Add...maybe Blizz added the servers in China MUCH later than the ones in the US, and people wanted to play the game NOW! And once you have a high level player, it's not fun to start over...
By the way, much of this is FUD. I'm sure that the things in the article actually do happen, but they're so far from commonplace that it's barely worth reporting on.
Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*. Interface, and sound quality. Now I'm not sure how they made it so that every kid under the age of 30 *has* to have one...that's another story.
Handheld computers just don't manage that simple job. They are sub-par computers with sub-par games and sub-par web browsing and some do a sub-par job of displaying video and playing songs. Yummy, just what I want...
I haven't replaced my old Samsung SCH3500 phone because few phones available today do a better job doing the things I *want* a phone for...reception, battery life, sound quality. I'd replace the phone every 6 months if they came up with phones that were better at being a *phone*.
In several respects, that's one of the reasons things are the way they are. Apple has always understood what the customer wanted (well, mostly anyway). It's just too bad they can't do it at a better price, or they'd be a frightening corporation...
I'd rather have 1 link that is exactly what I want, than 100,000,000,000 irrelevant links. The same goes for beta-testing, _if_ the goal is actually to beta-test, and not just to get some free publicity: I'd rather have just 50 people actually professionally looking for bugs, than 50,000 whining about everything else"
Well, sure if you have that exact goal...but that's not what beta testing is.
Lets say that your scope was to take those 100,000,000,000 pages and check them for errors and typos...now which team would you want?
Beta testing is not about testing a single feature or even a feature set (usually), it's about getting as many eyes on the game as possible. It's about random hardware and software configurations messing things up. It's about the *actual* effect of getting 50,000 people trying to log in and play. It's about someone doing something that no professional gamer would even *consider* doing.
I'm not knocking the idea of the seasoned beta tester...they're important as well. They know what to do, and they do it more efficiently and more systematically, but they can't do *everything*. They can't stress the systems as much as a crowd of fanboys can.
Probably less than 1mm, and you wouldn't probably notice it.
The Lexmark Optra N I'd used for several years at work turned out to be one of these. VERY faint yellow dots on the white parts of the border (I didn't test it on anything full-bleed though, so no idea what it would look like under those circumstances).
I'd used that printer for light-to-moderate graphics work for a long time, and never noticed. Heck, I barely noticed when I knew what to look for, but it was most certainly there.
There are PvP servers. There are roleplaying servers that I've heard are PvP, but I'm not sure in any way.
On the non-PvP servers, there is still PvP mode you can go into, and anyone else who is in PvP mode is vulnerable (if you're on the opposition's side).
I was involved in the big raids on the open beta's last 2 days, and all I can say was that it was a complete blast. If you get tired of getting your elvin butt handed to you, the PvP mode times out after 5 minutes of non-use, then you can go back to playing PvM. That's a great compromise IMO. (turning into a chicken was a little less of a blast, and I didn't quite figure out why that was going on, but it was amusing at least)
POTENTIAL superpower?!? You'd better hope they don't decide to provide proof of it...
Someone post some stats about China's military numbers and their nuclear arsenal...I'm too lazy to google...
No I'm not...2.5 million in the military, first successful nuclear test, 1964, hydrogen in 1967....OK they're #5 among the main nuclear powers, but that's still ~120 nuclear missles can do enough damage to consider them pretty powerful.
>> Between the two, Microsoft may have a serious problem on their hands.:-)
If I may act like a M$ fanboy for a sec...if IE use drops to 0% across the board, how does this affect M$'s bottom line?
I'm all for using anything but IE, but I still don't get the whole 'browser wars' thing. Except for bragging rights (and a potentially safer web experience), how much does it matter whether I'm using Free Browser X or Free Browser Y?
Hussien would be likely to use WMDs. And we could do something about it. That is somewhat over-simplified, but it's the bottom line.
NK could use them, but isn't likely to. They're probably more interested in using them as a bargaining tool. And while we could possibly have gone in and done something about it, we'd likely have had to deal with China if we had. And that's not a good idea, their army is both massive and well armed with their own nukes, as well as other things.
I'd rather take the toys away from the bullies who are likely to use them on us than the ones that are just puffing up their collective chests.
Judges make decisions based on their OPINIONS of th laws as they understand them, if they bother to know or research the laws in teh first place (which I assume most do, though not all).
Assuming that the laws they're basing their decisions on in the first place are just, that's a decent system. If the original laws are crap, then you get new crap laws based on the old ones (until someone finds the lot unconstitutional and throws them out).
Judges are human, just like the rest of us. They have good and bad days, they come in varying degrees of intelligence, and varying degrees of ignorance. And they aren't cookie-cutters when it comes to their decisions...their understanding and experience can easily affect their judgements.
I can't speak for the country, but in California it seems like about 30% of people arrested for felonies are not convicted (as opposed to 'found not guilty)
http://caag.state.ca.us/cjsc/publications/candd/ cd 96/cd96obts.pdf
Also, DNA gets you a lot more than a fingerprint does. You only get a fingerprint under good conditions (such as, the person wasn't wearing gloves), but you can gather DNA evidence much more frequently. This is especially useful in sexual assault cases, but there are a lot of instances where DNA is left at a crime scene even when no fingerprints are left behind.
DNA also can tell you a lot more about a person than a fingerprint. Even if you don't have the person's DNA on file, you can still develop a profile of the person given a good DNA sample. You can get the person's race and sex, at the very least. All that having a fingerprint of a person tells you is that they have a finger.
OTOH, DNA would be a bit easier to plant than a fingerprint (leave a few hair samples from someone else at the crime scene) than it would be to leave a fake fingerprint.
I'd not be overly concerned if the government had my DNA on file, as I don't generally commit those kinds of crimes:P Then again, I'm not the tinfoil-hat-wearing type, so I don't generally spend much time thinking about how that kind of info could be used to oppress me...
The article and the quote both say 'dual core processor' - not dual processors. Forgive me for not knowing off the top of my head, but I am assuming that they don't mean one of those hyperthreading things though, so...multi-processor chips maybe?
Gods...I hate to post this in reply about wood, but....
Did anyone else see the URL for that site and immediately try to figure out if it was something akin to goatse.cx?
See..../ does rot the brain...
Re:Talk about a weird week.
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Insightful?
It wasn't the CA government that got fooled, it was some idiot staffer in a TOWN government that got fooled (and dragged a few other town idiots with them) It was no more the CA government than it was the US government, NATO, or the New World Order.
And they were fooled by a web site, which was incorrectly attributed to a 14 year old who used it for a science fair project. The info (and spoof) he used was available on the web long before that.
If I make a couple vague but complete errors while flaming a story, can I get modded insightful too? Please?
"Give the manufacturer your money and tell him that he can send you your stuff whenever he's done with it"
It's more like, give them your money and tell them to send you your stuff whever it's done, but if it's more than a year from now...just keep the money.
This is something that's always concerned me when we talk about boycotting companies that advertise with spam...it's completely reasonable to believe that someone in an affilliate program is sending out millions of emails (which you can do for free if you try)in the hopes of pulling down some easy commissions.
I'm not sure what it would take to deal with this though...the company would have to be willing to cooperate for certain, and you'd have to set up some sort of sting if the spammer was at all capable of covering his tracks (have someone go through with a purchase to the point where the affiliate information was made visible)
Invasion of privacy? Well, only if you consider that they looked to see what you bought...but since you're volunteering to use the card, and volunteering to use correct contact information, I'd have to say no. Plus, they do see you when you check out, so it's not like you're keeping secrets anyway.
Now, is it a violation of their privacy agreement? Not having read it, it's hard to say. However, have you ever read one that says 'we promise never ever to contact you about anything'? Seems rather unlikely doesn't it?
I've been trying to explain this exact fact to some of the people playing at There.com for months...
There.com is a company that is situated in the US, and therefor has to abide by the laws and practices in the US. They also have their own TOS which has to go along with those laws, and can in fact be more controlling (but not less). No matter what you may thing your rights are There, you have to follow both sets of rules.
Not quite sure how this applies when someone from an even MORE strict set of laws plays there...There is under no obligation to have the same rules as every country/state/whatever as everyone who might log in there over the 'net, so maybe it's up to the people to follow There.com's rules as well as their own country's....
Actually, that's pretty much what's happening. There.com is a 'gaming' or virtual world site that has regular paying members. The software used to run it is the same (basic) software that the Army is using to train with. Obviously modified to fit the situation.
Not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg, but no matter which one came first, it's an existng game, so you can stop worrying about your tax dollars.
I missed the initial Amazon stock (which sold out in...what, hours?). I immediately got on their waiting list though, and my set arrived late last week.
I should have a DVD player by the end of the holidays...and probably a TV some time shortly after that:-)
Slashdot Mirror
It seemed to be missing for a bit, but it's there now.
And it's one of the most awfully formatted (or, non-formatted) pages I've seen in a long time...
Add...maybe Blizz added the servers in China MUCH later than the ones in the US, and people wanted to play the game NOW! And once you have a high level player, it's not fun to start over...
By the way, much of this is FUD. I'm sure that the things in the article actually do happen, but they're so far from commonplace that it's barely worth reporting on.
There's a *bingo*.
Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*. Interface, and sound quality. Now I'm not sure how they made it so that every kid under the age of 30 *has* to have one...that's another story.
Handheld computers just don't manage that simple job. They are sub-par computers with sub-par games and sub-par web browsing and some do a sub-par job of displaying video and playing songs. Yummy, just what I want...
I haven't replaced my old Samsung SCH3500 phone because few phones available today do a better job doing the things I *want* a phone for...reception, battery life, sound quality. I'd replace the phone every 6 months if they came up with phones that were better at being a *phone*.
In several respects, that's one of the reasons things are the way they are. Apple has always understood what the customer wanted (well, mostly anyway). It's just too bad they can't do it at a better price, or they'd be a frightening corporation...
Well, sure if you have that exact goal...but that's not what beta testing is.
Lets say that your scope was to take those 100,000,000,000 pages and check them for errors and typos...now which team would you want?
Beta testing is not about testing a single feature or even a feature set (usually), it's about getting as many eyes on the game as possible. It's about random hardware and software configurations messing things up. It's about the *actual* effect of getting 50,000 people trying to log in and play. It's about someone doing something that no professional gamer would even *consider* doing.
I'm not knocking the idea of the seasoned beta tester...they're important as well. They know what to do, and they do it more efficiently and more systematically, but they can't do *everything*. They can't stress the systems as much as a crowd of fanboys can.
Probably less than 1mm, and you wouldn't probably notice it.
The Lexmark Optra N I'd used for several years at work turned out to be one of these. VERY faint yellow dots on the white parts of the border (I didn't test it on anything full-bleed though, so no idea what it would look like under those circumstances).
I'd used that printer for light-to-moderate graphics work for a long time, and never noticed. Heck, I barely noticed when I knew what to look for, but it was most certainly there.
About PvP:
There are PvP servers. There are roleplaying servers that I've heard are PvP, but I'm not sure in any way.
On the non-PvP servers, there is still PvP mode you can go into, and anyone else who is in PvP mode is vulnerable (if you're on the opposition's side).
I was involved in the big raids on the open beta's last 2 days, and all I can say was that it was a complete blast. If you get tired of getting your elvin butt handed to you, the PvP mode times out after 5 minutes of non-use, then you can go back to playing PvM. That's a great compromise IMO. (turning into a chicken was a little less of a blast, and I didn't quite figure out why that was going on, but it was amusing at least)
POTENTIAL superpower?!? You'd better hope they don't decide to provide proof of it...
Someone post some stats about China's military numbers and their nuclear arsenal...I'm too lazy to google...
No I'm not...2.5 million in the military, first successful nuclear test, 1964, hydrogen in 1967....OK they're #5 among the main nuclear powers, but that's still ~120 nuclear missles can do enough damage to consider them pretty powerful.
>> Between the two, Microsoft may have a serious problem on their hands. :-)
If I may act like a M$ fanboy for a sec...if IE use drops to 0% across the board, how does this affect M$'s bottom line?
I'm all for using anything but IE, but I still don't get the whole 'browser wars' thing. Except for bragging rights (and a potentially safer web experience), how much does it matter whether I'm using Free Browser X or Free Browser Y?
Hussien would be likely to use WMDs. And we could do something about it. That is somewhat over-simplified, but it's the bottom line.
NK could use them, but isn't likely to. They're probably more interested in using them as a bargaining tool. And while we could possibly have gone in and done something about it, we'd likely have had to deal with China if we had. And that's not a good idea, their army is both massive and well armed with their own nukes, as well as other things.
I'd rather take the toys away from the bullies who are likely to use them on us than the ones that are just puffing up their collective chests.
Judges make decisions based on their OPINIONS of th laws as they understand them, if they bother to know or research the laws in teh first place (which I assume most do, though not all).
Assuming that the laws they're basing their decisions on in the first place are just, that's a decent system. If the original laws are crap, then you get new crap laws based on the old ones (until someone finds the lot unconstitutional and throws them out).
Judges are human, just like the rest of us. They have good and bad days, they come in varying degrees of intelligence, and varying degrees of ignorance. And they aren't cookie-cutters when it comes to their decisions...their understanding and experience can easily affect their judgements.
That's $600...plus a list of acessories and 'recommended' add-ons that reads like a new car brochure. Figure at least $800 by the time you're done.
The pretty color screen will cost you an extra $138. $45 for an internal MP3 player.
$25 for USB *CORD*? I thought that was for a USB interface. But hey, you can get 4 AA batteries for only $5!
I can't speak for the country, but in California it seems like about 30% of people arrested for felonies are not convicted (as opposed to 'found not guilty)
/ cd 96/cd96obts.pdf
:P Then again, I'm not the tinfoil-hat-wearing type, so I don't generally spend much time thinking about how that kind of info could be used to oppress me...
http://caag.state.ca.us/cjsc/publications/candd
Also, DNA gets you a lot more than a fingerprint does. You only get a fingerprint under good conditions (such as, the person wasn't wearing gloves), but you can gather DNA evidence much more frequently. This is especially useful in sexual assault cases, but there are a lot of instances where DNA is left at a crime scene even when no fingerprints are left behind.
DNA also can tell you a lot more about a person than a fingerprint. Even if you don't have the person's DNA on file, you can still develop a profile of the person given a good DNA sample. You can get the person's race and sex, at the very least. All that having a fingerprint of a person tells you is that they have a finger.
OTOH, DNA would be a bit easier to plant than a fingerprint (leave a few hair samples from someone else at the crime scene) than it would be to leave a fake fingerprint.
I'd not be overly concerned if the government had my DNA on file, as I don't generally commit those kinds of crimes
The article and the quote both say 'dual core processor' - not dual processors. Forgive me for not knowing off the top of my head, but I am assuming that they don't mean one of those hyperthreading things though, so...multi-processor chips maybe?
Apex is one of my favorites...I keep a list (lightly updated) online
http://home.earthlink.net/~thalen/shopping.htm
(I make no money from anything there...no ads, no affiliate links, etc).
Apex, HotDeals, Dealnews (ala DealMac), TechBargians, and a long list of also-rans that occasionally have a good deal.
"The Lyrids are best seen between about 2 a.m. and daybreak local time, regardless of where you live, astronomers say"
Missed the 3rd paragraph I take it?
Gods...I hate to post this in reply about wood, but....
./ does rot the brain...
Did anyone else see the URL for that site and immediately try to figure out if it was something akin to goatse.cx?
See...
Insightful?
It wasn't the CA government that got fooled, it was some idiot staffer in a TOWN government that got fooled (and dragged a few other town idiots with them) It was no more the CA government than it was the US government, NATO, or the New World Order.
And they were fooled by a web site, which was incorrectly attributed to a 14 year old who used it for a science fair project. The info (and spoof) he used was available on the web long before that.
If I make a couple vague but complete errors while flaming a story, can I get modded insightful too? Please?
"Give the manufacturer your money and tell him that he can send you your stuff whenever he's done with it"
It's more like, give them your money and tell them to send you your stuff whever it's done, but if it's more than a year from now...just keep the money.
This is something that's always concerned me when we talk about boycotting companies that advertise with spam...it's completely reasonable to believe that someone in an affilliate program is sending out millions of emails (which you can do for free if you try)in the hopes of pulling down some easy commissions.
I'm not sure what it would take to deal with this though...the company would have to be willing to cooperate for certain, and you'd have to set up some sort of sting if the spammer was at all capable of covering his tracks (have someone go through with a purchase to the point where the affiliate information was made visible)
Invasion of privacy? Well, only if you consider that they looked to see what you bought...but since you're volunteering to use the card, and volunteering to use correct contact information, I'd have to say no. Plus, they do see you when you check out, so it's not like you're keeping secrets anyway.
Now, is it a violation of their privacy agreement? Not having read it, it's hard to say. However, have you ever read one that says 'we promise never ever to contact you about anything'? Seems rather unlikely doesn't it?
I've been trying to explain this exact fact to some of the people playing at There.com for months...
There.com is a company that is situated in the US, and therefor has to abide by the laws and practices in the US. They also have their own TOS which has to go along with those laws, and can in fact be more controlling (but not less). No matter what you may thing your rights are There, you have to follow both sets of rules.
Not quite sure how this applies when someone from an even MORE strict set of laws plays there...There is under no obligation to have the same rules as every country/state/whatever as everyone who might log in there over the 'net, so maybe it's up to the people to follow There.com's rules as well as their own country's....
Actually, that's pretty much what's happening. There.com is a 'gaming' or virtual world site that has regular paying members. The software used to run it is the same (basic) software that the Army is using to train with. Obviously modified to fit the situation.
Not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg, but no matter which one came first, it's an existng game, so you can stop worrying about your tax dollars.
Dude...pull the tinfoil hat on a little tighter, part of your head is still showing.
I missed the initial Amazon stock (which sold out in...what, hours?). I immediately got on their waiting list though, and my set arrived late last week.
:-)
I should have a DVD player by the end of the holidays...and probably a TV some time shortly after that