Idle, somewhat connected question... has anybody seen any statistics on browser usage for people who have actually tried an alternative browser? I've introduced quite a few people to Mozilla/Firefox, and I don't recall any of them saying "Well yeah, but I still like IE better."
Will somebody PLEASE put this guys theories to the test? Why can't Rockstar put a story arc in the next GTA which has the character bumping off some slimeball ambulance chasing lawyer who's sueing game companies?
Then if nothing happens to this guy, we'll know he's full of shit. And if he does happen to get killed by some video game junkie... well, I'm sure he'll rest in peace knowing that his story was vindicated. We could all chip in and send a big burial wreath saying "We're sorry, you were right!"
I'd like to see a UT2K4 package that would do some thorough stat tracking and analysis of my play. Weapon usage, hit pct, kills/killed by... preferably in nice pastel powerpoint type pie charts and bar graphs. Stats for a single game don't mean much, but if they were tracked for weeks or months, it might be fun to analyze them.
There was one stat I really wished for back when I played bunches of TFC - a simple plus/minus cap tracker. Every time the team you're on captures the flag, you get a point, Get capped on, you lose a point. Track that for a few dozen games, and you should have a pretty decent idea of how good a player you really are.
I've got no interest in comparing my stats to other people. As soon as stats become public, people start looking for ways to screw the system and inflate their numbers. Besides, I pretty much suck terribly at any FPS game I try.
If a consumers console breaks, and you refuse to fix it for them, there's a good change that the replacement unit they buy will be from another company. If I've owned an XBox for a year, I've probably bought and played all the most popular games already. If it failed on me suddenly, and if I was slightly irked at MS and whoever else because the unit was barely a year old, I'd certainly give serious consideration to buying a PS2 and trading in all my old XBox games for PS2 games. GTA:San Andreas... MMMMmmmmm....
I've figured it out. The Rubiks cube was actually invented by some commie, wasn't it? So the All-American Majick Cube would actually be HELPING our economy, by making sure part of the profits didn't go to those godless communists.
So, if the Dept of Homeland Security confiscated the American cubes.... they must be agents of the Soviet Government. Thats the only thing that makes sense.
So give them a better story. Granted, the company won't be able to disassociate themselves from the kiddie porn thing. So cooperate with the authorities, get a good PR person, and try to go from "the company that sent out all that kiddie porn" to "the company that helped the police catch that awful kiddie porn blackmailer person". Maybe if you point out to the media outlets that they could just as easily be targeted by the same scheme, they'll give you a positive spin on things.
That's really the only chance the company has. If they pay off the blackmailer, he'll be back again next week. Or someone else trying the same scam, who won't care that you're out of money because you paid it all to the last blackmailer.
That might happen. I'd kind of hope that if the target contacted the authorities as soon as the recieved the threat, and cooperated with them completely, that the authorities would realize that the spam didn't originate from the victim without needing to shut them down and confiscate their computers for a few years.
On the other hand, doesn't trying this sort of thing make the blackmailer public enemy number one? DOS attacks are common and boring... I doubt the public knows much about them, and cares even less. Someone spams out a few thousand pieces of kiddie porn, on the other hand... there's going to be a lot of publicity, and a ton of respectable citizens screaming for someones head.
You mean once the cars started its parking process, it can't be stopped? It's like some crazed, out of control parking cyborg, and the poor driver is trapped and helpless until its completed its mission?
I kinda figured they'd design so that doing something like stepping on the brake would halt the process. You know, like they do with cruise control. That way the driver could sit in the car and keep an eye out for trouble, and not be distracted by trying to maneuver the vehicle into a tight space without hitting something. Driver watches for trouble, car parks itself, everyones safer.
Granted, some people will hit the "Park" button, then start making phone calls or putting on makeup or hell, get out of the car and head into the mall and leave the empty car to park itself. I chalk those problems up to stupid people, not a stupid design.
As for your 700 cc engines and 50 mph speed limit... come vistit me in Dallas sometime. We'll make a day trip to El Paso, and along the way you'll have plenty of time to tell me how much you you enjoy driving at 50 MPH.
Okay, maybe I was wrong. Apparently, people won't wait until after the election before they start dismissing allegations of election fraud as nothing more then an attempt by the other party to thwart the will of the people. They're doing it already.
There will be lots of allegations of election fraud and election screwups for the upcoming vote. The closer the races, the louder and more widespread the allegations will be.
However, we won't be hearing "The voting system is confusing and insecure. We need to change it!". We'll be hearing the Democrats say "The Republicans screwed with the results and stole the election!". The Repubicans will be making the same allegations about the Democrats. And both sides will be so busy pointing fingers and slinging mud, the process itself will be completely ignored and will remain as broken as ever.
A high-tech voting system that is properly designed and deployed should be easier to use and more secure then a paper solution. A paper ballot can't prevent a person from voting for two different candidates in the same race. A paper ballot can't remind a person that they didn't place a vote for dogcatcher, and make sure that they truly intended to not vote in that race. Paper ballots have problems with hanging chads (if they're the punch-out type) or improper erasures (did he intend to erase "A" and vote vor "B", or did he vote for both of them?) or faint markings that may or may not have been intended to be votes.
And you're going to have errors when you start to count millions and millions of paper ballots by hand. Any candidate who lost by a narrow enough margin is going to demand a recount, and the recount will come up with a different total then the original, which will lead to yet another recount demand. And there's a limited amount of time available to get the recounts done. A recount for the Presidential election would have to be completed before January 2nd. Limited time means people rushing, which means more errors...
Assuming that you have access to a place with lots of wide, smooth paths with no hills and gentle turns. And no pedestrians.
Better get someone out front to direct traffic, too. The person who is doing the steering has the whole bike and three people sitting right in front of them, I don't imagine they have much of a view.
My phone lets me set any special ringing mode so that it will expire at a specified time. So at the start of the movie I set it to "Silent", set silent mode to expire in two hours, and I'm all set. After two hours, my phone will go back to ringing at 120 decibles.
I agree with an earlier poster, that phone calls in theatres are a social problem. People know you shouldn't talk loudly, or pick your nose, or let your kids run around screaming. Some idiots do it anyway.
I wonder how many people don't set their phone to vibrate because they simply don't know how? I'd be willing to bet that neither of my parents could do it without a lot of button mashing and probably screwing something else up along the way.
(And on a totally unrelated side note... if your cell phone gets dirty, just dump it in the washing machine. I did that to mine... actually, left it in the pocket of my slacks when I washed them. Phone came out nice and clean, and still works great.)
They can probably tell you what init, dex, and enc are. I'm not too sure about initiative, dexterity, or encumbrance.
Grew up playing D&D in the '70s. Dropped out of college in the 80's because of too much gaming. Eventually moved on. Haven't rolled a 20-sider in y ears. Don't remember how many HD a troll has, or what a hill giant needs to hit AC0.
Unique names are fine. Normal names are fine. Normal names with unique spellings suck, because everyone who hears your name is "Jon" winds up spelling it "John" at least 98% of the time. And then you have to decide whether to just ignore it, or whether to correct the person and hope they remember.
No, I'm neither bitter, nor scarred for life by this. Why the fuck are you looking at me like that?
Is there a babelfish something somewhere that'll translate BSOD into English? Because most of the error messages I've seen there have been spectacularly unhelpful.
"If you're forced to reboot a machine, that machine has a problem...". Well, the machines problem is probably simply the fact that it's running Windows. Some Windows crashes are caused by fluxes in the Earths magnetic field, or vibrations from a truck passing by outside, or other equally screwy and unforseeable causes. If a user is getting bluescreened once a weeek, it seems kind of silly for me to take the machine offline for half a day, and scratch my head and run tests and peruse knowledgebase and then do something that might fix the problem, or might make things worse.
Sure, if you're blueing regularly, or if you blue every time you click a certain button, you've got a problem that needs looking at. If you're blueing once a week or so, with no rhyme or reason as to cause or preliminary symptoms... chalk it up to Windows overhead, remember to save your work regularly, and get on with things.
I agree.. the initial robot scan probably doesn't use up many resources, but any sort of followup has to be done by a human. There's the "please don't hesitate to contact us" blurb. If the number of people attempting to contact them jumps 10X, it's gotta throw some sort of wrench in their plans.
Heck, it might at least cause them to make their bot a little smarter. Shouldn't it be able to differentiate file types? And maybe realize that a 120K file is unlikely to be seven seasons worth of TV shows?
I doubt they can hold him for a week on the vandalism charge, but the can certainly keep posession of his bike as "evidence". The bike is getting all the attention, without it he's just another protester.
I don't know... on the one hand, sure the guy was vandalizing public property, and the police had the right to bust him. On the other hand, I'd like to see a city that's hosting a major political convention give free speech a little more slack. The police could just have easily ignored the guy and let him put his messages on the street. If he's not harming anyone, or obstructing traffic, or threatening anyone, can't we just let the guy do his thing?
Why is MS celebrating the release of a "designer' mouse. Aren't computer mice supposed to be funcional? You don't hang them on your wall for your friends to ooh and ahh over... you hook them up to your computer and grab them with your hand and use them to do things. I don't remember Ford every advertising a "designer" starter motor.
Really, I just want a mouse that's comfortable to my hand, that I can use for long stretches without discomfort, that has buttons and wheels that feel familiar the first time I use them. I'd like to see mice that recognize that human beings come in both left and right-handed varieties, and that those hands can have different sizes. I could give a shit what the damn thing looks like. It doesn't need cool lights or glowing stripes to accomplish its function.
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Idle, somewhat connected question... has anybody seen any statistics on browser usage for people who have actually tried an alternative browser? I've introduced quite a few people to Mozilla/Firefox, and I don't recall any of them saying "Well yeah, but I still like IE better."
Will somebody PLEASE put this guys theories to the test? Why can't Rockstar put a story arc in the next GTA which has the character bumping off some slimeball ambulance chasing lawyer who's sueing game companies?
Then if nothing happens to this guy, we'll know he's full of shit. And if he does happen to get killed by some video game junkie... well, I'm sure he'll rest in peace knowing that his story was vindicated. We could all chip in and send a big burial wreath saying "We're sorry, you were right!"
I'd like to see a UT2K4 package that would do some thorough stat tracking and analysis of my play. Weapon usage, hit pct, kills/killed by... preferably in nice pastel powerpoint type pie charts and bar graphs. Stats for a single game don't mean much, but if they were tracked for weeks or months, it might be fun to analyze them.
There was one stat I really wished for back when I played bunches of TFC - a simple plus/minus cap tracker. Every time the team you're on captures the flag, you get a point, Get capped on, you lose a point. Track that for a few dozen games, and you should have a pretty decent idea of how good a player you really are.
I've got no interest in comparing my stats to other people. As soon as stats become public, people start looking for ways to screw the system and inflate their numbers. Besides, I pretty much suck terribly at any FPS game I try.
They don't have much interest in going after the average user, because the average user isn't worth the trouble.
Is the RIAA aware of that? They seem to be going after a lot of "average users".
If a consumers console breaks, and you refuse to fix it for them, there's a good change that the replacement unit they buy will be from another company. If I've owned an XBox for a year, I've probably bought and played all the most popular games already. If it failed on me suddenly, and if I was slightly irked at MS and whoever else because the unit was barely a year old, I'd certainly give serious consideration to buying a PS2 and trading in all my old XBox games for PS2 games. GTA:San Andreas... MMMMmmmmm....
I've figured it out. The Rubiks cube was actually invented by some commie, wasn't it? So the All-American Majick Cube would actually be HELPING our economy, by making sure part of the profits didn't go to those godless communists.
So, if the Dept of Homeland Security confiscated the American cubes.... they must be agents of the Soviet Government. Thats the only thing that makes sense.
So give them a better story. Granted, the company won't be able to disassociate themselves from the kiddie porn thing. So cooperate with the authorities, get a good PR person, and try to go from "the company that sent out all that kiddie porn" to "the company that helped the police catch that awful kiddie porn blackmailer person". Maybe if you point out to the media outlets that they could just as easily be targeted by the same scheme, they'll give you a positive spin on things.
That's really the only chance the company has. If they pay off the blackmailer, he'll be back again next week. Or someone else trying the same scam, who won't care that you're out of money because you paid it all to the last blackmailer.
That might happen. I'd kind of hope that if the target contacted the authorities as soon as the recieved the threat, and cooperated with them completely, that the authorities would realize that the spam didn't originate from the victim without needing to shut them down and confiscate their computers for a few years.
On the other hand, doesn't trying this sort of thing make the blackmailer public enemy number one? DOS attacks are common and boring... I doubt the public knows much about them, and cares even less. Someone spams out a few thousand pieces of kiddie porn, on the other hand... there's going to be a lot of publicity, and a ton of respectable citizens screaming for someones head.
Now I'm thoroughly dissatisfied with my cable modem.
Thanks.
And once you're there, I'm sure El Pasos excellent pubic(sic) tranportation system will whisk you anywhere you want to go, quickly and conveniently.
You mean once the cars started its parking process, it can't be stopped? It's like some crazed, out of control parking cyborg, and the poor driver is trapped and helpless until its completed its mission?
I kinda figured they'd design so that doing something like stepping on the brake would halt the process. You know, like they do with cruise control. That way the driver could sit in the car and keep an eye out for trouble, and not be distracted by trying to maneuver the vehicle into a tight space without hitting something. Driver watches for trouble, car parks itself, everyones safer.
Granted, some people will hit the "Park" button, then start making phone calls or putting on makeup or hell, get out of the car and head into the mall and leave the empty car to park itself. I chalk those problems up to stupid people, not a stupid design.
As for your 700 cc engines and 50 mph speed limit... come vistit me in Dallas sometime. We'll make a day trip to El Paso, and along the way you'll have plenty of time to tell me how much you you enjoy driving at 50 MPH.
So we can look forward to a bunch of stupid "Which Doom Monster are you?" quizzes all over the internet.
Yeah, and she's worried about getting typecast as one-eyed things.
Okay, maybe I was wrong. Apparently, people won't wait until after the election before they start dismissing allegations of election fraud as nothing more then an attempt by the other party to thwart the will of the people. They're doing it already.
There will be lots of allegations of election fraud and election screwups for the upcoming vote. The closer the races, the louder and more widespread the allegations will be.
However, we won't be hearing "The voting system is confusing and insecure. We need to change it!". We'll be hearing the Democrats say "The Republicans screwed with the results and stole the election!". The Repubicans will be making the same allegations about the Democrats. And both sides will be so busy pointing fingers and slinging mud, the process itself will be completely ignored and will remain as broken as ever.
A high-tech voting system that is properly designed and deployed should be easier to use and more secure then a paper solution. A paper ballot can't prevent a person from voting for two different candidates in the same race. A paper ballot can't remind a person that they didn't place a vote for dogcatcher, and make sure that they truly intended to not vote in that race. Paper ballots have problems with hanging chads (if they're the punch-out type) or improper erasures (did he intend to erase "A" and vote vor "B", or did he vote for both of them?) or faint markings that may or may not have been intended to be votes.
And you're going to have errors when you start to count millions and millions of paper ballots by hand. Any candidate who lost by a narrow enough margin is going to demand a recount, and the recount will come up with a different total then the original, which will lead to yet another recount demand. And there's a limited amount of time available to get the recounts done. A recount for the Presidential election would have to be completed before January 2nd. Limited time means people rushing, which means more errors...
Assuming that you have access to a place with lots of wide, smooth paths with no hills and gentle turns. And no pedestrians.
Better get someone out front to direct traffic, too. The person who is doing the steering has the whole bike and three people sitting right in front of them, I don't imagine they have much of a view.
My phone lets me set any special ringing mode so that it will expire at a specified time. So at the start of the movie I set it to "Silent", set silent mode to expire in two hours, and I'm all set. After two hours, my phone will go back to ringing at 120 decibles.
I agree with an earlier poster, that phone calls in theatres are a social problem. People know you shouldn't talk loudly, or pick your nose, or let your kids run around screaming. Some idiots do it anyway.
I wonder how many people don't set their phone to vibrate because they simply don't know how? I'd be willing to bet that neither of my parents could do it without a lot of button mashing and probably screwing something else up along the way.
(And on a totally unrelated side note... if your cell phone gets dirty, just dump it in the washing machine. I did that to mine... actually, left it in the pocket of my slacks when I washed them. Phone came out nice and clean, and still works great.)
They can probably tell you what init, dex, and enc are. I'm not too sure about initiative, dexterity, or encumbrance.
Grew up playing D&D in the '70s. Dropped out of college in the 80's because of too much gaming. Eventually moved on. Haven't rolled a 20-sider in y ears. Don't remember how many HD a troll has, or what a hill giant needs to hit AC0.
Sigh.
Unique names are fine. Normal names are fine. Normal names with unique spellings suck, because everyone who hears your name is "Jon" winds up spelling it "John" at least 98% of the time. And then you have to decide whether to just ignore it, or whether to correct the person and hope they remember.
No, I'm neither bitter, nor scarred for life by this. Why the fuck are you looking at me like that?
Is there a babelfish something somewhere that'll translate BSOD into English? Because most of the error messages I've seen there have been spectacularly unhelpful.
"If you're forced to reboot a machine, that machine has a problem...". Well, the machines problem is probably simply the fact that it's running Windows. Some Windows crashes are caused by fluxes in the Earths magnetic field, or vibrations from a truck passing by outside, or other equally screwy and unforseeable causes. If a user is getting bluescreened once a weeek, it seems kind of silly for me to take the machine offline for half a day, and scratch my head and run tests and peruse knowledgebase and then do something that might fix the problem, or might make things worse.
Sure, if you're blueing regularly, or if you blue every time you click a certain button, you've got a problem that needs looking at. If you're blueing once a week or so, with no rhyme or reason as to cause or preliminary symptoms... chalk it up to Windows overhead, remember to save your work regularly, and get on with things.
I agree.. the initial robot scan probably doesn't use up many resources, but any sort of followup has to be done by a human. There's the "please don't hesitate to contact us" blurb. If the number of people attempting to contact them jumps 10X, it's gotta throw some sort of wrench in their plans.
Heck, it might at least cause them to make their bot a little smarter. Shouldn't it be able to differentiate file types? And maybe realize that a 120K file is unlikely to be seven seasons worth of TV shows?
I doubt they can hold him for a week on the vandalism charge, but the can certainly keep posession of his bike as "evidence". The bike is getting all the attention, without it he's just another protester.
I don't know... on the one hand, sure the guy was vandalizing public property, and the police had the right to bust him. On the other hand, I'd like to see a city that's hosting a major political convention give free speech a little more slack. The police could just have easily ignored the guy and let him put his messages on the street. If he's not harming anyone, or obstructing traffic, or threatening anyone, can't we just let the guy do his thing?
Why is MS celebrating the release of a "designer' mouse. Aren't computer mice supposed to be funcional? You don't hang them on your wall for your friends to ooh and ahh over... you hook them up to your computer and grab them with your hand and use them to do things. I don't remember Ford every advertising a "designer" starter motor.
Really, I just want a mouse that's comfortable to my hand, that I can use for long stretches without discomfort, that has buttons and wheels that feel familiar the first time I use them. I'd like to see mice that recognize that human beings come in both left and right-handed varieties, and that those hands can have different sizes. I could give a shit what the damn thing looks like. It doesn't need cool lights or glowing stripes to accomplish its function.
Luckily our eagle-eyed /. editors caught it before they posted it.