>In most of south-eastern Asia, milk and milk >products are considered disgusting.
Not really. It's just that Cow's milk was a rare commodity in SE Asia for a very long time. Goat's milk was much more common, but it was generally rare to find a village rich enough to afford large livestock (which are pretty much the only animals that anyone would bother to milk). Add to that a fair percentage of the population is lactose intolerant, and you can see why milkshakes aren't popular over there.
For those that don't know, Lactose intolerance means eating anything with lactose in it results in nasty cramps, diarrhea, and a whole lot of gas. That's all sorts of 'eww' all around.
As for cheese, the common pronounciation among Cantonese speakers is "Chee-see" which sounds very much like you're telling your guests that you're serving them scat out of some unidentified animal that they've never heard of. Yummy...
That aside, just try and describe what cheese is, without it sounding gross.
I could see your argument if this fellow was in Canada, because here, some publications are banned because they promote hatred, or instruct people on how to commit illegal acts.
As the FBI is investigating, I presume this is the USA. That's where companies like the well known Paladin Press are. For those that don't know, they publish some very weird stuff. They publish books on subjects like Improvised Explosives, weapons conversions (making a semi-auto into full-auto), improvised silencers, as well as how-to's on electronics for Surveillance and sabotage. Since they're still advertising in the back of various hobby magazines, I presume they're still legal in at least some states.
What I find weird is, if stuff like that is still legal why would something like this be an issue? This is pretty lightweight stuff by comparison.
By the way, being "investigated" doesn't mean anything. Law enforcement agencies around the world "investigate" useless crap all the time. All it requires is someone filing an official complaint and it has to be followed up. You can't infer guilt just because the police want to talk to someone.
Probably a joke killer, but I'm curious, can you legitimately call it a slide-rule, if it's not straight? i always thought the "rule" part of "slide-rule" was meant to mean ruler, or straight edge measuring device.
I presume the same way they do with every other agricultural product.
Everybody seems to be comparing MJ with tobacco, so why not continue with that. You're aware that you can grow tobacco in your back yard or in planters, right? A guy could grow tobacco in his backyard garden, dry the leaves on his back patio or the oven, and roll his own cigars/cigarettes/etc. Somehow tobacco companies still manage to make a huge amount of cash, and governments worldwide still manage to collect a nice amount of coin on the stuff.
There's a lot of agricultural products out there (legal ones) that people CAN grow themselves but don't because they don't want to put in the time and effort. It doesn't take much effort, time or space to grow tomatoes either, but most of us still choose to buy our salad ingredients from the corner store rather than devote a planter or two.
If I recall correctly, for a very long time Brahm Cohen resisted the idea of decentralizing the trackers and adding search capabilities into BT. If I recall some of the issues presented were that distributed tracking and searching capabilities would eat up bandwidth, and that they didn't make sense for the legitimate uses that Cohen originally envisioned. What's changed his mind?
Enough to buy your way past British immigration and obtain British citizenship. Only British citizens gain the title of "Sir". Gates is a foreigner, so while he may be granted the award, he can't be granted the title. That's why it's honourary.
The offline games are still available to users. The trick is to getting the offline games to work when the servers are acting up is to actually be OFFLINE, so that steam can't find an internet connection. If ANY of the steam servers replies at all, there will be a verification delay. In situations like this, the delay can be considerable.
Anyways, the workaround for the offline single player games is to just disconnect before firing up steam. It really is goofy, because if it can't find a net connection, it checks for local files for signs of the verification and fires up. If you're playing an offline game, I don't see why steam doesn't just do that to begin with to keep the delays to a minimum.
You misinterpreted my post. I said "let's say..." it works 80% of the time. I didn't say that firearms only work 80% of the time on average. I just chose that number at random for the sake of illustration.
Actually, it's NOT 90% success odds. That 90% success only applies to that "smart gun" locking system, and having it recognize you as an authorized user and unlocking the gun.
It doesn't mean that you have a 90% chance of successfully deploying the firearm and defending yourself.
Let's say that under normal conditions, you have a 80% chance that the gun will work right when you deploy it. Even if you like those odds, put that locking system on it. 1/10 times, it's going to screw up and lock you out. Now, your odds of having that gun work perfectly is down to 72% (80% - (0.1 * 80%)).
Are the odds so "well in your favor" that you feel the need to offer fate a helping hand?
Re:No No NO! That's called Starship Troopers 2
on
Doom Movie Update
·
· Score: 1
No, what's sad is the rip off that they tried to pawn off as a sequel to Starship Troopers. It was released this past summer (I think, maybe it was earlier than that). If you insist on seeing it, rent it, don't buy it.
The first movie wasn't great, but at least they had the budget for a coolness factor. The second is a below B budget movie. They recycled the CGI from the first movie for the bugs, and they didn't even use real blank firing guns for this one. Their weapons were just flashlights that were wired into a plastic shell that looked like the guns from ST1, with a bit of fibre optic in the "muzzle" that would blink when the trooper "fired" it.
This isn't just straight to video, it's straight to MS3K. What made it all the more sad was that the producers and the director had done interviews describing what they wanted to do originally, but couldn't because of the pathetic budget.
If you're masochistic enough to want to still want to see it, rent it. It's just not worth buying unless you can find it for less than $3 (I think it's worth $2, but I add an extra $1 because you can reuse the case).
Re:No No NO! That's called Starship Troopers 2
on
Doom Movie Update
·
· Score: 1
You haven't seen how bad this could become until you've had a chance to check out the Starship Troopers 2 DVD. Even the "extras" were embarassing, as they essentially had the producers talk about the movie they WOULD have made if they had more money.
Email to Sierra Tech support. Email bounces. OK. Try VUGames Tech support. web email form disabled -- it's there, you just can't type anything into it. OK. Try emailing directly. Email bounces.
Swear. Swear some more. Give up and go out.
Next day. Try again. Ok it accepts my registration, but authentication servers are too busy to activate me for real, so it sort of puts me on probation and lets me play. Still waiting for Steam to recognize me as a legit user.
maybe if someone didn't steal and release the source code two years ago, valve wouldn't have had to do this to their customers.
Nope. They had Steam already planned out as a distribution and copy protection measure, and had a working version well before the source wandered off. If it was done as you suggest, then the guys at Valve are clairvoyant because they knew it was going to happen, and stupid because they let it happen anyways.
I do blame Valve because they lied to the paying users. Early on when Steam was announced, a lot of people were concerned about privacy issues and things like this preventing paying users from playing. Valve put out press releases (some not too long ago) promising that all such concerns had been addressed and that the bugs were worked out of Steam. They assured us that there would be no problems once HL2 hit the shelves. After all this, I'm wondering whether the the promises behind the privacy concerns were really addressed either.
For the first time since Ultima 9, we've got a retail product where the only way to play it is to hunt down a crack because the copy protection is so screwed up.
Depending on where you live, the roaches may not be naturally occuring. If you live in North America the roaches are a foreign species (there's a reason why it's called a 'German cockroach'). Eliminating them isn't going to upset any natural food chains, as they're a near exclusive parasite that's hitched itself to humans.
If it wasn't for the fact that we try to kill them on a regular basis, they might be considered pets.
I got a BB gun for Christmas when I was a kid. I was moved up to a.22 semi-auto a year later. I'm not sure I'd consider them toys, but they're certainly a lot of fun, and they're far cooler than a PS2 is. I still have the.22 rifle but admittedly, a "friend" stole, and later broke the BB gun (thanks for eventually bringing it back, dude).
If your children are mature enough and you trust them enough with the responsibility, it really does make a great gift. Honestly, it's not for everybody, as there were some childhood friends that I wouldn't trust with a gun even now and if you're already using the TV and PS2 as baby sitter/roboparent, it's probably not a good idea for you. The range sessions provide some really good quality time with the kids, and teaches responsibility.
That's the way it is now. The cops are getting billed by the phone company for the wire taps and records searches and are supposed to pay for it out of their operating budgets. The money for wire taps, informants, etc are supposed to be budgetted out of the public funds that they receive for their annual budgets. Where things are getting complicated and where the controversy lies is that some police forces are refusing to pay the bills when they arrive and instead using the money for other things (unspecified).
They're effectively breaking the law, but the phone company can't do anything about it. It's not like they can just cut the police off for not paying the phone bill.
From my point of view, I've already paid for this stuff in my taxes and they've got parts of their budget already allocated for it. I do not wish to pay for this twice.
There have been a great many portable survivalist filtration devices advertised in camping and hunting magazines in the 80s. The biggest hurdle is that the devices can't handle biologicals (so the source resevoir has to be treated with chlorine pills). They were meant to allow you to make use of local natural water sources, but many of the advertisements claimed that the filters systems could produce 99% pure water from urine.
I would imagine that such a much more advanced filtration device was integrated into the pack. Otherwise, how would that be different from taking a leak into a regular MRE?
I think you've got your definitions mixed.
A computer virus is called a virus BECAUSE of its similarities to biological virii. Specifically, that it is code that REPLICATES itself and attaches to or integrates itself with a host file or structure to do so.
A WORM is a program that replicates itself by using various means, but does not require a host. It can exist and replicate itself independent of a host (the computer and the OS are considered the environment, rather than a host).
A Trojan is a reference to the Trojan horse of the Troyan war. It's meant to trick users into believing it's something else, so that they'll run it.
Hey, if the theater owners/managers are smart, they'll treat customers politely, and either allocate a small room towards storing camcorders for people (like a coat check room), or ask them to leave them in their vehicles.
The first option isn't likely to happen, and if it is offered, most people wouldn't be stupid enough to do it. A number of stores (some chain stores as well) have a policy where you have to check backpacks and shopping bags at customer service as you enter the store. But... the typical policy is also that if the items wander off, or get damaged, it's not their responsibility. I don't agree with it, but that's how it usually is.
As for asking people to leave their camcorders in their cars, many theatres are located in malls. While suburban malls have acres of parking, inside the city, parking is scarce, so many people just take public transit. If you get to the theatre, then have to go home and drop off your stuff and come back, people will go home, but they won't come back.
Of course, at the rate technology seems to be going, it shouldn't be too long before someone manages to build a recorder into a pair of glasses and records the movie that way.
Spytech already has something similar but I can't see anyone going through through all that cloak and daggar stuff just to scam a movie -- especially since the camera glasses cost as much as a camcorder does ($400 Canadian) with no built-in recording capabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't this going to violate some sort of patent Hostess has on Twinkies?
>In most of south-eastern Asia, milk and milk
>products are considered disgusting.
Not really. It's just that Cow's milk was a rare commodity in SE Asia for a very long time. Goat's milk was much more common, but it was generally rare to find a village rich enough to afford large livestock (which are pretty much the only animals that anyone would bother to milk). Add to that a fair percentage of the population is lactose intolerant, and you can see why milkshakes aren't popular over there.
For those that don't know, Lactose intolerance means eating anything with lactose in it results in nasty cramps, diarrhea, and a whole lot of gas. That's all sorts of 'eww' all around.
As for cheese, the common pronounciation among Cantonese speakers is "Chee-see" which sounds very much like you're telling your guests that you're serving them scat out of some unidentified animal that they've never heard of. Yummy...
That aside, just try and describe what cheese is, without it sounding gross.
I could see your argument if this fellow was in Canada, because here, some publications are banned because they promote hatred, or instruct people on how to commit illegal acts.
As the FBI is investigating, I presume this is the USA. That's where companies like the well known Paladin Press are. For those that don't know, they publish some very weird stuff. They publish books on subjects like Improvised Explosives, weapons conversions (making a semi-auto into full-auto), improvised silencers, as well as how-to's on electronics for Surveillance and sabotage. Since they're still advertising in the back of various hobby magazines, I presume they're still legal in at least some states.
What I find weird is, if stuff like that is still legal why would something like this be an issue? This is pretty lightweight stuff by comparison.
By the way, being "investigated" doesn't mean anything. Law enforcement agencies around the world "investigate" useless crap all the time. All it requires is someone filing an official complaint and it has to be followed up. You can't infer guilt just because the police want to talk to someone.
Probably a joke killer, but I'm curious, can you legitimately call it a slide-rule, if it's not straight? i always thought the "rule" part of "slide-rule" was meant to mean ruler, or straight edge measuring device.
I presume the same way they do with every other agricultural product.
Everybody seems to be comparing MJ with tobacco, so why not continue with that. You're aware that you can grow tobacco in your back yard or in planters, right? A guy could grow tobacco in his backyard garden, dry the leaves on his back patio or the oven, and roll his own cigars/cigarettes/etc. Somehow tobacco companies still manage to make a huge amount of cash, and governments worldwide still manage to collect a nice amount of coin on the stuff.
There's a lot of agricultural products out there (legal ones) that people CAN grow themselves but don't because they don't want to put in the time and effort. It doesn't take much effort, time or space to grow tomatoes either, but most of us still choose to buy our salad ingredients from the corner store rather than devote a planter or two.
"Profit" doesn't really fit too well in "Soviet Russia"
If I recall correctly, for a very long time Brahm Cohen resisted the idea of decentralizing the trackers and adding search capabilities into BT. If I recall some of the issues presented were that distributed tracking and searching capabilities would eat up bandwidth, and that they didn't make sense for the legitimate uses that Cohen originally envisioned. What's changed his mind?
Enough to buy your way past British immigration and obtain British citizenship. Only British citizens gain the title of "Sir". Gates is a foreigner, so while he may be granted the award, he can't be granted the title. That's why it's honourary.
So what do you propose? A UN resolution to impose sanctions against spammers?
The offline games are still available to users. The trick is to getting the offline games to work when the servers are acting up is to actually be OFFLINE, so that steam can't find an internet connection. If ANY of the steam servers replies at all, there will be a verification delay. In situations like this, the delay can be considerable.
Anyways, the workaround for the offline single player games is to just disconnect before firing up steam. It really is goofy, because if it can't find a net connection, it checks for local files for signs of the verification and fires up. If you're playing an offline game, I don't see why steam doesn't just do that to begin with to keep the delays to a minimum.
You misinterpreted my post. I said "let's say..." it works 80% of the time. I didn't say that firearms only work 80% of the time on average. I just chose that number at random for the sake of illustration.
Actually, it's NOT 90% success odds. That 90% success only applies to that "smart gun" locking system, and having it recognize you as an authorized user and unlocking the gun.
It doesn't mean that you have a 90% chance of successfully deploying the firearm and defending yourself.
Let's say that under normal conditions, you have a 80% chance that the gun will work right when you deploy it. Even if you like those odds, put that locking system on it. 1/10 times, it's going to screw up and lock you out. Now, your odds of having that gun work perfectly is down to 72% (80% - (0.1 * 80%)).
Are the odds so "well in your favor" that you feel the need to offer fate a helping hand?
No, what's sad is the rip off that they tried to pawn off as a sequel to Starship Troopers. It was released this past summer (I think, maybe it was earlier than that). If you insist on seeing it, rent it, don't buy it.
The first movie wasn't great, but at least they had the budget for a coolness factor. The second is a below B budget movie. They recycled the CGI from the first movie for the bugs, and they didn't even use real blank firing guns for this one. Their weapons were just flashlights that were wired into a plastic shell that looked like the guns from ST1, with a bit of fibre optic in the "muzzle" that would blink when the trooper "fired" it.
This isn't just straight to video, it's straight to MS3K. What made it all the more sad was that the producers and the director had done interviews describing what they wanted to do originally, but couldn't because of the pathetic budget.
If you're masochistic enough to want to still want to see it, rent it. It's just not worth buying unless you can find it for less than $3 (I think it's worth $2, but I add an extra $1 because you can reuse the case).
You haven't seen how bad this could become until you've had a chance to check out the Starship Troopers 2 DVD. Even the "extras" were embarassing, as they essentially had the producers talk about the movie they WOULD have made if they had more money.
At the time, steampowered.com was giving me a 404 not found error, so I presume their webserver was out too.
There's a reason why I'm posting here instead of playing that game.
My own experiences were more like:
Insert disc1. wait...3 minutes
Insert disc2. wait...3 minutes
Insert disc3. wait...3 minutes
Insert disc4. wait...3 minutes
Insert disc5. wait...3 minutes
Fill in blanks for steam. wait... 5 minutes.
"Unable to find Master AuthenticationServer"
Retry.
"Connection Reset by Peer."
Swear. Retry.
[repeat any of 5 random error messages]
Swear. Repeat.
Email to Sierra Tech support. Email bounces.
OK. Try VUGames Tech support. web email form disabled -- it's there, you just can't type anything into it.
OK. Try emailing directly. Email bounces.
Swear. Swear some more. Give up and go out.
Next day. Try again. Ok it accepts my registration, but authentication servers are too busy to activate me for real, so it sort of puts me on probation and lets me play. Still waiting for Steam to recognize me as a legit user.
Nope. They had Steam already planned out as a distribution and copy protection measure, and had a working version well before the source wandered off. If it was done as you suggest, then the guys at Valve are clairvoyant because they knew it was going to happen, and stupid because they let it happen anyways.
I do blame Valve because they lied to the paying users. Early on when Steam was announced, a lot of people were concerned about privacy issues and things like this preventing paying users from playing. Valve put out press releases (some not too long ago) promising that all such concerns had been addressed and that the bugs were worked out of Steam. They assured us that there would be no problems once HL2 hit the shelves. After all this, I'm wondering whether the the promises behind the privacy concerns were really addressed either.
For the first time since Ultima 9, we've got a retail product where the only way to play it is to hunt down a crack because the copy protection is so screwed up.
Depending on where you live, the roaches may not be naturally occuring. If you live in North America the roaches are a foreign species (there's a reason why it's called a 'German cockroach'). Eliminating them isn't going to upset any natural food chains, as they're a near exclusive parasite that's hitched itself to humans.
If it wasn't for the fact that we try to kill them on a regular basis, they might be considered pets.
How is this funny?
.22 semi-auto a year later. I'm not sure I'd consider them toys, but they're certainly a lot of fun, and they're far cooler than a PS2 is. I still have the .22 rifle but admittedly, a "friend" stole, and later broke the BB gun (thanks for eventually bringing it back, dude).
I got a BB gun for Christmas when I was a kid. I was moved up to a
If your children are mature enough and you trust them enough with the responsibility, it really does make a great gift. Honestly, it's not for everybody, as there were some childhood friends that I wouldn't trust with a gun even now and if you're already using the TV and PS2 as baby sitter/roboparent, it's probably not a good idea for you. The range sessions provide some really good quality time with the kids, and teaches responsibility.
In the next episode of Mythbusters, Jaime and Adam put two dead pigs in a PC case and seal it up for 6 months!
Oh yeah, if you can't reach the Globe and mail article, the Toronto Star article doesn't require registration yet:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?paThat's the way it is now. The cops are getting billed by the phone company for the wire taps and records searches and are supposed to pay for it out of their operating budgets. The money for wire taps, informants, etc are supposed to be budgetted out of the public funds that they receive for their annual budgets. Where things are getting complicated and where the controversy lies is that some police forces are refusing to pay the bills when they arrive and instead using the money for other things (unspecified).
They're effectively breaking the law, but the phone company can't do anything about it. It's not like they can just cut the police off for not paying the phone bill.
From my point of view, I've already paid for this stuff in my taxes and they've got parts of their budget already allocated for it. I do not wish to pay for this twice.
There have been a great many portable survivalist filtration devices advertised in camping and hunting magazines in the 80s. The biggest hurdle is that the devices can't handle biologicals (so the source resevoir has to be treated with chlorine pills). They were meant to allow you to make use of local natural water sources, but many of the advertisements claimed that the filters systems could produce 99% pure water from urine. I would imagine that such a much more advanced filtration device was integrated into the pack. Otherwise, how would that be different from taking a leak into a regular MRE?
I think you've got your definitions mixed. A computer virus is called a virus BECAUSE of its similarities to biological virii. Specifically, that it is code that REPLICATES itself and attaches to or integrates itself with a host file or structure to do so. A WORM is a program that replicates itself by using various means, but does not require a host. It can exist and replicate itself independent of a host (the computer and the OS are considered the environment, rather than a host). A Trojan is a reference to the Trojan horse of the Troyan war. It's meant to trick users into believing it's something else, so that they'll run it.
Hey, if the theater owners/managers are smart, they'll treat customers politely, and either allocate a small room towards storing camcorders for people (like a coat check room), or ask them to leave them in their vehicles.
The first option isn't likely to happen, and if it is offered, most people wouldn't be stupid enough to do it. A number of stores (some chain stores as well) have a policy where you have to check backpacks and shopping bags at customer service as you enter the store. But... the typical policy is also that if the items wander off, or get damaged, it's not their responsibility. I don't agree with it, but that's how it usually is.
As for asking people to leave their camcorders in their cars, many theatres are located in malls. While suburban malls have acres of parking, inside the city, parking is scarce, so many people just take public transit. If you get to the theatre, then have to go home and drop off your stuff and come back, people will go home, but they won't come back.
Of course, at the rate technology seems to be going, it shouldn't be too long before someone manages to build a recorder into a pair of glasses and records the movie that way.
Spytech already has something similar but I can't see anyone going through through all that cloak and daggar stuff just to scam a movie -- especially since the camera glasses cost as much as a camcorder does ($400 Canadian) with no built-in recording capabilities.