At least in Chrome, when I Ctrl-+ (or Command +) the page (at 1280x1024), it grows horizontally. This means I now have to scroll left and right to read the page, just because I don't like my text tiny. I don't know exactly what's causing that, I assume it's the headers? The page should be reflowing, it shouldn't care about my font size.
As pointed out by Orac, things are nowhere as simple here as they've been presented. There was still an establishment of expectation of the treatment working, which is exactly one would expect would elicit the placebo effect.
...the investigators deceived their subjects to induce placebo effects. Here's how they describe what they told their patients:
Patients who gave informed consent and fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria were randomized into two groups: 1) placebo pill twice daily or 2) no-treatment. Before randomization and during the screening, the placebo pills were truthfully described as inert or inactive pills, like sugar pills, without any medication in it. Additionally, patients were told that "placebo pills, something like sugar pills, have been shown in rigorous clinical testing to produce significant mind-body self-healing processes." The patient-provider relationship and contact time was similar in both groups. Study visits occurred at baseline (Day 1), midpoint (Day 11) and completion (Day 21). Assessment questionnaires were completed by patients with the assistance of a blinded assessor at study visits.
Moreover, the investigators recruited subjects thusly:
Participants were recruited from advertisements for "a novel mind-body management study of IBS" in newspapers and fliers and from referrals from healthcare professionals. During the telephone screening, potential enrollees were told that participants would receive "either placebo (inert) pills, which were like sugar pills which had been shown to have self-healing properties" or no-treatment.
Even the authors had to acknowledge that this was a problem:
A further possible limitation is that our results are not generalizable because our trial may have selectively attracted IBS patients who were attracted by an advertisement for "a novel mind-body" intervention. Obviously, we cannot rule out this possibility. However, selective attraction to the advertised treatment is a possibility in virtually all clinical trials.
In other words, not only did Kaptchuk et al deceive their subjects to trigger placebo effects, whether they realize or will admit that that's what they did or not, but they might very well have specifically attracted patients more prone to believing that the power of "mind-body" interactions. Yes, patients were informed that they were receiving a placebo, but that knowledge was tainted by what the investigators told them about what the placebo pills could do.
By far the most annoying thing about this game's multiplayer are the playlists they chose. SWAT (no shields, one or two shots to kill, COD-style) is included in the normal deathmatch playlists now. Halo 3 had it segregated to its own playlist, so players who wanted to play can do so. Now, any time it comes up as a voting option almost everyone votes for it. It's gotten so that you practically need a sizeable party if you want to play anything else.
It's a tad ridiculous; I don't really want to play COD if I'm playing Halo. I want to play Halo, where it takes awhile to whittle down an enemy's shields and where you're able to get right in their face while doing so. If I wanted to play "one-hit-kills from the other side of the map", I'd be playing something else.
An atheist is someone who puts belief in gods on the same level as belief in magic and belief in leprechauns.
Yes, but there's lots of kinds of agnostic. All it means is a state of not knowing. Some agnostics ("hard") believe that god is unknowable while "soft" agnostics believe that there may or may not be a god (some believe that there is, some don't have a firm opinion) and that they don't know god. Some agnostics think that no human knows God, but that he is knowable. And so on.
the only thing you can say for sure is that Xtifr does not knowwhat atheist means — the belief that there is no God. That is substantially different from requiring substantial proof. Indeed, it is a highly unscientific view. The scientific view is to regard God as either unknown, unknowable, or outside the dominion of science, depending on where you stand.
The second definition on the very site you linked to:
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
That is that definition that many atheists actually use. Disbelief is not the same thing as certainty in falsehood, and it's certainly not "unscientific". If it is, every human on Earth is infinitely unscientific (+1 Unscientific for every one of the infinite possibilities that haven't been shown to be part of reality), which is silly and unhelpful.
I'm in Canada and this feature is working through Gmail for me, though it could just be a temporary glitch. I also got into voice.google.com immediately after making the first call (it only showed call history, wouldn't let me set up a Google Voice number), but I'm locked out again now.
Hate to tell you this but as a person who was involved in the running of the largest Tribes 2 server in existence(at the time) Houston Vehicles, your facts are full of shit.
Tribes 2 is the sequel, Starsiege: Tribes is the first game (or: "Tribes 1"). T1 didn't have any DRM of any sort, which is exactly what the GP said.
And why did you need so many serial numbers? Tribes 2's serial was tied to your account; after you registered the account, all you needed was your username and password.
Not to mention providing a reason for nations to band together as well as declare war on one another. The diplomatic aspect was made even more interesting by the addition of the apostolic palace in Beyond the Sword.
My last major upgrade was in 2007. It wasn't super high-end; it's a Core 2 Duo E6600 and a Geforce 8800 GTS with a cheap motherboard (P5B-E) and okay RAM. Everything still runs more than acceptably. I've also overclocked the CPU and GPU moderately, which brings most new games past "more than acceptably" and up to "runs on High at 1920x1080 at more than 50 FPS". This is probably the longest I've had a PC last at this level of performance.
Firefox won't block popups triggered by a click, presumably because it assumes you wanted the popup. The site does exactly that should you click on any empty space. NoScript will naturally nail it, though.
Civ 4 has "global warming". This will gradually turn tiles to deserts, based on the number of nukes that have gone off, the number of polluting structures, and the number of forest/jungle tiles that remain in the game.
This is slow, though. I've only ever had a few tiles do this across an empire, and by the time it starts happening the game is nearing the end. I have no idea how you could think this is "becoming" the game, unless you're just extremely annoyed at the environmental message and letting that ruin the game for you.
The surest way to speed up global warming is through the use of nukes (reverse Nuclear Winter); if nukes are going off, a few extra desert tiles will be the least of your concerns.
I got an 8" reflecting telescope for $350 Canadian, and that's when our dollar was worth closer to $0.80 USD. Surely you can get one of this size for well less than $1000. That is, unless you buy one from a department store. You need to go to a specialty or online store if you don't want to be fleeced.
Compare the performance of something like FoxIt PDF Reader ( http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/ ) against Adobe Reader, and then tell me with a straight face that Adobe's version is better.
Last time I used Foxit (during the summer), I had issues with printing. It missed half the graphical elements on a number of slides, including simple lines (though it did print the arrowheads at the end). These elements appeared perfectly fine on-screen, but simply wouldn't print. Adobe Reader had no issue, nor did Preview on OS X.
Take this anecdote as you will, though it's pretty much as well-supported as what's provided above.
My last refurbished console I received had a broken DVD drive out of the box, but I have to pay to have it fixed. I'm stuck helping the drive door open and close. I also periodically get disk wobble that scratches the disks and causes games to have "disk read errors" during games with a lot of disk access. Luckily, the ability to rip games to the HD have helped work around the second issue, but it'd be nice to not have to manually pull the drive tray out to change games.
My refurb had a bad DVD drive - it made a terrible grinding noise and occasionally stopped while reading discs, though it still mostly worked. This was a replacement made in the 3-year RROD warranty, not the 1-year standard one. They replaced it for free with no hassle at all, after I mentioned that I got it from them in this condition. Maybe you should have pressed them?
I do not trust Wikipedia, and use this as an example to prove how bad an idea it is.
Your example doesn't prove it to be a bad idea, exactly. Your example proves that using it incorrectly is a bad idea. Anyone who knows anything about Wikipedia knows that you don't use it for proper research, or as a final say in anything; you use it if you want to read a general summary about something you've got a bit of curiousity about and maybe for links to other, peer-reviewed sources.
Like I pointed out in another Wikipedia thread, it even has a disclaimer reminding users that the validity of the content can't be guaranteed. And as the Grandparent said, you shouldn't be blindly trusting any source anyways.
Who is proposing that Wikipedia be trusted, exactly? It's even got a big ol' disclaimer stating that the validity of the articles is not guaranteed. It's useful as a quick reference on things you don't know anything about, but for anything more, or anything controversial, you're obviously better off going elsewhere (such as, say, a scientific journal). You know, sort of like how an encyclopedia is supposed to be treated.
What? The PS2 was already dominant at that point. The later games didn't create that dominance, the early price, games, and consumer momentum did. The PS3 has already lost that momentum.
Perhaps associated with its culture of 'experts', or perhaps simply its low population. One needs look no further than the Homeopathy article, which on Wikipedia is strongly rooted in reality, but on Citizendium is largely controlled by one Homeopath editor (who has been banned from Wikipedia for pushing his unsupportable POV), and leans towards promotion and advocacy.
But this is cool for an automated "musician". Clearly it's nowhere near what a human can do. However, it does actually resemble music, and that's neat. This is Slashdot, after all.
Take this. Aside from being absolutely hilarious, the songsmith track (very roughly) follows the flow of the song; very noticeable, for instance, around 1:08. Not particularly useful at this point, but still interesting.
The noise and hiss is certainly a bit of an issue, but you can buy a simple volume controller (such as this one), and the problem is solved. That is, unless your onboard sound is absolutely godawful.
This works for myself. I can even use my Shure e2c comfortably. The e2cs are sensitive enough that I can't use them comfortably with my iPod without the volume controller because of the hissing.
If RTFA:), you'll notice that previous systems used refresh rates in the 30Hz range for each eye
Bullshit. Many LCD shutter glasses of the past were capable of 120Hz as well, if you could actually get your monitor to do that (high-end CRTs would, or lower end ones put on a lower than normal screen resolution). The only new thing here is that it's coming from nVidia.
Slashdot Mirror
At least in Chrome, when I Ctrl-+ (or Command +) the page (at 1280x1024), it grows horizontally. This means I now have to scroll left and right to read the page, just because I don't like my text tiny. I don't know exactly what's causing that, I assume it's the headers? The page should be reflowing, it shouldn't care about my font size.
I assume you're not stargazing right beside an airport, so the planes are going to be at a pretty good altitude. How are you going to hit the cockpit?
As pointed out by Orac, things are nowhere as simple here as they've been presented. There was still an establishment of expectation of the treatment working, which is exactly one would expect would elicit the placebo effect.
Wikipedia has a nice map of which countries use which legal system.
By far the most annoying thing about this game's multiplayer are the playlists they chose. SWAT (no shields, one or two shots to kill, COD-style) is included in the normal deathmatch playlists now. Halo 3 had it segregated to its own playlist, so players who wanted to play can do so. Now, any time it comes up as a voting option almost everyone votes for it. It's gotten so that you practically need a sizeable party if you want to play anything else.
It's a tad ridiculous; I don't really want to play COD if I'm playing Halo. I want to play Halo, where it takes awhile to whittle down an enemy's shields and where you're able to get right in their face while doing so. If I wanted to play "one-hit-kills from the other side of the map", I'd be playing something else.
An atheist is someone who puts belief in gods on the same level as belief in magic and belief in leprechauns.
Yes, but there's lots of kinds of agnostic. All it means is a state of not knowing. Some agnostics ("hard") believe that god is unknowable while "soft" agnostics believe that there may or may not be a god (some believe that there is, some don't have a firm opinion) and that they don't know god. Some agnostics think that no human knows God, but that he is knowable. And so on.
the only thing you can say for sure is that Xtifr does not know what atheist means — the belief that there is no God. That is substantially different from requiring substantial proof. Indeed, it is a highly unscientific view. The scientific view is to regard God as either unknown, unknowable, or outside the dominion of science, depending on where you stand.
The second definition on the very site you linked to:
2.
disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
That is that definition that many atheists actually use. Disbelief is not the same thing as certainty in falsehood, and it's certainly not "unscientific". If it is, every human on Earth is infinitely unscientific (+1 Unscientific for every one of the infinite possibilities that haven't been shown to be part of reality), which is silly and unhelpful.
I'm in Canada and this feature is working through Gmail for me, though it could just be a temporary glitch. I also got into voice.google.com immediately after making the first call (it only showed call history, wouldn't let me set up a Google Voice number), but I'm locked out again now.
Tribes 2 is the sequel, Starsiege: Tribes is the first game (or: "Tribes 1"). T1 didn't have any DRM of any sort, which is exactly what the GP said.
And why did you need so many serial numbers? Tribes 2's serial was tied to your account; after you registered the account, all you needed was your username and password.
Not to mention providing a reason for nations to band together as well as declare war on one another. The diplomatic aspect was made even more interesting by the addition of the apostolic palace in Beyond the Sword.
My last major upgrade was in 2007. It wasn't super high-end; it's a Core 2 Duo E6600 and a Geforce 8800 GTS with a cheap motherboard (P5B-E) and okay RAM. Everything still runs more than acceptably. I've also overclocked the CPU and GPU moderately, which brings most new games past "more than acceptably" and up to "runs on High at 1920x1080 at more than 50 FPS". This is probably the longest I've had a PC last at this level of performance.
What are you buying every year?
Firefox won't block popups triggered by a click, presumably because it assumes you wanted the popup. The site does exactly that should you click on any empty space. NoScript will naturally nail it, though.
Civ 4 has "global warming". This will gradually turn tiles to deserts, based on the number of nukes that have gone off, the number of polluting structures, and the number of forest/jungle tiles that remain in the game.
This is slow, though. I've only ever had a few tiles do this across an empire, and by the time it starts happening the game is nearing the end. I have no idea how you could think this is "becoming" the game, unless you're just extremely annoyed at the environmental message and letting that ruin the game for you.
The surest way to speed up global warming is through the use of nukes (reverse Nuclear Winter); if nukes are going off, a few extra desert tiles will be the least of your concerns.
The corresponding Hubble NewsCenter article includes more details and more, larger images.
I got an 8" reflecting telescope for $350 Canadian, and that's when our dollar was worth closer to $0.80 USD. Surely you can get one of this size for well less than $1000. That is, unless you buy one from a department store. You need to go to a specialty or online store if you don't want to be fleeced.
Last time I used Foxit (during the summer), I had issues with printing. It missed half the graphical elements on a number of slides, including simple lines (though it did print the arrowheads at the end). These elements appeared perfectly fine on-screen, but simply wouldn't print. Adobe Reader had no issue, nor did Preview on OS X.
Take this anecdote as you will, though it's pretty much as well-supported as what's provided above.
My refurb had a bad DVD drive - it made a terrible grinding noise and occasionally stopped while reading discs, though it still mostly worked. This was a replacement made in the 3-year RROD warranty, not the 1-year standard one. They replaced it for free with no hassle at all, after I mentioned that I got it from them in this condition. Maybe you should have pressed them?
Your example doesn't prove it to be a bad idea, exactly. Your example proves that using it incorrectly is a bad idea. Anyone who knows anything about Wikipedia knows that you don't use it for proper research, or as a final say in anything; you use it if you want to read a general summary about something you've got a bit of curiousity about and maybe for links to other, peer-reviewed sources.
Like I pointed out in another Wikipedia thread, it even has a disclaimer reminding users that the validity of the content can't be guaranteed. And as the Grandparent said, you shouldn't be blindly trusting any source anyways.
Who is proposing that Wikipedia be trusted, exactly? It's even got a big ol' disclaimer stating that the validity of the articles is not guaranteed. It's useful as a quick reference on things you don't know anything about, but for anything more, or anything controversial, you're obviously better off going elsewhere (such as, say, a scientific journal). You know, sort of like how an encyclopedia is supposed to be treated.
What? The PS2 was already dominant at that point. The later games didn't create that dominance, the early price, games, and consumer momentum did. The PS3 has already lost that momentum.
Perhaps associated with its culture of 'experts', or perhaps simply its low population. One needs look no further than the Homeopathy article, which on Wikipedia is strongly rooted in reality, but on Citizendium is largely controlled by one Homeopath editor (who has been banned from Wikipedia for pushing his unsupportable POV), and leans towards promotion and advocacy.
The feature that lets you pull down application updates is called Microsoft Update. In Windows 7, the description above the checkbox is:
"How to get updates for other Microsoft products"
To develop image editing software to sell to photographers.
But this is cool for an automated "musician". Clearly it's nowhere near what a human can do. However, it does actually resemble music, and that's neat. This is Slashdot, after all.
Take this. Aside from being absolutely hilarious, the songsmith track (very roughly) follows the flow of the song; very noticeable, for instance, around 1:08. Not particularly useful at this point, but still interesting.
The noise and hiss is certainly a bit of an issue, but you can buy a simple volume controller (such as this one), and the problem is solved. That is, unless your onboard sound is absolutely godawful.
This works for myself. I can even use my Shure e2c comfortably. The e2cs are sensitive enough that I can't use them comfortably with my iPod without the volume controller because of the hissing.
If RTFA :), you'll notice that previous systems used refresh rates in the 30Hz range for each eye
Bullshit. Many LCD shutter glasses of the past were capable of 120Hz as well, if you could actually get your monitor to do that (high-end CRTs would, or lower end ones put on a lower than normal screen resolution). The only new thing here is that it's coming from nVidia.