If I make a Facebook group of "Slashdot posters" then everyone sees who is in that group and one member can message all the other members.
So... basically, you want public circles? And this is a GOOD thing?
Well, no matter, you can do that anyway. In your list of circles, click a circle. That circle will have "Edit", "Delete", and "Share" links. The last one is probably what you're looking for. It'll make a post with the contents of that circle, and that circle can have any of the usual G+ privacy settings on it. Anyone else can add that circle en masse (or one piece at a time) if they want.
Unless you want this made public on a permanent basis (as opposed to in a single post) for some reason, in which case I have to reiterate: That's a GOOD thing?
"In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Neal Stephenson says the 'Metaverse' he created in his seminal novel Snow Crash missed the point — and that video games like World of Warcraft are the true future of cyberspace."
They are?
Aw. That's really sort of disappointing, given what we were promised.
Then again, the future IS only the future until it happens. Then it becomes the present, which is never as good as the future was. Maybe when it's the past we can look back on when it was so much better.
It's a bit hard to convincingly fake taking a phone call when your phone is not ringing.
"It's on vibrate."
"But I didn't hear it vibrate." "I've got the vibrator off, since it makes too much noise in the theater." "Then how did you know it was vibrating?" "Look, I've got this call to take."
The 3DS's major selling point over the DS is the 3D.
That's a shame, actually; I was mostly interested in it because it's a more powerful console than the DS/DSi, even without the 3D. In fact, I was fairly convinced we would've seen a value-priced DS2 next year, one that had all the 3DS's enhancements besides the 3D (especially given you can just turn off the 3D and lose very little, if any, of the gameplay).
Maybe if Nintendo put more marketing muscle behind the 3DS's actual technical improvements over the DS/DSi instead of focusing all their efforts on what quite frankly already WAS a pointless gimmick in movie theaters even before the console was released...
Electronics (and everything, it seems) have taken on the blockbuster movie vibe -- if it doesn't hit BIG IMMEDIATELY then it's a total flop.
I'd say it's more a matter of reputation and pedigree in this case. When was the last time Nintendo released a new portable that didn't print money for them?
I'll grant that you'd have to assume the Virtual Boy wasn't "portable" and ignore rehashes (i.e. the Game Boy Micro), but whenever Nintendo's released a new portable in the past since and including the original Game Boy some twentyish years ago, they've had a history of dominating the market. Now, they're not. This is what's making people wonder.
That being, stopping wasting their money on buying patents, and using their considerable amount of cash to push the elimination of software patents. Just imagine the amount of money and bullshit that would get saved long term.
Problem being, doing so would effectively mean outspending the combined lobbyist spending ability of every US company in existence that has a vested interest in keeping software patents just the way they are. Or in other words, they would need to be able to outlobby at least Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle (and many others), all of which are benefiting (or trying to benefit) from software patents, and would most likely respond by sending their own lobbyists to stop Google's, if not outright pooling their resources to make it happen. Google might have a considerable amount of cash, but they don't have THAT much.
As longtime watchers of QI know, comedian Rich Hall already has a hard time accepting the entire concept of there being two moons around earth, even without this revelation. He'll be insufferable now. Stephen won't be able to shut him up.
Assassins Creed: Completely un-intuitive console controls. Impossible to change.
I finally broke down and got a 360 controller after trying this game for the first time last month.... It's a good controller, at least. I would've preferred it to cost about 2/3 the price, but what can you do?
I'll admit the XBox 360 controller IS actually a quite fine gamepad. Reminds me a lot of the Gamecube controller. I just wish that the reason I bought one wasn't because Team Meat seems to be openly disdainful of PC gaming in general in their port of Super Meat Boy.
Okay, to be honest, Super Meat Boy's gameplay itself DOES nearly require either a gamepad or a ridiculously good keyboard and borderline-inhuman finger reflexes in the harder levels, but the game could've done without the blatant insults to keyboard users in the loading screen. Or the on-screen icons that assume you're using an XBox 360 controller (admittedly not too confusing, given the simple controls, but still screams of "they just didn't care" when you're instructed to use trigger buttons to scroll a leaderboard list).
When the open AMD driver gets to at least 100% of the proprietary driver's speed in ALL cases, AND when AMD's sales start jumping up because of it, AND when Ubuntu decides to stop making it easy to install the Nvidia proprietary driver*. In other words, when they have a market reason to change ways and when competition is threatening to creep up on them if they don't.
Wow, that was easy enough. Next question?
*: Face facts, among Linux users who are going to want to use high-end video cards, the vast majority will use Ubuntu.
Come on kids, everyone knows the only real way to get back at an evil media mogul is to broadcast him on his own channel saying that his viewers mean as much to him as a festering bowl of dog snot does. Bonus points if you get the reference.
Sorry, but Philo already returned to his home planet. We'd need some way to broadcast it other than U62.
The taxes aren't the important part. The fact that it's any increase in price that would eat into their cost advantage or their razor-thin margins that's the problem. That is, it would either entail an X% to-customer price increase (which may drive customers away from Amazon to local stores) or an X% reduction in profits (which, given their business model, could be quite painful financially). The ultimate utility of the taxes doesn't matter in this case; in fact, it could be argued that Amazon doesn't really care about California's economic sustainability at all, given they're headquartered in Washington, if I'm not mistaken. Amazon would just lose the advantage it has.
Now, you could make an argument as to whether or not this has just been Amazon abusing a tax loophole as a key element of their primary business model, or you could make an argument as to the benefits of taxes and the future of California's tax system, or whatever else, but that's neither here nor there. I'm just explaining why Amazon's so up in arms about this in the first place, which appeared to be what your initial confusion was.
I am missing something... Amazon charges $x for something, they make $y profit.
Amazon charges $x for something, plus tax... they still make $y profit.
More accurately:
Amazon charges $x for something, they make $y profit.
Amazon charges ($x + tax) for something, they make $y profit. The item, however, is still ($x + tax) in cost to consumers. This is greater than $x.
Amazon charges $x for something and has to pay tax on it separately, they make ($y - tax) profit.
The second option increases the price to consumers. The third option decreases the profit to Amazon. The first option is the best of both worlds. The local shops in California don't have that first option. Simplified a bit, that's the major contention.
It's been confirmed that Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS is a game that once finished, cannot be reset for complete replay. According to both the U.S. and U.K. game's instruction manual "saved data on this software cannot be reset."
The way I'm reading that, there's no "NEW GAME" option on the front menu. There' no front menu at all, possibly. You start the game for the first time, you're thrust into the action from the beginning. You start the game the second time you're thrust into the action starting with your last checkpoint. You start the game after you've won, you're thrust into the credits. Game over.
Then again, it could also mean that you CAN do most of the game again after beating it. That is, you get restarted in some manner of New Game+-like mode, where you're dumped near the beginning of the game (so, minus any tutorials or intro cutscenes) with any amount of junk you've collected through the first run of the game, maybe leaving it in a pathetically easy state. But you have no way of going back to an ultimately "fresh" game.
Still not a good state of affairs, of course, but that way sounds at least a little bit less like you're paying $40-50 for a movie on a VHS tape you can't rewind.
Google Music supports FLAC quite nicely, actually.
The strange part is that it DOESN'T support Ogg Vorbis. Strange because it's clear that one of their major target audiences is Android users, where Ogg Vorbis IS natively supported, but FLAC isn't (in vanilla Android). Meaning they're doing SOME sort of transcoding somewhere along the line anyway before they kick it out the pipe to Android.
A UC San Diego team is about to demonstrate a solid state storage device that it says provides performance thousands of times faster than a conventional hard drive and up to seven times faster than current state-of-the-art solid-state drives.
I don't know why, but the speed comparisons in the summary amuse me. "This is THOUSANDS of times faster than a conventional hard drive — absolutely phenomenal speed gains, faster than anything else ever seen in the conventional hard drive world, speeds which will blow your mind straight out of your skull with how much blindingly faster they are than conventional hard drives, literally THOUSANDS of times faster — and kinda sorta faster than solid-state drives."
Re:not just a reboot, also a new distribution mode
on
DC Reboots Universe
·
· Score: 2
Reboot?
'Cos the DC's are not nearly as "Movie Friendly" as the Marvels - I'm guessing...
Except PowerGirl, of course.
She's probably the LEAST "movie friendly" they have. I mean, there's certain laws of physics and human anatomy that would make casting extraordinarily difficult...
Slashdot Mirror
YES
If he starts talking about Arctic Circle-Candy next, I'll get hold of Mr. Nutty.
Now I was reading somewhere - can't rember - about a copanany unveiling a Personalized Anime Robot Girl? Maybe we can cross these technologies?
Yeah! Then we'd finally see if the uncanny valley is additive or multiplicative!
If I make a Facebook group of "Slashdot posters" then everyone sees who is in that group and one member can message all the other members.
So... basically, you want public circles? And this is a GOOD thing?
Well, no matter, you can do that anyway. In your list of circles, click a circle. That circle will have "Edit", "Delete", and "Share" links. The last one is probably what you're looking for. It'll make a post with the contents of that circle, and that circle can have any of the usual G+ privacy settings on it. Anyone else can add that circle en masse (or one piece at a time) if they want.
Unless you want this made public on a permanent basis (as opposed to in a single post) for some reason, in which case I have to reiterate: That's a GOOD thing?
Pix of hats or it didn't happen.
Alternate translation: "We're planning on buying out Sprint in a few months, so we hope this doesn't cause any problems for us then."
"In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Neal Stephenson says the 'Metaverse' he created in his seminal novel Snow Crash missed the point — and that video games like World of Warcraft are the true future of cyberspace."
They are?
Aw. That's really sort of disappointing, given what we were promised.
Then again, the future IS only the future until it happens. Then it becomes the present, which is never as good as the future was. Maybe when it's the past we can look back on when it was so much better.
Because they thought they wouldn't get caught?
"It's on vibrate."
"But I didn't hear it vibrate."
"I've got the vibrator off, since it makes too much noise in the theater."
"Then how did you know it was vibrating?"
"Look, I've got this call to take."
"Have you ever had that feeling like spiders were crawling all over your skin? Well, modern science has just developed this new artificial skin..."
The 3DS's major selling point over the DS is the 3D.
That's a shame, actually; I was mostly interested in it because it's a more powerful console than the DS/DSi, even without the 3D. In fact, I was fairly convinced we would've seen a value-priced DS2 next year, one that had all the 3DS's enhancements besides the 3D (especially given you can just turn off the 3D and lose very little, if any, of the gameplay).
Maybe if Nintendo put more marketing muscle behind the 3DS's actual technical improvements over the DS/DSi instead of focusing all their efforts on what quite frankly already WAS a pointless gimmick in movie theaters even before the console was released...
Electronics (and everything, it seems) have taken on the blockbuster movie vibe -- if it doesn't hit BIG IMMEDIATELY then it's a total flop.
I'd say it's more a matter of reputation and pedigree in this case. When was the last time Nintendo released a new portable that didn't print money for them?
I'll grant that you'd have to assume the Virtual Boy wasn't "portable" and ignore rehashes (i.e. the Game Boy Micro), but whenever Nintendo's released a new portable in the past since and including the original Game Boy some twentyish years ago, they've had a history of dominating the market. Now, they're not. This is what's making people wonder.
That being, stopping wasting their money on buying patents, and using their considerable amount of cash to push the elimination of software patents. Just imagine the amount of money and bullshit that would get saved long term.
Problem being, doing so would effectively mean outspending the combined lobbyist spending ability of every US company in existence that has a vested interest in keeping software patents just the way they are. Or in other words, they would need to be able to outlobby at least Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle (and many others), all of which are benefiting (or trying to benefit) from software patents, and would most likely respond by sending their own lobbyists to stop Google's, if not outright pooling their resources to make it happen. Google might have a considerable amount of cash, but they don't have THAT much.
As longtime watchers of QI know, comedian Rich Hall already has a hard time accepting the entire concept of there being two moons around earth, even without this revelation. He'll be insufferable now. Stephen won't be able to shut him up.
Assassins Creed: Completely un-intuitive console controls. Impossible to change.
I finally broke down and got a 360 controller after trying this game for the first time last month.... It's a good controller, at least. I would've preferred it to cost about 2/3 the price, but what can you do?
I'll admit the XBox 360 controller IS actually a quite fine gamepad. Reminds me a lot of the Gamecube controller. I just wish that the reason I bought one wasn't because Team Meat seems to be openly disdainful of PC gaming in general in their port of Super Meat Boy.
Okay, to be honest, Super Meat Boy's gameplay itself DOES nearly require either a gamepad or a ridiculously good keyboard and borderline-inhuman finger reflexes in the harder levels, but the game could've done without the blatant insults to keyboard users in the loading screen. Or the on-screen icons that assume you're using an XBox 360 controller (admittedly not too confusing, given the simple controls, but still screams of "they just didn't care" when you're instructed to use trigger buttons to scroll a leaderboard list).
IEEE has just announced a new Wireless standard, 802.22, that can cover up to 12,000 square miles.
But if just ONE person turns on a microwave...
When will NVIDIA change ways?
When the open AMD driver gets to at least 100% of the proprietary driver's speed in ALL cases, AND when AMD's sales start jumping up because of it, AND when Ubuntu decides to stop making it easy to install the Nvidia proprietary driver*. In other words, when they have a market reason to change ways and when competition is threatening to creep up on them if they don't.
Wow, that was easy enough. Next question?
*: Face facts, among Linux users who are going to want to use high-end video cards, the vast majority will use Ubuntu.
I know! Now that I know Zuckerberg's no longer on Google+, I'm a lot more willing to use it! That's fantastic PR for Google!
Wait, what did you mean?
Come on kids, everyone knows the only real way to get back at an evil media mogul is to broadcast him on his own channel saying that his viewers mean as much to him as a festering bowl of dog snot does. Bonus points if you get the reference.
Sorry, but Philo already returned to his home planet. We'd need some way to broadcast it other than U62.
And we don't have Stanley's mop handy.
The taxes aren't the important part. The fact that it's any increase in price that would eat into their cost advantage or their razor-thin margins that's the problem. That is, it would either entail an X% to-customer price increase (which may drive customers away from Amazon to local stores) or an X% reduction in profits (which, given their business model, could be quite painful financially). The ultimate utility of the taxes doesn't matter in this case; in fact, it could be argued that Amazon doesn't really care about California's economic sustainability at all, given they're headquartered in Washington, if I'm not mistaken. Amazon would just lose the advantage it has.
Now, you could make an argument as to whether or not this has just been Amazon abusing a tax loophole as a key element of their primary business model, or you could make an argument as to the benefits of taxes and the future of California's tax system, or whatever else, but that's neither here nor there. I'm just explaining why Amazon's so up in arms about this in the first place, which appeared to be what your initial confusion was.
I am missing something... Amazon charges $x for something, they make $y profit.
Amazon charges $x for something, plus tax... they still make $y profit.
More accurately:
The second option increases the price to consumers. The third option decreases the profit to Amazon. The first option is the best of both worlds. The local shops in California don't have that first option. Simplified a bit, that's the major contention.
The way I'm reading that, there's no "NEW GAME" option on the front menu. There' no front menu at all, possibly. You start the game for the first time, you're thrust into the action from the beginning. You start the game the second time you're thrust into the action starting with your last checkpoint. You start the game after you've won, you're thrust into the credits. Game over.
Then again, it could also mean that you CAN do most of the game again after beating it. That is, you get restarted in some manner of New Game+-like mode, where you're dumped near the beginning of the game (so, minus any tutorials or intro cutscenes) with any amount of junk you've collected through the first run of the game, maybe leaving it in a pathetically easy state. But you have no way of going back to an ultimately "fresh" game.
Still not a good state of affairs, of course, but that way sounds at least a little bit less like you're paying $40-50 for a movie on a VHS tape you can't rewind.
Google Music supports FLAC quite nicely, actually.
The strange part is that it DOESN'T support Ogg Vorbis. Strange because it's clear that one of their major target audiences is Android users, where Ogg Vorbis IS natively supported, but FLAC isn't (in vanilla Android). Meaning they're doing SOME sort of transcoding somewhere along the line anyway before they kick it out the pipe to Android.
Would it have been so hard to use the summary to reveal who Gary Gygax is? It's not like he's a famous geek like John Bardeen.
I'm sorry, but I'll have to ask you to turn in your geek card. You... (rolls dice) ...disgust me.
A UC San Diego team is about to demonstrate a solid state storage device that it says provides performance thousands of times faster than a conventional hard drive and up to seven times faster than current state-of-the-art solid-state drives.
I don't know why, but the speed comparisons in the summary amuse me. "This is THOUSANDS of times faster than a conventional hard drive — absolutely phenomenal speed gains, faster than anything else ever seen in the conventional hard drive world , speeds which will blow your mind straight out of your skull with how much blindingly faster they are than conventional hard drives, literally THOUSANDS of times faster — and kinda sorta faster than solid-state drives."
Reboot?
'Cos the DC's are not nearly as "Movie Friendly" as the Marvels - I'm guessing...
Except PowerGirl, of course.
She's probably the LEAST "movie friendly" they have. I mean, there's certain laws of physics and human anatomy that would make casting extraordinarily difficult...