Not only that, but there's actually hacked Steam clients available that let you download any game
Not true, steam's content servers won't let you download everything. Some games yes, but not all. Just those where there's no difference between the demo and full game, plus a few other minor exceptions. However if you crack steam or modify its subscription list, it will let you play games you have downloaded through other means.
IIRC, they even let you play online as if you had a legit Steam game.
That's an even shorter list or games than those you can download.
Before Darwin, in the christian dominated sciences of the time, adaptation was considered normal. Darwin's idea, and since then the further study of evolution, was saying that this adaptation is sufficient to describe the complete history of all life. Without that idea, we would still be studying micro-biology, and discovering how life can adapt to changes in the current environment.
... refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old
All proofs of such a nature depend on a number of assumptions, which in turn are based on the results of other experiments. For example a "proof" like say "this rock is X million years old" might depend on some of the following; "the ratio of carbon 12 to 14 in the atmosphere has always been Y%", "carbon 14 has always decayed at rate Z". Do we have enough data to be certain about all those assumptions? Do we even understand what all of those assumptions are?
All we really know about in detail are the environments we've been able to reproduce here on earth, or guesses based on the recent history of observations of distant objects.
A student of scientific history will tell you that we have repeatedly barked up the wrong tree. Our history is littered with research based on incorrect assumptions that we have discarded when further information has come to hand, sometimes only when the previous generation retired.
I guess I'm still rather pessimistic that we know enough to say we can really prove that a rock is X million years old, that the universe is Y billion light years across. Is there really any dark matter? Or are our assumptions in deriving solutions to general relativity inaccurate?
There is a third option. On a successful login, store a token that is unique to that device. If you don't store the password, it's impossible to obtain it. I believe steam uses an approach like this now, after lots of malware was written to steal users passwords.
There's a picture on one of our cubical walls called something like the "sine wave of test automation" (can't find an online copy ATM). You start with heaps of manual testing, automate it and become more productive. But then a small change breaks heaps of tests, you end up with an aversion to change because of all the tests that would break.
The best documentation for what the application currently does, is the source code. Of course not everyone can read it. If you find yourself answering the same questions, then you don't have enough external documentation. Too much documentation is a lot harder to diagnose. And there's nothing worse than documents that are inaccurate or misleading.
Our development processes used to be all about control being imposed from the analysts and project managers who have nothing to do with writing the actual code. They tried to spec everything in way too much detail, get the client to sign off on it even though they may not understand it. Then us dev's would get a hold of it and try to make something that actually worked. What ended up being tested rarely matched the spec precisely.
Now we have a small team starting to work in a more agile way. The biggest change isn't how we go about writing the software, it's how we communicate about those changes. We're admitting the truth about how we actually develop software.
The requirements are stated in much simpler terms. The more detailed documentation we produce, actually describes what we are implementing. Our estimates are approximate and the design isn't set in stone until the work is actually finished. And most importantly, we're communicating with each other more throughout the whole process.
Google's money is coming in from ads, that's their core business. Provided that income stream keeps going, their other focus is to reduce the income of their competitors (eg Microsoft) by turning everything they do into a commodity. Webmail, Office Suite, Maps, Browsers, Codecs, Instant Messaging... These are all products that someone else was profiting from.
Ok, I've used the ribbon. I've transitioned from office 97 to 2000 to 2003. Yeah it was different. The one thing I've heard the most complaints about would be "where did save / save as / print go to...". But everything you know office can do is at least possible to find on your own.
There's a hell of a lot of things I *know* OOO can do. But I can't find them from the menu's.
Here's a use case to explain what I mean. You have some address data in a Calc spreadsheet. Print some mailing labels on a sheet of stickers.
The approach I used that ended up working was;
delete and recreate heading (apparently the style info was confusing the issue).
copy the content.
Open OOO Base
Right click and paste the data as a new table.
Create a new "Labels" page in Writer.
Pick the database, table, and add the fields.
Print it.
Only then are you prompted to generate the form data.
Why isn't this just another mail-merge style feature? Why is there no easy way to use a spreadsheet as a data source? The paste table menu item doesn't even show up in Base unless you already know exactly what to put on the clipboard.
Without google I was lost. There is very little discover-ability in the OOO interface. Hopefully this will improve in LibreOffice.
The libraries don't even need a scanner to accomplish the same thing. Just trawl through their database and look up the Amazon price / volume. Filter out the more valuable volumes, separate them, mark them for prices that are closer to market value. And anything the locals don't buy, list online.
Do that and you remove the easy profit from scalpers, removing the problem.
Bullshit. When you buy a flat screen tv on your credit card, you create a loan with the bank and a deposit in the retailers bank account. Only then does the bank go chasing their reserve requirements.
Well, yes. Without the massive government response around the western world, things would be much bleaker.
Since the 80's banks have been lending money mainly using existing assets as security. When you go to an auction, the price of a house was set such that the interest burden was roughly equivalent to the cost of rent.
As interest rates have fallen all this has done is encourage buyers to borrow more while paying the same amount of interest.
Rising asset prices encourages "investors" to get into the market to make some easy money.
But all this did for the last 30 years was give everyone the illusion of wealth. Borrowing money against their asset value, where that value was based on how much people were borrowing. Increasing debt levels without doing anything productive with the loaned money.
Just before the party ended, the private sector of the US economy was borrowing $4 trillion a year. Adding significantly to demand, and dwarfing any amount spent by the government.
So now that party has finished. Debts are being repaid (or defaulted), and this reduction in debt is now subtracting from our ability to spend.
However it's not the change in debt that gives us the feeling of growth / recession. Just like in a car, it's the acceleration that you feel. The "credit impulse" that has a direct effect on GDP and employment. And right now, though the level of debt is still falling, debt growth has accelerated slightly. Giving economists the impression that we're out of the woods, and all our problems are behind us. (Steve Keen explains this idea in more detail here)
Slashdot Mirror
Not only that, but there's actually hacked Steam clients available that let you download any game
Not true, steam's content servers won't let you download everything. Some games yes, but not all. Just those where there's no difference between the demo and full game, plus a few other minor exceptions. However if you crack steam or modify its subscription list, it will let you play games you have downloaded through other means.
IIRC, they even let you play online as if you had a legit Steam game.
That's an even shorter list or games than those you can download.
Before Darwin, in the christian dominated sciences of the time, adaptation was considered normal. Darwin's idea, and since then the further study of evolution, was saying that this adaptation is sufficient to describe the complete history of all life. Without that idea, we would still be studying micro-biology, and discovering how life can adapt to changes in the current environment.
... refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old
All proofs of such a nature depend on a number of assumptions, which in turn are based on the results of other experiments. For example a "proof" like say "this rock is X million years old" might depend on some of the following; "the ratio of carbon 12 to 14 in the atmosphere has always been Y%", "carbon 14 has always decayed at rate Z". Do we have enough data to be certain about all those assumptions? Do we even understand what all of those assumptions are?
All we really know about in detail are the environments we've been able to reproduce here on earth, or guesses based on the recent history of observations of distant objects.
A student of scientific history will tell you that we have repeatedly barked up the wrong tree. Our history is littered with research based on incorrect assumptions that we have discarded when further information has come to hand, sometimes only when the previous generation retired.
I guess I'm still rather pessimistic that we know enough to say we can really prove that a rock is X million years old, that the universe is Y billion light years across. Is there really any dark matter? Or are our assumptions in deriving solutions to general relativity inaccurate?
If you use a carrier to link remote sites into a WAN...
... run your own encrypted vpn connection over the link. Then you don't care if the wire is ever hacked into.
And a spammer wont send a similar looking email?
There is a third option. On a successful login, store a token that is unique to that device. If you don't store the password, it's impossible to obtain it. I believe steam uses an approach like this now, after lots of malware was written to steal users passwords.
There's a picture on one of our cubical walls called something like the "sine wave of test automation" (can't find an online copy ATM). You start with heaps of manual testing, automate it and become more productive. But then a small change breaks heaps of tests, you end up with an aversion to change because of all the tests that would break.
The best documentation for what the application currently does, is the source code. Of course not everyone can read it. If you find yourself answering the same questions, then you don't have enough external documentation. Too much documentation is a lot harder to diagnose. And there's nothing worse than documents that are inaccurate or misleading.
Our development processes used to be all about control being imposed from the analysts and project managers who have nothing to do with writing the actual code. They tried to spec everything in way too much detail, get the client to sign off on it even though they may not understand it. Then us dev's would get a hold of it and try to make something that actually worked. What ended up being tested rarely matched the spec precisely.
Now we have a small team starting to work in a more agile way. The biggest change isn't how we go about writing the software, it's how we communicate about those changes. We're admitting the truth about how we actually develop software.
The requirements are stated in much simpler terms. The more detailed documentation we produce, actually describes what we are implementing. Our estimates are approximate and the design isn't set in stone until the work is actually finished. And most importantly, we're communicating with each other more throughout the whole process.
Google's money is coming in from ads, that's their core business. Provided that income stream keeps going, their other focus is to reduce the income of their competitors (eg Microsoft) by turning everything they do into a commodity. Webmail, Office Suite, Maps, Browsers, Codecs, Instant Messaging... These are all products that someone else was profiting from.
$60 is ridiculous
USD $88.15 is even worse. Just because I live in Australia.
$200 for FXS and FXO? I can get an ADSL modem with both for less than that.
Ham radio enthusiasts + round robin DNS. Problem solved.
My biggest gripe, and the reason I have not yet purchased SC2, is their region locking and the inflated cost of the Australian version.
The price of the US version is currently USD$59.99. The australian version, AUD$89.95 (USD$87.38) a 45% markup.
I might consider buying it from steam... When they remove their 30% markup for people living in Australia.
Ok, I've used the ribbon. I've transitioned from office 97 to 2000 to 2003. Yeah it was different. The one thing I've heard the most complaints about would be "where did save / save as / print go to...". But everything you know office can do is at least possible to find on your own.
There's a hell of a lot of things I *know* OOO can do. But I can't find them from the menu's.
Here's a use case to explain what I mean. You have some address data in a Calc spreadsheet. Print some mailing labels on a sheet of stickers.
The approach I used that ended up working was;
Why isn't this just another mail-merge style feature? Why is there no easy way to use a spreadsheet as a data source? The paste table menu item doesn't even show up in Base unless you already know exactly what to put on the clipboard.
Without google I was lost. There is very little discover-ability in the OOO interface. Hopefully this will improve in LibreOffice.
And how many people in that queue are competent? How many are going to create a mess of Access DB's, Excel spreadsheets, macros, etc?
The libraries don't even need a scanner to accomplish the same thing. Just trawl through their database and look up the Amazon price / volume. Filter out the more valuable volumes, separate them, mark them for prices that are closer to market value. And anything the locals don't buy, list online.
Do that and you remove the easy profit from scalpers, removing the problem.
express 1/9 as a decimal
I think this is the biggest initial stumbling block, as most people don't really know what this means.
Think about how you would expand that decimal using long division;
1/9
= 0 + 1/9
= 0.9 + 1/90
= 0.99 + 1/900
= 0.999 + 1/9000
etc.
The notation 0.999... is misleading and perhaps inaccurate since it drops the implicit + 1 / infinity.
Apparently that image pattern also breaks web servers...
Well there's the obvious risk from breaking the glass screen with your bum...
Probably a signed 32bit primary key....
Without saving, you can't have debt
Bullshit. When you buy a flat screen tv on your credit card, you create a loan with the bank and a deposit in the retailers bank account. Only then does the bank go chasing their reserve requirements.
Loans create deposits. Not the other way around.
Well, yes. Without the massive government response around the western world, things would be much bleaker.
Since the 80's banks have been lending money mainly using existing assets as security. When you go to an auction, the price of a house was set such that the interest burden was roughly equivalent to the cost of rent.
As interest rates have fallen all this has done is encourage buyers to borrow more while paying the same amount of interest.
Rising asset prices encourages "investors" to get into the market to make some easy money.
But all this did for the last 30 years was give everyone the illusion of wealth. Borrowing money against their asset value, where that value was based on how much people were borrowing. Increasing debt levels without doing anything productive with the loaned money.
Just before the party ended, the private sector of the US economy was borrowing $4 trillion a year. Adding significantly to demand, and dwarfing any amount spent by the government.
So now that party has finished. Debts are being repaid (or defaulted), and this reduction in debt is now subtracting from our ability to spend.
However it's not the change in debt that gives us the feeling of growth / recession. Just like in a car, it's the acceleration that you feel. The "credit impulse" that has a direct effect on GDP and employment. And right now, though the level of debt is still falling, debt growth has accelerated slightly. Giving economists the impression that we're out of the woods, and all our problems are behind us. (Steve Keen explains this idea in more detail here)
But we still have a mountain of debt to repay.
Microsoft's internal voices are pretty crap, but there are some really nice commercial synthesised voices out there.
... there is endless scope to keep discovering new techniques to improve the way a specific task is done ...
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped.
Explain again how sheeps' bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.