Depends on the video game. America's Army obviously has nothing to do with motor skills, but I have a friend who in high school was nothing all the special, wasn't a jock and if anything did more to support the Area 51 arcade games than probably any other man alive. The arcade owner most likely retired because of him.
Well, to make a long story short, after high school he joined the army. No previous weapons experience of any kind. During weapons training for the M16 (just like in Americas Army) he shot hawkeye (that's 40 hits out of 40 possible targets... somethng like 33 hits qualifies you for sniper school, I think). He did a few years of bouncing around various elite army schools (special ops training in the phillipines, sniper school where he would spend literally days inching through the grass to take out a target, etc etc) before heading off to Bosnia, where he had multiple confirmed kills in Bosnia as both recon and a sniper. He later hooked up with some underworld elements and became essentially a hit man for a very large gang in Long Beach (one that you've all heard of), and currently is up near the top of the list of people in organized crime in LA and Orange counties, despite his young age, all because of his abilities to shoot stuff and shoot stuff well. He's also one of the quickest people mentally I've ever known, but nobody would have noticed that if it hadn't been for his skills with a gun.
I'm not going to go into the morals of what he does... he's good to his friends, but not loved by his enemies - I've seen the bullet holes in him to prove that. The point is that with no arms training of any sort other than arcade games he was able to almost instantly become a sought after crack shot. And, in his own words, he credits that to his many, many, many hours of Area 51 and video game firearms in general. I'm not sure if I believe that, but it's what he says and if anything I'm telling his story on the conservative side so people don't think I'm bullshitting it.
Signing deals and making business alliances means nothing other than that they're trying. Wait until something good (or bad) actually happens because of the changes before forming too strong of an opinion.
Re:Bad 80s is much better than bad 2000s
on
Retro Vision
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
We can learn a valuable lesson from this, and that is...
How can a service of that magnitude with M$
money backing it not realize it was/was not
under attack?
It's simple... the bigger it is, the more holes there are, and the longer it takes to check them all (or at least what the holes lead to). A basic analysis, but there it is. At least they didn't blame it on terrorists.
Re:Some things are unstoppable
on
Spam Bits
·
· Score: 1
OS X + Safari + PithHelmet + friends who buy CDs = me without needing P2P, seeing popups, or having a virus. The spam sucks, though.
Reading that was like reading Dickens, except without the payoff. Sentences should not need to be read, re-read, and read once more for a basic understanding of the point they're trying to make.
In my experience, and the experience of people I know coming from all kinds of backgrounds, homeschooling is a mixed bag that creates thoughtful, intelligent, and incredibly awkward people. I remember friends in college who had been homeschooled... they were the ones who people liked but had a permanent guard in place. If not that, they overcompensated by trying to be as social as possible, leading (in most cases) to drug abuse, and if not that then merely becoming the outcast that was too damn annoying to be around for any lengthy period of time.
I haven't hit the age yet where I can look back and say whether or not being a homeschooled kid would have been worth it. But my view is that you get out of life what you can, and enjoy it as much as you can. Sure, high school and middle school can be rough, but that's a part of the learning process in which most people develop skills to handle other people for the rest of their life. Take that away and they are put way behind the curve. Not everything in life is about being able to talk to other people, but not everything is about how much knowledge is in your head either.
Give it a week. I'm sure the same people who let you play your video games with some number found online will provide a way for you to watch Star Trek in the afternoon.
As we become more comfortable with basic technology (3D graphics and physics and stuff) it will probably become easier to get the basics done. At some point a lot of the risk will be mitigated, and you'll start seeing more creativity because we start developing with a higher baseline. Hopefully within the next few years!
Yes and no. There isn't a whole lot left to discover and become familiar with in the engines that already exist, because, well, they already exist. I mean, what does the Quake 3 engine really have that people aren't familiar with? On the plus side maybe future engines will be a little easier to work with, in theory.
But there's another side about continued development. It gets mentioned all the time on slashdot, so I hate to use, but it's the old "I'll NEVER need more than xx amount of RAM" argument again. New technologies, methods, etc will be developed, and developers will need to become familiar with them, and release dates will be pushed up even as programmers are still feeling out the system, so they'll be forced to cut out what they really want to make.
The solution won't come through familiarity with the technology, it'll come through a change in the way that games are developed.
Every year on slashdot people say it'll be Linux's big year. Yes, that means next year people will say it too. It's partly because of this thinking like yours, that you need to be l33t to even touch the machine, that linux's big year hasn't happened yet. You follow "What is a non-technical user doing with Linux anyway?" with "I like to think of Linux as a sort of technical boot camp." So which is it? Is Linux the end-all of nerdom, or is it just an educational experience on the way to... what?
The point is that a better UI isn't something that should be frowned on. Christ, I feel stupid for even having to say that.
oh, come on. you can get a cheaper mac for that from the front page of the Apple store, to say nothing of buying a recently refurbished one filled with RAM from somewhere else.
yup, i have a friend with a 29 picture digital camera that used to be disposable but is now... just a digital camera. no view screen, but if you're comparing it to film that's not a problem anyway.
somehow this makes me think of DRM schemes. I don't know why, but I can't shake the feeling that we're going to see subscription-based digital cameras, and 99 cent pictures....yes yes I know it won't happen, but I can dream about terrible business ideas, can't I?
I have a similar story... when I used to live in Long Beach, CA, I ordered a package that I soon found out was originating in Long Beach, CA through the online tracking. A week later it was in Nashville, TN, not long after that Illinois, and almost 2 weeks later it finally arrived having seen more of the US than I have.
I know it's still cheaper than having an actual storefront, but the cost effectiveness of giving a box a vacation eludes me.
Yes, this is the main problem. It seems to be generally agreed that this won't stop anyone who's serious, but when you're using image/pattern recognition to prevent scanning and printing, it's not a big leap to putting copyright enforcement patterns in magazines, books, etc etc. And as much as I can sympathize with wanting to protect your copyright, there are perfectly legitimate and legal reasons for scanning something out of your magazine/book/etc. The question is how long it will be before this kind of protection is implemented, and if we'll be told when it happens.
Sorry for sounding paranoid, but it seems warranted.
I can understand their approach though. If they release their own sync software they end up with a bunch of extra tech support calls.
oooh! and to really cut back on tech support, they could just stop giving their software to anyone at all! imagine that beautiful site... a giant room full of cubicles and telephones, but not a single peson manning the lines... perhaps even a solitary tumbleweed drifting across the floor.
it's different now. students (usually girls) go door to door, do some flirting, and try to get $5 out of you. what they don't say is that you aren't giving them only the $5 you hand over, but every quarter after that $5 is automatically billed as part of tuition once your name is on the list.
at least you get an unlaminated card with the CALPIRG logo and your social security number on it, i guess...
I know that, I was just thinking about a possible use for it that has been said by others. Expanding ideas and whatnot. If you've ever used the shelf in PathFinder you'd know what I was talking about (so I guess that means my idea doesn't really need to be expanded since someone else has already done it). XShelf does it too, but I'm not a fan of it.
PathFinder - http://www.cocoatech.com/
XShelf - http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/XShelf/XShelf.html
When I think of the effort you took to save this over the past half decade, it makes me wish you had done something more worthwhile with your time. Hell, even masturbation would have done the world a greater service than topical humor that wasn't funny when it was fresh.
Moving the icons onto the desktop would make for a simple undo... it would also provide a sensible counterpart operation to dragging something onto the dock in the first place.
At first I didn't like this idea at all, but the more I think about it the more I think I would like it. Not so I could quickly fix any dragging mistakes (I don't think I've ever done that in years of OS X use), but because you could use it as a shelf.
Open up your downloads folder, drag a file to the dock. Go to the Applications folder, drag the file from the dock to Applications. It's no longer in the dock, it's no longer in the Downloads folder, and it's right where you want it to be without opening extra windows.
You don't resize the dock by dragging the mouse on its border. You have to command-click the line-seperator and drag... (a combination you wouldn't be using otherwise when at the dock and so it makes the chance of accidentally re-sizing the dock almost impossible."
you don't need to do a command click, just click and drag on the separator. hold down option for the sizing to jump to default sizes so the anti-aliasing doesn't look bad (64x64, 32x32, etc etc)
Slashdot Mirror
And I, for one, welcome a new joke every now and then.
Depends on the video game. America's Army obviously has nothing to do with motor skills, but I have a friend who in high school was nothing all the special, wasn't a jock and if anything did more to support the Area 51 arcade games than probably any other man alive. The arcade owner most likely retired because of him.
Well, to make a long story short, after high school he joined the army. No previous weapons experience of any kind. During weapons training for the M16 (just like in Americas Army) he shot hawkeye (that's 40 hits out of 40 possible targets... somethng like 33 hits qualifies you for sniper school, I think). He did a few years of bouncing around various elite army schools (special ops training in the phillipines, sniper school where he would spend literally days inching through the grass to take out a target, etc etc) before heading off to Bosnia, where he had multiple confirmed kills in Bosnia as both recon and a sniper. He later hooked up with some underworld elements and became essentially a hit man for a very large gang in Long Beach (one that you've all heard of), and currently is up near the top of the list of people in organized crime in LA and Orange counties, despite his young age, all because of his abilities to shoot stuff and shoot stuff well. He's also one of the quickest people mentally I've ever known, but nobody would have noticed that if it hadn't been for his skills with a gun.
I'm not going to go into the morals of what he does... he's good to his friends, but not loved by his enemies - I've seen the bullet holes in him to prove that. The point is that with no arms training of any sort other than arcade games he was able to almost instantly become a sought after crack shot. And, in his own words, he credits that to his many, many, many hours of Area 51 and video game firearms in general. I'm not sure if I believe that, but it's what he says and if anything I'm telling his story on the conservative side so people don't think I'm bullshitting it.
How in the world would you market to samba? I mean, is there some way to configure it as a consumer?
Signing deals and making business alliances means nothing other than that they're trying. Wait until something good (or bad) actually happens because of the changes before forming too strong of an opinion.
We can learn a valuable lesson from this, and that is...
TV sucks.
How can a service of that magnitude with M$ money backing it not realize it was/was not under attack? It's simple... the bigger it is, the more holes there are, and the longer it takes to check them all (or at least what the holes lead to). A basic analysis, but there it is. At least they didn't blame it on terrorists.
OS X + Safari + PithHelmet + friends who buy CDs = me without needing P2P, seeing popups, or having a virus. The spam sucks, though.
In my experience, and the experience of people I know coming from all kinds of backgrounds, homeschooling is a mixed bag that creates thoughtful, intelligent, and incredibly awkward people. I remember friends in college who had been homeschooled... they were the ones who people liked but had a permanent guard in place. If not that, they overcompensated by trying to be as social as possible, leading (in most cases) to drug abuse, and if not that then merely becoming the outcast that was too damn annoying to be around for any lengthy period of time.
I haven't hit the age yet where I can look back and say whether or not being a homeschooled kid would have been worth it. But my view is that you get out of life what you can, and enjoy it as much as you can. Sure, high school and middle school can be rough, but that's a part of the learning process in which most people develop skills to handle other people for the rest of their life. Take that away and they are put way behind the curve. Not everything in life is about being able to talk to other people, but not everything is about how much knowledge is in your head either.
Give it a week. I'm sure the same people who let you play your video games with some number found online will provide a way for you to watch Star Trek in the afternoon.
As we become more comfortable with basic technology (3D graphics and physics and stuff) it will probably become easier to get the basics done. At some point a lot of the risk will be mitigated, and you'll start seeing more creativity because we start developing with a higher baseline. Hopefully within the next few years!
Yes and no. There isn't a whole lot left to discover and become familiar with in the engines that already exist, because, well, they already exist. I mean, what does the Quake 3 engine really have that people aren't familiar with? On the plus side maybe future engines will be a little easier to work with, in theory.
But there's another side about continued development. It gets mentioned all the time on slashdot, so I hate to use, but it's the old "I'll NEVER need more than xx amount of RAM" argument again. New technologies, methods, etc will be developed, and developers will need to become familiar with them, and release dates will be pushed up even as programmers are still feeling out the system, so they'll be forced to cut out what they really want to make.
The solution won't come through familiarity with the technology, it'll come through a change in the way that games are developed.
Every year on slashdot people say it'll be Linux's big year. Yes, that means next year people will say it too. It's partly because of this thinking like yours, that you need to be l33t to even touch the machine, that linux's big year hasn't happened yet. You follow "What is a non-technical user doing with Linux anyway?" with "I like to think of Linux as a sort of technical boot camp." So which is it? Is Linux the end-all of nerdom, or is it just an educational experience on the way to... what?
The point is that a better UI isn't something that should be frowned on. Christ, I feel stupid for even having to say that.
oh, come on. you can get a cheaper mac for that from the front page of the Apple store, to say nothing of buying a recently refurbished one filled with RAM from somewhere else.
yup, i have a friend with a 29 picture digital camera that used to be disposable but is now... just a digital camera. no view screen, but if you're comparing it to film that's not a problem anyway. somehow this makes me think of DRM schemes. I don't know why, but I can't shake the feeling that we're going to see subscription-based digital cameras, and 99 cent pictures. ...yes yes I know it won't happen, but I can dream about terrible business ideas, can't I?
I have a similar story... when I used to live in Long Beach, CA, I ordered a package that I soon found out was originating in Long Beach, CA through the online tracking. A week later it was in Nashville, TN, not long after that Illinois, and almost 2 weeks later it finally arrived having seen more of the US than I have. I know it's still cheaper than having an actual storefront, but the cost effectiveness of giving a box a vacation eludes me.
number of Ls in syllable: WRONG.
be nicer to the first post people (bitch).
Yes, this is the main problem. It seems to be generally agreed that this won't stop anyone who's serious, but when you're using image/pattern recognition to prevent scanning and printing, it's not a big leap to putting copyright enforcement patterns in magazines, books, etc etc. And as much as I can sympathize with wanting to protect your copyright, there are perfectly legitimate and legal reasons for scanning something out of your magazine/book/etc. The question is how long it will be before this kind of protection is implemented, and if we'll be told when it happens. Sorry for sounding paranoid, but it seems warranted.
getting large things to replicate is a lot harder than small things.
it's different now. students (usually girls) go door to door, do some flirting, and try to get $5 out of you. what they don't say is that you aren't giving them only the $5 you hand over, but every quarter after that $5 is automatically billed as part of tuition once your name is on the list. at least you get an unlaminated card with the CALPIRG logo and your social security number on it, i guess...
I know that, I was just thinking about a possible use for it that has been said by others. Expanding ideas and whatnot. If you've ever used the shelf in PathFinder you'd know what I was talking about (so I guess that means my idea doesn't really need to be expanded since someone else has already done it). XShelf does it too, but I'm not a fan of it. PathFinder - http://www.cocoatech.com/ XShelf - http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/XShelf/XShelf.html
When I think of the effort you took to save this over the past half decade, it makes me wish you had done something more worthwhile with your time. Hell, even masturbation would have done the world a greater service than topical humor that wasn't funny when it was fresh.
You don't resize the dock by dragging the mouse on its border. You have to command-click the line-seperator and drag... (a combination you wouldn't be using otherwise when at the dock and so it makes the chance of accidentally re-sizing the dock almost impossible." you don't need to do a command click, just click and drag on the separator. hold down option for the sizing to jump to default sizes so the anti-aliasing doesn't look bad (64x64, 32x32, etc etc)
As I understand it this essentially X10, except actually feasible.
Exactly, nobody in the world anywhere is affected by caliquakes. Oh, wait... nevermind.