This isn't actually true (in general, some computers may have trouble running any particular game). First, Far Cry doesn't require a powerful processor, while Doom 3 will not run faster than 25fps on a P4 1.5 (minimal requirements). Second, Far Cry runs at approximately the same framerates or faster on most setups. Check out any recent videocard review - they must have both game benchmarks.
Greetings from the land of piracy, Arrggh! The game will be available in stores (and at stands) throughout Russia on September 25. Needless to say, the version is expected to have significantly lower "security requirements". I bet it will even run without a CD in drive.:)
It's a wonderful idea to inconvenience your customers, while everybody else enjoys your game. Makes total business sense.
There is no reason why someone can't take the newly released movies, the DVD-R versions of the old films (from the LD) and combine them into precisely what they want. Making Han shoot first is trivial! Furthermore, the examples of Episode I.I: The Phantom Edit and The Two Towers: The Purist Edit show that you can do much more with the footage provided by the director.
Nope, it just proves that they can't think of any investment opportunities that can compare with building a desktop OS monopoly in profitability and low risk.
Puhleeese! Enough of personal anecdotes already. There's a study that very clearly showed - WinXP requires a reboot more often than Win2k. The study was done on a 1285000 computers that all belong to large businesses and have professional system administrators maintaining them. The fact that WinXP doesn't crash for you doesn't mean jack shit for everyone else. There are more than 100000000 computers running Windows XP and every computer is different. Just be happy that your computer doesn't crash, but stop that "you must be doing something wrong" bullshit. Your stable XP installation is mostly luck, not something you can be proud of.
Look, why do you want to go Room 101 so much? Before we send thought police after you, I suggest you try to understand yourself, why detaining people who have the same initials as a suspected terrorist makes sense, while detaining people who are close relatives of a proved terrorist doesn't.
Just think about it non-stop and eventually it will dawn on you - 2x2 really is 5. And you love George W. Bush.
Because it is legal in the US to lie during elections. I can make an ad that would present as fact that Bush rapes 6-month old infants and then sacrifices them together with Rumsfeld. Any media outlet that airs Bush's ads will be required by law to air my own ad and First Amendment will probably protect me against any lawsuits (according to most of the past precedents).
Look, Soviet Union had a space station for how long? And what did the US had? Skylab?
Russians do a great job, but their problem is a lack of funding. NASA buget is $15 billion, while Russian space budget is 9.6 billion. Rubles... And the exchange rate is, need I remind you, 26 RUB/USD. Which means that Russian space budget is merely $370 million, or about 2.5% of the American budget.
If we didn't fuck up the great Soviet Union in 1970s-1980s, there might very well have been a Mars base already... With apple trees... but you'll never understand that.
I think I am supposed to be excited about the ad, about some people working in Google, about google HR people being oh so smart... But I am not, actually I think it's rather silly.
The problems that Google faces are not ones to be solved by genius mathematicians/engineers. Well, some of them may be, but most of the improvements in search will probably come from hard and pretty uninspired work. Google doesn't seem to realise this (or should I say "doesn't agree with this"), and I think it's their big mistake.
P.S. I definitely can realise how fun working with very smart people in a very comfortable environment can be, I just don't think it makes much sense for Google.
Nothing wrong, but if one wants an innovative browser, Opera is the only choice. Mouse gestures, tabs and pop-up blocking do not sell Opera, even if they did several years ago. While Firefox copied these features, the Opera team continued to improve the browsing experience. I tried Firefox once, but while it's a great replacement for IE, it doesn't really compare with Opera.
1. You can maximize the pages if you want to. Or resize the pages.:) You can even run it in full screen for truly maximal viewing area. There is even a beta available with "Medium-screen rendering" that comfortably fits large pages designed for 1280x960 into a small window without horisontal scrolling.
2. What schemes? The default one is quite nice, IMO, there are many others, you can make your own, etc. Personally I remove all controls anyway, so the only thing that the skin influences are the tabs. They are quite nice actually and have a pretty mouse-over effect.:)
3. The mail client is not crappy. May be it's not your style, but I migrated from The Bat! (which was pretty good) and am very happy with M2. May be you tried an old version of Opera? Try 7.54, it's quite good.
So you see, there is no reason not to use Opera.:)
Heh, call ME a pirate, but I'd rather not mess with CD at all after I install the game - virtual or not. My copy of Doom 3 runs perfectly well without a CD at all - and this is the way I like it. I am not very willing to pay for software (other than the cost of media), but I did it sometimes - and every single time I regretted the decision because the copy-protection was so annoying. So now I am pretty strongly bent on not buying any licensed products, as long as I can get a pirated copy, because the experience is so much better.
Not really. Of course, you may claim that you know more about my childhood than I do, but I don't remember being extensively told to help others - no more, no less than any other kid is told that. My desire to help others developed in some other way. No, it is silly to call it a reflex, because this is clearly not - it's an example of higher nervous functions, not something as basic as salivating on a bell. Of course, it would be equally silly to deny that I am "wired" or "programmed" this way, but don't equate it with reflexes. My complex mind evolved in such a way as to help others - this is always my free choice, the decision depends on many factors, but quite often I decide to do it.
In regards to denying the selfish person, I think you are wrong as well. In fact, I find being selfish good, correct and rational. I am actually quite selfish (sometimes my willingness to admit it really surprises others), but I also act altruistically sometimes. Some of these altruistic acts are results of simple societal programming (letting someone sit in the metro, opening a door for someone), but others are a result of my own free choice, but still aren't selfish.
Yes, you fix faucets to sleep well at night, but not because you enjoy fixing them. Ergo, it is possible to do things that you don't directly derive satisfaction from. And I don't derive satisfaction from the helping (actually sometimes I do, but sometimes I don't). I also usually don't help people to get anything in return (though very rarely I do). The motivation is not necessarily selfish, as hard as it can be for you to believe.
Right now I am trying to persuade you because I enjoy doing this - selfish, you are right. But there have been many cases where I would post some information on the Net just to help someone, even though I don't particularly care about the topic, about the person, etc., and don't expect anything in return. And I didn't feel especially happy about it, I would certainly be happier spending that time playing Minesweeper or something.
It is obvious that I do it because that's the way my brain work, but that doesn't necessarily mean I am selfish. That merely means that I behave this way because I want to. It just happens that I want to help others.:)
Selfish: 1) "Concerned chiefly or only with oneself."
2) "Caring supremely or unduly for one's self; regarding one's own comfort, advantage, etc., in disregard, or at the expense, of those of others."
3) "Believing or teaching that the chief motives of human action are derived from love of self." (in ethics)
If you want to redefine the word to mean "guided by your own brain", this is wrong. Yes, in that case my actions would be described as selfish, so you'd be correct, but the English language would suffer a minor rape.:)
When I help someone, I am not being selfish. First, I am concerned with another person foremost. Second, I only care about others' comfort, not about my own. Third, I don't feel paricularly good, I don't really enjoy it - it just seems the correct action.
I don't help simply for the feeling, I help for helping. The feeling is just an indicator. Similarly, you fix a leaking faucet because it feels right, because you know this should be done, but the motivation is not in the feeling itself, it's in the outcome. In my case the outcome doesn't have to do anything with myself - entirely with others, ergo I am not selfish.
It's not a problem that you have this understanding of a comment on Slashdot - there is plenty of room in the bottom, as Feynman once said, and there is plenty of space at -1 for comments such as your. The [widely acknowledged] problem is that moderators mistakenly agree.
The story showed the facts - that a research carried out (with the help of MS) on 1285000 computers showed that among those with WinXP 12% of sessions required a reboot, while the numbers for other OSes was less. That was a fact. Now your comment that you "find it hard to believe", followed with some personal anecdotes, is idiocy. There is time and place for personal experiences and this time is not when you discuss a large survey. There is zero relevant information in your post, because it's obvious to everyone that there are always probability distributions - there are computers that require a reboot more often and those that require it less often. Any intelligent person realises that there are more factors than one (OS) and that hardware, software, usage patterns, networking environment, etc. are relevant too.
But facts are facts - if a random user (assuming the sample was representative) has WinXP, he is likely to reboot in about 12% sessions. A Win2k user is likely to reboot in about 4% sessions. Your comment is irrelevant. Period.
This is not science fault - this is a fault of wacko environmentalists. They are organised - they can manipulate public opinion, media and lawmakers. After all, you don't want to be AGAINST Spotted Owls, do you?
A big indicator of the problem was the candidates' response to the BSE question. They both said this is a serious problem that warrants a lot of attention (and funding), even though less than 100 people died from BSE during 5 years. Heck, I am sure more people die because they don't wash their hands before eating.:) So politicians only care about problems that are PERCEIVED as important, they don't care how valid is the science. Eventually, when people in the USA realise that global warming is happening, every American candidate will start supporting Kyoto protocol and other measures.
So what you are saying is that a president plays essentially no role in politics. While one may agree with that, it just shows that the United States is a corrupt oligarchy, ruled by the shadow government, comprised of some old WASP farts, that dream about hoarding all the money in the world, scaring everyone into submission and are religious nuts to top it off. Not a very comforting view...
Opera can zoom in on the page, including Flash animations. So by setting the zoom to 250% I saw large very readable, smooth, but sharp antialiased font. That doesn't mean that Flash is good, though, only that Opera is a great browser. They don't call it "The best Internet experience" for nothing.:)
I'm not sure what use proving each candidate has weak areas of knowledge would prove.
You don't have to accept that for the position of a single most powerful person on the planet! There are brilliant people in the world, politicians with powerful minds, rational, capable of perceiving the whole systems at once, with erudition to rival the Library of Congress, with personal integrity, courage, honesty, the desire to change the world for the better, a vision for the future and the ability to motivate people. And you settle for a choice between a functionally illiterate retard and a boring guy, whose redeeming qualities are that he married a ketchup queen and won a purple heart thrice, and who is only marginally better.
This is stupid, really stupid. Heck, I am sure if you asked Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein whether Pakistan is a democracy, what language do they speak in Mexico or how many US troops are stationed somewhere, they will have boatloads more clue. Say what you want about their political ideas and management style, but at least they are competent.
It would be pretty hard to distinguish these two guys without the clues like "John Edwards" or "current administration's mishandling of the problem".
I think both candidates are pretty clueless in science, surely neither is as smart and erudite as Clinton was (who, among other things, admitted in 1999 the possibility of human immortality and stated that it should be our goal).
The questions by Nature weren't too interesting either. The only thing that we can learn from this article is that both candidates have good support stuff who can bullshit people very well.
What you don't seem to realise is that there is less and less public property in the US. And when everything is private, you don't have freedoms, because private companies can take them away. At the very least, you have to buy food - and when the only place where you can do it - the Walmart, starts requiring a RFID (or a mind-control device) implantation, you will either succumb to it or starve.
But he also gets to name 130 students "Sidney Frank Scholars" each year. Are you sure you want 130 CMU students to be called "Bill Gates Scholars" each year?
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't actually true (in general, some computers may have trouble running any particular game). First, Far Cry doesn't require a powerful processor, while Doom 3 will not run faster than 25fps on a P4 1.5 (minimal requirements). Second, Far Cry runs at approximately the same framerates or faster on most setups. Check out any recent videocard review - they must have both game benchmarks.
Greetings from the land of piracy, Arrggh! The game will be available in stores (and at stands) throughout Russia on September 25. Needless to say, the version is expected to have significantly lower "security requirements". I bet it will even run without a CD in drive. :)
It's a wonderful idea to inconvenience your customers, while everybody else enjoys your game. Makes total business sense.
There is no reason why someone can't take the newly released movies, the DVD-R versions of the old films (from the LD) and combine them into precisely what they want. Making Han shoot first is trivial! Furthermore, the examples of Episode I.I: The Phantom Edit and The Two Towers: The Purist Edit show that you can do much more with the footage provided by the director.
Nope, it just proves that they can't think of any investment opportunities that can compare with building a desktop OS monopoly in profitability and low risk.
Puhleeese! Enough of personal anecdotes already. There's a study that very clearly showed - WinXP requires a reboot more often than Win2k. The study was done on a 1285000 computers that all belong to large businesses and have professional system administrators maintaining them. The fact that WinXP doesn't crash for you doesn't mean jack shit for everyone else. There are more than 100000000 computers running Windows XP and every computer is different. Just be happy that your computer doesn't crash, but stop that "you must be doing something wrong" bullshit. Your stable XP installation is mostly luck, not something you can be proud of.
Look, why do you want to go Room 101 so much? Before we send thought police after you, I suggest you try to understand yourself, why detaining people who have the same initials as a suspected terrorist makes sense, while detaining people who are close relatives of a proved terrorist doesn't.
Just think about it non-stop and eventually it will dawn on you - 2x2 really is 5. And you love George W. Bush.
Because it is legal in the US to lie during elections. I can make an ad that would present as fact that Bush rapes 6-month old infants and then sacrifices them together with Rumsfeld. Any media outlet that airs Bush's ads will be required by law to air my own ad and First Amendment will probably protect me against any lawsuits (according to most of the past precedents).
Check out this article at Fact Check:
False Ads: There Oughtta Be A Law! Or -- Maybe Not.
Look, Soviet Union had a space station for how long? And what did the US had? Skylab?
Russians do a great job, but their problem is a lack of funding. NASA buget is $15 billion, while Russian space budget is 9.6 billion. Rubles... And the exchange rate is, need I remind you, 26 RUB/USD. Which means that Russian space budget is merely $370 million, or about 2.5% of the American budget.
If we didn't fuck up the great Soviet Union in 1970s-1980s, there might very well have been a Mars base already... With apple trees... but you'll never understand that.
I think I am supposed to be excited about the ad, about some people working in Google, about google HR people being oh so smart... But I am not, actually I think it's rather silly.
The problems that Google faces are not ones to be solved by genius mathematicians/engineers. Well, some of them may be, but most of the improvements in search will probably come from hard and pretty uninspired work. Google doesn't seem to realise this (or should I say "doesn't agree with this"), and I think it's their big mistake.
P.S. I definitely can realise how fun working with very smart people in a very comfortable environment can be, I just don't think it makes much sense for Google.
Nothing wrong, but if one wants an innovative browser, Opera is the only choice. Mouse gestures, tabs and pop-up blocking do not sell Opera, even if they did several years ago. While Firefox copied these features, the Opera team continued to improve the browsing experience. I tried Firefox once, but while it's a great replacement for IE, it doesn't really compare with Opera.
Excuses, excuses...
:) You can even run it in full screen for truly maximal viewing area. There is even a beta available with "Medium-screen rendering" that comfortably fits large pages designed for 1280x960 into a small window without horisontal scrolling.
:)
:)
1. You can maximize the pages if you want to. Or resize the pages.
2. What schemes? The default one is quite nice, IMO, there are many others, you can make your own, etc. Personally I remove all controls anyway, so the only thing that the skin influences are the tabs. They are quite nice actually and have a pretty mouse-over effect.
3. The mail client is not crappy. May be it's not your style, but I migrated from The Bat! (which was pretty good) and am very happy with M2. May be you tried an old version of Opera? Try 7.54, it's quite good.
So you see, there is no reason not to use Opera.
Heh, call ME a pirate, but I'd rather not mess with CD at all after I install the game - virtual or not. My copy of Doom 3 runs perfectly well without a CD at all - and this is the way I like it. I am not very willing to pay for software (other than the cost of media), but I did it sometimes - and every single time I regretted the decision because the copy-protection was so annoying. So now I am pretty strongly bent on not buying any licensed products, as long as I can get a pirated copy, because the experience is so much better.
Not really. Of course, you may claim that you know more about my childhood than I do, but I don't remember being extensively told to help others - no more, no less than any other kid is told that. My desire to help others developed in some other way. No, it is silly to call it a reflex, because this is clearly not - it's an example of higher nervous functions, not something as basic as salivating on a bell. Of course, it would be equally silly to deny that I am "wired" or "programmed" this way, but don't equate it with reflexes. My complex mind evolved in such a way as to help others - this is always my free choice, the decision depends on many factors, but quite often I decide to do it.
In regards to denying the selfish person, I think you are wrong as well. In fact, I find being selfish good, correct and rational. I am actually quite selfish (sometimes my willingness to admit it really surprises others), but I also act altruistically sometimes. Some of these altruistic acts are results of simple societal programming (letting someone sit in the metro, opening a door for someone), but others are a result of my own free choice, but still aren't selfish.
Yes, you fix faucets to sleep well at night, but not because you enjoy fixing them. Ergo, it is possible to do things that you don't directly derive satisfaction from. And I don't derive satisfaction from the helping (actually sometimes I do, but sometimes I don't). I also usually don't help people to get anything in return (though very rarely I do). The motivation is not necessarily selfish, as hard as it can be for you to believe.
:)
Right now I am trying to persuade you because I enjoy doing this - selfish, you are right. But there have been many cases where I would post some information on the Net just to help someone, even though I don't particularly care about the topic, about the person, etc., and don't expect anything in return. And I didn't feel especially happy about it, I would certainly be happier spending that time playing Minesweeper or something.
It is obvious that I do it because that's the way my brain work, but that doesn't necessarily mean I am selfish. That merely means that I behave this way because I want to. It just happens that I want to help others.
Sorry, my bad.
Selfish: 1) "Concerned chiefly or only with oneself."
:)
2) "Caring supremely or unduly for one's self; regarding one's own comfort, advantage, etc., in disregard, or at the expense, of those of others."
3) "Believing or teaching that the chief motives of human action are derived from love of self." (in ethics)
If you want to redefine the word to mean "guided by your own brain", this is wrong. Yes, in that case my actions would be described as selfish, so you'd be correct, but the English language would suffer a minor rape.
When I help someone, I am not being selfish. First, I am concerned with another person foremost. Second, I only care about others' comfort, not about my own. Third, I don't feel paricularly good, I don't really enjoy it - it just seems the correct action.
I don't help simply for the feeling, I help for helping. The feeling is just an indicator. Similarly, you fix a leaking faucet because it feels right, because you know this should be done, but the motivation is not in the feeling itself, it's in the outcome. In my case the outcome doesn't have to do anything with myself - entirely with others, ergo I am not selfish.
It's not a problem that you have this understanding of a comment on Slashdot - there is plenty of room in the bottom, as Feynman once said, and there is plenty of space at -1 for comments such as your. The [widely acknowledged] problem is that moderators mistakenly agree.
The story showed the facts - that a research carried out (with the help of MS) on 1285000 computers showed that among those with WinXP 12% of sessions required a reboot, while the numbers for other OSes was less. That was a fact. Now your comment that you "find it hard to believe", followed with some personal anecdotes, is idiocy. There is time and place for personal experiences and this time is not when you discuss a large survey. There is zero relevant information in your post, because it's obvious to everyone that there are always probability distributions - there are computers that require a reboot more often and those that require it less often. Any intelligent person realises that there are more factors than one (OS) and that hardware, software, usage patterns, networking environment, etc. are relevant too.
But facts are facts - if a random user (assuming the sample was representative) has WinXP, he is likely to reboot in about 12% sessions. A Win2k user is likely to reboot in about 4% sessions. Your comment is irrelevant. Period.
Thanks for the nice informative reply. That's all there is to say. :)
This is not science fault - this is a fault of wacko environmentalists. They are organised - they can manipulate public opinion, media and lawmakers. After all, you don't want to be AGAINST Spotted Owls, do you?
:) So politicians only care about problems that are PERCEIVED as important, they don't care how valid is the science. Eventually, when people in the USA realise that global warming is happening, every American candidate will start supporting Kyoto protocol and other measures.
A big indicator of the problem was the candidates' response to the BSE question. They both said this is a serious problem that warrants a lot of attention (and funding), even though less than 100 people died from BSE during 5 years. Heck, I am sure more people die because they don't wash their hands before eating.
So what you are saying is that a president plays essentially no role in politics. While one may agree with that, it just shows that the United States is a corrupt oligarchy, ruled by the shadow government, comprised of some old WASP farts, that dream about hoarding all the money in the world, scaring everyone into submission and are religious nuts to top it off. Not a very comforting view...
Opera can zoom in on the page, including Flash animations. So by setting the zoom to 250% I saw large very readable, smooth, but sharp antialiased font. That doesn't mean that Flash is good, though, only that Opera is a great browser. They don't call it "The best Internet experience" for nothing. :)
I'm not sure what use proving each candidate has weak areas of knowledge would prove.
You don't have to accept that for the position of a single most powerful person on the planet! There are brilliant people in the world, politicians with powerful minds, rational, capable of perceiving the whole systems at once, with erudition to rival the Library of Congress, with personal integrity, courage, honesty, the desire to change the world for the better, a vision for the future and the ability to motivate people. And you settle for a choice between a functionally illiterate retard and a boring guy, whose redeeming qualities are that he married a ketchup queen and won a purple heart thrice, and who is only marginally better.
This is stupid, really stupid. Heck, I am sure if you asked Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein whether Pakistan is a democracy, what language do they speak in Mexico or how many US troops are stationed somewhere, they will have boatloads more clue. Say what you want about their political ideas and management style, but at least they are competent.
It would be pretty hard to distinguish these two guys without the clues like "John Edwards" or "current administration's mishandling of the problem".
I think both candidates are pretty clueless in science, surely neither is as smart and erudite as Clinton was (who, among other things, admitted in 1999 the possibility of human immortality and stated that it should be our goal).
The questions by Nature weren't too interesting either. The only thing that we can learn from this article is that both candidates have good support stuff who can bullshit people very well.
What you don't seem to realise is that there is less and less public property in the US. And when everything is private, you don't have freedoms, because private companies can take them away. At the very least, you have to buy food - and when the only place where you can do it - the Walmart, starts requiring a RFID (or a mind-control device) implantation, you will either succumb to it or starve.
But he also gets to name 130 students "Sidney Frank Scholars" each year. Are you sure you want 130 CMU students to be called "Bill Gates Scholars" each year?