Safari is no competition for Internet Explorer, since noone who is able and willing to download and install another browser is still using IE. It's main competitor is Firefox, but I can't imagine many FF users switching to Safari as it confirms every prejudice I as a Windows user have about Mac software: it looks grey and it works against me (e.g. no ctrl-enter, can't resize it easily).
The danger is that between all the crackpots with absurd theories, someone is actually telling the truth or at least raising a valid question, and noone will listen to him because he's just seen to be one of the conspiracy nuts. By opining that ALL conspiracy theories are absurd, you make it easier for actual crooks to cover up their conspiracies or blunders.
When I was 9 I thought Logo was childish crap and only wanted to learn Basic. Somehow I think all children who are meant to become programmers will feel the same.
Of course playing an FPS with a gaming pad is also gaming, just like playing tennis with iron sticks and a magnetic ball would still be a sport. It just wouldn't be tennis anymore, and you have to understand the criticism of PC FPS players in that regard.
Playing an FPS with a gaming pad means you're severely crippled in the game world. The whole concept seems outrageously retarded to serious FPS players because a mouse is not that complicated or expensive a device to use.
Hopefully someone invents a good way to use the Wii controllers in an FPS. Then you'd have both the ease of use of a game pad and the precision and speed of a mouse and the whole discussion would become moot.
They should have cut out the part in the middle where he suddenly says something on a normal tone. That shows he was not losing it, it was just a shouting match. Either way, losing it to those creepy Xenu freaks is hardly gonna increase their credibility.
1) The EU had nothing to do with Eurofighter. If you're gonna put any initiative by several European countries on the EU's record, you should also add the Ariane rockets and Airbus. Not all-around successes either, but still things we'd rather have than not have.
2) The thing the EU is good at is unifying the European market and fighting against petty national protectionism and state monopolies. If you have any grasp of economics, you'll understand the massive boost that has given and continues to give to Europe's economy. I know my electricity and communications bills have gone down a lot thanks to EU policies, as have the prices of many consumer goods.
Wow, patriotic rants get rated insightful on slashdot? Disappointing.
1) The EU kept the peace through economic integration and interdependence - that was the whole purpose of the EU's earliest predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community.
2) There has never been a defense subsidy. Rather, Europe has been a major market for the US military industry. True enough, during the cold war the US took on itself defensive tasks that Europe didn't have to pay for itself as a result, but the cold war is over. If NATO collapsed tomorrow, the effect on European defense budgets would be minor - not nearly enough to split Europe into warring factions overnight as you seem to expect.
3) It is human nature to wage war against perceived enemies. No two peoples inside western Europe consider each other enemies anymore, precisely because of European integration. There are plenty of outside enemies for European demagogues to work with.
In such a system, high-skilled players will deliberately lose some games to stay in a category that is easy for them. They'll win exactly the highest amount of games that they can win without being promoted.
Let me guess: even more horsepower and storage so all the exact same games can be remade once again with even better graphics? The Wii has killed off this stale 'vision', thankfully. I hope and fully expect that in the next generation, the console makers will try to outdo each other with innovative controller concepts - think live motion capturing.
This concept has been tried many times before by various companies, e.g. mplayer.com back in 2000, UltimateArena.com in 2003, PaycheckArena.com just last year. It never worked and it never will, for the simple reason that FPS games are highly skill-dependent - the random factor is very low and the better player wins 95% of the time. Some people try it, but the below average players soon realise they don't have any chance to win money and quit, thus raising the average difficulty until noone is left. This as opposed to poker, where the outcome of any single tournament is highly random and anyone with half a clue can win sometimes, leaving everyone convinced that they too have a chance of winning.
I pop in an Ubuntu CD, hit yes, yes, yeah, sure, why not, and bam! A Working desktop. Ubuntu recognizes all of my hardware at boot (and I have some rather odd hardware on top of it)
Good for you. Here's my experience with Feisty Fawn (Kubuntu)... On my laptop, a Dell Latitude D820, I can't get wireless to work, making Ubuntu useless. On my PC, everything works fine when I boot from the CD, but when I try to install, the installer freezes at step 4 (Partitioning) with no way out. So far I have spent a few hours trying to resolve these issues, with a Linux expert friend helping online, without any progress. I'm sure if I put in enough time and effort I'll eventually get it to work, but otoh Windows already works.
Maybe I'm unlucky but every year or so I, a Microsoft-loathing Windows user, try Linux and each time end up with increased appreciation for Windows. I don't *want* to whine about Linux, but feel compelled to every time I read a Slashdot user proclaiming how easy Linux is nowadays. Maybe it is for you but don't just assume it's as troublefree for everyone.
Dunno about the US but I'm almost certain that here in Europe the iPhone will be a big hit among the suits, especially early on when they're a curiousity and too expensive for most consumers. Never mind the features, it'll be a little status symbol and a bit of style you can buy. It's not like corporations have carefully weighed the pros and cons of all available cars and decided that only Mercedes, BMW and Audi have the features that suits need most, yet that's what 99% of them drive. As long as Apple can't bring down the price of the iPhone enough to make it a mass product like the iPod, it needs to target this market which will pay a premium for a prestige product. They would need a bigger range of iPhones then, and make sure the more expensive ones are visually distinguishable, to cater to the whole corporate hierarchy.
So this is supposed to be the user friendly Linux version... yet not the slightest effort is made to help the ordinary computer user who might want to try out Linux with the installation. How many of those people can go to www.ubuntu.com today and find the right download link? There is no explanation of what the different versions are (server and desktop, okay, but what is "alternate"), no explanation of what i386 and amd64 mean, no mention that you need the.iso file, no explanation of what a.iso file is and what you need to do with it,... . So much effort is put into making Linux user friendly, yet I bet this week alone thousands of people who catch the Ubuntu hype will be having a look at ubuntu.com, get lost in ftp directories and decide that Linux is still way too complicated.
Doesn't it bother you that in basically the whole rest of the world, 80-90% of the population saw through the lies and did NOT believe Saddam Hussein was a threat, yet your senators now cry they couldn't have known? If Joska Fischer, the German foreign minister, could tell Colin Powell in his face "I don't buy it, you simply don't have a case", why couldn't your senators?
The large majority of Americans happily marched to a war that the whole world knew was unjustified. Now that it's gone wrong, just like the rest of the world feared, the "we were lied to" excuse is very weak.
Overall, the results suggest that the US dollar has scope to rise against a range of major currencies except for the Hong Kong or Canadian dollars or Japanese yen.
So they conclude that the low price of the iPod in the USA means the $ is undervalued compared to the currencies of countries where the iPod is more expensive. No mention of factors like labour cost and the internal competitiveness of the retail sector. Whoever wrote this seems entirely clueless about economics.
You forget that the actual price of the iPhone is not 500-600 but more like 700-800. Take away the phone technology and you also take away the contract and the purchase subsidy that goes with it. Which brings you right back to the 500-600 range.
About a year ago I was working at a big European bookmaker and our MySQL setup had gone as far as we could push it. We wanted to hear from another big MySQL user so our CTO mailed Craigslist, and to our pleasant surprise we soon got a very long, friendly and helpful explanation about their setup. I don't need to say how rare that is in business. Very likable company indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
Safari is no competition for Internet Explorer, since noone who is able and willing to download and install another browser is still using IE. It's main competitor is Firefox, but I can't imagine many FF users switching to Safari as it confirms every prejudice I as a Windows user have about Mac software: it looks grey and it works against me (e.g. no ctrl-enter, can't resize it easily).
The danger is that between all the crackpots with absurd theories, someone is actually telling the truth or at least raising a valid question, and noone will listen to him because he's just seen to be one of the conspiracy nuts. By opining that ALL conspiracy theories are absurd, you make it easier for actual crooks to cover up their conspiracies or blunders.
When I was 9 I thought Logo was childish crap and only wanted to learn Basic. Somehow I think all children who are meant to become programmers will feel the same.
Of course playing an FPS with a gaming pad is also gaming, just like playing tennis with iron sticks and a magnetic ball would still be a sport. It just wouldn't be tennis anymore, and you have to understand the criticism of PC FPS players in that regard.
Playing an FPS with a gaming pad means you're severely crippled in the game world. The whole concept seems outrageously retarded to serious FPS players because a mouse is not that complicated or expensive a device to use.
Hopefully someone invents a good way to use the Wii controllers in an FPS. Then you'd have both the ease of use of a game pad and the precision and speed of a mouse and the whole discussion would become moot.
They should have cut out the part in the middle where he suddenly says something on a normal tone. That shows he was not losing it, it was just a shouting match. Either way, losing it to those creepy Xenu freaks is hardly gonna increase their credibility.
And that Wii software outsells PS3 software at over 25 to 1 (31 to 1 this week).
1) The EU had nothing to do with Eurofighter. If you're gonna put any initiative by several European countries on the EU's record, you should also add the Ariane rockets and Airbus. Not all-around successes either, but still things we'd rather have than not have.
2) The thing the EU is good at is unifying the European market and fighting against petty national protectionism and state monopolies. If you have any grasp of economics, you'll understand the massive boost that has given and continues to give to Europe's economy. I know my electricity and communications bills have gone down a lot thanks to EU policies, as have the prices of many consumer goods.
By the same retarded logic, the USA is really an empire conquered by the original Thirteen Colonies.
Wow, patriotic rants get rated insightful on slashdot? Disappointing.
1) The EU kept the peace through economic integration and interdependence - that was the whole purpose of the EU's earliest predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community.
2) There has never been a defense subsidy. Rather, Europe has been a major market for the US military industry. True enough, during the cold war the US took on itself defensive tasks that Europe didn't have to pay for itself as a result, but the cold war is over. If NATO collapsed tomorrow, the effect on European defense budgets would be minor - not nearly enough to split Europe into warring factions overnight as you seem to expect.
3) It is human nature to wage war against perceived enemies. No two peoples inside western Europe consider each other enemies anymore, precisely because of European integration. There are plenty of outside enemies for European demagogues to work with.
In such a system, high-skilled players will deliberately lose some games to stay in a category that is easy for them. They'll win exactly the highest amount of games that they can win without being promoted.
Let me guess: even more horsepower and storage so all the exact same games can be remade once again with even better graphics? The Wii has killed off this stale 'vision', thankfully. I hope and fully expect that in the next generation, the console makers will try to outdo each other with innovative controller concepts - think live motion capturing.
This concept has been tried many times before by various companies, e.g. mplayer.com back in 2000, UltimateArena.com in 2003, PaycheckArena.com just last year. It never worked and it never will, for the simple reason that FPS games are highly skill-dependent - the random factor is very low and the better player wins 95% of the time. Some people try it, but the below average players soon realise they don't have any chance to win money and quit, thus raising the average difficulty until noone is left. This as opposed to poker, where the outcome of any single tournament is highly random and anyone with half a clue can win sometimes, leaving everyone convinced that they too have a chance of winning.
I pop in an Ubuntu CD, hit yes, yes, yeah, sure, why not, and bam! A Working desktop. Ubuntu recognizes all of my hardware at boot (and I have some rather odd hardware on top of it)
Good for you. Here's my experience with Feisty Fawn (Kubuntu)... On my laptop, a Dell Latitude D820, I can't get wireless to work, making Ubuntu useless. On my PC, everything works fine when I boot from the CD, but when I try to install, the installer freezes at step 4 (Partitioning) with no way out. So far I have spent a few hours trying to resolve these issues, with a Linux expert friend helping online, without any progress. I'm sure if I put in enough time and effort I'll eventually get it to work, but otoh Windows already works.
Maybe I'm unlucky but every year or so I, a Microsoft-loathing Windows user, try Linux and each time end up with increased appreciation for Windows. I don't *want* to whine about Linux, but feel compelled to every time I read a Slashdot user proclaiming how easy Linux is nowadays. Maybe it is for you but don't just assume it's as troublefree for everyone.
Dunno about the US but I'm almost certain that here in Europe the iPhone will be a big hit among the suits, especially early on when they're a curiousity and too expensive for most consumers. Never mind the features, it'll be a little status symbol and a bit of style you can buy. It's not like corporations have carefully weighed the pros and cons of all available cars and decided that only Mercedes, BMW and Audi have the features that suits need most, yet that's what 99% of them drive. As long as Apple can't bring down the price of the iPhone enough to make it a mass product like the iPod, it needs to target this market which will pay a premium for a prestige product. They would need a bigger range of iPhones then, and make sure the more expensive ones are visually distinguishable, to cater to the whole corporate hierarchy.
That wasn't there yesterday (there were only links to ftp sites) but it's exactly what I had in mind. So I jumped to wrong conclusions, sorry Ubuntu!
So this is supposed to be the user friendly Linux version... yet not the slightest effort is made to help the ordinary computer user who might want to try out Linux with the installation. How many of those people can go to www.ubuntu.com today and find the right download link? There is no explanation of what the different versions are (server and desktop, okay, but what is "alternate"), no explanation of what i386 and amd64 mean, no mention that you need the .iso file, no explanation of what a .iso file is and what you need to do with it, ... . So much effort is put into making Linux user friendly, yet I bet this week alone thousands of people who catch the Ubuntu hype will be having a look at ubuntu.com, get lost in ftp directories and decide that Linux is still way too complicated.
Obama is already making the news on this side of the pond and being talked about very favourably. Quite the opposite of Bush :)
Doesn't it bother you that in basically the whole rest of the world, 80-90% of the population saw through the lies and did NOT believe Saddam Hussein was a threat, yet your senators now cry they couldn't have known? If Joska Fischer, the German foreign minister, could tell Colin Powell in his face "I don't buy it, you simply don't have a case", why couldn't your senators? The large majority of Americans happily marched to a war that the whole world knew was unjustified. Now that it's gone wrong, just like the rest of the world feared, the "we were lied to" excuse is very weak.
Overall, the results suggest that the US dollar has scope to rise against a range of major currencies except for the Hong Kong or Canadian dollars or Japanese yen.
So they conclude that the low price of the iPod in the USA means the $ is undervalued compared to the currencies of countries where the iPod is more expensive. No mention of factors like labour cost and the internal competitiveness of the retail sector. Whoever wrote this seems entirely clueless about economics.
bah, black&white photography is so arty-farty.
The VAT rate there is 21 per cent, whereas it can be as low as 16 per cent in other EU countries.
It's 21% in Belgium as well, but we could just hop across the border if they charged more here. So that extra 30 euro is just an island tax.
The new Linux 'Flash 9' will just help to further cement flash as the mainstream format for video content distribution.
Yeah now that there's a flash player for the <1% of internet users who run Linux, flash finally has a chance to hit the big time!
You forget that the actual price of the iPhone is not 500-600 but more like 700-800. Take away the phone technology and you also take away the contract and the purchase subsidy that goes with it. Which brings you right back to the 500-600 range.
I meant online sports betting. Company was called MrBookmaker btw.
About a year ago I was working at a big European bookmaker and our MySQL setup had gone as far as we could push it. We wanted to hear from another big MySQL user so our CTO mailed Craigslist, and to our pleasant surprise we soon got a very long, friendly and helpful explanation about their setup. I don't need to say how rare that is in business. Very likable company indeed.