Computer hardware notwithstanding, I always saw online gaming as a kind of meritocracy where the most skilled could advance to the top and achieve some kind of fame in whatever social circle they played in.
These kinds of "monetizations" seem to unbalance that a bit by offering new, useful things in-game to people who can afford to pay a bit more. Can't afford to buy the maps? Well, too bad, because you won't be able to practice all you want on those maps. Can't afford the gear, the guns? Too bad, you'll have to make do with what you have.
It's a shame. I think they should either just put the stuff in the game or not put it in at all.
Can you imagine if you had had to pay three bucks per upgrade in Mega Man X, and ten bucks for the special hadouken? What a ripoff.
I'm confused. You quote someone saying that they have no idea why the US doesn't like diesel, then you say that you have -- i.e., you understand why the US doesn't like diesel... and yet, everything you say seems to point to why America should love diesel.
If you know why America doesn't like diesel, I'd love to know.
Considering that a lot of people have used cannabis these days it really doesn't indicate shit, especially considering a lot of intelligent people feel that the illegal status of cannabis is, quite honestly, bullshit.
It indicates a flagrant disregard for the law that represents a liability for the potential employer, to be frank.
It seems like (in my pessimistic worldview) that it's more likely that the whole plan will backfire and that the courts will rule that torrent distribution sites such as isohunt (I mean, their name implies the a search for ISOs, and I'll be that the large number of ISOs available on that site are illegal) exist solely to facilitate the illegal sharing of copyrighted files through legal methods.
It seems like, to me, a newspaper is allowing drug dealers to take out classified ads (legal) and those dealers drive cars safely (legal) to legal parking spaces where they are legally allowed to congregate to pursue an illegal transaction.
I know the analogy isn't spot-on, but the fact of the matter is, a large number of those torrent sites specialize in providing copyrighted content.
I'd second this, with a correction -- they're generally referred to as the "Barsoom" books, with an "s". They're great, action-packed, feature strong, moral male characters, and can teach kids that old books are not bad books.
Along those lines, I'd also recommend the Tom Swift books. The first series is interesting for showing them what people a hundred years ago thought was science fiction -- many of his inventions are fact now. The second series is more traditional science fiction, with space stations, rockets, and Russians stealing strange inventions that have to do with nuclear technology.
Additionally, I'd recommend Heinlein's or Asimov's juveniles -- there's a reason they're called "juveniles". Things like The Star Beast, Have Spacesuit May Travel, Podkayne of Mars, the Lucky Starr series, and some of Asimov's short story colletions.
You can probably also dig up old astronaut series like Tom Corbett or even the Lensman books. There are also tons of juvenile Star Wars and Star Trek books to be had on the cheap in used book stores all over the place.
I'd suggest reading along with them, or at least trying to read what they're reading when they're not -- not for watching their material or anything like that, but simply so you know where they're coming from when they say something is cool. That way you can actually talk about it.
The darkening of the sky bit is dubious, yes, but if you look at the article, they used other references to astronomical phenomenon to narrow it down, rather than going from that one dubious interpretation. It seems telling (to me, at least), that all of those phenomenon PLUS an eclipse can be dated to a time that fits when the story is guessed to have taken place.
Plutarch may have thought some nutty things, but he also thought some good things. I'm sure you can say that about anyone. For a specific and more recent example, look no further than the article on Bucknminster Fuller that was linked the other day.
Well, I thought it was interesting, considering the whole "mythical" quality of the story. Don't forget that people doubted Troy was real, let alone the Trojan War, until relatively recently. With the additional verification of other (astronomical) elements of the epic as well as the phenomenon that marked his return, it lends more credence to the story as a whole as well as the existence of Odysseus himself.
What other "myths" could be somewhat verified in this manner?
As far as other myths go, don't forget that a lot of people claim that Jesus was an actual person, but in an era that had an extensive bureaucratic system and census, no record was ever made of him, and he was much, much more recent than Odysseus...
I think the comparison is a good one, though. Even though we might not use cast iron in much since it's been replaced by steel, this paper offers a greater strength using a material that is more common and easily made. Not only that, but it's lighter than ORDINARY paper, which means it's much, much lighter than cast iron.
When treated with a coating for water- or flame-proofing, this could easily replace wood, plastic, or cardboard in existing situations. Imagine using this in an airplane, for example.
I've been noticing that a lot of comments have been asking why the OP has a laptop if he doesn't take it home. Has it actually occurred to anyone that perhaps he has a company-issued laptop that he takes from office-to-office or meeting-to-meeting... at the company?
Due to security problems, I find it quite easy to imagine that employees would have work-issued laptops that they are unable to take home, hence the remote desktopping... though I really hope they have a VPN solution.
However, if that's the case, I'm not sure why you're so worried about physical theft. It's the company's laptop, so you shouldn't really have to worry about it. Their property, their security, their fault.
On the other hand, if, for some reason, you have a personal laptop that you leave at work (charity or crappy company, perhaps?), then I guess you have a whole different can of worms. I'm with a lot of posters when I say that you should probably just go with the cable lock. Anyone that's going to cut a cable is goign to be willing to take a box, in my opinion.
If your security concerns are really, really that bad, you should be telling your boss as well.
Well, you could just release it as-is and see if anyone's interested.
Alternatively, you could go through and write up some documentation so that even if your code is messy and/or idiosyncratic, other people can find their way around with the help of the documentation. If they don't like the way things are set up, or if things are inefficient, they can fix it on their own -- isn't that a part of what OSS is about?
According to dictionary.com, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary definition of "hoax" is "something intended to deceive or defraud". I don't see how, at all, the mooninite publicity stunt would be a "hoax" under the proper definition.
Sure, if they had intended to scare the public into thinking that terrorists were attacking America in order to drive them into their homes (where they would no doubt cower in fear watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force), then yes, I would agree that it was a hoax and that they would need to be properly penalized.
It doesn't seem like that was the case at all. I wish people would stop using words however they want, especially in political arenas, where rhetoric is one of the most powerful tools available. ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")
I agree with the bill in letter, but I doubt the government's ability to follow it in spirit. Anything they don't like and construe as a terrorist treat can be a "hoax". That guy in a black spider-man costume? Well, we need some money... he must be a possible terrorist.
I'm sure you're aware that despite being one of the most-used browsers, Internet Explorer often seems to be one of the most-disliked browsers due to an extremely vocal number of people (as I'm sure you're aware, if you read Slashdot!). Some people seem to dislike Internet Explorer as a Microsoft product, some seem to dislike it because of its stances on standards compliance, and still more seem to dislike it because it's the "geek thing to do". It has to be a bit of a hit on morale to be playing on a pitch where all the vocal groups seem to be rooting against you.
If this figures much (or at all, even) in the lives and stress levels of the IE development team, what are some ways you have dealt with it in the past?
I'm sure there are many people on the IE development team who have their own hobbies or preferences that involve certain browser setups or certain types of compatibilities -- how much, if at all, do personal preferences figure into the development of IE versus Microsoft-mandated standards from higher-up?
You have implemented a new GUI and new security features; these have been examined, praised, and lambasted on just about every tech site out there, so those of us "in the know" are aware of all of the changes and their implications. You also have resources like the quick reference sheet available to help new users of IE7. These are all well and good, but they'll be of no use to anyone who does not know about them or how to use them.
What I want to know is this: how will you spread word of the new changes and features to neighbor Joe or Grandma Smith -- will you rely on word-of-mouth from the technocracy, or do you trust that your features are transparent enough that they will easily understand the difference between, say, types of SSL certificates provided by sites?
When I first read "Now someone find me . . . Arisia to go with it", my first thought was that I'd really like to have a Lens of Arisia, as described in E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels. The Lensmen are almost certainly the predecessors of the Green Lanterns, if not in actuality, then in philosophy and form.
I remember the days when I played the Space Quest and King's Quest series; the days when the hardest part of using a computer for me was remembering the esoteric string of letters that would let me into the mouse-driven directory/file view: DOSSHELL. I mean, as primitive as it might have been, it's still very easy to see in it the precursor of today's Window's Explorer with the Folder Explorer Bar enabled -- especially with 20/20 hindsight.
It's a bit disappointing not to see it listed there -- I would have thought it an integral part in Microsoft's GUI development. I mean, come on, it even let you change the colors! Primitive theming!
Just a FYI, but when you use a browser that is natively dedicated to tabs, such as Opera, instead of a browser that allows you to utilize tabs but does not exclusively integrate them, such as Firefox, links opened in new windows will instead open in new tabs.
One of the reasons I prefer Opera, honestly - either I'm going to use tabs or I'm not - and if I'm going to use them, I'd prefer to use them all the way. Whole hog or none, so to speak.
I agree with many of the sentiments expressed here in that it seems to be a waste of a front page space - there's no much real information here and it reads like a publicity stunt. Inspirational pictures of Steve Jobs and his creations plus little snippets about how great his is, having risen from the horror of being a "has-been".
No, it doesn't... you're forgetting that one of the appeals of iTunes and the iPod is that iTunes makes it very easy to rip and import music from your CDs. I don't know about you, but the people in my family have pretty extensive music collections on CDs that they have accumulated over the last ten years. When my sister got her iPod for Christmas, the first thing she did was dig out her binder, rip, and import.
Instead of linking to some guy's blog with the (minimal) content three posts down, perhaps it would be prudent to link to the articles with the actual content.
Speaking as a person with what is categorized as severe hearing loss who has a cochlear implant in his left ear, Windows (and any other OS, for that matter) works fine for me, whether it's command line or GUI. In fact, the only thing I do to make it a bit more useful is turn off every single sound that any program can make, as they interfere with my ability to comprehend normal speech.
For example, if I were using AIM and talking with someone in real life, the beeps and sound effects it produces make it almost impossible for me to follow conversations.
Windows Media Player and Media Player Classic have both done wonderful jobs of supporting soft subtitles for movies, whether they're toggleable subtitles or closed captioning (not the same thing!). I can't say the same for VLC, I'm afraid.
So all I can really say in terms of designing a better interface for the deaf is to make it easy to turn off all sounds. Do not yield to the impulse to make everything loud so that a deaf person can hear it - it doesn't work quite like that. Fortunately that popular belief seems to be going the way of the dodo...
You make a good point, but these are examples from Golden Age books - how much of what we see in modern science fiction is really based on science? When they wrote it, it was based on possibilities in science as it existed - now, in science fiction, what we have almost 99% of the time are plot devices with scientific names producing a deus ex machina effect.
Slashdot Mirror
Computer hardware notwithstanding, I always saw online gaming as a kind of meritocracy where the most skilled could advance to the top and achieve some kind of fame in whatever social circle they played in.
These kinds of "monetizations" seem to unbalance that a bit by offering new, useful things in-game to people who can afford to pay a bit more. Can't afford to buy the maps? Well, too bad, because you won't be able to practice all you want on those maps. Can't afford the gear, the guns? Too bad, you'll have to make do with what you have.
It's a shame. I think they should either just put the stuff in the game or not put it in at all.
Can you imagine if you had had to pay three bucks per upgrade in Mega Man X, and ten bucks for the special hadouken? What a ripoff.
Before an educated populace, I think you need one that really cares. If they care, they'll try to educate themselves (hopefully)...
I'm confused. You quote someone saying that they have no idea why the US doesn't like diesel, then you say that you have -- i.e., you understand why the US doesn't like diesel... and yet, everything you say seems to point to why America should love diesel.
If you know why America doesn't like diesel, I'd love to know.
Considering that a lot of people have used cannabis these days it really doesn't indicate shit, especially considering a lot of intelligent people feel that the illegal status of cannabis is, quite honestly, bullshit.
It indicates a flagrant disregard for the law that represents a liability for the potential employer, to be frank.
Using Opera 9.27 here, and unfortunately I can't read the page because the content all loads under the ads and crap on the right.
Hate it when that happens.
It seems like (in my pessimistic worldview) that it's more likely that the whole plan will backfire and that the courts will rule that torrent distribution sites such as isohunt (I mean, their name implies the a search for ISOs, and I'll be that the large number of ISOs available on that site are illegal) exist solely to facilitate the illegal sharing of copyrighted files through legal methods.
It seems like, to me, a newspaper is allowing drug dealers to take out classified ads (legal) and those dealers drive cars safely (legal) to legal parking spaces where they are legally allowed to congregate to pursue an illegal transaction.
I know the analogy isn't spot-on, but the fact of the matter is, a large number of those torrent sites specialize in providing copyrighted content.
I'd second this, with a correction -- they're generally referred to as the "Barsoom" books, with an "s". They're great, action-packed, feature strong, moral male characters, and can teach kids that old books are not bad books.
Along those lines, I'd also recommend the Tom Swift books. The first series is interesting for showing them what people a hundred years ago thought was science fiction -- many of his inventions are fact now. The second series is more traditional science fiction, with space stations, rockets, and Russians stealing strange inventions that have to do with nuclear technology.
Additionally, I'd recommend Heinlein's or Asimov's juveniles -- there's a reason they're called "juveniles". Things like The Star Beast, Have Spacesuit May Travel, Podkayne of Mars, the Lucky Starr series, and some of Asimov's short story colletions.
You can probably also dig up old astronaut series like Tom Corbett or even the Lensman books. There are also tons of juvenile Star Wars and Star Trek books to be had on the cheap in used book stores all over the place.
I'd suggest reading along with them, or at least trying to read what they're reading when they're not -- not for watching their material or anything like that, but simply so you know where they're coming from when they say something is cool. That way you can actually talk about it.
The darkening of the sky bit is dubious, yes, but if you look at the article, they used other references to astronomical phenomenon to narrow it down, rather than going from that one dubious interpretation. It seems telling (to me, at least), that all of those phenomenon PLUS an eclipse can be dated to a time that fits when the story is guessed to have taken place.
Plutarch may have thought some nutty things, but he also thought some good things. I'm sure you can say that about anyone. For a specific and more recent example, look no further than the article on Bucknminster Fuller that was linked the other day.
Well, I thought it was interesting, considering the whole "mythical" quality of the story. Don't forget that people doubted Troy was real, let alone the Trojan War, until relatively recently. With the additional verification of other (astronomical) elements of the epic as well as the phenomenon that marked his return, it lends more credence to the story as a whole as well as the existence of Odysseus himself.
What other "myths" could be somewhat verified in this manner?
As far as other myths go, don't forget that a lot of people claim that Jesus was an actual person, but in an era that had an extensive bureaucratic system and census, no record was ever made of him, and he was much, much more recent than Odysseus...
I think it's a common feature; it's not really touted as being "multiple address books", but rather as the ability to separate contacts into groups.
I don't actually remember if any of my US cell phones had it, though I feel like they did. My cell phones here in Japan certainly do, though.
I think the comparison is a good one, though. Even though we might not use cast iron in much since it's been replaced by steel, this paper offers a greater strength using a material that is more common and easily made. Not only that, but it's lighter than ORDINARY paper, which means it's much, much lighter than cast iron.
When treated with a coating for water- or flame-proofing, this could easily replace wood, plastic, or cardboard in existing situations. Imagine using this in an airplane, for example.
I've been noticing that a lot of comments have been asking why the OP has a laptop if he doesn't take it home. Has it actually occurred to anyone that perhaps he has a company-issued laptop that he takes from office-to-office or meeting-to-meeting... at the company?
Due to security problems, I find it quite easy to imagine that employees would have work-issued laptops that they are unable to take home, hence the remote desktopping... though I really hope they have a VPN solution.
However, if that's the case, I'm not sure why you're so worried about physical theft. It's the company's laptop, so you shouldn't really have to worry about it. Their property, their security, their fault.
On the other hand, if, for some reason, you have a personal laptop that you leave at work (charity or crappy company, perhaps?), then I guess you have a whole different can of worms. I'm with a lot of posters when I say that you should probably just go with the cable lock. Anyone that's going to cut a cable is goign to be willing to take a box, in my opinion.
If your security concerns are really, really that bad, you should be telling your boss as well.
Well, you could just release it as-is and see if anyone's interested.
Alternatively, you could go through and write up some documentation so that even if your code is messy and/or idiosyncratic, other people can find their way around with the help of the documentation. If they don't like the way things are set up, or if things are inefficient, they can fix it on their own -- isn't that a part of what OSS is about?
It's probably comparable to the somewhat more common "passerby", which, when pluralized, becomes "passersby".
According to dictionary.com, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary definition of "hoax" is "something intended to deceive or defraud". I don't see how, at all, the mooninite publicity stunt would be a "hoax" under the proper definition.
Sure, if they had intended to scare the public into thinking that terrorists were attacking America in order to drive them into their homes (where they would no doubt cower in fear watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force), then yes, I would agree that it was a hoax and that they would need to be properly penalized.
It doesn't seem like that was the case at all. I wish people would stop using words however they want, especially in political arenas, where rhetoric is one of the most powerful tools available. ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")
I agree with the bill in letter, but I doubt the government's ability to follow it in spirit. Anything they don't like and construe as a terrorist treat can be a "hoax". That guy in a black spider-man costume? Well, we need some money... he must be a possible terrorist.
I'm sure you're aware that despite being one of the most-used browsers, Internet Explorer often seems to be one of the most-disliked browsers due to an extremely vocal number of people (as I'm sure you're aware, if you read Slashdot!). Some people seem to dislike Internet Explorer as a Microsoft product, some seem to dislike it because of its stances on standards compliance, and still more seem to dislike it because it's the "geek thing to do". It has to be a bit of a hit on morale to be playing on a pitch where all the vocal groups seem to be rooting against you.
If this figures much (or at all, even) in the lives and stress levels of the IE development team, what are some ways you have dealt with it in the past?
I'm sure there are many people on the IE development team who have their own hobbies or preferences that involve certain browser setups or certain types of compatibilities -- how much, if at all, do personal preferences figure into the development of IE versus Microsoft-mandated standards from higher-up?
You have implemented a new GUI and new security features; these have been examined, praised, and lambasted on just about every tech site out there, so those of us "in the know" are aware of all of the changes and their implications. You also have resources like the quick reference sheet available to help new users of IE7. These are all well and good, but they'll be of no use to anyone who does not know about them or how to use them.
What I want to know is this: how will you spread word of the new changes and features to neighbor Joe or Grandma Smith -- will you rely on word-of-mouth from the technocracy, or do you trust that your features are transparent enough that they will easily understand the difference between, say, types of SSL certificates provided by sites?
When I first read "Now someone find me . . . Arisia to go with it", my first thought was that I'd really like to have a Lens of Arisia, as described in E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels. The Lensmen are almost certainly the predecessors of the Green Lanterns, if not in actuality, then in philosophy and form.
I remember the days when I played the Space Quest and King's Quest series; the days when the hardest part of using a computer for me was remembering the esoteric string of letters that would let me into the mouse-driven directory/file view: DOSSHELL. I mean, as primitive as it might have been, it's still very easy to see in it the precursor of today's Window's Explorer with the Folder Explorer Bar enabled -- especially with 20/20 hindsight.
It's a bit disappointing not to see it listed there -- I would have thought it an integral part in Microsoft's GUI development. I mean, come on, it even let you change the colors! Primitive theming!
Just a FYI, but when you use a browser that is natively dedicated to tabs, such as Opera, instead of a browser that allows you to utilize tabs but does not exclusively integrate them, such as Firefox, links opened in new windows will instead open in new tabs. One of the reasons I prefer Opera, honestly - either I'm going to use tabs or I'm not - and if I'm going to use them, I'd prefer to use them all the way. Whole hog or none, so to speak. I agree with many of the sentiments expressed here in that it seems to be a waste of a front page space - there's no much real information here and it reads like a publicity stunt. Inspirational pictures of Steve Jobs and his creations plus little snippets about how great his is, having risen from the horror of being a "has-been".
No, it doesn't... you're forgetting that one of the appeals of iTunes and the iPod is that iTunes makes it very easy to rip and import music from your CDs. I don't know about you, but the people in my family have pretty extensive music collections on CDs that they have accumulated over the last ten years. When my sister got her iPod for Christmas, the first thing she did was dig out her binder, rip, and import.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2461
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/28/news_61283 06.html
Speaking as a person with what is categorized as severe hearing loss who has a cochlear implant in his left ear, Windows (and any other OS, for that matter) works fine for me, whether it's command line or GUI. In fact, the only thing I do to make it a bit more useful is turn off every single sound that any program can make, as they interfere with my ability to comprehend normal speech.
For example, if I were using AIM and talking with someone in real life, the beeps and sound effects it produces make it almost impossible for me to follow conversations.
Windows Media Player and Media Player Classic have both done wonderful jobs of supporting soft subtitles for movies, whether they're toggleable subtitles or closed captioning (not the same thing!). I can't say the same for VLC, I'm afraid.
So all I can really say in terms of designing a better interface for the deaf is to make it easy to turn off all sounds. Do not yield to the impulse to make everything loud so that a deaf person can hear it - it doesn't work quite like that. Fortunately that popular belief seems to be going the way of the dodo...
You make a good point, but these are examples from Golden Age books - how much of what we see in modern science fiction is really based on science? When they wrote it, it was based on possibilities in science as it existed - now, in science fiction, what we have almost 99% of the time are plot devices with scientific names producing a deus ex machina effect.