I don't think video games are getting increasingly violent as a symptom of our increasingly violent culture, I think we're just more capable of making violent games.
If Space Invaders could have had 3D graphics, explosions, and shrapnel, I think they would have put it in. The technology simply wasn't available to them. More realistic violent video games are just a result of more realistic graphic engines.
Incidentally, realplayer and quicktime files won't play. There are licensing issues with them. Media Player Classic however handles these well (albeit illegally). There have been some avis that didn't work as well.
Mozilla FireFox has their own problems. First and foremost is not telling people they exist, and second is their ongoing identity crisis. If they can fix that they'll be in good shape. Unfortunately the people I did introduce it too thought it was 'too cluttered' and didn't want to fiddle with custom settings.
MSN was a much cleaner and more asthetically pleasing program than ICQ. ICQ simply provided no significant advantage over MSN. And MSN isn't as powerful as you think:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5065650.html?tag=c d_mh
I don't see paintbrush killing Photoshop, or MS's bundled Firewall having any effect on ZoneAlarm, or IE's embedded search engine killing Google. The reason is obvious: The competetion is damn good at what they do that MS doesn't even bother trying to challenge them. Maybe ICQ should try the same thing.
Winamp still plays audio files just as good as it normally did. I actually like the video player, my only problem is it doesn't play certain files. Even if you hate it you have the choice not to install video support and get the original player.
Re:WM and Real - Just Say No
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Where other streaming alternatives exist? Does OGM have something on the burner?
I live in Canada too. Doctors do not have the same liability here as they do in the states. And the only 'professional capacity' I have is being a med student.
Doctors want to make sure their asses are covered before they treat. They'll do so many unecessary tests to go from 99% sure to 99.5% sure. It's just measures to make sure they don't get sued. I guess it's surprise why US hospitals are so much more costly.
In California there is a massive shortage of obstetricians (baby-deliverers) because it's such a risky job. If the baby is still born the parents will find someway to blame someone; it's just a natural reaction to a tragedy.
Unfortunately this leads to many trials that are unwarranted and yet the parents still win. Now you almost have to leave the state if you want to have a baby.
What I never understood is instead of going after the spammers, can't we go after the companies hiring the spammers? They would be far easier to track down. They must have websites to solicite their garbage, with credit card payments and lots of contact info.
I can see the potential for people to 'fake-spam' and get a company into trouble, but is this the only problem?
Oh come now, what do people do with their old car batteries? Smash them open on their front lawns? Dump them into the rainforest?
We recycle them, and I imagine that for expensive lithium batteries the incentive to recycle will even be greater. Unless you mean that recycling causes more pollution than it prevents, in which case I'd like a source on that.
Electric car adoption really comes down to the price of oil. Nobody will buy an electric car that is more expensive to run than a combustion engine, and no company will heavily invest in the development of an electric car if it won't turn profit.
So really it comes down to oil and how much is left. It won't be environmental concerns or government involvement that will ultimately push electric cars into mass-scale production, but consumers and their pocketbooks.
Still, these articles are reassuring that nutballs like this are wrong.
Well then again he was a biology prof. He didn't work with big fat nuclear reactors, just radioactive material, like solids and such. Which of course would never glow.
I talked to my radiation-biology professor and he swore, that in 15 years of working with radioactive he had never, ever seen anything radioactive actual glow. In fact it's usually grey, and sits there rather innocuously. If anyone has heard different please let me know.
The biggest problem with single player games is piracy. It's just too easy to get a copy from a friend. No amount of CD keys, game-manual copy protection, or anti-burning technologies will ever work.
With multiplayer games, at least the CD-key is checked against a database of CD-keys before the player can play online. I have no doubt this is why Blizzard's battle.net and Half Life's WON systems have been so successful.
Okay let's say for example that the Japanese get our US dollars and they [b]don't[/b] US goods or invest in US businesses. This leaves them 2 options:
1. Sit on the cash, use it to wallpaper their room, use it as matress padding, put it in an-ever-growing-piggy-bank, etc. This would be great. The Japanese would give us cars and electronics in exchange for little pieces of paper with presidents on them. We would live in splendor and all we'd have to do is mint money. Unfortunately the Japanese are not that stupid
2. They use the dollars to buy Arab oil. Then what do the Arabians do? Buy US goods or invest in the US economy. At some point, the money [b]must[/b] be spent, or banked, in the US.
It is fathomable that this money would just keep circulating as a 'world curency', which indeed it does. However if people are constantly selling to the US the US dollars in circulation would decrease in value. This would prevent people from wanting anymore US dollars.
The US dollar can lose its value if the US's GDP decreases substantially for a long period of time. Never in the history of the US has that ever happened. At times the US dollar is weaker, which means foreigners can buy US goods cheaply, which increases the demand for US dollars and the dollar rises again. Having a steadily increasing GDP is best attained through comparative advantage and specialization. They are not hard concepts but I simply cannot take the time to write out the examples. I'm sure there are plenty of online sites about this concept as it is one the Holy Grail of economics.
Well 'rich' individuals don't like high taxes either. What makes it even worse is they are highly mobile, both in the nature of their jobs (doctor) and with the financial resources to move. In Canada we lose many of our doctors to the states where promises of a higher income result in the 'brain drain' of our most productive people.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, what's your charisma at, like 19? I'd get the kid to reroll if possible.
I don't think video games are getting increasingly violent as a symptom of our increasingly violent culture, I think we're just more capable of making violent games.
If Space Invaders could have had 3D graphics, explosions, and shrapnel, I think they would have put it in. The technology simply wasn't available to them. More realistic violent video games are just a result of more realistic graphic engines.
Incidentally, realplayer and quicktime files won't play. There are licensing issues with them. Media Player Classic however handles these well (albeit illegally). There have been some avis that didn't work as well.
Mozilla FireFox has their own problems. First and foremost is not telling people they exist, and second is their ongoing identity crisis. If they can fix that they'll be in good shape. Unfortunately the people I did introduce it too thought it was 'too cluttered' and didn't want to fiddle with custom settings.
c d_mh
MSN was a much cleaner and more asthetically pleasing program than ICQ. ICQ simply provided no significant advantage over MSN. And MSN isn't as powerful as you think:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5065650.html?tag=
I don't see paintbrush killing Photoshop, or MS's bundled Firewall having any effect on ZoneAlarm, or IE's embedded search engine killing Google. The reason is obvious: The competetion is damn good at what they do that MS doesn't even bother trying to challenge them. Maybe ICQ should try the same thing.
I just cal it like I see it:s tetricians.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-05-06-ob
Bundling has a much smaller effect than people give it credit for, especially when the bundled product is garbage.
I have yet to see someone use WMP over Winamp for instance. I see a lot of Nero, CDex and Trillian as well.
Winamp still plays audio files just as good as it normally did. I actually like the video player, my only problem is it doesn't play certain files. Even if you hate it you have the choice not to install video support and get the original player.
Where other streaming alternatives exist? Does OGM have something on the burner?
I live in Canada too. Doctors do not have the same liability here as they do in the states. And the only 'professional capacity' I have is being a med student.
Doctors want to make sure their asses are covered before they treat. They'll do so many unecessary tests to go from 99% sure to 99.5% sure. It's just measures to make sure they don't get sued. I guess it's surprise why US hospitals are so much more costly.
In California there is a massive shortage of obstetricians (baby-deliverers) because it's such a risky job. If the baby is still born the parents will find someway to blame someone; it's just a natural reaction to a tragedy.
Unfortunately this leads to many trials that are unwarranted and yet the parents still win. Now you almost have to leave the state if you want to have a baby.
What I never understood is instead of going after the spammers, can't we go after the companies hiring the spammers? They would be far easier to track down. They must have websites to solicite their garbage, with credit card payments and lots of contact info.
I can see the potential for people to 'fake-spam' and get a company into trouble, but is this the only problem?
Oh come now, what do people do with their old car batteries? Smash them open on their front lawns? Dump them into the rainforest?
We recycle them, and I imagine that for expensive lithium batteries the incentive to recycle will even be greater. Unless you mean that recycling causes more pollution than it prevents, in which case I'd like a source on that.
Electric car adoption really comes down to the price of oil. Nobody will buy an electric car that is more expensive to run than a combustion engine, and no company will heavily invest in the development of an electric car if it won't turn profit.
So really it comes down to oil and how much is left. It won't be environmental concerns or government involvement that will ultimately push electric cars into mass-scale production, but consumers and their pocketbooks.
Still, these articles are reassuring that nutballs like this are wrong.
Well then again he was a biology prof. He didn't work with big fat nuclear reactors, just radioactive material, like solids and such. Which of course would never glow.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990430a.html
Little FAQ on Cerenkov radiation. Radiation itself doesn't glow, it energizes other particles which do the glowing.
That's fluorescence, not radiation. Do you actually think nuclear reactors have big vats of glowing green ooze?
I talked to my radiation-biology professor and he swore, that in 15 years of working with radioactive he had never, ever seen anything radioactive actual glow. In fact it's usually grey, and sits there rather innocuously. If anyone has heard different please let me know.
I wish I had modpoints...
Don't forget "just use Ogg"
Maybe that would cut the costs and allow us to enjoy a sequel to a great game.
See? There are benefits to our Indian overlords!
The biggest problem with single player games is piracy. It's just too easy to get a copy from a friend. No amount of CD keys, game-manual copy protection, or anti-burning technologies will ever work.
With multiplayer games, at least the CD-key is checked against a database of CD-keys before the player can play online. I have no doubt this is why Blizzard's battle.net and Half Life's WON systems have been so successful.
Okay let's say for example that the Japanese get our US dollars and they [b]don't[/b] US goods or invest in US businesses. This leaves them 2 options:
1. Sit on the cash, use it to wallpaper their room, use it as matress padding, put it in an-ever-growing-piggy-bank, etc. This would be great. The Japanese would give us cars and electronics in exchange for little pieces of paper with presidents on them. We would live in splendor and all we'd have to do is mint money. Unfortunately the Japanese are not that stupid
2. They use the dollars to buy Arab oil. Then what do the Arabians do? Buy US goods or invest in the US economy. At some point, the money [b]must[/b] be spent, or banked, in the US.
It is fathomable that this money would just keep circulating as a 'world curency', which indeed it does. However if people are constantly selling to the US the US dollars in circulation would decrease in value. This would prevent people from wanting anymore US dollars.
The US dollar can lose its value if the US's GDP decreases substantially for a long period of time. Never in the history of the US has that ever happened. At times the US dollar is weaker, which means foreigners can buy US goods cheaply, which increases the demand for US dollars and the dollar rises again.
Having a steadily increasing GDP is best attained through comparative advantage and specialization. They are not hard concepts but I simply cannot take the time to write out the examples. I'm sure there are plenty of online sites about this concept as it is one the Holy Grail of economics.
Whether it's CD-ripping protections or DRM, they aren't meant to be invincible barriers, just deterrent. Hell even Fort Knox isn't 100% proof.
Everybody knows that locking your door isn't going to keep the people out who really want to get in, but it doesn't mean we're going to stop doing it.
Of course. But what's your point? How is paying 20% for an identical product 'more to life'?
Well 'rich' individuals don't like high taxes either. What makes it even worse is they are highly mobile, both in the nature of their jobs (doctor) and with the financial resources to move. In Canada we lose many of our doctors to the states where promises of a higher income result in the 'brain drain' of our most productive people.