Unless you use your passport a lot (as in weekly) you can make your own and it will last for a couple of years. Take a sufficiently large sheet of metal foil and lay it flat. Cover it with duct tape. Fold and tape, and add a Velcro (or clone) fastener to keep it closed. I've had an RFID passport for about four years now and my second homemade wallet is still going strong, even though I fly internationally every few weeks.
The trickier one is how to shield cards which you want to use more frequently than that. The metro system in my city introduced RFID cards for reusable tickets last month, and I'm still thinking about how to carry two of those (for different zones) such that I can pull out / open at the one I want easily.
Nonsense. The first world was NATO and its sphere of influence. The second world was the Warsaw Pact and its sphere of influence. The third world was everyone else. The terms ceased to be useful in the 90s when the Warsaw Pact fell apart.
Some of snippets that were interesting were statements that the UK is the world's biggest exporter of culture. That seems rather unlikely to me, certainly compared to the US' McDonalds, Hollywood, RIAA affiliated companies etc. I can't see that we come close.
The observation about Hollywood and the RIAA is obvious. McDonalds, though? I'm pretty sure that doesn't fall within the definition of culture that they're using.
I'm not sure that any of the examples you list fail to qualify as "a bit odd, and not for everyone", although I would agree that not all of them are campy. (By way of illustration of the "not for everyone": The Office would make my list of comedies with no inherent redeeming value whatever; it does have the single redeeming value that it enabled Gervais and Marshall to go on and make Extras).
There should also be other remedies available, such as prohibiting the CEOs of these companies from holding any company office for five years. That's the kind of penalty which sets an example to make other companies think twice about what they're doing, and I don't think it's disproportionate.
My father has bought vans with cash. I've bought construction materials costing thousands of dollars with 20s. But all of this is missing the point, anyway, as already observed by AC.
Plus I frankly I don't see how an expert wouldn't be able to find citations.
I can give a quick example of something I spotted yesterday on the WP article about a company I used to work for. It makes a claim which is backed up by a citation to an interview with the CEO. Now, I know that what the CEO said was wishful thinking rather than the truth, but there's nothing published I can cite to demonstrate that. Obviously there's nothing WP can do about that particular example, but it does illustrate that "verifiability" isn't the same as accuracy.
I agree with a lot of what you say, although not all of it. I think that high expectations of fun aren't specifically due to competition from other games but rather because game playing is a leisure activity, so games are also competing against TV, reading, sport, etc. (Obviously graphics and audio expectations are driven by competition from other games). I would also qualify your comment about being able to have fun with almost every game by saying that almost every game has an audience who can enjoy it. And I think you're simply wrong to claim that a small team can't implement graphics to a high standard: the key is to go for a strong visual style rather than trying for photorealism.
But on the main point, you're right to say that a focus on gameplay doesn't automatically result in good gameplay. I quite explicitly didn't claim that all of the entries do have good gameplay. It would be interesting to know how many intended entries were discarded because people couldn't make the gameplay fun in the space available, but obviously that isn't possible.
I do wonder to what extent you're taking into account the context of my GP post. GGP was talking about the need to focus on gameplay: I mentioned a context in which it's for all practical purposes impossible to focus on anything else, where graphics more complicated than a square or a circle are frequently left until last.
This is true, but it provides a big hint to the maintainer as to what the type of each variable is. With dynamically typed languages you rely on keeping documentation up-to-date. And using static typing does not, of course, preclude having a good test suite.
I had fun this month spending a week and a half developing a game for the Java 4k competition - fit a game into a 4kB.jar file. With that kind of constraint you're forced to concentrate on getting the gameplay right and then trying to squeeze in a bit of graphical polish. Not to say that all of the games that people have submitted have good gameplay, but there are a number which are fun to play (including a Peggle clone).
Dynamic typing may allow you to write code fast, but "the job" is more than just initial development. Static typing is appropriate for projects which you expect to have to maintain.
The problem with that system is that it protects the banks and not the customers. Before you could contest the signature: now all they have is a PIN, and there's no way of proving who typed it in. It would be better to use chip, PIN and signature, but people will usually choose convenience over security.
The original paper doesn't really discuss the connections with Nobel prizes - it mentions as an aside that one paper was cited for a Nobel prize - as it's concerned not with predicted Nobel laureates but evaluating the importance of papers. Therefore any conclusions about predicting Nobel winners are without merit until further analysis is performed.
Because Brown's government and Blair's government are different. Their disagreement wasn't just personal but ideological, and Brown is taking the country in a different direction to that for which people elected Blair.
If you want to take the theoretical approach, we don't elect prime ministers or parties but individuals. Under this approach no British government is elected.
If you want to take the practical approach, the personality of the party leader is one of the most important influences on people's votes, and the views of the PM are a significant influence on the direction of policy. Why else would Blair have made a campaign promise to stay at the helm for the entire term? Brown's government is quite clearly not Blair's government because it is implementing Brownite rather than Blairite policy.
Either way, Labour was elected with a majority but not by a majority. It had 36% of the vote.
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Sure, but maybe the different software company would have had some concept of quality.
In fairness the mod was just overly suspicious of the man who rang the doorbell claiming to be a burglar.
Her Royal Highness? Did Her Majesty abdicate?
Unless you use your passport a lot (as in weekly) you can make your own and it will last for a couple of years. Take a sufficiently large sheet of metal foil and lay it flat. Cover it with duct tape. Fold and tape, and add a Velcro (or clone) fastener to keep it closed. I've had an RFID passport for about four years now and my second homemade wallet is still going strong, even though I fly internationally every few weeks.
The trickier one is how to shield cards which you want to use more frequently than that. The metro system in my city introduced RFID cards for reusable tickets last month, and I'm still thinking about how to carry two of those (for different zones) such that I can pull out / open at the one I want easily.
Nonsense. The first world was NATO and its sphere of influence. The second world was the Warsaw Pact and its sphere of influence. The third world was everyone else. The terms ceased to be useful in the 90s when the Warsaw Pact fell apart.
Some of snippets that were interesting were statements that the UK is the world's biggest exporter of culture. That seems rather unlikely to me, certainly compared to the US' McDonalds, Hollywood, RIAA affiliated companies etc. I can't see that we come close.
The observation about Hollywood and the RIAA is obvious. McDonalds, though? I'm pretty sure that doesn't fall within the definition of culture that they're using.
I'm not sure that any of the examples you list fail to qualify as "a bit odd, and not for everyone", although I would agree that not all of them are campy. (By way of illustration of the "not for everyone": The Office would make my list of comedies with no inherent redeeming value whatever; it does have the single redeeming value that it enabled Gervais and Marshall to go on and make Extras).
There should also be other remedies available, such as prohibiting the CEOs of these companies from holding any company office for five years. That's the kind of penalty which sets an example to make other companies think twice about what they're doing, and I don't think it's disproportionate.
237 instances in the Authorised Version, 94 in the New American Standard, and 22 in the New International. It's perfectly Biblical.
Bank passwords. Don't they teach people how to parse sentences any more?
My father has bought vans with cash. I've bought construction materials costing thousands of dollars with 20s. But all of this is missing the point, anyway, as already observed by AC.
Given that The Times moderates comments before displaying them, you're certainly correct.
Plus I frankly I don't see how an expert wouldn't be able to find citations.
I can give a quick example of something I spotted yesterday on the WP article about a company I used to work for. It makes a claim which is backed up by a citation to an interview with the CEO. Now, I know that what the CEO said was wishful thinking rather than the truth, but there's nothing published I can cite to demonstrate that. Obviously there's nothing WP can do about that particular example, but it does illustrate that "verifiability" isn't the same as accuracy.
So essentially what you're saying is that it's the perfect accompaniment for a chocolate frog?
I agree with a lot of what you say, although not all of it. I think that high expectations of fun aren't specifically due to competition from other games but rather because game playing is a leisure activity, so games are also competing against TV, reading, sport, etc. (Obviously graphics and audio expectations are driven by competition from other games). I would also qualify your comment about being able to have fun with almost every game by saying that almost every game has an audience who can enjoy it. And I think you're simply wrong to claim that a small team can't implement graphics to a high standard: the key is to go for a strong visual style rather than trying for photorealism.
But on the main point, you're right to say that a focus on gameplay doesn't automatically result in good gameplay. I quite explicitly didn't claim that all of the entries do have good gameplay. It would be interesting to know how many intended entries were discarded because people couldn't make the gameplay fun in the space available, but obviously that isn't possible.
I do wonder to what extent you're taking into account the context of my GP post. GGP was talking about the need to focus on gameplay: I mentioned a context in which it's for all practical purposes impossible to focus on anything else, where graphics more complicated than a square or a circle are frequently left until last.
Creative commons? I get some Google hits for "creative commons" "3d models".
I once copy-pasted some demo code from MSDN and it didn't work. That's a bug in documentation even by your standards.
...the e-mail servers, for which the White House is infamously known, seemed to be down.
Well, duh! You can't really expect a server to boot immediately after someone runs shred /dev/hda.
This is true, but it provides a big hint to the maintainer as to what the type of each variable is. With dynamically typed languages you rely on keeping documentation up-to-date. And using static typing does not, of course, preclude having a good test suite.
I had fun this month spending a week and a half developing a game for the Java 4k competition - fit a game into a 4kB .jar file. With that kind of constraint you're forced to concentrate on getting the gameplay right and then trying to squeeze in a bit of graphical polish. Not to say that all of the games that people have submitted have good gameplay, but there are a number which are fun to play (including a Peggle clone).
Dynamic typing may allow you to write code fast, but "the job" is more than just initial development. Static typing is appropriate for projects which you expect to have to maintain.
The problem with that system is that it protects the banks and not the customers. Before you could contest the signature: now all they have is a PIN, and there's no way of proving who typed it in. It would be better to use chip, PIN and signature, but people will usually choose convenience over security.
The original paper doesn't really discuss the connections with Nobel prizes - it mentions as an aside that one paper was cited for a Nobel prize - as it's concerned not with predicted Nobel laureates but evaluating the importance of papers. Therefore any conclusions about predicting Nobel winners are without merit until further analysis is performed.
Because Brown's government and Blair's government are different. Their disagreement wasn't just personal but ideological, and Brown is taking the country in a different direction to that for which people elected Blair.
If you want to take the theoretical approach, we don't elect prime ministers or parties but individuals. Under this approach no British government is elected.
If you want to take the practical approach, the personality of the party leader is one of the most important influences on people's votes, and the views of the PM are a significant influence on the direction of policy. Why else would Blair have made a campaign promise to stay at the helm for the entire term? Brown's government is quite clearly not Blair's government because it is implementing Brownite rather than Blairite policy.
Either way, Labour was elected with a majority but not by a majority. It had 36% of the vote.