If Microsoft has any common sense left, they'll leave Internet Explorer as "beta" for the duration of its product life. That would serve to blunt some of the more obvious criticisms of security, interface, and data loss that are sure to crop up.
Then again, if they were to truly mimic Google, Mozilla, and the rest of the "do good" gang, they'd release a Microsoft-equivalent finished product as their beta.
The issue is sustained typing speed and the inaccuracies that result. Assuming: A) You type in English B)The average word length in day-to-day spoken English is five characters C)You maintain your burst-speed for the full duration of your typing the longer password
...You'd be typing at approximately 120 words per minute. This is too much to ask of your "average" user, plodding along at 20-30 WPM. I type at "only" 101 WPM, yet people give me strange looks when I work in the library. I think you're expectations exceed consumers' true abilities.
This approach certainly works for advertising. As long as they "rebrand" the game right, it could work. Never, though, should this replace honest-to-goodness schooling. Games should be considered academic enrichment (in their current form). The only thing Pac Man taught me was that I couldn't cut corners.
This is not the Playstation 3. The PSP is a portable media player designed to play last-generation games in a compact form factor. Compare it to the Nintendo DS.
Assuming you knew this already, I suppose you meant that Sony will port older games to the new architecture? PS1 games may be ported to PSP, but licensing issues and a general lack of funding tend to limit the selection of titles.
Google has a very kind policy when it comes to third-party GMail hacks: They don't care. That is, they don't care at all. Google is permitted to change its structure and/or features at any time without telling a soul, rendering your application/extension obsolete. Google hasn't got the time to go after people using GMail as a personal server, nor do the staff have time to allow them and accept responsibility for their functioning. It's a fair system, in my mind.
[Insert OS here] can be frustrating sometimes. With his/her particular system, the touchpad may require disabling at every startup. This would seem to be the case, given the submitter's annoyance with the toggle.
Buy a top-of-the-line laptop and place ducttape over the trackpad. The cost of the trackpad is negligible in comparison to the overall price of the laptop and duct tape is cheap. You can get a roll of white for your iBook, chrome for your Vaio, or manila for your Walmart PC. As long as you cover the pad, your hand brushing over won't be recognized (conductivity is often measured).
-and I wasn't saying that FPS was the issue for Doom 3. The engine's bandwidth capacity was never in contention, only its rendering capability in very particular situations.
As for your having trouble with allId Software games, I have only a few ideas what could be wrong. Id Software's color palette tends to that of a worm: Brown, off-brown, and the occasional green. These dark colors don't do well, especially on LCD monitors. That brings me to the second possibility: your monitor is either high-latency or innapropriate for displaying low-contrast images (or both, if you have a standard LCD screen). The final possibility is that you have a low tolerance for dark games. Period. You simply don't like them. Enough people are frustrated with Doom 3 that a change is merited, but Quake I was plenty-bright to most people. For better or for worse, your personal opinion only practically matters to Id Software if it matches a well-represented consumer population.
John Carmack admitted that the Doom 3 was so dark because the game couldn't handle light on the engine level. There is, apparently, some pixel bleed-through and seaming of textures when light-entities are placed more generously. He said, on his blog I think, that he essentially made a game to suit the engine, but that the engine would develop with each new game release
I will respectfully sidestep the evolution debate, as there is none to be had. As for the remaining poiints:
* It matters not only that the patterns have changed but also that they've changed in a predictable manner, in line with the measured results of human impact on particular ecosystems.
* Evolution is different from hybridization. The same forces are at work, but hybridization is on a far smaller scale. The famous example of moths turning black to match the soot-filled air of the industrial age was in an isolated area. Migratory patterns shifting this dramatically, observed worldwide is unheard of. We're not only seeing a difference between what they were 200 years ago when we began counting and what they are today, we're noticing a marked shift in a far more compressed time period. This time is too short to pin the label of "evolution" on. It simply does not happen that quickly. This is a direct result of human activity that could, ultimately, do us in.
*I listed several things this is going to do to us in a parent post. What we should do about any parts we don't like is change them back. This can be done, first of all, through the signing of the Kyoto climate treaty. How the United States can get away with saying that biodiversity and stable ecosystems are "too expensive"? What's expensive is our shortsightedness and belligerent politics.
*How can we adapt, though? That's a good question. On the personal scale, you can burn your fossil fuels to heat your home and run your air conditioner when required. But again, billions of people doing so only serves to speed up the downward spiral. On the global scale, assuming health is non-negotiable, the only feasible adaptation would be put into effect NOW.
In summary: It becomes very clear that this is not "normal" change when you realize that species are just flat-out dying. No significant evolution occurs in decades.
if there is more than one average rise in temperature from the globe, it denotes a change of temperature in a single location (i.e. from a single sensing station).
Had the article said "for the next hundred years", I'd have questioned its science rather than its grammar. Yes, it is confusing, but 11 Degress Celsius (as it is properly referred to) is still an outrageous increase, especially taking into account the fact that it is an average temperature. This means that the both the mean and extremes increase. Expect some very cold weather in parts due to "global warming". Also, expect scorchers. Of course, the significance is not so much the extremes as it is this mean temperature. Bird migration and plant budding schedules are already off-kilter. This isn't only an inconvenience for Dodo birds, its a serious hazard to the Earth's convenient biological balance. Watch for increased pollution in cities, species die-offs, catastrophic farming years, fisheries collapse, and increased natural disasters. It's in front of us right now. Those places least harmed by the full force of the tsunami had wave-breaking coral reefs and mangrove swamps in front of them. Without these, and many more, of nature's natural defenses, we're in major trouble.
Portable gaming system::Gameboy
Portable audio player::iPod
Operating system::Windows
Web browser::Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer (depending on whether the person is used to a Windows or Macintosh OS)
There are many more examples of this, but you hit the most prevalent ones.
Despite the PSP's geeky allure, Nintendo is still the standby brand for millions of parents around the world. When a child says s/he want a portable game system, by default s/he gets a Nintendo. Most adults don't know to compare price, performance, battery life, and game selection when making a purchase for their child. The Nintendo DS might be getting worse press because those who read reviews are likely looking forward to the PSP anyway. Nintendo's largest consumer population doesn't know the difference.
The tough treatment of the Nintendo DS could also be the game industry itself knowing its most profitable market, somehow channeling this wisdom through reviewers? Reviewers appeal to die-hard gamers by being harsh on what's current while oggling everything in the future. Preorders ensue and the cycle repeats itself. I remember the previews for Beachhead 2000 being plated in gold, while the game itself was one of the worst of the year. This is SOP in the industry.
The environmental impact of a space elevator is far less than that of the convential rockets. A space elevator could be powered in part by alternative energy sources that are both energy efficient and clean when compared to rocket fuel. The space elevator's effective footprint would be the size of its anchor facility (which amounts to far less space, in a very remote location).
A friend of mine bought a "Bolex" on the street in New York. We placed bets on how long it would last. Surprisingly, it went strong for several months until it was accidentally left in a pocket. The washing machine tore the plastic faceplate out and revealed the cardboard interior. ..
I am also getting a guitar this holiday season. It'll be my second after four years and is long overdue (my current one is a $50 Memphis). This whole time, I have been taking music lessons. Unfortunately, much of what I've been learning has been "enriched faking". That is, I learn how to play a song and in the process learn about some of the styles, techniques, etc. of playing it (from a real human being). Now, my teacher is a real find - top notch guy - but I think it's time for some serious studying on my own in addition.
The downside is that it has been a while since I learned any music theory. It's something I'm loathe to do, but I recognize its necessity. I think that this could be learned quite effectively from a book and CD/DVD. Regardless of what you turn up for learning the basics on your own, I think that you should seriously consider hammering theory into your head while you still feel motivated to.
Trust me: once you can play by rote and solo at a reasonable level, you'll be reluctant to return to theory. I'm counting on the new guitar to motivate me to do the same thing as you.
For the comparison to be equitable, day-of videogame sales must exclude preorders. That, or the sales and rental markets should be included for both media.
The rental market for PC games is difficult to gauge. Almost nowhere are computer games rented. Instead, cybercafes rent access to machines on which the games are all full-installed with site licenses (to avoid piracy). To accurately measure the secondary market value of PC games, one must include the cost of using a cybercafe with deductions for the operating cost of the facility. Good luck finding concrete data on this.
If I understand solar sails correctly, this is not how they work. Instead, they utilize the combined force of billions of subatomic particles radiated by stars hitting a parachute shaped foil to tow a capsule. This is why they are made to be exceptionally lightweight and large in their surface area.
Sure, s/he won't be legally responsible if the document is written properly, but s/he'll still be the person hired to clean the network afterwards (for no additional pay, I assume).
Re:I saw ASIMO "in person": it's semi-autonomous
on
Honda Updates ASIMO
·
· Score: 1
-and that IS how it works. They tour with the robot, so it has to be able to deal with new environments.
Although they only seemed to use the tape to line ASIMO up with a staircase, it is a promising step (pun intended). There is one problem, though. ASIMO looks for the tape when it is already very near where it needs to be. ASIMO has an easy time seeing a high-contrast mark directly in front of itself - especially if it knows when to look for it. Note that the tape is on the floor - when ASIMO looks down anywhere within a foot of the tape, there is no ambiguity that it is the trigger. I doubt that ASIMO can even locate a piece of tape on a wall more than a few feet away. Locating and approaching a trigger on the ground without "practice" is also unlikely. Maybe, as you suggest, ASIMO could adapt its path through trial and error, implemented by the technicians pre-show, and guided with the same triggers.
Re:I saw ASIMO "in person": it's semi-autonomous
on
Honda Updates ASIMO
·
· Score: 1
I never said that ASIMO exhibited artificially intelligent behavior. The system of remote control, as I described it in the parent post, consists of a prewritten macro. The act is monitored by a team of technicians. Steps are triggered by both active (button push) and passive (detection of object in FOV, physical contact,etc. ) stimuli. The distinction that should be made is that all of the processing is done by ASIMO. Also, there are subroutines running the entire time that keep ASIMO balanced in spite of ambient conditions (that guy who has to touch everything in the museum, mild earthquakes, flash photography, rifts in space time, etc.)
Lego Mindstorms uses an infrared transceiver. You can find Lego IR boxes in toystores anywhere in the world. They can be hacked into loving your Macintosh.
I saw ASIMO "in person": it's semi-autonomous
on
Honda Updates ASIMO
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The routine was preprogrammed and triggered remotely from backstage over a broadband wireless connection. Everything was scripted - the floor was plastered in tape to help the human actors perform correctly. A few of the markers were triggers for ASIMO to orient itself with before demonstrating an action. It was explained to the crowd that some half-dozen technicians were working backstage, keeping the thing going the whole time.
Now, many of the feats (climbing stairs, walking across a see saw, walking in circles, bracing for a fall) were calculated on the fly by ASIMO. You have to give Honda credit for succeeding in that, but overall ASIMO is just an overblown animatronic puppet.
At least half a year ago, I saw a video of ASIMO jogging. Although the jogging was a joke as a mode of locomotion, it was an interesting demonstration of balance. My question is, how much has ASIMO changed since then? The video of the new ASIMO running looks suspiciously similar to the old one. I have the feeling that this "next-generation" ASIMO is far more capable than these new video demonstrations convey.
Slashdot Mirror
If Microsoft has any common sense left, they'll leave Internet Explorer as "beta" for the duration of its product life. That would serve to blunt some of the more obvious criticisms of security, interface, and data loss that are sure to crop up.
Then again, if they were to truly mimic Google, Mozilla, and the rest of the "do good" gang, they'd release a Microsoft-equivalent finished product as their beta.
The issue is sustained typing speed and the inaccuracies that result. Assuming:
...You'd be typing at approximately 120 words per minute. This is too much to ask of your "average" user, plodding along at 20-30 WPM. I type at "only" 101 WPM, yet people give me strange looks when I work in the library. I think you're expectations exceed consumers' true abilities.
A) You type in English
B)The average word length in day-to-day spoken English is five characters
C)You maintain your burst-speed for the full duration of your typing the longer password
This approach certainly works for advertising. As long as they "rebrand" the game right, it could work. Never, though, should this replace honest-to-goodness schooling. Games should be considered academic enrichment (in their current form). The only thing Pac Man taught me was that I couldn't cut corners.
...which cannot be used with the PSP?
This is not the Playstation 3. The PSP is a portable media player designed to play last-generation games in a compact form factor. Compare it to the Nintendo DS.
Assuming you knew this already, I suppose you meant that Sony will port older games to the new architecture? PS1 games may be ported to PSP, but licensing issues and a general lack of funding tend to limit the selection of titles.
Google has a very kind policy when it comes to third-party GMail hacks: They don't care. That is, they don't care at all. Google is permitted to change its structure and/or features at any time without telling a soul, rendering your application/extension obsolete. Google hasn't got the time to go after people using GMail as a personal server, nor do the staff have time to allow them and accept responsibility for their functioning. It's a fair system, in my mind.
[Insert OS here] can be frustrating sometimes. With his/her particular system, the touchpad may require disabling at every startup. This would seem to be the case, given the submitter's annoyance with the toggle.
The AskSlashdot questioner said that s/he was frustrated with having to disable the feature.
"A trackpad is just pointlessly annoying for me, because I have to remember to turn it off or I'll 'hit' it accidentally while typing..."
Buy a top-of-the-line laptop and place ducttape over the trackpad. The cost of the trackpad is negligible in comparison to the overall price of the laptop and duct tape is cheap. You can get a roll of white for your iBook, chrome for your Vaio, or manila for your Walmart PC. As long as you cover the pad, your hand brushing over won't be recognized (conductivity is often measured).
I keep that link by my bedside at all times. Funny that you think I'm joking. I honestly do.
-and I wasn't saying that FPS was the issue for Doom 3. The engine's bandwidth capacity was never in contention, only its rendering capability in very particular situations.
As for your having trouble with allId Software games, I have only a few ideas what could be wrong. Id Software's color palette tends to that of a worm: Brown, off-brown, and the occasional green. These dark colors don't do well, especially on LCD monitors. That brings me to the second possibility: your monitor is either high-latency or innapropriate for displaying low-contrast images (or both, if you have a standard LCD screen). The final possibility is that you have a low tolerance for dark games. Period. You simply don't like them. Enough people are frustrated with Doom 3 that a change is merited, but Quake I was plenty-bright to most people. For better or for worse, your personal opinion only practically matters to Id Software if it matches a well-represented consumer population.
John Carmack admitted that the Doom 3 was so dark because the game couldn't handle light on the engine level. There is, apparently, some pixel bleed-through and seaming of textures when light-entities are placed more generously. He said, on his blog I think, that he essentially made a game to suit the engine, but that the engine would develop with each new game release
Unfortunately, I do not have a link on-hand.
I will respectfully sidestep the evolution debate, as there is none to be had. As for the remaining poiints:
* It matters not only that the patterns have changed but also that they've changed in a predictable manner, in line with the measured results of human impact on particular ecosystems.
* Evolution is different from hybridization. The same forces are at work, but hybridization is on a far smaller scale. The famous example of moths turning black to match the soot-filled air of the industrial age was in an isolated area. Migratory patterns shifting this dramatically, observed worldwide is unheard of. We're not only seeing a difference between what they were 200 years ago when we began counting and what they are today, we're noticing a marked shift in a far more compressed time period. This time is too short to pin the label of "evolution" on. It simply does not happen that quickly. This is a direct result of human activity that could, ultimately, do us in.
*I listed several things this is going to do to us in a parent post. What we should do about any parts we don't like is change them back. This can be done, first of all, through the signing of the Kyoto climate treaty. How the United States can get away with saying that biodiversity and stable ecosystems are "too expensive"? What's expensive is our shortsightedness and belligerent politics.
*How can we adapt, though? That's a good question. On the personal scale, you can burn your fossil fuels to heat your home and run your air conditioner when required. But again, billions of people doing so only serves to speed up the downward spiral. On the global scale, assuming health is non-negotiable, the only feasible adaptation would be put into effect NOW.
In summary: It becomes very clear that this is not "normal" change when you realize that species are just flat-out dying. No significant evolution occurs in decades.
if there is more than one average rise in temperature from the globe, it denotes a change of temperature in a single location (i.e. from a single sensing station).
Had the article said "for the next hundred years", I'd have questioned its science rather than its grammar. Yes, it is confusing, but 11 Degress Celsius (as it is properly referred to) is still an outrageous increase, especially taking into account the fact that it is an average temperature. This means that the both the mean and extremes increase. Expect some very cold weather in parts due to "global warming". Also, expect scorchers. Of course, the significance is not so much the extremes as it is this mean temperature. Bird migration and plant budding schedules are already off-kilter. This isn't only an inconvenience for Dodo birds, its a serious hazard to the Earth's convenient biological balance. Watch for increased pollution in cities, species die-offs, catastrophic farming years, fisheries collapse, and increased natural disasters. It's in front of us right now. Those places least harmed by the full force of the tsunami had wave-breaking coral reefs and mangrove swamps in front of them. Without these, and many more, of nature's natural defenses, we're in major trouble.
It's not just "The Day After Tomorrow", people.
Portable gaming system::Gameboy Portable audio player::iPod Operating system::Windows Web browser::Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer (depending on whether the person is used to a Windows or Macintosh OS) There are many more examples of this, but you hit the most prevalent ones.
Despite the PSP's geeky allure, Nintendo is still the standby brand for millions of parents around the world. When a child says s/he want a portable game system, by default s/he gets a Nintendo. Most adults don't know to compare price, performance, battery life, and game selection when making a purchase for their child. The Nintendo DS might be getting worse press because those who read reviews are likely looking forward to the PSP anyway. Nintendo's largest consumer population doesn't know the difference.
The tough treatment of the Nintendo DS could also be the game industry itself knowing its most profitable market, somehow channeling this wisdom through reviewers? Reviewers appeal to die-hard gamers by being harsh on what's current while oggling everything in the future. Preorders ensue and the cycle repeats itself. I remember the previews for Beachhead 2000 being plated in gold, while the game itself was one of the worst of the year. This is SOP in the industry.
The environmental impact of a space elevator is far less than that of the convential rockets. A space elevator could be powered in part by alternative energy sources that are both energy efficient and clean when compared to rocket fuel. The space elevator's effective footprint would be the size of its anchor facility (which amounts to far less space, in a very remote location).
A friend of mine bought a "Bolex" on the street in New York. We placed bets on how long it would last. Surprisingly, it went strong for several months until it was accidentally left in a pocket. The washing machine tore the plastic faceplate out and revealed the cardboard interior. . .
That was a dang good watch, while it worked.
I am also getting a guitar this holiday season. It'll be my second after four years and is long overdue (my current one is a $50 Memphis). This whole time, I have been taking music lessons. Unfortunately, much of what I've been learning has been "enriched faking". That is, I learn how to play a song and in the process learn about some of the styles, techniques, etc. of playing it (from a real human being). Now, my teacher is a real find - top notch guy - but I think it's time for some serious studying on my own in addition.
The downside is that it has been a while since I learned any music theory. It's something I'm loathe to do, but I recognize its necessity. I think that this could be learned quite effectively from a book and CD/DVD. Regardless of what you turn up for learning the basics on your own, I think that you should seriously consider hammering theory into your head while you still feel motivated to.
Trust me: once you can play by rote and solo at a reasonable level, you'll be reluctant to return to theory. I'm counting on the new guitar to motivate me to do the same thing as you.
For the comparison to be equitable, day-of videogame sales must exclude preorders. That, or the sales and rental markets should be included for both media.
The rental market for PC games is difficult to gauge. Almost nowhere are computer games rented. Instead, cybercafes rent access to machines on which the games are all full-installed with site licenses (to avoid piracy). To accurately measure the secondary market value of PC games, one must include the cost of using a cybercafe with deductions for the operating cost of the facility. Good luck finding concrete data on this.
If I understand solar sails correctly, this is not how they work. Instead, they utilize the combined force of billions of subatomic particles radiated by stars hitting a parachute shaped foil to tow a capsule. This is why they are made to be exceptionally lightweight and large in their surface area.
Sure, s/he won't be legally responsible if the document is written properly, but s/he'll still be the person hired to clean the network afterwards (for no additional pay, I assume).
-and that IS how it works. They tour with the robot, so it has to be able to deal with new environments.
Although they only seemed to use the tape to line ASIMO up with a staircase, it is a promising step (pun intended). There is one problem, though. ASIMO looks for the tape when it is already very near where it needs to be. ASIMO has an easy time seeing a high-contrast mark directly in front of itself - especially if it knows when to look for it. Note that the tape is on the floor - when ASIMO looks down anywhere within a foot of the tape, there is no ambiguity that it is the trigger. I doubt that ASIMO can even locate a piece of tape on a wall more than a few feet away. Locating and approaching a trigger on the ground without "practice" is also unlikely. Maybe, as you suggest, ASIMO could adapt its path through trial and error, implemented by the technicians pre-show, and guided with the same triggers.
I never said that ASIMO exhibited artificially intelligent behavior. The system of remote control, as I described it in the parent post, consists of a prewritten macro. The act is monitored by a team of technicians. Steps are triggered by both active (button push) and passive (detection of object in FOV, physical contact,etc. ) stimuli. The distinction that should be made is that all of the processing is done by ASIMO. Also, there are subroutines running the entire time that keep ASIMO balanced in spite of ambient conditions (that guy who has to touch everything in the museum, mild earthquakes, flash photography, rifts in space time, etc.)
Lego Mindstorms uses an infrared transceiver. You can find Lego IR boxes in toystores anywhere in the world. They can be hacked into loving your Macintosh.
The routine was preprogrammed and triggered remotely from backstage over a broadband wireless connection. Everything was scripted - the floor was plastered in tape to help the human actors perform correctly. A few of the markers were triggers for ASIMO to orient itself with before demonstrating an action. It was explained to the crowd that some half-dozen technicians were working backstage, keeping the thing going the whole time.
Now, many of the feats (climbing stairs, walking across a see saw, walking in circles, bracing for a fall) were calculated on the fly by ASIMO. You have to give Honda credit for succeeding in that, but overall ASIMO is just an overblown animatronic puppet.
At least half a year ago, I saw a video of ASIMO jogging. Although the jogging was a joke as a mode of locomotion, it was an interesting demonstration of balance. My question is, how much has ASIMO changed since then? The video of the new ASIMO running looks suspiciously similar to the old one. I have the feeling that this "next-generation" ASIMO is far more capable than these new video demonstrations convey.