I am referring to a particular experience I had involving a certain popular university. The department refused to permit a professor I know to project a Pixar movie to a large class as part of the lesson. The movie was relevant and out on DVD but likely had not grossed itself out, so to speak. The issue was whether showing the movie in the equivalent of a movie theater, to a large audience of non MPAA and Pixar paying customers, would be illegal. Clearly, there were no good legal geeks on hand, and the EFF had far more important things to deal with. It's likely that the scare tactics used by our dearly loved RIAA scared the university out of dealing with movies either (there were discreet network crackdowns on music). I'm still not convinced that what you quoted applies to this situation in particular, but I thank you for the effort.
Can you legally show a film to a group without paying a licensing fee? I know that at universities, it is not permitted in classrooms because of the possible legal fallout. Moviehouses pay to show their films to large audiences. Why hasn't the MPAA cracked down on this? I'd have thought this would be a prime target, being a progressive group of people. *sarcasm*Who knows, maybe they're doing other terrible things to help their country!*/sarcasm* What's the scoop on this?
Interesting point - Folding@home is a more appropriate compairson. That said, Folding@home received a metric ton of press. Fewer people are aware of find-a-drug's wonderful projects, and for that, I feel that it is the more appropriate underdog. Both are distributed clients working to cure disease, so there's not a big difference in application. I propose replacing the Seti@home comparison with "find-a-drug:floding@home"
Yes, point taken on Winamp:iTunes too, but I feel that a certain crowd skews the data a bit: those who own iPods. Many aren't geeked out enough to deal with plugins for Winamp, even. It's not a fair comparison when Apple has customers that buy into its software, not knowing anything else. Then again, typing this, I realize that WiMP is the software equivalent. Okay, here's a non-debatable change - Winamp:Realplayer.
I don't get the appeal of Opera over Firefox. I guess that can goon the list too, if people are really flocking to it as an "alternative browser" without knowing why.
Why not simply upload a really simple HTML page onto Geocities or some other free, limited use, hosting site? You can edit your list without a fancy applet too, if you like. Sure, your bookmarks are public. Just make sure you don't have any personally identifying information.
If you are a privacy freak (no offense whatsoever, we love you guys), consider simply e-mailing the list to to some free HTML enabled web based e-mail client that you can later update through. It's that simple.
Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera; they all export bookmark lists. Schedule your computer to automatically save them. Heck, maybe you could use GMail as a network drive as was suggested a while ago here on Slashdot. That way, you can always have a fresh bookmarks list at ready disposal, regardless of where you are.
Remember though, third party tools are never reliable. Birds fly south, snow melts, and companies go under. It's best just to manage your bookmarks the old fashioned way: folders,.html backups, and more folders.
Gamers are using both ATI and nVidia cards, in nearly equal numbers (if I recall the Valve survey correctly). To be honest, the two companies are competing to be the most powerful for brand recognition, not for use. As much as I want one for status, and I'll readily admit this, I do not need an nVidia 6800 sucking down electricity as fast as Homer eats donuts. I'm not running predictive weather simulations on my graphics card.
If you want to have a reasonably priced, competitive, computer system for gaming, you're going to have to do some research. You'll have to see whether the specific game you want to play runs better with nVidia or ATI drivers, you'll have to determine which midrange card is cheaper, and you'll have to decide between a cheap 256mb card or a speedy 128mb one (both bus and GPU speed). There are so many marketing ploys in effect right now, it's difficult to do a good job. Regardless of what you do, somebody will criticise you. I presonally use an nVidia card. [flames below]
Indeed, Star Trek is the larger empire. However, the generation that memorized the ship classifications as kids is soon to be retired. Only the very devoted fans remain obsessed with the franchise (the heart if it, not the dreck that Enterprise is, IMHO). Star Wars, on the other hand, is still spawning its fanbase. The fact that these kids haven't been well acquainted with Star Trek is the fault of great marketing on George Lucas' part. If anyone saw the review of Star Wars: Battlefront in PC Gamer, they'd know what I meant. The franchise can get away with mediocrity while still growing its ranks. For Star Trek, it has seemed recently, there is no middle ground as far as attracting new fans is concerned. Every Star Wars movie is laughable. Fans accept it. The whole even-odd rule for Star Trek is just a tired excuse for a dying franchise. The fans are die hard. They won't admit it.
Almost unconsciously, I have categorized nearly all brand names I know into one of two categories: those I imagine to be supported by die hard, underdog loving fans and those embraced by the conformist, top of the game crowd. Although I realize that some of these associations are flat out absurd, they sit in my mind as such, nonetheless. I am curious if others have the same type of relationships in the back of their minds:
I wonder how much of this is my personal bias and how much is a result of clever advertising. Clearly, some of these comparisons are not legitimate or accurate, but the vast majority are. Regardless, those are the pairs I imagine. It's the fans of those things on the left that I feel would go out of their way for their cause.
Half of Slashdotters are below the median for the population, not neccesarily the average. Some certain extremely stupid people can bring down the average, all while still being valued as only one unit person.
Given the sheer volume of comments posted on Slashdot, I'd care more to know the mode than either the average or median. Okay you geeks, gimme a histogram.
* Do you earn more than $200,000 a year, if you do: welcome back to 1999. Big deal. You just helped our country. If you earn less than that, you keep your tax break.
* Are you referring to premiums for non-privatized health insurance? That's why Kerry supports a cap on insurance payout: $30,000.01 and up is covered by government. This effectively reduces how much you pay for your insurance premium each year. Privatizing health insurance leads to misinformed citizens and patchy plans - backed by companies that could go under any second in the resulting big business competition.
* Are you referring to the war in Iraq which has cost over $120,000,000,000? Are you not concerned that nearly half of your taxes go to the military and fund this war? That's what is being deducted from your paycheck. Vote with your wallet.
It's a reference to Douglass Adams, I believe, about how people are scared of the wrong lizard being elected. So, they always vote for the other lizard. They never consider voting for somebody other than a lizard.
What you are unknowingly referring to are the Archos MP3 hard drive based players. When the iPod 20 came out, I bought an Archos Jukebox 20 Recorder for exactly half the price. Admittedly, it was a tad larger than the Apple which also gets points for style, but since when did geeks begin caring about carrying around the equivalent of e-jewelry? At the time, it was a more than viable alternative. It didn't hurt that the crazies over at Rockbox Firmware (down right now) rewrote the firmware for Archos systems. You can now develop your own apps for the system as well as enjoy total customization of the interface. They've added a "video" extension, a text file reader, and multilingual support, among other things. Now, with the release of the new 20 gb Archos player, even smaller than the iPod and the around the same size as the iPod mini (2.9" x 2.3" x.7") albeit with a larger screen (2"), I am beginning to believe that a new era of iPod competition is being reigned in.
"Evicted from his Hollywood apartment, Wood and his wife moved into the bungalow of an actor friend. Only days after the move, Ed died of a heart attack, aged 53. Posthumously, his extensive portfolio of terrible motion pictures earned him the Golden Turkey Award for being the worst director of all time."
Right. I may not have been too clear in my post. I intended to illustrate that the skirt itself did not have a hole in it (and was therefore airtight on its own), but instead was joined to a board that, itself, did have a hole. About a third of the air was sent straight down. All the deisgns you, the grandparent poster, and I wrote are fine and practical - it's only the way-back ancestor post that was downright wrong.
First of all, thank you for clearing this up for him. Second he's not totally wrong, he just doesn't know it. The original hovercraft by Cockrell worked roughly as "Rocket physics 101" describes. Having no skirt, the whole thing had a clearance of 6 inches or more if I recall correcly (not the mere centimeters that the anonymous coward claimed).
Now, a minor correction for you. Taken separately, the hovercraft's skirt should be totally airtight. It should inflate like the inner tube of a tire. However, there is a hole in the base of the hovercraft through which a fraction of the air from the lift fan is channeled. Creating a second high-pressure chamber beneath the inflated skirt, this air cuases the hovercraft to rise several milimeters off of the ground. By definition, the vehicle hovers the full inch (scale size) height of the inflated skirt because the skirt itself does not support he hovercraft - but that's a technicality. My point is that if the skirt itself had any holes aside from the center board's, it would not work.
Trust me, hovercrafts fare quite poorly on grass. Grass is, by hovercrafting standards, quite porous. The craft's skirt cannot form a tight enough seal with the ground for it to hover evenly. Instead, grass keeps the front-pointing driving edge from moving. This causes the vehicle to buckle forward and start to dig into the ground. In a bizarre attempt to compensate, the prop begins to spin more rapidly, ultimately succeding only in draining the remaining battery.
It's futile to bother with anything but sidewalk pavement, some concrete, linoleum flooring, good sand, calm water, hard wood flooring, flat ice, and packed snow.
Granted, I'm more experienced with models than full scalers. Still, I'd expect a hovering lawnmower to behave more like a "toy" than a military LCAC, so this description holds.
This is my response to your claim that it is chronic pessimisim:
"The skill of accurate perception is called cynicism by those who don't posses it" - Alan Millar
Upgradability is a major concern for geeks. Shuttle PCs afford users the option to upgrade. Laptops, with their carefully budgeted proprietary systems, usually do not.
There have been attempts at modding the PSOne flipscreen to work with other systems (Gameboy Advance, for example). Although I do not have any links at present, I recall that the GBA modification was extensive enough to ultimately discount the proprietary VGA plug entirely.
I agree with you, it's strange, but I think it is because the moderator wanted the original post to be visible to those browsing at a higher threshold. Modding up only a correction causes it to appear out of context. Therefore, corrections, if warranted and self-imposed, ought to be moderated in tandem with the parent (and vice versa). Let's be honest, moderation points aren't as powerful as the noobs think - one can "afford" to moderate two posts by the same author if it mitigates the impact of an honest mistake. It's a community after all, we share the load of moderation. As long as you don't moderate to further your own social or commercial agenda, moderation points are not golden eggs.
But isn't that what Sims 2 Expansions are for? Maxis has proven the first Sims that they can get a much larger population playing the original game by creating niche expansion packs.
I just see no incentive for them to promote another label just for consoles. They could even have downloadable content as a gimmick/hook with just The Sims 2 on consoles.
Slashdot Mirror
I am referring to a particular experience I had involving a certain popular university. The department refused to permit a professor I know to project a Pixar movie to a large class as part of the lesson. The movie was relevant and out on DVD but likely had not grossed itself out, so to speak. The issue was whether showing the movie in the equivalent of a movie theater, to a large audience of non MPAA and Pixar paying customers, would be illegal. Clearly, there were no good legal geeks on hand, and the EFF had far more important things to deal with. It's likely that the scare tactics used by our dearly loved RIAA scared the university out of dealing with movies either (there were discreet network crackdowns on music). I'm still not convinced that what you quoted applies to this situation in particular, but I thank you for the effort.
We all know how well the "friends helping friends" mentality helped them out against the RIAA and "Greater Good" (tm)(r)(patent pending).
Can you legally show a film to a group without paying a licensing fee? I know that at universities, it is not permitted in classrooms because of the possible legal fallout. Moviehouses pay to show their films to large audiences. Why hasn't the MPAA cracked down on this? I'd have thought this would be a prime target, being a progressive group of people. *sarcasm*Who knows, maybe they're doing other terrible things to help their country!*/sarcasm* What's the scoop on this?
Interesting point - Folding@home is a more appropriate compairson. That said, Folding@home received a metric ton of press. Fewer people are aware of find-a-drug's wonderful projects, and for that, I feel that it is the more appropriate underdog. Both are distributed clients working to cure disease, so there's not a big difference in application. I propose replacing the Seti@home comparison with "find-a-drug:floding@home"
Yes, point taken on Winamp:iTunes too, but I feel that a certain crowd skews the data a bit: those who own iPods. Many aren't geeked out enough to deal with plugins for Winamp, even. It's not a fair comparison when Apple has customers that buy into its software, not knowing anything else. Then again, typing this, I realize that WiMP is the software equivalent. Okay, here's a non-debatable change - Winamp:Realplayer.
I don't get the appeal of Opera over Firefox. I guess that can goon the list too, if people are really flocking to it as an "alternative browser" without knowing why.
What are these features? Telling us could help us find an alternative that better suits your needs.
Why not simply upload a really simple HTML page onto Geocities or some other free, limited use, hosting site? You can edit your list without a fancy applet too, if you like. Sure, your bookmarks are public. Just make sure you don't have any personally identifying information.
.html backups, and more folders.
If you are a privacy freak (no offense whatsoever, we love you guys), consider simply e-mailing the list to to some free HTML enabled web based e-mail client that you can later update through. It's that simple.
Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera; they all export bookmark lists. Schedule your computer to automatically save them. Heck, maybe you could use GMail as a network drive as was suggested a while ago here on Slashdot. That way, you can always have a fresh bookmarks list at ready disposal, regardless of where you are.
Remember though, third party tools are never reliable. Birds fly south, snow melts, and companies go under. It's best just to manage your bookmarks the old fashioned way: folders,
Gamers are using both ATI and nVidia cards, in nearly equal numbers (if I recall the Valve survey correctly). To be honest, the two companies are competing to be the most powerful for brand recognition, not for use. As much as I want one for status, and I'll readily admit this, I do not need an nVidia 6800 sucking down electricity as fast as Homer eats donuts. I'm not running predictive weather simulations on my graphics card.
If you want to have a reasonably priced, competitive, computer system for gaming, you're going to have to do some research. You'll have to see whether the specific game you want to play runs better with nVidia or ATI drivers, you'll have to determine which midrange card is cheaper, and you'll have to decide between a cheap 256mb card or a speedy 128mb one (both bus and GPU speed). There are so many marketing ploys in effect right now, it's difficult to do a good job. Regardless of what you do, somebody will criticise you. I presonally use an nVidia card. [flames below]
Indeed, Star Trek is the larger empire. However, the generation that memorized the ship classifications as kids is soon to be retired. Only the very devoted fans remain obsessed with the franchise (the heart if it, not the dreck that Enterprise is, IMHO). Star Wars, on the other hand, is still spawning its fanbase. The fact that these kids haven't been well acquainted with Star Trek is the fault of great marketing on George Lucas' part. If anyone saw the review of Star Wars: Battlefront in PC Gamer, they'd know what I meant. The franchise can get away with mediocrity while still growing its ranks. For Star Trek, it has seemed recently, there is no middle ground as far as attracting new fans is concerned. Every Star Wars movie is laughable. Fans accept it. The whole even-odd rule for Star Trek is just a tired excuse for a dying franchise. The fans are die hard. They won't admit it.
Almost unconsciously, I have categorized nearly all brand names I know into one of two categories: those I imagine to be supported by die hard, underdog loving fans and those embraced by the conformist, top of the game crowd. Although I realize that some of these associations are flat out absurd, they sit in my mind as such, nonetheless. I am curious if others have the same type of relationships in the back of their minds:
y (and more recently, Microsoft)a mp(rip):WiMP
*Apple:Microsoft
*Linux:Windows
*Nintendo:Son
*Armadillo Aerospace:Scaled Composites
*Blizzard:Valve
*Mozilla:Internet Explorer
*Texas Instruments:Hewlett Packard (despite TI's market hold)
*Star Trek:Star Wars
*Archos:Apple
*Find-a-drug:Seti@home
*Win
I wonder how much of this is my personal bias and how much is a result of clever advertising. Clearly, some of these comparisons are not legitimate or accurate, but the vast majority are. Regardless, those are the pairs I imagine. It's the fans of those things on the left that I feel would go out of their way for their cause.
Does anybody know the state of those in Ohio? That could account for the discrepencies in registered voters vs. ballots cast.
Half of Slashdotters are below the median for the population, not neccesarily the average. Some certain extremely stupid people can bring down the average, all while still being valued as only one unit person.
Given the sheer volume of comments posted on Slashdot, I'd care more to know the mode than either the average or median. Okay you geeks, gimme a histogram.
May I ask what money you are referring to?
* Do you earn more than $200,000 a year, if you do: welcome back to 1999. Big deal. You just helped our country. If you earn less than that, you keep your tax break.
* Are you referring to premiums for non-privatized health insurance? That's why Kerry supports a cap on insurance payout: $30,000.01 and up is covered by government. This effectively reduces how much you pay for your insurance premium each year. Privatizing health insurance leads to misinformed citizens and patchy plans - backed by companies that could go under any second in the resulting big business competition.
* Are you referring to the war in Iraq which has cost over $120,000,000,000? Are you not concerned that nearly half of your taxes go to the military and fund this war? That's what is being deducted from your paycheck. Vote with your wallet.
It's a reference to Douglass Adams, I believe, about how people are scared of the wrong lizard being elected. So, they always vote for the other lizard. They never consider voting for somebody other than a lizard.
What you are unknowingly referring to are the Archos MP3 hard drive based players. When the iPod 20 came out, I bought an Archos Jukebox 20 Recorder for exactly half the price. Admittedly, it was a tad larger than the Apple which also gets points for style, but since when did geeks begin caring about carrying around the equivalent of e-jewelry? At the time, it was a more than viable alternative. It didn't hurt that the crazies over at Rockbox Firmware (down right now) rewrote the firmware for Archos systems. You can now develop your own apps for the system as well as enjoy total customization of the interface. They've added a "video" extension, a text file reader, and multilingual support, among other things. Now, with the release of the new 20 gb Archos player, even smaller than the iPod and the around the same size as the iPod mini (2.9" x 2.3" x .7") albeit with a larger screen (2"), I am beginning to believe that a new era of iPod competition is being reigned in.
"Evicted from his Hollywood apartment, Wood and his wife moved into the bungalow of an actor friend. Only days after the move, Ed died of a heart attack, aged 53. Posthumously, his extensive portfolio of terrible motion pictures earned him the Golden Turkey Award for being the worst director of all time."
Is that Ed Wood's equivalent of a last "hurrah"?
Right. I may not have been too clear in my post. I intended to illustrate that the skirt itself did not have a hole in it (and was therefore airtight on its own), but instead was joined to a board that, itself, did have a hole. About a third of the air was sent straight down. All the deisgns you, the grandparent poster, and I wrote are fine and practical - it's only the way-back ancestor post that was downright wrong.
First of all, thank you for clearing this up for him. Second he's not totally wrong, he just doesn't know it. The original hovercraft by Cockrell worked roughly as "Rocket physics 101" describes. Having no skirt, the whole thing had a clearance of 6 inches or more if I recall correcly (not the mere centimeters that the anonymous coward claimed).
Now, a minor correction for you. Taken separately, the hovercraft's skirt should be totally airtight. It should inflate like the inner tube of a tire. However, there is a hole in the base of the hovercraft through which a fraction of the air from the lift fan is channeled. Creating a second high-pressure chamber beneath the inflated skirt, this air cuases the hovercraft to rise several milimeters off of the ground. By definition, the vehicle hovers the full inch (scale size) height of the inflated skirt because the skirt itself does not support he hovercraft - but that's a technicality. My point is that if the skirt itself had any holes aside from the center board's, it would not work.
Trust me, hovercrafts fare quite poorly on grass. Grass is, by hovercrafting standards, quite porous. The craft's skirt cannot form a tight enough seal with the ground for it to hover evenly. Instead, grass keeps the front-pointing driving edge from moving. This causes the vehicle to buckle forward and start to dig into the ground. In a bizarre attempt to compensate, the prop begins to spin more rapidly, ultimately succeding only in draining the remaining battery.
It's futile to bother with anything but sidewalk pavement, some concrete, linoleum flooring, good sand, calm water, hard wood flooring, flat ice, and packed snow.
Granted, I'm more experienced with models than full scalers. Still, I'd expect a hovering lawnmower to behave more like a "toy" than a military LCAC, so this description holds.
This is my response to your claim that it is chronic pessimisim:
"The skill of accurate perception is called cynicism by those who don't posses it" - Alan Millar
A blade maybe? I don't know much about them, to be honest.
Upgradability is a major concern for geeks. Shuttle PCs afford users the option to upgrade. Laptops, with their carefully budgeted proprietary systems, usually do not.
There have been attempts at modding the PSOne flipscreen to work with other systems (Gameboy Advance, for example). Although I do not have any links at present, I recall that the GBA modification was extensive enough to ultimately discount the proprietary VGA plug entirely.
I agree with you, it's strange, but I think it is because the moderator wanted the original post to be visible to those browsing at a higher threshold. Modding up only a correction causes it to appear out of context. Therefore, corrections, if warranted and self-imposed, ought to be moderated in tandem with the parent (and vice versa). Let's be honest, moderation points aren't as powerful as the noobs think - one can "afford" to moderate two posts by the same author if it mitigates the impact of an honest mistake. It's a community after all, we share the load of moderation. As long as you don't moderate to further your own social or commercial agenda, moderation points are not golden eggs.
But isn't that what Sims 2 Expansions are for? Maxis has proven the first Sims that they can get a much larger population playing the original game by creating niche expansion packs.
I just see no incentive for them to promote another label just for consoles. They could even have downloadable content as a gimmick/hook with just The Sims 2 on consoles.
EGHDADS! I did rtfa, but I overlooked something... Maxis made The Sims too *doy*. Okay, still, why mention The Urbz with The Sims 2 still being hyped?