I made it a habit of typing in notes on my cell phone whenever I heard a song that I liked. Then I'd go home and try typing it into google. This works some of the time, but not all.
A lot of the music I listen to, such as music on a local indie radio station, is pretty rare. Thus, the lyrics cannot be googled. The DJ's are all stupid high schoolers, so they can't tell you the song title if you could sing the whole thing for them.
I tested out the service this morning and it does fairly well. Not all of the rare songs that I tried work, but it did get a fair amount of them. (It also got Axel F, which I thought was cool) It doesn't do a really good job on parody music, as one might think, but other then that, it's pretty good.
There are already pleanty of games out there for the PS2, and not many that are available solely for XBox. I mean, there's Halo 2, but who would want to play that? There really aren't any good games out there for the XBox, and FPSs just SUCK on consoles. (3,8) It's so obvious that PS2 is better then XBox. I mean, they only sold like 40 XBoxen (6) in Europe and Japan. (7)
Besides, Bill Gates is evil. He spends too much time talking about products and graphics and stuff, and he's really rich. That asshole! (10) Microsoft can't even make an operating system that works! And they're EVIL! They use slave labor to build their rice box. (6, 11) In Soviet Russia, you own M$. (11, standard/.)
The biggest problem on the XBox is the graphics. I mean, IANAL, (standard/.) but the best game erer was pong. Since they've started adding bettter graphics, the playability has just suffered. (8, 9)
Oh, and my Sweedish super model internet girlfriend was supposed to come to prom with me, but they wouldn't let her get on the plane because she had her XBox and they've had trouble with them exploding on airplanes. True story. (10, 11)
Note: It would have beeen helpful if I could have said something like "I, for one, welcome our new XBox 360 overlords." Also mentioning the terms Mircosoft and FUD would be helpful. OH! And we totally forgot to attack it from the Apple angle too! It's got PowerPC chips in it, and we all know that PowerPC chips are used in Macs, and Macs suck at gaming!
-- I'm sorry for wasting your time, but hey, you are reading slashdot.
Well, when I got a camera phone I initally thought the camera was sooo cool. Then I found out, "Gee, it's really easy to take a picture with this phone, but to call my girlfriend I have to press like 8 buttons." I switched back to my old phone. Heck 640x480 is crap anyway.
Actually, that's part of teh AWESOME functionality of the XBOX 360. The new graphics capabilities will allow for a fully rendered screen of death. Sources close to Microsoft claim to have seen the new death screen with a 3-D rendering of the Jolly Roger, but Microsoft claims that those machines have pirated software.
Well, programming in Basic seems counter productive...
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
I've competed in quite a few ACM competitions, and to use an ACM competition to judge whether or not a country is good at programming is a fallacy. Here's why:
1. These competitions focus on problem solving techniques and algorithm recognition. Looking through the problem set (Warning, PDF) you'll notice that there are a few geometry problems, some graph problems, some simple "do this" problems. It's much like Jeopardy. And in the same respect, some Jeopardy champions know nothing about certain subject but excel in others. The poor showing in the competition just shows that the teams did not have the proper skill set to perform well in THAT given competition.
2. They are competing in teams of three. That being said, there are many reasons why the US didn't perform well. (ie, the teams weren't balanced, which can lead to #1) Also, if 3 members from an American University can't beat 3 members from a European or Asian University, does that mean the American University is poor as a whole, and therefore, the United States is worse? Yet again, a fallacy. Maybe that means that there are more good Universities in the US! (ie, since Berkeley and MIT are competing against each other, they could have formed a better team working together.) In addition, if you made some sort of standardized test and gave it to ALL CS students in given countries, that would show more accurate results.
3. You're also not accounting for the superman coders. I wasn't at the best school when I was competing, but the people on my team were excellent programmers and problem solvers, going to a sub-par University. It could just mean that some of the better performing teams got lucky and had a really smart guy to carry the competition. (kinda like Shaq)
In fact, basketball is a prime example. I don't much pay attention to the news, but I recall the US men's team getting spanked in International competition, though I certainly don't hear anyone claiming that the US just doesn't have as good of a basketball program as other countries.
I was wondering when someone would play the troll card on this one. I'm certainly not surprised that it came in this form either. Other acceptable trolls would have been:
- I told you OS X had major security issues. - I don't need to worry about it. iTunes doesn't run on my linux box.
But yeah, of the three, yours is far better. I mean, since we all have hard disks and portable music players of infinite size, things like WAV and FLAC make perfect sense for the standard user....and don't give me that OGG or WMA is better then MP4/AAC bs because comparing lossy formats is just a waste of time.
I'm not saying "I can't talk cause I'm paying attention" I'm saying "I can't talk because it would be a lot more of a distraction if I pulled my phone out and started talking on it."
You know, for the most part, what you can hear and see is a lot more distracting then what you can just see.
I like to use text messaging for multiple reasons:
1. Sometimes you can't take a call but you wanna talk (you know, cause you have a job) "I'm in a meeting right now. What do you wanna do for lunch?"
2. You type something that you can't (shouldn't) exactly say out loud. "The person I'm talking to right now is a complete moron." or "Man alive, there's a fat lady with a mullet here in the dentist's office."
Though, I have a nokia 6800 with a QWERTY keyboard, so I doubt that old man could beat me out.
I seem to remember there being an argument about that after episode V came out. The common concensus was that Han did have some force powers. (Which explains why he was such a good pilot, how he knew when to come help Luke out during the attack on the first death star and some other things that I can't remember.)
You'd need a complete lack of a story line and a complete lack of quests for a game to be non-linear.
That being said, the last "non-linear" game of any sort that I can remember playing was the Sims. (And sadly, it's available for XBox, PS2, and yes, even the Mac.)
In addition, button mashers and 3rd person platformers are a privilege of owning a console.
Another great benefit of consoles is the friends perspective. See, I'm not your typical nerd. I have friends. Now I know you PC users love your LAN parties, and I did those when I used to own a PC too. However, taking an hour to get everybody set up and their (unstable) PCs running just to play one of the many crappy FPSs out there all night long. It's a lot easier to just switch the CD out and have an 8-player game ready to go.
As far as the FPS thing is concerned, I could try the Halo defense, but I realize that Halo is a crappy game, though it's also available for the Mac. Other FPS games available on Mac include: UT2K4, Doom 3, and STILL my personal favorite FPS, Raven Shield.
So what are we missing out on for not owning a PC? Half-life 2. Maybe Guild Wars. Thanks, I'll keep my stable mac and my enjoyable consoles around the house.
Oh, so funny! I never thought that I'd see another comment along the lines of "Macs don't have as many games as PC's." I mean, it's not like it's in EVERY thread containing the Apple logo or anything.
But seriously, the article could be about Steve Jobs playing tennis with George Lucas and some bonehead would say, "Yeah, that's the only game Jobs can play, cause he sure can't use his Mac to play any," or some shit like that.
As far as computer gaming goes. Computer games suck. I'd rather play XBox or PS2 games. The only game I bother playing on my Mac is WoW. For those of you PC owners that keep bitching about the lack of Mac games, maybe us PS2 and XBox owners should complain about the lack of games for the PC. I mean, web browsing is more stable on the PS2 anyway.
No news as to when Java 1.5 (I refuse to call it Java 5 - see more) will be out. However, Apple has said that Tiger will be required for Java 1.5 (ie they're not gonna make it compatible with Panther)
Early reviews of 10.4 Beta have said that a beta version of Java 1.5 is there, but seeing as apple hasn't mentioned anything, I'd be surprised to see it on an actual 10.4 disk.
Summary: Java Tiger on Mac Tiger? If not now then soon.
More: As for the name Java 5...
Java 1.0 was Java 1.0.
When they came out with Java 1.2, they called it Java 2
Then they had Java 2 versions 1.3, 1.4, etc.
Now they have Java 5.
Come on people! I don't care what your versioning conventions are, I just care that you have some.
Aah, you must be a libertarian. That, truly, is the difference.
Libertarians believe that the standard lies in whether or not something is harmful to others (and sometimes even to themselves).
My beliefs rest around whether or not something is moral, which is admittedly a higher standard then the libertarian system, and one that I cannot possibly keep. (I lie all the time. I swear. I speak poorly about others.)
The point is, I try. Just like everything else, I aim for perfection. I'll never hit it, but I'll come a lot closer then someone who's just hoping to hit the target.
Okay, I'll bite, mostly cause I actually read the Bible, and appearently you haven't.
Most people refer to Paul's letter to the Romans when talking about homosexuality:
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.
Romans 1:26-28 (NASB)
Paul used this as an example of a community that was without God. Paul viewed homosexuality as a controllable sin, something you wouldn't do if you had a relationship with God. When Jesus accepted the adulterous woman, he finished by telling her, "Go, and sin no more." The reasons that we, as Christians, are so against homosexual marriage, is because we're against these signs that we are no longer a country without God. When the framers of the Constitution created the Bill of Rights, separation of Church and state was there to protect the Churches from the Government. Now, as our society has gone towards accepting things like homosexuality, atheists have championed separation of Church and state to protect their beliefs.
I don't support gay marriage and believe that our country shouldn't either. Appearently I'm in the majority, seeing as eleven states actually passed laws against gay marriage during the last election. As a Christian, I realize that we're all sinners, but we were never told that we should support sinful practices. We're told to forgive, not to encourage.
Being a homocidal maniac also is neither a choice, nor is it particularly a disability, but I, for one, champion not being homocidal as a moral standard that I'd hold all of my company's employees to....betcha I'll get modded down for this one.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry. When they come out with the top 100 worst movies of all time I'm sure "Mars Attacks" will be on there.
or this...
You must listen to a lot of Popular music.
I made it a habit of typing in notes on my cell phone whenever I heard a song that I liked. Then I'd go home and try typing it into google. This works some of the time, but not all.
A lot of the music I listen to, such as music on a local indie radio station, is pretty rare. Thus, the lyrics cannot be googled. The DJ's are all stupid high schoolers, so they can't tell you the song title if you could sing the whole thing for them.
I tested out the service this morning and it does fairly well. Not all of the rare songs that I tried work, but it did get a fair amount of them. (It also got Axel F, which I thought was cool) It doesn't do a really good job on parody music, as one might think, but other then that, it's pretty good.
No, really! What'd you waste all of that research money on?
One button?
You obviously don't have a mac, do you?
There are already pleanty of games out there for the PS2, and not many that are available solely for XBox. I mean, there's Halo 2, but who would want to play that? There really aren't any good games out there for the XBox, and FPSs just SUCK on consoles. (3,8) It's so obvious that PS2 is better then XBox. I mean, they only sold like 40 XBoxen (6) in Europe and Japan. (7)
/.)
/.) but the best game erer was pong. Since they've started adding bettter graphics, the playability has just suffered. (8, 9)
Besides, Bill Gates is evil. He spends too much time talking about products and graphics and stuff, and he's really rich. That asshole! (10) Microsoft can't even make an operating system that works! And they're EVIL! They use slave labor to build their rice box. (6, 11) In Soviet Russia, you own M$. (11, standard
The biggest problem on the XBox is the graphics. I mean, IANAL, (standard
Oh, and my Sweedish super model internet girlfriend was supposed to come to prom with me, but they wouldn't let her get on the plane because she had her XBox and they've had trouble with them exploding on airplanes. True story. (10, 11)
Note: It would have beeen helpful if I could have said something like "I, for one, welcome our new XBox 360 overlords." Also mentioning the terms Mircosoft and FUD would be helpful. OH! And we totally forgot to attack it from the Apple angle too! It's got PowerPC chips in it, and we all know that PowerPC chips are used in Macs, and Macs suck at gaming!
--
I'm sorry for wasting your time, but hey, you are reading slashdot.
Well, when I got a camera phone I initally thought the camera was sooo cool. Then I found out, "Gee, it's really easy to take a picture with this phone, but to call my girlfriend I have to press like 8 buttons." I switched back to my old phone. Heck 640x480 is crap anyway.
I call this the futon principle. Sure, it's a couch AND a bed, but it can't do either well.
Actually, that's part of teh AWESOME functionality of the XBOX 360. The new graphics capabilities will allow for a fully rendered screen of death. Sources close to Microsoft claim to have seen the new death screen with a 3-D rendering of the Jolly Roger, but Microsoft claims that those machines have pirated software.
A random nobody?
AC's are the only random nobody's I see here.
Well, programming in Basic seems counter productive...
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
- E.W. Dijkstra
I've competed in quite a few ACM competitions, and to use an ACM competition to judge whether or not a country is good at programming is a fallacy. Here's why:
1. These competitions focus on problem solving techniques and algorithm recognition. Looking through the problem set (Warning, PDF) you'll notice that there are a few geometry problems, some graph problems, some simple "do this" problems. It's much like Jeopardy. And in the same respect, some Jeopardy champions know nothing about certain subject but excel in others. The poor showing in the competition just shows that the teams did not have the proper skill set to perform well in THAT given competition.
2. They are competing in teams of three. That being said, there are many reasons why the US didn't perform well. (ie, the teams weren't balanced, which can lead to #1) Also, if 3 members from an American University can't beat 3 members from a European or Asian University, does that mean the American University is poor as a whole, and therefore, the United States is worse? Yet again, a fallacy. Maybe that means that there are more good Universities in the US! (ie, since Berkeley and MIT are competing against each other, they could have formed a better team working together.) In addition, if you made some sort of standardized test and gave it to ALL CS students in given countries, that would show more accurate results.
3. You're also not accounting for the superman coders. I wasn't at the best school when I was competing, but the people on my team were excellent programmers and problem solvers, going to a sub-par University. It could just mean that some of the better performing teams got lucky and had a really smart guy to carry the competition. (kinda like Shaq)
In fact, basketball is a prime example. I don't much pay attention to the news, but I recall the US men's team getting spanked in International competition, though I certainly don't hear anyone claiming that the US just doesn't have as good of a basketball program as other countries.
Well, the do support gay rights.
I was wondering when someone would play the troll card on this one. I'm certainly not surprised that it came in this form either. Other acceptable trolls would have been:
...and don't give me that OGG or WMA is better then MP4/AAC bs because comparing lossy formats is just a waste of time.
- I told you OS X had major security issues.
- I don't need to worry about it. iTunes doesn't run on my linux box.
But yeah, of the three, yours is far better. I mean, since we all have hard disks and portable music players of infinite size, things like WAV and FLAC make perfect sense for the standard user.
I'm not saying "I can't talk cause I'm paying attention" I'm saying "I can't talk because it would be a lot more of a distraction if I pulled my phone out and started talking on it."
You know, for the most part, what you can hear and see is a lot more distracting then what you can just see.
I like to use text messaging for multiple reasons: 1. Sometimes you can't take a call but you wanna talk (you know, cause you have a job) "I'm in a meeting right now. What do you wanna do for lunch?" 2. You type something that you can't (shouldn't) exactly say out loud. "The person I'm talking to right now is a complete moron." or "Man alive, there's a fat lady with a mullet here in the dentist's office." Though, I have a nokia 6800 with a QWERTY keyboard, so I doubt that old man could beat me out.
I seem to remember there being an argument about that after episode V came out. The common concensus was that Han did have some force powers. (Which explains why he was such a good pilot, how he knew when to come help Luke out during the attack on the first death star and some other things that I can't remember.)
I stopped watching the MTV movie awards when Keanu Reeves won Best Actor.
You'd need a complete lack of a story line and a complete lack of quests for a game to be non-linear. That being said, the last "non-linear" game of any sort that I can remember playing was the Sims. (And sadly, it's available for XBox, PS2, and yes, even the Mac.) In addition, button mashers and 3rd person platformers are a privilege of owning a console. Another great benefit of consoles is the friends perspective. See, I'm not your typical nerd. I have friends. Now I know you PC users love your LAN parties, and I did those when I used to own a PC too. However, taking an hour to get everybody set up and their (unstable) PCs running just to play one of the many crappy FPSs out there all night long. It's a lot easier to just switch the CD out and have an 8-player game ready to go. As far as the FPS thing is concerned, I could try the Halo defense, but I realize that Halo is a crappy game, though it's also available for the Mac. Other FPS games available on Mac include: UT2K4, Doom 3, and STILL my personal favorite FPS, Raven Shield. So what are we missing out on for not owning a PC? Half-life 2. Maybe Guild Wars. Thanks, I'll keep my stable mac and my enjoyable consoles around the house.
Oh, so funny! I never thought that I'd see another comment along the lines of "Macs don't have as many games as PC's." I mean, it's not like it's in EVERY thread containing the Apple logo or anything.
But seriously, the article could be about Steve Jobs playing tennis with George Lucas and some bonehead would say, "Yeah, that's the only game Jobs can play, cause he sure can't use his Mac to play any," or some shit like that.
As far as computer gaming goes. Computer games suck. I'd rather play XBox or PS2 games. The only game I bother playing on my Mac is WoW. For those of you PC owners that keep bitching about the lack of Mac games, maybe us PS2 and XBox owners should complain about the lack of games for the PC. I mean, web browsing is more stable on the PS2 anyway.
No news as to when Java 1.5 (I refuse to call it Java 5 - see more) will be out. However, Apple has said that Tiger will be required for Java 1.5 (ie they're not gonna make it compatible with Panther) Early reviews of 10.4 Beta have said that a beta version of Java 1.5 is there, but seeing as apple hasn't mentioned anything, I'd be surprised to see it on an actual 10.4 disk. Summary: Java Tiger on Mac Tiger? If not now then soon. More: As for the name Java 5... Java 1.0 was Java 1.0. When they came out with Java 1.2, they called it Java 2 Then they had Java 2 versions 1.3, 1.4, etc. Now they have Java 5. Come on people! I don't care what your versioning conventions are, I just care that you have some.
http://inventionshowcase.com/jlhome.htm
Aah, you must be a libertarian. That, truly, is the difference.
Libertarians believe that the standard lies in whether or not something is harmful to others (and sometimes even to themselves).
My beliefs rest around whether or not something is moral, which is admittedly a higher standard then the libertarian system, and one that I cannot possibly keep. (I lie all the time. I swear. I speak poorly about others.)
The point is, I try. Just like everything else, I aim for perfection. I'll never hit it, but I'll come a lot closer then someone who's just hoping to hit the target.
Do you @ssholes even read the bible anymore?
Okay, I'll bite, mostly cause I actually read the Bible, and appearently you haven't.
Most people refer to Paul's letter to the Romans when talking about homosexuality:
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.
Romans 1:26-28 (NASB)
Paul used this as an example of a community that was without God. Paul viewed homosexuality as a controllable sin, something you wouldn't do if you had a relationship with God. When Jesus accepted the adulterous woman, he finished by telling her, "Go, and sin no more." The reasons that we, as Christians, are so against homosexual marriage, is because we're against these signs that we are no longer a country without God. When the framers of the Constitution created the Bill of Rights, separation of Church and state was there to protect the Churches from the Government. Now, as our society has gone towards accepting things like homosexuality, atheists have championed separation of Church and state to protect their beliefs.
I don't support gay marriage and believe that our country shouldn't either. Appearently I'm in the majority, seeing as eleven states actually passed laws against gay marriage during the last election. As a Christian, I realize that we're all sinners, but we were never told that we should support sinful practices. We're told to forgive, not to encourage.
Being a homocidal maniac also is neither a choice, nor is it particularly a disability, but I, for one, champion not being homocidal as a moral standard that I'd hold all of my company's employees to. ...betcha I'll get modded down for this one.