I am so sick of the default answer to all things in a capitalist economy; "competition will make the products better". Sure, in the short run all of the products get optimized, but not necessarily "better". Car makers have plenty of so-called competition in design, fuel efficiency, production, etc, but where is our uber-efficient electric car? All we get for our money are SUVs and sports cars. If you want an efficient gas-electric you need to wait a year or two for Toyota to allow you to have one. That is competition at its best.
So Germany wisely decided that $2.6B to reinvent the wheel isn't a good investment. Good for them. Google may not be the best is can be, but I'm willing to bet that any "competition" between search engines will follow the same lines it has already - namely added features like calendars, blogs, and browser-embedded search windows. Like I need another buggy feature to support for my users.
There seems to be a slight problem with the reality translation module. Allow me to help:
"We're working, patiently and step-by-step" Trans: "This is gonna be super safe. Trust us. Just don't expect miracles."
"to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go" Trans: "And as soon as we can find a market and get the launch costs to the break-even point..."
"so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system." Trans: "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"
"Accomplishing this mission will take a long time, and we're working on it methodically." Trans: "Anyone who wants to pony up some funds will be welcomed, but it will still take a while."
Okay, magnetic swipe cards are better than the old way of making a carbon from the raised info on the little plastic cards, but what is the advantage of an RFID credit card? I still need to get the RFID-thing out of my wallet or out of my pocket to use it. Is saving five seconds such a big deal that I wouldn't spend that five seconds in order to protect my identity?
Upgrades for the sake of the "wow-factor" are stupid.
any time a company or country defines security or privacy, it isn't to ensure their customers/citizens have more but to put limits on how much they need ro provide.
So, on one hand schools teach that information from blogs and personal web pages is trivial and can't be trusted, and on the other hand the information is so important that it can ruin a person's life.
By suing someone for defamation of character over a personal web page, this person is legitimising the information on personal web sites. If she wins, MySpace and other sites like it will be even more legitimate.
Raising money for Sudan is fantastic and I wish everyone all the luck they can handle with this.
On the other hand, This may be one of those watershed events when our culture changes course. In this case it may signal a (very slight) shift from music being national to music being regional. If the USA or even the world can watch a concert without the musicians moving around, then all music becomes local.
True randomness is the stuff of magic to humanity. Randomness has inspired just about everything "mystical" or magic in our understanding of the universe. Look at the discussions raging about creationism vs. evolution. People believe God created the universe becasue humans can't wrap their minds around the idea that in a random univers, all things have a chance of happening. What we want from our randomness isn't "all things", its one-each of everything. The one-each randomness is what human s truly believe, deep, deep down inside, to be random.
Steve Levy should know better, but I can't think of a better way to illustrate the differences between real randomness and the human perception of randomness.
First - land war for control of territory resulting in nation-states Second - Sea and Land war resulting in continental/regional trade blocks Now - Space war resulting in what? Solar System trade blocks? Space nations?
This is just the first step in preparation for fighting the next big war.
Why? What is inherently superior obout the LOC? Please don't think that the LOC wouldn't charge a fee, lock out users, censor texts, or anything any other publisher would do. Also, why wouldn't the LOC be susceptable to the same copyright troubles as Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo!?
Just becasue the LOC is part of the government doesn't give it the right to ignore the law. That's the president's job.
Interesting and true (sorry, no mod points right now). As someone who has worked for a government agency before, I can vouch for how cash-strapped these places really are. Money goes to wages and health care and very little is left for other things. Granted, the USA Government should do a better job, but given the amount of red-tape involved in contracting the IT dept (clearances, call-out times, safety assurances) it is a wonder the PCs work at all.
It would be great if we could all go into the government with our skills and tools and just fix things, but we'd never get clearance to work on the PCs. Its a catch-22 that we don't need clearance to infect a government PC and steal the data, but we need it to fix the PC and keep other people out.
Lucas NEVER does ANYTHING without wieghing the profits first. If he calls internet distribution a rathole, you can bet your house he's signed a mega-million dollar deal with a distribution house. When the Dist. House starts sending his material down the 'Net, you can be sure he'll recant along the lines of "the internet is much more mature now".
So in order to get this to work on say, a human, you'd need the exact number and type of atoms in the human body already group together somewhere in the exact configuration of the orginal human, and then this process would copy state from one human to the other, essentialy destroying the state of the first group of atoms.
My company has a cube fetish. Everyone who is not management has a cube. Thankfully this does not extend to me as they office planner ran out of cubes when the built my area. I have two tables (gasp) for my work area and these work great. I can move the tables around, other people can work with me, and I am not locked down to a single area. When I am assigned to a project, the project is assigned to my desk. That is the project home. People who work on the project with me drop by to help out or come over to do their own work away from their projects. When I help out on other projects, we work in an open conference room.
It's just a way of looking at work as a project assigned to an area and then designing an area to house a project and not a person+equipment. I could pick up my workstation and move it right now if there were other areas like mine around the building.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) game1/gem/ noun, adjective, gamer, gamest, verb, gamed, gaming. -noun 1. an amusement or pastime: children's games.
"Useful game" is an oxymoronic idea. Yes, SOME games can teach SOME skills, but saying that a game itself, or worse yet the violence in a game, is useful is like arguing that shooting heroine is good because junkies learn about hypodermics and injections.
Games are GAMES. There are no good games or bad games, just good and bad people.
This is just an election year bid to link something the public fears but cannot be dealt with (terroism) with something the public fears and can be dealt with (video games). If Video Games == Terrorism, then if we stop video games we can stop terroism.
Please stop listening to anything anyone says when they are up for election.
To be "highbrow" or a classic, the game must have layers of appreciation. Insert oblig. onion reference here. 1) The action itself 2) References to other things in the pop-culture 3) References to things in current events 4) References to real history 5) A statement about something - even if it is trivial 6) Engaging characters
Start counting how many games have these elements and then you will have a real list.
Microsoft doesn't need to destroy the iPod-economy with one blow, it can keep releasing failures for five or six years. Each time it releases a failure it takes a chunk of the iPod market away. Pretty soon Apple only has 50% or less of the market, then MS can concentrate on picking up the shattered pieces and taking another 15% or 20% away from Apple. All it needs is >50% and the market is theirs.
Slashdot Mirror
I am so sick of the default answer to all things in a capitalist economy; "competition will make the products better". Sure, in the short run all of the products get optimized, but not necessarily "better". Car makers have plenty of so-called competition in design, fuel efficiency, production, etc, but where is our uber-efficient electric car? All we get for our money are SUVs and sports cars. If you want an efficient gas-electric you need to wait a year or two for Toyota to allow you to have one. That is competition at its best.
So Germany wisely decided that $2.6B to reinvent the wheel isn't a good investment. Good for them. Google may not be the best is can be, but I'm willing to bet that any "competition" between search engines will follow the same lines it has already - namely added features like calendars, blogs, and browser-embedded search windows. Like I need another buggy feature to support for my users.
Yawn.
There seems to be a slight problem with the reality translation module. Allow me to help:
"We're working, patiently and step-by-step"
Trans: "This is gonna be super safe. Trust us. Just don't expect miracles."
"to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go"
Trans: "And as soon as we can find a market and get the launch costs to the break-even point..."
"so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system."
Trans: "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"
"Accomplishing this mission will take a long time, and we're working on it methodically."
Trans: "Anyone who wants to pony up some funds will be welcomed, but it will still take a while."
I hope this helped.
Okay, magnetic swipe cards are better than the old way of making a carbon from the raised info on the little plastic cards, but what is the advantage of an RFID credit card? I still need to get the RFID-thing out of my wallet or out of my pocket to use it. Is saving five seconds such a big deal that I wouldn't spend that five seconds in order to protect my identity?
Upgrades for the sake of the "wow-factor" are stupid.
any time a company or country defines security or privacy, it isn't to ensure their customers/citizens have more but to put limits on how much they need ro provide.
Perhaps you should learn to read. The word "libel" doesn't appear in my post specifically for that reason, donut boy.
So, on one hand schools teach that information from blogs and personal web pages is trivial and can't be trusted, and on the other hand the information is so important that it can ruin a person's life.
By suing someone for defamation of character over a personal web page, this person is legitimising the information on personal web sites. If she wins, MySpace and other sites like it will be even more legitimate.
Trolling trolling trolling. Someone mod this guy down, PLEASE!!!
Raising money for Sudan is fantastic and I wish everyone all the luck they can handle with this.
On the other hand, This may be one of those watershed events when our culture changes course. In this case it may signal a (very slight) shift from music being national to music being regional. If the USA or even the world can watch a concert without the musicians moving around, then all music becomes local.
Please! If the Islamic Fundamentalist Terroists hadn't existed, Hollywood would have invented them.
Just keep thinking, you'll get it.
Okay, so did the BBC repeat the test with a patched version of XP Home? How about XP Pro, or Win 2003 server, or Solaris, or whaterver-linux.
This isn't a story so much as me-too Microsoft bashing
True randomness is the stuff of magic to humanity. Randomness has inspired just about everything "mystical" or magic in our understanding of the universe. Look at the discussions raging about creationism vs. evolution. People believe God created the universe becasue humans can't wrap their minds around the idea that in a random univers, all things have a chance of happening. What we want from our randomness isn't "all things", its one-each of everything. The one-each randomness is what human s truly believe, deep, deep down inside, to be random.
Steve Levy should know better, but I can't think of a better way to illustrate the differences between real randomness and the human perception of randomness.
Steve, its random already.
First - land war for control of territory resulting in nation-states
Second - Sea and Land war resulting in continental/regional trade blocks
Now - Space war resulting in what? Solar System trade blocks? Space nations?
This is just the first step in preparation for fighting the next big war.
Why? What is inherently superior obout the LOC? Please don't think that the LOC wouldn't charge a fee, lock out users, censor texts, or anything any other publisher would do. Also, why wouldn't the LOC be susceptable to the same copyright troubles as Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo!?
Just becasue the LOC is part of the government doesn't give it the right to ignore the law. That's the president's job.
Interesting and true (sorry, no mod points right now).
As someone who has worked for a government agency before, I can vouch for how cash-strapped these places really are. Money goes to wages and health care and very little is left for other things. Granted, the USA Government should do a better job, but given the amount of red-tape involved in contracting the IT dept (clearances, call-out times, safety assurances) it is a wonder the PCs work at all.
It would be great if we could all go into the government with our skills and tools and just fix things, but we'd never get clearance to work on the PCs. Its a catch-22 that we don't need clearance to infect a government PC and steal the data, but we need it to fix the PC and keep other people out.
Lucas NEVER does ANYTHING without wieghing the profits first. If he calls internet distribution a rathole, you can bet your house he's signed a mega-million dollar deal with a distribution house. When the Dist. House starts sending his material down the 'Net, you can be sure he'll recant along the lines of "the internet is much more mature now".
So in order to get this to work on say, a human, you'd need the exact number and type of atoms in the human body already group together somewhere in the exact configuration of the orginal human, and then this process would copy state from one human to the other, essentialy destroying the state of the first group of atoms.
Let's test a cat.
My company has a cube fetish. Everyone who is not management has a cube. Thankfully this does not extend to me as they office planner ran out of cubes when the built my area. I have two tables (gasp) for my work area and these work great. I can move the tables around, other people can work with me, and I am not locked down to a single area. When I am assigned to a project, the project is assigned to my desk. That is the project home. People who work on the project with me drop by to help out or come over to do their own work away from their projects. When I help out on other projects, we work in an open conference room.
It's just a way of looking at work as a project assigned to an area and then designing an area to house a project and not a person+equipment. I could pick up my workstation and move it right now if there were other areas like mine around the building.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) /gem/ noun, adjective, gamer, gamest, verb, gamed, gaming.
game1
-noun
1. an amusement or pastime: children's games.
"Useful game" is an oxymoronic idea. Yes, SOME games can teach SOME skills, but saying that a game itself, or worse yet the violence in a game, is useful is like arguing that shooting heroine is good because junkies learn about hypodermics and injections.
Games are GAMES. There are no good games or bad games, just good and bad people.
This is just an election year bid to link something the public fears but cannot be dealt with (terroism) with something the public fears and can be dealt with (video games). If Video Games == Terrorism, then if we stop video games we can stop terroism.
Please stop listening to anything anyone says when they are up for election.
Absolutly. Thank you for making my point.
"pentagon rules" are rules made by the Pentagon and miscapitalized.
"pentagon rule" is a rule about pentagon shapes.
"Editor" is a person who knows the difference.
Next in the pipeline - physicists work with news editors to produce useless but well-targeted articles.
To be "highbrow" or a classic, the game must have layers of appreciation. Insert oblig. onion reference here.
1) The action itself
2) References to other things in the pop-culture
3) References to things in current events
4) References to real history
5) A statement about something - even if it is trivial
6) Engaging characters
Start counting how many games have these elements and then you will have a real list.
Microsoft doesn't need to destroy the iPod-economy with one blow, it can keep releasing failures for five or six years. Each time it releases a failure it takes a chunk of the iPod market away. Pretty soon Apple only has 50% or less of the market, then MS can concentrate on picking up the shattered pieces and taking another 15% or 20% away from Apple. All it needs is >50% and the market is theirs.