No mod points, but thank you for this. I've managed to tweak my work PC enough that the parts of Win8 that piss me off mostly stay out of my way, but hunting through the mess of settings makes me curse the day Balmer emerged from the primordial soup of whatever parallel evolutionary track coughed him up.
I went back to college this semester, and prior to our first test, I dug out the Casio scientific calculator I originally got for Algebra 1 in 8th grade. Had to put a new battery in it, but it worked fine.
When I pulled it out in class, I realized that, purchased in 1991, it was several years older than all of my classmates.
Or a laser version of same, which IIRC they are also working on.
My understanding of the laser defense systems is that they work by heating the incoming projectile, causing the explosives within the warhead to detonate. As the article mentioned, one advantage of a railgun is that the "warhead" is a chunk of inert metal. So unless your laser is powerful enough to melt something that we already know can withstand air friction at Mach 7...
The most obvious game type for VR would be FPS, but I can imagine a few others that I would love to play in VR. Top of my list would be space sims - I would love to be able to sit down at my desk, pop on a VR hood, and play something along the line of X-Wing or Freespace. Flight sims and racing games would work really well also.
Metro is "easily avoided" if you're already a power user - if you know enough to install a start-button replacement, and replacements for all the other Metro applications bundled in.
My job is serving as the one-man IT department for my employer. I installed a copy of Win8 on my work desktop to test it out, and very quickly came to the conclusion that there was no way I was going to inflict it on my users. Even if I had a BOFH-style hatred for every single one of my coworkers, self-preservation would dictate I'd want to avoid all the helpdesk calls that Win8 would generate.
In the months I've been using Win8, I've managed to get it tweaked to the point that the parts I hate mostly stay out of my way. But this isn't something I'm going to install on any computer I'll be expected to support.
I can't image what Microsoft was thinking expecting "tech savvy" people to serve as Win8 cheerleaders for their friends. Most "tech savvy" people hate Window 8. Like most IT guys, I also do a bit of moonlight on evenings and weekends, and I've gotten a lot of people asking for advice for a new computer. Without fail, I always point them toward Windows 7 machines. You might not find them sitting on the shelves at Best Buy or Walmart, but they are out there, and will be until either Microsoft ends support for Win7, or they abandon their stupid insistence on cramming a tablet interface on to a desktop.
FTL is an absolute gem. The gameplay is almost like an RTS set aboard a starship. Instead of controlling the ship, you're controlling the people inside. It really doesn't feel anything like Battlestar Galactica as mentioned below: For one thing, your ship has a maximum crew of 8. If we're comparing it to a sci-fi series, I'd say more like Firefly, except your ship is armed.
As the parent noted, it's got tons of replay value. It's almost a bit of a rogue-like, in that the sector layouts and encounters are all randomized, and death is permanent (and you'll probably die a lot.) You might have the same encounter multiple times is subsequent games, but you'll get different options depending on your crew and equipment. The most recent ship I unlocked, for example required having a teleporter, upgraded med-bay, and at least 1 crew member of a specific race.
I'll admit I've sunk a lot of time into it lately, but each individual game is fairly short - when I win, it probably takes between 1 and 2 hours from start to finish.
The 90's game Earthworm Jim (which is an absolute gem) has a level called "What the Heck?" that's set in hell. Most of the enemies are briefcase-wielding corporate lawyers.
I'm still impressed with the build quality of the ThinkPad and ThinkCenter line, and that acquisition was back in 2005.
Actually, the big relief is that their support is still as good as ever. I've called for parts (under warranty) at 3 PM and had the part show up the next day. I don't think I've ever had to sit on hold for more than 5 minutes before speaking to an actual person, and most of the time it's been no hold at all. My previous employer was an all-IBM shop and we were concerned when we heard they were selling their desktop and laptop division, but I don't think Lenovo has let thing slip.
Ah, yes, you are right. I had forgotten about Tannen's arrest prior to the train hijacking. (In my defense, I haven't watched the movie in over 15 years.)
I once spent the better part of an hour brainstorming alternate ways to get the DeLorean up to speed, based on what was available in 1886. I'll admit I didn't think of an electrically-heated steam engine. The most interesting was feeding the juice from Mr. Fusion into a series of electromagnets, essentially acting as a giant rail-gun. Theoretically possible, but pretty much impossible to pull off the engineering involved, particularly with the limited time they had available.
Actually, with the time limit involved, stealing the train may have been their best option.
You forgot to mention boot floppies. Far to many/.ers still twitch when remembering having to tweak autoexec.bat and config.sys to get Tie Fighter to run.
Ultra violent war simulation is training for military service. Obey the Man, man!
In the future, 80% of basic training will consist of recruits un-learning what they learned from video games. Lesson 1: No rocket-jumping. Lesson 2: No tea-bagging enemy corpses.
... So that makes him either a liar, or the crappiest president we've ever had.
I'm willing to consider that both may be true.
Regarding the larger point of Presidential power, yes he was elected president, but the Constitution wasn't up for a vote. When he was inaugurated, he swore an oath to follow the Constitution, and he doesn't get to pick and choose which parts he likes. The 4th Amendment protects us from unreasonable search, and the broad, sweeping data collection go well beyond reasonable. The Constitution defines separation of powers, so when he unilaterally decides not to enforce certain parts of laws passed by Congress, he is usurping their legislative power. He has the highest authority of the executive branch, but the Constitution defines the limits of that authority, and he has gone well beyond those limits.
You have a commonly-held misconception of what constitutes impeachment. Impeachment does not mean "removed from office", it means that the House has voted to impeach. Once a president has been impeached, then the Senate holds a trial to determine if he will be removed from office.
Both the parent and grandparent are correct in saying that Nixon was never impeached, because he resigned before the full House voted on articles of impeachment. I think the parent doesn't understand that Bill Clinton was impeached - the full House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment, sending it to the Senate for trial. The fact that the Senate voted not to remove him from office doesn't change the fact that he was impeached.
Out of that $32 you quote, over half of it is the can opener and cooking pot that a) is a 1-time cost, and b) could be obtained for less than $5 at a garage sale or thrift store.
Potatoes: last for months if stored correctly, and you can get them for $0.50 per pound. Potato chips, on the other hand, are about $4.50 per pound. McDonald's medium fries: ~1/4/lb: $1.49
You can cut potatoes, toss with a bit of oil and salt and bake them and will get a much healthier and tastier side for 1/10 the price. Or of course you can boil and mash them, bake them whole, or a dozen other ways for variety and little to no extra cost.
I know I'm not the only/.er who read this and thought, "Po-Ta-Toes. Mash 'em. Boil 'em. Put 'em in a stew."
Obviously, this is Star Trek technology and isn't likely to happen for centuries (at least until we make first contact with the Vulcans, after inventing warp drive!), if ever.
It will even be quite a wait from that point. At least a Generation... (ducks)
I took my 13-year-old daughter, who was absolutely dying to see it and thoroughly enjoyed it. And this wasn't entirely due to spending the whole movie drooling over Chris Hemsworth - she has enjoyed most of Marvel's recent movies. As for my take:
The Good: Loved the opening sequence with the Dark Elves. If they had made a full-length movie based on the Dark Elf/Asgardian war, I'd go see it. Really enjoyed Loki again, particularly when he was taunting Thor by repeatedly changing form. Also the exploration of the strained relationship between Loki and his mother. Eric No Pants - as the parent referred to him - was a great addition to the movie, especially showing how badly being possessed by Loki has messed with his mind. The Battle of Asgard was a visual masterpiece, and did a great job of showing Asgardian technology as the pseudo-magic they're trying to portray. Really enjoyed the final scene with Thor and Odin discussing his realization that he was not suited for the throne. And it had what I think was the best Stan Lee cameo of any Marvel movie so far. (Also liked seeing the IT Crowd's Chris Dowd in his small role.)
The Bad: Jane was forgettable and Darcy's character came off as forced, like she was playing a caricature of her character in the first movie. The main villain really needed more development; as is, he was rather forgettable. I'm sure they intended to portray him as cold and emotionless, but instead it just seemed flat. Part of, I think, came from having him speak in subtitles so much of the time. (I felt his strongest scene was his confrontation with Frigga during the invasion of Asgard.) As several others have noted, Jane's "infection" with the Aether seemed pretty badly done.
Overall, I'd say slightly better than the original Thor, not as good as the Avengers or the first Iron Man. (And as an aside, the previews for the next Captain America and X-Men look very promising.)
The pic that first got him in trouble came out when he posted it himself, probably intending it to be direct-message only rather than publicly viewable.
This. I'd love to be able to share my Steam library with my wife and daughter, but with some usage controls. Neither one has a Steam account right now, and, ideally, I'd like to be able to set up sub-account, including some parental controls regarding game ratings, time limits, and the like.
But the real problem here is, as many others have mentioned, that Family Sharing isn't really sharing if only one user can access the library at a time. I completely understand not allowing simultaneous use of a game, but the entire library? If I'm playing Left4Dead2, why should that lock my daughter out of Peggle?
I don't think you quite understand what Calibre really is. Think of whatever program you use to organize your music collection - whether it's Windows Media Player or Amarok or iTunes or whatever. Now substitute "e-book collection" for music collection, and you'll be close. The difference is that Calibre is primarily an organizational tool. You can import ebooks from dozens of different formats, convert from one format to another, and keep them all organized in one library.
So to address your concerns, both really depend on the format of the document. Calibre supports just about any format you could think to throw at it, so if you pick a format that supports annotations, you won't have any trouble. You mention PDF and PDF/A - either one can be imported into your Calibre library.
I make heavy use of Calibre at work. I have imported tons of internally created MS Word documents with different policies and forms we use, PDF manuals for hardware and software, plain text files, just about anything.
Another great feature I haven't seen mentioned much in the thread is Calibre's ability to subscribe to a page and automatically download it for offline reading. Combine that with Dropbox syncing files to my phone, and it's the closest I've found to the now-defunct (and much missed) Newsroom.
Slashdot Mirror
mY pretend girlfriend IS Windows XP
Virus-ridden, goes down regularly?
Most of the Kardashians are about 3 additional cosmetic surgeries away from being indistinguishable from Cardassians.
...and this, ladies and gentlemen, is why experimenting with hallucinogens is a bad idea.
No mod points, but thank you for this. I've managed to tweak my work PC enough that the parts of Win8 that piss me off mostly stay out of my way, but hunting through the mess of settings makes me curse the day Balmer emerged from the primordial soup of whatever parallel evolutionary track coughed him up.
I went back to college this semester, and prior to our first test, I dug out the Casio scientific calculator I originally got for Algebra 1 in 8th grade. Had to put a new battery in it, but it worked fine.
When I pulled it out in class, I realized that, purchased in 1991, it was several years older than all of my classmates.
Or a laser version of same, which IIRC they are also working on.
My understanding of the laser defense systems is that they work by heating the incoming projectile, causing the explosives within the warhead to detonate. As the article mentioned, one advantage of a railgun is that the "warhead" is a chunk of inert metal. So unless your laser is powerful enough to melt something that we already know can withstand air friction at Mach 7...
The most obvious game type for VR would be FPS, but I can imagine a few others that I would love to play in VR. Top of my list would be space sims - I would love to be able to sit down at my desk, pop on a VR hood, and play something along the line of X-Wing or Freespace. Flight sims and racing games would work really well also.
Metro is "easily avoided" if you're already a power user - if you know enough to install a start-button replacement, and replacements for all the other Metro applications bundled in.
My job is serving as the one-man IT department for my employer. I installed a copy of Win8 on my work desktop to test it out, and very quickly came to the conclusion that there was no way I was going to inflict it on my users. Even if I had a BOFH-style hatred for every single one of my coworkers, self-preservation would dictate I'd want to avoid all the helpdesk calls that Win8 would generate.
In the months I've been using Win8, I've managed to get it tweaked to the point that the parts I hate mostly stay out of my way. But this isn't something I'm going to install on any computer I'll be expected to support.
I can't image what Microsoft was thinking expecting "tech savvy" people to serve as Win8 cheerleaders for their friends. Most "tech savvy" people hate Window 8. Like most IT guys, I also do a bit of moonlight on evenings and weekends, and I've gotten a lot of people asking for advice for a new computer. Without fail, I always point them toward Windows 7 machines. You might not find them sitting on the shelves at Best Buy or Walmart, but they are out there, and will be until either Microsoft ends support for Win7, or they abandon their stupid insistence on cramming a tablet interface on to a desktop.
FTL is an absolute gem. The gameplay is almost like an RTS set aboard a starship. Instead of controlling the ship, you're controlling the people inside. It really doesn't feel anything like Battlestar Galactica as mentioned below: For one thing, your ship has a maximum crew of 8. If we're comparing it to a sci-fi series, I'd say more like Firefly, except your ship is armed.
As the parent noted, it's got tons of replay value. It's almost a bit of a rogue-like, in that the sector layouts and encounters are all randomized, and death is permanent (and you'll probably die a lot.) You might have the same encounter multiple times is subsequent games, but you'll get different options depending on your crew and equipment. The most recent ship I unlocked, for example required having a teleporter, upgraded med-bay, and at least 1 crew member of a specific race.
I'll admit I've sunk a lot of time into it lately, but each individual game is fairly short - when I win, it probably takes between 1 and 2 hours from start to finish.
The 90's game Earthworm Jim (which is an absolute gem) has a level called "What the Heck?" that's set in hell. Most of the enemies are briefcase-wielding corporate lawyers.
I'm still impressed with the build quality of the ThinkPad and ThinkCenter line, and that acquisition was back in 2005.
Actually, the big relief is that their support is still as good as ever. I've called for parts (under warranty) at 3 PM and had the part show up the next day. I don't think I've ever had to sit on hold for more than 5 minutes before speaking to an actual person, and most of the time it's been no hold at all. My previous employer was an all-IBM shop and we were concerned when we heard they were selling their desktop and laptop division, but I don't think Lenovo has let thing slip.
Ah, yes, you are right. I had forgotten about Tannen's arrest prior to the train hijacking. (In my defense, I haven't watched the movie in over 15 years.)
I once spent the better part of an hour brainstorming alternate ways to get the DeLorean up to speed, based on what was available in 1886. I'll admit I didn't think of an electrically-heated steam engine. The most interesting was feeding the juice from Mr. Fusion into a series of electromagnets, essentially acting as a giant rail-gun. Theoretically possible, but pretty much impossible to pull off the engineering involved, particularly with the limited time they had available.
Actually, with the time limit involved, stealing the train may have been their best option.
You forgot to mention boot floppies. Far to many /.ers still twitch when remembering having to tweak autoexec.bat and config.sys to get Tie Fighter to run.
Ultra violent war simulation is training for military service. Obey the Man, man!
In the future, 80% of basic training will consist of recruits un-learning what they learned from video games. Lesson 1: No rocket-jumping. Lesson 2: No tea-bagging enemy corpses.
Uh, that's standard for any Lotus Notes install. You must not have read appendix 666 in the install docs.
... So that makes him either a liar, or the crappiest president we've ever had.
I'm willing to consider that both may be true.
Regarding the larger point of Presidential power, yes he was elected president, but the Constitution wasn't up for a vote. When he was inaugurated, he swore an oath to follow the Constitution, and he doesn't get to pick and choose which parts he likes. The 4th Amendment protects us from unreasonable search, and the broad, sweeping data collection go well beyond reasonable. The Constitution defines separation of powers, so when he unilaterally decides not to enforce certain parts of laws passed by Congress, he is usurping their legislative power. He has the highest authority of the executive branch, but the Constitution defines the limits of that authority, and he has gone well beyond those limits.
You have a commonly-held misconception of what constitutes impeachment. Impeachment does not mean "removed from office", it means that the House has voted to impeach. Once a president has been impeached, then the Senate holds a trial to determine if he will be removed from office.
Both the parent and grandparent are correct in saying that Nixon was never impeached, because he resigned before the full House voted on articles of impeachment. I think the parent doesn't understand that Bill Clinton was impeached - the full House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment, sending it to the Senate for trial. The fact that the Senate voted not to remove him from office doesn't change the fact that he was impeached.
Out of that $32 you quote, over half of it is the can opener and cooking pot that a) is a 1-time cost, and b) could be obtained for less than $5 at a garage sale or thrift store.
Potatoes: last for months if stored correctly, and you can get them for $0.50 per pound. Potato chips, on the other hand, are about $4.50 per pound. /lb: $1.49
McDonald's medium fries: ~1/4
You can cut potatoes, toss with a bit of oil and salt and bake them and will get a much healthier and tastier side for 1/10 the price. Or of course you can boil and mash them, bake them whole, or a dozen other ways for variety and little to no extra cost.
I know I'm not the only /.er who read this and thought, "Po-Ta-Toes. Mash 'em. Boil 'em. Put 'em in a stew."
Obviously, this is Star Trek technology and isn't likely to happen for centuries (at least until we make first contact with the Vulcans, after inventing warp drive!), if ever.
It will even be quite a wait from that point. At least a Generation... (ducks)
I took my 13-year-old daughter, who was absolutely dying to see it and thoroughly enjoyed it. And this wasn't entirely due to spending the whole movie drooling over Chris Hemsworth - she has enjoyed most of Marvel's recent movies. As for my take:
The Good: Loved the opening sequence with the Dark Elves. If they had made a full-length movie based on the Dark Elf/Asgardian war, I'd go see it. Really enjoyed Loki again, particularly when he was taunting Thor by repeatedly changing form. Also the exploration of the strained relationship between Loki and his mother. Eric No Pants - as the parent referred to him - was a great addition to the movie, especially showing how badly being possessed by Loki has messed with his mind. The Battle of Asgard was a visual masterpiece, and did a great job of showing Asgardian technology as the pseudo-magic they're trying to portray. Really enjoyed the final scene with Thor and Odin discussing his realization that he was not suited for the throne. And it had what I think was the best Stan Lee cameo of any Marvel movie so far. (Also liked seeing the IT Crowd's Chris Dowd in his small role.)
The Bad: Jane was forgettable and Darcy's character came off as forced, like she was playing a caricature of her character in the first movie. The main villain really needed more development; as is, he was rather forgettable. I'm sure they intended to portray him as cold and emotionless, but instead it just seemed flat. Part of, I think, came from having him speak in subtitles so much of the time. (I felt his strongest scene was his confrontation with Frigga during the invasion of Asgard.) As several others have noted, Jane's "infection" with the Aether seemed pretty badly done.
Overall, I'd say slightly better than the original Thor, not as good as the Avengers or the first Iron Man. (And as an aside, the previews for the next Captain America and X-Men look very promising.)
The pic that first got him in trouble came out when he posted it himself, probably intending it to be direct-message only rather than publicly viewable.
This. I'd love to be able to share my Steam library with my wife and daughter, but with some usage controls. Neither one has a Steam account right now, and, ideally, I'd like to be able to set up sub-account, including some parental controls regarding game ratings, time limits, and the like.
But the real problem here is, as many others have mentioned, that Family Sharing isn't really sharing if only one user can access the library at a time. I completely understand not allowing simultaneous use of a game, but the entire library? If I'm playing Left4Dead2, why should that lock my daughter out of Peggle?
I don't think you quite understand what Calibre really is. Think of whatever program you use to organize your music collection - whether it's Windows Media Player or Amarok or iTunes or whatever. Now substitute "e-book collection" for music collection, and you'll be close. The difference is that Calibre is primarily an organizational tool. You can import ebooks from dozens of different formats, convert from one format to another, and keep them all organized in one library.
So to address your concerns, both really depend on the format of the document. Calibre supports just about any format you could think to throw at it, so if you pick a format that supports annotations, you won't have any trouble. You mention PDF and PDF/A - either one can be imported into your Calibre library.
I make heavy use of Calibre at work. I have imported tons of internally created MS Word documents with different policies and forms we use, PDF manuals for hardware and software, plain text files, just about anything.
Another great feature I haven't seen mentioned much in the thread is Calibre's ability to subscribe to a page and automatically download it for offline reading. Combine that with Dropbox syncing files to my phone, and it's the closest I've found to the now-defunct (and much missed) Newsroom.