Sure, fiber to my house would be even better. However, demanding such build-outs I think is less then realistic right now. Some day perhaps. Right now, utilizing copper wire to bridge the last mile is just more suitable.
You don't get fiber directly to your house, the expense of doing that kind of build out is just too high. So, they lay fiber to the local DSLAM, and then use vdsl to bridge the 'last mile' from the DSLAM to your house.
Me.
I've just had vsdl service installed, which utilizes QWest's FTTN(Fiber To The Node) service. The DSLAM is about 2 blocks away from my house. I'm getting 20mbit down/5 mbit up.
It's awesome. I see it as the future of DSL, simply bridging the last mile problem from fiber nodes.
This is the exact system used in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Which was also an evolution from a potion system in X-Men Legends 2.
That said, it's actually a very *good* system. I approve.
This is a very astute point, and something that is lost on today's society. Apparently history should be studied more. For example, throughout history there have been times when it was very very common for an older man to marry a much younger woman. Pretty much the norm in fact. I'm not actually a serious history buff, so I'll leave it to someone else to cite specific references on this one.(Think middle ages if I remember correctly.)
So yes, this 'being attracted to a matured teenager is an aberration' thing is a recent invention. Probably due to the fact that we now live a huge amount of time longer, and teenagers actually are still considered children because of this.
Someone mentioned the obvious choice of libraries digitizing their collections. I think this is inevitable. I mean, really, think about what this article is about.. the speed at which people expect information to be collected. Isn't the ability to search text a beautiful gift of technology? It seems to me that what we're actually talking about is the medium in which the information comes from, as well as the reliability of the source. If libraries *did* digitize their collected works, wouldn't we treat that collection with the same respect of accuracy as we do in book form?
Just something to think about.
So, even if this *isn't* an actual root kit, it does install some software that is a little more 'gung ho' about the whole DRM thing, which I'm definitely not thrilled to hear about. Add this in with the widescreen FOV issues from before(or more specifically how the company handled those inquiries, re: badly) and we have a game I've totally lost interest in. I'm very, very glad I didn't buy it, and do not plan to. It could be the most awesome game on the planet, but I have other cool games. In the end, I'm tired of being treated in this fashion by game companies. I refuse to support them in these actions.
The last time that I moved apartments, it was to move in with a friend of mine. We talked about it briefly, and decided we didn't want cable. Oh, we have a cable *modem*, but no actual broadcast television stations. Honestly, I have not ever missed it, and it's been about 3 years now. Oh, there's the occasional show that I want to see, and I try an episode online here or from a friend's DVD collection there. If I like it, I rent or buy it, and watch it. Or just watch it at a friends house. I watch a bit of Anime now and then as well.
By and large however, TV is really no longer a way I spend a lot of my time. I really, really enjoy the lack of advertising bombarding me in my life.
This mis-identified defendant issue is a bit worrying. I mean, let's say you're tracking information on a p2p network. Now, you write your own client, and sit there tracking what IP address sends you data from downloading a specific file(that is supposedly copyrighted). At that point, you have the data block(s), and can compare them against the final downloaded file, which you can verify with it's file hash. And you have the IP, and the date/time you got it from them.(Let's assume this is a p2p protocol where the client you get the data from is definitely the one that actually has the data purposely shared, and not one like say Freenet, where it's passed often by other clients)
Then you go to the ISP, and query who had that IP address at that time. For bonus points, you ask if they have any traffic logs that will verify the IP address was participating on the appropriate ports for that p2p network.
All that data seems enough to validly go to court. You still have to link a person successfully to the ip address, but the base level identification is enough to have a valid name to at least start with.
So the overwhelming question for me, is how they can get it so wrong? If this is the wrong person, and they are not even a subscriber to a comcast cable modem, how is their name in the RIAA's possession? I'm throwing out the wacky idea that they are suing via random selection in the phone book:P(which would garner them insanely bad press, and make judges in courtrooms very, very angry with them)
Obviously you have to treat each case on it's own merits, and making assumptions about guilt/innocence is a dangerous thing indeed. Also, we are not counting the times when an adult is the target in court, but it turns out it's the child of the adult who is the infringing person. But still, these *completely* erroneous identifications are very worrying. Just who are the RIAA getting their information from?
After watching 8 seasons of the main series, I thought they pretty much wrapped things up quite nicely. It *felt* like an ending I could accept, and even like quite a bit. When I heard there was going to be a 9th season, and the storyline that it would entail, I was quite frankly a bit disgusted. I thought the 'bad ancients' idea was silly, and just meant to extract more cash from a series that was going to 'jump the shark' so to speak.
Add to that fact that Richard Dean Anderson was on his way out of the show, and to be honest, it was over at that point. His character added something to the whole thing, call it maybe the reality check. O'Neil just kind of refused to take things seriously 100% of the time, and added a great amount of quips, and humor.
This is something I've often considered about commercial encryption software. There's just no way to be sure of their validity, as they are closed source implementations. Open source solutions like Truecrypthttp://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/ are at least somewhat more trustworthy, in that they can be openly reviewed by anyone. Despite the fact that I know jack all about the specific math behind AES and such, at least I can read some simple explanations of the concepts, read the source, and decide if I want to trust my data to it. Honestly, unless we get down to the fraction of the population that actually does understand these bits at a deep level, that's the best any of us can do really.
Sure, large clusters of powerful servers working in tandem(or quantum computing) may render the factoral math behind crypto obsolete. A nice thing though, is that those kind of solutions are limited to those that can afford them. Still, even if it's all true, and I'm wasting my time encrypting things, what better solutions do we have?
Eve actually isn't that dull, but it's also a game that refuses to hold your hand. Gameplay is whatever you choose to do, so there's no overarcing plot or guide to steer you towards something really. Combat for example, seems simple at first. However, as you play more and more, and understand the mechanics more, you find that combat is anything but simple. Simply autopiloting around a target, and going afk while your weapons fire only works very early on. After that you have to start thinking about ship loadouts, traversal velocities, what modules to activitate when, distances relative to your target, damage type selection, what to harden your ship against, etc. I too remember being initally bored with combat. Then I started fighting real opponents, and that's when things got very exciting.
Anyway, Eve has a high learning curve, and tries not to throw it at you all at once. It's a strength, but also a flaw. It's a game of patience in many ways, and not instant gratification like some other games.
So when 3 came out and I snagged it, I was a bit disappointed. For starters, the memory limitations of doing a dual pc/console development, meant that the levels felt... cramped. This was in sharp, sharp contrast to the previous two games that were famous for larger, more sprawling/free form level design. Was a big *ouch* to say the least.
Secondly, the first two games had quite a few places where you could swim under water for a variety of reasons. It was fairly important as a gameplay bit. In the 3rd one, I walked into ankle deep water, and the game promptly informed me that I had died/passed out, and put me straight into jail:P Total destruction of any immersion there.
And lastly, the climbing gloves... First two games had you using what were called 'rope arrows'.(Arrow, rope tied to it, you get the idea) Also was a fairly useful/important gameplay feature, for a variety of designed for and not designed for puzzles/situations. Was an awesome feature. In the 3rd? They scrapped it entirely, citing issues getting it to work with the new physics engine. So we got... climbing gloves! Which were only useful in one instance, and pretty much a waste of time for the rest of the game.(The one instance was enforced, you *had* to use them to continue in the game)
The only thing that saved Thief3 from itself, was the Cradle level. If it wasn't for that, I'd say it was a waste of money. But, I still have a copy, just for that level really.
Incorrect, online friends are fine. I'm just saying that they are different. In a real life interraction over an extended period of time,(Like for example, seeing someone every day for many, many hours at a time, or getting engaged, and then spending 2 weeks solid with them and their family) you can't really hide much about yourself too effectively. They will see the real you, your good points and bad ones. While this is a bit of a generalization, it's usually true.
Not so in an online interaction. People will only see the things you choose to type, to talk about. You can gloss over things quite easily, and display a personality that may not be the 100% real you. This is a great advantage in fact of online relationships, and also something that can hinder them.
The two types of interaction are simply quite different, and involve different levels of scale as far as your involvement with someone.
Okay, so I've seen quite a few comments to the effect of, 'Games are just another way to spend your free time'. This is true, and people can quite frankly become addicted to pretty much anything. Most addictions to games, movies, books, trying to take over the world, happen because the person in question isn't really.. well, grounded in life. They start to view their hobby(games for example) as the way deal with things, rather then really deal with them. Generally, they were probably unstable to begin with, and then they turned to games.
Another comment I see, is that games ala mmorpgs, can be highly social. This is true, however it's actually a serious problem. Interaction with people online is a very different animal from in person interaction. If someone who is incredibly socially inept suddenly attempts to have a social life through an mmorpg... well, they are in for a surprise when it comes to real life relationships/interaction. People can 'put their best foot forward' in a game, a virtual environment. This is much harder to do in person.
This doesn't mean that online relationships are doomed to fail or anything. I've known several people whom met online and are very happy together. But, they were usually fairly stable people to begin with, and met each other as soon as possible. Also, they preferred real life interaction over a virtual/long distance one. This is an important point I think.
Regardless, trying to expose people to real life things they've never experienced before could probably work, as they will realise there is life after that last round of counter strike. On the other hand, the 12 step programs seem kind of iffy. I don't think gamers need to permanently give up their fun. Rather, they just need to realise other types of fun as well, and try to lead a more balanced life.
Anyway, that's just my 2 coppers on the subject. Sorry if it's a bit rantish.
Does this still work with hardware supported Data Execution Protection enabled I wonder? Just curious. Seems like the kind of thing it's supposed to trigger against. I know that with it enabled, I can't profile a visual studio project I'm working on, as the profiling app hooks into the memory of the app I'm working on. Not sure if this is a similar thing though. But still, seems like something that should be a clear separation between executable and data segments of memory.
I work for [CENSORED*], and we use the open source app [CENSORED*] by snagging it's source, modifying it a bit, and then deploying it internally, and only internally.(We don't distribute it outside of the company, so there is no one to whom we would have to give out our source to) This allows us to [CENSORED*] the [CENSORED*], and get [CENSORED*] on [CENSORED*]. It's a profitable business, as you can tell.
* These censored bits brought to you by men in black coats, and my NDA. Enjoy!
So I'm a programmer, and also end up staring at the screen for long periods of time. I usually wear contacts when I feel like it, and have discovered how to keep the comfort levels up for longer periods of time. Firstly, using some of the newer lenses(acuvue, with hydraclear, etc) does help. What helps the most though, is not using the 'multipurpose all in one' cleaners to keep my lenses in good condition. I found that they just didn't work very well, and would give me eye irritation/problems after a while. Mostly, just because they were not actually cleaning the contact lenses to any level of satisfaction.
What does seem to work, is peroxide based cleaners. Some of these are AMO Ultracare, and Ciba's AOSept apparently. I've been using Ultracare, and like it a lot. Sadly, some of Ciba's products had a serious contamination problem at their factory, and were pulled from the shelves. This in turn has apparently caused a shortage of Ultracare, which I use. Haven't been able to find any peroxide based contact lens cleaner, online or offline, for about 2 months almost? So I'm back to glasses again:( Hopefully supply problems will be resolved, and I'll be able to comfortably wear my contacts again.
Hrm... it seems as if you haven't read the entire article. The writer comes to the same conclusions, that terrorist rogues are unlikely to put forth the time, resources, and money to make working biological agents. What they are more afraid of, is another massive arms race. A large well funded nation putting forth large amounts of resources to do a biological manhatten project of sorts, and to paraphrase the article, 'we'd be in deep shit'.
Something that seems to be missing from all MMORPGS, is stories. Tabletop role play was about epic stories, and interaction with people on your adventures. MMORPGS seem to be about killing things and collecting loot. I didn't play DnD with friends for getting cool magical swords. After all, all it took was writing in a cool item on your character sheet to 'have it' anyway. Also, DM's are famous for scaling their adventures to the players stats/skills/items anyway, so leveling up was simply a way to keep score, not the goal in mind.
I played such games for *stories*. Things to tantalize my mind, to experience in a more direct role. I look at a role playing session as like experiencing an epic tale that I can have a direct hand in. All attempts to recreate that in a digital form for MMORPGS have failed dismally in my opinion. Even WoW.
Is it so hard to create some gameplay that is more like playing the Baldur's Gate style games? Or Planescape Torment? Most of the single player RPG's manage this pretty well. What about NWN? That game has managed a multiplayer component that has virtually no rivals in the digital age, purely from it's lack of centralized multiplayer, and by allowing players to create their own content. These are all food for thought I think, although I'll stop rambling now about this, as I could go on for a while.
Using Microsoft's e-reader app, reading ebooks is actually quite pleasant. On my palm, also not a bad experience. However, the few times I've tried to purchase some, the DRM really got in the way. As in, made the.LIT reader crash alot, and so on. Also, the price of the ebook was pretty out of wack. Why buy for $10 what you can buy for $5 or $6, especially when the paper form is probably going to give you less headaches?
I love it! Keyless entry! Erm wait, what happens when the power and/or batteries for the electronic 'knock' system is dead? Hrm... guess I should start carrying AA batteries around.
So, in 2005 I went to E3 for the first time. I didn't feel too much like an outsider, my company was there to do business, and I had an industry invite, etc. I was excited, and curious to see what it was all about. While there were many cool things about the show, I ended up disappointed for three reasons. First was of course, the booth babes. I thought it was a bit silly. Now, I'm a man, and enjoy looking at women, however having scantily clad women there with absolutely no real interest in the industry whatsoever was actually a turn off.
However, that wasn't actually the worst detractor from the show. The noise levels, and the blaring loud stage performances were just way too much. I couldn't take more then an hour straight of being in the larger show halls, and had to go outside just to keep my ears from bleeding. The noise made it highly difficult to meet with the various people who actually wanted to talk about their upcoming games in any detail, and have normal conversations.
Lastly, something that I just didn't think about before going, was that there is no place to *sit down*. I mean, I don't mind wandering the show floor, but if I'm going to stop for a while in a booth or view/play something, I kind of expect to be able to have a small break given to my feet:P
Anyway, here's hoping that the booth babe restrictions/changes, while not the most annoying thing about the show, will lead to alleviations of the other 2 larger issues(in my opinion anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, fiber to my house would be even better. However, demanding such build-outs I think is less then realistic right now. Some day perhaps. Right now, utilizing copper wire to bridge the last mile is just more suitable.
You don't get fiber directly to your house, the expense of doing that kind of build out is just too high. So, they lay fiber to the local DSLAM, and then use vdsl to bridge the 'last mile' from the DSLAM to your house.
Me. I've just had vsdl service installed, which utilizes QWest's FTTN(Fiber To The Node) service. The DSLAM is about 2 blocks away from my house. I'm getting 20mbit down/5 mbit up. It's awesome. I see it as the future of DSL, simply bridging the last mile problem from fiber nodes.
This is the exact system used in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Which was also an evolution from a potion system in X-Men Legends 2. That said, it's actually a very *good* system. I approve.
This is a very astute point, and something that is lost on today's society. Apparently history should be studied more. For example, throughout history there have been times when it was very very common for an older man to marry a much younger woman. Pretty much the norm in fact. I'm not actually a serious history buff, so I'll leave it to someone else to cite specific references on this one.(Think middle ages if I remember correctly.)
So yes, this 'being attracted to a matured teenager is an aberration' thing is a recent invention. Probably due to the fact that we now live a huge amount of time longer, and teenagers actually are still considered children because of this.
Someone mentioned the obvious choice of libraries digitizing their collections. I think this is inevitable. I mean, really, think about what this article is about.. the speed at which people expect information to be collected. Isn't the ability to search text a beautiful gift of technology? It seems to me that what we're actually talking about is the medium in which the information comes from, as well as the reliability of the source. If libraries *did* digitize their collected works, wouldn't we treat that collection with the same respect of accuracy as we do in book form? Just something to think about.
So, even if this *isn't* an actual root kit, it does install some software that is a little more 'gung ho' about the whole DRM thing, which I'm definitely not thrilled to hear about. Add this in with the widescreen FOV issues from before(or more specifically how the company handled those inquiries, re: badly) and we have a game I've totally lost interest in. I'm very, very glad I didn't buy it, and do not plan to. It could be the most awesome game on the planet, but I have other cool games. In the end, I'm tired of being treated in this fashion by game companies. I refuse to support them in these actions.
http://www.bittornado.com/
There, that should tide us over for a while.
The last time that I moved apartments, it was to move in with a friend of mine. We talked about it briefly, and decided we didn't want cable. Oh, we have a cable *modem*, but no actual broadcast television stations. Honestly, I have not ever missed it, and it's been about 3 years now. Oh, there's the occasional show that I want to see, and I try an episode online here or from a friend's DVD collection there. If I like it, I rent or buy it, and watch it. Or just watch it at a friends house. I watch a bit of Anime now and then as well.
By and large however, TV is really no longer a way I spend a lot of my time. I really, really enjoy the lack of advertising bombarding me in my life.
Just my 2 cents.
This mis-identified defendant issue is a bit worrying. I mean, let's say you're tracking information on a p2p network. Now, you write your own client, and sit there tracking what IP address sends you data from downloading a specific file(that is supposedly copyrighted). At that point, you have the data block(s), and can compare them against the final downloaded file, which you can verify with it's file hash. And you have the IP, and the date/time you got it from them.(Let's assume this is a p2p protocol where the client you get the data from is definitely the one that actually has the data purposely shared, and not one like say Freenet, where it's passed often by other clients)
:P(which would garner them insanely bad press, and make judges in courtrooms very, very angry with them)
Then you go to the ISP, and query who had that IP address at that time. For bonus points, you ask if they have any traffic logs that will verify the IP address was participating on the appropriate ports for that p2p network.
All that data seems enough to validly go to court. You still have to link a person successfully to the ip address, but the base level identification is enough to have a valid name to at least start with.
So the overwhelming question for me, is how they can get it so wrong? If this is the wrong person, and they are not even a subscriber to a comcast cable modem, how is their name in the RIAA's possession? I'm throwing out the wacky idea that they are suing via random selection in the phone book
Obviously you have to treat each case on it's own merits, and making assumptions about guilt/innocence is a dangerous thing indeed. Also, we are not counting the times when an adult is the target in court, but it turns out it's the child of the adult who is the infringing person. But still, these *completely* erroneous identifications are very worrying. Just who are the RIAA getting their information from?
After watching 8 seasons of the main series, I thought they pretty much wrapped things up quite nicely. It *felt* like an ending I could accept, and even like quite a bit. When I heard there was going to be a 9th season, and the storyline that it would entail, I was quite frankly a bit disgusted. I thought the 'bad ancients' idea was silly, and just meant to extract more cash from a series that was going to 'jump the shark' so to speak.
Add to that fact that Richard Dean Anderson was on his way out of the show, and to be honest, it was over at that point. His character added something to the whole thing, call it maybe the reality check. O'Neil just kind of refused to take things seriously 100% of the time, and added a great amount of quips, and humor.
Just let it die. It's over.
Hrm... I think the fact that you sat around thinking about this is just a whee bit disturbing :)
This is something I've often considered about commercial encryption software. There's just no way to be sure of their validity, as they are closed source implementations. Open source solutions like Truecrypthttp://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/ are at least somewhat more trustworthy, in that they can be openly reviewed by anyone. Despite the fact that I know jack all about the specific math behind AES and such, at least I can read some simple explanations of the concepts, read the source, and decide if I want to trust my data to it. Honestly, unless we get down to the fraction of the population that actually does understand these bits at a deep level, that's the best any of us can do really.
Sure, large clusters of powerful servers working in tandem(or quantum computing) may render the factoral math behind crypto obsolete. A nice thing though, is that those kind of solutions are limited to those that can afford them. Still, even if it's all true, and I'm wasting my time encrypting things, what better solutions do we have?
Eve actually isn't that dull, but it's also a game that refuses to hold your hand. Gameplay is whatever you choose to do, so there's no overarcing plot or guide to steer you towards something really. Combat for example, seems simple at first. However, as you play more and more, and understand the mechanics more, you find that combat is anything but simple. Simply autopiloting around a target, and going afk while your weapons fire only works very early on. After that you have to start thinking about ship loadouts, traversal velocities, what modules to activitate when, distances relative to your target, damage type selection, what to harden your ship against, etc. I too remember being initally bored with combat. Then I started fighting real opponents, and that's when things got very exciting.
Anyway, Eve has a high learning curve, and tries not to throw it at you all at once. It's a strength, but also a flaw. It's a game of patience in many ways, and not instant gratification like some other games.
Thief 1 + 2 were great games. Just spectacular.
:P Total destruction of any immersion there.
So when 3 came out and I snagged it, I was a bit disappointed. For starters, the memory limitations of doing a dual pc/console development, meant that the levels felt... cramped. This was in sharp, sharp contrast to the previous two games that were famous for larger, more sprawling/free form level design. Was a big *ouch* to say the least.
Secondly, the first two games had quite a few places where you could swim under water for a variety of reasons. It was fairly important as a gameplay bit. In the 3rd one, I walked into ankle deep water, and the game promptly informed me that I had died/passed out, and put me straight into jail
And lastly, the climbing gloves... First two games had you using what were called 'rope arrows'.(Arrow, rope tied to it, you get the idea) Also was a fairly useful/important gameplay feature, for a variety of designed for and not designed for puzzles/situations. Was an awesome feature. In the 3rd? They scrapped it entirely, citing issues getting it to work with the new physics engine. So we got... climbing gloves! Which were only useful in one instance, and pretty much a waste of time for the rest of the game.(The one instance was enforced, you *had* to use them to continue in the game)
The only thing that saved Thief3 from itself, was the Cradle level. If it wasn't for that, I'd say it was a waste of money. But, I still have a copy, just for that level really.
Just my 2cents.
Incorrect, online friends are fine. I'm just saying that they are different. In a real life interraction over an extended period of time,(Like for example, seeing someone every day for many, many hours at a time, or getting engaged, and then spending 2 weeks solid with them and their family) you can't really hide much about yourself too effectively. They will see the real you, your good points and bad ones. While this is a bit of a generalization, it's usually true.
Not so in an online interaction. People will only see the things you choose to type, to talk about. You can gloss over things quite easily, and display a personality that may not be the 100% real you. This is a great advantage in fact of online relationships, and also something that can hinder them.
The two types of interaction are simply quite different, and involve different levels of scale as far as your involvement with someone.
IANAS (I am not a shrink)
Okay, so I've seen quite a few comments to the effect of, 'Games are just another way to spend your free time'. This is true, and people can quite frankly become addicted to pretty much anything. Most addictions to games, movies, books, trying to take over the world, happen because the person in question isn't really.. well, grounded in life. They start to view their hobby(games for example) as the way deal with things, rather then really deal with them. Generally, they were probably unstable to begin with, and then they turned to games.
Another comment I see, is that games ala mmorpgs, can be highly social. This is true, however it's actually a serious problem. Interaction with people online is a very different animal from in person interaction. If someone who is incredibly socially inept suddenly attempts to have a social life through an mmorpg... well, they are in for a surprise when it comes to real life relationships/interaction. People can 'put their best foot forward' in a game, a virtual environment. This is much harder to do in person.
This doesn't mean that online relationships are doomed to fail or anything. I've known several people whom met online and are very happy together. But, they were usually fairly stable people to begin with, and met each other as soon as possible. Also, they preferred real life interaction over a virtual/long distance one. This is an important point I think.
Regardless, trying to expose people to real life things they've never experienced before could probably work, as they will realise there is life after that last round of counter strike. On the other hand, the 12 step programs seem kind of iffy. I don't think gamers need to permanently give up their fun. Rather, they just need to realise other types of fun as well, and try to lead a more balanced life.
Anyway, that's just my 2 coppers on the subject. Sorry if it's a bit rantish.
Does this still work with hardware supported Data Execution Protection enabled I wonder? Just curious. Seems like the kind of thing it's supposed to trigger against. I know that with it enabled, I can't profile a visual studio project I'm working on, as the profiling app hooks into the memory of the app I'm working on. Not sure if this is a similar thing though. But still, seems like something that should be a clear separation between executable and data segments of memory.
I work for [CENSORED*], and we use the open source app [CENSORED*] by snagging it's source, modifying it a bit, and then deploying it internally, and only internally.(We don't distribute it outside of the company, so there is no one to whom we would have to give out our source to) This allows us to [CENSORED*] the [CENSORED*], and get [CENSORED*] on [CENSORED*]. It's a profitable business, as you can tell.
* These censored bits brought to you by men in black coats, and my NDA. Enjoy!
So I'm a programmer, and also end up staring at the screen for long periods of time. I usually wear contacts when I feel like it, and have discovered how to keep the comfort levels up for longer periods of time. Firstly, using some of the newer lenses(acuvue, with hydraclear, etc) does help. What helps the most though, is not using the 'multipurpose all in one' cleaners to keep my lenses in good condition. I found that they just didn't work very well, and would give me eye irritation/problems after a while. Mostly, just because they were not actually cleaning the contact lenses to any level of satisfaction.
:( Hopefully supply problems will be resolved, and I'll be able to comfortably wear my contacts again.
What does seem to work, is peroxide based cleaners. Some of these are AMO Ultracare, and Ciba's AOSept apparently. I've been using Ultracare, and like it a lot. Sadly, some of Ciba's products had a serious contamination problem at their factory, and were pulled from the shelves. This in turn has apparently caused a shortage of Ultracare, which I use. Haven't been able to find any peroxide based contact lens cleaner, online or offline, for about 2 months almost? So I'm back to glasses again
Just my 2 coppers.
Hrm... it seems as if you haven't read the entire article. The writer comes to the same conclusions, that terrorist rogues are unlikely to put forth the time, resources, and money to make working biological agents. What they are more afraid of, is another massive arms race. A large well funded nation putting forth large amounts of resources to do a biological manhatten project of sorts, and to paraphrase the article, 'we'd be in deep shit'.
Something that seems to be missing from all MMORPGS, is stories. Tabletop role play was about epic stories, and interaction with people on your adventures. MMORPGS seem to be about killing things and collecting loot. I didn't play DnD with friends for getting cool magical swords. After all, all it took was writing in a cool item on your character sheet to 'have it' anyway. Also, DM's are famous for scaling their adventures to the players stats/skills/items anyway, so leveling up was simply a way to keep score, not the goal in mind.
I played such games for *stories*. Things to tantalize my mind, to experience in a more direct role. I look at a role playing session as like experiencing an epic tale that I can have a direct hand in. All attempts to recreate that in a digital form for MMORPGS have failed dismally in my opinion. Even WoW.
Is it so hard to create some gameplay that is more like playing the Baldur's Gate style games? Or Planescape Torment? Most of the single player RPG's manage this pretty well. What about NWN? That game has managed a multiplayer component that has virtually no rivals in the digital age, purely from it's lack of centralized multiplayer, and by allowing players to create their own content. These are all food for thought I think, although I'll stop rambling now about this, as I could go on for a while.
Using Microsoft's e-reader app, reading ebooks is actually quite pleasant. On my palm, also not a bad experience. However, the few times I've tried to purchase some, the DRM really got in the way. As in, made the .LIT reader crash alot, and so on. Also, the price of the ebook was pretty out of wack. Why buy for $10 what you can buy for $5 or $6, especially when the paper form is probably going to give you less headaches?
I love it! Keyless entry! Erm wait, what happens when the power and/or batteries for the electronic 'knock' system is dead? Hrm... guess I should start carrying AA batteries around.
So, in 2005 I went to E3 for the first time. I didn't feel too much like an outsider, my company was there to do business, and I had an industry invite, etc. I was excited, and curious to see what it was all about. While there were many cool things about the show, I ended up disappointed for three reasons. First was of course, the booth babes. I thought it was a bit silly. Now, I'm a man, and enjoy looking at women, however having scantily clad women there with absolutely no real interest in the industry whatsoever was actually a turn off.
:P
However, that wasn't actually the worst detractor from the show. The noise levels, and the blaring loud stage performances were just way too much. I couldn't take more then an hour straight of being in the larger show halls, and had to go outside just to keep my ears from bleeding. The noise made it highly difficult to meet with the various people who actually wanted to talk about their upcoming games in any detail, and have normal conversations.
Lastly, something that I just didn't think about before going, was that there is no place to *sit down*. I mean, I don't mind wandering the show floor, but if I'm going to stop for a while in a booth or view/play something, I kind of expect to be able to have a small break given to my feet
Anyway, here's hoping that the booth babe restrictions/changes, while not the most annoying thing about the show, will lead to alleviations of the other 2 larger issues(in my opinion anyway).