Another nitpick: I think it'd be legitimate to count several other people as people who "have magic", even if not actually wizards -- definitely Sauron, for one, and the Lord of the Nazgul too. I'll leave it to the sibling posts to argue about elven "magic":-) though I will observe that the "magic" duel between Luthien and Sauron is noteworthy.
I do not doubt at all that this is censorship by a company.
Well, really, it's not censorship by a company. That would be when a company prohibits the use of the number in its own circles and fires employees who break the rule, or delete posts on forums that they host.
This is most definitely censorship by the government, by means of the DMCA. It so happens that it is for the benefit of a company. As soon as the government starts passing laws (and especially once they start being enforced), that's government censorship.
Re:Wikipedia article on 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8
on
Censoring a Number
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· Score: 1
It's been permanently removed now, thanks to the actions of the public-spirited^W^Wimperialist lackey John Reaves. But it's still available in the page history.
Oh, that's easy: because it takes a lot longer to type "... " than it takes to type "... " into the <title> tag. (Though that's still not as long as it took me to type this comment.)
I take it you didn't look at the "Compression Efficiency" graph at the bottom of each page.
Of course they don't seem to reveal their methodology for calculating that graph, but even a glance at the other tables will show that, for example, Stuffit is almost always much faster saves very nearly as much space as 7-Zip (sometimes more). That's why comparisons like this are interesting.
What's the big deal? You have the permissions and can take the trouble to install the enormously bloated DivX package, but not VLC, which will happily deal with pretty much anything? Sorry, but it sounds like it takes very little to irk you.
Stuff carved into stone has a very, very low survival ratio -- orders of magnitude lower than you're probably expecting. Clay is even worse. It lasts through almost nothing, other than by astounding flukes. (The only reason any survives at all is because, well, astounding flukes happen.)
Who's forcing you to have your web browser filling the whole screen? Just make the window narrower. Works fine for me. If you start adding five-centimetre margins to every chunk of text on the web, that's just going to piss off those who are looking at a different-sized window.
(5) None of the above. There was no "like". The phrase was, "jacking off a bobcat" -- "jack off" as transitive, not reflexive. Lovely image, I might start using it too.
"If" can be a lot more nuanced than you think. There are numerous types of conditionals, the main categories being "simple" ("If A is true, then B is true") and "contrary to fact", also known as "unfulfilled" ("If A were true, then B would be true, but A is not true"). The ggpp's sentence is clearly of the first type (its avoidance of the subjunctive is not the determining factor, as people rarely use the subjunctive in English; but people do use other similar periphrases for unfulfilled conditions). Moreover, a new paragraph starting, "Furthermore, if..." carries a clear implication that the premise is not in any doubt: "If it is indeed the case that A is true, then...". I stand by my comment, though posting this one without a karma bonus as it's off-topic.
... and I think they've made a pretty good start. I'm now finding that my students are e-mailing assignments to me (which they're not supposed to do, but that's another story) in OpenDocument format. That in itself tells me they're not using MS Office. But what's more, the layout in the document makes it pretty clear that they weren't using OpenOffice either -- all the manual line-breaks look suspiciously like... a web interface, maybe?...
Furthermore, if this cannot export to PDF or PowerPoint, it's pretty much useless.
Where does the information that it can't export to PDF or PowerPoint format come from? I can't find that in TFA. Google Documents and Spreadsheets can certainly export to MS Office, OpenDocument, PDF and other formats, so it would certainly surprise me if this couldn't too.
Still, after all these years, the phrase "hard core badass gamer" calls to my mind the image of someone effortlessly ripping through levels 20-30 of Defender with more lives than will fit on the screen, and blowing the planet up just to get more points from the mutants. It's hard to say why, as these days I find that style of game almost completely un-fun; I know back in the early 80s I remember gaping awestruck at the m4d sk1llz of people who played like that in arcades.
I think, on the whole, I personally prefer the approach in modern gaming that allows players to experience the whole game. If I wanted a sense of achievement I'd get around to finish writing a book.:-) For me gaming is more an alternative to TV, so I guess narrative experience is important. Interesting how one's own perspectives shift over time.
I think the AC's point is perfectly valid. I know in the time I've been visiting/. I've posted sufficient clues for anyone to deduce precisely who I am -- not that I particularly mind, as I didn't choose my nick for anonymity.
And yes, there's a danger in that: the danger of temper tantrums, mostly. If you've never lost your temper online, you're a better person than I am. (I basically just figure as long as I don't say things that are too much more outrageous than what a lot of colleagues say on professional-oriented mailing lists every day, I should be OK.:-)
Alternatively, a story like this might prompt someone to say "Reverse the polarity of the moderation flow!" suggesting moderators go nuts modding up trolls and flamebait and modding down everything else. (That would actually be pretty funny. Read More -- 10 of 381 comments).
The mod system is designed to prevent that -- moderators don't go nuts so much when mod points are limited. And I'm very glad of this; if the comments in/. articles ever start looking like this, I'll be taking a break from/. for a few months.
That's a very intriguing suggestion. I say that particularly thinking of some courses I'm teaching at the moment which have an unusually high failure rate because the subject is more work than 80% of students expect (and government regulations prohibit me from allowing students to drop out after the second week). I think I'd still need to supplement it with some form of, say, oral interview at the end -- maybe I could call it a "viva"! --, but it would be worth investigating as a potential way of addressing a very specific problem that I'm having. So, thank you for the suggestion. I doubt my colleagues will go for it but I may well give it a shot.
I don't think it would work as a more general strategy, because of the social role that universities have to fulfil: most students don't go to university to become expert in a field, they go to get a piece of paper. For students with the latter motivation, I'm still inclined to think exams and term papers are the most appropriate tactic.
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Another nitpick: I think it'd be legitimate to count several other people as people who "have magic", even if not actually wizards -- definitely Sauron, for one, and the Lord of the Nazgul too. I'll leave it to the sibling posts to argue about elven "magic" :-) though I will observe that the "magic" duel between Luthien and Sauron is noteworthy.
Well, really, it's not censorship by a company. That would be when a company prohibits the use of the number in its own circles and fires employees who break the rule, or delete posts on forums that they host.
This is most definitely censorship by the government, by means of the DMCA. It so happens that it is for the benefit of a company. As soon as the government starts passing laws (and especially once they start being enforced), that's government censorship.
It's been permanently removed now, thanks to the actions of the public-spirited^W^Wimperialist lackey John Reaves. But it's still available in the page history.
It's nearly 10,000 now ...
Just at a guess, I'd say it only gets modded redundant/offtopic if you don't include "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" in your post.
Oh, that's easy: because it takes a lot longer to type " ... " than it takes to type " ... " into the <title> tag. (Though that's still not as long as it took me to type this comment.)
That's very interesting. Looks like WinRAR is sitting in a pretty sweet spot in that hyperbola.
I take it you come from a planet where very few people use Windows. Please, I'm curious to know, what are things like there?
I take it you didn't look at the "Compression Efficiency" graph at the bottom of each page.
Of course they don't seem to reveal their methodology for calculating that graph, but even a glance at the other tables will show that, for example, Stuffit is almost always much faster saves very nearly as much space as 7-Zip (sometimes more). That's why comparisons like this are interesting.
Wow. That's almost as silly as making armour out of glass, or ebony ...
Well, I'd venture a guess that it's not being played at the native sample rate ...
What's the big deal? You have the permissions and can take the trouble to install the enormously bloated DivX package, but not VLC, which will happily deal with pretty much anything? Sorry, but it sounds like it takes very little to irk you.
That is untrue: the whole site is blocked. Note what the blocked URL is.
Stuff carved into stone has a very, very low survival ratio -- orders of magnitude lower than you're probably expecting. Clay is even worse. It lasts through almost nothing, other than by astounding flukes. (The only reason any survives at all is because, well, astounding flukes happen.)
Hmm, maybe you could pass on the message to them that "Bianca" is Italian and "Casandra" Spanish ... just in case they don't know.
Who's forcing you to have your web browser filling the whole screen? Just make the window narrower. Works fine for me. If you start adding five-centimetre margins to every chunk of text on the web, that's just going to piss off those who are looking at a different-sized window.
(5) None of the above. There was no "like". The phrase was, "jacking off a bobcat" -- "jack off" as transitive, not reflexive. Lovely image, I might start using it too.
"If" can be a lot more nuanced than you think. There are numerous types of conditionals, the main categories being "simple" ("If A is true, then B is true") and "contrary to fact", also known as "unfulfilled" ("If A were true, then B would be true, but A is not true"). The ggpp's sentence is clearly of the first type (its avoidance of the subjunctive is not the determining factor, as people rarely use the subjunctive in English; but people do use other similar periphrases for unfulfilled conditions). Moreover, a new paragraph starting, "Furthermore, if ..." carries a clear implication that the premise is not in any doubt: "If it is indeed the case that A is true, then ...". I stand by my comment, though posting this one without a karma bonus as it's off-topic.
... and I think they've made a pretty good start. I'm now finding that my students are e-mailing assignments to me (which they're not supposed to do, but that's another story) in OpenDocument format. That in itself tells me they're not using MS Office. But what's more, the layout in the document makes it pretty clear that they weren't using OpenOffice either -- all the manual line-breaks look suspiciously like ... a web interface, maybe?...
Where does the information that it can't export to PDF or PowerPoint format come from? I can't find that in TFA. Google Documents and Spreadsheets can certainly export to MS Office, OpenDocument, PDF and other formats, so it would certainly surprise me if this couldn't too.
Still, after all these years, the phrase "hard core badass gamer" calls to my mind the image of someone effortlessly ripping through levels 20-30 of Defender with more lives than will fit on the screen, and blowing the planet up just to get more points from the mutants. It's hard to say why, as these days I find that style of game almost completely un-fun; I know back in the early 80s I remember gaping awestruck at the m4d sk1llz of people who played like that in arcades.
I think, on the whole, I personally prefer the approach in modern gaming that allows players to experience the whole game. If I wanted a sense of achievement I'd get around to finish writing a book. :-) For me gaming is more an alternative to TV, so I guess narrative experience is important. Interesting how one's own perspectives shift over time.
I think the AC's point is perfectly valid. I know in the time I've been visiting /. I've posted sufficient clues for anyone to deduce precisely who I am -- not that I particularly mind, as I didn't choose my nick for anonymity.
And yes, there's a danger in that: the danger of temper tantrums, mostly. If you've never lost your temper online, you're a better person than I am. (I basically just figure as long as I don't say things that are too much more outrageous than what a lot of colleagues say on professional-oriented mailing lists every day, I should be OK. :-)
The mod system is designed to prevent that -- moderators don't go nuts so much when mod points are limited. And I'm very glad of this; if the comments in /. articles ever start looking like this, I'll be taking a break from /. for a few months.
"Term paper" is the American term for an "essay" (but specifically "essay" in the red-brick sense of the word, not the Oxbrigian sense).
That's a very intriguing suggestion. I say that particularly thinking of some courses I'm teaching at the moment which have an unusually high failure rate because the subject is more work than 80% of students expect (and government regulations prohibit me from allowing students to drop out after the second week). I think I'd still need to supplement it with some form of, say, oral interview at the end -- maybe I could call it a "viva"! --, but it would be worth investigating as a potential way of addressing a very specific problem that I'm having. So, thank you for the suggestion. I doubt my colleagues will go for it but I may well give it a shot.
I don't think it would work as a more general strategy, because of the social role that universities have to fulfil: most students don't go to university to become expert in a field, they go to get a piece of paper. For students with the latter motivation, I'm still inclined to think exams and term papers are the most appropriate tactic.