Just wanted to point out: UWB is another of those abbreviations that's quicker to write, but slower to say. I think the English-speaking world needs to redefine the way "W" is pronounced, before this interweb tubes thing takes off.
Power corrupts, some being more susceptible than others - give everyone the power to make changes, and you can guarantee they will not all be entirely scrupulous or responsible.
So you need some form of regulation to curb corruption. You introduce editors, moderators, whatever.
And then you have to ask: who watches the watchmen (quis custodiet custard or summat)
White Goods is a UK term for big domestic electrical appliances - washing machine, fride/freezer etc, so called because most of them are white, and some of them are good.
I'm not tracking usage because we made the changes as soon as we moved into our new house, so there's no baseline for comparison. What I can say is that the renewable-electricity supplier is a somewhat more expensive per kWh than conventional suppliers, but our bills compare favourably with those of other households in similar domestic situations.
A ceramic hob is no more/less efficient than a traditional coil job, because that's what they essentially are. They just have a big sheet of highly toughened glass on top that makes it a lot easier to keep clean, so they tend to last longer before becoming unhealthy, smoky, whatever. Ideally we would've liked a wood-burning Aga, but had nowhere convenient to vent, and they're very inconvenient. Better would be an induction hob as they really are efficient and very convenient for electical, but they're prohibitively expensive, especially when you've just moved house!
The solar heaters are remarkable things. I saw a demonstration tube (which was half the size of one tube, and you'd normally have a whole bank of full-size tubes) which had been sitting outside for a morning, and this was a completely overcast day. The heating element on the end was almost too hot to touch. Bloody ingenious things, I swear. As long as you're not a heavy user and you have a storage tank, you might never need a backup heater even in midwinter (we're up north, so the days are quite short in winter).
Our last place was a rented flat, and we had full CFL and only a couple of rooms. The quarterly electricity bill was laughably small, even with a fridge and PC on half the time. We didn't even budget for it after a while.
It's been our experience that most of what we squander energy on is useless waste. Leaving lights and appliances on unnecessarily, open windows in winter, rubbish insulation and single-glazing, over-sized over-specified inefficient white goods, heating on all day while nobody's in and all night while you're all in bed, and set too high to boot (put on a jumper!), and just generally being too lazy to be efficient or too short-sighted to invest in energy- and cost-efficient long-term solutions.
Most of my tight-fistedness comes from my Scottish & Yorkshire upbringing, but a nod in the direction of eco-friendliness does no harm. And I still eat meat, dammit.
Yes, those definitions do suck. Some innovative guy has gone "Maybe we're missing an opportunity here by assuming gamers fall into two categories" - fair enough - and then some firm has done a load of statistical dog-work to corroborate his theory.
Only it's just that - a theory, as embryonic and flawed as any initial bright idea that has yet to be properly researched. No doubt if he'd come up with 20 categories, the statistics could fit those just as well. This is hardly proof, is it?
Example? I'm definitely a gamer, and definitely fit into none of those categories. I love complex and challenging games, especially the latest FPS, RTS, novel non-genre, whatever. I prefer to play solo - I don't mind online games, but only as a way to extend the life-span of a perfectly enjoyable single-player. However, I probably buy about 4 new games a year, often that have recently entered the budget-titles stage (because I don't have that much money), and I play games for less than 10 hours a week because I just don't have the time.
Too much of a life to be a Power Gamer, too solo for Social, too indifferent about "new services" (what the hell is that supposed to mean?) for Leisure, too interested and deliberate to be Incidental, and who would seriously class and Occasional as a gamer? I might possibly fit into Dormant, but who wants to play with family/friends when gaming is an escape?
Okay, so I'm just one example, but anyone could've come up with a better list off-the-bat than the normal 2 categories, and followed it up by fitting the statistics. Why don't they consider doing the research first, and then trying to fit categories to the obvious correlations?
Too late for my opinion to be heard, but there's a serious omission in this discussion (I think).
Everyone - from the victim's family to the posters in/. - seems to be focusing on the murderer and how there was something wrong with him, I would never do that, yada yada yada.
What about the girl? She wasn't some random rape victim, she was his girlfriend. That would suggest to me (though it's not certain) that this violent-sex tendency was something she already knew about at the least, and probably willingly participated in to some degree. Who here, having such tendencies, would deliberately murder their partner in consensual violent sex? Isn't it more likely that this was an accident of recreation, rather than an act evil?
Please understand, I have every sympathy for the girl's family, and I can certainly see why they would want to pursue this course. However, I think the fact that this crime involved sex, and association with internet pornography, has hit some big buttons in those of a reactionary nature. I couldn't say for certain, but isn't it a reasonable possibility that this man's tendencies were also hers?
On a personal note, I have enjoyed, and occasionally still do, similar practices with my consenting partner. Is it dangerous? Well, it can be painful, even dangerous - as can bouldering, white-water rafting (these aren't sexual terms, as far as I'm aware!) and various other recreational activities. When I go climbing, I and my partner are aware of and accept the risks and, most importantly, trust one another enough to not seriously endanger each other deliberately or carelessly. We may die, it's true, but we're prepared for that and we take safety precautions where possible.
People are talking about this case as though this was an act inflicted upon an unwilling victim - and by association it is implied that all such acts have a similar element. I don't know if that's true or not in this particular case, but to make a sweeping, generalised law that restricts the actions of (I can't stress this enough) responsible, consenting adults in their pursuit of what they enjoy is legal folly at its worst.
I, for one, will continue to enjoy all manner of kinkiness. I will enjoy watching the occasional film clip of such acts, if I come across them, and if that means evading the law with simple steganography then so be it. I know that I'm responsible (and experienced) enough not to seriously endanger another's life in this activity, and certainly not against someone's will!
If (as it may be) the girl was not a willing participant, and (as it certainly seems) the guy was not responsible enough to treat her rights and wishes with care and respect, then socially and psychologically speaking he is a dangerous individual. This has nothing to do with his sexual preferences, however. I enjoy kinky sex, rock-climbing, riding fast on my bicycle without a helmet and so on. If I ever think I'm seriously endangering someone else's rights or liberties (or indeed my own) with my actions, I will stop - whatever it is I'm doing. He didn't. That's his problem - nothing to do with sex - and as such he should be treated as an amoral murderer or a deeply irresponsible manslaughterer (Murder 2, for you Americans), not a sex fiend who is a product of the evil interweb tubes.
In any case, I hardly think it is for parliament to decide to restrict everybody's right to enjoy themselves because one or two socially undeveloped individuals are unable to do so responsibly. They should be watched and guarded where possible, but anything else smacks of suspected-guilty-until-proven-otherwise. Aside from anything else, people who disregard the rigths and safety of another in spite of the law will continue to do so, whatever their fancy, even with this law in place.
As another poster said: Treat the causes, not the symptoms. It's our society that's churning out irresponsible people, not our laws.
What, like, all the time? Well, very few, probably.
See, that's the point. It has all these genes - all this complexity - because its adaptability to environmental changes and challenges is based on its genome, NOT its clever near-static design (like us humans). Its physical form, metabolism etc adapt according to whatever challenge it faces by "waking" different genes when they become necessary instead of creating new tools with its intelligence, so I would expect that the majority of its genes are not in use at any one time.
As a species, however, I expect that most of its (non-junk) DNA is useful at some point or other.
If that makes you feel inferior in some way, then take comfort in the theory that part of humans' junk DNA may have evolved as a response to some killer plague, which was eventually out-flanked by this DNA, which then became redundant. Should a similar plague arise again, that junk DNA may become active and adapt (in mutative evolutionary terms) to fight back, saving the species once more.
That's what this organism is doing - just in a far more active, everyday sense. Clever really.
Funny, but we're having a discussion about carbon-neutrality in the office.
<smug> Since we bought our house 3 months ago, we've replaced all the bulbs with CFLs (they do take a moment to warm up, but when you turn on the light in the morning in winter, that's a GOOD thing!), got a fantastically efficient electric/ceramic oven, some AA-efficiency white goods, started recycling etc etc etc, and we buy our electricity from a renewable-only supplier. Once we have the funds, we're going to look into solar water-heating so we can cut out gas altogether (we've not gone for an electric boiler, as gas is far more efficient in energy terms). </smug>
My real point is: we could go into the environmental cost of our electrical demands, but that's a whole different discussion. The question is, does your conscience prick you more than your wallet? Whatever your answer, don't preach either way please. People make up their minds from the outset and, apart from a the availability of information, there's nothing anyone can say to convince them otherwise. With all the hot air that gets generated over this issue we could power 2.5 million Libraries of Congress or a big light bulb that shines on the night-side of the Earth so we never need light-bulbs for our homes again, but it never seems to come to any good...
What a game that was though - and, to be fair, there are a couple of Race Against The Clock parts to the game, and they don't add much. They were added when it was appropriate - getting your buddy OUT of the factory, for example - and I don't think sneak-em-up style games like the entering-factory section of BGaE would do too well out of timed challenges. Besides, there were races to compete in as well... Also, it was an exceptional game in its own right - given when it was released, its graphics were interesting and fluid, the gameplay was original, intuitive, varied and fun, and the game as a whole just felt very fresh and professional. Making it more of a time-challenge would've made it harder to appreciate the fun and slickness of the game, and how much skilled development had gone into it. It's still one of my favourite games, and I would've undoubtedly enjoyed it less if there had been a clock hanging over my head all the time.
Yes, what happened to the eBay/Google scuffle over online payments? It's amazing how the power of commerce can bring net-giants together in a spirit of capitalism and mutual profit, in spite of all their differences and rivalries.
I agree - I had great service (once it was up) until I moved house. 3 months and they did nothing, in spite of several calls and booked engineers appointments. All this time, they were taking our cash, too. Eventually we cancelled, and they would only refund us our last month as they hadn't even bothered putting a note on the system to say that we'd been trying to get it changed! No solid records from our part, so no comeback.
So yes, they're fine as long as you don't ask them to do anything. But that's hardly a plaudit, is it?
As a 'dumb' Office user (apart from my other work, I have to slog away with Word & Excel a lot of the time, as mandated by the Board Room in the Sky), I have to ask: what difference does it make??
In any given hour of work in Word or Excel, do you know how often I use menus, buttons or anything outside the actual document/worksheet space? Maybe once or twice for Word, maybe only a little more for Excel. The reason? Shortcuts, people, shortcuts.
How office-monkeys can sit in their Dell Hells day after day, doing the same crap over and over again, without learning a) to touch type and b) how to do things a bit quicker and easier with the keyboard is absolutely beyond me.
What do I need from my UI? Leave it as it is. I have exactly two toolbars in either Word or Excel, and use a fraction of each (if I'm that concerned about screen space, I'll customise more carefully). Anything beyond my capabilities with keyboard and the odd button, I will happily use a menu for. Anyone who tells me how much easier and more intuitive Ribbons are to use, I say this: I've tried it, and I found them exactly as useful as the current UI, ie not at all.
No, this is not a "I don't need no stinkin' upgrades" rant. This is a "For God's sake, people, learn to use the tools you have properly and you'll work quicker, easier and not give a damn about this either" tirade.
No, it'll respond instantly.
(Or rather, it won't as this isn't the CPU we're talking about. You've just tripped my latest semantics-nazi pet-hate. Sorry.)
Yeah alright, at the surface, sure, but I think you're missing the point.
The classification of these bodies NEEDS to make some kind of abstract sense to people, since it gives us a "handle" with which to manipulate these thoughts in our minds. It may seem arbitrary, but you'll notice that all the definitions given - out of necessity - are given in terms of things to which we can relate. Spherical (ish), smaller than Mercury, centre of mass outside of the body etc. These are all things we can appreciate as solid criteria rather than abstract, even if they do become fuzzy right at the border; therefore they are not arbitrary definitions, which was rather the point of this re-classification. They allow us to apply labels with some degree of agreed certainty, and then we can move on.
I would agree, but it concerns me a little that they seem to be putting so much effort into revamping old ground with HDR again instead of moving on and doing bigger and better things - which, as they have previously demonstrated to the FPS community at large, they are more than capable of doing. Is this a sign that they don't have any bright ideas left? I sincerely hope not.
Slashdot Mirror
Just wanted to point out: UWB is another of those abbreviations that's quicker to write, but slower to say. I think the English-speaking world needs to redefine the way "W" is pronounced, before this interweb tubes thing takes off.
So you need some form of regulation to curb corruption. You introduce editors, moderators, whatever.
And then you have to ask: who watches the watchmen (quis custodiet custard or summat)
(Cue the usual /. Wikipedia flame-war)
After all, the escape countdown was generous enough, right?
I'm not tracking usage because we made the changes as soon as we moved into our new house, so there's no baseline for comparison. What I can say is that the renewable-electricity supplier is a somewhat more expensive per kWh than conventional suppliers, but our bills compare favourably with those of other households in similar domestic situations.
A ceramic hob is no more/less efficient than a traditional coil job, because that's what they essentially are. They just have a big sheet of highly toughened glass on top that makes it a lot easier to keep clean, so they tend to last longer before becoming unhealthy, smoky, whatever. Ideally we would've liked a wood-burning Aga, but had nowhere convenient to vent, and they're very inconvenient. Better would be an induction hob as they really are efficient and very convenient for electical, but they're prohibitively expensive, especially when you've just moved house!
The solar heaters are remarkable things. I saw a demonstration tube (which was half the size of one tube, and you'd normally have a whole bank of full-size tubes) which had been sitting outside for a morning, and this was a completely overcast day. The heating element on the end was almost too hot to touch. Bloody ingenious things, I swear. As long as you're not a heavy user and you have a storage tank, you might never need a backup heater even in midwinter (we're up north, so the days are quite short in winter).
Our last place was a rented flat, and we had full CFL and only a couple of rooms. The quarterly electricity bill was laughably small, even with a fridge and PC on half the time. We didn't even budget for it after a while.
It's been our experience that most of what we squander energy on is useless waste. Leaving lights and appliances on unnecessarily, open windows in winter, rubbish insulation and single-glazing, over-sized over-specified inefficient white goods, heating on all day while nobody's in and all night while you're all in bed, and set too high to boot (put on a jumper!), and just generally being too lazy to be efficient or too short-sighted to invest in energy- and cost-efficient long-term solutions.
Most of my tight-fistedness comes from my Scottish & Yorkshire upbringing, but a nod in the direction of eco-friendliness does no harm. And I still eat meat, dammit.
Only it's just that - a theory, as embryonic and flawed as any initial bright idea that has yet to be properly researched. No doubt if he'd come up with 20 categories, the statistics could fit those just as well. This is hardly proof, is it?
Example? I'm definitely a gamer, and definitely fit into none of those categories. I love complex and challenging games, especially the latest FPS, RTS, novel non-genre, whatever. I prefer to play solo - I don't mind online games, but only as a way to extend the life-span of a perfectly enjoyable single-player. However, I probably buy about 4 new games a year, often that have recently entered the budget-titles stage (because I don't have that much money), and I play games for less than 10 hours a week because I just don't have the time.
Too much of a life to be a Power Gamer, too solo for Social, too indifferent about "new services" (what the hell is that supposed to mean?) for Leisure, too interested and deliberate to be Incidental, and who would seriously class and Occasional as a gamer? I might possibly fit into Dormant, but who wants to play with family/friends when gaming is an escape?
Okay, so I'm just one example, but anyone could've come up with a better list off-the-bat than the normal 2 categories, and followed it up by fitting the statistics. Why don't they consider doing the research first, and then trying to fit categories to the obvious correlations?
Everyone - from the victim's family to the posters in /. - seems to be focusing on the murderer and how there was something wrong with him, I would never do that, yada yada yada.
What about the girl? She wasn't some random rape victim, she was his girlfriend. That would suggest to me (though it's not certain) that this violent-sex tendency was something she already knew about at the least, and probably willingly participated in to some degree. Who here, having such tendencies, would deliberately murder their partner in consensual violent sex? Isn't it more likely that this was an accident of recreation, rather than an act evil?
Please understand, I have every sympathy for the girl's family, and I can certainly see why they would want to pursue this course. However, I think the fact that this crime involved sex, and association with internet pornography, has hit some big buttons in those of a reactionary nature. I couldn't say for certain, but isn't it a reasonable possibility that this man's tendencies were also hers?
On a personal note, I have enjoyed, and occasionally still do, similar practices with my consenting partner. Is it dangerous? Well, it can be painful, even dangerous - as can bouldering, white-water rafting (these aren't sexual terms, as far as I'm aware!) and various other recreational activities. When I go climbing, I and my partner are aware of and accept the risks and, most importantly, trust one another enough to not seriously endanger each other deliberately or carelessly. We may die, it's true, but we're prepared for that and we take safety precautions where possible.
People are talking about this case as though this was an act inflicted upon an unwilling victim - and by association it is implied that all such acts have a similar element. I don't know if that's true or not in this particular case, but to make a sweeping, generalised law that restricts the actions of (I can't stress this enough) responsible, consenting adults in their pursuit of what they enjoy is legal folly at its worst.
I, for one, will continue to enjoy all manner of kinkiness. I will enjoy watching the occasional film clip of such acts, if I come across them, and if that means evading the law with simple steganography then so be it. I know that I'm responsible (and experienced) enough not to seriously endanger another's life in this activity, and certainly not against someone's will!
If (as it may be) the girl was not a willing participant, and (as it certainly seems) the guy was not responsible enough to treat her rights and wishes with care and respect, then socially and psychologically speaking he is a dangerous individual. This has nothing to do with his sexual preferences, however. I enjoy kinky sex, rock-climbing, riding fast on my bicycle without a helmet and so on. If I ever think I'm seriously endangering someone else's rights or liberties (or indeed my own) with my actions, I will stop - whatever it is I'm doing. He didn't. That's his problem - nothing to do with sex - and as such he should be treated as an amoral murderer or a deeply irresponsible manslaughterer (Murder 2, for you Americans), not a sex fiend who is a product of the evil interweb tubes.
In any case, I hardly think it is for parliament to decide to restrict everybody's right to enjoy themselves because one or two socially undeveloped individuals are unable to do so responsibly. They should be watched and guarded where possible, but anything else smacks of suspected-guilty-until-proven-otherwise. Aside from anything else, people who disregard the rigths and safety of another in spite of the law will continue to do so, whatever their fancy, even with this law in place.
As another poster said: Treat the causes, not the symptoms. It's our society that's churning out irresponsible people, not our laws.
Okay, I'm betraying my 2000AD-reading youth here, but...
Judge Death, anyone?
</sorry>
What, like, all the time? Well, very few, probably.
See, that's the point. It has all these genes - all this complexity - because its adaptability to environmental changes and challenges is based on its genome, NOT its clever near-static design (like us humans). Its physical form, metabolism etc adapt according to whatever challenge it faces by "waking" different genes when they become necessary instead of creating new tools with its intelligence, so I would expect that the majority of its genes are not in use at any one time.
As a species, however, I expect that most of its (non-junk) DNA is useful at some point or other.
If that makes you feel inferior in some way, then take comfort in the theory that part of humans' junk DNA may have evolved as a response to some killer plague, which was eventually out-flanked by this DNA, which then became redundant. Should a similar plague arise again, that junk DNA may become active and adapt (in mutative evolutionary terms) to fight back, saving the species once more.
That's what this organism is doing - just in a far more active, everyday sense. Clever really.
You're saying there are employment prospects for art students?? God, what did you smoke at Uni?
Top statements made by software developers when their software falls over:
4. Oh. It's never done that before.
3. It's an undocumented feature.
2. #!!*ing Windows!
And number one (you know it's true):
1. Strange...
(blatantly stolen from the usually unfunny Keeper Of Lists)
Funny, but we're having a discussion about carbon-neutrality in the office.
<smug>
Since we bought our house 3 months ago, we've replaced all the bulbs with CFLs (they do take a moment to warm up, but when you turn on the light in the morning in winter, that's a GOOD thing!), got a fantastically efficient electric/ceramic oven, some AA-efficiency white goods, started recycling etc etc etc, and we buy our electricity from a renewable-only supplier. Once we have the funds, we're going to look into solar water-heating so we can cut out gas altogether (we've not gone for an electric boiler, as gas is far more efficient in energy terms).
</smug>
My real point is: we could go into the environmental cost of our electrical demands, but that's a whole different discussion. The question is, does your conscience prick you more than your wallet? Whatever your answer, don't preach either way please. People make up their minds from the outset and, apart from a the availability of information, there's nothing anyone can say to convince them otherwise. With all the hot air that gets generated over this issue we could power 2.5 million Libraries of Congress or a big light bulb that shines on the night-side of the Earth so we never need light-bulbs for our homes again, but it never seems to come to any good...
What a game that was though - and, to be fair, there are a couple of Race Against The Clock parts to the game, and they don't add much. They were added when it was appropriate - getting your buddy OUT of the factory, for example - and I don't think sneak-em-up style games like the entering-factory section of BGaE would do too well out of timed challenges. Besides, there were races to compete in as well...
Also, it was an exceptional game in its own right - given when it was released, its graphics were interesting and fluid, the gameplay was original, intuitive, varied and fun, and the game as a whole just felt very fresh and professional. Making it more of a time-challenge would've made it harder to appreciate the fun and slickness of the game, and how much skilled development had gone into it. It's still one of my favourite games, and I would've undoubtedly enjoyed it less if there had been a clock hanging over my head all the time.
It makes you sick, doesn't it?
Dammit, meant to finish ""
Oh, really?
So yes, they're fine as long as you don't ask them to do anything. But that's hardly a plaudit, is it?
Red planet, ha ha.
Yes. In the UK, we call it NTL...
(don't get me started)
Wait... Hang on, does this mean I missed the release of HL2?
In any given hour of work in Word or Excel, do you know how often I use menus, buttons or anything outside the actual document/worksheet space? Maybe once or twice for Word, maybe only a little more for Excel. The reason? Shortcuts, people, shortcuts.
How office-monkeys can sit in their Dell Hells day after day, doing the same crap over and over again, without learning
a) to touch type and
b) how to do things a bit quicker and easier with the keyboard
is absolutely beyond me.
What do I need from my UI? Leave it as it is. I have exactly two toolbars in either Word or Excel, and use a fraction of each (if I'm that concerned about screen space, I'll customise more carefully). Anything beyond my capabilities with keyboard and the odd button, I will happily use a menu for. Anyone who tells me how much easier and more intuitive Ribbons are to use, I say this: I've tried it, and I found them exactly as useful as the current UI, ie not at all.
No, this is not a "I don't need no stinkin' upgrades" rant. This is a "For God's sake, people, learn to use the tools you have properly and you'll work quicker, easier and not give a damn about this either" tirade.
No, it'll respond instantly.
(Or rather, it won't as this isn't the CPU we're talking about. You've just tripped my latest semantics-nazi pet-hate. Sorry.)
At what altitude?
Yeah alright, at the surface, sure, but I think you're missing the point.
The classification of these bodies NEEDS to make some kind of abstract sense to people, since it gives us a "handle" with which to manipulate these thoughts in our minds. It may seem arbitrary, but you'll notice that all the definitions given - out of necessity - are given in terms of things to which we can relate. Spherical (ish), smaller than Mercury, centre of mass outside of the body etc. These are all things we can appreciate as solid criteria rather than abstract, even if they do become fuzzy right at the border; therefore they are not arbitrary definitions, which was rather the point of this re-classification. They allow us to apply labels with some degree of agreed certainty, and then we can move on.
If anyone has the right to specify these commandments, it's Introversion (Uplink, Darwinia).
Yes, but does it... oh never mind.
I would agree, but it concerns me a little that they seem to be putting so much effort into revamping old ground with HDR again instead of moving on and doing bigger and better things - which, as they have previously demonstrated to the FPS community at large, they are more than capable of doing. Is this a sign that they don't have any bright ideas left? I sincerely hope not.