A point a lot of people seem to miss in any discussion of authorization is the nature of a password: it requires you to actively remember it (provided you don't write it down or something similar to degrade its security). If you are not around to remember it or unable to consciously do so, the lock stays shut.
Using biometrics might still require some action on your part (put the thumb on the reader, look into the reader, etc.) but the password is always the same. You may be unaware of what it is being used for -exactly-. This risk is non-existent with passwords, if you pick your passwords carefully. You have to consciously select the password you memorized for this particular application and if you do it well, the password won't unlock anything else.
I'm not saying passwords are the end-all of security, but they do have this aspect whereas most other solutions that are being considered because of their increase safety in terms of creating copies or simply 'cracking the code' don't.
If you think this topic is interesting, you might really like Greg Bear's novel on the topic: Darwin's Radio.
With phrases like "In the next stage of evolution, humans are history" and "The next Great War will start inside us" on the cover, you know what you're in for.
Somehow I doubt that the actual career of IT dads is the problem here. In my experience, IT professionals spend a lot of time with computers in their spare time as well. Computer games, hobby programming and all sorts of "digital hobbies" like photography, music or movie making, etc. are very popular with IT personnel, but also very time consuming.
Not just that, all if these hobbies usually come with large, active online communities. As a result, most of my friends who are in IT, like myself, have wives or girlfriends complaining of a lack of attention, personal contact hours or common interests. Now, you might say these women just aren't the right match for these men. But it's not like it would be any better if they had similar hobbies, in fact I'd say it would aggravate the situation.
Any career, if taken seriously, is demanding. And people in all fields bring their work and its problems home with them. But I think IT may be special in that it flows into personal life almost seamlessly and this is the true root of any structural marital problems in the field.
Your family may have done well, academically, but statistics, the scientific method or their relevance probably weren't your forte. Or you wouldn't be trying to disprove a scientific study (of whatever quality) by presenting a single case, notably yourself, from a hardly representative population, i.e. Slashdot.
I'd say most of the readers will be either headed for a career in IT (or some other tech field) and may actually benefit from a little extra computer time, or they already are in such a career and have thus proven their resistance to the effects of gaming, if needed.
Think again. There's actually people out there living lives in which WoW, Linux and ThinkGeek don't mean a thing.
Although most of the posts sofar seem to debate whether or not WoW is an actual community and what the addictive effects of WoW are, they don't go into another popular topic related to the question "Is WoW More Than Just a Game?".
I've had discussions with several players of MMO's (specifically NeoCron and EVE Online) who stated that they felt property created by them in these games somehow belonged to them. Ofcourse the respective EULA's of the game state that such claims are void, everything belongs to the owner of the game, usually it's creator.
But to my knowledge, none of these cases sofar have been tested in court, anywhere. They hold that, since they invested real time in creating these items and the items represent real value to them, the game company is not allowed to take these items from them as long as they stick to the rules of the game (for instance by removing them as a result of a change in the game).
I on the other hand feel that this 'investment' is not a very wise investement of their time and the game company has no obligation to them, anymore than a corporation going bankrupt has any further obligation to its stockholders. A bad investment is likely to go bust, but maybe someone on/. has strong arguments contrary to mine?
The other 4 images are clearly photographs of the same scene. Let me give you my view on the positioning of the photographers in each.
#1 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj1234.jpg This picture was taken with a regular angle lens, say somthing like 35mm, towards a building, across the bridge that is out. The photographer was standing close to the right side of the road (when viewed in this direction). The car in the next picture is out of the frame, to the left of the photographer. The photographer is too far from the actual damage to get a good shot of it. The actual damage is close to the right shoulder of the man in the center of the image, off to the left.
#2 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj1245.jpg This picture has been taken from the opposite side of the road from #1, i.e. the left, shooting in the same direction. The photographer will have used a telelens, say 200mm. This pulls in the distant background and seems to place the pilons in the center of the road closer together. Note the tree white and red pilons, with the overturned fourth. Now look at #1 again, you will notice the same three pilons with the overturned one pointing towards the photographer. Also not that the two palms and the car on the right side of the road are visible in #1 as well, off in the distance.
Again, this picture has been shot across the destroyed bridge, which is now partly obscured by the car and the man. But you can make out the concrete mesh fragments sticking off the right shoulder of the man, to the right.
#3 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj2345.jpg In #3, the photopgrapher has arrived at the collapsed bridge. From this angle, the photographer, shooting with something like the 35mm again, can shoot into the gap, clearly showing the damage. The photographer is now well past the car in #2, but the other car is still visible across the gap. The car in #3 is actually visible in all of the images, as is the building in the background, though very poorly in #1.
#4 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj3456.jpg In #4, the photographer has moved back beyond the overturned car. Or, about as likely, #4 was actually taken before #1. The photographer is now so far back and to the left, that the small watchtower is also in the frame.
The allegations in the piece are sensationalist and don't stand up to scrutiny. The author (and powerlineblog) are doing exactly what they are accusing Reuters of doing: posting material without a critical and sceptical review. If the bottom photo (#5, http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj4567.jpg) was published as a photo of the same incident, that's not right But some of the comments on the other 4 are simply wrong.
I've included a schematic drawing of the scene as I think it was, for your reference. Note that I was there no more than the author was and that errors in my reasoning or schematics should in no way impact what Reuters and Hajj have to say for themselves.
I mean, come on. Would the author please be so kind to inform us what he thinks are good movies then? I happen to think there have been tons of good movies lately. But for me, not an awful lot of them have been coming out of Hollywood.
To all you US-centric readers, who happen to think "the rest of the world" is a small island off the coast of Australia: a lot of more than just decent movies are actually coming out of Europe and Asia. Also, closer to home, you'll find that Canadian, South American and even independant US movie makers still know the meaning of the word 'quality', instead of confusing it with 'budget' or 'star count'.
So, after this bout of feeding the troll, I'll just crawl back under my rock and wait for a worthwhile/. article to appear.
Oh come on... Deja vu is fairly common among adolescents and is often accompanied by the same feelings you experienced. I used to get deja vu myself regularly, but it stopped completely around age 20. Now, I very rarely experience a similar, but very brief sensation.
To me, it has always felt like current observations being accessed by the the brain like memories. Like streaming your senses straight into your recollection, if you will. I even found that it would seem to last longer if I didn't "fight it", that is, just blank out and not change what I was thinking when it started and the "memories" would keep coming, seemingly ahead of my awareness of the observation. Social situations, locations, food and even games triggered these sensations.
Also, I was often left with the strong feeling that I'd dreamt whatever was going on, instead of remembering it from an actual event. I started keeping diaries of my dreams, just to see if I could find a match. Introspection isn't exactly reliable, but I eventually came to the conclusions that the deja vu cases always matched up with dreams that were vague and unclear when I woke up to them.
My theory therefore would be that the deja vu effect actually has to do with the memory malfunctioning and feeding the pool of conscious thought with current sensory input, instead of recollections. It would make sense that these signals seem to 'predict' what is going to happen, since the actual observation takes time to get processed, registered and filed away before you can recall it. Especially if you're keeping yourself occupied with the fake memories and not paying close attention to actual observations.
It will be interesting to see what the scientists come up with, but I'll bet you any sum you can afford that it will be nothing more than some neurological phenomenon and I'll bet you a beer that it's not dissimilar to what I've just described. My having experienced deja vu more often than I can (or care to) remember doesn't change that a single bit, however religious or revelating the feeling may have seemed at the time.
You put visonaries like da Vinci to shame, comparing your gullible self to the likes of him (though admittedly, he was slightly bonkers).
What most people seem to forget is that most (other?) people suck at custimization. To actually improve your browser usability, by customizing it to your needs, you need to be knowing what you're doing. If my friends and family (the non-geek, non-tech, non-designer ones, i.e. most of 'em) are a decent sample at all, people suck at it.
Half-hearted attempts, misunderstanding of the possibilities or simply the lack of a clue what usability means in the first place prevents these people from customizing their browser to make it more productive, prettier or accessible.
They are best off with a browser that has a decent, balanced interface right out of the box. My money is on Firefox, though the new IE isn't half bad.
Like most games, EVE is not a game for everyone. It's too specific in flavour, not at all suited for so-called 'casual play', has a steep learning curve and is very unforgiving with respect to PvP play. However, some of those traits are actually what make it great for those of us that do like it. Unlike most MMO's, where the penalty for loss in a PvP situation is some experience, some gear or simply a relocation of your character, EVE has truly harsh penalties. Dying in EVE to most players means losing a substantial part of your wealth, in some cases half of it or more even. As a result, PvP can evoke powerful emotions. People -care- about losing, like you would care about losing a high stakes poker game.
The steep learning curve can be another strong point. For the player with more brains than brawn, EVE can be very rewarding, since the game offers a lot of opportunities to make it big on politics, or actual trade (that is P2P trading, instead of "MMO Elite" P2NPC trading). As someone already mentioned, most of the economy of EVE is player-based. Anything worth buying has either been constructed or collected by players and to get the best gear in the game, impressive chains of collection, construction and transportation have to be in place. Getting the best ships in the game means purchasing an item that has parts that may have gone through the hands of 100's of players. Add to that an impressive lack of inflation without developer interference and EVE has a unique environment for trade, without tying it in to real world currency (like Entropia Universe and others do). Efficient acquisition, assembly and trade of all these goods requires well-organized groups of players, with access to vast resources, offering ample opportunity for politics and war.
As nnother result of the immense amounts of information available to the player, which they'll need to sift through to get what they want, a large number of player-built sites has appeared that involve players in shaping the way the game works. Though CCP remains firmly in control, these sites add invaluable parts to EVE gameplay that make the experience of playing it more rewarding and give people the feeling they're involved in gameplay as well as game development.
Finally, CCP itself loves both the game and the community. It's the most candid game developer on the market as far as I know. It discusses planned changes to the game in very early stages (and I mean discuss, not just announce), it takes user feedback seriously and not unimportant: most of the developers love to play the game. Add to that spennding on extra's like an EVE Online magazine (EON), an EVE Online tradeable cardgame, good support for player initiatives like EVE Radio (24h on-topic music radio) and most recently this EVE TV and I think it should be clear why EVE is unique.
Whether you like it or not, however, remains a matter of taste. That's good. It means EVE Online is not bland.
I don't see how I'm saying the technical community (or communities, as you seem to object to me overgeneralizing there) needs to start fighting dirty.
First of all, I didn't use the word 'duty'. I just observed a bunch of techies getting their shorts in a bunch over choice of words of a senator. I'm saying that if a technical community feels it is being represented in a bad way, this is not necessarily 100% the representative's fault. Many concepts in modern technology are hard to grasp and understand. I feel it should be up to the people that understand them best to come up with ways of explaining them to a broader audience. I'm not saying -all- techies should. I'm definitely not saying you should.
Besides, metaphors only "abstract counterarguments away and empasize (sic) the aspects which are supportive of your agenda" if you pick em that way. Nothing wrong with that either, if your agenda is to explain the inner workings of the Internet to a layman.
And finally, I'm not saying finding a simple single metaphor will solve the entire problem. Your style of black-and-white thinking is simply too much here. I'm saying well-picked metaphors may stick in the public conscience and may help explain complex concepts to the regular Joe. I'm also saying that most techies I see on/. as well as in my professional environment tend to feel that everyone should be able to grasp what they know, in the terms and concepts they use. So, any answer to a question about the internet quickly degenerates into a murky word soup with the unlucky inquisitive layman wishing he'd just kept quiet.
It's a common problem too, not limited to techies. Instead of thinking themselves superior, well-educated or gifted folks tend to consider people with lesser abilities or different areas of expertise 'unwilling to learn' or just plain 'stupid'. While they should perhaps recognize that, though it may work in their professional environment, their mode of communication is inadequate to address outsiders.
Perhaps I should take to black-and-white thinking, trolling and pointless insulting to get my point across in here though.
I agree with parent, up to a point, but I think another point is missed here. The technical community (that's you/us) has sofar failed to come up with adequate metaphores for the way the internet works, to help educate the public.
This poor senator sounds to me like he's struggling for words. And although he seems to have grasped some of the basics, he's wildly off on some of the functional aspects of the internet he is trying to discuss. If the general public had some useful (and common) metaphores for grasping how something like the internet works, it would have been easier for this man to put his thoughts into words, whether you agree with them or not.
Instead of childishly attacking his choice of words, we could have been discussing his meaning or the inadequacy of the metaphores we provide the public with, instead of their absence.
I like to liken the internet to a subway system with couriers on foot running around between offices where messages are processed and new messages sent by courier. With a metaphore like that, at least you can easily explain concepts like routers, firewalls, bandwidth, priority, etc. Any analogy or metaphore breaks at some point, but the point is to explain a complex technical system in terms people can understand without requiring a high level of abstract thought.
Also, in a subway analogy, using the word "tubes" makes sense;)
The whole point here is that if WGA works and kills your Windows, you won't be able to pirate it. The RIAA might actually be right if there was some way of achieving the same feat with music.
Or are you saying that if Madonna, Metallica and Eminem had proper protection in place, people would listen to other music? Ofcourse not. In the (purely hypothetical) situation where it would be no longer possible to copy their music (the copy protection shuts down your CD player and eats your pet gerbil) you would start paying for it.
Same goes for Windows, people won't switch to the clearly superior, open and free OS, if piracy would become impossible. The only thing opening would be their wallets.
Ofcourse, what will -really- happen if WGA works, is that people will once again start distributing illegal, cracked copies of windows installer disc images. Some versions with clear security holes, other with the security fixes slipstreamed in before cracking it.
The net result of that: an even worse reputation for Windows, more piracy, more insecurity on the net for privately owned PCs (with pirated OSes) and more ways for spyware and other malware to find its way onto your system (nicely packaged with the cracked copy of Windows).
Which is exactly why MS won't shut down your Windows with WGA, since this is bad for everyone -including- MS.
It's not (or shouldn't be) about passing laws. It's about creating public awareness of a fact that's either ignored or disputed by a majority. Being on the phone while driving increases the risk of accidents. Period.
Doesn't mean laws need to get passed. Doesn't mean you're no longer allowed to be on the phone in your car.
Means that you're probably still better off using a hands-free set. Means you should be aware that you're increasing the risk to yourself, your passengers and others out there on the streets when you do pick up that phone.
As far as law goes, I suppose it should mean that you're to blame when an accident does occur and you were the one on the phone. Or at least it should weigh in as evidence to your disadvantage.
Blinded by PRK? Even with RK the chance of being blinded is minimal, if infections are treated. There's about 1/20 chance of minor perforations, which can result in infections with RK (that's RK, not PRK (Lasek) or Lasik) totaling about 1/1000 cases. And those infections are usually easily treatable. The chance of being blinded by RK is almost theoretical.
The chances of being blinded by PRK (Lasek) are virtually non-existent, barring accidents. But then there's also the chance of the optometrist putting your eye out while fitting you with new glasses.
I don't know where parent is getting its information, but people marking his post as Informative are sensationalist scare mongers. Wherever you'll look, you'll find that actual failure or long-term negative effects of Lasek (when compared to the situation before the procedure) is very rare.
The article quoted only goes into clinics claiming that there's an immediate success rate of 99.9% or better. That's not true, many need a second and even a third treatment before the desired result is achieved. Any decent clinic will offer these additional treatments for free, since they're actually part of the treatment as a whole. Just the fact that the doc with the laser has to go in 2 or 3 times to get it right doesn't make it a dangerous procedure, it just makes it a lengthy one and a moderately painful one at that, if you're unlucky.
Like going to the dentist for dentures. No walk in the park, but the end result is almost always an improvement of quality of life. People may even have died, in isolated cases, from infections following the removal of their teeth. Doesn't stop people from getting dentures though, nor does it inspire the kind of scare hype displayed here.
I'd agree that there are non-arbitry ways to create a definition and then attach the name 'planet' to it. But you have to ask yourself why you would be doing this. Similar as with the 'ocean and sea' example, what exactly is the point of calling something a planet in the first place?
This is not to say that calling anything anything is pointless. But it is pointless to invent a named category of objects if that category serves no other purpose than a placeholder for the name.
It would seem that in the case of oceans and seas the point is that oceans connect to multiple other large bodies of water, whereas seas are less connected. I can see how that makes sense from a geological point of view, even though IANAG.
From a scientific point of view, naming a clearly defined category, with non-arbitrary criteria, only makes sense if you want to use that name to refer to the category to state or prove something about it. Frankly, I don't really see such a use for the word 'planet', at least not as it stands.
What about mutiuser systems where the normal user doesn't have write access to the firefox directory?
As far as I know, they will still get a notification of the availability of the update, they just won't be able to install it. This article on/. didn't change that.
What about OSes that don't support the auto update feature?
The OS does not need to "support the auto update", it's a built-in Firefox feature, it does its own checking and downloading.
That's what I thought. I guess you could interpret Google's move to only target MS file formats (csv isn't limited to, but widely in use for Excel) in two ways. Either they -are- targeting the MS Office market specifically, leaving OOo in peace. Or they -are not- targeting MS Office, but endorsing it. Since the only people able to use the service will need to save in MS' proprietary format, making the.ods format pointless for them.
As an OOo user though, I strongly dislike this move by Google, whatever the reasoning behind it. I'm sure it saves them loads of work and they're only ignoring a few percent of the market, but it shows little or no support for OOo, imo.
... -after- the update has installed itself in a friendly way on my machine? I mean, come on: anyone who needs this update already has Firefox installed and will get a notification -or- has turned such notifications off for some very good reason and won't be interested to read about it here.
"Oh, they actually fixed some security issues in Firefox? That must means it's now completely safe, I'm going down there to download straightaway..."
If you drive up to a bridge that has a sign reading "cross at own risk" and it requires you to push a button to raise a barrier, would you drive across?
And yet you would use the software that clearly reads "use at own risk"?
... is remotely funny and even that should never have lasted the author of TFA to actually get to the end of writing it. If people didn't think this was funny because they didn't like Python jokes, spam or trout, that would have been ok. But it's got nothing to do with Python humour in the first place...
And now, for something completely different, I'd say.
It's exactly this attitude that's wrong with the engineers parent's parent is referring to. I happen to be a software engineer, for 15 years running now, and find myself surrounded by engineers who feel they know better than the people using their products.
Instead of listening to user feedback, they go ahead and write stuff that 'works better than what the customer is suggesting'. Or spending insane amounts of effort and time on features that no user actually needs, while disregarding features that users crave.
*Someone does not need to know how to build something to be able to tell how they want something to work*
Engineers don't seem to want to get this and it's exactly this attitude that makes users like grandparent unwilling to submit feedback, since we (the engineers) have created an environment where users don't expect we'll do anything with the feedback anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
A point a lot of people seem to miss in any discussion of authorization is the nature of a password: it requires you to actively remember it (provided you don't write it down or something similar to degrade its security). If you are not around to remember it or unable to consciously do so, the lock stays shut.
Using biometrics might still require some action on your part (put the thumb on the reader, look into the reader, etc.) but the password is always the same. You may be unaware of what it is being used for -exactly-. This risk is non-existent with passwords, if you pick your passwords carefully. You have to consciously select the password you memorized for this particular application and if you do it well, the password won't unlock anything else.
I'm not saying passwords are the end-all of security, but they do have this aspect whereas most other solutions that are being considered because of their increase safety in terms of creating copies or simply 'cracking the code' don't.
If you think this topic is interesting, you might really like Greg Bear's novel on the topic: Darwin's Radio.
With phrases like "In the next stage of evolution, humans are history" and "The next Great War will start inside us" on the cover, you know what you're in for.
Somehow I doubt that the actual career of IT dads is the problem here. In my experience, IT professionals spend a lot of time with computers in their spare time as well. Computer games, hobby programming and all sorts of "digital hobbies" like photography, music or movie making, etc. are very popular with IT personnel, but also very time consuming.
Not just that, all if these hobbies usually come with large, active online communities. As a result, most of my friends who are in IT, like myself, have wives or girlfriends complaining of a lack of attention, personal contact hours or common interests. Now, you might say these women just aren't the right match for these men. But it's not like it would be any better if they had similar hobbies, in fact I'd say it would aggravate the situation.
Any career, if taken seriously, is demanding. And people in all fields bring their work and its problems home with them. But I think IT may be special in that it flows into personal life almost seamlessly and this is the true root of any structural marital problems in the field.
Your family may have done well, academically, but statistics, the scientific method or their relevance probably weren't your forte. Or you wouldn't be trying to disprove a scientific study (of whatever quality) by presenting a single case, notably yourself, from a hardly representative population, i.e. Slashdot.
I'd say most of the readers will be either headed for a career in IT (or some other tech field) and may actually benefit from a little extra computer time, or they already are in such a career and have thus proven their resistance to the effects of gaming, if needed.
Think again. There's actually people out there living lives in which WoW, Linux and ThinkGeek don't mean a thing.
Although most of the posts sofar seem to debate whether or not WoW is an actual community and what the addictive effects of WoW are, they don't go into another popular topic related to the question "Is WoW More Than Just a Game?".
/. has strong arguments contrary to mine?
I've had discussions with several players of MMO's (specifically NeoCron and EVE Online) who stated that they felt property created by them in these games somehow belonged to them. Ofcourse the respective EULA's of the game state that such claims are void, everything belongs to the owner of the game, usually it's creator.
But to my knowledge, none of these cases sofar have been tested in court, anywhere. They hold that, since they invested real time in creating these items and the items represent real value to them, the game company is not allowed to take these items from them as long as they stick to the rules of the game (for instance by removing them as a result of a change in the game).
I on the other hand feel that this 'investment' is not a very wise investement of their time and the game company has no obligation to them, anymore than a corporation going bankrupt has any further obligation to its stockholders. A bad investment is likely to go bust, but maybe someone on
Not about the image that the original post is about, but about what happens after something like this gets out. Read this blog post:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014929.php
A fine example of a blogger making a fool of themself, doing the exact same thing they are accusing Reuters of doing. Read my response to it:
----
The only photograph that strikes me as somewhat odd is the bottom image http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj4567.jpg.
The other 4 images are clearly photographs of the same scene. Let me give you my view on the positioning of the photographers in each.
#1 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj1234.jpg
This picture was taken with a regular angle lens, say somthing like 35mm, towards a building, across the bridge that is out. The photographer was standing close to the right side of the road (when viewed in this direction). The car in the next picture is out of the frame, to the left of the photographer. The photographer is too far from the actual damage to get a good shot of it. The actual damage is close to the right shoulder of the man in the center of the image, off to the left.
#2 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj1245.jpg
This picture has been taken from the opposite side of the road from #1, i.e. the left, shooting in the same direction. The photographer will have used a telelens, say 200mm. This pulls in the distant background and seems to place the pilons in the center of the road closer together. Note the tree white and red pilons, with the overturned fourth. Now look at #1 again, you will notice the same three pilons with the overturned one pointing towards the photographer. Also not that the two palms and the car on the right side of the road are visible in #1 as well, off in the distance.
Again, this picture has been shot across the destroyed bridge, which is now partly obscured by the car and the man. But you can make out the concrete mesh fragments sticking off the right shoulder of the man, to the right.
#3 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj2345.jpg
In #3, the photopgrapher has arrived at the collapsed bridge. From this angle, the photographer, shooting with something like the 35mm again, can shoot into the gap, clearly showing the damage. The photographer is now well past the car in #2, but the other car is still visible across the gap. The car in #3 is actually visible in all of the images, as is the building in the background, though very poorly in #1.
#4 : http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj3456.jpg
In #4, the photographer has moved back beyond the overturned car. Or, about as likely, #4 was actually taken before #1. The photographer is now so far back and to the left, that the small watchtower is also in the frame.
The allegations in the piece are sensationalist and don't stand up to scrutiny. The author (and powerlineblog) are doing exactly what they are accusing Reuters of doing: posting material without a critical and sceptical review. If the bottom photo (#5, http://powerlineblog.com/archives/Hajj4567.jpg) was published as a photo of the same incident, that's not right But some of the comments on the other 4 are simply wrong.
I've included a schematic drawing of the scene as I think it was, for your reference. Note that I was there no more than the author was and that errors in my reasoning or schematics should in no way impact what Reuters and Hajj have to say for themselves.
----
The schematic I'm talking about: http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k88/Grismar75/i
> [b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
There's a bug in your sig. I think it should be:
b.belong('us') for b in base if b.owner() == 'you'
I mean, come on. Would the author please be so kind to inform us what he thinks are good movies then? I happen to think there have been tons of good movies lately. But for me, not an awful lot of them have been coming out of Hollywood.
/. article to appear.
To all you US-centric readers, who happen to think "the rest of the world" is a small island off the coast of Australia: a lot of more than just decent movies are actually coming out of Europe and Asia. Also, closer to home, you'll find that Canadian, South American and even independant US movie makers still know the meaning of the word 'quality', instead of confusing it with 'budget' or 'star count'.
So, after this bout of feeding the troll, I'll just crawl back under my rock and wait for a worthwhile
Oh come on... Deja vu is fairly common among adolescents and is often accompanied by the same feelings you experienced. I used to get deja vu myself regularly, but it stopped completely around age 20. Now, I very rarely experience a similar, but very brief sensation.
To me, it has always felt like current observations being accessed by the the brain like memories. Like streaming your senses straight into your recollection, if you will. I even found that it would seem to last longer if I didn't "fight it", that is, just blank out and not change what I was thinking when it started and the "memories" would keep coming, seemingly ahead of my awareness of the observation. Social situations, locations, food and even games triggered these sensations.
Also, I was often left with the strong feeling that I'd dreamt whatever was going on, instead of remembering it from an actual event. I started keeping diaries of my dreams, just to see if I could find a match. Introspection isn't exactly reliable, but I eventually came to the conclusions that the deja vu cases always matched up with dreams that were vague and unclear when I woke up to them.
My theory therefore would be that the deja vu effect actually has to do with the memory malfunctioning and feeding the pool of conscious thought with current sensory input, instead of recollections. It would make sense that these signals seem to 'predict' what is going to happen, since the actual observation takes time to get processed, registered and filed away before you can recall it. Especially if you're keeping yourself occupied with the fake memories and not paying close attention to actual observations.
It will be interesting to see what the scientists come up with, but I'll bet you any sum you can afford that it will be nothing more than some neurological phenomenon and I'll bet you a beer that it's not dissimilar to what I've just described. My having experienced deja vu more often than I can (or care to) remember doesn't change that a single bit, however religious or revelating the feeling may have seemed at the time.
You put visonaries like da Vinci to shame, comparing your gullible self to the likes of him (though admittedly, he was slightly bonkers).
Greetings.
What most people seem to forget is that most (other?) people suck at custimization. To actually improve your browser usability, by customizing it to your needs, you need to be knowing what you're doing. If my friends and family (the non-geek, non-tech, non-designer ones, i.e. most of 'em) are a decent sample at all, people suck at it.
Half-hearted attempts, misunderstanding of the possibilities or simply the lack of a clue what usability means in the first place prevents these people from customizing their browser to make it more productive, prettier or accessible.
They are best off with a browser that has a decent, balanced interface right out of the box. My money is on Firefox, though the new IE isn't half bad.
Like most games, EVE is not a game for everyone. It's too specific in flavour, not at all suited for so-called 'casual play', has a steep learning curve and is very unforgiving with respect to PvP play. However, some of those traits are actually what make it great for those of us that do like it. Unlike most MMO's, where the penalty for loss in a PvP situation is some experience, some gear or simply a relocation of your character, EVE has truly harsh penalties. Dying in EVE to most players means losing a substantial part of your wealth, in some cases half of it or more even. As a result, PvP can evoke powerful emotions. People -care- about losing, like you would care about losing a high stakes poker game.
The steep learning curve can be another strong point. For the player with more brains than brawn, EVE can be very rewarding, since the game offers a lot of opportunities to make it big on politics, or actual trade (that is P2P trading, instead of "MMO Elite" P2NPC trading). As someone already mentioned, most of the economy of EVE is player-based. Anything worth buying has either been constructed or collected by players and to get the best gear in the game, impressive chains of collection, construction and transportation have to be in place. Getting the best ships in the game means purchasing an item that has parts that may have gone through the hands of 100's of players. Add to that an impressive lack of inflation without developer interference and EVE has a unique environment for trade, without tying it in to real world currency (like Entropia Universe and others do). Efficient acquisition, assembly and trade of all these goods requires well-organized groups of players, with access to vast resources, offering ample opportunity for politics and war.
As nnother result of the immense amounts of information available to the player, which they'll need to sift through to get what they want, a large number of player-built sites has appeared that involve players in shaping the way the game works. Though CCP remains firmly in control, these sites add invaluable parts to EVE gameplay that make the experience of playing it more rewarding and give people the feeling they're involved in gameplay as well as game development.
Finally, CCP itself loves both the game and the community. It's the most candid game developer on the market as far as I know. It discusses planned changes to the game in very early stages (and I mean discuss, not just announce), it takes user feedback seriously and not unimportant: most of the developers love to play the game. Add to that spennding on extra's like an EVE Online magazine (EON), an EVE Online tradeable cardgame, good support for player initiatives like EVE Radio (24h on-topic music radio) and most recently this EVE TV and I think it should be clear why EVE is unique.
Whether you like it or not, however, remains a matter of taste. That's good. It means EVE Online is not bland.
It's a space game. OFCOURSE it's UTC... (which is the same as GMT, in case you're wondering)
I don't see how I'm saying the technical community (or communities, as you seem to object to me overgeneralizing there) needs to start fighting dirty.
/. as well as in my professional environment tend to feel that everyone should be able to grasp what they know, in the terms and concepts they use. So, any answer to a question about the internet quickly degenerates into a murky word soup with the unlucky inquisitive layman wishing he'd just kept quiet.
First of all, I didn't use the word 'duty'. I just observed a bunch of techies getting their shorts in a bunch over choice of words of a senator. I'm saying that if a technical community feels it is being represented in a bad way, this is not necessarily 100% the representative's fault. Many concepts in modern technology are hard to grasp and understand. I feel it should be up to the people that understand them best to come up with ways of explaining them to a broader audience. I'm not saying -all- techies should. I'm definitely not saying you should.
Besides, metaphors only "abstract counterarguments away and empasize (sic) the aspects which are supportive of your agenda" if you pick em that way. Nothing wrong with that either, if your agenda is to explain the inner workings of the Internet to a layman.
And finally, I'm not saying finding a simple single metaphor will solve the entire problem. Your style of black-and-white thinking is simply too much here. I'm saying well-picked metaphors may stick in the public conscience and may help explain complex concepts to the regular Joe. I'm also saying that most techies I see on
It's a common problem too, not limited to techies. Instead of thinking themselves superior, well-educated or gifted folks tend to consider people with lesser abilities or different areas of expertise 'unwilling to learn' or just plain 'stupid'. While they should perhaps recognize that, though it may work in their professional environment, their mode of communication is inadequate to address outsiders.
Perhaps I should take to black-and-white thinking, trolling and pointless insulting to get my point across in here though.
I agree with parent, up to a point, but I think another point is missed here. The technical community (that's you/us) has sofar failed to come up with adequate metaphores for the way the internet works, to help educate the public.
;)
This poor senator sounds to me like he's struggling for words. And although he seems to have grasped some of the basics, he's wildly off on some of the functional aspects of the internet he is trying to discuss. If the general public had some useful (and common) metaphores for grasping how something like the internet works, it would have been easier for this man to put his thoughts into words, whether you agree with them or not.
Instead of childishly attacking his choice of words, we could have been discussing his meaning or the inadequacy of the metaphores we provide the public with, instead of their absence.
I like to liken the internet to a subway system with couriers on foot running around between offices where messages are processed and new messages sent by courier. With a metaphore like that, at least you can easily explain concepts like routers, firewalls, bandwidth, priority, etc. Any analogy or metaphore breaks at some point, but the point is to explain a complex technical system in terms people can understand without requiring a high level of abstract thought.
Also, in a subway analogy, using the word "tubes" makes sense
The whole point here is that if WGA works and kills your Windows, you won't be able to pirate it. The RIAA might actually be right if there was some way of achieving the same feat with music.
Or are you saying that if Madonna, Metallica and Eminem had proper protection in place, people would listen to other music? Ofcourse not. In the (purely hypothetical) situation where it would be no longer possible to copy their music (the copy protection shuts down your CD player and eats your pet gerbil) you would start paying for it.
Same goes for Windows, people won't switch to the clearly superior, open and free OS, if piracy would become impossible. The only thing opening would be their wallets.
Ofcourse, what will -really- happen if WGA works, is that people will once again start distributing illegal, cracked copies of windows installer disc images. Some versions with clear security holes, other with the security fixes slipstreamed in before cracking it.
The net result of that: an even worse reputation for Windows, more piracy, more insecurity on the net for privately owned PCs (with pirated OSes) and more ways for spyware and other malware to find its way onto your system (nicely packaged with the cracked copy of Windows).
Which is exactly why MS won't shut down your Windows with WGA, since this is bad for everyone -including- MS.
It's not (or shouldn't be) about passing laws. It's about creating public awareness of a fact that's either ignored or disputed by a majority. Being on the phone while driving increases the risk of accidents. Period.
Doesn't mean laws need to get passed. Doesn't mean you're no longer allowed to be on the phone in your car.
Means that you're probably still better off using a hands-free set. Means you should be aware that you're increasing the risk to yourself, your passengers and others out there on the streets when you do pick up that phone.
As far as law goes, I suppose it should mean that you're to blame when an accident does occur and you were the one on the phone. Or at least it should weigh in as evidence to your disadvantage.
Blinded by PRK? Even with RK the chance of being blinded is minimal, if infections are treated. There's about 1/20 chance of minor perforations, which can result in infections with RK (that's RK, not PRK (Lasek) or Lasik) totaling about 1/1000 cases. And those infections are usually easily treatable. The chance of being blinded by RK is almost theoretical.
8 .html
Some info here: http://www.hon.ch/Library/Theme/VisionFaq/section
The chances of being blinded by PRK (Lasek) are virtually non-existent, barring accidents. But then there's also the chance of the optometrist putting your eye out while fitting you with new glasses.
I don't know where parent is getting its information, but people marking his post as Informative are sensationalist scare mongers. Wherever you'll look, you'll find that actual failure or long-term negative effects of Lasek (when compared to the situation before the procedure) is very rare.
The article quoted only goes into clinics claiming that there's an immediate success rate of 99.9% or better. That's not true, many need a second and even a third treatment before the desired result is achieved. Any decent clinic will offer these additional treatments for free, since they're actually part of the treatment as a whole. Just the fact that the doc with the laser has to go in 2 or 3 times to get it right doesn't make it a dangerous procedure, it just makes it a lengthy one and a moderately painful one at that, if you're unlucky.
Like going to the dentist for dentures. No walk in the park, but the end result is almost always an improvement of quality of life. People may even have died, in isolated cases, from infections following the removal of their teeth. Doesn't stop people from getting dentures though, nor does it inspire the kind of scare hype displayed here.
... who think this writer should lay of the Ctrl+B for a bit? The emphasis in my inner voice is driving me bonkers.
I'd agree that there are non-arbitry ways to create a definition and then attach the name 'planet' to it. But you have to ask yourself why you would be doing this. Similar as with the 'ocean and sea' example, what exactly is the point of calling something a planet in the first place?
This is not to say that calling anything anything is pointless. But it is pointless to invent a named category of objects if that category serves no other purpose than a placeholder for the name.
It would seem that in the case of oceans and seas the point is that oceans connect to multiple other large bodies of water, whereas seas are less connected. I can see how that makes sense from a geological point of view, even though IANAG.
From a scientific point of view, naming a clearly defined category, with non-arbitrary criteria, only makes sense if you want to use that name to refer to the category to state or prove something about it. Frankly, I don't really see such a use for the word 'planet', at least not as it stands.
As far as I know, they will still get a notification of the availability of the update, they just won't be able to install it. This article on /. didn't change that.
The OS does not need to "support the auto update", it's a built-in Firefox feature, it does its own checking and downloading.
That's what I thought. I guess you could interpret Google's move to only target MS file formats (csv isn't limited to, but widely in use for Excel) in two ways. Either they -are- targeting the MS Office market specifically, leaving OOo in peace. Or they -are not- targeting MS Office, but endorsing it. Since the only people able to use the service will need to save in MS' proprietary format, making the .ods format pointless for them.
As an OOo user though, I strongly dislike this move by Google, whatever the reasoning behind it. I'm sure it saves them loads of work and they're only ignoring a few percent of the market, but it shows little or no support for OOo, imo.
... -after- the update has installed itself in a friendly way on my machine? I mean, come on: anyone who needs this update already has Firefox installed and will get a notification -or- has turned such notifications off for some very good reason and won't be interested to read about it here.
"Oh, they actually fixed some security issues in Firefox? That must means it's now completely safe, I'm going down there to download straightaway..."
If you drive up to a bridge that has a sign reading "cross at own risk" and it requires you to push a button to raise a barrier, would you drive across?
And yet you would use the software that clearly reads "use at own risk"?
... is remotely funny and even that should never have lasted the author of TFA to actually get to the end of writing it. If people didn't think this was funny because they didn't like Python jokes, spam or trout, that would have been ok. But it's got nothing to do with Python humour in the first place...
And now, for something completely different, I'd say.
It's exactly this attitude that's wrong with the engineers parent's parent is referring to. I happen to be a software engineer, for 15 years running now, and find myself surrounded by engineers who feel they know better than the people using their products.
Instead of listening to user feedback, they go ahead and write stuff that 'works better than what the customer is suggesting'. Or spending insane amounts of effort and time on features that no user actually needs, while disregarding features that users crave.
*Someone does not need to know how to build something to be able to tell how they want something to work*
Engineers don't seem to want to get this and it's exactly this attitude that makes users like grandparent unwilling to submit feedback, since we (the engineers) have created an environment where users don't expect we'll do anything with the feedback anyway.