Clippy: I see you're trying to type a memo, would you like me to help? User: No. Clippy: Is it ok if I delete the memo, since you mistyped a word? User: No. Clippy: I'm just going to shut off the Internet, it might send some viruses in the future if someone doesn't like you - ok? User: No. Clippy: Oops. You just typed a word in Arabic! You might be a terrorist! I'm going to send a copy of your memo to the NSA right now! User:tries to turn off Clippy Clippy: Well, that did it! Noone turns off Clippy, especially a terrorist! I'm going to shutdown this computer! User:turns off computer, installs BSD or Linux
One has to wonder how many people won't even bother to upgrade to Vista in the first place.
For example, in every review I've read, it appears you need more than 1 GB of RAM, preferably more than 2 GB or more, and a top of the line video card with more than 128 graphics memory.
Additionaly, for reasonable performance with your normal multi-application usage, you have to have better than 4 GHz or a dual core CPU.
This pretty much rules out most laptops I've seen around, and a lot of home PCs.
I can't see paying more than $2000 (more like $4000) for a new PC (or $5000 for a laptop) as well as an additional $2000 for replacement applications, just because Microsoft wants us to pay them more money.
Unless I'm wrong on these counts, I'm going to stick with WinXP for my home laptop and work PC, and consider switching to Linux soon.
1. Many global warming deniers are:
a. funded by oil and coal companies that strongly encourage them to try to find anything so that they won't have to actually take action;
b. not peer reviewed; and
c. not supported by the more than 95 percent of climatologists who agree the GW does exist.
2. Global Warming is not what you think it is. It is actually large dramatic changes in the global temperature patterns, and even if the median temperature increases - which it is currently doing at an accelerating rate - it will tend to oscillate and result in massive changes in temperature - both Warming and Freezing - at both a local and global level.
This last point means that you can have some parts of the globe get colder while other parts - like say the Northwest section of the US - have 60 percent of their glaciers that have survived hundreds of thousands of years all melt.
You can also have, in global warming, a period where it gets much much colder for 2-5 years, and then suddenly gets a lot warmer for 5-100 years - in fact, much of our recent history shows this.
What is known is that man-made pollution, heat generation, and deforestation is now a major factor in global warming, and was not so before the 18th century. And it is becoming more and more of a major factor each and every day.
I would as a consumer would be interested in another Diablo addition.
I agree, Diablo and Diablo II were my fave games up until I stopped playing online (other than Sims 2).
In addition to Spore, I could definitely see playing a Diablo expansion on my wireless cable-modem-fed laptop or my soon-to-buy Wii.
My son's getting a Mac mini this afternoon - it's tax free day (we have no income tax here) and I get the educational discount. I hope if they expand it that it will run on the Mac as well (intel-based Mac mini). It's been his fave game, other than Starcraft, which I'm sure he could convince me to buy an online version of (beyond the base setup).
They based the results on a questionnaire, after all, and many of those are far too broad (and too sloppily answered) to give precise data about an individual's real consumption of either alcohol or coffee.
I'm not sure if you know this, but most human studies are heavily questionnaire oriented, and we do have a range of questionnaires, including self-administered (useful for embarrassing subjects), informant-administered (usually one's spouse or, in this case, perhaps your bartender and barrista), and clinician-administered (where a trained specialist asks you the questions and is watching for how you answer and evasiveness, and may have follow-up questions).
We can't go around and cage you up like we do mice, and accurately measure your caffeine and alcohol consumption. Human subjects have to consent, have to participate, and the level of invasiveness impacts the participation.
As to coffee-drinking being a white-collar lifestyle, in my experience, having worked in forestry, mines, road construction, computing, management, and research, I would say it's class neutral and exists in all levels - people who do manual work drink coffee at work, at lunch, and at the bar before heading home or when having breakfast - people who are white color do the same, just in a different manner. Your personal observations may be clouded by your limited experience in world travel and working in different occupations.
But, a good study would do comparisons in say Norway, Japan, USA, Canada, and Kenya just to be sure. And have a large enough study group that even when you sub-sample (say Canada, or maybe blue collar workers in urban areas versus rural areas) you still have significant populations.
Press Start is a podcast about the world of video games--and the culture that surrounds them. Hosts Robert Holt, Ralph Cooper, and Kyle Orland discuss the art and craft of video games: what's new and what games they've been playing. Visit this podcast's Web site
Updates: Every other Friday at 12:30am ET Duration: approx 15 minutes
I agree, both Rosetta@Home and Folding@Home are good projects.
One should point out, to those confused by the research being announced as having come from Japanese, Canadian, and American scientists, that many such scientific papers are as a result of collaboration of a number of scientists and/or labs, frequently in multiple countries.
Or, you could just go to Nature Medicine and look it up yourself. That's where the original article that the news is based on is located.
after all, in addition to a new disk format noone sees a need for, and a price way too high for not enough games, you also get wonderful DRM and region-coding to make your life even more meaningful.
I'll be using my inexpensive, less than $250 USD Wii, in the meantime, playing all the really cool games that knock my socks off.
But, on a good note, PS2 sales are still beating the xBox and xBox360 combined, after E3.
Yeah, just saw a preview trailer (long) from EA for E3, which had Sims 2: Pets clips, and the Command and Conquer title looked nice. But Spore rules over all!
I've personally thought of buying a PS2 - and I have an xBox and a GameCube - because some of the games at E3 will release for the PS2 regardless.
But, I'm still waiting for the Wii, which I'll be buying, so I would probably buy used games at EBX for any PS2, now that the price is so low.
Even if Sony did badly at E3, I don't sense anyone deciding to buy a 360 because of it - most either decided to get a Wii, or might get a PS3 if they drop the DRM, the price, and the rootkits.
Let's face it, the MSM doesn't have a clue as to what's going on, and so long as their advertising budget comes from Company A, that's the games they want.
Like whys for a messaging service, if WoW didn't have a artificial mail service, and some independant group of players created their own ingame mail company (ala Fed-Axe!) would it be wrong of them to advertise in the major cities?
I remember getting sick in Diablo with all the pop-up trolls who would advertise for the place to buy a special Diablo sword, etc. All scripted.
It annoyed the HELL out of me. I HATED it.
The problem is every advertiser acts like he's the only one. But he isn't. Once one person does it, five thousand people do the same thing.
The only solution is context-sensitive ads - want an ad in a fantasy game? It has to be a faded banner on a wall in a place that normally would have ad banners and fits - e.g. Nike could have an ad that said "Ye Olden Nike - Shoes and Sandals fur ye Actif Trolle or Gobline" on the side of an Arena building, or Pepsi could have an ad on a torn weathered poster made of old style paper in a Wild West game that said "Reward: $500 for Pepsi Drinking Sam - Dead or Alive - with a charcoal picture badly done of a guy with a hat with a Pepsi color bandanna". But only one ad per town.
Ok, so one of my first degrees was in Business (Marketing and Sales), and I used to design games back in the stone age.
I think that the most effective advertising online is as follows:
1. Humorous - If someone tries to sell me Coca-Cola while I'm online in say WoW, I might hate it, and In The Real World (ITRW) might even start to dislike Coke and choose Pepsi. But if they were to have the Coca-Cola symbol only it was Coca-Noca-Cola but otherwise the same, that's kind of funny, so it might give me a positive image of the real Coke, and ITRW I might buy more Coke.
2. Appropriate - If I'm in the Sims and I see something for Bank of America, I'll be miffed. But if I see the BofA logo but it's Simlish and says Banca de Sim but is the same logo, I might enjoy it and think Good Things about BofA - especially if it's an ATM I can use an interaction like "Plead for money" on.
3. Not irritating - If I'm playing a game and something pops up in the middle of a three-guild war when we're in a massive slaughterfest and it's an animated strobing ad that distracts me - I will become furious and actively boycott the MOFO who placed the ad - period. If it's a banner that looks appropriate (not sharp, fits in, does not get in the way, placed where a banner would be) that might be ok, so long as it's not animated, strobing, or otherwise wrong.
4. Avatars - and Assumptions - just because my character in say Diablo is a female assassin who likes to dress in skimpy clothes, don't assume I'm interested in: a. skimpy clothes; b. female clothes; c. birth control pills; d. poison; or e. Hamster Death Heads. Um, wait, I might be interested in Hamster Death Heads.
We can either panic, or realize that moves like this are the last desperate cries, by those who hate Freedom and Liberty, before they are thrown into the dustbin of History.
Gird thy loins, and guard thy lions, for the battle for freedom is ne'er won by faint of heart.
If they can keep opening the facebook up to mobile phones, they might have truly created an advertiser's wet dream... because at that point, college kids everywhere will reach social networking nirvana.
They implemented that already on Facebook. I like the status update part, right now my status is "pondering why Grey's Anatomy isn't #1 on Facebook in Seattle".
Maybe I should change it to "pondering how to get beer into my iPod"...
Until the staff busts you for posting pics about it while you're underage.
[caveat, I'm staff, I'm on facebook, I drink beer (prefer hard cider, actually), and I don't own an iPod, just an MP3 512MB USB flashcard with headphones]
Slashdot Mirror
I knew I shouldn't have answered the question "When is the last time you purchased weapons of mass destruction?" on that Safeway survey!
You should do like I did, and have a Safeway card registered under the name Richard M. Nixon. Presidents are immune from questioning about WMD.
and will proudly present my papers when searched by the Politburo's duly designated Security Police.
Clippy has a black hat and six shooters now ...
Clippy: I see you're trying to type a memo, would you like me to help?
User: No.
Clippy: Is it ok if I delete the memo, since you mistyped a word?
User: No.
Clippy: I'm just going to shut off the Internet, it might send some viruses in the future if someone doesn't like you - ok?
User: No.
Clippy: Oops. You just typed a word in Arabic! You might be a terrorist! I'm going to send a copy of your memo to the NSA right now!
User: tries to turn off Clippy
Clippy: Well, that did it! Noone turns off Clippy, especially a terrorist! I'm going to shutdown this computer!
User: turns off computer, installs BSD or Linux
One has to wonder how many people won't even bother to upgrade to Vista in the first place.
For example, in every review I've read, it appears you need more than 1 GB of RAM, preferably more than 2 GB or more, and a top of the line video card with more than 128 graphics memory.
Additionaly, for reasonable performance with your normal multi-application usage, you have to have better than 4 GHz or a dual core CPU.
This pretty much rules out most laptops I've seen around, and a lot of home PCs.
I can't see paying more than $2000 (more like $4000) for a new PC (or $5000 for a laptop) as well as an additional $2000 for replacement applications, just because Microsoft wants us to pay them more money.
Unless I'm wrong on these counts, I'm going to stick with WinXP for my home laptop and work PC, and consider switching to Linux soon.
some of them are funded by Chevron and Peabody, too.
We should realize two things:
1. Many global warming deniers are:
a. funded by oil and coal companies that strongly encourage them to try to find anything so that they won't have to actually take action;
b. not peer reviewed; and
c. not supported by the more than 95 percent of climatologists who agree the GW does exist.
2. Global Warming is not what you think it is. It is actually large dramatic changes in the global temperature patterns, and even if the median temperature increases - which it is currently doing at an accelerating rate - it will tend to oscillate and result in massive changes in temperature - both Warming and Freezing - at both a local and global level.
This last point means that you can have some parts of the globe get colder while other parts - like say the Northwest section of the US - have 60 percent of their glaciers that have survived hundreds of thousands of years all melt.
You can also have, in global warming, a period where it gets much much colder for 2-5 years, and then suddenly gets a lot warmer for 5-100 years - in fact, much of our recent history shows this.
What is known is that man-made pollution, heat generation, and deforestation is now a major factor in global warming, and was not so before the 18th century. And it is becoming more and more of a major factor each and every day.
I would as a consumer would be interested in another Diablo addition.
I agree, Diablo and Diablo II were my fave games up until I stopped playing online (other than Sims 2).
In addition to Spore, I could definitely see playing a Diablo expansion on my wireless cable-modem-fed laptop or my soon-to-buy Wii.
My son's getting a Mac mini this afternoon - it's tax free day (we have no income tax here) and I get the educational discount. I hope if they expand it that it will run on the Mac as well (intel-based Mac mini). It's been his fave game, other than Starcraft, which I'm sure he could convince me to buy an online version of (beyond the base setup).
Coffee gives me a similar length word with two 'r' in it.
Slurry?
Furry?
jitter?
They based the results on a questionnaire, after all, and many of those are far too broad (and too sloppily answered) to give precise data about an individual's real consumption of either alcohol or coffee.
I'm not sure if you know this, but most human studies are heavily questionnaire oriented, and we do have a range of questionnaires, including self-administered (useful for embarrassing subjects), informant-administered (usually one's spouse or, in this case, perhaps your bartender and barrista), and clinician-administered (where a trained specialist asks you the questions and is watching for how you answer and evasiveness, and may have follow-up questions).
We can't go around and cage you up like we do mice, and accurately measure your caffeine and alcohol consumption. Human subjects have to consent, have to participate, and the level of invasiveness impacts the participation.
As to coffee-drinking being a white-collar lifestyle, in my experience, having worked in forestry, mines, road construction, computing, management, and research, I would say it's class neutral and exists in all levels - people who do manual work drink coffee at work, at lunch, and at the bar before heading home or when having breakfast - people who are white color do the same, just in a different manner. Your personal observations may be clouded by your limited experience in world travel and working in different occupations.
But, a good study would do comparisons in say Norway, Japan, USA, Canada, and Kenya just to be sure. And have a large enough study group that even when you sub-sample (say Canada, or maybe blue collar workers in urban areas versus rural areas) you still have significant populations.
As an adjunct, they noted that consuming tea does not have a similar effect.
Doc: Nurse, this man's liver is failing! Get him four cups of coffee, strong and black!
Nurse: But, Doctor, he's caffeine intolerant - it says it interacts with his other meds.
Doc: Oh, ok, in that case, give it to me, I'll drink it.
Fun & Games
alt.NPR: Press Start [alt.NPR]
Press Start is a podcast about the world of video games--and the culture that surrounds them. Hosts Robert Holt, Ralph Cooper, and Kyle Orland discuss the art and craft of video games: what's new and what games they've been playing. Visit this podcast's Web site
Updates: Every other Friday at 12:30am ET
Duration: approx 15 minutes
I agree, both Rosetta@Home and Folding@Home are good projects.
One should point out, to those confused by the research being announced as having come from Japanese, Canadian, and American scientists, that many such scientific papers are as a result of collaboration of a number of scientists and/or labs, frequently in multiple countries.
Or, you could just go to Nature Medicine and look it up yourself. That's where the original article that the news is based on is located.
Designate a special area online and let people attend as their characters, and enter areas such as:
...
1. The Valley of Optimizing Characters
2. Mountains of the Efficient Guild
3. River Tales - or how to curse properly in Dark Elvish
Then people can read the signs and travel there, and get the same basic effect (minus the beer and furtive sex) as a real con.
I mean, most of them are already online already
after all, in addition to a new disk format noone sees a need for, and a price way too high for not enough games, you also get wonderful DRM and region-coding to make your life even more meaningful.
I'll be using my inexpensive, less than $250 USD Wii, in the meantime, playing all the really cool games that knock my socks off.
But, on a good note, PS2 sales are still beating the xBox and xBox360 combined, after E3.
Yeah, just saw a preview trailer (long) from EA for E3, which had Sims 2: Pets clips, and the Command and Conquer title looked nice. But Spore rules over all!
I try not to write Will Wright just because it's right, but because it's not wrong.
I think that when the Wii comes out we may find other Gaming Gods on that platform, but for now we can stick with Will Wright right or wrong.
So long as Will Wright is around, who needs other Game Gods?
I've personally thought of buying a PS2 - and I have an xBox and a GameCube - because some of the games at E3 will release for the PS2 regardless.
But, I'm still waiting for the Wii, which I'll be buying, so I would probably buy used games at EBX for any PS2, now that the price is so low.
Even if Sony did badly at E3, I don't sense anyone deciding to buy a 360 because of it - most either decided to get a Wii, or might get a PS3 if they drop the DRM, the price, and the rootkits.
racing cigarette speed boats in Venice.
Let's face it, the MSM doesn't have a clue as to what's going on, and so long as their advertising budget comes from Company A, that's the games they want.
Like whys for a messaging service, if WoW didn't have a artificial mail service, and some independant group of players created their own ingame mail company (ala Fed-Axe!) would it be wrong of them to advertise in the major cities?
I remember getting sick in Diablo with all the pop-up trolls who would advertise for the place to buy a special Diablo sword, etc. All scripted.
It annoyed the HELL out of me. I HATED it.
The problem is every advertiser acts like he's the only one. But he isn't. Once one person does it, five thousand people do the same thing.
The only solution is context-sensitive ads - want an ad in a fantasy game? It has to be a faded banner on a wall in a place that normally would have ad banners and fits - e.g. Nike could have an ad that said "Ye Olden Nike - Shoes and Sandals fur ye Actif Trolle or Gobline" on the side of an Arena building, or Pepsi could have an ad on a torn weathered poster made of old style paper in a Wild West game that said "Reward: $500 for Pepsi Drinking Sam - Dead or Alive - with a charcoal picture badly done of a guy with a hat with a Pepsi color bandanna". But only one ad per town.
Ok, so one of my first degrees was in Business (Marketing and Sales), and I used to design games back in the stone age.
I think that the most effective advertising online is as follows:
1. Humorous - If someone tries to sell me Coca-Cola while I'm online in say WoW, I might hate it, and In The Real World (ITRW) might even start to dislike Coke and choose Pepsi. But if they were to have the Coca-Cola symbol only it was Coca-Noca-Cola but otherwise the same, that's kind of funny, so it might give me a positive image of the real Coke, and ITRW I might buy more Coke.
2. Appropriate - If I'm in the Sims and I see something for Bank of America, I'll be miffed. But if I see the BofA logo but it's Simlish and says Banca de Sim but is the same logo, I might enjoy it and think Good Things about BofA - especially if it's an ATM I can use an interaction like "Plead for money" on.
3. Not irritating - If I'm playing a game and something pops up in the middle of a three-guild war when we're in a massive slaughterfest and it's an animated strobing ad that distracts me - I will become furious and actively boycott the MOFO who placed the ad - period. If it's a banner that looks appropriate (not sharp, fits in, does not get in the way, placed where a banner would be) that might be ok, so long as it's not animated, strobing, or otherwise wrong.
4. Avatars - and Assumptions - just because my character in say Diablo is a female assassin who likes to dress in skimpy clothes, don't assume I'm interested in: a. skimpy clothes; b. female clothes; c. birth control pills; d. poison; or e. Hamster Death Heads. Um, wait, I might be interested in Hamster Death Heads.
We can either panic, or realize that moves like this are the last desperate cries, by those who hate Freedom and Liberty, before they are thrown into the dustbin of History.
Gird thy loins, and guard thy lions, for the battle for freedom is ne'er won by faint of heart.
If they can keep opening the facebook up to mobile phones, they might have truly created an advertiser's wet dream... because at that point, college kids everywhere will reach social networking nirvana.
...
They implemented that already on Facebook. I like the status update part, right now my status is "pondering why Grey's Anatomy isn't #1 on Facebook in Seattle".
Maybe I should change it to "pondering how to get beer into my iPod"
well, beer isn't exactly a new phenomenon. it's like saying football games are not "in" on college campuses.
Actually, extreme Frisbee is in. Football is ok, but way overpriced.
But beer is cheap if you go at Happy Hour.
was about 90 percent cool.
Until the staff busts you for posting pics about it while you're underage.
[caveat, I'm staff, I'm on facebook, I drink beer (prefer hard cider, actually), and I don't own an iPod, just an MP3 512MB USB flashcard with headphones]