From TFA: "A Microsoft representative was not available to comment on Acrylic's final release date or a retail price."
You mean to tell me, in a company with about a billion dollars in marketing, and lord knows how many marketing staffers, that they couldn't find ONE person to tell us these things? C'mon;)
As unbelievably beautiful as Sony's hardware can be, Sony has a long-standing history of creating atrocious proprietary software to support it. So this strikes me as a surprisingly smart move for them. Let them create a semi-decent Linux environment (it's not like they don't already exist in Pocket PCs, smartphones, etc.), and let dedicated programmers create excellent software for the PS3 for free.
It kills two birds with one stone very efficiently dontcha think?
I find it funny that my parent got modded interesting, seeing as there was quite a bit of sarcasm in her when she said it - but that's neither here nor there.
On that note, she lives with me in New York. She is just of Indonesian descent, and her parents came to the U.S. from there while Suharto was robbing them blind.
And her exact words (after a five minute rant about how the guy was an asshole) were, and I quote:
"Damnit this is awful. But it sounds about right. After that damned Suharto ran off with $30 billion dollars, there was no way in hell we could ever afford to pay for anything. But still, better for him to steal it than Microsoft."
I don't know if I'm the only person out there who believes the Simpsons, as a series, has been getting much funnier over the last few seasons (especially when compared to how unfunny it was for a while in the late 90's), but I wouldn't be too surprised if Groening and the gang decided to call it quits after the movie is released.
Granted, that sounds hopefully idealistic of me, considering what kinda cash cow the Simpsons has become, but the act of leaving on a high note doesn't occur much often anymore, and I would like to see it happen here for once.
From TFA: "Tiger Woods has a geek-like drive for a stodgy sport, a fat bank account and Swedish model Elin Nordegren on his arm."
I have heard him in interviews call himself somewhat geeky. But a jock he most certainly is not. A geek's determination when it comes to doing something is simply unmatched I have noticed.
Also, (a) he hardly his "ripping muscles" (b) Michelle Wie is 13 (14 now?) and can almost hit a ball 300 yards with a driver. So? (c) world-class hand-eye coordination is a mainstay for the geek crowd no?;)
To use that mouse...it doesn't matter what for really, but anything that will allow him a free moment to realize that "mice" is the correct word might have saved him the need to post a "news" article about something 99% of Slashdot readers probably don't care about;).
How can one say that (a) a few hundred or thousand years of persecution can accelerate genetic evolution quickly enough to provide increased intelligence? Obviously I must have been wrong, but doesn't evolution require many many generations (thousands? I dunno) to fully play out? (b) just the Jews (and not even all of them...just one segment of the Jewish population?) have this apparent "improvement" over everyone else? Jew jokes notwithstanding, but they have been far from the only persecuted race in human history, and comparing hundreds to thousands of years should not be sufficient to justify increased intelligence.
Good strong economic analysis. I like that. Although I'm not so sure about the broadreaching statement that they simply "live better" than people in the US or Europe.
On an aside, however, good luck trying to get anything done in terms of the farmers and their lobbyists. For little more than reasons of national pride, farmers are the most heavily protected group of people, no matter where they are, in the entire world. The political fallout of removing any kind of subsidy from the farmers group would be heard throughout the country, and it simply doesn't make any sense.
Until you insert into peoples' heads the idea that all nations "must" be self-sufficient foodwise, else suffer horrible failure...or something.
Call it a Troll if You Like, But
on
Tokyo's Geek Ghetto
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
As something of a geek (I guess not as much of one as I used to be, but still somewhat of one), I wonder about a few things after reading the article:
(a) "We can feel comfortable because here, we outnumber everyone else"
As someone who has been a member of both predominantly geek- and non-geek social groups at one point, I've always wondered greatly why geeks, who always complain about being tortured and abused by non-geeks, turn around and do it amongst their own geek groups? "We outnumber everyone else" is hardly the way geeks should be fighting back against the non-geeks they claim abuse them so much, and if ya ask me, I'd tell you they were acting just like the non-geeks to one another. Just goes to show you that social structures work the same, geek or not.
(b) "Here, the waitresses' uniforms are inspired by the French maid-meets-Pokemon outfits of adult manga. At other cafes, waitresses greet patrons at the door with a curtsy and the words "Welcome home, master.""
So most of the 10% females left in this area have resorted to saying "welcome home master"? I feel kinda awkward saying this, but any self-respecting (woman-loving?) geek should be trying to get the hell OUT of there as soon as possible, not try to rush into this place.
(c) "Nerd subgroups include not only people obsessed with cartoons and computer games, but also pop idols such as Morning Daughter, a music group marketed to kids that has become so popular among otaku that men sometimes attend its concerts wearing kimonos covered in glossy pictures of young band members.
That, along with the child pornography aspect of some adult manga, has led to allegations that some nerds are pedophiles."
This has been a very long-standing problem in Japanese culture in general (five minutes of Google should net you more than enough information), so trying to stick this behavior to just the nerds specifically discussed here is misguided, to say the least.
(a) Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys? (b) So it occurred to absolutely no one in all of the Wall Street Journal that you could have asked to save a copy of your previous e-mails and Calendar information onto your own computer? Not being able to send e-mails in the present is one thing (and the phone works fine for that), but to tell me that your entire past was wiped out cuz you were too dumb to ask for your stuff to be saved? C'mon.
hmm....homebrewed webserver...serves at a majestic 3MHz...so let's all Slashdot it real quick! However, if the next Slashdot article talks about how we lit up a 3Mhz webserver on fire, I'll be satisfied.
...calling geekiness some kind of horrible disease? It'll be like those idiots who (still?) seem to believe that homosexuality is a disease. I already get beat up enough for being a geek. What happens when people start thinking it's a disease?
On the plus side, in my experience, most geeks tend to be fairly intelligent, (autism aside), and I wouldn't mind knowing ahead of time if my kid will grow up to be smarter than his dad.
When it sez "partial backwards compatibility with XBox games"?
I mean, the XBox 360 has parts of the XBox OS, and that's all it needs to run certain XBox games...right?
Jeez.
One Word Answer
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 2, Informative
No.
More detailed explanation: (a) I can type at 85 wpm, and sometimes I still forget where a key is sometimes. Even if you know where all the keys are, sometimes you may brush the keyboard to one side, and lose orientation, thus needing you to look down at the keyboard anyway to get it back. Not seeing keys makes it harder to regain that orientation. (b) Differentially weighted keys is a minimal improvement at best. Regular keyboards with regularly weighted keys have never bothered me, and unless these keys make me feel physical pleasure of some form when I hit them, it ain't worth spending extra money on. (c) It's not even wireless. No bells, no whistles, nothing. Pass on it.
Granted, I think I can see the point of spending a few extra dollars on an ergonomic keyboard (read: $20, versus $10 for a regular one), and spending a few more dollars on wireless seems luxurious to me at best. An extra $5 on a gel pad or something should prevent most stress injuries, and *gasp* NOT typing for a minute or two helps too.
But spending almost $50 on a massive clump of a mouse that (in the end) really doesn't do more than a normal mouse? Save for maybe targetting airliners or blinding your friends, a laser pointer in a mouse has a minimal effect on 99% of anything you would use a mouse for. Unless, of course, you're using the thing on a rocky floor or something, in which case you have more important things to worry about.
Unless these things drop down in price to the $5 of my two button wireless laptop mouse w/scrollwheel (made in China baby $), they're almost not worth reporting.
Higher than zero would be something I would notice. At least for myself (as a Commerce account holder with a sizable amount of money in my account), this
(a) scares the bejesus outta me, and
(b) could not justifiably allow for an increase in fees beyond the zero I'm currently paying for them. And if there's any more left in my account after this (:\) I'll happily switch banks if they try to use this as an excuse to boost fees.
Ian Pearson graduated in 1981 in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Queens University, Belfast. He spent four years in Shorts Missile Systems, in many different disciplines from mechanical engineering to battlefield strategy simulation. He joined BT Laboratories in 1985 as a performance analyst, and has since worked in network design and evolution, cybernetics, and mobile systems. He now concentrates on mapping the progress of new developments throughout information technology, considering both technological and social implications. As BT's futurologist and a principal consultant, he lectures extensively on his futures views. In between conferences, current projects include machine consciousness, NBIC convergence, and advanced computing technology.
He has received ten awards for his papers, written several books and has made well over 250 TV and radio appearances. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Institute of Nanotechnology. He is married (to Susan) with a daughter (Rachel). He runs a small art group, and enjoys swimming and writing.
I coulda swore this guy was just some overoptimistic kook genuinely believing the stuff he was spewing, but then it dawned upon me: the math obviously got to him, and drove him insane. It could be worse though - he coulda been one of those nuts from the TV show biases team today.
"Man some people aren't getting enough sleep...must've seen that silly Star Wars movie too many times in the last week or so"
It was strange actually - I saw "The Science of Star Wars" and actually saw physicists from Cal Tech, MIT, and other places come up and talk about how close current science might become to reaching Star Wars, and I proceeded to laugh myself clean off my chair onto the floor. Physicists nowadays obviously must not have much to do.
* AMD® Athlon(TM) XP 2500+ central processing unit (CPU)
* NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) FX 5700 Ultra graphics processing unit (GPU)
* NVIDIA nForce(TM)2 Ultra 400 platform processor
* 256 MB RAM
* 40 GB local content cache
* Microsoft Windows XP® Embedded Operating System
* Dynamic, personalized user interfaces customizable for age, gender or technical expertise
* Lapboard, mouse and game pad included
* HDTV and Dolby® Digital 5.1 compatible
* Works with any consumer-standard broadband Internet Service Provider (ISP): DSL or faster
You mean to tell me they've spent millions of dollars trying to build a normal computer, and FAILING??? What kind of real stupidity is going on here?
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
;)
"A Microsoft representative was not available to comment on Acrylic's final release date or a retail price."
You mean to tell me, in a company with about a billion dollars in marketing, and lord knows how many marketing staffers, that they couldn't find ONE person to tell us these things? C'mon
As unbelievably beautiful as Sony's hardware can be, Sony has a long-standing history of creating atrocious proprietary software to support it. So this strikes me as a surprisingly smart move for them. Let them create a semi-decent Linux environment (it's not like they don't already exist in Pocket PCs, smartphones, etc.), and let dedicated programmers create excellent software for the PS3 for free.
It kills two birds with one stone very efficiently dontcha think?
I find it funny that my parent got modded interesting, seeing as there was quite a bit of sarcasm in her when she said it - but that's neither here nor there. On that note, she lives with me in New York. She is just of Indonesian descent, and her parents came to the U.S. from there while Suharto was robbing them blind.
And her exact words (after a five minute rant about how the guy was an asshole) were, and I quote:
"Damnit this is awful. But it sounds about right. After that damned Suharto ran off with $30 billion dollars, there was no way in hell we could ever afford to pay for anything. But still, better for him to steal it than Microsoft."
I don't know if I'm the only person out there who believes the Simpsons, as a series, has been getting much funnier over the last few seasons (especially when compared to how unfunny it was for a while in the late 90's), but I wouldn't be too surprised if Groening and the gang decided to call it quits after the movie is released.
Granted, that sounds hopefully idealistic of me, considering what kinda cash cow the Simpsons has become, but the act of leaving on a high note doesn't occur much often anymore, and I would like to see it happen here for once.
From TFA: "Tiger Woods has a geek-like drive for a stodgy sport, a fat bank account and Swedish model Elin Nordegren on his arm."
;)
I have heard him in interviews call himself somewhat geeky. But a jock he most certainly is not. A geek's determination when it comes to doing something is simply unmatched I have noticed.
Also,
(a) he hardly his "ripping muscles"
(b) Michelle Wie is 13 (14 now?) and can almost hit a ball 300 yards with a driver. So?
(c) world-class hand-eye coordination is a mainstay for the geek crowd no?
To use that mouse...it doesn't matter what for really, but anything that will allow him a free moment to realize that "mice" is the correct word might have saved him the need to post a "news" article about something 99% of Slashdot readers probably don't care about ;).
:)
Using keyboard = not thinking
How can one say that
(a) a few hundred or thousand years of persecution can accelerate genetic evolution quickly enough to provide increased intelligence? Obviously I must have been wrong, but doesn't evolution require many many generations (thousands? I dunno) to fully play out?
(b) just the Jews (and not even all of them...just one segment of the Jewish population?) have this apparent "improvement" over everyone else? Jew jokes notwithstanding, but they have been far from the only persecuted race in human history, and comparing hundreds to thousands of years should not be sufficient to justify increased intelligence.
Good strong economic analysis. I like that. Although I'm not so sure about the broadreaching statement that they simply "live better" than people in the US or Europe.
On an aside, however, good luck trying to get anything done in terms of the farmers and their lobbyists. For little more than reasons of national pride, farmers are the most heavily protected group of people, no matter where they are, in the entire world. The political fallout of removing any kind of subsidy from the farmers group would be heard throughout the country, and it simply doesn't make any sense.
Until you insert into peoples' heads the idea that all nations "must" be self-sufficient foodwise, else suffer horrible failure...or something.
As something of a geek (I guess not as much of one as I used to be, but still somewhat of one), I wonder about a few things after reading the article:
(a) "We can feel comfortable because here, we outnumber everyone else"
As someone who has been a member of both predominantly geek- and non-geek social groups at one point, I've always wondered greatly why geeks, who always complain about being tortured and abused by non-geeks, turn around and do it amongst their own geek groups? "We outnumber everyone else" is hardly the way geeks should be fighting back against the non-geeks they claim abuse them so much, and if ya ask me, I'd tell you they were acting just like the non-geeks to one another. Just goes to show you that social structures work the same, geek or not.
(b) "Here, the waitresses' uniforms are inspired by the French maid-meets-Pokemon outfits of adult manga. At other cafes, waitresses greet patrons at the door with a curtsy and the words "Welcome home, master.""
So most of the 10% females left in this area have resorted to saying "welcome home master"? I feel kinda awkward saying this, but any self-respecting (woman-loving?) geek should be trying to get the hell OUT of there as soon as possible, not try to rush into this place.
(c) "Nerd subgroups include not only people obsessed with cartoons and computer games, but also pop idols such as Morning Daughter, a music group marketed to kids that has become so popular among otaku that men sometimes attend its concerts wearing kimonos covered in glossy pictures of young band members.
That, along with the child pornography aspect of some adult manga, has led to allegations that some nerds are pedophiles."
This has been a very long-standing problem in Japanese culture in general (five minutes of Google should net you more than enough information), so trying to stick this behavior to just the nerds specifically discussed here is misguided, to say the least.
(a) Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys?
(b) So it occurred to absolutely no one in all of the Wall Street Journal that you could have asked to save a copy of your previous e-mails and Calendar information onto your own computer? Not being able to send e-mails in the present is one thing (and the phone works fine for that), but to tell me that your entire past was wiped out cuz you were too dumb to ask for your stuff to be saved? C'mon.
hmm....homebrewed webserver...serves at a majestic 3MHz...so let's all Slashdot it real quick! However, if the next Slashdot article talks about how we lit up a 3Mhz webserver on fire, I'll be satisfied.
...calling geekiness some kind of horrible disease? It'll be like those idiots who (still?) seem to believe that homosexuality is a disease. I already get beat up enough for being a geek. What happens when people start thinking it's a disease?
On the plus side, in my experience, most geeks tend to be fairly intelligent, (autism aside), and I wouldn't mind knowing ahead of time if my kid will grow up to be smarter than his dad.
Both you and the previous commenter missed my blatant sarcasm - it's ok though :)
When it sez "partial backwards compatibility with XBox games"?
I mean, the XBox 360 has parts of the XBox OS, and that's all it needs to run certain XBox games...right?
Jeez.
No.
More detailed explanation:
(a) I can type at 85 wpm, and sometimes I still forget where a key is sometimes. Even if you know where all the keys are, sometimes you may brush the keyboard to one side, and lose orientation, thus needing you to look down at the keyboard anyway to get it back. Not seeing keys makes it harder to regain that orientation.
(b) Differentially weighted keys is a minimal improvement at best. Regular keyboards with regularly weighted keys have never bothered me, and unless these keys make me feel physical pleasure of some form when I hit them, it ain't worth spending extra money on.
(c) It's not even wireless. No bells, no whistles, nothing. Pass on it.
CS nerds are good at lying through our teeth - all we need to do is get close enough, and BANG! One less problem.
Granted, I think I can see the point of spending a few extra dollars on an ergonomic keyboard (read: $20, versus $10 for a regular one), and spending a few more dollars on wireless seems luxurious to me at best. An extra $5 on a gel pad or something should prevent most stress injuries, and *gasp* NOT typing for a minute or two helps too.
But spending almost $50 on a massive clump of a mouse that (in the end) really doesn't do more than a normal mouse? Save for maybe targetting airliners or blinding your friends, a laser pointer in a mouse has a minimal effect on 99% of anything you would use a mouse for. Unless, of course, you're using the thing on a rocky floor or something, in which case you have more important things to worry about.
Unless these things drop down in price to the $5 of my two button wireless laptop mouse w/scrollwheel (made in China baby $), they're almost not worth reporting.
"Toolbar users have submitted more than 5,600 phishing sites since the IE version was released in late December."
If you're going to insult IE users, the least you could do is read the damned article caption. Jeez.
If Anny-kins can survive getting the Monty Python treatment, two nut jobs in England can survive a couple of burns ;)
Maybe he was just being sarcastic and hoping people wouldn't notice it?
*twitch* Oh wait...
Higher than zero would be something I would notice. At least for myself (as a Commerce account holder with a sizable amount of money in my account), this (a) scares the bejesus outta me, and (b) could not justifiably allow for an increase in fees beyond the zero I'm currently paying for them. And if there's any more left in my account after this (:\) I'll happily switch banks if they try to use this as an excuse to boost fees.
From Ian's website:
Ian Pearson graduated in 1981 in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Queens University, Belfast. He spent four years in Shorts Missile Systems, in many different disciplines from mechanical engineering to battlefield strategy simulation. He joined BT Laboratories in 1985 as a performance analyst, and has since worked in network design and evolution, cybernetics, and mobile systems. He now concentrates on mapping the progress of new developments throughout information technology, considering both technological and social implications. As BT's futurologist and a principal consultant, he lectures extensively on his futures views. In between conferences, current projects include machine consciousness, NBIC convergence, and advanced computing technology.
He has received ten awards for his papers, written several books and has made well over 250 TV and radio appearances. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Institute of Nanotechnology. He is married (to Susan) with a daughter (Rachel). He runs a small art group, and enjoys swimming and writing.
I coulda swore this guy was just some overoptimistic kook genuinely believing the stuff he was spewing, but then it dawned upon me: the math obviously got to him, and drove him insane. It could be worse though - he coulda been one of those nuts from the TV show biases team today.
"Man some people aren't getting enough sleep...must've seen that silly Star Wars movie too many times in the last week or so"
It was strange actually - I saw "The Science of Star Wars" and actually saw physicists from Cal Tech, MIT, and other places come up and talk about how close current science might become to reaching Star Wars, and I proceeded to laugh myself clean off my chair onto the floor. Physicists nowadays obviously must not have much to do.
From the Infinium Labs website:
Phantom(TM) Game Receiver
* AMD® Athlon(TM) XP 2500+ central processing unit (CPU)
* NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) FX 5700 Ultra graphics processing unit (GPU)
* NVIDIA nForce(TM)2 Ultra 400 platform processor
* 256 MB RAM
* 40 GB local content cache
* Microsoft Windows XP® Embedded Operating System
* Dynamic, personalized user interfaces customizable for age, gender or technical expertise
* Lapboard, mouse and game pad included
* HDTV and Dolby® Digital 5.1 compatible
* Works with any consumer-standard broadband Internet Service Provider (ISP): DSL or faster
You mean to tell me they've spent millions of dollars trying to build a normal computer, and FAILING??? What kind of real stupidity is going on here?