JEDI... CGI has now advanced to the point where it might even be economical to re-make Jedi with Wookies instead of Ewoks. It's a lot of good animating and a lot of good editing work. Emphasis on a lot. And good writing, lets not forget that. Economical ornot, it's still worth doing. Rveenge of the Jedi anyone ?
She gets into the science-fiction genre quite solidly with her treatment of advanced medical techniques such as cloning and genetic manipulation. She also uses it to create Barrayar as a setting - an isoloated world that fell back to barbarism is now back on the galactic stage. The depth of their peculiar political situation also derives from the science fiction background; Barrayar is at the end of a wormhole chain, with only a single entry point, when it collapsed the system was isolated.
Grab a copy of Falling Free or Ethan of Athos for a (more or less) standalone novel that depend on these issues as major plot points. Both are in continuity with the Vorkosigan saga, but only one features a character from the main line of books, and she's on an independant assignment. Also note that a church group based its statement on medical ethics regarding cloning on themes developed by Bujold; I can't find the link to save my life right now.
I'm interested in other horrorshow sites myself. I work (mostly) second-level support and I see a lot of confused users. I use the User Interface Hall of Shame to show people that it just might not be their fault if something is confusing. It seems to help the (few) users who actually check it out.
I've been brushing up on my spirituality, so the religious overtones in Chalion hit closer to home. Now we can hope that she does a sequel or seven to Chalion so we can properly compare it to the Vorkosigan series. Which, btw, I buy in hardback as they come out, Chalion I read from the library and will pick up in paperback.
I have graveyard on the helldesk at work, Friday and Saturday. The 16 hours between the two shifts will be spent at my girlfriend's house. Any other brilliant observations (I only have to be polite to the folks who call the helpline)
Put me down for Bujold's latest. Of the others, all I've read was "Cosmonaut Keep", which was good but not up to, say, Stone Canal. Curse of Chalion is actually better than the Vorkosigan books, and muuuuuuch better than "Spirit Ring" (one of the few books where I don't remember if I finished it, don't care, and won't try again).
Tinkering is how I learned computers too. But you never tinker with a production system. Ever. Or you lose important data. Data that will cost real money (quantity) to replace, if it even can be. Did you have your data backed up by the way ? It's hard to lose an entire drive permanently just by tinkering, but it is possible. Maybe you were lucky. Maybe you never tinkered with anything that might require, or impose, a reformat. But again, you didn't do that on a production system did you ?
One also has to consider the implications of giving an untrained or incompetent person access to mission-critical production systems. That's a management issue, but if you got stock from the company, you might consider making noise at stockholder's meeting about poor personnel policies that cost the company quantifiable dollars.
The CEO of ActiveBuddy responded to the article. And he's way out in left field.
Yes, LindsayBuddy was built to "promote" a musician. But in the case of an interactive agent, a person chooses to interact with and engage this "promotional" property; which I believe is far less disingenuous than television programs, which insert (or should I write "impose") advertising within programming material.
This ignores the point. The child has no way whatsoever to indentify that "LindsayBuddy" is designed to sell her somethings. There is no correlation at all between the name of the bot and its designed function - advertising to children. That's deceptive. Even product placements are obvious - the logo is showing - if they weren't, they wouldn't be product placements.
Would you rather your child engaged in an IM session with a stranger who found their screen name in a chat room, or with a friendly, well-mannered "bot" that plays by rules of propriety too often ignored in today's world of crass media overload, seeking audience regardless of the cost to morals and proper social behavior?
Advertising bots protect children from online predators by their very existence ? Is that really his argument ? Yes, he really is arguing to parent's fears for their children. I find such an argument to be as despicable as the advertising bots themselves.
Furthermore, he wraps that appeal in "rules of propriety too often ignored". I have a wakeup call for him, stealth advertising aimed at children is illegal in some cases and considered improper in many others.
I hope that the marketing associations will act to ban this behavior before it becomes necessary to legislate against it. I can foresee more insidious uses of this technology than these first versions. Imagine bots that act to develop a child's trust over an extended period, and then begin pitching subtle commercial messages to the child. I believe that this is the very definition of insidious. from www.m-w.com we have:
One entry found for insidious. Main Entry: insidious Pronunciation: in-'si-dE-&s Function: adjective Etymology: Latin insidiosus, from insidiae ambush, from insidEre to sit in, sit on, from in- + sedEre to sit -- more at SIT Date: 1545 1 a : awaiting a chance to entrap : TREACHEROUS b : harmful but enticing : SEDUCTIVE 2 a : having a gradual and cumulative effect : SUBTLE b of a disease : developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent.
Around San Francisco the economy started dropping off much earlier than 9/11. I bought, oh, 6 CDs in 2000 - none mainstream - and exactly no CDs last year. In a statistical sample consisting of me, we have a 100% dropoff - tied directly to the bubble bursting in early 2001.
I have half the DVDs (rest on legal VCD) and I found that the translation for the dubbing was pretty wwell done. It came out very close to the subtitles on the VCD.
The sad part about Episode 1 was the first full trailer that was released. That promised us a samurai movie with lightsabers. We got Jar-Jar. We were promised an evil scheme and daring heroes. We got a plot where the villians wins either way (actually, that's is the cleverest think I can think of a movie villain ever doing - at least after a day on helldesk).
Go back and watch the trailer for Ep.1 agaian. That's really not what we actually got. All the scenes are there, but the tone of the film is quite different from the trailer.
Wrong. It depends on the state. California for example is a two-party permissions state for any recording. But if you ask, on tape, and they acede, on tape, then you have a legal tape. I suspect you can record them saying no, but recording the argument to get them to agree probably isn't.
Let's make this a thread.... hfnetchk is God's gift to Windows admins. Itr's aveyr nice utility that scans your network for Windows boxes needing security patches. If it can't tell if a box needs a patch, it tells you why. Then you pass the info to SMS and the patches get applied at the next login. Presto - a completely up to date Windows network.
I did some marketing work back in college daze. I worked on marketing Ascend dialup servers to ISPs. Back in the mid-90s most ISPs were targetting an 8:1 customer to modem ratio. This worked out to 10 or 12 to 1 in practice, but users still didn't get very many busy signals.
In the broadband world with Morpheus et al sucking bandwidth, the provider has to maintain a better equipment to customer ratio, and that with more expensive equipment (not that modem concentrators were ever cheap), so margins get razor thin. On top of that, users consuming more total bandwidth means higher costs to the provider - in only to maintain their own network.
RtCW gets its realism in an odd way. The "Limbo" system of spawning isn't very realistic in its own right, but in practice it helps create groups of soldiers and gives the feel of waves of reinforcements or reserves coming into the action. Not strictly realistic in the pieces, but it plays more "realistic". It also avoids the "lets watch the last 5 minutes of the match" syndrome. However it does encourage more "suicidal" play styles: charging in with an SMG is more likely if you'll be back in 20 seconds, and not splattered all over the place asin real life. So it's a trade off - gameplay vs. realism.
And when I'm on the beach, cowering behind an obstacle, knowing that support fire can get me anyway, and that a sniper could nail me when I step around to fire, that's a realistic case of combat nerves. Suddenly hearing the "thwap" of a sniper's bullet taking you out, and you have no idea where it came from... that's a realism element. When a grenade you didn't see takes you out, that's real. When your buddy puts a burst into because he saw motion, that's real. There are a lot of 'arcade" and 'movie" elements to RtCW, which changes the standards of realism, but it works out as a reasonable simulation of the stresses of war. That's a high immersion factor.
On that last note, I saw an article recently that said a recent building clearing exercise using MILES laser tag gear would have resulted in about thirty blue on blue casualties, but google can't find the link for me.
For once I'm glad I don't have any mod points right now. I'd give myself a headache trying to decide if this is +1 Funny or -1 Troll. Now all we need is, +1 Troll and we'd be set.
If they gave out a chat log that I had participated in, without my knowledge or consent, then I would be very upset. I'd probably even have a better case than this woman does.
EU was flawed, but reports from trusted gamers say that EU2 is significantly improved with a lot of minor stuff fixed and more options for everything. It's not a big step up over the first game, so it had a short development cycle.
I have RtCW and beta-tested DoD2. RtCW is, to me, a lot more fun. DoD is more "realistic", but the team-based play in RtCW and the group spawning gets a lot more action into the game. The maps in RtCW retail are also bigger, better looking and more balanced than those in DoD.
Your mileage may vary, but try the multiplayer demos for both.
Of course, Google doesn't have to list list CoS ads. In fact, they would probably rather not ever hear from them again.
In the link arena, I find myself almost appalled at the prospect of all-out memetic warfare waged with state of the art googlebombs. The possibility that someone might automate the process leads us into AI territory.
Slashdot Mirror
JEDI... CGI has now advanced to the point where it might even be economical to re-make Jedi with Wookies instead of Ewoks. It's a lot of good animating and a lot of good editing work. Emphasis on a lot. And good writing, lets not forget that. Economical ornot, it's still worth doing. Rveenge of the Jedi anyone ?
Grab a copy of Falling Free or Ethan of Athos for a (more or less) standalone novel that depend on these issues as major plot points. Both are in continuity with the Vorkosigan saga, but only one features a character from the main line of books, and she's on an independant assignment. Also note that a church group based its statement on medical ethics regarding cloning on themes developed by Bujold; I can't find the link to save my life right now.
I'm interested in other horrorshow sites myself. I work (mostly) second-level support and I see a lot of confused users. I use the User Interface Hall of Shame to show people that it just might not be their fault if something is confusing. It seems to help the (few) users who actually check it out.
Now to wait until Diplomatic Immunity comes out in May.
I have graveyard on the helldesk at work, Friday and Saturday. The 16 hours between the two shifts will be spent at my girlfriend's house. Any other brilliant observations (I only have to be polite to the folks who call the helpline)
Put me down for Bujold's latest. Of the others, all I've read was "Cosmonaut Keep", which was good but not up to, say, Stone Canal. Curse of Chalion is actually better than the Vorkosigan books, and muuuuuuch better than "Spirit Ring" (one of the few books where I don't remember if I finished it, don't care, and won't try again).
Was there ever a good reason to use Flash for menus ?
One also has to consider the implications of giving an untrained or incompetent person access to mission-critical production systems. That's a management issue, but if you got stock from the company, you might consider making noise at stockholder's meeting about poor personnel policies that cost the company quantifiable dollars.
This ignores the point. The child has no way whatsoever to indentify that "LindsayBuddy" is designed to sell her somethings. There is no correlation at all between the name of the bot and its designed function - advertising to children. That's deceptive. Even product placements are obvious - the logo is showing - if they weren't, they wouldn't be product placements.
Advertising bots protect children from online predators by their very existence ? Is that really his argument ? Yes, he really is arguing to parent's fears for their children. I find such an argument to be as despicable as the advertising bots themselves.
Furthermore, he wraps that appeal in "rules of propriety too often ignored". I have a wakeup call for him, stealth advertising aimed at children is illegal in some cases and considered improper in many others.
I hope that the marketing associations will act to ban this behavior before it becomes necessary to legislate against it. I can foresee more insidious uses of this technology than these first versions. Imagine bots that act to develop a child's trust over an extended period, and then begin pitching subtle commercial messages to the child. I believe that this is the very definition of insidious. from www.m-w.com we have:
Yup. And Claris would live again !
Around San Francisco the economy started dropping off much earlier than 9/11. I bought, oh, 6 CDs in 2000 - none mainstream - and exactly no CDs last year. In a statistical sample consisting of me, we have a 100% dropoff - tied directly to the bubble bursting in early 2001.
Is 2A the Boy is chased by many women who wish they were his fiance ?
I have half the DVDs (rest on legal VCD) and I found that the translation for the dubbing was pretty wwell done. It came out very close to the subtitles on the VCD.
Go back and watch the trailer for Ep.1 agaian. That's really not what we actually got. All the scenes are there, but the tone of the film is quite different from the trailer.
Wrong. It depends on the state. California for example is a two-party permissions state for any recording. But if you ask, on tape, and they acede, on tape, then you have a legal tape. I suspect you can record them saying no, but recording the argument to get them to agree probably isn't.
Let's make this a thread.... hfnetchk is God's gift to Windows admins. Itr's aveyr nice utility that scans your network for Windows boxes needing security patches. If it can't tell if a box needs a patch, it tells you why. Then you pass the info to SMS and the patches get applied at the next login. Presto - a completely up to date Windows network.
In the broadband world with Morpheus et al sucking bandwidth, the provider has to maintain a better equipment to customer ratio, and that with more expensive equipment (not that modem concentrators were ever cheap), so margins get razor thin. On top of that, users consuming more total bandwidth means higher costs to the provider - in only to maintain their own network.
And when I'm on the beach, cowering behind an obstacle, knowing that support fire can get me anyway, and that a sniper could nail me when I step around to fire, that's a realistic case of combat nerves. Suddenly hearing the "thwap" of a sniper's bullet taking you out, and you have no idea where it came from... that's a realism element. When a grenade you didn't see takes you out, that's real. When your buddy puts a burst into because he saw motion, that's real. There are a lot of 'arcade" and 'movie" elements to RtCW, which changes the standards of realism, but it works out as a reasonable simulation of the stresses of war. That's a high immersion factor.
On that last note, I saw an article recently that said a recent building clearing exercise using MILES laser tag gear would have resulted in about thirty blue on blue casualties, but google can't find the link for me.
For once I'm glad I don't have any mod points right now. I'd give myself a headache trying to decide if this is +1 Funny or -1 Troll. Now all we need is, +1 Troll and we'd be set.
If they gave out a chat log that I had participated in, without my knowledge or consent, then I would be very upset. I'd probably even have a better case than this woman does.
Congratulations, a goatse link is finally on-topic !
EU was flawed, but reports from trusted gamers say that EU2 is significantly improved with a lot of minor stuff fixed and more options for everything. It's not a big step up over the first game, so it had a short development cycle.
Your mileage may vary, but try the multiplayer demos for both.
And Microsoft is picthing MSN as an 'alternative" to AOL. That's gotta be the funniest ad campaign I've seen in a loong time.
In the link arena, I find myself almost appalled at the prospect of all-out memetic warfare waged with state of the art googlebombs. The possibility that someone might automate the process leads us into AI territory.
I hope nobody turns anything loose.