The problem with the SimCity games (haven't played to latest versions, so maybe this has changed) was always that a city completely lacked a sense of *history*. It took me right out of the game. A building would be a skyscraper one minute, a small shop the next minute, and the same skyscraper again a minute after that. In the real world, buildings decay and are sometimes torn down, but a given neighborhood maintains *much* more consistency and history than any "city" in SimCity (where a lot can house several completely different buildings over the course or just a year or two).
As opposed to the more real environs of Jimmy's basement, eating the pizzeria rolls his mom made, while he reads from a piece of cardboard and several losers pretend that a glorified series of dice roles represents something meaningful in their lives? Yes, I can see where a mere videogame would pale in comparison to that awesome experience.
Yeah, well in *my* day, we had *real* swordfights. Until there is the real threat of death, you won't get that (really really *really* fun) experience either.
This whole thing was just saber-rattling in retaliation for China trying to steal some of their source code. It was nothing more than a big PR show from the get-go. They censored before the theft, and it was only a matter of time before they went right back to censoring. Money always wins, and China has all the money these days.
I guess you could narrow down the definition of "environmental disaster" to preclude about anything. But, by almost every measure, man-made disasters occurred in those centuries (and many others) that would absolutely *dwarf* this petty little oil spill. Let's not lose perspective here. A handful of people died, some fishermen are temporarily out of work, a lot of fish and wildlife in that one region are going to die, and there will be sludge to deal with for a while (a year or so on the water, many more years buried on the beach). But that's NOTHING compared to the man-made disasters of history. In just the period of 1914-1919 alone, humanity suffered more at the hands of man that it would if this disaster were amplified by several orders of magnitude. And that was WORLDWIDE. Mustard gas, nerve gas, machine guns, a flu outbreak that we facilitated. *Tens of millions* died. An entire *continent* was laid waste. Even relatively forgotten disasters like the St. Francis Dam Break did way more damage and took many more lives and livelihoods than this spill ever will.
Any young journalist coming out of college in *ANY* era thinking that journalism is going to mean "trotting the globe in pursuit of a story" is in for a huge disappointment. Even in the heyday of journalism, very few journalists ever even left their town on city. For every Bob Woodward, there are about 1,000 local reporters whose most exciting story of the year involves an argument at a town council meeting.
Sounds like a good idea in theory. But this is an awful idea in practice. A leopard can't change its spots, and a curious hacker who can't respect boundaries (legal, ethical, or corporate) can rarely be trusted not to break those boundaries again as soon as he gets bored. Case in point.
If 235 months was the maximum sentence, then wasn't the judge breaking the law by sentencing him to 285? Obviously, either 235 wasn't *really* the maximum or the judge is looking for a good way to get removed from the bench. I suspect the former.
NoScript + Adblock Plus make Firefox the undisputed king. Much as I like the speed of Opera and Chrome, without those they aren't even playing in the same league as Firefox. There are many add-ons that I could do without, but those two are deal-breakers.
I love achievements. If they're done right, they're a great way to show off your skills and/or playing style. I'm quite proud of some of my more hard-to-get achievements. Not many people have those. It's a nice little recognition for dedication and skill. And I don't see anything wrong with that (no one complains when the Boy Scouts do it).
Yes, but at a certain point I decided is wasn't worth any more effort. If the documentation is so poor that you have to tell people to search on google to understand even the basics, it's time to hire more technical writers.
Well,/. itself is a pretty good example of how this can work. The basics are available for free, but subscribers get nice perks. I'm more than happy to pay extra for those perks. But I never would have even considered subscribing if, on my first visit to the site, I had been greeted with a big wall that said "You can't see ANYTHING here until you pay us."
Thanks for the information. This was Ubuntu 7.something (I think probably 2 or 3 years ago). Things may well have changed since then on the monitor front.
The real question is how many of those remaining users are actual *new* subscribers and not just those who had already had print subscriptions even before the change. I suspect that number would make these stats even more dismal.
It seems to me like the Times would have been better off offering *premium* content to subscribers rather than closing off the entire site altogether. At a certain point, if you're not out there in the digital world, you risk utter irrelevance. You can have the best reporters in the world, but if they're speaking to an empty room, they might as well not exist.
Add to this the fact that they supposedly won't even allow their subscribers to cut/copy from stories or do searches, and it seems like a program almost designed to intentionally drive away interest. Even the subscribers are treated with open hostility.
Maybe Murdoch is adopting the Cartmanland business plan (i.e., if you tell people they can't come, they'll line up in droves). But I don't think it works that way in real life.
I'm a pretty tech savvy user and even I had trouble with Linux when I converted one of my machines over to Ubuntu a while back (I finally just gave up). The documentation is absolutely horrid. Without a good understanding of how Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular does things, it seems like a real chore to do even the simplest thing (I never could get it to recognize dual monitors or get the right screen resolution). And one of the worst things for me was dealing with all the distros and UI's out there and even trying to decide if a given piece of Linux software would work for me. I'm still not clear on some of it. Will KDE software run on gnome? Will gnome software run on KDE? Is the difference just cosmetic? Will a given piece of software run on all distros, or only some? Is the installation different for each distro?
"New to computers" is probably their euphemism for "stupid." Stupid people would benefit from Linux's virus resistance, no doubt. But they're also going to be the kind of people who won't understand why their new computer won't run the software they just bought at Best Buy. So it could be argued either way.
Personally, I wish stupid people would just stay away from computers and the internet altogether.
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This isn't about privacy. This is about 37 states in desperate budget crises who will latch on to anything that might get them a cash settlement.
If a MS employee leaves his MS phone prototype in a bar and no blogger considers it even worth stealing, does it make a ring?
Don't be silly, Fox would never report this story. It didn't come out of a press release from the Republican Party.
Guess a google employee got his mod points today. Truth hurt, sparky?
The problem with the SimCity games (haven't played to latest versions, so maybe this has changed) was always that a city completely lacked a sense of *history*. It took me right out of the game. A building would be a skyscraper one minute, a small shop the next minute, and the same skyscraper again a minute after that. In the real world, buildings decay and are sometimes torn down, but a given neighborhood maintains *much* more consistency and history than any "city" in SimCity (where a lot can house several completely different buildings over the course or just a year or two).
As opposed to the more real environs of Jimmy's basement, eating the pizzeria rolls his mom made, while he reads from a piece of cardboard and several losers pretend that a glorified series of dice roles represents something meaningful in their lives? Yes, I can see where a mere videogame would pale in comparison to that awesome experience.
Yeah, well in *my* day, we had *real* swordfights. Until there is the real threat of death, you won't get that (really really *really* fun) experience either.
This whole thing was just saber-rattling in retaliation for China trying to steal some of their source code. It was nothing more than a big PR show from the get-go. They censored before the theft, and it was only a matter of time before they went right back to censoring. Money always wins, and China has all the money these days.
I guess you could narrow down the definition of "environmental disaster" to preclude about anything. But, by almost every measure, man-made disasters occurred in those centuries (and many others) that would absolutely *dwarf* this petty little oil spill. Let's not lose perspective here. A handful of people died, some fishermen are temporarily out of work, a lot of fish and wildlife in that one region are going to die, and there will be sludge to deal with for a while (a year or so on the water, many more years buried on the beach). But that's NOTHING compared to the man-made disasters of history. In just the period of 1914-1919 alone, humanity suffered more at the hands of man that it would if this disaster were amplified by several orders of magnitude. And that was WORLDWIDE. Mustard gas, nerve gas, machine guns, a flu outbreak that we facilitated. *Tens of millions* died. An entire *continent* was laid waste. Even relatively forgotten disasters like the St. Francis Dam Break did way more damage and took many more lives and livelihoods than this spill ever will.
I hope so. Everything's better with lasers.
Any young journalist coming out of college in *ANY* era thinking that journalism is going to mean "trotting the globe in pursuit of a story" is in for a huge disappointment. Even in the heyday of journalism, very few journalists ever even left their town on city. For every Bob Woodward, there are about 1,000 local reporters whose most exciting story of the year involves an argument at a town council meeting.
Sounds like a good idea in theory. But this is an awful idea in practice. A leopard can't change its spots, and a curious hacker who can't respect boundaries (legal, ethical, or corporate) can rarely be trusted not to break those boundaries again as soon as he gets bored. Case in point.
If only we could live in a world where this was the case.
If 235 months was the maximum sentence, then wasn't the judge breaking the law by sentencing him to 285? Obviously, either 235 wasn't *really* the maximum or the judge is looking for a good way to get removed from the bench. I suspect the former.
NoScript + Adblock Plus make Firefox the undisputed king. Much as I like the speed of Opera and Chrome, without those they aren't even playing in the same league as Firefox. There are many add-ons that I could do without, but those two are deal-breakers.
I love achievements. If they're done right, they're a great way to show off your skills and/or playing style. I'm quite proud of some of my more hard-to-get achievements. Not many people have those. It's a nice little recognition for dedication and skill. And I don't see anything wrong with that (no one complains when the Boy Scouts do it).
They used to suck. But then Steve said they were great and started to put them on everything. So now they're great.
Yes, but at a certain point I decided is wasn't worth any more effort. If the documentation is so poor that you have to tell people to search on google to understand even the basics, it's time to hire more technical writers.
Well, /. itself is a pretty good example of how this can work. The basics are available for free, but subscribers get nice perks. I'm more than happy to pay extra for those perks. But I never would have even considered subscribing if, on my first visit to the site, I had been greeted with a big wall that said "You can't see ANYTHING here until you pay us."
Thanks for the information. This was Ubuntu 7.something (I think probably 2 or 3 years ago). Things may well have changed since then on the monitor front.
And it's answers like this that ensure that Linux will never be mainstream.
Yeah, but that's only true 20% of the time.
The real question is how many of those remaining users are actual *new* subscribers and not just those who had already had print subscriptions even before the change. I suspect that number would make these stats even more dismal.
It seems to me like the Times would have been better off offering *premium* content to subscribers rather than closing off the entire site altogether. At a certain point, if you're not out there in the digital world, you risk utter irrelevance. You can have the best reporters in the world, but if they're speaking to an empty room, they might as well not exist.
Add to this the fact that they supposedly won't even allow their subscribers to cut/copy from stories or do searches, and it seems like a program almost designed to intentionally drive away interest. Even the subscribers are treated with open hostility.
Maybe Murdoch is adopting the Cartmanland business plan (i.e., if you tell people they can't come, they'll line up in droves). But I don't think it works that way in real life.
I'm a pretty tech savvy user and even I had trouble with Linux when I converted one of my machines over to Ubuntu a while back (I finally just gave up). The documentation is absolutely horrid. Without a good understanding of how Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular does things, it seems like a real chore to do even the simplest thing (I never could get it to recognize dual monitors or get the right screen resolution). And one of the worst things for me was dealing with all the distros and UI's out there and even trying to decide if a given piece of Linux software would work for me. I'm still not clear on some of it. Will KDE software run on gnome? Will gnome software run on KDE? Is the difference just cosmetic? Will a given piece of software run on all distros, or only some? Is the installation different for each distro?
I get headaches even remembering it.
"New to computers" is probably their euphemism for "stupid." Stupid people would benefit from Linux's virus resistance, no doubt. But they're also going to be the kind of people who won't understand why their new computer won't run the software they just bought at Best Buy. So it could be argued either way.
Personally, I wish stupid people would just stay away from computers and the internet altogether.