Less-lethal sounds like a good way to describe this. I don't like the idea of this being used to force compliance from someone, but it sounds like a terrific tool against somebody armed that you're not looking to kill but not willing to be killed by.
Perhaps it could be useful for tactical teams that need to capture someone alive?
He's got a point. Vista even introduces that "Dreamscape" stuff where the screensaver draws off your graphics card to do 3D rendering the entire time you're away.
It even moves the shutdown button elsewhere and put a standby button in its place.
Negligible for each PC but adds up to a lot of unnecessary power draw.
Cheer didn't get your business because Tide's advertising beat theirs. They inserted their brand name into your head before Cheers by getting their big logo on the bottle near you when you were a baby. Brand recognition is part of advertising.
McDonalds aims their ads towards kids for this reason, so that they don't need to bother advertising to adults, those adults grow up to buy McDonalds because they'd already been doing so, or are at least well aware of what they can get when they go to McDonalds.
The price isn't really an indicator of a company's value. The overall value is divided by the number of available shares and Google hasn't made that many available. Many companies just split the stock so that there are more shares to trade around but the overall value of the shares as a whole doesn't change even though the price is reduced.
The P/E is more akin to what the parent post intends to refer to, which is Price/Earnings. If the price per share is high, the earnings per share being pulled into the company needs to justify what you pay. Google's is freaking high at above 30 right now(It's been higher!). It'd take them 30 years at their current earnings rate to buy back the stock from its shareholders! After 10 PE people start to get edgy, a 10 year is already a long gamble, 30 is a looong way.
This means that they're not betting that Google is going to make the money needed to pay for its stock, they're betting Google will eventually expand profitability in the future to the point where they can make money off a jump in the stock price. So they're gambling on future, unknown expansion, rather than actual money-making.
So far this high PE hasn't deflated because people really believe Google is going to one day rock the world with a tremendous new product with enormous profitability. Google experiments in numerous areas with a sharp "google" approach, so people expect them to one day find that new product, and that's how Google's managed to support this expectation. If the internet bubble bursts, it'd probably start elsewhere since I doubt Google is going to cease this practice anytime soon. Google'd have to worry about investors running off scared from other internet companies falling apart, but Google itself is somewhat insulated since their exploration is intrinsic to their methodology, and is a known risk that isn't a suprise to anybody.
I have firefox, and I have adblock, with no block packages enabled.
Reasonable advertisements are fine by me, if they get too instrusive, I add it to adblock. Adblock is still useful to have even when you're willing to view some ads.
It's another tool in the handbag of communication and ettiquette.
Visits being the highest priority and inconvenience. Phonecalls being the next step down in priority and inconvenience. Voicemail. E-mail. IM.
Use the appropriate tool for the level of urgency. Bothering everybody with a visit on your timetable is extremely disruptive to THEIR timetable, so it should only be done when it's called for.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 1
Christian Bale is my favorite actor.
However, he only has a supporting role in this movie. He spends the bulk of it behind a mask, and most of the unmasked portion in plot advancing exposition. He didn't have much material available to demonstrate his tremendous talent.
I didn't care about Heath's death, just some another celeb who OD'd. This was the first movie I saw him in, and he was freaking amazing.
This is an important aspect that I think is critical for successful adaptations. The writer/developer/director needs to understand and capitalize on the advantages of the medium, rather than simply regurgitate the material in the same form as it was received.
The Watchmen did some interesting things by supporting the main comic format with letters, articles, and prose in order to flesh out the background of the world. In a book, brevity can be sacrificed for extensive levels of detail. In a movie, you've got the full focus of the audience onto the screen in order to present the director's imagining of the story. This can enable an inspired accounting of the material, but is a double-edged sword since he must take the reins of imagination from the audience and guide it in the most entertaining fashion possible in a 1.5-2.5 hour timespan. He's armed with both visual and auditory effects to bring the story to life...as long as he has the budget.
There are particular advantages and disadvantages to each medium that really need to be taken into consideration to provide the most entertaining experience possible. The presenter must recognize what was used in the original medium and what must be done to successfully execute the material in the presenter's medium. If the best aspects of the comic fail to carry over to the movie he'd damn well better find another way to make it succeed or it's just a cheap knock-off that never needed to be made in the first place.
In this particular case, the Watchmen is some pretty heavy material in a dense comic-book form. He's already been supplied with the storyboards, but he'll need to nail the right look and sound, while preserving the key aspects of the storyline. The storyboard should carry over fairly easily, but he won't have the supporting stories and reading material, which he may need to replace by squeezing in brief and/or subtle moments of insight in the course of the movie.
Most importantly, the movie better not have a happy ending.
While it made no pretense of subtlety, the way in which the supervillain ultimately explains his scheme was markedly different from the norm, and he explicitly points out why. It was a creative twist on an old standby which was still pretty effective in keeping me engaged.
It's a spoiler, and wikipedia spoils it as well.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 1
I'll offer this anecdote:
I had wondered why the Joker was considered Batman's arch-rival after all these years. Batman's rogue-gallery includes a number of reasonably powerful "metas" or super-powered beings, and yet the Joker stands out among them, with no appreciable special abilities.
This movie really drove home what made Joker Batman's ultimate counter-part. His ability is somewhat similar to Batman. He doesn't have any limits. He has no hesistation, and is completely unpredictable. Nobody can be sure of what to expect, not even the Batman, not even the Joker himself. This makes it hard for Batman to plan for, since the Joker may not even have a plan, or he's making up the plan on the fly.
A serial killer might be working out a personal vendetta. A criminal might want money, perhaps power? But when the Joker is on the loose people die because the Joker thought up a pun. The purity of Joker's chaos is what makes him so damned creepy.
And you have to hear Heath Ledger's take on the Joker Laugh.:O
I could understand Joker's motivation in that scene quite clearly, but I didn't get how the Joker's words could lead Dent to lose all judgement. Essentially it felt like:
Joker: "I ruined your life and took everything from you. I'm crazy so please don't hold it against me. Btw, why not be crazy too?"
Dent: "Since you've destroyed my life, I really want to kill you, but instead I'll leave it to chance."
I can get why Dent started his coin-flip massacre to kill those responsible for what happened to him. In his demented reasoning, the coin-flips took away responsibility for his actions so he could kill as long as the coin falls that way(this coin-dependency stemming from an earlier reference to his use of the head/head coin flip). The coin frees Dent from his ethics to allow him to get the revenge he sought.
However, this brings him to targeting Gordon and Gordon's family, which were pretty much unrelated. Breaking off from this vigilante streak into general psychopath is where the movie lost me.
I've been using Vista on 2 out of 3 computers for quite some time now but I can't express any excitement over the OS. Nothing really changed for me and my usage so I'm wondering what changed for them?
This is the ending to a Batman story by Frank Miller regarding Batman's "retirement".
He beats up Superman, fakes his death, goes underground and starts a Bat network of autonomous crime-fighting splinter cells. Ends with a bat cavern filled with bat-teens.
It's annoying to have Asian- appended to me even though I'm American. I was born and raised here. It's silly to even pretend to belong to an asian background because I don't speak a lick of Chinese. No, I can't tell you what your inane tattoo says. It's not that I have some problem with Asian culture. I think it's fascinating! But it's not a part of my identity.
The annoyance is that the classification is tacked onto me, even though it has no practical usage. So why is it included? Only to divide people up by race. It's a minor issue of course, but it's tangible evidence that race still affects perception in America.
Even affirmative action is racist, it works against the Asian group because they're disproportionately represented in colleges. But this isn't because they're somehow inherently smarter, but because they(or their parents) come from a cultural background with a high emphasis on the value of education.
You can avoid ticking off a checkbox stating your race, but there shouldn't even be a spot on the form asking for that information.
Just last week, my friend had his car broken into and his ipod was stolen among other things.
It was auctioned on Craigslist shortly afterward, he met with the seller, and pretty much as soon as he brought out the ipod he recognized it(He uses an unusual case). After he had it in hand to inspect it, he told the thief it was his and the thief ran off. It's nice to be able to meet and do the deal in person.
The original plan was to have his roommate come up from behind with a potatoe bag so they could give the thief a sack party, but he got away. They were able to get the plates at least, so maybe the police can actually do something now that he's got evidence to prove a theft, might have been good that the sack party didn't occur since he stands a chance at getting the wallet back now.
Further to the above, it's not like it's a primary computer for many people where they're packing in long periods of time.
It's just convenient portable computing for light use, and pumped up specs don't add as much value if you're only popping it open to browse for a half-hour during lunch. Especially if the more powerful specs come at an increased cost. The main selling point and differentiation for the Eee is the size and weight.
Yah, running it in Wine was the insufficient workaround I was referring to since it fails to detect the talk-key when not in focus and the fix was a script that only works some of the time for some of the people. After 5 minutes it completely stops detecting the talk-key and whatever I do manage to transmit sounds robotic and full of static.
Not really Linux's "fault" for Ventrilo's inability and unwillingness to work with Wine, but I have to use the program my friends are using. They expressed intent to create a Linux version but since that was years and years ago, they're probably full of shit.
Linux lacks Ventrilo. It has Mumble, it has Teamspeak, but it does not have my friends on servers using either of those, which makes both of those programs useless to me.
Windows can suck from one end to another, but it has momentum and that momentum gives it power.
Ventrilo would have been great for my EeePC so that I could keep in contact with my friends from my couch, but the current workarounds are insufficient.
You're not really the target audience. If you poke around in it or check out some screenshots, the design is really geared towards teenagers, much like IMVU.
There are benefits, but in my opinion they do not justify the relatively high overhead on the computer relative to a simple chatroom.
There isn't much persistence in Lively, it's just a 3D chat room. It offers context-conversations from the positioning. In a simple chatscroll all conversation is given the same weight and carried out in a linear fashion. However, for greater numbers of people there can be more than one topic within the room which interrupts all topics at hand. In the 3D chatroom, avatar-positioning provides context for who is included in the convesation and the chatballoons appear closer and in colors matching those in the immediate group. Of course a log is critical and a standard chatscroll is available on its own tab.
It's like carrying out a conversation everyone in a restaurant vs. carrying out a conversation with others at the same table.
Also, they are supplied with a few animations and inter-avatar animations. The visual aspect is pleasing, but not really useful./me in IRC allows for much more variety. I also noted that:) and:O resulted in a corresponding animation from your avatar.
Aside from that, it has personalization of the chatroom space. While this is stupid to me, the others in my IRC chat have already "personalized" the text chatroom, pretending we're in a virtual terrarium/spa replete with cabana boys and fruity drinks. Some people might actually enjoy the room-building aspect.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo
A well known case with 41 shots, killing the unarmed suspect.
This involved shooting him, reloading, and shooting him some more.
Less-lethal sounds like a good way to describe this. I don't like the idea of this being used to force compliance from someone, but it sounds like a terrific tool against somebody armed that you're not looking to kill but not willing to be killed by.
Perhaps it could be useful for tactical teams that need to capture someone alive?
He's got a point. Vista even introduces that "Dreamscape" stuff where the screensaver draws off your graphics card to do 3D rendering the entire time you're away.
It even moves the shutdown button elsewhere and put a standby button in its place.
Negligible for each PC but adds up to a lot of unnecessary power draw.
I'm going to keep it simple and just tell you to refresh this slashdot article, read at level 1 and start counting anti-MS posts and pro-MS posts.
At 10:10am EST I see
16 anti-MS
2 neutral: 1 post that just says "42" and this one.
0 pro-MS
Even the post you're referring to is not visible to me as it was either posted as anonymous or modded below 1.
Cheer didn't get your business because Tide's advertising beat theirs. They inserted their brand name into your head before Cheers by getting their big logo on the bottle near you when you were a baby. Brand recognition is part of advertising.
McDonalds aims their ads towards kids for this reason, so that they don't need to bother advertising to adults, those adults grow up to buy McDonalds because they'd already been doing so, or are at least well aware of what they can get when they go to McDonalds.
The price isn't really an indicator of a company's value. The overall value is divided by the number of available shares and Google hasn't made that many available. Many companies just split the stock so that there are more shares to trade around but the overall value of the shares as a whole doesn't change even though the price is reduced.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=Goog
The P/E is more akin to what the parent post intends to refer to, which is Price/Earnings. If the price per share is high, the earnings per share being pulled into the company needs to justify what you pay. Google's is freaking high at above 30 right now(It's been higher!). It'd take them 30 years at their current earnings rate to buy back the stock from its shareholders! After 10 PE people start to get edgy, a 10 year is already a long gamble, 30 is a looong way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PE_ratio
This means that they're not betting that Google is going to make the money needed to pay for its stock, they're betting Google will eventually expand profitability in the future to the point where they can make money off a jump in the stock price. So they're gambling on future, unknown expansion, rather than actual money-making.
So far this high PE hasn't deflated because people really believe Google is going to one day rock the world with a tremendous new product with enormous profitability. Google experiments in numerous areas with a sharp "google" approach, so people expect them to one day find that new product, and that's how Google's managed to support this expectation. If the internet bubble bursts, it'd probably start elsewhere since I doubt Google is going to cease this practice anytime soon. Google'd have to worry about investors running off scared from other internet companies falling apart, but Google itself is somewhat insulated since their exploration is intrinsic to their methodology, and is a known risk that isn't a suprise to anybody.
I have firefox, and I have adblock, with no block packages enabled.
Reasonable advertisements are fine by me, if they get too instrusive, I add it to adblock. Adblock is still useful to have even when you're willing to view some ads.
It's another tool in the handbag of communication and ettiquette.
Visits being the highest priority and inconvenience.
Phonecalls being the next step down in priority and inconvenience.
Voicemail.
E-mail.
IM.
Use the appropriate tool for the level of urgency. Bothering everybody with a visit on your timetable is extremely disruptive to THEIR timetable, so it should only be done when it's called for.
Christian Bale is my favorite actor.
However, he only has a supporting role in this movie. He spends the bulk of it behind a mask, and most of the unmasked portion in plot advancing exposition. He didn't have much material available to demonstrate his tremendous talent.
I didn't care about Heath's death, just some another celeb who OD'd. This was the first movie I saw him in, and he was freaking amazing.
This is an important aspect that I think is critical for successful adaptations. The writer/developer/director needs to understand and capitalize on the advantages of the medium, rather than simply regurgitate the material in the same form as it was received.
The Watchmen did some interesting things by supporting the main comic format with letters, articles, and prose in order to flesh out the background of the world. In a book, brevity can be sacrificed for extensive levels of detail. In a movie, you've got the full focus of the audience onto the screen in order to present the director's imagining of the story. This can enable an inspired accounting of the material, but is a double-edged sword since he must take the reins of imagination from the audience and guide it in the most entertaining fashion possible in a 1.5-2.5 hour timespan. He's armed with both visual and auditory effects to bring the story to life...as long as he has the budget.
There are particular advantages and disadvantages to each medium that really need to be taken into consideration to provide the most entertaining experience possible. The presenter must recognize what was used in the original medium and what must be done to successfully execute the material in the presenter's medium. If the best aspects of the comic fail to carry over to the movie he'd damn well better find another way to make it succeed or it's just a cheap knock-off that never needed to be made in the first place.
In this particular case, the Watchmen is some pretty heavy material in a dense comic-book form. He's already been supplied with the storyboards, but he'll need to nail the right look and sound, while preserving the key aspects of the storyline. The storyboard should carry over fairly easily, but he won't have the supporting stories and reading material, which he may need to replace by squeezing in brief and/or subtle moments of insight in the course of the movie.
Most importantly, the movie better not have a happy ending.
While it made no pretense of subtlety, the way in which the supervillain ultimately explains his scheme was markedly different from the norm, and he explicitly points out why. It was a creative twist on an old standby which was still pretty effective in keeping me engaged.
It's a spoiler, and wikipedia spoils it as well.
I'll offer this anecdote:
I had wondered why the Joker was considered Batman's arch-rival after all these years. Batman's rogue-gallery includes a number of reasonably powerful "metas" or super-powered beings, and yet the Joker stands out among them, with no appreciable special abilities.
This movie really drove home what made Joker Batman's ultimate counter-part. His ability is somewhat similar to Batman. He doesn't have any limits. He has no hesistation, and is completely unpredictable. Nobody can be sure of what to expect, not even the Batman, not even the Joker himself. This makes it hard for Batman to plan for, since the Joker may not even have a plan, or he's making up the plan on the fly.
A serial killer might be working out a personal vendetta. A criminal might want money, perhaps power? But when the Joker is on the loose people die because the Joker thought up a pun. The purity of Joker's chaos is what makes him so damned creepy.
And you have to hear Heath Ledger's take on the Joker Laugh. :O
I could understand Joker's motivation in that scene quite clearly, but I didn't get how the Joker's words could lead Dent to lose all judgement. Essentially it felt like:
Joker: "I ruined your life and took everything from you. I'm crazy so please don't hold it against me. Btw, why not be crazy too?"
Dent: "Since you've destroyed my life, I really want to kill you, but instead I'll leave it to chance."
I can get why Dent started his coin-flip massacre to kill those responsible for what happened to him. In his demented reasoning, the coin-flips took away responsibility for his actions so he could kill as long as the coin falls that way(this coin-dependency stemming from an earlier reference to his use of the head/head coin flip). The coin frees Dent from his ethics to allow him to get the revenge he sought.
However, this brings him to targeting Gordon and Gordon's family, which were pretty much unrelated. Breaking off from this vigilante streak into general psychopath is where the movie lost me.
The movie was great across the board, driven by Heath's terrific acting and superb writing.
However...I don't really get the reasoning Joker used to convert Dent into Two-Face?
Why do your users "LOVE" it?
I've been using Vista on 2 out of 3 computers for quite some time now but I can't express any excitement over the OS. Nothing really changed for me and my usage so I'm wondering what changed for them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Dark_Knight_Returns
Sorry, should have linked in the prior post.
This is the ending to a Batman story by Frank Miller regarding Batman's "retirement".
He beats up Superman, fakes his death, goes underground and starts a Bat network of autonomous crime-fighting splinter cells. Ends with a bat cavern filled with bat-teens.
It's annoying to have Asian- appended to me even though I'm American. I was born and raised here. It's silly to even pretend to belong to an asian background because I don't speak a lick of Chinese. No, I can't tell you what your inane tattoo says. It's not that I have some problem with Asian culture. I think it's fascinating! But it's not a part of my identity.
The annoyance is that the classification is tacked onto me, even though it has no practical usage. So why is it included? Only to divide people up by race. It's a minor issue of course, but it's tangible evidence that race still affects perception in America.
Even affirmative action is racist, it works against the Asian group because they're disproportionately represented in colleges. But this isn't because they're somehow inherently smarter, but because they(or their parents) come from a cultural background with a high emphasis on the value of education.
You can avoid ticking off a checkbox stating your race, but there shouldn't even be a spot on the form asking for that information.
A little Craigslist story:
Just last week, my friend had his car broken into and his ipod was stolen among other things.
It was auctioned on Craigslist shortly afterward, he met with the seller, and pretty much as soon as he brought out the ipod he recognized it(He uses an unusual case). After he had it in hand to inspect it, he told the thief it was his and the thief ran off. It's nice to be able to meet and do the deal in person.
The original plan was to have his roommate come up from behind with a potatoe bag so they could give the thief a sack party, but he got away. They were able to get the plates at least, so maybe the police can actually do something now that he's got evidence to prove a theft, might have been good that the sack party didn't occur since he stands a chance at getting the wallet back now.
For future reference, the phenomenon you're trying to explain is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
Say beta a few more times. Maybe it'll eventually add up into a valid excuse.
SPOILER: It won't. A public beta is the same thing as 1.0 release no matter how you want to paint it. Different names for the same thing.
Further to the above, it's not like it's a primary computer for many people where they're packing in long periods of time.
It's just convenient portable computing for light use, and pumped up specs don't add as much value if you're only popping it open to browse for a half-hour during lunch. Especially if the more powerful specs come at an increased cost. The main selling point and differentiation for the Eee is the size and weight.
Yah, running it in Wine was the insufficient workaround I was referring to since it fails to detect the talk-key when not in focus and the fix was a script that only works some of the time for some of the people. After 5 minutes it completely stops detecting the talk-key and whatever I do manage to transmit sounds robotic and full of static.
Not really Linux's "fault" for Ventrilo's inability and unwillingness to work with Wine, but I have to use the program my friends are using. They expressed intent to create a Linux version but since that was years and years ago, they're probably full of shit.
Linux lacks Ventrilo. It has Mumble, it has Teamspeak, but it does not have my friends on servers using either of those, which makes both of those programs useless to me.
Windows can suck from one end to another, but it has momentum and that momentum gives it power.
Ventrilo would have been great for my EeePC so that I could keep in contact with my friends from my couch, but the current workarounds are insufficient.
You're not really the target audience. If you poke around in it or check out some screenshots, the design is really geared towards teenagers, much like IMVU.
There are benefits, but in my opinion they do not justify the relatively high overhead on the computer relative to a simple chatroom.
There isn't much persistence in Lively, it's just a 3D chat room. It offers context-conversations from the positioning. In a simple chatscroll all conversation is given the same weight and carried out in a linear fashion. However, for greater numbers of people there can be more than one topic within the room which interrupts all topics at hand. In the 3D chatroom, avatar-positioning provides context for who is included in the convesation and the chatballoons appear closer and in colors matching those in the immediate group. Of course a log is critical and a standard chatscroll is available on its own tab.
It's like carrying out a conversation everyone in a restaurant vs. carrying out a conversation with others at the same table.
Also, they are supplied with a few animations and inter-avatar animations. The visual aspect is pleasing, but not really useful. /me in IRC allows for much more variety. I also noted that :) and :O resulted in a corresponding animation from your avatar.
Aside from that, it has personalization of the chatroom space. While this is stupid to me, the others in my IRC chat have already "personalized" the text chatroom, pretending we're in a virtual terrarium/spa replete with cabana boys and fruity drinks. Some people might actually enjoy the room-building aspect.