I believe many of the top-gamers don't bother with expensive "gaming"-oriented hardware. They're good enough to notice that they missed because they missed, not because their mouse somehow misinterpreted them. An understandable excuse on a dirty ball mouse, but it's ridiculous on an optical or laser mouse.
I don't understand why back-lighting is sold to gamers. I get that gamers often play late into the night and may be forced to turn off the lights(or voluntarily do it to reduce glare). But jeezus christ, if you need to look down and key-hunt in a game, you're screwed in everything but turn-based and adventure games, and we all know how small those two genres are. Even most puzzle games these days involve a timer. The target market should already be able to touch-type, if not in general application, at the very least in the context of the game they're so focused on that they'd be willing to pay a premium for hardware.
I'd imagine additional hotkeys to be more useful. Perhaps a series of mappable/bindable hotkeys within pinky-reach without removing the other 4 fingers from standard WSAD/ESDF positions? Make sure they're large enough to hit, and NEAR enough to be hit without pulling off critical buttons. Placing them too far away is why hotkeys thus far haven't been that useful in gamer hardware I've seen.
Even the logitech G5 and G7 have removed the 5th button because they thought gamers were so incompetent that they couldn't avoid hitting extra buttons? My Logitech MX Revolution uses a 3rd party tool called uberOptions(since logitech's Setpoint is trash) to unlock bindable inputs which I use for: back, forward, next track, prev track, play/pause, toggling an exposè feature, tossing windows to the other monitor, close window, shift+click/mousewheel for all web navigation, plus popping up a list of frequently accessed folders/programs directly under the mouse, and toggling Ventrilo. And these are all just for regular use in the OS. In games, each of these can be given program-specific bindings so that I can access all of them without moving fingers off the critical functions(I don't play MMOs but having all these buttons close at hand would be helpful). And the MX Revolution isn't even a gaming product, the 4-button G5 and G7 mice are their gaming products. It's silly.
That's the method we use. It's a presumption, but being able to organize your own affairs is a basic prerequisite for a wide expanse of roles. If they can't sort out their own stuff, how can you expect them to assist in sorting anything else out? It's pretty reasonable to expect them to be able to keep track of their own sorting system, and not reasonable to expect them to find things as quickly when someone else has done all the sorting first and they now need to find where the e-mails went.
For us, e-mails go to a single address which represents all of us in our department. We sort it in a way that we can find our own e-mails. We all have our own copy, and use our own computer, so how we find our e-mails is up to us. What works for each of us is what we use. If they can't find their own e-mails then they should leverage their own organizational skills accordingly in a manner suited to their particular function.
Making both folders, tagging, and search available would be best, and how it goes from there is best left up to the individual who'll be looking for their own e-mail.
The boss knows, but that's a waste of his time. Not the cutting out part, but the putting parts back in when people ask for information that was originally in that part.
It's also a cover-your-ass best practice to include all possible information so that you can point to supplied information to blame others with it. The more you supply, the more ammo you have in a time of need. "You didn't tell me about X!" "See the e-mail of October 24, 2007, and scroll down 4 mails to the reply from _______ where they stated..."
I also see a third, where both products split the support of the original user base, and both products failing as a result of inability to compete with a 3rd competitor who had kept a unified network of users to drive development of new features/plugins until the resulting experience is more compelling than the tailored, but limited pidgin forks.
The network effect is real, and it may be the most important feature that Microsoft brings to the table. Their product is often far from "the best", but by keeping everyone under one umbrella, support goes to their umbrella which keeps more people under their umbrella, etc. etc. I like my Linux laptop, but Ventrilo still runs like @#$^ on it under Wine, so I still need my Windows PC. Too bad the niche my Linux OS falls under is too small for Ventrilo to support. I can't force other people to swap their clients and the server to Mumble for my benefit. So the Windows PC gained Ventrilo support as a "feature" simply by being the single most popular market block.
(Is there some reason that a fork is necessary? Can't they just maintain a plugin instead?)
It would also depend on the infraction they're planning to check out. Get fresh and your minor traffic violation may also include -*SMASH*- driving with a busted tail-light. Oooh, and I think I saw you move through a stop sign too. And whatever else he decides he saw.
Even if you go to court and argue these things (a cop's word against yours), you're still out time and money.
Though the GP is an AC and may not ever revisit this thread to address replies, I suggest that such links be provided to enlighten other readers in this thread.
I don't think the point of dispute here is the definition of slippery slope.
The problem with the slippery slope justification is that a "slippery slope" just proposes the theory that a marginal increase in "X" will also increase the threshold of tolerance to an amount equal to or greater than needed for the next increase in "X".
What would need to be proven is that acceptance of an marginal increase of "X" must necessarily result in a sufficient increase in tolerance for the next marginal increase.
One day we give warnings to traffic offenders, so we would then give fines, leading to jail time, and in the end we will be put to death for jaywalking. Why? Because we gave warnings. Slippery slope.
Why doesn't it work in this context? Because it's absurd in this context. The train of logic isn't necessarily true. So what do we need to do? We need to examine each case within the context of the case. This may require some judgement but that is the burden and gift of intelligence.
Morally, my/opinion/ is that people should have the option of the freedoms we were granted in the constitution.
But morality is heavily based upon if not entirely consisting of opinions and mine is but one in an ocean just like everyone else's. Yes they are still human beings like us and the GP is not disputing this. The GP is pointing out that they do not necessarily share MY opinion or yours that such freedoms are important.
This is Slashdot. Surely readers here can identify people in the West who don't value freedom of speech, a fair say in their government, a right to privacy.
Bush has pretty shitty approval ratings, but the fact that his approval rating isn't 0 yet points to the fact that there ARE people in the West who really do think that these freedoms aren't valuable. Especially when someone tells them it's matter of "national security"
One thing to consider is that China is big. Damned big. Big fucking big. To paraphrase a chinese saying: "The government is powerful...and far away." On the ground, they might not know what might be going on elsewhere, or even a need to care, people often worry about the more immediate concerns in their personal life. Look at voter participation in the U.S, there are plenty here who share that opinion here too.
Is it so inconceivable that many people over there just don't care? Apathy is also common trait amongst humanity.
Well, I could see its use in awkward unusual lifts. I see pleny of pictures of port disasters where cargo is flung all over the place, 5-story cranes collapsing over ships half-sunk and half-flipped into the water of the pier. Or digging out a tank stuck in the mud before enemies close in on the pinned and expensive equipment.
It takes some specialized equipment to get that stuff moving and time can be of the essence.
Nevertheless I still agree with the main point that heavy weaponry isn't our problem. If a 50 dollar IED toasts a humvee and/or a soldier or two we just lost more than a million spent fielding and maintaining them, and are also even deeper in the hole for the raised security costs resulting from a recent attack in that area. Tossing more and more at the problem has its limits. You can shoot an insurgent, but all it takes is a book to convert a fresh body and another gun to point in our direction. Then we have to spend orders of magnitude more money to counteract that.
Further to the above, I use a middle-road approach. I have AdBlock installed but I don't have any filters added. I'm fine with seeing ads, it's revenue for the sites I visit if they serve up something of interest to me. When an ad bugs me, I just selectively block it.
Free markets are not ideal when there are barriers to competition. Thus intervention is needed to remove the barriers to allow the increase in efficiency, but this would not be a free market.
The use of the word "personally" emphasizes the "I". While it could be considered grammatically redundant, given the context of a mixed audience of both careless and anal-retentive readers, it serves to reinforce the point that he is merely making a statement with regards to his belief in the value rendered.
This reduces the likelihood that a careless reader will review his words and misunderstand his point to read:
"Yes the price is higher than the previous model, but the Eee PC 900 still represents staggering value for money."
This is not the same statement, and while this may appear clear to most, there are plenty of readers who will need the extra clarification provided by the use of the word "personally" in the original phrasing.
This is why the Judicial branch is around to rule on constitutionality. They can guess at future rulings all they like in memos and footnotes but their conclusion is irrelevant to the court's decision.
A prime example of this is Digg's "health" section, packed with 1-2 paragraph "articles" with no source, often just paraphrasing a similarly short(and sometimes SHORTER) article which may even be a summary of another link.
You can expect to find no sources and hundreds of comments agreeing with the articles and marveling at their obviousness. After all, X knew somebody that had Y happen to them at some point. Thus, everybody should know the article to be fact right?
I'm not a big fan of them. I don't read slashdot for the articles, just the comments. I remember last year's April Fools as blatant jokes that just resulted in a "har, har, april fools." And then nothing more to see and nothing to comment on, so I had no material to read for that day.
In addition to the parent's comment regarding frequency of attack, I'd like to point out that this is a reasonable characteristic to take into account when judging the OS.
One of the major features of Windows, and one of the most powerful, is that it is widely adopted and incumbent for the majority of the market. This provides them with the network effect that increases the value of this OS. It's only fair that the same penalty that is partnered with this popularity is taken into consideration when comparing operating systems.
Better handwriting recognition would be great(especially for making notes or diagrams), or new input methods in general.
But thus far, only vocal dictation has been (sometimes) faster than my typing speed, but also comes with its own problems of voice strain, flubbed words(not failure to recognize, failure to dictate properly, a vocal typo), additional noise pollution, etc.
Typing is pretty good as a method, I'd rather see an update to the layout and possible inputs. Some of the keys are a bit superfluous and there are some useful ones that I'd like to be included as a standard. For instance, Scroll Lock is rarely used, but I do need to bind a key globally for Ventrilo so it ends up way over on the Scroll lock button. But what if I need a similar global binding for another purpose? I'm stuck with other keys that already have a purpose/effect, or more likely an unwieldly key combination.
A sarcasm tag is commonly lamented on the internet because bold, italic, and underlining doesn't give enough context for a statement. You need to rephrase the entire sentence to establish context we can usually deliver by simply raising our eyebrow while saying it. Emotion modifiers on text would make our text communications considerably more flexible.
However, keyboards are standardized, and so the real innovation here is developing incentives to get ideas implemented across a wide spectrum of devices/media.
China can already end Taiwan without nukes in a week or less. China has already expressed their intent to take Taiwan. Losses could even be avoided by simply toasting Taiwan from afar. They don't even need to worry about the high cost of securing territory like we are in Iraq.
If Taiwan had a nuke, China would have something to lose. It would survive, but it would feel the difference before/after the war at least.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe many of the top-gamers don't bother with expensive "gaming"-oriented hardware. They're good enough to notice that they missed because they missed, not because their mouse somehow misinterpreted them. An understandable excuse on a dirty ball mouse, but it's ridiculous on an optical or laser mouse.
I don't understand why back-lighting is sold to gamers. I get that gamers often play late into the night and may be forced to turn off the lights(or voluntarily do it to reduce glare). But jeezus christ, if you need to look down and key-hunt in a game, you're screwed in everything but turn-based and adventure games, and we all know how small those two genres are. Even most puzzle games these days involve a timer. The target market should already be able to touch-type, if not in general application, at the very least in the context of the game they're so focused on that they'd be willing to pay a premium for hardware.
I'd imagine additional hotkeys to be more useful. Perhaps a series of mappable/bindable hotkeys within pinky-reach without removing the other 4 fingers from standard WSAD/ESDF positions? Make sure they're large enough to hit, and NEAR enough to be hit without pulling off critical buttons. Placing them too far away is why hotkeys thus far haven't been that useful in gamer hardware I've seen.
Even the logitech G5 and G7 have removed the 5th button because they thought gamers were so incompetent that they couldn't avoid hitting extra buttons? My Logitech MX Revolution uses a 3rd party tool called uberOptions(since logitech's Setpoint is trash) to unlock bindable inputs which I use for: back, forward, next track, prev track, play/pause, toggling an exposè feature, tossing windows to the other monitor, close window, shift+click/mousewheel for all web navigation, plus popping up a list of frequently accessed folders/programs directly under the mouse, and toggling Ventrilo. And these are all just for regular use in the OS. In games, each of these can be given program-specific bindings so that I can access all of them without moving fingers off the critical functions(I don't play MMOs but having all these buttons close at hand would be helpful). And the MX Revolution isn't even a gaming product, the 4-button G5 and G7 mice are their gaming products. It's silly.
That's the method we use. It's a presumption, but being able to organize your own affairs is a basic prerequisite for a wide expanse of roles. If they can't sort out their own stuff, how can you expect them to assist in sorting anything else out? It's pretty reasonable to expect them to be able to keep track of their own sorting system, and not reasonable to expect them to find things as quickly when someone else has done all the sorting first and they now need to find where the e-mails went.
For us, e-mails go to a single address which represents all of us in our department. We sort it in a way that we can find our own e-mails. We all have our own copy, and use our own computer, so how we find our e-mails is up to us. What works for each of us is what we use. If they can't find their own e-mails then they should leverage their own organizational skills accordingly in a manner suited to their particular function.
Making both folders, tagging, and search available would be best, and how it goes from there is best left up to the individual who'll be looking for their own e-mail.
The boss knows, but that's a waste of his time. Not the cutting out part, but the putting parts back in when people ask for information that was originally in that part.
It's also a cover-your-ass best practice to include all possible information so that you can point to supplied information to blame others with it. The more you supply, the more ammo you have in a time of need. "You didn't tell me about X!" "See the e-mail of October 24, 2007, and scroll down 4 mails to the reply from _______ where they stated..."
Paint some minor imperfections onto the parking lot?
It won't look as pretty, but then, crushed pigeon guts don't help either:P
I also see a third, where both products split the support of the original user base, and both products failing as a result of inability to compete with a 3rd competitor who had kept a unified network of users to drive development of new features/plugins until the resulting experience is more compelling than the tailored, but limited pidgin forks.
The network effect is real, and it may be the most important feature that Microsoft brings to the table. Their product is often far from "the best", but by keeping everyone under one umbrella, support goes to their umbrella which keeps more people under their umbrella, etc. etc. I like my Linux laptop, but Ventrilo still runs like @#$^ on it under Wine, so I still need my Windows PC. Too bad the niche my Linux OS falls under is too small for Ventrilo to support. I can't force other people to swap their clients and the server to Mumble for my benefit. So the Windows PC gained Ventrilo support as a "feature" simply by being the single most popular market block.
(Is there some reason that a fork is necessary? Can't they just maintain a plugin instead?)
Good lord, you figured me out!
You're actually the only other person on this site:(
It would also depend on the infraction they're planning to check out. Get fresh and your minor traffic violation may also include -*SMASH*- driving with a busted tail-light. Oooh, and I think I saw you move through a stop sign too. And whatever else he decides he saw.
Even if you go to court and argue these things (a cop's word against yours), you're still out time and money.
Though the GP is an AC and may not ever revisit this thread to address replies, I suggest that such links be provided to enlighten other readers in this thread.
I don't think the point of dispute here is the definition of slippery slope.
The problem with the slippery slope justification is that a "slippery slope" just proposes the theory that a marginal increase in "X" will also increase the threshold of tolerance to an amount equal to or greater than needed for the next increase in "X".
What would need to be proven is that acceptance of an marginal increase of "X" must necessarily result in a sufficient increase in tolerance for the next marginal increase.
One day we give warnings to traffic offenders, so we would then give fines, leading to jail time, and in the end we will be put to death for jaywalking. Why? Because we gave warnings. Slippery slope.
Why doesn't it work in this context? Because it's absurd in this context. The train of logic isn't necessarily true. So what do we need to do? We need to examine each case within the context of the case. This may require some judgement but that is the burden and gift of intelligence.
Morally, my /opinion/ is that people should have the option of the freedoms we were granted in the constitution.
But morality is heavily based upon if not entirely consisting of opinions and mine is but one in an ocean just like everyone else's. Yes they are still human beings like us and the GP is not disputing this. The GP is pointing out that they do not necessarily share MY opinion or yours that such freedoms are important.
This is Slashdot. Surely readers here can identify people in the West who don't value freedom of speech, a fair say in their government, a right to privacy.
Bush has pretty shitty approval ratings, but the fact that his approval rating isn't 0 yet points to the fact that there ARE people in the West who really do think that these freedoms aren't valuable. Especially when someone tells them it's matter of "national security"
One thing to consider is that China is big. Damned big. Big fucking big. To paraphrase a chinese saying: "The government is powerful...and far away." On the ground, they might not know what might be going on elsewhere, or even a need to care, people often worry about the more immediate concerns in their personal life. Look at voter participation in the U.S, there are plenty here who share that opinion here too.
Is it so inconceivable that many people over there just don't care? Apathy is also common trait amongst humanity.
Well, I could see its use in awkward unusual lifts. I see pleny of pictures of port disasters where cargo is flung all over the place, 5-story cranes collapsing over ships half-sunk and half-flipped into the water of the pier. Or digging out a tank stuck in the mud before enemies close in on the pinned and expensive equipment.
It takes some specialized equipment to get that stuff moving and time can be of the essence.
Nevertheless I still agree with the main point that heavy weaponry isn't our problem. If a 50 dollar IED toasts a humvee and/or a soldier or two we just lost more than a million spent fielding and maintaining them, and are also even deeper in the hole for the raised security costs resulting from a recent attack in that area. Tossing more and more at the problem has its limits. You can shoot an insurgent, but all it takes is a book to convert a fresh body and another gun to point in our direction. Then we have to spend orders of magnitude more money to counteract that.
Further to the above, I use a middle-road approach. I have AdBlock installed but I don't have any filters added. I'm fine with seeing ads, it's revenue for the sites I visit if they serve up something of interest to me. When an ad bugs me, I just selectively block it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Free markets are not ideal when there are barriers to competition. Thus intervention is needed to remove the barriers to allow the increase in efficiency, but this would not be a free market.
The use of the word "personally" emphasizes the "I". While it could be considered grammatically redundant, given the context of a mixed audience of both careless and anal-retentive readers, it serves to reinforce the point that he is merely making a statement with regards to his belief in the value rendered.
This reduces the likelihood that a careless reader will review his words and misunderstand his point to read:
"Yes the price is higher than the previous model, but the Eee PC 900 still represents staggering value for money."
This is not the same statement, and while this may appear clear to most, there are plenty of readers who will need the extra clarification provided by the use of the word "personally" in the original phrasing.
This is why the Judicial branch is around to rule on constitutionality. They can guess at future rulings all they like in memos and footnotes but their conclusion is irrelevant to the court's decision.
Further to the above, I'm not dogging on Digg specifically, it's just a good example.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=509580&cid=22949966
We have the same thing here on Slashdot. In this thread even.
A prime example of this is Digg's "health" section, packed with 1-2 paragraph "articles" with no source, often just paraphrasing a similarly short(and sometimes SHORTER) article which may even be a summary of another link.
You can expect to find no sources and hundreds of comments agreeing with the articles and marveling at their obviousness. After all, X knew somebody that had Y happen to them at some point. Thus, everybody should know the article to be fact right?
I'm not a big fan of them. I don't read slashdot for the articles, just the comments. I remember last year's April Fools as blatant jokes that just resulted in a "har, har, april fools." And then nothing more to see and nothing to comment on, so I had no material to read for that day.
I think everybody expected this typo at some point in this thread.
In addition to the parent's comment regarding frequency of attack, I'd like to point out that this is a reasonable characteristic to take into account when judging the OS.
One of the major features of Windows, and one of the most powerful, is that it is widely adopted and incumbent for the majority of the market. This provides them with the network effect that increases the value of this OS. It's only fair that the same penalty that is partnered with this popularity is taken into consideration when comparing operating systems.
A slide-out/roll-out plastic overlay onto the touch screen could supply the bumps described.
The GUI would have to be designed around this implementation though.
Better handwriting recognition would be great(especially for making notes or diagrams), or new input methods in general.
But thus far, only vocal dictation has been (sometimes) faster than my typing speed, but also comes with its own problems of voice strain, flubbed words(not failure to recognize, failure to dictate properly, a vocal typo), additional noise pollution, etc.
Typing is pretty good as a method, I'd rather see an update to the layout and possible inputs. Some of the keys are a bit superfluous and there are some useful ones that I'd like to be included as a standard. For instance, Scroll Lock is rarely used, but I do need to bind a key globally for Ventrilo so it ends up way over on the Scroll lock button. But what if I need a similar global binding for another purpose? I'm stuck with other keys that already have a purpose/effect, or more likely an unwieldly key combination.
A sarcasm tag is commonly lamented on the internet because bold, italic, and underlining doesn't give enough context for a statement. You need to rephrase the entire sentence to establish context we can usually deliver by simply raising our eyebrow while saying it. Emotion modifiers on text would make our text communications considerably more flexible.
However, keyboards are standardized, and so the real innovation here is developing incentives to get ideas implemented across a wide spectrum of devices/media.
How is that stupid?
China can already end Taiwan without nukes in a week or less. China has already expressed their intent to take Taiwan. Losses could even be avoided by simply toasting Taiwan from afar. They don't even need to worry about the high cost of securing territory like we are in Iraq.
If Taiwan had a nuke, China would have something to lose. It would survive, but it would feel the difference before/after the war at least.
What if someone drives by with their headlights on?