I play about 2-3 hours a night most nights. We put the kid down at 8, tidy up a bit, and jump online around 8:30-9:00, then play until 10 or 11 most nights, maybe a bit later on saturdays and sundays. So maybe 20-25 hours a week.
Before WoW my wife and I would most likely spend that time playing single player games (we had just gone through dungeon seige for the umpteenth time when we picked up wow), or watching Law and Order/CSI reruns on TV.
We definately socialize more with eachother while playing WoW then we do when we were watching TV. Infact, our marrage has greatly improved since we started playing (much to my suprise as much as anyone else's!). Although we go out to bars less often. Of course, the two of us at a bar, drinking, shooting pool, etc... will run up a $50+ tab in a night. Not to mention having to get a baby sitter, and dealing with a toddler and a hang over.
I don't know, maybe we're a fluke. But if you can keep your personal life first, it seems like a good inexpensive way to relax and enjoy socializing while gaming.
I'm a senior computer programmer with A+/Net+ certs, years of PC/Server building experience, and a handful of previous Linux/BSD builds.
My last attempt at using Linux at home failed. I was going with Ubuntu, probably 9 months ago. After 3 weeks with no sound and no hardware graphics acceleration, I gave up and went back to XP. I went through drivers galore, usegroups, IRC, forums, all sorts of places, and I could find no working solution.
Yeah, it was nice to have a free OS, Gimp, FF, Open Office, and what not. But with no games and no music, it was a short lived endevor.
Yes and no. Do you need to know everyone with in two degrees of separation from your target? Probably not. But if the vast majority of know intrest groups and persons of intrest are in a wiki like system, a script could generate a listing of all associations and individuals within two degrees of the target. And with any such system it is only as useful as the data it contains. The more data it contains, the more associations, and the more accurate the patterns, that can be determined. In order to get that kind of data you need to open the system up to the widest possible safe audience. Which means, clearance and access. Need to Know gets traded for Need to Share.
Here's what I'm worried about:
If you sell a virtual necklace for 1000 virtual dollars, and those 1000 virtual dollars are worth $50 on the open real world market, then could you be taxed on that $50 regardless on whether you converted those 1000 virtual dollars to currency or not?
"Oh, that's right. There's an escape clause in there that says, "the government can steamroll the people, no matter what the Constitution says. You just can't steamroll each other." Well that's peachy keen."
Hey! We just got that same clause in our constitution!
I could understand if say one licenses popped up on 10 different subnets with 10 different configurations one evening that there would likely be a pirating issue.
But If I upgrade my memory card last spring, and my primary hard drive this fall, I'm screwed.
The original anology is not perfect, but it is not completely inacurate. My car for instance has gone through three engines, two interiors, dozens of tires, a full suspention rebuild, a new sterio, etc... over the years that I've owned it. At no point in time has the manufacturer barred me from opperating (or working on) it.
From a consumer's point of view, a PC should work the same. It shouldn't matter if I replace every piece of that computer. So long as I am opperating only that one copy of the OS, the OS should work. Just because I threw out that old Pentium 200mhz machine doesn't mean that my copy of Windows 95 is void.
Anyways, these companies are attempting to use technology to enforce contract law. Which to me has never sat well. Just like DRMs, they are attempting to enforce the laws of the United States regardless of consumer rights.
"discussions of software patents" must be some kind of new-fangled euphanism for "Porn"
It makes the review and book much more entertaining if you replace all occurances of "software patents" with "porn" and all closed source vendor names with "midgets".
I was going to say, Grues were from Zork. Also, handily enough, they make a great excuse for a lack of a costume at holloween parties.
Host: What's your costume suposed to be? Me: I'm a Grue. Host: What's that? Me: We eat people in the pitch dark. Host: What's it look like? Me: No one knows, they only attack in the dark.
-Rick
PS: The worse part is, one of the party hosts knew what a Grue was.
Physique is the word I was looking for. Thanks for the correction. I looked at that sentence, and I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't remember the proper spelling. And a right proper embarrassment is what my lazy editing gets me.
"The funny thing about your question is that in some ways, users are about two clicks from this scenario every time they run Windows XP: from the Start menu, select Set Program Access and Defaults. And it's not limited to the browsers you list, but any browser that they can download."
Uhh, it doesn't matter. If they are currently recording the area with a 'dumb' camera, they have everything already. If someone circumvents the 'intelligence' of the new camera, we're just back to where we are now, with constant survailence.
People are screaming that the intelligence of this camera reduces their privacy, but the truth is that you have already LOST your privacy. The intelligence of this camera reduces the amount of privacy lost.
I fail to see how a system that records LESS than a traditional system results in a larger loss of privacy.
Think about it, if they just stick a dumb camera up on that street corner, it will record everything. Someone will have to watch it constantly, or review extended sections when looking for a specific individual.
With intelligence the camera only needs to record the time surrounding a "violent" event. Sure, there may be a few false positives, but it will greatly reduce the amount of record/monitor time that an overseeing body would have to go through. Thus, less people's "privacy" (you're in a public place, you have no expectation of privacy) is violated.
I disagree. The importance of this situation has NOTHING to do with technology, and EVERYTHING to do with a business plan, marketing, IP control, and the inevitable lawsuit.
Craking DRM's will always become trivial as they age. But selling those cracks to competitors, and protecting those cracks to ensure solid business, and having enough money to pay for the lawyers when Apple sues under the DCMA. That's what is truly important here.
Can a business exist if it depends on intelectual property (the decode/encode procedure of Fair play) that results in the breaking of a security schema, user agreements(not sure on the iTunes agreement), and enables potential copy right infringements?
Who cares? The argument at hand was to boycott Sony because they distribute his music. But they don't publish it. I don't care if www.Goats.ex has exclusive publishing rights to his music, boycotting it will not effect Sony.
Boycotting Weird Al to hurt Sony would be like boycotting Apple to hurt Fedex.
Slashdot Mirror
There's two keys to keeping your bar tab low while shooting pool.
1) Get to the club at 9:00 for 2-for-1 drinks.
2) Win on the pool table
-Rick
I play about 2-3 hours a night most nights. We put the kid down at 8, tidy up a bit, and jump online around 8:30-9:00, then play until 10 or 11 most nights, maybe a bit later on saturdays and sundays. So maybe 20-25 hours a week.
Before WoW my wife and I would most likely spend that time playing single player games (we had just gone through dungeon seige for the umpteenth time when we picked up wow), or watching Law and Order/CSI reruns on TV.
We definately socialize more with eachother while playing WoW then we do when we were watching TV. Infact, our marrage has greatly improved since we started playing (much to my suprise as much as anyone else's!). Although we go out to bars less often. Of course, the two of us at a bar, drinking, shooting pool, etc... will run up a $50+ tab in a night. Not to mention having to get a baby sitter, and dealing with a toddler and a hang over.
I don't know, maybe we're a fluke. But if you can keep your personal life first, it seems like a good inexpensive way to relax and enjoy socializing while gaming.
-Rick
I'm a senior computer programmer with A+/Net+ certs, years of PC/Server building experience, and a handful of previous Linux/BSD builds.
My last attempt at using Linux at home failed. I was going with Ubuntu, probably 9 months ago. After 3 weeks with no sound and no hardware graphics acceleration, I gave up and went back to XP. I went through drivers galore, usegroups, IRC, forums, all sorts of places, and I could find no working solution.
Yeah, it was nice to have a free OS, Gimp, FF, Open Office, and what not. But with no games and no music, it was a short lived endevor.
-Rick
Yes and no. Do you need to know everyone with in two degrees of separation from your target? Probably not. But if the vast majority of know intrest groups and persons of intrest are in a wiki like system, a script could generate a listing of all associations and individuals within two degrees of the target. And with any such system it is only as useful as the data it contains. The more data it contains, the more associations, and the more accurate the patterns, that can be determined. In order to get that kind of data you need to open the system up to the widest possible safe audience. Which means, clearance and access. Need to Know gets traded for Need to Share.
-Rick
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/1732834.php
/.'d last week.
A nice little read that was
-Rick
Max Payne, the crying baby hallucination level... scares the crap out of me still.
And the first time I played Quake 1 home, alone, in the dark.
-Rick
Here's what I'm worried about:
If you sell a virtual necklace for 1000 virtual dollars, and those 1000 virtual dollars are worth $50 on the open real world market, then could you be taxed on that $50 regardless on whether you converted those 1000 virtual dollars to currency or not?
-Rick
"Oh, that's right. There's an escape clause in there that says, "the government can steamroll the people, no matter what the Constitution says. You just can't steamroll each other." Well that's peachy keen."
Hey! We just got that same clause in our constitution!
-Rick
I've always found the Need For Speed series to have a great selection of hard driving music. Not composed tunes, but real studio band recordings.
-Rick
And what if the US becomes the next China, Iran, etc...
The point of having a multi-national body of control is to prevent any singular extremist nation from having a totalitarian control over the Internet.
-Rick
Yes, but it is a poor indicator.
I could understand if say one licenses popped up on 10 different subnets with 10 different configurations one evening that there would likely be a pirating issue.
But If I upgrade my memory card last spring, and my primary hard drive this fall, I'm screwed.
The original anology is not perfect, but it is not completely inacurate. My car for instance has gone through three engines, two interiors, dozens of tires, a full suspention rebuild, a new sterio, etc... over the years that I've owned it. At no point in time has the manufacturer barred me from opperating (or working on) it.
From a consumer's point of view, a PC should work the same. It shouldn't matter if I replace every piece of that computer. So long as I am opperating only that one copy of the OS, the OS should work. Just because I threw out that old Pentium 200mhz machine doesn't mean that my copy of Windows 95 is void.
Anyways, these companies are attempting to use technology to enforce contract law. Which to me has never sat well. Just like DRMs, they are attempting to enforce the laws of the United States regardless of consumer rights.
-Rick
"discussions of software patents" must be some kind of new-fangled euphanism for "Porn"
It makes the review and book much more entertaining if you replace all occurances of "software patents" with "porn" and all closed source vendor names with "midgets".
-Rick
So is Tina Turner (Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). What's your point?
-Rick
I was going to say, Grues were from Zork. Also, handily enough, they make a great excuse for a lack of a costume at holloween parties.
Host: What's your costume suposed to be?
Me: I'm a Grue.
Host: What's that?
Me: We eat people in the pitch dark.
Host: What's it look like?
Me: No one knows, they only attack in the dark.
-Rick
PS: The worse part is, one of the party hosts knew what a Grue was.
Physique is the word I was looking for. Thanks for the correction. I looked at that sentence, and I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't remember the proper spelling. And a right proper embarrassment is what my lazy editing gets me.
-Rick
FTFA: It is well suited in several ways to a phone designed for poor countries, says Motorola's chief technology officer, Padmasree Warrior.
Padmasree Warrior. Sounds like their board meetings take place in a steel cage with investors chanting "Two man enter! One man leave!"
-Rick
Close. :P I've worked and partied at a number of Goth clubs in the US and never had a problem.
-Rick
Don't let my pasty white skin and ebbing physic fool you. Chicks dig scrawny pale guys, if you know where to look.
-Rick
News at 11:00.
-Rick
"The funny thing about your question is that in some ways, users are about two clicks from this scenario every time they run Windows XP: from the Start menu, select Set Program Access and Defaults. And it's not limited to the browsers you list, but any browser that they can download."
Where is this??!?
-Rick
Uhh, it doesn't matter. If they are currently recording the area with a 'dumb' camera, they have everything already. If someone circumvents the 'intelligence' of the new camera, we're just back to where we are now, with constant survailence.
People are screaming that the intelligence of this camera reduces their privacy, but the truth is that you have already LOST your privacy. The intelligence of this camera reduces the amount of privacy lost.
I fail to see how a system that records LESS than a traditional system results in a larger loss of privacy.
-Rick
Think about it, if they just stick a dumb camera up on that street corner, it will record everything. Someone will have to watch it constantly, or review extended sections when looking for a specific individual.
With intelligence the camera only needs to record the time surrounding a "violent" event. Sure, there may be a few false positives, but it will greatly reduce the amount of record/monitor time that an overseeing body would have to go through. Thus, less people's "privacy" (you're in a public place, you have no expectation of privacy) is violated.
-Rick
I disagree. The importance of this situation has NOTHING to do with technology, and EVERYTHING to do with a business plan, marketing, IP control, and the inevitable lawsuit.
Craking DRM's will always become trivial as they age. But selling those cracks to competitors, and protecting those cracks to ensure solid business, and having enough money to pay for the lawyers when Apple sues under the DCMA. That's what is truly important here.
Can a business exist if it depends on intelectual property (the decode/encode procedure of Fair play) that results in the breaking of a security schema, user agreements(not sure on the iTunes agreement), and enables potential copy right infringements?
-Rick
Who cares? The argument at hand was to boycott Sony because they distribute his music. But they don't publish it. I don't care if www.Goats.ex has exclusive publishing rights to his music, boycotting it will not effect Sony.
Boycotting Weird Al to hurt Sony would be like boycotting Apple to hurt Fedex.
-Rick
Except that most of his work has NOT been published by Sony. It may have been distributed by sony, but his discograph barily mentions Sony.
-Rick