Google should really do a driving simulator based on Google Earth, similar to the flight simulator. You could drive around any city virtually, which would be pretty useful if you wanted to learn the streets of a city you were visiting. I'm sure there are a ton of other possibilities too, which I'll refrain from spelling out in detail since I've played a few too many hours of Grand Theft Auto.
Battlefield 2 is a lot different though (I think; I've never actually played a MMORPG). There are ranks, but they mean very little in-game. You get some weapon upgrades as you move on up, but the first four (there is one for each of the seven classes) come quite quickly, and you can simply buy the expansion pack for like $20 if you're that desperate (and several of the weapon upgrades aren't even that good). The only in-game area for which rank matters is becoming commander (if multiple players apply then the one with the higher rank gets it) but I've seen privates become commander if no one else wants to (and yes, they virtually always do a terrible job...).
This is the difference -- anyone can log onto a BF2 server and start pwning everyone regardless of their rank. FPS games are basically games of skill, unlike RPGs in which your character's ability/reputation is largely based on having particular items/spells/money etc. that have powers. None of this is to say that BF2 can't be addictive, and the various medals, ribbons and badges that you can obtain are artificial ways of keeping you hooked, some of which have insane requirements (for instance to get the Expert Armor Badge you need 400 hours in an armored vehicle). In general though, over time, EA has actually reduced the qualifications for the awards due to complaints that many of them were too hard to get.
He's had a lot of mainstream press coverage before today -- see his Press page.
He has a very high Alexa rank of 1480th in the world (ya, not exactly the most reliable source but better than nothing) . His reach per million users is 810, which I think means around 150,000 to 200,000 visitors a day.
Sure, anything *could* be a hoax, and I am usually pretty skeptical with these things, but I really don't think so in this case. Journalists have seen his paypal account (like from the Times Online) and verified the money.
One worrying possibility with any sort of market-based pricing is the possibility of the record labels (or anyone else getting a cut) secretly buying large numbers of the songs and then using that to justify charging higher rates. There will be no fair market, and I doubt it's even possible.
To be fair, that is a "sponsored result" (in admittedly tiny print). The actual results are lousy though. None of their top 10 are in google's top 10 (which seem quite fair to me -- sites like linux.com, linux.org, kernel.org, redhat.com, debian.org etc).
I bought one of these (the 64 MB regular version) a couple of weeks ago from ThinkGeek. Ordering time was pretty fast, three days I think (and I live in Canada). One minor caveat about the shape of it, is that it was definitely a bit thicker than expected (about 1.9 cm thick), and possibly a bit shorter (6 cm length). It's not a real problem, just know what you are getting. Consequently, the knife blade is fairly small.
Overall the gadget is great, has been very useful. Oddly I think the ballpoint pen has gotten a fair amount of the use, but it's great having some portable storage. I was on vacation last week and it was perfect for use at Internet cafes.
I tried to get Firefox installed on it however it's not fully working yet, but I'm sure that's my fault.
I installed SP2 on my machine at work but it seems to have broken a Perl script using Net::FTP. I get these connection timeout errors. FTP works fine through a GUI client (I'm using Filezilla).
Anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it?
Other than that, it seems fine. Some good new options (and by new I mean newly copied from Mozilla) in Internet Explorer.
... that grade 9 typing was the most useful course I ever took. I geeked out, took it as a summer course, got a 95, and have enjoyed that skill probably 99.9% of days since that course. It just pains me watching people hunt & peck (and it's not like learning to touch-type is difficult).
I'm not a *great* typist, averaged around 40-50 wpm on the old word processors and typewriters back then, around 80-90 wpm on computers now, but still good enough. I can't even imagine not being able to type well, especially as a programmer.
Well, Mays was clearly a lot better baseball player than Sosa. With baseball you can very accurately estimate a player's contribution to scoring runs and thus winning ballgames.
But for symphonies or ice cream, just about the only meaningful measurement of anything is an opinion poll about people's preference. And I do agree with your basic point.
Yeah, I saw that! The Economist was aware of the reference, they printed the Simpsons quote about them in the April 29, 2004 issue, so I'm assuming the real headline was as a result of that.
"Look at me. I'm reading The Economist. Did you know Indonesia is at a crossroads?" -- Homer Simpson
Just kidding, I subscribe to the Economist too and it is a great magazine. It has everything & I like the fact that it's not from the USA. We get enough American media here in Canada. (Not a gratuitous USA-bash, it's just good to be informed of different perspectives on things.)
I just got a PVR from Rogers Digital Cable in Canada and it totally rules. It's probably overpriced in one sense (high margins for them) but then again, I'd pay even more because it's so cool! I find myself now *avoiding* watching shows at their actual time so I can watch them on PVR in 3/4 of the time. The ability to easily record *many* future shows at once is just excellent. Picture-in-picture is OK but I don't use that much. Pausing live TV is really nice too.
Tivo isn't available in Canada... but if it is or isn't dying, I couldn't overly care, since the technology in general is excellent and more competition should give us better prices and more choices. I bet you'll be able to buy a PVR with a 400+ GB hard disk and DVD player/burner in 2-3 years for like 200 bucks. They will become immensely popular.
I have RH9 but I'd like to ditch it, since it's passe now. What do you recommend for me? I care about: ease of install (I tried Debian before and gave up), a decent system for installing new software and having a decent amount of pre-installed stuff. I don't particularly need to have the latest kernel (nor do I want the oldest one in the name of stability). Any thoughts? Thanks.
I'm not trying to pretend that six dollars an hour CDN is a lot, it certainly isn't, but converting it to U.K. pounds with the exchange rate is a bit misleading -- the value of the Canadian dollar is signicantly higher: Puchasing Power Parity. Check the U.K. pound and Canadian dollar to see that the Canadian dollar is quite undervalued in terms of what it actually buys, and that the graph suggests that a Canadian dollar buys approximately the same goods as a pound -- which is what I hear anecdotally from people who visit the U.K.
Nice list. I agree with pretty much all of those. I wrote up my wish list on my web site. My biggest gripe about the gameplay has to be stuff spawning in your view, or disappearing if you away and then quickly look back.
Maybe I just didn't see enough movies this year (16 in the theatre so far) but I wasn't overly impressed with this year's releases. I guess my five favorites this year were
Funny thing is, an MSN search for microsoft windows only returns 713 results. And the second, third and fourth entries appear to be ads, if you look at the URL.
Even just plain windows only returns 2373 results.
I think Quebec has a law whereby the rules have to be in French for it to be legal. It's more about the Quebec government than the people running the "promotion".
Slashdot Mirror
Google should really do a driving simulator based on Google Earth, similar to the flight simulator. You could drive around any city virtually, which would be pretty useful if you wanted to learn the streets of a city you were visiting. I'm sure there are a ton of other possibilities too, which I'll refrain from spelling out in detail since I've played a few too many hours of Grand Theft Auto.
Battlefield 2 is a lot different though (I think; I've never actually played a MMORPG). There are ranks, but they mean very little in-game. You get some weapon upgrades as you move on up, but the first four (there is one for each of the seven classes) come quite quickly, and you can simply buy the expansion pack for like $20 if you're that desperate (and several of the weapon upgrades aren't even that good). The only in-game area for which rank matters is becoming commander (if multiple players apply then the one with the higher rank gets it) but I've seen privates become commander if no one else wants to (and yes, they virtually always do a terrible job...).
This is the difference -- anyone can log onto a BF2 server and start pwning everyone regardless of their rank. FPS games are basically games of skill, unlike RPGs in which your character's ability/reputation is largely based on having particular items/spells/money etc. that have powers. None of this is to say that BF2 can't be addictive, and the various medals, ribbons and badges that you can obtain are artificial ways of keeping you hooked, some of which have insane requirements (for instance to get the Expert Armor Badge you need 400 hours in an armored vehicle). In general though, over time, EA has actually reduced the qualifications for the awards due to complaints that many of them were too hard to get.
He's had a lot of mainstream press coverage before today -- see his Press page.
He has a very high Alexa rank of 1480th in the world (ya, not exactly the most reliable source but better than nothing) . His reach per million users is 810, which I think means around 150,000 to 200,000 visitors a day.
Sure, anything *could* be a hoax, and I am usually pretty skeptical with these things, but I really don't think so in this case. Journalists have seen his paypal account (like from the Times Online) and verified the money.
One worrying possibility with any sort of market-based pricing is the possibility of the record labels (or anyone else getting a cut) secretly buying large numbers of the songs and then using that to justify charging higher rates. There will be no fair market, and I doubt it's even possible.
To be fair, that is a "sponsored result" (in admittedly tiny print). The actual results are lousy though. None of their top 10 are in google's top 10 (which seem quite fair to me -- sites like linux.com, linux.org, kernel.org, redhat.com, debian.org etc).
No, that was a road game. Summary. The trend is for their last *home* game before the election.
That worked really well for me. Thanks for posting that. Any idea on how to enable themes that are no longer working (but were on PR) as well?
curious if it follows mapped network drives as well
Nope, but it searches files you have already seen.
Queen Victoria vetoed a similar law banning lesbian sexual acts as she refused to believe they were possible.
I believe they are impossible too. I demand that you show me the evidence!
Overall the gadget is great, has been very useful. Oddly I think the ballpoint pen has gotten a fair amount of the use, but it's great having some portable storage. I was on vacation last week and it was perfect for use at Internet cafes.
I tried to get Firefox installed on it however it's not fully working yet, but I'm sure that's my fault.
Anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it?
Other than that, it seems fine. Some good new options (and by new I mean newly copied from Mozilla) in Internet Explorer.
I'm not a *great* typist, averaged around 40-50 wpm on the old word processors and typewriters back then, around 80-90 wpm on computers now, but still good enough. I can't even imagine not being able to type well, especially as a programmer.
But for symphonies or ice cream, just about the only meaningful measurement of anything is an opinion poll about people's preference. And I do agree with your basic point.
Yeah, I saw that! The Economist was aware of the reference, they printed the Simpsons quote about them in the April 29, 2004 issue, so I'm assuming the real headline was as a result of that.
Just kidding, I subscribe to the Economist too and it is a great magazine. It has everything & I like the fact that it's not from the USA. We get enough American media here in Canada. (Not a gratuitous USA-bash, it's just good to be informed of different perspectives on things.)
Tivo isn't available in Canada... but if it is or isn't dying, I couldn't overly care, since the technology in general is excellent and more competition should give us better prices and more choices. I bet you'll be able to buy a PVR with a 400+ GB hard disk and DVD player/burner in 2-3 years for like 200 bucks. They will become immensely popular.
If anyone wants to watch the Wikipedia Recent Announcements page automatically, feel free to point your favorite news aggregator to Wikipedia Recent Announcements RSS Feed which I generate from the web page. If you use Bloglines, click here for a preview or to subscribe.
I have RH9 but I'd like to ditch it, since it's passe now. What do you recommend for me? I care about: ease of install (I tried Debian before and gave up), a decent system for installing new software and having a decent amount of pre-installed stuff. I don't particularly need to have the latest kernel (nor do I want the oldest one in the name of stability). Any thoughts? Thanks.
I'm not trying to pretend that six dollars an hour CDN is a lot, it certainly isn't, but converting it to U.K. pounds with the exchange rate is a bit misleading -- the value of the Canadian dollar is signicantly higher: Puchasing Power Parity. Check the U.K. pound and Canadian dollar to see that the Canadian dollar is quite undervalued in terms of what it actually buys, and that the graph suggests that a Canadian dollar buys approximately the same goods as a pound -- which is what I hear anecdotally from people who visit the U.K.
Nice list. I agree with pretty much all of those. I wrote up my wish list on my web site. My biggest gripe about the gameplay has to be stuff spawning in your view, or disappearing if you away and then quickly look back.
- Return of the King
- Matrix Reloaded
- Pirates of the Carribean
- School of Rock
- Master and Commander
The bottom three would have to beTry YahooPOPs which emulates POP access to Yahoo. You can use this with pretty much any mail reader I believe. I use this and it works very well.
Funny thing is, an MSN search for microsoft windows only returns 713 results. And the second, third and fourth entries appear to be ads, if you look at the URL. Even just plain windows only returns 2373 results.
I think Quebec has a law whereby the rules have to be in French for it to be legal. It's more about the Quebec government than the people running the "promotion".
mv Britney_Spears.mp3 Professor_Boring's_Presentation.pdf