I also think it needs to be pointed out that a FLOSS developer chooses to donate their time to the cause, whereas this kid was attacked by the RIAA; equating them really isn't fair. Besides, what worthwhile FLOSS dev is unnoticed on/.? Unless you're building something totally unnecessary, you'll get loved.
I had a chance to ask Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft's entertainment & devices division, why the Zune wouldn't support PlaysForSure DRM'd songs. His answer was actually pretty heartening. PlaysForSure has to support a wide range of players, because the specification for PlaysForSure players is somewhat loose. Regardless, they want a very tight system with the Zune -- you buy music from the Microsoft store, and put it on the Zune, and It Just Works®. Allowing PlaysForSure music on the device would break this system (similar to how fairplay'd music only comes from iTunes) and they don't want to focus on supporting a wide range of different devices. They want to make it work for the Zune, and they want to make it work well -- he recognized that this is why Apple's system was so far ahead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since when does Africa have massive quantities of water frozen slightly beneath its surface? Plus, I'd always heard that most of Africa has decent access to water, but it was the purification that was the problem -- hence few people dying of thirst outright, and most getting sick of water borne illnesses.
I have a soundblaster X-Fi: XtremeMusic. If you can get over the kind of goofy name, it's a very, very nice card. I have only done a little recording on it, but it's powerful (51 mn transistors) and clear (136 decibel signal to noise ratio). It can do all the normal stuff like surround sound, plus some cool stereo -> surround stuff. If you need weird inputs or an optical out, you'll need to go with one of the slightly more expensive cards, but for digital i/o or 3 stereo plugs, this card is awesome.
I've always been a big fan of KDevelop, as to me (granted, a total newb) it seems pretty similar to large IDE's (eg Visual Studio), and it definitely does everything I need.
Blind people can use screen readers, but if you bury your content in flash or in images without alt text, it makes it very difficult (impossible really) for the screen reader to know what to say. Also, if you position everything in tables and it loads in a weird order but looks right when it hits the screen, it presents problems, since the reader won't know that the 5 rows down actually explains the 3 columns over.
CSS can help with this, as it keeps the formatting away from the content, but you still have to keep your.html (or.php or whatever) source files nice, clean and logical. A simple test is, if you can read your source file easily (ie in notepad or vi or whatever) then you're probably ok.
Idiotic puns? The English language is a beautiful one and not everything is about efficiency, speed and clarity. If it were, we'd all read dictionaries for fun and teach our children Lojban. I, for one, celebrate the wordplay practiced by newspapers and think it's intriguing.
I read a rant by someone who works as a game reviewer that said that they have a hard time evaluating games fairly. Since a) they don't pay for their own games and b) they play so many games (2 or 3 full games per week if I remember right) it gets tough. That's why small innovations are weighted far more heavily than the acutal "Fun Factor" of a game. I review games at my own site, SkorchedEarth, it's small and personal. Sites like these are the reviews I trust, because it's more of a recommendation from a friend than a review from someone who shares a bunk with game publishers. The biggest problem with them, though, is that there aren't many games reviewed (because I'm super-broke), especially not obscure ones, and it takes a while to publish them (since I don't get the games early, and I have to beat them on my own time). But, this gives the lesser-known reviewers a much better perspective on whether or not the game is worth your scarce time and hard-earned cash.
Obvious disclaimer: I run the site. There are no ads though, so I don't stand to gain from hits, except the joy of watching my server get slammed.
Seriously, the Dewey Decimal System has always worked for me. Unless you're running an actual "Go-ahead-and-check-stuff-out" library out of your home, the barcodes and MySQL seem like total overkill.
If you can't / don't want to pay, but you still want to be secure, you still have an option. You see, if you read the full article, and go to the knowledgebase post about it, Microsoft says that up-to-date anti-cirus will take care of it. Don't have up to date anti-virus? That's ok too! Just visit the onecare part of safety.live.com, and Microsoft will scan your computer for viruses (including this one) in addition to all the other crap that builds up on computers.
Now, speaking as someone who has tried the online virus scanner, I have to say it works really quite well. It's just the tool to clean your computer of viruses, spyware, malware, unused/unneeded files -- and even knocks out those MICRO$OFT haters on/.!
Notice, however, that the 60 some tests that Wine leads on are synthetic through and through... and when you get to actual games it's XP all the way. While Wine's performance is impressive, the requisite dose of salt may be several kg for this article.
I currently have a website that is hosted only because my university has serious bandwidth caps so I can't host off my own machine. Definitely, though, you should opt for as much independance as you can manage, because then you are bound by fewer agreements. I'm not saying you should or would even want to host pr0n, but often times I want to put something up that a certain service would fail at. IE, using sourceforge for pictures of me and my friends, or using gmail for publicly distributed (or even large) files. Free services just have too many ropes tying you down.
Even hosting to a degree, though it has it's benefits (security, ridiculous uptime), has some issues. I'm learning perl instead of Ruby on Rails simply because my host doesn't support Ruby on Rails. Plus, with hosting normally (I at least) run out of webspace but can't even get close to my bandwidth cap (200 gigs? really?) and host-your-own hard drive space is super cheap.
So, my advice is to set up your own box and enjoy the freedom of a truly blank, unrestricted slate.
Eve Online cleaned up these awards, and all it gets is a "Oh yeah, it won best game?" I mean, no offense to Saga of Ryzom, but why does winning best story determine who gets the full paragraph on the/. summary? I mean, Eve online won some of it's four or five awards on write in's for pete's sake! It beat out WoW for PvP! It won best MMORPG! And all it gets is one of it's awards mentioned once?!?
The actual article says "It's not known if the packs are a permanent replacement for any possible expansion packs in the future." All this article says is that the plan for a current exapansion pack has been scrapped, and DICE's efforts have been focused into two Booster Packs, which are "fairly substantial."
I play a ton of Battlefield (too much, probably) and I think these are a great idea. Not only are they cheap ($10 US) but they are offered through the EA Downloader. EAD may not be as mature as Steam, but it works just fine for me.
Well this makes sense, because anime isn't necessarily one big genre. Often anime movies and shows have similar themes / plot devices / etc., but when you get down to it Bubblegum Crisis is really pretty different from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I'm not too much of an anime geek, but I watch anime occaisionally. I think it should be phrased "Anime gains acceptance as a medium" rather than "Anime gains acceptance as a genre."
You paid for something you enjoyed... don't worry about it any more than that. You should never feel that you have to amertise something after you've made the decision to buy it -- especially if it's not a large expenditure. In my experience, trying to "get your money's worth" ruins the fun, whether it's eating too much at an all-you-can-eat buffet or by playing an MMO past the point of fun.
Another good way to look at it is by percentages -- was the game worth $14/(your monthly salary)? This helps me justify (or reject) stuff all the time, because it puts purchases in perspective of their size.
I used to study (for a class project) Nuclear Quadropole Resonance (aka NQR) which was pretty good at stuff like this. It was slow and power consumptive, which were definite downsides, but it could detect not only trace amounts of explosives, but could detect what type of explosive it was. This would be particularly useful in some of the above examples (4th of July) where you could set your scanner to go off if it picked up C4, or TNT, or whatever, but not the stuff in black cats (if these are the same chemical, my deepest apologies).
We mainly studied it as a replacement to the current stick-and-metal-detector landmine detecting plan, which has a false alarm rate of about 200-300 false positives to every actual landmine or unexploded ordinance (UXO) found. And, with new plastic landmines, NQR was the only way to go. There is a reason UN deminers have a serious injury or death so often.
Regardless, something like this is needed so people with bombs can't get on airplanes, and people with large belt buckles can:).
Slashdot Mirror
As stated in TFV (the fine video) 10 Zen monkeys and Mondo Globo own the movie.
Spare your eyeballs with the ad free, one page print version.
I also think it needs to be pointed out that a FLOSS developer chooses to donate their time to the cause, whereas this kid was attacked by the RIAA; equating them really isn't fair. Besides, what worthwhile FLOSS dev is unnoticed on /.? Unless you're building something totally unnecessary, you'll get loved.
I had a chance to ask Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft's entertainment & devices division, why the Zune wouldn't support PlaysForSure DRM'd songs. His answer was actually pretty heartening. PlaysForSure has to support a wide range of players, because the specification for PlaysForSure players is somewhat loose. Regardless, they want a very tight system with the Zune -- you buy music from the Microsoft store, and put it on the Zune, and It Just Works®. Allowing PlaysForSure music on the device would break this system (similar to how fairplay'd music only comes from iTunes) and they don't want to focus on supporting a wide range of different devices. They want to make it work for the Zune, and they want to make it work well -- he recognized that this is why Apple's system was so far ahead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since when does Africa have massive quantities of water frozen slightly beneath its surface? Plus, I'd always heard that most of Africa has decent access to water, but it was the purification that was the problem -- hence few people dying of thirst outright, and most getting sick of water borne illnesses.
I have a soundblaster X-Fi: XtremeMusic. If you can get over the kind of goofy name, it's a very, very nice card. I have only done a little recording on it, but it's powerful (51 mn transistors) and clear (136 decibel signal to noise ratio). It can do all the normal stuff like surround sound, plus some cool stereo -> surround stuff. If you need weird inputs or an optical out, you'll need to go with one of the slightly more expensive cards, but for digital i/o or 3 stereo plugs, this card is awesome.
I've always been a big fan of KDevelop, as to me (granted, a total newb) it seems pretty similar to large IDE's (eg Visual Studio), and it definitely does everything I need.
Blind people can use screen readers, but if you bury your content in flash or in images without alt text, it makes it very difficult (impossible really) for the screen reader to know what to say. Also, if you position everything in tables and it loads in a weird order but looks right when it hits the screen, it presents problems, since the reader won't know that the 5 rows down actually explains the 3 columns over.
.html (or .php or whatever) source files nice, clean and logical. A simple test is, if you can read your source file easily (ie in notepad or vi or whatever) then you're probably ok.
CSS can help with this, as it keeps the formatting away from the content, but you still have to keep your
Don't fall as you climb off, it's a long way down off your horse there mister.
Idiotic puns? The English language is a beautiful one and not everything is about efficiency, speed and clarity. If it were, we'd all read dictionaries for fun and teach our children Lojban. I, for one, celebrate the wordplay practiced by newspapers and think it's intriguing.
Shit, if I had mod points. This is the funniest thing I've seen all day.
I read a rant by someone who works as a game reviewer that said that they have a hard time evaluating games fairly. Since a) they don't pay for their own games and b) they play so many games (2 or 3 full games per week if I remember right) it gets tough. That's why small innovations are weighted far more heavily than the acutal "Fun Factor" of a game. I review games at my own site, SkorchedEarth, it's small and personal. Sites like these are the reviews I trust, because it's more of a recommendation from a friend than a review from someone who shares a bunk with game publishers. The biggest problem with them, though, is that there aren't many games reviewed (because I'm super-broke), especially not obscure ones, and it takes a while to publish them (since I don't get the games early, and I have to beat them on my own time). But, this gives the lesser-known reviewers a much better perspective on whether or not the game is worth your scarce time and hard-earned cash.
Obvious disclaimer: I run the site. There are no ads though, so I don't stand to gain from hits, except the joy of watching my server get slammed.
Seriously, the Dewey Decimal System has always worked for me. Unless you're running an actual "Go-ahead-and-check-stuff-out" library out of your home, the barcodes and MySQL seem like total overkill.
Who supported the Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security, and Domestic Eavesdropping? Liberals?
I found the page was a little slow, so before it goes down completely, here are the screenshots. Also works for the lazy. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Just what happened with ReactOS, and why is some of their code "tainted"?
If you can't / don't want to pay, but you still want to be secure, you still have an option. You see, if you read the full article, and go to the knowledgebase post about it, Microsoft says that up-to-date anti-cirus will take care of it. Don't have up to date anti-virus? That's ok too! Just visit the onecare part of safety.live.com, and Microsoft will scan your computer for viruses (including this one) in addition to all the other crap that builds up on computers.
/.!
Now, speaking as someone who has tried the online virus scanner, I have to say it works really quite well. It's just the tool to clean your computer of viruses, spyware, malware, unused/unneeded files -- and even knocks out those MICRO$OFT haters on
Notice, however, that the 60 some tests that Wine leads on are synthetic through and through... and when you get to actual games it's XP all the way. While Wine's performance is impressive, the requisite dose of salt may be several kg for this article.
I currently have a website that is hosted only because my university has serious bandwidth caps so I can't host off my own machine. Definitely, though, you should opt for as much independance as you can manage, because then you are bound by fewer agreements. I'm not saying you should or would even want to host pr0n, but often times I want to put something up that a certain service would fail at. IE, using sourceforge for pictures of me and my friends, or using gmail for publicly distributed (or even large) files. Free services just have too many ropes tying you down.
Even hosting to a degree, though it has it's benefits (security, ridiculous uptime), has some issues. I'm learning perl instead of Ruby on Rails simply because my host doesn't support Ruby on Rails. Plus, with hosting normally (I at least) run out of webspace but can't even get close to my bandwidth cap (200 gigs? really?) and host-your-own hard drive space is super cheap.
So, my advice is to set up your own box and enjoy the freedom of a truly blank, unrestricted slate.
Eve Online cleaned up these awards, and all it gets is a "Oh yeah, it won best game?" I mean, no offense to Saga of Ryzom, but why does winning best story determine who gets the full paragraph on the /. summary? I mean, Eve online won some of it's four or five awards on write in's for pete's sake! It beat out WoW for PvP! It won best MMORPG! And all it gets is one of it's awards mentioned once?!?
The actual article says "It's not known if the packs are a permanent replacement for any possible expansion packs in the future." All this article says is that the plan for a current exapansion pack has been scrapped, and DICE's efforts have been focused into two Booster Packs, which are "fairly substantial."
I play a ton of Battlefield (too much, probably) and I think these are a great idea. Not only are they cheap ($10 US) but they are offered through the EA Downloader. EAD may not be as mature as Steam, but it works just fine for me.
Psh... old man. They can come and get me at ::1 ...
Well this makes sense, because anime isn't necessarily one big genre. Often anime movies and shows have similar themes / plot devices / etc., but when you get down to it Bubblegum Crisis is really pretty different from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I'm not too much of an anime geek, but I watch anime occaisionally. I think it should be phrased "Anime gains acceptance as a medium" rather than "Anime gains acceptance as a genre."
You paid for something you enjoyed... don't worry about it any more than that. You should never feel that you have to amertise something after you've made the decision to buy it -- especially if it's not a large expenditure. In my experience, trying to "get your money's worth" ruins the fun, whether it's eating too much at an all-you-can-eat buffet or by playing an MMO past the point of fun.
Another good way to look at it is by percentages -- was the game worth $14/(your monthly salary)? This helps me justify (or reject) stuff all the time, because it puts purchases in perspective of their size.
I used to study (for a class project) Nuclear Quadropole Resonance (aka NQR) which was pretty good at stuff like this. It was slow and power consumptive, which were definite downsides, but it could detect not only trace amounts of explosives, but could detect what type of explosive it was. This would be particularly useful in some of the above examples (4th of July) where you could set your scanner to go off if it picked up C4, or TNT, or whatever, but not the stuff in black cats (if these are the same chemical, my deepest apologies).
:).
We mainly studied it as a replacement to the current stick-and-metal-detector landmine detecting plan, which has a false alarm rate of about 200-300 false positives to every actual landmine or unexploded ordinance (UXO) found. And, with new plastic landmines, NQR was the only way to go. There is a reason UN deminers have a serious injury or death so often.
Regardless, something like this is needed so people with bombs can't get on airplanes, and people with large belt buckles can