Is it reliable as in "Least Downtime", or as in "You can rely on us having a network for you no matter where you go"? (The proper term there would likely not be "reliable" but rather "extensive", I guess?)
Cryptonomicon doesn't count as a cryptographic thriller? Perhaps I misunderstood the term. (Not that I'm claiming it's the first, just that it's the first thing that came to mind when I read "cryptographic thriller".)
If I screwed up something suffuciently that my health and nano stores were too low, it lent a feeling of Quick Reload, not urgency. (In fact, I generally would re-play most encounters until I'd done it with a minimum of damage taken, no grenades used, etc.) I specifically played the game so that I would NOT need to expend large amounts of energy or ammo... precicely because I was expecting things like the need to save Paul in an ambush, or have a heavy firefight at some point in the future.
In contrast, the "If you survive this, you'll be OK" effect from CoD (and, to an extent, Halo) let me enjoy the game a lot more, rather than focusing on the minutae of health management. This is not to say that I wasn't careful, just that I wouldn't consider getting injured a non-recoverable event.
The games were VERY buggy, but I found that I really REALLY enjoyed the Starfleet Command series of games. They have a very "naval" feel to them. SFC1 and SFC3 were especially enjoyable, to me. SFC3 is probably the morestable of them, and has a non-campaign single player mode that you can play which was kinda fun.
it has Halo-style regenerating health and is in basically all ways a fucking console shooter.
I distinctly recall health-recovery (and energy-recovery) abilities in the first Deus Ex. The important thing (IMO) about Deus Ex was the immersive world and the complex plot. If they were to re-make it using the gameplay mechanics from Call of Duty (regenerating health, etc), or Halo (regenerating shields, fixed health), it would still be awesome.
I believe you are conflating the simplification of the UI from DX2 (made for consoles) and the simplification of the plot and character development options. The only things different in the UI were that inventory management was different (since you no longer had to really be choosy about weapon/ammo choice). They could have used a "console game" UI for the hacking tasks, dialogue, lockpicking, etc... they just chose not to in an effort to streamline the game.
The fact that there were fewer nonlinear options in DX2 was what made it worse, not the fact that the UI was intended to be for a console.
Cursive is far harder to read, has more person to person variation, and isn't really faster to write.
Cursive was intended to be a faster form of writing. If you were as good at it as you are at printing letters, you'd likely be faster at it.
As for legibility... I think that's more a function of our (collective) poor skills at cursive. I recently was at a museum exhibition of some poetry and other manuscripts -- and the cursive used even in the margin scribblings was legible. Written a hundred years ago, these cursive writings were more legible than any of my class notes were in college, and more legible than the meeting notes I take today.
The FriendDA, while excellent for dealing with FRIENDS, isn't really applicable when dealing with a Subject Matter Expert that you do not know well.
The FriendDA is a long way of saying that they agree not to Screw you, that they agree not to be a jerk. Some people, however, ARE jerks, and would happily tell you to your face that they won't be a jerk, and then betray you at the first opportunity. It's hard to tell whether a stranger will be a jerk or someone who will respect a FriendDA. Thus, it's wise to get a real NDA in place when you want to get your Ptentially Great Idea vetted by a subject matter expert.
Exactly. Retract service to Belguim: it can't be that big of a revenue loss.... but that doesn't solve the larger question of how to handle things the next time it occurs.
Exactly -- I'm glad I'm not the first to post that. I'd certainly rather have small (or large!) chance of getting cancer than have my body just suicide itself.
Poorly taken photos of works of art are better than none. If I want to learn about Picasso's "Woman Mowing the Lawn with a Squid" (not a real painting), my viewing preference order is:
- high res online (convenient) - in person (awesome but requires travel) - crappy version online (better than nothing) - nothing
Infringement isn't about sharing a complete copy. If you shared half a song with two people, that could be interpreted (and would be, I expect) of two infringements.
Taken to an (absurd IMO) extreme, that could be taken to mean that if you shared 1/N of a song with N people, that would be N infringements... meaning one could easily "infringe" several hundred thousand times while uploading to someone over p2p. This seems absolutely absurd to us, but until someone answers "what fraction of a copyrighted work is no longer considered infringement", that could very well BE the court interpretation as well. Currently, it seems (to a lay person like myself) that the courts consider ANY fraction of a work to be infringing.
Not being a lawyer, the only reference I have on this is the copyright.gov listing of the copyright code, which seems pretty vague.
You don't have to be a font nerd to decry the appalling typography that passes for acceptable on the web (which you are claiming is some sort of standard we should all adhere to), the lack of subtlety in the default fonts chosen and typography available
I don't? I wasn't really aware that the typography on the web was all that bad. Just as many people don't care (and can't tell) if their mp3 is 128 kbps or 320 kbps, I suspect many are unaware of the nature (and benefits) of good typography.
What is so appalling about the typography used on the web? What do you mean by "subtlety" in a font? In what ways are the current "default" fonts un-subtle, and why is that bad? In what ways would different fonts improve our web-reading experience, and how would it be measurably better than if we kept using current fonts?
Bonus points for using language understandable by a non-font-nerd, as many of us aren't. Please also note that I completely respect the idea that some people want to use specific fonts to convey a message in a particular way -- I merely am trying to understand what is so bad about what we currently use. What's wrong with helvetica-like fonts, or Times-flavored ones? There's some serious type-nerdery that goes into typesetting, and it's a foreign world to me... and one that I have a hard time recognizing the value in. (I believe there IS value, I just don't understand it.) How much easier to read is my latest novel because it uses some special typeface than if I had read the same text in a more commonly-used typeface?
Any mouse that makes your hand happy, and pleases you.
I happen to really enjoy my Razer Copperhead, and the Logitech mouse I have at work. I like that they are symmetrical, and not at all tied to whether I use them left or right handed. Some people love "ergonomic" mice, I don't. Go to the store and feel some mice. Not everyone holds a mouse in the same way, so you will want to find one that works for you. You've already cut off many (all) mice that I like by requiring a wireless mouse... but as with all interface devices, your preferences are more important.
If this made installation in Vista easier, I am going to be thrilled. MW4 was one of the few series of that game that I felt got it "right". I liked MW2/3, and their campaigns were great, but I really enjoyed the way that mech chassis actually had a flavor in MW4. Now, if only my Uziel could be competitive for the rest of the game...
Damn, I may have to buy a new joystick and play this.
Turn-By-Turn directions don't really help a lot unless you're already on the route. If you miss a turn (and don't realize until later), it's hard to recover.
There are two fundamental questions: - Where the hell am I? - How do I get from Here to There?
Without knowing where you are, it's hard to get (or give) directions. Similarly, a map doesn't help until you find some way to correlate your map to your current location -- whether that be a landmark, street sign, or other feature.
Given that $1/month is one third the price of $36/year, I wonder how they will get Pandora One subscribers. That almost sounds as appealing as a "Buy one, get another at double the price!" deal.
[Y]ou know it's only a matter of time before law enforcement starts watching the GPS data for patterns and flagging any deviation from daily patterns as suspicious and worthy of investigation.
You say that as if you think it's a good thing. I cannot agree. "Law enforcement" which watches its citizens that closely are too similar to, and to conducive to, a culture of fear that was present in the USSR and Nazi germany.
I have a harder time opposing the style of (currently fictional) GPS records that we see on CSI and the like, where it seems the officers need to actually have a reason to look for something... but it's still easy to to think of how that could be abused. Passing such a database an incorrect queery, or asking it an imperfectly framed question, could yield false positives, any number of which could "look bad".
Not everyone with a foreclosed house has a million-dollar house or lifestyle.
When the only houses you can buy in an area are in the ~400k-500k range (as things were near where I work for the past several years), you need to get a loan that size to live there. If, after doing so, your property is suddenly valued much lower (e.g., 250k), you're often likely to be foreclosed on. I know engineers who live frugally who still have encountered (or narrowly escaped) foreclosure.
Please try to exercise some empathy, and not assume that the reason for a foreclosure is irresponsible living. Many entered into mortgages on the belief that property values were mostly going to stay similar, or go up -- not halve in value. Who (aside from a very few) had ANY IDEA that the housing market was going to go as tits-up as it did?
That is one of the longest non-form-submission type URLs I've ever seen. I realize that on the back end it is likely a submission to blog software, but DAMN.
Even if a neural interface were only able to replace my mouse and keyboard (or multiple ones), I'd be happy. No need to worry about ergonomic "layout"s, no repetetive stresses. I'd love to see that, even if it's a ways off still.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it reliable as in "Least Downtime", or as in "You can rely on us having a network for you no matter where you go"? (The proper term there would likely not be "reliable" but rather "extensive", I guess?)
Cryptonomicon doesn't count as a cryptographic thriller? Perhaps I misunderstood the term. (Not that I'm claiming it's the first, just that it's the first thing that came to mind when I read "cryptographic thriller".)
You and I play games differently, then.
If I screwed up something suffuciently that my health and nano stores were too low, it lent a feeling of Quick Reload, not urgency. (In fact, I generally would re-play most encounters until I'd done it with a minimum of damage taken, no grenades used, etc.) I specifically played the game so that I would NOT need to expend large amounts of energy or ammo ... precicely because I was expecting things like the need to save Paul in an ambush, or have a heavy firefight at some point in the future.
In contrast, the "If you survive this, you'll be OK" effect from CoD (and, to an extent, Halo) let me enjoy the game a lot more, rather than focusing on the minutae of health management. This is not to say that I wasn't careful, just that I wouldn't consider getting injured a non-recoverable event.
The games were VERY buggy, but I found that I really REALLY enjoyed the Starfleet Command series of games. They have a very "naval" feel to them. SFC1 and SFC3 were especially enjoyable, to me. SFC3 is probably the morestable of them, and has a non-campaign single player mode that you can play which was kinda fun.
I distinctly recall health-recovery (and energy-recovery) abilities in the first Deus Ex. The important thing (IMO) about Deus Ex was the immersive world and the complex plot. If they were to re-make it using the gameplay mechanics from Call of Duty (regenerating health, etc), or Halo (regenerating shields, fixed health), it would still be awesome.
I believe you are conflating the simplification of the UI from DX2 (made for consoles) and the simplification of the plot and character development options. The only things different in the UI were that inventory management was different (since you no longer had to really be choosy about weapon/ammo choice). They could have used a "console game" UI for the hacking tasks, dialogue, lockpicking, etc ... they just chose not to in an effort to streamline the game.
The fact that there were fewer nonlinear options in DX2 was what made it worse, not the fact that the UI was intended to be for a console.
Cursive was intended to be a faster form of writing. If you were as good at it as you are at printing letters, you'd likely be faster at it.
As for legibility ... I think that's more a function of our (collective) poor skills at cursive. I recently was at a museum exhibition of some poetry and other manuscripts -- and the cursive used even in the margin scribblings was legible. Written a hundred years ago, these cursive writings were more legible than any of my class notes were in college, and more legible than the meeting notes I take today.
The FriendDA, while excellent for dealing with FRIENDS, isn't really applicable when dealing with a Subject Matter Expert that you do not know well.
The FriendDA is a long way of saying that they agree not to Screw you, that they agree not to be a jerk. Some people, however, ARE jerks, and would happily tell you to your face that they won't be a jerk, and then betray you at the first opportunity. It's hard to tell whether a stranger will be a jerk or someone who will respect a FriendDA. Thus, it's wise to get a real NDA in place when you want to get your Ptentially Great Idea vetted by a subject matter expert.
Brute force computing power has certainly advanced a lot since the Stasi. Look at what Google does with a large volume of cheap hardware.
Exactly. Retract service to Belguim: it can't be that big of a revenue loss. ... but that doesn't solve the larger question of how to handle things the next time it occurs.
Exactly -- I'm glad I'm not the first to post that. I'd certainly rather have small (or large!) chance of getting cancer than have my body just suicide itself.
Poorly taken photos of works of art are better than none. If I want to learn about Picasso's "Woman Mowing the Lawn with a Squid" (not a real painting), my viewing preference order is:
- high res online (convenient)
- in person (awesome but requires travel)
- crappy version online (better than nothing)
- nothing
Infringement isn't about sharing a complete copy. If you shared half a song with two people, that could be interpreted (and would be, I expect) of two infringements.
Taken to an (absurd IMO) extreme, that could be taken to mean that if you shared 1/N of a song with N people, that would be N infringements ... meaning one could easily "infringe" several hundred thousand times while uploading to someone over p2p. This seems absolutely absurd to us, but until someone answers "what fraction of a copyrighted work is no longer considered infringement", that could very well BE the court interpretation as well. Currently, it seems (to a lay person like myself) that the courts consider ANY fraction of a work to be infringing.
Not being a lawyer, the only reference I have on this is the copyright.gov listing of the copyright code, which seems pretty vague.
I don't? I wasn't really aware that the typography on the web was all that bad. Just as many people don't care (and can't tell) if their mp3 is 128 kbps or 320 kbps, I suspect many are unaware of the nature (and benefits) of good typography.
What is so appalling about the typography used on the web?
What do you mean by "subtlety" in a font?
In what ways are the current "default" fonts un-subtle, and why is that bad?
In what ways would different fonts improve our web-reading experience, and how would it be measurably better than if we kept using current fonts?
Bonus points for using language understandable by a non-font-nerd, as many of us aren't. Please also note that I completely respect the idea that some people want to use specific fonts to convey a message in a particular way -- I merely am trying to understand what is so bad about what we currently use. What's wrong with helvetica-like fonts, or Times-flavored ones? There's some serious type-nerdery that goes into typesetting, and it's a foreign world to me ... and one that I have a hard time recognizing the value in. (I believe there IS value, I just don't understand it.) How much easier to read is my latest novel because it uses some special typeface than if I had read the same text in a more commonly-used typeface?
That was a very interesting article you linked to -- thanks!
Wow, that's pretty cool! I regret having used up my mod points, as I wish I could mod you interesting. :)
Any mouse that makes your hand happy, and pleases you.
I happen to really enjoy my Razer Copperhead, and the Logitech mouse I have at work. I like that they are symmetrical, and not at all tied to whether I use them left or right handed. Some people love "ergonomic" mice, I don't. Go to the store and feel some mice. Not everyone holds a mouse in the same way, so you will want to find one that works for you. You've already cut off many (all) mice that I like by requiring a wireless mouse ... but as with all interface devices, your preferences are more important.
Consider a trackball, also.
If this made installation in Vista easier, I am going to be thrilled. MW4 was one of the few series of that game that I felt got it "right". I liked MW2/3, and their campaigns were great, but I really enjoyed the way that mech chassis actually had a flavor in MW4. Now, if only my Uziel could be competitive for the rest of the game ...
Damn, I may have to buy a new joystick and play this.
Turn-By-Turn directions don't really help a lot unless you're already on the route. If you miss a turn (and don't realize until later), it's hard to recover.
There are two fundamental questions:
- Where the hell am I?
- How do I get from Here to There?
Without knowing where you are, it's hard to get (or give) directions. Similarly, a map doesn't help until you find some way to correlate your map to your current location -- whether that be a landmark, street sign, or other feature.
Given that $1/month is one third the price of $36/year, I wonder how they will get Pandora One subscribers. That almost sounds as appealing as a "Buy one, get another at double the price!" deal.
You say that as if you think it's a good thing. I cannot agree. "Law enforcement" which watches its citizens that closely are too similar to, and to conducive to, a culture of fear that was present in the USSR and Nazi germany.
I have a harder time opposing the style of (currently fictional) GPS records that we see on CSI and the like, where it seems the officers need to actually have a reason to look for something ... but it's still easy to to think of how that could be abused. Passing such a database an incorrect queery, or asking it an imperfectly framed question, could yield false positives, any number of which could "look bad".
Not everyone with a foreclosed house has a million-dollar house or lifestyle.
When the only houses you can buy in an area are in the ~400k-500k range (as things were near where I work for the past several years), you need to get a loan that size to live there. If, after doing so, your property is suddenly valued much lower (e.g., 250k), you're often likely to be foreclosed on. I know engineers who live frugally who still have encountered (or narrowly escaped) foreclosure.
Please try to exercise some empathy, and not assume that the reason for a foreclosure is irresponsible living. Many entered into mortgages on the belief that property values were mostly going to stay similar, or go up -- not halve in value. Who (aside from a very few) had ANY IDEA that the housing market was going to go as tits-up as it did?
That is one of the longest non-form-submission type URLs I've ever seen. I realize that on the back end it is likely a submission to blog software, but DAMN.
Would you consider listing the name of this sci-fi story? I Like a good read.
Even if a neural interface were only able to replace my mouse and keyboard (or multiple ones), I'd be happy. No need to worry about ergonomic "layout"s, no repetetive stresses. I'd love to see that, even if it's a ways off still.
That's a good point. I am not sure -- but I have not noticed a "there's a new version" dialog in a while. So, I expect it's probably not 3.5.