I think they may have bought one too many $40,000 toilet seats. But this is a serious issue: These brownouts are affecting their ability to spy on us! Something must be done immediately or innocent men may go free.
There is value in using computers for education in K-12. Software can quiz students and adapt to their mistakes to help them learn actively. When we have strong AI teachers will be outdated because they won't be able to give students the one-on-one time the computer can.
Certainly it's pretty funny when we type something like "pidgin problem" into Google and see "Find pidgin problem now on eBay!" But when you look at search queries it's definitively true that a non-trivial number of them are for products, and probably people looking to buy. Besides, if eBay only pays through click-thrus, why would they care if there are false-positives?
It seems to be more and more common to see games in PC and console games, even though those are paid for by the consumer too... This is not an isolated trend.
Back in the days of 56k modems some ISPs used to use proxies to make images smaller so sites would appear to download faster. This is a much more despicable use. I leave ads on so I can support the sites that I like, but I would be outraged if it turned out the ads were actually coming from my ISP who I was already paying.
Re:Well tested?
on
Pimp Your XP
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
That's a troll right? More than 40 million copies have been sold.
Why buy separate?
on
Pimp Your XP
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm not sure of the value of tacking on features to XP to make it more like Vista, especially when such features cost money. I mean, if you want Vista-like stuff, why don't you just pay the upgrade fee and get a complete, well-tested package instead of a bunch of disjoint shareware utilities?
And what will happen to the American economy when all the service sector jobs become automated? Where will all the unemployed people work?
Cashiers are already on the way out... Automated janitors, shelf-stockers, and back-end loaders are sure to follow.
It's going to be an interesting century, folks.
Perhaps they feel threatened. ISPs are forced to retain data for the government's benefit, and they are able to aggregate that data as they please. Due to their nature search engines also collect aggregate data on people's browsing habits and search queries. If I was in the government and I wanted to be the only entity with such data, you bet I'd be cracking down on search providers...
You know what would be really awesome? Glasses that are "smartly" polarized. That is, they just remove all highly polarized light while still letting the generally unpolarized stuff thorough. They would work equally well at all angles of tilt.
If you drive with horizontally polarized sunglasses, you cut the glare from the road, but still get glare from the windshield. If you switch to vertical, you cut the glare from the windshield, but not the glare from the road. I don't want to see any reflected light.
You probably can't do this sort of thing passively and would need a computer to do the comparisons, so the cost will be way too high for a long time to come. But maybe in the late 2070s?
Congratulations, you realized that World of Warcraft is a game inside which everything is pointless and subject to change by the whims of Vivendi at any time.
Duh.
Technical superiority doesn't mean as much when you can't get vendor support. This is sad but true. For a long while to come Vista will enjoy all the attention and benefits of a larger install base regardless of technical merits (or lack thereof).
Seems to me that the problems with drug patents are similar to the problems we see with software patents. The guys who are approving/disapproving the patents don't know anything about the field to which the patent applies, and so make poor judges of whether or not a new patent is sufficiently innovative to deserve approval.
If you substantially increased the fee for patent applications then you could hire real experts to review new patents, and that might help solve some of these problems. Of course, many would claim that gave large companies with big coffers an unfair advantage compared to the little guy, and they would be right.
For around 30 bucks you can get a pair of 3d glasses that works great with Nvidia's stereo software and an old CRT display to produce true 3d images from most compatible games. I have a pair and they are pretty interesting.
The problem? For most people, the real 3d effect is disturbing and causes headache. I think the theory goes that the effect is too good for the poor brain, which now expects the sensation of physical motion to be coming along with the visual image. Of course, you feel no sensation just sitting in your chair playing an FPS, so the brain is confused and hurts itself. Or something. (It's also a pain in the ass to get simple things like hud reticules working right, surprisingly)
Spend the $30, try it for yourself, see why it (mostly) sucks.
I agree that it is not a smart idea to give companies tax incentives to hire workers on H1B, but why are you so anti-foreigner that you don't want them to come at all? Are you afraid that you are inferior to these people and unable to compete with them in a free marketplace? As long as they contribute to the enrollment numbers at universities and thereby subsidize American student educations, I am happy to see them come.
In my college engineering program there were all sorts of students from foreign countries (the majority from India) that spoke barely a lick of English, cheated off each other constantly, and generally degraded the quality of the work environment. I saw them as the sort only desperate people would hire for inconsequential jobs because it was clear that they had no self-direction and you would have to hold their hand every step of the way in any major task.
I haven't been out of college for a long time, but I did get a decent job at a fun company and, unsurprisingly, I haven't seen any of my foreign compatriots working here. Go figure. I can't imagine for a second that I wouldn't be able to best any of these folks in any reasonable test an interviewer could throw out, and I have no fear of competing with them.
I find TFA to be a little melodramatic. "SHODAN is... The Girl Your Mother Warned You About"... "SHODAN IS... the Hand that Wrecks the Cradle"... "SHODAN is... Her Own Impersonal Jesus"... Yes, it's true, SHODAN was an excellent character, but she was only scary because of other good design decisions on the part of the developers. The audio logs in the first game, for instance, were an excellent idea and provided a lot of suspense and incentive to explore.
System Shock 2 was a good game, but honestly it didn't creep me out as much as the original did. Maybe SHODAN's novelty had worn off by that point, or maybe I just got more jaded as a gamer. The idea of being all alone on a monster-infested spacestation has been done to death by now (Doom 3 et al) but it was new and cool back when the original came out.
I wonder if System Shock 3 will be genuinely scary? Here's to hoping...
Re:Did anyone see the products they offer?
on
P2P Now and Then
·
· Score: 1
I mean the ISP would actually be hosting the files going around on P2P, which would mostly be copyrighted works.
You've never visited a binary newsgroup, have you?
There are TONS of things that paying a penny or two for would be really useful, and could make your online browsing experience much better.
For instance, imagine paying a penny to read a webcomic on a site (like, say http://penny-arcade.com/). It's a pittance to you, assuming all you have to do is click one button to make the payment. If 10,000 people pay one penny to read that comic, the author has made $100. This is a great way to support online content-based sites, and also to rid them of ads. Something that can get the darn ads off the Internet would be great!
Thanks for clairifying the situation; it does make a little more sense when you point out their business model was primarily based on supporting an illegal activity, whereas the primary purpose of a pencil is hopefully not to inflict bodily harm on others.
I read some of the actual decision and it makes more sense to me now.
The key difference between Iraq and New Orleans is that Iraq is a national problem. It is another country, and individal states are not authorized to "deal" or make war with other countries. Thus, it is the responsibility of the federal government to deal with Iraq. Regardless of whether you believe we should be there or not, it's a situation that has to be dealt with and paid for on a federal level.
New Orleans, however, is but a small city within a state. They had a responsibility, as a city, to do everything in their power to protect themselves from predictable natural disasters. They should have done this with their own money, not with money from the Federal government. The local tax rates should have been much higher in New Orlearns (and should be much higher in all coastal areas) so that the goverment could provide adequate protection for the people.
Sharman Network licensed users to access a network it knew was being used for piracy and hence it was authorising people to infringe copyright
What? By this logic, the manufacturer of a firearm would be held liable for any murders committed with said firearm because they knew it could be used for such a purpose. Thankfully, such cases have been struck down in the USA.
This is an awful decision. If we were to hold manufacturers responsible for what people did with their products, we wouldn't have guns, knives, VCRs, computers, cameras (kiddie porn!), or even pencils. There is almost always a destructive use for any type of technology, but that doesn't mean the technology should be outlawed or it's creators punished.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they may have bought one too many $40,000 toilet seats. But this is a serious issue: These brownouts are affecting their ability to spy on us! Something must be done immediately or innocent men may go free.
There is value in using computers for education in K-12. Software can quiz students and adapt to their mistakes to help them learn actively. When we have strong AI teachers will be outdated because they won't be able to give students the one-on-one time the computer can.
Certainly it's pretty funny when we type something like "pidgin problem" into Google and see "Find pidgin problem now on eBay!" But when you look at search queries it's definitively true that a non-trivial number of them are for products, and probably people looking to buy. Besides, if eBay only pays through click-thrus, why would they care if there are false-positives?
It seems to be more and more common to see games in PC and console games, even though those are paid for by the consumer too... This is not an isolated trend.
Back in the days of 56k modems some ISPs used to use proxies to make images smaller so sites would appear to download faster. This is a much more despicable use. I leave ads on so I can support the sites that I like, but I would be outraged if it turned out the ads were actually coming from my ISP who I was already paying.
That's a troll right? More than 40 million copies have been sold.
I'm not sure of the value of tacking on features to XP to make it more like Vista, especially when such features cost money. I mean, if you want Vista-like stuff, why don't you just pay the upgrade fee and get a complete, well-tested package instead of a bunch of disjoint shareware utilities?
And what will happen to the American economy when all the service sector jobs become automated? Where will all the unemployed people work? Cashiers are already on the way out... Automated janitors, shelf-stockers, and back-end loaders are sure to follow. It's going to be an interesting century, folks.
Perhaps they feel threatened. ISPs are forced to retain data for the government's benefit, and they are able to aggregate that data as they please. Due to their nature search engines also collect aggregate data on people's browsing habits and search queries. If I was in the government and I wanted to be the only entity with such data, you bet I'd be cracking down on search providers...
You really missed the sarcasm there, dude.
You know what would be really awesome? Glasses that are "smartly" polarized. That is, they just remove all highly polarized light while still letting the generally unpolarized stuff thorough. They would work equally well at all angles of tilt.
If you drive with horizontally polarized sunglasses, you cut the glare from the road, but still get glare from the windshield. If you switch to vertical, you cut the glare from the windshield, but not the glare from the road. I don't want to see any reflected light.
You probably can't do this sort of thing passively and would need a computer to do the comparisons, so the cost will be way too high for a long time to come. But maybe in the late 2070s?
Here's to hoping.
Congratulations, you realized that World of Warcraft is a game inside which everything is pointless and subject to change by the whims of Vivendi at any time. Duh.
Chlorine oxidizes bodily waste.
Technical superiority doesn't mean as much when you can't get vendor support. This is sad but true. For a long while to come Vista will enjoy all the attention and benefits of a larger install base regardless of technical merits (or lack thereof).
Seems to me that the problems with drug patents are similar to the problems we see with software patents. The guys who are approving/disapproving the patents don't know anything about the field to which the patent applies, and so make poor judges of whether or not a new patent is sufficiently innovative to deserve approval.
If you substantially increased the fee for patent applications then you could hire real experts to review new patents, and that might help solve some of these problems. Of course, many would claim that gave large companies with big coffers an unfair advantage compared to the little guy, and they would be right.
What are some real solutions to this problem?
For around 30 bucks you can get a pair of 3d glasses that works great with Nvidia's stereo software and an old CRT display to produce true 3d images from most compatible games. I have a pair and they are pretty interesting. The problem? For most people, the real 3d effect is disturbing and causes headache. I think the theory goes that the effect is too good for the poor brain, which now expects the sensation of physical motion to be coming along with the visual image. Of course, you feel no sensation just sitting in your chair playing an FPS, so the brain is confused and hurts itself. Or something. (It's also a pain in the ass to get simple things like hud reticules working right, surprisingly) Spend the $30, try it for yourself, see why it (mostly) sucks.
Did you mean "between u and mu"?
I agree that it is not a smart idea to give companies tax incentives to hire workers on H1B, but why are you so anti-foreigner that you don't want them to come at all? Are you afraid that you are inferior to these people and unable to compete with them in a free marketplace? As long as they contribute to the enrollment numbers at universities and thereby subsidize American student educations, I am happy to see them come. In my college engineering program there were all sorts of students from foreign countries (the majority from India) that spoke barely a lick of English, cheated off each other constantly, and generally degraded the quality of the work environment. I saw them as the sort only desperate people would hire for inconsequential jobs because it was clear that they had no self-direction and you would have to hold their hand every step of the way in any major task. I haven't been out of college for a long time, but I did get a decent job at a fun company and, unsurprisingly, I haven't seen any of my foreign compatriots working here. Go figure. I can't imagine for a second that I wouldn't be able to best any of these folks in any reasonable test an interviewer could throw out, and I have no fear of competing with them.
I find TFA to be a little melodramatic. "SHODAN is... The Girl Your Mother Warned You About"... "SHODAN IS... the Hand that Wrecks the Cradle"... "SHODAN is... Her Own Impersonal Jesus"... Yes, it's true, SHODAN was an excellent character, but she was only scary because of other good design decisions on the part of the developers. The audio logs in the first game, for instance, were an excellent idea and provided a lot of suspense and incentive to explore.
System Shock 2 was a good game, but honestly it didn't creep me out as much as the original did. Maybe SHODAN's novelty had worn off by that point, or maybe I just got more jaded as a gamer. The idea of being all alone on a monster-infested spacestation has been done to death by now (Doom 3 et al) but it was new and cool back when the original came out.
I wonder if System Shock 3 will be genuinely scary? Here's to hoping...
I mean the ISP would actually be hosting the files going around on P2P, which would mostly be copyrighted works. You've never visited a binary newsgroup, have you?
There are TONS of things that paying a penny or two for would be really useful, and could make your online browsing experience much better.
For instance, imagine paying a penny to read a webcomic on a site (like, say http://penny-arcade.com/). It's a pittance to you, assuming all you have to do is click one button to make the payment. If 10,000 people pay one penny to read that comic, the author has made $100. This is a great way to support online content-based sites, and also to rid them of ads. Something that can get the darn ads off the Internet would be great!
Thanks for clairifying the situation; it does make a little more sense when you point out their business model was primarily based on supporting an illegal activity, whereas the primary purpose of a pencil is hopefully not to inflict bodily harm on others.
I read some of the actual decision and it makes more sense to me now.
The key difference between Iraq and New Orleans is that Iraq is a national problem. It is another country, and individal states are not authorized to "deal" or make war with other countries. Thus, it is the responsibility of the federal government to deal with Iraq. Regardless of whether you believe we should be there or not, it's a situation that has to be dealt with and paid for on a federal level.
New Orleans, however, is but a small city within a state. They had a responsibility, as a city, to do everything in their power to protect themselves from predictable natural disasters. They should have done this with their own money, not with money from the Federal government. The local tax rates should have been much higher in New Orlearns (and should be much higher in all coastal areas) so that the goverment could provide adequate protection for the people.
Sharman Network licensed users to access a network it knew was being used for piracy and hence it was authorising people to infringe copyright What? By this logic, the manufacturer of a firearm would be held liable for any murders committed with said firearm because they knew it could be used for such a purpose. Thankfully, such cases have been struck down in the USA. This is an awful decision. If we were to hold manufacturers responsible for what people did with their products, we wouldn't have guns, knives, VCRs, computers, cameras (kiddie porn!), or even pencils. There is almost always a destructive use for any type of technology, but that doesn't mean the technology should be outlawed or it's creators punished.