So, following your logic, because it's 2013 it is "culturally aware" to associate Islam with terrorism? Yes, that is discrimination/racism. I'm not throwing terms around.
No. That''s not discrimination. I don't treat judge or treat muslims differently. I don't presume they are terrorists, I am in fact well aware that the vast majority are perfectly normal people.
But there is no escaping that the media and government bogeyman is "Extremist Islamic Terrorism" right now, and its not 'discrimination' to make a joke about that.
The settings you have on your fridge determine how long it will last.
Funny, in my house, its whether the kids have friends over or not that determines how ong it will last. I buy milk 12-16 liters at a time and it never comes within a mile of going bad.
The start screen version of all programs isn't as bad, but I really shouldn't have to right click to get it.
Agreed. 8.1 gives you the obvious link, and also lets you set that view as the default so you can go straight there everytime if you prefer.
Mousing over a section of screen bringing up new things you can do with out any visual cues whatsoever that there's something there, those hotpoints acting differently depending on whether you are in a metro app/start screen or desktop/regular program, and generally the completely different behavior between metro and desktop modes.
I don't like Metro on a desktop computer either. I find it good on a tablet/phone and on my HTPC, but I don't use any metro apps on my desktop. Fortunately, you don't need to use them.
Mousing over a section of screen bringing up new things you can do with out any visual cues whatsoever that there's something there, those hotpoints
I agree. I don't like hotcorners - and its a reason i like the start 'button' making a return. I'd like to see the rest of the hotcorners disappear from the desktop as mandatory as well.
I'm not sure what hotpoints you are referring to if you mean something beyond that though.
Especially for Metro IE and flash. Can't load flash on a site you want? Guess you need to download it. Except doing so loads adobe's version for the desktop mode, even if you downloaded it in Metro.
Yeah - metro IE vs desktop IE is clumsy. I don't use metro IE on my desktop at all, ever, though, and can't imagine any reason for doing so, so its kind of a non-issue for me.
As for closing metro apps from the desktop -- yup that's another gaffe. I use alt-f4, then learned about the 3 finger trackpad swipe -- which is fine for the logitech pad i use with the HTPC... but drag-to-close via mouse -- i just learned that just now from you. There's no question they half-baked metro for desktop keyboard/mouse users.
But 8 isn't metro. I have 8.1 preview on a desktop, and other than the start screen I don't ever see any metro stuff.
On my HTPC I use metro for netflix and the video player and that's about it.
I don't have a windows tablet, but we do have a lumia 820 in the house, and the modern UI generally works well there, and I'd have no problem using it on a tablet. But yes, modern ui or metro on a desktop mostly sucks.
But deciding on 8.1 for the desktop based on metro apps is like not getting Windows 7 because you didn't like the new Windows Media player. You don't have to use it. I never did.:)
There are clearly many people for whom that race to the bottom is the goal, as long as they keep making money and their stocks go up, they don't give a damn what happens to the rest of society.
And there are many people who just want their next heroine fix too, and who couldn't care less about anything else.:)
But neither group is who is meant when one refers to the goals of society in the abstract.
It takes far longer than 2 weeks to "default on their mortgages."
Yes and no.
To go from paid and in good standing to foreclosure, it absolutely takes a lot longer than a couple weeks.
But if you are already courting default due to previous circumstances, it can be the final straw.
It won't be most people but there's going to be people out there who were already into past-due, final-notice territory, who were scrambling to get back on track who probably just had the rug yanked out from under them.
The return of the start button is an acknowledgement of the fact that people using a mouse as their primary interface expect to be able to click something.
The hot corners were not 'discoverable' or 'intuitive' for a desktop, with a keyboard and mouse.
Bringing the button back, but still having it go to the start screen is fine. It's not what you want, but it does solve a real problem.
(what if I wanted to navigate based on a graphic that was previously on the screen or based on instructions that I wanted to keep up)
Yes, that the scenario that keeps me up at night. Lets cram everything installed on the coputer into a heirarchical nested menu in the corner of the screen, in case the user needs to see a graphic while navigating it.
Then when this draws a complaint, the seller installs a stick and clutch pedal, but leaves the automatic transmission.
Tiptronic is here to stay.
This is more just MS not wanting to bend.
Its always a tough call. Microsoft wants an OS that works well on the TV, on the Desktop, and on a tablet. The old start menu is only good on a desktop. I can understand (and even agree) with the design of the start menu.
I also think, despite your love letter, that the windows 7 start menu is a piece of SHIT. I like pinning apps (but I can pin apps to a taskbar toolbar in win8 and that works the same), and I like the quick search widget to run programs. But the actual start menu, is garbage -- a heirarchy of folders crammed into a small popup in the corner of the screen? That's ASININE if you forget for a second that you love it so much and really think about it from a UI design perspective.
Windows 8.1's start screen is a lot more usable.
What's scary is that 3rd party companies had no problem doing this almost on day one.
Yes, 3rd party companies that had an opportunity to do anything... decided to slavishly copy the start menu -- the stuff that it was good at... and the stuff that makes no sense at all.
If you are going to write a custom start-menu for windows 8 for god's sake, give us pinned apps, the search widget, and the shortcuts to controls, computer, etc... but don't idiotically recreate the "everything on your computer in a hierarchical menu popup"... clicking all programs should bring up the start screen, or at the very least a MUCH LARGER window with the start screen's capabilities. Because the start screen is actually much BETTER at that.
nobody I've spoken to is happy with this.
Few people like change. And focus on the negative, even if changes are actually better... then they just focus on having to "learn something". In the case of the 8.1 start screen -- its a mixed bag... its better at some things, its not as good at others. It could have been done better, but what it was replaces was garbage too.
OSX doesn't have a start menu.
It has launchpad which does the same thing as the start screen in much the same way (full screen, paged, easily searched by typing). It has a dock that lets you pin things to it like the task bar. And it has spotlight. And nobody is having a fit about how.
Windows 8 doesn't need the classic start menu. It needs spotlight.
The windows 8 start screen has all of spotlights search capabilties and more, which is good and should be kept; and its better than spotlight for actually searching for something, but spotlight is better UX for a power user to quickly pulling something up that you already know by name. --
"spotlight-search powertoy for windows 8" is what we need, not "Start8" etc trying to cling to the legacy start menu.
But quite frankly I'd argue to vegan that the plant itself grew from soil with animal matter in it anyway
Fertilized with shit from captive animals. Grown in farms that displaced natural wildlife (and surely killed a few) Wrapped in paper made from trees that were cut down destroying bird nests, insect habitats. Transported to the store using a truck driven by a guy who thinks an entire ham is "breakfast"...
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
But you can argue that reward per hour, grinding is more efficient than doing challenging content in terms of the in game rewards.
I used to play EQ1, you could go and do a real dungeon crawl with a group, and fight yellows and low reds. And it was genuinely fun. Lose control of aggro, or run into someone elses train though and you died. The necro would summon our corpes out, and our cleric would rez us... we'd re-equip and go in for another run. It was great fun.
BUT
You made more ingame currency, and gained more XP by joing to a known camp and grinding.
At 15-20th level ("back in the day") you could walk into Blackburrow and head down to the bottom... and that was challenging and fun. But the gnolls were pretty poor, and the risk of death (and associated "downtime") was high.
Or you could go to Highhold Pass, and fight a particular camping spot there. The drops were reliably better, the stream of creatures to kill was constant, and if things got out of hand you were just steps away from a zone line. You made more money, and gained more xp, easier, and faster, with less risk.
You didn't have to "grind", but most players did. Because the game actively rewarded them better in everything but "fun" by doing so. And it turns out the majority of players will sacrifice "fun" for "progress" for reasons that I truly find baffling.
WoW and other MMORPGs, and even many single player RPGs are the same, hell even stuff like diablo -- how many diablo 2 players just spent hours doing "Hill Runs" repeatedly for xp, over and over again because it was the easiest and safest place to get loot and xp?
Who can blame someone want to rent a residence for not taking plastic? Care lease companies don't do it either. Nor my condo maintenance fees.
But here in Canada at least, all those types support (and prefer) pre-authorized bank withdrawals as payment method.
The ONLY thing I regularly still write cheques for is the kids school stuff - field trips, hot lunch day, etc.
I had to pay the contractor who came to fix the hot water tank by cheque a couple years ago because he wasn't carrying around a mobile cellular enabled credit card machine. (And I can't say I really blame him -- those aren't cheap, and cellular data service isn't ubiquitous. Hell, I live in a hilly area that part of a major metro area, and there are parts of my own street that don't have a good reliable cellular data link. I've had the pizza guy wander around into the middle of the street holding the machine over his head a couple times to get a good enough data signal.:)
There are lots of places that are a lot worse. So I can understand those guys still taking cheques.
The list wouldn't be complete without "Allah", would it?
I referenced Viagra and Cialis but left out Levitra too. What do you divine from that fact?
It really shows the level of your discrimination and/or racism.
Discrimination? What $deity-name$ would you have found acceptable? Or do I have to propose a religious extremist terrorist cell that's also multi-faith to appease you? I picked on Islam because its 2013, and its culturally aware. Proposing Quaker terrorist cells would have been funny in its own right, but that's not the modern bogeyman is it?
Racism? Well that was random. Why not throw in chauvinist too?
I threw that up as pre-emptive defense, because in these sorts of arguments their ARE people (not you) who do claim that they need it for such and such and that its the only way to reach so-and-so etc. I don't claim that set includes you and didn't mean to imply that.
On my profile, Facebook has access to my name, marital status, friends list, the text that I post on the service...
Look, if you are a typical facebook user that think that, you are probably grossly underestimating things.
From a full access to your profile, and the profiles you are connected to, and your indication that you "circulate information to the family" I almost guarantee I can pin down where you live, how old you are, how many kids you have, their genders, their age, where they go to school, your income bracket, likely know what car you drive, your phone number, your hobbies, perhaps even where you shop, where you work, what you do, what your work schedule is, whether you cook or dine out, where you eat when you do, what you cook when you don't, how much you weigh, whether you exercise, your political affiliation...
Seriously.
Actually, I could probably get that without looking at your profile at all, and just focusing on those of your friends, assuming even just of few them "over share".
Some are more responsive on Facebook than to a phone call. Go figure.
I'm not really sure what to make of that... if I had a friend that was only responsive to handwritten letters I likely wouldn't oblige him.
If I had a friend that was only responsive on facebook, I expect he'd figure things out when he realized people weren't talking to him anymore. Yet his phone was full of texts and voicemails.
Apparently newer forms of communication aren't useful to you and your social circle; that's fine
I'm curious why you deliberately chose to conflate "newer" with "invasive and proprietary advertising platforms". My friends and family are all about "newer" -- but we select platforms where we are the owner, or at least the customer, as opposed to platforms where we are the product.
Among my friends and family, Facebook is sometimes the quickest way to circulate information
The information and rights you assign facebook just for the ability to "circulate information" a bit quicker is a pretty lousy trade, especially as facebook doesn't even possess anything that makes it uniquely qualified to do it. Its not like choosing between writing a letter or using the phone where the phone is orders of magnitude faster... its like choosing between a phone that records everything you say, for a slightly different shaped phone that doesn't*, and requires minimal setup.
(* fuck you NSA)
. What about electronic contact makes you feel like you're unimportant to someone else?
Nothing at all. Re-read my message. I am not suggesting that the only way that is acceptable is via landline calls made from a rotary phone. I am fine with receiving text messages on 2 different numbers, or email at 5 different addresses, or instant messages on 2 different platforms. I also use a number of forums, IRC, and so on.
Nobody needs to use any one thing in particular to reach me.
If my friends want to get a hold of me, they have a variety of options.
And that was my point. When you tell the facebook crowd they don't need facebook, they always seem to end to up whining about some oh-so-important friend/relative to them that is ONLY available on facebook... that NO OTHER TECHNOLOGY on the face of the planet can reach them.
And YES, if there is someone out there who is ONLY reachable on facebook, and who is unwilling to make themselves available to you via any other channel... then yeah, you are not that important to them.
I have friends that don't like steam. I have friends that like skype, I have friends that rarely check their email. I have friends that prefer email to texts. I even have friends who use facebook a lot -- but its not the only way to get in touch with them.
As I said before, it's a very "to each their own"/YMMV situation.
And as I said before, nobody needs facebook. And its such an objectionably implemented concept that only a fool would choose to use it.
Some of my friends don't check their e-mail more than once every few weeks and don't sign in to any instant messenger often,
And they don't have phones? Wherein you text them, or even call them when you want to talk to them?
If something else had quite the communications potential for reaching a long list of friends quickly,
Anyone who prioritizes being able to send a long list of people a message that highly isn't likely to be sending messages I need to read.
And If you wanted to invite me to a party and we're such good friends yet it doesn't even merit a text message or a phone call...well I've got better things to do.
Its usefulness depends on your own circle of friends.
If you need facebook to be able to talk to your friends, then you need new friends.
Yes, yes, some guy now always pipes up about how facebook lets him keep in touch with some cousin half way around the world who doesn't apparently know how to use any technology except facebook, and further - he or she doesn't care enough about remaining in contact with YOU to lift a finger to make any sort of effort beyond passively catching your messages you leave them on facebook, and if you couldn't reach them on facebook you'd lose contact with them.
I'd let them go... if I'm that unimportant to the other person... why would I make staying in touch that important to me?
If you're gonna go snooping through people's stuff, you're bound to find a lot of garbage.
Garbage!? That's how my terrorist cell communicates you insensitive clod.
Cialis spam is "Alpha" [ia1i5 spam is "Bravo" CiAli$ spam is "Charlie"...
Viagra spam is "Death" ViAgr4 spam is "America" P3n is 3nlargem3nt is "Allah" We1gt L0ss is "Target" "I saw your picture online" is "Great Satan"... "This stock is making a turnaround" is whatever letter the stock starts with. "This stock is on High Alert for Today" is whatever the 2nd letter of the stock starts with. "This Company could be come my longest running winner!!!" has a GPS latitude encoded into the digits of the target price, trade date, and last trade info Longitude comes in on a fake PO tracking number shipment spam
Seriously. Who cares if it doesn't correctly detect that you sister has lupus and is on steroid therapy... if the outcome of an incorrect detection is...
The hat doesn't count as "more axes". It was merely one "joystick" mounted on another. Just like an XBox controller, you still just have 2 x 2-axis sticks (or buttons). Again granted, some joysticks had a little more but buttons don't count.
The key difference to an xbox controller, and the reason it relates to your original post is that all 5 axes (hand joystick x/y/twist + thumb joystick x/y could all be controlled with a single hand.
As I recall the genuinely good ones also cost upward of $100
Supply and demand. I'm confident the $100 sticks would easily have been in the xbox controller price range had they been ubiquitously sold with a major console like that, in those kinds of numbers.
The controller came with a copy of Descent, if you remember that, which had direct 3D movement (unlike an airplane) and used all 6 degrees.
I recall the old microsoft sidewinder was a pretty decent controller for that game as well. find this on google...
You can see they juse the pitch/yaw axes as you'd expect, with twist for banking left/right and the hat for slide "strafe left right / move up / down)" all with one hand.
The second hand controlled the thottle slider, and buttons on the base for changing weapons, afterburner, and flares.
5 axes if you include the: hat (thumbstick at the top of the joystick)
In practice the hat was usually implemented usually as 4 buttons (that usually supported 8 directions N/W/S/E + NW/NE/SW/SE) instead of actual true axes but that was more a limitation of what the old game port could take than anything else.
In any case the old jet fighter games did allow for pitch, yaw, roll while they were often setup to use the hat as a way of looking left/right/forward/back all from one stick. (or more realistically for controlling aileron or rudder trim).
Then the thrust axis was a slider at the base along with additional buttons for the 2nd hard. Or was separated out onto a 2ndary controller.
But the base controls aside, a good flightstick could be considered to have 5 axes, main trigger, secondary fire, and at least another couple buttons all operable from a single hand.
And they still exist, except as the flight sim and space shooter genre collapsed, they are relatively niche.
If its not the game itself, it could be other software. Skype in particular (on your PC, or on your smartphone on your wifi...)
Any number of other chat programs, p2p software, etc are suspect.
Rootkit/malware/backdoor is possible.
And that's all assuming its real, which, i don't know your level of sophistication. For all we know you just have an infected unit that's flooding your network, and you are mis-reading the overly "dangerous" sounding warnings crappy security constantly throws up to justify its existence.
A traffic analyzer would be helpful. Suspect everything, and knock down the entire network, disable wireless (takes care of the smartphones, etc) boot up one PC from a linux live CD... and then move forward from there.
The non-centering joystick of the Atari 5200 got really bad reviews, and the Turbo Touch 360 was rated the 9th worst video game controller of all time by IGN.
What is a mouse on a mousepad in an FPS shooter with mouse look if its not a "non-centering joystick"?
I don't know if the steam controller is going to be any good in practice, but for on the couch gaming -- I'm willing to give it a shot. I already prefer to play quite a few styles of games with a controller - Platformers, shmups, and stuff like defense grid.
The new Xcom I can go either way on - but if I'm on the couch playing it on the big screen, I'll go with a controller.
Really the only games I just can't abide controllers for are FPS, and most RTS. And hunched forward over the coffee table with a keyboard and mouse with my head tilted back to see the tv is cringe inducing... so I play those on my office PC. But I'd like a good couch experience... I'm willing to try steam controller. It's basically playing an FPS with a trackpad (which I've done and THAT is miserable -- but its a trackpad designed to be handheld and used with a thumb which overcomes one of the major problems with trackpads... and it has good button placement for "shooting" etc, which is the other major problem with trackpads. So it might suck... but it might be good.
My god. Where to even begin. If your numbers are to be believed, then prosecution is REQUIRED to change the situation
Uh... the guy is persona non-grata in Sweden, and then again in the United Kingdom too.
If someone sexually assaulted a woman you know, and then had to flee the country, and then had to flee the country he fled to the 3rd world to avoid extradition... for a relatively non-violent sexual assault.
Exile to the 3rd world, with automatic arrest and extradition if he tries to come back anywhere with an extradition treaty with the UK/Sweden is pretty stiff consequences.
As long as men are allowed to laugh off sexual assault as business as usual, this is one shit culture that we live in.
God god indeed. I don't think anyone is "laughing it off".
They've got an arrest warrant out for him on INTERPOL. What more do you really expect?
That's the extent of the police responsibility here -- they hardly need to maintain 24x7 guard on an embassy.
Next time someone gropes your daughter, and the guy flees the country, then flees that country he fled to to the 3rd world to escape international warrants... what then do you expect the army to be flown in to invade Peru for extraordinary rendition?
What more do we want here? The women of Sweden are safe from Julian Assange; as is pretty much the rest of the first world. He's a persona non grata in most of the civilized world.
How many date rapists are high profile and hide out in embassies openly defying the law?
Relevancy?
And if the 24x7 police guard wasn't there he'd have vanished into obscurity a while ago.You don't get to point to the exception situation the UK police have created as justification for their exceptional behavior. That's circular.
Date rape is something that the take fairly seriously in Britain. It's a violent crime from someone accused of two different sexual assaults that refuses to face justice.
Saying its a "violent crime" doesn't make it so and is just inflammatory rhetoric.
Does he deserve to be arrested and face justice for it. Yes. Does it really rise to the level of an international extradition? Worth spending millions on?
. They certainly aren't spending the money to keep him/in/ the embassy, as they would far rather he come out so that he could answer for the crimes he has been accused of.
So... 5 million GPB... is money well spent?
As for your 1 in 4 figure...
Splitting hairs between rape vs attempted rape, or consensual activity, activity that happened despite being actively rejected, activity that didn't happen because it was successfully actively rejected, and activity that happened that wasn't actively rejected but was still unwanted isn't really the point here.
Whatever number you like, or however you wish to count it, there are far better things for the UK police to be doing.
While I think Wikileaks is a good thing for the world, I also think Assange is an attention whore and mostly self-serving.
High profile people tend to have large egos. Go figure.
He's not the one putting his neck on the line to disclose secret information,
And yet he *is* stuck in an embassy for reasons that defy any real logic, stemming from a case that has been prosecuted in a truly baffling manner.
Just one example would be the level of commitment the UK police have demonstrated in ensuring he stays in that embassy -- a 24x7 stakeout for coming up on 16 months at cost of around 300,000 GPB per month... so closing in on 5 million GPB for a guy accused of something ranging from a misdemeanor sexual assault to something like date-rape.
Not that I condone date rape or think he should get away with it... but 1 in 4 college women surveyed are victims of rape or attempted rape... how many UK rape victims could they have investigated with 5 million GPB?
One would think it would be pretty hard to justify that budget for keeping one penned up in an embassy for years on end over a sexual misconduct in another country for which the evidence ultimately amounts to he-said she-said.
Only a handful of mathematicians would trust that.
Paper ballots with independents actually conducting the election taking ballots and counting them, etc, with overseers from all political parties welcome to watch the entire proceedings, from start to finish.
Slashdot Mirror
So, following your logic, because it's 2013 it is "culturally aware" to associate Islam with terrorism?
Yes, that is discrimination/racism. I'm not throwing terms around.
No. That''s not discrimination. I don't treat judge or treat muslims differently. I don't presume they are terrorists, I am in fact well aware that the vast majority are perfectly normal people.
But there is no escaping that the media and government bogeyman is "Extremist Islamic Terrorism" right now, and its not 'discrimination' to make a joke about that.
The settings you have on your fridge determine how long it will last.
Funny, in my house, its whether the kids have friends over or not that determines how ong it will last. I buy milk 12-16 liters at a time and it never comes within a mile of going bad.
The start screen version of all programs isn't as bad, but I really shouldn't have to right click to get it.
Agreed. 8.1 gives you the obvious link, and also lets you set that view as the default so you can go straight there everytime if you prefer.
Mousing over a section of screen bringing up new things you can do with out any visual cues whatsoever that there's something there, those hotpoints acting differently depending on whether you are in a metro app/start screen or desktop/regular program, and generally the completely different behavior between metro and desktop modes.
I don't like Metro on a desktop computer either. I find it good on a tablet/phone and on my HTPC, but I don't use any metro apps on my desktop. Fortunately, you don't need to use them.
Mousing over a section of screen bringing up new things you can do with out any visual cues whatsoever that there's something there, those hotpoints
I agree. I don't like hotcorners - and its a reason i like the start 'button' making a return. I'd like to see the rest of the hotcorners disappear from the desktop as mandatory as well.
I'm not sure what hotpoints you are referring to if you mean something beyond that though.
Especially for Metro IE and flash. Can't load flash on a site you want? Guess you need to download it. Except doing so loads adobe's version for the desktop mode, even if you downloaded it in Metro.
Yeah - metro IE vs desktop IE is clumsy. I don't use metro IE on my desktop at all, ever, though, and can't imagine any reason for doing so, so its kind of a non-issue for me.
As for closing metro apps from the desktop -- yup that's another gaffe. I use alt-f4, then learned about the 3 finger trackpad swipe -- which is fine for the logitech pad i use with the HTPC... but drag-to-close via mouse -- i just learned that just now from you. There's no question they half-baked metro for desktop keyboard/mouse users.
But 8 isn't metro. I have 8.1 preview on a desktop, and other than the start screen I don't ever see any metro stuff.
On my HTPC I use metro for netflix and the video player and that's about it.
I don't have a windows tablet, but we do have a lumia 820 in the house, and the modern UI generally works well there, and I'd have no problem using it on a tablet. But yes, modern ui or metro on a desktop mostly sucks.
But deciding on 8.1 for the desktop based on metro apps is like not getting Windows 7 because you didn't like the new Windows Media player. You don't have to use it. I never did. :)
Depends on exactly whose goals you mean.
Society as a whole in the abstract.
There are clearly many people for whom that race to the bottom is the goal, as long as they keep making money and their stocks go up, they don't give a damn what happens to the rest of society.
And there are many people who just want their next heroine fix too, and who couldn't care less about anything else. :)
But neither group is who is meant when one refers to the goals of society in the abstract.
It takes far longer than 2 weeks to "default on their mortgages."
Yes and no.
To go from paid and in good standing to foreclosure, it absolutely takes a lot longer than a couple weeks.
But if you are already courting default due to previous circumstances, it can be the final straw.
It won't be most people but there's going to be people out there who were already into past-due, final-notice territory, who were scrambling to get back on track who probably just had the rug yanked out from under them.
How much does increasing the cost of running a business cost us in the global economy?
Because the best way to achieve our goals as a society is to compete with China by winning a race to the bottom?
The return of the start button is an acknowledgement of the fact that people using a mouse as their primary interface expect to be able to click something.
The hot corners were not 'discoverable' or 'intuitive' for a desktop, with a keyboard and mouse.
Bringing the button back, but still having it go to the start screen is fine. It's not what you want, but it does solve a real problem.
(what if I wanted to navigate based on a graphic that was previously on the screen or based on instructions that I wanted to keep up)
Yes, that the scenario that keeps me up at night. Lets cram everything installed on the coputer into a heirarchical nested menu in the corner of the screen, in case the user needs to see a graphic while navigating it.
Then when this draws a complaint, the seller installs a stick and clutch pedal, but leaves the automatic transmission.
Tiptronic is here to stay.
This is more just MS not wanting to bend.
Its always a tough call. Microsoft wants an OS that works well on the TV, on the Desktop, and on a tablet. The old start menu is only good on a desktop. I can understand (and even agree) with the design of the start menu.
I also think, despite your love letter, that the windows 7 start menu is a piece of SHIT. I like pinning apps (but I can pin apps to a taskbar toolbar in win8 and that works the same), and I like the quick search widget to run programs. But the actual start menu, is garbage -- a heirarchy of folders crammed into a small popup in the corner of the screen? That's ASININE if you forget for a second that you love it so much and really think about it from a UI design perspective.
Windows 8.1's start screen is a lot more usable.
What's scary is that 3rd party companies had no problem doing this almost on day one.
Yes, 3rd party companies that had an opportunity to do anything... decided to slavishly copy the start menu -- the stuff that it was good at... and the stuff that makes no sense at all.
If you are going to write a custom start-menu for windows 8 for god's sake, give us pinned apps, the search widget, and the shortcuts to controls, computer, etc... but don't idiotically recreate the "everything on your computer in a hierarchical menu popup" ... clicking all programs should bring up the start screen, or at the very least a MUCH LARGER window with the start screen's capabilities. Because the start screen is actually much BETTER at that.
nobody I've spoken to is happy with this.
Few people like change. And focus on the negative, even if changes are actually better... then they just focus on having to "learn something". In the case of the 8.1 start screen -- its a mixed bag... its better at some things, its not as good at others. It could have been done better, but what it was replaces was garbage too.
OSX doesn't have a start menu.
It has launchpad which does the same thing as the start screen in much the same way (full screen, paged, easily searched by typing). It has a dock that lets you pin things to it like the task bar. And it has spotlight. And nobody is having a fit about how.
Windows 8 doesn't need the classic start menu. It needs spotlight.
The windows 8 start screen has all of spotlights search capabilties and more, which is good and should be kept; and its better than spotlight for actually searching for something, but spotlight is better UX for a power user to quickly pulling something up that you already know by name. --
"spotlight-search powertoy for windows 8" is what we need, not "Start8" etc trying to cling to the legacy start menu.
But quite frankly I'd argue to vegan that the plant itself grew from soil with animal matter in it anyway
Fertilized with shit from captive animals.
Grown in farms that displaced natural wildlife (and surely killed a few)
Wrapped in paper made from trees that were cut down destroying bird nests, insect habitats.
Transported to the store using a truck driven by a guy who thinks an entire ham is "breakfast"...
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
But you can argue that reward per hour, grinding is more efficient than doing challenging content in terms of the in game rewards.
I used to play EQ1, you could go and do a real dungeon crawl with a group, and fight yellows and low reds. And it was genuinely fun. Lose control of aggro, or run into someone elses train though and you died. The necro would summon our corpes out, and our cleric would rez us... we'd re-equip and go in for another run. It was great fun.
BUT
You made more ingame currency, and gained more XP by joing to a known camp and grinding.
At 15-20th level ("back in the day") you could walk into Blackburrow and head down to the bottom... and that was challenging and fun. But the gnolls were pretty poor, and the risk of death (and associated "downtime") was high.
Or you could go to Highhold Pass, and fight a particular camping spot there. The drops were reliably better, the stream of creatures to kill was constant, and if things got out of hand you were just steps away from a zone line. You made more money, and gained more xp, easier, and faster, with less risk.
You didn't have to "grind", but most players did. Because the game actively rewarded them better in everything but "fun" by doing so. And it turns out the majority of players will sacrifice "fun" for "progress" for reasons that I truly find baffling.
WoW and other MMORPGs, and even many single player RPGs are the same, hell even stuff like diablo -- how many diablo 2 players just spent hours doing "Hill Runs" repeatedly for xp, over and over again because it was the easiest and safest place to get loot and xp?
Who can blame someone want to rent a residence for not taking plastic? Care lease companies don't do it either. Nor my condo maintenance fees.
But here in Canada at least, all those types support (and prefer) pre-authorized bank withdrawals as payment method.
The ONLY thing I regularly still write cheques for is the kids school stuff - field trips, hot lunch day, etc.
I had to pay the contractor who came to fix the hot water tank by cheque a couple years ago because he wasn't carrying around a mobile cellular enabled credit card machine. (And I can't say I really blame him -- those aren't cheap, and cellular data service isn't ubiquitous. Hell, I live in a hilly area that part of a major metro area, and there are parts of my own street that don't have a good reliable cellular data link. I've had the pizza guy wander around into the middle of the street holding the machine over his head a couple times to get a good enough data signal. :)
There are lots of places that are a lot worse. So I can understand those guys still taking cheques.
The list wouldn't be complete without "Allah", would it?
I referenced Viagra and Cialis but left out Levitra too. What do you divine from that fact?
It really shows the level of your discrimination and/or racism.
Discrimination? What $deity-name$ would you have found acceptable? Or do I have to propose a religious extremist terrorist cell that's also multi-faith to appease you? I picked on Islam because its 2013, and its culturally aware. Proposing Quaker terrorist cells would have been funny in its own right, but that's not the modern bogeyman is it?
Racism? Well that was random. Why not throw in chauvinist too?
I never said that I need it
Understood.
I threw that up as pre-emptive defense, because in these sorts of arguments their ARE people (not you) who do claim that they need it for such and such and that its the only way to reach so-and-so etc. I don't claim that set includes you and didn't mean to imply that.
On my profile, Facebook has access to my name, marital status, friends list, the text that I post on the service...
Look, if you are a typical facebook user that think that, you are probably grossly underestimating things.
From a full access to your profile, and the profiles you are connected to, and your indication that you "circulate information to the family" I almost guarantee I can pin down where you live, how old you are, how many kids you have, their genders, their age, where they go to school, your income bracket, likely know what car you drive, your phone number, your hobbies, perhaps even where you shop, where you work, what you do, what your work schedule is, whether you cook or dine out, where you eat when you do, what you cook when you don't, how much you weigh, whether you exercise, your political affiliation...
Seriously.
Actually, I could probably get that without looking at your profile at all, and just focusing on those of your friends, assuming even just of few them "over share".
Some are more responsive on Facebook than to a phone call. Go figure.
I'm not really sure what to make of that... if I had a friend that was only responsive to handwritten letters I likely wouldn't oblige him.
If I had a friend that was only responsive on facebook, I expect he'd figure things out when he realized people weren't talking to him anymore. Yet his phone was full of texts and voicemails.
Apparently newer forms of communication aren't useful to you and your social circle; that's fine
I'm curious why you deliberately chose to conflate "newer" with "invasive and proprietary advertising platforms". My friends and family are all about "newer" -- but we select platforms where we are the owner, or at least the customer, as opposed to platforms where we are the product.
Among my friends and family, Facebook is sometimes the quickest way to circulate information
The information and rights you assign facebook just for the ability to "circulate information" a bit quicker is a pretty lousy trade, especially as facebook doesn't even possess anything that makes it uniquely qualified to do it. Its not like choosing between writing a letter or using the phone where the phone is orders of magnitude faster... its like choosing between a phone that records everything you say, for a slightly different shaped phone that doesn't*, and requires minimal setup.
(* fuck you NSA)
. What about electronic contact makes you feel like you're unimportant to someone else?
Nothing at all. Re-read my message. I am not suggesting that the only way that is acceptable is via landline calls made from a rotary phone. I am fine with receiving text messages on 2 different numbers, or email at 5 different addresses, or instant messages on 2 different platforms. I also use a number of forums, IRC, and so on.
Nobody needs to use any one thing in particular to reach me.
If my friends want to get a hold of me, they have a variety of options.
And that was my point. When you tell the facebook crowd they don't need facebook, they always seem to end to up whining about some oh-so-important friend/relative to them that is ONLY available on facebook... that NO OTHER TECHNOLOGY on the face of the planet can reach them.
And YES, if there is someone out there who is ONLY reachable on facebook, and who is unwilling to make themselves available to you via any other channel... then yeah, you are not that important to them.
I have friends that don't like steam. I have friends that like skype, I have friends that rarely check their email. I have friends that prefer email to texts. I even have friends who use facebook a lot -- but its not the only way to get in touch with them.
As I said before, it's a very "to each their own"/YMMV situation.
And as I said before, nobody needs facebook. And its such an objectionably implemented concept that only a fool would choose to use it.
Some of my friends don't check their e-mail more than once every few weeks and don't sign in to any instant messenger often,
And they don't have phones? Wherein you text them, or even call them when you want to talk to them?
If something else had quite the communications potential for reaching a long list of friends quickly,
Anyone who prioritizes being able to send a long list of people a message that highly isn't likely to be sending messages I need to read.
And If you wanted to invite me to a party and we're such good friends yet it doesn't even merit a text message or a phone call...well I've got better things to do.
Its usefulness depends on your own circle of friends.
If you need facebook to be able to talk to your friends, then you need new friends.
Yes, yes, some guy now always pipes up about how facebook lets him keep in touch with some cousin half way around the world who doesn't apparently know how to use any technology except facebook, and further - he or she doesn't care enough about remaining in contact with YOU to lift a finger to make any sort of effort beyond passively catching your messages you leave them on facebook, and if you couldn't reach them on facebook you'd lose contact with them.
I'd let them go... if I'm that unimportant to the other person... why would I make staying in touch that important to me?
If you're gonna go snooping through people's stuff, you're bound to find a lot of garbage.
Garbage!? That's how my terrorist cell communicates you insensitive clod.
Cialis spam is "Alpha" ...
[ia1i5 spam is "Bravo"
CiAli$ spam is "Charlie"
Viagra spam is "Death" ...
ViAgr4 spam is "America"
P3n is 3nlargem3nt is "Allah"
We1gt L0ss is "Target"
"I saw your picture online" is "Great Satan"
"This stock is making a turnaround" is whatever letter the stock starts with.
"This stock is on High Alert for Today" is whatever the 2nd letter of the stock starts with.
"This Company could be come my longest running winner!!!" has a GPS latitude encoded into the digits of the target price, trade date, and last trade info
Longitude comes in on a fake PO tracking number shipment spam
Pretty sure "Fat Person Detected" is the input not the output.
What is your comment to that?
Would she like a 20 cent coupon on special K?
Seriously. Who cares if it doesn't correctly detect that you sister has lupus and is on steroid therapy... if the outcome of an incorrect detection is...
"Would she like a 20 cent coupon on special K?"
The hat doesn't count as "more axes". It was merely one "joystick" mounted on another. Just like an XBox controller, you still just have 2 x 2-axis sticks (or buttons). Again granted, some joysticks had a little more but buttons don't count.
The key difference to an xbox controller, and the reason it relates to your original post is that all 5 axes (hand joystick x/y/twist + thumb joystick x/y could all be controlled with a single hand.
As I recall the genuinely good ones also cost upward of $100
Supply and demand. I'm confident the $100 sticks would easily have been in the xbox controller price range had they been ubiquitously sold with a major console like that, in those kinds of numbers.
The controller came with a copy of Descent, if you remember that, which had direct 3D movement (unlike an airplane) and used all 6 degrees.
I recall the old microsoft sidewinder was a pretty decent controller for that game as well. find this on google...
http://www.descent2.com/patty/controls/side.html
You can see they juse the pitch/yaw axes as you'd expect, with twist for banking left/right and the hat for slide "strafe left right / move up / down)" all with one hand.
The second hand controlled the thottle slider, and buttons on the base for changing weapons, afterburner, and flares.
A joystick has only 2 axes.
3 axes.
Main joystick, +twist, +thumbstick
5 axes if you include the: hat (thumbstick at the top of the joystick)
In practice the hat was usually implemented usually as 4 buttons (that usually supported 8 directions N/W/S/E + NW/NE/SW/SE) instead of actual true axes but that was more a limitation of what the old game port could take than anything else.
In any case the old jet fighter games did allow for pitch, yaw, roll while they were often setup to use the hat as a way of looking left/right/forward/back all from one stick. (or more realistically for controlling aileron or rudder trim).
Then the thrust axis was a slider at the base along with additional buttons for the 2nd hard. Or was separated out onto a 2ndary controller.
But the base controls aside, a good flightstick could be considered to have 5 axes, main trigger, secondary fire, and at least another couple buttons all operable from a single hand.
And they still exist, except as the flight sim and space shooter genre collapsed, they are relatively niche.
If its not the game itself, it could be other software.
Skype in particular (on your PC, or on your smartphone on your wifi...)
Any number of other chat programs, p2p software, etc are suspect.
Rootkit/malware/backdoor is possible.
And that's all assuming its real, which, i don't know your level of sophistication. For all we know you just have an infected unit that's flooding your network, and you are mis-reading the overly "dangerous" sounding warnings crappy security constantly throws up to justify its existence.
A traffic analyzer would be helpful. Suspect everything, and knock down the entire network, disable wireless (takes care of the smartphones, etc) boot up one PC from a linux live CD... and then move forward from there.
The non-centering joystick of the Atari 5200 got really bad reviews, and the Turbo Touch 360 was rated the 9th worst video game controller of all time by IGN.
What is a mouse on a mousepad in an FPS shooter with mouse look if its not a "non-centering joystick"?
I don't know if the steam controller is going to be any good in practice, but for on the couch gaming -- I'm willing to give it a shot. I already prefer to play quite a few styles of games with a controller - Platformers, shmups, and stuff like defense grid.
The new Xcom I can go either way on - but if I'm on the couch playing it on the big screen, I'll go with a controller.
Really the only games I just can't abide controllers for are FPS, and most RTS. And hunched forward over the coffee table with a keyboard and mouse with my head tilted back to see the tv is cringe inducing... so I play those on my office PC. But I'd like a good couch experience... I'm willing to try steam controller. It's basically playing an FPS with a trackpad (which I've done and THAT is miserable -- but its a trackpad designed to be handheld and used with a thumb which overcomes one of the major problems with trackpads... and it has good button placement for "shooting" etc, which is the other major problem with trackpads. So it might suck... but it might be good.
My god. Where to even begin. If your numbers are to be believed, then prosecution is REQUIRED to change the situation
Uh... the guy is persona non-grata in Sweden, and then again in the United Kingdom too.
If someone sexually assaulted a woman you know, and then had to flee the country, and then had to flee the country he fled to the 3rd world to avoid extradition... for a relatively non-violent sexual assault.
Exile to the 3rd world, with automatic arrest and extradition if he tries to come back anywhere with an extradition treaty with the UK/Sweden is pretty stiff consequences.
As long as men are allowed to laugh off sexual assault as business as usual, this is one shit culture that we live in.
God god indeed. I don't think anyone is "laughing it off".
They've got an arrest warrant out for him on INTERPOL. What more do you really expect?
That's the extent of the police responsibility here -- they hardly need to maintain 24x7 guard on an embassy.
Next time someone gropes your daughter, and the guy flees the country, then flees that country he fled to to the 3rd world to escape international warrants... what then do you expect the army to be flown in to invade Peru for extraordinary rendition?
What more do we want here? The women of Sweden are safe from Julian Assange; as is pretty much the rest of the first world. He's a persona non grata in most of the civilized world.
So that's laughing it off?
How many date rapists are high profile and hide out in embassies openly defying the law?
Relevancy?
And if the 24x7 police guard wasn't there he'd have vanished into obscurity a while ago.You don't get to point to the exception situation the UK police have created as justification for their exceptional behavior. That's circular.
Date rape is something that the take fairly seriously in Britain. It's a violent crime from someone accused of two different sexual assaults that refuses to face justice.
Saying its a "violent crime" doesn't make it so and is just inflammatory rhetoric.
Does he deserve to be arrested and face justice for it. Yes. Does it really rise to the level of an international extradition? Worth spending millions on?
. They certainly aren't spending the money to keep him /in/ the embassy, as they would far rather he come out so that he could answer for the crimes he has been accused of.
So ... 5 million GPB... is money well spent?
As for your 1 in 4 figure...
Splitting hairs between rape vs attempted rape, or consensual activity, activity that happened despite being actively rejected, activity that didn't happen because it was successfully actively rejected, and activity that happened that wasn't actively rejected but was still unwanted isn't really the point here.
Whatever number you like, or however you wish to count it, there are far better things for the UK police to be doing.
While I think Wikileaks is a good thing for the world, I also think Assange is an attention whore and mostly self-serving.
High profile people tend to have large egos. Go figure.
He's not the one putting his neck on the line to disclose secret information,
And yet he *is* stuck in an embassy for reasons that defy any real logic, stemming from a case that has been prosecuted in a truly baffling manner.
Just one example would be the level of commitment the UK police have demonstrated in ensuring he stays in that embassy -- a 24x7 stakeout for coming up on 16 months at cost of around 300,000 GPB per month... so closing in on 5 million GPB for a guy accused of something ranging from a misdemeanor sexual assault to something like date-rape.
Not that I condone date rape or think he should get away with it... but 1 in 4 college women surveyed are victims of rape or attempted rape... how many UK rape victims could they have investigated with 5 million GPB?
One would think it would be pretty hard to justify that budget for keeping one penned up in an embassy for years on end over a sexual misconduct in another country for which the evidence ultimately amounts to he-said she-said.
Only a handful of mathematicians would trust that.
Paper ballots with independents actually conducting the election taking ballots and counting them, etc, with overseers from all political parties welcome to watch the entire proceedings, from start to finish.
Simple and transparent.