I fail to understand the point of tags completly. I've read the FAQ about a dozen times now, what is the point? I don't see any reason to have these one-word phrases (of which are rarely one word) "that you think best describe this article." Is their any practical reason beyond informing lazy editors with the tag "dupe"? And when the example tags already have words directly from the headline...? Check any one of the articles for example tags and I can guarantee you they've got half the title in them. Why have tags at all? is itsatrap, funny, unfunny (which should apparently be !funny according to the seemingly arbitrary rules of the FAQ) or yes and no helping anyone? Are any of them really helpful to the editors? All they've become is annoying mini-comments. Is that really what they should "build the next generation of moderation on top of"?
This article is fluffy and full of crap, but it did illuminate a Sony statement quite well. I enjoy trying to understand why companies say what they say to new media. Obviously, everything they say is planned and has a purpose except for the rare slip (which contrasts slips that are purposely let out.) Because the intended statement is not always the same as the intended purpose of the statement, it creates a fun little mental exercise. Sony's not-to-recent claim that the PS3 is a 10 year cycle system was quarky but understandable (reassuring customers are getting their money's worth and defending the $500/$600 price.) But what was very strange, and has perpelexed me up until today, was to say the PS2 is also a 10 year cycle machine. Obviously, the PS3 is coming out well before the PS2 has been out for 10 years and it seemed very odd. It seems obvious now. As one might guess Sony doesn't just suddenly realize they are going to miss shipment targets. Signs and symptoms that would suggest this were know well before they finally made the announcement. The PS2 10 year statement was part of a marketing insurance scheme. Look back on Sony news, what do they push a lot beyond the PS3 immenent arrival? The popularity of the PS2, because it certainly isn't the PSP. This of course is not just for their investors' continued good will. It is also important that they keep public opinions about the PS2 positive, while weaving in repeated statements about the PS3's backwards compatability with the PS2. This way, as it has worked out now, they are in a position to push PS2s as an option for those who can't snag one of thier PS3s. Sony Marketing wants us to see PS2 as a perfectly acceptible bridge to the PS3 while we wait for new shipments; focusing on how backward compatability means we wont be "wasting money" on an older system that will be replaced by the PS3 soon. In that light, the PS2 is a 10 year console is a statement of confidence, a marketing reminder, and a subtle admittance to fears that they will not make announced shipments. It's fun to work this sort of thing out, even if I'm completly wrong. Although I think Sony's heading for big trouble, I also think (despite the optimistic corporate face they present) they are not oblivious to it either.
Bah, the public is a push over. How do you think we got into our electronic voting situation as it is? We've already broadcast all the fears of electronic voting. All we need is a couple "hanging chads" style incidents involving electronic voting systems then have some "experts" (marketers) present this solution to the public shortly after. They'll all be clamoring for it and it'll be installed in time for the 2008 election.
Host: Yes, what the Iron sheik is trying to do is spice up his Napalm Suprise with some irradiated sand!
Guest 1: Oh! That'll be really good! I can't wait to see how this turns out!
Guest 2: I love the smell of napalm in the morning!
All: *Laughs*
I'd be investing in technologies designed to perform the ocean species' duties on a mass scale.
If we can build massive floating factories that sweep away the sea life, then maybe, just maybe, we can build ships to clear out toxins and drive back the red tide of algea. It seems like that's about our only hope.
We wanted to control our environment and Nature said: "Good, then you can do this stuff too! How about balancing ocean life? Would you like to maintain a protective ozone, too?" So far, our answer has been a lot of hemming and hawing.
At last, the long awaited G80 series! Only two things prevent my upgrade: Vista's final release reqs and the G80 series. Is it Direct x10 ready as expected? I can't tell from the article. Bah! Even if it isn't I'm holding off Vista until well past its release; I could wait for the GeForce 8850GTX, or 8900GTX or whatever their naming convention is, as well. Impressive stats to say the least.
What scares me is not really the lack of privacy (hey, if your looking to go blind, go ahead and spy on some of my activities!) but rather what gets done with the information. So long as we work to maintain a firm grasp on the kind of people who are in charge of the info, I'm alright. Sadly, I am not alright right now. Our grip over those who watch us is slippery if even existant; we need better congressional oversight and that'll require better citizen oversight. I'm very meticulous when I choose my votes; I look into just about everything, especially the Library of Congress' records on ledgislation (and who voted for them) but I know plenty of people who don't either because they have a them-or-us attitude or they simply don't have the time. And that's what gets the wrong people watching us; that's what scares me.
I had read recently in Popular Science that said researchers discovered that alot of what we thought was junk DNA is actually regulatory code that operates in coordination and in response to the environment of protiens and enzymes to turn genes on and off and change the folding of the DNA structure itself. I think they called the idea, the epigenome, if anyone else knows more. (I forget which issue. It may have been Scientific American instead.)
From Henry Ford:
"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."
Also attributed to Ford: "Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick you should not take it."
Re:Half Life 2, Ravenholm
on
Games and Fear
·
· Score: 1
Their is only one chapter I don't play in HL2 anymore: Ravenholm. I play the intro chapter, the boat chapter, and the jeep chapters much much more. The howlers...grabbing onto my car in ep 2? That'll be frightening!
Not surprising, Father Grigori is by far my favorite character...
I'm not interested in spending money either way, I was merely wondering if they'll allow retailers to use the steam version, kind of like how HL2 retail worked except after the fact. I've tried no-cd hacks, haven't found one that doesn't crash in the middle of the game (I assume because it also trips the protection.)
Well, The Steam Review has a blog/report on the closing of Triton; an online games distribution system that once hosted Prey.
The closing of Triton is a lesson on how not to shut down DD systems. While I fully support Steam and buy all my valve products through it, it is always important to know what could happen. We can only hope Valve takes up Triton's lesson and prepares fail safes. As of now, Valve has tested and says they are prepared to allow bypassing the authentication servers should their service be offline for an extended time. This is a good first step in preparations, but it is still a small step.
You are fully allowed to backup all steam games to disk; it even provides you with a function to do so with minimal work.
In my personal opinion, Digital purchasing of Steam games is just as safe as physical purchases, easier, and (in some cases) cheaper. The real arguement is what if Steam's gone for good and that'll affect all the Steam games equally.
I've already got Civ 4, but it would be very nice if I can use the CD code to run it off steam. For some unknown reason, my CD Drive trips a copy protection on Civ 4, causing a switch to low priority on my machine. I can reset it to normal, but it doesn't stay for long. It's incredibly frustrating. All tech support could say is "update your CD drive drivers" but apparently my drive's company doesn't support this drive anymore. This drives' not even supposed to work on XP!
It's really nice to see higher qualities coming to steam. It's even scheduled to have an Unreal Engine 3 based game. The Pop-caps games are just annoying to see advertised; maybe Civ 4 can class-up the place alittle.
If my historical degree from the History channel means anything, those drugs (1,3,4,9,11) became illegal well before the Big Pharma of today. The 'channel also had an interesting contention that the pressure to make them illegal was born out a combination of racism, prohibition movements, and misinformation. Today, well maybe its Big Pharma keeping it going, but personally I think its politicians looking for an easy issue to agree with voters. Mind you, I mean both Liberals and Conservatives; I'll not have my opinion dumped on one group and not the other.
That said, the constitution is an evolving document, subject to the collective will of the people, for better or worse, yadda yadda yadda.
Check it out, I totally overclocked my pants! The zipper can zip up from unzipped to zipped up in 1/5 of a second! Plus the coolant system is quite refreshing.
Always remember, 'better' is a human-formed opinion. The Earth would not be better, or worse, off without us. Just...different. If all life were removed from Earth, it would be far worse... in our opinion. Without humans, their is no know universal qualifier as "better" or "worse;" just "is" or "is not," though without a way to observe, we couldn't be sure...
All of humanity shares a wonderful ability to briefly transcend their individual lives and apply human qualities across far-reaching matters. That we can say "without us, the world would be better." If there is one true glimmer of hope in humanity, it is that we have so deeply ingrained ourselves a necessity to acknowledge our deficiencies.
With no built in natural prey or predators, what reason did life have to begin evolving in the first place? Evolution is not a question of will, but a question of circumstance. We don't face the selection pressure of predators and prey, but we do continue to face other pressures. Even the lack of pressure would change us; that'd be evolution too.
Slashdot Mirror
I fail to understand the point of tags completly. I've read the FAQ about a dozen times now, what is the point? I don't see any reason to have these one-word phrases (of which are rarely one word) "that you think best describe this article." Is their any practical reason beyond informing lazy editors with the tag "dupe"?
And when the example tags already have words directly from the headline...? Check any one of the articles for example tags and I can guarantee you they've got half the title in them. Why have tags at all? is itsatrap, funny, unfunny (which should apparently be !funny according to the seemingly arbitrary rules of the FAQ) or yes and no helping anyone? Are any of them really helpful to the editors? All they've become is annoying mini-comments. Is that really what they should "build the next generation of moderation on top of"?
This article is fluffy and full of crap, but it did illuminate a Sony statement quite well. I enjoy trying to understand why companies say what they say to new media. Obviously, everything they say is planned and has a purpose except for the rare slip (which contrasts slips that are purposely let out.) Because the intended statement is not always the same as the intended purpose of the statement, it creates a fun little mental exercise. Sony's not-to-recent claim that the PS3 is a 10 year cycle system was quarky but understandable (reassuring customers are getting their money's worth and defending the $500/$600 price.) But what was very strange, and has perpelexed me up until today, was to say the PS2 is also a 10 year cycle machine. Obviously, the PS3 is coming out well before the PS2 has been out for 10 years and it seemed very odd. It seems obvious now. As one might guess Sony doesn't just suddenly realize they are going to miss shipment targets. Signs and symptoms that would suggest this were know well before they finally made the announcement. The PS2 10 year statement was part of a marketing insurance scheme. Look back on Sony news, what do they push a lot beyond the PS3 immenent arrival? The popularity of the PS2, because it certainly isn't the PSP. This of course is not just for their investors' continued good will. It is also important that they keep public opinions about the PS2 positive, while weaving in repeated statements about the PS3's backwards compatability with the PS2. This way, as it has worked out now, they are in a position to push PS2s as an option for those who can't snag one of thier PS3s. Sony Marketing wants us to see PS2 as a perfectly acceptible bridge to the PS3 while we wait for new shipments; focusing on how backward compatability means we wont be "wasting money" on an older system that will be replaced by the PS3 soon. In that light, the PS2 is a 10 year console is a statement of confidence, a marketing reminder, and a subtle admittance to fears that they will not make announced shipments. It's fun to work this sort of thing out, even if I'm completly wrong. Although I think Sony's heading for big trouble, I also think (despite the optimistic corporate face they present) they are not oblivious to it either.
With Videos! (on the 4th page.)
Bah, the public is a push over. How do you think we got into our electronic voting situation as it is? We've already broadcast all the fears of electronic voting. All we need is a couple "hanging chads" style incidents involving electronic voting systems then have some "experts" (marketers) present this solution to the public shortly after. They'll all be clamoring for it and it'll be installed in time for the 2008 election.
Host: Yes, what the Iron sheik is trying to do is spice up his Napalm Suprise with some irradiated sand!
Guest 1: Oh! That'll be really good! I can't wait to see how this turns out!
Guest 2: I love the smell of napalm in the morning!
All: *Laughs*
I'd be investing in technologies designed to perform the ocean species' duties on a mass scale.
If we can build massive floating factories that sweep away the sea life, then maybe, just maybe, we can build ships to clear out toxins and drive back the red tide of algea. It seems like that's about our only hope.
We wanted to control our environment and Nature said: "Good, then you can do this stuff too! How about balancing ocean life? Would you like to maintain a protective ozone, too?" So far, our answer has been a lot of hemming and hawing.
The final piece of my plan for world domi...
I mean...
At last, the long awaited G80 series! Only two things prevent my upgrade: Vista's final release reqs and the G80 series. Is it Direct x10 ready as expected? I can't tell from the article. Bah! Even if it isn't I'm holding off Vista until well past its release; I could wait for the GeForce 8850GTX, or 8900GTX or whatever their naming convention is, as well. Impressive stats to say the least.
What scares me is not really the lack of privacy (hey, if your looking to go blind, go ahead and spy on some of my activities!) but rather what gets done with the information. So long as we work to maintain a firm grasp on the kind of people who are in charge of the info, I'm alright. Sadly, I am not alright right now. Our grip over those who watch us is slippery if even existant; we need better congressional oversight and that'll require better citizen oversight. I'm very meticulous when I choose my votes; I look into just about everything, especially the Library of Congress' records on ledgislation (and who voted for them) but I know plenty of people who don't either because they have a them-or-us attitude or they simply don't have the time. And that's what gets the wrong people watching us; that's what scares me.
I had read recently in Popular Science that said researchers discovered that alot of what we thought was junk DNA is actually regulatory code that operates in coordination and in response to the environment of protiens and enzymes to turn genes on and off and change the folding of the DNA structure itself. I think they called the idea, the epigenome, if anyone else knows more. (I forget which issue. It may have been Scientific American instead.)
From Henry Ford:
"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."
Also attributed to Ford:
"Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick you should not take it."
Because 6-party talks are only for old Koreans
Their is only one chapter I don't play in HL2 anymore: Ravenholm. I play the intro chapter, the boat chapter, and the jeep chapters much much more. The howlers...grabbing onto my car in ep 2? That'll be frightening!
Not surprising, Father Grigori is by far my favorite character...
uhh... I think you ment to post that here.
Calling all cars, calling all cars. Man apparently trapped in box off public plaza square 3; suffocation immenent. Please respond.
Oh shiny! Give it to me!
What? This is the wrong article?
I'm not interested in spending money either way, I was merely wondering if they'll allow retailers to use the steam version, kind of like how HL2 retail worked except after the fact. I've tried no-cd hacks, haven't found one that doesn't crash in the middle of the game (I assume because it also trips the protection.)
Well, The Steam Review has a blog/report on the closing of Triton; an online games distribution system that once hosted Prey.
The closing of Triton is a lesson on how not to shut down DD systems. While I fully support Steam and buy all my valve products through it, it is always important to know what could happen. We can only hope Valve takes up Triton's lesson and prepares fail safes. As of now, Valve has tested and says they are prepared to allow bypassing the authentication servers should their service be offline for an extended time. This is a good first step in preparations, but it is still a small step.
You are fully allowed to backup all steam games to disk; it even provides you with a function to do so with minimal work.
In my personal opinion, Digital purchasing of Steam games is just as safe as physical purchases, easier, and (in some cases) cheaper. The real arguement is what if Steam's gone for good and that'll affect all the Steam games equally.
I've already got Civ 4, but it would be very nice if I can use the CD code to run it off steam. For some unknown reason, my CD Drive trips a copy protection on Civ 4, causing a switch to low priority on my machine. I can reset it to normal, but it doesn't stay for long. It's incredibly frustrating. All tech support could say is "update your CD drive drivers" but apparently my drive's company doesn't support this drive anymore. This drives' not even supposed to work on XP!
It's really nice to see higher qualities coming to steam. It's even scheduled to have an Unreal Engine 3 based game. The Pop-caps games are just annoying to see advertised; maybe Civ 4 can class-up the place alittle.
If my historical degree from the History channel means anything, those drugs (1,3,4,9,11) became illegal well before the Big Pharma of today. The 'channel also had an interesting contention that the pressure to make them illegal was born out a combination of racism, prohibition movements, and misinformation. Today, well maybe its Big Pharma keeping it going, but personally I think its politicians looking for an easy issue to agree with voters. Mind you, I mean both Liberals and Conservatives; I'll not have my opinion dumped on one group and not the other.
That said, the constitution is an evolving document, subject to the collective will of the people, for better or worse, yadda yadda yadda.
Check it out, I totally overclocked my pants! The zipper can zip up from unzipped to zipped up in 1/5 of a second! Plus the coolant system is quite refreshing.
*sniff**sniff*
Do you smell smoke?
[quote]Rocket-powered Army Jeep (for when you need to get out FAST!)[/quote]
Or for soldiers who like to post lame stunt videos on the internet.
Sony Shareholders.
This is off an investment website, after all
The answer is 42!
Always remember, 'better' is a human-formed opinion. The Earth would not be better, or worse, off without us. Just...different. If all life were removed from Earth, it would be far worse... in our opinion. Without humans, their is no know universal qualifier as "better" or "worse;" just "is" or "is not," though without a way to observe, we couldn't be sure...
All of humanity shares a wonderful ability to briefly transcend their individual lives and apply human qualities across far-reaching matters. That we can say "without us, the world would be better." If there is one true glimmer of hope in humanity, it is that we have so deeply ingrained ourselves a necessity to acknowledge our deficiencies.
With no built in natural prey or predators, what reason did life have to begin evolving in the first place? Evolution is not a question of will, but a question of circumstance. We don't face the selection pressure of predators and prey, but we do continue to face other pressures. Even the lack of pressure would change us; that'd be evolution too.