It's a great truck (and one of the few smaller SUVs that I will actually call a truck). I think I saw a 2007 the other day, it looks to have some great new features. One of the little things I noticed in passing was that it appears to have steps on the rear sides so you can get to the top of the vehicle.
If I won a $100,000,000 lottery I'd build a giant trebuche to throw my Kia Optima as far as I possibly could and post it video of it to the web, but I'd still be driving an XTerra.
2001 Nissan XTerra V6. It's actually listed at (I think) 21 MPG, but after meticulously tracking gas consumption for over 1,000, I found that it was averaging just over 25.
I've used it to pull tree stumps and get a friend's F150 out of a ditch. It is most certainly not a station wagon...the thing gets better ground clearance than my friend's F150.
Read the manual for a game released in the past couple of years? They typically consist of 20-30 pages of three things:
How to install the game (duh) How the main menu works How the main game screen works
If you're lucky, it might tell you a few things like information on specific weapons or units. But maybe not all of them.
How about giving me a comprehensive list of hotkeys? Or an explanation of all the features of online play? Do you think maybe you could mention something about port forwarding for the massive number of broadband users who would benefit from it? HOW ABOUT INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY BOTH FACTIONS??? (I'm talking to you, developers of Company of Heroes)
Let's imagine that every piece of software you've bought followed Microsoft's lead: you reinstall your motherboard, or buy a computer, and you have to call the 27 different companies and ask for permission to please use the software license you've purchased on your new equipment;
MS gets away with it on Windows because the operating system is reinstalled far less frequently.
Also, this is the OEM license of Windows we're talking about. It is tied to a particular computer, and discounted heavily (to a more realistic price) because of that. I've got an OEM version of Nero that only works with the particular brand of DVD burner I have. So some companies have their own restrictive OEM licenses.
It truly amazes me what people put up with. Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X all don't have Activation; something to consider.
Linux and FreeBSD are FOSS, so of course they have no licensing issues.
Tangent: I decided I should find out whether you can buy a Mac without an OS or not. I went to Apple.com and clicked "Get a Mac" and, oddly enough, I don't see anything on that page that will actually allow me to GET A MAC. Shouldn't it be titled "WHY get a Mac" if it's just a marketing page?
Tangent 2: The purchasing site is almost unnavigable because our content filter kills akamai.net due to their hosting of pornography on the same domain as webmd and apple.com. Why is the CSS file on akamai and everything else on apple.com?
I'm not able to find where a system can be purchased without OSX. If that's the case, why should Apple make it difficult to install the OS? They KNOW they sold an OS with every Apple system ever made. Microsoft doesn't have that luxury.
A player of the popular on-line game "EVE Online" was recently convicted of hacking several servers for information on his opponents. He was sentenced to 30 in jail and finded $50,000. Oh, and his EVE Online account was deleted, too.
Starcraft I feel was possibly the most interesting RTS that had been released during its time
Ever play Total Annihilation?
StarCraft: high terrain serves only to create choke points and barriers to units. It is completely ignored for anything but restricting movement.
TA: Terrain is modelled as truly 3D, and has great effect on combat. High gound matters; a unit firing off a ridge can be protected by the ridge while pummelling its targets below.
StarCraft: Every shot fired hits its target, even when a moving target changes direction as a slow-moving projectile approaches.
TA: Weapons are semi-realistic; they can miss a fast-moving target or be stopped by terrain.
StarCraft: Air units move just like ground units (with the exception of the Carrier's drones), only ignoring terrain.
TA: Air units move realistically, with planes banking and gunships swerving to avoid enemy fire.
StarCraft: Units either move or they fight. Not both.
TA: Most units are capable of firing while on the move, and frequently do so on their own.
Don't get me wrong; StarCraft was a fun game and brought some great things to the RTS genre. Its three balanced factions brought a new element to strategy gaming that is used heavily today. But that was the only real innovation in SC; the only great step it took from WC2 was that the factions forced players to learn a variety of tactics to be competitive.
Total Annihilation was years ahead of its time with gameplay elements that weren't seen in other games until just recently. It's probably the most underrated RTS out there.
All things considered, it's a minor inconvenience. It takes longer to download and isntall OpenOffice than it does to call MS to get Windows reactivated. I know this because on my last reinstall that's exactly what I did...start OOo downloading and call at the same time. Multitasking ftw.
My current XP license was originally installed on this:
Intel D850MD motherboard Intel Pentium 4 2.2 Ghz CPU 512 MB Rambus Radeon 7000 80 GB Western Digital HDD CD-RW DVD-ROM
I then replaced the motherboard with a Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra (or something like that) and bought generic DDR RAM. Then I bought a GeForce 5200 FX When my motherboard's AGP port got flaky, I replaced it with a Soyo P4S-D Then I added an Adaptec 1200A and two Seagate 120 MB HDDs on RAID 0 and reinstalled my OS on them When my 5200FX was damaged by THAT AGP port getting flaky, I bought an Abit IC7-MaxIII and went with a different Radeon 7000 due to budget constraints. I finally got around to getting a better CPU--a P4 3.0E and switched to high-end Corsair RAM. Then I bought a Radeon X850 Pro as the last semi-high-end component to go in this system prior to a planned upgrade and switch to Vista this summer.
Some time In there I replaced my optical drives with a DVD+-RW, and several small hard drives have been in and out to back up data as I changed partitioning schemes twice.
I've had to call MS three times to have the license reactivated. All three times I've explained that I was replacing bad components or upgrading various things, and all three times they've not given me any grief on reactivation. The anonymous submitter is either doing something wrong, is clueless, or is trolling.
Agreed. Nuke plants won't fix everything--there will still be the issue of the waste--but it's certainly better than what we have now.
As for the nuclear waste: if we switched to 100% nuclear and renewable sources, it should follow that a significant amount of time and money be devoted to a permanent solution for nuclear waste. But I'd prefer we have 1,000 years to solve that problem than have 100 years or so to solve the current one. Especially as the current problem is alreay doing harm, whereas a well-run nuke plant would not.
How to sell your product for the price you want without paying for reserve pricing or shill bidding:
Set your starting price at what you want to make. Instead of trying to lure in buyers with $1 auctions and a $100 reserve or shilling a $1 auction up to over $100, try just starting the auction at $100. Gee, there's a thought.
Subscription-funded scientific journals will simply have to find alternatives to exclusivity of information.
A funded journal would still be the best way to get the relevant information all in one place; the problem with free information is that it can be difficult to sort through for specific information. Take all the information that is freely available, pick out the best of it, do some research of your own, and publish a work that goes above and beyond the free information.
That's what thousands of news organizations and non-science journals do every day.
That's not bullying, that's gossip and libel. There's a difference.
In that particular case, the girl's best recourse is still to ignore it. Laugh it off and mock the people who started it.
In junior high, a group of guys started a rumor about a gay encounter between me and my brother. It got all over school and people who didn't even know me had heard I was an incestuous fag. Whenever the rumor came my way I just laughed, asked if they still believed in the Easter Bunny too, and went about my business. It lingered among those who didn't like me for a while, but I never really cared.
Maybe if we spent a little less time teaching our kids that everyone else's opinions are so important they'd be able to cope with a few lies being told about them.
DVD players needed over a decade to supersede the VCR in the living rooms of the United States
Umm...no. DVD was finalized in 1995, and by 2002 DVD was outselling VHS. That's a lot less than 10 years. They probably mean that it took ten years for every home that owned a VCR to also own a DVD player. That's a meaningless statement.
DVD was mainstream less than five years after launch and dominant in seven. It's the consumption of the media that is important, not the number of installed players. In another five years there will probably still be a huge number of VCRs, but VHS is about to be bumped off the store shelves in favor of DVD and its successors.
DVD could very well win the format war right now. Joe Consumer doesn't see a point in switching to HD-DVD or BluRay. When he does switch, HDDVD gets points for its name. That should be apparent from its install base...only 25,000 BluRay players are non-PS3, and most of the PS3s probably aren't being used as players.
My money is on HD-DVD winning the race, but BluRay sticking around indefinitely thanks to hybrid drives. HD-DVD has the name going for, a larger base of installed non-console players, and those nifty hybrid disks that will work in your DVD player today and your HD-DVD player next year. Talk about a seamless upgrade path.
Okay, so that wasn't exactly what he told me. But that's how it applies to internet bullies.
Bullies get their jollies by making you look little. They want to feel superior to you. If you just put every account they create on ignore and don't bother reading whatever crap they post online in an attempt to get a rise out of you, they'll get bored and go elsewhere. The problem is that a lot of kids think they have to argue back any time anyone says something about them. They can't shut up long enough to realize they are giving the bully exactly what he wants.
Favorite stunt against a bully: I once told a guy I'd let him hit me three times and if he could knock me down with any of those three punches I'd give him $20. Three hits later I was still standing and he was seriously reconsidering the idea of a fight. He was a wuss and I knew it:)
Slashdot Mirror
HTML ate my fake tag.
It was supposed to say [imjustkidding]
They badly need to implement an tag in HTML. I got taken by someone else's joke in another topic. :)
It's a great truck (and one of the few smaller SUVs that I will actually call a truck). I think I saw a 2007 the other day, it looks to have some great new features. One of the little things I noticed in passing was that it appears to have steps on the rear sides so you can get to the top of the vehicle.
If I won a $100,000,000 lottery I'd build a giant trebuche to throw my Kia Optima as far as I possibly could and post it video of it to the web, but I'd still be driving an XTerra.
Troll???
... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Some people wouldn't know a joke if it killed them.
Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja!
2001 Nissan XTerra V6. It's actually listed at (I think) 21 MPG, but after meticulously tracking gas consumption for over 1,000, I found that it was averaging just over 25.
I've used it to pull tree stumps and get a friend's F150 out of a ditch. It is most certainly not a station wagon...the thing gets better ground clearance than my friend's F150.
There's a difference between writing them, and writing FOR them.
"Game Documentation Writing"
Read the manual for a game released in the past couple of years? They typically consist of 20-30 pages of three things:
How to install the game (duh)
How the main menu works
How the main game screen works
If you're lucky, it might tell you a few things like information on specific weapons or units. But maybe not all of them.
How about giving me a comprehensive list of hotkeys? Or an explanation of all the features of online play? Do you think maybe you could mention something about port forwarding for the massive number of broadband users who would benefit from it? HOW ABOUT INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY BOTH FACTIONS??? (I'm talking to you, developers of Company of Heroes)
Technically speaking, activation is just lame.
No argument there. I'd rather just do without it.
Let's imagine that every piece of software you've bought followed Microsoft's lead: you reinstall your motherboard, or buy a computer, and you have to call the 27 different companies and ask for permission to please use the software license you've purchased on your new equipment;
MS gets away with it on Windows because the operating system is reinstalled far less frequently.
Also, this is the OEM license of Windows we're talking about. It is tied to a particular computer, and discounted heavily (to a more realistic price) because of that. I've got an OEM version of Nero that only works with the particular brand of DVD burner I have. So some companies have their own restrictive OEM licenses.
It truly amazes me what people put up with. Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X all don't have Activation; something to consider.
Linux and FreeBSD are FOSS, so of course they have no licensing issues.
Tangent: I decided I should find out whether you can buy a Mac without an OS or not. I went to Apple.com and clicked "Get a Mac" and, oddly enough, I don't see anything on that page that will actually allow me to GET A MAC. Shouldn't it be titled "WHY get a Mac" if it's just a marketing page?
Tangent 2: The purchasing site is almost unnavigable because our content filter kills akamai.net due to their hosting of pornography on the same domain as webmd and apple.com. Why is the CSS file on akamai and everything else on apple.com?
I'm not able to find where a system can be purchased without OSX. If that's the case, why should Apple make it difficult to install the OS? They KNOW they sold an OS with every Apple system ever made. Microsoft doesn't have that luxury.
A player of the popular on-line game "EVE Online" was recently convicted of hacking several servers for information on his opponents. He was sentenced to 30 in jail and finded $50,000. Oh, and his EVE Online account was deleted, too.
The problem with that comes when MS figures out a VL code has been leaked and takes steps to keep it from updating properly, as it has in the past.
Yeah, because it'll save so much gas when I make two trips in my car (30 MPG) to pick up what I could in one trip with my SUV (25 MPG).
Starcraft I feel was possibly the most interesting RTS that had been
released during its time
Ever play Total Annihilation?
StarCraft: high terrain serves only to create choke points and barriers to units. It is completely ignored for anything but restricting movement.
TA: Terrain is modelled as truly 3D, and has great effect on combat. High gound matters; a unit firing off a ridge can be protected by the ridge while pummelling its targets below.
StarCraft: Every shot fired hits its target, even when a moving target changes direction as a slow-moving projectile approaches.
TA: Weapons are semi-realistic; they can miss a fast-moving target or be stopped by terrain.
StarCraft: Air units move just like ground units (with the exception of the Carrier's drones), only ignoring terrain.
TA: Air units move realistically, with planes banking and gunships swerving to avoid enemy fire.
StarCraft: Units either move or they fight. Not both.
TA: Most units are capable of firing while on the move, and frequently do so on their own.
Don't get me wrong; StarCraft was a fun game and brought some great things to the RTS genre. Its three balanced factions brought a new element to strategy gaming that is used heavily today. But that was the only real innovation in SC; the only great step it took from WC2 was that the factions forced players to learn a variety of tactics to be competitive.
Total Annihilation was years ahead of its time with gameplay elements that weren't seen in other games until just recently. It's probably the most underrated RTS out there.
*rolls eyes*
All things considered, it's a minor inconvenience. It takes longer to download and isntall OpenOffice than it does to call MS to get Windows reactivated. I know this because on my last reinstall that's exactly what I did...start OOo downloading and call at the same time. Multitasking ftw.
My current XP license was originally installed on this:
Intel D850MD motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 2.2 Ghz CPU
512 MB Rambus
Radeon 7000
80 GB Western Digital HDD
CD-RW
DVD-ROM
I then replaced the motherboard with a Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra (or something like that) and bought generic DDR RAM.
Then I bought a GeForce 5200 FX
When my motherboard's AGP port got flaky, I replaced it with a Soyo P4S-D
Then I added an Adaptec 1200A and two Seagate 120 MB HDDs on RAID 0 and reinstalled my OS on them
When my 5200FX was damaged by THAT AGP port getting flaky, I bought an Abit IC7-MaxIII and went with a different Radeon 7000 due to budget constraints.
I finally got around to getting a better CPU--a P4 3.0E and switched to high-end Corsair RAM.
Then I bought a Radeon X850 Pro as the last semi-high-end component to go in this system prior to a planned upgrade and switch to Vista this summer.
Some time In there I replaced my optical drives with a DVD+-RW, and several small hard drives have been in and out to back up data as I changed partitioning schemes twice.
I've had to call MS three times to have the license reactivated. All three times I've explained that I was replacing bad components or upgrading various things, and all three times they've not given me any grief on reactivation. The anonymous submitter is either doing something wrong, is clueless, or is trolling.
All these damn 0% pre-approved credit card applications I get every day (probably 2-3) is not only spam, but a huge waist.
Calling them "spam" may be true, but it's just insulting to imply that they're fat, too.
As I understand it, professional spammers get paid per e-mail, so the more legitimate e-mails they can spam the more they get paid.
Agreed. Nuke plants won't fix everything--there will still be the issue of the waste--but it's certainly better than what we have now.
As for the nuclear waste: if we switched to 100% nuclear and renewable sources, it should follow that a significant amount of time and money be devoted to a permanent solution for nuclear waste. But I'd prefer we have 1,000 years to solve that problem than have 100 years or so to solve the current one. Especially as the current problem is alreay doing harm, whereas a well-run nuke plant would not.
Liveplasma links Transsiberian Orchestra with Iron Maiden. Yeah, I see so much in common there.
How to sell your product for the price you want without paying for reserve pricing or shill bidding:
Set your starting price at what you want to make. Instead of trying to lure in buyers with $1 auctions and a $100 reserve or shilling a $1 auction up to over $100, try just starting the auction at $100. Gee, there's a thought.
Because it's easier to work in multiples of 40 than multiples of 35?
* Any idea why Firefox has suddenly decided that the single-quote key should take me to search instead of typing the character?
Google the Firefox apostrophe bug. You must be using an older version of Firefox, I haven't had that happen to me in at least half a year.
Also, it seemed to happen to me more with two FF windows open.
Subscription-funded scientific journals will simply have to find alternatives to exclusivity of information.
A funded journal would still be the best way to get the relevant information all in one place; the problem with free information is that it can be difficult to sort through for specific information. Take all the information that is freely available, pick out the best of it, do some research of your own, and publish a work that goes above and beyond the free information.
That's what thousands of news organizations and non-science journals do every day.
That's not bullying, that's gossip and libel. There's a difference. In that particular case, the girl's best recourse is still to ignore it. Laugh it off and mock the people who started it. In junior high, a group of guys started a rumor about a gay encounter between me and my brother. It got all over school and people who didn't even know me had heard I was an incestuous fag. Whenever the rumor came my way I just laughed, asked if they still believed in the Easter Bunny too, and went about my business. It lingered among those who didn't like me for a while, but I never really cared. Maybe if we spent a little less time teaching our kids that everyone else's opinions are so important they'd be able to cope with a few lies being told about them.
From the summary (and TFA):
DVD players needed over a decade to supersede the VCR in the living rooms of the United States
Umm...no. DVD was finalized in 1995, and by 2002 DVD was outselling VHS. That's a lot less than 10 years. They probably mean that it took ten years for every home that owned a VCR to also own a DVD player. That's a meaningless statement.
DVD was mainstream less than five years after launch and dominant in seven. It's the consumption of the media that is important, not the number of installed players. In another five years there will probably still be a huge number of VCRs, but VHS is about to be bumped off the store shelves in favor of DVD and its successors.
DVD could very well win the format war right now. Joe Consumer doesn't see a point in switching to HD-DVD or BluRay. When he does switch, HDDVD gets points for its name. That should be apparent from its install base...only 25,000 BluRay players are non-PS3, and most of the PS3s probably aren't being used as players.
My money is on HD-DVD winning the race, but BluRay sticking around indefinitely thanks to hybrid drives. HD-DVD has the name going for, a larger base of installed non-console players, and those nifty hybrid disks that will work in your DVD player today and your HD-DVD player next year. Talk about a seamless upgrade path.
/ignore
:)
Okay, so that wasn't exactly what he told me. But that's how it applies to internet bullies.
Bullies get their jollies by making you look little. They want to feel superior to you. If you just put every account they create on ignore and don't bother reading whatever crap they post online in an attempt to get a rise out of you, they'll get bored and go elsewhere. The problem is that a lot of kids think they have to argue back any time anyone says something about them. They can't shut up long enough to realize they are giving the bully exactly what he wants.
Favorite stunt against a bully: I once told a guy I'd let him hit me three times and if he could knock me down with any of those three punches I'd give him $20. Three hits later I was still standing and he was seriously reconsidering the idea of a fight. He was a wuss and I knew it