Of course it can't! It's the friggin' malware industry! Their business plan centers around installing stuff on your PC that you don't want on there and didn't ask for, and abusing your PC without your permission for their own purposes. Why on God's green earth would someone like that be trusted?
I seem to remember a day when game systems (among other things technological) would drop in price according to when the seller chose, not by decree of the manufacturer. What on earth happened? How are Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo and other manufacturers allowed to prevent retailers from determining their own pricing?
I think the original commenter's point was that phones shouldn't be locked in the first place, nor should they be propietary or sold by-and-large by the service providers. Rather, like computers, phones should be easily and cheaply available independently, such as the phone in the article in Europe. Then, I can take MY phone and sign up with any provider, and if I don't like them I can switch. I don't have any barriers INSIDE my phone preventing me from doing so, nor would I need to mess with any because all providers would strive to support any phone, not just the ones they hand out.
As far as I know, T-Mobile's phones are all unlocked. I could be wrong, as I have never had a reason to leave them.
Only one console it out yet, it's only been out for three months, and the other two aren't due to be out for several months more, most likely not even until Christmas 2006. How can they prejudge the "next-gen" launch based on the early results from ONE console? That should tell you right there that the article is a bunch of bullshit anyway. No one knows what killer games will be available for the PS3 or Revolution release. Did anyone anticipate GTA3 for the PS2 a year in advance of the console's release? Did Microsoft even start flogging Halo that early?
Distribution of comic books in America today is at a fraction of what it once was. During the WWII era distribution figures in the millions for a single issue are normal, whereas in today's industry an issue is a huge success if it can manage to sell 100,000 copies.
Another way of looking at it is asking yourself how old are all the universally-known properties? None outside of maybe Spawn (which is crap now, and only well-known for that crappy movie) are less than 30 years old. Superman? Batman? Wonder Woman? Flash? Spider-man? X-Men? Captain America? Thor? Hulk? Most of them come from two eras, depression/WWII (Superman, Batman, anything else by DC), and the 60s, (Spider-man, X-Men, anything else by Marvel.)
Perhaps slightly off-topic, but it's unfair to label today's generation as the "comic book generation", as if the "ubiquity" of comics today is related to the rapid change in language. Comics were FAR more ubiquitous 70-40 years ago, during the "golden" and "silver" ages. How rapidly was the language changing then? Today's generation would much more accurately be called the Internet generation, not the comic book generation.
I couldn't bring myself to spend the time to finish Vice City, or get more than a few hours into San Andreas. They didn't seem like anything new, just more.
I'm using Adblock Plus which has the whitelist feature.
1) Couldn't one just whitelist anything that comes from Google? I haven't been "rolled out" yet, I don't see any indication of Gtalk in my Gmail account, so I can't try this for myself.
2) Can someone who does try it let us know what we need to add to the whitelist to make it work? Thanks.
Only obvious things come to mind. In case they aren't so obvious to you:
Use the computers for heat in the winter, try to pipe the heat away in the summer. Wear a sweater. Shower with your girlfriend. Wear your clothes multiple days to save on laundry loads. But of course all these habits you probably picked up in college anyway.
The number of games expected to be released for one system in 2006 is far greater than the others. Only one system has been released already. Guess which one it is?
Is this anything other than an obvious function of stage of development? Or just some pro-360 spin?
What is new about what Microsoft and Google are doing that would warrant complaint? China enjoys "most favored nation" trade status and Americans have been trading with China since Nixon normalized trade relations with them in the early 70s. It's not as if we have had hundreds of billions of dollars invested in China for decades or anything.
Also, at the risk of being self-referential, let me repeat a point I made in an earlier thread.
First, although this may be meaningless semantics, I believe the policy states "Don't be evil," not "Do no evil." You can do evil and not be evil. The distinction lies in the details. Is the thief who steals to feed his starving family being evil? The answer is a whole lot less clear.
Related to that, it seems that a lot of people on this site and elsewhere seem to (unfairly, I think) hold Google to a much higher standard than anyone else. For example, no one batted an eye when Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL complied with the government's request for their search data. But when Google did, "OMG! Stop the presses!" That story wasn't so much about the government's onerous subpoena, but about Google. Another good one is the complaints about its Gmail service. They've got your personal data! Yeah, and how many of you have been using Yahoo and Hotmail for years? What's different here? The only difference (besides exceptional features and service) is they use an algorithm that tries to target ads to you. If the alternative to targeted text ads is annoying popups, pop-unders, and flashy, vibrating, seizure-inducing banner ads, I'll gladly accept the limited targeted text ads as an improvement. A lot of the flak Google gets seems to stem from the expectation that it must be all things to everyone.
And my main point, assuming you think Google is a good company that compensates and treats its employees and customers well, Google stands to do a lot of good, in spite of the evil of complying with China's unquestionably evil speech restrictions. I haven't heard any complaints about the way Google treats its employees or customers yet, but I have heard a lot of good things. I'm not a free-market fundamentalist by any means, I believe in an effective activist government, I believe in the social safety net, but I also believe in the power of the free market. The great wealth that America enjoys today, and that China is just beginning to create for itself, is due to the power of free enterprise. A company like Google that can make a lot of money by making a lot of people happy stands to do a lot of good wherever it goes, China included, in spite of the restrictions it imposes. A presense in China means raising the standard of living for its employees, its contractors, its customers, and the communities they inhabit. And that's a lot of good that I haven't seen anyone here yet recognize. (Although it took me some time to write this up so someone may have since I read the comments.)
There are two ways the US can go, and it's tried both. It can take a hard stand on principle, as the United States had done before Nixon, and refuse to deal with anyone who restricts speech, jails reporters and dissidents, beats and tortures Christians and Falun Gong (sp?) but this won't accomplish anything but drive China further from us. Look at how successful our hard stance against Castro in Cuba has been. We've refused to trade with Cuba for 45 years and guess what? Cuba is the poorer for it but Castro is still there, so are his policies. Nixon decided this wasn't going to work, that China was going to become a global superpower with or without us, and that it was better that China liked and understood us and was allied with us rather than viewed us as a rival that refuses to have relations with them. It's much easier to go to war against a country when you have had no economic ties and no diplomatic relations for decades.
Probably because Google News wasn't news until it came out of beta. Knowing how archaic most newspapers are when it comes to new technology, I bet they had to read about it on Google News.
First, although this may be meaningless semantics, I believe the policy states "Don't be evil," not "Do no evil." You can do evil and not be evil. The distinction lies in the details. Is the thief who steals to feed his starving family being evil? The answer is a whole lot less clear.
Related to that, it seems that a lot of people on this site and elsewhere seem to (unfairly, I think) hold Google to a much higher standard than anyone else. For example, no one batted an eye when Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL complied with the government's request for their search data. But when Google did, "OMG! Stop the presses!" That story wasn't so much about the government's onerous subpoena, but about Google. Another good one is the complaints about its Gmail service. They've got your personal data! Yeah, and how many of you have been using Yahoo and Hotmail for years? What's different here? The only difference (besides exceptional features and service) is they use an algorithm that tries to target ads to you. If the alternative to targeted text ads is annoying popups, pop-unders, and flashy, vibrating, seizure-inducing banner ads, I'll gladly accept the limited targeted text ads as an improvement. A lot of the flak Google gets seems to stem from the expectation that it must be all things to everyone.
And my main point, assuming you think Google is a good company that compensates and treats its employees and customers well, Google stands to do a lot of good, in spite of the evil of complying with China's unquestionably evil speech restrictions. I haven't heard any complaints about the way Google treats its employees or customers yet, but I have heard a lot of good things. I'm not a free-market fundamentalist by any means, I believe in an effective activist government, I believe in the social safety net, but I also believe in the power of the free market. The great wealth that America enjoys today, and that China is just beginning to create for itself, is due to the power of free enterprise. A company like Google that can make a lot of money by making a lot of people happy stands to do a lot of good wherever it goes, China included, in spite of the restrictions it imposes. A presense in China means raising the standard of living for its employees, its contractors, its customers, and the communities they inhabit. And that's a lot of good that I haven't seen anyone here yet recognize. (Although it took me some time to write this up so someone may have since I read the comments.)
Why would a politically unstable country have a seed bank?
For the same reasons that politically stable ones want them, presumably. The point isn't that politically stable countries are interested in them because of their instability, the point is that their instability threatens their banks. Ergo, Norway is concerned about future access and wants to build one of their own.
That and you can't actually set people on fire just by waving your hands. Magic doesn't even really exist. Neither do dragons, or elves, or orcs, or demons who walk the earth. Realism isn't the point. That would preclude almost every RPG element that people expect in RPGs.
Indeed, why do they bother to release anything BUT Halo for the Xbox? Because the fratboy image is a stereotype. Not everyone bought the system just for Halo. For example. Some of us liked tinkering with it, slapping Linux on it to make it the media center it should have been, to play downloaded music and video in our home entertainment system, not just games. Some of us also liked RPGs but hate shooters.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope it's the hard cover edition of War and Peace. The large print hard cover edition!
Troll much?
"Can the Malware Industry be Trusted?"
Of course it can't! It's the friggin' malware industry! Their business plan centers around installing stuff on your PC that you don't want on there and didn't ask for, and abusing your PC without your permission for their own purposes. Why on God's green earth would someone like that be trusted?
I predict many happy years to come for millions of Xbox users, with their Xboxes hacked to be a media center device.
If the Xbox 360 is McDonalds, then will someone explain to me why we should be relating the PS3 to Olive Garden and not Burger King?
I seem to remember a day when game systems (among other things technological) would drop in price according to when the seller chose, not by decree of the manufacturer. What on earth happened? How are Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo and other manufacturers allowed to prevent retailers from determining their own pricing?
University Professor (aka College Professor) is number 2. It's on the linked page, which you must not have even clicked on.
I think the original commenter's point was that phones shouldn't be locked in the first place, nor should they be propietary or sold by-and-large by the service providers. Rather, like computers, phones should be easily and cheaply available independently, such as the phone in the article in Europe. Then, I can take MY phone and sign up with any provider, and if I don't like them I can switch. I don't have any barriers INSIDE my phone preventing me from doing so, nor would I need to mess with any because all providers would strive to support any phone, not just the ones they hand out. As far as I know, T-Mobile's phones are all unlocked. I could be wrong, as I have never had a reason to leave them.
I just blew two grand on a Dell laptop for this game.
In other news, next-next-gen already predetermined to be an abysmal failure by "forecasters". Damn me for not using preview.
Only one console it out yet, it's only been out for three months, and the other two aren't due to be out for several months more, most likely not even until Christmas 2006. How can they prejudge the "next-gen" launch based on the early results from ONE console? That should tell you right there that the article is a bunch of bullshit anyway. No one knows what killer games will be available for the PS3 or Revolution release. Did anyone anticipate GTA3 for the PS2 a year in advance of the console's release? Did Microsoft even start flogging Halo that early?
Distribution of comic books in America today is at a fraction of what it once was. During the WWII era distribution figures in the millions for a single issue are normal, whereas in today's industry an issue is a huge success if it can manage to sell 100,000 copies.
Another way of looking at it is asking yourself how old are all the universally-known properties? None outside of maybe Spawn (which is crap now, and only well-known for that crappy movie) are less than 30 years old. Superman? Batman? Wonder Woman? Flash? Spider-man? X-Men? Captain America? Thor? Hulk? Most of them come from two eras, depression/WWII (Superman, Batman, anything else by DC), and the 60s, (Spider-man, X-Men, anything else by Marvel.)
Perhaps slightly off-topic, but it's unfair to label today's generation as the "comic book generation", as if the "ubiquity" of comics today is related to the rapid change in language. Comics were FAR more ubiquitous 70-40 years ago, during the "golden" and "silver" ages. How rapidly was the language changing then? Today's generation would much more accurately be called the Internet generation, not the comic book generation.
I couldn't bring myself to spend the time to finish Vice City, or get more than a few hours into San Andreas. They didn't seem like anything new, just more.
Captain Lou Albano is more than worth sitting through Legend of Zelda for.
I'm using Adblock Plus which has the whitelist feature.
1) Couldn't one just whitelist anything that comes from Google? I haven't been "rolled out" yet, I don't see any indication of Gtalk in my Gmail account, so I can't try this for myself.
2) Can someone who does try it let us know what we need to add to the whitelist to make it work? Thanks.
Only obvious things come to mind. In case they aren't so obvious to you: Use the computers for heat in the winter, try to pipe the heat away in the summer. Wear a sweater. Shower with your girlfriend. Wear your clothes multiple days to save on laundry loads. But of course all these habits you probably picked up in college anyway.
The number of games expected to be released for one system in 2006 is far greater than the others. Only one system has been released already. Guess which one it is?
Is this anything other than an obvious function of stage of development? Or just some pro-360 spin?
What is new about what Microsoft and Google are doing that would warrant complaint? China enjoys "most favored nation" trade status and Americans have been trading with China since Nixon normalized trade relations with them in the early 70s. It's not as if we have had hundreds of billions of dollars invested in China for decades or anything.
Also, at the risk of being self-referential, let me repeat a point I made in an earlier thread.
There are two ways the US can go, and it's tried both. It can take a hard stand on principle, as the United States had done before Nixon, and refuse to deal with anyone who restricts speech, jails reporters and dissidents, beats and tortures Christians and Falun Gong (sp?) but this won't accomplish anything but drive China further from us. Look at how successful our hard stance against Castro in Cuba has been. We've refused to trade with Cuba for 45 years and guess what? Cuba is the poorer for it but Castro is still there, so are his policies. Nixon decided this wasn't going to work, that China was going to become a global superpower with or without us, and that it was better that China liked and understood us and was allied with us rather than viewed us as a rival that refuses to have relations with them. It's much easier to go to war against a country when you have had no economic ties and no diplomatic relations for decades.
Or, we can let capitalism take its cour
Does this special computer run on Windows?
Probably because Google News wasn't news until it came out of beta. Knowing how archaic most newspapers are when it comes to new technology, I bet they had to read about it on Google News.
First, although this may be meaningless semantics, I believe the policy states "Don't be evil," not "Do no evil." You can do evil and not be evil. The distinction lies in the details. Is the thief who steals to feed his starving family being evil? The answer is a whole lot less clear.
Related to that, it seems that a lot of people on this site and elsewhere seem to (unfairly, I think) hold Google to a much higher standard than anyone else. For example, no one batted an eye when Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL complied with the government's request for their search data. But when Google did, "OMG! Stop the presses!" That story wasn't so much about the government's onerous subpoena, but about Google. Another good one is the complaints about its Gmail service. They've got your personal data! Yeah, and how many of you have been using Yahoo and Hotmail for years? What's different here? The only difference (besides exceptional features and service) is they use an algorithm that tries to target ads to you. If the alternative to targeted text ads is annoying popups, pop-unders, and flashy, vibrating, seizure-inducing banner ads, I'll gladly accept the limited targeted text ads as an improvement. A lot of the flak Google gets seems to stem from the expectation that it must be all things to everyone.
And my main point, assuming you think Google is a good company that compensates and treats its employees and customers well, Google stands to do a lot of good, in spite of the evil of complying with China's unquestionably evil speech restrictions. I haven't heard any complaints about the way Google treats its employees or customers yet, but I have heard a lot of good things. I'm not a free-market fundamentalist by any means, I believe in an effective activist government, I believe in the social safety net, but I also believe in the power of the free market. The great wealth that America enjoys today, and that China is just beginning to create for itself, is due to the power of free enterprise. A company like Google that can make a lot of money by making a lot of people happy stands to do a lot of good wherever it goes, China included, in spite of the restrictions it imposes. A presense in China means raising the standard of living for its employees, its contractors, its customers, and the communities they inhabit. And that's a lot of good that I haven't seen anyone here yet recognize. (Although it took me some time to write this up so someone may have since I read the comments.)
People need a reason not to buy an XBox 360.
$400. That's mine.
Why would a politically unstable country have a seed bank?
For the same reasons that politically stable ones want them, presumably. The point isn't that politically stable countries are interested in them because of their instability, the point is that their instability threatens their banks. Ergo, Norway is concerned about future access and wants to build one of their own.
That and you can't actually set people on fire just by waving your hands. Magic doesn't even really exist. Neither do dragons, or elves, or orcs, or demons who walk the earth. Realism isn't the point. That would preclude almost every RPG element that people expect in RPGs.
Indeed, why do they bother to release anything BUT Halo for the Xbox? Because the fratboy image is a stereotype. Not everyone bought the system just for Halo. For example. Some of us liked tinkering with it, slapping Linux on it to make it the media center it should have been, to play downloaded music and video in our home entertainment system, not just games. Some of us also liked RPGs but hate shooters.