... because each generation is getting 30% smarter. There's almost a whole 12 years since 1996: we've got a lot smarter since then.. maybe 10% even. Just think about all the really stimulating shows for our current lowest common denominator like Big Brother and ${country.name} Idol.
And what should the cost be to violating a patent be? Okay, sure someone might infringe upon this patent, but if it takes someone a few pretty easy intuitive hours to come up with this original idea, what's that, like a few hundred bucks of expense. The current patent system is more like bingo then reward attributed effort, which it should be. And the effort rewarded should be the least possible effort: work smarter not harder.
I agree with the idea of patents in principal. Like that guy who invented the bagless vacuum cleaner: fantastic. That would have taken a hell of a long time to work out all the different air vortexes and stuff. This supposed patent is nothing even close: an idea should not be possible to patent if all it is only the bare "use case" itself, it has to have complete details of the implementation. And even the bagless vacuum cleaner idea should have limits: bagless vacuum cleaners themselves should not be patentable, as it is a feature, but the mechanism to do so should be - and again this should be challenged against how hard it really was to work out exactly where to put the input/output pipes.
You know what, I don't care if this falls into a heap; at least their trying something. They aren't as big a company as someone like Blizzard so they have to think a bit harder about solving problems with less.
What I find bitterly ironic is the same people on Slashdot who will give Open Source Software movement a chance will also love paying out on CCP. When compared to a company like Blizzard, they must have to work damn hard to stay afloat. Personally I'll stick with them purely because I want to see where CCP are going: and I want to see more variation in the MMORPG arena from smaller companies. If I have to put up with a bit of this, fine.
It wasn't that long ago that the only good games used dice, books and imagination. If Eve requires a bit of that, again fine, personally I like where they are going and would like to see what the game is like in another few years.
The only thing I really do want to see addressed in Eve are the increasing amount of farmers. The other night I was in a system with about 60 accounts, only 10 of them being real players.
And maybe they need new universes - similar to WoW realms, since new players really don't get the same experience as those who started a few years back.
Like administrator skills - the very fact that your asking slashdot about this stuff means that you're inquisitive about this and that puts you far ahead of most of the dum dums I see in the skill shortage world which is IT in Australia at the moment.
The number one cause of data loss is a badly skilled administrator. If you understand the system you've deployed and looked through the different scenarios of data loss and have recovery strategies in place, then you've probably covered most of your bases already. And that's the kicker isn't it; it's not so much about what you purchase as it is about having a well thought out process in place when you make one of these decisions.
When I was a system admin, the best book I ever read was "the practice of system and network administration" http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Admi nistration/dp/0201702711/. It's probably a few years out of date now, but should still have a heap on the process of making purchases like this. That used to be one of my favourite reads... but then someone borrowed it at work (thanks whoever took it yeh bastard... hehe).
I've only ever logged a single request in Eve, to get back an quest item after my first pod kill when I was ganked by pirate gate campers (three battle cruisers jumping on my little destroyer)... WTFPWND. Petitions are not something to be used often. I figure it's more like asking a DM in a game of D&D to occasionally use their omnipotent ability to make the game more enjoyable - not level scores.
I had my petition answered within 24 hours and found the system to be pretty good. So now including me in your vast statistical study, was their response time average or am I too many standard deviations from the mean to be considered a valid entry? I usually follow the rule that being nice to people gets the best results - maybe CCP do give unfavorable treatment to some people, but that's life. Chefs spit in the food of annoying customers and customs officials will do their best to give assholes a lovely time coming through immigration.
Or maybe I'm one of the devs... and I'm also flying a black ops chopper spying on you right now. Get the aluminum foil off your head and relax, CCP aren't corrupt, just people - so whilst they're not imps waiting to give you the worst possible playing experience, they're also not knights in shining armor who'll come to your aid every time you stub your toe.
The treatment was largely successful, with the exception of the occasional creation of a highly intelligent electro mutant.
I for one welcome our new highly intelligent electro mutant overlords....
Aww c'mon, someone had to say it;)
... as long as the end result somehow resembles the Black Mesa underground maps from Half Life 1. And having a few metal walkers going through toxic spill will be a nice bonus:)
Oh yeah - and a security guard like Barney:)
If a person is born blind they can still speak. They can't see though, so this is where the future may hold a solution either biologically or cybernetically (or a cool combination of both).
Autism is a different story in terms of a solution - from what little I know about Autism, that is a problem within the brain itself; the brain doesn't filter out unnecessary information leaving the afflicted individual shutting out everything except an absolute minimum. Most of the first cybernetic implants would probably treat the brain like a legacy module in an application (black box); a cybernetic solution to Autism would be equivalent to Aspect Orientated Programming for the brain: fixing a problem which goes across many different concerns, and is going to be a dogs breakfast to implement no matter what, let alone producing a solution for the masses. I guess this problem also exists for many types of blindness too - people who've had head trauma and cannot see may have perfect eyes, but if the parts of the brain which process images are stuffed then they're just as blind. So this kind of future will not be a one size fits all cybernetic repair module, at least not for a hell of a long time.
But I agree that having these things out there as a choice will be better then not. Bring me one case on ethical questions about a parents right to modify a child and I'll bring you twenty cases of abusive parents. My point is that whilst modifying a child will have certain religious groups up in arms, nowadays even just having a parent genuinely interested in the welfare of their is probably better then your average bear. And besides, I want to modify my fetus to be able to play Eve Online with me - it's their right damnit. heh;)
These all seem like breast implants for technology nerds anyway. You mean I can get a breast implant which is also a wireless network interface? Bring it on...
Seriously though, I foresee these kinds of things coming on (maybe not in the next 50 years though), but they'll be either completely external to the body (like a watch, mobile), or seamlessly integrated (like a pacemaker). No interface will be bought by consumers en-mass until it's aesthetically pleasing too - no one, except borg fetishists would want wires sticking out of them.
Being able to access search engines or things like maps at will is going to be too irritableness for most people. Think about the difference the Internet has made to the learning process for those who have it - no more heading to libraries for books which are loaned out. Similarly I'd imagine being able to access a news update like a normal memory would be a similar jump.
The big downside to this is it will further increase the divide between people who are plugged in and those who aren't. Further, any disassociation syndromes are only going to get worse - they'll probably even start bringing in health warnings and stuff like "no more then four hours a day of direct neural interface".
I guess all this just re-iterates the need for moderation... it's possible to have most of the latest gadgets now and also lead a normal life, so long as real contact with people is maintained. The same rules apply now as they will in 100 years time. That is unless the world is ruled by a neural super entity consciousness:)
...that you'd see in the Civilization 4 technology tree or from Galactic Civilizations 2?
This stuff matters - I'd like to imagine there's some uber controller directing researching funds for our civilization... and after plastics, the Apollo Program!!! Go Team Human!!!
I've worked in a few different capacities in IT, from a system admin at a small start up and now a developer role. It seems consistent to me that IT is always made out to be a villain by upper executives whilst their own misguided decisions can be entirely ignored.
I had a friend tell me some of the nightmares in Australia's flight company (the one which sounds like Quantums) before they decided to outsource to Indian companies. The consistent theme was an embarrasing mix of stuff ups between middle managers and upper executives which are never analysed. The summary was that due to a failed outsourced IT project (called e-ticket or something like that) it left them with a shortfall of something like $20m AUD. Solution - outsource your remaining IT to make up for it. From the sounds of it, the higher level IT project manager of the failed project then went on to work for the company that they'd outsourced to - and was given a nice hand shake payout as well.
It seems that there are decent IT workers and managers out there, but yeah, there's a lot of dummies who don't seek to automate their work. However, as bad as they are, having non-technical upper executives making whimsical decisions seems to be the biggest cost to companies.
Every year, IT is getting easier to do more with less, and should reduce the cost - but to want to entirely outsource? Meh, some people never learn.
Why can't people (well executives) take a step back, and realise that we're doing a pretty complicated job - but that it's a necessary job, just like their own one.
It's funny, but in Australia they've so completely buggered the IT workforce by pushing down salaries, they've now found a skill shortage - and consequently pay very well for good help. Well boo hoo to employers - they pushed many smart people into different professions, and now they try and whinge about skill shortages. Until people start realising that fostering a good skill base is a good long term strategy on a micro and macro level, this cycle is just going to keep repeating...
One poster said without microsoft we wouldn't have nice PC's and an environment which just works.
I hate microsoft for the future that has been delayed by a good decade. For all the bloody inconsistencies between browsers, which are still present I hate them. Things like Ajax enabled Apps would have been possible earlier if these issues hadn't been so bad at first. Good on Google for making their Web Toolkit so I can program in Java and create Javascript compatible with most browsers out there. If Microsoft had used their position responsibly from the word go and encouraged or stuck to established standards for their browsers and documents we would not have had the lock in we did.
Ever hear the phrase, "Oh we'd like to use XXXX software but it's not compatible with Microsoft XXXX". Yeah, I hate them for locking me in, and I hate them for making other companies trying to compete look like the bad guys for not having compatibility with proprietary obscure formats.
Reboots. Maybe that's my biggest gripe. Bloody 3 Reboots on some of those Service Packs.
If XML Schema was a work colleague they would be Wally from Dilbert - it's not that things are impossible to do with it, it's just that the relative simple things become hard and the complex almost impossible. Due to the fact that almost anything is possible with XML schema with enough work (weeks, months years...) instead of just scrapping it, people keep at it doggedly despite the number of times we get bitten. I'd love to see the community move more completely to RELAX NG if it makes my life easier.
And what was true then which is also true today is that little device gave someone absolute job security - along with a middle manager to go along with it. Surely there is enough material here to do a "ye olde Dilbert" strip.
Documentation - bah, keep it minimal, make sure you need to be employed since there isn't anyone on earth capable of maintaining it;)
I'm lost... which company is the good cop now and which one is bad cop? Oh that's right, companies don't care, they just want more money - I keep forgetting that quintessential fact about a company.
In Australia we've got one too called the "Pee-mate" for ladies to use at large festivals where the number of girls toilets never seems to stop huge lines, and inevitably has them using the guys facilities.
Yeah, like a team sport, but one that leaves your real world meat sack unattended and going the way of man boobs. Seeing the South Park episode, "Make Love not Warcraft" was the perfect joke at this where the players doing the "Fight to Win" montage. I did like play WoW to begin with, but playing an instance for eight hours without a break is a little demanding - especially if you've still got a girlfriend.
Warcraft Exec #1: Fellow board members, we have a problem. Somebody in the World of Warcraft is ignoring the world's rules and is going around killing innocent players. Warcraft President: Why kill innocent players? The game is about finishing quests. Warcraft Exec #2: What kind of person would do this? Warcraft Exec #1: Only one kind, whoever this person is, he has played World of Warcraft nearly every hour of every day for the past year and a half! Gentlemen, we are dealing with someone here who has absolutely no life. Warcraft Exec #3: How can you kill that which has no life?
Yep, I agree with this comment completely.
Great games come from great ideas implemented well - not the graphics obsession (up to a base level of course). I've played what feels like so many single player orientated games lately where the story line and plot falls on it's bum due to lack of detail and forethought. Whereas games like Galatic Civilizations 2 just keep me coming back despite the slightly rough edges to the game - it's got a killer AI and the games usually develop nicely. Half Life 1 had okay graphics for it's time, but it was the attention to detail which really impressed me (though face huggers jumping at me in dark vents did get a bit old after the thousandth time).
What we need to teach kids is how to ask questions only other kids know in order to verify the age of the person they're talking to. We should rely on the fact that the next generation will be smarter then us...questions like, "how do you program a set top box?" would eliminate most adults but I'm sure there are better ones:)
So the Bush government has been doing a fantastic job taking money out of your pocket so far, potenitally a trillion dollars for the iraq war http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/, but a few million for your own civil liberties is too much to pay?
Remember, just in case maths wasn't your strong point, a trillion is a million-million, so in perspective, the civil liberties case cost about 0.000001% of the war in iraq. Or maybe if it was a few million, 0.000003% of the war in iraq. Starting to get the picture that this cost you bugger all
Maybe if I put it another way, if there are 275 million americans, and the case cost 3 million, then the cost to you personally is $0.012. Maybe that's a lot of money to you, but most people can round that one down to nothing. Contrast that with the war in iraq, which has cost each person $3636.
So you feel that everytime you ask a subordinate to do a job it must be wrapped in faffy, beat around the bush, useless trivialty? What a joke. Someone can be rude while still saying please and thank you - tone is far more important then faffy pleasentries (http://www.incoming.com/WebModules/QueueTips/Ques tion.aspx?ID=182/). Personally, I hate anyone who has a dislike for me, but isn't strong enough in character to discuss it with me and instead uses pedantic and facetious use of words and tone to mask their true attitudes.
So many companies spend so much money on PR and image marketing I think you'll find your average pundit nowadays is sick of faffy pleasentries and just want people to get to the damn point. A poo wrapped in gold foil is still a poo, and a bad message will always have bad content to it. A company notice to all employees that X number of jobs from section Y are going to be cut with niceties around it will still leave people jaded - regardless of the niceties around it.
Also, you're thinking that a typical person will sabotage a workplace simply due to the fact that they're not receiving please and thank you everytime they get asked to do a job. If I was an employer and saw any kind of resentment build up simply due to a straight talking attitude, that person would be gone in a second - a good workplace should leave emotion at the door so people can concentrate on the business problems.
Bet you also love those fake emotion morning teas which seem to push everyone together into a pretense of getting along. Marketing and engineers in the same room - yeah, theres an environment of great buddy friendships.
I could just imagine a pointy haired boss in a dilbert like biotech firm talking up the tumors as an extra "feature" - and make the parkinsons patients pay extra for it.
Hmmm, I've been a bit of a pendulum with my attitude towards security and identity theft.
Originally, I never really cared, then got into system admin, learnt a whole heap of stuff and became ultra paranoid about security. Then I figured (once I moved out of system admin and into dev) my standards were too high and I should probably relax a little. Then someone used my name and an old address of mine (when I was 8 years old) to enquire about the purchase of a car - though whoever the genius was that did it left my current phone number as a callback when the car came into the shop. When I received a call from out of the blue about the car I was after arriving, I managed to nip that in the bud, letting them know that whoever was inquiring about the car was in all likeliness a con man. That did wake me up a little though so now at least I try destroy financial statements before throwing them out and a few other things.
So, whilst you may not have much of significance from putting a phone number on a website, others have had their personal details used and abused from stuff like this.
Identity theft is the thing I really care about - I'm not sure you can insure against that, and the hassle of proving that various transactions are invalid is the reason I will keep the details of my life private. If someone burgals me fine, it would suck ass, but that's where insurance comes in. If someone steals my identity and sullys my quite small persona it can be almost impossible to clean up.
Are we sure that this story wasn't posted by Calvin as his latest school assignment? If you have a look at the PDF with edits left in, you'll see words like "Transmogrify" crossed out all through it. I'm sure Hobbes could have put him up to it.
I thought the principle of a working HDCP system was the combination of a valid display adapter and a valid graphics card (Feel free to let me know what I'm missing). One of the requirements for valid display adapters is that they are DVI. This probably excludes a very large portion of the market so I wouldn't expect HDCP to become a reality for quite a while. I don't think many people would accept having to purchase a new monitor as an acceptable cost.
Slashdot Mirror
... because each generation is getting 30% smarter. There's almost a whole 12 years since 1996: we've got a lot smarter since then.. maybe 10% even. Just think about all the really stimulating shows for our current lowest common denominator like Big Brother and ${country.name} Idol.
And what should the cost be to violating a patent be? Okay, sure someone might infringe upon this patent, but if it takes someone a few pretty easy intuitive hours to come up with this original idea, what's that, like a few hundred bucks of expense. The current patent system is more like bingo then reward attributed effort, which it should be. And the effort rewarded should be the least possible effort: work smarter not harder.
I agree with the idea of patents in principal. Like that guy who invented the bagless vacuum cleaner: fantastic. That would have taken a hell of a long time to work out all the different air vortexes and stuff. This supposed patent is nothing even close: an idea should not be possible to patent if all it is only the bare "use case" itself, it has to have complete details of the implementation. And even the bagless vacuum cleaner idea should have limits: bagless vacuum cleaners themselves should not be patentable, as it is a feature, but the mechanism to do so should be - and again this should be challenged against how hard it really was to work out exactly where to put the input/output pipes.
You know what, I don't care if this falls into a heap; at least their trying something. They aren't as big a company as someone like Blizzard so they have to think a bit harder about solving problems with less.
What I find bitterly ironic is the same people on Slashdot who will give Open Source Software movement a chance will also love paying out on CCP. When compared to a company like Blizzard, they must have to work damn hard to stay afloat. Personally I'll stick with them purely because I want to see where CCP are going: and I want to see more variation in the MMORPG arena from smaller companies. If I have to put up with a bit of this, fine.
It wasn't that long ago that the only good games used dice, books and imagination. If Eve requires a bit of that, again fine, personally I like where they are going and would like to see what the game is like in another few years.
The only thing I really do want to see addressed in Eve are the increasing amount of farmers. The other night I was in a system with about 60 accounts, only 10 of them being real players.
And maybe they need new universes - similar to WoW realms, since new players really don't get the same experience as those who started a few years back.
Like administrator skills - the very fact that your asking slashdot about this stuff means that you're inquisitive about this and that puts you far ahead of most of the dum dums I see in the skill shortage world which is IT in Australia at the moment. The number one cause of data loss is a badly skilled administrator. If you understand the system you've deployed and looked through the different scenarios of data loss and have recovery strategies in place, then you've probably covered most of your bases already. And that's the kicker isn't it; it's not so much about what you purchase as it is about having a well thought out process in place when you make one of these decisions. When I was a system admin, the best book I ever read was "the practice of system and network administration" http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Admi nistration/dp/0201702711/. It's probably a few years out of date now, but should still have a heap on the process of making purchases like this. That used to be one of my favourite reads... but then someone borrowed it at work (thanks whoever took it yeh bastard... hehe).
I've only ever logged a single request in Eve, to get back an quest item after my first pod kill when I was ganked by pirate gate campers (three battle cruisers jumping on my little destroyer)... WTFPWND. Petitions are not something to be used often. I figure it's more like asking a DM in a game of D&D to occasionally use their omnipotent ability to make the game more enjoyable - not level scores. I had my petition answered within 24 hours and found the system to be pretty good. So now including me in your vast statistical study, was their response time average or am I too many standard deviations from the mean to be considered a valid entry? I usually follow the rule that being nice to people gets the best results - maybe CCP do give unfavorable treatment to some people, but that's life. Chefs spit in the food of annoying customers and customs officials will do their best to give assholes a lovely time coming through immigration. Or maybe I'm one of the devs ... and I'm also flying a black ops chopper spying on you right now. Get the aluminum foil off your head and relax, CCP aren't corrupt, just people - so whilst they're not imps waiting to give you the worst possible playing experience, they're also not knights in shining armor who'll come to your aid every time you stub your toe.
The treatment was largely successful, with the exception of the occasional creation of a highly intelligent electro mutant. I for one welcome our new highly intelligent electro mutant overlords. ...
Aww c'mon, someone had to say it;)
... as long as the end result somehow resembles the Black Mesa underground maps from Half Life 1. And having a few metal walkers going through toxic spill will be a nice bonus:) Oh yeah - and a security guard like Barney:)
I hereby declare Shenanigans on Zango - SHENANIGANS!!!
If a person is born blind they can still speak. They can't see though, so this is where the future may hold a solution either biologically or cybernetically (or a cool combination of both). Autism is a different story in terms of a solution - from what little I know about Autism, that is a problem within the brain itself; the brain doesn't filter out unnecessary information leaving the afflicted individual shutting out everything except an absolute minimum. Most of the first cybernetic implants would probably treat the brain like a legacy module in an application (black box); a cybernetic solution to Autism would be equivalent to Aspect Orientated Programming for the brain: fixing a problem which goes across many different concerns, and is going to be a dogs breakfast to implement no matter what, let alone producing a solution for the masses. I guess this problem also exists for many types of blindness too - people who've had head trauma and cannot see may have perfect eyes, but if the parts of the brain which process images are stuffed then they're just as blind. So this kind of future will not be a one size fits all cybernetic repair module, at least not for a hell of a long time. But I agree that having these things out there as a choice will be better then not. Bring me one case on ethical questions about a parents right to modify a child and I'll bring you twenty cases of abusive parents. My point is that whilst modifying a child will have certain religious groups up in arms, nowadays even just having a parent genuinely interested in the welfare of their is probably better then your average bear. And besides, I want to modify my fetus to be able to play Eve Online with me - it's their right damnit. heh;)
Seriously though, I foresee these kinds of things coming on (maybe not in the next 50 years though), but they'll be either completely external to the body (like a watch, mobile), or seamlessly integrated (like a pacemaker). No interface will be bought by consumers en-mass until it's aesthetically pleasing too - no one, except borg fetishists would want wires sticking out of them.
Being able to access search engines or things like maps at will is going to be too irritableness for most people. Think about the difference the Internet has made to the learning process for those who have it - no more heading to libraries for books which are loaned out. Similarly I'd imagine being able to access a news update like a normal memory would be a similar jump.
The big downside to this is it will further increase the divide between people who are plugged in and those who aren't. Further, any disassociation syndromes are only going to get worse - they'll probably even start bringing in health warnings and stuff like "no more then four hours a day of direct neural interface".
I guess all this just re-iterates the need for moderation... it's possible to have most of the latest gadgets now and also lead a normal life, so long as real contact with people is maintained. The same rules apply now as they will in 100 years time. That is unless the world is ruled by a neural super entity consciousness:)
...that you'd see in the Civilization 4 technology tree or from Galactic Civilizations 2?
This stuff matters - I'd like to imagine there's some uber controller directing researching funds for our civilization... and after plastics, the Apollo Program!!! Go Team Human!!!
I've worked in a few different capacities in IT, from a system admin at a small start up and now a developer role. It seems consistent to me that IT is always made out to be a villain by upper executives whilst their own misguided decisions can be entirely ignored. I had a friend tell me some of the nightmares in Australia's flight company (the one which sounds like Quantums) before they decided to outsource to Indian companies. The consistent theme was an embarrasing mix of stuff ups between middle managers and upper executives which are never analysed. The summary was that due to a failed outsourced IT project (called e-ticket or something like that) it left them with a shortfall of something like $20m AUD. Solution - outsource your remaining IT to make up for it. From the sounds of it, the higher level IT project manager of the failed project then went on to work for the company that they'd outsourced to - and was given a nice hand shake payout as well. It seems that there are decent IT workers and managers out there, but yeah, there's a lot of dummies who don't seek to automate their work. However, as bad as they are, having non-technical upper executives making whimsical decisions seems to be the biggest cost to companies. Every year, IT is getting easier to do more with less, and should reduce the cost - but to want to entirely outsource? Meh, some people never learn. Why can't people (well executives) take a step back, and realise that we're doing a pretty complicated job - but that it's a necessary job, just like their own one. It's funny, but in Australia they've so completely buggered the IT workforce by pushing down salaries, they've now found a skill shortage - and consequently pay very well for good help. Well boo hoo to employers - they pushed many smart people into different professions, and now they try and whinge about skill shortages. Until people start realising that fostering a good skill base is a good long term strategy on a micro and macro level, this cycle is just going to keep repeating...
One poster said without microsoft we wouldn't have nice PC's and an environment which just works. I hate microsoft for the future that has been delayed by a good decade. For all the bloody inconsistencies between browsers, which are still present I hate them. Things like Ajax enabled Apps would have been possible earlier if these issues hadn't been so bad at first. Good on Google for making their Web Toolkit so I can program in Java and create Javascript compatible with most browsers out there. If Microsoft had used their position responsibly from the word go and encouraged or stuck to established standards for their browsers and documents we would not have had the lock in we did. Ever hear the phrase, "Oh we'd like to use XXXX software but it's not compatible with Microsoft XXXX". Yeah, I hate them for locking me in, and I hate them for making other companies trying to compete look like the bad guys for not having compatibility with proprietary obscure formats. Reboots. Maybe that's my biggest gripe. Bloody 3 Reboots on some of those Service Packs.
If XML Schema was a work colleague they would be Wally from Dilbert - it's not that things are impossible to do with it, it's just that the relative simple things become hard and the complex almost impossible. Due to the fact that almost anything is possible with XML schema with enough work (weeks, months years...) instead of just scrapping it, people keep at it doggedly despite the number of times we get bitten. I'd love to see the community move more completely to RELAX NG if it makes my life easier.
And what was true then which is also true today is that little device gave someone absolute job security - along with a middle manager to go along with it. Surely there is enough material here to do a "ye olde Dilbert" strip. Documentation - bah, keep it minimal, make sure you need to be employed since there isn't anyone on earth capable of maintaining it;)
I'm lost... which company is the good cop now and which one is bad cop? Oh that's right, companies don't care, they just want more money - I keep forgetting that quintessential fact about a company.
In Australia we've got one too called the "Pee-mate" for ladies to use at large festivals where the number of girls toilets never seems to stop huge lines, and inevitably has them using the guys facilities.
Yeah, like a team sport, but one that leaves your real world meat sack unattended and going the way of man boobs. Seeing the South Park episode, "Make Love not Warcraft" was the perfect joke at this where the players doing the "Fight to Win" montage. I did like play WoW to begin with, but playing an instance for eight hours without a break is a little demanding - especially if you've still got a girlfriend.
Warcraft Exec #1: Fellow board members, we have a problem. Somebody in the World of Warcraft is ignoring the world's rules and is going around killing innocent players.
Warcraft President: Why kill innocent players? The game is about finishing quests.
Warcraft Exec #2: What kind of person would do this?
Warcraft Exec #1: Only one kind, whoever this person is, he has played World of Warcraft nearly every hour of every day for the past year and a half! Gentlemen, we are dealing with someone here who has absolutely no life.
Warcraft Exec #3: How can you kill that which has no life?
Yep, I agree with this comment completely. Great games come from great ideas implemented well - not the graphics obsession (up to a base level of course). I've played what feels like so many single player orientated games lately where the story line and plot falls on it's bum due to lack of detail and forethought. Whereas games like Galatic Civilizations 2 just keep me coming back despite the slightly rough edges to the game - it's got a killer AI and the games usually develop nicely. Half Life 1 had okay graphics for it's time, but it was the attention to detail which really impressed me (though face huggers jumping at me in dark vents did get a bit old after the thousandth time).
What we need to teach kids is how to ask questions only other kids know in order to verify the age of the person they're talking to. We should rely on the fact that the next generation will be smarter then us...questions like, "how do you program a set top box?" would eliminate most adults but I'm sure there are better ones:)
So the Bush government has been doing a fantastic job taking money out of your pocket so far, potenitally a trillion dollars for the iraq war http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/, but a few million for your own civil liberties is too much to pay?
Remember, just in case maths wasn't your strong point, a trillion is a million-million, so in perspective, the civil liberties case cost about 0.000001% of the war in iraq. Or maybe if it was a few million, 0.000003% of the war in iraq. Starting to get the picture that this cost you bugger all
Maybe if I put it another way, if there are 275 million americans, and the case cost 3 million, then the cost to you personally is $0.012. Maybe that's a lot of money to you, but most people can round that one down to nothing. Contrast that with the war in iraq, which has cost each person $3636.
So you feel that everytime you ask a subordinate to do a job it must be wrapped in faffy, beat around the bush, useless trivialty? What a joke. Someone can be rude while still saying please and thank you - tone is far more important then faffy pleasentries (http://www.incoming.com/WebModules/QueueTips/Ques tion.aspx?ID=182/). Personally, I hate anyone who has a dislike for me, but isn't strong enough in character to discuss it with me and instead uses pedantic and facetious use of words and tone to mask their true attitudes.
So many companies spend so much money on PR and image marketing I think you'll find your average pundit nowadays is sick of faffy pleasentries and just want people to get to the damn point. A poo wrapped in gold foil is still a poo, and a bad message will always have bad content to it. A company notice to all employees that X number of jobs from section Y are going to be cut with niceties around it will still leave people jaded - regardless of the niceties around it.
Also, you're thinking that a typical person will sabotage a workplace simply due to the fact that they're not receiving please and thank you everytime they get asked to do a job. If I was an employer and saw any kind of resentment build up simply due to a straight talking attitude, that person would be gone in a second - a good workplace should leave emotion at the door so people can concentrate on the business problems.
Bet you also love those fake emotion morning teas which seem to push everyone together into a pretense of getting along. Marketing and engineers in the same room - yeah, theres an environment of great buddy friendships.
I could just imagine a pointy haired boss in a dilbert like biotech firm talking up the tumors as an extra "feature" - and make the parkinsons patients pay extra for it.
Hmmm, I've been a bit of a pendulum with my attitude towards security and identity theft. Originally, I never really cared, then got into system admin, learnt a whole heap of stuff and became ultra paranoid about security. Then I figured (once I moved out of system admin and into dev) my standards were too high and I should probably relax a little. Then someone used my name and an old address of mine (when I was 8 years old) to enquire about the purchase of a car - though whoever the genius was that did it left my current phone number as a callback when the car came into the shop. When I received a call from out of the blue about the car I was after arriving, I managed to nip that in the bud, letting them know that whoever was inquiring about the car was in all likeliness a con man. That did wake me up a little though so now at least I try destroy financial statements before throwing them out and a few other things. So, whilst you may not have much of significance from putting a phone number on a website, others have had their personal details used and abused from stuff like this. Identity theft is the thing I really care about - I'm not sure you can insure against that, and the hassle of proving that various transactions are invalid is the reason I will keep the details of my life private. If someone burgals me fine, it would suck ass, but that's where insurance comes in. If someone steals my identity and sullys my quite small persona it can be almost impossible to clean up.
Are we sure that this story wasn't posted by Calvin as his latest school assignment? If you have a look at the PDF with edits left in, you'll see words like "Transmogrify" crossed out all through it. I'm sure Hobbes could have put him up to it.
I thought the principle of a working HDCP system was the combination of a valid display adapter and a valid graphics card (Feel free to let me know what I'm missing). One of the requirements for valid display adapters is that they are DVI. This probably excludes a very large portion of the market so I wouldn't expect HDCP to become a reality for quite a while. I don't think many people would accept having to purchase a new monitor as an acceptable cost.