You're doing it wrong. You should be increasing the DPI setting in your operating system, which will let you increase the size of things but will let them have far more detail. This should lead to a better browsing experience because the text will be more legible.
And in Firefox (and presumable other browsers), and Open Office, you can hold CTRL and Scroll up/down (with mouse wheel) to adjust size of the text on the page.
Personally I don't have very good eye sight (and studies have showed that working with small text wears you out faster and lowers your focus) so I prefer to have comfortable size when I read/write. Running 1680*1050 on a 22'' widescreen at the moment (okay so it isn't really very big), got about 133% font size set (running Windows 7) and have most webpages I frequent sized up quite a bit. For the most part it works fine, though I admit the UI of Windows leaves much to be desired, especially in regards to setting comfortable size on the various elements.
P.S. It might be worth mentioning that I have a friend who I converted to having larger font size and stuff and he claims his headaches got a lot better when he wasn't sitting around straining to read small text all day.
Arguing that game rules applied to art isn't art is just as absurd a line of argument - it doesn't matter if it's a game, if the content is art, the product itself is artistic.
I would go so far as to claim that "Art" is just a word and that whether or not video games should be "allowed" to use that tag is a debate on the verge of being without meaning. Personally I enjoy music, books, movies, and yes; computer games. If the things I like can be classified as art, proper art, true art, or any other constructed sub-category, is not something that enters into my mind when I am busy enjoying whatever it is I am devoting time to at that particular moment.
Roger Ebert seems to have bound himself deeply to his personal definition of what art should be and is desperately grasping at straws to try and convince others that he is right. Creating, and trying to enforce rules, for what constitute art is the goal of a pedantic bureaucrat without the capacity to just enjoy.
Would that suggest, then, that if an observer and not player of such game - with no interest in victory for the player - appreciates it, that it is then art?
Art is whatever I say it is! *smack* Obey my authority!
Well, FWIW, the system has worked in so far as there is no scene release of AC2 yet. Didn't see that coming; I figured that whatever Ubisoft would do, it'd be trivially cracked in a few days at most. Nope.
And all they needed to do was create a game that was unplayable out of the box; pure genius.
Because judges aren't generally empowered to prevent a case from going to trial because they don't believe the facts alleged. A judge can prevent a case from going to trial because the facts alleged, if viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, don't support a legal cause of action.
I shall refrain from passing judgement upon this case or the alleged victim until the girl has been satisfactory examined by a neutral party with the knowledge (and possibly lab) required to study this case properly. This may or may not be a false claim; but it is easy to jump to conclusions. I believe that dismissing a case simply by gut instinct is to risk perpetrating a great crime against the potential victim.
It's not that all state employees are terrible, it's that they're just not accountable for their performance, and it's hard to stay sharp when you don't really have to answer to anyone.
Speaking somewhat from personal experience even if you want, wish and are able to do a good job, or better than what you are doing, interlocking levels of bureaucracy and departmental hierarchies will kill whatever soul and will to live you might have.
(My experience is that larger corporations and government have similar ratios of useless employees.)
My experience is that such useless employees tend to accumulate in middle management making life miserable for workers and customers alike. Not to imply that there aren't useless employees among workers or higher administrators; it's just harder to hide incompetence when you either have to do actual work or make actual decisions.
The author of the ars article, Ben Kuchera, purposely never mentioned this and made some hand-waving comments about how he'd round up some beta users who had negative comments about the service
PC Perspective may have broken the End User Licensing Agreement, a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and probably annoyed OnLive to no end when the site borrowed someone's beta account for a detailed write-up on the performance of the service, but with the testing done far outside the beta's supported area, the write-up has caused no small amount of controversy.
The final, production version of OnLive promises to adapt to your Internet connection and location every time you connect, but for now each beta account is linked to a single OnLive location, configured to your ISP and the client you're using. "If you change any of these factors, OnLive Beta may not even run, or if it does, the lag and/or graphics performance may render games unplayable," the company explains. "OnLive will try to detect these conditions and warn you, but when you are using OnLive in a different location, you are not providing us with usable test data."
The fact that Ryan Shrout was outside that area means, according to OnLive, there was no possibly way to give him a good experience. "The reason location is so critical is because of the speed of light. If you are more than 1,000 miles from an OnLive data center, then the round trip communications delay ('ping' time) between your home and OnLive will be too long for fast-action video games." It's also a matter of optimization for your particular situation. "Your Beta account will only connect to the data center it was originally assigned to. So, if you are assigned to our West Coast data center and then try your Beta account from the Midwest or East Coast, you'll find the lag impaired to the point where most games are unplayable. And, depending on how your Beta account was configured for the characteristics of your home ISP, you may see degraded image quality or controller/mouse performance on a different ISP."
We heard from many beta testers after our story went live, but few were willing to speak on the record... for the obvious reasons. One user did agree to give us his take on the service, provided we keep his anonymity.
From the Ars article. Seems like the Ars article mentioned it and specified that their comments was from ONE beta tester.
This only seems to happen for products that are effectively obsolete, and as a way to increase exposure for new products (e.g. Bioshock as you mentioned.
Don't know what you mean by "obsolete", but I got Bioshock during christmas sale for about 4.67€ and Dead Space for 6£, both gave me a good gaming experience I would say, and both, at least Dead Space, is relatively new. A mate got Arkham Asylum during the same sale, 33€ (I think it was) down from 49€. Personally I don't buy second hand games, but I'll happily buy games when they have a discount on Steam.
I don't think I have used a library since high school. Currently I average about a dozen books bought each year, maybe a few more, some hardcover and some paperbacks. Most of my friends with an interest in literature average about the same.
As for e-readers I would claim that the main problem right now is that it's still a new technology lacking proper refinement. I have no doubt that over the next couple of decades the readers themselves and the underlying tech, software and services will drastically improve. Feel fairly certain that by the end of this decade I will have purchased a reader and use that for much of the literature I'd be interested in. The current level of readers on the market isn't quite there yet for me to get one, but as I state; I feel certain that they will get there eventually, at which point reading "books" on e-readers will become commonplace.
As a Norwegian I would say that what you descripe is more or less what we have here; Social Democracy. Interestingly enough when it comes to land rights all land ultimately belongs to the nation; yet individuals and companies have various rights to use and administer the property. The only place I know we have something like a HOA (Home Owners Association) is for appartment buildings/complexes and what they can or can't do is severly limited by the confines of the law. As far as lawn goes I have not yet heard about anyone having to maintain theirs in any particular or mandated way. Property value is of course interesting, but enforcing arbitrary standards for appearance isn't part of our way of doing things.
I wonder what his motivation for lying like about it was.
Duh, Paranoia 101; The guy was obviously a covert operative from Microsofts Intelligence Service put there to discredit views that criticize Windows. As my conspiracy teacher told me "Never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by malicious intent from our evil alien overlords!"
Does anybody actually believe that we have progressed significantly in our use of tech to educate? I sure don't.
As far as organizing and accessing schedules and course information it definitely have. When I attended university a few years back we used It's Learning a lot. It gave us access to the lecture notes, sub-forums for specific courses, ability to send messages and organize study groups, listed possible sources of material, and we could deliver our papers through the system as well. All in all that I would call that a definite boon for many students.
Of course I would happily claim that computers, as regards to incorporation into lectures and classes themselves, could be done better. At the present time I think one of the major problems is a lack of good software tailored for the job. Interactive Educational Software is in many ways a new thing, little resources are dedicated to researching and developing such tools, and few good examples exist to day; Immune Attack apparently being one of the exceptions. In the end, I believe, that it is a matter of technological progress, and perhaps some generational shifts among the teaching staff, before computers can truly become an enhancing part of the educational process.
UM, I thought the plan was to scoop them up and use them for fuel, ie. you WANT those hydrogen atoms to pile up in front of the ship.
As I understand it for a Ramscoop type system you want those hydrogen atoms. However a ramscoop is meant to travel at sub-lightspeed. Presumably for faster than light you might want something that phases out, teleports, or whatever; to avoid hitting a small meteor and getting a large hole in your ship (I am presuming that hitting a rock at 500.000 m/s is bad).
I think we need to abolish the idea of "too big to fail". If a company can't handle it, they can't handle it, they deserve to be shut down, and everyone invested in it can lose all the money they invested in that risk, and everyone stuck owing debts to it can finally be debt free.
That's class warfare! It's the duty of the working, and middle, classes to absorb the risk and losses, cushioning the rich against potential bankruptcy. After all it's the corporations and banks that make the world go around! (and soon they'll demand a nickel from everyone for every rotation).
On a totally unrelated note I am going to live on fat and sugar from now on so I can get Too Fat To Die!
I find the growing field of interactive education, or educational tools, interesting. Personally I have do problems believing that a well constructed narrative combined with virtual tasks of various types; can help stimulate the mind. Such a system by mimicking mechanics of games and other forms of entertainment could potentially be able to keep the attention and focus of a student for far longer than a single teacher could ever hope to.
Projects like Immune Attack can be helpful in increasing our understanding and I wish the developers luck in developing their next program, whatever it might be.
Here is the link to the game.
They are asking for donations for "ll monies that are donated are returned to game development and further research in the field of learning technologies. And "Immune Attack is free to download for educational purposes."
And one could add that the more people that use Linux distributions, and the more that buy support from people proficient in the development and maintenance of various systems and distributions; the better it is for Linux in general.
Ah, hate to break it to you but the Slashdot audience is getting older, so the joke is no longer, 'We're all single and can't get laid.' The joke is now, 'We're all married and can't get laid.' Please do keep up.
Soon a growing portion will be "This page was bookmarked on my dad's computer; what does 'laid' mean?!"
There's a conventional statistic among publishers, to the effect that every book sold is read by four people. This is usually mentioned in a context that makes it clear that there's a problem.
Thinking back on my own experiences growing up me and my friends bought a lot of books. Usually one of us would buy a book, if it was any good we'd recommend it our friends and they'd take turns reading it. With only very few exceptions (like special hardcover collectors versions) books purchased by one ended up belonging to the group (I have even re-bought several bought later because my original copy was read to devastation or ended up in one of the others bookcase's). One of the benefits of this system was that we, as a group, could read a large number of books far surpassing the purchasing power of any one single individual. If I had to purchase all the books I was going to read myself, the amount of authors I would gain familiarity with would be diminished by several factors.
I'm going to pay. I read the NYTimes online everyday; a habit I started more than 10 years ago. The sites/shows you have listed are really just aggregators. Someone needs to be there, hit the pavement and get the story. This article [nytimes.com] is a great example of good reporting. I think it is worth value. If I have to pay a few cents for it... so be it.
The question is how many of the employees and journalists paid by the NYT are actually out there, hitting the pavement and getting the story. And how many are basically just dead weight writing bullcrap to fill space.
Instead, I think NYT has a terrible business mechanism that is trapped too much 30 years ago to capitalize on emerging media.
Probably many newspapers have a lot of people, material and space that they pay for that this digital age simply won't be able to cover the cost of. The revenue generated online simply won't cover them running a big news machine the way they are used to, so they try to hold on to an outdated model out of nostalgia and a stubborn belief that it's not them its the internet and all those damn kids.
Slashdot Mirror
You're doing it wrong. You should be increasing the DPI setting in your operating system, which will let you increase the size of things but will let them have far more detail. This should lead to a better browsing experience because the text will be more legible.
And in Firefox (and presumable other browsers), and Open Office, you can hold CTRL and Scroll up/down (with mouse wheel) to adjust size of the text on the page.
Personally I don't have very good eye sight (and studies have showed that working with small text wears you out faster and lowers your focus) so I prefer to have comfortable size when I read/write. Running 1680*1050 on a 22'' widescreen at the moment (okay so it isn't really very big), got about 133% font size set (running Windows 7) and have most webpages I frequent sized up quite a bit. For the most part it works fine, though I admit the UI of Windows leaves much to be desired, especially in regards to setting comfortable size on the various elements.
P.S. It might be worth mentioning that I have a friend who I converted to having larger font size and stuff and he claims his headaches got a lot better when he wasn't sitting around straining to read small text all day.
Arguing that game rules applied to art isn't art is just as absurd a line of argument - it doesn't matter if it's a game, if the content is art, the product itself is artistic.
I would go so far as to claim that "Art" is just a word and that whether or not video games should be "allowed" to use that tag is a debate on the verge of being without meaning. Personally I enjoy music, books, movies, and yes; computer games. If the things I like can be classified as art, proper art, true art, or any other constructed sub-category, is not something that enters into my mind when I am busy enjoying whatever it is I am devoting time to at that particular moment.
Roger Ebert seems to have bound himself deeply to his personal definition of what art should be and is desperately grasping at straws to try and convince others that he is right. Creating, and trying to enforce rules, for what constitute art is the goal of a pedantic bureaucrat without the capacity to just enjoy.
Would that suggest, then, that if an observer and not player of such game - with no interest in victory for the player - appreciates it, that it is then art?
Art is whatever I say it is! *smack* Obey my authority!
Well, FWIW, the system has worked in so far as there is no scene release of AC2 yet. Didn't see that coming; I figured that whatever Ubisoft would do, it'd be trivially cracked in a few days at most. Nope.
And all they needed to do was create a game that was unplayable out of the box; pure genius.
Because judges aren't generally empowered to prevent a case from going to trial because they don't believe the facts alleged. A judge can prevent a case from going to trial because the facts alleged, if viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, don't support a legal cause of action.
I shall refrain from passing judgement upon this case or the alleged victim until the girl has been satisfactory examined by a neutral party with the knowledge (and possibly lab) required to study this case properly. This may or may not be a false claim; but it is easy to jump to conclusions. I believe that dismissing a case simply by gut instinct is to risk perpetrating a great crime against the potential victim.
And lutfisk *shudder*
Sweden and Norway have actually been united as one country [wikipedia.org] at various times in the past.
A personal union with the same monarch and foreign office. Separate administrations and constitutions. NOT one country.
It's not that all state employees are terrible, it's that they're just not accountable for their performance, and it's hard to stay sharp when you don't really have to answer to anyone.
Speaking somewhat from personal experience even if you want, wish and are able to do a good job, or better than what you are doing, interlocking levels of bureaucracy and departmental hierarchies will kill whatever soul and will to live you might have.
(My experience is that larger corporations and government have similar ratios of useless employees.)
My experience is that such useless employees tend to accumulate in middle management making life miserable for workers and customers alike. Not to imply that there aren't useless employees among workers or higher administrators; it's just harder to hide incompetence when you either have to do actual work or make actual decisions.
The author of the ars article, Ben Kuchera, purposely never mentioned this and made some hand-waving comments about how he'd round up some beta users who had negative comments about the service
PC Perspective may have broken the End User Licensing Agreement, a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and probably annoyed OnLive to no end when the site borrowed someone's beta account for a detailed write-up on the performance of the service, but with the testing done far outside the beta's supported area, the write-up has caused no small amount of controversy.
The final, production version of OnLive promises to adapt to your Internet connection and location every time you connect, but for now each beta account is linked to a single OnLive location, configured to your ISP and the client you're using. "If you change any of these factors, OnLive Beta may not even run, or if it does, the lag and/or graphics performance may render games unplayable," the company explains. "OnLive will try to detect these conditions and warn you, but when you are using OnLive in a different location, you are not providing us with usable test data." The fact that Ryan Shrout was outside that area means, according to OnLive, there was no possibly way to give him a good experience. "The reason location is so critical is because of the speed of light. If you are more than 1,000 miles from an OnLive data center, then the round trip communications delay ('ping' time) between your home and OnLive will be too long for fast-action video games." It's also a matter of optimization for your particular situation. "Your Beta account will only connect to the data center it was originally assigned to. So, if you are assigned to our West Coast data center and then try your Beta account from the Midwest or East Coast, you'll find the lag impaired to the point where most games are unplayable. And, depending on how your Beta account was configured for the characteristics of your home ISP, you may see degraded image quality or controller/mouse performance on a different ISP."
We heard from many beta testers after our story went live, but few were willing to speak on the record... for the obvious reasons. One user did agree to give us his take on the service, provided we keep his anonymity.
From the Ars article.
Seems like the Ars article mentioned it and specified that their comments was from ONE beta tester.
This only seems to happen for products that are effectively obsolete, and as a way to increase exposure for new products (e.g. Bioshock as you mentioned.
Don't know what you mean by "obsolete", but I got Bioshock during christmas sale for about 4.67€ and Dead Space for 6£, both gave me a good gaming experience I would say, and both, at least Dead Space, is relatively new. A mate got Arkham Asylum during the same sale, 33€ (I think it was) down from 49€. Personally I don't buy second hand games, but I'll happily buy games when they have a discount on Steam.
I don't think I have used a library since high school. Currently I average about a dozen books bought each year, maybe a few more, some hardcover and some paperbacks. Most of my friends with an interest in literature average about the same.
As for e-readers I would claim that the main problem right now is that it's still a new technology lacking proper refinement. I have no doubt that over the next couple of decades the readers themselves and the underlying tech, software and services will drastically improve. Feel fairly certain that by the end of this decade I will have purchased a reader and use that for much of the literature I'd be interested in. The current level of readers on the market isn't quite there yet for me to get one, but as I state; I feel certain that they will get there eventually, at which point reading "books" on e-readers will become commonplace.
Is that communism? If so, I want more of that :-)
As a Norwegian I would say that what you descripe is more or less what we have here; Social Democracy. Interestingly enough when it comes to land rights all land ultimately belongs to the nation; yet individuals and companies have various rights to use and administer the property. The only place I know we have something like a HOA (Home Owners Association) is for appartment buildings/complexes and what they can or can't do is severly limited by the confines of the law. As far as lawn goes I have not yet heard about anyone having to maintain theirs in any particular or mandated way. Property value is of course interesting, but enforcing arbitrary standards for appearance isn't part of our way of doing things.
I wonder what his motivation for lying like about it was.
Duh, Paranoia 101; The guy was obviously a covert operative from Microsofts Intelligence Service put there to discredit views that criticize Windows. As my conspiracy teacher told me "Never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by malicious intent from our evil alien overlords!"
Does anybody actually believe that we have progressed significantly in our use of tech to educate? I sure don't.
As far as organizing and accessing schedules and course information it definitely have. When I attended university a few years back we used It's Learning a lot. It gave us access to the lecture notes, sub-forums for specific courses, ability to send messages and organize study groups, listed possible sources of material, and we could deliver our papers through the system as well. All in all that I would call that a definite boon for many students.
Of course I would happily claim that computers, as regards to incorporation into lectures and classes themselves, could be done better. At the present time I think one of the major problems is a lack of good software tailored for the job. Interactive Educational Software is in many ways a new thing, little resources are dedicated to researching and developing such tools, and few good examples exist to day; Immune Attack apparently being one of the exceptions. In the end, I believe, that it is a matter of technological progress, and perhaps some generational shifts among the teaching staff, before computers can truly become an enhancing part of the educational process.
UM, I thought the plan was to scoop them up and use them for fuel, ie. you WANT those hydrogen atoms to pile up in front of the ship.
As I understand it for a Ramscoop type system you want those hydrogen atoms. However a ramscoop is meant to travel at sub-lightspeed. Presumably for faster than light you might want something that phases out, teleports, or whatever; to avoid hitting a small meteor and getting a large hole in your ship (I am presuming that hitting a rock at 500.000 m/s is bad).
I think we need to abolish the idea of "too big to fail". If a company can't handle it, they can't handle it, they deserve to be shut down, and everyone invested in it can lose all the money they invested in that risk, and everyone stuck owing debts to it can finally be debt free.
That's class warfare! It's the duty of the working, and middle, classes to absorb the risk and losses, cushioning the rich against potential bankruptcy. After all it's the corporations and banks that make the world go around! (and soon they'll demand a nickel from everyone for every rotation).
On a totally unrelated note I am going to live on fat and sugar from now on so I can get Too Fat To Die!
I find the growing field of interactive education, or educational tools, interesting. Personally I have do problems believing that a well constructed narrative combined with virtual tasks of various types; can help stimulate the mind. Such a system by mimicking mechanics of games and other forms of entertainment could potentially be able to keep the attention and focus of a student for far longer than a single teacher could ever hope to.
Projects like Immune Attack can be helpful in increasing our understanding and I wish the developers luck in developing their next program, whatever it might be.
Here is the link to the game.
They are asking for donations for "ll monies that are donated are returned to game development and further research in the field of learning technologies. And "Immune Attack is free to download for educational purposes."
And one could add that the more people that use Linux distributions, and the more that buy support from people proficient in the development and maintenance of various systems and distributions; the better it is for Linux in general.
Ah, hate to break it to you but the Slashdot audience is getting older, so the joke is no longer, 'We're all single and can't get laid.' The joke is now, 'We're all married and can't get laid.' Please do keep up.
Soon a growing portion will be "This page was bookmarked on my dad's computer; what does 'laid' mean?!"
..think about, what hundreds of thousands of years of evolution optimized you for. Can’t get any better.
That's were genetic engineering comes in. Bye bye evolution, hello Human 2.3 BETA.
There's a conventional statistic among publishers, to the effect that every book sold is read by four people. This is usually mentioned in a context that makes it clear that there's a problem.
Thinking back on my own experiences growing up me and my friends bought a lot of books. Usually one of us would buy a book, if it was any good we'd recommend it our friends and they'd take turns reading it. With only very few exceptions (like special hardcover collectors versions) books purchased by one ended up belonging to the group (I have even re-bought several bought later because my original copy was read to devastation or ended up in one of the others bookcase's). One of the benefits of this system was that we, as a group, could read a large number of books far surpassing the purchasing power of any one single individual. If I had to purchase all the books I was going to read myself, the amount of authors I would gain familiarity with would be diminished by several factors.
I'm going to pay. I read the NYTimes online everyday; a habit I started more than 10 years ago. The sites/shows you have listed are really just aggregators. Someone needs to be there, hit the pavement and get the story. This article [nytimes.com] is a great example of good reporting. I think it is worth value. If I have to pay a few cents for it... so be it.
The question is how many of the employees and journalists paid by the NYT are actually out there, hitting the pavement and getting the story. And how many are basically just dead weight writing bullcrap to fill space.
Instead, I think NYT has a terrible business mechanism that is trapped too much 30 years ago to capitalize on emerging media.
Probably many newspapers have a lot of people, material and space that they pay for that this digital age simply won't be able to cover the cost of. The revenue generated online simply won't cover them running a big news machine the way they are used to, so they try to hold on to an outdated model out of nostalgia and a stubborn belief that it's not them its the internet and all those damn kids.