Agreed. Instead of surfing the net from work, everyone will be surfing the net from home. All the "Net traffic has been shifting to the suburbs" talk is just stating obvious: have you had a look at flickr or youtube or *puke* myspace lately? Plus, anyone on here who claims they've never used bittorrent is lyin' like a politician. All that crap (and other streaming media) gets blocked at work by a lot of companies, so if folks vpn in from home to work, it'll stay blocked.
Speculation tag indeed; I hate journalism when you don't have a story.
Oh, and Liberal or Conservative, it's all the same mess. The Liberals were a bunch of criminals and it's likely the Conservatives will end up that way if they stay as long as the Liberals did as well. Welcome to politics. These days, one party only does something because the other party doesn't want to. Remember why you hated the popular kids who ran for student council? Yeah, they 'grow up' some day too. Half the reason we have half the problems we have today is that the people in charge everywhere are the people who want to be in charge, not necessarily the people who should be in charge.
The problem with science and global warming is that it has become so heavily politicized that it's pointless to try and follow and / or agree / disagree with either 'side'. Every 'report' that's issued in either direction really looks to me as nothing more than a giant new marketing campaign. I take the same stand with global warming as I do about my own purchasing, eating, consuption:
It makes sense to try and live cleaner and more efficiently. It's cheaper, and you eat better (less processed foods, half of which I'm convinced are petroleum products lol) and feel better.
We know that people commit suicide by sticking the hose in the tailpipe, so how can that be good for the general population even dilluted in the atmosphere? The less of it that goes up, the better for all of us. Why can't someone in 'charge' just say something like that for a change, and then lead by example. In business it's called the 'halo effect'. "We have to rely less on middle-eastern oil" does not say "we have to rely less on oil."
Oh, the sweet teenage angst on here whenever someone says something nice about Microsoft.
Welcome to running a business, you want to make sure you stay on top. Addressing an earlier post, MS does not try to create MS Zombies in schools, good teachers (whom I observe weekly) leverage whatever technology they have to enable content that helps them to instruct. Then there are other teachers who tell their students that the phases of the moon are caused by the shadow of the earth on the moon. I saw this being taught on a Mac, so obviously that's Apple's fault.
Honestly about 5 years ago I would have jumped on the "obviously this is false" slashdot bandwagon, but the honest to goodness truth is that things have gotten better. I have friends who are currently dedicating two years of their lives to travel around the world to various Global Giving projects. I've been trying to look at my life and figure out how I could do something like that and make it work. That Bill Gates has the resources to do it is one thing, the fact that he does do it - no matter what people here describe as a small percentage of what he's worth - is excellent. The halo effect means that whatever the boss does reflects on the company. To most people on the planet MS is Bill Gates, and so the impression is now good. You can add that XP has been an awesome product with an excellent run (that's not over) that has elevated the company (compared to previous offerings), and you get a much better impression.
And anyways, for the haters and the teen angst-kids here, if you don't use Windows then who cares, don't whine. They're not forcing you to just like they're not forcing me to run Windows Server instead of Linux (which is running) on my server.
For all you folks State-side and worldwide who may not know Telus, I'm just doing you the favour of filling you in: this is just a cash-making scheme, filling in the void caused by many people like me becoming so completely fed up with their terrible customer service and illegible bills that we'd rather use tin-can phones. So we severed all ties (mobile and wired) and now live happily in Telus-free zones (e.g., like my house). The extra revenue had to come from somewhere... pun intended.
Moral discussions aside, I wouldn't be surprised if the numpties that run the company are looking into production as the next step; then your telus web-mail will have Telus-pr0n banner-ads, and the ppv offerings will only be from Telus studios. Customers will be getting it rammed down their throats, pun intended.
I'm in the same boat as you. Our company just celebrated its 20th anniversary this past year, so it's not like we haven't been doing this stuff for a while. I think I will patent a method for opening a bag of chips that doesn't result in the bag exploding and throwing chips all over the place.
One more comment about That Guy: he's even less of a threat to the media corps because he never actually watches or listens to all the crap he downloads. He's a hoarder. He's got tons of crap and it's all immaculately organized, but because there's so much, there's no physical way (in this time continuum) that he'd be able to get through all of it unless he took some time out from downloading. Technically the media companies haven't lost any money on him because he never even sees any of it! The only people that lose out to the hoarder are the guys selling the bandwidth. They could be selling him out to the AA's purely because they're peeved at the amount of crap going down his wire.
Oh, That Guy's mom loses out too. She never gets grandkids because That Guy spends all his time lookin' thru tubes on teh intarwebs and never meets that special someone.:)
Pacific? Agenda? Because cities like Waterloo, Ottawa-Gatineau, Dundee, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Tallinn, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear are close to Asia and the Pacific? I think you've answered your own intelligence question... and intelligence is further confirmed by this being modded insightful.
Totally agreed here. The main reason I'm legally buying only DJ tracks in unrestricted formats to play when I go out to a party and not any other records in styles of music that I like to listen to is that the music industry (as they want it to be) is churning out really nothing but crap recently, which leads me not to buy it. Instead, I'm buying best of Phil Collins, Jazz records (e.g., Joshua Redman, or CDs right from the artists at shows), and lots of classical. How do you sell more? Make a better product, regardless of the delivery method. There's a reason I'll buy a Bjork album and not a Paris Hilton album - yeah, they're both girls, but one wrote a really cool piece of music, and the other was given a chance to further stroke her own ego on an album because some record company product manager decided there would be a really good revenue stream driven by a fanbase due to her pre-existing notoriety. I will hang myself the day I buy a record resulting from a large overblown Karaoke competition (*cough* American Idol *cough*).
Also agree here. As another proud Albertan I pride myself on being a curmudgeon, but I'd call myself a practical and progressive one at least, and I don't work in the Oil industry. I drive a Corolla and take my entire mobile DJ Rig (2 turntables, case with mixer, cables and other stuff, records, monitor and amp, rented speakers and tripods) on the road no problem. I take the same Corolla skiing (haven't managed to spin out and fly off the Sunshine Road yet), mountain biking, rock climbing etc on lots of backcountry roads. All involve lots of gear. It's handled the crappy winter roads we get occasionally (anymore) without missing a beat, I see more SUVs in the ditch. 4WD/AWD is not safer, it just lets you accelerate faster on the slick; it's how you use the technology of course that's the ticket. I don't even have ABS. I commend you on getting a hybrid SUV: they will get you roughly the same gas mileage as my Corolla, which is impressive. Think about the kind of mileage (kilometerage?) you'd get out of a hybrid the size of my car...
We bought an older house for Calgary last year (built 1987), and one of the first things we did was replace the furnace with a more efficient one. This year we'll be doing more energy upgrades. Yes, this will cost money, but my bills go down so it must eventually pay off, and I feel better at using less. It bugs me to no end to see neighbours who weekly produce 4-6 bags of garbage, when our entire household can't fill one, even when we have parties.
This comment is made elsewhere in this discussion: Nobody wants to live in a dump. Choosing a hybrid or low consumption vehicle is great. Whether it affects the climate or not (I don't see how it can be ignored), nobody wants to walk around breathing like they're following a diesel pickup. People are stupid if they refuse to help out for political / business reasons. How about the practicality of having a clean house? I don't want to come home to filth, and small efforts make a big difference in coming home to my house, not to mention removing fire and health hazards like garbage and dust. Same thing should apply to all of us living on the planet. It's the only one we've got, better safe than sorry, because this one doesn't have an insurance policy that I'm aware of.
One console can't turn it around? *cough* Final Fantasy VII *cough* I can't count the number of friends who bought a PS to play that. Too bad #8 turned around and stank up the joint.:)
If MS can attract some more Japanese developers, Sony's PS3 will be in some serious trouble. Cheaper price-point, similar capabilities, and it plays HD-DVD so you get your HD-picture feature checklist fix... the 360 could do for HD-DVD what Sony wants the PS3 to do for Blu-Ray and then we could witness the most awesome product planning backfire in history. One can only hope, just for the comedy.:)
As funny as your sarcasm is, I'd seriously side with the megacorp on this one. Greedy dorks can be much worse than the megacorp they're targeting. They just try to rely on good press for the 'little guy.'
Firstly, if they sold it (instead of just offering tennancy) would they have to call it "New Sealand?" Furthermore, is there a state-sanctioned religion? Do they celebrate festivus? I won't bid unless I get to pin the leader.
Sealand is awesome. It renews my desire to declare myself holy ground to avoid income tax.
The good news is that there are new heroes every once in a while, but you won't see three or four in a year. Rocky and Indy weren't invented even a year apart, eh?
In recent memory I can think of a couple of good flix (not that my opinion counts) that used new characters and were just a fun romp of an adventure escape alla Indy. The Mummy (and sequel), Sahara, Treasure Hunters, Pirates movies and even the Tomb Raider (although that characer pre-existed) films were pretty fun to watch in that kind of way. The new ideas do pop up every once in a while, but like I say they're not going to be five per year. Hollywood seems to hit its creativity saturation point fairly easily.:) That's the great thing about an Indiana Jones, they only come up once in a while. I just hope they keep with the feel of the first three: the last thing I'd want to see would be a "Blockbuster" Indy (to me Blockbuster == Blocksuxx0r;). I remember seeing a revival of Temple of Doom in a local cinema a couple of years ago and being just enthralled with the awesome matte backgrounds (like the Indian village from the cliff at night). What a great feel!
Some Hollywood directors are starting to do what I've thought they should be doing for a long time: taking cues from existing sources to visualize. Examples done well, X-Men, Lord of the Rings, Bourne series (although they don't match the books they are very good action spy flics in their own right), Batman Begins. Of course it's possible for even that to go oh so wrong as with Daredevil, The Da Vinci Code, The Punisher, Harry Potter 4. Hollywood tends to be particularly adept at picking a good story and just killing it by blockbustering it.
I don't mind sequels to good films as long as they're done well as in the original like Pirates, Bourne, X-Men; and unlike Star Wars (the 'first' three), slasher flicks in general, Bill & Ted, etc...
What a bunch of hypocritical ninconpoopery. Although, that's only to be expected when reading SlashDot and Microsoft in the same sentence. I was impressed to see a few people actually backing the 3v1l suxx0rz, however. I haven't read all the posts and this one won't get read either, but I couldn't not put something down.
Bill Buxton recently spoke at CSCW 2006 and had a great talk. One of the things he talked about was his recent hiring by Microsft Research. He took a lot of flak when he moved there, but here he presented the reasons he joined. Basically, Microsoft funds and embraces research, and they encourage people to publish what they find. This can be seen in reality when you look at the mass of publications that come from or are touched by Microsoft Research at many of the academic conferences I attend regularly (like SIGCHI, CSCW, UIST, etc...). I have known many people who have done many internships at MSR, why would they go back if it is so terrible?
A good example of research personified is the new side-bar in Vista. This idea was not stolen from anywhere. It was originally published here and in that paper you'll see the original prototype was written by a research intern, who was inspired by work he and I were doing together at the time in our graduate programs (and that work is cited by this paper as well). Am I peeved that MS hasn't bought out my MSc Thesis? No! Is he peeved that MSR furthered and then included his prototype in a shipping product several years later? No! Most of the numpties here would be peeved, though. Whatever. We work at the same company now, and I can honestly say it's a discussion we've never had.
It was amazing to see the zealots in the CSCW community turn on Buxton. Buxton is long resepected and almost revered in this research area, but the overpowering hate of MS broke through even his passionate and relevant points. It's almost as bad as religious extremism. During the question period, one attendee called out MS (using Bill Buxton as the face) for not releasing easy ways for him to get projects he was working on in after school programs with kids onto the XBox. "Why can't I compile and run this stuff on an XBox without paying lots of money to MS? If MS is so great, why don't they enable people to use their stuff?" Bill said "well geez, contact me after the conference and I'll look into it." Anyways, it's unrelated to Bill, how about this??? And a month after his talk, no less. MS knows that enabling people on their systems is the way to go, and they work towards that. Slashdot will accuse them of stealing the idea from OSS, I can't wait.
(Now) classic Slashdot riff: "PS3 is teh suxx0rz! My XBOX 360 pWns! Gonna get a Wii too!" followed by a post in the next article by the same person "M$ is teh suxx0rz! Evil evil bad horrible!" Again, if you don't want to use MS products, then don't! It's that simple! I run Windows because I don't have to think about it. It has the tools I want, accessible and running. I run a Linux file server, because it's inexpensive (cost: a bunch of hard drives and an old pc I'm not using) and it works just for what I need. This is hardly Gap or Nike or Enron or McKesson (personal experience dictates I say that here:D) we're talking about, here.
A point about OS's. The classic definition of OS has changed and evolved over the last few years (greatly simplified): An OS initially was a human operating a loom. Then it evolved to a series of cards running a loom. Then it was a bunch of cards running a census tabulator. Then it was a bunch of cards running a bunch of vaccuum tubes (pop!). Then it was a bunch of cards running big mainframes. Then it was an incr
As the only purveyor of your religion, I say declare yourself as holy ground so you can be exempt from property taxes. That would mean that technically you should be able to avoid ever paying income tax again. "I am the human temple of common sense and decency!"
You're not alone, as you know. How can billions of Buddhists all be wrong?! And there's no Jesus or Mohammed there.
they sold out the first day and they're selling on eBay for more. That just says to me there's a lot of numpties out there, but I digress. Every time I read something like this about Sony, I just get the Price is Right "you just lost, hahaha" jingle going through my head. It's like a sitcom with those morons. As a later post says however, Nintendo really is taking the high-road on this.
Homer: "I'm just gonna start chomping my jaw like this. If that *chomp* blueberry pie gets *chomp* in the way, then I'm *chomp* not responsible for *chomp* what's going to happen..." It's more than likely that even with his limited capacity for reason, Homer knows exactly what he's doing.
On the other hand:
This suing everyone is just becoming ridiculous. This case sounds a little like stripping Kif Kroker of his rank just for being there when Zapp Brannigan attacks the neutrals (not saying the RIAA is neutral, I'd use another N word here...). Whose fault is it really?
The buck's just gonna get passed around in a circle, and with the grounds for litigation I see getting weaker and weaker, it's just bound to get worse. The next step will be Kazaa suing the lady's ISP for providing the bandwidth for this lady that enabled her to abuse their good faith software to break the law. Then the ISP will sue the lady for violating her terms of use agreement and using the connection they provided to her in good faith to break the law. Ah, the circle of life is complete.
someone had to do it. Thanks to the 'M$ suxx0rz!' crowd for all their creativity as always. Great work, kids. Here's word from the 'alternate lifestyle' that the same counter-arguments keep popping up:
you don't use windows, so stop caring.
The vast majority of users on the planet don't know what virtualization is let alone how to run it (I try to think of even siblings trying to figure out what that is and it makes me batty)
you don't use windows, so stop caring. If you whine that "meow, I'll have to support my family's computers and now I can't run a VM, meow" you'll either warez it (like you always have as your stand against the MAN) or you'll make this oft-rumoured and touted 'jump to FOSS' I keep hearing about.
Hey hey! Apple sells their OS too! Oh wait, but it's built on a UNIX core. Well, then that's okay. But dude, they're like totally selling Linux! But it's more 'user-friendly' than Windows. Apple's historically had pretty closed systems (even in hardware), and I don't hear any complaints about that. Oh, you wouldn't want to bash St. Steve and the iPod dream.
If M$ has been selling 'immature' technology all along, then why has XP had the run that it has? "oh dude, you have to patch it every two weeks!" Oh hey! It's called support. The last time I tried to get support from the "Linux community", it sounded an awful lot like this board.
Yes, I run a Windows machine. Because I like it too! *gasp* Wow! Yes, I run a Linux file server with a nice terabyte RAID 5 file system too (well, roughly a terabyte...close enough). I like that too!! Is it because I'm worried about 'windoze beign teh sUx?' No, it's called safe backup. Hardware does die.
If you want to complain about Vista, complain about something real. I dislike that when I install it, it automatically turns on a feature that defragments as I go or when I'm idle. It is using my hardware and wearing on it without my permission, and I didn't have the patience to go and figure out how to turn it off. There. A real complaint. And a good reason to have the file server backup. For me, Vista isn't to the point that I will install it yet, hence I will not install it, hence I don't care. Before I get modded flame-bait, read your own bullshit, folks.
...I received two phonecalls yesterday: one from my brother and another from another buddy. The content of both messages was simply "Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!" Awesome.:)
Ballz! Poo! LOL! Seriously, that made my morning. I'd buy that crap.;)
PS3 launched, hurray. Hopefully I am not called a 'non-gamer' because I chose to stay in my warm bed after having shut off my PS2 for the evening a scant 8 hours earlier... which was also being played in my nice warm house where I had nachos and pop and everything, oh my! There won't be a PS3 when I get home today! Oh well, I did get a raise because I don't do things like take the day off to play the one game that came out with a currently over-priced system, I'll just turn on the just-as-good (for now) PS2 again. It came in a fancy GT3 box. I bet all the people who waited in line on its launch date are jealous! It pays to wait, you get a limited edition box. Now that's hip.
A reporter has no news to report so digs as hard as he can to find something to make something out of. Oh wait! Just like CNN and the Republican party. John Kerry is evil. Democrats are evil. Ya boo sucks to that.:P
And then the enlightened masses here! Read me: if you uses linux, don't complain because you don't care! Same for you Mac users! (it still amuses me that people here don't bash Apple for "selling" unix or hardware or whatever, but who'm I to complain?
It's MS's bloody software, they can do what they want
Yay a reporter made news because there is no news to talk about
You all use linux or Mac, why do you care?
If you manage a network that dictates Windows, why do you care? You're not buying it...
Weak people, weak. I'm not defending MS, I'm telling you to use some common sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Instead of surfing the net from work, everyone will be surfing the net from home. All the "Net traffic has been shifting to the suburbs" talk is just stating obvious: have you had a look at flickr or youtube or *puke* myspace lately? Plus, anyone on here who claims they've never used bittorrent is lyin' like a politician. All that crap (and other streaming media) gets blocked at work by a lot of companies, so if folks vpn in from home to work, it'll stay blocked.
Speculation tag indeed; I hate journalism when you don't have a story.
Use your postal code at this site, and you can find out how to contact your MP.
Oh, and Liberal or Conservative, it's all the same mess. The Liberals were a bunch of criminals and it's likely the Conservatives will end up that way if they stay as long as the Liberals did as well. Welcome to politics. These days, one party only does something because the other party doesn't want to. Remember why you hated the popular kids who ran for student council? Yeah, they 'grow up' some day too. Half the reason we have half the problems we have today is that the people in charge everywhere are the people who want to be in charge, not necessarily the people who should be in charge.
The problem with science and global warming is that it has become so heavily politicized that it's pointless to try and follow and / or agree / disagree with either 'side'. Every 'report' that's issued in either direction really looks to me as nothing more than a giant new marketing campaign. I take the same stand with global warming as I do about my own purchasing, eating, consuption:
It makes sense to try and live cleaner and more efficiently. It's cheaper, and you eat better (less processed foods, half of which I'm convinced are petroleum products lol) and feel better.
We know that people commit suicide by sticking the hose in the tailpipe, so how can that be good for the general population even dilluted in the atmosphere? The less of it that goes up, the better for all of us. Why can't someone in 'charge' just say something like that for a change, and then lead by example. In business it's called the 'halo effect'. "We have to rely less on middle-eastern oil" does not say "we have to rely less on oil."
Oh, the sweet teenage angst on here whenever someone says something nice about Microsoft.
Welcome to running a business, you want to make sure you stay on top. Addressing an earlier post, MS does not try to create MS Zombies in schools, good teachers (whom I observe weekly) leverage whatever technology they have to enable content that helps them to instruct. Then there are other teachers who tell their students that the phases of the moon are caused by the shadow of the earth on the moon. I saw this being taught on a Mac, so obviously that's Apple's fault.
Honestly about 5 years ago I would have jumped on the "obviously this is false" slashdot bandwagon, but the honest to goodness truth is that things have gotten better. I have friends who are currently dedicating two years of their lives to travel around the world to various Global Giving projects. I've been trying to look at my life and figure out how I could do something like that and make it work. That Bill Gates has the resources to do it is one thing, the fact that he does do it - no matter what people here describe as a small percentage of what he's worth - is excellent. The halo effect means that whatever the boss does reflects on the company. To most people on the planet MS is Bill Gates, and so the impression is now good. You can add that XP has been an awesome product with an excellent run (that's not over) that has elevated the company (compared to previous offerings), and you get a much better impression.
And anyways, for the haters and the teen angst-kids here, if you don't use Windows then who cares, don't whine. They're not forcing you to just like they're not forcing me to run Windows Server instead of Linux (which is running) on my server.
...of friends telling me they've "lost their hard disk" somewhere on their way to meet up with me to work on our project.
For all you folks State-side and worldwide who may not know Telus, I'm just doing you the favour of filling you in: this is just a cash-making scheme, filling in the void caused by many people like me becoming so completely fed up with their terrible customer service and illegible bills that we'd rather use tin-can phones. So we severed all ties (mobile and wired) and now live happily in Telus-free zones (e.g., like my house). The extra revenue had to come from somewhere... pun intended.
Moral discussions aside, I wouldn't be surprised if the numpties that run the company are looking into production as the next step; then your telus web-mail will have Telus-pr0n banner-ads, and the ppv offerings will only be from Telus studios. Customers will be getting it rammed down their throats, pun intended.
I'm in the same boat as you. Our company just celebrated its 20th anniversary this past year, so it's not like we haven't been doing this stuff for a while. I think I will patent a method for opening a bag of chips that doesn't result in the bag exploding and throwing chips all over the place.
One more comment about That Guy: he's even less of a threat to the media corps because he never actually watches or listens to all the crap he downloads. He's a hoarder. He's got tons of crap and it's all immaculately organized, but because there's so much, there's no physical way (in this time continuum) that he'd be able to get through all of it unless he took some time out from downloading. Technically the media companies haven't lost any money on him because he never even sees any of it! The only people that lose out to the hoarder are the guys selling the bandwidth. They could be selling him out to the AA's purely because they're peeved at the amount of crap going down his wire.
Oh, That Guy's mom loses out too. She never gets grandkids because That Guy spends all his time lookin' thru tubes on teh intarwebs and never meets that special someone. :)
Pacific? Agenda? Because cities like Waterloo, Ottawa-Gatineau, Dundee, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Tallinn, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear are close to Asia and the Pacific? I think you've answered your own intelligence question... and intelligence is further confirmed by this being modded insightful.
Totally agreed here. The main reason I'm legally buying only DJ tracks in unrestricted formats to play when I go out to a party and not any other records in styles of music that I like to listen to is that the music industry (as they want it to be) is churning out really nothing but crap recently, which leads me not to buy it. Instead, I'm buying best of Phil Collins, Jazz records (e.g., Joshua Redman, or CDs right from the artists at shows), and lots of classical. How do you sell more? Make a better product, regardless of the delivery method. There's a reason I'll buy a Bjork album and not a Paris Hilton album - yeah, they're both girls, but one wrote a really cool piece of music, and the other was given a chance to further stroke her own ego on an album because some record company product manager decided there would be a really good revenue stream driven by a fanbase due to her pre-existing notoriety. I will hang myself the day I buy a record resulting from a large overblown Karaoke competition (*cough* American Idol *cough*).
Rasmus Bjoerk obviously hasn't met half of my ex-girlfriends. Not even probing allowed me to understand what the heck was going on there.
Also agree here. As another proud Albertan I pride myself on being a curmudgeon, but I'd call myself a practical and progressive one at least, and I don't work in the Oil industry. I drive a Corolla and take my entire mobile DJ Rig (2 turntables, case with mixer, cables and other stuff, records, monitor and amp, rented speakers and tripods) on the road no problem. I take the same Corolla skiing (haven't managed to spin out and fly off the Sunshine Road yet), mountain biking, rock climbing etc on lots of backcountry roads. All involve lots of gear. It's handled the crappy winter roads we get occasionally (anymore) without missing a beat, I see more SUVs in the ditch. 4WD/AWD is not safer, it just lets you accelerate faster on the slick; it's how you use the technology of course that's the ticket. I don't even have ABS. I commend you on getting a hybrid SUV: they will get you roughly the same gas mileage as my Corolla, which is impressive. Think about the kind of mileage (kilometerage?) you'd get out of a hybrid the size of my car...
We bought an older house for Calgary last year (built 1987), and one of the first things we did was replace the furnace with a more efficient one. This year we'll be doing more energy upgrades. Yes, this will cost money, but my bills go down so it must eventually pay off, and I feel better at using less. It bugs me to no end to see neighbours who weekly produce 4-6 bags of garbage, when our entire household can't fill one, even when we have parties.
This comment is made elsewhere in this discussion: Nobody wants to live in a dump. Choosing a hybrid or low consumption vehicle is great. Whether it affects the climate or not (I don't see how it can be ignored), nobody wants to walk around breathing like they're following a diesel pickup. People are stupid if they refuse to help out for political / business reasons. How about the practicality of having a clean house? I don't want to come home to filth, and small efforts make a big difference in coming home to my house, not to mention removing fire and health hazards like garbage and dust. Same thing should apply to all of us living on the planet. It's the only one we've got, better safe than sorry, because this one doesn't have an insurance policy that I'm aware of.
One console can't turn it around? *cough* Final Fantasy VII *cough* I can't count the number of friends who bought a PS to play that. Too bad #8 turned around and stank up the joint. :)
If MS can attract some more Japanese developers, Sony's PS3 will be in some serious trouble. Cheaper price-point, similar capabilities, and it plays HD-DVD so you get your HD-picture feature checklist fix... the 360 could do for HD-DVD what Sony wants the PS3 to do for Blu-Ray and then we could witness the most awesome product planning backfire in history. One can only hope, just for the comedy. :)
As funny as your sarcasm is, I'd seriously side with the megacorp on this one. Greedy dorks can be much worse than the megacorp they're targeting. They just try to rely on good press for the 'little guy.'
this really screams "I attack the darkness!"
Firstly, if they sold it (instead of just offering tennancy) would they have to call it "New Sealand?" Furthermore, is there a state-sanctioned religion? Do they celebrate festivus? I won't bid unless I get to pin the leader.
Sealand is awesome. It renews my desire to declare myself holy ground to avoid income tax.
The good news is that there are new heroes every once in a while, but you won't see three or four in a year. Rocky and Indy weren't invented even a year apart, eh?
In recent memory I can think of a couple of good flix (not that my opinion counts) that used new characters and were just a fun romp of an adventure escape alla Indy. The Mummy (and sequel), Sahara, Treasure Hunters, Pirates movies and even the Tomb Raider (although that characer pre-existed) films were pretty fun to watch in that kind of way. The new ideas do pop up every once in a while, but like I say they're not going to be five per year. Hollywood seems to hit its creativity saturation point fairly easily. :) That's the great thing about an Indiana Jones, they only come up once in a while. I just hope they keep with the feel of the first three: the last thing I'd want to see would be a "Blockbuster" Indy (to me Blockbuster == Blocksuxx0r;). I remember seeing a revival of Temple of Doom in a local cinema a couple of years ago and being just enthralled with the awesome matte backgrounds (like the Indian village from the cliff at night). What a great feel!
Some Hollywood directors are starting to do what I've thought they should be doing for a long time: taking cues from existing sources to visualize. Examples done well, X-Men, Lord of the Rings, Bourne series (although they don't match the books they are very good action spy flics in their own right), Batman Begins. Of course it's possible for even that to go oh so wrong as with Daredevil, The Da Vinci Code, The Punisher, Harry Potter 4. Hollywood tends to be particularly adept at picking a good story and just killing it by blockbustering it.
I don't mind sequels to good films as long as they're done well as in the original like Pirates, Bourne, X-Men; and unlike Star Wars (the 'first' three), slasher flicks in general, Bill & Ted, etc...What a bunch of hypocritical ninconpoopery. Although, that's only to be expected when reading SlashDot and Microsoft in the same sentence. I was impressed to see a few people actually backing the 3v1l suxx0rz, however. I haven't read all the posts and this one won't get read either, but I couldn't not put something down.
Bill Buxton recently spoke at CSCW 2006 and had a great talk. One of the things he talked about was his recent hiring by Microsft Research. He took a lot of flak when he moved there, but here he presented the reasons he joined. Basically, Microsoft funds and embraces research, and they encourage people to publish what they find. This can be seen in reality when you look at the mass of publications that come from or are touched by Microsoft Research at many of the academic conferences I attend regularly (like SIGCHI, CSCW, UIST, etc...). I have known many people who have done many internships at MSR, why would they go back if it is so terrible?
A good example of research personified is the new side-bar in Vista. This idea was not stolen from anywhere. It was originally published here and in that paper you'll see the original prototype was written by a research intern, who was inspired by work he and I were doing together at the time in our graduate programs (and that work is cited by this paper as well). Am I peeved that MS hasn't bought out my MSc Thesis? No! Is he peeved that MSR furthered and then included his prototype in a shipping product several years later? No! Most of the numpties here would be peeved, though. Whatever. We work at the same company now, and I can honestly say it's a discussion we've never had.
It was amazing to see the zealots in the CSCW community turn on Buxton. Buxton is long resepected and almost revered in this research area, but the overpowering hate of MS broke through even his passionate and relevant points. It's almost as bad as religious extremism. During the question period, one attendee called out MS (using Bill Buxton as the face) for not releasing easy ways for him to get projects he was working on in after school programs with kids onto the XBox. "Why can't I compile and run this stuff on an XBox without paying lots of money to MS? If MS is so great, why don't they enable people to use their stuff?" Bill said "well geez, contact me after the conference and I'll look into it." Anyways, it's unrelated to Bill, how about this??? And a month after his talk, no less. MS knows that enabling people on their systems is the way to go, and they work towards that. Slashdot will accuse them of stealing the idea from OSS, I can't wait.
(Now) classic Slashdot riff: "PS3 is teh suxx0rz! My XBOX 360 pWns! Gonna get a Wii too!" followed by a post in the next article by the same person "M$ is teh suxx0rz! Evil evil bad horrible!" Again, if you don't want to use MS products, then don't! It's that simple! I run Windows because I don't have to think about it. It has the tools I want, accessible and running. I run a Linux file server, because it's inexpensive (cost: a bunch of hard drives and an old pc I'm not using) and it works just for what I need. This is hardly Gap or Nike or Enron or McKesson (personal experience dictates I say that here :D) we're talking about, here.
A point about OS's. The classic definition of OS has changed and evolved over the last few years (greatly simplified): An OS initially was a human operating a loom. Then it evolved to a series of cards running a loom. Then it was a bunch of cards running a census tabulator. Then it was a bunch of cards running a bunch of vaccuum tubes (pop!). Then it was a bunch of cards running big mainframes. Then it was an incr
As the only purveyor of your religion, I say declare yourself as holy ground so you can be exempt from property taxes. That would mean that technically you should be able to avoid ever paying income tax again. "I am the human temple of common sense and decency!"
You're not alone, as you know. How can billions of Buddhists all be wrong?! And there's no Jesus or Mohammed there.
they sold out the first day and they're selling on eBay for more. That just says to me there's a lot of numpties out there, but I digress. Every time I read something like this about Sony, I just get the Price is Right "you just lost, hahaha" jingle going through my head. It's like a sitcom with those morons. As a later post says however, Nintendo really is taking the high-road on this.
I'm of two minds about this one.
On the one hand:
Homer: "I'm just gonna start chomping my jaw like this. If that *chomp* blueberry pie gets *chomp* in the way, then I'm *chomp* not responsible for *chomp* what's going to happen..." It's more than likely that even with his limited capacity for reason, Homer knows exactly what he's doing.
On the other hand:
This suing everyone is just becoming ridiculous. This case sounds a little like stripping Kif Kroker of his rank just for being there when Zapp Brannigan attacks the neutrals (not saying the RIAA is neutral, I'd use another N word here...). Whose fault is it really?
The buck's just gonna get passed around in a circle, and with the grounds for litigation I see getting weaker and weaker, it's just bound to get worse. The next step will be Kazaa suing the lady's ISP for providing the bandwidth for this lady that enabled her to abuse their good faith software to break the law. Then the ISP will sue the lady for violating her terms of use agreement and using the connection they provided to her in good faith to break the law. Ah, the circle of life is complete.
utterly ridiculous.
Lawn-bot would also need a shotgun and obligatory large jug labeled 'XXX'.
someone had to do it. Thanks to the 'M$ suxx0rz!' crowd for all their creativity as always. Great work, kids. Here's word from the 'alternate lifestyle' that the same counter-arguments keep popping up:
Yes, I run a Windows machine. Because I like it too! *gasp* Wow! Yes, I run a Linux file server with a nice terabyte RAID 5 file system too (well, roughly a terabyte...close enough). I like that too!! Is it because I'm worried about 'windoze beign teh sUx?' No, it's called safe backup. Hardware does die.
If you want to complain about Vista, complain about something real. I dislike that when I install it, it automatically turns on a feature that defragments as I go or when I'm idle. It is using my hardware and wearing on it without my permission, and I didn't have the patience to go and figure out how to turn it off. There. A real complaint. And a good reason to have the file server backup. For me, Vista isn't to the point that I will install it yet, hence I will not install it, hence I don't care. Before I get modded flame-bait, read your own bullshit, folks.
...I received two phonecalls yesterday: one from my brother and another from another buddy. The content of both messages was simply "Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!" Awesome. :)
Ballz! Poo! LOL! Seriously, that made my morning. I'd buy that crap. ;)
PS3 launched, hurray. Hopefully I am not called a 'non-gamer' because I chose to stay in my warm bed after having shut off my PS2 for the evening a scant 8 hours earlier... which was also being played in my nice warm house where I had nachos and pop and everything, oh my! There won't be a PS3 when I get home today! Oh well, I did get a raise because I don't do things like take the day off to play the one game that came out with a currently over-priced system, I'll just turn on the just-as-good (for now) PS2 again. It came in a fancy GT3 box. I bet all the people who waited in line on its launch date are jealous! It pays to wait, you get a limited edition box. Now that's hip.
A reporter has no news to report so digs as hard as he can to find something to make something out of. Oh wait! Just like CNN and the Republican party. John Kerry is evil. Democrats are evil. Ya boo sucks to that. :P
And then the enlightened masses here! Read me: if you uses linux, don't complain because you don't care! Same for you Mac users! (it still amuses me that people here don't bash Apple for "selling" unix or hardware or whatever, but who'm I to complain?
Weak people, weak. I'm not defending MS, I'm telling you to use some common sense.