What's the point of doing more than 65 on a congested highway? 65 will get you there in about the same time as zoom stop zig zag zoom stop zoom stop and be more pleasant, save fuel, and not call attention from the police.
This, not only will weaving in and out of lanes use more fuel and is a lot more frustrating, it's slower.
If you drive down the same bit of highway every day, you should figure out which lanes move faster and how best to use this to your advantage. I drive down a stretch of road each day where the right lane is congested (Australia is an RHD country, so the right lane is an overtaking lane) so the left lane is moving faster. I have to take a right to get onto the road that my work is on. Rather than trying to push into traffic I just go straight through the lights and take the next right. Sure I have to come back but it's actually faster because there's very little traffic on that road despite being longer.
This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around.90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive.
I think you just don't understand what WinSxS is, how it works, and what the problem is that it is designed to address, suggest you start reading a bit more.
The reason the old Sxs assemblies need to be kept, is that installed software may require the usage of an old assembly.
Just because an update has superceded a certain library version, does not mean that all applications that still rely on it should be broken.
When you've got a 19 GB Win SxS folder on a 40 GB HDD (which is plenty for a server and expensive on Tier 0 SSD's) it's a serious issue. 19 GB is not ridiculous, it's not even usual for a 2 yr old server that's been updated regularly. 19 GB across 250 virtual servers is a serious waste of space. Even 6 GB is a massive costs in infrastructure.
Not every update needs to keep dozens of updates. Fortunately Microsoft has addressed this problem (as of April this year, so relatively quick in Microsoft time) so that the WinSxS folder can be cleaned up.
Even with an SSD, if applications are leaving behind shit in the various places shit can run on startup, you might be losing CPU or memory to some task that doesn't need to be there.
Win Rot is alive and well in Windows 7.
Both my gaming machine and personal laptop have serious performance issues after 8 or so months (OK, the laptop is 2 years old but I use that infrequently). Both have SSD's, both were blisteringly fast when first installed.
Surprisingly enough, my work laptop is fine but I dont install much on there.
You can have this problem on other OSes like OSX and Linux too, but Windows is the only OS where the SOP is to make a mess of things. Don't like an app on OSX or linux? Just delete them. most of the garbage goes with it.
As a sysadmin, the biggest issue I have with Linux servers are the servers running out of space (mostly because some slovenly developer or DBA didn't bother writing a script to clean up log files or other output so it just grows until the disk runs out of space). Clogging up disk space with garbage is sort of *nix rot. Whilst Linux and OS X have no registry to clog up things, running out of disk space is a lot more painful on *nix than it is on Windows.
Very few *nix machines ever get used in the same abusive fashion as most people treat their windows boxen though.
This* What people fail to realise is that Ebola is not very contagious. It has a high mortality rate which makes it scary as but as far as contagious goes it has nothing on influenza or many other viral infections.
This,
Ebola is only transmissible by direct blood contact. Even kissing is not a guaranteed transmission vector (but likely as Ebola is a haemorrhagic fever, which means they'll likely be bleeding inside the mouth as the infection progresses).
Real Thai food is very spicy as the Thais love their chilis. I like my food spicy, but when you ask for Thai food "local style" (as opposed to the tourist food that is a lot milder), you get a VERY hot dish.
Not all Thai food is spicy but very few dishes are bland and tasteless.
If you've ever been to Thailand and tasted proper Thai food you'd quickly have learned that the muck that gets passed off at Thai food in western countries is nothing like the real thing. Much like proper Chinese food, it's westernised and made bland. Often in Australia Thai restaurants aren't even run by Thais.
when you ask for Thai food "local style" (as opposed to the tourist food that is a lot milder), you get a VERY hot dish.
The best way is to ask in Thai, "Phet" means spicy, "Phet mak" is very spicy and "Phet mak mak" is very very spicy. For those of you with weak stomachs "Mai Phet" is not spicy.
A quick note on the Thai language, it's a tonal language so you might want to hear how they're spoken before practising yourself.
(we assume most people aren't complete morons in Australia).
Did you _see_ the results of the last election?
Touche.
But in our defence, only 32% of people voted for the Libs, the remaining 13% was made up of the various national parties. The 5% that got them over the post were due to dodgy preference deals.
But realistically the dregs of Labor weren't getting back in to office.
Whcih is a sad indictment of Australia because instead of putting Labor back in office, they picked the worse alternative.
Since Abbott got into power the economy has nosedived and unemployment is rising. If he keeps going, everyday costs will skyrocket as well. Labor wasn't perfect by a long shot, but the mob we have now makes them look like they were. Sad to say, the only thing preventing this is Palmer United (and lets face it, Clive's there to look after Clive and only Clive).
On their own, the Libs didn't have enough votes to get in, if the preference deals were favouring Labor, they would have gotten in with the Greens.
The attempts to censor my posts are terrible.
I've got plenty of Karma to burn, how many mod points have you got left?
I pointed out that the AFP (Australian Federal Police) did exactly what they were meant to do, at first glance they dont know whether the guy was an idiot or a meth addict. They didn't know he'd just gotten off a flight. All they saw was a guy walking the wrong way through the doors. They caught up with the guy, questioned him and let him go because he wasn't malicious, just a complete tool (like the people modding this down).
It's a shame stupidity isn't painful. It would stop people walking the wrong way though security doors and bad moderation.
(we assume most people aren't complete morons in Australia).
Did you _see_ the results of the last election?
Touche.
But in our defence, only 32% of people voted for the Libs, the remaining 13% was made up of the various national parties. The 5% that got them over the post were due to dodgy preference deals.
Walking into the wrong bookshop instead of the cafe you were going to is a mistake. Walking into a clearly marked security zone when every other single person was walking the other way and being completely oblivious to this is retarded. the Ipad didn't accidentally fall into his hand, he's old enough to know to look where he is going. There's nothing accidental about this, he was deliberately not looking where he was going.
The AFP did their job.
Ipadguy fucked up, badly. Everyone who had their time wasted and flight delayed on that day can only blame the Ipadguy for not paying attention to what he was doing. Why does he deserve forgiveness when he deliberately caused his and hundreds of other people problems?
The reason no one heads to Canada for medical treatment is that they wouldn't be covered and would have to pay out of pocket.
Not quite everyone.
Many other commonwealth countries have reciprocal agreements with health care. A Canadian in Australia would be covered under our Medicare system as much as an Australian in Canada would under your system...
That being said, neither Australians nor Canadians need to travel overseas to get essential medical services.
We could have socialized medicine in the US if we could get this money.
USA doesn't need more taxes to have socialized medicine. USA has the 10th biggest public healthcare expenditure per capita of the world already, more than 20% higher than the UK and Canada for instance.
So, unlike what the majority of the Americans actually thinks, they are paying more for much much less, just out of they congenital spite over "paying stuff to poor people".
So why does the US have such a woeful health care system?
It makes the NIH in the UK look like the paragon of efficiency.
It seems the problem isn't funding but Americans. It would be a good idea if you could paid Canada to run the whole system for you.
1. iPad Man, for not actually paying attention to his surroundings.
2. Airport security (obviously) for freaking out over the oblivious iPad Man.
Nope, the full extent of the dumbarsery is entirely on number 1.
He was walking in the opposite direction to everyone else and in order for the doors at to be open somoene had to be walking the right way (at an airport, this would likely be dozens of other people). If he didn't notice this, he is the idiot.
The AFP (Australian Federal Police) who secure our airports cant take chances. They cant tell whether dumb Ipad man is just Dumb Ipad man or Disgruntled Steve who wants to beat up Bill in the airside cafe until they talk to him. Now the AFP did just that and released the man without charge (they could have charged him, but under the circumstances they chose not to), so good on them for that but it is a real shame that this kind of idiocy isn't a crime... or painful.
LAX just runs people through huge powered revolving doors to enforce one-way traffic. They used to have a sign that said "Once you have passed this point you cannot return".
Most Aussie airports use automatic sliding doors so the disabled can use the same exit without having someone there all day to assist them. They only have sensors on one side so they will only open for people airside but this means someone can walk in against the flow of traffic... but you've got to be a complete idiot not to notice you're going in the wrong direction to everyone else (we assume most people aren't complete morons in Australia).
" a man walked past a Sydney Airport security screening while engrossed in his iPad and delayed flights for an hour."
TFA implies he caused the delay, when in fact incompetent airport security staff caused the delay.
He did cause the delay.
What this moron did was leave the secure area (he was disembarking) and then walk back through. Its not like the secure area exit isn't extremely, mind-blowingly obvious. The AFP (Australian Federal Police) didn't know if this guy was a complete tool or a malicious agent, but they cant take chances. Fortunately it turned out he was a complete idiot but this all could have been avoided if he had of been doing something as silly as paying attention to what he was doing. I mean what kind of imbecile tries to walk back through a security gate?
Security in Australia isn't as bad as the USA (yet), in fact it's quite efficient in comparison but if you ignore them they will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
Indeed! Lighting has always been their biggest drawback. Their static lighting, even using lightmaps, is a FAR cry away from Dynamic Global Illumination.
Another thing the Eucliedian guys don't get is is that polygons are "good enough." Photorealism is a red herring of computer games. All the photorealism doesn't make a game FUN, only the potential to NOT break immersion. When game design breaks immersion the easiest all the photorealism in the world won't save it -- ironically, it makes it worst! What do you mean I can't climb that fence?
Cool tech of course with their compression for voxel data, but until they have real time dynamic lighting and global illumination... *yawn*.
This, there is too much emphasis on photo realism and not enough on making environments believable and imersive.
I'd rather a building look a little less real if I can blow a decent hole in it with a rocket launcher where I want to. This is something that surprised me about the original Operation Flashpoint. you could actually blow holes in buildings that you could walk through. Of course only in certain spots and as long as the building had an actual interior (this was just swapping out the model for a pre-damaged one). Battlefield Bad Company 2 did something similar some 12 years later (hey, consoles are catching up right).
We've jumped the graphics shark, I'm replaying X3:Terran Conflict at the moment and some of the background images are breathtaking, but dont add much beyond being an insta-kill wall if you decide to fly into a planet (OK, they are very nice to look at as you haul an NPC's lazy arse across a sector). What I want are objects I can interact with, give me a building that deforms and collapses, ships and cars that ablate and crumple as they get damaged where you damage them. What we need is a proper deformation engine, not simply swapping out models or bits of models for pre-damaged ones.
THis, or just write them down in a notebook. Who cares about those passwords anyways? They are kids for christsake. Just give the teacher admin password to reset and change everything. They WILL steal eachothers passwords, they will share them, they will make up "funny" passwords if they get to choose. They are kids, let them be kids. Being impulsive, naive, and, well, juvenile, is integral part of being a kid. Also, they already remember all the important passwords, such as their facebook, online games etc.
Point in short, you cant teach children to be secure.
I work for a university, you cant rely on students following the most basic of security policies so you have to treat student accounts like they've already been compromised. Make sure a student account cant access anything remotely important or dangerous.
If you buy a used car, it will run into problems. If you go to a mechanic with even the smallest of problems, they will quote you $500. If you ignore the problem, it will get worse and worse until it is unsafe to drive or the car simply doesn't start at all.
You need to learn how to talk to mechanics.
It's easy to get simple problems fixed cheaply (in Australia, the land of high prices I might add) if you're polite, likeable even if you dont know what you're on about. A few months back I got a power steering belt replaced for $50 ($20 for the belt, $30 for 1/2 hours labour).
The key is to give the mechanic the information of what exactly went wrong. Symptoms, time, place, what you did and so forth. Like the rest of us, mechanics are magical beings that instantly know what went on from your vauge description of "car dont run right" so details people. Also give the mechanic a modicum of respect, after all you came to them for help. So shake his hand and dont look down on him just because he works with his hands.
That being said, I can do a lot of things myself such as replace brakes (pads, rotors and callipers) but still pay someone else to do it because 1. they're faster at it; 2. they're better at it and 3. It saves me some time. Back when I had more time (and a much cheaper 10 yr old Honda Civic) I would. Things like checking oil and fluid levels is a must for any car owner though, but sadly too many people rely on roadside assistance rather than checking the oil and coolant once a month.
So before you go jumping to the defense of the people in the article, you might want to see what the terms of something like this is. I don't know, and I'm not saying it isn't a "you have to pay by the second it is due or we shut it off," but it also might well be a normal "It is due on day X, late on day X+15, and we shut it off on day X+20," and the people involved have just decided that "X+20" is the day it is "due".
This.
The X+20 people call me foolish for paying my bills before the due date. I budget, so I usually have the entire amount planned for when the bill is expected, so I pretty much pay them as they arrive. Of course these people are continually surprised when I'm saving half my wage each month (dont have to pay off the card, dont have car/personal loans to service).
I live by the axiom that there is no such thing as a free lunch. This goes doubly so for anyone offering you money, banks dont offer things to you out of the goodness of their heart... they dont even have a heart... or goodness for that matter. So when I enter into a loan I make damn sure I'm able to service it, that I actually need the item I'm borrowing for and that the asset will not depreciate faster than I pay off the principle (for a car, this means paying off 20% pretty much immediately which is what I did on my last car loan).
With regards to #2, where in the US if you call 911 do you not get an ambulance?
It's possible the OP doesn't live in the US.
American doesn't have a monopoly on constipated angry conservatives who love to blame the poor for everything:)
Payday loans are a scurge on the earth. If you have to resort to one you are already financially toast, and all they do is suck you into a final debt black hole that is nearly impossible to escape.
I have to agree. The laws have changed recently in Australia to allow this kind of scum to be advertised on TV (they advertise a lot on Pay TV which says a lot about their audience). However, if payday loans were illegal, they wouldn't dissapear. They'd simply go underground and then they'd become even more predatory. So we've got a choice between allowing the scum to operate openly and regulating them or making them operate illegally and losing all control over it.
Let me make it clear, payday loan operators are the scum of the earth and I am in no way defending them.
We visited a friend last night that is trying to sell a vehicle that's been sitting awhile. The battery is dead and a potential buyer made outlandish claims for what could be wrong with the vehicle in order to try to lowball her.
Thats when you simply tell that buyer to naff off and not bother you again... then change the battery, check the fluid levels and what not.
I could probably remove or bypass this anti-nonpayment disabler device in the same way that one could disable a breathalyzer or antitheft starter disabler device, but I don't think that most people could
Most people would just take it to a mechanic. This is what they do with aftermarket anti-theft devices that play up and Alcohol Interlock Devices are not commonplace (their installation has to be court ordered).
But this device, lets call it what it is, extortion. I'm glad I live in a nation where this kind of thing is illegal.
Americans please take note, this is what happens when you elect conservatives.
To fill in non-Australians on what happened, a few days ago the Australian government launched a massive campaign "to fight terror" which involved 800 police across 3 states and resulted in 16 arrests. All of these people just happened to be Muslim.
The government made a big song and dance about it but what they didn't say is that 15 of the 16 were released without charge. The 16th man was held because they found a broken taser and 4 unused shotgun rounds in his house. He went to court 2 days ago and the judge with a brain released him with a misdemeanour charge (a fine, no criminal record).
So this operation has all the hallmarks of a false flag to get bad laws passed on a wave of fear based support... Lo and behold, this appears in parliament.
America will have elections before we do, we didn't learn from Canada and the UK... Please dont make the same mistakes as we did by voting in the other guy because we hate the current guys. It always ends up worse.
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What's the point of doing more than 65 on a congested highway? 65 will get you there in about the same time as zoom stop zig zag zoom stop zoom stop and be more pleasant, save fuel, and not call attention from the police.
This, not only will weaving in and out of lanes use more fuel and is a lot more frustrating, it's slower.
If you drive down the same bit of highway every day, you should figure out which lanes move faster and how best to use this to your advantage. I drive down a stretch of road each day where the right lane is congested (Australia is an RHD country, so the right lane is an overtaking lane) so the left lane is moving faster. I have to take a right to get onto the road that my work is on. Rather than trying to push into traffic I just go straight through the lights and take the next right. Sure I have to come back but it's actually faster because there's very little traffic on that road despite being longer.
This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive.
I think you just don't understand what WinSxS is, how it works, and what the problem is that it is designed to address, suggest you start reading a bit more.
The reason the old Sxs assemblies need to be kept, is that installed software may require the usage of an old assembly.
Just because an update has superceded a certain library version, does not mean that all applications that still rely on it should be broken.
When you've got a 19 GB Win SxS folder on a 40 GB HDD (which is plenty for a server and expensive on Tier 0 SSD's) it's a serious issue. 19 GB is not ridiculous, it's not even usual for a 2 yr old server that's been updated regularly. 19 GB across 250 virtual servers is a serious waste of space. Even 6 GB is a massive costs in infrastructure. Not every update needs to keep dozens of updates. Fortunately Microsoft has addressed this problem (as of April this year, so relatively quick in Microsoft time) so that the WinSxS folder can be cleaned up.
Even with an SSD, if applications are leaving behind shit in the various places shit can run on startup, you might be losing CPU or memory to some task that doesn't need to be there.
Win Rot is alive and well in Windows 7.
Both my gaming machine and personal laptop have serious performance issues after 8 or so months (OK, the laptop is 2 years old but I use that infrequently). Both have SSD's, both were blisteringly fast when first installed.
Surprisingly enough, my work laptop is fine but I dont install much on there.
As a sysadmin, the biggest issue I have with Linux servers are the servers running out of space (mostly because some slovenly developer or DBA didn't bother writing a script to clean up log files or other output so it just grows until the disk runs out of space). Clogging up disk space with garbage is sort of *nix rot. Whilst Linux and OS X have no registry to clog up things, running out of disk space is a lot more painful on *nix than it is on Windows.
Very few *nix machines ever get used in the same abusive fashion as most people treat their windows boxen though.
This,
Ebola is only transmissible by direct blood contact. Even kissing is not a guaranteed transmission vector (but likely as Ebola is a haemorrhagic fever, which means they'll likely be bleeding inside the mouth as the infection progresses).
Real Thai food is very spicy as the Thais love their chilis. I like my food spicy, but when you ask for Thai food "local style" (as opposed to the tourist food that is a lot milder), you get a VERY hot dish.
Not all Thai food is spicy but very few dishes are bland and tasteless. If you've ever been to Thailand and tasted proper Thai food you'd quickly have learned that the muck that gets passed off at Thai food in western countries is nothing like the real thing. Much like proper Chinese food, it's westernised and made bland. Often in Australia Thai restaurants aren't even run by Thais.
when you ask for Thai food "local style" (as opposed to the tourist food that is a lot milder), you get a VERY hot dish.
The best way is to ask in Thai, "Phet" means spicy, "Phet mak" is very spicy and "Phet mak mak" is very very spicy. For those of you with weak stomachs "Mai Phet" is not spicy.
A quick note on the Thai language, it's a tonal language so you might want to hear how they're spoken before practising yourself.
(we assume most people aren't complete morons in Australia).
Did you _see_ the results of the last election?
Touche.
But in our defence, only 32% of people voted for the Libs, the remaining 13% was made up of the various national parties. The 5% that got them over the post were due to dodgy preference deals.
But realistically the dregs of Labor weren't getting back in to office.
Whcih is a sad indictment of Australia because instead of putting Labor back in office, they picked the worse alternative.
Since Abbott got into power the economy has nosedived and unemployment is rising. If he keeps going, everyday costs will skyrocket as well. Labor wasn't perfect by a long shot, but the mob we have now makes them look like they were. Sad to say, the only thing preventing this is Palmer United (and lets face it, Clive's there to look after Clive and only Clive).
On their own, the Libs didn't have enough votes to get in, if the preference deals were favouring Labor, they would have gotten in with the Greens.
The attempts to censor my posts are terrible. I've got plenty of Karma to burn, how many mod points have you got left?
Because the correct response to being modded down is to keep posting the same thing and go for volume. Jerkass.
Because eventually they run out of mod points, dickhead. Looks like that's happened.
The attempts to censor my posts are terrible. I've got plenty of Karma to burn, how many mod points have you got left? I pointed out that the AFP (Australian Federal Police) did exactly what they were meant to do, at first glance they dont know whether the guy was an idiot or a meth addict. They didn't know he'd just gotten off a flight. All they saw was a guy walking the wrong way through the doors. They caught up with the guy, questioned him and let him go because he wasn't malicious, just a complete tool (like the people modding this down). It's a shame stupidity isn't painful. It would stop people walking the wrong way though security doors and bad moderation.
(we assume most people aren't complete morons in Australia).
Did you _see_ the results of the last election?
Touche.
But in our defence, only 32% of people voted for the Libs, the remaining 13% was made up of the various national parties. The 5% that got them over the post were due to dodgy preference deals.
Ipadguy made a mistake!
No, Ipadguy was a complete idiot.
Walking into the wrong bookshop instead of the cafe you were going to is a mistake. Walking into a clearly marked security zone when every other single person was walking the other way and being completely oblivious to this is retarded. the Ipad didn't accidentally fall into his hand, he's old enough to know to look where he is going. There's nothing accidental about this, he was deliberately not looking where he was going.
The AFP did their job.
Ipadguy fucked up, badly. Everyone who had their time wasted and flight delayed on that day can only blame the Ipadguy for not paying attention to what he was doing. Why does he deserve forgiveness when he deliberately caused his and hundreds of other people problems?
Who modded this Troll? I pointed out that Ipad man did something incredibly and all the AFP did was the job they're meant to do.
The guy was released without charge, although I reiterate it's a shame stupidity like this isn't painful.
Way to swallow the Murdoch bullshit and regurgitate it.
The two articles have nothing to do with Murdoch or Newscorp.
The first is published by CNet which is owned by CBS (American) and the second is the Sydney Morning Herald, which is Fairfax.
You dont know your arse from your elbow.
The reason no one heads to Canada for medical treatment is that they wouldn't be covered and would have to pay out of pocket.
Not quite everyone.
Many other commonwealth countries have reciprocal agreements with health care. A Canadian in Australia would be covered under our Medicare system as much as an Australian in Canada would under your system...
That being said, neither Australians nor Canadians need to travel overseas to get essential medical services.
We could have socialized medicine in the US if we could get this money.
USA doesn't need more taxes to have socialized medicine. USA has the 10th biggest public healthcare expenditure per capita of the world already, more than 20% higher than the UK and Canada for instance.
So, unlike what the majority of the Americans actually thinks, they are paying more for much much less, just out of they congenital spite over "paying stuff to poor people".
So why does the US have such a woeful health care system?
It makes the NIH in the UK look like the paragon of efficiency.
It seems the problem isn't funding but Americans. It would be a good idea if you could paid Canada to run the whole system for you.
1. iPad Man, for not actually paying attention to his surroundings.
2. Airport security (obviously) for freaking out over the oblivious iPad Man.
Nope, the full extent of the dumbarsery is entirely on number 1.
He was walking in the opposite direction to everyone else and in order for the doors at to be open somoene had to be walking the right way (at an airport, this would likely be dozens of other people). If he didn't notice this, he is the idiot.
The AFP (Australian Federal Police) who secure our airports cant take chances. They cant tell whether dumb Ipad man is just Dumb Ipad man or Disgruntled Steve who wants to beat up Bill in the airside cafe until they talk to him. Now the AFP did just that and released the man without charge (they could have charged him, but under the circumstances they chose not to), so good on them for that but it is a real shame that this kind of idiocy isn't a crime... or painful.
LAX just runs people through huge powered revolving doors to enforce one-way traffic. They used to have a sign that said "Once you have passed this point you cannot return".
Most Aussie airports use automatic sliding doors so the disabled can use the same exit without having someone there all day to assist them. They only have sensors on one side so they will only open for people airside but this means someone can walk in against the flow of traffic... but you've got to be a complete idiot not to notice you're going in the wrong direction to everyone else (we assume most people aren't complete morons in Australia).
" a man walked past a Sydney Airport security screening while engrossed in his iPad and delayed flights for an hour."
TFA implies he caused the delay, when in fact incompetent airport security staff caused the delay.
He did cause the delay.
What this moron did was leave the secure area (he was disembarking) and then walk back through. Its not like the secure area exit isn't extremely, mind-blowingly obvious. The AFP (Australian Federal Police) didn't know if this guy was a complete tool or a malicious agent, but they cant take chances. Fortunately it turned out he was a complete idiot but this all could have been avoided if he had of been doing something as silly as paying attention to what he was doing. I mean what kind of imbecile tries to walk back through a security gate?
Security in Australia isn't as bad as the USA (yet), in fact it's quite efficient in comparison but if you ignore them they will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
Indeed! Lighting has always been their biggest drawback. Their static lighting, even using lightmaps, is a FAR cry away from Dynamic Global Illumination.
I'm much more impressed with Unreal Engine 4's realtime global illumination and and architecture real-time
Another thing the Eucliedian guys don't get is is that polygons are "good enough." Photorealism is a red herring of computer games. All the photorealism doesn't make a game FUN, only the potential to NOT break immersion. When game design breaks immersion the easiest all the photorealism in the world won't save it -- ironically, it makes it worst! What do you mean I can't climb that fence?
Cool tech of course with their compression for voxel data, but until they have real time dynamic lighting and global illumination ... *yawn*.
This, there is too much emphasis on photo realism and not enough on making environments believable and imersive.
I'd rather a building look a little less real if I can blow a decent hole in it with a rocket launcher where I want to. This is something that surprised me about the original Operation Flashpoint. you could actually blow holes in buildings that you could walk through. Of course only in certain spots and as long as the building had an actual interior (this was just swapping out the model for a pre-damaged one). Battlefield Bad Company 2 did something similar some 12 years later (hey, consoles are catching up right).
We've jumped the graphics shark, I'm replaying X3:Terran Conflict at the moment and some of the background images are breathtaking, but dont add much beyond being an insta-kill wall if you decide to fly into a planet (OK, they are very nice to look at as you haul an NPC's lazy arse across a sector). What I want are objects I can interact with, give me a building that deforms and collapses, ships and cars that ablate and crumple as they get damaged where you damage them. What we need is a proper deformation engine, not simply swapping out models or bits of models for pre-damaged ones.
Grille
He could have a folded one in his wallet or whatever. If he loses his notebook, it's just a random set of letters.
Grille
Cool idea, but pretty impractical for a password.
THis, or just write them down in a notebook. Who cares about those passwords anyways? They are kids for christsake. Just give the teacher admin password to reset and change everything. They WILL steal eachothers passwords, they will share them, they will make up "funny" passwords if they get to choose. They are kids, let them be kids. Being impulsive, naive, and, well, juvenile, is integral part of being a kid. Also, they already remember all the important passwords, such as their facebook, online games etc.
Point in short, you cant teach children to be secure.
I work for a university, you cant rely on students following the most basic of security policies so you have to treat student accounts like they've already been compromised. Make sure a student account cant access anything remotely important or dangerous.
If you buy a used car, it will run into problems. If you go to a mechanic with even the smallest of problems, they will quote you $500. If you ignore the problem, it will get worse and worse until it is unsafe to drive or the car simply doesn't start at all.
You need to learn how to talk to mechanics.
It's easy to get simple problems fixed cheaply (in Australia, the land of high prices I might add) if you're polite, likeable even if you dont know what you're on about. A few months back I got a power steering belt replaced for $50 ($20 for the belt, $30 for 1/2 hours labour).
The key is to give the mechanic the information of what exactly went wrong. Symptoms, time, place, what you did and so forth. Like the rest of us, mechanics are magical beings that instantly know what went on from your vauge description of "car dont run right" so details people. Also give the mechanic a modicum of respect, after all you came to them for help. So shake his hand and dont look down on him just because he works with his hands.
That being said, I can do a lot of things myself such as replace brakes (pads, rotors and callipers) but still pay someone else to do it because 1. they're faster at it; 2. they're better at it and 3. It saves me some time. Back when I had more time (and a much cheaper 10 yr old Honda Civic) I would. Things like checking oil and fluid levels is a must for any car owner though, but sadly too many people rely on roadside assistance rather than checking the oil and coolant once a month.
So before you go jumping to the defense of the people in the article, you might want to see what the terms of something like this is. I don't know, and I'm not saying it isn't a "you have to pay by the second it is due or we shut it off," but it also might well be a normal "It is due on day X, late on day X+15, and we shut it off on day X+20," and the people involved have just decided that "X+20" is the day it is "due".
This.
The X+20 people call me foolish for paying my bills before the due date. I budget, so I usually have the entire amount planned for when the bill is expected, so I pretty much pay them as they arrive. Of course these people are continually surprised when I'm saving half my wage each month (dont have to pay off the card, dont have car/personal loans to service).
I live by the axiom that there is no such thing as a free lunch. This goes doubly so for anyone offering you money, banks dont offer things to you out of the goodness of their heart... they dont even have a heart... or goodness for that matter. So when I enter into a loan I make damn sure I'm able to service it, that I actually need the item I'm borrowing for and that the asset will not depreciate faster than I pay off the principle (for a car, this means paying off 20% pretty much immediately which is what I did on my last car loan).
With regards to #2, where in the US if you call 911 do you not get an ambulance?
It's possible the OP doesn't live in the US.
:)
American doesn't have a monopoly on constipated angry conservatives who love to blame the poor for everything
Payday loans are a scurge on the earth. If you have to resort to one you are already financially toast, and all they do is suck you into a final debt black hole that is nearly impossible to escape.
I have to agree. The laws have changed recently in Australia to allow this kind of scum to be advertised on TV (they advertise a lot on Pay TV which says a lot about their audience). However, if payday loans were illegal, they wouldn't dissapear. They'd simply go underground and then they'd become even more predatory. So we've got a choice between allowing the scum to operate openly and regulating them or making them operate illegally and losing all control over it.
Let me make it clear, payday loan operators are the scum of the earth and I am in no way defending them.
We visited a friend last night that is trying to sell a vehicle that's been sitting awhile. The battery is dead and a potential buyer made outlandish claims for what could be wrong with the vehicle in order to try to lowball her.
Thats when you simply tell that buyer to naff off and not bother you again... then change the battery, check the fluid levels and what not.
I could probably remove or bypass this anti-nonpayment disabler device in the same way that one could disable a breathalyzer or antitheft starter disabler device, but I don't think that most people could
Most people would just take it to a mechanic. This is what they do with aftermarket anti-theft devices that play up and Alcohol Interlock Devices are not commonplace (their installation has to be court ordered).
But this device, lets call it what it is, extortion. I'm glad I live in a nation where this kind of thing is illegal.
Americans please take note, this is what happens when you elect conservatives.
To fill in non-Australians on what happened, a few days ago the Australian government launched a massive campaign "to fight terror" which involved 800 police across 3 states and resulted in 16 arrests. All of these people just happened to be Muslim.
The government made a big song and dance about it but what they didn't say is that 15 of the 16 were released without charge. The 16th man was held because they found a broken taser and 4 unused shotgun rounds in his house. He went to court 2 days ago and the judge with a brain released him with a misdemeanour charge (a fine, no criminal record).
So this operation has all the hallmarks of a false flag to get bad laws passed on a wave of fear based support... Lo and behold, this appears in parliament.
America will have elections before we do, we didn't learn from Canada and the UK... Please dont make the same mistakes as we did by voting in the other guy because we hate the current guys. It always ends up worse.