Games have never been the problem. The number of shootings, bombings etc in a country doesn't grow proportionally to the number of people exposed to violent video games. They grow based on the culture of the country in which they occur in. The US has a particularly high number (overall and per capita), but countries with similar living conditions have almost none.
Russia has always had a problem with terrorists and various ethnic groups. Anyone blaming a game for something like this is desperately grasping for straws and hits.
Complete bullshit. So long as you're over 18, you can buy knives from a supermarket or any number of knife stores no questions asked. There are of course even shops that deal solely with combat knives, hunting knives, even sacrificial ceremonial knives - none of which require an sort of registration or reason required whatsoever.
If there is something that humans find inherently addictive about gaming, health companies should tap into that to provide something which humans both need and desire: fitness.
If you ask around, a lot of people *want* to be fit but they have lots of convenient excuses as to why they're not. People want to look good and a lot of people are even willing to put up with the inconvenience of exercise and physical exertion - they just don't have the time.
Being able to introduce a method of exercise that is genuinely fun for all and doesn't require extra time on top of our daily activities, as long as it's done sensibly and cleverly, could be a crucial step towards reducing obesity.
These guys could *actually* have been terrorists. Did Nokia Navigator commission them to photograph and document Indian military installations?
It's good to see that India isn't taking any chances. Imagine the outcry if a terrorist attack occurred, and it was later revealed India knew the attackers were documenting military installations and major roads but did nothing about it.
At this point in time, India is NOT the place to be testing the limits of political correctness.
... or they simply live much longer than humans and are way more patient...
Even if that were the case, consider how a distance of 200 light years (a rather short distance in cosmic terms) compares to the age of the universe. You won't get many conversations in over 15 billion years.
And if they're intelligent enough to have the ability and desire to communicate through space, they're not going to be stupid enough to settle for a half assed, inefficient method of communication.
The time from big bang to big crunch might be a "day" for them. Our entire civilization would be like a lightning flash. Are you suggesting some sort of hyper-slow motion state (metabolism, perception etc)? If so, that would be an extreme natural disadvantage. They wouldn't even be able to keep up with the geological events on their home planet, let alone adapt to predators.
Such a species cannot survive. Even a lack of natural predators wouldn't help: geologically active planets would take care of them.
Surely the vastness of space would make any sort of standard communication, whether using protons or neutrinos, unfeasible. Who wants to wait 6 minutes for a message to travel the distance between the Earth and our sun?
Unless aliens have some sort of incredible way of communicating through subspace, or wormholes, or some other fantastic medium through which they can shorten or eliminate the pesky problem of distance, neutrinos over photons won't make too much of a difference, even if they are used solely for advertising their presence.
According to http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm:
Internet Usage Statistics
215,935,529 Internet users as of Dec/07, 71.7% of the population, according to Nielsen//NetRatings
Latest Population Estimate
301,139,947 population for 2007, according to the Census Bureau. If 28.3% of the population aren't internet users, why is it a surprise that 20% haven't sent an email?
Despite being a techy, I've always loved to dabble in website design. Soon after I mastered the basics I realised that no matter how good I got at html, my sites never looked pro. They were well written and often cleverly designed but they lacked adequate graphics. I remember trying to use photoshop and literally not being able to draw a single line. Advanced graphics programs can sometimes seem to be out to make your life hard, and learning a program like photoshop is extremely intimidating for someone who just wants to hack up some images for his or her website.
The solution? Make your own graphics from ground up! I started off making stuff in MS Paint pixel by pixel. With a little knowledge of CSS I learnt to turn an image one pixel wide and several pixels long into a really kickass background. Pretty soon I was making backgrounds worthy of any commercial site.
Next step: navigation menus. The trick to these is to make one button onto which you can then paste whatever text you need. Also consider inverting the colours or playing with the brightness/contrast/hue/saturation to have an onMouseOver button the same size. With just a little attention to detail you can make a really cool navigation menu that works great whether they have javascript on or off.
When you look around at some great sites, the background image and navigation buttons are usually what give the site its "punch". Any other photos, images or whatever just fill in gaps or build around what the background and navigation menu have already created. Get those right and even an otherwise shabby site can look quite cute.
If you see any random graphic online that has some effect you like (such as blending into the bg or some glowing look) open it up in Paint and have a look at how to pixels are coloured to make it look that way, then use that in your images!
There are some great free tools available to make graphic design a breeze. One example is Paint.net. It feels a lot like MS Paint in its down-to-earth simplicity, but the more menus you click the more cool things you'll find you can do. It really is like Paint on protein shakes. If you've ever used Paint, you'll find you can sit down at Paint.net and make really complex graphics very quickly. Very little adjustment is required but you get infinitely more functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
They should have done it in San Francisco!
Games have never been the problem. The number of shootings, bombings etc in a country doesn't grow proportionally to the number of people exposed to violent video games. They grow based on the culture of the country in which they occur in. The US has a particularly high number (overall and per capita), but countries with similar living conditions have almost none.
Russia has always had a problem with terrorists and various ethnic groups. Anyone blaming a game for something like this is desperately grasping for straws and hits.
When I said the Millennium Bug would strike again, you all thought I was crazy! Who's laughing now?
How about a heartbeat sensor from Modern Warfare 2? Games are a goldmine for these sorts of wacky ideas which just might work.
Complete bullshit. So long as you're over 18, you can buy knives from a supermarket or any number of knife stores no questions asked. There are of course even shops that deal solely with combat knives, hunting knives, even sacrificial ceremonial knives - none of which require an sort of registration or reason required whatsoever.
If there is something that humans find inherently addictive about gaming, health companies should tap into that to provide something which humans both need and desire: fitness.
If you ask around, a lot of people *want* to be fit but they have lots of convenient excuses as to why they're not. People want to look good and a lot of people are even willing to put up with the inconvenience of exercise and physical exertion - they just don't have the time.
Being able to introduce a method of exercise that is genuinely fun for all and doesn't require extra time on top of our daily activities, as long as it's done sensibly and cleverly, could be a crucial step towards reducing obesity.
Silly NASA keeps forgetting to put in the blast crater...
...but both the NetBSD users are waiting until 5.1 before they make the switch.
...isn't a country.
It would probably be more beneficial for them to say the test was an unprecedented success.
These guys could *actually* have been terrorists. Did Nokia Navigator commission them to photograph and document Indian military installations?
It's good to see that India isn't taking any chances. Imagine the outcry if a terrorist attack occurred, and it was later revealed India knew the attackers were documenting military installations and major roads but did nothing about it.
At this point in time, India is NOT the place to be testing the limits of political correctness.
Are there any export restrictions?
You can't just "file a lawsuit," you have to allege some particular violation of civil law.
Not in the U.S.
How can we be having children earlier when men used to live to the age of 30, back when we were scared of our own shadow?
No fun. I wanted to register 128.214.6.100 but GoDaddy won't let me...
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
That's so ironic, coming from the EFF.
Sorry, I'm an idiot. Please ignore me while I sit in the corner and watch...
If they settled for Windows, the sheer volume of available machines would far outweight any (probably minor to begin with) advantages to using Linux.
First Mars blooper released by NASA
... or they simply live much longer than humans and are way more patient ...
Even if that were the case, consider how a distance of 200 light years (a rather short distance in cosmic terms) compares to the age of the universe. You won't get many conversations in over 15 billion years.And if they're intelligent enough to have the ability and desire to communicate through space, they're not going to be stupid enough to settle for a half assed, inefficient method of communication.
Such a species cannot survive. Even a lack of natural predators wouldn't help: geologically active planets would take care of them.
"Nature always finds a way."
All the time. They use subspace communication.
Surely the vastness of space would make any sort of standard communication, whether using protons or neutrinos, unfeasible. Who wants to wait 6 minutes for a message to travel the distance between the Earth and our sun?
Unless aliens have some sort of incredible way of communicating through subspace, or wormholes, or some other fantastic medium through which they can shorten or eliminate the pesky problem of distance, neutrinos over photons won't make too much of a difference, even if they are used solely for advertising their presence.
215,935,529 Internet users as of Dec/07, 71.7% of the population, according to Nielsen//NetRatings
Latest Population Estimate
301,139,947 population for 2007, according to the Census Bureau. If 28.3% of the population aren't internet users, why is it a surprise that 20% haven't sent an email?
Despite being a techy, I've always loved to dabble in website design. Soon after I mastered the basics I realised that no matter how good I got at html, my sites never looked pro. They were well written and often cleverly designed but they lacked adequate graphics. I remember trying to use photoshop and literally not being able to draw a single line. Advanced graphics programs can sometimes seem to be out to make your life hard, and learning a program like photoshop is extremely intimidating for someone who just wants to hack up some images for his or her website.
The solution? Make your own graphics from ground up! I started off making stuff in MS Paint pixel by pixel. With a little knowledge of CSS I learnt to turn an image one pixel wide and several pixels long into a really kickass background. Pretty soon I was making backgrounds worthy of any commercial site.
Next step: navigation menus. The trick to these is to make one button onto which you can then paste whatever text you need. Also consider inverting the colours or playing with the brightness/contrast/hue/saturation to have an onMouseOver button the same size. With just a little attention to detail you can make a really cool navigation menu that works great whether they have javascript on or off.
When you look around at some great sites, the background image and navigation buttons are usually what give the site its "punch". Any other photos, images or whatever just fill in gaps or build around what the background and navigation menu have already created. Get those right and even an otherwise shabby site can look quite cute.
If you see any random graphic online that has some effect you like (such as blending into the bg or some glowing look) open it up in Paint and have a look at how to pixels are coloured to make it look that way, then use that in your images!
There are some great free tools available to make graphic design a breeze. One example is Paint.net. It feels a lot like MS Paint in its down-to-earth simplicity, but the more menus you click the more cool things you'll find you can do. It really is like Paint on protein shakes. If you've ever used Paint, you'll find you can sit down at Paint.net and make really complex graphics very quickly. Very little adjustment is required but you get infinitely more functionality.