Any change will please some fans and anger others, and it's mostly the angry ones who will post. Having a "community relations" person to find the few facts-and-numbers complaints and forwards those on to devs is can be valuable (and sadly is almost never done), but beyond that all the forums really tell you is "27% more angry rants than the last change", which is interesting and useful information - no need to read the actual rants.
Somehow, producers for every other entertainment media figured out that you can't give consumers a direct voice, but the video game makers seem to have missed the memo.
All one has to do is take a step back and suppose the devs actually implemented every idea suggested. Then look towards your favorite fanfiction site or newsgroup and imagine what a horrible world we would live in if all that stuff was actually canon.
The article shows why each is preposterous to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of meteorology or an iota of common sense
Actually, it doesn't. The closest I saw was this:
HAARP does not and cannot control the weather. While the frequencies are high powered, it doesn’t have nearly enough energy to do anything over the Lower 48, let alone specifically target communities for destruction like one would see in a science fiction movie. Both common sense and a basic understanding of meteorology debunk the conspiracy theory surrounding HAARP’s alleged ability to control the weather.
So the question is, how do we know how much energy is being pumped into the ionosphere? The whole article seems mostly of ridicule. "Well, of course it doesn't, you'd have to be crazy to believe otherwise, but we're not going to provide any evidence."
Don't get me wrong, I don't think HAARP is part of an evil shadowy conspiracy to create tornados and tsunamis or whatever. But I'm also not a meteorologist... so a breakdown of the physics required to perform such a feat compared to what we know would be pretty useful. I remember a Weekly World News article claiming hackers can turn your computer into a bomb... and as a computer professional, I know exactly why that's impossible and might even giggle at the thought. But I can't expect the general public to explicitly know that there's no real-life equivalent to the HCF instruction.
Kind of like What If at xkcd... putting things to scale such as a hair dryer that just happens to draw 11 petawatts of power can really hit the understanding home.
As opposed to buying a physical disc, where you can just email the developer and they will happily send you a replacement if you lose that disc, right?
Actually, the EULA will state that you didn't purchase the game, you purchased a license to run it. So it should then follow that you're permitted to run it even if you happen to lose the media.
Maybe phone calls about this will get popular instead of "do you have Battletoads?"
Only a few hours ago NBC was reporting only 15-20. The same with Fox. And NBC and ABC.
At least they seem to be correcting their stories.
The problem with the "always on" news cycle is that fact-checking isn't part of it. They all want to be first to report, so if it's wrong, who cares, we'll patch it later.
It's this kind of speculative journalism that gives conspiracy theorists fuel for the shadowy figures in smokey rooms trope.
I recently heard how Reagan started his career....calling baseball games. Back in the era when he would get a small abbreviated summary on a news ticker, and then would make up a story based on the description of the game, pretending like he was actually watching it, even faking the sound of bats hitting balls..... putting on a show as if he was there, when in reality, he was sitting in a dull room getting small bits of information over a ticker.
So, he should have made the summary as boring as the ticket? Boy howdy, better tell all those news organizations to axe the graphics, sounds, on-scene reporting, and all that stuff. Hell, get rid of the anchors, too. Text to speech a newspaper on the nightly news, anything else is just a song and dance.
Face it, Google just isn't getting what they wanted out of the platform.
Or they got exactly what they wanted: market penetration. The majority of happy Android users will have no problem upgrading to a closed Chrome Mobile as long as they get keep their apps (which will then be emulated in an Android VM, a VM within a VM if you will). And Google dropping old, smelly, and open Android means they won't keep their apps on future Android devices.
If I could go back in time and tell myself 5 years younger that Google, not Microsoft, was going to lead the next wave of Embrace Extend Extinguish, I'd have laughed in my own face.
I've never tried it but I have it on good authority that when combined with the component gunpowder the dose of lead in a bullet is sufficiently lethal to the average human.
Since they are advocating throwing away an entire OS due to a flaw in Firefox, I'll go one step further. Throw out your entire PC and you'll be 100% secure.
This is incorrect, the latest version of firefox do allow javascript to be turned off. It is an invalid complaint.
Don't give me bullshit about it not being in the "UI" either, since I have a bookmark with the address about:config?filter=javascript.enabled right there in my bookmarks toolbar.
And if that ever stops working, don't give me that bullshit because I can always patch it out of the executable binary, right?
Hiding it is user hostile, full stop. I don't want to play GameFAQs on software to find out the secret button code to unlock things like "disable javascript"
If we want the government to stop snooping we need to change the LAWS. If there aren't enough votes to change the law, then we just need to suck it up, same as for any other decision by the majority.
Sorry, I fail to see where morality enters into this argument at all...?
Humans are just another variety of animal on this planet, like the rest of them, we eat, sleep, shit, fuck and make new little copies of ourselves.
We just happen to be on the top of the food chain, and have a lot of choices on what to eat, picking from those lower than us on the food chain.
There's nothing morally wrong with eating something lower than yourself on the food chain, that's they way nature made all of us animals.
Somewhere along the line....people have gotten so abstracted from their food, they seem to forget this.
Please don't misunderstand, I like meat and I eat it.
But I'm not so abstracted from my food that I forget that it used to be a living thing, and that it's life was taken so that I could have nutrition (and useful byproducts like bone meal, glycerin, leather, etc). If we ever reach a level of technology where there are no health or taste reasons why a synthetic meat would be undesirable, I simply wouldn't ever buy meat that used to be alive.
We're a unique animal that need not be limited to the "natural." It's natural to piss and shit wherever, but modern sanitation sets up some rules about how piss and shit are handled so we don't contaminate our living area or food and water supplies. It's natural to breed and have women spending their childbearing years perpetually pregnant from potentially many different men, but we as a society calm things down a bit because runaway breeding is unsustainable. We've gone far beyond our evolved instincts.
Hell, I'm just trying to eat beef/animal products that are more natural than the normal stuff you see in the grocery stores.
I'd rather cut down my meat intake (quality over quantity), and have say beef, that is grass fed, allowed to eat what it normally eats, and not needing all the hormones and anti-biotics....
I'm certainly not wanting to swing the complete other day and have synthetic "dead animal".
Why are we trying to go so far away from foodstuffs that mother natures put on earth for us...?
It isn't like most of us (in the west) are starving or anything.
I would argue that if it's possible to grow meat that's just as wholesome as grass-fed beef (arguably more so because it won't have any environmental contaminants at all) and at the same price, the practice of raising and killing of animals is no longer justified in the slightest. It's a morally tough call today as it is.
Because in the event of an all out nuclear war, praying will be about as effective against an atomic blast as against an oncoming tidal wave, and everybody knows this.
What would you prefer? I've always liked "smoke 'em if you got 'em"
Most low-end 3D printers use PLA plastic. This is basically processed corn starch, and while initially hydrophobic, it will rapidly degrade (rot) if exposed to water for an extended period of time. In addition, the prints are much stronger in the direction of the filament than cross-wise (using the tensile strength of the filament vs the bonding strength of the layers), so it's not just model quality but actual printing technique that matters for durability.
They're making huge strides, but 3D printing is nowhere near the "run out and buy an HP inkjet and hook it up" level of utility.
Spoiler: not as bad as one might think. The fine print on those application white papers usually say that, to bio-degrade PLA, it needs to be ground up very finely and composted in a very specific manner.
This. With free shipping on everything, and a shower curtain including 12 rings costing $10, an iPhone case costing $3.50, I think the 3D printer would take a long time to break even.
That assumes the shower curtain rings and iPhone case available for sale at such prices are exactly what I want.
Maybe I want a phone case with a few earbud holding loops on the side in glow-in-the-dark green, or maybe I want shower curtains each with a separate symbol of the zodiac on the outside. If your needs don't fall into the 90% of the market that wants it, you can forget about anyone making it in quantity such that it would be as cheap as you describe.
In retrospect, I've spent money over the years on seemingly mundane things that are a compromise between what I really wanted and what was available. Drawer handles that are square with a bulge instead of just square. Wall plates with a mismatched Command hook attached for a keyring holder instead of built in to the panel. Spice racks that are slightly undersized for my cabinet and shifts around instead of a perfect friction fit. With a 3d printer you can build things that perfectly match your needs (and will only get better as time goes on), and with significantly less skill required for, say, using a lathe to turn your perfect faucet handle.
What if I just click on 'Print it', then go on with the rest of your life until it's printed?
You come back to it 3 hours later to find that the object has separated from the raft leaving you with $20 worth of extruded plastic spaghetti. But if you babysit it the success rate goes way up.
It might have something to do with the nearby body heat, or maybe a hidden camera that verifies a person is there, or just pissed off little elves that don't want to be lonely. But yes, you have to babysit it:(
How long have you been a 3d printer operator? I recommend more practice.
After getting the hang of it (which involves a robust toolchain, proper calibration, and correct leveling and maintenance), I've had many many hours worth of prints completely unattented. It took me about 8 months of casual usage with some periods of inactivity to get here.
Your response is a bit tongue in cheek, I get that, but while the learning curve is rather steep it levels off considerably.
And still america isn't managing to come out better looking than them in this situation... how hard could it be for the "land of the free"
On the upside, when his one-year asylum expires, he will be back in the press as a political prop during an election year. It will be interesting how those that called him a traitor in the house and 1/3 of the senate wind up when the election chips fall.
I'll start caring about computing power on consoles again when we have ray-shaded games, I haven't cared about the shininess of games in years now.
There's more that can be done with computing power than just make things shiny.
Although, if you're selling the same game over and over with only incremental gameplay improvements, the Nintendo equivalent of Windows 3.11 over 3.1, then there's nothing much you can do with your extra computing power EXCEPT add a few extra shaders.
"In fairness?" So it's okay to threaten to rape of kill someone if they don't share your opinion? Wow...
I know you were probably being facetious, but really: You're not helping here.
Rape threats and other cases of "angry menz syndrome" are actually agent provocateur campaigns made possible through the anonymity of the internet, for the express purpose of gaining allies to their cause, no matter what the cause is. Under fictional assaults, women who may not care either way of course defend their sisters, but even men join the cause and join a white knight campaign to prove that they themselves aren't misogynists and in order to gain favor with women called to action.
Consider: if these were genuine threats, why weren't the authorities involved? Why has no one been arrested or investigated? From Anna Sarkeesian to Caroline Criado-Perez, perhaps if they pressed charges then it would be discovered that all these claims are completely fabricated for publicity and as an appeal to emotion.
Not only that, statistics show that a rapist is most likely to be someone the victim already knows. There is no purpose to threatening a complete stranger, and no chance of follow through. It's still a crime, however.
I unfortunately know my sysadmin by name, because most sentences with his name usually include "I know for a fact that you didn't". I'd love to have a gentleman's agreement in place where I promise to run well-written unit tests that won't take anything else down and he promises not to keep randomly locking firewall ports "just to see if I was still using it."
What on earth are you talking about and however did you get modded up to +5? Economic sanctions may come about in times of war, granted. But to claim they're an act of war is to cheapen and trivialize the horror that is such a conflict as to be named a war.
Economic sanctions can be as minor a thing as import tariffs. They're a part of everyday international business.
People here are getting way too emotional and need to grow up.
Trivialize the horror of war? Considering the US (and other nations, present and in times past) were and still are willing to wage war and have citizens die for lies, deception, and manipulation, how much more trivialized can it get?
Slashdot Mirror
Any change will please some fans and anger others, and it's mostly the angry ones who will post. Having a "community relations" person to find the few facts-and-numbers complaints and forwards those on to devs is can be valuable (and sadly is almost never done), but beyond that all the forums really tell you is "27% more angry rants than the last change", which is interesting and useful information - no need to read the actual rants.
Somehow, producers for every other entertainment media figured out that you can't give consumers a direct voice, but the video game makers seem to have missed the memo.
All one has to do is take a step back and suppose the devs actually implemented every idea suggested. Then look towards your favorite fanfiction site or newsgroup and imagine what a horrible world we would live in if all that stuff was actually canon.
The article shows why each is preposterous to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of meteorology or an iota of common sense
Actually, it doesn't. The closest I saw was this:
HAARP does not and cannot control the weather. While the frequencies are high powered, it doesn’t have nearly enough energy to do anything over the Lower 48, let alone specifically target communities for destruction like one would see in a science fiction movie. Both common sense and a basic understanding of meteorology debunk the conspiracy theory surrounding HAARP’s alleged ability to control the weather.
So the question is, how do we know how much energy is being pumped into the ionosphere? The whole article seems mostly of ridicule. "Well, of course it doesn't, you'd have to be crazy to believe otherwise, but we're not going to provide any evidence."
Don't get me wrong, I don't think HAARP is part of an evil shadowy conspiracy to create tornados and tsunamis or whatever. But I'm also not a meteorologist... so a breakdown of the physics required to perform such a feat compared to what we know would be pretty useful. I remember a Weekly World News article claiming hackers can turn your computer into a bomb... and as a computer professional, I know exactly why that's impossible and might even giggle at the thought. But I can't expect the general public to explicitly know that there's no real-life equivalent to the HCF instruction.
Kind of like What If at xkcd... putting things to scale such as a hair dryer that just happens to draw 11 petawatts of power can really hit the understanding home.
As opposed to buying a physical disc, where you can just email the developer and they will happily send you a replacement if you lose that disc, right?
Actually, the EULA will state that you didn't purchase the game, you purchased a license to run it. So it should then follow that you're permitted to run it even if you happen to lose the media.
Maybe phone calls about this will get popular instead of "do you have Battletoads?"
Only a few hours ago NBC was reporting only 15-20. The same with Fox. And NBC and ABC.
At least they seem to be correcting their stories.
The problem with the "always on" news cycle is that fact-checking isn't part of it. They all want to be first to report, so if it's wrong, who cares, we'll patch it later.
It's this kind of speculative journalism that gives conspiracy theorists fuel for the shadowy figures in smokey rooms trope.
I recently heard how Reagan started his career....calling baseball games. Back in the era when he would get a small abbreviated summary on a news ticker, and then would make up a story based on the description of the game, pretending like he was actually watching it, even faking the sound of bats hitting balls..... putting on a show as if he was there, when in reality, he was sitting in a dull room getting small bits of information over a ticker.
So, he should have made the summary as boring as the ticket? Boy howdy, better tell all those news organizations to axe the graphics, sounds, on-scene reporting, and all that stuff. Hell, get rid of the anchors, too. Text to speech a newspaper on the nightly news, anything else is just a song and dance.
Face it, Google just isn't getting what they wanted out of the platform.
Or they got exactly what they wanted: market penetration. The majority of happy Android users will have no problem upgrading to a closed Chrome Mobile as long as they get keep their apps (which will then be emulated in an Android VM, a VM within a VM if you will). And Google dropping old, smelly, and open Android means they won't keep their apps on future Android devices.
If I could go back in time and tell myself 5 years younger that Google, not Microsoft, was going to lead the next wave of Embrace Extend Extinguish, I'd have laughed in my own face.
I guess it's time for the old piracy groups to step up and steal the factory images that the production house is flashing onto those devices.
I've never tried it but I have it on good authority that when combined with the component gunpowder the dose of lead in a bullet is sufficiently lethal to the average human.
I, uh, fell on a bullet.
Since they are advocating throwing away an entire OS due to a flaw in Firefox, I'll go one step further. Throw out your entire PC and you'll be 100% secure.
But but but they can go through your garbage!
This is incorrect, the latest version of firefox do allow javascript to be turned off. It is an invalid complaint.
Don't give me bullshit about it not being in the "UI" either, since I have a bookmark with the address about:config?filter=javascript.enabled right there in my bookmarks toolbar.
And if that ever stops working, don't give me that bullshit because I can always patch it out of the executable binary, right?
Hiding it is user hostile, full stop. I don't want to play GameFAQs on software to find out the secret button code to unlock things like "disable javascript"
If we want the government to stop snooping we need to change the LAWS. If there aren't enough votes to change the law, then we just need to suck it up, same as for any other decision by the majority.
What good are laws if government ignores them?
Sorry, I fail to see where morality enters into this argument at all...?
Humans are just another variety of animal on this planet, like the rest of them, we eat, sleep, shit, fuck and make new little copies of ourselves.
We just happen to be on the top of the food chain, and have a lot of choices on what to eat, picking from those lower than us on the food chain.
There's nothing morally wrong with eating something lower than yourself on the food chain, that's they way nature made all of us animals.
Somewhere along the line....people have gotten so abstracted from their food, they seem to forget this.
Please don't misunderstand, I like meat and I eat it.
But I'm not so abstracted from my food that I forget that it used to be a living thing, and that it's life was taken so that I could have nutrition (and useful byproducts like bone meal, glycerin, leather, etc). If we ever reach a level of technology where there are no health or taste reasons why a synthetic meat would be undesirable, I simply wouldn't ever buy meat that used to be alive.
We're a unique animal that need not be limited to the "natural." It's natural to piss and shit wherever, but modern sanitation sets up some rules about how piss and shit are handled so we don't contaminate our living area or food and water supplies. It's natural to breed and have women spending their childbearing years perpetually pregnant from potentially many different men, but we as a society calm things down a bit because runaway breeding is unsustainable. We've gone far beyond our evolved instincts.
They can keep it.
Hell, I'm just trying to eat beef/animal products that are more natural than the normal stuff you see in the grocery stores.
I'd rather cut down my meat intake (quality over quantity), and have say beef, that is grass fed, allowed to eat what it normally eats, and not needing all the hormones and anti-biotics....
I'm certainly not wanting to swing the complete other day and have synthetic "dead animal".
Why are we trying to go so far away from foodstuffs that mother natures put on earth for us...?
It isn't like most of us (in the west) are starving or anything.
I would argue that if it's possible to grow meat that's just as wholesome as grass-fed beef (arguably more so because it won't have any environmental contaminants at all) and at the same price, the practice of raising and killing of animals is no longer justified in the slightest. It's a morally tough call today as it is.
Because in the event of an all out nuclear war, praying will be about as effective against an atomic blast as against an oncoming tidal wave, and everybody knows this.
What would you prefer? I've always liked "smoke 'em if you got 'em"
Because they are not just looking at the metadata of what you search on the internet, they are looking at the content of those searches.
If metadata is data about data, then clearly the data about the data in your data is also metadata, isn't it?
Most low-end 3D printers use PLA plastic. This is basically processed corn starch, and while initially hydrophobic, it will rapidly degrade (rot) if exposed to water for an extended period of time. In addition, the prints are much stronger in the direction of the filament than cross-wise (using the tensile strength of the filament vs the bonding strength of the layers), so it's not just model quality but actual printing technique that matters for durability.
They're making huge strides, but 3D printing is nowhere near the "run out and buy an HP inkjet and hook it up" level of utility.
You might find this post interesting, in which a PLA object was left outdoors for about a year. http://www.protoparadigm.com/blog/2013/06/weathering-of-3d-printed-pla-objects/
Spoiler: not as bad as one might think. The fine print on those application white papers usually say that, to bio-degrade PLA, it needs to be ground up very finely and composted in a very specific manner.
This. With free shipping on everything, and a shower curtain including 12 rings costing $10, an iPhone case costing $3.50, I think the 3D printer would take a long time to break even.
That assumes the shower curtain rings and iPhone case available for sale at such prices are exactly what I want.
Maybe I want a phone case with a few earbud holding loops on the side in glow-in-the-dark green, or maybe I want shower curtains each with a separate symbol of the zodiac on the outside. If your needs don't fall into the 90% of the market that wants it, you can forget about anyone making it in quantity such that it would be as cheap as you describe.
In retrospect, I've spent money over the years on seemingly mundane things that are a compromise between what I really wanted and what was available. Drawer handles that are square with a bulge instead of just square. Wall plates with a mismatched Command hook attached for a keyring holder instead of built in to the panel. Spice racks that are slightly undersized for my cabinet and shifts around instead of a perfect friction fit. With a 3d printer you can build things that perfectly match your needs (and will only get better as time goes on), and with significantly less skill required for, say, using a lathe to turn your perfect faucet handle.
What if I just click on 'Print it', then go on with the rest of your life until it's printed?
You come back to it 3 hours later to find that the object has separated from the raft leaving you with $20 worth of extruded plastic spaghetti. But if you babysit it the success rate goes way up.
It might have something to do with the nearby body heat, or maybe a hidden camera that verifies a person is there, or just pissed off little elves that don't want to be lonely. But yes, you have to babysit it :(
How long have you been a 3d printer operator? I recommend more practice.
After getting the hang of it (which involves a robust toolchain, proper calibration, and correct leveling and maintenance), I've had many many hours worth of prints completely unattented. It took me about 8 months of casual usage with some periods of inactivity to get here.
Your response is a bit tongue in cheek, I get that, but while the learning curve is rather steep it levels off considerably.
And still america isn't managing to come out better looking than them in this situation... how hard could it be for the "land of the free"
On the upside, when his one-year asylum expires, he will be back in the press as a political prop during an election year. It will be interesting how those that called him a traitor in the house and 1/3 of the senate wind up when the election chips fall.
I'll start caring about computing power on consoles again when we have ray-shaded games, I haven't cared about the shininess of games in years now.
There's more that can be done with computing power than just make things shiny.
Although, if you're selling the same game over and over with only incremental gameplay improvements, the Nintendo equivalent of Windows 3.11 over 3.1, then there's nothing much you can do with your extra computing power EXCEPT add a few extra shaders.
You shouldn't have sold your Wii. It makes a fantastic low-cost, low-power system to emulate older systems including a few arcade games.
I just wish there was more arcade/Neo-Geo titles in their library.
The Ouya does that better at lower cost, no soft-mod required.
The only thing special about the Wii U is the controller has a screen.
Actually, the 5 player same-console multiplayer is pretty nice too when you have a lot of kids (or kid's friends).
That didn't save the Turbo Grafx.
"In fairness?" So it's okay to threaten to rape of kill someone if they don't share your opinion? Wow...
I know you were probably being facetious, but really: You're not helping here.
Rape threats and other cases of "angry menz syndrome" are actually agent provocateur campaigns made possible through the anonymity of the internet, for the express purpose of gaining allies to their cause, no matter what the cause is. Under fictional assaults, women who may not care either way of course defend their sisters, but even men join the cause and join a white knight campaign to prove that they themselves aren't misogynists and in order to gain favor with women called to action.
Consider: if these were genuine threats, why weren't the authorities involved? Why has no one been arrested or investigated? From Anna Sarkeesian to Caroline Criado-Perez, perhaps if they pressed charges then it would be discovered that all these claims are completely fabricated for publicity and as an appeal to emotion.
Not only that, statistics show that a rapist is most likely to be someone the victim already knows. There is no purpose to threatening a complete stranger, and no chance of follow through. It's still a crime, however.
Or maybe he's got a good sysadmin.
I unfortunately know my sysadmin by name, because most sentences with his name usually include "I know for a fact that you didn't". I'd love to have a gentleman's agreement in place where I promise to run well-written unit tests that won't take anything else down and he promises not to keep randomly locking firewall ports "just to see if I was still using it."
What on earth are you talking about and however did you get modded up to +5? Economic sanctions may come about in times of war, granted. But to claim they're an act of war is to cheapen and trivialize the horror that is such a conflict as to be named a war.
Economic sanctions can be as minor a thing as import tariffs. They're a part of everyday international business.
People here are getting way too emotional and need to grow up.
Trivialize the horror of war? Considering the US (and other nations, present and in times past) were and still are willing to wage war and have citizens die for lies, deception, and manipulation, how much more trivialized can it get?