Can we please stop using "loophole" to describe provisions that are intentionally and knowingly written into legislation? If the president waives away the entire bill under the auspices of "national security," no one, especially not Congress, can cry "loophole!"; the president was acting within the explicit provisions of the legislation.
NVIDIA's newest top-of-the-line card is the 9800. I'm using a 9800 right now -- only it was produced by ATI some four years ago.
The (mild) confusion brought by NVIDIA's naming scheme wouldn't be an issue if ATI's 9800 series was shoddy or unspectacular. But the cards are so good that many people still use them today.
Netizen choice fatigue Web 3.0 wisdom of the crowds
What the hell is "choice fatigue" anyway? Are users overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data aggregated by Google and the like? Is the author implying that we're too lazy/tired/inept to handle more than one or two obvious sources of information? A combination of both? These trend stories only hold weight when constructed with ambiguous phrases, hurried research, and lack of in-depth explanations. He damns Amazon, Wikipedia, and craigslist in a matter of four sentences using flimsy support at best. Dark days for the internet heavyweights indeed.
Also: when will the "Web x.0" label finally die? This is a serious question. At the current buzzword usage rate, we'll arrive at Web 10.0 by 2015. So the tech trend story authors will either have to qualify the phrase using several paragraphs, assume readers understand all 10 evolutions of the web, or stop using it altogether. If it's the latter -- oh god please let it be the latter -- then at what number will it stop: 4.0, 5.0, 6.0? Anyone want to take bets?
You're not supposed to run the Optimus through the dishwasher if it gets dirty and crusty?:) And unless you're filthy rich, you can't chuck it and buy a new one.
So you either: Type with gloves on; Use in a clean room; Spend a painstaking amount of time cleaning it.
The Optimus is best at home among all those other impractical gadgets, usually found in HOUSE OF THE FUTURE! exhibits, that aren't used by real people...
Not because they'll be charged with illegal file sharing, but because it will go on record that they in fact downloaded music by The Village People. Revealing that to the world should be enough punishment.:)
Videogames could be the cultural equivalent of a ghetto filled with thugs, whores, crack dealers, derelict housing, corrupt cops, stray bullets, overflowing sewers, the homeless, broken glass, and gun-toting radioactive giant sewer rats and I'd still be happy as long as games are fun and stimulating.
I'll leave determining what and what isn't art to the professional intellectual masturbaters:)
The social networking elements in Spore do look truly stunning and already there's a wealth of content available from the testers and developers - everything from flying toilets to animals that look like letters
Stop right there pal, you had me sold on "flying toilet"!
I look forward to exploring new worlds and encountering other players' utterly ridiculous creatures. Of course, I'll be disappointed if someone doesn't create creatures/civilizations based on every internet meme ever (oh how I'll enjoy destroying the LOLcats with my spaceship's death ray).
Oh yeah, Spore's Wikipedia article mentions how the galaxy will feature active planetary nebulas, black holes, rotating spiral arms, etc. After acquiring a spaceship, I fully plan on plotting a course to the black hole's event horizon. I wonder how the game will model that experience...
According to the stats, Red successfully defends Dustbowl some 71% of the time. While I expect the defenders to win slightly more than the attackers, this percentage indicates that's something wrong with the map balance. Dustbowl is also ranked fourth based on time played (ahead of Well and Granary). This might not have anything to do with Red's skewed win/loss ratio, but it's worth pointing out.
(I've been playing Dustbowl since 2000 and it's the only reason I give a damn about TF, in case you're wondering.)
A mediocre Red team still has a decent chance of winning; a mediocre Blu team doesn't. Furthermore, a good player can still have fun on Red even if his teammates are idiots. Not so on Blu, where the entire team must work together to gain ground. Try advancing through the "death corridor" on stage 3 as your four offense engies refuse to switch to a more useful class or move their gear up. (As a side note, I've noticed that as more Blu players switch to engineer, the odds of Blu losing increase exponentially.)
To be sure, I've played some fantastic rounds on team Blu, but I often find myself server hopping to avoid wasting my time as an attacker doomed to defeat (hey, I don't have much gaming time these days and I'm not going to squander it getting raped.)
This trend is the reverse of what I saw in TFC: Blue would win the majority of matches thanks to skilled players pipe/nade jumping the flag into the cap, bypassing the entire defending team. In TF2, one player can't jump across half the map and save the day. In other words, there's a greater emphasis on teamwork.
One of my suggestions: redesign the first capture point on stage 3. Maybe narrow the bunker to give Blu a wider area to navigate and reduce the potency of Red demos. Any other Dbowl players think the map needs tweaking to even the odds, or is this simply due to offense requiring more coordinated teamwork, something in scarce supply on pub servers?
Scientists still debate if viruses meet the definition of life as we know it. I'm certainly not qualified to render an opinion on the matter; I just think it's fascinating how viruses occupy this gray area between our definitions of living and non-living.
The stream of "APPLE IS DOOOOMED!!1" stories showed us that proclaiming the death of something makes for easy writing and easy page views. Reality is more mundane; people will continue using a mix of all three, as you said, for years to come.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
A strong military is essential to safeguarding liberty and the Republic. But a strong military doesn't have to be one of excess. The military has become a tool for delivering profits to Lockheed Martin and Boeing and other conglomerates under the auspice of national security. It's a tool congressmen use to allocate military projects to their districts, whether or not such projects benefit the mission at hand.
Some examples of the Pentagon's famed waste and corruption:
The Crusader artillery project, finally canceled in 2002 after $11 billion was spent on it. Donald Rumsfeld said it wasn't mobile enough for the 21st century. What is so wrong with the current Paladin artillery platform that this project was required in the first place?
And what about the Coast Guard's troubled modernization efforts, contracted out to Lockheed and Northrop? The project is $7 billion overbudget and nine years behind schedule, yet both of these companies still continue to work on it. And Lockheed and Northrop will continue working on projects for decades to come despite this.
The Air Force and Navy have F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. But they're building the F-22 and some F-35 joint strike aircraft, too? At what point is enough enough? If the branches could afford dabbling in that stuff, then they should go for it. But it's a matter of prioritizing; money is not infinite, despite what the debt-ridden government believes. Maintain the systems we have, many of which are at the breaking point after years of service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Churning out more wonder weapons seems pointless when our current crop of fighters perform just fine.
There comes a point where we must see this game for what it is. The challenge is in creating a ready, able, and fearsome fighting force while not indulging the excesses of the military-industrial complex. And I know that many great things have come from Pentagon-sponsored R&D projects. But these programs can still exist without spending countless sums of money.
And this doesn't even take into account that such a fearsome military is all too often misused in wars of choice like Vietnam and Iraq. So we spend all of this money to build a huge military, then spend even more money to misuse it...without ever having declared war. Brilliant.
See if your local landfill has a recycling center. If it does, it will probably have a designated area for old electronics. From there, the electronics are probably hauled to a specialized recycling center.
However, you should inquire as to where this recycling center is located. Having your old HDs and monitors sent to China for reprocessing probably causes more environmental damage than simply throwing them away.
Ultimately, don't be afraid of paying the landfill a few bucks to properly dispose of your refuge; in the long run, it's better than simply tossing it in the ground.
Blockbuster is just indicative of things to come. Netflix may be riding high now, but as Hollywood slowly embraces digital distribution, its party will eventually end. But for the digital distribution to really take hold, several issues must first be resolved: DRM, broadband access, widely-used media centers, digital distribution services, etc. Of these, broadband availability and speed is the biggest obstacle, especially in the U.S.
The seeds are planted; now they must converge to the point of making physical copies of DVDs and games obsolete. And with oil rapidly approaching $100/barrel, all commodities, even small things like a DVDs and videogames, become more expensive to produce and deliver to consumers. Digital distribution is better insulated from rising commodity prices.
I just don't see the public embracing endless format and retailer wars. Cut out the HD-DVDs, Blu-Rays, Blockbusters, and Netflixes; just download the damn things straight to my future 5TB harddrive:)
This entire process might take take 10, maybe 15, years, but I wouldn't bet the future on companies like Gamestop, with their high fixed operating costs. Why not cut out them out and sell directly to the consumer, as Steam does? Wii, 360, and PS3 all have online stores that will only expand over the coming years. Hell, Gamestop has practically eliminated its PC game section and makes a lot of its money on used videogame sales. Of course when physical copies of videogames stop being manufactured, it'll be pretty hard to sell used versions, won't it? And it doesn't help that Gamestop, like Blockbuster, pisses off legions of would-be customers through its terrible customer service.
before users get a button to press when they see a speed trap? If enough users report a speed trap at a given intersection or off-ramp, the system could issue an alert to other drivers approaching the area. People would love that.
One: the console fanboys will have nothing to argue about. Wait, scratch that. We'd probably have posts about how UniConsole's red scheme is outselling the white scheme, but behind the jet black scheme followed. This would be followed by pages of overwrought analysis, flame wars, and someone posting goatse before the thread lock:p
Two: EA believes that in THE FUTURE, gamers might play on Nintendo "channels" and Sony "channels" through some universal console. Doubtful, but I hope virtual console offerings are expanded across the board. Digital distribution is relatively cheap and EA, Nintendo, etc. could sell games for years or even decades after release. Maybe a Steam-like system that allows me to transfer games from console to console with guaranteed compatibility?
As it stands, there are hundreds of games that are effectively lost to time for no good reason. Consoles come and go, games stop being manufactured, and eager players either have to buy rehashes (and the required hardware), expensive used copies, or resort to emulation (which doesn't always work, especially with PS1 games). With digital distribution there's no reason why classic games, which aren't inherently scarce, have to be so difficult to find. Plus digital distribution will help bankrupt the assholes at Gamestop...assuming Comcast doesn't throttle your game downloads!
Maybe you didn't read the part about how I was only discussing SimCity?
And even if you think those games are crap, they at least ran smoothly on my systems. When EA makes a game, it needs 2GB of RAM and 30 seconds of splash videos too.
Maxis no longer exists. The studio was folded into EA years ago.
Look no further than SimCity Societies to see how far the SimCity series has fallen. The Sims, revolutionary way back when, is a pathetic cash cow at this point.
Imagine SimCity, only take out the simulation elements, dumb it down, give it a lame 3d engine, and hire the mediocre studio behind the failure that is Caesar IV to design it. That's exactly what EA is doing with SimCity Societies. One of the most venerable PC game series of all time is reduced to the uninspired, inoffensive, mildly-likable crap that EA specializes in. If Maxis were still around, I doubt we'd be seeing this.
Then there's the Westwood. EA dissolved the studio and released C&C: Generals. It had no live action cut scenes, no creative and silly weapons, and no enigmatic bald men bent on world domination. It was a generic RTS featuring the USA, China, and some Arab quasi-nationstate fighting across desert landscapes dotted with mosques - the same setting used by every Clancy knockoff.
(Just because you build a city doesn't make it SimCity. Likewise, just because you command a modern army doesn't make it C&C.)
And let's not forget the Battlefield series. DICE revolutionized online FPS gaming with BF1942. To this day, it's still one of my favorite games. Battlefield 2, however, is a system hog that could teach Vista a thing or two. Post-release support is abysmal and the game is still riddled with bugs. BF2142 is for all purposes a half-assed futuristic mod based on the same crummy BF2 engine...and it features in-game ads.
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. I've been playing PC games ever since SimCity 2000 in 1993 and have witnessed EA steadily bastardize so many PC games I know and love. They make boatloads of cash from their exploitation games (Madden, The Sims) and then buy out respectable studios. Am I cynical for thinking that BioWare and Pandemic will go to shit? Based on my experience with EA, it's only a matter of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Another great Simpsons intro, this one parodying the classic "Powers of 10" video.
Can we please stop using "loophole" to describe provisions that are intentionally and knowingly written into legislation? If the president waives away the entire bill under the auspices of "national security," no one, especially not Congress, can cry "loophole!"; the president was acting within the explicit provisions of the legislation.
Wait, so the headline isn't a crafty way of referring to a new DOOM game? Color me disappointed.
NVIDIA's newest top-of-the-line card is the 9800. I'm using a 9800 right now -- only it was produced by ATI some four years ago.
The (mild) confusion brought by NVIDIA's naming scheme wouldn't be an issue if ATI's 9800 series was shoddy or unspectacular. But the cards are so good that many people still use them today.
That even MS employees don't read the EULA...
Buzzwords discovered during a quick reading:
Netizen
choice fatigue
Web 3.0
wisdom of the crowds
What the hell is "choice fatigue" anyway? Are users overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data aggregated by Google and the like? Is the author implying that we're too lazy/tired/inept to handle more than one or two obvious sources of information? A combination of both? These trend stories only hold weight when constructed with ambiguous phrases, hurried research, and lack of in-depth explanations. He damns Amazon, Wikipedia, and craigslist in a matter of four sentences using flimsy support at best. Dark days for the internet heavyweights indeed.
Also: when will the "Web x.0" label finally die? This is a serious question. At the current buzzword usage rate, we'll arrive at Web 10.0 by 2015. So the tech trend story authors will either have to qualify the phrase using several paragraphs, assume readers understand all 10 evolutions of the web, or stop using it altogether. If it's the latter -- oh god please let it be the latter -- then at what number will it stop: 4.0, 5.0, 6.0? Anyone want to take bets?
You're not supposed to run the Optimus through the dishwasher if it gets dirty and crusty? :) And unless you're filthy rich, you can't chuck it and buy a new one.
So you either:
Type with gloves on;
Use in a clean room;
Spend a painstaking amount of time cleaning it.
The Optimus is best at home among all those other impractical gadgets, usually found in HOUSE OF THE FUTURE! exhibits, that aren't used by real people...
Not because they'll be charged with illegal file sharing, but because it will go on record that they in fact downloaded music by The Village People. Revealing that to the world should be enough punishment. :)
Videogames could be the cultural equivalent of a ghetto filled with thugs, whores, crack dealers, derelict housing, corrupt cops, stray bullets, overflowing sewers, the homeless, broken glass, and gun-toting radioactive giant sewer rats and I'd still be happy as long as games are fun and stimulating.
:)
I'll leave determining what and what isn't art to the professional intellectual masturbaters
The social networking elements in Spore do look truly stunning and already there's a wealth of content available from the testers and developers - everything from flying toilets to animals that look like letters
Stop right there pal, you had me sold on "flying toilet"!
I look forward to exploring new worlds and encountering other players' utterly ridiculous creatures. Of course, I'll be disappointed if someone doesn't create creatures/civilizations based on every internet meme ever (oh how I'll enjoy destroying the LOLcats with my spaceship's death ray).
Oh yeah, Spore's Wikipedia article mentions how the galaxy will feature active planetary nebulas, black holes, rotating spiral arms, etc. After acquiring a spaceship, I fully plan on plotting a course to the black hole's event horizon. I wonder how the game will model that experience...
According to the stats, Red successfully defends Dustbowl some 71% of the time. While I expect the defenders to win slightly more than the attackers, this percentage indicates that's something wrong with the map balance. Dustbowl is also ranked fourth based on time played (ahead of Well and Granary). This might not have anything to do with Red's skewed win/loss ratio, but it's worth pointing out.
(I've been playing Dustbowl since 2000 and it's the only reason I give a damn about TF, in case you're wondering.)
A mediocre Red team still has a decent chance of winning; a mediocre Blu team doesn't. Furthermore, a good player can still have fun on Red even if his teammates are idiots. Not so on Blu, where the entire team must work together to gain ground. Try advancing through the "death corridor" on stage 3 as your four offense engies refuse to switch to a more useful class or move their gear up. (As a side note, I've noticed that as more Blu players switch to engineer, the odds of Blu losing increase exponentially.)
To be sure, I've played some fantastic rounds on team Blu, but I often find myself server hopping to avoid wasting my time as an attacker doomed to defeat (hey, I don't have much gaming time these days and I'm not going to squander it getting raped.)
This trend is the reverse of what I saw in TFC: Blue would win the majority of matches thanks to skilled players pipe/nade jumping the flag into the cap, bypassing the entire defending team. In TF2, one player can't jump across half the map and save the day. In other words, there's a greater emphasis on teamwork.
One of my suggestions: redesign the first capture point on stage 3. Maybe narrow the bunker to give Blu a wider area to navigate and reduce the potency of Red demos. Any other Dbowl players think the map needs tweaking to even the odds, or is this simply due to offense requiring more coordinated teamwork, something in scarce supply on pub servers?
If it was never alive in the first place?
Scientists still debate if viruses meet the definition of life as we know it. I'm certainly not qualified to render an opinion on the matter; I just think it's fascinating how viruses occupy this gray area between our definitions of living and non-living.
Here's a PDF of a SciAm article about this very debate, written by the Director of Virus Research at UC Irvine.
The stream of "APPLE IS DOOOOMED!!1" stories showed us that proclaiming the death of something makes for easy writing and easy page views. Reality is more mundane; people will continue using a mix of all three, as you said, for years to come.
:P
Did you know that the hardcover book faces imminent doom as well?
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
A strong military is essential to safeguarding liberty and the Republic. But a strong military doesn't have to be one of excess. The military has become a tool for delivering profits to Lockheed Martin and Boeing and other conglomerates under the auspice of national security. It's a tool congressmen use to allocate military projects to their districts, whether or not such projects benefit the mission at hand.
Some examples of the Pentagon's famed waste and corruption:
The Crusader artillery project, finally canceled in 2002 after $11 billion was spent on it. Donald Rumsfeld said it wasn't mobile enough for the 21st century. What is so wrong with the current Paladin artillery platform that this project was required in the first place?
And what about the Coast Guard's troubled modernization efforts, contracted out to Lockheed and Northrop? The project is $7 billion overbudget and nine years behind schedule, yet both of these companies still continue to work on it. And Lockheed and Northrop will continue working on projects for decades to come despite this.
The Air Force and Navy have F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. But they're building the F-22 and some F-35 joint strike aircraft, too? At what point is enough enough? If the branches could afford dabbling in that stuff, then they should go for it. But it's a matter of prioritizing; money is not infinite, despite what the debt-ridden government believes. Maintain the systems we have, many of which are at the breaking point after years of service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Churning out more wonder weapons seems pointless when our current crop of fighters perform just fine.
There comes a point where we must see this game for what it is. The challenge is in creating a ready, able, and fearsome fighting force while not indulging the excesses of the military-industrial complex. And I know that many great things have come from Pentagon-sponsored R&D projects. But these programs can still exist without spending countless sums of money.
And this doesn't even take into account that such a fearsome military is all too often misused in wars of choice like Vietnam and Iraq. So we spend all of this money to build a huge military, then spend even more money to misuse it...without ever having declared war. Brilliant.
See if your local landfill has a recycling center. If it does, it will probably have a designated area for old electronics. From there, the electronics are probably hauled to a specialized recycling center.
However, you should inquire as to where this recycling center is located. Having your old HDs and monitors sent to China for reprocessing probably causes more environmental damage than simply throwing them away.
Ultimately, don't be afraid of paying the landfill a few bucks to properly dispose of your refuge; in the long run, it's better than simply tossing it in the ground.
How low are your comedic standards if you can call this crap "hilarious" and keep a straight face?
Blockbuster is just indicative of things to come. Netflix may be riding high now, but as Hollywood slowly embraces digital distribution, its party will eventually end. But for the digital distribution to really take hold, several issues must first be resolved: DRM, broadband access, widely-used media centers, digital distribution services, etc. Of these, broadband availability and speed is the biggest obstacle, especially in the U.S.
:)
The seeds are planted; now they must converge to the point of making physical copies of DVDs and games obsolete. And with oil rapidly approaching $100/barrel, all commodities, even small things like a DVDs and videogames, become more expensive to produce and deliver to consumers. Digital distribution is better insulated from rising commodity prices.
I just don't see the public embracing endless format and retailer wars. Cut out the HD-DVDs, Blu-Rays, Blockbusters, and Netflixes; just download the damn things straight to my future 5TB harddrive
This entire process might take take 10, maybe 15, years, but I wouldn't bet the future on companies like Gamestop, with their high fixed operating costs. Why not cut out them out and sell directly to the consumer, as Steam does? Wii, 360, and PS3 all have online stores that will only expand over the coming years. Hell, Gamestop has practically eliminated its PC game section and makes a lot of its money on used videogame sales. Of course when physical copies of videogames stop being manufactured, it'll be pretty hard to sell used versions, won't it? And it doesn't help that Gamestop, like Blockbuster, pisses off legions of would-be customers through its terrible customer service.
"International editions" can be purchased brand new for less than half of the price you'd pay at the college bookstore.
before users get a button to press when they see a speed trap? If enough users report a speed trap at a given intersection or off-ramp, the system could issue an alert to other drivers approaching the area. People would love that.
Otherwise it would've looked totally stupid...
One: the console fanboys will have nothing to argue about. Wait, scratch that. We'd probably have posts about how UniConsole's red scheme is outselling the white scheme, but behind the jet black scheme followed. This would be followed by pages of overwrought analysis, flame wars, and someone posting goatse before the thread lock :p
Two: EA believes that in THE FUTURE, gamers might play on Nintendo "channels" and Sony "channels" through some universal console. Doubtful, but I hope virtual console offerings are expanded across the board. Digital distribution is relatively cheap and EA, Nintendo, etc. could sell games for years or even decades after release. Maybe a Steam-like system that allows me to transfer games from console to console with guaranteed compatibility?
As it stands, there are hundreds of games that are effectively lost to time for no good reason. Consoles come and go, games stop being manufactured, and eager players either have to buy rehashes (and the required hardware), expensive used copies, or resort to emulation (which doesn't always work, especially with PS1 games). With digital distribution there's no reason why classic games, which aren't inherently scarce, have to be so difficult to find. Plus digital distribution will help bankrupt the assholes at Gamestop...assuming Comcast doesn't throttle your game downloads!
Yeah, just switch to the phone company that spies for the NSA.
Maybe you didn't read the part about how I was only discussing SimCity? And even if you think those games are crap, they at least ran smoothly on my systems. When EA makes a game, it needs 2GB of RAM and 30 seconds of splash videos too.
Maxis no longer exists. The studio was folded into EA years ago. Look no further than SimCity Societies to see how far the SimCity series has fallen. The Sims, revolutionary way back when, is a pathetic cash cow at this point.
Some of EA's finer moments:
Imagine SimCity, only take out the simulation elements, dumb it down, give it a lame 3d engine, and hire the mediocre studio behind the failure that is Caesar IV to design it. That's exactly what EA is doing with SimCity Societies. One of the most venerable PC game series of all time is reduced to the uninspired, inoffensive, mildly-likable crap that EA specializes in. If Maxis were still around, I doubt we'd be seeing this.
Then there's the Westwood. EA dissolved the studio and released C&C: Generals. It had no live action cut scenes, no creative and silly weapons, and no enigmatic bald men bent on world domination. It was a generic RTS featuring the USA, China, and some Arab quasi-nationstate fighting across desert landscapes dotted with mosques - the same setting used by every Clancy knockoff.
(Just because you build a city doesn't make it SimCity. Likewise, just because you command a modern army doesn't make it C&C.)
And let's not forget the Battlefield series. DICE revolutionized online FPS gaming with BF1942. To this day, it's still one of my favorite games. Battlefield 2, however, is a system hog that could teach Vista a thing or two. Post-release support is abysmal and the game is still riddled with bugs. BF2142 is for all purposes a half-assed futuristic mod based on the same crummy BF2 engine...and it features in-game ads.
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. I've been playing PC games ever since SimCity 2000 in 1993 and have witnessed EA steadily bastardize so many PC games I know and love. They make boatloads of cash from their exploitation games (Madden, The Sims) and then buy out respectable studios. Am I cynical for thinking that BioWare and Pandemic will go to shit? Based on my experience with EA, it's only a matter of time.