The problem with that idea is that business users can be JUST as annoying as personal users, and they'd be more willing to pay the increased costs. I have no wish to sit next to someone discussing last week's PTS reports.
I speak here from the benefit of having first hand experience:
I have a Combined Honours batchelor degree in Computer Science and Music - that is the British version of a double major degree, with half my classes spent with the Comp Sci students, and the other half spent with the Classical Music students. Consequently, I had half my marks coming from the Computing department and the other half coming from the Music department, and I can say that Music papers and courses were marked MUCH lower than in the Comp Sci department. Specifically, there were courses in Comp Sci (and Maths, Chemical Engineering, etc) where it was possible, and not uncommon, to get 100%.
There has never - in any year, in any course - been a 100% mark in any of the Music courses. They just don't mark that high. If you had written an essay on, say, 19th Century French Piano Concertos, that was so good it was published by the University, it might just get a 90% mark. A low pass mark was 40%, 70% was a 1st, and a very good to excellent mark would be in the 80s.
That's not to say that one course was any harder than the other, but I'd like to know where this idea of high marking for arts degrees come from... it was anything but at my uni.
I have no problem with Wikipedia (which I use every day) putting ads on the site, as long as:
They are text only,
They are not offensive, or weird.
To illustrate the last point, I have seen some strange ads come up on GoogleAds - sometimes very much NSFW, due to some strange word connection in an otherwise safe page (I don't want to see 'Buy Viagra' appearing on pages describing the human body...).
The most bizarre GoogleAd I saw was on Gmail when it was displaying a mail where I'd mentioned the word 'rat' - it was a link to a site that sold miniature Guillotines for killing lab rats:-(
I know what you mean - I bought a 2nd hand PS2 a few months ago, and bought a few FPS games.
I just couldn't get into them - the controls seemed clunky and horrible. Then again, I really enjoyed Halo on the XBox.
One observation: the control system on Halo seemed to make much better use of the analogue controller, in that gentle movements of the stick caused equally gentle look movements (so that the movement responded exponentially to actual stick movement). The PS2 games I played didn't implement this (or at least didn't implement it properly) so when I played I found myself twitching at the control stick to try and make fine movements.
I personally did found the message to be obscured by the poor design, and I did found the whole thing hard to read.
Why not improve readability with some well-used CSS? A few extra lines of code would vastly improve things and would not noticably increase the load time.
There's a middle ground to be had here - it's not a choice between AJAX madness and a plain bulleted list.
As a Brit who's been to the US many time in the last few years, I can say -
It feels like this:
"Next please.
Please place your finger on the scanner and look at the camera.
Thank you.
What is the purpose of your visit?
How long will you be staying?
Have a nice day. Next please"
The IRA didn't just plant bombs - they shot taxi drivers, grenaded army barracks, kneecapped people etc. etc.
Yes, the IRA gave warnings before they bombed, but don't think that meant they were honorable or nice and fluffy - they sometimes gave deliberately false and confusing warnings that led to more deaths / injuries to innocent civilians (see the Omagh Bombing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omagh_bombing)
Don't get me wrong: the loyalist groups were just as bad. Most of the deaths in the Troubles were not bomb victims but tit-for-tat killings between Catholics and Protestants, as one side retaliated against the other in a horrible spiral of violence.
First gaming experience: being lifted up by my dad so I could play a Space Invaders machine in while on holiday Teignmouth (circa 1979)
First home gaming experience: playing PacMan on the Atari 2600 (circa 1982)
Best gaming experience (still): playing Half-Life with my co-workers after hours on our company network (circa 2001). Nothing since has come close to the joy of playing a good multiplayer game with friends, in the same room, on a no-lag local network.
Ha - in fact, a great deal of the voice work is put on afterwards. You can usually tell, as the sound is 'up close' as you would get in a vocal booth, not roomy sounding like you'd get on a sound stage.
It's called ADR in the US, or Post-Sync in the UK:
There's a good example of it in the Bonus Features of Men In Black 2 - the director calls Will Smith the 'king of ADR' as he's so good at matching up vocal booth performances with the sound stage version - although even he seems to be a bit annoyed by how much of it he has to do.
I currently run WinXP at home, along with both Mac and PC laptops. I'm getting less and less happy with the performance & o/s of these machines, and besides I'd like to be able to casually access the net while my wife hogs the main desktop... for these reasons I'm looking into buying a solid state Linux box that I can use really just for net access.
There are plenty of options around now (all around $200, which is fine by me) - and I think this is going to become a big trend in the next few years. The concept of having a dirt-cheap, reliable, low power, always-on computer _in addition_ to the main household PC, being used (at first) only as a web client, is very exiting. My TV screen already has a VGA input - the idea is to have a backup PC running full-time so I can switch over to Linux and check my mail just as easily as looking something up on teletext.
I've been contemplating making the switch to Linux for a year or so, but this way I don't have to switch. I can keep the Windows box around and migrate slowly - the low cost of the hardware and environmental advantage of having a 1-watt processor make it an easy decision. Good times.
BTW - The Microclient Sr looks like the machine of choice.
But why do you automatically equate drinking with getting wasted? This is the problem - the mainstream US mentality seems to be that alcohol = abuse... having a glass of wine with dinner is quite civilised, and doesn't make you a bad person.
ps - I may not disagree with your comment, but I really don't see why it was marked as Flamebait...:-(
That's an interesting point - what would happen if a Jewish kid at the school posted pictures of themselves at passover, sharing a glass of wine (as is traditional)...?
I'd like to see the school try and suspend them for that.
The US has a very unhealthy attitude towards drinking - how can someone be trusted to vote, but not allowed to drink?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with that idea is that business users can be JUST as annoying as personal users, and they'd be more willing to pay the increased costs. I have no wish to sit next to someone discussing last week's PTS reports.
"Plus of course sitting on a bus or a train causes me significant knee issues that lead to constant pain and limping."
Well, of course!
(what?)
I speak here from the benefit of having first hand experience:
I have a Combined Honours batchelor degree in Computer Science and Music - that is the British version of a double major degree, with half my classes spent with the Comp Sci students, and the other half spent with the Classical Music students. Consequently, I had half my marks coming from the Computing department and the other half coming from the Music department, and I can say that Music papers and courses were marked MUCH lower than in the Comp Sci department. Specifically, there were courses in Comp Sci (and Maths, Chemical Engineering, etc) where it was possible, and not uncommon, to get 100%.
There has never - in any year, in any course - been a 100% mark in any of the Music courses. They just don't mark that high. If you had written an essay on, say, 19th Century French Piano Concertos, that was so good it was published by the University, it might just get a 90% mark. A low pass mark was 40%, 70% was a 1st, and a very good to excellent mark would be in the 80s.
That's not to say that one course was any harder than the other, but I'd like to know where this idea of high marking for arts degrees come from... it was anything but at my uni.
(IAAAG - I Am An Arts Graduate)
No, they write the chords.
I have no problem with Wikipedia (which I use every day) putting ads on the site, as long as:
:-(
They are text only,
They are not offensive, or weird.
To illustrate the last point, I have seen some strange ads come up on GoogleAds - sometimes very much NSFW, due to some strange word connection in an otherwise safe page (I don't want to see 'Buy Viagra' appearing on pages describing the human body...).
The most bizarre GoogleAd I saw was on Gmail when it was displaying a mail where I'd mentioned the word 'rat' - it was a link to a site that sold miniature Guillotines for killing lab rats
I know what you mean - I bought a 2nd hand PS2 a few months ago, and bought a few FPS games.
I just couldn't get into them - the controls seemed clunky and horrible. Then again, I really enjoyed Halo on the XBox.
One observation: the control system on Halo seemed to make much better use of the analogue controller, in that gentle movements of the stick caused equally gentle look movements (so that the movement responded exponentially to actual stick movement). The PS2 games I played didn't implement this (or at least didn't implement it properly) so when I played I found myself twitching at the control stick to try and make fine movements.
I'm in ur aortas, reducing your stress
K thnx bai
Take robotics from the research lab into homes, you say?
My, what a marvelous idea!
Any company that thinks like that doesn't deserve to have me work for them.
I personally did found the message to be obscured by the poor design, and I did found the whole thing hard to read.
Why not improve readability with some well-used CSS? A few extra lines of code would vastly improve things and would not noticably increase the load time.
There's a middle ground to be had here - it's not a choice between AJAX madness and a plain bulleted list.
Great. So why don't we coin a new catchphrase:
Linux - if you don't understand it, you must be stupid!
Then we'll get far more converts, right?
"Computers are complicated. If Joe User wants things to just work, he can buy a fucking PDA."
THIS is one of the reasons no-one wants to use Linux.
Thanks to people like you, the average user buys Windows. Well done.
Maybe they should be looking for designers first - that site is a mess.
As a Brit who's been to the US many time in the last few years, I can say -
It feels like this:
"Next please.
Please place your finger on the scanner and look at the camera.
Thank you.
What is the purpose of your visit?
How long will you be staying?
Have a nice day. Next please"
C'mon guys, it's not exactly 1984.
Really? Do you happen to have any record of that happening?
'cos it sounds like prime, grade-A bullshit to me.
The IRA didn't just plant bombs - they shot taxi drivers, grenaded army barracks, kneecapped people etc. etc.
Yes, the IRA gave warnings before they bombed, but don't think that meant they were honorable or nice and fluffy - they sometimes gave deliberately false and confusing warnings that led to more deaths / injuries to innocent civilians (see the Omagh Bombing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omagh_bombing)
Don't get me wrong: the loyalist groups were just as bad. Most of the deaths in the Troubles were not bomb victims but tit-for-tat killings between Catholics and Protestants, as one side retaliated against the other in a horrible spiral of violence.
First gaming experience: being lifted up by my dad so I could play a Space Invaders machine in while on holiday Teignmouth (circa 1979)
First home gaming experience: playing PacMan on the Atari 2600 (circa 1982)
Best gaming experience (still): playing Half-Life with my co-workers after hours on our company network (circa 2001). Nothing since has come close to the joy of playing a good multiplayer game with friends, in the same room, on a no-lag local network.
And two cups!
Ha - in fact, a great deal of the voice work is put on afterwards. You can usually tell, as the sound is 'up close' as you would get in a vocal booth, not roomy sounding like you'd get on a sound stage.
It's called ADR in the US, or Post-Sync in the UK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_(filmmaking)
There's a good example of it in the Bonus Features of Men In Black 2 - the director calls Will Smith the 'king of ADR' as he's so good at matching up vocal booth performances with the sound stage version - although even he seems to be a bit annoyed by how much of it he has to do.
I currently run WinXP at home, along with both Mac and PC laptops. I'm getting less and less happy with the performance & o/s of these machines, and besides I'd like to be able to casually access the net while my wife hogs the main desktop... for these reasons I'm looking into buying a solid state Linux box that I can use really just for net access.
There are plenty of options around now (all around $200, which is fine by me) - and I think this is going to become a big trend in the next few years. The concept of having a dirt-cheap, reliable, low power, always-on computer _in addition_ to the main household PC, being used (at first) only as a web client, is very exiting. My TV screen already has a VGA input - the idea is to have a backup PC running full-time so I can switch over to Linux and check my mail just as easily as looking something up on teletext.
I've been contemplating making the switch to Linux for a year or so, but this way I don't have to switch. I can keep the Windows box around and migrate slowly - the low cost of the hardware and environmental advantage of having a 1-watt processor make it an easy decision. Good times.
BTW - The Microclient Sr looks like the machine of choice.
But why do you automatically equate drinking with getting wasted? This is the problem - the mainstream US mentality seems to be that alcohol = abuse... having a glass of wine with dinner is quite civilised, and doesn't make you a bad person. ps - I may not disagree with your comment, but I really don't see why it was marked as Flamebait... :-(
That's an interesting point - what would happen if a Jewish kid at the school posted pictures of themselves at passover, sharing a glass of wine (as is traditional)...?
I'd like to see the school try and suspend them for that.
The US has a very unhealthy attitude towards drinking - how can someone be trusted to vote, but not allowed to drink?
Has everyone noticed that Simon Baron-Cohen is in fact the cousin of Sacha?
Though I'm sure he's done plenty of important work of his own...
It's still pints & halfs at pubs in the UK.
Perhaps they're pulling your leg?
"into the Intel/Microsoft closed-source and commercial hegemony"
Here - you dropped this: "Apple/"