Posts by Loki 1 64 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
Quote: Frontier have only modeled the entire Galaxy - probably a bit of a stretch to fit that in 4GB of RAM at 32bits, really!
Why? They did it originally on an 800k floppy disk. Its all procedurally generated except for core systems..
<quote>Children are getting far more access to pornography than they used to, and it's not doing them any good at all. Western society increasingly covers real bodies while exposing the plastic perfection at every turn, leading to an explosion in genital plastic surgery, for those who can afford it, and a plethora of issues around self-image for those who can't. Manufactured porn creates expectations to which the sticky fumbling of teenage exploration can't compare, and which is hardly comparable to the dodgy magazines and saucy VHS of yesteryear.</quote>
Then best start with regular advertising on TV and the internet which shower us in images of perfection and trying to convince us (and think of the children!) that they need to also look like perfection, and that using product X will help them achieve this. By comparison, porn is nothing.
A few relevant things. In Russia (not sure about in Moscow, but in my city for sure), speed cameras are grey boxes, not usually hidden, but no warning signs. And they just placed a new one that is hidden just down the hill from my house... i know about that bugger now.
As for Russian drivers, its no different from seeing a policeman. You slow down when you see a camera/policeman, then as soon as you are past you go back to doing 80 in a 40 zone. Some people don't even bother slowing down. Many drivers, especially those in the black SUVs just don't care. They will drive how they want, and when the penalty comes through the post (assuming the system is even working), they just send a flunky to pay it.
Driving in Russia is a lot more erm... interesting than in the UK. Most people rarely have any idea what stopping distances are for (i often slow down to well below the speed limit if someone is tailgating me until they either get the message or overtake), and red lights are just optional.
Yes, accidents happen all the time. Its a rare day when driving when i don't see the aftermath of a a stupid accident.
Its strange, because Russians once you get to know them are really great people and very friendly and open. But when they get behind the wheel they turn into morons with a death wish.
"Grandpa... what's a tele-vision?"
"Ah lad, back in the 20th Century the whole family used to gather round that there device and watch programs. This was before the days of the internet of course. Back then, we had to work down t'pit 23 hours a day...."
Come on, who the hell watches TV these days anyway? Isn't it dead yet?
I mean... come on, the so-called Win95 interface has been around a lot longer than Win95. I had pop up menus and win like desktops under Linux before Win95 was released. And was using proper desktops since the days of old Solaris and Amigas.... why do people thing the desktop paradigm started with Win95?
The Hyperion books by Dan Simmons would be awesome and would be open for sequels with the Endymion books.
Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy would be out of this world as long as Holywood could stick to the plot, no overdo the gory bits, but not sanitize it either... just present it as it should be.
Both are awesome Space Opera just screaming for a whole series of movies.
Something in the fantasy line, Elric.... somebody someday is going to make this into a movie, although they will probably start with Stormbringer which would be typically out of sequence.
You may have a point, but Office is full of crap that 99% of its user base never needs to touch.
The point may be, is open office (or Libre) good enough? And for 99% of users it is... if of course they can convince their customers/correspeondants to send their documents in an open format, as doc/docx files can suffer a formatting problem when converting.
You see, while it blatantly looks like it was decompiled, what really happened was some Oracle/Sun engineer used Google search to find some code to do what he needed to do his work. This was the same code that was already in use and open sourced by Google.
The Oracle engineer thought, hey, those variable names are a bit crap, i'll rename them to look better and impress my bosses.
So, you see, its quite a simple explanation. Google should be suing Oracle for stealing their code!
@Michael C - as far as i understood he does not intent to profit from it. He says as much in his post.
The real problem (as i understand it) is that the EULA (if enforceable) gives Blizzard ownership of anything created with the tools, so, if they throw their toys out of the pram they can simply claim ownership of the mod and then stop distribution that way.
My guess is they realize the WoW cash cow isn't going to last forever and they are planning a WoS game within the next 5 years or so, so if this mod becomes a polished product it will hurt their business.
My take: Sorry Bliz, this guy is out-innovating you, and rather than compete, like many companies you turn to the law to stop competition.
Always been a fan of AMD and most of my computers have used their chips as opposed to Intel ones, but they really need to get some new marketing drones:
<Quote>Seifert agreed. "I think you can...hear the excitement we feel for [Llano] and the momentum we have generated. So we feel confident to gain significant market share in this segment with this platform."</Quote>
I mean, cant these guys just use plain English?
Would love to see one say:
Yeah, its great, we are really going to f**k Intel in the ass this time.
When the user is about to allow it, print their personal details in big bold red letters on the screen saying "Do you really want Company X to know this information?"
But of course, they don't want to make it obvious, because most of the people who will be mining for this information (and from which Facebook will profit) have no real need to know this information except for the purpose of pushing more unwanted crap and services on you.
Its like the question on the US visa form, something like "Are you, or have you ever been part of, or associated with, a terrorist organization?"
I mean, you would have to be really dumb to check that box. It would just get you a free flight to gitmo to be held indefinitely without trial.
If you tick the box about porn you can at best be expected to be delayed in your travels, possibly have your laptop taken for investigation for several days/weeks, possibly returned completely trashed, and at worst either denied entry or paying a visit to the local cop shop for interrogation and possibly (if really nasty stuff) a stay as a guest of her majesty in prison.
So, just don't tick the bloody box. Who will ever know?
"Sir, can you show us your porn?"
"I don't have any porn on my computer"
"Sir, obstructing a customs officer in his duty is a booting* office, now show me the porn"
"But, i really don't have any"
"Sir, you are a human male, aged between 1 and dead and carrying a laptop, we know you have porn"
"Ok, you got me, its in C:\porn"
"Thank you sir, we would never have thought of looking th..... Oh my f**king god. Two people having sex missionary! Get out of our country you pervert!!!"
* - simpsons reference for those who wondered.
Call 3113 Noises from empty property. It is believed property is being removed. Officers attend. Nobody seen. #gmp24
What? Someone trying to steal an entire house?
And in 24 hours they made 341 arrests? Ok, i know manchester is a city, but doesn't that strike anyone as a rather large number of arrests... is Manchester such a criminal city? Ok, ok, don't answer that one.
He doesn't want to be his kids' friend? I want to by my kids' best friend so if they have any problems they will come to me to talk about it. He just will push his kids away from him and probably completely off the rails.
This traditional, I'm the father you do as I say crap is something that should have died out with the dinosaurs. Its like how you see on US films and series' with boys calling their fathers "Sir!". Sir? Its not the bloody army.
<quote>They argue for a national classification scheme that "includes uniform ratings for explicit adult material across all jurisdictions and through all media</quote>
So, does this mean that the nurses uniform gets a risque rating of 5/10 and the schoolgirl uniform gets 10/10?
We rarely wear clothes at home unless expecting guests (it can be a bit frantic when the doorbell goes unexpectedly!). A new tower block is being built almost directly opposite us with windows facing our windows. When they are finished we will be left with the choice of putting curtains up (we never needed them before) and keeping them closed, or wearing at least some clothes all the time at home.
I may be drunk but from my poor and unenlightened understanding of how the internet thingy works, this sounds all like a pile of ballocks.
No, really, do these guys actually have any concept of routing or how the internet works? I'm pretty sure the interwebnetthingy can grow and grow with its current model and survive just nice and dandy.
But what you are confusing I think is Government with the Civil Service. The civil service is a big machine where nobody wants change unless it benefits them. They really didn't want any sort of exist clauses or even consider it because then it would become that much easier for the new government to scrap their departments (and empire building is a major thing in the civil service - trust me on this one).
So, its naturally in their interests to make sure that they retain some "power" regardless of who is in charge of the government.
<quote> "It is my ambition to create a Britain in which there is a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community, and where community service will become a normal part of growing up in Britain.
"And, by doing so, the contributions of each of us will build a better society for all of us."</quote>
Get me out of this bloody country! Oh, wait, i got out! Haha! Come on the rest of you, get out before you start needing a travel permit to leave your home!
While a Firefox user myself, these statistics seem a little bit wonky. Multiply by 3 to include those who dont browse every day??!!! What about me where on my home dial-up computer i do not have auto-update set.. lets multiply by 3 for people who disable auto-update. Now, what about people who are using a live CD.... hmm, x2 for that, then people who are not allowed to use Firefox because of corporate policies, well, lets include those as well, multiple by 10.
Revised total: 100 trillion users of Firefox.
Sometimes the law is an ass, that needs taking in the ass so it sees common sense.
How does society gain for giving this guy 6 months just because of pictures of bestiality? Its probably not nice for the animals.... although i have come across a number of dogs that would shag anything from my leg to the neighbors cat.
7.5 years for dealing drugs as well? How long do you get put away for murder these days?
Remember a film a saw when i was younger where 2 girls 'played' with a pony. That was scary, made me feel very small, but i don't think the horse was upset. In fact it got quite excited. Also another where there was a woman and a snake.... i wont go into details on that but use your imagination. Guess watching these makes me a menace to society and i should be locked up for a lot more than 6 months.
... with Linux getting 10% market share on the desktop. With this much there would be enough people using Linux to ensure MS remained on their toes and standards compliant (otherwise they wouldnt be able to work well with that 10%.... and it could be vital customers/suppliers/OEMs/etc).
With 10% market share it may be even enough to encourage MS to create a version of Office for Linux - which would give the OpenOffice team a major kick as well.
I'm more that 90% of my time at work in Linux, resorting to VM/Wine for checking document formatting in MS Office and the occasional need for IE for sites that just refuse to play with FireFox (including one of our own!!).
At home 4 computers. 2 x dual boot XP/Linux Mint (gaming/work machines), 1 x Mint only (daughters computer - she loves Childsplay/GCompris), and a Mac running OSX 10.2.
You are away from home (probably) for the first time. You have no idea who you can score reasonably priced quality weed from. Your first task is to ingratiate yourself with the other pot heads around you (ie: in almost every room) and find out who gets the best weed. Become friends and make friends with their dealer.
Question: "What happens if you put a FAT32 usb drive into your ubuntu machine and try to write to it?"
Answer: It works. If you have a distro like Mint they also come with built in NTFS support as well so "they just work". IIRC all distros for the last million years have had built in FAT32 support.
Perhaps a bit easier than in the UK or US. I can pick up a copy of whatever OS i want from the CD/DVD market for a couple of hundred roubles (say $5 max). Quite often comes on a DVD several versions of Windows, all pre-cracked and ready to roll. Normally both EN and RU versions on the disks and sometimes with several versions of office.
Strangely enough the guys there don't normally sell disks with Linux on them! I have to get those from a legal outlet or download!
I really wish they would crack down on this sort of thing though. The less available pirated copies of Windows are the more people will move to Linux :-)
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