Comment Re:They Just Don't Get It... (Score 1) 82
Apparently Google is still my friend...
Comment Re:They Just Don't Get It... (Score 1) 82
I'm not sure exactly what it was called.. but when I was very young I used to play a text based ST game on my Dad's mainframe terminal at home. It was awesome, you could discover planets and mine for dilithium crystals, do experimental things with your engines, and klingons would pop up from time to time to fight? Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
It supports your statement though... It would be a great candidate for a next-gen 'SimEarth' type of free-play exploration game.
Comment Chips (Score 1) 699
I find this a little disturbing in regards to the commercial unix space. It seems like Sun, IBM, and Intel are the only chipset manufacturers left. If sparc goes, your choices are IBM, Intel (Power, Itanium). If another company were to enter the chip market with something competetive, I would think there are enough Unix variants and forks that another one could arise. The software isn't really the problem, IMHO.
Comment Re:Kinda sad, though (Score 1) 54
I get a a lot of your points. IMHO, most of the mistakes with COH are actually simpler than that. The big problem is you start with a name and a costume. Coming up with a name up front is really tough, since people used up tons of them. It's possible to look cool at level 1, and suck. They should have started everyone with normal names and no costume, and given pieces of both as you level. The appearance factor is a huge carrot.
Comment Automate (Score 1) 401
Write scripts for machines to follow, not people. If they are semi-intelligent, the people can figure it out from the script. If not, they need a new career anyway.
Comment Privacy vs. Anonymity (Score 1) 690
Why is it a bad thing that you aren't allowed to be anonymous? I've never really been sure that having to announce who you are is a violation of privacy. Why is everyone so desperate to remain nameless?
Comment Re:Don't take technology for granted (Score 1) 411
Yeah, also keep in mind that for every one of you that fixed a few things, there was likely another non-IT staffer who managed to make it worse and cause the external guy to spend a lot more time than he would have if the problem had been left alone.
Microsoft Quietly Previews PC Advisor Repair Tool 151
notthatwillsmith writes "On Friday, Microsoft invited members of the Windows Feedback Program to try out a preview of a new application, the Microsoft PC Advisor. The new tool promises to 'continuously monitor your PC for problems and give you the solutions to fix them, in real time.' After testing on several Vista machines with a variety of problems, Maximum PC has written a full report on the Microsoft PC Advisor. The short version? Like every other 'PC Repair' tool they've tested, the new apps signal-to-noise ratio is quite bad, and it misses the obvious and important problems, like out-of-date videocard drivers."
Global Warming Only a Theory, Says School Board 1089
BendingSpoons writes "A Seattle school board has placed a moratorium on screenings of 'An Inconvenient Truth', having found its subject matter too controversial. Echoing the language of the evolution debate, the school board found that students must be told that global warming is only a theory and presented with an opposing viewpoint. The ban was prompted by the complaints of a parent: '"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."'"
First Russian Anti-Evolution Suit Enters Court Room 485
sdriver writes "If you thought it was only the US giving Darwin a hard time, Russia has its own problems starting with evolution. A student has 'sued the St. Petersburg city education committee, claiming the 10th-grade biology textbook used at the Cervantes Gymnasium was offensive to believers and that teachers should offer an alternative to Darwin's famous theory.' The suit, the first of its kind in Russia, is being dismissed out of hand by the principal and teachers. The teacher of the science class had apparently even taken the step of stating at the start of the school year that there were other theories on the origin of life."
Big Blue Designing Chip to Decode the Big Bang 149
Jerry Beth writes "IBM is working with European astronomy organization Astron to design a chip that will be used to help gather billions-of-years-old radio signals from deep space in the hopes of learning more about the origins of the universe. From the article: 'It's part of Astron's Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope project. The SKA will be linked to millions of antennas collecting radio signals from space. The antennas will be spread over a large surface area of the globe but, in the aggregate, they will form a square kilometer's worth of collection area. [...] The microprocessors will essentially help the antennas capture the signals, filter out extraneous data and then convert the signals into data. Astrophysicists will then analyze the data to look for patterns. The weakest signals are the prize in this project, because they will be the oldest.'"
Apple's Smart Phone Depends on OS X Tie-Ins 260
anaesthetica writes "According to AppleInsider, Apple is not only working on a cellphone + mp3 player iPhone, but is working on a second model designed to be a smart phone, highly integrated with Mac OS and .Mac. The smart phone has gone through several iterations, as the notoriously demanding Mr. Jobs ordered the elite team working on the phone to redesign and re-engineer their prototypes. Capabilities are reported to include Front Row interface, syncing contacts and iCal with .Mac, "call ahead", iChat video conferencing integration, WiFi, and a slide-out keyboard. Too good to be true?"
Stem Cell Bill Passes in Australia 253
nickd writes "Having recently being passed in the Senate by only 2 votes, an Australian bill to overturn the ban on 'theraputic cloning' has now been passed in the House of Representatives by 82-62. The amendment that was seeking to prevent stem cells being extracted from the eggs of aborted late term female fetuses has also been voted down. The changes will allow scientists to create and use embryos up to 14 days old for research."
