You might want to use VHS tape or film reels as metaphors when introducing video editing in the 90s...
But even back then, yes, even with technophobes, if you'd forced your users to rewind those tapes in real time you would have had a serious problem.
- PCs need to be replaced with a new model every 3-4 years. Game console cycles last 5-7 years.
The rest of your points are bollocks as well, but this. Wow. This isn't just wrong, it's actively misinterpreting one of the most significant advantages of PCs.
It is not that you *must* replace your model every 3-4 years, the fact is that you *can* replace it every 3-4 years. (In practice you probably only need to think about replacing the video card, as a quad core bought in 2008/9 is just as fast today as it was then, and CPUs haven't been the bottleneck in the majority of games for quite a long time.)
Those PC games will scale to your hardware, and your 2008 graphics card will still produce better graphics at higher resolutions than either the PS3 or Xbox 360, it's just that a 2012/3 card will do even more - if you want to go there.
Because it's expensive to develop exclusively for the PC, and because the console market is more lucrative, the consoles have effectively been holding better graphics on the PC back for seven years. All PC owners get is higher resolution basically for free, and if we're very, very lucky some kind of texture pack.
Please note that the PS3 originally released in the same week as nVidia launched the 8800 series, the first DX10 cards. Sony made such a hoo-hah at the time about how the truly next gen experience could begin. But the truth was, it was already last generation at launch.
Treating this story as news in this day and age smacks of the "Same old crime.... but on a COMPUTER!!!" syndrome that we've been criticising for a decade or more.
What part of the summary did you fail to comprehend?
Thats right, the part about the need to prove attendance of *foreign students on a student visa*. READ THE FUCKING SUMMARY, YOU MORON !!
If they're passing the courses, who cares if they're attending the lectures? What are the chances that someone who can pass degree level courses through disciplined self-study is likely to be *less* of an asset to their country?
The University is treating the students like criminals because the UK Border Agency encourages this. But the UK Border Agency know fuck all about Universities, so why should we take their opinion on Universities over that of the instituions themselves? Hell, the UKBA can barely manage their own house, let alone our centuries old and rapidly losing its edge (but once world class) Higher Education system.
Remember their imaginative lawyers are second only to their imaginative accountants - just ask the artists...
Everybody imagines accountancy and the legal professions to be dry, bookish jobs dealing in facts, history and obscurae.
But the truth is that those jobs are just as creative as writers, painters or musicians.
If anything, we should be paying them more!
No, he has Asperger's syndrome, which, from what I can gather, is way for IT guys like us to behave like absolutely fucking pricks, and we just have to hold up the card "Asperger's" and everyone is supposed to accept our miserable attitude. Apserger also apparently extends to hacking into systems we have no business being in. Apparently, providing we have this wonderful social ineptitude disease, we don't face the consequences of any of our online actions.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I'm going to go out at lunch and kick some little old lady in the ass. "Asperger's!"
Did you really just have an uncalled for, violent, frothing rage at people with "social ineptitude disease"? You know, it pays to look both ways before crossing Irony Street.
I have heard about 2/3 rate, not 90% rate. There is little room to independently separate propaganda exaggeration from actual facts.
Agreed that we shouldn't quoted figures as gospel, but I think the discrepancy is between rockets fired out of Gaza, and interceptor missiles fired in response.
What I've heard is that about 60% of missiles out of Gaza have been shot down, but that Israel is not targeting rockets other than those with a reasonable chance of hitting urban areas. So, of the missiles they have *tried* to hit, somewhere between 80 and 90 per cent are being hit.
Perhaps you'd have more success if you learned to capitalize properly.
That is a fantastic double entendre, in context...
I can barely tell where one sentence ends and the next begins in your post, and I wouldn't even try to struggle with that in an entire novel.
...but given that you're in full on Grammar Crusader mode, I'm assuming it was accidental.
I don't like the insinuation that success can only be defined in pure numbers, or by sheer monitization. This is art. Sometimes it can do that, but it's not for that.
Also, whilst artists must know the rules, in order to be competent, nobody ever made art worth salt by merely following them.
obviously, people were willing to settle for the electronic books without the physical.
May not even be a case of settling.
I wrote a novel aimed at a small student community, and released the ebook for free. i wanted it to be a gift, so i made the ebook free (creative commons) and also gave away a lot of physical copies to the people i thought would appreciate them most (within a certain community).
the really interesting thing is that i got feedback (remember, from people who i was offering the book to for free) that they were really happy to have the ebook version, but they didn't want the physical book version becase it was 'stuff' that they didn't need. they're students, they move around a lot, books aren't that light, plus they don't really have a place they keep 'things' any more, now they've moved out of home, and probably won't for a few years to come.
now sure, they might not have been interested at all, and been letting me down gently, but it made me realise that there'd need to be more to any future business model i might come up with than 'electronic is free, physical is not'. i know this may seem obvious in retrospect, but i think there's still an assumption held by many people that physical copy = upgrade of electronic copy, and this may not be true.
i'm sure many people on slashdot feel that way already, but mostly i would expect for functional/practical reasons. however, my experience suggests that the sentimental value of a physical book may no longer exceed the value of the ebook, either.
that could be the seeds of an interesting change in our perception of books altogether.
Go wave your dead chicken elsewhere, shaman.
Show me that placebos cure actual illness.
-- BMO
I don't need to show you anything. You are the one who made a positive statement. You said "Placebos don't work when you've got a real disease".
I didn't even disagree with the statement. I simply asked you if you had evidence, or if you were forming a conclusion based on what you expect to be the case.
That's ironic for at least two reasons, and this irony is only further compounded by your calling me a 'shaman' for asking for evidence of your positive statement.
That's not homeopathy working, that's the placebo effect working. Again, homeopathy does not work. It is no better than a placebo.
I think you're missing the point. A placebo has to be administered. Homeopathy, for the context of this argument, could be seen as a method of administration. As such, it probably is more effective than some other placebos, such as those which the patient knows to be placebos, or those which the patient is more skeptical of. (Although it's not 'some effect vs. no effect'; studies have also shown, IIRC, that there is *some* placebo effect even where the patient knows they are taking a placebo). But at any rate, if some kook is demanding homeopathic remedies, giving them to that person is likely to be more effective than any other placebo.
Whether using this particular (or any other) placebo is ethical and whether the benefits outweigh the costs of, effectively, keeping people ignorant is a different conversation, where we probably have more in common. But let's not rail against the facts simply because we don't like those fucking charlatan liars, the actual homeopaths.
Placebos don't work when you've got a real disease.
Evidence, please? Or is that just an assumption you made because the conclusion seems obvious?
That would be ironic coming from someone who is clearly championing empiricism.
This file will self-destruct in five minutes.
