Actually, as a linux user for four or five years, and a nexus one user for a couple weeks now, I would say you're not quite right.
After using linux exclusively on both desktop and laptop systems for those four or five years, my latest system is now a MacBook Pro (though not just because of frustrations with linux, that was certainly a factor and I am happy with OS X... my other systems are still all on linux). They gave me a free ipod touch with it, and I got pretty familiar with that. Very nice platform (besides all of the standard slashdot complaints about Apple, which I generally agree with).
When I decided to get a smartphone, I didn't even consider the iphone - I know from using the ipod touch that it's a good platform, there are a lot of great apps and games, and so on... but for something that's not essentially just a toy like the ipod touch I wasn't satisfied with the restrictions and so on the iphone comes with.
So I got the nexus one, fully expecting it to be like you say - an experience like desktop linux from a while ago. In fact, though, it is well beyond that. It's unpolished in certain places - the polish of the user experience is what makes the iphone/ipod touch so nice to use - but it is nowhere near as frustrating as the typical linux experience *today*, even the well-polished distros. A few oddities here and there, but overall very nice to use, does everything you need and more - and if it doesn't do it, it's possible to add core functionality (or hope that someone else that knows how to code will do it;) ). I get frustrated with it sometimes, but only because I'm trying to do stuff beyond what it was designed to... nothing that it's not possible to do, like with the iphone, just things that need some coding and that I expect to improve in the future as development for the platform expands.
So the point is that those of us that want to tweak everything and to push what our stuff is capable of will always find fault. For your grandmother, though, while I still would be hesitant in recommending linux, I wouldn't have a problem recommending a good android phone over the iphone (though you have to wonder how many grandmothers want or need this kind of thing...). In its stock state, everything should run just fine and "just work", like the iphone and definitely unlike linux (except for highly customized installations of course... which is essentially what android is).
That said, it does definitely need time to mature. However, given how good it is now, I can easily see it becoming extremely popular and widely used, and not just among geeky types. It's already seen as cool by many just on virtue of it *not* being an iphone. The iphone is a status symbol only in very certain groups. The other people who have it got it because it was the best device available, and the nexus one and the android phones that I'm guessing will be coming out in the next couple years will easily be seen by more than just geeks as the best devices available.
I have noticed a few problem apps in the market on my nexus one. I guess "problem" is not the right word, but still, there are incompatibility and other issues that do actually crop up. I'll say first that you're right, in general if they show you an app in the market, it will work on your phone.
However - this doesn't stop the developers from coding poorly. It's very obvious in many apps that the developer isn't using the APIs correctly - the app is designed to work well with specific devices with specific hardware. Sure it *does* work on any hardware, but it's sized incorrectly, isn't expecting to be covered up by the on-screen keyboard, navigation between text fields is weird, etc. This has me doing things like in one app (which in other aspects is the best app for what I want it to do) having to physically move between landscape and portrait orientation each time I want to switch text fields. This is seriously screwed up.
Apparently (according to earlier posts here) Google's APIs provide excellent ways to handle the differences in hardware. As I said, I just don't think developers are doing it properly. The occasional well-made apps you come across are great - even if it wasn't written specifically with the nexus one in mind, the interface adapts properly and it just works.
Another thing that kind of annoys me is that there are a lot of apps that provide added functionality - you know, stuff that should be provided in the first place. This stuff was in most cases designed to add functionality to earlier versions of android. Great. Except... now in 2.1 on the nexus one, this functionality is built-in. It's possible to use the other solution in place of the stock one, and that's great - I like to have the choice. However, in every case I tried, the google-provided solution was far better. So while 2.1 may be compatible with things written for 1.5 (or whatever), I'd like to have the option to filter stuff out that's written specifically for earlier versions.
I've been watching some of it; NBC's primetime coverage is pretty awful but it does give you good highlights (skipping the 'boring' stuff) if you're interested in these kinds of sports (and it's free OTA HD if you don't pay for cable, like me). I'm not generally interested in sports, but I am a skier myself and the other events can be exciting because these are the top athletes in the world competing at the edge of being in control (and of course, sometimes spectacularly out of control).
I can definitely see how people wouldn't be interested, but it's the same with any sport. I can't imagine how anyone is interested in any typical American organized team sport, yet most people are...
One thing I'm really not interested in is snowboarding... I don't really see how this is an olympic sport on par with the others. They're good athletes, sure, but this is not the kind of thing you spend your whole life training for, sacrificing all kinds of things to get to the olympic level. It seems like a bunch of rich kids whose parents paid for them to go snowboarding every weekend when they were growing up (not that there isn't some aspect of that in many other olympic events, just not as much).
Check out the Nexus One - higher resolution camera than the iphone, and much easier to write applications for (you don't have to pay Apple anything) - there aren't any camera applications that are better than google's default that I've seen, but I think there's a lot of room for really cool stuff like you're describing in the future as more apps are written.
The accelerometer and compass on the nexus one are very good, and from what I've seen on an ipod touch I think it's pretty good on there too, though I don't know if either is high enough in resolution to really be used for shake reduction in any meaningful way.
Some apps that use the camera will try to detect movement, and wait to take the picture until you're holding it relatively steady, which may be what you were thinking of. The really good anti-shake systems in digital cameras, though, physically move either the image sensor itself or lens elements to counter-act your shaking, which isn't something you can really emulate in software.
I think there's a lot of room for other stuff, like panorama stitching and so on. The accelerometer is definitely high enough resolution to help with something like that.
I got a Nexus One, and they give you free overnight FedEx shipping, meaning it traveled on a cargo plane to get to me. There's a huge label on the shipping box warning about the lithium-ion battery inside, and that the carrier shouldn't handle the box if it is damaged. I was pretty surprised to see that on there; kind of stupid.
I thought it was excellent as well. Why I even watched part of the game I don't know, but I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed this ad. I don't even remember any of the others, and I was actually watching them, not getting a sandwich (saved that for the actual game). Others have pointed out what's brilliant about it already.
It struck a personal chord for me, since I fell in love overseas recently myself and am at a certain point in the relationship that's covered in the ad, and it makes me hopeful that it will work out as in the ad... advertising is about getting into people's heads, and I think that even if one hasn't been in a similar situation that this ad really succeeds. It's a great fantasy (especially for nerdy types!) and the ad made a touching story.
It's an effective short film... the kind of thing someone might make as art. Keep in mind that like any good slashdotter, I loathe advertising - even other Google-related advertising - and I still feel this way about this ad.
The poster is a little deluded to think that everyone is going to think this was a dumb ad - I suspect that even among the slashdot crowd most people will like it. Seems typical of slashdot... strong opinions get posted in the summaries and it's worded in a way that makes it seem like you'd have to be an idiot to not agree, and then it turns out 95% or more of slashdot disagrees. Well, it gets the comments rolling, anyway.
Bentley donated the original glass plates to the Buffalo Museum of Science (a city known for snow itself, though Bentley did most of his work in Vermont as far as I know). They have many of them scanned, and include data about each photo as well. See it here.
I'm from Buffalo and have been to the museum countless times; after learning about Bentley I am always amazed that they don't capitalize on it with some sort of exhibit. Seems like it would be a nice attraction to a museum that otherwise seems to be having trouble encouraging attendance and keeping up the collections.
I'm sure there are similar things in other cities, but in Rochester, NY there's a privately-owned wall that the owner allows people to spray-paint whatever they want, whenever they want. Cool idea, but it's pretty much just 15-year-olds with long hair who get dropped off and picked up there by their mom in an SUV who actually paint it (meanwhile, graffiti thrives elsewhere in the city - such as in the abandoned subway tunnel).
Re:But will it get you high when you snort it?
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Spray-On Liquid Glass
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Not that this is really relevant (your point stands), but you've got some geological details wrong (IAAG).
Most mountains have a lot of granite, yes, so I'll start with that - first, your assertion that granite is harder than glass is perhaps technically true, but there are several things to consider. Granite is composed primarily of quartz (hardness 7) and feldspar (hardness 6) while plate glass is traditionally considered to be hardness 5.5. Fine. But - glass is structurally solid and homogeneous, while granite is composed of a bunch of different mineral crystals stuck together, some of which (like biotite) might be considerably softer. This heterogeneity likely weakens the overall structure of granite (though this is far outside my areas of expertise within geology and material science).
Most erosion in mountains comes from water, not wind. Wind is significant but only in certain areas in certain types of rock - think Arches National Park in Utah, with those wind-blown formations in sandstone, a very weak rock. For water to do anything, you need either something that will react chemically (which pure silicon shouldn't as far as I know) or you need mechanical action. This can be freezing and thawing like what cracks the roadway, or water carrying particulate over the surface (like in a stream). Again, with such a smooth, homogeneous surface, I don't see this being a problem... you don't really see erosion on glass windows, for example, even sloped ones.
Erosion over hard surfaces (such as granite) is a big part of my research. It is extremely slow. How much erosion happens to rock counter tops, for example? Not all of those are granite, by the way, though they may be called that at home depot - there's a very wide range of minerals that goes into counter tops, many of which are soft enough to be eroded quite easily.
And anyway - the "particulate" you mentioned as eroding mountains is particles of rock and mineral. Hard stuff. Unless you cook with sand, I really don't see this being a problem.
What I'd be worried about is what happens in an impact. If you drop something heavy and sharp-edged on it, is it going to break? Even small breaks give you the opportunity for erosion as discussed. If this stuff fractures easily, then my points are partially invalid. It doesn't seem like that's the case, though. Seems like pretty great stuff.
To be fair, in Asia people tend to be smaller, and they look more ridiculous on a full-size motorcycle than on a scooter.
I haven't been to China, but in SE Asia there are more motorbikes (scooters) on the road than cars and it works great. It's scarier to drive a car there than a motorbike. I, as a somewhat large white male, may look ridiculous on some of the smaller scooters - but you simply have to choose well when renting.
Even the silliest looking machines I saw didn't look *that* silly with a tiny Thai person riding them, and over there even foreigners look a little silly riding the larger bikes.
Actually, the funniest thing is that they're so ubiquitous that people tend to know more about them than they do about cars. Here in the US, everyone at least knows the difference between the different sizes of cars, and can probably tell a "nice" car from a cheap one. In Thailand, while I could tell motorbikes apart by size and style, I noticed that the Thais have all kinds of ways to classify them and can tell how good one is visually where I could tell no difference. Really, it is not hard to impress girls if you have the right motorbike (which I did, luckily...) as even they can tell.
It depends on your point of view. In science, many things are "problems", but can be quite different in scope. Everything is broken down into a series of "problems" to be solved by science. Whether you work on large-scale or very specific problems depends on your field and your specific research, but it all feeds into the overall system and advances scientific knowledge.
For example: something like climate change is a "problem" in that it affects the whole planet in a somewhat unpredictable and possibly disastrous way (for humans anyway).
To get at a solution to that huge problem, you can't really attack it head-on. You have to narrow it down to smaller problems. So for example, we need to ease off on fossil fuels. Great - for that, we need better batteries. Battery tech is a more well-defined problem, and much easier to work on than attacking climate change as a whole.
I'm not a geneticist, biologist, or anything like that (I am a geologist) so I can't say too much about TFS, but I do see it as a "problem" that's worthy of study, for a few reasons. First, for the reason I explained above - if it's valid science, it contributes to the whole no matter what the result. For example, cutting-edge gene sequencing and other techniques are being refined with this type of research, and that has applications across the whole field. Second, it's cool and interesting. As a scientist in a field that's often hard to explain the utility of myself, that's good enough for me... anything that brings us closer to Jurassic Park is awesome. Even if we just have a "Stuff Extinct Because of Humans Park", that would be amazing and extremely valuable.
I'm not accusing you specifically of anything, this is a generality - people do not understand science and how it's useful unless it directly affects their life. The thing is, even the craziest science contributes in some way to "useful" science. Cloning extinct animals isn't curing cancer, which would be a directly useful application of similar science (biology, genetics, etc.) that most will see the utility in. However, besides the improved techniques as I mentioned, we *don't know* what will come of this kind of experimentation. Scientific breakthroughs are often serendipitous - for all we know, this research *will* directly lead to curing cancer.
A final point - science requires a different mindset than engineering. In engineering, there is a distinct problem (say, crossing the river), and (usually) one best solution (a certain type of bridge). In science, it's not the outcome (the bridge) that matters, it's the process. The problem is ill-defined (there's no specific river to cross). The hard part is coming up with the questions that need to be answered (we're looking for rivers to cross, and not necessarily just because we need to get to the other side). What we find along the way slowly but surely adds to our understanding of the world.
I appreciate that you're probably correct about CHP citing people for that, but living in SoCal for a couple years I've never seen most freeways moving anywhere close to the speed limit during commute hours (i.e. almost all day apparently);)
Whether it's a law or not (and others have pointed out the various legal and real-life aspects) it's the safest and best thing to do for keeping traffic flowing, considering the driving habits of many (meaning it's not necessarily the most efficient way that people should drive, but it's reality).
If someone wants to drive faster than you and you won't let them, you may think you have the high ground because you're not breaking the law (though you probably are, just not as much), but think about it - as another poster states - that guy in the M5 riding on your tail is a hugely dangerous situation, where both of you are not paying as much attention to the road as you should because you're agitated by each other, constantly checking the mirror, etc.
The guy in the M5 is an asshole, but the solution to dealing with assholes is not (usually) to be an asshole back, especially if you're creating a dangerous situation for yourself and others. To be clear: you're being just as much of an asshole, and a smug one at that, by not moving over and letting someone pass.
And whether or not it's law in every state, sticking to the right lane except for passing is common courtesy. Not everyone understands that (the grandma in the station wagon going 5 under the limit in the left lane probably isn't trying to be a smug asshole), unfortunately, and that is the biggest cause of stress for me when driving. I drive a little bit aggressively (I am a male in my early 20's, what can I say) but not recklessly, and when I come upon someone going too slow in the left lane I get nervous... and that is the *only* driving situation that makes me particularly nervous, even in Los Angeles and Southern California where I currently live. You're not "supposed" to pass on the right, so even if there is space, it's not a good thing to do because you don't know if the other driver will realize you're behind them and suddenly move over to let you pass, or what... just a completely unknown situation. In states where it isn't covered by law, it really needs to be so that people would understand that they need to move over (possibly the only situation where I would advocate more laws...) or maybe states could invest in "keep right except to pass" signs.
Naturally, this problem would be solved if aggressive drivers slowed down a bit, and you could spin the situation into the aggressive driver being at fault for creating the unknown and dangerous situation, but when there is a generally accepted rule in place (or in some cases an actual law) that you should stick to the right, then the slow driver *is* at fault. Who is at fault according to the insurance company if there's a crash is different, but it's the slow driver who caused the problem in the first place - not because people should be given a free pass to drive aggressively, but because knowing that people will drive aggressively no matter what, you really need to get the heck out of their way. It's stupid not to.
I started trying to come up with a car analogy, but...;)
Your example is obviously flawed - libraries do not cost each person $1000 a month in taxes, besides the fact that it would be pretty difficult to eat $1000 worth of sweets in a month (by yourself), meaning the value proposition is so low that no one would take up that offer.
It's not really necessary and I doubt anyone will even read my post, but I've always wanted to do a slashdot style back-of-the-envelope calculation... so here goes.
Let's assume the previous post was correct, and libraries cost $1.1 billion a year. To keep it simple I'll use state taxes only, which is listed as $895 million. Wikipedia says total state tax revenue (in 2007) was $749,785,186,000 ($750 billion). So, 0.001% of state tax revenue was spent on libraries. Very likely there are local/city taxes that could be significant, but the previous poster showed that states provide the largest source of library funding.
In 2005, at $38,206 per capita the average state tax rate was 9.8% (source). So, about $3,750 in taxes was paid per person, on average, to the state(s) where they did business (these numbers include taxes from states besides those the person resides in, such as sales tax on out-of-state purchases, but doesn't include federal taxes). 0.001% of that is 4 cents, and that's for the whole year... 0.3 cents/month.
Let's assume my math and the figures I used are bad, and it's actually significantly higher. Say, one hundred times higher... $4 a year is still a heck of a good deal for everything that libraries provide to those who use them, and if you never ever use the library, you can write off the expense (pun intended), considering how small it is, as part of "buying civilization" as the well-known slashdot sig goes, just like you probably don't directly use a lot of the other things state, local, and federal taxes pay for (and you don't get to pick and choose what your money goes toward).
Your sweets example is obviously different, because sweets can't be almost endlessly re-used like books and DVDs from the library can (I suppose you could try with sweets, but...) That's why, of course, such a pre-payment scheme as you suggest wouldn't work for food (although all-you-can-eat buffets are an interesting thing to consider), but why the original point stands... you are pre-paying for the library, but it's a minuscule amount that more or less equals nothing, especially when compared to the value it potentially provides to you.
Seriously, read westlake's post - Chow Yun-Fat is pretty incredible... if you've only seen him in "The Replacements" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", check out his films with John Woo, especially Hard Boiled. He's one of the baddest bad-asses in film history.
as in it only has the basic abilities you actually use
Uh, ok... I'm no professional and while I don't use the slideshow and fancy layout stuff in Lightroom, but I do use almost all of the "developing" and library features it offers. Not everything on every photo, obviously, but I think I've used every feature since I've been using it.
I fully appreciate RawStudio and similar programs that are trying to offer similar functionality, but the key to Lightroom being so great is that it offers all of the "basic abilities you actually use" from Photoshop, which is a ridiculously full-featured program. It's a sub-set of features packaged in a different way such that it is quicker and easier for a specific task, photo manipulation, whereas the full Photoshop offers endless more possibilities, most of which aren't necessary for photography. Even so, occasionally a situation comes up where you need to do something that Lightroom can't handle - and it's integrated perfectly with Photoshop, so it's no problem (if you have Photoshop obviously).
RawStudio and the like offer subsets of the features of Lightroom, and therefore offer sub-sub-sets of the capabilities of Photoshop or Gimp.
I don't want to knock their efforts - I'm an open source guy all the way - but even for amateurs, RawStudio and similar are not good replacements for Lightroom.
It's unfortunate because I want to like open source graphics and photo software. InkScape is pretty good, but my main interest is photography and photography software is severely lacking in comparison to commercial offerings. I'm not saying everyone should pirate Lightroom and Photoshop for really basic stuff - RawStudio, GIMP, etc. are fine if all you really want to do is adjust the white balance and contrast - but if you're starting with a RAW, it *requires* more processing than that for a good result. It's designed that way. If you don't like the extra work, shoot jpg or raw+jpg just in case, and set how you want it to look in-camera.
And I don't suggest anyone pay for Lightroom and Photoshop for non-commercial uses either, because it's so ridiculously expensive (Lightroom at least is not outrageous, but you do sometimes need Photoshop, so...) - but if you're even a little bit serious about it, even just for fun, once you try the industry standard software it's hard to go back because it's just so much better. It helps that this is some of the easiest to find software on piratebay and the like.
Where I went to university for undergrad, the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, there was something similar. From what I've seen, a lot of universities are doing this these days: certain (or all, in some cases) city bus routes are free if you have a student ID card. It's definitely paid for by the university, and there are special university routes. At Rochester, there were routes between the two major universities (UR and RIT) and local shopping areas, with stops right in front of the mall, the most popular grocery store (Wegman's), Wal-Mart, etc., as well as one to some downtown destinations.
I have seen non-university-route buses at those stops as well, so whether or not the businesses are subsidizing anything, the bus service has figured out how to make it work and presumably does not run up the city's debt paying for it. Of course, usually the only students who use the bus service are freshman (at least at UR), because freshman can't get parking permits.
I don't know where the previous guy lives, but in my experience whether or not bus service works profitably depends on how dense the city is and where businesses and services are located in relation to where people live. Think of places like NYC and Chicago, which have very usable buses. It can also be a small city, though - cities like Rochester, or small towns. Buses simply do not work in the sprawl - see Southern California, where I live now. I pity those who have to use the buses here. I tried it one time when I was just visiting without a car and it's ridiculously bad. It doesn't have to be that big of a sprawl, though - for example, Buffalo, NY has usable buses and one light rail line downtown, but most of the population of the area lives outside of the city, and though the suburbs are a fraction of the size of SoCal, the bus system is almost as unusable no matter if your destination is within the suburbs or if you're trying to get downtown and back.
You're correct, of course, but - being from Buffalo myself - do you see the need for more than one major daily in Buffalo? I was born after the Courier Express ended and my parents have had a daily subscription to the Buffalo News for at least my whole life, so I'm pretty familiar with it and somewhat familiar with how well they cover things. I've heard the Courier Express mentioned a few times by my parents and grandparents (in connection with old news events, say, or to illustrate how long ago the story they were telling happened) and I presume back then it was important to Buffalo to have multiple news options.
But now? What purpose does it serve, when all the news in the paper is regurgitated from the internet, except for some spotty coverage of local stuff? This is not to slag on the Buffalo News, as I think it's a decent paper, all things considered. (In any case, it's a heck of a lot better than many other local papers I've seen around the US - see for example the Orange County Register and even the L.A. Times in Southern California where I live now. Both are pretty awful compared to the Buffalo News.)
But now that Buffalo is a city in a major decline, there isn't *that much* local news to report, there are several local TV channels which (sometimes) report on the important local stuff (sometimes pretty well too, like with the recent plane crash) and anything else most people get online. Sadly, I think that actually if newspapers still thrived in Buffalo there is a lot of room for in-depth investigative reporting considering all that goes on in the city. That kind of thing is rare nowadays even in thriving cities, though, so I don't hold my breath expecting that.
As an aside I will note that though I moved away for grad school, I don't consider Western New York a bad place to live... the quality of the Buffalo News is a testament to that, because as I already said, it's far better than newspapers in other, oftentimes more thriving areas.
I don't think Star Wars needs to be "rebooted" in the same sense as Star Trek was... there is so much in the "expanded universe" or even just the video games that endless movies/shows could be produced without even having to come up with new stories - they're already out there, waiting. A lot of it is crap, but there's good stuff too.
If you did want new stuff, just commission a good writer to come up with a story. You can have a whole new set of characters, who of course will interact at least a couple of times with some of the original characters. If you set it after Return of the Jedi, you can even use the original actors. We don't need further prequel stories, though - Lucas screwed that up pretty badly already. The Clone Wars animated shorts were pretty much better than the films, which is sad (whatever CGI clone wars show they have now looks awful, though). I thought they were going to do a live-action Star Wars show, actually... don't know what happened to that. Could have been good.
Lucas gave us an interesting (if relatively simple) universe to work within, and there are endless possibilities. Of course, it would be perceived as a cash-in on the Star Wars name, so it would *have* to be pretty darn good - it would be held to a higher standard than a wholly new story.
I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm only 23 and I remember all those things as well... I'm not sure that it actually makes me feel old, though, because it really wasn't that long ago.
I am three years older than you, and I played the 2D Duke Nukems... I grew up on computer side-scrollers (first console I ever had was the first X-Box so it was computer games only - no Mario) and of course the early first-person shooters when they came out. Commander Keen, Crystal Caves, Secret Agent, and so on. They may have been a couple years old by the time I played some of them, but some of them I played when they were new - my dad downloaded shareware from BBSs for me (took hours I presume) and later I would get them from Prodigy/Compuserve/whatever it was until we had real internet access.
I don't remember the sequence exactly, but even after 3D games were available to me (which was Wolfenstein 3D, X-Wing, and everything as they came out... though I never played Doom or Quake originally for some reason), I was still playing side-scrollers. I had CDs that I got occasionally at Computer City packed full of shareware games (much easier than trying to download them and the discs cost next to nothing since the software was free). Duke Nukem 1 & 2 were on one of those, and I remember having a great time with them, even though at that point I may have already played Duke Nukem 3D! So the point is that it's not just an age thing... there's a bigger window of ages that might have played those games than you might suspect.
Back then for a kid it wasn't usually possible to have the latest and greatest all the time. You took what you could get, and enough effort was required to acquire a new game (whether it was free shareware episodes or not) that it meant that you were going to get enjoyment out of it no matter what. Even if the game sucked, you would play it, because you didn't have easy access to anything else. I think I enjoyed myself a lot more that way, even if I didn't always play the latest and greatest games right away, or ever. As you said, though, you may be right about there being some sort of border beyond which people would not have played some of the older titles.
Of course I was also at the age where the resurgence in interest in Star Wars (including the re-releases, new series of toys, etc.) meant that I had to have all the latest Star Wars games, so I would usually choose those over whatever else was popular at the time. Luckily, back in the day Star Wars games used to be great, so I didn't miss out on too much:)
Within the US they normally don't, but everywhere else they do (including international flights to/from the US). It's pretty great, actually, because they usually have those honey flavored ones, and they're pretty good. On Korean Air (who have great in-flight service in other areas as well) the cute flight attendants carry around baskets filled with the little bags of honey peanuts, and you can grab as many as you want:)
I want to say I've had peanuts on a NY-LA flight recently (I do that flight several times a year) but I am not sure - I use whichever airline is cheapest and I don't keep track of these kinds of things very well; the general trend though has been to just not give you anything. That sucks. It was cookies for a while (which were pretty good), then pretzels, and now they want to charge you $5 for $1 worth of various snacks. Not that those snack boxes look bad or anything, but it's kind of lame. I'd rather they raised fares by $0.05 or whatever it costs them for a small packet of snacks and give me that for "free". Keep the snack box option for people who are starving, but for those of us who plan ahead and don't get on the plane starving and without food, a little snack would be a nice gesture, especially since fares are so expensive to begin with. Of all the stupid reasons they come up with to add hidden cost to the fares, a few cents for snacks is one I think that everyone can get behind.
At least nowadays they seem to usually give you a whole can of coke instead of just pouring you a little glass of it like they had been doing for a while. I will mention here that Korean Air and Thai Air offer as much free wine and beer as you want - presumably to a reasonable limit of course - even in economy. And they have great free snack offerings (well, as great as airline food can get... Korean does better here than Thai does) even for short in-country flights.
The humor usually plays off the artwork. The artwork *does* matter. He takes great liberties with it, of course, but without the artwork it wouldn't really work. At the most basic level, the artwork illustrates who's talking to who without having to say "T-Rex said" at the end of each sentence. There's a lot more going on than that, though. Great comic.
The Max head in the Dark Forces ice level was accessible without cheating, as I recall (this was a while ago) - you could drop off a cliff and land on a ledge, and the only thing at that elevation in the whole level was the Max head, so that's what you could see on the map. Of course, there was no place to go from there, so you would have to drop off the ledge and kill yourself.
I'm not sure what kind of geologist you're referring to but that's a little insulting (IAAG)... there are people who don't learn to think in any field (including all the sciences) but geologists are not systematically not trained to think in university, that's bogus. In fact I'd say we are trained to think more than people in other fields of science, as true understanding of geological concepts is not easily obtained by reading or hearing about them and can't always be mathematically described.
To be fair, of course, you're probably referring to low-end industry geologists who are little more than technicians; if that's your goal in life as a geologist then sure, you don't have to think too much, same as any low-end science technician. Whether that's good for getting stuff done (taking orders blindly from the chief) I can't say, but I guess it would be.
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Actually, as a linux user for four or five years, and a nexus one user for a couple weeks now, I would say you're not quite right.
After using linux exclusively on both desktop and laptop systems for those four or five years, my latest system is now a MacBook Pro (though not just because of frustrations with linux, that was certainly a factor and I am happy with OS X... my other systems are still all on linux). They gave me a free ipod touch with it, and I got pretty familiar with that. Very nice platform (besides all of the standard slashdot complaints about Apple, which I generally agree with).
When I decided to get a smartphone, I didn't even consider the iphone - I know from using the ipod touch that it's a good platform, there are a lot of great apps and games, and so on... but for something that's not essentially just a toy like the ipod touch I wasn't satisfied with the restrictions and so on the iphone comes with.
So I got the nexus one, fully expecting it to be like you say - an experience like desktop linux from a while ago. In fact, though, it is well beyond that. It's unpolished in certain places - the polish of the user experience is what makes the iphone/ipod touch so nice to use - but it is nowhere near as frustrating as the typical linux experience *today*, even the well-polished distros. A few oddities here and there, but overall very nice to use, does everything you need and more - and if it doesn't do it, it's possible to add core functionality (or hope that someone else that knows how to code will do it ;) ). I get frustrated with it sometimes, but only because I'm trying to do stuff beyond what it was designed to... nothing that it's not possible to do, like with the iphone, just things that need some coding and that I expect to improve in the future as development for the platform expands.
So the point is that those of us that want to tweak everything and to push what our stuff is capable of will always find fault. For your grandmother, though, while I still would be hesitant in recommending linux, I wouldn't have a problem recommending a good android phone over the iphone (though you have to wonder how many grandmothers want or need this kind of thing...). In its stock state, everything should run just fine and "just work", like the iphone and definitely unlike linux (except for highly customized installations of course... which is essentially what android is).
That said, it does definitely need time to mature. However, given how good it is now, I can easily see it becoming extremely popular and widely used, and not just among geeky types. It's already seen as cool by many just on virtue of it *not* being an iphone. The iphone is a status symbol only in very certain groups. The other people who have it got it because it was the best device available, and the nexus one and the android phones that I'm guessing will be coming out in the next couple years will easily be seen by more than just geeks as the best devices available.
I have noticed a few problem apps in the market on my nexus one. I guess "problem" is not the right word, but still, there are incompatibility and other issues that do actually crop up. I'll say first that you're right, in general if they show you an app in the market, it will work on your phone.
However - this doesn't stop the developers from coding poorly. It's very obvious in many apps that the developer isn't using the APIs correctly - the app is designed to work well with specific devices with specific hardware. Sure it *does* work on any hardware, but it's sized incorrectly, isn't expecting to be covered up by the on-screen keyboard, navigation between text fields is weird, etc. This has me doing things like in one app (which in other aspects is the best app for what I want it to do) having to physically move between landscape and portrait orientation each time I want to switch text fields. This is seriously screwed up.
Apparently (according to earlier posts here) Google's APIs provide excellent ways to handle the differences in hardware. As I said, I just don't think developers are doing it properly. The occasional well-made apps you come across are great - even if it wasn't written specifically with the nexus one in mind, the interface adapts properly and it just works.
Another thing that kind of annoys me is that there are a lot of apps that provide added functionality - you know, stuff that should be provided in the first place. This stuff was in most cases designed to add functionality to earlier versions of android. Great. Except... now in 2.1 on the nexus one, this functionality is built-in. It's possible to use the other solution in place of the stock one, and that's great - I like to have the choice. However, in every case I tried, the google-provided solution was far better. So while 2.1 may be compatible with things written for 1.5 (or whatever), I'd like to have the option to filter stuff out that's written specifically for earlier versions.
I've been watching some of it; NBC's primetime coverage is pretty awful but it does give you good highlights (skipping the 'boring' stuff) if you're interested in these kinds of sports (and it's free OTA HD if you don't pay for cable, like me). I'm not generally interested in sports, but I am a skier myself and the other events can be exciting because these are the top athletes in the world competing at the edge of being in control (and of course, sometimes spectacularly out of control).
I can definitely see how people wouldn't be interested, but it's the same with any sport. I can't imagine how anyone is interested in any typical American organized team sport, yet most people are...
One thing I'm really not interested in is snowboarding... I don't really see how this is an olympic sport on par with the others. They're good athletes, sure, but this is not the kind of thing you spend your whole life training for, sacrificing all kinds of things to get to the olympic level. It seems like a bunch of rich kids whose parents paid for them to go snowboarding every weekend when they were growing up (not that there isn't some aspect of that in many other olympic events, just not as much).
Check out the Nexus One - higher resolution camera than the iphone, and much easier to write applications for (you don't have to pay Apple anything) - there aren't any camera applications that are better than google's default that I've seen, but I think there's a lot of room for really cool stuff like you're describing in the future as more apps are written.
The accelerometer and compass on the nexus one are very good, and from what I've seen on an ipod touch I think it's pretty good on there too, though I don't know if either is high enough in resolution to really be used for shake reduction in any meaningful way.
Some apps that use the camera will try to detect movement, and wait to take the picture until you're holding it relatively steady, which may be what you were thinking of. The really good anti-shake systems in digital cameras, though, physically move either the image sensor itself or lens elements to counter-act your shaking, which isn't something you can really emulate in software.
I think there's a lot of room for other stuff, like panorama stitching and so on. The accelerometer is definitely high enough resolution to help with something like that.
I got a Nexus One, and they give you free overnight FedEx shipping, meaning it traveled on a cargo plane to get to me. There's a huge label on the shipping box warning about the lithium-ion battery inside, and that the carrier shouldn't handle the box if it is damaged. I was pretty surprised to see that on there; kind of stupid.
I thought it was excellent as well. Why I even watched part of the game I don't know, but I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed this ad. I don't even remember any of the others, and I was actually watching them, not getting a sandwich (saved that for the actual game). Others have pointed out what's brilliant about it already.
It struck a personal chord for me, since I fell in love overseas recently myself and am at a certain point in the relationship that's covered in the ad, and it makes me hopeful that it will work out as in the ad... advertising is about getting into people's heads, and I think that even if one hasn't been in a similar situation that this ad really succeeds. It's a great fantasy (especially for nerdy types!) and the ad made a touching story.
It's an effective short film... the kind of thing someone might make as art. Keep in mind that like any good slashdotter, I loathe advertising - even other Google-related advertising - and I still feel this way about this ad.
The poster is a little deluded to think that everyone is going to think this was a dumb ad - I suspect that even among the slashdot crowd most people will like it. Seems typical of slashdot... strong opinions get posted in the summaries and it's worded in a way that makes it seem like you'd have to be an idiot to not agree, and then it turns out 95% or more of slashdot disagrees. Well, it gets the comments rolling, anyway.
Bentley donated the original glass plates to the Buffalo Museum of Science (a city known for snow itself, though Bentley did most of his work in Vermont as far as I know). They have many of them scanned, and include data about each photo as well. See it here.
I'm from Buffalo and have been to the museum countless times; after learning about Bentley I am always amazed that they don't capitalize on it with some sort of exhibit. Seems like it would be a nice attraction to a museum that otherwise seems to be having trouble encouraging attendance and keeping up the collections.
I'm sure there are similar things in other cities, but in Rochester, NY there's a privately-owned wall that the owner allows people to spray-paint whatever they want, whenever they want. Cool idea, but it's pretty much just 15-year-olds with long hair who get dropped off and picked up there by their mom in an SUV who actually paint it (meanwhile, graffiti thrives elsewhere in the city - such as in the abandoned subway tunnel).
Not that this is really relevant (your point stands), but you've got some geological details wrong (IAAG).
Most mountains have a lot of granite, yes, so I'll start with that - first, your assertion that granite is harder than glass is perhaps technically true, but there are several things to consider. Granite is composed primarily of quartz (hardness 7) and feldspar (hardness 6) while plate glass is traditionally considered to be hardness 5.5. Fine. But - glass is structurally solid and homogeneous, while granite is composed of a bunch of different mineral crystals stuck together, some of which (like biotite) might be considerably softer. This heterogeneity likely weakens the overall structure of granite (though this is far outside my areas of expertise within geology and material science).
Most erosion in mountains comes from water, not wind. Wind is significant but only in certain areas in certain types of rock - think Arches National Park in Utah, with those wind-blown formations in sandstone, a very weak rock. For water to do anything, you need either something that will react chemically (which pure silicon shouldn't as far as I know) or you need mechanical action. This can be freezing and thawing like what cracks the roadway, or water carrying particulate over the surface (like in a stream). Again, with such a smooth, homogeneous surface, I don't see this being a problem... you don't really see erosion on glass windows, for example, even sloped ones.
Erosion over hard surfaces (such as granite) is a big part of my research. It is extremely slow. How much erosion happens to rock counter tops, for example? Not all of those are granite, by the way, though they may be called that at home depot - there's a very wide range of minerals that goes into counter tops, many of which are soft enough to be eroded quite easily.
And anyway - the "particulate" you mentioned as eroding mountains is particles of rock and mineral. Hard stuff. Unless you cook with sand, I really don't see this being a problem.
What I'd be worried about is what happens in an impact. If you drop something heavy and sharp-edged on it, is it going to break? Even small breaks give you the opportunity for erosion as discussed. If this stuff fractures easily, then my points are partially invalid. It doesn't seem like that's the case, though. Seems like pretty great stuff.
To be fair, in Asia people tend to be smaller, and they look more ridiculous on a full-size motorcycle than on a scooter.
I haven't been to China, but in SE Asia there are more motorbikes (scooters) on the road than cars and it works great. It's scarier to drive a car there than a motorbike. I, as a somewhat large white male, may look ridiculous on some of the smaller scooters - but you simply have to choose well when renting.
Even the silliest looking machines I saw didn't look *that* silly with a tiny Thai person riding them, and over there even foreigners look a little silly riding the larger bikes.
Actually, the funniest thing is that they're so ubiquitous that people tend to know more about them than they do about cars. Here in the US, everyone at least knows the difference between the different sizes of cars, and can probably tell a "nice" car from a cheap one. In Thailand, while I could tell motorbikes apart by size and style, I noticed that the Thais have all kinds of ways to classify them and can tell how good one is visually where I could tell no difference. Really, it is not hard to impress girls if you have the right motorbike (which I did, luckily...) as even they can tell.
It depends on your point of view. In science, many things are "problems", but can be quite different in scope. Everything is broken down into a series of "problems" to be solved by science. Whether you work on large-scale or very specific problems depends on your field and your specific research, but it all feeds into the overall system and advances scientific knowledge.
For example: something like climate change is a "problem" in that it affects the whole planet in a somewhat unpredictable and possibly disastrous way (for humans anyway).
To get at a solution to that huge problem, you can't really attack it head-on. You have to narrow it down to smaller problems. So for example, we need to ease off on fossil fuels. Great - for that, we need better batteries. Battery tech is a more well-defined problem, and much easier to work on than attacking climate change as a whole.
I'm not a geneticist, biologist, or anything like that (I am a geologist) so I can't say too much about TFS, but I do see it as a "problem" that's worthy of study, for a few reasons. First, for the reason I explained above - if it's valid science, it contributes to the whole no matter what the result. For example, cutting-edge gene sequencing and other techniques are being refined with this type of research, and that has applications across the whole field. Second, it's cool and interesting. As a scientist in a field that's often hard to explain the utility of myself, that's good enough for me... anything that brings us closer to Jurassic Park is awesome. Even if we just have a "Stuff Extinct Because of Humans Park", that would be amazing and extremely valuable.
I'm not accusing you specifically of anything, this is a generality - people do not understand science and how it's useful unless it directly affects their life. The thing is, even the craziest science contributes in some way to "useful" science. Cloning extinct animals isn't curing cancer, which would be a directly useful application of similar science (biology, genetics, etc.) that most will see the utility in. However, besides the improved techniques as I mentioned, we *don't know* what will come of this kind of experimentation. Scientific breakthroughs are often serendipitous - for all we know, this research *will* directly lead to curing cancer.
A final point - science requires a different mindset than engineering. In engineering, there is a distinct problem (say, crossing the river), and (usually) one best solution (a certain type of bridge). In science, it's not the outcome (the bridge) that matters, it's the process. The problem is ill-defined (there's no specific river to cross). The hard part is coming up with the questions that need to be answered (we're looking for rivers to cross, and not necessarily just because we need to get to the other side). What we find along the way slowly but surely adds to our understanding of the world.
I appreciate that you're probably correct about CHP citing people for that, but living in SoCal for a couple years I've never seen most freeways moving anywhere close to the speed limit during commute hours (i.e. almost all day apparently) ;)
Whether it's a law or not (and others have pointed out the various legal and real-life aspects) it's the safest and best thing to do for keeping traffic flowing, considering the driving habits of many (meaning it's not necessarily the most efficient way that people should drive, but it's reality).
If someone wants to drive faster than you and you won't let them, you may think you have the high ground because you're not breaking the law (though you probably are, just not as much), but think about it - as another poster states - that guy in the M5 riding on your tail is a hugely dangerous situation, where both of you are not paying as much attention to the road as you should because you're agitated by each other, constantly checking the mirror, etc.
The guy in the M5 is an asshole, but the solution to dealing with assholes is not (usually) to be an asshole back, especially if you're creating a dangerous situation for yourself and others. To be clear: you're being just as much of an asshole, and a smug one at that, by not moving over and letting someone pass.
And whether or not it's law in every state, sticking to the right lane except for passing is common courtesy. Not everyone understands that (the grandma in the station wagon going 5 under the limit in the left lane probably isn't trying to be a smug asshole), unfortunately, and that is the biggest cause of stress for me when driving. I drive a little bit aggressively (I am a male in my early 20's, what can I say) but not recklessly, and when I come upon someone going too slow in the left lane I get nervous... and that is the *only* driving situation that makes me particularly nervous, even in Los Angeles and Southern California where I currently live. You're not "supposed" to pass on the right, so even if there is space, it's not a good thing to do because you don't know if the other driver will realize you're behind them and suddenly move over to let you pass, or what... just a completely unknown situation. In states where it isn't covered by law, it really needs to be so that people would understand that they need to move over (possibly the only situation where I would advocate more laws...) or maybe states could invest in "keep right except to pass" signs.
Naturally, this problem would be solved if aggressive drivers slowed down a bit, and you could spin the situation into the aggressive driver being at fault for creating the unknown and dangerous situation, but when there is a generally accepted rule in place (or in some cases an actual law) that you should stick to the right, then the slow driver *is* at fault. Who is at fault according to the insurance company if there's a crash is different, but it's the slow driver who caused the problem in the first place - not because people should be given a free pass to drive aggressively, but because knowing that people will drive aggressively no matter what, you really need to get the heck out of their way. It's stupid not to.
I started trying to come up with a car analogy, but... ;)
Your example is obviously flawed - libraries do not cost each person $1000 a month in taxes, besides the fact that it would be pretty difficult to eat $1000 worth of sweets in a month (by yourself), meaning the value proposition is so low that no one would take up that offer.
It's not really necessary and I doubt anyone will even read my post, but I've always wanted to do a slashdot style back-of-the-envelope calculation... so here goes.
Let's assume the previous post was correct, and libraries cost $1.1 billion a year. To keep it simple I'll use state taxes only, which is listed as $895 million. Wikipedia says total state tax revenue (in 2007) was $749,785,186,000 ($750 billion). So, 0.001% of state tax revenue was spent on libraries. Very likely there are local/city taxes that could be significant, but the previous poster showed that states provide the largest source of library funding.
In 2005, at $38,206 per capita the average state tax rate was 9.8% (source). So, about $3,750 in taxes was paid per person, on average, to the state(s) where they did business (these numbers include taxes from states besides those the person resides in, such as sales tax on out-of-state purchases, but doesn't include federal taxes). 0.001% of that is 4 cents, and that's for the whole year... 0.3 cents/month.
Let's assume my math and the figures I used are bad, and it's actually significantly higher. Say, one hundred times higher... $4 a year is still a heck of a good deal for everything that libraries provide to those who use them, and if you never ever use the library, you can write off the expense (pun intended), considering how small it is, as part of "buying civilization" as the well-known slashdot sig goes, just like you probably don't directly use a lot of the other things state, local, and federal taxes pay for (and you don't get to pick and choose what your money goes toward).
Your sweets example is obviously different, because sweets can't be almost endlessly re-used like books and DVDs from the library can (I suppose you could try with sweets, but...) That's why, of course, such a pre-payment scheme as you suggest wouldn't work for food (although all-you-can-eat buffets are an interesting thing to consider), but why the original point stands... you are pre-paying for the library, but it's a minuscule amount that more or less equals nothing, especially when compared to the value it potentially provides to you.
Seriously, read westlake's post - Chow Yun-Fat is pretty incredible... if you've only seen him in "The Replacements" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", check out his films with John Woo, especially Hard Boiled. He's one of the baddest bad-asses in film history.
as in it only has the basic abilities you actually use
Uh, ok... I'm no professional and while I don't use the slideshow and fancy layout stuff in Lightroom, but I do use almost all of the "developing" and library features it offers. Not everything on every photo, obviously, but I think I've used every feature since I've been using it.
I fully appreciate RawStudio and similar programs that are trying to offer similar functionality, but the key to Lightroom being so great is that it offers all of the "basic abilities you actually use" from Photoshop, which is a ridiculously full-featured program. It's a sub-set of features packaged in a different way such that it is quicker and easier for a specific task, photo manipulation, whereas the full Photoshop offers endless more possibilities, most of which aren't necessary for photography. Even so, occasionally a situation comes up where you need to do something that Lightroom can't handle - and it's integrated perfectly with Photoshop, so it's no problem (if you have Photoshop obviously).
RawStudio and the like offer subsets of the features of Lightroom, and therefore offer sub-sub-sets of the capabilities of Photoshop or Gimp.
I don't want to knock their efforts - I'm an open source guy all the way - but even for amateurs, RawStudio and similar are not good replacements for Lightroom.
It's unfortunate because I want to like open source graphics and photo software. InkScape is pretty good, but my main interest is photography and photography software is severely lacking in comparison to commercial offerings. I'm not saying everyone should pirate Lightroom and Photoshop for really basic stuff - RawStudio, GIMP, etc. are fine if all you really want to do is adjust the white balance and contrast - but if you're starting with a RAW, it *requires* more processing than that for a good result. It's designed that way. If you don't like the extra work, shoot jpg or raw+jpg just in case, and set how you want it to look in-camera.
And I don't suggest anyone pay for Lightroom and Photoshop for non-commercial uses either, because it's so ridiculously expensive (Lightroom at least is not outrageous, but you do sometimes need Photoshop, so...) - but if you're even a little bit serious about it, even just for fun, once you try the industry standard software it's hard to go back because it's just so much better. It helps that this is some of the easiest to find software on piratebay and the like.
Where I went to university for undergrad, the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, there was something similar. From what I've seen, a lot of universities are doing this these days: certain (or all, in some cases) city bus routes are free if you have a student ID card. It's definitely paid for by the university, and there are special university routes. At Rochester, there were routes between the two major universities (UR and RIT) and local shopping areas, with stops right in front of the mall, the most popular grocery store (Wegman's), Wal-Mart, etc., as well as one to some downtown destinations.
I have seen non-university-route buses at those stops as well, so whether or not the businesses are subsidizing anything, the bus service has figured out how to make it work and presumably does not run up the city's debt paying for it. Of course, usually the only students who use the bus service are freshman (at least at UR), because freshman can't get parking permits.
I don't know where the previous guy lives, but in my experience whether or not bus service works profitably depends on how dense the city is and where businesses and services are located in relation to where people live. Think of places like NYC and Chicago, which have very usable buses. It can also be a small city, though - cities like Rochester, or small towns. Buses simply do not work in the sprawl - see Southern California, where I live now. I pity those who have to use the buses here. I tried it one time when I was just visiting without a car and it's ridiculously bad. It doesn't have to be that big of a sprawl, though - for example, Buffalo, NY has usable buses and one light rail line downtown, but most of the population of the area lives outside of the city, and though the suburbs are a fraction of the size of SoCal, the bus system is almost as unusable no matter if your destination is within the suburbs or if you're trying to get downtown and back.
You're correct, of course, but - being from Buffalo myself - do you see the need for more than one major daily in Buffalo? I was born after the Courier Express ended and my parents have had a daily subscription to the Buffalo News for at least my whole life, so I'm pretty familiar with it and somewhat familiar with how well they cover things. I've heard the Courier Express mentioned a few times by my parents and grandparents (in connection with old news events, say, or to illustrate how long ago the story they were telling happened) and I presume back then it was important to Buffalo to have multiple news options.
But now? What purpose does it serve, when all the news in the paper is regurgitated from the internet, except for some spotty coverage of local stuff? This is not to slag on the Buffalo News, as I think it's a decent paper, all things considered. (In any case, it's a heck of a lot better than many other local papers I've seen around the US - see for example the Orange County Register and even the L.A. Times in Southern California where I live now. Both are pretty awful compared to the Buffalo News.)
But now that Buffalo is a city in a major decline, there isn't *that much* local news to report, there are several local TV channels which (sometimes) report on the important local stuff (sometimes pretty well too, like with the recent plane crash) and anything else most people get online. Sadly, I think that actually if newspapers still thrived in Buffalo there is a lot of room for in-depth investigative reporting considering all that goes on in the city. That kind of thing is rare nowadays even in thriving cities, though, so I don't hold my breath expecting that.
As an aside I will note that though I moved away for grad school, I don't consider Western New York a bad place to live... the quality of the Buffalo News is a testament to that, because as I already said, it's far better than newspapers in other, oftentimes more thriving areas.
I don't think Star Wars needs to be "rebooted" in the same sense as Star Trek was... there is so much in the "expanded universe" or even just the video games that endless movies/shows could be produced without even having to come up with new stories - they're already out there, waiting. A lot of it is crap, but there's good stuff too.
If you did want new stuff, just commission a good writer to come up with a story. You can have a whole new set of characters, who of course will interact at least a couple of times with some of the original characters. If you set it after Return of the Jedi, you can even use the original actors. We don't need further prequel stories, though - Lucas screwed that up pretty badly already. The Clone Wars animated shorts were pretty much better than the films, which is sad (whatever CGI clone wars show they have now looks awful, though). I thought they were going to do a live-action Star Wars show, actually... don't know what happened to that. Could have been good.
Lucas gave us an interesting (if relatively simple) universe to work within, and there are endless possibilities. Of course, it would be perceived as a cash-in on the Star Wars name, so it would *have* to be pretty darn good - it would be held to a higher standard than a wholly new story.
I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm only 23 and I remember all those things as well... I'm not sure that it actually makes me feel old, though, because it really wasn't that long ago.
I am three years older than you, and I played the 2D Duke Nukems... I grew up on computer side-scrollers (first console I ever had was the first X-Box so it was computer games only - no Mario) and of course the early first-person shooters when they came out. Commander Keen, Crystal Caves, Secret Agent, and so on. They may have been a couple years old by the time I played some of them, but some of them I played when they were new - my dad downloaded shareware from BBSs for me (took hours I presume) and later I would get them from Prodigy/Compuserve/whatever it was until we had real internet access.
I don't remember the sequence exactly, but even after 3D games were available to me (which was Wolfenstein 3D, X-Wing, and everything as they came out... though I never played Doom or Quake originally for some reason), I was still playing side-scrollers. I had CDs that I got occasionally at Computer City packed full of shareware games (much easier than trying to download them and the discs cost next to nothing since the software was free). Duke Nukem 1 & 2 were on one of those, and I remember having a great time with them, even though at that point I may have already played Duke Nukem 3D! So the point is that it's not just an age thing... there's a bigger window of ages that might have played those games than you might suspect.
Back then for a kid it wasn't usually possible to have the latest and greatest all the time. You took what you could get, and enough effort was required to acquire a new game (whether it was free shareware episodes or not) that it meant that you were going to get enjoyment out of it no matter what. Even if the game sucked, you would play it, because you didn't have easy access to anything else. I think I enjoyed myself a lot more that way, even if I didn't always play the latest and greatest games right away, or ever. As you said, though, you may be right about there being some sort of border beyond which people would not have played some of the older titles.
Of course I was also at the age where the resurgence in interest in Star Wars (including the re-releases, new series of toys, etc.) meant that I had to have all the latest Star Wars games, so I would usually choose those over whatever else was popular at the time. Luckily, back in the day Star Wars games used to be great, so I didn't miss out on too much :)
Within the US they normally don't, but everywhere else they do (including international flights to/from the US). It's pretty great, actually, because they usually have those honey flavored ones, and they're pretty good. On Korean Air (who have great in-flight service in other areas as well) the cute flight attendants carry around baskets filled with the little bags of honey peanuts, and you can grab as many as you want :)
I want to say I've had peanuts on a NY-LA flight recently (I do that flight several times a year) but I am not sure - I use whichever airline is cheapest and I don't keep track of these kinds of things very well; the general trend though has been to just not give you anything. That sucks. It was cookies for a while (which were pretty good), then pretzels, and now they want to charge you $5 for $1 worth of various snacks. Not that those snack boxes look bad or anything, but it's kind of lame. I'd rather they raised fares by $0.05 or whatever it costs them for a small packet of snacks and give me that for "free". Keep the snack box option for people who are starving, but for those of us who plan ahead and don't get on the plane starving and without food, a little snack would be a nice gesture, especially since fares are so expensive to begin with. Of all the stupid reasons they come up with to add hidden cost to the fares, a few cents for snacks is one I think that everyone can get behind.
At least nowadays they seem to usually give you a whole can of coke instead of just pouring you a little glass of it like they had been doing for a while. I will mention here that Korean Air and Thai Air offer as much free wine and beer as you want - presumably to a reasonable limit of course - even in economy. And they have great free snack offerings (well, as great as airline food can get... Korean does better here than Thai does) even for short in-country flights.
The humor usually plays off the artwork. The artwork *does* matter. He takes great liberties with it, of course, but without the artwork it wouldn't really work. At the most basic level, the artwork illustrates who's talking to who without having to say "T-Rex said" at the end of each sentence. There's a lot more going on than that, though. Great comic.
The Max head in the Dark Forces ice level was accessible without cheating, as I recall (this was a while ago) - you could drop off a cliff and land on a ledge, and the only thing at that elevation in the whole level was the Max head, so that's what you could see on the map. Of course, there was no place to go from there, so you would have to drop off the ledge and kill yourself.
I'm not sure what kind of geologist you're referring to but that's a little insulting (IAAG)... there are people who don't learn to think in any field (including all the sciences) but geologists are not systematically not trained to think in university, that's bogus. In fact I'd say we are trained to think more than people in other fields of science, as true understanding of geological concepts is not easily obtained by reading or hearing about them and can't always be mathematically described.
To be fair, of course, you're probably referring to low-end industry geologists who are little more than technicians; if that's your goal in life as a geologist then sure, you don't have to think too much, same as any low-end science technician. Whether that's good for getting stuff done (taking orders blindly from the chief) I can't say, but I guess it would be.