1. Actual 3d environments. You could have people above and below you and shoot at either of them. Doom and Doom2 are really 2d environments, but do a good job acting 3d.
2. Cooperative bots. In Marathon 2 I think they were called "bobs". They ran around and killed some of the enemies for you. You couldn't really coordinate them much, but it was cool having them.
3. Interesting storylines.
4. Two pistols firing one in each hand. I don't think any version of Doom had this.
I agree with the people who espouse the belief that Microsoft purchasing Bungie has only reduced the company's innovation rather than assisting it.
naw... I have a similar setup going to my garage. cat 5 is fine outdoors. They do sell a slightly more expensive type that is white for exterior use. The blue stuff works fine, thought.
I did a little research and it is unclear to me now if the battery is entirely charged by braking.
Like the Honda, the Toyota Prius captures kinetic energy under braking to recharge the battery and it shuts the gasoline engine down at stoplights - reducing engine idling reduces vehicle emissions.
That's how I had understood the battery-charging process of the Prius. But in various documentation, I am seeing references to MG1 and MG2, one of which is used to charge the battery by drawing power from the gas motor. This doesn't make a lot of sense because the car is still using gasoline to make electricity.
In any event, I think the Prius is a fantastic first-generation hybrid and it certainly sounds like your family is benefitting from it. It will be interesting to see how the new Accord compares to it.
Glad to hear your mom's experience with the Prius is so positive. It is a very popular car. The dealers apparently have waiting lists for this model.
One thing I wanted to point out about your post, though. The engine doesn't 'charge' per se. The batteries in the Prius are charged through 'regenerative braking'. So when you apply the breaks, the energy that would normally be absorbed in the brake-pad friction is actually absorbed by generators that create electricity and charge the battery.
I'm impressed that you got 80mpg with it. That's cool!/blockquote
Your fallacy is that you are discussing this topic in terms of 'us' and 'them'. Us being the western nations and them being the third world. On the subject of global climate change, it is only us as the world.
I have no idea how you construed my comments to be pointed at the population growth of the US or western nations. But I suppose you could infer that I was speaking about our overconsumption of products/energy/resources relative to the third world.
Perhaps my examples weren't as clever as I imagined. In terms of global climate change, much like most things in nature, the full impact may not be felt until a decade or more after a threshold has been reached. Take the pecan trees in my yard, for instance. We had a drought several years ago that severely damaged them. Only now are all the branches falling off them and it's looking like I'll have to pull them down so they don't fall on my house. Had I known they were suffering at the time, I might have watered them better.
Another example: Scientists and doctors have concluded that cigarrettes cause cancer. A person doesn't currently have cancer. Should that person keep puffing away because the threshold hasn't been crossed yet? The number of cigarrettes it takes to get cancer may not seem finite because it's so difficult to measure. If we had an unlimited technological apptitude, we could factor all the elements in the equation (red blood cell resistance to cancer cells, genetic susceptibility, etc.) and get a precision that would allow us to say x number of cigarrettes will kill you. But it's unneccesary when we know the likely outcome and can try to avoid it by not smoking cigarrettes in the first place.
When the parent poster used the phrase
a maximum number of people he really meant that there is a finite number of humans the earth can sustain. Whether or not the specific number is known is unimportant to this concept. The same way that:
1. I can stab you in the chest a finite number of times before you die. 2. I can drive a finite number of miles before the tires on my motorcycle will burst. 3. You can hold your breath a finite number of minutes before you pass out.
As you can see from these examples, when the consequences are as unpleasant as these, you will probably want to take steps to avoid suffering them. Even if you were given the exact number, you probably would distrust the validity of that number and be careful not to come anywhere near passing the threshold. That's what the doomsayers are doing in this discussion.
Not to flame you here.. I think your post is well-reasoned.
I actually think, though, that it is highly unlikely that the donor is trying to create an incentive for linux console games. There was some other company, I forgot the name, that went through their VC money last year or year before and soundly demonstrated that there's no traction for a linux console.
Instead, I suspect the goal here is to simply punch holes in the financial hull of the goodship XBOX. Much in the same way as the eyeOpener suffered. People buying the device to use in an unintended way, at a cost to the manufacturer (microsoft), with no contribution to the maker's revenue stream (i.e. buying games that have a license fee, using online MSN gaming service, etc). If there were a linux distro available, some third party could fashion a bootdisk that could turn the XBOX into any number of other devices (mp3 jukebox, tv-based web browser, etc.) and suddenly people would start buying xBOxS for these other uses.... not to play games.
I am not trying to flame you. This response is simply food for thought.
I refuse to pay for it on the grounds that I'm fucking POOR.
The obvious response here is to ask what else you will steal that you cannot afford to buy? A Porsche 996 is pretty expensive, have you stolen one? Probably not. The anti-theft mechanism truly requires that you have the key to start the engine, so your only other option would be to use a flatbed trailer. Stealing a Porsche is a far less accessible crime than copying discs, so perhaps you believe it is less of a crime.
I'm not attempting to convince you that you have comitted a horrible crime. Just keep in mind that as you champion bands like Unwound, you are hurting the musicians whom you've chosen to copy their music from.
I'm assuming you've purchased all your Unwound CDs, but have pirated music by major label bands. Musicians like the members of Unwound who dedicate a significant portion of their younger years to performing their music are taking a gamble. They're not building their resumes for a career. They're doing something they love for the time that they can. As long as fans support them, they can afford to do it. Perhaps they can even cash in and retire and not have to work a regular job for the rest of their lives. As long as people are stealing from musicians in general, fewer and fewer musicians will consider this to be a viable gamble. Fewer will stick with music as long as Unwound has. More will get moderately popular in the indie scene, then attempt to cash-out with a major album and a major label. Example: And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead jumped ship from Merge and released their latest album on Interscope.
Of course the royalties from a major label contract will be less per album, but they'll probably sell more albums than Merge would, so perhaps they'll make more money. For people whose dream is playing music and avoiding a straight job, can you really condemn the musician who signs up for a payday on a major label? If you think this justifies piracy, then you are really discouraging bands like Unwound from touring 365 and sleeping on people's floors. Incidentally, Unwound has slept on my floor twice while touring Austin, tx.
This industry is too young. You're not going to benefit from being an early-adopter. Features and prices are going to improve in the next year or so.
Besides, satellite radio, in its present incarnation, is much like the DiVX dvd format pushed by Circuit City a few years back-- who's to benefit the most? Vendor or consumer?
Get an in-dash mp3 player. I have one and love it.
I'm pretty fed up with movie CGI stuff. I like older movies where even though you know stuff isn't real, it at least is physical. Like Yoda looked way better and seemed more huggable when he was a rubber puppet. CGI is a cheap way to lie to the audience. How about all those old epic films where they had REAL crowds in the Collesium? I find it rewarding to think that the filmmaker went to some amount of trouble to produce the illusion of the story.
A lot of people are referencing the final police chase shot in Chicago for the Blues Brothers. How lame would it have been if those cars crashing were all CGI? Wouldn't it just be GTA3 on the big screen?
I think that it is the person who is sharing's resposiblity to keep their mp3 collection correct and in order.
But the weakness here is that people aren't doing that. This is the achilles tendon that the RIAA may be exploiting.
One aspect of the p2p clients I've evaluated lately is that they automatically place the completed uploads in the shared directory. This encourages the proliferation of bad, unchecked files. The p2p client writers can improve this by providing 2 levels of searching:
1. Verified files. 2. "I'm desperate, I'll take anything"
In order for this to work, the client will need an additional directory in which users will place files they've originated and / or checked the validity of the contents. For their clients to register hits for 2, the search will just continue on the existing directory which includes completed downloads.
The station is probably broadcasting from Mexico. You didn't say how far north of the border you are. If the station's located outside the US, then the FCC is
not really going to be able to do much.
The difference is that real journalists attribute everything. Since the editor at the Chinese newspaper wasn't aware of the Onion, etc. it appears this freelance writer simply plagarized the entire story. Slashdot does not plagarize stories because it ONLY references other published articles with the exception of
Jonathan Katz's work, which very well could be plagarizing pieces appearing in the Weekly World News. I'd strongly suspect this writer won't be working with that newspaper again.
If the communication between the server and client is encrypted and dynamic (based off some environmental seed such as time and date), this would be very, very difficult to reverse-engineer.
So if mtv's web page is pulling a lone gunman, then does that imply that there's a spinoff webpage that sucks worse than the original web page? Perhaps an mtv2.com webpage or some such crap?
Wow, I guess there is! It sucks so bad it just redirects to port 89 of the regular mtv web server which then refuses the connection. Now that's what I call a lousy rehash of an existing website.
When the fuck did anyone train your users in IE? Why will they need to be retrained?
And licensing? Since when did any other browsers require licensing fees?
Of course the help desk tard isn't going to have any decision making power over whether to switch the company to another browser, etc. I'm not encouraging people to call up the help desk and tell that person to switch the company. I'm simply encouraging people to stumble over this exploit and call the help desk to get their computers repaired from the damage done. If the help desk is tied up with enough IE security headaches, then the real phbs (pointy-haired-bosses) will take notice and perhaps listen to that one pasty-skinned guy with long hair who keeps suggesting at meetings that the company ween itself away from the Microsoft tax.
solved. this is the equivalent to the end scene in caddyshack where bill murray blows up all the gophers with C4. The only difference is that the golf course remains intact.
I think it is then your responsibility to intentionally fall victim to every IE / Outlook exploit that comes around. Make your suffering public within the company. Demonstrate how your productivity is reduced due to the draconian browser and mail client policies of your company. After repeated episodes of the IT crew re-imaging your machine, perhaps they'll reconsider.
Sony has the
SVR 2000 available from Amazon dot com. It's not the cheapest, nor what I would recommend. I just mention it as an example of how simplified this technology is. If Sony sells it, it's dumbed down enough for mainstream consumers like yourself. I had brought up sony to demonstrate to you that although your friends who own TiVos are techno-geeks, their embrace of the TiVo simply exhibits their foresight. It doesn't imply the product is a pain in the ass.
I don't know what problem you have with Best Buy's return policies. I purchased my TiVo from Circuit City. They flat out said if I wanted to bring it back within the month, they'd give me my money back with no questions. 15 minutes after I got home, I knew there was no chance I would exercise that option.
Because you completely misconstrued my reference to the Sony TiVo product as an encouragement to purchase it, I suspect that the complication you are facing in this purchase is your own doing. Perhaps you're not ready for this technology.
I am not trying to flame you or criticize you. Just thought I might offer you some insight.
In the research I assume you have done (I didn't read your essay because your post suggests that it's just going to be the internet rantings of a crank), I doubt you found any purchasers complaining about how crummy TiVo is. You dismiss the word-of-mouth endorsements of your out-of-state friends because they're "techno-geeks". Think about this: Sony is selling TiVo boxes with their logo. Sony. That's not some crazy group of people selling some collection of parts off the internet to people with EE (Electrical Engineering) degrees.
Because you seem interested in the convenience of a PVR, I recommend that you actually take the plunge and buy a TiVo. Most stores have a 30-day, "no-questions-asked" return policy. If you get it home and are unsatisfied, you probably can even get a refund on the subscription fee, too.
I am pretty confident, though, that you'll fall into the overwhelming majority of purchasers who recognize that PVRs (like TiVo) are the future of television watching.
As for your concern about the future of the product, it'll be there even if TiVo goes bankrupt. Do you think Sony is going bankrupt anytime soon? The cash-burner in this market is the building of the console. The post-sale service is the profit stream. Do you think all the existing owners would be ignored by third-parties as well as Sony? Those people are FREE MONEY for anyone who can provide a simple replacement for the TiVo service. Heck, if you look close enough, you'll see that there are already people within the TiVo hacking community who have the wherewithall to provide this service out of their bedrooms, but they're currently not because they don't want to threaten the TiVo business model.
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Within the marathon engine, they innovated :
1. Actual 3d environments. You could have people above and below you and shoot at either of them. Doom and Doom2 are really 2d environments, but do a good job acting 3d.
2. Cooperative bots. In Marathon 2 I think they were called "bobs". They ran around and killed some of the enemies for you. You couldn't really coordinate them much, but it was cool having them.
3. Interesting storylines.
4. Two pistols firing one in each hand. I don't think any version of Doom had this.
I agree with the people who espouse the belief that Microsoft purchasing Bungie has only reduced the company's innovation rather than assisting it.
Seth
naw... I have a similar setup going to my garage. cat 5 is fine outdoors. They do sell a slightly more expensive type that is white for exterior use. The blue stuff works fine, thought.
6. Watch a recorded show and tape another at same time.
7. Builds viewer profile and records stuff you 'might' like.
8. Record any show with a specific celebrity appearance (SNL, Conan, Letterman, etc.)