Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a massive problem with lifespan right now? Depending on the color, I've heard they burn out in as little as a year of continious use (and once one of the colors is gone, the monitor is clearly not going to be very useful). Sure, this should improve with time, but it's by no means certain that lifespans will ever be as long as LCDs or CRTs.
Maybe you didn't know this, but widespread EMP attacks are one of the major uses of nuclear weapons. Detonated in the upper atmosphere, you can wipe out unshielded electronics over an entire continent. This whole microwave thing is just an effort to make it more localized, and without the nasty fallout.
Actually, as I understand it, they didn't target the Pentagon at all. As I recall, they were aiming for the Capitol building or the White House or something similar, but the buildings in DC were too small for them to figure out which was which. The Pentagon, though, is fucking huge, so when they couldn't find their target, they thought that'd be a good thing to hit instead.
Damn, I wish I could remember what state it was. I want to say Wisconsin, but I'm really not sure. Wherever it was, the first two cars puchased in that state crashed into each other.
Anyway, when a new technology is introduced, the long term implications are often unclear. In the keynote speech at the Embedded Systems conference in SF in '01, Douglas Adams gave the example of the telephone. Apparently, when the telephone was first introduced, it was so prohibitively expensive that some people thought its primary use would be to let someone know when he had a telegram. So, often early regulations are designed to regulate a technology for a purpose that may be different than its eventual use.
What progress has California made? The San Francisco Penninsula has more SUVs than I've seen anywhere in the country, and I read an article recently that one of the cities there actually has more cars than people! Not more cars than licensed drivers, more cars than people.
Just to check, this is also the same California that mandated MTBE be added to gasoline? MTBE leaked into the groundwater, which resulted in a law being passed to force gas stations to build a whole new type of tank to prevent future leaks. This forced about half of the gas stations in the Bay Area out of business (I can't speak for the rest of the state), and now San Francisco has more expensive gas than anywhere except Hawaii (because of reduced competition, and the need to make up the cost of the renovations). I'd guess that, to the extent that Californians are driving more fuel efficient cars, the whole MTBE fiasco has more to do with it than anything.
At Brown University, our phones work as follows: dial 8 to reach an outside line, if you're calling a number outside of Brown. Then dial the number. Then dial your 7 digit "personal security code" for a long distance call.
So, if you're just calling another person at Brown, there's no outside line, and no PSC, and the number's only 5 digits long. Pretty easy. But if you're calling long distance, you've got a total of 19 digits to dial, a pretty huge pain in the ass.
My little girl can barely read, but she has an easier time understanding single-clicking over double-clicking to open an application.
When was the last time you used Windows? IIRC, every version since Win98 has defaulted to single clicks. I always switch it back, because I grew up with double clicks, but the option is there.
The 777 is the only two engine plane rated for over water travel. That means that from way out over the Pacific, if one engine goes out, you can still make it to the nearest airport on one engine. That's crazy! And have you seen the size of those engines? The look like they're going to snap the wings off! From a practical perspective, this makes the 777 cheaper to fly, compared with other planes in its size/range catagory. I think the 777 deserves a little bit more credit than you give it.
In addition to what everyone else has said, I would also point out that Southwest is exclusively based on the Boeing 737. Indeed, as I understand it, Southwest's demand for new planes currently outstrips Boeing's ability to manufacture them.
The 767 is not a terribly useful plane, disliked by passengers, and expensive to fly. What demand there is for the 767 is easily met by the existing planes on the leasing market, Airbus has swallowed up any new demand for that size of plane. My father actually owns a couple of 767's, and he's having a hell of a time finding people who want to lease them.
Perhaps what you're looking for is a Gamecube?
on
Doom Archive Reopened
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· Score: 2
Mario Sunshine is certainly not dark and distopian. It gives you worlds to explore. I haven't played anything else from the Gamecube, but given Nintendo's history, I'm sure that there are many other bright, cheerful games.
You realize that Doom was not a 3d game, right? The height dimension was just an illusion, and hence there were no sloped floors or ceilings, rooms could not be stacked on top of each other, and anything shot at an enemy would automatically angle itself up or down to hit it. On top of that, all the objects were sprites, and there were no light sources. All lighting was just a numerical value assigned to the room, which set the brightness level of the walls and any sprites in the room.
Believe me, NO ONE would play a game that looked like Doom on a modern machine. Especially now that it's been GPLed, why wouldn't your hypothetical entry level game company just use the Quake 2 engine? Or pay ID the going rate to use Quake 3?
Could you not have a car dealer called ford motors just because there already was one?
That is correct. Being born with a name does not automatically entitle you to a trademark. If you wanted to make, say, a company that manufactured lawnmower motors, and call it "Ford Motors," you might be able to do that, it would be up to a judge to decide if that's confusingly similar or not.
Are you deliberately being stupid here? SOME people do upgrade frequently, and SOME of those people run Office. Office is still slow on new, expensive machines (not really slow, but slow enough that its obvious the MS Office file format is not designed the way it is because of speed). The first guy you replied to was not saying that all machines are fast. All he was saying is that MS Office still takes a second or two to open files, even on very fast machines.
If you do business in America, you can be sued in American courts. If you want to do business entirely outside of the USA (which, by the way, accounts for approximately 1/3rd of the world economy), you are not bound by US commercial law. However, if you do ship products to American customers, you can be sued for failing to comply with American patents. If you don't pay, the US government will likely seize any assets within American borders, and could take the additional steps of impounding any further products sent to US customers (somewhat less likely) or even arrest any employees of the company in question who visit the States (least likely of all, and even if this step were taken, it would probably be reserved for high ranking officers like the CEO).
IANAL, merely an economics student. However, I do think it would be nice if people toned down their anti-US "they think their laws apply to everyone" rhetoric. Even the ElcomSoft case is based mainly around the fact that they knowingly exported their product to American customers. Every country in the world does the exact same thing. The only difference is that it's harder to avoid doing business with the US, because as I mentioned above, this country has such an enormous economy.
Just by making and using a system, Amazon effectively can not be sued.
Actually, they most certainly CAN be sued. They would probably win, but when you get into a court of law, anything can happen. Any sane CEO in the world would want as much legal protection on his side as possible. The argument that "we're pretty sure we'd win a lawsuit anyway, so we don't need a patent," isn't going to fly with investors.
Much as I would like to be filled with righteous anger at Amazon, it's really not their fault. They're just taking the rational course of action, given the insane patent process.
What about archers? Those eagles aren't going to be able to do much as long as they're in the air, anyway. They'll have to land to actually get inside the mountain. Besides which, those birds will get tired, they'll have to sleep, they'll have to rest, etc. At any one of those points they'd be vunerable.
2 years? The last movie is coming out next year. Maybe there'll be another post 6 months after that for the DVD. After that, it'll be a totally worthless topic. I think giving LOTR its own topic would be fairly useless.
Well, I can't think of any reason why a dozen companies can't each send up their own blimps, so I'd imagine that if one company does it successfully, others will follow, driving down profit margins. Even if, for whatever reason, competition doesn't set in (a patent, maybe?), they'll still have to undercut satellite enough to convince people to switch (which may mean $1 a month, or it may mean $10 a month, but either way, it's still better than nothing).
Well, if it's not less expensive than satellite, no one would bother trying. So, while it may not be as cheap and quick as DSL, it should be better than the existing satellite options.
The only problem with Nintendo's games is the perception that they are "lame" because they are "for kids." I don't think this is really a big problem, though. Yes, it will alienate the image concious male teens, but they'll come back in a few years. Of course, as always, Penny-Arcade says it best.
Personally, I take some degree of offense to the implication in the article that the puzzles in Miyamoto's games are simplistic. How many people here have found every secret in a Mario game without the help of a hint guide? I'm sure a few of you have, but how long did it take? Sure, the main goal of beating Bowzer is pretty easy, but that's one of the geniuses of these games, there are different goals, of varying difficulty, so that all ages can enjoy the game.
Okay, first of all the idea that the Russians would want to retaliate against Lance Bass for failing to pay up is absurd. He didn't pay, so they didn't take him, simple enough. It would be like the cashier at your local convenience store offing you because you didn't have enough money to pay for all the things you brought up to the register, so you had to put some back.
Second of all, there is no more KGB. They were officially disbanded back in '91, after the attempted coup. The Russian spy agency is now the SVR, though much of the personnel remains the same.
Re:Hard to defend a logical morality?
on
Google vs. Evil
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· Score: 2
He details how without a government to monopolize force, societies never advanced much past hunter gather existance.
Okay, but a government monopolizing force is not the same thing as no immoral killings. In fact, the particular example I used was the Nazis, who did have a governmental monopoly on killing, but were still deeply immoral.
I know of no porn stars that do it because they are forced to.
Well, we can start with Linda Lovelace, generally considered the first real porn star. Yes, these cases are probably the minority, but I've never heard of someone being forced to, say, program computers. If the problems with prostitution were solely due to its illegality, then similar problems would not exist in pornography.
I know of few people who take that stance to support their view porn is immoral.
I take it you don't know many women? The exploitative nature of the industry, and many women would argue, the demeaning nature of the pornography itself, is a major reason why many women are against porn. Personally, I don't have any real problem with porn, I'm a big believer in personal responsability (if the women are being exploited, they ought to go to the police), but I'm just trying to point out that logic is not a basis for morality, because your underlying assumptions are always vunerable to attacks. At a certain point, you just have to say "this is what I believe, dammit." But don't BS yourself that your morality is somehow more worthy than someone else's.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a massive problem with lifespan right now? Depending on the color, I've heard they burn out in as little as a year of continious use (and once one of the colors is gone, the monitor is clearly not going to be very useful). Sure, this should improve with time, but it's by no means certain that lifespans will ever be as long as LCDs or CRTs.
Maybe you didn't know this, but widespread EMP attacks are one of the major uses of nuclear weapons. Detonated in the upper atmosphere, you can wipe out unshielded electronics over an entire continent. This whole microwave thing is just an effort to make it more localized, and without the nasty fallout.
Actually, as I understand it, they didn't target the Pentagon at all. As I recall, they were aiming for the Capitol building or the White House or something similar, but the buildings in DC were too small for them to figure out which was which. The Pentagon, though, is fucking huge, so when they couldn't find their target, they thought that'd be a good thing to hit instead.
Anyway, when a new technology is introduced, the long term implications are often unclear. In the keynote speech at the Embedded Systems conference in SF in '01, Douglas Adams gave the example of the telephone. Apparently, when the telephone was first introduced, it was so prohibitively expensive that some people thought its primary use would be to let someone know when he had a telegram. So, often early regulations are designed to regulate a technology for a purpose that may be different than its eventual use.
Just to check, this is also the same California that mandated MTBE be added to gasoline? MTBE leaked into the groundwater, which resulted in a law being passed to force gas stations to build a whole new type of tank to prevent future leaks. This forced about half of the gas stations in the Bay Area out of business (I can't speak for the rest of the state), and now San Francisco has more expensive gas than anywhere except Hawaii (because of reduced competition, and the need to make up the cost of the renovations). I'd guess that, to the extent that Californians are driving more fuel efficient cars, the whole MTBE fiasco has more to do with it than anything.
So, if you're just calling another person at Brown, there's no outside line, and no PSC, and the number's only 5 digits long. Pretty easy. But if you're calling long distance, you've got a total of 19 digits to dial, a pretty huge pain in the ass.
When was the last time you used Windows? IIRC, every version since Win98 has defaulted to single clicks. I always switch it back, because I grew up with double clicks, but the option is there.
The 777 is the only two engine plane rated for over water travel. That means that from way out over the Pacific, if one engine goes out, you can still make it to the nearest airport on one engine. That's crazy! And have you seen the size of those engines? The look like they're going to snap the wings off! From a practical perspective, this makes the 777 cheaper to fly, compared with other planes in its size/range catagory. I think the 777 deserves a little bit more credit than you give it.
The 767 is not a terribly useful plane, disliked by passengers, and expensive to fly. What demand there is for the 767 is easily met by the existing planes on the leasing market, Airbus has swallowed up any new demand for that size of plane. My father actually owns a couple of 767's, and he's having a hell of a time finding people who want to lease them.
Mario Sunshine is certainly not dark and distopian. It gives you worlds to explore. I haven't played anything else from the Gamecube, but given Nintendo's history, I'm sure that there are many other bright, cheerful games.
Believe me, NO ONE would play a game that looked like Doom on a modern machine. Especially now that it's been GPLed, why wouldn't your hypothetical entry level game company just use the Quake 2 engine? Or pay ID the going rate to use Quake 3?
That is correct. Being born with a name does not automatically entitle you to a trademark. If you wanted to make, say, a company that manufactured lawnmower motors, and call it "Ford Motors," you might be able to do that, it would be up to a judge to decide if that's confusingly similar or not.
Are you deliberately being stupid here? SOME people do upgrade frequently, and SOME of those people run Office. Office is still slow on new, expensive machines (not really slow, but slow enough that its obvious the MS Office file format is not designed the way it is because of speed). The first guy you replied to was not saying that all machines are fast. All he was saying is that MS Office still takes a second or two to open files, even on very fast machines.
But many home users do. It's not like people only run Office in the office, we can also see how well this software performs on hour home machines.
IANAL, merely an economics student. However, I do think it would be nice if people toned down their anti-US "they think their laws apply to everyone" rhetoric. Even the ElcomSoft case is based mainly around the fact that they knowingly exported their product to American customers. Every country in the world does the exact same thing. The only difference is that it's harder to avoid doing business with the US, because as I mentioned above, this country has such an enormous economy.
Actually, they most certainly CAN be sued. They would probably win, but when you get into a court of law, anything can happen. Any sane CEO in the world would want as much legal protection on his side as possible. The argument that "we're pretty sure we'd win a lawsuit anyway, so we don't need a patent," isn't going to fly with investors.
Much as I would like to be filled with righteous anger at Amazon, it's really not their fault. They're just taking the rational course of action, given the insane patent process.
What about archers? Those eagles aren't going to be able to do much as long as they're in the air, anyway. They'll have to land to actually get inside the mountain. Besides which, those birds will get tired, they'll have to sleep, they'll have to rest, etc. At any one of those points they'd be vunerable.
2 years? The last movie is coming out next year. Maybe there'll be another post 6 months after that for the DVD. After that, it'll be a totally worthless topic. I think giving LOTR its own topic would be fairly useless.
Well, I can't think of any reason why a dozen companies can't each send up their own blimps, so I'd imagine that if one company does it successfully, others will follow, driving down profit margins. Even if, for whatever reason, competition doesn't set in (a patent, maybe?), they'll still have to undercut satellite enough to convince people to switch (which may mean $1 a month, or it may mean $10 a month, but either way, it's still better than nothing).
Well, if it's not less expensive than satellite, no one would bother trying. So, while it may not be as cheap and quick as DSL, it should be better than the existing satellite options.
Personally, I take some degree of offense to the implication in the article that the puzzles in Miyamoto's games are simplistic. How many people here have found every secret in a Mario game without the help of a hint guide? I'm sure a few of you have, but how long did it take? Sure, the main goal of beating Bowzer is pretty easy, but that's one of the geniuses of these games, there are different goals, of varying difficulty, so that all ages can enjoy the game.
Second of all, there is no more KGB. They were officially disbanded back in '91, after the attempted coup. The Russian spy agency is now the SVR, though much of the personnel remains the same.
Okay, but a government monopolizing force is not the same thing as no immoral killings. In fact, the particular example I used was the Nazis, who did have a governmental monopoly on killing, but were still deeply immoral.
I know of no porn stars that do it because they are forced to.
Well, we can start with Linda Lovelace, generally considered the first real porn star. Yes, these cases are probably the minority, but I've never heard of someone being forced to, say, program computers. If the problems with prostitution were solely due to its illegality, then similar problems would not exist in pornography.
I know of few people who take that stance to support their view porn is immoral.
I take it you don't know many women? The exploitative nature of the industry, and many women would argue, the demeaning nature of the pornography itself, is a major reason why many women are against porn. Personally, I don't have any real problem with porn, I'm a big believer in personal responsability (if the women are being exploited, they ought to go to the police), but I'm just trying to point out that logic is not a basis for morality, because your underlying assumptions are always vunerable to attacks. At a certain point, you just have to say "this is what I believe, dammit." But don't BS yourself that your morality is somehow more worthy than someone else's.
"In Soviet Russia, all my base are belong to you!"
I don't think these are statistics either. I think these are "damned lies."