Scientist's don't really believe in global warming so much as accept it. That is, the current evidence very clearly points to a trend of global warming, and there is evidence that it is bad. This is why scientists and people who think like them really are more intelligent than others: if the evidence changes, so will their acceptance of it. It is shocking how few people actually understand this.
What isn't so clear is how much of an effect mankind has had on it, and how much power we have to stop it or at least slow it down. That's what is debatable. In my opinion we should be trying to head it off because it benefits us so much to do so. Using more alternative and/or renewable energy sources reduces both pollution and dependence on foreign oil. Sure it's expensive now but I'd rather spend that money here instead of pumping billions of dollars a day into the Middle East. The
That, or US voters. How can such a highly educated, technologically advanced citizenry lose all sense when it steps into the voting booth?
I agree. Why else would they elect democrats constantly, who basically piss the budget down the drain and do no good?
Why, there you have your answer, GP. A lack of long term memory. How lucky for the politicians that the populace always forgets how badly their party screwed everybody over last time, and come election time are always convinced the non-incumbent party will fix everything. It's like we're all just suffering from an undiagnosed but widespread Stockholm Syndrome.
When the last LTS release shipped, I requested 10 x86 and 10 x86_64 discs and stuck them in our group's common area at work (40-50 people pass through there daily). There were three x86 copies left a week later.
I don't fall into any of those categories, so I guess I can't do that again.
You've got to be kidding? Super-easy installation and automatic security updates for all applications is 'awkward'?
If I understood you correctly, your suggestion is that desktop software should be hard to find, it should be installed from whatever website I happen to ultimately find and it shouldn't automatically get security updates. Sounds fabulous.
"Better is worse if it's different." - Linus Torvalds
I thought the general consensus about this is that it's bad because Microsoft still gets your money. Too few people actually do it, so HP, Dell, and others just eat the loss and call it a day. I'm not going to search either but you might have a harder time getting the refund from Sony or Lenovo, or if you go to Best Buy or something.
You are quite entitled to make any protests in the appropriate time period. Provided, of course, you visit the unlit cellar with broken stairs at the ISP offices, where you can find the notice on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
Its $330, and I believe there are still a few available from the first run due to cancellations. The status is pretty much up to date except the CE/FCC testing is scheduled for today. The case moulds are expected very soon (mid-October, delayed from late September due to Chinese holidays). Finally some exciting stuff for the people that have had their order in for a year! I really want one (that's why I follow it so closely), but can't justify the purchase just yet. Maybe the second batch in 2010.
I'm not so sure about that.... Even if you value your time at $0/hr, you can still often get a pre-built from Dell cheaper than a comparable build-your-own system.
Well I'm not so sure about that. It's sometimes true if you're willing to accept the usually minimal default configuration and they have a particularly good sale going on, but once you start adding upgrades, the cost of building your own soon wins out. This occurs much sooner if you are a Linux user (or if you can transfer your Windows license) and you can reuse components (monitor, case, optical drive, keyboard & mouse, etc.). And that doesn't take into account the various things you can almost never do on a big box system - upgrading components without voiding warranty, overclocking, unlocking processor cores when available, etc.
Once it actually makes sense financially to buy an ebook reader, you better start packing. I expect hardly any of the younger members of my generation (Y) will fight too hard to keep paper books around, let alone the generations that follow.
Unfortunately I never had a Dreamcast but I absolutely loved Skies of Arcadia: Legends on the Gamecube. It has some additions and improved loading times, but it lacked that VMU feature. A Skies of Arcadia sequel would automatically jump to the top of my "to buy" list. FYI, Vyse and Aika are playable in Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3, which is also an excellent game.
I'm glad to hear Square Enix decided against screwing over PS3 owners again like they are with Final Fantasy 13 (holding back the PS3 release for a year until the 360 port is completed).
Microsoft doesn't lose any money by doing this. Whoever sold you the computer just eats the loss because it's better to keep customers happy and avoid bad press. They already paid for the license, and you could probably get away with using the OEM license key anyway. Granted, if enough people did this, somebody might take notice, but of the millions of PCs sold per year, the number of people who request refunds probably number in the hundreds, if that. I would argue that purchasing a computer with Linux pre-installed has a more significant (albeit still quite small) effect.
Thanks for the detailed review; no mod points today so I'm commenting instead. I can't wait to get this. I wasn't too thrilled with Voices of the Lifestream, but FFIV is my favorite of the series (currently in the final dungeon on the DS version, something like my 5th play-through), so I think this is right up my alley.
I'm far from being a qualified music critic - indeed, I hardly listen to music at all - but have you ever heard one of OCRemix's early FFIV tracks named The Sky was Never a Limit by goat? I listened to that song on my drive to and from work everyday for weeks, and I still pop in my own personal OCRemix FF mix occasionally just for this song. The reviewer (djpretzel) had some minor problems with it, but I love it.
Also, I'm a sucker for a solid vocal track (I don't know the terminology, but by that I mean the kind of choir chanting in Halo's and HOMM4's soundtracks, not actual singing), so I'm interested in both this FF9 piece you speak of (I loved the Garnet's vocal track in the original), and Act 1-15 - "Fighting for Tomorrow" in this album which a previous poster mentioned. Regarding the FF9 track, it looks like you are talking about The Rose General, right? I'll have to give that one a listen as well.
Release Vista, a relatively broken operating system, and try to ram it down peoples' throats. When the people gag enough pop out a 'new' OS that fixes the unpalatableness of the old OS and sell millions!
So you would have preferred Microsoft follow up an OS that was not received well publicly with another OS that wouldn't be received well publicly? I swear, the company can do nothing right for some people.
Why are you assuming that he wasn't being honest? Maybe he really thinks it *is* a great strategy (I do), but that doesn't mean he can't be snarky about it.
Of course for me, why yes, I would prefer it if Microsoft continued to churn out poorly received operating systems, whether that reputation is deserved or not. Their de facto monopoly on the desktop is hardly a good thing for consumers. One does not need look far into the past to see the results (or lack thereof) of Microsoft either being too comfortable in (IE6) or outright abusing their leadership position (OOXML).
Many people were going to buy 7 anyway; why not pre-order it and save half the cost (or more)? I didn't know common sense when it comes to discretionary income was news.
And how many of those people are aware that they may be in a situation in which they can spend their discretionary income elsewhere by choosing a free alternative? I'm pretty sure common sense says you don't spend money if you don't have to. It is no longer even remotely hard to try. With Ubuntu's shipit, you don't even have to know how to burn a CD anymore. No it doesn't make sense for everybody, and if you have a problem you can go right back to leasing your operating system. No harm, no foul.
Firefox users can't be too complacent; Secunia is warning of a 0-day in version 3.5.
Well, I guess I'm safe. At my workplace, my Redhat 9 installation is incapable of running any version newer than Firefox 2.0.0.20.
That, and the fact that there are no exploits for the Firefox vulnerability in the wild. The two pieces of news are hardly comparable. Seriously, this is like reporting a string of car thefts exploiting a defect in Ford's keyless entry systems and ending the story by reminding Chevy drivers that their vehicles can be broken into with a sledgehammer.
Dammit, Heroes 4 was the best! This coming from one who logged hundreds of hours on HoMM3 and its expansions too. The graphics are 2D sprites made from 3D models, and I believe it turned out far more beautifully than the full 3D models in HoMM5. Part of it was, as somebody said, they made it look more WoW-like by getting rid of the realistic proportions of the characters. The music was absolutely fantastic; I have about 4 CDs in my car, and one is the HoMM4 soundtrack. And I don't care what anybody says, having playable heroes is awesome. The skill system overhaul was so much more natural. There were a few niggling issues, like the trouble obstacles cause in combat, but the good far outweighs the bad. I did miss the ability to upgrade units somewhat, but that also removed the frequent headache of mixing upgraded units with non-upgraded ones. There are fewer creatures, too, but I didn't really miss any.
So Heroes 5 ruined the series for me, with no small part of it being unable to run it smoothly on my budget laptop, which runs all of the previous games perfectly.
Just how are they going to port this without removing half of it? The game was complex already and now they want to get it onto a Console? I think porting Excel or Access would be simpler.
Sorry, I don't see how you came to this conclusion. Surely you don't mean content, as the PC version requires 8.5 GB of HD space, which is exactly the capacity of a Dual Layer DVD. Content isn't the problem, anyway, it's getting the engine to work. They used BioWare's Aurora Engine for the PC version, which ran on Linux and has previously been modified to work on the Xbox. So it's reasonable to assume their code must be relatively platform-independent already. They're developing a new engine for use with the consoles, yes, but I fail to see how complexity has anything to do with "getting it onto a console."
In fact, if you check out this interview, it sounds like they are (or were, anyway) actually making it more complex.
I highly doubt there are any million dollar parts lying around, and if there are, the reason they would cost so much would be because they were specifically developed for this mission. I also doubt they've dismantled and parted out the flat sat (all the components laid out on tables connected like it would be in flight) already, and they've probably got a full structure that's been through vibration and environment testing. They'd build a new one though, since that one has probably been stressed more than it would be in flight.
And regarding the people thing, they don't just up and disappear as soon as the thing is shipped. The engineers are definitely still around, as there is simulation and testing all the way up until launch, and then there are post-launch reports to write and data to sift through. Some of the technicians might be helping out other programs, but they were probably shared from the beginning anyway.
If Orbital cuts a deal with NASA (maybe eat some of the cost to bring back some good will), I'm sure they could relaunch with a redesigned fairing shroud at a fraction of the cost. After all, I'd bet that a huge percentage of that quarter billion dollars is labor, starting all the way back from the design stages.
I am getting about 90x60 mi or 150x100 km. You could fit the entire greater Phoenix area in there with room to spare in the corners.
My question is, if those are sonar artifacts, why aren't they seen anywhere else near there? Why that nearly perfect rectangle (actually, that would be really freaky if the actual aspect ratio were the golden ratio).
Slashdot Mirror
Great post with one minor nitpick:
Scientist's don't really believe in global warming so much as accept it. That is, the current evidence very clearly points to a trend of global warming, and there is evidence that it is bad. This is why scientists and people who think like them really are more intelligent than others: if the evidence changes, so will their acceptance of it. It is shocking how few people actually understand this.
What isn't so clear is how much of an effect mankind has had on it, and how much power we have to stop it or at least slow it down. That's what is debatable. In my opinion we should be trying to head it off because it benefits us so much to do so. Using more alternative and/or renewable energy sources reduces both pollution and dependence on foreign oil. Sure it's expensive now but I'd rather spend that money here instead of pumping billions of dollars a day into the Middle East. The
That, or US voters. How can such a highly educated, technologically advanced citizenry lose all sense when it steps into the voting booth?
I agree. Why else would they elect democrats constantly, who basically piss the budget down the drain and do no good?
Why, there you have your answer, GP. A lack of long term memory. How lucky for the politicians that the populace always forgets how badly their party screwed everybody over last time, and come election time are always convinced the non-incumbent party will fix everything. It's like we're all just suffering from an undiagnosed but widespread Stockholm Syndrome.
Ah, the submitter just mixed up the conversion from metric. Happens all the time here.
Canonical wouldn't make money if they just pointed users to Dropbox, now would they?
When the last LTS release shipped, I requested 10 x86 and 10 x86_64 discs and stuck them in our group's common area at work (40-50 people pass through there daily). There were three x86 copies left a week later.
I don't fall into any of those categories, so I guess I can't do that again.
You've got to be kidding? Super-easy installation and automatic security updates for all applications is 'awkward'?
If I understood you correctly, your suggestion is that desktop software should be hard to find, it should be installed from whatever website I happen to ultimately find and it shouldn't automatically get security updates. Sounds fabulous.
"Better is worse if it's different." - Linus Torvalds
Or if you prefer:
"The better is the enemy of the good." - Voltaire
I thought the general consensus about this is that it's bad because Microsoft still gets your money. Too few people actually do it, so HP, Dell, and others just eat the loss and call it a day. I'm not going to search either but you might have a harder time getting the refund from Sony or Lenovo, or if you go to Best Buy or something.
You are quite entitled to make any protests in the appropriate time period. Provided, of course, you visit the unlit cellar with broken stairs at the ISP offices, where you can find the notice on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
Its $330, and I believe there are still a few available from the first run due to cancellations. The status is pretty much up to date except the CE/FCC testing is scheduled for today. The case moulds are expected very soon (mid-October, delayed from late September due to Chinese holidays). Finally some exciting stuff for the people that have had their order in for a year! I really want one (that's why I follow it so closely), but can't justify the purchase just yet. Maybe the second batch in 2010.
I'm not so sure about that. ... Even if you value your time at $0/hr, you can still often get a pre-built from Dell cheaper than a comparable build-your-own system.
Well I'm not so sure about that. It's sometimes true if you're willing to accept the usually minimal default configuration and they have a particularly good sale going on, but once you start adding upgrades, the cost of building your own soon wins out. This occurs much sooner if you are a Linux user (or if you can transfer your Windows license) and you can reuse components (monitor, case, optical drive, keyboard & mouse, etc.). And that doesn't take into account the various things you can almost never do on a big box system - upgrading components without voiding warranty, overclocking, unlocking processor cores when available, etc.
Once it actually makes sense financially to buy an ebook reader, you better start packing. I expect hardly any of the younger members of my generation (Y) will fight too hard to keep paper books around, let alone the generations that follow.
Praise for MS by kdawson.
Hot damn it's cold down here.
~ Satan
Unfortunately I never had a Dreamcast but I absolutely loved Skies of Arcadia: Legends on the Gamecube. It has some additions and improved loading times, but it lacked that VMU feature. A Skies of Arcadia sequel would automatically jump to the top of my "to buy" list. FYI, Vyse and Aika are playable in Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3, which is also an excellent game.
I'm glad to hear Square Enix decided against screwing over PS3 owners again like they are with Final Fantasy 13 (holding back the PS3 release for a year until the 360 port is completed).
Microsoft doesn't lose any money by doing this. Whoever sold you the computer just eats the loss because it's better to keep customers happy and avoid bad press. They already paid for the license, and you could probably get away with using the OEM license key anyway. Granted, if enough people did this, somebody might take notice, but of the millions of PCs sold per year, the number of people who request refunds probably number in the hundreds, if that. I would argue that purchasing a computer with Linux pre-installed has a more significant (albeit still quite small) effect.
Thanks for the detailed review; no mod points today so I'm commenting instead. I can't wait to get this. I wasn't too thrilled with Voices of the Lifestream, but FFIV is my favorite of the series (currently in the final dungeon on the DS version, something like my 5th play-through), so I think this is right up my alley.
I'm far from being a qualified music critic - indeed, I hardly listen to music at all - but have you ever heard one of OCRemix's early FFIV tracks named The Sky was Never a Limit by goat? I listened to that song on my drive to and from work everyday for weeks, and I still pop in my own personal OCRemix FF mix occasionally just for this song. The reviewer (djpretzel) had some minor problems with it, but I love it.
Also, I'm a sucker for a solid vocal track (I don't know the terminology, but by that I mean the kind of choir chanting in Halo's and HOMM4's soundtracks, not actual singing), so I'm interested in both this FF9 piece you speak of (I loved the Garnet's vocal track in the original), and Act 1-15 - "Fighting for Tomorrow" in this album which a previous poster mentioned. Regarding the FF9 track, it looks like you are talking about The Rose General, right? I'll have to give that one a listen as well.
Release Vista, a relatively broken operating system, and try to ram it down peoples' throats. When the people gag enough pop out a 'new' OS that fixes the unpalatableness of the old OS and sell millions!
So you would have preferred Microsoft follow up an OS that was not received well publicly with another OS that wouldn't be received well publicly? I swear, the company can do nothing right for some people.
Why are you assuming that he wasn't being honest? Maybe he really thinks it *is* a great strategy (I do), but that doesn't mean he can't be snarky about it.
Of course for me, why yes, I would prefer it if Microsoft continued to churn out poorly received operating systems, whether that reputation is deserved or not. Their de facto monopoly on the desktop is hardly a good thing for consumers. One does not need look far into the past to see the results (or lack thereof) of Microsoft either being too comfortable in (IE6) or outright abusing their leadership position (OOXML).
Many people were going to buy 7 anyway; why not pre-order it and save half the cost (or more)? I didn't know common sense when it comes to discretionary income was news.
And how many of those people are aware that they may be in a situation in which they can spend their discretionary income elsewhere by choosing a free alternative? I'm pretty sure common sense says you don't spend money if you don't have to. It is no longer even remotely hard to try. With Ubuntu's shipit, you don't even have to know how to burn a CD anymore. No it doesn't make sense for everybody, and if you have a problem you can go right back to leasing your operating system. No harm, no foul.
Firefox users can't be too complacent; Secunia is warning of a 0-day in version 3.5.
Well, I guess I'm safe. At my workplace, my Redhat 9 installation is incapable of running any version newer than Firefox 2.0.0.20.
That, and the fact that there are no exploits for the Firefox vulnerability in the wild. The two pieces of news are hardly comparable. Seriously, this is like reporting a string of car thefts exploiting a defect in Ford's keyless entry systems and ending the story by reminding Chevy drivers that their vehicles can be broken into with a sledgehammer.
Dammit, Heroes 4 was the best! This coming from one who logged hundreds of hours on HoMM3 and its expansions too. The graphics are 2D sprites made from 3D models, and I believe it turned out far more beautifully than the full 3D models in HoMM5. Part of it was, as somebody said, they made it look more WoW-like by getting rid of the realistic proportions of the characters. The music was absolutely fantastic; I have about 4 CDs in my car, and one is the HoMM4 soundtrack. And I don't care what anybody says, having playable heroes is awesome. The skill system overhaul was so much more natural. There were a few niggling issues, like the trouble obstacles cause in combat, but the good far outweighs the bad. I did miss the ability to upgrade units somewhat, but that also removed the frequent headache of mixing upgraded units with non-upgraded ones. There are fewer creatures, too, but I didn't really miss any.
So Heroes 5 ruined the series for me, with no small part of it being unable to run it smoothly on my budget laptop, which runs all of the previous games perfectly.
Very untrue, considering they shipped Hardy (a long-term support release no less!) with Firefox 3 Beta 5 as the default browser.
I can't understand it either, as I sit here, very carefully typing, going 17,880 MPH around the Sun.
I find it very amusing that such an orbital speed would put you somewhere in the neighborhood of Uranus.
Just how are they going to port this without removing half of it? The game was complex already and now they want to get it onto a Console? I think porting Excel or Access would be simpler.
Sorry, I don't see how you came to this conclusion. Surely you don't mean content, as the PC version requires 8.5 GB of HD space, which is exactly the capacity of a Dual Layer DVD. Content isn't the problem, anyway, it's getting the engine to work. They used BioWare's Aurora Engine for the PC version, which ran on Linux and has previously been modified to work on the Xbox. So it's reasonable to assume their code must be relatively platform-independent already. They're developing a new engine for use with the consoles, yes, but I fail to see how complexity has anything to do with "getting it onto a console."
In fact, if you check out this interview, it sounds like they are (or were, anyway) actually making it more complex.
I'm pretty sure it's the apocolypse on December 21, 2012 that will kill our planet.
I highly doubt there are any million dollar parts lying around, and if there are, the reason they would cost so much would be because they were specifically developed for this mission. I also doubt they've dismantled and parted out the flat sat (all the components laid out on tables connected like it would be in flight) already, and they've probably got a full structure that's been through vibration and environment testing. They'd build a new one though, since that one has probably been stressed more than it would be in flight.
And regarding the people thing, they don't just up and disappear as soon as the thing is shipped. The engineers are definitely still around, as there is simulation and testing all the way up until launch, and then there are post-launch reports to write and data to sift through. Some of the technicians might be helping out other programs, but they were probably shared from the beginning anyway.
If Orbital cuts a deal with NASA (maybe eat some of the cost to bring back some good will), I'm sure they could relaunch with a redesigned fairing shroud at a fraction of the cost. After all, I'd bet that a huge percentage of that quarter billion dollars is labor, starting all the way back from the design stages.
I am getting about 90x60 mi or 150x100 km. You could fit the entire greater Phoenix area in there with room to spare in the corners.
My question is, if those are sonar artifacts, why aren't they seen anywhere else near there? Why that nearly perfect rectangle (actually, that would be really freaky if the actual aspect ratio were the golden ratio).