"But I did buy a PS1 (because I hate Nintendo even more than Sony) and a PS4 (because MS made all the wrong moves in the early days of the XboxOne). So that says SOMETHING about the quality of their consoles."
No it doesn't. Microsoft making wrong moves pre-release says nothing about their actual released system.
I have all current gen and last gen consoles. The PS4 has the least polished software and controller, but has the nicest physical console design and best specs. The Xbox One has the most good games, by far the best controller, and a joint best UI with the Wii U, but the Xbox One is physically much to big and ugly. At release the Xbox One was also overpriced relative to performance but now it's often much easier to get it cheaper than the PS4 so offers better value for money at this point just over a year in to the X1/PS4 release.
The Wii U is different, it's UI is polished, it's games are almost entirely consistently excellent quality, but it's underpowered relative to it's price, and there aren't enough games even though the bulk of what's there is incredibly high quality.
So they all have their pros and cons, there's nothing inherently high quality about Sony's console, in fact, whilst the Xbox One and PS4 both had far more release issues than they should have I'd argue the PS4 had the lowest quality launch in terms of number and seriousness of defects. Neither were ready for release when they were.
Which is interesting because as an owner of both the Xbox One and PS4 I tend to feel differently about the two by contrast. The PS4 has a smoother, more polished UI and overall experience, the controllers are more comfortable and the game selection is superior. Xbox One meanwhile feels like it has a UI which tried to innovate and failed to do so (in fairness I do not use Kinect) leading to a rather clunky and hard to navigate bastard offspring of the Windows 8 tile system....something the 360 also suffered from. PS4 just feels like it was designed with goal and that goal was reached and maintained. X1 feels like it's goal got shifted somewhere along the way....multiple times....and the end product does not quite match the expectations.
Stross makes the usual mistake of assuming that SF is exclusively about modeling potential futures in all their various aspects. Most science fiction is actually about saying "what if WE as a culture were actually in the future and had cool stuff." It's about modelling our culture today in a different SF-based context. As many others have pointed out this is at least partially to engender familiarity with the intended focus of the SF elements. Social science fiction is its own beast and alive and kicking, albeit with the caveat that they did it better a few decades ago when the SF market was narrower and therefore more tolerant of the concept. Be that as it may, these are all valid forms of SF; at best I'll side with Stross and say we're not getting enough of the social SF elements these days, and it would be nice to see more of that and less of, say, IP tie-ins and military SF which are massively over-represented in today's market.
I'm shocked that those window cleaners make "up to $26.89" WTF seriously? They just bragged like that was a good number for that sort of work....?
I guess, relatively speaking, it might be good for the alternative choices those workers have, but I sure as hell wouldn't do that for $26.89.
Why is it that all the high mortality rate jobs have such shitty wages?
GOG is not competing with video retailers, they're competing with streaming services like Netflix. GOG, meet Netflix. They get my $8.55 a month and will continue to do so for as long as I can stream videos from them without a price restriction. When you can do this count me in.
It is morbidly disturbing just how many posters here seem to need to see the video to experience emotion or empathy for what happened. Just being told it happened is enough to wrench my stomach....I really don't need to view this in order to experience empathy...at worst watching it might lead to depression and despair.
Especially because people who mod their Xbox consoles to run Nintendo emulators are the same kind of people who run ad blockers.
Don't be so literal. Very few people mod their consoles. Parent was basically meant "people who play platformers on consoles"
Then Parent may excuse himself from this conversation for having the temerity to link Mario to an Xbox. Unclean non-gamer, leave this house! There is nothing for you here.
Who said the employee couldn't use contraception? The employee is still free to obtain and use contraception on their own or through a provision - it just isn't forced upon the company to purchase it which seems equally fair. In addition to the employee purchasing (or using the provisions) for the contraception, then they are also free to work in another with/without religious beliefs who will purchase it.
Although ironically the company's insurance does include coverage for vasectomies and viagra.
Everyone else has jumped on you for this, but...seriously: do you really think books are one-off disposables? Really?!?!? I've got an extensive library and I read a ton of content every week. I have a lot of favorites I have read a second, third or sometimes even fourth time. I have reference books and informational books I draw upon time and again.
Who reads a book twice? People who read, that's who.
Set up facebook....link to a sacrificial email account. Offer as little personal data as you can (make 'em work for it) and then post a new pic of your kid once a year like I do for gandma. Never, ever bother to check it more than once a year, and never go back to the dummy email you set up.
It isn't even surprising that the Wii U isn't selling as well as the Wii did. They sold a lot of Wiis to people who don't buy games consoles. Those people will have gotten over the fad and won't be buying another games console. It's not that they're defecting to Sony or MS, they're just going back to their non-gaming ways.
It doesn't take much effort to figure out that if you bought a Wii for your 9 year old in 2007, then you'll be upgrading to an Xbox or Ps4 in 2014 for your 16 year old. This is not a static audience...and the Wii is looking very old now to new 9 year olds with their android tablets.
Just a thought, but if there was a major impact from another planet, wouldn't we see a lot of that planet here on earth? Seems odd that they would just find it on the moon.
Yes, but the Earth is a geologically active world with a lot of churn, an atmosphere and constant active chemistry going on. The moon changes very little over the course of its life outside of occasional impacts.
Barring that issue, I think from what i recall the Theia collision theory models around the idea of a large planet effective broadsiding Earth, and pulling off a significant chunk of crust as it does so. The models all seem to suggest that the vast majority of the debris forms the moon itself, while Earth loses some mass but keeps on going. But disclaimer: IAAAA (I am an armchair astronomer) so take it all with a grain of salt; but I'm pretty sure that we have a lot of specific factors that make finding remnants of this collision on Earth really difficult, vs. on the moon where nothing ever really changes even on a geologic clock.
The problem, I think, is in the wording of the sentence... The sentence in question:
Analysis of lunar rock brought back by Apollo astronauts shows traces of the "planet" called Theia.
Simply saying it was called Theia like that implies that somebody was actually around back when this actually happened, and gave it that name.... There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with giving it a name, however... but I would suggest that it would be less ambiguous to explicitly state that they gave the name Theia to the other planet, rather than simply that is what it was called. It may be called Theia now, but it certainly wasn't called Theia then, while how the quoted sentence from the summary is phrased heavily implies the latter.
Going to venture a guess that someone who is confused about the naming conventions in scientific process of hypothetical worlds (or anything, for that matter) probably has no business rooting around in such articles; they've got bigger, more remedial issues to work out. The article is fine; it does not need to dumb down the conversation to explain something so obvious to anyone who has even a modicum of understanding in basic astronomy.
I'm in a theatre for two hours, you need to entertain me, outsmart me and give me something to think about for a long time after.
I think by that criteria he failed 2 out of 3 then. Abrhams made a Star Trek that didn't outsmart anyone: it confused, annoyed and disrespected its audience more than anything. Did he make us think about it for a long time after? I'd venture to suggest that people dwelling on the starship-sized plot holes is not quite what you intended, and suggest that no, these films were essentially irrelevant. That's a shame, because by contrast I still think about and enjoy the original films and many of the TV episodes, but the two latest movies were spectacle without substance. I'll agree his ST take was popcorn-at-the-movies-bam-wow-wizbang entertaining, though.
Marvel's stories have always been parables about racisim and homophobia, using mutants and superheroes as a cypher to teach kids that it's not okay to discriminate and to entertain old cheeto-stained adults (disclaimer: I pick up about 40 comics a month, but admit I am not actually cheeto-stained so I have not not been living up to the standard I set for our kind). They are not parables about ways to make sure that health concerns caused by misinformed individuals do not blow up in our face and cause loss of life. Terrible article premise, sorry.
Or you could, you know, have more realistic standards and just look for a gal who's decent if not a barbie super star, also likes video games, and enjoys a good shut-in away from the plebians as much as you do. There are plenty of nerdy gals out there....but the real problem is that men have a weird disconnect between "who I am" and "what I deserve" in our society. Every buddy of mine I've ever known who has made it to his forties (and in two cases fifties) single and unwed (or divorced) have a common habit of always, inevitably believing that only the finest, most knock-out amazing women are good enough for them. These women must not only be attractive but they must be agreeable, great servants, wonderful conversationalists and also be doting. If they fail to meet that criteria, then something is wrong with them and out the door they go.
Where does this come from? Each of these guys is facing a lonely tenure at the end of their life, while admiring myself and other friends who have a wife and kids, because we "got lucky." But I didn't get lucky...I just realized that I needed to find a woman who was like myself, or close enough to accept who I was, and was happy do so because....and this is where it gets hard for guys who are part of the "culture of misogyny" to understand...because I also accepted her for who she was. That mutual acceptance is really damned important.
But who knows, maybe my buddies who are facing their alone years in their waning decades are happy; they never could find someone they could just accept...and be accepted by. Instead, they have created a wall of perfection that can never be scaled, and maybe secretly that's how they wanted it.
You must not engage much on the creative side, as your view sounds like one who is very much good at consuming rather than producing. Speaking as someone who'd love to write more, I find that this plebian real job I have makes that damned difficult. I can safely say that if anything, writing and making money at it can only assure you of increase in volume; quality will come from the author, not whether or not he's motivated exclusively by financial needs.
No no no, he's just pointing out that he prefers to look to the past rather than the future. Also, that he's too cheap and lacking in personal momentum to bother picking something up that isn't out of copyright, near as I can tell. Or, in other words, totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.
I think Charles' target audience is for people who hunger for something new. Just sayin' you're not his target audience. Enjoy reading Wells and all the other out-of-copyright classics, I'll be reading some fiction that's of more than literary historical significance while you do that.
Bad analogy. This kid's doing the "driving equivalent" of jumping lanes and driving into traffic because it's fun to see people swerve out of his way. And then slash-dotters here are defending him on the grounds that people driving in one direction should assume that other people will be driving down the wrong lane toward them so its their fault for not double checking before going out.
Geez......guess this one must touch some people in their dark naughty bits with all the defense this guy's getting.
I would rather describe this as: the HD 2080p gain Blu-Ray offers is not worth the additional $10-20 tacked on per copy. People aren't apathetic to the resolution; they're conscientious of the price.
I'm also trying to wrap my head around the idea of a paltry $90 for a doctor's visit. That's damned cheap, and I'd be suspect of the quality of service is that was the uninsured price they were charging.
Next time you get your doctor's bill and an insurance claim, take a moment to do the math on how much you would have paid without insurance, and that'll give you a more realistic picture of uninsured health costs. If it were only $90 we wouldn't be having this discussion........I still have lingering medical debt from my uninsured days fifteen years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
"But I did buy a PS1 (because I hate Nintendo even more than Sony) and a PS4 (because MS made all the wrong moves in the early days of the XboxOne). So that says SOMETHING about the quality of their consoles."
No it doesn't. Microsoft making wrong moves pre-release says nothing about their actual released system.
I have all current gen and last gen consoles. The PS4 has the least polished software and controller, but has the nicest physical console design and best specs. The Xbox One has the most good games, by far the best controller, and a joint best UI with the Wii U, but the Xbox One is physically much to big and ugly. At release the Xbox One was also overpriced relative to performance but now it's often much easier to get it cheaper than the PS4 so offers better value for money at this point just over a year in to the X1/PS4 release.
The Wii U is different, it's UI is polished, it's games are almost entirely consistently excellent quality, but it's underpowered relative to it's price, and there aren't enough games even though the bulk of what's there is incredibly high quality.
So they all have their pros and cons, there's nothing inherently high quality about Sony's console, in fact, whilst the Xbox One and PS4 both had far more release issues than they should have I'd argue the PS4 had the lowest quality launch in terms of number and seriousness of defects. Neither were ready for release when they were.
Which is interesting because as an owner of both the Xbox One and PS4 I tend to feel differently about the two by contrast. The PS4 has a smoother, more polished UI and overall experience, the controllers are more comfortable and the game selection is superior. Xbox One meanwhile feels like it has a UI which tried to innovate and failed to do so (in fairness I do not use Kinect) leading to a rather clunky and hard to navigate bastard offspring of the Windows 8 tile system....something the 360 also suffered from. PS4 just feels like it was designed with goal and that goal was reached and maintained. X1 feels like it's goal got shifted somewhere along the way....multiple times....and the end product does not quite match the expectations.
Stross makes the usual mistake of assuming that SF is exclusively about modeling potential futures in all their various aspects. Most science fiction is actually about saying "what if WE as a culture were actually in the future and had cool stuff." It's about modelling our culture today in a different SF-based context. As many others have pointed out this is at least partially to engender familiarity with the intended focus of the SF elements. Social science fiction is its own beast and alive and kicking, albeit with the caveat that they did it better a few decades ago when the SF market was narrower and therefore more tolerant of the concept. Be that as it may, these are all valid forms of SF; at best I'll side with Stross and say we're not getting enough of the social SF elements these days, and it would be nice to see more of that and less of, say, IP tie-ins and military SF which are massively over-represented in today's market.
I'm shocked that those window cleaners make "up to $26.89" WTF seriously? They just bragged like that was a good number for that sort of work....? I guess, relatively speaking, it might be good for the alternative choices those workers have, but I sure as hell wouldn't do that for $26.89. Why is it that all the high mortality rate jobs have such shitty wages?
GOG is not competing with video retailers, they're competing with streaming services like Netflix. GOG, meet Netflix. They get my $8.55 a month and will continue to do so for as long as I can stream videos from them without a price restriction. When you can do this count me in.
It is morbidly disturbing just how many posters here seem to need to see the video to experience emotion or empathy for what happened. Just being told it happened is enough to wrench my stomach....I really don't need to view this in order to experience empathy...at worst watching it might lead to depression and despair.
Especially because people who mod their Xbox consoles to run Nintendo emulators are the same kind of people who run ad blockers.
Don't be so literal. Very few people mod their consoles. Parent was basically meant "people who play platformers on consoles"
Then Parent may excuse himself from this conversation for having the temerity to link Mario to an Xbox. Unclean non-gamer, leave this house! There is nothing for you here.
How if you RTFA that's linked the answer is obviously no, and why.
Perhaps I misunderstood.
Who said the employee couldn't use contraception? The employee is still free to obtain and use contraception on their own or through a provision - it just isn't forced upon the company to purchase it which seems equally fair. In addition to the employee purchasing (or using the provisions) for the contraception, then they are also free to work in another with/without religious beliefs who will purchase it.
Although ironically the company's insurance does include coverage for vasectomies and viagra.
Who reads a book twice?
Everyone else has jumped on you for this, but...seriously: do you really think books are one-off disposables? Really?!?!? I've got an extensive library and I read a ton of content every week. I have a lot of favorites I have read a second, third or sometimes even fourth time. I have reference books and informational books I draw upon time and again. Who reads a book twice? People who read, that's who.
Set up facebook....link to a sacrificial email account. Offer as little personal data as you can (make 'em work for it) and then post a new pic of your kid once a year like I do for gandma. Never, ever bother to check it more than once a year, and never go back to the dummy email you set up.
It isn't even surprising that the Wii U isn't selling as well as the Wii did. They sold a lot of Wiis to people who don't buy games consoles. Those people will have gotten over the fad and won't be buying another games console. It's not that they're defecting to Sony or MS, they're just going back to their non-gaming ways.
It doesn't take much effort to figure out that if you bought a Wii for your 9 year old in 2007, then you'll be upgrading to an Xbox or Ps4 in 2014 for your 16 year old. This is not a static audience...and the Wii is looking very old now to new 9 year olds with their android tablets.
Just a thought, but if there was a major impact from another planet, wouldn't we see a lot of that planet here on earth? Seems odd that they would just find it on the moon.
Yes, but the Earth is a geologically active world with a lot of churn, an atmosphere and constant active chemistry going on. The moon changes very little over the course of its life outside of occasional impacts. Barring that issue, I think from what i recall the Theia collision theory models around the idea of a large planet effective broadsiding Earth, and pulling off a significant chunk of crust as it does so. The models all seem to suggest that the vast majority of the debris forms the moon itself, while Earth loses some mass but keeps on going. But disclaimer: IAAAA (I am an armchair astronomer) so take it all with a grain of salt; but I'm pretty sure that we have a lot of specific factors that make finding remnants of this collision on Earth really difficult, vs. on the moon where nothing ever really changes even on a geologic clock.
The problem, I think, is in the wording of the sentence... The sentence in question:
Simply saying it was called Theia like that implies that somebody was actually around back when this actually happened, and gave it that name.... There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with giving it a name, however... but I would suggest that it would be less ambiguous to explicitly state that they gave the name Theia to the other planet, rather than simply that is what it was called. It may be called Theia now, but it certainly wasn't called Theia then, while how the quoted sentence from the summary is phrased heavily implies the latter.
Going to venture a guess that someone who is confused about the naming conventions in scientific process of hypothetical worlds (or anything, for that matter) probably has no business rooting around in such articles; they've got bigger, more remedial issues to work out. The article is fine; it does not need to dumb down the conversation to explain something so obvious to anyone who has even a modicum of understanding in basic astronomy.
Your tale was the scariest goddamn thing I've read all year.
I'm in a theatre for two hours, you need to entertain me, outsmart me and give me something to think about for a long time after.
I think by that criteria he failed 2 out of 3 then. Abrhams made a Star Trek that didn't outsmart anyone: it confused, annoyed and disrespected its audience more than anything. Did he make us think about it for a long time after? I'd venture to suggest that people dwelling on the starship-sized plot holes is not quite what you intended, and suggest that no, these films were essentially irrelevant. That's a shame, because by contrast I still think about and enjoy the original films and many of the TV episodes, but the two latest movies were spectacle without substance. I'll agree his ST take was popcorn-at-the-movies-bam-wow-wizbang entertaining, though.
Marvel's stories have always been parables about racisim and homophobia, using mutants and superheroes as a cypher to teach kids that it's not okay to discriminate and to entertain old cheeto-stained adults (disclaimer: I pick up about 40 comics a month, but admit I am not actually cheeto-stained so I have not not been living up to the standard I set for our kind). They are not parables about ways to make sure that health concerns caused by misinformed individuals do not blow up in our face and cause loss of life. Terrible article premise, sorry.
Or you could, you know, have more realistic standards and just look for a gal who's decent if not a barbie super star, also likes video games, and enjoys a good shut-in away from the plebians as much as you do. There are plenty of nerdy gals out there....but the real problem is that men have a weird disconnect between "who I am" and "what I deserve" in our society. Every buddy of mine I've ever known who has made it to his forties (and in two cases fifties) single and unwed (or divorced) have a common habit of always, inevitably believing that only the finest, most knock-out amazing women are good enough for them. These women must not only be attractive but they must be agreeable, great servants, wonderful conversationalists and also be doting. If they fail to meet that criteria, then something is wrong with them and out the door they go. Where does this come from? Each of these guys is facing a lonely tenure at the end of their life, while admiring myself and other friends who have a wife and kids, because we "got lucky." But I didn't get lucky...I just realized that I needed to find a woman who was like myself, or close enough to accept who I was, and was happy do so because....and this is where it gets hard for guys who are part of the "culture of misogyny" to understand...because I also accepted her for who she was. That mutual acceptance is really damned important. But who knows, maybe my buddies who are facing their alone years in their waning decades are happy; they never could find someone they could just accept...and be accepted by. Instead, they have created a wall of perfection that can never be scaled, and maybe secretly that's how they wanted it.
It's hard to take this comment as anything other than mild trolling, even if it's unintentional.
You must not engage much on the creative side, as your view sounds like one who is very much good at consuming rather than producing. Speaking as someone who'd love to write more, I find that this plebian real job I have makes that damned difficult. I can safely say that if anything, writing and making money at it can only assure you of increase in volume; quality will come from the author, not whether or not he's motivated exclusively by financial needs.
No no no, he's just pointing out that he prefers to look to the past rather than the future. Also, that he's too cheap and lacking in personal momentum to bother picking something up that isn't out of copyright, near as I can tell. Or, in other words, totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.
I think Charles' target audience is for people who hunger for something new. Just sayin' you're not his target audience. Enjoy reading Wells and all the other out-of-copyright classics, I'll be reading some fiction that's of more than literary historical significance while you do that.
Bad analogy. This kid's doing the "driving equivalent" of jumping lanes and driving into traffic because it's fun to see people swerve out of his way. And then slash-dotters here are defending him on the grounds that people driving in one direction should assume that other people will be driving down the wrong lane toward them so its their fault for not double checking before going out. Geez......guess this one must touch some people in their dark naughty bits with all the defense this guy's getting.
2080 sigh 1080 no edit button d'oh
I would rather describe this as: the HD 2080p gain Blu-Ray offers is not worth the additional $10-20 tacked on per copy. People aren't apathetic to the resolution; they're conscientious of the price.
I'm also trying to wrap my head around the idea of a paltry $90 for a doctor's visit. That's damned cheap, and I'd be suspect of the quality of service is that was the uninsured price they were charging. Next time you get your doctor's bill and an insurance claim, take a moment to do the math on how much you would have paid without insurance, and that'll give you a more realistic picture of uninsured health costs. If it were only $90 we wouldn't be having this discussion........I still have lingering medical debt from my uninsured days fifteen years ago.