So your saying that the release of energy from the mass of 100 flaws of skyscraper falling wouldn't be able to shear and melt an iron girder, realy?! 9/11 was caused by a bunch of pissed off religious fanatics.
You don't even need to think as exotic as that. Someone probably came along with a blowtorch and cut the beam during the rescue / cleanup operation. There are plenty of pictures of people doing just that. Indeed, the original picture linked was (deliberately) cropped to remove a couple of firefighters and a couple of cleanup crew standing right in front, behind and to the side of the cut beam. One of the crew is stood slightly to the left of the beam, bent over so his head is obscured but still visible.
As usual this is just another moronic "truther" picture which turns out to have a far more mundane and likely explanation. Just like their other moronic claims it will be recycled ad nauseum.
In other words, "Truthers" are full of shit. They've been debunked countless times and they keep coming back. Accept it, you are wrong. There is no government conspiracy. There was no demolition. Terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into buildings where the heat from the fires caused them to collapse. That is FACT!
"Truthers" are afraid of facts because they don't conform to their own paranoid world view. Simply put, they want the gubmint to have conducted some wildly over the top, physically impossible plot of some kind and they aren't going to let a mountain of evidence that says different get in the way. This is why they spend their lives poring over minute inconsistencies, similes, misquotations and so on.
The funny thing is you can state very clearly to a "truther" why steel doesn't have to melt, or how fireproofing is rated by the hour, or provide evidence of how other steel frame structures fared after fire and the morons will still bleat the same shit all over again.
At this stage I think it is okay just to mock them openly to their face. They belong in the same category of stupid that creationists and holocaust deniers occupy.
XPCOM is just a way of defining an abstract interface to an object. You say what methods the interface has in.idl, compile it and out pops the equivalent C++ pure virtual class and methods as well as a type library. These you just implement on a class as you would any base class. Calling an XPCOM interface implemented by a C++ object is exactly the same as calling a direct method on the object. The compiler even spits out a stub implementation of the class making it easy to cut and paste any boiler plate for the object.
One distinct advantage of using XPCOM is that the idl is language neutral. There may be occasions where you don't want to implement an object in C++, or that object resides in another process or thread. XPCOM allows you to implement an object in JavaScript or any other language with a binding. XPCOM also has marshalling code so the caller and callee could even be running in different threads. Neither even cares what the other is implemented in because XPCOM takes care of everything. This is why a substantial amount of Firefox is actually implemented in JavaScript and the rest is largely platform neutral.
Yes there are occasions where XPCOM is not suitable. XPCOM objects are memory allocated and don't live on the stack (although you can cheat in some circumstances). There can also be an overhead in creating some objects (e.g. from a class id or string), and there is small overhead associated with querying the interface and reference counting. This means XPCOM is best suited to long lived objects, especially ones that represent or are passed between subsystems. It isn't suitable for temporary objects or objects which are used in very tight loops such as string classes and so on.
Anyway yes you could wrap WebKit and the overhead would likely be miniscule. Create an interface to represent whatever WebKit object you want to encapsulate and then do the minimal marshalling to connect the two worlds. After all, Safari manages it in Objective-C. I really don't see any big deal doing the same for XPCOM. The issue of course is why bother. Gecko is a robust, fast, mature and fully featured rendering engine. What point is there in junking it and stuffing another engine in instead?
Personally I see very little about Chrome (and I've run it) that justifies why they bothered with WebKit to implement it. Chrome could have been implemented in chrome (XUL) fairly easily from what I've seen.
Who would pay MPEG-LA and various other patent holders for a license to use H.264 and friends? Or did you mean s/H264/Theora/g?
Real would of course. Providing a free and useful ripping tool is how they attract people to pay for the digital downloads and other $$$ services that their product would contain. Let users rip their unencrypted content, but charge to rip protected content. Some people would of course know how to circumvent the whole protected / unprotected thing but many wouldn't and would pay up. It's likely that RealPlayer already has software codecs so I don't see it being a big deal. It's the smart thing to do. Sticking a pricetag of $30 on it is frankly ludicrous. If people want rip software they can get it for free, and may already have Nero Recode or something analogous bundled with their DVD rewriter.
It's no different from how Apple did things with iTunes. They managed to provide free music ripping even though MP3 and I'm sure AAC are both patented. The player / ripper functionality of iTunes even used to be a separate commercial product called SoundJam.
But then again, Apple seem to have more of a clue how these things work than Real. Maybe part of the problem is that studios are tying the hands of Real, Apple etc. in their digital download negotiations to keep ripping tools out of these things. Which would suck if true. Still, it's fairly straightforward to rip or backup DVDs if you have the time and inclination.
Real just don't have a clue. If they had any sense their software would work like this:
You can rip any unencrypted DVD you like via a 1-click tool. For free. It takes 2-5 hours after which you have a lovely H264 or AVC file to do with as you please.
You can insert any encrypted DVD you like and instantly download a DRM'd digital copy of it for $2.
You can buy / rent movies from Real Network's online service.
The result is people would flock to Real Player just like they flocked to iTunes when it offered free CD ripping.
Attempting to bilk people for $30 software that makes a DRM'd copy of a movie just isn't going to fly when free and non-free tools already exist that rip DVDs to any format you like. Especially when Real Networks is reknowned for producing bloated spyware laced crap. If you want to go free, find DVD Decrypter & Handbrake and you can rip and encode movies suitable for a variety of formats and devices. If you want non-free then use AnyDVD and Nero Recode. The tools are not as simple as they could be but they work and they work extremely well.
True, but there must be a way of releasing open-sourcifying it over a period of time. e.g. if you know some system service (e.g. presentation manager) has certain entry points, all of which are fairly well documented and stable, then you should be able to develop an alternative. That's how WINE and other OS replacement projects work after all
It might be easier to do than WINE as well since the APIs and system are relatively primitive and fixed. For example there is no common controls, OLE, DirectX or web browser control to worry about. It's not a moving target either making easier to implement fully. WINE would even be a good reference since OS/2 and Windows have such similar APIs to begin with.
It doesn't solve the issue of motivating people to do the port though. Maybe the best strategy would be to be to give away OS/2 with a GNU tool chain for free personal use (including free images that run in QEMU, VMWare etc.) in conjunction with the bounty.
DIVX was a rental model. I really don't care if they slather rental formats with DRM since in a few days you have to return the disk or rerent the movie anyway.
It's different for movies you want to keep for years and years. I have no problem with DVD or Blu Ray because you can keep 'em in a cupboard, sell them, loan them, play them on any player from dozens of manufacturers. You can even rip and transcode them if you have the knowhow.
What I object to is profusion of proprietary players and formats for digital download. You can't rent or loan that title, you don't get any features, the title is locked to specific devices/players, registration is required to transfer it and it is far too easy for the provider to pull the plug and lose everything. Oh and they cost nearly the same and often times more than physical disks which have none of those issues and have better quality & features. Its in the studio's interests to make downloads open and standards compliant. Otherwise it will just be Microsoft, Apple, Amazon beating each other to an impasse for years to come while consumers stare on in bemusement.
All this realism stuff gets on my nerves. Sure it looks more realistic but is it actually a better game?
Why don't you wait and see? Producing a compelling game is a fine art and it might suck for a multitude of reasons, but I fail to see why you pour hate on it because it strives for realism and a strong narrative.
hey hollywood, until you offer me something that is NOT DRM encumbered I aint' buyin' it! I'll violate your copyright instead...
The problem is that Hollywood isn't going to listen to you. They think that movie files can be DRM'd the same way as physical disks can and so they demand it.
The problem is they are pissing in their own pool. The digital download scene is a wasteland of proprietary DRM schemes, proprietary players, proprietary devices attached to proprietary services. The result is consumers are scared, confused and angry. You might need one device / player for one movie bought from one place and another device / player for another. You might even discover that your movie cannot be transferred or doesn't even work because the service was cancelled. It's happened with PlaysForSure and might happen to Amazon Unbox too some day. Only an idiot would try and build up a collection of titles amongst this chaos.
Look at what proprietary did to the music scene. Even Apple has begun to backdown from it and offer unencumbered downloads instead.
The industry really needs to adopt a single common file format, preferably with passive watermarking and no restrictions on usage. The result would be a massive upsurge in spending. Consumers would be confident in the format because they can purchase and manage their collection from anywhere. Consumers also get a better deal because stores are forced to compete on price and service. Any losses due to piracy would be dwarfed by legitimate sales. If they must implement a DRM, it should be one which is managed by an independent entity, allows fair use, and protects the consumer if a store dies or cancels its service.
If you want open source only use Debian (and stay away from the non-free parts), otherwise use Ubuntu. Why the hell would anyone want to use gNewSense which is just a hobbled Ubuntu? Maybe there are a few FSF diehards who might but the vast majority will go with Ubuntu or another dist which make pragmatic use of free commercial software when it serves a purpose.
It is a question of what is more important to you: 100% hardware support or freedom.
100% hardware support. As is the answer for the vast, vast majority of people who use Windows, OSX or indeed some Linux dists and really don't care how their OS works as long as it does. Much though I'd like to see NVidia / ATI or whoever provide open source drivers, in the absence of those I still want my machine to work as intended whether they are closed or not.
I certainly see little point for someone who wants "freedom" to use a "free" version of Ubuntu. Either their hardware is already supported by open source in which case why not use Ubuntu, or it isn't, in which case they're tossing a working solution for one that doesn't. Neither seems very sensible to me. Why would someone who puts "freedom" over hardware even own an NVidia card? It's not like the situation hasn't been well known for years now.
Anyway, steel bends in fires, that's why it has to be insulated and why steel bldg's must have sprinkler systems. I doubt the fire dept. was able to respond effectively in time.
Not only that, retardant rated by how long it will withstand (resist) fire. WTC7 was badly damaged, burning on multiple floors and left to burn all day with no fire suppression. The beams were sprayed with 2h/3h fire resistant material so some of them were well past their certified protection. It's no surprise it collapsed, especially when we have firemen on record reporting scary looking bulges and other signs of structural failure well before it finally came down.
5. Building 7 was never hit by an airplane. The owner of the building admitted to it being demolished, then reneged his statement. There are videos of reporters describing building 7's fall while it is still standing in the background. It took SEVEN years for investigators to come up with a reason for the building to fall the way it did. Is it possible that the SEVEN years were spent honing a story plausible enough to convince even the most skeptical people of it's truth?
No, the building owner told the firechief to "pull it", as in pull his men's fire fighting efforts. Though maybe you think the firechief and all his men were in on this conspiracy too? Poor old Larry would've gotten away with it except for you pesky kids...
Maybe you think firemen like hauling around high explosives, entering burning buildings and rigging them to blow. And that they do all this for an empty building while hundreds of their fellow firefighters are dead?
No? Then what the hell are you saying? The problem with conspiracy theories such as the one you are insuating is there is no theory to begin with. A theory is meant to be a model which fits the evidence (and in science can be used to predict and correspond to future observations). We'll forget the future observation part and concentrate on the model for now. Tell me of a single 9/11 conspiracy theory which says:
How the explosives were laid
Who laid them
When the explosives were laid
How three huge buildings could be rigged to blow without attracting the attention of anyone in the buildings
How these explosives were detonated
How these explosions were detonated to precisely model a building collapse, and in the case of WTC 1 & 2 starting at the exact points they were struck by aircraft.
Why no detonations were heard or observed
How no evidence of explosives were found afterwards
Which if any of the tens of thousands involved in various government agencies, office workers, emergency responders, reporters, investigators, scientists was "in on it".
Please supply some detail. Of course you could continue to advance some lame insinuations about misreporting or the interpretation of "pull it". But then you're just going to get laughed at. Moaning about it is missing the point entirely.
he warns that unless there is a full-blown investigation by an independent panel established solely for that purpose, "the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals."
So how does a editor of a Fire magazine in 2002 wanting an independent panel investigating the collapses support idiot truthers who proclaim it was a controlled demolition? Or was it thermite? Or was it basement nukes? Idiot truthers never actually say do they?
The editor of course doesn't subscribe to any paranoia fuelled conspiracy theory. In fact your own mined quote goes on to say "Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers.... The lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world.".
So the editor just wanted a independent panel heading the investigation for the purpose of better fire safety and standards. Whether the actual investigation satisfied or allayed his concerns is something you would have to ask him. Irrespective, it is absolutely clear that he would tell idiot "truthers" to get lost if they tried to count him as one of their own.
Sorry, but the actual evidence is very, very compelling. YOU are the one who is rationalizing here.
Sorry but that is evidence that in a maelstrom of conflicting reports some stations chose to report something which was later proven to be wrong. How many people do you think even knew what WTC7 looked like? Why do you think some BBC reporter to be able to pick it out from the skyline especially when she's faced away from it?
Maybe you think this is "compelling", but then you would be wrong. It is evidence of idiot truther's imaginations amplifying and exagerating minor details, ignoring major details and filling in the blanks in the most fantastic and paranoid way possible.
Maybe it's a US thing, but I would assume that if I subscribe to a service, that either I should be able to use my own equipment or the equipment be included for free or as a one-off expense.
I've noticed this sort of thing about several electronic devices, anyone know why they charge so much more in the UK?
Not just the UK, Europe. As for the reason, VAT plays some part but more than that its because they can get away it. They hike the price because they can. It is not uncommon for a device costing $399 to cost 399. They also know that many people don't like buying electronics from outside the EU because of issues with voltage, warranties, keyboard layout or simply for fear of being slapped with a huge import duty.
I'm sure if you asked them they'd pull out some excuse that you should be looking at the exchange rate between China / Japan and Europe, not between Europe and the US. But it still doesn't explain why they don't hike the prices in the US if exchange rates are an issue.
Same thing in the Republic of Ireland. Used to be that you'd grab 3 or 4 bags to do the shopping. These days you take a reusable bags or a box with you and stick everything in that. If you forget your bags you have to pay for disposables. I don't have the figures to hand but the scheme has apparantly cut bag consumption by 90% which is close to a billion bags a year. I can't say its a major burden either as you soon adapt and remember to save up your bags and bring them with you.
A billion bags in a country the size of Ireland. The US has 75 times the population meaning it could save 75 billion bags a year.
The article shows you how to use WEP or WPA encryption. I agree that this is a pain in the butt to do but I don't see how its Sony's fault in this instance. Sony opened up the wireless to the VM so not it's up to Terrasoft to put a nice shiny UI on the whole process, not Sony.
I also think that anyone bothering to stick Linux on a PS3 isn't just a gamer and should have a modicum of knowledge about Linux. That doesn't excuse YDL from making the process easy, but it does set expectations a little.
As for doing wireless in the regular Game OS - it's very easy to do. I got mine talking WPA with my router no trouble at all. Its usually more effort to make the router work properly and lock down the MAC addresses than it is getting the client devices working.
Python, Ruby etc are interesting languages but Java is ultra robust, runs on any hardware, has multiple implementations, and so many specifications and libs to support everything from handhelds all the way up to mainframes. And it has a large pool of programmers trained to write Java apps.
For all the hype of Ruby on Rails, etc., the cold reality is that you would have to be a pretty foolhardy architect to recommend it for anything mission critical. Java might not be sexy but it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Its great news that its been open source, especially for Linux. But what it means in practice remains to be seen. I expect what it will mean is random bug fix submissions but little else but in practice Java is going to get governed the way it's always been governed. People will branch Java of course but just like Firefox, I doubt it means they can still call it Java.
Also Kojima Productions put a sensor on reviews, but I think that was just to get rid of spoilers.
They also censored reviews from mentioning the mandatory installs. Not just one, but one per act and they take a while to install. While MGS4 is an epic game, and well worth the purchase, it is frankly weird it has a mandatory install and clearly someone in Konami was paranoid enough to make early reviewers sign NDAs about it amongst other things.
I do believe PS3 games do get picked on but frankly I would prefer this to be the norm across the board. I want to know the good and the bad points about a game, not some gushing PR piece. I am disgusted by the attempts to bribe reviewers or coerce them to give favourable reviews by imposing conditions on exclusives. I've played GTA IV and think its a great game, but some of the "exclusive" reviews were so unbelievably uncritical and gushing that they might as well have been written by Rockstar's PR department. The game is great in many ways but it has faults and reviews that fail to mention them are doing their readers a massive disservice.
Hype and shill reviews are poison to gaming. I understand why studios do it (to sell more games), but gamers should be disgusted by the practice. The sad thing is hype works. All we can hope for is a few more incidents like this get published. People really need to be far more skeptical and cynical to understand how the industry works. At the end of the day it's better for everyone if a little honesty gets pushed back into the system.
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You don't even need to think as exotic as that. Someone probably came along with a blowtorch and cut the beam during the rescue / cleanup operation. There are plenty of pictures of people doing just that. Indeed, the original picture linked was (deliberately) cropped to remove a couple of firefighters and a couple of cleanup crew standing right in front, behind and to the side of the cut beam. One of the crew is stood slightly to the left of the beam, bent over so his head is obscured but still visible.
As usual this is just another moronic "truther" picture which turns out to have a far more mundane and likely explanation. Just like their other moronic claims it will be recycled ad nauseum.
I think it was the contents of your head that imploded.
"Truthers" are afraid of facts because they don't conform to their own paranoid world view. Simply put, they want the gubmint to have conducted some wildly over the top, physically impossible plot of some kind and they aren't going to let a mountain of evidence that says different get in the way. This is why they spend their lives poring over minute inconsistencies, similes, misquotations and so on.
The funny thing is you can state very clearly to a "truther" why steel doesn't have to melt, or how fireproofing is rated by the hour, or provide evidence of how other steel frame structures fared after fire and the morons will still bleat the same shit all over again.
At this stage I think it is okay just to mock them openly to their face. They belong in the same category of stupid that creationists and holocaust deniers occupy.
One distinct advantage of using XPCOM is that the idl is language neutral. There may be occasions where you don't want to implement an object in C++, or that object resides in another process or thread. XPCOM allows you to implement an object in JavaScript or any other language with a binding. XPCOM also has marshalling code so the caller and callee could even be running in different threads. Neither even cares what the other is implemented in because XPCOM takes care of everything. This is why a substantial amount of Firefox is actually implemented in JavaScript and the rest is largely platform neutral.
Yes there are occasions where XPCOM is not suitable. XPCOM objects are memory allocated and don't live on the stack (although you can cheat in some circumstances). There can also be an overhead in creating some objects (e.g. from a class id or string), and there is small overhead associated with querying the interface and reference counting. This means XPCOM is best suited to long lived objects, especially ones that represent or are passed between subsystems. It isn't suitable for temporary objects or objects which are used in very tight loops such as string classes and so on.
Anyway yes you could wrap WebKit and the overhead would likely be miniscule. Create an interface to represent whatever WebKit object you want to encapsulate and then do the minimal marshalling to connect the two worlds. After all, Safari manages it in Objective-C. I really don't see any big deal doing the same for XPCOM. The issue of course is why bother. Gecko is a robust, fast, mature and fully featured rendering engine. What point is there in junking it and stuffing another engine in instead?
Personally I see very little about Chrome (and I've run it) that justifies why they bothered with WebKit to implement it. Chrome could have been implemented in chrome (XUL) fairly easily from what I've seen.
Real would of course. Providing a free and useful ripping tool is how they attract people to pay for the digital downloads and other $$$ services that their product would contain. Let users rip their unencrypted content, but charge to rip protected content. Some people would of course know how to circumvent the whole protected / unprotected thing but many wouldn't and would pay up. It's likely that RealPlayer already has software codecs so I don't see it being a big deal. It's the smart thing to do. Sticking a pricetag of $30 on it is frankly ludicrous. If people want rip software they can get it for free, and may already have Nero Recode or something analogous bundled with their DVD rewriter.
It's no different from how Apple did things with iTunes. They managed to provide free music ripping even though MP3 and I'm sure AAC are both patented. The player / ripper functionality of iTunes even used to be a separate commercial product called SoundJam.
But then again, Apple seem to have more of a clue how these things work than Real. Maybe part of the problem is that studios are tying the hands of Real, Apple etc. in their digital download negotiations to keep ripping tools out of these things. Which would suck if true. Still, it's fairly straightforward to rip or backup DVDs if you have the time and inclination.
Sorry I meant to say ASP.
Attempting to bilk people for $30 software that makes a DRM'd copy of a movie just isn't going to fly when free and non-free tools already exist that rip DVDs to any format you like. Especially when Real Networks is reknowned for producing bloated spyware laced crap. If you want to go free, find DVD Decrypter & Handbrake and you can rip and encode movies suitable for a variety of formats and devices. If you want non-free then use AnyDVD and Nero Recode. The tools are not as simple as they could be but they work and they work extremely well.
It might be easier to do than WINE as well since the APIs and system are relatively primitive and fixed. For example there is no common controls, OLE, DirectX or web browser control to worry about. It's not a moving target either making easier to implement fully. WINE would even be a good reference since OS/2 and Windows have such similar APIs to begin with.
It doesn't solve the issue of motivating people to do the port though. Maybe the best strategy would be to be to give away OS/2 with a GNU tool chain for free personal use (including free images that run in QEMU, VMWare etc.) in conjunction with the bounty.
It's different for movies you want to keep for years and years. I have no problem with DVD or Blu Ray because you can keep 'em in a cupboard, sell them, loan them, play them on any player from dozens of manufacturers. You can even rip and transcode them if you have the knowhow.
What I object to is profusion of proprietary players and formats for digital download. You can't rent or loan that title, you don't get any features, the title is locked to specific devices/players, registration is required to transfer it and it is far too easy for the provider to pull the plug and lose everything. Oh and they cost nearly the same and often times more than physical disks which have none of those issues and have better quality & features. Its in the studio's interests to make downloads open and standards compliant. Otherwise it will just be Microsoft, Apple, Amazon beating each other to an impasse for years to come while consumers stare on in bemusement.
Why don't you wait and see? Producing a compelling game is a fine art and it might suck for a multitude of reasons, but I fail to see why you pour hate on it because it strives for realism and a strong narrative.
The problem is that Hollywood isn't going to listen to you. They think that movie files can be DRM'd the same way as physical disks can and so they demand it.
The problem is they are pissing in their own pool. The digital download scene is a wasteland of proprietary DRM schemes, proprietary players, proprietary devices attached to proprietary services. The result is consumers are scared, confused and angry. You might need one device / player for one movie bought from one place and another device / player for another. You might even discover that your movie cannot be transferred or doesn't even work because the service was cancelled. It's happened with PlaysForSure and might happen to Amazon Unbox too some day. Only an idiot would try and build up a collection of titles amongst this chaos.
Look at what proprietary did to the music scene. Even Apple has begun to backdown from it and offer unencumbered downloads instead.
The industry really needs to adopt a single common file format, preferably with passive watermarking and no restrictions on usage. The result would be a massive upsurge in spending. Consumers would be confident in the format because they can purchase and manage their collection from anywhere. Consumers also get a better deal because stores are forced to compete on price and service. Any losses due to piracy would be dwarfed by legitimate sales. If they must implement a DRM, it should be one which is managed by an independent entity, allows fair use, and protects the consumer if a store dies or cancels its service.
I've already tried it in its unhobbled form. It works great. Why would I deliberately want to choose another dist which has worse hardware support?
If you want open source only use Debian (and stay away from the non-free parts), otherwise use Ubuntu. Why the hell would anyone want to use gNewSense which is just a hobbled Ubuntu? Maybe there are a few FSF diehards who might but the vast majority will go with Ubuntu or another dist which make pragmatic use of free commercial software when it serves a purpose.
100% hardware support. As is the answer for the vast, vast majority of people who use Windows, OSX or indeed some Linux dists and really don't care how their OS works as long as it does. Much though I'd like to see NVidia / ATI or whoever provide open source drivers, in the absence of those I still want my machine to work as intended whether they are closed or not.
I certainly see little point for someone who wants "freedom" to use a "free" version of Ubuntu. Either their hardware is already supported by open source in which case why not use Ubuntu, or it isn't, in which case they're tossing a working solution for one that doesn't. Neither seems very sensible to me. Why would someone who puts "freedom" over hardware even own an NVidia card? It's not like the situation hasn't been well known for years now.
Not only that, retardant rated by how long it will withstand (resist) fire. WTC7 was badly damaged, burning on multiple floors and left to burn all day with no fire suppression. The beams were sprayed with 2h/3h fire resistant material so some of them were well past their certified protection. It's no surprise it collapsed, especially when we have firemen on record reporting scary looking bulges and other signs of structural failure well before it finally came down.
No, the building owner told the firechief to "pull it", as in pull his men's fire fighting efforts. Though maybe you think the firechief and all his men were in on this conspiracy too? Poor old Larry would've gotten away with it except for you pesky kids...
Maybe you think firemen like hauling around high explosives, entering burning buildings and rigging them to blow. And that they do all this for an empty building while hundreds of their fellow firefighters are dead?
No? Then what the hell are you saying? The problem with conspiracy theories such as the one you are insuating is there is no theory to begin with. A theory is meant to be a model which fits the evidence (and in science can be used to predict and correspond to future observations). We'll forget the future observation part and concentrate on the model for now. Tell me of a single 9/11 conspiracy theory which says:
Please supply some detail. Of course you could continue to advance some lame insinuations about misreporting or the interpretation of "pull it". But then you're just going to get laughed at. Moaning about it is missing the point entirely.
So how does a editor of a Fire magazine in 2002 wanting an independent panel investigating the collapses support idiot truthers who proclaim it was a controlled demolition? Or was it thermite? Or was it basement nukes? Idiot truthers never actually say do they?
The editor of course doesn't subscribe to any paranoia fuelled conspiracy theory. In fact your own mined quote goes on to say "Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers .... The lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world.".
So the editor just wanted a independent panel heading the investigation for the purpose of better fire safety and standards. Whether the actual investigation satisfied or allayed his concerns is something you would have to ask him. Irrespective, it is absolutely clear that he would tell idiot "truthers" to get lost if they tried to count him as one of their own.
Sorry but that is evidence that in a maelstrom of conflicting reports some stations chose to report something which was later proven to be wrong. How many people do you think even knew what WTC7 looked like? Why do you think some BBC reporter to be able to pick it out from the skyline especially when she's faced away from it?
Maybe you think this is "compelling", but then you would be wrong. It is evidence of idiot truther's imaginations amplifying and exagerating minor details, ignoring major details and filling in the blanks in the most fantastic and paranoid way possible.
Maybe it's a US thing, but I would assume that if I subscribe to a service, that either I should be able to use my own equipment or the equipment be included for free or as a one-off expense.
This app is only going to grow in value when there only 8 copies in the world.
Not just the UK, Europe. As for the reason, VAT plays some part but more than that its because they can get away it. They hike the price because they can. It is not uncommon for a device costing $399 to cost 399. They also know that many people don't like buying electronics from outside the EU because of issues with voltage, warranties, keyboard layout or simply for fear of being slapped with a huge import duty.
I'm sure if you asked them they'd pull out some excuse that you should be looking at the exchange rate between China / Japan and Europe, not between Europe and the US. But it still doesn't explain why they don't hike the prices in the US if exchange rates are an issue.
A billion bags in a country the size of Ireland. The US has 75 times the population meaning it could save 75 billion bags a year.
I also think that anyone bothering to stick Linux on a PS3 isn't just a gamer and should have a modicum of knowledge about Linux. That doesn't excuse YDL from making the process easy, but it does set expectations a little.
As for doing wireless in the regular Game OS - it's very easy to do. I got mine talking WPA with my router no trouble at all. Its usually more effort to make the router work properly and lock down the MAC addresses than it is getting the client devices working.
For all the hype of Ruby on Rails, etc., the cold reality is that you would have to be a pretty foolhardy architect to recommend it for anything mission critical. Java might not be sexy but it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Its great news that its been open source, especially for Linux. But what it means in practice remains to be seen. I expect what it will mean is random bug fix submissions but little else but in practice Java is going to get governed the way it's always been governed. People will branch Java of course but just like Firefox, I doubt it means they can still call it Java.
They also censored reviews from mentioning the mandatory installs. Not just one, but one per act and they take a while to install. While MGS4 is an epic game, and well worth the purchase, it is frankly weird it has a mandatory install and clearly someone in Konami was paranoid enough to make early reviewers sign NDAs about it amongst other things.
I do believe PS3 games do get picked on but frankly I would prefer this to be the norm across the board. I want to know the good and the bad points about a game, not some gushing PR piece. I am disgusted by the attempts to bribe reviewers or coerce them to give favourable reviews by imposing conditions on exclusives. I've played GTA IV and think its a great game, but some of the "exclusive" reviews were so unbelievably uncritical and gushing that they might as well have been written by Rockstar's PR department. The game is great in many ways but it has faults and reviews that fail to mention them are doing their readers a massive disservice.
Hype and shill reviews are poison to gaming. I understand why studios do it (to sell more games), but gamers should be disgusted by the practice. The sad thing is hype works. All we can hope for is a few more incidents like this get published. People really need to be far more skeptical and cynical to understand how the industry works. At the end of the day it's better for everyone if a little honesty gets pushed back into the system.