As I said above, I think the multiverse theories are a pantload of stink.
The interesting thing about a way of describing the universe is that it doesn't have to be true to be userful, provided it produces useful results. Think for a moment of Copernicus.
His model wasn't accurate at all, not even slightly, it was nowhere near as useful in real terms then the Ptolemaic model, but it allowed the universe to be viewed in a different way, eventually leading to our current, vastly more accurate description.
Ours too may be wrong, but you need ways of describing reality which produce useful results. They don't have to be 'real' to be useful.
Actually no, I found it to be predictable and boring.
Oh look, a dark corridor/open vent/faulty light, queue bad guy leaping out in 3-2-1.. Over and over again.
AvP 2 had me shooting walls and damn near crapping myself. With surround sound I couldn't take it at all, I had to go back to normal stereo until I had acclimatised myself to the game.
I don't know what it is with ID and their terrible 'revive our old games' thing.
Seriously, good as the engine was, doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games. Obviously things had moved on in many ways, but it played more like an AvP knockoff to me, and not a well designed one at that.
Quake 4 was also pretty poor. There wasn't much to wolfenstein, so they can pretty much start from scratch and go any way they like. Looking at their recent track record in games sat atop their (undeniably excellent) engines, I won't be shelling out the pounds for this until its been around long enough to be cheap.
Its only a big win if Microsoft don't have similer problems.
I'm personally very dubious about these online apps as anything but utilities for occasional use.
The main issue for me is that they exists primarily to benefit the hosting company (google, Microsoft or whoever). We don't need them, they need us to use them, otherwise they can't make money from us.
The current 'install on local machine' application model works perfectly well for end users, but there's less profit for them if you can buy something then use it for years without paying again.
Its not exactly as if someone can harm HP, or any other hardware company by repurposing their calculators, so yes, more companies should do it.
I suspect what they are hoping is that tech types will play, the calculators name will be thrown around the water cooler, and procurement will find requests to purchase on their desk.
You haven't given up your rights regarding ownership of it, just the ability to stop anyone else from downloading it for their own use, or for some sharing. The issue here is an unwillingness to understand the latter. The former has never been in doubt.
What I see as the main problem is the state of mind DRM brings about. Put simply, if you try to restrict access, there will always be people who will be interested in it simply because they want to break it.
Put it out there as is, with a nice complete 'my property, do not claim as your own, but otherwise, have fun' type license, most people will watch/listen to it and move along, not bothering to download it to keep because you haven't added the 'forbidden fruit' enticement of DRM.
They may even be willing to pay you for a super HQ version, streamed direct to them from your servers with no interruptions. Provided you don't irritate by piling on restrictions (this is the two second attention span internet after all).
Go buy yourself a copy of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'.
You'll find that control of the mind, and thus the population through mood adjustment on demand, and communal broadcast 'hallucination', play a big part.
I haven't described it perfectly, don't want to ruin the book. Suffice it to say none of this made it into the film. Not that I don't think the film is awesome, its just different in ultimate message.
No, all I need to do is manage to get through a gentoo install without forgetting some small but vital step and ruining days of work.
My endlessly repeating 'learn while you sleep' tape that whispers "compiling your own kernel is fun and good for you" into my ears every night is helping, honest...
I really liked the Diablo series, but I have got to say that I got utterly sick of endless button mashing to apply potions.
It never really added anything to the game in my opinion, in fact I felt it was the worst part of it. I went on to play the dungeon siege games, and there I deliberately avoided using health potions, simply so I wouldn't have that button mashing experience again. I died a lot, but its more interesting if you have to retreat rather then apply an inventory full of potions just to stay alive.
If we move our transport systems over to electricity, then change the way we generate that electricity, it does a great deal.
Also, its a hell of a lot easier to control emissions from power stations then it is to control millions of cars pouring exhaust fumes into the air in cities.
Its going to take a while to get the somewhat large number of nuclear power stations and solar power farms the US now wants up and running, but it is going to happen, and when it does, things will get a lot better.
No budget is in irretrievable deficit when you have missiles large enough to level any bank that tries to get back what you owe them:)
You can always find statistics to make one country look bad. This happens to the US far too often.
There's one fairly simple measure of a country's success, and that's how willing its occupants are to leave if they get the chance. You could offer free emigration to all US citizens, and I bet hardly any would take up the offer.
Sure it has problems, and to be honest, for the country that 'invented' the internet, your connection speed is a joke, seriously. On the other hand, and American can get in a car and drive thousands of miles without crossing national borders or having their right to travel questioned.
That's a pretty big thing in my opinion, something to be proud of in fact.
Due to the desire of the US to use the space shuttle to service the ISS, it was placed in a much lower orbit then would otherwise have been the case. Certainly it was much lower then most interested parties wanted.
As a result of this it is constantly being slowed by friction caused by contact with the outer atmosphere. We are talking very slight friction, but at the speed of the ISS that slight friction is enough to bring it into a lower orbit over time.
One of the main worries after the challenger disaster was that space shuttle had been used to correct this reduction in orbit periodically by firing its thrusters whilst docked. Instead they had to use Soyuz capsules to try and do the same thing.
Its bad either way, but if there is tension and both countries stop going there, the orbit will deteriorate to the point where only a specialised mission to boost it would work. That may not be possible, or indeed successful.
While it would have to drop a long way to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up, it wouldn't have to drop too far to start being prohibitively complicated and expensive to get it back into its normal orbit.
might it not be something as simple as the fact that cooking renders many foods non toxic?
Or at least, reduces the risk caused by the fact that they had no storage technology capable of inhibiting rotting.
Meat killed a few days ago is certain to be safer if cooked. It might just be that this meant we lost fewer useful mutations because people weren't randomly dying through food poisoning
Slashdot Mirror
As I said above, I think the multiverse theories are a pantload of stink.
The interesting thing about a way of describing the universe is that it doesn't have to be true to be userful, provided it produces useful results.
Think for a moment of Copernicus.
His model wasn't accurate at all, not even slightly, it was nowhere near as useful in real terms then the Ptolemaic model, but it allowed the universe to be viewed in a different way, eventually leading to our current, vastly more accurate description.
Ours too may be wrong, but you need ways of describing reality which produce useful results. They don't have to be 'real' to be useful.
"cloud" in reference to the internet he will he recieve a digital kick in the balls.
Fuck "clouds" and "Web2.0".
(But fuck clouds more)
In a manner of speaking the entire Internet is a cloud of computers.
AAAARRGGHH!
[whimper]
I thought it was because nobody actually cares enough to watch.
I think the main reason is that 70% of the internets heaviest users have been playing WoW and didn't notice the olympics were on.
I also qualified my reply with 'if true'.
All parameters are not created equal, he may have picked up on something rather interesting.
Or not, it requires more investigation.
The slower pace was the problem. Doom should be fast, needs to be to be fun.
This hypothesis, if true, shows that the universe is actually a rather robust structure.
I like that a lot more then the 'one tiny bit off and you get nothing' thing. It sounds more plausible to me.
Its far more likely that you have driver problems
Actually no, I found it to be predictable and boring.
Oh look, a dark corridor/open vent/faulty light, queue bad guy leaping out in 3-2-1..
Over and over again.
AvP 2 had me shooting walls and damn near crapping myself. With surround sound I couldn't take it at all, I had to go back to normal stereo until I had acclimatised myself to the game.
I don't know what it is with ID and their terrible 'revive our old games' thing.
Seriously, good as the engine was, doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games. Obviously things had moved on in many ways, but it played more like an AvP knockoff to me, and not a well designed one at that.
Quake 4 was also pretty poor. There wasn't much to wolfenstein, so they can pretty much start from scratch and go any way they like. Looking at their recent track record in games sat atop their (undeniably excellent) engines, I won't be shelling out the pounds for this until its been around long enough to be cheap.
Its only a big win if Microsoft don't have similer problems.
I'm personally very dubious about these online apps as anything but utilities for occasional use.
The main issue for me is that they exists primarily to benefit the hosting company (google, Microsoft or whoever). We don't need them, they need us to use them, otherwise they can't make money from us.
The current 'install on local machine' application model works perfectly well for end users, but there's less profit for them if you can buy something then use it for years without paying again.
Its not exactly as if someone can harm HP, or any other hardware company by repurposing their calculators, so yes, more companies should do it.
I suspect what they are hoping is that tech types will play, the calculators name will be thrown around the water cooler, and procurement will find requests to purchase on their desk.
Which is, of course, all well and good.
Good job Hitler never had this kind of info. I can't see that as having ended well.
New Microsoft One Time Pad(tm) for WMA!
You haven't given up your rights regarding ownership of it, just the ability to stop anyone else from downloading it for their own use, or for some sharing. The issue here is an unwillingness to understand the latter. The former has never been in doubt.
What I see as the main problem is the state of mind DRM brings about. Put simply, if you try to restrict access, there will always be people who will be interested in it simply because they want to break it.
Put it out there as is, with a nice complete 'my property, do not claim as your own, but otherwise, have fun' type license, most people will watch/listen to it and move along, not bothering to download it to keep because you haven't added the 'forbidden fruit' enticement of DRM.
They may even be willing to pay you for a super HQ version, streamed direct to them from your servers with no interruptions. Provided you don't irritate by piling on restrictions (this is the two second attention span internet after all).
Go buy yourself a copy of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'.
You'll find that control of the mind, and thus the population through mood adjustment on demand, and communal broadcast 'hallucination', play a big part.
I haven't described it perfectly, don't want to ruin the book. Suffice it to say none of this made it into the film. Not that I don't think the film is awesome, its just different in ultimate message.
No, all I need to do is manage to get through a gentoo install without forgetting some small but vital step and ruining days of work.
My endlessly repeating 'learn while you sleep' tape that whispers "compiling your own kernel is fun and good for you" into my ears every night is helping, honest...
Write properly to ntfs?
I really liked the Diablo series, but I have got to say that I got utterly sick of endless button mashing to apply potions.
It never really added anything to the game in my opinion, in fact I felt it was the worst part of it. I went on to play the dungeon siege games, and there I deliberately avoided using health potions, simply so I wouldn't have that button mashing experience again. I died a lot, but its more interesting if you have to retreat rather then apply an inventory full of potions just to stay alive.
If we move our transport systems over to electricity, then change the way we generate that electricity, it does a great deal.
Also, its a hell of a lot easier to control emissions from power stations then it is to control millions of cars pouring exhaust fumes into the air in cities.
Its going to take a while to get the somewhat large number of nuclear power stations and solar power farms the US now wants up and running, but it is going to happen, and when it does, things will get a lot better.
What's wrong with the Governator?
Just what you see, pal.
The difference to the US is that those are actually sovereign, European countries, whoms borders you cross.
Which was exactly my point....
No budget is in irretrievable deficit when you have missiles large enough to level any bank that tries to get back what you owe them :)
You can always find statistics to make one country look bad. This happens to the US far too often.
There's one fairly simple measure of a country's success, and that's how willing its occupants are to leave if they get the chance. You could offer free emigration to all US citizens, and I bet hardly any would take up the offer.
Sure it has problems, and to be honest, for the country that 'invented' the internet, your connection speed is a joke, seriously.
On the other hand, and American can get in a car and drive thousands of miles without crossing national borders or having their right to travel questioned.
That's a pretty big thing in my opinion, something to be proud of in fact.
Due to the desire of the US to use the space shuttle to service the ISS, it was placed in a much lower orbit then would otherwise have been the case. Certainly it was much lower then most interested parties wanted.
As a result of this it is constantly being slowed by friction caused by contact with the outer atmosphere. We are talking very slight friction, but at the speed of the ISS that slight friction is enough to bring it into a lower orbit over time.
One of the main worries after the challenger disaster was that space shuttle had been used to correct this reduction in orbit periodically by firing its thrusters whilst docked. Instead they had to use Soyuz capsules to try and do the same thing.
Its bad either way, but if there is tension and both countries stop going there, the orbit will deteriorate to the point where only a specialised mission to boost it would work. That may not be possible, or indeed successful.
While it would have to drop a long way to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up, it wouldn't have to drop too far to start being prohibitively complicated and expensive to get it back into its normal orbit.
Fire. Is there ANYTHING it can't do?
Stop your liver being pecked out each day by a giant Eagle, apparently.....
might it not be something as simple as the fact that cooking renders many foods non toxic?
Or at least, reduces the risk caused by the fact that they had no storage technology capable of inhibiting rotting.
Meat killed a few days ago is certain to be safer if cooked. It might just be that this meant we lost fewer useful mutations because people weren't randomly dying through food poisoning