Perhaps it's because we really have no actual sway over it anymore. The government has become so detached from its citizens that it makes it very hard to participate in it outside of your local community without a boatload of money.
As long as you have enough to keep the company afloat and profitable you're free to invest in other areas that don't necessarily need to be profitable. In other words you can take on all sorts of really cool things that most people, companies, or governments wont invest it because they may not necessarily be profitable at first.
That's the way Google works. Their core finances are based around their search engine and ad revenue. All the other projects on the side are just frills they added. That's why they can offer so many services for free, usually without any sort of ads or other obtrusive 'pay me' things and continue to develop them without them needing to be profitable.
The very fact that Apple is sitting on top of such a huge pile of money is a testament to how small their ambitions are. Steve Jobs somehow lifted the entire thing upon his shoulders and moved the world to buy fad based items that are so not worth the 300% price increase. Other then that there isn't a lot to Apple, they don't offer any sort of major world changing ideas or software (as odd as that sounds). They don't really innovate either. Nothing really comes or goes out of the company that has any lasting impact outside of fads.
I really don't understand how the company got so big in the first place if they have no real direction outside of making trendy devices that remain largely the same from model to model. I guess Steve Jobs really had a world altering engine built into himself. It's really honestly quite sad. That is a LOT of money and I could think of hundreds of different things they should be doing with it other then sitting on it...
You could start with the altruistic option. Instead of paying Chinese workers more, move the fing jobs back to America where we actually purchase your devices.
Please keep in mind the huge biases associated with the metric in use to measure a teachers performance. Their performance isn't solely dependent upon their individual performance, but rather upon the performance of their students. While some people believe a good teacher will motivate students to learn, I can point out this simply isn't true if the student doesn't want to learn in the first place. It doesn't matter how good the teacher is. You know how I know? Because I was one of those students. I wasn't interested in anything remotely till college and generally got around a C average due to this.
This puts undue stress on not only the student who doesn't care for various reasons and the teacher whose job is at stake, who inevitably ends up going to lengths to protect their lively hood (such as letting students cheat). This doesn't even take into account funding, the community around that area, their classmates, their friends, their parents (which are a integral part of learning), or how they generally interact with those around them. The biases don't stop there, learning in itself is hugely complex.
The current metric is quite stupid, but sadly there aren't a lot of ways to measure a teachers performance outside of this.
I'm actually quite interested in when these will be available as normal prescription glasses lenses. I think this is a lot of geeks wet dream. Heck you could even possibly replace the lenses themselves with a modified display that uses a camera and alters the image to your prescription. Given the imaging resolution would have to be high enough and it would have to have a fast enough response time. This is like the holy grail of all technology beyond being directly connected to your computer via your brain.
Honestly, just using a modified pair of prescription lenses would work... for now.
This would be due to consolization and not due to the hardware industry out pacing the software industry by leaps and bounds. Although, that is arguably the same, the reasoning isn't.
So this doesn't strike anyone as odd? We here in the US have to rationalize everything in terms of money. We don't even lift a finger anymore unless it pays off in the long run as it's unjustifiable, yet the Swiss are going to be spending billions to clean up other peoples messes in outer space? We can't even get most people to do that here in the US without adding a price tag to it.
Seriously, just take a step back and look at this for a moment.
The ideology in threads on here is quite weird honestly. Either they're for the money or they think Microsoft should just stuff it as they already charge a licensing fee and subscriptions, which I sorta agree with... But what about actually charging for resources they use? A fixed rate like this is mind boggling for small companies and indies and for big businesses that produce titles like CoD it's a steal. Smells a lot like subsidizing bigger companies.
Telling people to make it right the first time is pure BS as well. 'Do better then you're currently doing' is stupid ideological BS people spout when they have absolutely no idea what's happening below the table. People make mistakes, it happens, some are careless, some cutting corners, but dealing with it is why we have patches in the first place and part of why web browsers switched to essentially streaming updates.
Even if it sound stupid, flow is a actual area of research for psychologists and the rather weird and interesting effects it has on human perception and reaction. It's really cool stuff and most people either take it for granted or don't even know they're doing it. It effects everyone in every part of our lives as well.
Anyone else see this as bad? I mean I'm all for space innovation, but the further other companies get into ultra expensive areas the less likely we'll ever see competition or good prices. SpaceX will turn into a monopoly that will have no competition. Not only that, but our government will no longer be able to take over such a role as is with ISPs in the US. People will argue it's socialism, that it'll put people out of jobs, and it's un-american like. Essentially this is giving birth to a corporation that we will never be able to dispute.
Of course what they have is an amazingly good price, but our space program is essentially crippled. It has been for quite a long time funding wise. When you jerry-rig everything to work it intrinsically becomes very expensive to keep it up, that's why you don't hodge podge everything. NASA doesn't have the funds to do real R&D anymore or do anything other then the hodge podge mess. All they can do is dream up ideas they can never reach as congress will inevitably give them some sort of goal they can't reach, but they have to follow instead on what little funding they have.
SpaceX IS a company, their primary goal is to turn a profit. Do not believe they're riding up there on their white horse while horns play in the background signaling a new age for man kind.
I would also like to add to this that our army is now experts at fighting insurgent forces and small militias (in part due to the oil war and vietnam)... which would be what any sort of rebel resistance would be in our country.
America wont survive a revolution. The moment people start thinking like this is the moment people who ARE corrupt and are in seats of power at the moment can claim even more power on the grounds of insurgants, terrorists, and rebels are trying to corrupt our pure country. They'll ride their white horse and smear any sort of truth that can be mustered to bring people to the cause and then with their new claimed power they will strike back with the full force of military aid at their disposal and they have a lot of that currently.
People armed with guns can't retake our country. This is a long cry from the civil war where all you had to do was pick up a musket and you'd be on relatively equal terms with the foe you're facing. They have military and strategic dominance on every level, not to mention they can do all sorts of underhanded things to make everyone involved disappear. I do believe such soldiers may turn sides, but it's highly unlikely. They country in and of itself has become too powerful to take back by a common citizen with a rifle. Such a imbalance of power would lead to an extremely bloody conflict with the people without it getting slaughtered in droves attempting to take it back from people with it. The american zeitgeist isn't ready for such a conflict either. We have too many differing opinions to split things down the middle and we easily get bored of things when it doesn't involve everyone dying around us.
This is completely putting aside how it will turn the country upside down and leaves us open to people who would never dream of trying to take america going and doing it. You shouldn't think in such short sighted terms. Picking up a weapon and starting to shoot people without any forethought is a bad decision.
You have to change things from the inside, bit by bit, piece by piece. Witch hunts need to be performed and we need something similar to the inquisition that will willingly investigate every part of the system (not the people) and burn the heretics retroactively. It needs to be done peacefully so when the side that gets power hungry and decides to use an iron fist they can be branded as such. So there is a right and wrong, so that the people can understand that one side is fighting for something better then power...
When and IF this happens it will start to signify a new golden age for America, one that is founded on the future rather then making more money then the other person. We need to help each other rather then trying to drive each other in the dirt. Just because the country was founded with capitalism in mind, doesn't mean we need to stay that way. We are much better then that. It's the direction most first world countries are taking and it's the right one.
Aye, there is a lot of 'lore' and theorizing behind the Blackbird. There are so many parts of the plane that don't match up to common jets that maintain similar quoted speeds. Like the parent said, they 'officially' didn't let the plane go past mach 3, yet I'm sure it never operated in that fashion. There is so much of the Blackbird that still seems like it's shrouded in mystery. It seems unlikely that the airforce that spent a lot of time and money funding it wouldn't try to experiment with how fast it can run.
It does really make you wonder why the SR-71 is retired and these flying bricks are still flying. The SR-71 can fly higher, faster, longer, stealthier, has better instrumentation, and lets face it, it's just a heck of a lot cooler as it's standard practice to avoid surface to air missile was just fly faster... The SR-71 was and still is a engineering marvel compared to everything around including this hunk of crap.
This could easily be replaced by a UAV or even standard aircraft. I can only imagine the only reason it being around is the airforce is playing favorites with contracts.
I disagree. I don't think teaching a subject makes kids hate something. It's all about how the subject is approached. When you add visual elements to coding it can make it more easily understood by just about everyone. All high level courses have entry level courses too. You shouldn't expect to be feeding advance programming to high school students. All you want them to grasp is the basic logic and troubleshooting, they don't need to design the next hit game while in high school.
I think this could on some levels replace higher level math in junior/high school or give kids the option to choose between the two. They largely cover the same categories, only one is quite a bit more applicable and hands on. You get to actually watch your work unfold in front of you and actively problem solve and troubleshoot. Not just do a problem set, bring it in the next day, have the teachers correct, correct your errors, rinse and repeat ad-naseum.
Programming can even be fun. Keep in mind I'm not talking about C++ or such, rather VB or other such visual languages that help add a learning element to the code. Hard code without any sort of visual element takes a niche personality to enjoy. Just entry level coding that helps kids to understand how computers work and think so they can better approach computers in general in the future. I wouldn't be against a basic level hardware troubleshooting course either.
Computers are NEVER going to go away save the next apocalypse (even then I'm sure they will survive in some form). They will become more and more integrated into our lives till we have the proverbial implant that lets us get sucked into the matrix and foam at the mouth. It WILL happen, there are plenty of people working on it already. Making our entire society ignorant to one of the greatest scientific achievements that has ever happened will not work out in our favor. They should be fully embraced in our school system, not just on the level of teaching kids how to use Office suites
Look at the ratings on all the HDMI to VGA cables and look at the reviews. Somethings not right with the reviews at monoprice, as there are no low rated reviews and none of them mention having trouble with the device. You need an active converter capable of doing that. That would be the $40 box on the page you linked.
Only DVI natively converts to VGA as it's built into the spec (four pins on the connector). HDMI and DP do not have pins for that. In order to convert from HDMI/DP to VGA you need a $60-70 converter, not a $10 adapter like you can use with DVI.
"...and they can't. It's just too expensive to make games with these ultra quality graphics."
I think you're using a confirmation bias to assert that just because they aren't, they can't. It's quite untrue that they can't afford graphics. They don't because consoles don't have the horsepower to support them. BF3 has some pretty bleeding edge graphics and the game is still quite profitable. MW3 looks pretty close to MW2 and it's safe to assume they had a bigger budget then BF3.
Consolization sucks... It sucks even more when people accept that games are the way that they are because of some sort of insidious barrier.
I don't think so at all. The Wii IMO is really the only 'true' console left. PS3 and Xbox 360 are rushing into the role that full blown computers fulfill. Neither have a unique role anymore. Once the stigma that a computer belongs in it's own little room tucked away and can't be next to your big screen TV dies out, I really see both the Xbox and the PS dying out. You may scoff at this, but it's true. The only thing keeping people from seeing this is clever marketing by both Sony and Xbox. It's so incredibly easy to hook up your PC to your TV that most people don't even know you can or know how easy it is. It's like something that almost all geeks know about, but most people have absolutely no idea that they can do.
Hardcore games always have the advantage on the computer, especially when it comes to FPS's. Nintendo has largely stayed out of that realm and tried to maintain a unique vibe to their systems, that can be seen with the Wii-mote when it first came out. Everyone then copied it and everyone wanted it. Nintendo is thinking further ahead into the future then you might think. They aren't rushing into the hardcore genre to strengthen their lines against a more formidable opponent when the public becomes aware of it.
A HTPC can be quiet, small, fast, and look very much a part of your living room. With the version of Steam coming out soon that's made for TVs and the fact that you can already use Xbox controllers on a computer for all the PoS ports that are terrible, there is little to nothing separating the PS/Xbox from a computer besides marketing and a stigma.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it's because we really have no actual sway over it anymore. The government has become so detached from its citizens that it makes it very hard to participate in it outside of your local community without a boatload of money.
As long as you have enough to keep the company afloat and profitable you're free to invest in other areas that don't necessarily need to be profitable. In other words you can take on all sorts of really cool things that most people, companies, or governments wont invest it because they may not necessarily be profitable at first.
That's the way Google works. Their core finances are based around their search engine and ad revenue. All the other projects on the side are just frills they added. That's why they can offer so many services for free, usually without any sort of ads or other obtrusive 'pay me' things and continue to develop them without them needing to be profitable.
The very fact that Apple is sitting on top of such a huge pile of money is a testament to how small their ambitions are. Steve Jobs somehow lifted the entire thing upon his shoulders and moved the world to buy fad based items that are so not worth the 300% price increase. Other then that there isn't a lot to Apple, they don't offer any sort of major world changing ideas or software (as odd as that sounds). They don't really innovate either. Nothing really comes or goes out of the company that has any lasting impact outside of fads.
I really don't understand how the company got so big in the first place if they have no real direction outside of making trendy devices that remain largely the same from model to model. I guess Steve Jobs really had a world altering engine built into himself. It's really honestly quite sad. That is a LOT of money and I could think of hundreds of different things they should be doing with it other then sitting on it...
You could start with the altruistic option. Instead of paying Chinese workers more, move the fing jobs back to America where we actually purchase your devices.
Please keep in mind the huge biases associated with the metric in use to measure a teachers performance. Their performance isn't solely dependent upon their individual performance, but rather upon the performance of their students. While some people believe a good teacher will motivate students to learn, I can point out this simply isn't true if the student doesn't want to learn in the first place. It doesn't matter how good the teacher is. You know how I know? Because I was one of those students. I wasn't interested in anything remotely till college and generally got around a C average due to this.
This puts undue stress on not only the student who doesn't care for various reasons and the teacher whose job is at stake, who inevitably ends up going to lengths to protect their lively hood (such as letting students cheat). This doesn't even take into account funding, the community around that area, their classmates, their friends, their parents (which are a integral part of learning), or how they generally interact with those around them. The biases don't stop there, learning in itself is hugely complex.
The current metric is quite stupid, but sadly there aren't a lot of ways to measure a teachers performance outside of this.
There is politics and drama even in academia.
I'm actually quite interested in when these will be available as normal prescription glasses lenses. I think this is a lot of geeks wet dream. Heck you could even possibly replace the lenses themselves with a modified display that uses a camera and alters the image to your prescription. Given the imaging resolution would have to be high enough and it would have to have a fast enough response time. This is like the holy grail of all technology beyond being directly connected to your computer via your brain.
Honestly, just using a modified pair of prescription lenses would work... for now.
This would be due to consolization and not due to the hardware industry out pacing the software industry by leaps and bounds. Although, that is arguably the same, the reasoning isn't.
So this doesn't strike anyone as odd? We here in the US have to rationalize everything in terms of money. We don't even lift a finger anymore unless it pays off in the long run as it's unjustifiable, yet the Swiss are going to be spending billions to clean up other peoples messes in outer space? We can't even get most people to do that here in the US without adding a price tag to it.
Seriously, just take a step back and look at this for a moment.
The ideology in threads on here is quite weird honestly. Either they're for the money or they think Microsoft should just stuff it as they already charge a licensing fee and subscriptions, which I sorta agree with... But what about actually charging for resources they use? A fixed rate like this is mind boggling for small companies and indies and for big businesses that produce titles like CoD it's a steal. Smells a lot like subsidizing bigger companies.
Telling people to make it right the first time is pure BS as well. 'Do better then you're currently doing' is stupid ideological BS people spout when they have absolutely no idea what's happening below the table. People make mistakes, it happens, some are careless, some cutting corners, but dealing with it is why we have patches in the first place and part of why web browsers switched to essentially streaming updates.
Even if it sound stupid, flow is a actual area of research for psychologists and the rather weird and interesting effects it has on human perception and reaction. It's really cool stuff and most people either take it for granted or don't even know they're doing it. It effects everyone in every part of our lives as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
So even somethings become too hot to handle for the RIAA. Just sounds like a cover story. I'm sure they'll make another pass with the maw wide.
Aye... makes you wonder if there is a bit more to it then just exploiting their weakness...
Anyone else see this as bad? I mean I'm all for space innovation, but the further other companies get into ultra expensive areas the less likely we'll ever see competition or good prices. SpaceX will turn into a monopoly that will have no competition. Not only that, but our government will no longer be able to take over such a role as is with ISPs in the US. People will argue it's socialism, that it'll put people out of jobs, and it's un-american like. Essentially this is giving birth to a corporation that we will never be able to dispute.
Of course what they have is an amazingly good price, but our space program is essentially crippled. It has been for quite a long time funding wise. When you jerry-rig everything to work it intrinsically becomes very expensive to keep it up, that's why you don't hodge podge everything. NASA doesn't have the funds to do real R&D anymore or do anything other then the hodge podge mess. All they can do is dream up ideas they can never reach as congress will inevitably give them some sort of goal they can't reach, but they have to follow instead on what little funding they have.
SpaceX IS a company, their primary goal is to turn a profit. Do not believe they're riding up there on their white horse while horns play in the background signaling a new age for man kind.
I would also like to add to this that our army is now experts at fighting insurgent forces and small militias (in part due to the oil war and vietnam)... which would be what any sort of rebel resistance would be in our country.
America wont survive a revolution. The moment people start thinking like this is the moment people who ARE corrupt and are in seats of power at the moment can claim even more power on the grounds of insurgants, terrorists, and rebels are trying to corrupt our pure country. They'll ride their white horse and smear any sort of truth that can be mustered to bring people to the cause and then with their new claimed power they will strike back with the full force of military aid at their disposal and they have a lot of that currently.
People armed with guns can't retake our country. This is a long cry from the civil war where all you had to do was pick up a musket and you'd be on relatively equal terms with the foe you're facing. They have military and strategic dominance on every level, not to mention they can do all sorts of underhanded things to make everyone involved disappear. I do believe such soldiers may turn sides, but it's highly unlikely. They country in and of itself has become too powerful to take back by a common citizen with a rifle. Such a imbalance of power would lead to an extremely bloody conflict with the people without it getting slaughtered in droves attempting to take it back from people with it. The american zeitgeist isn't ready for such a conflict either. We have too many differing opinions to split things down the middle and we easily get bored of things when it doesn't involve everyone dying around us.
This is completely putting aside how it will turn the country upside down and leaves us open to people who would never dream of trying to take america going and doing it. You shouldn't think in such short sighted terms. Picking up a weapon and starting to shoot people without any forethought is a bad decision.
You have to change things from the inside, bit by bit, piece by piece. Witch hunts need to be performed and we need something similar to the inquisition that will willingly investigate every part of the system (not the people) and burn the heretics retroactively. It needs to be done peacefully so when the side that gets power hungry and decides to use an iron fist they can be branded as such. So there is a right and wrong, so that the people can understand that one side is fighting for something better then power...
When and IF this happens it will start to signify a new golden age for America, one that is founded on the future rather then making more money then the other person. We need to help each other rather then trying to drive each other in the dirt. Just because the country was founded with capitalism in mind, doesn't mean we need to stay that way. We are much better then that. It's the direction most first world countries are taking and it's the right one.
That's what a UAV is for... they can shoot down both UAVs and U2s now...
Aye, there is a lot of 'lore' and theorizing behind the Blackbird. There are so many parts of the plane that don't match up to common jets that maintain similar quoted speeds. Like the parent said, they 'officially' didn't let the plane go past mach 3, yet I'm sure it never operated in that fashion. There is so much of the Blackbird that still seems like it's shrouded in mystery. It seems unlikely that the airforce that spent a lot of time and money funding it wouldn't try to experiment with how fast it can run.
It does really make you wonder why the SR-71 is retired and these flying bricks are still flying. The SR-71 can fly higher, faster, longer, stealthier, has better instrumentation, and lets face it, it's just a heck of a lot cooler as it's standard practice to avoid surface to air missile was just fly faster... The SR-71 was and still is a engineering marvel compared to everything around including this hunk of crap.
This could easily be replaced by a UAV or even standard aircraft. I can only imagine the only reason it being around is the airforce is playing favorites with contracts.
I disagree. I don't think teaching a subject makes kids hate something. It's all about how the subject is approached. When you add visual elements to coding it can make it more easily understood by just about everyone. All high level courses have entry level courses too. You shouldn't expect to be feeding advance programming to high school students. All you want them to grasp is the basic logic and troubleshooting, they don't need to design the next hit game while in high school.
I think this could on some levels replace higher level math in junior/high school or give kids the option to choose between the two. They largely cover the same categories, only one is quite a bit more applicable and hands on. You get to actually watch your work unfold in front of you and actively problem solve and troubleshoot. Not just do a problem set, bring it in the next day, have the teachers correct, correct your errors, rinse and repeat ad-naseum.
Programming can even be fun. Keep in mind I'm not talking about C++ or such, rather VB or other such visual languages that help add a learning element to the code. Hard code without any sort of visual element takes a niche personality to enjoy. Just entry level coding that helps kids to understand how computers work and think so they can better approach computers in general in the future. I wouldn't be against a basic level hardware troubleshooting course either.
Computers are NEVER going to go away save the next apocalypse (even then I'm sure they will survive in some form). They will become more and more integrated into our lives till we have the proverbial implant that lets us get sucked into the matrix and foam at the mouth. It WILL happen, there are plenty of people working on it already. Making our entire society ignorant to one of the greatest scientific achievements that has ever happened will not work out in our favor. They should be fully embraced in our school system, not just on the level of teaching kids how to use Office suites
Those adapters are made for macbooks, which have a built in converter. You can't use them on normal HDMI devices.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=hdmi+to+vga&x=0&y=0
Look at the ratings on all the HDMI to VGA cables and look at the reviews. Somethings not right with the reviews at monoprice, as there are no low rated reviews and none of them mention having trouble with the device. You need an active converter capable of doing that. That would be the $40 box on the page you linked.
Only DVI natively converts to VGA as it's built into the spec (four pins on the connector). HDMI and DP do not have pins for that. In order to convert from HDMI/DP to VGA you need a $60-70 converter, not a $10 adapter like you can use with DVI.
Of course putting that into context he was joking when he said that, because Socrates was awesome...
Perhaps it boils down to trust... something that is sucked out of your soul after it gets raped by the world a few times.
"...and they can't. It's just too expensive to make games with these ultra quality graphics."
I think you're using a confirmation bias to assert that just because they aren't, they can't. It's quite untrue that they can't afford graphics. They don't because consoles don't have the horsepower to support them. BF3 has some pretty bleeding edge graphics and the game is still quite profitable. MW3 looks pretty close to MW2 and it's safe to assume they had a bigger budget then BF3.
Consolization sucks... It sucks even more when people accept that games are the way that they are because of some sort of insidious barrier.
I don't think so at all. The Wii IMO is really the only 'true' console left. PS3 and Xbox 360 are rushing into the role that full blown computers fulfill. Neither have a unique role anymore. Once the stigma that a computer belongs in it's own little room tucked away and can't be next to your big screen TV dies out, I really see both the Xbox and the PS dying out. You may scoff at this, but it's true. The only thing keeping people from seeing this is clever marketing by both Sony and Xbox. It's so incredibly easy to hook up your PC to your TV that most people don't even know you can or know how easy it is. It's like something that almost all geeks know about, but most people have absolutely no idea that they can do.
Hardcore games always have the advantage on the computer, especially when it comes to FPS's. Nintendo has largely stayed out of that realm and tried to maintain a unique vibe to their systems, that can be seen with the Wii-mote when it first came out. Everyone then copied it and everyone wanted it. Nintendo is thinking further ahead into the future then you might think. They aren't rushing into the hardcore genre to strengthen their lines against a more formidable opponent when the public becomes aware of it.
A HTPC can be quiet, small, fast, and look very much a part of your living room. With the version of Steam coming out soon that's made for TVs and the fact that you can already use Xbox controllers on a computer for all the PoS ports that are terrible, there is little to nothing separating the PS/Xbox from a computer besides marketing and a stigma.