Borderlands has the most unsatisfying ending of any game I've played to the end. And the weird thing is, they roll the credits, which goes on and on, and if you wait for them to finish, you're dropped back in-game with one small task to complete.
Although the ending leaves a possible sequel, it seems a whole lot more like a 'whoops - ran out of money' ending.
Folks in our department have local admin on our own PCs, but it's like pulling teeth to get InfoSec to grant it. (I think it requires VP approval for each PC). On the other hand, we are under no circumstances given root to our Linux servers, not even our dev boxes. Not even on virtual machines running Linux. This is a huge PITA. I can't count the times a five-minute change like adding an entry to tnsnames.ora has ended up taking hours or days to complete through the 'create a ticket' method. Even worse than slowing down mundane tasks, it stifles any exploration of alternative tools. Unfortunately, this sort of intangible 'innovation cost' will never show up on any objective cost/benefit analysis.
I find that giving the music-loving part of my brain something to chew on while the logical problem-solving part is busy writing code works great. Not only does it avoid distractions from other sources of sound, it keeps the music-loving part of my brain from also distracting me. It has to be music that won't grab my conscious attention, though. So, as many have posted, it tends to be either IDM or trance or ambient stuff, or it has to be stuff that is so time-worn in my brain that it doesn't catch my attention. I would estimate it at least doubles my coding productivity.
Now, reading, on the other hand, is very much interfered with by music. Somehow the part of my brain that likes music is also tied in with processing language inputs. I suspect that's where the OP's boss gets this notion from. He's probably also afflicted by music messing up his language input processing abilities, and assumes that this translates to distraction while coding.
I tried emailing a suggestion and got:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.1.1 : Recipient address rejected: User unknown in relay recipient table (state 14).
Seems to me if we'd just glassify the waste and spread it out thinly across subduction zones, there'd be no need to worry about warning anyone after a couple of decades.
As many have pointed out, blowing $50-$60 a pop just to find out whether a title is good just isn't feasible. This is why many people download "unlicensed evaluation" copies of PC games. The ones that are good, get bought. Yes, really. It'd be interesting to find out how many folks do legitimize their favorite evaluation copies. I bet the anti-evaluation folks would be surprised.
Only problem with opentick is it's been "upgrading its network infrastructure and temporarily cannot accept new users" for the past six months or so.
But it sure looks like a cool service.
If pollution is degrading aroma molecules before pollinators can pick up on them, this is a selective pressure for plants to produce more scent or at least more durable scents. Given that peppered moths have been able to change from light to dark and back to light coloring in less than a century, I'd expect we'd already be seeing (or smelling) stronger-scented flowers.
I know plenty of very sociable people who, like myself, eschew IM, Twitter, texting and their ilk simply because there is no meaningful communication to be had in these media. It's all crap. The very nature of communication via misspelt sentence-fragments practically guarantees that no lucent or cogent transfer of information is possible.
Seems to me that angle isn't quantized. Therefore, the amount of information that one can encode on a single photon is only limited by our ability to encode and decode the angle at which a photon is traveling. Given the ability to measure the angle of a photon down to, oh, something on the order of 10e-34 radians or so, one should have no problem transmitting multiple yottabytes on a single photon.
All that Tse's team did was use the Canadian Light Source synchrotron to characterize the high pressure structures of silane and other hydrides as potential superconducting materials for industrial applications as well as a storage mechanism for hydrogen fuel cells.
No room-temperature superconductor, not even a wire. Just some super-compressed gas that they fired synchrotron radiation at to determine whether the pressurized gas is superconductive. That, too, at a whopping 17 degrees Kelvin. Not anywhere near room temperature.
This is sensational distortion almost on par with the duroquinone crapola the other day that claimed they were making nano-brains, yes, NANO-BRAAINS!
Ain't nobody in this world that sees it as it really is. We all impose distortions of perception, cognition and memory. So what's not to love about supernatural beliefs? If anything, rational minds should go out of their way to date those of an awkward reality, to help correct their mistaken ideas. Besides, couples are all about molding each other into "something better". If you don't date someone who needs some molding, what's the point?
Cats are notorious as reservoirs of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasitic protozoa that infects an estimated one-third of the world's population. This parasite causes behaviorial changes in rats that are infected, damping their fear response to the odor of cats, making Toxoplasma less a parasite for the cat and more of a synergist. In humans, Toxoplasma are thought to influence behavior enough that varying infection rates between cultures is thought to explain cultural differences of character. Perhaps they also have a beneficial side-effect on cardiovascular health, explaining the correlation between cat ownership and this observation?
I can see modified craft like this becoming automated, slow mules for smugglers. Since there is no need for a sail, they can ride low, leaving almost no visible, radar or sonar signature. Just put a generator and some electronics for navigation, and you've got a virtually undetectable smuggle-bot.
This is more newsworthy as an arcane Rube Goldberg method of extracting energy than as anything remotely practical. You could extract more power by implanting braces of dissimilar metals in the mouths of two teens, then forming a battery when they kiss.
To make things clear, an old meme: copyright infringement isn't theft.
To make things clearer, copyright infringement is a form of contingent theft. Theft is any action on inaction that deprives another party their access to or enjoyment of something they would otherwise have had. If your duplication of a copyrighted work causes you to not pay for something you would otherwise have bought, then you have committed theft. If, on the other hand, there is no way in hell you would have purchased that item otherwise, then your action hasn't resulted in any deprivation to the rights-holder.
In the case of the NFL, their income is tied to how many eyeballs their entertainment attracts for advertisers. Unfortunately for them, they can only count particular televisions in particular households tuned to their entertainment as a proxy for eyeball count. So by displacing pollable viewers onto non-polled TV sets, they are being deprived of income they would otherwise have had. That's not to say copyright law gives them the right to successfully prosecute such dilution, merely that the constraints of their market results in a loss for them when this activity occurs, hence their desire to curtail that sort of thing.
Recent observations that time appears to be slowing could in actuality be showing that the computational load required for simulating our region of space-time is increasing, thereby causing events propagated from distant automata to appear to be running faster than what we consider realtime.
Ironically, I actually use my library for their literary content. I say ironically, because I don't actually go there in person. I download eBooks and AudioBooks. I wonder if this foreshadows a broader trend, in which folks seeking content use their virtual library, while folks seeking, uh, other stuff, go to the building. Maybe old library buildings will be converted into a modern equivalent of the Grange Hall?
The selective pressures of the environment are radically altered by presence or absence of daylight. This profound change results in two separate ecosystems. Sleep is a hack to enable survival in both worlds. Those species best adapted to a lit world will find their more restless members get eaten if they don't sit absolutely still at night. And vice-versa. Evolving to be competitive in both worlds is a much taller order. Evolution settles for the first solution that assures reproduction, not the ultimate ideal solution. Because this hack has been around since our microbial days, other architectural features have evolved around it as a given. Removing the need for sleep will require addressing all of these features built up around sleep, not just alertness.
The much-predicted talent shortage arising from the retirement of the baby boomers may, paradoxically, swell the ranks of open-source coders. Open-source folks work for coin of the spirit (which is that same thing wage-slaves work for, ultimately, as they turn their coin of the realm into stuff they like). Anyway, retired folks get itchy for something to do, and no longer need to earn a living. A lot of them will still have viable coding skills, and I expect we'll see a groundswell in open-source development of geezers looking for a rewarding part-time hobbby that will help them keep sharp.
How does one judge the power of technology in warfare? Since the 'product' of war is killing, we can keep score by looking at kill ratios. Look at the numbers. If we examine historical conflicts and compare them with the effectiveness of the coalition invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I think we'll quickly see how lopsided the use of superior technology and training have made things. Iraq had the third-largest standing army in the world, yet the coalition was able to defeat this army in two weeks using a small fraction of the manpower they had. Coalition forces regularly manage 100:1 kill ratios. The notion that availability of off-the-shelf technology makes things more level is unbelievably naïve.
It's a form of Pareto optimization, in which a reallocation of resources is expected to improve the utility for a subgroup without decreasing the utility of others. In this case, users who are not regular Amazon consumers will not have pre-set expectations of service. So fulfilling their orders in a slightly less rushed fashion will not be noticeable to them. By applying the resources freed from servicing new customers to improved service of old customers, the old customers will sense that Amazon just keeps getting better and better for them, further cementing their loyalty.
Amazon wishes to patent this as a form of obstructive competition. (Which seems to be the only use for software and process patents). If they hold a monopoly, nobody else in the commercial optimization space can offer software or business process design that includes this particular expression of Pareto optimization without fear of Amazon's lawyers. It is ugly, but because our government rewards this sort of behavior, it would be against the shareholder's best interests NOT to pursue such patents. Now, if the consuming public provide a massive negative reaction to this behavior, then the shareholders would be rightfully demanding that Amazon and other companies not play the patent game. But we all know how thoughtful most consumers are.
Slashdot Mirror
Because I have several computer models that predict what I should trade to become fabulously wealthy. Excellent!
Although the ending leaves a possible sequel, it seems a whole lot more like a 'whoops - ran out of money' ending.
Folks in our department have local admin on our own PCs, but it's like pulling teeth to get InfoSec to grant it. (I think it requires VP approval for each PC). On the other hand, we are under no circumstances given root to our Linux servers, not even our dev boxes. Not even on virtual machines running Linux. This is a huge PITA. I can't count the times a five-minute change like adding an entry to tnsnames.ora has ended up taking hours or days to complete through the 'create a ticket' method. Even worse than slowing down mundane tasks, it stifles any exploration of alternative tools. Unfortunately, this sort of intangible 'innovation cost' will never show up on any objective cost/benefit analysis.
I find that giving the music-loving part of my brain something to chew on while the logical problem-solving part is busy writing code works great. Not only does it avoid distractions from other sources of sound, it keeps the music-loving part of my brain from also distracting me. It has to be music that won't grab my conscious attention, though. So, as many have posted, it tends to be either IDM or trance or ambient stuff, or it has to be stuff that is so time-worn in my brain that it doesn't catch my attention. I would estimate it at least doubles my coding productivity.
Now, reading, on the other hand, is very much interfered with by music. Somehow the part of my brain that likes music is also tied in with processing language inputs. I suspect that's where the OP's boss gets this notion from. He's probably also afflicted by music messing up his language input processing abilities, and assumes that this translates to distraction while coding.
I tried emailing a suggestion and got: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.1.1 : Recipient address rejected: User unknown in relay recipient table (state 14).
Seems to me if we'd just glassify the waste and spread it out thinly across subduction zones, there'd be no need to worry about warning anyone after a couple of decades.
As many have pointed out, blowing $50-$60 a pop just to find out whether a title is good just isn't feasible. This is why many people download "unlicensed evaluation" copies of PC games. The ones that are good, get bought. Yes, really. It'd be interesting to find out how many folks do legitimize their favorite evaluation copies. I bet the anti-evaluation folks would be surprised.
Only problem with opentick is it's been "upgrading its network infrastructure and temporarily cannot accept new users" for the past six months or so. But it sure looks like a cool service.
If pollution is degrading aroma molecules before pollinators can pick up on them, this is a selective pressure for plants to produce more scent or at least more durable scents. Given that peppered moths have been able to change from light to dark and back to light coloring in less than a century, I'd expect we'd already be seeing (or smelling) stronger-scented flowers.
I know plenty of very sociable people who, like myself, eschew IM, Twitter, texting and their ilk simply because there is no meaningful communication to be had in these media. It's all crap. The very nature of communication via misspelt sentence-fragments practically guarantees that no lucent or cogent transfer of information is possible.
Seems to me that angle isn't quantized. Therefore, the amount of information that one can encode on a single photon is only limited by our ability to encode and decode the angle at which a photon is traveling. Given the ability to measure the angle of a photon down to, oh, something on the order of 10e-34 radians or so, one should have no problem transmitting multiple yottabytes on a single photon.
No room-temperature superconductor, not even a wire. Just some super-compressed gas that they fired synchrotron radiation at to determine whether the pressurized gas is superconductive. That, too, at a whopping 17 degrees Kelvin. Not anywhere near room temperature.
This is sensational distortion almost on par with the duroquinone crapola the other day that claimed they were making nano-brains, yes, NANO-BRAAINS!
Ain't nobody in this world that sees it as it really is. We all impose distortions of perception, cognition and memory. So what's not to love about supernatural beliefs? If anything, rational minds should go out of their way to date those of an awkward reality, to help correct their mistaken ideas. Besides, couples are all about molding each other into "something better". If you don't date someone who needs some molding, what's the point?
Cats are notorious as reservoirs of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasitic protozoa that infects an estimated one-third of the world's population. This parasite causes behaviorial changes in rats that are infected, damping their fear response to the odor of cats, making Toxoplasma less a parasite for the cat and more of a synergist. In humans, Toxoplasma are thought to influence behavior enough that varying infection rates between cultures is thought to explain cultural differences of character. Perhaps they also have a beneficial side-effect on cardiovascular health, explaining the correlation between cat ownership and this observation?
I can see modified craft like this becoming automated, slow mules for smugglers. Since there is no need for a sail, they can ride low, leaving almost no visible, radar or sonar signature. Just put a generator and some electronics for navigation, and you've got a virtually undetectable smuggle-bot.
This is more newsworthy as an arcane Rube Goldberg method of extracting energy than as anything remotely practical. You could extract more power by implanting braces of dissimilar metals in the mouths of two teens, then forming a battery when they kiss.
To make things clearer, copyright infringement is a form of contingent theft. Theft is any action on inaction that deprives another party their access to or enjoyment of something they would otherwise have had. If your duplication of a copyrighted work causes you to not pay for something you would otherwise have bought, then you have committed theft. If, on the other hand, there is no way in hell you would have purchased that item otherwise, then your action hasn't resulted in any deprivation to the rights-holder.
In the case of the NFL, their income is tied to how many eyeballs their entertainment attracts for advertisers. Unfortunately for them, they can only count particular televisions in particular households tuned to their entertainment as a proxy for eyeball count. So by displacing pollable viewers onto non-polled TV sets, they are being deprived of income they would otherwise have had. That's not to say copyright law gives them the right to successfully prosecute such dilution, merely that the constraints of their market results in a loss for them when this activity occurs, hence their desire to curtail that sort of thing.
Last I heard, much of Amazon.com is Perl/Mason.
Recent observations that time appears to be slowing could in actuality be showing that the computational load required for simulating our region of space-time is increasing, thereby causing events propagated from distant automata to appear to be running faster than what we consider realtime.
Ironically, I actually use my library for their literary content. I say ironically, because I don't actually go there in person. I download eBooks and AudioBooks. I wonder if this foreshadows a broader trend, in which folks seeking content use their virtual library, while folks seeking, uh, other stuff, go to the building. Maybe old library buildings will be converted into a modern equivalent of the Grange Hall?
The selective pressures of the environment are radically altered by presence or absence of daylight. This profound change results in two separate ecosystems. Sleep is a hack to enable survival in both worlds. Those species best adapted to a lit world will find their more restless members get eaten if they don't sit absolutely still at night. And vice-versa. Evolving to be competitive in both worlds is a much taller order. Evolution settles for the first solution that assures reproduction, not the ultimate ideal solution. Because this hack has been around since our microbial days, other architectural features have evolved around it as a given. Removing the need for sleep will require addressing all of these features built up around sleep, not just alertness.
The much-predicted talent shortage arising from the retirement of the baby boomers may, paradoxically, swell the ranks of open-source coders. Open-source folks work for coin of the spirit (which is that same thing wage-slaves work for, ultimately, as they turn their coin of the realm into stuff they like). Anyway, retired folks get itchy for something to do, and no longer need to earn a living. A lot of them will still have viable coding skills, and I expect we'll see a groundswell in open-source development of geezers looking for a rewarding part-time hobbby that will help them keep sharp.
How does one judge the power of technology in warfare? Since the 'product' of war is killing, we can keep score by looking at kill ratios. Look at the numbers. If we examine historical conflicts and compare them with the effectiveness of the coalition invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I think we'll quickly see how lopsided the use of superior technology and training have made things. Iraq had the third-largest standing army in the world, yet the coalition was able to defeat this army in two weeks using a small fraction of the manpower they had. Coalition forces regularly manage 100:1 kill ratios. The notion that availability of off-the-shelf technology makes things more level is unbelievably naïve.
Amazon wishes to patent this as a form of obstructive competition. (Which seems to be the only use for software and process patents). If they hold a monopoly, nobody else in the commercial optimization space can offer software or business process design that includes this particular expression of Pareto optimization without fear of Amazon's lawyers. It is ugly, but because our government rewards this sort of behavior, it would be against the shareholder's best interests NOT to pursue such patents. Now, if the consuming public provide a massive negative reaction to this behavior, then the shareholders would be rightfully demanding that Amazon and other companies not play the patent game. But we all know how thoughtful most consumers are.
YOU SPECIFICALLY AGREE THAT THE SOFTWARE MAY DELETE FILES AND CONTENT FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE(S) AND OTHER COMPUTER MEDIA.
Now, they'll say this just pertains to the content you download from them, but the wording is disconcertingly broad, don't you think?