Just because humans are influencing the system, why is this artificial? We've exerted selection pressure on fish, and they have adapted to fit the pressure. How's this different from any other predator influencing a population?
Yeah, I was assuming CRT. CRT refreshes below 75Hz really bug me. LCD refreshes are quite different than CRT. There's no fade on the individual pixels like there are on phosphors.
And they gave me terrible headaches. Playing Descent in real 3d was pretty durned cool, though. Too bad 15 minutes of play left me hurting pretty badly.
I'm guessing the old ones probably shuttered at 60Hz. I'm doubtful that the 120Hz rate solves the issues. I bet it still looks a bit flickery, because I know I can't look at a 60Hz display without eye strain and headaches. They'll need to hit 150 Hz before it really looks smooth.
Fellow godless here. Not something I openly advertise to certain folks, though. I'm careful specifically because of religious bias in the area I live (Kentucky).
As for legality, you may be correct. I just remembered that Kentucky passed a law in recent years that specifically *allows* religious organizations to discriminate. It all came about because of Camp Quest, a secular/skeptic camp for kids that was started here in Kentucky. More here: http://www.edwinkagin.com/documents/bullittsburg/
Isn't religion a choice? Being a certain skin color is not. I doubt most handicapped persons chose their condition, either.
Being straight or gay is maybe a choice (I'm uncertain whether any genes have been specifically IDed yet.).
There's a big difference between *choosing* a path in life and being born into one. It's perfectly fine to discriminate against people for choices they make. It's not ok to discriminate based on their lot in life.
I'm saying that as a pretty liberal guy, too. I just don't like legislation forcing me to accept some people's choices. If they choose, they can deal with the consequences.
I really, really, really hope a lot of these things are implemented as compiler- or runtime-level features. I understand the purity aspect of implementing features as templates, but it just bloats my code and slows my compile times. A lot of the compile time for my apps is spent regenerating the same template crap over and over, then waiting on the linker to weed out what's duplicated. It takes forever.
If you copy it w/o buying, you *are* committing software piracy. There's no other way to look at it.
If you choose not to buy the game and you don't copy it, you're certainly not a pirate. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone insinuate such a thing.
Most of the data I've seen recently that supports a notion of excessive piracy rates comes from games with servers from which statistics can be gathered (COD4 comes to mind). When there are more X% players than copies sold of a game, I think it's safe to infer a piracy rate of >= X%. (Yeah I know, [citation needed] - I'm just lazy this morning).
If you want to protest a game, don't play it at all. Just because you are opposed to the tactics of the industry (I do sympathize with your point here), you don't have the right to make copies of the software without buying it.
Yup, I had to answer a similar question when I got my mortgage a couple of years ago (in the USA). My wife and I had to sign a statement that said we weren't going to use the house for terrorism or use any of the mortgage funds for terrorism.
The RFID wands cost about $50.($135 patient cost) Sweet sassy mollassy! Talk about your exhorbitant markup... How many businesses outside of medecine get a 170% markup on ther products to end consumers?
1 - Send person to be cloned into a coma. 2 - Prepare clone (rsync brain) 3 - Destroy original 4 - Place clone in location where original was put into a coma (for continuity) 5 - Wake up clone
Bam! It's you.
The only nitpick I see here is if you are a mind/body dualist.
For most of us, the concept of God is unrelated to looking for answers. Just ignore the nutjobs and quit assuming they speak for anyone but themselves. What? God has nothing to do with looking for answers? So your god has no moral dictates? (ie - answers to 'what is right and wrong')
Honestly, from my perspective, any belief in god seems completely irrational, if not just a little bit nutty (schizophrenic, at the least). I really don't see how you it's possible to separate out the nutjobs from any given religious crowd. Unless, by nutjobs, you mean the people who have completely different, unfounded, irrational belief systems than the one you grew up in.
if we're wrong, we learned from it and can better understand the universe because of it. This is the point the grandparent poster completely doesn't get. Science is about creating theories based on experimentation and observation. Once a hypothesis has been proved to predict outcomes consistently, we say "That's got a really good chance of being true." and we run with it. That doesn't mean it's not wrong, and that's just *fine*.
If we learn something new that blows an old theory away, we start with new hypotheses and continue from there. We use it as a learning experience to continue exploring what makes things tick. The anti-science rhetoric of the creationists think this is a flaw, which always confused me. Creationists want everything to start and stop with the idea of god, which isn't even a hypothesis (it's totally untestable!). How a creationist can be happy with such a non-answer as 'god' is astounding to me, personally. The concept of god answers no questions, and encourages us to stop looking for answers.
When I play a Halo game, I see a largely secular Earth fighting against a religious alliance out to wipe out intelligent life in the galaxy. The big bad guys are the prophets named things like 'Truth'. The humans are holding out because they don't want to convert and join The Covenant.
Am I the only one who sees irony in that *churches* are playing this game?
As an unbeliever, I find the irony both rich and oddly disturbing.
I call BS. A *quality* rip to mp3 is going to sound as good as the original to a human.
I've put together a test for a couple of people before and they've never been able to har the difference. Here's what I did:
1 - Get a CD that the person is familiar with. 2 - Rip the CD using error detection & correction 3 - Encode the output with a quality encoder, like LAME (I use alt-preset extreme). 4 - Uncompress the files back to wav. 5 - Burn the original and wav back to cd, with the tracks paired. Each pairing needs to be rancom. An example mapping might be: Original CD Track 1 is now Track 1 & 2 Original CD Track 2 is now Track 3 & 4 etc
Write down the real track ordering yourself (which are original and which have been compressed). Hand the cd to your friend and have them try to figure out which tracks are compressed.
My last friend who ran this test has a hell of a setup. I've heard it before, and it may be the best stereo I've personally heard (Neat Petites mated to a high-end CD player & amp). He was really unable to pick the original. Honestly, I've love to test this out with more people, but I don't know anyone with a higher-end system.
If you want me to send you a few wavs, I'd be happy to help you run a single blind test - just drop me an email. It's pretty easy, and I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.
I write C++ for embedded systems, and I needed a decent heap checker, so I rolled my own. It only took a few hours to write.
Of course, I basically copied the mechanism of tools like efence or DUMA, but I was able to tweak the tool to do exactly what I needed it to do. You may want to try the same approach.
That's because there is no such think as a 'Liberal Christian'. Liberal Christians are no different from conservative bible-thumpers or hardcore muslims. They all believe in things written in a book hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago, and let it guide their life. I'm sorry, but no matter how 'liberal' your beliefs are, if you adhere to any religion, you're part of the problem and not the solution.
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Just because humans are influencing the system, why is this artificial? We've exerted selection pressure on fish, and they have adapted to fit the pressure. How's this different from any other predator influencing a population?
Yeah, I was assuming CRT. CRT refreshes below 75Hz really bug me. LCD refreshes are quite different than CRT. There's no fade on the individual pixels like there are on phosphors.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refresh_rate#Liquid_crystal_displays
And they gave me terrible headaches. Playing Descent in real 3d was pretty durned cool, though. Too bad 15 minutes of play left me hurting pretty badly.
I'm guessing the old ones probably shuttered at 60Hz. I'm doubtful that the 120Hz rate solves the issues. I bet it still looks a bit flickery, because I know I can't look at a 60Hz display without eye strain and headaches. They'll need to hit 150 Hz before it really looks smooth.
Fellow godless here. Not something I openly advertise to certain folks, though. I'm careful specifically because of religious bias in the area I live (Kentucky).
As for legality, you may be correct. I just remembered that Kentucky passed a law in recent years that specifically *allows* religious organizations to discriminate. It all came about because of Camp Quest, a secular/skeptic camp for kids that was started here in Kentucky. More here: http://www.edwinkagin.com/documents/bullittsburg/
Yay Kentucky.
Isn't religion a choice? Being a certain skin color is not. I doubt most handicapped persons chose their condition, either.
Being straight or gay is maybe a choice (I'm uncertain whether any genes have been specifically IDed yet.).
There's a big difference between *choosing* a path in life and being born into one. It's perfectly fine to discriminate against people for choices they make. It's not ok to discriminate based on their lot in life.
I'm saying that as a pretty liberal guy, too. I just don't like legislation forcing me to accept some people's choices. If they choose, they can deal with the consequences.
I really, really, really hope a lot of these things are implemented as compiler- or runtime-level features. I understand the purity aspect of implementing features as templates, but it just bloats my code and slows my compile times. A lot of the compile time for my apps is spent regenerating the same template crap over and over, then waiting on the linker to weed out what's duplicated. It takes forever.
Careful... by bringing up genetic impact on thought patterns, you're starting to flirt with the "do we have free will" question.
I don't want to get into my opinion here, but even the notion that we might not have free will tends to get a lot of people riled up.
If you copy it w/o buying, you *are* committing software piracy. There's no other way to look at it.
If you choose not to buy the game and you don't copy it, you're certainly not a pirate. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone insinuate such a thing.
Most of the data I've seen recently that supports a notion of excessive piracy rates comes from games with servers from which statistics can be gathered (COD4 comes to mind). When there are more X% players than copies sold of a game, I think it's safe to infer a piracy rate of >= X%. (Yeah I know, [citation needed] - I'm just lazy this morning).
preview > me
s/by/my/
That's because, practically speaking, only one person at a time can read the book.
All the borked analogies on /. hurt by brains.
If you want to protest a game, don't play it at all. Just because you are opposed to the tactics of the industry (I do sympathize with your point here), you don't have the right to make copies of the software without buying it.
Yup, I had to answer a similar question when I got my mortgage a couple of years ago (in the USA). My wife and I had to sign a statement that said we weren't going to use the house for terrorism or use any of the mortgage funds for terrorism.
Seriously, who's going to say "Yes"?
So what happens if a gene is found that predisposes one to homosexuality? Will that mean discrimination against gays/lesbians is illegal?
Secondly, will people's heads explode (I'm thinking of a particular Dave Chappelle skit here)?
Totally! I really get pissed off when people don't believe I have a tiny gnome in my cupboard that hides when you look for him.
You can't scientifically disprove that, and people still don't believe. It's astounding close mindedness, and it just pisses me off.
Sure, it can be done.
1 - Send person to be cloned into a coma.
2 - Prepare clone (rsync brain)
3 - Destroy original
4 - Place clone in location where original was put into a coma (for continuity)
5 - Wake up clone
Bam! It's you.
The only nitpick I see here is if you are a mind/body dualist.
Insulting me is a sure-fire way to recruit me to your way of thinking.
Honestly, from my perspective, any belief in god seems completely irrational, if not just a little bit nutty (schizophrenic, at the least). I really don't see how you it's possible to separate out the nutjobs from any given religious crowd. Unless, by nutjobs, you mean the people who have completely different, unfounded, irrational belief systems than the one you grew up in.
If we learn something new that blows an old theory away, we start with new hypotheses and continue from there. We use it as a learning experience to continue exploring what makes things tick. The anti-science rhetoric of the creationists think this is a flaw, which always confused me. Creationists want everything to start and stop with the idea of god, which isn't even a hypothesis (it's totally untestable!). How a creationist can be happy with such a non-answer as 'god' is astounding to me, personally. The concept of god answers no questions, and encourages us to stop looking for answers.
Here you go: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-07-17-rudolph-monday-sentencing_x.htm
When I play a Halo game, I see a largely secular Earth fighting against a religious alliance out to wipe out intelligent life in the galaxy. The big bad guys are the prophets named things like 'Truth'. The humans are holding out because they don't want to convert and join The Covenant.
Am I the only one who sees irony in that *churches* are playing this game?
As an unbeliever, I find the irony both rich and oddly disturbing.
I call BS. A *quality* rip to mp3 is going to sound as good as the original to a human.
I've put together a test for a couple of people before and they've never been able to har the difference. Here's what I did:
1 - Get a CD that the person is familiar with.
2 - Rip the CD using error detection & correction
3 - Encode the output with a quality encoder, like LAME (I use alt-preset extreme).
4 - Uncompress the files back to wav.
5 - Burn the original and wav back to cd, with the tracks paired. Each pairing needs to be rancom. An example mapping might be:
Original CD Track 1 is now Track 1 & 2
Original CD Track 2 is now Track 3 & 4
etc
Write down the real track ordering yourself (which are original and which have been compressed). Hand the cd to your friend and have them try to figure out which tracks are compressed.
My last friend who ran this test has a hell of a setup. I've heard it before, and it may be the best stereo I've personally heard (Neat Petites mated to a high-end CD player & amp). He was really unable to pick the original. Honestly, I've love to test this out with more people, but I don't know anyone with a higher-end system.
If you want me to send you a few wavs, I'd be happy to help you run a single blind test - just drop me an email. It's pretty easy, and I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.
I write C++ for embedded systems, and I needed a decent heap checker, so I rolled my own. It only took a few hours to write.
Of course, I basically copied the mechanism of tools like efence or DUMA, but I was able to tweak the tool to do exactly what I needed it to do. You may want to try the same approach.
-Seth
That's because there is no such think as a 'Liberal Christian'. Liberal Christians are no different from conservative bible-thumpers or hardcore muslims. They all believe in things written in a book hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago, and let it guide their life. I'm sorry, but no matter how 'liberal' your beliefs are, if you adhere to any religion, you're part of the problem and not the solution.
We wouldn't have had to put up with his 'art'? Wow, that would have been awesome.