...and potential legal problems with imitating money?
Just get a couple of adds... umm.. I mean articles... in the papers about lava bringing up diamonds and gold and oil and iPods to the surface. At the same time take out another series of adds stating you will pay a premium for freshly hand-squeezed lava juice. Follow that up with a series of adds about benefits of fresh lava to sex life and penis size. Finally, take out another batch of adds for books and DVDs about the best ways and locations for lava collecting. Make those over the weekend and sell them for $29.99. Once you get that thin rolling, hire someone else to keep the flow, get all your "data" about the booming "lava market" into a powerpoint presentation and find some investors. Chanel their investments into personal accounts on Cayman Islands, personal bodyguards and campaign donations.
And having used one for the past year, the glare issue is really a red herring. I don't notice it. In fact I find the glossy screens more usable in sunlight conditions since they appear brighter than the matte. I actually find it really hard to believe your statement, "every end user I support hates the things" based on my experience. It's really hard to fathom that anyone who has actually used a glossy display for any serious amount of time wouldn't prefer it to a matte display.
Brave words Mr. Anonymous...
Every user I know hates glossy or has at best learned to cope with it. Its kinda like having a disabled person in the family - you can't just get rid of them or replace them with a new model, you must learn how to live with their disability. So, just as you would start learning sign language if someone in your family was deaf, you pick up some other skills.
You learn to sit away from windows or sources of light, you start wearing darker colors, you learn to precisely tilt the laptop with only your knees while watching video and scenes change rapidly, you gain greater sense of personal appearance from staring at yourself the whole time, you become more aware of your surroundings cause now you can see what is BEHIND you while you work...
While many of those skills would be very useful to a prospective assassin/spy - most common users find it kind of a burden.
The path players take through the missions can vary -- the storyline branches frequently -- but they will end in the same place. The games will run alongside each other; there will not be cliffhanger endings leading from one to another, and each game will focus on a different part of the story.
The games will run alongside each other. No "cliffhanger endings leading from one to another" and "each game focusing on a different PART of the story" (NOT different story) means 1 story and 3 views and paths of the story.
1 ending battle. 3 possible outcomes. Which will in the end come to the same thing - since SCII HAS to have it's Broodwar (or two), right?
Apparently it is supposed to be "smart" regarding politics, but at the same time it can't give a single relevant hit on Mickey Mouse. OK... maybe there is on or two of those somewhere.
But I kinda like the search engine to give me information relevant to my query.
While you are at it, why not compare it to Star Wars movie and it's sequels? Logic is about the same.
Half-Life 1 - 1998 Half-Life 2 - 2004 HL2: Episode One - 2006 HL2: Episode Two - 2007 HL2: Episode Three - they are working on it.
Notice the time between the "expansions"? Its there because episode 2 DID NOT EXIST back when episode 1 came out. And the time-line is sequential. HL1, HL2, Ep1, Ep2...
SCII will have 3 releases at practically the same time - with parallel time-lines. And I could bet that at least one of the missions on each map pack fans will dish out money for, will be the exact same mission they'll have in two other map packs. Only from a different angle.
- Wanna play the "Battle of the burning lollipop fields" as a Zerg after playing it as a Terran? Dish out some more cash. - Wait, but won't me winning the battle as a Zerg change the story? - Naaah... Don't worry, just fork over the cash. Outcome of that battle is dealt with a deus ex machina later.
Starcraft was released, people were happy. Brood War was released, and people didn't whine about Blizzard "ripping them off" because hey, this expansion also had content.
Starcraft II is exactly the same, and yet, people are whining now...? Am I missing something?
SC Starcraft came out and turned out to be a success. People wanted more, Blizzard saw that it was selling, Blizzard made more of SC to sell. With more story, better AI and strategy, tweaks and new units.
SCII Blizzard announces game. People say "Well its about time" and "Give it to us". Blizzard says "Hey! How about instead of 1 disk, we sell you 3 disks instead? We got the idea even before the game was completed. And which we have fluffed-out enough with video and audio so it fits onto 3 discs instead of 1, so that you could buy 3 discs instead of 1."
Its a strategy game. There is no practical reason why all 3 of it's announced campaigns should now be able to fit on a single disk and come out at the same time. Its not like there are months or years of development left once they release the first one. Its a bloody MAP PACK! Multiplayer being "functional from the start" and "games running alongside each other" means no new units or functionality with campaign 2 and 3.
They are making 3 of them JUST SO they could sell 3 of them, 3 times. Plain and simple.
Kuiper is a moderate-size crater with a central peak cluster located at 11 S, 31.5 W on Mercury. It is 60 km in diameter and was named after Gerard Kuiper. Kuiper crater has the highest recorded albedo of any region on the planet's surface, suggesting that it is one of the youngest craters.
As can be seen from the diagram (left), magnetic reversal has occurred fairly chaotically in the last 160 million years. Long-term data suggests that the longest stable period between magnetic "flips" is nearly 40 million years (during the Cretaceous period over 65 million years BC) and the shortest is a few hundred years.
Some 2012 theories suggest that the Earth's geomagnetic reversal is connected to the natural 11-year solar cycle. Again, there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support this claim. No data has ever been produced suggesting a Sun-Earth magnetic polarity change connection.
So, already this doomsday theory falters in that geomagnetic reversal does not occur with "clockwork regularity," and it has no connection with solar dynamics. We are not due a magnetic flip as we cannot predict when the next one is going to occur, magnetic reversals occur at seemingly random points in history.
Well you know what. Back at'cha bub. There is no evidence to support your theories ether. There is no evidence stating geomagnetic reversal *isn't* related to the solar cycle. And there is no evidence stating we are not due for such a reversal.
See graph on the FA.
BTW... just to clarify - something "random" can not have a 11-year cycle. Integer described cycle is NOT RANDOM. Ergo... no connection or even correlation between the 11-year solar cycle and magnetic shifts.
Also... being "due" for something implies prediction. As of yet - we are not able to predict random events. Even ones with 160 million years of previous cases. Just because there is a minuscule chance of me being hit by a meteor right now... OK... nothing happened...
... that does not mean that I am "due" to be hit by a meteor. Or to win a lottery. . . . OK... still not being hit by a meteor...
As far as cask aging, which I saw a few posts on, it has nothing to do with evaporating heavier alcohols (where would they go, and, there's is only one alcohol, ethanol).
The key ingredient in the experiment is caustic soda, which absorbs CO2 in the air. It is added at the top of the machine. About 20 gallons of the chemical were used during the test.
Team members check data results throughout the 20-hour experiment. The scrubber needs to remove more CO2 than it creates (about 20 lbs.) during the test.
Hold on... Does that mean that the device uses 20 gallons of caustic soda, for 20 hours to create or to remove 20 lbs of CO2?
And remove what little there is of Martian atmosphere?
I guess the next step would be to send huge quantities of white paint to Mars. Cause if we are going to make something a dead(er) wasteland - we better make sure it is done by some standards, right? Like.. you know... the Moon.
As a consumer, I don't want to read the 2D barcode. That barcode is in the vendor's interest and will likely be very difficult to correlate with products from competing vendors or to find availablility from multiple sources to price shop. All I need is the UPC. Even that needs some massaging because some stores ask the vendor to put special UPCs on their products.
And info relayed to you by google will most certainly not be in vendor's/manufacturer's interest? Cause... god forbid that google might peddle adds for products and services, right?
All I need is the UPC.
The world needs more. That is why EAN exists.
More room for data (which 2D barcode has) means more opportunity. Manufacturers can keep their "personal interest data" and include the 1D data needed for the "killer app" database. But... if there is such a killer app database out there - "personal interest data" soon becomes useless. Cause who are you going to trust?
Nike, Pepsi and SONY or the magical app by company that does no evil? They still do no evil, right?
What benefit is to be gained from adding 2D capability when so few 2D barcodes exist?
Yeah... What benefit is there to create asphalt covered roads and rubber tires when everyone out there still uses horses?
No... wait... bad analogy. Adding another input to the database costs nothing. Roads and tires cost money.
You can't put dynamic or user content in a 2D code
And you can in a 1D code?
the best you can do is a URL to a site controlled by the manufacturer, which may or may not still exist.
No. You can put up to 2,335 characters in a single data matrix code. You can have the entire 1D code, plus the link to the site, plus the promotional message, plus etc. etc.
And it costs nothing to implement. While at the same time it promotes competition among the manufacturers of the products. Will everyone with a camera phone be able to read that "killer app" database and buy YOUR product cause it is cheaper or better or will only 1% of people with new phones who may or may not be in a market for your product be able to connect to the "killer app's" database?
Slashdot Mirror
To paraphrase J.T. Kirk - "What does a God need with money?"
It has humidifying, oxygen-producing, aroma-emitting, and kinetic functions.
But can it feel love and love you in return?
...and potential legal problems with imitating money?
Just get a couple of adds... umm.. I mean articles... in the papers about lava bringing up diamonds and gold and oil and iPods to the surface.
At the same time take out another series of adds stating you will pay a premium for freshly hand-squeezed lava juice.
Follow that up with a series of adds about benefits of fresh lava to sex life and penis size.
Finally, take out another batch of adds for books and DVDs about the best ways and locations for lava collecting. Make those over the weekend and sell them for $29.99.
Once you get that thin rolling, hire someone else to keep the flow, get all your "data" about the booming "lava market" into a powerpoint presentation and find some investors.
Chanel their investments into personal accounts on Cayman Islands, personal bodyguards and campaign donations.
Oh yeah...
Profit.
And having used one for the past year, the glare issue is really a red herring. I don't notice it. In fact I find the glossy screens more usable in sunlight conditions since they appear brighter than the matte. I actually find it really hard to believe your statement, "every end user I support hates the things" based on my experience. It's really hard to fathom that anyone who has actually used a glossy display for any serious amount of time wouldn't prefer it to a matte display.
Brave words Mr. Anonymous...
Every user I know hates glossy or has at best learned to cope with it.
Its kinda like having a disabled person in the family - you can't just get rid of them or replace them with a new model, you must learn how to live with their disability.
So, just as you would start learning sign language if someone in your family was deaf, you pick up some other skills.
You learn to sit away from windows or sources of light, you start wearing darker colors, you learn to precisely tilt the laptop with only your knees while watching video and scenes change rapidly, you gain greater sense of personal appearance from staring at yourself the whole time, you become more aware of your surroundings cause now you can see what is BEHIND you while you work...
While many of those skills would be very useful to a prospective assassin/spy - most common users find it kind of a burden.
Aaahh... Innocence...
Rhymes well with ignorance and nonsense.
With incense too, but that is from another song.
In my humble opinion, there should be a law that would make linking of The Apple Product Cycle with every single mac/slashvertisement mandatory.
You pay for the SS with "goods harvested" from the concentration camps.
Come on! Its Nazism 101.
The path players take through the missions can vary -- the storyline branches frequently -- but they will end in the same place. The games will run alongside each other; there will not be cliffhanger endings leading from one to another, and each game will focus on a different part of the story.
The games will run alongside each other.
No "cliffhanger endings leading from one to another" and "each game focusing on a different PART of the story" (NOT different story) means 1 story and 3 views and paths of the story.
1 ending battle. 3 possible outcomes.
Which will in the end come to the same thing - since SCII HAS to have it's Broodwar (or two), right?
Apparently it is supposed to be "smart" regarding politics, but at the same time it can't give a single relevant hit on Mickey Mouse.
OK... maybe there is on or two of those somewhere.
But I kinda like the search engine to give me information relevant to my query.
Yup. Rowling made seven books just so that you'd have to buy it seven times.
You know... I actually thought to make a thought out, detailed and argument backed up reply to your post.
Until I saw the above quoted sentence.
Which tells me that you are clearly living in a imaginary, delusional universe of your own, far away from dangers of logical thinking.
While you are at it, why not compare it to Star Wars movie and it's sequels? Logic is about the same.
Half-Life 1 - 1998
Half-Life 2 - 2004
HL2: Episode One - 2006
HL2: Episode Two - 2007
HL2: Episode Three - they are working on it.
Notice the time between the "expansions"? Its there because episode 2 DID NOT EXIST back when episode 1 came out.
And the time-line is sequential. HL1, HL2, Ep1, Ep2...
SCII will have 3 releases at practically the same time - with parallel time-lines.
And I could bet that at least one of the missions on each map pack fans will dish out money for, will be the exact same mission they'll have in two other map packs.
Only from a different angle.
- Wanna play the "Battle of the burning lollipop fields" as a Zerg after playing it as a Terran? Dish out some more cash.
- Wait, but won't me winning the battle as a Zerg change the story?
- Naaah... Don't worry, just fork over the cash. Outcome of that battle is dealt with a deus ex machina later.
SC
Starcraft came out and turned out to be a success.
People wanted more, Blizzard saw that it was selling, Blizzard made more of SC to sell.
With more story, better AI and strategy, tweaks and new units.
SCII
Blizzard announces game.
People say "Well its about time" and "Give it to us".
Blizzard says "Hey! How about instead of 1 disk, we sell you 3 disks instead? We got the idea even before the game was completed. And which we have fluffed-out enough with video and audio so it fits onto 3 discs instead of 1, so that you could buy 3 discs instead of 1."
Its a strategy game.
There is no practical reason why all 3 of it's announced campaigns should now be able to fit on a single disk and come out at the same time.
Its not like there are months or years of development left once they release the first one. Its a bloody MAP PACK!
Multiplayer being "functional from the start" and "games running alongside each other" means no new units or functionality with campaign 2 and 3.
They are making 3 of them JUST SO they could sell 3 of them, 3 times.
Plain and simple.
They could also be giving them away for free.
To third world children.
With their free Blizzard-sponsored OLPC.
And a lollipop.
Chery flavor.
Human faces are not symmetric, and our brains know that even if we don't.
Mirrored faces often seem grotesque. Or at least plastic-robotic.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_(crater_on_Mercury)
For some unexplainable reason - only in Hungary.
... for a more civilized times.
As can be seen from the diagram (left), magnetic reversal has occurred fairly chaotically in the last 160 million years. Long-term data suggests that the longest stable period between magnetic "flips" is nearly 40 million years (during the Cretaceous period over 65 million years BC) and the shortest is a few hundred years.
Some 2012 theories suggest that the Earth's geomagnetic reversal is connected to the natural 11-year solar cycle. Again, there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support this claim. No data has ever been produced suggesting a Sun-Earth magnetic polarity change connection.
So, already this doomsday theory falters in that geomagnetic reversal does not occur with "clockwork regularity," and it has no connection with solar dynamics. We are not due a magnetic flip as we cannot predict when the next one is going to occur, magnetic reversals occur at seemingly random points in history.
Well you know what. Back at'cha bub. There is no evidence to support your theories ether. There is no evidence stating geomagnetic reversal *isn't* related to the solar cycle. And there is no evidence stating we are not due for such a reversal.
See graph on the FA.
BTW... just to clarify - something "random" can not have a 11-year cycle. Integer described cycle is NOT RANDOM.
Ergo... no connection or even correlation between the 11-year solar cycle and magnetic shifts.
Also... being "due" for something implies prediction.
As of yet - we are not able to predict random events. Even ones with 160 million years of previous cases.
Just because there is a minuscule chance of me being hit by a meteor right now...
OK... nothing happened...
... that does not mean that I am "due" to be hit by a meteor.
Or to win a lottery.
.
.
.
OK... still not being hit by a meteor...
As far as cask aging, which I saw a few posts on, it has nothing to do with evaporating heavier alcohols (where would they go, and, there's is only one alcohol, ethanol).
Ever heard of methanol?
My grandfather used to call leaving freshly distilled brandy to "cool off" for some time "venting the stupidity out of the booze".
Methanol evaporates at lower temperature. Venting the brandy for a while makes for less hangovers later on.
All the blah-blah and nobody addressed the question of filters.
Are they magically-electrical or something?
No... They are caustic soda.
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/explores/carbon.html
The key ingredient in the experiment is caustic soda, which absorbs CO2 in the air. It is added at the top of the machine. About 20 gallons of the chemical were used during the test.
Team members check data results throughout the 20-hour experiment. The scrubber needs to remove more CO2 than it creates (about 20 lbs.) during the test.
Hold on...
Does that mean that the device uses 20 gallons of caustic soda, for 20 hours to create or to remove 20 lbs of CO2?
Either way... it ain't JUST 100kW of electricity.
And remove what little there is of Martian atmosphere?
I guess the next step would be to send huge quantities of white paint to Mars.
Cause if we are going to make something a dead(er) wasteland - we better make sure it is done by some standards, right?
Like.. you know... the Moon.
Even that kitten looks threatening today.
Wheres your polar ice cap now, nya?!
Polar ice takes a long time to form - it does not just refreeze in the winter.
We have been chipping at that temperature ballast for a century or two.
Remember you Prison Break season 1? The hookers law?
Once you drill enough holes in something it goes down much easier?
Or in this case, comes up from the depths of ocean to end our civilization.
As a consumer, I don't want to read the 2D barcode. That barcode is in the vendor's interest and will likely be very difficult to correlate with products from competing vendors or to find availablility from multiple sources to price shop. All I need is the UPC. Even that needs some massaging because some stores ask the vendor to put special UPCs on their products.
And info relayed to you by google will most certainly not be in vendor's/manufacturer's interest?
Cause... god forbid that google might peddle adds for products and services, right?
All I need is the UPC.
The world needs more. That is why EAN exists.
More room for data (which 2D barcode has) means more opportunity.
Manufacturers can keep their "personal interest data" and include the 1D data needed for the "killer app" database.
But... if there is such a killer app database out there - "personal interest data" soon becomes useless.
Cause who are you going to trust?
Nike, Pepsi and SONY or the magical app by company that does no evil?
They still do no evil, right?
Yes, there are more than one standard. Again... 1 database input is a folly.
2, 3, 4, 5... 50 inputs... price of implementation is still 0.
As for licensing...
All codes listed here (including data matrix) are either in public domain or free to use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datamatrix#See_also
What benefit is to be gained from adding 2D capability when so few 2D barcodes exist?
Yeah... What benefit is there to create asphalt covered roads and rubber tires when everyone out there still uses horses?
No... wait... bad analogy.
Adding another input to the database costs nothing. Roads and tires cost money.
You can't put dynamic or user content in a 2D code
And you can in a 1D code?
the best you can do is a URL to a site controlled by the manufacturer, which may or may not still exist.
No.
You can put up to 2,335 characters in a single data matrix code.
You can have the entire 1D code, plus the link to the site, plus the promotional message, plus etc. etc.
And it costs nothing to implement. While at the same time it promotes competition among the manufacturers of the products.
Will everyone with a camera phone be able to read that "killer app" database and buy YOUR product cause it is cheaper or better or will only 1% of people with new phones who may or may not be in a market for your product be able to connect to the "killer app's" database?