I don't find it odd at all that the honeybee survived a year without sunshine, especially if in the warmer months it got above 40, so the bees could fly about to collect water.
Even tropical species? I'm not aiming this at you particularly, but there seems to be the usual cacophony of Slashdot naysayers, typically missing the point: TFA is talking about tropical species, which are far more susceptible to temperature variation and do not "winter" (some actuall migrate to avoid the cold).
Which just makes it even more bizzare that the author considers Evil Genius (rather than Dungeon Keeper) the "first real-time strategy game whose tag line could have been "Mwahahahahahahahaha!".
If you click on the link labelled "original contract" in that story it takes you to this article from 1997, which says the original deal signed in 1991 was for three films: Toy Story and two more. In 1997 a second deal was signed for 5 films, the first two of which where the last two from the first deal (so A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars). This second deal is the one everyone talks about, and it is this deal that Disney pulled the "sequels don't count" move on. So no urban legend, although most people do assume that Toy Story was part of the five Pixar/Disney films.
That article you cited is misleading in that it says "Disney and Pixar have sealed a deal" which implies a new contract, but it actually talking about the last three movies of the 5 picture deal signed in 1997.
I wish that every software company would put optimization first and features second. This way, we would not have to buy computers every few years. They can potentially last much longer.
Want to explain your logic? It seems to me it'd be a once-off win (as everyone switches to focus on optimization), and then business as usual. Think it through:
You have a computer capable of running the software you have at a level of performance you're happy with.
All you software gets magically optimized, obviously your computer has excess capacity now.
Some new versions of your software come out. These require more resources, even when optimized. But your hardware still performs well because of the excess capacity. This is the once-off win, you don't have to upgrade when you would have before. But then...
The increased requirements of new software exceed the capability of your hardware. You have to upgrade hardware. Now the cycle will repeat at the same rate it did before optimization.
The problem is that optimization gets you a reduction in absolute requirements but it doesn't reduce the rate at which software's requirements increase over time.
As it says on his weblog, they are supposedly rearranging the components on the motherboard and hoping that Microsoft and Sony won't notice.
Not the motherboard, the CPU. "It turns out that what IBM is doing is moving around parts on the CPU to make them look different". Of course the two chips would still have essentially the same performance, instruction sets, and features, so it wouldn't take either Sony or Microsoft long to figure it out. Which indicates to me that this rumor is all rubbish.
Hate to disappoint you, but Antarctica has been cooling for years:
It ain't that simple. The pole seems to have cooled slightly, and most of Antarctica seems to show a statistically insignificant warming trend, but the Antarctic Peninsula is showing warming of about 2.5 degrees over the last 50 years (take a look at the graph on this page). Which is why Antarctic ice shelves been retreating for 30 years.
Let's see: the Sun is at an 8000-year high for solar activity
Did you even read that article? Here's the second paragraph:
Many researchers have tried to link sunspot activity to climate change, but the
new results cannot be used to explain global warming, according to the scientists who did the study.
I'm sure mankind is contributing somehow to this process but why is what seems to be a natural cycle of the earth an inherrently bad thing?
It's inherently a bad thing because of the effect it is going to have on our race. Obviously. We're not talking about a isolated local disaster like a volcanic eruption or a hurricane. We're talking about global change that will make a large proportion of the world's current food producing land untenable, and potentially make a significant number of world cities uninhabitable (if the worst predicted sea level rises are realised). This point is something global warming sceptics seem to struggle with: it doesn't really matter exactly what degree of climate change is natural versus caused by mankind, what matters is what is happening and what we can do about it.
It just limits the number of people that can go to/from the station at any one time to three.
No, it limits the total number of occupants to three. No matter how many additional modules are added, while Soyuz is the "liferaft" only three people can occupy the station. That's a serious limitation.
Just some minor pedantry: DC-X was the name of the 1/3 scale Delta Clipper demostrator. Had the program continued there would have been a DC-Y prototype, and hopefully finally a DC-1 launch vehicle. The Delta Clipper program was aimed to design an unmanned reusable lifter with quick turnaround (the DC-X set a world record turnaround of 26 hours), but it wouldn't have had the cargo capacity of the Space Shuttle (9 tons v 29 tons).
Soyuz works fine for what it does, but it's an artificial limitation on the usefulness of the Station because it limits the number of occupants to three. A replacement for Soyuz is desirable, IMHO.
If you're refering to Linus, he does have experience with G++. I'd also point out that Linus does (deliberately) overstate arguments on LMKL. He may not have said that quote you're reacting to "with a straight face".
The kernel developers have found a number of bugs in GCC over the years. Do you think it's unreasonable to say that G++ is likely to be more buggy than GCC?
Build multiple versions of the iPod photo, each with a different card reader to minimize size impact, but complicating manufacture, inventory, and marketing (40GB/SD, 60GB/xD, 40GB/Memory stick, etc.)
If the card reader part is modular and interchangable this is a very good way to go.
I could fill this up on a backpacking expedition or vacation.
290pics/gig *60 gigs = 17400 jpg
Are you saying you take 17000 photos on your average backpacking expedition or vacation? Over a month (which is quite a long vacation) that's over 500 photos a day. Do you actually have time to do anything?
And please, please tell me you don't subject friends and family to slideshows. At 5 seconds a photo (which would be unbelievably fast for a family slideshow in my experience) it'd take you nearly 24 hours to get through your holiday snaps. Without any breaks!
or deny his past stands and expose the duplicity of his current employer.
I don't see how you're making this jump to hyperspace. Pike's views are his own, not his employers. He might have revealed his own duplicity, hypocracy, or whatever, but his past actions and current views are no reflection on his employer's duplicity or lack thereof.
You're confused. Ravenloft and Spelljammer are pre WotC, and the power-gaming you seem to be complaining about was around well before 3rd edition, infact most of it predates 2nd edition. Was it really necessary or desirable for TSR to publish statistics for gods (Deities and Demigods)? Was there much storytelling potential in the artifacts presented in 1st edition? Or monsters such as the much loved Tarrasque?
From the economic point of view 2nd edition really felt exploitive with the never ending range of class and race specific handbooks. TSR were known for their heavy handed tactics with website owners and small publishers, and indeed anyone they felt was a threat.
After WotC bought TSR things immediately improved. 3rd edition is a much more consistent and intuitive set of rules. The few badly abused rules in 3rd edition (like critical ranges) have been mostly fixed up in 3.5. The Open Gaming License and free availability of the System Reference Documents make WotC at least appear to be much more friendly, fair, and reasonable with their customers than TSR was in the later years. There is also a huge amount more free content available from WotC than TSR ever provided.
They basically did. I get the impression you don't actually play, or you'd know that the type of dice rolled most frequently is the d20. That's why it's called the D20 System. Other dice are used almost exclusively for damage and hitpoints, with the occassional d% thrown in (though very rarely for players). The other dice add variety, but the d20 is by far the most important one.
Slashdot Mirror
That article you cited is misleading in that it says "Disney and Pixar have sealed a deal" which implies a new contract, but it actually talking about the last three movies of the 5 picture deal signed in 1997.
- You have a computer capable of running the software you have at a level of performance you're happy with.
- All you software gets magically optimized, obviously your computer has excess capacity now.
- Some new versions of your software come out. These require more resources, even when optimized. But your hardware still performs well because of the excess capacity. This is the once-off win, you don't have to upgrade when you would have before. But then
...
- The increased requirements of new software exceed the capability of your hardware. You have to upgrade hardware. Now the cycle will repeat at the same rate it did before optimization.
The problem is that optimization gets you a reduction in absolute requirements but it doesn't reduce the rate at which software's requirements increase over time.It could land on it's edge.
WTF are you on about? If you butter one side and then make a Mobius strip it'll have one side, half buttered. Nothing complicated about it.
References:
Soyuz works fine for what it does, but it's an artificial limitation on the usefulness of the Station because it limits the number of occupants to three. A replacement for Soyuz is desirable, IMHO.
most of its bugs are fixed, and they are doing final tests to make sure everything works That's what beta is supposed to mean.
If you're refering to Linus, he does have experience with G++. I'd also point out that Linus does (deliberately) overstate arguments on LMKL. He may not have said that quote you're reacting to "with a straight face".
The kernel developers have found a number of bugs in GCC over the years. Do you think it's unreasonable to say that G++ is likely to be more buggy than GCC?
And please, please tell me you don't subject friends and family to slideshows. At 5 seconds a photo (which would be unbelievably fast for a family slideshow in my experience) it'd take you nearly 24 hours to get through your holiday snaps. Without any breaks!
That's just some journalists opinion/wet dream. Got any actual evidence?
Google hasn't done anything to make me distrust or hate them. Until they have, you're just being paranoid.
From the economic point of view 2nd edition really felt exploitive with the never ending range of class and race specific handbooks. TSR were known for their heavy handed tactics with website owners and small publishers, and indeed anyone they felt was a threat.
After WotC bought TSR things immediately improved. 3rd edition is a much more consistent and intuitive set of rules. The few badly abused rules in 3rd edition (like critical ranges) have been mostly fixed up in 3.5. The Open Gaming License and free availability of the System Reference Documents make WotC at least appear to be much more friendly, fair, and reasonable with their customers than TSR was in the later years. There is also a huge amount more free content available from WotC than TSR ever provided.
They basically did. I get the impression you don't actually play, or you'd know that the type of dice rolled most frequently is the d20. That's why it's called the D20 System. Other dice are used almost exclusively for damage and hitpoints, with the occassional d% thrown in (though very rarely for players). The other dice add variety, but the d20 is by far the most important one.
Oops, sorry, you're right about the login for searches. You can browse some of some books without a login but not always.