What about XP? Windows 7? The entire server family of Windows? MS Office in general other than one UI aspect that some people like and others don't like? They make some pretty good software. Sure, they've had some blunders like Bob, Clippy, Me and Vista... but even those provided some insight and innovations that MS could use later on. I expect Windows 8 to be another insight-provider, but it's too early to call.
In spite of RRoD issues, the Xbox and 360 have still been wildly popular... I'd call it a success by most relevant metrics. They tried the Zune... it didn't work as planned, although marketing played a major part in its failure above and beyond any technical failures.
But full-blown laptops are also less portable... you do pay more money for that portability. For some people, it's worth it... much the same reason some people pay more money for a laptop over a desktop with the same specs.
I once knew a kid who, whether through a mental disability or through general weirdness, liked to smear his poop around places in public. I would consider him a greater artist than George Lucas, except for the fact his works could be considered an imitation of Revenge of the Sith.
NASA has a tiny budget compared to military and intelligence, so it's no surprise that gear NASA has to fight to fund can be given away as surplus or obsolete by another agency.
I'm just glad, and a bit surprised, the 'free' telescopes weren't scrapped or left to rust in some military warehouse.
Regardless of the method that caused climate change, the point still stands that Mars could have easily had a very different climate than it does today... so life could have had a similar environmental opportunity on Mars as it had on Earth (although maybe millions of years apart). That life could have then adapted in the same manner as the featured life in Antarctica.
It just said sealed for 2800 years... nothing about being in a warmer climate then. There's any number of things that could have caused it to be unsealed (which is not the same thing is completely open) up until ~2800 years ago. Maybe there was a subsurface channel connecting it to the ocean, maybe there was a chasm leading from the surface, maybe a meteor strike penetrated the cap.
Mars wasn't always a frigid desert. Once it could have been filled with life and liquid water until it drifted further from the sun.
Same goes for moons, but substitute closer to the sun with more geologic activity or greater tidal stresses... either of which could have caused significantly different environments than they have now.
The big problem with lasers is that atmosphere scatters them quite a bit, so while they're great in space combat, they have pretty short range on the ground. The US military has experimented with mounting them on a 747 (or some similar sized jet) with some success, but the power requirements are huge and there's a lot of technical obstacles that still need to be overcome before they're practical for shooting down a lot of rockets.
No, 90% still isn't enough to stop MAD between superpowers, although it might be effective against smaller aggressors (IE: Hamas). If you launch 50 nukes at each city, half of the cities will still be destroyed. 100 nukes at each cities and 90% will be destroyed. That's well within the capabilities of the US and Russia and probably other first-world nuclear powers as well. The sheer number of missiles will still overwhelm any defense. You'd need at least three or four nines effectiveness at a minimum to prevent MAD.
You need to 1) detect the launch 2) determine the trajectory 3) determine the speed 4) determine a few other factors (mass? range? payload? whether it's capable of changing trajectory mid-flight?) 5) calculate where it's going 6) determine if that counts as a populated area 7) fill in any missing variables 8) make a decision 9) direct the defense
How fast could you do this? What if there's a hundred rockets coming in at once? It's not like a dumb bomb that's dropped straight down on a given point.
Miscalculation? Mechanical error in the defense? I imagine the margin of error is relatively significant just because it does all of this on the fly, so the best way to get a quick enough response is to guess at a few things.
Given what it's doing, however, I'd say 90% is pretty damned good.
While Metro is certainly the biggest change between Win7 and Win8, anyone who says it's the whole point either does little more than play Freecell all day or hasn't spent a whole lot of time with Windows 8. I was going to pass it by because many people spouted off about Metro, but I found a few articles talking about the other features of Win 8 and that's what got me to try it. Client Hyper-V is my favorite new thing (at the expense of XP Mode), but the additional multi-monitor support is also very nice for anyone who routinely uses more than two monitors. While both of those have relatively limited target audiences, they're still proof that Metro is not "the whole point" of Win 8.
I install Chrome fine. I launch it and it gives an error that Chrome could not load. I uninstall, reinstall, lather, rinse, repeat in every possible variation. Give up, try again after the next round of updates, no luck. Try again a week later after yet another round of updates and it works fine now.
Blue screens seem to come up mostly from playing older 32bit games (IE: Homeworld, Space Empires IV, a few others), but have also occurred from installing Notepad++ (had to install a slightly older version then update it), having someone print to a printer that was shared when the machine was Win 7 but I had not shared again yet under Win 8, running many different Metro apps and the Windows Store in particular. It could be my configuration, but it's pretty standard hardware and Windows 7 ran fine except for a wireless driver issue (the computer is now wired).
I could reinstall 8 to see if that fixes the issues, but I'm hopeful future updates will save me the hassle.
I think they're referring to the UI formerly called Metro. You can put two apps side-by-side, but most apps don't work well like that and it's a huge pain in the ass to work with more than one app at a time. If you use a desktop, it's more of a traditional feel and I routinely use a dozen apps at a time like that... just no Metro apps.
I upgraded to Windows 8 ($40 for Pro, I needed an OS reinstall anyway... worth trying it, worst case is I put 7 back on). It took two weeks to get Chrome to run. It still bluescreens at random intervals, sometimes several times a day (event log is no help in explaining why). I miss having XP mode (although Client Hyper-V is one of its best features so far). So in the end, I'm sticking with Windows 8 but I'm not going to be recommending it to anyone any time soon other than for tablet use and maybe netbooks.
The biggest design fuck-up in my opinion is that they expanded multi-monitor support, but the Win8 UI is absolutely horrible with multi-tasking (the main purpose of multi-monitor for most people). You can't have Win8 apps on more than one monitor, can't float them in their own little windows, can't launch another one without interfering with the current one. I do like some of the apps, but because I can only use one at a time, and I have to hide it to pull up the Start menu, makes them unusable.
In the end, I had to add a third-party Start menu replacement that's similar to Win7's and give up on using apps altogether. The stability is somewhat expected of a new OS but still disappointing.
Not to say Windows 8 doesn't have some nice features - Client Hyper-V being my favorite - but even that has issues. For one, you can't run the Netflix app if you have Hyper-V installed (this may have been fixed since I last tried). Also, you can't import an XP Mode VM into Hyper-V... although you reportedly can import XP Mode into VMWare or Virtual Box without too much of a problem.
Overall, I can only recommend Windows 8 to people who do no multitasking whatsoever and don't run much more than a browser and email. Congratulations, Microsoft, you've developed the first mainstream OS catering exclusively to elderly grandmothers.
Assuming you're referring to this article in particular, let me define the most important word in the summary. volunteer/välnti()r/ Noun: A person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task. Verb: Freely offer to do something
If you're referring to some possible future event that may or may not happen and is vaguely related to this, then please disregard.
I don't use webkit or IE as my primary browser, but nice try with the Microsoft Shill thing. I'd prefer that no one browser engine dominated the market... it tends to lead to bugs that you can't get away from.
The funny and bizarre part is that this is exactly what Microsoft did for a long, long time. It's only with IE7 they made the first steps towards standardization (thus why so many apps are stuck using IE6) and later versions of IE have made standardization even more of a priority. It's toeing a thin line of hypocrisy and the only thing keeping them from crossing is it the fact that they stopped doing exactly this just a few years ago.
Why, exactly, do we not WANT them to reproduce? There are some genetic traits that affect reproduction as well as other systems that may be desirable to not pass on, but there are plenty of genetic reproduction issues that otherwise have no effect on the person. Why shouldn't they be allowed to pass those on? What about people who can't reproduce because of a surgery, accident, etc completely unrelated to genetics?
We left "natural" evolution a long time ago... many thousands of years. And we forced dogs, cows, chickens and countless other species to do the same when we started selectively breeding them. This is just one more step down the same old road.
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What about XP? Windows 7? The entire server family of Windows? MS Office in general other than one UI aspect that some people like and others don't like? They make some pretty good software. Sure, they've had some blunders like Bob, Clippy, Me and Vista... but even those provided some insight and innovations that MS could use later on. I expect Windows 8 to be another insight-provider, but it's too early to call.
In spite of RRoD issues, the Xbox and 360 have still been wildly popular... I'd call it a success by most relevant metrics. They tried the Zune... it didn't work as planned, although marketing played a major part in its failure above and beyond any technical failures.
But full-blown laptops are also less portable... you do pay more money for that portability. For some people, it's worth it... much the same reason some people pay more money for a laptop over a desktop with the same specs.
I once knew a kid who, whether through a mental disability or through general weirdness, liked to smear his poop around places in public. I would consider him a greater artist than George Lucas, except for the fact his works could be considered an imitation of Revenge of the Sith.
The RIAA will have the money to do that once Napster pays up... and have $3 trillion left over
NASA has a tiny budget compared to military and intelligence, so it's no surprise that gear NASA has to fight to fund can be given away as surplus or obsolete by another agency.
I'm just glad, and a bit surprised, the 'free' telescopes weren't scrapped or left to rust in some military warehouse.
Considering the original didn't have DVD playback over licensing cost concerns, I doubt the lower-end cheaper model will have it either.
Regardless of the method that caused climate change, the point still stands that Mars could have easily had a very different climate than it does today... so life could have had a similar environmental opportunity on Mars as it had on Earth (although maybe millions of years apart). That life could have then adapted in the same manner as the featured life in Antarctica.
It just said sealed for 2800 years... nothing about being in a warmer climate then. There's any number of things that could have caused it to be unsealed (which is not the same thing is completely open) up until ~2800 years ago. Maybe there was a subsurface channel connecting it to the ocean, maybe there was a chasm leading from the surface, maybe a meteor strike penetrated the cap.
Mars wasn't always a frigid desert. Once it could have been filled with life and liquid water until it drifted further from the sun.
Same goes for moons, but substitute closer to the sun with more geologic activity or greater tidal stresses... either of which could have caused significantly different environments than they have now.
That's trademarks, not copyright. Two completely different things.
The big problem with lasers is that atmosphere scatters them quite a bit, so while they're great in space combat, they have pretty short range on the ground. The US military has experimented with mounting them on a 747 (or some similar sized jet) with some success, but the power requirements are huge and there's a lot of technical obstacles that still need to be overcome before they're practical for shooting down a lot of rockets.
I don't know what's scarier... my utter crap math or the fact the real math makes me want to hide under my desk.
What, you mean "import missingvariables" isn't enough?
No, 90% still isn't enough to stop MAD between superpowers, although it might be effective against smaller aggressors (IE: Hamas). If you launch 50 nukes at each city, half of the cities will still be destroyed. 100 nukes at each cities and 90% will be destroyed. That's well within the capabilities of the US and Russia and probably other first-world nuclear powers as well. The sheer number of missiles will still overwhelm any defense. You'd need at least three or four nines effectiveness at a minimum to prevent MAD.
You need to 1) detect the launch 2) determine the trajectory 3) determine the speed 4) determine a few other factors (mass? range? payload? whether it's capable of changing trajectory mid-flight?) 5) calculate where it's going 6) determine if that counts as a populated area 7) fill in any missing variables 8) make a decision 9) direct the defense
How fast could you do this? What if there's a hundred rockets coming in at once? It's not like a dumb bomb that's dropped straight down on a given point.
Miscalculation? Mechanical error in the defense? I imagine the margin of error is relatively significant just because it does all of this on the fly, so the best way to get a quick enough response is to guess at a few things.
Given what it's doing, however, I'd say 90% is pretty damned good.
While Metro is certainly the biggest change between Win7 and Win8, anyone who says it's the whole point either does little more than play Freecell all day or hasn't spent a whole lot of time with Windows 8. I was going to pass it by because many people spouted off about Metro, but I found a few articles talking about the other features of Win 8 and that's what got me to try it. Client Hyper-V is my favorite new thing (at the expense of XP Mode), but the additional multi-monitor support is also very nice for anyone who routinely uses more than two monitors. While both of those have relatively limited target audiences, they're still proof that Metro is not "the whole point" of Win 8.
I install Chrome fine. I launch it and it gives an error that Chrome could not load. I uninstall, reinstall, lather, rinse, repeat in every possible variation. Give up, try again after the next round of updates, no luck. Try again a week later after yet another round of updates and it works fine now.
Blue screens seem to come up mostly from playing older 32bit games (IE: Homeworld, Space Empires IV, a few others), but have also occurred from installing Notepad++ (had to install a slightly older version then update it), having someone print to a printer that was shared when the machine was Win 7 but I had not shared again yet under Win 8, running many different Metro apps and the Windows Store in particular. It could be my configuration, but it's pretty standard hardware and Windows 7 ran fine except for a wireless driver issue (the computer is now wired).
I could reinstall 8 to see if that fixes the issues, but I'm hopeful future updates will save me the hassle.
I think they're referring to the UI formerly called Metro. You can put two apps side-by-side, but most apps don't work well like that and it's a huge pain in the ass to work with more than one app at a time. If you use a desktop, it's more of a traditional feel and I routinely use a dozen apps at a time like that... just no Metro apps.
I upgraded to Windows 8 ($40 for Pro, I needed an OS reinstall anyway... worth trying it, worst case is I put 7 back on). It took two weeks to get Chrome to run. It still bluescreens at random intervals, sometimes several times a day (event log is no help in explaining why). I miss having XP mode (although Client Hyper-V is one of its best features so far). So in the end, I'm sticking with Windows 8 but I'm not going to be recommending it to anyone any time soon other than for tablet use and maybe netbooks.
The biggest design fuck-up in my opinion is that they expanded multi-monitor support, but the Win8 UI is absolutely horrible with multi-tasking (the main purpose of multi-monitor for most people). You can't have Win8 apps on more than one monitor, can't float them in their own little windows, can't launch another one without interfering with the current one. I do like some of the apps, but because I can only use one at a time, and I have to hide it to pull up the Start menu, makes them unusable.
In the end, I had to add a third-party Start menu replacement that's similar to Win7's and give up on using apps altogether. The stability is somewhat expected of a new OS but still disappointing.
Not to say Windows 8 doesn't have some nice features - Client Hyper-V being my favorite - but even that has issues. For one, you can't run the Netflix app if you have Hyper-V installed (this may have been fixed since I last tried). Also, you can't import an XP Mode VM into Hyper-V... although you reportedly can import XP Mode into VMWare or Virtual Box without too much of a problem.
Overall, I can only recommend Windows 8 to people who do no multitasking whatsoever and don't run much more than a browser and email. Congratulations, Microsoft, you've developed the first mainstream OS catering exclusively to elderly grandmothers.
Assuming you're referring to this article in particular, let me define the most important word in the summary.
volunteer/välnti()r/
Noun: A person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task.
Verb: Freely offer to do something
If you're referring to some possible future event that may or may not happen and is vaguely related to this, then please disregard.
I don't use webkit or IE as my primary browser, but nice try with the Microsoft Shill thing. I'd prefer that no one browser engine dominated the market... it tends to lead to bugs that you can't get away from.
Why don't they use Linux for Linux? Why doesn't Ford use GM designs?
Diversity is a good thing. Everything-webkit is nearly as bas as everything-IE
The funny and bizarre part is that this is exactly what Microsoft did for a long, long time. It's only with IE7 they made the first steps towards standardization (thus why so many apps are stuck using IE6) and later versions of IE have made standardization even more of a priority. It's toeing a thin line of hypocrisy and the only thing keeping them from crossing is it the fact that they stopped doing exactly this just a few years ago.
Why, exactly, do we not WANT them to reproduce? There are some genetic traits that affect reproduction as well as other systems that may be desirable to not pass on, but there are plenty of genetic reproduction issues that otherwise have no effect on the person. Why shouldn't they be allowed to pass those on? What about people who can't reproduce because of a surgery, accident, etc completely unrelated to genetics?
We left "natural" evolution a long time ago... many thousands of years. And we forced dogs, cows, chickens and countless other species to do the same when we started selectively breeding them. This is just one more step down the same old road.