As I say to my students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children, it will be an option. To your grandchildren, knowing how to drive a car will be as quaint a concept as knowing how to saddle and ride a horse."
I doubt it. Of your opinions the only one that really is likely is #3 absolute enforcement of existing traffic laws. I'll tell you the two things that will happen then. That'll have lots of effects. One lots of fined/pissed drivers will opt/push/lobby for reduced/changed traffic fines/laws. A $150 fine will become $1.50.
The insurance industry will be mixed. They'll fight against removing/reducing existing traffic laws/fines. They'll want and try to penalize individuals that get all these nitpicky fines. Want and try, but will have mixed results. The last thing that'll happen is that your average driver will driver closer to 98% of what the traffic laws say that the driver should be driving. I'd predict that'll happen far more/faster than AI driving. AI driving will have to come into play with 100% traffic enforcement already in place. (Which may happen in less than twenty years.) What's worse is that traffic laws will change and your average human driver will adapt. Your idealized AI could, but your actual driving AIs won't be able to do it.
The only ones that would use AI drivers are those that are too lazy to learn to drive, too young to drive and let the AI do it, or have been penalized/fined against driving.
I understand why they want to do it this way, but the seperation of responsibility was put there for a reason in TCP waaaaay back in the DARPA days so that if any link goes down you have no data loss. What happens if critical data is being transmitted from a source, and the source gets cut off. The retransmitting router gets hit by a meteor and is trashed. Critical data loss. Am I missing something?
Um, if you only have one retransmitting router, then you'll loose your critical connection to that end point if that router ever went down...
That statement isn't supported by the data either. One really obvious problems with all these studies is that cell phone technologies keep changing, including frequencies, usage patterns, cofactors, and encodings. For example, AMPS at 800 MHz might be harmless, while HSDPA at 2100 MHz might be quite harmful after a decade of usage, yet none of these studies would show that. There are many other statistical effects in such retroactive studies that could hide even a substantial risk.
So, we simply don't know.
I'll take my chances with the cell phone companies changing techs every few years. I guess when cell phone tech has reached it's peak and hasn't changed for two decades then I'll start to worry about its long term use. But since its currently a relatively short term changing factor, I'd say its not that big of a deal.
It's like trying to factor in my increased risks of cancer by encountering a random person that's smoking. It's annoying, but unless you marry or live with said smoker nothing to worry yourself about.
I personally think this is worth losing his position over.
Unless some massive groups drop dead from cell phone caused cancer in the next two weeks, I'd tend to agree with your statement.
Trying to ban cell phones is like trying to ban/censor communication in general. Generally we don't like to be told to be quiet or to shut up and react badly to those that try to tell us to do so. The cell phone companies don't have anything really to worry about until a few more decades; we couldn't get rid of cell phones now even if we wanted to. In the future decades to come, it would be more difficult and annoying to live without a cell phone.
Seriously, how could the SSD manufacturers not know that one of Vista requirements were: Thrash the hard disk for no reason at some random point in time yielding no apparent benefits.
Um, I thought that it would give advantage to those SSD over tradional HDs. Wasn't that the point?
I'm sure anyone in IT can relate to the concept of someone you'd rather not talk to, but have to leave a message for. I have several people like this that I need to work with. Having a conversation with them is like root canal therapy sometimes. Being able to leave them messages and not actually speak to them would definitely lower my daily stress levels.
Call me anti-social, but these people could drive anyone nuts.
What about that one guy across from the office that you don't work with, but his personal habits just drive you up the wall when ever he just attempts to say hi? O.k. Him just saying hi would be a vast improvement. It's more like every time I speak to him he says something like Do you spend all day looking at porn or something else along those lines. I privately hate the guy's guts and would avoid him if at all possible, but he sits in the cube next to me, and I have to pass him to get out of the office door.
Wind in contrast can be handled in smaller, cheaper chunks which will not give you the economy of scale of large thermal plants but it will give you the electricity this decade.
There is a part of me wondering if we'll see 5-10% of our power produced by wind in the next 10 years just because of that reason.
The only way to do it sensibly is to build the panels in orbit. This requires capture of near-Earth asteroids with the right mineral mixture and orbital factory infrastructure. Once you've got the basic infrastructure up there then it's self-sustaining, but the start-up costs are immense.
I thought that we were only waiting for the right nanotech / fully robotic factories for this to happen. We wouldn't mess around with asteroids. We'd use that big mass that we already have in orbit as source material for our massive orbiting solar panel. Once we've converted the entire moon into a solar panel we should have plenty of energy for a few years.
Wouldn't it work better if being batman was like some elite social prize for the super elite rich? You have to pay a billion a year to be batman and be at the top of your game. If you fail for any reason, the next super rich guy that can do it becomes batman. Heck, it could also be some surreal reality TV. Imagine all the batman stuff being recorded, and you'd have to pay a few million to watch views of the current batman... You'd have to test out on known Batman enemies and their weaknesses.
Of course if you really wanted to implement "The Batman Project," it would be simpler to go the entire clone army route and just have 1,000 batmen of various ages in training ready just in case.
souls are a fiat currency - they have value so long as everyone *believes*.
Just like every other currency system. Though that would mean believers souls are worth more than nonbelievers souls. Nonbelievers souls wouldn't have any associated value to them, while believers souls would have some attached a value. Basically non believers would have a zero or null value soul. The only usage of that I could see would be avoiding/attracting entities that collect what they see as valuable souls. Of course there could always be some entity that collects zero or null value souls just to piss them off.
Actually, it's pointless for FPS style games. They'll never use even a GB of that memory effectively because the games are designed around people with 512MB at the high end. The only reason I see to buy this card is maybe there are drivers optimized for professional work where the memory requirements are much higher (3D modelers and the like).
I always thought that FPS was the genre that was really pushing this gotta have a massive video card thing. I couldn't even tell you what my video card is other than nvidia something. I've got 512MB of main memory. The only two games that I really hurt playing on my system are simcity4 and civ4. Both are perfectly playable, but Civ4 crawls way sooner than most civ games. Used to be you'd expect those end game turns to take 15-20 min to complete. Now it's those beginning to mid game turns taking that long.
SimCity4 will load and play. It'll take "awhile" to load though. I've gotten off the entire PC gaming thing lately. Last Christmas my wife got me like 12 PS2 RPGs. I've yet to make it through about half of them.
Go to walmart and see that desktop/laptop that they are selling for about $500. That's what game makers really want to be their base line target audience. Oh, they'll make it where $3500 rigs will make their product really shiny, but when it comes down to it, that'll always be a niche audience. It's those masses of PC owners that the game makers really want to sell to.
The only reason this kind of thing bothers me a bit is that I imagine it's pushing videogames further and further into the world of being 1,000 employee, NASA sized engineering projects. Rather than charming little projects that say, that husband and wife that were Sierra could do on their own and be competitive.
Um, come on games like Jewel Quest will always be more profitable and easier to create than Final Fantasy or heck next Mario game. Look at Tetris and solitaire games at the other big examples.
Anyhow, i generally view 64-bits as a waste of address space, UNLESS you're accessing large amounts of memory (>3GB per program!). This will be more of a concern in the next few years, but there isn't any rush. I use 64-bit Vista for development (Because I have 4GB of RAM) but otherwise probably wouldn't care. Even Visual Studio (the dev platform for 64-bit code) is mostly a 32-bit app, nor should they change it.
You know you've got a good point about 32 bit vs 64 bit apps. I'm more nervous about 32 bit vs 64 bit Windows OS. O.k. you are right unless you've got 4 Gb or more of ram and apps that make use of it, you won't see any magic benefit with 64 bit windows. My worry is that we are on the transition edge of 4Gbs in a standard desktop. O.k. it may take another 5 years, but your plain jane windows computer should be able to use much more than 4 Gb of ram. O.k. 98% of users won't notice or care that their OS is 64 bit and can handle 4Gb of ram. What matters is that it can just in case Duke Nuke'Em Forever gets released and suggests you have 10 Gb of ram to run or youtube home video editor that let's you do real time video editing of all your videos or who knows what neat awesome app that chews through massive amounts of RAM to make pretty shines for their user base. O.k. right now I can't even run the existing shiny games. I only have 512 MB of ram. It doesn't take a genius to see that shortly 1-2 GB and then 4 GB will become min. spec. for those types of apps.
You haven't really thought this through, because once they no longer have an incentive to export jobs they no longer get those jobs (there would be little reason to export jobs!) and they're having an even harder time finding a job. I don't know if you're racist against Indians or Chinese or what, but to deny them jobs because "Americans deserve them" or "they should be American jobs" or "America is the benchmark by which everyone should live!" is only going to result in people elsewhere suffering.
Blinks. Maybe you need to reword that to where it makes sense in English. I won't deny anyone a job. The only "people" that I'd "harm" would be so called US or US State based companies that either at the state or federal level it is said all employees get this standard of living. If the company choses to follow that no problem. If company decides to outsource, no problem as long as the country it is outsourcing to meets that standard of living. Now if the country the company wants to export to isn't meeting whatever our magic current standard of living level is. Then fine the company can out source all it wants, but it's US taxes just went up by 1000% and if the foreign based workers aren't shown to have a US standard of living within say 5 years, then all the company's US based assets get seized and divided among the US shareholders, employees, and government/general public.
What part of that makes me racist? I wouldn't care if they are little green asexual critters from Pluto, our companies doing business there need to make sure that all their employees have our SOL or worry about getting their domestic assets taxed/seized. O.k. You might not want the average Indian or Chinese person to have our SOL, but I do.
We can't control what goes on else where, but we can punish those we see doing behavior we don't like. (It's the basis for all law.) We can't do anything about a company that is mainly based outside of our borders and has no or little trade in our region. Now a company like Walmart has much to loose if it doesn't play our given ball game. Most of it's assets are in this country. I honestly think Walmart going global will do more to increase the global standard of living than any governments actions.
Now what you may have missed, is that it's like a see saw. We want other to be at our SOL. Well we may be able to push "them" else where up to near our SOL, but that may mean our SOL would drop. O.k. ideally the global average SOL would be the same. You could pick me up and drop me off any country and I'd make the same amount of money, and could buy the same stuff without too much hassles other than the being flung across the globe problem.
Our problem is that our SOL may have to change. We don't want that now do we? Everyone resists what they think will be a downward change in their SOL. What's racist about trying to keep our SOL higher than some one else? Remember they are trying to raise their SOL at the same time. Everyone is doing it. It's abnormal not to attempt to raise your family's SOL. The only difference between me and that Chinese, Indian, or African worker is where I'm sitting at. I know and accept that. Do you?
I want "safe mode" to include a video driver that supports 800x600,1024x768, and 1600x1200 at 16 bit color.
Heck, I'd want "safe mode" now to include internet support for downloading drivers and such.
I want a tech logon that doesn't give the tech access to anything other than desktop, start menu, control panel, and what apps get loaded of the users. The best buy tech or random computer tech doesn't need access to Joe Users my documents and his entire family's documents to trouble shoot his computer.
I'd actually like the tech logon to be able to apply default profile setup over an existing user to fix most of those minor users glitches. I want that tech log in logged and the admin user to see a nice readable list of what the tech did/didn't do.
I want this utility http://www.tgrmn.com/ to be be bought and made part of the base system and a defrag service that is trivial to set and forget about.
Seriously, from what I understand. Locating your laptop is a lot easier than recovering it. The police are not likely to get involved. The user is probably not the thief but a buyer, etc.
Um, the police don't like to get involved if there isn't tracking software/hardware in place because then it becomes nearly impossible to actually find said object. Best that they can do is put all the info into NCIC just incase it is found or recovered by any other law enforcement agency. Now, if you had tracking and knew exactly where said object was, as long as the it doesn't cost too much, then they'll be happy to jump through the hoops to recover your stolen object. It doesn't matter if the party that currently has the object was a buyer rather than the actual thief. They are in possession of stolen property and if they don't want to get arrested will return said property and be very helpful in IDing where they got said object.
it may be more difficult for Adeona to gain traction with non-technical law enforcement officers.
Um, LEOs would actually love to have this preinstalled on laptops, desktops, cellphones, game pads, game consoles, and everything else under the sun. All they need is for you to file a police report that X device is stolen. The tricky thing is how easy would it be to make a LEO account so you could log in some where and give Joe Bob Police Officer tracking rights to that cell phone and ipod that were just stolen, but not the LCD tv, pc, and all the other toys.
Trust me, LEO would love for you to have your own tracking software/hardware installed on everything that you own because it makes there job so much easier.
A free market is an unregulated market, with no government subsidies, bailouts, handouts, or funding, where the customers ultimately are responsible for the successes or failures for business based on whether they patronize them.
I think most of us generally term the global market as the free market. The global market includes all those regional governments that are trying to help out their own citizens by under cutting their neighbors and all the different experiments in worker lifestyles. We tend to think that the global market = the free market in that all those regional governments can only really make enforceable rules for their own given regions when you get the regions actually to trade with each other the social difference seem to level out some what.
That social differences leveling out is what we are seeing and not liking over here. We don't want our lifestyle to drop to the Indian/Chinese norm. I'm always mixed about it all. I really wish we'd pass a US labor human rights law that says that every US based company has to ensure that all their employees worldwide have as close to the US standard of living as possible. If we don't like a company moving locations outside, we should not stop them. We should make it clear that they won't be doing any profitable business in that given region again.
If that's your plan, then the zeroth thing you need to do is form a union. This kind of collective bargaining business doesn't work unless there's...a collective. Also, mob ties, to keep the collective in line.
I thought the mob ties were to keep the company management inline so that the collective can make a few more per hour and pay more union dues. What we really need are global unions that a worker at X level anywhere on the globe will make Y salary and benefits and can't be undercut from any other region. I'm looking forward to the day the CEOs of all companies freak when there is a global min. wage and every industry union makes sure that all their workers world wide are in the union and living at the union level life style.
I'm so mixed on this. I think that the papers/media were wrong to invade this individual's privacy over nothing other than rumor/fantasy. So what if the girl put it up on her social networking site? She could also put up how she is dating an alien from a UFO and has been given replicator tech and used it to build her own vacation home. Would you believe it without basic fact checking?
If my kids draw fantasy crap that they want for their next birthday and post it to myspace would the media instantly believe that I'll have real life Barbie fairies and unicorns or a real life Spiderman/Superman/Batman will attend? Come on.
Oh, but if my kids make up a story about how they've been drinking, doing drugs, having sex or being arrested though that'll be instantly believed to be true? If any one was arrested than there should be a police report on it. I know it would be beyond the average/. user to check, but we aren't generally throwing up inaccurate information to be published/viewed by everyone under the sun.
What if the media focused in on any given/. user for their comments about having a wild party last night? (O.k. It wouldn't be the media that focused on that user, but you get the concept.)
Bluray is the better picture (and sound), there is no question, but the difference is incremental, and ultimately pretty minor. Especially when compared with the transition from VHS to DVD. --THAT-- is a transition the average person can tell apart easily, and then you factor in all the extra convenience of the DVD format in terms of form factor and features. DVDs were worth re-buying much of ones collection in, blu-ray? There's maybe a dozen movies I would consider re-purchasing, and even when buying new, I'll take the usually significantly cheaper DVD version 9 times out of 10.
That's the reason why I'm skipping the entire BlueRay generation. My family can live with DVD quality just fine. (Heck we download youtube quality stuff and are happy with it.) BlueRay just doesn't bring enough to be plate to make it worth it for me. Now if a new 400+GB disc format came out, I and others would love it for buying one disc that has the entire series of DVD quality shows on it. O.k. some will want increased picture quality; I'd like to easily fit my entire DVD collection on 2-3 single discs.
On a related note, why is it okay for a country to have nuclear weapons, pursue new nuclear weapons and resist international calls for disarmament when that country is the only one in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons aggressively and has a commander in chief with no regard for international law, let alone the constitutional law of his own country? Why is that okay, but Iraq or now Iran wanting nukes is not?
Because you don't piss off the guy with the heavy weapons when you don't have any. It's one thing to say let's make a global law outlawing 98% of weapons and getting most of the world to follow happily along. You wouldn't get the US or a few others to follow along though. If the US ever had to fight a war with any of those disarmed countries, they'd be easy prey. The predator doesn't want the prey to have claws as well. Enough said. When said predator can enforce his wishes on most of the prey that becomes the standard regardless of what the prey want.
we invaded and occupied a country, have allowed the pubs that did this to remain in office, and it appears that the dems are going to do nothing about it. All in all, it does not speak well of us Americans. I know that many other countries allow their traitors and criminal politicians to get off scot-free. But we are Americans. This is NOT suppose to happen. Sadly, we allowed reagan off with all that he did. Likewise, Clinton for lying (though it was a lie on a question that should never have been asked of him). And now this. Interestingly, pubs and dems made more of a todo about Clinton, than they have about W..
Blinks. Blinks a lot more. I thought that I could be willfully blind. Do you know why most disliked Clinton's lie? It was a moral issue about a sex scandal. No one cared about how Clinton was running the government; they disliked his private life. Even Clinton supporters found it hard to support him on that. The best that they could do is say that it should never have been brought up and such. (Sort of like it's expected of all those high ranking politicians and they don't want to ever face that themselves...)
Now compare that with Bush. He "lied" to get his country into a war that we wanted to fight! Your average US citizen wanted to go to war with a Middle Eastern government. Iraq was the chosen target because the average US citizen vaguely recalls Iraq as the bad guy from that whole Desert Storm/Desert Shield bit. His lie was an excuse that we used because we as a freaking nation wanted to go to war over there. Be truthful. Bush would have been risking impeachment by not going to war in Iraq. Gore would have found himself forced to have a war over there for the same reasons. The lie just makes Bush the fall guy if we really want one. The truth is that the US nation wanted to have a war in Iraq. I can't blame Bush without also blaming the percentage of the country that was pissed over 9/11.
I don't like Saddam at all, but I knew, as did a large portion of Americans who were listening to more than just the US administration, that Iraq did not have WMDs and that an invasion was a bad idea. I had arguments to this effect with many people at the time, but about 2/3 of the nation was in a rabid war frenzy. I'd say about 1/2 still are.
Our nation fucked up -- please stop trying to rewrite history.
I really don't have too much against the entire so called war thing. My big complaint is cost. I'd have preferred us to spend that amount of money in a 5 year plan to make oil products worthless. Oil seems to be their only trade good, make that have a worse social stigma than nuclear, abortion, and cuss words. Heck, have the FCC add oil and gas to their banned dirty word list. Then after spent 5-10 years converting your nation away from all oil fuel and products, then you can happily declare a moral war on countries that produce that obscene resource. Basically equate using/drilling oil to using drugs/using nuclear/killing babies/and torturing puppies.
My other thought was why not just straight out right conquer the region? Ah yes since WWII conquest hasn't be socially acceptable anymore.
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I said we just need to bump down the high school boys' performance a couple notches and we'll be good: no child left behind!
Shouldn't it be "No child out ahead?"
As I say to my students: "You are the last generation that will need to learn to drive. To your children, it will be an option. To your grandchildren, knowing how to drive a car will be as quaint a concept as knowing how to saddle and ride a horse."
I doubt it. Of your opinions the only one that really is likely is #3 absolute enforcement of existing traffic laws. I'll tell you the two things that will happen then. That'll have lots of effects. One lots of fined/pissed drivers will opt/push/lobby for reduced/changed traffic fines/laws. A $150 fine will become $1.50.
The insurance industry will be mixed. They'll fight against removing/reducing existing traffic laws/fines. They'll want and try to penalize individuals that get all these nitpicky fines. Want and try, but will have mixed results. The last thing that'll happen is that your average driver will driver closer to 98% of what the traffic laws say that the driver should be driving. I'd predict that'll happen far more/faster than AI driving. AI driving will have to come into play with 100% traffic enforcement already in place. (Which may happen in less than twenty years.) What's worse is that traffic laws will change and your average human driver will adapt. Your idealized AI could, but your actual driving AIs won't be able to do it.
The only ones that would use AI drivers are those that are too lazy to learn to drive, too young to drive and let the AI do it, or have been penalized/fined against driving.
I understand why they want to do it this way, but the seperation of responsibility was put there for a reason in TCP waaaaay back in the DARPA days so that if any link goes down you have no data loss. What happens if critical data is being transmitted from a source, and the source gets cut off. The retransmitting router gets hit by a meteor and is trashed. Critical data loss. Am I missing something?
Um, if you only have one retransmitting router, then you'll loose your critical connection to that end point if that router ever went down...
That statement isn't supported by the data either. One really obvious problems with all these studies is that cell phone technologies keep changing, including frequencies, usage patterns, cofactors, and encodings. For example, AMPS at 800 MHz might be harmless, while HSDPA at 2100 MHz might be quite harmful after a decade of usage, yet none of these studies would show that. There are many other statistical effects in such retroactive studies that could hide even a substantial risk.
So, we simply don't know.
I'll take my chances with the cell phone companies changing techs every few years. I guess when cell phone tech has reached it's peak and hasn't changed for two decades then I'll start to worry about its long term use. But since its currently a relatively short term changing factor, I'd say its not that big of a deal.
It's like trying to factor in my increased risks of cancer by encountering a random person that's smoking. It's annoying, but unless you marry or live with said smoker nothing to worry yourself about.
I personally think this is worth losing his position over.
Unless some massive groups drop dead from cell phone caused cancer in the next two weeks, I'd tend to agree with your statement.
Trying to ban cell phones is like trying to ban/censor communication in general. Generally we don't like to be told to be quiet or to shut up and react badly to those that try to tell us to do so. The cell phone companies don't have anything really to worry about until a few more decades; we couldn't get rid of cell phones now even if we wanted to. In the future decades to come, it would be more difficult and annoying to live without a cell phone.
Seriously, how could the SSD manufacturers not know that one of Vista requirements were: Thrash the hard disk for no reason at some random point in time yielding no apparent benefits.
Um, I thought that it would give advantage to those SSD over tradional HDs. Wasn't that the point?
I'm sure anyone in IT can relate to the concept of someone you'd rather not talk to, but have to leave a message for. I have several people like this that I need to work with. Having a conversation with them is like root canal therapy sometimes. Being able to leave them messages and not actually speak to them would definitely lower my daily stress levels.
Call me anti-social, but these people could drive anyone nuts.
What about that one guy across from the office that you don't work with, but his personal habits just drive you up the wall when ever he just attempts to say hi? O.k. Him just saying hi would be a vast improvement. It's more like every time I speak to him he says something like Do you spend all day looking at porn or something else along those lines. I privately hate the guy's guts and would avoid him if at all possible, but he sits in the cube next to me, and I have to pass him to get out of the office door.
Wind in contrast can be handled in smaller, cheaper chunks which will not give you the economy of scale of large thermal plants but it will give you the electricity this decade.
There is a part of me wondering if we'll see 5-10% of our power produced by wind in the next 10 years just because of that reason.
The only way to do it sensibly is to build the panels in orbit. This requires capture of near-Earth asteroids with the right mineral mixture and orbital factory infrastructure. Once you've got the basic infrastructure up there then it's self-sustaining, but the start-up costs are immense.
I thought that we were only waiting for the right nanotech / fully robotic factories for this to happen. We wouldn't mess around with asteroids. We'd use that big mass that we already have in orbit as source material for our massive orbiting solar panel. Once we've converted the entire moon into a solar panel we should have plenty of energy for a few years.
Wouldn't it work better if being batman was like some elite social prize for the super elite rich? You have to pay a billion a year to be batman and be at the top of your game. If you fail for any reason, the next super rich guy that can do it becomes batman. Heck, it could also be some surreal reality TV. Imagine all the batman stuff being recorded, and you'd have to pay a few million to watch views of the current batman... You'd have to test out on known Batman enemies and their weaknesses.
Of course if you really wanted to implement "The Batman Project," it would be simpler to go the entire clone army route and just have 1,000 batmen of various ages in training ready just in case.
souls are a fiat currency - they have value so long as everyone *believes*.
Just like every other currency system. Though that would mean believers souls are worth more than nonbelievers souls. Nonbelievers souls wouldn't have any associated value to them, while believers souls would have some attached a value. Basically non believers would have a zero or null value soul. The only usage of that I could see would be avoiding/attracting entities that collect what they see as valuable souls. Of course there could always be some entity that collects zero or null value souls just to piss them off.
Actually, it's pointless for FPS style games. They'll never use even a GB of that memory effectively because the games are designed around people with 512MB at the high end. The only reason I see to buy this card is maybe there are drivers optimized for professional work where the memory requirements are much higher (3D modelers and the like).
I always thought that FPS was the genre that was really pushing this gotta have a massive video card thing. I couldn't even tell you what my video card is other than nvidia something. I've got 512MB of main memory. The only two games that I really hurt playing on my system are simcity4 and civ4. Both are perfectly playable, but Civ4 crawls way sooner than most civ games. Used to be you'd expect those end game turns to take 15-20 min to complete. Now it's those beginning to mid game turns taking that long.
SimCity4 will load and play. It'll take "awhile" to load though. I've gotten off the entire PC gaming thing lately. Last Christmas my wife got me like 12 PS2 RPGs. I've yet to make it through about half of them.
Go to walmart and see that desktop/laptop that they are selling for about $500. That's what game makers really want to be their base line target audience. Oh, they'll make it where $3500 rigs will make their product really shiny, but when it comes down to it, that'll always be a niche audience. It's those masses of PC owners that the game makers really want to sell to.
The only reason this kind of thing bothers me a bit is that I imagine it's pushing videogames further and further into the world of being 1,000 employee, NASA sized engineering projects. Rather than charming little projects that say, that husband and wife that were Sierra could do on their own and be competitive.
Um, come on games like Jewel Quest will always be more profitable and easier to create than Final Fantasy or heck next Mario game. Look at Tetris and solitaire games at the other big examples.
Anyhow, i generally view 64-bits as a waste of address space, UNLESS you're accessing large amounts of memory (>3GB per program!). This will be more of a concern in the next few years, but there isn't any rush. I use 64-bit Vista for development (Because I have 4GB of RAM) but otherwise probably wouldn't care. Even Visual Studio (the dev platform for 64-bit code) is mostly a 32-bit app, nor should they change it.
You know you've got a good point about 32 bit vs 64 bit apps. I'm more nervous about 32 bit vs 64 bit Windows OS. O.k. you are right unless you've got 4 Gb or more of ram and apps that make use of it, you won't see any magic benefit with 64 bit windows. My worry is that we are on the transition edge of 4Gbs in a standard desktop. O.k. it may take another 5 years, but your plain jane windows computer should be able to use much more than 4 Gb of ram. O.k. 98% of users won't notice or care that their OS is 64 bit and can handle 4Gb of ram. What matters is that it can just in case Duke Nuke'Em Forever gets released and suggests you have 10 Gb of ram to run or youtube home video editor that let's you do real time video editing of all your videos or who knows what neat awesome app that chews through massive amounts of RAM to make pretty shines for their user base. O.k. right now I can't even run the existing shiny games. I only have 512 MB of ram. It doesn't take a genius to see that shortly 1-2 GB and then 4 GB will become min. spec. for those types of apps.
You haven't really thought this through, because once they no longer have an incentive to export jobs they no longer get those jobs (there would be little reason to export jobs!) and they're having an even harder time finding a job. I don't know if you're racist against Indians or Chinese or what, but to deny them jobs because "Americans deserve them" or "they should be American jobs" or "America is the benchmark by which everyone should live!" is only going to result in people elsewhere suffering.
Blinks. Maybe you need to reword that to where it makes sense in English. I won't deny anyone a job. The only "people" that I'd "harm" would be so called US or US State based companies that either at the state or federal level it is said all employees get this standard of living. If the company choses to follow that no problem. If company decides to outsource, no problem as long as the country it is outsourcing to meets that standard of living. Now if the country the company wants to export to isn't meeting whatever our magic current standard of living level is. Then fine the company can out source all it wants, but it's US taxes just went up by 1000% and if the foreign based workers aren't shown to have a US standard of living within say 5 years, then all the company's US based assets get seized and divided among the US shareholders, employees, and government/general public.
What part of that makes me racist? I wouldn't care if they are little green asexual critters from Pluto, our companies doing business there need to make sure that all their employees have our SOL or worry about getting their domestic assets taxed/seized. O.k. You might not want the average Indian or Chinese person to have our SOL, but I do.
We can't control what goes on else where, but we can punish those we see doing behavior we don't like. (It's the basis for all law.) We can't do anything about a company that is mainly based outside of our borders and has no or little trade in our region. Now a company like Walmart has much to loose if it doesn't play our given ball game. Most of it's assets are in this country. I honestly think Walmart going global will do more to increase the global standard of living than any governments actions.
Now what you may have missed, is that it's like a see saw. We want other to be at our SOL. Well we may be able to push "them" else where up to near our SOL, but that may mean our SOL would drop. O.k. ideally the global average SOL would be the same. You could pick me up and drop me off any country and I'd make the same amount of money, and could buy the same stuff without too much hassles other than the being flung across the globe problem.
Our problem is that our SOL may have to change. We don't want that now do we? Everyone resists what they think will be a downward change in their SOL. What's racist about trying to keep our SOL higher than some one else? Remember they are trying to raise their SOL at the same time. Everyone is doing it. It's abnormal not to attempt to raise your family's SOL. The only difference between me and that Chinese, Indian, or African worker is where I'm sitting at. I know and accept that. Do you?
I want "safe mode" to include a video driver that supports 800x600,1024x768, and 1600x1200 at 16 bit color.
Heck, I'd want "safe mode" now to include internet support for downloading drivers and such.
I want a tech logon that doesn't give the tech access to anything other than desktop, start menu, control panel, and what apps get loaded of the users. The best buy tech or random computer tech doesn't need access to Joe Users my documents and his entire family's documents to trouble shoot his computer.
I'd actually like the tech logon to be able to apply default profile setup over an existing user to fix most of those minor users glitches. I want that tech log in logged and the admin user to see a nice readable list of what the tech did/didn't do.
I want this utility http://www.tgrmn.com/ to be be bought and made part of the base system and a defrag service that is trivial to set and forget about.
Seriously, from what I understand. Locating your laptop is a lot easier than recovering it.
The police are not likely to get involved. The user is probably not the thief but a buyer, etc.
Um, the police don't like to get involved if there isn't tracking software/hardware in place because then it becomes nearly impossible to actually find said object. Best that they can do is put all the info into NCIC just incase it is found or recovered by any other law enforcement agency. Now, if you had tracking and knew exactly where said object was, as long as the it doesn't cost too much, then they'll be happy to jump through the hoops to recover your stolen object. It doesn't matter if the party that currently has the object was a buyer rather than the actual thief. They are in possession of stolen property and if they don't want to get arrested will return said property and be very helpful in IDing where they got said object.
it may be more difficult for Adeona to gain traction with non-technical law enforcement officers.
Um, LEOs would actually love to have this preinstalled on laptops, desktops, cellphones, game pads, game consoles, and everything else under the sun. All they need is for you to file a police report that X device is stolen. The tricky thing is how easy would it be to make a LEO account so you could log in some where and give Joe Bob Police Officer tracking rights to that cell phone and ipod that were just stolen, but not the LCD tv, pc, and all the other toys.
Trust me, LEO would love for you to have your own tracking software/hardware installed on everything that you own because it makes there job so much easier.
A free market is an unregulated market, with no government subsidies, bailouts, handouts, or funding, where the customers ultimately are responsible for the successes or failures for business based on whether they patronize them.
I think most of us generally term the global market as the free market. The global market includes all those regional governments that are trying to help out their own citizens by under cutting their neighbors and all the different experiments in worker lifestyles. We tend to think that the global market = the free market in that all those regional governments can only really make enforceable rules for their own given regions when you get the regions actually to trade with each other the social difference seem to level out some what.
That social differences leveling out is what we are seeing and not liking over here. We don't want our lifestyle to drop to the Indian/Chinese norm. I'm always mixed about it all. I really wish we'd pass a US labor human rights law that says that every US based company has to ensure that all their employees worldwide have as close to the US standard of living as possible. If we don't like a company moving locations outside, we should not stop them. We should make it clear that they won't be doing any profitable business in that given region again.
If that's your plan, then the zeroth thing you need to do is form a union. This kind of collective bargaining business doesn't work unless there's...a collective. Also, mob ties, to keep the collective in line.
I thought the mob ties were to keep the company management inline so that the collective can make a few more per hour and pay more union dues. What we really need are global unions that a worker at X level anywhere on the globe will make Y salary and benefits and can't be undercut from any other region. I'm looking forward to the day the CEOs of all companies freak when there is a global min. wage and every industry union makes sure that all their workers world wide are in the union and living at the union level life style.
I'm so mixed on this. I think that the papers/media were wrong to invade this individual's privacy over nothing other than rumor/fantasy. So what if the girl put it up on her social networking site? She could also put up how she is dating an alien from a UFO and has been given replicator tech and used it to build her own vacation home. Would you believe it without basic fact checking?
If my kids draw fantasy crap that they want for their next birthday and post it to myspace would the media instantly believe that I'll have real life Barbie fairies and unicorns or a real life Spiderman/Superman/Batman will attend? Come on.
Oh, but if my kids make up a story about how they've been drinking, doing drugs, having sex or being arrested though that'll be instantly believed to be true? If any one was arrested than there should be a police report on it. I know it would be beyond the average /. user to check, but we aren't generally throwing up inaccurate information to be published/viewed by everyone under the sun.
What if the media focused in on any given /. user for their comments about having a wild party last night? (O.k. It wouldn't be the media that focused on that user, but you get the concept.)
Bluray is the better picture (and sound), there is no question, but the difference is incremental, and ultimately pretty minor. Especially when compared with the transition from VHS to DVD. --THAT-- is a transition the average person can tell apart easily, and then you factor in all the extra convenience of the DVD format in terms of form factor and features. DVDs were worth re-buying much of ones collection in, blu-ray? There's maybe a dozen movies I would consider re-purchasing, and even when buying new, I'll take the usually significantly cheaper DVD version 9 times out of 10.
That's the reason why I'm skipping the entire BlueRay generation. My family can live with DVD quality just fine. (Heck we download youtube quality stuff and are happy with it.) BlueRay just doesn't bring enough to be plate to make it worth it for me. Now if a new 400+GB disc format came out, I and others would love it for buying one disc that has the entire series of DVD quality shows on it. O.k. some will want increased picture quality; I'd like to easily fit my entire DVD collection on 2-3 single discs.
On a related note, why is it okay for a country to have nuclear weapons, pursue new nuclear weapons and resist international calls for disarmament when that country is the only one in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons aggressively and has a commander in chief with no regard for international law, let alone the constitutional law of his own country? Why is that okay, but Iraq or now Iran wanting nukes is not?
Because you don't piss off the guy with the heavy weapons when you don't have any. It's one thing to say let's make a global law outlawing 98% of weapons and getting most of the world to follow happily along. You wouldn't get the US or a few others to follow along though. If the US ever had to fight a war with any of those disarmed countries, they'd be easy prey. The predator doesn't want the prey to have claws as well. Enough said. When said predator can enforce his wishes on most of the prey that becomes the standard regardless of what the prey want.
we invaded and occupied a country, have allowed the pubs that did this to remain in office, and it appears that the dems are going to do nothing about it. All in all, it does not speak well of us Americans. I know that many other countries allow their traitors and criminal politicians to get off scot-free. But we are Americans. This is NOT suppose to happen. Sadly, we allowed reagan off with all that he did. Likewise, Clinton for lying (though it was a lie on a question that should never have been asked of him). And now this. Interestingly, pubs and dems made more of a todo about Clinton, than they have about W..
Blinks. Blinks a lot more. I thought that I could be willfully blind. Do you know why most disliked Clinton's lie? It was a moral issue about a sex scandal. No one cared about how Clinton was running the government; they disliked his private life. Even Clinton supporters found it hard to support him on that. The best that they could do is say that it should never have been brought up and such. (Sort of like it's expected of all those high ranking politicians and they don't want to ever face that themselves...)
Now compare that with Bush. He "lied" to get his country into a war that we wanted to fight! Your average US citizen wanted to go to war with a Middle Eastern government. Iraq was the chosen target because the average US citizen vaguely recalls Iraq as the bad guy from that whole Desert Storm/Desert Shield bit. His lie was an excuse that we used because we as a freaking nation wanted to go to war over there. Be truthful. Bush would have been risking impeachment by not going to war in Iraq. Gore would have found himself forced to have a war over there for the same reasons. The lie just makes Bush the fall guy if we really want one. The truth is that the US nation wanted to have a war in Iraq. I can't blame Bush without also blaming the percentage of the country that was pissed over 9/11.
I don't like Saddam at all, but I knew, as did a large portion of Americans who were listening to more than just the US administration, that Iraq did not have WMDs and that an invasion was a bad idea. I had arguments to this effect with many people at the time, but about 2/3 of the nation was in a rabid war frenzy. I'd say about 1/2 still are.
Our nation fucked up -- please stop trying to rewrite history.
I really don't have too much against the entire so called war thing. My big complaint is cost. I'd have preferred us to spend that amount of money in a 5 year plan to make oil products worthless. Oil seems to be their only trade good, make that have a worse social stigma than nuclear, abortion, and cuss words. Heck, have the FCC add oil and gas to their banned dirty word list. Then after spent 5-10 years converting your nation away from all oil fuel and products, then you can happily declare a moral war on countries that produce that obscene resource. Basically equate using/drilling oil to using drugs/using nuclear/killing babies/and torturing puppies.
My other thought was why not just straight out right conquer the region? Ah yes since WWII conquest hasn't be socially acceptable anymore.