Computers still are, and probably always will be, a fairly small fraction of electrical consumption. Yeah, data centers are all the way up to 1%... But 1% is 1%. Not a big component... Hell, I'd be more concerned about this - if we replace fossil fuel cars with electric in the next fifty years, electric power used to recharge vehicles will probably become one of the biggest fractions of the total load.
But the result would be the same as doubling the number of power plants available, once this technology (supposing it works as advertised) is installed - you'd suddenly be able to halve the number of running generators.
Figuring out the exact speed of an asteroid, relative to us, is apparently a tad easier than figuring out its exact course. According to the data we have, the possible path of the asteriod is a cone.... the earth is inside that cone currently. Earth takes up about 1/45,000th of that cone, specifically. We know when it will get here, if it does get here, with a good degree of accuracy. And we know what direction it would be coming from. So that rules out it landing in, say, Cuba - it would be coming from the wrong direction to hit there at the time of impact.
It's just not in publishers best interest to let the developers become known. Once people get their names known then they can't treat them like crap anymore. For fear of if the designer jumping ship the public will follow the name over the brand.
Well, there's nothing stopping EA (or any other software house) from drafting the same kind of contract for a game designer than a musician.
The other thing - as far as a music CD goes, you have a lot less people involved than a game (or a movie). A producer, and the band - usually three to five people - compared to the small armies that the typical movie or video game requires. Course, that, perhaps, is why musicians are usually held to such ridiculous licenses...
Even if the demand existed to justify it, nobody currently knows HOW to build it.
Umm... what? You're just wrong here.
Long-distance (100+ miles) electric transmission is quite common throughout the US. Link
In most states, you're rarely more than a hundred miles away from the nearest power plant, of one kind or another. Another link.
Yes, a commercial recharging station on a major interstate would probably need it's own substation. But the paper mills in northeastern NC I drive past on the way to visit my parents every few months have their own substations. The electric load from those is much higher than any electric roadrunner would ever need. It's not a particularly hard problem, or one that hasn't been solved before. It would put more demand on the electric grid, that's true. And if everyone in the US bought an electic car eventually, we'd definetely need to build more power plants.
But it's not lack of a technical innovation,nor a conspiracy, that is preventing that from happening - it's the chicken/egg problem. Few people will buy electric cars before the infrastructure exists, few companies will set up infrastructure while there's few customers.
People in the U.S. have the same chance of being killed by a meteorite as they do of being killed by a terrorist but that sure doesn't stop the fear machine. I wish people wake up, take a look around, start asking some serious questions and then demand answers.
So, wait, you're saying that in the last five years, 3000 some people have been killed by meteorites? That's not right.
Hell, I'm pretty sure if you average deaths from terrorism vs. death from space rocks over the life of the United States, terrorism still wins. I'm not big on the whole paranoia thing, but some times you just have to think before you come up with a comparison.
Oh, are you saying that the chance of an individual person being killed by a meterorite in the US is the same? Well, even assuming that every 50 million years, a big enough asteroid/comet hits to kill everything, that still only averages to 6 deaths a year. So you're still looking at 530 years, just from 9/11 and Oklahoma City. So it's still a bogus statistic.
but don't pretend that there isn't a lot of people taking a free ride, downloading everything and buying nothing.
This totally misses the point.
So let's do a little scenario.
1.) A million third-world nation kids get the much-touted '$100 laptop.'. Hell, we could make it two million.
2.) They all get bittorrent.
3.) They all download every crappy pop, pop R&B, and pop-punk crap you can hear on the radio every day. Let's say 500 songs.
4.)The RIAA claims there's a billion(!) lost sales, at a dollar a piece.
5.)The US bombs Kenya, or Thailand, or whoever.
6.) Okay, 5 was made up. But, seriously...
Do you see the flaw in this? Sure, there may be a shitload of people who never buy the movies and/or music. But if they wouldn't have bought in the first place, you have copyright infrigement without a loss of sales. It's hard to imagine (at least for the RIAA/MPAA), but a lot of infringement is costing them nothing.
Now, how to separate the two... that's a question I'll leave for somebody else. But as far as the RIAA/MPAA claims that 'copyright protection must getz better cause we're loosing all our monies!'... Well, a little statistics should be able to put the claim to rest. (Supposing you can find a truly fair study.)
It's not that, really. It's actually just that a lot of women (who want to have shitloads of children) seem to like being smarter than the guy they're with... so it's a lot easier for them to go for the big dumb type.
As to the criticism of the diversity of the mobs, well they are somewhat constrained by the lore. They cannot invent a bunch of monster types to inhabit the lands.
I'd say that there's actually a pretty good variety of strange creatures in middle-earth. Look at Iron Crown's MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing) - a pen&paper rpg based on Tolkien's world, sorta popular in the early 1990's. There was a fairly decent variety of creatures - most of them were some variety of orc or troll, but there was plenty of odd, random creatures (like random spawn of Ungoliant that were still running about, and smaller dragon-like drakes, and wolves. Oh, god, the wolves.).
The one thing I would say against this game is the timing - it's been too long since the movies to get a pile of tie-in there, and the fact that it's set during the Fellowship of the Ring, and you're running into members of the fellowship... Eh, I dunno. Seems like it'll get old fast.
Course, the fact that that turbine didn't get rights to the books outside of the trilogy...
They'll make it a point to actually put some effort into QA. Course, since this is about games, you would think EA (and a lot of other games publishers) would maybe take some of that advice, too...
5 hours isn't that bad. In FFXII, the similair optional boss has 25,000,000 HP. And you're still limited to 9999 per hit.
He wasn't even that hard, really. I mean, once you've got the right attack pattern set up, it's only running out of stuff that makes you possibly lose.
I'm really not getting what you're saying - yes, there's been 500 major amputations, and 9,500 other permanent injuries that prevent someone from returning to active duty.
Blind in one eye may or may not be a factor. It depends upon the job. The same with deaf in one ear. The same with limping.
Well, that's true - but considering most of the injuries have come from infantry MOS's - any of those injuries is going to be enough to get them an early retirement. (Although I'm not sure about the Army's policy of retraining in a case like that.)
Right - not all medevacs are going to mean amputation. But any amputation will have been medevaced - hence the upper limit of 7000. If I had to guess, not using the 'major amputation' definition that they used to reach the 500 amputee figure, probably fully half of those 7000 are going to have a permanent loss of something, be it a part of a finger, an eye, or a whole limb.
When they approve stuff for military use only, it doesn't have the most glorious history of being perfect. Sure, maybe the anthrax vaccine is perfect protection against that disease, but the side effects...
Yeah, but your own link include some 18,704 who were medevaced due to illnes. I mean, the flu is pretty bad an all, but not too many people of soldiering age lose a limb from it.
Serious chest wound that caused internal organ damage - you might survive, but if your lung capacity is permanently reduced 20%, you're not going to be running about the desert with a pack on.
Ditto for a knee/joint injury - even if they save you leg, if you're limping, you're not going to be staying in the infantry.
Well, the figures for people with amputations aren't readibly available. What you can find, though, is the figures on total casualties. See this link. So we know that (as of Feb 2006), a total of 23,000 troops were wounded in action and survived, of which some 7000 required to be medevaced. (Hence my 7000 figure from the earlier post.) I've looked a bit, but I haven't seen any reports on the final disposition of those casualties - how many of those make full recoveries, how many are amputess, blind, deaf, or end up with medical discharges at some point.
But all that was specificed in the article was "over 500 soldiers" had lost limbs. Now, five hundred & thirty four would be over five hundred. But so would seven thousand.
and if you read the articles, you would see that several of the magazines involved (Feathered Warrior & Gamecock) advertise:
1.)Breeders of fighting cocks & dogs in states where such is illegal
2.)Paraphenelia in states where such is illegal
3.)Events in states where such is illegal
So, yeah, it seems kinda clear that they're advertising & profiting off an illegal activity.
Oh, yeah, and the racism thing? Well, you know, my ancestors made sacrifices of strangers & criminals several times a year to make sure the seasons still changed. So should I be calling you a racist for banning my traditions?
So, here's a question... do convictions of sex-related crimes by minors give them sex offender status once they become adults?
Cause if this 17 year old & 16 year old have to register as sex offenders for the next five years, I would imagine that worse than almost any potential psychological trauma from having your ex-(boy/girl)friend show their friends some nude pictures of you...
Reading the full majority decision, the judge effectively wrote that there's not a reasonable expectation of privacy on any pictures/video/whatever placed on one computer & transferred to another. With no reasonable expectation of privacy, you don't even need a warrant in order to search it.
So it's Florida that leads us to the police state... I woulda guessed California or Boston, at least after the last few months...
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Computers still are, and probably always will be, a fairly small fraction of electrical consumption. Yeah, data centers are all the way up to 1%... But 1% is 1%. Not a big component... Hell, I'd be more concerned about this - if we replace fossil fuel cars with electric in the next fifty years, electric power used to recharge vehicles will probably become one of the biggest fractions of the total load.
But the result would be the same as doubling the number of power plants available, once this technology (supposing it works as advertised) is installed - you'd suddenly be able to halve the number of running generators.
Figuring out the exact speed of an asteroid, relative to us, is apparently a tad easier than figuring out its exact course. According to the data we have, the possible path of the asteriod is a cone.... the earth is inside that cone currently. Earth takes up about 1/45,000th of that cone, specifically. We know when it will get here, if it does get here, with a good degree of accuracy. And we know what direction it would be coming from. So that rules out it landing in, say, Cuba - it would be coming from the wrong direction to hit there at the time of impact.
Well, there's nothing stopping EA (or any other software house) from drafting the same kind of contract for a game designer than a musician.
The other thing - as far as a music CD goes, you have a lot less people involved than a game (or a movie). A producer, and the band - usually three to five people - compared to the small armies that the typical movie or video game requires. Course, that, perhaps, is why musicians are usually held to such ridiculous licenses...
Umm... what? You're just wrong here.
Long-distance (100+ miles) electric transmission is quite common throughout the US. Link
In most states, you're rarely more than a hundred miles away from the nearest power plant, of one kind or another. Another link.
Yes, a commercial recharging station on a major interstate would probably need it's own substation. But the paper mills in northeastern NC I drive past on the way to visit my parents every few months have their own substations. The electric load from those is much higher than any electric roadrunner would ever need. It's not a particularly hard problem, or one that hasn't been solved before. It would put more demand on the electric grid, that's true. And if everyone in the US bought an electic car eventually, we'd definetely need to build more power plants.
But it's not lack of a technical innovation,nor a conspiracy, that is preventing that from happening - it's the chicken/egg problem. Few people will buy electric cars before the infrastructure exists, few companies will set up infrastructure while there's few customers.
Hell, I'm pretty sure if you average deaths from terrorism vs. death from space rocks over the life of the United States, terrorism still wins. I'm not big on the whole paranoia thing, but some times you just have to think before you come up with a comparison.
Oh, are you saying that the chance of an individual person being killed by a meterorite in the US is the same? Well, even assuming that every 50 million years, a big enough asteroid/comet hits to kill everything, that still only averages to 6 deaths a year. So you're still looking at 530 years, just from 9/11 and Oklahoma City. So it's still a bogus statistic.
So let's do a little scenario.
1.) A million third-world nation kids get the much-touted '$100 laptop.'. Hell, we could make it two million.
2.) They all get bittorrent.
3.) They all download every crappy pop, pop R&B, and pop-punk crap you can hear on the radio every day. Let's say 500 songs.
4.)The RIAA claims there's a billion(!) lost sales, at a dollar a piece.
5.)The US bombs Kenya, or Thailand, or whoever.
6.) Okay, 5 was made up. But, seriously...
Do you see the flaw in this? Sure, there may be a shitload of people who never buy the movies and/or music. But if they wouldn't have bought in the first place, you have copyright infrigement without a loss of sales. It's hard to imagine (at least for the RIAA/MPAA), but a lot of infringement is costing them nothing .
Now, how to separate the two... that's a question I'll leave for somebody else. But as far as the RIAA/MPAA claims that 'copyright protection must getz better cause we're loosing all our monies!'... Well, a little statistics should be able to put the claim to rest. (Supposing you can find a truly fair study.)
It's not that, really. It's actually just that a lot of women (who want to have shitloads of children) seem to like being smarter than the guy they're with... so it's a lot easier for them to go for the big dumb type.
So I guess I'm going to try 'Agburanar' and see how long it goes before somebody gets it....
I'd say that there's actually a pretty good variety of strange creatures in middle-earth. Look at Iron Crown's MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing) - a pen&paper rpg based on Tolkien's world, sorta popular in the early 1990's. There was a fairly decent variety of creatures - most of them were some variety of orc or troll, but there was plenty of odd, random creatures (like random spawn of Ungoliant that were still running about, and smaller dragon-like drakes, and wolves. Oh, god, the wolves.).
The one thing I would say against this game is the timing - it's been too long since the movies to get a pile of tie-in there, and the fact that it's set during the Fellowship of the Ring, and you're running into members of the fellowship... Eh, I dunno. Seems like it'll get old fast.
Course, the fact that that turbine didn't get rights to the books outside of the trilogy...
They'll make it a point to actually put some effort into QA. Course, since this is about games, you would think EA (and a lot of other games publishers) would maybe take some of that advice, too...
He wasn't even that hard, really. I mean, once you've got the right attack pattern set up, it's only running out of stuff that makes you possibly lose.
Well, that's true - but considering most of the injuries have come from infantry MOS's - any of those injuries is going to be enough to get them an early retirement. (Although I'm not sure about the Army's policy of retraining in a case like that.)
Right - not all medevacs are going to mean amputation. But any amputation will have been medevaced - hence the upper limit of 7000. If I had to guess, not using the 'major amputation' definition that they used to reach the 500 amputee figure, probably fully half of those 7000 are going to have a permanent loss of something, be it a part of a finger, an eye, or a whole limb.
When they approve stuff for military use only, it doesn't have the most glorious history of being perfect. Sure, maybe the anthrax vaccine is perfect protection against that disease, but the side effects...
Yeah, but your own link include some 18,704 who were medevaced due to illnes. I mean, the flu is pretty bad an all, but not too many people of soldiering age lose a limb from it.
Blind in one eye.
Partially paralyzed.
Serious chest wound that caused internal organ damage - you might survive, but if your lung capacity is permanently reduced 20%, you're not going to be running about the desert with a pack on.
Ditto for a knee/joint injury - even if they save you leg, if you're limping, you're not going to be staying in the infantry.
Well, the figures for people with amputations aren't readibly available. What you can find, though, is the figures on total casualties. See this link. So we know that (as of Feb 2006), a total of 23,000 troops were wounded in action and survived, of which some 7000 required to be medevaced. (Hence my 7000 figure from the earlier post.) I've looked a bit, but I haven't seen any reports on the final disposition of those casualties - how many of those make full recoveries, how many are amputess, blind, deaf, or end up with medical discharges at some point.
But all that was specificed in the article was "over 500 soldiers" had lost limbs. Now, five hundred & thirty four would be over five hundred. But so would seven thousand.
1.)Breeders of fighting cocks & dogs in states where such is illegal
2.)Paraphenelia in states where such is illegal
3.)Events in states where such is illegal
So, yeah, it seems kinda clear that they're advertising & profiting off an illegal activity.
Oh, yeah, and the racism thing? Well, you know, my ancestors made sacrifices of strangers & criminals several times a year to make sure the seasons still changed. So should I be calling you a racist for banning my traditions?
But since you did mention hooters, how about we call them Hooterists, and the owl can be the sacred symbol?
My work here is done.
Oh, yeah, the IRA. Hmm. That's funny, they're still installing more & more cameras, all the time...
Now, give the fat man a cookie. Please?
Cause if this 17 year old & 16 year old have to register as sex offenders for the next five years, I would imagine that worse than almost any potential psychological trauma from having your ex-(boy/girl)friend show their friends some nude pictures of you...
So it's Florida that leads us to the police state... I woulda guessed California or Boston, at least after the last few months...