An anti-AIDS activist fights to get sex education and AIDS education in schools, get funding for anti-AIDS/HIV medical trials, to make people aware of how the virus is spread and to aid in preventing its spread through safer sex practices and dealing with the issues that put people in positions of making bad decisions that result in the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Environmentalists promote research into alternative fuels, advocate for funding for alternative fuels and for recycling, for promoting sustainable use of resources.
Activits against HIV/AIDS got a LOT done in trying to push and prod the huge governmental beaurocracies in the 80's, streamlining drug trials and pushing for funding to get help to the people who needed it the most... people who were being utterly ignored by big business and the government up until that point.
I think you're just flat our wrong on this one, and that your perspective is one of intense cynicism and of a very narrow view of what activists actually do. It doesn't seem to reflect ANY of my experience with such people. "Preventing" the spread of AIDS is but one small part, and it certainly doesn't have the negative connotations you seem to imbue the word 'prevent' with in your diatribe. Ditto envrionmentalists... preventing the over-fishing or over-use of resources isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing. Sustainable use of resources means they'll be here not just today, but tomorrow, and ten and a hundred years from now. Again, it's a positive, and active thing to do, unlike the implications you're implying with your use of the word 'prevent'.
Most of the 'activists' I know want to incite activity, not prevent it. From AIDS activists to Environmental activists, they want to get people off their apathetic asses and motivate them to do the right thing, instead of continuing to ignore big problems and just letting them get worse.
So I'm not sure I see your point about 'activists'. Either that, or we know very, very different kinds of 'activists'.
When was the last time you paid $19 for a 10 song CD? That's ridiculous.
Most CDs are in the $9.99 to $14.99 area, and usually have between 10 and 20 songs on them.
And on virtually all of the CDs I buy (I have several hundreds), the "radio singles" are generally not my favorite songs on the disc. And in many cases, the whole album has a mood or concept, where all the songs, played in order, add up to more than just listening to randomly shuffled tracks. It's a work of art, not "product".
Of course, a lot of today's music is corporate crap, and very much like product... and there are of course lots of artists with one or two hits, and the rest of the CD is filler or garbage. But that's a general problem with the music industry right now, not anything really special to CDs.
In several of my calculations, the "flat $1.00 per track" thing makes a lot of otherwise good songs not worth it (you mean a 2:30 song is the same price as a 6:50 song??) and makes comparison with full CDs rather meaningless (some 30 second interludes between songs are also priced at $1.00). I've found several of my own CDs that would have cost me significantly more than I paid, if I had downloaded the entire contents at one buck per song.
And on top of it, I get liner notes, album art, lyric sheets, and a physical, tangible hard-copy I can hold in my hands, and use universally... everywhere... no mattter what, for all of time.
There's just no contest for me. CDs are vastly superior to downloaded tracks in all cases EXCEPT one-hit-wonders. And even there, it's questionable.
Far from being dead, it is still the ONLY way I purchase music.
Why?
It's DRM-free. Period. I *own* the disc, and I can listen to it in my CD player at home, or in my CD player in my car. I can do anything I want with the disc, including loaning it to a friend, or giving it away to someone. I can rip songs to my hard disk and load them on my MP3 player.
It's precisely the way I want my music to be.
I don't steal music. I don't download free music. And if I borrow a CD or some tracks from a friend, if I like it, I go buy the CD itself so I OWN it.
I cannot stand the concept that anything I might buy is only compatible with my current player, cannot be played in my car at all, and would have to be re-purchased if my hard disk crashes or I get a new computer. That's just ridiculous, especially since it's essentially the same price as buying a CD (rather than being significantly cheaper).
Screw iTunes, screw Rhapsody, screw Napster, screw it all.
CD is the only way I purchase music, and the day they pump it full of DRM is the day I stop buying even CDs. I will buy downloaded music when they let me OWN the track, transfer it to any player I happen to have, and keep it with me even if I buy a new player, my hard drive crashes, or I buy a new computer. I don't want to *rent* music.
Besides, some of my favorite tracks are usually buried on CDs, rather than the "singles" everyone hears and tries to download. I love buying a cohesive work of art as well... where the collection of songs and even their order, is meaningful. I like getting lyric sheets and liner notes. There simply is no substitute for the CD for me, right now.
Dead? HARDLY. Music downloading is currently nothing more than an unfunny joke on the consumer. Fix all the multitide of problems, issues, compatibility problems, and worse, and MAYBE I'll consider paying for downloadable music. But not before.
The worst game I ever purchased was "Airport Tycoon". Talk about abysmal. The concept had so much promise, but the result was so buggy and unfinsihed and ugly and unplayable, that it's the only game I ever uninstalled completely after less than one day, and then shredded and destroyed rather than taking it back for a refund. The only pleasure I got was destroying that piece of crap game.
Examples of what was wrong: all the graphical colors were muddy earth tones, just ugly. Placing buildings was buggy as hell (many times a building, road, or runway would refuse to be placed, for no apparent reason). Placing things inside the terminal (like ticket counters and security) was pointless... you could pile everything up on top of each other so people couldn't possible reach them, and it didn't matter. All that mattered is that you placed them somewhere. Also, what happened on the screen showed ZERO relationship with what was going on in the game. The game would say that the runway was too crowded, but the display would show an empty runway.
Just horrible all around. There wasn't a single redeeming value.
I was beta testing IE7 and even the last release candidate still had several bugs that were show-stoppers for me.
Tonight I downloaded and installed the final version... and everything seems to be working perfectly. Videos and mp3s play fine, and Outlook Express isn't screwed up, and all the other annoying glitches I experienced all seem to be gone.
I can now officially say that IE7 is vastly superior to IE6, and that anyone who is still using IE6 should upgrade to IE7 as a no-brainer.
I have not once been able to get IE7 to launch a windows media player file (audio MP3 or video WMV) successfully. It launches the Media Player as expected, which then hangs consuming tons of CPU forever, until you actively kill it with Task Manager.
The suggested work-around of disabling the anti-phishing filter doesn't work (and isn't acceptable anyway).
LOTS of people are experiencing this problem. I can't believe they're pushing it out with this serious of an issue. I've provided them logs and such, but they only got them last Thursday, so I doubt there's been any fix (hell, I doubt they've even looked at them yet).
It's completely irresponsible to be pushing it out. Looking at the list of outstanding "large" bugs, and knowing the problems I myself have had with it, it's not yet ready for primetime.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 is unrelated to the Zoo Tycoon series.
If you have kids, RollerCoaster Tycoon is a great game to play. Well worth the money. It's cute, it's funny, it's got lots of great touches, and it's just plain fun. And it's fully 3D, free camera movement, ride the rides, and great graphics (better if you have a good graphics card). The 3D interface isn't defective, IMHO, and in fact has several different modes depending on your preferences.
I've played the original Zoo Tycoon, and I think RCT3 is just a much better game over-all, and infinitely replayable.
I can't speak to your question specifically, because I never played "The Suffering", but I'll say this... I don't think "F.E.A.R." was ever "jump out of your seat" scary, but it was definitely "raising hair on the back of your neck" creepy. Brilliant use of music and sound, as well as visuals and scripted events during game play.
And as for upgrading... hell, I bought a whole new system primarily to play this game (and all the others that have been coming out with large system requirements). The "creepy" factor may have been amped up for me given I played it on a 24" wide-screen at full resolution with AA and everything turned up to the max, thanks to a brand new ATI X1900XT graphics card and 5.1 dolby surround sound;-)
It's just an all-around great game, with great replayability for an FPS, and a great story. I cannot wait for F.E.A.R. 2!
Heh... after compleating "F.E.A.R." the first time (positively the creepest, best game I've ever played), I now play with 'god mode' and full weapons. It IS sort of 'comforting', after a hard and frustrating day at work, to run through blowing things up like crazy. I think F.E.A.R. is the first FPS I've ever played through multiple times.
Yeah, but 80 cores isn't going to help much if every thread blocks on system calls because the OS isn't granular enough. Thread sychronization issues and resource contention issues will be HUGE factors constraining performance in an 80 core system.
The only problem with that claim is that OS/2 was a better windows 3.1 than windows 3.1... meanwhile the rest of the world was moving on to Windows 95 and Win32, and OS/2 didn't or couldn't do anything about that.
I personally don't think any time should be wasted trying to make things work in IE6.
I do however think close attention should be paid to IE7 on two fronts, because very shortly, IE7 is going to be the dominant browser in use:
1) Make a solid effort to make this site work in IE7
2) Report as soon as possible all the problems in IE7 that make supporting this site in IE7 (as opposed to FireFox, Opera, and others) difficult to Microsoft so they can prioritize those fixes for IE7 GA, or at the very least, in a 7.0.1 patch or update in the near future.
And you never thought to satisfy that curiosity by renting the DVDs on NetFlix and seeing if the enthusiasm was maybe actually justified?
It really is a very good show. Don't let rabid fanboys turn you off to a show that's definitly worth your time to watch, or at least to judge for yourself.
Woudln't an object orbiting outside the plane of the ecliptic for a given star be far more likely to be something 'captured' than a fundamental result of the star's creation, acreting out of the same disc of gas?
It seems to me that unless and until we find a system where it's clear a definition invovling the plane of the ecliptic fails, it's likely to be 'good enough' and more importantly clear and clean enough, such that we don't suddenly have to consider that we have two or ten dozen planets in this system.
The barycenter for the Earth-Luna system is inside the earth, yes. But the Moon never falls away from the sun, its orbit about the sun being concave at all points along its path.
It seems to me that latter criteria, rather than the location of the barycenter being within the radius of one of the bodies, should be a more important determining factor.
The Moon, in its orbit around the Sun, never actually falls 'away' from the Sun. So even though the point of orbit between the Earth and the Moon (when looked at in isolation) is inside the Earth, the Moon is actually just orbiting the Sun in tandem with Earth.
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Your perspective is a strange one to me.
An anti-AIDS activist fights to get sex education and AIDS education in schools, get funding for anti-AIDS/HIV medical trials, to make people aware of how the virus is spread and to aid in preventing its spread through safer sex practices and dealing with the issues that put people in positions of making bad decisions that result in the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Environmentalists promote research into alternative fuels, advocate for funding for alternative fuels and for recycling, for promoting sustainable use of resources.
Activits against HIV/AIDS got a LOT done in trying to push and prod the huge governmental beaurocracies in the 80's, streamlining drug trials and pushing for funding to get help to the people who needed it the most... people who were being utterly ignored by big business and the government up until that point.
I think you're just flat our wrong on this one, and that your perspective is one of intense cynicism and of a very narrow view of what activists actually do. It doesn't seem to reflect ANY of my experience with such people. "Preventing" the spread of AIDS is but one small part, and it certainly doesn't have the negative connotations you seem to imbue the word 'prevent' with in your diatribe. Ditto envrionmentalists... preventing the over-fishing or over-use of resources isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing. Sustainable use of resources means they'll be here not just today, but tomorrow, and ten and a hundred years from now. Again, it's a positive, and active thing to do, unlike the implications you're implying with your use of the word 'prevent'.
Most of the 'activists' I know want to incite activity, not prevent it. From AIDS activists to Environmental activists, they want to get people off their apathetic asses and motivate them to do the right thing, instead of continuing to ignore big problems and just letting them get worse.
So I'm not sure I see your point about 'activists'. Either that, or we know very, very different kinds of 'activists'.
Where are you that you think CDs cost $20 per disc?
I buy CDs all the time, and usually pay between $9 and $14 tops.
When was the last time you paid $19 for a 10 song CD? That's ridiculous.
... everywhere ... no mattter what, for all of time.
Most CDs are in the $9.99 to $14.99 area, and usually have between 10 and 20 songs on them.
And on virtually all of the CDs I buy (I have several hundreds), the "radio singles" are generally not my favorite songs on the disc. And in many cases, the whole album has a mood or concept, where all the songs, played in order, add up to more than just listening to randomly shuffled tracks. It's a work of art, not "product".
Of course, a lot of today's music is corporate crap, and very much like product... and there are of course lots of artists with one or two hits, and the rest of the CD is filler or garbage. But that's a general problem with the music industry right now, not anything really special to CDs.
In several of my calculations, the "flat $1.00 per track" thing makes a lot of otherwise good songs not worth it (you mean a 2:30 song is the same price as a 6:50 song??) and makes comparison with full CDs rather meaningless (some 30 second interludes between songs are also priced at $1.00). I've found several of my own CDs that would have cost me significantly more than I paid, if I had downloaded the entire contents at one buck per song.
And on top of it, I get liner notes, album art, lyric sheets, and a physical, tangible hard-copy I can hold in my hands, and use universally
There's just no contest for me. CDs are vastly superior to downloaded tracks in all cases EXCEPT one-hit-wonders. And even there, it's questionable.
Think of it as a "safe, secure backup" for when your computer HD dies. :-)
Far from being dead, it is still the ONLY way I purchase music.
Why?
It's DRM-free. Period. I *own* the disc, and I can listen to it in my CD player at home, or in my CD player in my car. I can do anything I want with the disc, including loaning it to a friend, or giving it away to someone. I can rip songs to my hard disk and load them on my MP3 player.
It's precisely the way I want my music to be.
I don't steal music. I don't download free music. And if I borrow a CD or some tracks from a friend, if I like it, I go buy the CD itself so I OWN it.
I cannot stand the concept that anything I might buy is only compatible with my current player, cannot be played in my car at all, and would have to be re-purchased if my hard disk crashes or I get a new computer. That's just ridiculous, especially since it's essentially the same price as buying a CD (rather than being significantly cheaper).
Screw iTunes, screw Rhapsody, screw Napster, screw it all.
CD is the only way I purchase music, and the day they pump it full of DRM is the day I stop buying even CDs. I will buy downloaded music when they let me OWN the track, transfer it to any player I happen to have, and keep it with me even if I buy a new player, my hard drive crashes, or I buy a new computer. I don't want to *rent* music.
Besides, some of my favorite tracks are usually buried on CDs, rather than the "singles" everyone hears and tries to download. I love buying a cohesive work of art as well... where the collection of songs and even their order, is meaningful. I like getting lyric sheets and liner notes. There simply is no substitute for the CD for me, right now.
Dead? HARDLY. Music downloading is currently nothing more than an unfunny joke on the consumer. Fix all the multitide of problems, issues, compatibility problems, and worse, and MAYBE I'll consider paying for downloadable music. But not before.
The worst game I ever purchased was "Airport Tycoon". Talk about abysmal. The concept had so much promise, but the result was so buggy and unfinsihed and ugly and unplayable, that it's the only game I ever uninstalled completely after less than one day, and then shredded and destroyed rather than taking it back for a refund. The only pleasure I got was destroying that piece of crap game.
Examples of what was wrong: all the graphical colors were muddy earth tones, just ugly. Placing buildings was buggy as hell (many times a building, road, or runway would refuse to be placed, for no apparent reason). Placing things inside the terminal (like ticket counters and security) was pointless... you could pile everything up on top of each other so people couldn't possible reach them, and it didn't matter. All that mattered is that you placed them somewhere. Also, what happened on the screen showed ZERO relationship with what was going on in the game. The game would say that the runway was too crowded, but the display would show an empty runway.
Just horrible all around. There wasn't a single redeeming value.
I was beta testing IE7 and even the last release candidate still had several bugs that were show-stoppers for me.
Tonight I downloaded and installed the final version... and everything seems to be working perfectly. Videos and mp3s play fine, and Outlook Express isn't screwed up, and all the other annoying glitches I experienced all seem to be gone.
I can now officially say that IE7 is vastly superior to IE6, and that anyone who is still using IE6 should upgrade to IE7 as a no-brainer.
IE6 is dead. May it die a sudden and quick death.
Have you tried turning off the anti-phishing filter and seeing if that has an effect for you?
I have not once been able to get IE7 to launch a windows media player file (audio MP3 or video WMV) successfully. It launches the Media Player as expected, which then hangs consuming tons of CPU forever, until you actively kill it with Task Manager.
The suggested work-around of disabling the anti-phishing filter doesn't work (and isn't acceptable anyway).
LOTS of people are experiencing this problem. I can't believe they're pushing it out with this serious of an issue. I've provided them logs and such, but they only got them last Thursday, so I doubt there's been any fix (hell, I doubt they've even looked at them yet).
It's completely irresponsible to be pushing it out. Looking at the list of outstanding "large" bugs, and knowing the problems I myself have had with it, it's not yet ready for primetime.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 is unrelated to the Zoo Tycoon series.
If you have kids, RollerCoaster Tycoon is a great game to play. Well worth the money. It's cute, it's funny, it's got lots of great touches, and it's just plain fun. And it's fully 3D, free camera movement, ride the rides, and great graphics (better if you have a good graphics card). The 3D interface isn't defective, IMHO, and in fact has several different modes depending on your preferences.
I've played the original Zoo Tycoon, and I think RCT3 is just a much better game over-all, and infinitely replayable.
I can't speak to your question specifically, because I never played "The Suffering", but I'll say this... I don't think "F.E.A.R." was ever "jump out of your seat" scary, but it was definitely "raising hair on the back of your neck" creepy. Brilliant use of music and sound, as well as visuals and scripted events during game play.
;-)
And as for upgrading... hell, I bought a whole new system primarily to play this game (and all the others that have been coming out with large system requirements). The "creepy" factor may have been amped up for me given I played it on a 24" wide-screen at full resolution with AA and everything turned up to the max, thanks to a brand new ATI X1900XT graphics card and 5.1 dolby surround sound
It's just an all-around great game, with great replayability for an FPS, and a great story. I cannot wait for F.E.A.R. 2!
Heh... after compleating "F.E.A.R." the first time (positively the creepest, best game I've ever played), I now play with 'god mode' and full weapons. It IS sort of 'comforting', after a hard and frustrating day at work, to run through blowing things up like crazy. I think F.E.A.R. is the first FPS I've ever played through multiple times.
1) "Rise of Nations" (Thrones and Patriots) ... by far.
2) Roller Coaster Tycoon 3
3) F.E.A.R.
4) Quake 3 Arena
5) Black & White 2
Yeah, but 80 cores isn't going to help much if every thread blocks on system calls because the OS isn't granular enough. Thread sychronization issues and resource contention issues will be HUGE factors constraining performance in an 80 core system.
The only problem with that claim is that OS/2 was a better windows 3.1 than windows 3.1 ... meanwhile the rest of the world was moving on to Windows 95 and Win32, and OS/2 didn't or couldn't do anything about that.
Yes. Exactly.
I'd mod that insightful, if it weren't so painfully obviously true.
I personally don't think any time should be wasted trying to make things work in IE6.
I do however think close attention should be paid to IE7 on two fronts, because very shortly, IE7 is going to be the dominant browser in use:
1) Make a solid effort to make this site work in IE7
2) Report as soon as possible all the problems in IE7 that make supporting this site in IE7 (as opposed to FireFox, Opera, and others) difficult to Microsoft so they can prioritize those fixes for IE7 GA, or at the very least, in a 7.0.1 patch or update in the near future.
Considering that I *hate* sports video games like the bundled ones (tennis? bowling? BLEH!) I'd rather spend $200 and buy my own game.
The fact that it includes the game at all is actually a turn-off for me. That's how much I hate those types of games. Seriously.
I understand they're trying to show off the controller with these things, but still. Bleh.
And you never thought to satisfy that curiosity by renting the DVDs on NetFlix and seeing if the enthusiasm was maybe actually justified?
It really is a very good show. Don't let rabid fanboys turn you off to a show that's definitly worth your time to watch, or at least to judge for yourself.
Do we know that?
Woudln't an object orbiting outside the plane of the ecliptic for a given star be far more likely to be something 'captured' than a fundamental result of the star's creation, acreting out of the same disc of gas?
It seems to me that unless and until we find a system where it's clear a definition invovling the plane of the ecliptic fails, it's likely to be 'good enough' and more importantly clear and clean enough, such that we don't suddenly have to consider that we have two or ten dozen planets in this system.
The barycenter for the Earth-Luna system is inside the earth, yes. But the Moon never falls away from the sun, its orbit about the sun being concave at all points along its path.
It seems to me that latter criteria, rather than the location of the barycenter being within the radius of one of the bodies, should be a more important determining factor.
The Moon, in its orbit around the Sun, never actually falls 'away' from the Sun. So even though the point of orbit between the Earth and the Moon (when looked at in isolation) is inside the Earth, the Moon is actually just orbiting the Sun in tandem with Earth.
If Pluto's orbit took it nearer the Sun, say, inside the orbit of Mars for sure, woudln't we call it a "comet"?