You know, I think I agree with you. In fact, if you look at the albums that have done well in the last few years, you'll see one big trend. First, the big numbers of sales for those "compilation" CDs (Now That's What I Call Music). Second, the better complete albums holding near the top for a long time. They may not have the big first and second week numbers, but overall, they tend to do well. Third, lots of flash in the pan acts... those acts that sell 50% of their total sales in the first week or two, then as the public realizes that the album is one track with lots of other crap, word of mouth spreads the news and kills off the album sales.
If anything, the MP3 and other single-track distribution formats have raised the bar on the album format. Could we be heading back toward the old single method of distribution like was popular in the 50s and 60s? Could it be that we'll go back to the ideas of the EP and LP for those artists who have lots of good things? It's an interesting idea, really.
I'd love to see self-made compilation album technology come out. Something where you can order a CD with some tracks on it that I've selected, have it made with some nice liner notes corresponding to each of the songs, and sent or given to me. I wouldn't complain too much about the $18 price if I was able to put together something like this on demand (legally, peoples!), especially if I could get a good number of tracks (12 to 15). That's why the whole iTunes Music Store is appealing to me... But this all just a pipedream, I'm sure. Oh well.
"We strongly believe that when the prices are dramatically reduced on so many titles, we will drive consumers back to stores and significantly bolster music sales," said Universal Music Chief Executive Doug Morris in the release.
------------
[sarcasm] *GASP!* No? Really? Supply and demand works? [/sarcasm]
Too bad some of your audience have decided to kill off a portion of your demand... okay, maybe not too bad.
Wonder what they'll learn in ECON 201 next year?;)
... don't forget that many people with no knowledge of science will take the science in them as truth, especially in contemporarily set movies. Think about a society that thinks that something like "The Core" is a good primer into the structure of the Earth and its magnetic field. Or how about some of the other terrible science sci-fi movies? You know how many people think "Twister" is really what storm chasing is like?
Yes, movies should be entertaining and science generally isn't that entertaining to the common folk. Yes, writers should be able to take minor liberties with some scientific principles (as I have done in some of my fiction writings). But to put things in stories are blatantly incorrect... that's just a disservice to the scientific education of the general populace.
Perhaps it's the way the number rolls off the tongue. Seriously.
What number between ten and one hundred really sounds like a more poetic number than forty-two? Twenty and fifty require a little more tongue-work. Seventy is too long. Ninety and thirty feel clunky. Sixty has the hard 'x' in the middle of it. Of the tens denominations, forty and eighty really roll off the tongue easiest since changing the 't' to more of a 'd' sound is acceptable there.
Then, the ones digits... five and six end with harsh sounds. Seven is too long again, but if you need the extra syllable for poetic effect, it's a nice digit. All the rest are poetically neutral or favorable, especially once you count in rhyming possibilities. But, 'two' rhymes best with 'you' which is, obviously, a very common word. So, it would make sense that forty-two and eighty-two would be relatively common "large" numbers.
*chuckles.* I'm only partially making this up as I go along. If you think about it poetically, there's a nice syllabic structure to the number forty-two, and it does roll off the tongue in a longer piece better than other two-digit numbers. Just try to read the last Carroll passage with some other numbers to hear it for yourself.
In essence, it seems as though they're saying, "If we see the same code in our System V and some other operating system, we own System V and, therefore, by derivative work, we own that code."
In more typical/. terminology: "All your code are belong to us."
Sorry, SCO, but if that's your "legal" position, prepare to get laughed at by almost whatever judge you get.
As for McBride, I think the Linux advocates have finally driven him officially insane. He's now babbling even more incoherently about some conspiracy. Or is that just an accidental Freudian slip that points to a conspiracy in his corner... Microsoft, perhaps... hmmm?
Dang, this whole SCO thing is like a cyber-soap-opera for nerds. I almost feel guilty for following it this closely.
Spin Doctor was one of those classic puzzle/arcade games that really should have taken off like Tetris but, sadly, didn't. It was pure fun and incredibly hard at the upper levels (at least that same "free" version). I think I could probably still beat the game after not having played it in two years, though.
Between Spectre and Bolo, the true multiplayer games for Mac rocked. I played Spectre back in high school on a Mac Classic that I borrowed from my high school. Even the single player mode was incredibly fun... and a joy to play at later levels when you got grenades. *evil laughter*
Bolo is a game that I still play on occasion. My version runs well in Classic emulation. Make four copies of the game, run them at the same time, give three of them some AI, force some alliances, and you got a great time for yourself. Or, attempt to find some actual other players.
Now, how about a quick shout out for the fun little multiplayer game called Minotaur? http://www.bungie.com/products/minotaur /minotaur.h tm The game was just lots of fun back in those days. I still have some of the keys stuck in my head when I play others. "Why do I keep stepping off this item that I'm trying to pick up?!? Oops... forgot... that key moves me diagonally in these games..."
Why did it have to be a reenactment? Couldn't they have scrapped the survival of their actor for realism's sake? They could even add another actor by the name of Pauly Shore, in case the shooting of Fraser's didn't turn out just right. Maybe even Carrottop as a third "actor". Wouldn't that have been better than a measly "reenactment"?;)
I don't necessarily think that there's a "rush," per se. It's just that it's a curiously interesting subject and that a lot of people are interested in it.
Scientists are most happy when we (yes, we) are able to do the research that interests us. Is it really fair to dictate what scientists have to research (outside of subjects that have deeper moral implications)? Where would we be if Einstein was told that he had to study the causes of friction or something like that, instead of letting him explore high energy and relativistic physics? Or any other scientist?
Scientists, like any other person, wants to do a job that makes them happy, and if they can find someone to support them to do it (research grants), they'll jump at the chance. If you really wanted to code games or write up that novel in your head, wouldn't you jump at the chance if it presented itself to you? So, why should the cosmologists not do what interests them, especially if they can make a living off of doing so?
And more importantly, why can't they do it at their own pace? Science's progress, when given freedom, cannot truly be predicted. Some fields can languish in "mediocre progress" for many decades, then suddenly explode in a rush of progress and knowledge. (Look at any history of mathematics book for examples of these... calculus and analytics have had a few periods like this.) Cosmology is no different. They've been free to answer their questions and have suddenly found that they can start answering them quickly now. Is there anything fundamentally wrong with this?
Lastly, about the "expense"... remember that "necessity is the mother of invention". It's a fallacy to believe that the tools the scientists use now would be any cheaper in the future, since many of these tools require machinery and equipment that are often not mass-produced and would probably never BE mass-produced. The nature of scientific tools are that they are often relatively unique and frequently have only moderate to limited use in larger industry. After all, how many industries could use the inner workings of a super-collider's detection unit? Some tools, yes, are mass-produced now and could be cheaper in the future, but I would contend that many wouldn't be. So, if no industry is going to invent these tools since they don't need them, why would they be cheaper in the future than now if the only reason that they are built and invented is because scientists needs to use them for their research? They still will have to be specially-built. Granted, you may get more "features" or cheaper manufacturing... but how many advances in those fields have been spurned, in the first place, by the unique engineering needed to built these instruments? Wouldn't you also lose those advances, or hinder your knowledge of those advances? In other words, it's a bit foolish to believe that "future" scientific tools would "cost more" than current ones.
I would highly doubt it. The figures for the annual heat transport by the atmosphere and oceans is calculated to be in the petawatt range. Even if you could pull out a few hundred terawatts over a year of "waste", that's barely a fraction of a percent change. And a few hundred terawatts is not a negligable amount of power.
*... of the world's smallest violin plays for the ATA.*
Anyone else feel like starting up a telemarketing scam for telemarketers?
"Hello, sir. Are you pissed since people no longer want to hear your sales pitch during their dinners? Would you like to hear about a technology which beats that nasty 'do not call' list? With our new technology, we are able to allow you to get around those laws and continue letting you peddle your crappy interest rate credit cards and stupid health insurance policies without the federal government finding out about it all! Are you interested, sir?"
"What? It sounds like you're eating right now. Well, just think about how surprised your potential clients will be when they have the same thing happen to them. If I can just get your name, address, telephone number, credit card and social security numbers, we can send our informational package to you for the low price of $159.99!"
Like it's not dangerous enough on the roads with the crazy people talking on their cell phones, shaving or putting on makeup, yelling at the kids in the back seats, etc. (often all these at the same time). You can just imagine what could happen.
*A soccer mom with three kids in the backseat is talking on her ultra-new cell phone.* "Yeah, Cindy, you take a left on..." *30-ton SUV drifts to the left lane nearly taking out a person next to her.* "... Killdeer Street, then a right..." *The SUV swerves back into its original lane, just missing the car that is trying to get around her.* "... on Center Court. We're the third house on the left." *Once again, the SUV swerves left, this time, thankfully, missing everyone.* "Yeah, and then-- will you kids shut up and stop..." *The SUV slams on the brakes, nearly causing a five-car pileup behind them. She continues on as if nothing has happened.* "... fighting! Otherwise I'll have to turn this car around..." *The SUV begins turning to the left, moving precariously close to the dividing, concrete median. Once again, since the command is short-lived, it stops just in time.* "... and take us back home! Sorry about that, Cindy. What were we talking about again?"...
Okay, maybe I'm a pessimist. *laughs.*
-Jellisky
Re:Check your password files
on
Inkblot Passwords
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· Score: 3, Funny
Freeverse is one of my all-time favorite shareware companies. Games that work well, play well, can be as addicting as all heck, and often have an odd sense of humor.
Between Ambrosia and Freeverse, most Mac users don't need any other games. Okay, maybe some others, but those are usually enough for many people.
The only thing hydrogen would do in our current situation would be to move pollution from your car to a power plant.
--------
Close, but there is another benefit to hydrogen that many people don't remember. There's lots of ways of producing the hydrogen needed for the cycle. Consider that a secondary problem, though. Fossil fuels are far from unlimited. The hydrogen fuel, though, excluding small leakages out of the atmosphere, is nearly limitless. Supply worries are nearly eliminated, once a stable production system can be put into place.
Granted, the proper production system is not in place yet. But as some other technologies (solar cells, wind turbines) that are less polluting improve, we would be able to move to those technologies for hydrogen production WITHOUT giving up the things that run off the hydrogen. Instead of replacing the whole system, you now only have to rework one part of it.
It's a very powerful idea when you stop and think about it. Right now, your statement is probably right. But, think about the consequences a little further down the road. THAT'S why hydrogen power is so attractive.
SCO claimed today that they own the copyrights and other intellectual property to the bubble sort technique, the use of the variables I, J, and K in incremental loops, and some text output routines.
"Programs all over the world are using this code from our UnixWare package," SCO lackey Bob Fishey said today after the conference call. "We're not sure how we're going to handle this, but if you ever took a programming class in your life, you might want to talk to your lawyer to make sure that you understand IP laws."
When pointed out that all the 'offending' code was commonplace in many programming textbooks, Fishey replied, "If you could give me authors and publishers, that would be appreciated. We are not happy about this blatant violation of our intellectual property and hope to stop it at its source."
Fishey also mentioned that they were not above calling other software vendors into their lawsuits. "The use of our sort techniques, almost letter for letter, without getting a license from us is wrong."
*chuckles.* Oops... so I did. *looks back at his calculator.* 200 != 2000.
Thanks for the picking up of that mistake. I'm normally more careful about that. Let this be a lesson to all kids: make sure that you typed the right numbers in your calculator before writing down your answer! After all, the axiom is "Garbage In, Garbage Out!"
Thanks again. My point still stands.
-Jellisky
Re:Not inteded to be a callus question
on
Surviving Tornadoes
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· Score: 2, Informative
Wow... callous isn't quite the word I'd use...
Let's do a little estimation, shall we? Let's call the "average" tornado as about 200 meters wide with a 10 kilometer path. That's actually a pretty big average, but let's take it for argument's sake. There are 1000 tornadoes in a year, on average. So, that's 2000 km^2 of damage per year. That translates roughly into a square patch of damage 9 miles on a side (80 mi^2).
Let's then further assume that all this damage happens in only Oklahoma proper. Again, a limiting and fanciful assumption, but one useful for these purposes. The area of Oklahoma is nearly 70,000 mi^2. So, the chances that your house will fall in tornado damage will be 80/70000, or 0.11% per year.
Of course, that percentage drops dramatically once you add in Kansas, northern and western Texas, western Missouri, and Nebraska (i.e. the rest of the traditional "Tornado Alley"). Think on the order of 0.01% chance per year.
Now take the Gulf and Atlantic coasts where hurricanes can be prevalent. I'd be willing to bet that the probabilities are higher since hurricanes are much bigger. Or how about damages related to massive snow and ice storms that can plague the northern states? (You live in Colorado... you surely saw the damages that the blizzard there this year caused.) How about those massive forest fires in the western states driven by weather also? Or maybe the floods that happen in the US every few years or so? Gods, how can we live anywhere in this country?
The point is that extreme and dangerous weather is not limited to the central US. What happened there this week was an astonishing and record-setting week in terms of tornadoes. Just put it this way... according to the preliminary tornado data, the US has had, in the first 8 days of May, the climatological average for tornadoes in the entire month of May. Yes, we've reached (and surpassed) the long-term average for a month in the first 8 days. (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/monthlytornsta ts.html )
Oklahoma City is the most hit metropolitan area, and even that is underwhelming when you examine the data for it all. (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/tornadodata/okc_torna do.html ) Just take a look at the map of the data (which is over an entire century, I remind you) and tell me that people are "expect{ing} taxpayers to buy them new trailers every few years"...
The southern plains are not as bad as you think. What has happened there is a pure fluke of weather... the same area of a city gets hit by a significant tornado twice in five years... and the same area of the nation gets hit by two or three batches of tornadoes in the same week. Set your integer random number generator to pop out random integers between 1 and 100 and tell me that you wouldn't expect a number to be repeated three or more times in a row in a sample size of 3 million. Streaks happen in randomness or even psuedo-randomness. The OKC area has probably the similar chance of not being hit for ten or more years than they do being hit again in the next three. Do some research into independent probabilities and such before going off on your stupid and inane rant.
Besides, as a storm chaser, I find that area of the country quite pleasant. Granted, I wouldn't want to live out there since, well, it's a little dull outside of storm chase season, but it's still a nice place to live. It's no worse weather-wise than the subtropical southeastern US with the hurricanes, or the northern states with their ice and snow storms, or the western states with the forest fires and flash floods. It's just different phenomena.
Barely noticable is an understatement. I pretty much had to listen specifically for it and actually missed it the first few times I tried. (15 GB picked up on Friday)
IMHO, unless it's a major annoyance (i.e. louder) on other iPods (which it could be), I'm sharing the opinion that some people want TOO much perfection.
Very much so. I absolutely love changing the ratings on the fly. I recently lost my iTunes Database file to corruption. All my song ratings for my nearly 2000 songs were gone.
I'm still recovering, but having that ability to change ratings at work (and a playlist on iTunes called "Unrated") is invaluable for reapplying that metadata.
For those with one and the 2.0 iPod software, on the Now Playing screen, hit the center wheel button. The first time you hit it, you are able to scroll through the track. Hit it a second time and the rating pops up. Adjust with wheel, hit the center button again, and it's re-rated.:) Amazingly simple and cool.
And then there's of course the bogey-man called something like "run-off global warming". ----------------
The chances of that happening are worse than the chances that you'll win the lottery on eight consecutive days in eight different drawings, survive an airliner crash the next day, then get struck twenty times by lightning in the span of one hour while lying in your hospital bed and still survive all that. (Major exaggeration, but I've always wanted to have fun with probabilities. Your statement of "tiny chance" is maybe even an exaggeration in the too-much range.)
In other words, you'd have to believe in fate or try to set yourself up for all of it.
The CO2 levels during the era of the dinosaurs was nearly 15-20 times current levels. Even assuming that we start going back to yearly CO2 production growth rates from back in the heyday (around 40's to 50's, IIRC), we get 3 times current CO2 in 100 years. In other words, to get "runaway" global warming, we better start working hard.
Of course, all the issues you bring up are important factors to keep in mind. But, the worries are almost definitely unfounded. There's enough negative feedbacks set up in the earth-atmosphere system to really pull things into an equilibrium state and not allow for escaping solutions. (Cloud-albedo, water-albedo, vertical atmospheric structure, biosphere, ocean circulation/residence times... just to name a few off the top of my head.)
The earth-atmosphere system is an INCREDIBLY stable system that would require an absolutely HUGE push to send it toward the Venus solution, assuming that such a solution COULD exist for the Earth system (which is not a good assumption given the H2O content of the Earth system is MUCH higher than Venus', IIRC).
In other words, the argument that is being made goes like this: Global warming is caused by a factor other than pollution. Therefore, pollution does not cause global warming. --------------
Hate to break it to you, but that argument is perfectly valid since it's just a restatement of the first statement. It's a perfectly valid and logical argument.
If the argument went: Global warming in this study is caused by a factor other than pollution; therefore, pollution does no cause global warming. then there'd be a logical fallacy.
I'm also not seeing where your post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is occuring. Perhaps you are insinuating that the scientists in the study are claiming that, since pollution is a modern effect and there was global warming before modern times, pollution was not a factor in the climate change, and thus, is not a factor in global warming at all. From what I read of the articles, I don't see any place where they say that pollution is NOT a factor in current climate. The insinuation of the articles seems to be that perhaps we are overestimating pollution's effect on the climate system, which is not a bad insinuation given recent studies on the carbon dioxide budget (see almost anything published by Dr. Scott Denning over the last two years). As for the/.ers making logical fallacies, let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised... but your example leaves much to be desired.
As an atmospheric scientist, I've seen enough global warming results from people on both sides of the fence that I feel comfortable saying something that may surprise many people: we don't have enough of a clue of what's going on to make any sort of accurate prediction of climate. These big old climate models that run for months on our supercomputers aren't very useful since they rely on so many parametrizations. And how these parametrizations are implemented can seriously affect the results of the models. We're finding out that the climate is so chaotic over even long times with averaging that prediction is difficult, at best. But, we're making strides in understanding the feedback mechanisms that are present... slowly but surely. In other words, expect even the most basic ideas of the climate scientists to be in constant flux for another decade or two. Climate science is much like nuclear science was during the beginning of the 1900's.
In my office here, we have two HP printers. There's a HP 4lj, black and white laser, which we've had for many years now. Then there's the 4550n color laser, which is just a little over two years old.
One is called "slow but reliable". The other is now called "schizo but prints color and fast... at least when it WANTS to work". I'm highly UNimpressed with the color printer, to say the least.
The color printer has had, as part of its maintainence, four new drum kits, runs out of ink every 10,000 pages (it seems), and has had a laundry list of problems. Included on this list:
- The smallest fan in the front died, causing the whole printer OS to freeze up, flashing "PRINTER ERROR 57.3". The "factory" solution is to replace the entire front assembly, a part that costs $400, for a malfunctioning fan. We replaced it by ourselves (with some difficulty since the fan had THREE wires coming out of it and refused to work without all three connected properly) and it has worked relatively fine since. - The transfer belt went obsolete about 30,000 pages early. And for those of you who have ever seen an HP printer spew an entire ream of paper from the tray entirely blank, that's the problem. HP gave us a free replacement of this $300 part for free since we complained enough about it (and since we're one of their biggest customers... the joys of working in a university). - The networking on the printer is a little flaky at times, occasionally disconnecting from the network randomly. We suspect that the M$ machine is behind this again, since it's that person who always seems to "find" that error. - The printer's internal systems got screwed up by one of the few M$ machines we have on it. For some reason, that M$ machine decided to cut us off from PS printing, which, well, is just slightly important for us.
Now, granted, the latter two points are OS related, but that's the problems we've had.
The 4lj, though, in the seven years, has had the following problems: - The transfer roll had to be cleaned once due to a buildup of ink on it. - One of the internal RAM chips' holders fried out about a year ago. Moved the RAM to an open slot and it's worked fine since.
Granted, I'll give them that the color process is harder to print than the black and white, so there should be some more problems. But what about that little fan that totally rendered the printer useless? You couldn't even just disconnect the fan, since that third wire was a connection checker that killed the printer if the fan "wasn't there".
The 4lj has been a workhorse for us and shows no signs of becoming obsolete for us. The 4550n may be fast and prints color, but it really is has been a pain and a complete money sink (we've put enough ink/repairs into it to have doubled its price, $3000 IIRC, in two years... the 4lj hasn't been doubled yet in 8).
If the 4550n keeps giving us trouble, we're switching brands. HP can suck our left big toe. A $3000 printer shouldn't be THIS much trouble, since our $1000 printer from 7 years ago hasn't been even close to that bad.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I think I agree with you. In fact, if you look at the albums that have done well in the last few years, you'll see one big trend. First, the big numbers of sales for those "compilation" CDs (Now That's What I Call Music). Second, the better complete albums holding near the top for a long time. They may not have the big first and second week numbers, but overall, they tend to do well. Third, lots of flash in the pan acts... those acts that sell 50% of their total sales in the first week or two, then as the public realizes that the album is one track with lots of other crap, word of mouth spreads the news and kills off the album sales.
If anything, the MP3 and other single-track distribution formats have raised the bar on the album format. Could we be heading back toward the old single method of distribution like was popular in the 50s and 60s? Could it be that we'll go back to the ideas of the EP and LP for those artists who have lots of good things? It's an interesting idea, really.
I'd love to see self-made compilation album technology come out. Something where you can order a CD with some tracks on it that I've selected, have it made with some nice liner notes corresponding to each of the songs, and sent or given to me. I wouldn't complain too much about the $18 price if I was able to put together something like this on demand (legally, peoples!), especially if I could get a good number of tracks (12 to 15). That's why the whole iTunes Music Store is appealing to me... But this all just a pipedream, I'm sure. Oh well.
-Jellisky
"We strongly believe that when the prices are dramatically reduced on so many titles, we will drive consumers back to stores and significantly bolster music sales," said Universal Music Chief Executive Doug Morris in the release.
;)
------------
[sarcasm]
*GASP!* No? Really? Supply and demand works?
[/sarcasm]
Too bad some of your audience have decided to kill off a portion of your demand... okay, maybe not too bad.
Wonder what they'll learn in ECON 201 next year?
-Jellisky
... don't forget that many people with no knowledge of science will take the science in them as truth, especially in contemporarily set movies. Think about a society that thinks that something like "The Core" is a good primer into the structure of the Earth and its magnetic field. Or how about some of the other terrible science sci-fi movies? You know how many people think "Twister" is really what storm chasing is like?
Yes, movies should be entertaining and science generally isn't that entertaining to the common folk. Yes, writers should be able to take minor liberties with some scientific principles (as I have done in some of my fiction writings). But to put things in stories are blatantly incorrect... that's just a disservice to the scientific education of the general populace.
-Jellisky
Perhaps it's the way the number rolls off the tongue. Seriously.
What number between ten and one hundred really sounds like a more poetic number than forty-two? Twenty and fifty require a little more tongue-work. Seventy is too long. Ninety and thirty feel clunky. Sixty has the hard 'x' in the middle of it. Of the tens denominations, forty and eighty really roll off the tongue easiest since changing the 't' to more of a 'd' sound is acceptable there.
Then, the ones digits... five and six end with harsh sounds. Seven is too long again, but if you need the extra syllable for poetic effect, it's a nice digit. All the rest are poetically neutral or favorable, especially once you count in rhyming possibilities. But, 'two' rhymes best with 'you' which is, obviously, a very common word. So, it would make sense that forty-two and eighty-two would be relatively common "large" numbers.
*chuckles.* I'm only partially making this up as I go along. If you think about it poetically, there's a nice syllabic structure to the number forty-two, and it does roll off the tongue in a longer piece better than other two-digit numbers. Just try to read the last Carroll passage with some other numbers to hear it for yourself.
-Jellisky
In essence, it seems as though they're saying, "If we see the same code in our System V and some other operating system, we own System V and, therefore, by derivative work, we own that code."
/. terminology: "All your code are belong to us."
In more typical
Sorry, SCO, but if that's your "legal" position, prepare to get laughed at by almost whatever judge you get.
As for McBride, I think the Linux advocates have finally driven him officially insane. He's now babbling even more incoherently about some conspiracy. Or is that just an accidental Freudian slip that points to a conspiracy in his corner... Microsoft, perhaps... hmmm?
Dang, this whole SCO thing is like a cyber-soap-opera for nerds. I almost feel guilty for following it this closely.
-Jellisky
Spin Doctor was one of those classic puzzle/arcade games that really should have taken off like Tetris but, sadly, didn't. It was pure fun and incredibly hard at the upper levels (at least that same "free" version). I think I could probably still beat the game after not having played it in two years, though.
r /minotaur.h tm
Between Spectre and Bolo, the true multiplayer games for Mac rocked. I played Spectre back in high school on a Mac Classic that I borrowed from my high school. Even the single player mode was incredibly fun... and a joy to play at later levels when you got grenades. *evil laughter*
Bolo is a game that I still play on occasion. My version runs well in Classic emulation. Make four copies of the game, run them at the same time, give three of them some AI, force some alliances, and you got a great time for yourself. Or, attempt to find some actual other players.
Now, how about a quick shout out for the fun little multiplayer game called Minotaur?
http://www.bungie.com/products/minotau
The game was just lots of fun back in those days. I still have some of the keys stuck in my head when I play others. "Why do I keep stepping off this item that I'm trying to pick up?!? Oops... forgot... that key moves me diagonally in these games..."
-Jellisky
Why did it have to be a reenactment? Couldn't they have scrapped the survival of their actor for realism's sake? They could even add another actor by the name of Pauly Shore, in case the shooting of Fraser's didn't turn out just right. Maybe even Carrottop as a third "actor". Wouldn't that have been better than a measly "reenactment"? ;)
-Jellisky
I don't necessarily think that there's a "rush," per se. It's just that it's a curiously interesting subject and that a lot of people are interested in it.
Scientists are most happy when we (yes, we) are able to do the research that interests us. Is it really fair to dictate what scientists have to research (outside of subjects that have deeper moral implications)? Where would we be if Einstein was told that he had to study the causes of friction or something like that, instead of letting him explore high energy and relativistic physics? Or any other scientist?
Scientists, like any other person, wants to do a job that makes them happy, and if they can find someone to support them to do it (research grants), they'll jump at the chance. If you really wanted to code games or write up that novel in your head, wouldn't you jump at the chance if it presented itself to you? So, why should the cosmologists not do what interests them, especially if they can make a living off of doing so?
And more importantly, why can't they do it at their own pace? Science's progress, when given freedom, cannot truly be predicted. Some fields can languish in "mediocre progress" for many decades, then suddenly explode in a rush of progress and knowledge. (Look at any history of mathematics book for examples of these... calculus and analytics have had a few periods like this.) Cosmology is no different. They've been free to answer their questions and have suddenly found that they can start answering them quickly now. Is there anything fundamentally wrong with this?
Lastly, about the "expense"... remember that "necessity is the mother of invention". It's a fallacy to believe that the tools the scientists use now would be any cheaper in the future, since many of these tools require machinery and equipment that are often not mass-produced and would probably never BE mass-produced. The nature of scientific tools are that they are often relatively unique and frequently have only moderate to limited use in larger industry. After all, how many industries could use the inner workings of a super-collider's detection unit? Some tools, yes, are mass-produced now and could be cheaper in the future, but I would contend that many wouldn't be. So, if no industry is going to invent these tools since they don't need them, why would they be cheaper in the future than now if the only reason that they are built and invented is because scientists needs to use them for their research? They still will have to be specially-built. Granted, you may get more "features" or cheaper manufacturing... but how many advances in those fields have been spurned, in the first place, by the unique engineering needed to built these instruments? Wouldn't you also lose those advances, or hinder your knowledge of those advances? In other words, it's a bit foolish to believe that "future" scientific tools would "cost more" than current ones.
-Jellisky
I would highly doubt it. The figures for the annual heat transport by the atmosphere and oceans is calculated to be in the petawatt range. Even if you could pull out a few hundred terawatts over a year of "waste", that's barely a fraction of a percent change. And a few hundred terawatts is not a negligable amount of power.
-Jellisky
*... of the world's smallest violin plays for the ATA.*
Anyone else feel like starting up a telemarketing scam for telemarketers?
"Hello, sir. Are you pissed since people no longer want to hear your sales pitch during their dinners? Would you like to hear about a technology which beats that nasty 'do not call' list? With our new technology, we are able to allow you to get around those laws and continue letting you peddle your crappy interest rate credit cards and stupid health insurance policies without the federal government finding out about it all! Are you interested, sir?"
"What? It sounds like you're eating right now. Well, just think about how surprised your potential clients will be when they have the same thing happen to them. If I can just get your name, address, telephone number, credit card and social security numbers, we can send our informational package to you for the low price of $159.99!"
-Jellisky
No, no, no!!!
...
Like it's not dangerous enough on the roads with the crazy people talking on their cell phones, shaving or putting on makeup, yelling at the kids in the back seats, etc. (often all these at the same time). You can just imagine what could happen.
*A soccer mom with three kids in the backseat is talking on her ultra-new cell phone.*
"Yeah, Cindy, you take a left on..." *30-ton SUV drifts to the left lane nearly taking out a person next to her.*
"... Killdeer Street, then a right..." *The SUV swerves back into its original lane, just missing the car that is trying to get around her.*
"... on Center Court. We're the third house on the left." *Once again, the SUV swerves left, this time, thankfully, missing everyone.*
"Yeah, and then-- will you kids shut up and stop..." *The SUV slams on the brakes, nearly causing a five-car pileup behind them. She continues on as if nothing has happened.*
"... fighting! Otherwise I'll have to turn this car around..." *The SUV begins turning to the left, moving precariously close to the dividing, concrete median. Once again, since the command is short-lived, it stops just in time.*
"... and take us back home! Sorry about that, Cindy. What were we talking about again?"
Okay, maybe I'm a pessimist. *laughs.*
-Jellisky
Wouldn't that be itititititititititit ?
;) )
(RTFA, if you don't understand...
-Jellisky
... the king of the weird and fun shareware for Mac (and some Windows):
Freeverse Software
Freeverse is one of my all-time favorite shareware companies. Games that work well, play well, can be as addicting as all heck, and often have an odd sense of humor.
Between Ambrosia and Freeverse, most Mac users don't need any other games. Okay, maybe some others, but those are usually enough for many people.
-Jellisky
The only thing hydrogen would do in our current situation would be to move pollution from your car to a power plant.
--------
Close, but there is another benefit to hydrogen that many people don't remember. There's lots of ways of producing the hydrogen needed for the cycle. Consider that a secondary problem, though. Fossil fuels are far from unlimited. The hydrogen fuel, though, excluding small leakages out of the atmosphere, is nearly limitless. Supply worries are nearly eliminated, once a stable production system can be put into place.
Granted, the proper production system is not in place yet. But as some other technologies (solar cells, wind turbines) that are less polluting improve, we would be able to move to those technologies for hydrogen production WITHOUT giving up the things that run off the hydrogen. Instead of replacing the whole system, you now only have to rework one part of it.
It's a very powerful idea when you stop and think about it. Right now, your statement is probably right. But, think about the consequences a little further down the road. THAT'S why hydrogen power is so attractive.
-Jellisky
SCO claimed today that they own the copyrights and other intellectual property to the bubble sort technique, the use of the variables I, J, and K in incremental loops, and some text output routines.
"Programs all over the world are using this code from our UnixWare package," SCO lackey Bob Fishey said today after the conference call. "We're not sure how we're going to handle this, but if you ever took a programming class in your life, you might want to talk to your lawyer to make sure that you understand IP laws."
When pointed out that all the 'offending' code was commonplace in many programming textbooks, Fishey replied, "If you could give me authors and publishers, that would be appreciated. We are not happy about this blatant violation of our intellectual property and hope to stop it at its source."
Fishey also mentioned that they were not above calling other software vendors into their lawsuits. "The use of our sort techniques, almost letter for letter, without getting a license from us is wrong."
'Proposed Sailor Moon Live-Action'
-Jellisky
*chuckles.* Oops... so I did. *looks back at his calculator.* 200 != 2000.
Thanks for the picking up of that mistake. I'm normally more careful about that. Let this be a lesson to all kids: make sure that you typed the right numbers in your calculator before writing down your answer! After all, the axiom is "Garbage In, Garbage Out!"
Thanks again. My point still stands.
-Jellisky
Wow... callous isn't quite the word I'd use...
a ts.html )
a do.html ) Just take a look at the map of the data (which is over an entire century, I remind you) and tell me that people are "expect{ing} taxpayers to buy them new trailers every few years"...
Let's do a little estimation, shall we? Let's call the "average" tornado as about 200 meters wide with a 10 kilometer path. That's actually a pretty big average, but let's take it for argument's sake. There are 1000 tornadoes in a year, on average. So, that's 2000 km^2 of damage per year. That translates roughly into a square patch of damage 9 miles on a side (80 mi^2).
Let's then further assume that all this damage happens in only Oklahoma proper. Again, a limiting and fanciful assumption, but one useful for these purposes. The area of Oklahoma is nearly 70,000 mi^2. So, the chances that your house will fall in tornado damage will be 80/70000, or 0.11% per year.
Of course, that percentage drops dramatically once you add in Kansas, northern and western Texas, western Missouri, and Nebraska (i.e. the rest of the traditional "Tornado Alley"). Think on the order of 0.01% chance per year.
Now take the Gulf and Atlantic coasts where hurricanes can be prevalent. I'd be willing to bet that the probabilities are higher since hurricanes are much bigger. Or how about damages related to massive snow and ice storms that can plague the northern states? (You live in Colorado... you surely saw the damages that the blizzard there this year caused.) How about those massive forest fires in the western states driven by weather also? Or maybe the floods that happen in the US every few years or so? Gods, how can we live anywhere in this country?
The point is that extreme and dangerous weather is not limited to the central US. What happened there this week was an astonishing and record-setting week in terms of tornadoes. Just put it this way... according to the preliminary tornado data, the US has had, in the first 8 days of May, the climatological average for tornadoes in the entire month of May. Yes, we've reached (and surpassed) the long-term average for a month in the first 8 days. (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/monthlytornst
Oklahoma City is the most hit metropolitan area, and even that is underwhelming when you examine the data for it all. (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/tornadodata/okc_torn
The southern plains are not as bad as you think. What has happened there is a pure fluke of weather... the same area of a city gets hit by a significant tornado twice in five years... and the same area of the nation gets hit by two or three batches of tornadoes in the same week. Set your integer random number generator to pop out random integers between 1 and 100 and tell me that you wouldn't expect a number to be repeated three or more times in a row in a sample size of 3 million. Streaks happen in randomness or even psuedo-randomness. The OKC area has probably the similar chance of not being hit for ten or more years than they do being hit again in the next three. Do some research into independent probabilities and such before going off on your stupid and inane rant.
Besides, as a storm chaser, I find that area of the country quite pleasant. Granted, I wouldn't want to live out there since, well, it's a little dull outside of storm chase season, but it's still a nice place to live. It's no worse weather-wise than the subtropical southeastern US with the hurricanes, or the northern states with their ice and snow storms, or the western states with the forest fires and flash floods. It's just different phenomena.
-Jellisky
Barely noticable is an understatement. I pretty much had to listen specifically for it and actually missed it the first few times I tried. (15 GB picked up on Friday)
IMHO, unless it's a major annoyance (i.e. louder) on other iPods (which it could be), I'm sharing the opinion that some people want TOO much perfection.
-Jellisky
Very much so. I absolutely love changing the ratings on the fly. I recently lost my iTunes Database file to corruption. All my song ratings for my nearly 2000 songs were gone.
:) Amazingly simple and cool.
I'm still recovering, but having that ability to change ratings at work (and a playlist on iTunes called "Unrated") is invaluable for reapplying that metadata.
For those with one and the 2.0 iPod software, on the Now Playing screen, hit the center wheel button. The first time you hit it, you are able to scroll through the track. Hit it a second time and the rating pops up. Adjust with wheel, hit the center button again, and it's re-rated.
-Jellisky
anyone with half a brain could tell they would only annoy users.
-----------
Remember that we're talking ad execs here. Half a brain is "uber-smart" for them.
-Jellisky
And then there's of course the bogey-man called something like "run-off global warming".
----------------
The chances of that happening are worse than the chances that you'll win the lottery on eight consecutive days in eight different drawings, survive an airliner crash the next day, then get struck twenty times by lightning in the span of one hour while lying in your hospital bed and still survive all that. (Major exaggeration, but I've always wanted to have fun with probabilities. Your statement of "tiny chance" is maybe even an exaggeration in the too-much range.)
In other words, you'd have to believe in fate or try to set yourself up for all of it.
The CO2 levels during the era of the dinosaurs was nearly 15-20 times current levels. Even assuming that we start going back to yearly CO2 production growth rates from back in the heyday (around 40's to 50's, IIRC), we get 3 times current CO2 in 100 years. In other words, to get "runaway" global warming, we better start working hard.
Of course, all the issues you bring up are important factors to keep in mind. But, the worries are almost definitely unfounded. There's enough negative feedbacks set up in the earth-atmosphere system to really pull things into an equilibrium state and not allow for escaping solutions. (Cloud-albedo, water-albedo, vertical atmospheric structure, biosphere, ocean circulation/residence times... just to name a few off the top of my head.)
The earth-atmosphere system is an INCREDIBLY stable system that would require an absolutely HUGE push to send it toward the Venus solution, assuming that such a solution COULD exist for the Earth system (which is not a good assumption given the H2O content of the Earth system is MUCH higher than Venus', IIRC).
-Jellisky
Yes, yes, yes...
I was just pointing out that your initial "argument" was actually, taken by itself, a perfectly valid argument.
I don't disagree with you, but I had to point that out.
-Jellisky
In other words, the argument that is being made goes like this: Global warming is caused by a factor other than pollution. Therefore, pollution does not cause global warming.
/.ers making logical fallacies, let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised... but your example leaves much to be desired.
--------------
Hate to break it to you, but that argument is perfectly valid since it's just a restatement of the first statement. It's a perfectly valid and logical argument.
If the argument went:
Global warming in this study is caused by a factor other than pollution; therefore, pollution does no cause global warming.
then there'd be a logical fallacy.
I'm also not seeing where your post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is occuring. Perhaps you are insinuating that the scientists in the study are claiming that, since pollution is a modern effect and there was global warming before modern times, pollution was not a factor in the climate change, and thus, is not a factor in global warming at all. From what I read of the articles, I don't see any place where they say that pollution is NOT a factor in current climate. The insinuation of the articles seems to be that perhaps we are overestimating pollution's effect on the climate system, which is not a bad insinuation given recent studies on the carbon dioxide budget (see almost anything published by Dr. Scott Denning over the last two years). As for the
As an atmospheric scientist, I've seen enough global warming results from people on both sides of the fence that I feel comfortable saying something that may surprise many people: we don't have enough of a clue of what's going on to make any sort of accurate prediction of climate. These big old climate models that run for months on our supercomputers aren't very useful since they rely on so many parametrizations. And how these parametrizations are implemented can seriously affect the results of the models. We're finding out that the climate is so chaotic over even long times with averaging that prediction is difficult, at best. But, we're making strides in understanding the feedback mechanisms that are present... slowly but surely. In other words, expect even the most basic ideas of the climate scientists to be in constant flux for another decade or two. Climate science is much like nuclear science was during the beginning of the 1900's.
-Jellisky
In my office here, we have two HP printers. There's a HP 4lj, black and white laser, which we've had for many years now. Then there's the 4550n color laser, which is just a little over two years old.
One is called "slow but reliable". The other is now called "schizo but prints color and fast... at least when it WANTS to work". I'm highly UNimpressed with the color printer, to say the least.
The color printer has had, as part of its maintainence, four new drum kits, runs out of ink every 10,000 pages (it seems), and has had a laundry list of problems. Included on this list:
- The smallest fan in the front died, causing the whole printer OS to freeze up, flashing "PRINTER ERROR 57.3". The "factory" solution is to replace the entire front assembly, a part that costs $400, for a malfunctioning fan. We replaced it by ourselves (with some difficulty since the fan had THREE wires coming out of it and refused to work without all three connected properly) and it has worked relatively fine since.
- The transfer belt went obsolete about 30,000 pages early. And for those of you who have ever seen an HP printer spew an entire ream of paper from the tray entirely blank, that's the problem. HP gave us a free replacement of this $300 part for free since we complained enough about it (and since we're one of their biggest customers... the joys of working in a university).
- The networking on the printer is a little flaky at times, occasionally disconnecting from the network randomly. We suspect that the M$ machine is behind this again, since it's that person who always seems to "find" that error.
- The printer's internal systems got screwed up by one of the few M$ machines we have on it. For some reason, that M$ machine decided to cut us off from PS printing, which, well, is just slightly important for us.
Now, granted, the latter two points are OS related, but that's the problems we've had.
The 4lj, though, in the seven years, has had the following problems:
- The transfer roll had to be cleaned once due to a buildup of ink on it.
- One of the internal RAM chips' holders fried out about a year ago. Moved the RAM to an open slot and it's worked fine since.
Granted, I'll give them that the color process is harder to print than the black and white, so there should be some more problems. But what about that little fan that totally rendered the printer useless? You couldn't even just disconnect the fan, since that third wire was a connection checker that killed the printer if the fan "wasn't there".
The 4lj has been a workhorse for us and shows no signs of becoming obsolete for us. The 4550n may be fast and prints color, but it really is has been a pain and a complete money sink (we've put enough ink/repairs into it to have doubled its price, $3000 IIRC, in two years... the 4lj hasn't been doubled yet in 8).
If the 4550n keeps giving us trouble, we're switching brands. HP can suck our left big toe. A $3000 printer shouldn't be THIS much trouble, since our $1000 printer from 7 years ago hasn't been even close to that bad.
-Jellisky