a) the planets and sun revolve around the earth b) heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects c) the atom is the smallest indivisible mass d) electrons orbit around an atoms' nucleus e) the information that falls into a black hole is destroyed and ceases to exist in our universe f) only gas giants orbit other stars
Laws that arise from intuition don't really mean much. When it comes to physics, our understanding of it constantly changes with new instruments with improved sensitivity.
Just because you can't see smaller planets, it doesn't mean they're not there.
They're just too small for our technology to detect right now.
And what faults exactly? The only fault of wikipedia that I see seems to be the failing grade students get when you mark their wikipedia-cited papers.
While anybody *can* write anything into wikipedia, it doesn't mean that it'll stick. You don't trust that the material found on wiki is accurate, or verified? But let me ask, how more accurate do you think any encyclopedia is? How many more people do you think verifies each fact for each publication of britannica? That doesn't even include new material that needs to be added, or existing entries that contain out-dated information. How many more people can they afford to pay to write and verify encyclopedia entries that the world just discovered more about? I can tell you one thing, they're not going to hire one million experts for one million topics for 2 days to do the job of verification. They're going to hire 1000 people to verify the same one million topics in 365 days.
Now I ask you, how reliable and accurate can one person update and verify one thousand encyclopedia entries?
Just because Britannica has bound paper doesn't make it any more reliable than wikipedia. Well, significantly enough to warrant a failing grade if citing Wikipedia.
Don't forget we got real beer you can drink once you hit 19. *Not* 21. Teenagers from the states frequently cross into Canada to booze up in cities like Niagra and Montreal. Heck, if you cross into Niagra you can gamble at 19 as well at Casino Niagra.
They're not "Absolute Identity Verifiers", or "Identity Truth Machines".
They are simply tools to be used with other forms and methods of identification. Are *all* fingerprinting validation systems supposed to include "temperature, pulse, blood pressure, electric resistance, etc"? Only if some company were relying on fingerprints ALONE to verify someone's identity. But NO company would rely on fingerprints alone. Also, it would make the machine MUCH too costly for anybody to buy.
The bottom line is, yeah sure, fingerprint scanners can't tell the difference between a human finger and a gelatin one. But if a fingerprint is *all* that it takes to get access to something, then the institution has problems that dig far deeper than the inadequacies of any fingerprint scanner.
It's actually unfortunate that it doesn't run on ethanol.
Methanol is toxic if ingested or inhaled. Metabolism of methanol changes it to formaldehyde (banned substance), and eventually formate. This will cause blindness if not treated immediately.
And guess what the treatment is?
Ingestion of ethanol!
Ethanol binds more easily to the eye's receptors more readily than methanol. So once the ethanol binds to those receptors, it will in effect prevent anything else from binding.
I would much rather they figure out a method to extract hydrogen from ethanol. Using methanol is a safety and health risk I'm not sure the majority of people would be willing to take. *Especially* if it's just to make their laptops and other gadgets last two times longer.
It doesn't matter how they get up there, the fact is they'd better be travelling at mach 25 before they start falling back towards earth. Accelerating to mach 25 even from 100km up in the sky is no easy task. They'd have to carry along a HELLUVA lot more propellant. So far, their craft uses ~600lbs of that rubber compound and 3000lbs of N02 to get up to mach 3. They'd need 64 times more energy to get to 8 times the speed of mach 3!
It's gonna be quite a challenge for privately-sponsered spacecraft to reach orbital flights.
Basically at first, they said the engine cut out early on their own (they were supposed to be switched off by the pilot instead). They don't know why the engine cut out early.
As a result, they weren't sure if they reached the 100km mark at first, but were told they did afterward.
On the glide back to the landing strip, some loud pops were heard coming from the back of the rocket. Chaser planes inspected, and reported everything looked ok.
If you lose your watch, or if it gets stolen... chances are, the crook won't realise there's credit card information *in it*. There'll be a pretty good chance they'll think it's any other watch. Unless it says "CREDIT CARD WATCH" on the wristband...
Er, don't forget the very important fact that South Korea deregulated their broadband internet market several years ago. This lead to an explosion of competition between internet providers. The insane bandwidth for equally insanely low costs are the direct results of this competition from deregulation.
It's kind've like the boom in long distance providers (321-10-10 numbers and countless long d cards) in north america once *that* was deregulated.
It takes the earth about 6 minutes to travel a distance equivalent of its own diameter. So basically, to avoid a direct hit, the the timing of of a near-earth-asteroid only needs to be altered by 6 minutes over the course of its orbit(s).
What I can't get over is that we *missed* this asteroid by only 12 to 18 minutes!
For people who didn't read the article, I think what he's trying to say is that he didn't purchase licenses for linux from sco, but from redhat.
And, from the bottom of his message, it sounds to me that his payout to sco was done to protect his customers from being sued by sco if they have linux hosted on their servers.
Justification? They just don't want to waste money fighting sco in case sco does pursue them.
I know to some, it may seem like he caved, or gave up, or did exactly what sco wants these companies to do (give up and put out $$$), but as a CEO sees it... business is business. He had to weigh in the risks (chances of sco filing suit against EV1, and/or against his customers), against the costs of those risks (total costs of fighting the lawsuit, and/or his customers fighting the lawsuit) against the benefits of exposing his company and customers to that risk (or not)... and make a decision that seemed best for his customers and his company.
I don't agree with his decision, but I can certainly see it from his point of view.
Re:The websites following the laws of physics
on
Comic Book Physics
·
· Score: 1
> Slashdot goes up > Website goes down
Gives new meaning to the phrase "Up! Up!... and away!"
Since you're the CEO, I don't see you abandoning your company or making any 180 degree changes with all the investment your company probably already put into its current strategy. But this is where I would re-focus my mobile-game-development company if I were CEO of my own mobile-game company.
First, there are some truths. a) Mobile platforms will always be playing catchup technically... so there's no point in trying to out-do, or match the most recent console platforms... in term of technology. b) because of a), there's not much point in porting games from more advanced systems with higher resolutions. Because then, customers will only perceive you as a seller and provider of lower-quality games. You'll be the company who turns good console games into dehydrated shrivelled up version. Why? Because the ports will always be compared to the originals. And you can't beat or match the originals... *especially* on a cellphone.
Second, I'd learn from Nintendo of the 80's. a) When you're at a disadvantage with graphics, processing power, and the number of buttons, all you have that will work for you will be gameplay. This is one of the reasons why why a two-colour spinach gameboy beat out Sega's portable system, and Neo-Geo's portable system. Both of which were WAAAAY superior, technically at least.
b) Since i) it'd be a waste to port higher quality games, ii) can't port nintendo games (without paying royalties), the only viable long-term strategy is to develop fun, addictive original games.
So that's it. Your company has to start making mobile games that will attain legendary status like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, bomberman, contra, etc etc.
You're the CEO of not a mobile-gaming company. You're the CEO of a GAMING company.
So stop showing off the hardware and show us how fun your games are.
See, that's the problem right there. A phone is a phone. What companies like Nokia are doing with N-Gage is an act of desperation to expand to new markets without understanding the customers and the reasons for why they buy what they buy. They think "Hey, GameCube, PS2, XBox are all pretty power machines, and they and their games are selling like hotcakes... so why don't we do the same with our cellphones?"
I don't doubt for a picosecond that gaming with communication will be THE future. It's already starting now. The PS2, XBox, Gamecube all have their network-enabling-addons. The reason it works is because the gaming system is CORE, and the communication is a feature. Not the other way around where the communication system is CORE, and the gaming system is a feature, as it is with NGage.
I know, future cellphone devices may have gaming Cores, but it still won't fly because it will always be thought of as 'something attached to a cellphone'. The public's perception of these cellphone gaming devices will have to change, and it's going to be a very icy uphill battle with Sony, and Nintendo to contend with.
I bet that if two exact mobile-enabled gaming devices were created but contained in a different shell, one labelled Nintendo, the other labelled Kyocera, which do you think will sell? It doesn't matter what's underneath... what matters is what the customer sees and thinks.
Don't believe perception can't bring down a company? Look at the sales figures for Mitsubishi Eclipses and Eagle Talons. *Exact* same car, one car sold for every ten of the other. I'd bet money that you'd know which sold ten and which sold one on your first guess.
Why? Perception... of Japanese made = higher quality.
Plainly put, you're right... the future of portable gaming is most definitely going to be wireless multiplayer games.
But it will be wireless-enable gaming platforms.
Not gaming-enabled cellphones.
I know there are full-speed emulators out there.
What I was talking about was the 'actual system'; not the actual PDA application.
ie. distributing SNES roms is illegal. They're the creative works of Nintendo. Much like the sharing of certain mp3's.
But, what if there were to legally sell and distribute SNES roms for PDA's, like how iTunes legally sells and distributes downloadable music.
What? A cellphone is likely to have much more computing resources than the GBA? *and* a PDA?
When was the last time you *used* a PDA? The Palm III from half a decade ago?? Today's PDAs have just about as much computing power as my 450MHz desktop!
Also, your post tells me that you're not that familiar with the "gamer" mindset. Sure, someone could make a portable gaming system that cuts my toenails and combs my hair... and you could use your argument to buy *that* system... but "multi-function" isn't the point here. Gamers want "gaming systems". Not just gagdets that happen to have enough processor power to play amputated, grainy, and filtered versions of console/PC games.
PDA's are getting pretty powerful these days, but trying to compete with the likes of Nintendo and Sony is just insane.
If I could, I'd make some kind of palm gaming application so that people could download ROMs of their favourite old-school games, kinda analogous to iTunes and their pay-per-download system.
I'd really like to know how far these northern lights have been spotted. I'm in Toronto and I'm hoping that the northern lights show will keep up until dusk here.
So, who has seen them so far, and how far south are you?
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations. You've just discovered that computer science has nothing to do with administrating computer systems.
Now if only you could spread the message to everyone else in your company...
"I think most people have an intutive sense that"
a) the planets and sun revolve around the earth
b) heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects
c) the atom is the smallest indivisible mass
d) electrons orbit around an atoms' nucleus
e) the information that falls into a black hole is destroyed and ceases to exist in our universe
f) only gas giants orbit other stars
Laws that arise from intuition don't really mean much.
When it comes to physics, our understanding of it constantly changes with new instruments with improved sensitivity.
Just because you can't see smaller planets, it doesn't mean they're not there.
They're just too small for our technology to detect right now.
"but it does have its faults"
And what faults exactly? The only fault of wikipedia that I see seems to be the failing grade students get when you mark their wikipedia-cited papers.
While anybody *can* write anything into wikipedia, it doesn't mean that it'll stick. You don't trust that the material found on wiki is accurate, or verified? But let me ask, how more accurate do you think any encyclopedia is? How many more people do you think verifies each fact for each publication of britannica? That doesn't even include new material that needs to be added, or existing entries that contain out-dated information. How many more people can they afford to pay to write and verify encyclopedia entries that the world just discovered more about? I can tell you one thing, they're not going to hire one million experts for one million topics for 2 days to do the job of verification. They're going to hire 1000 people to verify the same one million topics in 365 days.
Now I ask you, how reliable and accurate can one person update and verify one thousand encyclopedia entries?
Just because Britannica has bound paper doesn't make it any more reliable than wikipedia. Well, significantly enough to warrant a failing grade if citing Wikipedia.
Don't forget we got real beer you can drink once you hit 19. *Not* 21. Teenagers from the states frequently cross into Canada to booze up in cities like Niagra and Montreal. Heck, if you cross into Niagra you can gamble at 19 as well at Casino Niagra.
Fingerprint scanners are exactly that.
Finger. Print. Scanners.
They're not "Absolute Identity Verifiers", or "Identity Truth Machines".
They are simply tools to be used with other forms and methods of identification. Are *all* fingerprinting validation systems supposed to include "temperature, pulse, blood pressure, electric resistance, etc"? Only if some company were relying on fingerprints ALONE to verify someone's identity. But NO company would rely on fingerprints alone. Also, it would make the machine MUCH too costly for anybody to buy.
The bottom line is, yeah sure, fingerprint scanners can't tell the difference between a human finger and a gelatin one. But if a fingerprint is *all* that it takes to get access to something, then the institution has problems that dig far deeper than the inadequacies of any fingerprint scanner.
It's actually unfortunate that it doesn't run on ethanol.
Methanol is toxic if ingested or inhaled.
Metabolism of methanol changes it to formaldehyde (banned substance), and eventually formate. This will cause blindness if not treated immediately.
And guess what the treatment is?
Ingestion of ethanol!
Ethanol binds more easily to the eye's receptors more readily than methanol. So once the ethanol binds to those receptors, it will in effect prevent anything else from binding.
I would much rather they figure out a method to extract hydrogen from ethanol. Using methanol is a safety and health risk I'm not sure the majority of people would be willing to take. *Especially* if it's just to make their laptops and other gadgets last two times longer.
So true.
It doesn't matter how they get up there, the fact is they'd better be travelling at mach 25 before they start falling back towards earth. Accelerating to mach 25 even from 100km up in the sky is no easy task. They'd have to carry along a HELLUVA lot more propellant. So far, their craft uses ~600lbs of that rubber compound and 3000lbs of N02 to get up to mach 3. They'd need 64 times more energy to get to 8 times the speed of mach 3!
It's gonna be quite a challenge for privately-sponsered spacecraft to reach orbital flights.
Basically at first, they said the engine cut out early on their own (they were supposed to be switched off by the pilot instead). They don't know why the engine cut out early.
As a result, they weren't sure if they reached the 100km mark at first, but were told they did afterward.
On the glide back to the landing strip, some loud pops were heard coming from the back of the rocket. Chaser planes inspected, and reported everything looked ok.
Hooray for private spaceflight!
I think it's quite the opposite.
Michael Moore's going to release Fahrenheit 9/11 with bittorrent.
http://www.denounce.com/archives/000055.html
Joining the sixty mile-high club?
And don't forget this point:
If you lose your watch, or if it gets stolen... chances are, the crook won't realise there's credit card information *in it*. There'll be a pretty good chance they'll think it's any other watch. Unless it says "CREDIT CARD WATCH" on the wristband...
Er, don't forget the very important fact that South Korea deregulated their broadband internet market several years ago. This lead to an explosion of competition between internet providers. The insane bandwidth for equally insanely low costs are the direct results of this competition from deregulation.
It's kind've like the boom in long distance providers (321-10-10 numbers and countless long d cards) in north america once *that* was deregulated.
Like THIS???
It takes the earth about 6 minutes to travel a distance equivalent of its own diameter.
So basically, to avoid a direct hit, the the timing of of a near-earth-asteroid only needs to be altered by 6 minutes over the course of its orbit(s).
What I can't get over is that we *missed* this asteroid by only 12 to 18 minutes!
That's just crazy.
For people who didn't read the article, I think what he's trying to say is that he didn't purchase licenses for linux from sco, but from redhat.
And, from the bottom of his message, it sounds to me that his payout to sco was done to protect his customers from being sued by sco if they have linux hosted on their servers.
Justification?
They just don't want to waste money fighting sco in case sco does pursue them.
I know to some, it may seem like he caved, or gave up, or did exactly what sco wants these companies to do (give up and put out $$$), but as a CEO sees it... business is business. He had to weigh in the risks (chances of sco filing suit against EV1, and/or against his customers), against the costs of those risks (total costs of fighting the lawsuit, and/or his customers fighting the lawsuit) against the benefits of exposing his company and customers to that risk (or not)... and make a decision that seemed best for his customers and his company.
I don't agree with his decision, but I can certainly see it from his point of view.
> Slashdot goes up
> Website goes down
Gives new meaning to the phrase "Up! Up!... and away!"
I got a SCO Linux License for Christmas :P
And don't forget, the monks are only allowed to move one disk per day.
MaxDB is a sort of merger between sapdb and mysql. As of today, MaxDB includes features such as:
* Views * Server-side cursors * Stored procedures and triggers * Automatic failover (to a standby server) * Scheduling and automatic messaging on alerts * Snapshots * Archive tables * Synonyms
And these are features in addition to mysql's feature set!
Check it out guys! http://www.mysql.com/products/maxdb/index.html
But don't be in too much of a rush to upgrade, mysql interoperability is slated for Q1 of 2004.
Enjoy!
And, to add to my previous comment.
Since you're the CEO, I don't see you abandoning your company or making any 180 degree changes with all the investment your company probably already put into its current strategy. But this is where I would re-focus my mobile-game-development company if I were CEO of my own mobile-game company.
First, there are some truths.
a) Mobile platforms will always be playing catchup technically... so there's no point in trying to out-do, or match the most recent console platforms... in term of technology.
b) because of a), there's not much point in porting games from more advanced systems with higher resolutions. Because then, customers will only perceive you as a seller and provider of lower-quality games. You'll be the company who turns good console games into dehydrated shrivelled up version. Why? Because the ports will always be compared to the originals. And you can't beat or match the originals... *especially* on a cellphone.
Second, I'd learn from Nintendo of the 80's.
a) When you're at a disadvantage with graphics, processing power, and the number of buttons, all you have that will work for you will be gameplay. This is one of the reasons why why a two-colour spinach gameboy beat out Sega's portable system, and Neo-Geo's portable system. Both of which were WAAAAY superior, technically at least.
b) Since i) it'd be a waste to port higher quality games, ii) can't port nintendo games (without paying royalties), the only viable long-term strategy is to develop fun, addictive original games.
So that's it.
Your company has to start making mobile games that will attain legendary status like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, bomberman, contra, etc etc.
You're the CEO of not a mobile-gaming company.
You're the CEO of a GAMING company.
So stop showing off the hardware and show us how fun your games are.
See, that's the problem right there. A phone is a phone. What companies like Nokia are doing with N-Gage is an act of desperation to expand to new markets without understanding the customers and the reasons for why they buy what they buy. They think "Hey, GameCube, PS2, XBox are all pretty power machines, and they and their games are selling like hotcakes... so why don't we do the same with our cellphones?"
I don't doubt for a picosecond that gaming with communication will be THE future. It's already starting now. The PS2, XBox, Gamecube all have their network-enabling-addons. The reason it works is because the gaming system is CORE, and the communication is a feature. Not the other way around where the communication system is CORE, and the gaming system is a feature, as it is with NGage.
I know, future cellphone devices may have gaming Cores, but it still won't fly because it will always be thought of as 'something attached to a cellphone'. The public's perception of these cellphone gaming devices will have to change, and it's going to be a very icy uphill battle with Sony, and Nintendo to contend with.
I bet that if two exact mobile-enabled gaming devices were created but contained in a different shell, one labelled Nintendo, the other labelled Kyocera, which do you think will sell? It doesn't matter what's underneath... what matters is what the customer sees and thinks.
Don't believe perception can't bring down a company? Look at the sales figures for Mitsubishi Eclipses and Eagle Talons. *Exact* same car, one car sold for every ten of the other. I'd bet money that you'd know which sold ten and which sold one on your first guess.
Why? Perception... of Japanese made = higher quality.
Plainly put, you're right... the future of portable gaming is most definitely going to be wireless multiplayer games.
But it will be wireless-enable gaming platforms. Not gaming-enabled cellphones.
But, what if there were to legally sell and distribute SNES roms for PDA's, like how iTunes legally sells and distributes downloadable music.
Get what I'm saying now?
When was the last time you *used* a PDA? The Palm III from half a decade ago?? Today's PDAs have just about as much computing power as my 450MHz desktop!
Also, your post tells me that you're not that familiar with the "gamer" mindset. Sure, someone could make a portable gaming system that cuts my toenails and combs my hair... and you could use your argument to buy *that* system... but "multi-function" isn't the point here. Gamers want "gaming systems". Not just gagdets that happen to have enough processor power to play amputated, grainy, and filtered versions of console/PC games.
If I could, I'd make some kind of palm gaming application so that people could download ROMs of their favourite old-school games, kinda analogous to iTunes and their pay-per-download system.
99 cents for all-you-can-play-forever ROMs?
That'd be super sweet.
I'm in Toronto and I'm hoping that the northern lights show will keep up until dusk here.
So, who has seen them so far, and how far south are you?