an additional $100/month to use your GPS device I was going to post the exact same thing.
Then I remembered my trusty Garmin:
$5/month for the painfully inaccurate ClearChannel traffic info.
$215 for the traffic receiver (granted, you can find a C550 with it included for less if you shop around).
$160 for the travel guides.
$100-$150 every time you want to go to a new country.
$70/year for the map updates.
Granted, you don't need to buy all of those. But every one of them involves Garmin prying your wallet open for something that's free on the net/Google Maps and thus free once you have paid your $70 monthly net access on your iPhone.
The argument is:
Phones are expensive. We give you what works out to be a $250 discount to help you cover that cost. We recoup it at $10/month during your two year contract. So, if you cancel early, we have to recoup what was essentially a loan. My question has always been:
So, when people don't ask for that discount, when they bring their own phone or when they're happy using the phone you've already collected the cost back on...
Where do you list your $10/month cheaper plan that doesn't have this tied in? Quoting from the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park: 250,000 tons of toxic material have been dumped in to landfills by 700 million "retired" cell phones in the U.S. alone. In addition, mining the coltan used to coat components in then, has devastated lowland gorilla and African elephant populations.
My phone's about to come out of its two year contract. It's still perfectly functional and will likely see me through several more years just fine. I'm guessing a lot of others are in the same boat. As it stands, with no discount for already having a phone making a lie of the cost reclamation argument, most people are likely to get a new one that they consider "free," tossing their old one. Were they able to save that $10/month, how many more would be tempted to save money and, even unintentionally, end up saving a lot of damage to the environment?
The people who actually make the crazy money are the ones who are well positioned when the wave hits.
They're the guys who built a search engine for finding things on the internet before the dotcom boom kicked off and were in a place to leverage the boom. They're the guys who thought about selling things like books and so had a product ready to capitalize on the leading edge of it.
The ones who lost money are the idiots who waited until they saw other people were making money, wanted to jump on the bandwagon, searched around for an idea, slowly built up a company and almost had it ready for IPO after the market tanked.
In a tough market, getting money from other people to do cool things is usually tough. However, it's also the time to start prepping your own great ideas if you want to be well placed to make a fortune when the next boom cycle hits.
Rhapsody: Last I checked was something like $13/month for access to unlimited songs but they all go away as soon as you stop paying.
At $0.10 each, this service gets you 130 new songs to add to your playlist, that then never go away, each month, for the same price.
If you're the kind of person who only ever listens to a core group of maybe five hundred songs plus a couple of new albums worth a month, you're looking at the equivalent of four months of Rhapsody subscriptions and then only a few bucks a month. Plus, when you stop, it doesn't go away.
For the cost of three years of Rhapsody subscription, you're now looking at being able to build a four and a half thousand song library that you technically* (assuming they don't switch the service off and tell you you're S.O.L.) keep forever.
In the scheme of things, if you're happy only listening to music on your computer, it's a better deal for a certain group of people than Rhapsody is. Rhapsody lets you get access to a broader library for one monthly price, it lets you stop paying without losing service on an initially more limited list.
Sure, you can just go download it all for free. If that's your thing, no fee paying option will ever appeal to you. If it's not... I don't know, you're say a programmer who makes imaginary property and likes getting paid for it so empathize with musicians that do the same... the more different pricing structures, that let you pick the one that suits your buying tastes, the better.
Insightfully spotted. With a user id of less than a third of yours, I cunningly first logged on to slashdot when in kindergarden just so I could mock you when I finally became a wet behind the ears high school kid.
It must be a proud moment to realize you were out-smarted by the plans of a [then] four year old.
Alternatively, having seen the diminishing returns 18-20 hour days provided in the game industry, and feeling that 8 hours applied well was worth more than 18-20 of debugging code that was written by frustrated and delerious people that maybe amounted to four hours of quality work, I decided to make a concious decision to seek employment that would let me model those philosophies with my own teams as I became a director.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I've never quite understood why people would work an insanely stressful job, suffer the ill effects, and then not look for the next one to address whatever they identified as they causes in the one they were leaving.
If you do have these years of experience, yet are managing to go from one miserable job to another, it kind of implies you're not smart enough to learn or poorly qualified enough that you can't get anything better.
So, which is it? Were you out smarted by a four year old with an ability to see the future? Too stupid to learn and therefore try to mock others out of your frustrations? Or too incompetent to qualify for something better? None of the options are looking good for you. But, please, mock away. *grins*
The culprits seem to be the stressful-yet-sedentary nature of tech work coupled with our famously poor eating habits. I'm a lazy bastard who'd rather sleep in in the mornings and chill out at the end of the day than go to the gym.
Stressful-yet-sedentary: I could exercise in the other sixteen hours of the day. I just don't.
Poor eating habits: I eat out a lot but they have this cool thing called "salad" now. It's like a complex collection of cellulose based food stuffs. If you have them put the CH3(CH2)nCOOH (they call this "dressing") on the side and only add enough for taste, it's surprisingly good for you.
Yep, at the end of the day, I'm a lazy bastard who eats because I revel in it. Not as good a headline as "IT jobs are to blame" but way more honest.
On the positive side, I can slap one side of my gut and pretend it's a newton's cradle... which I'm sure you'll agree is pretty cool.
It's really easy to say "If the relationship's that broken, just divorce."
It's also badly missing the realities.
If there's that much paranoia, odds are one or both parties are moving towards divorce but know they need to do a bunch of things to either avoid getting screwed in the process (or, if they're malicious, screw the other side).
From experience with friends going through divorce, you should really be doing a bunch of things before you turn the cold war hot:
You should ensure there's money to pay for lawyers in accounts that can't suddenly turn up empty on you.
You should ensure that any evidence of infidelity on their part is documented. Likewise, you should be making sure you've not left any trails on your part.
You should be making sure you've got copies of things like the mortgage paperwork, house deeds, car titles, etc.
You should be contacting a lawyer first, not after you've set things in motion.
Many of these can be handle via the web/email. The last thing you want is the spouse you're leaving having logged conversations with your lawyer and having grabbed the passwords to all of your accounts so they gain privileged information after the split.
So, rather than assuming "It's broken. Go for divorce." and setting them up for a world of hurt they're trying to minimize, how about we try answering the question instead?
Seriously, this stupid "what if governments..." paranoia on slashdot has to stop. What if the government decided to suspend the right of habeus corpus that's lasted since the magna carta?
What if the government decided to do away with the fourth ammendment and declare it was their right to search and seize simply becuase they're fighting a war against a noun?
What if the government decided to completely ignore the right to legal representation and a free trial because they were holding you in a special, magical place where they decided those rules didn't apply?
What if the government started shipping people off to be tortured by third party nations so they could pretend they weren't doing it themselves.
What if the government wrote a statement that said certain forms of torture was OK, completely refused to list what those forms are, then pretended to be shocked when, exactly as intended, junior troops did what was expected of them?
What if the government could demand your library and bookstore records and had a special way of doing it where, legally, no one was ever allowed to report they'd been demanded, let alone fight the demands?
Or, the classic "crazy" one: What if the government was secretly spying on your phonecalls? Don't tell me there are laws against that. They could do it if they really wanted, right?
You want me to keep going?
The government tends to do the insidious crap because, exactly as they've done with most of the above, they can then deny they're even doing it for several years until the weight of evidence becomes completely overwhelming then they stop that one specific thing and start the next one.
You cut someone's tongue off, you've left a really big piece of physical evidence that sickens and outrages the world.
You toss someone in jail without trial, in normal circumstances, and a lawyer seeking to make a name for themselves is on your ass within months.
Pull the shady crap like suspending habeus corpus and you've got years before they even get it reinstated and can begin trying to get the guy you jailed back out.
Keep shipping him off to Syria or Egypt for "questioning" and you get to torture, whilst claiming innocence, the whole time.
Insidious works far better than blunt.
Continuing the insidious theme:
The British government is having major issues with a cleric they can't deport because he might face torture but who they can't make charges stick on in England.
Blunt option: Jail without trial. They tried that, it caused outrage. They had to release him.
Subtle tinfoil hat option: Zap him with a magnet. "Oh, the poor dear's had a stroke. He can't preach anymore. How awful." Then you take him to a nice secure hospital to protect him from the people who might do him harm and you keep repeating. Problem solved. You're helping him, not harming him.
Technically, a harpoon launcher allows you to use an external power source (compressed air, explosive, etc.) while his legs don't directly add power to the equation.
What they do however is take an inherrently inefficient task (the loss of kinetic energy from a running stride) and make it more efficient (storing that energy in a spring and then re-releasing it to power forward).
What he's doing is closer to a high jumper entering on a state of the art pogo stick.
Of course, I think it's a brilliant idea. I'm trying out for the marathon on another form of energy transference I call "a bicycle." I'm pretty sure I can get my 26 mile time down under two hours. Never thought of myself as an Olympian but Beijing, here I come!
Put one in a camera. Leave a whole bunch of inane pictures of it.
Use the second one as your main file store. At $20-25 for a 4GB card, they're cheap. They're also 15x11mm, so small you'll "lose" them - oops - in your checked luggage and are never going to be spotted by a bored inspector, that barely graduated highschool, watching hundreds of thousands of large bags going by.
Alternatively, stick it in a GameBoy DS. They have SD readers. Look utterly bored as you wander through, in flight toy in hand. Odds of their bothering to inspect a children's toy and find something that looks like it's supposed to be there anyway, are next to zero.
At customs, look bored, hand over your largely empty laptop and meaningless digital camera.
Let them copy off anything they feel like. Don't fight it. Don't complain. Let them think they've got everything.
Once you're back on the other side, put the other card back in, get access to your files again.
No, it won't stop them if they're utterly convinced you're a terrorist. They'll take everything apart and will eventually find that tiny thing. The abusive copying of anyone's crap, with no grounds for suspicion, is going to leave them copying junk that means nothing to them. There's simply no time to search everyone to the degree they'd find the few people with a MicroSD card. And, even if they do, it's a totally legitimate thing to do so you can claim total ignorance.
4GB should be plenty for most trip type info. Sensitive business docs should easily fit in to that. If you store porn on your laptop, leave it on an external drive at home for when you get back. If you really must have some with you, if you need more than 4GB, it's time to admit you've got issues.
'We don't want to say, "We're releasing a better version next year." and then have people refuse to buy the old units like they did with the HDMI thing. Especially as it would be for a full twelve months this time. That would really kill our lead against the other consoles in North America. So, uh, "We've got no plans!"'
It's almost certainly a lie. But they would be crazy to tell the truth and destroy their market until the new models did finally ship.
It's pretty much guaranteed Sony will ship new models too. Bigger hard drives, cooler processors, smaller cases, new skus with games bundled. There are always new stimuli to keep the market active. But no one in their right mind acknowledges their roadmap for the next 20 months (to the end of '09), screwing their current market with all the people who figure they'll just wait.
It's not just consoles. Canon releases a new xxxD camera every year or so, a new xxD camera every 18 months, pretty much like clockwork. And yet they refuse to announce the new model until the last possible moment, denying everything they can, so as not to trash the current prices. Look at what happened to the $3,000 Canon 5D that everyone assumed would have got a new revision in February. Even without a new rev turning up, discounting got so competetive on the assumption the old model was about to become obsolete that it now goes for a hair over $2,000. Even then, people like myself who'd still get a lot from the 5D are putting off their purchase, waiting for whatever its successor turns out to be or much lower 5D prices, rather than letting Canon shift stock now.
Lack of/biased reporting on their goals doesn't equate to their not being any.
They'd really like Palestine back how it was.
They'd really like [essentially] occupying U.S. troops out of Iraq.
They'd really like the U.S. to stop imposing Western [semi agnostic] Christian values on Eastern Muslims.
They'd really like U.S. troops out of bases in places like Saudi Arabia as part of that.
They'd really like to stop having their culture threatened by Western culture in pretty much the same way a lot of Americans get upset when their culture is threatened by Mexican culture.
I'm not going to pass judgment on whether those goals are "right" or "wrong." (Actually, arguably, such struggles almost always break down to both sides doing a lot of "wrong" things and ignoring their own wrongs, focusing on the others' to justify even more of their own.)
There are those who can dismiss them as wrong just as there are those who can dismiss the justifications for the American struggle for indepedence as wrong if they're determined enough.
Yes, it can be argued that it's mostly about a few cynical Muslims whipping up hatred so they can consolidate power far more than it's about the above stated aims. Then again, the same argument can be made that the stated aims for American independence were very different to the argument it was really about rich white slave owners, who'd taken the land from the native people, wanting to pay less tax and whipping up populist sentiment to ensure they got it.
Again: Just because the goals get a fraction of the attention "OMFG TERRORISTS!" gets on the nightly news, it doesn't mean there aren't any.
I remember playing with something pretty identical to this at E3, several years ago, a while before Flight Simulator X came out.
As I recall, it was more like 120-140 degrees rather than pretending it was full 180. Then again, I'm not convinced the jDome is true 180 either - think about it, one point, relatively close, projecting on to a hemisphere, by definition, can't get to the outtermost edges.
The experience was certainly cool and definitely added an immersive element.
It wasn't quite as cool as it promised to be though for the following reasons:
Projector resolution generally sucks - even now, 1080p projectors cost several thousand dollars vs. about $400 for a basic 24 inch 1920x1200 LCD monitor. Most likely, you're going to be hobbled with 720p which is on the low end of most gaming systems these days. Now factor in that 1280 horizontal resolution has to project both the normal ~60 degree view AND the sides. You're now at maybe the equivalent of 800x600 for the area your cheaper 1920x1200 monitor is showing. Sure, you get the edges - but at a massive cost to the center's clarity.
Whilst edges are nice, down is often pretty pointless. It looks great if you're flying with the instrument panel turned off. The moment you turn it on, that whole bottom half of the screen is now filled with your control panel and your legs. You've gone to all of this trouble and you see... a big grey panel and a nice rendering of legs moving pedals. Most FPSs are relatively planar and so, most of the time, all you see is the ground running underneath you. Sure, it's nice when you're shooting around an industrial complex with people above and below... but most of the time you're just trading resolution for watching empty space above and very close ground below. You'll notice our eyes are horizontal, giving a much wider field of view than a vertical one.
You generally need your input devices resting on something. Unless you spend a fortune on custom controllers, odds are you're going to need a keyboard and mouse for most FPSs, a keyboard, throttle, yoke and mouse for menus for flight sims. The table you need to put all of that on ends up obscuring half of your downward view anyway. Plus it tends to really suck, trying to use most input devices while standing anyway.
It's a fun concept. Much like shutter glasses and TrackIR, it's one that can add a whole lot of wow factor, albeit at the expense of real practical use. On the flip side, for those with money to burn, a 1080p projector, a fast gaming rig, shutter glasses to make it 3D as well and TrackIR to make swaying your head from side to side have a difference... it could be the ultimate show off gimick. Hopefully it'll be easy to wash, when motion sickness makes people vomit, too.
"But neither the law of armed conflict nor common sense would allow belligerents to hide behind the skirts of its civilians." Remember that much celebrated tea party in, where was it, Boston? The one where none of the protagonists war uniforms or abided by the laws of armed conflict and then slipped back in to the public masses? The one where, today, the U.S. would classify them as illegal combatants and deny them access to any legal protection?
The one where the superior military, that could crush its opposition anywhere they stood and fought, couldn't defeat an army that kept slipping in to the countryside?
The one where the "evil" greater power could be demonised every time they caused collateral damage or took reprisals on the people the weaker force hid behind?
The one where the great general George Washington brilliantly used geurilla tactics to make up for never having more than 17,000 men in the field at any one time?
The one where, soon after winning its largely guerilla war, they wrote the second ammendment to their constitution to enshrine the right to that kind of combat?
The one where the larger but distant power regarded the attacks on its own holdings as terrorism - the term just wasn't widely used yet?
It's ironic that a nation formed on, and celebrating in its constitution, the principles of armed insurrection, guerilla warfare and terrorism when it was the weaker power gets its panties in such a collective bunch when people do exactly the same thing that worked so well for it back again.
Remember: If you win and you're powerful enough to write the history, it's noble. If you lose, it's evil terrorism. Until it's decided, which one it's viewed as simply depends on which side you're on.
He's like a jet engine supporter immediately after World War II:
"Jet engines are inherrently capable of much greater speeds than propeller engines!"
"OK, so show me one that goes much faster than the prop driven spitfire?"
"Well, uh, there's the Gloster Meteor!"
"It does about 500mph*, right? That's not bad compared to the Spitfire XIX's 460mph. But there are tons of Spitfires out there, available cheaply vs. paying several times the cost for the Meteor for about a 10% speed improvement." *note: F-3 variant, not the "overclocked" tweaked versions that set speed records.
"Well, but the point isn't that it's better today. It's a better technology! It'll be better in the future! Props will never go supersonic. Jets can potentially go several times supersonic."
"That is cool. Doesn't really help me today though, does it? I'm still paying several times the cost for a small improvement, today."
"Yeah, but if you don't buy jets now, how will their prices ever come down? How will we ever reach the heady perfection they're capable of?"
"Again, not helping me today, is it?"
"But! But! It's really cool!"
Yes, the technology shows promise. But its future promise with only small increases today doesn't justify its current high cost.
If more people bought it, the cost would come down over time and more investment would mean unlocking more of that promise. Which is great in the future but gives you very little today in exchange for that high cost.
The argument he seems to be making is that everyone should adopt it right now, not because it actually gets them much for their money but because their investment will enable him to buy even faster stuff for a lower price later.
Chief among the voices in opposition to this measure were members of the armed forces, who pointed out that they could not rely on having an internet connection every ten days. 1914/18... Trenchfoot becomes rife due to lack of access to dry footwear/socks.
1939/45... Troops freeze through the Battle of the Bulge, across Russia.
2008... Access to certain videogames sometimes limited in certain situations for a few days until net access can be resecured.
I know "Won't anybody think of the troops!" is second only to "Won't anybody think of the children!" and can thus never be questioned unless you're a terrorist as well as a paedophile.. but there comes a point where the rallying cry is used for such ludicrously trivial things that it just devalues everyone involved.
"what kind of screwy logic leads them to think that " It's not screwy at all.
This increases competition with us. With less competition, we can profit more. Therefore competition is bad. If we justify that because "we" want it, no one will agree. If we justify that because "it hurts customers" we sound noble. Let's claim that then. Quick, someone think of a remotely plausible reason.
The logic for what leads them to think it is entirely clear and simple.
The mistake is confusing the logic that leads them to think it with the implied logic they try to present as to how they got to their deliberately fake conclusion.
Slashdot Mirror
Then I remembered my trusty Garmin:
$5/month for the painfully inaccurate ClearChannel traffic info.
$215 for the traffic receiver (granted, you can find a C550 with it included for less if you shop around).
$160 for the travel guides.
$100-$150 every time you want to go to a new country.
$70/year for the map updates.
Granted, you don't need to buy all of those. But every one of them involves Garmin prying your wallet open for something that's free on the net/Google Maps and thus free once you have paid your $70 monthly net access on your iPhone.
If he'll do this for them when they get interested in science, imagine what he'll do when they get interested in girls!
No wonder you want to be adopted. Who wouldn't?
Where do you list your $10/month cheaper plan that doesn't have this tied in? Quoting from the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park: 250,000 tons of toxic material have been dumped in to landfills by 700 million "retired" cell phones in the U.S. alone. In addition, mining the coltan used to coat components in then, has devastated lowland gorilla and African elephant populations.
My phone's about to come out of its two year contract. It's still perfectly functional and will likely see me through several more years just fine. I'm guessing a lot of others are in the same boat. As it stands, with no discount for already having a phone making a lie of the cost reclamation argument, most people are likely to get a new one that they consider "free," tossing their old one. Were they able to save that $10/month, how many more would be tempted to save money and, even unintentionally, end up saving a lot of damage to the environment?
Having watched multiple booms and busts go by:
The people who actually make the crazy money are the ones who are well positioned when the wave hits.
They're the guys who built a search engine for finding things on the internet before the dotcom boom kicked off and were in a place to leverage the boom. They're the guys who thought about selling things like books and so had a product ready to capitalize on the leading edge of it.
The ones who lost money are the idiots who waited until they saw other people were making money, wanted to jump on the bandwagon, searched around for an idea, slowly built up a company and almost had it ready for IPO after the market tanked.
In a tough market, getting money from other people to do cool things is usually tough. However, it's also the time to start prepping your own great ideas if you want to be well placed to make a fortune when the next boom cycle hits.
Rhapsody: Last I checked was something like $13/month for access to unlimited songs but they all go away as soon as you stop paying.
At $0.10 each, this service gets you 130 new songs to add to your playlist, that then never go away, each month, for the same price.
If you're the kind of person who only ever listens to a core group of maybe five hundred songs plus a couple of new albums worth a month, you're looking at the equivalent of four months of Rhapsody subscriptions and then only a few bucks a month. Plus, when you stop, it doesn't go away.
For the cost of three years of Rhapsody subscription, you're now looking at being able to build a four and a half thousand song library that you technically* (assuming they don't switch the service off and tell you you're S.O.L.) keep forever.
In the scheme of things, if you're happy only listening to music on your computer, it's a better deal for a certain group of people than Rhapsody is. Rhapsody lets you get access to a broader library for one monthly price, it lets you stop paying without losing service on an initially more limited list.
Sure, you can just go download it all for free. If that's your thing, no fee paying option will ever appeal to you. If it's not... I don't know, you're say a programmer who makes imaginary property and likes getting paid for it so empathize with musicians that do the same... the more different pricing structures, that let you pick the one that suits your buying tastes, the better.
DO NOT EAT THE POWER PILL.
:(
I tried. It gave me no bonuses. It just made me feel kinda weird. Didn't taste like a mint either.
Insightfully spotted. With a user id of less than a third of yours, I cunningly first logged on to slashdot when in kindergarden just so I could mock you when I finally became a wet behind the ears high school kid.
It must be a proud moment to realize you were out-smarted by the plans of a [then] four year old.
Alternatively, having seen the diminishing returns 18-20 hour days provided in the game industry, and feeling that 8 hours applied well was worth more than 18-20 of debugging code that was written by frustrated and delerious people that maybe amounted to four hours of quality work, I decided to make a concious decision to seek employment that would let me model those philosophies with my own teams as I became a director.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I've never quite understood why people would work an insanely stressful job, suffer the ill effects, and then not look for the next one to address whatever they identified as they causes in the one they were leaving.
If you do have these years of experience, yet are managing to go from one miserable job to another, it kind of implies you're not smart enough to learn or poorly qualified enough that you can't get anything better.
So, which is it? Were you out smarted by a four year old with an ability to see the future? Too stupid to learn and therefore try to mock others out of your frustrations? Or too incompetent to qualify for something better? None of the options are looking good for you. But, please, mock away. *grins*
Stressful-yet-sedentary: I could exercise in the other sixteen hours of the day. I just don't.
Poor eating habits: I eat out a lot but they have this cool thing called "salad" now. It's like a complex collection of cellulose based food stuffs. If you have them put the CH3(CH2)nCOOH (they call this "dressing") on the side and only add enough for taste, it's surprisingly good for you.
Yep, at the end of the day, I'm a lazy bastard who eats because I revel in it. Not as good a headline as "IT jobs are to blame" but way more honest.
On the positive side, I can slap one side of my gut and pretend it's a newton's cradle... which I'm sure you'll agree is pretty cool.
Two /. news stories:
Google helps the Indian government make a man eat from the same bowl he craps in.
Microsoft saves users from recording American Gladiators.
As part of their competition with Google strategy, I think Microsoft just stole the right to the "Do no evil" slogan.
It's really easy to say "If the relationship's that broken, just divorce."
It's also badly missing the realities.
If there's that much paranoia, odds are one or both parties are moving towards divorce but know they need to do a bunch of things to either avoid getting screwed in the process (or, if they're malicious, screw the other side).
From experience with friends going through divorce, you should really be doing a bunch of things before you turn the cold war hot:
You should ensure there's money to pay for lawyers in accounts that can't suddenly turn up empty on you.
You should ensure that any evidence of infidelity on their part is documented. Likewise, you should be making sure you've not left any trails on your part.
You should be making sure you've got copies of things like the mortgage paperwork, house deeds, car titles, etc.
You should be contacting a lawyer first, not after you've set things in motion.
Many of these can be handle via the web/email. The last thing you want is the spouse you're leaving having logged conversations with your lawyer and having grabbed the passwords to all of your accounts so they gain privileged information after the split.
So, rather than assuming "It's broken. Go for divorce." and setting them up for a world of hurt they're trying to minimize, how about we try answering the question instead?
What if the government decided to do away with the fourth ammendment and declare it was their right to search and seize simply becuase they're fighting a war against a noun?
What if the government decided to completely ignore the right to legal representation and a free trial because they were holding you in a special, magical place where they decided those rules didn't apply?
What if the government started shipping people off to be tortured by third party nations so they could pretend they weren't doing it themselves.
What if the government wrote a statement that said certain forms of torture was OK, completely refused to list what those forms are, then pretended to be shocked when, exactly as intended, junior troops did what was expected of them?
What if the government could demand your library and bookstore records and had a special way of doing it where, legally, no one was ever allowed to report they'd been demanded, let alone fight the demands?
Or, the classic "crazy" one: What if the government was secretly spying on your phonecalls? Don't tell me there are laws against that. They could do it if they really wanted, right?
You want me to keep going?
The government tends to do the insidious crap because, exactly as they've done with most of the above, they can then deny they're even doing it for several years until the weight of evidence becomes completely overwhelming then they stop that one specific thing and start the next one.
You cut someone's tongue off, you've left a really big piece of physical evidence that sickens and outrages the world.
You toss someone in jail without trial, in normal circumstances, and a lawyer seeking to make a name for themselves is on your ass within months.
Pull the shady crap like suspending habeus corpus and you've got years before they even get it reinstated and can begin trying to get the guy you jailed back out.
Keep shipping him off to Syria or Egypt for "questioning" and you get to torture, whilst claiming innocence, the whole time.
Insidious works far better than blunt.
Continuing the insidious theme:
The British government is having major issues with a cleric they can't deport because he might face torture but who they can't make charges stick on in England.
Blunt option: Jail without trial. They tried that, it caused outrage. They had to release him.
Subtle tinfoil hat option: Zap him with a magnet. "Oh, the poor dear's had a stroke. He can't preach anymore. How awful." Then you take him to a nice secure hospital to protect him from the people who might do him harm and you keep repeating. Problem solved. You're helping him, not harming him.
Technically, a harpoon launcher allows you to use an external power source (compressed air, explosive, etc.) while his legs don't directly add power to the equation.
What they do however is take an inherrently inefficient task (the loss of kinetic energy from a running stride) and make it more efficient (storing that energy in a spring and then re-releasing it to power forward).
What he's doing is closer to a high jumper entering on a state of the art pogo stick.
Of course, I think it's a brilliant idea. I'm trying out for the marathon on another form of energy transference I call "a bicycle." I'm pretty sure I can get my 26 mile time down under two hours. Never thought of myself as an Olympian but Beijing, here I come!
You'll notice, no one with an amputation at the ankle has managed to compete on a close to competetive level.
Which is a pretty clear indicator the kinetic energy store of a giant freaking spring for a leg adds something.
Buy two MicroSD cards.
Put one in a camera. Leave a whole bunch of inane pictures of it.
Use the second one as your main file store. At $20-25 for a 4GB card, they're cheap. They're also 15x11mm, so small you'll "lose" them - oops - in your checked luggage and are never going to be spotted by a bored inspector, that barely graduated highschool, watching hundreds of thousands of large bags going by.
Alternatively, stick it in a GameBoy DS. They have SD readers. Look utterly bored as you wander through, in flight toy in hand. Odds of their bothering to inspect a children's toy and find something that looks like it's supposed to be there anyway, are next to zero.
At customs, look bored, hand over your largely empty laptop and meaningless digital camera.
Let them copy off anything they feel like. Don't fight it. Don't complain. Let them think they've got everything.
Once you're back on the other side, put the other card back in, get access to your files again.
No, it won't stop them if they're utterly convinced you're a terrorist. They'll take everything apart and will eventually find that tiny thing. The abusive copying of anyone's crap, with no grounds for suspicion, is going to leave them copying junk that means nothing to them. There's simply no time to search everyone to the degree they'd find the few people with a MicroSD card. And, even if they do, it's a totally legitimate thing to do so you can claim total ignorance.
4GB should be plenty for most trip type info. Sensitive business docs should easily fit in to that. If you store porn on your laptop, leave it on an external drive at home for when you get back. If you really must have some with you, if you need more than 4GB, it's time to admit you've got issues.
'We don't want to say, "We're releasing a better version next year." and then have people refuse to buy the old units like they did with the HDMI thing. Especially as it would be for a full twelve months this time. That would really kill our lead against the other consoles in North America. So, uh, "We've got no plans!"'
It's almost certainly a lie. But they would be crazy to tell the truth and destroy their market until the new models did finally ship.
It's pretty much guaranteed Sony will ship new models too. Bigger hard drives, cooler processors, smaller cases, new skus with games bundled. There are always new stimuli to keep the market active. But no one in their right mind acknowledges their roadmap for the next 20 months (to the end of '09), screwing their current market with all the people who figure they'll just wait.
It's not just consoles. Canon releases a new xxxD camera every year or so, a new xxD camera every 18 months, pretty much like clockwork. And yet they refuse to announce the new model until the last possible moment, denying everything they can, so as not to trash the current prices. Look at what happened to the $3,000 Canon 5D that everyone assumed would have got a new revision in February. Even without a new rev turning up, discounting got so competetive on the assumption the old model was about to become obsolete that it now goes for a hair over $2,000. Even then, people like myself who'd still get a lot from the 5D are putting off their purchase, waiting for whatever its successor turns out to be or much lower 5D prices, rather than letting Canon shift stock now.
I'm not going to pass judgment on whether those goals are "right" or "wrong." (Actually, arguably, such struggles almost always break down to both sides doing a lot of "wrong" things and ignoring their own wrongs, focusing on the others' to justify even more of their own.)
There are those who can dismiss them as wrong just as there are those who can dismiss the justifications for the American struggle for indepedence as wrong if they're determined enough.
Yes, it can be argued that it's mostly about a few cynical Muslims whipping up hatred so they can consolidate power far more than it's about the above stated aims. Then again, the same argument can be made that the stated aims for American independence were very different to the argument it was really about rich white slave owners, who'd taken the land from the native people, wanting to pay less tax and whipping up populist sentiment to ensure they got it.
Again: Just because the goals get a fraction of the attention "OMFG TERRORISTS!" gets on the nightly news, it doesn't mean there aren't any.
I remember playing with something pretty identical to this at E3, several years ago, a while before Flight Simulator X came out.
As I recall, it was more like 120-140 degrees rather than pretending it was full 180. Then again, I'm not convinced the jDome is true 180 either - think about it, one point, relatively close, projecting on to a hemisphere, by definition, can't get to the outtermost edges.
The experience was certainly cool and definitely added an immersive element.
It wasn't quite as cool as it promised to be though for the following reasons:
Projector resolution generally sucks - even now, 1080p projectors cost several thousand dollars vs. about $400 for a basic 24 inch 1920x1200 LCD monitor. Most likely, you're going to be hobbled with 720p which is on the low end of most gaming systems these days. Now factor in that 1280 horizontal resolution has to project both the normal ~60 degree view AND the sides. You're now at maybe the equivalent of 800x600 for the area your cheaper 1920x1200 monitor is showing. Sure, you get the edges - but at a massive cost to the center's clarity.
Whilst edges are nice, down is often pretty pointless. It looks great if you're flying with the instrument panel turned off. The moment you turn it on, that whole bottom half of the screen is now filled with your control panel and your legs. You've gone to all of this trouble and you see... a big grey panel and a nice rendering of legs moving pedals. Most FPSs are relatively planar and so, most of the time, all you see is the ground running underneath you. Sure, it's nice when you're shooting around an industrial complex with people above and below... but most of the time you're just trading resolution for watching empty space above and very close ground below. You'll notice our eyes are horizontal, giving a much wider field of view than a vertical one.
You generally need your input devices resting on something. Unless you spend a fortune on custom controllers, odds are you're going to need a keyboard and mouse for most FPSs, a keyboard, throttle, yoke and mouse for menus for flight sims. The table you need to put all of that on ends up obscuring half of your downward view anyway. Plus it tends to really suck, trying to use most input devices while standing anyway.
It's a fun concept. Much like shutter glasses and TrackIR, it's one that can add a whole lot of wow factor, albeit at the expense of real practical use. On the flip side, for those with money to burn, a 1080p projector, a fast gaming rig, shutter glasses to make it 3D as well and TrackIR to make swaying your head from side to side have a difference... it could be the ultimate show off gimick. Hopefully it'll be easy to wash, when motion sickness makes people vomit, too.
The one where the superior military, that could crush its opposition anywhere they stood and fought, couldn't defeat an army that kept slipping in to the countryside?
The one where the "evil" greater power could be demonised every time they caused collateral damage or took reprisals on the people the weaker force hid behind?
The one where the great general George Washington brilliantly used geurilla tactics to make up for never having more than 17,000 men in the field at any one time?
The one where, soon after winning its largely guerilla war, they wrote the second ammendment to their constitution to enshrine the right to that kind of combat?
The one where the larger but distant power regarded the attacks on its own holdings as terrorism - the term just wasn't widely used yet?
It's ironic that a nation formed on, and celebrating in its constitution, the principles of armed insurrection, guerilla warfare and terrorism when it was the weaker power gets its panties in such a collective bunch when people do exactly the same thing that worked so well for it back again.
Remember: If you win and you're powerful enough to write the history, it's noble. If you lose, it's evil terrorism. Until it's decided, which one it's viewed as simply depends on which side you're on.
He's like a jet engine supporter immediately after World War II:
"Jet engines are inherrently capable of much greater speeds than propeller engines!"
"OK, so show me one that goes much faster than the prop driven spitfire?"
"Well, uh, there's the Gloster Meteor!"
"It does about 500mph*, right? That's not bad compared to the Spitfire XIX's 460mph. But there are tons of Spitfires out there, available cheaply vs. paying several times the cost for the Meteor for about a 10% speed improvement." *note: F-3 variant, not the "overclocked" tweaked versions that set speed records.
"Well, but the point isn't that it's better today. It's a better technology! It'll be better in the future! Props will never go supersonic. Jets can potentially go several times supersonic."
"That is cool. Doesn't really help me today though, does it? I'm still paying several times the cost for a small improvement, today."
"Yeah, but if you don't buy jets now, how will their prices ever come down? How will we ever reach the heady perfection they're capable of?"
"Again, not helping me today, is it?"
"But! But! It's really cool!"
Yes, the technology shows promise. But its future promise with only small increases today doesn't justify its current high cost.
If more people bought it, the cost would come down over time and more investment would mean unlocking more of that promise. Which is great in the future but gives you very little today in exchange for that high cost.
The argument he seems to be making is that everyone should adopt it right now, not because it actually gets them much for their money but because their investment will enable him to buy even faster stuff for a lower price later.
Not really compelling.
"Someone has attempted to stop me from shocking you. Allow or Deny?"
"Allo-" BZZZ
"Denied"
"Ow! Stop-" BZZZ "Stop shocking me!"
"Someone has attempted to stop me from shocking you. Allow or Deny?"
"Allo-" BZZZ
"Denied"
Repeat ad infinitum.
"It looks like you are looking at an attractive woman. Press 1 to..."
Ew.
They should start with something simple like an OS that works. I think your first line answers your second.
Windows 1.0 was launched 23 years ago, in 1985.
MS-DOS wasn't too bad. But then they bought that one from Seattle Computer Products.
1939/45... Troops freeze through the Battle of the Bulge, across Russia.
2008... Access to certain videogames sometimes limited in certain situations for a few days until net access can be resecured.
I know "Won't anybody think of the troops!" is second only to "Won't anybody think of the children!" and can thus never be questioned unless you're a terrorist as well as a paedophile.. but there comes a point where the rallying cry is used for such ludicrously trivial things that it just devalues everyone involved.
Washington has been run on pure hot air for decades.
This increases competition with us.
With less competition, we can profit more.
Therefore competition is bad.
If we justify that because "we" want it, no one will agree.
If we justify that because "it hurts customers" we sound noble.
Let's claim that then.
Quick, someone think of a remotely plausible reason.
The logic for what leads them to think it is entirely clear and simple.
The mistake is confusing the logic that leads them to think it with the implied logic they try to present as to how they got to their deliberately fake conclusion.