AND you still have to have the ability/right to negotiate the terms. A blind click-through or tear-through EULA contract without a means of negotiating terms is useless crap. Tear as you will, simply do as indicated by the previous poster and send in YOUR terms/changes to the EULA that YOU accept.
I was in Desert Storm, I don't need footage. As for WWII...hell, screw that. The point is that there is a LOT more to history than a couple wars. I don't want to see a buch of Vietnam stuff either. I want Minoa, ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the ancient Egyptian empire, the Middle Ages, the Celts...real good history. Enough WWII, Vietnam, Desert Storm, etc. Done to death. Do HISTORY (and quit with the _Blacksheep Squadron_. What crap. Give me _Connections_ (a GREAT series that spans real history) instead.
"The History Channel" should be renamed the "WWII Channel", or as another poster referred...call it "The Hitler Channel". It sure as hell isn't any longer a REAL history channel.
I'm rural now (4 months now) and I'm just 8 miles from Purdue University. There will NEVER be DSL where I am now, NEVER be cable. There is no broadband option even this close to a major university like Purdue.
My ONLY hope is forthcoming...Purdue is in the process of building a campus-wide wireless network. With any luck, with my 30+ dB directional antenna I will be able to pull a signal from the campus when they finish late this year and do some form of broadband that way...incidently, are there any electrical engineers around willing to put up simple schematics for a 2.4-2.5 GHz amplifier design that could be built with RadioShack parts? I have in mind making an amp that has switchable amplification for 1 W, 2 W, 5 W, and 10 W amp (yeah, I know the technical rules concerning power output, etc, WRT WiFi/802.11b but I don't care right now...I just want the designs to build from).
How about posting such a design on a website? Pleeeeze? I could probably pull in a connection with such an amp combined with my directional...
Satellites SUCK. For broadband, they are the only option I have besides dialup so I am sticking with dialup. Satellites are EXPENSIVE. To get more than 3 TV channels, I've had to go satellite TV. That costs ~$40/month and isn't worth it so it turns out. 155 channels and STILL nothing on worth watching (all the history channel ever shows is WWII crap over and over and over...but that's another story). Anyway, I am already shelling out ~$40/month on sat-TV. For sat-internet, it costs ~$70/month! Bullsh*t I'll EVER pay that much for high-latency, sub-DSL quality internet connectivity. If you have to choose between satellite or dialup, as I do, it is better to stick with dialup. Really.
Your argument makes no sense. Simply make good products without any protection? Loser's game. Ok, I make a really great device that I do not patent but begin to sell, shortly thereafter, YOU steal my idea and start selling the same thing, perhaps undercutting me. You rip off my idea and I have no recourse becuase I was an idiot and didn't seek patent protection.
Same idea here with RH, see? They should be able to 1) make money and pay their employees and not be expected to be starving hackers, and 2) they should have recourse to nail those who seek to take ideas that they are incapable of coming up with themselves and undercutting the real source of the ideas. RedHat is perfectly logical an right to seek to be able to make money off corporations and protect themselves from such corporations (Microsnot, for instance) taking one of their product/ideas/code and folding it into one of their proprietory, anticompetitive, and illegal bullcrap software. Bully for Redhat.
I'm more than happy with Transgaming's product. The regular wine cannot run most of the games that Transgaming's winex can. They went specifically for a particular focus that the winehq was simply blowing off.
Transgaming and only Transgaming gave DX 8.0 compatibility to wine(x). Transgaming is also temporarily holding the code until they make back what they put into it. Perfectly fine and fair. Free everything just isn't real world.
I wanted wine almost exclusively to permit me to play the games I want to play without needing to bootup windoze. Winex gives me that for 90% of the games I am interested in. Wine NEEDED and NEEDS groups to focus on particular targets instead of the hit or miss general everything that is wine itself. Transgaming focused exlusively on games, and good for them (and we who play those games).
Portman? OK, instead of inserting her into old movies, how about inserting her into my home? What a frickin' hottie.
I don't see how it can be done. The first movies were futurama, presumably when Portmans character would be well aged...unless there is to be some sort of flashback stuff or goofy "the force" ghost stuff with a hot young Portman spook (ala the dead Obi-Wan and recently deceased Darth).
As for Jar-Jar. If this thing makes it into anything else Star Warzy, then it will be due to Lucas demonstrating a true loss of touch with reality. I'd say this would prove beyond doubt that his creativity ended with the first trilogy and Alzhiemer's or presenile dementia has kicked in.
Jar-Jar is the pinnacle of nasti-stupid characters created by Lucas. The other members of the STUPID-Ass, childish (OVERLY childish) characters would be the ridiculous Ewoks and then a just-out-of-diapers Anakin in Episode 1. Talk about foresaking real people that are past wearing poopie diapers and pandering to the Romper Room crowd.
Hey Lucas, quite aiming at the Goo-goo-gaa-gaa set and aim HIGHER. Go no lower than the mid-teens (but skip the teen-beloved farting and barfing humor).
Infants are not a worthy market but that seems to be all you shoot for - of course, they are the easiest to please and require the least amount of talent to amuse...
Well...I don't know why the previous reply was modded down to -1. The comment about teaching one's creature not to eat its own poopidoops is one I've read before from other people.
I believe that the trick is to be very careful how you administer rewards and punishment. Sure, it might take time - and if your balance if wrong with the rewards/punishments, you get unexpected results, or so I hear. Haven't played that game either.
Control freaks? Hmmm, this sounds like a PERFECT game for...$CIENTOLOGISTS! Yes, $cientologist players could happily and without consequence squelch dissenters, prevent Sims characters from protesting at their "churches", have perfect, all-powerful OT III and higher characters with magical powers.
I wonder what percentage of the Sims players are $cientologist?
You've done it! You've answered the mystery of the Sims! What mystery? I don't frickin' know because I'll never frickin' touch that stupid frickin' game BUT...someone else posted a comment about how long it takes to put the dishes away or turn on a radio across the room. The Sims must be playing the Sims so that the mundane aspects of REAL life that they normally do go undone so they can play the Sims and run the mundane lives of these computer pustules. I think it is an infinite regression. The Sims play the Sims who play the Sims, etc, etc.
Stupid fuckin' game. It speaks VOLUMES about the game that character DO DISHES or TAKE OUT TRASH, or shower, shit, brush teeth, etc, etc. Hell, I sure hope the people who get off playing that "game" do at least the same thing as their pustule Sims characters do.
I'd actually play the game if I could create a molecular biologist character who creates a nasty plague virus and releases it, wiping out whole geographic Sims areas. Or let me be the leader of a Sims country and develop a neutron bomb and start lobbing it at enemy Sims cities. THAT would be cool.
Ok,NOW the game sounds interesting...Will this maid be a French Maid in a sexy, short maid outfit? Will she take it off? Will she do other nifty stuff?
No? She'll just clean the frickin' house? What a frickin' STUPID game! Back to hoards of orcs. Mumble, mumble, pussy Sims game, mumble, mumble, retards play it, mumble, mumble.
I do not understand the draw of this game. There, I said it. I live life every day, mow the lawn when it needs it, go to work...why the HELL would I want to play a "game" within which I get to do the same crap? I play to escape and solve mysteries/puzzles, put my tactical and strategic wargaming skills against those of the computer or another person. Why do I want to play a game where I have to go to work, mow the lawn, etc?
That said, I WOULD find it interesting if the game maker would BRING BACK the plague hamster that kills. Add plagues, pandemics, crime, terrorists, serial killers... THAT would be frickin' cool (or COULD be if done properly). You character goes for a walk at night and gets mugged or does the wrong girl/guy and gets a disease. Has a car accident. Make it gritty and more unpredictable. Toss in the wildcards. THAT would make it more interesting.
As it is, I'll never touch it or even look at the box. I'll stick with Deus Ex, Half-Life, the coming Call of Cthulhu (YEAH!), and Warcraft III. REAL escapist fun games.
And I would posit that if you posit a singularity, you are positing a phantasm. You have never observed a singularity and you never will.
Anything that implies infinite energy or infinite density, infinite curvature is suspect and likely wrong. I would go with Einstein's feeling that it just makes no sense and is wrong.
Since black holes have so many undisputed problems, why the investment in keeping the idea as depicted around? What sense does it make to hold on to an idea that is loaded chock full with problems? Just because? That is a horrible reason. Black holes should in no way be considered real - they should be clearly posited as merely theoretical and provisional in recognition for their many, many problems.
Hell, these guys haven't even published yet and many here are poo-pooeing it offhand. All any of us have read are the general popular press versions. Wait until they publish and THEN commense to critiquing it. It speaks volumes that there are a growing number in the field that (provisionally) accept the idea of gravastars as possible. It also speaks volumes that it is mostly astronomers who buy black holes as is while a goodly number of astrophysicists and such are not convinced and actually dislike black holes.
Ultimately the gravastar theory may be wrong AS IS, but I'll bet my left eye and right testicle that the black hole theory is also wrong AS IS.
Really? And BEFORE there was an "accepted" theory of black holes the equivalent scientists would tell you something totally different. Don't hold TOO tightly to "black holes" because they could well turn out to be ephemeral.
The problem of infinities is enough to kill the idea of black holes anyway. The fact that these scientists would go for an idea that contravenes ALL the rest of physics, with impossible infinities, "break downs" of the laws of physics (my ASS!). Nope, I would say that black holes are ripe for picking off.
A gravastar behaves, observationally, EXACTLY like a black hole so there is no way to argue against them on that level. At this point it is ONLY a matter of taste - do you like mystical (and bullshit) breakdowns of the laws of physics and nonsensical singularities, naked or otherwise, or do you like maintaining all the laws of physics but allow for phase changes in space-time (which fits right in with accepted cosmology, by the way, which holds that there WERE phase changes in space-time during the development of the modern universe from the big bang...and that there could be more phase changes on the way)? I like the more reasonable gravastar to the ghostie, goblinie, magic black hole.
Dude...a gravastar would kill you just as deaders as a neutron star or "black hole". They still develop accretion rings, synchroton radiation, and have huge gravity gradients. The only real diff is that you get to strike the actual surface of the gravastar and get converted into pure energy, whereas there is the problem with black holes essentially stopping time (infinite gravitational energy), event horizons, etc. Nonsense, I tell you. You can account for the same observational evidence with gravastars. In any case, a gravastar is a killer too. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
This story first hit/. several weeks ago. I am glad to see the astrophysics community taking it onward and upward. Me no like blackie-holes. There is that ugly problem of infinities, entropy imbalances, loss of information, and so forth - none of which appear in the gravastar model...with the added bonus that a gravastar in every other way behaves exactly like a "black hole" (gravitationally).
Cosmology DOES contain ideas of phase changes occurring during the development of the universe after the big bang, so gravastars with space-time phase changes fits in there too.
It still permits sci-fi some cool material too, so the loss of classic black holes would be no biggie on that front.
Bring REASON back and eliminate "black holes". Silly, impossible buggers they are.
Time to bring the non-scientifically adept up to speed vs the legal system. The legal system of ANY country is not about reality or facts or science. For such things as driving age, age of consent, voting, etc, the legal systems all must come to a compromise vs reality when it comes to these things. First, many laws were put on the books before most of modern science properly existed, and WELL before any real developmental biology was worked out. That, plus the fact that lifespans were shorter in the past, on average, than today and you find you need to make adjustments.
If you wanted the legal system to be completely self-consistent and based on reality, then EVERY individual would have to go through a battery of biological and psychological testing to give the legal system an idea as to your level of emotional development and judgement level. Some few people would gain full legal rights at 20, others at 25, and so forth, due to natural biological and developmental variation. This is clearly not the way we can reasonably expect it to go so we need to compromise and provide for graduated rights.
In case you haven't noticed lately, since it is a FACT that teenage drivers are the most dangerous people on the streets, bar none, many states are beginning to change the laws such that even 16 year-olds are NOT allowed to drive freely and at will. They are receiving restricted driver's licenses, subject to stricter review, requiring that you gradually develop into a good driver with full driving priviledges. Expect this to spread to more and more states rather than remain restricted to a handful of vanguard states.
Many of you are looking at this backwards, as if the law is reality and reality isn't. The law has very little to do with reality. For instance, I would go so far as to say that countries in which the age of consent is so low (did someone mention 12?) are stupidly WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Not because of some moral qualms on my part, but because of developmental biological FACTS. Sex is NOT harmless emotionally nor physically. It DOES have consequences that go beyond whether or not one gets preggers. A 12-year-old is in no way, shape, or form emotionally mature. They are also strongly lacking in judgement. They, as a matter of fact, cannot make thoughtful, logical, mature, reasoned decisions because the faculties required for such are not fully developed yet.
I think we could make the laws more properly fit with biological and psychological reality by creating graduated rights, but instead of basing it on testing everyone, you go with the average rate of development for humans. Thus, 15 year olds would have a subset of rights, 20 year olds a larger collection of rights, and then 25 year olds the full set of adult rights...because by 25 MOST people have fully developed "equipment" to allow for full, clear judgement. Of course this isn't perfect, but again, the laws are more about wierd compromises rather than reality.
A kid's brain is not fully developed until they are in their low 20s. In particular, the part of the brain involved in JUDGEMENT isn't. It doesn't matter how intelligent one is with numbers, words, etc, as this has NOTHING to do with judgement and emotional maturity which is more important. Being emotionally immature AND judgementally impaired due to the facts of developmental biology are reasons that minors must have adult supervision and oversight (and why minors cannot enter legally binding contracts, vote, simply quit school legally, etc).
Programming well at 12 or 15 means NOTHING vis a vis emotional maturity and judgement.
And what about the totally valid, peer-reviewed research that demonstrates that a person's brain, in particular, those parts of the brain involved in judgement, are not fully developed until one is in their low 20s?
There are valid reasons that a society cannot trust the young and require adults to be caretakers. Same applies to contracts, voting, etc. Your mind is NOT fully developed, your judgement is NOT clear. I'm sorry if you don't like the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, or that your brain is not fully developed and, therefore, you need to have an adult to ultimately be responsible for you, but that is reality and if you don't like reality...then that just proves the point.
Apple IS correct here. What they should do is allow the parent of a minor to grant permission and thus take all responsibility for their kid's actions. It is not reasonable (here comes the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex again - thus weakened judgement) to expect a company with liabilities and properties worth many millions to simply let someone who cannot (rightfully) enter into a binding contractual agreements have access to their properties. The correct thing to do is ask Apple to permit PARENTS/legal guardians to take on the liability for their kid's actions.
Since there IS small print that must be agreed to, Apple is absolutely correct and in the right to remove him. A minor cannot be legally bound to a contract. The only option in this case should be for his parents to accept responsibility - which might be best of all. The kid wont do anything to bust the fine print agreement because the heat would fall upon his PARENTS instead of him.
I gave $120. I did it and did not immediately log in to see what I could get. I haven't paid attention. I am not rich, I am a frickin' grad student. I did it to support a good distro through some bad times.
I also PAID for the boxed 8.2 release...same reasons. Up to now, I've downloaded iso images or did the slower, painful upgrades via rpm alone. I figured it was time to give back. It is a GOOD thing to pay, at least once in a while, for the work your distro is doing. Ungrateful, snot-nosed twerps.
THIS is one of the main reasons that there are no linux games. This is the main reason there is practically no linux commercial software. When was the last time you saw an opensource tax-prep package? Or a top-of-the line game come to linux and do well? All that has EVER come is a port (loki, now dead because of deadbeats leeches) or out of the goodness of the developer's heart (idSoftware) but STILL requiring a windoze game purchase. This last is just a nice gesture and does nothing to keep the company afloat and game-producing.
Ya'll have the misimpression that you are OWED software. That you shouldn't have to pay for ANYTHING...ever. That you are entitled to ANYTHING. Nope. You are not. You want the niceties (simple installers, nice development ala Transgaming's version of wine that works better than ANY other version of wine to games), then you should be willing to pay to get them...REGARDLESS of licensing.
Too many of you talk a good game
about the strength and political superiority of opensource but what you are REALLY doing is demanding free/never pay for software developed by the labor of others. I LIKE opensource and I like that I can get most/all of it for free but I also know for a fact that a lot of it would NOT be here if NO one coughed up money to cover the costs. Fact. Grow up and join the real world.
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AND you still have to have the ability/right to negotiate the terms. A blind click-through or tear-through EULA contract without a means of negotiating terms is useless crap. Tear as you will, simply do as indicated by the previous poster and send in YOUR terms/changes to the EULA that YOU accept.
I was in Desert Storm, I don't need footage. As for WWII...hell, screw that. The point is that there is a LOT more to history than a couple wars. I don't want to see a buch of Vietnam stuff either. I want Minoa, ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the ancient Egyptian empire, the Middle Ages, the Celts...real good history. Enough WWII, Vietnam, Desert Storm, etc. Done to death. Do HISTORY (and quit with the _Blacksheep Squadron_. What crap. Give me _Connections_ (a GREAT series that spans real history) instead.
"The History Channel" should be renamed the "WWII Channel", or as another poster referred...call it "The Hitler Channel". It sure as hell isn't any longer a REAL history channel.
I'm rural now (4 months now) and I'm just 8 miles from Purdue University. There will NEVER be DSL where I am now, NEVER be cable. There is no broadband option even this close to a major university like Purdue.
My ONLY hope is forthcoming...Purdue is in the process of building a campus-wide wireless network. With any luck, with my 30+ dB directional antenna I will be able to pull a signal from the campus when they finish late this year and do some form of broadband that way...incidently, are there any electrical engineers around willing to put up simple schematics for a 2.4-2.5 GHz amplifier design that could be built with RadioShack parts? I have in mind making an amp that has switchable amplification for 1 W, 2 W, 5 W, and 10 W amp (yeah, I know the technical rules concerning power output, etc, WRT WiFi/802.11b but I don't care right now...I just want the designs to build from).
How about posting such a design on a website? Pleeeeze? I could probably pull in a connection with such an amp combined with my directional...
Satellites SUCK. For broadband, they are the only option I have besides dialup so I am sticking with dialup. Satellites are EXPENSIVE. To get more than 3 TV channels, I've had to go satellite TV. That costs ~$40/month and isn't worth it so it turns out. 155 channels and STILL nothing on worth watching (all the history channel ever shows is WWII crap over and over and over...but that's another story). Anyway, I am already shelling out ~$40/month on sat-TV. For sat-internet, it costs ~$70/month! Bullsh*t I'll EVER pay that much for high-latency, sub-DSL quality internet connectivity. If you have to choose between satellite or dialup, as I do, it is better to stick with dialup. Really.
Your argument makes no sense. Simply make good products without any protection? Loser's game. Ok, I make a really great device that I do not patent but begin to sell, shortly thereafter, YOU steal my idea and start selling the same thing, perhaps undercutting me. You rip off my idea and I have no recourse becuase I was an idiot and didn't seek patent protection.
Same idea here with RH, see? They should be able to 1) make money and pay their employees and not be expected to be starving hackers, and 2) they should have recourse to nail those who seek to take ideas that they are incapable of coming up with themselves and undercutting the real source of the ideas. RedHat is perfectly logical an right to seek to be able to make money off corporations and protect themselves from such corporations (Microsnot, for instance) taking one of their product/ideas/code and folding it into one of their proprietory, anticompetitive, and illegal bullcrap software. Bully for Redhat.
I'm more than happy with Transgaming's product. The regular wine cannot run most of the games that Transgaming's winex can. They went specifically for a particular focus that the winehq was simply blowing off.
Transgaming and only Transgaming gave DX 8.0 compatibility to wine(x). Transgaming is also temporarily holding the code until they make back what they put into it. Perfectly fine and fair. Free everything just isn't real world.
I wanted wine almost exclusively to permit me to play the games I want to play without needing to bootup windoze. Winex gives me that for 90% of the games I am interested in. Wine NEEDED and NEEDS groups to focus on particular targets instead of the hit or miss general everything that is wine itself. Transgaming focused exlusively on games, and good for them (and we who play those games).
Portman? OK, instead of inserting her into old movies, how about inserting her into my home? What a frickin' hottie.
I don't see how it can be done. The first movies were futurama, presumably when Portmans character would be well aged...unless there is to be some sort of flashback stuff or goofy "the force" ghost stuff with a hot young Portman spook (ala the dead Obi-Wan and recently deceased Darth).
As for Jar-Jar. If this thing makes it into anything else Star Warzy, then it will be due to Lucas demonstrating a true loss of touch with reality. I'd say this would prove beyond doubt that his creativity ended with the first trilogy and Alzhiemer's or presenile dementia has kicked in.
Jar-Jar is the pinnacle of nasti-stupid characters created by Lucas. The other members of the STUPID-Ass, childish (OVERLY childish) characters would be the ridiculous Ewoks and then a just-out-of-diapers Anakin in Episode 1. Talk about foresaking real people that are past wearing poopie diapers and pandering to the Romper Room crowd.
Hey Lucas, quite aiming at the Goo-goo-gaa-gaa set and aim HIGHER. Go no lower than the mid-teens (but skip the teen-beloved farting and barfing humor).
Infants are not a worthy market but that seems to be all you shoot for - of course, they are the easiest to please and require the least amount of talent to amuse...
If you can deal with a very flash-laden website, you can go to the source of the game at
- http://www.fishtankgames.de/
. I look forward to this game. Looks cool, SOUNDS cool, and it is Lovecraftian. THAT'S cool.Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, due this summer. Action/adventure RPG 3d:s html
http://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu/DCOTE/index.
Well...I don't know why the previous reply was modded down to -1. The comment about teaching one's creature not to eat its own poopidoops is one I've read before from other people.
I believe that the trick is to be very careful how you administer rewards and punishment. Sure, it might take time - and if your balance if wrong with the rewards/punishments, you get unexpected results, or so I hear. Haven't played that game either.
If that is what you want, then buy and play Black and White. That certainly seems more interesting than the Sims.
Control freaks? Hmmm, this sounds like a PERFECT game for...$CIENTOLOGISTS! Yes, $cientologist players could happily and without consequence squelch dissenters, prevent Sims characters from protesting at their "churches", have perfect, all-powerful OT III and higher characters with magical powers.
I wonder what percentage of the Sims players are $cientologist?
You've done it! You've answered the mystery of the Sims! What mystery? I don't frickin' know because I'll never frickin' touch that stupid frickin' game BUT...someone else posted a comment about how long it takes to put the dishes away or turn on a radio across the room. The Sims must be playing the Sims so that the mundane aspects of REAL life that they normally do go undone so they can play the Sims and run the mundane lives of these computer pustules. I think it is an infinite regression. The Sims play the Sims who play the Sims, etc, etc.
Stupid fuckin' game. It speaks VOLUMES about the game that character DO DISHES or TAKE OUT TRASH, or shower, shit, brush teeth, etc, etc. Hell, I sure hope the people who get off playing that "game" do at least the same thing as their pustule Sims characters do.
I'd actually play the game if I could create a molecular biologist character who creates a nasty plague virus and releases it, wiping out whole geographic Sims areas. Or let me be the leader of a Sims country and develop a neutron bomb and start lobbing it at enemy Sims cities. THAT would be cool.
Ok,NOW the game sounds interesting...Will this maid be a French Maid in a sexy, short maid outfit? Will she take it off? Will she do other nifty stuff?
No? She'll just clean the frickin' house? What a frickin' STUPID game! Back to hoards of orcs. Mumble, mumble, pussy Sims game, mumble, mumble, retards play it, mumble, mumble.
I do not understand the draw of this game. There, I said it. I live life every day, mow the lawn when it needs it, go to work...why the HELL would I want to play a "game" within which I get to do the same crap? I play to escape and solve mysteries/puzzles, put my tactical and strategic wargaming skills against those of the computer or another person. Why do I want to play a game where I have to go to work, mow the lawn, etc?
That said, I WOULD find it interesting if the game maker would BRING BACK the plague hamster that kills. Add plagues, pandemics, crime, terrorists, serial killers... THAT would be frickin' cool (or COULD be if done properly). You character goes for a walk at night and gets mugged or does the wrong girl/guy and gets a disease. Has a car accident. Make it gritty and more unpredictable. Toss in the wildcards. THAT would make it more interesting.
As it is, I'll never touch it or even look at the box. I'll stick with Deus Ex, Half-Life, the coming Call of Cthulhu (YEAH!), and Warcraft III. REAL escapist fun games.
And I would posit that if you posit a singularity, you are positing a phantasm. You have never observed a singularity and you never will.
Anything that implies infinite energy or infinite density, infinite curvature is suspect and likely wrong. I would go with Einstein's feeling that it just makes no sense and is wrong.
Since black holes have so many undisputed problems, why the investment in keeping the idea as depicted around? What sense does it make to hold on to an idea that is loaded chock full with problems? Just because? That is a horrible reason. Black holes should in no way be considered real - they should be clearly posited as merely theoretical and provisional in recognition for their many, many problems.
Hell, these guys haven't even published yet and many here are poo-pooeing it offhand. All any of us have read are the general popular press versions. Wait until they publish and THEN commense to critiquing it. It speaks volumes that there are a growing number in the field that (provisionally) accept the idea of gravastars as possible. It also speaks volumes that it is mostly astronomers who buy black holes as is while a goodly number of astrophysicists and such are not convinced and actually dislike black holes.
Ultimately the gravastar theory may be wrong AS IS, but I'll bet my left eye and right testicle that the black hole theory is also wrong AS IS.
Really? And BEFORE there was an "accepted" theory of black holes the equivalent scientists would tell you something totally different. Don't hold TOO tightly to "black holes" because they could well turn out to be ephemeral.
The problem of infinities is enough to kill the idea of black holes anyway. The fact that these scientists would go for an idea that contravenes ALL the rest of physics, with impossible infinities, "break downs" of the laws of physics (my ASS!). Nope, I would say that black holes are ripe for picking off.
A gravastar behaves, observationally, EXACTLY like a black hole so there is no way to argue against them on that level. At this point it is ONLY a matter of taste - do you like mystical (and bullshit) breakdowns of the laws of physics and nonsensical singularities, naked or otherwise, or do you like maintaining all the laws of physics but allow for phase changes in space-time (which fits right in with accepted cosmology, by the way, which holds that there WERE phase changes in space-time during the development of the modern universe from the big bang...and that there could be more phase changes on the way)? I like the more reasonable gravastar to the ghostie, goblinie, magic black hole.
Dude...a gravastar would kill you just as deaders as a neutron star or "black hole". They still develop accretion rings, synchroton radiation, and have huge gravity gradients. The only real diff is that you get to strike the actual surface of the gravastar and get converted into pure energy, whereas there is the problem with black holes essentially stopping time (infinite gravitational energy), event horizons, etc. Nonsense, I tell you. You can account for the same observational evidence with gravastars. In any case, a gravastar is a killer too. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
This story first hit /. several weeks ago. I am glad to see the astrophysics community taking it onward and upward. Me no like blackie-holes. There is that ugly problem of infinities, entropy imbalances, loss of information, and so forth - none of which appear in the gravastar model...with the added bonus that a gravastar in every other way behaves exactly like a "black hole" (gravitationally).
Cosmology DOES contain ideas of phase changes occurring during the development of the universe after the big bang, so gravastars with space-time phase changes fits in there too.
It still permits sci-fi some cool material too, so the loss of classic black holes would be no biggie on that front.
Bring REASON back and eliminate "black holes". Silly, impossible buggers they are.
Time to bring the non-scientifically adept up to speed vs the legal system. The legal system of ANY country is not about reality or facts or science. For such things as driving age, age of consent, voting, etc, the legal systems all must come to a compromise vs reality when it comes to these things. First, many laws were put on the books before most of modern science properly existed, and WELL before any real developmental biology was worked out. That, plus the fact that lifespans were shorter in the past, on average, than today and you find you need to make adjustments.
If you wanted the legal system to be completely self-consistent and based on reality, then EVERY individual would have to go through a battery of biological and psychological testing to give the legal system an idea as to your level of emotional development and judgement level. Some few people would gain full legal rights at 20, others at 25, and so forth, due to natural biological and developmental variation. This is clearly not the way we can reasonably expect it to go so we need to compromise and provide for graduated rights.
In case you haven't noticed lately, since it is a FACT that teenage drivers are the most dangerous people on the streets, bar none, many states are beginning to change the laws such that even 16 year-olds are NOT allowed to drive freely and at will. They are receiving restricted driver's licenses, subject to stricter review, requiring that you gradually develop into a good driver with full driving priviledges. Expect this to spread to more and more states rather than remain restricted to a handful of vanguard states.
Many of you are looking at this backwards, as if the law is reality and reality isn't. The law has very little to do with reality. For instance, I would go so far as to say that countries in which the age of consent is so low (did someone mention 12?) are stupidly WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Not because of some moral qualms on my part, but because of developmental biological FACTS. Sex is NOT harmless emotionally nor physically. It DOES have consequences that go beyond whether or not one gets preggers. A 12-year-old is in no way, shape, or form emotionally mature. They are also strongly lacking in judgement. They, as a matter of fact, cannot make thoughtful, logical, mature, reasoned decisions because the faculties required for such are not fully developed yet.
I think we could make the laws more properly fit with biological and psychological reality by creating graduated rights, but instead of basing it on testing everyone, you go with the average rate of development for humans. Thus, 15 year olds would have a subset of rights, 20 year olds a larger collection of rights, and then 25 year olds the full set of adult rights...because by 25 MOST people have fully developed "equipment" to allow for full, clear judgement. Of course this isn't perfect, but again, the laws are more about wierd compromises rather than reality.
A kid's brain is not fully developed until they are in their low 20s. In particular, the part of the brain involved in JUDGEMENT isn't. It doesn't matter how intelligent one is with numbers, words, etc, as this has NOTHING to do with judgement and emotional maturity which is more important. Being emotionally immature AND judgementally impaired due to the facts of developmental biology are reasons that minors must have adult supervision and oversight (and why minors cannot enter legally binding contracts, vote, simply quit school legally, etc).
Programming well at 12 or 15 means NOTHING vis a vis emotional maturity and judgement.
Totally separate things.
And what about the totally valid, peer-reviewed research that demonstrates that a person's brain, in particular, those parts of the brain involved in judgement, are not fully developed until one is in their low 20s?
There are valid reasons that a society cannot trust the young and require adults to be caretakers. Same applies to contracts, voting, etc. Your mind is NOT fully developed, your judgement is NOT clear. I'm sorry if you don't like the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, or that your brain is not fully developed and, therefore, you need to have an adult to ultimately be responsible for you, but that is reality and if you don't like reality...then that just proves the point.
Apple IS correct here. What they should do is allow the parent of a minor to grant permission and thus take all responsibility for their kid's actions. It is not reasonable (here comes the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex again - thus weakened judgement) to expect a company with liabilities and properties worth many millions to simply let someone who cannot (rightfully) enter into a binding contractual agreements have access to their properties. The correct thing to do is ask Apple to permit PARENTS/legal guardians to take on the liability for their kid's actions.
Since there IS small print that must be agreed to, Apple is absolutely correct and in the right to remove him. A minor cannot be legally bound to a contract. The only option in this case should be for his parents to accept responsibility - which might be best of all. The kid wont do anything to bust the fine print agreement because the heat would fall upon his PARENTS instead of him.
If it makes you feel better you can always use an image of asterisks as you password.
I gave $120. I did it and did not immediately log in to see what I could get. I haven't paid attention. I am not rich, I am a frickin' grad student. I did it to support a good distro through some bad times.
I also PAID for the boxed 8.2 release...same reasons. Up to now, I've downloaded iso images or did the slower, painful upgrades via rpm alone. I figured it was time to give back. It is a GOOD thing to pay, at least once in a while, for the work your distro is doing. Ungrateful, snot-nosed twerps.
THIS is one of the main reasons that there are no linux games. This is the main reason there is practically no linux commercial software. When was the last time you saw an opensource tax-prep package? Or a top-of-the line game come to linux and do well? All that has EVER come is a port (loki, now dead because of deadbeats leeches) or out of the goodness of the developer's heart (idSoftware) but STILL requiring a windoze game purchase. This last is just a nice gesture and does nothing to keep the company afloat and game-producing.
Ya'll have the misimpression that you are OWED software. That you shouldn't have to pay for ANYTHING...ever. That you are entitled to ANYTHING. Nope. You are not. You want the niceties (simple installers, nice development ala Transgaming's version of wine that works better than ANY other version of wine to games), then you should be willing to pay to get them...REGARDLESS of licensing.
Too many of you talk a good game
about the strength and political superiority of opensource but what you are REALLY doing is demanding free/never pay for software developed by the labor of others. I LIKE opensource and I like that I can get most/all of it for free but I also know for a fact that a lot of it would NOT be here if NO one coughed up money to cover the costs. Fact. Grow up and join the real world.