The person to whom the investor entrusts his money...the mutual fund company. If the mutual fund company invests in bad companies, the fund loses money. Just like now. Right now, I'm having a hell of a time finding funds that don't include Microsoft and show good growth, and I will not tolerate investing in Microsoft, even if it IS profitable.
Every investor is responsible for their own investments. If you proxy the mutual fund to invest for you, you better trust them to make good decisions. If you don't trust them, do it yourself.
By your position, I'm assuming that you feel that female interests are underrepresented a) in the video game market in general and b) at E3 (these are not the same sets).
1) I have no issues whatsoever with people who think differently. My post was designed to encourage people to think differently, and share that expression with the world. It's not MY responsibility to express YOUR thoughts.
2) I don't have to clean up my conversations at all. If you have issues with the way some people talk, take it up with them. It might surprise you that the male population of this planet is non-homogenous, and runs the gamut from crass to urbane. I'm well towards the latter, and there are lots of people like me.
3) Maybe when I've got some free time, I will. Not that I have anything to contribute...I'm not a programmer, and I have no interest in being one. I was making a sociological comment.
4) I've never been afraid to make friends with anyone, regardless of gender. I defy you to illustrate counterexamples. Since you've never met me, or anybody I know, this will be very challenging.
5) I'm not dissatisfied with the state of the gaming hobby. I have plenty of original, interesting titles that take all my available time. I don't play all (well, any) of the myriad shooters out there. If you are dissatisfied with the gamut or quality of games, MAKE ONE. Don't cry about how hard it is to have your voice heard: start an open source gaming project and get to it. If you don't want to, or cannot, that's fine. Neither can I. But, again, don't expect anybody to make the game YOU want if nobody (yourself included) really knows what that game looks like.
PS: You use the word "your" implying that I am part of some machine that is bent on creating and maintaining the subjugation and denigration of women, particularly by keeping them out of the video game market. Not only is this worldview foolish, it's offensive and inaccurate. Repeat after me: nobody is out to get you.
Seems to me like if females want to play games oriented at females, then females ought to start writing games. I'm not trying to be crass or offensive...I'm just pointing out that telling somebody else to make a game to appeal to you isn't necessarily the best way to do it.
Think about it this way...should I try to tell Amy Tan to start writing stories that appeal to men? I'm not saying that men don't read and enjoy her books (just as many females play and enjoy video games). I keep hearing, however, that women don't feel as engaged by games as men do. OK, fine...go ahead and show us what you're talking about! Getting up on a moral high horse and painting game developers as misogynistic retards isn't productive. Explaining what you are interested in might be productive. Making a game that you would like would certainly be productive.
In other words, if nobody understands your taste, why are you surprised that nobody caters to it?
Some people would have dispelled the incipient confusion by reading and thinking about the article. But I understand that's not the fashionable thing to do around here...
Look, the guy went to the trouble of showing you how his design works on his web site. You really ought to look it over before criticising. The kb is balanced on rubber feet. When you press the heel of your hand onto your mouse, it rocks towards you and glides on teflon feet just like the mouse you're using now. So, no, the kb isn't going to be skating around on you.
Had you actually read the article, you'd see he went you one better. The right kb rocks forward onto high-friction rubber feet when typing, then rocks back onto teflon feet when mousing. There's also a contact switch on the left side of the mouse that activates mouse mode. You won't get your pointer moving without your permission.
One of Apple's original API guidelines was to have all shortcut key combinations accessible with the left hand, leaving the right hand free to use the mouse. So, instead of retraining 90% of the population to use their off-hand for mousing, they designed the software correctly. In the best of all possible worlds, there would be a preference to set the keymap to "right handed" or "left handed". That wouldn't be hard.
The idea that the user should have to retrain themselves instead of making simple changes in the way the software works is terrible ergonomics.
A man walks into a strip club and sits down at the bar. The man says to the bartender, "Would you look at all these losers? I see these same guys in this same skanky joint every damn day."
People who want cheap computers buy iMacs, if they buy Macs at all. Apple has never marketed towards price-sensitive users. They want performance conscious and style conscious users, and with this decision they refocus their attention on the second group. (Most of the performance conscious users don't buy Apple monitors anyway.)
This is going to be a big win for Apple. I bet they're going to get great deals from Samsung since they ONLY sell LCDs, and just like USB, I bet they're going to increase the installed base of a "new" technology dramatically. Good for them.
I didn't say infrared. I said "no cables". There are several good RF keyboards and mice out there (I'm using one now on my PC). There's no reason that the receiver couldn't be built into the case, much the same way as the new Apple laptops incorporate AirPort antennas.
Bluetooth might be the answer. We'll see.
Just because IBM did something poorly, doesn't mean it can't be done.
The only reason the corollary benefits of space exploration are even mentioned is so that people who don't understand the fundamental human imperative of exploration can be snookered out of their (approximately) $1.00 tax contribution to the space program.
The cost for space exploration is trivial. The benefits are uncountably huge. The tax revenues from the telecom industry (which would not exist in any recognizable form without modern satellite communication) from one single year would cover NASA's budget back to 1960.
So, the money's REALLY for space exploration. The rest are just freebies. You're trying to put the cart before the horse.
You don't have to trust anything I say. Do some research on your own. I suggest you start with R. Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". It's an excellent study that outlines precisely why a) returning to the moon is FAR less interesting and useful than Mars and b) exactly how one would go about supporting a long-term manned presence on Mars. It's FAR EASIER to do so on Mars than on the moon, simply because many important consumables (air, water, fuel) are easy to produce from indigenous materials on Mars.
The moon is far more hostile and dangerous than Mars. Just because Mars happens to be farther away does not greatly compound the risks associated with the mission. Ready access to consumables, and a pre-made shield against cosmic radiation, are two major advantages for Mars over Luna. There are many more...I'll leave you to read about them.
I am in no way suggesting a "glory quest" flags and footprints Mars mission. That would be worse than useless! Just look at what such a strategy has gotten us WRT the moon...absolutely nowhere. We've been jacking around in low-earth orbit for the last 20 years, and all we've got to show for it is a very mediocre space station that is years away from being useful. With current technology, it is possible to have a long-duration (910 day total, 400+ day on Mars) mission, doable in 10 years, for a small fraction of NASA's current budget. Why is NASA not doing it this way? Because they're trying to justify the ISS as a necessary component of any further exploration of the solar system.
Read Zubrin's book, and think about every single successful exploratory expedition in human history. The best ones travel light and live off the land. It's possible to do much the same thing on Mars.
We've already crawled. We know how to walk. What NASA is currently telling us is that we need a PhD in walking theory in order to run. Any four year old can tell you that that's not true. I say that we can figure it out quite nicely without all the intermediate nonsense (like ISS).
Extracting water from regolith is an extremely difficult process. It basically involves baking cubic meters of soil to get out deciliters of water...with a tremendous energy cost. So, my point stands: water is readily available on Mars, and not on the Moon.
Or think about Apollo 1. Gus Grissom, one of the astronauts who died in the fire on the launch pad, stated explicitly that the exploration of space is worth the sacrifice of human life. Every astronaut who ever strapped on a rocket knew the risks involved. They had huge numbers of brilliant people working beyond the limit of endurance to minimize those risks, but the risks were still there. The Challenger astronauts were no different...they knew that their chosen profession was risky, yet they stepped up to the line and took their chances. Any astronaut who thinks that space travel is "safe" is incompetent and not fit for the job.
As far as your argument about pollution, I must infer that you haven't the faintest idea how a nuclear thermal generator works. If you did, you wouldn't be drawing these ludicrous parallels between NTGs and fission piles. They're about as much in common with each other as a yo-yo has with a semi truck.
Here's a bit about NTGs. Machines with zero moving parts don't often fail.
http://starfire.ne.uiuc.edu/~ne201/1995/cerven/r ea ctors.html
Considering the advances in life sciences and engineering we've made in the twenty (!!!) years since we went to another celestial body, and considering that getting out of Earth's gravity well puts you about half way to anyplace in the solar system (from a logistics standpoint), I'd say that an eight year plan to get to Mars is not overly ambitious. Twenty MORE years is just lazy.
Because the Moon has very little life support infrastructure available. Mars has plenty. It's relatively easy to crack and compress the atmosphere into a human-breathable one, and water's not terribly hard to come by. You can even manufacture rocket fuel for your return trip using very simple chemistry.
Supporting life on the moon is a pain in the ass. No air, no water, nothing interesting to anybody except geologists, whereas Mars has an excellent chance of supporting life, both human and indigenous varieties. It's not substantially more expensive to establish a base on Mars than on the Moon, but the return is far greater.
Like what, smart guy? If not for the Cold War, the money would have probably gone into some useless black hole like welfare (we called it the Great Society back then) or educational reform...and gotten exactly nothing back from it.
The tax revenues from the communications satellite industry alone have more than paid NASA's funding. Never mind all the amazing technology (like, uh, the transistor...maybe you've heard of it...) that you use every day.
Twenty years? Dear God, the American rocketry program went from zero to the moon in eight years.
The problem has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with motivation. The American public is not sufficiently well-versed in history to realize that all exploratory endeavors like this pay back many times their cost. I'm making a purely economic argument...one which I believe is trivial compared to the sociological one. Humans are defined by the frontiers they conquer. Our lack of a frontier spirit shows up on the front page of every newspaper on Earth. Mars (and space exploration in general) provides an excellent goal. Why are we wasting 20 years to get to it? I've seen mission plans that cost 1/10 what NASA plans to spend, which allow us to set foot on Mars less than seven years from TODAY. Unfortunately, NASA is more concerned about preserving their monopoly on American heavy-lift rockets (a task for which the Space Shuttle is staggeringly ill-suited) and building Battlestar Galactica (er, I mean the ISS) to actually pick an EFFICIENT plan to go to Mars.
I want to go so bad I can taste it, but it looks like NASA is doing everything possible to thwart the dream...
I promise that ninety four zillion more people will die from car accidents than all accidents concerning all forms of plutonium, from now until the end of time.
Risks can be managed. The risks from nuclear thermal generator power plants in satellites are vanishingly TRIVIAL compared to, say, getting into your bathtub with wet feet.
You're homing in on another major advantage of the Mac. PC system 1 is high-spec, doesn't accomplish the required task. PC system 2 is lower spec, but DOES accomplish the required task. Why? What do I need to do to get it to work? How much time/headache do I need to expend to accomplish the required task? How much is that time worth?
Macs work. Out of the box. No excuses. That's why many people (especially creative people) who are more concerned about the task than about the tool rely on them.
Not to say that PCs don't have their advantages too...but it's a different tool for a different task. Can't we all just get along?
What does "Restrictive and limited" mean? Are you restricted by the PCI slots in the back, or the firewire and USB ports? I just don't understand your contention.
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The person to whom the investor entrusts his money...the mutual fund company. If the mutual fund company invests in bad companies, the fund loses money. Just like now. Right now, I'm having a hell of a time finding funds that don't include Microsoft and show good growth, and I will not tolerate investing in Microsoft, even if it IS profitable.
Every investor is responsible for their own investments. If you proxy the mutual fund to invest for you, you better trust them to make good decisions. If you don't trust them, do it yourself.
You're completely missing the point.
By your position, I'm assuming that you feel that female interests are underrepresented a) in the video game market in general and b) at E3 (these are not the same sets).
1) I have no issues whatsoever with people who think differently. My post was designed to encourage people to think differently, and share that expression with the world. It's not MY responsibility to express YOUR thoughts.
2) I don't have to clean up my conversations at all. If you have issues with the way some people talk, take it up with them. It might surprise you that the male population of this planet is non-homogenous, and runs the gamut from crass to urbane. I'm well towards the latter, and there are lots of people like me.
3) Maybe when I've got some free time, I will. Not that I have anything to contribute...I'm not a programmer, and I have no interest in being one. I was making a sociological comment.
4) I've never been afraid to make friends with anyone, regardless of gender. I defy you to illustrate counterexamples. Since you've never met me, or anybody I know, this will be very challenging.
5) I'm not dissatisfied with the state of the gaming hobby. I have plenty of original, interesting titles that take all my available time. I don't play all (well, any) of the myriad shooters out there. If you are dissatisfied with the gamut or quality of games, MAKE ONE. Don't cry about how hard it is to have your voice heard: start an open source gaming project and get to it. If you don't want to, or cannot, that's fine. Neither can I. But, again, don't expect anybody to make the game YOU want if nobody (yourself included) really knows what that game looks like.
PS: You use the word "your" implying that I am part of some machine that is bent on creating and maintaining the subjugation and denigration of women, particularly by keeping them out of the video game market. Not only is this worldview foolish, it's offensive and inaccurate. Repeat after me: nobody is out to get you.
Seems to me like if females want to play games oriented at females, then females ought to start writing games. I'm not trying to be crass or offensive...I'm just pointing out that telling somebody else to make a game to appeal to you isn't necessarily the best way to do it.
Think about it this way...should I try to tell Amy Tan to start writing stories that appeal to men? I'm not saying that men don't read and enjoy her books (just as many females play and enjoy video games). I keep hearing, however, that women don't feel as engaged by games as men do. OK, fine...go ahead and show us what you're talking about! Getting up on a moral high horse and painting game developers as misogynistic retards isn't productive. Explaining what you are interested in might be productive. Making a game that you would like would certainly be productive.
In other words, if nobody understands your taste, why are you surprised that nobody caters to it?
Some people would have dispelled the incipient confusion by reading and thinking about the article. But I understand that's not the fashionable thing to do around here...
Look, the guy went to the trouble of showing you how his design works on his web site. You really ought to look it over before criticising. The kb is balanced on rubber feet. When you press the heel of your hand onto your mouse, it rocks towards you and glides on teflon feet just like the mouse you're using now. So, no, the kb isn't going to be skating around on you.
Had you actually read the article, you'd see he went you one better. The right kb rocks forward onto high-friction rubber feet when typing, then rocks back onto teflon feet when mousing. There's also a contact switch on the left side of the mouse that activates mouse mode. You won't get your pointer moving without your permission.
One of Apple's original API guidelines was to have all shortcut key combinations accessible with the left hand, leaving the right hand free to use the mouse. So, instead of retraining 90% of the population to use their off-hand for mousing, they designed the software correctly. In the best of all possible worlds, there would be a preference to set the keymap to "right handed" or "left handed". That wouldn't be hard.
The idea that the user should have to retrain themselves instead of making simple changes in the way the software works is terrible ergonomics.
That reminds me of my favourite joke.
A man walks into a strip club and sits down at the bar. The man says to the bartender, "Would you look at all these losers? I see these same guys in this same skanky joint every damn day."
If it's a joke, why are you wasting your time?
People who want cheap computers buy iMacs, if they buy Macs at all. Apple has never marketed towards price-sensitive users. They want performance conscious and style conscious users, and with this decision they refocus their attention on the second group. (Most of the performance conscious users don't buy Apple monitors anyway.)
This is going to be a big win for Apple. I bet they're going to get great deals from Samsung since they ONLY sell LCDs, and just like USB, I bet they're going to increase the installed base of a "new" technology dramatically. Good for them.
I didn't say infrared. I said "no cables". There are several good RF keyboards and mice out there (I'm using one now on my PC). There's no reason that the receiver couldn't be built into the case, much the same way as the new Apple laptops incorporate AirPort antennas.
Bluetooth might be the answer. We'll see.
Just because IBM did something poorly, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Hopefully, the next thing gone will be all cables. I LOATHE the wad o' cable I have snarling itself behind my desk.
Come on, though...you weren't REALLY going to buy a Mac anyway, were you? So this decision doesn't really affect you at all, right?
The only reason the corollary benefits of space exploration are even mentioned is so that people who don't understand the fundamental human imperative of exploration can be snookered out of their (approximately) $1.00 tax contribution to the space program.
The cost for space exploration is trivial. The benefits are uncountably huge. The tax revenues from the telecom industry (which would not exist in any recognizable form without modern satellite communication) from one single year would cover NASA's budget back to 1960.
So, the money's REALLY for space exploration. The rest are just freebies. You're trying to put the cart before the horse.
You don't have to trust anything I say. Do some research on your own. I suggest you start with R. Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". It's an excellent study that outlines precisely why a) returning to the moon is FAR less interesting and useful than Mars and b) exactly how one would go about supporting a long-term manned presence on Mars. It's FAR EASIER to do so on Mars than on the moon, simply because many important consumables (air, water, fuel) are easy to produce from indigenous materials on Mars.
The moon is far more hostile and dangerous than Mars. Just because Mars happens to be farther away does not greatly compound the risks associated with the mission. Ready access to consumables, and a pre-made shield against cosmic radiation, are two major advantages for Mars over Luna. There are many more...I'll leave you to read about them.
I am in no way suggesting a "glory quest" flags and footprints Mars mission. That would be worse than useless! Just look at what such a strategy has gotten us WRT the moon...absolutely nowhere. We've been jacking around in low-earth orbit for the last 20 years, and all we've got to show for it is a very mediocre space station that is years away from being useful. With current technology, it is possible to have a long-duration (910 day total, 400+ day on Mars) mission, doable in 10 years, for a small fraction of NASA's current budget. Why is NASA not doing it this way? Because they're trying to justify the ISS as a necessary component of any further exploration of the solar system.
Read Zubrin's book, and think about every single successful exploratory expedition in human history. The best ones travel light and live off the land. It's possible to do much the same thing on Mars.
We've already crawled. We know how to walk. What NASA is currently telling us is that we need a PhD in walking theory in order to run. Any four year old can tell you that that's not true. I say that we can figure it out quite nicely without all the intermediate nonsense (like ISS).
Extracting water from regolith is an extremely difficult process. It basically involves baking cubic meters of soil to get out deciliters of water...with a tremendous energy cost. So, my point stands: water is readily available on Mars, and not on the Moon.
Or think about Apollo 1. Gus Grissom, one of the astronauts who died in the fire on the launch pad, stated explicitly that the exploration of space is worth the sacrifice of human life. Every astronaut who ever strapped on a rocket knew the risks involved. They had huge numbers of brilliant people working beyond the limit of endurance to minimize those risks, but the risks were still there. The Challenger astronauts were no different...they knew that their chosen profession was risky, yet they stepped up to the line and took their chances. Any astronaut who thinks that space travel is "safe" is incompetent and not fit for the job.
r ea ctors.html
As far as your argument about pollution, I must infer that you haven't the faintest idea how a nuclear thermal generator works. If you did, you wouldn't be drawing these ludicrous parallels between NTGs and fission piles. They're about as much in common with each other as a yo-yo has with a semi truck.
Here's a bit about NTGs. Machines with zero moving parts don't often fail.
http://starfire.ne.uiuc.edu/~ne201/1995/cerven/
Considering the advances in life sciences and engineering we've made in the twenty (!!!) years since we went to another celestial body, and considering that getting out of Earth's gravity well puts you about half way to anyplace in the solar system (from a logistics standpoint), I'd say that an eight year plan to get to Mars is not overly ambitious. Twenty MORE years is just lazy.
Because the Moon has very little life support infrastructure available. Mars has plenty. It's relatively easy to crack and compress the atmosphere into a human-breathable one, and water's not terribly hard to come by. You can even manufacture rocket fuel for your return trip using very simple chemistry.
Supporting life on the moon is a pain in the ass. No air, no water, nothing interesting to anybody except geologists, whereas Mars has an excellent chance of supporting life, both human and indigenous varieties. It's not substantially more expensive to establish a base on Mars than on the Moon, but the return is far greater.
Like what, smart guy? If not for the Cold War, the money would have probably gone into some useless black hole like welfare (we called it the Great Society back then) or educational reform...and gotten exactly nothing back from it.
The tax revenues from the communications satellite industry alone have more than paid NASA's funding. Never mind all the amazing technology (like, uh, the transistor...maybe you've heard of it...) that you use every day.
Twenty years? Dear God, the American rocketry program went from zero to the moon in eight years.
The problem has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with motivation. The American public is not sufficiently well-versed in history to realize that all exploratory endeavors like this pay back many times their cost. I'm making a purely economic argument...one which I believe is trivial compared to the sociological one. Humans are defined by the frontiers they conquer. Our lack of a frontier spirit shows up on the front page of every newspaper on Earth. Mars (and space exploration in general) provides an excellent goal. Why are we wasting 20 years to get to it? I've seen mission plans that cost 1/10 what NASA plans to spend, which allow us to set foot on Mars less than seven years from TODAY. Unfortunately, NASA is more concerned about preserving their monopoly on American heavy-lift rockets (a task for which the Space Shuttle is staggeringly ill-suited) and building Battlestar Galactica (er, I mean the ISS) to actually pick an EFFICIENT plan to go to Mars.
I want to go so bad I can taste it, but it looks like NASA is doing everything possible to thwart the dream...
I promise that ninety four zillion more people will die from car accidents than all accidents concerning all forms of plutonium, from now until the end of time.
Risks can be managed. The risks from nuclear thermal generator power plants in satellites are vanishingly TRIVIAL compared to, say, getting into your bathtub with wet feet.
It's easy to get up on a moral high horse and challenge people to "do something". It's a bit harder to find constructive suggestions.
Tell me, O swami, what exactly should we do? What's the solution to the problem? How can this be fixed?
You're homing in on another major advantage of the Mac. PC system 1 is high-spec, doesn't accomplish the required task. PC system 2 is lower spec, but DOES accomplish the required task. Why? What do I need to do to get it to work? How much time/headache do I need to expend to accomplish the required task? How much is that time worth?
Macs work. Out of the box. No excuses. That's why many people (especially creative people) who are more concerned about the task than about the tool rely on them.
Not to say that PCs don't have their advantages too...but it's a different tool for a different task. Can't we all just get along?
It doesn't count, though, because he was totally unrecognizable. Thank God.
100% babe. Yowza.
6 21 .html
http://www.maximonline.com/girls_of_maxim/girl_
What does "Restrictive and limited" mean? Are you restricted by the PCI slots in the back, or the firewire and USB ports? I just don't understand your contention.