If maintenance is down, what does "tolerances for internal operation are way down" mean? And the reason people don't fix their own cars anymore is because they don't elect to obtain the skills to do so. I work on my car all the time (a '90 Miata) and I've yet to run across a factory sealed thing I'm not allowed to fool with. This attitude is a throwback to people who like carburetors. You can have 'em.
Pick up the phone, get a dial tone. If you don't, buy another one for $10. What's the problem? I don't need a phone to be an objet d'art, but I can purchase one such phone if I wish. How is this bad?
Compaqs: Suck ass hard. Always have, always will.
Tools: I defy you to break a SnapOn tool. If you buy a $2 pair of pliers at Wal-Mart, what do you EXPECT to get? Buy good equipment, get good performance.
What you seem to be crying about is that there exists a market for lower quality objects. There is, and it flourishes...but that doesn't mean higher quality objects are any less available (or more expensive). Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90% of EVERYTHING is crap.
Wow, everybody's all about freedom 'till they come to their pet peeve.
Care to explain to us why those of us who enjoy the games we play on consoles shouldn't be allowed to do so?
For the record, I play on both PSX and PC, and enjoy many titles on both. See, silly me, I thought that options and alternatives are a Good Thing, but I forgot that there's a One True Way I'm supposed to subscribe to. What was it again?
Feature for feature is a meaningless comparison. Utility for utility is where the Palm dominates, and will continue to do so until Microsoft figures out how to design a good UI.
Sure it's precise. However, that's not a prime attribute for a communications interface...certainly not one between intelligent (or pseudo-intelligent) beings.
Well, any pretty small chunk is going to get ablated by air friction. It's the big, not-so-dense, tough chunks you have to worry about. Density isn't exactly the driving factor, but denser objects have a higher mass per surface area. Therefore, a light object with a high surface area (like a titanium fuel tank) is going to decelerate rather rapidly, and possibly not ablate as much. What I don't know is whether the rapid deceleration is going to increase or decrease the ablation due to air friction...I haven't the vaguest idea what that math looks like. (the aerodynamics I understand rather well, but heat transfer is next semester. : )
Multiply 1 in 20,000 by 70 satellites and the odds don't look so good. However, I can't understand how the odds could possibly be so high...these satellites just aren't that massive, and the ocean is a great big target compared to a human. (or even compared to a densely populated region)
Making the technology that makes a nuclear bomb possible does ABSOLUTELY advance humanity and science, and it is not possible to make that technology precluding its use as a weapon. I'd go even further and argue that the friction between the US and the USSR drove the most productive and life-enhancing technological advancements in history.
Look, the nuclear genie was not going to stay in the bottle. Had America not won the war in Europe when it did, it was very possible that the Nazis would have had The Bomb before America. It would be an odd value system indeed that would think that this was preferable to the Americans obtaining it, and demonstrating it, first.
The reason that there wasn't a WWIII is because there COULDN'T be one without literally destroying the entire world. Both sides realized it, and neither was mad enough to try. It's a crazy kind of equilibrium, but I think it's the only thing that kept us out of a conventional war with the USSR for fifty years.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's hard for me to feel remorseful about those tragedies. (Yes, I've seen Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies and cried profusely at both.) The Japanese military leaders started a war with a country that was trying hard to remain neutral, and it looked like they (the Japanese military leaders) were not going to agree to end it without an overwhelming display of power. The atomic option did two important things.
1) I submit that the Japanese had to be made to surrender in order to restore peace in the Pacific basin. The invasion of the Japanese mainland was going to be obscenely expensive in terms of American lives, and positively ghastly in terms of Japanese lives. I think that the Japanese people would have been used as human shields by the military leaders, and would have been slaughtered wholesale throughout the country. The Bomb ended the war with the smallest possible number of Japanese casualties. Note that the conventional bombing campaign in Europe (particularly the firebombing of Dresden) caused much more destruction and death than the two bombs dropped on Japan.
2) By demonstrating the technical ability and political will to use atomic weaponry, the United States established itself as a world leader. Whether you think this is good or not, I submit that the last 50 years has been rather peaceful compared to the previous 2000.
As far as your original point, I don't think worrying about the body count by race at the end of a Schwartzenegger flick has anything to do with a racial bias in Hollywood. Again, just about everybody but Ahnold is dead at the end of these joints, and he's white, so of course there's going to be a bias. If he was mowing down fields of otherly-colored individuals and letting bad white folk away with a stern lecture, you might have a case, but he kills EVERYBODY.
He invented a technology that got out of his control. He was also brilliant. I don't see this as being a traitor, any more than Oppenheimer (sorry, he was white...bad example maybe) was a traitor.
There's enough real racism out there that we shouldn't be worried about this piddly shit.
Yeah, in Eraser, he protected Vanessa Williams, who is, um, black. And she was alive at the end of the movie.
The reason black people die in Schwartzenegger movies is because Arnold is usually the only person who survives Schwartzenegger movies and he's not black. No hidden agenda here. Lots of white folk died in Blade, but you don't see me leading demonstrations...
You LIKED Wing Commander? Dear sweet zombie Jesus, what DID you take before you went to see that steaming turd of a film? I've got to know. It's a sick fascination thing.
They PUSHED a SPACE FIGHTER off a SPACE CARRIER DECK with a bloody BULLDOZER, and it FELL. That was the last straw for my poor, abused suspension of disbelief.
How it came out? That's easy. Microsoft said "Hey, if you keep working on this OpenDoc thing that makes monolithic office productivity suites a thing of the past, we're going to stop shipping Office for Mac like, today and stuff." And Apple said "Shit. OpenDoc's not going to be ready for prime time for at least two years of intensive development. If MS stops shipping Office, we're never going to sell another computer. Guess we have to shelve the best idea ever."
Last time I checked, I didn't have to type anything to talk to my girlfriend. Why is the CLI somehow the acme of interface with not-me objects? Seems to me like characters on a plastic board is a much less rich form of communication than, say, speech, or even gestures.
Twelve hour battery life? Geez! I'm trying to remember the last time I changed the AAA's in my Palm III, and it's still at half charge. It's been at least three weeks. The first week I had it, I blew through a set of batteries, but since then I've been using one set every four to six weeks. THAT, my friend, is battery life.
(note...all the handspring visors I come into daily contact with have at least as good battery performance)
You are confused. The GoType keyboard is a rigid piece of plastic with a clamshell lid. The folding keyboard (marketed by Targus and Palm themselves) must be the one you used.
And which oracle (no pun), O wise one, does one consult to find out whether one has given enough of oneself to be able to indulge a childhood dream? It's his money. Even though he earned it by shady means (including those that put my dad's company out of business), he can do whatever the hell he wants with it. Anything else leads, ultimately, to slavery.
Here in DFW, you can tell when you're going to get reamed for long distance if you dial the number and the operator tells you you have to dial a 1 to complete the call. Then you hang up, shake your head to get rid of the blinding headache the horrible operator tri-tone gives you, and dial the number again preceded by a one. Then you accept SWBell's shaft and pay a ton of money for a "long distance" call to somebody 40 miles away.
The hugely annoying thing here in DFW is not knowing whether a number is supposed to be long distance or not. I've got a bunch of friends who live in Arlington, and I live in Plano, and it's a pain to remember who I need to dial 1 to call, and who I don't. Never mind the fact that when I call "long distance" (40 miles to Arlington), I get charged more than when I place phone calls to Boston or Sacramento.
10 digit dialing is a pain, but a moderate one compared to inconsistency across phone numbers. (ie SOME 817 numbers are long distance, some are not)
They were saying "Mahdi", which is the Fremen messiah. Fremen legend says that the outworlder son of a Bene Gesserit will lead them to victory, and Paul fits the bill. I think that the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva seeded that word intentionally so it would sound similar to "Muad'Dib", but maybe I'm just being creative.
Okay, pick all the nits you want, but the pronunciations are allegedly correct according to Herbert's pronunciation guide. Just 'cuz Lynch did it first doesn't mean he did it right.
On the other hand, Lynch did LOTS of other stuff right, and the series does some stuff right. The first book does everything right, and the second book does everything right except be interesting. Oh well. Still fun to watch and read...
Maybe the whiney little nimrod couldn't remember it.
On the whole, the mini seems to me to be less fulfilling even than the movie. Whatever you think of the weirding modules ("My name is a killing word!"), the movie had the LOOK down pat. I think of the movie as a visual aid to enjoy the book, and just go ahead and ignore the last 10 minutes with the Emperor's court sitting down to play Tempest and Alia playing a reverse pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
William Hurt isn't NEAR intense enough to be Leto. Paul...well, let's hope he grows a spine here right quick.
I like the new Baron a lot. The dialog is not bad, the interior sets are nice, the thopters are weird, the exterior shots are unconvincing...an altogether mixed bag. I certainly don't hate it the way some Dune grognards do (I've read two books, which is twice as many as some who say they hate the movie and everybody who's ever seen it), but I still wish it could be BETTER somehow.
HOW does excluding DVD cut the price? All the same chips are still there...they've just got to make a different shaped plastic hole to accept the larger DVD's. They're excluding this feature to get ppl to shell out for the more expensive one.
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B-2's can't fly in the rain? Why not?
If maintenance is down, what does "tolerances for internal operation are way down" mean? And the reason people don't fix their own cars anymore is because they don't elect to obtain the skills to do so. I work on my car all the time (a '90 Miata) and I've yet to run across a factory sealed thing I'm not allowed to fool with. This attitude is a throwback to people who like carburetors. You can have 'em.
Pick up the phone, get a dial tone. If you don't, buy another one for $10. What's the problem? I don't need a phone to be an objet d'art, but I can purchase one such phone if I wish. How is this bad?
Compaqs: Suck ass hard. Always have, always will.
Tools: I defy you to break a SnapOn tool. If you buy a $2 pair of pliers at Wal-Mart, what do you EXPECT to get? Buy good equipment, get good performance.
What you seem to be crying about is that there exists a market for lower quality objects. There is, and it flourishes...but that doesn't mean higher quality objects are any less available (or more expensive). Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90% of EVERYTHING is crap.
Wow, everybody's all about freedom 'till they come to their pet peeve.
Care to explain to us why those of us who enjoy the games we play on consoles shouldn't be allowed to do so?
For the record, I play on both PSX and PC, and enjoy many titles on both. See, silly me, I thought that options and alternatives are a Good Thing, but I forgot that there's a One True Way I'm supposed to subscribe to. What was it again?
Feature for feature is a meaningless comparison. Utility for utility is where the Palm dominates, and will continue to do so until Microsoft figures out how to design a good UI.
You're absolutely right. They are, and will remain, the best.
Unless you're talking about sales numbers, which has about as much to do with quality as the color of your dad's tube socks...
Good thing Palm has features that Wince will NEVER have, even if they change the name.
Like ease of use.
And battery life.
I don't think they have anything to worry about.
Just ez long as Rudy Ray Moore get ta be da VP, 'sall good up in this muhfuckah. We need tha Dolemite Total Experience up in tha Chocolate City.
Sure it's precise. However, that's not a prime attribute for a communications interface...certainly not one between intelligent (or pseudo-intelligent) beings.
But that velocity thang is a motherfucker. Bullets aren't very big either...
Well, any pretty small chunk is going to get ablated by air friction. It's the big, not-so-dense, tough chunks you have to worry about. Density isn't exactly the driving factor, but denser objects have a higher mass per surface area. Therefore, a light object with a high surface area (like a titanium fuel tank) is going to decelerate rather rapidly, and possibly not ablate as much. What I don't know is whether the rapid deceleration is going to increase or decrease the ablation due to air friction...I haven't the vaguest idea what that math looks like. (the aerodynamics I understand rather well, but heat transfer is next semester. : )
Multiply 1 in 20,000 by 70 satellites and the odds don't look so good. However, I can't understand how the odds could possibly be so high...these satellites just aren't that massive, and the ocean is a great big target compared to a human. (or even compared to a densely populated region)
Making the technology that makes a nuclear bomb possible does ABSOLUTELY advance humanity and science, and it is not possible to make that technology precluding its use as a weapon. I'd go even further and argue that the friction between the US and the USSR drove the most productive and life-enhancing technological advancements in history.
Look, the nuclear genie was not going to stay in the bottle. Had America not won the war in Europe when it did, it was very possible that the Nazis would have had The Bomb before America. It would be an odd value system indeed that would think that this was preferable to the Americans obtaining it, and demonstrating it, first.
The reason that there wasn't a WWIII is because there COULDN'T be one without literally destroying the entire world. Both sides realized it, and neither was mad enough to try. It's a crazy kind of equilibrium, but I think it's the only thing that kept us out of a conventional war with the USSR for fifty years.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's hard for me to feel remorseful about those tragedies. (Yes, I've seen Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies and cried profusely at both.) The Japanese military leaders started a war with a country that was trying hard to remain neutral, and it looked like they (the Japanese military leaders) were not going to agree to end it without an overwhelming display of power. The atomic option did two important things.
1) I submit that the Japanese had to be made to surrender in order to restore peace in the Pacific basin. The invasion of the Japanese mainland was going to be obscenely expensive in terms of American lives, and positively ghastly in terms of Japanese lives. I think that the Japanese people would have been used as human shields by the military leaders, and would have been slaughtered wholesale throughout the country. The Bomb ended the war with the smallest possible number of Japanese casualties. Note that the conventional bombing campaign in Europe (particularly the firebombing of Dresden) caused much more destruction and death than the two bombs dropped on Japan.
2) By demonstrating the technical ability and political will to use atomic weaponry, the United States established itself as a world leader. Whether you think this is good or not, I submit that the last 50 years has been rather peaceful compared to the previous 2000.
As far as your original point, I don't think worrying about the body count by race at the end of a Schwartzenegger flick has anything to do with a racial bias in Hollywood. Again, just about everybody but Ahnold is dead at the end of these joints, and he's white, so of course there's going to be a bias. If he was mowing down fields of otherly-colored individuals and letting bad white folk away with a stern lecture, you might have a case, but he kills EVERYBODY.
He invented a technology that got out of his control. He was also brilliant. I don't see this as being a traitor, any more than Oppenheimer (sorry, he was white...bad example maybe) was a traitor.
There's enough real racism out there that we shouldn't be worried about this piddly shit.
Yeah, in Eraser, he protected Vanessa Williams, who is, um, black. And she was alive at the end of the movie.
The reason black people die in Schwartzenegger movies is because Arnold is usually the only person who survives Schwartzenegger movies and he's not black. No hidden agenda here. Lots of white folk died in Blade, but you don't see me leading demonstrations...
You LIKED Wing Commander? Dear sweet zombie Jesus, what DID you take before you went to see that steaming turd of a film? I've got to know. It's a sick fascination thing.
They PUSHED a SPACE FIGHTER off a SPACE CARRIER DECK with a bloody BULLDOZER, and it FELL. That was the last straw for my poor, abused suspension of disbelief.
How it came out? That's easy. Microsoft said "Hey, if you keep working on this OpenDoc thing that makes monolithic office productivity suites a thing of the past, we're going to stop shipping Office for Mac like, today and stuff." And Apple said "Shit. OpenDoc's not going to be ready for prime time for at least two years of intensive development. If MS stops shipping Office, we're never going to sell another computer. Guess we have to shelve the best idea ever."
I hate Microsoft, and this is why.
Last time I checked, I didn't have to type anything to talk to my girlfriend. Why is the CLI somehow the acme of interface with not-me objects? Seems to me like characters on a plastic board is a much less rich form of communication than, say, speech, or even gestures.
Twelve hour battery life? Geez! I'm trying to remember the last time I changed the AAA's in my Palm III, and it's still at half charge. It's been at least three weeks. The first week I had it, I blew through a set of batteries, but since then I've been using one set every four to six weeks. THAT, my friend, is battery life.
(note...all the handspring visors I come into daily contact with have at least as good battery performance)
You are confused. The GoType keyboard is a rigid piece of plastic with a clamshell lid. The folding keyboard (marketed by Targus and Palm themselves) must be the one you used.
You can get DSL in Alaska? I'm THERE, dude!
And which oracle (no pun), O wise one, does one consult to find out whether one has given enough of oneself to be able to indulge a childhood dream? It's his money. Even though he earned it by shady means (including those that put my dad's company out of business), he can do whatever the hell he wants with it. Anything else leads, ultimately, to slavery.
Here in DFW, you can tell when you're going to get reamed for long distance if you dial the number and the operator tells you you have to dial a 1 to complete the call. Then you hang up, shake your head to get rid of the blinding headache the horrible operator tri-tone gives you, and dial the number again preceded by a one. Then you accept SWBell's shaft and pay a ton of money for a "long distance" call to somebody 40 miles away.
The hugely annoying thing here in DFW is not knowing whether a number is supposed to be long distance or not. I've got a bunch of friends who live in Arlington, and I live in Plano, and it's a pain to remember who I need to dial 1 to call, and who I don't. Never mind the fact that when I call "long distance" (40 miles to Arlington), I get charged more than when I place phone calls to Boston or Sacramento.
10 digit dialing is a pain, but a moderate one compared to inconsistency across phone numbers. (ie SOME 817 numbers are long distance, some are not)
They were saying "Mahdi", which is the Fremen messiah. Fremen legend says that the outworlder son of a Bene Gesserit will lead them to victory, and Paul fits the bill. I think that the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva seeded that word intentionally so it would sound similar to "Muad'Dib", but maybe I'm just being creative.
Okay, pick all the nits you want, but the pronunciations are allegedly correct according to Herbert's pronunciation guide. Just 'cuz Lynch did it first doesn't mean he did it right.
On the other hand, Lynch did LOTS of other stuff right, and the series does some stuff right. The first book does everything right, and the second book does everything right except be interesting. Oh well. Still fun to watch and read...
Maybe the whiney little nimrod couldn't remember it.
On the whole, the mini seems to me to be less fulfilling even than the movie. Whatever you think of the weirding modules ("My name is a killing word!"), the movie had the LOOK down pat. I think of the movie as a visual aid to enjoy the book, and just go ahead and ignore the last 10 minutes with the Emperor's court sitting down to play Tempest and Alia playing a reverse pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
William Hurt isn't NEAR intense enough to be Leto. Paul...well, let's hope he grows a spine here right quick.
I like the new Baron a lot. The dialog is not bad, the interior sets are nice, the thopters are weird, the exterior shots are unconvincing...an altogether mixed bag. I certainly don't hate it the way some Dune grognards do (I've read two books, which is twice as many as some who say they hate the movie and everybody who's ever seen it), but I still wish it could be BETTER somehow.
HOW does excluding DVD cut the price? All the same chips are still there...they've just got to make a different shaped plastic hole to accept the larger DVD's. They're excluding this feature to get ppl to shell out for the more expensive one.