Well, aren't you riding the vanguard of the new media. How awesome for you, that you had no idea that a regularly recurring, major international event was about to happen until it was happening.
What are we supposed to get from your post? That you're too hip to know what's going on? That the web is better than TV because you get surprised a lot?
That may have the best advertisement for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and PBS I've ever read-- and all in one place!
Uh, public education has ALWAYS been nothing but a tedious exercise in corporate indoctrination.
Really? That's funny, I somehow came out of public grade school (in the late 90s) both literate and reasonably well read; with a pretty good background in history; with knowledge of the basics in chemistry, biology, and physics; with mathematics through some elementary calculus; and most importantly, with a desire to learn more and knowledge of how to do so. I was neither "bored" nor "bewildered" (per your buddy Gatto) when I graduated, and somehow I doubt McDonald's gives a shit about any of the things I learned.
There's some bad shit going down in the public school system, but the root cause is not that public schools were built to fulfill some evil corporate agenda-- it's underfunding, plain and simple. People talk a good game about reforming the schools, but always look for solutions that don't involve paying anything, even if they have to solve the wrong problems to do so.
I've just read the site you linked, and sorry pal, but the Gatto's a grade A conspiracy nut.
What better way to habituate kids to abandoning trust in their peers (and themselves) than to create an atmosphere of constant low-level stress and danger, relief from which is only available by appeal to authority? And many times not even then!
I there's some evidence in his book, but I've read my fair share of UFO and conspiracy magazines, so I know this pattern and I have a pretty good idea of the kind of evidence I'm likely to see. This is exactly the same spiel as "the government is keeping us scared so they can impose martial law", or "the UN secretly instigates wars so it can stay in power". It's paranoid bullshit, and it obscures real problems in need of real solutions. I'm sorry if your schooling (public or otherwise) didn't prepare you to discern sensation from insight... mine did.
Actually, Eisenhower wanted the first US satellite to be the result of a Civilian Space Program, NASA, and not a military program. He ordered the engineers at Redstone not to "accidentally" put anything in orbit during their test flights, which was exactly what they were planning to do when they saw how close the Russians were. While it is true that the Viking platform for Vanguard was a Navy design, it was the "civilian" aspect that the president through the Secretary of Defense, wanted played up.
This is true, and is another primary reason Eisenhower favored the Navy program for the IGY satellite launch. I only left it out to be concise, not to imply that Eisenhower only favored the Navy program because the Army's was essentially von Braun's.
Fun story:
The Army conducted a Jupiter test launch in September 1956 which could have orbited a satellite, "accidentally" as you say. The only reason it didn't is that nobody trusted von Braun's team to restrain themselves, even under orders from Eisenhower, and so to ensure that nothing went into orbit the rocket was actually weighed down by filling the fourth stage with sand.
Actually it would be more accurate to say that American rocketry and the American space program was kick started by imported Germans.
I'm not saying that the United States wouldn't have eventually built a decent space program without von Braun and his team. But to say that they didn't contribute much simply because we would have gotten there eventually without them is absurd for two reasons: 1) they actually got us there, and 2) it was the Germans' use of rockets during WWII that made the US actually want to develop rocketry. The US was more or less happily ignoring Goddard til the V-2s started hitting Britain.
I have in my notes from Dr. John Krige's "History of Rocketry" course at Georgia Tech the following text of a telegram sent immediately from Germany to Washington upon the debriefing of the captured von Braun and his personnel (emphasis mine):
HAVE IN CUSTODY OVER 400 TOP RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PERSONNEL FROM PEENEMUNDE. DEVELOPED THE V-2.
THE THINKING OF THE SCIENTIFIC DIRECTORS OF THIS GROUP 25 YRS AHEAD OF US. RECOMMEND 100 OF THE VERY BEST MEN OF THIS RESEARCH ORGANIZATION BE EVACUATED TO US IMMEDIATELY.
And the guy was right. It was a hell of a "kick start" the Germans gave us.
Wernher von Braun was brought to the US, along with hundreds of his best scientists and engineers, at the end of WWII. The Army set him up in Texas and later at Huntsville, where he built the Redstone rockets-- that's "Redstone" as in "Mercury Redstone", as in "MR-3", as in the mission that put the first American into space. Had von Braun not fought to delay the attempt for reasons of additional testing, Grissom would have entered space in the MR-BD mission and beaten Gagarin by a few weeks, to become the first person in space period.
von Braun could have put the first American satellite into orbit in the IGY, months before Sputnik, but Eisenhower wanted the Navy team to do it (for a variety of excellent reasons, not least of which was that von Braun's team was a bunch of captured Nazis).
When NASA was formed, von Braun directed Marshall Space Flight Center-- where he built the Saturn V, which was the launch vehicle for every single moon shot.
Sorry, but American rocketry, and the American space program, was built by imported Germans.
Anyway, when I say "capitalize," I don't mean monetarily, although I'm sure he's raking in the money, too. I understand that Moore is trying to "draw a direct parallel" between his work and Bradbury's.
Oh, you mean the way he's misappropriated Bradbury's title and is getting filthy stinking rich?
If you've changed your mind on that score, that's cool. If you didn't mean "capitalize monetarily", perhaps different phrasing might have helped convey the point better.
I just disagree that this is a perfectly legitimate thing to do over the objections of the original author. Moore is saying something about the situation portrayed in his movie, and is employing Bradbury's title to re-enforce/illustrate that. Bradbury is saying, in effect.. Hey, I wrote that book, and I know what I meant, and you are misusing my title. Whether that's because Moore has pressed it into service in his political agenda, or because he thinks Moore's film is a steaming pile of crap from an artistic point of view and would prefer that his title not be dragged through it, or even if it is a money issue, I don't think it makes much difference.
This is the crux of the matter. Bradbury, in publishing Fahrenheit 451, placed a packaged set of ideas into the public discourse. However invalid Moore's comparisons, he has every right-- morally and ethically-- to refer to those ideas, even to do so in the most convenient way, which is by invoking the title under which they were presented and by which they are most easily identified. It is simply unreasonable for Bradbury or anyone else to cry foul over the fact of the title's adaptation.
What is reasonable is to argue that the comparison is invalid and the use of the title sensationalist and unsupported. But that's not Bradbury's stated objection, and it wasn't yours until just now:
"Michael Moore is a dumb [expletive], that's what I think," Bradbury told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter during a phone interview from Los Angeles. "He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking my permission."
Nothing illegal is going on. Bradbury may even be completely wrong, whatever he thinks. But it just seems really peculiar to me that the same guy who is giving deference to a book refuses to take seriously the wishes of its author. It just isn't very gentlemanly. Moore has, in my mind, shown acute willingness to make his point at all costs, and this is just another example of that.
Moore isn't "giving deference" to Fahrenheit 451, he's using it. My argument is that his use is legitimate, in that it refers to the ideas in the book for the purpose of making a statement. That's so common in conversation and in literature that we have a word for it: "allusion".
Your final point seems to be that Moore behaves like a jackass, and that ignoring the wishes of Bradbury in this matter is more evidence of that. All I can say is that I agree with the first half of that statement, but not the second. It's Bradbury who's behaving like a jackass here, by essentially saying "it's morally wrong for you to allude to my work in order to better convey yours." How is that a reasonable moral argument?
I think that if anyone is in a position to know whether his title is being legitimately used, it's Bradbury. There's nothing strictly illegal about what Moore did, but he's still a bastard.
If he were parodying Bradbury's work, I'd feel that way a lot less. But the fact that he is capitalizing on it by way of suggesting that there is some commonality or agreement, when Bradbury apparently thinks there isn't, is dirty.
Okay, I will call bullshit again. As I said before, Moore's adapted title is meant to draw a direct parallel between the government that is the subject of his movie and the government that is central to Bradbury's book. It is meant to evoke a specific response, and thus the parallel intentionally drawn between Bradbury's subject matter and Moore's serves as social commentary. Moore didn't choose the title "Fahrenheit 911" simply because Bradbury's book was popular and sold well. He did it because he wanted to draw that comparison, because he wanted to make a point about the subject of his film. It is a sensational point, and one likely to grab attention and therefore money, but the very fact that the title conveys the meaning of the work so well validates its use.
Moore's adaptation of Bradbury's title is thus totally legitimate, regardless of whether Bradbury or anyone else believes the commentary to be flawed, and regardless of whether Bradbury likes Moore or his movie. Bradbury is not in some unique position of moral authority on this matter, no matter how much either of you wants him to be for the purpose of vilifying Moore.
Oh, you mean the way he's misappropriated Bradbury's title and is getting filthy stinking rich?
He referenced Bradbury's title, and in so doing evoked the primary themes of Bradbury's book. There's absolutely nothing legally, morally, or ethically wrong with that. Bradbury's just bitching about it because he doesn't like Moore's politics, and so are you.
The really obnoxious part is that Bradbury knows there's nothing wrong with the way Moore adapted his title.
Seriously. When Otto threw the car at Parker I assumed Otto figured out his secret identity. He didn't, it was just a mindless action shot.
By that point in the scene, I wanted to throw a car at Parker and MJ. I can only assume Dr. Octopus was also tired of their waffling and wanted another action scene.
I'd agree with you... if I hadn't spent nine months after 9/11 arguing with my friends that we should too give Bush a chance, that the unintended consequences weren't the result of malicious intent.
Yes, let's now assume that I'm a Bush administration apologist.
I voted against that right-wing braindamaged jackass the first time around, and I'm going to do it again. I'm not interested in "giving him a chance". But if there's anything the Bush administration is not, it's masterminds. If you really think they've hatched a Machiavellian plot to discredit John Kerry through overregulation of model rocketry, you need your head examined.
What's important isn't controlling model rockets, per se; what's important is getting the American public used to a never-ending "war against terror", keeping them keyed-up, ever fearful and ever compliant.
Well, you're half right. What's important isn't controlling model rockets. It's controlling explosives, which happen to be used in model rockets. The ATF didn't decide to clamp down on the hobby of model rocketry to pacify the citizerny-- that's an idiotic scenario even for the average conspiracy theorist. Model rocket enthusiasts are catching a side-effect of new explosives regulation because they use explosives in their hobby.
It sounds like the ATF may have been overzealous in creating those new regulations, and that those regulations may have had unintended (or disregarded) side effects, but you're going way out of your way to justify an assumption of maliciousness here.
The biggest obstacle to FPSes working the way professional sports do is the games themselves. FPSes evolve with the technology they run on at a much faster pace than any popular sport does. There will never be a Super Bowl XXVIII of Counter-Strike, because Counter-Strike will simply become dated and uninteresting (and likely unrunnable) long before then.
That means no tradition in the game. It means you can't be a fan of one team for years, even if you want to, because they'll end up playing stuff that might simply not interest you. It very likely means that nobody will be able to make a career of it, and that alone shoots the whole concept to hell right there. Rules for scoring, the ideas of performance, will not simply become more advanced... they will make lateral jumps every few years.
Sure, it's possible that someone could develop a game and then propagate its rules through successive waves of technology, to provide a stable experience on which professional leagues could be built. But why the hell would anyone even begin to undertake that effort? Video games are sold largely on novelty, and that novelty is primarily looked for in gameplay-- technological advance is simply expected. Nobody except the kids who want to make a living playing games-- and probably not even most of them-- would be interested in such a thing. That's just not enough of a support base to make it happen.
Another is that Thiokol decided shortly before an enormously expensive launch that had already been delayed twice to invent a new launch criterion (ambient temperature above 54 degrees), and did so with no real evidence. They picked 54 simply because they hadn't launched below 54 before. The makers of the O-rings' material claimed it would work down to at least thirty degrees colder than it was on the pad. There had been problems with the O-rings all along, but none related to temperature, and Thiokol had never mentioned this temperature as a potential launch criterion before. NASA made a perfectly reasonable judgment call to launch, and it turned out to be the wrong call.
You might also consider that what caused the Columbia disaster was not the fragility of the tiles-- after all, the tiles had worked fine for a long, long time, and the ice didn't crack them, it knocked them off. The reason the falling ice knocked the tiles off seems to be that they were not properly adhered-- the glue that was used has a relatively short pot life, and it appears that already-hardening glue may have been used to affix the tiles. The design envelope wasn't violated, the manufacturing process was. The manufacturing process, incidentally, was contracted to a private firm-- like damn near everything else in the Shuttle program.
The Shuttle program definitely has problems, and some of those problems are congenital. But NASA has hardly been reckless when it comes to go/no-go for launches, even the ones where the odds came crashing down on them.
It'd be nice if political theory were actually taught in public schools, as opposed to the watered-down liberal crap you obviously learned.
I know conservatives like to think that the word "liberal" is just a pejorative to be used for politics they don't like, but in this context it actually tends to mean "fuck the police", which I believe is basically your position on this matter. Uh oh... hope you're not some closeted pansy pinko left-winger!
So why the *hell* not just use paper votes in the first place? Empty boxes, you mark an X. We have been doing this in Canada forever, and we are still doing it this year. Why? Cause it is cheap, and it works. There's no hanging chaffes, no computer error, no security issues, it's totally transparent to the public.
With electronic voting, you should (in theory) get more accurate results, in less time, using fewer people. The paper verification means that if there is a dispute and a recount is called for, the option is available. However, you don't have to front that level of expenditure everywhere. It's much more efficient.
It's worth noting that in their national elections in 2000, Canada had 21 million voters and the US had 105 million. You can see why the US might be a little more obsessed with the cost and speed elements.
It should be well known by now that Nintendo is putting 802.11 and Bluetooth on the Nintendo DS.
It really shouldn't be that well known, because it's not true.
DS users will be able to connect with a local wireless network of up to 16 players. Nintendo's guaranteed range is 30 feet, but will extend far beyond that depending on circumstances. It assures high response rates required for real time game play, and will make use of both
IEEE 802.11 and Nintendo's proprietary communication protocol, which provides low battery consumption.
By the time I click "submit" on this, it'll probably be redundant, but here goes anyway:
For those wondering if AirPort Express supports MP3, AAC, or any other specific file formats, the answer is no. AirPort Express supports Apple's Lossless Compression technology -- and everything that your iTunes streams across the network to Airport Express is compressed using that technology.
Source: Jason Snell's blog entry at MacWorld, which has more detail.
The article doesn't discuss this, and I've never played Deus Ex. But a major problem I've run into many times in video games is that the best option (sometimes, the only correct one) is completely unapparent.
All things being equal, my bet would be that the window completely lacks what Don Norman calls "affordances": indications that a thing can be used, for what purpose it may be used, and how one should go about using it. Is the window open, or at least half open? Is there some appealing path or alluring object visible beyond the window?
This is the sort of thing game designers need to take into account, but too often they rely on trial-and-error gameplay or "herding" to direct the player.
Re:Still a vaporware?
on
OQO Examined
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· Score: 1
Most users of PDAs etc don't care about the OS, they just want the thing to work, and exchange data with their PC. No need to reproduce XP exactly, with all its serious deficiencies,
The whole point is that this is not a PDA, and does not need to be synced to anything. It's a portable PC which docks for use with a full-size display, keyboard, and mouse. It runs XP because that's what the target market runs on their desktops now, and this device is meant to replace those desktop systems altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
What are we supposed to get from your post? That you're too hip to know what's going on? That the web is better than TV because you get surprised a lot?
That may have the best advertisement for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and PBS I've ever read-- and all in one place!
Really? That's funny, I somehow came out of public grade school (in the late 90s) both literate and reasonably well read; with a pretty good background in history; with knowledge of the basics in chemistry, biology, and physics; with mathematics through some elementary calculus; and most importantly, with a desire to learn more and knowledge of how to do so. I was neither "bored" nor "bewildered" (per your buddy Gatto) when I graduated, and somehow I doubt McDonald's gives a shit about any of the things I learned.
There's some bad shit going down in the public school system, but the root cause is not that public schools were built to fulfill some evil corporate agenda-- it's underfunding, plain and simple. People talk a good game about reforming the schools, but always look for solutions that don't involve paying anything, even if they have to solve the wrong problems to do so.
I've just read the site you linked, and sorry pal, but the Gatto's a grade A conspiracy nut.
I there's some evidence in his book, but I've read my fair share of UFO and conspiracy magazines, so I know this pattern and I have a pretty good idea of the kind of evidence I'm likely to see. This is exactly the same spiel as "the government is keeping us scared so they can impose martial law", or "the UN secretly instigates wars so it can stay in power". It's paranoid bullshit, and it obscures real problems in need of real solutions. I'm sorry if your schooling (public or otherwise) didn't prepare you to discern sensation from insight... mine did.bullshit.
This is true, and is another primary reason Eisenhower favored the Navy program for the IGY satellite launch. I only left it out to be concise, not to imply that Eisenhower only favored the Navy program because the Army's was essentially von Braun's.
Fun story:
The Army conducted a Jupiter test launch in September 1956 which could have orbited a satellite, "accidentally" as you say. The only reason it didn't is that nobody trusted von Braun's team to restrain themselves, even under orders from Eisenhower, and so to ensure that nothing went into orbit the rocket was actually weighed down by filling the fourth stage with sand.
I'm not saying that the United States wouldn't have eventually built a decent space program without von Braun and his team. But to say that they didn't contribute much simply because we would have gotten there eventually without them is absurd for two reasons: 1) they actually got us there, and 2) it was the Germans' use of rockets during WWII that made the US actually want to develop rocketry. The US was more or less happily ignoring Goddard til the V-2s started hitting Britain.
I have in my notes from Dr. John Krige's "History of Rocketry" course at Georgia Tech the following text of a telegram sent immediately from Germany to Washington upon the debriefing of the captured von Braun and his personnel (emphasis mine):
And the guy was right. It was a hell of a "kick start" the Germans gave us.
Wernher von Braun was brought to the US, along with hundreds of his best scientists and engineers, at the end of WWII. The Army set him up in Texas and later at Huntsville, where he built the Redstone rockets-- that's "Redstone" as in "Mercury Redstone", as in "MR-3", as in the mission that put the first American into space. Had von Braun not fought to delay the attempt for reasons of additional testing, Grissom would have entered space in the MR-BD mission and beaten Gagarin by a few weeks, to become the first person in space period.
von Braun could have put the first American satellite into orbit in the IGY, months before Sputnik, but Eisenhower wanted the Navy team to do it (for a variety of excellent reasons, not least of which was that von Braun's team was a bunch of captured Nazis).
When NASA was formed, von Braun directed Marshall Space Flight Center-- where he built the Saturn V, which was the launch vehicle for every single moon shot.
Sorry, but American rocketry, and the American space program, was built by imported Germans.
I'm just going to refer you to your original comment:
If you've changed your mind on that score, that's cool. If you didn't mean "capitalize monetarily", perhaps different phrasing might have helped convey the point better.I just disagree that this is a perfectly legitimate thing to do over the objections of the original author. Moore is saying something about the situation portrayed in his movie, and is employing Bradbury's title to re-enforce/illustrate that. Bradbury is saying, in effect.. Hey, I wrote that book, and I know what I meant, and you are misusing my title. Whether that's because Moore has pressed it into service in his political agenda, or because he thinks Moore's film is a steaming pile of crap from an artistic point of view and would prefer that his title not be dragged through it, or even if it is a money issue, I don't think it makes much difference.
This is the crux of the matter. Bradbury, in publishing Fahrenheit 451, placed a packaged set of ideas into the public discourse. However invalid Moore's comparisons, he has every right-- morally and ethically-- to refer to those ideas, even to do so in the most convenient way, which is by invoking the title under which they were presented and by which they are most easily identified. It is simply unreasonable for Bradbury or anyone else to cry foul over the fact of the title's adaptation.
What is reasonable is to argue that the comparison is invalid and the use of the title sensationalist and unsupported. But that's not Bradbury's stated objection, and it wasn't yours until just now:
Nothing illegal is going on. Bradbury may even be completely wrong, whatever he thinks. But it just seems really peculiar to me that the same guy who is giving deference to a book refuses to take seriously the wishes of its author. It just isn't very gentlemanly. Moore has, in my mind, shown acute willingness to make his point at all costs, and this is just another example of that.
Moore isn't "giving deference" to Fahrenheit 451, he's using it. My argument is that his use is legitimate, in that it refers to the ideas in the book for the purpose of making a statement. That's so common in conversation and in literature that we have a word for it: "allusion".
Your final point seems to be that Moore behaves like a jackass, and that ignoring the wishes of Bradbury in this matter is more evidence of that. All I can say is that I agree with the first half of that statement, but not the second. It's Bradbury who's behaving like a jackass here, by essentially saying "it's morally wrong for you to allude to my work in order to better convey yours." How is that a reasonable moral argument?
If he were parodying Bradbury's work, I'd feel that way a lot less. But the fact that he is capitalizing on it by way of suggesting that there is some commonality or agreement, when Bradbury apparently thinks there isn't, is dirty.
Okay, I will call bullshit again. As I said before, Moore's adapted title is meant to draw a direct parallel between the government that is the subject of his movie and the government that is central to Bradbury's book. It is meant to evoke a specific response, and thus the parallel intentionally drawn between Bradbury's subject matter and Moore's serves as social commentary. Moore didn't choose the title "Fahrenheit 911" simply because Bradbury's book was popular and sold well. He did it because he wanted to draw that comparison, because he wanted to make a point about the subject of his film. It is a sensational point, and one likely to grab attention and therefore money, but the very fact that the title conveys the meaning of the work so well validates its use.
Moore's adaptation of Bradbury's title is thus totally legitimate, regardless of whether Bradbury or anyone else believes the commentary to be flawed, and regardless of whether Bradbury likes Moore or his movie. Bradbury is not in some unique position of moral authority on this matter, no matter how much either of you wants him to be for the purpose of vilifying Moore.
He referenced Bradbury's title, and in so doing evoked the primary themes of Bradbury's book. There's absolutely nothing legally, morally, or ethically wrong with that. Bradbury's just bitching about it because he doesn't like Moore's politics, and so are you.
The really obnoxious part is that Bradbury knows there's nothing wrong with the way Moore adapted his title.
yes.
By that point in the scene, I wanted to throw a car at Parker and MJ. I can only assume Dr. Octopus was also tired of their waffling and wanted another action scene.
Yes, let's now assume that I'm a Bush administration apologist.
I voted against that right-wing braindamaged jackass the first time around, and I'm going to do it again. I'm not interested in "giving him a chance". But if there's anything the Bush administration is not, it's masterminds. If you really think they've hatched a Machiavellian plot to discredit John Kerry through overregulation of model rocketry, you need your head examined.
Are you kidding? How the hell do you think ammonium perchlorate propels a rocket? With lovely wonderful thoughts ?
Well, you're half right. What's important isn't controlling model rockets. It's controlling explosives, which happen to be used in model rockets. The ATF didn't decide to clamp down on the hobby of model rocketry to pacify the citizerny-- that's an idiotic scenario even for the average conspiracy theorist. Model rocket enthusiasts are catching a side-effect of new explosives regulation because they use explosives in their hobby.
It sounds like the ATF may have been overzealous in creating those new regulations, and that those regulations may have had unintended (or disregarded) side effects, but you're going way out of your way to justify an assumption of maliciousness here.
That means no tradition in the game. It means you can't be a fan of one team for years, even if you want to, because they'll end up playing stuff that might simply not interest you. It very likely means that nobody will be able to make a career of it, and that alone shoots the whole concept to hell right there. Rules for scoring, the ideas of performance, will not simply become more advanced... they will make lateral jumps every few years.
Sure, it's possible that someone could develop a game and then propagate its rules through successive waves of technology, to provide a stable experience on which professional leagues could be built. But why the hell would anyone even begin to undertake that effort? Video games are sold largely on novelty, and that novelty is primarily looked for in gameplay-- technological advance is simply expected. Nobody except the kids who want to make a living playing games-- and probably not even most of them-- would be interested in such a thing. That's just not enough of a support base to make it happen.
That's "taking a hint".
Another is that Thiokol decided shortly before an enormously expensive launch that had already been delayed twice to invent a new launch criterion (ambient temperature above 54 degrees), and did so with no real evidence. They picked 54 simply because they hadn't launched below 54 before. The makers of the O-rings' material claimed it would work down to at least thirty degrees colder than it was on the pad. There had been problems with the O-rings all along, but none related to temperature, and Thiokol had never mentioned this temperature as a potential launch criterion before. NASA made a perfectly reasonable judgment call to launch, and it turned out to be the wrong call.
You might also consider that what caused the Columbia disaster was not the fragility of the tiles-- after all, the tiles had worked fine for a long, long time, and the ice didn't crack them, it knocked them off. The reason the falling ice knocked the tiles off seems to be that they were not properly adhered-- the glue that was used has a relatively short pot life, and it appears that already-hardening glue may have been used to affix the tiles. The design envelope wasn't violated, the manufacturing process was. The manufacturing process, incidentally, was contracted to a private firm-- like damn near everything else in the Shuttle program.
The Shuttle program definitely has problems, and some of those problems are congenital. But NASA has hardly been reckless when it comes to go/no-go for launches, even the ones where the odds came crashing down on them.
I know conservatives like to think that the word "liberal" is just a pejorative to be used for politics they don't like, but in this context it actually tends to mean "fuck the police", which I believe is basically your position on this matter. Uh oh... hope you're not some closeted pansy pinko left-winger!
What works for Canada doesn't necessarily scale so well for the US.
With electronic voting, you should (in theory) get more accurate results, in less time, using fewer people. The paper verification means that if there is a dispute and a recount is called for, the option is available. However, you don't have to front that level of expenditure everywhere. It's much more efficient.
It's worth noting that in their national elections in 2000, Canada had 21 million voters and the US had 105 million. You can see why the US might be a little more obsessed with the cost and speed elements.
Pudge is right.
It really shouldn't be that well known, because it's not true.
Source: Nintendo. Emphasis: mine.
Source: Jason Snell's blog entry at MacWorld, which has more detail.
All things being equal, my bet would be that the window completely lacks what Don Norman calls "affordances": indications that a thing can be used, for what purpose it may be used, and how one should go about using it. Is the window open, or at least half open? Is there some appealing path or alluring object visible beyond the window?
This is the sort of thing game designers need to take into account, but too often they rely on trial-and-error gameplay or "herding" to direct the player.
The whole point is that this is not a PDA, and does not need to be synced to anything. It's a portable PC which docks for use with a full-size display, keyboard, and mouse. It runs XP because that's what the target market runs on their desktops now, and this device is meant to replace those desktop systems altogether.