While this is a great advance, the real deal will be when we get to the point we can predict precisely enough to WARN the people living in these areas.
As in, hey two weeks from friday, leave the area for a day or two.
Dear Greater Los Angeles Metro Area,
It has come to our attention that there is a high risk of an earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater strking the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area in the next 24-48 hours. While we understand you may be concerned about the prospect of this earthquake, rest assured that the vast majority of earthquakes that strike the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area region are no greater than magnitude 5, and we do not expect this magnitude 8 earthquake to cause any unusual disruption to your daily schedule. In general, we only advise evacuation in the event of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake. This magnitude 8 earthquake is certainly no cause for alarm.
Once again, thank you for subscribing to our automated Earthquake Alert Service, Greater Los Angeles Metro Area!
In 6-9 months there will be an earthquake within 310 miles of San Francisco of at least 4.0.
This is fun!
Not to ruin a joke, but there are roughly 14,500 4.0+ earthquakes every year. By contrast, there are an average of 134 earthquakes between 6.0 and 6.9, and a whopping 17 between 7.0 and 7.9.
...so while these guys seem to be managing to hit the target, you're suggesting that you can reliably hit the broad side of the barn.
If they are on to something, this could be huge. Imagine that you're in charge of running a major international relief organization. Think of how useful it could be even to have this degree of earthquake prediction, considering that today you basically need to wait for a city to collapse before you can even begin the logistics of sending aid. If this team turns out to be on to something, odds are they'd be able to further hone their simulations and predictions to the point where you could have, say, a 200-mile radius and a 3 month 'window'. Given this window, you could take care of a lot of preparation, not the least of which is dealing with the politics of an international aid operation. Add to this the ability to 'beef up' aid agencies in the region, and you've got a lot better emergency response before the thing ever even hits...
Carly's totally right -- what makes a job yours by birthright? Compete like everyone else.
Oh, but wait 'till you hear her whine when overseas companies stop being cheap labor centers and start forming companies that take a nice, fat chunk out of HP's business. Once it's her ass in the fire--once the firms in India realize that they can make a killing by cutting out the middleman of overpaid American executives--she'll be screaming bloody murder.
I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment...rather, I'm suggesting that you reconsider holding Carly up as an example on this one.
what crock of crap... only a 4gb model for 249 and a new 15gb for 299... Why would I not spend 50 dollars more for 3 times the storage space?!?!
Your preferences aside, I'm told that people have been known to spend ungodly sums of money on fractionally smaller cellular phones, digital cameras, camcorders, pagers, PDAs...you get the gist of it.
The iPod mini is 65% as heavy as the standard iPod.
The iPod mini takes up 60% as much space as the standard iPod.
When you're talking about personal digital toys, that's a huge space savings, especially considering the fact that the iPod mini does everything the iPod will do and has the same battery life as the standard version.
Yeah, $250 seems rich. Then again, I can't even count how many "no way in hell I'm dropping that kind of cash on an iPod" statements I saw a couple years ago, and now it's got 35% of the market share for all portable MP3 players.
I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt on their price point...
I would have to wait until the second generation of that machine b/c I would like to make sure that Apple just isn't unloading G4 parts with a G5 chip.
I agree with the wisdom of letting others find the flaws in a first generation laptop--It's too easy to get burned with a brand new laptop design, pun intended.
That said, Apple puts more effort into laptop design than just about any other manufacturer I can think of. I seriously doubt they'd slap a G5 processor into a G4 design and call it done.
It's becoming more obvious that people who review video games are becoming more and more snobbish against violence and sex in video games.
...actually, I'd say that video game reviewers are becoming less easily impressed by violence and sex in lieu of good gameplay. They've seen one too many half-assed games that slap a bit of skin or gore on to sell more copies, and they're getting sick of it.
Consider that GTA3 and Vice City continue to be lauded as ass-kickingly good games. If the reviewers are going all snobbish on us, why didn't they denounce GTA as some half-baked game that gets old once you've finished picking up hookers for extra life and shooting transients in the head with a sniper rifle?
Is Nullsoft adopting a Fibonacci versioning system?
'cause that would be awesome.
...I dunno. Fibonacci versioning sounds cool and all, but tech support would be a nightmare:
Tech: "Okay, sir, which version of our software are you running?" Customer: "Version 1." Tech: "OK...which version 1 are you running?" Customer: "Huh?" Tech: "Are you running the first version 1 or the second version 1?" Customer: "Ummmm..."
Even if you do produce a paper receipt, most people won't even look at it. Even those who do look at it will probably just toss it in the trash bin on the way out. We're such a consumer culture, the average american tosses printed receipts several times a day.
...bear in mind that the store gets a receipt, too, and they don't chuck theirs in the wastepaper bin.
A paper receipt would be retained by the polling station and used to verify the electronic results. There are a number of ways they could implement this, but c'mon--didja really think that they'd design a system where, in the event of a dispute, they had to call everyone up and say "Hey, could you bring your paper receipt down to the voting office on Fifth and Elm? Anytime before five today will work. Thanks!"
I have been reading a lot about how difficult it is for an independant developer to break even in the mainsteam game industry. Does anyone know how shareware games fare? How many copies can you sell? Are there any shareware game developers that can be considered financial successes?
Well, it all depends on how you define 'success'.
My own little game has brought in over $1000 in donations and profit from tchotchke sales over the past year. I wrote the game in my free time (I was unemployed for a while, which helped) and I treat it like a full-time hobby. I've made more than it cost me to create the game, so I'm happy about that, and I consider most of the time I took making it time well spent. (I could have done without the weeks of tracking down forehead-slapper bugs, but it comes with the territory.)
I'm lucky in that I have free hosting through a friend, so I don't need to worry about bandwidth costs, which is a big plus. Even if I had to buy my own server space, though, I'm making enough that I could come close to breaking even, or maybe even earn a little bit.
Thing is, I never planned to earn money off this game. I wrote it for two reasons: it sounded like a fun thing to do, and I wanted to get some name recognition. Today, most of my hits are coming directly to the game's home page; even six months ago, I was relying primarily on other peoples' links. This tells me that people have heard of the game and are coming straight to the site to get it--the name is out there, and it's generating it's own buzz.
Now that I've gone through it, I've learned that the real trick isn't to make money--at least, not right off the bat. The real trick is to get noticed. Once you get noticed, the Internet practically builds a game's reputation for you. If your game is fun and engaging, it gets forwarded around and shared. You don't need to pay a dime for this.
Look at Ambrosia. They started out with Malestrom, which was and still is one of the best versions of Asteroids out there. The game got noticed, people passed it around, linked to it, and Ambrosia got a name. Today, they run a solvent shareware business; they've developed a solid registration system, they have tons of titles, and (most importantly) tons of people know who they are.
Shareware can make $$, but if that's the first thing you gun for, you'll have trouble. Make your game fun, free as in beer, have non-obtrusive requests for donations, and seed it onto the net. Make a name for yourself. Then start looking into ways to make a business out of it.
Tom
(P.S. A tip: release early in the year, so you don't get passed over on the 'Best of 200X' award lists...)
Without the threat to its business, IBM loses its incentive to pursure this matter.
True enough, but they may determine that the cost of litigating SCO into the ground is worth making it crystal clear that they don't put up with this kind of thing. A quick settlement, while not as expensive right now, wouldn't entirely close the book on 'is Linux a safe choice for my business?' Seeing as Linux is big business for IBM, they may decide to go for the easy kill now and avoid problems from someone else later...
Let's use the comments for this article to list more jokes from our technical professions which are funny but not necessarily to those outside of the field.
Q: What did the webserver say to Slashdot?
A: HRRRRRNNNnnnnnnghhhh......
With hundreds of channels of entertainment, from the Disney Channel to HBO, to keep them occupied, they're silent. "It's like you don't even have them. You can baby-sit and drive at the same time,'' Montag said.
This is nothing. I'm waiting for the garage-to-living-room solution, so I need never worry that my kids' eyes aren't safely glued to a screen.
Waitaminnut, I don't have kids.
Then again, if I did have kids, I could get this system and it'd be like I didn't even have them. Hmm.
Please excuse me--I need to go talk to my wife about kicking out a tax cut or two...
Slashdot Mirror
Now, had the leak been in a non-American-made part of the space station, I could have made a funny!
Remember, kids: it's not about being the best, it's about making fun of everybody else.
As in, hey two weeks from friday, leave the area for a day or two.
Dear Greater Los Angeles Metro Area ,
It has come to our attention that there is a high risk of an earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater strking the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area in the next 24-48 hours. While we understand you may be concerned about the prospect of this earthquake, rest assured that the vast majority of earthquakes that strike the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area region are no greater than magnitude 5 , and we do not expect this magnitude 8 earthquake to cause any unusual disruption to your daily schedule. In general, we only advise evacuation in the event of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake. This magnitude 8 earthquake is certainly no cause for alarm.
Once again, thank you for subscribing to our automated Earthquake Alert Service, Greater Los Angeles Metro Area !
This is fun!
Not to ruin a joke, but there are roughly 14,500 4.0+ earthquakes every year. By contrast, there are an average of 134 earthquakes between 6.0 and 6.9, and a whopping 17 between 7.0 and 7.9.
If they are on to something, this could be huge. Imagine that you're in charge of running a major international relief organization. Think of how useful it could be even to have this degree of earthquake prediction, considering that today you basically need to wait for a city to collapse before you can even begin the logistics of sending aid. If this team turns out to be on to something, odds are they'd be able to further hone their simulations and predictions to the point where you could have, say, a 200-mile radius and a 3 month 'window'. Given this window, you could take care of a lot of preparation, not the least of which is dealing with the politics of an international aid operation. Add to this the ability to 'beef up' aid agencies in the region, and you've got a lot better emergency response before the thing ever even hits...
Tell that to the Florida chapter of the Association of Retired Jews For Pat Buchanan...
In other news, Microsoft, Red Hat, Oracle, Sun, and Apple had to do a little coding today.
Rumors abound that Arnold Schwarzenegger had to do a little governing today, but these allegations remain unconfirmed at this time. More at eleven.
Oh, but wait 'till you hear her whine when overseas companies stop being cheap labor centers and start forming companies that take a nice, fat chunk out of HP's business. Once it's her ass in the fire--once the firms in India realize that they can make a killing by cutting out the middleman of overpaid American executives--she'll be screaming bloody murder.
I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment...rather, I'm suggesting that you reconsider holding Carly up as an example on this one.
Y'know, so they can maintain their secular lifestyles of lavish excess. Their jihad-oriented faith demands bling-bling.
This way, they can crush the infidel Western capitalists in style.
No, but you still need to destroy the angry Red Planet...
Your preferences aside, I'm told that people have been known to spend ungodly sums of money on fractionally smaller cellular phones, digital cameras, camcorders, pagers, PDAs...you get the gist of it.
The iPod mini is 65% as heavy as the standard iPod.
The iPod mini takes up 60% as much space as the standard iPod.
When you're talking about personal digital toys, that's a huge space savings, especially considering the fact that the iPod mini does everything the iPod will do and has the same battery life as the standard version.
Yeah, $250 seems rich. Then again, I can't even count how many "no way in hell I'm dropping that kind of cash on an iPod" statements I saw a couple years ago, and now it's got 35% of the market share for all portable MP3 players.
I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt on their price point...
I agree with the wisdom of letting others find the flaws in a first generation laptop--It's too easy to get burned with a brand new laptop design, pun intended.
That said, Apple puts more effort into laptop design than just about any other manufacturer I can think of. I seriously doubt they'd slap a G5 processor into a G4 design and call it done.
Consider that GTA3 and Vice City continue to be lauded as ass-kickingly good games. If the reviewers are going all snobbish on us, why didn't they denounce GTA as some half-baked game that gets old once you've finished picking up hookers for extra life and shooting transients in the head with a sniper rifle?
'cause that would be awesome.
Tech: "Okay, sir, which version of our software are you running?"
Customer: "Version 1."
Tech: "OK...which version 1 are you running?"
Customer: "Huh?"
Tech: "Are you running the first version 1 or the second version 1?"
Customer: "Ummmm..."
Gnerd.
It's about time Apple did something about the POS security in OS X!
A paper receipt would be retained by the polling station and used to verify the electronic results. There are a number of ways they could implement this, but c'mon--didja really think that they'd design a system where, in the event of a dispute, they had to call everyone up and say "Hey, could you bring your paper receipt down to the voting office on Fifth and Elm? Anytime before five today will work. Thanks!"
Well, it all depends on how you define 'success'.
My own little game has brought in over $1000 in donations and profit from tchotchke sales over the past year. I wrote the game in my free time (I was unemployed for a while, which helped) and I treat it like a full-time hobby. I've made more than it cost me to create the game, so I'm happy about that, and I consider most of the time I took making it time well spent. (I could have done without the weeks of tracking down forehead-slapper bugs, but it comes with the territory.)
I'm lucky in that I have free hosting through a friend, so I don't need to worry about bandwidth costs, which is a big plus. Even if I had to buy my own server space, though, I'm making enough that I could come close to breaking even, or maybe even earn a little bit.
Thing is, I never planned to earn money off this game. I wrote it for two reasons: it sounded like a fun thing to do, and I wanted to get some name recognition. Today, most of my hits are coming directly to the game's home page; even six months ago, I was relying primarily on other peoples' links. This tells me that people have heard of the game and are coming straight to the site to get it--the name is out there, and it's generating it's own buzz.
Now that I've gone through it, I've learned that the real trick isn't to make money--at least, not right off the bat. The real trick is to get noticed. Once you get noticed, the Internet practically builds a game's reputation for you. If your game is fun and engaging, it gets forwarded around and shared. You don't need to pay a dime for this.
Look at Ambrosia. They started out with Malestrom, which was and still is one of the best versions of Asteroids out there. The game got noticed, people passed it around, linked to it, and Ambrosia got a name. Today, they run a solvent shareware business; they've developed a solid registration system, they have tons of titles, and (most importantly) tons of people know who they are.
Shareware can make $$, but if that's the first thing you gun for, you'll have trouble. Make your game fun, free as in beer, have non-obtrusive requests for donations, and seed it onto the net. Make a name for yourself. Then start looking into ways to make a business out of it.
Tom
(P.S. A tip: release early in the year, so you don't get passed over on the 'Best of 200X' award lists...)
It's not a dupe, it's the gift that keeps on giving!
True enough, but they may determine that the cost of litigating SCO into the ground is worth making it crystal clear that they don't put up with this kind of thing. A quick settlement, while not as expensive right now, wouldn't entirely close the book on 'is Linux a safe choice for my business?' Seeing as Linux is big business for IBM, they may decide to go for the easy kill now and avoid problems from someone else later...
Q: What did the webserver say to Slashdot?
A: HRRRRRNNNnnnnnnghhhh......
No local storage. Bigger than an iPod. Lame.
Sure, you say that, but I'll be laughing all the way to the bank the next time our sun explodes.
Is that where all the LPBs come from?
Since today's family vehicles are so grossly oversized, most kids aren't tall enough to see anything but sky, anyways.
Thus, you need at least one TV and a closed-circuit camera if you want them to see anything. Why not add a satellite dish to the mix?
This is nothing. I'm waiting for the garage-to-living-room solution, so I need never worry that my kids' eyes aren't safely glued to a screen.
Waitaminnut, I don't have kids.
Then again, if I did have kids, I could get this system and it'd be like I didn't even have them. Hmm.
Please excuse me--I need to go talk to my wife about kicking out a tax cut or two...