Itanium has lots of cool new features that compilers could be using and people could be taking advantage of
Yes, and Intel would really appreciate it if someone would develop a compiler that takes full advantage of the Itanium. Really. Please. Because their own compiler is still struggling with the problems inherent in VLIW... yes, it's much, much, much better than it was a couple years ago, but it's still nowhere near where it needs to be.
And it costs a fortune. But, hey, if you can afford a $9000 chip, you should be able to afford the compiler too.
I like and respect Intel... I've grown beyond the newbie EE stance of "it sucks because it does", and recognize that they have some of the best minds working there, and that their fab processes are second to none. But Itanium has been a massive disaster for them, and they're now caught between a rock and a hard place. They can continue developing future revisions of IA64 and hope that someday their engineers figure out how to make it work well, work cheaply, and work fast with legacy code, or they can commit corporate hari kari and adopt x86-64 from AMD. Or they could do something similar, but different, to x86-64 on their own and just piss off everyone. Bad choices all around.
The only chance Itanium has is if AMD flubs the Athlon64/Opteron launch. AMD will probably pull out of the market shortly after and Intel can gradually increase profit margins to the point where throwing cash at a losing proposition (IA64) remains viable. And eventually force everyone to transition, like it or not (which, admittedly, would probably be a good thing in the long run, but the short term would suck).
The Opteron could be a real turning point, with Intel for once forced to clone AMD designs
And, just in case anyone's wondering, Intel does have rights to use x86-64 if they wish -- dates back to cross-licensing agreements between AMD and Intel, as well as various lawsuits.
There were rumors of an Intel chip in the pipeline that would implement x86-64, but those rumors were squashed repeatedly about 9 months ago. Intel keeps hoping that IA64 will pan out someday, despite repeated indications otherwise (well, ok... it seems to be doing ok for them as a company, since the profit margins are huge... but it's doing nada for the average consumer).
Yes, but as far as the PC market is concerned the original poster is correct -- if the Athlon64 and Opteron do not significantly increase AMD's market share then they're gone -- as in out of the market. Which means we essentially go back to a single chip maker monopoly for the PC market.
If AMD wasn't around to spur Intel on (and vica versa) do you think we'd have a 3 GHz CPU available to the general public right now? Yes, you can question the need for one, or you can whine about the price, but the reality is that competition has significantly improved both prices and features.
Will AMD, the company, go under? Doubt it. But they can't stay in a losing market much longer, and right now the x86 market is a massive loss leader for them.
Right you are - the speed limit is 75 for cars on interstates in non-urban areas during daylight.
And it looks like it may have been federal funding that did it, although I'm not bothering to look into it in depth. One site claims that it was actually safer during the no limit time than it was after limits were imposed. Dunno.
well grade 3 (1987) up until grade 9, calculators werent allowed in the classroom
I'm trying to remember when I first used a calculator in class, and I think it was probably trig in 9th or 10th grade. Up until then what on earth do you need one for? It's all basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Once you hit trig, you need sin/cos/tan, logs, and so forth. And yeah, I guess you don't need one then (I distinctly remember the tables in the back of the book that gave values for all of the above, along with natural log, for certain numbers), but it makes it a helluva lot easier.
I understand they allow calculators on the SAT now too, which is pretty damn sad. Of course, there's an essay section or something now too, to which I'd just like to say "ha ha".
As far as computers in the classroom go -- what's wrong with them being used as quick-access libraries? As someone else said, they should be information stores, not information processors. Otherwise the kids will use them as processors and not learn how to do the processing on their own. It becomes a crutch, and when the crutch is no longer available the kids won't be able to stand on their own.
Of course, if you show up at another tower 200Km away in 35 minutes, that would still be a little suspicious
200 Km in 35 minutes is suspicious? Must have low speed limits where you live... 100 Km/h is roughly 60 mph, which is well within the speed limit in much of the US.
Of course, if you're talking residential neighborhoods that's another matter:)
Oh, and if you say "fine, then 1000 Km" -- well, the phone company will simple disable your cell phone because it just triggered fraud detection. They've been doing that particular trick for a decade now.
Uh... riiiight. Which is why, I suppose, the speed limits haven't changed in the last decade in the US.
Oh wait. They have. The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 repealed the 55 mph limit in all areas (a 1987 act allowed speed limits to increase to 65 in rural areas on interstates). The limits are now set by the states. In Montana, for instance, there is no enforced speed limit during daylight hours on much of the highways.
Bah! Or am I just bitter?!
Both bitter and clueless. But I guess that's why you're an AC.
EQ can be fun, if you don't take it too seriously.
If you play EQ to "win" then no, it won't be fun. Because "winning" means being one of the top people in the game - the best equipment, the biggest kills, etc. And you run into the high level timesuck that the original article writer described. Yes, I know exactly what he's talking about. At one point my enchanter was probably one of the top 10 in the game. But it meant spending all my free time in the game, and I eventually learned that sucked.
Play just to talk to friends, maybe kill a few things (but not the top stuff), get a new toy every now and then, then it's probably fun. I know a number of people who quit EQ for months or over a year and have gone back to do exactly that. They seem to be enjoying it too, which is good for them. I personally won't go back because I'd be too drawn to the power game -- I generally play games to win (and my wife will most certainly agree with that), and EQ is not a winnable game. The challenges are never ending, although at the high end of the game you're not trying to beat the monsters - you're trying to beat the code. Most high end players have a better understanding of how the game works (and where its weak points are) than the authors do. Not surprising. The authors don't spend 80-100 hours/week in the game.
As far as the money sucking goes -- the only thing that costs real money in EQ is the monthly fee and the yearly expansion. Sure, you can buy plat, or items, or whatever on auction sites, but that's optional. All of that stuff is available in game, and buying it outside won't get you to the high end either -- at that point the stuff can't be traded and you have to actually put in the time to get the pixels.
I think we can expect to see a situation in where, not only haveing more time but also having more money allows you to advance beyond other players
Oh no... yet another example of where time == money!
Why does this perpetually surprise people? Even better, why do people always scream and moan about it? It's a game folks...
And yes, I say this as someone who has a L60 Enchanter and a L55 Ranger in EQ. Both played by me from L1, not bought. I quit the game 9 months ago though, so I have a bit of perspective on it now.
Dark Energy: Does anyone else believe that perhaps dark energy simply does not exist, and our laws of physics and what-not are just totally untrue anywhere except on Earth?
Uh... right. Which is why stellar processes conform to known laws of physics. Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, et. al. didn't invent basic orbital mechanics from watching things on Earth.
The inaccuracies we're finding are largely in the tiny percentages, although apparantly just large enough to not be thrown away as statistical error. The universe accelerating bit is, to my knowledge, still controversial.
Water on Mars: My vote is yes. There is ice on Mars. Some parts of Mars can get up to 80F. If there was ice in such a place, it would be in liquid form. AKA water
As has been pointed out repeatedly, you fail to take vapor pressure into account. If there is liquid water on Mars, it's certainly nowhere near the surface and hasn't been for eons.
even if we could travel as fast or faster than light, BILLIONS of years would pass on Earth in less than a year's time on the starship
No it wouldn't. If you manage to go at nearly light speed then yes, longer periods of time pass outside than inside, but it still won't be more than ~30,000 years (as one poster pointed out). If you go FTL then your logic is completely incorrect -- current tachyon theory (last I heard) was that you'd actually move backwards in time relative to an outside observer. You'd literally get there before you left. Of course, to the observer you'd appear at some point after you left, because the light is still moving at, yup, light speed.
Of course, other theoretical space-time constructs like wormholes would allow instantaneous travel.
Let's build a Dyson's sphere around the sun
Before you know exactly how a stellar system works? That's a bad idea. Tremendously bad. Oh, and there's no theoretical reason that a solid Dyson sphere wouldn't be possible, but then again we don't know enough theory to actually do it.
Age of the universe would imply that time exists. There are some that believe space-time is really just space, and that time is only something humans perceive
Yes, and there are some that believe that mankind is descended from aliens who visited in 1973 on the top of a volcano in France.
Regardless of whether space-time exists as a cohesive whole or if time and space are independant dimensions, we are inherently limited by how we view them. And we have loads of actual data to back up our theories.
Well the, the "standard model" is not exactly the most accurate one, now is it?
Actually, yes it is. That doesn't mean it's the final model or entirely correct. Which is why there are always theories about how to further refine it.
If you think that the risk of being hit is low, glace at the moon sometime
And when was the last significant lunar impact? Heck, the last significant impact in our solar system was Shoemaker-Levy, and that was a one-in-a-million occurrence. The odds of something hitting Earth is even lower, since we have gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn sweeping the outer solar system of most large asteroids. Even the space.com article admits it's mostly media hype.
Oh, and as for everyone slamming on you - it's because a post full of factual errors got modded up. Welcome to slashdot. The only reason you found entrager's post "tactful" was because it was largely a "me too" post that was equally full of errors.
the first human clone has probably already been walking around for a while
And you base this on what? Your abundant lack of knowledge about cloning technology and basic biology?
The first adult mammal cloned was Dolly the sheep. She has some rather serious defects as a result of that cloning, such as rapid aging. It took 277 attempts to produce a viable clone.
China cloned their first cow in October of this year. Brazil attempted to clone a cow and wound up with a bull instead.
Cloning isn't easy. It's not like you can just go to the corner drug store and buy a clone'o'matic. It requires a great deal of lab resources, time, and lots of money.
And while you may very well find scientists who would try to clone a human, you also have to find 50-100 women willing to be implanted with a cloned embryo, given that 90%+ of them will miscarry (the human body is pretty good at detecting and aborting non-viable fetuses -- and I apologize right now to anyone who has had to deal with a miscarraige in their family, I know they are deeply traumatizing). This immediately increases the number of potential leaks.
Right now is about the earliest it would have been possible to clone a human... after all, no matter what you try to do, it's going to take 9 months from implantation until birth.
It has nothing to do with fear, at least not for me. I think the ethics are questionable at best, primarily due to the large number of failures in current cloning methods. For the record, I'm pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that I would want dozens of women subjected to the trauma of a miscarraige (or worse), or that I think playing with human life this way is a good thing.
that engineering is the only profession where your value to the company goes down the older you get
Then he was an idiot.
Those kids fresh out of college may know current technology, but they don't have a damn clue when it comes to designing systems. When it comes to making a decision most will take whatever path is quicker/easier and not consider the longterm implications -- which means down the road you have to throw out huge chunks of code and rewrite it because it wasn't done right the first time. After all, long-term up till now has meant "next semester".
Learning the latest technology is trivial. Having the mindset to solve problems, plan out a project, and write code that doesn't break is something learned only through experience, which can't be taught so easily. And yes, you'll pay more for those people. It's worth it.
Outsource to India? No thanks... I've seen the results of that. My company tried to outsource the GUI front-end of our application to India for a very, very low sum. End result? All of the code was thrown away. The one piece that may have been salvagable turned out to be a BSD-license library that was from an alpha release and had its license violated -- the moron coder removed the copyright and claimed it was his own. It was broken too (hence the reason it was alpha). We hired a Java programmer and he finished in four months what they had failed to do in nine.
We're currently interviewing for another two positions as well, plus one more sysadmin. And we find the same thing over and over - most of the people applying for the jobs are idiots and shouldn't have been in the field in the first place. They lie about their experience, and we catch them (most are caught in pre-screen -- if you claim to know Unix, you should really know what things like 'pwd' do). The actual interview is more theory than practice, as well as making sure you'll work well in the group. It's really amazing just how many people claim a masters in CS or EE, 10 years of experience, and yet have no idea what a race condition or deadlock is or how to handle/prevent them.
Yes, I was laid off at the start of the year. And, know what? I found another job. And if it happens again I'll find another one, even if it takes some time. My wife and I have a 6 month cash emergency fund, so we're ok for awhile even if we both lose our jobs. And we can live on a single salary if needed. If you don't have a cash fund, or are living over your means, fix it. Now.
Well, Civ3 wasn't released this year as I recall, it was released last year... the expansion was this year.
Personally, I loved Civ and Civ2, but hated Civ3. Did they ever fix the issues with corruption? Utterly killed the game for me. My wife couldn't even get into it - even Chieftan level was too difficult with the improved AI and the beat-the-player-down methodolgy used in Civ3.
Outlook is more than just email -- in fact, as an email program it's not that great -- the filtering is sub-par and the permanently embedded HTML rendering is nice for idiots, but causes security problems.
The magic is in the group collaboration... which takes relatively little to setup as I understand it (I'm a Unix programmer, not a Windows admin). Properly setup you can schedule meetings, view your own or other people's calendars, schedule reminders (for yourself, for a group, etc), view availability of conference rooms, and quite a bit more (I'm an Outlook novice frankly). I haven't even looked at the journaling and PDA sync capabilities.
Can you do all of this in a bevy of other programs? Yup. Are they as well integrated as Outlook? Nope. Having all of the scheduling system in one place makes a lot of sense, and thus far Outlook is one of the few that does it right. I really hope Evolution becomes fully functional with Exchange and Outlook, and/or that someone puts forth an app that's better than Exchange/Outlook -- there's certainly room for improvement. I like Outlook's interface for email, but wow does it suck beyond that. Moving between tasks/calendar/email is a PITA to me, probably because I'm more keyboard oriented.
I'm very much hoping that someone comes out with an Exchange/Outlook killer in the near future. It's pretty much the one thing that's holding a lot of companies back at this point.
If NASA says GNULinux administrations costs are too high, think again---surely all these Unix gurus can administer thier own systems little support needed
Yes, because it's a good idea to have your people wasting time on system administration instead of doing what they need to do. And yes, this applies just as much to Windows, OS-X, or any other system -- it's why you have sysadmin groups in the first place. And, frankly, it's generally cheaper to admin Unix than NT since you need fewer people for more boxes.
IF NASA says that MS OUTLOOK is needed to standardize email ---- sticking to open and standard protocols as opposed to proprietary and costly protocols is surely the best way to standardization.
No, because you save money in time. Look, the greatest expense any large company has is not capital expenditures -- it's payroll. There is no equivalent to Outlook in the open source world. There are very few equivalents in the commercial software arena, and there's a reason that Outlook is beating them. Notes, whatever Sun is offering now, Novell -- they all require a lot more administration and hardware for little gain. Yes, you get stuck with Outlook. But the calendaring, email, tasklist, and so forth aren't as well integrated in any open source solution. I sincerely hope that changes, and soon, but until then all the people whining about Outlook are simply proving that they don't have a clue about what it does and what it offers to a medium-to-large company.
If NASA made it a REQUIREMENT that ALL of its vendors communicate using OPEN and NON-PROPRIETARY FILE FORMATS as a REQUIREMENT FOR DOING BUSINESS, THEY WOULD!
Not likely. NASA isn't stupid enough to make that kind of decree, nor is the DoD. Just take a look at the three biggest aerospace/military contractors - Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. Oh heck, let's throw General Dynamics in there too. You aren't going to tell these four monsters to switch their entire computing platform -- yes, they need the business. But you also need them. If they told you to go screw yourself and your standards, who the hell are you going to get to replace them? There isn't anyone that can step in. Which is why any kind of standards like you talk about are fielded before the large defense/NASA contractors beforehand to make sure it doesn't cause too many problems. Yes, this is the real world. You may not like it, but it doesn't care about you.
The issue, I believe, is that OO doesn't completely understand even the older versions of Word document format. Not bashing them - I'm extraordinarily pleased with how well they handle things as is - but if you can't read the document in any reasonably marked up format (no, RTF does not count) then it does you little good.
The document format dance has pretty well ended though -- at least until the next version of Office is released. Office '97 and 2000 use the same formats (AFAIK) and nearly everyone has moved to them by now.
Of course, if the court ruling actually sticks and MS has to open its document formats then it's a non-issue, and we'll finally have real competition -- both in the OSS and closed source arenas. Hallelujah.
Well, I do use IE on Windows, and I don't use Outlook/OE... at least not at home. Never had a problem with system security as far as Outlook/OE is concerned because I simply don't run them.
Yes, I know, someone else could run it (my wife doesn't use it at home either), and it's still installed and eating "valuable" disk space (er yeah with 70+ gigs free...), but realistically those aren't concerns.
As for being careful - that's the watchword, and not just for Windows users. Yes, I am a Unix developer.
IT people ought to be able to fix a program they have the source code for
Uh... riiiight.
I'm sure he has the authority to tell a programmer to shelf whatever they're working on and fix this bug... presuming it is a bug and not just a config error or something. Since the programmer has absolutely zero familiarity with the source, and probably none with the program at all, it's going to take some time to figure the bug out. Even given an above average coder who is familiar with all the necessary tools, it would take at least a couple weeks to figure out the code and fix.
Presuming that said above-average-coder is being paid only $80k, two weeks of their time is worth $3k in salary... which means about $5k once you add in benefits. And you've just delayed some other project -- one that is actually related to your core business -- by 2 weeks or more (probably more - it takes time to gearshift). That delay could cost the company an unknown amount of money - anything from $0 to millions, depending on the importance of the project.
Oh, and lets not kid ourselves. Programmers in large corps (and most small corps) don't work in a vacuum. Most have teams that interact with one another as well as other groups. Pull this senior programmer out of that and you're going to delay all of them too.
Now, how exactly do you justify this to management? Versus just buying an off-the-shelf solution, which -- even at $50-100k may -- be cheaper than tasking a coder to something that's tertiary to your core business.
To some extent this is a worse-case-scenario. To some extent its not. But having the code available doesn't mean jack shit in the real world, because it still costs huge amounts of money to get it fixed. Most successful (as in adopted by businesses) open source projects realize this and provide paid-for support -- because most companies know it's worth the time to pay for support rather than spend their own resources fixing it when something goes wrong.
Thing is, you could've spent $300 for another, better brand in 1982 and they'd be faithfully reproducing audio without any noticeable distortion. And it would've sounded better.
Although companies "own" the right to use certain spectrums of the airwaves
With respect to TV and radio stations -- no they don't.
would lease the airwaves to radio and tv stations (instead of selling them)
Hrm... I don't suppose that's what the multi-thousand or multi-million dollar licensing fees that broadcasters pay yearly are for... nah.
The broadcasters do not "own" the spectrum, despite their attitude otherwise. They do pay hefty fees on a yearly basis for the right to utilize that spectrum (and the fees are proportional to the amount of power, and thus coverage, they have).
The parent post was equally wrong. The broadcasters are not holding out to sell the analog spectrum -- you can't sell what you don't own. And the FCC has made it abundantly clear that they are going to reclaim the analog spectrum in the (nearish) future, and that the broadcasters are not allowed to resell the digital spectrum for primary uses other than broadcasting digital television (yes, they can lease a portion of the spectrum out, but they must be using most of it for DTV).
Just because it's a standard doesn't mean that anyone will actually use it.
Once the FCC approves it they will. At least, if they want to continue doing business in this country.
This is one of the standards that the FCC has been asking the industry to agree upon for 3 years now. Powell even stated that he expected a quick review and approval on it.
Once approved you must conform to the standard by a certain date. If you don't then your FCC license gets revoked and you're out of business.
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Itanium has lots of cool new features that compilers could be using and people could be taking advantage of
Yes, and Intel would really appreciate it if someone would develop a compiler that takes full advantage of the Itanium. Really. Please. Because their own compiler is still struggling with the problems inherent in VLIW... yes, it's much, much, much better than it was a couple years ago, but it's still nowhere near where it needs to be.
And it costs a fortune. But, hey, if you can afford a $9000 chip, you should be able to afford the compiler too.
I like and respect Intel... I've grown beyond the newbie EE stance of "it sucks because it does", and recognize that they have some of the best minds working there, and that their fab processes are second to none. But Itanium has been a massive disaster for them, and they're now caught between a rock and a hard place. They can continue developing future revisions of IA64 and hope that someday their engineers figure out how to make it work well, work cheaply, and work fast with legacy code, or they can commit corporate hari kari and adopt x86-64 from AMD. Or they could do something similar, but different, to x86-64 on their own and just piss off everyone. Bad choices all around.
The only chance Itanium has is if AMD flubs the Athlon64/Opteron launch. AMD will probably pull out of the market shortly after and Intel can gradually increase profit margins to the point where throwing cash at a losing proposition (IA64) remains viable. And eventually force everyone to transition, like it or not (which, admittedly, would probably be a good thing in the long run, but the short term would suck).
The Opteron could be a real turning point, with Intel for once forced to clone AMD designs
And, just in case anyone's wondering, Intel does have rights to use x86-64 if they wish -- dates back to cross-licensing agreements between AMD and Intel, as well as various lawsuits.
There were rumors of an Intel chip in the pipeline that would implement x86-64, but those rumors were squashed repeatedly about 9 months ago. Intel keeps hoping that IA64 will pan out someday, despite repeated indications otherwise (well, ok... it seems to be doing ok for them as a company, since the profit margins are huge... but it's doing nada for the average consumer).
Yes, but as far as the PC market is concerned the original poster is correct -- if the Athlon64 and Opteron do not significantly increase AMD's market share then they're gone -- as in out of the market. Which means we essentially go back to a single chip maker monopoly for the PC market.
If AMD wasn't around to spur Intel on (and vica versa) do you think we'd have a 3 GHz CPU available to the general public right now? Yes, you can question the need for one, or you can whine about the price, but the reality is that competition has significantly improved both prices and features.
Will AMD, the company, go under? Doubt it. But they can't stay in a losing market much longer, and right now the x86 market is a massive loss leader for them.
Right you are - the speed limit is 75 for cars on interstates in non-urban areas during daylight.
And it looks like it may have been federal funding that did it, although I'm not bothering to look into it in depth. One site claims that it was actually safer during the no limit time than it was after limits were imposed. Dunno.
Now where was that thread about basic math skills failing us due to computers?
Erp.
well grade 3 (1987) up until grade 9, calculators werent allowed in the classroom
I'm trying to remember when I first used a calculator in class, and I think it was probably trig in 9th or 10th grade. Up until then what on earth do you need one for? It's all basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Once you hit trig, you need sin/cos/tan, logs, and so forth. And yeah, I guess you don't need one then (I distinctly remember the tables in the back of the book that gave values for all of the above, along with natural log, for certain numbers), but it makes it a helluva lot easier.
I understand they allow calculators on the SAT now too, which is pretty damn sad. Of course, there's an essay section or something now too, to which I'd just like to say "ha ha".
As far as computers in the classroom go -- what's wrong with them being used as quick-access libraries? As someone else said, they should be information stores, not information processors. Otherwise the kids will use them as processors and not learn how to do the processing on their own. It becomes a crutch, and when the crutch is no longer available the kids won't be able to stand on their own.
Of course, if you show up at another tower 200Km away in 35 minutes, that would still be a little suspicious
:)
200 Km in 35 minutes is suspicious? Must have low speed limits where you live... 100 Km/h is roughly 60 mph, which is well within the speed limit in much of the US.
Of course, if you're talking residential neighborhoods that's another matter
Oh, and if you say "fine, then 1000 Km" -- well, the phone company will simple disable your cell phone because it just triggered fraud detection. They've been doing that particular trick for a decade now.
There is little hope of changing speed limits
Uh... riiiight. Which is why, I suppose, the speed limits haven't changed in the last decade in the US.
Oh wait. They have. The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 repealed the 55 mph limit in all areas (a 1987 act allowed speed limits to increase to 65 in rural areas on interstates). The limits are now set by the states. In Montana, for instance, there is no enforced speed limit during daylight hours on much of the highways.
Bah! Or am I just bitter?!
Both bitter and clueless. But I guess that's why you're an AC.
EQ can be fun, if you don't take it too seriously.
If you play EQ to "win" then no, it won't be fun. Because "winning" means being one of the top people in the game - the best equipment, the biggest kills, etc. And you run into the high level timesuck that the original article writer described. Yes, I know exactly what he's talking about. At one point my enchanter was probably one of the top 10 in the game. But it meant spending all my free time in the game, and I eventually learned that sucked.
Play just to talk to friends, maybe kill a few things (but not the top stuff), get a new toy every now and then, then it's probably fun. I know a number of people who quit EQ for months or over a year and have gone back to do exactly that. They seem to be enjoying it too, which is good for them. I personally won't go back because I'd be too drawn to the power game -- I generally play games to win (and my wife will most certainly agree with that), and EQ is not a winnable game. The challenges are never ending, although at the high end of the game you're not trying to beat the monsters - you're trying to beat the code. Most high end players have a better understanding of how the game works (and where its weak points are) than the authors do. Not surprising. The authors don't spend 80-100 hours/week in the game.
As far as the money sucking goes -- the only thing that costs real money in EQ is the monthly fee and the yearly expansion. Sure, you can buy plat, or items, or whatever on auction sites, but that's optional. All of that stuff is available in game, and buying it outside won't get you to the high end either -- at that point the stuff can't be traded and you have to actually put in the time to get the pixels.
I think we can expect to see a situation in where, not only haveing more time but also having more money allows you to advance beyond other players
Oh no... yet another example of where time == money!
Why does this perpetually surprise people? Even better, why do people always scream and moan about it? It's a game folks...
And yes, I say this as someone who has a L60 Enchanter and a L55 Ranger in EQ. Both played by me from L1, not bought. I quit the game 9 months ago though, so I have a bit of perspective on it now.
Dark Energy: Does anyone else believe that perhaps dark energy simply does not exist, and our laws of physics and what-not are just totally untrue anywhere except on Earth?
Uh... right. Which is why stellar processes conform to known laws of physics. Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, et. al. didn't invent basic orbital mechanics from watching things on Earth.
The inaccuracies we're finding are largely in the tiny percentages, although apparantly just large enough to not be thrown away as statistical error. The universe accelerating bit is, to my knowledge, still controversial.
Water on Mars: My vote is yes. There is ice on Mars. Some parts of Mars can get up to 80F. If there was ice in such a place, it would be in liquid form. AKA water
As has been pointed out repeatedly, you fail to take vapor pressure into account. If there is liquid water on Mars, it's certainly nowhere near the surface and hasn't been for eons.
even if we could travel as fast or faster than light, BILLIONS of years would pass on Earth in less than a year's time on the starship
No it wouldn't. If you manage to go at nearly light speed then yes, longer periods of time pass outside than inside, but it still won't be more than ~30,000 years (as one poster pointed out). If you go FTL then your logic is completely incorrect -- current tachyon theory (last I heard) was that you'd actually move backwards in time relative to an outside observer. You'd literally get there before you left. Of course, to the observer you'd appear at some point after you left, because the light is still moving at, yup, light speed.
Of course, other theoretical space-time constructs like wormholes would allow instantaneous travel.
Let's build a Dyson's sphere around the sun
Before you know exactly how a stellar system works? That's a bad idea. Tremendously bad. Oh, and there's no theoretical reason that a solid Dyson sphere wouldn't be possible, but then again we don't know enough theory to actually do it.
Age of the universe would imply that time exists. There are some that believe space-time is really just space, and that time is only something humans perceive
Yes, and there are some that believe that mankind is descended from aliens who visited in 1973 on the top of a volcano in France.
Regardless of whether space-time exists as a cohesive whole or if time and space are independant dimensions, we are inherently limited by how we view them. And we have loads of actual data to back up our theories.
Well the, the "standard model" is not exactly the most accurate one, now is it?
Actually, yes it is. That doesn't mean it's the final model or entirely correct. Which is why there are always theories about how to further refine it.
If you think that the risk of being hit is low, glace at the moon sometime
And when was the last significant lunar impact? Heck, the last significant impact in our solar system was Shoemaker-Levy, and that was a one-in-a-million occurrence. The odds of something hitting Earth is even lower, since we have gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn sweeping the outer solar system of most large asteroids. Even the space.com article admits it's mostly media hype.
Oh, and as for everyone slamming on you - it's because a post full of factual errors got modded up. Welcome to slashdot. The only reason you found entrager's post "tactful" was because it was largely a "me too" post that was equally full of errors.
I believe that's been solved.
the first human clone has probably already been walking around for a while
And you base this on what? Your abundant lack of knowledge about cloning technology and basic biology?
The first adult mammal cloned was Dolly the sheep. She has some rather serious defects as a result of that cloning, such as rapid aging. It took 277 attempts to produce a viable clone.
A cow was cloned in 1998 without the aging problems, and it took a "mere" 104 attempts.
China cloned their first cow in October of this year. Brazil attempted to clone a cow and wound up with a bull instead.
Cloning isn't easy. It's not like you can just go to the corner drug store and buy a clone'o'matic. It requires a great deal of lab resources, time, and lots of money.
And while you may very well find scientists who would try to clone a human, you also have to find 50-100 women willing to be implanted with a cloned embryo, given that 90%+ of them will miscarry (the human body is pretty good at detecting and aborting non-viable fetuses -- and I apologize right now to anyone who has had to deal with a miscarraige in their family, I know they are deeply traumatizing). This immediately increases the number of potential leaks.
Right now is about the earliest it would have been possible to clone a human... after all, no matter what you try to do, it's going to take 9 months from implantation until birth.
It has nothing to do with fear, at least not for me. I think the ethics are questionable at best, primarily due to the large number of failures in current cloning methods. For the record, I'm pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that I would want dozens of women subjected to the trauma of a miscarraige (or worse), or that I think playing with human life this way is a good thing.
that engineering is the only profession where your value to the company goes down the older you get
Then he was an idiot.
Those kids fresh out of college may know current technology, but they don't have a damn clue when it comes to designing systems. When it comes to making a decision most will take whatever path is quicker/easier and not consider the longterm implications -- which means down the road you have to throw out huge chunks of code and rewrite it because it wasn't done right the first time. After all, long-term up till now has meant "next semester".
Learning the latest technology is trivial. Having the mindset to solve problems, plan out a project, and write code that doesn't break is something learned only through experience, which can't be taught so easily. And yes, you'll pay more for those people. It's worth it.
Outsource to India? No thanks... I've seen the results of that. My company tried to outsource the GUI front-end of our application to India for a very, very low sum. End result? All of the code was thrown away. The one piece that may have been salvagable turned out to be a BSD-license library that was from an alpha release and had its license violated -- the moron coder removed the copyright and claimed it was his own. It was broken too (hence the reason it was alpha). We hired a Java programmer and he finished in four months what they had failed to do in nine.
We're currently interviewing for another two positions as well, plus one more sysadmin. And we find the same thing over and over - most of the people applying for the jobs are idiots and shouldn't have been in the field in the first place. They lie about their experience, and we catch them (most are caught in pre-screen -- if you claim to know Unix, you should really know what things like 'pwd' do). The actual interview is more theory than practice, as well as making sure you'll work well in the group. It's really amazing just how many people claim a masters in CS or EE, 10 years of experience, and yet have no idea what a race condition or deadlock is or how to handle/prevent them.
Yes, I was laid off at the start of the year. And, know what? I found another job. And if it happens again I'll find another one, even if it takes some time. My wife and I have a 6 month cash emergency fund, so we're ok for awhile even if we both lose our jobs. And we can live on a single salary if needed. If you don't have a cash fund, or are living over your means, fix it. Now.
Well, Civ3 wasn't released this year as I recall, it was released last year... the expansion was this year.
Personally, I loved Civ and Civ2, but hated Civ3. Did they ever fix the issues with corruption? Utterly killed the game for me. My wife couldn't even get into it - even Chieftan level was too difficult with the improved AI and the beat-the-player-down methodolgy used in Civ3.
Outlook is more than just email -- in fact, as an email program it's not that great -- the filtering is sub-par and the permanently embedded HTML rendering is nice for idiots, but causes security problems.
The magic is in the group collaboration... which takes relatively little to setup as I understand it (I'm a Unix programmer, not a Windows admin). Properly setup you can schedule meetings, view your own or other people's calendars, schedule reminders (for yourself, for a group, etc), view availability of conference rooms, and quite a bit more (I'm an Outlook novice frankly). I haven't even looked at the journaling and PDA sync capabilities.
Can you do all of this in a bevy of other programs? Yup. Are they as well integrated as Outlook? Nope. Having all of the scheduling system in one place makes a lot of sense, and thus far Outlook is one of the few that does it right. I really hope Evolution becomes fully functional with Exchange and Outlook, and/or that someone puts forth an app that's better than Exchange/Outlook -- there's certainly room for improvement. I like Outlook's interface for email, but wow does it suck beyond that. Moving between tasks/calendar/email is a PITA to me, probably because I'm more keyboard oriented.
I'm very much hoping that someone comes out with an Exchange/Outlook killer in the near future. It's pretty much the one thing that's holding a lot of companies back at this point.
If NASA says GNULinux administrations costs are too high, think again---surely all these Unix gurus can administer thier own systems little support needed
Yes, because it's a good idea to have your people wasting time on system administration instead of doing what they need to do. And yes, this applies just as much to Windows, OS-X, or any other system -- it's why you have sysadmin groups in the first place. And, frankly, it's generally cheaper to admin Unix than NT since you need fewer people for more boxes.
IF NASA says that MS OUTLOOK is needed to standardize email ---- sticking to open and standard protocols as opposed to proprietary and costly protocols is surely the best way to standardization.
No, because you save money in time. Look, the greatest expense any large company has is not capital expenditures -- it's payroll. There is no equivalent to Outlook in the open source world. There are very few equivalents in the commercial software arena, and there's a reason that Outlook is beating them. Notes, whatever Sun is offering now, Novell -- they all require a lot more administration and hardware for little gain. Yes, you get stuck with Outlook. But the calendaring, email, tasklist, and so forth aren't as well integrated in any open source solution. I sincerely hope that changes, and soon, but until then all the people whining about Outlook are simply proving that they don't have a clue about what it does and what it offers to a medium-to-large company.
If NASA made it a REQUIREMENT that ALL of its vendors communicate using OPEN and NON-PROPRIETARY FILE FORMATS as a REQUIREMENT FOR DOING BUSINESS, THEY WOULD!
Not likely. NASA isn't stupid enough to make that kind of decree, nor is the DoD. Just take a look at the three biggest aerospace/military contractors - Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. Oh heck, let's throw General Dynamics in there too. You aren't going to tell these four monsters to switch their entire computing platform -- yes, they need the business. But you also need them. If they told you to go screw yourself and your standards, who the hell are you going to get to replace them? There isn't anyone that can step in. Which is why any kind of standards like you talk about are fielded before the large defense/NASA contractors beforehand to make sure it doesn't cause too many problems. Yes, this is the real world. You may not like it, but it doesn't care about you.
The issue, I believe, is that OO doesn't completely understand even the older versions of Word document format. Not bashing them - I'm extraordinarily pleased with how well they handle things as is - but if you can't read the document in any reasonably marked up format (no, RTF does not count) then it does you little good.
The document format dance has pretty well ended though -- at least until the next version of Office is released. Office '97 and 2000 use the same formats (AFAIK) and nearly everyone has moved to them by now.
Of course, if the court ruling actually sticks and MS has to open its document formats then it's a non-issue, and we'll finally have real competition -- both in the OSS and closed source arenas. Hallelujah.
Well, I do use IE on Windows, and I don't use Outlook/OE... at least not at home. Never had a problem with system security as far as Outlook/OE is concerned because I simply don't run them.
Yes, I know, someone else could run it (my wife doesn't use it at home either), and it's still installed and eating "valuable" disk space (er yeah with 70+ gigs free...), but realistically those aren't concerns.
As for being careful - that's the watchword, and not just for Windows users. Yes, I am a Unix developer.
Unlike recent DVD releases of 80s classics (ie. the gun-to-walkie-talkie edits in E.T.)
You know that the ET DVDs have both the original, unedited version released in 1982 and the modified 2002 release on them, right?
No, I didn't think you did.
IT people ought to be able to fix a program they have the source code for
Uh... riiiight.
I'm sure he has the authority to tell a programmer to shelf whatever they're working on and fix this bug... presuming it is a bug and not just a config error or something. Since the programmer has absolutely zero familiarity with the source, and probably none with the program at all, it's going to take some time to figure the bug out. Even given an above average coder who is familiar with all the necessary tools, it would take at least a couple weeks to figure out the code and fix.
Presuming that said above-average-coder is being paid only $80k, two weeks of their time is worth $3k in salary... which means about $5k once you add in benefits. And you've just delayed some other project -- one that is actually related to your core business -- by 2 weeks or more (probably more - it takes time to gearshift). That delay could cost the company an unknown amount of money - anything from $0 to millions, depending on the importance of the project.
Oh, and lets not kid ourselves. Programmers in large corps (and most small corps) don't work in a vacuum. Most have teams that interact with one another as well as other groups. Pull this senior programmer out of that and you're going to delay all of them too.
Now, how exactly do you justify this to management? Versus just buying an off-the-shelf solution, which -- even at $50-100k may -- be cheaper than tasking a coder to something that's tertiary to your core business.
To some extent this is a worse-case-scenario. To some extent its not. But having the code available doesn't mean jack shit in the real world, because it still costs huge amounts of money to get it fixed. Most successful (as in adopted by businesses) open source projects realize this and provide paid-for support -- because most companies know it's worth the time to pay for support rather than spend their own resources fixing it when something goes wrong.
Uh... so? Any decent speaker brand can do that.
Thing is, you could've spent $300 for another, better brand in 1982 and they'd be faithfully reproducing audio without any noticeable distortion. And it would've sounded better.
Paradigm, B&W, PSB, NHT, or a half dozen others that make reasonably priced, but high quality speakers.
You can buy Bose. Or you can spend the same amount on a quality speaker and get far better sound. And yes, I've heard the difference.
For a starter, you might want to try this site.
Although companies "own" the right to use certain spectrums of the airwaves
With respect to TV and radio stations -- no they don't.
would lease the airwaves to radio and tv stations (instead of selling them)
Hrm... I don't suppose that's what the multi-thousand or multi-million dollar licensing fees that broadcasters pay yearly are for... nah.
The broadcasters do not "own" the spectrum, despite their attitude otherwise. They do pay hefty fees on a yearly basis for the right to utilize that spectrum (and the fees are proportional to the amount of power, and thus coverage, they have).
The parent post was equally wrong. The broadcasters are not holding out to sell the analog spectrum -- you can't sell what you don't own. And the FCC has made it abundantly clear that they are going to reclaim the analog spectrum in the (nearish) future, and that the broadcasters are not allowed to resell the digital spectrum for primary uses other than broadcasting digital television (yes, they can lease a portion of the spectrum out, but they must be using most of it for DTV).
Just because it's a standard doesn't mean that anyone will actually use it.
Once the FCC approves it they will. At least, if they want to continue doing business in this country.
This is one of the standards that the FCC has been asking the industry to agree upon for 3 years now. Powell even stated that he expected a quick review and approval on it.
Once approved you must conform to the standard by a certain date. If you don't then your FCC license gets revoked and you're out of business.