I will always pay them homage and due respect for inventing a genre that I loved for many years. I fully believe it's possible that they will be the first ones to figure out how to put the R in VR on home-quality hardware.
But Doom3 finally convinced me they've got NOTHING in the box as far as a single new idea under the sun for the story.
If a child gets scolded for biting another child, is that "revenge"?
I expect humans to follow the rules set by society around them (or change them in the prescribed ways). If they cannot behave according to these standards, there should be negative reinforcements for such behavior.
Well, I'm going to get flamed for this but I'll give you a rarely heard answer to your question "What was the point of their prison sentence?"
PUNISHMENT.
Not exoneration, not forgiveness, not rehabilitation. Just the plain ole "stick" of the carrot & stick variety.
Do something wrong as a kid, and you get slapped on the hand for it. Your parents don't forget what you did, but the fact that you got slapped SHOULD help you remember not to do it next time.
As an adult, if you go to prison for committing a crime, that's society slapping you unpleasantly on the hand. You walk out of prison, and you haven't "undone" what you did, you were merely PUNISHED for it.
Don't like it? To channel Jim Carey: "STOP BREAKING THE LAW, LOSER."
In the vein of the OP, II personally think tracking every sex offender is a little ridiculous, given the way such a label is handed out so easily. But level 3 sex offenders? HELL YES I want to know where they are, and frankly, tough shit if they don't like it.
(And oh no, if they are more likely to re-offend if they are 'stressed'? SO WHAT? They're people, not animals. Expect them to control themselves appropriately. If they can't, well, then they ARE animals and should be dealt with as any animal that habitually preys on people. End of story.)
What I find interesting from a psychological perspective is the baseless optimism of the participants.
Do they think that in 1979 (or some specific date since) that Bill Gates stroked an imaginary 'Snidely Whiplash' mustachio and cackled over how he'd dominate the computer market and exploit people for his own wealth?
Do they really think that any corporate/government organization that represents the polar opposite to the Linux 'paradigm' - highly bureaucratic, stifling, top-down organizations - didn't START with a font of goodwill, like Linux?
What, precisely, did they think made their effort unique? Why did they actually think that Linux, as it becomes more relevant, wouldn't ALSO become a balkanized playground of ego, power, and territory-marking?
How many distros of Linux are there? And how many of them have forums filled with not just people who are talking about the postive aspects of this distro or that, but who display the fanboi-attack piranha behavior toward anyone that dares preferentially support some other distro?
Hey, I congratulate the guy for putting up with it as long as he did. He made a valiant effort, regardless of its futility.
Let me be clear: I SUSPECT THAT THE PANIC OVER AGW IS FUD.
I can outline my position succinctly with these 5 questions.
Q: Is the planet warming? A: Unclear. *Most* data seems to point to an overall warming trend that is also inducing pattern changes that may even result in localized cooling.
Q: Is this warming unusual? A: No. All historical climate data points to the fact that the climate changes over time in varying cycles. According to all long-term plots (example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png) , we are in an extended cool period; the globe has generally been very much warmer over history. Does that mean we're 'due' for warming? Unclear. It's possible that the current warming is happening faster than most warming periods, but it's not the fastest ever, at least as far as we can tell from historical data.
Q: is this warming caused by humans or human activity? A: Unclear. Previous warming cycles happened without humans, so it's hard to identify any reason that humans 'happen' to be at fault for this one.
Q: but doesn't the 'hockey stick' graph prove the warming came from human activity? A: No. The 'hockey stick' is an example of cherry-picked, massaged data. Is it warmer than it was 1000 years ago? Yes. Is it warmer than last year? No. Than 30 years ago? No. Than 100,000 years ago? No.
Q: But you're not a climatologist! They all say AGW is real. A: You're right. But when a doctor tells me something that contradicts common sense, I get a second, or perhaps third opinion before acting drastically. I've pulled RAW data myself from www.ncdc.noaa.gov, plotted it and looked at it myself, without either side 'interpreting' it for me. I don't see a trend that sticks out of the chaos. On the other hand, it's logical to me that humans ARE warming the planet - practically every human activity generates heat, as well as the albedo effect of paving everything in asphalt. The 'urban heat island' effect is obvious, why wouldn't it scale when more and more and more of our land surface is being urbanized?
I'm simply unconvinced at this point. Note: I'm not saying it's bullshit, I'm saying that I'm unconvinced. The cast of characters trying to convince me of AGW (balding eco-nuts from the 70s, leftist politicians, histrionic actors convinced of their relevance, etc.) is NOT helping the cause. They're wrong about just about everything else that I *can* check.
Personally, I think there are far more serious issues of pollution, energy-dependence, overpopulation, etc that need our attention far more urgently. If they net out at reducing a potential impact on global warming, great, but that shouldn't be the driver. In *ANY* conceivable future, the climate WILL change, sometimes drastically. Sea level has not remained constant in earth's history, it's pure solipsism to believe that natural processes will stop right 'here' at some theoretical human-optimum (we don't even know THAT for a fact, just that rising sea levels will be inconvenient to the urban centers whose location and growth is the result of not careful planning, but NOTHING more than human convenience...).
Here's what I find interesting: the bulk of the 'data' behind anthropogenic global warming points to a rise in temps THIS century of a small handful of degrees. The concern is over the consequences of a further rise of, again, a small handful of degrees.
Now, drag out all the charts, graphs, and politically-motivated reports you want, for and against; the only actual modern large-scale experiment that gives us any proof regarding human impact on temperature was the week after 9/11.
The complete lack of aircraft over the US had a SIGNIFICANT effect on high and low temperatures immediately.
Couple that with this current evidence that a single shuttle launch can apparently impact cloud formation over the Antarctic, and I'd say that's a far-more-tangible red flag than the supposed connections made over CO2 or other 'global warming' gases.
So why isn't there a significant, sustained effort to minimize air travel?
Now if only we could get 'hi res' pictures of all the glaciers that are GROWING (http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm) then we could have an accurate picture of what's going on.
And as far as arctic ice melting, the last 'uninterpreted' data I saw (http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png) doesn't show much if any evident trend for the last 8 years.
I'm guessing that they didn't take a big enough selection.
Yes, in our upper-middle-class, racially homogenous study group, perhaps true.
Generally, on a HUMAN EVOLUTION scale? Ah, not so much.
Otherwise, you're asserting that Octomom is gorgeous? Theoretically...?
And at least in the US, while it's clear that beauty is an upwardly-mobile social selection trait (beautiful but poor girls have a good chance of being married to someone significantly wealthier than their parents), I'm not sure this translates into OFFSPRING.
It certainly seems here like the Jerry-Springer-watching, white- or black-trash underclass is SIGNFICANTLY outproducing the upper- and middle-class birthrates.
Replace a passive, cheap, adequate technology with something powered, expensive, (no doubt) prone to failure, that adds features people don't know that they (allegedly) need.
Barry misunderstands the BASIC transaction basis of currently-free media (like TV): the ADVERTISERS are his customers, the VIEWERS EYES AND ATTENTION is what he's selling and the 'content' is merely bait to attract and hold the viewers for as long as possible.
So in a sense, he's stating categorically that fish are going to need to pay to enjoy the worms hanging on those hooks.
It's quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
And, for what it's worth? "Disney, the world's biggest media company, is developing a subscription-based product for the Internet, Iger said..." Disney: really good content producer, really BAD at predicting how they can exploit the viewers. I recall them saying categorically that Disney movies would NEVER be released in DVD format (for fear of piracy) and then they did release in a dvd format...DIVX. Everyone remember what a huge success that was?
No, if Disney's working on a 'subscription' internet, I'm going to bet strongly that they'll be wrong.
...for those who know far more than I do about kernels, virtual devices, etc.:
I saw this comment about running "old" (ie DOS, Win95, etc) games in Win7 "...If you just have to play one, I suggest making a small dual-boot partition or keeping an old computer around..."
Seriously?
Considering the exponential increase in processor and memory speed/size over the last 10 years, it's astonishing to me that Win7 couldn't just spawn a child window that would, as far as that program is concerned, be a complete 286/386 machine along with a "massive"4 megs of RAM (which could simulate extended/expanded memory as needed)? I know DOS programs had the occasionally bad habit of either running off system clock ticks (which makes them scream crazily along with a modern processor) or writing directly to devices (something Win doesn't like at all), but it still seems like it would possible to cordon off a program's operations so that - as far as the program is concerned - clock speeds are whatever you want them to be, and it THINKS its writing directly to devices when in fact they're being passed out to Win DLLs?
I mean, it even seems like it could be as simple for the user as to be GUI'd - run the "spawn virtual machine" app, select the processor speed, the former version of Win/DOS that would be running, the amount of RAM it can use, and "go". Anything that goes on in that window is entirely segregated from the rest of the system. Heck, I can see a lot of reasons that might be a handy thing to have.
Because we ALL know that internet traffic is geographically routed and exclusive, right?
I mean, packets from West Africa *never* go over lines from East Africa, and the installation of PHAT bandwidth to E. Africa certainly wouldn't reduce congestion on the rest of the system, yes?
Look, I understand that my point is specious - but it's entirely possible these points were made in humor (and thus not really worth the hypersensitive response), or even if not, they may have a reasonable basis in fact (and thus not arguable).
While you're criticizing someone's ignorant stereotyping, perhaps you might want to check your own baggage first?
Yawn. I enjoy my Roku box, thanks to Netflix. It was also staggeringly easy to set up with no hassles whatsoever. But beyond that, Roku seems committed to 'pushing the envelope' with deal for crappy, worthless content.
Amazon 'video on demand' is ludicrously bad offering nothing but *complete* crap for free, or I could watch a second-run movie for more than I'd pay for a theater ticket! $15 for Coraline?...or $10 for the original Ghostbusters?! (wow, what a... deal)
I'd have said the only one lamer is Mediafly, which is really just a podcast aggregator - not much worth watching there at all.
Also, I've been disappointed with Roku's 'not clearly explained' "hi def" option. They offer only 480p (normal def) or 720p if you have the bandwidth...as someone with a 1080i set, it sucks to be me.:\
Ironically, I'd *heard* the story told as "one million lines of code"...I downgraded that as conceptually unlikely.:\
Just to be clear - this was NOT a story that John ever told, it was whispered around Digi by admiring employees. When questioned casually about it, he'd deny that it was such a big deal and just state that he was part of the team that worked on it.
I had the pleasure to meet John Schinas, one of the programmers tasked with LEM landing and orbital code and the entrepreneur behind a company my wife had the pleasure to work for. An absolute genius.
As I hear the story, he was given the task to write the code and was asked how many team members he'd need, he demurred, saying that he'd just do it himself. Program managers said it was impossible for a person to write 100,000 lines of machine code without error, and after he did it, nevertheless tasked backup personnel to scrutinize the code line by line. They didn't find anything.
A quick googling shows that Salon's article titled "Bush's Stem Cell fumble" is dated August 2001.
You're right, medical developments don't happen instantly, but wouldn't you expect that EIGHT YEARS of development by THE REST OF THE WORLD (assuming of course that a) stem cell therapies are as obvious and imminent as suggested, and b) everyone else in the world is charging forward since they weren't cursed with a benighted Flat Earther as a president) might have come up with *something*?
I don't have mod points, so I'll comment - absolutely.
The 'eminent domain' powers granted to this BS project because of its politically-correct 'green' feel were the real point, and TBP played the civic leaders like a finely tuned band.
I recall having an indepth discussion on this at an E3 with Jack Emmert before City of Heroes came out. CoH was originally planned as (and I think through early beta was) a skill based game without levels. Or there may have been levels, but they gave you skill points to buy powers without a guiding archetype.
In beta, they were extremely disappointed as the beta players quickly resolved a "best set" of talents for each archetype (tank, dps) and everyone migrated to those with only trivial differences between characters. No matter how they tweaked the skills to be balanced, there was always SOME advantage to one over another, and the beta players would very quickly resolve which was most useful in most instances, and everyone would switch to that.
So after much agony over the decision, the dev team relegated themselves to the current level mechanic.
It really wasn't so much about balance (there was no PVP at that time, as I recall) but about the dirty-little-secret of "CRPG" MMO's - they're frightfully one dimensional. Everything relies on COMBAT and surviving it. You can't negotiate your way to a resolution, you can't sneak into places and accomplish anything (except skipping some trash mobs, perhaps). NOTHING significant is accomplishable without bashing heads, and thus the skills that are most useful to this end become the flavor of the month.
You even see this in level based games with talent points allowing variety within the classes. For WoW, look at talentchic.com - despite 10 classes, 3 talent trees per class, and 51 points of talents in each tree so 153 choices to spend a character's 71 talent points, there are at BEST 3, perhaps 4 "best distribution" of talent points for each class. Some, like Warrior or Hunter, have ONE...yes ONE theorycrafted "best" allocation of talent points.
So no, I don't particularly think its about balance, although that may be part of it. The root problem is that there is ONE solution to every challenge in an MMO, so is it any surprise that of the varied choices players (supposedly) get, that they resolve a single way to 'win'?
...nor did Bush's executive order have any impact on funding for such research in any other country, yet THEY haven't produced any of the purported and inevitable 'miracle' cures in the meanwhile....
So either: - the assertion that embryonic stem cells were critical to medical breakthroughs and that the lack of Federal funding has caused people to die from otherwise treatable conditions was just politically-motivated hyperbolic bullshit, or - every other country in the world is incompetent in the field of stem cell research, and unless US researchers using government dollars are able to find the use for stem cells, nobody will.
If the cures were so certain, so promising, so inevitable as you state, then private research dollars would have been forthcoming. But see, venture capitalists don't rely on vague handwaving and (honestly) politically-motivated criticism to invest their $$, they rely on facts.
Let's be clear - academia hated GW Bush, and this was just another way that they could pile on.
Moreover, you're asserting, then, that without US GOVERNMENT FUNDING no other country in the WORLD is capable of making technological breakthroughs in stem cell research? The US was the only country with such a ban...yet none of these absolutely certain therapies seemed to materialize, despite fervent research by the Chinese, the British, the French, the Germans, and the Koreans - and those are just the ones I've been following closely.
No, I call that utter hyperbolic bullshit from the 'addicted to sucking from the government teat' crowd.
Meanwhile totally disregarded is the fact that researchers have been successful in generating untainted, pleuripotent stem cell lines from other sources...obviating the need for foetal sources ANYWAY.
"...you could pick up Windows 95 for about 90 bucks."
LOL, you PAID for Win95?
I still insist that the key reason for MS's dominance on the desktop was its widespread piracy. This led to people developing a near-universal 'comfort level' with Windows paradigms and a self-reinforcing cycle of apps and compatibility that even today FREE O/S's can't beat.
When Win95 came out, it was cool, sure but it was buggy as hell and not nearly as powerful as OS/2. Win95 had slightly better drivers, but it didn't have any sort of established software base ensuring its install-dominance, either.
Based on the computers I used frequently (work + home + school) Win95 installs were perhaps 25% legit - the rest were just pirated copies.
Of course, MS chose to interpret this one way: a reason to become obsessive about validation and antipiracy. I wonder how the software world would look if MS had instead recognized that the OS was a loss-leader that ensured widespread and longterm ubiquity on the desktop for MS Office and MS-compliant programs....?
You're the one that's either naive or misunderstanding.
The PEOPLE can be about making great games. The COMPANY - as any company - is about making money. Perhaps not solely this, but this is the essential nature of it as it is a business. If they weren't about making money, they'd be a NONPROFIT, because it would be stupid to pay taxes if you don't have to. Hell, they could go the L Ron Hubbard route and be a RELIGION, it doesn't take much time on the WoW forums to see that it would be staggeringly successful.
The people EMPLOYED there* can have all the passion and idealism that you posit, but ultimately everyone has bills to pay. (* and if money's so irrelevant, then why do they accept paychecks? I mean, if they worked probono, the game could be lower priced and reach even more consumers, no? If their goal is artistic excellence, why wouldn't that be better?)
Look, I'm not criticizing them for getting to do what they must enjoy for a living - that's a rare and fortunate situation. But it's a very naive viewpoint to suggest that they aren't in it to make money.
Slashdot Mirror
"Let's hope she gets laughed out of court."
Maybe if she doesn't, we should sue?
id Software:
Technical Mad Skillz: +10
Creativity, originality: what?
I will always pay them homage and due respect for inventing a genre that I loved for many years. I fully believe it's possible that they will be the first ones to figure out how to put the R in VR on home-quality hardware.
But Doom3 finally convinced me they've got NOTHING in the box as far as a single new idea under the sun for the story.
I'm not sure, am I supposed to see that as BAD?
If a child gets scolded for biting another child, is that "revenge"?
I expect humans to follow the rules set by society around them (or change them in the prescribed ways). If they cannot behave according to these standards, there should be negative reinforcements for such behavior.
I'm not sure how much simpler it could be?
Well, I'm going to get flamed for this but I'll give you a rarely heard answer to your question "What was the point of their prison sentence?"
PUNISHMENT.
Not exoneration, not forgiveness, not rehabilitation. Just the plain ole "stick" of the carrot & stick variety.
Do something wrong as a kid, and you get slapped on the hand for it. Your parents don't forget what you did, but the fact that you got slapped SHOULD help you remember not to do it next time.
As an adult, if you go to prison for committing a crime, that's society slapping you unpleasantly on the hand. You walk out of prison, and you haven't "undone" what you did, you were merely PUNISHED for it.
Don't like it? To channel Jim Carey: "STOP BREAKING THE LAW, LOSER."
In the vein of the OP, II personally think tracking every sex offender is a little ridiculous, given the way such a label is handed out so easily. But level 3 sex offenders? HELL YES I want to know where they are, and frankly, tough shit if they don't like it.
(And oh no, if they are more likely to re-offend if they are 'stressed'? SO WHAT? They're people, not animals. Expect them to control themselves appropriately. If they can't, well, then they ARE animals and should be dealt with as any animal that habitually preys on people. End of story.)
What I find interesting from a psychological perspective is the baseless optimism of the participants.
Do they think that in 1979 (or some specific date since) that Bill Gates stroked an imaginary 'Snidely Whiplash' mustachio and cackled over how he'd dominate the computer market and exploit people for his own wealth?
Do they really think that any corporate/government organization that represents the polar opposite to the Linux 'paradigm' - highly bureaucratic, stifling, top-down organizations - didn't START with a font of goodwill, like Linux?
What, precisely, did they think made their effort unique? Why did they actually think that Linux, as it becomes more relevant, wouldn't ALSO become a balkanized playground of ego, power, and territory-marking?
How many distros of Linux are there? And how many of them have forums filled with not just people who are talking about the postive aspects of this distro or that, but who display the fanboi-attack piranha behavior toward anyone that dares preferentially support some other distro?
Hey, I congratulate the guy for putting up with it as long as he did. He made a valiant effort, regardless of its futility.
But as far as what he was fighting? Q.E.D.
"Hidden?"
HAHAHAAHAHA
Let me be clear: I SUSPECT THAT THE PANIC OVER AGW IS FUD.
I can outline my position succinctly with these 5 questions.
Q: Is the planet warming?
A: Unclear. *Most* data seems to point to an overall warming trend that is also inducing pattern changes that may even result in localized cooling.
Q: Is this warming unusual?
A: No. All historical climate data points to the fact that the climate changes over time in varying cycles. According to all long-term plots (example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png) , we are in an extended cool period; the globe has generally been very much warmer over history. Does that mean we're 'due' for warming? Unclear. It's possible that the current warming is happening faster than most warming periods, but it's not the fastest ever, at least as far as we can tell from historical data.
Q: is this warming caused by humans or human activity?
A: Unclear. Previous warming cycles happened without humans, so it's hard to identify any reason that humans 'happen' to be at fault for this one.
Q: but doesn't the 'hockey stick' graph prove the warming came from human activity?
A: No. The 'hockey stick' is an example of cherry-picked, massaged data. Is it warmer than it was 1000 years ago? Yes. Is it warmer than last year? No. Than 30 years ago? No. Than 100,000 years ago? No.
Q: But you're not a climatologist! They all say AGW is real.
A: You're right. But when a doctor tells me something that contradicts common sense, I get a second, or perhaps third opinion before acting drastically. I've pulled RAW data myself from www.ncdc.noaa.gov, plotted it and looked at it myself, without either side 'interpreting' it for me. I don't see a trend that sticks out of the chaos.
On the other hand, it's logical to me that humans ARE warming the planet - practically every human activity generates heat, as well as the albedo effect of paving everything in asphalt. The 'urban heat island' effect is obvious, why wouldn't it scale when more and more and more of our land surface is being urbanized?
I'm simply unconvinced at this point. Note: I'm not saying it's bullshit, I'm saying that I'm unconvinced. The cast of characters trying to convince me of AGW (balding eco-nuts from the 70s, leftist politicians, histrionic actors convinced of their relevance, etc.) is NOT helping the cause. They're wrong about just about everything else that I *can* check.
Personally, I think there are far more serious issues of pollution, energy-dependence, overpopulation, etc that need our attention far more urgently. If they net out at reducing a potential impact on global warming, great, but that shouldn't be the driver.
In *ANY* conceivable future, the climate WILL change, sometimes drastically. Sea level has not remained constant in earth's history, it's pure solipsism to believe that natural processes will stop right 'here' at some theoretical human-optimum (we don't even know THAT for a fact, just that rising sea levels will be inconvenient to the urban centers whose location and growth is the result of not careful planning, but NOTHING more than human convenience...).
Here's what I find interesting: the bulk of the 'data' behind anthropogenic global warming points to a rise in temps THIS century of a small handful of degrees. The concern is over the consequences of a further rise of, again, a small handful of degrees.
Now, drag out all the charts, graphs, and politically-motivated reports you want, for and against; the only actual modern large-scale experiment that gives us any proof regarding human impact on temperature was the week after 9/11.
The complete lack of aircraft over the US had a SIGNIFICANT effect on high and low temperatures immediately.
Couple that with this current evidence that a single shuttle launch can apparently impact cloud formation over the Antarctic, and I'd say that's a far-more-tangible red flag than the supposed connections made over CO2 or other 'global warming' gases.
So why isn't there a significant, sustained effort to minimize air travel?
Now if only we could get 'hi res' pictures of all the glaciers that are GROWING (http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm) then we could have an accurate picture of what's going on.
And as far as arctic ice melting, the last 'uninterpreted' data I saw (http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png) doesn't show much if any evident trend for the last 8 years.
I'm guessing that they didn't take a big enough selection.
Yes, in our upper-middle-class, racially homogenous study group, perhaps true.
Generally, on a HUMAN EVOLUTION scale? Ah, not so much.
Otherwise, you're asserting that Octomom is gorgeous? Theoretically...?
And at least in the US, while it's clear that beauty is an upwardly-mobile social selection trait (beautiful but poor girls have a good chance of being married to someone significantly wealthier than their parents), I'm not sure this translates into OFFSPRING.
It certainly seems here like the Jerry-Springer-watching, white- or black-trash underclass is SIGNFICANTLY outproducing the upper- and middle-class birthrates.
Replace a passive, cheap, adequate technology with something powered, expensive, (no doubt) prone to failure, that adds features people don't know that they (allegedly) need.
BRILLIANT.
Barry misunderstands the BASIC transaction basis of currently-free media (like TV): the ADVERTISERS are his customers, the VIEWERS EYES AND ATTENTION is what he's selling and the 'content' is merely bait to attract and hold the viewers for as long as possible.
So in a sense, he's stating categorically that fish are going to need to pay to enjoy the worms hanging on those hooks.
It's quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
And, for what it's worth? "Disney, the world's biggest media company, is developing a subscription-based product for the Internet, Iger said..." Disney: really good content producer, really BAD at predicting how they can exploit the viewers. I recall them saying categorically that Disney movies would NEVER be released in DVD format (for fear of piracy) and then they did release in a dvd format...DIVX. Everyone remember what a huge success that was?
No, if Disney's working on a 'subscription' internet, I'm going to bet strongly that they'll be wrong.
...for those who know far more than I do about kernels, virtual devices, etc.:
I saw this comment about running "old" (ie DOS, Win95, etc) games in Win7
"...If you just have to play one, I suggest making a small dual-boot partition or keeping an old computer around..."
Seriously?
Considering the exponential increase in processor and memory speed/size over the last 10 years, it's astonishing to me that Win7 couldn't just spawn a child window that would, as far as that program is concerned, be a complete 286/386 machine along with a "massive"4 megs of RAM (which could simulate extended/expanded memory as needed)? I know DOS programs had the occasionally bad habit of either running off system clock ticks (which makes them scream crazily along with a modern processor) or writing directly to devices (something Win doesn't like at all), but it still seems like it would possible to cordon off a program's operations so that - as far as the program is concerned - clock speeds are whatever you want them to be, and it THINKS its writing directly to devices when in fact they're being passed out to Win DLLs?
I mean, it even seems like it could be as simple for the user as to be GUI'd - run the "spawn virtual machine" app, select the processor speed, the former version of Win/DOS that would be running, the amount of RAM it can use, and "go". Anything that goes on in that window is entirely segregated from the rest of the system. Heck, I can see a lot of reasons that might be a handy thing to have.
Or is this just exposing my ignorance?
Because we ALL know that internet traffic is geographically routed and exclusive, right?
I mean, packets from West Africa *never* go over lines from East Africa, and the installation of PHAT bandwidth to E. Africa certainly wouldn't reduce congestion on the rest of the system, yes?
Look, I understand that my point is specious - but it's entirely possible these points were made in humor (and thus not really worth the hypersensitive response), or even if not, they may have a reasonable basis in fact (and thus not arguable).
While you're criticizing someone's ignorant stereotyping, perhaps you might want to check your own baggage first?
Yawn.
I enjoy my Roku box, thanks to Netflix. It was also staggeringly easy to set up with no hassles whatsoever. But beyond that, Roku seems committed to 'pushing the envelope' with deal for crappy, worthless content.
Amazon 'video on demand' is ludicrously bad offering nothing but *complete* crap for free, or I could watch a second-run movie for more than I'd pay for a theater ticket! $15 for Coraline?...or $10 for the original Ghostbusters?! (wow, what a ... deal)
I'd have said the only one lamer is Mediafly, which is really just a podcast aggregator - not much worth watching there at all.
Also, I've been disappointed with Roku's 'not clearly explained' "hi def" option. They offer only 480p (normal def) or 720p if you have the bandwidth...as someone with a 1080i set, it sucks to be me. :\
Ironically, I'd *heard* the story told as "one million lines of code"...I downgraded that as conceptually unlikely. :\
Just to be clear - this was NOT a story that John ever told, it was whispered around Digi by admiring employees. When questioned casually about it, he'd deny that it was such a big deal and just state that he was part of the team that worked on it.
I had the pleasure to meet John Schinas, one of the programmers tasked with LEM landing and orbital code and the entrepreneur behind a company my wife had the pleasure to work for. An absolute genius.
As I hear the story, he was given the task to write the code and was asked how many team members he'd need, he demurred, saying that he'd just do it himself. Program managers said it was impossible for a person to write 100,000 lines of machine code without error, and after he did it, nevertheless tasked backup personnel to scrutinize the code line by line. They didn't find anything.
Really nice guy, too.
How is that "absurd"?
PII requires a 1:1 matchup with a PERSON.
In the course of a single day or week, how many people use a single external IP address at an Internet Cafe?
I think the ruling is correct - PII is no more personally-identifying than the street address of (possibly) an apartment building.
A quick googling shows that Salon's article titled "Bush's Stem Cell fumble" is dated August 2001.
You're right, medical developments don't happen instantly, but wouldn't you expect that EIGHT YEARS of development by THE REST OF THE WORLD (assuming of course that a) stem cell therapies are as obvious and imminent as suggested, and b) everyone else in the world is charging forward since they weren't cursed with a benighted Flat Earther as a president) might have come up with *something*?
EIGHT YEARS?
I don't have mod points, so I'll comment - absolutely.
The 'eminent domain' powers granted to this BS project because of its politically-correct 'green' feel were the real point, and TBP played the civic leaders like a finely tuned band.
He really is a modern day robber baron.
I'm not sure that's it.
I recall having an indepth discussion on this at an E3 with Jack Emmert before City of Heroes came out.
CoH was originally planned as (and I think through early beta was) a skill based game without levels. Or there may have been levels, but they gave you skill points to buy powers without a guiding archetype.
In beta, they were extremely disappointed as the beta players quickly resolved a "best set" of talents for each archetype (tank, dps) and everyone migrated to those with only trivial differences between characters. No matter how they tweaked the skills to be balanced, there was always SOME advantage to one over another, and the beta players would very quickly resolve which was most useful in most instances, and everyone would switch to that.
So after much agony over the decision, the dev team relegated themselves to the current level mechanic.
It really wasn't so much about balance (there was no PVP at that time, as I recall) but about the dirty-little-secret of "CRPG" MMO's - they're frightfully one dimensional. Everything relies on COMBAT and surviving it. You can't negotiate your way to a resolution, you can't sneak into places and accomplish anything (except skipping some trash mobs, perhaps). NOTHING significant is accomplishable without bashing heads, and thus the skills that are most useful to this end become the flavor of the month.
You even see this in level based games with talent points allowing variety within the classes. For WoW, look at talentchic.com - despite 10 classes, 3 talent trees per class, and 51 points of talents in each tree so 153 choices to spend a character's 71 talent points, there are at BEST 3, perhaps 4 "best distribution" of talent points for each class. Some, like Warrior or Hunter, have ONE...yes ONE theorycrafted "best" allocation of talent points.
So no, I don't particularly think its about balance, although that may be part of it. The root problem is that there is ONE solution to every challenge in an MMO, so is it any surprise that of the varied choices players (supposedly) get, that they resolve a single way to 'win'?
...nor did Bush's executive order have any impact on funding for such research in any other country, yet THEY haven't produced any of the purported and inevitable 'miracle' cures in the meanwhile....
So either:
- the assertion that embryonic stem cells were critical to medical breakthroughs and that the lack of Federal funding has caused people to die from otherwise treatable conditions was just politically-motivated hyperbolic bullshit, or
- every other country in the world is incompetent in the field of stem cell research, and unless US researchers using government dollars are able to find the use for stem cells, nobody will.
Go ahead, pick one.
I call complete Bullshit on that.
If the cures were so certain, so promising, so inevitable as you state, then private research dollars would have been forthcoming. But see, venture capitalists don't rely on vague handwaving and (honestly) politically-motivated criticism to invest their $$, they rely on facts.
Let's be clear - academia hated GW Bush, and this was just another way that they could pile on.
Moreover, you're asserting, then, that without US GOVERNMENT FUNDING no other country in the WORLD is capable of making technological breakthroughs in stem cell research? The US was the only country with such a ban...yet none of these absolutely certain therapies seemed to materialize, despite fervent research by the Chinese, the British, the French, the Germans, and the Koreans - and those are just the ones I've been following closely.
No, I call that utter hyperbolic bullshit from the 'addicted to sucking from the government teat' crowd.
Meanwhile totally disregarded is the fact that researchers have been successful in generating untainted, pleuripotent stem cell lines from other sources...obviating the need for foetal sources ANYWAY.
Does it come with the subsequent "body on the pavement outline-drawer" module too? Because it IS going to be needed.
Insisting something is true doesn't make it so.
If I 'insist' that the space I'm riding in is a bike space that I'm entitled to, all it gives me is a ludicrous false sense of security.
"...you could pick up Windows 95 for about 90 bucks."
LOL, you PAID for Win95?
I still insist that the key reason for MS's dominance on the desktop was its widespread piracy. This led to people developing a near-universal 'comfort level' with Windows paradigms and a self-reinforcing cycle of apps and compatibility that even today FREE O/S's can't beat.
When Win95 came out, it was cool, sure but it was buggy as hell and not nearly as powerful as OS/2. Win95 had slightly better drivers, but it didn't have any sort of established software base ensuring its install-dominance, either.
Based on the computers I used frequently (work + home + school) Win95 installs were perhaps 25% legit - the rest were just pirated copies.
Of course, MS chose to interpret this one way: a reason to become obsessive about validation and antipiracy. I wonder how the software world would look if MS had instead recognized that the OS was a loss-leader that ensured widespread and longterm ubiquity on the desktop for MS Office and MS-compliant programs....?
You're the one that's either naive or misunderstanding.
The PEOPLE can be about making great games.
The COMPANY - as any company - is about making money. Perhaps not solely this, but this is the essential nature of it as it is a business. If they weren't about making money, they'd be a NONPROFIT, because it would be stupid to pay taxes if you don't have to.
Hell, they could go the L Ron Hubbard route and be a RELIGION, it doesn't take much time on the WoW forums to see that it would be staggeringly successful.
The people EMPLOYED there* can have all the passion and idealism that you posit, but ultimately everyone has bills to pay.
(* and if money's so irrelevant, then why do they accept paychecks? I mean, if they worked probono, the game could be lower priced and reach even more consumers, no? If their goal is artistic excellence, why wouldn't that be better?)
Look, I'm not criticizing them for getting to do what they must enjoy for a living - that's a rare and fortunate situation. But it's a very naive viewpoint to suggest that they aren't in it to make money.