I mean, was it just that NCSoft offered unrefuseably large piles of cash?
I met & interviewed Jack Emmert at E3 the year before CoH released - if there's anyone who was developing a game as a labor of love, it was him. He was almost a caricature of the Simpsons' comic book guy, but it was in a charming way because he was so genuine. I agree with his characterization of comic books as 'modern day mythology' and while I can't quite yet personally consider them quite 'literature', there are some fantastic stories being told.
It was such a product of his particular personality and desire, I'm curious what it would have taken to get him to relinquish creative control.
"All states would have to pass enabling laws before the measure could come into effect. "
Does anyone else find it ironic that local legislation is required to implement data gathering and storage, yet the EU can ramrod a CONSTITUTION down people's throats (this would be a constitution that a couple of countries have already rejected) without any similar requirement?
Congratulations Europe, you now have a massive overweening Federal government that sucks as hard as ours. Sorry that you didn't get the constitution down on paper FIRST, but then again, we're pretty much ignoring ours too.
I'd agree with you in concept, but this woman was sentenced to LIFE. Generally the prison sentence for murder is around 20 years, the case has to be especially heinous to get life (typically).
So on the face of it you may have a point, but barring other information, I'll presume that the judge and jury involved in the case serve as an adequate 'common-sense-proxy' for my doing the research myself, and agree that if she got life, she deserved it for some reason.
"Yes, the police system creates fear. But does fear deter crime? The answer is no. This has been proven by countless studies over the years, many of which have focused on capital punishment and its deterrent effect"
At the height of the "capital punishment slaughter" in the US, fewer than 1/1000 of the death row inmates in Texas have ever actually BEEN executed. 0.1% chance is getting into "struck by lightning" territory, and this was of CONVICTED, INCARCERATED INMATES. Do the odds of being in a fatal car accident deter you from driving? They're reasonably the same for a crime-committer, depending on how likely you believe he is to be caught in the first place, convicted, and sentenced to death.
Capital punishment - whether it deters crime or not - has one certain effect: 0% recidivism. If you are truly going to imprison a man for life for heinous crimes, then save the taxpayers $50,000/year and just kill him. He's a waste of resources, and I see no moral need to restrain from getting rid of him (hell, use his organs to help people desperately awaiting transplants) than I would hesitate to put down a rabid dog.
Spamming by any other name? You're still being an annoyance, no matter your motivations. Since it's 'legitimized' apparently by the academics' good intentions, would it also be legitimate for an enthusiastic and devoted Christian to issue a spambot that chases you around with the message of Christ's Forgiveness until your avatar accepts electronic baptism?
Frankly, I think someone should mailbomb the researchers....as part of a legitimate academic survey, of course.
"i can tell you that the total costs (including maintenance costs and system improvements costs) of having a system designed and developed by these "cheap young people" far outweighs the savings you get from not including at least one or two experience persons in the team."
Who cares, when the PHB's who make the decision to put the team together are going to cash out with their golden parachute and stock options long, long before the project has even ended, much less before anyone has to be faced with hiring you and your ilk to fix the screwups?
"Try being assertive, it works even on problems that technology can't solve."
I agree entirely with your very reasonable response, the only question for me is that this is 2007: in many American cities, you have reasonable odds that the selfish dink you're talking to is willing to follow you into the parking lot and beat/shoot you for 'disrespecting' him. Is that a fair response to a reasonable request? Not hardly, I'm sure they'll sympathize with your wife at the hospital/your funeral.
I live comfortably in a small town, and wouldn't have a problem with this solution in my local theater because I probably either know that person, or we have mutual acquaintances. But in an urban theater? I can see the attractiveness of an entirely anonymous solution, even if that makes me feel like a coward admitting it.
You do understand that she ostensibly MURDERED someone? She didn't just steal his ipod or wreck his car - she MURDERED him.
"Given that she spent 35 years on the outside with no further crimes, I'd say that she's pretty rehabilitated already.... but I guess not."
Maybe prison is meant to be *punishment*, and no, I don't think she's done her time if she was in fact guilty.
Or would you agree that someone who kills YOUR sister, son, cousin, father - and managed to evade capture for 35 years should just be therefore forgiven?
Most of the videophiles seem to be saying that Blu-Ray 'won' the format war already, but IMO that's due entirely to the: - Blu Ray in the PS3 and the perceived 'bargain' of getting a blu-ray player and game console at the same time. - early adopters are hobbyists, purists, and people on the bleeding edge; I don't know that they track particularly well with what the 'mass market' will eventually settle for.
Not so much. There's a local telecom company that formerly gave out Nano's to hear their 'pitch' for your phone services. This year, they're giving out PSPs.
I originally thought this was ridiculous, before I booked my $1000 flight, $100 hotel, and rented a $100 car to go to a pointless 3 hour meeting at one of MY customers.
Touch a nerve, much? If you RTFA. I don't think this story was about US intel agencies at all, whom (if they'd done something similar) I'd have made the same comment using names like Pollard, Hiss, etc.
"At least they caught their traitors eventually."
Philby, MacLean, Burgess, all died in Moscow. Blunt confessed to MI-5 himself, and Cairncross was only identified by Soviet defectors.
Caught: are you sure it means what you think it means?
One might imagine that the land of Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross might be a little more leery of posting their employment ads in a game called "DOUBLE AGENT".
So what's going to happen is that over the next 50 years solar activity is going to drop, global temps are going to drop, and the eco-marxists are all going to then claim that An Inconvenient Truth, Kyoto, and the global warming hysteria all caused people to change ENOUGH to avert the otherwise-certain global warming disaster.
Yes, we can develop better solar cells for an incremental, tiny improvement to a technology that is miles away from being economical to employ in real scales, even WITH hefty government subsidies.
Improving battery tech, which has been nearly stagnant for what, 80+ years? I believe that this field is probably progressing about as fast as it's going to.
More wind farms? That's a solution, of course, it's not very flexible, portable, and again we're talking marginal economy even with massive taxpayer subsidies.
On the other hand, we could marry some mature technologies (solar panels, space launch, microwave power transmission) which have clear scale-up paths to try to get OUT of the "box" by thinking somewhat laterally.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten the original motivation for the satellites that predict your weather, route your cellphone calls (as well as your rental car), and carry your high-def broadcast. Or for going into space at all, for that matter.
I don't know that this is possible, either. But it sounds like they have 'crunched' the numbers and at least it's worth TRYING.
And yeah, I don't even object to the USA ending up with a space weapons platform, if that's possible too.
1985: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War - "for spreading authoritative information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare." Because that was so unclear, before? The Nobel committee clearly just wanted to jump in with a big "F-you Ronald Reagan" like everyone else in Europe. 1988: United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces - sure, because we can count all the places where they've been employed, that are now firmly at peace.... 1990: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev - "for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community"...unbelieveable. This was the second of the "F.U.-USA" nobel prizes. 1994: Yasser Arafat? Har de har har. 2001: United Nations & Kofi Annan - "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world" bwahahahahaaha 2002: Jimmy Carter - for being the last US president impotent enough to satisfy the world community. 2005: International Atomic Energy Agency & Mohamed ElBaradei : Another direct "FU USA (Bush)" nobel prize. Nice job in India, Pakistan, NKorea, and Iran!
They've made some good choices over the decades, but in the last 20 years their penchant for political 'statement' and theatricality has made them mostly irrelevant.
Not to harsh your possimistic buzz, but "If you can get a free ride you might be able to make solar satellites work, but you've still gotta crunch a lot of numbers first, and no-one has done that successfully."....isn't the number-crunching what the report IS doing?
1) It's apparent that you didn't bother to RTFA; wouldn't it make somewhat more sense if you're going to seriously criticize their ideas to do so?
2) you mention that the space w/m2 number should be downgraded since we don't have 100% solar panels: a) they're talking about solar energy delivered per sqm, so the efficiency of solar panels placed on that sqm really comes AFTER the question and is thus irrelevant b) wouldn't said lack of efficiency apply equally to BOTH solar- and ground-based panels? One might say that it *feels* like someone is downplaying the possible efficiency of solar panels in space vs the same solar panel on the ground in order to make their criticism stronger.
3) you end up at 400 w/sqm which is "a lot more than 250". I can see LOTS of things going into that calculation: a) maintenance - both need maintenance, but even the most sterile, dead, climatalogically lifeless place on earth will have erosive factors thousands of times more pernicious than space where, barring the occasional micrometeoroid and the (increasing) space junk, basically things remain utterly unchanged. GEO-synch orbit is REALLY high, so junk is hopefully less of an issue, anyway. b) deployment - yes, throwing an array up in space would be expensive, but the advantage of 100% available power, REDEPLOYABLE TO WHERE IT'S NEEDED AT THE MOMENT is almost priceless. Brownouts in California? Redirect powersats 1-4 to the San Diego receiver. Hurricane knocks out the South Carolina grid? Point powersat 2 over there. It's winter, and power demands in the south are low? Retarget powersats to Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit. Excess power in the system compared to demand? Send it to desalination plants in India or Somalia.
I don't know if it's feasible or not. I'm still reading, but it seems like you're trying REALLY hard to explain why it's a waste of time to even consider it. That's practically Luddite.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, was it just that NCSoft offered unrefuseably large piles of cash?
I met & interviewed Jack Emmert at E3 the year before CoH released - if there's anyone who was developing a game as a labor of love, it was him. He was almost a caricature of the Simpsons' comic book guy, but it was in a charming way because he was so genuine. I agree with his characterization of comic books as 'modern day mythology' and while I can't quite yet personally consider them quite 'literature', there are some fantastic stories being told.
It was such a product of his particular personality and desire, I'm curious what it would have taken to get him to relinquish creative control.
"All states would have to pass enabling laws before the measure could come into effect. "
Does anyone else find it ironic that local legislation is required to implement data gathering and storage, yet the EU can ramrod a CONSTITUTION down people's throats (this would be a constitution that a couple of countries have already rejected) without any similar requirement?
Congratulations Europe, you now have a massive overweening Federal government that sucks as hard as ours. Sorry that you didn't get the constitution down on paper FIRST, but then again, we're pretty much ignoring ours too.
I'd agree with you in concept, but this woman was sentenced to LIFE.
Generally the prison sentence for murder is around 20 years, the case has to be especially heinous to get life (typically).
So on the face of it you may have a point, but barring other information, I'll presume that the judge and jury involved in the case serve as an adequate 'common-sense-proxy' for my doing the research myself, and agree that if she got life, she deserved it for some reason.
"You remind me of a story where you could [be punished] in advance in exchange for the right to break a law later."
No, no. That's not prison, that's the Catholic Church.
cf. Indulgences
"Yes, the police system creates fear. But does fear deter crime? The answer is no. This has been proven by countless studies over the years, many of which have focused on capital punishment and its deterrent effect"
At the height of the "capital punishment slaughter" in the US, fewer than 1/1000 of the death row inmates in Texas have ever actually BEEN executed. 0.1% chance is getting into "struck by lightning" territory, and this was of CONVICTED, INCARCERATED INMATES. Do the odds of being in a fatal car accident deter you from driving? They're reasonably the same for a crime-committer, depending on how likely you believe he is to be caught in the first place, convicted, and sentenced to death.
Capital punishment - whether it deters crime or not - has one certain effect: 0% recidivism. If you are truly going to imprison a man for life for heinous crimes, then save the taxpayers $50,000/year and just kill him. He's a waste of resources, and I see no moral need to restrain from getting rid of him (hell, use his organs to help people desperately awaiting transplants) than I would hesitate to put down a rabid dog.
....escaping.
Spamming by any other name? You're still being an annoyance, no matter your motivations.
Since it's 'legitimized' apparently by the academics' good intentions, would it also be legitimate for an enthusiastic and devoted Christian to issue a spambot that chases you around with the message of Christ's Forgiveness until your avatar accepts electronic baptism?
Frankly, I think someone should mailbomb the researchers....as part of a legitimate academic survey, of course.
"i can tell you that the total costs (including maintenance costs and system improvements costs) of having a system designed and developed by these "cheap young people" far outweighs the savings you get from not including at least one or two experience persons in the team."
Who cares, when the PHB's who make the decision to put the team together are going to cash out with their golden parachute and stock options long, long before the project has even ended, much less before anyone has to be faced with hiring you and your ilk to fix the screwups?
"Try being assertive, it works even on problems that technology can't solve."
I agree entirely with your very reasonable response, the only question for me is that this is 2007: in many American cities, you have reasonable odds that the selfish dink you're talking to is willing to follow you into the parking lot and beat/shoot you for 'disrespecting' him. Is that a fair response to a reasonable request? Not hardly, I'm sure they'll sympathize with your wife at the hospital/your funeral.
I live comfortably in a small town, and wouldn't have a problem with this solution in my local theater because I probably either know that person, or we have mutual acquaintances. But in an urban theater? I can see the attractiveness of an entirely anonymous solution, even if that makes me feel like a coward admitting it.
You do understand that she ostensibly MURDERED someone? She didn't just steal his ipod or wreck his car - she MURDERED him.
"Given that she spent 35 years on the outside with no further crimes, I'd say that she's pretty rehabilitated already.... but I guess not."
Maybe prison is meant to be *punishment*, and no, I don't think she's done her time if she was in fact guilty.
Or would you agree that someone who kills YOUR sister, son, cousin, father - and managed to evade capture for 35 years should just be therefore forgiven?
Most of the videophiles seem to be saying that Blu-Ray 'won' the format war already, but IMO that's due entirely to the:
- Blu Ray in the PS3 and the perceived 'bargain' of getting a blu-ray player and game console at the same time.
- early adopters are hobbyists, purists, and people on the bleeding edge; I don't know that they track particularly well with what the 'mass market' will eventually settle for.
Not so much. There's a local telecom company that formerly gave out Nano's to hear their 'pitch' for your phone services.
This year, they're giving out PSPs.
I originally thought this was ridiculous, before I booked my $1000 flight, $100 hotel, and rented a $100 car to go to a pointless 3 hour meeting at one of MY customers.
It's firing at us?
Believe me, we're working on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_junk
Thanks China for your latest contribution to the Greater Terra Ring Project!
Hyperbole aside, number of passenger miles http://www.bts.gov/publications/white_house_economic_statistics_briefing_room/october_2005/html/air_revenue_passenger_miles.html has nearly doubled since 1992, yet number of fatalities per year has gone down RADICALLY (http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Paxfatal.htm - wow was '85 a bad year).
I dunno, seems like it's getting safer to me.
Touch a nerve, much? If you RTFA. I don't think this story was about US intel agencies at all, whom (if they'd done something similar) I'd have made the same comment using names like Pollard, Hiss, etc.
"At least they caught their traitors eventually."
Philby, MacLean, Burgess, all died in Moscow. Blunt confessed to MI-5 himself, and Cairncross was only identified by Soviet defectors.
Caught: are you sure it means what you think it means?
One might imagine that the land of Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross might be a little more leery of posting their employment ads in a game called "DOUBLE AGENT".
:)
Or maybe it's just habit?
This graph, so often waved in people's faces by individuals convinced of the dangerous crisis of global warming (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png correlates directly to this graph (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5c/Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg/800px-Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg.png) which shows solar activity. (note reversed timescales)
So what's going to happen is that over the next 50 years solar activity is going to drop, global temps are going to drop, and the eco-marxists are all going to then claim that An Inconvenient Truth, Kyoto, and the global warming hysteria all caused people to change ENOUGH to avert the otherwise-certain global warming disaster.
Al Gore will be canonized in 2060.
Note: Judges in Family Court don't really buy that argument. And then they call you a "bad parent", sheesh.
"To get rid of the condensation, you have to get rid of the people."
:\
Which is kind of ironic, since that's the one thing Russia (and the Soviets before them) have ALWAYS been good at: "getting rid of the people".
Evolution vs Revolution.
Yes, we can develop better solar cells for an incremental, tiny improvement to a technology that is miles away from being economical to employ in real scales, even WITH hefty government subsidies.
Improving battery tech, which has been nearly stagnant for what, 80+ years? I believe that this field is probably progressing about as fast as it's going to.
More wind farms? That's a solution, of course, it's not very flexible, portable, and again we're talking marginal economy even with massive taxpayer subsidies.
On the other hand, we could marry some mature technologies (solar panels, space launch, microwave power transmission) which have clear scale-up paths to try to get OUT of the "box" by thinking somewhat laterally.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten the original motivation for the satellites that predict your weather, route your cellphone calls (as well as your rental car), and carry your high-def broadcast. Or for going into space at all, for that matter.
I don't know that this is possible, either. But it sounds like they have 'crunched' the numbers and at least it's worth TRYING.
And yeah, I don't even object to the USA ending up with a space weapons platform, if that's possible too.
1985: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War - "for spreading authoritative information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare." Because that was so unclear, before? The Nobel committee clearly just wanted to jump in with a big "F-you Ronald Reagan" like everyone else in Europe.
1988: United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces - sure, because we can count all the places where they've been employed, that are now firmly at peace....
1990: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev - "for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community"...unbelieveable. This was the second of the "F.U.-USA" nobel prizes.
1994: Yasser Arafat? Har de har har.
2001: United Nations & Kofi Annan - "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world" bwahahahahaaha
2002: Jimmy Carter - for being the last US president impotent enough to satisfy the world community.
2005: International Atomic Energy Agency & Mohamed ElBaradei : Another direct "FU USA (Bush)" nobel prize. Nice job in India, Pakistan, NKorea, and Iran!
They've made some good choices over the decades, but in the last 20 years their penchant for political 'statement' and theatricality has made them mostly irrelevant.
Needlepoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needlepoint
String Collecting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collecting, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_ball_of_twine
Mayan hunting techniques: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization says they were mainly cultivators, although http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_diet_and_subsistence touches briefly on it.
Unless you're talking about hunting MAYA ANGELOU, which is creepier but still available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hunting
So...what was your point again?
Not to harsh your possimistic buzz, but "If you can get a free ride you might be able to make solar satellites work, but you've still gotta crunch a lot of numbers first, and no-one has done that successfully."....isn't the number-crunching what the report IS doing?
1) It's apparent that you didn't bother to RTFA; wouldn't it make somewhat more sense if you're going to seriously criticize their ideas to do so?
2) you mention that the space w/m2 number should be downgraded since we don't have 100% solar panels:
a) they're talking about solar energy delivered per sqm, so the efficiency of solar panels placed on that sqm really comes AFTER the question and is thus irrelevant
b) wouldn't said lack of efficiency apply equally to BOTH solar- and ground-based panels? One might say that it *feels* like someone is downplaying the possible efficiency of solar panels in space vs the same solar panel on the ground in order to make their criticism stronger.
3) you end up at 400 w/sqm which is "a lot more than 250". I can see LOTS of things going into that calculation:
a) maintenance - both need maintenance, but even the most sterile, dead, climatalogically lifeless place on earth will have erosive factors thousands of times more pernicious than space where, barring the occasional micrometeoroid and the (increasing) space junk, basically things remain utterly unchanged. GEO-synch orbit is REALLY high, so junk is hopefully less of an issue, anyway.
b) deployment - yes, throwing an array up in space would be expensive, but the advantage of 100% available power, REDEPLOYABLE TO WHERE IT'S NEEDED AT THE MOMENT is almost priceless. Brownouts in California? Redirect powersats 1-4 to the San Diego receiver. Hurricane knocks out the South Carolina grid? Point powersat 2 over there. It's winter, and power demands in the south are low? Retarget powersats to Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit. Excess power in the system compared to demand? Send it to desalination plants in India or Somalia.
I don't know if it's feasible or not. I'm still reading, but it seems like you're trying REALLY hard to explain why it's a waste of time to even consider it. That's practically Luddite.
"Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev alojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld."
Cool, my convenience-store cashier posts to Slashdot!