Ask any detective, most criminals got caught because of their own hubris (or stupidity) LONG before myspace or facebook. This technology only makes it easier because of the assumption of anonymity.
I was talking to a police detective from AZ when some juveniles escaped from a nearby detention facility - we specifically discussed how hard they'd be to (re)capture. He was utterly unconcerned.
His opinion was that they would be caught very, very quickly. Only a tiny percentage of criminals actually escape and are not reapprehended....because they're criminals. It's not like a hat you choose not to wear; these are dysfunctional personalities that simply cannot comprehend that society does not accept that taking money at gunpoint or raping somone to get your sexual satisfaction is not acceptable. It's absolutely inevitable that they will recommit a crime and be caught again. His concern (and why they work so hard to catch fugitives) was mainly that they didn't hurt anyone in that subsequent crime. The fact of their eventual recapture was almost a dead-on certainty, in itself.
He pointed out that if they DID escape and somehow 'vanish' into the population, becoming a law-abiding citizen for the rest of their lives, then GREAT: that's in a sense what they are trying to accomplish with rehabilitory prison systems.
Podcasting requires: 1) an expensive piece of hardware 2) a substantially higher-than-average level of understanding of both the internet, and how to move the information from the internet onto the expensive hardware 3) excessive amounts of free time, to watch the hours of worthless crap
Between work, social life, family, Netflix, and the online gaming I squeeze into the spare hour or two per week, I don't even have a 'favorite' TV show because I simply don't have the time available to watch it on a regular basis.
If I don't have a spare hour this week, I certainly won't have the two spare hours next week, or the three hours after that, that would be required to watch a podcast AND catch up to the show.
(And this is only talking about marginally-interesting professionally-produced shows; as the OT says, there are 55,000 hours of crap of which a vanishingly small % is of any entertainment value whatsoever.)
Frankly, if I need to tote some small device to amuse myself during some intolerably 'free' time, they have this really cool thing called a book - fits in a pocket, uses NO batteries, you can get it (a little) wet and it's ok, heck it even works if you sit on or drop it. Plus you have a reasonably well-reviewed body of work going back at least 1000 years so you don't lack for content that you KNOW (or can at least reasonably expect) is rather good.
1) China has only just started and has more inhabitants than Europe and the USA put together. Their (mostly poor) citizens are the most likely to suffer from our (western-made) polution.
Either pollution is a problem, or it isn't. It's not just a problem for some people on earth, and not for others. If you contend that Global Warming is 'catastrophic' doesn't it seem pedantic to then say "But those guys over there should get a chance to pollute since they haven't had their turn yet." WTF? China and India don't have to make the same mistakes the rest of us made; they don't have to claw their way technologically through some sort of wierd forced-industrial-evolution process. Since all the Greenies INSIST that upgrading our infrastructure will be somehow (insert hand-waving here) beneficial to our economy, why wouldn't it be also beneficial to China or India? Why would one imagine that they aren't somehow clever enough to likewise reap these mysterious benefits of gigantic, government-mandated conformance? Oh, and I'd love to see a link that provides proof (or even credible SUGGESTION) that their citizens are the "most likely to suffer". A pulled-from-the-ass statistic if I've ever heard one.
2)...FYI: this story was not about America or capitalism. Oh, and some other economies have done quite well at reducing emissions whilst maintaining growth.... Firstly, you're being pretty disingenuous if you believe that the story was not pointed directly at the darn Americans who aren't buying into Kyoto. And as far as reducing emissions plus maintaining growth: Really? Who? Last time I checked, none of the larger advanced economies was actually conforming to their Kyoto targets (excepting countries whose industrial bases essentially collapsed), and none of them that are even close are anywhere near economically healthy.
3) "3C isn't that bad". Right, this is the most clueless one Really? I understand some climate data was determined from tree-rings in wood frozen in Greenland glaciers...but wait, that means that there were trees in Greenland? 3C would certainly be disastrous, I'm sure...well, unless you visit Central Park in New York city, (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/425725030010.2.1.gif) where the Mean temps were 2-3 degrees C higher 180 years ago. I mean, we can all recall the tens of thousands of people dead, the icecaps melted, cities were wiped out, human advancement faltered, and the mass human and animal die-offs of 1820, can't we? I mean, 3C...it MUST be a disaster, right? What EnviroNazis can't seem to grasp is that if you don't come to the situation with preconceptions (say, for example, cherry-picking data from the climatological record to produce a 'hockey stick' graph), it's very hard to draw conclusions - the 'trend' doesn't exceed the 'noise', which statistically means you usually need more data to be confident about the results. To spend $TRILLIONS$ on such flimsy conclusions is irresponsible and frankly stupid. It's like noticing that the weather's been getting cooler the last few days, and promptly bricking up all your windows and doors, and then wrapping your whole house in thermal blankets. Yes, that would be stupid.
4) the last time on record there was a dramatic climate shift was when the dinosaurs went extinct. Really? "The approach allows for the identification of thirty extreme wet periods and thirty-five extreme dry periods in the 1,425-year precipitation reconstruction and 30 extreme cool periods and 26 extreme warm periods in 2,262-year temperature reconstruction." (Colorado Plateau) ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/re constructions/northamerica/usa/colorado-plateau200 5.txt "Temperature maxima during the Me
Computer models predict it? COMPUTER models? Head for the hills!
Oh wait, there's a little principle called GIGO that's been with us for ages: Table 6.1 of Chapter 6 in Houghton et al 1996 (Kattenberg et al., Projections of Future Climate) gives a range of --0.8 C to -1.6C as the calculated temperature reduction during the last century due to sulphate aerosols. Since this represented 29% of the warming to doubling of carbon dioxide, the range of adjustment to the climate sensitivity for 100% warming (climate sensitivity) if the effects of aerosols increase at the same rate, is -2.8C to -5.5C. The adjusted IPCC climate sensitivity range now becomes -4.0C to +1.7C, with the "Best Estimate" in the range -3.0C to -0.3C. The range covers the established "Best Fit" value of 0.8C ± 0.6C, but, this time, at the upper end of the calculated range. The range places predominance on negative predicted values of climate sensitivity.
The IPCC, in Chapter 6 of Climate Change 1995 (Kattenberg et al) make two alternative assumptions for the future behaviour of sulphate aerosols for their future projections to 2100. One assumes a moderate continued increase in aerosols and the other that aerosol values will remain constant at 1990 levels,. If it is assumed that aerosols remain constant up to the doubling of carbon dioxide, then the modifications to the range of climate sensitivity are -0.8C to -1.6C, giving a revised IPCC range of -0.1C to +3.7C, with a "Best Estimate" at 0.9C to -1.7C. This time the "Best Estimate" almost equals the "Best Fit" from the temperature data, at its lower end. The IPCC avoids admitting that the models can predict a zero temperature change or a temperature drop by selecting a figure for the sulphate aerosol effect which is above the extreme high figure, for the future predictions.
So essentially the 'models' 'predicting' global warming actually only predict climate CHANGE (wow, surprising to anybody?), and bias upward when the base assumptions predict inputs far outside the high-extremes observed so far.
New York Times 1956: "ICE AGE PREDICTED IN GLACIER STUDY" 1968: "NEW STUDIES POINT TO ICE AGE AGAIN" 1933: "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776" Sept. 14, 1975 NYT editorial: global cooling "may mark the return to another ice age," that "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" and that it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."
...but isn't the hangover a result of severe dehydration?
As I understand it, this is a chemical response at the cellular level to the presence of alcohol in the system. I don't know if it's true, but anecdotally one fairly dedicated alcoholic I knew in college advised me on a number of 'drinking tips' of which this is one that actually worked: if you're drunk when you go to bed, take 2 aspirin and a huge glass of water before falling asleep.
Voila, no hangover in the morning.
So in regards to TFA, how do you make alcohol that doesn't have the chemical effects of alcohol?
(And yes, if you're too wasted to remember to do this, you're drinking too much and deserve the aftereffect.)
"players may not transmit or post any content or language which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard Entertainment, is deemed to be offensive,"
What part of that is unclear? Don't like it? Don't give them your money.
You call it censorship? I call it freedom of association.
Personally, I disagree with Blizzard's decision to cave in to the PC police. But you know what? If I *really* didn't like it, I could quit. So I can't say much beyond that, can I? It's their game, they made a business decision (the cost in lost memberships for allowing the practice is, in their opinion LESS THAN the cost of banning it).
Hm, granted that aside from Toontown, Disney computer games (and movie computer games) generally suck, but perhaps this will light an unpleasant fire under the crew behind http://www.burningsea.com/ (Pirates of the Burning Sea) ANOTHER pirate MMOG that's been in development forever.
Ironic, how these things with multi-year development times all seem to come out at once....WW2 games (jillions of them), Space 4x games (nothing for a long time, then GalCiv and MOO3 like the same week), now pirate games.
A good comment by the discoverer of Sedna, Xena, etc, to the effect that the term "planet" is probably best used like "continent" - it doesn't really have a rigorous scientific definition but every pretty much agrees what it applies to.
And you know what? If you could predict whether a game would be hugely successful or not, you might be right. But firstly, the fact is that it's an art, not a science, and nobody knows FOR SURE which titles are going to be hits and which are going to suck.
"We're not going to carry any game with nudity." Gee, because before Wal-Mart became big, there was a HUGE market for computer-porn games?
Are some games modified because of the tremendous buying power of Wal Mart? Sure, that's logical. But that's a big step from claiming that "every AAA game is managed start to finish, top to bottom" with WalMart in mind.
Yes, for crapware like Deer Hunter and Barbie Fashion designer, I'm sure WalMart's giant demographic is part of their calculus "Say 0.001% of the WalMart electronics browsers buy our game? That's like....a gajillion dollars!".
But AAA titles? I doubt it. How much did WalMart come into the design of World of Warcraft? Oblivion? GalCiv2? Peripherally, if at all.
As usual, reality is somewhere beneath The Escapist's flashy hyperbolic copy.
I dunno, I'm always suspicious of someone claiming we've reached some sort of philosophical (or marketing, business, educations, military, scientific, literary, etc) "endpoint".
Businesses go through cycles of "diversification" (hey, I worked for a freight forwarder that owned gold shares in RSA) followed by "focus" (when someone asks why a car maker owns resort hotels and travel agencies). The business MODEL in general might go through meta-versions of these cycles, where diverse, widely ranging businesses are successful and rewarded in the marketplace and then eventually constrict to where narrow-focus seems to be preferable.
Google is a great company, as far as I can tell. Kind of the "Magical Trevor" of the business world...for now.
As a PC player, I have to say there are some irksome (albeit easily fixed) UI issues which I suppose were a legacy of Xbox360-compatibility decisions.
For example: default to detecting and running joystick. Something like half or more of the people I personally know (me included) started the game, and in the first 'scene' ended up creeping or lunging one way or another, and once you hit a wall (or bars) you were unable to move....until you figured out that it was reading the JOYSTICK input. And no, as far as I know there's no way to turn it off - just unplug the joystick, but still.
Second: the inventory/spell lists, or really any list in game is lowest-common-denominator resolution, probably to make sure people playing on a non-HD TV could still see the details, but the rest of us playing at 1600x1200 on a 24" monitor don't REALLY need to see each icon about 1.5" tall.
Critical? Nope, not at all. Annoying, yeah, until you mod it.
(Oh, and I'd personally be rather ticked if I was a X360 owner, as I understand it unable to download ANY mods for the game without paying for them. Blech.)
Of course, you DO understand that you're partially to blame for the explosion?
The *first* time you called one and said "take me off your list", you just raised the value of that CONFIRMED GOOD fax number 100x. So you got bumped to the "confirmed good" fax number list, to be sold MUCH more widely.
Here's a trick: put a phone on your fax line. Hit *77 or whatever your local telco's signal is for (Anonymous call reject). Reattach your fax.
Voila, 90%+ of your incoming spamfaxen are now prevented from reaching your line.
REAL PEOPLE that send faxes don't typically BLOCK their fax numbers, and thus will come through.
"Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." - TIME, Monday, Jun. 24, 1974
But NOW (I understand) they're sure?
Let's just point out: "From around 150,000 to 130,000 years ago, North America experienced colder and generally more arid than present conditions. About 130,000 years ago, a warm phase slightly moister than the present began, and conditions at least as warm as the present lasted until about 115,000 years ago. Subsequent cooling and drying of the climate led to a cold, arid maximum about 70,000 years ago, followed by a slight moderation of climate with a second aridity maximum around 22,000-13,000 14C years ago. Conditions then quickly became warmer and moister, though with an interruption by cold and aridity in many areas around 11,000 14C years ago." (Jonathan Adams, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory) http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercNORTHAMER ICA.html [ornl.gov]
Does the temperature seem to be moving up lately? Yep.
Beyond that, it seems to be a huge guessing game: are humans responsible for the current warming? (personally, I think we probably contribute significantly to it)
Is warming a catastrophe? Even IF you buy into the Cassandras, for every "coral reef is gonna die because the water's too warm!" it's hard to believe that there's not a corresponding expansion (northward) of coral-reef-able zones. For every acre of expanded desert, there's another acre of former-tundra that now has a growing season.
And don't even get me STARTED on "cities will flood" crap. Duh? For ANY city in any location, over a long enough span of time, the odds of it surviving unscathed are ultimately zero. Nobody built the big cities (generally starting as a cluster of wooden huts around a river or nice bay) with an eye toward their long term survivability - NOBODY. To presume at this point that we need to exert every effort to somehow FREEZE Earth's dynamic climate to accomodate habitation choices made 000's of years ago?
What I don't see them saying is that perhaps they have to simply compete, like the rest of radio, in the marketplace.
I mean, does ANYONE see any difference between their "underwriters" and plain-old "advertisers"?
Stop what's left of the government subsidy, and stop the charade - they are a commercial entity that needs to compete like one. If their 'model' is begging rather than commerical breaks, hey, whatever works (or doesn't).
Further, their comments at least recognize what the rest of the marketing business world seems to be in deep denial about: that timeshifting has/will annihilate the typical 'free broadcast' TV and radio models, with shuddering ramifications up and down the media stream. I congratulate them for their perspicacity.
"Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." - TIME, Monday, Jun. 24, 1974
NOW they're sure?
Let's just point out: "From around 150,000 to 130,000 years ago, North America experienced colder and generally more arid than present conditions. About 130,000 years ago, a warm phase slightly moister than the present began, and conditions at least as warm as the present lasted until about 115,000 years ago. Subsequent cooling and drying of the climate led to a cold, arid maximum about 70,000 years ago, followed by a slight moderation of climate with a second aridity maximum around 22,000-13,000 14C years ago. Conditions then quickly became warmer and moister, though with an interruption by cold and aridity in many areas around 11,000 14C years ago." (Jonathan Adams, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory) http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercNORTHAMER ICA.html
Does the temperature seem to be moving up lately? Yep.
Beyond that, it seems to be a huge guessing game: are humans responsible for the current warming? (personally, I think we probably contribute significantly to it)
Is warming a catastrophe? Even IF you buy into the Cassandras, for every "coral reef is gonna die because the water's too warm!" it's hard to believe that there's not a corresponding expansion (northward) of coral-reef-able zones. For every acre of expanded desert, there's another acre of former-tundra that now has a growing season.
And don't even get me STARTED on "cities will flood" crap. Duh? For ANY city in any location, over a long enough span of time, the odds of it surviving unscathed are ultimately zero. Nobody built the big cities (generally starting as a cluster of wooden huts around a river or nice bay) with an eye toward their long term survivability - NOBODY. To presume at this point that we need to exert every effort to somehow FREEZE Earth's dynamic climate to accomodate habitation choices made 000's of years ago?
TrekStor has recently decided to produce a limited series of this magnificent gadget for those who would buy the most expensive mp3 player in the world. A price has not been disclosed as of yet.
How is it the "most expensive" if they haven't set a price?
The big theater chains should first blame Hollywood for making a ton of garbage, then they should go after Best Buy and Circuit City who give credit to people so they can buy large TVs and home theater systems. A dinosaur that rails against its own inevitable extinction merely is fossilized as an angry dinosaur. It's no less dead.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote: "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you." -- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of
Lisa Simpson"
Movie reviewers aren't selling the plot spoilers to a movie they've seen. They are selling their OPINION of the movie that they've seen. Whether it's of value to you is an entirely subjective thing.
If this guy was selling HIS REVIEW of WoW, that would be entirely different. "The Ultimate World of Warcraft Leveling & Gold Guide" is clearly NOT a review; neither is it 'educational' in the typical sense.
The key question is - if you build a complex piece of machinery, and write an instruction manual, you clearly hold the copyright to what you wrote. But could someone else (essentially) reverse-engineer your machine, or simply use it a lot, and write their OWN instruction manual?
IANAL, but I think that seems like it crosses the line of infringement. You could (fair use) write a lengthy and detailed article with pictures and diagrams saying "this is one of the features of this machine, and why I don't/do like it so much", but 'user guides' are, I believe, essentially competing with the owners own manuals.
However, I'll throw this spin on it too: by my OWN preferences, I'd say that the moment someone licenses an outside firm to produce 'user guides' one has ceased to defend one's copyright effectively, and has given it over to the free market. So in this PARTICULAR case, if that was the standard, then this would be fine since Blizz licensed at least one other company to write guides.
Sounds like the guy basically just published and is trying to sell the data that's available almost everywhere on thottbot.com or wow.allakhazam.com (for example), which Blizz doesn't seem to object to.
So what's their beef? Probably that he's trying to make a buck off THEIR IP. I agree with them. If he just put it up for download as a free pdf, I bet that they wouldn't have any beef with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Change screen setting to letterbox.
FOV=120
Sit Really Close.
Ask any detective, most criminals got caught because of their own hubris (or stupidity) LONG before myspace or facebook. This technology only makes it easier because of the assumption of anonymity.
I was talking to a police detective from AZ when some juveniles escaped from a nearby detention facility - we specifically discussed how hard they'd be to (re)capture. He was utterly unconcerned.
His opinion was that they would be caught very, very quickly. Only a tiny percentage of criminals actually escape and are not reapprehended....because they're criminals. It's not like a hat you choose not to wear; these are dysfunctional personalities that simply cannot comprehend that society does not accept that taking money at gunpoint or raping somone to get your sexual satisfaction is not acceptable. It's absolutely inevitable that they will recommit a crime and be caught again. His concern (and why they work so hard to catch fugitives) was mainly that they didn't hurt anyone in that subsequent crime. The fact of their eventual recapture was almost a dead-on certainty, in itself.
He pointed out that if they DID escape and somehow 'vanish' into the population, becoming a law-abiding citizen for the rest of their lives, then GREAT: that's in a sense what they are trying to accomplish with rehabilitory prison systems.
Podcasting requires:
1) an expensive piece of hardware
2) a substantially higher-than-average level of understanding of both the internet, and how to move the information from the internet onto the expensive hardware
3) excessive amounts of free time, to watch the hours of worthless crap
Between work, social life, family, Netflix, and the online gaming I squeeze into the spare hour or two per week, I don't even have a 'favorite' TV show because I simply don't have the time available to watch it on a regular basis.
If I don't have a spare hour this week, I certainly won't have the two spare hours next week, or the three hours after that, that would be required to watch a podcast AND catch up to the show.
(And this is only talking about marginally-interesting professionally-produced shows; as the OT says, there are 55,000 hours of crap of which a vanishingly small % is of any entertainment value whatsoever.)
Frankly, if I need to tote some small device to amuse myself during some intolerably 'free' time, they have this really cool thing called a book - fits in a pocket, uses NO batteries, you can get it (a little) wet and it's ok, heck it even works if you sit on or drop it. Plus you have a reasonably well-reviewed body of work going back at least 1000 years so you don't lack for content that you KNOW (or can at least reasonably expect) is rather good.
1) China has only just started and has more inhabitants than Europe and the USA put together. Their (mostly poor) citizens are the most likely to suffer from our (western-made) polution.
...FYI: this story was not about America or capitalism. Oh, and some other economies have done quite well at reducing emissions whilst maintaining growth....
.2.1.gif) where the Mean temps were 2-3 degrees C higher 180 years ago. I mean, we can all recall the tens of thousands of people dead, the icecaps melted, cities were wiped out, human advancement faltered, and the mass human and animal die-offs of 1820, can't we? I mean, 3C...it MUST be a disaster, right?
Either pollution is a problem, or it isn't. It's not just a problem for some people on earth, and not for others. If you contend that Global Warming is 'catastrophic' doesn't it seem pedantic to then say "But those guys over there should get a chance to pollute since they haven't had their turn yet." WTF?
China and India don't have to make the same mistakes the rest of us made; they don't have to claw their way technologically through some sort of wierd forced-industrial-evolution process. Since all the Greenies INSIST that upgrading our infrastructure will be somehow (insert hand-waving here) beneficial to our economy, why wouldn't it be also beneficial to China or India? Why would one imagine that they aren't somehow clever enough to likewise reap these mysterious benefits of gigantic, government-mandated conformance?
Oh, and I'd love to see a link that provides proof (or even credible SUGGESTION) that their citizens are the "most likely to suffer". A pulled-from-the-ass statistic if I've ever heard one.
2)
Firstly, you're being pretty disingenuous if you believe that the story was not pointed directly at the darn Americans who aren't buying into Kyoto.
And as far as reducing emissions plus maintaining growth: Really? Who?
Last time I checked, none of the larger advanced economies was actually conforming to their Kyoto targets (excepting countries whose industrial bases essentially collapsed), and none of them that are even close are anywhere near economically healthy.
3) "3C isn't that bad". Right, this is the most clueless one
Really? I understand some climate data was determined from tree-rings in wood frozen in Greenland glaciers...but wait, that means that there were trees in Greenland? 3C would certainly be disastrous, I'm sure...well, unless you visit Central Park in New York city, (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/425725030010
What EnviroNazis can't seem to grasp is that if you don't come to the situation with preconceptions (say, for example, cherry-picking data from the climatological record to produce a 'hockey stick' graph), it's very hard to draw conclusions - the 'trend' doesn't exceed the 'noise', which statistically means you usually need more data to be confident about the results. To spend $TRILLIONS$ on such flimsy conclusions is irresponsible and frankly stupid. It's like noticing that the weather's been getting cooler the last few days, and promptly bricking up all your windows and doors, and then wrapping your whole house in thermal blankets. Yes, that would be stupid.
4) the last time on record there was a dramatic climate shift was when the dinosaurs went extinct.
Really?
"The approach allows for the identification of thirty extreme wet periods and thirty-five extreme dry periods in the 1,425-year precipitation reconstruction and 30 extreme cool periods and 26 extreme warm periods in 2,262-year temperature reconstruction." (Colorado Plateau) ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/re constructions/northamerica/usa/colorado-plateau200 5.txt
"Temperature maxima during the Me
Oh wait, there's a little principle called GIGO that's been with us for ages:
Table 6.1 of Chapter 6 in Houghton et al 1996 (Kattenberg et al., Projections of Future Climate) gives a range of --0.8 C to -1.6C as the calculated temperature reduction during the last century due to sulphate aerosols. Since this represented 29% of the warming to doubling of carbon dioxide, the range of adjustment to the climate sensitivity for 100% warming (climate sensitivity) if the effects of aerosols increase at the same rate, is -2.8C to -5.5C. The adjusted IPCC climate sensitivity range now becomes -4.0C to +1.7C, with the "Best Estimate" in the range -3.0C to -0.3C. The range covers the established "Best Fit" value of 0.8C ± 0.6C, but, this time, at the upper end of the calculated range. The range places predominance on negative predicted values of climate sensitivity.
From http://www.john-daly.com/bull-123.htm :
So essentially the 'models' 'predicting' global warming actually only predict climate CHANGE (wow, surprising to anybody?), and bias upward when the base assumptions predict inputs far outside the high-extremes observed so far.
RIGHT.
All I can say is that it must be a bloody disaster, if New York city's temperatures were to rise in 100 years....to almost the level they were 180 years ago: http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/425725030010
New York Times 1956: "ICE AGE PREDICTED IN GLACIER STUDY"
1968: "NEW STUDIES POINT TO ICE AGE AGAIN"
1933: "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776"
Sept. 14, 1975 NYT editorial: global cooling "may mark the return to another ice age," that "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" and that it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."
...but isn't the hangover a result of severe dehydration?
As I understand it, this is a chemical response at the cellular level to the presence of alcohol in the system. I don't know if it's true, but anecdotally one fairly dedicated alcoholic I knew in college advised me on a number of 'drinking tips' of which this is one that actually worked: if you're drunk when you go to bed, take 2 aspirin and a huge glass of water before falling asleep.
Voila, no hangover in the morning.
So in regards to TFA, how do you make alcohol that doesn't have the chemical effects of alcohol?
(And yes, if you're too wasted to remember to do this, you're drinking too much and deserve the aftereffect.)
"players may not transmit or post any content or language which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard Entertainment, is deemed to be offensive,"
What part of that is unclear? Don't like it? Don't give them your money.
You call it censorship? I call it freedom of association.
Personally, I disagree with Blizzard's decision to cave in to the PC police. But you know what? If I *really* didn't like it, I could quit. So I can't say much beyond that, can I? It's their game, they made a business decision (the cost in lost memberships for allowing the practice is, in their opinion LESS THAN the cost of banning it).
Hm, granted that aside from Toontown, Disney computer games (and movie computer games) generally suck, but perhaps this will light an unpleasant fire under the crew behind http://www.burningsea.com/ (Pirates of the Burning Sea) ANOTHER pirate MMOG that's been in development forever.
Ironic, how these things with multi-year development times all seem to come out at once....WW2 games (jillions of them), Space 4x games (nothing for a long time, then GalCiv and MOO3 like the same week), now pirate games.
A good comment by the discoverer of Sedna, Xena, etc, to the effect that the term "planet" is probably best used like "continent" - it doesn't really have a rigorous scientific definition but every pretty much agrees what it applies to.
But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue... ...from people trapped by bombs FROM TERRORISTS, of course.
And you know what? If you could predict whether a game would be hugely successful or not, you might be right. But firstly, the fact is that it's an art, not a science, and nobody knows FOR SURE which titles are going to be hits and which are going to suck.
"We're not going to carry any game with nudity."
Gee, because before Wal-Mart became big, there was a HUGE market for computer-porn games?
Are some games modified because of the tremendous buying power of Wal Mart? Sure, that's logical. But that's a big step from claiming that "every AAA game is managed start to finish, top to bottom" with WalMart in mind.
Yes, for crapware like Deer Hunter and Barbie Fashion designer, I'm sure WalMart's giant demographic is part of their calculus "Say 0.001% of the WalMart electronics browsers buy our game? That's like....a gajillion dollars!".
But AAA titles? I doubt it. How much did WalMart come into the design of World of Warcraft? Oblivion? GalCiv2? Peripherally, if at all.
As usual, reality is somewhere beneath The Escapist's flashy hyperbolic copy.
I dunno, I'm always suspicious of someone claiming we've reached some sort of philosophical (or marketing, business, educations, military, scientific, literary, etc) "endpoint".
Businesses go through cycles of "diversification" (hey, I worked for a freight forwarder that owned gold shares in RSA) followed by "focus" (when someone asks why a car maker owns resort hotels and travel agencies). The business MODEL in general might go through meta-versions of these cycles, where diverse, widely ranging businesses are successful and rewarded in the marketplace and then eventually constrict to where narrow-focus seems to be preferable.
Google is a great company, as far as I can tell. Kind of the "Magical Trevor" of the business world...for now.
I just want to say congratulations on an apparently perfect orbit shot.
F GLE_0.html
NICE JOB ESA!
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEMY1SN
As a PC player, I have to say there are some irksome (albeit easily fixed) UI issues which I suppose were a legacy of Xbox360-compatibility decisions.
For example: default to detecting and running joystick. Something like half or more of the people I personally know (me included) started the game, and in the first 'scene' ended up creeping or lunging one way or another, and once you hit a wall (or bars) you were unable to move....until you figured out that it was reading the JOYSTICK input. And no, as far as I know there's no way to turn it off - just unplug the joystick, but still.
Second: the inventory/spell lists, or really any list in game is lowest-common-denominator resolution, probably to make sure people playing on a non-HD TV could still see the details, but the rest of us playing at 1600x1200 on a 24" monitor don't REALLY need to see each icon about 1.5" tall.
Critical? Nope, not at all. Annoying, yeah, until you mod it.
(Oh, and I'd personally be rather ticked if I was a X360 owner, as I understand it unable to download ANY mods for the game without paying for them. Blech.)
You can't make this shit up I tell you. ...so wait a sec, he was lying about not being able to "make this shit up" too, apparently?
My head is spinning.
You again?
Of course, you DO understand that you're partially to blame for the explosion?
The *first* time you called one and said "take me off your list", you just raised the value of that CONFIRMED GOOD fax number 100x. So you got bumped to the "confirmed good" fax number list, to be sold MUCH more widely.
Here's a trick: put a phone on your fax line. Hit *77 or whatever your local telco's signal is for (Anonymous call reject). Reattach your fax.
Voila, 90%+ of your incoming spamfaxen are now prevented from reaching your line.
REAL PEOPLE that send faxes don't typically BLOCK their fax numbers, and thus will come through.
"Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive,
R ICA.html [ornl.gov]
for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." - TIME, Monday, Jun. 24, 1974
But NOW (I understand) they're sure?
Let's just point out:
"From around 150,000 to 130,000 years ago, North America experienced colder and generally more arid than present conditions. About 130,000 years ago, a warm phase slightly moister than the present began, and conditions at least as warm as the present lasted until about 115,000 years ago. Subsequent cooling and drying of the climate led to a cold, arid maximum about 70,000 years ago, followed by a slight moderation of climate with a second aridity maximum around 22,000-13,000 14C years ago. Conditions then quickly became warmer and moister, though with an interruption by cold and aridity in many areas around 11,000 14C years ago."
(Jonathan Adams, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercNORTHAME
Does the temperature seem to be moving up lately? Yep.
Beyond that, it seems to be a huge guessing game: are humans responsible for the current warming? (personally, I think we probably contribute significantly to it)
Is warming a catastrophe? Even IF you buy into the Cassandras, for every "coral reef is gonna die because the water's too warm!" it's hard to believe that there's not a corresponding expansion (northward) of coral-reef-able zones. For every acre of expanded desert, there's another acre of former-tundra that now has a growing season.
And don't even get me STARTED on "cities will flood" crap. Duh? For ANY city in any location, over a long enough span of time, the odds of it surviving unscathed are ultimately zero. Nobody built the big cities (generally starting as a cluster of wooden huts around a river or nice bay) with an eye toward their long term survivability - NOBODY. To presume at this point that we need to exert every effort to somehow FREEZE Earth's dynamic climate to accomodate habitation choices made 000's of years ago?
That's just stupid.
What I don't see them saying is that perhaps they have to simply compete, like the rest of radio, in the marketplace.
I mean, does ANYONE see any difference between their "underwriters" and plain-old "advertisers"?
Stop what's left of the government subsidy, and stop the charade - they are a commercial entity that needs to compete like one. If their 'model' is begging rather than commerical breaks, hey, whatever works (or doesn't).
Further, their comments at least recognize what the rest of the marketing business world seems to be in deep denial about: that timeshifting has/will annihilate the typical 'free broadcast' TV and radio models, with shuddering ramifications up and down the media stream. I congratulate them for their perspicacity.
"Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive,
R ICA.html
for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." - TIME, Monday, Jun. 24, 1974
NOW they're sure?
Let's just point out:
"From around 150,000 to 130,000 years ago, North America experienced colder and generally more arid than present conditions. About 130,000 years ago, a warm phase slightly moister than the present began, and conditions at least as warm as the present lasted until about 115,000 years ago. Subsequent cooling and drying of the climate led to a cold, arid maximum about 70,000 years ago, followed by a slight moderation of climate with a second aridity maximum around 22,000-13,000 14C years ago. Conditions then quickly became warmer and moister, though with an interruption by cold and aridity in many areas around 11,000 14C years ago."
(Jonathan Adams, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercNORTHAME
Does the temperature seem to be moving up lately? Yep.
Beyond that, it seems to be a huge guessing game: are humans responsible for the current warming? (personally, I think we probably contribute significantly to it)
Is warming a catastrophe? Even IF you buy into the Cassandras, for every "coral reef is gonna die because the water's too warm!" it's hard to believe that there's not a corresponding expansion (northward) of coral-reef-able zones. For every acre of expanded desert, there's another acre of former-tundra that now has a growing season.
And don't even get me STARTED on "cities will flood" crap. Duh? For ANY city in any location, over a long enough span of time, the odds of it surviving unscathed are ultimately zero. Nobody built the big cities (generally starting as a cluster of wooden huts around a river or nice bay) with an eye toward their long term survivability - NOBODY. To presume at this point that we need to exert every effort to somehow FREEZE Earth's dynamic climate to accomodate habitation choices made 000's of years ago?
That's just stupid.
How is it the "most expensive" if they haven't set a price?
Personally, I think this: http://www.automobilemag.com/auto_shows/naias_200
Doesn't even use RAM, it's a friggin' cd player.
The big theater chains should first blame Hollywood for making a ton of garbage, then they should go after Best Buy and Circuit City who give credit to people so they can buy large TVs and home theater systems.
A dinosaur that rails against its own inevitable extinction merely is fossilized as an angry dinosaur. It's no less dead.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote:
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you."
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of
Lisa Simpson"
No, that's not a fair analogy.
Movie reviewers aren't selling the plot spoilers to a movie they've seen. They are selling their OPINION of the movie that they've seen. Whether it's of value to you is an entirely subjective thing.
If this guy was selling HIS REVIEW of WoW, that would be entirely different. "The Ultimate World of Warcraft Leveling & Gold Guide" is clearly NOT a review; neither is it 'educational' in the typical sense.
The key question is - if you build a complex piece of machinery, and write an instruction manual, you clearly hold the copyright to what you wrote. But could someone else (essentially) reverse-engineer your machine, or simply use it a lot, and write their OWN instruction manual?
IANAL, but I think that seems like it crosses the line of infringement. You could (fair use) write a lengthy and detailed article with pictures and diagrams saying "this is one of the features of this machine, and why I don't/do like it so much", but 'user guides' are, I believe, essentially competing with the owners own manuals.
However, I'll throw this spin on it too: by my OWN preferences, I'd say that the moment someone licenses an outside firm to produce 'user guides' one has ceased to defend one's copyright effectively, and has given it over to the free market. So in this PARTICULAR case, if that was the standard, then this would be fine since Blizz licensed at least one other company to write guides.
But that's just me.
I guess I have to side with Blizz on this one.
Sounds like the guy basically just published and is trying to sell the data that's available almost everywhere on thottbot.com or wow.allakhazam.com (for example), which Blizz doesn't seem to object to.
So what's their beef? Probably that he's trying to make a buck off THEIR IP. I agree with them. If he just put it up for download as a free pdf, I bet that they wouldn't have any beef with it.