Im so sick of hearing about native cultures living in "harmony" with nature. Such cultures do their share of damage to the enviroment, they just do it on a smaller scale, mainly because their populations were much smaller and they lacked the tools to do more. Lack of medicine and hygiene means lots of illness, add in regular tribal wars and regular famine, and the population will stay small enough to not make a massive impact on their enviroment. The culture's arent any more noble, and when introduced to the benefits of modern society almost invariable embrace them and all the enviromental impact they bring. And primitive people still managed to overhunt wildlife and destroy natural habitats with the best of them. Don't delude yourself, if they had the tools the most backwards tribe in Africa would cause as much enviromental damage as any American. The reality of so called harmony with nature is an existence at the whims of nature, with sickness and death around every corner. Farming, and thus the civilization needed to enable widespread farming with resistance to drought and famine, was so attractive to ancient peoples because it allowed them to break free of an existence dictated by luck and the weather. They didnt give a damn about clearing forests full of animals to make farm land. Humans are, and always have been a fairly selfish lot, with little regard to far long term consequences of our actions. And even if a human culture arose that shunned civilization and lived a life with as little impact on the enviroment as possible, that culture would either quickly be destroyed by other cultures who had learned to bend the planet and it's enviroment to their own purposes. The best example of this is the American Indians, who although hardly living in perfect harmony with nature as the tour guides would have you believe, largely lacked the tools or manpower to make signifigant changes to their enviroment. When europeans came, they brought with them the rewards of the quite savage raping of the natural European ecosystem (which, after so many centuries of heavy human inhabitance, barely resembles it's original form) and took their land, and either killed them or forced them off into tracts of poor quality land not deemed fit for european settlement. That society would grow so much by using the abundant resources of a hitherto virtually untapped continent to become the dominant military and economic force on the planet, partly through the development of a weapon capable of causing damage to the planet at a rate never before imagined. Humans. in our lifetimes or any other, will never find "harmony" with nature, and even if a subset does, they will likely be killed by stronger cultures who want the only chunk of land not yet completely exploited. The only realistic ways to escape total destruction of the planet, in my opinion, is technology. Technology can allow us to enjoy all the benefits of our modern society while at the same time making it easy to avoid excessive damage to the enviroment. Technology could even let us one day harvest resources from other planets, as well as allow us to use existing resources more effeciently. None of that will be accomplished by throwing away our cars and computers and screwing around in huts in the woods.
Wow, Signs? You think Signs is an example of a great movie? Can I remind you Signs is about an alien invasion of Earth(A planet 75% water, with an atmosphere of water vapor) by Aliens for whom water is deadly? That's kind of like us invading a planet where Acid rains from the skies, the atmosphere is made of nerve gas, and everywhere we look theres giant pools of cyanide. I'm not one to harp on realism in movies, but the entire premise of Signs is retarded. Besides, the budget for Signs was 72 Million, which while not the $200 million blockbuster Lucas is referring to, is still a fairly large budget.
If you read what I said, you'd understand. You are not "forced" to buy a new textbook, but the stand-alone prices of a used book, plus the clicker codes, plus the homework codes (the codes in use at my uni are one time use and the homework is graded) are almost 3x the price of the "bundle" that comes with a new textbook. Theres no reason for the extra crap to be so expensive, except that the publisher has a complete monopoly on them, and wants to discourage people buying them seperately. You can buy a used book, but you will pay more in the long run, so theres no point. This kills the used market completely, as the pile of used books in the bookstore, completely untouched attest (normally all the used copies available of any book sell out quickly).
'The explanation certainly sounds a little simplistic - heck, almost "communistic". By which I mean, that the free-market process of having many textbook products to choose from, and marketers that make all options known to the professor/customers, is SUPPOSED to result in top products for rock-bottom price"
The reason for this is simple. Professors don't look at the price. They are given free copies by the publisher. They don't have to pay for the book, so they don't care what it costs. Likewise, they dont care if a new, completely pointless edition is released, because that just means the publisher sends them a fancy new replacement book. The professors rairly even look at quality of the text when picking a textbook, they go with who gave them the best free vacation, or whose sale's rep had the biggest tits, etc. I once had a professor tell me he got on his department's committee for picking textbooks, not because he cared about the book (he actually advised his students not to buy it, because everything you needed was available in course notes he provieded) but for all the free crap from the publishers. In my courses, I never even bought the book about half the time because it wasnt actually needed, and the prof never even reffered to it.
Meanwhile, the publishers have a new way to force you to buy new. My physics book came with a code for online homework, and an electronic response clicker thing. The code is only good once, and my professor requires we do it. A used book is about $90, however if you have to buy the code for the homework seperately, it costs about $50. The clicker is like $20 seperatle, and the frequency code card for it is like $40. A new textbook, which includes all of this for "free" is $140. By adding in 1-use only crap, and convincing lazy profs to use it, they have completely killed the secondary market for that book.
Theres a huge problem with 5-man dungeons. They are next to impossible to balance without completely leaving some of the classes of the game out. Look at any 5 man dungeon in the game, and although all of them have been nerfed to being easy regardless, they all have certain class combinations that make them incredibly easy, and certain class combinations that make them very difficult. If they ever release 5 man content that requires actual skill (instead of mindless gear farming), people will quickly figure out the best character combinations and the classes not part of those will have an extremely difficult time getting groups that can actually finish the instance. If you make it easy enough that sub-optimal groups can still do it, it will be incredibly easy for optimal groups, and thus incredibly boring, like the current 5-mans.
Last I checked, Karl Marx never killed anybody. All Karl Marx ever had was an idea for a new system of government, and even if it wasn't a very good one, you can't hold him responsible for the evil things communist governments would go on to do. Hold the people who actually issued the orders and the ones who actually pulled the trigger for the murders. If you can point out the passage in the Communist manifesto where he says to kill everyone who opposes you, then maybe he's to blame. He never actively participated in any of the communist governments you're referring to, he died in 1883, the Russian revolution wasn't until 1917. Don't try to lay mass murder, commited by power hungry lunatics and the people spineless enough to obey them, at the feet of a philospher who's only crime was he wrote down and published a novel new idea for a system of government that turned out not to work.
Actually, this is a pretty good analogy, because when the auto industry began to replace assembly jobs with robots, some of the workers complained and picketed and fought them, and the others learned how to assemble, operate and maintain the robots. People willing to learn new skills, improve themselves, and adapt to a changing economy have nothing to fear from automation or outsourcing.
I don't see how this has anything to do with the fact they are a chinese company. Americans especially are used to buying products all over the world. The problem is Thinkpads have always been overpriced compared to their competitors, but people bought them anyways because they had IBM behind them. Lenovo bought the Thinkpad name but thats all they really bought. The thing is the target market for thinkpads (geeks and corporate buyers) know that lenovo bought the Thinkpad and that Thinkpad's arent really IBM Thinkpads anymore, they are Lenovo laptops with a Thinkpad logo on them. Buying up a brand name and slapping it on your product works for cheap consumer goods, but the target market for Thinkpads won't be fooled so easily, they read tech/business news and they consider carefuly before buying.
Some sort of prejudice about buying from a chinese company is just a stupid spin put on the article. The real reason sales are falling is because Lenovo bought a name but not the trust associated with it, and like any new entry into the laptop market they have to earn their trust. When you see Lenovo thinkpads still alive and kicking after 5+ years of hard use like you see with a lot of IBM Thinkpads, people will start to trust them, and they will be able to charge that same premium price IBM could.
Remember that the MS engineers have a near impossible task. They have to design a DRM system to ensure only official games work, but at the same time, A. The DRM is implemented into a consumer device that the "enemy" has complete access too. B. The DRM can not be complex as to hinder third party companies making licensed games. C. The DRM can not signifigantly impact the performance of the device (ie no CPU intensive encryption). D. The Xbox itself has to be able to un-drm the code to play the game. E. Because old games can not be updated on a console, the DRM can not be changed or updated after release. F. The DRM system can not signifigantly add to the cost of production of the consoles or games.
Basically DRM on consoles is a losing battle. All the odds are stacked against the developers. Add in the fact that the number of people trying to break it probably greatly exceeds the number of people responsible for it's development in the first place, and it becomes a fight MS can't hope to win. However, the tougher the DRM is, the more complicated the workarounds will be. Consider how massive dreamcast piracy (Dreamcast games could be copied with no mod chip and a cd burner) was compared to playstation piracy (required a mod chip with lots of soldering at first, later would require just a swap disk trick). The dreamcast sold a lot less then the playstation, but the piracy scene was enormous in comparison because it was so easy.
The situation is different. When the government appoints people to the FDA, they don't pick a random yahoo off the street. They pick doctors and people experienced in medical research. They pick economists for the SEC, and educators for the DOE, etc. Sometimes cronyism happens and they dont pick the best possible candidates, but they still have qualifications in the feild. If you read the article, you would see this task force is made up of
And who would make up this task force? That would be two industry representatives (one with a telecom background, and one with IT experience) and the balance being the following State officials: the CIO, the Supervisor of Records, the Archivist, the Treasurer, the Secretary of State, and the Auditor (or, in the case of the last three officers, his or her designee). In short, there would be an eight person task force, only three members of which would be sure to have any relevant knowledge at all, and all of whom would have full time, or more than full time, jobs in addition to their duties on the task force.
In other words, almost entirely people with no qualifactions in IT. Those people are supposed to decide on all the tech used in Massachusetts, Hardware, software, the works (the relevant duties are all quoted in the article). That would be a big job for 8 full time IT professionals, much less a group of amateurs. In this case, the IT professionals have a legitimate grievance, not that they are somehow being oppressed, but that this legislation is going to be a nightmare for all IT employees in Mass. and it's citizens. This is a case of politicians legislating something they dont understand. They are showing they have no respect for the IT profession and no understanding of the IT requirements of a state.
Imagine if you took all of American television, and took out all the crap you don't like. You'd probably be left with 3-4 series you really enjoy and a bunch of crap you will watch cause theres nothing better on. When you open up a whole new genre to yourself, you are bound to find some new gems in all the crap. It's the same thing with anime, a massive variety is made and almost everyone is bound to find some they really enjoy. Theres cop shows, and romance shows, and sci-fi shows, and comedy shows, etc. And while the OVA market has pretty much dried up, TV anime and movies are still going strong in Japan, with tons more being made every year. Fansubs are so prevelant and easily available now you could literally watch nothing but newly released anime all day. Also, instead of self-contained 30 minute episodes like most American series, Anime tend more towards long story arc, with each episode connecting directly to the next. So it can be easy to get drawn in and want to watch "what happens next" every week. So even if you've watched all the "classics" theres tons of new material out there and access to it is easier then ever. Everyone in my group of friends watches 3-4 shows every week like they would a tv series, and we talk about it "over the watercooler" so to speak like we would a normal television show. In short, anime is not going anywhere, and I really think a cable network that showed NEW anime shows, subtitled and uneditied within a week of them airing in Japan (some fansub groups put out a decent quality sub within 24 hrs of the show airing, and they do it for no profit) could be really successful. However most forays into anime on tv have been A. Dubbed, the dubs are generally either very innacurate or just low quality B. Editied for time and content (Japanese TV seems to have less time dedicated to commercials and the show is only interrupted once for a longer commercial break), and C. given no respect for the original work or it's creators and their artistic vision.
I have watched a lot of fansub anime. Many of the groups put out subs FAR superior to what you get when you buy the dvd. Not to mention some anime distributors edit the anime and don't tell you. Most of the dvd's I have, even ones from large importers like ADV, have subs that are full of errors and can often be hard to read. And although I don't watch the dubs normally myself, I want a well done dub so I can watch them with friends/family that dont like subs, and almsot all series have disgustingly bad dubs (and good dubs aren't impossible, I prefer the Cowboy Bebop dub to the sub, and the Full Metal Alchemist dub is pretty good). Either way, I like to watch anime, and I like to support anime legally distributed in the US. But when they do a crappier job then a handful of people doing subs in their spare time, then charge me $25 for a disc with 3-4 episodes of a show with 50 episodes, they can go fuck themselves. I don't mind paying for it, but when they cant manage to put out a product superior then something being offered for free (usually within 1 week of it being aired in Japan, within 24 hours for some groups) they don't deserve my money. I refuse to support people who think they can buy a license, slap togethor the most poorly produced DVD's they can, and overcharge for it.
If you do this, doesnt that mean everyone has to read all the submissions? Doesn't that kind of eliminate the point of journals? The reviewing panels take the time to read the submission, check it's references and arguments and all that, so that the people who read the journals can read the papers in them and be reasonably sure they represent quality science without doing a ton of fact checking themselves. I always try to blow my mod points as quickly as possible on trolls because to do a decent job it means I have to browse at -1. Imagine browsing at -1 when every comment was 10 pages full of dense academia speak and you had to read the full thing to get an idea of it was completely worthless or not.
Most karma whores do it to build up a large number of accounts with excellent karma and mod points. If you do this enough you can create a web of accounts that mod each other up etc. Why people take the time to do this, I don't know [url]http://www.anti-slash.org/%5B/url%5D is a site dedicated to trolling slash dot, and "gaming" the moderation system. And in case you were wondering I've been at the cap for a very long time, so this doesn't count as whoring.
This is not exactly true. The way the rested system works is when you log out in an inn, you start to gain "rested" experience. The longer you are logged out the more you get. When you return, every monster you kill gives you double experience until it runs out, regardless of how long it takes you. However an entire days worth of rested will probably be less then 1 hour of killing at a reasonable rate. Either way it is not really practical to wait for rested xp. Due to negative reaction from players, the whole resting system was changed heavily from it's initial idea in beta to be purely a bonus, and a relatively small one at that. Anyways, theres only 2 states, rested and non-rested, and no diminishing returns.
Who would go all the way to Congo? If I wanted a pirated copy of OS X I dont have to leave my desk, plenty of places to download it for free. OS X cd's dont even seem to have rudimentary copy protection like most game cd's do. Be realistic, how many people from developed countries (apple's market) visit undeveloped countries and buy pirated software they could easily get for free at home? Lack of availability of illegal copies is not what makes people buy software.
Consider: If this project ever actually gets past vaporware, the platform they use will get a large population of first-time computer users in nations which are still developing markets. In other words, they stand a good chance of becoming the defacto standard for said nations. Since software has zero cost to make copies, and you have no chance of selling your product to be used on these anyways, you would have to be retarded not to offer to let them use it or free. I'm amazaed Microsoft hasn't offered. If anything they should charge money to be the OS of choice (which considering Red Hat's large donations, may be exactly what has happened).
Theres a million different charities you can donate that goes towards treatment. Thats definitly important. The idea behind Child's Play is for gamers to give the gifts of games to A. Share something they enjoy with kids that need something to lift their spirits and B. Prove to Jack Thompson's of the world that gamers aren't twisted violent people preying on the innocence of children. People donate to charities that they like, and in the absence of those charities probably wouldn't donate at all. So don't pull the "this cause is more worthy then your cause" card. It's not like theres some finite amount of charitable donations and we have to pick the absolute best cause. A lot of people already give money but when they see a great idea like this they give a little more, or they might give when they wouldn't have given at all. I hate people who try to make people feel guilty for doing a good deed because they could have "done more" or others gave more or because they havent given so much they live below the poverty line. It's peoples money, they can keep it for themselves or donate it or do whatever they want with it, they don't need pretentious "do-gooders" to tell them what to do with it.
Public urination has nothing to do with modesty, it has to do with the fact that noone wants to clean urine off their wall. Human urine also has some nasty chemicals and if concentrated in any particular area is pretty bad for the enviroment. Public urination is generally punishable only by a fine in the U.S., and if you hang out at seedy bars (or the NY subway) you will see plenty of it. The only thing thats gonna get you charged for some sort of sex crime is if you go out of your way to go pee on the playground at an elementary school. Restrooms available to the public are very common in all but rural areas so it's not like it's a big hassle to find a restroom. If you were to ask a random sample of Americans, they would say that public urination is rude and kinda disgusting but not something that should be a serious crime. Oh but thats right this is slashdot where you can take a story you heard from a friend of a friend and apply it to an entire nation.
In the real world, a lot of engineering gets done in standard, particularly in the US. The reason? If I walk to the hardware store, they are gonna sell me a 2"x4" piece of wood, not 40mm X 90mm. The same is true for metal, screws, bolts, even the specifications for things like motors and sensors. When you work in a CAD program all day its easy to do all metric but when you want to actually build things (in the US) it is much easier to use standard. I personally prefer to work in standard, the conversions are easy to do in your head (for me) and your probably using a calculator anyway. I find that when using standard if you make a mistake converting it is really obvious, when using metric it can become obscured cause it might only move one decimal point. That said it was a communications fuck up on both sides to not specify the units correctly and engineering fuckup on both sides to not check the mathematics properly.
The point of the robot arm is to get the same range of motion as the actual Dinosaur would have had. They can then give each joint a strength proportional to the size of the muscle that would have been attached to it (some guess work here I would assume). Then they can play around with it and see what different movements and would kind of attacks would have been possible and how much damage they would do. Animals use their claws in different ways, and the appendage the claw is attached to gives you just as much information as the size and shape of the claw itself. The expirement isn't what damage can WE do with a velociraptor claw it's what damage the velociraptor could have done.
Apps like yours are a nightmare in multi-user enviroments. Please move your config data into the proper space in the user's profile. MS provides the application data fodler for that reason. That way different users have different configs and you can call the location of it using the global variable for that users directory. Users will be able to run your app from anywhere (even off a server on the network) and have it use their config. Also your app will not work if stored in a read-only enviroment or where the user is denied access to said directory (aka schools where they dont want students messing around with the comps).
Having worked on some movies, I have found the importance of the producer is inversly proportional to the reputation of the director. The executive producer generally represents the money backing the movie, and if the director is a no-name, the producers will push creative decisions they think will make money. It's all part of the Hollywood system of making LOTS of mediocre movies that do decently at the box office. The studios know there is pretty much a formula to making a movie that will make money, and they follow it. As a director gets a reputation for making good movies, the backers will generally give him (or her) more freedom to expirement. This results in some really good movies, but also some very very bad ones. The deal with Peter Jackson and Halo is probably just a publicity move. Executive producer is a job that requires no day to day presence on the set and will in this case probably entail a weekly conference call with Jackson. It does mean Jackson is willing to attach his name to the film, so he must think it either has potential or they threw a lot of money at him.
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Im so sick of hearing about native cultures living in "harmony" with nature. Such cultures do their share of damage to the enviroment, they just do it on a smaller scale, mainly because their populations were much smaller and they lacked the tools to do more. Lack of medicine and hygiene means lots of illness, add in regular tribal wars and regular famine, and the population will stay small enough to not make a massive impact on their enviroment. The culture's arent any more noble, and when introduced to the benefits of modern society almost invariable embrace them and all the enviromental impact they bring. And primitive people still managed to overhunt wildlife and destroy natural habitats with the best of them. Don't delude yourself, if they had the tools the most backwards tribe in Africa would cause as much enviromental damage as any American.
The reality of so called harmony with nature is an existence at the whims of nature, with sickness and death around every corner. Farming, and thus the civilization needed to enable widespread farming with resistance to drought and famine, was so attractive to ancient peoples because it allowed them to break free of an existence dictated by luck and the weather. They didnt give a damn about clearing forests full of animals to make farm land. Humans are, and always have been a fairly selfish lot, with little regard to far long term consequences of our actions. And even if a human culture arose that shunned civilization and lived a life with as little impact on the enviroment as possible, that culture would either quickly be destroyed by other cultures who had learned to bend the planet and it's enviroment to their own purposes.
The best example of this is the American Indians, who although hardly living in perfect harmony with nature as the tour guides would have you believe, largely lacked the tools or manpower to make signifigant changes to their enviroment. When europeans came, they brought with them the rewards of the quite savage raping of the natural European ecosystem (which, after so many centuries of heavy human inhabitance, barely resembles it's original form) and took their land, and either killed them or forced them off into tracts of poor quality land not deemed fit for european settlement. That society would grow so much by using the abundant resources of a hitherto virtually untapped continent to become the dominant military and economic force on the planet, partly through the development of a weapon capable of causing damage to the planet at a rate never before imagined.
Humans. in our lifetimes or any other, will never find "harmony" with nature, and even if a subset does, they will likely be killed by stronger cultures who want the only chunk of land not yet completely exploited.
The only realistic ways to escape total destruction of the planet, in my opinion, is technology. Technology can allow us to enjoy all the benefits of our modern society while at the same time making it easy to avoid excessive damage to the enviroment. Technology could even let us one day harvest resources from other planets, as well as allow us to use existing resources more effeciently. None of that will be accomplished by throwing away our cars and computers and screwing around in huts in the woods.
Wow, Signs? You think Signs is an example of a great movie? Can I remind you Signs is about an alien invasion of Earth(A planet 75% water, with an atmosphere of water vapor) by Aliens for whom water is deadly? That's kind of like us invading a planet where Acid rains from the skies, the atmosphere is made of nerve gas, and everywhere we look theres giant pools of cyanide. I'm not one to harp on realism in movies, but the entire premise of Signs is retarded. Besides, the budget for Signs was 72 Million, which while not the $200 million blockbuster Lucas is referring to, is still a fairly large budget.
If you read what I said, you'd understand. You are not "forced" to buy a new textbook, but the stand-alone prices of a used book, plus the clicker codes, plus the homework codes (the codes in use at my uni are one time use and the homework is graded) are almost 3x the price of the "bundle" that comes with a new textbook. Theres no reason for the extra crap to be so expensive, except that the publisher has a complete monopoly on them, and wants to discourage people buying them seperately. You can buy a used book, but you will pay more in the long run, so theres no point. This kills the used market completely, as the pile of used books in the bookstore, completely untouched attest (normally all the used copies available of any book sell out quickly).
'The explanation certainly sounds a little simplistic - heck, almost "communistic". By which I mean, that the free-market process of having many textbook products to choose from, and marketers that make all options known to the professor/customers, is SUPPOSED to result in top products for rock-bottom price"
The reason for this is simple. Professors don't look at the price. They are given free copies by the publisher. They don't have to pay for the book, so they don't care what it costs. Likewise, they dont care if a new, completely pointless edition is released, because that just means the publisher sends them a fancy new replacement book. The professors rairly even look at quality of the text when picking a textbook, they go with who gave them the best free vacation, or whose sale's rep had the biggest tits, etc. I once had a professor tell me he got on his department's committee for picking textbooks, not because he cared about the book (he actually advised his students not to buy it, because everything you needed was available in course notes he provieded) but for all the free crap from the publishers. In my courses, I never even bought the book about half the time because it wasnt actually needed, and the prof never even reffered to it.
Meanwhile, the publishers have a new way to force you to buy new. My physics book came with a code for online homework, and an electronic response clicker thing. The code is only good once, and my professor requires we do it. A used book is about $90, however if you have to buy the code for the homework seperately, it costs about $50. The clicker is like $20 seperatle, and the frequency code card for it is like $40. A new textbook, which includes all of this for "free" is $140. By adding in 1-use only crap, and convincing lazy profs to use it, they have completely killed the secondary market for that book.
Theres a huge problem with 5-man dungeons. They are next to impossible to balance without completely leaving some of the classes of the game out. Look at any 5 man dungeon in the game, and although all of them have been nerfed to being easy regardless, they all have certain class combinations that make them incredibly easy, and certain class combinations that make them very difficult. If they ever release 5 man content that requires actual skill (instead of mindless gear farming), people will quickly figure out the best character combinations and the classes not part of those will have an extremely difficult time getting groups that can actually finish the instance. If you make it easy enough that sub-optimal groups can still do it, it will be incredibly easy for optimal groups, and thus incredibly boring, like the current 5-mans.
Last I checked, Karl Marx never killed anybody. All Karl Marx ever had was an idea for a new system of government, and even if it wasn't a very good one, you can't hold him responsible for the evil things communist governments would go on to do. Hold the people who actually issued the orders and the ones who actually pulled the trigger for the murders. If you can point out the passage in the Communist manifesto where he says to kill everyone who opposes you, then maybe he's to blame. He never actively participated in any of the communist governments you're referring to, he died in 1883, the Russian revolution wasn't until 1917. Don't try to lay mass murder, commited by power hungry lunatics and the people spineless enough to obey them, at the feet of a philospher who's only crime was he wrote down and published a novel new idea for a system of government that turned out not to work.
Actually, this is a pretty good analogy, because when the auto industry began to replace assembly jobs with robots, some of the workers complained and picketed and fought them, and the others learned how to assemble, operate and maintain the robots. People willing to learn new skills, improve themselves, and adapt to a changing economy have nothing to fear from automation or outsourcing.
I don't see how this has anything to do with the fact they are a chinese company. Americans especially are used to buying products all over the world. The problem is Thinkpads have always been overpriced compared to their competitors, but people bought them anyways because they had IBM behind them. Lenovo bought the Thinkpad name but thats all they really bought. The thing is the target market for thinkpads (geeks and corporate buyers) know that lenovo bought the Thinkpad and that Thinkpad's arent really IBM Thinkpads anymore, they are Lenovo laptops with a Thinkpad logo on them. Buying up a brand name and slapping it on your product works for cheap consumer goods, but the target market for Thinkpads won't be fooled so easily, they read tech/business news and they consider carefuly before buying.
Some sort of prejudice about buying from a chinese company is just a stupid spin put on the article. The real reason sales are falling is because Lenovo bought a name but not the trust associated with it, and like any new entry into the laptop market they have to earn their trust. When you see Lenovo thinkpads still alive and kicking after 5+ years of hard use like you see with a lot of IBM Thinkpads, people will start to trust them, and they will be able to charge that same premium price IBM could.
To think like a politician, that should read:
"But, if we do it that way, I don't get a piece of the action!"
Remember that the MS engineers have a near impossible task. They have to design a DRM system to ensure only official games work, but at the same time,
A. The DRM is implemented into a consumer device that the "enemy" has complete access too.
B. The DRM can not be complex as to hinder third party companies making licensed games.
C. The DRM can not signifigantly impact the performance of the device (ie no CPU intensive encryption).
D. The Xbox itself has to be able to un-drm the code to play the game.
E. Because old games can not be updated on a console, the DRM can not be changed or updated after release.
F. The DRM system can not signifigantly add to the cost of production of the consoles or games.
Basically DRM on consoles is a losing battle. All the odds are stacked against the developers. Add in the fact that the number of people trying to break it probably greatly exceeds the number of people responsible for it's development in the first place, and it becomes a fight MS can't hope to win. However, the tougher the DRM is, the more complicated the workarounds will be. Consider how massive dreamcast piracy (Dreamcast games could be copied with no mod chip and a cd burner) was compared to playstation piracy (required a mod chip with lots of soldering at first, later would require just a swap disk trick). The dreamcast sold a lot less then the playstation, but the piracy scene was enormous in comparison because it was so easy.
Imagine if you took all of American television, and took out all the crap you don't like. You'd probably be left with 3-4 series you really enjoy and a bunch of crap you will watch cause theres nothing better on. When you open up a whole new genre to yourself, you are bound to find some new gems in all the crap. It's the same thing with anime, a massive variety is made and almost everyone is bound to find some they really enjoy. Theres cop shows, and romance shows, and sci-fi shows, and comedy shows, etc. And while the OVA market has pretty much dried up, TV anime and movies are still going strong in Japan, with tons more being made every year. Fansubs are so prevelant and easily available now you could literally watch nothing but newly released anime all day. Also, instead of self-contained 30 minute episodes like most American series, Anime tend more towards long story arc, with each episode connecting directly to the next. So it can be easy to get drawn in and want to watch "what happens next" every week. So even if you've watched all the "classics" theres tons of new material out there and access to it is easier then ever. Everyone in my group of friends watches 3-4 shows every week like they would a tv series, and we talk about it "over the watercooler" so to speak like we would a normal television show. In short, anime is not going anywhere, and I really think a cable network that showed NEW anime shows, subtitled and uneditied within a week of them airing in Japan (some fansub groups put out a decent quality sub within 24 hrs of the show airing, and they do it for no profit) could be really successful. However most forays into anime on tv have been A. Dubbed, the dubs are generally either very innacurate or just low quality B. Editied for time and content (Japanese TV seems to have less time dedicated to commercials and the show is only interrupted once for a longer commercial break), and C. given no respect for the original work or it's creators and their artistic vision.
I have watched a lot of fansub anime. Many of the groups put out subs FAR superior to what you get when you buy the dvd. Not to mention some anime distributors edit the anime and don't tell you. Most of the dvd's I have, even ones from large importers like ADV, have subs that are full of errors and can often be hard to read. And although I don't watch the dubs normally myself, I want a well done dub so I can watch them with friends/family that dont like subs, and almsot all series have disgustingly bad dubs (and good dubs aren't impossible, I prefer the Cowboy Bebop dub to the sub, and the Full Metal Alchemist dub is pretty good). Either way, I like to watch anime, and I like to support anime legally distributed in the US. But when they do a crappier job then a handful of people doing subs in their spare time, then charge me $25 for a disc with 3-4 episodes of a show with 50 episodes, they can go fuck themselves. I don't mind paying for it, but when they cant manage to put out a product superior then something being offered for free (usually within 1 week of it being aired in Japan, within 24 hours for some groups) they don't deserve my money. I refuse to support people who think they can buy a license, slap togethor the most poorly produced DVD's they can, and overcharge for it.
If you do this, doesnt that mean everyone has to read all the submissions? Doesn't that kind of eliminate the point of journals? The reviewing panels take the time to read the submission, check it's references and arguments and all that, so that the people who read the journals can read the papers in them and be reasonably sure they represent quality science without doing a ton of fact checking themselves. I always try to blow my mod points as quickly as possible on trolls because to do a decent job it means I have to browse at -1. Imagine browsing at -1 when every comment was 10 pages full of dense academia speak and you had to read the full thing to get an idea of it was completely worthless or not.
Most karma whores do it to build up a large number of accounts with excellent karma and mod points. If you do this enough you can create a web of accounts that mod each other up etc. Why people take the time to do this, I don't know [url]http://www.anti-slash.org/%5B/url%5D is a site dedicated to trolling slash dot, and "gaming" the moderation system. And in case you were wondering I've been at the cap for a very long time, so this doesn't count as whoring.
This is not exactly true. The way the rested system works is when you log out in an inn, you start to gain "rested" experience. The longer you are logged out the more you get. When you return, every monster you kill gives you double experience until it runs out, regardless of how long it takes you. However an entire days worth of rested will probably be less then 1 hour of killing at a reasonable rate. Either way it is not really practical to wait for rested xp. Due to negative reaction from players, the whole resting system was changed heavily from it's initial idea in beta to be purely a bonus, and a relatively small one at that. Anyways, theres only 2 states, rested and non-rested, and no diminishing returns.
Who would go all the way to Congo? If I wanted a pirated copy of OS X I dont have to leave my desk, plenty of places to download it for free. OS X cd's dont even seem to have rudimentary copy protection like most game cd's do. Be realistic, how many people from developed countries (apple's market) visit undeveloped countries and buy pirated software they could easily get for free at home? Lack of availability of illegal copies is not what makes people buy software.
Consider: If this project ever actually gets past vaporware, the platform they use will get a large population of first-time computer users in nations which are still developing markets. In other words, they stand a good chance of becoming the defacto standard for said nations. Since software has zero cost to make copies, and you have no chance of selling your product to be used on these anyways, you would have to be retarded not to offer to let them use it or free. I'm amazaed Microsoft hasn't offered. If anything they should charge money to be the OS of choice (which considering Red Hat's large donations, may be exactly what has happened).
Theres a million different charities you can donate that goes towards treatment. Thats definitly important. The idea behind Child's Play is for gamers to give the gifts of games to A. Share something they enjoy with kids that need something to lift their spirits and B. Prove to Jack Thompson's of the world that gamers aren't twisted violent people preying on the innocence of children. People donate to charities that they like, and in the absence of those charities probably wouldn't donate at all. So don't pull the "this cause is more worthy then your cause" card. It's not like theres some finite amount of charitable donations and we have to pick the absolute best cause. A lot of people already give money but when they see a great idea like this they give a little more, or they might give when they wouldn't have given at all. I hate people who try to make people feel guilty for doing a good deed because they could have "done more" or others gave more or because they havent given so much they live below the poverty line. It's peoples money, they can keep it for themselves or donate it or do whatever they want with it, they don't need pretentious "do-gooders" to tell them what to do with it.
Public urination has nothing to do with modesty, it has to do with the fact that noone wants to clean urine off their wall. Human urine also has some nasty chemicals and if concentrated in any particular area is pretty bad for the enviroment. Public urination is generally punishable only by a fine in the U.S., and if you hang out at seedy bars (or the NY subway) you will see plenty of it. The only thing thats gonna get you charged for some sort of sex crime is if you go out of your way to go pee on the playground at an elementary school. Restrooms available to the public are very common in all but rural areas so it's not like it's a big hassle to find a restroom.
If you were to ask a random sample of Americans, they would say that public urination is rude and kinda disgusting but not something that should be a serious crime. Oh but thats right this is slashdot where you can take a story you heard from a friend of a friend and apply it to an entire nation.
In the real world, a lot of engineering gets done in standard, particularly in the US. The reason? If I walk to the hardware store, they are gonna sell me a 2"x4" piece of wood, not 40mm X 90mm. The same is true for metal, screws, bolts, even the specifications for things like motors and sensors. When you work in a CAD program all day its easy to do all metric but when you want to actually build things (in the US) it is much easier to use standard. I personally prefer to work in standard, the conversions are easy to do in your head (for me) and your probably using a calculator anyway. I find that when using standard if you make a mistake converting it is really obvious, when using metric it can become obscured cause it might only move one decimal point. That said it was a communications fuck up on both sides to not specify the units correctly and engineering fuckup on both sides to not check the mathematics properly.
The point of the robot arm is to get the same range of motion as the actual Dinosaur would have had. They can then give each joint a strength proportional to the size of the muscle that would have been attached to it (some guess work here I would assume). Then they can play around with it and see what different movements and would kind of attacks would have been possible and how much damage they would do. Animals use their claws in different ways, and the appendage the claw is attached to gives you just as much information as the size and shape of the claw itself. The expirement isn't what damage can WE do with a velociraptor claw it's what damage the velociraptor could have done.
Apps like yours are a nightmare in multi-user enviroments. Please move your config data into the proper space in the user's profile. MS provides the application data fodler for that reason. That way different users have different configs and you can call the location of it using the global variable for that users directory. Users will be able to run your app from anywhere (even off a server on the network) and have it use their config. Also your app will not work if stored in a read-only enviroment or where the user is denied access to said directory (aka schools where they dont want students messing around with the comps).
The US made payment in full, it's called "South Vietnam".
Having worked on some movies, I have found the importance of the producer is inversly proportional to the reputation of the director. The executive producer generally represents the money backing the movie, and if the director is a no-name, the producers will push creative decisions they think will make money. It's all part of the Hollywood system of making LOTS of mediocre movies that do decently at the box office. The studios know there is pretty much a formula to making a movie that will make money, and they follow it. As a director gets a reputation for making good movies, the backers will generally give him (or her) more freedom to expirement. This results in some really good movies, but also some very very bad ones. The deal with Peter Jackson and Halo is probably just a publicity move. Executive producer is a job that requires no day to day presence on the set and will in this case probably entail a weekly conference call with Jackson. It does mean Jackson is willing to attach his name to the film, so he must think it either has potential or they threw a lot of money at him.