Jeez, talk about advocating cutting off your nose to spite your face!
People like you (republicans, libertarians, and those who are just plain ignorant), who hold the census to its strict constitutional interperetation of "actual enumeration" do the US, and the world a disservice. Why, because a proper statistical sample of the population of the United States would be much more accurate than attempting to actually count every person. In fact, the census uses a statistically adjusted (survey) count for its official data. Except for the case of redistricting and federal funding, where they have been blocked by republican opposition, who recognize that they would lose lots of power if we actually took into account the millions of uncounted poor americans!
Furthermore, the detailed nature of the survey is what makes the US census the best source of social-science data in the world. You advocate destroying thousands of studies which provide wonderful insights into the way our world works.
stand up against science and poor people, answer only question #1!
How about on a tank? The DoD's study for the next gen MBT for the US army finds that a railgun is the best choice of armarment. In fact, it specifies a 5-barreled rail-gattling-gun. The kinetic energy achieved by the projectiles is estimated to be over twice that of the current 120-mm cannon-launched DU penetrators....
...considering that during the gulf war, it was commonplace for these projectiles to go completely through a T-72 tank, with enough heat to catastrophically ignite the air inside the vehicle, you would have to admit that 2x the kinetic energy in a projectile so fast that the first shot would be very, very likely to hit (and thus destroy) a target IS A USEFULL APPLICATION.
Hey wasn't there some prank of legend involving a manager-type at apple whose underlings thought it fitting to get a VW through his door and into his office?????
Umm...isn't the obvious problem the fact that humans face imminent threats of distruction from short-timescale threats such as nuclear weapons. A great theoretical exercise, I am sure, but who funded it anyways?????? A waste.
This would not be a problem seeing as these boats are envisioned as trans-oceanic vessels, operating in environments that already generate huge waves on a once-every-few seconds basis.
What's the big deal? I am sure 1 oil tanker accident does 1000s of times more damage than any fleet of "fast" ships does by just running....
Actually, I would consider the Sim City series to be a non-zero sum game. There is no way to "win" a game; the fun comes through effective management of your city. Of course, one might regard various things such as natural disasters destroying the entire city as "losing", but that depends on how you look at it.
...I mean, come on! Do you think throwing some networked PC's into a poor american public school is going to help? Have you ever been to a poor school? HUGE class size, not enough money, bad teachers, parents who cant afford to care for their kids cause the government cut off their welfare....how are some computers gonna help??
Hey, this reminds me of that research project at (stanford?) a few years ago where they hooked some rig up to a guy's head and his brainwaves moved the mouse around.
No telling if they ever figured out how to click (or distinguish between right/left click, mousewheel, 3rd button, etc), but imagine the frag potential....
We studied the risks involved with Nuclear Power plants in a technology & public policy class in college. As it turns out, given the frequency of accidents and the possibility of maintainance failiure, the chance of a catastrophic accident causing 1000s or 10s of 1000s of deaths is not low enough to call nukes "the safest"....
....not by a long shot. In fact, the risk, worked out per year, along with the associated cancers risk, was something along the lines of a 1 in 10^6 range. Well, the FDA and the EPA pretty much ban anything with this risk level (dioxin, PCB's, absbestos). So maybe it is a good thing we are not building nuclear plants!
Plus, the cost of nukes is so high, they will never ever ever be "efficient", at least in the economic sense.
I, for one, work in a place where we study electricity deregulation as enivronmental policy. Basically, the california power shortage is attributable to a number of factors, NONE OF WHICH ARE ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION.
The state decided to "de-regulate" the power industry. Unfortunately, they forgot to de-regulate the prices. That's right, they were forcing companies to supply electricity at a fixed price, whether it be too high or too low. Now, a couple of plants went down for boiler maintainance. This is a big, big deal and takes a while. So, as the demand for electricity was rising, the price was set at a constant level, thus, companies had no incentive to start planning ahead for the days (now) in which they would not have enough power (They could have contracted to buy from out-of-state).
THE LESSON: Don't "de-regulate" like California did (duh!). Other states, like Pennsylvania, have done it without problems. What did they do? They gradually removed regulation, step-by-step, rather than taking it away all at once. You can't expect an industry which has previously existed only under a regulated environment to adapt instantly.
AS FOR YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL ASSERTIONS, they are generally incorrect. Check out the DOE energy information agency website. (http://www.eia.doe.gov). They have done some really, really interesting research, including studies which have shown, when including the cost of pollution, that natural gas power plants, the type all over Cali, are THE LOWEST COST TYPE. Yeah, coal looks like its cheaper, but coal plants spew rediculous amounts of No2 into the environment.
The natural gas supply is not "drying up"; the distribution system is simply stretched. The same thing happened to gasoline production (and thus prices) this summer.
As for your political views, they are obviously uninformed, much like your general knowledge of the power industry or of environmental issues. How could the legislature in California vote to build more power plants if the industry has been privatized? Sounds to me like you just wanted to complain about democrats.
However, thank you for reinforcing my closely-held assertion that all conservatives are stupid, selfish, or both. Someday I will have to study that scientifically....until then...
If they are building "beowulf" computers, then why the heck would they want to build them around something as cost-inneffective as alphas? Why not use tbirds? Easier and cheaper, and more power for the $$$.
Hey, George Lucas has always made the Star Wars flicks for 6 year olds. Even though EP1 was a large, undercooked piece of tripe, little kids _loved_ it. My 7 year old bro saw it 4 times, no joke (and with him, every time, another unhappy adult). Too bad he thinks racial stereotyping is a framing technique.
Japan protects its domestic industries to a rediculous extent. Part of this is due to the political power of large corporations in Japan. You think lobbyists in the US have power!
Yes, in consumer electronics and automobiles, the Japanese have huge industries which pump out wonderful, wonderful products. In everything else, especially non-durables, the Japanese consumer pays a huge price for keeping a few obsolete jobs around. Have you ever tried buying fruit in Japan? Tasteless home-grown melon costs a small fortune. Rice is rediculously overpriced--yes, some consumers might prefer homegrown rice, but I bet a huge number of people would much prefer cheap rice from California.
Wouldn't it be better to allow the Japanese consumers to make the choice for themselves? I bet more than a few would love those stylish volkswagens--if they weren't priced out of the market, that is.
True, technology may not have advanced in a way that Kubrick and Clarke could predict. Who could--most of our current technological advances are highly dependent on multiple layers of technologies that were imagined at the time of 2001.
Take miniaturisation (sp?) and microbiology as an example. Both have progressed to points beyond what these two imagined in the 60's. Humans have come remarkably close to the omnipotent Monoliths in terms of shaping the development of our own and other species. But it would be incredibly difficult to predict that genetic engineering would evolve so quickly. Yes, Clarke and Kubrick predicted massivly powerful digital computers, but how could they predict rather obscure advances in biological theory that when combined with computers, allowed humans a rather powerful grasp over genetic code....
Take it easy on them. They made a much better prediction than most others did.
What if you were poor when you were a child...and never had access to a computer until coming to school. So do you think you would be a young sysadmin then?
Education may be unimportant to the extreme few who are lucky enough to be smart, talented, motivated and provided with advantages from birth (smart parents who provide for their kids, access to computers, books, musical instruments, etc.).
For the other 6 billion, education is and will always be utterly essential.
Hey maybe Saddam is trying to corner the world market on PS2's. With Bush and Powell in the Exexutive Branch we can have Bush-Saddam 2 Solid: the Ps2 war. To quench America's unending thirst for well-marketed yet suspiciously rare video game consoles, Bush sends us to war to "protect our freedom"...
...seriously, though, it looks like Saddam is yet another person to be suckered in by Sony's BS-marketing about the "graphics power" of the PS-2. I find it hard to believe that the guts of a PS 2 could make a "supercomputer" more cheaply than a Beowolf cluster of PC's.
"Applications for this system are potentially frightening," said an intelligence source. "One expert I spoke with estimated that an integrated bundle of 12-15 PlayStations could provide enough computer power to control an Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV -- a pilotless aircraft."
Yeah, and for that same $4,000 you could buy 2 PC's to controll 2 UAV's.
If you take me literally, yes, of course the statement that "nobody" rides the bus is wrong everywhere. Millions of people ride the bus every day.
However, controlling for factors such as barriers to car ownership (gas and purchase taxes), you will find that, statistically, the same people ride the bus in europe as in the US: those that cannot afford some other means of transit (subway, car, trolley). Granted, there is more of a social stigma in the US and Canada towards the bus, BUT, that does not make up for it. And dont give me some anecdotal evidence like "but i see lots of people on the bus when i go to London". Fuckoff.
Leave this US-centric bullshit aside. Zillions of cities all around the world use streetcars and have for a long, long time. Ever been to Europe?
Streetcars also face the same problem as all other non-dedicated right-of-way mass transit--traffic! Why do you think nobody rides the bus? Because the average speed of a bus is 12 mph.
Re:A crash is possible, but for different reasons
on
Gaming Crash up Ahead
·
· Score: 1
I find these figures hard, maybe even impossible to believe. If this were the case, we would only see completely vertically integrated game producers (Nintendo, SEGA). Otherwise, who would risk it? Are you saying that a huge, publicly held developer like EA makes a profit on 10% of its products? That means that these 10% of the products must make so much money that they can cover the rest of the company--why would they even bother developing other titles? Nope, we would see a marketplace with fewer and fewer, rather than more and more titles. Furthermore, no stockholder would stand for IRR's on these projects with such high risk. That would put the level of videogame developing risk on par with, say, copper speculation.
Iridiums are in geosynchronous orbit, that means hovering above a fixed spot on the planet. Otherwise they would not work. those satellites are in low-earth orbit, meaning that they are 1)garbage 2)spy satellites 3)other surveying (landsat-type) 4)something i didnt think of.
I for one will love any company that keeps great games like those on dreamcast or playstation coming. Nintendo has crap, all crap--how many games do i still play on n64? 1-perfect dark.
Slashdot Mirror
Jeez, talk about advocating cutting off your nose to spite your face!
People like you (republicans, libertarians, and those who are just plain ignorant), who hold the census to its strict constitutional interperetation of "actual enumeration" do the US, and the world a disservice. Why, because a proper statistical sample of the population of the United States would be much more accurate than attempting to actually count every person. In fact, the census uses a statistically adjusted (survey) count for its official data. Except for the case of redistricting and federal funding, where they have been blocked by republican opposition, who recognize that they would lose lots of power if we actually took into account the millions of uncounted poor americans!
Furthermore, the detailed nature of the survey is what makes the US census the best source of social-science data in the world. You advocate destroying thousands of studies which provide wonderful insights into the way our world works.
stand up against science and poor people, answer only question #1!
How about on a tank? The DoD's study for the next gen MBT for the US army finds that a railgun is the best choice of armarment. In fact, it specifies a 5-barreled rail-gattling-gun. The kinetic energy achieved by the projectiles is estimated to be over twice that of the current 120-mm cannon-launched DU penetrators....
...considering that during the gulf war, it was commonplace for these projectiles to go completely through a T-72 tank, with enough heat to catastrophically ignite the air inside the vehicle, you would have to admit that 2x the kinetic energy in a projectile so fast that the first shot would be very, very likely to hit (and thus destroy) a target IS A USEFULL APPLICATION.
Hey wasn't there some prank of legend involving a manager-type at apple whose underlings thought it fitting to get a VW through his door and into his office?????
Umm...isn't the obvious problem the fact that humans face imminent threats of distruction from short-timescale threats such as nuclear weapons. A great theoretical exercise, I am sure, but who funded it anyways?????? A waste.
This would not be a problem seeing as these boats are envisioned as trans-oceanic vessels, operating in environments that already generate huge waves on a once-every-few seconds basis.
What's the big deal? I am sure 1 oil tanker accident does 1000s of times more damage than any fleet of "fast" ships does by just running....
Actually, I would consider the Sim City series to be a non-zero sum game. There is no way to "win" a game; the fun comes through effective management of your city. Of course, one might regard various things such as natural disasters destroying the entire city as "losing", but that depends on how you look at it.
Kickass game.
...I mean, come on! Do you think throwing some networked PC's into a poor american public school is going to help? Have you ever been to a poor school? HUGE class size, not enough money, bad teachers, parents who cant afford to care for their kids cause the government cut off their welfare....how are some computers gonna help??
Hey, this reminds me of that research project at (stanford?) a few years ago where they hooked some rig up to a guy's head and his brainwaves moved the mouse around.
No telling if they ever figured out how to click (or distinguish between right/left click, mousewheel, 3rd button, etc), but imagine the frag potential....
We studied the risks involved with Nuclear Power plants in a technology & public policy class in college. As it turns out, given the frequency of accidents and the possibility of maintainance failiure, the chance of a catastrophic accident causing 1000s or 10s of 1000s of deaths is not low enough to call nukes "the safest"....
....not by a long shot. In fact, the risk, worked out per year, along with the associated cancers risk, was something along the lines of a 1 in 10^6 range. Well, the FDA and the EPA pretty much ban anything with this risk level (dioxin, PCB's, absbestos). So maybe it is a good thing we are not building nuclear plants!
Plus, the cost of nukes is so high, they will never ever ever be "efficient", at least in the economic sense.
I, for one, work in a place where we study electricity deregulation as enivronmental policy. Basically, the california power shortage is attributable to a number of factors, NONE OF WHICH ARE ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION.
The state decided to "de-regulate" the power industry. Unfortunately, they forgot to de-regulate the prices. That's right, they were forcing companies to supply electricity at a fixed price, whether it be too high or too low. Now, a couple of plants went down for boiler maintainance. This is a big, big deal and takes a while. So, as the demand for electricity was rising, the price was set at a constant level, thus, companies had no incentive to start planning ahead for the days (now) in which they would not have enough power (They could have contracted to buy from out-of-state).
THE LESSON: Don't "de-regulate" like California did (duh!). Other states, like Pennsylvania, have done it without problems. What did they do? They gradually removed regulation, step-by-step, rather than taking it away all at once. You can't expect an industry which has previously existed only under a regulated environment to adapt instantly.
AS FOR YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL ASSERTIONS, they are generally incorrect. Check out the DOE energy information agency website. (http://www.eia.doe.gov). They have done some really, really interesting research, including studies which have shown, when including the cost of pollution, that natural gas power plants, the type all over Cali, are THE LOWEST COST TYPE. Yeah, coal looks like its cheaper, but coal plants spew rediculous amounts of No2 into the environment.
The natural gas supply is not "drying up"; the distribution system is simply stretched. The same thing happened to gasoline production (and thus prices) this summer.
As for your political views, they are obviously uninformed, much like your general knowledge of the power industry or of environmental issues. How could the legislature in California vote to build more power plants if the industry has been privatized? Sounds to me like you just wanted to complain about democrats.
However, thank you for reinforcing my closely-held assertion that all conservatives are stupid, selfish, or both. Someday I will have to study that scientifically....until then...
EAT A DICK
Alphas==over-hyped, overrated, under-supported architecture.
If they are building "beowulf" computers, then why the heck would they want to build them around something as cost-inneffective as alphas? Why not use tbirds? Easier and cheaper, and more power for the $$$.
ZORK ZORK ZORK
Ask anyone who has ever MADE a computer game (not those who review, they're just idiots) and they will say "zork zork zork"
Hey, George Lucas has always made the Star Wars flicks for 6 year olds. Even though EP1 was a large, undercooked piece of tripe, little kids _loved_ it. My 7 year old bro saw it 4 times, no joke (and with him, every time, another unhappy adult). Too bad he thinks racial stereotyping is a framing technique.
How about:
Protectionism.
Japan protects its domestic industries to a rediculous extent. Part of this is due to the political power of large corporations in Japan. You think lobbyists in the US have power!
Yes, in consumer electronics and automobiles, the Japanese have huge industries which pump out wonderful, wonderful products. In everything else, especially non-durables, the Japanese consumer pays a huge price for keeping a few obsolete jobs around. Have you ever tried buying fruit in Japan? Tasteless home-grown melon costs a small fortune. Rice is rediculously overpriced--yes, some consumers might prefer homegrown rice, but I bet a huge number of people would much prefer cheap rice from California.
Wouldn't it be better to allow the Japanese consumers to make the choice for themselves? I bet more than a few would love those stylish volkswagens--if they weren't priced out of the market, that is.
True, technology may not have advanced in a way that Kubrick and Clarke could predict. Who could--most of our current technological advances are highly dependent on multiple layers of technologies that were imagined at the time of 2001.
Take miniaturisation (sp?) and microbiology as an example. Both have progressed to points beyond what these two imagined in the 60's. Humans have come remarkably close to the omnipotent Monoliths in terms of shaping the development of our own and other species. But it would be incredibly difficult to predict that genetic engineering would evolve so quickly. Yes, Clarke and Kubrick predicted massivly powerful digital computers, but how could they predict rather obscure advances in biological theory that when combined with computers, allowed humans a rather powerful grasp over genetic code....
Take it easy on them. They made a much better prediction than most others did.
Is education all about gaining income?
What if you were poor when you were a child...and never had access to a computer until coming to school. So do you think you would be a young sysadmin then?
Education may be unimportant to the extreme few who are lucky enough to be smart, talented, motivated and provided with advantages from birth (smart parents who provide for their kids, access to computers, books, musical instruments, etc.).
For the other 6 billion, education is and will always be utterly essential.
Hey maybe Saddam is trying to corner the world market on PS2's. With Bush and Powell in the Exexutive Branch we can have Bush-Saddam 2 Solid: the Ps2 war. To quench America's unending thirst for well-marketed yet suspiciously rare video game consoles, Bush sends us to war to "protect our freedom"...
...seriously, though, it looks like Saddam is yet another person to be suckered in by Sony's BS-marketing about the "graphics power" of the PS-2. I find it hard to believe that the guts of a PS 2 could make a "supercomputer" more cheaply than a Beowolf cluster of PC's.
"Applications for this system are potentially frightening," said an intelligence source. "One expert I spoke with estimated that an integrated bundle of 12-15 PlayStations could provide enough computer power to control an Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV -- a pilotless aircraft."
Yeah, and for that same $4,000 you could buy 2 PC's to controll 2 UAV's.
SF streetcars have dedicated right of way. And i love the vintage cars from other cities. esp. the "green hornet" from chicago.
If you take me literally, yes, of course the statement that "nobody" rides the bus is wrong everywhere. Millions of people ride the bus every day. However, controlling for factors such as barriers to car ownership (gas and purchase taxes), you will find that, statistically, the same people ride the bus in europe as in the US: those that cannot afford some other means of transit (subway, car, trolley). Granted, there is more of a social stigma in the US and Canada towards the bus, BUT, that does not make up for it. And dont give me some anecdotal evidence like "but i see lots of people on the bus when i go to London". Fuckoff.
Sucks. Come on, did you ever try to use it? It made a text editor and latex seem easy...
Leave this US-centric bullshit aside. Zillions of cities all around the world use streetcars and have for a long, long time. Ever been to Europe? Streetcars also face the same problem as all other non-dedicated right-of-way mass transit--traffic! Why do you think nobody rides the bus? Because the average speed of a bus is 12 mph.
I find these figures hard, maybe even impossible to believe. If this were the case, we would only see completely vertically integrated game producers (Nintendo, SEGA). Otherwise, who would risk it? Are you saying that a huge, publicly held developer like EA makes a profit on 10% of its products? That means that these 10% of the products must make so much money that they can cover the rest of the company--why would they even bother developing other titles? Nope, we would see a marketplace with fewer and fewer, rather than more and more titles. Furthermore, no stockholder would stand for IRR's on these projects with such high risk. That would put the level of videogame developing risk on par with, say, copper speculation.
Iridiums are in geosynchronous orbit, that means hovering above a fixed spot on the planet. Otherwise they would not work. those satellites are in low-earth orbit, meaning that they are 1)garbage 2)spy satellites 3)other surveying (landsat-type) 4)something i didnt think of.
I for one will love any company that keeps great games like those on dreamcast or playstation coming. Nintendo has crap, all crap--how many games do i still play on n64? 1-perfect dark.