Here in Germany, there are some factory jobs that can compete with the salary one would get as an engineer, but not many. And they tend to be skilled jobs, so it is not just a matter of "oh, I feel like doing manufacturing for a change", you usually have to show that you've successfully completed some form of vocational training. So the graduate who has never worked in a factory before might not be accepted for these jobs.
He could try for an unskilled job instead but the pay is much lower then. The Chinese situation seems pretty unique.
True, but not releasing the study casts even more doubts on its reliability. A study being paid for by someone who has an interest in a certain outcome is always suspect. Not releasing the details is almost a guarantee that the results are biased and the owner of the study wants to avoid public scrutiny..
That is, if they really did a study and it is not just a number someone pulled out of his ass.
TL:DR: Never trust a study where the methodology is not public.
The planned changes would bring Vendetta Online closer to EVE in features: Player-owned capital ships and stations are two things EVE has, as well as benefits for conquering territory. EVE also has pretty amazing graphics, which is something Vendetta Online could use a bit more of (and it is planned for the Kickstarter). Graphics are usually not the thing I look for first, but in case on Vendetta Online the gap to AAA games is pretty large.
What I really like is the twitch-based combat. A feature I always missed in EVE. Unfortunately, Vendetta Online does have its only server in Milwaukee, which makes the ping times somewhat long for players from Europe like me. When I tried Vendetta Online some years ago, I promptly got my ass handed to me in PvP. I think that was at least partly due to lag.
So far (in the time after year 2000), touch screens were usually on smartphones, tablets and lately some laptops. No need for horizontally extended arms there.
With the combination of desktop and 24" screen, the distance is larger and the problem will reappear. I also don't see ditching myself the desktop anytime soon.
Can you imagine an architect you can lay out blueprints on a large drafting table monitor? Where many people can stand around it?
I think I'd still prefer a beamer for that. Can provide an even larger image and be seen from the entire room. Also, at this size a touch screen might become unpractical again (or even more unpractical), as you may be too short to get to widgets near the ceiling of the room. Back to the mouse;-)
They pioneered the "walled garden" approach on devices that might otherwise have been more open platforms. I don't know a single Apple tablet or smartphone that does not have a locked bootloader and is restricted to getting its apps from Apples App Store. I admit I've overlooked the "classic" Mac desktops and laptops when writing my post, but otherwise I see only Apple products that are way too much under the control of the manufacturer.
Lately Microsoft seems eager to provide the same reasons for not buying their stuff, see Windows 8 RT. But so far, it is only one of many products by Microsoft. Also, they have a history of playing dirty with the competition, but they never abused their customers directly in the way Sony did.
I call it "by the church" when a) ordered or done by church officials and b) widespread enough that it appears to be church policy rather than individual crimes.
In that sense, the Catholic Church was responsible for much of the witch burning in Europe. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Early_Modern_Europe [wikipedia.org]. Things are a bit muddied by the fact that some of the bishops involved were also secular rulers. But according to Wikipedia, the religious aspect seems to have been the main motivation, so I'd count these as crimes of the Catholic Church. Also, they were encouraged by the pope, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summis_desiderantes_affectibus.
Some of us are aware of that and adjust our purchasing habits accordingly. In the case of Steam, I simply won't pay full price anymore for Steam games. I will pay maybe a quarter of the original retail price though. At that point, I'm willing to take the risk that Valve kills my account at some point.
Indeed. Sony is one of currently three companies I would not buy any digital equipment or software from (the other two are Apple and Activision Blizzard).
The rootkit on audio CDs and the deletion of Linux support from the PS3 are not forgotten. The patent in the article is only proof the thinking at Sony hasn't changed, it is not a new trend.
The graphics engine seems to be done, as there are some demo videos on the website of Frontier Development (http://elite.frontier.co.uk/). My impression is that the graphics quality does not quite reach that of an AAA game, but is good enough.
X3 player here. I think the X series is great but has its own engine limits. For instance, no procedural generation and weak AI. Also, some people on the modding forums claim that the architecture is a bit convoluted;-)
Egosoft (the development studio behind X3) has spent much of the time since X3 Terran Conflict on building a new engine for the successor to X3. Maybe that would be an interesting starting point - after the game is released and works well.
Intel also charges you extra for ECC (only in server processors and mainboards), while AMD supports it in their better desktop processors. You still have to check if the mainboard does support it, though.
A quick online price check shows that for 8 GByte DDR3 RAM (2 sticks), you might have to pay 20 Euros more for the ECC variety, compared to non-ECC from the same vendor. The more limited choice in mainboards might end up costing you cost another 10-20 Euros, so let's say +40 Euros to get your AMD PC with ECC Ram.
On the Intel side, it is more like +50 Euros for a small Xeon instead of a matching i5, +100 Euros for an ECC-capable board and the same +20 for the RAM as with AMD. That makes about +170 Euros to get an Intel with ECC RAM, and was the main reason why my current PC is still an AMD...
For me, "good enough" means Half Life 2 graphics quality, which even an older card can handle. For instance, the Nvidia 8600 GT in my older, secondary PC from 2007:-)
They have recently dropped support for anything up to the Radeon HD 4xxx. Which is not that old.
On the other hand, according to various articles on http://www.phoronix.com/ the open source Radeon drivers are making great progress. One drawback is that you may have to tinker with your Linux installation to get all of that: You will need the very latest source code, which probably means recompiling mesa and maybe the kernel;-)
The situation is similar in Germany, where a lot of PV power plant were built in times of high guaranteed prices per kWh. That price is guaranteed for 20 years from initial operation and depends on the year in which the plant was started. Now it is a matter of keeping those promises or losing face.
For new plants those prices have been reduced a lot to reflect the lower panel prices. New PV power plants get prices between 12 and 17 Euro-Cent/kWh, and there is an ongoing degression. So the problem will solve itself over time, but those 20 year promises take their toll.
But close enough. It think we can safely assume most of the damage is in cleanup and paying compensation claims. According to another source I found in the meantime, Tepco "may have to pay more than 10 trillion yen to decontaminate areas around the plant and compensate those affected by the disaster": http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-07/fukushima-137-billion-cost-has-tepco-seeking-more-aid.html And for that nuclear plant operators should be obliged to have adequate insurance coverage, like any car owner needs to have liability insurance.
The question is, how much is adequate? The 2.5 billion Euros in current German law are clearly not. Fukushima indicates $100 Billion may not be enough. Other estimates are even higher, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9608262. But even if legislators settle for $100 Billion in mandatory coverage, nuclear power will become a lot less attractive.
Mostly true, but I doubt the part about "building a few more nuclear plants". Those get a lot of hidden subsidies too, like grossly inadequate compulsory insurance for nuclear power plants and the state bearing most of the risks. For instance, the financial cost from the Fukushima accident may exceed 100 billion dollars(1). But nuclear plant operators in Germany only need to insure a coverage of 2.5 billion euros. A mandatory coverage that matches disasters like Fukushima would make nuclear power a lot more expensive.
In "grid parity", the yield of PV is an average value where rainy days are already factored in. So you might calculate with 1000 kWh of energy per year from a panel with 1kW peak output, not 12*365 = 4380 kWh as in a naive calculation where you have optimal yield throughout the year. But even with only the 1000 kWh, prices of PV are getting into the ballpark of grid parity.
What is not included is the cost of bridging nights and rainy days. For that you need plenty of batteries or conventional powerplants running part-time. Which destroys grid parity pretty thoroughly at current prices.
True, especially the part about batteries. But then again, the solar panels won't need gasoline.
Overall, solar panes as emergency power supply are not cost efficient. But as a long term investment to reduce your utility bill, they may be worthwhile. In the case of my parents' house (southern Germany, pretty high electricity prices of ~0.25 Euros/kWh), I think a small photovoltaic installation might amortize itself within a few years.
Keeping stuff older than maybe three generations back becomes simply pointless, as it cannot run most current software anyway. Unless you're talking about specialized hardware for industrial applications. But then the software is likely to be ten years old anyway and might run best on whatever OS it came with;-)
I'm a bit of a pack rat myself, but last year I threw out a working (probably, had not used it in years) Pentium 133 complete with board and memory. Along with the ISA cards I still had lying around.
For the purposes a 386 board is good for in 2012, you're probably better off with an Atom or Bobcat. First generation models you might get a good bargain on. Those will still run rings around anything up to the Pentium II and use less energy doing so (a late - model Pentium III may still be able to compete).
I would not sue for $50 either, but I see Valve's recent TOS change as positioning themselves so they can screw people with less risk of a lawsuit.
As a result, I'm more reluctant than ever of buying games on Steam, and it shows in the prices I'm willing to pay. Prior to the TOS change, I might have bought a Steam game for half of the price a DRM-free version, but not for more. Now it is 25%;-)
If Valve goes bust, I suspect exactly nothing would happen for most of the games using Steam as DRM.
Some assets (games) that are still considered valuable would be purchased and eventually re-released by their new owners. The rest would just become useless.
Slashdot Mirror
Here in Germany, there are some factory jobs that can compete with the salary one would get as an engineer, but not many.
And they tend to be skilled jobs, so it is not just a matter of "oh, I feel like doing manufacturing for a change", you usually have to show that you've successfully completed some form of vocational training. So the graduate who has never worked in a factory before might not be accepted for these jobs.
He could try for an unskilled job instead but the pay is much lower then. The Chinese situation seems pretty unique.
True, but not releasing the study casts even more doubts on its reliability. A study being paid for by someone who has an interest in a certain outcome is always suspect. Not releasing the details is almost a guarantee that the results are biased and the owner of the study wants to avoid public scrutiny..
That is, if they really did a study and it is not just a number someone pulled out of his ass.
TL:DR:
Never trust a study where the methodology is not public.
The planned changes would bring Vendetta Online closer to EVE in features:
Player-owned capital ships and stations are two things EVE has, as well as benefits for conquering territory.
EVE also has pretty amazing graphics, which is something Vendetta Online could use a bit more of (and it is planned for the Kickstarter). Graphics are usually not the thing I look for first, but in case on Vendetta Online the gap to AAA games is pretty large.
What I really like is the twitch-based combat. A feature I always missed in EVE. Unfortunately, Vendetta Online does have its only server in Milwaukee, which makes the ping times somewhat long for players from Europe like me. When I tried Vendetta Online some years ago, I promptly got my ass handed to me in PvP. I think that was at least partly due to lag.
So far (in the time after year 2000), touch screens were usually on smartphones, tablets and lately some laptops. No need for horizontally extended arms there.
With the combination of desktop and 24" screen, the distance is larger and the problem will reappear. I also don't see ditching myself the desktop anytime soon.
Can you imagine an architect you can lay out blueprints on a large drafting table monitor? Where many people can stand around it?
I think I'd still prefer a beamer for that. Can provide an even larger image and be seen from the entire room. ;-)
Also, at this size a touch screen might become unpractical again (or even more unpractical), as you may be too short to get to widgets near the ceiling of the room. Back to the mouse
They pioneered the "walled garden" approach on devices that might otherwise have been more open platforms. I don't know a single Apple tablet or smartphone that does not have a locked bootloader and is restricted to getting its apps from Apples App Store. I admit I've overlooked the "classic" Mac desktops and laptops when writing my post, but otherwise I see only Apple products that are way too much under the control of the manufacturer.
Lately Microsoft seems eager to provide the same reasons for not buying their stuff, see Windows 8 RT. But so far, it is only one of many products by Microsoft. Also, they have a history of playing dirty with the competition, but they never abused their customers directly in the way Sony did.
I call it "by the church" when a) ordered or done by church officials and b) widespread enough that it appears to be church policy rather than individual crimes.
In that sense, the Catholic Church was responsible for much of the witch burning in Europe. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Early_Modern_Europe [wikipedia.org]. Things are a bit muddied by the fact that some of the bishops involved were also secular rulers. But according to Wikipedia, the religious aspect seems to have been the main motivation, so I'd count these as crimes of the Catholic Church. Also, they were encouraged by the pope, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summis_desiderantes_affectibus.
Some of us are aware of that and adjust our purchasing habits accordingly.
In the case of Steam, I simply won't pay full price anymore for Steam games. I will pay maybe a quarter of the original retail price though. At that point, I'm willing to take the risk that Valve kills my account at some point.
Indeed. Sony is one of currently three companies I would not buy any digital equipment or software from (the other two are Apple and Activision Blizzard).
The rootkit on audio CDs and the deletion of Linux support from the PS3 are not forgotten. The patent in the article is only proof the thinking at Sony hasn't changed, it is not a new trend.
The graphics engine seems to be done, as there are some demo videos on the website of Frontier Development (http://elite.frontier.co.uk/). My impression is that the graphics quality does not quite reach that of an AAA game, but is good enough.
X3 player here. I think the X series is great but has its own engine limits. For instance, no procedural generation and weak AI. Also, some people on the modding forums claim that the architecture is a bit convoluted ;-)
Egosoft (the development studio behind X3) has spent much of the time since X3 Terran Conflict on building a new engine for the successor to X3. Maybe that would be an interesting starting point - after the game is released and works well.
Intel also charges you extra for ECC (only in server processors and mainboards), while AMD supports it in their better desktop processors. You still have to check if the mainboard does support it, though.
A quick online price check shows that for 8 GByte DDR3 RAM (2 sticks), you might have to pay 20 Euros more for the ECC variety, compared to non-ECC from the same vendor. The more limited choice in mainboards might end up costing you cost another 10-20 Euros, so let's say +40 Euros to get your AMD PC with ECC Ram.
On the Intel side, it is more like +50 Euros for a small Xeon instead of a matching i5, +100 Euros for an ECC-capable board and the same +20 for the RAM as with AMD. That makes about +170 Euros to get an Intel with ECC RAM, and was the main reason why my current PC is still an AMD...
Matter of taste.
For me, "good enough" means Half Life 2 graphics quality, which even an older card can handle. For instance, the Nvidia 8600 GT in my older, secondary PC from 2007 :-)
They have recently dropped support for anything up to the Radeon HD 4xxx. Which is not that old.
On the other hand, according to various articles on http://www.phoronix.com/ the open source Radeon drivers are making great progress. One drawback is that you may have to tinker with your Linux installation to get all of that: ;-)
You will need the very latest source code, which probably means recompiling mesa and maybe the kernel
The situation is similar in Germany, where a lot of PV power plant were built in times of high guaranteed prices per kWh. That price is guaranteed for 20 years from initial operation and depends on the year in which the plant was started. Now it is a matter of keeping those promises or losing face.
For new plants those prices have been reduced a lot to reflect the lower panel prices. New PV power plants get prices between 12 and 17 Euro-Cent/kWh, and there is an ongoing degression. So the problem will solve itself over time, but those 20 year promises take their toll.
But close enough. It think we can safely assume most of the damage is in cleanup and paying compensation claims. According to another source I found in the meantime, Tepco "may have to pay more than 10 trillion yen to decontaminate areas around the plant and compensate those affected by the disaster":
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-07/fukushima-137-billion-cost-has-tepco-seeking-more-aid.html
And for that nuclear plant operators should be obliged to have adequate insurance coverage, like any car owner needs to have liability insurance.
The question is, how much is adequate? The 2.5 billion Euros in current German law are clearly not. Fukushima indicates $100 Billion may not be enough. Other estimates are even higher, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9608262. But even if legislators settle for $100 Billion in mandatory coverage, nuclear power will become a lot less attractive.
Mostly true, but I doubt the part about "building a few more nuclear plants". Those get a lot of hidden subsidies too, like grossly inadequate compulsory insurance for nuclear power plants and the state bearing most of the risks.
For instance, the financial cost from the Fukushima accident may exceed 100 billion dollars(1). But nuclear plant operators in Germany only need to insure a coverage of 2.5 billion euros. A mandatory coverage that matches disasters like Fukushima would make nuclear power a lot more expensive.
(1): http://rt.com/business/news/tepco-fukushima-costs-double-158/.
Partly correct.
In "grid parity", the yield of PV is an average value where rainy days are already factored in. So you might calculate with 1000 kWh of energy per year from a panel with 1kW peak output, not 12*365 = 4380 kWh as in a naive calculation where you have optimal yield throughout the year. But even with only the 1000 kWh, prices of PV are getting into the ballpark of grid parity.
What is not included is the cost of bridging nights and rainy days. For that you need plenty of batteries or conventional powerplants running part-time. Which destroys grid parity pretty thoroughly at current prices.
True, especially the part about batteries. But then again, the solar panels won't need gasoline.
Overall, solar panes as emergency power supply are not cost efficient. But as a long term investment to reduce your utility bill, they may be worthwhile. In the case of my parents' house (southern Germany, pretty high electricity prices of ~0.25 Euros/kWh), I think a small photovoltaic installation might amortize itself within a few years.
Very much agreed.
Keeping stuff older than maybe three generations back becomes simply pointless, as it cannot run most current software anyway. Unless you're talking about specialized hardware for industrial applications. But then the software is likely to be ten years old anyway and might run best on whatever OS it came with ;-)
I'm a bit of a pack rat myself, but last year I threw out a working (probably, had not used it in years) Pentium 133 complete with board and memory. Along with the ISA cards I still had lying around.
For the purposes a 386 board is good for in 2012, you're probably better off with an Atom or Bobcat. First generation models you might get a good bargain on. Those will still run rings around anything up to the Pentium II and use less energy doing so (a late - model Pentium III may still be able to compete).
See this article: http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/05/09/1514235/more-fake-journals-from-elsevier. Those guys have not much credibility left ;-)
That only proves that existing religions are flawed. God could still exist. Then again, he might not. In short, I agree with GP ;-)
I would not sue for $50 either, but I see Valve's recent TOS change as positioning themselves so they can screw people with less risk of a lawsuit.
As a result, I'm more reluctant than ever of buying games on Steam, and it shows in the prices I'm willing to pay. Prior to the TOS change, I might have bought a Steam game for half of the price a DRM-free version, but not for more. Now it is 25% ;-)
If Valve goes bust, I suspect exactly nothing would happen for most of the games using Steam as DRM.
Some assets (games) that are still considered valuable would be purchased and eventually re-released by their new owners. The rest would just become useless.
The same goes for users willingly buying games with online DRM such as Steam or Origin (the EA DRM system). That's also asking to be fucked over.