Although Wiktionary has allowed the use of "foil" to describe transparencies, Webster still hasn't allowed that usage of the word. And neither of them allow "foil" to be used in the manner that you seem to think - to describe any kind of thin plastic film in general.
It used to be foils were always made of metal, as reflected in those definitions. Times change. Also, the fact that you say "Webster still hasn't allowed..." and "neither of them allow" means you don't actually understand what a dictionary's function is. It documents how words are used. It does not now and never has had the power to dictate how they are used. The fact that Webster does not document this particular usage is, if the usage is becoming more popular, a failure in the dictionary to keep up to date it its function: to document how words are used.
glad to see that slashdot is 100% on board with the media's general nuclear hysteria
[I don't think I need to explain why "nearing chernobyl levels" is a ridiculous description...]
Nope, no need to explain at all. If you're against any presentation of the facts that might be viewed negatively, even if it's factually accurate, you're certainly going to object to this. People should not be given the facts if they might be alarmed by them, amirite?
The amounts being released, he says, are "entirely consistent" with the relatively low amounts of caesium and iodine being measured in soil, plants and water in Japan, because so much has blown out to sea. The amounts crossing the Pacific to places like Sacramento are vanishingly small – they were detected there because the CTBT network is designed to sniff out the tiniest traces.
"Relatively low amounts" in Japan. "Vanishingly small" amounts elsewhere. Yeah, they're really sensationally hyping this one up./sarcasm
I don't doubt the claim, I do doubt the presentation. Have some respect.
So you think the claim is true, but it should not have been presented? Reporting simple facts now is sensationalism? They should have had enough respect to simply not report it? (No doubt you'll claim they could have been presented in a less sensational manner, which is utterly ridiculous considering, but whatever. Clearly any reporting of these facts at all would be considered sensationalist by you.)
If there were true aliens among us (microscopic organisms that did not use DNA for genetics), the Venter approach would not see them.
Of course not. Nor is it what they were looking for, nor is it what is being claimed. But thanks for the complete non sequitur.
I have a cookbook that explains how to bake an apple pie. This technique is also completely useless for finding microscopic organisms that don't use DNA. But it makes great tasting pie nonetheless. Criticizing it for failing to find non-DNA based life forms, but merely making great tasting pie, is a special kind of stupid...
I think that would have been during the Pertwee era or maybe Tom Baker. (Both of whom made better Drs than the current one.)
Have you watched them recently? I have fond childhood memories of Tom Baker, but I rewatched some recently and... um... let's just say my judgment has become more discerning in recent years. Matt Smith is no David Tennant, but he's actually quite a bit better than Tom Baker.
Not unless you drill down directly over a mantle plume. That's not something you're likely to do accidentally, given that mantle plumes are fairly easy to identify due to the proliferation of naturally occurring volcanoes above them.
... as weapons of mass destruction? Why invade Iraq if you can just make a few volcanoes pop up where ya needs 'em?
So... you think it might be too difficult to invade, but you think you can manage to send a bunch of engineers with heavy machinery in to the foreign country and have them drill a few hole, and no one will notice or stop them during the months or years it takes them? xD
Grey goo isn't really a credible threat either. Somehow you start talking nanotechnology and people imagine magical machines capable of operating and replicating without regard to basic principles of conservation of energy and so on. Self-replicating machines will quickly bump into the same limits that naturally occuring self-replicating life forms do, and unlike machines we design, things like bacteria have no interest in limiting themselves -- they'd happily become the grey goo that takes over the planet if they could. But they don't, because it's not realistically possible.
If it was that easy to split the planet in half, or ignite the atmosphere, or whatever, it would have happened long before we came along.
Now, a genetically engineered virus or something might have some potential here... but really, there's no reason to think even that's realistically possible. I mean, a deadly virus is certainly possible, but one that entirely destroys the species is highly unlikely. Even the most virulent plagues in history have never even made the halfway mark. A 100% kill is absurdly unlikely. One that kills billions, certainly within the realm of possibility, but one that kills everyone isn't really, not even if it was specifically designed to do so by nihilistic terrorists or something. As an accidental discovery, much less likely still.
I'd prefer a mmorpg with a truly dynamic world, not a circus fair ride.
Me too. What's what I find lacking about WoW -- it's not a dynamic world at all. No matter what you do, the world never really changes. The same foes are still there menacing the same caravan that never seems to make it to its destination, etc. They've using phasing here and there to try to combat that, but they don't do it nearly enough. GW2 has a very interesting system to make the world truly dynamic. I can't wait to see it in action...
...it won't happen over night. It will be a very long and slow process, requiring tons of work and patience from the competitor.
Indeed. There's a reason why there's a "2" at the end of "Guild Wars 2". ArenaNet didn't spring up overnight. They delivered a product that was superior to WoW in just about every conceivable way back 2005, but with one significant issue: it wasn't really an MMORPG. WoW had just launched months before, BTW, so they weren't looking at making a WoW killer -- there was nothing to be slain, they were just trying to make a great game, and they succeeded. Ultimately, though, it was no more an MMORPG than Diablo II Battlenet realms were an MMORPG -- sure you could chat with a lot of people, but all the actual gameplay happened in 8 person instances. Better interface, better graphics, better gameplay, better questing, more interesting and fun combat, HUGELY better PvP, but, at the end of the day, not really even competition for WoW since it wasn't really an MMORPG, lacking a persistent world.
Guild Wars 2 is ArenaNet's first real attempt to go after the MMORPG market, but it's been a very long and slow process to be sure, many years of thought and development into bringing everything that makes Guild Wars a great game into a real MMORPG without losing what made Guild Wars so much better.
Either you have completely different ideas of what the word 'auto-hit' implies than I do, or I didn't make my point particularly clear.
You said...
Might this be the MMO that does away with standing right before the enemy, slashing your ten foot two-handed sword diagonally and freaking missing.
Guild Wars does precisely that. You never miss unless your opponent uses some skill to counter your attack. Failing that, you simply cannot miss -- your hit chance is 100%.
If you have an Ipod, throw it out. The cheapest MP3 player they sell at Walmart will be superior in every way, I guarantee it. Stop drinking the coolaid, get away from apple... you'll be much happier.
I went through four different MP3 players before settling on the iPod. The most expensive player they sell at Walmart is still inferior in every way that actually matters. The only thing I regret at this point is the money I wasted on the other crap, rather than doing the smart thing and buying an iPod in the first place. You get what you pay for...
Intel is obligated to continue developing Itanium, or HP sues them. Itanium isn't going anywhere, and Oracle is spreading FUD.
I assume you misspoke and meant Intel is obligated to continue producing Itanium (and if so, no doubt the contract specifies a minimum number of units HP has to order each year to uphold their end of the deal, or the agreement is void).
A contractual obligation to continue developing the product would be so monumentally stupid for both parties, neither would waste the time to draft, much less sign, such a deal. If it doesn't specify features or performance requirements to be met by particular dates or the like, it's worthless paper to HP, since Intel could just assign one developer to look at the design for bugfixes and improvements one hour each month and uphold their end. And there's no way in hell Intel would sign one that did contain specifics on future processor features by specified future dates.
The Free Market *WOULD* solve all these problems, if it weren't for all that pesky government intervention.
Absolutely false. The problem here was a lack of standards in the completely unregulated market that existed at the time.
There are few activities so strongly regulated anywhere as the electric power industry.
There's a reason for this. It's to avoid the kind of problems that an unregulated system would result in, such as happened in Japan in the late 1800s.
Had Free Market forces prevailed in Japan there would exist many interconnection points between the 50hz and 60hz zones. After all, what good is a market if you are unable to buy and sell stuff?
Nope. You can buy and sell stuff much more cheaply within your compatible zone.
The problem in Japan is not the Free Market, but the fact that the industry was divided in two segments that weren't allowed to trade their product freely among themselves.
They're are allowed to do so. The reason they rarely ever do is because it costs too much, not because of any government regulations preventing it. Market forces ensure continued segmentation in this case.
Hmm. You're right, if you read the label carefully, you'll find it only means exactly what it says. It's not made "bogus" just because you had some weird idea that it meant something other than exactly what it says when apparently you were hoping it meant something else entirely. Perhaps I'm weird, but I really only expect "made entirely from strawberries" to mean "made entirely from strawberries". I don't expect other phrases to mean that. Even "all natural" wouldn't mean "made entirely from strawberries", it would merely mean made from nothing artificial. Silly me, I expect words to actually mean what they mean, and am not at all surprised when I found out they only meant what they said and didn't mean something entirely different.
True. It's just made from silica aka quartz sand, the most common type of sand found inland on continents, or on coasts except in the tropics. So, not any random sand, true. Just the most common and most abundant type.
If Wikipedia and its current admins had been around in 1890, they'd have deleted the entry for Vincent Van Gogh.
Encyclopedias have to restrict themselves due to their medium. They would love to be repositories of all knowledge if they could, but that's just not possible, it would take too much paper. Wikipedia has the potential to become what traditional encyclopedias can only aspire to be -- but they've decided instead to imitate as if it were a virtue what encyclopedias do out of unfortunate necessity. They've basically decided to self-limit themselves to make sure they don't transcend the limitations of their paper relatives, and for some reason consider themselves better off for making sure they are no better.
Studying history, it's often frustrating to go over what people wrote centuries before, because they often fail to note precisely what you're most interested in finding out. History shows people are extremely poor at determining what's actually worth noting at the time. The best service that could ever be provided to the future would be to try as hard as possible to note as much as possible. The catch, of course, is to keep from drowning the information in noise, but the answer to that is organization and search tools, not limiting the data. No one is going to miss the information they're looking for because a page for Old Man Murray is on the site, and if there ever were so many similar entries that this was at all a danger, an index page of "notable" writers would clear up the problem lickety-split.
They should be working on how to organize information to make sure whatever the current generation finds most notable is most easy to find, not on limiting information to what history tells us will inevitably be a large number of very poor decisions on what's actually worth recording.
Everytime I read one of these "studies" that "shows" stuff, I can't help but think that the researcher is a press whore or is just trying to get more funding by throwing out a ridiculously convoluted "theory" to explain a simple observation. After all, the "people get stressed out when they're late for work" hypothesis doesn't get you as many grants.
Every time I read the "opinion" of some "poster" on a web "forum" who "abuses" quotation marks "extensively", I naturally expect to see some crazy conspiracy "theory" about the "motives" of researchers.
Slashdot Mirror
Although Wiktionary has allowed the use of "foil" to describe transparencies, Webster still hasn't allowed that usage of the word. And neither of them allow "foil" to be used in the manner that you seem to think - to describe any kind of thin plastic film in general.
It used to be foils were always made of metal, as reflected in those definitions. Times change. Also, the fact that you say "Webster still hasn't allowed..." and "neither of them allow" means you don't actually understand what a dictionary's function is. It documents how words are used. It does not now and never has had the power to dictate how they are used. The fact that Webster does not document this particular usage is, if the usage is becoming more popular, a failure in the dictionary to keep up to date it its function: to document how words are used.
glad to see that slashdot is 100% on board with the media's general nuclear hysteria [I don't think I need to explain why "nearing chernobyl levels" is a ridiculous description...]
Nope, no need to explain at all. If you're against any presentation of the facts that might be viewed negatively, even if it's factually accurate, you're certainly going to object to this. People should not be given the facts if they might be alarmed by them, amirite?
From TFA:
The amounts being released, he says, are "entirely consistent" with the relatively low amounts of caesium and iodine being measured in soil, plants and water in Japan, because so much has blown out to sea. The amounts crossing the Pacific to places like Sacramento are vanishingly small – they were detected there because the CTBT network is designed to sniff out the tiniest traces.
"Relatively low amounts" in Japan. "Vanishingly small" amounts elsewhere. Yeah, they're really sensationally hyping this one up. /sarcasm
I don't doubt the claim, I do doubt the presentation. Have some respect.
So you think the claim is true, but it should not have been presented? Reporting simple facts now is sensationalism? They should have had enough respect to simply not report it? (No doubt you'll claim they could have been presented in a less sensational manner, which is utterly ridiculous considering, but whatever. Clearly any reporting of these facts at all would be considered sensationalist by you.)
And the "something" that just doesn't work is Slashdot fact-checking.
False. That's like claiming the wings on your car don't work when your car doesn't actually have wings.
If there were true aliens among us (microscopic organisms that did not use DNA for genetics), the Venter approach would not see them.
Of course not. Nor is it what they were looking for, nor is it what is being claimed. But thanks for the complete non sequitur.
I have a cookbook that explains how to bake an apple pie. This technique is also completely useless for finding microscopic organisms that don't use DNA. But it makes great tasting pie nonetheless. Criticizing it for failing to find non-DNA based life forms, but merely making great tasting pie, is a special kind of stupid...
I think that would have been during the Pertwee era or maybe Tom Baker. (Both of whom made better Drs than the current one.)
Have you watched them recently? I have fond childhood memories of Tom Baker, but I rewatched some recently and... um... let's just say my judgment has become more discerning in recent years. Matt Smith is no David Tennant, but he's actually quite a bit better than Tom Baker.
They can just drill 500 meters into a volcano. Much easier.
Or they can get in their kids sandbox. Even easier still. However, neither of these things will tell them anything about the Earth's mantle.
Not unless you drill down directly over a mantle plume. That's not something you're likely to do accidentally, given that mantle plumes are fairly easy to identify due to the proliferation of naturally occurring volcanoes above them.
The same part as Final that Fantasy doesn't understand?
I remember laughing my ass off first time I saw "Final Fantasy II" in the store...
... as weapons of mass destruction? Why invade Iraq if you can just make a few volcanoes pop up where ya needs 'em?
So... you think it might be too difficult to invade, but you think you can manage to send a bunch of engineers with heavy machinery in to the foreign country and have them drill a few hole, and no one will notice or stop them during the months or years it takes them? xD
Grey goo isn't really a credible threat either. Somehow you start talking nanotechnology and people imagine magical machines capable of operating and replicating without regard to basic principles of conservation of energy and so on. Self-replicating machines will quickly bump into the same limits that naturally occuring self-replicating life forms do, and unlike machines we design, things like bacteria have no interest in limiting themselves -- they'd happily become the grey goo that takes over the planet if they could. But they don't, because it's not realistically possible.
If it was that easy to split the planet in half, or ignite the atmosphere, or whatever, it would have happened long before we came along.
Now, a genetically engineered virus or something might have some potential here... but really, there's no reason to think even that's realistically possible. I mean, a deadly virus is certainly possible, but one that entirely destroys the species is highly unlikely. Even the most virulent plagues in history have never even made the halfway mark. A 100% kill is absurdly unlikely. One that kills billions, certainly within the realm of possibility, but one that kills everyone isn't really, not even if it was specifically designed to do so by nihilistic terrorists or something. As an accidental discovery, much less likely still.
I'd prefer a mmorpg with a truly dynamic world, not a circus fair ride.
Me too. What's what I find lacking about WoW -- it's not a dynamic world at all. No matter what you do, the world never really changes. The same foes are still there menacing the same caravan that never seems to make it to its destination, etc. They've using phasing here and there to try to combat that, but they don't do it nearly enough. GW2 has a very interesting system to make the world truly dynamic. I can't wait to see it in action...
...it won't happen over night. It will be a very long and slow process, requiring tons of work and patience from the competitor.
Indeed. There's a reason why there's a "2" at the end of "Guild Wars 2". ArenaNet didn't spring up overnight. They delivered a product that was superior to WoW in just about every conceivable way back 2005, but with one significant issue: it wasn't really an MMORPG. WoW had just launched months before, BTW, so they weren't looking at making a WoW killer -- there was nothing to be slain, they were just trying to make a great game, and they succeeded. Ultimately, though, it was no more an MMORPG than Diablo II Battlenet realms were an MMORPG -- sure you could chat with a lot of people, but all the actual gameplay happened in 8 person instances. Better interface, better graphics, better gameplay, better questing, more interesting and fun combat, HUGELY better PvP, but, at the end of the day, not really even competition for WoW since it wasn't really an MMORPG, lacking a persistent world.
Guild Wars 2 is ArenaNet's first real attempt to go after the MMORPG market, but it's been a very long and slow process to be sure, many years of thought and development into bringing everything that makes Guild Wars a great game into a real MMORPG without losing what made Guild Wars so much better.
Either you have completely different ideas of what the word 'auto-hit' implies than I do, or I didn't make my point particularly clear.
You said...
Might this be the MMO that does away with standing right before the enemy, slashing your ten foot two-handed sword diagonally and freaking missing.
Guild Wars does precisely that. You never miss unless your opponent uses some skill to counter your attack. Failing that, you simply cannot miss -- your hit chance is 100%.
If you have an Ipod, throw it out. The cheapest MP3 player they sell at Walmart will be superior in every way, I guarantee it. Stop drinking the coolaid, get away from apple... you'll be much happier.
I went through four different MP3 players before settling on the iPod. The most expensive player they sell at Walmart is still inferior in every way that actually matters. The only thing I regret at this point is the money I wasted on the other crap, rather than doing the smart thing and buying an iPod in the first place. You get what you pay for...
Intel is obligated to continue developing Itanium, or HP sues them. Itanium isn't going anywhere, and Oracle is spreading FUD.
I assume you misspoke and meant Intel is obligated to continue producing Itanium (and if so, no doubt the contract specifies a minimum number of units HP has to order each year to uphold their end of the deal, or the agreement is void).
A contractual obligation to continue developing the product would be so monumentally stupid for both parties, neither would waste the time to draft, much less sign, such a deal. If it doesn't specify features or performance requirements to be met by particular dates or the like, it's worthless paper to HP, since Intel could just assign one developer to look at the design for bugfixes and improvements one hour each month and uphold their end. And there's no way in hell Intel would sign one that did contain specifics on future processor features by specified future dates.
The Free Market *WOULD* solve all these problems, if it weren't for all that pesky government intervention.
Absolutely false. The problem here was a lack of standards in the completely unregulated market that existed at the time.
There are few activities so strongly regulated anywhere as the electric power industry.
There's a reason for this. It's to avoid the kind of problems that an unregulated system would result in, such as happened in Japan in the late 1800s.
Had Free Market forces prevailed in Japan there would exist many interconnection points between the 50hz and 60hz zones. After all, what good is a market if you are unable to buy and sell stuff?
Nope. You can buy and sell stuff much more cheaply within your compatible zone.
The problem in Japan is not the Free Market, but the fact that the industry was divided in two segments that weren't allowed to trade their product freely among themselves.
They're are allowed to do so. The reason they rarely ever do is because it costs too much, not because of any government regulations preventing it. Market forces ensure continued segmentation in this case.
Hmm. You're right, if you read the label carefully, you'll find it only means exactly what it says. It's not made "bogus" just because you had some weird idea that it meant something other than exactly what it says when apparently you were hoping it meant something else entirely. Perhaps I'm weird, but I really only expect "made entirely from strawberries" to mean "made entirely from strawberries". I don't expect other phrases to mean that. Even "all natural" wouldn't mean "made entirely from strawberries", it would merely mean made from nothing artificial. Silly me, I expect words to actually mean what they mean, and am not at all surprised when I found out they only meant what they said and didn't mean something entirely different.
Glass isn't made from just any random sand.
True. It's just made from silica aka quartz sand, the most common type of sand found inland on continents, or on coasts except in the tropics. So, not any random sand, true. Just the most common and most abundant type.
...explosions per se are not anything to be particularly concerned about...
o.O
I'm seeing a ton of uninformed bullshit from both sides...
Welcome to /.! [notes user id] Oh, wait...
If Wikipedia and its current admins had been around in 1890, they'd have deleted the entry for Vincent Van Gogh.
Encyclopedias have to restrict themselves due to their medium. They would love to be repositories of all knowledge if they could, but that's just not possible, it would take too much paper. Wikipedia has the potential to become what traditional encyclopedias can only aspire to be -- but they've decided instead to imitate as if it were a virtue what encyclopedias do out of unfortunate necessity. They've basically decided to self-limit themselves to make sure they don't transcend the limitations of their paper relatives, and for some reason consider themselves better off for making sure they are no better.
Studying history, it's often frustrating to go over what people wrote centuries before, because they often fail to note precisely what you're most interested in finding out. History shows people are extremely poor at determining what's actually worth noting at the time. The best service that could ever be provided to the future would be to try as hard as possible to note as much as possible. The catch, of course, is to keep from drowning the information in noise, but the answer to that is organization and search tools, not limiting the data. No one is going to miss the information they're looking for because a page for Old Man Murray is on the site, and if there ever were so many similar entries that this was at all a danger, an index page of "notable" writers would clear up the problem lickety-split.
They should be working on how to organize information to make sure whatever the current generation finds most notable is most easy to find, not on limiting information to what history tells us will inevitably be a large number of very poor decisions on what's actually worth recording.
Everytime I read one of these "studies" that "shows" stuff, I can't help but think that the researcher is a press whore or is just trying to get more funding by throwing out a ridiculously convoluted "theory" to explain a simple observation. After all, the "people get stressed out when they're late for work" hypothesis doesn't get you as many grants.
Every time I read the "opinion" of some "poster" on a web "forum" who "abuses" quotation marks "extensively", I naturally expect to see some crazy conspiracy "theory" about the "motives" of researchers.
Fine, as long as the regular business hours occur while it's light outside where I live...
Right, do you begin to see a problem with this now?
Yes. Regular business hours should be 24/7.