Disney will have "3 levels of chat available". I'm betting the most common one used will be "speed chat" where you can only pick words from a predefined (by Disney)list.
The true freeform chat that a predator would need also requires considerable hoops be jumped through in order to use it - and then only with others who have jumped through those hoops back in the big blue room.
So, predators will have a pretty rough time of it - not impossible, but pretty darn difficult. Of course, it will be even rougher for all those FBI agents impersonating lonely 13 year olds...
is immense and you have the right of it in pointing out that a failure to have a sufficient portion of a society educated is going to result in a non-sustainable society.
BUT: As others have pointed out, one of the costs of forcing the "at risk" (PC speak for "lost cause") kids into the regular classroom is the downward pressure they will exert (via disruptive behavior etc) of the marginal kids (the one's who really are "at risk") as well as those who might excell, but instead experience immense "peer" pressure (including violence) to underperform. And that is just the direct negative influence. The extra time and resources required from the teachers to try and simply maintain order and make minimal test scores means neglect of the more talented students.
So, I'd go one better than DISD and put those truant kids that accept the tracking device in separate classes - at a different location. This would help the beancounters recognize the real costs of dealing with the most disruptive "students" and allow the regular teachers some room to work with the students that are not actively hostile to learning.
The lessons for the truants could be considerably simpler with the consequences for both failure and sucess more immediately apparent. I don't know what sort of consequences should be involved (though I have a gut feeling electric shocks and candy bars would not get the desired result), but kids who ditch school a lot are not going to be big on the concept of deferred gratification and expecting otherwise is foolish.
It sounds like moose and squirrel were thwarted. Unfortunately for the Russians Comrade Badenov developed capitalistic streak and did not deliver formula on to glorious Air Force
Actually, there was an old sci-fi parody story about how to build a supersonic aircraft that was able to cancel out it's own shockwave. Naturally there were certain engineering hurdles to overcome - most notably that the airframe design had to produce zero lift. Brownie points to anyone who can name the stpry and the author
Someone forgot what NASA is an acronym for. Second letter stands for "Aeronautics". So even non-space travel is well within NASA's authority. And the more they (NASA/JAXA) get distracted with that, the more likely it is that a private company will come up with a proper replacement for long distance air travel.
sunborbital ballistic passenger flights... now that would rock(et).
I understand the current imbalancfe is on the order of 20 million extra Chinese males. And with China becoming a bit more nationalistic I can predict the just how the problem will self correct.
Want a wife? Join the Army. Invade and conquer our enemies and take their women.
a lower unit price for greater volume is fine as long as there are no practical limits to the good being consumed. Bandwidth - especially with the cable TV system does have a limit, (as does the generating capacity of the local power companies). That means encouraging greater consumption does not make sense if you aer getting close to your practical limits This results in little incentive to increase the supply of the limited good (bandwidth or KWH).
flat rate + line rental is better, but will not encourage much conservation among consumers as the limits are approached - this would result in degradation of service.
An increasing rate will tend to push consumers towards watching their consumption a bit more. It might also give the suppliers some breathing room to increase production and provide the capital needed to finance it faster.
Of course, expecting Comcast to actually plan in such a manner is silly. It would involve long range planning. The ads I'm seeing here in Texas that poke fun of Comcast (being run by AT&T I think) contain more than a grain of truth.
Well since the site has already melted down, I'll pass on the hologram projections, but can it handle BLU-RAY?
Actually, since I'm not that much into the cult of Lucas, I have far far better places to send 3 kilobux. (maybe a deposit on a pleasure droid from Bladerunner?)
"If they impose a high cap now, they'll change it after a relatively short time to a lower value, and so on. Bet you."
What I said was: "If Comcast goes through with this, they will just fold regular reductions in the cap into their frequent service changes and overall price hikes."
I take it you are betting against my prediction that a high cap will be somehow reduced shortly after it is introduced?
Read what I wrote about how I fully expect they will at some future point include the delivery of the digital cable television signal in their bandwidth cap.
But frankly, if I have to pay in cold hard cash for the bandwidth consumed in watching a cable TV program, then I will not be paying in the irreplaceble time consumed by commercials. I might also look hard at the bandwidth cost of the shows I watch as compared to the cost of buying a DVD set later (especially a used DVD set).
Oh come on already! Here Comcast is (possibly) going to announce a change in their service plan so it does not say unlimited -exactly what you seem to want. And in the next sentence you are calling for a class action lawsuit. SUch a lawsuit would have the following effects:
1> really big fricken payoff for one waste of skin (lawyer) 2> maybe fifty bucks worth of discount coupons on PPV movies (you will have to spend 100 bucks to get the full value) 3> Comcast will raise their rates to show their customers who is really in charge.
For myself I would welcome the idea of a fair charge per gigabyte - My ideal would be a tiered system based on consumption similar to how my electric bill is structured. (1st 250 KWH is pretty cheap, next 750 not too bad, and beyond 1000 is highest. (Now how can I monitor my actual consumption bearin in mind that I have 5 PCs in my home network - can my router tell me how much internet bandwidth I am consuming?)
But, that is not what Comcast is doing. They are proposing a very high cap that would only affect the very highest consumers of bandwidth. Folks who have had any exposure to real American History may recall that when the Federal Income tax was introduced it was only going to affect the wealthiest 2% of the population. If Comcast goes through with this, they will just fold regular reductions in the cap into their frequent service changes and overall price hikes. (Yep we have added the Comcastic Mandarin Home SHopping Channel to your regular lineup - and this new service requires us to raise your basic cable charges by....mumble... and (in mouseprint) your digital television service is now included in your internet bandwidth cap...
Assume that price includes all the pre-installed software - including all appropriate CALs for everything MSFT was able to persuade (via campaign contributions to Congresscritters) the State Department they would need at the "special" taxpayer funded purchase price.
You have to go back to the original source material. Tony Stark was a genius at using transistors to miniaturize technological gadgetry. He transistorized his rocket boots, the fuel they use, and the batteries. Just remember that he did it all with transistors.
Sure, other super-heroes relied on semi-magical crutches like "radioactive spiders", "super soldier serums", "cosmic radiation exposure", but Iron Man is pure technology. Just slap (well solder) a three legged transistor on small widget and you will find it is able to do the same work as a room sized version of the same widget.
I think that someone was going for +1 funny as DRMS is a Point-Of-Sale (POS) system - very closely related to...
wait for it...
Dynamics - Point Of Sale
DRMS is intended as a multiuser/multistore solution complete with an upper level interface for consolidating results from all the individual stores. As such, it does have some fairly large installations - meaning folks with enough money to hire nasty lawyers if someone with deep pockets breaks their business systems.
"why not instead redirect the customers to their Ubuntu offerings instead?"
Maybe because they are going with XP Pro? The OS that Dell's business customers are already using and still demanding? The OS that Dell obediently stopped offering back when MSFTs product rollout originally demanded that Vista go on all new machines more than a year ago. The OS that Dell started putting back on new machines as soon as it was discovered that Vista BROKE "mission critical" business applications left and right.
Maybe Ubuntu is no more capable of handling those same mission critical applications that Vista. Is it's Dell's reponsibility to guarantee that Ubuntu is going to seamlessly slot into any and all of their business customer's IT infrastructure and run the myriads of customized internal and thrid party apps run by those customers?
Why the heck would Dell put a "kick me" sign right over their corporate cojones by offering another useless OS to their business customers after having already been on the steel toed receiving end of the backlash over Vista?
Actually, a nuclear powered lethal laser would not be all that difficult to deal with. Lasers have this little problem with heat. High powered lasers even more so. So, you either have to cool off between shots, or you need a darn good cooling system - like a dynamic gas laser. So, long cool-off between shots which gives your trusty human enough time to throw coffee/mud/paint into the laser output, or your nuclear powered robot runs out of lasing gas.. perhaps it can then wave it's arms and say "Danger Danger Danger"?
"I would be more concerned about windage and elevation targeting of a object 220 miles away with a project traveling at Mach 8. The angle of the gun and flight projectile would need to be carefully calaculated"
Last I heard railgun rounds fall into the category of precision guided munitions. I don't know the precise method, but I would assume a combination of GPS navigation and possibly laser illunination for the terminal phase if needed. So, the windage and elevation are a bit less of a concern except that the less "manuvering" a round would have to do, the more of it's kinetic energy would remain to be applied against the target.
"One of the big reasons the USA lost in Vietnam..."
Quick timeline for those stuck in revisionist history mode.
The Vietnam war ended in 1973 with a peace treaty after the South Vietnamese army (with major support from the US) defeated a massive invasion by the regular North Vietnamese army (not the critters in the black PJs).
In 1974 Nixon resigned ahead of a very probable impeachment.
In 1975 a re-armed and re-equipped North Vietnam launched another massive invasion. The US Congress decided to honor our treaty obligations to South Vietnam with military aid in the amount of twenty bullets and two hand greandes per South Vietnamese soldier. No air support or intelligece given to the South Vietnamese.
So, while there was a major US loss reulting from Vietnam, it was not a militarty loss, but a major loss of respect from the rest of the world. (While this specific example can be laid squarely at the feet of the Congress, both JFK and G HW Bush have their own examples of treacherous behavior towards folks they promised to aid and support in military endeavors )JFK with the Bay of Pigs, Bush with the Kurds back in the early 90s)
That depends.. do these "atheists" you speak of believe in man-made global warming?
Sure a lot of "traditional" religious people insist on having their religion explain a bit more than it can really handle, but the fundamentalist atheists are every bit as deluded as the bible-thumpers they love to denigrate.
An inability to comprehend the validity of the arguments that define "atheism", "transhumanism", environmentalism", etc as religions cements one firmly in the "religious nutjob" community. And every community of religious nutjobs claims intellectual superiority over everyone else.. so how is it atheists are smarter again?
"there's nothing new on TV due to the writers strike"
Hmm.. and who is getting a residual payment from your downloads of those older shows?
I'm uncertain about what might be better, but if the writers are going to stick with some form of deferred compensation/revenue sharing model, you would think that they might have caught on to the idea of a more comprehensive contract in the past 30 years. One with a clause that just syas, when the studio (or whoever) gets money, the writers will get their piece of the action - rather than the currently lame half-baked mashup of clauses and conditions and explicitly defined distribution models.
Do you game strictly at home, or do you ever go to a game store that provides places for gamers to game?
If you ever go into a store, how many copies of the DnD books does the store carry?
Have you considered how much of the store's capital is tied up in those books as a percentage of their total inventory?
How about the square footage to display the books?
Now how do you expect the store's owner to feel if those books were available as eBooks for one fourth of the hardcopy retail price? (Game stores generally do not have the option of returning unsold books for full credit the way bookstores do)
Generally speaking the surviving game stores are on pretty tight margins - it would not take much to tip them into the red. WOTC sells lots more than DnD to those stores - doing things that may put their customers out of business is generally a Bad Thing.
So, while it may look like simple greed to you, there are other considerations that enter into the pricing.
The whole Lunar Revolution, bombardment of Earth, and economic plan was masterminded by a computer network that achieved sentience somehow. So now you know what a beowulf cluster of those would look like.
But more seriously, human nature being what it is, and given that individual people keep gaining the ability to control more destructive power all the time, there is an interesting dilemmna.
Establish independent colonies on other planets/moons/asteroids and
1> You have ensured that the species will not die out from some single plaentary catastrophe (natural or man made).
2> You will greatly increase the probablility that some lunatic or small group of them will find a way to hit Earth with a big rock or bioweapon.
Those unclear on the concept of risk management will assume this means that we should not go into space. They will be wrong.
Hmm attending a con or cruising the Outlands on a flying mount.
Blizzard, you must by all means dicth the convention. Obviously the folks who should have developed my flying car wasted time attending Star Trek conventions in the 70's. I hold Paramount fully liable for my lack of a flying car. They seduced multiple generations of engineers away from flying car development with their nasty conventions.
Yes, you pushed it too far with P$3. The resident atroturfer will take that as evidence that the PS3 will really only cost three dollars after the MSFT "tax" is removed:)
Of course others of us might take it as an indication that the PS3 is as phony as a three dollar bill - and that might be going too far as well.
Slashdot Mirror
RTFA:
Disney will have "3 levels of chat available". I'm betting the most common one used will be "speed chat" where you can only pick words from a predefined (by Disney)list.
The true freeform chat that a predator would need also requires considerable hoops be jumped through in order to use it - and then only with others who have jumped through those hoops back in the big blue room.
So, predators will have a pretty rough time of it - not impossible, but pretty darn difficult. Of course, it will be even rougher for all those FBI agents impersonating lonely 13 year olds...
whoosh!
whoosh!
whoosh!
"the costs of an uneducated public"
is immense and you have the right of it in pointing out that a failure to have a sufficient portion of a society educated is going to result in a non-sustainable society.
BUT:
As others have pointed out, one of the costs of forcing the "at risk" (PC speak for "lost cause") kids into the regular classroom is the downward pressure they will exert (via disruptive behavior etc) of the marginal kids (the one's who really are "at risk") as well as those who might excell, but instead experience immense "peer" pressure (including violence) to underperform. And that is just the direct negative influence. The extra time and resources required from the teachers to try and simply maintain order and make minimal test scores means neglect of the more talented students.
So, I'd go one better than DISD and put those truant kids that accept the tracking device in separate classes - at a different location. This would help the beancounters recognize the real costs of dealing with the most disruptive "students" and allow the regular teachers some room to work with the students that are not actively hostile to learning.
The lessons for the truants could be considerably simpler with the consequences for both failure and sucess more immediately apparent. I don't know what sort of consequences should be involved (though I have a gut feeling electric shocks and candy bars would not get the desired result), but kids who ditch school a lot are not going to be big on the concept of deferred gratification and expecting otherwise is foolish.
Uh oh...
It sounds like moose and squirrel were thwarted. Unfortunately for the Russians Comrade Badenov developed capitalistic streak and did not deliver formula on to glorious Air Force
Actually, there was an old sci-fi parody story about how to build a supersonic aircraft that was able to cancel out it's own shockwave. Naturally there were certain engineering hurdles to overcome - most notably that the airframe design had to produce zero lift. Brownie points to anyone who can name the stpry and the author
Someone forgot what NASA is an acronym for. Second letter stands for "Aeronautics". So even non-space travel is well within NASA's authority. And the more they (NASA/JAXA) get distracted with that, the more likely it is that a private company will come up with a proper replacement for long distance air travel.
sunborbital ballistic passenger flights... now that would rock(et).
I understand the current imbalancfe is on the order of 20 million extra Chinese males. And with China becoming a bit more nationalistic I can predict the just how the problem will self correct.
Want a wife? Join the Army. Invade and conquer our enemies and take their women.
a lower unit price for greater volume is fine as long as there are no practical limits to the good being consumed. Bandwidth - especially with the cable TV system does have a limit, (as does the generating capacity of the local power companies). That means encouraging greater consumption does not make sense if you aer getting close to your practical limits This results in little incentive to increase the supply of the limited good (bandwidth or KWH).
flat rate + line rental is better, but will not encourage much conservation among consumers as the limits are approached - this would result in degradation of service.
An increasing rate will tend to push consumers towards watching their consumption a bit more. It might also give the suppliers some breathing room to increase production and provide the capital needed to finance it faster.
Of course, expecting Comcast to actually plan in such a manner is silly. It would involve long range planning. The ads I'm seeing here in Texas that poke fun of Comcast (being run by AT&T I think) contain more than a grain of truth.
Well since the site has already melted down, I'll pass on the hologram projections, but can it handle BLU-RAY?
Actually, since I'm not that much into the cult of Lucas, I have far far better places to send 3 kilobux.
(maybe a deposit on a pleasure droid from Bladerunner?)
"If they impose a high cap now, they'll change it after a relatively short time to a lower value, and so on. Bet you."
What I said was:
"If Comcast goes through with this, they will just fold regular reductions in the cap into their frequent service changes and overall price hikes."
I take it you are betting against my prediction that a high cap will be somehow reduced shortly after it is introduced?
Read what I wrote about how I fully expect they will at some future point include the delivery of the digital cable television signal in their bandwidth cap.
But frankly, if I have to pay in cold hard cash for the bandwidth consumed in watching a cable TV program, then I will not be paying in the irreplaceble time consumed by commercials. I might also look hard at the bandwidth cost of the shows I watch as compared to the cost of buying a DVD set later (especially a used DVD set).
Oh come on already!
....mumble... and (in mouseprint) your digital television service is now included in your internet bandwidth cap...
Here Comcast is (possibly) going to announce a change in their service plan so it does not say unlimited -exactly what you seem to want. And in the next sentence you are calling for a class action lawsuit. SUch a lawsuit would have the following effects:
1> really big fricken payoff for one waste of skin (lawyer)
2> maybe fifty bucks worth of discount coupons on PPV movies (you will have to spend 100 bucks to get the full value)
3> Comcast will raise their rates to show their customers who is really in charge.
For myself I would welcome the idea of a fair charge per gigabyte - My ideal would be a tiered system based on consumption similar to how my electric bill is structured. (1st 250 KWH is pretty cheap, next 750 not too bad, and beyond 1000 is highest. (Now how can I monitor my actual consumption bearin in mind that I have 5 PCs in my home network - can my router tell me how much internet bandwidth I am consuming?)
But, that is not what Comcast is doing. They are proposing a very high cap that would only affect the very highest consumers of bandwidth. Folks who have had any exposure to real American History may recall that when the Federal Income tax was introduced it was only going to affect the wealthiest 2% of the population. If Comcast goes through with this, they will just fold regular reductions in the cap into their frequent service changes and overall price hikes. (Yep we have added the Comcastic Mandarin Home SHopping Channel to your regular lineup - and this new service requires us to raise your basic cable charges by
Assume that price includes all the pre-installed software - including all appropriate CALs for everything MSFT was able to persuade (via campaign contributions to Congresscritters) the State Department they would need at the "special" taxpayer funded purchase price.
You have to go back to the original source material. Tony Stark was a genius at using transistors to miniaturize technological gadgetry. He transistorized his rocket boots, the fuel they use, and the batteries. Just remember that he did it all with transistors.
Sure, other super-heroes relied on semi-magical crutches like "radioactive spiders", "super soldier serums", "cosmic radiation exposure", but Iron Man is pure technology. Just slap (well solder) a three legged transistor on small widget and you will find it is able to do the same work as a room sized version of the same widget.
I think that someone was going for +1 funny as DRMS is a Point-Of-Sale (POS) system - very closely related to ...
wait for it...
Dynamics - Point Of Sale
DRMS is intended as a multiuser/multistore solution complete with an upper level interface for consolidating results from all the individual stores. As such, it does have some fairly large installations - meaning folks with enough money to hire nasty lawyers if someone with deep pockets breaks their business systems.
"why not instead redirect the customers to their Ubuntu offerings instead?"
Maybe because they are going with XP Pro? The OS that Dell's business customers are already using and still demanding? The OS that Dell obediently stopped offering back when MSFTs product rollout originally demanded that Vista go on all new machines more than a year ago. The OS that Dell started putting back on new machines as soon as it was discovered that Vista BROKE "mission critical" business applications left and right.
Maybe Ubuntu is no more capable of handling those same mission critical applications that Vista. Is it's Dell's reponsibility to guarantee that Ubuntu is going to seamlessly slot into any and all of their business customer's IT infrastructure and run the myriads of customized internal and thrid party apps run by those customers?
Why the heck would Dell put a "kick me" sign right over their corporate cojones by offering another useless OS to their business customers after having already been on the steel toed receiving end of the backlash over Vista?
Actually, a nuclear powered lethal laser would not be all that difficult to deal with. Lasers have this little problem with heat. High powered lasers even more so. So, you either have to cool off between shots, or you need a darn good cooling system - like a dynamic gas laser. So, long cool-off between shots which gives your trusty human enough time to throw coffee/mud/paint into the laser output, or your nuclear powered robot runs out of lasing gas.. perhaps it can then wave it's arms and say "Danger Danger Danger"?
"I would be more concerned about windage and elevation targeting of a object 220 miles away with a project traveling at Mach 8. The angle of the gun and flight projectile would need to be carefully calaculated"
Last I heard railgun rounds fall into the category of precision guided munitions. I don't know the precise method, but I would assume a combination of GPS navigation and possibly laser illunination for the terminal phase if needed. So, the windage and elevation are a bit less of a concern except that the less "manuvering" a round would have to do, the more of it's kinetic energy would remain to be applied against the target.
"One of the big reasons the USA lost in Vietnam..."
Quick timeline for those stuck in revisionist history mode.
The Vietnam war ended in 1973 with a peace treaty after the South Vietnamese army (with major support from the US) defeated a massive invasion by the regular North Vietnamese army (not the critters in the black PJs).
In 1974 Nixon resigned ahead of a very probable impeachment.
In 1975 a re-armed and re-equipped North Vietnam launched another massive invasion. The US Congress decided to honor our treaty obligations to South Vietnam with military aid in the amount of twenty bullets and two hand greandes per South Vietnamese soldier. No air support or intelligece given to the South Vietnamese.
So, while there was a major US loss reulting from Vietnam, it was not a militarty loss, but a major loss of respect from the rest of the world. (While this specific example can be laid squarely at the feet of the Congress, both JFK and G HW Bush have their own examples of treacherous behavior towards folks they promised to aid and support in military endeavors )JFK with the Bay of Pigs, Bush with the Kurds back in the early 90s)
That depends.. do these "atheists" you speak of believe in man-made global warming?
Sure a lot of "traditional" religious people insist on having their religion explain a bit more than it can really handle, but the fundamentalist atheists are every bit as deluded as the bible-thumpers they love to denigrate.
An inability to comprehend the validity of the arguments that define "atheism", "transhumanism", environmentalism", etc as religions cements one firmly in the "religious nutjob" community. And every community of religious nutjobs claims intellectual superiority over everyone else.. so how is it atheists are smarter again?
"there's nothing new on TV due to the writers strike"
Hmm.. and who is getting a residual payment from your downloads of those older shows?
I'm uncertain about what might be better, but if the writers are going to stick with some form of deferred compensation/revenue sharing model, you would think that they might have caught on to the idea of a more comprehensive contract in the past 30 years. One with a clause that just syas, when the studio (or whoever) gets money, the writers will get their piece of the action - rather than the currently lame half-baked mashup of clauses and conditions and explicitly defined distribution models.
Do you game strictly at home, or do you ever go to a game store that provides places for gamers to game?
If you ever go into a store, how many copies of the DnD books does the store carry?
Have you considered how much of the store's capital is tied up in those books as a percentage of their total inventory?
How about the square footage to display the books?
Now how do you expect the store's owner to feel if those books were available as eBooks for one fourth of the hardcopy retail price? (Game stores generally do not have the option of returning unsold books for full credit the way bookstores do)
Generally speaking the surviving game stores are on pretty tight margins - it would not take much to tip them into the red. WOTC sells lots more than DnD to those stores - doing things that may put their customers out of business is generally a Bad Thing.
So, while it may look like simple greed to you, there are other considerations that enter into the pricing.
The whole Lunar Revolution, bombardment of Earth, and economic plan was masterminded by a computer network that achieved sentience somehow. So now you know what a beowulf cluster of those would look like.
But more seriously, human nature being what it is, and given that individual people keep gaining the ability to control more destructive power all the time, there is an interesting dilemmna.
Establish independent colonies on other planets/moons/asteroids and
1> You have ensured that the species will not die out from some single plaentary catastrophe (natural or man made).
2> You will greatly increase the probablility that some lunatic or small group of them will find a way to hit Earth with a big rock or bioweapon.
Those unclear on the concept of risk management will assume this means that we should not go into space. They will be wrong.
Hmm attending a con or cruising the Outlands on a flying mount.
Blizzard, you must by all means dicth the convention. Obviously the folks who should have developed my flying car wasted time attending Star Trek conventions in the 70's. I hold Paramount fully liable for my lack of a flying car. They seduced multiple generations of engineers away from flying car development with their nasty conventions.
Yes, you pushed it too far with P$3. The resident atroturfer will take that as evidence that the PS3 will really only cost three dollars after the MSFT "tax" is removed :)
Of course others of us might take it as an indication that the PS3 is as phony as a three dollar bill - and that might be going too far as well.