Agreed. All a hijacker can possibly hope to accomplish from now on is to destroy the plane immediately or kill a few people on board before the passengers aboard the plane tear the throats out of the terrorists with plastic forks in desperation. I expect the pilot's doors to be fortified and remain shut and locked throughout the entire flight, "panic" autopilots and ground remote control installed, and flight attendents packing weapons. What happened on tuesday will never happen again - hijacking will from now on will be less effective that just opening fire in the street.
Re:You think this is war? I'LL show you War!
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What exactly is the "Kill Americans" attitude that apparently motivates the bihn Ladens of the world supposed to accomplish besides striking back at America? It's not going to get Israel out of Palestine, it's not going to get us to back off, and it's certainly not going to make these scattered terrorist networks and 3rd world countries more imposing towards the world's only superpower. The most they could possibly hope for is some sort of war they can't possibly win.
Re:You think this is war? I'LL show you War!
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Our New Pearl Harbor
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Regardless, I don't think Japan is complaining about their present state of affairs, especially considering that prior to the Marshall Plan, the usual fate of a defeated enemy was to suffer and pay whatever reparations the victor demanded. That was exactly what happened to Germany after WW1, which suffered worse than anyone during the great depression, and the result was that a certain mentally unstable gentleman took over the country and nearly the world.
Just because the plan worked to America's military and economic benefit doesn't mean that it hurt the recipients. It was better than they could have ever hoped for.
Re:You think this is war? I'LL show you War!
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First of all, according to a friend of mine who was an Army Ranger and has seen some real action, Three Kings is pretty damn ridiculous.
As for which country we should fight in this case, obviously it should be the ones that support terrorists like these. Countries must be held accountable for the actions of their citizens. Have there been successful wars as such? Well, terrorism has really only developed to it's present civilian-targeting objective-less passive-aggressive form over the last few decades, so no, not really. How should it be fought? Like the war we did win. Do I expect them to react like the Japanese? Of course not. Japan acted out of arrogance, wheras most terrorists act out of ill-defined nihlistic anger. Do I think a Marshall-plan-esque solution based on economic development and military-political pressure could work? Hell yes.
Obviously, war is not pretty, or good. But it is sometimes necessary to make people who use violence understand what they're bringing on themselves, especially when they're only aware of a small part of it. Whatever it takes to break their destructive cycles is justified.
Re:You think this is war? I'LL show you War!
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Our New Pearl Harbor
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Exactly my point. Every one of those wars was fundamentally limited in such a way that they could not be pursued in full. I also think that most of them were unjustified actions which we should not have been involved in, and that military action was not the solution. But likewise, there is NEVER justification for terrorism against civilians, no matter what the cause. It is an endless form of war which can only bring degradation to both perpetrator and victim, and must be stopped. With the death toll apparently running into the tens of thousands, this is not some potshot carbomb - many times more people have died today than in Pearl Harbor, and ALL of them were civilians. It will not go unpunished. The terrorists may have thought they were at war with the US already, but it's high time we should show them what it is like when WE think we're at war with somone.
We DID pursue the war in full in Japan, the country that institutionalized suicide attacks, and we won - completely, and at great cost. We invaded, and we occupied, and we rebuilt things from the ground up. We didn't try to punish them for all the horrendous things they had done up until that point, but instead helped them create a peaceful and prosperous nation instead. The Japanese and these terrorists may not have thought they had anything left to lose, but they're wrong. They can lose their reason and will to fight.
People are already saying that this was an act of war. You've got to understand that many nations feel that they've been at war with the U.S. long before this first strike back.
Already at war? Those people don't know what war is. We haven't had a real war since World War II, the last time anyone was stupid enough to attack us on our own turf. Looks like we'll get another one. No holds barred, no compromise, I'm talking invasion with unconditional surrender. We taught the Japanese to play nice, we can do it again.
There are three basic types of genetic modification: conventional breeding (practiced for thousands of years, and yes this is a form of GM any way you look at it); GM by way of expression level modification (knocking out or modulating the expression of a pre-existing gene or genes, such as with the flavr-savr tomato); and by Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), whereby genes from one species are introduced into another. HGT can occur naturally in the rare hybridizations between species, or more frequently through viruses carrying DNA snips between them. And in the case of bacteria, it happens every which way. You may not realize it, but the classic definition of a species doesn't actually apply to bacteria because they transfer genetic material between species so readily.
HGT is by far the most controversial form of genetic engineering. Everyone is afraid it will cause some sort of damage or corruption. Very few people have considered how it benefits the natural environment by stimulating evolution. That's right, I say we should do MORE HGT. It increases genetic variety by introducing new traits into a species. And if it gets out into the wild, so much the better. Either it will die out or flourish - simple as that. Yes, it may cause some trouble in the meantime, but life will find a way like it always does.
Sorry guys, but you're many moons too late for this to be new - Apple beat you to it in 1996, in the form of the ill-fated eMate 300 (incidentally, the first translucent Apple product) coupled to a Freeplay generator, for the useful purpose of education and as written in this 1997 press release. Furthermore, although the eMate (and it's parent the Newton) are long dead, the idea is still pretty much on the table with Apple, as this 1999 WIRED article points out. Who knows, with Apple seemingly interested in getting into the PDA market again, we may yet see this idea resurrected in commercial form.
Long and short of it - screw webservers. Think of powering keyboard-equipped highly functional PDAs with these things.
ReplayTV apparently doesn't charge for this programming information. Just for the unit (which does cost more).
One thing I wonder about is that there is no need for ReplayTV to duplicate TiVo's efforts, and vice versa. The programming is the same everywhere. I wonder if they collaborate on this effort, or if they have a third party they are getting the information from.
People have already proposed this in a number of ways. They also lump in digital cable/satellite decoding too, since that's just another type of MPEG2 feed to deal with. There was a discussion a while back on the hypothetical Borg Box. The ill-fated Indrema had all those capabilities and more. And the vaporous Nokia Media Terminal looks promising.
But in all these cases they were including hardware encoding/decoding for MPEG2, since that's the only appropriate codec for real-time encoding of high quality video, which costs buck$. A celeron 400 wouldn't be up to the job. This drives the cost well above $300, more than most people would be willing to pay for such a device. That's why Tivo is sold at a loss, which is made up by the subscription service. (I know, in the long run it costs more, but people are shortsighted when it comes to buying stuff and companies like to keep their hands in your pockets).
Even if you had a personal TV device that did everything tivo did, and were hooked up to a free TV listing service, you still have to get your TV from somewhere. The digital cable and satellite providers reeeeeeeeally don't want you copying and distributing their pristine feeds. Those satellites weren't cheap, and you're damn right they want their money, probably worse than most. If such devices did become available, we'd have a serious encryption war on our hands in no time, just like with DirecTV. Such a device would be unusable much of the time, which is hardly good enough for the casual user.
That message took me all of 10 minutes to write. Big whoop. And I always try to back up my arguments with references - it saves me the trouble of having to inevitably prove I'm not just talking out of my ass later. If you can prove me wrong, why not go for it? One reference is all it takes.
I hate to pick this nit, but I also hate it when people don't understand their own language:
The definition of stable from dictionary.com is available here. Pay particular attention to definition 2.3: A group, as of athletes or entertainers, under common management. This definition is not exactly equivalent to the relationship between a console and its games, but it is close enough that the term can be co-opted for this purpose. Definition 2.2a is also good: All the racehorses belonging to a single owner or racing establishment. This definition is also considered roughly synonymous with "flock" which is generally used only for living things but can be applied to non-living things in certain contexts. Perhaps a better term in this case might be the complement(1b) of games.
Compare and contrast that to the definition of staple. You said that "staple" means "supply", which would make sense if that were the case, but nowhere in this entry is "supply" mentioned as a synonym. It is mentioned as being a place of supply or a sort of marketplace, but that definition doesn't even remotely match your usage. Nor could I find supply and staple to be related in any other way through their dictionary or thesaurus entries.
So sorry, you're wrong. You claim that this staple-supply definition is in the dictionary. I can't find it, and I've never heard of it. Which dictionary are you using? I suggest you get another one.
No, it's "stable" as in the horse stable... a horse stable contains all of your horses, which are there to be ridden and are the whole reason you built the stable in the first place. This software stable is the collection of games which run on your platform, and are the reason that people buy it in the first place.
Which brings me to my second point - there are very few cross platform games for a reason. Unlike the PC/Mac arena, where producing a cross-platform version is purely a function of whether it is worth the time and effort to do so, the console arena is much more competitive. Not only is there all the extra work (and due to fundamentally different and limited hardware, that conversion can be MORE difficult than a Mac/PC issue where graphics card APIs are semi-standardized and differences in cpu performance can be adjusted for by requiring a faster processor), but there are also huge licensing fees which the console maker levys to recoup the loss they take in console sales. Furthermore, the very best of the games are often produced in house, and if not are frequently the subject of exclusive deals.
Hardware specs are great. If Sony/Sega/Nintendo/MS were competing purely on the merits of their hardware it would be a very different world (though probably no less complicated due to differences in design philosophy). But when you get down to business, it's really all about the games. That's why I would never have bought an N64, even though it's graphics were somewhat better than the PS1.
This Dreamcast/PS2 deal is just an exception. It's merely a way for Sega to ease the transition to a software-only company. Sony is agreeing because while hardware Sega was a competitor (whose console/game philosophy was uncomfortably close to sony's), software Sega is a powerful, skilled, and valuable ally and is well worth the small investment.
The irony of that message being marked as funny(adapted as it is from Mark Twain) is that after a few seconds to adjust, I had no trouble reading that statement at all.
We tend to forget that there have been a lot of different spelling and notation systems for english. Even today, the british and american methods aren't identical. For all the fun we make and fear we have of the idea that the english (or any other language's) orthographic system should be simplified and made consistent with pronunciation, it is not a bad idea. It would greatly simplify the process of becoming literate and save tons of effort spent trying to learn irregular spellings. Beyond that, applying the same principles to pronunciation, the alphabetic letters (children's difficulty distinguishing b and d is universal), and vocabulary would accomplish the same goals with learning and using language.
cryptochrome
P.S. You forgot to mention dropping that pesky capitalization system. of course half the messages on the net don't both with it. same thing goes for dealing with contractions, a la dont, wont, ill, and so on.
For crying out loud, somebody tries and do something nice for somebody and they come back and accuse them of cultural chauvanism. The powers that be didn't have to develop unicode or UCF at all. They only developed it because of the proliferation of language protocols was making the internet difficult to use for foreign languages and multinational businesses in general.
And besides which, the point of the article is moot. As this article states:
ISO 10646 defines formally a 31-bit character set. However, of this huge code space, so far characters have been assigned only to the first 65534 positions (0x0000 to 0xFFFD). This 16-bit subset of UCS is called the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) or Plane 0. The characters that are expected to be encoded outside the 16-bit BMP belong all to rather exotic scripts (e.g., Hieroglyphs) that are only used by specialists for historic and scientific purposes. Current plans suggest that there will never be characters assigned outside the 21-bit code space from 0x000000 to 0x10FFFF, which covers a bit over one million potential future characters.
The italics and bold are mine. The 16 bit system was not meant to be completely comprehensive - it was meant to be useful for everyday use. Which, since it covers the characters literate people are expected to know in these systems, it does. The rest of the characters are academic (literally). If these characters are so important why don't they expect all of their own countrymen to know them?
The proprietors of the internet could have happily stuck with the regular 8-bit Roman alphabet system forever (the internet being an American military invention in the first place). The roman alphabet was just part of the system. Hell, even a 16-bit code would have covered all script-based writing and scientific/miscellaneous notation systems easily, while leaving codes or a dedicated bit for the eastern pictograph systems to signal an extension of the protocol and letting them work out their own standard amongst themselves. It would have been fun to watch them (particularly Taiwan and China) squabble for dominance over it too. No one is forcing these eastern nations (or any non-roman-alphabet users) to use unicode or UCF, or the internet or computers for that matter. If they really wanted to, they could come up with their own systems based on their own languages. They just hopped on board and adapted it to their own needs like everyone else because it's a good idea, and it would be way to difficult to build around their own languages. But isn't it funny how every one of these eastern countries (except Japan thanks to hiragana and katakana) adapted the phonic roman alphabet to simplify the teaching of their own languages? With at least 170,000 characters between them, defenders of these languages claim they are a rich cultural heritage and a beautiful illustrated system. You could just as easily say that modern use of these pictograph-based written languages are oppressively difficult and ensure a lot of time and effort wasted just trying to learn to write at best, and a stratifying system which guarantees high rates of illiteracy at worst. Erosion of these rigid and limited pictographic writing systems in favor of flexible and encompassing phonic ones is no accident or western conspiracy. Just as UCF was developed to make computer communication universal, the adaptation of phonic systems is the tendency to make literacy universal.
cryptochrome
P.S. Some may think that ISO 10646 (aka UCF-2) is not Unicode, but in fact as that same article points out "They joined their efforts and worked together on creating a single code table. Both projects still exist and publish their respective standards independently, however the Unicode Consortium and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 have agreed to keep the code tables of the Unicode and ISO 10646 standards compatible and they closely coordinate any further extensions. "
Well this is certainly an interesting idea, and the greenhouse plan sounds fine, but if you want to grow plants on the martian surface you've got a LOT of problems to overcome (nearly zero air pressure, dry-ice cold temperatures, hardly any water, no magnetosphere to protect against cosmic rays, high UV, etc) No fancy reporter system is going to fix that. Try growing plants in antartica first.
One issue I had: the reporter gene is presumably GFP. GFP doesn't actually glow, it flouresces. If coupled to luciferase it could glow, but then you wouldn't actually need GFP because the luciferase itself produces light. Of course you could always just light them yourself with external UV, or the natural UV on mars may be enough on its own (during the day, anyway). Also, there are many variants of GFP that glow in different colors besides green, so you could use those to offer a richer set of reporter genes.
I know there are more than a few artists and independent labels that AREN'T under the thumb of the RIAA. Some of them are even favorable towards P2P-type distribution. A few of them actually have talent, too.
How hard would it be to set up an open-source ethos internet radio station to showcase these works, and thereby bypass the big companies control over what new songs get heard? A non-profit station with no commercials or fees to artists or consumers? A real station, with DJs that have personality and producers who actually know good songs when they hear them and can build a decent playlist?
Well, it sounds like a good idea to me, anyway. If the songs were halfway decent it could really suck the wind out of the radio/record companies' sails.
According to the article, "Indeed, the undercover agents told (Gorshkov) that they wanted to watch in order to see what he was capable of doing" and "asked the men to demonstrate their prowess". Sure sounds like they were challenging them to do something difficult on the spot - and playing defense in the security business isn't exactly flashy. There is nothing about asking them to access their home computers in that article. Apparently they did so in the process.
No, I don't think this is considered entrapment. Entrapment generally involves them making you commit a crime, and then charging you with it. Pretending to go along with a crime they are committing (such as prostitution or solicitation of a prostitute, or drug deals) doesn't count, nor does leading them on for the purposes of obtaining information (such as this case).
This opens a particularly nasty can of worms. Let's say I have a computer, and for whatever reason a law enforcement agency is told that my computer may have something they want. They could storm into my home and take my personal posessions, and there is nothing I could do about it, since they have not viewed the data yet. I would have no right to ask what they needed the equipment for, or why, or when I would get the hardware back.
But they can do that. Seizing evidence is a part of any criminal investigation, and they can hold it until the investigation is complete (although I think they have to get court permission for more than a certain length of time). Seizing electronic evidence is a tricky business anyway.
And as this page states, "A warrant is usually required before a search or seizure takes place, unless there are 'exigent circumstances'"... in fact "there is no requirement in the Fourth Amendment that a warrantless search or seizure take place only upon probable cause", just reasonable suspicion. In this case, they had plenty of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, and (critically) exigent circumstances.
I can't say I feel sorry for these guys - they had it coming.
Besides, if you actually read the article you'll see that the FBI went to a lot of trouble to get those passwords - by setting up a fake business, luring them with job offers, flying them to America from Russian, and then sniffing their passwords while they demonstrated their cracking ability (presumably an illegal act in itself). Needless to say it's not something they would have the resources to do to just anyone.
Yes, sales are up among napster users. But which sales? How are the sales of major labels versus independent labels? Prior to napster, the RIAA pretty much controlled the entire process by means of controlling play time on radio. Which, as this article noted, is unbelievably corrupt. But with P2P, people don't have to listen to the radio - they just search for the song they want to hear and get it immediately, no commercials, no filler, and browse to your heart's content. Grass roots publicity suddenly becomes much easier, there is no cost in time or money to listen to a song once. The trouble with Napster, then, is it puts the big labels on an even playing field with the indy labels, and could thereby suck some of their business away.
More importantly, if you can do almost as well with an indy or even your own label, why the hell would you want to go with a big one? The big labels could still control the manufactured stars, but all the real talent would stay away from them. In other words, the big labels would lose not just consumers but artists as well.
Furthermore, the recording industry clearly doesn't want any competition when it comes to digital distribution. They're not opposed to P2P distribution per se, just that they aren't getting paid for it. If they can sell by the song (or even pay-per-play) they can charge amounts equal to or more than it would take to buy the whole CD without even having the overhead of shipping the physical product.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. All a hijacker can possibly hope to accomplish from now on is to destroy the plane immediately or kill a few people on board before the passengers aboard the plane tear the throats out of the terrorists with plastic forks in desperation. I expect the pilot's doors to be fortified and remain shut and locked throughout the entire flight, "panic" autopilots and ground remote control installed, and flight attendents packing weapons. What happened on tuesday will never happen again - hijacking will from now on will be less effective that just opening fire in the street.
What exactly is the "Kill Americans" attitude that apparently motivates the bihn Ladens of the world supposed to accomplish besides striking back at America? It's not going to get Israel out of Palestine, it's not going to get us to back off, and it's certainly not going to make these scattered terrorist networks and 3rd world countries more imposing towards the world's only superpower. The most they could possibly hope for is some sort of war they can't possibly win.
Regardless, I don't think Japan is complaining about their present state of affairs, especially considering that prior to the Marshall Plan, the usual fate of a defeated enemy was to suffer and pay whatever reparations the victor demanded. That was exactly what happened to Germany after WW1, which suffered worse than anyone during the great depression, and the result was that a certain mentally unstable gentleman took over the country and nearly the world.
Just because the plan worked to America's military and economic benefit doesn't mean that it hurt the recipients. It was better than they could have ever hoped for.
First of all, according to a friend of mine who was an Army Ranger and has seen some real action, Three Kings is pretty damn ridiculous.
As for which country we should fight in this case, obviously it should be the ones that support terrorists like these. Countries must be held accountable for the actions of their citizens. Have there been successful wars as such? Well, terrorism has really only developed to it's present civilian-targeting objective-less passive-aggressive form over the last few decades, so no, not really. How should it be fought? Like the war we did win. Do I expect them to react like the Japanese? Of course not. Japan acted out of arrogance, wheras most terrorists act out of ill-defined nihlistic anger. Do I think a Marshall-plan-esque solution based on economic development and military-political pressure could work? Hell yes.
Obviously, war is not pretty, or good. But it is sometimes necessary to make people who use violence understand what they're bringing on themselves, especially when they're only aware of a small part of it. Whatever it takes to break their destructive cycles is justified.
Exactly my point. Every one of those wars was fundamentally limited in such a way that they could not be pursued in full. I also think that most of them were unjustified actions which we should not have been involved in, and that military action was not the solution. But likewise, there is NEVER justification for terrorism against civilians, no matter what the cause. It is an endless form of war which can only bring degradation to both perpetrator and victim, and must be stopped. With the death toll apparently running into the tens of thousands, this is not some potshot carbomb - many times more people have died today than in Pearl Harbor, and ALL of them were civilians. It will not go unpunished. The terrorists may have thought they were at war with the US already, but it's high time we should show them what it is like when WE think we're at war with somone.
We DID pursue the war in full in Japan, the country that institutionalized suicide attacks, and we won - completely, and at great cost. We invaded, and we occupied, and we rebuilt things from the ground up. We didn't try to punish them for all the horrendous things they had done up until that point, but instead helped them create a peaceful and prosperous nation instead. The Japanese and these terrorists may not have thought they had anything left to lose, but they're wrong. They can lose their reason and will to fight.
cryptochrome
People are already saying that this was an act of war. You've got to understand that many nations feel that they've been at war with the U.S. long before this first strike back.
Already at war? Those people don't know what war is. We haven't had a real war since World War II, the last time anyone was stupid enough to attack us on our own turf. Looks like we'll get another one. No holds barred, no compromise, I'm talking invasion with unconditional surrender. We taught the Japanese to play nice, we can do it again.
cryptochromen/t
As if episode one wasn't ample evidence of the Big Guy's increasing inability to write a decent script, this title should leave no doubt.
While the most important bits are handled here in the states, I believe the animation itself is subcontracted to a korean production company.
cryptochrome
There are three basic types of genetic modification: conventional breeding (practiced for thousands of years, and yes this is a form of GM any way you look at it); GM by way of expression level modification (knocking out or modulating the expression of a pre-existing gene or genes, such as with the flavr-savr tomato); and by Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), whereby genes from one species are introduced into another. HGT can occur naturally in the rare hybridizations between species, or more frequently through viruses carrying DNA snips between them. And in the case of bacteria, it happens every which way. You may not realize it, but the classic definition of a species doesn't actually apply to bacteria because they transfer genetic material between species so readily.
HGT is by far the most controversial form of genetic engineering. Everyone is afraid it will cause some sort of damage or corruption. Very few people have considered how it benefits the natural environment by stimulating evolution. That's right, I say we should do MORE HGT. It increases genetic variety by introducing new traits into a species. And if it gets out into the wild, so much the better. Either it will die out or flourish - simple as that. Yes, it may cause some trouble in the meantime, but life will find a way like it always does.
cryptochrome
Sorry guys, but you're many moons too late for this to be new - Apple beat you to it in 1996, in the form of the ill-fated eMate 300 (incidentally, the first translucent Apple product) coupled to a Freeplay generator, for the useful purpose of education and as written in this 1997 press release. Furthermore, although the eMate (and it's parent the Newton) are long dead, the idea is still pretty much on the table with Apple, as this 1999 WIRED article points out. Who knows, with Apple seemingly interested in getting into the PDA market again, we may yet see this idea resurrected in commercial form.
Long and short of it - screw webservers. Think of powering keyboard-equipped highly functional PDAs with these things.
cryptochromeReplayTV apparently doesn't charge for this programming information. Just for the unit (which does cost more).
One thing I wonder about is that there is no need for ReplayTV to duplicate TiVo's efforts, and vice versa. The programming is the same everywhere. I wonder if they collaborate on this effort, or if they have a third party they are getting the information from.
cryptochrome
People have already proposed this in a number of ways. They also lump in digital cable/satellite decoding too, since that's just another type of MPEG2 feed to deal with. There was a discussion a while back on the hypothetical Borg Box. The ill-fated Indrema had all those capabilities and more. And the vaporous Nokia Media Terminal looks promising.
But in all these cases they were including hardware encoding/decoding for MPEG2, since that's the only appropriate codec for real-time encoding of high quality video, which costs buck$. A celeron 400 wouldn't be up to the job. This drives the cost well above $300, more than most people would be willing to pay for such a device. That's why Tivo is sold at a loss, which is made up by the subscription service. (I know, in the long run it costs more, but people are shortsighted when it comes to buying stuff and companies like to keep their hands in your pockets).
Even if you had a personal TV device that did everything tivo did, and were hooked up to a free TV listing service, you still have to get your TV from somewhere. The digital cable and satellite providers reeeeeeeeally don't want you copying and distributing their pristine feeds. Those satellites weren't cheap, and you're damn right they want their money, probably worse than most. If such devices did become available, we'd have a serious encryption war on our hands in no time, just like with DirecTV. Such a device would be unusable much of the time, which is hardly good enough for the casual user.
cryptochromeThat message took me all of 10 minutes to write. Big whoop. And I always try to back up my arguments with references - it saves me the trouble of having to inevitably prove I'm not just talking out of my ass later. If you can prove me wrong, why not go for it? One reference is all it takes.
cryptochrome
Naturally you'd have to do something about homonyms (I'll sounds just like aisle, anyway). Probably best to just work around them.
cryptochrome
time to get ill
I hate to pick this nit, but I also hate it when people don't understand their own language:
The definition of stable from dictionary.com is available here. Pay particular attention to definition 2.3: A group, as of athletes or entertainers, under common management. This definition is not exactly equivalent to the relationship between a console and its games, but it is close enough that the term can be co-opted for this purpose. Definition 2.2a is also good: All the racehorses belonging to a single owner or racing establishment. This definition is also considered roughly synonymous with "flock" which is generally used only for living things but can be applied to non-living things in certain contexts. Perhaps a better term in this case might be the complement(1b) of games.
Compare and contrast that to the definition of staple. You said that "staple" means "supply", which would make sense if that were the case, but nowhere in this entry is "supply" mentioned as a synonym. It is mentioned as being a place of supply or a sort of marketplace, but that definition doesn't even remotely match your usage. Nor could I find supply and staple to be related in any other way through their dictionary or thesaurus entries.
So sorry, you're wrong. You claim that this staple-supply definition is in the dictionary. I can't find it, and I've never heard of it. Which dictionary are you using? I suggest you get another one.
cryptochrome
No, it's "stable" as in the horse stable... a horse stable contains all of your horses, which are there to be ridden and are the whole reason you built the stable in the first place. This software stable is the collection of games which run on your platform, and are the reason that people buy it in the first place.
Which brings me to my second point - there are very few cross platform games for a reason. Unlike the PC/Mac arena, where producing a cross-platform version is purely a function of whether it is worth the time and effort to do so, the console arena is much more competitive. Not only is there all the extra work (and due to fundamentally different and limited hardware, that conversion can be MORE difficult than a Mac/PC issue where graphics card APIs are semi-standardized and differences in cpu performance can be adjusted for by requiring a faster processor), but there are also huge licensing fees which the console maker levys to recoup the loss they take in console sales. Furthermore, the very best of the games are often produced in house, and if not are frequently the subject of exclusive deals.
Hardware specs are great. If Sony/Sega/Nintendo/MS were competing purely on the merits of their hardware it would be a very different world (though probably no less complicated due to differences in design philosophy). But when you get down to business, it's really all about the games. That's why I would never have bought an N64, even though it's graphics were somewhat better than the PS1.
This Dreamcast/PS2 deal is just an exception. It's merely a way for Sega to ease the transition to a software-only company. Sony is agreeing because while hardware Sega was a competitor (whose console/game philosophy was uncomfortably close to sony's), software Sega is a powerful, skilled, and valuable ally and is well worth the small investment.
cryptochrome
The irony of that message being marked as funny(adapted as it is from Mark Twain) is that after a few seconds to adjust, I had no trouble reading that statement at all.
We tend to forget that there have been a lot of different spelling and notation systems for english. Even today, the british and american methods aren't identical. For all the fun we make and fear we have of the idea that the english (or any other language's) orthographic system should be simplified and made consistent with pronunciation, it is not a bad idea. It would greatly simplify the process of becoming literate and save tons of effort spent trying to learn irregular spellings. Beyond that, applying the same principles to pronunciation, the alphabetic letters (children's difficulty distinguishing b and d is universal), and vocabulary would accomplish the same goals with learning and using language.
cryptochrome
P.S. You forgot to mention dropping that pesky capitalization system. of course half the messages on the net don't both with it. same thing goes for dealing with contractions, a la dont, wont, ill, and so on.
For crying out loud, somebody tries and do something nice for somebody and they come back and accuse them of cultural chauvanism. The powers that be didn't have to develop unicode or UCF at all. They only developed it because of the proliferation of language protocols was making the internet difficult to use for foreign languages and multinational businesses in general.
And besides which, the point of the article is moot. As this article states:
ISO 10646 defines formally a 31-bit character set. However, of this huge code space, so far characters have been assigned only to the first 65534 positions (0x0000 to 0xFFFD). This 16-bit subset of UCS is called the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) or Plane 0. The characters that are expected to be encoded outside the 16-bit BMP belong all to rather exotic scripts (e.g., Hieroglyphs) that are only used by specialists for historic and scientific purposes. Current plans suggest that there will never be characters assigned outside the 21-bit code space from 0x000000 to 0x10FFFF, which covers a bit over one million potential future characters.
The italics and bold are mine. The 16 bit system was not meant to be completely comprehensive - it was meant to be useful for everyday use. Which, since it covers the characters literate people are expected to know in these systems, it does. The rest of the characters are academic (literally). If these characters are so important why don't they expect all of their own countrymen to know them?
The proprietors of the internet could have happily stuck with the regular 8-bit Roman alphabet system forever (the internet being an American military invention in the first place). The roman alphabet was just part of the system. Hell, even a 16-bit code would have covered all script-based writing and scientific/miscellaneous notation systems easily, while leaving codes or a dedicated bit for the eastern pictograph systems to signal an extension of the protocol and letting them work out their own standard amongst themselves. It would have been fun to watch them (particularly Taiwan and China) squabble for dominance over it too. No one is forcing these eastern nations (or any non-roman-alphabet users) to use unicode or UCF, or the internet or computers for that matter. If they really wanted to, they could come up with their own systems based on their own languages. They just hopped on board and adapted it to their own needs like everyone else because it's a good idea, and it would be way to difficult to build around their own languages. But isn't it funny how every one of these eastern countries (except Japan thanks to hiragana and katakana) adapted the phonic roman alphabet to simplify the teaching of their own languages? With at least 170,000 characters between them, defenders of these languages claim they are a rich cultural heritage and a beautiful illustrated system. You could just as easily say that modern use of these pictograph-based written languages are oppressively difficult and ensure a lot of time and effort wasted just trying to learn to write at best, and a stratifying system which guarantees high rates of illiteracy at worst. Erosion of these rigid and limited pictographic writing systems in favor of flexible and encompassing phonic ones is no accident or western conspiracy. Just as UCF was developed to make computer communication universal, the adaptation of phonic systems is the tendency to make literacy universal.
cryptochrome
P.S. Some may think that ISO 10646 (aka UCF-2) is not Unicode, but in fact as that same article points out "They joined their efforts and worked together on creating a single code table. Both projects still exist and publish their respective standards independently, however the Unicode Consortium and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 have agreed to keep the code tables of the Unicode and ISO 10646 standards compatible and they closely coordinate any further extensions. "
Well this is certainly an interesting idea, and the greenhouse plan sounds fine, but if you want to grow plants on the martian surface you've got a LOT of problems to overcome (nearly zero air pressure, dry-ice cold temperatures, hardly any water, no magnetosphere to protect against cosmic rays, high UV, etc) No fancy reporter system is going to fix that. Try growing plants in antartica first.
One issue I had: the reporter gene is presumably GFP. GFP doesn't actually glow, it flouresces. If coupled to luciferase it could glow, but then you wouldn't actually need GFP because the luciferase itself produces light. Of course you could always just light them yourself with external UV, or the natural UV on mars may be enough on its own (during the day, anyway). Also, there are many variants of GFP that glow in different colors besides green, so you could use those to offer a richer set of reporter genes.
cryptochrome
I know there are more than a few artists and independent labels that AREN'T under the thumb of the RIAA. Some of them are even favorable towards P2P-type distribution. A few of them actually have talent, too.
How hard would it be to set up an open-source ethos internet radio station to showcase these works, and thereby bypass the big companies control over what new songs get heard? A non-profit station with no commercials or fees to artists or consumers? A real station, with DJs that have personality and producers who actually know good songs when they hear them and can build a decent playlist?
Well, it sounds like a good idea to me, anyway. If the songs were halfway decent it could really suck the wind out of the radio/record companies' sails.
cryptochrome
According to the article, "Indeed, the undercover agents told (Gorshkov) that they wanted to watch in order to see what he was capable of doing" and "asked the men to demonstrate their prowess". Sure sounds like they were challenging them to do something difficult on the spot - and playing defense in the security business isn't exactly flashy. There is nothing about asking them to access their home computers in that article. Apparently they did so in the process.
No, I don't think this is considered entrapment. Entrapment generally involves them making you commit a crime, and then charging you with it. Pretending to go along with a crime they are committing (such as prostitution or solicitation of a prostitute, or drug deals) doesn't count, nor does leading them on for the purposes of obtaining information (such as this case).
cryptochrome
This opens a particularly nasty can of worms. Let's say I have a computer, and for whatever reason a law enforcement agency is told that my computer may have something they want. They could storm into my home and take my personal posessions, and there is nothing I could do about it, since they have not viewed the data yet. I would have no right to ask what they needed the equipment for, or why, or when I would get the hardware back.
But they can do that. Seizing evidence is a part of any criminal investigation, and they can hold it until the investigation is complete (although I think they have to get court permission for more than a certain length of time). Seizing electronic evidence is a tricky business anyway.
And as this page states, "A warrant is usually required before a search or seizure takes place, unless there are 'exigent circumstances'"... in fact "there is no requirement in the Fourth Amendment that a warrantless search or seizure take place only upon probable cause", just reasonable suspicion. In this case, they had plenty of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, and (critically) exigent circumstances.
cryptochrome
I can't say I feel sorry for these guys - they had it coming.
Besides, if you actually read the article you'll see that the FBI went to a lot of trouble to get those passwords - by setting up a fake business, luring them with job offers, flying them to America from Russian, and then sniffing their passwords while they demonstrated their cracking ability (presumably an illegal act in itself). Needless to say it's not something they would have the resources to do to just anyone.
cryptochrome
Yes, sales are up among napster users. But which sales? How are the sales of major labels versus independent labels? Prior to napster, the RIAA pretty much controlled the entire process by means of controlling play time on radio. Which, as this article noted, is unbelievably corrupt. But with P2P, people don't have to listen to the radio - they just search for the song they want to hear and get it immediately, no commercials, no filler, and browse to your heart's content. Grass roots publicity suddenly becomes much easier, there is no cost in time or money to listen to a song once. The trouble with Napster, then, is it puts the big labels on an even playing field with the indy labels, and could thereby suck some of their business away.
More importantly, if you can do almost as well with an indy or even your own label, why the hell would you want to go with a big one? The big labels could still control the manufactured stars, but all the real talent would stay away from them. In other words, the big labels would lose not just consumers but artists as well.
Furthermore, the recording industry clearly doesn't want any competition when it comes to digital distribution. They're not opposed to P2P distribution per se, just that they aren't getting paid for it. If they can sell by the song (or even pay-per-play) they can charge amounts equal to or more than it would take to buy the whole CD without even having the overhead of shipping the physical product.
cryptochrome