unless you shift-rightclick a file and use the "Open With..." option.
As Scott goes on to say, he's been "told" that under Win2K (and WinXP?) it's a simple right click. I find it hard to believe that Scott didn't know this, and as he sticks to his guns and claims that this is still too complicated for Joe Sixpack, his whole article is basically flamebait.
I have to say though, the PS2 is starting to suck less and less
That's maybe a sign the developers are finally getting their head round it. My game developer chums certainly weren't impressed with it when it first appeared, but cognitive dissonance has kicked in and they now view the pain they went through as a purifying process... now their POWAHS are complete...;-)
Maybe it's a perception thing, but I feel like my compile times stay constant no matter how much I upgrade my machine. Perhaps it's memory bandwidth or hard drive access, or perhaps it just that I've moved from ASM to C to C++ to (god help me) C#...
just the cpu can burn in excess of 50W in existing cpus
An Athlon needs 76W and runs at up to 95 degrees C die temperature. Ouchie!
Funnily enough, in some areas, it's illegal to put an incandescent lightbulb of that power in a confined area, e.g. the closet under the stairs where I run my (pleasantly warm) P133 firewall. I don't know of any such restrictions for computers.
We're a Constitutional Republic, not a representative democracy.
Uhh... we're both. It's a descriptive term.
And it's their job to do the right thing for their district and the country based on their opinion, not the opinions of the residents of their district. If the residents don't like their votes, they can elect someone new next election.
Sure, if you like. Although considering that your choice is this guy or that gal or a protest vote, it's no wonder that we have crappy turnouts (except when we're protest voting against The Other Guy).
But let's try and be constructive (I know this is/., but what the heck). I'd prefer to have more layers of representation (neighborhood, city/district, state, federal) where each layer elects representatives to the next level. Actually, I'd really prefer a small beaurocracy implementing regular referenda, overseen by an elected judiciary.
If we keep adding reps, there will too many for them to communicate effectively with each other
Ouch, yes. We need more layers of representation, or (better) a small beaurocracy to implement the decisions of referenda. I can't think of a time when voters felt both disenfranchised and apathetic to such a degree (unless they've voting against someone). Of course, throwing away votes because it's too much bother to count them doesn't exactly help to get home the message that your vote counts.
use the term "suck" or "sucks" [is] the definition of flamebait.
Oh great wise one, enlighten your poor disciplies. What term should we use to describe PS2 games? Sub-optimal? Differently excellent?
Because, by and large, they do suck. Or so I think, and I don't think DC game suck. How do you want me to put that so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities?
Damn. I ask because my cousin got hospitalised by a bunch of knuckle draggers who were dumb enough to actually go and brag about it to enough people that they basically convicted themselves. But one whinge of "broken home, abusive parents, no opportunities, first offence, youthful exuberance that got out of hand..." later, and they got 90 days in Young Offenders Institutes (aka Career Criminal Boot Camp), or suspended sentences.
I wasn't at court for the sentencing, but I can just picture the grins on their bestial faces.
That's why I'm ambivelant about cameras. If they deter casual criminals, great. If they help convict dumb criminals, wonderful. But the animals who don't give a fuck still won't give a fuck, because they treat the English (Scottish in this case) custodial legal system with the contempt it deserves.
I mailed the EFF's sample letter [eff.org] because they pretty much summed it all up
Welcome to their round file. Form letters are better than nothing, but if you actually believe in the issue, demonstrate that by spending five minutes of your time on it
The legislators decided they wanted people to wear them (to benefit the individual of course) but they forgot that I am not hurting anyone else if I die in a fucking accident b/c I wasn't wearing mine
Your insurance payouts hurt everyone else's premiums. Or worse, you end up a vegetable and tie up a hospital bed for the rest of your life.
Not that I'm disagreeing with your point, but pick another example.
The fact is that email is just too easy. He gets something like 5000-6000 email EVERY day.
So, under the current system, elected representatives actually "represent" too many people to be able to find out what those people want them to be doing?
Is it just me, or does that demonstrate that our implementation of "representative democracy" is badly flawed?
Here's how I see NASA. No innovation, no excitement, no risks, no profits. Brilliant individuals with breaktakingly audacious ideas are sidelined on risk grounds until they leave in disgust, or worse, lose their drive and ambition and hide themselves in the beaurocracy.
The shuttle is the world's most expensive launch system - probably. I say probably because NASA won't give (consistent) figures on how much a shuttle launch actually costs, especially as they refuse to cost astronaut training. They have budget overruns because they really don't know and don't care how much things cost. The reason why they don't care is simple: they don't have to.
They currently have a $4 billion and some cost overrun. Think about that. NASA has spent (or allocated) $4 billion more than it has, only it's not sure where it spent it. The fuck? No company in the world would be allowed to do that. This is a big boondoggle even by government standards. Think how far $4 billion would go if spent on researching new technologies, rather than poured into supporting old ones.
I don't view this $4 billion overrun as incompetence. I view it as theft. Theft from people who could have spent it on improving the future rather than maintaining the status quo.
Here's my radical solution. Privatise NASA. Float it on the market. Let it keep all of its assets, gift it five years worth of funding, and wish it good luck. Cut it free of red tape, let it come up with its own projects and it's own standards.
Let it decide whether the PR cost of never losing an American in space is really worth the financial cost, when airline pilots, train drivers, bus and truck drivers lose their lives every day and yet those industries find a way to keep going.
We've been promised commercial space exploitation within the next ten years, for at least the past thirty years. It's well past time to put up or shut up.
I propose this not because I think that we shouldn't be in space, but because I want us to get out there and stay out there. If space travel can be sustainable rather than a series of staggeringly expensive proofs of concept, then let's demonstrate that.
I don't see what we expect to achieve with airstrikes.
Have you been paying attention? We expect to send in ground troops. We expect this to take a long time. Before you do that, you first get control of the airspace. That is probably most easily accomplished with airstrikes against selected targets. It is incomprehensible to me to not understand what we expect to accomplish with airstrikes
I'm perfectly aware of what the stated goal is. I don't understand what we expect to actually achieve.
The AA threat in Afghanistan isn't radar or SAM vehicles, it's 57mm and 20mm guns and man portable SAMs. Do we really expect that we can suppress all of them? We'd be better off (i.e. cheaper) flying unmanned weasels around to get them to blow off all their unreplacable ammo. Heck, maybe we're doing that as well, but it's really all we need to do.
The missiles and bombs are mostly a PR exercise, plus it's a great excuse to test weapons systems in the field.
By the way, did you see the speech by bin Laden? Substitute "democracry" for "Islam" and "terrorist" for "infidel" and it's pretty much indistinguishable from Bush's rhetoric. Wierd.
getting the message across that allowing terrorists to attack the U.S. from your country means your government gets crushed may be enough to deter state-sponsored terrorism for a while.
Uh, wait, I thought that the problem was that the terrorists are individuals and non-governmental organisations? What the fuck does bin Laden (or Son of bin Laden) care if his host government gets overthrown? The guy has messianic delusions, he'll just view whatever happens as part of his personal Ineffable Plan.
And today the Rebel, sorry Northern Alliance are the good guys. They're the brave freedom fighters, standing up to the big bad ideological oppressors. Remember when that was the Taliban? If we put the Northern Alliance in power, how long before we have to start supporting another faction against them?
We've chosen to go on policing the world. That comes at a cost, and taking out bin Laden, or the Taliban, or the Death Star or whatever is short term PR. Every time we set a boot into a foreign country, some fanatic is going to scream jihad. We need to drop the pretence of winning a War on Terrorists and admit that civilian casualties (US and foreign) are the cost of having the world run the way we want it.
I read on USA Today that they have a total of about 40k troops. I don't know what they think they are going to accomplish w/that low number of forces but whatever.
They probably think that they're going to die. We keep assuming that they play by the same rules as us, keeping the PR bullshit separate from the real negotiations.
I don't see that happening. I see a bunch of people saying what they mean, and meaning what they say. I see them digging in, kissing their asses goodbye, and preparing to take as many invaders with them as possible. Funnily enough, that's always worked for Afghanistan before. Nobody holds on to it for long.
More to the point, I don't see what we expect to achieve with airstrikes. Bomb them back to the stone age? What's that going to take? Like five bombs? OK, now what? Drop smart bombs that can distinguish Taliban from Afghan civilians? Or send in troops armed with a handy "Who to shoot" guide?
What we are doing is PR fluff. It's putting some big bangs on TV to get the reruns of the WTC off the screen. The only actions that will actually matter are the black ops. Everything else is just revenge, pure and simple. Payback. Take that, you bastards.
I find it hard to disagree with that, but I'd at least like us to be honest about it.
you only seem to want to look at arguments that LP is a boondogle. Did you even look at the link I provided before
Er, yes, and I've looked at all the pretty concept art that looks like it's been done by the same guy that drew all those flying cars back in the 1950's.
Again, I really like the idea of light propulsion, but the reality is a long, long way off. That's not to say that we shouldn't pursue it, only that we should be careful about throwing money at it just because it's appealing and exciting. The results (so far) simply don't justify it. Once it works reliably for simple toys, then I'd be 100% behind scaling it up, but the proof of concept has to come first.
I think you'll find that Scotland simply bypassed QEI
I think I'll find that Scotland did not bypass Queen Elizabeth the First, but that the current monarch is properly recognised as Queen Elizabeth the First by the Lord Lyon in Scotland. It's a quirk of the Act of Union, whereby England and Scotland agreed to disagree on the numbering of monarchs. That's why it's no more or less correct to refer to the current monarch as Queen Elizabeth the First or Queen Elizabeth the Second, it's a matter of choice whether you view it from a Scottish or English/Welsh perspective.
if I understand this explanation [osd.mil] of laser propulsion, there's no reason the thrust has to be strictly vertical. The thrust comes out of a nozzle
...in theory. The last that I heard, Lightcraft are still at the stage of shooting tiny disks straight up in the air, with no nozzles or lateral motion.
Actually, that's not strictly true, the disks do experience lateral forces - when the reflective base fails catastrophically in one area and explodes, or when the disks pick up a wobble and tumble out of the air.
It's a truly appealing idea, but (again, AFAIK) the practice is lagging way, way behind the theory. I'm having a hard time picturing them getting anything into orbit without dropping it or frying it to a crisp.
Perhaps our best hope is that Son of Star Wars spins off some useful technology in this area.
Ummm....if you have anti-grav, why do you even need to orbit?
I'm kind of assuming that it takes power to stay up. Plus, you generally want satellites to orbit. Geostationary? Although if you can shove things out to the moon and catch them there, you can fuel and launch them on much more cheaply.
Hey, wait, why am I debating "sufficiently advanced technology"? We don't have that yet.;-)
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As Scott goes on to say, he's been "told" that under Win2K (and WinXP?) it's a simple right click. I find it hard to believe that Scott didn't know this, and as he sticks to his guns and claims that this is still too complicated for Joe Sixpack, his whole article is basically flamebait.
That's maybe a sign the developers are finally getting their head round it. My game developer chums certainly weren't impressed with it when it first appeared, but cognitive dissonance has kicked in and they now view the pain they went through as a purifying process... now their POWAHS are complete... ;-)
Maybe it's a perception thing, but I feel like my compile times stay constant no matter how much I upgrade my machine. Perhaps it's memory bandwidth or hard drive access, or perhaps it just that I've moved from ASM to C to C++ to (god help me) C#...
An Athlon needs 76W and runs at up to 95 degrees C die temperature. Ouchie!
Funnily enough, in some areas, it's illegal to put an incandescent lightbulb of that power in a confined area, e.g. the closet under the stairs where I run my (pleasantly warm) P133 firewall. I don't know of any such restrictions for computers.
Uhh... we're both. It's a descriptive term.
Sure, if you like. Although considering that your choice is this guy or that gal or a protest vote, it's no wonder that we have crappy turnouts (except when we're protest voting against The Other Guy).
But let's try and be constructive (I know this is /., but what the heck). I'd prefer to have more layers of representation (neighborhood, city/district, state, federal) where each layer elects representatives to the next level. Actually, I'd really prefer a small beaurocracy implementing regular referenda, overseen by an elected judiciary.
What's your take? Or are we fine as we are?
Ouch, yes. We need more layers of representation, or (better) a small beaurocracy to implement the decisions of referenda. I can't think of a time when voters felt both disenfranchised and apathetic to such a degree (unless they've voting against someone). Of course, throwing away votes because it's too much bother to count them doesn't exactly help to get home the message that your vote counts.
Oh great wise one, enlighten your poor disciplies. What term should we use to describe PS2 games? Sub-optimal? Differently excellent?
Because, by and large, they do suck. Or so I think, and I don't think DC game suck. How do you want me to put that so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities?
Ah, I see your problem. Read this page carefully:
We need a new mod score "-1, Lazy Fuckwit".
Yes, yes, the irony that this is -1 Flamebait / Offtopic / Overrated isn't missed on me. Mod me, I am full of love.
Damn. I ask because my cousin got hospitalised by a bunch of knuckle draggers who were dumb enough to actually go and brag about it to enough people that they basically convicted themselves. But one whinge of "broken home, abusive parents, no opportunities, first offence, youthful exuberance that got out of hand..." later, and they got 90 days in Young Offenders Institutes (aka Career Criminal Boot Camp), or suspended sentences.
I wasn't at court for the sentencing, but I can just picture the grins on their bestial faces.
That's why I'm ambivelant about cameras. If they deter casual criminals, great. If they help convict dumb criminals, wonderful. But the animals who don't give a fuck still won't give a fuck, because they treat the English (Scottish in this case) custodial legal system with the contempt it deserves.
Welcome to their round file. Form letters are better than nothing, but if you actually believe in the issue, demonstrate that by spending five minutes of your time on it
Your insurance payouts hurt everyone else's premiums. Or worse, you end up a vegetable and tie up a hospital bed for the rest of your life.
Not that I'm disagreeing with your point, but pick another example.
Let me synopsise: our system of representative democracy doesn't work. The ratio of plebians to representatives is too high.
So, under the current system, elected representatives actually "represent" too many people to be able to find out what those people want them to be doing?
Is it just me, or does that demonstrate that our implementation of "representative democracy" is badly flawed?
Here's how I see NASA. No innovation, no excitement, no risks, no profits. Brilliant individuals with breaktakingly audacious ideas are sidelined on risk grounds until they leave in disgust, or worse, lose their drive and ambition and hide themselves in the beaurocracy.
The shuttle is the world's most expensive launch system - probably. I say probably because NASA won't give (consistent) figures on how much a shuttle launch actually costs, especially as they refuse to cost astronaut training. They have budget overruns because they really don't know and don't care how much things cost. The reason why they don't care is simple: they don't have to.
They currently have a $4 billion and some cost overrun. Think about that. NASA has spent (or allocated) $4 billion more than it has, only it's not sure where it spent it. The fuck? No company in the world would be allowed to do that. This is a big boondoggle even by government standards. Think how far $4 billion would go if spent on researching new technologies, rather than poured into supporting old ones.
I don't view this $4 billion overrun as incompetence. I view it as theft. Theft from people who could have spent it on improving the future rather than maintaining the status quo.
Here's my radical solution. Privatise NASA. Float it on the market. Let it keep all of its assets, gift it five years worth of funding, and wish it good luck. Cut it free of red tape, let it come up with its own projects and it's own standards.
Let it decide whether the PR cost of never losing an American in space is really worth the financial cost, when airline pilots, train drivers, bus and truck drivers lose their lives every day and yet those industries find a way to keep going.
We've been promised commercial space exploitation within the next ten years, for at least the past thirty years. It's well past time to put up or shut up.
I propose this not because I think that we shouldn't be in space, but because I want us to get out there and stay out there. If space travel can be sustainable rather than a series of staggeringly expensive proofs of concept, then let's demonstrate that.
- I don't see what we expect to achieve with airstrikes.
Have you been paying attention? We expect to send in ground troops. We expect this to take a long time. Before you do that, you first get control of the airspace. That is probably most easily accomplished with airstrikes against selected targets. It is incomprehensible to me to not understand what we expect to accomplish with airstrikesI'm perfectly aware of what the stated goal is. I don't understand what we expect to actually achieve.
The AA threat in Afghanistan isn't radar or SAM vehicles, it's 57mm and 20mm guns and man portable SAMs. Do we really expect that we can suppress all of them? We'd be better off (i.e. cheaper) flying unmanned weasels around to get them to blow off all their unreplacable ammo. Heck, maybe we're doing that as well, but it's really all we need to do.
The missiles and bombs are mostly a PR exercise, plus it's a great excuse to test weapons systems in the field.
By the way, did you see the speech by bin Laden? Substitute "democracry" for "Islam" and "terrorist" for "infidel" and it's pretty much indistinguishable from Bush's rhetoric. Wierd.
Stiff upper lips.
Uh, wait, I thought that the problem was that the terrorists are individuals and non-governmental organisations? What the fuck does bin Laden (or Son of bin Laden) care if his host government gets overthrown? The guy has messianic delusions, he'll just view whatever happens as part of his personal Ineffable Plan.
And today the Rebel, sorry Northern Alliance are the good guys. They're the brave freedom fighters, standing up to the big bad ideological oppressors. Remember when that was the Taliban? If we put the Northern Alliance in power, how long before we have to start supporting another faction against them?
We've chosen to go on policing the world. That comes at a cost, and taking out bin Laden, or the Taliban, or the Death Star or whatever is short term PR. Every time we set a boot into a foreign country, some fanatic is going to scream jihad. We need to drop the pretence of winning a War on Terrorists and admit that civilian casualties (US and foreign) are the cost of having the world run the way we want it.
They probably think that they're going to die. We keep assuming that they play by the same rules as us, keeping the PR bullshit separate from the real negotiations.
I don't see that happening. I see a bunch of people saying what they mean, and meaning what they say. I see them digging in, kissing their asses goodbye, and preparing to take as many invaders with them as possible. Funnily enough, that's always worked for Afghanistan before. Nobody holds on to it for long.
More to the point, I don't see what we expect to achieve with airstrikes. Bomb them back to the stone age? What's that going to take? Like five bombs? OK, now what? Drop smart bombs that can distinguish Taliban from Afghan civilians? Or send in troops armed with a handy "Who to shoot" guide?
What we are doing is PR fluff. It's putting some big bangs on TV to get the reruns of the WTC off the screen. The only actions that will actually matter are the black ops. Everything else is just revenge, pure and simple. Payback. Take that, you bastards.
I find it hard to disagree with that, but I'd at least like us to be honest about it.
Any idea how long a sentence they actually served?
The same as any other human conflict; to demonstrate who has the biggest dick.
Er, yes, and I've looked at all the pretty concept art that looks like it's been done by the same guy that drew all those flying cars back in the 1950's.
Again, I really like the idea of light propulsion, but the reality is a long, long way off. That's not to say that we shouldn't pursue it, only that we should be careful about throwing money at it just because it's appealing and exciting. The results (so far) simply don't justify it. Once it works reliably for simple toys, then I'd be 100% behind scaling it up, but the proof of concept has to come first.
I think I'll find that Scotland did not bypass Queen Elizabeth the First, but that the current monarch is properly recognised as Queen Elizabeth the First by the Lord Lyon in Scotland. It's a quirk of the Act of Union, whereby England and Scotland agreed to disagree on the numbering of monarchs. That's why it's no more or less correct to refer to the current monarch as Queen Elizabeth the First or Queen Elizabeth the Second, it's a matter of choice whether you view it from a Scottish or English/Welsh perspective.
Pedantic quirk, but then this is /. ;-)
...in theory. The last that I heard, Lightcraft are still at the stage of shooting tiny disks straight up in the air, with no nozzles or lateral motion.
Actually, that's not strictly true, the disks do experience lateral forces - when the reflective base fails catastrophically in one area and explodes, or when the disks pick up a wobble and tumble out of the air.
It's a truly appealing idea, but (again, AFAIK) the practice is lagging way, way behind the theory. I'm having a hard time picturing them getting anything into orbit without dropping it or frying it to a crisp.
Perhaps our best hope is that Son of Star Wars spins off some useful technology in this area.
I'm kind of assuming that it takes power to stay up. Plus, you generally want satellites to orbit. Geostationary? Although if you can shove things out to the moon and catch them there, you can fuel and launch them on much more cheaply.
Hey, wait, why am I debating "sufficiently advanced technology"? We don't have that yet. ;-)