Some people don't even think it is special powers, just a thing you do. My grandpa did the dowsing thing to decide where to put the various wells on his property. Not because he thought he had special powers, it was just how he'd learned you select your well spot. Anyone could do it. He figured it worked since every time he'd drill that spot, and before long have a functional well.
For him it wasn't magical or special powers, it was just the standard process. Get Y shaped stick, walk around, it signals where the well goes, put it there.
You feel like you are "fighting for scraps" because your big screen TV is 6 years old, you have a surround sound system but you don't like it, and your fridge 10?
See this is what I'm talking about with needing to take a more global look at things. Oh no, you don't have all new conveniences, whatever shall you do! I don't either, for that matter. My fridge is about 10 years old, and I've no wish to replace it as it keeps working great. My microwave is over 30 years old, it was given to me a long time ago and just keeps on trucking. Again, no reason to replace it as it still works great. Having a good life doesn't mean buying everything new all the time. In fact a big part of it can be managing your money by spending it smartly on things as needed and keeping what works.
Then of course you have to go with the silly doom and gloom "You won't have a good life soon!" shit and show a rather poor understanding of economics.
Look man, sorry that your life is not working out as well as you believe it should but you also should maybe do a little research and see how good you have it compared to the majority of the world's population.
Also consider that maybe, just maybe, you are part of the problem with your ability to get and keep a job. Layoffs are something that everyone is likely to face from time to time, but if you keep losing your job, if you are always having problems finding one, well then perhaps you are doing something wrong. I don't know much about you so I can't say what, but perhaps some introspection is in order. It is like the people who perpetually have bad relationships yet never seem to consider they may have a part of that.
Civilians don't get to do "warning" shots. The deal with the use of deadly force is that it either is or is not justified. There isn't a situation where it is justified to "just try and scare them" with a gun.
In the case of something like this, the justification would be that you feared for your life. In most places that allow lethal force for self defense, that is a valid reason. The thing is, just firing a warning shots could show that you really DIDN'T have an imminent fear for your life. You weren't so afraid you felt the need to shoot your attacker, just "warn" them. Thus you weren't really in fear for your life, so no justification.
I am not aware of jurisdictions that allow you to use guns to just try and scare people for various reasons. You can use them to defend yourself and sometimes others, but only in grave cases. If the case isn't grave enough for that, then you aren't justified in using it in any way.
Basically as a civilian in a self defense situation don't draw your gun unless to shoot and don't shoot except to kill. If the situation isn't serious enough to warrant that, then a gun isn't the answer.
That was for sure my feeling on the OJ case. I thought he was guilty (and sure do now after his book that Chris Rock accurately predicted) but had I been on the jury I'm pretty sure I would have voted to acquit. The prosecution fucked up the case, and there was reasonable doubt.
This is slightly different, what with self defense being an affirmative defense, but same basic deal: Doesn't matter what you think happened, matters if it was proven to whatever standard the court instructs you is required.
Remember that they looked for people who hadn't followed the leadup to this a ton. Not everyone gives a fuck what is in the media. Also it turns out in most cases jurors do a reasonable job of following what the judge tells them. The judge tells them what evidence they can consider, and what is required for a charge, and they usually listen to that, at least reasonably well.
The system is far from perfect, but they really do try and get people who have little to no knowledge about a case beforehand, and they try to instruct those people as to what is and is not to be considered.
Also the prosecution screwed up their case at several points, and that makes a big difference as well.
Remember that while the rest of the world (that was interested) was following the media accounts, the jurors were following only what happened in the courtroom.
Seriously the OSW "99%" whining is really, really stupid.
So let's do a bit of analysis: You have to be making over $400,000 per year (or have multiple millions in the bank) to be in the top 1% in the US. Everything under that is, by definition, "the 99%". The median income in the US is about $50,000 which would be "the 50%".
So, what is life like there? Well I have a fairly good idea, what with making around that. At that income you can afford to own your own house. Not a huge one, but plenty of space. You can afford to have a car that is nice, and in good working order, you don't have to fight with a junker. You can have all the appliances of modern life: dishwasher, fridge, washer/dryer, A/C, stove, etc, etc. You can get more food than you can or should eat, even if you eat out semi-regularly. You can have entertainment, like a bigscreen TV, surround sound, modern computer, broadband Internet, etc. You have enough money you can afford to put some in savings, to deal with unexpected events and not be thrown into debt by them.
In other words, you can have a damn good life. I want for nothing, I have an exceedingly good standard of living on a global scale and I am very, very grateful for it. Do "the 1%" have it better than me? Sure, but I am not "fighting scraps" (I presume you meant fighting for scraps). I am sitting in my air conditioned home, typing on my nice 30" computer screen while contemplating which of my many food options I wish to avail myself of for dinner. That is not a bad life in any way, shape, or form.
So seriously, stop with the uninformed bitching. Stop with this class warfare "1%" type shit. There IS an income inequity problem in the US and we do need to look at it. However it is not a case of "all of us vs them" nor is it valid to pretend that everyone who isn't the most privileged of the elite are starving in the streets.
Also, when you start talking equality, you might want to look on the global scene. You may well BE "the 1%" globally. Starts are a little hard but the median GDP in terms of purchasing power parity is like $12,000. So you can say if you want true equality that anyone making more than that, including you probably, need to give up their money.
No, the judge gets to decide their relevance. Attorneys can't just enter whatever they want into evidence. The judge has to decide it is relevant to the case at hand. None of the gun stuff would be admissible. Nobody contends Martin had a gun, so it is of no relevance at all. Saying "Well he wanted to get a gun," is silly, particularly since there was no way Zimmerman knew this.
The stuff on fighting, maybe, kinda depends on the context. It might hinge on the claims the state made, like if they claimed Martin wasn't strong enough to have done any harm then it might be admitted in as counterevidence.
The stuff on marijuana, well that did come in, but only because there was evidence he had it in his system. Drug use in general is not relevant, you don't get to try and make the victim (or the defendant) look like a bad guy. Drug use would only be relevant if the person in question was on drugs at the time. It seems the ME's report says Martin had evidence of marijuana in his system, hence that is admissible.
But no, you don't just get to introduce anything you want to attack a witness/defendant/victim and say "Well the jury gets to decide!" That is not what the law says. The judge gets to decide what evidence is presented to the jury to consider.
Well having not kept up on all the evidence in the trial I can't say anything for certain, but in general it seems like they could make manslaughter charges stick. Doesn't matter is Martin was an asshole a punk, etc. What matters is that it seems Zimmerman followed him, confronted him, and was probably not realistically in fear of his life when he shot him. The whole "slamming on the pavement" thing has been contested. There really isn't hard evidence of what happened.
I'm not saying I'm sure, just saying I think they probably could make the case. Murder no way, but Manslaughter I think is a realistic possibility.
In terms of why not let juries hear evidence? Well because it may not be relevant and it may bias them. Just because someone did X that people do not like it does not also follow that they did Y. That is why you can't generally mention a defendant's prior bad acts unless they somehow relate to the particular case. So if someone was convicted of robbery in the past, you can't bring it up in an unrelated murder case just to try and make them look like a bad guy.
Same for victims. That someone was a bad guy or a thug or whatever doesn't deny them due process of law. As such you can't try and introduce evidence they were bad people for untreated shit.
So that Zimmerman did drugs is not relevant unless he was on drugs at the time of the attack (apparently he was and that did come in). That he liked weapons was not relevant unless he had one at the time (which he didn't). That kind of thing.
For example suppose you are a firearms enthusiast and own many guns. Also you are a computer security professional and know plenty about securing computers and circumventing said security. So some asshole you know gets his phone hacked and embarrassing pictures posted online. He thinks you did it, confronts you, and beats you with a bat and puts you in the hospital.
At his trial, would you want his defense team to be able to bring up these things. Would you want them to try and say "Well using a weapon was justified because he thought causality might have a gun, after all causality is a well known gun nut and owns a ton of weapons!" and "It is likely casualty did in fact hack my client's phone, look at all the training and experience he has in this area, it would be easy for him to do!" They try to make you look bad because of something totally unrelated to the case.
I don't care enough to go and review the evidence but the judge, who does, decided it wasn't relevant in this case and she probably had a reason. Martin may well have been a thug, but that doesn't have any bearing on the legality of this incident.
Seriously, I think the state had a pretty good manslaughter case against Zimmerman, but with all the antics they've been pulling, they are just asking to get an acquittal or an overturn on appeal. You can't go and give a guy a good performance eval and a raise, and then suddenly fire him and claim that he's a bad employee when he reveals that you may have been messing with evidence.
The worst part? Sounds like the evidence wasn't really relevant.
For certain kinds of games, where reaction time is pretty much the be all, end all (like Call of Duty) it does seem like it can make a difference. It isn't that your human reaction time isn't still the biggest thing, but that you make it faster relative to other people and thus gain an advantage. I was, and still am to a degree, skeptical that it matter much but I've tried it and seen results.
So in my case, it was my monitor. I have long used professional screens, at the time it was a NEC 2690WUXi. Nice pro quality IPS screen, fully calibrated for a great image. It runs at 60fps, meaning 16.7ms between images and has about 33.3ms (2 frames) of delay for its image processing time. So basically 50ms from the time the computer sends the data to it, to the beginning of image formation. A few more ms for the image to fully form.
I decided I wanted to see what the 120Hz hype was about, so I bought myself a second monitor, a BenQ XL2420T. It's a cheap TN panel, but very, very fast and has a mode to cut through all processing and lower latency. In 120fps mode you get a frame every 8.3ms, and delay of about 3.4ms until the image start forming, just another 1.5ms until it is complete. So 11.7ms from data to beginning of image formation.
Well I found out two things. One is that you definitely CAN see the difference between 60 and 120 fps. It is actually more noticeable on the desktop, where you have sharp lines and high contrast, but in games too. It is a level of smoothness and fluidity you hadn't seen before.
The other thing is that my performance in Black Ops 2 was quite measurably better playing on the faster monitor. My KDR (kill death ratio, how many times on average you kill another player per time you die) increased by over 0.5, which is a lot. It was just much easier for me to get shots off on people before they could get me.
Now is that all latency? Probably not, the smoother frame rate probably helps too, but it is a difference that is really there. It isn't a case of "Oh you just want you new monitor to be better," or something I have both kinds of monitors and the pro one is what I use 99.9% of the time and for almost all games (I now have a PA301W) because the better colour and image quality is just so worth it. But there is no question for speed sensitive games, the faster display helps me do better.
So how does this apply to mouse and keyboard? I've no idea. I haven't tested it. The keyboard I use is based off of ergonomics, not speed (a Kinesis Freestyle 2, they rock). However perhaps such a thing could help too.
I mean the theory would go like this: Presume you have two people, both with an equal reaction time. Say 500ms if you like. Their computers process and prepare everything for display at the same time. However one guy has a fast screen, and the other a slow screen, like 10ms vs 50ms. Then also one guy has a fast input device, the other guy a slow one, say 1ms vs 10ms. What this means is that the net reaction time, as in the time from the computer saying "This has happened," to the time it receives a response, is 511ms in one case, and 560ms in the other. If you are talking games where a lot of damage is done per shot, that could be enough to make a difference.
I'm not sure that it is worth worry about as much as people do, but I can see how it can make a difference in theory and I was amazed that the fast monitor made as much difference for me as it did. In general though, my recommendation is just stick to games that aren't so twitch based, and use a nicer display.
Now few people need that, but if you have a massive database, massive transaction rates, etc that can be the kind of thing you need a heavy hitter like Oracle to do. There are workloads that just aren't possible on lesser DBs. As I said, not all that common, but they are there.
Overall when it comes to the "free vs enterprise" type question there are three things I think you really need to look at:
1) Can you, or someone else really support the free solution, or is there GOOD support you can pay for if not? If you don't have a support contract, everything is on YOU. Make sure you weigh the cost of your (and other's time) and productivity vs the cost of a support contract. In the case of things like Postgres, you can find companies that support it, however they have a great range in their competence levels.
2) Are there any features you need that you have to trade off for the free stuff? If so, the enterprise stuff is probably the right answer. Don't assume you can just cowboy up a solution that is "just as good" because you probably can't. If you need those features, pay for them. However if all the features are either "don't care," "meh," or "nice but no biggie," then the free option can be a winner.
3) Can the free solution scale to the level that we are talking about (performance or size)? If not, then it is probably not for you.
So like with databases: Just hosting a single website? Hell ya use Postgres or MySQL. Oracle is not likely to buy you anything. However dealing with a 2PB data set that does hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, all of which is absolutely mission critical and has to be always online? Ya, you probably need something heavier hitting, and more reliable.
Your actual setup probably falls somewhere in between those big extremes. You need to determine where and thus what side it falls on.
One thing not to underestimate in some workloads is how well the procedural SQL is. Hopping back and forth from a program to the database is expensive, CPU wise, so in some cases you really need to do some procedural SQL for performance reasons. How well that works can vary DB to DB. If you have stuff like that, worth testing to see how it performs in other DBs. Does it have what you need to implement it, and how fast is it?
The right answer is a service account they can have activated, if needed. On the EqualLogic (Dell) we have that is how it is done. When they need to work on the system, they have you connect to a WebEx session. They then request control of the PC. They have you log in to the system using your admin account, and they can then set the password on an "fse" account, which they can use to access service functions you aren't supposed to get at. Once they are done, they encourage you to change the fse account to a different password.
That is how it is properly done: They get in using your system, with you monitoring what they do, and you lock out access after they are done.
Now maybe they are going to have access all the time for proactive monitoring. Fine, that is a service some like (we may take Dell up on it if they start offering it). Again the right method is an account set up by the customer, not one hardcoded in. Why? Well because of shit like this. If it is hardcoded in, and you can't change it, then if someone discovers the access, it is bad times.
For that matter I've never seen this on Cisco stuff either. The recovery for that is via serial, I've never seen a remote override from Cisco. Maybe it is there, but I've never seen them use it.
Even if I didn't care about the privacy issues, can they offer me anywhere near the performance of my SSD? Of course not. It's latency is expressed in microseconds, my network in 2-3 digits of milliseconds. Its bandwidth is near enough 500MB/sec, my network caps out at about 4MB/sec (30mbit).
I fail to see why the hell I'd want to store my data on such an inferior setup.
Now backups to a remote site, sure that is something that can make sense. However that isn't what they are talking about. That is more like what Acronis does. They seem to think I'd want them as straight out storage.
Hell no. Until the performance issues are resolved, it is all 100% moot. Then and only then am I even interested in examining the other issues, which would rule it out anyhow.
You really won't win an argument with bigots. They think their positions is RIGHT, as in absolutely right. As such they think everyone has to support it, or those people are wrong. So ya, they feel like you have to give them money, have to let them do as they wish, or you are the problem.
And they will, if the defendant asks for a trial. However trials cost money, as such prosecutors are heavily pressured to offer plea deals to lesser charges and lesser time. They don't HAVE to, but if they regularly push things to trial and refuse to plead people out, they are likely to wind up fired. Defense lawyers take the pleas because they are a good deal, better than the law specifies. Their client might actually be guilty of a class 6 felony, but the plea deal is for a misdemeanor, that kind of thing.
You need to look in to how this all works a little more, I think. You can argue against harsh sentencing, the US has a real problem with that, and so on but the plea system is not something set up to screw defendants. It is set up to give defendants a better deal with they'd normally get under the law in exchange for reduced costs by not having a trial.
If the concern is that the sentences for crimes are too much, then that is the issue, not the plea system.
But the reason people take plea deals all the time is they are guilty. In general, law enforcement does a pretty good job of not bringing innocent people to trial. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it is fairly rare. It isn't the "all the time" sort of thing some on Slashdot seem to assume.
I'm friends with a number of defense attorneys, private and public, and they'll tell you that almost all their clients are guilty. They did what they are accused of doing. When they can get them off, it is generally because of a mistake made by law enforcement, not because there was never a case in the first place.
So what happens most of the time is a person has been brought up on charges for something they did. The evidence against them is good. Their lawyer looks at it and says "They've got you, you aren't going to get off. You should take the plea."
If the state's case isn't solid? Then they generally take it to trial. My friend is doing that right now with a DUI case. The state screwed up badly, their evidence is basically invalid. However they won't drop the case. So my friend is taking it to trial. He's very likely to win too (he has good instincts and is a good trial lawyer). He recommends trial if he thinks he can win. However, often as not, there's no chance. They have the person dead to rights, so a plea is the smart thing.
No it is quite correct. If the weapon is made properly, and most are, the only way they can fire is if the trigger is pulled. The sear will hold the hammer in place. Since the hammer is held back, there's nothing to fire the bullet.
So, if the gun is sitting in a holster, where the trigger can't be pulled, then it can't go off. Yes, even if it is dropped. You have to understand that guns are meant to be reliable and predictable. If they aren't, well they not only are not likely to be popular, but the makers are likely to get sued.
Guns don't "just fire" they don't randomly decide to go off. They are actually rather simple mechanical devices.
If you want to see for yourself, go to a gun shop or gun range or something. They'll take one apart and show you how it works. They are not complex items.
These days, Valve,s money comes from Steam. Their profits on that are stupid, like tens of millions per employee. Basically they just get to sit back and sell other people's stuff, and take a nice cut (30ish percent). As anyone who's ever had trouble with something will tell you, they have a minimal support staff, there's no phone number to call or anything, and responses take forever. Also when you really look at Steam it isn't that great. It isn't bad, but it is not some masterpiece of software engineering. Rather it was the first DD service to do a reasonable job, and thus it is what everyone started using and is in a nice positive feedback loop. Gamers buy on it because it has all the game and publishers sell on it because it has all the gamers.
Those massive profits let them do whatever the fuck they want in the rest of the company. They can goof off as much as they like, spend as much time as they like, release every game for free if they like, Steam makes WAY more money than they need.
That is also why Valve is so worried about the MS store in Windows. Supposing MS does a competent job of it (which at this point seems very unlikely), it could take away their golden goose. If people decided to start buying from the Windows store instead, because it came with the system and was integrated (like the Play Store on Android or the like) they could see their sales market evaporate and that would leave them in a rather uncomfortable situation. Hence the look at expanding Steam to other platforms, and the Steambox. They didn't just suddenly decide this was a good idea, they decided it when it looked like there might be a threat to Steam. Now given the utter hash MS is making of things, I don't think they need to worry, but that is the reason.
Also going back to the start of Steam, again you are correct. People seem to forget that Steam was hated, maligned, when it came out. The reason people used it was because they wanted to play Halflife 2, and that required Steam. They weren't pleased with it, but they wanted HL2. In that way, Valve got Steam to a large market. From there they worked on improving it, offering more games, etc, etc until eventually it is the juggernaut we see today.
Some of the games that have come on KS have had a pretty good business plan behind them. They know what they want to make, the basics of the world, the story, the scope, all that kind of thing. They then can determine based on funding what sorts of things they'll be able to put in the final project. I mean this goes on with any game project, you will have more ideas than you've ability to implement, so you decide what to keep and what to cut.
However the Doublefine Adventure really didn't seem to have that. It was basically "Let's make a point and click adventure game!" Ok, cool, but that is pretty broad. I mean they don't even have enough to have a title, just kinda a place holder. A whole lot could fall in their potential scope. Hence, a bit harder to know how to budget for it and so on.
They really would have been better off having a more solid plan first and then been able to do some budgeting on it.
While developers like to hate on publishers, and often with good reason, one thing they usually do is have some business and accounting sense to keep projects on track. Developers can have a "just another couple months and it'll be great!" mentality whereas a publisher understands that time is money, a lot of it. Every month you spend on a project has a big cost. Hence it can be important to release earlier, even if it does mean cutting back.
Shadowbane and Duke Nukem Forever are two great examples of developers just running away with the "we'll just work on it until it is whatever our vision is," sort of thing and failing massively.
The problem with the Doublefine thing is that it seems to be a creative person at the helm, and that can mean bad business decisions. It's a nice sentiment to say "Let creativity run wild," but in the real world, you have to consider business concerns.
I'm more optimistic on Wasteland 2 because Brian Fargo is at the helm and he's a business person. He seems to well understand the need for getting things out the door and working on doing what you can with the resources you have, even if it is less than you want to do.
Todd Howard had some good points on this during his keynote about this kind of thing: "Your ideas are not as important as your execution," and "We can do anything, we just can't do everything." Both are very true. You have to decide what is going to be in and what isn't, because you haven't the time or resources to implement it all, and what you do implement needs to be good because the grandest ideas are blunted in an unplayable game.
Let's be straight: The president is NOT offering asylum to Snowden because of deeply held beliefs, he's doing it as a "fuck you" to the US. Part of Chavez's popularity came from his appearance (you can argue if he deserved it or not) of not kowtowing to America and giving them the finger. His successor is going on with the same thing. Venezuela is not bastion of human rights and spying on the opposition is something that is done there.
So this is not some deep-seated anti-spying position. It is politics. Also might be a bit of self-interest as he may hope Snowden will enlighten him as to the US's spying on Venezuela. Who knows if Snowden has any information on that though (intelligence information is kept compartmentalized).
As for the parent, it is always sad to hear about countries having real troubles, particularly when people in the US often make such a big deal out of trivial ones. I hope the very best for you and your nation, that your troubles will start to abate.
It means serious injuries or deaths. In military speak, which is where it comes from, it means a soldier hurt to the point they can't go back and fight. So someone who's dead: casualty. Someone who has a compound fracture in both legs: casualty. Someone who has a surface cut on their arm: not a casualty.
There's not as hard and fast a civilian definition, but it is just if the injury is serious. It is a useful number for determining how bad something is. Number of injuries period is irrelevant, number of fatalities while relevant doesn't tell the whole store. Number of fatalities and casualties gives a good idea of the human damage that happened in an incident.
I would like to see something like that parties have one year from the time they should have reasonably become aware of a product that infringes on their patents to contact the party infringing to license/desist/whatever. If they fail to, then the patent expires.
So it is fine to patent something and not make something with it. After all, there are places that do research (like universities) that don't make products. You don't need to make something yourself. However if someone starts using your work, and you should reasonably be aware of it, like it is being sold in retail stores and such, then the clock starts ticking. You have to contact them. If you don't, well then I think it is fair to assume you don't care. As such, you lose it.
None of the waiting for shit to become really popular and then jumping from the shadows. You either enforce it, or it goes away.
Also for this particular case if this is about GaN LEDs (I haven't looked at their claims) that is rather trolly of them given that Nagoya University is where that came from, back in 1989, and some of the more recent stuff from the University of Illinois.
Intel's high end fabs are tasked to capacity with their own chips near as I know. They are probably not interested in taking on outside orders for ARM chips.
Now I suppose Apple could switch over to x86, but I doubt they'd be willing to do that given that they own a big stake in ARM. Also at this point Intel doesn't have x86 processors suitable for phones. They may make such a thing in the future but they do not now.
So ya, Intel would be the best option... if they were an option. They have fabs above and beyond anyone else, they spend billions in R&D on it and as such are nearly always a node ahead and have good yields. However, their fabs are for them. Their 22nm fabs are busily cranking out Haswell and Ivy Bridge chips. They are not for rent for cranking out ARM chips, unless something has changed since last I looked.
Slashdot Mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1te01rfEF0g
In particular the part you are interested in starts at 23:45, though the overall segment starts at around 19:20.
The short version? Religious fundamentalism.
Some people don't even think it is special powers, just a thing you do. My grandpa did the dowsing thing to decide where to put the various wells on his property. Not because he thought he had special powers, it was just how he'd learned you select your well spot. Anyone could do it. He figured it worked since every time he'd drill that spot, and before long have a functional well.
For him it wasn't magical or special powers, it was just the standard process. Get Y shaped stick, walk around, it signals where the well goes, put it there.
You feel like you are "fighting for scraps" because your big screen TV is 6 years old, you have a surround sound system but you don't like it, and your fridge 10?
See this is what I'm talking about with needing to take a more global look at things. Oh no, you don't have all new conveniences, whatever shall you do! I don't either, for that matter. My fridge is about 10 years old, and I've no wish to replace it as it keeps working great. My microwave is over 30 years old, it was given to me a long time ago and just keeps on trucking. Again, no reason to replace it as it still works great. Having a good life doesn't mean buying everything new all the time. In fact a big part of it can be managing your money by spending it smartly on things as needed and keeping what works.
Then of course you have to go with the silly doom and gloom "You won't have a good life soon!" shit and show a rather poor understanding of economics.
Look man, sorry that your life is not working out as well as you believe it should but you also should maybe do a little research and see how good you have it compared to the majority of the world's population.
Also consider that maybe, just maybe, you are part of the problem with your ability to get and keep a job. Layoffs are something that everyone is likely to face from time to time, but if you keep losing your job, if you are always having problems finding one, well then perhaps you are doing something wrong. I don't know much about you so I can't say what, but perhaps some introspection is in order. It is like the people who perpetually have bad relationships yet never seem to consider they may have a part of that.
Civilians don't get to do "warning" shots. The deal with the use of deadly force is that it either is or is not justified. There isn't a situation where it is justified to "just try and scare them" with a gun.
In the case of something like this, the justification would be that you feared for your life. In most places that allow lethal force for self defense, that is a valid reason. The thing is, just firing a warning shots could show that you really DIDN'T have an imminent fear for your life. You weren't so afraid you felt the need to shoot your attacker, just "warn" them. Thus you weren't really in fear for your life, so no justification.
I am not aware of jurisdictions that allow you to use guns to just try and scare people for various reasons. You can use them to defend yourself and sometimes others, but only in grave cases. If the case isn't grave enough for that, then you aren't justified in using it in any way.
Basically as a civilian in a self defense situation don't draw your gun unless to shoot and don't shoot except to kill. If the situation isn't serious enough to warrant that, then a gun isn't the answer.
That was for sure my feeling on the OJ case. I thought he was guilty (and sure do now after his book that Chris Rock accurately predicted) but had I been on the jury I'm pretty sure I would have voted to acquit. The prosecution fucked up the case, and there was reasonable doubt.
This is slightly different, what with self defense being an affirmative defense, but same basic deal: Doesn't matter what you think happened, matters if it was proven to whatever standard the court instructs you is required.
Remember that they looked for people who hadn't followed the leadup to this a ton. Not everyone gives a fuck what is in the media. Also it turns out in most cases jurors do a reasonable job of following what the judge tells them. The judge tells them what evidence they can consider, and what is required for a charge, and they usually listen to that, at least reasonably well.
The system is far from perfect, but they really do try and get people who have little to no knowledge about a case beforehand, and they try to instruct those people as to what is and is not to be considered.
Also the prosecution screwed up their case at several points, and that makes a big difference as well.
Remember that while the rest of the world (that was interested) was following the media accounts, the jurors were following only what happened in the courtroom.
Seriously the OSW "99%" whining is really, really stupid.
So let's do a bit of analysis: You have to be making over $400,000 per year (or have multiple millions in the bank) to be in the top 1% in the US. Everything under that is, by definition, "the 99%". The median income in the US is about $50,000 which would be "the 50%".
So, what is life like there? Well I have a fairly good idea, what with making around that. At that income you can afford to own your own house. Not a huge one, but plenty of space. You can afford to have a car that is nice, and in good working order, you don't have to fight with a junker. You can have all the appliances of modern life: dishwasher, fridge, washer/dryer, A/C, stove, etc, etc. You can get more food than you can or should eat, even if you eat out semi-regularly. You can have entertainment, like a bigscreen TV, surround sound, modern computer, broadband Internet, etc. You have enough money you can afford to put some in savings, to deal with unexpected events and not be thrown into debt by them.
In other words, you can have a damn good life. I want for nothing, I have an exceedingly good standard of living on a global scale and I am very, very grateful for it. Do "the 1%" have it better than me? Sure, but I am not "fighting scraps" (I presume you meant fighting for scraps). I am sitting in my air conditioned home, typing on my nice 30" computer screen while contemplating which of my many food options I wish to avail myself of for dinner. That is not a bad life in any way, shape, or form.
So seriously, stop with the uninformed bitching. Stop with this class warfare "1%" type shit. There IS an income inequity problem in the US and we do need to look at it. However it is not a case of "all of us vs them" nor is it valid to pretend that everyone who isn't the most privileged of the elite are starving in the streets.
Also, when you start talking equality, you might want to look on the global scene. You may well BE "the 1%" globally. Starts are a little hard but the median GDP in terms of purchasing power parity is like $12,000. So you can say if you want true equality that anyone making more than that, including you probably, need to give up their money.
No, the judge gets to decide their relevance. Attorneys can't just enter whatever they want into evidence. The judge has to decide it is relevant to the case at hand. None of the gun stuff would be admissible. Nobody contends Martin had a gun, so it is of no relevance at all. Saying "Well he wanted to get a gun," is silly, particularly since there was no way Zimmerman knew this.
The stuff on fighting, maybe, kinda depends on the context. It might hinge on the claims the state made, like if they claimed Martin wasn't strong enough to have done any harm then it might be admitted in as counterevidence.
The stuff on marijuana, well that did come in, but only because there was evidence he had it in his system. Drug use in general is not relevant, you don't get to try and make the victim (or the defendant) look like a bad guy. Drug use would only be relevant if the person in question was on drugs at the time. It seems the ME's report says Martin had evidence of marijuana in his system, hence that is admissible.
But no, you don't just get to introduce anything you want to attack a witness/defendant/victim and say "Well the jury gets to decide!" That is not what the law says. The judge gets to decide what evidence is presented to the jury to consider.
Well having not kept up on all the evidence in the trial I can't say anything for certain, but in general it seems like they could make manslaughter charges stick. Doesn't matter is Martin was an asshole a punk, etc. What matters is that it seems Zimmerman followed him, confronted him, and was probably not realistically in fear of his life when he shot him. The whole "slamming on the pavement" thing has been contested. There really isn't hard evidence of what happened.
I'm not saying I'm sure, just saying I think they probably could make the case. Murder no way, but Manslaughter I think is a realistic possibility.
In terms of why not let juries hear evidence? Well because it may not be relevant and it may bias them. Just because someone did X that people do not like it does not also follow that they did Y. That is why you can't generally mention a defendant's prior bad acts unless they somehow relate to the particular case. So if someone was convicted of robbery in the past, you can't bring it up in an unrelated murder case just to try and make them look like a bad guy.
Same for victims. That someone was a bad guy or a thug or whatever doesn't deny them due process of law. As such you can't try and introduce evidence they were bad people for untreated shit.
So that Zimmerman did drugs is not relevant unless he was on drugs at the time of the attack (apparently he was and that did come in). That he liked weapons was not relevant unless he had one at the time (which he didn't). That kind of thing.
For example suppose you are a firearms enthusiast and own many guns. Also you are a computer security professional and know plenty about securing computers and circumventing said security. So some asshole you know gets his phone hacked and embarrassing pictures posted online. He thinks you did it, confronts you, and beats you with a bat and puts you in the hospital.
At his trial, would you want his defense team to be able to bring up these things. Would you want them to try and say "Well using a weapon was justified because he thought causality might have a gun, after all causality is a well known gun nut and owns a ton of weapons!" and "It is likely casualty did in fact hack my client's phone, look at all the training and experience he has in this area, it would be easy for him to do!" They try to make you look bad because of something totally unrelated to the case.
I don't care enough to go and review the evidence but the judge, who does, decided it wasn't relevant in this case and she probably had a reason. Martin may well have been a thug, but that doesn't have any bearing on the legality of this incident.
Seriously, I think the state had a pretty good manslaughter case against Zimmerman, but with all the antics they've been pulling, they are just asking to get an acquittal or an overturn on appeal. You can't go and give a guy a good performance eval and a raise, and then suddenly fire him and claim that he's a bad employee when he reveals that you may have been messing with evidence.
The worst part? Sounds like the evidence wasn't really relevant.
I hope this guys successfully sues these idiots.
For certain kinds of games, where reaction time is pretty much the be all, end all (like Call of Duty) it does seem like it can make a difference. It isn't that your human reaction time isn't still the biggest thing, but that you make it faster relative to other people and thus gain an advantage. I was, and still am to a degree, skeptical that it matter much but I've tried it and seen results.
So in my case, it was my monitor. I have long used professional screens, at the time it was a NEC 2690WUXi. Nice pro quality IPS screen, fully calibrated for a great image. It runs at 60fps, meaning 16.7ms between images and has about 33.3ms (2 frames) of delay for its image processing time. So basically 50ms from the time the computer sends the data to it, to the beginning of image formation. A few more ms for the image to fully form.
I decided I wanted to see what the 120Hz hype was about, so I bought myself a second monitor, a BenQ XL2420T. It's a cheap TN panel, but very, very fast and has a mode to cut through all processing and lower latency. In 120fps mode you get a frame every 8.3ms, and delay of about 3.4ms until the image start forming, just another 1.5ms until it is complete. So 11.7ms from data to beginning of image formation.
Well I found out two things. One is that you definitely CAN see the difference between 60 and 120 fps. It is actually more noticeable on the desktop, where you have sharp lines and high contrast, but in games too. It is a level of smoothness and fluidity you hadn't seen before.
The other thing is that my performance in Black Ops 2 was quite measurably better playing on the faster monitor. My KDR (kill death ratio, how many times on average you kill another player per time you die) increased by over 0.5, which is a lot. It was just much easier for me to get shots off on people before they could get me.
Now is that all latency? Probably not, the smoother frame rate probably helps too, but it is a difference that is really there. It isn't a case of "Oh you just want you new monitor to be better," or something I have both kinds of monitors and the pro one is what I use 99.9% of the time and for almost all games (I now have a PA301W) because the better colour and image quality is just so worth it. But there is no question for speed sensitive games, the faster display helps me do better.
So how does this apply to mouse and keyboard? I've no idea. I haven't tested it. The keyboard I use is based off of ergonomics, not speed (a Kinesis Freestyle 2, they rock). However perhaps such a thing could help too.
I mean the theory would go like this: Presume you have two people, both with an equal reaction time. Say 500ms if you like. Their computers process and prepare everything for display at the same time. However one guy has a fast screen, and the other a slow screen, like 10ms vs 50ms. Then also one guy has a fast input device, the other guy a slow one, say 1ms vs 10ms. What this means is that the net reaction time, as in the time from the computer saying "This has happened," to the time it receives a response, is 511ms in one case, and 560ms in the other. If you are talking games where a lot of damage is done per shot, that could be enough to make a difference.
I'm not sure that it is worth worry about as much as people do, but I can see how it can make a difference in theory and I was amazed that the fast monitor made as much difference for me as it did. In general though, my recommendation is just stick to games that aren't so twitch based, and use a nicer display.
Now few people need that, but if you have a massive database, massive transaction rates, etc that can be the kind of thing you need a heavy hitter like Oracle to do. There are workloads that just aren't possible on lesser DBs. As I said, not all that common, but they are there.
Overall when it comes to the "free vs enterprise" type question there are three things I think you really need to look at:
1) Can you, or someone else really support the free solution, or is there GOOD support you can pay for if not? If you don't have a support contract, everything is on YOU. Make sure you weigh the cost of your (and other's time) and productivity vs the cost of a support contract. In the case of things like Postgres, you can find companies that support it, however they have a great range in their competence levels.
2) Are there any features you need that you have to trade off for the free stuff? If so, the enterprise stuff is probably the right answer. Don't assume you can just cowboy up a solution that is "just as good" because you probably can't. If you need those features, pay for them. However if all the features are either "don't care," "meh," or "nice but no biggie," then the free option can be a winner.
3) Can the free solution scale to the level that we are talking about (performance or size)? If not, then it is probably not for you.
So like with databases: Just hosting a single website? Hell ya use Postgres or MySQL. Oracle is not likely to buy you anything. However dealing with a 2PB data set that does hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, all of which is absolutely mission critical and has to be always online? Ya, you probably need something heavier hitting, and more reliable.
Your actual setup probably falls somewhere in between those big extremes. You need to determine where and thus what side it falls on.
One thing not to underestimate in some workloads is how well the procedural SQL is. Hopping back and forth from a program to the database is expensive, CPU wise, so in some cases you really need to do some procedural SQL for performance reasons. How well that works can vary DB to DB. If you have stuff like that, worth testing to see how it performs in other DBs. Does it have what you need to implement it, and how fast is it?
The right answer is a service account they can have activated, if needed. On the EqualLogic (Dell) we have that is how it is done. When they need to work on the system, they have you connect to a WebEx session. They then request control of the PC. They have you log in to the system using your admin account, and they can then set the password on an "fse" account, which they can use to access service functions you aren't supposed to get at. Once they are done, they encourage you to change the fse account to a different password.
That is how it is properly done: They get in using your system, with you monitoring what they do, and you lock out access after they are done.
Now maybe they are going to have access all the time for proactive monitoring. Fine, that is a service some like (we may take Dell up on it if they start offering it). Again the right method is an account set up by the customer, not one hardcoded in. Why? Well because of shit like this. If it is hardcoded in, and you can't change it, then if someone discovers the access, it is bad times.
For that matter I've never seen this on Cisco stuff either. The recovery for that is via serial, I've never seen a remote override from Cisco. Maybe it is there, but I've never seen them use it.
Even if I didn't care about the privacy issues, can they offer me anywhere near the performance of my SSD? Of course not. It's latency is expressed in microseconds, my network in 2-3 digits of milliseconds. Its bandwidth is near enough 500MB/sec, my network caps out at about 4MB/sec (30mbit).
I fail to see why the hell I'd want to store my data on such an inferior setup.
Now backups to a remote site, sure that is something that can make sense. However that isn't what they are talking about. That is more like what Acronis does. They seem to think I'd want them as straight out storage.
Hell no. Until the performance issues are resolved, it is all 100% moot. Then and only then am I even interested in examining the other issues, which would rule it out anyhow.
You really won't win an argument with bigots. They think their positions is RIGHT, as in absolutely right. As such they think everyone has to support it, or those people are wrong. So ya, they feel like you have to give them money, have to let them do as they wish, or you are the problem.
So just ignore them.
And they will, if the defendant asks for a trial. However trials cost money, as such prosecutors are heavily pressured to offer plea deals to lesser charges and lesser time. They don't HAVE to, but if they regularly push things to trial and refuse to plead people out, they are likely to wind up fired. Defense lawyers take the pleas because they are a good deal, better than the law specifies. Their client might actually be guilty of a class 6 felony, but the plea deal is for a misdemeanor, that kind of thing.
You need to look in to how this all works a little more, I think. You can argue against harsh sentencing, the US has a real problem with that, and so on but the plea system is not something set up to screw defendants. It is set up to give defendants a better deal with they'd normally get under the law in exchange for reduced costs by not having a trial.
If the concern is that the sentences for crimes are too much, then that is the issue, not the plea system.
But the reason people take plea deals all the time is they are guilty. In general, law enforcement does a pretty good job of not bringing innocent people to trial. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it is fairly rare. It isn't the "all the time" sort of thing some on Slashdot seem to assume.
I'm friends with a number of defense attorneys, private and public, and they'll tell you that almost all their clients are guilty. They did what they are accused of doing. When they can get them off, it is generally because of a mistake made by law enforcement, not because there was never a case in the first place.
So what happens most of the time is a person has been brought up on charges for something they did. The evidence against them is good. Their lawyer looks at it and says "They've got you, you aren't going to get off. You should take the plea."
If the state's case isn't solid? Then they generally take it to trial. My friend is doing that right now with a DUI case. The state screwed up badly, their evidence is basically invalid. However they won't drop the case. So my friend is taking it to trial. He's very likely to win too (he has good instincts and is a good trial lawyer). He recommends trial if he thinks he can win. However, often as not, there's no chance. They have the person dead to rights, so a plea is the smart thing.
No it is quite correct. If the weapon is made properly, and most are, the only way they can fire is if the trigger is pulled. The sear will hold the hammer in place. Since the hammer is held back, there's nothing to fire the bullet.
So, if the gun is sitting in a holster, where the trigger can't be pulled, then it can't go off. Yes, even if it is dropped. You have to understand that guns are meant to be reliable and predictable. If they aren't, well they not only are not likely to be popular, but the makers are likely to get sued.
Guns don't "just fire" they don't randomly decide to go off. They are actually rather simple mechanical devices.
If you want to see for yourself, go to a gun shop or gun range or something. They'll take one apart and show you how it works. They are not complex items.
These days, Valve,s money comes from Steam. Their profits on that are stupid, like tens of millions per employee. Basically they just get to sit back and sell other people's stuff, and take a nice cut (30ish percent). As anyone who's ever had trouble with something will tell you, they have a minimal support staff, there's no phone number to call or anything, and responses take forever. Also when you really look at Steam it isn't that great. It isn't bad, but it is not some masterpiece of software engineering. Rather it was the first DD service to do a reasonable job, and thus it is what everyone started using and is in a nice positive feedback loop. Gamers buy on it because it has all the game and publishers sell on it because it has all the gamers.
Those massive profits let them do whatever the fuck they want in the rest of the company. They can goof off as much as they like, spend as much time as they like, release every game for free if they like, Steam makes WAY more money than they need.
That is also why Valve is so worried about the MS store in Windows. Supposing MS does a competent job of it (which at this point seems very unlikely), it could take away their golden goose. If people decided to start buying from the Windows store instead, because it came with the system and was integrated (like the Play Store on Android or the like) they could see their sales market evaporate and that would leave them in a rather uncomfortable situation. Hence the look at expanding Steam to other platforms, and the Steambox. They didn't just suddenly decide this was a good idea, they decided it when it looked like there might be a threat to Steam. Now given the utter hash MS is making of things, I don't think they need to worry, but that is the reason.
Also going back to the start of Steam, again you are correct. People seem to forget that Steam was hated, maligned, when it came out. The reason people used it was because they wanted to play Halflife 2, and that required Steam. They weren't pleased with it, but they wanted HL2. In that way, Valve got Steam to a large market. From there they worked on improving it, offering more games, etc, etc until eventually it is the juggernaut we see today.
Some of the games that have come on KS have had a pretty good business plan behind them. They know what they want to make, the basics of the world, the story, the scope, all that kind of thing. They then can determine based on funding what sorts of things they'll be able to put in the final project. I mean this goes on with any game project, you will have more ideas than you've ability to implement, so you decide what to keep and what to cut.
However the Doublefine Adventure really didn't seem to have that. It was basically "Let's make a point and click adventure game!" Ok, cool, but that is pretty broad. I mean they don't even have enough to have a title, just kinda a place holder. A whole lot could fall in their potential scope. Hence, a bit harder to know how to budget for it and so on.
They really would have been better off having a more solid plan first and then been able to do some budgeting on it.
While developers like to hate on publishers, and often with good reason, one thing they usually do is have some business and accounting sense to keep projects on track. Developers can have a "just another couple months and it'll be great!" mentality whereas a publisher understands that time is money, a lot of it. Every month you spend on a project has a big cost. Hence it can be important to release earlier, even if it does mean cutting back.
Shadowbane and Duke Nukem Forever are two great examples of developers just running away with the "we'll just work on it until it is whatever our vision is," sort of thing and failing massively.
The problem with the Doublefine thing is that it seems to be a creative person at the helm, and that can mean bad business decisions. It's a nice sentiment to say "Let creativity run wild," but in the real world, you have to consider business concerns.
I'm more optimistic on Wasteland 2 because Brian Fargo is at the helm and he's a business person. He seems to well understand the need for getting things out the door and working on doing what you can with the resources you have, even if it is less than you want to do.
Todd Howard had some good points on this during his keynote about this kind of thing: "Your ideas are not as important as your execution," and "We can do anything, we just can't do everything." Both are very true. You have to decide what is going to be in and what isn't, because you haven't the time or resources to implement it all, and what you do implement needs to be good because the grandest ideas are blunted in an unplayable game.
Let's be straight: The president is NOT offering asylum to Snowden because of deeply held beliefs, he's doing it as a "fuck you" to the US. Part of Chavez's popularity came from his appearance (you can argue if he deserved it or not) of not kowtowing to America and giving them the finger. His successor is going on with the same thing. Venezuela is not bastion of human rights and spying on the opposition is something that is done there.
So this is not some deep-seated anti-spying position. It is politics. Also might be a bit of self-interest as he may hope Snowden will enlighten him as to the US's spying on Venezuela. Who knows if Snowden has any information on that though (intelligence information is kept compartmentalized).
As for the parent, it is always sad to hear about countries having real troubles, particularly when people in the US often make such a big deal out of trivial ones. I hope the very best for you and your nation, that your troubles will start to abate.
I fear that is not yet the case though :(.
It means serious injuries or deaths. In military speak, which is where it comes from, it means a soldier hurt to the point they can't go back and fight. So someone who's dead: casualty. Someone who has a compound fracture in both legs: casualty. Someone who has a surface cut on their arm: not a casualty.
There's not as hard and fast a civilian definition, but it is just if the injury is serious. It is a useful number for determining how bad something is. Number of injuries period is irrelevant, number of fatalities while relevant doesn't tell the whole store. Number of fatalities and casualties gives a good idea of the human damage that happened in an incident.
I would like to see something like that parties have one year from the time they should have reasonably become aware of a product that infringes on their patents to contact the party infringing to license/desist/whatever. If they fail to, then the patent expires.
So it is fine to patent something and not make something with it. After all, there are places that do research (like universities) that don't make products. You don't need to make something yourself. However if someone starts using your work, and you should reasonably be aware of it, like it is being sold in retail stores and such, then the clock starts ticking. You have to contact them. If you don't, well then I think it is fair to assume you don't care. As such, you lose it.
None of the waiting for shit to become really popular and then jumping from the shadows. You either enforce it, or it goes away.
Also for this particular case if this is about GaN LEDs (I haven't looked at their claims) that is rather trolly of them given that Nagoya University is where that came from, back in 1989, and some of the more recent stuff from the University of Illinois.
Intel's high end fabs are tasked to capacity with their own chips near as I know. They are probably not interested in taking on outside orders for ARM chips.
Now I suppose Apple could switch over to x86, but I doubt they'd be willing to do that given that they own a big stake in ARM. Also at this point Intel doesn't have x86 processors suitable for phones. They may make such a thing in the future but they do not now.
So ya, Intel would be the best option... if they were an option. They have fabs above and beyond anyone else, they spend billions in R&D on it and as such are nearly always a node ahead and have good yields. However, their fabs are for them. Their 22nm fabs are busily cranking out Haswell and Ivy Bridge chips. They are not for rent for cranking out ARM chips, unless something has changed since last I looked.