When you consider that 90% of the world's goods are transported by sea
Bzzzt. The submitter misstated the article, so this statement is flat out wrong.
From the article (emphasis mine): in 2003 more than 90 per cent of all goods that were sent around the globe went by ship
So in the context of global shipping, 90% of goods are transported by sea. Obviously far, far less than 90% of the world's goods are transported globally in the first place.
that doesn't stop Google, Microsoft and others from trying their best to use them to build office suites and the like.
How can you include Microsoft in that sentence? They have done more to harm and impede the WWW than all other entities combined. You make them sound like they are doing something ground-breaking and cutting-edge. If MS could be granted one wish, they would ask for the death of "Web 2.0" and the return to static html, thus protecting their well-entrenched product line and business model.
The Google Earth images of my town (population ~10,000 in Virginia, USA) are old - at least 5 years old. Not to mention really crappy low-res (I resort to terraserver's USGS black and white images for our area, because at least they are detailed).
So unless they only need to sample say twice a decade, I don't see how this could be useful for tracking really new encroachments.
I've not actually read a book on my laptop, but I have read many dozens of books on my Asus Pocket PC (240x320 display). I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy (including the Hobbit) twice, Da Vinci code, all the Harry Potters, and dozens of older works (most everything by Jules Verne, many of them twice), Moby Dick, etc.
So no, I wouldn't have any problem at all reading a 300 page book on a PC / notebook.
Okay, so I made that book up. Anyways, I find myself using hardly any formal reference material at this point (during software development). I used to consult MSDN regularly, and sometimes I still do if Google directs me there.
The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before
Um, it's not too hard to increase the article count that fast when the articles are just filled with nothing but question marks. Visit the site and see for yourself!
I know this is purely anecdotal, but the experience with Tesla's mother reminds me of something that happened with my Grandfather. Before I was born he was out riding in the country on his motorcycle. Suddenly he knew something was wrong with his mother. In fact, if I remember correctly, he distinctly heard the word "mother". So he headed back to the house and had his wife call long distance (he lived around 300 miles away from his mother at the time) to check on her. A relative answered at the residence and said everything was fine, but that his mother wasn't there at the moment. Just a few minutes later the relative called back and said that his mother had died (it was an acute, non-trauma death). Now, I know my grandfather very well, and I believe what he said and experienced 100%. After they found out more details, specifically when it was she died, they determined that her death would have coincided exactly with whatever it was he experienced.
So personally, I believe that Tesla very well could have experienced the same thing. Whether or not it was related to sympathetic resonance of RF emissions or something more supernatural is of course unknown.
What I really want to know if any software PS3 emulators are out yet. I'd like to try this thing out on my Inspiron 6000 to see what all the hoopla is about. Sure, it might have to skip a frame every now and then, but I can live with that.
they will pay musicians directly to give them what no amount of digital files can give them: live performances.
You know, that's kind of funny, because so many times I've heard "artists don't make their money off of CD sales, but from touring". Now I don't know if that's urban legend or what, but even if it is mostly true then I don't think the artists would be complaining too much if the industry goes away. Well, maybe the handful of artists that were specifically promoted by the industry to serve the industry (Top 40 artists, etc) would have the most to loose.
Save yourself some reading, here's what the article says:
Apple had an 80% market share of MP3 player hardware, and only offered their own proprietary format AAC for DRM (since MP3 has none). So studios had to concede to Apple's demands if they wanted any DRM control over their media on Apple hardware. Thus Apple was able to provide a better deal for consumers in that arena. Apple has no such leverage with the movie studios.
I left out a confusing explanation of BATNA, lots of banter like "I could buy movie X here or I could buy it here" and something about not having kids or taking them to Vegas, and grammatical errors like using to instead of two.
I'm curious why both BATNA charts (Music verses Movies) in the article are exactly the same - the plots are identical. Obviously they don't represent actual data, so are they just for illustration?
I think the facts you state are a bit distorted. This would have occurred in an internment camp or prison camp, where the inmates could only posses radios incapable of long-range SW reception. Thus people in the camps would have voluntarily modified radios to meet the requirements, so they could at least listen to local broadcasting. You make it sound like electrical engineers were sneaking into houses to make modifications out in the general public. Considering how strained resources were during WWII that is ludicrous.
According to this site, Prisoners could attend censored motion pictures and possess and operate a standard radio receiver that was incapable of shortwave reception. Prisoners were also allowed to attend religious services within the camp and were permitted to receive visitors twice a month who were related to the prisoner as wife, child, parent, brother, sister, grandparent, uncle, or aunt.
Further up in that article it states that Wisconsin had at least one such camp. If you've got any references to the contrary I'd be interested in reading through them (seriously).
The sad thing is that we all (the consumers) will pay in the end. Sony will increase the cost of the batteries they produce, claiming it is necessary to insure QC and a safe product. So there will be less competition in the market, and likely other manufacturers will follow suite in raising prices, knowing that demand may exceed production because of Sony's recall.
I assume your jesting, but while you're on the subject, let's be glad Valve gave up on the technology back in 2001:
The ISPs are going to need to spend a fair amount of money to be compliant with PowerPlay. But how they get that back is up to them. Some will have a tiered service, and some will just try to recoup their investment through reduced customer churn and customer acquisition.
That's the last thing we need - to give the ISPs another incentive to go after tiered services.
In case anyone is interested, at the moment my parent post has been moderated 14 times, and is right back at its starting value. Nothing like burning those mod points!
I'm sorry you thought I was trolling, because I felt those were some legitimate questions. Their methodology is nebulous. Exactly who are these "130 correspondents around the world" that fill out the questionnaires, and what is their agenda?
See, my point is this. There are plenty of European countries that "enjoy" more "freedom" than we do here in the US. For example, anyone is free to walk up and down Main Street completely naked if they so desire. However, what about a parent's rights and freedom to be able to take their family out in public, and not have the children exposed to genitalia? The type of "freedom" they want the press to have is the same carte blanche "freedom" I just described.
Am I the only one that finds their entire ranking system a bit nebulous? Countries get low scores when a "reporter" is arrested for not releasing information when subpoenaed by courts, etc. Are they wanting reporters to be above the law or what? What does that have to do with their freedom to publish what they want? Do they feel reporters should be extended the same privileges as the attorney / client relationship? If so I don't agree with that, because the press is not (strictly speaking) a necessary part of the court system.
The latest version is quite nice. The integrated spell checker is worth it alone (I had been using an extension, but having it integrated is so much nicer).
I thought I might could do away with Tab Mix Plus now, however it was quickly apparent that the extension is still a must. As a developer I'm too used to switching through multiple documents by history, not by some arbitrary linear order. So with Tab Mix Plus I can easily CTRL-TAB back and forth between a couple specific tabs, even if there are a dozen other tabs open. So I'm waiting for the author(s) to update it because it is no longer compatible.
Happily, the other extensions I use all had upgrades for 2.0. That was my biggest gripe about FireFox in the past. Especially a previous upgrade that I think was security-related. The version went from like 1.5.0.2 to 1.5.0.3 and suddenly 90% of my extensions weren't compatible. That was unacceptable, especially with such a seemingly small change in version number.
Zahi Hawass; either he's omnipresent, or is a media hound, because it seems any documentary or photo shoot about Egyptian archeology has him in it. Maybe he just likes fame as much as archeology.
According to the rules, the circumference of the loop must measure at least 2 metres....the Snowstar team from Canada's University of British Columbia, for example, was shy of this by less than half a millimetre.
The diameter of their spool was 0.25% smaller than required, which was probably the result of warping from moving the spool around so it could be weighed, etc, before the competition. So they were disqualified and didn't get to formally compete.
The height of the robot climb is what got me. It's a timed event, and the height they had to climb might have been 10 meters further than the benchmark. Now that's a complete joke.
You know, this might actually help (at least to some degree). My wife and I went and saw Notting Hill (guess which one of us got to pick the movie that day) at the theater. I don't know why (we were the only ones in the whole theater) but they had subtitles turned on (English movie with English subtitles - obviously for hearing-impaired). For the next 90 minutes it took all my willpower to keep my eyes from shooting to the bottom of the screen and reading those blasted subtitles. It was really strange. My wife mentioned it too - she couldn't keep herself from reading them.
Speech is very much the same thing. If we can hear conversations, even just partial bits here and there, our brains will immediately work at translating the speech into thought.
So on one hand, I can understand how simply covering those frequencies with sounds that don't sound like speech could alleviate some distraction (assuming the sound it admits isn't blatantly annoying). During that movie if the subtitled text was replaced by white noise / static, I at least wouldn't have been trying to make sense of the extraneous information.
Okay, so what are the odds someone can flip a coin ten times in a row, and have it turn up heads every time? 1 in 1024. So now say we have 10,000 people try this and capture each on video, and we find which actually succeeded in turning up heads 10 times in a row. Now, what are the odds that person will flip another heads on their 11th try? It's still only 1:1 of course. However there are those that will believe, after watching the video, that the odds are better than that - the whole "gut feeling" thing. That's all this website is doing - reporting on a the few lucky enough to predict the correct result n times in a row. Obviously when it comes to sporting events and the like, knowledge certainly helps. However with a large enough number of people submitting, pure chance will result in a few getting great results even with completely random submissions.
The people that set this site up were simply smart enough to combine the statistics and the psychology and make money off of it.
You're taking it out of context. From the next sentence in the article, "Mr Thompson criticised the decision to have an employee take him through the game, arguing he could have avoided making violent choices."
In other words, since it was a pre-release version, and since the judge was only shown what the Take-Two employee decided to demonstrate for him, it's hard to tell what the judge actually saw. I can't even count how many games can be played in a much less violent way if so desired (like not using fatalites in Mortal Combat, or not doing head shots in TFC, etc). Entire areas of the map could also be avoided (like fighting inside of shcools).
Slashdot Mirror
When you consider that 90% of the world's goods are transported by sea
Bzzzt. The submitter misstated the article, so this statement is flat out wrong.
From the article (emphasis mine):
in 2003 more than 90 per cent of all goods that were sent around the globe went by ship
So in the context of global shipping, 90% of goods are transported by sea. Obviously far, far less than 90% of the world's goods are transported globally in the first place.
Dan East
LOL, check out the newsletter for Acclaim which features a sword-wielding Fabio ala Conan the Barbarian.
Dan East
that doesn't stop Google, Microsoft and others from trying their best to use them to build office suites and the like.
How can you include Microsoft in that sentence? They have done more to harm and impede the WWW than all other entities combined. You make them sound like they are doing something ground-breaking and cutting-edge. If MS could be granted one wish, they would ask for the death of "Web 2.0" and the return to static html, thus protecting their well-entrenched product line and business model.
Dan East
This happened only 4,800 years ago. The impact would have had global repercussions, so shouldn't it be reflected in written history, like in Egypt?
Dan East
The Google Earth images of my town (population ~10,000 in Virginia, USA) are old - at least 5 years old. Not to mention really crappy low-res (I resort to terraserver's USGS black and white images for our area, because at least they are detailed).
So unless they only need to sample say twice a decade, I don't see how this could be useful for tracking really new encroachments.
Dan East
I've not actually read a book on my laptop, but I have read many dozens of books on my Asus Pocket PC (240x320 display). I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy (including the Hobbit) twice, Da Vinci code, all the Harry Potters, and dozens of older works (most everything by Jules Verne, many of them twice), Moby Dick, etc.
So no, I wouldn't have any problem at all reading a 300 page book on a PC / notebook.
Dan East
My favorite is Effective Googling.
Okay, so I made that book up. Anyways, I find myself using hardly any formal reference material at this point (during software development). I used to consult MSDN regularly, and sometimes I still do if Google directs me there.
Dan East
The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before
Um, it's not too hard to increase the article count that fast when the articles are just filled with nothing but question marks. Visit the site and see for yourself!
Dan East
(mtcf)
I know this is purely anecdotal, but the experience with Tesla's mother reminds me of something that happened with my Grandfather. Before I was born he was out riding in the country on his motorcycle. Suddenly he knew something was wrong with his mother. In fact, if I remember correctly, he distinctly heard the word "mother". So he headed back to the house and had his wife call long distance (he lived around 300 miles away from his mother at the time) to check on her. A relative answered at the residence and said everything was fine, but that his mother wasn't there at the moment. Just a few minutes later the relative called back and said that his mother had died (it was an acute, non-trauma death). Now, I know my grandfather very well, and I believe what he said and experienced 100%. After they found out more details, specifically when it was she died, they determined that her death would have coincided exactly with whatever it was he experienced.
So personally, I believe that Tesla very well could have experienced the same thing. Whether or not it was related to sympathetic resonance of RF emissions or something more supernatural is of course unknown.
Dan East
What I really want to know if any software PS3 emulators are out yet. I'd like to try this thing out on my Inspiron 6000 to see what all the hoopla is about. Sure, it might have to skip a frame every now and then, but I can live with that.
Dan East
they will pay musicians directly to give them what no amount of digital files can give them: live performances.
You know, that's kind of funny, because so many times I've heard "artists don't make their money off of CD sales, but from touring". Now I don't know if that's urban legend or what, but even if it is mostly true then I don't think the artists would be complaining too much if the industry goes away. Well, maybe the handful of artists that were specifically promoted by the industry to serve the industry (Top 40 artists, etc) would have the most to loose.
Dan East
Save yourself some reading, here's what the article says:
Apple had an 80% market share of MP3 player hardware, and only offered their own proprietary format AAC for DRM (since MP3 has none). So studios had to concede to Apple's demands if they wanted any DRM control over their media on Apple hardware. Thus Apple was able to provide a better deal for consumers in that arena. Apple has no such leverage with the movie studios.
I left out a confusing explanation of BATNA, lots of banter like "I could buy movie X here or I could buy it here" and something about not having kids or taking them to Vegas, and grammatical errors like using to instead of two.
I'm curious why both BATNA charts (Music verses Movies) in the article are exactly the same - the plots are identical. Obviously they don't represent actual data, so are they just for illustration?
Dan East
I think the facts you state are a bit distorted. This would have occurred in an internment camp or prison camp, where the inmates could only posses radios incapable of long-range SW reception. Thus people in the camps would have voluntarily modified radios to meet the requirements, so they could at least listen to local broadcasting. You make it sound like electrical engineers were sneaking into houses to make modifications out in the general public. Considering how strained resources were during WWII that is ludicrous.
According to this site,
Prisoners could attend censored motion pictures and possess and operate a standard radio receiver that was incapable of shortwave reception. Prisoners were also allowed to attend religious services within the camp and were permitted to receive visitors twice a month who were related to the prisoner as wife, child, parent, brother, sister, grandparent, uncle, or aunt.
Further up in that article it states that Wisconsin had at least one such camp. If you've got any references to the contrary I'd be interested in reading through them (seriously).
Dan East
The sad thing is that we all (the consumers) will pay in the end. Sony will increase the cost of the batteries they produce, claiming it is necessary to insure QC and a safe product. So there will be less competition in the market, and likely other manufacturers will follow suite in raising prices, knowing that demand may exceed production because of Sony's recall.
Dan East
I assume your jesting, but while you're on the subject, let's be glad Valve gave up on the technology back in 2001:
The ISPs are going to need to spend a fair amount of money to be compliant with PowerPlay. But how they get that back is up to them. Some will have a tiered service, and some will just try to recoup their investment through reduced customer churn and customer acquisition.
That's the last thing we need - to give the ISPs another incentive to go after tiered services.
Dan East
In case anyone is interested, at the moment my parent post has been moderated 14 times, and is right back at its starting value. Nothing like burning those mod points!
Dan East
That means that we can't watch, purchase, or rent popular movies like:
What does watching have to do with purchasing or renting (or even buying tickets)?
Dan East
I'm sorry you thought I was trolling, because I felt those were some legitimate questions. Their methodology is nebulous. Exactly who are these "130 correspondents around the world" that fill out the questionnaires, and what is their agenda?
See, my point is this. There are plenty of European countries that "enjoy" more "freedom" than we do here in the US. For example, anyone is free to walk up and down Main Street completely naked if they so desire. However, what about a parent's rights and freedom to be able to take their family out in public, and not have the children exposed to genitalia? The type of "freedom" they want the press to have is the same carte blanche "freedom" I just described.
Dan East
Am I the only one that finds their entire ranking system a bit nebulous? Countries get low scores when a "reporter" is arrested for not releasing information when subpoenaed by courts, etc. Are they wanting reporters to be above the law or what? What does that have to do with their freedom to publish what they want? Do they feel reporters should be extended the same privileges as the attorney / client relationship? If so I don't agree with that, because the press is not (strictly speaking) a necessary part of the court system.
Dan East
The latest version is quite nice. The integrated spell checker is worth it alone (I had been using an extension, but having it integrated is so much nicer).
I thought I might could do away with Tab Mix Plus now, however it was quickly apparent that the extension is still a must. As a developer I'm too used to switching through multiple documents by history, not by some arbitrary linear order. So with Tab Mix Plus I can easily CTRL-TAB back and forth between a couple specific tabs, even if there are a dozen other tabs open. So I'm waiting for the author(s) to update it because it is no longer compatible.
Happily, the other extensions I use all had upgrades for 2.0. That was my biggest gripe about FireFox in the past. Especially a previous upgrade that I think was security-related. The version went from like 1.5.0.2 to 1.5.0.3 and suddenly 90% of my extensions weren't compatible. That was unacceptable, especially with such a seemingly small change in version number.
Dan East
Zahi Hawass; either he's omnipresent, or is a media hound, because it seems any documentary or photo shoot about Egyptian archeology has him in it. Maybe he just likes fame as much as archeology.
g ypttombs//im:/061022/481/d9433cbb7dc24106bdf87f124 dd60323
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/sc/102206e
Dan East
According to the rules, the circumference of the loop must measure at least 2 metres. ...the Snowstar team from Canada's University of British Columbia, for example, was shy of this by less than half a millimetre.
The diameter of their spool was 0.25% smaller than required, which was probably the result of warping from moving the spool around so it could be weighed, etc, before the competition. So they were disqualified and didn't get to formally compete.
The height of the robot climb is what got me. It's a timed event, and the height they had to climb might have been 10 meters further than the benchmark. Now that's a complete joke.
Dan East
You know, this might actually help (at least to some degree). My wife and I went and saw Notting Hill (guess which one of us got to pick the movie that day) at the theater. I don't know why (we were the only ones in the whole theater) but they had subtitles turned on (English movie with English subtitles - obviously for hearing-impaired). For the next 90 minutes it took all my willpower to keep my eyes from shooting to the bottom of the screen and reading those blasted subtitles. It was really strange. My wife mentioned it too - she couldn't keep herself from reading them.
Speech is very much the same thing. If we can hear conversations, even just partial bits here and there, our brains will immediately work at translating the speech into thought.
So on one hand, I can understand how simply covering those frequencies with sounds that don't sound like speech could alleviate some distraction (assuming the sound it admits isn't blatantly annoying). During that movie if the subtitled text was replaced by white noise / static, I at least wouldn't have been trying to make sense of the extraneous information.
Dan East
Okay, so what are the odds someone can flip a coin ten times in a row, and have it turn up heads every time? 1 in 1024. So now say we have 10,000 people try this and capture each on video, and we find which actually succeeded in turning up heads 10 times in a row. Now, what are the odds that person will flip another heads on their 11th try? It's still only 1:1 of course. However there are those that will believe, after watching the video, that the odds are better than that - the whole "gut feeling" thing. That's all this website is doing - reporting on a the few lucky enough to predict the correct result n times in a row. Obviously when it comes to sporting events and the like, knowledge certainly helps. However with a large enough number of people submitting, pure chance will result in a few getting great results even with completely random submissions.
The people that set this site up were simply smart enough to combine the statistics and the psychology and make money off of it.
Dan East
You're taking it out of context. From the next sentence in the article, "Mr Thompson criticised the decision to have an employee take him through the game, arguing he could have avoided making violent choices."
In other words, since it was a pre-release version, and since the judge was only shown what the Take-Two employee decided to demonstrate for him, it's hard to tell what the judge actually saw. I can't even count how many games can be played in a much less violent way if so desired (like not using fatalites in Mortal Combat, or not doing head shots in TFC, etc). Entire areas of the map could also be avoided (like fighting inside of shcools).
Dan East