The more a song gets downloaded, the more it would cost.
Right, because supply and demand dictates that... oh, but this is digital media. There will never be a physical shortage of that song.
From the buyer's perspective, however, Apple's 99-cents-for-everything model isn't perfect. Isn't 99 cents too much to pay for music that appeals to just a few people?
Right, because rarity typically dictates that something should cost more, so... oh, but this is digital media. There will never be a shortage of that song.
Yes, you have to pay for the bandwidth, the infrastructure, the yadda yadda and et cetera. It costs money to provide the media. Granted. And I personally think that $1 for a copy-protected, sampled audio file in a proprietary file format is ridiculous, but that's another can of worms. The point is that pricing by popularity when supply is not an issue reeks of greed, just as Jobs says.
This thing is a toy for children up to about 30 years old.
--bzzt, wrong answer. The console is not intended for children at all, it is intended for teens 14 and up.
Furthermore, the average age of the gamer is 30 years old. It slants younger for video games, admittedly, but it slants older for PC users. It's not for the jet-setting executive types, but the married guy in the cubicle next to you could very well be a hardcore Counter-Strike or StarCraft player.
Look man, you can pick apart the off-the-top-of-my-head reasons I came up with, but the fact still remains that parts alone do not a console launch make. I could probably come up with a more reasoned and informed outline of the true cost of launching a console, but my head is full of cold medication.
But I will attempt to address a couple items. I'm not sure what your response about manufacturing means, respectfully, but the 360 has one thousand seven hundred separate components being made all over the world. It's an orginazation and inventory nightmare. The parts don't just get delivered to Xbox 360 Factory #5 and come out the other end as a complete product. In actuality, it's a network of production centers all coordinating to create the parts of the parts, then putting those parts together, then sending those pieces off to Xbox 360 Factory #5.
And when I say "haggling with developers," I mean things like partial funding, partial resource supplying (free dev kits, free Macs, free dev tools, free phone support) or outright buying of the property, like MS did with Rare. I'm sure Japanese devs are salivating at the concessions MS will have to make in order to make one of their titles a 360 exclusive.
Seriously, at $399 a unit, I'm absolutely shocked that Microsoft is still losing money on the thing. The CPU and the GPU are the two expensive components. In bulk, I'd have a hard time believing that they cost more than $150-$175 together. The rest of the hardware is relatively inexpensive stuff, costing maybe $50-$100 at most. That leaves me with a total of $200-$275 for manufacturing, making me wonder where the inefficiency is. Is Microsoft really that BAD at hardware design that they can't sell a $399 integrated PC at anything less than a loss?
Yeah, they'll make a killing since they didn't spend a penny on advertising, manufacturing, research and development, haggling with developes, distribution... nigga, please.
I recognize that Gaiman is quite talented in the graphic novel field, and that American Gods has been widely lauded (winner of the Hugo [i]and[/i] Nebula, nominated for the World Fantasy awards, etc.) but I just don't see the appeal. I think he paints some vivid vignettes, but I think his novel characters are generally quite thin and the plot arcs suddenly halted.
I still remember with annoyance the constant reminder in American Gods that "a storm is coming." He engendered in the reader a long-simmering anticipation of a thrilling climax, with constant (and IMHO) and heavy-handed foreshadowing. Unfortunately, the narrative fulcrum occurred in the space of perhaps two paragraphs, and I found it incredibly unconvincing (and aggravatingly brief after a leadup of several hundred pages). I think there are much better books to be found in the Hugo- and Nebula award libraries, and it puzzles me how Gaiman managed to nab both nods for I thought was a middling novel, albeit one with an original mythology and those vivid vignettes (like when Shadow showed a sleight-of-hand trick to an unsuspecting boy in the library).
I wish Gaiman the best in his professional efforts, and I hope to see another novel from him soon; but I just don't get the admiration this novel has acculumated. (And no, I'm not a bitter also-ran:p)
To those who believe their livelihood depends on copyright and patent, I call shens. I've written two books that are "freely" copyable. In both I request $20 to acquire my official version and help motivate me to write more. Guess what? I get the money. Often. With the web, it is even easier to make money this way.
Respectfully, you're livlihood does not, in fact, depend on those two books, so that's not a very helpful example.
Patents and copyright are dead. Use your talents to build and convince, not build and coerce. What you invent likely came from seeing the inventions of others and making a new or better way to do something. If you want to cut off others from bettering your idea, then make another, better version.
You appear to have copyrights and patents rolled together into one evil ball. Copyright protects written works, and it's not just a notion of profit, but a notion of protecting your work against avaricious hacks, and idiots who think they can redistribute your work because they credit you as the source. Patents, now, those are different, and they tend to retard innovation more than they protect people's ideas. But innovation isn't really a factor with written works (magazine articles, novels, short stories, et cetera). I'll keep my copyright, thanks. I want my work to remain in my legal possession. By championing the death of copyright, you make the journalist and novelist as ridiculously weak at the bargaining table as a rock band trying to get signed to its first music label.
In his new book, The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama warns readers about the consequences of seeing people as "the products of pure chance in the random combination of genes." This materialistic account is "an invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty." Correct. He writes that "the view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality."
I'll bite.
Number one, atomic reduction in science is explained through mathematic formulae, not Hegelistic reasoning. I trust numbers before I trust language, and I'm speaking as someone who makes a living by making sentences out of words.
Next item.
Science is not random, nor is it explanations of origin. Nor is its explanation of evolution. Evolution is clearly defined as the passing on of traits conducive to survival, traits acquired not through random DNA juggling but through the (admittedly complex) layering of recessive and successive genes, with the gene package delivered via the strongest spermatazoa in the group.
Pure chance my ass. This is why it's very important to carefully analyze a message, no matter much you trust its source. I like the Dalai Lama a lot, but he's been known to be a little inflammatory, and this is one of those situations. Always consider the source. No matter how smart they sound.
Don't let Gyatso paint science into a corner of randomization. That's not what it's about at all. It's about -- wait for it -- natural explanations of phenomena. Explanations without a divine origin. "Spiritual poverty" is just a matter of perspective, as is "gullible optimism about what happens to me after I die." Although I may be spiritually impoverished, I am also empowered by reasoning independent of divine judgement and by action independent of spiritual complication. I can do something because I know it's right, not because my priest told me it's right. I'm free to make my own judgements about people, rather than letting God tell me that fags are evil and going to Hell.
You think Buddhism is free of such ridiculous condescension? I'm afraid not. Read up on Sokka Gakkai International some time. It's the most popular sect in Japan and claims over 12 million members worldwide, across 180-plus nations. It's big business baby, and it's just as fundamentalist and evangelical -- and divisive -- as the crap we deal with in the States.
But of course, since you are so familiar with the Dalai Lama's work, you would be at least fairly familair with this nagging detail already. But thanks for enlightening an American savage like me anyway.
So, why is it that the Kansas board of "education" will not allow science and religion to be separately taught? 1) Primarily because they have an agenda that is religiously biased.
Ah, but it's not religiously-biased. The problem with intelligent design is that it's a firmly Judeo-Christian agenda outlined by monotheistic origin mythology.
And once again, one fact is getting lost in the ether: The theory evolution does not attempt to explain origination. If it did, it would probably be called, well, the Theory of Origination. All the ToE attempts to do is explain -- wait for it -- how species have evolved.
The fundie right should just admit that their problem isn't with evolution, but that we were very likely descended from tree-swinging banana munchers. That offends them to no end. They'd like to think they came out of the divine crucible just as we are now: full-fledged humans. Not only does this make them look stupid, but it makes the rest of us look stupid for letting this shallow meme insinuate its way into our already embarrassing public education system.
In other words, the fundies are taking a text they did NOT write, and they claim to be the only ones who know the correct interpretation (i.e. claiming to be something equivalent to a Pope). Under what basis? With what authority?
The Patriot Act. Come on now. That's an "interpretation" of another document known as the Bill of Rights. This kind of thing happens all the time, with the authority going to whichever multimillionaire senator who can smear his opponents most effectively.
The software, disclosed in mid-October, is called Glide Effortless. It's a set of 12 applications for content creation, communication, E-commerce, and sharing. The apps are Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Video, Glide Docs, Glide AllMedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline (Glide's search engine), Glide Mail, Glide Cast (audio, text, and video conferencing), Glide Share, and Glide Shops.
Sounds like a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation here. Purely speculative, of course, but these individual apps would take quite a long while to polish to the level of their competitors, requiring a huge staff that a start-up just wouldn't have. It would be nice to have an all-in-one, platform-agnostic, Web-accessible solution, but it reminds me too much of those multi-function printers and mobile devices where the sum is less than its parts.
There's also the Google Mail syndrome, where people don't get on board en masse because they already have a Yahoo/MSN/whatever email address. Not only does the Glide suite have to be compelling, it has to make the user say "I need the whole thing" in the face of him or her already possessing individual programs they're already familiar with and are paying for. If I were TransMedia, I would have released demo versions of their individual apps, rather than cramming everything into one high-profile release. I think that's just asking for trouble.
Agreed. Gates is right, it seems like malaria is almost overlooked even in the media with all the focus on AIDS, cancer, killer bees, avian flu, anthrax threats, SARS, etc...
That's because malaria, unlike those in your list, typically occurs Somewhere Far Away.
Even the most ardent proponent of EULAs couldn't make the claim that you give such permissions by default. Unless they specifically ask, they don't have permission to do anything that isn't specifically part of the product as a reasonable person would perceive it to be.
And the EULA doesn't mention this rootkit or anything like it, from what I've read. In my opinion, I have the right to create a secure environment for my data, and the rootkit subverts that. Since the EULA doesn't mention it, I'm free to remove unauthorized the unauthorized code.
IE: The worm is a compact, surreptitious BT/Kademlia client.
Took me a second to realize that "IE" meant "id est" and not Internet Explorer. And "id est" means "that is," not "for example," also known as e.g. (exempli gratia).
Handy cheat sheet:
i.e. = id est = that is (not commonly captitalized, or puncuated as an acronym like IE)
I've had some hands-on time with the Evoluent mouse, and I can tell you that its Achilles Heel is the perpendicular hand motion required to click a button. The grip may be more natural to the hand (with less wrist activity and all), but they didn't do a lot to adjust button action. The middle-click button is awkwardly placed as well, and having three proper buttons takes time to adjust to.
A horizontal middle click button actually calls for less tendon movement. You can feel it on the inside of your wrist -- at least, I can. And notice in the picture how one's pinky finger is flush against the ring finger. That means less fluid action for right-clicking, and the middle finger is more muscular for this job (as any cab driver knows). You can remap so that the center button (not the scroll button) acts as right-click, maintaining familiar movement, but you'll also notice from the picture that you're still left rubbing the right side of your hand against the desktop surface. If you have oily hands, or having been eating Doritos, this can create residue buildup that reduces smooth surface response. And the matte finish on half of the device makes the mouse itself prone to residue.
In the long run, the Evoluent mouse shifts the axis of tendon movement to something the hand is more accustomed to (up and down waving motion, instead of rotating left to right) so it will probably come in handy to those with tired wrists. But the buttons still need some work in my opinion, and I would want an easily cleanable gloss finish instead of matte, even though matte has "grippier" contact.
Not going to get very far without a keyboard and mouse, speakers, or a monitor, either. I'm all for putting together inexpensive rigs, but it's just not doable at $500. Not yet. I know they're "focusing simply on the box itself," but that's a cop-out. Especially when they didn't choose a "box" at all. I think it's safe to say that a "Gaming Machine" includes input and display (and a case and operating system), so the title of the article is misleading. It's more like "How much of a gaming-oriented computer can we put together for $500?" Not all of it, apparently. But we knew that already, didn't we? So what's the point of this exercise?
Get used to it. 50% of users is just the beginning. It will be 90% soon enough, especially with the next increment in storage (particularly flash), CPU (Low leakage chips with ultra low power consumption) and portable networking speeds (WiMax in particular). Thats not even counting things like digital paper which will drive down power consumption even more. With all this, the number of people who will be saying that they need a desktop to provide some extra functionality they can't get in a laptop is going to fall to a very low percentage of users.
While I agree with the rest of your post, there is one factor you're forgetting: price. On average, a desktop costs half as much as its mobile counterpart, for similar specs. And in the corporate world, this is what the boss will look for above all else, particularly when you factor in lost, stolen, and damaged mobile devices. Speaking of theft, sensitive data is more likely to be stored in static locations, so there will always be a market for desktops.
Measurements and particular jargon abound in all walks of life. If you're making cookies, for example, you need to understand a cup, teaspoon, pint, etc. (or liter and the like if you're not American). If you build a shed, you need to know what a foot or meter is, don't you? In those disciples, you also need to know things like what a hammer is, or a mixer. Computers aren't any different.
True, but a computer is a device, not a tradecraft. Furthermore, unlike a device like a car or pocket calculator, it is a platform for entertainment and productivity, and it is far more complex than both and truly requires an additional vocabulary to operate it efficiently. And the complexity isn't necessarily the hardware, but in the lack of standardization, the abstraction of the interface, and in the necessities of modern security. The home computer is still a novelty to the general public, believe it or not. Partly because it's still a relatively expensive investment and prone to all kinds of exploits, tricks, and scams as soon as you connect it to the Internet.
Think about evertyhing you must put in place to properly secure a Windows PC, for example. First, you must install a virus scanner. For the majority of users, this *is* a must, because they really aren't savvy about e-mail attachements, message spoofing, and shady-looking websites. Then you need at least a software firewall, which pops up a prompt the first time each app request a network connection -- and the prompts aren't always very informative. Win32 Generic Host Process? Um, okay, I guess. Either that, or you get a router, and that requires hooking it up with the modem and the computer. And God help you if you need to start forwarding ports and setting up wireless encryption. Then there's IE's default settings that allow browser helper objects, referral IDs, and every cookie that gets thrown your way.
So what to do when you don't even know what a firewall is? When you aren't aware of the importance of shrinking down that huge "jpeg" you took with your digital camera before mass mailing it to all your friends and family who have email addresses? There's a lot of technical awareness that/. takes for granted, but it's important to remember that we represent a very small percentage of the populace.
The download box is annoying. It should be attached to the bottom in the same manner the find is.
FWIW, you can disable the download manager from popping up (Tools>Options>Downloads, uncheck "show download manager") and save things automagically by holding down the Alt key and clicking on the link. If the link is Java, however, this doesn't work.
...Because it implies an all-new generation of technology, when the truth is that most of its internals are silicon that Apple just hasn't used for its iPods but has been used extensively elsewhere, as Ars Technica noted in their review posted here yesterday. This isn't a bad thing, of course, it's just kind of lazy journalism, IMO.
From the review: "Most of the other components are run of the mill as far as iPods go. The heart of the iPod, the PortalPlayer chip, was upgraded to a slightly newer model (the PP5021C-TDF), the audio codec is the same Wolfson Microprocessor (WM8975G) found in the current generation iPods, a new power management unit by Phillips (CF50607), a batch of 32MB of Samsung SDRAM (534-K9WAG08U1M) replaces the old Hynix chips, and the LCD is of unknown manufacturer but it's a 16-bit color, 176x132 1.5" model."
I hear that. I've got a 49th level paladin who's been spending a LOT of time at the inn lately because I just don't want to kill that much time playing WoW.
Well, one of the problems with your situation is the blandness of being a pally. This is what it eventually devolves to:
--Approach enemy, open with Hammer of Justice --Continue melee until your health is low --Cast Divine Shield, Divine Favor, then heal --Continue melee until mob is dead
And it's pretty much the same dynamic in PvP, except you're also hitting Blessing of Freedom and Cleanse. This gets old very fast.
I've been leveling up a shammy recently, and he has all kinds of ways to approach different character classes and mob types. It keeps things fresh. Plus, I'm no longer helpless against mages, who can just nuke-poly-nuke-poly a pally until my health goes to zero. I'm also not dependent on the inconsistent Retrib crits.
"Combat and mechanics are all well and good, but roleplaying games should be about storytelling." Fair enough. A matter of taste and not objective assessment, but it's your review.
But then you end with, "Even though the game hews very close to the genre standard, the entertaining and visceral combat gameplay can make this a worthwhile addition to your library." (Emphasis mine)
So what kind of game is this? Is an action RPG, against which you are, respectfully, biased? Or is it a classic RPG?
Clinton supporters always wanted to believe it was about sex and not purjury.
I don't recall the rule of law being brought up very often during that morass. What I recall was a barrage of moral positions. Clinton was a shameful idiot when it came to his personal life, but the right would have been much better off leveraging his acitivies to undermine his credibility. "Would you trust a man who's getting blowjobs from interns in the Oval Office" would have been a lot stronger than "He lied to us about getting blowjobs from interns in the Oval Office." Who cares if he lied or not? Because there's too many people who are familiar with that kind of thing -- the difference being that those other people are not the President of the United States and are not expected to hold themselves to his standards. Leverage the schism between the idealized statesman and the hornball smooth-talker, not the difference between truth and lies about blowjobs. Even Democrats want their national leaders to comport themselves respectably.
But staying on topic... I think the real worry in the "blogosphere" is astroturf, not loss of mindshare. There's a global political arena right now that's like the Old West, minus that nasty bit about slaughtering the natives. Land is being claimed, and communities are being built. The earlier you arrive, the more difficult it is to topple you, and the more time you have to reinforce yourself against things like comment spam, slander, and the truth. Ten years from now, or less, we will have political institutions that only exist online. And they're building the digital foundations right now; building a social network, collecting a roster of talent, and establishing connections in Washington. What we're seeing right now is a rudiment, not a passing fad.
Slashdot Mirror
The more a song gets downloaded, the more it would cost.
Right, because supply and demand dictates that... oh, but this is digital media. There will never be a physical shortage of that song.
From the buyer's perspective, however, Apple's 99-cents-for-everything model isn't perfect. Isn't 99 cents too much to pay for music that appeals to just a few people?
Right, because rarity typically dictates that something should cost more, so... oh, but this is digital media. There will never be a shortage of that song.
Yes, you have to pay for the bandwidth, the infrastructure, the yadda yadda and et cetera. It costs money to provide the media. Granted. And I personally think that $1 for a copy-protected, sampled audio file in a proprietary file format is ridiculous, but that's another can of worms. The point is that pricing by popularity when supply is not an issue reeks of greed, just as Jobs says.
This thing is a toy for children up to about 30 years old.
--bzzt, wrong answer. The console is not intended for children at all, it is intended for teens 14 and up.
Furthermore, the average age of the gamer is 30 years old. It slants younger for video games, admittedly, but it slants older for PC users. It's not for the jet-setting executive types, but the married guy in the cubicle next to you could very well be a hardcore Counter-Strike or StarCraft player.
Seems you would rather take this opportunity to bash Republicans... as usual.
And you would respond by claiming unpatriotic behavior, instead of refuting the evidence. Like Cheney does.
As my President Bush once said, "Is our children learning?"
Welcome to the club!
Look man, you can pick apart the off-the-top-of-my-head reasons I came up with, but the fact still remains that parts alone do not a console launch make. I could probably come up with a more reasoned and informed outline of the true cost of launching a console, but my head is full of cold medication.
But I will attempt to address a couple items. I'm not sure what your response about manufacturing means, respectfully, but the 360 has one thousand seven hundred separate components being made all over the world. It's an orginazation and inventory nightmare. The parts don't just get delivered to Xbox 360 Factory #5 and come out the other end as a complete product. In actuality, it's a network of production centers all coordinating to create the parts of the parts, then putting those parts together, then sending those pieces off to Xbox 360 Factory #5.
And when I say "haggling with developers," I mean things like partial funding, partial resource supplying (free dev kits, free Macs, free dev tools, free phone support) or outright buying of the property, like MS did with Rare. I'm sure Japanese devs are salivating at the concessions MS will have to make in order to make one of their titles a 360 exclusive.
Seriously, at $399 a unit, I'm absolutely shocked that Microsoft is still losing money on the thing. The CPU and the GPU are the two expensive components. In bulk, I'd have a hard time believing that they cost more than $150-$175 together. The rest of the hardware is relatively inexpensive stuff, costing maybe $50-$100 at most. That leaves me with a total of $200-$275 for manufacturing, making me wonder where the inefficiency is. Is Microsoft really that BAD at hardware design that they can't sell a $399 integrated PC at anything less than a loss?
Yeah, they'll make a killing since they didn't spend a penny on advertising, manufacturing, research and development, haggling with developes, distribution... nigga, please.
I recognize that Gaiman is quite talented in the graphic novel field, and that American Gods has been widely lauded (winner of the Hugo [i]and[/i] Nebula, nominated for the World Fantasy awards, etc.) but I just don't see the appeal. I think he paints some vivid vignettes, but I think his novel characters are generally quite thin and the plot arcs suddenly halted.
:p)
I still remember with annoyance the constant reminder in American Gods that "a storm is coming." He engendered in the reader a long-simmering anticipation of a thrilling climax, with constant (and IMHO) and heavy-handed foreshadowing. Unfortunately, the narrative fulcrum occurred in the space of perhaps two paragraphs, and I found it incredibly unconvincing (and aggravatingly brief after a leadup of several hundred pages). I think there are much better books to be found in the Hugo- and Nebula award libraries, and it puzzles me how Gaiman managed to nab both nods for I thought was a middling novel, albeit one with an original mythology and those vivid vignettes (like when Shadow showed a sleight-of-hand trick to an unsuspecting boy in the library).
I wish Gaiman the best in his professional efforts, and I hope to see another novel from him soon; but I just don't get the admiration this novel has acculumated. (And no, I'm not a bitter also-ran
Aw, I loved that mediocre childhood favorite!
To those who believe their livelihood depends on copyright and patent, I call shens. I've written two books that are "freely" copyable. In both I request $20 to acquire my official version and help motivate me to write more. Guess what? I get the money. Often. With the web, it is even easier to make money this way.
Respectfully, you're livlihood does not, in fact, depend on those two books, so that's not a very helpful example.
Patents and copyright are dead. Use your talents to build and convince, not build and coerce. What you invent likely came from seeing the inventions of others and making a new or better way to do something. If you want to cut off others from bettering your idea, then make another, better version.
You appear to have copyrights and patents rolled together into one evil ball. Copyright protects written works, and it's not just a notion of profit, but a notion of protecting your work against avaricious hacks, and idiots who think they can redistribute your work because they credit you as the source. Patents, now, those are different, and they tend to retard innovation more than they protect people's ideas. But innovation isn't really a factor with written works (magazine articles, novels, short stories, et cetera). I'll keep my copyright, thanks. I want my work to remain in my legal possession. By championing the death of copyright, you make the journalist and novelist as ridiculously weak at the bargaining table as a rock band trying to get signed to its first music label.
In his new book, The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama warns readers about the consequences of seeing people as "the products of pure chance in the random combination of genes." This materialistic account is "an invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty." Correct. He writes that "the view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality."
I'll bite.
Number one, atomic reduction in science is explained through mathematic formulae, not Hegelistic reasoning. I trust numbers before I trust language, and I'm speaking as someone who makes a living by making sentences out of words.
Next item.
Science is not random, nor is it explanations of origin. Nor is its explanation of evolution. Evolution is clearly defined as the passing on of traits conducive to survival, traits acquired not through random DNA juggling but through the (admittedly complex) layering of recessive and successive genes, with the gene package delivered via the strongest spermatazoa in the group.
Pure chance my ass. This is why it's very important to carefully analyze a message, no matter much you trust its source. I like the Dalai Lama a lot, but he's been known to be a little inflammatory, and this is one of those situations. Always consider the source. No matter how smart they sound.
Don't let Gyatso paint science into a corner of randomization. That's not what it's about at all. It's about -- wait for it -- natural explanations of phenomena. Explanations without a divine origin. "Spiritual poverty" is just a matter of perspective, as is "gullible optimism about what happens to me after I die." Although I may be spiritually impoverished, I am also empowered by reasoning independent of divine judgement and by action independent of spiritual complication. I can do something because I know it's right, not because my priest told me it's right. I'm free to make my own judgements about people, rather than letting God tell me that fags are evil and going to Hell.
You think Buddhism is free of such ridiculous condescension? I'm afraid not. Read up on Sokka Gakkai International some time. It's the most popular sect in Japan and claims over 12 million members worldwide, across 180-plus nations. It's big business baby, and it's just as fundamentalist and evangelical -- and divisive -- as the crap we deal with in the States.
But of course, since you are so familiar with the Dalai Lama's work, you would be at least fairly familair with this nagging detail already. But thanks for enlightening an American savage like me anyway.
So, why is it that the Kansas board of "education" will not allow science and religion to be separately taught? 1) Primarily because they have an agenda that is religiously biased.
Ah, but it's not religiously-biased. The problem with intelligent design is that it's a firmly Judeo-Christian agenda outlined by monotheistic origin mythology.
And once again, one fact is getting lost in the ether: The theory evolution does not attempt to explain origination. If it did, it would probably be called, well, the Theory of Origination. All the ToE attempts to do is explain -- wait for it -- how species have evolved.
The fundie right should just admit that their problem isn't with evolution, but that we were very likely descended from tree-swinging banana munchers. That offends them to no end. They'd like to think they came out of the divine crucible just as we are now: full-fledged humans. Not only does this make them look stupid, but it makes the rest of us look stupid for letting this shallow meme insinuate its way into our already embarrassing public education system.
God help us.
Heh.
In other words, the fundies are taking a text they did NOT write, and they claim to be the only ones who know the correct interpretation (i.e. claiming to be something equivalent to a Pope). Under what basis? With what authority?
The Patriot Act. Come on now. That's an "interpretation" of another document known as the Bill of Rights. This kind of thing happens all the time, with the authority going to whichever multimillionaire senator who can smear his opponents most effectively.
From TFA:
The software, disclosed in mid-October, is called Glide Effortless. It's a set of 12 applications for content creation, communication, E-commerce, and sharing. The apps are Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Video, Glide Docs, Glide AllMedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline (Glide's search engine), Glide Mail, Glide Cast (audio, text, and video conferencing), Glide Share, and Glide Shops.
Sounds like a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation here. Purely speculative, of course, but these individual apps would take quite a long while to polish to the level of their competitors, requiring a huge staff that a start-up just wouldn't have. It would be nice to have an all-in-one, platform-agnostic, Web-accessible solution, but it reminds me too much of those multi-function printers and mobile devices where the sum is less than its parts.
There's also the Google Mail syndrome, where people don't get on board en masse because they already have a Yahoo/MSN/whatever email address. Not only does the Glide suite have to be compelling, it has to make the user say "I need the whole thing" in the face of him or her already possessing individual programs they're already familiar with and are paying for. If I were TransMedia, I would have released demo versions of their individual apps, rather than cramming everything into one high-profile release. I think that's just asking for trouble.
Agreed. Gates is right, it seems like malaria is almost overlooked even in the media with all the focus on AIDS, cancer, killer bees, avian flu, anthrax threats, SARS, etc...
That's because malaria, unlike those in your list, typically occurs Somewhere Far Away.
Even the most ardent proponent of EULAs couldn't make the claim that you give such permissions by default. Unless they specifically ask, they don't have permission to do anything that isn't specifically part of the product as a reasonable person would perceive it to be.
And the EULA doesn't mention this rootkit or anything like it, from what I've read. In my opinion, I have the right to create a secure environment for my data, and the rootkit subverts that. Since the EULA doesn't mention it, I'm free to remove unauthorized the unauthorized code.
Bad Sony! No biscuit!
IE: The worm is a compact, surreptitious BT/Kademlia client.
:p
Took me a second to realize that "IE" meant "id est" and not Internet Explorer. And "id est" means "that is," not "for example," also known as e.g. (exempli gratia).
Handy cheat sheet:
i.e. = id est = that is (not commonly captitalized, or puncuated as an acronym like IE)
e.g. = exempli gratia = for example
There's your pendantic lesson of the day
I've had some hands-on time with the Evoluent mouse, and I can tell you that its Achilles Heel is the perpendicular hand motion required to click a button. The grip may be more natural to the hand (with less wrist activity and all), but they didn't do a lot to adjust button action. The middle-click button is awkwardly placed as well, and having three proper buttons takes time to adjust to.
A horizontal middle click button actually calls for less tendon movement. You can feel it on the inside of your wrist -- at least, I can. And notice in the picture how one's pinky finger is flush against the ring finger. That means less fluid action for right-clicking, and the middle finger is more muscular for this job (as any cab driver knows). You can remap so that the center button (not the scroll button) acts as right-click, maintaining familiar movement, but you'll also notice from the picture that you're still left rubbing the right side of your hand against the desktop surface. If you have oily hands, or having been eating Doritos, this can create residue buildup that reduces smooth surface response. And the matte finish on half of the device makes the mouse itself prone to residue.
In the long run, the Evoluent mouse shifts the axis of tendon movement to something the hand is more accustomed to (up and down waving motion, instead of rotating left to right) so it will probably come in handy to those with tired wrists. But the buttons still need some work in my opinion, and I would want an easily cleanable gloss finish instead of matte, even though matte has "grippier" contact.
Not going to get very far without a keyboard and mouse, speakers, or a monitor, either. I'm all for putting together inexpensive rigs, but it's just not doable at $500. Not yet. I know they're "focusing simply on the box itself," but that's a cop-out. Especially when they didn't choose a "box" at all. I think it's safe to say that a "Gaming Machine" includes input and display (and a case and operating system), so the title of the article is misleading. It's more like "How much of a gaming-oriented computer can we put together for $500?" Not all of it, apparently. But we knew that already, didn't we? So what's the point of this exercise?
Get used to it. 50% of users is just the beginning. It will be 90% soon enough, especially with the next increment in storage (particularly flash), CPU (Low leakage chips with ultra low power consumption) and portable networking speeds (WiMax in particular). Thats not even counting things like digital paper which will drive down power consumption even more. With all this, the number of people who will be saying that they need a desktop to provide some extra functionality they can't get in a laptop is going to fall to a very low percentage of users.
While I agree with the rest of your post, there is one factor you're forgetting: price. On average, a desktop costs half as much as its mobile counterpart, for similar specs. And in the corporate world, this is what the boss will look for above all else, particularly when you factor in lost, stolen, and damaged mobile devices. Speaking of theft, sensitive data is more likely to be stored in static locations, so there will always be a market for desktops.
Measurements and particular jargon abound in all walks of life. If you're making cookies, for example, you need to understand a cup, teaspoon, pint, etc. (or liter and the like if you're not American). If you build a shed, you need to know what a foot or meter is, don't you? In those disciples, you also need to know things like what a hammer is, or a mixer. Computers aren't any different.
/. takes for granted, but it's important to remember that we represent a very small percentage of the populace.
True, but a computer is a device, not a tradecraft. Furthermore, unlike a device like a car or pocket calculator, it is a platform for entertainment and productivity, and it is far more complex than both and truly requires an additional vocabulary to operate it efficiently. And the complexity isn't necessarily the hardware, but in the lack of standardization, the abstraction of the interface, and in the necessities of modern security. The home computer is still a novelty to the general public, believe it or not. Partly because it's still a relatively expensive investment and prone to all kinds of exploits, tricks, and scams as soon as you connect it to the Internet.
Think about evertyhing you must put in place to properly secure a Windows PC, for example. First, you must install a virus scanner. For the majority of users, this *is* a must, because they really aren't savvy about e-mail attachements, message spoofing, and shady-looking websites. Then you need at least a software firewall, which pops up a prompt the first time each app request a network connection -- and the prompts aren't always very informative. Win32 Generic Host Process? Um, okay, I guess. Either that, or you get a router, and that requires hooking it up with the modem and the computer. And God help you if you need to start forwarding ports and setting up wireless encryption. Then there's IE's default settings that allow browser helper objects, referral IDs, and every cookie that gets thrown your way.
So what to do when you don't even know what a firewall is? When you aren't aware of the importance of shrinking down that huge "jpeg" you took with your digital camera before mass mailing it to all your friends and family who have email addresses? There's a lot of technical awareness that
The download box is annoying. It should be attached to the bottom in the same manner the find is.
FWIW, you can disable the download manager from popping up (Tools>Options>Downloads, uncheck "show download manager") and save things automagically by holding down the Alt key and clicking on the link. If the link is Java, however, this doesn't work.
...Because it implies an all-new generation of technology, when the truth is that most of its internals are silicon that Apple just hasn't used for its iPods but has been used extensively elsewhere, as Ars Technica noted in their review posted here yesterday. This isn't a bad thing, of course, it's just kind of lazy journalism, IMO.
From the review: "Most of the other components are run of the mill as far as iPods go. The heart of the iPod, the PortalPlayer chip, was upgraded to a slightly newer model (the PP5021C-TDF), the audio codec is the same Wolfson Microprocessor (WM8975G) found in the current generation iPods, a new power management unit by Phillips (CF50607), a batch of 32MB of Samsung SDRAM (534-K9WAG08U1M) replaces the old Hynix chips, and the LCD is of unknown manufacturer but it's a 16-bit color, 176x132 1.5" model."
I hear that. I've got a 49th level paladin who's been spending a LOT of time at the inn lately because I just don't want to kill that much time playing WoW.
Well, one of the problems with your situation is the blandness of being a pally. This is what it eventually devolves to:
--Approach enemy, open with Hammer of Justice
--Continue melee until your health is low
--Cast Divine Shield, Divine Favor, then heal
--Continue melee until mob is dead
And it's pretty much the same dynamic in PvP, except you're also hitting Blessing of Freedom and Cleanse. This gets old very fast.
I've been leveling up a shammy recently, and he has all kinds of ways to approach different character classes and mob types. It keeps things fresh. Plus, I'm no longer helpless against mages, who can just nuke-poly-nuke-poly a pally until my health goes to zero. I'm also not dependent on the inconsistent Retrib crits.
An intriguing contradiction struck me:
"Combat and mechanics are all well and good, but roleplaying games should be about storytelling." Fair enough. A matter of taste and not objective assessment, but it's your review.
But then you end with, "Even though the game hews very close to the genre standard, the entertaining and visceral combat gameplay can make this a worthwhile addition to your library." (Emphasis mine)
So what kind of game is this? Is an action RPG, against which you are, respectfully, biased? Or is it a classic RPG?
Clinton supporters always wanted to believe it was about sex and not purjury.
I don't recall the rule of law being brought up very often during that morass. What I recall was a barrage of moral positions. Clinton was a shameful idiot when it came to his personal life, but the right would have been much better off leveraging his acitivies to undermine his credibility. "Would you trust a man who's getting blowjobs from interns in the Oval Office" would have been a lot stronger than "He lied to us about getting blowjobs from interns in the Oval Office." Who cares if he lied or not? Because there's too many people who are familiar with that kind of thing -- the difference being that those other people are not the President of the United States and are not expected to hold themselves to his standards. Leverage the schism between the idealized statesman and the hornball smooth-talker, not the difference between truth and lies about blowjobs. Even Democrats want their national leaders to comport themselves respectably.
But staying on topic... I think the real worry in the "blogosphere" is astroturf, not loss of mindshare. There's a global political arena right now that's like the Old West, minus that nasty bit about slaughtering the natives. Land is being claimed, and communities are being built. The earlier you arrive, the more difficult it is to topple you, and the more time you have to reinforce yourself against things like comment spam, slander, and the truth. Ten years from now, or less, we will have political institutions that only exist online. And they're building the digital foundations right now; building a social network, collecting a roster of talent, and establishing connections in Washington. What we're seeing right now is a rudiment, not a passing fad.