Did you read the article? A hobby does not cause one to fail to attend school for a semester in order to play EverQuest. A hobby does not lead one to play Civilization for seven straight years. Yes, this is an addiction. A hobby is a healthy way of spending one's free time. When it reaches the point where the hobby begins demanding more than than you have free and you gladly feed it that time, then it is an addiction.
Not so. An expert witness, by the nature of his expertise, may be considered a source of factual information. Thus, as long as such a witness is setting forth information with the explicit understanding that it is factual, then the posting may be treated as factual (although that in no way verifies its accuracy)
The airplane is shoving the rocket out the back, meaning that if anything, it will only make the airplane go faster in the direction it's already travelling.
You have remarkable insight into the core of the problem and you raise a very interesting point. I too was considering the possibility of a [peaceful] revolution. I think that our current legislative process focuses too much on patching up real or perceived problems rather than building a strong, clear set of laws that will deal with a broad category of issues. This, in turn, leads, at worst, to breaches of constitutionality and, at best, to an unsound legal structure. I truly think that the people need to be orchestrated such that they will demand that government stop pandering to corporate interests and return to the fundamental principles upon which our nation was founded. Obviously, this isn't an easy task. I can't even say it's possible. After all, a revolutionary effort that appears to have coherence and any real power is almost certain to be quashed by any government (every regime tends to act to preserve itself from genuine, external threats.) However, I think that things have gone so far that it is necessary.
I have to agree with you on this one. I tend to go off on them because when I buy a CD, my expectations are that the music will be of the utmost quality and that I will enjoy it as music. The reason why I'm so ready to deride Britney Spears, 'NSync, The Backstreet Boys, etc.. is because I feel they've taken something good and pure (music) and corrupted it so that it is no longer a purely aural medium, as _music_ should be. Instead, their popularity relies upon the visual aspects of the performance. If it weren't for the fact that there were 5 attractive men or a curvacious woman dancing in the video (and I confess - the visual aspect of modern music videos is very impressive), the music itself would not acchieve the popularity that it does. The prevalence and popularity of music as an aural/visual form of entertainment bothers me, which is why I am so ready to criticize Britney Spears and 'NSync (the two most recognizeable models of this phemonemon.) It just seems to me that this is a trait that, if not unique, is most common in pop music. Seldom do I see videos for country/western music (such videos _do_ exist, by the way) but I still like the music. Of the pop music I've heard, it is often lackluster alone, but manages to shine with the video.
At the time when artists were not so well-payed as they are today, you could be quite certain that the artist either truly loved what (s)he was doing or was exceptionally talented, thus ensuring large commisions. If you're willing to pay more, you increase the overall number of artists, but you typically also lower the standard of 'exceptional talent.' Is there an ideal level at which this rather arbitrary standard should be set? Probably. I happen to believe that at present it is far too low, since even a striking appearance and a decent voice can be mistaken for 'exceptional talent' (ala Britney Spears or 'NSync.)
This disturbingly low opinion of talent conversely indicates that musicians are being paid disturbingly well. Those of us who recognize this (most Slashdotters, it seems, and many others in intellectual circles) are unwilling to pay for what is, to us, a decided lack of talent. Unfortunately, we don't comprise a large enough portion of the market to sufficiently dent demand. So long as the media influences popular judgement of 'exceptional talent' and encourages conformity, we cannot expect this trend to change anytime soon. The recording industry will continue to churn out music of whatever quality so long as it is demanded by their market - those very people who rush to the malls every time a new CD is released, because they think that 'NSync represents 'exceptional talent' when in fact, 'NSync represents nothing more than the ability to sing lyrics written by somebody else to a tune composed by somebody else and to look pretty in the process.
In conclusion, I must say that I disagree with your assessment that the phenomenon of large royalties and licensing fees is unlikely to stand the test of time. I certainly agree that to an intellectual crowd such as Slashdot, such a change seems inevitable, but I do not foresee the drastic cultural changes necessary to affect such a collapse of the present system.
I don't think that a grade of "F" means that the security risk couldn't get greater. I think it means that at that point, the risk is deemed unacceptable and it doesn't matter how unacceptable it is, it needs to be fixed. I'm sure that specific reports are freely availalbe to the departments themselves, but that to the public, only the letter grades are released.
Re:Nintendo's Warranty
on
Gamecube Guts
·
· Score: 1
The philosophy behind this isn't that they don't expect the console to die shortly after three months. The way of thinking here is that if the console is treated properly, if it doesn't break in three months, it is probably not ever going to break - at least not in any particularly critical way. On the other hand, if the machine is abused, yeah, it might last three months still, after which, the manufacturer can wash its hands of it. No company wants to be responsible for the negligence of their customers.
If I'm not mistaken the current emphasis lies in reudcing the projected capabilities of the ISS in order to maintain both safety and an acceptible budget. I don't think that safety will ever NOT be a primary concern for the ISS. Instead, I think what is being said is that if, with X dollars, they cannot make the ISS safely do A, B, and C, but can make it safely do just A, B, or C, then two of the three functions must be discarded.
I was chatting with Alicebot and just for the heck of it, I entered a question in German. To my great surprise, she answered - in German. Her vocabulary is somewhat limited, since she doesn't understand things like 'Cleveland ist mir sehr kalt' - Cleveland is very cold. Even so, the fact that she's programmed with more than one language (which means recognizing the language for what it is and adjusting how she interprets the syntax) is quite impressive!
Yeah, mm is a SI friendly unit, but the use of mercury is totally arbitrary. I'd rather use a Pascal anyday, even though most of SI was initially based on water. (ie: a gram is the mass of distilled water in 1 cubic centimetre...or was it the other way around?) Although yes, inHg is much worse than mmHg. Regardless, I'd rather just leave mercury _out_ of the picture.
Alas, being an engineering student in the USA, I am forced to use Imperial units as far as some of the questions in the textbooks actually force you to use them (unless you want to convert to SI, solve, then convert back, just for the fun of it). Although from what I understand it, even if the SI unit for pressure is (Pa)scals, the global scientific/engineering community still fully recognizes (atm)ospheres, mmHg (milimetres mercury), and psi (pounds per square inch). I find this incredibly annoying, because it makes it so that I have to work with 3 or 4 different versions of the ideal gass constant.
Something mentioned in passing in this article gave me quite a turn. It said that several other act(ors/resses) had trademarked their names. What exactly does that imply? Granted, Farrah Fawcett isn't so common a name, but Dick Smith? Does this mean that had some other Australian actor named Dick Smith wanted to get into show business, he would have had to have changed his name or risked a law suit? What are the actual benefits of having one's name trademarked like that?
The finite limit of hydrogen isn't what sustainability refers to. An efficient reactor has a problem that the necessary configuration for the plasma is itself not stable and is known to spontaneously collapse, causing the machine to cease power production. On the other hand, a reactor that uses a more stable configuration has a much lower conversion rate and is thus less useful.
What needs to be understood is that they've managed to use a fusion generator to generate electricity. However, they've never managed to create electricity in a useful fashion.
As it stands, they can create an efficient reactor that is not self-sustaining or a self-sustaining reactor that is not efficient. In other words, the former uses very little outside power, but isn't stable and ceases to function. The latter is more stable, but uses more fuel than conventional means.
Fusion power is not a pipe dream. Just as conventional power reactors have been improved over time to produce electricity more efficiently, so will fusion reactors eventually be improved to the point where they're useful. Will it be in the next decade? It may well be, but regardless of when it will happen, it will happen.
Hrrm...This sort of sounds familiar to me. If anybody's ever played Civilzation: Call to Power, this ought to sound remarkably like the Corporate Republic in which private, commercial entities oversee the functions that the government currently oversees. That can really make one wonder what MS could do (for good or for ill) if its influence begins to extend into matters that don't concern them directly, but which they think would be useful to control.
My difficulty in writing to my congresscritter (aside from the fact that I only just registered to vote this past summer) is that I'm ignorant of the details of the issues at hand. It's an easy matter to get plenty of information about one side of most of these issues just by reading/., but if I want to see the defense, as it were, I don't know where to get anything like that. One solution may be to read the bills and drafts in question and forumlate an opinion of my own, but I can't understand legalise for the life of me. Does anybody know of a well-informed source where I can get either both sides of any given issue or to get the "other side" (that is: from the point of view of the corporations, the government, or such). Given that much, I am confident I could write a reasonable letter voicing my concerns.
Gadzooks, this guy's on every channel. Every story I've read has this very same inane comment (albeit with a different topic of discussion) somewhere in it. I've got my priorities and among them is moving on with my life.
Doesn't matter. If the seeds are actually going to grow into anything, they have to get nutrients from somehwere. The Law of Conservation of Mass rules out that their mass can increase (ie: by growing) without drawing substance from elsewhere and converting it to cellular material.
Technically, in a free country, no producer really does get to set the price for his product. He can set it at whatever he pleases, but market forces dictate that he should set it as such a point where demand meets supply (ie: the producer is willing to sell X units when they are priced at A, and the consumers are willing to purchase X units at price A). In a monopoly system, because there are no alternatives, the demand curve no longer slopes down as sharply, or in the extreme case, it does not slope down at all. People "need" an operating system, and the lack of viable alternatives forces them to purchase the monopoly's products. As a result, the monopoly can set prices higher than a free market system would allow, because there is no competetive force among producers to bid down the price of the product.
I'm not sure about the specifics, but if you pulse a very low-intensity sound wave through any substance, you can measure the distortion of the wave to see whether the material is behaving as you expect it to. If it is not, it is often because of miscroscopic structural defects.
Egad...Resident evil projected onto my retina. I'd really have to remember not to drink coffee before playing it at 2 in the morning, because I would certain wet myself.
Cheap creatures in enhancement decks are always good, especially ones that come with enhancements of their own (ie: flying). Spinal graft was already mentioned, but there's also regneration, inviolability, entangler, rancor, and a whole slew of other enchantments that make ornithopter a card worth having.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you read the article? A hobby does not cause one to fail to attend school for a semester in order to play EverQuest. A hobby does not lead one to play Civilization for seven straight years. Yes, this is an addiction. A hobby is a healthy way of spending one's free time. When it reaches the point where the hobby begins demanding more than than you have free and you gladly feed it that time, then it is an addiction.
Not so. An expert witness, by the nature of his expertise, may be considered a source of factual information. Thus, as long as such a witness is setting forth information with the explicit understanding that it is factual, then the posting may be treated as factual (although that in no way verifies its accuracy)
The airplane is shoving the rocket out the back, meaning that if anything, it will only make the airplane go faster in the direction it's already travelling.
You have remarkable insight into the core of the problem and you raise a very interesting point. I too was considering the possibility of a [peaceful] revolution. I think that our current legislative process focuses too much on patching up real or perceived problems rather than building a strong, clear set of laws that will deal with a broad category of issues. This, in turn, leads, at worst, to breaches of constitutionality and, at best, to an unsound legal structure. I truly think that the people need to be orchestrated such that they will demand that government stop pandering to corporate interests and return to the fundamental principles upon which our nation was founded. Obviously, this isn't an easy task. I can't even say it's possible. After all, a revolutionary effort that appears to have coherence and any real power is almost certain to be quashed by any government (every regime tends to act to preserve itself from genuine, external threats.) However, I think that things have gone so far that it is necessary.
I have to agree with you on this one. I tend to go off on them because when I buy a CD, my expectations are that the music will be of the utmost quality and that I will enjoy it as music. The reason why I'm so ready to deride Britney Spears, 'NSync, The Backstreet Boys, etc.. is because I feel they've taken something good and pure (music) and corrupted it so that it is no longer a purely aural medium, as _music_ should be. Instead, their popularity relies upon the visual aspects of the performance. If it weren't for the fact that there were 5 attractive men or a curvacious woman dancing in the video (and I confess - the visual aspect of modern music videos is very impressive), the music itself would not acchieve the popularity that it does. The prevalence and popularity of music as an aural/visual form of entertainment bothers me, which is why I am so ready to criticize Britney Spears and 'NSync (the two most recognizeable models of this phemonemon.) It just seems to me that this is a trait that, if not unique, is most common in pop music. Seldom do I see videos for country/western music (such videos _do_ exist, by the way) but I still like the music. Of the pop music I've heard, it is often lackluster alone, but manages to shine with the video.
At the time when artists were not so well-payed as they are today, you could be quite certain that the artist either truly loved what (s)he was doing or was exceptionally talented, thus ensuring large commisions. If you're willing to pay more, you increase the overall number of artists, but you typically also lower the standard of 'exceptional talent.' Is there an ideal level at which this rather arbitrary standard should be set? Probably. I happen to believe that at present it is far too low, since even a striking appearance and a decent voice can be mistaken for 'exceptional talent' (ala Britney Spears or 'NSync.)
This disturbingly low opinion of talent conversely indicates that musicians are being paid disturbingly well. Those of us who recognize this (most Slashdotters, it seems, and many others in intellectual circles) are unwilling to pay for what is, to us, a decided lack of talent. Unfortunately, we don't comprise a large enough portion of the market to sufficiently dent demand. So long as the media influences popular judgement of 'exceptional talent' and encourages conformity, we cannot expect this trend to change anytime soon. The recording industry will continue to churn out music of whatever quality so long as it is demanded by their market - those very people who rush to the malls every time a new CD is released, because they think that 'NSync represents 'exceptional talent' when in fact, 'NSync represents nothing more than the ability to sing lyrics written by somebody else to a tune composed by somebody else and to look pretty in the process.
In conclusion, I must say that I disagree with your assessment that the phenomenon of large royalties and licensing fees is unlikely to stand the test of time. I certainly agree that to an intellectual crowd such as Slashdot, such a change seems inevitable, but I do not foresee the drastic cultural changes necessary to affect such a collapse of the present system.
I don't think that a grade of "F" means that the security risk couldn't get greater. I think it means that at that point, the risk is deemed unacceptable and it doesn't matter how unacceptable it is, it needs to be fixed. I'm sure that specific reports are freely availalbe to the departments themselves, but that to the public, only the letter grades are released.
The philosophy behind this isn't that they don't expect the console to die shortly after three months. The way of thinking here is that if the console is treated properly, if it doesn't break in three months, it is probably not ever going to break - at least not in any particularly critical way. On the other hand, if the machine is abused, yeah, it might last three months still, after which, the manufacturer can wash its hands of it. No company wants to be responsible for the negligence of their customers.
If I'm not mistaken the current emphasis lies in reudcing the projected capabilities of the ISS in order to maintain both safety and an acceptible budget. I don't think that safety will ever NOT be a primary concern for the ISS. Instead, I think what is being said is that if, with X dollars, they cannot make the ISS safely do A, B, and C, but can make it safely do just A, B, or C, then two of the three functions must be discarded.
I was chatting with Alicebot and just for the heck of it, I entered a question in German. To my great surprise, she answered - in German. Her vocabulary is somewhat limited, since she doesn't understand things like 'Cleveland ist mir sehr kalt' - Cleveland is very cold. Even so, the fact that she's programmed with more than one language (which means recognizing the language for what it is and adjusting how she interprets the syntax) is quite impressive!
Yeah, mm is a SI friendly unit, but the use of mercury is totally arbitrary. I'd rather use a Pascal anyday, even though most of SI was initially based on water. (ie: a gram is the mass of distilled water in 1 cubic centimetre...or was it the other way around?) Although yes, inHg is much worse than mmHg. Regardless, I'd rather just leave mercury _out_ of the picture.
Alas, being an engineering student in the USA, I am forced to use Imperial units as far as some of the questions in the textbooks actually force you to use them (unless you want to convert to SI, solve, then convert back, just for the fun of it). Although from what I understand it, even if the SI unit for pressure is (Pa)scals, the global scientific/engineering community still fully recognizes (atm)ospheres, mmHg (milimetres mercury), and psi (pounds per square inch). I find this incredibly annoying, because it makes it so that I have to work with 3 or 4 different versions of the ideal gass constant.
Then again, the future is a scary place. Scare it back! (Winux 2004 Edition T-Shirt)
Something mentioned in passing in this article gave me quite a turn. It said that several other act(ors/resses) had trademarked their names. What exactly does that imply? Granted, Farrah Fawcett isn't so common a name, but Dick Smith? Does this mean that had some other Australian actor named Dick Smith wanted to get into show business, he would have had to have changed his name or risked a law suit? What are the actual benefits of having one's name trademarked like that?
The finite limit of hydrogen isn't what sustainability refers to. An efficient reactor has a problem that the necessary configuration for the plasma is itself not stable and is known to spontaneously collapse, causing the machine to cease power production. On the other hand, a reactor that uses a more stable configuration has a much lower conversion rate and is thus less useful.
The second law of thermodynamics states, in leyman's terms, that everything is going to hell.
What needs to be understood is that they've managed to use a fusion generator to generate electricity. However, they've never managed to create electricity in a useful fashion.
As it stands, they can create an efficient reactor that is not self-sustaining or a self-sustaining reactor that is not efficient. In other words, the former uses very little outside power, but isn't stable and ceases to function. The latter is more stable, but uses more fuel than conventional means.
Fusion power is not a pipe dream. Just as conventional power reactors have been improved over time to produce electricity more efficiently, so will fusion reactors eventually be improved to the point where they're useful. Will it be in the next decade? It may well be, but regardless of when it will happen, it will happen.
Hrrm...This sort of sounds familiar to me. If anybody's ever played Civilzation: Call to Power, this ought to sound remarkably like the Corporate Republic in which private, commercial entities oversee the functions that the government currently oversees. That can really make one wonder what MS could do (for good or for ill) if its influence begins to extend into matters that don't concern them directly, but which they think would be useful to control.
My difficulty in writing to my congresscritter (aside from the fact that I only just registered to vote this past summer) is that I'm ignorant of the details of the issues at hand. It's an easy matter to get plenty of information about one side of most of these issues just by reading /., but if I want to see the defense, as it were, I don't know where to get anything like that. One solution may be to read the bills and drafts in question and forumlate an opinion of my own, but I can't understand legalise for the life of me. Does anybody know of a well-informed source where I can get either both sides of any given issue or to get the "other side" (that is: from the point of view of the corporations, the government, or such). Given that much, I am confident I could write a reasonable letter voicing my concerns.
Gadzooks, this guy's on every channel. Every story I've read has this very same inane comment (albeit with a different topic of discussion) somewhere in it. I've got my priorities and among them is moving on with my life.
Doesn't matter. If the seeds are actually going to grow into anything, they have to get nutrients from somehwere. The Law of Conservation of Mass rules out that their mass can increase (ie: by growing) without drawing substance from elsewhere and converting it to cellular material.
Technically, in a free country, no producer really does get to set the price for his product. He can set it at whatever he pleases, but market forces dictate that he should set it as such a point where demand meets supply (ie: the producer is willing to sell X units when they are priced at A, and the consumers are willing to purchase X units at price A). In a monopoly system, because there are no alternatives, the demand curve no longer slopes down as sharply, or in the extreme case, it does not slope down at all. People "need" an operating system, and the lack of viable alternatives forces them to purchase the monopoly's products. As a result, the monopoly can set prices higher than a free market system would allow, because there is no competetive force among producers to bid down the price of the product.
I'm not sure about the specifics, but if you pulse a very low-intensity sound wave through any substance, you can measure the distortion of the wave to see whether the material is behaving as you expect it to. If it is not, it is often because of miscroscopic structural defects.
Egad...Resident evil projected onto my retina. I'd really have to remember not to drink coffee before playing it at 2 in the morning, because I would certain wet myself.
Cheap creatures in enhancement decks are always good, especially ones that come with enhancements of their own (ie: flying). Spinal graft was already mentioned, but there's also regneration, inviolability, entangler, rancor, and a whole slew of other enchantments that make ornithopter a card worth having.