It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs.
I think you're using the wrong distro. Try Mandrake or Linspire instead.
In Mandrake, configuring software is a snap. Launch the "Mandrake Control Center", and choose from "Insall new software", "Remove Software" and "Update software". Everything available is listed in a nice tree sorted by category, and there's even a search available (so I can search for "Breakout" clones). Check off what you want installed, press "Install", and everything is set up automatically, placed into nice categorized menus (such as "Games" or "Office").
AFAIK, Linsipre's Click-n-run warehouse is quite simmilar.
You are right. The poll was 55%, and what's more, there seems to be a majority FOR the shield outside of Quebec. The various sources aren't too clean on where the support for missle defense lies, so I'm not going to pretend I know.
However, it does seem strange that the government did not make any commitments until this poll was released. All the coverage makes it look like there has been almost no communication between US and Canada in the past few weeks, so I can't think of another factor that caused the Liberals to suddenly announce they were against missle defense.
Actually, there's plenty of political movements that happen in Canada (gay marriages, legalizing pot...). However, they aren't as big, mainly because the public gets what it wants.
The main party that's been in power for more than a decade, the Liberals, are famous for waffling. This isn't really their fault. It's because we Canadians waffle so much (we don't want missle defense! but we still want a business realtionship with the US!). The Liberal party usually doesn't commit to anything, untill an opinion poll is released. When the poll was released last week that 80%+ of Canadians were against the missle defense shield, and with mounting pressure in the Parliment to show their hand, the Liberals had to give in (sort of...).
Especially now that there is a minority government, the public will be mighty pissed at the party that causes a re-election. So the Liberals are being very careful to be as popular as possible right now.
As long as our please-the-people Liberals are in power, I don't think you'll see too much activism. Now, if the Conservatives or NDP got the power... then you'd hear something.
Well, Nintendo doesn't even throw this into the hype vaccuum. They are patenting ideas they have for names in advance of releasing them, so they can protect these names when the product is actually released.
I don't know if you've heard these "trademark filing" stories before, but they are frequently junk names either discarded at the last minute or purposely filed to surpise competitors/the media.
The fact that people are continously checking these trademark filing for "Nintendo" or "Sony" probably says more about the gaming media (and masses) more than the companies.
Hate to break it to you, but the N64's 3-D engine was much more powerful than the Playstation. Mind you, the lack of space meant the textures were not always high quality, and there weren't any FMVs, but if you are just talking about the 3-D system, the N64 was far superior to PlayStation.
I also find it amusing that you bash the N64's controller. Nintendo invented both analog controls and the added rumble pack for the N64, something Sony copied after in their (now much more popular) dual shock controllers.
And yes, FFF VII sold millions, but sports games sell millions each year. They are far more popular, and far more important. I personally don't know what you're talking about with FF defining 3D gaming. It was just characters running against a static background. Sure, it was a neat story, and it had purty graphics, but the ultimate 3D game it was not.
Oh, and there were lots of 3D graphics games (that were good!) before the Playstation came out, as well.
But games aren't movies. There's no commandment that states: "Thou shall have cutscenes. And the player shall appreciate them." Once you've played through the game once or twice, cut scenes are skipped to get back to the action.
Games have certain properties that movies do not have. They are meant to be interactive. Why do games have to emulate other mediums, when they are free to strike out on their own and define a new medium? Why not integrate these scenes into the game itself?
Cutscenes aren't "supposed" to be anything. Rules are meant to be broken.
Rockstar Games also announced that they would be changing their name to "Grand Theft Auto" Games (ticket symbol GTA). When Chairman and CEO Richard Roedel was asked about the name change, he said it was to capitalize on their strengths.
"Seriously, what else do we make any more? By acknowledging our history, we can bring the elements we are known best for into our new franchices. I mean, if hookers and cops in the new Director's Cut of "Manhunt" don't finally sell off our remaining copies, what will?"
When Richard Roedel was asked to comment on the next iterations of the ESPN series without an NFL franchice agreement, and what they were going to do about EA, he didn't hold back.
"EA, look out! Your official teams are no match for the San Andreas Playaz, the Vice City Copz, and the Stuantun Island Slutz."
It should work fine on the DS in "GBA mode". Since each DS screen is slightly larger than on the GBA, any videos you watch will have a black border. Unless Nintendo goes out of their way to prevent it from working...
In fact, seeing as how each launch was quite different (here it came with a Metroid Demo, in Japan there were more games at launch), it's pretty meaningless to compare sales between the two regions on an absolute basis.
Firstly, High-Def DVDs are not as expensive to make, because they do not have to be "remixed". Video Cassettes and existing DVDs are just down-sampled versions of higher resolution film. Movie studios just need to record the original onto the new format, make some minor tweaks, and they're done.
Secondly, HDTV is easier to notice then high def audio. CD-quality audio is good enough for most people, and there are very few people who can appreciate improvements beyond this range. HDTV, on the other hand, is quite striking when compared next to analog signals. Most people can see the improvement, and the wide-screens are a nice plus.
So the format is easy to produce, and the difference is easy to show to the consumer, your last point is probably the only thing that could hold back High Definition DVDs. Are people going to want to invest in HDTVs, new DVD players, and a whole new collection of movies?
I would argue that HDTV is now playing out simmilar to colour televisions. Most networks now broadcast in HDTV, and new shows and sports are broadcast in HDTV as well. The sets are coming down in price so that they will be easily available in a year or two.
The greatest resistance I've seen is in buying the same movies all over again. I believe that people sick of always upgrading to CDs, DVDs, etc will be hard to convince to buy their movies again in the new format.
It seems your argument is that reworking of prior art is okay as long as the end result is good.
I'm sure you see the obvious flaw is that while it may be easy in hindsight to see what is bad and what isn't, those in the middle of the process may not be able to see this. Remember, the original Psycho is not yet in the public domain, so the remake was done with permission from the copyright holder. So while Hitchcock did not personally endorse the remake, whomever he decided would take over his estate did (presumably a trusted person).
Even more important, one man's trash is another's gold. There are many people who enjoy particular Disney movies. Who are we to say which re-telling is sufficiently creative for distribution?
When stories are still under copyright protection, the creators can do whatever they please. They can lock it in a vault, authorize endless bad remakes, or open-source the work. That is their right.
At some point, though, I believe this right should end, and the work(s) should enter the public domain. Ideally, this should happen at some point after the author has exhausted all revenue from the work, but before the work is destroyed (so a copies can be made and kept as a record). In reality, there is no such area of mutual agreement, and we will always have this tug-of-war between the supply and demand for creative ideas.
Disney has followed a simmilar pattern for its entire history.
Either it was neutering the most frigtening parts of the stories (Snow White, Litte Mermaid, etc.), or just re-inventing a new story (Treasure Planet).
I don't see anything wrong with it, as this is really the purpose of copyright expiration. New storytellers can re-imagine elements of old stories and mix them into something entirely new.
This is different than taking something that's currently has copyright protection (see Lion King vs Kimba the White Lion), making money for a big idea-starved company that the original creative artist should be earning. Determining what the limit for copyright expiration is a tricky issue, but it should eventually expire for precisely this reason.
MandrakelinuxTM is a friendly Linux Operating System which specializes in ease-of-use for both servers and the home/office. It is freely available in many languages throughout the world.
There's more info on their concept page, but they're basic pitch is Linux for Newbies and switchers from Windows/Macs. I'd say they're going after the end-user market like Linspire, but they're also going after business/government businesses that don't want to spend a lot on "retraining" their users for Linux.
The number 3 LANL supercomputer "is a key part of DOE's plan to simulate nuclear weapons tests in the absence of actual explosions. The more powerful computers are designed to model explosions in three dimensions, a far more complex task than the two-dimensional models used in weapons design years ago." I imagine that most US government simulations would be doing something simmilar.
An example of a situation where country people might not be able to be protected:
Take some hypothetical state where everyone is elected by popular vote. Now imagine this state has a large city (say, 80% of the total). Now imagine there is a small region just outside of the city, with no more than 1000 people.
Now, whenever there is an issue that affects the city people, you better believe that those that were elected by those 80% are going to care about it if they want to be re-elected. But what if it affects small-towns everywhere? Since all the votes come from the city, they're not going to care what happens to the towns.
So, you take an issue that is good for cities but bad for towns (say, shipping garbage outside the city to a huge landfill in the small town).
Now say this issue is affecting the whole country, but everyone is elected by the popular vote. No one is going to care about this, because these small towns everywhere that are getting too much garbage have no say.
Now compare this to the current situation, where at least some of these small towns will have elected someone. This someone is their voice, that they can hold accountable to stand up for their needs in politics.
It's not the "country" folk that necessarily need protecting, either. There are often a need for certain elected positions to 'represent' certain minorities, whether it be a sparely populate state, or a group of people. It's far more easy, though, to count votes based on district rather than a particular race, religion, or most other minority group.
While I cannot say I have met a large enough sample size to distinguish between women and men, I have met lots of people who had great difficulties "getting" CS concepts. (And also certain theoretical math and physics) I would often understand the concept after just hearing the overview, while these people would have to be explained all the details to really understand what is happening.
I believe the problem is spatial orientation. Certain people can create an accurate representation in their minds, and thus can easily "see" the changes happening. In the article I linked to, they give an example of rotating a complex shape in three-dimensional space. Obviously certain concepts in CS (data structures, for instance) involve making a mental picture to understand what's happening, since you can't exactly touch the data.
What I find interesting is how the theory mentioned in this article compares with this theory. According to the article above, only humans with very high or very low levels of testosterone enables humans to think spatially.
In the article I linked to (and many others), there is a theory that men traditionally developped this skill so that they could map out where lunch was, track it and hunt it down, and how they would need to get back home once they had killed it. This is compared to the women, who would stay near home and 'gather' small berries which required more of a sharp eye.
So my question is now, is did these early humans (which obviously must have needed good spatial abiliity) have high or low testosterone? And where are the high-testosterone guys that should be exceeding at spatial orientation now?
However, it is not new. For the past two years, customers in the United States have already been able to buy their in-house Google.
Google says that after some fine-tuning the technology has "matured". Even large companies should be able to index and search their sprawling intranets within a few hours of switching on the Google search appliance, which can recognise about 250 different file formats.
So I'm guessing it's news that it's availale in England now (plus it's "matured", are we now comparing search engines to wine?).
I personally loved the puzzles best in Sands of Time, and was relatively bored/tired of the button mashing battles. I knew one person who just played the puzzles, and gave the controller to someone else when enemies appeared.
The fact that they're pushing the gorier battles means to me that they're leaving behind what made the last game so much fun. So I'm probably going to pass on this one.
To add to your comment, though, I think something I read at Insert Credit put what seems to be the main difference so eloquently:
In Sands of Time, the Prince spends almost the entire game fretting about a servant girl he could just order to do whatever he said. After all, he's a prince.
I totally missed this at first, but notice that this new product only has 2 characters per button, rather than the cell-phone standard 3. This means that any given word you type will have a great deal fewer simmilar words to confuse the system.
For instance, any given 5 letter word entered using predictative text-entries on a cell phone could be anything among 3^5 = 243 possibilities, whereas this unit will have a mere 2^5 = 32 possibilities.
Of course, this assumes that every combination is equally likely to be a word. However it's easy to see that any given word will have fewer possibilities on the RIM device.
Whether this is enough to make is usable is difficult to say, but I don't think it's going to be nearly as difficult as current cell-phone predicative text messages.
Slashdot Mirror
It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs.
Yeah, I'll bet the guy who leaked it is sorry, it was supposed to be the 1918 strain.
I think you're using the wrong distro. Try Mandrake or Linspire instead.
In Mandrake, configuring software is a snap. Launch the "Mandrake Control Center", and choose from "Insall new software", "Remove Software" and "Update software". Everything available is listed in a nice tree sorted by category, and there's even a search available (so I can search for "Breakout" clones). Check off what you want installed, press "Install", and everything is set up automatically, placed into nice categorized menus (such as "Games" or "Office").
AFAIK, Linsipre's Click-n-run warehouse is quite simmilar.
You are right. The poll was 55%, and what's more, there seems to be a majority FOR the shield outside of Quebec. The various sources aren't too clean on where the support for missle defense lies, so I'm not going to pretend I know.
However, it does seem strange that the government did not make any commitments until this poll was released. All the coverage makes it look like there has been almost no communication between US and Canada in the past few weeks, so I can't think of another factor that caused the Liberals to suddenly announce they were against missle defense.
Actually, there's plenty of political movements that happen in Canada (gay marriages, legalizing pot...). However, they aren't as big, mainly because the public gets what it wants.
The main party that's been in power for more than a decade, the Liberals, are famous for waffling. This isn't really their fault. It's because we Canadians waffle so much (we don't want missle defense! but we still want a business realtionship with the US!). The Liberal party usually doesn't commit to anything, untill an opinion poll is released. When the poll was released last week that 80%+ of Canadians were against the missle defense shield, and with mounting pressure in the Parliment to show their hand, the Liberals had to give in (sort of...).
Especially now that there is a minority government, the public will be mighty pissed at the party that causes a re-election. So the Liberals are being very careful to be as popular as possible right now.
As long as our please-the-people Liberals are in power, I don't think you'll see too much activism. Now, if the Conservatives or NDP got the power... then you'd hear something.
Well, Nintendo doesn't even throw this into the hype vaccuum. They are patenting ideas they have for names in advance of releasing them, so they can protect these names when the product is actually released.
I don't know if you've heard these "trademark filing" stories before, but they are frequently junk names either discarded at the last minute or purposely filed to surpise competitors/the media.
The fact that people are continously checking these trademark filing for "Nintendo" or "Sony" probably says more about the gaming media (and masses) more than the companies.
Hmmm...
Hate to break it to you, but the N64's 3-D engine was much more powerful than the Playstation. Mind you, the lack of space meant the textures were not always high quality, and there weren't any FMVs, but if you are just talking about
the 3-D system, the N64 was far superior to PlayStation.
I also find it amusing that you bash the N64's controller. Nintendo invented both analog controls and the added rumble pack for the N64, something Sony copied after in their (now much more popular) dual shock controllers.
And yes, FFF VII sold millions, but sports games sell millions each year. They are far more popular, and far more important. I personally don't know what you're talking about with FF defining 3D gaming. It was just characters running against a static background. Sure, it was a neat story, and it had purty graphics, but the ultimate 3D game it was not.
Oh, and there were lots of 3D graphics games (that were good!) before the Playstation came out, as well.
But games aren't movies. There's no commandment that states: "Thou shall have cutscenes. And the player shall appreciate them." Once you've played through the game once or twice, cut scenes are skipped to get back to the action.
Games have certain properties that movies do not have. They are meant to be interactive. Why do games have to emulate other mediums, when they are free to strike out on their own and define a new medium? Why not integrate these scenes into the game itself?
Cutscenes aren't "supposed" to be anything. Rules are meant to be broken.
Rockstar Games also announced that they would be changing their name to "Grand Theft Auto" Games (ticket symbol GTA). When Chairman and CEO Richard Roedel was asked about the name change, he said it was to capitalize on their strengths.
"Seriously, what else do we make any more? By acknowledging our history, we can bring the elements we are known best for into our new franchices. I mean, if hookers and cops in the new Director's Cut of "Manhunt" don't finally sell off our remaining copies, what will?"
When Richard Roedel was asked to comment on the next iterations of the ESPN series without an NFL franchice agreement, and what they were going to do about EA, he didn't hold back.
"EA, look out! Your official teams are no match for the San Andreas Playaz, the Vice City Copz, and the Stuantun Island Slutz."
It should work fine on the DS in "GBA mode". Since each DS screen is slightly larger than on the GBA, any videos you watch will have a black border. Unless Nintendo goes out of their way to prevent it from working...
It was released in North America almost two full weeks before Japan, so it's no wonder that they've currently sold more here.
In fact, seeing as how each launch was quite different (here it came with a Metroid Demo, in Japan there were more games at launch), it's pretty meaningless to compare sales between the two regions on an absolute basis.
There are couple of problems with your argument.
Firstly, High-Def DVDs are not as expensive to make, because they do not have to be "remixed". Video Cassettes and existing DVDs are just down-sampled versions of higher resolution film. Movie studios just need to record the original onto the new format, make some minor tweaks, and they're done.
Secondly, HDTV is easier to notice then high def audio. CD-quality audio is good enough for most people, and there are very few people who can appreciate improvements beyond this range. HDTV, on the other hand, is quite striking when compared next to analog signals. Most people can see the improvement, and the wide-screens are a nice plus.
So the format is easy to produce, and the difference is easy to show to the consumer, your last point is probably the only thing that could hold back High Definition DVDs. Are people going to want to invest in HDTVs, new DVD players, and a whole new collection of movies?
I would argue that HDTV is now playing out simmilar to colour televisions. Most networks now broadcast in HDTV, and new shows and sports are broadcast in HDTV as well. The sets are coming down in price so that they will be easily available in a year or two.
The greatest resistance I've seen is in buying the same movies all over again. I believe that people sick of always upgrading to CDs, DVDs, etc will be hard to convince to buy their movies again in the new format.
It seems your argument is that reworking of prior art is okay as long as the end result is good.
I'm sure you see the obvious flaw is that while it may be easy in hindsight to see what is bad and what isn't, those in the middle of the process may not be able to see this. Remember, the original Psycho is not yet in the public domain, so the remake was done with permission from the copyright holder. So while Hitchcock did not personally endorse the remake, whomever he decided would take over his estate did (presumably a trusted person).
Even more important, one man's trash is another's gold. There are many people who enjoy particular Disney movies. Who are we to say which re-telling is sufficiently creative for distribution?
When stories are still under copyright protection, the creators can do whatever they please. They can lock it in a vault, authorize endless bad remakes, or open-source the work. That is their right.
At some point, though, I believe this right should end, and the work(s) should enter the public domain. Ideally, this should happen at some point after the author has exhausted all revenue from the work, but before the work is destroyed (so a copies can be made and kept as a record). In reality, there is no such area of mutual agreement, and we will always have this tug-of-war between the supply and demand for creative ideas.
Disney has followed a simmilar pattern for its entire history.
Either it was neutering the most frigtening parts of the stories (Snow White, Litte Mermaid, etc.), or just re-inventing a new story (Treasure Planet).
I don't see anything wrong with it, as this is really the purpose of copyright expiration. New storytellers can re-imagine elements of old stories and mix them into something entirely new.
This is different than taking something that's currently has copyright protection (see Lion King vs Kimba the White Lion), making money for a big idea-starved company that the original creative artist should be earning. Determining what the limit for copyright expiration is a tricky issue, but it should eventually expire for precisely this reason.
It uses native OS X widgets, so it tends to look better or run faster, depending on who you ask.
Back when they announced this, they said they'll be coming to Canada in November. Technically, they still have two more weeks, but it's coming.
From mandrakelinux.com:
MandrakelinuxTM is a friendly Linux Operating System which specializes in ease-of-use for both servers and the home/office. It is freely available in many languages throughout the world.
There's more info on their concept page, but they're basic pitch is Linux for Newbies and switchers from Windows/Macs. I'd say they're going after the end-user market like Linspire, but they're also going after business/government businesses that don't want to spend a lot on "retraining" their users for Linux.
This was a personal annoyance of mine too, until I figured out how it works.
The "/" key invokes search, and escape will take you out of it.
I actually prefer the box at the bottom of the screen, it just take a bit of time to get used to it.
The vast majority of clusters are for simulating very complex systems that require lots and lots of calculations.
You can get a few hints by looking just at their names.
The number one "Earth Simulator Centre" is fairly self-explanatory, going to their website show they create a variety of models for things such as weather, tectonic plate movement, etc.
The number 3 LANL supercomputer "is a key part of DOE's plan to simulate nuclear weapons tests in the absence of actual explosions. The more powerful computers are designed to model explosions in three dimensions, a far more complex task than the two-dimensional models used in weapons design years ago." I imagine that most US government simulations would be doing something simmilar.
twinkly twinkle little star
circumference equals 2 pi 'r'.
I'm a sucker for rhymes.
An example of a situation where country people might not be able to be protected:
Take some hypothetical state where everyone is elected by popular vote. Now imagine this state has a large city (say, 80% of the total). Now imagine there is a small region just outside of the city, with no more than 1000 people.
Now, whenever there is an issue that affects the city people, you better believe that those that were elected by those 80% are going to care about it if they want to be re-elected. But what if it affects small-towns everywhere? Since all the votes come from the city, they're not going to care what happens to the towns.
So, you take an issue that is good for cities but bad for towns (say, shipping garbage outside the city to a huge landfill in the small town).
Now say this issue is affecting the whole country, but everyone is elected by the popular vote. No one is going to care about this, because these small towns everywhere that are getting too much garbage have no say.
Now compare this to the current situation, where at least some of these small towns will have elected someone. This someone is their voice, that they can hold accountable to stand up for their needs in politics.
It's not the "country" folk that necessarily need protecting, either. There are often a need for certain elected positions to 'represent' certain minorities, whether it be a sparely populate state, or a group of people. It's far more easy, though, to count votes based on district rather than a particular race, religion, or most other minority group.
While I cannot say I have met a large enough sample size to distinguish between women and men, I have met lots of people who had great difficulties "getting" CS concepts. (And also certain theoretical math and physics) I would often understand the concept after just hearing the overview, while these people would have to be explained all the details to really understand what is happening.
I believe the problem is spatial orientation. Certain people can create an accurate representation in their minds, and thus can easily "see" the changes happening. In the article I linked to, they give an example of rotating a complex shape in three-dimensional space. Obviously certain concepts in CS (data structures, for instance) involve making a mental picture to understand what's happening, since you can't exactly touch the data.
What I find interesting is how the theory mentioned in this article compares with this theory. According to the article above, only humans with very high or very low levels of testosterone enables humans to think spatially.
In the article I linked to (and many others), there is a theory that men traditionally developped this skill so that they could map out where lunch was, track it and hunt it down, and how they would need to get back home once they had killed it. This is compared to the women, who would stay near home and 'gather' small berries which required more of a sharp eye.
So my question is now, is did these early humans (which obviously must have needed good spatial abiliity) have high or low testosterone? And where are the high-testosterone guys that should be exceeding at spatial orientation now?
However, it is not new. For the past two years, customers in the United States have already been able to buy their in-house Google.
Google says that after some fine-tuning the technology has "matured". Even large companies should be able to index and search their sprawling intranets within a few hours of switching on the Google search appliance, which can recognise about 250 different file formats.
So I'm guessing it's news that it's availale in England now (plus it's "matured", are we now comparing search engines to wine?).
I personally loved the puzzles best in Sands of Time, and was relatively bored/tired of the button mashing battles. I knew one person who just played the puzzles, and gave the controller to someone else when enemies appeared.
The fact that they're pushing the gorier battles means to me that they're leaving behind what made the last game so much fun. So I'm probably going to pass on this one.
To add to your comment, though, I think something I read at Insert Credit put what seems to be the main difference so eloquently:
In Sands of Time, the Prince spends almost the entire game fretting about a servant girl he could just order to do whatever he said. After all, he's a prince.
In The Warrior Within, he calls a woman a bitch.
Gamespot, and others all have initial impressions of the game. There's even a movie of the thing in action. There's also info on the official page.
I totally missed this at first, but notice that this new product only has 2 characters per button, rather than the cell-phone standard 3. This means that any given word you type will have a great deal fewer simmilar words to confuse the system.
For instance, any given 5 letter word entered using predictative text-entries on a cell phone could be anything among 3^5 = 243 possibilities, whereas this unit will have a mere 2^5 = 32 possibilities.
Of course, this assumes that every combination is equally likely to be a word. However it's easy to see that any given word will have fewer possibilities on the RIM device.
Whether this is enough to make is usable is difficult to say, but I don't think it's going to be nearly as difficult as current cell-phone predicative text messages.