Slashdot just had a story a couple of days ago about finding ways to detect/destroy planet-killer asteroids. There were a lot of comments to the tune of "well the odds are really low of being killed by an asteroid, so we should cure cancer instead because rocket scientists can easily slide into that position." Does this asteroid open your eyes a bit?
The chances of Earth being hit by an asteroid aren't one in a million. They're one in two. That's right, 1:2. Either we will be hit or we will not. The variable is when. Question is: Do you want to bet your species on it, or do you want to be prepared?
Sorry for the rant guys, still got a little bit of steam to blow off from people trying to downplay asteroid impacts with odds. The truth is, we just can't see far enough to have enough time to do something about it. I'm hoping that more funding and technology make their way towards watching the sky a little more carefully.
"I'm sure it can create short films of 10 minutes... that's if you don't mind a low resolution low framerate compressed-to-hell pixellated blob resembling vomit!"
I have a Nokia 3650, and yeah it has a movie mode. Yeah it's postage stamp sized. Yeah it's pixellated. You know what? I have a video of my phone of my dog and cat playing together. It is low res and pixellated, yet you can still tell what's going on in the 'movie'. I captured a cute short-lived moment that would have been missed if I had run to the other end of the house to grab the DV cam.
I guess my point is that it may be technologically disappointing, but that doesn't mean it isn't still interesting.
"I never thought I'd see the day that first person shooters would be more tolerant of social differences the the general U.S. population."
Is tolerance really that big of problem these days? It's not so easy to generalize about 300 million people, is it? Not sure where you're from, but where I'm at now (both the real world and on the net) being gay or anything else isn't a big screaming deal. Heck,a close friend of mine underwent a gender transformation. Everybody around was quite supportive, even where she works.
Yes, there are people in the United States that aren't happy about the specifics of where some are born, but you can still be just about anything here and hold your head up high. I'm happy with this country's progress over the last 100 years, not disappointed.
"Please. A DVD player option wasn't useful to you. But it was to everyone else, who figured for an extra $50 they'd get one for free. They weren't cheap then"
Yes, they were more expensive. I remember that. I even personally considered getting one for that. However, at best, it caused an interest in the system when there were no interesting launch titles for it. Now Sony's paying for it. The extra $50 or so is making the PS2 the most expensive yet least powerful system. Nintendo's strategy is paying off. The question is, whether it did for Sony. Did the DVD player feature of the PS2 sell many units? Personally, I don't think so. I think it was the expectation that there'd be a zillion games for it. That came true. So people are happy.
"I'd say a lot more people watch movies than chat over IM."
Heh. Okay. The difference is that IM can be part of the gaming experience.
"The point is not that Nintendo didn't have a DVD player. That's fine if they chose that. Their console was $50 less. But at the time, they were taking a very arrogant stance about it: "This is a pure game machine; it doesn't need a DVD!"."
That's arrogance? It's true! And they've provided a console for a LOT less than a PS2. If Nintendo had gone with a DVD based system, the price would be about where Sony is right now. Nintendo would be #3 instead of #2. Arrogant? More like "correct'.
The real issue here is that you are trying to paint Nintendo as being hypocritical. Sorry, they're not. Wireless Communications == multiplayer gaming. (Notice how most modern consoles have 4 controller ports now? Gee, I wonder who started that?) Stylus == More sophisticated input device. This isn't a gaming need? A touch screen wouldn't widen the bredth of gaming availalbe on this machine? IM == Chat with other players. That's not a gaming need?
"You're missing my point. No, consoles didn't really need a DVD player but they were better for it."
No they weren't. Your own reply proves that.
"Nintendo was taking a "our machine is a pure game machine!" stance, which was a red herring to distract you from the truth: They were cutting features to provide a lower cost."
Bingo. And when Nintendo had that killer app (Zelda), they rocketed ahead. It's a lot easier to buy that killer game when the console doesn't cost much more than a game. But when a console's almost $200.. sorry, most will pass.
"But if you're going to dump everything but the kitchen sink into a game machine, it looks a little hypocritical when you were lambasting your competitors for doing the same a few years prior."
Eh? It's just software. They're adding a stylus and wireless communication to the system. That's not 'everything and the kitchen sink', that's gaming related stuff. (As opposed to DVD playing...) They wrote some code so you could IM. BFD. That's not adding a new feature at any real cost. If they added a keyboard for them to do IM, then yes, you might just have a point. But right now, you do not.
"The thousands of comments on that forum were one hundred percent opposed to the flag. Oh look, they passed the law anyway."
Well, just playing Devil's advocate here, it was a request for comments as opposed to a vote. If the reasoning put forth had a strong rebuttal from the industry, then yeah I can see the people being fairly (I said devils advocate here, put your pitchfork down) blown off.
"There is precisely zero chance that a comment this time is going to be any different. You cannot affect this process by posting to a forum."
Probably not. The problem is, we don't have PR spindoctors on our side.
"Wow, all this from a company that defended its lack of a DVD player in the GC by saying it was purely a game machine. You don't need a dvd player!"
For gaming, you don't. BTW, the GC is a NEWER machine than the PS2, and it's still $80 bucks cheaper. They were RIGHT.
"Yeah, and I don't need a clamshell instant messenger, either."
You're relating this to the DVD player? You've never chatted during Quake? I know for a fact you never have on a console. Meanwhile, everybody else is churning out new consoles with a graphic card upgrade.
Frankly, I'm curious about a portable with stylus capability. New interface == new gaming possibilities. Nintendo == company creative enough to make good use of these capabilities. (Incidently, the stylus bit is more important than the IM bit. IM is something that would be new to a game console though. It's just software.)
Maybe you should think about taking a little more time to understand the ramifications of the new 'features' before spouting off a knee-jerk "It does IM? Wtf?!?" comment. I don't care if you like the system or not, I just think you could have put a little more thought-time into it before spewing garbage.
"Am I the only one who thinks this is the next N-Gage?"
Yes.
"I mean really Nintendo, Do what you do best. It is not making hardware, but games."
Nintendo doesn't make good hardware? The NES wasn't good? The GameBoy and all its variants? The SNES? The N64? The GameCube?! The hardware's great! The only real smudge on their hardware record I can think of is the Virtual Boy. Even that was pretty cool, just needed a little more tweaking. (I.e. lose the red LEDs and go with a more neutral color.)
"Now release Zelda for PS2, and make yourself RICH!"
They have made themselves rich with Zelda.
Nintendo makes great hardware. Even their less successful stuff demonstrated ambition and innovation. Does that mean the DS will be cool? Who knows? I got $1 that says the system as a piece of hardware will be pretty spiffy, the real question is what the games will be like on it. You're not going to be holding the edge of this thing up to your ear, if that's what you're asking.
"Maybe throw in a warning that the whole disk will be wiped out, but how much user interaction does an installer really need? "
Seeing as how the big mindset is that Linux has choices upon choices of stuff for every little task, I'd say it's pretty much painted itself into that little corner. "Why put Konqueror there instead of Mozilla?" (Yeah, I know, not a great example.)
I guess what I'm saying is deciding on the defaults is sort of like trying to order pizza for everybody in the room.
Re:Talk about a weird week.
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
"I really feel the end is near anybody else with me on this? "
So what you're saying is that the week didn't really seem weird to you until somebody made a comment about a radioactive heater on a probe killing life on an irradiated moon? heh.
Chill man, every week has 'end of the world' news in it.
The off-topic meta-moderation of the above post is unfair. Challenging a moderation is NEVER off-topic. Use your points to reevaluate the the guy's post instead of modding down his challenge of it.
The chances of boarding a plane with a bomb aboard are approximately a million to one. The chances of boarding a plane with two bombs aboard are a million x a million to one. Reduce the risk, bring your own bomb!
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot just had a story a couple of days ago about finding ways to detect/destroy planet-killer asteroids. There were a lot of comments to the tune of "well the odds are really low of being killed by an asteroid, so we should cure cancer instead because rocket scientists can easily slide into that position." Does this asteroid open your eyes a bit?
The chances of Earth being hit by an asteroid aren't one in a million. They're one in two. That's right, 1:2. Either we will be hit or we will not. The variable is when. Question is: Do you want to bet your species on it, or do you want to be prepared?
Sorry for the rant guys, still got a little bit of steam to blow off from people trying to downplay asteroid impacts with odds. The truth is, we just can't see far enough to have enough time to do something about it. I'm hoping that more funding and technology make their way towards watching the sky a little more carefully.
"Hmm, except that this one was detected Monday. 3 days notice isn't enough to do anything."
;)
For something that size, we can fling a few nuclear missiles at it. Pretty light show.
"I'm sure it can create short films of 10 minutes... that's if you don't mind a low resolution low framerate compressed-to-hell pixellated blob resembling vomit!"
I have a Nokia 3650, and yeah it has a movie mode. Yeah it's postage stamp sized. Yeah it's pixellated. You know what? I have a video of my phone of my dog and cat playing together. It is low res and pixellated, yet you can still tell what's going on in the 'movie'. I captured a cute short-lived moment that would have been missed if I had run to the other end of the house to grab the DV cam.
I guess my point is that it may be technologically disappointing, but that doesn't mean it isn't still interesting.
"Well I guess it does but despite the trollish title, I wonder if it on-the-fly convert OGG to MP3 when it transfer tunes to the ipod ?"
Your life would be a lot easier if you just used MP3 in the first place.
"I never thought I'd see the day that first person shooters would be more tolerant of social differences the the general U.S. population."
Is tolerance really that big of problem these days? It's not so easy to generalize about 300 million people, is it? Not sure where you're from, but where I'm at now (both the real world and on the net) being gay or anything else isn't a big screaming deal. Heck,a close friend of mine underwent a gender transformation. Everybody around was quite supportive, even where she works.
Yes, there are people in the United States that aren't happy about the specifics of where some are born, but you can still be just about anything here and hold your head up high. I'm happy with this country's progress over the last 100 years, not disappointed.
" But it is all humans who are handicapped. Why must we endure pain just to be able to draw blood?"
There's a reason why your body's telling you there is a hull breach. Ever notice that when the needle's small enough, it doesn't hurt? Minimal damage.
"Give them some credit where it is due. Microsoft has always pushed multi language support at every level long before OSS was a serious contender."
Isn't it cool how profit can drive a company to make their products more accessible to break into new markets?
"Please. A DVD player option wasn't useful to you. But it was to everyone else, who figured for an extra $50 they'd get one for free. They weren't cheap then"
Yes, they were more expensive. I remember that. I even personally considered getting one for that. However, at best, it caused an interest in the system when there were no interesting launch titles for it. Now Sony's paying for it. The extra $50 or so is making the PS2 the most expensive yet least powerful system. Nintendo's strategy is paying off. The question is, whether it did for Sony. Did the DVD player feature of the PS2 sell many units? Personally, I don't think so. I think it was the expectation that there'd be a zillion games for it. That came true. So people are happy.
"I'd say a lot more people watch movies than chat over IM."
Heh. Okay. The difference is that IM can be part of the gaming experience.
"The point is not that Nintendo didn't have a DVD player. That's fine if they chose that. Their console was $50 less. But at the time, they were taking a very arrogant stance about it: "This is a pure game machine; it doesn't need a DVD!"."
That's arrogance? It's true! And they've provided a console for a LOT less than a PS2. If Nintendo had gone with a DVD based system, the price would be about where Sony is right now. Nintendo would be #3 instead of #2. Arrogant? More like "correct'.
The real issue here is that you are trying to paint Nintendo as being hypocritical. Sorry, they're not. Wireless Communications == multiplayer gaming. (Notice how most modern consoles have 4 controller ports now? Gee, I wonder who started that?) Stylus == More sophisticated input device. This isn't a gaming need? A touch screen wouldn't widen the bredth of gaming availalbe on this machine? IM == Chat with other players. That's not a gaming need?
Use your imagination man.
"You're missing my point. No, consoles didn't really need a DVD player but they were better for
it."
No they weren't. Your own reply proves that.
"Nintendo was taking a "our machine is a pure game machine!" stance, which was a red herring to distract you from the truth: They were cutting features to provide a lower cost."
Bingo. And when Nintendo had that killer app (Zelda), they rocketed ahead. It's a lot easier to buy that killer game when the console doesn't cost much more than a game. But when a console's almost $200.. sorry, most will pass.
"But if you're going to dump everything but the kitchen sink into a game machine, it looks a little hypocritical when you were lambasting your competitors for doing the same a few years prior."
Eh? It's just software. They're adding a stylus and wireless communication to the system. That's not 'everything and the kitchen sink', that's gaming related stuff. (As opposed to DVD playing...) They wrote some code so you could IM. BFD. That's not adding a new feature at any real cost. If they added a keyboard for them to do IM, then yes, you might just have a point. But right now, you do not.
..just the letter S?
"The thousands of comments on that forum were one hundred percent opposed to the flag. Oh look, they passed the law anyway."
Well, just playing Devil's advocate here, it was a request for comments as opposed to a vote. If the reasoning put forth had a strong rebuttal from the industry, then yeah I can see the people being fairly (I said devils advocate here, put your pitchfork down) blown off.
"There is precisely zero chance that a comment this time is going to be any different. You cannot affect this process by posting to a forum."
Probably not. The problem is, we don't have PR spindoctors on our side.
"Jack of all trades, master of none? Convergence strikes again."
Putting a stylus in it makes it a jack of all trades? Dontch'a think it's a little eary for observations like that?
"Wow, all this from a company that defended its lack of a DVD player in the GC by saying it was purely a game machine. You don't need a dvd player!"
For gaming, you don't. BTW, the GC is a NEWER machine than the PS2, and it's still $80 bucks cheaper. They were RIGHT.
"Yeah, and I don't need a clamshell instant messenger, either."
You're relating this to the DVD player? You've never chatted during Quake? I know for a fact you never have on a console. Meanwhile, everybody else is churning out new consoles with a graphic card upgrade.
Frankly, I'm curious about a portable with stylus capability. New interface == new gaming possibilities. Nintendo == company creative enough to make good use of these capabilities. (Incidently, the stylus bit is more important than the IM bit. IM is something that would be new to a game console though. It's just software.)
Maybe you should think about taking a little more time to understand the ramifications of the new 'features' before spouting off a knee-jerk "It does IM? Wtf?!?" comment. I don't care if you like the system or not, I just think you could have put a little more thought-time into it before spewing garbage.
"Am I the only one who thinks this is the next N-Gage?"
Yes.
"I mean really Nintendo, Do what you do best. It is not making hardware, but games."
Nintendo doesn't make good hardware? The NES wasn't good? The GameBoy and all its variants? The SNES? The N64? The GameCube?! The hardware's great! The only real smudge on their hardware record I can think of is the Virtual Boy. Even that was pretty cool, just needed a little more tweaking. (I.e. lose the red LEDs and go with a more neutral color.)
"Now release Zelda for PS2, and make yourself RICH!"
They have made themselves rich with Zelda.
Nintendo makes great hardware. Even their less successful stuff demonstrated ambition and innovation. Does that mean the DS will be cool? Who knows? I got $1 that says the system as a piece of hardware will be pretty spiffy, the real question is what the games will be like on it. You're not going to be holding the edge of this thing up to your ear, if that's what you're asking.
"why would you want a GBA when you have a more powerful, more versatile machine available? That smells of 'replacement' to me, not 'supplemental'."
It's the game support that makes it a 'pillar', not the features.
"Maybe throw in a warning that the whole disk will be wiped out, but how much user interaction does an installer really need? "
Seeing as how the big mindset is that Linux has choices upon choices of stuff for every little task, I'd say it's pretty much painted itself into that little corner. "Why put Konqueror there instead of Mozilla?" (Yeah, I know, not a great example.)
I guess what I'm saying is deciding on the defaults is sort of like trying to order pizza for everybody in the room.
"I really feel the end is near anybody else with me on this? "
So what you're saying is that the week didn't really seem weird to you until somebody made a comment about a radioactive heater on a probe killing life on an irradiated moon? heh.
Chill man, every week has 'end of the world' news in it.
" Will companies now apply for largest screen? Fastest start-up time? Fastest processor? Quietest fan? Largest spam mailing? "
If it lights a fire under companies to do more R&D, is that so bad?
"But I wonder how long the time lag will be between the probe finding life, and a leak in the radioactive heater wiping all of it out."
Ever notice how observations like these are intended to make one look more intelligent than engineers at space programs?
"And most importantly how do you handle authority (tardiness, work ethic, and workplace codes) with a girlfriend?"
I'm really curious how many people will step up to the plate on that question.
"hat's next? I'm going to get a free song with a Happy Meal? "
I bought a drink at a movie theater that came with a little CD with some music on the lid. They don't fly very well, though.
loser.
The off-topic meta-moderation of the above post is unfair. Challenging a moderation is NEVER off-topic. Use your points to reevaluate the the guy's post instead of modding down his challenge of it.
Unlike your average Linux distro that thinks you need to have a bunch of similar apps?
"Risks of dying in plane:1 in 20,000"
The chances of boarding a plane with a bomb aboard are approximately a million to one. The chances of boarding a plane with two bombs aboard are a million x a million to one. Reduce the risk, bring your own bomb!