But there's a reason we never saw Earthbound sequels, and that's because most Americans didn't like the first one (myself included). The game got repetitive and boring after just an hour of play. The trippy battle system lost it's luster after just a few rounds, and the tasks made me feel like I was doing a LOT of back-and-forth trips just to proceed in the storyline (even for an RPG)!
Yeah, but Comcast is another matter. If all you want is internet, that's fine - they charge you $50 a month just like everyone else, and the speeds are fairly competitive (I saw 2MB/s downloads just last week). But the moment you want something else, you're going to pay through the roof for it!
Take my example: I signed-up for Comcast's digital plus package plus Showtime plus internet five years ago for $110/month (this was the price after incentives ended). In the time since, I've not added any services, nor watched one new channel they've added, but somehow they've justified increasing my payment to $140/month.
I ended-up calling the Comcast retention six months ago because I saw the prices for FIOS and about shit my pants ($110/month for my current level of service). After I got the run-around, and basically nothing to fix the problem, I told the service representative this: For a RETENTION service, you're not trying very hard. I told him, you can't beat Verizon at this if you're not even going to TRY. He responded by giving me a %10 discount and free Showtime for six months (back down to $110/month...for now).
So this month, I moved into a new place, and I asked myself...gee, am I going to continue to put-up with that Comcast bullshit? Am I going to call the retention department every six months just to get a REASONABLE rate on my cable TV? Hell no! I signed-on with Verizon for one year (with a two-year price guarantee) at $115/month. I get the exact same level of service as my old $140/month Comcast, and I also get a DVR for that price (that level of service would cost me $155/month with Comcast). And if I need to bail, it's only a $175 early termination, so it's not exactly painful.
He may only be sensitive to certain wavelengths...just like you can't get the same effects out of a microwave oven if you changed the wavelength to millimeter wave. If you are attuned, you will feel things more intensely than others.
I believe this man only because I am also more sensitive to a certain radiation than most other people: I am sensitive to light, and I am MOST sensitive to red light. This means that I turn lights off in my house, turn down the brightness of monitors, and even use black backgrounds on text editors.
But outside of the computing realm, I am surrounded by my #1 enemy: red LEDs. All LEDs are too intense for me, but red LEDs are super-intense, and are (unfortunately) appearing on all sorts of cars these days. I can get a headache just from having these bright red tail lights in my face all the way home.
God, I can't stand looking at these arrays of bright-red LEDs, especially since the idiots who designed them decided not to filter them at all. So during my entire drive home, I see a lattice of fiery points burning their way through my retina. It's so bad, I switch lanes to get behind cars with regular (filtered) brake lights, or I look away from the car in front of me (now, that's not safe). And don't even get me started on red LASERS (headache city!)...
I can't be the only person suffering from this, but it feels like I am, because everything around me is getting BRIGHTER. So I can commiserate with a single man who claims to be sensitive to WiFi (approx 2.4 GHz).
The Soviets were not the only ones sending probes to the Moon. We sent the Ranger series of probes to the Moon during the 1960s to take pictures. This accomplished two major goals:
1. The probes impacted, and failed immediately upon impact. This proved that the lunar surface was indeed solid rock.
2. The probes provided high-detail imagery to give planners a better idea of how rough landing it would be, and to allow them to pick an optimal landing site.
Now, I won't discount the impressive success the Soviets had with Luna 10, but it wasn't the standalone breakthrough you insist it is. Really, with just the information we got from Ranger, putting astronauts on the moon was now just a simple physics problem.
It was mostly power, portability and durability concerns that drove the creation of OLPC. The E-bay systems offer none of the above.
In third-world countries, power is in short supply, and is spotty when available. It is also expensive. We would be run out of town for offering people computers + monitors that used 100-150 watts like the desktops you mentioned.
Portability was seen as a selling point for OLPC because, then the computer could come with the owner everywhere. Not only does this guarantee that the computer never leaves the owner's sight (theft deterrent), but it also means the owner will have the opportunity to use the computer in ways we cannot anticipate.
Durability is just as important as the above, because if it can't last, it will be outright rejected. These are the same sort of people who insist on buying Toyota light trucks because they will still be running a decade from now - if the price is high, durability is a top priority.
Yeah, it turned out to be a bad concept overall, but that doesn't mean the intentions were wrong. It was much better an idea than shipping old PCs to Africa.
What exactly is the title referring to? It means simply this: if you put a flash drive on a shelf, and NOTHING breaks EVER, you will still lose your data within 10 years. This is because the data on flash is less "permanent" than a hard disk drive - it is an electric charge trapped between insulating gates. Unfortunately, the insulation is imperfect, and the charge slowly leaks away. This means that every drive in existence will lose it's data, unless that data is periodically refreshed (i.e. manually rewrite all the data).
I would say that hard drives have a longer shelf-life in terms of the lifetime of magnetic moment, but at the same time the mechanical portions have poor shelf life. Assuming nothing else breaks, if you leave a hard drive on a shelf for years without powering it up, the mechanical parts will seize (corrosion, drying of lubricants, etc).
Your best best is to backup early, and often, and KNOW the weaknesses of your media. Basically, if you want to use flash, periodically clean the drive and re-write all data. If you want to use hard disks, power them up regularly.
Yes, but the industry dropped prices with to move to optical media...and then promptly raised prices again because they added so much more content! I think the industry needs to realize that games don't all have to be 80-hour works of art with 20 different endings, all packed into that $59.95 wrapper. Give us games in the $30-50 range that have maybe 10-15 hours of game play, and I think players will flock.
Agreed. I took advantage of the offer because, $50 is what I USED to pay for Windows back in the 1990s, and it's a damn good price to upgrade my XP machine.
And it's not as-if Microsoft is the only one trying to titillate sales in this weak economy. Apple is having a fire sale of it's own, with $30 upgrades to Snow Leopard (but only for Leopard owners, so I'm SOL with my Tiger box), and $50 family-pack upgrades. Microsoft is charging $20 more, but they are simultaneously adding more value than Apple's offer, because you can upgrade from XP. Both offers are an excellent value, and should build-up hype.
Basically, OS makers are recognizing that, in this day and age, they can't add much more value to their existing offerings (I mean, just see how long I've held-on to XP and Tiger). And that means, unless the price is right, people will upgrade at a very sedate pace, mostly through new PC purchases. Because the price is right, I will be upgrading to Windows 7 this fall. On the other hand, I won't be upgrading my Mac Mini to Snow Leopard because it's $130, and for me Tiger works just fine (I would buy Snow Leopard for $50 if Apple gave me the chance).
Nope. You see, EVERY SINGLE technology was eventually made available to both sides (with the exception of the C3 computer). Who had what tech depended on what FASA was smoking in a particular month.
This made a "standard" tough because "available" technologies varied from sourcebook to sourcebook. An example: the 3050 manual introduces all Clan tech, and gave MOST of it to the IS...but they left a few tasty bits for the Clan only:
Targeting Computer ER Medium Laser ER Small Laser Small Pulse Laser Ultra AC/10 Ultra AC/20 LB 2-X AC LB 5-X AC LB 20-X AC Streak SRM-4 Streak SRM-6
And then they introduced other strange weapons like MRMs, and suddenly the universe was a mess.
But it's not like he had much of a choice in the matter. Using the 8088, he still had an upper 1MB barrier to deal with. And since I/O ports were no longer the "feature" they were a decade previous (too slow), you needed some space for memory-mapped I/O.
I suppose he could have pressured IBM to go with the Motorola 68000 (flat 32-bit address space), but that would have screwed with the "cheap" design philosophy of the IBM PC (that's why they used the 8088 instead of the 8086). Also, it would have prevented any kind of easy migration from 8080 CP/M to DOS (see the TRANS command blurb on this page). Given the situation, they made the best decision they could.
But In terms of Ferro-Fibrous versus Endo-Steel, always go with Endo-Steel. They both take the same amount of critical spots, but Endo-Steel will always save you more weight than Ferro Fibrous will (for the same armor rating).
And since maximum armor is determined by rating (2x inner structure), and not by tonnage, you can't use Ferro-Fibrous to cheat the system and give you a higher max armor rating than normally possible.
One thing to remember though, Half-Life was a generation behind on the graphical curve, it was no where near state of the art when it came out. Quake 2 was already out a year when it came out and it was based on Quake 1.
NO. They started wth the Quake engine, then added some Quake II engine code. It wasn't difficult because that's exactly what ID software did when they wrote Quake II. In terms of map surfaces, Half-Life could handle anything Quake II could. I think they were similar on lighting - lightmaps plus a few dynamic lights. Hell, I think Half-Life even supported colored lighting, although I can't remember for certain.
In addition, Valve added skeletal animation to the game, which made the movements and interactions with NPCs a LOT more convincing. This was important, since the game is story-driven, and the story is told by NPCs. When NPCs walk, they walk convincingly. When they talk, they emphasize what they are saying with limb movements. When they die, they fall down much more smoothly than anything I'd seen before.
Oh no, you're absolutely correct, most mid-range 19" CRTs topped-out at 1600x1200, and the top-end hit 1920x1440. Really, you could only resolve pixels up to the monitor's dot pitch, so anything above 1600x1200 was a waste. But it was a sign of good dot clock hardware if they could advertise such a high resolution as 1920x1440, especially with a refresh rate of 85Hz (like my Iiyama Visionmaster Pro 454). At higher resolutions, you wanted dot clock hardware that wasn't bandwidth-limited (results in blurred images).
Don't forget that a 17" CRT is really 16" viewable best-case. I'll bet almost everyone has forgotten that by now. LCD is fully-viewable, so a 19" screen is really 19".
Also, NOWHERE in the article post does the author request another 4:3 monitor, so if a 19" widescreen has similar vertical viewing range and the same (or better) DPI, then we can assume it is a winner.
Some math for you
16" CRT (viewable) 1400x1050
We know the hypotenuse = 16. for a 4:3 monitor:
4^2 + 3^2 = 5^2. 16" / 5 = a factor of 3.2, so multiply all factors by 3.2 to get true screen dimensions.
Screen is 12.8" by 9.6", with a DPI of 109
19" widescreen LCD (16:10) 1680x1050
16^2 + 10^2 = 18.87^2, 19 / 18.87 = 1.007
Screen is 16.1" by 10.07", with a DPI of 104
With the 19" LCD, you get a VERY SLIGHT drop in DPI, with the same vertical resolution/area, and MUCH INCREASED horizontal area. Sounds like a win to me!
Right, the last time I looked around on the interwebs (2007), I couldn't find ANY version of XCOM that wasn't Windows-based. This pissed me off because the Windows port is notoriously unstable.
Also, I have my old DOS copy of XCOM:TFD, but for some reason it doesn't work well in DOSBox. Whenever I enter a battle, the game speeds-up to ludicrous speed. It scrolls so fast that the view window moves from one end of the map to another instantaneously. Also, outside of battle, strange jumps in time occur, and I sometimes see my submarines get bugged.
Yes, but they create muscle, which burns more calories 24/7.
It's not a replacement for cardio, but that's something he can do on the WEEKENDS, along with real weight training. We're just finding things here he can do on the job.
This metabolic slowdown is why a lot of people pork out once they get past their prime.
You typically only get metabolic slowdown when you stop being active. For a select few people, this is a result of real changes in body chemistry as they age, or the result of real diseases/disorders. But for MOST people, it's simply a lack of free time, combined with a lack of ambition.
Most people don't notice, but as they go through high school and college, they stop the physical activity that used to be a major part of their lives. Once PE becomes an elective in high school, most kids don't bother taking it, and don't bother supplementing the lost activity after school. Once people get jobs after graduation, they have less time for sports and recreation. Most of these people are perfectly capable of physical activity, but they stop for other reasons; some people really don't have the time to spare, but a lot of them do, but they make excuses anyway.
You can stay in "your prime" a lot longer than most people think (I know from experience, over half the people I play Ultimate Frisbee with are in their 30-50s). You can remain fairly active until you hit your 50s, when the body starts to show some REAL signs of physical breakdown. By that point in your life, joints are worn-down and you become more prone to injury. But you don't have to quit cold-turkey - you just have to tone it down as you age, and come to grips with your growing limitations.
And it's never too late to change. I'm in better shape today then I ever was in high school / college. All it takes is a little determination to stick with it, and a sport/activity you like.
Why the hell was an ENTIRE DISCUSSION THREAD moderated as -1 Redundant? It's not like we were just parroting exactly what someone else said, this thread was so deep the mods had to mod -1 to the PARENT and THE GRANDPARENT to which I replied. That takes a whole lot of mod points!
Yeah, go ahead and mod down threads of discussion with critical insights, I guess that's what Slashdot is all about.
I hated the cut in the middle of songs, although I don't remember any "good" songs being cut, usually it was mid-album lamers that got cut.
One glaring example I remember: on Billy Joel's "52nd Street" 8-track, they cut "Zanzibar" in-half because it's too long for one track (5:13). It fades out during Freddie Hubbard's excellent trumpet solo.
I am so thankful that 8-tracks quickly lost to cassette tapes, so I really never had to deal with them. Even though cassette tapes sucked, they were genuinely portable, and at least you didn't have to split tracks not intended for radio.
The simple fact of the matter is this: we put redundancy into aircraft for reasons of safety. This is one reason why I've never like the Airbus system - if the computers fail (as redundant as they may be), the pilots are shit outta luck. I've always considered them to have a bit of a God Complex, contending that they could write software and make hardware to run it on that was more reliable than the current manual backup systems. I've always wondered why nobody considers this total detachment of pilot control in an emergency "acceptable" - computer error can be just as deadly a problem as pilot error, but if the computer has failed, I trust the pilot a million times more.
As a software engineer, I know how crappy your average software is, and since my company builds custom hardware to run the software on, I'm well aware of how high defect rates can run, even with top-shelf components and manufacturing techniques. As we try to make everything in the system software-driven, we need to realize just how stupid software systems are when inputs go outside nominal ranges, and how fragile hardware can be when they *oops* used a set of chinese knockoff capacitors in the latest aircraft electronics, and nobody noticed. This shit happens all the time, so it's absolutely retarded to not have a fully-manual backup mode. Sure, maybe the manual backup will fail. Sure, maybe the pilot will screw-up. But it's stupid not to give them the chance to succeed.
I hope this crash (and other recent incidents) help bring to light how stupid the Airbus control philosophy is. Christ, if they think the pilots are useless, they should just install ILS at every single major airport and let the computers fly the planes.
This is absolutely true, this is the reason Motown Records got established in the 1950s/60s - to allow black performers the same chances at mega-stardom that white performers already enjoyed.
Michael Jackson may have spent some of his best years making solo albums for CBS Records, but even he can trace his roots to Motown Records (The Jackson 5 had a contract with Motown). My hats-off to them both for changing music as we know it.
The article is spread annoyingly over multiple pages, like everything at the site, and the print version omits the graphs. my tags
ExtremeTech always has that sucky layout, but I'm proud to mention that they are closing their doors in a week or two. This will mean the end of one of the many sites that spew 20-page articles that could have easily fit on two pages (and I never bother visiting).
Hopefully, the author of this article will find gainful employment at a site that DOESN'T hate it's users. The fact is, he's the only reason I've bothered reading an ExtremeTech article in years.
I love the concept of "default." It means I don't have to think about %99 the things I do on a daily basis, simply because the defaults are good enough. Without this concept driving design and development, we would have never gotten this far with technology, as each extra layer would have added way to much complexity for the user.
Slashdot Mirror
But there's a reason we never saw Earthbound sequels, and that's because most Americans didn't like the first one (myself included). The game got repetitive and boring after just an hour of play. The trippy battle system lost it's luster after just a few rounds, and the tasks made me feel like I was doing a LOT of back-and-forth trips just to proceed in the storyline (even for an RPG)!
Yeah, but Comcast is another matter. If all you want is internet, that's fine - they charge you $50 a month just like everyone else, and the speeds are fairly competitive (I saw 2MB/s downloads just last week). But the moment you want something else, you're going to pay through the roof for it!
Take my example: I signed-up for Comcast's digital plus package plus Showtime plus internet five years ago for $110/month (this was the price after incentives ended). In the time since, I've not added any services, nor watched one new channel they've added, but somehow they've justified increasing my payment to $140/month.
I ended-up calling the Comcast retention six months ago because I saw the prices for FIOS and about shit my pants ($110/month for my current level of service). After I got the run-around, and basically nothing to fix the problem, I told the service representative this: For a RETENTION service, you're not trying very hard. I told him, you can't beat Verizon at this if you're not even going to TRY. He responded by giving me a %10 discount and free Showtime for six months (back down to $110/month...for now).
So this month, I moved into a new place, and I asked myself...gee, am I going to continue to put-up with that Comcast bullshit? Am I going to call the retention department every six months just to get a REASONABLE rate on my cable TV? Hell no! I signed-on with Verizon for one year (with a two-year price guarantee) at $115/month. I get the exact same level of service as my old $140/month Comcast, and I also get a DVR for that price (that level of service would cost me $155/month with Comcast). And if I need to bail, it's only a $175 early termination, so it's not exactly painful.
He may only be sensitive to certain wavelengths...just like you can't get the same effects out of a microwave oven if you changed the wavelength to millimeter wave. If you are attuned, you will feel things more intensely than others.
I believe this man only because I am also more sensitive to a certain radiation than most other people: I am sensitive to light, and I am MOST sensitive to red light. This means that I turn lights off in my house, turn down the brightness of monitors, and even use black backgrounds on text editors.
But outside of the computing realm, I am surrounded by my #1 enemy: red LEDs. All LEDs are too intense for me, but red LEDs are super-intense, and are (unfortunately) appearing on all sorts of cars these days. I can get a headache just from having these bright red tail lights in my face all the way home.
God, I can't stand looking at these arrays of bright-red LEDs, especially since the idiots who designed them decided not to filter them at all. So during my entire drive home, I see a lattice of fiery points burning their way through my retina. It's so bad, I switch lanes to get behind cars with regular (filtered) brake lights, or I look away from the car in front of me (now, that's not safe). And don't even get me started on red LASERS (headache city!)...
I can't be the only person suffering from this, but it feels like I am, because everything around me is getting BRIGHTER. So I can commiserate with a single man who claims to be sensitive to WiFi (approx 2.4 GHz).
The Soviets were not the only ones sending probes to the Moon. We sent the Ranger series of probes to the Moon during the 1960s to take pictures. This accomplished two major goals:
1. The probes impacted, and failed immediately upon impact. This proved that the lunar surface was indeed solid rock.
2. The probes provided high-detail imagery to give planners a better idea of how rough landing it would be, and to allow them to pick an optimal landing site.
Now, I won't discount the impressive success the Soviets had with Luna 10, but it wasn't the standalone breakthrough you insist it is. Really, with just the information we got from Ranger, putting astronauts on the moon was now just a simple physics problem.
It will be followed by the release of web app: Google Suicide
Don't you mean Google Suicide BETA?
It was mostly power, portability and durability concerns that drove the creation of OLPC. The E-bay systems offer none of the above.
In third-world countries, power is in short supply, and is spotty when available. It is also expensive. We would be run out of town for offering people computers + monitors that used 100-150 watts like the desktops you mentioned.
Portability was seen as a selling point for OLPC because, then the computer could come with the owner everywhere. Not only does this guarantee that the computer never leaves the owner's sight (theft deterrent), but it also means the owner will have the opportunity to use the computer in ways we cannot anticipate.
Durability is just as important as the above, because if it can't last, it will be outright rejected. These are the same sort of people who insist on buying Toyota light trucks because they will still be running a decade from now - if the price is high, durability is a top priority.
Yeah, it turned out to be a bad concept overall, but that doesn't mean the intentions were wrong. It was much better an idea than shipping old PCs to Africa.
What exactly is the title referring to? It means simply this: if you put a flash drive on a shelf, and NOTHING breaks EVER, you will still lose your data within 10 years. This is because the data on flash is less "permanent" than a hard disk drive - it is an electric charge trapped between insulating gates. Unfortunately, the insulation is imperfect, and the charge slowly leaks away. This means that every drive in existence will lose it's data, unless that data is periodically refreshed (i.e. manually rewrite all the data).
I would say that hard drives have a longer shelf-life in terms of the lifetime of magnetic moment, but at the same time the mechanical portions have poor shelf life. Assuming nothing else breaks, if you leave a hard drive on a shelf for years without powering it up, the mechanical parts will seize (corrosion, drying of lubricants, etc).
Your best best is to backup early, and often, and KNOW the weaknesses of your media. Basically, if you want to use flash, periodically clean the drive and re-write all data. If you want to use hard disks, power them up regularly.
Yes, but the industry dropped prices with to move to optical media...and then promptly raised prices again because they added so much more content! I think the industry needs to realize that games don't all have to be 80-hour works of art with 20 different endings, all packed into that $59.95 wrapper. Give us games in the $30-50 range that have maybe 10-15 hours of game play, and I think players will flock.
Agreed. I took advantage of the offer because, $50 is what I USED to pay for Windows back in the 1990s, and it's a damn good price to upgrade my XP machine.
And it's not as-if Microsoft is the only one trying to titillate sales in this weak economy. Apple is having a fire sale of it's own, with $30 upgrades to Snow Leopard (but only for Leopard owners, so I'm SOL with my Tiger box), and $50 family-pack upgrades. Microsoft is charging $20 more, but they are simultaneously adding more value than Apple's offer, because you can upgrade from XP. Both offers are an excellent value, and should build-up hype.
Basically, OS makers are recognizing that, in this day and age, they can't add much more value to their existing offerings (I mean, just see how long I've held-on to XP and Tiger). And that means, unless the price is right, people will upgrade at a very sedate pace, mostly through new PC purchases. Because the price is right, I will be upgrading to Windows 7 this fall. On the other hand, I won't be upgrading my Mac Mini to Snow Leopard because it's $130, and for me Tiger works just fine (I would buy Snow Leopard for $50 if Apple gave me the chance).
Nope. You see, EVERY SINGLE technology was eventually made available to both sides (with the exception of the C3 computer). Who had what tech depended on what FASA was smoking in a particular month.
This made a "standard" tough because "available" technologies varied from sourcebook to sourcebook. An example: the 3050 manual introduces all Clan tech, and gave MOST of it to the IS...but they left a few tasty bits for the Clan only:
Targeting Computer
ER Medium Laser
ER Small Laser
Small Pulse Laser
Ultra AC/10
Ultra AC/20
LB 2-X AC
LB 5-X AC
LB 20-X AC
Streak SRM-4
Streak SRM-6
And then they introduced other strange weapons like MRMs, and suddenly the universe was a mess.
But it's not like he had much of a choice in the matter. Using the 8088, he still had an upper 1MB barrier to deal with. And since I/O ports were no longer the "feature" they were a decade previous (too slow), you needed some space for memory-mapped I/O.
I suppose he could have pressured IBM to go with the Motorola 68000 (flat 32-bit address space), but that would have screwed with the "cheap" design philosophy of the IBM PC (that's why they used the 8088 instead of the 8086). Also, it would have prevented any kind of easy migration from 8080 CP/M to DOS (see the TRANS command blurb on this page). Given the situation, they made the best decision they could.
But In terms of Ferro-Fibrous versus Endo-Steel, always go with Endo-Steel. They both take the same amount of critical spots, but Endo-Steel will always save you more weight than Ferro Fibrous will (for the same armor rating).
And since maximum armor is determined by rating (2x inner structure), and not by tonnage, you can't use Ferro-Fibrous to cheat the system and give you a higher max armor rating than normally possible.
Good thing for you, the Gauss Rifle uses very little heat.
Hey, you get 10 heatsinks free with the engine. If you use double heatsinks, it won't cost you any critical slots for engines larger than 250 rating.
*Sigh* I'm a Battletech geek.
One thing to remember though, Half-Life was a generation behind on the graphical curve, it was no where near state of the art when it came out. Quake 2 was already out a year when it came out and it was based on Quake 1.
NO. They started wth the Quake engine, then added some Quake II engine code. It wasn't difficult because that's exactly what ID software did when they wrote Quake II. In terms of map surfaces, Half-Life could handle anything Quake II could. I think they were similar on lighting - lightmaps plus a few dynamic lights. Hell, I think Half-Life even supported colored lighting, although I can't remember for certain.
In addition, Valve added skeletal animation to the game, which made the movements and interactions with NPCs a LOT more convincing. This was important, since the game is story-driven, and the story is told by NPCs. When NPCs walk, they walk convincingly. When they talk, they emphasize what they are saying with limb movements. When they die, they fall down much more smoothly than anything I'd seen before.
Oh no, you're absolutely correct, most mid-range 19" CRTs topped-out at 1600x1200, and the top-end hit 1920x1440. Really, you could only resolve pixels up to the monitor's dot pitch, so anything above 1600x1200 was a waste. But it was a sign of good dot clock hardware if they could advertise such a high resolution as 1920x1440, especially with a refresh rate of 85Hz (like my Iiyama Visionmaster Pro 454). At higher resolutions, you wanted dot clock hardware that wasn't bandwidth-limited (results in blurred images).
Don't forget that a 17" CRT is really 16" viewable best-case. I'll bet almost everyone has forgotten that by now. LCD is fully-viewable, so a 19" screen is really 19".
Also, NOWHERE in the article post does the author request another 4:3 monitor, so if a 19" widescreen has similar vertical viewing range and the same (or better) DPI, then we can assume it is a winner.
Some math for you
16" CRT (viewable) 1400x1050
We know the hypotenuse = 16. for a 4:3 monitor:
4^2 + 3^2 = 5^2. 16" / 5 = a factor of 3.2, so multiply all factors by 3.2 to get true screen dimensions.
Screen is 12.8" by 9.6", with a DPI of 109
19" widescreen LCD (16:10) 1680x1050
16^2 + 10^2 = 18.87^2, 19 / 18.87 = 1.007
Screen is 16.1" by 10.07", with a DPI of 104
With the 19" LCD, you get a VERY SLIGHT drop in DPI, with the same vertical resolution/area, and MUCH INCREASED horizontal area. Sounds like a win to me!
Right, the last time I looked around on the interwebs (2007), I couldn't find ANY version of XCOM that wasn't Windows-based. This pissed me off because the Windows port is notoriously unstable.
Also, I have my old DOS copy of XCOM:TFD, but for some reason it doesn't work well in DOSBox. Whenever I enter a battle, the game speeds-up to ludicrous speed. It scrolls so fast that the view window moves from one end of the map to another instantaneously. Also, outside of battle, strange jumps in time occur, and I sometimes see my submarines get bugged.
Maybe I just need to try another copy.
Yes, but they create muscle, which burns more calories 24/7.
It's not a replacement for cardio, but that's something he can do on the WEEKENDS, along with real weight training. We're just finding things here he can do on the job.
This metabolic slowdown is why a lot of people pork out once they get past their prime.
You typically only get metabolic slowdown when you stop being active. For a select few people, this is a result of real changes in body chemistry as they age, or the result of real diseases/disorders. But for MOST people, it's simply a lack of free time, combined with a lack of ambition.
Most people don't notice, but as they go through high school and college, they stop the physical activity that used to be a major part of their lives. Once PE becomes an elective in high school, most kids don't bother taking it, and don't bother supplementing the lost activity after school. Once people get jobs after graduation, they have less time for sports and recreation. Most of these people are perfectly capable of physical activity, but they stop for other reasons; some people really don't have the time to spare, but a lot of them do, but they make excuses anyway.
You can stay in "your prime" a lot longer than most people think (I know from experience, over half the people I play Ultimate Frisbee with are in their 30-50s). You can remain fairly active until you hit your 50s, when the body starts to show some REAL signs of physical breakdown. By that point in your life, joints are worn-down and you become more prone to injury. But you don't have to quit cold-turkey - you just have to tone it down as you age, and come to grips with your growing limitations.
And it's never too late to change. I'm in better shape today then I ever was in high school / college. All it takes is a little determination to stick with it, and a sport/activity you like.
Why the hell was an ENTIRE DISCUSSION THREAD moderated as -1 Redundant? It's not like we were just parroting exactly what someone else said, this thread was so deep the mods had to mod -1 to the PARENT and THE GRANDPARENT to which I replied. That takes a whole lot of mod points!
Yeah, go ahead and mod down threads of discussion with critical insights, I guess that's what Slashdot is all about.
I hated the cut in the middle of songs, although I don't remember any "good" songs being cut, usually it was mid-album lamers that got cut.
One glaring example I remember: on Billy Joel's "52nd Street" 8-track, they cut "Zanzibar" in-half because it's too long for one track (5:13). It fades out during Freddie Hubbard's excellent trumpet solo.
I am so thankful that 8-tracks quickly lost to cassette tapes, so I really never had to deal with them. Even though cassette tapes sucked, they were genuinely portable, and at least you didn't have to split tracks not intended for radio.
The simple fact of the matter is this: we put redundancy into aircraft for reasons of safety. This is one reason why I've never like the Airbus system - if the computers fail (as redundant as they may be), the pilots are shit outta luck. I've always considered them to have a bit of a God Complex, contending that they could write software and make hardware to run it on that was more reliable than the current manual backup systems. I've always wondered why nobody considers this total detachment of pilot control in an emergency "acceptable" - computer error can be just as deadly a problem as pilot error, but if the computer has failed, I trust the pilot a million times more.
As a software engineer, I know how crappy your average software is, and since my company builds custom hardware to run the software on, I'm well aware of how high defect rates can run, even with top-shelf components and manufacturing techniques. As we try to make everything in the system software-driven, we need to realize just how stupid software systems are when inputs go outside nominal ranges, and how fragile hardware can be when they *oops* used a set of chinese knockoff capacitors in the latest aircraft electronics, and nobody noticed. This shit happens all the time, so it's absolutely retarded to not have a fully-manual backup mode. Sure, maybe the manual backup will fail. Sure, maybe the pilot will screw-up. But it's stupid not to give them the chance to succeed.
I hope this crash (and other recent incidents) help bring to light how stupid the Airbus control philosophy is. Christ, if they think the pilots are useless, they should just install ILS at every single major airport and let the computers fly the planes.
This is absolutely true, this is the reason Motown Records got established in the 1950s/60s - to allow black performers the same chances at mega-stardom that white performers already enjoyed.
Michael Jackson may have spent some of his best years making solo albums for CBS Records, but even he can trace his roots to Motown Records (The Jackson 5 had a contract with Motown). My hats-off to them both for changing music as we know it.
The article is spread annoyingly over multiple pages, like everything at the site, and the print version omits the graphs.
my tags
ExtremeTech always has that sucky layout, but I'm proud to mention that they are closing their doors in a week or two. This will mean the end of one of the many sites that spew 20-page articles that could have easily fit on two pages (and I never bother visiting).
Hopefully, the author of this article will find gainful employment at a site that DOESN'T hate it's users. The fact is, he's the only reason I've bothered reading an ExtremeTech article in years.
...Or should I say, luser name?
I love the concept of "default." It means I don't have to think about %99 the things I do on a daily basis, simply because the defaults are good enough. Without this concept driving design and development, we would have never gotten this far with technology, as each extra layer would have added way to much complexity for the user.