It does not say 50% more content, it says that "Almost a 50% new game," and from what I can see it could very well mean "we are dumbing it down because console don't have a mouse. We need to rework it fully to be adapted to a joystick"
From what I read, while Newtonian mechanic can predict light bending for a small weighted photon, it don't predict light bending for zero mass photon.
QUOTE
However, there is a problematical aspect to this "Newtonian" prediction, because it's based on the assumption that particles of light can be accelerated and decelerated just like ordinary matter, and yet if this were the case, it would be difficult to explain why (in non-relativistic absolute space and time) all the light that we observe is traveling at a single characteristic speed. Admittedly if we posit that the rest mass of a particle of light is extremely small, it might be impossible to interact with such a particle without imparting to it a very high velocity, but this doesn't explain why all light seems to have precisely the same velocity, as if this particular speed is somehow a characteristic property of light. As a result of these concerns, especially as the wave conception of light began to supersede the corpuscular theory, the idea that gravity might bend light rays was largely discounted in Newtonian physics. (The same fate befell the idea of black holes, originally proposed by Mitchell based on the Newtonian escape velocity for light. Laplace also mentioned the idea in his Celestial Mechanics, but deleted it in the third edition, possibly because of the conceptual difficulties discussed here.)
But then again I could misread the paragraph, the light bending prediction from newtonian physic was based on false premise.
The rest of the text give you 100% reason, on the difficulty of measurement, up to the funny details that Einstein made an error initially and had a bending prediction identical as newtonian physic, and that really the measurement verification were more confirmed in 2004.
US = 1 language, 1 history (more or less), 1 government which dictated the dance up to the point that some states smacked other states (US CIVIL war). It was called Civil war for a good reason. 1 president/head of the USA.
EU= 12 (more than that but bear with me) states, 12 languages, 12 histories (not really, but most people consider the history of THEIR countries before the one of Europe), 12 currencies, 12 head of states which went on war with each others. And no they were not called civil war. EU got started as an economic entity, USA as a political one.
I could go on, but Europe is not a country, not in the same sense as with the US. It is a loose economic federation of sovereign countries. If one decide to leave EU, AFAIK it can without getting the shit kicked out of him by the northern state / southern state. Despite having different constitution or army or whatnot, the US states are more like province under the control of a head government. And last time someone decided to leave, it did not end that well...
Even if I did, why should I believe somebody ignoring one simple fact : in nearly all western country where video game boomed (and thus violent one too), juvenile violence went down.
The wiki link to the article which says the count is different and thus the mortality in the US is higher, but it does not : 1) cite peer reviewed study, it only cite a media article 2) it does not cite a comparison on identical basis. For example take 1000 infant death, then cut off those less than 1 pound. Do you get the same number as the germany , worst or better ? Count only birth after 6 month and a half (26 weeks) do you get identical number as France ? I see none of this. Just a "they don't count like us". 3) as another poster said, even if you discount infant mortality outright as being counted differently and thus not being comparable, death in the 0-5 year period is still apparently higher in the US than in the same previously discounted countries. That should certainly indicate a trend.
QUOTE: Jimbo is like a 40 year old man, he should know better than to stick his dick into some crazy woman with a history of stalking.
Most men I know will not take the personality of the woman into account, if she is attractive , and if they get half a chance to stick their dick in her.
QUOTE:"Although the Singularity research development kit (RDK) is available for download, it is not technically open source. The source code is distributed under the terms of the restrictive Microsoft Research License rather than one of Microsoft's two OSI-approved open source licenses."
"However, the Church at least has a history of adopting ideas once they've been safely mainstream for a few hundred years."
Let me correct this. What you meant to write is "However, the church has a history of fighting idea up to the bitter end, until they can no more fight them without looking ridiculous because those idea have become mainstream even for their own believer. Until then, everything is fair game".
When I was young, the number of people which did not have a TV was very small, and mostly it was due to economic reason. Now I don't have one, I know a few people which don't have one (colleagues, friends). Mostly due to lassitude reason (nothing worth to watch), some of us due to more ideological reason. Me I just did not watch it anymore. Entertainment ? I get a better quick "just" hanging out with friends. it is as time consuming but far funnier. Films/series ? Download or rent from video-club. Information ? TV is more biased than any other source, and nowadays the net fulfill that better than Tv will ever do. And I see an increasing number of people joining our rank. TV don't cut it. Internet replace it. TV might never totally disappear but it is getting less relevant as the central "point" of the family.
So when you say QUOTE "There will be one, if not two, iterations of the "next next generation" of this technology before you get one that gets adopted as widespread as DVD was. The amount of people with next-gen displays is too small, and too many people are now leery about the next "new hotness" that they'll stay away even more now." ENDQUOTE Well I disagree. I think new generation teck will NOT bring anything more than DVD brought us. And if it will, it will be at a great loss of liberty (DRM) from a format which for all purpose can be considered to be DRM free so cracked it is... No what i think is that next generations will increasingly go toward the net and drop tv more. IMHO on the "film" playing device field, DVD is the last usable format, and HDDVD/Bluray was the last war. Unless a leap in TV teck happens (3D for example) there won't be any incencitive to really enhancethe format more.
"A child can be told all about intelligent design, but it doesn't mean they'll believe it."
But it has been proved time and time over that kids are vulnerable to fake info, more so than adult. Why do you think it is easier to get a bunch of kid to accept faery existence, than a bunch of adult ? They are at a period of their life were not only they tend to accept info at face value, but also the school/teachers/parents tell them to swallow information, just spit it back, in other word without critical thinking (I can't tell for all country, but we were asked to start to really "think" critically only at about 15-16 years old for philosophy... Up to that point even science cursus required you to swallow a lot at face value).
The day the school cursus around here change to have critcial thinking at a low age , I will agree with you. Until then science teachers should stick to what is accepted knowledge by science, and not muddy things with their own belief.
And this is *ALREADY* happening. Look at the boarding pass of some EU airlines (example : Deutsche LH) you will see what they call "boarding zone" near your boarding place, a number between 1 and 6. If i recall correctly 1 and 6 are windows, 2 and 5 are middle , and 3 and 4 are corridor. When introduced it was supposed to be used to accelerate boarding time by sorting the passenger which go first in the plane. Practically it seems that getting the passenger to board with their correct boarding zone is harder than herd sheep. So instead they do that only on the biggest flight, and on some non german stations.
You mean, emphasize time spent on the game. It ain't chess where you need skill and strategy, it ain't sport competition where you need some real athletic skills. The highiest skill most MMO ask you to understand is roughly equivalent to paper-scissor-stone : what the mob is vulnerable to, and what is his attack made of. MAYBE the FIRST person fighting the same mob display some skills understanding how to attack it effectively, but for the rest of the following camping people is then nearly automation and cook book recipe.
A lot of mathematical application in research are in Fortran. They use known library, debugged for the last 40 years, giving known results, with a known precision. Most people which I know do some research using a lot of math (physic, etc...) don#t use c or java or whatever on their irix-origin, they use Fortran, most probably HPF. Heck i know of some airline IT provider using fortran...
In many country (in EU for example) you cannot give up fundamental right, or agree to give up protection of the law by signing a contract. This in many case nullify the contract utterly. But surprise, surprise, many of those EULA (particularly the one drafted for the US and just translated) just do that, for example in saying they are not liable for any damage occasioned by the software. Although in recent year I saw in a lot of EULA added "except in the country which forbid such clause, in which case it does not apply" or something similar.
I USED to before install go and change the text of the EULA for fun (so that the CEO of the software maker give me his first born). Or delete the text file before install. Or ask my nephew to install your software (kids aren't contractible if parents refuse). Such shenanigan would not happen with a real signed contract.
I use windows at home to develop some software for fun (like a "game of life" I am building right now), and to game a bit. I would certainly like to try to develop a bit under linux, but can't really. I tried linux how many time now ? Only to find some piece of hardware or software that I had to manually configure. Every time I bite to the "linux is so much easier now" only to be bitten back (from "search for the correct setting, how-the-heck-do-I-use-this, what switch should I use the MAN page is too cluttered, and naturally a few "go read the man page newbie"). True it is a bit better now, I remember having problem with basic stuff like graphic card, how to auto-mount and network driver, not anymore. Last time I tried 2 years ago I could not get sound with my computer. Maybe I will try again. I heard ubuntu is really easy.
But the point I am trying to make is that I develop, I use a lot of the windows command prompt (use a lot of program in batch mode). I *used* to develop under ksh QM package under fortran. Linux should not be such a PITA for me. But it still is. Until somebody comes up with a "winlux" with : *one* gui, and every conf file switchable with button (and check for the user on the fly that the value are not silly), with autoconfiguration of every stuff from graphic to network controler (I remember darkly YAST did something like that), and that by default everything is mounted , in other word more windows user friendly like, I doubt linux will make heyday anywhere.
The older I got, the less I wanted to put up with hacking my system, as opposed to "work out of the box".
It does not compile. I added a ) after the while(i. It did not compile at the scattering command either. Suppressed rgb. Got a black screen. So... Are those 256/512 byte file somewhere available to download ? Not that I doubt that one could do nifty things in a compact unreadable code (after all I did similar stuff, although not as cool, in assembly and MCGA a long time ago). But I would still like to see it done on my PC , maybe to learn something who knows.
1) plan to counterfeit money with a nice color printer
2) steal one. Social engineering at a firm to get a copy of printer order. Or just plain pay somebody to give you a copy.
3) watch the wrong guy land in prison and laugh all the way to your money laundering place of choice
Alternatively :
1) plan to counterfeit money with a nice color printer
2) Pay an underpaid tech to switch this off (if possible)
3) watch the wrong guy land in prison and laugh all the way to your money laundering place of choice
This can only catch the average idiot. Not a real criminal.
Quote : Canada has joined Russia and China as the biggest violators of U.S. copyright law
Cannada CANNOT break (grammatically error on country placement inserted intentionally) copyright US law, anymore than an US as a country cannot break coypright new-guinea law . What could happen is that somebody could infringe on the copyright held by somebody else in another country, which means (if I recall correctly WIPO) that a Canadian could at most only break a canadian law on respecting other country copyright. A country can only break international Agreement (like WIPO agreement). So the above quoted line is wrong on the citizen [of the country] level, and it is wrong on the country level. Beside that, it is only propaganda from US copyright holder to put pressure on foreign government or require their paid-off US lawmaker to put pressure on those countries.
Choice quote : ""the illusion of design in the living world is explained with far greater economy... by Darwinian natural selection" "the universe would appear the same to us whether it was designed by God or not"
Quote : "How the fuck is the LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD supposed to "keep out of other countries' business"?
There is a difference between being the largest economy of the world, and the largest bully. Nothing in being the largest economy of the world force you to have a big army, and a big nuclear arsenal beyond what is necessary for retaliation, and certainly nothing force you to invade other country which never heard of you, and nothing force you to blackmail other country against producing cheaping anti aids drug (a pet peeve of me, international treaty allow it for emergency situation but the US blackmail a lot of country against doing this, or even retaliate). The fact is that the US seems to be quite trigger happy and forget what diplomacy is. If it was not the case, you would not have so-unhappy-ally and falling out with decades old ally. In case you don't remember you had a lot of support a few years ago before you decided to squander it into what i would call bullying Iraq. Nobody ask you to be isolationist. But sometimes, sometimes, it would be nice if you could leave people which are not disturbing you alone in their own FUCKING country. And I am not even speaking of Irak alone. Nicaragua. Chile. Panama. And so on. You are part of the world, but most of the time your extern politic amount to "do whatever we say or we crush you, crush you so bad you won't believe it".
Remember kids, respecting others [person,country] goes into a long way to get respect back. Bullying other make you a nice target. And spitting on your friend make you look like an idiot.
We know tons about the enthalpy of formation of various chemicals, family of chemicals, not only from carbonated life but other type of chemicals. The problem is to have molecule which bond easily enough, quickly enough, but not strongly enough that you have to spend a lot of energy to break bonds. Furthermore there are good indication that a liquid phase of some sort is necessary. If I recall correctly from the first proposition one can deduce life would use carbonated compound, as other type of compound (Si for example) would either not bind strongly enough, or too strongly. From the second in conjunction of the first, water present all sort of advantage. It ain't that we are so earth centric that we can't imagine other form of life, it is more that the chemistry of other compound don't seem to lend to the type of reaction necessary for life. Finally if you have carbonated compound as condition sine qua non, then 700C is enough to dissociate most of them.
Now, mind you, even if we have to abandon dreams of Silicate life in extrem hot environment, it does not mean we think life could be identical to what we have on earth.
They are the one which can define what a standard is and what is not acceptable. In the pure spirit of capitalism if MS thinks EU is out of bound they can go out of EU and stop selling there (fat chance in Hell). Furthermore I don't recall EU requiring MS to buy vote in to make their own cooked stuff forcefully becoming a standard. That last part is even more damning than making a bad document format with all the trapping of a standard without the spirit of one.
Slashdot Mirror
It does not say 50% more content, it says that "Almost a 50% new game," and from what I can see it could very well mean "we are dumbing it down because console don't have a mouse. We need to rework it fully to be adapted to a joystick"
From what I read, while Newtonian mechanic can predict light bending for a small weighted photon, it don't predict light bending for zero mass photon.
QUOTE
However, there is a problematical aspect to this "Newtonian" prediction, because it's based on the assumption that particles of light can be accelerated and decelerated just like ordinary matter, and yet if this were the case, it would be difficult to explain why (in non-relativistic absolute space and time) all the light that we observe is traveling at a single characteristic speed. Admittedly if we posit that the rest mass of a particle of light is extremely small, it might be impossible to interact with such a particle without imparting to it a very high velocity, but this doesn't explain why all light seems to have precisely the same velocity, as if this particular speed is somehow a characteristic property of light. As a result of these concerns, especially as the wave conception of light began to supersede the corpuscular theory, the idea that gravity might bend light rays was largely discounted in Newtonian physics. (The same fate befell the idea of black holes, originally proposed by Mitchell based on the Newtonian escape velocity for light. Laplace also mentioned the idea in his Celestial Mechanics, but deleted it in the third edition, possibly because of the conceptual difficulties discussed here.)
light bending in newtonian physic
But then again I could misread the paragraph, the light bending prediction from newtonian physic was based on false premise.
The rest of the text give you 100% reason, on the difficulty of measurement, up to the funny details that Einstein made an error initially and had a bending prediction identical as newtonian physic, and that really the measurement verification were more confirmed in 2004.
US = 1 language, 1 history (more or less), 1 government which dictated the dance up to the point that some states smacked other states (US CIVIL war). It was called Civil war for a good reason. 1 president/head of the USA.
EU= 12 (more than that but bear with me) states, 12 languages, 12 histories (not really, but most people consider the history of THEIR countries before the one of Europe), 12 currencies, 12 head of states which went on war with each others. And no they were not called civil war. EU got started as an economic entity, USA as a political one.
I could go on, but Europe is not a country, not in the same sense as with the US. It is a loose economic federation of sovereign countries. If one decide to leave EU, AFAIK it can without getting the shit kicked out of him by the northern state / southern state. Despite having different constitution or army or whatnot, the US states are more like province under the control of a head government. And last time someone decided to leave, it did not end that well...
Even if I did, why should I believe somebody ignoring one simple fact : in nearly all western country where video game boomed (and thus violent one too), juvenile violence went down.
The wiki link to the article which says the count is different and thus the mortality in the US is higher, but it does not :
1) cite peer reviewed study, it only cite a media article
2) it does not cite a comparison on identical basis. For example take 1000 infant death, then cut off those less than 1 pound. Do you get the same number as the germany , worst or better ? Count only birth after 6 month and a half (26 weeks) do you get identical number as France ? I see none of this. Just a "they don't count like us".
3) as another poster said, even if you discount infant mortality outright as being counted differently and thus not being comparable, death in the 0-5 year period is still apparently higher in the US than in the same previously discounted countries. That should certainly indicate a trend.
QUOTE: Jimbo is like a 40 year old man, he should know better than to stick his dick into some crazy woman with a history of stalking.
Most men I know will not take the personality of the woman into account, if she is attractive , and if they get half a chance to stick their dick in her.
From the ars technica link below :
QUOTE:"Although the Singularity research development kit (RDK) is available for download, it is not technically open source. The source code is distributed under the terms of the restrictive Microsoft Research License rather than one of Microsoft's two OSI-approved open source licenses."
ars technica
To be "open source" you need a tad little bit more than having the source readable in plain text, IMHO.
"However, the Church at least has a history of adopting ideas once they've been safely mainstream for a few hundred years."
Let me correct this. What you meant to write is "However, the church has a history of fighting idea up to the bitter end, until they can no more fight them without looking ridiculous because those idea have become mainstream even for their own believer. Until then, everything is fair game".
When I was young, the number of people which did not have a TV was very small, and mostly it was due to economic reason. Now I don't have one, I know a few people which don't have one (colleagues, friends). Mostly due to lassitude reason (nothing worth to watch), some of us due to more ideological reason. Me I just did not watch it anymore. Entertainment ? I get a better quick "just" hanging out with friends. it is as time consuming but far funnier. Films/series ? Download or rent from video-club. Information ? TV is more biased than any other source, and nowadays the net fulfill that better than Tv will ever do. And I see an increasing number of people joining our rank. TV don't cut it. Internet replace it. TV might never totally disappear but it is getting less relevant as the central "point" of the family.
So when you say QUOTE "There will be one, if not two, iterations of the "next next generation" of this technology before you get one that gets adopted as widespread as DVD was. The amount of people with next-gen displays is too small, and too many people are now leery about the next "new hotness" that they'll stay away even more now." ENDQUOTE
Well I disagree. I think new generation teck will NOT bring anything more than DVD brought us. And if it will, it will be at a great loss of liberty (DRM) from a format which for all purpose can be considered to be DRM free so cracked it is... No what i think is that next generations will increasingly go toward the net and drop tv more. IMHO on the "film" playing device field, DVD is the last usable format, and HDDVD/Bluray was the last war. Unless a leap in TV teck happens (3D for example) there won't be any incencitive to really enhancethe format more.
"A child can be told all about intelligent design, but it doesn't mean they'll believe it."
But it has been proved time and time over that kids are vulnerable to fake info, more so than adult. Why do you think it is easier to get a bunch of kid to accept faery existence, than a bunch of adult ? They are at a period of their life were not only they tend to accept info at face value, but also the school/teachers/parents tell them to swallow information, just spit it back, in other word without critical thinking (I can't tell for all country, but we were asked to start to really "think" critically only at about 15-16 years old for philosophy... Up to that point even science cursus required you to swallow a lot at face value).
The day the school cursus around here change to have critcial thinking at a low age , I will agree with you. Until then science teachers should stick to what is accepted knowledge by science, and not muddy things with their own belief.
And this is *ALREADY* happening. Look at the boarding pass of some EU airlines (example : Deutsche LH) you will see what they call "boarding zone" near your boarding place, a number between 1 and 6. If i recall correctly 1 and 6 are windows, 2 and 5 are middle , and 3 and 4 are corridor. When introduced it was supposed to be used to accelerate boarding time by sorting the passenger which go first in the plane. Practically it seems that getting the passenger to board with their correct boarding zone is harder than herd sheep. So instead they do that only on the biggest flight, and on some non german stations.
I make sure to tell them about all of the weird fetishes I wank off to.
:).
If you have nothing to hide...
Now let me make some popcorn up for us, and tell us more about your weird fetishes you wank on
You mean, emphasize time spent on the game. It ain't chess where you need skill and strategy, it ain't sport competition where you need some real athletic skills. The highiest skill most MMO ask you to understand is roughly equivalent to paper-scissor-stone : what the mob is vulnerable to, and what is his attack made of. MAYBE the FIRST person fighting the same mob display some skills understanding how to attack it effectively, but for the rest of the following camping people is then nearly automation and cook book recipe.
A lot of mathematical application in research are in Fortran. They use known library, debugged for the last 40 years, giving known results, with a known precision. Most people which I know do some research using a lot of math (physic, etc...) don#t use c or java or whatever on their irix-origin, they use Fortran, most probably HPF. Heck i know of some airline IT provider using fortran...
In many country (in EU for example) you cannot give up fundamental right, or agree to give up protection of the law by signing a contract. This in many case nullify the contract utterly. But surprise, surprise, many of those EULA (particularly the one drafted for the US and just translated) just do that, for example in saying they are not liable for any damage occasioned by the software. Although in recent year I saw in a lot of EULA added "except in the country which forbid such clause, in which case it does not apply" or something similar.
I USED to before install go and change the text of the EULA for fun (so that the CEO of the software maker give me his first born). Or delete the text file before install. Or ask my nephew to install your software (kids aren't contractible if parents refuse). Such shenanigan would not happen with a real signed contract.
I use windows at home to develop some software for fun (like a "game of life" I am building right now), and to game a bit. I would certainly like to try to develop a bit under linux, but can't really. I tried linux how many time now ? Only to find some piece of hardware or software that I had to manually configure. Every time I bite to the "linux is so much easier now" only to be bitten back (from "search for the correct setting, how-the-heck-do-I-use-this, what switch should I use the MAN page is too cluttered, and naturally a few "go read the man page newbie"). True it is a bit better now, I remember having problem with basic stuff like graphic card, how to auto-mount and network driver, not anymore. Last time I tried 2 years ago I could not get sound with my computer. Maybe I will try again. I heard ubuntu is really easy.
But the point I am trying to make is that I develop, I use a lot of the windows command prompt (use a lot of program in batch mode). I *used* to develop under ksh QM package under fortran. Linux should not be such a PITA for me. But it still is. Until somebody comes up with a "winlux" with : *one* gui, and every conf file switchable with button (and check for the user on the fly that the value are not silly), with autoconfiguration of every stuff from graphic to network controler (I remember darkly YAST did something like that), and that by default everything is mounted , in other word more windows user friendly like, I doubt linux will make heyday anywhere.
The older I got, the less I wanted to put up with hacking my system, as opposed to "work out of the box".
It does not compile. I added a ) after the while(i. It did not compile at the scattering command either. Suppressed rgb. Got a black screen. So... Are those 256/512 byte file somewhere available to download ? Not that I doubt that one could do nifty things in a compact unreadable code (after all I did similar stuff, although not as cool, in assembly and MCGA a long time ago). But I would still like to see it done on my PC , maybe to learn something who knows.
Spore, or even one of the follow up on Oblivion... Who knows.
1) plan to counterfeit money with a nice color printer
2) steal one. Social engineering at a firm to get a copy of printer order. Or just plain pay somebody to give you a copy.
3) watch the wrong guy land in prison and laugh all the way to your money laundering place of choice
Alternatively : 1) plan to counterfeit money with a nice color printer
2) Pay an underpaid tech to switch this off (if possible)
3) watch the wrong guy land in prison and laugh all the way to your money laundering place of choice
This can only catch the average idiot. Not a real criminal.
Apparently it only apply to US citizen. (if you don't think so, I have a hint for you : gitmo).
Quote : Canada has joined Russia and China as the biggest violators of U.S. copyright law
Cannada CANNOT break (grammatically error on country placement inserted intentionally) copyright US law, anymore than an US as a country cannot break coypright new-guinea law . What could happen is that somebody could infringe on the copyright held by somebody else in another country, which means (if I recall correctly WIPO) that a Canadian could at most only break a canadian law on respecting other country copyright. A country can only break international Agreement (like WIPO agreement). So the above quoted line is wrong on the citizen [of the country] level, and it is wrong on the country level. Beside that, it is only propaganda from US copyright holder to put pressure on foreign government or require their paid-off US lawmaker to put pressure on those countries.
Theistic evolution criticism
... by Darwinian natural selection"
Choice quote :
""the illusion of design in the living world is explained with far greater economy
"the universe would appear the same to us whether it was designed by God or not"
By Caroll and Dawkins.
Quote : "How the fuck is the LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD supposed to "keep out of other countries' business"?
There is a difference between being the largest economy of the world, and the largest bully. Nothing in being the largest economy of the world force you to have a big army, and a big nuclear arsenal beyond what is necessary for retaliation, and certainly nothing force you to invade other country which never heard of you, and nothing force you to blackmail other country against producing cheaping anti aids drug (a pet peeve of me, international treaty allow it for emergency situation but the US blackmail a lot of country against doing this, or even retaliate). The fact is that the US seems to be quite trigger happy and forget what diplomacy is. If it was not the case, you would not have so-unhappy-ally and falling out with decades old ally. In case you don't remember you had a lot of support a few years ago before you decided to squander it into what i would call bullying Iraq. Nobody ask you to be isolationist. But sometimes, sometimes, it would be nice if you could leave people which are not disturbing you alone in their own FUCKING country. And I am not even speaking of Irak alone. Nicaragua. Chile. Panama. And so on. You are part of the world, but most of the time your extern politic amount to "do whatever we say or we crush you, crush you so bad you won't believe it".
Remember kids, respecting others [person,country] goes into a long way to get respect back. Bullying other make you a nice target. And spitting on your friend make you look like an idiot.
We know tons about the enthalpy of formation of various chemicals, family of chemicals, not only from carbonated life but other type of chemicals. The problem is to have molecule which bond easily enough, quickly enough, but not strongly enough that you have to spend a lot of energy to break bonds. Furthermore there are good indication that a liquid phase of some sort is necessary. If I recall correctly from the first proposition one can deduce life would use carbonated compound, as other type of compound (Si for example) would either not bind strongly enough, or too strongly. From the second in conjunction of the first, water present all sort of advantage. It ain't that we are so earth centric that we can't imagine other form of life, it is more that the chemistry of other compound don't seem to lend to the type of reaction necessary for life. Finally if you have carbonated compound as condition sine qua non, then 700C is enough to dissociate most of them.
Now, mind you, even if we have to abandon dreams of Silicate life in extrem hot environment, it does not mean we think life could be identical to what we have on earth.
They are the one which can define what a standard is and what is not acceptable. In the pure spirit of capitalism if MS thinks EU is out of bound they can go out of EU and stop selling there (fat chance in Hell). Furthermore I don't recall EU requiring MS to buy vote in to make their own cooked stuff forcefully becoming a standard. That last part is even more damning than making a bad document format with all the trapping of a standard without the spirit of one.