Agreed. And furthermore, not all programmers are systems administrators or even particularly above average users when it comes to network security. I would think that any internet user should know to run a firewall/virus scanner, install os update patches now and then, and not to open attachments, but none of that is enough to avoid every possible hazard. Just because someone is a programmer doesn't mean they should need to know any more than average about advanced network security, unless their job actually involves it.
Programming itself is abstract, and you can be quite good at your job without knowing everything there is to know about computers other than what relates to your area of focus. In this case, they're writing a FPS, and except for the few people actually involved with multiplayer infrastructure, there is very little overlap between the skills the developers need and computer security, so they shouldn't be held to a higher standard than other office workers.
open while going away for the weekend.
Err.. I don't think thats a very accurate observation. If anything, the ultra-rich are more likely to lean towards libertarian, while the non-affluent cultural conservatives are more solidly republican. Libertarians are every bit as pro-business, and just as likely to get into the country club. The only consistent distinction between the two groups is that religious people are more likely to be Republican, while the atheist/agnostic minority are generally predisposed towards Libertarianism. Whichever way they vote, most of the successful business executives I know have a distinctly libertarian perspective, while the most Republican people I know tend to be religious but not particularly wealthy. Those are two very different groups (fiscal vs cultural conservatives), and the republican party has to work to strike a balance to try to satisfy both.
The comparison is not the same as between Democrats and Socialists. In the 2-dimensional political graph defining Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians, Socialists are like Democrats amplified. Democrats are much closer to center than socialists, but oriented in the same direction.
If you're talking about hippies who can't get into the country club, perhaps you're thinking of the greens, not the libertarians.
Look up the definition of artificial. For something to be artificial, it pretty much has to have a degree of human involvement in its creation. Thats basically what keeps it from being natural. What would make normal movies less artificial isn't the human involvement in their production but that they feature human likenesses and voices, and humans are not artificial since they didn't design themselves. A product 100% designed by humans is the perfect definition of artificial. Something designed by a human constructed AI is just a degree of indirection, but it is still ultimately designed by humans.
Presumably since you mention City of Heroes, you're including that in your discussion. The first new content patch is coming pretty soon, and it looks to be very satisfactory. If they keep adding updates of this magnitude every few months, it should be fine. As for the first scheduled expansion, they are adding major new aspects to the game with tons of content.
I don't think Everquest players would be complaining if all the Everquest expansions rose to that level, but they fall far short. Another Everquest grievance is that devs have been spread to thin making the crappy expansions and have let major bugs and balancing issues go unfixed. City of Heroes can still benefit from more content, but the core product is very stable for a new MMOG.
As for the price.. MMOGs just cost a lot of money to maintain and operate. New content is just a small part of the cost. I get at least as entertainment out of an MMOG as I do out of cable, but I'm paying many times more for the cable. We're spoiled that the prices are as low as they are, and no amount of complaining will make it cheaper.
God forbid a company would want to actually profit on an investment. Businesses operate for profit and charities operate at cost. The difference is that charities don't generally make MMORPGs, because they have more important things to devote their resources towards. An inessential luxury like an MMORPG doesn't exist to fulfill a need but to make a profit for someone. Period.
Have you ever priced buying one of the little drives in an ipod or ipod mini individually? The primary reason that competitors can claim similar features cheaper is that their players are a bit larger, thus able to use cheaper hard drives. The smaller form factor of the ipod and the hard drive inside does add value. If you don't value the slightly smaller size, thats a perfectly valid opinion, but some people do value it, and the smaller drives are legitimately more expensive than larger ones with the same capacity.
Most of Apples competitors have only been able to compete in form OR function OR price, or 2 of those factors, never all 3. That indicates that the iPods aren't as inflated in price as you think, or with all the competition out there, they wouldn't be so hard to improve on. Apple does have a higher markup than some companies, but if they knocked $100 off the entry level iPod, I doubt they'd be making any net profit, and they are not a charity. The markup is not that dramatic.
The only PvP that ever ultimately satisfies PvP advocates is full-on, unrestricted PvP anarchy. Any compromise short of that is always a constant source of complaints. While that sort of gameplay works in an FPS, for MMORPGs it alienates the vast majority of players. I've never played an MMORPG without some form of PvP, and the PvP always results in fun gameplay taking a backseat to nerfs in the name of balancing that PvP. PvPers have unlimited PvP in a handful of games, and limited PvP in almost every game, yet they're always the biggest whiners in the community. Whats wrong with a publisher deciding to focus on PvE only and making that fun, instead of making yet another half-assed attempt at PvP that satisfies nobody?
The point is that your time is orders of magnitude more valuable than $15 a month, given the amount of time the average MMORPG gamer plays in a month. When something is dirt cheap like that, why should anyone spend their limited time playing something that isn't what they most want to play, just to save the difference of $3 to $5 a month between this and a cheaper game? If City of Heroes is the game you'd most like to play for the next few months, then play it. If not, don't. A few pennies per hour of entertainment shouldn't factor into your decision.
Some students have far more time than money, but most adults with jobs have far more money than time, so a few dollars here or there isn't relevant to them (and I would argue that even students can earn a few bucks quickly enough that it shouldn't matter much to them either).
It depends on your music collecting style. Some people collect music faster and some have been at it for longer. I've been collecting mp3s since before Napster, but I do it very very slowly, and have only just surpassed the 4gb boundary on my 10gb iPod (but there is some I could cut, and I'd "upgrade" to a mini if I had an excuse to get a new one). I only collect individual singles that I like, and only keep a small fraction of the music that I download.
Some people however, prefer to focus on full albums and entire catalogs of the artists they like, or to keep around just about everything they download and don't explicitly dislike. That style of collector could fill up an iPod mini in a single evening.
And of course, some people prefer more multifunctional (but arguably less streamlined) products than either iPod. Its all up to personal preferences. I'm glad that there is a variety of cool products to satisfy these different demands. There is no question that the options are way way better than they were just a few years ago. Soon enough, portable music players will probably have enough memory and a small enough form factor to satisfy everyone without major compromises.
If you are connected to the net and have a clue about security, you'll be using both and monitoring both white and blackhat security sites daily.
If you are a sysadmin or your life otherwise revolves around computer security, sure. But if you are an average user, even one with "a clue about security", this just isn't a reasonable level of precaution. For most people, computers are just appliances to enhance and simplify their lives, not something they want to spend countless hours maintaining just so they can check their email and use ebay. Suppose your TV, furnace, lights, microwave, plumbing, and toaster each required just a few extra minutes of maintenance each day for optimal safety?
Even if it just takes 5 minutes a day to stay on top of every possible security threat (and on days when there is a threat, it would be more than 5 minutes to deal with it), thats 30 hours of your life per year. While a handful of people might tolerate those 30 hours, for most it would be a tedious chore. Most people would rather take the rather small risk and in the rare, worst case scenario, buying a new computer would cost less than all their wasted time avoiding problems.
Think of all the things that you could avoid with just a little time each day. You could check the oil, brakes, etc daily on your car in just a few minutes. You could thoroughly brush and floss after any meal or snack and it would only cost an extra 10 minutes or so. You could check the traffic and weather reports and scan police dispatch for possible trouble before going anywhere. You could double check and second guess everything you do. Or you could live your life and accept the usually minor consequences of imperfect precaution. Take precautions that are proportional to the potential risk. For most people the risk of computer troubles simply isn't worth 5 minutes daily.
Thats a good point. In a world where technology didn't change quickly and typical games had the budgets of typical movies, it would be cool to be able to play a well designed game continuously across multiple platforms. But in the real world of short release cycles, tight budgets, and quick obsolescence, it just wouldn't make sense for developers to spread themselves so thin.
A description of the Randi/Browne fued from Randi's POV. I suppose that it comes down to who you find more credible, but in my mind it certainly isn't the phony psychic.
"I don't really know why I'm spending any of my valuable time on the professional liar who uses the name Sylvia Browne. However, since I get so many questions from readers about what she says and writes about me and about the JREF, I have to do a certain amount of repair work from time to time.
This examination of her recent mendacious tirades will not be kind. I've no obligation to be tolerant of this person, and I'm known to call 'em as I see 'em. She has freely attacked me in the media, making false and damaging statements about me, without any opposition from those who gave her the platform from which to deliver this trash. I'm answering in kind. The big difference in our approaches is that all of my response that follows is factual and provable. And it's damning to Browne. WHAT FOLLOWS IS STRONG, DIRECT, NO-HOLDS-BARRED, AND TRUE. I'll apologize in advance to my readers, so that I might be spared the expected murmers about how rude I was. Browne has viciously slandered and libeled me, in the public media, repeatedly. This is my response, and I don't give a damn whether she likes it or not. Read on, if you dare.
As most of you will know, Sylvia owes her entire success to those two intellectual giants of TV -- Larry King and Montel Williams. These are two well-educated men who certainly are not themselves deceived by these "psychics" on whom they dote; they give them air-time and promote them freely because of the basic bottom line: all that matters to them is the program ratings, thus the opinion of their sponsors, and they know full well that they'll get maximum attention when any "psychic" matter is introduced on their programs. That's all they care about; truth is discarded when money is scented.
Let's look back to just one particularly cruel hoax perpetrated by this woman Browne. Years ago on Montel Williams' show, she spoke to the grandmother of a local missing child, a six-year-old named Opal Jo Jennings who disappeared from her home in north Texas in March of 1999. Browne told the distraught woman that the child was still alive but had been sold into white slavery and was currently being held in Japan. She even gave a city name, but there is no such city in Japan. Moving ahead three years and nine months, we find that the body of little Opal was recovered -- just seven weeks ago; she had been killed by a blow to the head. Currently, there is a man in prison in Texas who has confessed to, and been convicted of, Opal Jo's abduction and murder.
Think about what's happened here: Sylvia Browne callously raised the hopes of the family of this little child, placing the fictitious location on the other side of the world. She did this well after a comprehensive search had already been performed in Texas, so she was pretty sure that the girl would never be found. She thought she was safe against exposure. She wasn't; the body was found and definitively identified. That was a callous, cruel, manipulative act by Sylvia Browne. But no one calls her to account for it, and her supporters continue on in Lotusland cooing over her wonderful powers. You have to wonder how someone can do such a heartless act. Sylvia can, and does.
Larry Thornton just sent me a tape and a transcript of the "Coast to Coast" radio show of Thursday, February 19th, 2004, Browne's most recent attack on me. The host was George Noory. There were three mentions of my name in this show, full of blatant lies and slander. Sylvia was at her best, which is to say, at her worst.
First, asked by Noory about her agreement to do the test for the million-dollar JREF prize, she interrupted with: "He [Randi] doesn't have any money!"
That statement by Sylvia Browne is a direct, knowing, lie. She has received documentary proof of the existence of the James Randi Educational Foundation Prize Account, along with a letter from Goldman, Sachs & Company stating that the account -- in "liquid
What are you talking about? They have huge heads for their size. Their bodies are perfectly proportioned. Their upper skulls are disproportionately large. If they were 5 or 6 feet they'd be unable to wear even XXXL hats.
No doubt, size isn't everything, but do you have any specific examples of that? On the contrary, all human little people that I've seen have had disproportionately large heads almost as large as that of a normal height person. Their chin and face may be on the small side, but not their skull. Look at a picture of verne troyer next to someone else kneeling down.
No matter how strict the game's system, you always have the option to quit the game, go on with your life, play another game or not. In real life if you go on a killing spree, your life is over and you don't ever get another chance. In a game there is always plenty of fresh starts, in other games or outside the game. In a game, everyone quits eventually, and when they do quit, if they're jerks, they can grief with impunity. In real life, few enough people are both evil and suicidal enough to cause many homicidal rampages, though it does happen occasionally, but in a game, a significant percentage of the population will go on rampages given the opportunity.
I've never been in the military, but I've known kids who've joined it out of high school that have been relatively bright and have been educated within the military for technical jobs. The military wouldn't just take random people and train them for random things. There are aptitude tests. Of the large pool of military recruits, many of them have the potential for all kinds of training. Its a good option for kids whose families can't afford to put them through college.
There are 10 alphanumeric characters in these codes, so around 36^10 different possible codes. If there are 100 million winning numbers, then about 1 in 30 million of them is going to be a winner. I would say that it would take quite a long time to brute force a 1 in 30 million code, considering that you have to wait for the website to respond to each request. Its fair to say that the contest would be over by the time you succeeded, and the time and bandwidth you wasted would be worth more than the 99 cents worth of free music (which you could just as easily download for free).
You're suggesting that when fossil fuels run out we'll experience an approximately 400 fold increase in electricity costs? Industrial scale solar power generation costs maybe 3 or 4 times as much as coal or oil, and could likely be improved quite a bit if we started using it more. There is also wind, geothermal, fission, and possibly someday fusion, none of which are in any way tied to our fossil fuel reserves.
Maybe you've worked with it, but VxWorks isn't a Green Hills operating system, its an operating system by Wind Rivers, so your criticism is misplaced. It is possible to use Green Hills tools with VxWorks, but its equally possible to use Green Hills tools with Linux.
A key problem with beta feedback is lack of quality in favor of quantity. More incentive may or may not improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
You can get thousands of people telling you there is an item loss bug or a phantom dupe bug or a client crash bug, but until you get someone who can describe in detail exactly how to make it happen, its more of a rumor than a bug report.
A major cultural problem is the beta players who just want a free chance to play the game before its released. When they find bugs they'll either exploit them for their own benefit if possible, or complain vaguely about how the game is buggy and sucks if they can't exploit it. Reporting them to improve the product doesn't cross their mind. This sort of player would probably be the most motivated by rewards, but its unclear whether their bug reports would actually be of equivalent or worse quality than average.
Obviously there are many quality products made overseas, but "overseas" includes Europe and Japan which for the most part also meet or exceed US labor prices. The high quality items made in third world countries are things designed in first world countries. Some kinds of software are developed in third world countries, but real technological innovation isn't a basic commodity that can be outsourced to the lowest bidder.
How do they know what the long term effects might be? This post is about an announcement regarding upcoming clinical trials of this treatment. How in the hell do you think they find out what the long term side effects are? By testing it, and thats what they're doing. The people in these trials don't HAVE a few years to live, so they are taking their chances and the best case scenario is that some of them will be alive to experience those side effects in a few years. Thats how clinical trials work.
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Agreed. And furthermore, not all programmers are systems administrators or even particularly above average users when it comes to network security. I would think that any internet user should know to run a firewall/virus scanner, install os update patches now and then, and not to open attachments, but none of that is enough to avoid every possible hazard. Just because someone is a programmer doesn't mean they should need to know any more than average about advanced network security, unless their job actually involves it. Programming itself is abstract, and you can be quite good at your job without knowing everything there is to know about computers other than what relates to your area of focus. In this case, they're writing a FPS, and except for the few people actually involved with multiplayer infrastructure, there is very little overlap between the skills the developers need and computer security, so they shouldn't be held to a higher standard than other office workers. open while going away for the weekend.
Err.. I don't think thats a very accurate observation. If anything, the ultra-rich are more likely to lean towards libertarian, while the non-affluent cultural conservatives are more solidly republican. Libertarians are every bit as pro-business, and just as likely to get into the country club. The only consistent distinction between the two groups is that religious people are more likely to be Republican, while the atheist/agnostic minority are generally predisposed towards Libertarianism. Whichever way they vote, most of the successful business executives I know have a distinctly libertarian perspective, while the most Republican people I know tend to be religious but not particularly wealthy. Those are two very different groups (fiscal vs cultural conservatives), and the republican party has to work to strike a balance to try to satisfy both. The comparison is not the same as between Democrats and Socialists. In the 2-dimensional political graph defining Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians, Socialists are like Democrats amplified. Democrats are much closer to center than socialists, but oriented in the same direction. If you're talking about hippies who can't get into the country club, perhaps you're thinking of the greens, not the libertarians.
Look up the definition of artificial. For something to be artificial, it pretty much has to have a degree of human involvement in its creation. Thats basically what keeps it from being natural. What would make normal movies less artificial isn't the human involvement in their production but that they feature human likenesses and voices, and humans are not artificial since they didn't design themselves. A product 100% designed by humans is the perfect definition of artificial. Something designed by a human constructed AI is just a degree of indirection, but it is still ultimately designed by humans.
Presumably since you mention City of Heroes, you're including that in your discussion. The first new content patch is coming pretty soon, and it looks to be very satisfactory. If they keep adding updates of this magnitude every few months, it should be fine. As for the first scheduled expansion, they are adding major new aspects to the game with tons of content.
I don't think Everquest players would be complaining if all the Everquest expansions rose to that level, but they fall far short. Another Everquest grievance is that devs have been spread to thin making the crappy expansions and have let major bugs and balancing issues go unfixed. City of Heroes can still benefit from more content, but the core product is very stable for a new MMOG.
As for the price.. MMOGs just cost a lot of money to maintain and operate. New content is just a small part of the cost. I get at least as entertainment out of an MMOG as I do out of cable, but I'm paying many times more for the cable. We're spoiled that the prices are as low as they are, and no amount of complaining will make it cheaper.
God forbid a company would want to actually profit on an investment. Businesses operate for profit and charities operate at cost. The difference is that charities don't generally make MMORPGs, because they have more important things to devote their resources towards. An inessential luxury like an MMORPG doesn't exist to fulfill a need but to make a profit for someone. Period.
Have you ever priced buying one of the little drives in an ipod or ipod mini individually? The primary reason that competitors can claim similar features cheaper is that their players are a bit larger, thus able to use cheaper hard drives. The smaller form factor of the ipod and the hard drive inside does add value. If you don't value the slightly smaller size, thats a perfectly valid opinion, but some people do value it, and the smaller drives are legitimately more expensive than larger ones with the same capacity.
Most of Apples competitors have only been able to compete in form OR function OR price, or 2 of those factors, never all 3. That indicates that the iPods aren't as inflated in price as you think, or with all the competition out there, they wouldn't be so hard to improve on. Apple does have a higher markup than some companies, but if they knocked $100 off the entry level iPod, I doubt they'd be making any net profit, and they are not a charity. The markup is not that dramatic.
To make this cost effective, I would hope they would select a saltwater algae rather than a freshwater algae.
Err... Super Mario Brothers 1, 2, and 3 were all on the NES to begin with.
The only PvP that ever ultimately satisfies PvP advocates is full-on, unrestricted PvP anarchy. Any compromise short of that is always a constant source of complaints. While that sort of gameplay works in an FPS, for MMORPGs it alienates the vast majority of players. I've never played an MMORPG without some form of PvP, and the PvP always results in fun gameplay taking a backseat to nerfs in the name of balancing that PvP. PvPers have unlimited PvP in a handful of games, and limited PvP in almost every game, yet they're always the biggest whiners in the community. Whats wrong with a publisher deciding to focus on PvE only and making that fun, instead of making yet another half-assed attempt at PvP that satisfies nobody?
The point is that your time is orders of magnitude more valuable than $15 a month, given the amount of time the average MMORPG gamer plays in a month. When something is dirt cheap like that, why should anyone spend their limited time playing something that isn't what they most want to play, just to save the difference of $3 to $5 a month between this and a cheaper game? If City of Heroes is the game you'd most like to play for the next few months, then play it. If not, don't. A few pennies per hour of entertainment shouldn't factor into your decision. Some students have far more time than money, but most adults with jobs have far more money than time, so a few dollars here or there isn't relevant to them (and I would argue that even students can earn a few bucks quickly enough that it shouldn't matter much to them either).
It depends on your music collecting style. Some people collect music faster and some have been at it for longer. I've been collecting mp3s since before Napster, but I do it very very slowly, and have only just surpassed the 4gb boundary on my 10gb iPod (but there is some I could cut, and I'd "upgrade" to a mini if I had an excuse to get a new one). I only collect individual singles that I like, and only keep a small fraction of the music that I download.
Some people however, prefer to focus on full albums and entire catalogs of the artists they like, or to keep around just about everything they download and don't explicitly dislike. That style of collector could fill up an iPod mini in a single evening.
And of course, some people prefer more multifunctional (but arguably less streamlined) products than either iPod. Its all up to personal preferences. I'm glad that there is a variety of cool products to satisfy these different demands. There is no question that the options are way way better than they were just a few years ago. Soon enough, portable music players will probably have enough memory and a small enough form factor to satisfy everyone without major compromises.
If you are connected to the net and have a clue about security, you'll be using both and monitoring both white and blackhat security sites daily.
If you are a sysadmin or your life otherwise revolves around computer security, sure. But if you are an average user, even one with "a clue about security", this just isn't a reasonable level of precaution. For most people, computers are just appliances to enhance and simplify their lives, not something they want to spend countless hours maintaining just so they can check their email and use ebay. Suppose your TV, furnace, lights, microwave, plumbing, and toaster each required just a few extra minutes of maintenance each day for optimal safety?
Even if it just takes 5 minutes a day to stay on top of every possible security threat (and on days when there is a threat, it would be more than 5 minutes to deal with it), thats 30 hours of your life per year. While a handful of people might tolerate those 30 hours, for most it would be a tedious chore. Most people would rather take the rather small risk and in the rare, worst case scenario, buying a new computer would cost less than all their wasted time avoiding problems.
Think of all the things that you could avoid with just a little time each day. You could check the oil, brakes, etc daily on your car in just a few minutes. You could thoroughly brush and floss after any meal or snack and it would only cost an extra 10 minutes or so. You could check the traffic and weather reports and scan police dispatch for possible trouble before going anywhere. You could double check and second guess everything you do. Or you could live your life and accept the usually minor consequences of imperfect precaution. Take precautions that are proportional to the potential risk. For most people the risk of computer troubles simply isn't worth 5 minutes daily.
Thats a good point. In a world where technology didn't change quickly and typical games had the budgets of typical movies, it would be cool to be able to play a well designed game continuously across multiple platforms. But in the real world of short release cycles, tight budgets, and quick obsolescence, it just wouldn't make sense for developers to spread themselves so thin.
A description of the Randi/Browne fued from Randi's POV. I suppose that it comes down to who you find more credible, but in my mind it certainly isn't the phony psychic. "I don't really know why I'm spending any of my valuable time on the professional liar who uses the name Sylvia Browne. However, since I get so many questions from readers about what she says and writes about me and about the JREF, I have to do a certain amount of repair work from time to time. This examination of her recent mendacious tirades will not be kind. I've no obligation to be tolerant of this person, and I'm known to call 'em as I see 'em. She has freely attacked me in the media, making false and damaging statements about me, without any opposition from those who gave her the platform from which to deliver this trash. I'm answering in kind. The big difference in our approaches is that all of my response that follows is factual and provable. And it's damning to Browne. WHAT FOLLOWS IS STRONG, DIRECT, NO-HOLDS-BARRED, AND TRUE. I'll apologize in advance to my readers, so that I might be spared the expected murmers about how rude I was. Browne has viciously slandered and libeled me, in the public media, repeatedly. This is my response, and I don't give a damn whether she likes it or not. Read on, if you dare. As most of you will know, Sylvia owes her entire success to those two intellectual giants of TV -- Larry King and Montel Williams. These are two well-educated men who certainly are not themselves deceived by these "psychics" on whom they dote; they give them air-time and promote them freely because of the basic bottom line: all that matters to them is the program ratings, thus the opinion of their sponsors, and they know full well that they'll get maximum attention when any "psychic" matter is introduced on their programs. That's all they care about; truth is discarded when money is scented. Let's look back to just one particularly cruel hoax perpetrated by this woman Browne. Years ago on Montel Williams' show, she spoke to the grandmother of a local missing child, a six-year-old named Opal Jo Jennings who disappeared from her home in north Texas in March of 1999. Browne told the distraught woman that the child was still alive but had been sold into white slavery and was currently being held in Japan. She even gave a city name, but there is no such city in Japan. Moving ahead three years and nine months, we find that the body of little Opal was recovered -- just seven weeks ago; she had been killed by a blow to the head. Currently, there is a man in prison in Texas who has confessed to, and been convicted of, Opal Jo's abduction and murder. Think about what's happened here: Sylvia Browne callously raised the hopes of the family of this little child, placing the fictitious location on the other side of the world. She did this well after a comprehensive search had already been performed in Texas, so she was pretty sure that the girl would never be found. She thought she was safe against exposure. She wasn't; the body was found and definitively identified. That was a callous, cruel, manipulative act by Sylvia Browne. But no one calls her to account for it, and her supporters continue on in Lotusland cooing over her wonderful powers. You have to wonder how someone can do such a heartless act. Sylvia can, and does. Larry Thornton just sent me a tape and a transcript of the "Coast to Coast" radio show of Thursday, February 19th, 2004, Browne's most recent attack on me. The host was George Noory. There were three mentions of my name in this show, full of blatant lies and slander. Sylvia was at her best, which is to say, at her worst. First, asked by Noory about her agreement to do the test for the million-dollar JREF prize, she interrupted with: "He [Randi] doesn't have any money!" That statement by Sylvia Browne is a direct, knowing, lie. She has received documentary proof of the existence of the James Randi Educational Foundation Prize Account, along with a letter from Goldman, Sachs & Company stating that the account -- in "liquid
What are you talking about? They have huge heads for their size. Their bodies are perfectly proportioned. Their upper skulls are disproportionately large. If they were 5 or 6 feet they'd be unable to wear even XXXL hats.
No doubt, size isn't everything, but do you have any specific examples of that? On the contrary, all human little people that I've seen have had disproportionately large heads almost as large as that of a normal height person. Their chin and face may be on the small side, but not their skull. Look at a picture of verne troyer next to someone else kneeling down.
No matter how strict the game's system, you always have the option to quit the game, go on with your life, play another game or not. In real life if you go on a killing spree, your life is over and you don't ever get another chance. In a game there is always plenty of fresh starts, in other games or outside the game. In a game, everyone quits eventually, and when they do quit, if they're jerks, they can grief with impunity. In real life, few enough people are both evil and suicidal enough to cause many homicidal rampages, though it does happen occasionally, but in a game, a significant percentage of the population will go on rampages given the opportunity.
I've never been in the military, but I've known kids who've joined it out of high school that have been relatively bright and have been educated within the military for technical jobs. The military wouldn't just take random people and train them for random things. There are aptitude tests. Of the large pool of military recruits, many of them have the potential for all kinds of training. Its a good option for kids whose families can't afford to put them through college.
These are state representatives we're talking about, not federal. If they have a chauffeur, its probably the bus or cab driver.
There are 10 alphanumeric characters in these codes, so around 36^10 different possible codes. If there are 100 million winning numbers, then about 1 in 30 million of them is going to be a winner. I would say that it would take quite a long time to brute force a 1 in 30 million code, considering that you have to wait for the website to respond to each request. Its fair to say that the contest would be over by the time you succeeded, and the time and bandwidth you wasted would be worth more than the 99 cents worth of free music (which you could just as easily download for free).
You're suggesting that when fossil fuels run out we'll experience an approximately 400 fold increase in electricity costs? Industrial scale solar power generation costs maybe 3 or 4 times as much as coal or oil, and could likely be improved quite a bit if we started using it more. There is also wind, geothermal, fission, and possibly someday fusion, none of which are in any way tied to our fossil fuel reserves.
Maybe you've worked with it, but VxWorks isn't a Green Hills operating system, its an operating system by Wind Rivers, so your criticism is misplaced. It is possible to use Green Hills tools with VxWorks, but its equally possible to use Green Hills tools with Linux.
A key problem with beta feedback is lack of quality in favor of quantity. More incentive may or may not improve the signal-to-noise ratio. You can get thousands of people telling you there is an item loss bug or a phantom dupe bug or a client crash bug, but until you get someone who can describe in detail exactly how to make it happen, its more of a rumor than a bug report. A major cultural problem is the beta players who just want a free chance to play the game before its released. When they find bugs they'll either exploit them for their own benefit if possible, or complain vaguely about how the game is buggy and sucks if they can't exploit it. Reporting them to improve the product doesn't cross their mind. This sort of player would probably be the most motivated by rewards, but its unclear whether their bug reports would actually be of equivalent or worse quality than average.
Obviously there are many quality products made overseas, but "overseas" includes Europe and Japan which for the most part also meet or exceed US labor prices. The high quality items made in third world countries are things designed in first world countries. Some kinds of software are developed in third world countries, but real technological innovation isn't a basic commodity that can be outsourced to the lowest bidder.
Ugh. That's pretty vile. I don't think human singers should be worried.
How do they know what the long term effects might be? This post is about an announcement regarding upcoming clinical trials of this treatment. How in the hell do you think they find out what the long term side effects are? By testing it, and thats what they're doing. The people in these trials don't HAVE a few years to live, so they are taking their chances and the best case scenario is that some of them will be alive to experience those side effects in a few years. Thats how clinical trials work.