Uh, no, Western governments do not. Only attention seeking unpopular politicians do.
The fact is, 9/11 was minor damage. About as much destruction as a few hours during World War 2. The United States has the capacity to absorb thousands of times as much damage without any real negative effects.
The sensible move to make would have been to spend only as much money to prevent another 9/11 as would be cost effective.
The FAA agrees that a human life is worth about 3 million bucks, and other numbers put the value at 10 million. So, in order to prevent another 9/11 that killed about 3000 people, 30 billion bucks is the spending limit.
30 billion would pay for better airport security, and that's it. That's all we should have done. The rest of the money should have gone to helping prevent more common causes of death that affect MANY more people. Such as heart disease and traffic accidents.
Ignorant, and false. Both countries developed military forces that rivaled any other nation. The Germans had the most technologically advanced tanks and guns, and the Japanese had considerable naval power, enough to match the United States. (yes, the U.S. soon surged ahead, due to our greater capacity to produce new equipment, but in 1941 this was not the case)
The truth is, both were relatively powerful and wealthy countries by the standards of the time. They were merely suffering an economic recession/depression.
Impoverished African villagers, or Arab religious zealots don't have the ability to develop this kind of military force.
You know, you may have a point. Two 640x480 displays do give the brain more to work with. I don't see how rendering at a higher resoltion is necessary, though...I thought anti-aliasing basically gives you all the benefits of that without the drawbacks.
Also, Crysis would probably run great in 640x480 stereoscopic!
Untrue. Poor people can't do anything, because fighting takes organization and planning and hard work and faith in an organization. Religions and irrational thinking breed terrorism.
The vast majority of terrorists think irrationally. They have no goal that makes any sense.
Yeah, that would also help. Or, there are post processing algorithms that reduce ghosting in commerical applications.
But, ultimately, the only way to get it PERFECT is to use a headset with separate displays for each eye. Like, a horror game with a flashlight and good headphones could really be a heart pounding experience.
I've owned and used heavily 2 stereoscopic 3d systems.
One used a large CRT monitor that could run at 150Hz. I had two different 3d shutter glasses I used. I remember having to do quite a bit of tweaking with each game I wanted to play, but eventually I was able to get 'perfect' effects that were completely and totally awesome.
You can't really know til you try it, but 3d can make games feel dramatically more real. It can make even older games look a LOT better. Deus Ex was pretty darn awesome looking when your weapons actually have depth to them, and so do the enemies.
I then built a passive stereoscopic rig using polarized glasses and 2 LCD monitors, as well as a half-silvered mirror. Total cost : about $650. That one also ruled, and worked better than the shutter glasses. I found that the killer app game for it was World of Warcraft.
This was 18 months ago : I was playing WoW in full 3d. I had to disable just 1 effect to get it to work perfectly, all of the time, smooth as glass. Again, a lot of the graphics of that game look amazing when they have depth, because your brain automatically fills in details that aren't really in the low detail graphics.
Why did I quit? Time, and the fact that Nvidia basically abandoned stereo 3d for a while. My 8800GT did not work at all for a long time. Stereo 3d IS worth it, but it requires heavy driver support or it doesn't work.
Also, I never could eliminate "ghosting". That is where the images from one eye leak into the other. One game in particular, a horror game, was AWESOME and VASTLY more scary with depth. The problem was, the dark shadows and flashlights would create various halos on the screen from ghosting which was very unrealistic and distracting.
Ghosting is inherent to shutter glasses. The only 3d tech that completely eliminates it is a headset with a separate display for each eye. However, no affordable, high resolution headsets are available on the market today. (and when I say affordable, I mean for any reasonable price. You cannot get a high resolution head mounted display for even $2000)
Maybe. It all depends on how the "points" work for the performance review system. You might be the most productive programmer within 50 cubicles, but take lots of breaks and show up late. Your boss might doc you accordingly on your performance reviews, putting you lower on the rankings than the mouth breather down the hall who knows how to suck up.
Ok. So you understand that the player piano receives data (MIDI file today) that tells it which note to hit, how hard, and what time to do it at. The robot then follows those instructions to the letter.
For the older models, the instructions were in a pattern on a big piece of paper, with the location of the holes somehow encoding this information. This is a digital method, not analog, that depends on a mechanical device to read the tape, similar to how early automatic fabric looms used to work.
There's no quality improvement for using the paper : unlike an analog record, there is not 'infinite' analog information encoded in the paper : it is just an alternate way of representing numbers.
Yeah, we don't know how long cds will last...but every indication is that manufactured CDs usually last indefinitely. As far as I know, audio CDs from the 80s and laser disks work just as well today as the day they were pressed. I've read of a handful succumbing to oxidation due to faulty plastics, but otherwise it looks like optical media are going to last longer than paper.
True, I know what you are going to point out : laser disc is a defunct media, and so while the disks might still be ok in 30 years, eventually all of the readers are going to break down or be thrown out.
Yes, but they are spending billions of dollars more than they take in. It would be a rational decision to cut their losses if there is no likely way to make the money back.
I'm just saying that in big corporate environments, there usually is some semi-shady way of getting paid for not really working, or to steal pens, ect. Yes, there's a risk of getting caught, and you might feel guilty for stealing...but if they just fired your friend Bob because he argued with a manager a year ago...you might feel a lot less guilt for bilking the company out of a few bucks.
OR, just doing the bare minimum. In a big software firm, there's probably a ton of ways to make it LOOK like you are cranking code like crazy but really be doing jack.
Of course, that's a really douchebag move on Microsoft's part. If they are going to fire a ton of people to increase their profits, why didn't they do this when the economy was ok? Or wait until the recession ends? Essentially they are kicking out thousands of people during the WORST possible time to be fired, and doing this now in order to not look as bad and to prevent lawsuits. (since the best way to do a questionable firing is to lump it together with a bunch of other firings and call it a 'layoff')
I know, I know, Corporations are not your friend, even if they employ you. They are out for themselves, and noone else. But why would an employee of Microsoft be motivated to 'go the extra mile' for a company that does things like this? If a company I was working for did stuff like this, I would quickly lose any loyalty I had and try to find ways to manipulate the system in order to do the least work for the most pay.
I have to ask...why? I thought Microsoft was massively profitable, even today. Surely they don't have to fire all these people to prevent losses?
If Microsoft is still profitable, despite the recession, then they are really using the economy as a 'cover' to do the layoffs they always wanted, anyways. A good chunk of Microsoft represents divisions that don't make money, and never have. They have all sorts of niche applications, research, online sites, game consoles, ect...none of which, as far as I know, have made them any money. All of Microsoft's dough comes from Windows and Office.
(before you say the Xbox division has made money, check your numbers : it never has made anywhere close to the money that was invested into it for each console. And, once a console is obsoleted, if you haven't made the money you spent to develop it back, you never will)
RTFA : people still buy player pianos.
They just don't buy the ones that use a useless roll of paper for recording the data for the notes, since digital methods are overwhelmingly superior.
Speed and reliability are the two deal breakers for me. I have a machine with 4 gigs RAM and a 3.2 ghz overclocked processor (granted, it is now 2 years old). It runs XP 64-bit lightning fast all of the time, for doing anything. I see no reason to slow it down.
In terms of reliability, everything I do on a daily basis works. All of the time. Again, I'm not going to jeopardize that by putting an OS that is well know for certain problems.
Since Win 7 is supposed to be FASTER, I am tempted to get it. After the final release, on a brand new computer with hardware designed for speed, I will probably upgrade to Win 7.
It just isn't good enough, though. I've used Linux, and while some features are nice, others are in practice VASTLY inferior.
In practice, it's a heck of a lot more trouble to get a lot of software to run on Linux. The command line is a shitty way to control a lot of basic tasks. "freedom" can be too much freedom...when you can choose to do anything, it is very difficult to min-max your decisions.
What do geeks want? We want our systems to be stable and FAST. After all, we are the people who both spend thousands upgrading our rigs to the best available hardware AND keep old machines around that have old hardware. In both respects, Vista was a huge step away from this.
In addition, we want to feel in control. Vista's UI felt like it took a lot of control away from us. For instance, I would tell Windows to CHANGE ITSELF and I would get a UAC popup. Many of those popups would be confirming something I EXPLICITLY JUST DID as a user.
Also, Vista would 'hide' crucial controls by default. For instance, control panel was now harder to get to to change basic, crucial settings needed to make certain things work at all.
Well, if Windows 7 is stable and fast and lets us play games, I can live with the UI being different. Heck, as a geek I can probably find a way to set the UI to be 'old style' for some things, and use the new features where it counts.
The problem with Linux is that not enough people use it.
This means that an awful lot of desktop software is not available for Linux. The most crucial software being games, but all sorts of productivity applications are also not available.
If Microsoft relied on their monopoly for long enough, getting fat and lazy and writing buggy, slow, bloated code, eventually a criticial mass of people would switch to Linux. At this point, developers would be forced to create Linux versions for everything, and then more people would switch, and so on and so forth. Open source, with the huge advantages it has, would become the dominant software model for operating systems.
Long term, the world would greatly benefit : Open source OSes could be both secure and unbelievably stable. Plus, anyone could simple 'opt out' of changes that broke something.
Microsoft developers are actually TRYING. Remember, there are a LOT of these people : I know quantity isn't everything, but microsoft has thousands and thousands of these men and women. Also, while standards have gradually slipped as the company grew, they have always tried to hire degreed computer science graduates with the top grades. Meaning, on average, microsoft developers are at least competent.
Sure, brilliance and freedom and various efficiencies (as well as IBM having a huge team of their own) have let Linux sort of keep up, but the evil empire of Microsoft does have a lot of firepower.
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Uh, no, Western governments do not. Only attention seeking unpopular politicians do.
The fact is, 9/11 was minor damage. About as much destruction as a few hours during World War 2. The United States has the capacity to absorb thousands of times as much damage without any real negative effects.
The sensible move to make would have been to spend only as much money to prevent another 9/11 as would be cost effective.
The FAA agrees that a human life is worth about 3 million bucks, and other numbers put the value at 10 million. So, in order to prevent another 9/11 that killed about 3000 people, 30 billion bucks is the spending limit.
30 billion would pay for better airport security, and that's it. That's all we should have done. The rest of the money should have gone to helping prevent more common causes of death that affect MANY more people. Such as heart disease and traffic accidents.
Ignorant, and false. Both countries developed military forces that rivaled any other nation. The Germans had the most technologically advanced tanks and guns, and the Japanese had considerable naval power, enough to match the United States. (yes, the U.S. soon surged ahead, due to our greater capacity to produce new equipment, but in 1941 this was not the case)
The truth is, both were relatively powerful and wealthy countries by the standards of the time. They were merely suffering an economic recession/depression.
Impoverished African villagers, or Arab religious zealots don't have the ability to develop this kind of military force.
You know, you may have a point. Two 640x480 displays do give the brain more to work with. I don't see how rendering at a higher resoltion is necessary, though...I thought anti-aliasing basically gives you all the benefits of that without the drawbacks. Also, Crysis would probably run great in 640x480 stereoscopic!
Untrue. Poor people can't do anything, because fighting takes organization and planning and hard work and faith in an organization. Religions and irrational thinking breed terrorism. The vast majority of terrorists think irrationally. They have no goal that makes any sense.
You're just a n00b.
I've played SupCom for many, many hundreds of hours, and I mastered the scale and zoom within my first week.
Among other tricks, the game intelligently switches to icons when you zoom out that quite clearly show what is going on.
Be realistic. Why does the United States care about a third world, impoverished nation?
Why can't they just buy a new 747? I'm not saying it's the best choice if they need a bigger plane, but it is a solution.
Do you consider that high resolution?
Even my crappiest stereo3d rig was 1600x1200.
You can tell. Also, the field of view is tiny. 640x480 is flat out unacceptable. The minimum I would use would be 1280x720.
Yeah, that would also help. Or, there are post processing algorithms that reduce ghosting in commerical applications. But, ultimately, the only way to get it PERFECT is to use a headset with separate displays for each eye. Like, a horror game with a flashlight and good headphones could really be a heart pounding experience.
I've owned and used heavily 2 stereoscopic 3d systems.
One used a large CRT monitor that could run at 150Hz. I had two different 3d shutter glasses I used. I remember having to do quite a bit of tweaking with each game I wanted to play, but eventually I was able to get 'perfect' effects that were completely and totally awesome.
You can't really know til you try it, but 3d can make games feel dramatically more real. It can make even older games look a LOT better. Deus Ex was pretty darn awesome looking when your weapons actually have depth to them, and so do the enemies.
I then built a passive stereoscopic rig using polarized glasses and 2 LCD monitors, as well as a half-silvered mirror. Total cost : about $650. That one also ruled, and worked better than the shutter glasses. I found that the killer app game for it was World of Warcraft.
This was 18 months ago : I was playing WoW in full 3d. I had to disable just 1 effect to get it to work perfectly, all of the time, smooth as glass. Again, a lot of the graphics of that game look amazing when they have depth, because your brain automatically fills in details that aren't really in the low detail graphics.
Why did I quit? Time, and the fact that Nvidia basically abandoned stereo 3d for a while. My 8800GT did not work at all for a long time. Stereo 3d IS worth it, but it requires heavy driver support or it doesn't work.
Also, I never could eliminate "ghosting". That is where the images from one eye leak into the other. One game in particular, a horror game, was AWESOME and VASTLY more scary with depth. The problem was, the dark shadows and flashlights would create various halos on the screen from ghosting which was very unrealistic and distracting.
Ghosting is inherent to shutter glasses. The only 3d tech that completely eliminates it is a headset with a separate display for each eye. However, no affordable, high resolution headsets are available on the market today. (and when I say affordable, I mean for any reasonable price. You cannot get a high resolution head mounted display for even $2000)
Maybe. It all depends on how the "points" work for the performance review system. You might be the most productive programmer within 50 cubicles, but take lots of breaks and show up late. Your boss might doc you accordingly on your performance reviews, putting you lower on the rankings than the mouth breather down the hall who knows how to suck up.
Ok. So you understand that the player piano receives data (MIDI file today) that tells it which note to hit, how hard, and what time to do it at. The robot then follows those instructions to the letter.
For the older models, the instructions were in a pattern on a big piece of paper, with the location of the holes somehow encoding this information. This is a digital method, not analog, that depends on a mechanical device to read the tape, similar to how early automatic fabric looms used to work.
There's no quality improvement for using the paper : unlike an analog record, there is not 'infinite' analog information encoded in the paper : it is just an alternate way of representing numbers.
Yeah, we don't know how long cds will last...but every indication is that manufactured CDs usually last indefinitely. As far as I know, audio CDs from the 80s and laser disks work just as well today as the day they were pressed. I've read of a handful succumbing to oxidation due to faulty plastics, but otherwise it looks like optical media are going to last longer than paper.
True, I know what you are going to point out : laser disc is a defunct media, and so while the disks might still be ok in 30 years, eventually all of the readers are going to break down or be thrown out.
Yes, but they are spending billions of dollars more than they take in. It would be a rational decision to cut their losses if there is no likely way to make the money back.
I'm just saying that in big corporate environments, there usually is some semi-shady way of getting paid for not really working, or to steal pens, ect. Yes, there's a risk of getting caught, and you might feel guilty for stealing...but if they just fired your friend Bob because he argued with a manager a year ago...you might feel a lot less guilt for bilking the company out of a few bucks.
OR, just doing the bare minimum. In a big software firm, there's probably a ton of ways to make it LOOK like you are cranking code like crazy but really be doing jack.
Dude, the paper is a paper PUNCHCARD for a mechanical actuator. It is DIGITAL data.
Of course, that's a really douchebag move on Microsoft's part. If they are going to fire a ton of people to increase their profits, why didn't they do this when the economy was ok? Or wait until the recession ends? Essentially they are kicking out thousands of people during the WORST possible time to be fired, and doing this now in order to not look as bad and to prevent lawsuits. (since the best way to do a questionable firing is to lump it together with a bunch of other firings and call it a 'layoff')
I know, I know, Corporations are not your friend, even if they employ you. They are out for themselves, and noone else. But why would an employee of Microsoft be motivated to 'go the extra mile' for a company that does things like this? If a company I was working for did stuff like this, I would quickly lose any loyalty I had and try to find ways to manipulate the system in order to do the least work for the most pay.
I have to ask...why? I thought Microsoft was massively profitable, even today. Surely they don't have to fire all these people to prevent losses?
If Microsoft is still profitable, despite the recession, then they are really using the economy as a 'cover' to do the layoffs they always wanted, anyways. A good chunk of Microsoft represents divisions that don't make money, and never have. They have all sorts of niche applications, research, online sites, game consoles, ect...none of which, as far as I know, have made them any money. All of Microsoft's dough comes from Windows and Office.
(before you say the Xbox division has made money, check your numbers : it never has made anywhere close to the money that was invested into it for each console. And, once a console is obsoleted, if you haven't made the money you spent to develop it back, you never will)
RTFA : people still buy player pianos. They just don't buy the ones that use a useless roll of paper for recording the data for the notes, since digital methods are overwhelmingly superior.
THIS JUST IN : Last Buggy whip manufacturer goes out of business!
Film at 11
Speed and reliability are the two deal breakers for me. I have a machine with 4 gigs RAM and a 3.2 ghz overclocked processor (granted, it is now 2 years old). It runs XP 64-bit lightning fast all of the time, for doing anything. I see no reason to slow it down. In terms of reliability, everything I do on a daily basis works. All of the time. Again, I'm not going to jeopardize that by putting an OS that is well know for certain problems. Since Win 7 is supposed to be FASTER, I am tempted to get it. After the final release, on a brand new computer with hardware designed for speed, I will probably upgrade to Win 7.
It just isn't good enough, though. I've used Linux, and while some features are nice, others are in practice VASTLY inferior. In practice, it's a heck of a lot more trouble to get a lot of software to run on Linux. The command line is a shitty way to control a lot of basic tasks. "freedom" can be too much freedom...when you can choose to do anything, it is very difficult to min-max your decisions.
What do geeks want? We want our systems to be stable and FAST. After all, we are the people who both spend thousands upgrading our rigs to the best available hardware AND keep old machines around that have old hardware. In both respects, Vista was a huge step away from this.
In addition, we want to feel in control. Vista's UI felt like it took a lot of control away from us. For instance, I would tell Windows to CHANGE ITSELF and I would get a UAC popup. Many of those popups would be confirming something I EXPLICITLY JUST DID as a user.
Also, Vista would 'hide' crucial controls by default. For instance, control panel was now harder to get to to change basic, crucial settings needed to make certain things work at all.
Well, if Windows 7 is stable and fast and lets us play games, I can live with the UI being different. Heck, as a geek I can probably find a way to set the UI to be 'old style' for some things, and use the new features where it counts.
The problem with Linux is that not enough people use it.
This means that an awful lot of desktop software is not available for Linux. The most crucial software being games, but all sorts of productivity applications are also not available.
If Microsoft relied on their monopoly for long enough, getting fat and lazy and writing buggy, slow, bloated code, eventually a criticial mass of people would switch to Linux. At this point, developers would be forced to create Linux versions for everything, and then more people would switch, and so on and so forth. Open source, with the huge advantages it has, would become the dominant software model for operating systems.
Long term, the world would greatly benefit : Open source OSes could be both secure and unbelievably stable. Plus, anyone could simple 'opt out' of changes that broke something.
Yes, I read that article.
Microsoft developers are actually TRYING. Remember, there are a LOT of these people : I know quantity isn't everything, but microsoft has thousands and thousands of these men and women. Also, while standards have gradually slipped as the company grew, they have always tried to hire degreed computer science graduates with the top grades. Meaning, on average, microsoft developers are at least competent.
Sure, brilliance and freedom and various efficiencies (as well as IBM having a huge team of their own) have let Linux sort of keep up, but the evil empire of Microsoft does have a lot of firepower.