With an orbital period that short, the tidal forces would be huge. This means that the planets most likely have a dark side and a light side (don't rotate). The back side, or even the twilight region, may be quite temperate.
My best computer science prof (who taught us OO, via Java), said a few things that really stuck:
1) Don't be clever! If you have to be clever, write a ton of documentation as to why you did it the way you did it. 2) Don't optimize (unless you must), and even then, leave the unoptimized (readable) code commented out. And only optimize the code blocks than a profiler tells you to... there is no point optimizing a loop that runs once.
I actually don't understand how some people can write such obfuscated code. I write comments like there is no tomorrow because in 2 days, I won't know what it does any more than another developer would! Refactoring is a bitch, or impossible, when you don't understand what you've written.
Anyone who writes code like a "hotshot" is anything but.
Hmm, the second review is more what I had expected of the first. To be completely honest, I did not finish it. When the reviewer opened in his criticism with "He has described Vladimir Lenin as a great man" I simply stopped reading. This is wrong, and dishonest. He knows that his typical reader will NOT check this fact out (Hitchens in fact rails agains Lenin quite avidly in the text). If the reviewer is going to lie to me, I am not going to listen.
I just finished reading the first (Christian) review. Interesting stuff, in the sense that the author appears to be an intelligent and non-reactionary individual. Unfortunately, his arguments basically boil down to pointing out some trivial inaccuracies which do not in the least diminish Hitchen's point, followed by an argument that goes thusly:
* Hitchens ridicules religious people. * Ridicule is wrong and bad for the world. * Therefore Hitchens-style godlessness is wrong and bad for the world.
This is a very, very flimsy argument. Yes, there are some inaccuracies which Hitchens really should correct in a later edition. No, he has not been defeated by their illustration.
I will read the second review now, and post a response. I really DO try to keep an open mind to this stuff, and dishonesty does not serve anyone, but so far I'm with Hitchens.
Nah, AFAIK you can always format in quick mode, but it doesn't do a check for bad blocks. The full format checks for and blocks off bad sectors. It's a good idea to run the full format unless you JUST formatted a minute ago and have to re-do it for some reason.
Meh, I just post under my own account. But I did have to behave myself for the first year or so just to get the karma up enough that it doesn't matter. Now (as you can tell) I don't really give a shit.
I might add that he doesn't therefore think credulity is a good thing in this day and age, just that it was a good adaptation for a hunter-gatherer with no access to science-based medicine. Now it is a genetic drive that (similar to our taste for fatty food) needs to be repressed.
I also read that book back in high school, and it definitely put me on the path towards science (and later atheism).
Another good recent read was "God Is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens. He discusses briefly the idea that human credulity is a biological adaptation to help us benefit from the placebo effect. Credulous individuals are religious, superstitious and generally happier and healthier than us miserable skeptics.
Just to clarify for Americans who don't understand the parliamentary system, basically the Conservatives hold the most seats, but not the majority of seats, so they can loose motions. If it is considered a confidence motion, then the goverment is overthrown and we have another election. Usually minority governments are unstable and dissolve after a few months, but this one has been around (IMO) far too long.
I know the NDP and probably the Liberals will vote this down, and we currently have a minority government so the Conservatives won't be able to push this though.
Hopefully... lately the Liberals (our official opposition) have been obstaining from votes rather than trigger an election when they're down in the polls. A sad state of affairs, really.
So I just thought to myself "I should get a comfortable chair for at home, like my office one." Googled the Aeron and found myself staring at a picture of the chair I am sitting in at work right now:)
"CO2 plays quite insignificant role in greenhouse effect."
Huh. All those millions of wasted research hours, supercomputer simulations and whatnot discounted in one sentence, typed in gramatically erratic fashion by one of the internet's faceless millions. Consider me convinced!
Yeah yeah, SPU and all that. We were talking about threading, and the PS3 is very capable of threading due to its multiple _whatever_s.
The 360 can't use a keyboard, although they do have the chatpad which works pretty well.
I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion though; WOW has the already-small PC gamer market saturated, and yet new PC MMOs come out with some regularity (Vanguard, LOTRO, Conan etc). Wouldn't coming out on a console give them a LARGER, less monopolized player base?
Evolution is NOT a theory. It is an observation about the world. A "fact" if you will. No sane individual who reasonably trusts their senses doubts that species change over time.
Natural Selection is the biological theory to explain the mechanism by which evolution occurs.
"Theory" IS the heaviest word you can use in biology. "Laws" are only used in physics and chemistry, and even then very seldom. The reason is that (this experiment aside) it is almost impossible to test something like natural selection experimentally, like we would gravity.
That's a straw person argument, and you know it. What climate scientist out there would ever suggest that the global climate stays constant? It doesn't, and they all know that. They study the degree and rate of change, and identify causation. The broad scientific (not dogmatic) consensus is that the change is too rapid, too large, and the corelation with increasing levels of CO2 is impossible to ignore.
* The modern consoles ALL have built-in networking. * The modern consoles (Wii exempt) both have multiple CPU cores. Anyhow, a) why do MMOs need multi-threading more than traditional games, and b) why do you think the multithreading support is lacking in consoles? * The same developers who make MMOs for PCs (Sony, Square Enix), make non-MMO console games. These guys already know how to run the business end of it. * The console market is huge, so games can target the young, the mature, or everyone. There are also parental controls on all 3 modern consoles.
Not to flame you, but I don't think any of your answers are "erm, obvious", or even "erm, likely". There is tons of online gaming on XBOX, just not massively multiplayer.
My guesses:
* No keyboard for socializing! The 360 has a headset. I'm not sure about the PS3. The Wii is screwed on this front. * Hard drive space is limited on the 360, and these games have HUGE update requirements. * XBOX Live users are accustomed to a single XBOX live charge for online pay, and might balk at additional per-game charges. Sony plugs their "free online play". These games make their money off recurring charges.
THe problem is, the "free market of ideas" gives us Astrology, Jesus on flatbread, etc. At risk of sounding elitist, "the masses" tend to believe stories that are easy to understand, and evoke the least cognitive dissonance. I think this is actually the reason that the climate change and evolution naysayers have managed to get such a foothold as of late; any old scientific quack can put up a web page.
Honestly I didn't much care for Metallica when they were "good", so now I'm just basking in self-righteousness. It's more a genre thing though; I find most metal to be pretty numbing after a few minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
With an orbital period that short, the tidal forces would be huge. This means that the planets most likely have a dark side and a light side (don't rotate). The back side, or even the twilight region, may be quite temperate.
My best computer science prof (who taught us OO, via Java), said a few things that really stuck:
1) Don't be clever! If you have to be clever, write a ton of documentation as to why you did it the way you did it.
2) Don't optimize (unless you must), and even then, leave the unoptimized (readable) code commented out. And only optimize the code blocks than a profiler tells you to... there is no point optimizing a loop that runs once.
I actually don't understand how some people can write such obfuscated code. I write comments like there is no tomorrow because in 2 days, I won't know what it does any more than another developer would! Refactoring is a bitch, or impossible, when you don't understand what you've written.
Anyone who writes code like a "hotshot" is anything but.
Hmm, the second review is more what I had expected of the first. To be completely honest, I did not finish it. When the reviewer opened in his criticism with "He has described Vladimir Lenin as a great man" I simply stopped reading. This is wrong, and dishonest. He knows that his typical reader will NOT check this fact out (Hitchens in fact rails agains Lenin quite avidly in the text). If the reviewer is going to lie to me, I am not going to listen.
I just finished reading the first (Christian) review. Interesting stuff, in the sense that the author appears to be an intelligent and non-reactionary individual. Unfortunately, his arguments basically boil down to pointing out some trivial inaccuracies which do not in the least diminish Hitchen's point, followed by an argument that goes thusly:
* Hitchens ridicules religious people.
* Ridicule is wrong and bad for the world.
* Therefore Hitchens-style godlessness is wrong and bad for the world.
This is a very, very flimsy argument. Yes, there are some inaccuracies which Hitchens really should correct in a later edition. No, he has not been defeated by their illustration.
I will read the second review now, and post a response. I really DO try to keep an open mind to this stuff, and dishonesty does not serve anyone, but so far I'm with Hitchens.
Nah, AFAIK you can always format in quick mode, but it doesn't do a check for bad blocks. The full format checks for and blocks off bad sectors. It's a good idea to run the full format unless you JUST formatted a minute ago and have to re-do it for some reason.
Meh, I just post under my own account. But I did have to behave myself for the first year or so just to get the karma up enough that it doesn't matter. Now (as you can tell) I don't really give a shit.
I might add that he doesn't therefore think credulity is a good thing in this day and age, just that it was a good adaptation for a hunter-gatherer with no access to science-based medicine. Now it is a genetic drive that (similar to our taste for fatty food) needs to be repressed.
I also read that book back in high school, and it definitely put me on the path towards science (and later atheism).
Another good recent read was "God Is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens. He discusses briefly the idea that human credulity is a biological adaptation to help us benefit from the placebo effect. Credulous individuals are religious, superstitious and generally happier and healthier than us miserable skeptics.
By "issues dear to them" you of course mean "things they wish would just go away".
This is true I think... I've had excellent karma for years though so i don't remember :)
*Sigh* I saw that right after submitting. I'm just too lazy to preview, ya know?
Or 3 months for the media to get bored with the issue, and then they can quietly pass it without a fuss.
Just to clarify for Americans who don't understand the parliamentary system, basically the Conservatives hold the most seats, but not the majority of seats, so they can loose motions. If it is considered a confidence motion, then the goverment is overthrown and we have another election. Usually minority governments are unstable and dissolve after a few months, but this one has been around (IMO) far too long.
I know the NDP and probably the Liberals will vote this down, and we currently have a minority government so the Conservatives won't be able to push this though.
Hopefully... lately the Liberals (our official opposition) have been obstaining from votes rather than trigger an election when they're down in the polls. A sad state of affairs, really.
So I just thought to myself "I should get a comfortable chair for at home, like my office one." Googled the Aeron and found myself staring at a picture of the chair I am sitting in at work right now :)
It really IS a very comfy chair.
This IS off topic and also a bit of a troll, but I couldn't help but think you were describing the modern woman.
I thought it was because everyone had simply seen everything, but I was apparently wrong. Can someone please forward me the cow-woman?
"CO2 plays quite insignificant role in greenhouse effect."
Huh. All those millions of wasted research hours, supercomputer simulations and whatnot discounted in one sentence, typed in gramatically erratic fashion by one of the internet's faceless millions. Consider me convinced!
Yeah yeah, SPU and all that. We were talking about threading, and the PS3 is very capable of threading due to its multiple _whatever_s.
The 360 can't use a keyboard, although they do have the chatpad which works pretty well.
I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion though; WOW has the already-small PC gamer market saturated, and yet new PC MMOs come out with some regularity (Vanguard, LOTRO, Conan etc). Wouldn't coming out on a console give them a LARGER, less monopolized player base?
Evolution is NOT a theory. It is an observation about the world. A "fact" if you will. No sane individual who reasonably trusts their senses doubts that species change over time.
Natural Selection is the biological theory to explain the mechanism by which evolution occurs.
"Theory" IS the heaviest word you can use in biology. "Laws" are only used in physics and chemistry, and even then very seldom. The reason is that (this experiment aside) it is almost impossible to test something like natural selection experimentally, like we would gravity.
That's a straw person argument, and you know it. What climate scientist out there would ever suggest that the global climate stays constant? It doesn't, and they all know that. They study the degree and rate of change, and identify causation. The broad scientific (not dogmatic) consensus is that the change is too rapid, too large, and the corelation with increasing levels of CO2 is impossible to ignore.
Don't make dishonest attacks.
* The modern consoles ALL have built-in networking.
* The modern consoles (Wii exempt) both have multiple CPU cores. Anyhow, a) why do MMOs need multi-threading more than traditional games, and b) why do you think the multithreading support is lacking in consoles?
* The same developers who make MMOs for PCs (Sony, Square Enix), make non-MMO console games. These guys already know how to run the business end of it.
* The console market is huge, so games can target the young, the mature, or everyone. There are also parental controls on all 3 modern consoles.
Not to flame you, but I don't think any of your answers are "erm, obvious", or even "erm, likely". There is tons of online gaming on XBOX, just not massively multiplayer.
My guesses:
* No keyboard for socializing! The 360 has a headset. I'm not sure about the PS3. The Wii is screwed on this front.
* Hard drive space is limited on the 360, and these games have HUGE update requirements.
* XBOX Live users are accustomed to a single XBOX live charge for online pay, and might balk at additional per-game charges. Sony plugs their "free online play". These games make their money off recurring charges.
THe problem is, the "free market of ideas" gives us Astrology, Jesus on flatbread, etc. At risk of sounding elitist, "the masses" tend to believe stories that are easy to understand, and evoke the least cognitive dissonance. I think this is actually the reason that the climate change and evolution naysayers have managed to get such a foothold as of late; any old scientific quack can put up a web page.
In the US at least: Final Fantasy 1, 2, 3 then 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12...
of course 2 and 3 were actually 4 and 6 in Japan, so we really skipped 2, 3 and 5.
Honestly I didn't much care for Metallica when they were "good", so now I'm just basking in self-righteousness. It's more a genre thing though; I find most metal to be pretty numbing after a few minutes.