despite the fact that sunspot activity corresponds to an increase in solar temperature and thus radiation reaching us
That's not really the model, as I understand it. It's not thought to be that changes in the output of the Sun directly affect the Earth's temperature; there are a lot of negative feedbacks that stabilise the Earth against this (think Daisyworld, but far, far more complex). It's about cosmic rays and cloud cover. High sunspot activity equals a very active solar magnetosphere, equals a shield against cosmic rays. Low sunspot activity equals a weak solar magnetosphere and more cosmic rays. And cosmic rays can provide nuclei for water vapour condensation, equals cloud formation, equals lots of white covering the Earth's surface, equals cooling.
Tenuous? Perhaps, but there's decent grounds to support it. I'm not aware of any major effect over the course of the eleven-year cycle, but back during the Maunder minimum when sunspots all but vanished for a prolonged period things did get a little chilly.
Reactionary: ADJECTIVE: Opposed to progress; extremely conservative, ultra right-wing.
I oppose the further progress of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. I wish to conserve the climate much as it is insofar as this is possible. It's only the 'right-wing' part I personally object to.
the fact the earths oceans can with a change a few tenths of a degree soak up or spew out more co2 than man can produce in a decade
[citation needed]
I find reference to the oceans currently absorbing some two billion tons of CO2 per annum; this is about one third of what human activity produces. Please cite references to the effect that a few tenths of a degree change in ocean temperature can result in the prompt absorbence or release of at least sixty billion tons of CO2.
Given the extent to which sound travels in the vacuum of space, I expect the sun is extremely quiet all the time.
Given that the Sun is itself a large ball of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace in which hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees, and on the surface of which flares and eruptions with the energy of millions of times the entire nuclear arsenal of the planet Earth go off more or less daily, I'd say it's a pretty damn noisy place all the time.
Wow you have high hopes for this thing. Do you seriously think it'll be one of the *best games ever made*
In 'proper' Mario games, they've missed twice by my count. Super Mario Bros. 2 (which wasn't really a Mario game anyway) and Super Mario Sunshine.
Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 are absolutely legendary, definitely among the 'best games ever made'. Yoshi's Island and New SMB are both excellent.
So I'd say that yes, there are very good grounds indeed to think that Super Mario Galaxy will, like most of its predecessors, be one of the best games ever made.
Stupid to rely on sudo when it has security bugs up the wazoo,
Really? I'm not aware of this.
I can see a danger that Ubuntu is training a generation of Linux users who neither know nor care what root is, and just type their password into whatever dialog box asks for it - that's setting us up for a Windows-style explosion of malware - but bugs inherent to sudo? Please explain, because that's a major issue if so.
but none of them represent a threat to people that demonstrably warrants the kind of reaction we are having.
Neither did the Jews, communists, homosexuals or what the Soviets called "fascist".
Well, apart from that one time when a lot of guys who were what the Soviets called 'fascist' invaded the Soviet Union. Somewhere between 30 million and 50 million Soviet citizens were killed defeating those 'fascists'. Unsurprising that thereafter there was a certain amount of paranoia in the USSR about 'fascism'.
But, again, how many REAL terrorist style bad guys have we heard about them taking down? By my count, admittedly incomplete though it is, the number is very close to if not actually equal to zero.
To my knowledge, one.,a href=http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_nofly_list.html>A known terrorist was stopped by security goons on arrival in the US. On questioning, he said that he was on his way to the White House in Washington. Purpose of visit, to meet the President. And why would he expect to achieve this? Because the President asked him to. Why would he do that? Can't tell you - security.
Cue substantial incredulity and a lengthy delay in proceedings, before it was established that Mr Gerry Adams was indeed an invited guest of the President of the United States.
Why do they always involve some type of machine to do the counting in the US? Is there a shortage of volunteers to do the counting?
I think the problem is that the Americans like to have an awful lot of elections. Most countries, there's just one vote at a time. You get a slip with a list of people's names and party affiliations, you put an X next to one, you fold up your paper and put it in the box, and that night people count them up. Simple.
In America they'll give you a list of people standing for president, a list of people standing for Congress seats, a list of people standing for the state government, a yes/no on whether gay marriage should be allowed, fifteen other propositions that for some reason the state government felt had to go to a referendum, and votes for who gets to be a judge, who gets to be a sherriff, and just for good measure who gets to be milk monitor.
Counting all that lot by hand would get pretty messy pretty quick...
... I thought for a moment that said 'BAE Systems'.
Oracle buy one of the world's major munitions manufacturers... well, do you want to argue about which is the best database with people who manufacture JSFs and Typhoons? No? Me neither...
Also, the first time you were a hacker, so no wonder you were a bit crap in the beginning with combat, this time you are a soldier, so why do you still suck?
You don't suck. You just don't rock as much as you're used to from Quake. You can't run at 60mph, your punches aren't as hard as a sledgehammer... But if you're a soldier you do massive damage with weapons, if a sailor you can rewire all the turrets in the game to do your bidding, if a psion then you can fling cryo blasts around the place at will.
Think seriously here for a moment. Drop Andy McNab, badass SAS motherfucker, onto the von Braun at the beginning of SS2. What's his life expectancy? How does that compare to yours?
Got to the point where you're avoiding cameras and every time you go around the corner a camera sees you.
Back in, oh, 2001, I was playing through Shock 2 for the first time. I was at university at the time, and I got a summer job in a book warehouse, picking out textbooks to ship out to various schools around the place. The job involved trotting around this big building grabbing books out of various aisles and throwing them onto a conveyor.
One day I was heading down an aisle in which the lights had packed in for some reason. It was dark. Not a problem, I have no fear of this. I walk down the aisle looking for the book that's on my order sheet.
At this point I spot a red light on the ceiling.
SHIT! I immediately duck to the floor and take cover behind my cart-o'-books, and reach for my gun to shoot out the camera...
At this point I realise that (a) I don't have a gun, (b) that isn't a camera but an LED indicating that a lamp is live, (c) I'm a bit of a pillock.
But for just a second or two, it was bloody terrifying. Thanks to the game designers for getting me so involved in their world. Salt the fries:-)
For me the big question now is, Nintendo has the third party support, but can we see anyone else besides them that makes a game that take advantage of the controls and uses the additional graphics power in the Wii?
Making a game that truly uses the Wii means abandoning 360, PS3 and PC. It's a major commitment. But if you try to compromise, then you'll either end up with a half-arsed wiimake of a PS2 game, or... well, who the hell ever played Raving Rabbids on any other machine? Nintendo will always make that commitment, of course, but who else will?
With Wii outselling just about everything there is, I reckon the Wii market is now big enough for developers to make that commitment and still turn a profit - even if the typical Wii gamer isn't the hardcore, must-play-the-latest-new-game-each-week type. It's not that nobody else can use the Wii controls right - check out Rayman, as I mentioned, and also try The Godfather - but I'm not sure they're generally prepared to invest the time and effort to really do it right, especially at the expense of other platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
Along with every single high-speed broadband provider on earth.
Speaking of whom, what's his /. userid, and more importantly, why hasn't he posted yet?
He has, but only four times.
As is traditional, although his grep patterns are atrociously complex and match most common variations on the Name that must not be spelt out.
(At one time, I hear people even avoided discussion of skiboots, for fear of invoking He Who Greps from the depths of the newsfeed...)
That's not really the model, as I understand it. It's not thought to be that changes in the output of the Sun directly affect the Earth's temperature; there are a lot of negative feedbacks that stabilise the Earth against this (think Daisyworld, but far, far more complex). It's about cosmic rays and cloud cover. High sunspot activity equals a very active solar magnetosphere, equals a shield against cosmic rays. Low sunspot activity equals a weak solar magnetosphere and more cosmic rays. And cosmic rays can provide nuclei for water vapour condensation, equals cloud formation, equals lots of white covering the Earth's surface, equals cooling.
Tenuous? Perhaps, but there's decent grounds to support it. I'm not aware of any major effect over the course of the eleven-year cycle, but back during the Maunder minimum when sunspots all but vanished for a prolonged period things did get a little chilly.
I oppose the further progress of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. I wish to conserve the climate much as it is insofar as this is possible. It's only the 'right-wing' part I personally object to.
Correction: I meant carbon, not CO2. These should be 7.33 billion tons of CO2, and 220 billion tons of CO2 respectively.
[citation needed]
I find reference to the oceans currently absorbing some two billion tons of CO2 per annum; this is about one third of what human activity produces. Please cite references to the effect that a few tenths of a degree change in ocean temperature can result in the prompt absorbence or release of at least sixty billion tons of CO2.
And in the meantime keep increasing the atmospheric concentration of that lesser greenhouse gas?
Given that the Sun is itself a large ball of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace in which hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees, and on the surface of which flares and eruptions with the energy of millions of times the entire nuclear arsenal of the planet Earth go off more or less daily, I'd say it's a pretty damn noisy place all the time.
In this case, you can.
Notice any kind of pattern here?
Specifically, at 11 years since the last solar minimum. And 22 years since the one before that. And 33 years since the one before that.
Meanwhile, as you say, the globe warms up.
In 'proper' Mario games, they've missed twice by my count. Super Mario Bros. 2 (which wasn't really a Mario game anyway) and Super Mario Sunshine.
Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 are absolutely legendary, definitely among the 'best games ever made'. Yoshi's Island and New SMB are both excellent.
So I'd say that yes, there are very good grounds indeed to think that Super Mario Galaxy will, like most of its predecessors, be one of the best games ever made.
Well, yours might be. I just transfer an MP3 over the USB cable that came with the phone, then select it as a ringtone. Done.
Really? I'm not aware of this.
I can see a danger that Ubuntu is training a generation of Linux users who neither know nor care what root is, and just type their password into whatever dialog box asks for it - that's setting us up for a Windows-style explosion of malware - but bugs inherent to sudo? Please explain, because that's a major issue if so.
... Oops. Actually, 26TB = 26000000MB. Seems the rule about spelling flames invariably containing a spelling error extends also to unit conversions :-(
26TB = 20000000 MB.
I think you mean TiB and MiB.
Neither did the Jews, communists, homosexuals or what the Soviets called "fascist".
Well, apart from that one time when a lot of guys who were what the Soviets called 'fascist' invaded the Soviet Union. Somewhere between 30 million and 50 million Soviet citizens were killed defeating those 'fascists'. Unsurprising that thereafter there was a certain amount of paranoia in the USSR about 'fascism'.
To my knowledge, one. ,a href=http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_nofly_list.html>A known terrorist was stopped by security goons on arrival in the US. On questioning, he said that he was on his way to the White House in Washington. Purpose of visit, to meet the President. And why would he expect to achieve this? Because the President asked him to. Why would he do that? Can't tell you - security.
Cue substantial incredulity and a lengthy delay in proceedings, before it was established that Mr Gerry Adams was indeed an invited guest of the President of the United States.
I think the problem is that the Americans like to have an awful lot of elections. Most countries, there's just one vote at a time. You get a slip with a list of people's names and party affiliations, you put an X next to one, you fold up your paper and put it in the box, and that night people count them up. Simple.
In America they'll give you a list of people standing for president, a list of people standing for Congress seats, a list of people standing for the state government, a yes/no on whether gay marriage should be allowed, fifteen other propositions that for some reason the state government felt had to go to a referendum, and votes for who gets to be a judge, who gets to be a sherriff, and just for good measure who gets to be milk monitor.
Counting all that lot by hand would get pretty messy pretty quick...
Oracle buy one of the world's major munitions manufacturers... well, do you want to argue about which is the best database with people who manufacture JSFs and Typhoons? No? Me neither...
You don't suck. You just don't rock as much as you're used to from Quake. You can't run at 60mph, your punches aren't as hard as a sledgehammer... But if you're a soldier you do massive damage with weapons, if a sailor you can rewire all the turrets in the game to do your bidding, if a psion then you can fling cryo blasts around the place at will.
Think seriously here for a moment. Drop Andy McNab, badass SAS motherfucker, onto the von Braun at the beginning of SS2. What's his life expectancy? How does that compare to yours?
Back in, oh, 2001, I was playing through Shock 2 for the first time. I was at university at the time, and I got a summer job in a book warehouse, picking out textbooks to ship out to various schools around the place. The job involved trotting around this big building grabbing books out of various aisles and throwing them onto a conveyor.
One day I was heading down an aisle in which the lights had packed in for some reason. It was dark. Not a problem, I have no fear of this. I walk down the aisle looking for the book that's on my order sheet.
At this point I spot a red light on the ceiling.
SHIT! I immediately duck to the floor and take cover behind my cart-o'-books, and reach for my gun to shoot out the camera...
At this point I realise that (a) I don't have a gun, (b) that isn't a camera but an LED indicating that a lamp is live, (c) I'm a bit of a pillock.
But for just a second or two, it was bloody terrifying. Thanks to the game designers for getting me so involved in their world. Salt the fries :-)
Cast Obi-Wan Kenobi as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott?
You do realise you just exploded the brains of at least two distinct sets of geeks, right?
Read Garth Ennis's 'The Boys'. Our hero is Wee Hughie, a Scot who is blatantly based on Simon Pegg...
Making a game that truly uses the Wii means abandoning 360, PS3 and PC. It's a major commitment. But if you try to compromise, then you'll either end up with a half-arsed wiimake of a PS2 game, or... well, who the hell ever played Raving Rabbids on any other machine? Nintendo will always make that commitment, of course, but who else will?
With Wii outselling just about everything there is, I reckon the Wii market is now big enough for developers to make that commitment and still turn a profit - even if the typical Wii gamer isn't the hardcore, must-play-the-latest-new-game-each-week type. It's not that nobody else can use the Wii controls right - check out Rayman, as I mentioned, and also try The Godfather - but I'm not sure they're generally prepared to invest the time and effort to really do it right, especially at the expense of other platforms.