In countries like Afghanistan, the segment of the population that have Internet access and are capable of search in English terms, probably have little in common with the rest of the population.
Katrina killed 1,836, they just found another 2,000 bodies in Japan
We had days of warning for Katrina, while they had zero to a handful seconds (for those who were far away from the epic center) for the earthquake and tsunami.
because the Governor of that state didn't sign the papers the Pentagon and White House faxed to her.
Utter nonsense. If they really had a contingency plan, details like that would've been on a comprehensive checklist and rehearsed ahead of time. It's like saying we didn't get the chance to retaliate a Soviet nuclear strike because the president didn't get the warning faxed to him (horrible fictional analogy, I know, but illustrates my point).
Katrina is the epic fail, compared to the epic competence displayed by the Japanese.
Every year headlines claim platforms "pwned" in seconds but it's misleading and sensationalist.
The exploits are researched and practiced over days or weeks, rehearsed and simply repeated on the day. Yes it's bad, yes it demonstrates insecurity but the headlines imply that some guy just sits down at a fresh machine, sight unseen, decides to have a go at hacking it and within seconds it's done.
Noobs. That's exactly how Hugh Jackman did it, with a gun pointing at his head, while receiving a blow job.
Is it me or does the world look more and more like some kid's Civ game from another dimension? A word of wisdom to the Chinese: hack Google all you want, just don't get too ambitious and start building a spaceship to Alpha Centauri, and doom us all to the endgame.
You are off by an order of magnitude. Japan is roughly 1/10th of China in terms of population, and even smaller in landmass. If China follows the exact growth path of Japan as you suggested, its economy will inevitably be 10x of Japan, or roughly 4x of U.S. by today's numbers. If anything, Japan (or for that matter, other smaller Asian powerhouses such as South Korean, Taiwan etc.) are only previews, teaser trailers of what China has to become.
On a side note, if you go back 300 years instead of 30, China was the undisputed top economy in the world. If you look at history, the Chinese people have been incredibly resilient and resourceful. Given a political environment that is relatively stable and conducive to growth, they WILL flourish in short order.
No matter how you look at it, whether we like it or not, the writing's on the wall.
3D shutter glasses have existed forever on high-end workstations, and remained a niche for a reason. Back in ~1995 when Descent 2 came out with 3D capacity, I rushed out to buy a pair of compatible glasses (~$150, a lot of money for a college student), and was promptly underwhelmed.
The game did a great job, but I remember one of the problems was that the small computer monitor (compared to the silver screen in a movie theater) makes the 3D effect extremely unnatural, almost like peeking through a tiny window into a midget infested world. On the other hand, when looking at 2D, I think the brain knows it's fictional and automatically applies suspension of disbelief and subconsciously scales things up. I suspect the whole situation is not unlike the uncanny valley in robotics.
Or maybe it just takes some get-used-to. In any case, it's definitely a gimmick -- like others said here, but not a gaming-changing one (pun intended).
P.S. You can still download Descent 1 or 2 for free. After almost two decades it's still more playable than most modern flying/shooting games out there.
Sometimes it's just part of a "strategic" business move that nobody has any control over.
I'm involved with an investment firm that has a wholly owned subsidiary company (one of many). This coming Monday, they are going to fire EVERYONE in the company, including IT, the CFO, and the CEO, and move assets and operation to another city. Pool performance is the leading cause, plus other factors.
Here is the fun part. While the big shots at the investment firm have been meticulously planning this for months, nobody at the subsidiary company has a clue about their imminent termination, not even the CEO. (Especially the CEO. He will be literally escorted out of the facility Monday morning, while everyone else will be offered to stay for another month to make the transition.)
And I'm supposed to move in with a team Friday evening, bypass everyone including IT, and (hopefully) secure a copy of all data on the network -- before they make the official announcement.
Boy, is it going to be a fun ride. The upside is that it's a small company (~30 people), so it's not unmanageable, and there will be a severance package for everyone. Nevertheless I'm going to shop for a bullet-proof vest in the next couple of days. Dead serious.
Bottom line is, will I trust anything on that network after Friday? No freaking way.
P.S. I'm posting under this account because it's work-safe. Feel free to dig around my profile if you are paranoid (that it might be YOUR company), but you are not going to find anything. It's too late to worry anyway. (And I didn't even mention which country/countries this is happening in.)
Half an hour of intense work-out a day is an absolute minimum necessity for a healthy life style. For running, that is about one marathon a week on average.
We don't need to get into all the well documented benefits of exercise, but I do want to mention two findings of the latest research. 1. Exercise slows the gradual shortening of the telemere; 2. Contrary to conventional wisdom, running (as long as it's not the extreme and/or competitive type) actually keeps the joints healthy. Look it up.
I should know from my personal experience. I have been running 10km every other day for the past 5 years, with each run consistently clocked at ~50 minutes. No knee problems whatsoever and the health benefits are just incredible. (People think I'm 15 years younger than my actual age.)
If you really hate running, try biking or swiming. No matter what you do, key words are: intense (read: pain), and 0.5hr/day (minimum). There is just no cop out.
Considering the challenges of spreading the "gospel" of science in a "demon haunted world", it takes a man of extraordinary wisdom, confidence, and strength to do the job. Such a man will inevitably come across as arrogant to some people.
While other people laid the math foundation for Special Relativity, it took a genius of Einstein to see the deeper meaning behind the math and come up with the Equivalence Principle, when everybody else was looking for Ether.
I suspect the next breakthrough (Warp Drive etc.) will require a mind greater than Einstein.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a textbook example of the selection bias.
In countries like Afghanistan, the segment of the population that have Internet access and are capable of search in English terms, probably have little in common with the rest of the population.
Low speed, non-hot-pluggable, and a mess that is the IDE cable.
Katrina killed 1,836, they just found another 2,000 bodies in Japan
We had days of warning for Katrina, while they had zero to a handful seconds (for those who were far away from the epic center) for the earthquake and tsunami.
because the Governor of that state didn't sign the papers the Pentagon and White House faxed to her.
Utter nonsense. If they really had a contingency plan, details like that would've been on a comprehensive checklist and rehearsed ahead of time. It's like saying we didn't get the chance to retaliate a Soviet nuclear strike because the president didn't get the warning faxed to him (horrible fictional analogy, I know, but illustrates my point).
Katrina is the epic fail, compared to the epic competence displayed by the Japanese.
Every year headlines claim platforms "pwned" in seconds but it's misleading and sensationalist.
The exploits are researched and practiced over days or weeks, rehearsed and simply repeated on the day. Yes it's bad, yes it demonstrates insecurity but the headlines imply that some guy just sits down at a fresh machine, sight unseen, decides to have a go at hacking it and within seconds it's done.
Noobs. That's exactly how Hugh Jackman did it, with a gun pointing at his head, while receiving a blow job.
I've been using these for years to rape snipers and campers.
Come on that's a little excessive don't you think. Snipers don't deserve this kind of punishment, let alone campers. You could've just used a dildo.
Is it me or does the world look more and more like some kid's Civ game from another dimension? A word of wisdom to the Chinese: hack Google all you want, just don't get too ambitious and start building a spaceship to Alpha Centauri, and doom us all to the endgame.
> Microsoft is the software-development division of IBM
There is an old joke.
Q: What does IBM stand for?
A: I Built Microsoft.
Agreed. Not to mention those who post from 2000 feet underground and live off two spoons of tuna and half a cup of milk every other day.
Or as recent as the latest Star Trek where Sulu and Kirk jump from sub-orbit to detroy the drill set up by Nero.
You are off by an order of magnitude. Japan is roughly 1/10th of China in terms of population, and even smaller in landmass. If China follows the exact growth path of Japan as you suggested, its economy will inevitably be 10x of Japan, or roughly 4x of U.S. by today's numbers. If anything, Japan (or for that matter, other smaller Asian powerhouses such as South Korean, Taiwan etc.) are only previews, teaser trailers of what China has to become.
On a side note, if you go back 300 years instead of 30, China was the undisputed top economy in the world. If you look at history, the Chinese people have been incredibly resilient and resourceful. Given a political environment that is relatively stable and conducive to growth, they WILL flourish in short order.
No matter how you look at it, whether we like it or not, the writing's on the wall.
Nerds.
3D shutter glasses have existed forever on high-end workstations, and remained a niche for a reason. Back in ~1995 when Descent 2 came out with 3D capacity, I rushed out to buy a pair of compatible glasses (~$150, a lot of money for a college student), and was promptly underwhelmed.
The game did a great job, but I remember one of the problems was that the small computer monitor (compared to the silver screen in a movie theater) makes the 3D effect extremely unnatural, almost like peeking through a tiny window into a midget infested world. On the other hand, when looking at 2D, I think the brain knows it's fictional and automatically applies suspension of disbelief and subconsciously scales things up. I suspect the whole situation is not unlike the uncanny valley in robotics.
Or maybe it just takes some get-used-to. In any case, it's definitely a gimmick -- like others said here, but not a gaming-changing one (pun intended).
P.S. You can still download Descent 1 or 2 for free. After almost two decades it's still more playable than most modern flying/shooting games out there.
when our ancestors are poking around other solar systems
I think you are confusing space travel with time travel.
Sometimes it's just part of a "strategic" business move that nobody has any control over.
I'm involved with an investment firm that has a wholly owned subsidiary company (one of many). This coming Monday, they are going to fire EVERYONE in the company, including IT, the CFO, and the CEO, and move assets and operation to another city. Pool performance is the leading cause, plus other factors.
Here is the fun part. While the big shots at the investment firm have been meticulously planning this for months, nobody at the subsidiary company has a clue about their imminent termination, not even the CEO. (Especially the CEO. He will be literally escorted out of the facility Monday morning, while everyone else will be offered to stay for another month to make the transition.)
And I'm supposed to move in with a team Friday evening, bypass everyone including IT, and (hopefully) secure a copy of all data on the network -- before they make the official announcement.
Boy, is it going to be a fun ride. The upside is that it's a small company (~30 people), so it's not unmanageable, and there will be a severance package for everyone. Nevertheless I'm going to shop for a bullet-proof vest in the next couple of days. Dead serious.
Bottom line is, will I trust anything on that network after Friday? No freaking way.
P.S. I'm posting under this account because it's work-safe. Feel free to dig around my profile if you are paranoid (that it might be YOUR company), but you are not going to find anything. It's too late to worry anyway. (And I didn't even mention which country/countries this is happening in.)
The feeling is mutual. There is no love lost.
Also check this out: those who lived a goal-driven life were 57 percent less likely to die during the 5-year study period.
Related to your second point.
Half an hour of intense work-out a day is an absolute minimum necessity for a healthy life style. For running, that is about one marathon a week on average.
We don't need to get into all the well documented benefits of exercise, but I do want to mention two findings of the latest research. 1. Exercise slows the gradual shortening of the telemere; 2. Contrary to conventional wisdom, running (as long as it's not the extreme and/or competitive type) actually keeps the joints healthy. Look it up.
I should know from my personal experience. I have been running 10km every other day for the past 5 years, with each run consistently clocked at ~50 minutes. No knee problems whatsoever and the health benefits are just incredible. (People think I'm 15 years younger than my actual age.)
If you really hate running, try biking or swiming. No matter what you do, key words are: intense (read: pain), and 0.5hr/day (minimum). There is just no cop out.
> Pity he was an arrogant man
Considering the challenges of spreading the "gospel" of science in a "demon haunted world", it takes a man of extraordinary wisdom, confidence, and strength to do the job. Such a man will inevitably come across as arrogant to some people.
Ordinary, everyday nice guys simply won't cut it.
Hey there's no need to insult the insurance industry like that. They give us a peace of mind, at least. Siebel, on the other hand...
> No air, no beer, no babes
I like your sense of priority.
Your story reminds me of a joke.
Q: What does it take to change a Democrat to a Republican?
A: 30 years.
(Not that I'm calling you old.)
So it's like, 2^64 = 0?
That's not very scalable. :)
While other people laid the math foundation for Special Relativity, it took a genius of Einstein to see the deeper meaning behind the math and come up with the Equivalence Principle, when everybody else was looking for Ether.
I suspect the next breakthrough (Warp Drive etc.) will require a mind greater than Einstein.