(1) Ryanair are well-known for making their customers jump through ludicrous hoops to get the misleadingly low advertised price (i.e. you won't) and then nickel and dime them every step of the way. If this is for real, it'll be blatantly (and grossly) overpriced to squeeze yet more money out of the customers. Don't waste your time. Oh, and more importantly...
(2) Michael O'Leary is a well-known attention whore who announces "controversial" ideas like this he knows damn well won't fly^h^h^h go ahead anyway, but will get plenty of attention from the papers in the meantime. It seems to work too, but damned if *I'm* going to dignify the tedious p**** by taking his bullshit seriously.
True- as I acknowledged, the binaries groups have been around for ages- certainly back when I started using it circa 1993, and I assume quite a while before that.
Point I was making is that back then- as implied by the OP- binaries were far from Usenet's only purpose, and people *did* actually use it as one of the main methods for conducting discussions on the net.
I still occasionally made non-binaries-related posts to Usenet until recently, but I'm under no illusion that this aspect is anything but a very pale shadow of its former self, and that for the vast majority of net users, newsgroups are really just a method of accessing "warez" content nowadays.
As for what you said, yeah, I think that the "trading" thing and the acquisition of warez for the sake of it is one of those things that probably appeals to people less as they get older. I also find it hard to relate to (e.g.) my colleagues talking about downloading massive video files because I'm really not that much into television and even less into films- I wouldn't bother watching most of that stuff even if they were showing it free on TV- probably a reflection of my tastes as much as an age thing, though.
Let's admit it, nowadays Usenet is just another warez distribution network. Except for a few diehard nerds everyone switched to online forums long ago.
Usenet has always been a Warez distribution network.
Well, yeah, it's had the binaries for a *long* time, but I'm pretty sure the OP was also implying that once upon a time this wasn't its primary purpose. The first thing I ever used on the Internet- circa 1993- was Usenet newsgroups via a text-based newsreader (before the web *really* took off and a while before I ever used a browser).
Back then it *was*- along with Internet-based BBSs- still a major part of online discussions. Nowadays... well, yeah, it *is* "just another warez distribution network". I still use it for its original purpose occasionally, but a lot of the groups are pretty overrun with spam and useless, and even MS no longer support their former moderated newsgroups.
Fast forward a little more, and the Death Star is destroyed, and a few sequels later, the Empire loses the war. Your point was?
My point was that Leia's self-assured bravado was pretty much subverted straight away. And most of the time I see it used here, it does tend to come across as a stock geeky wish-fulfilling incantation, especially as it doesn't normally say anything particularly insightful or predictive in the context in which it's used(!)
The more you tighten your grip, BREIN, the more star systems will slip through your fingers...
Why are people always using that quote? Aside from the fact it doesn't fit very well here, does anyone remember what happened after Leia said originally?
I'm not a big Star Wars fan, and even *I* know that it didn't end well...
Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
Tarkin: Not after we demonstrate the power of this station. In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that will be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's destructive power on your home planet of Alderaan.
Leia: [shocked] No! Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons. You can't possibly--
Tarkin: You would prefer another target? A military target?! Then name the system! [stepping closer to Leia and pinning her against Darth Vader] I grow tired of asking this, so it will be the last time. Where is the Rebel base?
Leia: [looks at Alderaan for a moment, then, resigned] Dantooine. They're on Dantooine.
Tarkin: There. You see, Lord Vader? She can be reasonable. Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready.
Leia: [panicked] What?!
Tarkin: You're far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration, but don't worry. We will deal with your rebel friends soon enough.
You appear to be far too thick to realise that your earlier post was so incredibly stupid that it provoked my post along the lines of "look at how badly these kids are taught today".
Yep, that's certainly what you meant. *cough*
As well as incorrectly assuming I was a product of the US education system, you're still talking about how "those kids" are taught "today"... with no knowledge of when I attended school. For all you *actually* know, maybe I left school last year, or maybe it was fifty years ago.
You're right... you were "provoked" into your spelling-bee-obsessed rant of narrow-minded stupidity!
By using such inconvenient things as facts instead of transparent fiction like your post above?
Thanks for clarifying that when I said:-
You're either incredibly stupid or intentionally repeating a lie [that I disagreed that nuclear power generated steam, even though I acknowledge this in my original and all subsequent posts] on the basis that if you say it enough times it'll be true.
You were going for the "repeating a lie" bit... in addition to being incredibly stupid.
You really appear to be trying very hard to make people think even less of you with each outpouring.
Sorry to disappoint you (oh no, wait.... I'm not). But the only people likely still following- or at least giving a damn about- this conversation are you and me.
you've childishly pretended they said something completely different to what was written just
On the contrary, I made quite clear that I agreed that boiling water was a part of the nuclear process, just not the end product.
You know this very well, so you're either incredibly stupid or intentionally repeating a lie on the basis that if you say it enough times it'll be true.
Then after I called you to task you are accusing me of being mentally ill.
Actually, I called you an "idiot". (*)
I said that even a mildly autistic ("mentally ill" in your words) person could understand in *principle* something that you apparently couldn't.
You didn't seem to get it when nearly everyone would
The part in my original post where I said, and I quote:-
I'm surprised that you didn't know that the boiling water *isn't* the final product! In fact, it's simply a means to an end- a minor *intermediate* step used to convert the heat created by the nuclear reactions into the final product- electricity!
None of this is relevant to nuclear power at all is it?
The OP's comment was relevant insofar as it was a subtle and intellectually dishonest way of attacking nuclear electricity using the same techniques that politicians and PR people use.
You didn't seem to get it when nearly everyone would, which is why I was holding you up as an example of a failure of education.
No, you *specifically* tried to use me as an example to serve the bee in your bonnet about the US education system with relation to *its* spelling obsession and *its* cuts.
(Given you likely didn't know how old I am or where I was educated, you couldn't have known for sure that there had even been "cuts" when and where I was educated).
Now that you've been proven wrong, you're weaselling out by trying to pretend that you were merely talking about "the failure of education" in general. Nice try.
(*) Yes, I know that "idiot" has various technical and formal meanings that would count as "mentally ill". Most people wouldn't take it that way in everyday use, and I think it's more likely you're just a sloppy reader and assumed I was calling you "autistic" when I wasn't.
I'm sorry. I felt your post was a technological argument about how useful and serious nuclear power is
No, not really... it wasn't that at all. It wasn't meant to pass judgement on nuclear power either way, per se.
What it *was* was an attack on the disingenuous use of language by him to make a point.
That said, I like the idea of nuclear electricity, but I *partly* agree with the misgivings expressed above (even those by SlippyToad!) in practice. Whether these misgivings outweight the benefits is open to question.
Of course I "get it" otherwise I could not point out your pointless attack over semantics could I? In this case "pedantically correct" is technically correct so you've got a whole lot of bullshit there attacking the truth.
I've already clearly explained the point I was attacking twice, and it wasn't the surface meaning that "reactors produce steam" (duh). I don't intend repeating it. I'd say "go back and read it", but in your case that would obviously be a waste of time.
Even mildly autistic people (who often have trouble picking up on hidden meaning and implication in practice) can at least understand the existence of this concept in principle when it's explained to them. The fact that *you* can't suggests that you're more likely just an idiot.
It's a shining example of what happens when you cut educational spending for years and get kids that think a spelling bee is more important than knowing what the words mean.
Another example of your blinkered, spelling-bee-in-your-bonnet insularity. I'm not even a product of the US education system- matter of fact I've never even been there.
And yes, it was pretty obvious that this was your underlying assumption- the "spelling bee" thing gave it away. While spelling bees aren't solely an American phenomenom, they don't have the same cultural importance elsewhere.
But yeah. My analysis of the underlying meaning demonstrates that I only have a superficial understanding of language.....?! The fact that you can't tell the difference between this and spelling-obsessed superficiality says a lot more about your ignorance than it does about mine.
Apple was the brand loyalty king for all of about 15 minutes until Google took that away then Facebook seems to have grabbed it
Yeah, Apple are real has-beens in the brand-loyalty stakes. That's why the iPod didn't sell that well and more recently the iPhone and iPad have been complete disasters that even their few buyers hated and didn't queue around the block or hang on to Steve Jobs' every word when the new one was due.
Seriously, what parallel universe are you living in where this is the case?
According to Wikipedia, the team was just laid off. But it's coming back as Microsoft Flight.
I might be wrong, but IIRC I heard somewhere that Flight is a different product and isn't necessarily compatible with the add-ons that Flight Simulator eventually accumulated a large number of(?)
In that context, the phrase "boiling fucking water" refers to something that should be straightforward.
No offence, but you missed the point. It's not the boiling water that is the hard part- that clearly *is*, as you suggest, relatively "straightforward" and a way of converting heat to electricity. It's generating the initial energy to boil the water in the first place that's the hard (and relevant!) part.
By focusing on the intermediate "boiling water" step, at the expense of the more significant generation of energy itself, and of the final more useful product, SlippyToad trivialises the difficulty of the process and the usefulness of the final product, and misleadingly bolsters his/her case critical of the nuclear energy process.
A reactor boils water, a turbine turns that into motion, and a generator produces electricity from that motion.
Indeed. Both myself and SlippyToad know this damn well, so what's your point?
There is nothing at all wrong with the statement you are pretending to correct
Yes there is, but it it lies in the implications of the way it was (deliberately) phrased and not in the surface meaning. *That* was correct, but misses the point.
It appears to all be about winning a spelling bee instead of understanding - the depressing tendancy of seeing science as an incantation where you have to get the spelling correct but don't require the merest clue of what is going on.
No. Despite your sanctimonious and condescending rant, you *entirely* missed the whole damn point of what I said.
Stating that nuclear power was an "unbelievably fraught with peril method of boiling fucking water" (while pedantically correct) rather than "...of generating electricity" carries the subtle but deliberate shift of emphasis away from the real and useful end purpose as well as implying that the nuclear part is trivial because it should just be a minor step in the process of boiling water.
No, it's obtaining the energy (in whatever form) to boil the water in the first place that's the whole damn hard part. The remainder is relatively trivial energy conversion.
I'm not implying that SlippyToad put as much conscious thought into his choice of words as I did in dissecting them, but it's pretty clear that on some level he knew damn well why he chose those words. This is how politicians, PR and the real world works, how one shifts arguments by subtly pushing an implied message via the choice of emphasis.
Please continue ranting to yourself if you still don't get that.
[Nuclear power is an] unbelievably fraught with peril method of boiling fucking water
Given how much you said about nuclear power, I'm surprised that you didn't know that the boiling water *isn't* the final product! In fact, it's simply a means to an end- a minor *intermediate* step used to convert the heat created by the nuclear reactions into the final product- electricity!
And yeah, in all seriousness, you damn well know this of course, Which makes your example blatantly disingenuous rather than downright stupid- an attempt to minimise the usefulness and seriousness of nuclear power by painting it as a minor first step towards a relatively unimportant end. By the same token, wind turbines are a massively intrusive way of getting some mechanism to spin and coal power is a very polluting way of creating flames!
Of course, the real problem- and hard part- is getting the energy in the first place. But you knew that too.
And please note that I was specifically attacking the intellectual dishonesty of that part of your argument. Even if I agreed with the rest of what you said (in truth I agree with parts and disagree with others), it doesn't change the dubiousness of that argumentative technique.
Urgh, what the hell is that mess? Lots of graphs where it's unclear which markets they're meant to refer to, and a mass of badly-formatted text.
The fact that the ZX Spectrum sold almost as many *units* worldwide as the Apple but doesn't appear on any of the graphs make me suspicious. Maybe they just missed it out... in which case, the graphs are still crap.
This was before [the word "blackboard"] was made verboten at the insistence of the PC lobby.
Yeah, right. The fact that the rabid anti-PCers (*) keep repeating this "fact" says more about it sounding plausible to their paranoid minds and its appeal to them (and the more you repeat something the more everyone "knows" it's right) and the fact it's a convenient strawman to use against political correctness. But it says absolutely nothing about whether the story's true or not.
I strongly suspect that this is either outright bullshit, or one overzealous person in a minor case that has been magnified a thousandfold by repetition.
(*) I say "anti-PCer", but truth is that the present-day form of political correctness is really just a strawman stereotype created and used by the reactionary right-wingers to justify their own spoutings.
No, the point of the story is that nobody knows shit, especially about how to do their jobs. If someone punches another employee in the face, and you can't get them fired, then you are the one that doesn't know how to do your job.
Can't find it now, but someone said elsewhere that they didn't think we had got the whole story with respect to what the OP said.
It's possible that the employee punched the aforementioned boss under extreme provocation (i.e. the boss was asking for it and was already known for borderline unacceptable behaviour towards subordinates)- and that if push came to shove this could be proven in court- which might work out badly for the company, even if the subordinate didn't come out smelling of roses either.
Or maybe the subordinate was actually quite good at his job, or they couldn't get someone else to easily replace him.
And/or a combination of the above meant that the boss's boss(es) didn't actually *want* to have to sack the guy. Who knows? It's all speculation- but then your comment relies on assumptions too!
My rig should run The Witcher 2 without too much trouble according to the site, but in practice the system plays laggy and ultimately it's not playable. Kind of like Quake when I first bought it.
Hmm. Regardless of what the publishers claim, if your system was struggling with Quake when it first came out, I *very* strongly suspect its performance on a game that came out earlier this year is going to be sub-par.;-)
It would be nice I think to not ascossiate China with cheap knock-off products... I'm probably just naive though.
China will start pushing for and supporting stronger IP protection when it judges that it's in its own interest to do so, and that's nothing to do with being "nice". Partly for the investment reasons, but far more because they'll have their own IP which they wish to reap the benefit of.
In the 19th century publishing battles raged between Britain and the United States. A loophole in American copyright law enabled publishers to reprint British books at will. Until 1891, the intellectual property of non-citizens was up for grabs. Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson and other popular British writers lost untold amounts of income as American publishers profited. American writers, too, were commercial losers at home, as a book of poetry by Longfellow or Poe selling for one dollar had to compete with a 25 cent novel by Dickens or Thackeray.
It was an intellectual-property war every bit as fierce as today's DVD black market in China. American publishers would send their agents to roam the wharves in New York, Philadelphia and Boston to intercept popular manuscripts coming in by ship. Across the Atlantic, English customs officials would search passenger ships coming from the States and confiscate pirated British books as contraband.
Now that America stands to benefit much more from protection of its own IP, it's quite obviously in favour of it.
You usually do backface removal, degenerate triangle removal, zero area triangle removal, offscreen triangle removal and triangles hidden by occluders removal just to reduce load on the vertex pipe
Is a "degenerate triangle" one that is effectively just a line- and wouldn't that then be a "zero-area triangle", or is that latter used to refer to a single-point triangle (i.e. all vertices the same point)?
Do all the photoshopping you want, print it, photograph it [sheldonbrown.com]. There, you have evidence captured on film.
Ah, but can you do that so it doesn't look like a photograph of a photo?
I suspect that- if done correctly- it would be impossible to tell whether a rephotographed photo had been tampered with digitally- either as an intermediate, or whether it was originally shot in digital.
However, I suspect photographing a photograph would always have telltale signs that it wasn't an original, even if you couldn't tell the nature of what had been photographed- you still have enough reason not to trust it!
There's actually a fairly high demand for classic Amiga app support; while the people who buy this sort of thing are certainly not Diehard Amiga Purists, we do want to run our old crap, too!
I suspect that you'd have to be pretty diehard to actually buy a new non-PC computer that has no prospect of mainstream success or use, pay an inflated price for it, and learn to use it, just to use your old apps under some marginally more modern hardware!
And is the "need" to run your old software actually enough to warrant buying a new computer to run on? I suspect that *technically* it would be quite feasible- and probably more sensible- to run it under some sort of Windows emulation layer.
I think I'd be right in guessing that any business that ever relied on the Amiga would have long, *long* (like 15 years ago) been forced to migrate away from the system- even if reluctantly- to the point that Amiga compatibility is almost utterly irrelevant to anyone except, er... "diehard hobbyists". Sorry:-)
Slashdot Mirror
(1) Ryanair are well-known for making their customers jump through ludicrous hoops to get the misleadingly low advertised price (i.e. you won't) and then nickel and dime them every step of the way. If this is for real, it'll be blatantly (and grossly) overpriced to squeeze yet more money out of the customers. Don't waste your time. Oh, and more importantly...
(2) Michael O'Leary is a well-known attention whore who announces "controversial" ideas like this he knows damn well won't fly^h^h^h go ahead anyway, but will get plenty of attention from the papers in the meantime. It seems to work too, but damned if *I'm* going to dignify the tedious p**** by taking his bullshit seriously.
True- as I acknowledged, the binaries groups have been around for ages- certainly back when I started using it circa 1993, and I assume quite a while before that.
Point I was making is that back then- as implied by the OP- binaries were far from Usenet's only purpose, and people *did* actually use it as one of the main methods for conducting discussions on the net.
I still occasionally made non-binaries-related posts to Usenet until recently, but I'm under no illusion that this aspect is anything but a very pale shadow of its former self, and that for the vast majority of net users, newsgroups are really just a method of accessing "warez" content nowadays.
As for what you said, yeah, I think that the "trading" thing and the acquisition of warez for the sake of it is one of those things that probably appeals to people less as they get older. I also find it hard to relate to (e.g.) my colleagues talking about downloading massive video files because I'm really not that much into television and even less into films- I wouldn't bother watching most of that stuff even if they were showing it free on TV- probably a reflection of my tastes as much as an age thing, though.
Let's admit it, nowadays Usenet is just another warez distribution network. Except for a few diehard nerds everyone switched to online forums long ago.
Usenet has always been a Warez distribution network.
Well, yeah, it's had the binaries for a *long* time, but I'm pretty sure the OP was also implying that once upon a time this wasn't its primary purpose. The first thing I ever used on the Internet- circa 1993- was Usenet newsgroups via a text-based newsreader (before the web *really* took off and a while before I ever used a browser).
Back then it *was*- along with Internet-based BBSs- still a major part of online discussions. Nowadays... well, yeah, it *is* "just another warez distribution network". I still use it for its original purpose occasionally, but a lot of the groups are pretty overrun with spam and useless, and even MS no longer support their former moderated newsgroups.
Fast forward a little more, and the Death Star is destroyed, and a few sequels later, the Empire loses the war. Your point was?
My point was that Leia's self-assured bravado was pretty much subverted straight away. And most of the time I see it used here, it does tend to come across as a stock geeky wish-fulfilling incantation, especially as it doesn't normally say anything particularly insightful or predictive in the context in which it's used(!)
The more you tighten your grip, BREIN, the more star systems will slip through your fingers...
Why are people always using that quote? Aside from the fact it doesn't fit very well here, does anyone remember what happened after Leia said originally?
I'm not a big Star Wars fan, and even *I* know that it didn't end well...
Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
Tarkin: Not after we demonstrate the power of this station. In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that will be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's destructive power on your home planet of Alderaan.
Leia: [shocked] No! Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons. You can't possibly--
Tarkin: You would prefer another target? A military target?! Then name the system! [stepping closer to Leia and pinning her against Darth Vader] I grow tired of asking this, so it will be the last time. Where is the Rebel base?
Leia: [looks at Alderaan for a moment, then, resigned] Dantooine. They're on Dantooine.
Tarkin: There. You see, Lord Vader? She can be reasonable. Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready.
Leia: [panicked] What?!
Tarkin: You're far too trusting. Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration, but don't worry. We will deal with your rebel friends soon enough.
Leia: No.
[The Death Star destroys Alderaan]
You appear to be far too thick to realise that your earlier post was so incredibly stupid that it provoked my post along the lines of "look at how badly these kids are taught today".
Yep, that's certainly what you meant. *cough*
As well as incorrectly assuming I was a product of the US education system, you're still talking about how "those kids" are taught "today"... with no knowledge of when I attended school. For all you *actually* know, maybe I left school last year, or maybe it was fifty years ago.
You're right... you were "provoked" into your spelling-bee-obsessed rant of narrow-minded stupidity!
By using such inconvenient things as facts instead of transparent fiction like your post above?
Thanks for clarifying that when I said:-
You're either incredibly stupid or intentionally repeating a lie [that I disagreed that nuclear power generated steam, even though I acknowledge this in my original and all subsequent posts] on the basis that if you say it enough times it'll be true.
You were going for the "repeating a lie" bit... in addition to being incredibly stupid.
You really appear to be trying very hard to make people think even less of you with each outpouring.
Sorry to disappoint you (oh no, wait.... I'm not). But the only people likely still following- or at least giving a damn about- this conversation are you and me.
you've childishly pretended they said something completely different to what was written just
On the contrary, I made quite clear that I agreed that boiling water was a part of the nuclear process, just not the end product.
You know this very well, so you're either incredibly stupid or intentionally repeating a lie on the basis that if you say it enough times it'll be true.
Then after I called you to task you are accusing me of being mentally ill.
Actually, I called you an "idiot". (*)
I said that even a mildly autistic ("mentally ill" in your words) person could understand in *principle* something that you apparently couldn't.
You didn't seem to get it when nearly everyone would
The part in my original post where I said, and I quote:-
I'm surprised that you didn't know that the boiling water *isn't* the final product! In fact, it's simply a means to an end- a minor *intermediate* step used to convert the heat created by the nuclear reactions into the final product- electricity!
None of this is relevant to nuclear power at all is it?
The OP's comment was relevant insofar as it was a subtle and intellectually dishonest way of attacking nuclear electricity using the same techniques that politicians and PR people use.
You didn't seem to get it when nearly everyone would, which is why I was holding you up as an example of a failure of education.
No, you *specifically* tried to use me as an example to serve the bee in your bonnet about the US education system with relation to *its* spelling obsession and *its* cuts.
(Given you likely didn't know how old I am or where I was educated, you couldn't have known for sure that there had even been "cuts" when and where I was educated).
Now that you've been proven wrong, you're weaselling out by trying to pretend that you were merely talking about "the failure of education" in general. Nice try.
(*) Yes, I know that "idiot" has various technical and formal meanings that would count as "mentally ill". Most people wouldn't take it that way in everyday use, and I think it's more likely you're just a sloppy reader and assumed I was calling you "autistic" when I wasn't.
I'm sorry. I felt your post was a technological argument about how useful and serious nuclear power is
No, not really... it wasn't that at all. It wasn't meant to pass judgement on nuclear power either way, per se.
What it *was* was an attack on the disingenuous use of language by him to make a point.
That said, I like the idea of nuclear electricity, but I *partly* agree with the misgivings expressed above (even those by SlippyToad!) in practice. Whether these misgivings outweight the benefits is open to question.
Of course I "get it" otherwise I could not point out your pointless attack over semantics could I? In this case "pedantically correct" is technically correct so you've got a whole lot of bullshit there attacking the truth.
I've already clearly explained the point I was attacking twice, and it wasn't the surface meaning that "reactors produce steam" (duh). I don't intend repeating it. I'd say "go back and read it", but in your case that would obviously be a waste of time.
Even mildly autistic people (who often have trouble picking up on hidden meaning and implication in practice) can at least understand the existence of this concept in principle when it's explained to them. The fact that *you* can't suggests that you're more likely just an idiot.
It's a shining example of what happens when you cut educational spending for years and get kids that think a spelling bee is more important than knowing what the words mean.
Another example of your blinkered, spelling-bee-in-your-bonnet insularity. I'm not even a product of the US education system- matter of fact I've never even been there.
And yes, it was pretty obvious that this was your underlying assumption- the "spelling bee" thing gave it away. While spelling bees aren't solely an American phenomenom, they don't have the same cultural importance elsewhere.
But yeah. My analysis of the underlying meaning demonstrates that I only have a superficial understanding of language.....?! The fact that you can't tell the difference between this and spelling-obsessed superficiality says a lot more about your ignorance than it does about mine.
Reactors make steam.
Well, duh. Clever boy. You get a gold star!
Apple was the brand loyalty king for all of about 15 minutes until Google took that away then Facebook seems to have grabbed it
Yeah, Apple are real has-beens in the brand-loyalty stakes. That's why the iPod didn't sell that well and more recently the iPhone and iPad have been complete disasters that even their few buyers hated and didn't queue around the block or hang on to Steve Jobs' every word when the new one was due.
Seriously, what parallel universe are you living in where this is the case?
According to Wikipedia, the team was just laid off. But it's coming back as Microsoft Flight.
I might be wrong, but IIRC I heard somewhere that Flight is a different product and isn't necessarily compatible with the add-ons that Flight Simulator eventually accumulated a large number of(?)
In that context, the phrase "boiling fucking water" refers to something that should be straightforward.
No offence, but you missed the point. It's not the boiling water that is the hard part- that clearly *is*, as you suggest, relatively "straightforward" and a way of converting heat to electricity. It's generating the initial energy to boil the water in the first place that's the hard (and relevant!) part.
By focusing on the intermediate "boiling water" step, at the expense of the more significant generation of energy itself, and of the final more useful product, SlippyToad trivialises the difficulty of the process and the usefulness of the final product, and misleadingly bolsters his/her case critical of the nuclear energy process.
A reactor boils water, a turbine turns that into motion, and a generator produces electricity from that motion.
Indeed. Both myself and SlippyToad know this damn well, so what's your point?
There is nothing at all wrong with the statement you are pretending to correct
Yes there is, but it it lies in the implications of the way it was (deliberately) phrased and not in the surface meaning. *That* was correct, but misses the point.
It appears to all be about winning a spelling bee instead of understanding - the depressing tendancy of seeing science as an incantation where you have to get the spelling correct but don't require the merest clue of what is going on.
No. Despite your sanctimonious and condescending rant, you *entirely* missed the whole damn point of what I said.
Stating that nuclear power was an "unbelievably fraught with peril method of boiling fucking water" (while pedantically correct) rather than "...of generating electricity" carries the subtle but deliberate shift of emphasis away from the real and useful end purpose as well as implying that the nuclear part is trivial because it should just be a minor step in the process of boiling water.
No, it's obtaining the energy (in whatever form) to boil the water in the first place that's the whole damn hard part. The remainder is relatively trivial energy conversion.
I'm not implying that SlippyToad put as much conscious thought into his choice of words as I did in dissecting them, but it's pretty clear that on some level he knew damn well why he chose those words. This is how politicians, PR and the real world works, how one shifts arguments by subtly pushing an implied message via the choice of emphasis.
Please continue ranting to yourself if you still don't get that.
[Nuclear power is an] unbelievably fraught with peril method of boiling fucking water
Given how much you said about nuclear power, I'm surprised that you didn't know that the boiling water *isn't* the final product! In fact, it's simply a means to an end- a minor *intermediate* step used to convert the heat created by the nuclear reactions into the final product- electricity!
And yeah, in all seriousness, you damn well know this of course, Which makes your example blatantly disingenuous rather than downright stupid- an attempt to minimise the usefulness and seriousness of nuclear power by painting it as a minor first step towards a relatively unimportant end. By the same token, wind turbines are a massively intrusive way of getting some mechanism to spin and coal power is a very polluting way of creating flames!
Of course, the real problem- and hard part- is getting the energy in the first place. But you knew that too.
And please note that I was specifically attacking the intellectual dishonesty of that part of your argument. Even if I agreed with the rest of what you said (in truth I agree with parts and disagree with others), it doesn't change the dubiousness of that argumentative technique.
When The Cloud makes it trivial for anyone to create a Cloud Service, there will be half a million Fart Services.
A cloud of farts sounds quite unpleasant, to be honest...
Urgh, what the hell is that mess? Lots of graphs where it's unclear which markets they're meant to refer to, and a mass of badly-formatted text.
The fact that the ZX Spectrum sold almost as many *units* worldwide as the Apple but doesn't appear on any of the graphs make me suspicious. Maybe they just missed it out... in which case, the graphs are still crap.
Pffft.... you may have posted your malicious "advice" anonymously, but I know your real identity.
This was before [the word "blackboard"] was made verboten at the insistence of the PC lobby.
Yeah, right. The fact that the rabid anti-PCers (*) keep repeating this "fact" says more about it sounding plausible to their paranoid minds and its appeal to them (and the more you repeat something the more everyone "knows" it's right) and the fact it's a convenient strawman to use against political correctness. But it says absolutely nothing about whether the story's true or not.
I strongly suspect that this is either outright bullshit, or one overzealous person in a minor case that has been magnified a thousandfold by repetition.
(*) I say "anti-PCer", but truth is that the present-day form of political correctness is really just a strawman stereotype created and used by the reactionary right-wingers to justify their own spoutings.
No, the point of the story is that nobody knows shit, especially about how to do their jobs. If someone punches another employee in the face, and you can't get them fired, then you are the one that doesn't know how to do your job.
Can't find it now, but someone said elsewhere that they didn't think we had got the whole story with respect to what the OP said.
It's possible that the employee punched the aforementioned boss under extreme provocation (i.e. the boss was asking for it and was already known for borderline unacceptable behaviour towards subordinates)- and that if push came to shove this could be proven in court- which might work out badly for the company, even if the subordinate didn't come out smelling of roses either.
Or maybe the subordinate was actually quite good at his job, or they couldn't get someone else to easily replace him.
And/or a combination of the above meant that the boss's boss(es) didn't actually *want* to have to sack the guy. Who knows? It's all speculation- but then your comment relies on assumptions too!
My rig should run The Witcher 2 without too much trouble according to the site, but in practice the system plays laggy and ultimately it's not playable. Kind of like Quake when I first bought it.
Hmm. Regardless of what the publishers claim, if your system was struggling with Quake when it first came out, I *very* strongly suspect its performance on a game that came out earlier this year is going to be sub-par. ;-)
One CRT I did manage to scratch with my fingernail, though.
Speaking of CRTs, I had problems with mine that looked a bit like scratches but ultimately couldn't have been (solely) due to that because they (a) got worse over time and (b) went under the bezel.
To be honest, it was very strange. (I no longer use that monitor, though I still have it).
Does anyone have a clue what might have caused this? See the linked thread. ("Flaavu" is my account there, BTW).
It would be nice I think to not ascossiate China with cheap knock-off products... I'm probably just naive though.
China will start pushing for and supporting stronger IP protection when it judges that it's in its own interest to do so, and that's nothing to do with being "nice". Partly for the investment reasons, but far more because they'll have their own IP which they wish to reap the benefit of.
Nothing specifically anti-Chinese in this observation; the Americans were quite content to permit unauthorised copying of works by non-citizens during the 19th century:-
In the 19th century publishing battles raged between Britain and the United States. A loophole in American copyright law enabled publishers to reprint British books at will. Until 1891, the intellectual property of non-citizens was up for grabs. Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson and other popular British writers lost untold amounts of income as American publishers profited. American writers, too, were commercial losers at home, as a book of poetry by Longfellow or Poe selling for one dollar had to compete with a 25 cent novel by Dickens or Thackeray. It was an intellectual-property war every bit as fierce as today's DVD black market in China. American publishers would send their agents to roam the wharves in New York, Philadelphia and Boston to intercept popular manuscripts coming in by ship. Across the Atlantic, English customs officials would search passenger ships coming from the States and confiscate pirated British books as contraband.
Now that America stands to benefit much more from protection of its own IP, it's quite obviously in favour of it.
You usually do backface removal, degenerate triangle removal, zero area triangle removal, offscreen triangle removal and triangles hidden by occluders removal just to reduce load on the vertex pipe
Is a "degenerate triangle" one that is effectively just a line- and wouldn't that then be a "zero-area triangle", or is that latter used to refer to a single-point triangle (i.e. all vertices the same point)?
Do all the photoshopping you want, print it, photograph it [sheldonbrown.com]. There, you have evidence captured on film.
Ah, but can you do that so it doesn't look like a photograph of a photo?
I suspect that- if done correctly- it would be impossible to tell whether a rephotographed photo had been tampered with digitally- either as an intermediate, or whether it was originally shot in digital.
However, I suspect photographing a photograph would always have telltale signs that it wasn't an original, even if you couldn't tell the nature of what had been photographed- you still have enough reason not to trust it!
There's actually a fairly high demand for classic Amiga app support; while the people who buy this sort of thing are certainly not Diehard Amiga Purists, we do want to run our old crap, too!
I suspect that you'd have to be pretty diehard to actually buy a new non-PC computer that has no prospect of mainstream success or use, pay an inflated price for it, and learn to use it, just to use your old apps under some marginally more modern hardware! And is the "need" to run your old software actually enough to warrant buying a new computer to run on? I suspect that *technically* it would be quite feasible- and probably more sensible- to run it under some sort of Windows emulation layer.
:-)
I think I'd be right in guessing that any business that ever relied on the Amiga would have long, *long* (like 15 years ago) been forced to migrate away from the system- even if reluctantly- to the point that Amiga compatibility is almost utterly irrelevant to anyone except, er... "diehard hobbyists". Sorry