As others pointed out, they're probably referring to Tc99m, which has a short half life. The fact that ground state Tc99 has a half life of roughly forever is probably why it's not mentioned... It's so long that you need a lot of it to get a lot of decays. It's also fairly unreactive and doesn't form any particularly soluble salts (as best as I can tell), so the exposure possibility is limited. Finally, it decays with a fairly low every beta (294keV) and only very rarely emits a low energy gamma (90keV @ 0.0006%).
Compare to Cs137 which has a 30yr half life, so it has the same decay rate as 7,000 times as much Tc99. It forms highly soluble salts and can be absorbed by the body and concentrated in plants. On top of that, it has a much higher decay energy, and usually emits a strong beta (514keV) and gamma (662keV). It makes the Tc99 look like so many bananas. So, they aren't technically correct, but Tc99 isn't really important.
Not so bad? I dunno. I think that it would be far better if it were illegal to have such a conversation (and sending porn) with someone underage (provided they could prove you knew) than this. I mean the only victim I can see here is the offender of a police trap. If he actually contacted a minor sure, but what's illegal here? It's like possible intent to harm a minor probably if a minor was actually involved.
What can happen, though, is that if the 'fringe' party is strong enough, they can pull enough votes from a major party to prevent them from being successful. As a result, the major party has to adapt to include these people or basically be destroyed altogether. It's a tricky battle of attrition though: it requires choosing ideology and possibly guaranteeing a one victory for the "greater evil".
However, it's worth pointing out that this partially happened with the tea party and Republicans prior to the former being undermined by a coordinated media attack. Republicans of the Bush era started to go against everything they used to stand for... Sure, they weren't completely the same as the Democrats: they made the DHS, rather than, say, the Department of Social Justice. The tea party formed under the basic premise that the Democrats weren't that much worse anymore, so reducing the Republicans' strength was a small price to pay for the chance to actually elect someone that represented their interests. This _seems_ to have created more interest in the Republican party to go back to their more libertarian ideals, but only time will tell if it sticks.
WOW, well, the media has certainly won this war then. Thanks for proving that point.
Sure, crazy people will associate with groups. Do you think all republicans are racist and bomb abortion clinics? Do you think that all democrats are communists that think that making money is evil? Because such people are certainly in both parties. Just because a few migrated into "fringe" parties doesn't make that party automatically support them. The problem is this: if you can't accept a party that's just a bunch of people with some common ideal and not a well oiled political machine, then all you will ever vote for are corrupt career politicians.
Citation needed. I have never heard this, and when I checked a few years ago (as I have the theoretical option to use either) nuclear was significantly cheaper.
Not only is nuclear cheaper (as far as I've ever heard), but it also produces less CO2 for it's lifetime (i.e. including manufacture, etc) than wind or solar. Moreover it doesn't require storage, which adds significant cost and environmental impact to both.
At least Experts-Exchange actually sometimes provides information, and doesn't usually eat pages of search. Blacklisting is more work than the occasional page down IMHO.
Now paywalled scientific papers... Goodbye ScienceDirect! Never again will I have to scroll through pages and pages of results for the one result that isn't going to cost me $30 whenever I search something science related. You will not be missed.
Agreed. If you can't do a least one tenth of a gram, you'll be back to volumetric measures for salt, spices, additives, etc. And while volumetric measure for them is generally more reliable than, say, flour, accuracy for them can be more important (as you mention). I think that hundredth of a gram is ideal, particularly if you're experimenting with smaller batches. Incidentally, just last night I needed to weigh spices in the range of 0.5 - 4 g. (I personally use an old digital lab balance precise to 1mg, but that's only because it was free; measurements better than 10mg aren't really feasible or worthwhile in the kitchen.)
I think the gram precision thing is more an issue of dynamic range... Most people are using their scales for weighing out flour, confectioners sugar, etc. These things are usually needed in the 500g range, and coupled with the weight of a measuring bowl, you need a scale that can handle 1kg or so. That means a gram scale needs a range of 0.1% and a hundredth gram scale would need 0.001%. That's expensive, and so most cooks would rather just buy something cheap for flour that does ~5g and stick with volumetric measure for spices. Of course, they could always get two scales, but that would be crazy;).
P.S. No, I can't get the SD article... Perhaps one of the contributors of Fact-Free Science is that fact that 'science' is only available to most of the populous through marketing departments and biased news-media sound bytes:/ (Which isn't to say I disbelieve GE's presentation, but is to say that there's major reporting bias, as it were, of dissenting or less optimistic analysis.)
THIS. Where are my mod points? The entire point of a college is to make money; even for state schools. This has become particularly bad in recent years where college has become less about higher learning and more about getting that piece of paper that shows that you payed and are now eligible to do anything beyond grunt work.
I, for one, welcome these "for profit" schools: They are like a parody of the existing system, showing how a diploma is really just about paying the money and playing the game. I am cautiously optimistic that the weakness of their 'shovelware' degrees will wake people up to the fact that every other institution is fundamentally the same.
> Have you read the article? It clearly states that the vast majority of Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates > are against global warming. So, yes, this is clearly, first and foremost, a "Republican" problems -- though I'll be the > first to admit Democratic politicians also trade in "woo".
I suppose that depends if "against global warming" is the problem here. Or, perhaps I should say openly against the unscientific plans the Democrats make to "deal" with global warming? But that sounds biased... Better stick with the first one.
The fact of the matter is that Democrats only _pretend_ to agree with science: Where's their love of science when it comes to nuclear power? Where was all this science on corn ethanol? Has there ever been a scientific study on the effectiveness of wind or solar power in reducing carbon emissions once all factors are considered (production, maintenance, lifetime energy output)? That last one's a serious question; if you know please link me.
The simple fact of the matter is that politicians don't give a damn about science at all. The just use it to manipulate their constituents and maximize their profits... Democrats pretend the world is ending and that it has to be stopped no matter the cost, and the Republicans pretend it's not and that the Democrats are trying to crush the country. The truth is a mix of both, but let's not pretend that just because a group superficially agrees with a scientific consensus or two that they care about science. It's really just another form of damned lies and statistics.
> Deleting a file should tell the OS that I don't need that data. That's what deleting is.
It does, and that is, in fact, what it is. So Windows unlinks the file from the directory and removes the blocks from the in-use map.
The drive, however, doesn't know any of this. It updates the requested sectors representing the directory and volume info, and that's about it. It has no idea that blocks somewhere else on the drive are no longer needed, so it will dutifully copy and maintain that data while rewriting blocks.
The idea of the trim command is that it tells the drive that the data is deleted so the drive doesn't have to worry about maintaining it. This was never needed in old drives because the data was basically ignored after being written. In SSDs, the data needs to be continuously copied around to facilitate the erasing (which wipes several thousand blocks at once).
The problem here is that, until the last decade, most people just didn't write. Historically, writing was actually something reserved for the "intellectually elite". Most people didn't go to college and write books or anything you might read (i.e. anything outside private correspondence). Instead, they worked in factories, contruction, etc., and if you mentioned 'then' v 'than' in a bar they'd throw you out for your "2 dollar words". a So now you have all of the people in the would that "could care less" about 'than' writing forum posts, blogs and text messages. Of course they don't get it right... They don't care. A decade ago they simply wouldn't be writing.
tl;dr We live in a society where the average level of intelligence required is beyond the average level of intelligence of humanity. People write poorly (and our education system looks like it's failing) because they just aren't equipped to work outside a factory but society isn't willing to accept that.
Bigger than what, exactly? Given that all the gloom and doom predictions haven't come true, I don't see where one could even argue that any of the big weather things that have happened are related to GW. And once you consider major historical events, there's nothing there.
> If they're wrong, Millions or Billions of people die.
Whoa there... Millions or billions, really? That's three orders of magnitude there, and a significant three at that. "Millions" (about 2) die every _month_, and billions? There are only 7 billion people on the planet, so that would be pretty much the apocalypse I guess.
And while I'm calling you on this vague emotional threat, what's the time scale here exactly? Is there just going to be a giant tidal wave that kills everyone instantly, or is it going to happen over the next hundred years? Which brings me to my real point:
> Whether it's our fault or not, greenhouse-gas caused or not, doesn't matter as much. The more > important question is, can we do something about it...
O rly? Paraphrased: It doesn't matter what is happening or why, we just have to stop it.
How, exactly, do you propose we stop it then, if it doesn't matter what's causing it? I mean, are you proposing that we install giant air conditioners, or are you really just spouting BS and hope that some people will support draconian actions taken in the name of stopping it? It's "think of the children" all over again, it seems.
So, here's a thought. How about we actually approach this like a real problem, and not just some vague cause to fight for. The problem is complicated: For one, the world getting hotter _isn't_ a problem; it's the effects of it that are.
And then, you have to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution. If human created green house gases are contributing 10% of the warming effect, and the ocean levels will rise 1 m in 100 years, is humanity cutting emissions by half (which would be rather devastating), worth prolonging the 1m rise by 5 years? Answer: no
And this is why I have global warming: There is no real analysis. It's just this "don't ask why, but if you don't agree with me billions will die" crap over and over. And every time I look at the figures, even the worst case ones (though based in reality), I just can't help but find it to be anything but a minor detail that can be solved in due time.
And yet, if I download songs for my personal, decidedly private and not business use, I'm subject to damages of hundreds of dollars for each instance.
The point isn't that this is _bad_, but if they're going to go around busting down doors because people are sharing copyrighted works for personal use, they shouldn't be violating copyright for their institutional use and pretending it's OK.
Actually, AFAIK the present ruling (see Blizzard's Glider case) is that a copy to RAM is a true copy that's not even covered under fair use and is only allowed because of the EULA. Therefore if you violate the EULA, or haven't agreed to one, making a copy to RAM is a violation of copyright.
From TFS: >In fact some theorists propose that the seemingly impossible things that postselection allows >is a kind of proof that quantum mechanics must be linear.
Work like this is not meant to be practical; it's a thought exercise. It provides a sort of preview of different things that may or may not be possible, and can inspire other scientists. For example (given the above context), it may generate a testable idea which can then be used to disprove non-linear quantum mechanics.
The idea of free will v.s paradox free time travel, and really all time travel paradoxes in general, is built upon the notion that the universe is causal. That seems like a pretty basic and safe assumption, but we are making it based how things seem, not direct observations and experiments. If our technology gets to the point where we're manipulating space and time, than we would be in a much better position to know. For now though, all we 'know' is time travel doesn't exist and the universe is causal. If you don't assume the former, there's no real reason to assume the latter either.
How, exactly, would you feel about your glorious mouse if I installed eye tracking equipment on my console and had my gun follow my eyes. Would you still think that was reasonable? Would you still say "... it's purely an equipment difference..."? Or would you start to say that those controls are unreasonable?
The simple fact of the matter is that it's not about bringing the mouse down to the level of a joystick, it about bringing it down to where it's realistic. Where you're not whipping around your 50+lb high inertia sniper rifle faster than I can move my bare arm.
We just had a thread touching on realism is shooters... It you don't want any, then maybe we ought just move to eye trackers and be done with it. For me, however, I find the ability to turn 45 degrees with pinpoint precision in the space of 100ms to be more unreasonable than enjoyable.
> The mouse and keyboard are superior controllers for most types of games. > In the case of FPS games, the difference is night and day.
Define superior...
What people tend not to appreciate is that FPS mouse controls allow you to change your view at speeds limited only by how fast you move you mouse, which might as well be infinite relative to the update rate of the game. Joysticks necessarily limit speed as they have a maximum and much more limited resolution (meaning that if you turn the speed up you lose a lot of precision). This allows PC gamers to react much faster to events in the game because they can move in the most important dimensions (rotation) at essentially infinite speed.
I'd wager that if games capped the turning speed on mouse controls console gamers would be _much_ more competitive with PC gamers. As it stands now though, PC gamers have an advantage that I would have to classify as unfair, not superior.
On the keyboard side... It's not even close: No analog, generally poor response times, and layout optimized for high bandwidth, low speed input. The only reason no one cares is because walking in an FPS is not much more than an implementation detail.
Now, for different games, especially (non-J) RPGs and RTS games, the keyboard and mouse are perfect. For FPSs though, they are a crude hack that just happens, because of the nature of the game, to be advantageous.
To add to previous comments, why would a customer bother printing up a box rather than just returning the one they got? And, for that matter, returning the fan and manual while they're at it. You do realize that it would cost more to make one of those fan things than buy an aftermarket fan, right? This is clearly a mass produced Chinese fake. Sure fakes are hardly uncommon and one of the many reasons dealing with Chinese production is problematic.
It occurred to me just after posting that there would be a decent sized chunk of market in DRMed devices that couldn't allow the use of memory cards, e.g. the iPods. However, there devices are far from being the entirety of the ARM based mobile computers and their switching wouldn't mean anything significant for the market.
I strongly doubt that... x86 has so much cruft associated with it, it will never be able to hedge ARM out of the market, esp since the later is so entrenched at this point. Do you think cell phone designers want to work with the PCI bus? Chipsets? And what software is available for a non PC-compatible x86 setup?
Anyways, this is all moot anyway: the demand for high density flash is almost entirely in the memory card market. No embedded system realistically needs more than 1GB internal memory (and generally 256M is plenty). For bulk storage, an SD card is not just a good idea, but actually desirable for consumers. There's just no market for some huge flash somehow tightly coupled to a CPU.
Somewhat ironically, they probably need the loan guarantees _because_ of the federal government. With all the waffling over things like waste disposal and even simply allowing nuclear power, a power plant is far from guaranteed to go smoothly. Smoothness is generally what lenders care about because any bumps in the road are a liability. (What if the government changes its mind about a plant halfway through construction?, What if it gets shut down halfway through its expected life?)
Anyway, that's not to say nuclear power is particularly cheap, because it's not always (basically depends on the availability of coal). However, it's not an inherently bad investment, just a risky one. And actually, for the same reasons, good luck getting a loan for a coal plant...
The one other thing is that with all the billions we're spending on the "green" crap and stimulus, can't we give a loan for a nuclear plant? They need a tremendous amount of workers to build, generate green power, and make money to pay the tax payer back. God forbid.
I find the use of spaces irritating and stupid, to be equally blunt. I mean, the tab is a character that exists _specifically_ for aligning text. It behaves predictably across editors and allows easy changing of width for various programmers. You never have to worry about half indents choking the editor. Why replace tabs with spaces? So you can hit the space bar a thousand times whenever you need to edit something outside a programming editor? So you can't change indent size without some obscene editor voodoo that may change the spaces and corrupt your diff history? But I doubt I'll ever understand... Most of the "benefits" I see people listing for using spaces I consider either more true for tabs, or disadvantages.
Slashdot Mirror
As others pointed out, they're probably referring to Tc99m, which has a short half life. The fact that ground state Tc99 has a half life of roughly forever is probably why it's not mentioned... It's so long that you need a lot of it to get a lot of decays. It's also fairly unreactive and doesn't form any particularly soluble salts (as best as I can tell), so the exposure possibility is limited. Finally, it decays with a fairly low every beta (294keV) and only very rarely emits a low energy gamma (90keV @ 0.0006%).
Compare to Cs137 which has a 30yr half life, so it has the same decay rate as 7,000 times as much Tc99. It forms highly soluble salts and can be absorbed by the body and concentrated in plants. On top of that, it has a much higher decay energy, and usually emits a strong beta (514keV) and gamma (662keV). It makes the Tc99 look like so many bananas. So, they aren't technically correct, but Tc99 isn't really important.
For reference:
Tc99m: http://ie.lbl.gov/toi/nuclide.asp?iZA=430399
Tc99: http://ie.lbl.gov/toi/nuclide.asp?iZA=430099
Cs137: http://ie.lbl.gov/toi/nuclide.asp?iZA=550137
Not so bad? I dunno. I think that it would be far better if it were illegal to have such a conversation (and sending porn) with someone underage (provided they could prove you knew) than this. I mean the only victim I can see here is the offender of a police trap. If he actually contacted a minor sure, but what's illegal here? It's like possible intent to harm a minor probably if a minor was actually involved.
What can happen, though, is that if the 'fringe' party is strong enough, they can pull enough votes from a major party to prevent them from being successful. As a result, the major party has to adapt to include these people or basically be destroyed altogether. It's a tricky battle of attrition though: it requires choosing ideology and possibly guaranteeing a one victory for the "greater evil".
However, it's worth pointing out that this partially happened with the tea party and Republicans prior to the former being undermined by a coordinated media attack. Republicans of the Bush era started to go against everything they used to stand for... Sure, they weren't completely the same as the Democrats: they made the DHS, rather than, say, the Department of Social Justice. The tea party formed under the basic premise that the Democrats weren't that much worse anymore, so reducing the Republicans' strength was a small price to pay for the chance to actually elect someone that represented their interests. This _seems_ to have created more interest in the Republican party to go back to their more libertarian ideals, but only time will tell if it sticks.
WOW, well, the media has certainly won this war then. Thanks for proving that point.
Sure, crazy people will associate with groups. Do you think all republicans are racist and bomb abortion clinics? Do you think that all democrats are communists that think that making money is evil? Because such people are certainly in both parties. Just because a few migrated into "fringe" parties doesn't make that party automatically support them. The problem is this: if you can't accept a party that's just a bunch of people with some common ideal and not a well oiled political machine, then all you will ever vote for are corrupt career politicians.
Citation needed. I have never heard this, and when I checked a few years ago (as I have the theoretical option to use either) nuclear was significantly cheaper.
Not only is nuclear cheaper (as far as I've ever heard), but it also produces less CO2 for it's lifetime (i.e. including manufacture, etc) than wind or solar. Moreover it doesn't require storage, which adds significant cost and environmental impact to both.
No.
(Can you even be serious? The way nuclear power is portrayed these days? Give me a break.)
At least Experts-Exchange actually sometimes provides information, and doesn't usually eat pages of search. Blacklisting is more work than the occasional page down IMHO.
Now paywalled scientific papers... Goodbye ScienceDirect! Never again will I have to scroll through pages and pages of results for the one result that isn't going to cost me $30 whenever I search something science related. You will not be missed.
Agreed. If you can't do a least one tenth of a gram, you'll be back to volumetric measures for salt, spices, additives, etc. And while volumetric measure for them is generally more reliable than, say, flour, accuracy for them can be more important (as you mention). I think that hundredth of a gram is ideal, particularly if you're experimenting with smaller batches. Incidentally, just last night I needed to weigh spices in the range of 0.5 - 4 g. (I personally use an old digital lab balance precise to 1mg, but that's only because it was free; measurements better than 10mg aren't really feasible or worthwhile in the kitchen.)
I think the gram precision thing is more an issue of dynamic range... Most people are using their scales for weighing out flour, confectioners sugar, etc. These things are usually needed in the 500g range, and coupled with the weight of a measuring bowl, you need a scale that can handle 1kg or so. That means a gram scale needs a range of 0.1% and a hundredth gram scale would need 0.001%. That's expensive, and so most cooks would rather just buy something cheap for flour that does ~5g and stick with volumetric measure for spices. Of course, they could always get two scales, but that would be crazy ;).
Very interesting... Thanks for the links.
P.S. No, I can't get the SD article... Perhaps one of the contributors of Fact-Free Science is that fact that 'science' is only available to most of the populous through marketing departments and biased news-media sound bytes :/ (Which isn't to say I disbelieve GE's presentation, but is to say that there's major reporting bias, as it were, of dissenting or less optimistic analysis.)
THIS. Where are my mod points? The entire point of a college is to make money; even for state schools. This has become particularly bad in recent years where college has become less about higher learning and more about getting that piece of paper that shows that you payed and are now eligible to do anything beyond grunt work.
I, for one, welcome these "for profit" schools: They are like a parody of the existing system, showing how a diploma is really just about paying the money and playing the game. I am cautiously optimistic that the weakness of their 'shovelware' degrees will wake people up to the fact that every other institution is fundamentally the same.
> Have you read the article? It clearly states that the vast majority of Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates
> are against global warming. So, yes, this is clearly, first and foremost, a "Republican" problems -- though I'll be the
> first to admit Democratic politicians also trade in "woo".
I suppose that depends if "against global warming" is the problem here. Or, perhaps I should say openly against the unscientific plans the Democrats make to "deal" with global warming? But that sounds biased... Better stick with the first one.
The fact of the matter is that Democrats only _pretend_ to agree with science: Where's their love of science when it comes to nuclear power? Where was all this science on corn ethanol? Has there ever been a scientific study on the effectiveness of wind or solar power in reducing carbon emissions once all factors are considered (production, maintenance, lifetime energy output)? That last one's a serious question; if you know please link me.
The simple fact of the matter is that politicians don't give a damn about science at all. The just use it to manipulate their constituents and maximize their profits... Democrats pretend the world is ending and that it has to be stopped no matter the cost, and the Republicans pretend it's not and that the Democrats are trying to crush the country. The truth is a mix of both, but let's not pretend that just because a group superficially agrees with a scientific consensus or two that they care about science. It's really just another form of damned lies and statistics.
> Deleting a file should tell the OS that I don't need that data. That's what deleting is.
It does, and that is, in fact, what it is. So Windows unlinks the file from the directory and removes the blocks from the in-use map.
The drive, however, doesn't know any of this. It updates the requested sectors representing the directory and volume info, and that's about it. It has no idea that blocks somewhere else on the drive are no longer needed, so it will dutifully copy and maintain that data while rewriting blocks.
The idea of the trim command is that it tells the drive that the data is deleted so the drive doesn't have to worry about maintaining it. This was never needed in old drives because the data was basically ignored after being written. In SSDs, the data needs to be continuously copied around to facilitate the erasing (which wipes several thousand blocks at once).
The problem here is that, until the last decade, most people just didn't write. Historically, writing was actually something reserved for the "intellectually elite". Most people didn't go to college and write books or anything you might read (i.e. anything outside private correspondence). Instead, they worked in factories, contruction, etc., and if you mentioned 'then' v 'than' in a bar they'd throw you out for your "2 dollar words".
a
So now you have all of the people in the would that "could care less" about 'than' writing forum posts, blogs and text messages. Of course they don't get it right... They don't care. A decade ago they simply wouldn't be writing.
tl;dr We live in a society where the average level of intelligence required is beyond the average level of intelligence of humanity. People write poorly (and our education system looks like it's failing) because they just aren't equipped to work outside a factory but society isn't willing to accept that.
> ... before even bigger catastrophes occur?
Bigger than what, exactly? Given that all the gloom and doom predictions haven't come true, I don't see where one could even argue that any of the big weather things that have happened are related to GW. And once you consider major historical events, there's nothing there.
> If they're wrong, Millions or Billions of people die.
Whoa there... Millions or billions, really? That's three orders of magnitude there, and a significant three at that. "Millions" (about 2) die every _month_, and billions? There are only 7 billion people on the planet, so that would be pretty much the apocalypse I guess.
And while I'm calling you on this vague emotional threat, what's the time scale here exactly? Is there just going to be a giant tidal wave that kills everyone instantly, or is it going to happen over the next hundred years? Which brings me to my real point:
> Whether it's our fault or not, greenhouse-gas caused or not, doesn't matter as much. The more
> important question is, can we do something about it...
O rly? Paraphrased: It doesn't matter what is happening or why, we just have to stop it.
How, exactly, do you propose we stop it then, if it doesn't matter what's causing it? I mean, are you proposing that we install giant air conditioners, or are you really just spouting BS and hope that some people will support draconian actions taken in the name of stopping it? It's "think of the children" all over again, it seems.
So, here's a thought. How about we actually approach this like a real problem, and not just some vague cause to fight for. The problem is complicated: For one, the world getting hotter _isn't_ a problem; it's the effects of it that are.
And then, you have to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution. If human created green house gases are contributing 10% of the warming effect, and the ocean levels will rise 1 m in 100 years, is humanity cutting emissions by half (which would be rather devastating), worth prolonging the 1m rise by 5 years? Answer: no
And this is why I have global warming: There is no real analysis. It's just this "don't ask why, but if you don't agree with me billions will die" crap over and over. And every time I look at the figures, even the worst case ones (though based in reality), I just can't help but find it to be anything but a minor detail that can be solved in due time.
And yet, if I download songs for my personal, decidedly private and not business use, I'm subject to damages of hundreds of dollars for each instance.
The point isn't that this is _bad_, but if they're going to go around busting down doors because people are sharing copyrighted works for personal use, they shouldn't be violating copyright for their institutional use and pretending it's OK.
Actually, AFAIK the present ruling (see Blizzard's Glider case) is that a copy to RAM is a true copy that's not even covered under fair use and is only allowed because of the EULA. Therefore if you violate the EULA, or haven't agreed to one, making a copy to RAM is a violation of copyright.
Exactly.
From TFS:
>In fact some theorists propose that the seemingly impossible things that postselection allows
>is a kind of proof that quantum mechanics must be linear.
Work like this is not meant to be practical; it's a thought exercise. It provides a sort of preview of different things that may or may not be possible, and can inspire other scientists. For example (given the above context), it may generate a testable idea which can then be used to disprove non-linear quantum mechanics.
The idea of free will v.s paradox free time travel, and really all time travel paradoxes in general, is built upon the notion that the universe is causal. That seems like a pretty basic and safe assumption, but we are making it based how things seem, not direct observations and experiments. If our technology gets to the point where we're manipulating space and time, than we would be in a much better position to know. For now though, all we 'know' is time travel doesn't exist and the universe is causal. If you don't assume the former, there's no real reason to assume the latter either.
How, exactly, would you feel about your glorious mouse if I installed eye tracking equipment on my console and had my gun follow my eyes. Would you still think that was reasonable? Would you still say "... it's purely an equipment difference..."? Or would you start to say that those controls are unreasonable?
The simple fact of the matter is that it's not about bringing the mouse down to the level of a joystick, it about bringing it down to where it's realistic. Where you're not whipping around your 50+lb high inertia sniper rifle faster than I can move my bare arm.
We just had a thread touching on realism is shooters... It you don't want any, then maybe we ought just move to eye trackers and be done with it. For me, however, I find the ability to turn 45 degrees with pinpoint precision in the space of 100ms to be more unreasonable than enjoyable.
> The mouse and keyboard are superior controllers for most types of games.
> In the case of FPS games, the difference is night and day.
Define superior...
What people tend not to appreciate is that FPS mouse controls allow you to change your view at speeds limited only by how fast you move you mouse, which might as well be infinite relative to the update rate of the game. Joysticks necessarily limit speed as they have a maximum and much more limited resolution (meaning that if you turn the speed up you lose a lot of precision). This allows PC gamers to react much faster to events in the game because they can move in the most important dimensions (rotation) at essentially infinite speed.
I'd wager that if games capped the turning speed on mouse controls console gamers would be _much_ more competitive with PC gamers. As it stands now though, PC gamers have an advantage that I would have to classify as unfair, not superior.
On the keyboard side... It's not even close: No analog, generally poor response times, and layout optimized for high bandwidth, low speed input. The only reason no one cares is because walking in an FPS is not much more than an implementation detail.
Now, for different games, especially (non-J) RPGs and RTS games, the keyboard and mouse are perfect. For FPSs though, they are a crude hack that just happens, because of the nature of the game, to be advantageous.
To add to previous comments, why would a customer bother printing up a box rather than just returning the one they got? And, for that matter, returning the fan and manual while they're at it. You do realize that it would cost more to make one of those fan things than buy an aftermarket fan, right? This is clearly a mass produced Chinese fake. Sure fakes are hardly uncommon and one of the many reasons dealing with Chinese production is problematic.
It occurred to me just after posting that there would be a decent sized chunk of market in DRMed devices that couldn't allow the use of memory cards, e.g. the iPods. However, there devices are far from being the entirety of the ARM based mobile computers and their switching wouldn't mean anything significant for the market.
I strongly doubt that... x86 has so much cruft associated with it, it will never be able to hedge ARM out of the market, esp since the later is so entrenched at this point. Do you think cell phone designers want to work with the PCI bus? Chipsets? And what software is available for a non PC-compatible x86 setup?
Anyways, this is all moot anyway: the demand for high density flash is almost entirely in the memory card market. No embedded system realistically needs more than 1GB internal memory (and generally 256M is plenty). For bulk storage, an SD card is not just a good idea, but actually desirable for consumers. There's just no market for some huge flash somehow tightly coupled to a CPU.
Somewhat ironically, they probably need the loan guarantees _because_ of the federal government. With all the waffling over things like waste disposal and even simply allowing nuclear power, a power plant is far from guaranteed to go smoothly. Smoothness is generally what lenders care about because any bumps in the road are a liability. (What if the government changes its mind about a plant halfway through construction?, What if it gets shut down halfway through its expected life?)
Anyway, that's not to say nuclear power is particularly cheap, because it's not always (basically depends on the availability of coal). However, it's not an inherently bad investment, just a risky one. And actually, for the same reasons, good luck getting a loan for a coal plant...
The one other thing is that with all the billions we're spending on the "green" crap and stimulus, can't we give a loan for a nuclear plant? They need a tremendous amount of workers to build, generate green power, and make money to pay the tax payer back. God forbid.
I find the use of spaces irritating and stupid, to be equally blunt. I mean, the tab is a character that exists _specifically_ for aligning text. It behaves predictably across editors and allows easy changing of width for various programmers. You never have to worry about half indents choking the editor. Why replace tabs with spaces? So you can hit the space bar a thousand times whenever you need to edit something outside a programming editor? So you can't change indent size without some obscene editor voodoo that may change the spaces and corrupt your diff history? But I doubt I'll ever understand... Most of the "benefits" I see people listing for using spaces I consider either more true for tabs, or disadvantages.