Google Maps may have come after Mapquest and some other online mapping service, but isn't that like saying the iPhone came after other smartphones, and the iPad came after almost a decade of tablets?
Because just like the iPhone and iPad did to their respective markets, Google Maps's first public release completely wiped the floor with what Mapquest had at the time, and of course they've greatly improved it since. It may not have had all the advanced features but the interface was so much better and easy to use it didn't matter.
There's a plausible reason for that. With almost all the other power generation schemes, a catastrophic failure in the system kills *someone else*. The coal miners, oil workers, anyone living beneath the dam, etc.
There's a very tiny chance you'll get hit by debris from a runaway wind turbine that breaks apart, and already people are complaining about wind farms decreasing their property values and the noise they make. But nuclear? You can be hundreds of kilometres away and still be affected in some way if something bad happens.
I happen to (mostly) support nuclear energy, I'm just pointing out a possible reason for the general paranoia.
To your point about geopolitics: ignoring all the other evidence, the mere fact that the Soviet Union (you know, the evil communists and the other country trying to land man on the moon first) did not immediately denounce the landings (choose from SIX of them, over 3 years) with "It's a FAAAAAAAAAKE!", should be more than enough evidence that the manned moon landings were real.
The nutters might then say "Well, the US and Soviets were obviously in cahoots then!" At that point it, it should be obvious to anyone that the nutters are not all there.
Just watched Serenity again yesterday, the sequence nedlohs quotes takes place *before* Mal and the Operative start fighting hand-to-hand, and before the massacres were ordered.
But, the Operative was already established as someone you can't truly reason with (through dialogue with Shepherd Book)--it's his way or not at all. He's a believer and willfully ignorant of why he's been ordered to do something.
More like an adult male passerby noticing a young girl playing near a dangerously fast-flowing river, but choosing not to intervene because the risk of being accused of a child molester or attempted abductor is too great (tell her it's dangerous and to move away from the river, and she'd run off screaming to her distant parents that there's a big bad man trying to kidnap her). After that, good luck proving that she *would* have fallen in if he hadn't intervened.
Sadly, this exact scenario happened in the UK a few years back--the girl fell in and drowned shortly after the man walked away. And the guy got roasted for not intervening. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Trees, coffee, corn/ethanol... both expensive in resources and take long to grow. I'm curious if anyone's tried using common weeds as fuel? Or even bamboo, which can grow up to 100 cm a day...
It might be, but as we returned the evaluation unit after the 1-week rental expired, I can't verify that with the PDFs we used.
First impressions were key, and if the thing can't even open simple PDFs a month after the system's release, their "amateur hour is over" ad slogan really bit them in the ass.
Not to mention lack of basic mail, calendar and contacts apps for users without Blackberries, told us they didn't want any business from small companies without existing Blackberries. We obliged.
We evaluated one a month after its release. Fully updated system, but the built-in Adobe reader was unable to open and reliably render or scroll two basic, Acrobat-generated PDFs (less than 500kB, text with some images, no fancy stuff). No background apps were running to slow things down.
My 2-year old underpowered iPhone opened them just fine.
Yes, the dialogue that he'd just divorced hinted that he was a bit older than Kirk.
What's harder to reconcile is stuff like Chekov already an ensign, while Uhuru is still a cadet (in the original series she was already a lieutenant). And then of course an inexperienced (though gifted) cadet Kirk jumping several grades straight to captain.
The big difference between the two is that Star Trek has very little in the way of fighter craft. There isn't much in the way of Star Trek canon to establish whether ships in that universe would have difficulty going up against a squadron of fighters, but Voyager got the crap kicked out of it by a few dozen supposedly obsolete fighters in one episode because the fighters were moving too fast to get a reliable shot on them.
That's because Voyager writers were lazy and unimaginative, or they hobbled technology only to suit a plot.
Warships *today* can target and fire on multiple airborne targets. A 24th-century starship, with faster-than-light computer systems and phaser banks that can be aimed almost instantaneously, should have no problem tracking and firing on any number of small sub-light craft, no matter how manoeuvrable they are.
A single ship can of course still be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but unless Voyager was damaged at that point (I don't know the episode you're referring to), "moving too fast to get a reliable shot" is a pathetic cop-out.
A Deep Space Nine episode dealt with the "Federation is kind of creepy" sentiment directly. A former Starfleet security officer, turned renegade Maquis, said this to Captain Sisko:
Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism... Starships chase us through the Badlands... and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why?
Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation.
Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators so that one day they can take their "rightful place" on the Federation Council.
You know, in some ways you're worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious... you assimilate people and they don't even know it.
A lot of character backstory in the recent "Star Trek" movie made no sense at all. My mom, who never really followed the original or any Trek series, saw the first scene with McCoy and Kirk together in the shuttle and remarked, Isn't the doctor supposed to be much older?
Also, why should we be able to mock Michael Jackson's death but not a random passerby's? It doesn't cause anyone close to him less grief just because he was a public figure. Which, by the way, anyone who appears in the news once or has a Facebook profile/shrine seems to be, to varying extents, in the web 2.0.
Because Michael Jackson, other celebrities, politicians, etc are public figures by choice. Less so royalty since they are born into it, or family of public figures.
The News of the World scandal has been around the better part of a decade--everyone *knew* they hacked into voicemails of the rich and famous, and they didn't really care, but it wasn't until it became known that they hacked into and tampered with VM evidence in the case of the murdered girl, and possibly also grieving war widows and widowers, that the line was crossed and the public turned en masse against Murdoch and his media empire (for all the good that did, admittedly). Because the public identifies with random passerbys who could be themselves. And in wonderful irony, Rupert Murdoch, who jealously guards his own privacy while implicitly approving the violation of others', was put under the media spotlight himself.
The AC did, kind of, by acknowledging the EU has a crappy first-to-file rule in its patent laws. And then lambasting the American government for following in its footsteps by harmonizing that part, and making an already crappy patent system worse overall.
The one time the US definitely should have forged on alone and given a big middle finger to the rest of the world, it refused to do so.
Not to suggest any credence to their claims, but microwaves aren't operating 24x7, while many wifi and other transmitters often are.
For example, you can be exposed for several minutes to the horrible electronic hum from an old CRT TV, and not get a headache, but could get one from an even less-audible hum from a cheap CFL light over an hour or two.
Or they could do the really crappy job they did for Babylon 5.
Although live action actually was shot in HD (forward thinking for a 1993 show), the large number of CGI and live/CGI composites were done in SD only. Computing resources were strained as it was, they weren't going to waste it rendering in HD until consumer technology caught up.
Unfortunately, the Warner Bros. warehouse that stored all these computer files burned down, and they had no backups elsewhere. So on the DVDs, any CGI or live/CGI scene was simply "blown up" to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio. The pure-CGI shots still look decent, but the composite scenes look bad on DVD on standard TV screens, and horrendous on HDTV.
Frankly, after the CGI files were destroyed, they shouldn't have bothered releasing the B5 DVDs in widescreen, leaving it regular 4:3 like the original broadcast and removing the need to blow up the CGI/composite shots.
You f'd over regular customers for a bunch of 20-somthing cheapskates - we have not returned and may not.
I'm curious why you'd write them off completely based on a single night. Sure, it was a bad business decision on their part--they like many others might not have known the serious issues with doing Groupon promos. And yes, you paid full price for crap service that one night. If you're a regular, can't you try speaking to the owner next time you're there to explain yourserious issues with them last time, and give them at least one chance to make things right for you?
I admit my crappy service threshold is a tad high--it took three bad experiences at two locations before I gave up on a franchise.
Either this is a "whoosh!" or you seriously think lots of the world, and heck even the US, don't put too much significance into these writings. Thanks to those writings, foreign aid funds from at least two western countries were (are still?) unavailable to any humanitarian group that promotes any birth control other than abstinence.
You think it's just "commies" that screwed things up? It's any authoritarian system.
How was Mao's demand any different from the Judeo-Christian God's blessing and command to "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground"?
Hell, I was going to it was ideologically different, but the full bible translation doesn't seem much different from Mao's plan to bury the enemy in a human wave (and even then it was meant as a defence, not offence).
Capitalist and democratic governments screw up just as much. They just spend a lot more money on consultants and studies before doing it. Or, they're so paralyzed by fear of screwing up that nothing gets done. Admit it, there's been at least one major project you wish your local government could ram through, ignoring the complaints of some residents that it'll disrupt their way of life, or not waste tax money on yet another environmental impact study.
The 1-child laws in China, while draconian and fraught with unintended consequences, were extremely necessary, and an example of how sometimes necessary but drastic actions can't be done in a democracy. India doesn't have this luxury.
I agree with the relative value of children in developed vs developing countries.
Mind you,in another "road to hell is paved with good intentions" example, a lot of aid comes as produce from developed-world farms. Since this food-aid is either free or very cheap, local farms can't make enough money to keep running, close, and these very workers are then out of a job, which was menial pay to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
Google Maps may have come after Mapquest and some other online mapping service, but isn't that like saying the iPhone came after other smartphones, and the iPad came after almost a decade of tablets?
Because just like the iPhone and iPad did to their respective markets, Google Maps's first public release completely wiped the floor with what Mapquest had at the time, and of course they've greatly improved it since. It may not have had all the advanced features but the interface was so much better and easy to use it didn't matter.
There's a plausible reason for that. With almost all the other power generation schemes, a catastrophic failure in the system kills *someone else*. The coal miners, oil workers, anyone living beneath the dam, etc.
There's a very tiny chance you'll get hit by debris from a runaway wind turbine that breaks apart, and already people are complaining about wind farms decreasing their property values and the noise they make. But nuclear? You can be hundreds of kilometres away and still be affected in some way if something bad happens.
I happen to (mostly) support nuclear energy, I'm just pointing out a possible reason for the general paranoia.
To your point about geopolitics: ignoring all the other evidence, the mere fact that the Soviet Union (you know, the evil communists and the other country trying to land man on the moon first) did not immediately denounce the landings (choose from SIX of them, over 3 years) with "It's a FAAAAAAAAAKE!", should be more than enough evidence that the manned moon landings were real.
The nutters might then say "Well, the US and Soviets were obviously in cahoots then!" At that point it, it should be obvious to anyone that the nutters are not all there.
Just watched Serenity again yesterday, the sequence nedlohs quotes takes place *before* Mal and the Operative start fighting hand-to-hand, and before the massacres were ordered.
But, the Operative was already established as someone you can't truly reason with (through dialogue with Shepherd Book)--it's his way or not at all. He's a believer and willfully ignorant of why he's been ordered to do something.
Using a service like facebook for free? news flash: You aren't the consumer, you are THE PRODUCT.
This isn't limited to just free services.
Remember the news a few days back about OnStar changing their TOS so they can sell data they collected from current and former customers?
Yes, you get to pay for the privilege of being a product.
And yet Microsoft somehow got a trademark for "windows" despite it being a generic term even in computing circles by the early 80s.
More like an adult male passerby noticing a young girl playing near a dangerously fast-flowing river, but choosing not to intervene because the risk of being accused of a child molester or attempted abductor is too great (tell her it's dangerous and to move away from the river, and she'd run off screaming to her distant parents that there's a big bad man trying to kidnap her). After that, good luck proving that she *would* have fallen in if he hadn't intervened.
Sadly, this exact scenario happened in the UK a few years back--the girl fell in and drowned shortly after the man walked away. And the guy got roasted for not intervening. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Trees, coffee, corn/ethanol... both expensive in resources and take long to grow. I'm curious if anyone's tried using common weeds as fuel? Or even bamboo, which can grow up to 100 cm a day...
It might be, but as we returned the evaluation unit after the 1-week rental expired, I can't verify that with the PDFs we used.
First impressions were key, and if the thing can't even open simple PDFs a month after the system's release, their "amateur hour is over" ad slogan really bit them in the ass.
Not to mention lack of basic mail, calendar and contacts apps for users without Blackberries, told us they didn't want any business from small companies without existing Blackberries. We obliged.
Blackberry Playbook. Seriously.
We evaluated one a month after its release. Fully updated system, but the built-in Adobe reader was unable to open and reliably render or scroll two basic, Acrobat-generated PDFs (less than 500kB, text with some images, no fancy stuff). No background apps were running to slow things down.
My 2-year old underpowered iPhone opened them just fine.
Yes, the dialogue that he'd just divorced hinted that he was a bit older than Kirk.
What's harder to reconcile is stuff like Chekov already an ensign, while Uhuru is still a cadet (in the original series she was already a lieutenant). And then of course an inexperienced (though gifted) cadet Kirk jumping several grades straight to captain.
The big difference between the two is that Star Trek has very little in the way of fighter craft. There isn't much in the way of Star Trek canon to establish whether ships in that universe would have difficulty going up against a squadron of fighters, but Voyager got the crap kicked out of it by a few dozen supposedly obsolete fighters in one episode because the fighters were moving too fast to get a reliable shot on them.
That's because Voyager writers were lazy and unimaginative, or they hobbled technology only to suit a plot.
Warships *today* can target and fire on multiple airborne targets. A 24th-century starship, with faster-than-light computer systems and phaser banks that can be aimed almost instantaneously, should have no problem tracking and firing on any number of small sub-light craft, no matter how manoeuvrable they are.
A single ship can of course still be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but unless Voyager was damaged at that point (I don't know the episode you're referring to), "moving too fast to get a reliable shot" is a pathetic cop-out.
A Deep Space Nine episode dealt with the "Federation is kind of creepy" sentiment directly. A former Starfleet security officer, turned renegade Maquis, said this to Captain Sisko:
Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism... Starships chase us through the Badlands... and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why?
Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation.
Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators so that one day they can take their "rightful place" on the Federation
Council.
You know, in some ways you're worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious... you assimilate people and they don't even know it.
That's a retcon (or alt-con to be accurate).
A lot of character backstory in the recent "Star Trek" movie made no sense at all. My mom, who never really followed the original or any Trek series, saw the first scene with McCoy and Kirk together in the shuttle and remarked, Isn't the doctor supposed to be much older?
Also, why should we be able to mock Michael Jackson's death but not a random passerby's? It doesn't cause anyone close to him less grief just because he was a public figure. Which, by the way, anyone who appears in the news once or has a Facebook profile/shrine seems to be, to varying extents, in the web 2.0.
Because Michael Jackson, other celebrities, politicians, etc are public figures by choice. Less so royalty since they are born into it, or family of public figures.
The News of the World scandal has been around the better part of a decade--everyone *knew* they hacked into voicemails of the rich and famous, and they didn't really care, but it wasn't until it became known that they hacked into and tampered with VM evidence in the case of the murdered girl, and possibly also grieving war widows and widowers, that the line was crossed and the public turned en masse against Murdoch and his media empire (for all the good that did, admittedly). Because the public identifies with random passerbys who could be themselves. And in wonderful irony, Rupert Murdoch, who jealously guards his own privacy while implicitly approving the violation of others', was put under the media spotlight himself.
The AC did, kind of, by acknowledging the EU has a crappy first-to-file rule in its patent laws. And then lambasting the American government for following in its footsteps by harmonizing that part, and making an already crappy patent system worse overall.
The one time the US definitely should have forged on alone and given a big middle finger to the rest of the world, it refused to do so.
Not to suggest any credence to their claims, but microwaves aren't operating 24x7, while many wifi and other transmitters often are.
For example, you can be exposed for several minutes to the horrible electronic hum from an old CRT TV, and not get a headache, but could get one from an even less-audible hum from a cheap CFL light over an hour or two.
Did the US or anyone ever file a patent on the systems used in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, space shuttle, and other spacecraft?
No? Then do the new "first to file" laws allow a private "inventor" to be granted patents on this obviously prior art (paid by taxpayers, no less)?
Or they could do the really crappy job they did for Babylon 5.
Although live action actually was shot in HD (forward thinking for a 1993 show), the large number of CGI and live/CGI composites were done in SD only. Computing resources were strained as it was, they weren't going to waste it rendering in HD until consumer technology caught up.
Unfortunately, the Warner Bros. warehouse that stored all these computer files burned down, and they had no backups elsewhere. So on the DVDs, any CGI or live/CGI scene was simply "blown up" to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio. The pure-CGI shots still look decent, but the composite scenes look bad on DVD on standard TV screens, and horrendous on HDTV.
Frankly, after the CGI files were destroyed, they shouldn't have bothered releasing the B5 DVDs in widescreen, leaving it regular 4:3 like the original broadcast and removing the need to blow up the CGI/composite shots.
That doesn't reflect well on us, we keep voting them in.
You f'd over regular customers for a bunch of 20-somthing cheapskates - we have not returned and may not.
I'm curious why you'd write them off completely based on a single night. Sure, it was a bad business decision on their part--they like many others might not have known the serious issues with doing Groupon promos. And yes, you paid full price for crap service that one night. If you're a regular, can't you try speaking to the owner next time you're there to explain yourserious issues with them last time, and give them at least one chance to make things right for you?
I admit my crappy service threshold is a tad high--it took three bad experiences at two locations before I gave up on a franchise.
Either this is a "whoosh!" or you seriously think lots of the world, and heck even the US, don't put too much significance into these writings. Thanks to those writings, foreign aid funds from at least two western countries were (are still?) unavailable to any humanitarian group that promotes any birth control other than abstinence.
You think it's just "commies" that screwed things up? It's any authoritarian system.
How was Mao's demand any different from the Judeo-Christian God's blessing and command to "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground"?
Hell, I was going to it was ideologically different, but the full bible translation doesn't seem much different from Mao's plan to bury the enemy in a human wave (and even then it was meant as a defence, not offence).
Capitalist and democratic governments screw up just as much. They just spend a lot more money on consultants and studies before doing it. Or, they're so paralyzed by fear of screwing up that nothing gets done. Admit it, there's been at least one major project you wish your local government could ram through, ignoring the complaints of some residents that it'll disrupt their way of life, or not waste tax money on yet another environmental impact study.
The 1-child laws in China, while draconian and fraught with unintended consequences, were extremely necessary, and an example of how sometimes necessary but drastic actions can't be done in a democracy. India doesn't have this luxury.
I agree with the relative value of children in developed vs developing countries.
Mind you,in another "road to hell is paved with good intentions" example, a lot of aid comes as produce from developed-world farms. Since this food-aid is either free or very cheap, local farms can't make enough money to keep running, close, and these very workers are then out of a job, which was menial pay to begin with.