What do you think SIXAXIS is, if not an attempt to steal Wii's thunder with a motion sensitive controller?
But you know what? It actually isn't that easy to throw something together like the Wiimote, to write the software libraries so developers can make the most use of the input, to tune those first-party games so that the controller feels as natural as possible.
Sony chose to spend their development time integrating the Cell while Nintendo decided to spend their development time on the controller. That was the bed Sony made, and now they must lie in it. They had your idea, to try to hack something together quick-like to try to "stillborn" the wii, and the best they could do was acceleration detection only in a two-handed controller, which is only used to good effect in games like Flow.
So how well did this strategy work for Sony? How many Wii sales do you think were lost? Is it clear that the Wiimote is an integral part of the console, while it is the SIXAXIS that is the gimmick? And do you really think that rushing off to make a full-fledged wiimote ripoff so it's ready by the end of the year would have even the slightest chance of making the Wii "stillborn" when it's already sold several times more than the PS3 and is likely to be even further ahead by christmas 07?
What amuses me about the Wii is that 360 and PS3 fans will mock Nintendo for catering to kids, yet it's the Wii that has all the adults playing while the audiences for the 360 and PS3 are made up of adolescent Grand Theft Auto and Halo fans.
That's because the only people who care about playing a game for "kids" are insecure adolescents.
That's where the AddictingGames thing comes in -- somebody to sort through the crap to pull out the nuggets of gold, and then to promote those games so that everyone can find them. If it works, it could be a great way to solve the signal/noise problem, bringing great homebrew games to people.
That has always been a problem with user-created content, in particular "mods" to games like quake or ut. This signal/noise problem exists, and the odds of people finding the same awesome mod as you is small so great mods would suffer from small user communities. My favorite quake 3 mod, navy seals, always suffered from this. Great mod (best of the semi-realistic mods if you ask me) but low user base. In large part, I think, because it was just one link among literally hundreds on some list of quake 3 mods, and who wants to download and install all those probably shitty mods just to try them out and discover that, yep, it's crap.
Anyway, I hope it works out, because I do really like the concept.
Which I single out not because it was the first or the best. I pick it because I bought the game solely for user-generated content (actually more the promise of user-generated content at the time I purchased it). The game itself was well-made and well-polished deathmatch, and I did play a few hours of it, but was already pretty bored of the format. Yet I can't even begin to calculate the amount of time I spent playing q3 fortress, navy seals, urban terror, true combat, and a smattering of other mods.
Without user-generated content I would call Q3 one of the most dissapointing games ever. With the user-generated content it is one of my favorite games ever.
So that's nothing new, but supporting user-created content on a console is new, especially supporting in the sense of actually funding some of their development and advertising and such. Sounds like a great idea overall if it works.
Under the current system big companies wait for smaller companies to become profitable and then they pounce. If one company sues another for patent infringement they should be obligated to sue all infringers. So as the owner of a small company I should be able to name co-defendants who also appear to use similar technology, and with how broad patents are these days it should not be hard to find big players who might be committing similar patent infringements.
If those bigger players are found to be implementing technology similar to what I am being sued for then they should be required to join the defense.
No more assassination through selective lawsuits.
The owner of the patent will just grant licenses to the bigger players that they don't want to have to face in court, so that they will not be infringing but the smaller company will. Unless you're planning on compulsory licenses too, then this idea will not stop selective lawsuits. Plus it would completely prevent any small company from ever enforcing a patent.
Besides, I don't think the problem is selective enforcement. Being allowed to not care about a given instance of infringement is a good thing. I don't want patents to become like trademarks, where companies must aggressively pursue all infringement just to keep the trademark. The problem in the common scenario you describe isn't the selectivity, it's the way in which they wait for the infringement to continue such that the infringing company is not just profitable but completely reliant on the patent for profits, and then they get attacked. They company with the patent knows the other is infringing, but allows it to continue so as to increase the damage done by their eventual attack.
So what I propose is that for someone to bring a patent infringement suit against someone, they must bring the suit within some reasonable time after first learning of the infringement. If it can be shown that the plaintiff knew about the infringement but just sat on the issue, then the case would be dismissed. The patent owner can still selectively enforce the patent based on who infringes, but not when. I'm thinking there would still be major implementation problems, such as what happens when a company is bought by another, does the infringement immunity get transfered? So it may not be practical. But it would have for example completely shut down the RAMBUS DDR patent suit, because simply by being aware that JDEC was implementing things covered by their patents they would have had to bring the issue up immediately (in which case JDEC would have changed the standard) or forfeit their ability to sue later. No more waiting until the "open" standard becomes ubiquitous then turning around and claiming you own it.
As a rule psychologists don't like to leave people more messed up than when they got them
"I have grossly misjudged the intent of the field" is what I said after hearing that the first time, and I withdrew my application to the psychology department.
Yeah, not real familiar with it since I'm not going there and the first google link that came up suggested 18. I'm just pointing out that it's more complicated than just over/under AoC in many cases.
I'd wager a guess they're going to fix the binary drivers only.
Fine with me as long as they actually do a good job of it. I'm sick of having only one well-supported choice for 3d cards, especially since some of the ATI cards are very good deals.
I love OSS and would prefer drivers with source, but I'm also pragmatic, I know it's not going to happen any time soon, and in the meantime would just rather have healthy support from multiple hardware vendors. I've been hoping that ATI being bought by AMD -- who was a big supporter of OSS especially when helping the linux kernel and gcc with x86-64 -- would help get the company on the ball with supporting Linux, and I wonder if this isn't evidence of that happening. In which case, yay, as far as I'm concerned.
Wait ten* more years when everyone is using Linux-based desktops, then we pressure the vendors to release open drivers and compete in part on that basis.:)
* may apply from the date you are reading this, not the date it was typed.
Age of consent in Germany is 18. However, if you and your partner are both under 18 ("under age", by definition), but over 16, that is not illegal.
This is similar to how many states laws work here in the U.S. Age of consent is generally 16-18, but there are often other ages where other rules apply. E.g. in some states if you are within 3 years of age of your partner, and your partner is over 16, then even though your partner is below the age of consent it is not considered statutory rape.
So there you go: Not-illegal under-age sex by definition. And now you know.
Heh, I'm just talking their motivations and goals, not the success of the actual implementation. Your link is pretty funny, showing as it does that the EU countries were thinking of the future of warfare in terms of the same mythical NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict that never happened, rather than the asymetrical wars that have been the majority of conflicts since WWII. Just like the US.
If a group posts fliers and holds rallies against some government official because he is corrupt, couldn't he simply call in the police/feds on the group as a "possible terrorist group", ransack their offices, etc, run up a huge bill and then sue the group out of existence under this new bill?
Yes! This is one step shy of being the domestic equivalent of the "enemy combatant" doctrine (I say doctrine because as far as I know none of our laws refer to the concept of the "enemy combatant" and that's just some new thing Bush made up). With enemy combatants, they can simply declare you to be one and at that point your guilt or innocence is irrelevent. The mere fact that they thought you were an enemy fighter is enough for them to do whatever they want.
Here, they at least aren't able to ignore the fact that you are actually innocent of plotting any real terrorist act, but they are still able to punish you for the fact that they merely thought you might be a terrorist. So all they have to do is say that they thought some activity of yours was terrorist-related, and when it turns out not to be, any expenses they incured "figuring out" what they already knew are your problem. So your innocence is irrelevent in the sense that you are still punished, just not as severely.
This is going to be fantastic for anyone who enjoys abusing their law enforcement powers. Imagine being able to accuse any woman wearing a short skirt of being a prostitute, drag her down to the station, and when it turns out there's no evidence of her being a prostitute, you can then charge her with the crime of making you think she was a prostitute. That short skirt was very deceiving! Okay, well, actually it wasn't even that short of a skirt. But it doesn't matter how stupid the inference is, the cop says he thought it was true! Ah, such a glorious time it is for fascists. If this bill passes, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the same principle is applied to other crimes like prostitution.
If you do see a risk of such a high level of disagreement, then Europe needs to grow it's military capacity drastically and quickly and not continue to be so dependant upon the USA for absolute support and NATO etc. Ergo IMHO Europe cannot raise # 3 as the underlying need for a separate GPS system, while at the same time not bother with a greater military and not desire US continued support in security matters.
Ever heard of the Eurofighter? The EU is trying to separate itself from dependence on the U.S. Clearly relations are still good right now, but that's no reason to assume they always will be.
Europe only needs to grow its military capacity drastically and quickly if a conflict appears to be imminent. The U.S. method of constantly maintaining a huge army is unusual, and even the US only practiced this in the last 60 years. Most countries maintain smaller armies and then ramp them up prior to a war. Switching factories from making cars to making planes and tanks isn't that hard, as we showed in the 40s. Switching an entire continent's navigation infrastructure from one GPS system to another is hard -- or at least time consuming -- due to all the embedded devices out there. Ergo, starting to build the redundant GPS network now makes sense, while producing massive amounts of tanks and planes does not. Being able to produce massive amounts of planes from your own design without requiring U.S. parts and services also makes sense. Those are the two things the EU is doing.
You might think that since we fought alongside half of Europe in two world wars -- and against the other half, don't forget -- that we will always be at peace with Europe. While the leaders of the US and EU may wish this to be the case, I doubt any of them are so foolish as to think it is guaranteed. Look at it this way: in 1776, the French were our best friends, our stalwart allies against the British (and the only reason we were able to defeat the redcoats). Less than 40 years later, we were at war with France. Things change, especially in politics. To think that because the past 50 years have been peaceful that the next 50 will be at well is naive and a-historical. To strive for peace while securing oneself against attack is the rational decision. And that's what the EU is doing.
Any agreement between the US and EU regarding the disabling of GPS service is implicitly grounded in the assumption that EU and US political objectives remain largely aligned. Anyone with any foresight can see that this assumption may not always hold true. The U.S. can selectively shut down the GPS system so that only particular regions are blocked. As you note, it would be near catastrophic for the system to be shut down. In the event that US/EU relations go sour -- in which case any agreement would be worth its weight in toilet paper -- the US could disable the GPS system over Europe, causing extreme amounts of damage with the push of a button. This is a foolish position for any government trying to position itself as an independent world power.
Notice how there is no other reason to build a redundant GPS system that makes any sense? There's no money to be made in it, nobody is going to subscribe to a slightly better GPS when they can get one that has proven itself more than adequate already (as evidenced by its importance and ubiquity) for free. Why would they reivnent the wheel, just for the sake of blowing money, though I'm sure the contractors don't mind. But the thing is that they aren't just re-inventing the wheel. They are invent a wheel owned by them as opposed to the original wheel which is owned by someone else.
#3 not only applies, it is the only reason that applies. There is only one reason for the EU to build their own redundant GPS system, and that's to have their own redundant GPS system.
I see no reason why we couldn't program the toilets to like being shit in. As long as we don't give them voices... that would be creepy. "Oh yeah, that was a huge one! What'd you have to eat last night? Wait, don't tell me... Corned beef, cheese fries and... yep... corn! That was fun. Come back soon!"
* higher precision to all users than is currently available through GPS or GLONASS * improve availability of positioning services at higher latitudes * provide an independent positioning system upon which European nations can rely even in times of war or political disagreement.
How important is #3 to the EU? I would say the first two points are the most valuable.
Without #3 there would be absolutely no motivation to execute the project at all. The current GPS signal is good enough, and some minor technical improvements would not justify going through all the expense of launching an entirely redundant satellite network. Politics and military pragmatism are what make it worth going through the expense. Not being subject to the U.S.' decisions on who will be able to receive GPS signals is the goal. It is only once you've decided to go ahead with the project for that reason that adding enhancements like #1 and #2 enter into the picture, because if you're going to launch a new GPS network it might as well be a better one. Launching a better GPS network is not a worthy enough goal by itself.
Sony is selling below production costs--what more could people want?
A product that was speced more appropriately for the target market, and thus more reasonably priced, maybe even without Sony having to price below cost.
It's not that the PS3 is a rip-off. Certainly you get enough for your money. But so what? It's still too much money. A yacht sold below cost is a great deal. Guess what? I'm not buying a yacht either.
Quit complaining about price--the reason you complain is that you want one badly but don't have the cash to pony up and buy the device. The price is what the price is. Either you buy it or you don't.
Thank you for explaining exactly why the PS3 is too expensive and why this is directly responsible for the PS3's shitty sales. People might want it, but it costs too much, so they don't. It's that freaking simple. "The price is what the price is", and all your pontificating about how worth it the PS3 is doesn't put any more money into peoples' pockets to buy a PS3 with, now does it?
You, Sony, and everyone like you needs to start thinking for real. If it costs too much then nobody will buy it. The PS3 costs too much. "For what it is"? No, that doesn't even enter into it. "For what people are willing to pay for a game console?" Now you're talking.
Anyone who pretends the price of the PS3 isn't a problem is simply delusional.
I worry it could actually get me in trouble if the randomly generated map resembles the white house, and the random seed says "i love bin laden" in ASCII.
WoW isn't an (F|T)PS, it's an MMORPG. Diablo II is a famous Blizzard RPG, and I'm certain that many of them were anxious for WoW since it is basically Diablo Online. There are a lot of people who aren't just fans of Warcraft or Diablo, but of Blizzard games in general since they are usually extremely well made examples of whatever genre they are in. Fanbase certainly counts for a lot.
There are plenty of open source companies that offer service and support for open source products. That's become one of the basic open source business models -- create the app as open source, and have a company that provides paid support contracts for it. This is how mysql and postgresql operate, for example. Red Hat makes their bank off support contracts for RHEL.
Legal responsibility? Show me the closed source company that takes legal responsibility for the functioning of their product. Every single one of their EULAs include the "NO RESPONSIBILITY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART" and disclaimers of all warranties implied or otherwise. This is one of MS's main FUD bullet points, and it's pretty hilarious -- making vague mentions of accountability and legal responsibility in PR statements, while at the same time using as much legalese as necessary to make it perfectly clear that they do NOT have any responsibility or accountability. So the only chance you would have of believing the PR lies is if you had never read the actual legal document that matters.
So, apples to apples isn't all that hard to do. The way in which closed source software falls behind is that by its nature you are dependent on whatever degree of support and accountability the company provides. An advantage of open source is that you can hire your own in-house support who is beholden to you and you only for maintenance, bug fixes, and tweaking the app to suit your needs.
You can use tri-state in modern computers (and I believe it is used) the problem comes from interference, modern microprocesser's already battle quantum effect and bulk effect, adding anouther layer make things much harder.
As another poster mentioned, the "tri-state" used in computers isn't trinary, it's binary with a 3rd state which is "off", as in not driving any output voltage at all.
The reason why we use binary and not trinary is because binary is simple circuit-wise -- you drive the output as hard as you can towards either Vdd or ground to get a logical 1 or 0. The harder you drive the faster the transition occurs*. The simplest logic gate -- the inverter -- can also be viewed as a simple amplifier. Trinary or higher order logic would require driving the output towards some intermediate voltage and then stopping, a much trickier feat and one where the hardest driving signal isn't necessarily the best.
* barring signal integrity issues like ringback, but these usually only start showing up as major factors at the system-bus level where the wires start to look more like transmission lines.
The Founding Fathers were living in a country that had never been attacked with weapons of mass destruction.
And what fucking country are you living in that has?!
Please don't tell me that 6 years of non-stop fearmongering has caused those planes to morph into nukes in peoples' easily manipulated memories! Please!
Unless you're suggesting that I'll be giving blood at the car rental place so they can run the dna analysis and prove who I am, I have a hard time understanding how this would make identity theft harder. Not having a bazillion cards in our wallet means there's only one document that needs be stolen.
It's not good enough for people interested in finding the truth.
The truth is that my father has had zero spyware problems since ditching the MS crap. You don't have to believe me, like I said it's anecdotal and I'm some random person on the internet, but I believe my personal experience.
In other words, you can go find truth wherever you want. My dad's computer works better now, and whatever the 'truth' is doesn't change that.
But hey, I'm sure the "truth" is that all software has bugs, and any difference in exploits can't have anything to do with the actual software involved.
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What do you think SIXAXIS is, if not an attempt to steal Wii's thunder with a motion sensitive controller?
But you know what? It actually isn't that easy to throw something together like the Wiimote, to write the software libraries so developers can make the most use of the input, to tune those first-party games so that the controller feels as natural as possible.
Sony chose to spend their development time integrating the Cell while Nintendo decided to spend their development time on the controller. That was the bed Sony made, and now they must lie in it. They had your idea, to try to hack something together quick-like to try to "stillborn" the wii, and the best they could do was acceleration detection only in a two-handed controller, which is only used to good effect in games like Flow.
So how well did this strategy work for Sony? How many Wii sales do you think were lost? Is it clear that the Wiimote is an integral part of the console, while it is the SIXAXIS that is the gimmick? And do you really think that rushing off to make a full-fledged wiimote ripoff so it's ready by the end of the year would have even the slightest chance of making the Wii "stillborn" when it's already sold several times more than the PS3 and is likely to be even further ahead by christmas 07?
What amuses me about the Wii is that 360 and PS3 fans will mock Nintendo for catering to kids, yet it's the Wii that has all the adults playing while the audiences for the 360 and PS3 are made up of adolescent Grand Theft Auto and Halo fans.
That's because the only people who care about playing a game for "kids" are insecure adolescents.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you eve... oh wait, I'm number 5. Haha. In your face, number 6!
That's where the AddictingGames thing comes in -- somebody to sort through the crap to pull out the nuggets of gold, and then to promote those games so that everyone can find them. If it works, it could be a great way to solve the signal/noise problem, bringing great homebrew games to people.
That has always been a problem with user-created content, in particular "mods" to games like quake or ut. This signal/noise problem exists, and the odds of people finding the same awesome mod as you is small so great mods would suffer from small user communities. My favorite quake 3 mod, navy seals, always suffered from this. Great mod (best of the semi-realistic mods if you ask me) but low user base. In large part, I think, because it was just one link among literally hundreds on some list of quake 3 mods, and who wants to download and install all those probably shitty mods just to try them out and discover that, yep, it's crap.
Anyway, I hope it works out, because I do really like the concept.
Which I single out not because it was the first or the best. I pick it because I bought the game solely for user-generated content (actually more the promise of user-generated content at the time I purchased it). The game itself was well-made and well-polished deathmatch, and I did play a few hours of it, but was already pretty bored of the format. Yet I can't even begin to calculate the amount of time I spent playing q3 fortress, navy seals, urban terror, true combat, and a smattering of other mods.
Without user-generated content I would call Q3 one of the most dissapointing games ever. With the user-generated content it is one of my favorite games ever.
So that's nothing new, but supporting user-created content on a console is new, especially supporting in the sense of actually funding some of their development and advertising and such. Sounds like a great idea overall if it works.
Under the current system big companies wait for smaller companies to become profitable and then they pounce. If one company sues another for patent infringement they should be obligated to sue all infringers. So as the owner of a small company I should be able to name co-defendants who also appear to use similar technology, and with how broad patents are these days it should not be hard to find big players who might be committing similar patent infringements.
If those bigger players are found to be implementing technology similar to what I am being sued for then they should be required to join the defense.
No more assassination through selective lawsuits.
The owner of the patent will just grant licenses to the bigger players that they don't want to have to face in court, so that they will not be infringing but the smaller company will. Unless you're planning on compulsory licenses too, then this idea will not stop selective lawsuits. Plus it would completely prevent any small company from ever enforcing a patent.
Besides, I don't think the problem is selective enforcement. Being allowed to not care about a given instance of infringement is a good thing. I don't want patents to become like trademarks, where companies must aggressively pursue all infringement just to keep the trademark. The problem in the common scenario you describe isn't the selectivity, it's the way in which they wait for the infringement to continue such that the infringing company is not just profitable but completely reliant on the patent for profits, and then they get attacked. They company with the patent knows the other is infringing, but allows it to continue so as to increase the damage done by their eventual attack.
So what I propose is that for someone to bring a patent infringement suit against someone, they must bring the suit within some reasonable time after first learning of the infringement. If it can be shown that the plaintiff knew about the infringement but just sat on the issue, then the case would be dismissed. The patent owner can still selectively enforce the patent based on who infringes, but not when. I'm thinking there would still be major implementation problems, such as what happens when a company is bought by another, does the infringement immunity get transfered? So it may not be practical. But it would have for example completely shut down the RAMBUS DDR patent suit, because simply by being aware that JDEC was implementing things covered by their patents they would have had to bring the issue up immediately (in which case JDEC would have changed the standard) or forfeit their ability to sue later. No more waiting until the "open" standard becomes ubiquitous then turning around and claiming you own it.
As a rule psychologists don't like to leave people more messed up than when they got them
"I have grossly misjudged the intent of the field" is what I said after hearing that the first time, and I withdrew my application to the psychology department.
Yeah, not real familiar with it since I'm not going there and the first google link that came up suggested 18. I'm just pointing out that it's more complicated than just over/under AoC in many cases.
I'd wager a guess they're going to fix the binary drivers only.
:)
Fine with me as long as they actually do a good job of it. I'm sick of having only one well-supported choice for 3d cards, especially since some of the ATI cards are very good deals.
I love OSS and would prefer drivers with source, but I'm also pragmatic, I know it's not going to happen any time soon, and in the meantime would just rather have healthy support from multiple hardware vendors. I've been hoping that ATI being bought by AMD -- who was a big supporter of OSS especially when helping the linux kernel and gcc with x86-64 -- would help get the company on the ball with supporting Linux, and I wonder if this isn't evidence of that happening. In which case, yay, as far as I'm concerned.
Wait ten* more years when everyone is using Linux-based desktops, then we pressure the vendors to release open drivers and compete in part on that basis.
* may apply from the date you are reading this, not the date it was typed.
Age of consent in Germany is 18. However, if you and your partner are both under 18 ("under age", by definition), but over 16, that is not illegal.
This is similar to how many states laws work here in the U.S. Age of consent is generally 16-18, but there are often other ages where other rules apply. E.g. in some states if you are within 3 years of age of your partner, and your partner is over 16, then even though your partner is below the age of consent it is not considered statutory rape.
So there you go: Not-illegal under-age sex by definition. And now you know.
Heh, I'm just talking their motivations and goals, not the success of the actual implementation. Your link is pretty funny, showing as it does that the EU countries were thinking of the future of warfare in terms of the same mythical NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict that never happened, rather than the asymetrical wars that have been the majority of conflicts since WWII. Just like the US.
New Square RPG -- The Last Laundromat.
Hmmm, intriguing, but I'm not so sure it'll work out.
If a group posts fliers and holds rallies against some government official because he is corrupt, couldn't he simply call in the police/feds on the group as a "possible terrorist group", ransack their offices, etc, run up a huge bill and then sue the group out of existence under this new bill?
Yes! This is one step shy of being the domestic equivalent of the "enemy combatant" doctrine (I say doctrine because as far as I know none of our laws refer to the concept of the "enemy combatant" and that's just some new thing Bush made up). With enemy combatants, they can simply declare you to be one and at that point your guilt or innocence is irrelevent. The mere fact that they thought you were an enemy fighter is enough for them to do whatever they want.
Here, they at least aren't able to ignore the fact that you are actually innocent of plotting any real terrorist act, but they are still able to punish you for the fact that they merely thought you might be a terrorist. So all they have to do is say that they thought some activity of yours was terrorist-related, and when it turns out not to be, any expenses they incured "figuring out" what they already knew are your problem. So your innocence is irrelevent in the sense that you are still punished, just not as severely.
This is going to be fantastic for anyone who enjoys abusing their law enforcement powers. Imagine being able to accuse any woman wearing a short skirt of being a prostitute, drag her down to the station, and when it turns out there's no evidence of her being a prostitute, you can then charge her with the crime of making you think she was a prostitute. That short skirt was very deceiving! Okay, well, actually it wasn't even that short of a skirt. But it doesn't matter how stupid the inference is, the cop says he thought it was true! Ah, such a glorious time it is for fascists. If this bill passes, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the same principle is applied to other crimes like prostitution.
If you do see a risk of such a high level of disagreement, then Europe needs to grow it's military capacity drastically and quickly and not continue to be so dependant upon the USA for absolute support and NATO etc. Ergo IMHO Europe cannot raise # 3 as the underlying need for a separate GPS system, while at the same time not bother with a greater military and not desire US continued support in security matters.
Ever heard of the Eurofighter? The EU is trying to separate itself from dependence on the U.S. Clearly relations are still good right now, but that's no reason to assume they always will be.
Europe only needs to grow its military capacity drastically and quickly if a conflict appears to be imminent. The U.S. method of constantly maintaining a huge army is unusual, and even the US only practiced this in the last 60 years. Most countries maintain smaller armies and then ramp them up prior to a war. Switching factories from making cars to making planes and tanks isn't that hard, as we showed in the 40s. Switching an entire continent's navigation infrastructure from one GPS system to another is hard -- or at least time consuming -- due to all the embedded devices out there. Ergo, starting to build the redundant GPS network now makes sense, while producing massive amounts of tanks and planes does not. Being able to produce massive amounts of planes from your own design without requiring U.S. parts and services also makes sense. Those are the two things the EU is doing.
You might think that since we fought alongside half of Europe in two world wars -- and against the other half, don't forget -- that we will always be at peace with Europe. While the leaders of the US and EU may wish this to be the case, I doubt any of them are so foolish as to think it is guaranteed. Look at it this way: in 1776, the French were our best friends, our stalwart allies against the British (and the only reason we were able to defeat the redcoats). Less than 40 years later, we were at war with France. Things change, especially in politics. To think that because the past 50 years have been peaceful that the next 50 will be at well is naive and a-historical. To strive for peace while securing oneself against attack is the rational decision. And that's what the EU is doing.
Any agreement between the US and EU regarding the disabling of GPS service is implicitly grounded in the assumption that EU and US political objectives remain largely aligned. Anyone with any foresight can see that this assumption may not always hold true. The U.S. can selectively shut down the GPS system so that only particular regions are blocked. As you note, it would be near catastrophic for the system to be shut down. In the event that US/EU relations go sour -- in which case any agreement would be worth its weight in toilet paper -- the US could disable the GPS system over Europe, causing extreme amounts of damage with the push of a button. This is a foolish position for any government trying to position itself as an independent world power.
Notice how there is no other reason to build a redundant GPS system that makes any sense? There's no money to be made in it, nobody is going to subscribe to a slightly better GPS when they can get one that has proven itself more than adequate already (as evidenced by its importance and ubiquity) for free. Why would they reivnent the wheel, just for the sake of blowing money, though I'm sure the contractors don't mind. But the thing is that they aren't just re-inventing the wheel. They are invent a wheel owned by them as opposed to the original wheel which is owned by someone else.
#3 not only applies, it is the only reason that applies. There is only one reason for the EU to build their own redundant GPS system, and that's to have their own redundant GPS system.
I see no reason why we couldn't program the toilets to like being shit in. As long as we don't give them voices... that would be creepy. "Oh yeah, that was a huge one! What'd you have to eat last night? Wait, don't tell me... Corned beef, cheese fries and... yep... corn! That was fun. Come back soon!"
* higher precision to all users than is currently available through GPS or GLONASS
* improve availability of positioning services at higher latitudes
* provide an independent positioning system upon which European nations can rely even in times of war or political disagreement.
How important is #3 to the EU? I would say the first two points are the most valuable.
Without #3 there would be absolutely no motivation to execute the project at all. The current GPS signal is good enough, and some minor technical improvements would not justify going through all the expense of launching an entirely redundant satellite network. Politics and military pragmatism are what make it worth going through the expense. Not being subject to the U.S.' decisions on who will be able to receive GPS signals is the goal. It is only once you've decided to go ahead with the project for that reason that adding enhancements like #1 and #2 enter into the picture, because if you're going to launch a new GPS network it might as well be a better one. Launching a better GPS network is not a worthy enough goal by itself.
Sony is selling below production costs--what more could people want?
A product that was speced more appropriately for the target market, and thus more reasonably priced, maybe even without Sony having to price below cost.
It's not that the PS3 is a rip-off. Certainly you get enough for your money. But so what? It's still too much money. A yacht sold below cost is a great deal. Guess what? I'm not buying a yacht either.
Quit complaining about price--the reason you complain is that you want one badly but don't have the cash to pony up and buy the device. The price is what the price is. Either you buy it or you don't.
Thank you for explaining exactly why the PS3 is too expensive and why this is directly responsible for the PS3's shitty sales. People might want it, but it costs too much, so they don't. It's that freaking simple. "The price is what the price is", and all your pontificating about how worth it the PS3 is doesn't put any more money into peoples' pockets to buy a PS3 with, now does it?
You, Sony, and everyone like you needs to start thinking for real. If it costs too much then nobody will buy it. The PS3 costs too much. "For what it is"? No, that doesn't even enter into it. "For what people are willing to pay for a game console?" Now you're talking.
Anyone who pretends the price of the PS3 isn't a problem is simply delusional.
I worry it could actually get me in trouble if the randomly generated map resembles the white house, and the random seed says "i love bin laden" in ASCII.
WoW isn't an (F|T)PS, it's an MMORPG. Diablo II is a famous Blizzard RPG, and I'm certain that many of them were anxious for WoW since it is basically Diablo Online. There are a lot of people who aren't just fans of Warcraft or Diablo, but of Blizzard games in general since they are usually extremely well made examples of whatever genre they are in. Fanbase certainly counts for a lot.
There are plenty of open source companies that offer service and support for open source products. That's become one of the basic open source business models -- create the app as open source, and have a company that provides paid support contracts for it. This is how mysql and postgresql operate, for example. Red Hat makes their bank off support contracts for RHEL.
Legal responsibility? Show me the closed source company that takes legal responsibility for the functioning of their product. Every single one of their EULAs include the "NO RESPONSIBILITY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART" and disclaimers of all warranties implied or otherwise. This is one of MS's main FUD bullet points, and it's pretty hilarious -- making vague mentions of accountability and legal responsibility in PR statements, while at the same time using as much legalese as necessary to make it perfectly clear that they do NOT have any responsibility or accountability. So the only chance you would have of believing the PR lies is if you had never read the actual legal document that matters.
So, apples to apples isn't all that hard to do. The way in which closed source software falls behind is that by its nature you are dependent on whatever degree of support and accountability the company provides. An advantage of open source is that you can hire your own in-house support who is beholden to you and you only for maintenance, bug fixes, and tweaking the app to suit your needs.
You can use tri-state in modern computers (and I believe it is used) the problem comes from interference, modern microprocesser's already battle quantum effect and bulk effect, adding anouther layer make things much harder.
As another poster mentioned, the "tri-state" used in computers isn't trinary, it's binary with a 3rd state which is "off", as in not driving any output voltage at all.
The reason why we use binary and not trinary is because binary is simple circuit-wise -- you drive the output as hard as you can towards either Vdd or ground to get a logical 1 or 0. The harder you drive the faster the transition occurs*. The simplest logic gate -- the inverter -- can also be viewed as a simple amplifier. Trinary or higher order logic would require driving the output towards some intermediate voltage and then stopping, a much trickier feat and one where the hardest driving signal isn't necessarily the best.
* barring signal integrity issues like ringback, but these usually only start showing up as major factors at the system-bus level where the wires start to look more like transmission lines.
The Founding Fathers were living in a country that had never been attacked with weapons of mass destruction.
And what fucking country are you living in that has?!
Please don't tell me that 6 years of non-stop fearmongering has caused those planes to morph into nukes in peoples' easily manipulated memories! Please!
Unless you're suggesting that I'll be giving blood at the car rental place so they can run the dna analysis and prove who I am, I have a hard time understanding how this would make identity theft harder. Not having a bazillion cards in our wallet means there's only one document that needs be stolen.
It's not good enough for people interested in finding the truth.
The truth is that my father has had zero spyware problems since ditching the MS crap. You don't have to believe me, like I said it's anecdotal and I'm some random person on the internet, but I believe my personal experience.
In other words, you can go find truth wherever you want. My dad's computer works better now, and whatever the 'truth' is doesn't change that.
But hey, I'm sure the "truth" is that all software has bugs, and any difference in exploits can't have anything to do with the actual software involved.