That's amazing. That same photograph just took my breath away.
It's wishful thinking, perhaps. but looking at the photograph and I imagine a place that once housed life. It might be the birthplace of life in our system and the seed planet for life on earth.
A dead planet once alive. Conservation of information.... the entire evolutionary record of that planet is in those rocks, that dirt. It's suffocatingly exciting.
And at once harrowing. It has no magnetic field to speak of. It must have had some form of one due to the clear volcanic/geological activity. What happened to it? When will the same thing happen here? If there was life there, did they just run out of time?
There are finite strictures on the amount of time ones birth planet remains hospitable to you. And if you don't figure out how to get off, how to survive in space and thrive, maybe you're doomed to die with your planet.
Some theories abound about why we haven't seen sign of intelligent life. my favorite espouses the notion that civilizations get wiped out by their own technology. What if the stricture is planetary? What if we don't see any intelligent signs because no species could survive the life cycle of their own planets?
It puts any interest in a next-gen ipod or the new google beta in perspective.
It's a great photograph. It fills me with that little kid feeling.... the one whe you look up a the sky and it feels like there's something there looking down at you, waiting for you to discover it.
I agree with you about a lunar base. I'm also interested in exploring the moon as a possible launch base for deep space vehicles. I can imagine that the obstacles neededto overcome deep space launches from the moon are easily offset by the reduced structural stress incurred from having to launch from earth's gravity.
We can build modular components on earth, assemble and launch from the moon. Hypothetically, we can even field extraterrestrial materials retrieved from foreign bodies on the moon before clearing them for earthbound research (although, I guess if we've bought it back this far, particulate matter would end up on earth anyway) It just makes a lot of sense.
Poster's point is valid whether you "care" about it or not.
Consumer software is an amalgam of relatively incompatible data types and proprietary platforms. Critical mass in the user base is thus very important to the success of a company's software, again, whether you "care" about it or not.
A poor analogy: I'm posting in english, (and I could be wrong) but you'll probably reply in english in order to ensure that your data is properly conveyed. Thus you're adhering to this critical mass pressure to conform, as most posters post in english. You could post in some obscure language (just as good as English or better, no doubt) but what would be the point?
Interestingly, Bill Gates has done interviews where he blatantly acknowledges Apple's innovation as its competitive advantage. In fact, he's been a valiant supporter of MSFT products for Apple when they struggled as a manufacturer. One can make the argument (poorly, albeit) that Microsoft's continued support of Office for Apple products during the lean years staved the company's death. Now that Apple has moved into consumer electronics, the dependence is less important. Gates also acknowledges that they look to Apple as an incubator for innovation which they then incorporate into their own products. This is all well documented. That makes Gates smart - why reinvent the wheel? For what? Microsoft doesn't seek to innovate - for better or worse - they seek to dominate. Apple is good at what it does, and thus far, Microsoft has been good at what it does.
Again, I submit, that poster's point about critical mass being advantageous to the producer as correct. Again, I submit that selfsame critical mass exerts pressure to conform on the industry as data types become standardized.
Microsoft's real threat is google. A google barebones OS perfectly integrated with an increasingly impressive suite of server side apps... and let's not forget that they'd release the OS for free. This is the only way I can see that Linux, any iteration thereof, can defeat the OS giants. Microsoft knows it, and they will try to crush Google at every chance going forward.
Again, I humbly submit, your post is not insightful.
right..... that's what I was going to say. There isn't dispute over the reality of global warming. More at issue is determining if the trigger is man's effect on the ecosystem or if it is a prexisting phemenomenon that distributes infrequently across the earth's timeline. My concern is that a lot of the research seems akin to an autopsy to me: everyone seems to be looking for the cause of death and disputing it, as if the cause somehow obviatets the fact that it's dead. The earth is warmer; greenhouse gases are called such for a reason - we release obscene amounts into a relatively closed system continuously. It is evident that the system would shift dynamically to regain an equilibrium. Reducing the production of greenhouse gases reduces our input and potentially increases the amount of time we have as a species to prepare for the dynamic climate shifts on the horizon.
It's like the US is damned both ways. In doing trade with them, we essentially enable and enbolden our replacement as a superpower. We ignore them, and our economy becomes an also ran as other economies enjoy the windfall of dealing with the sheer mass of their economy.
One can argue about a correlation between the health of an economy and the size of their urban centers, especially as far as consumer spending goes. China's urban centers alone stand at 300 million and counting. It's a fucking awesome mass of people just entering the first world economy. The Chinese are known to be excellent at saving cash; I read something about car companies salivating to get into the market because an overwhelming percentage of cars are purchased with cash (their banking system sucks, another chink in the armor).
I agree with all of the human rights concerns, etc., but they embody a critical mass that cannot be ignored.
someone posted something about them being unable to feed themselves. They can't power themselves either. I can imagine the war *cough* middle east destabilization efforts *cough* is a preemptive attempt to prevent consolidation and collusion efforts in the middle east with the chinese.
All in all, they can't be ignored. We're fucked both ways. I'm learning mandarin.
Oh, and to get on the topic: how is it possible that this Lee guy not ever disclose trade secrets. It's impossible. Not only that, but he's a well educated Chinese man who well serves as a frontman for a company attempting to woo the Chinese government into allowing them egress. There is so much more at stake with this lawsuit. If google establishes a significant foothold in that market, microsoft might be done. Wow. Like, they could really be done. A suite of server side applications for free, serving two billion people (their current penetration plus the chinese market) - OS agnostic. Then an OS like Linux can thrive - Google can even champion its own distribution - for free of course - that integrates all of its server side apps directly on a clean GUI - right on the desktop. It not only puts Microsoft in a quandary - but it wipes out a significant segment of the industry in one fell swoop. It's the commoditization of software - and a monopoly on information and the potential for relationships. Shit.
They do not in fact have earnings to justify their P/E.
I stream bloomberg financial at work and school - which these days often has google segments. Each of these will have an expert from Legg Mason or something (which owns like 20% of google). The analyst will ask the Legg Mason rep about overvaluation. The reply will be something like: "Google has the highest percentage of PHDs relative to its worksforce."
The analyst replies: "Well, how does that translate into revenue? What else is making money other than search and advertising?"
Legg Mason guy: "Didn't you hear what I said? PHDs. PHDs!!!!!"
Analyst shrugs. Cue commercial.
Dude, with 6 billion in cash and no set business plan, you can reinvent yourself any way you want. They are positioning themselves.... and with cash they can buy their way into a lot of subfields and muscle their way to the forefront. Very Microsoftesque.
Let's say you're aussie a inc. Would you accept flat profits over the course of your life as a company?
Better question: as a worker are you/do you turn down raises when they come your way? Don't you, in fact, work towards them?
How is this different?
Phone companies sell ringtones for $3-4 dollars; and they sell them by the millions. this would lead me to believe that songs themselves are underpriced at a dollar. The market supports $3-4 dollar songs, so record companies should indeed seek the model that maximizes revenue and is supported by sales.
but dude, Apple isn't making money off downloads. They use iTunes to sell iPods. Forget about downloads... the studios would get killed.
They need some kind of DRMed bit torrent client to kill bandwidth issues - and serious download penetration into the living room for there to be money in it now.
Again, the article is probably right in it's facts, but claiming that "Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth" (the article title) is like saying that linux would never be more popular on desktops than windows, or that desktop pc's would never outperform mainframes, or any other flippant claims about how the current way of doing things is the best.
I don't think the issue is whether the current way of doing things is the best or not in those instances. Linux won't surpass Windows on the desktop in its various current iterations because it is not standardized.
Re: desktops outperforming mainframes (I'm not a computer scientist) - but I'm not aware of any desktop ever outperforming a mainframe.
Re: SpaceShipOne and its descendants. It was designed to solve a particular problem and it solved it. It doesn't even have avionics and computer control. There is NO way that SpaceShipOne, in its current iteration or derivatives thereof, would EVER reach orbit. It was just a proof of concept. To design an orbital vehicle will mean going back to the drawing board and designing an orbital vehicle - probably some form of dual engine vehicle (thick atmosphere engines and thin atmosphere engines).
I'm not certain, and I didn't google it, but I don't think any craft has achieved orbit from a piggyback launch. Has that ever happened?
actually, for most people, the liver flushes at night. It's why people with gall bladder problems tend to have the most pain at night, as it contracts to dump dead blood cells, cholesterol, and toxins from the liver. the assumption is to rid the body of the stuff while you're not doing anything to minimize damage to organs and systems. So you work through the night and you work through the "dump" cycle, and you do the body some harm. Sleep is associated with increases in serum levels of growth hormone, but those levels are highest during night sleep, which is why even an 8 hour nap is not as refreshing as a night's worth of sleep.
For the most part, unless you want to be recycling all that mercury from the salmon you had for dinner, its in your best interest to get a good night's sleep.
When was the zenith of paranoia and nationalism of the Cold War most prevalent?
We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. Tyler Durden, FIGHT CLUB.
Give China about five years. Give India about 10-15. Tech will start moving at lightspeed as the US watches its hegemony abate and is forced to fight back.
Most students I know are more likely to be on Yahoo, which easily outstrips AIM in terms of features, but the point stands.
Most people I know don't switch IM clients. You add them to the ones you already use. So AIM has the largest user base because they were first. I guess the question is, how many IM clients is too many, and will a client like Trillian obviate the intended utility of their product?
Hollywood's primary audience is and always will be US filmgoers,
This is quickly changing. In fact, a good number of films are being designed for moderate American box office success with an aim to get in the black overseas. Put any Tom Cruise film in this category; he's a huge international star, eclipsing his fame domestically. Films like Collateral and American Samurai are examples of how the industry is acknowledging the sheer mass of the international market and catering accordingly.
That said, I agree with you. For the most part, comic book adaptations suffer greatly because the things that make great graphic novels often translate poorly onscreen. It's two critical things, I think: pacing and imagination. Hollywood doesn't want to lose its core audience. They'd rather seem a little behind the curve than ahead of it; this affirms the supposed intelligence of the audience, so dumbing down is a must as far as they're concerned. The second is imagination: film robs the viewer of the opportunity to imagine the unfolding of events, or for a different take on the turn of events. Unless someone totally nails it (Robert Rodriguez nailed Sin City visually) it becomes something people are dissatisfied with.
The problem is that you have smart people bringing smart projects to executives who understand how to sell dumb movies. Nine times out of ten, those executives have final cut, and are beholden to big-money investors who expect significant returns.
exactly. In another post we discussed how many corporate environments still use win 2k professional. it's stable, smaller footprint, etc. there's no need to upgrade.
re: 8 year old computer. exactly. it's another reason why consumer electronics companies are in a hurry to adopt new "standards" like HD and Blu-Ray, etc. They need to keep giving the consumer compelling reasons to upgrade, of which there have not been any recently.
I tend to think that Microsoft's greatest advantage is that they don't manufacture hardware.
Losing market share as a coercive monopoly (http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Coercive_monopol y ) is inevitable once leveling factors come into play. As there is little natural barrier to entry in the OS business, it's natural that more attractive price points would erode its position as a monopoly.
my personal experience is that you get updates using a pirated copy of xp.
you turn automatic updates on and they download in the background and you're prompted to install.
i run both pirated and legitimate versions of xp and the updating is identical - i.e. every update prompt for the clean copy comes up for the pirated copy.
MS has a vested interest in keeping their machines running, even if its a pirated copy.
previews ARE commercials. for the most part, so are movies.
product placement in films is one of the more consistent ways feature films offset increasingly expensive production costs.
notice the vintage cars in the original matrix... then notice the switch to plainly badged new (at the time) Cadillacs during the chase scene of reloaded... or Trinity's Ducati motorcycle (a scene which is slo-motioned just in time to get an uninterrupted view of the name brand).
I guess the issue here is the obtrusive nature of the advertisement. If i have to stop playing to watch it... that sux...
if i can watch during load screens or *gasp* at my discretion... that's another thing.
I've had truly amazing experiences and wow moments. I was also raised Roman Catholic.
None of those experiences, however, have affirmed in my mind the existence of a divine Jesus Christ, or a religious God. They have affirmed in me, however, that the universe is a wondrous and joyous place filled with an infinity of discovery and countless mystery. So I learned that I cannot comment on the nature of God, or his son, or the manner of rules to obey in order to please him. In actuality, my thinking has led me to believe that I would not worship an omnipotent being that demands my worship in exchange for his good favor, as those ideas seem incongruous.
So I have given it a good go, and any God that cannot forgive my natural skepticism when the entire world implies a universe diametrically opposed to that which God conveys is indeed a tough God to love.
I choose not to speculate on religion. Instead, I attempt to embrace the true wonder of humanity and the incandescent nature of each moment.
The universe will be what it will be, regardless of what I think of it.
Not a creationist troll, but much of what we do as humans is reward based. Reward based systems provide structure and reinforce behavior.
Religion in actuality is a precursor to government and other forms of social organization that we've yet to excise from the human canon. Don't eat that, why? Because God says so, and you wouldn't argue with God, would you? It's the original form of government, it reinforces rights of others and equitable social cooperation. There's even this reward... the biggest reward. Interesting that the religions with the biggest promised rewards are the most popular (i.e. immortality, everlasting life, reincarnation, etc).
For the most part, those who are religious justify life and its daily trials because they expect the reward if they do it right... it gives them purpose and structure. To take away both the reward and the game removes the very meaning from most people's lives. Many, forced with the choice, continue to believe in religion out of fear, especially because replacements offer no alternative, no reward. It's fear, fundamentally, of an indifferent universe.
Slashdot Mirror
That's amazing. That same photograph just took my breath away.
It's wishful thinking, perhaps. but looking at the photograph and I imagine a place that once housed life. It might be the birthplace of life in our system and the seed planet for life on earth.
A dead planet once alive. Conservation of information.... the entire evolutionary record of that planet is in those rocks, that dirt. It's suffocatingly exciting.
And at once harrowing. It has no magnetic field to speak of. It must have had some form of one due to the clear volcanic/geological activity. What happened to it? When will the same thing happen here? If there was life there, did they just run out of time?
There are finite strictures on the amount of time ones birth planet remains hospitable to you. And if you don't figure out how to get off, how to survive in space and thrive, maybe you're doomed to die with your planet.
Some theories abound about why we haven't seen sign of intelligent life. my favorite espouses the notion that civilizations get wiped out by their own technology. What if the stricture is planetary? What if we don't see any intelligent signs because no species could survive the life cycle of their own planets?
It puts any interest in a next-gen ipod or the new google beta in perspective.
It's a great photograph. It fills me with that little kid feeling.... the one whe you look up a the sky and it feels like there's something there looking down at you, waiting for you to discover it.
I agree with you about a lunar base. I'm also interested in exploring the moon as a possible launch base for deep space vehicles. I can imagine that the obstacles neededto overcome deep space launches from the moon are easily offset by the reduced structural stress incurred from having to launch from earth's gravity.
We can build modular components on earth, assemble and launch from the moon. Hypothetically, we can even field extraterrestrial materials retrieved from foreign bodies on the moon before clearing them for earthbound research (although, I guess if we've bought it back this far, particulate matter would end up on earth anyway) It just makes a lot of sense.
how is this insightful? under what circumstances?
Poster's point is valid whether you "care" about it or not.
Consumer software is an amalgam of relatively incompatible data types and proprietary platforms. Critical mass in the user base is thus very important to the success of a company's software, again, whether you "care" about it or not.
A poor analogy: I'm posting in english, (and I could be wrong) but you'll probably reply in english in order to ensure that your data is properly conveyed. Thus you're adhering to this critical mass pressure to conform, as most posters post in english. You could post in some obscure language (just as good as English or better, no doubt) but what would be the point?
Interestingly, Bill Gates has done interviews where he blatantly acknowledges Apple's innovation as its competitive advantage. In fact, he's been a valiant supporter of MSFT products for Apple when they struggled as a manufacturer. One can make the argument (poorly, albeit) that Microsoft's continued support of Office for Apple products during the lean years staved the company's death. Now that Apple has moved into consumer electronics, the dependence is less important. Gates also acknowledges that they look to Apple as an incubator for innovation which they then incorporate into their own products. This is all well documented. That makes Gates smart - why reinvent the wheel? For what? Microsoft doesn't seek to innovate - for better or worse - they seek to dominate. Apple is good at what it does, and thus far, Microsoft has been good at what it does.
Again, I submit, that poster's point about critical mass being advantageous to the producer as correct. Again, I submit that selfsame critical mass exerts pressure to conform on the industry as data types become standardized.
Microsoft's real threat is google. A google barebones OS perfectly integrated with an increasingly impressive suite of server side apps... and let's not forget that they'd release the OS for free. This is the only way I can see that Linux, any iteration thereof, can defeat the OS giants. Microsoft knows it, and they will try to crush Google at every chance going forward.
Again, I humbly submit, your post is not insightful.
I think it's in the article. Mention is made about the next stage of beta being the stage at which new features are added in.
right..... that's what I was going to say. There isn't dispute over the reality of global warming. More at issue is determining if the trigger is man's effect on the ecosystem or if it is a prexisting phemenomenon that distributes infrequently across the earth's timeline. My concern is that a lot of the research seems akin to an autopsy to me: everyone seems to be looking for the cause of death and disputing it, as if the cause somehow obviatets the fact that it's dead. The earth is warmer; greenhouse gases are called such for a reason - we release obscene amounts into a relatively closed system continuously. It is evident that the system would shift dynamically to regain an equilibrium. Reducing the production of greenhouse gases reduces our input and potentially increases the amount of time we have as a species to prepare for the dynamic climate shifts on the horizon.
I was totally unaware of that angle, and it of course makes perfect sense.
Re: the lecture. I would have been there. Tell me more.
It's like the US is damned both ways. In doing trade with them, we essentially enable and enbolden our replacement as a superpower. We ignore them, and our economy becomes an also ran as other economies enjoy the windfall of dealing with the sheer mass of their economy.
One can argue about a correlation between the health of an economy and the size of their urban centers, especially as far as consumer spending goes. China's urban centers alone stand at 300 million and counting. It's a fucking awesome mass of people just entering the first world economy. The Chinese are known to be excellent at saving cash; I read something about car companies salivating to get into the market because an overwhelming percentage of cars are purchased with cash (their banking system sucks, another chink in the armor).
I agree with all of the human rights concerns, etc., but they embody a critical mass that cannot be ignored.
someone posted something about them being unable to feed themselves. They can't power themselves either. I can imagine the war *cough* middle east destabilization efforts *cough* is a preemptive attempt to prevent consolidation and collusion efforts in the middle east with the chinese.
All in all, they can't be ignored. We're fucked both ways. I'm learning mandarin.
Oh, and to get on the topic: how is it possible that this Lee guy not ever disclose trade secrets. It's impossible. Not only that, but he's a well educated Chinese man who well serves as a frontman for a company attempting to woo the Chinese government into allowing them egress. There is so much more at stake with this lawsuit. If google establishes a significant foothold in that market, microsoft might be done. Wow. Like, they could really be done. A suite of server side applications for free, serving two billion people (their current penetration plus the chinese market) - OS agnostic. Then an OS like Linux can thrive - Google can even champion its own distribution - for free of course - that integrates all of its server side apps directly on a clean GUI - right on the desktop. It not only puts Microsoft in a quandary - but it wipes out a significant segment of the industry in one fell swoop. It's the commoditization of software - and a monopoly on information and the potential for relationships. Shit.
Guess that money spent on PHDs was well spent.
Sorry for the ramble.
This is lame modding. This is not flamebait.
They do not in fact have earnings to justify their P/E.
I stream bloomberg financial at work and school - which these days often has google segments. Each of these will have an expert from Legg Mason or something (which owns like 20% of google). The analyst will ask the Legg Mason rep about overvaluation. The reply will be something like: "Google has the highest percentage of PHDs relative to its worksforce."
The analyst replies: "Well, how does that translate into revenue? What else is making money other than search and advertising?"
Legg Mason guy: "Didn't you hear what I said? PHDs. PHDs!!!!!"
Analyst shrugs. Cue commercial.
Dude, with 6 billion in cash and no set business plan, you can reinvent yourself any way you want. They are positioning themselves.... and with cash they can buy their way into a lot of subfields and muscle their way to the forefront. Very Microsoftesque.
Let's say you're aussie a inc. Would you accept flat profits over the course of your life as a company?
Better question: as a worker are you/do you turn down raises when they come your way? Don't you, in fact, work towards them?
How is this different?
Phone companies sell ringtones for $3-4 dollars; and they sell them by the millions. this would lead me to believe that songs themselves are underpriced at a dollar. The market supports $3-4 dollar songs, so record companies should indeed seek the model that maximizes revenue and is supported by sales.
but dude, Apple isn't making money off downloads. They use iTunes to sell iPods. Forget about downloads... the studios would get killed.
They need some kind of DRMed bit torrent client to kill bandwidth issues - and serious download penetration into the living room for there to be money in it now.
Again, the article is probably right in it's facts, but claiming that "Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth" (the article title) is like saying that linux would never be more popular on desktops than windows, or that desktop pc's would never outperform mainframes, or any other flippant claims about how the current way of doing things is the best.
I don't think the issue is whether the current way of doing things is the best or not in those instances. Linux won't surpass Windows on the desktop in its various current iterations because it is not standardized.
Re: desktops outperforming mainframes (I'm not a computer scientist) - but I'm not aware of any desktop ever outperforming a mainframe.
Re: SpaceShipOne and its descendants. It was designed to solve a particular problem and it solved it. It doesn't even have avionics and computer control. There is NO way that SpaceShipOne, in its current iteration or derivatives thereof, would EVER reach orbit. It was just a proof of concept. To design an orbital vehicle will mean going back to the drawing board and designing an orbital vehicle - probably some form of dual engine vehicle (thick atmosphere engines and thin atmosphere engines).
I'm not certain, and I didn't google it, but I don't think any craft has achieved orbit from a piggyback launch. Has that ever happened?
Dude, Yahoo's been doing it for a while.
It does matter when you go to sleep.
actually, for most people, the liver flushes at night. It's why people with gall bladder problems tend to have the most pain at night, as it contracts to dump dead blood cells, cholesterol, and toxins from the liver. the assumption is to rid the body of the stuff while you're not doing anything to minimize damage to organs and systems. So you work through the night and you work through the "dump" cycle, and you do the body some harm. Sleep is associated with increases in serum levels of growth hormone, but those levels are highest during night sleep, which is why even an 8 hour nap is not as refreshing as a night's worth of sleep.
For the most part, unless you want to be recycling all that mercury from the salmon you had for dinner, its in your best interest to get a good night's sleep.
When was the zenith of paranoia and nationalism of the Cold War most prevalent?
We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. Tyler Durden, FIGHT CLUB.
Give China about five years. Give India about 10-15. Tech will start moving at lightspeed as the US watches its hegemony abate and is forced to fight back.
Most students I know are more likely to be on Yahoo, which easily outstrips AIM in terms of features, but the point stands.
Most people I know don't switch IM clients. You add them to the ones you already use. So AIM has the largest user base because they were first. I guess the question is, how many IM clients is too many, and will a client like Trillian obviate the intended utility of their product?
Hollywood's primary audience is and always will be US filmgoers,
This is quickly changing. In fact, a good number of films are being designed for moderate American box office success with an aim to get in the black overseas. Put any Tom Cruise film in this category; he's a huge international star, eclipsing his fame domestically. Films like Collateral and American Samurai are examples of how the industry is acknowledging the sheer mass of the international market and catering accordingly.
That said, I agree with you. For the most part, comic book adaptations suffer greatly because the things that make great graphic novels often translate poorly onscreen. It's two critical things, I think: pacing and imagination. Hollywood doesn't want to lose its core audience. They'd rather seem a little behind the curve than ahead of it; this affirms the supposed intelligence of the audience, so dumbing down is a must as far as they're concerned. The second is imagination: film robs the viewer of the opportunity to imagine the unfolding of events, or for a different take on the turn of events. Unless someone totally nails it (Robert Rodriguez nailed Sin City visually) it becomes something people are dissatisfied with.
The problem is that you have smart people bringing smart projects to executives who understand how to sell dumb movies. Nine times out of ten, those executives have final cut, and are beholden to big-money investors who expect significant returns.
lol
variations of "i'll hit it":
-I'll smash...
-I'd beat it...
-split the cut, hit the cut, or just "cutting" (southern)
variations of "I'd break it off":
-I'll stand up in it...
-I'll blow her back out...
-put a tingle in her spine...
This should be a slashdot poll.
Yeah, he's a beast. I actually have him in heavy rotation now - the "Surrounded by Silence" cd.
Is Kid Koala nerdcore?
mod parent up.
exactly. In another post we discussed how many corporate environments still use win 2k professional. it's stable, smaller footprint, etc. there's no need to upgrade.
re: 8 year old computer. exactly. it's another reason why consumer electronics companies are in a hurry to adopt new "standards" like HD and Blu-Ray, etc. They need to keep giving the consumer compelling reasons to upgrade, of which there have not been any recently.
I tend to think that Microsoft's greatest advantage is that they don't manufacture hardware.
l y ) is inevitable once leveling factors come into play. As there is little natural barrier to entry in the OS business, it's natural that more attractive price points would erode its position as a monopoly.
Losing market share as a coercive monopoly (http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Coercive_monopo
this is not insightful. why/how should/can an operating system be able to account for software advances in the future?
how can an operating system come complete? what does that mean?
my personal experience is that you get updates using a pirated copy of xp.
you turn automatic updates on and they download in the background and you're prompted to install.
i run both pirated and legitimate versions of xp and the updating is identical - i.e. every update prompt for the clean copy comes up for the pirated copy.
MS has a vested interest in keeping their machines running, even if its a pirated copy.
previews ARE commercials. for the most part, so are movies. product placement in films is one of the more consistent ways feature films offset increasingly expensive production costs. notice the vintage cars in the original matrix... then notice the switch to plainly badged new (at the time) Cadillacs during the chase scene of reloaded... or Trinity's Ducati motorcycle (a scene which is slo-motioned just in time to get an uninterrupted view of the name brand). I guess the issue here is the obtrusive nature of the advertisement. If i have to stop playing to watch it... that sux... if i can watch during load screens or *gasp* at my discretion... that's another thing.
I've had truly amazing experiences and wow moments. I was also raised Roman Catholic.
None of those experiences, however, have affirmed in my mind the existence of a divine Jesus Christ, or a religious God. They have affirmed in me, however, that the universe is a wondrous and joyous place filled with an infinity of discovery and countless mystery. So I learned that I cannot comment on the nature of God, or his son, or the manner of rules to obey in order to please him. In actuality, my thinking has led me to believe that I would not worship an omnipotent being that demands my worship in exchange for his good favor, as those ideas seem incongruous.
So I have given it a good go, and any God that cannot forgive my natural skepticism when the entire world implies a universe diametrically opposed to that which God conveys is indeed a tough God to love.
I choose not to speculate on religion. Instead, I attempt to embrace the true wonder of humanity and the incandescent nature of each moment.
The universe will be what it will be, regardless of what I think of it.
Not a creationist troll, but much of what we do as humans is reward based. Reward based systems provide structure and reinforce behavior.
Religion in actuality is a precursor to government and other forms of social organization that we've yet to excise from the human canon. Don't eat that, why? Because God says so, and you wouldn't argue with God, would you? It's the original form of government, it reinforces rights of others and equitable social cooperation. There's even this reward... the biggest reward. Interesting that the religions with the biggest promised rewards are the most popular (i.e. immortality, everlasting life, reincarnation, etc).
For the most part, those who are religious justify life and its daily trials because they expect the reward if they do it right... it gives them purpose and structure. To take away both the reward and the game removes the very meaning from most people's lives. Many, forced with the choice, continue to believe in religion out of fear, especially because replacements offer no alternative, no reward. It's fear, fundamentally, of an indifferent universe.