Parent shop talk is a good way to describe it. If I tell you I don't have a problem with my son playing GTA IV if he wants to, you may view that differently if I said 'my fifteen-year-old' versus 'my five-year-old'.:-)
In an example of YMMV, I have bad ankles, damaged from various sporting events and a bad fall down some steps 15 years ago. Coupled to that the weight I've added to my frame in the last 10 years, standing for much more than an hour at a time is a form of torture to me. Walking's okay, but just standing would kill me.
Fortunately, my back is in pretty good shape. If I had back problems, I would be screwed.:-/ I am also a demon about taking care of my back for this reason exactly.
Wow, you presume to know SO much about everyone. You assume that I don't buy carbon offsets (I do) and that I watch American Idol (I don't, and never have). For every decent carbon credit system out there, there's two that are fly-by-night confidence schemes and if you think only an hour or two of research is enough for anyone to make an informed decision, then the chances that YOU'RE getting taken in are not insignificant.
Nice strawman you've constructed to make yourself feel smug and superior. I think the point the GP was making is that money != CO2 in the atmosphere, and just because you throw money at a problem doesn't automatically make the problem go away.
If buying a carbon offset really reduces net greenhouse effects in the atmosphere, then that's terrific, and I wholeheartedly support it. If it doesn't, then all its doing is making people feel good about themselves while we continue to stick our planet in an E-Z-Bake oven, and that's arguably worse than doing nothing.
If that certain sequence of bytes isn't an actual service, then presumably any sequence of bytes (say a 4GB dump from/dev/urandom) is just as good?
You're not paying 10-60 bucks for the current copy. You're helping to pay for the first copy that cost thousands to millions to make without which the current 1 cent copy simply couldn't exist.
With that said, I think copy protection is stupid as it adds at best a slight inconvenience to those who would copy it, and oftentimes a greater than slight inconvenience to one's actual customers.
As to people pirating software, if I ever get around to writing a game that I would charge for, I think the only thing worse than people making copies and sharing it would be people not making copies and sharing it (apologies to Oscar Wilde).
No prob. Our 1e group noticed that high level wizards were almost overpowered, so we used magic resistance as "the great leveler". Many magic items in our universe would confer 5 or 10 percent MR, which was generally cumulative with other items. As a result, high level characters and intelligent monsters tended to all have enough MR to give the high level MUs a little something to worry about.
We also had adapted a mana point system for MUs that kept things more flexible, and also allowed MUs to overspend to get to spells they ordinarily didn't have access to, with clearly defined rules for chances and effects of spell failure. Made for some fun role-playing mechanics when the party is in dire straits and their only hope is for a spell caster to reach a little beyond their grasp with no guarantees on the outcome. The mechanics as is in 1e (and in all other eds I've played) made spell casting a clear line, either you could or you couldn't. Whereas in a lot of fiction where magic use is highlighted there was almost always some uncertainly when a spell caster was operating at the edges of their talents. When a party needs (or thinks they need) a teleport and all they have is a 9th level wizard, with our rules it could happen, but it could be interesting. We also awarded XP for using magic on the fringe successfully, to encourage a little chaos.:-)
I'm not disputing your litany of complaints, but in true/. pedantic mode, I'm about to call you out on your 1e rules magic resistance comment:-). IIRC, if something was magic resistant, the percentage listed was for an 11th level magic user and you added 5% per level below that and subtracted 5% for every level above. E.g. if you had 50% MR, a first level MU couldn't touch you with spells at all, but a 21st level MU would go through it like an acetylene torch through warm butter.
That is hilarious... I can see that on a YouTube already. If I had a video camera and a spare weekend, I'd film it myself. Brilliant. ****1/2 Starts Friday in select theatres.
Signed, a guy who just finished his Cingular contract, getting away from AT&T, to switch to Alltel to stay away from Verizon. When this contract is over, I'm going back to smoke signals.
I don't know if this is true with Phoenix or not, but it is true for Spirit & Opportunity and I have no reason to suspect it would be different for Phoenix.
The scientists are not really that interested in the visible light spectrum, the camera captures other wavelengths which are more telling of material composition and the like.
This is half-true. It's more accurate to say that scientists are interested in a lot more than the visible light spectrum. The MER Pancam actually mostly operates in the visible portion of the spectrum. The CCD itself is sensitive from about 400 (violet near the edge of UV) nanometers to 1100 nanometers (near IR) and the two cameras have different sets of filters (and the "left eye" camera has a filterless setting).
The Mini-TES instrument on the rovers operates mostly in the IR (167 bands!). Both VIS and IR can be used to do compositional science.
Just so you're clear, the money spent on space missions doesn't get put in a briefcase and put into space with the instrument. Most of that is actually spent on personnel, like most human endeavors, both public and private. And those people keep food on the table for their family, buy goods, pay taxes, and yes, even occasionally donate to help children dying of starvation here.
BTW, as one of those guys working on a few of these missions you're complaining about, I can tell you as a person intimately familiar with the budgeting for unmanned missions that a billion for a single mission to Mars would be living in luxury. Both rovers cost less than that, and the orbiters even less still. A modern sports stadium costs more than a mission to Mars. The entire space science budget proposed for FY2009 is 4.4 billion, which is about 22 days of the direct Iraq war budget authorization, or 6 days of interest payments on our debt. Our little lab here is a hair under 8 minutes of that interest payment.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a neutral party here, but it seems to me that there's some places that could be trimmed just a little bit that would make a much larger impact than if you abolished NASA.
I don't necessarily disagree with your premise, but that chart is a little bit disingenuous. Income != net worth, and if you're going to make a point of showing Bill Gate's largest single year of net worth increase as the top end (presumably from the 1999 year when MSFT split AND doubled), then to be fair, you'd have to show the mantle borehole his loss of net worth takes the very next year.
Google for "Pareto distribution" for more than you probably ever want to know about the phenomenon.
Hell, I'd settle for it going to its size and scope from 15 years ago. I can't recall where I read it, but someone did the numbers and showed if government spending just held to core inflation increases between then and now, that there would be a sufficient surplus right now that personal income tax could be totally eliminated and the budget would still be balanced.
Would it be gauche of me to point out this was 1993 and right before that whole Gingrich Republican revolution because government growth was out of control?
As a UK friend of mine put it: "In the US, 200 miles is practically around the corner, but 200 years is practically an eternity. In the UK, 200 years is like yesterday, but 200 miles might as well be the next star system."
Slashdot Mirror
-1 scary as hell?
Parent shop talk is a good way to describe it. If I tell you I don't have a problem with my son playing GTA IV if he wants to, you may view that differently if I said 'my fifteen-year-old' versus 'my five-year-old'. :-)
In an example of YMMV, I have bad ankles, damaged from various sporting events and a bad fall down some steps 15 years ago. Coupled to that the weight I've added to my frame in the last 10 years, standing for much more than an hour at a time is a form of torture to me. Walking's okay, but just standing would kill me.
Fortunately, my back is in pretty good shape. If I had back problems, I would be screwed. :-/ I am also a demon about taking care of my back for this reason exactly.
Wow, you presume to know SO much about everyone. You assume that I don't buy carbon offsets (I do) and that I watch American Idol (I don't, and never have). For every decent carbon credit system out there, there's two that are fly-by-night confidence schemes and if you think only an hour or two of research is enough for anyone to make an informed decision, then the chances that YOU'RE getting taken in are not insignificant.
Nice strawman you've constructed to make yourself feel smug and superior. I think the point the GP was making is that money != CO2 in the atmosphere, and just because you throw money at a problem doesn't automatically make the problem go away.
If buying a carbon offset really reduces net greenhouse effects in the atmosphere, then that's terrific, and I wholeheartedly support it. If it doesn't, then all its doing is making people feel good about themselves while we continue to stick our planet in an E-Z-Bake oven, and that's arguably worse than doing nothing.
If that certain sequence of bytes isn't an actual service, then presumably any sequence of bytes (say a 4GB dump from /dev/urandom) is just as good?
You're not paying 10-60 bucks for the current copy. You're helping to pay for the first copy that cost thousands to millions to make without which the current 1 cent copy simply couldn't exist.
With that said, I think copy protection is stupid as it adds at best a slight inconvenience to those who would copy it, and oftentimes a greater than slight inconvenience to one's actual customers.
As to people pirating software, if I ever get around to writing a game that I would charge for, I think the only thing worse than people making copies and sharing it would be people not making copies and sharing it (apologies to Oscar Wilde).
No prob. Our 1e group noticed that high level wizards were almost overpowered, so we used magic resistance as "the great leveler". Many magic items in our universe would confer 5 or 10 percent MR, which was generally cumulative with other items. As a result, high level characters and intelligent monsters tended to all have enough MR to give the high level MUs a little something to worry about.
We also had adapted a mana point system for MUs that kept things more flexible, and also allowed MUs to overspend to get to spells they ordinarily didn't have access to, with clearly defined rules for chances and effects of spell failure. Made for some fun role-playing mechanics when the party is in dire straits and their only hope is for a spell caster to reach a little beyond their grasp with no guarantees on the outcome. The mechanics as is in 1e (and in all other eds I've played) made spell casting a clear line, either you could or you couldn't. Whereas in a lot of fiction where magic use is highlighted there was almost always some uncertainly when a spell caster was operating at the edges of their talents. When a party needs (or thinks they need) a teleport and all they have is a 9th level wizard, with our rules it could happen, but it could be interesting. We also awarded XP for using magic on the fringe successfully, to encourage a little chaos. :-)
I'm not disputing your litany of complaints, but in true /. pedantic mode, I'm about to call you out on your 1e rules magic resistance comment :-). IIRC, if something was magic resistant, the percentage listed was for an 11th level magic user and you added 5% per level below that and subtracted 5% for every level above. E.g. if you had 50% MR, a first level MU couldn't touch you with spells at all, but a 21st level MU would go through it like an acetylene torch through warm butter.
Ohio: combines the warm, down-home friendliness and charm of the East Coast with the sophisticated urbane cosmopolitanism of the Midwest.
That is hilarious... I can see that on a YouTube already. If I had a video camera and a spare weekend, I'd film it myself. Brilliant. ****1/2 Starts Friday in select theatres.
Signed, a guy who just finished his Cingular contract, getting away from AT&T, to switch to Alltel to stay away from Verizon. When this contract is over, I'm going back to smoke signals.
Cue the Death Star references in 3... damn! Late to the party again!
I don't know if this is true with Phoenix or not, but it is true for Spirit & Opportunity and I have no reason to suspect it would be different for Phoenix.
The scientists are not really that interested in the visible light spectrum, the camera captures other wavelengths which are more telling of material composition and the like.
This is half-true. It's more accurate to say that scientists are interested in a lot more than the visible light spectrum. The MER Pancam actually mostly operates in the visible portion of the spectrum. The CCD itself is sensitive from about 400 (violet near the edge of UV) nanometers to 1100 nanometers (near IR) and the two cameras have different sets of filters (and the "left eye" camera has a filterless setting).
The Mini-TES instrument on the rovers operates mostly in the IR (167 bands!). Both VIS and IR can be used to do compositional science.
Remember: Buzz shot first!
You can buy this book for cheap in electronic format. Newegg has them, 100 copies on DVD for 24.99. and free three day shipping.
I keed, I keed. Relax! Hey you, RoR fans with the mod points! Put those back down!
When you buy Nepal at regular price.
Just so you're clear, the money spent on space missions doesn't get put in a briefcase and put into space with the instrument. Most of that is actually spent on personnel, like most human endeavors, both public and private. And those people keep food on the table for their family, buy goods, pay taxes, and yes, even occasionally donate to help children dying of starvation here.
BTW, as one of those guys working on a few of these missions you're complaining about, I can tell you as a person intimately familiar with the budgeting for unmanned missions that a billion for a single mission to Mars would be living in luxury. Both rovers cost less than that, and the orbiters even less still. A modern sports stadium costs more than a mission to Mars. The entire space science budget proposed for FY2009 is 4.4 billion, which is about 22 days of the direct Iraq war budget authorization, or 6 days of interest payments on our debt. Our little lab here is a hair under 8 minutes of that interest payment.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a neutral party here, but it seems to me that there's some places that could be trimmed just a little bit that would make a much larger impact than if you abolished NASA.
I don't necessarily disagree with your premise, but that chart is a little bit disingenuous. Income != net worth, and if you're going to make a point of showing Bill Gate's largest single year of net worth increase as the top end (presumably from the 1999 year when MSFT split AND doubled), then to be fair, you'd have to show the mantle borehole his loss of net worth takes the very next year.
Google for "Pareto distribution" for more than you probably ever want to know about the phenomenon.
And geosynchronous orbit isn't LEO, either. It's an order of magnitude larger than LEO.
Your hypothesis that conceit generates gravity intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
They said they did want more money to expand it beyond Bryan Adams.... so maybe Celine's next?
Hell, I'd settle for it going to its size and scope from 15 years ago. I can't recall where I read it, but someone did the numbers and showed if government spending just held to core inflation increases between then and now, that there would be a sufficient surplus right now that personal income tax could be totally eliminated and the budget would still be balanced.
Would it be gauche of me to point out this was 1993 and right before that whole Gingrich Republican revolution because government growth was out of control?
About 0.42 euros^2.
As a UK friend of mine put it: "In the US, 200 miles is practically around the corner, but 200 years is practically an eternity. In the UK, 200 years is like yesterday, but 200 miles might as well be the next star system."
Can't be perl. I could read it.