Star Trek and Star Wars are completely different, and not merely derivative of each other (except maybe the ice planet in ST6; my favourite ST film and it has a lot of SW elements).
ST is basically military SF: command structure, officers, etc. SW has very little of that. SW is space fantasy, rather than science fiction; it's LotR in space. It deals with the big Good vs Evil struggle of epic fantasy. ST is a utopian view of how technology will bring about a better society. Any big Evils there have to be outsiders, rather than the establishment. SW is practically the exact opposite.
Yes, it was a typo. I started with "I have a..." then changed it but messed up. And you can't edit slashdot messages afterward.
Very good of you to correct it while complimenting my command of a second language, though. More people should be like that.
And sorry for the confusion. I have an Angry Birds-addicted 2 year old, not 12 year old. While he sometimes launches birds to the left instead of the right, he also manages to finish some (easy) levels, and even improved a few highscores! I fear I've created a gaming prodigy.
He's two. He gets angry over the stupidest little things, and sometimes he doesn't even know why he's upset. It's a difficult age. We do set limits about when he can and cannot use his "tuter" (a small, cheap Android tablet) or "big tuter" (an iPad), and he's slowly getting better at accepting those limits.
It was certainly something that made us think. We still let him play Angry Birds (because it's such a cute game, and they are technically puzzles, though my son is still too young to really figure out the puzzle part; and alright, also because he loves it so much and gets angry when he can't play it and it's kinda convenient when he can enjoy himself for a few moments without our attention), but now we "launch" birds instead of shooting them.
I 2 year old loves Angry Birds (and is pretty good at it too!) and recently pointed to a real life bird outside saying "shoot!". (Actually he spoke Dutch, and said "afschieten" but this is a good enough translation, I guess.)
The only advantage that XML has over JSON is type-safety, basically. You can define the structure of really complex XML in excruciating detail. JSON is much looser. But all the DTDs and XSDs only annoyed people and took up time, and in these days of dynamic typing, nobody really cares much about that stuff. JSON is quick and lightweight, and when something is missing, you're going to notice anyway.
XML sounded good in the days of binary formats, but mostly it was a valuable lesson that led to JSON.
Not many, and certainly not well-publicized, which is why civilian deaths keep happening quite a lot there. Give people consequences and they'll change their behaviour. Let them see the consequences of other people's bad behaviour.
But they don't want to force morals on anyone. They just don't want to see silly stories about how their game encourages killing civilians, even when it doesn't. Removing civilians is by far the easiest way to do that, so that's what they do. Don't look at military FPSs for morality and choice.
I once played an awesome Robin Hood game (isometric perspective of gorgeous cities and castles) where you could knock people out and tie them up. If another guard came along, he'd untie him and they'd go look for their sergeant, who'd assemble all the guards and they'd organize a big sweep to find you. If you kept hidden, they'd eventually give up. Sometimes if you didn't tie up the guard, and another guard found him, he'd just berate the KO'd guard for sleeping on the job.
It was absolutely brilliant. Every game should have opponents react like that.
There's a lot of cheap supermarket home brand beers here that I'd never touch with a 10-foot pole. Euroshopper beer, for example, I've only ever seen being bought by homeless people. (Amazing that's a viable market!)
(Yes, I deserve to be modded into oblivion for this. Go ahead.)
The real reason why nuclear is so popular, is that the real problems, and therefore the real cost, only comes after the power has been generated. You can kinda ignore it for a while and hope it becomes someone else's problem. Or hope a better solution comes along later. It encourages to postpone solving the hard issues. For most renewable energy, you have to pay everything upfront. That's a big economic barrier, even if it is technically more economic in the long run. Most companies and governments just don't look that far ahead.
Remember, this article is about Europe, not the (continental) USA. Europe, despite its impressively mild climate, is actually quite far north. As another poster just commented, Sicily (about as far south as you can go in Europe) is at about the same latitude as San Francisco, which is considered somewhat northern here in the USA.
USA is not the same as California. There's still two states north of that. San Francisco seems to be about the same latitude as Kentucky and Virginia. But your point is correct. Naples, still definitely southern Italy, is the same latitude as New York.
Much of Europe is closer to the latitude of New England or Oregon and Washington, places not known for sunniness.
How about Calgary or even Edmonton? That's roughly the latitude of Amsterdam, London, and Berlin. All of Scandinavia is northern Canada.
Without the warm gulf stream, we'd be freezing our butts off here. (And while it's hard to predict such things accurately, global warming could mean the end of the warm gulf stream to Europe, and basically a new ice age in northern Europe.)
Solar plants would probably work pretty well in the southern parts of Europe like Italy and Greece, but they wouldn't be worthwhile at all in countries like Sweden or Finland. They probably wouldn't work all that great in the UK either; that island is famous for its fog and clouds and generally nasty weather.
There's occasional talk about huge power lines to the Sahara, and huge solar plants there. Ofcourse infrastructure on that scale has problems of its own.
This is a good point. I don't know exactly how much land has been declared uninhabitable around Chernobyl, but I've seen a map with the amount of desert we'd need to dedicate to solar power in order to power the world, and that's really a tiny, tiny fraction of the world's deserts.
Most of the green energy sources are not viable by themselves. They're too unstable. Wind gusts cause surges for wind power. Solar doesn't produce anything at night. The only one that sounds like it might be viable is wave energy, and that only on shorelines that are never flat.
So to fill in, you need nuclear, coal, or gas plants.
No, you need gas. Nuclear and coal don't deal well with fluctuations in demand (or supply or other energy sources) either. Gas does.
To remove all incentive to innovate, you have to remove the market on which innovative products can be sold. Most innovation happens because it enables you to produce a better product, which can be sold for money. Patents are mostly irrelevant, or get in the way.
Exactly. It's not that hard to build a PC with only a few slow, quiet fans. Silent PC Review helped me out a lot 3.5 years ago. I've got an Antec Solo case, Seasonic S380 (I think) PSU, passively cooled E8400 and HD3850, and I think a Nexus case fan. Two fans total (the PSU and the Nexus) do make some sound, but you only really hear it when the rest of the world is really, really quiet. And even then it's barely audible. If your game makes any kind of sound at all, you won't hear it.
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Shatner is definitely making little sense.
Star Trek and Star Wars are completely different, and not merely derivative of each other (except maybe the ice planet in ST6; my favourite ST film and it has a lot of SW elements).
ST is basically military SF: command structure, officers, etc. SW has very little of that.
SW is space fantasy, rather than science fiction; it's LotR in space. It deals with the big Good vs Evil struggle of epic fantasy.
ST is a utopian view of how technology will bring about a better society. Any big Evils there have to be outsiders, rather than the establishment. SW is practically the exact opposite.
Yes, it was a typo. I started with "I have a..." then changed it but messed up. And you can't edit slashdot messages afterward.
Very good of you to correct it while complimenting my command of a second language, though. More people should be like that.
And sorry for the confusion. I have an Angry Birds-addicted 2 year old, not 12 year old. While he sometimes launches birds to the left instead of the right, he also manages to finish some (easy) levels, and even improved a few highscores! I fear I've created a gaming prodigy.
He's two. He gets angry over the stupidest little things, and sometimes he doesn't even know why he's upset. It's a difficult age. We do set limits about when he can and cannot use his "tuter" (a small, cheap Android tablet) or "big tuter" (an iPad), and he's slowly getting better at accepting those limits.
It was certainly something that made us think. We still let him play Angry Birds (because it's such a cute game, and they are technically puzzles, though my son is still too young to really figure out the puzzle part; and alright, also because he loves it so much and gets angry when he can't play it and it's kinda convenient when he can enjoy himself for a few moments without our attention), but now we "launch" birds instead of shooting them.
I feel dirty.
I 2 year old loves Angry Birds (and is pretty good at it too!) and recently pointed to a real life bird outside saying "shoot!". (Actually he spoke Dutch, and said "afschieten" but this is a good enough translation, I guess.)
I wish Diaspora* would change their fucking name so it'd be more appealing to the masses.
What? The name is the coolest part of it! If only the rest of it was anywhere near as good, it might amount to something.
The only advantage that XML has over JSON is type-safety, basically. You can define the structure of really complex XML in excruciating detail. JSON is much looser. But all the DTDs and XSDs only annoyed people and took up time, and in these days of dynamic typing, nobody really cares much about that stuff. JSON is quick and lightweight, and when something is missing, you're going to notice anyway.
XML sounded good in the days of binary formats, but mostly it was a valuable lesson that led to JSON.
Not many, and certainly not well-publicized, which is why civilian deaths keep happening quite a lot there. Give people consequences and they'll change their behaviour. Let them see the consequences of other people's bad behaviour.
But they don't want to force morals on anyone. They just don't want to see silly stories about how their game encourages killing civilians, even when it doesn't. Removing civilians is by far the easiest way to do that, so that's what they do. Don't look at military FPSs for morality and choice.
I once played an awesome Robin Hood game (isometric perspective of gorgeous cities and castles) where you could knock people out and tie them up. If another guard came along, he'd untie him and they'd go look for their sergeant, who'd assemble all the guards and they'd organize a big sweep to find you. If you kept hidden, they'd eventually give up. Sometimes if you didn't tie up the guard, and another guard found him, he'd just berate the KO'd guard for sleeping on the job.
It was absolutely brilliant. Every game should have opponents react like that.
Come on, you only mention their crappy travesties of the past few years. Look at their games from when they still made good CRPGs, like Baldur's Gate.
For one of them, it's actually quite likely that they'll find something interesting.
Won't be long before parts of it become independent from each other.
So while the advertising is technically false, it does happen to give the correct impression.
Beer should be drunk at cellar temperature, somewhere between 6 and 8ÂC.
That's pretty normal fridge temperature, actually. How cold do you think cold is?
What is it with Czech towns and beer? Most Dutch light beers are called "pils", short for "pilsener beer", named after the Czech town of Pilsn.
There's a lot of cheap supermarket home brand beers here that I'd never touch with a 10-foot pole. Euroshopper beer, for example, I've only ever seen being bought by homeless people. (Amazing that's a viable market!)
(Yes, I deserve to be modded into oblivion for this. Go ahead.)
The thing is, weak export versions of boring European beers seem to be considered strong, special and/or hip in the US. Same thing with Heineken.
The real reason why nuclear is so popular, is that the real problems, and therefore the real cost, only comes after the power has been generated. You can kinda ignore it for a while and hope it becomes someone else's problem. Or hope a better solution comes along later. It encourages to postpone solving the hard issues. For most renewable energy, you have to pay everything upfront. That's a big economic barrier, even if it is technically more economic in the long run. Most companies and governments just don't look that far ahead.
Remember, this article is about Europe, not the (continental) USA. Europe, despite its impressively mild climate, is actually quite far north. As another poster just commented, Sicily (about as far south as you can go in Europe) is at about the same latitude as San Francisco, which is considered somewhat northern here in the USA.
USA is not the same as California. There's still two states north of that. San Francisco seems to be about the same latitude as Kentucky and Virginia. But your point is correct. Naples, still definitely southern Italy, is the same latitude as New York.
Much of Europe is closer to the latitude of New England or Oregon and Washington, places not known for sunniness.
How about Calgary or even Edmonton? That's roughly the latitude of Amsterdam, London, and Berlin. All of Scandinavia is northern Canada.
Without the warm gulf stream, we'd be freezing our butts off here. (And while it's hard to predict such things accurately, global warming could mean the end of the warm gulf stream to Europe, and basically a new ice age in northern Europe.)
Solar plants would probably work pretty well in the southern parts of Europe like Italy and Greece, but they wouldn't be worthwhile at all in countries like Sweden or Finland. They probably wouldn't work all that great in the UK either; that island is famous for its fog and clouds and generally nasty weather.
There's occasional talk about huge power lines to the Sahara, and huge solar plants there. Ofcourse infrastructure on that scale has problems of its own.
This is a good point. I don't know exactly how much land has been declared uninhabitable around Chernobyl, but I've seen a map with the amount of desert we'd need to dedicate to solar power in order to power the world, and that's really a tiny, tiny fraction of the world's deserts.
Most of the green energy sources are not viable by themselves. They're too unstable. Wind gusts cause surges for wind power. Solar doesn't produce anything at night. The only one that sounds like it might be viable is wave energy, and that only on shorelines that are never flat.
So to fill in, you need nuclear, coal, or gas plants.
No, you need gas. Nuclear and coal don't deal well with fluctuations in demand (or supply or other energy sources) either. Gas does.
The problem with fusion isn't so much sustaining it for thousands of years, but sustaining it for more than a second.
To remove all incentive to innovate, you have to remove the market on which innovative products can be sold. Most innovation happens because it enables you to produce a better product, which can be sold for money. Patents are mostly irrelevant, or get in the way.
Exactly. It's not that hard to build a PC with only a few slow, quiet fans. Silent PC Review helped me out a lot 3.5 years ago.
I've got an Antec Solo case, Seasonic S380 (I think) PSU, passively cooled E8400 and HD3850, and I think a Nexus case fan. Two fans total (the PSU and the Nexus) do make some sound, but you only really hear it when the rest of the world is really, really quiet. And even then it's barely audible. If your game makes any kind of sound at all, you won't hear it.
And I'm sure than you can improve on my setup.