"The worst nuclear disaster in history killed a total of 3,000 people"
The worst one so far that is. And no one has tried flying a plane into a nuke yet.
Sure, the feds have investigated the ability of our nuclear plants to withstand a terrorist attack like 9/11, and it even looks like our reactors could take a 747 and keep on tickin'.
Not to sound like Chicken Little, or beat the 9/11 horse to death, or spread FUD (though I readily admit that I am), but even Washington isn't so sure that we could come through a 777/7E7 attack alive.
A massive shit-your-pants attack on our nuclear infrastructure is a matter of when, not if.
Sega's choice of the PowerVR (over rivaling 3dfx boards at the time) for the Dreamcast may have meant that the system shippped with one nail firmly driven in the coffin.
I'm not trolling here. I have a DC and really love the little system. It was genuinely underappreciated.
The industry rumor mill had it that the upcoming next-gen Sega console "Blackbelt" would use a Voodoo chipset. Sega and 3dfx never could come to terms on pricing, so Sega chose rivaling PowerVR hardware.
Sega had the chance to capitalize strongly on the existing installed base of programmers familiar with 3dfx/Voodoo solutions at the time of the Dreamcast's launch. The PowerVR2 had some strenghs, but involved an unnecessarily steep learning curve for most developers. Coding well for it was harder than it should have been.
As with any console, the launch titles were nowhere near as good as the later games in terms of utilizing the power of the hardware, but that was especially the case with the Dreamcast.
Sega has shown with its arcade cabinets that they know how to make good machines using PowerVR hardware -- and in the arcade world, that's fine if you're the only one that needs to know how to make games for your system -- but it was no easy task to build a console that needed broad developer support.
Of course, there were other factors that hurt the DC, but the gpu choice that Sega made was one of their biggest mistakes.
High-powered GPUs can make for really good general-purpose devices.
Apple's Newton had no CPU, only a GPU that was more than adequate.
Ideas like these are good in general. I'd like to see the industry move away from the CPU-as-chief status quo. Amigas were years ahead of their time in large part because the emphasis wasn't as much on central processing. The CPU did only what it was supposed to do -- hand out instructions to the gfx and audio subsystems.
Hardly using a "motorcycle to tow a pop-up camper." If anything, the conventional wisdom is, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Isn't it more likely that IBM would enter a long-term strategic partnership with Sun, rather than buying them up outright? IBM would end up with lots of tech it would have no use for -- what the hell does IBM need Sparc's for when they have the vibrant Power 4/PPC970 business?
Seriously though, would the human talent and access to Java they gain from purchasing Sun, make up for having to sort through the mess that is Sun right now?
Even if, despite their market cap, Sun folds, who would buy?
The problem, as I see it for potentional buyers, is that SUN is spread so far. They have the server business, JAVA, their burgeoning linux desktop experiment, and countless other projects that, frankly, seem to lack a common direction or guiding force. McNealy can't seem to drive the industry like he once could.
So any tech giant that might snatch SUN up would have to deal with product canibalization and addressing the company's systemic ills.
IBM seems unlikely, since they seem to be pushing the 64bit pro-enterprise market in other directions (read the Power line), but what about HP?
They, like Sun, have shown some serious committment as of late to AMD-based solutions. And they might even be able to flesh out their product offerings if they are choosey. I don't think HP-Compaq wants to jump ship on the low-end consumer Windows market, so the Java Desktop System might be on the chopping block, but SUN's enterprise products could, in theory mesh with HP's relatively well.
Just some thoughts. I don't claim to be an informed industry wonk.
What I'm really getting at is that so few people actually named themselves as co-complaintants.
You can look at the millions and millions of $$ that are being paid out, and say "wow, we really stuck it to the RIAA" but as several have pointed out, it's really a drop in the bucket.
The only reason the checks are arriving is because it was the cheapest way for the RIAA to go. If another million or so people named themselves as cocomplaintants, the local school district might not have to cut back its Arts deptartments again. The money would have gone to publiic music programs.
I'm sure plenty of RIAA folks breathed a deep sigh of relief knowing they could take the cheapo route and mail out some checks instead of fostering the sort of musical creativity that would drive students to *gasp* challenge authority and, say, sign with indie labels when they grow up and drop out of college.
That so many people people were unaware, or too lazy to even bother naming themselves as co-complaintants is a tragedy.
Why did this happen? Did the RIAA sit on making the public aware? Are people really too lazy? Did the opposite happen -- too many people read the fine print and realized they might not get a check if lots of other folks signed on.
If there were enough co-complaintants, the RIAA would have sent this money to fund public music programs.
Not enough people signed on, indicating (1) not enough people were aware of their rights, (2) not enough people cared, or more likely (3) not enough people understand just how evil the RIAA is.
I'll be getting a check, and I know what I should do with it -- give it to a local school.
This is a little troubling.
Suppose it works -- I am not an environmental scientist -- but isn't weather necessary?
Most "disasters" have some serious ecological import. Floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and earthquakes all serve ecological purposes.
Wildfires, in particular, clean out underbrush in forests. Decades of putting out small wildfires as soon as they sparked resulted in serious buildup of underbrush (=fuel). Eventually we had huge fires that more much more difficult to contain.
Should we want people to prevent hail? What ecological purpose does hail serve? I really don't know, I'm asking here.
Lamar Smith is also co-sponsor of the "Clean Airwaves Act" (HR 3687) that wants to eliminate the Safe-Haven distinction.
You won't be able to use dirty words at all on the public airwaves, 24 hours a day, if Smith gets his way.
Off topic, I know, but of general interest perhaps.
http://lamarsmith.house.gov/news.asp?FormMode=Deta il&ID=344
Spiegel has been covering the Maglev project in China for some time now, and nytimes.com also recently did a piece on the promise of Maglev in China.
This could be a serious blow to the German economy, already struggling to service Eastern debt. Exports are hurting because of the weak dollar, and this is one more blow to the Red-Green Coalition.
Any Germans care to (in)validate my claims?
The term weed has frequently been used in live music trading circles to refer to a method of distributing your favorite phish/dead/moe./sci show quickly.
Out of generosity on person seeds the show to two people absolutely free, no blanks, no postage, etc.
The only string attached are that each recipient in turn gives it to two more people for free.
And so on, like rabbits.
peace.
Preventing quack graphologists or more to my point quack psychology from swaying a jury's opinion is a pretty worthwhile idea.
There is sooo much junk psychology out there -- and I'd hate to see a return to people being sentenced on "recovered memories."
People want to believe "experts" and trust their authority (this concept is not junk psychology). All too often, a trial may come down to which side can afford the most "expert-sounding experts."
The funny thing about psychology is that depending on whom you ask, a psychologist will blame only the accused, or the parents, or the school, or the media, or genetics, or or or.
We psychologists have an amazing ability to snow people over with bullshit, and the push to publish generates some really questionable science. Lastly, our field does not tolerate reproducing earlier science much. For whatever reason, it's damned hard to get a PhD and gain credibility if you 'merely' reproduce someone else's work. One of the foundations of GOOD science is the replication of results, which weeds out much of the cruft.
And one last thing, try getting published with null-results. It almost surely won't happen.
Saying so and so, is a "respected, published expert" in such and such field of psychology doesn't always mean much. Said psychologist may have only had the most sensational study that quarter to adopt the alternate hypothesis.
Anyway, all that is to say this: we NEED some pretty high bar to prevent junk science for further ruining our courtrooms.
peace
12"/17" AlBooks
The G5'
All the apple branded Apps (even QT6 for win).
Notice a trend? It's brushed metal outside and inside.
Apple is and always has branded both a look and a feel. Mac apps work a certain way, and the hardware the run on tend to look a certain way. It's a hardware/software theme.
There were snow (aqua-ish?) iBooks/iMacs and eMacs. The current color uniting apple hardware and software is brushed metal.
peace.
todd
Slashdot Mirror
The worst one so far that is. And no one has tried flying a plane into a nuke yet.
Sure, the feds have investigated the ability of our nuclear plants to withstand a terrorist attack like 9/11, and it even looks like our reactors could take a 747 and keep on tickin'.
Not to sound like Chicken Little, or beat the 9/11 horse to death, or spread FUD (though I readily admit that I am), but even Washington isn't so sure that we could come through a 777/7E7 attack alive.
A massive shit-your-pants attack on our nuclear infrastructure is a matter of when, not if.
I'm not trolling here. I have a DC and really love the little system. It was genuinely underappreciated.
The industry rumor mill had it that the upcoming next-gen Sega console "Blackbelt" would use a Voodoo chipset. Sega and 3dfx never could come to terms on pricing, so Sega chose rivaling PowerVR hardware.
Sega had the chance to capitalize strongly on the existing installed base of programmers familiar with 3dfx/Voodoo solutions at the time of the Dreamcast's launch. The PowerVR2 had some strenghs, but involved an unnecessarily steep learning curve for most developers. Coding well for it was harder than it should have been.
As with any console, the launch titles were nowhere near as good as the later games in terms of utilizing the power of the hardware, but that was especially the case with the Dreamcast.
Sega has shown with its arcade cabinets that they know how to make good machines using PowerVR hardware -- and in the arcade world, that's fine if you're the only one that needs to know how to make games for your system -- but it was no easy task to build a console that needed broad developer support.
Of course, there were other factors that hurt the DC, but the gpu choice that Sega made was one of their biggest mistakes.
Apple's Newton had no CPU, only a GPU that was more than adequate.
Ideas like these are good in general. I'd like to see the industry move away from the CPU-as-chief status quo. Amigas were years ahead of their time in large part because the emphasis wasn't as much on central processing. The CPU did only what it was supposed to do -- hand out instructions to the gfx and audio subsystems.
Hardly using a "motorcycle to tow a pop-up camper." If anything, the conventional wisdom is, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Seriously though, would the human talent and access to Java they gain from purchasing Sun, make up for having to sort through the mess that is Sun right now?
The problem, as I see it for potentional buyers, is that SUN is spread so far. They have the server business, JAVA, their burgeoning linux desktop experiment, and countless other projects that, frankly, seem to lack a common direction or guiding force. McNealy can't seem to drive the industry like he once could.
So any tech giant that might snatch SUN up would have to deal with product canibalization and addressing the company's systemic ills.
IBM seems unlikely, since they seem to be pushing the 64bit pro-enterprise market in other directions (read the Power line), but what about HP? They, like Sun, have shown some serious committment as of late to AMD-based solutions. And they might even be able to flesh out their product offerings if they are choosey. I don't think HP-Compaq wants to jump ship on the low-end consumer Windows market, so the Java Desktop System might be on the chopping block, but SUN's enterprise products could, in theory mesh with HP's relatively well.
Just some thoughts. I don't claim to be an informed industry wonk.
You can look at the millions and millions of $$ that are being paid out, and say "wow, we really stuck it to the RIAA" but as several have pointed out, it's really a drop in the bucket.
The only reason the checks are arriving is because it was the cheapest way for the RIAA to go. If another million or so people named themselves as cocomplaintants, the local school district might not have to cut back its Arts deptartments again. The money would have gone to publiic music programs.
I'm sure plenty of RIAA folks breathed a deep sigh of relief knowing they could take the cheapo route and mail out some checks instead of fostering the sort of musical creativity that would drive students to *gasp* challenge authority and, say, sign with indie labels when they grow up and drop out of college.
That so many people people were unaware, or too lazy to even bother naming themselves as co-complaintants is a tragedy.
Why did this happen? Did the RIAA sit on making the public aware? Are people really too lazy? Did the opposite happen -- too many people read the fine print and realized they might not get a check if lots of other folks signed on.
What a pity.
Not enough people signed on, indicating (1) not enough people were aware of their rights, (2) not enough people cared, or more likely (3) not enough people understand just how evil the RIAA is.
I'll be getting a check, and I know what I should do with it -- give it to a local school.
Musical theater can be pretty expensive. I'd be OK with Les Mis-lite if it cost 50% less. Just a thought (then again, I hate musical theater).
This is a little troubling. Suppose it works -- I am not an environmental scientist -- but isn't weather necessary? Most "disasters" have some serious ecological import. Floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and earthquakes all serve ecological purposes. Wildfires, in particular, clean out underbrush in forests. Decades of putting out small wildfires as soon as they sparked resulted in serious buildup of underbrush (=fuel). Eventually we had huge fires that more much more difficult to contain. Should we want people to prevent hail? What ecological purpose does hail serve? I really don't know, I'm asking here.
Lamar Smith is also co-sponsor of the "Clean Airwaves Act" (HR 3687) that wants to eliminate the Safe-Haven distinction. You won't be able to use dirty words at all on the public airwaves, 24 hours a day, if Smith gets his way. Off topic, I know, but of general interest perhaps. http://lamarsmith.house.gov/news.asp?FormMode=Deta il&ID=344
Spiegel has been covering the Maglev project in China for some time now, and nytimes.com also recently did a piece on the promise of Maglev in China. This could be a serious blow to the German economy, already struggling to service Eastern debt. Exports are hurting because of the weak dollar, and this is one more blow to the Red-Green Coalition. Any Germans care to (in)validate my claims?
The term weed has frequently been used in live music trading circles to refer to a method of distributing your favorite phish/dead/moe./sci show quickly. Out of generosity on person seeds the show to two people absolutely free, no blanks, no postage, etc. The only string attached are that each recipient in turn gives it to two more people for free. And so on, like rabbits. peace.
Preventing quack graphologists or more to my point quack psychology from swaying a jury's opinion is a pretty worthwhile idea. There is sooo much junk psychology out there -- and I'd hate to see a return to people being sentenced on "recovered memories." People want to believe "experts" and trust their authority (this concept is not junk psychology). All too often, a trial may come down to which side can afford the most "expert-sounding experts." The funny thing about psychology is that depending on whom you ask, a psychologist will blame only the accused, or the parents, or the school, or the media, or genetics, or or or. We psychologists have an amazing ability to snow people over with bullshit, and the push to publish generates some really questionable science. Lastly, our field does not tolerate reproducing earlier science much. For whatever reason, it's damned hard to get a PhD and gain credibility if you 'merely' reproduce someone else's work. One of the foundations of GOOD science is the replication of results, which weeds out much of the cruft. And one last thing, try getting published with null-results. It almost surely won't happen. Saying so and so, is a "respected, published expert" in such and such field of psychology doesn't always mean much. Said psychologist may have only had the most sensational study that quarter to adopt the alternate hypothesis. Anyway, all that is to say this: we NEED some pretty high bar to prevent junk science for further ruining our courtrooms. peace
12"/17" AlBooks The G5' All the apple branded Apps (even QT6 for win). Notice a trend? It's brushed metal outside and inside. Apple is and always has branded both a look and a feel. Mac apps work a certain way, and the hardware the run on tend to look a certain way. It's a hardware/software theme. There were snow (aqua-ish?) iBooks/iMacs and eMacs. The current color uniting apple hardware and software is brushed metal. peace. todd