"Why would you think that it's ethical to profit off of someone else's scam? Why would you think it's ethical to help make spam profitable? Why would you think that it was ethical to possibly ruin an innocent start-up company?"
If you read, I didn't say it would be ethical. I asked, implying that there is a good chance that it isn't.
It's certainly not ethical to make spam profitable; but by latching onto the pump and dump (ie: being one of the dumpers, not a pumper), you're essentially eating their lunch - it doesn't improve their profitability, and possibly damages it.
Meanwhile, if you know a pump-and-dump is going on, and that the possibility of it ruining an innocent start-up exists, is it unethical to attempt to catch th pump and dump, and once its over, return the profits by reinvesting them in the now-very-low priced stock, in a damage-control effort?
When I was younger - 11th grade, playing the 'stock market game' - I used FFT analysis to find out if there were any continuous patterns in penny stocks. Most of them had primary cycles at one frequency or another (around 14-30 days); characteristic of a business that's just starting, its capital varies widely based on its business cycle. I was never able to properly exploit this to maximum effect, but I did double my 'money' over the course of the semester.
If you get the e-mail, and are interested, would you not look at the stock history? You know it's a pump-and-dump scam, and if the stock's gone up in the last, say, day by, say, 5%, would you bother to do it, knowing that the pump has already occurred?
On the other hand, if the stock HASN'T moved in the past few days, is it ethicaly OK to jump in, and right back out when it reaches a 5% increase?
Heh. Sorry about that; my knowledge of the term comes rather solely from context clues via its (apprently improper) use on Slashdot. It's my own bad for using a term before looking it up ^_^.
Any serious non-contracted web designer does so on the equipment provided. I'm an employee, you understand. I work on what I'm given. Hell, I'm primarily a Linux user, but Wharton is a Windows shop. So, I bring my laptop along to test Konqy, and get at least SOME compatibility with webkit.
By the way, who cares about iCab? It's used by the 1% of the 4% of the computer using population that uses Apple with OS 9.
By the way: Testing a page rendering in virtualization is a Bad Thing. There's too many variables between the system and the actual browser that may interfere with rendering. You can flout all the stability statistics you want, but I've USED paralells; there are... unacceptable inconsistencies.
I do it on native hardware if I can. If I wanted to do things through virtualization, I could VMWare to OS-X (Yes, you haughty little Mac User, it works the other way too). I don't, because I want my testing results to be accurate.
'1. It's as if "may be provable" turned into "already proven" somewhere along the way, and I don't see any such proof. '
Sorry, mate. This isn't academia, it's slashdot ^_^. I wrote that off the top of my head as a hypothetical model, not an implementable one. IE: you're trying to run pseudocode directly on hardware. Of course nothing in the statement assumes that things are proven. Should be a given in a hypothetical model. Especially one that states it, as you say, at the start.
'Topic: Not necessarily a straw man'
Assuming you're refering to what I called a straw man in the first pgph of my post, of course it's a straw man; it's a statement of subjective experience placed out as evidence to the contrary of a position. There's nothing wrong with it being a straw man argument, just that this case may or may not be a border condition, depending on the results of actual research.
'...pretty much means that you found one axis that is completely independent from the others, and you can maximize without touching the others, which tends to never be true.'
Granted, but that's how the model starts; constraints and such are added as the game is fleshed out with empirical data. Note that I said in no less than two places that it's the beginning of a model in which I hypothesized that it may be a border condition, not that I promoted such a thing as fact.
'As you undoubtedly know, min-maxing in an optimal solution in pretty much any space _can_, in fact, reduce the value on one axis, to gain more on another that matters more.'
Pretty 20-20 obvious, and thank you for positing it. Still, you'll note that it is far easier, in a work setting, to quip a joke or discuss a small matter with your co-workers if they're actually in the room with you, ie: you don't have to take time away from typing code to type an IM or email. You're right, though; there are limits to a person's multitasking ability, and only so many hours in the day. That should be reflected in the game.
"There are problems and factors which you seem to not even consider at all... Quality of life, for example, is something that [is achieved] by knowing when to... just have a life."
Very true, but harder to quantify. Should I have determined QoL via hours of free time? How about an inverse coefficient based on commuting time? I'm not being sarcastic, just throwing out examples; what do you think the best quantification of QoL would be?
"As with any other min-maxing problem, you have to reduce X to get more on Y and Z, or reduce Y to get more of the other two."
As you stated before, the model is 'ill-defined', or as I like to say, 'green'. Exchanges such as this, and empirical research are needed to refine the model. The purpose of a green model is just to give ideas about how a system works, not to rigidly define it.
"Two solutions to two different problems can end up _very_ different... I don't think you can automatically assume that if one is better served by more networking, the other will too."
True, but that's the purpose of using game theory for such a model. Notice I didn't use 'advancement', but 'movement' in my original post. The idea is to determine whether the player is more able to change his position in the environment based on a number of variables, some or all of which may or may not be connected.
"For example, it seems to me that being a good programmer (and having a boss who can actually judge that) is alone very much enough."
Absolutely true! But I'll give you an example using a real game: Final Fantasy. It's equally possible to defeat a given monster if you're uber strong or uber magical, but it's also possible to do so if your character is well balanced. Similarly, it may be possible that the ability to network somewhat well can make up for, for example, being a merely mediocre coder. If that were the case, it may be the reason for the existence of so many mediocre programm
Ok, Plutonium isn't 'spent', it's a transuranic fission waste product from light water cooled reactors. It's quite energetic, radioactively speaking, so I wouldn't call it spent.
Meanwhile, the suburanics would be pretty valuable, industrially, if we were to extract them and let them live out their half lives (Xenon is a good example; it only takes a few months to become radioactively background, and is useful for a number of things).
Additionally, given the failure rate of railgun tech (ie: the rails fail eventually), I don't think I want a hunk of plutonium falling short of 'to the sun' and landing in the ocean. That sounds way too much like a pollution externality.
The best course, by the way, is not to produce the transuranic actinides in the first place; thorium flouride reactors pull this off nicely, spending almost all of the fuel and leaving only fission products, which can be distilled, stored until they reach background radiation levels, and be resold for industrial use. I do believe they produce a minute amount of neptunium - about a millionth by-mass of the transuranics light water reactors produce - but we gotta use Yucca Mountain for something, don't we?
I should say the _relative_ weight is smaller on a VW launcher. Sorry. Also, the stat for lithium is wrong, but it doesn't matter for the rest of it, as I used the NiMH stats.
You are correct. In fact, 8,000 joules is about the capacity of a standard AA rechargable battery. 8,000j = 2,222 V*mAh 2,222 V*mAh/1.2V = 1851.85 mAh
As a result, using an array of eight paralell AA rechargables and a capacitor array, one could probably build a railpistol, capable of 4-8 shots per charge (depending on the failure characteristics of the batteries, and the wear-and-tear on the caps). That is, given they've solved the rail damage issue.
Mind you, the max discharge rate on Lithium is 1.5A, and on NiMH is 6.4A, so you end up waiting 2-4 minutes between shots
1851.85 mAh/(8*6.4A)=130.21s
You can, of course, decrease this time by switching from a large-pistol to a rifle form factor, thus affording enough room for a larger batter/capacitor array, and a shorter recharge time.
For the coveted one-shot-per-second in quake, you'd need:
1851.85 mAh/(1s*6.4A)=1041 batteries
This is rediculous, of course. You get a lot more flexibility if you move from NiMH to Alkaline (with their higher discharge rates). Also, you don't need supersonic speed from a handgun.
Example: To launch a 0.22" short bullet (1.8g) to the same velocity as a standard.22 short handgun (330m/s), in a 10cm muzzle, you'd need to do it in about 0.0003s (0.1m/(330m/s)==0.0003s). As a result, you'd need about 20 joules:
So, you could get the power of a saturday night special, with a 3 shots-per-second limit in a four-or-so pound package and a lot more technology. That's, of course, assuming ideal energy transfer and no friction (heh, yeah right).
Which, of course, is why this is only used for BFG tech; the extra weight is a lot smaller and a lot more efficient on a Volkswagon launcher.
And if anyone links to the Gauss pistol kit, I'll be very cross. A gauss gun is not a railgun. They operate using different configurations, and require different electromagnetic engineering techniques. And gauss guns are more complicated.
The question is: "How do they solve the rail-damage problem?"
That is, in a railgun, the projectile must be in electrical contact with the rails. Also, the rails push each other apart. Early test using titanium would damage the rails beyond repair after a shot or two.
Now, I'm sure there are new esoteric conductive materials they could use, but my question is which one, and in what configuration?
Well, that may be true, but straw man is straw man; your personal account includes variables that can't be accounted for.
What I mean is this: Using a game-statistical model, with various directions of advancement, and attributes like skill, office presence (ie: not telecommuting), charisma, and such, it may be provable that, all other things being equal, having an office presence provides social connectivity, allowing the player to advance more easily in his chosen direction.
In cases where the player's other stats are higher, this may be irrelevant - he is more able to move on his own merit, and thus doesn't need the 'social grease'. Additionally, it may be showable that having a periodic office presence has significant advantages over having none, but a continuous office presence may have little advantage over a periodic one.
Of course, the game dynamic changes for a contractor versus a firm-static employee; the contracter lives more on reputation than on social contact, and thus has little need for face-to-face meetings. Meanwhile, the firm-static employee's advancement is eased by the ability to personally impress his superiors and coworkers - his good reputation is formed from good social interaction.
Moving further on, the impact of an office presence on a player's career would be inversely related to the percent of the firm that telecommutes - ie: the greater number of people without an office presence, the less likely it would be that having none would impact an individual's career. People would be used to it, and would very likely have a greater capacity for forming social contacts and personal respect for others via e-mail, phone, or other remote communication means.
So, will telecommuting kill your career? If you're good at what you do, not likely. If it's only most of the time, not likely. If you're a contracter and not an employee, not likely. If your firm is primarily telecommuted, not likely.
You, my good man, appear to be all three, so I'd say your 'player' would lay in a boundary condition in this 'game'. I don't mean to invalidate your position and experience, but to generalize a system and perhaps explain your relative position in it - that is, creating an statistical game doesn't bear directly on reality, but serves only to direct research and hypothesis (which in turn refine the game).
I know that. I've done that. I have a Xubuntu laptop with Konqy installed specifically or that. They have inconsistencies that really annoy me.
Example: I'm working on a webpage for the Wharton School. In Konqy, everything but the slideshow shows up fine (the slideshow doesn't fade, but it still works as a slideshow). I look at it on one of the library computers, and bam, nuffin works quite right.
WebKit is significantly different from the KHTML codebase as to be irritating for anyone in web development who can't afford to plotz down $500 for a Mac Mini.
What I don't get about it is that the Wharton School CAN afford to, but despite my requests, won't.
Which would be null if it weren't for the fanboys wanting to buy a movie and show it off - that is, before they relaized they could put films on their memory sticks - that is, before they realized it's a fun novelty, but really not worth the effort unless you're going on a long plane trip.
"If you're any type of web designer you use both to check your sites work." *inserts the word 'useful' before 'web designer'*
And hear hear. On any given project, so long as you've built it with a single point of maintenance design paradigm, this, and debugging, only takes a few hours.
That said, I really need a Mac. Gotta make sure those lame-ass Safari users can view my clients' work.
Agreed. Guinness is good. Damn good. And it isn't very nice to waste it. Still, a good batch of homebrew is often better, especially if you're the brewer (appreciating your own hard work makes it taste better, I think).
I would like to see DVDs, en masse, released in a dual layer setup, where layer 1 is standard DVD (for backward compatibility), and layer 2 is the HD-DVD version. That would let the movie companies sneak the new format in utilizing the existing install base.
That this isn't being done just shows how flipping stupid the content industry can be.
Unfortunately, dismissing the porn industry is what killed the technically superior Betamax. Without it, all they have is the rabid PS3 fans to bolster their film sales - and that's only if the gamers want to take a minute to watch a movie.
Thing is, you can't print the circuitry - just the shell. And usually the products coming out of these things are somewhat brittle (but can be hardened). They're for prototyping. I dunno. Maybe your guys had ones that print circuits, but I doubt it - especially that cell phones include some pretty sophisticated chippery.
Now, I don't doubt that using something more sophisticated (there are much nicer 3d quick-fab printers, even ones that use metal powder and can do 24 bit color plastic) we could eventually do PCBs and have the product cold-soldered together in place, but it doesn't exist yet.
Meanwhile, you'd still have to pay for raw materials, the printers are expensive (even this DIY printer is $2400 by itself - though, I think it could be built for cheaper - and the pro ones are $19k), and the end product of either is NOT durable by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, a little wealth may shift (and, indeed, already has), but for now, you're thinking all kinds of pie-in-the-sky.
Meanwhile, what the internet is doing to mass media: forcing it, slowly, to produce better quality entertainment.
It's taking them a while to catch on, but sci fi, as it's market pressures come from greater geekdom, seems to be moving the fastest. Geeks won't pay for shit television they can download, but they'll very happily buy the DVD of something they've downloaded if they've enjoyed it.
As a result, we have things like the new Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, the Stargates, etc. (and whatever your opinion of the writing/acting is, these examples are all of a certain objective quality: the plots are fine-grained and consistent, the acting is always believable and natural, and the production values are the best we've seen in non-movie sci fi).
Slashdot Mirror
"Why would you think that it's ethical to profit off of someone else's scam? Why would you think it's ethical to help make spam profitable? Why would you think that it was ethical to possibly ruin an innocent start-up company?"
If you read, I didn't say it would be ethical. I asked, implying that there is a good chance that it isn't.
It's certainly not ethical to make spam profitable; but by latching onto the pump and dump (ie: being one of the dumpers, not a pumper), you're essentially eating their lunch - it doesn't improve their profitability, and possibly damages it.
Meanwhile, if you know a pump-and-dump is going on, and that the possibility of it ruining an innocent start-up exists, is it unethical to attempt to catch th pump and dump, and once its over, return the profits by reinvesting them in the now-very-low priced stock, in a damage-control effort?
When I was younger - 11th grade, playing the 'stock market game' - I used FFT analysis to find out if there were any continuous patterns in penny stocks. Most of them had primary cycles at one frequency or another (around 14-30 days); characteristic of a business that's just starting, its capital varies widely based on its business cycle. I was never able to properly exploit this to maximum effect, but I did double my 'money' over the course of the semester.
Ok, here's the thing:
If you get the e-mail, and are interested, would you not look at the stock history? You know it's a pump-and-dump scam, and if the stock's gone up in the last, say, day by, say, 5%, would you bother to do it, knowing that the pump has already occurred?
On the other hand, if the stock HASN'T moved in the past few days, is it ethicaly OK to jump in, and right back out when it reaches a 5% increase?
I've read this post somewhere before... probably in another slashdot article.
Hey, mods, get this guy; I believe he's a spammer-troll.
That said, macs are kinda lame, but that's WAY offtopic in a Google discussion.
Heh. Sorry about that; my knowledge of the term comes rather solely from context clues via its (apprently improper) use on Slashdot. It's my own bad for using a term before looking it up ^_^.
Any serious non-contracted web designer does so on the equipment provided. I'm an employee, you understand. I work on what I'm given. Hell, I'm primarily a Linux user, but Wharton is a Windows shop. So, I bring my laptop along to test Konqy, and get at least SOME compatibility with webkit.
... unacceptable inconsistencies.
By the way, who cares about iCab? It's used by the 1% of the 4% of the computer using population that uses Apple with OS 9.
By the way:
Testing a page rendering in virtualization is a Bad Thing. There's too many variables between the system and the actual browser that may interfere with rendering. You can flout all the stability statistics you want, but I've USED paralells; there are
I do it on native hardware if I can. If I wanted to do things through virtualization, I could VMWare to OS-X (Yes, you haughty little Mac User, it works the other way too). I don't, because I want my testing results to be accurate.
'1. It's as if "may be provable" turned into "already proven" somewhere along the way, and I don't see any such proof. '
... Quality of life, for example, is something that [is achieved] by knowing when to ... just have a life."
... I don't think you can automatically assume that if one is better served by more networking, the other will too."
Sorry, mate. This isn't academia, it's slashdot ^_^. I wrote that off the top of my head as a hypothetical model, not an implementable one. IE: you're trying to run pseudocode directly on hardware. Of course nothing in the statement assumes that things are proven. Should be a given in a hypothetical model. Especially one that states it, as you say, at the start.
'Topic: Not necessarily a straw man'
Assuming you're refering to what I called a straw man in the first pgph of my post, of course it's a straw man; it's a statement of subjective experience placed out as evidence to the contrary of a position. There's nothing wrong with it being a straw man argument, just that this case may or may not be a border condition, depending on the results of actual research.
'...pretty much means that you found one axis that is completely independent from the others, and you can maximize without touching the others, which tends to never be true.'
Granted, but that's how the model starts; constraints and such are added as the game is fleshed out with empirical data. Note that I said in no less than two places that it's the beginning of a model in which I hypothesized that it may be a border condition, not that I promoted such a thing as fact.
'As you undoubtedly know, min-maxing in an optimal solution in pretty much any space _can_, in fact, reduce the value on one axis, to gain more on another that matters more.'
Pretty 20-20 obvious, and thank you for positing it. Still, you'll note that it is far easier, in a work setting, to quip a joke or discuss a small matter with your co-workers if they're actually in the room with you, ie: you don't have to take time away from typing code to type an IM or email. You're right, though; there are limits to a person's multitasking ability, and only so many hours in the day. That should be reflected in the game.
"There are problems and factors which you seem to not even consider at all
Very true, but harder to quantify. Should I have determined QoL via hours of free time? How about an inverse coefficient based on commuting time? I'm not being sarcastic, just throwing out examples; what do you think the best quantification of QoL would be?
"As with any other min-maxing problem, you have to reduce X to get more on Y and Z, or reduce Y to get more of the other two."
As you stated before, the model is 'ill-defined', or as I like to say, 'green'. Exchanges such as this, and empirical research are needed to refine the model. The purpose of a green model is just to give ideas about how a system works, not to rigidly define it.
"Two solutions to two different problems can end up _very_ different
True, but that's the purpose of using game theory for such a model. Notice I didn't use 'advancement', but 'movement' in my original post. The idea is to determine whether the player is more able to change his position in the environment based on a number of variables, some or all of which may or may not be connected.
"For example, it seems to me that being a good programmer (and having a boss who can actually judge that) is alone very much enough."
Absolutely true! But I'll give you an example using a real game: Final Fantasy. It's equally possible to defeat a given monster if you're uber strong or uber magical, but it's also possible to do so if your character is well balanced. Similarly, it may be possible that the ability to network somewhat well can make up for, for example, being a merely mediocre coder. If that were the case, it may be the reason for the existence of so many mediocre programm
Hi.
Ok, Plutonium isn't 'spent', it's a transuranic fission waste product from light water cooled reactors. It's quite energetic, radioactively speaking, so I wouldn't call it spent.
Meanwhile, the suburanics would be pretty valuable, industrially, if we were to extract them and let them live out their half lives (Xenon is a good example; it only takes a few months to become radioactively background, and is useful for a number of things).
Additionally, given the failure rate of railgun tech (ie: the rails fail eventually), I don't think I want a hunk of plutonium falling short of 'to the sun' and landing in the ocean. That sounds way too much like a pollution externality.
The best course, by the way, is not to produce the transuranic actinides in the first place; thorium flouride reactors pull this off nicely, spending almost all of the fuel and leaving only fission products, which can be distilled, stored until they reach background radiation levels, and be resold for industrial use. I do believe they produce a minute amount of neptunium - about a millionth by-mass of the transuranics light water reactors produce - but we gotta use Yucca Mountain for something, don't we?
Actually, you don't need a ferromagnetic slug for a railgun, just a conductive one.
I should say the _relative_ weight is smaller on a VW launcher. Sorry. Also, the stat for lithium is wrong, but it doesn't matter for the rest of it, as I used the NiMH stats.
You are correct. In fact, 8,000 joules is about the capacity of a standard AA rechargable battery.
.22 short handgun (330m/s), in a 10cm muzzle, you'd need to do it in about 0.0003s (0.1m/(330m/s)==0.0003s). As a result, you'd need about 20 joules:
8,000j = 2,222 V*mAh
2,222 V*mAh/1.2V = 1851.85 mAh
As a result, using an array of eight paralell AA rechargables and a capacitor array, one could probably build a railpistol, capable of 4-8 shots per charge (depending on the failure characteristics of the batteries, and the wear-and-tear on the caps). That is, given they've solved the rail damage issue.
Mind you, the max discharge rate on Lithium is 1.5A, and on NiMH is 6.4A, so you end up waiting 2-4 minutes between shots
1851.85 mAh/(8*6.4A)=130.21s
You can, of course, decrease this time by switching from a large-pistol to a rifle form factor, thus affording enough room for a larger batter/capacitor array, and a shorter recharge time.
For the coveted one-shot-per-second in quake, you'd need:
1851.85 mAh/(1s*6.4A)=1041 batteries
This is rediculous, of course. You get a lot more flexibility if you move from NiMH to Alkaline (with their higher discharge rates). Also, you don't need supersonic speed from a handgun.
Example: To launch a 0.22" short bullet (1.8g) to the same velocity as a standard
((0.00018 kg)*(0.1 m)*(330m/s))/(0.0003s)=19.8 j
19.8j = 5.5 v*mAh
5.5v*mAh/1.2v = 4.58 mAh
4.58 mAh/(1s*6.4A)=2.57 batteries
4.58 mAh/(8*6.4A)=0.33s
So, you could get the power of a saturday night special, with a 3 shots-per-second limit in a four-or-so pound package and a lot more technology. That's, of course, assuming ideal energy transfer and no friction (heh, yeah right).
Which, of course, is why this is only used for BFG tech; the extra weight is a lot smaller and a lot more efficient on a Volkswagon launcher.
And if anyone links to the Gauss pistol kit, I'll be very cross. A gauss gun is not a railgun. They operate using different configurations, and require different electromagnetic engineering techniques. And gauss guns are more complicated.
The question is:
"How do they solve the rail-damage problem?"
That is, in a railgun, the projectile must be in electrical contact with the rails. Also, the rails push each other apart. Early test using titanium would damage the rails beyond repair after a shot or two.
Now, I'm sure there are new esoteric conductive materials they could use, but my question is which one, and in what configuration?
Or is it classified?
Well, that may be true, but straw man is straw man; your personal account includes variables that can't be accounted for.
What I mean is this: Using a game-statistical model, with various directions of advancement, and attributes like skill, office presence (ie: not telecommuting), charisma, and such, it may be provable that, all other things being equal, having an office presence provides social connectivity, allowing the player to advance more easily in his chosen direction.
In cases where the player's other stats are higher, this may be irrelevant - he is more able to move on his own merit, and thus doesn't need the 'social grease'. Additionally, it may be showable that having a periodic office presence has significant advantages over having none, but a continuous office presence may have little advantage over a periodic one.
Of course, the game dynamic changes for a contractor versus a firm-static employee; the contracter lives more on reputation than on social contact, and thus has little need for face-to-face meetings. Meanwhile, the firm-static employee's advancement is eased by the ability to personally impress his superiors and coworkers - his good reputation is formed from good social interaction.
Moving further on, the impact of an office presence on a player's career would be inversely related to the percent of the firm that telecommutes - ie: the greater number of people without an office presence, the less likely it would be that having none would impact an individual's career. People would be used to it, and would very likely have a greater capacity for forming social contacts and personal respect for others via e-mail, phone, or other remote communication means.
So, will telecommuting kill your career? If you're good at what you do, not likely. If it's only most of the time, not likely. If you're a contracter and not an employee, not likely. If your firm is primarily telecommuted, not likely.
You, my good man, appear to be all three, so I'd say your 'player' would lay in a boundary condition in this 'game'. I don't mean to invalidate your position and experience, but to generalize a system and perhaps explain your relative position in it - that is, creating an statistical game doesn't bear directly on reality, but serves only to direct research and hypothesis (which in turn refine the game).
Does any of that sound about right?
I know that. I've done that. I have a Xubuntu laptop with Konqy installed specifically or that. They have inconsistencies that really annoy me.
Example:
I'm working on a webpage for the Wharton School. In Konqy, everything but the slideshow shows up fine (the slideshow doesn't fade, but it still works as a slideshow). I look at it on one of the library computers, and bam, nuffin works quite right.
WebKit is significantly different from the KHTML codebase as to be irritating for anyone in web development who can't afford to plotz down $500 for a Mac Mini.
What I don't get about it is that the Wharton School CAN afford to, but despite my requests, won't.
Which would be null if it weren't for the fanboys wanting to buy a movie and show it off - that is, before they relaized they could put films on their memory sticks - that is, before they realized it's a fun novelty, but really not worth the effort unless you're going on a long plane trip.
"If you're any type of web designer you use both to check your sites work."
*inserts the word 'useful' before 'web designer'*
And hear hear. On any given project, so long as you've built it with a single point of maintenance design paradigm, this, and debugging, only takes a few hours.
That said, I really need a Mac. Gotta make sure those lame-ass Safari users can view my clients' work.
Hey, how much, and can I get you're e-mail you so I can (over)charge for performing the little hack?
You may obsess over extending your stay on this earth, or you may enjoy it, and aide other in enjoying their stays. You may not do both.
Agreed. Guinness is good. Damn good. And it isn't very nice to waste it. Still, a good batch of homebrew is often better, especially if you're the brewer (appreciating your own hard work makes it taste better, I think).
That said, what sort do you brew?
One ring to rule them all?
Nah. Anymore, it seems more like a bus.
*cheesy rimshot*
I would like to see DVDs, en masse, released in a dual layer setup, where layer 1 is standard DVD (for backward compatibility), and layer 2 is the HD-DVD version. That would let the movie companies sneak the new format in utilizing the existing install base.
That this isn't being done just shows how flipping stupid the content industry can be.
Unfortunately, dismissing the porn industry is what killed the technically superior Betamax. Without it, all they have is the rabid PS3 fans to bolster their film sales - and that's only if the gamers want to take a minute to watch a movie.
Thing is, you can't print the circuitry - just the shell. And usually the products coming out of these things are somewhat brittle (but can be hardened). They're for prototyping. I dunno. Maybe your guys had ones that print circuits, but I doubt it - especially that cell phones include some pretty sophisticated chippery.
Now, I don't doubt that using something more sophisticated (there are much nicer 3d quick-fab printers, even ones that use metal powder and can do 24 bit color plastic) we could eventually do PCBs and have the product cold-soldered together in place, but it doesn't exist yet.
Meanwhile, you'd still have to pay for raw materials, the printers are expensive (even this DIY printer is $2400 by itself - though, I think it could be built for cheaper - and the pro ones are $19k), and the end product of either is NOT durable by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, a little wealth may shift (and, indeed, already has), but for now, you're thinking all kinds of pie-in-the-sky.
Meanwhile, what the internet is doing to mass media: forcing it, slowly, to produce better quality entertainment.
It's taking them a while to catch on, but sci fi, as it's market pressures come from greater geekdom, seems to be moving the fastest. Geeks won't pay for shit television they can download, but they'll very happily buy the DVD of something they've downloaded if they've enjoyed it.
As a result, we have things like the new Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, the Stargates, etc. (and whatever your opinion of the writing/acting is, these examples are all of a certain objective quality: the plots are fine-grained and consistent, the acting is always believable and natural, and the production values are the best we've seen in non-movie sci fi).
Funny. I haven't ever seen Quicktime preinstalled on a single Windows machine, but it seems to be the format of choice for Hollywood trailers.
Blame Microsoft. The OSS community didn't write a video format with the express purpose of locking out other platforms.
They wrote OGG, which plays on anything.
One could use a 32 bit build of mplayer or xine. 32 bit apps still work in linux 64. Just not optimally.