I chose not to waste mod points on the entire discussion here. The greater majority of it which is off-topic, flamebait, or troll.
There was also no -1 Arrogant Buffoon for the rest of the mostly male posts that knew with divine certainty the correctness of a blind bias.
In short the discussion here mirrors the gaming world in general. When the subject is the female gamer, their voice is simply not heard because there are too many others to tell you what the problem is or isn't without ever going to the source.
This really isn't news at all. The article itself should be marked redundant. Researchers have been saying for years that some sunlight is needed to prevent skin cancer. They have found that the highest risk tend to be office workers in artificial light and the areas of the body that are most prone to skin cancer are areas of the torso that have the most covering.
The most common scenario however is the user that has bought a new or replacement Windows PC. He doesn't own a firewall or even a router. So for him it's a matter of luck as to just how current the copy of Windows he got is.
Now what happens when he has to go back to those discs later and do a system restore? They aren't so current anymore and his window of death is the time it takes him to go online and get the updates, assuming the Auto-Update feature was turned on for him.
You and I, and everyone else here know better than to connect a pristine PC without some protection. Looking at my logs I see a probe or attack about every 2 minutes. And that's why there are thousands of PCs acting as willing slaves for spam and DoS attacks.
Hooking up a PC to your big screen is trivial, so is burning the copy and playing it on a standard deck hooked to said big-screen.
Of course go see SW in a theater. I can't see someone watching some low contrast handheld vidcam of this movie that actually cared about seeing it.
I've used downloads to see if a film is actually worth watching, shut it off in the first 15 minutes and either gone out to the theater or picked something else to watch. I also go and buy the DVD even if I have the download if it's worth keeping. When that changes, the studios will get much less of my money.
Can you imagine if the studios had enough confidence in their shovelware to provide a decent quality MPEG of the first 15 minutes of their titles?
Just like the game industry, the majority who actually pirate are ones who wouldn't buy it if that was their only option.
It doesn't matter what you think the new definition of science means. It has only one purpose, to ram creationism down the synapses of children.
People rigidly placed in a religious mindset tend to follow that particular mindset permanently. Just look around the world.
The outcome of this will simply be to "dumb down" a people. People who will be easily swayed by any dogma and propaganda fed to them by those in authority and by the ones responsible for their dogma specifically.
FAR more interesting than The Elegant Universe is his subsequent book The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. I highly recommend this to anyone that was interested by his earlier work or the various discussions here.
Most posts here seem to be quoting science from decades ago. The errors and misconceptions too numerous. It is clear that many have no idea how far we have come in understanding everything all the way back to and including time zero, including what even caused the Big Bang. It takes a mass of just 10Kg at the Big Bang to explain all known matter and energy in the unverse today. The Inflationary Model today is nothing like the originally proposed Big Bang. It predicts and explains what we currently observe.
Fermilab's proposal is fascinating and if they are correct could have a serious impact on modern research such as the search for the Higgs boson that will be done at the CERN supercollider. The Higgs Field is related to the Inflaton Field responsible for the initial expansion.
The universe is very possibly 2 dimensional, you can think of a Pac-Man screen. If string theory is correct, all known matter is made of open ended strings. Open ended strings must be attached to a d-brane, a one or more dimensional membrane predicted by string theory. It is very likely our entire universe is attached to a 2 diminsional d-brane. This prevents our universe from any of those sci-fi parralel or other universes we love reading about. The only thing that can possibly escape is gravity, hence Gravity Phones for those of you that watched the Elegant Universe.
Fantasy has been around far longer than Sci-Fi a genre hardly over a 100 years old. Fantasy is as old as religion.
Only Empire Strikes Back is fantasy, and deliberately so out of the mouth of the director himself who stated he deliberately wanted specific symbolisms from fantasy in the film and TO NOT MAKE A SCI_FI MOVIE. This is also why Kershner felt it was key for Luke to feel pain in his right hand at the end of the film even though it is artificial. For a hero to lose his right hand means he has lost touch with Good.
Let Jim Henson Studios do the TV show. Many early Farscape eps that involve the Peacekeepers are very Empire in feel. It also might not suck out of LucasFilm's hands.
Who knows what Lucas will do with 7,8 & 9. Even though novels supposedly all go through his personal approval he still has changed the mythos in the film. Otherwise, the plot of the final trilogy is in the novels. Luke is the one destined to bring balance to the light & dark sides of the force and a generation of fanatical "gray" Jedi are born.
We have the technology to feed everyone on the planet, supply everyone with all the free energy they need, supply basic medicine and health care for everyone, grow food anywhere on the planet on any terrain or underwater. And yet we don't do it and leave billions in a horribly sub-standard existence.
How can you be critical of a show as being unrealistic that says we won't do it in the future either?
Firefly is the only SF series to ever have NO SOUND IN SPACE! No whoosh as spaceships go by, no booms when things blow up in space. The only other piece of SF to do this was 2001.
At a quick glance, Firefly seems like a dumb old hicks in space western, even using a similar theme of many old westerns, a group of disenfranchised post Civil War southerners just trying to get by after being reamed by "the man".
Fortunately, it survived and used this premise very well and develop strong characters as well as a wide range of stories from action adventure to horror to comedy. Every time I introduce someone new to the DVD they can't believe they missed it during its run.
p.s. The "sonic boom" of the Enterprise going to warp (along with its colorful burst effect) has got to be the stupidest gimmick ever.
Instead, I think the Star Trek and Star Wars universes should merge. That way there will be only one crappy SF series to ignore or cry about. And think about it, with a merger Lucas can Special Edition away of all those pesky incongrous timelines and plot holes fans keep going on about.
If you throw in Spielberg it will be easy to explain why Romulans and Earthicans never saw each other -- because all phasers will be replaced by walkie-talkies.
I certainly didn't mean to bash any individual's homebrew. Homebrews are as much reward in the baking as in the eating. But when it comes to what horse to back in the PVR race. TiVo is the only contender I'm willing to back.
Once upon a time there was Replay. Although Replay had some good ideas (many of which are now licensed by TiVo)it did not survive. TiVo may not survive. But if not, what will the alternative be and who will control it?
Having watched coworkers dodge TiVo monthly fees with their PVR alternatives. I see two things:
2. Most of them suck, and are just lame me-toos. Who cares if it's free or cheaper, it sucks.
1. TiVo is hardly a giant. They've already defended their market from Microsoft's PVR entry, once. Why endorse lame alternatives that weaken the viability of company that is on the side of the consumer until a giant can DRM you blind.
Yeah, yeah. So you got a free alternative you claim is just as awesome. And my Commodore 64 running Geos is still better than a Mac with OS X. Yeah, sure whatever.
Believe what you want. Go ahead, shoot TiVo in the foot and your consumer rights in the face.
There was another little feature of this game to prevent hoarding. Once a player became too overburdened they would randomly start dropping items and gold on the ground from their bulging pockets. If you payed attention you might notice and pick it back up, otherwise you'd be scratching your head later about it.
The biggest disputes in the "real world" are whether these changes should be considered natural occurrence. The assumption is made that if global warming is normal and not man made then there is nothing to worry about and we should not concern ourselves with it or matters like the ozone layer.
These arguments are made without looking at known ecological effects. The ecological disaster in the Mediterranean Sea caused by common algae (Caulerpa taxifolia) from aquariums could not have happened ten years ago. The subtle difference in temperature of 3 degrees was enough to allow a tropical plant thrive and now dominate.
The issue where these conditions are man-made or not is also a valid one. How much is caused by fluorocarbons and how much from changes in the earth's magnetic field. We only have measurements going back 300 years, in that period the earth's magnetic field has decreased by 10% as part of a natural changes at the core. How much it has actually decreased is unknown as is how much of the atmosphere has eroded because of this.
Natural causes does not mean no cause for concern.
Novels in the Dungeons & Dragons, Warcraft and of course Star Wars franchises continue to sell and sell enough to keep churning them out. Oh, you meant people of a younger age don't read good SF.
Perhaps it's simply a matter of wanting or needing the cash generated by tourists, but the area is hardly safe for those that live there. For example in nearby Minsk in Belarus most adults have had nearly 20 years to resign themselves to the consequences and their greatest concern right now is their children. There are programs that try to arrange for children to spend at least 3 months of the year outside the country to minimize the chances of cancer, infertility and birth defects of the next generation. The programs do not allow parents to travel with the children out of a concern that it is unlikely they would return. The "official" line is that everything is just fine of course.
Probably a lot of us have a typical response when we see a group that labels itself Christian going after a hot market whether it be music, games, junk food or whatever. But...
I recall receiving a letter sometime in the 1980's from a Christian youth regarding an RPG I co-wrote. His problem was he desperately wanted to play the game but since it contained demons as part of the monster list he wasn't allowed to. Apparently, in his case it was simply the label "demon" that placed it on the banned list and he pleaded that we simply change the name from "demon" to "beast". Alas, I couldn't accommodate him and ended up writing him a letter of apology.
Moral of story: There are a lot of frustrated gamers out there with choices limited by conscience or parents.
So, my sympathy goes to the gamer rather than a group trying to figure out how to get cash out of something like Davey and Goliath's Xtreme Rapture Rampage or whatever.
Saving $2000 on a repair by going to a junkyard seems very attractive. A fair mechanic will inform you of this and give you the expected life of the replacement, most of his income is from labor. An official dealership's repair shop will not even offer this option, their money is in labor and the high markup of original parts they are obligated to use exclusively. At best they will suggest you try a junkyard yourself but will not offer to do it for you.
So, if the customer is savvy and bold enough they will go to the junkyard and pay 1/4 or less of what the dealer would have charged. But wait, Let's say the customer just goes to the dealer because out of habit because they've done all his required warranty service or is simply facing a high labor charge on engine or tranny replacement... He's faced with a $2000 bill and a car no longer under warranty to cover it. What he does depends on what he paid for the car. If it's a $40K+ car he lumps it. If it's and $20K or under economy car...he simply trades it in and leases a new one.
This is something my mechanic explained to me when I noticed most of his repair bays were empty. "It simply isn't worth it to most people to repair their used car when they can lease a brand new one so cheap. It doesn't make sense to spend the money. They take the repair money and get a new car."
Only the minority that prefer to keep their car are going to take advantage of smart shopping, the rest simply regard it as disposable.
The only thing that's likely to motivate anyone is if we find an indigent "heathen" population and we have a race to mass drop holy re-education centers on for their own good.
Yeah, I'd love for us to get off this rock too but considering the fact that every president since Kennedy who claimed he cared about the space program was lying through his teeth, I have little hope of it becoming a reality. It's easy to say you have a long range plan when you know your administration is leaving in four years and someone else will do the budget cuts. Rolling and bouncing around in a cluster of beach balls was hardly NASA's first choice for a mars landing.
Ironically, it's very likely the space community itself will aid in shooting itself in the foot by failing to speak in a single voice. Go to the planets, go to the moon, L5? Then will come the intellectual debate and corprorate battle as to how to get there.
But the largest issue people fail to see is the tangible benefits that having a space program really means for the country. Nobody wants what this country produces anymore. Nobody wants our cars, TV's, electronics or appliances anymore. Microcomputers were a direct result of the space program. That created giants like, IBM, HP, TI and Microsoft.
Now, computers are manufactured in Asia and programming jobs are being outsourced to India. There will be very little to keep this nation from slipping into economic decline. The rest of the world is learning that world powers aren't made and toppled with bombs but dollars, money that is only earned by technology.
A space program allows us to keep a technological edge and a financial one. Without continuing to innovate we become as short-sighted as the RIAA that we blast so often for defending its antiquated financial model. Without jobs that require higher educatation there is little reason to pursue it. It's small wonder that the money from major U.S. corporation is now going overseas, wherever technology is growing fastest is where the money is.
You mean like all the winningly romantic dialog between Anakin and Amidala? I might have bought their romance if it was silent and shorter. But no amount of dialog could capture the visual splendor of Yoda getting wired up on sugar and going after Count Dookie like a kid on a pinata.
Slashdot Mirror
I chose not to waste mod points on the entire discussion here. The greater majority of it which is off-topic, flamebait, or troll.
There was also no -1 Arrogant Buffoon for the rest of the mostly male posts that knew with divine certainty the correctness of a blind bias.
In short the discussion here mirrors the gaming world in general. When the subject is the female gamer, their voice is simply not heard because there are too many others to tell you what the problem is or isn't without ever going to the source.
This really isn't news at all. The article itself should be marked redundant. Researchers have been saying for years that some sunlight is needed to prevent skin cancer. They have found that the highest risk tend to be office workers in artificial light and the areas of the body that are most prone to skin cancer are areas of the torso that have the most covering.
The most common scenario however is the user that has bought a new or replacement Windows PC. He doesn't own a firewall or even a router. So for him it's a matter of luck as to just how current the copy of Windows he got is.
Now what happens when he has to go back to those discs later and do a system restore? They aren't so current anymore and his window of death is the time it takes him to go online and get the updates, assuming the Auto-Update feature was turned on for him.
You and I, and everyone else here know better than to connect a pristine PC without some protection. Looking at my logs I see a probe or attack about every 2 minutes. And that's why there are thousands of PCs acting as willing slaves for spam and DoS attacks.
I give Ballmer less than 5 years.
Another "Developers! Developers! Developers!"-like outburst and he'll pop like a watermellon in a Gallagher routine. Bring your raincoats.
Hooking up a PC to your big screen is trivial, so is burning the copy and playing it on a standard deck hooked to said big-screen.
Of course go see SW in a theater. I can't see someone watching some low contrast handheld vidcam of this movie that actually cared about seeing it.
I've used downloads to see if a film is actually worth watching, shut it off in the first 15 minutes and either gone out to the theater or picked something else to watch. I also go and buy the DVD even if I have the download if it's worth keeping. When that changes, the studios will get much less of my money.
Can you imagine if the studios had enough confidence in their shovelware to provide a decent quality MPEG of the first 15 minutes of their titles?
Just like the game industry, the majority who actually pirate are ones who wouldn't buy it if that was their only option.
It doesn't matter what you think the new definition of science means. It has only one purpose, to ram creationism down the synapses of children.
People rigidly placed in a religious mindset tend to follow that particular mindset permanently. Just look around the world.
The outcome of this will simply be to "dumb down" a people. People who will be easily swayed by any dogma and propaganda fed to them by those in authority and by the ones responsible for their dogma specifically.
FAR more interesting than The Elegant Universe is his subsequent book The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. I highly recommend this to anyone that was interested by his earlier work or the various discussions here.
Most posts here seem to be quoting science from decades ago. The errors and misconceptions too numerous. It is clear that many have no idea how far we have come in understanding everything all the way back to and including time zero, including what even caused the Big Bang. It takes a mass of just 10Kg at the Big Bang to explain all known matter and energy in the unverse today. The Inflationary Model today is nothing like the originally proposed Big Bang. It predicts and explains what we currently observe.
Fermilab's proposal is fascinating and if they are correct could have a serious impact on modern research such as the search for the Higgs boson that will be done at the CERN supercollider. The Higgs Field is related to the Inflaton Field responsible for the initial expansion.
The universe is very possibly 2 dimensional, you can think of a Pac-Man screen. If string theory is correct, all known matter is made of open ended strings. Open ended strings must be attached to a d-brane, a one or more dimensional membrane predicted by string theory. It is very likely our entire universe is attached to a 2 diminsional d-brane. This prevents our universe from any of those sci-fi parralel or other universes we love reading about. The only thing that can possibly escape is gravity, hence Gravity Phones for those of you that watched the Elegant Universe.
Fantasy has been around far longer than Sci-Fi a genre hardly over a 100 years old. Fantasy is as old as religion. Only Empire Strikes Back is fantasy, and deliberately so out of the mouth of the director himself who stated he deliberately wanted specific symbolisms from fantasy in the film and TO NOT MAKE A SCI_FI MOVIE. This is also why Kershner felt it was key for Luke to feel pain in his right hand at the end of the film even though it is artificial. For a hero to lose his right hand means he has lost touch with Good. Let Jim Henson Studios do the TV show. Many early Farscape eps that involve the Peacekeepers are very Empire in feel. It also might not suck out of LucasFilm's hands. Who knows what Lucas will do with 7,8 & 9. Even though novels supposedly all go through his personal approval he still has changed the mythos in the film. Otherwise, the plot of the final trilogy is in the novels. Luke is the one destined to bring balance to the light & dark sides of the force and a generation of fanatical "gray" Jedi are born.
Who wants to wait until Sunday?
We have the technology to feed everyone on the planet, supply everyone with all the free energy they need, supply basic medicine and health care for everyone, grow food anywhere on the planet on any terrain or underwater. And yet we don't do it and leave billions in a horribly sub-standard existence.
How can you be critical of a show as being unrealistic that says we won't do it in the future either?
Firefly is the only SF series to ever have NO SOUND IN SPACE! No whoosh as spaceships go by, no booms when things blow up in space. The only other piece of SF to do this was 2001.
At a quick glance, Firefly seems like a dumb old hicks in space western, even using a similar theme of many old westerns, a group of disenfranchised post Civil War southerners just trying to get by after being reamed by "the man".
Fortunately, it survived and used this premise very well and develop strong characters as well as a wide range of stories from action adventure to horror to comedy. Every time I introduce someone new to the DVD they can't believe they missed it during its run.
p.s. The "sonic boom" of the Enterprise going to warp (along with its colorful burst effect) has got to be the stupidest gimmick ever.
Instead, I think the Star Trek and Star Wars universes should merge. That way there will be only one crappy SF series to ignore or cry about. And think about it, with a merger Lucas can Special Edition away of all those pesky incongrous timelines and plot holes fans keep going on about.
If you throw in Spielberg it will be easy to explain why Romulans and Earthicans never saw each other -- because all phasers will be replaced by walkie-talkies.
Farscape forever you insensitive clod.
No no. What's better is to wait for said sociopath to pull next to a cop and then beam over "Fuck the Police"
I certainly didn't mean to bash any individual's homebrew. Homebrews are as much reward in the baking as in the eating. But when it comes to what horse to back in the PVR race. TiVo is the only contender I'm willing to back.
Once upon a time there was Replay. Although Replay had some good ideas (many of which are now licensed by TiVo)it did not survive. TiVo may not survive. But if not, what will the alternative be and who will control it?
Having watched coworkers dodge TiVo monthly fees with their PVR alternatives. I see two things:
2. Most of them suck, and are just lame me-toos. Who cares if it's free or cheaper, it sucks.
1. TiVo is hardly a giant. They've already defended their market from Microsoft's PVR entry, once. Why endorse lame alternatives that weaken the viability of company that is on the side of the consumer until a giant can DRM you blind.
Yeah, yeah. So you got a free alternative you claim is just as awesome. And my Commodore 64 running Geos is still better than a Mac with OS X. Yeah, sure whatever.
Believe what you want. Go ahead, shoot TiVo in the foot and your consumer rights in the face.
There was another little feature of this game to prevent hoarding. Once a player became too overburdened they would randomly start dropping items and gold on the ground from their bulging pockets. If you payed attention you might notice and pick it back up, otherwise you'd be scratching your head later about it.
These arguments are made without looking at known ecological effects. The ecological disaster in the Mediterranean Sea caused by common algae (Caulerpa taxifolia) from aquariums could not have happened ten years ago. The subtle difference in temperature of 3 degrees was enough to allow a tropical plant thrive and now dominate.
The issue where these conditions are man-made or not is also a valid one. How much is caused by fluorocarbons and how much from changes in the earth's magnetic field. We only have measurements going back 300 years, in that period the earth's magnetic field has decreased by 10% as part of a natural changes at the core. How much it has actually decreased is unknown as is how much of the atmosphere has eroded because of this.
Natural causes does not mean no cause for concern.
Novels in the Dungeons & Dragons, Warcraft and of course Star Wars franchises continue to sell and sell enough to keep churning them out. Oh, you meant people of a younger age don't read good SF.
Perhaps it's simply a matter of wanting or needing the cash generated by tourists, but the area is hardly safe for those that live there. For example in nearby Minsk in Belarus most adults have had nearly 20 years to resign themselves to the consequences and their greatest concern right now is their children. There are programs that try to arrange for children to spend at least 3 months of the year outside the country to minimize the chances of cancer, infertility and birth defects of the next generation. The programs do not allow parents to travel with the children out of a concern that it is unlikely they would return. The "official" line is that everything is just fine of course.
Probably a lot of us have a typical response when we see a group that labels itself Christian going after a hot market whether it be music, games, junk food or whatever. But...
I recall receiving a letter sometime in the 1980's from a Christian youth regarding an RPG I co-wrote. His problem was he desperately wanted to play the game but since it contained demons as part of the monster list he wasn't allowed to. Apparently, in his case it was simply the label "demon" that placed it on the banned list and he pleaded that we simply change the name from "demon" to "beast". Alas, I couldn't accommodate him and ended up writing him a letter of apology.
Moral of story: There are a lot of frustrated gamers out there with choices limited by conscience or parents.
So, my sympathy goes to the gamer rather than a group trying to figure out how to get cash out of something like Davey and Goliath's Xtreme Rapture Rampage or whatever.
Saving $2000 on a repair by going to a junkyard seems very attractive. A fair mechanic will inform you of this and give you the expected life of the replacement, most of his income is from labor. An official dealership's repair shop will not even offer this option, their money is in labor and the high markup of original parts they are obligated to use exclusively. At best they will suggest you try a junkyard yourself but will not offer to do it for you.
So, if the customer is savvy and bold enough they will go to the junkyard and pay 1/4 or less of what the dealer would have charged. But wait, Let's say the customer just goes to the dealer because out of habit because they've done all his required warranty service or is simply facing a high labor charge on engine or tranny replacement... He's faced with a $2000 bill and a car no longer under warranty to cover it. What he does depends on what he paid for the car. If it's a $40K+ car he lumps it. If it's and $20K or under economy car...he simply trades it in and leases a new one.
This is something my mechanic explained to me when I noticed most of his repair bays were empty. "It simply isn't worth it to most people to repair their used car when they can lease a brand new one so cheap. It doesn't make sense to spend the money. They take the repair money and get a new car."
Only the minority that prefer to keep their car are going to take advantage of smart shopping, the rest simply regard it as disposable.
Time to renew my membership in Radio Shack's Battery of the Month Club.
Just think of the number of fans you could power for free if we all banded together! Mwuahahahahha.
The only thing that's likely to motivate anyone is if we find an indigent "heathen" population and we have a race to mass drop holy re-education centers on for their own good.
Yeah, I'd love for us to get off this rock too but considering the fact that every president since Kennedy who claimed he cared about the space program was lying through his teeth, I have little hope of it becoming a reality. It's easy to say you have a long range plan when you know your administration is leaving in four years and someone else will do the budget cuts. Rolling and bouncing around in a cluster of beach balls was hardly NASA's first choice for a mars landing.
Ironically, it's very likely the space community itself will aid in shooting itself in the foot by failing to speak in a single voice. Go to the planets, go to the moon, L5? Then will come the intellectual debate and corprorate battle as to how to get there.
But the largest issue people fail to see is the tangible benefits that having a space program really means for the country. Nobody wants what this country produces anymore. Nobody wants our cars, TV's, electronics or appliances anymore. Microcomputers were a direct result of the space program. That created giants like, IBM, HP, TI and Microsoft.
Now, computers are manufactured in Asia and programming jobs are being outsourced to India. There will be very little to keep this nation from slipping into economic decline. The rest of the world is learning that world powers aren't made and toppled with bombs but dollars, money that is only earned by technology.
A space program allows us to keep a technological edge and a financial one. Without continuing to innovate we become as short-sighted as the RIAA that we blast so often for defending its antiquated financial model. Without jobs that require higher educatation there is little reason to pursue it. It's small wonder that the money from major U.S. corporation is now going overseas, wherever technology is growing fastest is where the money is.
StarWars Episode III: No Refunds
You mean like all the winningly romantic dialog between Anakin and Amidala? I might have bought their romance if it was silent and shorter. But no amount of dialog could capture the visual splendor of Yoda getting wired up on sugar and going after Count Dookie like a kid on a pinata.