Same deal: From Wikipedia: "The Guaraná plant contains caffeine (though sometimes called guaranine), and so acts as a stimulant. Like many caffeine-containing plants, it is used for drinks; a kind of carbonated soft drink that is made from the Guaraná fruit is known as "Guaraná". Guarana contains a compound called Methylxanthine, the source of its energy boosting properties."
See also Methylxanthine: "Methylated xanthine derivatives include caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine (found mainly in chocolate). These drugs inhibit phosphodiesterase and antagonise adenosine."
I don't know how much nutrition and biochem you have, but with my background, I find energy drinks amusing. Take a good multivitamin with your mountain dew and save your money. There are plenty of people selling B-vitamin cocktail pills as energy boosters, too. I hear radio advertisements for the "B-1 bomber" on the local radio station all the time.
MS's system is sure gabbed about like it's a success, when it's not.
Xbox Live! has, roughly, 1 million subscribers. There's been a pretty steady state number of subscribers since people would run out of interesting games on Live!, leaving a drought before the next set of interesting titles. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag became boring after a while.
Compare this with Nintendo's DS service. They've already peaked over 1 million people in the space of a few months, beating out Microsoft's Xbox Live! service. Surprise, surprise, Microsoft has admitted that it's not working by offering the basic service for free (after all, if you want to pay for basic access, you're going to limit your customer base).
Nintendo was right to wait and figure out the logistics. Sony was stupid to wait too long, and set some bad precedents on their front. Nintendo has managed to turn a lot of people's biggest complaint into their biggest strength with the DS online service, and it's soon going to be linked to the Revolution service. That's a pretty good lead.
Most energy drinks are a mixture of the following: * Caffeine * Sugar * B-vitamins (1: Thiamin, 2: Riboflavin, 3:Niacin, 12, ) * 1 more substance (at least in the can I most recently looked at). I can't remember the name, but it's normally produced in the body unless you are an infant (where the normal source is breast milk).
The concentration of B vitamins can be between 50% to 200% of the RDA, depending on the drink.
I think they left the modem off because it was stupid to have one. The only time I used dialup since 1996 was when I visited the US in 2001, and again in 2004. It's not hard to find wireless networks to use, and broadband has been the rule of the law in Canada for many years.
I don't want a modem on my machine because they represent an era that is over. WiFi internet, or Bluetooth to my cell phone, are easy enough to use when I want to deal with data transfers. A little ethernet cable will also connect me if only wired networks are in range. Modems transfer data so glacially slow, they're a non-issue.
That Apple doesn't have it, means they don't have to have an engineer integrate it into the system, or provide the chipset with power, etc. I was really surprised that, as the company that went to USB so full-force, they still had the modem jack on their machines. Thankfully they've realized their mistake.
I bought that movie for 12$ CDN. The fact is that the industry is awash in games, and the ones that sell are the promoted ones. If you want your game to sell well, you have to either promote it yourself, or hope it gets a buzz. But a buzz takes time, and retail game sales are very quarter oriented.
I think gamers are more interested in new things. Also, since money is tight, people are less likely to buy whole boats of games. I'm only buying DS games because I find them more rewarding. Pyschonauts is in no way as original as any DS game I can pull out of the ones I've played and enjoyed.
If calculus was already "invented" by Newton and Leibnitz, I doubt that scholars would say that a person in grade 7 had also invented it. When someone in the past has invented something, even if the knowledge is lost, the term is rediscovery.
This person "rediscovered" it in that sense, or merely "discovered" it in my assertion. In no sense was it invented, thus my original point is still valid.
The folks get to ride a bus for 3 hours each day to/from work. Their shift is really a 12-hour shift because of this, since they get it at 15:00 and get home around 03:00. The day shifters get 9.50$ US/Hour, and night people get 50 cents more (a whole 4$ more/day; 1,040$ more/year).
Given 52 weeks with 5 business days, 8 hours/day, gives a salary of $19,760 before taxes for the day shifters. Is that above the US poverty line? In Saskatchewan (where most of basic healthcare is taken care of, and things like food are a bit cheaper), our poverty line is around $16,000/year. Any medical problem in the US is going to cost hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars -- I've seen what your drugs cost at the corner store. If you adjust it, I'd say they're probably pretty close to the poverty line.
Adjusting the 8/hour wages for the true 12/hour day with commute, the poor folks are actually earning $6.34 an hour, which is a lot closer to minimum wage. You can argue that the time on the bus isn't lost to them, but I don't see them being able to pursue most hobbies, clean their houses, or be there for their children in that time.
So, in fact, tech is not saving small town America. These folks are just as poor and not well off as any inner-city folks who have to bus for hours to work for almost nothing, while their children are home alone. They live in poverty, and they have no time to themselves for self development.
"I honestly believed I invented the calculus when finding some shortcuts for algebraic equations in the 7th grade."
No, you rediscovered (independently) principles of calculus perhaps, but you did not invent it. You cannot invent calculus anymore than you can invent gravity or hydrogen -- they already exist, and are waiting to be discovered by the fertile human mind.
"Why is it that in Halo, a pistol takes up the same inventory space as a rocket launcher?"
Why is it, in Doom, I can run around with a chainsaw, rocket launcher, pistol, rifle, machine gun, chain gun, plasma rifle, and about 1,300 rounds for all these weapons combined?
You can pick nits, but it's far more realistic than most games.
"Is it the weapons?" Yes. The weapons are satisfying (especially in Halo 2 with the sword), and you have a realistic amount of them on you (2 max with a half-dozen grenades) when fully loaded.
The melee combat is not bad also. It's very satisfying to crack skulls.
"The controls?" The controls do allow for fun head-to-head, as well as a good feel in general. You know what you're doing at any time.
"The plot?" The plot is one of the better points; the novelizations are good. The novel that connects Halo 1 and Halo 2's story is well thought out, and enjoyable.
Bungie made Marathon. They know what they're doing with story.
"The visials? The visuals are about what you'd expect from a Geforce 2.5. Not as good as the new fancy Unreal engine or Half-Life 2, but certainly better everything released up until 2001 simply because the framerate tends to be steadier.
Most of the stuff I saw out on the PC in 2002/2003 didn't take advantage of bump mapping like Halo 1 did. Halo 2's a bit updated, but you can tell they were pushing the hardware to its limit.
"The levels?" No, Halo's level design is pretty much the biggest pile of crap. The levels are the worst part. If they could get good level design, they would have the best console FPS on their hands.
"The 15 year-old demo loved it, and bought millions of consoles and games. But, in 5 years, these 22 year-olds won't want to be seen playing the same thing as 15 year-olds."
It seems clear to me that anyone who thinks that 15 + 5 = 22 has bigger problems than Dawnson's Creek or playing Xbox, assuming they can tie their shoes and make it out of the house without incident.
Wind Waker was a great game. Finally, a game I can play that has good graphics, fun dungeons, and which I can cut up and enjoy in 1-hour increments. I don't have time for dungeon crawls, where the dungeon takes over 3 hours to finish. I have studying to do! Wind Waker was great because it was fun without being stupid, and something I could finish in my lifetime.
If you thought the graphics were kiddy, you must've hated Jet Set Radio Future, and totally hated Akira:p
As for the DS.. I'm not sure what's kiddy about fun games. They have Wario Ware: Touched, Meteos, Advance Wars... what's causing you consternation? Is Scrabble and Risk what you consider adult?
How to use a car is not in a glove box. Do they describe threshold braking? Road signs for your region? Counter steering techniques? The differences in handling between front-wheel and rear-wheel drive vehicles? How weight distribution and centre of gravity affect handling? How about proper shifting techniques, what to do if your clutch line is broken, or emergency driving techniques?
How about driving to road conditions? Clearing off all external debris on a car (leaves, snow, etc) before using it? Regular adjustment of mirrors and the circle check? How many people do these things?
Very few people can operate a vehicle, just like very few can operate a computer. They can use a car much like they can use a computer: they basically get going in a direction, and manage to follow enough rules that they don't get into an accident!
Perl 6 is evolving the language into awesome!
on
What is Perl 6?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
My compilers professor has nothing but bad things to say about a language whose syntax is inelegant and tricky. After all, if a language is inelegant, it will be hard to read and understand, as well as hard to create a proper grammar for, or parse.
"(Perl 5 overloaded curly braces in six different ways. If you can list four, you're doing well.)" ! Java has something like 22 levels of precedence. Most people will use the bare minimum of that, lest they tread upon a dragon's tail.
And, one of my favourite points: "Why is the method call operator two characters (one shifted), not a single dot? "
Perl 6 means a simpler, better parser, while keeping all the language strengths. This means it won't be such a bitch to deal with mod_perl's weird gleeps once it's Perl 6. This means smaller process overhead. This means quicker development of web applications that are cool (although I must admit, Ruby on Rails is also pretty neat looking).
"The next crop of consoles will set you back a lot more than a PC, though. 400$ for the XBox, 400$ for the PS3, 200$ for a Revolution... and then you get to buy controllers, AV adaptors, and games. And you still don't get to do any of the useful PC things."
Well, if you're going to jump in at the beginning of a console life cycle, it's going to be expensive. OTOH, let's sit back and do some real thinking. An Xbox, PS2, and GameCube would have been (respectively) 300$ USD + 300$ USD + 200$ USD (800USD!). The 500$ I quoted earlier was CAD. Now, at the same time, all the really cool games that I would've paid lots of $$ for back a few years ago are available for not really much (20-30$). I know what's bad and what's not bad.
Plus, PC gaming involves Microsoft. I have to pay 120$ USD for the OS and how much for Office? No thanks, I'd rather save all my money for console games (when doing entertainment), and run Linux on my PC. Linux doesn't tether me to MS, and doesn't cost me anything for the tools to do my job.
If you're really anal about it, I'm sure I can generate a nice fancy spreadsheet that shows how staying behind on consoles costs far, far less than PC games (since you can't get a Ti4400 easily, but for about the same money, you can get a GameCube with a game), and how it amoratizes better since I have no evil troubles playing Mario 1 on my NES (while Space Quest 1 VGA is not easy to run and play).
"But if you buy all 3 consoles each generation, you're spending abut as much for the PC, and not getting the side benefits of a full computer."
I buy myself an Xbox (200$), PS2 (180$), and a GameCube (120$). That costs me $500. A GeForce 6800 GT costs the same amount.
Then I look at the games. Between the GameCube, Xbox, and PS2, I own (easily) over 100 games. Have there been over 100 PC games in the past 3 years that are worth owning? We do have representatives from the real-time strategy crowd and the FPS crowd, but what of the musir rythm games, platformers, party games (Mario Party on a computer would be considerably more constrained!), J-RPGs, etc?
I should mention I've never had to patch Super Mario Sunshine. When I bought it in 2002, it worked bug free!
".. that Windows Vista isn't going to be all the fresh, hot goodness that we've been promised?"
How does an obvious statement like this manage to get 4 stupid moderators all to mod it up?
Windows 95! Now better than ever!
Windows 98! All your problems are solved!
Windows ME! We will help you how we can!
Windows 2000! No limit to your dreams!
Windows XP! Easier than ever, better, faster!
Of course MS is going to hype up their new product and have you upgrade from the old product. A statement as naive as yours is not truth, nor insightful, nor informative.
The rest of your comment similarly refuses to acknowledge that legacy momentum is the only thing keeping Microsoft going forward. People only use Windows because they "know" it. The tiny scraps of knowledge of how to use it they've gathered are things they are unwilling to abandon. Most people could as easily use MacOSX or Linux (Ubuntu is very nice), but they are unwilling to even learn what the names of the apps they would need in the new OS are (for most people, an MP3 player, browser, mail client, and Open Office are enough).
I do not see why any post that is not very insightful and also incorrectly spells the word grammar (which no e has ever been involved with) should be +5.
Perhaps you could make a case for +3. I would certainly mod this kind of tripe down if I were you.
I will agree that mathematical models that we produce will be flawed and will have problems, but (with some exceptions) we can generally get "close enough" (such as in statistical applications, where a 95% confidence interval is enough, as you mentioned). However, I do not believe that math in general is flawed -- although our understanding may be.
Math, like physics or chemistry, is imuteable. We do not change it by understanding of it. What we consider math is just our understanding of what actually happens.
"But it's also useless to us except as it helps us understand the world around us, or model something we've obvserved, etc. There are still things it is wholely unconcerned with (but can be applied to in various situations)."
That is where I think you have something to learn. While math may seem, at first, to be unconnected except for use in models, it is not. Goedel's incompleteness theorem seems like it is not useful to someone with your point of view. However, Dr. Jurgensen has the CS POV where we see that not only do we have axiomatic systems about number theory, we see that when we organize problems into classes of ones we can solve in finite steps, we run across similar odd issues.
He has lecture slides up somewhere. His major findings are also published. I can't find the specific reference at the moment, but there is a string of publications up until 2005 that are mentioned in his most recent work.
From my own notes on his lecture slides: "What does this mean?
* Independence is a wide-spread phenomenon. * Independence seems to be a consequence of a deficit of information (we cannot gain information by deduction). * The measure of information must be relativized ( instead of H). * Proving (computing) cannot generate information, but can only make hidden information explicit. GIGO -- you only work with what is given. * True and independent statements are no artifacts; independence is essentially independent of the particular formalization of the theory.
The question of whether there are many "interesting" true and independent statements remains unanswered.
Conjecture: It could be possible to prove that statements are correct merely in terms of their size and length related to the work."
So, as you see, an artifact of math affects information theory (indeed, they are almost the same once you get into the details). This affects the kinds of systems of logic we can build in computer science, and also what kinds of brain activity can exist if the human mind is at all like a Turing machine in terms of its ultimate implementation. I think that's important.
Math can seem to be unconnected, but the relationships are there.
Their backup protocols and means of transitioning the home directory and user preferences is very nice. It'd be good if I could setup a server at home on my main server that allowed me to sync the basic prefs.
It has deeper implications than "just math". I don't know how far you've gone with computer algorithms, but I attended a wonderful talk given at my University by a gentleman who has been related the logic behind that statement to other things.
It has very deep implications on what can and can't be proven or computed within the lifetime of the Universe, not "just" math axioms. It's not that math is limited, it's that information theory is complex. You imply that math is a creation like a telephone (" realize that math and even logic are human's own inventions, and are limited in what they can be applied to.") when, in fact, we are merely describing underlying features of the Universe.
Go learn about NP vs. P and other parts of algorithm theory, then talk to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Same deal: From Wikipedia: "The Guaraná plant contains caffeine (though sometimes called guaranine), and so acts as a stimulant. Like many caffeine-containing plants, it is used for drinks; a kind of carbonated soft drink that is made from the Guaraná fruit is known as "Guaraná". Guarana contains a compound called Methylxanthine, the source of its energy boosting properties."
See also Methylxanthine: "Methylated xanthine derivatives include caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine (found mainly in chocolate). These drugs inhibit phosphodiesterase and antagonise adenosine."
I don't know how much nutrition and biochem you have, but with my background, I find energy drinks amusing. Take a good multivitamin with your mountain dew and save your money. There are plenty of people selling B-vitamin cocktail pills as energy boosters, too. I hear radio advertisements for the "B-1 bomber" on the local radio station all the time.
MS's system is sure gabbed about like it's a success, when it's not.
Xbox Live! has, roughly, 1 million subscribers. There's been a pretty steady state number of subscribers since people would run out of interesting games on Live!, leaving a drought before the next set of interesting titles. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag became boring after a while.
Compare this with Nintendo's DS service. They've already peaked over 1 million people in the space of a few months, beating out Microsoft's Xbox Live! service. Surprise, surprise, Microsoft has admitted that it's not working by offering the basic service for free (after all, if you want to pay for basic access, you're going to limit your customer base).
Nintendo was right to wait and figure out the logistics. Sony was stupid to wait too long, and set some bad precedents on their front. Nintendo has managed to turn a lot of people's biggest complaint into their biggest strength with the DS online service, and it's soon going to be linked to the Revolution service. That's a pretty good lead.
Most energy drinks are a mixture of the following:
* Caffeine
* Sugar
* B-vitamins (1: Thiamin, 2: Riboflavin, 3:Niacin, 12, )
* 1 more substance (at least in the can I most recently looked at). I can't remember the name, but it's normally produced in the body unless you are an infant (where the normal source is breast milk).
The concentration of B vitamins can be between 50% to 200% of the RDA, depending on the drink.
Check out the Vitamin facts, B-vitamin groups, or check out a nutrition textbook.
Energy drinks are just sugar + caffeine to people on correct diets. Why pay over 2x the price for what is essentially Mountain Dew or sugary coffee?
Eat the normal 4-5 small meals a day with no snacks, and take a multivitamin supplement. Do some exercise. You'll get a much better effect.
""So I can get the company's [Apple] health plan." I think that speaks volumes to his personality."
Yea, he's a realist. Have you ever looked into US health care?
I think they left the modem off because it was stupid to have one. The only time I used dialup since 1996 was when I visited the US in 2001, and again in 2004. It's not hard to find wireless networks to use, and broadband has been the rule of the law in Canada for many years.
I don't want a modem on my machine because they represent an era that is over. WiFi internet, or Bluetooth to my cell phone, are easy enough to use when I want to deal with data transfers. A little ethernet cable will also connect me if only wired networks are in range. Modems transfer data so glacially slow, they're a non-issue.
That Apple doesn't have it, means they don't have to have an engineer integrate it into the system, or provide the chipset with power, etc. I was really surprised that, as the company that went to USB so full-force, they still had the modem jack on their machines. Thankfully they've realized their mistake.
".. 12 Angry Men in the bargain bin"
I bought that movie for 12$ CDN. The fact is that the industry is awash in games, and the ones that sell are the promoted ones. If you want your game to sell well, you have to either promote it yourself, or hope it gets a buzz. But a buzz takes time, and retail game sales are very quarter oriented.
I think gamers are more interested in new things. Also, since money is tight, people are less likely to buy whole boats of games. I'm only buying DS games because I find them more rewarding. Pyschonauts is in no way as original as any DS game I can pull out of the ones I've played and enjoyed.
"Is the fact that temporary, low-skill jobs don't pay very much supposed to be news?"
No, but when it's spun to be news as if it were a breath of life to America's small towns, I think it's interesting to investigate the details.
If calculus was already "invented" by Newton and Leibnitz, I doubt that scholars would say that a person in grade 7 had also invented it. When someone in the past has invented something, even if the knowledge is lost, the term is rediscovery.
This person "rediscovered" it in that sense, or merely "discovered" it in my assertion. In no sense was it invented, thus my original point is still valid.
Did anyone read this link from the summary?
The folks get to ride a bus for 3 hours each day to/from work. Their shift is really a 12-hour shift because of this, since they get it at 15:00 and get home around 03:00. The day shifters get 9.50$ US/Hour, and night people get 50 cents more (a whole 4$ more/day; 1,040$ more/year).
Given 52 weeks with 5 business days, 8 hours/day, gives a salary of $19,760 before taxes for the day shifters. Is that above the US poverty line? In Saskatchewan (where most of basic healthcare is taken care of, and things like food are a bit cheaper), our poverty line is around $16,000/year. Any medical problem in the US is going to cost hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars -- I've seen what your drugs cost at the corner store. If you adjust it, I'd say they're probably pretty close to the poverty line.
Adjusting the 8/hour wages for the true 12/hour day with commute, the poor folks are actually earning $6.34 an hour, which is a lot closer to minimum wage. You can argue that the time on the bus isn't lost to them, but I don't see them being able to pursue most hobbies, clean their houses, or be there for their children in that time.
So, in fact, tech is not saving small town America. These folks are just as poor and not well off as any inner-city folks who have to bus for hours to work for almost nothing, while their children are home alone. They live in poverty, and they have no time to themselves for self development.
"I honestly believed I invented the calculus when finding some shortcuts for algebraic equations in the 7th grade."
No, you rediscovered (independently) principles of calculus perhaps, but you did not invent it. You cannot invent calculus anymore than you can invent gravity or hydrogen -- they already exist, and are waiting to be discovered by the fertile human mind.
"Why is it that in Halo, a pistol takes up the same inventory space as a rocket launcher?"
Why is it, in Doom, I can run around with a chainsaw, rocket launcher, pistol, rifle, machine gun, chain gun, plasma rifle, and about 1,300 rounds for all these weapons combined?
You can pick nits, but it's far more realistic than most games.
"Is it the weapons?"
Yes. The weapons are satisfying (especially in Halo 2 with the sword), and you have a realistic amount of them on you (2 max with a half-dozen grenades) when fully loaded.
The melee combat is not bad also. It's very satisfying to crack skulls.
"The controls?"
The controls do allow for fun head-to-head, as well as a good feel in general. You know what you're doing at any time.
"The plot?"
The plot is one of the better points; the novelizations are good. The novel that connects Halo 1 and Halo 2's story is well thought out, and enjoyable.
Bungie made Marathon. They know what they're doing with story.
"The visials?
The visuals are about what you'd expect from a Geforce 2.5. Not as good as the new fancy Unreal engine or Half-Life 2, but certainly better everything released up until 2001 simply because the framerate tends to be steadier.
Most of the stuff I saw out on the PC in 2002/2003 didn't take advantage of bump mapping like Halo 1 did. Halo 2's a bit updated, but you can tell they were pushing the hardware to its limit.
"The levels?"
No, Halo's level design is pretty much the biggest pile of crap. The levels are the worst part. If they could get good level design, they would have the best console FPS on their hands.
I'd pay 5$ for one!
"The 15 year-old demo loved it, and bought millions of consoles and games. But, in 5 years, these 22 year-olds won't want to be seen playing the same thing as 15 year-olds."
It seems clear to me that anyone who thinks that 15 + 5 = 22 has bigger problems than Dawnson's Creek or playing Xbox, assuming they can tie their shoes and make it out of the house without incident.
Wind Waker was a great game. Finally, a game I can play that has good graphics, fun dungeons, and which I can cut up and enjoy in 1-hour increments. I don't have time for dungeon crawls, where the dungeon takes over 3 hours to finish. I have studying to do! Wind Waker was great because it was fun without being stupid, and something I could finish in my lifetime.
:p
If you thought the graphics were kiddy, you must've hated Jet Set Radio Future, and totally hated Akira
As for the DS.. I'm not sure what's kiddy about fun games. They have Wario Ware: Touched, Meteos, Advance Wars... what's causing you consternation? Is Scrabble and Risk what you consider adult?
How to use a car is not in a glove box. Do they describe threshold braking? Road signs for your region? Counter steering techniques? The differences in handling between front-wheel and rear-wheel drive vehicles? How weight distribution and centre of gravity affect handling? How about proper shifting techniques, what to do if your clutch line is broken, or emergency driving techniques?
How about driving to road conditions? Clearing off all external debris on a car (leaves, snow, etc) before using it? Regular adjustment of mirrors and the circle check? How many people do these things?
Very few people can operate a vehicle, just like very few can operate a computer. They can use a car much like they can use a computer: they basically get going in a direction, and manage to follow enough rules that they don't get into an accident!
My compilers professor has nothing but bad things to say about a language whose syntax is inelegant and tricky. After all, if a language is inelegant, it will be hard to read and understand, as well as hard to create a proper grammar for, or parse.
"(Perl 5 overloaded curly braces in six different ways. If you can list four, you're doing well.)" ! Java has something like 22 levels of precedence. Most people will use the bare minimum of that, lest they tread upon a dragon's tail.
And, one of my favourite points: "Why is the method call operator two characters (one shifted), not a single dot? "
Perl 6 means a simpler, better parser, while keeping all the language strengths. This means it won't be such a bitch to deal with mod_perl's weird gleeps once it's Perl 6. This means smaller process overhead. This means quicker development of web applications that are cool (although I must admit, Ruby on Rails is also pretty neat looking).
The new regex syntax alone is reason to switch!
"The next crop of consoles will set you back a lot more than a PC, though. 400$ for the XBox, 400$ for the PS3, 200$ for a Revolution... and then you get to buy controllers, AV adaptors, and games. And you still don't get to do any of the useful PC things."
Well, if you're going to jump in at the beginning of a console life cycle, it's going to be expensive. OTOH, let's sit back and do some real thinking. An Xbox, PS2, and GameCube would have been (respectively) 300$ USD + 300$ USD + 200$ USD (800USD!). The 500$ I quoted earlier was CAD. Now, at the same time, all the really cool games that I would've paid lots of $$ for back a few years ago are available for not really much (20-30$). I know what's bad and what's not bad.
Plus, PC gaming involves Microsoft. I have to pay 120$ USD for the OS and how much for Office? No thanks, I'd rather save all my money for console games (when doing entertainment), and run Linux on my PC. Linux doesn't tether me to MS, and doesn't cost me anything for the tools to do my job.
If you're really anal about it, I'm sure I can generate a nice fancy spreadsheet that shows how staying behind on consoles costs far, far less than PC games (since you can't get a Ti4400 easily, but for about the same money, you can get a GameCube with a game), and how it amoratizes better since I have no evil troubles playing Mario 1 on my NES (while Space Quest 1 VGA is not easy to run and play).
"But if you buy all 3 consoles each generation, you're spending abut as much for the PC, and not getting the side benefits of a full computer."
I buy myself an Xbox (200$), PS2 (180$), and a GameCube (120$). That costs me $500. A GeForce 6800 GT costs the same amount.
Then I look at the games. Between the GameCube, Xbox, and PS2, I own (easily) over 100 games. Have there been over 100 PC games in the past 3 years that are worth owning? We do have representatives from the real-time strategy crowd and the FPS crowd, but what of the musir rythm games, platformers, party games (Mario Party on a computer would be considerably more constrained!), J-RPGs, etc?
I should mention I've never had to patch Super Mario Sunshine. When I bought it in 2002, it worked bug free!
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and it never has been.
Only cracked out moderators would mod this up.
".. that Windows Vista isn't going to be all the fresh, hot goodness that we've been promised?"
How does an obvious statement like this manage to get 4 stupid moderators all to mod it up?
Windows 95! Now better than ever!
Windows 98! All your problems are solved!
Windows ME! We will help you how we can!
Windows 2000! No limit to your dreams!
Windows XP! Easier than ever, better, faster!
Of course MS is going to hype up their new product and have you upgrade from the old product. A statement as naive as yours is not truth, nor insightful, nor informative.
The rest of your comment similarly refuses to acknowledge that legacy momentum is the only thing keeping Microsoft going forward. People only use Windows because they "know" it. The tiny scraps of knowledge of how to use it they've gathered are things they are unwilling to abandon. Most people could as easily use MacOSX or Linux (Ubuntu is very nice), but they are unwilling to even learn what the names of the apps they would need in the new OS are (for most people, an MP3 player, browser, mail client, and Open Office are enough).
I do not see why any post that is not very insightful and also incorrectly spells the word grammar (which no e has ever been involved with) should be +5.
Perhaps you could make a case for +3. I would certainly mod this kind of tripe down if I were you.
I will agree that mathematical models that we produce will be flawed and will have problems, but (with some exceptions) we can generally get "close enough" (such as in statistical applications, where a 95% confidence interval is enough, as you mentioned). However, I do not believe that math in general is flawed -- although our understanding may be.
Math, like physics or chemistry, is imuteable. We do not change it by understanding of it. What we consider math is just our understanding of what actually happens.
"But it's also useless to us except as it helps us understand the world around us, or model something we've obvserved, etc. There are still things it is wholely unconcerned with (but can be applied to in various situations)."
That is where I think you have something to learn. While math may seem, at first, to be unconnected except for use in models, it is not. Goedel's incompleteness theorem seems like it is not useful to someone with your point of view. However, Dr. Jurgensen has the CS POV where we see that not only do we have axiomatic systems about number theory, we see that when we organize problems into classes of ones we can solve in finite steps, we run across similar odd issues.
He has lecture slides up somewhere. His major findings are also published. I can't find the specific reference at the moment, but there is a string of publications up until 2005 that are mentioned in his most recent work.
From my own notes on his lecture slides:
"What does this mean?
* Independence is a wide-spread phenomenon.
* Independence seems to be a consequence of a deficit of information (we cannot gain information by deduction).
* The measure of information must be relativized ( instead of H).
* Proving (computing) cannot generate information, but can only make hidden information explicit. GIGO -- you only work with what is given.
* True and independent statements are no artifacts; independence is essentially independent of the particular formalization of the theory.
The question of whether there are many "interesting" true and independent statements remains unanswered.
Conjecture: It could be possible to prove that statements are correct merely in terms of their size and length related to the work."
So, as you see, an artifact of math affects information theory (indeed, they are almost the same once you get into the details). This affects the kinds of systems of logic we can build in computer science, and also what kinds of brain activity can exist if the human mind is at all like a Turing machine in terms of its ultimate implementation. I think that's important.
Math can seem to be unconnected, but the relationships are there.
Their backup protocols and means of transitioning the home directory and user preferences is very nice. It'd be good if I could setup a server at home on my main server that allowed me to sync the basic prefs.
.Mac-alike?
Is anyone working on a FOSS
It has deeper implications than "just math". I don't know how far you've gone with computer algorithms, but I attended a wonderful talk given at my University by a gentleman who has been related the logic behind that statement to other things.
It has very deep implications on what can and can't be proven or computed within the lifetime of the Universe, not "just" math axioms. It's not that math is limited, it's that information theory is complex. You imply that math is a creation like a telephone (" realize that math and even logic are human's own inventions, and are limited in what they can be applied to.") when, in fact, we are merely describing underlying features of the Universe.
Go learn about NP vs. P and other parts of algorithm theory, then talk to me.