apparently "balls" are something you've only heard people talk about. Because you've certainly never worked with MS technology and compared their documentation with what you get from other technlogies. MS compares favorably with Sun and Intel, and I am unaware of any other tech company that comes even within shouting distance of those three. MS has reams upon reams of info available on their web site, and if your complaint is you cannot understand it, you should perhaps look within yourself, not point fingers at others for your own failings.
Problem: Body says "Eat until you aren't hungry." Instinct says "Eat this, it smells like it will give you lots of energy, you need energy." Mind says "Do things this way, it saves energy."
Outcome: You get fat. Not because you are inherently lazy, but because you have an ingrained drive to be more efficient, while your unconscious mental and physical processes haven't adapted to the extent to which you've reduced your energy needs for survival.
As has been pointed out, the whole stable weight thing is a bit of a balancing act. Behavior that keeps a person on the ragged edge of survival will tend to cause health problems in a situation where mere survival is no longer the taxing endeavor it once was. And lets not forget that America is populated by ethnicities of the largest stature: Europeans are certainly going to tend to out-weigh their Asian counterparts, being generally taller on average for starters. This whole attitude that Americans are somehow all pigs for being 5'8"-6' and 160-200lbs. is silly and ignorant. At 6' and 200lbs., I am "overweight" according to BMI charts, but with a 44" chest and a 36" waist, I certainly don't have a belly to speak of, and my arms and legs are pretty solidly muscled, with perhaps 20% body fat. Is it remotely possible that "over-weight" is not something that can be determined by two or three factors alone?
No shit, Sherlock. I don't think anyone cares who develops their own, but prohibitions on export mean other countries won't just be GIVEN a tool like that.
Welcome to Slashdot, where fools with limited comprehension prove their inability to fathom the motivations of those smarter than themselves. Over and over again.
I fail to see why there would be any drive to restrict civilian access to any computer technology that isn't part of some classified defense project. on the other hand, I can easily see justification for export regulation. It makes no sense to export your best tech to countries that have a track record of violating patents (China, Korea, hell, big chunks of Asia, I'm looking at you). This would hardly be a new practice, and anyone who's surprised by this needs to read a bit of history.
Seriously, if you've ever spent any time trying o figure it out, then learn the secret, how can you forget it for long? I didn't even remember what it was called, but as soon as I rolled the dice, it was obvious.
GPS isn't geosynchronous, so any failure would only mean a temporary potential for degradation of accuracy. I would presume that the spares are orbiting in a space not far from the next likley failure, rather than just randomly placed.
you seem to forget that this Archimedes guy had more funds and manpower at his disposal then ten "very promising" undergrads. Also keep in mind that Archimedes by this point in his career was well beyond his first four years in college - he actually had experience to draw on.
Sure, after you factor out all the different ways Java is slow, you can come to the conclusion that Java isn't slow, but then, you don't have to factor out those cases for C, C++, hell, even Basic.
Taken as a whole, in every case, from start of execution to exit, Java is slow. So many, many people, who know a thing or two, fail to see any reason to code software where speed and performance is paramount, in Java.
Java is slow, which is why you will never see a triple-A game title coded in Java.
"That's because evolutions at it's heart is based on just one thing: "There is no Creator.""
Not even close to accurate. The question of the existence of a "Creator" deity is not even tangentially associated with evolution. "Evolution" is the change in individuals from generation to generation, and how that ffects procreation, roughly.
The scientific study of the origin of life is undertaken with the premise that life was not created in toto by a supernatural entity. The possibility that there is certainly exists, but in the abscence of any scientific observations of such, it is not possible to formulate a SCIENTIFIC theory that includes a deity. However this planet got here, and however it became overgrown with such dtestable creatures, it certainly is an interesting case study.
Suppose there IS a divine being that created the heavens and earth. What better worship than documenting and cataloging the scope of his creation? (if you want to bicker over the use of the masculine pronoun, might as well bicker over ships being called "her", as well:)) I therefore fail to see the supposedly religious imperitive to ban all study of creation.
There is nothing wrong with teaching religion in schools. There IS, however, something wrong with confusing the study of historical writings with the study of creation. And perhaps something wrong with teaching one specific religion in the publicly funded secular learning centers, much less in an effort to obscure and discredit the teaching of scientific knowledge. Our nation relies on publicly funded education to ensure the continued growth and success of our citizens. Sabotaging that effort with public funds is counterproductive, and will never be popular or acceptable to thinking people.
I was responding to suggestions that the map is a part of the public domain because an organization had purchased rights. No such thing had taken place.
I quote you: "it would be theirs to put in the public domain IF THEY SO WISHED." Apparently, the aggreived party did not so wish. End of story.
I find it funny that none of the deeply offended posters have any idea if the owners of the map rights are public, private, or subject to having every property passed into public domain immediately upon purchase of said property.
so, you know for a fact the arrangements that the map in question was commissioned under?
Where was my analogy flawed? Is a map any less of a property than a school? Do you, or any other single ciutizen, have the right to use it as you see fit, or is there a legal and social consensus that public property is not the same as communal property?
sorry, but if the New York Transit people hired me and my firm to produce a subway map for them, our contract would grant rights to the transit organization, not everyone curently paying taxes in the US.
While you may think that everything paid by taxes should belong to you personally, consider that while roads are paid out of taxes and usage fees, you don't own them in the sense that you have the right to use them as you please. You buy a house, you can use it as you please (even then, within some basic guidelines). You pay taxes that builds a school, you will get arrested for trespassing if you try to enter it at will. Not many people would argue that charging people with trespassing for breaking into a public school is wrong. Paying your taxes doesn't buy you rights to use the tax-purchased properties at your discretion.
perhaps the surge in laptops is from people who already have one or more desktops? Then the surge in laptop sales doesn't indicate laptops replacing desktops, or "stealing marketshare," but merely increased overlap. In fact, I am struggling to come up with a single household I know of that has a laptop WITHOUT at least one desktop machine already. We are not talking about people buying "either/or," but people buying "in addition to."
It really seems as if the growth in laptop sales corresponds to a drop in price for performance. The cost of performance in laptops has dropped to within range of desktop machines for only a small premium, compared to only a few years ago, when even the cheapest desktop machines eclipsed all but the top-end laptops costing thousands more.
gone with the advent of computers and plastic. Oh, wait.
Please, can we stop hyping the great new waste of technology as the dawn of an imaginary era? We don't have flying cars, either, despite the predictions of idiots. (I just love imagining traffic jams and collisions at altitude:D)
"****WHAT**** was the additional loss from mp3 to ogg"
to restate the obvious, MP3 is a lossy compressed format. Ogg Vorbis is a lossy compressed format. Your MP3 file already is a lower quality than the original wav file. You convert the MP3 back to wav, which hasn't improved anything. Then you convert the new wav to Ogg Vorbis. In the Ogg Vorbis lossy compression, you lose even more audio data than the original MP3 compression. The end result is a worse sounding file than the MP3. The lower the bitrate, the worse it will be. I can think of no reason to do this kind of conversion, other than just to be stupid.
And if your reasoning for buying into an Ogg Vorbis player had anything to do with perceived audio quality, WTF would you be trashing the quality of your audio files even further simply to use a perceived better format? It's akin to killing all chickens by starvation because raising them for food is cruel:/
well, Human Immunodeficiency Virus has yet to make inroads into birds, rocks, and the internet, but no-one is running around writing articles about how "something about rocks makes them resistant to HIV." Even if they did write the articles, it is hardly "HUGE." Crocs are not even mammals, so it would be *very* surprising if a virus that infects a very specific group of mammals WOULD ALSO infect a reptile.
I guess it is possible that something might be learned from studying the immune system of reptiles, such as it is, but it isn't like the croc is the only thing on earth that is not affected by HIV. It's just that much of what we know about why HIV doesn't infect rocks (rocks are not alive, et al.), for example, isn't very useful when it comes to using this knowledge to benefit humans. Nothing about crocodiles suggests they possess anything that would work in the sick human body as they do in the healthy croc's.
Since Microsoft is the single most important company in mmany Slashdot posters' lives, we can expect irrational behavior every time someone at MS hiccups. Kinda sad. This whole "the sky is falling" hyperbole, along with the assumption of hidden MS agendas is normal, I guess, for people who devote an inordinate amount of time to the goings-on in Redmond. The funniest thing is these people purport to "hate" MS, yet every time an MS employee flushes a toilet, one of these guys is there watching and ready to comment. Talk about unhealthy obsession.
What follows will be screeching defensiveness and name-calling, as people self-identify themselves as MS junkies who claim to not really like Windows much at all. yeah, right. It is like little girls punching boys on the playground - they call it "hating," everyone else sees it as the flirting and obsession it is.
Actually, it could certainly be argued that the dissemination of information is what is responsible for hte technological advances of the modern era. And further argued that the dissemination of national news is likely the most important factor in the political stability of our nation - we can all see and hear what took place, regardless of our location geographically, and so can vote for nationally significant positions accordingly. Zealots and fanatics won't get elected, as we know more about them than just their name and affiliation.
Right now, I am surfing the net while the History Channel is educating me on, well, history. Please tell me that knowledge of the past is useless and a waste of my time.
Watching the nightly news is something I do at least a few times a week. I have cable, but I live in a city. I don't intend to live here forever, and I have friends and relatives that don't live in cities. Broadcast TV is the lifeline to civilization for many people in this nation.
I fail to see the "digital/HD broadcast only" imperative. Who cares if broadcast is analog or digital? If I want digital, I can get satellite or cable. If I can't afford satellite or cable, I obviously won't have the cash for a new HD TV. In fact, I can afford cable, but cannot afford a new HD TV. I bought a very good flatscreen CRT TV this winter, and could not make the stretch to spending 3-5 times the money on a POS HD TV.
You are oblivious to the benefits provided by a free, nationwide TV broadcast network. Do you really think it makes sense to alienate over ten percent of the US population?
to be fair, it is the graphics that pose the greatest drain on processing power. If you provide a graphics processor capable of handling more elements faster, it opens up new gameplay experiences. For example, in the Dynasty Warriors franchise, one major draw is the huge numbers of enemies you battle, but those same numbers cause problems when the time comes to have them on the screen. Their behavior isn't that complicated compared to placing every point in space for a model, determining if it is visible, estimating the amount of light hitting them, mapping textures to the model, etc., for each of the 100 or so enemy soldiers, then combining it all into a scene, 60 times a second or so.
A faster, more compentent graphics processor is useful for more than specular highlights. Raw general purpose processing power isn't the bottleneck, slowdown in complicated and quickly changing scenes is. One of the most strident complaints in any game review is slowdown in graphics when alot is going on on-screen. The problem isn't ever going to go away, because as much graphics processing power is delivered, developers will take it all and want more. That is why graphics processing gets the lion's share of press when a new console is announced.
well, one problem with "powerhouse" PC's is their very existence. Playing any online shooter against a guy with a much faster PC than you will be an uphill battle, if you don't get wiped out off the bat. Consoles offer a level playing field, so all players can develop their skills to succeed against foes with no hardware advantage. I've got better things to do with my money than buying new hardware every six months, so online gaming is restricted to my console, for the most part. I'm surely not alone.
Wow, every genertoin of consoles, people forget there is no magic inside. The very point of a console is the dedicated nature of the guts, not "hardware from the future." You don't need the fastest processor to provide superior performance. When developers can focus their development efforts on a single, stationary target, they can optimize the engine in ways that are either prohibitively costly or simply not possible when targeting the ludicrously disparate and constantly changing environment of multipurpose PCs.
At the planning stages, the hardware in a console is ahead of the status quo, but by release time, the hardware is merely state of the art at best. Fanbois brag about their chosen console's "superior tech," but more informed folks appreciate the benefits of a stable platform allowing developers to push the limits of the hardware and find untapped potential in otherwise standard hardware. Compare the first games on any console to the last releases to see the great improvements possible through experience.
Slashdot Mirror
apparently "balls" are something you've only heard people talk about. Because you've certainly never worked with MS technology and compared their documentation with what you get from other technlogies. MS compares favorably with Sun and Intel, and I am unaware of any other tech company that comes even within shouting distance of those three. MS has reams upon reams of info available on their web site, and if your complaint is you cannot understand it, you should perhaps look within yourself, not point fingers at others for your own failings.
Problem: Body says "Eat until you aren't hungry." Instinct says "Eat this, it smells like it will give you lots of energy, you need energy." Mind says "Do things this way, it saves energy."
Outcome: You get fat. Not because you are inherently lazy, but because you have an ingrained drive to be more efficient, while your unconscious mental and physical processes haven't adapted to the extent to which you've reduced your energy needs for survival.
As has been pointed out, the whole stable weight thing is a bit of a balancing act. Behavior that keeps a person on the ragged edge of survival will tend to cause health problems in a situation where mere survival is no longer the taxing endeavor it once was. And lets not forget that America is populated by ethnicities of the largest stature: Europeans are certainly going to tend to out-weigh their Asian counterparts, being generally taller on average for starters. This whole attitude that Americans are somehow all pigs for being 5'8"-6' and 160-200lbs. is silly and ignorant. At 6' and 200lbs., I am "overweight" according to BMI charts, but with a 44" chest and a 36" waist, I certainly don't have a belly to speak of, and my arms and legs are pretty solidly muscled, with perhaps 20% body fat. Is it remotely possible that "over-weight" is not something that can be determined by two or three factors alone?
No shit, Sherlock. I don't think anyone cares who develops their own, but prohibitions on export mean other countries won't just be GIVEN a tool like that.
Welcome to Slashdot, where fools with limited comprehension prove their inability to fathom the motivations of those smarter than themselves. Over and over again.
I fail to see why there would be any drive to restrict civilian access to any computer technology that isn't part of some classified defense project. on the other hand, I can easily see justification for export regulation. It makes no sense to export your best tech to countries that have a track record of violating patents (China, Korea, hell, big chunks of Asia, I'm looking at you). This would hardly be a new practice, and anyone who's surprised by this needs to read a bit of history.
um, IMHO, smart people remember the solution :p
Seriously, if you've ever spent any time trying o figure it out, then learn the secret, how can you forget it for long? I didn't even remember what it was called, but as soon as I rolled the dice, it was obvious.
GPS isn't geosynchronous, so any failure would only mean a temporary potential for degradation of accuracy. I would presume that the spares are orbiting in a space not far from the next likley failure, rather than just randomly placed.
you seem to forget that this Archimedes guy had more funds and manpower at his disposal then ten "very promising" undergrads. Also keep in mind that Archimedes by this point in his career was well beyond his first four years in college - he actually had experience to draw on.
Java is slow. End of story.
Sure, after you factor out all the different ways Java is slow, you can come to the conclusion that Java isn't slow, but then, you don't have to factor out those cases for C, C++, hell, even Basic.
Taken as a whole, in every case, from start of execution to exit, Java is slow. So many, many people, who know a thing or two, fail to see any reason to code software where speed and performance is paramount, in Java.
Java is slow, which is why you will never see a triple-A game title coded in Java.
"That's because evolutions at it's heart is based on just one thing: "There is no Creator.""
:)) I therefore fail to see the supposedly religious imperitive to ban all study of creation.
Not even close to accurate. The question of the existence of a "Creator" deity is not even tangentially associated with evolution. "Evolution" is the change in individuals from generation to generation, and how that ffects procreation, roughly.
The scientific study of the origin of life is undertaken with the premise that life was not created in toto by a supernatural entity. The possibility that there is certainly exists, but in the abscence of any scientific observations of such, it is not possible to formulate a SCIENTIFIC theory that includes a deity. However this planet got here, and however it became overgrown with such dtestable creatures, it certainly is an interesting case study.
Suppose there IS a divine being that created the heavens and earth. What better worship than documenting and cataloging the scope of his creation? (if you want to bicker over the use of the masculine pronoun, might as well bicker over ships being called "her", as well
There is nothing wrong with teaching religion in schools. There IS, however, something wrong with confusing the study of historical writings with the study of creation. And perhaps something wrong with teaching one specific religion in the publicly funded secular learning centers, much less in an effort to obscure and discredit the teaching of scientific knowledge. Our nation relies on publicly funded education to ensure the continued growth and success of our citizens. Sabotaging that effort with public funds is counterproductive, and will never be popular or acceptable to thinking people.
I was responding to suggestions that the map is a part of the public domain because an organization had purchased rights. No such thing had taken place.
I quote you: "it would be theirs to put in the public domain IF THEY SO WISHED." Apparently, the aggreived party did not so wish. End of story.
I find it funny that none of the deeply offended posters have any idea if the owners of the map rights are public, private, or subject to having every property passed into public domain immediately upon purchase of said property.
so, you know for a fact the arrangements that the map in question was commissioned under?
Where was my analogy flawed? Is a map any less of a property than a school? Do you, or any other single ciutizen, have the right to use it as you see fit, or is there a legal and social consensus that public property is not the same as communal property?
sorry, but if the New York Transit people hired me and my firm to produce a subway map for them, our contract would grant rights to the transit organization, not everyone curently paying taxes in the US.
While you may think that everything paid by taxes should belong to you personally, consider that while roads are paid out of taxes and usage fees, you don't own them in the sense that you have the right to use them as you please. You buy a house, you can use it as you please (even then, within some basic guidelines). You pay taxes that builds a school, you will get arrested for trespassing if you try to enter it at will. Not many people would argue that charging people with trespassing for breaking into a public school is wrong. Paying your taxes doesn't buy you rights to use the tax-purchased properties at your discretion.
perhaps the surge in laptops is from people who already have one or more desktops? Then the surge in laptop sales doesn't indicate laptops replacing desktops, or "stealing marketshare," but merely increased overlap. In fact, I am struggling to come up with a single household I know of that has a laptop WITHOUT at least one desktop machine already. We are not talking about people buying "either/or," but people buying "in addition to."
It really seems as if the growth in laptop sales corresponds to a drop in price for performance. The cost of performance in laptops has dropped to within range of desktop machines for only a small premium, compared to only a few years ago, when even the cheapest desktop machines eclipsed all but the top-end laptops costing thousands more.
news at 11 :/
Big frikkin' deal. In other news, little Janey vowed to kill school, after throwing teddy bear at dresser when mom grounded her for poor grades.
---
BTW, I'm a script with extra-ordinary powers of deduction.
gone with the advent of computers and plastic. Oh, wait.
:D)
Please, can we stop hyping the great new waste of technology as the dawn of an imaginary era? We don't have flying cars, either, despite the predictions of idiots. (I just love imagining traffic jams and collisions at altitude
"****WHAT**** was the additional loss from mp3 to ogg"
:/
to restate the obvious, MP3 is a lossy compressed format. Ogg Vorbis is a lossy compressed format. Your MP3 file already is a lower quality than the original wav file. You convert the MP3 back to wav, which hasn't improved anything. Then you convert the new wav to Ogg Vorbis. In the Ogg Vorbis lossy compression, you lose even more audio data than the original MP3 compression. The end result is a worse sounding file than the MP3. The lower the bitrate, the worse it will be. I can think of no reason to do this kind of conversion, other than just to be stupid.
And if your reasoning for buying into an Ogg Vorbis player had anything to do with perceived audio quality, WTF would you be trashing the quality of your audio files even further simply to use a perceived better format? It's akin to killing all chickens by starvation because raising them for food is cruel
well, Human Immunodeficiency Virus has yet to make inroads into birds, rocks, and the internet, but no-one is running around writing articles about how "something about rocks makes them resistant to HIV." Even if they did write the articles, it is hardly "HUGE." Crocs are not even mammals, so it would be *very* surprising if a virus that infects a very specific group of mammals WOULD ALSO infect a reptile.
I guess it is possible that something might be learned from studying the immune system of reptiles, such as it is, but it isn't like the croc is the only thing on earth that is not affected by HIV. It's just that much of what we know about why HIV doesn't infect rocks (rocks are not alive, et al.), for example, isn't very useful when it comes to using this knowledge to benefit humans. Nothing about crocodiles suggests they possess anything that would work in the sick human body as they do in the healthy croc's.
I happen to know someone who was cured of cancer, so apparently, your info is dated.
Since Microsoft is the single most important company in mmany Slashdot posters' lives, we can expect irrational behavior every time someone at MS hiccups. Kinda sad. This whole "the sky is falling" hyperbole, along with the assumption of hidden MS agendas is normal, I guess, for people who devote an inordinate amount of time to the goings-on in Redmond. The funniest thing is these people purport to "hate" MS, yet every time an MS employee flushes a toilet, one of these guys is there watching and ready to comment. Talk about unhealthy obsession.
What follows will be screeching defensiveness and name-calling, as people self-identify themselves as MS junkies who claim to not really like Windows much at all. yeah, right. It is like little girls punching boys on the playground - they call it "hating," everyone else sees it as the flirting and obsession it is.
You got it all wrong - TV Keeps Us Free!!!!
:/
talk about misinterpreting the facts
Actually, it could certainly be argued that the dissemination of information is what is responsible for hte technological advances of the modern era. And further argued that the dissemination of national news is likely the most important factor in the political stability of our nation - we can all see and hear what took place, regardless of our location geographically, and so can vote for nationally significant positions accordingly. Zealots and fanatics won't get elected, as we know more about them than just their name and affiliation.
Newsflash: You are ignorant.
Right now, I am surfing the net while the History Channel is educating me on, well, history. Please tell me that knowledge of the past is useless and a waste of my time.
Watching the nightly news is something I do at least a few times a week. I have cable, but I live in a city. I don't intend to live here forever, and I have friends and relatives that don't live in cities. Broadcast TV is the lifeline to civilization for many people in this nation.
I fail to see the "digital/HD broadcast only" imperative. Who cares if broadcast is analog or digital? If I want digital, I can get satellite or cable. If I can't afford satellite or cable, I obviously won't have the cash for a new HD TV. In fact, I can afford cable, but cannot afford a new HD TV. I bought a very good flatscreen CRT TV this winter, and could not make the stretch to spending 3-5 times the money on a POS HD TV.
You are oblivious to the benefits provided by a free, nationwide TV broadcast network. Do you really think it makes sense to alienate over ten percent of the US population?
to be fair, it is the graphics that pose the greatest drain on processing power. If you provide a graphics processor capable of handling more elements faster, it opens up new gameplay experiences. For example, in the Dynasty Warriors franchise, one major draw is the huge numbers of enemies you battle, but those same numbers cause problems when the time comes to have them on the screen. Their behavior isn't that complicated compared to placing every point in space for a model, determining if it is visible, estimating the amount of light hitting them, mapping textures to the model, etc., for each of the 100 or so enemy soldiers, then combining it all into a scene, 60 times a second or so.
A faster, more compentent graphics processor is useful for more than specular highlights. Raw general purpose processing power isn't the bottleneck, slowdown in complicated and quickly changing scenes is. One of the most strident complaints in any game review is slowdown in graphics when alot is going on on-screen. The problem isn't ever going to go away, because as much graphics processing power is delivered, developers will take it all and want more. That is why graphics processing gets the lion's share of press when a new console is announced.
well, one problem with "powerhouse" PC's is their very existence. Playing any online shooter against a guy with a much faster PC than you will be an uphill battle, if you don't get wiped out off the bat. Consoles offer a level playing field, so all players can develop their skills to succeed against foes with no hardware advantage. I've got better things to do with my money than buying new hardware every six months, so online gaming is restricted to my console, for the most part. I'm surely not alone.
Wow, every genertoin of consoles, people forget there is no magic inside. The very point of a console is the dedicated nature of the guts, not "hardware from the future." You don't need the fastest processor to provide superior performance. When developers can focus their development efforts on a single, stationary target, they can optimize the engine in ways that are either prohibitively costly or simply not possible when targeting the ludicrously disparate and constantly changing environment of multipurpose PCs.
At the planning stages, the hardware in a console is ahead of the status quo, but by release time, the hardware is merely state of the art at best. Fanbois brag about their chosen console's "superior tech," but more informed folks appreciate the benefits of a stable platform allowing developers to push the limits of the hardware and find untapped potential in otherwise standard hardware. Compare the first games on any console to the last releases to see the great improvements possible through experience.
"Porting the existing drivers to this new acceleration architecture should be easy"
:D
Obviously not written by anyone who has ever worked on a coding project