As soon as even one or two bacteria manage to throw the phage-genes out again or, even simpler, acquire a loss-of-function mutation they'll have a huge advantage over the self-destructing ones and might eventually eliminate them. The result would be quite nasty for those who run the harvesting plant...
I'd at least suggest seperated smaller tanks of bacteria that are isolated from one another so that the damage of such an event is kept at a minimum.
Does this make any sense at all? It sounds like complete bollocks but has been modded to +5 so I thought I'd ask.
Restricting access will turn around and bite the newspaper industry. The will rue th day they thought of restricting access.
They have to do something - they are haemorrhaging money at the moment. If you know what that something is then you can make a shit-load from that idea.
The problem is simply that the shift to online has had a drastically bad effect on their advertising revenue. They have two options: 1) cut costs - this means cutting journalists, and essentially stopping being a serious news outlet, ie just become yet another website that rewrites other websites and press releases. 2) Raise more revenue. I'm sure they would love to do this from advertisers in the traditional way, but you can't force people to pay more than they want to to advertise with you, so that leaves trying to get money from readers.
If you think Murdoch et al don't understand the risks of this then you are a fool; hence why he has been making noises about paywalls rather than actually doing it, but they have to get money from somewhere.
Looking at US politics from the outside, one thing I simply can't understand is this.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
You have an entire group of people who were brought to the country as slaves and even after slavery was abolished were terribly discriminated against (eg kept under control by lynching) within living memory. Even after reform you still have serious discrimination going on into the present day.
Then you act surprised that they vote as a block for one of their own to be head of state the first time they have a real chance! Seriously what the fuck did you expect? That isn't racism, its human nature.
I think the word that is usually used is retribution. I had a friend at University who was an enthusiastic law student and I remember him going on about the 4 reasons for criminal punishments: Retribution, Rehabilitation, Deterrence and Containment.
You can argue that retribution is actually the most important. Fundamentally as a society we believe in and support the rule of law; that is that we allow a third party (the state) to punish those who commit crimes against us. For this to be acceptable retribution has to be part of it. since if people do not feel they are getting justice then they will take the law into their own hands and we are back to the old ways of blood-feud.
No surprise... price variations based on cookies... is old news. I remember reading about how cookies resident on the user's machine can cause different quoted prices to appear years ago... probably five years ago at least. I was able to test it at the time using two browsers with different cookie loads. It's definitely happening. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was a/. story years ago that first mentioned it.
A/B split testing is very common practice in ecommerce, for everything from site design, or cart functionality to shipping charges or prices. Go onto an ecommerce forum and post something inane like "if I raise my prices, will I make more money?" and you'll get a generic "do a split test and see" response.
Because without something that the BBC can at least represent to their content providers as a solution, they won't be able to get some of them to agree to let them licence their content.
Full disclosure: I'm a songwriter and a member of a PRS. The money I make a year on songwriting could maybe buy a nice dinner. Without someone looking out for my interests, I'd make nothing.
I do understand where you're coming from, but (what's seems to be) the current campaign by the PRS is maybe a little over the top.
We are a (very) small ecommerce business and I have taken 3 calls myself, and at least one other has been taken by someone else, from the PRS taking an irritatingly high-handed approach. From what they have said we need a license to play music in our office; not due to customers hearing but just if we are playing it at all where staff can hear. I have been told this explicitly although I'm very far from sure it is actually the case.
We don't play music in the office, as I told the first two people who called up, I'm afraid I was considerably shorter with the third call I took - unfair on a phone monkey I suppose, but getting repeated calls that feel very much like a shakedown is annoying. Especially when they are clearly just randomly dialling businesses, without keeping any track of who has been called already. Either that or they work on the same principle as the TV licence people, and just assume you're lying.
Anyway, I don't mean to rant at you, and I understand that getting paid for your work is important to you:) But I don't think the PRS are doing you any favours when it comes to the attitudes towards licensing they are engendering (I'm certainly less, not more, likely to contact them if I was ever in a situation where I felt I might need a performance licence; I also know very well that they aren't going to do anything more than call again, even if they get the phone slammed down on them). That said, I don't know how much revenue these calls are bringing in.
heh, just going on your comment and user name, I was assuming you were Scottish yourself. A mistake of that magnitude would probably have required you to hand in your kilt:)
I don't think we'll ever lose the ability to make simple firearms, even in a real apocalyptic scenario. Sure modern weapons need a fair amount of manufacturing know-how, but even smooth-bore muzzle loading muskets are better military weapons than bows and spears, and very simple to make along with their ammunition and black powder.
So these immigrants stay young for ever? It's just putting off the problem.
No, but they will pay enough tax in their working lives to more than counterbalance what they cost in retirement. Yes we probably get the same demographic problem when they/their descendants slow down their reproduction, but better to have it in a few centuries than a few decades - we are getting richer as a nation all the time so will be better equipped to deal with it the later it happens.
When all the chavs who chose the dole as a career have been forcibly got off their arses and there are still unfilled vacancies then get back to me.
You are going to have a long fucking wait. There are now, and always have been, plenty of the jobs that immigrants go for. Good fucking luck getting our home-grown underclass to take them.
As I see it the economic benefits of immigration are pretty much unanswerable. The problems (and they are real problems) are social, not economic.
While you are probably right, how about in the interim we don't leave our troops to hang out to dry in a war zone?
Very un-British I know, our glorious traditions indicate that we should not have the guts to make the decision to get out, while showing our dislike of the business by refusing to properly support the men and women doing the dying.
So how long does it take to plant a roadside bomb? 15 minutes? Suppose you see some truck stop by the side of the road, some guys get out and they're doing something that might, or might not, be digging a hole. It just so happens that you've got a predator drone in the air so you blow them up five minutes later.
You would kill a lot of innocents with that policy, and ultimately lose any political support we may still have. But maybe if you know that area is suspicious, and you have a convoy going through that area you can warn them to be even more careful of that spot. More, if you had blanket coverage of large areas of Afghanistan, maybe commanders wanting to navigate a route could go back through the last days/weeks/months of surveillance and look for anything suspicious.
I dunno, I'm no soldier, but I have been trying to keep informed on Afghanistan. I've seen talk about a massive increase in surveillance as a tool against roadside bombs. The only arguments I've seen against it have been along the lines of; can't do it, it would cost to much.
Maybe it isn't practical for other reasons (I've certainly no knowledge that this blimp is actually intended for this role), but we are taking a terrible amount of casualties from bombs; both deaths and horrific injuries. I hope something can be done about it and as a (British) taxpayer I am certainly willing to pay for it.
Well given the summary says it is meant to stay airborne for the best part of a month, I doubt ascent and descent are major worries.
I have no personal knowledge, but my impression is that our troops are getting slaughtered by roadside bombs; mainly because they don't have the manpower or surveillance assets to control even heavily travelled routes. Anything that can help that must surely be a benefit.
Re:Some would call X3 the successor...
on
Elite Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
heh, I really do know what you mean. To be honest TC isn't much better than Reunion when it comes to the whole WTF?? element when first playing. It still has the same gotchas, reading newbie forum posts you get the same list of questions over and over, eg:
Why can't I hit anything with my lasers?
- You need to buy Fight Command Software Mk 1 and then toggle the autoaim on. Oh and this doesn't work with the mouse button controlled firing which aims at your cursor (new in TC IIRC) but only with the bore-sight Reunion style firing which is tucked away with a binding to the Ctrl button by default, although it is the only type of firing you will want to do until you are fighting capital ships.
Why can't I see the prices at a station unless I'm landed there?
- You need to have the Trading System Extension software (not Trade Command Mk1, 2 or 3) installed on the ship you are currently flying, and have an asset in the relevant sector. Basically you need a Navigation Satellite network which you can easily lay automatically, as long as you know that you need to fit Explorer Command software to the ship in question, and give it at least 1 Nav Sat before you have the option.
I really like this game, but it does seem to take forever to get anywhere..
- Oh dear, how long have you being playing without the compress time feature... try pressing 'j'...
etc etc etc:)
One of the things about an incredibly complex game developed by a small software house I suppose. When you are banging your head against a wall trying to work out if you can do something simple, the answer is nearly always 'Yes', as long as you can read the mind of the developer who coded the feature:)
The big advantages of TC over Reunion come in when you are over the initial complete confusion - a huge amount of the grind has been taken out; instead of having to dock at station after station looking for missions, you see icons around stations that have missions to give and can Com them to take the mission (sounds small, but this is a HUGE improvement). Race reputation moves much faster (some do say too fast), so you don't have to grind away before you can buy a decent ship. Readily available combat missions give you an reasonable way to make money from fighting apart from simply trying to cap ships. A much more generous plot-mission sequence where you actually get decent rewards for following the plot. An in-game encyclopedia that remembers the specs/where to buy/sell etc of all wares, software, equipment, weapons and ships (there's a lot more to TC, but those are some of the big improvements that help newer players getting started)
It really is a game where the forum is not an optional extra. Thankfully the forum is excellent.
Slashdot Mirror
Having been on the wrong end of a trademark claim I can tell you that that doesn't matter in the slightest.
Thankfully the British billion is well and truly dead now.
Does this make any sense at all? It sounds like complete bollocks but has been modded to +5 so I thought I'd ask.
For vessels that do not dock at US ports? Nothing at all of course, that would be piracy...
They have to do something - they are haemorrhaging money at the moment. If you know what that something is then you can make a shit-load from that idea.
The problem is simply that the shift to online has had a drastically bad effect on their advertising revenue. They have two options: 1) cut costs - this means cutting journalists, and essentially stopping being a serious news outlet, ie just become yet another website that rewrites other websites and press releases. 2) Raise more revenue. I'm sure they would love to do this from advertisers in the traditional way, but you can't force people to pay more than they want to to advertise with you, so that leaves trying to get money from readers.
If you think Murdoch et al don't understand the risks of this then you are a fool; hence why he has been making noises about paywalls rather than actually doing it, but they have to get money from somewhere.
That is an odd way of putting it. It sounds like you find the concept immoral in some way, rather than impossible.
Touché.
I stand by my point however.
Looking at US politics from the outside, one thing I simply can't understand is this.
You have an entire group of people who were brought to the country as slaves and even after slavery was abolished were terribly discriminated against (eg kept under control by lynching) within living memory. Even after reform you still have serious discrimination going on into the present day.
Then you act surprised that they vote as a block for one of their own to be head of state the first time they have a real chance! Seriously what the fuck did you expect? That isn't racism, its human nature.
Don't be a fool.
You are using my computer, not reading my book. Of course I have the right to keep records of that usage.
I think the word that is usually used is retribution. I had a friend at University who was an enthusiastic law student and I remember him going on about the 4 reasons for criminal punishments: Retribution, Rehabilitation, Deterrence and Containment.
You can argue that retribution is actually the most important. Fundamentally as a society we believe in and support the rule of law; that is that we allow a third party (the state) to punish those who commit crimes against us. For this to be acceptable retribution has to be part of it. since if people do not feel they are getting justice then they will take the law into their own hands and we are back to the old ways of blood-feud.
Also, the word 'quaint' may not be taken in the complementary way you think it will..
There is no right side of the road to drive on. Your choices are left or wrong.
A/B split testing is very common practice in ecommerce, for everything from site design, or cart functionality to shipping charges or prices. Go onto an ecommerce forum and post something inane like "if I raise my prices, will I make more money?" and you'll get a generic "do a split test and see" response.
>So why must piracy be solved here?
Because without something that the BBC can at least represent to their content providers as a solution, they won't be able to get some of them to agree to let them licence their content.
I do understand where you're coming from, but (what's seems to be) the current campaign by the PRS is maybe a little over the top.
We are a (very) small ecommerce business and I have taken 3 calls myself, and at least one other has been taken by someone else, from the PRS taking an irritatingly high-handed approach. From what they have said we need a license to play music in our office; not due to customers hearing but just if we are playing it at all where staff can hear. I have been told this explicitly although I'm very far from sure it is actually the case.
We don't play music in the office, as I told the first two people who called up, I'm afraid I was considerably shorter with the third call I took - unfair on a phone monkey I suppose, but getting repeated calls that feel very much like a shakedown is annoying. Especially when they are clearly just randomly dialling businesses, without keeping any track of who has been called already. Either that or they work on the same principle as the TV licence people, and just assume you're lying.
Anyway, I don't mean to rant at you, and I understand that getting paid for your work is important to you :) But I don't think the PRS are doing you any favours when it comes to the attitudes towards licensing they are engendering (I'm certainly less, not more, likely to contact them if I was ever in a situation where I felt I might need a performance licence; I also know very well that they aren't going to do anything more than call again, even if they get the phone slammed down on them). That said, I don't know how much revenue these calls are bringing in.
heh, just going on your comment and user name, I was assuming you were Scottish yourself. A mistake of that magnitude would probably have required you to hand in your kilt :)
Presumably because Scottish law is separate from English law, something most Scots, in my experience, seem very aware of :)
I don't think we'll ever lose the ability to make simple firearms, even in a real apocalyptic scenario. Sure modern weapons need a fair amount of manufacturing know-how, but even smooth-bore muzzle loading muskets are better military weapons than bows and spears, and very simple to make along with their ammunition and black powder.
No, but they will pay enough tax in their working lives to more than counterbalance what they cost in retirement. Yes we probably get the same demographic problem when they/their descendants slow down their reproduction, but better to have it in a few centuries than a few decades - we are getting richer as a nation all the time so will be better equipped to deal with it the later it happens.
You are going to have a long fucking wait. There are now, and always have been, plenty of the jobs that immigrants go for. Good fucking luck getting our home-grown underclass to take them.
As I see it the economic benefits of immigration are pretty much unanswerable. The problems (and they are real problems) are social, not economic.
You sounded like you very nearly had a point that time, well done!
Look, we all have something to bring to this discussion. But I think from now on the thing you should bring is silence.
While you are probably right, how about in the interim we don't leave our troops to hang out to dry in a war zone?
Very un-British I know, our glorious traditions indicate that we should not have the guts to make the decision to get out, while showing our dislike of the business by refusing to properly support the men and women doing the dying.
You would kill a lot of innocents with that policy, and ultimately lose any political support we may still have. But maybe if you know that area is suspicious, and you have a convoy going through that area you can warn them to be even more careful of that spot. More, if you had blanket coverage of large areas of Afghanistan, maybe commanders wanting to navigate a route could go back through the last days/weeks/months of surveillance and look for anything suspicious.
I dunno, I'm no soldier, but I have been trying to keep informed on Afghanistan. I've seen talk about a massive increase in surveillance as a tool against roadside bombs. The only arguments I've seen against it have been along the lines of; can't do it, it would cost to much.
Maybe it isn't practical for other reasons (I've certainly no knowledge that this blimp is actually intended for this role), but we are taking a terrible amount of casualties from bombs; both deaths and horrific injuries. I hope something can be done about it and as a (British) taxpayer I am certainly willing to pay for it.
Well given the summary says it is meant to stay airborne for the best part of a month, I doubt ascent and descent are major worries.
I have no personal knowledge, but my impression is that our troops are getting slaughtered by roadside bombs; mainly because they don't have the manpower or surveillance assets to control even heavily travelled routes. Anything that can help that must surely be a benefit.
heh, I really do know what you mean. To be honest TC isn't much better than Reunion when it comes to the whole WTF?? element when first playing. It still has the same gotchas, reading newbie forum posts you get the same list of questions over and over, eg:
:)
:)
Why can't I hit anything with my lasers?
- You need to buy Fight Command Software Mk 1 and then toggle the autoaim on. Oh and this doesn't work with the mouse button controlled firing which aims at your cursor (new in TC IIRC) but only with the bore-sight Reunion style firing which is tucked away with a binding to the Ctrl button by default, although it is the only type of firing you will want to do until you are fighting capital ships.
Why can't I see the prices at a station unless I'm landed there?
- You need to have the Trading System Extension software (not Trade Command Mk1, 2 or 3) installed on the ship you are currently flying, and have an asset in the relevant sector. Basically you need a Navigation Satellite network which you can easily lay automatically, as long as you know that you need to fit Explorer Command software to the ship in question, and give it at least 1 Nav Sat before you have the option.
I really like this game, but it does seem to take forever to get anywhere..
- Oh dear, how long have you being playing without the compress time feature... try pressing 'j'...
etc etc etc
One of the things about an incredibly complex game developed by a small software house I suppose. When you are banging your head against a wall trying to work out if you can do something simple, the answer is nearly always 'Yes', as long as you can read the mind of the developer who coded the feature
The big advantages of TC over Reunion come in when you are over the initial complete confusion - a huge amount of the grind has been taken out; instead of having to dock at station after station looking for missions, you see icons around stations that have missions to give and can Com them to take the mission (sounds small, but this is a HUGE improvement). Race reputation moves much faster (some do say too fast), so you don't have to grind away before you can buy a decent ship. Readily available combat missions give you an reasonable way to make money from fighting apart from simply trying to cap ships. A much more generous plot-mission sequence where you actually get decent rewards for following the plot. An in-game encyclopedia that remembers the specs/where to buy/sell etc of all wares, software, equipment, weapons and ships (there's a lot more to TC, but those are some of the big improvements that help newer players getting started)
It really is a game where the forum is not an optional extra. Thankfully the forum is excellent.