SimEarth is another example and I believe Alpha Centuri (tho I never played that one)
Yeah the numbering thing doesn't mean much, though the yearly sport games are pretty lazy. Update the stats, add a mini-game, a bit or shine and polish, and a metric fuckton of advertising.
Duke, Quake, Unreal, Warcraft, etc.... Tons of games that were sequels were better than the original.
However I think what they are trying to get at is "EA SPORTS" "IT'S IN THE GAME!!!" sort of garbage.EA made their money making half assed sport games, then using that monetary leverage bought up all sorts of actual good non-asshat companies whose owners get a big payday. EA now makes these games, badly, and tries to eek out every bit of profit, before abandoning it for the next...
I haven't bought EA games in a long time with one exception. Mass Effect 3. Even then there was the gamer outrage at the craptacular ending, which again, was just pure laziness on their part, and likely to get it on shelves as quickly as they could to maximize their profit. It also has all the micro transaction BS stuff built in to try an eek out any money they can. Despite all of this I still enjoy the game and weirdly enough EA has offered up a lot of free downloadable content for multiplayer. However, every now and again I get the "CANNOT CONNECT TO EA SERVERS, TRY AGAIN LATER" error message which really dives me insane. To me it is just them saying "Hey, go fuck yourself and go do something else we're busy or something, piss off!"
That said, if EA bought the rights to Fallout and released Fallout 4 tomorrow, I'd probably be an idiot and buy it. Shhh no one repeat that, we don't want to give EA any big ideas!
What possible sactions could be made? I mean is any UN country currently doing ANY trade with NK?
I remember reading sometime ago when they were talking about Iran and sactions... if you don't do any trade with them in the first place, don't have an embasy there anymore, what is it you hope to possibly do?
"It has a killer refresh rate. P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium. Yeah. It’s not just the chip, it has a PCI bus. But you knew that. Indeed. RISC architecture is gonna change everything. Yeah. RISC is good."
I mean its not all about RISC, its that PCI bus as well, but you know that!:)
I agree with most of what your say, with the exception of:
"Basic truth: if it's a good wind power site, it's too windy for most people to live there"
That is a load of garbage.
If you want the "Basic Truth" about wind power I will give it to you:
Basic Truth about Wind Power: MOST of the best locations for wind power is off shore. MOST of the land located close to off shore are owned by wealthy people. MOST wealthy people like to keep their wealth. SOME of the wealth is tied up in expensive cottages and shore land. They expect the worth of that land/property to be degraded by Wind Power. Wealthy land owners and cottage owers can pour a lot of money into a lobby group to kill any Wind Power project. Typically they join/form some sort of "green" "enviromental" group that has huge concerns about the windmills killing bats, birds, creating noise, and being natually astheticlly displeasing, etc... Using this window dressing and a war chest full of money they hire lawyers and lobby government until the issue either goes someplace else, or it is delayed until it fails or the company gets too frustrated. These are essientially landowner and cottage owner assoications pretending to be enviromently groups to shut down these projects for the sole purpose of protecting their interests insofar as how much their land is worth.
So not so basic, but the truth is it is total bull. There is no pressing enviromental concern (I am sure there are a few nut cases that believe their own cool aid), it is all fabracated more less (or hyped and propaganda) by wealthly landowners that own expensive cottages and don't want them devalued by having some windmills stuck off shore wreaking their view. Which is crazy and sad if you ask me. I think they look cool myself.
In the few cases I have seen of successful projects 200MW+ it was on an island (i.e. you don't have to have expensive waterfrontage) and the company was smart to enter into agreements with land owners to buy their land at good prices (probably a drop in the bucket if you are rich or your cottage is worth a few million), or even I think more interestingly giving a percentage of profit earned by that particular windmill directly to the landowner (which I think is really cool). However it is unlikely that would work for the hyper rich and their cottage properties (not to mention if it is off shore, they don't own the land, so they shouldn't/wouldn't get anything anyway).
Anyway I am not one of those nuts that think wind is going to save us all. But I think it is an important component of any power strategy, particulary if you have pumping and resoviours available for use in storage. I think it is crazy that these things are being killed not only by a very select few, but likely the most well off in our society. It is sad.
If said impact occurs, and if a rover is somehow able to reach it, it would be a huge opportunity! I mean we attached little digging and drilling tools to try and lean about Martian soil and subsurface conditions, and the same goes with the landing site and checking out old disturbances. Heck the Japanese I believe intentionally crashed a spaceship/satillite/insturment whatever into a celestial object just to see what was down there.
Supposedly this impact will make a hole 2km deep. Looking to see water, or what the martian crust is made up of? Well it is about to be exposed!
OK. So I am normally the last person to defend big corporate, and the first to make excuses for government. However in this case I am inclined to say: WTF?
Since when is it a companies responsibility to have "public interest". There job is to make money. If they sold broken things, or misrepresented the things they sold, then it is on them and their reputation, which will hurt them later on.
Nobody held a gun to the head of government and said "You must buy this CISCO router!"
Did they not put out competitive bids? Did they not do their research? Do the procurement people not know what they are doing? Does the IT staff not know? Did none of the afore mention communicate with each other?
It does sould like Cisco seriously upsold government in this case, and that is sort of a real jerk thing to do, which if I were government again looking for routers or network whatever, and bids came in, I might make a arguement for not selecting Cisco based on previous work. However the blame does seem to fall on incompatance in this case in whoever was in charge of the tech procurement, either not understaning the job, the requirements, or perhaps something even illegal like a nice kick back from Cisco.
Threw my ass in prison. What were you doing in Germany, huh? Excuse me, says I, but it was comrade Stalin who sent me there. Don't bring our glorious leader into your treachery. Confess, spy bastard! Confess. And bang! Bang, bang, bang! Well, there wasn't a sickle, but there was a hammer. And bang. Knocked out all my teeth. That's right, boy. Have no illusions. That's the land of socialism and universal bliss for you.
Particulary when many of the requirements are mutually exclusive.
There was a really good news special up here in Canada (Can't remember network, may have been CBC), where they interviewed a now retired avaition engineer who was the lead for most of the successful designs in the last several decades in the US.
The whole interview could be sumed up that he thought it was a collosal joke, that it was a failure, that it isn't good at anything with the exception of costing a lot of money and funneling tons of money to Lockheed from the government.
So you want an agile dogfighter, that can also function as a bomber, that has stealth capability, that has an extended range, that (at least in some varients) had vertical take off ability, etc... and so on. Like designing a cargo ship to be small and nimble, you can't have both and really be successful.
I think part of the problem is divergant purposes of these type of craft. As I understand it most air combat (despite Top Gun) is about stand off capability, which is mostly about radar and stealth and perhaps ordance. That is you see them first from a LONG way off, let your birds fly, return to base to rearm without even really "seeing" your targets, let along get in an actual dog fight. However, that is against a modern air force, which historically hasn't really been a problem for a very long time (maybe some migs in Vietnam perhaps, not including cold war). Who are they arming against, China? Who else has any fighter capability to speak of? If USSR was the "Cold War", is China the "Warm and Fuzzy War" as it isn't exactly stoping buisness or relations. Then you get to the fact that most modern wars seem to be against despotic contries that really have little or no air force to begin with, and what they might have either is too old to be effective, ill maintained for any use, or the defect rather than throwing their lives away. That means that most targets are land targets. None of which are close by, Many of which would require use of various "allied" bases of varing degrees, and carriers should you have them (and Canada does, not).
Anyway at least for Canada what would make more sense is a more modest jet, or even going with say two different models say for different purposes. I can understand why Canada wanted to get involved in the project from an ally perspective and coordination, and economies of scale and the like, however after a while it is just throwing good money after bad rather than admint a mistake was made. Personally I would rather see our helicopters get upgraded first, they are older, have been slated to be replaced for longer, and our Frigates which make up the core of what we call a navy actally have helicopter pads. They also make a bit more sense for ground support for loiter reaons, swap out with search and rescue when close to home... I would also like more heavy lift capability such as the C-17 would make more sense and be more useful. Not only would this be able to ferry troops and equipment around the world faster, but would be infinatly more useful in peaceful missions like sending disaster aid and the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-17_Globemaster_III#Royal_Canadian_Air_Force
Anyway I am not military analyst by any means, I just hope that Canada isn't getting swindled by a scam whos only purpose it to pump money into a specific defence contractor for whatever political reasons, rather than getting the proper equipment for our armed forces.
Is that not the exact requirements for the F35? I believe this has been the number one concern regarding them, and apparently much of the overruns are due to having to satisfy so many masters and have so many varients.
Clearly the entire computer manufacturing sector must be incorrect in making Gigabit LAN pretty much standard for the last 5 years or so. Clearly there is no demand for gigabit internet when everyone has a gigabit lan already running.
Or it could be they want to charge 150$ a month for the service or the fact that it is only available in one city block of one city, and only for those of odd numbered postal address that might be holding consumers back.
Not sure as to why you think I am ignorant. TNT and dynamite are clearly the same thing, AC/DC said so.
As for the rest of your post about creating a "peace prize" so that he wouldn't be remembered as a "Merchant of Death" only proves my point rather than refuting it.
As to how stabalized explosives makes war too costly, I am not sure how that really works. It is essentially a safer way as far as a delivery system to transport a big chemical explosion somewhere (well safer anyway but not foolproof as seen in the Halifax Explosion).
I don't know if it is sad or not, but I did this a very long time ago.
I have a throw away email address that I forward (and delete) everything from to one I actually use. When I use my online identity I only use the throw away account (Slashdot included). If it ever becomes compromised (or even just too much spam, which I think was my orginal intent before filters became very good), you can just drop and delete it (if possible), then if you like start a new one and continue the same process. Sure you may have to reconnect to various websites again to re-register or whatever, but seriously 90% are garbage anyway.
It's not perfect, and won't protect you from everything, but it is at least one level of seperation between you and your online communication. Anyway the way I figure it, it doesn't take much to foil most online attempts, most are looking for the low hanging fruit (usually enmasse, usally scripting, so any deviation throws a wrench into the works). Any amount of effort on their part is too much, as there are plenty of easier marks. If someone of some knowlege really wants to illegally access your stuff (and isn't really worried about repercussions), given time and resources they can probably do it. However I have always maintained that doing so to me would be rather pointless in terms of riches and loot, so why would anyone really bother.
Agree on 3.1, though I always heard that OS/2 was a better system, had better or closer to real multitasking for example, but wasn't as marketed as well by IBM that the MS product was.
95 was a big step forward, so much so, that people put up with the crashes and stability issues. Also was pretty pro gaming.
I thought 98 was simply an attempt to take the various things that got added onto 95 like themes and integrate them into the OS, and to make the user experiance a bit more easy by the adding of various system wizards for various tasks.
Me was a 98 gone too far. Everything was an easy user wizard, but it was bloated, slow, and difficult to even do stuff manually once all the wizards failed. I bought a pre-built dell back in 2000, that of course had ME installed by default. It didn't last a week before I replaced it with 2000....
2000 was great. Updated NT, allowed for more modern features and compatibility. First real consumer to run dual procs (I had a BP6 and dual celerons back in the day) (other then linux of course, which was an even less friendly gaming enviro back then)
Vista was fine. How they released it was terrible. The problem with vista was either they a) rushed it out the door or b) hardware companies were too slow to react to something that wasn't XP. I was unfortunatly an early adopter. Drivers were either non-existant, or developed by some dude online, or by some hardware company in about 5min to ship out with their latest doodad so they could claim "Vista Compatibility", when most of them were obvisouly not. The install process consisted of like an hour of install followed by about 3 hours of updates and driver installs, many of them which had to be downloaded and updated manually. The OS itself is fine. I still use it today with no problems. Were I to do a clean install today, I wouldn't have the issues I had years ago.
7 basically was good and had the benefit of having Vista go through all the change over pains for it. So by the time it came along, most of that sort of stuff had been figured out. I use it at work. Although both in 7 and in Office2010 I come across a feature every now and again where I think, why did you change that, and is most cases eliminate it.
Never used 8, but haven't heard too many good things about it. I get the idea of convergance, and the strategy seems like a good thing to do across platforms, however they might have either been a bit early (how many people have touch screen laptops), or not thought out well enough for legacy systems (i.e. installing a next gen OS on a bargain basement laptop using technology of 3 years ago.) and then getting sub optimal results to complain about.
Wasn't Nobel the guy that invented TNT explosives?
Yes there are non-military uses for explosives, but still. Since the inception it seems a bit skechy to me.
Probably saved a lot of migrant worker lives who didn't have to use a glass vial of nitro for mining I am sure, but then also used to blow up people in times of war also. Could say the same about atomic research I suppose. It is all about how it is applied I suppose.
However somethings are a little more "peaceful" than others.
Thats why you shoud make all your drones totally autonomous on a self healing network, preferably coordinated centrally. Of course the complexity would require some sort of AI to manage it all, but I am sure that would be trival to create.
There is a reason why wiretapping and other forms of telecommunication survailance require a warrent. Considering they tried to open up police powers on the internet, and the outcry was so much that the conservative government had no choice but to shitcan it (which is really saying something, they do all sorts of crazy things just because they can).
I would not be surprised to see this challanged again.
Apparently according to the news the actual example they used was a locked VS unlocked briefcase found on your person at the time of arrest. This, like the front door, or wallet, or whatever is NOT a legitimate example of like action. I chock this up like a lot of technological things that go to the court system, where you have an old out of touch judge that doesn't understand the implications of technology (or it hasn't been presented to him correctly which would be the defendents fault).
This is SO invasive it cannot be allowed. On the old technology, maybe not as big a deal. Now, on a modern smart phone, it opens up just about every part of your life to scruinty.
That said, for that very reason (and because these things are worth some money and get stolen), I haven't had an "unlocked" phone in many many years. Anyone that has one, and doesn't lock it is a fool and an idiot. Still, its not for the court to simply pray on the fools and idiots of the world (though in many cases, this one included the criminals are one and the same).
I use genetic algorythims on living organisms to store information. Solar radiation can introduce some error, but evolution can compensate for that. Built in redundancy. Read/Write times may be measured in centuries however. Might be susceptible to massive meterors, however should the system fail, odds are no one is going to care.
Slashdot Mirror
SimEarth is another example and I believe Alpha Centuri (tho I never played that one)
Yeah the numbering thing doesn't mean much, though the yearly sport games are pretty lazy. Update the stats, add a mini-game, a bit or shine and polish, and a metric fuckton of advertising.
Duke, Quake, Unreal, Warcraft, etc.... Tons of games that were sequels were better than the original.
However I think what they are trying to get at is "EA SPORTS" "IT'S IN THE GAME!!!" sort of garbage.EA made their money making half assed sport games, then using that monetary leverage bought up all sorts of actual good non-asshat companies whose owners get a big payday. EA now makes these games, badly, and tries to eek out every bit of profit, before abandoning it for the next...
I haven't bought EA games in a long time with one exception. Mass Effect 3. Even then there was the gamer outrage at the craptacular ending, which again, was just pure laziness on their part, and likely to get it on shelves as quickly as they could to maximize their profit. It also has all the micro transaction BS stuff built in to try an eek out any money they can. Despite all of this I still enjoy the game and weirdly enough EA has offered up a lot of free downloadable content for multiplayer. However, every now and again I get the "CANNOT CONNECT TO EA SERVERS, TRY AGAIN LATER" error message which really dives me insane. To me it is just them saying "Hey, go fuck yourself and go do something else we're busy or something, piss off!"
That said, if EA bought the rights to Fallout and released Fallout 4 tomorrow, I'd probably be an idiot and buy it. Shhh no one repeat that, we don't want to give EA any big ideas!
What possible sactions could be made? I mean is any UN country currently doing ANY trade with NK?
I remember reading sometime ago when they were talking about Iran and sactions... if you don't do any trade with them in the first place, don't have an embasy there anymore, what is it you hope to possibly do?
It's not Canadians with hockey sticks you have to worry about, it's Canadians *without* hockey gloves you might want to look out for...
If you see a Canadian not wearing hockey gloves, it means they have already dropped them... approach cautiously.
Heh, one of my favorites!
"It has a killer refresh rate.
P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium.
Yeah. It’s not just the chip, it has a PCI bus. But you knew that.
Indeed. RISC architecture is gonna change everything.
Yeah. RISC is good."
I mean its not all about RISC, its that PCI bus as well, but you know that! :)
I agree with most of what your say, with the exception of:
"Basic truth: if it's a good wind power site, it's too windy for most people to live there"
That is a load of garbage.
If you want the "Basic Truth" about wind power I will give it to you:
Basic Truth about Wind Power: MOST of the best locations for wind power is off shore. MOST of the land located close to off shore are owned by wealthy people. MOST wealthy people like to keep their wealth. SOME of the wealth is tied up in expensive cottages and shore land. They expect the worth of that land/property to be degraded by Wind Power. Wealthy land owners and cottage owers can pour a lot of money into a lobby group to kill any Wind Power project. Typically they join/form some sort of "green" "enviromental" group that has huge concerns about the windmills killing bats, birds, creating noise, and being natually astheticlly displeasing, etc... Using this window dressing and a war chest full of money they hire lawyers and lobby government until the issue either goes someplace else, or it is delayed until it fails or the company gets too frustrated. These are essientially landowner and cottage owner assoications pretending to be enviromently groups to shut down these projects for the sole purpose of protecting their interests insofar as how much their land is worth.
So not so basic, but the truth is it is total bull. There is no pressing enviromental concern (I am sure there are a few nut cases that believe their own cool aid), it is all fabracated more less (or hyped and propaganda) by wealthly landowners that own expensive cottages and don't want them devalued by having some windmills stuck off shore wreaking their view. Which is crazy and sad if you ask me. I think they look cool myself.
In the few cases I have seen of successful projects 200MW+ it was on an island (i.e. you don't have to have expensive waterfrontage) and the company was smart to enter into agreements with land owners to buy their land at good prices (probably a drop in the bucket if you are rich or your cottage is worth a few million), or even I think more interestingly giving a percentage of profit earned by that particular windmill directly to the landowner (which I think is really cool). However it is unlikely that would work for the hyper rich and their cottage properties (not to mention if it is off shore, they don't own the land, so they shouldn't/wouldn't get anything anyway).
Anyway I am not one of those nuts that think wind is going to save us all. But I think it is an important component of any power strategy, particulary if you have pumping and resoviours available for use in storage. I think it is crazy that these things are being killed not only by a very select few, but likely the most well off in our society. It is sad.
If said impact occurs, and if a rover is somehow able to reach it, it would be a huge opportunity! I mean we attached little digging and drilling tools to try and lean about Martian soil and subsurface conditions, and the same goes with the landing site and checking out old disturbances. Heck the Japanese I believe intentionally crashed a spaceship/satillite/insturment whatever into a celestial object just to see what was down there.
Supposedly this impact will make a hole 2km deep. Looking to see water, or what the martian crust is made up of? Well it is about to be exposed!
OK. So I am normally the last person to defend big corporate, and the first to make excuses for government. However in this case I am inclined to say: WTF?
Since when is it a companies responsibility to have "public interest". There job is to make money. If they sold broken things, or misrepresented the things they sold, then it is on them and their reputation, which will hurt them later on.
Nobody held a gun to the head of government and said "You must buy this CISCO router!"
Did they not put out competitive bids? Did they not do their research? Do the procurement people not know what they are doing? Does the IT staff not know? Did none of the afore mention communicate with each other?
It does sould like Cisco seriously upsold government in this case, and that is sort of a real jerk thing to do, which if I were government again looking for routers or network whatever, and bids came in, I might make a arguement for not selecting Cisco based on previous work. However the blame does seem to fall on incompatance in this case in whoever was in charge of the tech procurement, either not understaning the job, the requirements, or perhaps something even illegal like a nice kick back from Cisco.
Threw my ass in prison.
What were you doing in Germany, huh?
Excuse me, says I, but it was comrade Stalin who sent me there.
Don't bring our glorious leader into your treachery.
Confess, spy bastard!
Confess.
And bang! Bang, bang, bang!
Well, there wasn't a sickle, but there was a hammer.
And bang.
Knocked out all my teeth.
That's right, boy.
Have no illusions.
That's the land of socialism and universal bliss for you.
Particulary when many of the requirements are mutually exclusive.
There was a really good news special up here in Canada (Can't remember network, may have been CBC), where they interviewed a now retired avaition engineer who was the lead for most of the successful designs in the last several decades in the US.
The whole interview could be sumed up that he thought it was a collosal joke, that it was a failure, that it isn't good at anything with the exception of costing a lot of money and funneling tons of money to Lockheed from the government.
So you want an agile dogfighter, that can also function as a bomber, that has stealth capability, that has an extended range, that (at least in some varients) had vertical take off ability, etc... and so on. Like designing a cargo ship to be small and nimble, you can't have both and really be successful.
I think part of the problem is divergant purposes of these type of craft. As I understand it most air combat (despite Top Gun) is about stand off capability, which is mostly about radar and stealth and perhaps ordance. That is you see them first from a LONG way off, let your birds fly, return to base to rearm without even really "seeing" your targets, let along get in an actual dog fight. However, that is against a modern air force, which historically hasn't really been a problem for a very long time (maybe some migs in Vietnam perhaps, not including cold war). Who are they arming against, China? Who else has any fighter capability to speak of? If USSR was the "Cold War", is China the "Warm and Fuzzy War" as it isn't exactly stoping buisness or relations. Then you get to the fact that most modern wars seem to be against despotic contries that really have little or no air force to begin with, and what they might have either is too old to be effective, ill maintained for any use, or the defect rather than throwing their lives away. That means that most targets are land targets. None of which are close by, Many of which would require use of various "allied" bases of varing degrees, and carriers should you have them (and Canada does, not).
Anyway at least for Canada what would make more sense is a more modest jet, or even going with say two different models say for different purposes. I can understand why Canada wanted to get involved in the project from an ally perspective and coordination, and economies of scale and the like, however after a while it is just throwing good money after bad rather than admint a mistake was made. Personally I would rather see our helicopters get upgraded first, they are older, have been slated to be replaced for longer, and our Frigates which make up the core of what we call a navy actally have helicopter pads. They also make a bit more sense for ground support for loiter reaons, swap out with search and rescue when close to home... I would also like more heavy lift capability such as the C-17 would make more sense and be more useful. Not only would this be able to ferry troops and equipment around the world faster, but would be infinatly more useful in peaceful missions like sending disaster aid and the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-17_Globemaster_III#Royal_Canadian_Air_Force
Anyway I am not military analyst by any means, I just hope that Canada isn't getting swindled by a scam whos only purpose it to pump money into a specific defence contractor for whatever political reasons, rather than getting the proper equipment for our armed forces.
Is that not the exact requirements for the F35? I believe this has been the number one concern regarding them, and apparently much of the overruns are due to having to satisfy so many masters and have so many varients.
Clearly the entire computer manufacturing sector must be incorrect in making Gigabit LAN pretty much standard for the last 5 years or so. Clearly there is no demand for gigabit internet when everyone has a gigabit lan already running.
Or it could be they want to charge 150$ a month for the service or the fact that it is only available in one city block of one city, and only for those of odd numbered postal address that might be holding consumers back.
In addition, make it only available in select markets (though not so much different than google in this respect).
Someone's been watching a bit too much Friendship Is Magic...
The asteroid was obviouisly from Klendathu, lets go kill some bugs!
Become a citizen and JOIN the Federal Service!
#Would you like to know more?#
Not sure as to why you think I am ignorant. TNT and dynamite are clearly the same thing, AC/DC said so.
As for the rest of your post about creating a "peace prize" so that he wouldn't be remembered as a "Merchant of Death" only proves my point rather than refuting it.
As to how stabalized explosives makes war too costly, I am not sure how that really works. It is essentially a safer way as far as a delivery system to transport a big chemical explosion somewhere (well safer anyway but not foolproof as seen in the Halifax Explosion).
It does sound a bit like ordering pizza's and magizine subscriptions to an address of someone you loath.
I don't know if it is sad or not, but I did this a very long time ago.
I have a throw away email address that I forward (and delete) everything from to one I actually use. When I use my online identity I only use the throw away account (Slashdot included). If it ever becomes compromised (or even just too much spam, which I think was my orginal intent before filters became very good), you can just drop and delete it (if possible), then if you like start a new one and continue the same process. Sure you may have to reconnect to various websites again to re-register or whatever, but seriously 90% are garbage anyway.
It's not perfect, and won't protect you from everything, but it is at least one level of seperation between you and your online communication. Anyway the way I figure it, it doesn't take much to foil most online attempts, most are looking for the low hanging fruit (usually enmasse, usally scripting, so any deviation throws a wrench into the works). Any amount of effort on their part is too much, as there are plenty of easier marks. If someone of some knowlege really wants to illegally access your stuff (and isn't really worried about repercussions), given time and resources they can probably do it. However I have always maintained that doing so to me would be rather pointless in terms of riches and loot, so why would anyone really bother.
Tilts my tinfoil hat to a jaunty angle.
Agree on 3.1, though I always heard that OS/2 was a better system, had better or closer to real multitasking for example, but wasn't as marketed as well by IBM that the MS product was.
95 was a big step forward, so much so, that people put up with the crashes and stability issues. Also was pretty pro gaming.
I thought 98 was simply an attempt to take the various things that got added onto 95 like themes and integrate them into the OS, and to make the user experiance a bit more easy by the adding of various system wizards for various tasks.
Me was a 98 gone too far. Everything was an easy user wizard, but it was bloated, slow, and difficult to even do stuff manually once all the wizards failed. I bought a pre-built dell back in 2000, that of course had ME installed by default. It didn't last a week before I replaced it with 2000....
2000 was great. Updated NT, allowed for more modern features and compatibility. First real consumer to run dual procs (I had a BP6 and dual celerons back in the day) (other then linux of course, which was an even less friendly gaming enviro back then)
Vista was fine. How they released it was terrible. The problem with vista was either they a) rushed it out the door or b) hardware companies were too slow to react to something that wasn't XP. I was unfortunatly an early adopter. Drivers were either non-existant, or developed by some dude online, or by some hardware company in about 5min to ship out with their latest doodad so they could claim "Vista Compatibility", when most of them were obvisouly not. The install process consisted of like an hour of install followed by about 3 hours of updates and driver installs, many of them which had to be downloaded and updated manually. The OS itself is fine. I still use it today with no problems. Were I to do a clean install today, I wouldn't have the issues I had years ago.
7 basically was good and had the benefit of having Vista go through all the change over pains for it. So by the time it came along, most of that sort of stuff had been figured out. I use it at work. Although both in 7 and in Office2010 I come across a feature every now and again where I think, why did you change that, and is most cases eliminate it.
Never used 8, but haven't heard too many good things about it. I get the idea of convergance, and the strategy seems like a good thing to do across platforms, however they might have either been a bit early (how many people have touch screen laptops), or not thought out well enough for legacy systems (i.e. installing a next gen OS on a bargain basement laptop using technology of 3 years ago.) and then getting sub optimal results to complain about.
Wasn't Nobel the guy that invented TNT explosives?
Yes there are non-military uses for explosives, but still. Since the inception it seems a bit skechy to me.
Probably saved a lot of migrant worker lives who didn't have to use a glass vial of nitro for mining I am sure, but then also used to blow up people in times of war also. Could say the same about atomic research I suppose. It is all about how it is applied I suppose.
However somethings are a little more "peaceful" than others.
Could just be legalese to the effect that the auction house usually takes a percentage, but who really knows.
Thats why you shoud make all your drones totally autonomous on a self healing network, preferably coordinated centrally. Of course the complexity would require some sort of AI to manage it all, but I am sure that would be trival to create.
Fool me once, shame on me...
Why anyone would trust these guys is beyond me.
This.
There is a reason why wiretapping and other forms of telecommunication survailance require a warrent. Considering they tried to open up police powers on the internet, and the outcry was so much that the conservative government had no choice but to shitcan it (which is really saying something, they do all sorts of crazy things just because they can).
I would not be surprised to see this challanged again.
Apparently according to the news the actual example they used was a locked VS unlocked briefcase found on your person at the time of arrest. This, like the front door, or wallet, or whatever is NOT a legitimate example of like action. I chock this up like a lot of technological things that go to the court system, where you have an old out of touch judge that doesn't understand the implications of technology (or it hasn't been presented to him correctly which would be the defendents fault).
This is SO invasive it cannot be allowed. On the old technology, maybe not as big a deal. Now, on a modern smart phone, it opens up just about every part of your life to scruinty.
That said, for that very reason (and because these things are worth some money and get stolen), I haven't had an "unlocked" phone in many many years. Anyone that has one, and doesn't lock it is a fool and an idiot. Still, its not for the court to simply pray on the fools and idiots of the world (though in many cases, this one included the criminals are one and the same).
Well even the Romulans had to decloak their warbirds from time to time. Seems the F22 Raptor is no exception.
Susceptible to errosion.
I use genetic algorythims on living organisms to store information. Solar radiation can introduce some error, but evolution can compensate for that. Built in redundancy. Read/Write times may be measured in centuries however. Might be susceptible to massive meterors, however should the system fail, odds are no one is going to care.