Car insurance knows how many accidents you've had. Home insurance knows what claims you've made. All the insurance companies know your criminal record.
Health records may be private - you don't particularly want your neighbors to know about it. But the company that is insuring you certainly has a right to know what type of risk they're insuring - and just like auto insurance your cost should reflect it.
At the same time, health care is something that is a necessity. So if they price it out of range, how do you protect yourself? Removing preventive care due to cost and substituting emergency care in it's place is a horrible solution, but if it's priced out of range, that is what may happen.
This is why the government is going to have to step into health care in some way. It's in the Health Insurance company's best interests to not insurance people that are high risk. In a free market, those people will end up being uninsured.
I hate government intervention in any market, but I don't see any way around it. You can walk to the store and work. You can't perform an appendectomy on yourself.
How eloquently phrased.
Now, perhaps you should consider that many folks are on a dialup connection. BITS creates constant traffic. Dialup users don't like that.
Ergo, unwanted overhead.
If you have automatic updates turned on in Windows, they automatically update as well.
However, most people I know turn off automatic updates because it can be so obnoxious. Many folks also disable the BITS service because of the process overhead it chews up.
It's the difference between being a virtually seamless integration (like Firefox) or an overly-obtrusive integration that eats up system resources.
For instance - firefox tells you when you go to close the program that there are updates ready. Microsoft pops a little icon that #1 interrupts what you are doing #2 may very well crash the machine or lock it up if it happens while you're playing a game, etc. Remember that letter Gates sent about usability? It's the key in this case, I think.
I also wonder if this took business users into account - I can't update because my IT department won't let me. I doubt that would be different if we were using Firefox or Opera rather than IE.
It's not that easy - and you might be better off just buying a cheap unidirectional antennae
I live in a rural community and a 3G USB dongle several months ago. The low signal strength meant I was on the slow end of the speed for 3G. I tried the exact thing he did, but tried some other options as well.
First, I purchased a $50 unidirectional antennae. That improved my signal strength by 10db. That was enough to get me to the range of 1300 down and 400 up consistently, with full "bars". So then I unplugged the antennae, added a couple of active USB cables, and put the dongle on the roof (1 story up). That improved my signal 5 db without the antennae, and 3 db with the antennae. So now I had improved about 13db. Finally, I grabbed my old dish, and aimed it at the cell tower. Then I put the dongle in place of the amp unit. Please note that most dishes have offset amp units, so you dish looks like it's aimed "below" the tower. It helped several decibles. I replaced the unidirection antennae and put in the dishes sweet spot, and it got me nothing more.
Short version - I was better off elevating the dongle and attaching a cheap unidirectional antenna than I was playing with the dish. I suspect that will be true of most who play around with this.
Final note - I have experience making other antennas - AM, FM, etc. I can assure you it wasn't lack of knowledge that prevented any huge increase in signal when using the dish.
I would much rather have a wider screen. Most coders have multiple windows open, and additional width proves more easy for me to use in that case. In addition, long code statements won't fit on a narrow screen and having to scroll sideways to read your code PLUS scroll vertically is a major annoyance. By going wide you removing ever having to scroll sideways - unless you're in excel. It's a big plus for me.
IT thinks the world can get by with Microsoft office and nothing else. Need a graphics program to put a presentation together? Fat chance. Hell, just downloading and installing convert.exe is a "violation". MP3 player other that windows media? PDF converter? There are a hundred different applications that I need to use, and half the time I use them only once or twice. If I followed the "IT" rules, I'd fill out a form, wait a month, then get denied because the application isn't "business centric" or it doesn't "fit your company position". Even better is that they only support 1 type of PDA. So I use a notebook (paper) instead.
Perhaps the "IT" generation should start being a little more flexible and actually give folks the applications they need on a somewhat timely basis. That would go a long way towards helping. Where's the report saying that the IT folks are the worst offenders when it comes to network security when you need it?
I didn't get on this article early, so no one will likely see my post, but:
Family members recently started getting the SprintPCS broadband cards with the external antenna. Their question was "Can we buy just one and have the rest of the computers networked through it?".
What a headache! The speeds are good, but networking them is a mess. At first, I tried standard procedure. I purchased a Kyocera wirless router that has a EVDO USB / port on it specifically for this purpose. It worked fine - except that you couldn't connect more than one computer at a time! The router did not have mac spoofing, and would only allow on one mac concurrently.
The solution was for me to plug my wireless buffalo into the Kyocera, then spoof the buffalo mac on the kyocera router. Then disable the wireless on the kyocera. All this headache, just to get the system to work the way it should!
I considered an ad-hoc network to eliminate the kyocera router since they only have two computers, but that would have the additional headache of the internet leaving whenever the laptop with the card in it left the house.
If you're willing to pay for individual cards you can eliminate this problem, I suppose. In addition, the sprint network even with full bars is not fast enough to stream something like network TV. I was a bit shocked at that. Even though it speedtests at 300k to 400k, videos skip constantly when you try to play them from a major network site in the us like NBC/ABC/CBS.
Overall, it's nice if you plan on using it for a single computer and web browsing only, but if you want any real content or to replace your home connection with it, I'd stay away.
What exactly is making people immune to certain drugs going to accomplish? New drugs are being created for this purpose (to get high) on a regular basis. Immunizing against one will simply lead to a rise in another, and the drug companies will always be 5 steps behind.
This vaccine seems like a way for the drug companies to increase profits - imagine what will happen if it's proven safe and then mandated by the U.S. or State governments. Guess who ends up paying for these wonder-drugs that are going to be ineffective? So our tax dollars will be used to pay for more and more vaccines while more and more are developed to comment new drugs that come out, ad infinitum.
Right, and you have a family, a dog, a camper to tow, a boat to tow, or you do landscaping or other types of work that requires trucks. Right? Right?
Oh sorry. No you don't.
As usual, folks don't get the point. The Big 3 AND the Japanese make what people want to buy. The foreign car companies aren't magical and don't have enormously better gas mileage than the domestics. They just happen to build mainly passenger cars, as opposed to more commercial and work oriented vehicles. Before you get all high and mighty there though - please not it isn't for lack of trying. They've been trying to break into the truck market for going on 15 years, but can't seem to get it right. Yeah, that's right, your vaunted-mileage companies would love just as much to be making low mileage trucks.
Placing blanket restrictions like these on vehicle emissions through governmental regulation is idiotic. The easy, quick, and GOOD solution is to do exactly what europe did. Raise the gas tax. Let people pay as they use their vehicles. Don't try to make the vehicles unaffordable for people who need them.
Actually, you are incorrect. There are many RFID tags that encased completely in metal and they can withstand high pressure and temperature. We use many of them right now, and they go through autoclaves and high pressure steam washes that clean our pallets - and this is in an automotive factory.
Some are as small as a watch battery, and could easily be attached to a sponge. Then you could simply wave an RFID reader over the body to see if there was anything there that shouldn't be.
Really? The ones that came before sucked?
I can think of quite a few MMORPG's that came before WoW that didn't suck. In fact, I'd argue that WoW itself is pretty sucktastic. It's cookie cutter - so they went and stole some from other games, wrapped it in a pretty package, then pushed it out the door. Other games did it better.
Asheron's Call had a seamless world. No zones, no pauses in the middle of running to "load", a giant continent, no "con" system to tell you whether you could kill a creature or not, random loot, little or no camping hunting areas, a skill based character developement system rather than a class based.... the list goes on and on.
I'm sure other folks from other MMORPG's could tell you the good points of their games as well.
It's a pretty myopic viewpoint to say that "all the ones that came before were awful". Pong was a damn good game in it's day and age.
This is pretty simply. They've got some serious problems with the core gameplay. Let me put that another way. The game isn't any fun.
You don't put off a game launch for "polish". Ok, so that character model might not be the best. If the game is fun, frankly, no one really cares much.
Sounds like Mythic is in trouble. From what they did to DAOC, I'm not terribly surprised.
Great. So we've got politicians blaming the National Aeronautics and Science Agency for not telling the whole truth? And we're gonna believe... who?
I agree with you on your point - air travel is incredibly safe by nearly every measure that matters. Crashes, fatalities, etc.
You simply can't be safe all the time. You can't. As you sit there right now, look down. How old is your surge surpressor? Is it within it's lifetime as specified by the manufacturer? Is your seat ergonomically correct, and is your computer sitting at exactly the right height? No, you probably won't die from carpal tunnel, but it's "unsafe" to work in the manner you are doing so right now.
I work for one of the big 3, and I can't tell you how much emphasis we put on safety, and still people die. Look at all the work put into passenger car safety. Look at all the law enforcement, traffic signals, and safety equipment on the cars. Despite all that work, someone can throw up the horrify XXXX many people were killed this year. It looks bad until you consider how many car trips there were.
When is the last time you slipped on ice? Merged without signalling? Ran with scissors? Cut towards your hands?
Why are we worried about this, exactly, and not about more important things like how we are going to pay social security to the baby boomers? (that's rethorical, in case you missed it...)
While I agree with your thought in theory - i.e. don't buy from stores that have return policies like that, I disagree with it in practice. Where I live (Michigan), neither Meijer, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Kmart, EB, or any of the other stores available to us will accept software returns once they have been "open" - except for store credit.
If you can come up with a chain store that accepts returns, I'm all ears. There aren't really any mom-and-pop stores around here anymore - they're all out of business or don't take returns of ANY sort on software.
So before you condemn him - give him some options. Otherwise your just preaching.
Putting only 5% down will make you subject to PMI. That is around $130 a month. In addition, because you have PMI and less that 20% down, mortgage companies will also force you to escrow both your insurance payment and your tax payment.
I happen to own a $190k home, and with an interest rate of 5.25% I pay $1600 a month. You are both wrong.
Why do so many people ignore the often-cited reason for not switching to Vista? DRM is invasive, restrictive, and ridiculous. Hard-core gamers went vista ASAP, much like file-sharers who got it for free. The universal response was either that they hated it, or that they didn't see an improvement.
I've had to trouble shoot computers with it on there. I repeatedly found myself wondering why they had changed things that were so simply on XP to be so complicated on Vista.
Microsoft won't "drop" Vista, any more than they "dropped" their most horrible other operating system - Windows ME *cringe*. They'll just move on. They've already wrote the system. They'll keep updating it. The real question - the critical one - is how long they will support XP. They'll need to continue to support XP until they get a system out that is an actual improvement, and not just a corporate-ass kissing piece of crap.
Certainly. A boat hull is subject to immersion in water 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 8-9 months. Many times for years if it bubbled rather than dry stored. In addition, you have cruising boats that have been in the water for decades.
Delamination of the layers, or "blistering" can be completely prevented by using an appropriate barrior coat of non-absorbing osmosis resistant epoxy.
The point is, engineers have decades of experience with laminates and epoxies that see far more moisture than a plane will in it's lifetime.
To address the next point, the poisonous chemicals during combustion are primarily a result of the expoxy that is used, not the fiber itself. Point in fact is that kevlar boats burn. It's not the kevlar doing the burning - it's the epoxy used in the lay up. Epoxy is just another polymer like the foam in the cushions, the plastic in the interior panels, or the polycarb used for lighting lenses.
A real problem with carbon fiber is fatigue. Each time carbon fiber panels are bent, the individual strands of carbon inside the laminate develop cracks. It is extremely difficult, indeed nearly impossible, to analyze what type effect these have on overall strength. This is why laminate structures using fiberglass, carbon fiber, and kevlar tend to catastrophically fail. One cannot see the tell-tale signs of impending failure like stress cracks. Once the fibers are no longer taking an appreciable amount of the load, the expoxy holding the whole thing to gether is just a hard piece of plastic that shatters.
However, the fatigue problem is one that is well understood. That is why the new military jets are using a large amount of laminates in their contrucstion. All in all, this report by a single engineer is a joke.
Let's get something straight regarding consumers. They are stupid. You know it, I know it, hell, even they know it. Saying that it will be on the "media" and that consumers will have a choice to buy it is sycophantic at the least, and dishonest if you examine it closer.
An excellent for-instance is the "secur-disc" technology that prevents copying. Go look at one of these boxes in Best-Buy. You will discover that "secur-disc" will prevent unauthorized copy of your copyrighted data to keep you safe! They don't mention that the average joe doesn't copyright or protect his DVD's. Nor do they mention that secur-disk invalidates the point of purchasing a dvd "Burner" - to copy DVD's, rip media, etc.
The technology was not put there to protect the consumer. The technology was not put there to simply "sit" and not be used. It was put there because hardware and media companies are demanding it. What is the alternative if you want a DVD and the only versions that have been released have this technology on them? You have none, aside from simply not watching the movie.
To go one step further, the average consumer doesn't read those labels, any more than the average consumer reads a Eula, or reads the FBI warning at the beginning of a DVD. You could claim that it is the consumers fault if they are not informed. I would beg to differ. In this day in age, everything from buying a Turkey sandwich at the local gas station to purchasing a game online has so many licensing agreements, privacy policy sign-offs, warnings, and other various "messages" that no one in public will ever look at them. We are so deluged with the warnings, messages, and reminders that we tune them out the same way we do commericals on TV - you simply have no choice.
Finally, nine consumers out of 10 don't know HDMI from component to DVI. They expect to be able to purchase a TV system and get a great picture - or purchase a computer and watch their movie. They aren't going to understand that if that particular media has a particular label on it then they need a specific DVD-rom drive, cable, monitor/lcd, etc for the anti-copying quality degradation to be prevented.
They need to do the smart thing. Ignore Vista. Stop buying movies and CD's. Stop going to the movies. Teach these people that they don't own you - it's the other way around.
I originally posted some of this as a reply to someone else, but I've seen so many folks posting things under the same assumption that I wanted to make a more generalized response.
Who, in their right mind, seeing 1/3 of the population dieing around them, in their houses, etc, is going to be going to work? Hospital workers will be dead. Military folks are not going to respond to being called-back, and frankly the close living quarters of the military is the best for spreading it around the force.
Folks, picture this. Your next door neighbor dies. The next day, co-workers start dieing. Are you going to go back to work?
Why are these "simulations" so naive that they believe folks will continue to work, rather than staying with their families? I'm not exactly and end-of-days kind of guys, but the folks on here discussing people telecommuting to work are insane. If half the people in the country are going to be dieing or caring for dieing folks, people aren't going to be worrying about how many strawberries are picked, cows are slaughtered, cars are made, or stocks are traded.
It goes beyond that.
We have moved away from a farm-based economy. Back then, many folks new how to grow their own food, or had access to people who did. They knew how to save food, had access to well-water that did not need pumps, etc.
If there was a flu pandemic that actually created a breakdown in services, people would begin to die within 2 weeks due to stravation. Sooner due to poison / bad water supplies - or worse if the power dropped out, NO water.
The original poster has to be a troll.
Us folks up in the Northeast understand a bit about what will happen - the blackout several years ago showed just how fragile modern society is. Without power - gas could not be pumped. Without gas, cars and trucks did not move. Without cars and trucks, NO one showed up for work, NO deliveries were made to the supermarket. Everything in your fridge rotted inside a week. If you were lucky, like me, you live in the country and have a well where you can get water from without an electrically powered pump. If you weren't lucky, you were stuck buying bottled water - then after that you were drinking out of the tank on the back of your toilet.
That's only when a small PART of the country lost power.
I can't believe these idiots are running this type of simulation. If there is a flu pandemic, NO ONE is going to be going to work. Army folks who are called back aren't going to show, and the country is going to go to hell in a handbasket.
Troll?
Sounds like we've got some rather childish folks wielding moderator points today.
The parent post made an excellent point. This is corporate strategy that should be kept secret - huge sums of money ride on generating successful buzz. If a competitor got ahold of this information they could do such things as cutting their price and announcing it the day before to make the other company appear reactionary.
That may appear to be big things - but what if you were a stock holder who knew this was going to happen, etc etc. They ARE big things. This was a violation of company trust. The violator should be fired, if nothing else. They have every right to find out who did it.
When existing browsers constantly break standards, do we need "more"?
I mean, seriously - I can do anything I need to do with a web page with the tools we have right now. Adding more options just results in more bloat, more exceptions and errors, and more difficult compatibility. It means new versions of other software to keep up, and new ways to exploit.
In the world of daily releases, I suppose everybody is desperate to get folks attention. It's a cute way to do it - but not much more.
The point of doing things for other people is that they shouldn't need to read the manual. Apple's got it right. It just works. In the case where it doesn't - you've already screwed up. In that situation I want an easily-consultable index with simple pages numbers along with a step by step with screenshots account of how to get it working.
I recently installed apache on my windows machine. 20 seconds to download, 1 minute to install, a couple of simple questions and it was running. THAT is the way things should work.
I'm surprised you aren't modded higher, frankly. This is the primary reasons open source isn't doing well. People stay with what they are comfortable with.
MS Office in high school => MS office in college => MS office in the workplace.
Windows in high school => Windows in college => Windows in the workplace.
Geeks are constantly in denial about these things because they are always working to make things better, faster, and more efficient. But "People", generally speaking, go with what's comfortable, easy, and common.
Drop down menus, radio boxes, etc are "common". Command line? Editting Text files? Apache better get out of the whole in a hurry. The server market is no longer a market where you can afford to be different. It's a commodity market, they are a dime a dozen, and if I can click a radio box as opposed to editing a text file - guess which I'm going to do?
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This is a difficult discussion to have:
Car insurance knows how many accidents you've had. Home insurance knows what claims you've made. All the insurance companies know your criminal record.
Health records may be private - you don't particularly want your neighbors to know about it. But the company that is insuring you certainly has a right to know what type of risk they're insuring - and just like auto insurance your cost should reflect it.
At the same time, health care is something that is a necessity. So if they price it out of range, how do you protect yourself? Removing preventive care due to cost and substituting emergency care in it's place is a horrible solution, but if it's priced out of range, that is what may happen.
This is why the government is going to have to step into health care in some way. It's in the Health Insurance company's best interests to not insurance people that are high risk. In a free market, those people will end up being uninsured.
I hate government intervention in any market, but I don't see any way around it. You can walk to the store and work. You can't perform an appendectomy on yourself.
How eloquently phrased. Now, perhaps you should consider that many folks are on a dialup connection. BITS creates constant traffic. Dialup users don't like that. Ergo, unwanted overhead.
Firefox already automatically updates.
If you have automatic updates turned on in Windows, they automatically update as well.
However, most people I know turn off automatic updates because it can be so obnoxious. Many folks also disable the BITS service because of the process overhead it chews up.
It's the difference between being a virtually seamless integration (like Firefox) or an overly-obtrusive integration that eats up system resources.
For instance - firefox tells you when you go to close the program that there are updates ready. Microsoft pops a little icon that #1 interrupts what you are doing #2 may very well crash the machine or lock it up if it happens while you're playing a game, etc. Remember that letter Gates sent about usability? It's the key in this case, I think.
I also wonder if this took business users into account - I can't update because my IT department won't let me. I doubt that would be different if we were using Firefox or Opera rather than IE.
It's not that easy - and you might be better off just buying a cheap unidirectional antennae I live in a rural community and a 3G USB dongle several months ago. The low signal strength meant I was on the slow end of the speed for 3G. I tried the exact thing he did, but tried some other options as well. First, I purchased a $50 unidirectional antennae. That improved my signal strength by 10db. That was enough to get me to the range of 1300 down and 400 up consistently, with full "bars". So then I unplugged the antennae, added a couple of active USB cables, and put the dongle on the roof (1 story up). That improved my signal 5 db without the antennae, and 3 db with the antennae. So now I had improved about 13db. Finally, I grabbed my old dish, and aimed it at the cell tower. Then I put the dongle in place of the amp unit. Please note that most dishes have offset amp units, so you dish looks like it's aimed "below" the tower. It helped several decibles. I replaced the unidirection antennae and put in the dishes sweet spot, and it got me nothing more. Short version - I was better off elevating the dongle and attaching a cheap unidirectional antenna than I was playing with the dish. I suspect that will be true of most who play around with this. Final note - I have experience making other antennas - AM, FM, etc. I can assure you it wasn't lack of knowledge that prevented any huge increase in signal when using the dish.
I would much rather have a wider screen. Most coders have multiple windows open, and additional width proves more easy for me to use in that case. In addition, long code statements won't fit on a narrow screen and having to scroll sideways to read your code PLUS scroll vertically is a major annoyance. By going wide you removing ever having to scroll sideways - unless you're in excel. It's a big plus for me.
Typical piece written by a suedo-IT guy.
IT thinks the world can get by with Microsoft office and nothing else. Need a graphics program to put a presentation together? Fat chance. Hell, just downloading and installing convert.exe is a "violation". MP3 player other that windows media? PDF converter? There are a hundred different applications that I need to use, and half the time I use them only once or twice. If I followed the "IT" rules, I'd fill out a form, wait a month, then get denied because the application isn't "business centric" or it doesn't "fit your company position". Even better is that they only support 1 type of PDA. So I use a notebook (paper) instead.
Perhaps the "IT" generation should start being a little more flexible and actually give folks the applications they need on a somewhat timely basis. That would go a long way towards helping. Where's the report saying that the IT folks are the worst offenders when it comes to network security when you need it?
Why shouldn't they have asked? That's not illegal yet, is it?
I didn't get on this article early, so no one will likely see my post, but:
Family members recently started getting the SprintPCS broadband cards with the external antenna. Their question was "Can we buy just one and have the rest of the computers networked through it?".
What a headache! The speeds are good, but networking them is a mess. At first, I tried standard procedure. I purchased a Kyocera wirless router that has a EVDO USB / port on it specifically for this purpose. It worked fine - except that you couldn't connect more than one computer at a time! The router did not have mac spoofing, and would only allow on one mac concurrently.
The solution was for me to plug my wireless buffalo into the Kyocera, then spoof the buffalo mac on the kyocera router. Then disable the wireless on the kyocera. All this headache, just to get the system to work the way it should!
I considered an ad-hoc network to eliminate the kyocera router since they only have two computers, but that would have the additional headache of the internet leaving whenever the laptop with the card in it left the house.
If you're willing to pay for individual cards you can eliminate this problem, I suppose. In addition, the sprint network even with full bars is not fast enough to stream something like network TV. I was a bit shocked at that. Even though it speedtests at 300k to 400k, videos skip constantly when you try to play them from a major network site in the us like NBC/ABC/CBS.
Overall, it's nice if you plan on using it for a single computer and web browsing only, but if you want any real content or to replace your home connection with it, I'd stay away.
What exactly is making people immune to certain drugs going to accomplish? New drugs are being created for this purpose (to get high) on a regular basis. Immunizing against one will simply lead to a rise in another, and the drug companies will always be 5 steps behind.
This vaccine seems like a way for the drug companies to increase profits - imagine what will happen if it's proven safe and then mandated by the U.S. or State governments. Guess who ends up paying for these wonder-drugs that are going to be ineffective? So our tax dollars will be used to pay for more and more vaccines while more and more are developed to comment new drugs that come out, ad infinitum.
Right, and you have a family, a dog, a camper to tow, a boat to tow, or you do landscaping or other types of work that requires trucks. Right? Right?
Oh sorry. No you don't.
As usual, folks don't get the point. The Big 3 AND the Japanese make what people want to buy. The foreign car companies aren't magical and don't have enormously better gas mileage than the domestics. They just happen to build mainly passenger cars, as opposed to more commercial and work oriented vehicles. Before you get all high and mighty there though - please not it isn't for lack of trying. They've been trying to break into the truck market for going on 15 years, but can't seem to get it right. Yeah, that's right, your vaunted-mileage companies would love just as much to be making low mileage trucks.
Placing blanket restrictions like these on vehicle emissions through governmental regulation is idiotic. The easy, quick, and GOOD solution is to do exactly what europe did. Raise the gas tax. Let people pay as they use their vehicles. Don't try to make the vehicles unaffordable for people who need them.
So you're agreeing with Ismael then. "Boy that's neat technology." Too bad no one can make it work any better than an standard IC engine.
Actually, you are incorrect. There are many RFID tags that encased completely in metal and they can withstand high pressure and temperature. We use many of them right now, and they go through autoclaves and high pressure steam washes that clean our pallets - and this is in an automotive factory.
Some are as small as a watch battery, and could easily be attached to a sponge. Then you could simply wave an RFID reader over the body to see if there was anything there that shouldn't be.
Really? The ones that came before sucked? I can think of quite a few MMORPG's that came before WoW that didn't suck. In fact, I'd argue that WoW itself is pretty sucktastic. It's cookie cutter - so they went and stole some from other games, wrapped it in a pretty package, then pushed it out the door. Other games did it better. Asheron's Call had a seamless world. No zones, no pauses in the middle of running to "load", a giant continent, no "con" system to tell you whether you could kill a creature or not, random loot, little or no camping hunting areas, a skill based character developement system rather than a class based.... the list goes on and on. I'm sure other folks from other MMORPG's could tell you the good points of their games as well. It's a pretty myopic viewpoint to say that "all the ones that came before were awful". Pong was a damn good game in it's day and age. This is pretty simply. They've got some serious problems with the core gameplay. Let me put that another way. The game isn't any fun. You don't put off a game launch for "polish". Ok, so that character model might not be the best. If the game is fun, frankly, no one really cares much. Sounds like Mythic is in trouble. From what they did to DAOC, I'm not terribly surprised.
Great. So we've got politicians blaming the National Aeronautics and Science Agency for not telling the whole truth? And we're gonna believe... who?
I agree with you on your point - air travel is incredibly safe by nearly every measure that matters. Crashes, fatalities, etc.
You simply can't be safe all the time. You can't. As you sit there right now, look down. How old is your surge surpressor? Is it within it's lifetime as specified by the manufacturer? Is your seat ergonomically correct, and is your computer sitting at exactly the right height? No, you probably won't die from carpal tunnel, but it's "unsafe" to work in the manner you are doing so right now.
I work for one of the big 3, and I can't tell you how much emphasis we put on safety, and still people die. Look at all the work put into passenger car safety. Look at all the law enforcement, traffic signals, and safety equipment on the cars. Despite all that work, someone can throw up the horrify XXXX many people were killed this year. It looks bad until you consider how many car trips there were.
When is the last time you slipped on ice? Merged without signalling? Ran with scissors? Cut towards your hands?
Why are we worried about this, exactly, and not about more important things like how we are going to pay social security to the baby boomers? (that's rethorical, in case you missed it...)
While I agree with your thought in theory - i.e. don't buy from stores that have return policies like that, I disagree with it in practice. Where I live (Michigan), neither Meijer, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Kmart, EB, or any of the other stores available to us will accept software returns once they have been "open" - except for store credit. If you can come up with a chain store that accepts returns, I'm all ears. There aren't really any mom-and-pop stores around here anymore - they're all out of business or don't take returns of ANY sort on software. So before you condemn him - give him some options. Otherwise your just preaching.
Putting only 5% down will make you subject to PMI. That is around $130 a month. In addition, because you have PMI and less that 20% down, mortgage companies will also force you to escrow both your insurance payment and your tax payment.
I happen to own a $190k home, and with an interest rate of 5.25% I pay $1600 a month. You are both wrong.
Why do so many people ignore the often-cited reason for not switching to Vista? DRM is invasive, restrictive, and ridiculous. Hard-core gamers went vista ASAP, much like file-sharers who got it for free. The universal response was either that they hated it, or that they didn't see an improvement.
I've had to trouble shoot computers with it on there. I repeatedly found myself wondering why they had changed things that were so simply on XP to be so complicated on Vista.
Microsoft won't "drop" Vista, any more than they "dropped" their most horrible other operating system - Windows ME *cringe*. They'll just move on. They've already wrote the system. They'll keep updating it. The real question - the critical one - is how long they will support XP. They'll need to continue to support XP until they get a system out that is an actual improvement, and not just a corporate-ass kissing piece of crap.
Certainly. A boat hull is subject to immersion in water 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 8-9 months. Many times for years if it bubbled rather than dry stored. In addition, you have cruising boats that have been in the water for decades.
Delamination of the layers, or "blistering" can be completely prevented by using an appropriate barrior coat of non-absorbing osmosis resistant epoxy.
The point is, engineers have decades of experience with laminates and epoxies that see far more moisture than a plane will in it's lifetime.
To address the next point, the poisonous chemicals during combustion are primarily a result of the expoxy that is used, not the fiber itself. Point in fact is that kevlar boats burn. It's not the kevlar doing the burning - it's the epoxy used in the lay up. Epoxy is just another polymer like the foam in the cushions, the plastic in the interior panels, or the polycarb used for lighting lenses.
A real problem with carbon fiber is fatigue. Each time carbon fiber panels are bent, the individual strands of carbon inside the laminate develop cracks. It is extremely difficult, indeed nearly impossible, to analyze what type effect these have on overall strength. This is why laminate structures using fiberglass, carbon fiber, and kevlar tend to catastrophically fail. One cannot see the tell-tale signs of impending failure like stress cracks. Once the fibers are no longer taking an appreciable amount of the load, the expoxy holding the whole thing to gether is just a hard piece of plastic that shatters.
However, the fatigue problem is one that is well understood. That is why the new military jets are using a large amount of laminates in their contrucstion. All in all, this report by a single engineer is a joke.
Let's get something straight regarding consumers. They are stupid. You know it, I know it, hell, even they know it. Saying that it will be on the "media" and that consumers will have a choice to buy it is sycophantic at the least, and dishonest if you examine it closer.
An excellent for-instance is the "secur-disc" technology that prevents copying. Go look at one of these boxes in Best-Buy. You will discover that "secur-disc" will prevent unauthorized copy of your copyrighted data to keep you safe! They don't mention that the average joe doesn't copyright or protect his DVD's. Nor do they mention that secur-disk invalidates the point of purchasing a dvd "Burner" - to copy DVD's, rip media, etc.
The technology was not put there to protect the consumer. The technology was not put there to simply "sit" and not be used. It was put there because hardware and media companies are demanding it. What is the alternative if you want a DVD and the only versions that have been released have this technology on them? You have none, aside from simply not watching the movie.
To go one step further, the average consumer doesn't read those labels, any more than the average consumer reads a Eula, or reads the FBI warning at the beginning of a DVD. You could claim that it is the consumers fault if they are not informed. I would beg to differ. In this day in age, everything from buying a Turkey sandwich at the local gas station to purchasing a game online has so many licensing agreements, privacy policy sign-offs, warnings, and other various "messages" that no one in public will ever look at them. We are so deluged with the warnings, messages, and reminders that we tune them out the same way we do commericals on TV - you simply have no choice.
Finally, nine consumers out of 10 don't know HDMI from component to DVI. They expect to be able to purchase a TV system and get a great picture - or purchase a computer and watch their movie. They aren't going to understand that if that particular media has a particular label on it then they need a specific DVD-rom drive, cable, monitor/lcd, etc for the anti-copying quality degradation to be prevented.
They need to do the smart thing. Ignore Vista. Stop buying movies and CD's. Stop going to the movies. Teach these people that they don't own you - it's the other way around.
I originally posted some of this as a reply to someone else, but I've seen so many folks posting things under the same assumption that I wanted to make a more generalized response.
Who, in their right mind, seeing 1/3 of the population dieing around them, in their houses, etc, is going to be going to work? Hospital workers will be dead. Military folks are not going to respond to being called-back, and frankly the close living quarters of the military is the best for spreading it around the force.
Folks, picture this. Your next door neighbor dies. The next day, co-workers start dieing. Are you going to go back to work?
Why are these "simulations" so naive that they believe folks will continue to work, rather than staying with their families? I'm not exactly and end-of-days kind of guys, but the folks on here discussing people telecommuting to work are insane. If half the people in the country are going to be dieing or caring for dieing folks, people aren't going to be worrying about how many strawberries are picked, cows are slaughtered, cars are made, or stocks are traded.
It goes beyond that. We have moved away from a farm-based economy. Back then, many folks new how to grow their own food, or had access to people who did. They knew how to save food, had access to well-water that did not need pumps, etc. If there was a flu pandemic that actually created a breakdown in services, people would begin to die within 2 weeks due to stravation. Sooner due to poison / bad water supplies - or worse if the power dropped out, NO water. The original poster has to be a troll. Us folks up in the Northeast understand a bit about what will happen - the blackout several years ago showed just how fragile modern society is. Without power - gas could not be pumped. Without gas, cars and trucks did not move. Without cars and trucks, NO one showed up for work, NO deliveries were made to the supermarket. Everything in your fridge rotted inside a week. If you were lucky, like me, you live in the country and have a well where you can get water from without an electrically powered pump. If you weren't lucky, you were stuck buying bottled water - then after that you were drinking out of the tank on the back of your toilet. That's only when a small PART of the country lost power. I can't believe these idiots are running this type of simulation. If there is a flu pandemic, NO ONE is going to be going to work. Army folks who are called back aren't going to show, and the country is going to go to hell in a handbasket.
Troll? Sounds like we've got some rather childish folks wielding moderator points today. The parent post made an excellent point. This is corporate strategy that should be kept secret - huge sums of money ride on generating successful buzz. If a competitor got ahold of this information they could do such things as cutting their price and announcing it the day before to make the other company appear reactionary.
That may appear to be big things - but what if you were a stock holder who knew this was going to happen, etc etc. They ARE big things. This was a violation of company trust. The violator should be fired, if nothing else. They have every right to find out who did it.
When existing browsers constantly break standards, do we need "more"?
I mean, seriously - I can do anything I need to do with a web page with the tools we have right now. Adding more options just results in more bloat, more exceptions and errors, and more difficult compatibility. It means new versions of other software to keep up, and new ways to exploit.
When do we need well enough alone?
In the world of daily releases, I suppose everybody is desperate to get folks attention. It's a cute way to do it - but not much more.
The point of doing things for other people is that they shouldn't need to read the manual. Apple's got it right. It just works. In the case where it doesn't - you've already screwed up. In that situation I want an easily-consultable index with simple pages numbers along with a step by step with screenshots account of how to get it working.
I recently installed apache on my windows machine. 20 seconds to download, 1 minute to install, a couple of simple questions and it was running. THAT is the way things should work.
I'm surprised you aren't modded higher, frankly. This is the primary reasons open source isn't doing well. People stay with what they are comfortable with. MS Office in high school => MS office in college => MS office in the workplace. Windows in high school => Windows in college => Windows in the workplace. Geeks are constantly in denial about these things because they are always working to make things better, faster, and more efficient. But "People", generally speaking, go with what's comfortable, easy, and common. Drop down menus, radio boxes, etc are "common". Command line? Editting Text files? Apache better get out of the whole in a hurry. The server market is no longer a market where you can afford to be different. It's a commodity market, they are a dime a dozen, and if I can click a radio box as opposed to editing a text file - guess which I'm going to do?