>Particuarlly not FPS games, since those seem to be the type of game most likely to get ported to Linux.
Unfortunately it's the old school ones that get ported, like the original Doom. I think the OP was saying that no one is developing new games for the PC under Linux, such as Doom3 or Tribes:Vengance. So for those of us who are video game junkies we HAVE to own at least one Windows machine to play all the latest and greatest games. If developers would start releasing Linux versions of their games within a reasonable time(within a few months of the PC release) for almost all games I would switch to 100% Linux faster than you can type fdisk.
>Most people play games on a console, not a PC.
It would appear this way if you look at sales, but also remember that PC games are usually WAY easier to copy than console games. There could be one copy of Q3A floating an office where everyone plays after work, but that is still only one sale. In general you are probably right tho.
>The most commonly used PC games are things like Solitare.
I don't know if I agree with you on this, but I am curious now. I know online games like Evercrack and the Sims are HUGE as well as those Tom Clancy games, Counter-Strike is still huge, Tribes, etc. Anyone have any statistics on this out there?
>She showed me how the startup was normal, but the "pictures" on the desktop seemed bigger, and when she fired up AOL, the background (default clouds) went "psychedelic." I took ten seconds to go into display settings, up her resolution, and bump the colours up from 256.
LOL, thanks for that. I needed a good chuckle early in the morning. And no I am not making fun of your aunt. I am laughing because this reminds me of the bi-weekly conversations I have with my parents about their computer problems.
A friend of mine once complained that when she started up netscape all she could see was the top of it. I couldn't figure out what the hell she was talking about so I had her describe EVERYTHING she saw. It turns out she had been clicking and messing around with everything while on the phone. She had accidentally moved the window down to the bottom of the screen so only the toolbar was visible and didn't know how to get it back. LOL.
I think I agree with you that a single user interface for everyone is never going to exist. Or maybe a more accurate way to say it is that the user should be able to determine the complexity of what they see on the screen. If the UI had a bunch of predetermined complexity settings, and you could pick how much or how little you wanted to see with a simple slider or something that would be ideal. I get so annoyed with M$ because every time I do a fresh install of my machine I have to take 20 min. to set it back to the way I like it, where it doesn't hide file extensions, etc.
Actually I am missing the part of the sentence which says "on the surface"( which makes no sense), not "to the surface" and I didn't miss that. We can definately set it down nice and safe on the ground with acceptable G forces. If you go to NASA's site and watch the movie you will see that the velocity is 0 at 20 or so meters above the ground and that then let it accelerate again in it's drop from the chute.
Unless you are claiming that we can accurately get it to cross millions of miles of space travelling at 20 times the speed of sound, enter the atmosphere, fall for miles, fire retro-rockets which are activated by how close it is to the surface and stop it's velocity, then inflate airbags, and release it to fall 50 ft, but can't do the same thing and have it land on the ground softly? Think about it, they had it seperate from the chute above the ground intentionally. I swear, you missed the entire point of the post in your effort to defend yourself when what you said wasn't even phrased properly.
Example: "slow acceleration to 0"
Huh? The acceleration is already NEGATIVE for the last few hundred miles of the trip! Unless by slow you mean slow the negative acceleration(also known as acceleration) to 0, thereby maintaining the same velocity? If you are going to nit-pick you should make sure your posts are in order first. I was just trying to inform you but I guess you don't care to be informed, oh well.
>in a manned mission, the landing would be by parachute with retro rockets to slow acceleration to 0 on the surface, because the trained pilot has that ability
Umm, the current mission USED a parachute with retro-rockets. The only reason the ballons were used was b/c the chute seperated from the lander at about 20M above the ground or something like that(I assume so that the rover didn't have to worry about getting caught up in the chute and leads). I'm not saying a human could have survived it of course, just pointing out that we are already using something that _could be modified_ to land a human.
In general I agree with you that the funding increase for such lofty plans is terribly insufficient. OTOH, the shuttle has been slated for retirement for years so taking money out of the shuttle budget is not really sacrificing other projects. Let's face it, the shuttle has had a long useful life but we need to create something that will be more cost efficient overall.
The Shuttle is pretty much like the mini-van of space craft. Useful for everything but not really good at any one thing. For example, if all we are taking is some people and food, then we are sending up a HUGE cargo bay empty for no reason. If we want to send up tons of cargo we can use unmanned cargo rockets and minimize danger to humans.
That being said, you are right for the most part. The amount of money(even including the redirected money) is vastly insufficient to the task. What we need to do is get some public companies on board who stand to make billions from minerals and stuff on Mars, and have them help bankroll the project. Of course if we did that everyone would say Bush was giving projects to his buddies in big business. Sounds like a Catch-22 to me. We can't bankroll a trip to Mars without big business backing with the hopes of making profits, but we can't have big business back a trip to Mars because then they might make a profit(which is evil).
Hey, I agree with so I am not trying to show how you are wrong here, just pointing out a small error. McDs restaurants are a franchise, and so are owned by individuals, or smaller companies who rarely own more than 10-20 stores. McDonald's the corporation has almost everything regulated down to how much mustard is on each burger, etc. but the day-to-day making sure people show up to work on time, etc. is still up to the local owner.
That being said, I still wouldn't want to be paying some lazy ass for sitting home playing his PS2 because his buddy is clocking him out late every day.
The post you are replying to is saying that the OP claims "spirit" is bad but uses "faith" in their own post. In other words they are on your side. As am I.
Remember to that we can only talk to the lander while the Earth is above the horizon or Mars. I just found that a Mars day is 24.66 or so hours so they probably have about 12 each day when the Earth is visible and they communicate with it. The rest of the time is "wait for my masters back at the JPL to be visible again" time.
There may be some sort of relaying going on with satellites here to get the signal out, no matter which way the Earth is facing but on the Mars side there is only one satellite flying in mars-stationary orbit so that won't effect the time too much.
Doesn't this discount all of the pollution billowing out of conventional fuel smoke stacks regularly every day? Certainly just because all of the harm isn't caused by one single huge incident doesn't mean their aren't terrible results of it. Skin cancer caused by Sun exposure in areas where the ozone layer is depleted is one example I can think of. What about acid rain, toxic waste poured into rivers, and the strip mining to get coal?
I know it would be terribly hard to come up with a side by side comparison between nuclear and fossil fuel's impact in the world but you can't discount nuclear on 1-2 big cases. It's like saying you won't fly because of plane crashes but you will drive in a car.
So I would say a) I would rather have a relatively small amount of something that I know is dangerous stored is a secured place which I can spend millions to protect, than have toxins floating in the air everywhere and b) new technologies are inherently unstable no matter what, there will be accidents which will decrease over time. Everything we use today was much more dangerous when it first came out but has gotten safer over time as we have learned more about it( cars, electricity, ships, planes, etc )
>* By the way, just try a 3 Ghz processor for a while (maybe a week or two). Then go back your 700 Mhz system. You'll see the light.
Disagree. I use a 2.4Ghz at work and a 533Mhz at home and can't really tell a difference, except when (un)zipping files, or installing software(maybe 1% of my total use of the machine). My home machine can play music, games, surf the web, edit docs, etc. just fine.
I commute very near the other people responding and there is litterally no choice around here. Either you live close to your work and pay $3000/month in mortage or you commute for an hour plus. Otherwise you rent for $1100-1800/month. That is the Bay Area. Luckily my company lets me come in early so I beat the morning traffic and can leave before it gets really bad at night.
Hmmm, I got laid-off from a company a few years ago to "cut costs". They let go about 75% of the work force and dropped the payroll by about 25%. In other words they kept ALL of the VPs, most of the Directors, all of the Sales, dropped IT, support, marketing and most of the engineers. Now they add 1-2 minor features to the same product they have been selling for years, call it version X+1 and they all collect fat salaries.
Why is it that the people who couldn't pass algebra in high school are the ones with the cushy jobs? Maybe it is our own stupidity that we aren't the VPs ripping people off while making 1/4 mil per year. Or maybe it's morals...
I think they are using "universe" to mean all that we can sense right now such as matter and energy, or matter-energy depending on how you look at it(galaxies, nebulea, random flotsam floating in space, etc.) That is a rough quote of the dictionary.
You are refering to "existence", which is a different thing because it covers EVERYTHING, including ideas, gods, magic, dreams, forces or powers or things which we haven't discovered yet. I don't think they are claiming that existence is inside a gravastar, because as you pointed out that makes no sense.
I'll third that. I have never heard anyone non-geek even mention Google. The only time I use it is to search M$ site, since their search sucks so bad, or to search newsgroups.
Methinks slashdot may not be an accurate sample of all internet users...
Paying programmers decent wages(above average due to the schooling and training required) instead of paying them $100K+/year with 5 years experience may also lower the unbearable cost of living in some of the big tech centers of the U.S.
Overpaid techies are inflating cities like San Francisco, San Jose and others up to where unskilled labor making a decent wage have to live in a one bedroom 600sq/ft apartment at best or need government assistance.
I agree there is a vast difference between programming at a university(where they want everything nice, neat and tidy) and programming for a commercial product(where time is much more important and you can almost always throw a faster machine at it). Also "churning out code from a spec" is vastly different from what is done in a university. In my experience we were not only encouraged, but forced to come up with our own solutions to problems. The people you worked with were probably just new to the commercial programming world and hadn't yet realized that things are done differently in the "real world".
Trust me. It is frustrating being one 3-4 programmers at a shop with a CS degree out of about 40 people too. I used to want to pull my hair out at meetings because some of the non-CS people wanted to write procedural code using JAVA.
Wasn't the "cyberpunk" genre supposed to be visionary and prophetic? Sorry about the word "cyberpunk" BTW, I hate that word but it gets the point across. Gibson, especially the earlier stuff, and Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age and Snow Crash were about the "day after tomorrow", maybe 20-100 years out(with Diamond Agebeing at the far end of the spectrum). That genre explored the technology, pop culture and politcal/business climate of the relatively near future.
Then there are enough SF novels to fill a VW bus which cover the future of the earth in the 100-800 year in the future time span.
Then if you are really in the mood for great SF-Fantasy start on Gene Wolfe's Sun series'. They all take place FAR into the future. WARNING: The surgeon general has established a correlation between starting your first Gene Wolfe novel and NSO(Negligence of Significant Other), SUBEFDGW(Searching Used Bookstores Endlessly For Discontinued Gene Wolfe), and SDFR(Sharp Decline in Fluff Reading). Read with CAUTION.
The reason that you can't think of 1 or 2 people out there who exemplify visionary SF today isn't because they aren't out there. It is because we have SO MANY SF writers now. Heck, one of these days soon, the English professors at colleges are actually going to have to start considering it literature!
Ok, I am not going to beat a dead horse here. Just two thing for you to think about.
A) "We hold these truths....all men are created equal". is a quote from the Delaration of Independence, not the Constitution. While this a VERY important document, most people use the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the other Amedments to decide whether something is "American" or not(including the courts).
The Declaration of Independence is just that, it is a document telling England to f00k off, and that we were going to govern ourselves. The Constitution was signed much later, 1776 vs. 1787 I think. Remember, the DofI you are quoting from didn't even include women or non-white people as "men", those Amendments were WAY later. So if you are using DofI LITERALLY, as your support for your arguement, gay men can get married but gay women can't.;-) I don't think that is what you mean.
B)Let's say for arguments sake that we can base what is legal and not legal on the Declaration of Independence, which is usually the assumption. Does that person have the right to do ANYTHING they want in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness? Of course not, they can only do what does not adversely affect other Americans.
So your real arguement should not be, "You are stupid if you don't think people should be able to do whatever they want, because we are all equal." As many other people here are trying to assert the best arguement is "There is no adverse effect on other Americans, so there is no reason not to give them these rights". Then support with examples, data, or logic. People who are opposed believe that gay marriage will damage society so you have to prove otherwise if you are going to get support.
>If you think that gay people choose to be gay, then provide some scrap of evidence
Not really relevant to the marriage argument except to the person who started this thread, because it somewhat supports their point.
>It doesn't matter a bit what proportion of the population agrees or disagrees with me.
Ahhh, but it does. See, the DofI and the Constitution both state that the law can be changed by THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE(two thirds vote of House or Senate, can't remember which). So it is very important what the rest of the country thinks. The Will of the People can become what IS American, if your definition of what is American is what is in the Constitution!
>take rights away from a segment of the population because they are ruled by hatred of people who are not like them
I think you mean they are trying not to give them, not taking them away. Don't pretend that this should be obvious to the rest of the world, when 90+% of the world disagrees with you. You may be right but you aren't going to convince anyone this way.
>Well your belief is wrong
Your arrogance astounds me. I'm sure your whole high school was impressed by your SAT scores, or your GPA or by your nomination for prom king, but here you are just another person with an opinion. Just like everyone else. Here you actually have to prove someone wrong if you want to change their mind.
>You are a bad American and a despiser of the principles this country was founded on...blah blah blah.
Your interpretation of those principles anyway. As a Democracy you and every other American has a voice in how the country is run. You also have to deal with it if the majority disagrees with you. Right now the majority of the nation is against gay marriage. So you can start insulting people and accomplish nothing or you can try to change people's minds if it is important to you.
For the recond I am for gay marriage. So don't come back with some crap about me hating America too, and how I am some cog in a wheel of a tyranical machine of opressiveness...yadda,yadda,yadda.
I wasn't the original poster so don't flame me but I think I can summarize what s/he was trying to say.
I think s/he was saying that if a man and a woman (and ONLY a man and a woman) join for life then they have the opportunity to get married, which provides those special rights. Homosexuals have made the choice NOT to have a life-partner of the opposite sex so they cannot get married, just like people who chose not to have a life partner. Homosexuals cannot get married for the same reasons that a man cannot marry two women, a car, a cat, or any other object, person, place or thing. The original poster was stating that their definition of marriage is between a man and a woman period. I don't know where this definition comes from but, it really is logical if your definition is the same as the original poster's.
That being said I am in favor of gay marriage because I personally believe that marriage in this country, in the eyes of the law is primarily about two people joining finances, incurring each other's debt, getting some benefits, etc. I can see no down side to gay couples having the same rights and responsibilities as straight couples. As was stated earlier it is between two consenting adults.
I believe that homosexuality is a choice, as much as we have free will about anything( meaning that a choice is dictated by our experiences ) but we do not restrict other people, whose choices we may not agree with, from getting married.
I hope you all don't mind if I chime in on this one. We have been talking about subsidies at work a lot recently and it is a political issue that really interests me.
Right now we purchase goods from other countries which we can't grow at here, or can only grow during certain times of the year. In other words we buy "luxury" produce, such as apples in february, from countries in warmer climates. Our farmers overproduce what grows well here. We sell some and the government buys some and destroys it or whatever they do with it. The important fact is that we have a surplus and we buy stuff from other countries because we want it, not because we need it.
If the subsidies stopped, less people would farm due to not being able to sell to the govt. We would produce simply what we need. The farmers that remained would still charge only as much as they could. If they charged too much someone down the road would open up a farm and then charge $.05 less and put them out of business, or at least lower the prices. In other words, I agree with your friend with the masters that subsidizing could keep the prices higher because the goverment is acting like a consumer and increasing "demand" if we were only producing what we need, but because we have a surplus they are essentially buying the surplus and not really effecting the price( As long as there are good controls in place. I can think of a few ways people could abuse this system. )
I could be wrong but I don't think farming is a very high-profit business. I grew up in an area where half the people were farmers and most just barely payed their bills, bought a house(which are rediculously cheap by city folk standards), etc. The majority of farmers are not jet-setting playboys who made millions on the brocolli business. Sure, you see some giant ranches, but they are often relying on their crops to pay the mortgage, or have worked hard and saved their whole life for it.
The farmers in third world counties are indeed selling us stuff and will in the foreseeable future, but wouldn't be effected at all by changes in our subsidies, IMHO. We currently don't need their food, we just like it. That being said, with the exploding world population, they could benefit greatly from modern techniques, and the rest of the world would benefit as well because of the conservation of the rain forests, decrease in disease, famine, etc.
>farming in the Amazon basin...
>Farmer plants on soil that isn't very rich in nutrients for plant growth.
I have to disagree on this one. Thousands of years of dead plants, and animals, animal waste, etc. sound like it would be pretty fertile. Also there is a enormous river there bringing down minerals, salts, etc. from the mountains. Points 1,3,4 are probably very accurate tho.
>And here's me thinking we have two eyes for a reason;)
You have to admit that our 'stereo' vision is very limited. I doubt you or I could tell the difference in distance between an unknown object so you aren't using experience to tell you, say at 15' vs. 20' if there were no other objects to give it perspective(pitch black room). On the other hand we could certainly tell the difference between 1' and 6'. With your eye balls only hmmm, one second gotta get my ruler here...about 3" apart and looking at something 15' away vs. 20' the difference in angle is tiny.
We routinely use computers to show distances of hundreds of feet, so our 'stereo' vision has very little effect on it.
We judge distance beyond a few feet entirely by perspective, clarity, prior knowledge of what we see, etc. Just for fun try putting a piece of paper over one eye at home for a while and see. I did it at work( on my lunch break that is ) and I didn't really have a problem with anything except picking up objects right in front of me. Beyond 6-7' I couldn't tell the difference.
>When you try to display something in three dimensions on a monitor, not only does it not really exist, but your brain can't deal with it. Watch computer game novices (and some experts!) try to lean their head around to peek round a corner playing a FPS game. See how quickly most people get motion sick watching someone else play a game. It's all because the visuals are faking 3D and our eyes & brain can't deal.
That isn't why novices get motion sick. People get motion sick because their eyes and ears are getting information that says they are moving, however they are physically feeling no changes in momentum, no acceleration, etc. People have experienced it for centuries in cars, airplanes, movie theatres, boats. It has nothing to do with 2D vs. 3D vs. faked 3D. An enormous 3D holographic world you literally walk around in and manipulate would probably help, but that is impractical.
>A 3D desktop is not going to be a feasible reality until we have a feasible 3D display to draw it on. Only if/when hologram or 3D-projection displays become a reality will there be a useful case for a desktop to match; in the meantime, this just adds unnecessary complexity to the 2D desktop.
How would having a 3D interface help? You would still need to look at it. We see our world from a perspective( our eyes ) which is just barely 3D. A TV or computer monitor just provies a prospective into another world which IS 3D( in the case of this new desktop, or a game such as Half-life). That perspective is designed to mimic the way we already see the world. In fact, other than having less peripheral vision( which isn't an issue for most people who wear glasses, because we generally can't see much on the periphery anyway ) a computer monitor or TV is almost indestinguishable from the 'real' world, except the resolution, and size of course( both of which we can improve ). Unless we re-wire a 360degree camera directly to our optic nerve so we have a full 360degree field of vision and THEN immerse us in a miniature holo world I don't think it would make a difference.
BTW, I am not saying holo-projectors are without merit. They could be tremendously useful in saving space, making computers more portable, etc. I just don't think it will make a difference because of their "3D-ness', because we essentially see 3D objects in a 2D manner anyway. We just know from experience that they have depth.
>Your car analogy doesn't work as most car manuals have a maintenance schedule that tells you to change the oil every so often.
>You don't have to mount a big fan on the front of your new car to keep it cool enough to operate properly.
You are right, probably not the best analogy. What I was trying to say is that since most sources, including CPU and fan manuals that I have seen recommend heatsink compound & fan(or heatsink in the PII days), if you follow the manual you shouldn't have any problems. Similar to if you follow the routine maintainence on a car which is recommended in the manual, you should also be ok.
OEM vs. retail is a whole other issue. I usually buy OEM. The reasons for that are that I have never had a CPU go bad and fans are cheap enough I can run down to the local computer store and pick one up rather than waiting for the manufacturer to send me one. That being said I can totally understand if you prefer the retail packaging too, since it is as you point out only a few dollars more. It is strictly personal preference and my utter lack of patience dictates my choice.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
>Particuarlly not FPS games, since those seem to be the type of game most likely to get ported to Linux.
Unfortunately it's the old school ones that get ported, like the original Doom. I think the OP was saying that no one is developing new games for the PC under Linux, such as Doom3 or Tribes:Vengance. So for those of us who are video game junkies we HAVE to own at least one Windows machine to play all the latest and greatest games. If developers would start releasing Linux versions of their games within a reasonable time(within a few months of the PC release) for almost all games I would switch to 100% Linux faster than you can type fdisk.
>Most people play games on a console, not a PC.
It would appear this way if you look at sales, but also remember that PC games are usually WAY easier to copy than console games. There could be one copy of Q3A floating an office where everyone plays after work, but that is still only one sale. In general you are probably right tho.
>The most commonly used PC games are things like Solitare.
I don't know if I agree with you on this, but I am curious now. I know online games like Evercrack and the Sims are HUGE as well as those Tom Clancy games, Counter-Strike is still huge, Tribes, etc. Anyone have any statistics on this out there?
-Comedian
>She showed me how the startup was normal, but the "pictures" on the desktop seemed bigger, and when she fired up AOL, the background (default clouds) went "psychedelic." I took ten seconds to go into display settings, up her resolution, and bump the colours up from 256.
LOL, thanks for that. I needed a good chuckle early in the morning. And no I am not making fun of your aunt. I am laughing because this reminds me of the bi-weekly conversations I have with my parents about their computer problems.
A friend of mine once complained that when she started up netscape all she could see was the top of it. I couldn't figure out what the hell she was talking about so I had her describe EVERYTHING she saw. It turns out she had been clicking and messing around with everything while on the phone. She had accidentally moved the window down to the bottom of the screen so only the toolbar was visible and didn't know how to get it back. LOL.
I think I agree with you that a single user interface for everyone is never going to exist. Or maybe a more accurate way to say it is that the user should be able to determine the complexity of what they see on the screen. If the UI had a bunch of predetermined complexity settings, and you could pick how much or how little you wanted to see with a simple slider or something that would be ideal. I get so annoyed with M$ because every time I do a fresh install of my machine I have to take 20 min. to set it back to the way I like it, where it doesn't hide file extensions, etc.
-Comedian
Actually I am missing the part of the sentence which says "on the surface"( which makes no sense), not "to the surface" and I didn't miss that. We can definately set it down nice and safe on the ground with acceptable G forces. If you go to NASA's site and watch the movie you will see that the velocity is 0 at 20 or so meters above the ground and that then let it accelerate again in it's drop from the chute.
Unless you are claiming that we can accurately get it to cross millions of miles of space travelling at 20 times the speed of sound, enter the atmosphere, fall for miles, fire retro-rockets which are activated by how close it is to the surface and stop it's velocity, then inflate airbags, and release it to fall 50 ft, but can't do the same thing and have it land on the ground softly? Think about it, they had it seperate from the chute above the ground intentionally. I swear, you missed the entire point of the post in your effort to defend yourself when what you said wasn't even phrased properly.
Example: "slow acceleration to 0"
Huh? The acceleration is already NEGATIVE for the last few hundred miles of the trip! Unless by slow you mean slow the negative acceleration(also known as acceleration) to 0, thereby maintaining the same velocity? If you are going to nit-pick you should make sure your posts are in order first. I was just trying to inform you but I guess you don't care to be informed, oh well.
-Comedian
>in a manned mission, the landing would be by parachute with retro rockets to slow acceleration to 0 on the surface, because the trained pilot has that ability
Umm, the current mission USED a parachute with retro-rockets. The only reason the ballons were used was b/c the chute seperated from the lander at about 20M above the ground or something like that(I assume so that the rover didn't have to worry about getting caught up in the chute and leads). I'm not saying a human could have survived it of course, just pointing out that we are already using something that _could be modified_ to land a human.
-Comedian
In general I agree with you that the funding increase for such lofty plans is terribly insufficient. OTOH, the shuttle has been slated for retirement for years so taking money out of the shuttle budget is not really sacrificing other projects. Let's face it, the shuttle has had a long useful life but we need to create something that will be more cost efficient overall.
The Shuttle is pretty much like the mini-van of space craft. Useful for everything but not really good at any one thing. For example, if all we are taking is some people and food, then we are sending up a HUGE cargo bay empty for no reason. If we want to send up tons of cargo we can use unmanned cargo rockets and minimize danger to humans.
That being said, you are right for the most part. The amount of money(even including the redirected money) is vastly insufficient to the task. What we need to do is get some public companies on board who stand to make billions from minerals and stuff on Mars, and have them help bankroll the project. Of course if we did that everyone would say Bush was giving projects to his buddies in big business. Sounds like a Catch-22 to me. We can't bankroll a trip to Mars without big business backing with the hopes of making profits, but we can't have big business back a trip to Mars because then they might make a profit(which is evil).
-Comedian
Hey, I agree with so I am not trying to show how you are wrong here, just pointing out a small error. McDs restaurants are a franchise, and so are owned by individuals, or smaller companies who rarely own more than 10-20 stores. McDonald's the corporation has almost everything regulated down to how much mustard is on each burger, etc. but the day-to-day making sure people show up to work on time, etc. is still up to the local owner.
That being said, I still wouldn't want to be paying some lazy ass for sitting home playing his PS2 because his buddy is clocking him out late every day.
-Comedian
The post you are replying to is saying that the OP claims "spirit" is bad but uses "faith" in their own post. In other words they are on your side. As am I.
-Comedian
Remember to that we can only talk to the lander while the Earth is above the horizon or Mars. I just found that a Mars day is 24.66 or so hours so they probably have about 12 each day when the Earth is visible and they communicate with it. The rest of the time is "wait for my masters back at the JPL to be visible again" time.
There may be some sort of relaying going on with satellites here to get the signal out, no matter which way the Earth is facing but on the Mars side there is only one satellite flying in mars-stationary orbit so that won't effect the time too much.
-Comedian
Doesn't this discount all of the pollution billowing out of conventional fuel smoke stacks regularly every day? Certainly just because all of the harm isn't caused by one single huge incident doesn't mean their aren't terrible results of it. Skin cancer caused by Sun exposure in areas where the ozone layer is depleted is one example I can think of. What about acid rain, toxic waste poured into rivers, and the strip mining to get coal?
I know it would be terribly hard to come up with a side by side comparison between nuclear and fossil fuel's impact in the world but you can't discount nuclear on 1-2 big cases. It's like saying you won't fly because of plane crashes but you will drive in a car.
So I would say a) I would rather have a relatively small amount of something that I know is dangerous stored is a secured place which I can spend millions to protect, than have toxins floating in the air everywhere and b) new technologies are inherently unstable no matter what, there will be accidents which will decrease over time. Everything we use today was much more dangerous when it first came out but has gotten safer over time as we have learned more about it( cars, electricity, ships, planes, etc )
-Comedian
>* By the way, just try a 3 Ghz processor for a while (maybe a week or two). Then go back your 700 Mhz system. You'll see the light.
:-)
Disagree. I use a 2.4Ghz at work and a 533Mhz at home and can't really tell a difference, except when (un)zipping files, or installing software(maybe 1% of my total use of the machine). My home machine can play music, games, surf the web, edit docs, etc. just fine.
> Faster boot times, faster archive extracing, faster application start times.
I think the faster disks in newer machines are probably the main reason this is faster, except the archive extraction, which is CPU intensive.
>Also, most developers need all the juice we can get.
You must be a Java programmer.
-Comedian
I commute very near the other people responding and there is litterally no choice around here. Either you live close to your work and pay $3000/month in mortage or you commute for an hour plus. Otherwise you rent for $1100-1800/month. That is the Bay Area. Luckily my company lets me come in early so I beat the morning traffic and can leave before it gets really bad at night.
-Comedian
Hmmm, I got laid-off from a company a few years ago to "cut costs". They let go about 75% of the work force and dropped the payroll by about 25%. In other words they kept ALL of the VPs, most of the Directors, all of the Sales, dropped IT, support, marketing and most of the engineers. Now they add 1-2 minor features to the same product they have been selling for years, call it version X+1 and they all collect fat salaries.
Why is it that the people who couldn't pass algebra in high school are the ones with the cushy jobs? Maybe it is our own stupidity that we aren't the VPs ripping people off while making 1/4 mil per year. Or maybe it's morals...
-Comedian
I think they are using "universe" to mean all that we can sense right now such as matter and energy, or matter-energy depending on how you look at it(galaxies, nebulea, random flotsam floating in space, etc.) That is a rough quote of the dictionary.
You are refering to "existence", which is a different thing because it covers EVERYTHING, including ideas, gods, magic, dreams, forces or powers or things which we haven't discovered yet. I don't think they are claiming that existence is inside a gravastar, because as you pointed out that makes no sense.
Just my $.02.
-Comedian
>Man, you guys need to get out more.
I can't deny that.
>Google's been synonymous with internet search among a huge swath of non-geek people, and it's been that way for a pretty long time now.
I honestly had no idea. I thought it was still used mainly by geeks looking for obscure technical resources. I will take your word for it though.
-Comedian
I'll third that. I have never heard anyone non-geek even mention Google. The only time I use it is to search M$ site, since their search sucks so bad, or to search newsgroups.
Methinks slashdot may not be an accurate sample of all internet users...
-Comedian
Paying programmers decent wages(above average due to the schooling and training required) instead of paying them $100K+/year with 5 years experience may also lower the unbearable cost of living in some of the big tech centers of the U.S.
Overpaid techies are inflating cities like San Francisco, San Jose and others up to where unskilled labor making a decent wage have to live in a one bedroom 600sq/ft apartment at best or need government assistance.
-Comedian
I agree there is a vast difference between programming at a university(where they want everything nice, neat and tidy) and programming for a commercial product(where time is much more important and you can almost always throw a faster machine at it). Also "churning out code from a spec" is vastly different from what is done in a university. In my experience we were not only encouraged, but forced to come up with our own solutions to problems. The people you worked with were probably just new to the commercial programming world and hadn't yet realized that things are done differently in the "real world".
Trust me. It is frustrating being one 3-4 programmers at a shop with a CS degree out of about 40 people too. I used to want to pull my hair out at meetings because some of the non-CS people wanted to write procedural code using JAVA.
-Comedian
Wasn't the "cyberpunk" genre supposed to be visionary and prophetic? Sorry about the word "cyberpunk" BTW, I hate that word but it gets the point across. Gibson, especially the earlier stuff, and Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age and Snow Crash were about the "day after tomorrow", maybe 20-100 years out(with Diamond Agebeing at the far end of the spectrum). That genre explored the technology, pop culture and politcal/business climate of the relatively near future.
Then there are enough SF novels to fill a VW bus which cover the future of the earth in the 100-800 year in the future time span.
Then if you are really in the mood for great SF-Fantasy start on Gene Wolfe's Sun series'. They all take place FAR into the future. WARNING: The surgeon general has established a correlation between starting your first Gene Wolfe novel and NSO(Negligence of Significant Other), SUBEFDGW(Searching Used Bookstores Endlessly For Discontinued Gene Wolfe), and SDFR(Sharp Decline in Fluff Reading). Read with CAUTION.
The reason that you can't think of 1 or 2 people out there who exemplify visionary SF today isn't because they aren't out there. It is because we have SO MANY SF writers now. Heck, one of these days soon, the English professors at colleges are actually going to have to start considering it literature!
-Comedian
Ok, I am not going to beat a dead horse here. Just two thing for you to think about.
;-) I don't think that is what you mean.
A) "We hold these truths....all men are created equal". is a quote from the Delaration of Independence, not the Constitution. While this a VERY important document, most people use the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the other Amedments to decide whether something is "American" or not(including the courts).
The Declaration of Independence is just that, it is a document telling England to f00k off, and that we were going to govern ourselves. The Constitution was signed much later, 1776 vs. 1787 I think. Remember, the DofI you are quoting from didn't even include women or non-white people as "men", those Amendments were WAY later. So if you are using DofI LITERALLY, as your support for your arguement, gay men can get married but gay women can't.
B)Let's say for arguments sake that we can base what is legal and not legal on the Declaration of Independence, which is usually the assumption. Does that person have the right to do ANYTHING they want in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness? Of course not, they can only do what does not adversely affect other Americans.
So your real arguement should not be, "You are stupid if you don't think people should be able to do whatever they want, because we are all equal." As many other people here are trying to assert the best arguement is "There is no adverse effect on other Americans, so there is no reason not to give them these rights". Then support with examples, data, or logic. People who are opposed believe that gay marriage will damage society so you have to prove otherwise if you are going to get support.
>If you think that gay people choose to be gay, then provide some scrap of evidence
Not really relevant to the marriage argument except to the person who started this thread, because it somewhat supports their point.
>It doesn't matter a bit what proportion of the population agrees or disagrees with me.
Ahhh, but it does. See, the DofI and the Constitution both state that the law can be changed by THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE(two thirds vote of House or Senate, can't remember which). So it is very important what the rest of the country thinks. The Will of the People can become what IS American, if your definition of what is American is what is in the Constitution!
-Comedian
>take rights away from a segment of the population because they are ruled by hatred of people who are not like them
I think you mean they are trying not to give them, not taking them away. Don't pretend that this should be obvious to the rest of the world, when 90+% of the world disagrees with you. You may be right but you aren't going to convince anyone this way.
>Well your belief is wrong
Your arrogance astounds me. I'm sure your whole high school was impressed by your SAT scores, or your GPA or by your nomination for prom king, but here you are just another person with an opinion. Just like everyone else. Here you actually have to prove someone wrong if you want to change their mind.
>You are a bad American and a despiser of the principles this country was founded on...blah blah blah.
Your interpretation of those principles anyway. As a Democracy you and every other American has a voice in how the country is run. You also have to deal with it if the majority disagrees with you. Right now the majority of the nation is against gay marriage. So you can start insulting people and accomplish nothing or you can try to change people's minds if it is important to you.
For the recond I am for gay marriage. So don't come back with some crap about me hating America too, and how I am some cog in a wheel of a tyranical machine of opressiveness...yadda,yadda,yadda.
-Comedian
I wasn't the original poster so don't flame me but I think I can summarize what s/he was trying to say.
I think s/he was saying that if a man and a woman (and ONLY a man and a woman) join for life then they have the opportunity to get married, which provides those special rights. Homosexuals have made the choice NOT to have a life-partner of the opposite sex so they cannot get married, just like people who chose not to have a life partner. Homosexuals cannot get married for the same reasons that a man cannot marry two women, a car, a cat, or any other object, person, place or thing. The original poster was stating that their definition of marriage is between a man and a woman period. I don't know where this definition comes from but, it really is logical if your definition is the same as the original poster's.
That being said I am in favor of gay marriage because I personally believe that marriage in this country, in the eyes of the law is primarily about two people joining finances, incurring each other's debt, getting some benefits, etc. I can see no down side to gay couples having the same rights and responsibilities as straight couples. As was stated earlier it is between two consenting adults.
I believe that homosexuality is a choice, as much as we have free will about anything( meaning that a choice is dictated by our experiences ) but we do not restrict other people, whose choices we may not agree with, from getting married.
I hope you all don't mind if I chime in on this one. We have been talking about subsidies at work a lot recently and it is a political issue that really interests me.
...
Right now we purchase goods from other countries which we can't grow at here, or can only grow during certain times of the year. In other words we buy "luxury" produce, such as apples in february, from countries in warmer climates. Our farmers overproduce what grows well here. We sell some and the government buys some and destroys it or whatever they do with it. The important fact is that we have a surplus and we buy stuff from other countries because we want it, not because we need it.
If the subsidies stopped, less people would farm due to not being able to sell to the govt. We would produce simply what we need. The farmers that remained would still charge only as much as they could. If they charged too much someone down the road would open up a farm and then charge $.05 less and put them out of business, or at least lower the prices. In other words, I agree with your friend with the masters that subsidizing could keep the prices higher because the goverment is acting like a consumer and increasing "demand" if we were only producing what we need, but because we have a surplus they are essentially buying the surplus and not really effecting the price( As long as there are good controls in place. I can think of a few ways people could abuse this system. )
I could be wrong but I don't think farming is a very high-profit business. I grew up in an area where half the people were farmers and most just barely payed their bills, bought a house(which are rediculously cheap by city folk standards), etc. The majority of farmers are not jet-setting playboys who made millions on the brocolli business. Sure, you see some giant ranches, but they are often relying on their crops to pay the mortgage, or have worked hard and saved their whole life for it.
The farmers in third world counties are indeed selling us stuff and will in the foreseeable future, but wouldn't be effected at all by changes in our subsidies, IMHO. We currently don't need their food, we just like it. That being said, with the exploding world population, they could benefit greatly from modern techniques, and the rest of the world would benefit as well because of the conservation of the rain forests, decrease in disease, famine, etc.
>farming in the Amazon basin
>Farmer plants on soil that isn't very rich in nutrients for plant growth.
I have to disagree on this one. Thousands of years of dead plants, and animals, animal waste, etc. sound like it would be pretty fertile. Also there is a enormous river there bringing down minerals, salts, etc. from the mountains. Points 1,3,4 are probably very accurate tho.
-GPK
>And here's me thinking we have two eyes for a reason ;)
You have to admit that our 'stereo' vision is very limited. I doubt you or I could tell the difference in distance between an unknown object so you aren't using experience to tell you, say at 15' vs. 20' if there were no other objects to give it perspective(pitch black room). On the other hand we could certainly tell the difference between 1' and 6'. With your eye balls only hmmm, one second gotta get my ruler here...about 3" apart and looking at something 15' away vs. 20' the difference in angle is tiny. We routinely use computers to show distances of hundreds of feet, so our 'stereo' vision has very little effect on it.
We judge distance beyond a few feet entirely by perspective, clarity, prior knowledge of what we see, etc. Just for fun try putting a piece of paper over one eye at home for a while and see. I did it at work( on my lunch break that is ) and I didn't really have a problem with anything except picking up objects right in front of me. Beyond 6-7' I couldn't tell the difference.
Just my opinion tho. We can agree to disagree.
>When you try to display something in three dimensions on a monitor, not only does it not really exist, but your brain can't deal with it. Watch computer game novices (and some experts!) try to lean their head around to peek round a corner playing a FPS game. See how quickly most people get motion sick watching someone else play a game. It's all because the visuals are faking 3D and our eyes & brain can't deal.
That isn't why novices get motion sick. People get motion sick because their eyes and ears are getting information that says they are moving, however they are physically feeling no changes in momentum, no acceleration, etc. People have experienced it for centuries in cars, airplanes, movie theatres, boats. It has nothing to do with 2D vs. 3D vs. faked 3D. An enormous 3D holographic world you literally walk around in and manipulate would probably help, but that is impractical.
>A 3D desktop is not going to be a feasible reality until we have a feasible 3D display to draw it on. Only if/when hologram or 3D-projection displays become a reality will there be a useful case for a desktop to match; in the meantime, this just adds unnecessary complexity to the 2D desktop.
How would having a 3D interface help? You would still need to look at it. We see our world from a perspective( our eyes ) which is just barely 3D. A TV or computer monitor just provies a prospective into another world which IS 3D( in the case of this new desktop, or a game such as Half-life). That perspective is designed to mimic the way we already see the world. In fact, other than having less peripheral vision( which isn't an issue for most people who wear glasses, because we generally can't see much on the periphery anyway ) a computer monitor or TV is almost indestinguishable from the 'real' world, except the resolution, and size of course( both of which we can improve ). Unless we re-wire a 360degree camera directly to our optic nerve so we have a full 360degree field of vision and THEN immerse us in a miniature holo world I don't think it would make a difference.
BTW, I am not saying holo-projectors are without merit. They could be tremendously useful in saving space, making computers more portable, etc. I just don't think it will make a difference because of their "3D-ness', because we essentially see 3D objects in a 2D manner anyway. We just know from experience that they have depth.
>Your car analogy doesn't work as most car manuals have a maintenance schedule that tells you to change the oil every so often.
:-)
>You don't have to mount a big fan on the front of your new car to keep it cool enough to operate properly.
You are right, probably not the best analogy. What I was trying to say is that since most sources, including CPU and fan manuals that I have seen recommend heatsink compound & fan(or heatsink in the PII days), if you follow the manual you shouldn't have any problems. Similar to if you follow the routine maintainence on a car which is recommended in the manual, you should also be ok.
OEM vs. retail is a whole other issue. I usually buy OEM. The reasons for that are that I have never had a CPU go bad and fans are cheap enough I can run down to the local computer store and pick one up rather than waiting for the manufacturer to send me one. That being said I can totally understand if you prefer the retail packaging too, since it is as you point out only a few dollars more. It is strictly personal preference and my utter lack of patience dictates my choice.