They keep the number of doctors artificially low, so as to keep demand high.
Keeping the supply of doctors low does not alter demand. Constraining the supply of a good or service while demand remains constant will keep prices 'high'.
Previous generations of consoles did not have broadband internet connections. When you upgraded from Console1.0 to SuperNextGenConsole2.0, you plugged in your old game media into the new console and it either worked (console was backward compatible) or it didn't.
With modern consoles having broadband internet connections, it would seem to offer other alternatives to solving the backward compatibility issue. Perhaps you can download replacement game modules (recompiled for the new system) to the new console, served up from either the game console vendor or the game manufacturer. The old game disc is just used as an unlock token and for the game data files (if the same data can work on the new console, otherwise you would need to download new game data as well.) That presumes that the new console has sufficient storage space to store the new code, or the broadband connection is fast enough and the new code small enough that local storage is unnecessary.
The music industry has begun to move beyond the fixation with the distribution media for its software, soon the gaming industry will follow I bet.
Dr Hunter Hoffman, research fellow at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle... [patients] defend themselves from attack by polar bears and penguins.
I know at least one resident of Seattle who wouldn't find attacks by virtual penguins to be relaxing!;)
And if disease and starvation don't pan out, there's always war.
The population explosion has already happened, btw. With current technology we won't be able to support the 6 billion or so of us around today at today's standard of living (even though billions today have a pretty poor way of life) for more than a century. The whole premise for our civilization is that it's ok to burn through our forests, water, and oil because technology will find a solution before we run out.
And if we don't find a solution? Well, we can tell our great grandchildren "Oops, our bad wasting all the oil and stuff. Sorry 'bout all the dead people you're gonna have from all the wars fighting over what's left."
That's the double edged sword of a 70ish year lifespan: It evolves the species but promotes short sightedness.
Doh, my bad! Forgot about that whole Italy using Euro thing. Substitute Turkey for Italy. At today's exchange rate, 0.99 Turkish Lira is something less than one-millionth of a US dollar... All the songs ever made for pocket change! Gonna need an iPod with a bigger HD!
>Instead of building a bomb which has a negative economic impact (not to mention cost)
Nobody (who is rational) builds a bomb thinking about how it will make them poorer. People build bombs because they believe that having the bomb will benefit them by: 1. Preventing others from taking their stuff, and/or 2. Allowing them to take others stuff.
As a hypothetical, suppose the United States had not spent any money on nuclear weapons or missiles after WW2. Imagine that that as a result of a lack of deterrence (Mutual Assured Destruction), there was a WW3 fought between the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and China and their puppets against the democracies of Western Europe, North America, and Australia. Do you think that the negative economic impacts of that war could have been worse that the costs of building the doomsday weapons?
I'm not a war monger, quite the opposite. I prefer butter to guns. But I am realistic and see that humanity has not passed the point where we can all throw down our weapons and just love each other.
>Never, ever, ever, take control away from the pilot.
I think that the passengers of the EgyptAir flight in which the (co)pilot deliberately crashed the plane into the ocean would disagree. Also, there was a crash in the Everglades a few decades ago that was caused by the flight crew becoming so distracted by a malfunctioning light that they forgot to fly the plane. There are situations where I would prefer to have a computer flying the plane rather than the human. Those situations would include a deranged, incapacitated, or unfit flight crew. In those situations I would deem computer control of the plane to be less risky than human control. Until we have some way of detecting such a flight crew, however, I'll place my trust in them to fly the plane rather than a computer...
Perhaps a follow on project to SoftWalls could be a deranged pilot detection system?;)
Also note that any computer can only be a good/reliable as its inputs, and radar/GPS/etc. can all fail or be actively interfered with. The FAA is so concerned about the aviation electronics being unreliable that they require passengers to shut off electronic devices during takeoff/landing. Who would want to hand over control of the plane to a computer which could crash just because some evildoer in the cabin turns on his laptop?
In 1997, Mars Pathfinder successfully landed on Mars and deployed a rover. That demonstrated that the design worked, and that all the various hardware and software pieces could come together for a successful mission.
Did Mars Express / Beagle 2 reuse any of that, or did they start from scratch? It seems to me that if you wanted an effective long term Mars exploration strategy you would develop a flexible and reliable platform for delivering payloads to the surface, then reuse as much as possible on subsequent missions.
That would be analogous to developing a standard booster to put satellites in orbit. If every booster were a one-of-a-kind, the success rate on satellite launches would be much lower than it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks to recent events like the SARS and Mad Cow outbreaks, the next version of the HHGTTG will have an updated entry for Canada: "Mostly Harmless."
Keeping the supply of doctors low does not alter demand. Constraining the supply of a good or service while demand remains constant will keep prices 'high'.
Previous generations of consoles did not have broadband internet connections. When you upgraded from Console1.0 to SuperNextGenConsole2.0, you plugged in your old game media into the new console and it either worked (console was backward compatible) or it didn't.
With modern consoles having broadband internet connections, it would seem to offer other alternatives to solving the backward compatibility issue. Perhaps you can download replacement game modules (recompiled for the new system) to the new console, served up from either the game console vendor or the game manufacturer. The old game disc is just used as an unlock token and for the game data files (if the same data can work on the new console, otherwise you would need to download new game data as well.) That presumes that the new console has sufficient storage space to store the new code, or the broadband connection is fast enough and the new code small enough that local storage is unnecessary.
The music industry has begun to move beyond the fixation with the distribution media for its software, soon the gaming industry will follow I bet.
I know at least one resident of Seattle who wouldn't find attacks by virtual penguins to be relaxing! ;)
And if disease and starvation don't pan out, there's always war.
The population explosion has already happened, btw. With current technology we won't be able to support the 6 billion or so of us around today at today's standard of living (even though billions today have a pretty poor way of life) for more than a century. The whole premise for our civilization is that it's ok to burn through our forests, water, and oil because technology will find a solution before we run out.
And if we don't find a solution? Well, we can tell our great grandchildren "Oops, our bad wasting all the oil and stuff. Sorry 'bout all the dead people you're gonna have from all the wars fighting over what's left."
That's the double edged sword of a 70ish year lifespan: It evolves the species but promotes short sightedness.
Doh, my bad! Forgot about that whole Italy using Euro thing. Substitute Turkey for Italy. At today's exchange rate, 0.99 Turkish Lira is something less than one-millionth of a US dollar... All the songs ever made for pocket change! Gonna need an iPod with a bigger HD!
I'd love to pay 0.99 yen, pesos, or lira per song!
>Instead of building a bomb which has a negative economic impact (not to mention cost)
Nobody (who is rational) builds a bomb thinking about how it will make them poorer. People build bombs because they believe that having the bomb will benefit them by:
1. Preventing others from taking their stuff, and/or
2. Allowing them to take others stuff.
As a hypothetical, suppose the United States had not spent any money on nuclear weapons or missiles after WW2. Imagine that that as a result of a lack of deterrence (Mutual Assured Destruction), there was a WW3 fought between the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and China and their puppets against the democracies of Western Europe, North America, and Australia. Do you think that the negative economic impacts of that war could have been worse that the costs of building the doomsday weapons?
I'm not a war monger, quite the opposite. I prefer butter to guns. But I am realistic and see that humanity has not passed the point where we can all throw down our weapons and just love each other.
>Never, ever, ever, take control away from the pilot. I think that the passengers of the EgyptAir flight in which the (co)pilot deliberately crashed the plane into the ocean would disagree. Also, there was a crash in the Everglades a few decades ago that was caused by the flight crew becoming so distracted by a malfunctioning light that they forgot to fly the plane. There are situations where I would prefer to have a computer flying the plane rather than the human. Those situations would include a deranged, incapacitated, or unfit flight crew. In those situations I would deem computer control of the plane to be less risky than human control. Until we have some way of detecting such a flight crew, however, I'll place my trust in them to fly the plane rather than a computer... Perhaps a follow on project to SoftWalls could be a deranged pilot detection system? ;)
Also note that any computer can only be a good/reliable as its inputs, and radar/GPS/etc. can all fail or be actively interfered with. The FAA is so concerned about the aviation electronics being unreliable that they require passengers to shut off electronic devices during takeoff/landing. Who would want to hand over control of the plane to a computer which could crash just because some evildoer in the cabin turns on his laptop?
In 1997, Mars Pathfinder successfully landed on Mars and deployed a rover. That demonstrated that the design worked, and that all the various hardware and software pieces could come together for a successful mission.
Did Mars Express / Beagle 2 reuse any of that, or did they start from scratch? It seems to me that if you wanted an effective long term Mars exploration strategy you would develop a flexible and reliable platform for delivering payloads to the surface, then reuse as much as possible on subsequent missions.
That would be analogous to developing a standard booster to put satellites in orbit. If every booster were a one-of-a-kind, the success rate on satellite launches would be much lower than it is.