I work part-time as a freelance copyeditor for medical and scientific publishing. I use Dorland's Medical Dictionary as my reference for medical/scientific terminology. Of course the dictionary is geared towards medical use, so if the scientific terms you need are, for example, from botany or astrophysics, this probably would not be of use. Dorland's does, however, come with a CD-ROM which includes a dictionary/spellchecker for use with with MS-WORD, so I find it immeasurably valuable.
It seems like this is a pretty pointless offer from microsoft. If you think about it, in order to play these games, you need to make the original hardware investment of $150, then you need to have Xbox Live, another $50/year (I think), and you have to pay for each game?
This is in opposition to the current retro-trend oriented hardware which bundles a bunch of games inside one old controller shaped device that you can hook directly to your TV for maybe $20.
Basically, the only advantages Live can claim are that 1)you don't need to go to a store and 2)you can post your scores on a message board. I just don't see the attraction.
It's funny, but I just finished speaking with a friend of mine who until very recently was involved in shaping some of the legislation of the private spaceflight/space commerce industry. This bill was something that he and his boss (the FAA was subcontracting this work out to them) started on about 2 years ago, and as it is in its current form, it bears almost no resmblance to their initial work.
He and his boss were both just "let go" because they didn't want to change the bill, but certain other parties applied some political pressure. I'm not sure how much detail I could go into without his permission.
Regardless, he was at the two flights with VIP passes, and is now working closely with some of the private companies involved as a consultant, and some of the ideas that are coming should be interesting. Of course, for the next 5, 10, maybe even more years this is going to remain a novelty industry; the playgroung of rich men. But in time, probably within our lifetimes, we will probably see the emergence of the space industry as part of the private sector, from tourism, to medicine, to other applications we have yet to think of.
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I work part-time as a freelance copyeditor for medical and scientific publishing. I use Dorland's Medical Dictionary as my reference for medical/scientific terminology. Of course the dictionary is geared towards medical use, so if the scientific terms you need are, for example, from botany or astrophysics, this probably would not be of use. Dorland's does, however, come with a CD-ROM which includes a dictionary/spellchecker for use with with MS-WORD, so I find it immeasurably valuable.
It seems like this is a pretty pointless offer from microsoft. If you think about it, in order to play these games, you need to make the original hardware investment of $150, then you need to have Xbox Live, another $50/year (I think), and you have to pay for each game?
This is in opposition to the current retro-trend oriented hardware which bundles a bunch of games inside one old controller shaped device that you can hook directly to your TV for maybe $20.
Basically, the only advantages Live can claim are that 1)you don't need to go to a store and 2)you can post your scores on a message board. I just don't see the attraction.
It's funny, but I just finished speaking with a friend of mine who until very recently was involved in shaping some of the legislation of the private spaceflight/space commerce industry. This bill was something that he and his boss (the FAA was subcontracting this work out to them) started on about 2 years ago, and as it is in its current form, it bears almost no resmblance to their initial work.
He and his boss were both just "let go" because they didn't want to change the bill, but certain other parties applied some political pressure. I'm not sure how much detail I could go into without his permission.
Regardless, he was at the two flights with VIP passes, and is now working closely with some of the private companies involved as a consultant, and some of the ideas that are coming should be interesting. Of course, for the next 5, 10, maybe even more years this is going to remain a novelty industry; the playgroung of rich men. But in time, probably within our lifetimes, we will probably see the emergence of the space industry as part of the private sector, from tourism, to medicine, to other applications we have yet to think of.