I can understand why Steam is such a successful platform, but I bought two games on it and got burned badly enough by them that I got rid of it.
The first pretty much killed it for me. It was a $60 AAA game that took several days to download over my DSL line, which by itself was fine. However, after waiting all that time to get it installed and playing it for exactly 1 evening, it came out with a patch that took about 48 hours to download. As soon as the patch was available, Steam locked me out of the game without warning and started downloading it. Soon after I finished downloading that patch, there was a new one that locked me out again. Steam wouldn't let me choose whether (or even when) to download a patch. I could force the download to stop, but that just kept me locked out of the game indefinitely until I restarted and completed it. In the first month I was only able to play the game two or three evenings because it pushed me up to my ISP's bandwidth cap. I explained my problem to Steam tech support, and asked for either a way to disable the lockouts or a refund so I could buy a copy of the game that I could actually play. They told me to piss off, and I told them I was done buying things on Steam.
The second was a game I'd bought first, but that I ended up playing for a while after. At some point, Steam ended up locking me out of the game with a cryptic error message. I don't recall the exact message (it's been a while), but when searching Steam forums for it, they recommended a number of things (including deleting the game and re-downloading it, re-installing Steam, etc.), but nothing worked. I would've contacted tech support, but fortunately that game had only cost $10. At that point I decided that $10 was a cheap price to pay to be able to uninstall Steam and walk away from it forever.
Well, what do you expect from a science where no direct observations can be made, no experiments can be performed, and all of your theories are based on fossils millions of years old? While I wouldn't say the study of subjects like this are a waste (things can still be learned from them), these theories have to be taken with more than the usual number of grains of salt.
IMO every set of theories on a subject like this is built up from the bottom like a house of cards. Commonly accepted scientific principles that relate to it are the foundation (biology in this case). Still, if the theories aren't built up logically around accepted scientific principles, they won't be able to stand up at all. Even if they are built logically, they're full of holes, and they're pretty easy to knock down when you take a poke at them. What's not so easy is to build your own house of cards that is clearly superior to all the others and that can withstand new discoveries (which would be the equivalent of someone shaking the foundation/table your house of cards was built on). If you can do that, others will try to fill in the holes, giving you a house of blocks instead of a house of cards. It can still be knocked down (e.g. if someone removes a block like a game of Jenga), but it's more stable.
Umm, weather satellites are spaceships. And NASA doesn't just build airplanes and spaceships, they also study the planets/moons in our solar system that those spaceships can reach. Earth being the closest of those planets, it's the cheapest and easiest to study. This helps NASA perfect space technologies in a more cost-effective way, which makes the spaceships that actually go somewhere else more likely to succeed (and less likely to waste tons of money). As an added bonus, the Earth is the only planet in our solar system capable of sustaining human life, so studying the Earth itself is way more useful to those human life forms than studying the lifeless rocks that surround it in space.
I agree, but the question isn't whether "people" are abusing this information. The question is whether this app is abusing it, and using your own logic, the answer would be no. If a stalker used this app, the stalker is responsible for his own actions (not the app developer).
However, IMO where this app developer went wrong was in scraping information from commercial web sites without permission. It's exactly like Bing stealing Google's search results and making money off it without cutting a deal with Google. This line tells you exactly where the app developer went wrong:
"Foursquare yanked the Girls Around Me app's access to its data"
If the app developer had signed a contract with Foursquare, this would not have happened.
I blame price gouging by New York parking garages: "most of the cards they analyzed seem to have in common are that they were used in parking garages in and around the New York City area"
When prices get so outrageous that a large group in the city joins forces to steal the funds to cover them, you know that price gouging has gotten way out of hand.
... until the LHC breaks down (which seems to happen pretty often). You know, it wouldn't surprise me if that scenario was made into a Japanese anime movie.
Then why isn't food on all flights equally bad? I haven't flown in about 10 years, but 10 years ago everything I ate on a domestic US flight was pretty bad. During the same time period, everything I ate on a flight to Europe or Asia was really good. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure everything the article mentions (taste and smell changes due to elevation/pressure/humidity) was roughly the same on all of those flights. So while the explanations in this article may be based on scientific facts, the claims they make based on them are blown way out of proportion.
In my experience, the changes in personal smell/taste on flights is not significant enough to make a real difference. It's all about the food served. I'm not certain whether the international flights I took spent more on the food, or whether they simply assumed that international travelers had a broader palate and would accept more "interesting" foods than the average American. It may have been both.
How is the pilot supposed to see the runway in that? One of the problems with the Concorde was that the pilot couldn't see the runway, which they addressed by causing the nose-cone to pivot downward during take-off and landing (which caused its own problems). This design looks even worse from that perspective.
Maybe TPB plans to create/acquire its own aircraft carrier. It would fit with the pirate image, after all. Maybe they could purchase the USS Enterprise, which is about to be decommissioned.
Weather balloons are blown around by the wind, which tends to be pretty fast (and consistent) high up where there are no trees or mountains to slow it down, so they wouldn't stay where TPB wants them (over international waters) for very long.
Maybe they could install robot fingers positioned over the power buttons. Although if they can be controlled remotely, the MPAA will try to hack into the fingers.;-)
I don't know. I think there's a difference between being dead and having no social life. If nothing else, one probably involves less pain and frustration.;-)
...major ice age which killed most of the plants, causing them to decompose and release the carbon again, starting an enormous cycle that is still going on today.
What is the moral of this story? Don't mess with the global carbon cycle if you don't want the Earth's climate to change enough to kill "most of us". Having said that, I'd rather live on a warmer world than a giant ball of ice. But I'm thinking there's probably a sweet spot somewhere between ball of ice and mosquitos the size of your head coming to give you drug-resistant malaria and dengue. If the latter happens, I'll probably carry a racquetball racquet with me everywhere I go (just in case). I don't think the DEET spray will cut it at that point.
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I can understand why Steam is such a successful platform, but I bought two games on it and got burned badly enough by them that I got rid of it.
The first pretty much killed it for me. It was a $60 AAA game that took several days to download over my DSL line, which by itself was fine. However, after waiting all that time to get it installed and playing it for exactly 1 evening, it came out with a patch that took about 48 hours to download. As soon as the patch was available, Steam locked me out of the game without warning and started downloading it. Soon after I finished downloading that patch, there was a new one that locked me out again. Steam wouldn't let me choose whether (or even when) to download a patch. I could force the download to stop, but that just kept me locked out of the game indefinitely until I restarted and completed it. In the first month I was only able to play the game two or three evenings because it pushed me up to my ISP's bandwidth cap. I explained my problem to Steam tech support, and asked for either a way to disable the lockouts or a refund so I could buy a copy of the game that I could actually play. They told me to piss off, and I told them I was done buying things on Steam.
The second was a game I'd bought first, but that I ended up playing for a while after. At some point, Steam ended up locking me out of the game with a cryptic error message. I don't recall the exact message (it's been a while), but when searching Steam forums for it, they recommended a number of things (including deleting the game and re-downloading it, re-installing Steam, etc.), but nothing worked. I would've contacted tech support, but fortunately that game had only cost $10. At that point I decided that $10 was a cheap price to pay to be able to uninstall Steam and walk away from it forever.
"I RTFA and it looks like hogwash to me."
Well, what do you expect from a science where no direct observations can be made, no experiments can be performed, and all of your theories are based on fossils millions of years old? While I wouldn't say the study of subjects like this are a waste (things can still be learned from them), these theories have to be taken with more than the usual number of grains of salt.
IMO every set of theories on a subject like this is built up from the bottom like a house of cards. Commonly accepted scientific principles that relate to it are the foundation (biology in this case). Still, if the theories aren't built up logically around accepted scientific principles, they won't be able to stand up at all. Even if they are built logically, they're full of holes, and they're pretty easy to knock down when you take a poke at them. What's not so easy is to build your own house of cards that is clearly superior to all the others and that can withstand new discoveries (which would be the equivalent of someone shaking the foundation/table your house of cards was built on). If you can do that, others will try to fill in the holes, giving you a house of blocks instead of a house of cards. It can still be knocked down (e.g. if someone removes a block like a game of Jenga), but it's more stable.
Umm, weather satellites are spaceships. And NASA doesn't just build airplanes and spaceships, they also study the planets/moons in our solar system that those spaceships can reach. Earth being the closest of those planets, it's the cheapest and easiest to study. This helps NASA perfect space technologies in a more cost-effective way, which makes the spaceships that actually go somewhere else more likely to succeed (and less likely to waste tons of money). As an added bonus, the Earth is the only planet in our solar system capable of sustaining human life, so studying the Earth itself is way more useful to those human life forms than studying the lifeless rocks that surround it in space.
I'm pretty sure the cops will get these first.
I agree, but the question isn't whether "people" are abusing this information. The question is whether this app is abusing it, and using your own logic, the answer would be no. If a stalker used this app, the stalker is responsible for his own actions (not the app developer).
However, IMO where this app developer went wrong was in scraping information from commercial web sites without permission. It's exactly like Bing stealing Google's search results and making money off it without cutting a deal with Google. This line tells you exactly where the app developer went wrong:
"Foursquare yanked the Girls Around Me app's access to its data"
If the app developer had signed a contract with Foursquare, this would not have happened.
My comment was meant as a joke. It was so ridiculous that I don't see how anyone could take it seriously.
I blame price gouging by New York parking garages:
"most of the cards they analyzed seem to have in common are that they were used in parking garages in and around the New York City area"
When prices get so outrageous that a large group in the city joins forces to steal the funds to cover them, you know that price gouging has gotten way out of hand.
... until the LHC breaks down (which seems to happen pretty often). You know, it wouldn't surprise me if that scenario was made into a Japanese anime movie.
Because then we'd have a black hole heading for Earth instead of an asteroid.
Don't light a match behind it. Actually, don't stand behind it.
What will Fark do? They'll have to stop using that "... still no cure for cancer" meme. Wonder what'll take its place.
Then why isn't food on all flights equally bad? I haven't flown in about 10 years, but 10 years ago everything I ate on a domestic US flight was pretty bad. During the same time period, everything I ate on a flight to Europe or Asia was really good. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure everything the article mentions (taste and smell changes due to elevation/pressure/humidity) was roughly the same on all of those flights. So while the explanations in this article may be based on scientific facts, the claims they make based on them are blown way out of proportion.
In my experience, the changes in personal smell/taste on flights is not significant enough to make a real difference. It's all about the food served. I'm not certain whether the international flights I took spent more on the food, or whether they simply assumed that international travelers had a broader palate and would accept more "interesting" foods than the average American. It may have been both.
How is the pilot supposed to see the runway in that? One of the problems with the Concorde was that the pilot couldn't see the runway, which they addressed by causing the nose-cone to pivot downward during take-off and landing (which caused its own problems). This design looks even worse from that perspective.
Maybe TPB plans to create/acquire its own aircraft carrier. It would fit with the pirate image, after all. Maybe they could purchase the USS Enterprise, which is about to be decommissioned.
Weather balloons are blown around by the wind, which tends to be pretty fast (and consistent) high up where there are no trees or mountains to slow it down, so they wouldn't stay where TPB wants them (over international waters) for very long.
How do you keep the helium balloon from being blown around by the winds? If you can't do that, you can't keep it over international waters.
So would an act of anti-piracy that's also an act of piracy cancel itself out?
Maybe they could install robot fingers positioned over the power buttons. Although if they can be controlled remotely, the MPAA will try to hack into the fingers. ;-)
Pirating must pay really well. I can't imagine how much it would cost to manage those servers and keep them up there 24/7.
I don't know. I think there's a difference between being dead and having no social life. If nothing else, one probably involves less pain and frustration. ;-)
You forgot the Dread Pirate Roberts, who was only "mostly dead". And of course, Buffy, who died a number of times.
They must have used the wrong cable, causing the light to go faster than C and mess with their readings.
""master/slave," but these terms could also be considered offensive"
That's probably when they decided to switch to pimp/bitch. I mean, you have to come up with names that get the point across.
"Example: Last week I bought an iPhone 4S and couldn't figure out how to make a call."
Isn't that why they created Siri?
...major ice age which killed most of the plants, causing them to decompose and release the carbon again, starting an enormous cycle that is still going on today.
What is the moral of this story? Don't mess with the global carbon cycle if you don't want the Earth's climate to change enough to kill "most of us". Having said that, I'd rather live on a warmer world than a giant ball of ice. But I'm thinking there's probably a sweet spot somewhere between ball of ice and mosquitos the size of your head coming to give you drug-resistant malaria and dengue. If the latter happens, I'll probably carry a racquetball racquet with me everywhere I go (just in case). I don't think the DEET spray will cut it at that point.