Interestingly, optimizations that are "no longer valid" on new x86 CPUs are typically still valid on ARM CPUs, so don't count out those old techniques yet.
The ability of x86 desktop CPUs to do fast floating point and division depends on having millions of transistors, dedicated to those tasks, running at high clock speeds. Since ARM is intended for low-power markets, it does not have an integer divide instruction, some ARM CPUs don't have a floating-point unit, and those that do floating point can't do FP as fast as they can do integer math. Similarly, very deep instruction pipelines are not available in ARM. Consequently, the performance characteristics of ARM CPUs are more similar to the oldest Pentiums than to the newest ones.
And of course, although demos targeted at old CPUs don't use new CPUs in the most ideal way, they still run much faster on new CPUs than they did on the CPUs for which they were intended. Thus, the old demos should still work perfectly well.
There is an alternative that doesn't suddenly take hundreds of thousands of computers off the internet: periodic denial of service. For two minutes every hour, on the hour, redirect all the most popular web domains to a HTTP server with a page with an FBI logo on it, explaining that you have the DNSChanger malware on your computer (or in your router) and that you must fix the problem or your internet will stop working completely in 4 months.
The goal is to inform users that their machine is compromised in such a way they can't ignore it, and won't mistake it for a problem at their ISP. There's no need to kick them off the internet (if you completely block their access to DNS, how can they perform the necessary research to clean up their machine or router?)
Well, they'll probably keep it stored in a booted state. 16 hours is very hard to believe, though.
Let's hope this weapon doesn't become too effective or cheap in our lifetimes; how often do you want the local cops to use the thing? Not to mention anyone who buys one on the black market, or third-world forces that buy it "legitimately".
Let's hope technology limitations force them to bring it out only on special occasions. The guy pulling the trigger will probably get away with pulling it far longer than he ever has to experience for himself. And with less evidence than a taser.
Switching to "freemium" now may have increased revenue now. That doesn't necessarily mean it would have been a good idea to release as freemium in the first place. Valve had 4 years to convince people to pay up-front for TF2, and they succeeded quite well! But after four years, you've just about exhausted the supply of people that are willing to pay up-front. Switching to freemium not only brings in new customers, it also convinces some of the original buyers to pay again for in-game items. Now that's smart.
IMO they struck the right balance, too: TF2 is still fun without paying anything (or in my case, any more than I paid for the Orange Box.) If you had to "pay to win", people might be pretty pissed off.
The tech to do this is NOT HERE TODAY, so you CAN'T ESTIMATE THE WEIGHT using today's tech.
[...] Therefore, your numbers -- in fact, any attempt you make to to specifically quantify the issue in any way -- are complete nonsense. Got that?
[...] WHEN (not if) ultracaps exceed battery capacity vs cost, THEN they will be the energy storage mechanism of choice. I further assert that this is almost a certainty, based on the fact that production ultracaps are improving in both cost and capacity quite rapidly, though they are STILL behind batteries at this time, and batteries are moving targets in terms of capacity as well.
What the heck? Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the UC concept. But you offered no evidence that UC capacity will ever be cheaper or smaller than batteries, but somehow we must accept that UCs are the future. If someone suggests otherwise they are a "troll", and we aren't allowed "specifically quantify the issue in any way"? I don't accept your terms.
First of all, what's the time frame on these cheaper-than-battery UCs? If they are more than a few years out, it's unreasonable talk about them as though they solve any current problems. Running low on electric capacity is a problem NOW so why should we focus on a hypothetical future of cheap ultracaps?
Secondly, even assuming they are someday cheaper than batteries, that doesn't mean they are cheaper than gas storage (since gas storage is inefficient, it was only proposed because it's cheaper). According to here, the cheapest kind of battery storage is Lead-acid at $170 per KWh. Assuming tp1024 is right that 100TWh is needed for 2 months of energy storage for Germany (= 69 GW, which admittedly feels like an overly high estimate to me), the needed batteries would cost $170 billion dollars, or about $2000 from every man, woman and child (in Germany). Even if UCs become half the price of the world's cheapest battery, $1000 per capita still seems like a huge extra cost (on top of the wind/solar plants themselves) that would be spent just to reduce storage losses and/or to avoid building nuclear plants (which wouldn't need any significant energy storage in the first place).
Plus, what reason is there to think UCs' energy density will get anywhere near that of compressed hydrogen?
Stomv didn't say "nuclear and fossil-fuel generated electricity costs more than photovoltaic" - he said the operating costs are higher, which is presumably added on top of the basic $14B price tag. Fossil fuel plants, of course, have the highest operating costs since their fuel costs more than water (hydro), uranium, sunlight, wind, etc.
Note: I realize you can't use solar power for base load. Still, if nuclear costs twice as much as solar, it's hard to believe it's the best use of funds. It seems plausible that you could afford to build a huge solar plant with huge energy-storage capacity (batteries, molten salt, whatever) for less than the price of this plant.
I actually like nuclear energy, especially newer safe designs that "can't" melt down, but to me the main attraction of nuclear is the potential cost savings over other possibilities. Am I missing something, or does this project not save any money compared to the alternatives?
(14G$ / 2.2GW) doesn't sound like a good price point to me, with the price of solar being at $3/watt and falling (assuming "AC Watts" have the same energy as "DC Watts"). Why so pricey?
What's wrong with your logical process is your assumptions. You assume that if you go back in time and change something, that it must affect the past you remember. You assume consistency between 1955's future and the 1985 you left from. But there are no known laws of physics governing time travel, since time travel has never been done. The universe it is what it is -- it may rule out time travel entirely, but if time travel is possible, it may or may not allow multiple timelines and inconsistencies. We can't say whether/which paradoxes are possible until we actually perform time travel and investigate it scientifically.
One possibility is that when you go back and change something, the universe splits. The universe you left continues to exist, and your changes create a parallel universe. Or, the changes propagate at some unknown speed toward the future, overwriting the old future. Or, perhaps time travel requires consistency between the future and past somehow (this is very hard for humans to imagine realistically; I read a novel based on this approach, and it was clearly unrealistic because it basically relied on "magic" to ensure you wouldn't kill your grandparents or save someone's life--not that physics would care about a person's life any more than a bug you might squash or a pebble you might displace while you're walking around in the past!)
What's not possible is for these three possibilities to mix unpredictably in nonsensical ways, which often happens in the movies according to the screenwriter's whim.
Politicians aren't interested in one data point, you.
The problem is this: rich guys who run for high office can now afford to analyze "location, demographics, political affiliations, social networks, behavior, and interests of citizens" and then tell voters in a specific area and demographic exactly what they want to hear. They can then give different messages to different people, and they can perhaps even risk playing different messages that contradict each other to different audiences.
Since most people have minimal political engagement, they will vote for the guy who is saying exactly what they want to hear, and the majority will fail to notice that the same guy is giving different messages to different groups of people. In contrast, candidates without enormous wealth cannot pull off this trick, and ethical candidates (who take a consistent position on an issue, regardless of their audience) wouldn't be willing to pull off this trick. Therefore, the risk we face here is that only unethical rich people will win important elections.
Man, who are the porn lovers modding this stuff up? I'm surprised how much traction is being granted to this hardline position of "porn equals speech, so it's okay to publicly display it, period."
Now, I actually believe non-sexual public nudity should be legal, but I still believe in basic courtesy, and surely minors should be protected from seeing porn as they walk by? I'm a nudist, but I wouldn't generally walk around on the street without clothes even if it were legal, except for special publicized events like the World Naked Bike Ride. Why? Because some people might be offended. If people look through a hole in the fence and see me sunbathing, fine: they don't have to keep looking, they can look away if they don't like it. I think a little nudity is good, to get people used to the human body, but out of courtesy we should avoid forcing it on people. When you're rude enough, you end up in the news, like this weirdo and the librarian.
And porn is a different story than simple nudity, since it can be quite addictive, especially to minors. I remember being a teenager, before I was a nudist. If I saw someone watching porn in public in the library, I would have been thinking about it for days afterward. I would have been itching to see some porn for myself. And my parents, thinking of me, would have rightly freaked out if they saw it in the library. We don't even have to bring the law into this; since it's sensational enough for a news story, I think that in the future, social norms will make this guy move to the computer in the corner.
You're asking "what if the porn computer in the corner is in constant use"? But it wasn't. The guy could have moved. When porn watching in the library becomes epidemic, let's talk about it then.
FTA: " 'And they can't be in the business of monitoring what their patrons are doing at any given computer.'
However, in 2010 the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that libraries can do exactly that. The ruling came after the ACLU sued a rural library district that had attempted to filter porn from its computers. "
Citation needed. Googling for Matt Deatheridge "bonch" doesn't turn up any obvious connection.
Actually, some up-modded comments here are contradictory. Some suggest Foxconn working conditions are deplorable and cruel, others say that Foxconn workers are lucky and that conditions are wonderful compared to work in rural China. It would be nice to see some facts to back up these varying claims.
The explanation isn't even correct. When I wrote a Super Nintendo emulator in the 90s, various documents referred to its GPU as a, er, GPU. The SNES predates NVidia itself, so let's not call it a "term coined by chip giant NVidia".
GPUs are nowhere near new. What's relatively new is GPGPUs (General-Purpose computation on Graphics Processing Units).
It's odd that neither of the ZDNet articles (to which Slashdot has linked in recent days) tell us what information Facebook is said to be holding back. So what information are you withholding from us, ZDNet? Is the story not juicy enough if it is too specific?
"We need to give this series some weight." - Valve Marketing Director
Valve announced today that it's found something else for its developers to do besides Half-Life 2: Episode 3. "After the heart-pounding and tragic ending to Episode 2, we felt it was important that players identify with the death of [redacted] and really identify with the pain of the other characters," Valve's CEO explains. "Half-Life 2 is a deep franchise, you know. It's all about giving the player a long-term and life-changing emotional experience. So it's really important, you know, to give players some time to let things sink in. We felt it wouldn't really be fitting to release a new episode so soon after the last one. I mean it was just, what, 2007? I mean, players need some time to deal with their grief."
Valve's new CounterStrike: GO provides much-needed work for Valve's developers, who are still waiting for the "right time" to begin work on HL2: Episode 3. "We're thinking the five-year anniversary [October 2012] would be about perfect [as a release date]" a Valve spin doctor explains. "That way we can have a nice anniversary and release party all rolled into one." The spokesperson denied that this was a cost-saving measure, insisting that "no, no, the party's really going to blow you away". Company executives are confident that there will be enough cake left over from Portals 1 and 2 (and 3, if there is time to make it before Episode 3) to serve at the party.
What does this have to do with PowerShell? PS uses an ordinary character grid terminal, same as bash. It processes binary data (.NET objects actually) instead of text, but all user interaction is limited to 16-color fixed-width text. No graphics, no IntelliSense. TermKit is designed around traditional Unix commands and seems to have much loftier usability goals--syntax highlighting for your commands, easier escaping, showing you relevant documentation automatically... I love it. This is what PS should have been.
"This is unquestionably undeserved," Isom [Herbert's spokeswoman] said. "The Legislature first passed this bill with a veto-proof majority.
"Were it not for the governor's action, the original HB477 would take effect. What the governor signed was an amended HB477 and, because of his leadership, we now have a process to remedy HB477."
I am not familiar with Herbert, but if this bill is his fault, why isn't his spokesperson eager to defend the bill?
"If you are not planning on getting an iPad 2 on Friday at 5 p.m., the terrorists win." So said open source icon Miguel de Icaza on his Twitter feed this week, and he wasn't joking.
itwbennett/soulskill/Chris Nerney are criticizing the choice of Eric Schmidt without proposing an alternative. I'm inclined to think that a pharmaceutical industry bigwig from Pfizer is chosen instead, he probably will not in any way improve life for US citizens. What's the big deal about Schmidt? Do you think, as Commerce Secretary, that he will somehow water down privacy legislation to help Google?
And once everyone had a replicator - everyone would replicate the newest, coolest, best car. [...] And all of the advancement and innovation that we've seen since the first car and now would grind to a halt.
Reality disagrees with you. Almost everybody now has a replicator--of bits and bytes. Yet somehow the companies that make brand new songs, software, movies and TV shows stay in business while continuing to make major profits. The biggest stars still make millions of dollars per year, and Big Content spends as much on blockbuster films as ever. The cable companies manage to get upwards of $600 per year from typical customers, and for all that money you still have to put up with 15 minutes of ads per hour and you still don't get to watch shows on-demand.
Somehow, people are still willing to pay for things they could copy for free. Partly this is because of Big Content's success in lobbying for powerful laws in their favor, and in using those laws to shut down networks and individuals that share files. Partly it may be that sheeple actually do believe ads that compare copying a song to stealing a car (it's frustrating how many people think this way!) For me, it is sense that those who make the best movies and music deserve to get paid, and I pay for those works that I like (provided that the price is reasonable and the DRM is not excessive).
Our society greatly benefits from the fact that people do not steal from a supermarket just because they can avoid getting caught. Recently I read about an incident where the staff of a grocery store were missing, but customers generally left money to pay for their purchases. That people are generally good means less resources must be wasted on security and prisons (which themselves produce nothing useful), people are less afraid of other people, and people less often have the unpleasant experience of being robbed.
Because people are generally good, they are willing to pay for copyrighted works even though copying them (unlike stealing physical objects) technically does not hurt anyone. Generally good people (GGP) know that these things must be paid for or they will not be produced in the first place. It's a principle we all understand, except perhaps Big Content, who assume their customers are criminals. And so, we the GGP have some willingness to do our part by paying for copyrighted works, just as we are willing to pay takes and do occasional volunteer work and give a bit to charity and not steal from the supermarket.
Big Content, however, does not want merely to have enough money to pay for a healthy music and film market--they always want to increase profits if possible, regardless of what they are now. Consider how much smaller the market for films was in 1960: the world population was only 3 billion and American films would probably have had a very small market beyond North America. Did the movie companies ever complain then that there were not enough humans available to buy copies? Today the potential market is nearly 7 billion and the actual market is probably several times larger than in 1960, yet film companies complain very loudly if, say, 1/6 of that market (China) is not paying them enough. Do they really need the money? Of course not: if money was tight they would simply scale back movie budgets, just as budgets were necessarily small in 1960. Certainly low-income pirates in no way prevent them from making movies, and the actual movie budgets of today prove that they are doing very well for themselves. Even if you took away the entire third world market, the would still have a good billion potential customers left.
But in copyright markets, the cost of "buying" a work has almost nothing to do with covering the cost of production: a movie DVD that costs $10 may be for something expected to take a heavy loss like Waterworld, or for something that has already made billions of dollars in profit like Star Wars, and certainly doesn't "need" more. Likewise, their rh
How did that get rated 5? Assuming this rule is actually in the ROE, it is clearly clause (b) and not (c) that applies to the wounded man.
(b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or
It does not say a wounded man is not allowed to escape or (as in this case) be carried away by a third party. Moreover, there is no evidence that the people in the van could be considered "attacking persons".
Basically, OpenLR's purpose is to describe a route in as few bytes as possible; therefore it relies on the sender and receiver's existing knowledge about the road network (and about shortest paths through that network) to encode and decode a route described using a very small number of points (where a point is a lat/lon pair with some metadata about a road).
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly, optimizations that are "no longer valid" on new x86 CPUs are typically still valid on ARM CPUs, so don't count out those old techniques yet. The ability of x86 desktop CPUs to do fast floating point and division depends on having millions of transistors, dedicated to those tasks, running at high clock speeds. Since ARM is intended for low-power markets, it does not have an integer divide instruction, some ARM CPUs don't have a floating-point unit, and those that do floating point can't do FP as fast as they can do integer math. Similarly, very deep instruction pipelines are not available in ARM. Consequently, the performance characteristics of ARM CPUs are more similar to the oldest Pentiums than to the newest ones. And of course, although demos targeted at old CPUs don't use new CPUs in the most ideal way, they still run much faster on new CPUs than they did on the CPUs for which they were intended. Thus, the old demos should still work perfectly well.
There is an alternative that doesn't suddenly take hundreds of thousands of computers off the internet: periodic denial of service. For two minutes every hour, on the hour, redirect all the most popular web domains to a HTTP server with a page with an FBI logo on it, explaining that you have the DNSChanger malware on your computer (or in your router) and that you must fix the problem or your internet will stop working completely in 4 months.
The goal is to inform users that their machine is compromised in such a way they can't ignore it, and won't mistake it for a problem at their ISP. There's no need to kick them off the internet (if you completely block their access to DNS, how can they perform the necessary research to clean up their machine or router?)
Well, they'll probably keep it stored in a booted state. 16 hours is very hard to believe, though.
Let's hope this weapon doesn't become too effective or cheap in our lifetimes; how often do you want the local cops to use the thing? Not to mention anyone who buys one on the black market, or third-world forces that buy it "legitimately".
Let's hope technology limitations force them to bring it out only on special occasions. The guy pulling the trigger will probably get away with pulling it far longer than he ever has to experience for himself. And with less evidence than a taser.
WTF is a customer device huge?
Switching to "freemium" now may have increased revenue now. That doesn't necessarily mean it would have been a good idea to release as freemium in the first place. Valve had 4 years to convince people to pay up-front for TF2, and they succeeded quite well! But after four years, you've just about exhausted the supply of people that are willing to pay up-front. Switching to freemium not only brings in new customers, it also convinces some of the original buyers to pay again for in-game items. Now that's smart.
IMO they struck the right balance, too: TF2 is still fun without paying anything (or in my case, any more than I paid for the Orange Box.) If you had to "pay to win", people might be pretty pissed off.
The tech to do this is NOT HERE TODAY, so you CAN'T ESTIMATE THE WEIGHT using today's tech.
[...] Therefore, your numbers -- in fact, any attempt you make to to specifically quantify the issue in any way -- are complete nonsense. Got that?
[...] WHEN (not if) ultracaps exceed battery capacity vs cost, THEN they will be the energy storage mechanism of choice. I further assert that this is almost a certainty, based on the fact that production ultracaps are improving in both cost and capacity quite rapidly, though they are STILL behind batteries at this time, and batteries are moving targets in terms of capacity as well.
What the heck? Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the UC concept. But you offered no evidence that UC capacity will ever be cheaper or smaller than batteries, but somehow we must accept that UCs are the future. If someone suggests otherwise they are a "troll", and we aren't allowed "specifically quantify the issue in any way"? I don't accept your terms.
First of all, what's the time frame on these cheaper-than-battery UCs? If they are more than a few years out, it's unreasonable talk about them as though they solve any current problems. Running low on electric capacity is a problem NOW so why should we focus on a hypothetical future of cheap ultracaps?
Secondly, even assuming they are someday cheaper than batteries, that doesn't mean they are cheaper than gas storage (since gas storage is inefficient, it was only proposed because it's cheaper). According to here, the cheapest kind of battery storage is Lead-acid at $170 per KWh. Assuming tp1024 is right that 100TWh is needed for 2 months of energy storage for Germany (= 69 GW, which admittedly feels like an overly high estimate to me), the needed batteries would cost $170 billion dollars, or about $2000 from every man, woman and child (in Germany). Even if UCs become half the price of the world's cheapest battery, $1000 per capita still seems like a huge extra cost (on top of the wind/solar plants themselves) that would be spent just to reduce storage losses and/or to avoid building nuclear plants (which wouldn't need any significant energy storage in the first place).
Plus, what reason is there to think UCs' energy density will get anywhere near that of compressed hydrogen?
Stomv didn't say "nuclear and fossil-fuel generated electricity costs more than photovoltaic" - he said the operating costs are higher, which is presumably added on top of the basic $14B price tag. Fossil fuel plants, of course, have the highest operating costs since their fuel costs more than water (hydro), uranium, sunlight, wind, etc.
Note: I realize you can't use solar power for base load. Still, if nuclear costs twice as much as solar, it's hard to believe it's the best use of funds. It seems plausible that you could afford to build a huge solar plant with huge energy-storage capacity (batteries, molten salt, whatever) for less than the price of this plant.
I actually like nuclear energy, especially newer safe designs that "can't" melt down, but to me the main attraction of nuclear is the potential cost savings over other possibilities. Am I missing something, or does this project not save any money compared to the alternatives?
(14G$ / 2.2GW) doesn't sound like a good price point to me, with the price of solar being at $3/watt and falling (assuming "AC Watts" have the same energy as "DC Watts"). Why so pricey?
What's wrong with your logical process is your assumptions. You assume that if you go back in time and change something, that it must affect the past you remember. You assume consistency between 1955's future and the 1985 you left from. But there are no known laws of physics governing time travel, since time travel has never been done. The universe it is what it is -- it may rule out time travel entirely, but if time travel is possible, it may or may not allow multiple timelines and inconsistencies. We can't say whether/which paradoxes are possible until we actually perform time travel and investigate it scientifically.
One possibility is that when you go back and change something, the universe splits. The universe you left continues to exist, and your changes create a parallel universe. Or, the changes propagate at some unknown speed toward the future, overwriting the old future. Or, perhaps time travel requires consistency between the future and past somehow (this is very hard for humans to imagine realistically; I read a novel based on this approach, and it was clearly unrealistic because it basically relied on "magic" to ensure you wouldn't kill your grandparents or save someone's life--not that physics would care about a person's life any more than a bug you might squash or a pebble you might displace while you're walking around in the past!)
What's not possible is for these three possibilities to mix unpredictably in nonsensical ways, which often happens in the movies according to the screenwriter's whim.
Politicians aren't interested in one data point, you.
The problem is this: rich guys who run for high office can now afford to analyze "location, demographics, political affiliations, social networks, behavior, and interests of citizens" and then tell voters in a specific area and demographic exactly what they want to hear. They can then give different messages to different people, and they can perhaps even risk playing different messages that contradict each other to different audiences.
Since most people have minimal political engagement, they will vote for the guy who is saying exactly what they want to hear, and the majority will fail to notice that the same guy is giving different messages to different groups of people. In contrast, candidates without enormous wealth cannot pull off this trick, and ethical candidates (who take a consistent position on an issue, regardless of their audience) wouldn't be willing to pull off this trick. Therefore, the risk we face here is that only unethical rich people will win important elections.
Man, who are the porn lovers modding this stuff up? I'm surprised how much traction is being granted to this hardline position of "porn equals speech, so it's okay to publicly display it, period."
Now, I actually believe non-sexual public nudity should be legal, but I still believe in basic courtesy, and surely minors should be protected from seeing porn as they walk by? I'm a nudist, but I wouldn't generally walk around on the street without clothes even if it were legal, except for special publicized events like the World Naked Bike Ride. Why? Because some people might be offended. If people look through a hole in the fence and see me sunbathing, fine: they don't have to keep looking, they can look away if they don't like it. I think a little nudity is good, to get people used to the human body, but out of courtesy we should avoid forcing it on people. When you're rude enough, you end up in the news, like this weirdo and the librarian.
And porn is a different story than simple nudity, since it can be quite addictive, especially to minors. I remember being a teenager, before I was a nudist. If I saw someone watching porn in public in the library, I would have been thinking about it for days afterward. I would have been itching to see some porn for myself. And my parents, thinking of me, would have rightly freaked out if they saw it in the library. We don't even have to bring the law into this; since it's sensational enough for a news story, I think that in the future, social norms will make this guy move to the computer in the corner.
You're asking "what if the porn computer in the corner is in constant use"? But it wasn't. The guy could have moved. When porn watching in the library becomes epidemic, let's talk about it then.
FTA: " 'And they can't be in the business of monitoring what their patrons are doing at any given computer.' However, in 2010 the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that libraries can do exactly that. The ruling came after the ACLU sued a rural library district that had attempted to filter porn from its computers. "
Citation needed. Googling for Matt Deatheridge "bonch" doesn't turn up any obvious connection.
Actually, some up-modded comments here are contradictory. Some suggest Foxconn working conditions are deplorable and cruel, others say that Foxconn workers are lucky and that conditions are wonderful compared to work in rural China. It would be nice to see some facts to back up these varying claims.
The explanation isn't even correct. When I wrote a Super Nintendo emulator in the 90s, various documents referred to its GPU as a, er, GPU. The SNES predates NVidia itself, so let's not call it a "term coined by chip giant NVidia".
GPUs are nowhere near new. What's relatively new is GPGPUs (General-Purpose computation on Graphics Processing Units).
It's odd that neither of the ZDNet articles (to which Slashdot has linked in recent days) tell us what information Facebook is said to be holding back. So what information are you withholding from us, ZDNet? Is the story not juicy enough if it is too specific?
"We need to give this series some weight." - Valve Marketing Director
Valve announced today that it's found something else for its developers to do besides Half-Life 2: Episode 3. "After the heart-pounding and tragic ending to Episode 2, we felt it was important that players identify with the death of [redacted] and really identify with the pain of the other characters," Valve's CEO explains. "Half-Life 2 is a deep franchise, you know. It's all about giving the player a long-term and life-changing emotional experience. So it's really important, you know, to give players some time to let things sink in. We felt it wouldn't really be fitting to release a new episode so soon after the last one. I mean it was just, what, 2007? I mean, players need some time to deal with their grief."
Valve's new CounterStrike: GO provides much-needed work for Valve's developers, who are still waiting for the "right time" to begin work on HL2: Episode 3. "We're thinking the five-year anniversary [October 2012] would be about perfect [as a release date]" a Valve spin doctor explains. "That way we can have a nice anniversary and release party all rolled into one." The spokesperson denied that this was a cost-saving measure, insisting that "no, no, the party's really going to blow you away". Company executives are confident that there will be enough cake left over from Portals 1 and 2 (and 3, if there is time to make it before Episode 3) to serve at the party.
[Note: this post is a lie.]
What does this have to do with PowerShell? PS uses an ordinary character grid terminal, same as bash. It processes binary data (.NET objects actually) instead of text, but all user interaction is limited to 16-color fixed-width text. No graphics, no IntelliSense. TermKit is designed around traditional Unix commands and seems to have much loftier usability goals--syntax highlighting for your commands, easier escaping, showing you relevant documentation automatically... I love it. This is what PS should have been.
"This is unquestionably undeserved," Isom [Herbert's spokeswoman] said. "The Legislature first passed this bill with a veto-proof majority.
"Were it not for the governor's action, the original HB477 would take effect. What the governor signed was an amended HB477 and, because of his leadership, we now have a process to remedy HB477."
I am not familiar with Herbert, but if this bill is his fault, why isn't his spokesperson eager to defend the bill?
"If you are not planning on getting an iPad 2 on Friday at 5 p.m., the terrorists win." So said open source icon Miguel de Icaza on his Twitter feed this week, and he wasn't joking.
Um, I think he was joking.
itwbennett/soulskill/Chris Nerney are criticizing the choice of Eric Schmidt without proposing an alternative. I'm inclined to think that a pharmaceutical industry bigwig from Pfizer is chosen instead, he probably will not in any way improve life for US citizens. What's the big deal about Schmidt? Do you think, as Commerce Secretary, that he will somehow water down privacy legislation to help Google?
Reality disagrees with you. Almost everybody now has a replicator--of bits and bytes. Yet somehow the companies that make brand new songs, software, movies and TV shows stay in business while continuing to make major profits. The biggest stars still make millions of dollars per year, and Big Content spends as much on blockbuster films as ever. The cable companies manage to get upwards of $600 per year from typical customers, and for all that money you still have to put up with 15 minutes of ads per hour and you still don't get to watch shows on-demand.
Somehow, people are still willing to pay for things they could copy for free. Partly this is because of Big Content's success in lobbying for powerful laws in their favor, and in using those laws to shut down networks and individuals that share files. Partly it may be that sheeple actually do believe ads that compare copying a song to stealing a car (it's frustrating how many people think this way!) For me, it is sense that those who make the best movies and music deserve to get paid, and I pay for those works that I like (provided that the price is reasonable and the DRM is not excessive).
Our society greatly benefits from the fact that people do not steal from a supermarket just because they can avoid getting caught. Recently I read about an incident where the staff of a grocery store were missing, but customers generally left money to pay for their purchases. That people are generally good means less resources must be wasted on security and prisons (which themselves produce nothing useful), people are less afraid of other people, and people less often have the unpleasant experience of being robbed.
Because people are generally good, they are willing to pay for copyrighted works even though copying them (unlike stealing physical objects) technically does not hurt anyone. Generally good people (GGP) know that these things must be paid for or they will not be produced in the first place. It's a principle we all understand, except perhaps Big Content, who assume their customers are criminals. And so, we the GGP have some willingness to do our part by paying for copyrighted works, just as we are willing to pay takes and do occasional volunteer work and give a bit to charity and not steal from the supermarket.
Big Content, however, does not want merely to have enough money to pay for a healthy music and film market--they always want to increase profits if possible, regardless of what they are now. Consider how much smaller the market for films was in 1960: the world population was only 3 billion and American films would probably have had a very small market beyond North America. Did the movie companies ever complain then that there were not enough humans available to buy copies? Today the potential market is nearly 7 billion and the actual market is probably several times larger than in 1960, yet film companies complain very loudly if, say, 1/6 of that market (China) is not paying them enough. Do they really need the money? Of course not: if money was tight they would simply scale back movie budgets, just as budgets were necessarily small in 1960. Certainly low-income pirates in no way prevent them from making movies, and the actual movie budgets of today prove that they are doing very well for themselves. Even if you took away the entire third world market, the would still have a good billion potential customers left.
But in copyright markets, the cost of "buying" a work has almost nothing to do with covering the cost of production: a movie DVD that costs $10 may be for something expected to take a heavy loss like Waterworld, or for something that has already made billions of dollars in profit like Star Wars, and certainly doesn't "need" more. Likewise, their rh
I would give plenty of money to it. I suppose I'll have to settle for the Pirate Party of Canada.
The same could be said of any legitimate web site that takes credit card numbers. Black hats probably have numerous targets more juicy than this one.
It does not say a wounded man is not allowed to escape or (as in this case) be carried away by a third party. Moreover, there is no evidence that the people in the van could be considered "attacking persons".
Basically, OpenLR's purpose is to describe a route in as few bytes as possible; therefore it relies on the sender and receiver's existing knowledge about the road network (and about shortest paths through that network) to encode and decode a route described using a very small number of points (where a point is a lat/lon pair with some metadata about a road).