An addendum to this is: don't even consider a motherboard that supports less than 8 gigs of ram, and max the thing out.
Yes.
XP 64 (and even my tests with Win7 64 are good). Avoid Vista 64 like the plague.
... No. We transitioned our entire studio and renderfarm to Vista 64 without incident. XPx64 had too many software incompatibilities.
Depending on your primary rendering usage, a Core i7 may actually be working against you with hyperthreading. Quite a few of the big boys (Renderman, Mental Ray) are still licensed per thread.
Licenses are by the CPU socket not by the number of cores. The i7 is worth every penny.
A few CG apps don't have command-line rendering available, and it'll suck to learn after the fact that the app you're trying to launch on your pile of new 1U servers won't launch because you don't have a decent video card. Linux & Mac OS (even Hackintoshes) are far superior to Windows in this regard
??? Uhhhh... I can't think of a single 3d app which requires a video card. Every notable 3d app was written before 3d accelleration was common. They all have software viewport drivers. I can't think of a single cg app which requires a video card period.
Lots of apps require shaders to be recompiled per platform, and small studios generally use share/freeware stuff that might not be available on all platforms -- it's much better to work around this issue when you're creating your assets, versus when you've got a delivery deadline looming and you realize that your fancy layered shader looked great on your Win64 previews, but the code isn't available for Linux 64 to render within your lifetime.
Very true. I'd say even take it a step further. Standardize your hardware too. Buy the same motherboard. Buy the same CPU. Keep everything except for video drivers identical. This will make managing your farm much easier since you can just format and clone instead of bothering with trouble shooting. A 1 hour HDD clone is faster and easier for solving problems than debugging in most cases.
Windows is just the start. If you really want to use your renderfarm you're going to want some rendermanagement software to keep it all running.
Cost per node of Deadline (which I highly recommend) is $140 per computer. Then of course you've already bought a copy of Maya or Max etc. $3k. You might want to use an alternate renderer than Mental Ray. $1k per workstation. And you're going to want ghost for equivalent to keep all your computers up to date and get them back to work in the event of a crash.
Also you're going to need a file server. If you have more than 10 computers that means Windows Server and CAL licenses. It's going to need to be a pretty beefy machine to feed GBs of data to the render nodes so expect at least $3k. If you lose all your data this will all be for nothing so you'll want to also be sure you invest in some good backup software. Also probably want to consider archiving all your old work on tape so I would factor in an LTO drive.
When you factor in the costs of actualing running a render farm the cost of windows is pretty negligible.
Every 32 bit renderer I've used hasn't been able to use more than 3GB. But you're right if you're still trying to use a 32bit renderer with most scenes you're going to just going to run out of memory and crash.
64bit + 4+ GB of RAM is pretty much mandatory for production rendering.
What this article really ignores though is software. Managing a renderfarm means you want to invest in some great render management software like Frantic Film's deadline.
And your chances of getting a licensed copy of Brazil, Final Render, Mental Ray, VRay or Renderman installed as a cloud application are what fraction of 0 above 0%?
I agree. I used to ride 100 miles a week on average. Eat almost entirely vegetarian food which was low in fat. Rock climb every day during lunch. And get sick like 5 times a year.
Now I only ride about 30 miles a week. Eat fast food every other day. Drink coffee more regularly and almost never get sick.
The change? I stopped spending time around sick people and get more sleep. School is the perfect storm for illness. Stress and Exposure.
When I climbed Mt Rainier I was in decent shape (after all I made it to the top.)
When I got back I stepped on a scale. I lost 10 pounds in 3 days. Probably mostly water. But I think it's still important to what you're saying. It's REALLY REALLY hard to work off weight. Like multi-day 12 hour a day grueling death march up the side of a mountain with 60 pounds of gear hard.
In contrast just not eating 10 pounds of fat in the first place is a cakewalk. No pun intended. It's easier to not strike a match than to put out a fire.
Exercise can be important but it's far more difficult.
My father is a PhD theologian and Philosopher. He used to be a pastor as well. I would describe him as liberal. Both theologically and politically.
I grew up around lots of PhD Theologians and I would say my dad was not an outliers. There were some conservatives but by and large they tended to be more theologically liberal than their students. The more you learn about religion often the less black and white it becomes.
Also I would say that bishops tend to be politically liberal. Much more so than their congregations. After all these are people who espouse socialism and welfare to the nth degree. They've completely committed their lives to public service. Even as an atheist I probably have more in common with the average political goals of the catholic church than the republican party.
I think it has something to do with the necessary talents to perform well in the two fields.
Engineering is application. I don't really view it as a science per say. The rules tend to be well known and documented and with sufficient practice and training an intelligent individual can learn to follow those rules and apply them. An example would be a programmer (which I classify as an engineer) who doesn't usually need to make any discoveries they just need to apply existing discoveries well. I view engineering like accounting in the regard that there is nothing in engineering which could possibly contradict anything outside of engineering. There isn't going to be some big engineering discovery which throws everything we know into doubt. You can be a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Nazi, Communist or anything without it any way contradicting your education in engineering. It's also completely apolitical.
On the other hand with a pure science the mindset isn't one of application so much as discovery. Most discoveries tend to be the ability to find relationships between data. And the attention isn't on how to creatively assemble existing ideas and 'facts' about the world it's about researching reality it self. A mathematician researches the nature of value and relationships. The Biologists researches the nature of organic matter and ecosystems. The Physicist researches the nature of particles and the forces through which they interact.
An engineer holds one of their highest respects for a system which performs well. A scientist holds one of their highest respects for the discovery of a new system.
An engineer is conservative in nature because a well tested system is more likely to function reliably. A scientist is more liberal in nature because they must question everything they know if they want to possibly find errors in the current system.
It's one annoyance I've always had with Computer Science vs Computer Engineering degrees. The computer science degree is usually less about actual computer science and more about software engineering. I've always felt CS is a misnomer.
I can tell you why I think scientists aren't republican.
1) Scientists try to view all data as equal. Scientists don't often assign spiritual significance to actions so things such as sex. As such scientists don't see anything materialistically 'abhorrent' about things like homosexuality.
2) Scientists are disproportionately atheist. And the higher their degree the more likely they are to be atheists. The Republican party likes to assign religious significance to situations. "God called us to fight the terrorists". Following God instead of data makes them doubly uncomfortable as both atheists and scientists.
3) Scientists like to fix things. When scientists can't fix things themselves or with personally raised funds they need to look outward. For instance Climate Change isn't something scientists can fix without government assistance. Scientists also believe that they can cure diseases, solve poverty and end crime. While Scientists are rather egalitarian in their views of present reality they're also very ambitious and optimistic in general when it comes to our capabilities to enact change.
A liberal views the singularity and transhumanism as the most significant possible advancement since we evolved sentience. A conservative views it as the most dangerous advancement in history since it will allow the fundamental altering of humans for the first time. The conservative religious view it as blasphemy and tantamount to the tower of Babel. Even the tower of babel is an interesting illustration of liberal and conservative outlooks. The liberals built a giant tower (using science) to ensure they would never be exterminated by God again and so that they could 'reach heaven' by human means. God destroys their little tower and discourages cooperation by scrambling their languages and development. The conservative lesson is "Don't rock the boat". The liberal lesson is "God is a dick".
4. Scientists tend to try to assess risks based on statistics and not sensationalism. A scientist sees little threat from Al Qaeda that warrants an enormous outpouring of resources. Compared to drunk driving, smoking and medical mistakes terrorisms isn't statistically significant enough to warrant a great deal of attention. To a Republican the fact that we're 'under attack' by a 'force of evil' escalates the danger.
5. Sarah Palin and her ilk. The wholesale encouragement for what many perceive as 'anti-intellectualism' from the Republican Party is perceived as a direct attack on their work and contributions to society.
6. Scientists probably disproportionately don't believe in free will. (If they're atheists). Without souls an Atheist is more likely to conclude that all thinking happens in the brain. If all thinking happens in the brain and not a soul then it's bound by chemistry and the laws of nature. That means everything is a deterministic reaction. Deterministic reactions can be modified like any environment. Secularists are more likely to view someone's poverty as the deterministic outcome of having been raised poor and the individual having received poor programming. A religious conservative is more likely to view the individual as having chosen to be poor because they had a free-will soul which makes decisions independent of upbringing or genetics.
This informs a great number of liberal vs conservative splits. If people are programmable then the government is the best way to enact a positive programming. If people are slaves to deterministic forces then we should help free them from poverty and hunger.
Hmmm.. so how important is tone of voice in linguistics and language development? More or less important than word order?
Depends on what you want to accomplish. Word order is critical to teaching you how to make a sandwich for instance. Tone of voice is limited to conveying things I already understand. "Oh that tone of voice means there is danger." It doesn't tell me what the danger is. Where it's coming from.
Now in all fairness this study doesn't really convincingly demonstrate that these monkeys actually recognize prefixes and suffixes. I would even go so far to say that I don't think they've at all demonstrated their claim. But... *if* the monkeys could actually discern meaning from a suffix and prefix then it would be interesting.
Your dog listens to your commands much like the classic Farside "Blah blah blah blah rex blah blah blah sit".
The ordering of your commands is unimportant.
The monkeys are able on the other hand to break apart components of a word and find meaning in the placement itself. And not just previously learned sequences either. Meaning from syllabic placement is a more advanced ability than meaning from a syllable. This is pretty critical to language development where word ordering is important to meaning. "The monkey at the banana." vs "The banana ate the monkey."
I was in advanced 6th grade through college. I got high Cs and Bs in all my classes until Calculus at which point I got an A+. I'm now a professional artist. I can completely identify with the parent's sentiment. There is a huge difference between something like geometry and calculus. In geometry I always felt like I simply was being tested on how well I memorized complex and arbitrary equations. In calculus I was rewarded for finding an answer to a problem. It wasn't simply a question of remembering what the formula for the area of a trapezoid was. It was a applying that knowledge in ways to find creative solutions.
Any class in which a calculator would be the superior instrument is a poor math class in my opinion. "Graph f(x)"... really? You want me to do this? Why? I could do this on my calculator in like 5 seconds. If you want me to be able to recognize the general shape fine... that's useful for ensuring your equation is correct in the calculator but plotting and hand graphing is just asking for making a mistake on some small detail somewhere not testing my comprehension of the material.
I get 3 feet in Washington State. Wherever the hell I feel like being in the lane.
This device just shows you where you can legally pass me.
And honestly I've found that the real idiot cyclists tend to be aware that they're breaking laws. It's the ones who are safe that would even be interested in this. Unless by assholes you mean... not getting off the road for you.
You conveniently ignore my PRIMARY point above ALL others. The road does NOT belong to "all" of us. It belongs to those of us with "two ton murder machines". Your logic might also seem to mean that pedestrians have as much right to the "roads" as do all other forms of transportation. The laws are more specific than that, and the laws are clear where I live, and they state that bicyclists must be in bicycle lanes or off the roads.
Where is this mythical state in the US where Bicycles aren't allowed on roads? I've never found such a place. I call bullshit. Show me the law.
See here is where I have a HUGE problem with all these "it's an environmental conspiracy" theories.
Global Warming is intrinsically a non-environmentla issue. Why?
- Because for the first time in 40 years we're going to start building nuclear reactors. (Suddenly radiation is a minor threat compared to CO2). - Because for the first time in 40 years taking out our dams which kill salmon is completely off the table. (Hydro is our best CO2 free energy source). - Because we're going to need to clear a lot more land for Solar and Wind installations.
The list goes on and on.
If Global Warming was just a grand conspiracy amongst extreme environmentalists then they picked the worst possible culprit imaginable. The solutions all undo decades of work by the environmental movement. The problem is extremely intangible. If you blame a global epidemic of cancer on... shit I don't know... coal dust then EVERYBODY has a story about someone they know dieing from cancer. Almost nobody has a story about "wow... I've been noticing it's a lot hotter lately."
Global Warming is the most insane and difficult case to sell to the American people. And as far as environmentalist causes go... CO2. An inert gas which causes almost no adverse health effects in humans in any concentrations we'll see in the next few millenia is a terrible villain to launch a worldwide crusade against.
Global Warming is an incredibly implausible environmental conspiracy.
Ask Apple -- that is, once they recover from the devastating choices of entering the saturated mp3 player and smartphone markets
MP3 Players and Smartphones were saturated in the geek demographic but Apple was able to enter the market right as smartphone and data costs were affordable for people who weren't ready to drop $100 extra a month for dial up speeds.
You had WM (Mostly corporate) and BlackBerry (again mostly corporate). The iphone was the blackberry you could take home and play with. The consumer smartphone market was almost non-existant and was only just barely becoming affordable for the mainstream.
I wouldn't even consider the market currently saturated. It's approaching it pretty fast but the vast majority of consumers are still pocketing flip phones and candybars without data access. I think in 5-10 years you'll see a majority of cell plans include data. Right now even with the iphone, wm, blackberry and android the smartphone market is just barely penetrating mainstream.
I'm always mildly concerned when I can tell a staffer had time to actually respond to *MY* email. While the impersonal canned mass email reply is disconcerting in its own way... if they take the time to even write up a single paragraph for *ME* I worry there aren't enough people communicating with their senators and congressmen/women.
If you drive someone along a road for a few minutes and then ask them how many miles they travelled I think you would find that people have no concept of a mile. Similarly if you asked them to draw an inch or cm I doubt there would be much difference in their accuracy.
I have a concept of a mile. And I'm sure it's also wildly inaccurate.
Slashdot Mirror
Autodesk product (or XSI) with Mental Ray bundled.
BTW. XSI was bought by Autodesk and renamed to Autodesk Softimage.
An addendum to this is: don't even consider a motherboard that supports less than 8 gigs of ram, and max the thing out.
Yes.
XP 64 (and even my tests with Win7 64 are good). Avoid Vista 64 like the plague.
... No. We transitioned our entire studio and renderfarm to Vista 64 without incident. XPx64 had too many software incompatibilities.
Depending on your primary rendering usage, a Core i7 may actually be working against you with hyperthreading. Quite a few of the big boys (Renderman, Mental Ray) are still licensed per thread.
Licenses are by the CPU socket not by the number of cores. The i7 is worth every penny.
A few CG apps don't have command-line rendering available, and it'll suck to learn after the fact that the app you're trying to launch on your pile of new 1U servers won't launch because you don't have a decent video card. Linux & Mac OS (even Hackintoshes) are far superior to Windows in this regard
??? Uhhhh... I can't think of a single 3d app which requires a video card. Every notable 3d app was written before 3d accelleration was common. They all have software viewport drivers. I can't think of a single cg app which requires a video card period.
Lots of apps require shaders to be recompiled per platform, and small studios generally use share/freeware stuff that might not be available on all platforms -- it's much better to work around this issue when you're creating your assets, versus when you've got a delivery deadline looming and you realize that your fancy layered shader looked great on your Win64 previews, but the code isn't available for Linux 64 to render within your lifetime.
Very true. I'd say even take it a step further. Standardize your hardware too. Buy the same motherboard. Buy the same CPU. Keep everything except for video drivers identical. This will make managing your farm much easier since you can just format and clone instead of bothering with trouble shooting. A 1 hour HDD clone is faster and easier for solving problems than debugging in most cases.
Windows is just the start. If you really want to use your renderfarm you're going to want some rendermanagement software to keep it all running.
Cost per node of Deadline (which I highly recommend) is $140 per computer. Then of course you've already bought a copy of Maya or Max etc. $3k. You might want to use an alternate renderer than Mental Ray. $1k per workstation. And you're going to want ghost for equivalent to keep all your computers up to date and get them back to work in the event of a crash.
Also you're going to need a file server. If you have more than 10 computers that means Windows Server and CAL licenses. It's going to need to be a pretty beefy machine to feed GBs of data to the render nodes so expect at least $3k. If you lose all your data this will all be for nothing so you'll want to also be sure you invest in some good backup software. Also probably want to consider archiving all your old work on tape so I would factor in an LTO drive.
When you factor in the costs of actualing running a render farm the cost of windows is pretty negligible.
Every 32 bit renderer I've used hasn't been able to use more than 3GB. But you're right if you're still trying to use a 32bit renderer with most scenes you're going to just going to run out of memory and crash.
64bit + 4+ GB of RAM is pretty much mandatory for production rendering.
What this article really ignores though is software. Managing a renderfarm means you want to invest in some great render management software like Frantic Film's deadline.
And your chances of getting a licensed copy of Brazil, Final Render, Mental Ray, VRay or Renderman installed as a cloud application are what fraction of 0 above 0%?
I agree. I used to ride 100 miles a week on average. Eat almost entirely vegetarian food which was low in fat. Rock climb every day during lunch. And get sick like 5 times a year.
Now I only ride about 30 miles a week. Eat fast food every other day. Drink coffee more regularly and almost never get sick.
The change? I stopped spending time around sick people and get more sleep. School is the perfect storm for illness. Stress and Exposure.
When I climbed Mt Rainier I was in decent shape (after all I made it to the top.)
When I got back I stepped on a scale. I lost 10 pounds in 3 days. Probably mostly water. But I think it's still important to what you're saying. It's REALLY REALLY hard to work off weight. Like multi-day 12 hour a day grueling death march up the side of a mountain with 60 pounds of gear hard.
In contrast just not eating 10 pounds of fat in the first place is a cakewalk. No pun intended. It's easier to not strike a match than to put out a fire.
Exercise can be important but it's far more difficult.
Google turned up this image:
http://people.rit.edu/andpph/photofile-b/ir-vulcan-comparison-1.jpg
Note the arm was moved.
My father is a PhD theologian and Philosopher. He used to be a pastor as well. I would describe him as liberal. Both theologically and politically.
I grew up around lots of PhD Theologians and I would say my dad was not an outliers. There were some conservatives but by and large they tended to be more theologically liberal than their students. The more you learn about religion often the less black and white it becomes.
Also I would say that bishops tend to be politically liberal. Much more so than their congregations. After all these are people who espouse socialism and welfare to the nth degree. They've completely committed their lives to public service. Even as an atheist I probably have more in common with the average political goals of the catholic church than the republican party.
I've noted this phenomenon as well.
I think it has something to do with the necessary talents to perform well in the two fields.
Engineering is application. I don't really view it as a science per say. The rules tend to be well known and documented and with sufficient practice and training an intelligent individual can learn to follow those rules and apply them. An example would be a programmer (which I classify as an engineer) who doesn't usually need to make any discoveries they just need to apply existing discoveries well. I view engineering like accounting in the regard that there is nothing in engineering which could possibly contradict anything outside of engineering. There isn't going to be some big engineering discovery which throws everything we know into doubt. You can be a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Nazi, Communist or anything without it any way contradicting your education in engineering. It's also completely apolitical.
On the other hand with a pure science the mindset isn't one of application so much as discovery. Most discoveries tend to be the ability to find relationships between data. And the attention isn't on how to creatively assemble existing ideas and 'facts' about the world it's about researching reality it self. A mathematician researches the nature of value and relationships. The Biologists researches the nature of organic matter and ecosystems. The Physicist researches the nature of particles and the forces through which they interact.
An engineer holds one of their highest respects for a system which performs well.
A scientist holds one of their highest respects for the discovery of a new system.
An engineer is conservative in nature because a well tested system is more likely to function reliably.
A scientist is more liberal in nature because they must question everything they know if they want to possibly find errors in the current system.
It's one annoyance I've always had with Computer Science vs Computer Engineering degrees. The computer science degree is usually less about actual computer science and more about software engineering. I've always felt CS is a misnomer.
I can tell you why I think scientists aren't republican.
1) Scientists try to view all data as equal. Scientists don't often assign spiritual significance to actions so things such as sex. As such scientists don't see anything materialistically 'abhorrent' about things like homosexuality.
2) Scientists are disproportionately atheist. And the higher their degree the more likely they are to be atheists. The Republican party likes to assign religious significance to situations. "God called us to fight the terrorists". Following God instead of data makes them doubly uncomfortable as both atheists and scientists.
3) Scientists like to fix things. When scientists can't fix things themselves or with personally raised funds they need to look outward. For instance Climate Change isn't something scientists can fix without government assistance. Scientists also believe that they can cure diseases, solve poverty and end crime. While Scientists are rather egalitarian in their views of present reality they're also very ambitious and optimistic in general when it comes to our capabilities to enact change.
A liberal views the singularity and transhumanism as the most significant possible advancement since we evolved sentience. A conservative views it as the most dangerous advancement in history since it will allow the fundamental altering of humans for the first time. The conservative religious view it as blasphemy and tantamount to the tower of Babel. Even the tower of babel is an interesting illustration of liberal and conservative outlooks. The liberals built a giant tower (using science) to ensure they would never be exterminated by God again and so that they could 'reach heaven' by human means. God destroys their little tower and discourages cooperation by scrambling their languages and development. The conservative lesson is "Don't rock the boat". The liberal lesson is "God is a dick".
4. Scientists tend to try to assess risks based on statistics and not sensationalism. A scientist sees little threat from Al Qaeda that warrants an enormous outpouring of resources. Compared to drunk driving, smoking and medical mistakes terrorisms isn't statistically significant enough to warrant a great deal of attention. To a Republican the fact that we're 'under attack' by a 'force of evil' escalates the danger.
5. Sarah Palin and her ilk. The wholesale encouragement for what many perceive as 'anti-intellectualism' from the Republican Party is perceived as a direct attack on their work and contributions to society.
6. Scientists probably disproportionately don't believe in free will. (If they're atheists). Without souls an Atheist is more likely to conclude that all thinking happens in the brain. If all thinking happens in the brain and not a soul then it's bound by chemistry and the laws of nature. That means everything is a deterministic reaction. Deterministic reactions can be modified like any environment. Secularists are more likely to view someone's poverty as the deterministic outcome of having been raised poor and the individual having received poor programming. A religious conservative is more likely to view the individual as having chosen to be poor because they had a free-will soul which makes decisions independent of upbringing or genetics.
This informs a great number of liberal vs conservative splits. If people are programmable then the government is the best way to enact a positive programming. If people are slaves to deterministic forces then we should help free them from poverty and hunger.
Hmmm.. so how important is tone of voice in linguistics and language development? More or less important than word order?
Depends on what you want to accomplish. Word order is critical to teaching you how to make a sandwich for instance. Tone of voice is limited to conveying things I already understand. "Oh that tone of voice means there is danger." It doesn't tell me what the danger is. Where it's coming from.
Now in all fairness this study doesn't really convincingly demonstrate that these monkeys actually recognize prefixes and suffixes. I would even go so far to say that I don't think they've at all demonstrated their claim. But... *if* the monkeys could actually discern meaning from a suffix and prefix then it would be interesting.
Your dog would need to learn an infinite number of words to qualify for this research.
($phoneticstring + "bi") != ("bi" + $phoneticstring)
Your dog listens to your commands much like the classic Farside "Blah blah blah blah rex blah blah blah sit".
The ordering of your commands is unimportant.
The monkeys are able on the other hand to break apart components of a word and find meaning in the placement itself. And not just previously learned sequences either. Meaning from syllabic placement is a more advanced ability than meaning from a syllable. This is pretty critical to language development where word ordering is important to meaning. "The monkey at the banana." vs "The banana ate the monkey."
It's a one time fee for a limited time.
Think Starbucks. The price you pay for a cup of coffee is a one time fee. There will not be recurring fees for that cup of coffee.
Another point of data.
I was in advanced 6th grade through college. I got high Cs and Bs in all my classes until Calculus at which point I got an A+. I'm now a professional artist. I can completely identify with the parent's sentiment. There is a huge difference between something like geometry and calculus. In geometry I always felt like I simply was being tested on how well I memorized complex and arbitrary equations. In calculus I was rewarded for finding an answer to a problem. It wasn't simply a question of remembering what the formula for the area of a trapezoid was. It was a applying that knowledge in ways to find creative solutions.
Any class in which a calculator would be the superior instrument is a poor math class in my opinion. "Graph f(x)" ... really? You want me to do this? Why? I could do this on my calculator in like 5 seconds. If you want me to be able to recognize the general shape fine... that's useful for ensuring your equation is correct in the calculator but plotting and hand graphing is just asking for making a mistake on some small detail somewhere not testing my comprehension of the material.
I don't see it taking this long as suprising at all.
That's a lot of work for $5k.
Actually it's a copy cat of Microsoft's own travel site farecast. Which they acquired last year.
I get 3 feet in Washington State. Wherever the hell I feel like being in the lane.
This device just shows you where you can legally pass me.
And honestly I've found that the real idiot cyclists tend to be aware that they're breaking laws. It's the ones who are safe that would even be interested in this. Unless by assholes you mean... not getting off the road for you.
You conveniently ignore my PRIMARY point above ALL others. The road does NOT belong to "all" of us. It belongs to those of us with "two ton murder machines". Your logic might also seem to mean that pedestrians have as much right to the "roads" as do all other forms of transportation. The laws are more specific than that, and the laws are clear where I live, and they state that bicyclists must be in bicycle lanes or off the roads.
Where is this mythical state in the US where Bicycles aren't allowed on roads? I've never found such a place. I call bullshit. Show me the law.
I assume that depends on the level of immunity it provides. Are we talking Flu Vaccine or Small Pox vaccine level of protection?
Two problems with that though:
1) You could play starcraft for free on a LAN legally. They had a LAN copy on the disk which had no single player and could only join.
2) I can't count how many LANs I've been to or hosted that had no internet because of problematic DHCP servers.
3) This thing better not lag like a mother with 8 people sharing a cable modem.
See here is where I have a HUGE problem with all these "it's an environmental conspiracy" theories.
Global Warming is intrinsically a non-environmentla issue. Why?
- Because for the first time in 40 years we're going to start building nuclear reactors. (Suddenly radiation is a minor threat compared to CO2).
- Because for the first time in 40 years taking out our dams which kill salmon is completely off the table. (Hydro is our best CO2 free energy source).
- Because we're going to need to clear a lot more land for Solar and Wind installations.
The list goes on and on.
If Global Warming was just a grand conspiracy amongst extreme environmentalists then they picked the worst possible culprit imaginable. The solutions all undo decades of work by the environmental movement. The problem is extremely intangible. If you blame a global epidemic of cancer on... shit I don't know... coal dust then EVERYBODY has a story about someone they know dieing from cancer. Almost nobody has a story about "wow... I've been noticing it's a lot hotter lately."
Global Warming is the most insane and difficult case to sell to the American people. And as far as environmentalist causes go... CO2. An inert gas which causes almost no adverse health effects in humans in any concentrations we'll see in the next few millenia is a terrible villain to launch a worldwide crusade against.
Global Warming is an incredibly implausible environmental conspiracy.
Ask Apple -- that is, once they recover from the devastating choices of entering the saturated mp3 player and smartphone markets
MP3 Players and Smartphones were saturated in the geek demographic but Apple was able to enter the market right as smartphone and data costs were affordable for people who weren't ready to drop $100 extra a month for dial up speeds.
You had WM (Mostly corporate) and BlackBerry (again mostly corporate). The iphone was the blackberry you could take home and play with. The consumer smartphone market was almost non-existant and was only just barely becoming affordable for the mainstream.
I wouldn't even consider the market currently saturated. It's approaching it pretty fast but the vast majority of consumers are still pocketing flip phones and candybars without data access. I think in 5-10 years you'll see a majority of cell plans include data. Right now even with the iphone, wm, blackberry and android the smartphone market is just barely penetrating mainstream.
I'm always mildly concerned when I can tell a staffer had time to actually respond to *MY* email. While the impersonal canned mass email reply is disconcerting in its own way... if they take the time to even write up a single paragraph for *ME* I worry there aren't enough people communicating with their senators and congressmen/women.
If you drive someone along a road for a few minutes and then ask them how many miles they travelled I think you would find that people have no concept of a mile. Similarly if you asked them to draw an inch or cm I doubt there would be much difference in their accuracy.
I have a concept of a mile. And I'm sure it's also wildly inaccurate.