One of the most intriguing of all the photos is likely the one of the moon Iapetus. While the other photos beautifully capture images of Titan and Saturn itself, the real object of intrigue is the geological formation on Iapetus. Near its equator theres a huge topographic ridge, which gives the moon a really unusual appearance.
Was anyone else struck by how Titan seems very similar to Mars on its surface shot? Lots of small rocks and boulders laying around its surface and a general haze present etc etc.
Yet at the same time such controls on the overall presentation and context of information leads to discontent. A lot of people here and elsewhere on the Internet express disdain for the American Corporate Media, for example.
The human attention span and intelligence will never be narrowed to the point where people will accept information as abbreviated and uninformative from say...Fox news, at least among minority communities like/. . Though it will be a long time, if ever, that vast numbers switch to the BBC and/or actively appeal for better prioritization and presentation.
If you read through a typical discussion on slashdot or a well made political blog, you'll find that peoples intepretations of information are extremely hard to manipulate. Every person is different, sure some will blindly believe what network X says, but others will reject such a presentation and express their own opinions on the said information.
A lot of adware servers are based in Quebec, Coolwebsearch being among the most prolific currently based there. But other countrys are also used, such as the Cayman Isles, and quite likely many other carribean nations too. It wouldn't be too pheasable to base ones spyware/adware empire off established landlines, it'd likely be too expensive and impractical.
Considering the advances made within the ISS during its years in space already, the astronauts on board don't just sit up there for months twiddling their thumbs, they do a lot of research on a huge variety of fields, such as theeffects of zero gravity on biological organisms. Also, the fact that Shuttles have consistantly maintained projects such as Hubble contradicts your views on its potential replacement! I think you need some trolling practice dude.
Its quite strange. Most of the major news agencys reported recently that NASA had confirmed that the Shuttle could be launched in July, as it was within an "acceptable" bracket of safety.
Yet less than a week later, the same news networks were saying that a major commission had concluded that NASA infact hadn't met their targets, lumped with a whole lot of criticism of the space agency as a whole, too.
But as this topic confirms the launch will go ahead apparantly regardless of what this commission found? I wondered if anyone could clarify the situation at large? (I'm not trolling or anything here, just geniunely puzzled about the table of events leading up to Discovery's launch.)
Here on slashdot, anything modded up usually has a spelling error or two, but a good percentage of that has to be due to rushed typing, us geeks being in a constant hurry surfing, downloading and so forth.
But when comparing Slashdot to your average BBS, you really learn not to take for granted what your reading here on slashdot. If one looks at the gaming forums over at blizzard.com, especially those for WoW, theres bad grammar, unusual abbreviations and rushed posting to boot. The people here really are geek/nerds whatever, somebody did a browser-usage assessment for those clicking links from/. stories and found that almost 70% were using Firefox, and under 15% were using IE. As such its pretty easy to expect a good level of spelling, grammar and so forth for the obvious reasons, higher than average intelligence etc.
Also whats intriguing about the usership here on/. is the fact that a lot of us have read and re-read 1984. For those who haven't 1984 basically introduces the concept of Newspeak, a perverted, abbreviated form of English designed to prevent any communication against the State and Big Brother as a whole. Perhaps we don't want to let our words become as abbreviated as Newspeak? But instead want to preserve our language on the Internet, things like L33Tspeak are completely rejected here (unless in jest) again this sort of supports that view.
Also, we must bear in mind the Internets usership, the type of persons who now use it as a service, back in 2000, when Broadband was almost entirely a business interest their were a lot less people online, as such the standard ofgrammar and spelling on...Usenet for example, was high. And when you see stats like "50% of 11 year olds cannot form coherant sentances" you wonder how many of those individuals are now using the Internet. Lastly, we must bear in mind that some are unable to spell long words correctly due to their gene makeup and so forth, a difficulty in spelling, grammar and written language as a whole can even be inherited, even if ones spoken speech is of a very high standard indeed. Thus, we must expect there to always be a degree of bad grammar, whether the users' IQ is 90 or 150.
Of course this isn't surprising to any of us slashdotters, we all recall the massive amounts of hype surrounding the PS2 for example. There was everything from "X times as fast as PS1" to "will improve viewing quality on PS1 Cds" etc.
One of the major reasons not to believe the hype is that legally Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft may test their new processors on ANY machine they wish, including an extremely expensive, painstakingly built device in a lab somewhere. Then, after acheiving an astoundingly high speed from it, may publish the info legally, all thats required is that the processor actually produced the speed results in something.
But once the processor makes it into your PS3 or 360 the speed is considerably impaired. What was 3.8 teraflops will decrease to around half a teraflop, perhaps less, simply due to the build quality of the device...its simply nowhere near cost effective to produce something on a mass scale capable of 5 or 10 teraflops yet. Also theres marketing statistic-inflation to take into account too of course.
Apparantly total shutdown of the Internet in Pakistan is common, but the article doesn't mention a timeframe, using the word brief. Its fairly surprising that one of the Indian subcontinents largest nations has just one line to support its Internet connections. In 10, 20, 30 years the amount of outsourced work and IT related industry located there will need a much more dependable connection, not to mention the rising home use.
Furthermore, the article mentions disruption to cities as far afield as Dubai, in India. Heres hoping upgrades in the form of more lines happen as soon as possible.
Awesome answers Wil, I don't think I'm alone when I say that for practically every other interview other than your two, I find myself skipping half the responses as their so cautious and humdrum. Your answers were clever, funny, insightful and in depth, allowing all us geeks to see a little of your unique character. Just like your insanely cool blog.:)
Hope the editors will have you back in another five years time for a third interview.
I noticed there weren't any D&D questions which is surprisingly considering you, and a good portion of/. are players. I wondered, (if your around read these responses) what your favorite edition and character class was for D&D?
Actually the War on Drugs costs around $18 billion dollars a year to run. Granted its still a phenomenal figure, and considering only a tiny fraction of drugs get seized its a pretty huge waste of money. And considering some of the most dangerous and addictive drugs Alcohol and Tobacco are legal its fairly hypocritical in its aims to protect the peoples' health and minimalize social problems.
Indeed, what if the money went to NASA, or to a formation of a new international space agency?
Or to removing taxes on healthier foods to encourage more consumption? Heck, THAT would definately improve peoples health and lifestyles.
On the whole, over the past 5 years Blueyonder has served myself and my family pretty well. The transition from dial-up to broadband was smooth, heck even the guy who came to fit the cable was polite. Downtime has been 0.01%, perhaps less and usually very late at night. That and the two free upgrades from 512k -> 768k -> 1024k being a bonus, though the upload speed for 1 meg customers remains at a low 128k with no sign of budging.
The only ISP I've heard really bad things about is AOL, for their downtime and awful customer service mainly. Also, BT is pretty strict when it comes to download limit, you can only dl a couple of films over their lines per month, then they've always been a shrewd ass company IMO.
Whats interesting is the pricing system, pay per minute isn't an option for Broadband technology. Some ISP's are offering 512k for £15 a month now, which is uber-low...the bare minimum one could get that for back in 2003 was £25. By 2010 the price will be down to 10 pounds or less...Blueyonder were pretty wise to simply upgrade their servers in favour of decreasing price. Though they still keep a 256k connection offer for the budget trade.
The BBC article goes into more detail, including the scrutiny over the decision over the July launch. In particular over ice impacts to the shuttle's heat shielding. Heres the article;
The only major problem NASA faces with regards to the shuttle is its planned retirement date. Put simply, if weather,mechanical and indeed financial conditions permitted the maximum amount of Shuttle launchs the International Space Station would still not be completed.
A very similar thing happened to the US car companies about 30 years ago
Ah the effects of that were already setting in by the mid 1960's, 40 years ago. I strongly recommend "Adam Smiths" amusing and satirical "Supermoney" novel which was published in 72' or thereabouts, it goes into the US automobile situation in quite some detail aswell as his own follys and adventures in the financial world...
Theres quite a lot of contempt still for gas-guzzling US-jeep style cars over here in Britain. People ask why a 4 litre car is needed for the school run and shopping trips when a 1.2 litre vehicle would suffice for a family of 4 easily.
Yet the old naggling Britishness prevails over even this criticism (we moan, and yet do nothing to follow up our moaning), some younger families opt for larger vehicles, more American style vehicles over here now. Also, Chevrolet and Crysler are going ahead with a vast attempt at market penetration.
Its certainly apparant that this sail is a huge step forward in space exploration as a whole. Whats even better is that the entire project cost around $4 million to get on the ground.
For those wandering what the mission will entail exactly, its quite simple:
Firstly, the craft must enter orbit. After a short time, the aluminium solar sails will unfurl. The speed and trajectory will be continually monitored as per the estimates of the Cosmos crew.
Lastly, the craft will keep heading outwards from low-earth orbit, thus concluding the mission and proving that solar sails are a viable and worthwhile method of space exploration.
Mars' atmosphere couldn't permit the spectacular light displays that can be witnessed here on Earth. While Mar's atmosphere stretches further into space than Earth's, its just not substantial enough to allow auroras. Further to this, since the solar wind has to travel further to Mars due to its distance from the sun the overall power of the aurorae would be reduced obviously.
Furthermore, the actual sighting was seen in the southern hemisphere, theres definately a different name for auroras that occur south of the equator than borealis.
Your depiction of WinMX as a trap-laden program is wrong. From a recent swathe of arrests of 23 people from filetrading over in the UK, just one used WinMX, most of them were using either Kazaa or Imesh.
How you got modded informative is beyond all reasoning, your points aren't even backed up. Oh and WinMX is constantly updated (check out the version history on winmx.com). Just because the overall aesthetics are very similar to years ago doesn't mean its broken, which begs the question; why would people continue to use a "broken" program?
On the contrary, while the media has lapped up the Dutch and French "No" votes with a wave of sensationalism, the vote was hardly a vote of no confidence in the EU itself. All it represented was concern towards the fact too much power may go to Brussels. The EU is very much a stable organization, and though some difficulties will have to be overcome, they are by no means major. It will still function as a competant legislative body. So we don't have to worry about M$ somehow overturning this judgement in the future.
3d immersive shooters have only really been around since Quake came out, for about a decade
Only? The games industry has only existed in the mainstream for about twenty five years, a decade is a huge about of time in gaming, theres no "only" about that sort of time frame. They say a week is a long time in politics, a month is a long time in gaming.
Furthermore, Counter-Strike's model was little different graphically from the Half Life engine it was born out of. The fundamental differences the game possesses rely solely on the perceived "realism" (ie. bullet paths, death from just a few shots, limited jumping and so forth). Aswell as the scenarios, hostage rescue or bomb plant.
NO mainstream FPS has or is going towards that model of gaming (there have only been some lesser-known niche market FPS's that incorporate CS style play), most FPS's stick to the traditional Quake formula. That you have quite ample health, and plenty of weapons to blast apart anything, leaving hundreds of alien corpses in your wake. Half Life 2 is a prime example, despite the physics, the bells and the whistles, it was fundamentally a jazzed up Quake with snipers.
Personally, for me games in general have lost a lot of what made them truly great back in the day. Its very true that most of the budgets are gone into graphical design, the stories are but an afterthought leaving much to be desired...
Monkey Island for one is an awesome game full of humour, satire and general fun and games. The graphics are still beautiful in their own colourful, pixelated way...and you get a memorable experience. Nobody recalls more than one level of Quake. Whereas games that have tales to tell like FF7,Monkey Island and to an lesser extent; Myst, stay with you for life. We need more cool adventure games with brilliantly rendered 2D interfaces and some sort of evolution of the SCUMM engine!
Seriously, who doesn't remember that weird variation of that "Knee Bone" song performed by Guybrush's deceased parents in Monkey 2?:)
Bear in mind however, that marijuana has been falling in price steadily over the last decade or so. Albeit more slowly in the US than where I live in the UK. In 1995 a UK kilo of hash was about £2000, now its around £500, with pure bud on a similar correlation at about twice that price...this has fueled growing demand of course.
http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm has some intriguing statistics pertaining to your speculation over money spent per arrest. Of course most arrests don't even lead to a conviction, especially in the case of marijuana...imagine if that cash went to NASA or another worthwhile cause huh? Heck, the money from taxes on soft drugs if prohibition were to end would probably generate that much each year!
Its a similar situation with ecstasy, throughout school in biology we were shown videos depicting the horrific effects of ecstasy. I was curious the entire programme focused on one case of death...which when I did some research turned out to be highly occansional. 37 deaths a year are attributed to ecstasy (most to dehydration which can be avoided with water intake obviously.) Compared to countless thousands of alcohol/tobacco related deaths. Prohibitionist propaganda indeed.
The effects of aging CRT monitors on the eyes are dire to say the least...
About a year ago, I bought a new Samsung LCD which unfortunately broke the following month. Customer service said it'd take 10 days for a replacement. Rather than go without computing and get some sunshine I plugged in my previous monitor...an old CRT.
The monitor itself was discoloured and washed out, clicked like crazy every time the resolution changed, and the brightness was terrific. To make firefox even remotely viewable I had to stick the brightness at about 10 or so. However, it was giving me bad eye pain within hours despite the reduced brightness, so I unplugged it and stuck it in the trash.
I don't think that the CRT's death is premature in the least, its been a long time coming, but LCD prices have been dropping and likewise performance rising in the past few years making them viable as an alternative. Also, they use a lot less power and space, so their more economical in more ways than one.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the most intriguing of all the photos is likely the one of the moon Iapetus. While the other photos beautifully capture images of Titan and Saturn itself, the real object of intrigue is the geological formation on Iapetus. Near its equator theres a huge topographic ridge, which gives the moon a really unusual appearance.
Was anyone else struck by how Titan seems very similar to Mars on its surface shot? Lots of small rocks and boulders laying around its surface and a general haze present etc etc.
Yet at the same time such controls on the overall presentation and context of information leads to discontent. A lot of people here and elsewhere on the Internet express disdain for the American Corporate Media, for example.
/. . Though it will be a long time, if ever, that vast numbers switch to the BBC and/or actively appeal for better prioritization and presentation.
The human attention span and intelligence will never be narrowed to the point where people will accept information as abbreviated and uninformative from say...Fox news, at least among minority communities like
If you read through a typical discussion on slashdot or a well made political blog, you'll find that peoples intepretations of information are extremely hard to manipulate. Every person is different, sure some will blindly believe what network X says, but others will reject such a presentation and express their own opinions on the said information.
A lot of adware servers are based in Quebec, Coolwebsearch being among the most prolific currently based there. But other countrys are also used, such as the Cayman Isles, and quite likely many other carribean nations too. It wouldn't be too pheasable to base ones spyware/adware empire off established landlines, it'd likely be too expensive and impractical.
Considering the advances made within the ISS during its years in space already, the astronauts on board don't just sit up there for months twiddling their thumbs, they do a lot of research on a huge variety of fields, such as theeffects of zero gravity on biological organisms. Also, the fact that Shuttles have consistantly maintained projects such as Hubble contradicts your views on its potential replacement! I think you need some trolling practice dude.
Its quite strange. Most of the major news agencys reported recently that NASA had confirmed that the Shuttle could be launched in July, as it was within an "acceptable" bracket of safety.
Yet less than a week later, the same news networks were saying that a major commission had concluded that NASA infact hadn't met their targets, lumped with a whole lot of criticism of the space agency as a whole, too.
But as this topic confirms the launch will go ahead apparantly regardless of what this commission found? I wondered if anyone could clarify the situation at large? (I'm not trolling or anything here, just geniunely puzzled about the table of events leading up to Discovery's launch.)
Here on slashdot, anything modded up usually has a spelling error or two, but a good percentage of that has to be due to rushed typing, us geeks being in a constant hurry surfing, downloading and so forth.
/. stories and found that almost 70% were using Firefox, and under 15% were using IE. As such its pretty easy to expect a good level of spelling, grammar and so forth for the obvious reasons, higher than average intelligence etc.
/. is the fact that a lot of us have read and re-read 1984. For those who haven't 1984 basically introduces the concept of Newspeak, a perverted, abbreviated form of English designed to prevent any communication against the State and Big Brother as a whole. Perhaps we don't want to let our words become as abbreviated as Newspeak? But instead want to preserve our language on the Internet, things like L33Tspeak are completely rejected here (unless in jest) again this sort of supports that view.
But when comparing Slashdot to your average BBS, you really learn not to take for granted what your reading here on slashdot. If one looks at the gaming forums over at blizzard.com, especially those for WoW, theres bad grammar, unusual abbreviations and rushed posting to boot. The people here really are geek/nerds whatever, somebody did a browser-usage assessment for those clicking links from
Also whats intriguing about the usership here on
Also, we must bear in mind the Internets usership, the type of persons who now use it as a service, back in 2000, when Broadband was almost entirely a business interest their were a lot less people online, as such the standard ofgrammar and spelling on...Usenet for example, was high. And when you see stats like "50% of 11 year olds cannot form coherant sentances" you wonder how many of those individuals are now using the Internet. Lastly, we must bear in mind that some are unable to spell long words correctly due to their gene makeup and so forth, a difficulty in spelling, grammar and written language as a whole can even be inherited, even if ones spoken speech is of a very high standard indeed. Thus, we must expect there to always be a degree of bad grammar, whether the users' IQ is 90 or 150.
Of course this isn't surprising to any of us slashdotters, we all recall the massive amounts of hype surrounding the PS2 for example. There was everything from "X times as fast as PS1" to "will improve viewing quality on PS1 Cds" etc.
One of the major reasons not to believe the hype is that legally Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft may test their new processors on ANY machine they wish, including an extremely expensive, painstakingly built device in a lab somewhere. Then, after acheiving an astoundingly high speed from it, may publish the info legally, all thats required is that the processor actually produced the speed results in something.
But once the processor makes it into your PS3 or 360 the speed is considerably impaired. What was 3.8 teraflops will decrease to around half a teraflop, perhaps less, simply due to the build quality of the device...its simply nowhere near cost effective to produce something on a mass scale capable of 5 or 10 teraflops yet. Also theres marketing statistic-inflation to take into account too of course.
Sorry, I meant Dubai and India, not Dubai in India.
Apparantly total shutdown of the Internet in Pakistan is common, but the article doesn't mention a timeframe, using the word brief. Its fairly surprising that one of the Indian subcontinents largest nations has just one line to support its Internet connections. In 10, 20, 30 years the amount of outsourced work and IT related industry located there will need a much more dependable connection, not to mention the rising home use.
Furthermore, the article mentions disruption to cities as far afield as Dubai, in India. Heres hoping upgrades in the form of more lines happen as soon as possible.
Awesome answers Wil, I don't think I'm alone when I say that for practically every other interview other than your two, I find myself skipping half the responses as their so cautious and humdrum. Your answers were clever, funny, insightful and in depth, allowing all us geeks to see a little of your unique character. Just like your insanely cool blog. :)
/. are players. I wondered, (if your around read these responses) what your favorite edition and character class was for D&D?
Hope the editors will have you back in another five years time for a third interview.
I noticed there weren't any D&D questions which is surprisingly considering you, and a good portion of
Actually the War on Drugs costs around $18 billion dollars a year to run. Granted its still a phenomenal figure, and considering only a tiny fraction of drugs get seized its a pretty huge waste of money. And considering some of the most dangerous and addictive drugs Alcohol and Tobacco are legal its fairly hypocritical in its aims to protect the peoples' health and minimalize social problems.
Indeed, what if the money went to NASA, or to a formation of a new international space agency?
Or to removing taxes on healthier foods to encourage more consumption? Heck, THAT would definately improve peoples health and lifestyles.
On the whole, over the past 5 years Blueyonder has served myself and my family pretty well. The transition from dial-up to broadband was smooth, heck even the guy who came to fit the cable was polite. Downtime has been 0.01%, perhaps less and usually very late at night. That and the two free upgrades from 512k -> 768k -> 1024k being a bonus, though the upload speed for 1 meg customers remains at a low 128k with no sign of budging.
The only ISP I've heard really bad things about is AOL, for their downtime and awful customer service mainly. Also, BT is pretty strict when it comes to download limit, you can only dl a couple of films over their lines per month, then they've always been a shrewd ass company IMO.
Whats interesting is the pricing system, pay per minute isn't an option for Broadband technology. Some ISP's are offering 512k for £15 a month now, which is uber-low...the bare minimum one could get that for back in 2003 was £25. By 2010 the price will be down to 10 pounds or less...Blueyonder were pretty wise to simply upgrade their servers in favour of decreasing price. Though they still keep a 256k connection offer for the budget trade.
The BBC article goes into more detail, including the scrutiny over the decision over the July launch. In particular over ice impacts to the shuttle's heat shielding. Heres the article;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4622243.stm/
The only major problem NASA faces with regards to the shuttle is its planned retirement date. Put simply, if weather,mechanical and indeed financial conditions permitted the maximum amount of Shuttle launchs the International Space Station would still not be completed.
A very similar thing happened to the US car companies about 30 years ago
/ qid=1119745711/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-9300774 -8365429/
Ah the effects of that were already setting in by the mid 1960's, 40 years ago. I strongly recommend "Adam Smiths" amusing and satirical "Supermoney" novel which was published in 72' or thereabouts, it goes into the US automobile situation in quite some detail aswell as his own follys and adventures in the financial world...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0394479939
Theres quite a lot of contempt still for gas-guzzling US-jeep style cars over here in Britain. People ask why a 4 litre car is needed for the school run and shopping trips when a 1.2 litre vehicle would suffice for a family of 4 easily.
Yet the old naggling Britishness prevails over even this criticism (we moan, and yet do nothing to follow up our moaning), some younger families opt for larger vehicles, more American style vehicles over here now. Also, Chevrolet and Crysler are going ahead with a vast attempt at market penetration.
Do pet stores stock neutered animals?
Exactly.
Its certainly apparant that this sail is a huge step forward in space exploration as a whole. Whats even better is that the entire project cost around $4 million to get on the ground.
:
For those wandering what the mission will entail exactly, its quite simple
Firstly, the craft must enter orbit.
After a short time, the aluminium solar sails will unfurl.
The speed and trajectory will be continually monitored as per the estimates of the Cosmos crew.
Lastly, the craft will keep heading outwards from low-earth orbit, thus concluding the mission and proving that solar sails are a viable and worthwhile method of space exploration.
Google confirms that it is compulsory for all attendees to its Summer of Code to wear flowers in their hair. :)
Mars' atmosphere couldn't permit the spectacular light displays that can be witnessed here on Earth. While Mar's atmosphere stretches further into space than Earth's, its just not substantial enough to allow auroras. Further to this, since the solar wind has to travel further to Mars due to its distance from the sun the overall power of the aurorae would be reduced obviously.
Furthermore, the actual sighting was seen in the southern hemisphere, theres definately a different name for auroras that occur south of the equator than borealis.
Your depiction of WinMX as a trap-laden program is wrong. From a recent swathe of arrests of 23 people from filetrading over in the UK, just one used WinMX, most of them were using either Kazaa or Imesh.
1 8765.stm/
The BBC report is here : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/43
How you got modded informative is beyond all reasoning, your points aren't even backed up. Oh and WinMX is constantly updated (check out the version history on winmx.com). Just because the overall aesthetics are very similar to years ago doesn't mean its broken, which begs the question; why would people continue to use a "broken" program?
May you continue to troll.
On the contrary, while the media has lapped up the Dutch and French "No" votes with a wave of sensationalism, the vote was hardly a vote of no confidence in the EU itself. All it represented was concern towards the fact too much power may go to Brussels. The EU is very much a stable organization, and though some difficulties will have to be overcome, they are by no means major. It will still function as a competant legislative body. So we don't have to worry about M$ somehow overturning this judgement in the future.
3d immersive shooters have only really been around since Quake came out, for about a decade
,Monkey Island and to an lesser extent; Myst, stay with you for life. We need more cool adventure games with brilliantly rendered 2D interfaces and some sort of evolution of the SCUMM engine!
:)
Only? The games industry has only existed in the mainstream for about twenty five years, a decade is a huge about of time in gaming, theres no "only" about that sort of time frame. They say a week is a long time in politics, a month is a long time in gaming.
Furthermore, Counter-Strike's model was little different graphically from the Half Life engine it was born out of. The fundamental differences the game possesses rely solely on the perceived "realism" (ie. bullet paths, death from just a few shots, limited jumping and so forth). Aswell as the scenarios, hostage rescue or bomb plant.
NO mainstream FPS has or is going towards that model of gaming (there have only been some lesser-known niche market FPS's that incorporate CS style play), most FPS's stick to the traditional Quake formula. That you have quite ample health, and plenty of weapons to blast apart anything, leaving hundreds of alien corpses in your wake. Half Life 2 is a prime example, despite the physics, the bells and the whistles, it was fundamentally a jazzed up Quake with snipers.
Personally, for me games in general have lost a lot of what made them truly great back in the day. Its very true that most of the budgets are gone into graphical design, the stories are but an afterthought leaving much to be desired...
Monkey Island for one is an awesome game full of humour, satire and general fun and games. The graphics are still beautiful in their own colourful, pixelated way...and you get a memorable experience. Nobody recalls more than one level of Quake. Whereas games that have tales to tell like FF7
Seriously, who doesn't remember that weird variation of that "Knee Bone" song performed by Guybrush's deceased parents in Monkey 2?
Bear in mind however, that marijuana has been falling in price steadily over the last decade or so. Albeit more slowly in the US than where I live in the UK. In 1995 a UK kilo of hash was about £2000, now its around £500, with pure bud on a similar correlation at about twice that price...this has fueled growing demand of course.
http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm has some intriguing statistics pertaining to your speculation over money spent per arrest. Of course most arrests don't even lead to a conviction, especially in the case of marijuana...imagine if that cash went to NASA or another worthwhile cause huh? Heck, the money from taxes on soft drugs if prohibition were to end would probably generate that much each year!
Its a similar situation with ecstasy, throughout school in biology we were shown videos depicting the horrific effects of ecstasy. I was curious the entire programme focused on one case of death...which when I did some research turned out to be highly occansional. 37 deaths a year are attributed to ecstasy (most to dehydration which can be avoided with water intake obviously.) Compared to countless thousands of alcohol/tobacco related deaths. Prohibitionist propaganda indeed.
The effects of aging CRT monitors on the eyes are dire to say the least...
:)
About a year ago, I bought a new Samsung LCD which unfortunately broke the following month. Customer service said it'd take 10 days for a replacement. Rather than go without computing and get some sunshine I plugged in my previous monitor...an old CRT.
The monitor itself was discoloured and washed out, clicked like crazy every time the resolution changed, and the brightness was terrific. To make firefox even remotely viewable I had to stick the brightness at about 10 or so. However, it was giving me bad eye pain within hours despite the reduced brightness, so I unplugged it and stuck it in the trash.
I don't think that the CRT's death is premature in the least, its been a long time coming, but LCD prices have been dropping and likewise performance rising in the past few years making them viable as an alternative. Also, they use a lot less power and space, so their more economical in more ways than one.
So good riddance to the CRT, long live the LCD.
Dude, what you do with your weiner really has nothing to do with CRT monitors.
Mine is...Indiana Jones and the Lost Zimmer Frame :)