Thank you for your feedback, but anything that I've managed to find wasn't quite what would be useful to me. If I missed something in my search, it wasn't because I didn't try looking.
Perhaps I titled my question poorly. I wasn't looking for a listing of what happened in each chapter. Consider when I come to chapter X in book Y, and it's discussing some character C, whom I don't remember well. The ability to pull up a summary of each previous chapter isn't useful, unless I hunt and hunt for references to character C. What I want to be able to do is open the listing for chapter X in book Y, and find out everything about character C (and all other characters in chapter X, book Y) that happened in previous chapters. Think of it like a cross-referenced listing, or something. What am I supposed to know, to date, that I inevitably forgot?
As I said, if such a cool cross-referenced listing exists, I just completely missed it...
I'd like to direct an open question to all of you, regarding the Wheel of Time...
My biggest problem when reading (or rather, trying to read) the later books in the series was the huge number of characters. While this may make a sad statement on my reading and concentration abilities, I simply got confused. I couldn't remember what minor noble was up to, when last we met him twenty-three chapters ago, and how other minor noble was plotting against him.
So, my question is: is anyone aware of a "what you know"-style summary for the Wheel of Time series?
What I mean by this is the following. Imagine an interface where I could click on any chapter number for any book in the series. Then, what it would list for me is what we know, to date, about every character in this chapter. In this way, I could actually keep the characters straight, without worrying about spoilers (e.g., if I found a summary that listed what every character did in Book 9, because I was halfway through the book and couldn't remember what some character did in an earlier chapter, this would contain spoilers about the end of Book 9).
I know this would be a huge undertaking, but do any of you know if it has been attempted? With such a resource, I may actually be able to finish what started (i.e., first six-ish books) as a very enjoyable series.
[Re: Whether 2nd Ammendment rights protect citizens' other rights in the U.S.]: Actually, it works well. We still have them. So we have one final defense.
I gave a lot of thought to your answer. In the end, what puzzled me was how you treat the right to own guns as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. What I mean is this: your reply seems to indicate that even if you lose all of your other rights, except the right to own guns, that this is somehow still a small victory for you. But, it seems to me that the original intention of your 2nd Ammendment was to be proactive -- namely, that the right to own guns should prevent your government from ever taking away your rights (fearing rebellion from an armed militia). At least in my opinion, as a non-American observing your politics from afar, this has failed (beating the Patriot Act example to death, here). What victory is there for your rights if you have a complacent (but armed!) population?
You just don't hear about how many crimes are actually prevented by guns.
Indeed, this is a very good point. It is much easier to produce statistics on how many gun deaths occured, rather than on how many crimes were prevented by guns. This argument seems to be a cornerstone of people who support arming the population.
Unfortunately, your statement was more accurate than you intended, perhaps. I don't hear about how many crimes are prevented by guns. In order for me to consider your argument that guns prevent crime as a valid argument, I would need at least some indication that the number of crimes preveted is large.
The only "indication" that I've ever seen produced is a thought game, which I've only ever heard as some variant of: "Would you rob that liquor store, if you knew the clerk was packing?" Yet, were that rationale valid, there would be far fewer liquor store robberies per capita in parts of the world where people are armed to the teeth (all other factors being equal, to rule out secondary causes of crime such as poverty, etc.). If I could see that evidence, or if anyone could point me in the right direction to it, then I would be able to assign a lot more weight to your argument.
Thankfully, a small segment of the American populace endeavor to maintain our 2nd Ammendment rights in order to ensure the rest of our rights.
How's that working out for you? I mean no disrespect, but as a Canadian looking south, from my point of view it doesn't look like your 2nd Ammendment is doing anything to curb your government screwing with its citizens (Patriot Act, anyone?). In fact, it seems like the only result of the 2nd Ammendment is a lot of gun deaths. I'd like to hear your point of view on this.
Hmmm, an SLR for travelling? Can anyone say (expletive) "American Tourist"?!?
Or someone who enjoys nature hikes, away from the Americanized restaurants and such? Anytime I've had the opportunity to venture far from civilization on my travels (e.g., into a rainforest), I've always brought my SLR (an old non-digital one, which may someday be replaced with a digital, funds allowing). Photographing flowers, birds, and landscapes is just more fun with an SLR!
Now, I know that this probably won't be the kind of answer you're looking for, but here I go anyway...
Personally, if I had the kind of space you had, with no light pollution, and if I had the budget you mentioned: I would buy a high quality digital SLR camera. Obviously, if you're looking to photograph things that you need a telescope to see, this wouldn't be a good use of money for you. But, if you're looking to take shots of constellations and the moon and such, then a high-quality digital SLR with a tripod will work beautifully.
Plus, such a setup would allow you to take great photos of various weather phenomenon (e.g., thunderstorms). While it may not be the case for you, most of the people that I know that enjoy photographing the moon and the night sky also love photographing weather as well.
And, obviously, you'd then have a great camera for travelling and such.
Why do people (especially Slashdotters) put up with [new Windows versions], when there are other options that are so much better?
Because, unfortunately, the newest software is written for the newest versions of Windows. And, as much as I would love to never touch Windows Vista, I know that, eventually, some piece of software I need to run for work will only run on Windows Vista.
It used to be that a lot of software ran on Win9x/Win2k. Then, it was Win9x/Win2k/WinXP. Now, I frequently see either Win2k/WinXP/Vista or WinXP/Vista. It won't be long until the software I need for work only runs on Vista. And, then I have no choice but to upgrade to Vista.
And, as much as I love open source, I don't always have the option of switching to OSS (i.e., there's no viable OSS alternative). Or, sometimes switching to OSS isn't worth the hassle, compared to the time I save by just giving in to Microsoft and buying the newest version of Office (instead of dealing with the minor, but often horrifically irritating incompatibilities with OO.org). And no: this is not a critique of OSS, nor is it something that I ever think will change. It is simply a fact of using a computer that I require to be easily compatible with the setups used by other people in my field. It's easier to spend to money on commercial software (that is, the monetary abuse I take from commerical vendors) than it is to piss away hours of my time trying to work around incompatibilities (that is, the kind of abuse I take when using some OSS). Sometimes, OSS works beautifully for what I need, and I love saving the money. Othertimes, I just have to pay up.
Hmm, this seems like a rather easy prediction to make: that all the arguments for, and against, the current view on global warming will be obsolete in 50 years.
Unfortunately, the debate on global warming has been so politicized that I can indeed believe that any theories currently present will be obsolete in a small number of years. Has it occured to anyone else that the huge right-vs-left debate over global warming has actually repressed all of the scientific facts on global warming? I'd love to see original scientific research on the question on global warming, but it seems that everyone with an opinion on global warming is merely a pundit for either the right or the left.
Perhaps, somewhat arrogantly, I consider myself an intelligent scientist (though not a climatologist). I would love to read the research on the subject of global warming, minus the political punditry, and make my own decisions on the problem.
Even right now, this minute, the 2600 series (in single-card configuration, which of course is the only option in the iMac line) is severely underpowered for modern gaming.
I've been trying to look for some benchmarks online to put some quantitative data to this analysis. And, I've found a lot of benchmarks comparing the 2600 Pro to other modern cards (e.g., the nVidia 8xxx series, the other current lineup of ATi cards). But, what's really missing, and what's important to me, is benchmarks on how the 2600 Pro compares to my current graphics card!
That is, I'm thinking of ditching my current Windows desktop to get an iMac, but I still want to be able to boot into Windows on the iMac and play my games. What I want to make sure is that, if I get an iMac, I won't be losing power compared to my current PC. Simply put, I want to be able to play the few games I already own:)
So, does anyone know of any site that would allow me to see a comparison between the iMac's Radeon HD 2600 Pro, and my current Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro?
The rapid suspend will let you quickly switch between OS X and Linux, both running natively
I heard that this feature was scrapped, unfortunately. I would have loved it, especially for Windows-OS X rapid switiching, for toggling between playing games and actually accomplishing something:)
Thank you very much for your suggestion, but unfortunately, OS X + KDE just won't do the trick. Don't get me wrong -- I absolutely love that OS X is a full UNIX, with the full toolkit and everything. In fact, I do nearly 100% of my development directly in OS X, and I absolutely love Fink:). The fact that I can run great OS X apps like OmniGraffle, TeXShop, and others alongside Emacs and various X11 stuff is a godsend.
Unfortuatnely, every once in a while, I need to test something in Linux, either for compatibility reasons, or because it's a Linux-specific project (i.e., something that relies on Linux-specific extensions which don't exist in OS X). And, for those few (annoying) times, I really need Linux in a VM.
Thank you so much for your great feedback, though! I always appreciate it when people suggest other options I may not have thought of.
I think Fusion is basically the only VMWare software that runs on a mac (Workstation does not support OSX as a host [...]
Indeed, Workstation is for non-OS X hosts, whereas Fusion is for OS X hosts. So, what I'm curious about is how my experience in Linux would differ between:
Running Linux as a guest OS of VMWare Workstation, running on a Windows XP host; and,
Running Linux as a guest OS of VMWare Fusion, running on an OS X host
Why is it that Workstation is so much more expensive than Fusion? Are there additional features I'd be missing out on if I used Fusion on a Mac instead of Workstation on Windows?
Thanks for all the feedback! I really appreciate everyone's insight.
I've been considering a Mac desktop for a while, and now that a new one is out, perhaps I'll buy it.
One thing I need, though, is to be able to run Linux and OpenBSD in virtual machines on my desktop. Does anyone have any experience with how the new VMWare Fusion compares to VMWare Workstation? Is there any difference between the two (aside from the price, and that unity view for Windows, which does not affect me)? I mean, in terms of features and running other OSes?
All I want to know is how the damn Zulu spearman could possibly defeat ALL my tanks. HOW!?!?!?
Unfortunately, this isn't just a problem in Civ. I was playing Rise of Nations the other day, and had a very similar experience. I watched in awe as an archer sunk a missile cruiser that was sitting just off shore. Why is fixing this such an issue in all of these historical RTS or strategy games?
3 digits are a thousand codes [...] we need public key encryption
"Sir, could you please read me the 768-character hexadecimal public key printed on the back of your credit card?... Yes, sir, the one in the really tiny font."
Re:The original hardware store experiment
on
MacGyver Physics
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Schrödinger Cat has been living on borrowed time long enough.
That's interesting. I've sunk a whole bunch of time -- many, many hours -- into Wii Sports. Bowling especially! The nice thing is, I haven't sunk all that time at once. I've played for a while, done something in real life, come back, and so on. My fiancee and I play Wii Sports together, since it's a great game to play with someone who doesn't have as much video game experience.
Even if you want games that take longer, how about Zelda? Or Super Paper Mario? I think the Wii succeeds, because it hits all of these targets.
Slashdot Mirror
You've failed to account for how easy it would be to hide explosives in the cell padding.
...and I'm only partially joking.
Thank you for your feedback, but anything that I've managed to find wasn't quite what would be useful to me. If I missed something in my search, it wasn't because I didn't try looking.
Perhaps I titled my question poorly. I wasn't looking for a listing of what happened in each chapter. Consider when I come to chapter X in book Y, and it's discussing some character C, whom I don't remember well. The ability to pull up a summary of each previous chapter isn't useful, unless I hunt and hunt for references to character C. What I want to be able to do is open the listing for chapter X in book Y, and find out everything about character C (and all other characters in chapter X, book Y) that happened in previous chapters. Think of it like a cross-referenced listing, or something. What am I supposed to know, to date, that I inevitably forgot?
As I said, if such a cool cross-referenced listing exists, I just completely missed it...
I'd like to direct an open question to all of you, regarding the Wheel of Time...
My biggest problem when reading (or rather, trying to read) the later books in the series was the huge number of characters. While this may make a sad statement on my reading and concentration abilities, I simply got confused. I couldn't remember what minor noble was up to, when last we met him twenty-three chapters ago, and how other minor noble was plotting against him.
So, my question is: is anyone aware of a "what you know"-style summary for the Wheel of Time series?
What I mean by this is the following. Imagine an interface where I could click on any chapter number for any book in the series. Then, what it would list for me is what we know, to date, about every character in this chapter. In this way, I could actually keep the characters straight, without worrying about spoilers (e.g., if I found a summary that listed what every character did in Book 9, because I was halfway through the book and couldn't remember what some character did in an earlier chapter, this would contain spoilers about the end of Book 9).
I know this would be a huge undertaking, but do any of you know if it has been attempted? With such a resource, I may actually be able to finish what started (i.e., first six-ish books) as a very enjoyable series.
That's called a taser. Feel free to use it either on the child or on the asinine parent unwilling to control the child.
Seriously, there have been times at restaurants where I would have left a very large tip were my waiter to have performed this little favour! :)
Umm, I think that may have been a given to start with... :)
I gave a lot of thought to your answer. In the end, what puzzled me was how you treat the right to own guns as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. What I mean is this: your reply seems to indicate that even if you lose all of your other rights, except the right to own guns, that this is somehow still a small victory for you. But, it seems to me that the original intention of your 2nd Ammendment was to be proactive -- namely, that the right to own guns should prevent your government from ever taking away your rights (fearing rebellion from an armed militia). At least in my opinion, as a non-American observing your politics from afar, this has failed (beating the Patriot Act example to death, here). What victory is there for your rights if you have a complacent (but armed!) population?
Indeed, this is a very good point. It is much easier to produce statistics on how many gun deaths occured, rather than on how many crimes were prevented by guns. This argument seems to be a cornerstone of people who support arming the population.
Unfortunately, your statement was more accurate than you intended, perhaps. I don't hear about how many crimes are prevented by guns. In order for me to consider your argument that guns prevent crime as a valid argument, I would need at least some indication that the number of crimes preveted is large.
The only "indication" that I've ever seen produced is a thought game, which I've only ever heard as some variant of: "Would you rob that liquor store, if you knew the clerk was packing?" Yet, were that rationale valid, there would be far fewer liquor store robberies per capita in parts of the world where people are armed to the teeth (all other factors being equal, to rule out secondary causes of crime such as poverty, etc.). If I could see that evidence, or if anyone could point me in the right direction to it, then I would be able to assign a lot more weight to your argument.
How's that working out for you? I mean no disrespect, but as a Canadian looking south, from my point of view it doesn't look like your 2nd Ammendment is doing anything to curb your government screwing with its citizens (Patriot Act, anyone?). In fact, it seems like the only result of the 2nd Ammendment is a lot of gun deaths. I'd like to hear your point of view on this.
Actually, AppleInsider said that 800 MHz G4 processors may not be supported. 867 MHz or greater G4 processors would still be usable. From TFA:
OS 10.6, it is speculated, may not support PPC processors (so, we're talking 2009 here?)Or someone who enjoys nature hikes, away from the Americanized restaurants and such? Anytime I've had the opportunity to venture far from civilization on my travels (e.g., into a rainforest), I've always brought my SLR (an old non-digital one, which may someday be replaced with a digital, funds allowing). Photographing flowers, birds, and landscapes is just more fun with an SLR!
And no, I'm not American :)
Now, I know that this probably won't be the kind of answer you're looking for, but here I go anyway...
Personally, if I had the kind of space you had, with no light pollution, and if I had the budget you mentioned: I would buy a high quality digital SLR camera. Obviously, if you're looking to photograph things that you need a telescope to see, this wouldn't be a good use of money for you. But, if you're looking to take shots of constellations and the moon and such, then a high-quality digital SLR with a tripod will work beautifully.
Plus, such a setup would allow you to take great photos of various weather phenomenon (e.g., thunderstorms). While it may not be the case for you, most of the people that I know that enjoy photographing the moon and the night sky also love photographing weather as well.
And, obviously, you'd then have a great camera for travelling and such.
Oh, crap. I always wondered why I couldn't walk more than three feet from the wall while I'm charging my phone.
Because, unfortunately, the newest software is written for the newest versions of Windows. And, as much as I would love to never touch Windows Vista, I know that, eventually, some piece of software I need to run for work will only run on Windows Vista.
It used to be that a lot of software ran on Win9x/Win2k. Then, it was Win9x/Win2k/WinXP. Now, I frequently see either Win2k/WinXP/Vista or WinXP/Vista. It won't be long until the software I need for work only runs on Vista. And, then I have no choice but to upgrade to Vista.
And, as much as I love open source, I don't always have the option of switching to OSS (i.e., there's no viable OSS alternative). Or, sometimes switching to OSS isn't worth the hassle, compared to the time I save by just giving in to Microsoft and buying the newest version of Office (instead of dealing with the minor, but often horrifically irritating incompatibilities with OO.org). And no: this is not a critique of OSS, nor is it something that I ever think will change. It is simply a fact of using a computer that I require to be easily compatible with the setups used by other people in my field. It's easier to spend to money on commercial software (that is, the monetary abuse I take from commerical vendors) than it is to piss away hours of my time trying to work around incompatibilities (that is, the kind of abuse I take when using some OSS). Sometimes, OSS works beautifully for what I need, and I love saving the money. Othertimes, I just have to pay up.
Fixed that for you!
Hmm, this seems like a rather easy prediction to make: that all the arguments for, and against, the current view on global warming will be obsolete in 50 years.
Unfortunately, the debate on global warming has been so politicized that I can indeed believe that any theories currently present will be obsolete in a small number of years. Has it occured to anyone else that the huge right-vs-left debate over global warming has actually repressed all of the scientific facts on global warming? I'd love to see original scientific research on the question on global warming, but it seems that everyone with an opinion on global warming is merely a pundit for either the right or the left.
Perhaps, somewhat arrogantly, I consider myself an intelligent scientist (though not a climatologist). I would love to read the research on the subject of global warming, minus the political punditry, and make my own decisions on the problem.
What a coincidence! My wife and I sometimes have quick fun in the bedroom with my Wii, too.
I've been trying to look for some benchmarks online to put some quantitative data to this analysis. And, I've found a lot of benchmarks comparing the 2600 Pro to other modern cards (e.g., the nVidia 8xxx series, the other current lineup of ATi cards). But, what's really missing, and what's important to me, is benchmarks on how the 2600 Pro compares to my current graphics card!
That is, I'm thinking of ditching my current Windows desktop to get an iMac, but I still want to be able to boot into Windows on the iMac and play my games. What I want to make sure is that, if I get an iMac, I won't be losing power compared to my current PC. Simply put, I want to be able to play the few games I already own :)
So, does anyone know of any site that would allow me to see a comparison between the iMac's Radeon HD 2600 Pro, and my current Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro?
Thanks!
Thank you very much for your suggestion, but unfortunately, OS X + KDE just won't do the trick. Don't get me wrong -- I absolutely love that OS X is a full UNIX, with the full toolkit and everything. In fact, I do nearly 100% of my development directly in OS X, and I absolutely love Fink :). The fact that I can run great OS X apps like OmniGraffle, TeXShop, and others alongside Emacs and various X11 stuff is a godsend.
Unfortuatnely, every once in a while, I need to test something in Linux, either for compatibility reasons, or because it's a Linux-specific project (i.e., something that relies on Linux-specific extensions which don't exist in OS X). And, for those few (annoying) times, I really need Linux in a VM.
Thank you so much for your great feedback, though! I always appreciate it when people suggest other options I may not have thought of.
Indeed, Workstation is for non-OS X hosts, whereas Fusion is for OS X hosts. So, what I'm curious about is how my experience in Linux would differ between:
Why is it that Workstation is so much more expensive than Fusion? Are there additional features I'd be missing out on if I used Fusion on a Mac instead of Workstation on Windows?
Thanks for all the feedback! I really appreciate everyone's insight.
I've been considering a Mac desktop for a while, and now that a new one is out, perhaps I'll buy it.
One thing I need, though, is to be able to run Linux and OpenBSD in virtual machines on my desktop. Does anyone have any experience with how the new VMWare Fusion compares to VMWare Workstation? Is there any difference between the two (aside from the price, and that unity view for Windows, which does not affect me)? I mean, in terms of features and running other OSes?
Unfortunately, this isn't just a problem in Civ. I was playing Rise of Nations the other day, and had a very similar experience. I watched in awe as an archer sunk a missile cruiser that was sitting just off shore. Why is fixing this such an issue in all of these historical RTS or strategy games?
"Sir, could you please read me the 768-character hexadecimal public key printed on the back of your credit card?
Or has it?
That's interesting. I've sunk a whole bunch of time -- many, many hours -- into Wii Sports. Bowling especially! The nice thing is, I haven't sunk all that time at once. I've played for a while, done something in real life, come back, and so on. My fiancee and I play Wii Sports together, since it's a great game to play with someone who doesn't have as much video game experience.
Even if you want games that take longer, how about Zelda? Or Super Paper Mario? I think the Wii succeeds, because it hits all of these targets.