Don't forget that they can have things that the Navy doesn't have. Things like swimming pools, racquetball courts, bowling alleys, high class restaurants and movie theaters. If they are smart they will have a lecture hall with guest speakers like Donald Knuth (I don't know if he personally would go, but speakers of his class). Not to mention live bands.
Since they are not moving (at least not far, if they want to be close to LA) they don't have to worry about people swimming/diving in the ocean around the ship. You could take a boat and go fishing, or just fish off the side of the ship. Have to be careful to remain in international waters, but that isn't too hard if you pay attention.
If it were me I'd make this into a real cruise ship, and travel a little. When an executive wants to meet with his underlings he boards in L.A. (the workers without VISAs can't get off, but they can enter US waters if I understand law), and gets off in Mexico City. It is a working vacation, but give the executive the full first class cruise experience while he is not working.
Note that this is all things they can do. They can also turn it into another Triangle Shirt factory. Your guess is as good as mine about what it will really be like. My guess is it will be somewhere in between. Not the full luxury cruise after work, but not slave labor either.
As annoying as it is, that paperwork is important. We cannot make another saturn V because some of the paperwork has been lost. Of course if you wanted to create a new Saturn V you would start from scratch because you want modern technology, but still it would be helpful to know how any why the Saturn V was done the way it was, and what problems they had to work around.
Even when the paperwork is obsolete it is useful to get a picture of where you were.
Paperwork is your checklist. Many times in my life I thought everything was done until I went through the checklist. If you don't do the paperwork you don't know if you checked everything. It would be really a bummer to find that the main fuel tank was never filled, only "topped off" to replace evaporation/leakage while waiting on the pad. (that is just enough fuel to get off the pad, but not enough to get into space) Only by running through a checklist can you be sure that step was done.
Remember the saturn Moon probe of a few months back where they forgot to put turn the radio on in the checklist? The radio wasn't turned on. There are plenty of major mistakes that only doing the paperwork (annoying as it is) can prevent. Of course doing the paperwork won't find problems that aren't in the checklists. The sheare volume of things that need to be done mean that for minor things you sometimes hope someone did it, but live with it when someone forgets.
Don't forget that at one time not all states required a photo on drivers licenses. I know one person who (20+ years ago) had to have here photo visa card with her all the time because her drivers license didn't have a photo. (It was optional in that state for some people and she met the requirements so they didn't even try to get her in for a photo) Her school checked photo Id for tests, so her Id was her Visa. Write a check and the clerk needs a photo id - Visa again.
If you need to present two forms of id you are otherwise in trouble. Nearly everyone (In the US anyway) has a drivers license, but what else is Id? A photo credit card counts. A passport counts as two, but few people have one.
Otherwise you are right, photos are not of much use on your credit card. When they are of use it isn't for security though, it is for id in general.
Koffice has the same problem: lack of developers. And reading the comments I'm sure that Koffice is much easier to develop. (but I have never looked at OOo source so I can't be sure) OOo is better, but Koffice is coming along nicely, and in many cases is better designed, in part because they started from scratch a few years ago, while OOo is an old app that was open sourced.
If they are European, then they cannot patent software - yet. (Or do some countries allow software patents already?) Even then, in Europe a patent must be filed before public disclosure. The US is one of the few (only?) countries that allows patenting after disclosure.
Though your point still stands, those old things are not patentable.
Well yeah, but if you have a family history of Type 2 you would be even more foolish than most people to not being carefully fit and slim, while eathing a healthy diet. (I don't use health food because some of what is called "health foods" are bad for you)
Even if you don't have a family history if you are a fat, fast food only, coach potato you are in danger of Type 2 diabetes.
There are controlable and uncontrollable. You cannot control your genetics (at least not yet, and I'm not hopeful for my lifetime). You can control those other factors, and controlling those other factors is often enough to make a difference.
I know someone Type 2s who just be fixing their diet do not need to take any shots. If that person hadn't made is diet of mostly fast food for 30 he might not be a Type 2 today. He is lucky, but if the doctors hadn't discovered the problem early and he continued on with the bad habits he is likely to need shots 4 times a day by now.
In short: they are factors, but they are not something to downplay.
Don't forget that much of that is optional features. A trucking company doesn't need the WiFi card, or the webcam. They just want a display (controlled remotely) to tell the driver where his next stop is, perhaps with a few acknowledgment buttons.
No, we want to use them, we just don't want to pay the cost to make them work.
If it was one block from my door to the train, one or two switches total to work, and didn't take forever (ie. 3 hours to go as far as a car in 30 minutes) to make the trip I would take the train. However there is no way people on my income (and I make above average) could afford the ticket prices to have that level of convince. So only large cities where the population density allows sharing the costs between more people than are in my neighborhood have trains.
So it is just a little farther because the tower you are reaching is one you are on the horizon for, not the one directly below you. Either way you still have clear line of sight, with no hills or trees in the way. (They are called towers for a reason)
They can aim antennas down, but most antenna designs that are aimable shoot a signal in the opposite direction of what they are aimed as well. (but not to the side, and generally a narrower and weaker signal)
Planes might seems like a good Faraday cage, but I have used my cell phone on a plane before. (We were on the ground but had to wait half an hour because an earlier emergency was at our gate, so the captin let us use phones while waiting). People also use phones in campers which have a lot of metal. Signals will get through if you don't have a perfect Faraday cage, though it may be weakened, or otherwise be unusable.
They make cells that are more than 6 miles wide, and cell have to deal with hills and trees. 5280 feet are in a mile. A plane at 30,000 feet is within normal range of some tower. However the plane has line of sight, so 40,000 feet is likely to still be in range, even though that distance on the ground might be just out of range.
The translation of the King James Bible predated the time when spelling was standardized. Over time the spelling of words was standardized, and in turn the spelling used in the bible was updated.
Much the same reason that many people prefer the NIV translation to KJV. The king James translation is just fine, except it was done in the early 1600s, and uses the language they spoke then[1]. Which is not the language as we speak it today, though it is close enough that we can understand it. As time goes on there will be a new popular translation that replaces NIV.
[1]Actually it doesn't. The translators of the King James Bible choose to invest a more formal English that was never spoken. For purposes of my point you can consider it the language spoken then, but you should be aware that people didn't speak like that back then.
The problem is then some farmers go bankrupt. Next year there is a drought and it turns out that we need all the food from last year, but some farmers were unable to sell it, so it ended up rotting in the field. (most likely storage bins) Now there is a famine because there are not enough farmers to take care of the bad times.
I have basic needs: food, clothing, shelter. I want farmers to always produce more food than I need because, that is the only chance I have that there will be enough food even when several disasters strike at once.
If he issues you claim are a problem then you need to fire your network administrator, or give him enough budget to do his job.
When you roll out VOIP he should figure out how much more traffic will be generators and modify the network as required so this issue doesn't exist. The additional routers and switches required should be charged to the VOIP upgrade - though in fact you were close to needing it anyway.
As the company grows the administrator should be planning so that there is never a shortage of bandwidth. As you get closer to the limits you buy more.
When you have an incompetent administrator he will not be running the reports required to notice bandwidth growth, nor will he notice the company is hiring more people (even though he has to activate all the new ports) which is a sign that more network bandwidth will be required. A good administrator will be on top of the companies plans and take action so that this isn't a problem.
Text Adventures have graphics stuck in the late 1500s. (That being when English had the last major change. You would not recognize the English of 1400, but Shakesphere writing 200 years latter, is understandable)
If you ever play one you will discover some of the best graphics anywhere. Who can forget the "breath taking view" in Zork I?
It is open source. If the graphics are ugly that means they are waiting for you to make nice ones!
I'm a coder. I can write great code. I have no talent for graphics. I'll write the game, but until someone who has talent does graphics it will look ugly.
Allies are groups that agree to do battle for each other. You cannot be allied with both France in Germany in a WWII setting. You can ignore the war as neutral Switzerland did, or you can join one side and piss the other off. (sometimes you don't have a choice depending on geography it is either become our allies, or we will kill to get your resources)
France and England had an Agreement before WWII that if one went to war the other automatically would too. (though that doesn't mean it is enforced, France and Checkoslovakia had such an agreement yet France ignored it when Germany invaded Checkoslovakia)
Wesnoth is not about all powerful characters. Yes a level 3 character is powerful (some get to level 5, but most stop at level 3), but a few level 1s can take it out. Wesnoth is designed so that those high level characters die once in a while. You should always have some low level characters moving up so you can afford to sacrifice those high level characters without losing much.
As for tight passes, Don't fight in them, retreat a little so you have some room to work. They can only fight on low level character at a time. Keep wearing them out.
Not all the maps are balanced. If you were not playing the Heir to The Throne map, start there because it is generally the best balanced. Some maps are impossible.
Your other criticisms are by design. Part of the game is working around limits. The game is designed so that you cannot use overwhelming numbers to win. In fact getting 2000 gold is generally a sign of a map that isn't working anyway. You should be fighting an enemy that is for the most part equal to you. (except for the controlling intelligence)
Yes, but none of that is near the advance seen when civilization moved from hunter gathers following the wild (not domestic) herds to farming in the first place.
Write it yourself... VOIP is still young. Linux was really hard to install before slackware and the like came out. It wasn't easy until RedHat came along.
In time VOIP will become easy, but for now you need to be willing to learn all the hard details. The best way to do this is setup a system at home. Until it is ready don't go live with it, but just start testing. Then write docs to help everyone else. A book would be nice. Once it is working and you understand it go live.
Though outsourcing telephone often does make sense.
To be fair to NASA, there isn't much you can do in the two shuttle cases. The by the time the problems were obvious in the two shuttle disaster it was too late to do anything. In this case there was time to figure out what was wrong after it went wrong. I don't know if there is anything they could have inspected to see and prevent this problem in Apollo 13, but is wasn't near as serious as the Shuttle disasters.
Apollo 13 had several minutes of thinking this was another minor issue before they realized there was something major. IIRC Challenger had ~90 second between fire and hitting the water (which is what killed the crew). Columbia had a little longer, but it was too late to do anything even if someone had realized the heat shield (tiles) had failed.
NASA has not since had a chance like this: an obviously recognizeable disaster that can be recovered from. Every disaster since has been unrecoverable.
Back when we first quit the migratory life to farm we made a lot of great strides, but what has changed since then? We still grow the same corn. Sure we have tractors now, but even they have not advanced in years again.
There are points in time where everything comes together and makes what seems like giant leaps. However they are not as much as they seem. Things have to build for a long time before the technology is ready for the leap. Then we make the leap quick, and have to settle down because there is very little more we can.
Computers have been advancing fast for years, but there is evidence that Moore's law is coming to an end. (though there is some hope that it might continue for a few more years) That is the way everything is.
I have to agree with the other anonymous coward: most people would have worked night and day in that situation.
I'd ask anyone who would not willingly do the same without complaint to remove themselves from the human population, but such a person doesn't exist (though a few might claim they would when not in that position) so there is no point.
Sorry, but the math doesn't add up. Back when distributed.net was first starting on RC56 I calculated that the cost of electricity to run enough 386s to equal one Pentium pro-200 (Then the fastest chip at the task and you paid for that power) was greater than the cost of the ppro-200 system! I haven't since done the calculations for modern systems, but it still applies.
That is for a task that scales well to multiple CPUs. Most computer tasks do not scale well to multiprocessor systems. So in the real world those old systems are worth even less.
Okay, I don't need any dumb terminals. I don't need computers. I can get everything I need on 10 acres of land: food, clothing, shelter, and even raise offspring on it. (If I can find a girl willing to breed with an uneducated guy who lives in a one room cabin)
I want more though. I having like the ability to read. I like lights that come on with just a flick of a switch. I like getting fresh fish and vegetables flown in, in the middle of winter. I like heat that I don't need to tend myself. I like Air Conditioning on those really hot days.
Happy? I have just admitted that I don't need most of what I have, and I don't have what it takes to get what I really need on my own.
I want some real dumb terminals. I think an old dumb terminal where everything is printed on paper would be perfect for one corner of the living room. (Perhaps a Ms. PacMan game in the other) Even though I rarely use my Sun3 systems I like having them around.
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Don't forget that they can have things that the Navy doesn't have. Things like swimming pools, racquetball courts, bowling alleys, high class restaurants and movie theaters. If they are smart they will have a lecture hall with guest speakers like Donald Knuth (I don't know if he personally would go, but speakers of his class). Not to mention live bands.
Since they are not moving (at least not far, if they want to be close to LA) they don't have to worry about people swimming/diving in the ocean around the ship. You could take a boat and go fishing, or just fish off the side of the ship. Have to be careful to remain in international waters, but that isn't too hard if you pay attention.
If it were me I'd make this into a real cruise ship, and travel a little. When an executive wants to meet with his underlings he boards in L.A. (the workers without VISAs can't get off, but they can enter US waters if I understand law), and gets off in Mexico City. It is a working vacation, but give the executive the full first class cruise experience while he is not working.
Note that this is all things they can do. They can also turn it into another Triangle Shirt factory. Your guess is as good as mine about what it will really be like. My guess is it will be somewhere in between. Not the full luxury cruise after work, but not slave labor either.
As annoying as it is, that paperwork is important. We cannot make another saturn V because some of the paperwork has been lost. Of course if you wanted to create a new Saturn V you would start from scratch because you want modern technology, but still it would be helpful to know how any why the Saturn V was done the way it was, and what problems they had to work around.
Even when the paperwork is obsolete it is useful to get a picture of where you were.
Paperwork is your checklist. Many times in my life I thought everything was done until I went through the checklist. If you don't do the paperwork you don't know if you checked everything. It would be really a bummer to find that the main fuel tank was never filled, only "topped off" to replace evaporation/leakage while waiting on the pad. (that is just enough fuel to get off the pad, but not enough to get into space) Only by running through a checklist can you be sure that step was done.
Remember the saturn Moon probe of a few months back where they forgot to put turn the radio on in the checklist? The radio wasn't turned on. There are plenty of major mistakes that only doing the paperwork (annoying as it is) can prevent. Of course doing the paperwork won't find problems that aren't in the checklists. The sheare volume of things that need to be done mean that for minor things you sometimes hope someone did it, but live with it when someone forgets.
Don't forget that at one time not all states required a photo on drivers licenses. I know one person who (20+ years ago) had to have here photo visa card with her all the time because her drivers license didn't have a photo. (It was optional in that state for some people and she met the requirements so they didn't even try to get her in for a photo) Her school checked photo Id for tests, so her Id was her Visa. Write a check and the clerk needs a photo id - Visa again.
If you need to present two forms of id you are otherwise in trouble. Nearly everyone (In the US anyway) has a drivers license, but what else is Id? A photo credit card counts. A passport counts as two, but few people have one.
Otherwise you are right, photos are not of much use on your credit card. When they are of use it isn't for security though, it is for id in general.
Koffice has the same problem: lack of developers. And reading the comments I'm sure that Koffice is much easier to develop. (but I have never looked at OOo source so I can't be sure) OOo is better, but Koffice is coming along nicely, and in many cases is better designed, in part because they started from scratch a few years ago, while OOo is an old app that was open sourced.
If they are European, then they cannot patent software - yet. (Or do some countries allow software patents already?) Even then, in Europe a patent must be filed before public disclosure. The US is one of the few (only?) countries that allows patenting after disclosure.
Though your point still stands, those old things are not patentable.
Well yeah, but if you have a family history of Type 2 you would be even more foolish than most people to not being carefully fit and slim, while eathing a healthy diet. (I don't use health food because some of what is called "health foods" are bad for you)
Even if you don't have a family history if you are a fat, fast food only, coach potato you are in danger of Type 2 diabetes.
There are controlable and uncontrollable. You cannot control your genetics (at least not yet, and I'm not hopeful for my lifetime). You can control those other factors, and controlling those other factors is often enough to make a difference.
I know someone Type 2s who just be fixing their diet do not need to take any shots. If that person hadn't made is diet of mostly fast food for 30 he might not be a Type 2 today. He is lucky, but if the doctors hadn't discovered the problem early and he continued on with the bad habits he is likely to need shots 4 times a day by now.
In short: they are factors, but they are not something to downplay.
Don't forget that much of that is optional features. A trucking company doesn't need the WiFi card, or the webcam. They just want a display (controlled remotely) to tell the driver where his next stop is, perhaps with a few acknowledgment buttons.
No, we want to use them, we just don't want to pay the cost to make them work.
If it was one block from my door to the train, one or two switches total to work, and didn't take forever (ie. 3 hours to go as far as a car in 30 minutes) to make the trip I would take the train. However there is no way people on my income (and I make above average) could afford the ticket prices to have that level of convince. So only large cities where the population density allows sharing the costs between more people than are in my neighborhood have trains.
So it is just a little farther because the tower you are reaching is one you are on the horizon for, not the one directly below you. Either way you still have clear line of sight, with no hills or trees in the way. (They are called towers for a reason)
They can aim antennas down, but most antenna designs that are aimable shoot a signal in the opposite direction of what they are aimed as well. (but not to the side, and generally a narrower and weaker signal)
Planes might seems like a good Faraday cage, but I have used my cell phone on a plane before. (We were on the ground but had to wait half an hour because an earlier emergency was at our gate, so the captin let us use phones while waiting). People also use phones in campers which have a lot of metal. Signals will get through if you don't have a perfect Faraday cage, though it may be weakened, or otherwise be unusable.
They make cells that are more than 6 miles wide, and cell have to deal with hills and trees. 5280 feet are in a mile. A plane at 30,000 feet is within normal range of some tower. However the plane has line of sight, so 40,000 feet is likely to still be in range, even though that distance on the ground might be just out of range.
The translation of the King James Bible predated the time when spelling was standardized. Over time the spelling of words was standardized, and in turn the spelling used in the bible was updated.
Much the same reason that many people prefer the NIV translation to KJV. The king James translation is just fine, except it was done in the early 1600s, and uses the language they spoke then[1]. Which is not the language as we speak it today, though it is close enough that we can understand it. As time goes on there will be a new popular translation that replaces NIV.
[1]Actually it doesn't. The translators of the King James Bible choose to invest a more formal English that was never spoken. For purposes of my point you can consider it the language spoken then, but you should be aware that people didn't speak like that back then.
The problem is then some farmers go bankrupt. Next year there is a drought and it turns out that we need all the food from last year, but some farmers were unable to sell it, so it ended up rotting in the field. (most likely storage bins) Now there is a famine because there are not enough farmers to take care of the bad times.
I have basic needs: food, clothing, shelter. I want farmers to always produce more food than I need because, that is the only chance I have that there will be enough food even when several disasters strike at once.
If he issues you claim are a problem then you need to fire your network administrator, or give him enough budget to do his job.
When you roll out VOIP he should figure out how much more traffic will be generators and modify the network as required so this issue doesn't exist. The additional routers and switches required should be charged to the VOIP upgrade - though in fact you were close to needing it anyway.
As the company grows the administrator should be planning so that there is never a shortage of bandwidth. As you get closer to the limits you buy more.
When you have an incompetent administrator he will not be running the reports required to notice bandwidth growth, nor will he notice the company is hiring more people (even though he has to activate all the new ports) which is a sign that more network bandwidth will be required. A good administrator will be on top of the companies plans and take action so that this isn't a problem.
Text Adventures have graphics stuck in the late 1500s. (That being when English had the last major change. You would not recognize the English of 1400, but Shakesphere writing 200 years latter, is understandable)
If you ever play one you will discover some of the best graphics anywhere. Who can forget the "breath taking view" in Zork I?
It is open source. If the graphics are ugly that means they are waiting for you to make nice ones!
I'm a coder. I can write great code. I have no talent for graphics. I'll write the game, but until someone who has talent does graphics it will look ugly.
Allies are groups that agree to do battle for each other. You cannot be allied with both France in Germany in a WWII setting. You can ignore the war as neutral Switzerland did, or you can join one side and piss the other off. (sometimes you don't have a choice depending on geography it is either become our allies, or we will kill to get your resources)
France and England had an Agreement before WWII that if one went to war the other automatically would too. (though that doesn't mean it is enforced, France and Checkoslovakia had such an agreement yet France ignored it when Germany invaded Checkoslovakia)
That is part of the game: figuring the right balance of veterans and gold to win the entire thing.
Wesnoth is not about all powerful characters. Yes a level 3 character is powerful (some get to level 5, but most stop at level 3), but a few level 1s can take it out. Wesnoth is designed so that those high level characters die once in a while. You should always have some low level characters moving up so you can afford to sacrifice those high level characters without losing much.
As for tight passes, Don't fight in them, retreat a little so you have some room to work. They can only fight on low level character at a time. Keep wearing them out.
Not all the maps are balanced. If you were not playing the Heir to The Throne map, start there because it is generally the best balanced. Some maps are impossible.
Your other criticisms are by design. Part of the game is working around limits. The game is designed so that you cannot use overwhelming numbers to win. In fact getting 2000 gold is generally a sign of a map that isn't working anyway. You should be fighting an enemy that is for the most part equal to you. (except for the controlling intelligence)
Yes, but none of that is near the advance seen when civilization moved from hunter gathers following the wild (not domestic) herds to farming in the first place.
Write it yourself... VOIP is still young. Linux was really hard to install before slackware and the like came out. It wasn't easy until RedHat came along.
In time VOIP will become easy, but for now you need to be willing to learn all the hard details. The best way to do this is setup a system at home. Until it is ready don't go live with it, but just start testing. Then write docs to help everyone else. A book would be nice. Once it is working and you understand it go live.
Though outsourcing telephone often does make sense.
To be fair to NASA, there isn't much you can do in the two shuttle cases. The by the time the problems were obvious in the two shuttle disaster it was too late to do anything. In this case there was time to figure out what was wrong after it went wrong. I don't know if there is anything they could have inspected to see and prevent this problem in Apollo 13, but is wasn't near as serious as the Shuttle disasters.
Apollo 13 had several minutes of thinking this was another minor issue before they realized there was something major. IIRC Challenger had ~90 second between fire and hitting the water (which is what killed the crew). Columbia had a little longer, but it was too late to do anything even if someone had realized the heat shield (tiles) had failed.
NASA has not since had a chance like this: an obviously recognizeable disaster that can be recovered from. Every disaster since has been unrecoverable.
Back when we first quit the migratory life to farm we made a lot of great strides, but what has changed since then? We still grow the same corn. Sure we have tractors now, but even they have not advanced in years again.
There are points in time where everything comes together and makes what seems like giant leaps. However they are not as much as they seem. Things have to build for a long time before the technology is ready for the leap. Then we make the leap quick, and have to settle down because there is very little more we can.
Computers have been advancing fast for years, but there is evidence that Moore's law is coming to an end. (though there is some hope that it might continue for a few more years) That is the way everything is.
I have to agree with the other anonymous coward: most people would have worked night and day in that situation.
I'd ask anyone who would not willingly do the same without complaint to remove themselves from the human population, but such a person doesn't exist (though a few might claim they would when not in that position) so there is no point.
Sorry, but the math doesn't add up. Back when distributed.net was first starting on RC56 I calculated that the cost of electricity to run enough 386s to equal one Pentium pro-200 (Then the fastest chip at the task and you paid for that power) was greater than the cost of the ppro-200 system! I haven't since done the calculations for modern systems, but it still applies.
That is for a task that scales well to multiple CPUs. Most computer tasks do not scale well to multiprocessor systems. So in the real world those old systems are worth even less.
Okay, I don't need any dumb terminals. I don't need computers. I can get everything I need on 10 acres of land: food, clothing, shelter, and even raise offspring on it. (If I can find a girl willing to breed with an uneducated guy who lives in a one room cabin)
I want more though. I having like the ability to read. I like lights that come on with just a flick of a switch. I like getting fresh fish and vegetables flown in, in the middle of winter. I like heat that I don't need to tend myself. I like Air Conditioning on those really hot days.
Happy? I have just admitted that I don't need most of what I have, and I don't have what it takes to get what I really need on my own.
I want some real dumb terminals. I think an old dumb terminal where everything is printed on paper would be perfect for one corner of the living room. (Perhaps a Ms. PacMan game in the other) Even though I rarely use my Sun3 systems I like having them around.