An upgrade to a PS4 now would cost huge amounts to develop, would have to be sold at a loss, wouldn't offer an immediate and significant improvement in graphics or gameplay, and would be followed by a new offering from Microsoft and Nintendo fairly quickly. And most of all, the success of the Wii showed that you don't need the biggest processor to make money.
Personally I see two paths to the next generation. One is a game that can't be made 3D without either a hardware upgrade or a graphics downgrade, combined with a super-secret new console that we don't hear about until it's almost on the shelves. Obviously won't happen until 3D TV's are common. The other is the Wii being pushed to slightly above 360/PS3 hardware levels, with a price similar to current PS3/360 prices. The former path is probably more likely and will result in a higher-quality next generation, the latter would probably deal a serious blow to the nextgen Microsoft and Sony offerings. I suppose if neither happens in the next few years a more typical generation movement would happen.
I think the editor is mixing up "impetus for discussion about the definition of planet (which ended up excluding Pluto)" with "reasons for the final definition of planet (which excludes Pluto)".
What actually happened was: we discovered Eris, and the IAU said "huh. It seems likely that there are hundreds of objects large enough that we'll have to decide if they're planets, where before everything we found was clearly either a planet or an asteroid/comet. Not to mention all these planets we're finding around other stars... We need a good definition of planet to go forward with." The final definition agreed upon excluded Pluto.
What the editor appears to believe happened is: we discovered Eris, and the IAU said "huh. This is bigger then Pluto, so either both are planets or neither are. We don't want to increase the number of planets, so lets go with 'neither'."
At least, I don't see any reason why someone might think an adjustment to the size of Eris would cause a reconsideration of Pluto as a planet unless something like the second was what happened.
Mostly because car manufacturers don't all own gas companies, or have exclusivity agreements with them.
No, really. If they did own gas companies, they would lock their own cars such that they could only use the right brand of gas, and then they wouldn't care about how much fuel got wasted since any drop in customers due to bad MPG would be made up for by increased fuel sales. Then we'd have reason to hack in, to remove the station-specific locks, and to correct the fuel injection amounts.
As it is, it's in the manufacturer's best interests to get those as good as possible on their own, and they do a near-optimal job. Nothing to fix.
We'll see if this continues once actual computer interfaces in the passenger compartment become commonplace, however. If they decide to try to prevent us from adding our own applications and similar, I'm sure we'll see just as much jail-breaking for cars as we do for phones.
There are three ways to do 3D. In each case you give up something in order to add a second picture on top of the first. The most basic is the red-blue version, where you give up color and wear glasses with red and blue lenses. The version currently popular in theaters is polarization, where you give up the polarization of light (which you don't notice in any case) and wear glasses with lenses polarized in two different directions. The third version is one in which you flip back and forth between two different pictures, giving up half your refresh rate and wearing glasses with shutters that block light to one eye at a time, at your refresh rate.
You seem to be conflating options two and three. Theaters can use cheap polarized glasses that indeed cost a couple of dollars at most. But the type of 3D where refresh rate matters requires glasses that can switch between black and clear perfectly in sync with your television, which as you say must be 120hz or more. THAT hardware isn't going to be cheap. (And to use the polarization-type 3D at home you'd need a special screen that I don't think you can buy at this point.)
Assuming it's small enough to only cause local devastation, and so close that we have to pick part of the earth for it to hit... I'd assume we'd sink it in the middle of the largest ocean on the correct side of the planet.
Yea! But sometimes you lose count, especially with several people on the same plan. If only there were some kind of notification when you reach your monthly limit...
I know most of these are supposed to be funny, but...
It will not pick up hitchhikers.
Since it is based on the driving of people with impeccable records, I suspect it will stop to let people pull out when appropriate.
I don't think it has fingers.
I doubt it will warn of speed traps.
It will certainly pull over for emergency vehicles.
I would bet that it does draft, though at a careful distance.
It will bring you to hookers and blackjack, if you want.
And I'd bet that new laws have to be passed to decide who gets the ticket. My guess at the final outcome is that the AI gets certified and as long as you follow the instructions nobody gets a ticket (though stack up enough and the AI's certification gets revoked, or something). Without new laws the person in control of the vehicle gets the ticket (and there are plenty of laws about what qualifies as "in control", mostly because of DUI laws).
The offenses for drink-related offenses are often far too lenient. But the laws deciding what counts as a drink-related offense? In just about every state, sleeping in the drivers seat of your car while you have a.08 BAC is a DUI. In some, sleeping in the back seat of your car with a.05 BAC is a DUI.
Bullshit like that dilutes the meaning of actual DUI's, and MADD fully supports it.
Well the obvious way to implement it unobtrusively would be to show the "instant" results where it currently shows the pages from history and guesses at what you're typing. Possibly formatted more like google search results or something.
But at the very least it should be easy to turn off. I mean, I currently use the search bar as a calculator occasionally, and I'm going to be pretty pissed if chrome decides to overwrite my current webpage with a search for a calculation.
The real story is that we had a solar minimum that was much longer then expected, so this is the first sun-related news we've had in years that wasn't "absolutely nothing is happening".
It's also about time to lay the groundwork for the "is the world going to end? Find out at 11!" stories that will run throughout 2012. At least one of the theories has the solar maximum playing some part and that doesn't work if people aren't aware that the sun shoots crap at us from time to time.
Thing 1: We don't know what lies behind the event horizon, since nothing (no light, no radio waves, no physical objects, no information) can come out. It's a one-way gate. Theory is all well and good, but the only way to find out for sure what is on the other side would be to remove or disrupt the event horizon. Scientists by their very nature aren't the kind of people who can fail to see what's inside a black hole, given the opportunity.
Thing 2: "When are they planning to do this?" Well, for starters there aren't any black holes that it would be even possible to reach by 2012, and the kind of mass/energy manipulation we'd have to do to impart significant angular momentum on something a dozen times as massive as the sun... well, it's not in the near future. In short, they aren't planning to do this, just thinking about how they *could* do it if they had a convenient black hole and near-enough limitless energy.
Oh yea, likely story. Just because there was something that looks like the UFO in the same place at the same time doesn't mean that it was the same thing.
Far more likely is that the Falcon 9 second stage hit an alien spacecraft, causing it (the alien spacecraft) to spin and spew gas!
Should we be concerned that only 30% of scientists adopt a position of agnosticism towards matters of leprechauns? Surely in the absence of reproducible evidence either way, the scientific position is to be non-committal?
Okay, now imagine they send you a notice saying that you have a choice of paying $1,500 or being sued for $10,000. You didn't pirate the movie in question.
There is a persistent and perplexing belief in our culture that there is such a thing as a "magic word". It goes back to the times when people thought magic was real, or perhaps even further. We *force* people to say "sorry" as if just saying it made it true. The same with "please" and "thank you". And the same with curse words. "Damn" is bad, but "darn" is okay, even when you mean exactly the same thing. Why? Because it's the words that are bad, not the meaning (well, sometimes the meaning as well as in the case of "fuck"). They're magic.
Hell, I personally knew someone who seriously banned the use of "ridiculous" at her house on the basis that it had a syllable that sounded the same as "dick". The same person banned Harry Potter books to her kids because of the whole "witchcraft" thing, which nicely brings us back to my first point.
There are performance issues. This is especially true on mobile phones and the like that support hardware acceleration for H.264 but not Theora (though obviously this would change if everyone adopted Theora instead of H.264).
But there's more to Theora then "open source". The H.264 specifications are open. The problem is the patents. Namely that there is a "free period" for implementations of H.264, and once that ends it will suddenly start costing money to support. Microsoft, Apple, and others own some of these patents and so won't have to pay. Just about everyone else *will* have to pay, and so opposes H.264 even if the alternatives are inferior. (And google recently announced an alternative that might be more palatable to the "performance at any cost" crowd who support H.264 despite its non-free nature, as I understand it.)
Yes, that wouldn't be admissible under Illinois law (to the best of my understanding, IANAL). Or the law of 11 other states. In New Jersey (where this took place) and most other states in the union, you only need one party's consent.
Yes, Google has to respect Chinese law if it wants to do business in China. As a result, it has decided not to do business in China. (Well, there are almost certainly other significant reasons as well, but the censorship laws are part of the reason).
There *is* something they can do that would be worse than losing a child. He has another kid, and this one isn't even a step-child. Take the kid away for its own safety, never let him have custody over a child again. And a few years in jail plus a criminal record wouldn't hurt either.
Perhaps some had an allergy, or their insurance didn't cover it, or their immune system was too compromised for the vaccine to work effectively, or they had an appointment scheduled for next Tuesday. Those people would usually be protected anyway by herd immunity, but when people start deliberately not getting a vaccine on a large scale, that doesn't work anymore.
Nobody out there not convinced by the existing lines of evidence proving birds are dinosaurs is going to be convinced by this. And don't kid yourself, there are lots of such people.
"Suppose you were an indie musician who sold your songs online..."
To be awarded damages you have to *know* you were filing a false claim. And at this point the difference between a self-represented indie musician (who accidentally flagged a single fair-use video in a long list of infringing ones) and a team of lawyers specializing in copyright law (who flag every video using any part of "their" songs, with no apparent effort to identify fair use) becomes important. One can argue that they missed some nuance of "fair use". The other really can't. Especially when they do it over and over again with no apparent effort reduce the number of falsely flagged videos.
The point of asking for penalties in this case is not to set a precedent of penalizing every mistakenly sent DMCA claim, it's to change the attitude of "we'll take down every possibly infringing video and let people who think they have fair use file counter-notices" into "hey, lets only file DMCA complaints against videos that are actually infringing."
Slashdot Mirror
An upgrade to a PS4 now would cost huge amounts to develop, would have to be sold at a loss, wouldn't offer an immediate and significant improvement in graphics or gameplay, and would be followed by a new offering from Microsoft and Nintendo fairly quickly. And most of all, the success of the Wii showed that you don't need the biggest processor to make money.
Personally I see two paths to the next generation. One is a game that can't be made 3D without either a hardware upgrade or a graphics downgrade, combined with a super-secret new console that we don't hear about until it's almost on the shelves. Obviously won't happen until 3D TV's are common. The other is the Wii being pushed to slightly above 360/PS3 hardware levels, with a price similar to current PS3/360 prices. The former path is probably more likely and will result in a higher-quality next generation, the latter would probably deal a serious blow to the nextgen Microsoft and Sony offerings. I suppose if neither happens in the next few years a more typical generation movement would happen.
I think the editor is mixing up "impetus for discussion about the definition of planet (which ended up excluding Pluto)" with "reasons for the final definition of planet (which excludes Pluto)".
What actually happened was: we discovered Eris, and the IAU said "huh. It seems likely that there are hundreds of objects large enough that we'll have to decide if they're planets, where before everything we found was clearly either a planet or an asteroid/comet. Not to mention all these planets we're finding around other stars... We need a good definition of planet to go forward with." The final definition agreed upon excluded Pluto.
What the editor appears to believe happened is: we discovered Eris, and the IAU said "huh. This is bigger then Pluto, so either both are planets or neither are. We don't want to increase the number of planets, so lets go with 'neither'."
At least, I don't see any reason why someone might think an adjustment to the size of Eris would cause a reconsideration of Pluto as a planet unless something like the second was what happened.
Mostly because car manufacturers don't all own gas companies, or have exclusivity agreements with them.
No, really. If they did own gas companies, they would lock their own cars such that they could only use the right brand of gas, and then they wouldn't care about how much fuel got wasted since any drop in customers due to bad MPG would be made up for by increased fuel sales. Then we'd have reason to hack in, to remove the station-specific locks, and to correct the fuel injection amounts.
As it is, it's in the manufacturer's best interests to get those as good as possible on their own, and they do a near-optimal job. Nothing to fix.
We'll see if this continues once actual computer interfaces in the passenger compartment become commonplace, however. If they decide to try to prevent us from adding our own applications and similar, I'm sure we'll see just as much jail-breaking for cars as we do for phones.
There are three ways to do 3D. In each case you give up something in order to add a second picture on top of the first. The most basic is the red-blue version, where you give up color and wear glasses with red and blue lenses. The version currently popular in theaters is polarization, where you give up the polarization of light (which you don't notice in any case) and wear glasses with lenses polarized in two different directions. The third version is one in which you flip back and forth between two different pictures, giving up half your refresh rate and wearing glasses with shutters that block light to one eye at a time, at your refresh rate.
You seem to be conflating options two and three. Theaters can use cheap polarized glasses that indeed cost a couple of dollars at most. But the type of 3D where refresh rate matters requires glasses that can switch between black and clear perfectly in sync with your television, which as you say must be 120hz or more. THAT hardware isn't going to be cheap. (And to use the polarization-type 3D at home you'd need a special screen that I don't think you can buy at this point.)
Assuming it's small enough to only cause local devastation, and so close that we have to pick part of the earth for it to hit... I'd assume we'd sink it in the middle of the largest ocean on the correct side of the planet.
Yea! But sometimes you lose count, especially with several people on the same plan. If only there were some kind of notification when you reach your monthly limit...
I know most of these are supposed to be funny, but...
It will not pick up hitchhikers.
Since it is based on the driving of people with impeccable records, I suspect it will stop to let people pull out when appropriate.
I don't think it has fingers.
I doubt it will warn of speed traps.
It will certainly pull over for emergency vehicles.
I would bet that it does draft, though at a careful distance.
It will bring you
to hookers and blackjack, if you want.
And I'd bet that new laws have to be passed to decide who gets the ticket. My guess at the final outcome is that the AI gets certified and as long as you follow the instructions nobody gets a ticket (though stack up enough and the AI's certification gets revoked, or something). Without new laws the person in control of the vehicle gets the ticket (and there are plenty of laws about what qualifies as "in control", mostly because of DUI laws).
The offenses for drink-related offenses are often far too lenient. But the laws deciding what counts as a drink-related offense? In just about every state, sleeping in the drivers seat of your car while you have a .08 BAC is a DUI. In some, sleeping in the back seat of your car with a .05 BAC is a DUI.
Bullshit like that dilutes the meaning of actual DUI's, and MADD fully supports it.
Well the obvious way to implement it unobtrusively would be to show the "instant" results where it currently shows the pages from history and guesses at what you're typing. Possibly formatted more like google search results or something.
But at the very least it should be easy to turn off. I mean, I currently use the search bar as a calculator occasionally, and I'm going to be pretty pissed if chrome decides to overwrite my current webpage with a search for a calculation.
The real story is that we had a solar minimum that was much longer then expected, so this is the first sun-related news we've had in years that wasn't "absolutely nothing is happening".
It's also about time to lay the groundwork for the "is the world going to end? Find out at 11!" stories that will run throughout 2012. At least one of the theories has the solar maximum playing some part and that doesn't work if people aren't aware that the sun shoots crap at us from time to time.
Thing 1: We don't know what lies behind the event horizon, since nothing (no light, no radio waves, no physical objects, no information) can come out. It's a one-way gate. Theory is all well and good, but the only way to find out for sure what is on the other side would be to remove or disrupt the event horizon. Scientists by their very nature aren't the kind of people who can fail to see what's inside a black hole, given the opportunity.
Thing 2: "When are they planning to do this?" Well, for starters there aren't any black holes that it would be even possible to reach by 2012, and the kind of mass/energy manipulation we'd have to do to impart significant angular momentum on something a dozen times as massive as the sun... well, it's not in the near future. In short, they aren't planning to do this, just thinking about how they *could* do it if they had a convenient black hole and near-enough limitless energy.
Oh yea, likely story. Just because there was something that looks like the UFO in the same place at the same time doesn't mean that it was the same thing.
Far more likely is that the Falcon 9 second stage hit an alien spacecraft, causing it (the alien spacecraft) to spin and spew gas!
Should we be concerned that only 30% of scientists adopt a position of agnosticism towards matters of leprechauns? Surely in the absence of reproducible evidence either way, the scientific position is to be non-committal?
In short, no.
Okay, now imagine they send you a notice saying that you have a choice of paying $1,500 or being sued for $10,000. You didn't pirate the movie in question.
There is a persistent and perplexing belief in our culture that there is such a thing as a "magic word". It goes back to the times when people thought magic was real, or perhaps even further. We *force* people to say "sorry" as if just saying it made it true. The same with "please" and "thank you". And the same with curse words. "Damn" is bad, but "darn" is okay, even when you mean exactly the same thing. Why? Because it's the words that are bad, not the meaning (well, sometimes the meaning as well as in the case of "fuck"). They're magic.
Hell, I personally knew someone who seriously banned the use of "ridiculous" at her house on the basis that it had a syllable that sounded the same as "dick". The same person banned Harry Potter books to her kids because of the whole "witchcraft" thing, which nicely brings us back to my first point.
There are performance issues. This is especially true on mobile phones and the like that support hardware acceleration for H.264 but not Theora (though obviously this would change if everyone adopted Theora instead of H.264).
But there's more to Theora then "open source". The H.264 specifications are open. The problem is the patents. Namely that there is a "free period" for implementations of H.264, and once that ends it will suddenly start costing money to support. Microsoft, Apple, and others own some of these patents and so won't have to pay. Just about everyone else *will* have to pay, and so opposes H.264 even if the alternatives are inferior. (And google recently announced an alternative that might be more palatable to the "performance at any cost" crowd who support H.264 despite its non-free nature, as I understand it.)
The LOC measurement is uncompressed plain text.
The VL measurement is uncompressed images of parchment.
Yes, that wouldn't be admissible under Illinois law (to the best of my understanding, IANAL). Or the law of 11 other states. In New Jersey (where this took place) and most other states in the union, you only need one party's consent.
The CIS includes Russia. Russia is a nuclear state. The ruling does not apply to nuclear states.
Yes, Google has to respect Chinese law if it wants to do business in China. As a result, it has decided not to do business in China. (Well, there are almost certainly other significant reasons as well, but the censorship laws are part of the reason).
There *is* something they can do that would be worse than losing a child. He has another kid, and this one isn't even a step-child. Take the kid away for its own safety, never let him have custody over a child again. And a few years in jail plus a criminal record wouldn't hurt either.
Ah, what is the difference between tritium and hydrogen?
Perhaps some had an allergy, or their insurance didn't cover it, or their immune system was too compromised for the vaccine to work effectively, or they had an appointment scheduled for next Tuesday. Those people would usually be protected anyway by herd immunity, but when people start deliberately not getting a vaccine on a large scale, that doesn't work anymore.
"If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period."
Nobody out there not convinced by the existing lines of evidence proving birds are dinosaurs is going to be convinced by this. And don't kid yourself, there are lots of such people.
"Suppose you were an indie musician who sold your songs online..."
To be awarded damages you have to *know* you were filing a false claim. And at this point the difference between a self-represented indie musician (who accidentally flagged a single fair-use video in a long list of infringing ones) and a team of lawyers specializing in copyright law (who flag every video using any part of "their" songs, with no apparent effort to identify fair use) becomes important. One can argue that they missed some nuance of "fair use". The other really can't. Especially when they do it over and over again with no apparent effort reduce the number of falsely flagged videos.
The point of asking for penalties in this case is not to set a precedent of penalizing every mistakenly sent DMCA claim, it's to change the attitude of "we'll take down every possibly infringing video and let people who think they have fair use file counter-notices" into "hey, lets only file DMCA complaints against videos that are actually infringing."