To put it in perspective, game consoles are sustained entirely by the limited market of gamers. "Casual" gaming was not even seen as a market segment until fairly recently with the rise of mobile gaming and the Wii. Until the PS2, game consoles had no purpose other than playing games either.
I agree there are going to be significant hurdles to overcome in achieving the economies of scale needed to push this on a mass-market basis. But they're on the appropriate path by drumming up core development support for the Oculus Rift. They can't skip the initial step of getting developer support, because they need to show the world a fully realized "vertical slice" of gaming in VR as a working solution, so that people can see the incremental benefits over gaming on a lighted square/rectangle. It's potentially a very significant benefit, comparable to the step up from 480i resolutions to 720p resolution. This can unlock sales to niche PC gamers who can afford the expensive add-on, and are willing to endure technical hurdles. It'll flounder at this level for some time, but the key goal at this point is proving it out as a distinctive gaming experience.
Once that is established, console manufacturers are now invited to step up to add support for a version of the device, in the same way the PS2 eyetoy led to a PS3 camera add-on and the development of Xbox's competing Kinect add-on...which has finally led to a pack-in camera device on the Xbox One. An incredibly difficult path, but one that has already been successfully navigated by a device that delivered far less on it's vision than the Oculus Rift's prototype.
I have to disagree there. I've seen a few interviews with Carmack on this technology and it doesn't seem that he's fighting for "perfection". In the interviews he cites specific numbers he believes are necessary to achieve immersive VR. He's not aiming at an abstract concept of making it better and better, but rather minimum requirements (for example, 20ms input lag).
There have been plenty of VR devices in the past, and they have been huge letdowns because people hear VR and imagine that it's like seeing another reality. But it's never been immersive in the way people envisioned, and part of Carmack's research has been on pinning down the specific factors that drop immersion for these devices. They've already gotten 3D and peripheral vision nailed down pretty early on, but one of the key metrics he's looking for is input lag.
"Virtual reality (VR) is one of the most demanding human-in-the-loop applications from a latency standpoint. The latency between the physical movement of a userâ(TM)s head and updated photons from a head mounted display reaching their eyes is one of the most critical factors in providing a high quality experience. Human sensory systems can detect very small relative delays in parts of the visual or, especially, audio fields, but when absolute delays are below approximately 20 milliseconds they are generally imperceptible. Interactive 3D systems today typically have latencies that are several times that figure, but alternate configurations of the same hardware components can allow that target to be reached." -Carmack
Some highlights from that post:
" A total system latency of 50 milliseconds will feel responsive, but still noticeable laggy.
- 20 milliseconds or less will provide the minimum level of latency deemed acceptable."
"Actions that require simulation state changes, like flipping a switch or firing a weapon, still need to go through the full pipeline for 32 â" 48 milliseconds of latency based on what scan line the result winds up displaying on the screen, and translational information may not be completely faithfully represented below the 16 â" 32 milliseconds of the view bypass rendering, but the critical head orientation feedback can be provided in 2 â" 18 milliseconds on a 60 hz display. In conjunction with low latency sensors and displays, this will generally be perceived as immediate. Continuous time warping opens up the possibility of latencies below 3 milliseconds, which may cross largely unexplored thresholds in human / computer interactivity!"
Part of what made Star Control 2 so special was the sense of discovery. I loved what was in SC2, but I don't want them to slavishly recreate the game (I can replay Ur-quan masters when I want that.)
I wouldn't mind if none of the old races made an appearance so long as they swing for the fences on making creative new races.
Star Control 2 has long been in my top 5 games of all time. It holds up shockingly well after recent replays via Ur-Quan masters.
The universe they painted was amazingly detailed for the resources they had at the time. There was an immense amount of content in those races and their histories, amid a whole galaxy in which to explore and discover. I love the creativity they put into those races, not every race was just another boring palette-change antropomorph. In this regard this game didn't see any real competition until Mass Effect's trilogy (and SC2's races were still more interesting, despite not having time to go into as much dept as in ME1-3).
And the story kept moving on without you! If you don't visit certain parts of the galaxy, or fail to resolve certain quests, whole races can go extinct before you get there. You could watch the spheres of territory shift over time! It gave you a sense that this galaxy was alive, unlike most games where it feels like you're just running through a museum of animatronic exhibits that only move when you come by to trigger them. I could hardly believe it the first time I saw a race just disappear off the starmap.
At it's foundation, a followup to the game doesn't need to have crazy graphics or elaborate new gameplay mechanics just to keep up with the games that had come afterwards. The core gameplay still holds up perfectly well. They mainly need good writers and a polished interface.
I think you're right, I don't know if I'd have the magnanimity to quietly hide while the USA is hunting me down for merely doing the right thing by blowing the whistle on domestic spying.
The US treated him like an enemy after that initial disclosure, I guess it's not that surprising that he retaliated as if the US was his enemy. In a way the US turned on him first.
I've audited valuation reports for used for the acquisitions of tech start-ups on behalf of a few companies. They're typically huge documents 100-200 pages long looking at historical trends, economic factors, strategy & expectations, market comparables, user base, tangle and intangible assets, if applicable, DCFs and the variables factored into that calc, revenue and opex trends/forecasting, evaluation of prior year forecasts vs. actuals. etc. etc. Lots of stuff.
But when it comes down to it, all of the calculations that really swing the valuations are all based on assumptions and judgementally selected variables. I can't prove they're doing it, but it's simple for these valuation consultants to just pick out a number and then just tweak assumptions and valuations until the calculations land on the number they wanted.
It's such a judgemental subject that the auditors can rarely call them out for having blown the valuation unless they're basing the calculations on things that are plainly and factually wrong, the assumptions need to be wildly outlandish to be seriously fought over by auditors, because the auditors argument would also have to be based on assumptions the auditors have chosen. It'd be an argument based on subjective opinion and since the auditors are being paid by the company they're auditing, the auditors only want to push on subjective matters when it's so outrageous the risk of a lawsuit outweighs the benefit of collecting audit fees from that company.
I second this, you don't have to read the bible as a religious pursuit.
Knowing what's in the bible allows you to catch a lot of references in the west, but more than that it's very interesting material from an anthropological perspective since it had such a tremendous impact on western society, and continues to do so to this day. You don't need to believe in it in order to understand that it's an incredibly significant book, and enjoy it with the kind of nerdy delight that accompanies the study of fascinating and complex apocrypha. It's useful in conversation, especially when people trot out misquotes or quote it without having understood the context of that passage.
Snowden absolutely should be pardoned for leaking information about the NSA's domestic spying activities, and/or covered under whistleblower policies. This was an act of a patriot.
But I don't think he'd get a pass for all the subsequent leaks which were only done to undermine the NSA's foreign spying (that's what they're for!). It's not benefiting US citizens or it's gov't. Now it seems like he's just trying to do as much damage to the US as he can.
Albums haven't been making musicians rich from a long time. Having their songs played on the radio didn't make them rich either.
But having their songs heard got them fans which go out and see their live shows/tours, and that makes them quite a bit of money. Merchandising/Cross promotional deals can make them quite a lot more. (Dr. Dre's Beats brand headphones have totally eclipsed the amount he made in his entire career in the music industry).
The cold hard fact here is that the changes in the music industry are going to happen, no matter what. Spotify and Pandora at least get the artists some money in the meantime. Pirates are not entitled to free music...but they're going to do their thing anyway. Giving those listeners a free stream that at least makes some returns off them gives the artist something rather than nothing.
Even if one day it becomes impossible to make a living off music, I guarantee you, there will still be plenty of music because there are just too many people who want to make music (not all of it good). They'll do it in their spare time while still holding down a full-time job, they feel they need to make that music. Whether that's fair or not, it's still true. The supply of music is overwhelming compared to the demand.
Developers find that their games need to be rebalanced for thumbsticks vs. kb/mouse users. Rebalancing their whole game around the input device takes budget away from other features and from their polish time. Ultimately, developers know they can just balance the game once around controllers(have you noticed how much slower modern shooters are compared to classic PC shooters?), then just release the game on PC for KB/M lovers.
This ensures singleplayer isn't too hard on controller users, and avoids multiplayer imbalance between controller users vs. kb/m. Developers don't need kb/m support on consoles, they can sell to those players on PC instead.
Due to lack of demand from the developers, it's hardly surprising that Sony/MS aren't interested in going into supporting kb/m. Plus Sony/MS would lose out on sales of their proprietary control input if they supported generic kb/ms.
Thanks, that was very interesting for a layperson like myself. Itâ(TM)s so obvious to the user when a program has a great interface design, but itâ(TM)s so hard to tell exactly what the designer did correctly to make it feel that way.
I don't think that "natural" is inherently better than "synthetic" either. Organic is just about meaningless to me.
However, there are still tremendous gulfs in our understanding of human nutritional needs, and the guy in the article is completely relying upon a single food source for all his needs. That ascribes a level of confidence to this "soylent" that is far above all other foods, natural or synthetic. This allows no leeway for serendipitously meeting unknown or poorly understood nutritional needs through a mixed diet.
I think the GP's position that synthetic foods can "never" take the place of of typical food is hyperbole, but I seriously doubt we've reached the level of understanding needed to achieve that goal today. Further, while there is no inherent reason why a "synthetic" food would be less nourishing than normal food, we have a wealth of empirical evidence (though poorly documented) that traditional foods provide the necessary nutrition for our current life expectancy. Synthetic foods (though better documented) just have less evidence, simply because they haven't been around as long in our diet yet. We shouldn't fear innovation, we should still proceed, just with reasonable skepticism. Admittedly, it seems a lot of people forget about the "reasonable" part in that skepticism.
A month-long search wouldn't be needed. They could simply show Kirk's landing, showing someone viewing this on a tricorder and getting up to move, cutting back to kirk's chase sequence, have "someone" yell out "Get in here!"
Explain that when old spock got marooned on the ice planet, a tricorder was included amongst the basic supplies given to him. Thus, the tricorder tracking forms the means by which Old Spock had been moving towards the same federation installation that Kirk was supposed to be headed towards, and be 1) the reason Old Spock was in the same area of the planet 2) the reason Old Spock could get close enough to Kirk to lend him a hand.
Not terribly hard to explain away implausible coincidence with a little bit of setup. They don't even need to spell it out, they could just throw in a brief shot of a tricorder reading, and let fans fill in the details.
The classical concept of the Republican platform has broad appeal. It's why I had registered as a Republican all those years ago, but my registration doesn't guarantee my vote, the GOP doesn't offer many opportunities to vote for those kinds of ideals anymore. The GOP needs to find those ideals again to recover the popular vote, but it looks like things are going to have to get worse for the party before it learns how to get better.
Wait, what "compassionate conservatism" have you seen bashed on this site? Not calling you out here, I just really can't think of a politician pushing compassionate conservatism since Obama got elected, and certainly not on a platform loud enough to have been discussed on/.
Classic economic growth theory was that technological advancements would come in and increase the marginal productivity of capital beyond that of labor and drive a shift towards skilled capital-intensive labor, and away from the cheap unskilled mass labor jobs.
Ultimately, though the unskilled laborers suffer from unemployment in the near term, in the long term, they can find new jobs created to support the more capital-intensive industry and end up better off than if they kept their unskilled jobs.
The problem is, it's just a theory. It's a model laid over past results from previous technological advancements, but there is no specific mechanism taking the unskilled worker into a new better job. Sometimes, the unskilled worker will just end up languishing. Especially in situations where education levels are low so that the worker is less equipped to shift into a new career (for example, illiterate fishing villages displaced by the Three Gorges Dam). Or, the jobs may simply spring up in another country, like India or China, and may be a step down. Simply put, labor is not as liquid as capital.
There is no guarantee that a technology that eliminates 10,000 jobs will then generate >10,000 supporting jobs. It's a hope. Because technology is going to keep marching on whether we like it or not, all we can do is try to protect ourselves as it happens.
Did those 2 seats belong to the Democratic party? No? Why is that? Neither a Democratic, nor a Republican candidate owned those seats. As independents they are certainly tempted to receive aid from the larger parties, since there is no large party supporting them, but ultimately they owned the seats and their votes were not guaranteed from the outset. You mention Lieberman taking his seat with help from the Republican Party. He had lost the support of the Democratic party. He could have chosen to side with the Republican Party against the bill to be reelected along the same path.
You're also conveniently pretending the Tea Party has had no effect on U.S. politics.
Your post in no way actually supports your conclusion.
I work for a telecommunications systems company, specifically serving government/military channels.
Over the 3 days leading up to 9/30, the volume of contract awards that came through was more than double that of the last 2 months. In the end it was still about 40% less than this time last year.
They delay some purchases until the end of the year so they can be sure their budget doesn't run out in the middle of the year. When we get to the end of the year, they pull the trigger on the purchases they'd put off because they weren't sure what they have money left for. The rest are put on hiatus until next year when they get a new budget. Plus, some vendors have fiscal year-ends coinciding with the gov't, so to get bookings into the fiscal year-end and maximize year-end bonus comp., salesmen will push to provide the sharpest discounts they can manage to bring those awards into this year.
It's not surprising to see a spurt of purchases at the end of the budget year.
The Tea Party has dragged the entire GOP party to the right. Sure they get elected within the GOP national campaign party, but they've gotten their platform absorbed in the larger GOP platform to create a spectrum shift to the right. They haven't taken a majority in congress as a separate party...but they didn't have to do that to make a difference in US politics. They can run against an incumbent and lose, but force him to move to the right to protect himself from losing his base. I consider the Tea Party to be a very solid example of how a third party can "win" without winning elections. Sure, the result was a shutdown of the government, but hey, they got what they wanted.
If I recall correctly, Obamacare's vote was divided by party lines. The only way it passed was by courting independent seats into joining the democrats. Courting independent seats means you need to offer them some red meat to bring them to your side. A third party doesn't necessarily need to win a presidency or a congressional to have weight in politics. Even failed campaigns split evenly between Dem Repub can be upset by a third party which the 2 big parties will need to coax over to their side. Adjusting your platform to invite votes from a third party that holds 5% of the vote makes a difference when Dem and Repub can only come up with with 46% each.
Think about what the GOP was like before the Tea Party rose up. The tea party didn't rise up as a separate class, it got absorbed. Sure there was some bluster about rejecting all incumbents and running separately, but that went away pretty quickly and they became part of the GOP. But in the meantime, the Tea Party minority has enough marginal power to swing the larger GOP party itself over towards their side of the political spectrum, resulting in a massive shift to the right and the current shutdown battle. There isn't a battle between the Democratic and Republican parties, there isn't even a discussion going on between them. All of the battles are taking place within the GOP party between the Tea Party faction and the traditional GOP officeholders. Even moderate GOP politicians who have not lost their seats, are forced to move their platforms to the right to avoid getting a primary challenge to the right.
Basically, third party voters don't even need to win elections to make a difference.
Actually, the Dems have held the popular vote in each election since Obama came into office, and the GOP only held onto house seats by playing with the districts:
Hypothetical example: If there are 2 open seats and 100k voters which are 80k Dem and 20k GOP, you can rearrange the outline of distict borders to put 80k dems in one district, and 20k GOP in another district. Then we have 1 Dem rep, and 1 GOP rep, and there you have a "close" "50%" vote.
Valuation of intangible assets like a brand is (big surprise) very subjective. It's typically based on a combination of management data, management estimates, and extrapolation by the valuation consultants. Most likely it's primarily based on some estimate of how much of a premium Apple gets to charge it's customer for it's brand by carving that piece out of their margin and then extrapolating the income from that brand-distinction out into the future. Then they'd take that whole amount, then present-value it all based on an incremental borrowing rate to come up with a number, and compare it with some comparable brand values for reasonableness.
I've had to read through several valuation reports for start-up acquisitions, they're usually hundreds of pages of documentation of associated factors and weighting of different calculation methodologies, but when it all comes down to it, they hinge on inputs that are best guess estimates that are used because it's the best conclusion that management, valuation consultants, and their auditors could reach. Ultimately there is something intangible about the company causing it to be valued so much more than it's book value, and the assigned value of the intangible asset here is all they have in lieu of more reliable information like the sale of a comparable intangible asset in an open market (like how houses are valued).
Coca-cola, when you get down to it, just sells flavored sugar water. There's hundreds of sodas out there that taste just as good, but make terrible volumes and margins compared to Coke. Aside from their massive distribution and bottling contracting, all they've got is their brand which they juice up regularly with lots and lots of advertisement. Slashdot is constantly talking about how Apple's devices are overpriced, and come with an "apple tax" where customers are paying ridiculous premiums just to buy into the cult of Apple. I'm not terribly surprised that Apple's brand value would compete with Coke's. Which brand is valued higher is meaningless to me since both of them are just based on contrived estimates and a small change to the input estimates for either one would probably flip the ranking.
Slashdot Mirror
To put it in perspective, game consoles are sustained entirely by the limited market of gamers. "Casual" gaming was not even seen as a market segment until fairly recently with the rise of mobile gaming and the Wii. Until the PS2, game consoles had no purpose other than playing games either.
I agree there are going to be significant hurdles to overcome in achieving the economies of scale needed to push this on a mass-market basis. But they're on the appropriate path by drumming up core development support for the Oculus Rift. They can't skip the initial step of getting developer support, because they need to show the world a fully realized "vertical slice" of gaming in VR as a working solution, so that people can see the incremental benefits over gaming on a lighted square/rectangle. It's potentially a very significant benefit, comparable to the step up from 480i resolutions to 720p resolution. This can unlock sales to niche PC gamers who can afford the expensive add-on, and are willing to endure technical hurdles. It'll flounder at this level for some time, but the key goal at this point is proving it out as a distinctive gaming experience.
Once that is established, console manufacturers are now invited to step up to add support for a version of the device, in the same way the PS2 eyetoy led to a PS3 camera add-on and the development of Xbox's competing Kinect add-on...which has finally led to a pack-in camera device on the Xbox One. An incredibly difficult path, but one that has already been successfully navigated by a device that delivered far less on it's vision than the Oculus Rift's prototype.
TL;DR: Carmack is working on Time Warping.
I have to disagree there. I've seen a few interviews with Carmack on this technology and it doesn't seem that he's fighting for "perfection". In the interviews he cites specific numbers he believes are necessary to achieve immersive VR. He's not aiming at an abstract concept of making it better and better, but rather minimum requirements (for example, 20ms input lag).
There have been plenty of VR devices in the past, and they have been huge letdowns because people hear VR and imagine that it's like seeing another reality. But it's never been immersive in the way people envisioned, and part of Carmack's research has been on pinning down the specific factors that drop immersion for these devices. They've already gotten 3D and peripheral vision nailed down pretty early on, but one of the key metrics he's looking for is input lag.
http://oculusrift-blog.com/john-carmacks-message-of-latency/682/
"Virtual reality (VR) is one of the most demanding human-in-the-loop applications from a latency standpoint. The latency between the physical movement of a userâ(TM)s head and updated photons from a head mounted display reaching their eyes is one of the most critical factors in providing a high quality experience. Human sensory systems can detect very small relative delays in parts of the visual or, especially, audio fields, but when absolute delays are below approximately 20 milliseconds they are generally imperceptible. Interactive 3D systems today typically have latencies that are several times that figure, but alternate configurations of the same hardware components can allow that target to be reached." -Carmack
Some highlights from that post:
" A total system latency of 50 milliseconds will feel responsive, but still noticeable laggy.
- 20 milliseconds or less will provide the minimum level of latency deemed acceptable."
"Actions that require simulation state changes, like flipping a switch or firing a weapon, still need to go through the full pipeline for 32 â" 48 milliseconds of latency based on what scan line the result winds up displaying on the screen, and translational information may not be completely faithfully represented below the 16 â" 32 milliseconds of the view bypass rendering, but the critical head orientation feedback can be provided in 2 â" 18 milliseconds on a 60 hz display. In conjunction with low latency sensors and displays, this will generally be perceived as immediate. Continuous time warping opens up the possibility of latencies below 3 milliseconds, which may cross largely unexplored thresholds in human / computer interactivity!"
Part of what made Star Control 2 so special was the sense of discovery. I loved what was in SC2, but I don't want them to slavishly recreate the game (I can replay Ur-quan masters when I want that.)
I wouldn't mind if none of the old races made an appearance so long as they swing for the fences on making creative new races.
Star Control 2 has long been in my top 5 games of all time. It holds up shockingly well after recent replays via Ur-Quan masters.
The universe they painted was amazingly detailed for the resources they had at the time. There was an immense amount of content in those races and their histories, amid a whole galaxy in which to explore and discover. I love the creativity they put into those races, not every race was just another boring palette-change antropomorph. In this regard this game didn't see any real competition until Mass Effect's trilogy (and SC2's races were still more interesting, despite not having time to go into as much dept as in ME1-3).
And the story kept moving on without you! If you don't visit certain parts of the galaxy, or fail to resolve certain quests, whole races can go extinct before you get there. You could watch the spheres of territory shift over time! It gave you a sense that this galaxy was alive, unlike most games where it feels like you're just running through a museum of animatronic exhibits that only move when you come by to trigger them. I could hardly believe it the first time I saw a race just disappear off the starmap.
At it's foundation, a followup to the game doesn't need to have crazy graphics or elaborate new gameplay mechanics just to keep up with the games that had come afterwards. The core gameplay still holds up perfectly well. They mainly need good writers and a polished interface.
I think you're right, I don't know if I'd have the magnanimity to quietly hide while the USA is hunting me down for merely doing the right thing by blowing the whistle on domestic spying.
The US treated him like an enemy after that initial disclosure, I guess it's not that surprising that he retaliated as if the US was his enemy. In a way the US turned on him first.
I've audited valuation reports for used for the acquisitions of tech start-ups on behalf of a few companies. They're typically huge documents 100-200 pages long looking at historical trends, economic factors, strategy & expectations, market comparables, user base, tangle and intangible assets, if applicable, DCFs and the variables factored into that calc, revenue and opex trends/forecasting, evaluation of prior year forecasts vs. actuals. etc. etc. Lots of stuff.
But when it comes down to it, all of the calculations that really swing the valuations are all based on assumptions and judgementally selected variables. I can't prove they're doing it, but it's simple for these valuation consultants to just pick out a number and then just tweak assumptions and valuations until the calculations land on the number they wanted.
It's such a judgemental subject that the auditors can rarely call them out for having blown the valuation unless they're basing the calculations on things that are plainly and factually wrong, the assumptions need to be wildly outlandish to be seriously fought over by auditors, because the auditors argument would also have to be based on assumptions the auditors have chosen. It'd be an argument based on subjective opinion and since the auditors are being paid by the company they're auditing, the auditors only want to push on subjective matters when it's so outrageous the risk of a lawsuit outweighs the benefit of collecting audit fees from that company.
I second this, you don't have to read the bible as a religious pursuit.
Knowing what's in the bible allows you to catch a lot of references in the west, but more than that it's very interesting material from an anthropological perspective since it had such a tremendous impact on western society, and continues to do so to this day. You don't need to believe in it in order to understand that it's an incredibly significant book, and enjoy it with the kind of nerdy delight that accompanies the study of fascinating and complex apocrypha. It's useful in conversation, especially when people trot out misquotes or quote it without having understood the context of that passage.
Obama's list of compromises:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/rulings/compromise/
About 25% of the 500 campaign promises compiled ended up in a compromise.
For the full list of 500 campaign promises and their results, see: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/
Snowden absolutely should be pardoned for leaking information about the NSA's domestic spying activities, and/or covered under whistleblower policies. This was an act of a patriot.
But I don't think he'd get a pass for all the subsequent leaks which were only done to undermine the NSA's foreign spying (that's what they're for!). It's not benefiting US citizens or it's gov't. Now it seems like he's just trying to do as much damage to the US as he can.
Albums haven't been making musicians rich from a long time. Having their songs played on the radio didn't make them rich either.
But having their songs heard got them fans which go out and see their live shows/tours, and that makes them quite a bit of money. Merchandising/Cross promotional deals can make them quite a lot more. (Dr. Dre's Beats brand headphones have totally eclipsed the amount he made in his entire career in the music industry).
The cold hard fact here is that the changes in the music industry are going to happen, no matter what. Spotify and Pandora at least get the artists some money in the meantime. Pirates are not entitled to free music...but they're going to do their thing anyway. Giving those listeners a free stream that at least makes some returns off them gives the artist something rather than nothing.
Even if one day it becomes impossible to make a living off music, I guarantee you, there will still be plenty of music because there are just too many people who want to make music (not all of it good). They'll do it in their spare time while still holding down a full-time job, they feel they need to make that music. Whether that's fair or not, it's still true. The supply of music is overwhelming compared to the demand.
Developers find that their games need to be rebalanced for thumbsticks vs. kb/mouse users. Rebalancing their whole game around the input device takes budget away from other features and from their polish time. Ultimately, developers know they can just balance the game once around controllers(have you noticed how much slower modern shooters are compared to classic PC shooters?), then just release the game on PC for KB/M lovers.
This ensures singleplayer isn't too hard on controller users, and avoids multiplayer imbalance between controller users vs. kb/m. Developers don't need kb/m support on consoles, they can sell to those players on PC instead.
Due to lack of demand from the developers, it's hardly surprising that Sony/MS aren't interested in going into supporting kb/m. Plus Sony/MS would lose out on sales of their proprietary control input if they supported generic kb/ms.
Thanks, that was very interesting for a layperson like myself. Itâ(TM)s so obvious to the user when a program has a great interface design, but itâ(TM)s so hard to tell exactly what the designer did correctly to make it feel that way.
I don't think that "natural" is inherently better than "synthetic" either. Organic is just about meaningless to me.
However, there are still tremendous gulfs in our understanding of human nutritional needs, and the guy in the article is completely relying upon a single food source for all his needs. That ascribes a level of confidence to this "soylent" that is far above all other foods, natural or synthetic. This allows no leeway for serendipitously meeting unknown or poorly understood nutritional needs through a mixed diet.
I think the GP's position that synthetic foods can "never" take the place of of typical food is hyperbole, but I seriously doubt we've reached the level of understanding needed to achieve that goal today. Further, while there is no inherent reason why a "synthetic" food would be less nourishing than normal food, we have a wealth of empirical evidence (though poorly documented) that traditional foods provide the necessary nutrition for our current life expectancy. Synthetic foods (though better documented) just have less evidence, simply because they haven't been around as long in our diet yet. We shouldn't fear innovation, we should still proceed, just with reasonable skepticism. Admittedly, it seems a lot of people forget about the "reasonable" part in that skepticism.
A month-long search wouldn't be needed. They could simply show Kirk's landing, showing someone viewing this on a tricorder and getting up to move, cutting back to kirk's chase sequence, have "someone" yell out "Get in here!"
Explain that when old spock got marooned on the ice planet, a tricorder was included amongst the basic supplies given to him. Thus, the tricorder tracking forms the means by which Old Spock had been moving towards the same federation installation that Kirk was supposed to be headed towards, and be 1) the reason Old Spock was in the same area of the planet 2) the reason Old Spock could get close enough to Kirk to lend him a hand.
Not terribly hard to explain away implausible coincidence with a little bit of setup. They don't even need to spell it out, they could just throw in a brief shot of a tricorder reading, and let fans fill in the details.
This was a very interesting debate on this very issue:
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/801-the-gop-must-seize-the-center-or-die
The classical concept of the Republican platform has broad appeal. It's why I had registered as a Republican all those years ago, but my registration doesn't guarantee my vote, the GOP doesn't offer many opportunities to vote for those kinds of ideals anymore. The GOP needs to find those ideals again to recover the popular vote, but it looks like things are going to have to get worse for the party before it learns how to get better.
Wait, what "compassionate conservatism" have you seen bashed on this site? Not calling you out here, I just really can't think of a politician pushing compassionate conservatism since Obama got elected, and certainly not on a platform loud enough to have been discussed on /.
My son turned 1 year old 2 weeks ago. We're STILL dealing with incorrect billing issues from his birth.
Classic economic growth theory was that technological advancements would come in and increase the marginal productivity of capital beyond that of labor and drive a shift towards skilled capital-intensive labor, and away from the cheap unskilled mass labor jobs.
Ultimately, though the unskilled laborers suffer from unemployment in the near term, in the long term, they can find new jobs created to support the more capital-intensive industry and end up better off than if they kept their unskilled jobs.
The problem is, it's just a theory. It's a model laid over past results from previous technological advancements, but there is no specific mechanism taking the unskilled worker into a new better job. Sometimes, the unskilled worker will just end up languishing. Especially in situations where education levels are low so that the worker is less equipped to shift into a new career (for example, illiterate fishing villages displaced by the Three Gorges Dam). Or, the jobs may simply spring up in another country, like India or China, and may be a step down. Simply put, labor is not as liquid as capital.
There is no guarantee that a technology that eliminates 10,000 jobs will then generate >10,000 supporting jobs. It's a hope. Because technology is going to keep marching on whether we like it or not, all we can do is try to protect ourselves as it happens.
Did those 2 seats belong to the Democratic party? No? Why is that? Neither a Democratic, nor a Republican candidate owned those seats. As independents they are certainly tempted to receive aid from the larger parties, since there is no large party supporting them, but ultimately they owned the seats and their votes were not guaranteed from the outset. You mention Lieberman taking his seat with help from the Republican Party. He had lost the support of the Democratic party. He could have chosen to side with the Republican Party against the bill to be reelected along the same path.
You're also conveniently pretending the Tea Party has had no effect on U.S. politics.
Your post in no way actually supports your conclusion.
I work for a telecommunications systems company, specifically serving government/military channels.
Over the 3 days leading up to 9/30, the volume of contract awards that came through was more than double that of the last 2 months. In the end it was still about 40% less than this time last year.
They delay some purchases until the end of the year so they can be sure their budget doesn't run out in the middle of the year. When we get to the end of the year, they pull the trigger on the purchases they'd put off because they weren't sure what they have money left for. The rest are put on hiatus until next year when they get a new budget. Plus, some vendors have fiscal year-ends coinciding with the gov't, so to get bookings into the fiscal year-end and maximize year-end bonus comp., salesmen will push to provide the sharpest discounts they can manage to bring those awards into this year.
It's not surprising to see a spurt of purchases at the end of the budget year.
The Tea Party has dragged the entire GOP party to the right. Sure they get elected within the GOP national campaign party, but they've gotten their platform absorbed in the larger GOP platform to create a spectrum shift to the right. They haven't taken a majority in congress as a separate party...but they didn't have to do that to make a difference in US politics. They can run against an incumbent and lose, but force him to move to the right to protect himself from losing his base. I consider the Tea Party to be a very solid example of how a third party can "win" without winning elections. Sure, the result was a shutdown of the government, but hey, they got what they wanted.
If I recall correctly, Obamacare's vote was divided by party lines. The only way it passed was by courting independent seats into joining the democrats. Courting independent seats means you need to offer them some red meat to bring them to your side. A third party doesn't necessarily need to win a presidency or a congressional to have weight in politics. Even failed campaigns split evenly between Dem Repub can be upset by a third party which the 2 big parties will need to coax over to their side. Adjusting your platform to invite votes from a third party that holds 5% of the vote makes a difference when Dem and Repub can only come up with with 46% each.
Think about what the GOP was like before the Tea Party rose up. The tea party didn't rise up as a separate class, it got absorbed. Sure there was some bluster about rejecting all incumbents and running separately, but that went away pretty quickly and they became part of the GOP. But in the meantime, the Tea Party minority has enough marginal power to swing the larger GOP party itself over towards their side of the political spectrum, resulting in a massive shift to the right and the current shutdown battle. There isn't a battle between the Democratic and Republican parties, there isn't even a discussion going on between them. All of the battles are taking place within the GOP party between the Tea Party faction and the traditional GOP officeholders. Even moderate GOP politicians who have not lost their seats, are forced to move their platforms to the right to avoid getting a primary challenge to the right.
Basically, third party voters don't even need to win elections to make a difference.
Actually, the Dems have held the popular vote in each election since Obama came into office, and the GOP only held onto house seats by playing with the districts:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/republicans-gerrymandering-house-representatives-election-chart
Hypothetical example: If there are 2 open seats and 100k voters which are 80k Dem and 20k GOP,
you can rearrange the outline of distict borders to put 80k dems in one district, and 20k GOP in another district. Then we have 1 Dem rep, and 1 GOP rep, and there you have a "close" "50%" vote.
Valuation of intangible assets like a brand is (big surprise) very subjective. It's typically based on a combination of management data, management estimates, and extrapolation by the valuation consultants. Most likely it's primarily based on some estimate of how much of a premium Apple gets to charge it's customer for it's brand by carving that piece out of their margin and then extrapolating the income from that brand-distinction out into the future. Then they'd take that whole amount, then present-value it all based on an incremental borrowing rate to come up with a number, and compare it with some comparable brand values for reasonableness.
I've had to read through several valuation reports for start-up acquisitions, they're usually hundreds of pages of documentation of associated factors and weighting of different calculation methodologies, but when it all comes down to it, they hinge on inputs that are best guess estimates that are used because it's the best conclusion that management, valuation consultants, and their auditors could reach. Ultimately there is something intangible about the company causing it to be valued so much more than it's book value, and the assigned value of the intangible asset here is all they have in lieu of more reliable information like the sale of a comparable intangible asset in an open market (like how houses are valued).
Coca-cola, when you get down to it, just sells flavored sugar water. There's hundreds of sodas out there that taste just as good, but make terrible volumes and margins compared to Coke. Aside from their massive distribution and bottling contracting, all they've got is their brand which they juice up regularly with lots and lots of advertisement. Slashdot is constantly talking about how Apple's devices are overpriced, and come with an "apple tax" where customers are paying ridiculous premiums just to buy into the cult of Apple. I'm not terribly surprised that Apple's brand value would compete with Coke's. Which brand is valued higher is meaningless to me since both of them are just based on contrived estimates and a small change to the input estimates for either one would probably flip the ranking.