I have been a Halo fanboy for a long time. I said Halo. Halo 2 blew chow in single-person, but online it is the bomb, and live on my 360 (Thanks, Mountain Dew and EveryTenMinutes.com!), it is just a little bit better. However, in the two years running up to the release of Halo 2 the Bungie.net website had discussion, rumors, leaks, blah, blah, blah. Recently out of Bungie.net? Lots of discussion of Halo 2 and XBox Live, but barely a sniffle on Halo 3. Given the extremely long production cycle that Bungie went through for two, and the fact that the PS3 has now been delayed until 2007, we won't see any babbling about Halo 3 until October, and then only because they want to have "something" ready for release in the Spring of 2007, but more likely Holiday 2007.
Wow. Do none of you have itemized deductions on your taxes? Do none of you have kids? Do a little math - let's say that you and a spouse (uh, I know that's a stretch for most of you) make the US average $75,000 together, and own a median $215,000 home that you are paying 6% on. You have the typical 2.3 kids (or is it 2.1 kids?). Your tax rate is...2.5%, unless I just did the math wrong. Let's see - 2 kids at $1,000 tax credit each, plus four times the standard deduction, add about $10K in mortgage interest, roughly $5K in property taxes, daycare...yeah, 2.5% seems to be close, if maybe a bit high.
Needless to say, your tax bill for the grand prize is pretty small. Just for the hell of it, I wonder what it would be if you had eight kids (you do have ten ipods to give away, so eight kids would about do it) - let's see - two people per bedroom is five bedrooms, which pushes your home to about $300,000...you get the idea.
The 30% number is generally a good starting point, but once you start adding in the tax incentives for families, the number drops fast.
I have been a Verizon Wireless customer for six or seven years. In that time I have had six or seven verizon phones (I only do one-year contracts). Each time I go to the Verizon store, and buy the current usb to phone interface cable and the new sofware that lets me use it as such. So if I was violating my terms of service, I suppose that Verizon was complicit in it.
When Microsoft released the Strategic Commander I thought I was in heaven, too. Finally we had a left-hand device for Warcraft, Age of Empires, Close Combat and all those other strategy games. The thing was freaking incredible. Three programmable button sets, scrolling and rotation, and comfortable to boot. Yet it didn't catch on. For $69.99 it was a lot of money and there just wasn't a significant base to grab it - the majority said "hell, my keyboard is enough" and that was that. Heck, Gravis couldn't even make the Firebird the defacto joystick despite the fact that it was, IMHO, the best, most comfortable joystick ever. The problem is that the price points for these things are insane-high, and they only target hard-core gamers. This is yet-another-flop in the making. Too bad, too. It's a good idea.
It's amazing how frequently these types of papers are released and how wrong they always are. Rene Jules Dubos, an environmentalist at SUNY, once, in a book (one of many) documenting the environmental damage Man had wreaked wrote "Wherever human beings are involved, trend is never destiny because life starts anew for them, with each new sunrise." The point that Dubos made, repeatedly over decades, is that there have been doomsday predictions for hundreds of years in the Western world, from when the Black Forest was gutted, to when Jamaica Bay was more polluted than the Cuyahoga, to predictions regarding the environmental consequences of population growth made by several since-discredited economists. Yet in each and every circumstance, as technology advances and our knowlege, understanding, and wisdom of how the Earth operates has improved, Mankind has not only stopped the madness, but reversed the damage as well. In fact, following the law of unintended consequences, many times after Man has botched things up, nature, storing in her litle finger more power to impose her will than Man could inflict in ten thousand lifetimes, has taken care of the problem herself. The fact that we don't understand, and can't calculate the healing power of Mom Na isn't her fault. However, making this sort of idiotic statement just proves that we're too ignorant to have the right to make them.
Crack-addicted strippers announced that their new focus isn't on the quality of their appearance, or the quantity of time you get, but how easy they were once you forked over your $200 and donned your virus protection. In addition, they pointed out that free sex with, say, some hot chick you meet at a party is overvalued compared to sex with them because they are professionals with experience and know-how that you just can't get from your average, ordinary girl.
In our case, we own several domains that are registered falsely and via proxy because the domains that we own that are not done in this way have resulted in a preposterous amount of spam, stupid phone calls, faxes, etc. The contacts, both technical and administrative for these domains continue to be badgered, in some cases years after they no longer work for us. Move your domain to us! We have cheap domains! We want to host your mail server! We have free pr0n! The list is unbelievable, not to mention the fact that we get spammed by phone, mail, fax, and email by many registrars (including a couple of, well, supposedly "official" ones), even though we obfuscated all of the information for those domains years ago, too. For the domains that we have always had obscured, we get absolutely no hassle from anyone, ever. In this day and age, I can't think of a good reason to be truthful on a domain registration. The law? Please. Good luck going to a jury with "They have an obligation under the law to open themselves to all of the harrassment that comes with following the law."
Because the 'tard who got his first mod points today modded down a post replying directly to part of TFA. Idiot. The point was to try and throw some bitter satire at an article that sounds like it's about someone who is...bitter. The fact that I have to explain that is, well, sad and makes me, well, bitter.
So your friend figured out that Woz can't take six separate, solid rings, and force them to interlock - that one of the rings must have a break in it. Wow. Your friend is really amazing, dude. I never would have guessed that one of the oldest tricks in the book was actually unknown to someone. Next thing you know your friend will be figuring how to walk on broken glass, lie on a bed of nails, or get CmdrTaco's girlfriend to go out on a date with CowboyNeal.
Really? The card in my box didn't say anything about the game coming later, nor did it mention the game I (thought) I ordered. Weird. Thanks for the info.
In reviewing the control, I compared it to my favorite control, "The Duke". Big hands are just one reason. I also like the fact that the button array is angled, to line up perpendicular to the natural line of motion of the thumb, instead of being perpendicular to the face, which involves more thumb action to find the right button. The trigger springs are slightly stiffer, and the stroke is long, making it far easier in racing games to get the right pedal deflection.
I didn't compare it to the Intellivision controller, the old Atari controller, the Sega Genesis Controller, or any of the other old ones because controllers have evolved. "The Duke" was, and still is, IMHO, the best, most comfortable controller I've used. I have been able to play for six hours at a sitting (like I did to play Halo when the original XBox was released) without any hand discomfort, only bladder discomfort.
Perhaps I should have said "I don't own a PS/2. One of my brothers does, and we get together once per week to play console games. I can never find L1/R1 when I need them. The "bump" buttons on the 360 controls, unlike the L1/R1 buttons on the PS/2 controls, stick out just enough from the face so that I can find them easily when I need them,". There. Does that make you feel better? Did I really have to put that entire paragraph in when a single sentence did just fine? Maybe Sony will have a better control for PS/3 and I can proclaim to the world how much nicer it is. Unfortunately the PS/2 control isn't.
I Already Got Mine: Impressions
on
Prepping For The 360
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I got my 360 yesterday courtesy of Pepsi and the everytenminutes.com promotion. The box contained: Kameo (an elves vs. Trolls game - it's definitely fun), the box, hard drive, wireless controller, headset, universal remote, a 10' ethernet cable (I think it's 10', maybe it's a tad longer), and an AV cable.
For those of you that might have some questions, here goes:
1) The menu structure is tabbed (side tabs). I don't really like it. I think it's needlessly complicated, and in a couple of cases there are tabs for settings whose differences are too subtle for me to remember which tab they belong on.
2) Halo 2 runs on it, although for some reason the digital sound doesn't include the subwoofer on the 360 for this title. I have no idea why. The subwoofer works fine for other functions on the 360, and Halo 2 is otherwise outputting digital sound. I have my woofer set to a very high threshold.
3) The chipset is clearly much faster than the original, including in the emulation mode for games such as Halo 2. In Halo 2, cutscenes thar have a delay, then dialog without an image, then layers being drawn for the first few seconds of the cutscene don't have any of that. It's all very fast, very clear, right away.
4) The AV cable was more than sufficient for me. It appears to have composite video out on RCA jacks, as well as analog sound. On the plug that connects directly into the box is a port for fiber to go to your amp for the digital sound. Nice hookup. I may find myself purchasing another one on Tuesday, though, to make my life more portable.
5) The hard drive attachment is really cool. It just snaps externally in place "on top" of the unit (when sitting like a tower). I have mine sitting like a console on top of its older sibling.
6) The wireless controls are very nice. I'm a fan of "The Duke" controls, because my hands are pretty big. The S controls, and the stupid controls for PS2 and GameCube feel too stinking small. This one, however, didn't cramp my hands, even after several hours of gameplay. I still don't like it as much as "The Duke", but otherwise it's fine.
7) The wireless control was very nicely balanced, and the force fededback wasn't so strong as to shake my fillings (like "The Duke", or barely noticable (like the others). I was very worried that the wireless controls wouldn't have enough feedback, as has been the complaint about many wireless controls. I would say that this control does not have that problem. In fact, this control is so comfortable and so nice without the cable that I would STRONGLY recommend that everyone spend the exra $10 and buy them.
8) I really like the bump buttons. They're easier than the old white and black, and they're not in the way, yet reachable and findable, unlike PS2's L1 & R1.
9) It's great that the order that the wireless controls are assigned is set based on the order in which controls sign in, not the order in which they are originally registered on the box (getting a control assigned and recognized on the box is a little weird for the first two controls, but after doing it a couple of times it was a breeze). In addition, each control and the box have a four-quadrant circular LED array. The box lights up the quadrants for the controls that are currently connected. The controller lights up the quadrant to indicate which player the controller is. The box can be turned on or off right from the wireless control. Turning off the box shuts down the controls that people activated for that session. Controls are "acivated" for a session by hitting the green "X" button in the middle of the control, so even if you have four controls registered to your box, you won't be chewing batteries for all of them unless you are using all of them.
10) The headset is much nicer than the old one. That was probably obvious to everyone who bought one as soon as they got it.
11) It's stated both on the box and in the pamphlet that comes with the wireless controls that the force feedback is adjustable to conserve battery powe
Yeah, well I will on Saturday. I got my confirmation from Pepsi that the 360 I won in the everytenminutes.com contest will be shipped overnight to arrive at my door on Saturday. My only question: Is it the core system or the "real" system? There isn't anything in the game rules about which one I'm getting. The other bummer is that there won't be any 360 hardware (e.g. different av cables, extra controllers) available until Tuesday, when the console officially launches, so all I can do is play Madden 2K6 with a single control until then.
Oh yeah baby. Everytenminutes.com. Last night I got a box from a Young America, MN. What the heck is this? 5 hats, 5 shirts, 10 postcards, and a notification postcard. I had never found the notification location on everytenminutes.com to find out that I won. The hats are one-size fits all (elastic back, very cool), and the T-shirts have the Mountain Dew logo on the front, with "Go ahead, push my buttons. I won at everytenminutes.com" on the back, with a picture of the 360 controller. The postcards are an invitation to an xbox360 party. Since the 360 is released 11/22, I should be receiving mine via overnight next Saturday, along with my requested game - Madden 2006. This r0k5.
Oh man! I was so hoping that the Flying Spaghetti Monster would be the new science of choice, yet the number of pirates appears to be increasing dramatically, which means that global warming should be reversing, but it can't be because of CO2 emissions. AAAAUGH! My theology is in shambles!
For all the complaining y'all are doing about these guys, they sure are getting a lot of play. Google morfik. It might be a well-orchestrated campaign of lies and deceit, but at first blush it doesn't look that way.
I got a chance to visit one of the facilities that manage GPS for the military, and talk to staff at length. So, while I'm not an expert on this topic, here's some of what I (think) I learned
Twenty-four satellites are required for full coverage.
That's assuming that you want full-featured coverage across the entire globe, with excellent accuracy, i.e. with 5 or six satellites visible to your receiver in your horizion. There are places in the world where there aren't as many (four is the minimum, if I remember, to get your exact position including altitude.
Lifespan of the satellites includes not only electronic function, but fuel supply for retasking.
The bases that manage the constellation (I am aware of two, but one would think there would be more)can compenstate for various issues with the satellites' clocks, some of which are issues related to age. In addition, since the master clocks are here on Earth, various satellites can be controlled more-or-less directly in the event that their clocks fail. In full manual mode, it it thus possible to lead a rogue object or person astray, but within the margin of error so that the person or object would have no idea that it/they were being "misguided".
I think Chicken Little ought to worry a bit less about the status of the constellation. The staff managing the constellation is well-aware of what's going on, has its own separate Command, and launch facilities that are quite capable of putting additional assets in orbit in short order.
Since The Wrong Trousers made an appearance at a shorts festival, I've been a fan. The good news should be that the clay figures should be ok evermore now that the heat has turned them into...ceramic...
I'm very excited about the possibility of this happening. However, before it does, I think we're going to need better and easier-to-use AJAX tools. Right now cranking out advanced web apps is mainly a text-editor proposition. There aren't any AJAX RAD/IDE tools, and there really aren't any good, easy-to-use, well-integrated tools that will generate the JS, HTML, CSS code necessary to make this happen...yet. Once it does, it will make life SO much easier. Among other things, JavaStations, which were a great idea (except for the fact that they ran Java instead of JavaScript, and were about ten years ahead of their time) drastically reduce the probability of virus, trjoan horse, and spyware infections. They're less complicated, and they're cheap. Of course there still needs to be some underlying OS, and this approach doesn't appear ready to do everything a PC can do (flash games are ok, but they're not Unreal, but as the Japs say "Games are for Consoles". It would be so much easier to not have to deal with a tech support calls with every little stupid user problem because the Windows/OSX/Linux/whatever configurations are so different from each other. So give me an AJAX tool that does what my existing GUI IDE/RAD does now, and I'm done building non-webbased apps.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been a Halo fanboy for a long time. I said Halo. Halo 2 blew chow in single-person, but online it is the bomb, and live on my 360 (Thanks, Mountain Dew and EveryTenMinutes.com!), it is just a little bit better. However, in the two years running up to the release of Halo 2 the Bungie.net website had discussion, rumors, leaks, blah, blah, blah. Recently out of Bungie.net? Lots of discussion of Halo 2 and XBox Live, but barely a sniffle on Halo 3. Given the extremely long production cycle that Bungie went through for two, and the fact that the PS3 has now been delayed until 2007, we won't see any babbling about Halo 3 until October, and then only because they want to have "something" ready for release in the Spring of 2007, but more likely Holiday 2007.
Wow. Do none of you have itemized deductions on your taxes? Do none of you have kids? Do a little math - let's say that you and a spouse (uh, I know that's a stretch for most of you) make the US average $75,000 together, and own a median $215,000 home that you are paying 6% on. You have the typical 2.3 kids (or is it 2.1 kids?). Your tax rate is...2.5%, unless I just did the math wrong. Let's see - 2 kids at $1,000 tax credit each, plus four times the standard deduction, add about $10K in mortgage interest, roughly $5K in property taxes, daycare...yeah, 2.5% seems to be close, if maybe a bit high. Needless to say, your tax bill for the grand prize is pretty small. Just for the hell of it, I wonder what it would be if you had eight kids (you do have ten ipods to give away, so eight kids would about do it) - let's see - two people per bedroom is five bedrooms, which pushes your home to about $300,000...you get the idea. The 30% number is generally a good starting point, but once you start adding in the tax incentives for families, the number drops fast.
I have been a Verizon Wireless customer for six or seven years. In that time I have had six or seven verizon phones (I only do one-year contracts). Each time I go to the Verizon store, and buy the current usb to phone interface cable and the new sofware that lets me use it as such. So if I was violating my terms of service, I suppose that Verizon was complicit in it.
When Microsoft released the Strategic Commander I thought I was in heaven, too. Finally we had a left-hand device for Warcraft, Age of Empires, Close Combat and all those other strategy games. The thing was freaking incredible. Three programmable button sets, scrolling and rotation, and comfortable to boot. Yet it didn't catch on. For $69.99 it was a lot of money and there just wasn't a significant base to grab it - the majority said "hell, my keyboard is enough" and that was that.
Heck, Gravis couldn't even make the Firebird the defacto joystick despite the fact that it was, IMHO, the best, most comfortable joystick ever.
The problem is that the price points for these things are insane-high, and they only target hard-core gamers. This is yet-another-flop in the making. Too bad, too. It's a good idea.
It's amazing how frequently these types of papers are released and how wrong they always are. Rene Jules Dubos, an environmentalist at SUNY, once, in a book (one of many) documenting the environmental damage Man had wreaked wrote "Wherever human beings are involved, trend is never destiny because life starts anew for them, with each new sunrise."
The point that Dubos made, repeatedly over decades, is that there have been doomsday predictions for hundreds of years in the Western world, from when the Black Forest was gutted, to when Jamaica Bay was more polluted than the Cuyahoga, to predictions regarding the environmental consequences of population growth made by several since-discredited economists. Yet in each and every circumstance, as technology advances and our knowlege, understanding, and wisdom of how the Earth operates has improved, Mankind has not only stopped the madness, but reversed the damage as well.
In fact, following the law of unintended consequences, many times after Man has botched things up, nature, storing in her litle finger more power to impose her will than Man could inflict in ten thousand lifetimes, has taken care of the problem herself.
The fact that we don't understand, and can't calculate the healing power of Mom Na isn't her fault. However, making this sort of idiotic statement just proves that we're too ignorant to have the right to make them.
Crack-addicted strippers announced that their new focus isn't on the quality of their appearance, or the quantity of time you get, but how easy they were once you forked over your $200 and donned your virus protection. In addition, they pointed out that free sex with, say, some hot chick you meet at a party is overvalued compared to sex with them because they are professionals with experience and know-how that you just can't get from your average, ordinary girl.
Of course DI is also very corrosive, so you have that working against you, too.
You have got to be kidding me. This just hit the front page and it's already slashdotted. Bummer. I wanted one for my pr0n
In our case, we own several domains that are registered falsely and via proxy because the domains that we own that are not done in this way have resulted in a preposterous amount of spam, stupid phone calls, faxes, etc. The contacts, both technical and administrative for these domains continue to be badgered, in some cases years after they no longer work for us. Move your domain to us! We have cheap domains! We want to host your mail server! We have free pr0n! The list is unbelievable, not to mention the fact that we get spammed by phone, mail, fax, and email by many registrars (including a couple of, well, supposedly "official" ones), even though we obfuscated all of the information for those domains years ago, too.
For the domains that we have always had obscured, we get absolutely no hassle from anyone, ever. In this day and age, I can't think of a good reason to be truthful on a domain registration. The law? Please. Good luck going to a jury with "They have an obligation under the law to open themselves to all of the harrassment that comes with following the law."
Because the 'tard who got his first mod points today modded down a post replying directly to part of TFA. Idiot. The point was to try and throw some bitter satire at an article that sounds like it's about someone who is...bitter. The fact that I have to explain that is, well, sad and makes me, well, bitter.
So your friend figured out that Woz can't take six separate, solid rings, and force them to interlock - that one of the rings must have a break in it. Wow. Your friend is really amazing, dude. I never would have guessed that one of the oldest tricks in the book was actually unknown to someone. Next thing you know your friend will be figuring how to walk on broken glass, lie on a bed of nails, or get CmdrTaco's girlfriend to go out on a date with CowboyNeal.
Really? The card in my box didn't say anything about the game coming later, nor did it mention the game I (thought) I ordered. Weird. Thanks for the info.
In reviewing the control, I compared it to my favorite control, "The Duke". Big hands are just one reason. I also like the fact that the button array is angled, to line up perpendicular to the natural line of motion of the thumb, instead of being perpendicular to the face, which involves more thumb action to find the right button. The trigger springs are slightly stiffer, and the stroke is long, making it far easier in racing games to get the right pedal deflection.
I didn't compare it to the Intellivision controller, the old Atari controller, the Sega Genesis Controller, or any of the other old ones because controllers have evolved. "The Duke" was, and still is, IMHO, the best, most comfortable controller I've used. I have been able to play for six hours at a sitting (like I did to play Halo when the original XBox was released) without any hand discomfort, only bladder discomfort.
Perhaps I should have said "I don't own a PS/2. One of my brothers does, and we get together once per week to play console games. I can never find L1/R1 when I need them. The "bump" buttons on the 360 controls, unlike the L1/R1 buttons on the PS/2 controls, stick out just enough from the face so that I can find them easily when I need them,". There. Does that make you feel better? Did I really have to put that entire paragraph in when a single sentence did just fine? Maybe Sony will have a better control for PS/3 and I can proclaim to the world how much nicer it is. Unfortunately the PS/2 control isn't.
I got my 360 yesterday courtesy of Pepsi and the everytenminutes.com promotion. The box contained: Kameo (an elves vs. Trolls game - it's definitely fun), the box, hard drive, wireless controller, headset, universal remote, a 10' ethernet cable (I think it's 10', maybe it's a tad longer), and an AV cable.
For those of you that might have some questions, here goes:
1) The menu structure is tabbed (side tabs). I don't really like it. I think it's needlessly complicated, and in a couple of cases there are tabs for settings whose differences are too subtle for me to remember which tab they belong on.
2) Halo 2 runs on it, although for some reason the digital sound doesn't include the subwoofer on the 360 for this title. I have no idea why. The subwoofer works fine for other functions on the 360, and Halo 2 is otherwise outputting digital sound. I have my woofer set to a very high threshold.
3) The chipset is clearly much faster than the original, including in the emulation mode for games such as Halo 2. In Halo 2, cutscenes thar have a delay, then dialog without an image, then layers being drawn for the first few seconds of the cutscene don't have any of that. It's all very fast, very clear, right away.
4) The AV cable was more than sufficient for me. It appears to have composite video out on RCA jacks, as well as analog sound. On the plug that connects directly into the box is a port for fiber to go to your amp for the digital sound. Nice hookup. I may find myself purchasing another one on Tuesday, though, to make my life more portable.
5) The hard drive attachment is really cool. It just snaps externally in place "on top" of the unit (when sitting like a tower). I have mine sitting like a console on top of its older sibling.
6) The wireless controls are very nice. I'm a fan of "The Duke" controls, because my hands are pretty big. The S controls, and the stupid controls for PS2 and GameCube feel too stinking small. This one, however, didn't cramp my hands, even after several hours of gameplay. I still don't like it as much as "The Duke", but otherwise it's fine.
7) The wireless control was very nicely balanced, and the force fededback wasn't so strong as to shake my fillings (like "The Duke", or barely noticable (like the others). I was very worried that the wireless controls wouldn't have enough feedback, as has been the complaint about many wireless controls. I would say that this control does not have that problem. In fact, this control is so comfortable and so nice without the cable that I would STRONGLY recommend that everyone spend the exra $10 and buy them.
8) I really like the bump buttons. They're easier than the old white and black, and they're not in the way, yet reachable and findable, unlike PS2's L1 & R1.
9) It's great that the order that the wireless controls are assigned is set based on the order in which controls sign in, not the order in which they are originally registered on the box (getting a control assigned and recognized on the box is a little weird for the first two controls, but after doing it a couple of times it was a breeze). In addition, each control and the box have a four-quadrant circular LED array. The box lights up the quadrants for the controls that are currently connected. The controller lights up the quadrant to indicate which player the controller is. The box can be turned on or off right from the wireless control. Turning off the box shuts down the controls that people activated for that session. Controls are "acivated" for a session by hitting the green "X" button in the middle of the control, so even if you have four controls registered to your box, you won't be chewing batteries for all of them unless you are using all of them.
10) The headset is much nicer than the old one. That was probably obvious to everyone who bought one as soon as they got it.
11) It's stated both on the box and in the pamphlet that comes with the wireless controls that the force feedback is adjustable to conserve battery powe
Really?! Cool! Toys 'R' Us told me I couldn't get games or accessories until Tuesday. Maybe I'll have to call Wal-Mart. Thanks for the update.
Thanks, but I think I'll test it extensively, just to make sure that the platform is worthy before the official launch next Tuesday...
Yeah, well I will on Saturday. I got my confirmation from Pepsi that the 360 I won in the everytenminutes.com contest will be shipped overnight to arrive at my door on Saturday. My only question: Is it the core system or the "real" system? There isn't anything in the game rules about which one I'm getting. The other bummer is that there won't be any 360 hardware (e.g. different av cables, extra controllers) available until Tuesday, when the console officially launches, so all I can do is play Madden 2K6 with a single control until then.
Oh yeah baby. Everytenminutes.com. Last night I got a box from a Young America, MN. What the heck is this? 5 hats, 5 shirts, 10 postcards, and a notification postcard. I had never found the notification location on everytenminutes.com to find out that I won. The hats are one-size fits all (elastic back, very cool), and the T-shirts have the Mountain Dew logo on the front, with "Go ahead, push my buttons. I won at everytenminutes.com" on the back, with a picture of the 360 controller. The postcards are an invitation to an xbox360 party. Since the 360 is released 11/22, I should be receiving mine via overnight next Saturday, along with my requested game - Madden 2006. This r0k5.
Oh man! I was so hoping that the Flying Spaghetti Monster would be the new science of choice, yet the number of pirates appears to be increasing dramatically, which means that global warming should be reversing, but it can't be because of CO2 emissions. AAAAUGH! My theology is in shambles!
For all the complaining y'all are doing about these guys, they sure are getting a lot of play. Google morfik. It might be a well-orchestrated campaign of lies and deceit, but at first blush it doesn't look that way.
I got a chance to visit one of the facilities that manage GPS for the military, and talk to staff at length. So, while I'm not an expert on this topic, here's some of what I (think) I learned Twenty-four satellites are required for full coverage. That's assuming that you want full-featured coverage across the entire globe, with excellent accuracy, i.e. with 5 or six satellites visible to your receiver in your horizion. There are places in the world where there aren't as many (four is the minimum, if I remember, to get your exact position including altitude.
Lifespan of the satellites includes not only electronic function, but fuel supply for retasking.
The bases that manage the constellation (I am aware of two, but one would think there would be more)can compenstate for various issues with the satellites' clocks, some of which are issues related to age. In addition, since the master clocks are here on Earth, various satellites can be controlled more-or-less directly in the event that their clocks fail. In full manual mode, it it thus possible to lead a rogue object or person astray, but within the margin of error so that the person or object would have no idea that it/they were being "misguided".
I think Chicken Little ought to worry a bit less about the status of the constellation. The staff managing the constellation is well-aware of what's going on, has its own separate Command, and launch facilities that are quite capable of putting additional assets in orbit in short order.
Me hates the hobbits!
Since The Wrong Trousers made an appearance at a shorts festival, I've been a fan. The good news should be that the clay figures should be ok evermore now that the heat has turned them into...ceramic...
I'm very excited about the possibility of this happening. However, before it does, I think we're going to need better and easier-to-use AJAX tools. Right now cranking out advanced web apps is mainly a text-editor proposition. There aren't any AJAX RAD/IDE tools, and there really aren't any good, easy-to-use, well-integrated tools that will generate the JS, HTML, CSS code necessary to make this happen...yet. Once it does, it will make life SO much easier. Among other things, JavaStations, which were a great idea (except for the fact that they ran Java instead of JavaScript, and were about ten years ahead of their time) drastically reduce the probability of virus, trjoan horse, and spyware infections. They're less complicated, and they're cheap.
Of course there still needs to be some underlying OS, and this approach doesn't appear ready to do everything a PC can do (flash games are ok, but they're not Unreal, but as the Japs say "Games are for Consoles". It would be so much easier to not have to deal with a tech support calls with every little stupid user problem because the Windows/OSX/Linux/whatever configurations are so different from each other.
So give me an AJAX tool that does what my existing GUI IDE/RAD does now, and I'm done building non-webbased apps.
Wow! 75% of reviewed cases in the 9th were overturned? I thought it was the most overturned Circuit.