and also that the DC 30year gun ban would go bust if even the big antigunners are being robbed at screwdriver point making the gunban worthless, what next, piece of rock and treebranch ban?)
Uh huh, and other countries that don't have gun bans are just as prevalent to violent crime as the US [/sarcasm]. The US has the highest number of murders/violent deaths in any western country by far, and (apart from canada) is the only one with such easy availability of guns. Now I'm not saying that guns are responsible for all the shootings, but taking them away is the easiest deterrant to stop stupid/violent/desperate people from going on shooting rampages or holding up liquor stores - it's either that or a nation-wide stability test with the mandatory jailing of those who fail.
In fact, we (Australia) relatively recently (roughly 10 years ago) had a national gun ban scheme (in response to a massacre by Martin Bryant - we didn't have too many murders when we did have guns, so massacres aren't a commonplace thing). Since then, we've seen a MASSIVE drop in the number of murders per year.
That is, until half of your work/orders/file interchange is marked "capitalist propoganda" by the censor-happy chinese government and blocked, or worse - the chinese decide they don't like your company and green-light the uploading of virii. IANAR (racist), but I somehow doubt that a staunchly communist country is in the business of aiding an capitalistic venture.. more likely they'd turn a blind eye to the hackers, it's easier and in their interests.
Although I would be interested to see the coding-equivalent of engrish:)
Apples and oranges. The numbers given on the costs of solar power amortise the costs of setting up the panels and all the materials (given the average lifespan of the panels), whilst the $0.07/kWh only takes into account the amount it costs to purchase the wholesale coal/oil/whatever. It does not include the costs of the infrastructure/etc costs. Solar power is *technically* free, since if you ignore the installation/setup/maintainance costs all you need is a sunny day. But you are correct about the cars/trucks/ships, since a high powered electric car is just a pipe dream and hydrogen powered cars have their own set of issues; and also that solar power is intermittent (weather/seasons/solar activity/etc), so entrusting 95% of our power generation on it means that
(Total Grid Usage)-(Power Generated by solar in least optimal conditions)=(non-solar power output);, ie, the margin of error between (grid usage) and (solars' least optimal output) has to be within 5% in a 95% solar grid (as we can negate power storage == pipe dream).
How are you going to tell people? Even if you had the sensors set up right at the earthquake, and you were far enough away that it still affects you, and all the conditions were optimal, you'd have to have an automated earthquake announcer that's always on to tell people the instant the news of arrives. Even then, it usually takes a few seconds to sink in what's happening(1) (anyone who's been in a car crash etc could say that for a second or two after the crash they were thinking "WTF is happening?"). Add that to the time it takes to locate and get to somewhere suitable, you're only left with 5 or so seconds, which isn't a whole lot for an OPTIMAL scenario (in most cases you'd end up running behind the clock, and a whole heap of money was spent on a detection system that really didn't help).
(1) But I don't live in anywhere that's had/will have an earthquake, maybe people in those areas are in a constant subconcious state of alert?
Yeah so is mine, but thats because there's usually a case/mobo in between them?
(I do know what you mean I was just being an ass:P) I drive like that though, but that's only because im 6"2' and every single car I've driven isn't big enough for me to run the seat back far enough, but then again I've never driven in a 4WD, let alone an American SUV (dang those cars are big). I do recline it to 135* though (as long as theres noone in the backseat)
Sounds to me like this is describing already popular games on the market, such as counter strike. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the game, but I've always thought it odd that terrorists would have access to the same grade of weapons as counter-terrorists, and that counter-terrorist co-ordinators would deploy the same (plus or minus one) number of units as there are terrorists - you'd think they'd send two or three counter-terrorists in for every terrorists, not one-to-one. Also that the CTs should have to pay for their weapons, and are allowed to switch their gear. Also that the counter-terrorists don't have to answer to any chain of command, they just run around doing their own thing (a little different for clan games but otherwise). CounterStrike CT's seem more like militia or vigilante than CTs:\. Even IRL terrorists usually have a chain o' command, although not nearly as enforced/commonplace as disciplined CT's. Perhaps realism is sometimes worth being sacrificed to make the game more fun (sure in original topic they're actually using it to train troops, but I bet they got a whole lot of them in by saying that they could play some fun computer games:P)
So, it's 10,000 years between all the gamers? To fairly compare them, because you added up each gamer's game hours, then you should also add up each person's lifetime - instead of the amount of time elapsed? So it should be (lifespan of first human+lifespan of second human+lifespan of third human....lifespan of newest human).. which by my reckonings, maybe 50 billion*50 year average lifespan? I don't know the actual numbers, but I know it would be A LOT MORE than 10,000.
Any amount of basic machine upgrading, and it continues apace, won't make a jot of difference, as I am now the fundamental slowdown agent.
So HE'S the one slowing us down? Well that's easy, we just get rid of him. Problem solved.
In all seriousness, the computers have only reached a point where the interfaces are now outdated in comparison to how much data it can simultaneously accept and act on (eg, i can click on an icon and it will be told both "click", and "open program" fast enough that I don't have to wait for it). Seems to me that it's just calling for the UIs to be upgraded - we could start using other body parts (cue jokes) such as eye focus for mouse pointer position (not my idea, another slashdot pundit). Or, as has been suggested in this topic, better voice commands, and audiable hotkeys (like that light-clapper thing, except it opens your web browser instead of turning the light on/off). Or we could have interfaces that have more complex meanings than only one ascii value - such as the internet keyboards with buttons for various programs, or with hotkeys speeding up productivity.
OR.. we could have interfaces that don't rely on physical movement, since even the fastest typist (keyboard) or gamer (mouse) are still much slower than their own brains. All the real life influences - the actual physics of arm momentum (don't go for the numpad too fast or you'll overshoot), appendage-anatomy limitations (RSI anyone?) and taking into account other obstacles (don't knock that coffee over!) slow them down. Perhaps we could have more intuitive machines, as the post suggests. Perhaps we could just have MORE task-queueing technology, which performs background tasks while waiting for user input (indexing the hard disk for searching, defragmenting, virus scanning, etc) so that the machine is ALWAYS waiting for user input, and we cut out that last little bit of having the user wait on the machine. Maybe we could enlarge UI areas, like the control centres in the matrix or minority report - it might be especially useful for coding (grab a variable/etc name or three from one place and a chunk of code from another window of related code) or graphics/design type work (grab colours, picture segments, morph shapes, you could assign a different line thickness to each finger! Perhaps body alterations - installing extra "memory" for multitasking, a telly in your tubby, a USB in your knee, bluetooth in your tooth or WIFI in your thigh..
Doesn't matter if victims are also worthy of blame. The blamed will still vote against such a law, and considering how many luddites there are out there it would still be political genocide. And the software isn't secure on granny's computer because grannys don't understand updating programs, don't know anyone computer-literate and don't have the money to afford a technician, and most importantly, VOTES. Yes they SHOULD keep their AV up to date and disallow remote exection0 but they aren't going to, because they dont understand. Not everyone has the grasp of technology that we do, even if we want them too.
Of course that's what makes human shields effective, which is exactly what GP is advocating - sacrificing innocent (albiet technically illiterate) people - and shooting THROUGH human shields is considered wrong, no matter who you are or what you stand for (unless of course you're the type of nutter who would USE a human shield).
wisecracking, you forgot the whistleblower/protagonist has to be wisecracking.
But I'm sure that sounds like a plot from some sci fi show or something:S Or a little like AntiTrust, but on a bigger scale.
Politicians rely on popularity. If they started promoting something that legally forced little-old-ladies to try and learn how to set up effective AV/firewalls, it would be worse than political suicide; it would be political genocide - especially considering how difficult it is to catch spammers to try and make them recompense the little-old-ladies, what with geopolitical borders/international diplomacy and spammers' tenacity. Although I do like your idea and wish it was enforced, you have to remember that the people with botnetted PCs are victims, not perpetrators - much like when terrorists use innocent people as human shields, it does not mean you can shoot THROUGH them. I'd say that in a perfect world we'd have that legislated, but in a perfect world we wouldn't have spammers to begin with..
Perhaps if someone created a terrible computer virus which could only be erradicated by setting up computer security at a level which would effectively deter spammers, (eg, EFFECTIVE FIREWALLS and CLEAN ISPs) then this would force people to upgrade their security; a little like how the Great Fire of London gutted all the filthy slums...
Yes, and it's now used to describe "developing" countries (developing being the PC term). The 1st world is the industrialised countries, the second is developing and the third is undeveloped. Just because you happen to only hear the PC words doesn't mean the others are wrong. Words can change meanings you know, for example, "bugs" meaning flaws (in code) originally came from an early computers collapsing because a bug was quite literally eating it. Now, it just means flaws (usually in code) and has nothing to do with a moth's brunch.
I won't hear a bad word said against caffiene. Perhaps it is a type of poison, but so is forcing your brain and body to endure 8 straight hours of working whilst fatigued - it feels like those cars sound that run on homebrew fuel sound (ie, terrible). Eating right/excersising/sleeping right is a commodity most people can't afford these days (healthy food costs too much, don't have time to get a full 8-10 hours every single night, and excersicing? far too busy.
I like all these people who are so eager to poke holes in other peoples charitable ideas, but dont have their own projects (or they'd have mentioned them). If we gave the OLPC money to the kids in the third world countries (ie, mudhutland) then yes, they would live, but once they grow up they wouldn't be able to get jobs. They don't just need food, they need medicine, education, shelter, clean water, revolutions (to overthrow corrupt governments).... It's not like first world countries where absolutely anyone could get a job, even if its cleaning sewers. Meanwhile, the kids in the second world countries (ie, where the OLPC project is designed for) grow up and can't compete in a country where the vast numbers of people and the scarcity of jobs (although not as bad as in third world countries) means that they don't have any advantages (eg, computer literacy) they can use to work in companies, or start companies, which would generate economic growth, and bringing them out of the second world. With extra jobs and less population growth (the affluent tend to have less children), the second world countries will start employing people from the third world countries, which further drives economic growth..
It's like the dilemma of "would you save one disabled person or 2 fully mobile people from a burning building" - yes it's horrible, but it's more effective to save the mobile people... the disabled person still has exactly the same right to be saved as the other two, but it's not possible to save all 3 given the available resources.
I bought my phone as a pre-paid mobile handset, and I never signed any contract saying that I must stay with the telco in question for any length of time. However, my phone is locked into the telco I bought it from - shouldn't I be allowed to unlock it after some length of time has passed (I know that they probably heavily subsidised the handset, but unlike a phone on a plan there is no expiry date on my sim lock)? I wish they'd pass that law in this country, because I want the ability to be able to switch telcos, especially considering that I signed no contract saying that I would stay with them.
I never said theres no skill to sport, I said it's a trivial skill that doesn't produce any tangible benefits. I could learn how to throw cards into a hat, but it serves no useful purpose other than to entertain - this is why it should not be valued more highly than if I had learned something more practical.
Anyway as usual you missed the point.
Are you e-stalking me, or are did you just throw in the words "As usual" because you liked how they sounded?
It's hardly surprising that geeks are disconnected from reality, with this moron turning them/us into social pariahs. And gaming vs sports is entirely relevant to how disconnected gamers are from reality - since sports is the "outside" equivalent to gaming. He isn't just criticising gaming, he's criticising the entire lifestyle connected - ie, geeks. He shouldn't be critical of a lifestyle he owes so much towards (geeks as inventors/scientists/etc) - if Edison had spent all his free time outside "connected" to the world instead of in his basement we'd still be using gas lanterns so we could watch each other die of pneumonia (yes I know others were close, but they were geeks too).
Although having said that, I wish my opinion was held in such high esteem - that way, like him, I wouldn't have to get a job where I have to *earn* money, and instead I could spend my time hanging around in public places, making friends with any and all passers-by, just like him. Oh wait, no, he hangs around with his own group in his own tight clique, ignoring views outside his own, JUST LIKE GAMERS. Just because it's done inside a house instead of inside an exclusive (air conditioned, Mr "The-Outside-Temperature-Is) club, doesn't make it any worse.
The argument that a person is being entirely irrational and should therefore simply be ignored only works when the topic under discussion is a matter of purely logical calculation.
You can have an opinion that is wrong, simply because it's based on a fact which is wrong. For example, if I said "Black people are bad (opinion) BECAUSE they all rape and loot on a daily basis ("fact"), 'my' OPINION is obviously wrong because black people DON'T all loot and rape on a daily basis. Otherwise, your opinions are at best inflammatory (as opposed to just opposite) and at worst, propoganda (I somehow doubt the nazis were entirely truthful about the jews before/during WWII).
But this concept has been confused (ie, what constitutes flamebait and where does free speech fit in to it). This is probably why you were too scared to post with your real account - people have different definitions of "flamebait". You can have any opinion you want (most western countries believe this), but you should base it on TRUE facts (that's just a sensible policy). Whoever this whinging moron is, he supported his opinion with crappy untrue facts and generalisations (eg. Geeks don't know their neighbours - not true, my geeky and I friends know our respective neighbours well, or "Geeks are unconnected to the real world" - ridiculous by definition, to make money you need to be able to function to some degree in society, and there's no way you could be the geek he describes for free - I doubt however that he has any concept of money's worth).
Sigh, I'll bite. Programmers/Geeks rely on their practical contributions for their fame, whereas sports stars rely purely on their own fans being impressed that a ball went through one area of space instead of another. Sports is self-justifying - you cannot find a contribution that sports has made to society that didn't originally spawn from it's own popularity. No-one says, "Hey, that Linus Torvalds plays up to his fans, let's admire him!"; they say "Hey, that Linus Torvalds created an OS that I like, let's admire him!" If sports DIDN'T rely on fandom, you can bet your bottom dollar that players would act more arrogantly towards fans than even the worst of programmers.
You must be the same sort of idiot that is upset when the minimum wage guy at McDonalds kisses your ass less than the department store salesman who relies on commission..
Somehow I don't think that the big companies employ them because they enjoy their poor graps of english... they employ them because illegal immigrants are willing to be paid less for the same effort - this is how capitalism works. If you went up to wal-mart and offered to work for $0.50/hour then they would hire you over any illegal immigrant - it's not that immigrants are "taking" jobs, it's that they are undercutting their prices (wages). Yes, they should seek to come to America legally, but its unlikely they were given the opportunity to - it was just luck that they were born a few (hundred/thousand) miles south of you.
What gives? Why do you people keep going back to these places? What could possibly be in there that makes it worth it?
Hey I think I know what club you're talking about - I see lines outside it all the time (I think there's a chain of them)! It is called a "toilet"? I've never seen what's so good about them, there are so many places to go in this city
Gilhoolies is the name of the PUB (bar) - not suburb/town. He's already said 3 place names (ie, suburb/city/country) so you'd imagine that Gilhoolies can only be the pubs name?
With the constant changing of slot sets (well, maybe GPU slightly less than CPU), eg AMD754->939->AM2->AM3, and AGP->PCI-e, you'd be better off to upgrade your motherboard+cpu+gpu all in one go, since this won't force you to try and squeeze as much out of an older slot set (eg, instead of upgrading your old AGP GF-5400 or R-8550 to an AGP GF-6800 or AGP R-X800 in 6 months, upgrade to a PCIe GF-7900 or PCIe R-X1900 in 12 months).
I for one welcome the new fusion technology (overlords), since it'll lower CPUCPU latency and it makes upgrading less of a balancing act (since GPU and CPU power requirements from games more or less scale - that is to say, you'd be hard pressed to find a game that requires a powerful GPU but a weak CPU or visa-versa) budget-wise.
Unlike homosexuality (although there is debate on the matter) athiesm is a choice (you can convince yourself of anything true or untrue if you want to enough - you believe what you want to believe). In fact, the fact that there is a homosexuality==choice debate goes to show that the choice to be a minority rules out any grievances suffered. Otherwise, the conservatives arguing that it is a choice would not justify their discrimination, even if they were proven correct, therefore they would not bother to argue that point (especially considering how detrimental it is to their case).
Considering that I've been told by more than one Christian (true story here) that atheists do not have the capacity for morality
Sounds like more than one "Christian" hasn't got the capacity for a brain.
But I do agree with you in principle, especially since most major religions teach tolerance (including Christianity... for 100 points, what did Jesus say the greatest commandment was?). It's always seemed completely backward that most thiests are extraordinarily bigoted to me, which is in contrary to the incredibly liberal ideals found in most holy texts.
Slashdot Mirror
(Total Grid Usage)-(Power Generated by solar in least optimal conditions)=(non-solar power output);, ie, the margin of error between (grid usage) and (solars' least optimal output) has to be within 5% in a 95% solar grid (as we can negate power storage == pipe dream).
That's exactly what I thought when I saw this... I hit the refresh button 5 times since I'm sure this exact story has been here before?
Sounds to me like this is describing already popular games on the market, such as counter strike. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the game, but I've always thought it odd that terrorists would have access to the same grade of weapons as counter-terrorists, and that counter-terrorist co-ordinators would deploy the same (plus or minus one) number of units as there are terrorists - you'd think they'd send two or three counter-terrorists in for every terrorists, not one-to-one. Also that the CTs should have to pay for their weapons, and are allowed to switch their gear. Also that the counter-terrorists don't have to answer to any chain of command, they just run around doing their own thing (a little different for clan games but otherwise). CounterStrike CT's seem more like militia or vigilante than CTs :\. Even IRL terrorists usually have a chain o' command, although not nearly as enforced/commonplace as disciplined CT's. Perhaps realism is sometimes worth being sacrificed to make the game more fun (sure in original topic they're actually using it to train troops, but I bet they got a whole lot of them in by saying that they could play some fun computer games :P)
So, it's 10,000 years between all the gamers? To fairly compare them, because you added up each gamer's game hours, then you should also add up each person's lifetime - instead of the amount of time elapsed? So it should be (lifespan of first human+lifespan of second human+lifespan of third human....lifespan of newest human).. which by my reckonings, maybe 50 billion*50 year average lifespan? I don't know the actual numbers, but I know it would be A LOT MORE than 10,000.
Yes, and it's now used to describe "developing" countries (developing being the PC term). The 1st world is the industrialised countries, the second is developing and the third is undeveloped. Just because you happen to only hear the PC words doesn't mean the others are wrong. Words can change meanings you know, for example, "bugs" meaning flaws (in code) originally came from an early computers collapsing because a bug was quite literally eating it. Now, it just means flaws (usually in code) and has nothing to do with a moth's brunch.
I won't hear a bad word said against caffiene. Perhaps it is a type of poison, but so is forcing your brain and body to endure 8 straight hours of working whilst fatigued - it feels like those cars sound that run on homebrew fuel sound (ie, terrible). Eating right/excersising/sleeping right is a commodity most people can't afford these days (healthy food costs too much, don't have time to get a full 8-10 hours every single night, and excersicing? far too busy.
I bought my phone as a pre-paid mobile handset, and I never signed any contract saying that I must stay with the telco in question for any length of time. However, my phone is locked into the telco I bought it from - shouldn't I be allowed to unlock it after some length of time has passed (I know that they probably heavily subsidised the handset, but unlike a phone on a plan there is no expiry date on my sim lock)? I wish they'd pass that law in this country, because I want the ability to be able to switch telcos, especially considering that I signed no contract saying that I would stay with them.
Somehow I don't think that the big companies employ them because they enjoy their poor graps of english... they employ them because illegal immigrants are willing to be paid less for the same effort - this is how capitalism works. If you went up to wal-mart and offered to work for $0.50/hour then they would hire you over any illegal immigrant - it's not that immigrants are "taking" jobs, it's that they are undercutting their prices (wages). Yes, they should seek to come to America legally, but its unlikely they were given the opportunity to - it was just luck that they were born a few (hundred/thousand) miles south of you.
With the constant changing of slot sets (well, maybe GPU slightly less than CPU), eg AMD754->939->AM2->AM3, and AGP->PCI-e, you'd be better off to upgrade your motherboard+cpu+gpu all in one go, since this won't force you to try and squeeze as much out of an older slot set (eg, instead of upgrading your old AGP GF-5400 or R-8550 to an AGP GF-6800 or AGP R-X800 in 6 months, upgrade to a PCIe GF-7900 or PCIe R-X1900 in 12 months). I for one welcome the new fusion technology (overlords), since it'll lower CPUCPU latency and it makes upgrading less of a balancing act (since GPU and CPU power requirements from games more or less scale - that is to say, you'd be hard pressed to find a game that requires a powerful GPU but a weak CPU or visa-versa) budget-wise.