Isn't that the same thing? Energy is going to be available, but at a higher price, decreasing our standard of living.
Thank you. Glad someone understood my point. Prefacing it with the "we (humanity)" stuff may have been dumb though as it obviously made it easy for people to dismiss me and everything I said as an extremist.
Since the dawn of environmentalism, we've been told to use less, deal with less, expect less. It isn't true. We've never run out of anything important and we never will.
Oh, I see, so when the Newfoundland cod stock was wiped out for instance, a benevolent market force fairy came down from the sky and replaced all the fish population, and left a big sack of gold for every person living there too. It must be nice living in la-la land.
If anything, our consumption of energy will only increase in the future and it'll just push us towards finding new sources of renewable energy. They are available, they're just not cost effective at the current price points when there are cheaper non-renewable means available.
Oh, I'm all for renewable energy, and the use will increase to be sure. My point is that it will not be as abundant and cheap as we can get energy from fossil fuels, at least not for a very long time. Therefore, the price effectiveness of the renewable energy may in the short term come from facts that energy prices will sharply increase, which in turn will put of lot of people in a problematic situation.
We (humanity) have been living beyond our means for a while, but all forms of energy is going to get more expensive - i.e. all products are going to get more expensive. This is going to mean a decrease in standards of living, for just about everyone. We might as well get used to the idea.
You can however lessen the impact of this on your life. If you have half a brain, look at ways to cut your energy costs NOW. If the energy bills for your house starts to skyrocket and you don't have the money to insulate the attic, get energy windows and/or install a heatpump... you are going to be in deep shit, aren't you?
I have been exposed to bullying and stalking, so maybe you should just shut your piehole before you make any other ignorant, arrogant statements about "if you haven't". I grew up as a mama's boy and I was picked on and physically, mentally, and emotionally assaulted by my "fellow" students from basically sixth grade on.
Hah, I beat you, I got bullied from third grade. I thought being in such a situation would give you a certain empathy, that is why I thought you hadn't. My apologies for misjudging you.
Is hiding the rest of your life in your house a rational solution? No, and she won't. She did report these people to the police, and named and shamed the people who ran the site and let the stuff carry on. Good on her.
But really, it's great that you assume she has gone through the same things you have and then call her pathetic, ridiculous, and a coward.
Whatever, fucktard. Anonymity kinda cancels out the whole 'reputation' bit. I hope your eyes rot out and maggots infest the sockets so that when I skull-fuck you I can feel them squirm.
. But I think that this woman is quite frankly unequipped to deal with the real world. An internet death threat generally means jack shit. If she's that upset by THAT non-event, what does she do when someone flips her off in traffic [...]
Nice way to belittle her fears. It wasn't just ONE comment. This is something that has been going on for a long time it seems, and we saw only a fraction of all the stuff that have been posted against her, stuff that others have described as being completely vile. If you haven't been exposed to bullying or stalking, you don't really know how bad it makes you feel, how it wears you down over time.
I've been following this today, on and off. I feel really sorry for Kathy Sierra. What is scary is the number of bloggers (mostly female) who describe being subjected to similar things, some even worse. Most of the bloggers mentioned by her have apologized for participating in such a site though, even if, as they claim, they did not do any of the objectionable content.
I think Don Parks summed up how I feel about this best. With reality TV the tolerance of bullying has unfortunately been increased. If something good can be said to come of this, it is that a few online bullies are getting their well deserved come-uppance. I think it was Chad Fowler who wrote that the net never forgets, and building a reputation becomes ever more important. The stuff you write may come back to haunt you for a long time, and never forget that there are real people with feelings on the other side. Even if you disagree with them they deserve to be treated as human beings.
Yes. At last year's JavaOne Matt Howitt demoed a Playstation 1 emulator written in Java. He ran three or four different games simultaniously without any performance problems, and went through some of the code. And this was with software rendering only, no OpenGL layer. He said he would open source it, but unfortunately no code has appeared yet.
So running a little x86 emulator should be no problem...
Not many other issues are capable of getting left-leaning economist Paul Krugman and the Cato Institute on the same side.
I'm sure all Slashdot posters will quickly reach a friendly consensus too, it being an environmental and economical issue that also mentions left vs right wing politics. I'm looking forward to the thoughtful and informative debate.
how about a 'real' system shock 3? with shodan and stuff. why do you resist 'the many', warren?
I really don't get it. Why do gamers only want sequels? Why are you so afraid to try something new? Bioshock is in essence the next SSH game anyway, why not buy that.
Fantastic news from Warren anyway. Once you get past all the negativity, I think the PC gaming market is stronger now than in a long time. There are so many good games out right now I don't have time to play half of those I want to. I will definitely make room for those two games when they come anyway.
This suggests what many geeks have been suggesting for a long time: Eliminate PE from the required school cirriculum.
Happily, this is the first time ever I have heard such an inane suggestion! The evidence that physical activity helps concentration, mood, stress tolerance and memory is overwhelming.
Every since it was made mandatory under (IIRC) Kennedy, Americans have only gotten fatter.
You don't think it is more likely to do with the huge increase in the average number of hours spent in front of TVs and games by children, or the abundance of cheap and unhealthy food the last couple of decades?
and it institutionalizes the bullying of the weak by the strong.
The phenomenon of the bullying jock seems to be a mainly American problem, and I suggest you try to fix the underlying causes. When I grew up in Sweden, there were bullies in school, but there was no correlation positive or negative to participation in sports that I could see.
I doubt the guy even believed it himself. The conference needed a little controversy to spice things up, the online gaming rags promoted it to get more page hits, and now Slashdot does the same.
maybe he refers to megawatthours which he might be right about, but it would have been generated over the span of many years.
For one person yes, but if you have hundred or thousands of customers per day pedalling/rowing/stairstepping, it adds upp quickly
I think it would be more efficient if the people who go to the gym instead would just put on a pair of running shoes and would not have to exercise in a room that had not to be lit and heated for the purpose of them having a place to exercise.
a) People in big cities rarely have good places outdoors to run. b) If it is winter and snowy, it can be difficult to excercise outside too. c) Some people prefer to build muscles over doing cardiovascular excercise. d) Heating and lighting a gym isn't more wasteful than heating and lightning any other room.
I guess the best thing about this is that it might raise some people's awareness of how much energy different electrical devices use during the day and might help them remember to shut them off and think of energy efficiency when they buy new equipment. The good thing about the way the human body works is not how much energy we use or generate, our biggest strength in this is the precise and versatile we can use our bodies and the energy we generate from the our food intake. For example I bet you can save a lot more energy and pollution from exercising by getting wood for heating than you would ever be able to make by exercising a stair machine or spinning device.
I got the new JDK a few days afterwards from Gentoo, and I think it was ready a few days before I got it.
Some Open Source project focuses on getting the bleeding edge, latest and greatest, for people to play around with. Some focuses on being stable and only including the stuff that has been proven with time. They have very different goals and target groups.
Picking one of the last ones and then throwing a tantrum about not getting the new stuff the same day it is released isn't the brightest thing to do in my opinion. Realize it is not the distro for you, and pick one more to your liking.
I live in Asia, and out of a few billion people in this region less than 200 people have died from avian bird flu. Source WHO.
Of the people infected, mortality rate is 90-100%. The reason so few people have died so far is that it only have spread from bird to human. The day it mutates to spread from human to human, we might look forward to a pandemic that makes the 1918 influenza pandemic look minor. And this is one of the most quickly mutating organisms known to man.
In order to prevent that, we must minimize contact between infected birds and humans, and especially birds with the H5N1 virus and humans who already have a human transmitted version of influenza.
Am I concerned. No.
That is because you are suffering from the "well I don't understand it, so it can't be true" fallacy.
When I say real gameplay changes, I mean like a better combat system (melee & magic). It's way too simple and get's boring extremely fast.
Ahh, I see. Yes, then I agree with you. BTMod removed the worst of the console-itis from the user interface, but I agree the game is too easy. There are a few special attacks available actually once you get to expert level in some skills. You can jump attack, move siteways and tap attack, or hold down attack and move forward or back to do a few special attacks like a bullrush. But combat is so simple you don't need to use them really. I too would have liked to see a combat system that relied less on stats and more on player skill.
Last game I played that tried to implement some real fencing mechanics was Die By the Sword, and that didn't work very well. Damn....how long ago was that game? 4 years? 7?
So if they've been retreating since 1850, how are cars to blame?
Climate has always gone through fluctuations, what is frightening now is the how much bigger the change is, and how quickly it happens. I don't know how many times we have to explain this.
The world has been warming way longer than cars have been around.
Greenhouse gas emissions have been around longer than cars, it has been inceasing steadily since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
I'm tired of all this bullshit about our generation killing the Earth.
Being tired of it is not a rational argument for whether it is true or not. Sorry.
There have been a few RPGs that trimmed the fat and the busywork and gave experiences with constant variety and excitement. KOTOR I-II. Baldur's Gate I-II. Planescape: Torment. Fallout 1-2. (So, what? Ten in 10 years?)
We seem to like the same type of games. For all those who liked those, I'd ask them to check out Deus Ex (the first one), System Shock 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, and Psychonauts. All of them share a really good story, levelling up and gaining new powers, and an interesting world and characters to explore. That is the important parts of an RPG to me.
We also have the upcoming Jade Empire special edition for the PC, Neverwinter Nights 2 with modules, and the KOTOR 2 restoration project. Ohh, and Bioshock. Am I ever looking forward to that one. =)
Slashdot Mirror
You can hate humanity, freedom and capitalism if you want,
Now, where did I say I did that?
but your theory that the world is going to end and we're all going to die is unfounded
Where did I claim that this was going to happen?
We are wealthier, healthier and freer than ever before in history and that's not going to change.
It might, if we are not careful. But I think debating this with you is useless, since you are reading everything I write like satan reads the bible.
I think the OP was merely trying to point out that, while we might get away with that approach, it doesn't mean it is a good one.
:)
That was indeed what I was trying to say, but as usual you said it so much more eloquently. Thank you.
Isn't that the same thing? Energy is going to be available, but at a higher price, decreasing our standard of living.
Thank you. Glad someone understood my point. Prefacing it with the "we (humanity)" stuff may have been dumb though as it obviously made it easy for people to dismiss me and everything I said as an extremist.
Since the dawn of environmentalism, we've been told to use less, deal with less, expect less. It isn't true. We've never run out of anything important and we never will.
Oh, I see, so when the Newfoundland cod stock was wiped out for instance, a benevolent market force fairy came down from the sky and replaced all the fish population, and left a big sack of gold for every person living there too. It must be nice living in la-la land.
Typical Luddite-speak.
Why, thank you.
If anything, our consumption of energy will only increase in the future and it'll just push us towards finding new sources of renewable energy. They are available, they're just not cost effective at the current price points when there are cheaper non-renewable means available.
Oh, I'm all for renewable energy, and the use will increase to be sure. My point is that it will not be as abundant and cheap as we can get energy from fossil fuels, at least not for a very long time. Therefore, the price effectiveness of the renewable energy may in the short term come from facts that energy prices will sharply increase, which in turn will put of lot of people in a problematic situation.
We (humanity) have been living beyond our means for a while, but all forms of energy is going to get more expensive - i.e. all products are going to get more expensive. This is going to mean a decrease in standards of living, for just about everyone. We might as well get used to the idea.
You can however lessen the impact of this on your life. If you have half a brain, look at ways to cut your energy costs NOW. If the energy bills for your house starts to skyrocket and you don't have the money to insulate the attic, get energy windows and/or install a heatpump... you are going to be in deep shit, aren't you?
I have been exposed to bullying and stalking, so maybe you should just shut your piehole before you make any other ignorant, arrogant statements about "if you haven't". I grew up as a mama's boy and I was picked on and physically, mentally, and emotionally assaulted by my "fellow" students from basically sixth grade on.
Hah, I beat you, I got bullied from third grade. I thought being in such a situation would give you a certain empathy, that is why I thought you hadn't. My apologies for misjudging you.
Is hiding the rest of your life in your house a rational solution? No, and she won't. She did report these people to the police, and named and shamed the people who ran the site and let the stuff carry on. Good on her.
But really, it's great that you assume she has gone through the same things you have and then call her pathetic, ridiculous, and a coward.
Whatever, fucktard. Anonymity kinda cancels out the whole 'reputation' bit. I hope your eyes rot out and maggots infest the sockets so that when I skull-fuck you I can feel them squirm.
Yes, yes. Very creative. *pats head*
. But I think that this woman is quite frankly unequipped to deal with the real world. An internet death threat generally means jack shit. If she's that upset by THAT non-event, what does she do when someone flips her off in traffic [...]
Nice way to belittle her fears. It wasn't just ONE comment. This is something that has been going on for a long time it seems, and we saw only a fraction of all the stuff that have been posted against her, stuff that others have described as being completely vile. If you haven't been exposed to bullying or stalking, you don't really know how bad it makes you feel, how it wears you down over time.
I've been following this today, on and off. I feel really sorry for Kathy Sierra. What is scary is the number of bloggers (mostly female) who describe being subjected to similar things, some even worse. Most of the bloggers mentioned by her have apologized for participating in such a site though, even if, as they claim, they did not do any of the objectionable content.
I think Don Parks summed up how I feel about this best. With reality TV the tolerance of bullying has unfortunately been increased. If something good can be said to come of this, it is that a few online bullies are getting their well deserved come-uppance. I think it was Chad Fowler who wrote that the net never forgets, and building a reputation becomes ever more important. The stuff you write may come back to haunt you for a long time, and never forget that there are real people with feelings on the other side. Even if you disagree with them they deserve to be treated as human beings.
Runs J2ME, so I can use one of the many open SSH implementations, GMaps, lots of great games etc.
Being more open and home brew friendly makes this much more attractive to me than the iPhone.
Yes. At last year's JavaOne Matt Howitt demoed a Playstation 1 emulator written in Java. He ran three or four different games simultaniously without any performance problems, and went through some of the code. And this was with software rendering only, no OpenGL layer. He said he would open source it, but unfortunately no code has appeared yet.
So running a little x86 emulator should be no problem...
Not many other issues are capable of getting left-leaning economist Paul Krugman and the Cato Institute on the same side.
I'm sure all Slashdot posters will quickly reach a friendly consensus too, it being an environmental and economical issue that also mentions left vs right wing politics. I'm looking forward to the thoughtful and informative debate.
how about a 'real' system shock 3? with shodan and stuff. why do you resist 'the many', warren?
I really don't get it. Why do gamers only want sequels? Why are you so afraid to try something new? Bioshock is in essence the next SSH game anyway, why not buy that.
Fantastic news from Warren anyway. Once you get past all the negativity, I think the PC gaming market is stronger now than in a long time. There are so many good games out right now I don't have time to play half of those I want to. I will definitely make room for those two games when they come anyway.
This suggests what many geeks have been suggesting for a long time: Eliminate PE from the required school cirriculum.
Happily, this is the first time ever I have heard such an inane suggestion! The evidence that physical activity helps concentration, mood, stress tolerance and memory is overwhelming.
Every since it was made mandatory under (IIRC) Kennedy, Americans have only gotten fatter.
You don't think it is more likely to do with the huge increase in the average number of hours spent in front of TVs and games by children, or the abundance of cheap and unhealthy food the last couple of decades?
and it institutionalizes the bullying of the weak by the strong.
The phenomenon of the bullying jock seems to be a mainly American problem, and I suggest you try to fix the underlying causes. When I grew up in Sweden, there were bullies in school, but there was no correlation positive or negative to participation in sports that I could see.
I doubt the guy even believed it himself. The conference needed a little controversy to spice things up, the online gaming rags promoted it to get more page hits, and now Slashdot does the same.
maybe he refers to megawatthours which he might be right about, but it would have been generated over the span of many years.
:)
For one person yes, but if you have hundred or thousands of customers per day pedalling/rowing/stairstepping, it adds upp quickly
I think it would be more efficient if the people who go to the gym instead would just put on a pair of running shoes and would not have to exercise in a room that had not to be lit and heated for the purpose of them having a place to exercise.
a) People in big cities rarely have good places outdoors to run. b) If it is winter and snowy, it can be difficult to excercise outside too. c) Some people prefer to build muscles over doing cardiovascular excercise. d) Heating and lighting a gym isn't more wasteful than heating and lightning any other room.
I guess the best thing about this is that it might raise some people's awareness of how much energy different electrical devices use during the day and might help them remember to shut them off and think of energy efficiency when they buy new equipment. The good thing about the way the human body works is not how much energy we use or generate, our biggest strength in this is the precise and versatile we can use our bodies and the energy we generate from the our food intake. For example I bet you can save a lot more energy and pollution from exercising by getting wood for heating than you would ever be able to make by exercising a stair machine or spinning device.
Now these points I agree with 100%.
Or perhaps it was motivated by Sun's desire to buy their way into the "free" software community's good graces without fully embracing its approach.
What the HELL are you talking about?? After Java was open sourced Stallman said: "I think that Sun with this contribution has contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software. And it shows leadership -- it's an example I hope others will follow.". What more do you want?
I got the new JDK a few days afterwards from Gentoo, and I think it was ready a few days before I got it.
Some Open Source project focuses on getting the bleeding edge, latest and greatest, for people to play around with. Some focuses on being stable and only including the stuff that has been proven with time. They have very different goals and target groups.
Picking one of the last ones and then throwing a tantrum about not getting the new stuff the same day it is released isn't the brightest thing to do in my opinion. Realize it is not the distro for you, and pick one more to your liking.
I live in Asia, and out of a few billion people in this region less than 200 people have died from avian bird flu. Source WHO.
Of the people infected, mortality rate is 90-100%. The reason so few people have died so far is that it only have spread from bird to human. The day it mutates to spread from human to human, we might look forward to a pandemic that makes the 1918 influenza pandemic look minor. And this is one of the most quickly mutating organisms known to man.
In order to prevent that, we must minimize contact between infected birds and humans, and especially birds with the H5N1 virus and humans who already have a human transmitted version of influenza.
Am I concerned. No.
That is because you are suffering from the "well I don't understand it, so it can't be true" fallacy.
When I say real gameplay changes, I mean like a better combat system (melee & magic). It's way too simple and get's boring extremely fast.
Ahh, I see. Yes, then I agree with you. BTMod removed the worst of the console-itis from the user interface, but I agree the game is too easy. There are a few special attacks available actually once you get to expert level in some skills. You can jump attack, move siteways and tap attack, or hold down attack and move forward or back to do a few special attacks like a bullrush. But combat is so simple you don't need to use them really. I too would have liked to see a combat system that relied less on stats and more on player skill.
Last game I played that tried to implement some real fencing mechanics was Die By the Sword, and that didn't work very well. Damn....how long ago was that game? 4 years? 7?
So if they've been retreating since 1850, how are cars to blame?
Climate has always gone through fluctuations, what is frightening now is the how much bigger the change is, and how quickly it happens. I don't know how many times we have to explain this.
The world has been warming way longer than cars have been around.
Greenhouse gas emissions have been around longer than cars, it has been inceasing steadily since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
I'm tired of all this bullshit about our generation killing the Earth.
Being tired of it is not a rational argument for whether it is true or not. Sorry.
There are so many statements like "functions as per Word 95" without explaining what that means.
Exactly. More about this here - how to hire Guillaume Portes.
I'm still waiting for a decent Oblivion mod to make the PC version less console-sucky.
What, BTMod, Elven Map, Book Jackets and Natural Environments wasn't good enough for you?
There have been a few RPGs that trimmed the fat and the busywork and gave experiences with constant variety and excitement. KOTOR I-II. Baldur's Gate I-II. Planescape: Torment. Fallout 1-2. (So, what? Ten in 10 years?)
We seem to like the same type of games. For all those who liked those, I'd ask them to check out Deus Ex (the first one), System Shock 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, and Psychonauts. All of them share a really good story, levelling up and gaining new powers, and an interesting world and characters to explore. That is the important parts of an RPG to me.
We also have the upcoming Jade Empire special edition for the PC, Neverwinter Nights 2 with modules, and the KOTOR 2 restoration project. Ohh, and Bioshock. Am I ever looking forward to that one. =)