I wonder how much postmodern thinking influences people perspective on science. Postmodern thought is mainly associated with a person's view on religion, but it can also impact non-religious related topics.
I recently read a survey about students view of religion going into and coming out of higher education. Religious students that majored in science kept their religious views they had going into the program. Students that majored in social studies and philosophy, which are majors have have heavy influence from postmodern thought, became much less religious. It would be interesting to find out each of these group's view on science. We already know the religious group thinks highly of science or they wouldn't have majored in it. Would the group highly influenced with postmodern thought change their view on science?
I run into dep hell with Fedora quite often where every package includes every possible little feature requiring zillions of packages, but RHEL? rarely.
That's not "hell!" Hell is when you get into a catch-22 with dependencies. A package that has dependencies that yum resolves for you is exactly how yum is supposed to work.
Dependency hell is not just for Fedora/Redhat. I have had dependency hell with debian and gentoo.
FIOS is awesome. There are no caps or limits. Ping times are less than 10ms to many remote hosts. The thing about Verizon is that they have enough peering that they don't need to limit or shape your connection. They have enough paths for traffic that their network doesn't suffer from congestion. It is no wonder they don't want to redefine the work broadband. They're set for speeds over 100mbit/s using their current technology. They could do 1Gb/s using existing fiber (that's the beauty of fiber) just by upgrading the equipment at some point in the future.
As far as I know, there is no port blocking on FiOS either. Does anyone know if they block port 25 to prevent spambots? I know my business Fios has no port 25 blocking, but they might have it for home accounts.
I don't know what type of games you like to play, but you might want to take a look at recent releases and coming soon listings for the Wii. You might be surprised to find that things are starting to broaden a bit. I think that third party game companies were caught a bit off guard. They didn't know what to do with the Wii, so they ignored it. Now that over 50 million units have sold, Nintendo has their attention again. Deep Space Extraction, The Conduit, Cursed Mountain, and The Grudge are all targeted at the traditional gamer. Final Fantasy games are certainly targeted at the traditional gamer. So keep your mind open!
If you haven't picked up a MotionPlus, do it! Tennis and golf games with the MotionPLus are amazing. Why would anyone play those types of games on a PS3 or XBox? Red Steel 2 should work much, much batter than the original title since it uses the MotionPlus.
And come on, any true gamer would love the Virtual Console on the Wii.
It also seems as though Nintendo has begun to hit market saturation with the Wii at its current price. The sales have been down over the last few months and there's still no word of a price cut. I'm expecting one around Christmas, but they may be running out of steam. If anyone needs to come out with a new piece of hardware it's Nintendo.
Nintendo is blue ocean. They are not trying to compete in the red ocean that is Xbox and PS3. MS and Sony have to price cut because they are fighting over the same pie.
The Wii is finally getting some interesting third party games. The MotionPlus is awesome and makes a huge difference in certain types of games. Less "waggle" and more precision. Nintendo really doesn't need to do anything right now. Sure, they'll have an HD console someday, but for now, the Wii is doing just fine.
A lot of people think that New Super Mario Wii is going to be HUGE (especially in Japan).
They likely have plans, but I don't expect them to make any moves until either Sony or Nintendo does something first. My bet is on Nintendo just because they're flush with cash and really lagging behind in terms of hardware, especially with both Sony and Microsoft releasing motion control features in the near future.
This is exactly why hardware performance doesn't matter. Nintendo *is* flush with cash and has moved many, many more units and they did it with lesser hardware! They weren't fighting over the current "hardcore" market. They were going after expanded market.
For the "hardcore" crowd, the PS3 is the way to go and MS could end up loosing some share to Sony.
"All it has to do is create its own synchronization driver."
Why? All the driver would do is see the Pre and copy the files over.... kinda like it ALREADY DOES! This is because the "sync driver" is already inside the Pre. The Pre reads the iPod music library files directly. Palm already did the "hard work" of reading well documented files. They just chose to do it in a different place than the rest of the market. Why create a totally new way of storing music files, why you can just copy how someone already did it. The only reason the other devices need a driver is because they don't know how to read the library files directly.
This gives the best experience to the user. No additional software to install.
This is slashdot.org! The people here love these kinds of hacks. They love giving a finger to the 800 pound gorilla in the market. Palm did one of the most simple things to do, they changed their USB ID. Can they help it if iTunes just goes ahead and copies all the files over to their device?
"d if Palm would grow a few braincells then they would write their own damn software that would read the XML file in the iTunes library"
This what the Pre already does. It is just that Palm decided to let iTunes copy the files over to the device first, instead of reading directly out of iTunes. Why should Apple care were the XML file is read? From a technical perspective it is basically the same. It saves the user from installing additional software. The is one of the nice things about the Pre, no need for any additional desktop software.
No thanks to Greenpeace et al that caused nuclear to be financially and politically less viable than coal. Think of what nuclear costs could be if over the top regulations didn't exist. If we can adopt sane regulations to nuclear reactors we would be much less dependent on coal.
Environmental groups have caused the greatest amount of greenhouse gases than any other group. Okay, okay, I made that stat up.
Vote Chuck DeVore (A pro nuclear power guy running for Senate in California).
Is there really a desire for more fuel efficient cars? As soon as prices dropped form $4/gallon, SUV sales jumped. Per gallon prices today are not that much more than they were in the mid 80's when calculated for inflation. Price in Los Angeles is $2.97/gal which was about $1.51 in 1985. Average price was $1.11 in 1985. Considering LA is at the high end of the average, it's not that much different.
The main reason hybrids well it not because people save money. Any money you would save goes into the cost of the electric motor and batteries. The reason they sell well is because people actually believe they might have a hand in bringing down global temperatures by.01-.03 degrees over 50 years.
Hmmm.. maybe there is a conspiracy! The Japanese haven't been known for their large vehicles, so they create a secret plan to market a new type of compact vehicle. Get people to believe that they can bring down global temperatures by buying a hybrid -- catch the US makers off guard. It worked brilliantly!;)
Incorrect. GM *lost* money on many of it cars. I recall the number being around $1,000-$1,500 a vehicle. The SUV's were the only line where they actually made money per car.
Personally, I think GM should have just let the autoworkers pull a world-wide strike years ago. In the long run they would have been ahead even though the short term costs would have been very painful.
There is no conspiracy other than the will to survive. You can see why a company losing money on each car would *have* to fight against further regulation.
The neat idea behind Chrysler's design is that the turbine must be de-coupled from the drive train. The electric engine is the thing that is moving the car. This way the turbine can run at the most efficient RPM.
The fact is that American car companies built cars that could actually make a profit on. Those vehicles were SUV's.
It can scale extremely well. It is the backend to Adobe's acrobat.com website! So you know it can handle millions of documents if you need it to. Sharepoint requires MS SQL Server for searching documents. With Alfresco, that feature is built in.
Sharepoint is teaming software and not really designed for large document repositories. Alfresco has a teaming interface (Alfresco Share) and a more generic document repository interface.
Alfresco can expose the repository via FTP, SMB, WebDAV, and a web client interface.
Palm will also release a lower end, lower cost WebOS phone soon that should compete with the $99 price point of the low end iPhone.
So far, I'm really liking WebOS. Especially the "card" multitasking interface and the cloud sync. I just wish that Palm would get the SDK out to everyone! Programming WebOS appears to be really, really easy. It is the most powerful feature of the phone, but only programmers get to see it.
Some Nokia's DO have video call support. They include two cameras, one on the front and one on the back. The video is based on the H.323M standard. If the carrier supports it, it will even connect the call over ISDN BRI or PRI lines to video conferencing equipment.
Heh... no wonder they hate selling new games! Apparently I kinda screwed them over when I spent $5 more. If the used game was selling for $15-$20 less, I'd consider it.... and someday when the demand is low I am sure the price will drop.
I would hope people would keep a new game for more than a week. It seems reasonable to me that if you keep a game for a couple of months, that you got at least $20 use out of it. Obviously people are willing to give up their old games for the price that Gamestop offers them otherwise they wouldn't have a store full of used titles!
I'm just wondering if the game companies are worried that Gamestop is going too far in pushing the used sales. They are becoming more of a game rental company.
I hadn't purchased anything from Gamestop until recently. My employer moved offices recently and now we are across the street from a Gamestop. I went over to purchase LIttle Big Planet and they assumed I wanted the used copy. There was only $5 difference between the used and the new and I figured I'd rather get the new. I knew something was up when the guy behind the counter kept telling me I could save a few dollars if I got the used one. Was I really sure I wanted the new one? Are you really sure? I figured they must be doing very will with their used games. Most of the store is full of used games.
What does Gamestop pay for used games? They must have some soft of dynamic system that keeps track of demand and quantity on hand before they quote a price. Is it worthwhile to sell games to Gamestop? They wanted to sell me on a membership card that would give me 15% when I sold a game to them.
The few games that I have bought used were from Gamefly. The nice thing about Gamefly is they at least give you a *new* case (not a beat up and gross one), cover art, and the booklet. I supposed I'm picky though, I don't buy a game unless I know I really want to keep a copy for a long time.
The Wii-mote and nunchuk make a very natural control system for FPS games. What does MS solution have over the Wii?
1. Wii is shipping a real product. We all know how Microsoft is with demos. 2. There is a slight, but noticeable lag in the MS solution compared to the Wii's controllers. The Wii-mote is very responsive. 3. MS showed some unique games showing off the controller. Does anyone know how this control system will make platform or FPS games better? The Wii-mote does work with these types of games. 4. This product appears to be trying to leapfrog the Playstation Eye and not the Wii. The camera accessory is something that Sony has been playing with since the PS2. 5. Xbox fans don't get to make fun of the Wii controllers anymore. Thank you Microsoft!
Note that the reviewer is looking at a pre-production version of the phone. Some people have pointed out that the real production versions of the phone have a better keyboard and smoother sliding action. Note that people *are* saying that the keyboard is a lesser keyboard than the Treo's.
Don't forget the episode where the comic book store owner/manger goes on a date with Penny. He appears to be relatively normal until Sheldon gets into an argument on who takes over for Batman.
Take filtering: by allowing ISPs to silently block access to sites that displease them..
Does anyone know of an ISP that is actually blocking a competitor's site?
ISPs would also like to be able to arbitrarily slow or degrade our network connections depending on what we're doing and with whom. In the classic "traffic shaping" scenario
Careful! Some QoS is good! I *want* my ISP to QoS VoIP traffic. If they QoS their internal VoIP traffic, but not traffic that goes outside their network, it that their fault? Will stupid laws prevent them from providing quality VoIP services within their network? What if the ISP routes VoIP traffic to special links? Is this a form of QoS that violates the spirit of the Internet?
Finally, there's the question of metered billing for ISP customers.
I think it is unfair for me to have to pay more for my bursty usage just because some guy wants to torrent 24/7. If you want more expensive Internet service, then by all means, pass a law that prevents capping. The funny thing is that a law like that will just help the big telcoms that have plenty of peering. The smaller, local ISP's will die because they won't be able to support the costs of their transit links.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how much postmodern thinking influences people perspective on science. Postmodern thought is mainly associated with a person's view on religion, but it can also impact non-religious related topics.
I recently read a survey about students view of religion going into and coming out of higher education. Religious students that majored in science kept their religious views they had going into the program. Students that majored in social studies and philosophy, which are majors have have heavy influence from postmodern thought, became much less religious. It would be interesting to find out each of these group's view on science. We already know the religious group thinks highly of science or they wouldn't have majored in it. Would the group highly influenced with postmodern thought change their view on science?
I run into dep hell with Fedora quite often where every package includes every possible little feature requiring zillions of packages, but RHEL? rarely.
That's not "hell!" Hell is when you get into a catch-22 with dependencies. A package that has dependencies that yum resolves for you is exactly how yum is supposed to work.
Dependency hell is not just for Fedora/Redhat. I have had dependency hell with debian and gentoo.
FIOS is awesome. There are no caps or limits. Ping times are less than 10ms to many remote hosts. The thing about Verizon is that they have enough peering that they don't need to limit or shape your connection. They have enough paths for traffic that their network doesn't suffer from congestion. It is no wonder they don't want to redefine the work broadband. They're set for speeds over 100mbit/s using their current technology. They could do 1Gb/s using existing fiber (that's the beauty of fiber) just by upgrading the equipment at some point in the future.
As far as I know, there is no port blocking on FiOS either. Does anyone know if they block port 25 to prevent spambots? I know my business Fios has no port 25 blocking, but they might have it for home accounts.
I don't know what type of games you like to play, but you might want to take a look at recent releases and coming soon listings for the Wii. You might be surprised to find that things are starting to broaden a bit. I think that third party game companies were caught a bit off guard. They didn't know what to do with the Wii, so they ignored it. Now that over 50 million units have sold, Nintendo has their attention again. Deep Space Extraction, The Conduit, Cursed Mountain, and The Grudge are all targeted at the traditional gamer. Final Fantasy games are certainly targeted at the traditional gamer. So keep your mind open!
If you haven't picked up a MotionPlus, do it! Tennis and golf games with the MotionPLus are amazing. Why would anyone play those types of games on a PS3 or XBox? Red Steel 2 should work much, much batter than the original title since it uses the MotionPlus.
And come on, any true gamer would love the Virtual Console on the Wii.
It also seems as though Nintendo has begun to hit market saturation with the Wii at its current price. The sales have been down over the last few months and there's still no word of a price cut. I'm expecting one around Christmas, but they may be running out of steam. If anyone needs to come out with a new piece of hardware it's Nintendo.
Nintendo is blue ocean. They are not trying to compete in the red ocean that is Xbox and PS3. MS and Sony have to price cut because they are fighting over the same pie.
The Wii is finally getting some interesting third party games. The MotionPlus is awesome and makes a huge difference in certain types of games. Less "waggle" and more precision. Nintendo really doesn't need to do anything right now. Sure, they'll have an HD console someday, but for now, the Wii is doing just fine.
A lot of people think that New Super Mario Wii is going to be HUGE (especially in Japan).
They likely have plans, but I don't expect them to make any moves until either Sony or Nintendo does something first. My bet is on Nintendo just because they're flush with cash and really lagging behind in terms of hardware, especially with both Sony and Microsoft releasing motion control features in the near future.
This is exactly why hardware performance doesn't matter. Nintendo *is* flush with cash and has moved many, many more units and they did it with lesser hardware! They weren't fighting over the current "hardcore" market. They were going after expanded market.
For the "hardcore" crowd, the PS3 is the way to go and MS could end up loosing some share to Sony.
It will limit the reach of the biased news content put out by his properties and limit the public exposure.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA. Yeah... like there is NO biased news anywhere else!
"All it has to do is create its own synchronization driver."
Why? All the driver would do is see the Pre and copy the files over.... kinda like it ALREADY DOES! This is because the "sync driver" is already inside the Pre. The Pre reads the iPod music library files directly. Palm already did the "hard work" of reading well documented files. They just chose to do it in a different place than the rest of the market. Why create a totally new way of storing music files, why you can just copy how someone already did it. The only reason the other devices need a driver is because they don't know how to read the library files directly.
This gives the best experience to the user. No additional software to install.
This is slashdot.org! The people here love these kinds of hacks. They love giving a finger to the 800 pound gorilla in the market. Palm did one of the most simple things to do, they changed their USB ID. Can they help it if iTunes just goes ahead and copies all the files over to their device?
"d if Palm would grow a few braincells then they would write their own damn software that would read the XML file in the iTunes library"
This what the Pre already does. It is just that Palm decided to let iTunes copy the files over to the device first, instead of reading directly out of iTunes. Why should Apple care were the XML file is read? From a technical perspective it is basically the same. It saves the user from installing additional software. The is one of the nice things about the Pre, no need for any additional desktop software.
No thanks to Greenpeace et al that caused nuclear to be financially and politically less viable than coal. Think of what nuclear costs could be if over the top regulations didn't exist. If we can adopt sane regulations to nuclear reactors we would be much less dependent on coal.
Environmental groups have caused the greatest amount of greenhouse gases than any other group. Okay, okay, I made that stat up.
Vote Chuck DeVore (A pro nuclear power guy running for Senate in California).
Is there really a desire for more fuel efficient cars? As soon as prices dropped form $4/gallon, SUV sales jumped. Per gallon prices today are not that much more than they were in the mid 80's when calculated for inflation. Price in Los Angeles is $2.97/gal which was about $1.51 in 1985. Average price was $1.11 in 1985. Considering LA is at the high end of the average, it's not that much different.
The main reason hybrids well it not because people save money. Any money you would save goes into the cost of the electric motor and batteries. The reason they sell well is because people actually believe they might have a hand in bringing down global temperatures by .01-.03 degrees over 50 years.
Hmmm.. maybe there is a conspiracy! The Japanese haven't been known for their large vehicles, so they create a secret plan to market a new type of compact vehicle. Get people to believe that they can bring down global temperatures by buying a hybrid -- catch the US makers off guard. It worked brilliantly! ;)
It seems to me the only organization that came out of this whole bailout was the UAW.
Incorrect. GM *lost* money on many of it cars. I recall the number being around $1,000-$1,500 a vehicle. The SUV's were the only line where they actually made money per car.
Personally, I think GM should have just let the autoworkers pull a world-wide strike years ago. In the long run they would have been ahead even though the short term costs would have been very painful.
There is no conspiracy other than the will to survive. You can see why a company losing money on each car would *have* to fight against further regulation.
If you think Japanese companies were the only ones working on hybrids, take a look at this article from June 1994:
Formula Hybrid at Le Mans
The neat idea behind Chrysler's design is that the turbine must be de-coupled from the drive train. The electric engine is the thing that is moving the car. This way the turbine can run at the most efficient RPM.
The fact is that American car companies built cars that could actually make a profit on. Those vehicles were SUV's.
It can scale extremely well. It is the backend to Adobe's acrobat.com website! So you know it can handle millions of documents if you need it to. Sharepoint requires MS SQL Server for searching documents. With Alfresco, that feature is built in.
Sharepoint is teaming software and not really designed for large document repositories. Alfresco has a teaming interface (Alfresco Share) and a more generic document repository interface.
Alfresco can expose the repository via FTP, SMB, WebDAV, and a web client interface.
Palm will also release a lower end, lower cost WebOS phone soon that should compete with the $99 price point of the low end iPhone.
So far, I'm really liking WebOS. Especially the "card" multitasking interface and the cloud sync. I just wish that Palm would get the SDK out to everyone! Programming WebOS appears to be really, really easy. It is the most powerful feature of the phone, but only programmers get to see it.
Some Nokia's DO have video call support. They include two cameras, one on the front and one on the back. The video is based on the H.323M standard. If the carrier supports it, it will even connect the call over ISDN BRI or PRI lines to video conferencing equipment.
...and it's not like there aren't plenty of people willing to sell them the games instead of via eBay. It's a "convenience/service charge." :)
Heh... no wonder they hate selling new games! Apparently I kinda screwed them over when I spent $5 more. If the used game was selling for $15-$20 less, I'd consider it.... and someday when the demand is low I am sure the price will drop.
I would hope people would keep a new game for more than a week. It seems reasonable to me that if you keep a game for a couple of months, that you got at least $20 use out of it. Obviously people are willing to give up their old games for the price that Gamestop offers them otherwise they wouldn't have a store full of used titles!
I'm just wondering if the game companies are worried that Gamestop is going too far in pushing the used sales. They are becoming more of a game rental company.
I hadn't purchased anything from Gamestop until recently. My employer moved offices recently and now we are across the street from a Gamestop. I went over to purchase LIttle Big Planet and they assumed I wanted the used copy. There was only $5 difference between the used and the new and I figured I'd rather get the new. I knew something was up when the guy behind the counter kept telling me I could save a few dollars if I got the used one. Was I really sure I wanted the new one? Are you really sure? I figured they must be doing very will with their used games. Most of the store is full of used games.
What does Gamestop pay for used games? They must have some soft of dynamic system that keeps track of demand and quantity on hand before they quote a price. Is it worthwhile to sell games to Gamestop? They wanted to sell me on a membership card that would give me 15% when I sold a game to them.
The few games that I have bought used were from Gamefly. The nice thing about Gamefly is they at least give you a *new* case (not a beat up and gross one), cover art, and the booklet. I supposed I'm picky though, I don't buy a game unless I know I really want to keep a copy for a long time.
The Wii-mote and nunchuk make a very natural control system for FPS games. What does MS solution have over the Wii?
1. Wii is shipping a real product. We all know how Microsoft is with demos.
2. There is a slight, but noticeable lag in the MS solution compared to the Wii's controllers. The Wii-mote is very responsive.
3. MS showed some unique games showing off the controller. Does anyone know how this control system will make platform or FPS games better? The Wii-mote does work with these types of games.
4. This product appears to be trying to leapfrog the Playstation Eye and not the Wii. The camera accessory is something that Sony has been playing with since the PS2.
5. Xbox fans don't get to make fun of the Wii controllers anymore. Thank you Microsoft!
Note that the reviewer is looking at a pre-production version of the phone. Some people have pointed out that the real production versions of the phone have a better keyboard and smoother sliding action. Note that people *are* saying that the keyboard is a lesser keyboard than the Treo's.
Don't forget the episode where the comic book store owner/manger goes on a date with Penny. He appears to be relatively normal until Sheldon gets into an argument on who takes over for Batman.
Does anyone know of an ISP that is actually blocking a competitor's site?
Careful! Some QoS is good! I *want* my ISP to QoS VoIP traffic. If they QoS their internal VoIP traffic, but not traffic that goes outside their network, it that their fault? Will stupid laws prevent them from providing quality VoIP services within their network? What if the ISP routes VoIP traffic to special links? Is this a form of QoS that violates the spirit of the Internet?
I think it is unfair for me to have to pay more for my bursty usage just because some guy wants to torrent 24/7. If you want more expensive Internet service, then by all means, pass a law that prevents capping. The funny thing is that a law like that will just help the big telcoms that have plenty of peering. The smaller, local ISP's will die because they won't be able to support the costs of their transit links.