Of the cases listed on that Wiki page, 9 were due to pilot error, 1 due to a fuel leak, and 1 resulting from hijacking. None were a result of instrument failures, and in most of the cases of pilot error there were complicating circumstances, such as heavy storms or landing gear failing to retract, increasing fuel consumption and distracting the crew.
My late grandfather was an avid ham and one of the best Morse code users I've ever seen. I had never really shown much interest in Morse when I was younger, but my eyes were really opened to its potential when my grandpa was hospitalized after a stroke.
Despite being essentially immobile and having a breathing tube down his throat, he was able to communicate with my grandmother by tapping out Morse code on the metal railing of his bed.
So no, Morse code isn't a particularly efficient means of communication, but when you're lying on a hospital bed with a tube down your throat, it's a damn useful skill to have.
As you may know, EA has already confirmed that a DS version of Spore is already in the works, and they've hinted that they have plans to release the game on other consoles down the road, so technically Spore can already be considered a franchise. Furthermore, Will Wright's game have an excellent track record when it comes to longevity and replayability. SimCity came out in 1989 and remains a successful franchise property to this day. While the core concept of the gameplay has always been the same, I would hardly say it's stagnated over the years. With each iteration they've observed what works and what doesn't, redesigned and rewritten the engine, and expanded the scope of the gameplay possibilities while remaining true to the core idea.
Furthermore, I don't think there's much danger of Spore falling to The Sims-style Release-of-the-Month Syndrome. The whole concept behind the system is that there's no need for the developer to continue to add new content resources; the players will do that on their own. With any game that has a development cycle as long as Spore and that breaks so much new ground, to ensure a good return on the substantial upfront investment requires branching out into as many markets as possible. Furthermore, once the core development work has been finished, it only makes financial sense to continue to leverage that property to develop new markets and maintain profitability.
The fact that Will Wright has demonstrated that his games will have broad appeal and continue to sell for years is exactly what has given Maxis the kind of financial leverage necessary to be able to make this kind of undertaking a reality. Most developers can't even dream of pushing the envelope like this. For most companies the risk would be far too high. For the time being let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that Spore does indeed push the boundaries of the gaming experience and evolve (pun unintentional) into a successful franchise property that will continue to develop this fascinating gameplay concept for years to come. Even if it does stagnate, it'll still be better money spent than most of the other games out there that are still rehashing the same tired gameplay over and over.
The hacked version of the image was only up for about two hours before it was taken down. Of course, it's now been replaced with an invitation to "Add to Gorup [sic]".
My best friend backpacking through Asia was a self-powered hard drive enclosure. Just plug your camera into it, hit the transfer button, and it copies all the photos, instantly freeing you up to keep on shooting.
It's great for remote locations where you don't have a computer to offload pictures to, and it's way cheaper than buying a bunch of large memory cards. I use an SLR and shoot exclusively in RAW, and on the average backpacking/sight-seeing trip easily shoot around 5 GBs of pictures a week.
Here's the link to the one I use right now. I would've given a Newegg link, but it seems they've stopped carrying it.
If local cops are mis-behaving, this is what IAD is for, and if IAD is corrupt, that's what the FBI is for, and if the FBI is corrupt, that's what Canada is for.:)
And if Canada is corrupt...oh wait, it already is. Dang it.
I'm amazed it took this long for someone to point this out! Many of the articles in fields such as biology, geology, history, philosophy, etc that tend to have political/religious controversy surrounding them are often not of the highest caliber. Articles in non-controversial fields, especially computer science and mathematics (IMO), are often, as the previous poster stated, extremely well written and highly detailed. Want to learn about the traveling salesman problem? The related Wikipedia article is almost ten pages long with graphs and detailed explanations, cites 16 qualified sources, and provides more than a dozen external links for further reading. How exactly is that trivial?
I wish I had saved some mod points for a +1 Underrated...
Once you have the production line up and running, and a steady stream of sales to amortize the start up costs, stamping out another unit costs only a couple bucks. It's like CPUs. In the beginning demand is high, production relatively low, and a large investment has been made in setting up a new product line, so costs are high. Once everything is in place, it costs only a few cents to actually stamp another CPU, and for a product with high production and market penetration, even the costs of labor are spread over many individual units. When the demand drops, the supply goes right with it. As long as the product continues to sell, the company can continue making money off a production line that's basically "paid for", which means profit in the bank, even if the prices drop.
Then there's the fact that companies may in fact be selling units at a loss, especially with technology that's not so cutting edge anymore. Some revenue is better than no revenue and a stack of product sitting in a warehouse taking up inventory space.
I mean, we're talking about a trip into space. Considering the normally prohibitive cost of recreational spaceflight, $25k almost seems like a bargain. I've seen people blow that much on timeshares for goodness sake. If nothing else he could write a book about the experience and recoup some of the expense.
Since matcha does contain caffeine, most products that have had it added also contain caffeine. On the other hand, the caffeine concentration in green tea is (depending on variety) generally a lot lower than that in coffee. Given the potency of matcha, most recipes don't call for much of it to be added, so I doubt you'd be able to get much of a buzz even if you lived off nothing but sembe and mochi ice cream.
This article is a pretty good summary of the reasons behind the search for large primes. Although finding a new large prime doesn't necessarily have any specific, short term "benefits", it serves to deepen our understanding of mathematics. As extremely large primes are of importance in cryptography, the ability to find and work with large primes has a great deal relevancy in IT, as well. The more we discover large primes the more we learn about ways to factor them quickly and efficiently.
Although there are probably a number of factors at play here, primarily JAXA is simply just chronically underfunded. Similar to the system used for many software developers, they were given a certain amount of funding based on achieving certain checkpoints. However, for the most part they were weighted heavily toward the end of the missions. This is only speculation, but it's likely JAXA was forced to skimp on some things in order to reach their budget checkpoints. Furthermore, if one project became bogged down and was unable to recoup its expenses, it would place further financial strain on the organization as a whole.
I agree. The simplest explanation is always the most likely, especially when regarding conspiracy theories. I'd much sooner believe that a moderator thought it wasn't relevant to the forum, or was having a bad day, didn't like your tone, and deleted the post out of spite than that this is part of a massive cover-up.
I don't know if this necessarily true of Canada, but if Canadian politicians are anything U.S. ones, a phone call or visit has a much stronger impact than a letter or e-mail. For a U.S. congressperson or representative, getting even a couple dozen phone calls on a particular issue is a big deal. It's just human nature, people are much harder to ignore when you actually have to talk to them. While this is a great form letter, you might almost be better off just calling up and saying this instead. It doesn't take that much more work.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget fists...
Finally we have a display that's safe for Wii-users!
Of the cases listed on that Wiki page, 9 were due to pilot error, 1 due to a fuel leak, and 1 resulting from hijacking. None were a result of instrument failures, and in most of the cases of pilot error there were complicating circumstances, such as heavy storms or landing gear failing to retract, increasing fuel consumption and distracting the crew.
My late grandfather was an avid ham and one of the best Morse code users I've ever seen. I had never really shown much interest in Morse when I was younger, but my eyes were really opened to its potential when my grandpa was hospitalized after a stroke.
Despite being essentially immobile and having a breathing tube down his throat, he was able to communicate with my grandmother by tapping out Morse code on the metal railing of his bed.
So no, Morse code isn't a particularly efficient means of communication, but when you're lying on a hospital bed with a tube down your throat, it's a damn useful skill to have.
Whoa, I can play games on other people's iPods? Wow, I had no idea, either!
As you may know, EA has already confirmed that a DS version of Spore is already in the works, and they've hinted that they have plans to release the game on other consoles down the road, so technically Spore can already be considered a franchise. Furthermore, Will Wright's game have an excellent track record when it comes to longevity and replayability. SimCity came out in 1989 and remains a successful franchise property to this day. While the core concept of the gameplay has always been the same, I would hardly say it's stagnated over the years. With each iteration they've observed what works and what doesn't, redesigned and rewritten the engine, and expanded the scope of the gameplay possibilities while remaining true to the core idea.
Furthermore, I don't think there's much danger of Spore falling to The Sims-style Release-of-the-Month Syndrome. The whole concept behind the system is that there's no need for the developer to continue to add new content resources; the players will do that on their own. With any game that has a development cycle as long as Spore and that breaks so much new ground, to ensure a good return on the substantial upfront investment requires branching out into as many markets as possible. Furthermore, once the core development work has been finished, it only makes financial sense to continue to leverage that property to develop new markets and maintain profitability.
The fact that Will Wright has demonstrated that his games will have broad appeal and continue to sell for years is exactly what has given Maxis the kind of financial leverage necessary to be able to make this kind of undertaking a reality. Most developers can't even dream of pushing the envelope like this. For most companies the risk would be far too high. For the time being let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that Spore does indeed push the boundaries of the gaming experience and evolve (pun unintentional) into a successful franchise property that will continue to develop this fascinating gameplay concept for years to come. Even if it does stagnate, it'll still be better money spent than most of the other games out there that are still rehashing the same tired gameplay over and over.
No worries. That's covered under the missing list item "F".
Much like the recent Penny Arcade comic on how Doritos wants people to make games about their product.
1. Write up an interesting comment
2. "Accidentally" cut it into two separate posts
3. ???
4. Karma!
I was going to mod this comment -1 Unsightfull but for some reason I couldn't find that option...
The hacked version of the image was only up for about two hours before it was taken down. Of course, it's now been replaced with an invitation to "Add to Gorup [sic]".
Will the incompetence ever end?
My best friend backpacking through Asia was a self-powered hard drive enclosure. Just plug your camera into it, hit the transfer button, and it copies all the photos, instantly freeing you up to keep on shooting.
It's great for remote locations where you don't have a computer to offload pictures to, and it's way cheaper than buying a bunch of large memory cards. I use an SLR and shoot exclusively in RAW, and on the average backpacking/sight-seeing trip easily shoot around 5 GBs of pictures a week.
Here's the link to the one I use right now. I would've given a Newegg link, but it seems they've stopped carrying it.
And if Canada is corrupt...oh wait, it already is. Dang it.
I'm amazed it took this long for someone to point this out! Many of the articles in fields such as biology, geology, history, philosophy, etc that tend to have political/religious controversy surrounding them are often not of the highest caliber. Articles in non-controversial fields, especially computer science and mathematics (IMO), are often, as the previous poster stated, extremely well written and highly detailed. Want to learn about the traveling salesman problem? The related Wikipedia article is almost ten pages long with graphs and detailed explanations, cites 16 qualified sources, and provides more than a dozen external links for further reading. How exactly is that trivial?
I wish I had saved some mod points for a +1 Underrated...
"...it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed."
Anybody know how that compares to other forms of energy production, say, fossil fuels or nuclear?
Once you have the production line up and running, and a steady stream of sales to amortize the start up costs, stamping out another unit costs only a couple bucks. It's like CPUs. In the beginning demand is high, production relatively low, and a large investment has been made in setting up a new product line, so costs are high. Once everything is in place, it costs only a few cents to actually stamp another CPU, and for a product with high production and market penetration, even the costs of labor are spread over many individual units. When the demand drops, the supply goes right with it. As long as the product continues to sell, the company can continue making money off a production line that's basically "paid for", which means profit in the bank, even if the prices drop.
Then there's the fact that companies may in fact be selling units at a loss, especially with technology that's not so cutting edge anymore. Some revenue is better than no revenue and a stack of product sitting in a warehouse taking up inventory space.
...all things considered.
I mean, we're talking about a trip into space. Considering the normally prohibitive cost of recreational spaceflight, $25k almost seems like a bargain. I've seen people blow that much on timeshares for goodness sake. If nothing else he could write a book about the experience and recoup some of the expense.
America: A country with four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter.
Canada: A country with two seasons: cold and not-as-cold (but still pretty cold).
California: A country with two seasons: hot and not-as-hot (but still pretty ugly).
When spoken aloud, I've always heard it pronounced like "fisk".
Since matcha does contain caffeine, most products that have had it added also contain caffeine. On the other hand, the caffeine concentration in green tea is (depending on variety) generally a lot lower than that in coffee. Given the potency of matcha, most recipes don't call for much of it to be added, so I doubt you'd be able to get much of a buzz even if you lived off nothing but sembe and mochi ice cream.
It's not something you dump stuff on, it's not a big toilet.
You're right, my bad. I should have said factoring very large numbers in general, not primes. :P
Prime factoring vs. factoring primes.
This article is a pretty good summary of the reasons behind the search for large primes. Although finding a new large prime doesn't necessarily have any specific, short term "benefits", it serves to deepen our understanding of mathematics. As extremely large primes are of importance in cryptography, the ability to find and work with large primes has a great deal relevancy in IT, as well. The more we discover large primes the more we learn about ways to factor them quickly and efficiently.
Although there are probably a number of factors at play here, primarily JAXA is simply just chronically underfunded. Similar to the system used for many software developers, they were given a certain amount of funding based on achieving certain checkpoints. However, for the most part they were weighted heavily toward the end of the missions. This is only speculation, but it's likely JAXA was forced to skimp on some things in order to reach their budget checkpoints. Furthermore, if one project became bogged down and was unable to recoup its expenses, it would place further financial strain on the organization as a whole.
I agree. The simplest explanation is always the most likely, especially when regarding conspiracy theories. I'd much sooner believe that a moderator thought it wasn't relevant to the forum, or was having a bad day, didn't like your tone, and deleted the post out of spite than that this is part of a massive cover-up.
I don't know if this necessarily true of Canada, but if Canadian politicians are anything U.S. ones, a phone call or visit has a much stronger impact than a letter or e-mail. For a U.S. congressperson or representative, getting even a couple dozen phone calls on a particular issue is a big deal. It's just human nature, people are much harder to ignore when you actually have to talk to them. While this is a great form letter, you might almost be better off just calling up and saying this instead. It doesn't take that much more work.