First of all, should that really be a surprise that a brand new, quad core chip can beat a 9 month old, slower, dual core?
One of the reasons I always buy Apple is because when they come out with a new piece of hardware they always say, "We'd compare the specs to an existing device, but since our device is new, that wouldn't be fair."
They also never compared the App Store to the Android Market, in terms of # of apps, because the App Store had a 1+ year head start!
Not only did you not read the article, you haven't even read any of the posts about the article clarifying things.
It goes like this: 1. European Explorers get to America 2. Disease wipes out tens of millions of natives 3. Forests that the natives were cultivating grow back 4. Carbon sucked out of the atmosphere in massive reforestation.
1. What role that you turned down do you regret, if any? 2. Is there any young and upcoming actor that reminds you of... you? 3. What role from any work of fiction would you love to play?
Likewise, the 5 man Zul'Gurub is literally nothing like the Vanilla Zul'Gurub raid. Zul'aman is pretty much the same though. However, these two instances were patched into the game. The 4 instances added in WoLK after the expansion's release weren't exactly shining examples of creativity, either. Before that? In TBC and Vanilla you simply did not get new 5 man instances patched into the game.
Except for, you know, Maraudon and Dire Maul, two 5 man instances patched into Vanilla. In addition to the raids Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub, An'Qiraj, and Naxx. Burning Crusade had Sunwell, in addition to its raids.
Is it me or is the article a load of bollocks? "The Chinese will win because the I Ching teaches them synchronicity"!
Agreed. I got to the end and the author just loses it: The "West" will lose because we're the West and the Chinese have a superior way of thinking. There was almost nothing of substance in the article except the very end: "
The decision to call cyberspace a domain was based on organizational necessity. That’s how the Defence Department is set up. It’s how budgets are created and funds distributed. It’s how contracts get assigned. Simply put, it’s how things get done at the Pentagon. This is why the United States will lose a war fought in cyberspace. A strategic doctrine built upon a flawed vision can’t yield a victory against an adversary whose knowledge of the battle space is superior to our own."
If he would've just expanded on that idea instead, it would have been much more informative. Pulling a "the chinese have a mystical way of thinking that we can not replicate!" is just dumb.
You're ignoring the rest of the poem and focusing on the last two lines. You are overlaying your own beliefs onto the poem, and saying that one path was more traveled than the other. In fact, the poem states: "Then took the other, as just as fair", and "Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same" and "And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black." There is not one path that is "taken by most of those around us." In fact, the only indication that they are different is that one is talked about as having undergrowth, whereas the other was a bit "grassy". In other words, he actually took the one that seemed slightly nicer, which is pretty much the opposite what people state the poem is about.
The poem is all about rationalizing your choices, something we are very good at doing, and why not? It's nearly impossible in most cases to figure out what choice was the best one in hindsight.
IT people are a complete pain in the ass with terrible attitudes and unrealistic expectations.
Unless you've been on both sides of the fence, and then suddenly IT makes sense.
"Waaaah! I *need* a bigger monitor to be more effective, and you have to open a hole in the firewall for my Dropbox account! Oh, and since you wouldn't give me a copy of Matlab to play with, I grabbed one from a file sharing site and installed it. But now my computer is all slow and acting weird... fix it!!!!"
Because it almost never is. Rather it's the programmer that plugged in a wifi router to his hub because he "just had to have wifi for this project", except he kept the default settings on the router resulting in it thinking it was the DHCP server. Or the programmer that was writing network code, had a bug, and didn't realize he was flooding the network with UDP packets - here's a hint, when developing networked software use a f'ing isolated network! Or maybe learn little things like time-to-live.
At least 90% of the network issues are caused by programmers or other users, and nothing to do with the infrastructure itself.
And no, I'm not an admin, just a developer like you that's f'ed up the network from time to time. It's just I learn from my mistakes and am not a frigging prima donna with entitlement issues. *insert image of dog going "WARGLBRLARGLRLLLG" at a sprinkler here*
Chris Lomont came up with the specific number, and he works three doors down, and he's too damn smart to be such a cool guy:) Unrelated, amusing anecdote. We've developed a "pre-interview questionnaire" for potential hires that have a bunch of (what we consider) easy computer questions. The first one has a singleton pattern in pseudo-code and has 4 possible answers. One of them is the "Lomont Twist", a mythical pattern I through in there for kicks. I'd say around 10% of respondents select that one! We're thinking of creating a wikipedia page for it with some strange content so hopefully one day we catch someone using Google instead of their brains when we ask why they picked Lomont Twist.
I can see that yes, in a perfect world, every father would like 6 months off to help raise their newborn, but what happens if that father is an engineer in a critical position 3 months before the launch of a new smartphone? Do you just say "sorry guys, we'll release the phone next year after Jens gets back from paternity leave"?
Clearly the rational approach is to say, "Sorry honey, I can't help you with the new life you brought into the world, I have to ship a telephone."
For a significantly larger screen. The resolution improvement is far better than simply looking at the screen pixel counts would suggest.
Comparing my HTC Evo to my friend's iPhone 4, I like my larger screen better - the iPhone screen is pretty, but too small for my eyes.
Dont forget the superior optics in the iPhone, the second front facing camera in the iPhone, or the gyroscope in the iPhone. Don't forget the iPhone is smaller in all dimensions, and lighter too. Don't forget the iPhone has videoconferencing. Don't forget the iPhone offers tap-to-focus for both stills and video. etc.
The HTC Evo has a higher rez camera, I'll have to compare pix to my friend's iPhone to see which one producing better. HTC Evo already had a front-facing camera before the iPhone, so iPhone is playing catchup there. Gyroscope is new, and nifty, agreed. iPhone being smaller is a negative for me, as I've mentioned. Videoconferencing is already there on Android. Tap-to-focus is arguable, but brings up an important point: iPhone users are dependent on Apple for innovation, and if Apple doesn't want it there, it won't be there. My HTC Evo has HDMI and USB - that crushes iPhone. I can treat the Evo as a USB drive, that crushes iPhone. The GUI (Sense) is better than iPhone. It had multi-tasking before iPhone.
The single only place where I envy iPhone users is the app store. Android's is adequate, but iPhone, given the closed model, is superior, and not just in number of apps. The apt comparison is an iPhone is a game console, and Android is a PC. Since I use my smartphone for non-game-console things, I'm very, very happy with the Android. Particularly with the Evo, it is simply better than iPhone 4, for me, and makes the 3GS look ancient.
But what if I'm a NASCAR driver and perfectly capable of handling my car at 200 MPH? Why should I be restricted just because a bunch of old lady drivers can't be bothered to learn how to go more than 155?.
A better analogy is a car capped at 70 mph, because, well, it's illegal anywhere in the US (I think) to go over 70, so you don't need that functionality! Would you buy that car then? And then of course there's the fact that you can't open any of the windows more than half way, because that's dangerous. And the steering wheel is permanently tilted to the angle the manufacturer believes is the perfect angle. Same with the mirrors, they've determined the optical angle for people. Are you over 6' or under 5'6"? Sorry, you'll just have to duck or crane your neck to see through them correctly. Oh, and it has no glove compartment because it is so easy to drive, there is no manual, and no reason for a glove compartment. Let's not mention it only gets one channel on the radio...
Huh, that analogy is much more fertile than I expected it was going to be!
Or you could use proven, effective techniques that people have used for a long, long time. "Colic" really means "fussy", basically kids with their nervous system amped up. http://www.amazon.com/Happiest-Baby-Block-Crying-Newborn/dp/0553588729 is a great book that helped us with our little guy.
But then, both my kids were born AT HOME with a midwife. No drugs, no unnecessary procedures, and no c-sections because the birth is not happening on the doctor's timetable (omg! he might miss his golf game!).
Making your kid at risk already because of your falsely informed political agenda. Nice.
I'm pretty sure the distance dropped is relatively independent of the source, unless we're talking guns that shoot gliders or relativistic hyperbullets or something.
Too bad there's been no studies or evidence whatsoever supporting such a view. Psychological state is effective in dealing with symptoms, but nothing has turned up showing a connection with contracting a disease, nor getting cured from it. In fact, many people devastate themselves trying to maintain a positive outlook while ill.
It is because the Medical community dropped black-magic ideas like yours and embraced the scientific method that they'd made such great strides in the past decade or two.
I could introduce you to my Mother-in-Law; but you'd have to hurry, the aggressive breast cancer...
And I could introduce you to my mother, who has aggressive, stage 4 kidney cancer. Her doctor told her she had 6 months. Fortunately her general practitioner didn't know what he was talking about, and made that statement 20 months ago. Also, it looks like my mother will be able to see the birth of my child, and with a bit of luck, get to know it as well.
I'm very sorry to hear about your mother-in-law, but understand that cancer research is making great strides now. That may be a bitter pill for you now, but in the future, there's a strong chance even aggressive cancers will be cured. For my mom, and your mother-in-law, I hope those advances come quickly.
The problem is what a person is cognitively focused on isn't necessarily what they are visually focused on. We've worked on vision-tracking systems for a long time, and this basic fact stymies most uses of the technology. We have had numerous devices that bounce various types of light off the retina for tracking, and people that use it complain that sometimes what they are focused on, and what their retina is apparently focused on, is different.
Your 2000 prediction fortunately is quite wrong. D&D 3 & 3.5 were much more fun to play for 99% of D&D players, even old grognards that have been playing since Chainmail. My entire group whined and bitched about 3.0 & 3.5, but we all converted and have had a blast. If you bother to read any of the new 4e information, it looks to be a game much more focused on at-the-table fun, with some (mild) experimentation into how to merge online gaming with D&D. But that latter part is all optional.
"fades into the background" is a meme from 5 years ago... turns out for most people (most, not all!) the want the Game part of RPG as much as the RP part. Simple systems are fun for one shots and quick campaigns, but the crunchier games tend to be more satisfying long term. Most D&Ders aren't interested in amateur improv hour - they want to game! Fortunately 4e is headed in that direction.
Anyway, don't let me convince you, take a gander at wizards.com, enworld.org, and rpg.net for more salient information. Some cool stuff is coming out!
And for a behind the scenes "listen" - stop by the podcast section of wizards and listen to two of the designers talk about inspirations and motivations for 4e - they're D&D geeks, they love gaming and D&D, and want to make a new, more fun edition, and you can hear that in their squeaky voices;)
I am pretty sure planting a few hundred hydrogen bombs a couple of miles below the surface of the planet at strategic locations, and detonating them, would make the world uninhabitable.
How so? What, exactly, do you think would happen? Nuclear winter, that bogeyman of the 70s and 80s? You could wipe out civilizations with them, but hardly make the world uninhabitable, and even that would be difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually,
If Skyrim is Fallout 3 with swords, and Fallout 3 is Oblivion with Guns, then Skyrim is Oblivion with guns with swords.
Which sounds like SWOR ... huh.
First of all, should that really be a surprise that a brand new, quad core chip can beat a 9 month old, slower, dual core?
One of the reasons I always buy Apple is because when they come out with a new piece of hardware they always say, "We'd compare the specs to an existing device, but since our device is new, that wouldn't be fair."
They also never compared the App Store to the Android Market, in terms of # of apps, because the App Store had a 1+ year head start!
Not only did you not read the article, you haven't even read any of the posts about the article clarifying things.
It goes like this:
1. European Explorers get to America
2. Disease wipes out tens of millions of natives
3. Forests that the natives were cultivating grow back
4. Carbon sucked out of the atmosphere in massive reforestation.
1. What role that you turned down do you regret, if any? ... you?
2. Is there any young and upcoming actor that reminds you of
3. What role from any work of fiction would you love to play?
Likewise, the 5 man Zul'Gurub is literally nothing like the Vanilla Zul'Gurub raid. Zul'aman is pretty much the same though. However, these two instances were patched into the game. The 4 instances added in WoLK after the expansion's release weren't exactly shining examples of creativity, either. Before that? In TBC and Vanilla you simply did not get new 5 man instances patched into the game.
Except for, you know, Maraudon and Dire Maul, two 5 man instances patched into Vanilla. In addition to the raids Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub, An'Qiraj, and Naxx. Burning Crusade had Sunwell, in addition to its raids.
Is it me or is the article a load of bollocks? "The Chinese will win because the I Ching teaches them synchronicity"!
Agreed. I got to the end and the author just loses it: The "West" will lose because we're the West and the Chinese have a superior way of thinking. There was almost nothing of substance in the article except the very end: "
The decision to call cyberspace a domain was based on organizational necessity. That’s how the Defence Department is set up. It’s how budgets are created and funds distributed. It’s how contracts get assigned. Simply put, it’s how things get done at the Pentagon. This is why the United States will lose a war fought in cyberspace. A strategic doctrine built upon a flawed vision can’t yield a victory against an adversary whose knowledge of the battle space is superior to our own."
If he would've just expanded on that idea instead, it would have been much more informative. Pulling a "the chinese have a mystical way of thinking that we can not replicate!" is just dumb.
You're ignoring the rest of the poem and focusing on the last two lines. You are overlaying your own beliefs onto the poem, and saying that one path was more traveled than the other. In fact, the poem states:
"Then took the other, as just as fair",
and "Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same"
and "And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black."
There is not one path that is "taken by most of those around us." In fact, the only indication that they are different is that one is talked about as having undergrowth, whereas the other was a bit "grassy". In other words, he actually took the one that seemed slightly nicer, which is pretty much the opposite what people state the poem is about.
The poem is all about rationalizing your choices, something we are very good at doing, and why not? It's nearly impossible in most cases to figure out what choice was the best one in hindsight.
IT people are a complete pain in the ass with terrible attitudes and unrealistic expectations.
Unless you've been on both sides of the fence, and then suddenly IT makes sense.
"Waaaah! I *need* a bigger monitor to be more effective, and you have to open a hole in the firewall for my Dropbox account! Oh, and since you wouldn't give me a copy of Matlab to play with, I grabbed one from a file sharing site and installed it. But now my computer is all slow and acting weird ... fix it!!!!"
Because it almost never is. Rather it's the programmer that plugged in a wifi router to his hub because he "just had to have wifi for this project", except he kept the default settings on the router resulting in it thinking it was the DHCP server. Or the programmer that was writing network code, had a bug, and didn't realize he was flooding the network with UDP packets - here's a hint, when developing networked software use a f'ing isolated network! Or maybe learn little things like time-to-live.
At least 90% of the network issues are caused by programmers or other users, and nothing to do with the infrastructure itself.
And no, I'm not an admin, just a developer like you that's f'ed up the network from time to time. It's just I learn from my mistakes and am not a frigging prima donna with entitlement issues. *insert image of dog going "WARGLBRLARGLRLLLG" at a sprinkler here*
OS X seems to have it's share of security problems:
http://news.techworld.com/security/1798/mac-os-x-security-myth-exposed/
Chris Lomont came up with the specific number, and he works three doors down, and he's too damn smart to be such a cool guy :) Unrelated, amusing anecdote. We've developed a "pre-interview questionnaire" for potential hires that have a bunch of (what we consider) easy computer questions. The first one has a singleton pattern in pseudo-code and has 4 possible answers. One of them is the "Lomont Twist", a mythical pattern I through in there for kicks. I'd say around 10% of respondents select that one! We're thinking of creating a wikipedia page for it with some strange content so hopefully one day we catch someone using Google instead of their brains when we ask why they picked Lomont Twist.
I can see that yes, in a perfect world, every father would like 6 months off to help raise their newborn, but what happens if that father is an engineer in a critical position 3 months before the launch of a new smartphone? Do you just say "sorry guys, we'll release the phone next year after Jens gets back from paternity leave"?
Clearly the rational approach is to say, "Sorry honey, I can't help you with the new life you brought into the world, I have to ship a telephone."
For a significantly larger screen. The resolution improvement is far better than simply looking at the screen pixel counts would suggest.
Comparing my HTC Evo to my friend's iPhone 4, I like my larger screen better - the iPhone screen is pretty, but too small for my eyes.
Dont forget the superior optics in the iPhone, the second front facing camera in the iPhone, or the gyroscope in the iPhone. Don't forget the iPhone is smaller in all dimensions, and lighter too. Don't forget the iPhone has videoconferencing. Don't forget the iPhone offers tap-to-focus for both stills and video. etc.
The HTC Evo has a higher rez camera, I'll have to compare pix to my friend's iPhone to see which one producing better. HTC Evo already had a front-facing camera before the iPhone, so iPhone is playing catchup there. Gyroscope is new, and nifty, agreed. iPhone being smaller is a negative for me, as I've mentioned. Videoconferencing is already there on Android. Tap-to-focus is arguable, but brings up an important point: iPhone users are dependent on Apple for innovation, and if Apple doesn't want it there, it won't be there. My HTC Evo has HDMI and USB - that crushes iPhone. I can treat the Evo as a USB drive, that crushes iPhone. The GUI (Sense) is better than iPhone. It had multi-tasking before iPhone.
The single only place where I envy iPhone users is the app store. Android's is adequate, but iPhone, given the closed model, is superior, and not just in number of apps. The apt comparison is an iPhone is a game console, and Android is a PC. Since I use my smartphone for non-game-console things, I'm very, very happy with the Android. Particularly with the Evo, it is simply better than iPhone 4, for me, and makes the 3GS look ancient.
But what if I'm a NASCAR driver and perfectly capable of handling my car at 200 MPH? Why should I be restricted just because a bunch of old lady drivers can't be bothered to learn how to go more than 155?.
A better analogy is a car capped at 70 mph, because, well, it's illegal anywhere in the US (I think) to go over 70, so you don't need that functionality! Would you buy that car then? And then of course there's the fact that you can't open any of the windows more than half way, because that's dangerous. And the steering wheel is permanently tilted to the angle the manufacturer believes is the perfect angle. Same with the mirrors, they've determined the optical angle for people. Are you over 6' or under 5'6"? Sorry, you'll just have to duck or crane your neck to see through them correctly. Oh, and it has no glove compartment because it is so easy to drive, there is no manual, and no reason for a glove compartment. Let's not mention it only gets one channel on the radio...
Huh, that analogy is much more fertile than I expected it was going to be!
Anti-aliasing makes a high-res picture look even better.
At the expense of resolution.
Or you could use proven, effective techniques that people have used for a long, long time. "Colic" really means "fussy", basically kids with their nervous system amped up. http://www.amazon.com/Happiest-Baby-Block-Crying-Newborn/dp/0553588729 is a great book that helped us with our little guy.
But then, both my kids were born AT HOME with a midwife. No drugs, no unnecessary procedures, and no c-sections because the birth is not happening on the doctor's timetable (omg! he might miss his golf game!).
Making your kid at risk already because of your falsely informed political agenda. Nice.
and falls maybe a foot (depending on the source).
I'm pretty sure the distance dropped is relatively independent of the source, unless we're talking guns that shoot gliders or relativistic hyperbullets or something.
"A cat is no trade for integrity."
Wise words to live by, always.
Too bad there's been no studies or evidence whatsoever supporting such a view. Psychological state is effective in dealing with symptoms, but nothing has turned up showing a connection with contracting a disease, nor getting cured from it. In fact, many people devastate themselves trying to maintain a positive outlook while ill.
It is because the Medical community dropped black-magic ideas like yours and embraced the scientific method that they'd made such great strides in the past decade or two.
I could introduce you to my Mother-in-Law; but you'd have to hurry, the aggressive breast cancer...
And I could introduce you to my mother, who has aggressive, stage 4 kidney cancer. Her doctor told her she had 6 months. Fortunately her general practitioner didn't know what he was talking about, and made that statement 20 months ago. Also, it looks like my mother will be able to see the birth of my child, and with a bit of luck, get to know it as well.
I'm very sorry to hear about your mother-in-law, but understand that cancer research is making great strides now. That may be a bitter pill for you now, but in the future, there's a strong chance even aggressive cancers will be cured. For my mom, and your mother-in-law, I hope those advances come quickly.
The problem is what a person is cognitively focused on isn't necessarily what they are visually focused on. We've worked on vision-tracking systems for a long time, and this basic fact stymies most uses of the technology. We have had numerous devices that bounce various types of light off the retina for tracking, and people that use it complain that sometimes what they are focused on, and what their retina is apparently focused on, is different.
I'm sure it's the place many a geek first got into techno:
http://www.amazon.com/Wipeout-XL-Various-Artists/dp/B000003RYJ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_6?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1197042838&sr=8-6
Wipeout XL
Your 2000 prediction fortunately is quite wrong. D&D 3 & 3.5 were much more fun to play for 99% of D&D players, even old grognards that have been playing since Chainmail. My entire group whined and bitched about 3.0 & 3.5, but we all converted and have had a blast. If you bother to read any of the new 4e information, it looks to be a game much more focused on at-the-table fun, with some (mild) experimentation into how to merge online gaming with D&D. But that latter part is all optional.
... turns out for most people (most, not all!) the want the Game part of RPG as much as the RP part. Simple systems are fun for one shots and quick campaigns, but the crunchier games tend to be more satisfying long term. Most D&Ders aren't interested in amateur improv hour - they want to game! Fortunately 4e is headed in that direction.
;)
"fades into the background" is a meme from 5 years ago
Anyway, don't let me convince you, take a gander at wizards.com, enworld.org, and rpg.net for more salient information. Some cool stuff is coming out!
And for a behind the scenes "listen" - stop by the podcast section of wizards and listen to two of the designers talk about inspirations and motivations for 4e - they're D&D geeks, they love gaming and D&D, and want to make a new, more fun edition, and you can hear that in their squeaky voices
I am pretty sure planting a few hundred hydrogen bombs a couple of miles below the surface of the planet at strategic locations, and detonating them, would make the world uninhabitable.
s .htm
How so? What, exactly, do you think would happen? Nuclear winter, that bogeyman of the 70s and 80s? You could wipe out civilizations with them, but hardly make the world uninhabitable, and even that would be difficult.
http://www.aussurvivalist.com/nuclear/factsvsmyth
A link to start with, do some other searching - I hear that "google" thing works well...