We complain about it because people in other countries are getting far higher internet speeds for the money we currently pay for much lower internet speeds.
It's like complaining about the price of a Cadillac or Viper, and then finding out in Europe they can buy them for the price of a Honda.
A hundred bucks a month for internet service is insane. For that kind of money a customer service rep should come over every other week and give me a blow job.
>That some people are fascinated with those pictures is fairly self-evident. >However, most of us are grossed out and feel the pain of empathy for the >victims and their families. These are not pleasant feelings, and we try not to seek them out.
I guess it's possible that the miles of cars I see stacking up to gawk at car accidents is really caused by a few folks, but I doubt it. I believe most people are fascinated by death on some level.
There's a reason behind the meme, "It was like a train wreck; I couldn't help but watch it."
>Everyone certainly is not fascinated with such images. I don't know where you get "facts" like that from.
I get them from the school of Life Experience.
For example, watching miles of cars slow down to look at an accident even though there is no obstruction to traffic. The onlookers that gather at any accident scene. Lots of people like to bitch about rubbernecking, but my experience is most people do it anyway. I believe that people are, as a general rule, fascinated with such things.
Every visit http://www.stileproject.com/ ? It's full of death, accident, and medical photos. It's interesting. If you've ever wondered what happens, for example, when a motorcycle loses against an 18-wheeler, you can see for yourself.
It's plain old curiosity.
Everyone is fascinated with images of mortality, for in them they see their own possible demise.
I've always wondered just how effective those paper masks are. They do not seem to seal well against the face. I would think at least 20% of the air you breath in bypasses the filter. Do these things actually do any good?
It's quite clear to me that the end of the Golden Age of the Internet is drawing near.
The internet has finally drawn the attention of the huge money and power brokers of the world. These people are going to make sure that the Internet serves their ends as much as possible.
Oh, there will be the few geeks who know how to set up a proxy to secure a tiny bit of anonymity until one of the Big Fish get wind of you and get interested in tracking you down, but for the most part, all connections are going to be monitored. They are going to know who's on each end of every communication channel, and they are going to know what is being communicated, and to a large extent, they will control it. Whether it's priority transmission speeds, bandwidth capping, or outright censoring, there's too much money at stake on the Internet now to leave the playing field "neutral".
I remember several years ago reading an article on the web where some guys were building a model rocket with an optical tracking and guidance system. They were essentially building an optically guided surface to air missile.
If the beam going off-track is a safety concern, it's a pretty safe bet that there will be safety interlocks designed to engage should such an event occur, up to and including a self-destruct device. In the space shuttle carries self-destruct mechanisms on it in case it veers off course into a populated area.
I had to google to know what a "companion cube" was.
With the exception of Silent Hunter III that I play on rare ocassion, I have not played any other video games other than the Call of Duty series since it came out in 2003.
Some of us just want a random shootfest. With spurting blood and intestines, please.
>I want to see a game where when you shoot the 'bad' guys, one of the others screams >out "Billy! Oh god, noo!" I want to see games where the enemies are people and not just >targets, and where civilians cry over the fallen.
Yeah! I agree, that would make the video games even COOLER!
Maybe games have gotten so good that no one needs to buy anymore?
My PC addiction for some years now has been Call of Duty. I have been playing since the first CoD came out. I have purchased each upgrade as it came out (except for CoD 3, which was not available for the PC). It is the only game I play. I have been playing them for years. I have no time nor desire to play any other game as it satisfies all my gaming desires for a 1st person shooter.
Every once in a rare while I will fire up Silent Hunter III, though not so much anymore as the Grey Wolves expansion has gotten so detailed my computer will no longer run it reliably.
But almost exclusively, I play Call of Duty. The game is so good, and so fun (I play online against other players), and so challenging, that I feel no need to buy a new game for entertainment. I keep buying the CoD upgrades mostly to see how much more realistic the graphics have gotten.
>But the Soviets also managed to outproduce the Germans.
Perhaps they did, by moving and protecting their manufacturing assets.
But the Soviet future was in doubt. America's never was. Aside from the few some months of uboat work off the cost of the United States, basically we were out of harms way.
Engineering projects would indeed be cool. Even if a bridge has been designed before, demonstrating that you can build one is indeed a learning process.
But nearly all of the "projects" or "laboratories" I had in school were not engineering projects, they were exercises. We did not set out to design a new polymer, for example, we simply mixed ingredients the same way they have been done by countless people for decades. We did not build a laser to burn a hole in a billboard, rather we shined one through a diffraction grating as has been done by countless students for years.
So I guess the key element here is: the output should be an original work. That, indeed, would be fun.
Our chemistry labs were so predictable at Georgia Tech we would work them backwards to make sure the numbers we got by experiment were correct. Booooring.
>As much as I'm all for freedom of speech, sometimes I think people take it a little >too far by bringing such graphic images into the public square. Anti-abortionist >protestors will frequently hold up graphic (bordering on pornographic) posters >showing aborted fetii. This is done in full view of children.
What about protesting war by showing photos of war atrocities?
The truth may be ugly, and the truth may be brutal, but the truth is the truth. Why whitewash it? For the children?
>Ask yourself, how many people who use a microwave everyday actually understand the principles on which it operates?
I agree, you don't want to teach kids to take things on faith. Which is why I specifically said, "Since I was quite willing to believe the peer-reviewed and much-previously-repeated scientific material at face value...".
When you read that water can be polarized, and you read that it is a reproducible experiment that has been reproduced for a hundred years or so, you can be pretty sure it's not a hoax or an act of faith to believe it.
Many people don't know how a microwave operates. But this does not mean you can't learn how they operate without building one.
To me, one of the biggest downers of doing experiments in any science class was that I knew that what I was doing was trivial and had been done before. There was no real reason to do the experiment as the outcome was already known. Since I was quite willing to believe the peer-reviewed and much-previously-repeated scientific material at face value, I did not feel I needed to waste my time rubbing my nose in the hard experimental evidence. Yes, Virginia, I really do believe that if I mix this goo with this other goo a precipitate will form, just as it has for everyone else who's done it since the mid 1800's or so.
If we are going to do some experimentation, let's experiment with stuff where the answer isn't known! Now THAT would be interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
They will get within weeks of flipping it on again, and then something will break requiring another 5 years and 5 billion dollars to fix it.
The complaint is not that there is tiered service and pricing.
The complaint is that in South Korea you can get 70/20 mbit connections for $30, while here in Huntsville, Alabama, a 8/640K connection costs $60.
We complain about it because people in other countries are getting far higher internet speeds for the money we currently pay for much lower internet speeds.
It's like complaining about the price of a Cadillac or Viper, and then finding out in Europe they can buy them for the price of a Honda.
A hundred bucks a month for internet service is insane. For that kind of money a customer service rep should come over every other week and give me a blow job.
>That some people are fascinated with those pictures is fairly self-evident.
>However, most of us are grossed out and feel the pain of empathy for the
>victims and their families. These are not pleasant feelings, and we try not to seek them out.
I guess it's possible that the miles of cars I see stacking up to gawk at car accidents is really caused by a few folks, but I doubt it. I believe most people are fascinated by death on some level.
There's a reason behind the meme, "It was like a train wreck; I couldn't help but watch it."
Most people can't help it.
>Everyone certainly is not fascinated with such images. I don't know where you get "facts" like that from.
I get them from the school of Life Experience.
For example, watching miles of cars slow down to look at an accident even though there is no obstruction to traffic. The onlookers that gather at any accident scene. Lots of people like to bitch about rubbernecking, but my experience is most people do it anyway. I believe that people are, as a general rule, fascinated with such things.
I think many people are just ashamed to admit it.
Every visit http://www.stileproject.com/ ? It's full of death, accident, and medical photos. It's interesting. If you've ever wondered what happens, for example, when a motorcycle loses against an 18-wheeler, you can see for yourself.
It's plain old curiosity.
Everyone is fascinated with images of mortality, for in them they see their own possible demise.
I've always wondered just how effective those paper masks are. They do not seem to seal well against the face. I would think at least 20% of the air you breath in bypasses the filter. Do these things actually do any good?
Question:
Why doesn't someone pirate the Wall Street Journal and or Crain's Chicago Business content and re-post elsewhere?
You know, I understand why everyone loves to bash Microsoft and their business practices.
But I can't help but wonder about the effects of the downfall of one of the biggest tech employers in the United States.
If you wish to expend your life energies fighting the billions of dollars at stake here, good luck with that.
It's quite clear to me that the end of the Golden Age of the Internet is drawing near.
The internet has finally drawn the attention of the huge money and power brokers of the world. These people are going to make sure that the Internet serves their ends as much as possible.
Oh, there will be the few geeks who know how to set up a proxy to secure a tiny bit of anonymity until one of the Big Fish get wind of you and get interested in tracking you down, but for the most part, all connections are going to be monitored. They are going to know who's on each end of every communication channel, and they are going to know what is being communicated, and to a large extent, they will control it. Whether it's priority transmission speeds, bandwidth capping, or outright censoring, there's too much money at stake on the Internet now to leave the playing field "neutral".
I remember several years ago reading an article on the web where some guys were building a model rocket with an optical tracking and guidance system. They were essentially building an optically guided surface to air missile.
I have not been able to find that article since.
I wonder what happened to it and their project?
Why did one of the lungs looked like it was sliced or cracked?
If the beam going off-track is a safety concern, it's a pretty safe bet that there will be safety interlocks designed to engage should such an event occur, up to and including a self-destruct device. In the space shuttle carries self-destruct mechanisms on it in case it veers off course into a populated area.
I had to google to know what a "companion cube" was.
With the exception of Silent Hunter III that I play on rare ocassion, I have not played any other video games other than the Call of Duty series since it came out in 2003.
Some of us just want a random shootfest. With spurting blood and intestines, please.
>I want to see a game where when you shoot the 'bad' guys, one of the others screams
>out "Billy! Oh god, noo!" I want to see games where the enemies are people and not just
>targets, and where civilians cry over the fallen.
Yeah! I agree, that would make the video games even COOLER!
I guess when each turd costs a million bucks to process, people start to count the turds they are processing.
Maybe games have gotten so good that no one needs to buy anymore?
My PC addiction for some years now has been Call of Duty. I have been playing since the first CoD came out. I have purchased each upgrade as it came out (except for CoD 3, which was not available for the PC). It is the only game I play. I have been playing them for years. I have no time nor desire to play any other game as it satisfies all my gaming desires for a 1st person shooter.
Every once in a rare while I will fire up Silent Hunter III, though not so much anymore as the Grey Wolves expansion has gotten so detailed my computer will no longer run it reliably.
But almost exclusively, I play Call of Duty. The game is so good, and so fun (I play online against other players), and so challenging, that I feel no need to buy a new game for entertainment. I keep buying the CoD upgrades mostly to see how much more realistic the graphics have gotten.
>But the Soviets also managed to outproduce the Germans.
Perhaps they did, by moving and protecting their manufacturing assets.
But the Soviet future was in doubt. America's never was. Aside from the few some months of uboat work off the cost of the United States, basically we were out of harms way.
I always hate the "X army did more than Y army" debate of WWII.
There was one overriding thing that dictated the outcome of WWII.
America's manufacturing centers were basically untouchable.
In the end, we simply made material faster than it could be destroyed.
Well now you are on to something.
Engineering projects would indeed be cool. Even if a bridge has been designed before, demonstrating that you can build one is indeed a learning process.
But nearly all of the "projects" or "laboratories" I had in school were not engineering projects, they were exercises. We did not set out to design a new polymer, for example, we simply mixed ingredients the same way they have been done by countless people for decades. We did not build a laser to burn a hole in a billboard, rather we shined one through a diffraction grating as has been done by countless students for years.
So I guess the key element here is: the output should be an original work. That, indeed, would be fun.
Our chemistry labs were so predictable at Georgia Tech we would work them backwards to make sure the numbers we got by experiment were correct. Booooring.
>As much as I'm all for freedom of speech, sometimes I think people take it a little
>too far by bringing such graphic images into the public square. Anti-abortionist
>protestors will frequently hold up graphic (bordering on pornographic) posters
>showing aborted fetii. This is done in full view of children.
What about protesting war by showing photos of war atrocities?
The truth may be ugly, and the truth may be brutal, but the truth is the truth. Why whitewash it? For the children?
>Ask yourself, how many people who use a microwave everyday actually understand the principles on which it operates?
I agree, you don't want to teach kids to take things on faith. Which is why I specifically said, "Since I was quite willing to believe the peer-reviewed and much-previously-repeated scientific material at face value...".
When you read that water can be polarized, and you read that it is a reproducible experiment that has been reproduced for a hundred years or so, you can be pretty sure it's not a hoax or an act of faith to believe it.
Many people don't know how a microwave operates. But this does not mean you can't learn how they operate without building one.
To me, one of the biggest downers of doing experiments in any science class was that I knew that what I was doing was trivial and had been done before. There was no real reason to do the experiment as the outcome was already known. Since I was quite willing to believe the peer-reviewed and much-previously-repeated scientific material at face value, I did not feel I needed to waste my time rubbing my nose in the hard experimental evidence. Yes, Virginia, I really do believe that if I mix this goo with this other goo a precipitate will form, just as it has for everyone else who's done it since the mid 1800's or so.
If we are going to do some experimentation, let's experiment with stuff where the answer isn't known! Now THAT would be interesting.