Does having boh uranium and Plutonium make them more dangerous? (honest question not flambait). Or is it more along the lines of a reactor being able to make pluonium faster than the (what I have heard) is the slow process of Uranuim enrichment
I am not a nuclear physicist (Wikipedia is), but having both Uranium and Plutonium doesn't really make either more dangerous. Plutonium, however, is infinitely more dangerous than Uranium - it is much more easily fissible and a 10cm sphere of it approaches critical mass. It's not that having them "together" is a problem, it's that Plutonium is all that's bad about Uranium, squared.
I'd like to direct your attention to the most useless key ever invented in the history of computing--the Windows key
[...] the Windows key stands alone in uselessness, my friends.
Bah. The Windows key has more uses than the Apple (or "command"?) key ever did.
Windows Key: Start menu
Windows Key + D: Minimize/Maximize all windows to/from desktop
Windows Key + R: Open "Run" dialog box (like having a command prompt at your fingertips!)
Windows Key + F: Open "Find" dialog box
Windows Key + L: Lock workstation / XP quick user switch
Windows Key + U: "Utilities" dialog box (Windows XP) - stuff like magnifier, text-to-speech reading of window text, etc.
With the Windows key, you can control about every aspect of your computer (especially Windows+R being a virtual command prompt). As for the command key... I remember a failed implementation of the "alt" button.
Sure, let's kill off the main source of income for a large portion of the midwest and south... Nothing like a nice boost to inflation, jobless/welfare claims, foreclosures, and everyone's grocery bill to make you feel all nice and cozy in your insane and impossible world.
That "income" for the Midwest and South comes from every U.S. taxpayer. Why are we spending billions to encourage farmers to plant fields that would be more productive razed? That will just go to waste? That worsen the problem of low crop prices by encouraging farmers to flood the market? It's expensive and counterproductive, and benefits large corporate plantations - the people who lobby for these price supports - more than anyone else.
explaining to the children there that you think it's better to take away their father's job, farm, their house, and throw them on welfare because some "third world" country needs the US's support more.
Bullshit. Nobody's "supporting" the third world by eliminating farm subsidies. Every dollar per bushel taxpayers give to a farmer lets him sell his crops one more dollar below cost. If crop X costs $2/bushel for both American and African farmers to produce but American farmers get $1/bushel in subsidies, the cost of the African crop will be double relative to the American's crop. Eliminating the subsidies doesn't give free money to third world countries - it just lets them sell their crops, like everyone else.
This also means crop X will be more expensive - even if the crop sells for "less" because of the subsidies, remember that it still cost $2/bushel to make in addition to the $1/bushel of subsidies.
These subsidies also produce wastage - farmers will grow much, much more of crop X at $3/bushel the government effectively gives them than they will at the $2/bushel the free market will give. Remember that the free market doesn't want to buy all of this - farmers are growing more because they get more money for it, not because there's anybody to actually buy it. Besides wasting perfectly good land and resources, farming has environmental consequences such as water contamination from runoff and the chemicals and pesticides used on a modern farm, not to mention the fuel usage of modern farming implements.
Early societies began to evolve from subsistence-level standards of living when it became possible for one man to grow more than he immediately needed, allowing him to sell the rest. Because others could buy food instead of growing it themselves, this allowed for the specialization and division of labor - not everyone had to be farmers, they could do something else for a living.
Farm subsidies artificially make it cheaper to buy imported food from abroad than to grow it domestically. This is the "real" support to third world countires. It also prevents this critical first step for the evolution of third world societies - nobody will ever grow food (or, at least more food than they need for themselves) if they can buy it cheaper than they can grow it. And, most people will agree that nobody growing food in a starving country is a Bad thing.
Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.
Of course not. But pacifism assumes we're already there.
Why would any company want to lose out on the win98,2000,XP crowd when they market their game? Only Microsoft has any interest in selling stuff that uses DX10+. To me DX10+ is dumb, stupid, and inane.
People said the same stuff about DirectX 9, DirectX 8, DirectX 7.... you get the idea.
Corporations realize $$$ when they can market the newest, fastest, shiniest whatever. For PC games, this is especially true - how realistic a games graphics are drive sales, and often make a game more fun.
More importantly, programmers will want to use DirectX 10. IMHO, the biggest improvement so far seems to be the elimination of "capability bits" - flags a programmer can query to see what features a GPU supports. The implications of "optional" features that video cards may or may not support means two "DirectX 9" cards can render things very, very differently and make life difficult for the programmer. Features not supported by the video hardware are automatically emulated in software by DirectX, but that is much slower and bugs the crap out of people who dropped $500 for speed. The elimination of capability bits in favor of "dot standards" lets developers code for a specific flavor of DirectX, knowing all cards made for that flavor will behave the same, resulting in better code.
Virtualization of the GPU is also interesting. It applies the same time-slicing multitasking operating systems use to run multiple programs (semi)simultaneously to the graphics hardware. This means that if the GPU chokes on an instruction for whatever reason (i.e., a page fault, the needed texture is compressed, etc.) other threads and processes can continue drawing. Currently, in multitask-less DX9, a page fault chokes the CPU until the needed page can be loaded, whereas DX10 would allow other taskts the GPU was working on to continue.
Better yet is "predicated rendering", which is French for "putting an 'if' in front of a drawing command." Predicated rendering allows the hardware to ignore a command to draw an object if it's not visible - i.e., a very sophisticated hardware clipping.
DirectX 10 has amazing new features and performance enhancements, and (so far) looks like programming with the new API will be much easier and faster. That means cheaper development and happier coders. Doesn't sound so inane to me.
Sure, you could take the socially-acceptible, healthy, and self-enriching route and live a well-rounded life helping yourself and others. Or, you could trade the fruits of 3 hours of labor for a month of fun! You do the math ^_^
..."War in Middle East"... which got nothing to do with terrorism... the real term should really be "War for Oil"
Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Also, "Climate Change" is more accurate. We're in a period of "global warming" right now (1 to 2 degrees), but we just finished with a "global cooling" - the "Little Ice Age". See here. See how our climate is changing, not just warming? And that this isn't a recent phenomenon? Not that global warming/climate change isn't an issue - climate change just isn't newspeak.
I really wonder how these kids do in school, or in real life?
I do just fine, thank you very much. I will be a senior when high school starts again, and already have 12 college credits to my name for computer science courses 200 and 300 level computer science courses I have completed at a local university. Unless by "these kids" you mean the handful that play 12 hours a day and not those who play more than an hour.
As for your idea of limiting gameplay to an hour a day - why? If people could only play this particular videogame for an hour, what makes you think they would go outside, write a book, lobby a congressman or do homework or whatever instead of playing another videogame or instant messaging? It would just make the $15 monthly fee even more ridiculous.
Administrator accounts in Vista are much better handled than in XP. Even when you're logged on as an administrator in Vista, you run with user priviliges. Should a program actually NEED your admin powers, a little dialog box pops up whenever a program tries to use admin priviliges. (It's a little annoying, but it doesn't happen as often as you'd think and it's much more secure.) When on an strictly userland account, this box also has a prompt for the admin password.
For games and other programs that pretty much scream for administrator access, you can still have it run with admin priviliges like in XP. The Vista build of Internet Explorer 7 also takes advantage of some security tweaks in the kernel that let it run as a super-limited user account - all ActiveX controls spawn as processes of the low-privilege IE7 thread (and inherit IE's restrictions), and all file reads/writes are redirected by the OS to a junk folder. So, even visiting an exploited website with IE while running as an administrator on an unpatched system probably wouldn't result in an infection.
If Windows implements an approved kernel hook for the antivirus companies, it will get exploited
Not exactly - Windows Vista breaks a lot of hardware support by forcing most drivers to exist in user mode instead of kernel mode. This keeps the system more stable because a crappy driver running in user won't bluescreen the computer and besides, your printer driver doesn't need to be in ring 0 anyway.
Most antivirus software uses a kernel mode driver to implement "on-access" scans or to see past a user-mode virus trying to cloak itself in some way. It's not that Microsoft isn't implementing a special backdoor hook; they just disallow almost every kind of kernel mode driver in Vista.
Remember, you were the one who knowingly bought encrypted music. You make it sound as if some G-Man broke into your house late at night and locked all your music in a trunk.
Another problem: Even with suit-clad ninjas going around locking everyone's music, it's obviously not that vexing of a problem if people are still buying the music.
Like say, the artificial influence voters have over the government?
Stop trying to break my perfectly prettyful metaphor. Voter's don't have "artificial" control over the government - there's that little think called a constituition, in which that "voter" idea was designed around. Lobbyists have artificial influence over the government - they're the unions of the political world. A tiny group of people gets together to bend things to their favor, at the expense of everyone else.
HA! You think there's such a thing as a free market? Tell you what. Start an oil company. Then come back and tell me all about the "free market."
You so totally could start an oil company if you so wished; there's nothing stopping you. In fact, the of petroleum and exploration IPOs. Considering that OPEC's office in Vienna determines the price of crude oil, and federal red tape in America has prevented new refineries from being built for decades, the American side of the petroleum biz is pretty free market. Prices rise in times of high demand (labor day) and uncertainty (hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq), fall in times of added supply (release of
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve), and fall in times of lesser demand (right after "driving holidays", in spring, etc.)
Oil companies are large because there are definite economies of scale - i.e., a bigger refinery lets you refine more oil more efficiently for less money than a small one. There are numerous oil companies that do business in America, all competing against each other as much as possible (given OPEC and regulation.) The "windfall profits" come from that whopping 9 cents a gallon those evil oil companies make selling gasoline.
it's an awfully selfish way to get job security
Awwww dats too bad. You know, a mortgage is an awfully selfish way for a bank to make money too. You don't really believe this shit do you?
Yup; you cut out the relevant part of my quote. Unions get job security by denying it to everyone else; by controlling who's hired - and limiting who's hired - unions make each individual worker more valuable because each individual workers is now, more or less, irreplaceable. (Especially true in "closed shops", which exist in every state without a right to work law.) In other words, unions provide job security to a few by excluding everyone else. If actively denying people jobs for your own personal gain isn't selfish, I don't know what is.
no one is left unable to feed their family
Except the 50% of people with no full-time job, but thanks for playing.
I hope you were exaggerating. Between workmen's comp, unemployment, food stamps, school lunches, and an economy at full employment, you have to work pretty hard to starve in America. Not that nobody does, but if you believe 50% of the unemployed do, your head is in the sand, not mine, sir.
Communism isn't "where the government owns everything." That's the transitional stage Marx thought would be necessary to bring about communism. Real communism is where the government has faded away (because, as Marx thought of religion, it would no longer be necessary), there would be no private property, all would be held in common, and everyone would work not out of motivation for a paycheck, but because it would be good for your fellow man. Real communism, if it were practical, would be a great thing because "real" communism is where everyone is equal and happy and prosperous.
But, that's just not possible the way Marx thought it would be. He envisioned you would need a "temporary", transitional government to force the conversion from a privitized, ownership society to a propertyless one. After private property was redistributed and effectively ended, the autocracy would have done its purpose faded away. Except, none of those "transitional" governments have ever faded away once they've had power.
Long answer: A union fights for extra perks for its memebers (like higher salaries and fewer hours) through three mechanisms:
Controlling hiring (closed shops) to artificially raise the cost of labor (i.e., people's salaries) above the market rate.
Leveraging collective bargaining (and the power gained from #1) to give workers an artificial influence over their employer that they would not have normally.
Using media coverage, which is generally sympathetic (but does not have to be) to draw attention to themselves at the expense of their employer.
In a free, competitive market there are no economic profits and each worker is paid according to his marginal productivity - i.e., how much value he adds to the final product. The tech industry is an excellent example of this: there are no barriers to entry - anyone with a Linux machine can enter the software biz if he wants - and the skills-based positions are highly competitive. Only the most menial tech jobs are outsourced to India for $2.50 an hour, and many companies are starting to regret this. Even though the accounting costs go down, the generally inferior code is more expensive to maintain in the long run, for example.
By definition, unions seek to artifically distort the natural workings of the market. Right now, jobs are flowing to India because in some cases, the same job can be performed there for less. How will making it more expensive to hire an American programmer discourage someone from hiring the less expensive Indian programmer?
Even if our theoretical union had a stranglehold over management, it's an awfully selfish way to get job security. Higher than normal wages in the tech industry would cause more expensive technology, plain and simple. Everyone who uses technology (read: everyone) would be forced to pay more. Kinda selfish to line your paycheck at the expense of the rest of us, isn't it?
Or, recall the number one way unions gain power: limiting hiring. Unions make individual workers more powerful by restricting the number of workers at the business. Sucks to have to go get that job in India because the union doesn't feel like hiring.
We can also turn to the auto industry for some insight into the artificial distortions unions cause. It is cheaper for Japan to build an automobile in Japan and ship it a thousand miles across the ocean, wait for customs to clear, and pay tariffs than it is to produce an identical car in America - unless the plant isn't unionized. Japanese car manufacturers are just starting to open plants in the non-union south - and they're absorbing the hemorrhage of workers from American industries caused by poor management and powerful unions.
Many of the purposes the unions originally fought for - fair wages, safe conditions, fewer hours - are now mandated by the federal government. (Minimum wages, OSHA, etc.) Unions have become obsolete, victims of their own success. Also victim is our bankrupt auto industry. And the airline industry. There's no reason to force the same dinosaur on the tech industry - no one is left unable to feed their family, mangled by unenclosed machines, or choked by coal dust.
A better solution: quit if you don't like your job.
If they wanted to sell more Macs to gamers, they'd pay game developers to write for the Mac
What do you mean "if" they wanted to? I'm sure Apple would love it if they could sell computers to gamers (or businesses, schools, trees, trained monkeys, anyone with money).
Other point is that Apple would have trouble getting developers to write for the Mac just by plunking down a few bucks. Modern games take millions in venture capital and years to develop. The fact that games get made at all is due to the profits anticipated from selling to the huge Windows market. Creating a comparable game exclusively for the Mac platform would require the same amount of capital and development time, but would yield far less profit.
It is easy. I use IE7, and to the right of the address bar is a shortened search bar, where you can type in a string, hit enter, and it will search for those terms.
To the right of that is a magnifying glass icon. You click it, and a drop-down menu appears with the choices "AOL search", "Ask Jeeves", "Google", "MSN Search", and "Yahoo! Search". You can't make it much easier to change the default search by placing the button to change the search right next to the search.
Interestingly enough, if you go to Google and are using IE7, there will be a link at the bottom of the page to change IE7's default search to Google. So, even if Joe Citizen can't figure it out, Google can do it for him.
As for the whole monopoly thing, I would also argue that Microsoft has only a "dominance." They have more or less the same market share in software as Google does in search. Besides, having a monopoly isn't illegal (using it to "capture other markets" isn't illegal, either), but coercively abusing your position as a monopoly to erect false barriers of entry is. Actively and explicitly stifling free-market competition with a monopoly is illegal; bundling services essential to an out-of-the-box desktop OS isn't (or at least, shouldn't be.)
It would be different if Microsoft prevented (coerced) anyone from using a different search engine, or a different web browser or word processor. It's a simple matter for people to use Google instead of MSN, Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, and WinAmp instead of Media Player. Just because most people are too lazy to switch from the defaults doesn't mean Microsoft is abusing their monopoly - these people obviously don't care, and the whole point of Windows is to have an easy-to-use, ready out-of-the-box desktop OS. The OS is designed for these people, and is that much more effective for including functions they're most likely to need. In other words, providing a product complete with the services their targeted users will need isn't making a monopoly - it's making a good product.
I disagree. Scripting generally refers to stuff that doesn't have to be compiled into a binary first.
And, as you said, the only manly, "real" programming left on the face of the earth would be video card drivers. (The "bare metal" of me writing Z80 graphics and memory managers of sorts isn't sexy enough to qualify, imho)
Far be I from a Microsoft troll. My experience with Java is a semester course in high school with a textbook that failed at all being. We were taught to use solely "Integer" objects.
For programming, I'd learn Visual Basic.NET. It's simple,.NET lets you make real applications, and introduces some vaguely object-oriented stuff. If you're feeling confident, learn just enough C/C++ syntax and parts of the Standard Template Library to jump into the Win32 API and MFC. There's a bunch of free compilers out there, like Bloodshed, and Microsoft offers trial versions of their Visual Studio compilers, which are actually worth checking out.
For web development, PHP is, in my humble opinion, much better than Perl. However, it's kinda neutered if you don't also learn some MySQL.
Java is an insanely difficult language, especially for those first beginning programming. They take object-oriented programming to a freakish extreme, to the point of avoiding all native data types. Just adding two numbers together and displaying the result is a horrible combination of objects, casting, parsing, and window manipulation. If your school offers C/C++, take it over Java in a heartbeat - it's a more popular language, used more in professional development (especially games), and can teach object-oriented programming *much* better than Java.
Interestingly enough, Revelations 13:16 - the verse that the infamous number 666 comes from - says that at the end of the world, the devil will force anyone who wants to engage in commerce to be marked on his right hand or forehead. The original Greek verb used is some translations meant "to stick into the skin", normally a reference to a tattoo.
However, a mandatory chip "stuck into the skin" would also qualify in this translation. Evidently, the end is near. o.o
There's a difference between abusing a work for purposes its creator would never want (your "Blacklung Cigarettes for kids") and Google parodying its logo to mark holidays and special events.
And what's with the knee-jerk free software reaction? Once again, way off in left field. Nobody thinks free software developers are in it for the money.
Command and Conquer isn't going to go "abandonware" any time soon. According to PC Gamer (May 2006), the C&C games were just re-released as "Command and Conquer: The First Decade". If you want a copy, go buy the DVD compilation.
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Does having boh uranium and Plutonium make them more dangerous? (honest question not flambait). Or is it more along the lines of a reactor being able to make pluonium faster than the (what I have heard) is the slow process of Uranuim enrichment
I am not a nuclear physicist (Wikipedia is), but having both Uranium and Plutonium doesn't really make either more dangerous. Plutonium, however, is infinitely more dangerous than Uranium - it is much more easily fissible and a 10cm sphere of it approaches critical mass. It's not that having them "together" is a problem, it's that Plutonium is all that's bad about Uranium, squared.
I'd like to direct your attention to the most useless key ever invented in the history of computing--the Windows key
[...] the Windows key stands alone in uselessness, my friends.
Bah. The Windows key has more uses than the Apple (or "command"?) key ever did.
With the Windows key, you can control about every aspect of your computer (especially Windows+R being a virtual command prompt). As for the command key... I remember a failed implementation of the "alt" button.
Sure, let's kill off the main source of income for a large portion of the midwest and south... Nothing like a nice boost to inflation, jobless/welfare claims, foreclosures, and everyone's grocery bill to make you feel all nice and cozy in your insane and impossible world.
That "income" for the Midwest and South comes from every U.S. taxpayer. Why are we spending billions to encourage farmers to plant fields that would be more productive razed? That will just go to waste? That worsen the problem of low crop prices by encouraging farmers to flood the market? It's expensive and counterproductive, and benefits large corporate plantations - the people who lobby for these price supports - more than anyone else.
explaining to the children there that you think it's better to take away their father's job, farm, their house, and throw them on welfare because some "third world" country needs the US's support more.
Bullshit. Nobody's "supporting" the third world by eliminating farm subsidies. Every dollar per bushel taxpayers give to a farmer lets him sell his crops one more dollar below cost. If crop X costs $2/bushel for both American and African farmers to produce but American farmers get $1/bushel in subsidies, the cost of the African crop will be double relative to the American's crop. Eliminating the subsidies doesn't give free money to third world countries - it just lets them sell their crops, like everyone else.
This also means crop X will be more expensive - even if the crop sells for "less" because of the subsidies, remember that it still cost $2/bushel to make in addition to the $1/bushel of subsidies.
These subsidies also produce wastage - farmers will grow much, much more of crop X at $3/bushel the government effectively gives them than they will at the $2/bushel the free market will give. Remember that the free market doesn't want to buy all of this - farmers are growing more because they get more money for it, not because there's anybody to actually buy it. Besides wasting perfectly good land and resources, farming has environmental consequences such as water contamination from runoff and the chemicals and pesticides used on a modern farm, not to mention the fuel usage of modern farming implements.
Early societies began to evolve from subsistence-level standards of living when it became possible for one man to grow more than he immediately needed, allowing him to sell the rest. Because others could buy food instead of growing it themselves, this allowed for the specialization and division of labor - not everyone had to be farmers, they could do something else for a living.
Farm subsidies artificially make it cheaper to buy imported food from abroad than to grow it domestically. This is the "real" support to third world countires. It also prevents this critical first step for the evolution of third world societies - nobody will ever grow food (or, at least more food than they need for themselves) if they can buy it cheaper than they can grow it. And, most people will agree that nobody growing food in a starving country is a Bad thing.
Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.
Of course not. But pacifism assumes we're already there.
Why would any company want to lose out on the win98,2000,XP crowd when they market their game? Only Microsoft has any interest in selling stuff that uses DX10+. To me DX10+ is dumb, stupid, and inane.
People said the same stuff about DirectX 9, DirectX 8, DirectX 7.... you get the idea.
Corporations realize $$$ when they can market the newest, fastest, shiniest whatever. For PC games, this is especially true - how realistic a games graphics are drive sales, and often make a game more fun.
More importantly, programmers will want to use DirectX 10. IMHO, the biggest improvement so far seems to be the elimination of "capability bits" - flags a programmer can query to see what features a GPU supports. The implications of "optional" features that video cards may or may not support means two "DirectX 9" cards can render things very, very differently and make life difficult for the programmer. Features not supported by the video hardware are automatically emulated in software by DirectX, but that is much slower and bugs the crap out of people who dropped $500 for speed. The elimination of capability bits in favor of "dot standards" lets developers code for a specific flavor of DirectX, knowing all cards made for that flavor will behave the same, resulting in better code.
Virtualization of the GPU is also interesting. It applies the same time-slicing multitasking operating systems use to run multiple programs (semi)simultaneously to the graphics hardware. This means that if the GPU chokes on an instruction for whatever reason (i.e., a page fault, the needed texture is compressed, etc.) other threads and processes can continue drawing. Currently, in multitask-less DX9, a page fault chokes the CPU until the needed page can be loaded, whereas DX10 would allow other taskts the GPU was working on to continue.
Better yet is "predicated rendering", which is French for "putting an 'if' in front of a drawing command." Predicated rendering allows the hardware to ignore a command to draw an object if it's not visible - i.e., a very sophisticated hardware clipping.
DirectX 10 has amazing new features and performance enhancements, and (so far) looks like programming with the new API will be much easier and faster. That means cheaper development and happier coders. Doesn't sound so inane to me.
You are making a big logical mistake here by assuming that the same people who pay for the war are going to profit for it.
Truth. But you are making a mistake in assuming that they are profiting from it. A 6% net profit doesn't lend much to the theory of:
Maybe instead, the industry functions more like this.
I wonder what people think of the windfall profits from the 1500% markup on soft drinks. or the 16% profits aided by $8,000 per gallon ink.
Sure, you could take the socially-acceptible, healthy, and self-enriching route and live a well-rounded life helping yourself and others. Or, you could trade the fruits of 3 hours of labor for a month of fun! You do the math ^_^
Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Also, "Climate Change" is more accurate. We're in a period of "global warming" right now (1 to 2 degrees), but we just finished with a "global cooling" - the "Little Ice Age". See here. See how our climate is changing, not just warming? And that this isn't a recent phenomenon? Not that global warming/climate change isn't an issue - climate change just isn't newspeak.
Bushspeak != Duckspeak
I really wonder how these kids do in school, or in real life?
I do just fine, thank you very much. I will be a senior when high school starts again, and already have 12 college credits to my name for computer science courses 200 and 300 level computer science courses I have completed at a local university. Unless by "these kids" you mean the handful that play 12 hours a day and not those who play more than an hour.
As for your idea of limiting gameplay to an hour a day - why? If people could only play this particular videogame for an hour, what makes you think they would go outside, write a book, lobby a congressman or do homework or whatever instead of playing another videogame or instant messaging? It would just make the $15 monthly fee even more ridiculous.
Administrator accounts in Vista are much better handled than in XP. Even when you're logged on as an administrator in Vista, you run with user priviliges. Should a program actually NEED your admin powers, a little dialog box pops up whenever a program tries to use admin priviliges. (It's a little annoying, but it doesn't happen as often as you'd think and it's much more secure.) When on an strictly userland account, this box also has a prompt for the admin password.
For games and other programs that pretty much scream for administrator access, you can still have it run with admin priviliges like in XP. The Vista build of Internet Explorer 7 also takes advantage of some security tweaks in the kernel that let it run as a super-limited user account - all ActiveX controls spawn as processes of the low-privilege IE7 thread (and inherit IE's restrictions), and all file reads/writes are redirected by the OS to a junk folder. So, even visiting an exploited website with IE while running as an administrator on an unpatched system probably wouldn't result in an infection.
If Windows implements an approved kernel hook for the antivirus companies, it will get exploited
Not exactly - Windows Vista breaks a lot of hardware support by forcing most drivers to exist in user mode instead of kernel mode. This keeps the system more stable because a crappy driver running in user won't bluescreen the computer and besides, your printer driver doesn't need to be in ring 0 anyway.
Most antivirus software uses a kernel mode driver to implement "on-access" scans or to see past a user-mode virus trying to cloak itself in some way. It's not that Microsoft isn't implementing a special backdoor hook; they just disallow almost every kind of kernel mode driver in Vista.
Remember, you were the one who knowingly bought encrypted music. You make it sound as if some G-Man broke into your house late at night and locked all your music in a trunk.
Another problem: Even with suit-clad ninjas going around locking everyone's music, it's obviously not that vexing of a problem if people are still buying the music.
Don't like DRM'd music? Don't buy it.
Like say, the artificial influence voters have over the government?
Stop trying to break my perfectly prettyful metaphor. Voter's don't have "artificial" control over the government - there's that little think called a constituition, in which that "voter" idea was designed around. Lobbyists have artificial influence over the government - they're the unions of the political world. A tiny group of people gets together to bend things to their favor, at the expense of everyone else.
HA! You think there's such a thing as a free market? Tell you what. Start an oil company. Then come back and tell me all about the "free market."
You so totally could start an oil company if you so wished; there's nothing stopping you. In fact, the of petroleum and exploration IPOs. Considering that OPEC's office in Vienna determines the price of crude oil, and federal red tape in America has prevented new refineries from being built for decades, the American side of the petroleum biz is pretty free market. Prices rise in times of high demand (labor day) and uncertainty (hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq), fall in times of added supply (release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve), and fall in times of lesser demand (right after "driving holidays", in spring, etc.)
Oil companies are large because there are definite economies of scale - i.e., a bigger refinery lets you refine more oil more efficiently for less money than a small one. There are numerous oil companies that do business in America, all competing against each other as much as possible (given OPEC and regulation.) The "windfall profits" come from that whopping 9 cents a gallon those evil oil companies make selling gasoline.
it's an awfully selfish way to get job security
Awwww dats too bad. You know, a mortgage is an awfully selfish way for a bank to make money too. You don't really believe this shit do you?
Yup; you cut out the relevant part of my quote. Unions get job security by denying it to everyone else; by controlling who's hired - and limiting who's hired - unions make each individual worker more valuable because each individual workers is now, more or less, irreplaceable. (Especially true in "closed shops", which exist in every state without a right to work law.) In other words, unions provide job security to a few by excluding everyone else. If actively denying people jobs for your own personal gain isn't selfish, I don't know what is.
no one is left unable to feed their family
Except the 50% of people with no full-time job, but thanks for playing.
I hope you were exaggerating. Between workmen's comp, unemployment, food stamps, school lunches, and an economy at full employment, you have to work pretty hard to starve in America. Not that nobody does, but if you believe 50% of the unemployed do, your head is in the sand, not mine, sir.
Communism isn't "where the government owns everything." That's the transitional stage Marx thought would be necessary to bring about communism. Real communism is where the government has faded away (because, as Marx thought of religion, it would no longer be necessary), there would be no private property, all would be held in common, and everyone would work not out of motivation for a paycheck, but because it would be good for your fellow man. Real communism, if it were practical, would be a great thing because "real" communism is where everyone is equal and happy and prosperous.
But, that's just not possible the way Marx thought it would be. He envisioned you would need a "temporary", transitional government to force the conversion from a privitized, ownership society to a propertyless one. After private property was redistributed and effectively ended, the autocracy would have done its purpose faded away. Except, none of those "transitional" governments have ever faded away once they've had power.
What's artificial about a union?
Short answer: everything.
Long answer: A union fights for extra perks for its memebers (like higher salaries and fewer hours) through three mechanisms:
In a free, competitive market there are no economic profits and each worker is paid according to his marginal productivity - i.e., how much value he adds to the final product. The tech industry is an excellent example of this: there are no barriers to entry - anyone with a Linux machine can enter the software biz if he wants - and the skills-based positions are highly competitive. Only the most menial tech jobs are outsourced to India for $2.50 an hour, and many companies are starting to regret this. Even though the accounting costs go down, the generally inferior code is more expensive to maintain in the long run, for example.
By definition, unions seek to artifically distort the natural workings of the market. Right now, jobs are flowing to India because in some cases, the same job can be performed there for less. How will making it more expensive to hire an American programmer discourage someone from hiring the less expensive Indian programmer?
Even if our theoretical union had a stranglehold over management, it's an awfully selfish way to get job security. Higher than normal wages in the tech industry would cause more expensive technology, plain and simple. Everyone who uses technology (read: everyone) would be forced to pay more. Kinda selfish to line your paycheck at the expense of the rest of us, isn't it?
Or, recall the number one way unions gain power: limiting hiring. Unions make individual workers more powerful by restricting the number of workers at the business. Sucks to have to go get that job in India because the union doesn't feel like hiring.
We can also turn to the auto industry for some insight into the artificial distortions unions cause. It is cheaper for Japan to build an automobile in Japan and ship it a thousand miles across the ocean, wait for customs to clear, and pay tariffs than it is to produce an identical car in America - unless the plant isn't unionized. Japanese car manufacturers are just starting to open plants in the non-union south - and they're absorbing the hemorrhage of workers from American industries caused by poor management and powerful unions.
Many of the purposes the unions originally fought for - fair wages, safe conditions, fewer hours - are now mandated by the federal government. (Minimum wages, OSHA, etc.) Unions have become obsolete, victims of their own success. Also victim is our bankrupt auto industry. And the airline industry. There's no reason to force the same dinosaur on the tech industry - no one is left unable to feed their family, mangled by unenclosed machines, or choked by coal dust.
A better solution: quit if you don't like your job.
If they wanted to sell more Macs to gamers, they'd pay game developers to write for the Mac
What do you mean "if" they wanted to? I'm sure Apple would love it if they could sell computers to gamers (or businesses, schools, trees, trained monkeys, anyone with money).
Other point is that Apple would have trouble getting developers to write for the Mac just by plunking down a few bucks. Modern games take millions in venture capital and years to develop. The fact that games get made at all is due to the profits anticipated from selling to the huge Windows market. Creating a comparable game exclusively for the Mac platform would require the same amount of capital and development time, but would yield far less profit.
Is there a bumper sticker that says: How do you like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT.
For children posters who might not know, the this is a reference to the JATO urban legend
It is easy. I use IE7, and to the right of the address bar is a shortened search bar, where you can type in a string, hit enter, and it will search for those terms.
To the right of that is a magnifying glass icon. You click it, and a drop-down menu appears with the choices "AOL search", "Ask Jeeves", "Google", "MSN Search", and "Yahoo! Search". You can't make it much easier to change the default search by placing the button to change the search right next to the search.
Interestingly enough, if you go to Google and are using IE7, there will be a link at the bottom of the page to change IE7's default search to Google. So, even if Joe Citizen can't figure it out, Google can do it for him.
As for the whole monopoly thing, I would also argue that Microsoft has only a "dominance." They have more or less the same market share in software as Google does in search. Besides, having a monopoly isn't illegal (using it to "capture other markets" isn't illegal, either), but coercively abusing your position as a monopoly to erect false barriers of entry is. Actively and explicitly stifling free-market competition with a monopoly is illegal; bundling services essential to an out-of-the-box desktop OS isn't (or at least, shouldn't be.)
It would be different if Microsoft prevented (coerced) anyone from using a different search engine, or a different web browser or word processor. It's a simple matter for people to use Google instead of MSN, Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, and WinAmp instead of Media Player. Just because most people are too lazy to switch from the defaults doesn't mean Microsoft is abusing their monopoly - these people obviously don't care, and the whole point of Windows is to have an easy-to-use, ready out-of-the-box desktop OS. The OS is designed for these people, and is that much more effective for including functions they're most likely to need. In other words, providing a product complete with the services their targeted users will need isn't making a monopoly - it's making a good product.
I disagree. Scripting generally refers to stuff that doesn't have to be compiled into a binary first.
And, as you said, the only manly, "real" programming left on the face of the earth would be video card drivers. (The "bare metal" of me writing Z80 graphics and memory managers of sorts isn't sexy enough to qualify, imho)
Far be I from a Microsoft troll. My experience with Java is a semester course in high school with a textbook that failed at all being. We were taught to use solely "Integer" objects.
Besides, Microsoft has released its own Java IDE.
"Programming" is creating code that, when compiled, produces a binary that needs nothing more than an operating system or JIT compiler to run.
"Scripting" is making funky text documents that need another program to do something. PHP, HTML, and Perl are technically scripting.
For calculators, learn TI-BASIC first, then jump here to learn assembly (assuming you're using a TI-83+/84). It's easier than you'd think, you can write real games with it, and you learn a lot of low level stuff like pointers that makes future programming concepts *much* easier.
For programming, I'd learn Visual Basic .NET. It's simple, .NET lets you make real applications, and introduces some vaguely object-oriented stuff. If you're feeling confident, learn just enough C/C++ syntax and parts of the Standard Template Library to jump into the Win32 API and MFC. There's a bunch of free compilers out there, like Bloodshed, and Microsoft offers trial versions of their Visual Studio compilers, which are actually worth checking out.
For web development, PHP is, in my humble opinion, much better than Perl. However, it's kinda neutered if you don't also learn some MySQL.
Java is an insanely difficult language, especially for those first beginning programming. They take object-oriented programming to a freakish extreme, to the point of avoiding all native data types. Just adding two numbers together and displaying the result is a horrible combination of objects, casting, parsing, and window manipulation. If your school offers C/C++, take it over Java in a heartbeat - it's a more popular language, used more in professional development (especially games), and can teach object-oriented programming *much* better than Java.
You *can* copy and paste into cmd.exe. You right-click on the window and hit "paste."
Seriously, Linux users are supposed to be smart. ^_^
Interestingly enough, Revelations 13:16 - the verse that the infamous number 666 comes from - says that at the end of the world, the devil will force anyone who wants to engage in commerce to be marked on his right hand or forehead. The original Greek verb used is some translations meant "to stick into the skin", normally a reference to a tattoo.
However, a mandatory chip "stuck into the skin" would also qualify in this translation. Evidently, the end is near. o.o
There's a difference between abusing a work for purposes its creator would never want (your "Blacklung Cigarettes for kids") and Google parodying its logo to mark holidays and special events.
And what's with the knee-jerk free software reaction? Once again, way off in left field. Nobody thinks free software developers are in it for the money.
Command and Conquer isn't going to go "abandonware" any time soon. According to PC Gamer (May 2006), the C&C games were just re-released as "Command and Conquer: The First Decade". If you want a copy, go buy the DVD compilation.