How do you pronounce Ubuntu? Ubuntu, an African word from Zulu and Xhosa, is pronounced "oo-BOON-too".
Before a vowel sound, you use 'an' instead of 'a'.
Anyhow, doesn't matter cuz Kubuntu is better.;)
I used Debian (long ago) and then more recently Slackware. When Kubuntu Dapper came out, I switched to that and never looked back. It had everything that Slackware did, but the ease of 'apt-get install x' for almost all the software I wanted. Slackware worked well and all, but any time I wanted to install something, I was expected to configure and make it, or download a slackware package from some third-party site that had stuff that worked about 2/3 of the time. (My definition of not-working includes compiles that leave out options that are pretty necessary as well as just plain broken.)
2 versions later, I can't imagine using another OS as my primary OS. There are drawbacks, like proprietary drivers for the major video cards, and lacking the fancy interface of certain fruit-oriented OS's, but I'm more efficient on Kubuntu than any other OS I've used.
"Ideally, find people that have little to no experience with GIMP."
I disagree. This is -not- what you want. If you do that, you'll end up with all the ways The GIMP isn't Photoshop. We already -know- that.
What we want is all the ways The GIMP could be improved for ease of use and efficiency. Some of that will be to copy some Photoshop features, sure, but if done right, it could surpass Photoshop, instead of merely tagging along behind it, always 3 steps shy of being the best.
"can't" is a such a strong word. I'll agree to 'is highly unlikely', though.
1) You're saying that console makers won't impose extreme demands on third parties? No AO-rated games (Manhunt 2) etc? Region-lock? Huge buy-in (devkit) fees? Have you seen how many homebrew games exist now on modded consoles/handhelds? 2) I was just thinking that there were SO many games coming out I couldn't possibly play all the ones I've pre-ordered for any decent length of time, let alone all the ones I want to. I'd say we've got too many developers again. 3) Yeah, Nintendo hasn't way underpriced anyone lately. There's no way there'd be a price war again... Wait, who was lowering their prices again? Oh yeah, everyone else in the market! (MS hasn't confirmed, but it's a pretty strong rumor, I hear. They've been out for near 2 years without a pricecut, and Sony is cutting into their sales this week.)
No, I think you're a little over-optimistic about the market. The setup for all of your scenarios is in motion. It only remains to be seen if the console makers follow the same path again, or see the problem ahead of time.
Yes, but that's only significant is the manufacturer creates the bundle. When that happens, it -does- matter to talk about them differently, as both the price and value-for-money change.
When a retailer creates a bundle, MS still counts the box as the same SKU sold, and only the retailer has a new SKU in the system.
I still can't figure out why it bothers -anyone- when SKU is used to describe a specific item for sale, especially when the topic of conversation primarily deals with price and specific items. "Get off my lawn!" maybe? Things change. If they didn't, we wouldn't even exist.
installation of multiple systems from one downloaded CD, bittorrent distribution,
Most of these also apply to Windows,
QFT.
As a side note, I've always felt the precision vs accuracy thing was a bit odd. What good is one without the other? Being precise and innacurate is pointless because you -know- the number is probably wrong, but it's always the same wrong. Being imprecise and accurate is pointless because your numbers are right, but you don't know what they mean. (They're -right-, but right for what?)
No, instead, you need both. You need the accuracy to get good data, and precision to guarantee that all the data can be measured against the other data.
I can't even get them to play from a USB stick. I know the DLNA servers are shoddy, as only 1 of the 3 I tried even played video. My next recourse is (-sigh-) Windows-based software. Maybe I can find some that will transcode and solve my problems... The no-pausing thing is still a concern, though.
I hadn't realized they even had 'official' PS3 support. I still expect it to run better than it does, though. The Cell processor was supposed to be the uber-processor of tomorrow, the way it was hyped. Could be a memory bottleneck, I suppose, as the poor thing has almost no RAM.
Maybe there's a better distro? Gentoo maybe?
Unfortunately, Untold Legends came with my console when I bought it... So I can't really 'skip' it. I actually liked Champions of Norrath, and the Baldur's Gate console games. UL for PSP and PS3 were just meh, though. (Can you believe they bothered to make a 'strategy guide' for UL on PS3?)
I'm not using Kubuntu on PS3 to do the playing. I'm trying to use the built-in media player stuff. It takes -way- too long to reboot into Kubuntu for me to use it as a media player if I also want to use it as a game machine.
I've been wondering how E3 was going to survive the specific non-invitation of everyone that cares one whit about it. It seemed they totally misunderstood what their show was actually about, and tried to jerk it back 'on course' without asking -anyone- what they thought.
I wonder exactly how surprised they are that their 'customers' no longer care? Publishers and developers can access the media -any time they want-. They don't need to pay thousands of dollars to set up a booth somewhere. On the other hand, to work the consumers into a frenzy, a big, semi-exclusive expo is great advertisement. They manage to get consumers waiting in line for pictures and crappy video clips to see exactly the same content that would have been available online, if the show didn't exist.
I'm guessing they thought that consumers would still be in a frenzy just over the name, and the reduced size and scope wouldn't matter.
There's a reason that every major developer was willing to pay massive amounts of money to be there. Reducing the price and forcing a reduce in size does not appeal to them as much. For smaller developers, it was a chance to get seen a little, and possibly get some free media attention by riding the coat-tails of the big guys.
Will E3 realize their mistake this year, and attempt to regain their status? Will GDC become the big show? Will the US gain another major game expo instead?
Everyone under the sun is offering official coverage of E3 this year, so I suspect that E3 thinks they can handle the issues without actually listening to anyone again. We'll see.
On the subject of horses... Are there REALLY people who have never heard the phrase 'a horse of a different color'? For those who haven't a clue, it just means that despite the name, it's a different. In other words: Even though it's called 'E3', it's not the same as it was.
I bought a PS3 the other day not because I -really- wanted one, but because someone sold it to me for $250 including a fan, game, and game guide. Subtracting the retail value of the add-ons, I paid $130 for a 20gb PS3.
So I installed Kubuntu, first thing.
I am very much unimpressed with the speed. I have a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo in my room that runs circles around this thing for speed and responsiveness in Kubuntu. Maybe it's not optimized or something, but I will -not- be using it as a Linux machine in the foreseeable future.
As a media player it fails as well. While it's better than my $40 DVD player for controls/etc, it lacks xvid/divx support and the fast-forward only goes in odd increments... 1.5x, 10x, 30x I think it is. My DVD player does 2x/4x/8x/16x/32x, which offers a lot more control.
And how about streaming? Once I -finally- found an app (fuppes) that would stream properly to it (gmediaserver and another failed horribly), it would not even -pause- the video. I had to watch the whole thing through as if it were TV. It will play from USB stick, but the only format I managed to get to work was MPEG.
So as a game machine? Untold Legends looks fairly good, but plays about exactly like the PSP game of the same name. -yawn- Ninja Gaiden Sigma's demo was fluid, but I immediately thought 'Hey! I've played this before!'... Yes, it's just the 360's Ninja Gaiden ported over, probably with some stuff added. The game felt exactly the same, no better, no worse. -yawn-
I don't normally side with Microsoft, but between 360 and PS3, even disregarding price, the 360 wins. I can transcode a stream to it (that pauses!) and the games feel and look the same. There are more games for the 360, and all the games I care about so far exist on both systems. The 360 also has Achievements, and as I have a collector-type personality, this appeals to me greatly.
In fact, at this point, were it not for Wii Sports, the 360 would be the best console on the market.
Sony needs to get their heads out of their asses and listen to their customers. (I was going to say 'again', but I've no proof that they ever did.) I suspect the problem is that they are a Japan-based company first, and their customer-base there is still rejecting Microsoft as foreign.
You apparently missed the other bit of the article: It's cheap to produce.
Memory cards are getting cheaper to produce every year, but when UMDs were invented, they were still quite expensive. A -blank- 2gb SD card at the time would have been about $200, I believe.
As it stands, a blank 2gb SD card is still about $15 (from your link), half the cost of the retail games. Most stores still charge about $40.
And those are just standard cards. In order to prevent easy theft, there would need to be a DRM system (like it or not, console makers aren't going to drop DRM ever). Nothing can ever stop the theft of games, but reasonable measures need to be taken to attract developers.
But wait! There's already a handheld on the market that does something like this! Nintendo -still- uses cartridges in their systems. I don't think any DS cart has had 2gb of data on it yet, but at least they use cartridges. If you really prefer carts, just buy Nintendo instead. Most games are coming out for both systems now, anyhow.
I think you are confused. The question is not 'Is Math Computer Science?', the question is 'Is Math -necessary- for Computer Science.'
To use your War analogy, Math is not War, but Math is necessary for War. (Unless you like losing, of course.) Someone may have done all the mathematics long ago, and stored it in a computer for you use, but it's still necessary. You can be infantry in a war without knowing how to add. Heck, I'd bet you could even be a low-level official without anything higher than elementary school math.
Programming is the same way. To use a PC, or script something up in VBScript, no math is necessary at all. To write a compiler (without which, computers can do nothing useful), you need college-level math. And for some applications, you need all the math that's known to humans.
For years I've heard this same 'you don't need math to program' argument, and it's like saying you don't need roads to drive cars on. Sure, it's -possible-, but it's far from efficient and you're very limited as to what you can do with it.
"The dragging it out and "investigating" that was done"
No part of that involves lying to the customer and denying there's a problem at all.
Do I know how costly that is? Yes. It would have been a -hell- of a lot cheaper to not have had the problem in the first place, and it would still have been -way- cheaper to have admitted the problem a year ago fixed it then. They've got approximately double the number of consoles to repair now, instead of fixing the problem ahead of time. On top of that, it is said that it costs 10x as much to gain a customer as keep an old one. (Not necessarily in the console market, but still.) Any customers they lose from this will cost them 10x as much as they should have. (Assuming they want to continue growing their customer base.)
You can probably find used ones, though. I managed to snag one for $250 including an add-on fan, game, and game guide because the guy had upgraded to a 60gb model and couldn't find -anyone- that would buy the old one off of him. From what I can tell it was hardly used, as it only have a half-dozen games saves for a total of 4 games. (Not that it's a great metric, with as few games as are out yet.)
Because to do so, they have to admit that they were denying the problem in the first place. There were shops that were refusing returns and telling the customers to go directly to MS for repair because MS wouldn't take any more returns from the shop, stating they didn't believe there could be that many bad consoles.
That's good customer service, yeah!
So as a consumer, how should I see this?
A) No worries, it won't happen to me! B) It's okay, I'll only be without my console for a week to a month or so. C) Microsoft only admits problems once the become a PR nightmare. If I buy their next product, I'd best be sure to wait until it's stable.
People are -already- doing C with their software products. 'Wait for SP1 before you buy Vista.' etc. MS even recently told people NOT to do that specifically, admitting that it's a known action people are taking.
How much more will it take before people just start referring to MS as the 'wait before you buy' company?
No, there's plenty of 'customer good will' lost here. The only way to engender good will is to be proactive, no reactive. (ie: Don't wait for 1/3 of your customers to complain before believing them.)
"Nobody held a gun to his head and threatened him"
Some people don't -need- people to hold a gun to their head to get them to do what they believe is right.
"It doesn't matter to you that (assuming you are a US taxpayer) "
Did he -know- they were false? Did he do it on purpose? It's also a matter of degree here. (I'm making a few assumptions here, but...) He had a choice. He could watch this potentially hazardous situation and do nothing more about it (as he was ordered to), or he could pull as many facts together as he could lay his hands on and attempt to do what he felt was right. Some of the facts are obviously shakey, but you don't start a presidential campaign with 'Voters, I think I can probably do a good job for you.' You go in with facts and a hard line and refuse to be shaken.
This argument is political, not scientific. They need a scapegoat and he's already pissed them off, so he's nominated.
But let's say he's wrong, and it really does only mean a 2-3% difference (instead of 10-16% difference)... It's still something. In the wake of recent events, where they have failed disastrously to predict the major storms, every little bit helps. Especially when something might have been done to prevent the fall of this satellite. The 'fix' now is to launch another, and many times the cost.
Instead of looking merely at his actions, we should be looking at theirs as well. Why did they want him to stop warning people this satellite would fail? It is pretty clear that they care not at all that it fell, and actually wanted it to happen. Why?
You've got the cart before the horse, there. Of course no patent ever spurred innovation. It isn't the patent themselves that do that, it's the promise that you will be given ample opportunity to profit from the idea that spurs innovation.
Look at it this way: If you make a new widget that quickly fruzzles gumplestongs, but the idea is easy to replicate, you can pretty much bet that you'll not get your R&D costs back and thus will never make money from having innovated. If the government has promised you a 7 year monopoly on the product, you can pretty bet you'll profit from it.
Now say you are in the same situation, but don't have the capital to produce the first widget. With no patent, you can't even solicit investors because each and every one of them would simply make the widget themselves and leave you nothing.
No, the answer is not to kill patents altogether. The answer is to make them reasonable in length and assure that they are non-obvious.
The non-obvious bit prevents 1-click patents from bogging down the entire industry. The length bit prevents oversights (like the 1-click patent) from being a major pain in the ass for more than a few years.
So, if the satellite was so worthless that it will have no effect on weather forecasting, why did we bother supporting it?
The answer is either:
A) They are spinning the loss and trying to blame it on the squealer. or B) Weather forecasting is so useless, nothing could affect how accurate it is.
Reading the article, I find that they are critical of the report he used with only 19 samples. The satellite hasn't existed long, and major storms are -not- that common. How the hell was he supposed to get more data? It's his -job- to do the best he can with what little data he has, especially since we're talking about one of the most imprecise and unpredictable sciences there have ever been: Weather forecasting.
So, the situations stands thus: He tried to warn people that the satellite, which provided valuable data (even if exagerated in usefulness) was going to fall. He was warned to shut up about it. Satellite falls, and now they want to fire him for it.
I can't see in any way, shape or form how this was his -fault-, only that he tried desperately to get someone to do something about it. Since he can't fly, and doesn't have the money to send up a space shuttle, he did the best he could.
Did he overstate the importance of the satellite? Probably. Does that matter a whit? Nope.
Re:Lets create the Urban Scouts!!!
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Explosives Camp
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· Score: 1
That's okay, I tried to join the scouts when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and they actually rejected me! The said that they'd only accept me if my father volunteered, but I was free to apply anyhow. So I didn't get in, as my father and mother both worked very hard already and just didn't have time.
It was quite crushing for me as a kid, and I've never forgiven them for it. Sounds like your group was only slightly less worthless than mine.
On the other hand, if I -had- learned those skills, I probably wouldn't have had time to learn my tech skillset as well (yeah, I was learning to program in 4th grade) and things would have gone very differently... So I should probably thank them for not wasting my time.
Yesterday's culture, you mean. All the shows are from 20 years ago.
I don't doubt that today's shows could receive the same treatment with the same results, though. Nothing changes. TV will always be 90% fluff and commercials as long as it's how they make money, and it doesn't appear that other money sources are likely.
I had hoped to see shows like Kyle XY on there, that I like the story but the majority of the ep is fluff. Grey's Anatomy (ow, gimme back my geek card!) too. Oddly, Lost is one of the shows that wouldn't benefit, as there are too many little hidden things that you notice later.
He earned his name long ago. He has no need to 'justify' himself to anyone, and he certainly doesn't owe us anything. He can do whatever he damned well pleases, and you should be thankful for anything that happens to help you, instead of disrespecting him for the stuff that doesn't.
"In a profit making company, this means raising the price indefinitely sees no reduction in demand. This leads to an ever increasing cost that outstrips inflation. The American system compounds this because a lot of white-collar workers get insurance plans from their companies. Companies have deeper pockets than an individual ever could so the prices increase still further!"
In that same paragraph, you contradict yourself. You say it will raise indefinitely, but then you say it can raise further because companies have 'deeper pockets.'
"It also pays because you can remove the inefficent insurance companies. If everybody is covered then there is no need to have a bureaucracy to decide if a person is covered."
Take some time to understand the system before you get bent out of shape. Those very same insurance companies are what is keeping the prices DOWN. If you go in without insurance, you are going to pay 2-10x as much as the insurance company would on your behalf. Why? Because the insurance companies have the power to tell their customers to go down the road to the next hospital instead, when they are ill. That means the hospitals -have- to deal with them or risk losing future business. A patient off the street is stuck for it and can't do anything about it.
"When a friend of mine, at the age of 20 developed Lukemia, put his Computer Science course on hold, checked in to the local hospital and began his treatment straight away."
No insurance, eh? Silly of him. Oh wait, you don't need it there, and he'd probably have paid for it here. So it's no different. They aren't allowed to drop your insurance when you get ill, so there's absolutely no difference.
As for the socialised utilities... They are all COMPLETELY run and staffed by government workers, with the possible exception of garbage collection, which goes to the lowest bidder. Hospitals here are businesses and there aren't enough of them for the government to shun any single one if they do wrong. Instead, the hospital has the power because the government needs them. The government certainly couldn't afford to buy every hospital in the US so they'd have real control, either.
While I agree that everyone needs access to healthcare, I don't think a huge government entity to oversee it is the answer. Our welfare system has pretty much proven how well that works. No, instead, I think the system proposed in the article is a good idea, minus the requirement. Strongly suggest everyone to buy it from one of the many insurance companies (to keep it competitive) and offer free or subsidized healthcare to those who can't afford it. There are still those who will not want to buy it, and why should they have to? But by giving it to those who can't afford it, the only ones without are those who don't want it.
To flip him over the edge. Get him ranting and raving about having to take yet another (apparently it's not the first) psych exam and generally make an ass of himself right before the real hearing, where they disbar him for "unprofessional behavior" or whatever they can.
Go back and finish Oblivion. The very same thing that everyone else bitches about is your friend here: Everything levels with you. In fact, if you level poorly, the end of the main mission is a lot harder at high levels than low levels. If you do exceptionally well at levelling (good bonuses always), it's incredibly easy.
As for Fallout... I was a huge Wasteland fan. I was exceptionally disappointed in the first Fallout because it wasn't Wasteland 2. Now that Fallout 3 is my kind of game again (even though it's a different genre yet), I get to hear everyone else bitch and moan about how the series has gone to the dogs while I'm the happy one.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/faq
Before a vowel sound, you use 'an' instead of 'a'.
Anyhow, doesn't matter cuz Kubuntu is better.
I used Debian (long ago) and then more recently Slackware. When Kubuntu Dapper came out, I switched to that and never looked back. It had everything that Slackware did, but the ease of 'apt-get install x' for almost all the software I wanted. Slackware worked well and all, but any time I wanted to install something, I was expected to configure and make it, or download a slackware package from some third-party site that had stuff that worked about 2/3 of the time. (My definition of not-working includes compiles that leave out options that are pretty necessary as well as just plain broken.)
2 versions later, I can't imagine using another OS as my primary OS. There are drawbacks, like proprietary drivers for the major video cards, and lacking the fancy interface of certain fruit-oriented OS's, but I'm more efficient on Kubuntu than any other OS I've used.
"Ideally, find people that have little to no experience with GIMP."
I disagree. This is -not- what you want. If you do that, you'll end up with all the ways The GIMP isn't Photoshop. We already -know- that.
What we want is all the ways The GIMP could be improved for ease of use and efficiency. Some of that will be to copy some Photoshop features, sure, but if done right, it could surpass Photoshop, instead of merely tagging along behind it, always 3 steps shy of being the best.
"can't" is a such a strong word. I'll agree to 'is highly unlikely', though.
1) You're saying that console makers won't impose extreme demands on third parties? No AO-rated games (Manhunt 2) etc? Region-lock? Huge buy-in (devkit) fees? Have you seen how many homebrew games exist now on modded consoles/handhelds?
2) I was just thinking that there were SO many games coming out I couldn't possibly play all the ones I've pre-ordered for any decent length of time, let alone all the ones I want to. I'd say we've got too many developers again.
3) Yeah, Nintendo hasn't way underpriced anyone lately. There's no way there'd be a price war again... Wait, who was lowering their prices again? Oh yeah, everyone else in the market! (MS hasn't confirmed, but it's a pretty strong rumor, I hear. They've been out for near 2 years without a pricecut, and Sony is cutting into their sales this week.)
No, I think you're a little over-optimistic about the market. The setup for all of your scenarios is in motion. It only remains to be seen if the console makers follow the same path again, or see the problem ahead of time.
Yes, but that's only significant is the manufacturer creates the bundle. When that happens, it -does- matter to talk about them differently, as both the price and value-for-money change.
When a retailer creates a bundle, MS still counts the box as the same SKU sold, and only the retailer has a new SKU in the system.
I still can't figure out why it bothers -anyone- when SKU is used to describe a specific item for sale, especially when the topic of conversation primarily deals with price and specific items. "Get off my lawn!" maybe? Things change. If they didn't, we wouldn't even exist.
QFT.
As a side note, I've always felt the precision vs accuracy thing was a bit odd. What good is one without the other? Being precise and innacurate is pointless because you -know- the number is probably wrong, but it's always the same wrong. Being imprecise and accurate is pointless because your numbers are right, but you don't know what they mean. (They're -right-, but right for what?)
No, instead, you need both. You need the accuracy to get good data, and precision to guarantee that all the data can be measured against the other data.
I can't even get them to play from a USB stick. I know the DLNA servers are shoddy, as only 1 of the 3 I tried even played video. My next recourse is (-sigh-) Windows-based software. Maybe I can find some that will transcode and solve my problems... The no-pausing thing is still a concern, though.
I hadn't realized they even had 'official' PS3 support. I still expect it to run better than it does, though. The Cell processor was supposed to be the uber-processor of tomorrow, the way it was hyped. Could be a memory bottleneck, I suppose, as the poor thing has almost no RAM.
Maybe there's a better distro? Gentoo maybe?
Unfortunately, Untold Legends came with my console when I bought it... So I can't really 'skip' it. I actually liked Champions of Norrath, and the Baldur's Gate console games. UL for PSP and PS3 were just meh, though. (Can you believe they bothered to make a 'strategy guide' for UL on PS3?)
I'm not using Kubuntu on PS3 to do the playing. I'm trying to use the built-in media player stuff. It takes -way- too long to reboot into Kubuntu for me to use it as a media player if I also want to use it as a game machine.
Who said there would not be a 3.0 release?
And what's with the need to jump version numbers at the drop of a hat?
And why the need to tell someone else how to name their product, when you don't contribute to it at all?
I've been wondering how E3 was going to survive the specific non-invitation of everyone that cares one whit about it. It seemed they totally misunderstood what their show was actually about, and tried to jerk it back 'on course' without asking -anyone- what they thought.
I wonder exactly how surprised they are that their 'customers' no longer care? Publishers and developers can access the media -any time they want-. They don't need to pay thousands of dollars to set up a booth somewhere. On the other hand, to work the consumers into a frenzy, a big, semi-exclusive expo is great advertisement. They manage to get consumers waiting in line for pictures and crappy video clips to see exactly the same content that would have been available online, if the show didn't exist.
I'm guessing they thought that consumers would still be in a frenzy just over the name, and the reduced size and scope wouldn't matter.
There's a reason that every major developer was willing to pay massive amounts of money to be there. Reducing the price and forcing a reduce in size does not appeal to them as much. For smaller developers, it was a chance to get seen a little, and possibly get some free media attention by riding the coat-tails of the big guys.
Will E3 realize their mistake this year, and attempt to regain their status? Will GDC become the big show? Will the US gain another major game expo instead?
Everyone under the sun is offering official coverage of E3 this year, so I suspect that E3 thinks they can handle the issues without actually listening to anyone again. We'll see.
On the subject of horses... Are there REALLY people who have never heard the phrase 'a horse of a different color'? For those who haven't a clue, it just means that despite the name, it's a different. In other words: Even though it's called 'E3', it's not the same as it was.
Yeah, but performance isn't all that.
... Yes, it's just the 360's Ninja Gaiden ported over, probably with some stuff added. The game felt exactly the same, no better, no worse. -yawn-
I bought a PS3 the other day not because I -really- wanted one, but because someone sold it to me for $250 including a fan, game, and game guide. Subtracting the retail value of the add-ons, I paid $130 for a 20gb PS3.
So I installed Kubuntu, first thing.
I am very much unimpressed with the speed. I have a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo in my room that runs circles around this thing for speed and responsiveness in Kubuntu. Maybe it's not optimized or something, but I will -not- be using it as a Linux machine in the foreseeable future.
As a media player it fails as well. While it's better than my $40 DVD player for controls/etc, it lacks xvid/divx support and the fast-forward only goes in odd increments... 1.5x, 10x, 30x I think it is. My DVD player does 2x/4x/8x/16x/32x, which offers a lot more control.
And how about streaming? Once I -finally- found an app (fuppes) that would stream properly to it (gmediaserver and another failed horribly), it would not even -pause- the video. I had to watch the whole thing through as if it were TV. It will play from USB stick, but the only format I managed to get to work was MPEG.
So as a game machine? Untold Legends looks fairly good, but plays about exactly like the PSP game of the same name. -yawn- Ninja Gaiden Sigma's demo was fluid, but I immediately thought 'Hey! I've played this before!'
I don't normally side with Microsoft, but between 360 and PS3, even disregarding price, the 360 wins. I can transcode a stream to it (that pauses!) and the games feel and look the same. There are more games for the 360, and all the games I care about so far exist on both systems. The 360 also has Achievements, and as I have a collector-type personality, this appeals to me greatly.
In fact, at this point, were it not for Wii Sports, the 360 would be the best console on the market.
Sony needs to get their heads out of their asses and listen to their customers. (I was going to say 'again', but I've no proof that they ever did.) I suspect the problem is that they are a Japan-based company first, and their customer-base there is still rejecting Microsoft as foreign.
You apparently missed the other bit of the article: It's cheap to produce.
Memory cards are getting cheaper to produce every year, but when UMDs were invented, they were still quite expensive. A -blank- 2gb SD card at the time would have been about $200, I believe.
As it stands, a blank 2gb SD card is still about $15 (from your link), half the cost of the retail games. Most stores still charge about $40.
And those are just standard cards. In order to prevent easy theft, there would need to be a DRM system (like it or not, console makers aren't going to drop DRM ever). Nothing can ever stop the theft of games, but reasonable measures need to be taken to attract developers.
But wait! There's already a handheld on the market that does something like this! Nintendo -still- uses cartridges in their systems. I don't think any DS cart has had 2gb of data on it yet, but at least they use cartridges. If you really prefer carts, just buy Nintendo instead. Most games are coming out for both systems now, anyhow.
I think you are confused. The question is not 'Is Math Computer Science?', the question is 'Is Math -necessary- for Computer Science.'
To use your War analogy, Math is not War, but Math is necessary for War. (Unless you like losing, of course.) Someone may have done all the mathematics long ago, and stored it in a computer for you use, but it's still necessary. You can be infantry in a war without knowing how to add. Heck, I'd bet you could even be a low-level official without anything higher than elementary school math.
Programming is the same way. To use a PC, or script something up in VBScript, no math is necessary at all. To write a compiler (without which, computers can do nothing useful), you need college-level math. And for some applications, you need all the math that's known to humans.
For years I've heard this same 'you don't need math to program' argument, and it's like saying you don't need roads to drive cars on. Sure, it's -possible-, but it's far from efficient and you're very limited as to what you can do with it.
"The dragging it out and "investigating" that was done"
No part of that involves lying to the customer and denying there's a problem at all.
Do I know how costly that is? Yes. It would have been a -hell- of a lot cheaper to not have had the problem in the first place, and it would still have been -way- cheaper to have admitted the problem a year ago fixed it then. They've got approximately double the number of consoles to repair now, instead of fixing the problem ahead of time. On top of that, it is said that it costs 10x as much to gain a customer as keep an old one. (Not necessarily in the console market, but still.) Any customers they lose from this will cost them 10x as much as they should have. (Assuming they want to continue growing their customer base.)
You can probably find used ones, though. I managed to snag one for $250 including an add-on fan, game, and game guide because the guy had upgraded to a 60gb model and couldn't find -anyone- that would buy the old one off of him. From what I can tell it was hardly used, as it only have a half-dozen games saves for a total of 4 games. (Not that it's a great metric, with as few games as are out yet.)
Because to do so, they have to admit that they were denying the problem in the first place. There were shops that were refusing returns and telling the customers to go directly to MS for repair because MS wouldn't take any more returns from the shop, stating they didn't believe there could be that many bad consoles.
That's good customer service, yeah!
So as a consumer, how should I see this?
A) No worries, it won't happen to me!
B) It's okay, I'll only be without my console for a week to a month or so.
C) Microsoft only admits problems once the become a PR nightmare. If I buy their next product, I'd best be sure to wait until it's stable.
People are -already- doing C with their software products. 'Wait for SP1 before you buy Vista.' etc. MS even recently told people NOT to do that specifically, admitting that it's a known action people are taking.
How much more will it take before people just start referring to MS as the 'wait before you buy' company?
No, there's plenty of 'customer good will' lost here. The only way to engender good will is to be proactive, no reactive. (ie: Don't wait for 1/3 of your customers to complain before believing them.)
"Nobody held a gun to his head and threatened him"
Some people don't -need- people to hold a gun to their head to get them to do what they believe is right.
"It doesn't matter to you that (assuming you are a US taxpayer) "
Did he -know- they were false? Did he do it on purpose? It's also a matter of degree here. (I'm making a few assumptions here, but...) He had a choice. He could watch this potentially hazardous situation and do nothing more about it (as he was ordered to), or he could pull as many facts together as he could lay his hands on and attempt to do what he felt was right. Some of the facts are obviously shakey, but you don't start a presidential campaign with 'Voters, I think I can probably do a good job for you.' You go in with facts and a hard line and refuse to be shaken.
This argument is political, not scientific. They need a scapegoat and he's already pissed them off, so he's nominated.
But let's say he's wrong, and it really does only mean a 2-3% difference (instead of 10-16% difference)... It's still something. In the wake of recent events, where they have failed disastrously to predict the major storms, every little bit helps. Especially when something might have been done to prevent the fall of this satellite. The 'fix' now is to launch another, and many times the cost.
Instead of looking merely at his actions, we should be looking at theirs as well. Why did they want him to stop warning people this satellite would fail? It is pretty clear that they care not at all that it fell, and actually wanted it to happen. Why?
"No patent has ever spurred innovation;"
You've got the cart before the horse, there. Of course no patent ever spurred innovation. It isn't the patent themselves that do that, it's the promise that you will be given ample opportunity to profit from the idea that spurs innovation.
Look at it this way: If you make a new widget that quickly fruzzles gumplestongs, but the idea is easy to replicate, you can pretty much bet that you'll not get your R&D costs back and thus will never make money from having innovated. If the government has promised you a 7 year monopoly on the product, you can pretty bet you'll profit from it.
Now say you are in the same situation, but don't have the capital to produce the first widget. With no patent, you can't even solicit investors because each and every one of them would simply make the widget themselves and leave you nothing.
No, the answer is not to kill patents altogether. The answer is to make them reasonable in length and assure that they are non-obvious.
The non-obvious bit prevents 1-click patents from bogging down the entire industry. The length bit prevents oversights (like the 1-click patent) from being a major pain in the ass for more than a few years.
So, if the satellite was so worthless that it will have no effect on weather forecasting, why did we bother supporting it?
The answer is either:
A) They are spinning the loss and trying to blame it on the squealer.
or
B) Weather forecasting is so useless, nothing could affect how accurate it is.
Reading the article, I find that they are critical of the report he used with only 19 samples. The satellite hasn't existed long, and major storms are -not- that common. How the hell was he supposed to get more data? It's his -job- to do the best he can with what little data he has, especially since we're talking about one of the most imprecise and unpredictable sciences there have ever been: Weather forecasting.
So, the situations stands thus: He tried to warn people that the satellite, which provided valuable data (even if exagerated in usefulness) was going to fall. He was warned to shut up about it. Satellite falls, and now they want to fire him for it.
I can't see in any way, shape or form how this was his -fault-, only that he tried desperately to get someone to do something about it. Since he can't fly, and doesn't have the money to send up a space shuttle, he did the best he could.
Did he overstate the importance of the satellite? Probably. Does that matter a whit? Nope.
That's okay, I tried to join the scouts when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and they actually rejected me! The said that they'd only accept me if my father volunteered, but I was free to apply anyhow. So I didn't get in, as my father and mother both worked very hard already and just didn't have time.
It was quite crushing for me as a kid, and I've never forgiven them for it. Sounds like your group was only slightly less worthless than mine.
On the other hand, if I -had- learned those skills, I probably wouldn't have had time to learn my tech skillset as well (yeah, I was learning to program in 4th grade) and things would have gone very differently... So I should probably thank them for not wasting my time.
Yesterday's culture, you mean. All the shows are from 20 years ago.
I don't doubt that today's shows could receive the same treatment with the same results, though. Nothing changes. TV will always be 90% fluff and commercials as long as it's how they make money, and it doesn't appear that other money sources are likely.
I had hoped to see shows like Kyle XY on there, that I like the story but the majority of the ep is fluff. Grey's Anatomy (ow, gimme back my geek card!) too. Oddly, Lost is one of the shows that wouldn't benefit, as there are too many little hidden things that you notice later.
He earned his name long ago. He has no need to 'justify' himself to anyone, and he certainly doesn't owe us anything. He can do whatever he damned well pleases, and you should be thankful for anything that happens to help you, instead of disrespecting him for the stuff that doesn't.
"In a profit making company, this means raising the price indefinitely sees no reduction in demand. This leads to an ever increasing cost that outstrips inflation. The American system compounds this because a lot of white-collar workers get insurance plans from their companies. Companies have deeper pockets than an individual ever could so the prices increase still further!"
In that same paragraph, you contradict yourself. You say it will raise indefinitely, but then you say it can raise further because companies have 'deeper pockets.'
"It also pays because you can remove the inefficent insurance companies. If everybody is covered then there is no need to have a bureaucracy to decide if a person is covered."
Take some time to understand the system before you get bent out of shape. Those very same insurance companies are what is keeping the prices DOWN. If you go in without insurance, you are going to pay 2-10x as much as the insurance company would on your behalf. Why? Because the insurance companies have the power to tell their customers to go down the road to the next hospital instead, when they are ill. That means the hospitals -have- to deal with them or risk losing future business. A patient off the street is stuck for it and can't do anything about it.
"When a friend of mine, at the age of 20 developed Lukemia, put his Computer Science course on hold, checked in to the local hospital and began his treatment straight away."
No insurance, eh? Silly of him. Oh wait, you don't need it there, and he'd probably have paid for it here. So it's no different. They aren't allowed to drop your insurance when you get ill, so there's absolutely no difference.
As for the socialised utilities... They are all COMPLETELY run and staffed by government workers, with the possible exception of garbage collection, which goes to the lowest bidder. Hospitals here are businesses and there aren't enough of them for the government to shun any single one if they do wrong. Instead, the hospital has the power because the government needs them. The government certainly couldn't afford to buy every hospital in the US so they'd have real control, either.
While I agree that everyone needs access to healthcare, I don't think a huge government entity to oversee it is the answer. Our welfare system has pretty much proven how well that works. No, instead, I think the system proposed in the article is a good idea, minus the requirement. Strongly suggest everyone to buy it from one of the many insurance companies (to keep it competitive) and offer free or subsidized healthcare to those who can't afford it. There are still those who will not want to buy it, and why should they have to? But by giving it to those who can't afford it, the only ones without are those who don't want it.
To flip him over the edge. Get him ranting and raving about having to take yet another (apparently it's not the first) psych exam and generally make an ass of himself right before the real hearing, where they disbar him for "unprofessional behavior" or whatever they can.
Go back and finish Oblivion. The very same thing that everyone else bitches about is your friend here: Everything levels with you. In fact, if you level poorly, the end of the main mission is a lot harder at high levels than low levels. If you do exceptionally well at levelling (good bonuses always), it's incredibly easy.
As for Fallout... I was a huge Wasteland fan. I was exceptionally disappointed in the first Fallout because it wasn't Wasteland 2. Now that Fallout 3 is my kind of game again (even though it's a different genre yet), I get to hear everyone else bitch and moan about how the series has gone to the dogs while I'm the happy one.