That's all very well if it were the US that was a warzone, but it isn't. Have you tried looking at any ariel pictures of Iraq? Staleness may not be a factor, but the hideous resolution might be. The UK and the US might have fantastic resolutions, but from my experience, Google Earth is a LOT less reliable once you start going into countries that nobody usually looks at.
There's a lot of use in astrophysics, whether it's confirming essential theories about physics, or applying what we know about other systems/galaxies to our own. There's, of course, the pure curiousity of finding out about the universe, but also there's stuff we'd never have a clue about if it wasn't for it - dark matter, et cetera. And some particle physics hinges on it: an awful lot of rare particles come from outer space, and if you're going to go about detecting them it's helpful to know where they came from, what kind of frequency you expect them at (and et cetera).
Also, a lot of the research is multipurpose - I'm sure that you know about the amount of technology that was kickstarted by the moon landings.
Finally, knowledge is an odd thing, in that you never know when you're going to need it. You never would have thought number theory would have been useful, but just look at modern day encryption. It's good to keep everything going at once, because science doesn't require just money - it requires time as well. I should also mention that funding for stuff like this doesn't automatically get granted, a lot of a scientist's time is spent pitching their research projects, showing that they're potentially useful to somebody or something. Nobody's going to fund useless research (or at least, the bias should be against it).
What do you mean "better known as complex"? Imaginary and complex numbers are entirely different things.
A multiple of i is an imaginary number (anything along the imaginary number line), and a complex number is any combination of an imaginary number and a real number (hence, anything in the complex plane).
Besides, re: electrical circuits, it's not why they work, it just makes the maths an awful lot easier. Most of the time you switch into the complex plane and then take the real part when you need an answer. It's basically an alternative to having to use a quagmire of trigonometric functions, and the same is true of quantum mechanics.
Take supermarkets. If a supermarket chain had a 44% marketshare, and its competitors had around 5-10% then what they could do is temporarily lower all their prices to WAY lower than their competitors, watch them all lose huge chunks of marketshare, and then restore prices gradually to what they originally were. Now the large supermarket chain has significantly larger share, and still has the same profit margins, and will slowly claw back what they lost in that (relatively) brief interim. There are many other schemes like this which a large enough company can do to squirm its way higher and higher, which do nothing but harm competition and customers.
This is why, by British law, a monopoly is defined as possessing more than 25% of a single market, believe it or not. This is why Tesco has been forced to diversify its range of services, and why certain mergers get blocked if they exceed this limit. It's not really a monopoly, but it holds such sway over the market by altering its prices that it leads to anticompetitive practises.
Anyway, google's product is Adwords, not their searches. If they held a 40% share in internet advertising, then there would be problems.
It's not necessarily soldier's first hand experience. The other guy who replied to you has the right idea - it's not the soldiers themselves, it's the institutions. Lest we forget, the US has never been involved in a full scale war where it was on the front lines, would it be able to mobilise itself as effectively as those who have examples to follow from?
The Iraq comment *was* little bit flamebait admittedly, but it shows in a lot of ways how inexperienced the US army is, or at least, how it's not necessarily as all that as it makes itself out to be (like the parent I replied to). It IS a terrible occupier. The proportion of deaths of US troops is significantly higher than the UK's (http://www.icasualties.org/oif/ - from a little research, 20 times the casualties with 5 times the troops, many of which in wartime were caused by US friendly fire!). Then again, this isn't overly surprising, considering Britain had an EMPIRE isn't terribly inexperienced with terrorism (obvious example - the IRA). Occupation IS relevant though - after they attack, you think they'd want to actually occupy the places they've struck.
And yeah, I completely agree with you, all said it would be a stalemate. I'm just saying the US isn't necessarily invincible and has its weakpoints as well as obvious strengths. Keep in mind I was replying to a parent that said the US was going to obliterate all European countries within weeks (which would clearly not be the case).
Declare war on a member state of the EU and the rest of it will come running to their defence. Remember that the EU is a strong bind between the member states, much stronger than the bond between even the UK and the US (people here generally dislike the fact we're so close to the US politically). That's Europe, you know, which has population as large as the US and an awfully more experienced military record (i'm being quite serious). Besides, Italy and Spain's military power aren't to be underestimated, the US has had a rocky ride capturing a small isolated middle eastern country, let alone a well developed, wealthy western nation, or an entire coalition of them.
I'm just applying a bit of common sense here. I don't really care who wins, but you're being very naive when you swipe aside the entire rest of the developed world as if you could trample on all over it. The US has limited resources and would never attack another developed country, because it would be political suicide. The US has enough enemies at the moment, don't you think?
I find it a very annoying trait of people that they assume the one that broke all the barriers is necessarily the better game. OoT vs MM is a very good example of this, and frankly, it's easy to see that they're both great games with strengths and weaknesses against one another.
OoT has an epic feeling but a static world, MM has a surreal feeling and a changing world. Okay, it was a bit annoying how you ran out of time, but it compensated by giving you shortcuts (you remembered songs and it was much easier to get through dungeons once you got the treasure), and that each person didn't just STAND THERE all day every day doing the same thing. Am I the only one who felt Majora's Mask infinitely more immersive because each character had a genuine timeline of their own? Also, whereas OoT tended to have segmented puzzles, MM tended to revolve around a central puzzle, which i personally much preferred, like the pillar in Snowhead or the valves in the Great Bay temple.. and call MM shorter if you like, but it also tended to have more buildup to each dungeon (often having minidungeons), increasing the playtime per area quite significantly.
Anyway, my point really isn't to prove one is better than the other. The point I'm making is I find it increasingly irritating how preferring different things is apparently OFFENSIVE to people, and that there are genuine reasons why people might prefer one thing to the other. Like one over the other as you like, but don't rip into people just because they don't like the same things as you.
Decent battery, really easy UI (Nokias are a lot easier to use), flashlight, alarm, texts, big fat buttons you can actually press comfortably. Cheap as all hell too. Looks better in black. Maybe it just hasn't been released in the US yet? A lot of people have this phone in the UK..
And yes, the flashlight is AMAZINGLY useful, just like the tiny screwdriver I have on my keyring. Not only is it good for screwing things, just as a sharp thin tool.
My brother has a maths degree, after quitting several jobs, one of which was a secondary school (read: high school) maths teacher, he started playing poker online as his source of income. The logic and instinct for probability he gained from his course make him quite formidable. He doesn't play in flashy casinos or anything, just sat at home with a laptop, for a number of hours a day, whenever he wants.
Sounds a little bit off topic, I know, but my point is that you don't have to restrict yourself to immediately relevant jobs. I'm doing a Bachelors in Physics myself, and most of the people from my course go through to the finance industry. Sound silly? Not really. It's a broad course, teaching a lot of different things, a lot of 'transferable skills' which look attractive on a job application (I find for a science it's a very social subject, strangely). Maths is even more flexible: it's pure logic, for crying out loud! You'd be VERY surprised what kind of fields you could get yourself involved in, as it's a quite respected kind of subject to be fluent in. And if you do need training, it might be less, or easier, than you anticipate.
This said, the finance industry is the most obvious choice. And pays handsomely. AND, can result in other benefits (ie: wise handling of your own money). Aim for the more statistics based options/modules/whatever if you can, very useful stuff... just be prepared to sell your soul;)
Added to that, you get a free copy of Windows. I know people swear it's the devil, but it's easy enough to set up a dual boot and only use it for solely-Windows based games or apps, without forking over money for Cedaga or something.
Not only that, but when people scoff at things like flying cars and etc within the next 100 years, look how far we've come in the past century. Before, the entire of Europe was still at war with itself, the very notion of things like the red cross never existed, it's remarkably easy (considered) to travel all over the globe, and class divides have been steadily closing all the while. It's not just technologically - socially, the world has come a long way, and although I hear calls of "oh no, it's just like 1984" all the time, on the whole, life is becoming more pleasant for the average person.
My wonder for the next 100 years isn't whether we'll be in space, it isn't how far technology will come: will developing countries eventually catch up with the so-called developed countries?
Stephen Hawkings is an intelligent guy, but isn't this a bit out of his field? He works in astrophysics at the highly theoretical level. Whilst the sentiment is nice, it's not exactly founded from a realistic perspective from working in the industry. It's not like he works at NASA and has a good grip on the realities - and limitations - of space travel. I could say curing cancer is vital to humankind's progression, but it doesn't exactly mean it's a realistic goal.
Strangely enough, such things are being developed in research as we speak. Yes, it's possible to have negative luminescence. Wikipedia has a brief article on the subject. It's really quite odd - there are certain metals/compounds that emit less light when electricity is passed through them than when not. Yes, it gets darker (or at least radiates less EM radiation).
CALCULATE pi? Do you mean recite? It's more than possible for anyone to calculate pi to any degree if they have a lot of time on their hands, or rudimentry knowledge of a programming language, there are iterative methods and infinite sequences that can calculate pi quite easily. Look down the page somewhere here for a decent list.
A lot of the trouble doesn't lie in installation if you ask me, it's the day to day management of the system. I played around with installing a few distros a while ago, ended up settling on Ubuntu. Installing was a cinch, and it even detected my university network connection automatically (whereas in Windows it has a college registration bit when you first open your browser).
However, some of the things I've tried to do to make my day to day use of a computer the same as in Windows, I would never wish upon the average user. My family sees me as the computer literate member, the one who knows his way around a computer, if anything goes wrong I'll be the one to fix it. Sure, I'm no IT genius, but I know how to maintain a desktop computer. Installing Java, Flash, media codecs, a media player HALF as capable as a good 3 or 4 I know on Windows? Pain in the arse. These are basic technologies used by lots of normal users, and it's POSSIBLE to install them, nay, quite easy for the *experienced* user, but for a noob to have to refer to a help file line by line? It's just not intuitive enough for the average user, and it's far too much hassle.
Don't get me wrong - I LOVE some aspects of Linux, but I've not been impressed enough by it to use Ubuntu as my default boot, for example.
Communists aren't liberal.. believe it or not, politics doesn't have just one degree of freedom. Here are a few examples.
Free market vs Controlled market. Conservatism vs Radicalism. Liberalism vs Totalitarianism. Democracy vs Autocracy. Socialism vs Capitalism.
In this case, communism is a radical socialist totalitarian state, that supports autocracy and controlled market economics. In the case of the topic we are supporting liberalism, which is the support of the LIBERTY of the individual.
I seriously suggest you actually do some reading up about political ideologies before you start chucking them around willy nilly. Wikipedia is a good place to start.
No offence, but anyone smart enough to be a good programmer or artist shouldn't be taking a course so focused. You'll wall yourself into a career, a decision you might regret in 10 or so years. Whereas this is necessary for certain professions (research scientists, doctors, surgeons, and etc), it certainly isn't for a game programmer at the moment.
Get a general degree in something like computer science, then you can specialise afterwards. I considered the same thing. I'm now taking a degree in physics, of all things. And C++ is part of the course!
I didn't know they had that small a minority of the retail market, to be honest.
Also, remember that it's British based companies only that can be prosecuted under the law, meaning that international companies are pretty much exempt (which is a kick in the arse really isn't it).
You can find more info here, it's not much but it's the best info there is online, it appears.
Slashdot Mirror
That's all very well if it were the US that was a warzone, but it isn't. Have you tried looking at any ariel pictures of Iraq? Staleness may not be a factor, but the hideous resolution might be. The UK and the US might have fantastic resolutions, but from my experience, Google Earth is a LOT less reliable once you start going into countries that nobody usually looks at.
There's a lot of use in astrophysics, whether it's confirming essential theories about physics, or applying what we know about other systems/galaxies to our own. There's, of course, the pure curiousity of finding out about the universe, but also there's stuff we'd never have a clue about if it wasn't for it - dark matter, et cetera. And some particle physics hinges on it: an awful lot of rare particles come from outer space, and if you're going to go about detecting them it's helpful to know where they came from, what kind of frequency you expect them at (and et cetera).
Also, a lot of the research is multipurpose - I'm sure that you know about the amount of technology that was kickstarted by the moon landings.
Finally, knowledge is an odd thing, in that you never know when you're going to need it. You never would have thought number theory would have been useful, but just look at modern day encryption. It's good to keep everything going at once, because science doesn't require just money - it requires time as well. I should also mention that funding for stuff like this doesn't automatically get granted, a lot of a scientist's time is spent pitching their research projects, showing that they're potentially useful to somebody or something. Nobody's going to fund useless research (or at least, the bias should be against it).
What do you mean "better known as complex"? Imaginary and complex numbers are entirely different things.
A multiple of i is an imaginary number (anything along the imaginary number line), and a complex number is any combination of an imaginary number and a real number (hence, anything in the complex plane).
Besides, re: electrical circuits, it's not why they work, it just makes the maths an awful lot easier. Most of the time you switch into the complex plane and then take the real part when you need an answer. It's basically an alternative to having to use a quagmire of trigonometric functions, and the same is true of quantum mechanics.
It depends upon what context, actually.
Take supermarkets. If a supermarket chain had a 44% marketshare, and its competitors had around 5-10% then what they could do is temporarily lower all their prices to WAY lower than their competitors, watch them all lose huge chunks of marketshare, and then restore prices gradually to what they originally were. Now the large supermarket chain has significantly larger share, and still has the same profit margins, and will slowly claw back what they lost in that (relatively) brief interim. There are many other schemes like this which a large enough company can do to squirm its way higher and higher, which do nothing but harm competition and customers.
This is why, by British law, a monopoly is defined as possessing more than 25% of a single market, believe it or not. This is why Tesco has been forced to diversify its range of services, and why certain mergers get blocked if they exceed this limit. It's not really a monopoly, but it holds such sway over the market by altering its prices that it leads to anticompetitive practises.
Anyway, google's product is Adwords, not their searches. If they held a 40% share in internet advertising, then there would be problems.
It's not necessarily soldier's first hand experience. The other guy who replied to you has the right idea - it's not the soldiers themselves, it's the institutions. Lest we forget, the US has never been involved in a full scale war where it was on the front lines, would it be able to mobilise itself as effectively as those who have examples to follow from?
The Iraq comment *was* little bit flamebait admittedly, but it shows in a lot of ways how inexperienced the US army is, or at least, how it's not necessarily as all that as it makes itself out to be (like the parent I replied to). It IS a terrible occupier. The proportion of deaths of US troops is significantly higher than the UK's (http://www.icasualties.org/oif/ - from a little research, 20 times the casualties with 5 times the troops, many of which in wartime were caused by US friendly fire!). Then again, this isn't overly surprising, considering Britain had an EMPIRE isn't terribly inexperienced with terrorism (obvious example - the IRA). Occupation IS relevant though - after they attack, you think they'd want to actually occupy the places they've struck.
And yeah, I completely agree with you, all said it would be a stalemate. I'm just saying the US isn't necessarily invincible and has its weakpoints as well as obvious strengths. Keep in mind I was replying to a parent that said the US was going to obliterate all European countries within weeks (which would clearly not be the case).
Use your head.
Declare war on a member state of the EU and the rest of it will come running to their defence. Remember that the EU is a strong bind between the member states, much stronger than the bond between even the UK and the US (people here generally dislike the fact we're so close to the US politically). That's Europe, you know, which has population as large as the US and an awfully more experienced military record (i'm being quite serious). Besides, Italy and Spain's military power aren't to be underestimated, the US has had a rocky ride capturing a small isolated middle eastern country, let alone a well developed, wealthy western nation, or an entire coalition of them.
I'm just applying a bit of common sense here. I don't really care who wins, but you're being very naive when you swipe aside the entire rest of the developed world as if you could trample on all over it. The US has limited resources and would never attack another developed country, because it would be political suicide. The US has enough enemies at the moment, don't you think?
I find it a very annoying trait of people that they assume the one that broke all the barriers is necessarily the better game. OoT vs MM is a very good example of this, and frankly, it's easy to see that they're both great games with strengths and weaknesses against one another.
OoT has an epic feeling but a static world, MM has a surreal feeling and a changing world. Okay, it was a bit annoying how you ran out of time, but it compensated by giving you shortcuts (you remembered songs and it was much easier to get through dungeons once you got the treasure), and that each person didn't just STAND THERE all day every day doing the same thing. Am I the only one who felt Majora's Mask infinitely more immersive because each character had a genuine timeline of their own? Also, whereas OoT tended to have segmented puzzles, MM tended to revolve around a central puzzle, which i personally much preferred, like the pillar in Snowhead or the valves in the Great Bay temple.. and call MM shorter if you like, but it also tended to have more buildup to each dungeon (often having minidungeons), increasing the playtime per area quite significantly.
Anyway, my point really isn't to prove one is better than the other. The point I'm making is I find it increasingly irritating how preferring different things is apparently OFFENSIVE to people, and that there are genuine reasons why people might prefer one thing to the other. Like one over the other as you like, but don't rip into people just because they don't like the same things as you.
A lot of phones already have these.
A good example being my phone: http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,46548,00.html
Decent battery, really easy UI (Nokias are a lot easier to use), flashlight, alarm, texts, big fat buttons you can actually press comfortably. Cheap as all hell too. Looks better in black. Maybe it just hasn't been released in the US yet? A lot of people have this phone in the UK..
And yes, the flashlight is AMAZINGLY useful, just like the tiny screwdriver I have on my keyring. Not only is it good for screwing things, just as a sharp thin tool.
That would be a good point, but before you moan next time, RTFA.
"10:54AM - "It looks like this [a flatter Mini]. It's called iTV. That's a codeword. We need to come up with a better name."
That's unsocial. As in, ignoring social trends. This is antisocial. It means deliberately breaking them and being malicious towards other people.
It's a distinct difference. The same counts for amoral and unmoral.
My brother has a maths degree, after quitting several jobs, one of which was a secondary school (read: high school) maths teacher, he started playing poker online as his source of income. The logic and instinct for probability he gained from his course make him quite formidable. He doesn't play in flashy casinos or anything, just sat at home with a laptop, for a number of hours a day, whenever he wants.
.. just be prepared to sell your soul ;)
Sounds a little bit off topic, I know, but my point is that you don't have to restrict yourself to immediately relevant jobs. I'm doing a Bachelors in Physics myself, and most of the people from my course go through to the finance industry. Sound silly? Not really. It's a broad course, teaching a lot of different things, a lot of 'transferable skills' which look attractive on a job application (I find for a science it's a very social subject, strangely). Maths is even more flexible: it's pure logic, for crying out loud! You'd be VERY surprised what kind of fields you could get yourself involved in, as it's a quite respected kind of subject to be fluent in. And if you do need training, it might be less, or easier, than you anticipate.
This said, the finance industry is the most obvious choice. And pays handsomely. AND, can result in other benefits (ie: wise handling of your own money). Aim for the more statistics based options/modules/whatever if you can, very useful stuff.
Added to that, you get a free copy of Windows. I know people swear it's the devil, but it's easy enough to set up a dual boot and only use it for solely-Windows based games or apps, without forking over money for Cedaga or something.
Not only that, but when people scoff at things like flying cars and etc within the next 100 years, look how far we've come in the past century. Before, the entire of Europe was still at war with itself, the very notion of things like the red cross never existed, it's remarkably easy (considered) to travel all over the globe, and class divides have been steadily closing all the while. It's not just technologically - socially, the world has come a long way, and although I hear calls of "oh no, it's just like 1984" all the time, on the whole, life is becoming more pleasant for the average person.
My wonder for the next 100 years isn't whether we'll be in space, it isn't how far technology will come: will developing countries eventually catch up with the so-called developed countries?
ER, ER, NOPE, CERTAINLY NOT.
Uh, wouldn't that be you clicked on one drug spam, and 280 porn spams?
Stephen Hawkings is an intelligent guy, but isn't this a bit out of his field? He works in astrophysics at the highly theoretical level. Whilst the sentiment is nice, it's not exactly founded from a realistic perspective from working in the industry. It's not like he works at NASA and has a good grip on the realities - and limitations - of space travel. I could say curing cancer is vital to humankind's progression, but it doesn't exactly mean it's a realistic goal.
Even the American Automobile Association? Holy carp.
Strangely enough, such things are being developed in research as we speak. Yes, it's possible to have negative luminescence. Wikipedia has a brief article on the subject. It's really quite odd - there are certain metals/compounds that emit less light when electricity is passed through them than when not. Yes, it gets darker (or at least radiates less EM radiation).
I doubt so, considering the moon has little to no atmosphere. No air resistance = parachutes next to useless.
CALCULATE pi? Do you mean recite? It's more than possible for anyone to calculate pi to any degree if they have a lot of time on their hands, or rudimentry knowledge of a programming language, there are iterative methods and infinite sequences that can calculate pi quite easily. Look down the page somewhere here for a decent list.
A lot of the trouble doesn't lie in installation if you ask me, it's the day to day management of the system. I played around with installing a few distros a while ago, ended up settling on Ubuntu. Installing was a cinch, and it even detected my university network connection automatically (whereas in Windows it has a college registration bit when you first open your browser).
However, some of the things I've tried to do to make my day to day use of a computer the same as in Windows, I would never wish upon the average user. My family sees me as the computer literate member, the one who knows his way around a computer, if anything goes wrong I'll be the one to fix it. Sure, I'm no IT genius, but I know how to maintain a desktop computer. Installing Java, Flash, media codecs, a media player HALF as capable as a good 3 or 4 I know on Windows? Pain in the arse. These are basic technologies used by lots of normal users, and it's POSSIBLE to install them, nay, quite easy for the *experienced* user, but for a noob to have to refer to a help file line by line? It's just not intuitive enough for the average user, and it's far too much hassle.
Don't get me wrong - I LOVE some aspects of Linux, but I've not been impressed enough by it to use Ubuntu as my default boot, for example.
Communists aren't liberal.. believe it or not, politics doesn't have just one degree of freedom. Here are a few examples.
Free market vs Controlled market.
Conservatism vs Radicalism.
Liberalism vs Totalitarianism.
Democracy vs Autocracy.
Socialism vs Capitalism.
In this case, communism is a radical socialist totalitarian state, that supports autocracy and controlled market economics. In the case of the topic we are supporting liberalism, which is the support of the LIBERTY of the individual.
I seriously suggest you actually do some reading up about political ideologies before you start chucking them around willy nilly. Wikipedia is a good place to start.
Haha, driving in central London! What next, chocolate teapots?
No offence, but anyone smart enough to be a good programmer or artist shouldn't be taking a course so focused. You'll wall yourself into a career, a decision you might regret in 10 or so years. Whereas this is necessary for certain professions (research scientists, doctors, surgeons, and etc), it certainly isn't for a game programmer at the moment.
Get a general degree in something like computer science, then you can specialise afterwards. I considered the same thing. I'm now taking a degree in physics, of all things. And C++ is part of the course!
Also, remember that it's British based companies only that can be prosecuted under the law, meaning that international companies are pretty much exempt (which is a kick in the arse really isn't it).
You can find more info here, it's not much but it's the best info there is online, it appears.