You seem to be forgetting who's turning up where. The "alien expeditionary force" would only have what it brought with them. Us earthlets would have home advantage.
Beating the alien expeditionary force isn't beating the aliens. If they want a round 2. Its game over for us.
Though as other people have pointed out they could use propulsion units as weapons, directly or indirectly.
Other people? I pointed that out myself, in the post you replied to.
But they'd have to have the intent to fight us. What if they didn't? What if they didn't understand the concept of agression, or had supressed it for some reason?
Right, we're going to get invaded by the possum people? Sure, I guess we might wipe that civilization out. But that's about it.
Although how they ever got that advanced in the first place is beyond me. Conflict drives progress and evolution.
The aliens could have very advanced technology, but only for peaceful purposes.
They could weaponize their propulsion system pretty trivially. Even if it just means "point empty ship at city and accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light".
A modern hospital or the geeks at a LAN party have tons of modern technology at their disposal, but neither could defeat a Roman legion.
This is a deceptive analogy. You are right, they couldn't beat a roman legion if the roman legion showed up unexpectedly at the front door. But the society that produces these things can weaponize it trivially... just via the side effects and by-products of peaceful technology. We'd have to know about things like nitroglycerine, hydrochloric acid, chlorine gas, bacteria, molds, nerve toxins, anthrax, gasoline gel (napalm), etc, etc. We'd have all kinds of advanced knowledge about toxins and how they affect us, just from our manufacturing experience.
As a society, we'd just take all of the above, and load it into those planes used to fight forest fires, and dump it on them. And in some cases, maybe follow it with a lit match (flare gun).
We're talking stupidly big numbers, not your garden variety big numbers. To paraphrase the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Its big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to these."
Using very rough numbers, at around 500 digits, around 99.9% of integers are composite, meaning around 0.1% are prime. (I'll leave proof of this as an exercise to the reader.) For the sake of the discussion, lets assume that is an accurate 'prime density' for the range of 500 digit numbers.
So, to create a database of the 500 digit prime numbers we'll need to store 0.1% of them. So far so good.
So how many are there. Lets look at 3 digit numbers (100-999) inclusive; which equals 999-100+1 or equivalently 10^3-10^2.Or we can express it even more conveniently as (10*(10^2))-(1*(10^2) = 9*(10^2). And the general formula for how many n digit integers there are is 9*(10^(n-1)). For 500 digit numbers there are 9*(10^499).
Ah, but we only need 0.1% because we are only storing primes, so we multiply by 0.001 or 10^-3 and get: 9*(10^496).
Our database is going to need around 9*(10^496) records for this...
If it hasn't already made itself clear to you, this poses a serious problem. There are estimated to be around 10^50 atoms on earth. So even if you could store an entire database record on an atom, and the entire planet was used in our storage system, we'd still run out of atoms before we made a measurable dent in the data set we need to store.
In fact, if we used every atom in the universe we'd still run out of atoms before we made a dent in the data set. The universe is estimated to have fewer than 10^81 atoms.
We couldn't store this data set even if we had a billion billion universes worth of atoms.
And that's just the 500 digit primes. We haven't talked about 501 digit primes yet...
If a known algorithm produces the encrypted password, why can't that algorithm be "reversed" to produce the original password in the first place?
It has been. But it doesn't really do you any good. The actual password is lost. The reverse of a hash produces infinite solutions. (In the same way the reverse of modulus division produces infinite solutions).
But those solutions are all 'collisions' and they could all be used interchangeably with the original password. So getting any solution is almost as good as getting the original.
Even in open source systems, encrypted passwords are not easy to crack. Why?
Because pretty much all modern encryption is based on the idea that its VERY easy to multiply two stupidly large prime numbers to find an even stupidly larger number. Multiple two 1000 bit prime number numbers and get a 2000 bit non-prime as a result.
But it takes years upon years of processor time to take that stupidly larger number, and factor it back into the original stupidly large primes.
Could a slashdotter post some "simple to understand code" that produces output I cannot reverse engineer?
z = primex * primey;
suppose z = 377, how do you find the factors: 13 and 29? Now, for encryption, z is thousands of digits instead of 3.
Algorithms that solve this exist, they just won't finish running until after you've died of old age.
I've read this several times, and tried to reply a couple. If its a troll its well crafted... if not... then I can't explain some of what you said.
Everyone I know who has bought one goes back to their other next-gen systems shortly after buying it, and the thing spends most of its time collecting dust.
This is pure troll on multiple levels. 1) Most people who own a Wii don't actually own another next-gen system. So they can't go "back to it".
2) Given 1 above, how can it be that "everyone you know" that has a wii has another nextgen console? Either your flat out lying, or you hang out exclusively with hard core gamers. And if that's the case you should be aware your experience is ridiculously skewed.
3) "collecting dust"? Why the negative spin? As if its a bad thing that it pretty much only gets pulled out at parties or social occasions? That's what most people bought it for. "collecting dust" makes it sound like some sort of horrible waste... like buying an exercise bike that NEVER gets used after the first week. Most people I know with a Wii, even those that don't play it much... e.g. like my parents, fire it up when the 'grandkids' come to visit, at family dinners, etc. That's precisely what they bought it for.
They never had any intention of completing a 250 hour RPG, or trash talking 12 year olds in an online FPS 6 hours a day...
Heating and cooling once a month would expand and contract the soil, obliterating footprints eventually.
That must be what erased all the craters. Oh wait...
To be fair you did say "eventually"... but then our sun will burn out eventually too, that doesn't mean we shouldn't make wildlife preserves in the meantime.
Libertarians don't care about net improvement across an alleged "society"; they've got theirs so fuck all of y'all.
That's just it, a large number of libertarians are in the category that get an improvement. They're just so brainwashed by the smaller group who actually have 'got theirs' they don't even realize they themselves are the very people who would be helped.
People like to think they are wealthier than they really are, but the sad truth is that its a mathematical certainty that fully half of us are below average. And there are an awful lot of people below that line, including plenty of libertarians, who think they are above it.
I vote for taking out North Korea today. I'd rather have a 100,000+ casualties today if it can prevent the likely horrific death of 20 million+ later.
What if it can't? What if it just sends the millions of survivors into the death-to-america mindset instead, providing anti-american terrorists a flood of recruits, labor, and funding. And a few years they detonate a nuke in a major city anyway.
"Take out X", that only creates more terrorism, unless you plan to exterminate everyone on the planet but you.
The way to end terrorism is a process of building bridges, not blowing them up.
You will never get it completely gone -- there will always be extremists that can't be reasoned with but, but killing innocent people just swells their ranks instead of diminishing them.
Seriously, the more I played Wii Sports Golf and Wii Sports Tennis, the more I knew they'd screwed up.
You "knew they'd screwed up"? Really? Because the control setup of Golf and Tennis games on the PS3 were a better arrangement? Something they had really 'gotten right'?
but Big N's already, by producing an "add-on" sensor to tweak the sensitivity, admitting their initial setup wasn't good enough.
Bottom line, if the original hadn't been 'good enough', there wouldn't be a motion plus, or copy-cat technology from Microsoft and Nintendo.
I guess I should probably avoid mentioning that Sony has made FAR more revisions to their PS3 hardware over the last two years than Nintendo... also a tacit admission that they completely screwed it up? And now with the announcement of this new controller they are admitting that even the fundamental controller they went with wasn't good enough?
Yes they are improving it, yes, Sony and Microsoft are both stepping up with their own innovations. And, yes, all of these motion controller systems will be be replaced with even better tech a couple years down the road.
Calling the Wii Remote not 'good enough' and saying Nintendo 'screwed it up' is just sour grapes.
2) offer the same quality of care for less money through innovation and efficiencies delivered like magic by the Federal bureaucracy.
And your explanation of say, Canada is what exactly?
a) Health care is a smaller percentage of the GDP. Meaning it costs less. b) Quality and availability of care... well... that's a can of worms.
on the one hand, yes, Canada is known for long waits on non-life-threatening surgery due to the prioritization of life-threatening surgery and budget constraints. So you could make an argument that there is lower availability and quality of care...
but on the other hand: despite the wait times EVERYONE has real access to health care. Clearly: not waiting in the US is better than waiting in Canada, but waiting in Canada is better than getting any care at all in the US. And if you look at the numbers, yeah, there is a percentage of American's for which the Canadian system would be objectively worse for them, but for a much larger percentage the Canadian system would be vastly better. ie... More american's would do better under the Canadian system than worse. That's a net IMPROVEMENT over what we have now.
secondly, Canadian's generally test healthier... longer life expectancy, better infant survival rates, etc. Now that can't ALL be attributed to the health care system in place, but at the very least it disproves that 'socialized medicine' is automatically worse.
If you think #2 is going to happen, it's a fair bet you still believe in Santa Claus too.
If you are truly in a financial position to beleive socialized medicine will actually make your life worse, odds are you can afford to just go somewhere else for the treatment you want tomorrow. If you aren't at that position, odds are you'll actually be better off under socialized medicine and have been duped into thinking and voting otherwise.
How about a dialog that says "do you want to modify your firefox install with our blah blah extension y/n?"
So now I have to say yes twice? Once to the installer, and then again to Firefox?
And where does this end? Do I get a dialog prompt that says "do you want to modify X with Y" for all 67 updates? Why not?
Most users don't remember what they installed and think that it was already there so they must have authorized it at some point or maybe that some IT guy did.
How do you get "This extension was installed since the last time you launched firefox" as something that was already there? I mean sure you can argue that users don't read, but then giving them another dialog to agree too isn't going to help either... and if they do read its pretty clear its something new.
And if there is an IT person responsible for the system, then yes, he effectively did put it there if he's allowing automatic updates.
Adobe Acrobat is not a browser--it is not a competing product. None of the examples you listed are competing products.
1) Microsoft.NET Framework is not a competing product to Firefox. I realize Microsoft also makes internet explorer, and I see where you are trying to go with this, but if MS had spun IE off into a separate company before doing this, would that change/.'s reaction. No I don't think so.
2) And, in point of fact, my comment about Apple *IS* a situation with a competing product, or perhaps you forget Apple makes safari? So here we have Apple, a browser maker pushing out an unrelated product that -gasp- isntalls an extension into a competing product: Firefox...
Where's the self righteous outrage about that? Where?
1) ahh it's ok they told me I just missed it while reading the 67 other security updates.
And your alternative is?
As long as it is in the small print that's ok..
FF notifies you to.
2) Part of the problem is that Disable IS DISABLED!!!!
No. Its not. The option to Uninstall is disabled. The option to "disable" works just fine.
The reason the option to uninstall is disabled is because it was installed by the windows update service, which is a very high priviledge account. The account that you use to run FF on the other hand doesn't have equivalent permission so you can't remove it. This is actually a good thing.
If you really want to remove it, you simply need to remove it from the add-ons folder manually, with suitable priviledge escalation. However, its smarter to just disable it so that it knows its already been installed and disabled. If you remove it, it will be restored next time its supposed to be updated.
Well You might want to watch what you install then. ALL of mine (bar the MS one) were installed by me on purpose.
I call bullshit.
On the one hand very few people are aware installing something like itunes will add an extension to firefox. And it certainly doesn't make a big production of "clearly notifying" you.
On the other hand, if YOU watched what you installed better, you wouldn't have been surprised by the MS extension either.
But hey I don't care it's only on my work laptop as I have switched to xubuntu at home.
You should care.
1) If an extension is installed via yum or apt-get or whatever you can't 'uninstall it' from within firefox. The option is greyed out same as windows. Same reason too: priviledges.
2) Things you install into ubuntu, from 3rd parties, will drop extensions into firefox without making a giant production of telling you about it too.
Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if one day you'll apt-get mono as a package pre-req for something else, and then lo and behold find the "Mono.NET Assissant 1.0 ClickOnce support" sitting in your firefox extensions next time you launch it.
It most definitely IS unexpected, because I was never notified anywhere that a MICROSOFT update would entail installing an addon to a completely NON-Microsoft product.
Oh? And when you download Adobe Acrobat Reader, were you shocked and surprised and offended when it did its thing to your browser too? Gasp its just a document viewer for PDFs... why is it installing browser addons?
The addon is relevant to the.net frameworks functionality, and its reasonable to assume people downloading an updating the.net framework should be aware of what it is and does, and want the functionality.
Plus...
1) Microsoft does notify you if you actually read the information about what you are downloading.
2) Firefox also notifies you when it starts up. If you don't want it just click disable. Microsoft knows this, and took no steps to try and stealth it in, so its RELYING on firefox's built in addon-notification. I don't see anything wrong with this.
1) Firefox is not a Microsoft application. It is installed at the will and whim of the end-user. And the end-user should have control over what is installed into their Firefox.
Lets take a look at my Addon's and Plugins... approximately 1/3rd of them were not explicitly installed by me, this is that half:
1) Adobe Acrobat.. Firefox is not an Adobe application !!! 2) Citrix ICA Client.. WTF... I access the Terminal Server via Program Neighborhood... I didn't ask for this in firefox! 3) iTunes Application Detector... Holy craps! Apple's in on this too? 4) Java Platform SE 6U13. I installed Java for OO.o what's it doing in Firefox... Man am I getting steamed. 5) Microsoft SharedView Plugin - Cripes... Microsoft snuck this into FF when I installed SharedView! Bastards. 6) QuickTime 7.6 -- Apple again fuckers!! 7) VMware Remote Console Plug-in -- holy shit even VMWARE is teh evilz!
Yeah, sorry, I'm having a tough time working a lot of outrage over the "Microsoft.NET Framework Assistant"
2) Microsoft has every opportunity to give that end user A CHOICE.
FF already notifies you on start up. Microsoft knows this. What is the advantage of being asked twice?
3)They have no right to assume that I want their goddamned "Clickonce" thing to work.
So don't install automatic updates to features if you don't want them automatically updated.
Given Microsoft's track record with security, I worry:
- Windows user installs Firefox to avoid IE's security flaws. - Microsoft silently installs a plugin onto Firefox that reports the browser includes.NET functionality allows websites to host.NET executables. - Hackers discover a way to exploit this. - Thus, Firefox is now less secure thanks to Microsoft
a) It wasn't silent. FF tells you quite plainly that it happened. b) It isn't unique to microsoft... Adobe, Citrix, Sun, VMware, and Apple are all doing it too... in some cases they even do it on Linux.
c) I'm curious what your "better solution" is? And why isn't relying on FF's own notification mechanism not acceptable to you?
You keep claiming that Wolf3d on the iPhone sucked... but what you need to realize is that you're in the minority in thinking that.
For starters the title is self selecting for enthusiasts here, and trading in nostalgia. All it had to do was be novel and adequate. Would an iphone fps from a no-name with a new franchise has been so well received? I doubt it.
Secondly, while I still think the controls of wolf3d on the iphone suck, the game overall is a relative gem in big blue ocean of suck. Most iphone apps are utter shit. Wolf3D being actually 'ok', a good game (hell, a true "Classic") only held back by its controls, which are themselves really good given the limitations of the device... well... hey, I'd give the game a good review too.
Hell, its actually pretty awesome for an iphone game. But that's setting the bar pretty low. Like having the nicest home in a slum.
The GBA port sucked because it was half-assed and had several major things cut (no end boss? lame).
Heh... I didn't even bother finishing the 3rd level in the first mission. I'd had enough.
If the iPhone one sucks, it's only because of irrational iPhone-hate.
I'm sure that must be it. I must have irrational hate for my own iphone that I'm overall very impressed with.
ok ok... I admit it... I actually only have the inferior ipod touch. I was waiting until they released the next hardware refresh before I bought the phone since its rumoured to be pretty soon... so yeah, it must be irrational Apple-hate that motivates me to upgrade my touch to the iphone.
I take it you have not played the Wolfenstein 3D port Carmack has made for the iphone, because it plays really well.
As I said in another reply:
The controls for iphone wolf3d sucked. It was playable, and perhaps even impressively playable even given the limitations. But that doesn't actually make it "good". Its still big pile of suck.
A number of people have come out in defense of doom based on wolf3d for iphone... I dunno what to say to that. Is it some sort of apple reality distortion or fanboyism? Sure, even I found it amusing, and thought it was impressive for what it was, and soaked up the retro glory... but objectively... its still clumsy and awkward and annoying.
As much as I enjoy Doom I'll take a pass on this, and play a game more suited to the screen and controls on the ipod/iphone.
Why? The iPhone is more powerful and has a better screen than the GBA. The only difference is the controls, and if you've played Wolfenstein on the iPhone (as mr_da3m0n said below), you'd realize how meritless your conclusion is.
The problem with the GBA version was the controls not the screen. The problem with the iphone version will be the same. The controls for iphone wolf3d sucked. It was playable, and perhaps even impressively playable even given the limitations. But that doesn't actually make it "good". Its still big pile of suck.
FPSes are excellent on the PC (keyboard and mouse is king). They can be very good on the Wii (point and shoot... not as reliable or twitch friendly as the PC, but immersion goes up and its just viscerally fun); and they are passable on the X360 and PS3 (dual analog sticks have never impressed me for FPSes).
But handhelds? First person shooters pretty much suck on handhelds. They suck on the GBA, they suck on the PSP, and and the king of suck for handheld FPS games is the iphone. I'm not saying they can't build a handheld with a good FPS controls, but they haven't yet.
Your statement, as well as the general notion of this thread, that writing code in languages enforcing global garbage collection, is faster or cheaper, is false.
I disagree. I find projects go faster in C#.net or Java than in unmanaged c/c++, in large part due to the way memory management is handled.
I concede I haven't tried boost, and I concede it could help significantly, but its still going to be more complicated to use than C#.NET or Java.
That leaves the advantage of providing selective garbage collection in languages supporting manual memory allocation, which can leverage software architecture and performance.
This is a good point though. When you do genuinely need manual memory allocation, its probably only for a portion, so having that flexibility and being able to use GC for "the rest" is potentially a big advantage. But if you don't need manual memory allocation at all, I think you are better off in a language that just provides it.
would think it would be a lot more robust to keep track of allocation and deallocation explicitly, add when you need, and delete when you don't need, and not count on some generic mechanism.
Ok... so I allocate object A. Then I allocate object B, C, and D that all reference A but aren't aware of eachother. Then I release D, and don't know whether to release A, so now A needs to have some sort of reference counting mechanism, and I have to remember to use it each time I create or copy or pass a reference to A.
Or... I can use a language that implements the reference counting stuff for me and implicitly calls it when I allocate new objects, create, copy, or pass references, and expire them as they go out of scope, without me having to write explicit destructors.
Basically, if you do any sort of remotely complicated object allocation where you are going to need to implement reference counting to keep track of them, you might as well use a garbage collector. That's what it does, it comes thoroughly debugged, and you don't have to waste time implementing and debugging your own.
So, a garbage collector language is MORE robust (assuming robust means 'more reliable').
That's not to say unmanaged code doesn't have its place, but in my experience managed code tends to get developed faster and cheaper than equivalent unmanaged code, so it only makes sense to use unmanaged code where you really need the performance or nuts&bolts control. Your typical productivity or business logic application don't. Drivers, real-time systems, etc do.
As always, use the best tool for the job. C is not always the best tool.
I would have said they were more like a guerilla organization.
That's what I say about most 'terrorist' groups active today too.
So apparently, the two words are interchangeable in newspeak.
Actualy the number of words that are interchangeable with terrorist these days is surprisingly large. I can probably call you a terrorist if I rationalize it right. (Are you a pacifist? Were you against the Iraq war? Terrorist sympathizer. Did you actually vote against Bush in protest of the iraq war? That's taking action... now your one of them. Or maybe you downloaded a song; the RIAA has claimed that piracy funds terrorism... so you don't have receipts for every track, I'm going to conclude you funded al-quaida...)
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be forgetting who's turning up where. The "alien expeditionary force" would only have what it brought with them. Us earthlets would have home advantage.
Beating the alien expeditionary force isn't beating the aliens. If they want a round 2. Its game over for us.
Though as other people have pointed out they could use propulsion units as weapons, directly or indirectly.
Other people? I pointed that out myself, in the post you replied to.
But they'd have to have the intent to fight us. What if they didn't? What if they didn't understand the concept of agression, or had supressed it for some reason?
Right, we're going to get invaded by the possum people? Sure, I guess we might wipe that civilization out. But that's about it.
Although how they ever got that advanced in the first place is beyond me. Conflict drives progress and evolution.
The aliens could have very advanced technology, but only for peaceful purposes.
They could weaponize their propulsion system pretty trivially. Even if it just means "point empty ship at city and accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light".
A modern hospital or the geeks at a LAN party have tons of modern technology at their disposal, but neither could defeat a Roman legion.
This is a deceptive analogy. You are right, they couldn't beat a roman legion if the roman legion showed up unexpectedly at the front door. But the society that produces these things can weaponize it trivially... just via the side effects and by-products of peaceful technology. We'd have to know about things like nitroglycerine, hydrochloric acid, chlorine gas, bacteria, molds, nerve toxins, anthrax, gasoline gel (napalm), etc, etc. We'd have all kinds of advanced knowledge about toxins and how they affect us, just from our manufacturing experience.
As a society, we'd just take all of the above, and load it into those planes used to fight forest fires, and dump it on them. And in some cases, maybe follow it with a lit match (flare gun).
Anybody willing to make such a database? :-D
We're talking stupidly big numbers, not your garden variety big numbers. To paraphrase the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"Its big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to these."
Using very rough numbers, at around 500 digits, around 99.9% of integers are composite, meaning around 0.1% are prime. (I'll leave proof of this as an exercise to the reader.) For the sake of the discussion, lets assume that is an accurate 'prime density' for the range of 500 digit numbers.
So, to create a database of the 500 digit prime numbers we'll need to store 0.1% of them. So far so good.
So how many are there. Lets look at 3 digit numbers (100-999) inclusive; which equals 999-100+1 or equivalently 10^3-10^2.Or we can express it even more conveniently as (10*(10^2))-(1*(10^2) = 9*(10^2). And the general formula for how many n digit integers there are is 9*(10^(n-1)). For 500 digit numbers there are 9*(10^499).
Ah, but we only need 0.1% because we are only storing primes, so we multiply by 0.001 or 10^-3 and get:
9*(10^496).
Our database is going to need around 9*(10^496) records for this...
If it hasn't already made itself clear to you, this poses a serious problem. There are estimated to be around 10^50 atoms on earth. So even if you could store an entire database record on an atom, and the entire planet was used in our storage system, we'd still run out of atoms before we made a measurable dent in the data set we need to store.
In fact, if we used every atom in the universe we'd still run out of atoms before we made a dent in the data set. The universe is estimated to have fewer than 10^81 atoms.
We couldn't store this data set even if we had a billion billion universes worth of atoms.
And that's just the 500 digit primes. We haven't talked about 501 digit primes yet...
If a known algorithm produces the encrypted password, why can't that algorithm be "reversed" to produce the original password in the first place?
It has been. But it doesn't really do you any good. The actual password is lost. The reverse of a hash produces infinite solutions. (In the same way the reverse of modulus division produces infinite solutions).
But those solutions are all 'collisions' and they could all be used interchangeably with the original password. So getting any solution is almost as good as getting the original.
Even in open source systems, encrypted passwords are not easy to crack. Why?
Because pretty much all modern encryption is based on the idea that its VERY easy to multiply two stupidly large prime numbers to find an even stupidly larger number. Multiple two 1000 bit prime number numbers and get a 2000 bit non-prime as a result.
But it takes years upon years of processor time to take that stupidly larger number, and factor it back into the original stupidly large primes.
Could a slashdotter post some "simple to understand code" that produces output I cannot reverse engineer?
z = primex * primey;
suppose z = 377, how do you find the factors: 13 and 29?
Now, for encryption, z is thousands of digits instead of 3.
Algorithms that solve this exist, they just won't finish running until after you've died of old age.
Craters would not be erased by this process...When you're talking about a hundred mile wide crater, you can see this is negliglble.
There are plenty of craters as small as footprints on the moon.
I've read this several times, and tried to reply a couple. If its a troll its well crafted... if not... then I can't explain some of what you said.
Everyone I know who has bought one goes back to their other next-gen systems shortly after buying it, and the thing spends most of its time collecting dust.
This is pure troll on multiple levels.
1) Most people who own a Wii don't actually own another next-gen system. So they can't go "back to it".
2) Given 1 above, how can it be that "everyone you know" that has a wii has another nextgen console? Either your flat out lying, or you hang out exclusively with hard core gamers. And if that's the case you should be aware your experience is ridiculously skewed.
3) "collecting dust"? Why the negative spin? As if its a bad thing that it pretty much only gets pulled out at parties or social occasions? That's what most people bought it for. "collecting dust" makes it sound like some sort of horrible waste... like buying an exercise bike that NEVER gets used after the first week. Most people I know with a Wii, even those that don't play it much... e.g. like my parents, fire it up when the 'grandkids' come to visit, at family dinners, etc. That's precisely what they bought it for.
They never had any intention of completing a 250 hour RPG, or trash talking 12 year olds in an online FPS 6 hours a day...
Heating and cooling once a month would expand and contract the soil, obliterating footprints eventually.
That must be what erased all the craters. Oh wait...
To be fair you did say "eventually"... but then our sun will burn out eventually too, that doesn't mean we shouldn't make wildlife preserves in the meantime.
Libertarians don't care about net improvement across an alleged "society"; they've got theirs so fuck all of y'all.
That's just it, a large number of libertarians are in the category that get an improvement. They're just so brainwashed by the smaller group who actually have 'got theirs' they don't even realize they themselves are the very people who would be helped.
People like to think they are wealthier than they really are, but the sad truth is that its a mathematical certainty that fully half of us are below average. And there are an awful lot of people below that line, including plenty of libertarians, who think they are above it.
We've been "building bridges" ever since WW2.
Yes. We've built a lot of bridges and they've paid off. We've also blown a few up, with less positive effects.
It doesn't appear to have done any great good.
The cold war ended peacefully, there was no WW3.
Your standards are too high for these not to be 'great good'.
I vote for taking out North Korea today. I'd rather have a 100,000+ casualties today if it can prevent the likely horrific death of 20 million+ later.
What if it can't? What if it just sends the millions of survivors into the death-to-america mindset instead, providing anti-american terrorists a flood of recruits, labor, and funding. And a few years they detonate a nuke in a major city anyway.
"Take out X", that only creates more terrorism, unless you plan to exterminate everyone on the planet but you.
The way to end terrorism is a process of building bridges, not blowing them up.
You will never get it completely gone -- there will always be extremists that can't be reasoned with but, but killing innocent people just swells their ranks instead of diminishing them.
Seriously, the more I played Wii Sports Golf and Wii Sports Tennis, the more I knew they'd screwed up.
You "knew they'd screwed up"? Really? Because the control setup of Golf and Tennis games on the PS3 were a better arrangement? Something they had really 'gotten right'?
but Big N's already, by producing an "add-on" sensor to tweak the sensitivity, admitting their initial setup wasn't good enough.
Bottom line, if the original hadn't been 'good enough', there wouldn't be a motion plus, or copy-cat technology from Microsoft and Nintendo.
I guess I should probably avoid mentioning that Sony has made FAR more revisions to their PS3 hardware over the last two years than Nintendo... also a tacit admission that they completely screwed it up? And now with the announcement of this new controller they are admitting that even the fundamental controller they went with wasn't good enough?
Yes they are improving it, yes, Sony and Microsoft are both stepping up with their own innovations. And, yes, all of these motion controller systems will be be replaced with even better tech a couple years down the road.
Calling the Wii Remote not 'good enough' and saying Nintendo 'screwed it up' is just sour grapes.
1) lower availability and quality of care
2) offer the same quality of care for less money through innovation and efficiencies delivered like magic by the Federal bureaucracy.
And your explanation of say, Canada is what exactly?
a) Health care is a smaller percentage of the GDP. Meaning it costs less.
b) Quality and availability of care... well... that's a can of worms.
on the one hand, yes, Canada is known for long waits on non-life-threatening surgery due to the prioritization of life-threatening surgery and budget constraints. So you could make an argument that there is lower availability and quality of care...
but on the other hand:
despite the wait times EVERYONE has real access to health care. Clearly: not waiting in the US is better than waiting in Canada, but waiting in Canada is better than getting any care at all in the US. And if you look at the numbers, yeah, there is a percentage of American's for which the Canadian system would be objectively worse for them, but for a much larger percentage the Canadian system would be vastly better. ie... More american's would do better under the Canadian system than worse. That's a net IMPROVEMENT over what we have now.
secondly, Canadian's generally test healthier... longer life expectancy, better infant survival rates, etc. Now that can't ALL be attributed to the health care system in place, but at the very least it disproves that 'socialized medicine' is automatically worse.
If you think #2 is going to happen, it's a fair bet you still believe in Santa Claus too.
If you are truly in a financial position to beleive socialized medicine will actually make your life worse, odds are you can afford to just go somewhere else for the treatment you want tomorrow. If you aren't at that position, odds are you'll actually be better off under socialized medicine and have been duped into thinking and voting otherwise.
How about a dialog that says "do you want to modify your firefox install with our blah blah extension y/n?"
So now I have to say yes twice? Once to the installer, and then again to Firefox?
And where does this end? Do I get a dialog prompt that says "do you want to modify X with Y" for all 67 updates? Why not?
Most users don't remember what they installed and think that it was already there so they must have authorized it at some point or maybe that some IT guy did.
How do you get "This extension was installed since the last time you launched firefox" as something that was already there? I mean sure you can argue that users don't read, but then giving them another dialog to agree too isn't going to help either... and if they do read its pretty clear its something new.
And if there is an IT person responsible for the system, then yes, he effectively did put it there if he's allowing automatic updates.
Adobe Acrobat is not a browser--it is not a competing product. None of the examples you listed are competing products.
1) Microsoft.NET Framework is not a competing product to Firefox. I realize Microsoft also makes internet explorer, and I see where you are trying to go with this, but if MS had spun IE off into a separate company before doing this, would that change /.'s reaction. No I don't think so.
2) And, in point of fact, my comment about Apple *IS* a situation with a competing product, or perhaps you forget Apple makes safari? So here we have Apple, a browser maker pushing out an unrelated product that -gasp- isntalls an extension into a competing product: Firefox...
Where's the self righteous outrage about that? Where?
1) ahh it's ok they told me I just missed it while reading the 67 other security updates.
And your alternative is?
As long as it is in the small print that's ok..
FF notifies you to.
2) Part of the problem is that Disable IS DISABLED!!!!
No. Its not. The option to Uninstall is disabled. The option to "disable" works just fine.
The reason the option to uninstall is disabled is because it was installed by the windows update service, which is a very high priviledge account. The account that you use to run FF on the other hand doesn't have equivalent permission so you can't remove it. This is actually a good thing.
If you really want to remove it, you simply need to remove it from the add-ons folder manually, with suitable priviledge escalation. However, its smarter to just disable it so that it knows its already been installed and disabled. If you remove it, it will be restored next time its supposed to be updated.
Well You might want to watch what you install then. ALL of mine (bar the MS one) were installed by me on purpose.
I call bullshit.
On the one hand very few people are aware installing something like itunes will add an extension to firefox. And it certainly doesn't make a big production of "clearly notifying" you.
On the other hand, if YOU watched what you installed better, you wouldn't have been surprised by the MS extension either.
But hey I don't care it's only on my work laptop as I have switched to xubuntu at home.
You should care.
1) If an extension is installed via yum or apt-get or whatever you can't 'uninstall it' from within firefox. The option is greyed out same as windows. Same reason too: priviledges.
2) Things you install into ubuntu, from 3rd parties, will drop extensions into firefox without making a giant production of telling you about it too.
Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if one day you'll apt-get mono as a package pre-req for something else, and then lo and behold find the "Mono .NET Assissant 1.0 ClickOnce support" sitting in your firefox extensions next time you launch it.
It most definitely IS unexpected, because I was never notified anywhere that a MICROSOFT update would entail installing an addon to a completely NON-Microsoft product.
Oh? And when you download Adobe Acrobat Reader, were you shocked and surprised and offended when it did its thing to your browser too? Gasp its just a document viewer for PDFs... why is it installing browser addons?
The addon is relevant to the .net frameworks functionality, and its reasonable to assume people downloading an updating the .net framework should be aware of what it is and does, and want the functionality.
Plus...
1) Microsoft does notify you if you actually read the information about what you are downloading.
2) Firefox also notifies you when it starts up. If you don't want it just click disable. Microsoft knows this, and took no steps to try and stealth it in, so its RELYING on firefox's built in addon-notification. I don't see anything wrong with this.
1) Firefox is not a Microsoft application. It is installed at the will and whim of the end-user. And the end-user should have control over what is installed into their Firefox.
Lets take a look at my Addon's and Plugins... approximately 1/3rd of them were not explicitly installed by me, this is that half:
1) Adobe Acrobat .. Firefox is not an Adobe application !!! .. WTF... I access the Terminal Server via Program Neighborhood... I didn't ask for this in firefox!
2) Citrix ICA Client
3) iTunes Application Detector... Holy craps! Apple's in on this too?
4) Java Platform SE 6U13. I installed Java for OO.o what's it doing in Firefox... Man am I getting steamed.
5) Microsoft SharedView Plugin - Cripes... Microsoft snuck this into FF when I installed SharedView! Bastards.
6) QuickTime 7.6 -- Apple again fuckers!!
7) VMware Remote Console Plug-in -- holy shit even VMWARE is teh evilz!
Yeah, sorry, I'm having a tough time working a lot of outrage over the "Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant"
2) Microsoft has every opportunity to give that end user A CHOICE.
FF already notifies you on start up. Microsoft knows this. What is the advantage of being asked twice?
3)They have no right to assume that I want their goddamned "Clickonce" thing to work.
So don't install automatic updates to features if you don't want them automatically updated.
Given Microsoft's track record with security, I worry:
- Windows user installs Firefox to avoid IE's security flaws. .NET functionality allows websites to host .NET executables.
- Microsoft silently installs a plugin onto Firefox that reports the browser includes
- Hackers discover a way to exploit this.
- Thus, Firefox is now less secure thanks to Microsoft
a) It wasn't silent. FF tells you quite plainly that it happened.
b) It isn't unique to microsoft... Adobe, Citrix, Sun, VMware, and Apple are all doing it too... in some cases they even do it on Linux.
c) I'm curious what your "better solution" is? And why isn't relying on FF's own notification mechanism not acceptable to you?
Your argument sounds pretty shrill to me.
5. AIM, MSN, IRC and other IM services took e-mail and made it much better
Say what now?
So the problem with email is that it wasn't fast enough, but that the telephone was 'too realtime'?
Or was the problem with email that we didn't have to create accounts with the provider of the people we wanted to talk to?
Or was the problem that we didn't have enough smiley icon sets in our lives?
Seriously, how did IM make email better?
You keep claiming that Wolf3d on the iPhone sucked... but what you need to realize is that you're in the minority in thinking that.
For starters the title is self selecting for enthusiasts here, and trading in nostalgia. All it had to do was be novel and adequate. Would an iphone fps from a no-name with a new franchise has been so well received? I doubt it.
Secondly, while I still think the controls of wolf3d on the iphone suck, the game overall is a relative gem in big blue ocean of suck. Most iphone apps are utter shit. Wolf3D being actually 'ok', a good game (hell, a true "Classic") only held back by its controls, which are themselves really good given the limitations of the device... well... hey, I'd give the game a good review too.
Hell, its actually pretty awesome for an iphone game. But that's setting the bar pretty low. Like having the nicest home in a slum.
The GBA port sucked because it was half-assed and had several major things cut (no end boss? lame).
Heh... I didn't even bother finishing the 3rd level in the first mission. I'd had enough.
If the iPhone one sucks, it's only because of irrational iPhone-hate.
I'm sure that must be it. I must have irrational hate for my own iphone that I'm overall very impressed with.
ok ok... I admit it... I actually only have the inferior ipod touch. I was waiting until they released the next hardware refresh before I bought the phone since its rumoured to be pretty soon... so yeah, it must be irrational Apple-hate that motivates me to upgrade my touch to the iphone.
I take it you have not played the Wolfenstein 3D port Carmack has made for the iphone, because it plays really well.
As I said in another reply:
The controls for iphone wolf3d sucked. It was playable, and perhaps even impressively playable even given the limitations. But that doesn't actually make it "good". Its still big pile of suck.
A number of people have come out in defense of doom based on wolf3d for iphone... I dunno what to say to that. Is it some sort of apple reality distortion or fanboyism? Sure, even I found it amusing, and thought it was impressive for what it was, and soaked up the retro glory... but objectively... its still clumsy and awkward and annoying.
As much as I enjoy Doom I'll take a pass on this, and play a game more suited to the screen and controls on the ipod/iphone.
Why? The iPhone is more powerful and has a better screen than the GBA. The only difference is the controls, and if you've played Wolfenstein on the iPhone (as mr_da3m0n said below), you'd realize how meritless your conclusion is.
The problem with the GBA version was the controls not the screen. The problem with the iphone version will be the same. The controls for iphone wolf3d sucked. It was playable, and perhaps even impressively playable even given the limitations. But that doesn't actually make it "good". Its still big pile of suck.
FPSes are excellent on the PC (keyboard and mouse is king). They can be very good on the Wii (point and shoot... not as reliable or twitch friendly as the PC, but immersion goes up and its just viscerally fun); and they are passable on the X360 and PS3 (dual analog sticks have never impressed me for FPSes).
But handhelds? First person shooters pretty much suck on handhelds. They suck on the GBA, they suck on the PSP, and and the king of suck for handheld FPS games is the iphone. I'm not saying they can't build a handheld with a good FPS controls, but they haven't yet.
You are mixing terminology
Yes I was. Thanks for pointing that out.
Your statement, as well as the general notion of this thread, that writing code in languages enforcing global garbage collection, is faster or cheaper, is false.
I disagree. I find projects go faster in C#.net or Java than in unmanaged c/c++, in large part due to the way memory management is handled.
I concede I haven't tried boost, and I concede it could help significantly, but its still going to be more complicated to use than C#.NET or Java.
That leaves the advantage of providing selective garbage collection in languages supporting manual memory allocation, which can leverage software architecture and performance.
This is a good point though. When you do genuinely need manual memory allocation, its probably only for a portion, so having that flexibility and being able to use GC for "the rest" is potentially a big advantage. But if you don't need manual memory allocation at all, I think you are better off in a language that just provides it.
Now that makes me think of buying an iPhone
Why? I tried Doom on the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. It utterly sucked. Its going to be even worse on the iphone.
would think it would be a lot more robust to keep track of allocation and deallocation explicitly, add when you need, and delete when you don't need, and not count on some generic mechanism.
Ok... so I allocate object A. Then I allocate object B, C, and D that all reference A but aren't aware of eachother. Then I release D, and don't know whether to release A, so now A needs to have some sort of reference counting mechanism, and I have to remember to use it each time I create or copy or pass a reference to A.
Or... I can use a language that implements the reference counting stuff for me and implicitly calls it when I allocate new objects, create, copy, or pass references, and expire them as they go out of scope, without me having to write explicit destructors.
Basically, if you do any sort of remotely complicated object allocation where you are going to need to implement reference counting to keep track of them, you might as well use a garbage collector. That's what it does, it comes thoroughly debugged, and you don't have to waste time implementing and debugging your own.
So, a garbage collector language is MORE robust (assuming robust means 'more reliable').
That's not to say unmanaged code doesn't have its place, but in my experience managed code tends to get developed faster and cheaper than equivalent unmanaged code, so it only makes sense to use unmanaged code where you really need the performance or nuts&bolts control. Your typical productivity or business logic application don't. Drivers, real-time systems, etc do.
As always, use the best tool for the job. C is not always the best tool.
I would have said they were more like a guerilla organization.
That's what I say about most 'terrorist' groups active today too.
So apparently, the two words are interchangeable in newspeak.
Actualy the number of words that are interchangeable with terrorist these days is surprisingly large. I can probably call you a terrorist if I rationalize it right. (Are you a pacifist? Were you against the Iraq war? Terrorist sympathizer. Did you actually vote against Bush in protest of the iraq war? That's taking action... now your one of them. Or maybe you downloaded a song; the RIAA has claimed that piracy funds terrorism... so you don't have receipts for every track, I'm going to conclude you funded al-quaida...)
Also, how can this be about illegal immigrants if they are going to scan US citizens???
Precisely. My post was that this was an absurd rationalization to pander support. He might as well have claimed it would stop child porn too.