I used to be a PC-only gamer, but that price was part of the problem for me. I find that even "$800 every couple of years" is still way more than I want to spend on this hobby (consider the average gamer, who finds the $600 PS3 prohibitively expensive despite it's advertised 10-year lifespan). I'm not trying to argue that it's a lot of money in an absolute sense, or even that it's a lot to spend on a hobby (it isn't); it's just more than I want to spend on a platform.
And just to make it perfectly clear, I think that the PC is the best platform for those people that are willing to invest the time and money into it (neglecting genre preferences), but for "casuals" like me (I typically have, at most, about an hour or two a night in which to play games) consoles offer better value.
No. That may be how the patent system is used today, but that's not why we have the patent system. Patents exist to keep people from trying to hide how a new invention works. Basically, in return for explaining (in detail) how one's new thing works, we allow you to have a temporary monopoly. (Don't believe me? look at the etymology of the word.) It's to increase the sharing of ideas. If someone can produce a product that does the same thing, but without looking at someone else's patent, then the patent is a burden on society.
This is just semantics, but yes, I mean "hard" as in "firm". As in, "Physics and chemistry experiments rely on 'hard' numbers". I am obviously biased, but something that I noticed is that people that go into the "softer" sciences often lack the mathematical background to do their work with the same rigor as is expected in the "harder" ones. And so you have a quandry: people that are able to bring rigor to their work go into a field where it's easy, and people that aren't go into a field where it's difficult. How do you fix this? That is to say, how do we bring about a change in culture so that Biology (or *gasp* Psychology) attracts students interested in the mathematics of extremely complex systems? My wife went into Bio partly because she found the math in Chemistry too difficult. This, to me, is a huge impediment to the advancement of the softer fields.
I'm not limiting experimental to table-top or to measurement. I am trying to emphasise the ability to 'hold everything else constant' as the defining feature of an "experimental science". Perhaps I should call it "experimental" and "observational" to emphasise the point that in "observational" science the scientist can't get in the process and control it, but must merely observe the outcomes and conduct inference from that. So I'm not making a theoretical vs experimental division.
Your point is valid, and I understood the distinction in the last post, but, as I mentioned earlier, I would still categorize any observations as "experimental" in nature. Part of the issue, I guess is that your distinction does cut through many fields one would normally group together.
All science aims to be predictive - but the nature of the data available (or that can be collected) to make those predictions varies by the subject under examination.
You're right, and this observation is part of my point. There are fields which produce "hard", useful numbers. And then there are fields that are still trying to get there. I think this is a useful distinction, although you may not. At the end of the day, what I care about is the accuracy with which you can use a model to predict the outcome of a particular initial state, not whether or not the folks who came up with the model were able to control their variables or not. I understand that you may not agree with this point of view, but I ask that if that's the case we simply agree to disagree, since I doubt that either of us is willing to budge on these points.
You're right about Mendel (Both Galileo and Newton dry-labbed their results, so I won't begrudge Mendel that), but I would argue that his case is fairly unique in Biology, whereas, by the time you hit the 18th century Physics is already a quantitative field.
Einstein proposed models long before they could be tested that later turned out to be quantitatively predictive.
That was basically my point. Relativity (before it was experimentally verified), was a quantitative, predictive model of how gravity ought to work. He came up with a mathematical model that produced testable numbers. Yes, they weren't testable when he first proposed the model, but that's not really his fault. My point is that anything that relies on correlation coefficients is almost definitely not what I would call "hard" science. I'm not saying that such studies are without merit; as you state, in the budding stages of understanding, it may be all one can manage. But it's not what I would call "hard" (by which I mean, there's something substantial you can actually stand on [figuratively]).
I did not make a distinction between experimental and theoretical science. I implicitly assumed that people would be doing both. Theory is the model, and experiment is the measurement. There was a time when physicists did both; the last great physicist like that that comes to mind is Enrico Fermi. I would consider any gathering of data as a(n) (experimental) measurement, be it a survey, observation of markets or stellar properties, or what I am used to calling "table-top" science (that is, science you can do on a table-top), the last of which is the only kind of experiment you seem to consider "experimental" (and boy would your definition piss a lot of experimentalists off).
Case in point: my wife does table-top science (specifically, she studies spindle pole bodies in yeast), but she cannot get a predictive model. It's not possible in her field. It's not correlational, but we (my wife and I, and pretty much everyone else I know) agree that what she does is soft, experimental, and science. There is some modeling in what she does, but a) it isn't predictive, and b) it's entirely phenomenological, which, from a theoretical standpoint, is unsatisfactory at best (and yes, she agrees with this assessment).
I may need to point out here, that I don't think this is a problem with her field or anyone else's research. Physics and Chemistry are both relatively (very) old fields. Quantitative (though fudged, actually) measurements date back at least to Galileo (15th century). Modern Biology dates back to when? the 50s? Yes, people did "biology" back in the dark ages too, but it was entirely phenomenological and descriptive. Useful, yes, but only in the same way that "cartoon" physics is useful. People already want good quantitative, predictive models in Biology, but that sort of thing takes time, especially when the systems are as ridiculously complex as they are in Bio.
Looking back over this, I would argue that what you ought to have keyed in on (if "hard" is to ill-defined for you) are the following two aspects of how I've categorized things: quantitative and predictive. You need numbers, and they must predict with accuracy what would happen in an hitherto unmeasured situation. If it can't do that, then it's not... I wanted to come up with some other descriptor, but I can't think of a single-word descriptor that covers both aspects, so I'm just going to stick with "hard".
I should note, in case it belies some kind of bias, that I'm a space physicist. I put that "space" bit in to point out that I don't actually study novel physics; I use well-understood (classical) physics to better understand "space weather" systems.
First off, I agree with your main point, but, for some reason, felt a need to comment on this one bit of what you typed:
In practice, science comes down to observing correlation, and speculating at what might have caused it. For hard science, where events are reproducible and variables can be controlled, you can go back and repeat the experiment until you have a good grasp of what caused the correlation you observed.
In what I would call "hard science", you don't bother with correlation coefficients. Correlation is too weak to make anyone turn their heads (especially if it's tabletop science). If you don't have a (quantitative) predictive model (i.e., you want to study a novel phenomenon), then you come up with one and devise an experiment that tests the model. If your chi-square is too big, then obviously your model doesn't describe the system. It could be because the model is wrong, or the experiment doesn't do what you thought it did, or you didn't execute the experiment properly. If you have a known phenomenon with an unknown mechanism, you take the various models and look for places where they differ. Presumably, they differ in a way that hasn't been tested yet, or you wouldn't be considering the wrong models. You run the experiment and see which model(s) was accurate. The key here is having a predictive model that gives you real numbers you can measure. If the numbers from the model are right (to within some statistical accuracy), then the model is "correct", at least for whatever regime it gives good numbers. Obviously, models with wider applicability and/or fewer parameters are preferred.
As you say, not all science can be done this way; some can only show correlation between phenomena. I would argue that that is the difference between "hard" and... not-"hard" science. Such studies are still science, but one must be careful not to make claims that aren't (sufficiently) supported by the data. On the other hand, making wild claims can sometimes make it easier to get future funding...
Why bother listing multiplats? They don't raise or lower a platform relative to its peers. In particular, Guitar Hero 1/2/3 and Rock Band are all on the PS2 (don't try to tell me that either of those games need HD graphics). Of the remaining games, none of them are in genres I like (platformers, puzzlers, TBS, adventure). That said, I would agree that the 360's library is finally showing some teeth (after what? 2 years?). Even if they're games I don't really want, I am willing to recognize that the 360 has a handful of AAA titles coming out this fall, whereas the other consoles are looking at 1 or 2 at most.
Nonetheless, I am quite happy with the Wii's library now and looking at the next year. I honestly don't have enough time to play what's already on my must-buy list. For people with more time and money than myself I would probably suggest the 360, but for better or worse, the 2 people that I know who fit that description already have one.
Tube amps are "living" things. Even how you route the wires can make a difference in how it sounds, especially in the older point to point wired amps. The tubes, the types of components you use (think of all the different types of capacitors you can get...carbon filament, silicon, paper, etc), everything, makes a difference. Amps fascinate me. I'd love to take my knowledge of electronics and love of guitars and make amps someday. They are, more than anything else I can think of, more than the sum of their parts.
Some (e.g., me) would argue that that's a bug, not a feature. I, for one, enjoy the fact that mechanical vibrations don't couple into the electrical signal in a solid state amp. Also, solid state amps are just as sensitive caps and routing (and also, the type of resistors used, which you didn't mention) as valve amps.
Actually, it goes back to the printing press. When Gutenberg invented his press, it didn't just print bibles. Among other things, it allowed people to make very cheap, identical(!) copies of sheet music (which, at the time, was the closest thing they had to recordings). The market was flooded with "pirated" copies of sheet music, and I guess it was a problem for music writers for some time.
Not sure what kind of tools you mean, but the Ubuntu repositories are well-stocked. I've rarely encountered a server or admin package that wasn't in the repos. All the usual Linux admin tools are available (commandline and html based, e.g. webmin, phphmyadmin).
Sorry for the confusion; I meant "first-party" admin tools. E.g., emerge, equery, etc-update, rc-update, etc. on Gentoo. Aside from apt-get and aptitude, I am unfamiliar with the tools to keep track of packages and dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu. Also, I was under the impression (from the last time I tried installing KUbuntu) that most, if not all of Ubuntu's administrative tools were GUI-based. If that's the case, then it seems like vanilla Debian would make more sense (as suggested in another comment).
I need to "redo" my personal webserver, since the hdd died. I was considering Ubuntu, but I am unfamiliar with the Debian Way (although I've used it in the past). As I recall, when installing Debian, it was easy enough to not install X (it's not needed in a server). Can you do this with Ubuntu? If you can't, how easy is it to get rid of X (and things that depend on it)? Does Ubuntu come with tools to aid administration on a headless server, or would I end up just using the standard Debian ones? I just want to know if it's a sane choice for what I'm trying to do. I'm most familiar with the Gentoo Way (I honestly have no clue how to handle init scripts without rc-update). Thanks in advance for any help anyone has to offer!
I don't see how they could possibly make 1:1 controls work. I think you (and everyone else clamoring for 1:1 controls) are expecting way too much from the developers (who, incidentally, don't appear to be particularly talented). If they do put them in, I fully expect the controls to suck hard.
The fundamental issue is that the sensitivity/accuracy is crap. You can't integrate the signal, because it's just not good enough for that (if you wanted it to be good enough to integrate, you'd being paying thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars for the accelerometers). It's good enough to detect gravity, but that's about it. One assumes that since a lightsaber has azimuthal symmetry, that you ought to be able to "spin" the remote along the longitudinal axis without changing anything. The accelerometers can only detect position wrt gravity, so if you spin the remote while keeping its angle wrt the floor (or ceiling, whichever is perpendicular to gravity) constant, the remote can't see it. Oh, it can (if you move it fast enough) detect that it's spinning, but it can't tell you which way it's pointing. That's really just 1 degree of freedom.
To use real-world examples, take a look at Wii Sports, which has what I think is one of the best implementations of the wiimote accelerometers. Golf, baseball, and bowling are all done in one dimension, because that's all the remote can detect. Yes, you swing the bat, but the swing is independent of angle that it's held at: it detects a "swing" and then your avatar swings. Tennis doesn't try to figure out the remote's position/orientation. Boxing, which is relies on position much more than the other sports was also much worse off for it. Other games? Excite truck, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Raving Rabbids and Super Paper Mario (for some of the powerups) are the only games I own that try to read off position/orientation information, and all of them just measure tilt. Every other game I have (and I have 10 Wii games) uses waggle and/or pointing for "motion" controls.
I'm not trying to say that I think the wii-mote sucks; I think it's great – when it's used appropriately. I just don't think that 1:1 controls are an appropriate use, mostly just because I don't think the technology is good enough to handle it.
No, you are trolling. The only source-based distro that even approaches the distinction of being "popular" is Gentoo, and... well, it isn't that popular, certainly not when compared to Fedora, Mandrake and Ubuntu. You use those distros, and you don't even have to compile your own kernel.
As for drivers, I don't see why you'd have issues using the closed-source nvidia drivers, which work perfectly. And now, since ATI's drivers will also soon work, I don't see anything keeping you from using something polished.
There are some things that just don't work under linux (e.g., the shitty webcam on my laptop, which I never use anyway, but... I can't even turn the stupid thing off in linux), but familiarity is something that depends on the user. I enjoy middle-click paste (no, you can't fake this in Windows, because highlighting doesn't automatically copy). I enjoy a command shell that doesn't suck. I enjoy a GUI that isn't in-kernel (Vista fixes this gripe, but creates entirely new ones at the same time). I enjoy being able to tweak keybindings in every one of the programs I use. I enjoy having a one-stop-shop for updating my software (emerge --sync; emerge -u world [gentoo], or apt-get update; apt-get upgrade [debian]).
I understand that linux isn't for everyone, and it probably isn't for you, but the only real reason you've given is "linux isn't as familiar to me", and that seems kind of weak, especially since you make a point of saying that you aren't trolling. You did read the post above where the guy says that the biggest reason Windows power-users don't switch is because they aren't familiar with it?
The problem isn't so much that it uses a database (nearly all DAPs use databases), so much as it is that it can't rebuild the database on its own (the original neuros could, and my wife's iRiver iHP-120 and X20 can as well). Also, the overwhelming majority of database-using DAPs also allow for filesystem browsing in addition to using the database. My Rio Karma can't but it doesn't mount as UMS anyway (USB is unsupported on linux).
For some bizarre reason, Cowon's database software can't deal with non-id3 tags, which means no meta-information for ogg and flac files. Oh, and lastly, on DAPs that use filesystem browsing, it isn't flat-file unless you're disorganized. Obviously, this isn't the only way to do things, but I usually have a/music/<format>/<artist>/<album>/<track>-<title>.<format> type of file structure. I am ordinarily a disorganized kind of guy, but virtually all ripping software supports filenames based on meta-information, so I don't have put any thought into it.
I find it odd that, of all the stories mentioned, you chose Red Riding Hood to balk at. The more modern versions have been cleaned up considerably, but the older versions are... more disturbing: http://reconstruction.eserver.org/022/cannibal/lit tlered.html. For some reason I was under the impression that the other mentioned stories weren't quite as overt as Red Riding Hood.
J&J said a deal with the charity's founder in 1895 gave it the "exclusive use" of the symbol as a trademark for drug, chemical and surgical products.
Which would suggest that the Red Cross agreed to only license the red cross symbol to J&J. But I haven't done any deeper digging, so I guess I don't really know.
That's called catharsis. It is generally the idea of purging; in this case, the idea that experiencing fake violence purges one from the need to ennact it oneself. There have been studies about this, though I'm too lazy to look them up for you. The ones I'm aware of focused on Japan, for obvious reasons.
Don't forget Freeman Dyson! I think he's a particularly relevant specimin, given his views on the PhD system. On the other hand, he's also the exception that proves the rule.
Well, if you're going to get picky, technically you are voting for an elector, who will then cast their vote for whomever they please. That is to say, you don't suggest anything; you are actually voting, albeit not for what you might think. On the other hand, in practice, you're actually voting for the president in a winner-takes-all race (per state) since electors rarely break rank in a way that makes a difference (yes, I'm aware some states allocate electors according to their percentage of votes).
Just a nitpick, but LCD sets are almost always either 1366x768 or 1080p (the break seems to be between 37" and 42" sets). DLP sets are usually 1080p, although you can still find the occasional 720p set (the point being, that it's always either 720p or 1080p, and not something in between). Plasmas are usually 1024x768. At least, that's how it is where I shop. It's probably different elsewhere. I don't think you can call a WXGA screen "720p", although it will certainly accept input at that resolution.
I haven't played GuitarFreaks, but looking at a youtube video of it, it looked hard. Hard enough that I probably couldn't pass it. But for it to be harder than Jordan, it would have to be on account of the tighter timings that I have heard GF requires. For some bizarre reason, I can't for the life of me pass "Psychobilly Freakout" on expert, but "Misirlou" is a breeze. Also, "Free Bird" is something of a marathon, if you're used to the length of songs on typical rhythm games. That said, Guitar Hero is much more lenient than other rhythm games I have played, so you can miss quite a bit of notes and still get through the song with 5 stars.
I don't speak from experience, but from the way people talk about it, the general consensus seems to be that the GC and Xbox were very close, with the PS2 lagging behind. With respect to RE4, I've heard that the big issue with the PS2 version is the lighting effects (or rather, the lack thereof).
I'm sure you're aware of this, but your post makes it sound like 16:9 is the aspect ratio in theaters ("Thus, I believe he would have wanted to see 16:9 DVD releases of his post-'Barry-Lyndon' movies, restoring the original theatrical cropping."). Many (most?) films are shot at 2.35:1 (actually, it's 2.39:1), although there are exceptions (including the occasional 1.85:1, which in my extremely limited experience is more common than 1.78). I'm not sure why HDTVs are 1.78:1, but whatever (yes, HDTV shows are generally shot at 1.78:1, but that's just because that's the HDTV spec).
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I used to be a PC-only gamer, but that price was part of the problem for me. I find that even "$800 every couple of years" is still way more than I want to spend on this hobby (consider the average gamer, who finds the $600 PS3 prohibitively expensive despite it's advertised 10-year lifespan). I'm not trying to argue that it's a lot of money in an absolute sense, or even that it's a lot to spend on a hobby (it isn't); it's just more than I want to spend on a platform.
And just to make it perfectly clear, I think that the PC is the best platform for those people that are willing to invest the time and money into it (neglecting genre preferences), but for "casuals" like me (I typically have, at most, about an hour or two a night in which to play games) consoles offer better value.
No. That may be how the patent system is used today, but that's not why we have the patent system. Patents exist to keep people from trying to hide how a new invention works. Basically, in return for explaining (in detail) how one's new thing works, we allow you to have a temporary monopoly. (Don't believe me? look at the etymology of the word.) It's to increase the sharing of ideas. If someone can produce a product that does the same thing, but without looking at someone else's patent, then the patent is a burden on society.
This is just semantics, but yes, I mean "hard" as in "firm". As in, "Physics and chemistry experiments rely on 'hard' numbers". I am obviously biased, but something that I noticed is that people that go into the "softer" sciences often lack the mathematical background to do their work with the same rigor as is expected in the "harder" ones. And so you have a quandry: people that are able to bring rigor to their work go into a field where it's easy, and people that aren't go into a field where it's difficult. How do you fix this? That is to say, how do we bring about a change in culture so that Biology (or *gasp* Psychology) attracts students interested in the mathematics of extremely complex systems? My wife went into Bio partly because she found the math in Chemistry too difficult. This, to me, is a huge impediment to the advancement of the softer fields.
Your point is valid, and I understood the distinction in the last post, but, as I mentioned earlier, I would still categorize any observations as "experimental" in nature. Part of the issue, I guess is that your distinction does cut through many fields one would normally group together.
You're right, and this observation is part of my point. There are fields which produce "hard", useful numbers. And then there are fields that are still trying to get there. I think this is a useful distinction, although you may not. At the end of the day, what I care about is the accuracy with which you can use a model to predict the outcome of a particular initial state, not whether or not the folks who came up with the model were able to control their variables or not. I understand that you may not agree with this point of view, but I ask that if that's the case we simply agree to disagree, since I doubt that either of us is willing to budge on these points.You're right about Mendel (Both Galileo and Newton dry-labbed their results, so I won't begrudge Mendel that), but I would argue that his case is fairly unique in Biology, whereas, by the time you hit the 18th century Physics is already a quantitative field.
That was basically my point. Relativity (before it was experimentally verified), was a quantitative, predictive model of how gravity ought to work. He came up with a mathematical model that produced testable numbers. Yes, they weren't testable when he first proposed the model, but that's not really his fault. My point is that anything that relies on correlation coefficients is almost definitely not what I would call "hard" science. I'm not saying that such studies are without merit; as you state, in the budding stages of understanding, it may be all one can manage. But it's not what I would call "hard" (by which I mean, there's something substantial you can actually stand on [figuratively]).
I did not make a distinction between experimental and theoretical science. I implicitly assumed that people would be doing both. Theory is the model, and experiment is the measurement. There was a time when physicists did both; the last great physicist like that that comes to mind is Enrico Fermi. I would consider any gathering of data as a(n) (experimental) measurement, be it a survey, observation of markets or stellar properties, or what I am used to calling "table-top" science (that is, science you can do on a table-top), the last of which is the only kind of experiment you seem to consider "experimental" (and boy would your definition piss a lot of experimentalists off).
Case in point: my wife does table-top science (specifically, she studies spindle pole bodies in yeast), but she cannot get a predictive model. It's not possible in her field. It's not correlational, but we (my wife and I, and pretty much everyone else I know) agree that what she does is soft, experimental, and science. There is some modeling in what she does, but a) it isn't predictive, and b) it's entirely phenomenological, which, from a theoretical standpoint, is unsatisfactory at best (and yes, she agrees with this assessment).
I may need to point out here, that I don't think this is a problem with her field or anyone else's research. Physics and Chemistry are both relatively (very) old fields. Quantitative (though fudged, actually) measurements date back at least to Galileo (15th century). Modern Biology dates back to when? the 50s? Yes, people did "biology" back in the dark ages too, but it was entirely phenomenological and descriptive. Useful, yes, but only in the same way that "cartoon" physics is useful. People already want good quantitative, predictive models in Biology, but that sort of thing takes time, especially when the systems are as ridiculously complex as they are in Bio.
Looking back over this, I would argue that what you ought to have keyed in on (if "hard" is to ill-defined for you) are the following two aspects of how I've categorized things: quantitative and predictive. You need numbers, and they must predict with accuracy what would happen in an hitherto unmeasured situation. If it can't do that, then it's not ... I wanted to come up with some other descriptor, but I can't think of a single-word descriptor that covers both aspects, so I'm just going to stick with "hard".
I should note, in case it belies some kind of bias, that I'm a space physicist. I put that "space" bit in to point out that I don't actually study novel physics; I use well-understood (classical) physics to better understand "space weather" systems.
First off, I agree with your main point, but, for some reason, felt a need to comment on this one bit of what you typed:
In what I would call "hard science", you don't bother with correlation coefficients. Correlation is too weak to make anyone turn their heads (especially if it's tabletop science). If you don't have a (quantitative) predictive model (i.e., you want to study a novel phenomenon), then you come up with one and devise an experiment that tests the model. If your chi-square is too big, then obviously your model doesn't describe the system. It could be because the model is wrong, or the experiment doesn't do what you thought it did, or you didn't execute the experiment properly. If you have a known phenomenon with an unknown mechanism, you take the various models and look for places where they differ. Presumably, they differ in a way that hasn't been tested yet, or you wouldn't be considering the wrong models. You run the experiment and see which model(s) was accurate. The key here is having a predictive model that gives you real numbers you can measure. If the numbers from the model are right (to within some statistical accuracy), then the model is "correct", at least for whatever regime it gives good numbers. Obviously, models with wider applicability and/or fewer parameters are preferred.
As you say, not all science can be done this way; some can only show correlation between phenomena. I would argue that that is the difference between "hard" and ... not-"hard" science. Such studies are still science, but one must be careful not to make claims that aren't (sufficiently) supported by the data. On the other hand, making wild claims can sometimes make it easier to get future funding ...
Nonetheless, I am quite happy with the Wii's library now and looking at the next year. I honestly don't have enough time to play what's already on my must-buy list. For people with more time and money than myself I would probably suggest the 360, but for better or worse, the 2 people that I know who fit that description already have one.
Some (e.g., me) would argue that that's a bug, not a feature. I, for one, enjoy the fact that mechanical vibrations don't couple into the electrical signal in a solid state amp. Also, solid state amps are just as sensitive caps and routing (and also, the type of resistors used, which you didn't mention) as valve amps.
Actually, it goes back to the printing press. When Gutenberg invented his press, it didn't just print bibles. Among other things, it allowed people to make very cheap, identical(!) copies of sheet music (which, at the time, was the closest thing they had to recordings). The market was flooded with "pirated" copies of sheet music, and I guess it was a problem for music writers for some time.
Sorry for the confusion; I meant "first-party" admin tools. E.g., emerge, equery, etc-update, rc-update, etc. on Gentoo. Aside from apt-get and aptitude, I am unfamiliar with the tools to keep track of packages and dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu. Also, I was under the impression (from the last time I tried installing KUbuntu) that most, if not all of Ubuntu's administrative tools were GUI-based. If that's the case, then it seems like vanilla Debian would make more sense (as suggested in another comment).
I need to "redo" my personal webserver, since the hdd died. I was considering Ubuntu, but I am unfamiliar with the Debian Way (although I've used it in the past). As I recall, when installing Debian, it was easy enough to not install X (it's not needed in a server). Can you do this with Ubuntu? If you can't, how easy is it to get rid of X (and things that depend on it)? Does Ubuntu come with tools to aid administration on a headless server, or would I end up just using the standard Debian ones? I just want to know if it's a sane choice for what I'm trying to do. I'm most familiar with the Gentoo Way (I honestly have no clue how to handle init scripts without rc-update). Thanks in advance for any help anyone has to offer!
I don't see how they could possibly make 1:1 controls work. I think you (and everyone else clamoring for 1:1 controls) are expecting way too much from the developers (who, incidentally, don't appear to be particularly talented). If they do put them in, I fully expect the controls to suck hard.
The fundamental issue is that the sensitivity/accuracy is crap. You can't integrate the signal, because it's just not good enough for that (if you wanted it to be good enough to integrate, you'd being paying thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars for the accelerometers). It's good enough to detect gravity, but that's about it. One assumes that since a lightsaber has azimuthal symmetry, that you ought to be able to "spin" the remote along the longitudinal axis without changing anything. The accelerometers can only detect position wrt gravity, so if you spin the remote while keeping its angle wrt the floor (or ceiling, whichever is perpendicular to gravity) constant, the remote can't see it. Oh, it can (if you move it fast enough) detect that it's spinning, but it can't tell you which way it's pointing. That's really just 1 degree of freedom.
To use real-world examples, take a look at Wii Sports, which has what I think is one of the best implementations of the wiimote accelerometers. Golf, baseball, and bowling are all done in one dimension, because that's all the remote can detect. Yes, you swing the bat, but the swing is independent of angle that it's held at: it detects a "swing" and then your avatar swings. Tennis doesn't try to figure out the remote's position/orientation. Boxing, which is relies on position much more than the other sports was also much worse off for it. Other games? Excite truck, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Raving Rabbids and Super Paper Mario (for some of the powerups) are the only games I own that try to read off position/orientation information, and all of them just measure tilt. Every other game I have (and I have 10 Wii games) uses waggle and/or pointing for "motion" controls.
I'm not trying to say that I think the wii-mote sucks; I think it's great – when it's used appropriately. I just don't think that 1:1 controls are an appropriate use, mostly just because I don't think the technology is good enough to handle it.
No, you are trolling. The only source-based distro that even approaches the distinction of being "popular" is Gentoo, and ... well, it isn't that popular, certainly not when compared to Fedora, Mandrake and Ubuntu. You use those distros, and you don't even have to compile your own kernel.
As for drivers, I don't see why you'd have issues using the closed-source nvidia drivers, which work perfectly. And now, since ATI's drivers will also soon work, I don't see anything keeping you from using something polished.
There are some things that just don't work under linux (e.g., the shitty webcam on my laptop, which I never use anyway, but ... I can't even turn the stupid thing off in linux), but familiarity is something that depends on the user. I enjoy middle-click paste (no, you can't fake this in Windows, because highlighting doesn't automatically copy). I enjoy a command shell that doesn't suck. I enjoy a GUI that isn't in-kernel (Vista fixes this gripe, but creates entirely new ones at the same time). I enjoy being able to tweak keybindings in every one of the programs I use. I enjoy having a one-stop-shop for updating my software (emerge --sync; emerge -u world [gentoo], or apt-get update; apt-get upgrade [debian]).
I understand that linux isn't for everyone, and it probably isn't for you, but the only real reason you've given is "linux isn't as familiar to me", and that seems kind of weak, especially since you make a point of saying that you aren't trolling. You did read the post above where the guy says that the biggest reason Windows power-users don't switch is because they aren't familiar with it?
The problem isn't so much that it uses a database (nearly all DAPs use databases), so much as it is that it can't rebuild the database on its own (the original neuros could, and my wife's iRiver iHP-120 and X20 can as well). Also, the overwhelming majority of database-using DAPs also allow for filesystem browsing in addition to using the database. My Rio Karma can't but it doesn't mount as UMS anyway (USB is unsupported on linux).
For some bizarre reason, Cowon's database software can't deal with non-id3 tags, which means no meta-information for ogg and flac files. Oh, and lastly, on DAPs that use filesystem browsing, it isn't flat-file unless you're disorganized. Obviously, this isn't the only way to do things, but I usually have a /music/<format>/<artist>/<album>/<track>-<title>.<format> type of file structure. I am ordinarily a disorganized kind of guy, but virtually all ripping software supports filenames based on meta-information, so I don't have put any thought into it.
I find it odd that, of all the stories mentioned, you chose Red Riding Hood to balk at. The more modern versions have been cleaned up considerably, but the older versions are ... more disturbing: http://reconstruction.eserver.org/022/cannibal/lit tlered.html. For some reason I was under the impression that the other mentioned stories weren't quite as overt as Red Riding Hood.
According to the BBC:
Which would suggest that the Red Cross agreed to only license the red cross symbol to J&J. But I haven't done any deeper digging, so I guess I don't really know.
That's called catharsis. It is generally the idea of purging; in this case, the idea that experiencing fake violence purges one from the need to ennact it oneself. There have been studies about this, though I'm too lazy to look them up for you. The ones I'm aware of focused on Japan, for obvious reasons.
Don't forget Freeman Dyson! I think he's a particularly relevant specimin, given his views on the PhD system. On the other hand, he's also the exception that proves the rule.
Well, if you're going to get picky, technically you are voting for an elector, who will then cast their vote for whomever they please. That is to say, you don't suggest anything; you are actually voting, albeit not for what you might think. On the other hand, in practice, you're actually voting for the president in a winner-takes-all race (per state) since electors rarely break rank in a way that makes a difference (yes, I'm aware some states allocate electors according to their percentage of votes).
Just a nitpick, but LCD sets are almost always either 1366x768 or 1080p (the break seems to be between 37" and 42" sets). DLP sets are usually 1080p, although you can still find the occasional 720p set (the point being, that it's always either 720p or 1080p, and not something in between). Plasmas are usually 1024x768. At least, that's how it is where I shop. It's probably different elsewhere. I don't think you can call a WXGA screen "720p", although it will certainly accept input at that resolution.
I haven't played GuitarFreaks, but looking at a youtube video of it, it looked hard. Hard enough that I probably couldn't pass it. But for it to be harder than Jordan, it would have to be on account of the tighter timings that I have heard GF requires. For some bizarre reason, I can't for the life of me pass "Psychobilly Freakout" on expert, but "Misirlou" is a breeze. Also, "Free Bird" is something of a marathon, if you're used to the length of songs on typical rhythm games. That said, Guitar Hero is much more lenient than other rhythm games I have played, so you can miss quite a bit of notes and still get through the song with 5 stars.
I don't speak from experience, but from the way people talk about it, the general consensus seems to be that the GC and Xbox were very close, with the PS2 lagging behind. With respect to RE4, I've heard that the big issue with the PS2 version is the lighting effects (or rather, the lack thereof).
Famitsu and Capcom are both Japanese (in Famitsu's case, it's Japan-only).
I'm sure you're aware of this, but your post makes it sound like 16:9 is the aspect ratio in theaters ("Thus, I believe he would have wanted to see 16:9 DVD releases of his post-'Barry-Lyndon' movies, restoring the original theatrical cropping."). Many (most?) films are shot at 2.35:1 (actually, it's 2.39:1), although there are exceptions (including the occasional 1.85:1, which in my extremely limited experience is more common than 1.78). I'm not sure why HDTVs are 1.78:1, but whatever (yes, HDTV shows are generally shot at 1.78:1, but that's just because that's the HDTV spec).