Because what private collectors interested in rare antiquities want is a plastic copy....
Fossils are very rarely complete.
If a collector has two-thirds of a T-Rex skeleton, they would absolutely want the last third in plastic for display purposes. Even if it's bright red PVA to highlight what's real and what's not.
As someone who recently got refused a job that I went to school for on the basis of my credit rating, I agree with you that things have gone too far."
Sometimes there's good reason for it. People heavily in debt are more easily corrupted. You'll find that applying for positions in the military, banks, security, etc. will likely mean they check your credit.
"See, the best invention really is neccesity. They should try to make a movie every year or two."
In future they should try to get better writers. I saw the Elephant's Dream movie, and technically it's not too bad. The models seemed fairly on-par with most "real" 3D animation feature movies. The animation was worse, but at least still around what you get on those 3D animated kids' shows or in-game cut-scenes. I was more impressed than I thought I'd be.
But did anyone think that story was any good? I didn't. And with all the stories and fan-fiction out there surely there must be hordes of aspiring writers out there who would like nothing more than a movie based on one of their scripts, even if it means making it creative common licensed. If nothing else, it gets their name on IMDB. That's a decent foot-in-the-door these days, if they're looking for a career. Then you perfect it with collaborative writing, TV-show style, where a whole team of writing staff have input (or in this case the whole Internet.)
Couldn't get open-sourcier than that.
But get WRITERS to do it. I'd bet good money this thing was written by animators and modelers. If you're a professional-level animator/modeler you're probably not a professional-level writer. No one's good at everything. Get over your egos and suck it up.
I guess it's the same problem open source programmers have with, for example, user interfaces or documentation. "It's just a minor detail, what really matters is this other aspect. Besides, how hard can it be? I'll do it myself."
'This is truly training for violence," he said. 'You assume the character of a mass murderer. You go out and kill people as violently as you can because you score more points.'"
Since serial killers usually have a history of abusing animals, we should also ban Whack-a-Mole. After all, the more you beat them the more points you get. Someone call PETA!
Re:It's not the launch that matters anymore
on
Shuttle Launch Success
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"But isn't the primary concern these days the foam breaking off of the fuel tank and damaging heat tiles, which don't matter until re-entry?"
Probably mostly because that's what went wrong most recently. One shuttle has been lost during take-off, one during re-entry. I think is small sigh of relief that all is well so far is justified.
"Hmm. I thought that if the offspring weren't sterile, then the parents aren't different species -- they are, instead, subspecies. I'm sure there's some grey area in the definition, any geneticists care to help out?"
Not only a gray area, there is no real definition of species. The consensus seems to be something along the lines of "distinct population groups that generally don't interbreed". Not that they can't, not that they don't, just that they usually don't.
For example, I seem to recall that all (or maybe just most) of the members of the Canidae family (That's dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals etc.) can interbreed. I don't remember exactly though... it could have just been the Canis genus (dogs, wolves, jackals), or maybe I'm just mistaken. Anyone else know?
"The wing patterns are probably mentioned because presumably these butterflies will breed with their own in the wild, building up a population of the species without merging with the parent species [snip]"
And fortunately for them, insects produce a great number of progeny from every single mating. Which means they can likely find a significant number of partners from their siblings.
I never really thought about it before, but I suppose this is one of the reasons there are so many insect species compared to other classes of animals (reptiles, mammals, etc.) I guess I assumed it was just because of the brief time between generations.
"A human baby today raised outside of civilization will not only fail to understand civilization, but will never be *able* to understand it once past a certain age. Certain parts of the brain don't develop in the necessary ways if they aren't stimulated early enough, like full language ability."
Sadly, there have been a number of cases. None of whom could fully integrated into society. Children raised by wolves, dogs, monkeys, and recently in the news... chickens (no really!).
A patent needs to be renewed every year. Failure to renew and it lapses into public domain. There's a fee every renewal.
If you want to discourage holding onto patents for long periods of time, have the annual fee doubled every year. No one would hang on to patents for 20 years anymore.
"DNA and fingerprint technology [...] will 'uniquely identify the person'"
Good point though. I wonder how the police deal with DNA evidence for twins. I very much doubt their DNA testing is sufficiently advanced to pick up the minor differences in DNA twins have. I guess they have to hope for fingerprints.
Someone should ask for a DNA sample from mayor Bloomberg. If he has nothing to hide, why not give it to the public? We can test for all kinds of diseases, maybe see if he's predisposed to any mental illness. Would people (re-)elect someone with a proven predisposition for psychotic behaviour?
"My ISP charges me 14$ a month for an unlimited 128kpbs connection. I've been downloading about 45-50 GB a month with no problem. Obviously the 14$ a month covers the cost of the maximum bandwidth that can be consumed by a 128 kbps connection in a month."
First of all, your math doesn't add up. You can't download 50GB on a 128kbps connection even if you saturate it 100% every second of every day of the longest month of the year.
Second, and more importantly, your logic is flawed. It's not obvious that $14 covers the cost. For every person that maximises the use of their bandwidth there's a lot more who don't. What matters financially to your isp is the bottom line: the cost of all the users' traffic vs. all the users' isp fees.
The company has simply determined that $14 is what maximises their profit, even if it didn't cover the cost of a saturated line. If they raised the fee they might lose customers who are profitable, ie the ones who don't saturate their connection.
Slashdot Mirror
Because what private collectors interested in rare antiquities want is a plastic copy....
Fossils are very rarely complete. If a collector has two-thirds of a T-Rex skeleton, they would absolutely want the last third in plastic for display purposes. Even if it's bright red PVA to highlight what's real and what's not.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santanaya
Only 92%? I'm sticking with The DaColbert Code.
As someone who recently got refused a job that I went to school for on the basis of my credit rating, I agree with you that things have gone too far."
Sometimes there's good reason for it. People heavily in debt are more easily corrupted. You'll find that applying for positions in the military, banks, security, etc. will likely mean they check your credit.
In future they should try to get better writers. I saw the Elephant's Dream movie, and technically it's not too bad. The models seemed fairly on-par with most "real" 3D animation feature movies. The animation was worse, but at least still around what you get on those 3D animated kids' shows or in-game cut-scenes. I was more impressed than I thought I'd be.
But did anyone think that story was any good? I didn't. And with all the stories and fan-fiction out there surely there must be hordes of aspiring writers out there who would like nothing more than a movie based on one of their scripts, even if it means making it creative common licensed. If nothing else, it gets their name on IMDB. That's a decent foot-in-the-door these days, if they're looking for a career. Then you perfect it with collaborative writing, TV-show style, where a whole team of writing staff have input (or in this case the whole Internet.)
Couldn't get open-sourcier than that.
But get WRITERS to do it. I'd bet good money this thing was written by animators and modelers. If you're a professional-level animator/modeler you're probably not a professional-level writer. No one's good at everything. Get over your egos and suck it up.
I guess it's the same problem open source programmers have with, for example, user interfaces or documentation. "It's just a minor detail, what really matters is this other aspect. Besides, how hard can it be? I'll do it myself."
"Software und SystemEntwicklung" = "Software and System Development" in German.
The Internet: Where men are men, women are men, and children are federal agents.
Doesn't sound like much.. but that's $42,000 for the top 24TB model.
Perhaps it's time to start using "per TB" costs for these things. Surely no one sells sub-terabyte storage servers anymore.
They missed the ball a bit, if you ask me. It should have been the Access Board Advisory Committee of the United States.
Or ABACUS for short.
Great. So now politicians will not only be able to talk out of their own asses, but mine as well?
That just don't seem right.
Since serial killers usually have a history of abusing animals, we should also ban Whack-a-Mole. After all, the more you beat them the more points you get. Someone call PETA!
Probably mostly because that's what went wrong most recently. One shuttle has been lost during take-off, one during re-entry. I think is small sigh of relief that all is well so far is justified.
Not only a gray area, there is no real definition of species. The consensus seems to be something along the lines of "distinct population groups that generally don't interbreed". Not that they can't, not that they don't, just that they usually don't.
For example, I seem to recall that all (or maybe just most) of the members of the Canidae family (That's dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals etc.) can interbreed. I don't remember exactly though... it could have just been the Canis genus (dogs, wolves, jackals), or maybe I'm just mistaken. Anyone else know?
And fortunately for them, insects produce a great number of progeny from every single mating. Which means they can likely find a significant number of partners from their siblings.
I never really thought about it before, but I suppose this is one of the reasons there are so many insect species compared to other classes of animals (reptiles, mammals, etc.) I guess I assumed it was just because of the brief time between generations.
Sadly, there have been a number of cases. None of whom could fully integrated into society. Children raised by wolves, dogs, monkeys, and recently in the news... chickens (no really!).
See Feral Children for more information.
Don't be stupid, that's so ludicrous it's not even funny
Clearly the ocean receded.
People who bought this also bought:
No, then he'd have to start spouting ambient-temperature air instead.
How about this for a start:
A patent needs to be renewed every year. Failure to renew and it lapses into public domain. There's a fee every renewal.
If you want to discourage holding onto patents for long periods of time, have the annual fee doubled every year. No one would hang on to patents for 20 years anymore.
Look down.
Oh, so elves can't be macho, huh? Bigot.
"WRONG!
HD-DVD is backwards compatable to DVD, whereas BluRay is not."
They're both backwards-compatible with DVD.
Good point though. I wonder how the police deal with DNA evidence for twins. I very much doubt their DNA testing is sufficiently advanced to pick up the minor differences in DNA twins have. I guess they have to hope for fingerprints.
Someone should ask for a DNA sample from mayor Bloomberg. If he has nothing to hide, why not give it to the public? We can test for all kinds of diseases, maybe see if he's predisposed to any mental illness. Would people (re-)elect someone with a proven predisposition for psychotic behaviour?
First of all, your math doesn't add up. You can't download 50GB on a 128kbps connection even if you saturate it 100% every second of every day of the longest month of the year.
Second, and more importantly, your logic is flawed. It's not obvious that $14 covers the cost. For every person that maximises the use of their bandwidth there's a lot more who don't. What matters financially to your isp is the bottom line: the cost of all the users' traffic vs. all the users' isp fees. The company has simply determined that $14 is what maximises their profit, even if it didn't cover the cost of a saturated line. If they raised the fee they might lose customers who are profitable, ie the ones who don't saturate their connection.
Lossy format with alpha channel?
Better image quality for lossy format?
Better compression for lossless format?
More than 32bit colour depth?
Layers?
There's lots of reasons for new formats.