Er, no, you quoted the Declaration of Independence, which is not legally binding (beyond its initial use of course). As much as it really should have, the US Constitution indeed says nothing of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
Well, there's a delicate corneal inversion procedure... a multi-opti-pupil-optomy. But, in order to keep from damaging the eye sockets, they've got to go in through the rectum.
Or, as incredibly unlikely as it is, you could've actually discovered some little corner case that no one else thought to test for, and thus hasn't written a law/theory/etc. (or updated an existing one) to cover it.
Hey, here's a clue for you: without truck drivers, you wouldn't have a home or anything in it. No furniture, no computer, no TV, no nothing - not even the lumber needed to build the frame of the building you live in, let alone the sheet rock, roofing materials, concrete foundation, etc. Regardless of how much of it you brought home in your own car or how much of it went partly by train or plane or boat, it takes trucks, large and small, to move those things from their manufacturers to the stores you buy the stuff from, and those trucks need drivers.
I have no sympathy for the out-and-out rednecks out there who don't have a shred of decency in them, but lay off the truckers as a group. They are a necessity and deserve a lot more respect than they're given.
I'm not usually one to "+1" something, let alone an AC, but this guy is right, really. If a computer in the context of this article doesn't speak with Majel Barrett's voice, it just won't sound right. That said, we don't need any kind of chip to do it - there is software out there that runs on commodity hardware that can sound like pretty much anyone, given adequate samples of that person's voice as a pattern to model against.
The real question is, what would Majel's estate, family, etc. have to say about it, if anything? Assuming there is still some such entity in existence, would they have the legal right to prevent the use of her voice? What about Paramount and/or CBS? Could they legally stop it?
Like all the Star Trek Enterprises, it will never fly except in your fantasies.
Sure, if we don't bother to *build* them. Let's face it, we have the technology right now to build an Enterprise, even if it can't do much yet. Will it have warp drive, transporters, and food replicators? No. But we CAN build one if we really wanted to, with at least some formerly-ST-only tech, and actually make it move, however slowly.
Even money isn't that big of a problem. It's all a matter of wanting it badly enough to overcome the greed that keeps it from happening.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but your comment and a couple others leave out something important: 2009 was a reboot of the post-USS Kelvin era. In other words, since Khan came to power in the late 20th century, the Botany Bay should still have flown off into nowhere (1996, wasn't it?), and he and his crew should still have gone into hibernation. Why would the events of 2009 cause any significant effect on someone who is fast asleep somewhere on the other side of the quadrant? That's like saying the Borg shouldn't exist now.
What it does give the movie moguls a chance to do is rewrite all of the stories we're already familiar with, and/or take them in new, maybe weird directions - but without necessarily eliminating the characters those stories were written around. We already know that Pike doesn't end up a vegetable anymore, let alone ending up on Talos IV. By the same token, maybe the Doomsday Machine (which originated outside the Milky Way) will "decide" to take a turn somewhere that it wouldn't have, owing to the absence of Vulcan. Or maybe the Enterprise won't show up at Janus VI and the Horta will go extinct at the hands of the miners there. There are tons of ways to re-use the characters and events of TOS and beyond.
That's Alcubierre's original theory, sure. The tests that warp field researchers are preparing for now, however, are expected to be doable with convential forms of energy (high voltages, as I understand). What a time to be alive!
Never mind if you are stacking up Product A with 1 show-stopping bug against Product B with 50 cosmetic bugs or unhandled corner cases.
Ordinarily I would agree with this, but there is a caveat to consider - that one "show-stopping" bug might only be seen by 5 or 10 percent of your userbase, who would quickly learn not to use the feature that triggers that bug, but those 50 cosmetic bugs will become so visible and glaring and unavoidable that you'll have users going, "Good G*d, this thing looks like shit! How I can I trust such a crappy-written program?", especially if those users are part of the general public, rather than a closed, business-users-only crowd.
In other words, Product B really *IS* worse, even if it objectively functions better.
I'm not saying those cosmetic bugs should necessarily be given the same weight as the showstopper, but to downplay them because they're "only cosmetic" is to ignore that rather sizable portion of your userbase, who care at least as much about spit and polish as they do about functionality.
Well, consider that there are many actions in a typical game that can be as easily* done with gestures as with a joystick or gamepad. It's all a matter of changing how you think about the game's controls. Let's take your platformer example:
Walking around? Seems to me that sliding your finger slowly around the screen along a viable path should work for that.
Need to shoot? A quick tap on your target seems fair (with a certain amount of "randomness" so that not every shot is perfect).
Need to jump? Swipe diagonally upwards to jump in that direction.
Need to crouch? Swipe diagonally downwards (the player should have a short timeout during which they stay crouched).
Need to operate an object on the screen (e.g. a door or something)? Tap your finger on it.
Want to use your special power-up? Surely there's an icon somewhere showing that you have it, so tap that icon.
Need to examine something? Use the two-finger "zoom" gesture on it.
Did I miss something?
(* Assuming you can consider programming/interpreting gestures as "easy" to begin with.)
All of my projects on github are either GPL, LGPL or WTFPL*, depending on the license of any code I borrowed from, unless I've forgotten one, even if it isn't stated in the code or README (because the license is always stated on forum posts where I publish the existence of the projects).
[*]WTFPL is a license commonly used in the Minetest community, equivalent to CC0 or "public domain".
In the situation in question, the dog was about the size of a newborn child (and so, big enough to damage the car) and had I swerved to miss it, I would have either piled into a telephone pole or oncoming traffic.
Either way, stomping the brake (with anti-lock, mind you) while tracking the car straight is still the safest way to avoid the issue if there's adequate room, and if the twit behind me had struck the car, in almost any state it would have been his fault for following too closely.
One problem it won't solve is the mindless moron behind you who nearly slams into your back end because you had to brake suddenly. This happened today in fact - I was on my way back from the store, doing about 35mph in a zone so marked, when a stray dog started to cross the street in front of my, and I instinctively stomped the brakes to avoid killing an innocent animal. Some little dipshit on a little blue moped was following too close and sounded his horn, then flipped me off two or three times, as if I was the one in the wrong.
Or maybe, just *maybe* coders could start focusing on making fast software again instead of just waiting for faster processors? You know, like we did in the old days?
Nevermind that, do anyone other than government agencies use the "cyber-" prefix in any serious manner? This ain't 1995 anymore, can't we finally bury that stupid term?
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
Er, no, you quoted the Declaration of Independence, which is not legally binding (beyond its initial use of course). As much as it really should have, the US Constitution indeed says nothing of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
Well, there's a delicate corneal inversion procedure... a multi-opti-pupil-optomy. But, in order to keep from damaging the eye sockets, they've got to go in through the rectum.
Or, as incredibly unlikely as it is, you could've actually discovered some little corner case that no one else thought to test for, and thus hasn't written a law/theory/etc. (or updated an existing one) to cover it.
Nonono, in Soviet Russia, *BSD confirms Nyetcraft. Jeez, get it right.
Sure, as soon as it shoots protons or collides positrons.
(depending on which part of the movie you want to consider)
Hey, here's a clue for you: without truck drivers, you wouldn't have a home or anything in it. No furniture, no computer, no TV, no nothing - not even the lumber needed to build the frame of the building you live in, let alone the sheet rock, roofing materials, concrete foundation, etc. Regardless of how much of it you brought home in your own car or how much of it went partly by train or plane or boat, it takes trucks, large and small, to move those things from their manufacturers to the stores you buy the stuff from, and those trucks need drivers.
I have no sympathy for the out-and-out rednecks out there who don't have a shred of decency in them, but lay off the truckers as a group. They are a necessity and deserve a lot more respect than they're given.
Well, to be fair the only experiment we know of resulted in some weird temporal displacement effect, followed by a spectacular crash...
I'm not usually one to "+1" something, let alone an AC, but this guy is right, really. If a computer in the context of this article doesn't speak with Majel Barrett's voice, it just won't sound right. That said, we don't need any kind of chip to do it - there is software out there that runs on commodity hardware that can sound like pretty much anyone, given adequate samples of that person's voice as a pattern to model against.
The real question is, what would Majel's estate, family, etc. have to say about it, if anything? Assuming there is still some such entity in existence, would they have the legal right to prevent the use of her voice? What about Paramount and/or CBS? Could they legally stop it?
Like all the Star Trek Enterprises, it will never fly except in your fantasies.
Sure, if we don't bother to *build* them. Let's face it, we have the technology right now to build an Enterprise, even if it can't do much yet. Will it have warp drive, transporters, and food replicators? No. But we CAN build one if we really wanted to, with at least some formerly-ST-only tech, and actually make it move, however slowly.
Even money isn't that big of a problem. It's all a matter of wanting it badly enough to overcome the greed that keeps it from happening.
"Iaowai? Well, at least now I know how to pronounce it. I always thought you folks preferred Io-wuh."
I haven't seen the movie yet, but your comment and a couple others leave out something important: 2009 was a reboot of the post-USS Kelvin era. In other words, since Khan came to power in the late 20th century, the Botany Bay should still have flown off into nowhere (1996, wasn't it?), and he and his crew should still have gone into hibernation. Why would the events of 2009 cause any significant effect on someone who is fast asleep somewhere on the other side of the quadrant? That's like saying the Borg shouldn't exist now.
What it does give the movie moguls a chance to do is rewrite all of the stories we're already familiar with, and/or take them in new, maybe weird directions - but without necessarily eliminating the characters those stories were written around. We already know that Pike doesn't end up a vegetable anymore, let alone ending up on Talos IV. By the same token, maybe the Doomsday Machine (which originated outside the Milky Way) will "decide" to take a turn somewhere that it wouldn't have, owing to the absence of Vulcan. Or maybe the Enterprise won't show up at Janus VI and the Horta will go extinct at the hands of the miners there. There are tons of ways to re-use the characters and events of TOS and beyond.
That's Alcubierre's original theory, sure. The tests that warp field researchers are preparing for now, however, are expected to be doable with convential forms of energy (high voltages, as I understand). What a time to be alive!
Never mind if you are stacking up Product A with 1 show-stopping bug against Product B with 50 cosmetic bugs or unhandled corner cases.
Ordinarily I would agree with this, but there is a caveat to consider - that one "show-stopping" bug might only be seen by 5 or 10 percent of your userbase, who would quickly learn not to use the feature that triggers that bug, but those 50 cosmetic bugs will become so visible and glaring and unavoidable that you'll have users going, "Good G*d, this thing looks like shit! How I can I trust such a crappy-written program?", especially if those users are part of the general public, rather than a closed, business-users-only crowd.
In other words, Product B really *IS* worse, even if it objectively functions better.
I'm not saying those cosmetic bugs should necessarily be given the same weight as the showstopper, but to downplay them because they're "only cosmetic" is to ignore that rather sizable portion of your userbase, who care at least as much about spit and polish as they do about functionality.
Well, consider that there are many actions in a typical game that can be as easily* done with gestures as with a joystick or gamepad. It's all a matter of changing how you think about the game's controls. Let's take your platformer example:
Walking around? Seems to me that sliding your finger slowly around the screen along a viable path should work for that.
Need to shoot? A quick tap on your target seems fair (with a certain amount of "randomness" so that not every shot is perfect).
Need to jump? Swipe diagonally upwards to jump in that direction.
Need to crouch? Swipe diagonally downwards (the player should have a short timeout during which they stay crouched).
Need to operate an object on the screen (e.g. a door or something)? Tap your finger on it.
Want to use your special power-up? Surely there's an icon somewhere showing that you have it, so tap that icon.
Need to examine something? Use the two-finger "zoom" gesture on it.
Did I miss something?
(* Assuming you can consider programming/interpreting gestures as "easy" to begin with.)
Well, it works for peanut butter and chocolate, so why not? ;-)
obligatory: http://xkcd.com/838/
Kevin Flynn: I'M your program?
Bit: Yes.
You forgot the most important part:
Kevin Flynn: Great, another mouth to feed.
Bit: Yes! Yes! Yes! [...]
All of my projects on github are either GPL, LGPL or WTFPL*, depending on the license of any code I borrowed from, unless I've forgotten one, even if it isn't stated in the code or README (because the license is always stated on forum posts where I publish the existence of the projects).
[*]WTFPL is a license commonly used in the Minetest community, equivalent to CC0 or "public domain".
In the situation in question, the dog was about the size of a newborn child (and so, big enough to damage the car) and had I swerved to miss it, I would have either piled into a telephone pole or oncoming traffic.
Either way, stomping the brake (with anti-lock, mind you) while tracking the car straight is still the safest way to avoid the issue if there's adequate room, and if the twit behind me had struck the car, in almost any state it would have been his fault for following too closely.
One problem it won't solve is the mindless moron behind you who nearly slams into your back end because you had to brake suddenly. This happened today in fact - I was on my way back from the store, doing about 35mph in a zone so marked, when a stray dog started to cross the street in front of my, and I instinctively stomped the brakes to avoid killing an innocent animal. Some little dipshit on a little blue moped was following too close and sounded his horn, then flipped me off two or three times, as if I was the one in the wrong.
Or maybe, just *maybe* coders could start focusing on making fast software again instead of just waiting for faster processors? You know, like we did in the old days?
does*
Nevermind that, do anyone other than government agencies use the "cyber-" prefix in any serious manner? This ain't 1995 anymore, can't we finally bury that stupid term?
My guess would be toasted by radiation, then burned alive, then spaghettified, then crushed, then some other horrible fate, in that order.