Fargo, Ottawa, the freaking north pole. Substitute wherever the hell you intended.
My point wasn't about whether it would stand up to the weather, the problem was that the system didn't really provide sufficient heat to create a truly comfortable living space, compared to other heating methods. Fluctuation is irrelevant. We're talking about at those constant low temperatures geo thermal doesn't adequately keep up with it.
There is a wide range for what is comfortable, and a lot of different systems of geothermal heating. I'm sure it works quite well in Iceland for creating a comfortable home.
It could be that an extreme temperature location might not work because in that specific location geothermal isn't an option due to the composition of the earth. Or it might be even easier in an extreme location (Near Yellowstone?) than in a more mild climate.
You would have to admit that if you lived in a geo-active area like Yellowstone, even if your surface temperature was -50F, that you would have little trouble pumping heat up from a geothermal source. And I would admit that if you lived in a non-geoactive region somewhere in Virginia(not sure if that's a good example, but you get the point) it might not be enough even with the milder temperatures.
Pittsburgh however, is a good example of a harsh climate, with generally low temperatures (When compared to the majority of regions where people live). I agree that the temperatures are not extreme, but I disagree that fluctuations don't matter (any heating system will have better performance depending on the rate/amplitude of fluctuations)
A direct heating system (Natural gas, forced air) will be much more 'comfortable' than an indirect heating system (Hot water Radiant) if temperatures fluctuate quickly. Depending on the design, Geothermal could behave quite differently.
C: does not allow Japan to reform, rebuild and become one of the better nations on earth. Look at what happened when this same said tactic was used against North Korea. Its military dictatorship turned upon and subjugated its own people to slavery and starvation.
You shouldn't assume that because one option isn't the ideal option from those perspectives that it just isn't an option.
I even specifically stated that our current situation (with Japan as an ally) could actually be preferential. But an unknown future situation (in 1945) can't really negate that at the time there were other option. I personally believe that dropping the bombs probably was the ideal decision (if such a decision can even be classified as ideal), but there were other options.
We COULD have let the Soviet Union march in. I wouldn't have advocated it, but it wasn't something that couldn't have occured.
Come again? There is nothing harsh about Pittsburgh's climate. the lowest average low is in January at a whopping -6.72 C. with a record low of only -24. I've spent over a week at -49 with wind, and not just in a single year. Pittsburgh is t-shirt weather.
Geothermals actually don't do that well in "harsh" climates. my neighbour growing up, and a good friend of the family, installed geothermal a few years ago. it's not bad, but his place isn't exactly comfortable in the winter. Used in conjunction with his other heating, I believe it helps reduce the cost there, but on its own it can't stand up.
Look, he isn't just talking about MAX/MIN temperatures. Pennsylvania, as an example is the exception to most weather 'trends. Pennsylvania has extreme weather in the sense that in a given year we will see some pretty bad (not the worst) cases of all weather conditions.
But Montana gets colder you say. Yes, it very well does. However it also tends to stay cold. In PA you will have it freeze at night, thaw during the day. Maybe it will freeze and thaw several dozen times in the span where a colder climate will see a single deep freeze, or a warmer climate will generally remain cool, but above freezing. I'm just dealing with the cold side here, but there is a reason why PA's roads are almost universally understood to be the worst in the country, and it isn't due to lack of maintenance.
The climate itself is not even close to the most extreme, but it IS one of the most harsh.
I've conducted HALT (highly accelerated life testing) and survivability/reliability tests on systems, and it isn't the 90C or the -100C temperatures that worry me. It's when my system is subjected to rapid fluctuations of temperature within its operational band. It's even possible to use similar tests to weed out infant mortality in production runs. Temperature fluctuations stress solder joints, chips, as well as mechanical links, hoses, etc.
Again, you 'win'. Your climate is very extreme. But in general, if something can operate in Pennsylvania and do so reliably then it's probably a fairly robust system. Such a system won't always be the best for other climates, but there is a high probability that it would 'work' if you added a few precautions (high temp protection for Tucson, low temp considerations for Fargo).
And don't even get me started on the road treatments in PA and NY which devour cars. I'm in the process of using power tools to remove rust damage from my 2005 vehicle.
2: Dropping nukes on Japan was the more moral option for ending that war. Our other option was to firebomb every city and mount an invasion that would have killed tens of millions of Japanese instead of tens of thousands.
Imagine if we chose option 3:
3: Don't invade mainland Japan. Establish dominance around the area, but don't forget that in the end, it was an island.
Is it an attractive option? Perhaps not from the perspective of American retribution. We might not be in such a beneficial situation today. However to say that it is less of an option than firebombing cities and killing tens of millions of people is incorrect.
Not to diminish in any way what this journalist has been through...unlawful where exactly? Iran or the US?
Sounds a bit like suing Heckler and Koch because they sold a gun to the government that provided it to the cop that used it to shoot you when the situation didn't warrant it.
My understanding, at least with US law (and this is grossly simplified) is that you merely have to prove that another person/entity damaged you without your consent.
Gold is currently going for $1225 US / oz according to NYMEX.
If someone decided to dump pounds of gold for $600 US / oz, would that be considered 'market value'?
Depends on how much gold they have. It's possible that someone dumping a large amount of gold on the market could drive the 'value' to LESS than $600/oz as other people panic and try to get as much out of their investment before it falls too low for them to realize a profit. If everyone bought in at $500/oz, you might not see much movement, but for those who bought in at $900-1100/oz? You might see some panic responses.
I have some land that's valued at around $1000/acre. If the farm next to me folds, and needs to cash out their property, they could EASILY sell for $700/acre and sell their 6,000 acres (it's been in their family for 120 years, so to them, it's pure profit). Do you think my 30 acres would still sell for $1000/acre after that sale? My land may have had a market value of $1000/acre before, but the market value after that sale would certainly not be $1000/acre.
The market value is really whatever a seller is willing to accept as a minimum price point at any given time.
It doesn't need to be encrypted. A perfectly compressed message looks exactly like noise (because anything which distinguishes it from noise is a redundancy, and therefore indicates non-perfect compression).
Good point. From a technical perspective, compression IS very similar to encryption. Also interesting to note that perfectly random noise can't be compressed.
Out of curiosity, and not knowing much on the subject, would subjecting data which appears to be random to a variety of compression algorithms be a means of testing for non-randomness?
(this might not be valuable since I think the whole concept of non-compressiblity is more mathematical than practical since for some sets of random data, individual sets would potentially exhibit the capability to be compressed)
I was gonna say that's odd, as I had checked into getting my helicopter rating a few years back (already have my PP-ASEL airplane license), and the cost for the helicopter was $295 an hour, but that was in a Robinson R-22 which after researching it is a piston powered helicopter
I am an engineer with experience in designing equipment for Search and Rescue helicopters. This is just a quick back of the envelope explanation for how the costs can quickly escalate.
What you were leasing there was likely a helicopter purchased/selected specifically for training and maybe a few other limited duties. All it really had to do was be available when someone needed it for a few hours to get some training. Maintenance on pistons is also MUCH less specialized.
So then we go to turbines (special equipment, special training, = expensive maintenance). The initial cost is high considering not many people actually purchase helicopters these days.
But then lets look into the costs of a medical/rescue helicopter.
Special avionics -P25, SAT, HF radios (You are going to have to communicate/coordinate with a variety of agencies) -Whatever you use for locating the beacon (Not my area of expertise, but something has to be there) -Special collission avoidance or terrain following systems (There is a potential for poor weather, and you don't want a 3 person rescue adding another 5 to be rescued) -FLIR (I could see it being very useful, but probably not essential)
Aircrew -Not too many helicopter pilots are trained for rescue -Flying EMTs -Dangerous duty pay -Oncall 24x7
Air Vehicle -Larger body to accomodate the 'flying ambulance' -Wide doors for stretchers -High capacity to fit aircrew and multiple patients -Multi engine (you aren't sending up a single engine helo into mountainous terrain) -High altitude capability -High reliability necessary -24x7 availability
So your $300/hr rental makes sense. But we can see by this how quickly the costs can quickly escalate to thousands of dollars per hour.
Unless she is incorporated, it should be considered a personally owned business. Do 17 year olds who mow their neighbors' lawns have to pay this fee? Paying tax on the income ($50) makes sense, but paying $300 for being a business doesn't.
It's PA and more importantly, Philadelphia. That city is an anathema to economic freedom.
Occupational Privledge tax (Sucks if you are an engineer that is underemployed) Wage tax (4% right off the top) Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you needed a permit to apply for a license in Philadelphia.
I lived in the area for most of my adult life, and one thing you learned is that you should avoid the influence of Philadelphia City Hall like the plague. An employer would have to pay me a hell of a lot more to put up with that city.
Isn't it amazing that Philadelphia is doing so well?
The rules and regulations are fairly rigorous because the potential for harm is so high. There are lots of great home based businesses to start - cooking or dealing with food in any form is not one of them.
I'm not so convinced that the potential harm is 'so high' there is potential harm, but I think the real reason has much more to do with raising the barrier for entry 'so high' than preventing harm.
If you really need a few dollars, just find a few bottles from the street and return them to stores.
1. Pennsylvania does not have a deposit system, so no returning bottles.
2. Why would revenue from scrap collection be any less subject to collection/regulation.
3. If you could earn the same amount of money doing exactly what you are doing now, or another way which adds several hours worth of labor, why the hell would you add the additional labor?
It is a big stretch to say that because you cannot decode it it would look like a random noise. I cannot read Chinese but I can recognize it from random noise. The argument is invalid - to recognize a message, we do not need to understand the message.
What if the Chinese was an audiostream that was encrypted?
I have never, ever, ever heard the word "gimped" until quite recently it apparently become fashionable to use the word in connection with Apple products.
The major difference is that Windows has problems, and people work around them. When Apple has a problem, it's usually by design.
That the moon is undergoing these kinds of changes shows that the moon is geologically active. There may be no convection going on in its core, but this is still geological activity.
It shows that there was geo-activity, not that it is currently geoactive.
Obama? No. Most other politicians? Also No. But Palin? You're telling me that you can't imagine Palin doing a national address from the White House rooftop, periodically stopping to fire an automatic weapon into the zombie masses below? Keep in mind, this is a woman who hunts wolves from a helicopter.
You may have point. She was just ahead of her time. We certainly didn't want her in the office dealing with foreign countries today.... But if those foreign countries were full of zombies?
Like they say, a hatchet is a great tool, just not one for waxing your car.
Complaining that someone else did the same thing is a bit silly. Yes, Twilight included some stuff from an unrelated mythical beastie. What, unlike Stoker, Anne Rice, White Wolf and everyone else... who added bits from unrelated mythical beasties too?
Oh you will be sorry, you all will be sorry, and you will rue the day you said that.
In my next novel, I'm giving them angelic wings... and rainbows.
(But in all seriousness, I can complain when someone adds something that makes a story worse, even if that story was pretty bad to begin with)
This opens a new legal can of worms - if a trojan or virus is found to be resposible (at least partially) of a plane crash, can the creator fo this virus be held legally liable for the crew and passenger deaths?
I don't see why not. It might be hard to prove murder, but negligent homicide should be fairly easy to show. Reckless endangerment should be damned near an automatic conviction if you can prove that the person released the virus even if it DIDN'T hurt anyone.
The same way you can be cited for unsafe driving even if no crash occured.
It does matter. However not in the manner you two are arguing.
What is important here is that we treat the Internet exactly the same as we would treat the real world in order to fully understand what makes this possible so laws can be crafted that cover both our real world privacy, and privacy on the internet.
If we simply treat these 'crossover' points as areas where 2 rules are good enough, then we aren't realizing that there are countless places where the internet doesn't immediately cross over into real life and that is lost under the radar.
Why is it ok for government agencies to monitor internet traffic in a manner that we would find extreme if applied to our vocal communications? My opinion is that it doesn't get much attention because people don't know.
In cases like this, people need to be reminded that technology now allows other people to have MASSIVE capability to invade their privacy, but that the technology itself isn't the problem, it's that we have forgotten how important privacy is in itself.
So my hope is that this doesn't just get certain points 'politely' fixed because anything politely fixed can be covertly exploited if no legal protections are in place.
I agree there should be a function to move saves between accounts, though I can see why the achievement system could be thrown entirely out of whack by that as well, so there could be reasons it's not there.
Copying a save is never going to happen for any game with an online component as it would make it too easy for everyone to just copy the same save and have all the stuff you're expected to unlock.
1. Just copy the achievements to go with the savegame file. It's not like it's a currency transfer. If people's achievements get screwed up give them the option to reset them.
2. The game I was playing was Mass Effect 2. So there is no reason to care about online 'cheating'.
Take this one game you and your friend worked on as a lesson in how gamer profiles work, take 30 seconds to create yourself one, and never have to worry about it again.
What do you mean never worry about it again? I DID have my own profile. The problem is that you can only unlock the content of the game in the SINGLE PLAYER game. So to unlock for both accounts you BOTH have to go through the same process in the single player game just so you both can have access to the same game during multiplayer.
It shouldn't require 2 playthroughs to play a splitscreen game on the same xbox.
Cheaper and higher capacity I'd say. I don't care if they've got some weight/size. 2.5" form factor for notebooks and very small pc's and 3.5" form factor for normal sized desktops is absolutely fine. My computer sits under my desk anyways.
And the computer I use the most during the day sits in my pocket.
Regardless of your primary system, Hard drives, even in the 2.5" form factor, use a lot of space compared to other components, especially now that the optical drives are being phased out. Along with that comes digital storage of the data that was traditionally stored on the optical drives. So what do we need more of? Storage space.
But as I explained above, smaller size of chips IS going to result in a cost reduction once production starts.
Exactly. It would be pretty hard to make something that sells for less by ultimately putting more of [xyz] material in it... Making them smaller pretty directly leads to same-size price reduction. GP needs a -1, Whining mod created just for him.
It's been a while, but I understood chip fabrication to be slightly different than traditional manufacturing (what you describe).
Lets say your current process allows you to make 10 chips per 'process'. Each process costs approximately X dollars. So each chip costs X/10. Now, you refine your process and now are able to make smaller chips, which allows you to make more per 'process' lets say 20. The chip capacity remains the same.
Now, each time you run the process it only costs you X/20 (The process may vary in cost from the original, but once designed and up and running it will probably be very similar in cost).
As a result, you now have the same capacity chip, smaller, and while it costs the same to make a 'batch' you get more per batch.
Thus you get your lower cost BECAUSE they made it smaller. (The price remaining the same or higher is just a way for them to make a little bit of profit and offset developing the new process and building the equipment to do the new process) Eventually the price will fall as either competitors make similar products or the early adopters become saturated.
Slashdot Mirror
Who said anything about Montana?
Fargo, Ottawa, the freaking north pole. Substitute wherever the hell you intended.
My point wasn't about whether it would stand up to the weather, the problem was that the system didn't really provide sufficient heat to create a truly comfortable living space, compared to other heating methods. Fluctuation is irrelevant. We're talking about at those constant low temperatures geo thermal doesn't adequately keep up with it.
There is a wide range for what is comfortable, and a lot of different systems of geothermal heating. I'm sure it works quite well in Iceland for creating a comfortable home.
It could be that an extreme temperature location might not work because in that specific location geothermal isn't an option due to the composition of the earth. Or it might be even easier in an extreme location (Near Yellowstone?) than in a more mild climate.
You would have to admit that if you lived in a geo-active area like Yellowstone, even if your surface temperature was -50F, that you would have little trouble pumping heat up from a geothermal source. And I would admit that if you lived in a non-geoactive region somewhere in Virginia(not sure if that's a good example, but you get the point) it might not be enough even with the milder temperatures.
Pittsburgh however, is a good example of a harsh climate, with generally low temperatures (When compared to the majority of regions where people live). I agree that the temperatures are not extreme, but I disagree that fluctuations don't matter (any heating system will have better performance depending on the rate/amplitude of fluctuations)
A direct heating system (Natural gas, forced air) will be much more 'comfortable' than an indirect heating system (Hot water Radiant) if temperatures fluctuate quickly. Depending on the design, Geothermal could behave quite differently.
C: does not allow Japan to reform, rebuild and become one of the better nations on earth. Look at what happened when this same said tactic was used against North Korea. Its military dictatorship turned upon and subjugated its own people to slavery and starvation.
You shouldn't assume that because one option isn't the ideal option from those perspectives that it just isn't an option.
I even specifically stated that our current situation (with Japan as an ally) could actually be preferential. But an unknown future situation (in 1945) can't really negate that at the time there were other option. I personally believe that dropping the bombs probably was the ideal decision (if such a decision can even be classified as ideal), but there were other options.
We COULD have let the Soviet Union march in. I wouldn't have advocated it, but it wasn't something that couldn't have occured.
And watch the Soviets invade instead? Do you really think Japan would have been better off in the long run?
No. Which is why I added this: "We might not be in such a beneficial situation today."
Come again?
There is nothing harsh about Pittsburgh's climate.
the lowest average low is in January at a whopping -6.72 C.
with a record low of only -24.
I've spent over a week at -49 with wind, and not just in a single year.
Pittsburgh is t-shirt weather.
Geothermals actually don't do that well in "harsh" climates.
my neighbour growing up, and a good friend of the family, installed geothermal a few years ago. it's not bad, but his place isn't exactly comfortable in the winter. Used in conjunction with his other heating, I believe it helps reduce the cost there, but on its own it can't stand up.
Look, he isn't just talking about MAX/MIN temperatures. Pennsylvania, as an example is the exception to most weather 'trends. Pennsylvania has extreme weather in the sense that in a given year we will see some pretty bad (not the worst) cases of all weather conditions.
But Montana gets colder you say. Yes, it very well does. However it also tends to stay cold. In PA you will have it freeze at night, thaw during the day. Maybe it will freeze and thaw several dozen times in the span where a colder climate will see a single deep freeze, or a warmer climate will generally remain cool, but above freezing. I'm just dealing with the cold side here, but there is a reason why PA's roads are almost universally understood to be the worst in the country, and it isn't due to lack of maintenance.
The climate itself is not even close to the most extreme, but it IS one of the most harsh.
I've conducted HALT (highly accelerated life testing) and survivability/reliability tests on systems, and it isn't the 90C or the -100C temperatures that worry me. It's when my system is subjected to rapid fluctuations of temperature within its operational band. It's even possible to use similar tests to weed out infant mortality in production runs. Temperature fluctuations stress solder joints, chips, as well as mechanical links, hoses, etc.
Again, you 'win'. Your climate is very extreme. But in general, if something can operate in Pennsylvania and do so reliably then it's probably a fairly robust system. Such a system won't always be the best for other climates, but there is a high probability that it would 'work' if you added a few precautions (high temp protection for Tucson, low temp considerations for Fargo).
And don't even get me started on the road treatments in PA and NY which devour cars. I'm in the process of using power tools to remove rust damage from my 2005 vehicle.
2: Dropping nukes on Japan was the more moral option for ending that war. Our other option was to firebomb every city and mount an invasion that would have killed tens of millions of Japanese instead of tens of thousands.
Imagine if we chose option 3:
3: Don't invade mainland Japan. Establish dominance around the area, but don't forget that in the end, it was an island.
Is it an attractive option? Perhaps not from the perspective of American retribution. We might not be in such a beneficial situation today. However to say that it is less of an option than firebombing cities and killing tens of millions of people is incorrect.
Not to diminish in any way what this journalist has been through...unlawful where exactly? Iran or the US?
Sounds a bit like suing Heckler and Koch because they sold a gun to the government that provided it to the cop that used it to shoot you when the situation didn't warrant it.
My understanding, at least with US law (and this is grossly simplified) is that you merely have to prove that another person/entity damaged you without your consent.
Gold is currently going for $1225 US / oz according to NYMEX.
If someone decided to dump pounds of gold for $600 US / oz, would that be considered 'market value'?
Depends on how much gold they have. It's possible that someone dumping a large amount of gold on the market could drive the 'value' to LESS than $600/oz as other people panic and try to get as much out of their investment before it falls too low for them to realize a profit. If everyone bought in at $500/oz, you might not see much movement, but for those who bought in at $900-1100/oz? You might see some panic responses.
I have some land that's valued at around $1000/acre. If the farm next to me folds, and needs to cash out their property, they could EASILY sell for $700/acre and sell their 6,000 acres (it's been in their family for 120 years, so to them, it's pure profit). Do you think my 30 acres would still sell for $1000/acre after that sale? My land may have had a market value of $1000/acre before, but the market value after that sale would certainly not be $1000/acre.
The market value is really whatever a seller is willing to accept as a minimum price point at any given time.
It doesn't need to be encrypted. A perfectly compressed message looks exactly like noise (because anything which distinguishes it from noise is a redundancy, and therefore indicates non-perfect compression).
Good point. From a technical perspective, compression IS very similar to encryption. Also interesting to note that perfectly random noise can't be compressed.
Out of curiosity, and not knowing much on the subject, would subjecting data which appears to be random to a variety of compression algorithms be a means of testing for non-randomness?
(this might not be valuable since I think the whole concept of non-compressiblity is more mathematical than practical since for some sets of random data, individual sets would potentially exhibit the capability to be compressed)
I was gonna say that's odd, as I had checked into getting my helicopter rating a few years back (already have my PP-ASEL airplane license), and the cost for the helicopter was $295 an hour, but that was in a Robinson R-22 which after researching it is a piston powered helicopter
I am an engineer with experience in designing equipment for Search and Rescue helicopters. This is just a quick back of the envelope explanation for how the costs can quickly escalate.
What you were leasing there was likely a helicopter purchased/selected specifically for training and maybe a few other limited duties. All it really had to do was be available when someone needed it for a few hours to get some training. Maintenance on pistons is also MUCH less specialized.
So then we go to turbines (special equipment, special training, = expensive maintenance). The initial cost is high considering not many people actually purchase helicopters these days.
But then lets look into the costs of a medical/rescue helicopter.
Special avionics
-P25, SAT, HF radios (You are going to have to communicate/coordinate with a variety of agencies)
-Whatever you use for locating the beacon (Not my area of expertise, but something has to be there)
-Special collission avoidance or terrain following systems (There is a potential for poor weather, and you don't want a 3 person rescue adding another 5 to be rescued)
-FLIR (I could see it being very useful, but probably not essential)
Specialized equipment
-Hoists/lifts, stretchers, Wide doors
-Medical equipment
-Medical supplies
Aircrew
-Not too many helicopter pilots are trained for rescue
-Flying EMTs
-Dangerous duty pay
-Oncall 24x7
Air Vehicle
-Larger body to accomodate the 'flying ambulance'
-Wide doors for stretchers
-High capacity to fit aircrew and multiple patients
-Multi engine (you aren't sending up a single engine helo into mountainous terrain)
-High altitude capability
-High reliability necessary
-24x7 availability
So your $300/hr rental makes sense. But we can see by this how quickly the costs can quickly escalate to thousands of dollars per hour.
Unless she is incorporated, it should be considered a personally owned business. Do 17 year olds who mow their neighbors' lawns have to pay this fee? Paying tax on the income ($50) makes sense, but paying $300 for being a business doesn't.
It's PA and more importantly, Philadelphia. That city is an anathema to economic freedom.
Occupational Privledge tax (Sucks if you are an engineer that is underemployed)
Wage tax (4% right off the top)
Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you needed a permit to apply for a license in Philadelphia.
I lived in the area for most of my adult life, and one thing you learned is that you should avoid the influence of Philadelphia City Hall like the plague. An employer would have to pay me a hell of a lot more to put up with that city.
Isn't it amazing that Philadelphia is doing so well?
The rules and regulations are fairly rigorous because the potential for harm is so high. There are lots of great home based businesses to start - cooking or dealing with food in any form is not one of them.
I'm not so convinced that the potential harm is 'so high' there is potential harm, but I think the real reason has much more to do with raising the barrier for entry 'so high' than preventing harm.
If you really need a few dollars, just find a few bottles from the street and return them to stores.
1. Pennsylvania does not have a deposit system, so no returning bottles.
2. Why would revenue from scrap collection be any less subject to collection/regulation.
3. If you could earn the same amount of money doing exactly what you are doing now, or another way which adds several hours worth of labor, why the hell would you add the additional labor?
It is a big stretch to say that because you cannot decode it it would look like a random noise. I cannot read Chinese but I can recognize it from random noise. The argument is invalid - to recognize a message, we do not need to understand the message.
What if the Chinese was an audiostream that was encrypted?
I have never, ever, ever heard the word "gimped" until quite recently it apparently become fashionable to use the word in connection with Apple products.
The major difference is that Windows has problems, and people work around them. When Apple has a problem, it's usually by design.
That the moon is undergoing these kinds of changes shows that the moon is geologically active. There may be no convection going on in its core, but this is still geological activity.
It shows that there was geo-activity, not that it is currently geoactive.
Well there's your problem. If he were an Astrogeologist then people might stop discounting his theories.
You ask to let it die, but what if it REFUSES to die. Like a zombie!
You know, I tend to do the same thing. Looks like I might be case zero.
Obama? No. Most other politicians? Also No. But Palin? You're telling me that you can't imagine Palin doing a national address from the White House rooftop, periodically stopping to fire an automatic weapon into the zombie masses below? Keep in mind, this is a woman who hunts wolves from a helicopter.
You may have point. She was just ahead of her time. We certainly didn't want her in the office dealing with foreign countries today.... But if those foreign countries were full of zombies?
Like they say, a hatchet is a great tool, just not one for waxing your car.
Complaining that someone else did the same thing is a bit silly. Yes, Twilight included some stuff from an unrelated mythical beastie. What, unlike Stoker, Anne Rice, White Wolf and everyone else... who added bits from unrelated mythical beasties too?
Oh you will be sorry, you all will be sorry, and you will rue the day you said that.
In my next novel, I'm giving them angelic wings... and rainbows.
(But in all seriousness, I can complain when someone adds something that makes a story worse, even if that story was pretty bad to begin with)
This opens a new legal can of worms - if a trojan or virus is found to be resposible (at least partially) of a plane crash, can the creator fo this virus be held legally liable for the crew and passenger deaths?
I don't see why not. It might be hard to prove murder, but negligent homicide should be fairly easy to show. Reckless endangerment should be damned near an automatic conviction if you can prove that the person released the virus even if it DIDN'T hurt anyone.
The same way you can be cited for unsafe driving even if no crash occured.
It does matter. However not in the manner you two are arguing.
What is important here is that we treat the Internet exactly the same as we would treat the real world in order to fully understand what makes this possible so laws can be crafted that cover both our real world privacy, and privacy on the internet.
If we simply treat these 'crossover' points as areas where 2 rules are good enough, then we aren't realizing that there are countless places where the internet doesn't immediately cross over into real life and that is lost under the radar.
Why is it ok for government agencies to monitor internet traffic in a manner that we would find extreme if applied to our vocal communications? My opinion is that it doesn't get much attention because people don't know.
In cases like this, people need to be reminded that technology now allows other people to have MASSIVE capability to invade their privacy, but that the technology itself isn't the problem, it's that we have forgotten how important privacy is in itself.
So my hope is that this doesn't just get certain points 'politely' fixed because anything politely fixed can be covertly exploited if no legal protections are in place.
I agree there should be a function to move saves between accounts, though I can see why the achievement system could be thrown entirely out of whack by that as well, so there could be reasons it's not there.
Copying a save is never going to happen for any game with an online component as it would make it too easy for everyone to just copy the same save and have all the stuff you're expected to unlock.
1. Just copy the achievements to go with the savegame file. It's not like it's a currency transfer. If people's achievements get screwed up give them the option to reset them.
2. The game I was playing was Mass Effect 2. So there is no reason to care about online 'cheating'.
Take this one game you and your friend worked on as a lesson in how gamer profiles work, take 30 seconds to create yourself one, and never have to worry about it again.
What do you mean never worry about it again? I DID have my own profile. The problem is that you can only unlock the content of the game in the SINGLE PLAYER game. So to unlock for both accounts you BOTH have to go through the same process in the single player game just so you both can have access to the same game during multiplayer.
It shouldn't require 2 playthroughs to play a splitscreen game on the same xbox.
Cheaper and higher capacity I'd say. I don't care if they've got some weight/size. 2.5" form factor for notebooks and very small pc's and 3.5" form factor for normal sized desktops is absolutely fine. My computer sits under my desk anyways.
And the computer I use the most during the day sits in my pocket.
Regardless of your primary system, Hard drives, even in the 2.5" form factor, use a lot of space compared to other components, especially now that the optical drives are being phased out. Along with that comes digital storage of the data that was traditionally stored on the optical drives. So what do we need more of? Storage space.
But as I explained above, smaller size of chips IS going to result in a cost reduction once production starts.
So we all win.
Exactly. It would be pretty hard to make something that sells for less by ultimately putting more of [xyz] material in it... Making them smaller pretty directly leads to same-size price reduction. GP needs a -1, Whining mod created just for him.
It's been a while, but I understood chip fabrication to be slightly different than traditional manufacturing (what you describe).
Lets say your current process allows you to make 10 chips per 'process'. Each process costs approximately X dollars. So each chip costs X/10. Now, you refine your process and now are able to make smaller chips, which allows you to make more per 'process' lets say 20. The chip capacity remains the same.
Now, each time you run the process it only costs you X/20 (The process may vary in cost from the original, but once designed and up and running it will probably be very similar in cost).
As a result, you now have the same capacity chip, smaller, and while it costs the same to make a 'batch' you get more per batch.
Thus you get your lower cost BECAUSE they made it smaller. (The price remaining the same or higher is just a way for them to make a little bit of profit and offset developing the new process and building the equipment to do the new process) Eventually the price will fall as either competitors make similar products or the early adopters become saturated.