"Computer, how many crew members on board are human, female, and single? Oh, and with big boobs?"
"I think you want to query the crew database, filtering for species: human, gender: female, marital status: single, physical attributes: big-breasted. If this is correct please say yes."
We *have* these systems, but their error rates are high enough that the computer must take ages to confirm every single minor action with the user, this is beyond annoying. Once we can trust the computer to never (or rather, almost never) misinterpret our words, then the Trek-ian world might be a reality.
While it's true that most of the 360's current titles are FPS/action games, I don't think it's fair to call R6:V and GOW "archetypical" and "generic". Both of these games have mechanics that have not been tried before - most notably the cover-system (which IMHO was better done in GOW than R6:V, though I enjoy both games immensely). I firmly believe that GOW and R6:V stand as two of the most innovative shooters done in the last couple of years. It seems to me that you don't like shooters, which is fair enough, but don't confuse GOW and R6:V with your stereotypical sequel-itis "shovelware".
And DOA4 - while I won't make any defenses for its... beatoff-ish content, it is a capable of fighter. Not the best and certainly no match for the big PS2 fighting games, but a good one nonetheless, and one that is impossible to win with pure button-mashing. DOA has always been about impeccable timing and knowing your character like the back of your hand. It's one of those games where simple button mashing won't get you 3 levels into story mode.
IMO the 360 has plenty of good games going for it, sequel or no. COD2 was amazing (though lacking in replay value), GRAW was deeply satisfying, GOW was simply breathtaking from the first minute to the last, and R6:V got me excited about the whole franchise again. I'm a shooter junkie, and I've played my share of horrid shooters in my time, and the 360 has a lot of GREAT shooters going for it.
No, the PS3 *will have* stuff going for it. Personally I've never been enough of a fan of FF or MGS to get a console solely based on those games - but even for those that would, there's no reason to buy now. There hasn't even been a PS3 FF project announced, not to mention dated, and MGS4 is rumoured to still be quite early in development. Until both of those games are on store shelves ready to buy, I see no reason to throw down for a PS3.
The difference here is that MacHeist do not have such a stranglehold over the software industry such that it is impossible (or even significantly more difficult) to get exposure without them. This is merely the first attempt at something which may in time become the most popular way for small-time software developers to market their wares. There are a large number of people and organizations in this world that can market something like MacHeist - they are not the only ones. With competition we will eventually arrive at a happy equilibrium between the promoter's margin and the developer's margin.
Until MacHeist starts demonstrating that they are intending to monopolize the whole "pack 'n sell" shareware market, I have no concerns.
Another poster below you also pointed out the same strategy. It is a valid notion, I admit, but considering our software is targeted at average users who may not be technically inclined, I believe ours is the right decision. I believe you are grossly underestimating the intelligence, or dare I suggest, honesty of the average software user.
If you give them the option to install, they will ignore any and all warnings and call you anyway when they run into problems. Worse yet, they will fly off the hook and begin slandering your software to anyone who will listen, and you bet your ass that their version of the story won't contain the fact that they're running on an unsupported OS.
Some won't even understand what the warning means, or some won't even read it - the "OK" button is just too large and tempting to click.
The install/runtime check is more of a preventative motion than anything else. We don't want to present a negative image of our product when know-nothing users decide to run it on unsupported hardware/software and get stuck. We don't want support calls related to this - even listening to them long enough to kick them off the line costs us valuable dollars and cents. We want nothing to do with this possibility - and the number of honest consumers who will legitimately accept the lack of support and run it on an old OS is small enough that we really don't want to open ourselves to that risk. Honestly, if there were a significant number of people still using the OS, we wouldn't drop support for it.
Disclaimer: The above is a personal opinion and in no way represents the views of my employer.
Evil? Not in the best interest of legacy OS users for sure, but evil? Where in blue blazes do you get off on calling that evil?
Get off the high horse and realize that just because we refuse to support your usage of an ancient OS, and we refuse to spend millions in man-hours QA'ing for it when you represent an infinitesimal portion of our customer base, doesn't mean we're evil. For cryin' out loud the damn thing is 7 years old! You don't expect Doom 3 to run on your Nvidia TNT2 do you?
From the summary: "other software (like MS's anti-spyware product) will install and run flawlessly -- but only if you remove an explicit check for Windows 2000 in the installer."
I work for a software company - and I suspect many Slashdotters do also, and there are extremely good reasons for this. My company's software dropped support for OSX Panther in our last release, even though in all likelihood there wouldn't be any trouble running it on Panther - we weren't using anything that would specifically be known to break Panther, right?
But one has to realize that to release software on a mass scale involves a lot of QA work. You cannot say "we're not using any XP-only features, so it must work on 2K also!", you have to rigorously test your software on all supported platforms. Failure to do so is irresponsible and unprofessional. This means that, if you wish the drop the overhead of testing in 2K, then you stop supporting 2K, and to prevent consumers from installing your software and then coming back to complain about it (or worse, posting a scathing blog entry about your software's suckitude), you simply block the installation of the software on the older OS.
There's nothing evil about this, this is a simple business decision: you cannot support every legacy OS forever, and as new OS'es get released, your QA load increases. At some point you have to drop support for legacy OS'es, even if they are still technologically compatible with your software.
Mass resignations or not, SiN is on the chopping block anyways. The first episode was generally not well-perceived, and I don't expect the second episode to do that well either.
Chicken and egg situation. If consumers were presented with the opportunity to run, say, Ubuntu on their machines, would they choose this over Windows? I agree that the ignorance of alternative OSes is at least in part due to the lack of availability in popular OEMs, but that's really only part of it. There's simply not enough software and the incidences of not being able to run something they bought off the shelf at Best Buy will turn most consumers off any 'nix-based OS. The dominance of Windows is only in part due to hardware OEM support - another large part is simply the lack of software choices for average users. Sure, as a server or professional platform we have a wide selection of FOSS to select from, but what about, say, QuickTax? That new Sims game sure looks cool... Wait, can't run it? Your customers won't have any of THAT.
Practically the only reason Mac OSX even gets away with it is because it's just so damned stylish. Unfortunately I don't think Ubuntu shares the same fashion cachet:P
"What are you basing your hypothesis on? HP doesn't manufacture any machines with Ubuntu preinstalled, so of course nobody buys them."
You are correct, I have no empirical data to back up my hypothesis, but nonetheless from what I have seen of average computer buyers, the vast majority are Windows users exclusively, while the vast minority are OSX users. The number of Linux/UNIX/etc users are so small that I do not believe there would be a significant market.
The likes of HP and Dell are here to service the average computer user - the ones who may just buy a machine without an OS to shave a few bucks off the pricetag, and then feel the need the call up the support line incessantly questioning why their shiny new hardware doesn't work.
I know if it were me, I'd offer the blank-HDD option, but also strongly warn that there will be no software support provided for such orders, only hardware. But that's HP/Dell/etc's choice, and I personally feel it's not really such a bad one.
Because there's a cost associated with offering different peripherals, both in terms of increased complexity on the production line and also future support. The number of people buying, say, Ubuntu installed on HP desktops is too small to justify the additional support and manufacturing commitment; whereas, say, enough people choose between the NVidia ATI cards.
There isn't *always* an evil nefarious conspiracy out to get you, y'know.
Additionally, go to an OEM like Dell and look at their choices. You will notice that, for each performance and product level, there is usually only one choice. You don't see an ATI X1900 being offered alongside the GeForce 7900 - there is no reason to complicate your operations by offering two competing products that are arguably in the exact same performance category.
IMHO the series is in dire need of a reboot, which is why I find myself enjoying Atlantis more than SG1. With a show like SG1 it's far too easy to rely on prior-knowledge and previous episodes, which rewards long-time fans but make the show increasingly unapproachable by new viewers. Since the show isn't gaining many fans, it experiences a net loss of viewers until it inevitably starves itself out and gets canned.
With Atlantis character development has to be pushed, enemies are still fresh, mysterious, and menacing. Part of the thing with the Goa'uld at the beginning was how little we knew about them. We didn't know their customs, we didn't know too much about their physiology, and we certainly had no idea how to beat them. Part of the problem right now is that they've killed off all the bad guys, necessitating the need to create ever more powerful bad guys - and now we're literally fighting gods. The show's also drifted away from the Stargate-y roots. I enjoyed episodes where the gate would meet strange new enemies through the gate, not... by going to hyperspace and waging intergalactic war in ginormous battlecruisers. Please. Leave that to Star Trek.
If MS can hit the mark with games which sell well in both Japan and the West, the money won't be wasted.
Except 80K units in the first week is pretty low for a game with both Toriyama and Uematsu's names attached ot it (art and music, respectively). This is like a Spielberg movie grossing $10M on the opening weekend - sure, not bad for your average *movie*, but it's still completely below par given the talent associated.
I really do hope MS can make the 360 work in Japan, at least as a 2nd-place contender, but it's really not looking good. God knows how much Toriyama cost to bring over, and 80K units, or perhaps 200K lifetime units, will simply not cut it.
"This sounds like the kind of wishful-thinking with which most Slashdot readers react to anti-porn news of any kind."
I'm not going to suggest that child porn somehow *alleviates* a molester's desire to molest. But it still comes down to the classic chick and egg situation: did the child porn lead to the act? Or did the guy's screwed up little mind lead to both child porn *and* the act?
Not so clear now, is it? Correlation doesn't represent causality, yadi yada.
Agreed. This whole thing is a bit ridiculous. I'm a X360 fanboy and all, and it'd rock for the 360 to succeed in Japan. But really, to pretend that the 360 is anything but a gigantic failure in Japan is just delusional thinking. If MS can release a Blue Dragon equivalent every month, maybe they'd have a chance of getting a minority market share, but at this rate it's just going to be a lot of money wasted for almost no gain in market share.
Come on, 80K units? How many units of 360's are actually in Japan? 200K? That's pathetic, the DS Lite sells more units in a WEEK than MS has sold all YEAR.
How direct do you want to get? People killed per day by American troops? Or people killed per day by American weapons - regardless of who is wielding it? Or people killed per day by weapons that may be derived from American military research?
Let's say we count weapons that American dollars R&D'ed directly. I'm willing to bet that medical technology that are a result of American military R&D saves more lives per day than American guns and weapons can take away; by a wide margin.
"Anything else divided by zero can be defined as giving infinity or -infinity, which can be used in further calculations just fine, even coming to the correct result."
False. While in some applications it may be useful to allow a divide by zero to go to +- infinity, this wreaks havoc with a ton of other applications./0 is undefined for a very good reason.
For your arctan example - arctan *is* in fact undefined at 90 + 180n degrees, where n is a whole number. tan = opposite / adjacent, when the x component of your vector is 0, tan does not exist.
If we were to divide by a number *approaching* zero, however, we could very well end up with +- infinity, which in itself is a concept and not an actual number. In these cases it is often necessary to know which direction you're approaching from. Take the function 1/x for example. If you were to divide by 0- (that is, a negative value that is infinitely close to zero), it would be -INF. If you were to divide by 0+, it would be INF.
It is important to know that 0- and 0+ are not zero. These concepts need to stay very clearly separate. A divide by zero should stay undefined, not arbitrarily pinned to +-INF.
Apple is still a computing company first. Moving to x86 is probably the single most important thing they've done in YEARS. The possibility of running Windows on a Mac is what has converted many of my colleagues to Mac over the last year. The Switch is occurring much faster than it has ever before, and much of that is thanks to the Intel move.
Yes, we all know Apple only has one good product at the top of its class. Nevermind the MacBooks that're selling like hotcakes... or the fact that it has multiple iPod products, each of which is at the top of their respective classes...
Any path is good, so long as you're taking the initiative to pave it yourself. One of the advantages of internship programs is that it's quite easy to get multiple job offers before graduation that way. Unless your intentions are entrepreneurial, this is quite a nice position to be in at graduation, especially if you have student loans built up.
I've worked as an education outreach assistant, a mechanical engineer in an automotive plant, and a number of programming internships, and I've got a couple solid job offers to return-upon-graduation that I'm considering - and I've got 2 more internship terms to go through before I even graduate. Unless I turn into a royal ass overnight, I'm practically guaranteed a job at graduation, and that's a lot of peace of mind, especially when said companies are some of the big hitters in industry.
The fact that you refer to soft skills as "PHB corporate-speak" speaks volumes about your current predicament. These soft skills - like the ability to gauge personalities, reactions, and simply get along with others - are perhaps more important than any technical skill that you possess.
Did you participate in internships during your time at college? If you didn't, smack yourself upside the head. For those reading that are entering or in college right now in a tech-related field, realize this: internships and other forms of "real" experience are a heck of a lot more important than that shiny diploma you get at the end. I picked my school because of its well-organized and well-respected co-op/internship placement program. There were many other schools that were, in manners of quality of education, comparable (if not superior) to my college, but none of them had an internship program worth a damn, and that's worth a lot nowadays.
While I love Canada, it's not all sugar and spice over here you know... Waiting lists for some major procedures are a mile long. It's great if you get the odd cold - drive on down to the doctor and make sure you don't have strep throat. No cost there. Need an MRI? Well, rewind the clock 9 months, 'cos that's how long you need to wait.
A while back there was a major crisis in emergency rooms. Not enough doctors, not enough beds, and at one point people were actually dying while waiting. Granted, these were isolated cases, but just remember that in public health care capacity will always be a problem.
The question I want answered is: The capacity problem isn't nearly as bad in the USA. Is it because you guys have much better capacity-per-capita, or is it just because a smaller proportion of your population can afford to use the services they need? I imagine a lot of people getting MRI's in Canada wouldn't come close to being able to afford it in the US.
Actually, I'm in engineering;) The whole "switch to Mac" thing has been slowly taking over, and it's really ballooned since the MacBook came out. The artsies have been making the Mac jump for the last couple years as it was, and now it's only faster.
The CS'ers all have their l33t rigs that they game on, with their custom paintjobs and other pizzaz. For us engineers we don't need that type of power in a laptop. The school provides (extremely powerful) drafting terminals for the heavy-duty work, such that most of us do light code, word processing, and other such miscellaneous tasks on our laptops. A MacBook is more than good enough to handle a few drawings, blueprints, and MatLab.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, from what I see at my school, anyone whose degree is not directly tied to computing is switching, and people who have never considered Macs as a real choice a year before are dying to get their hands on a MacBook now. Things are looking good for Apple, and not-so-good for mid-high end PC laptop manufacturers. I'm sure Dell will be just fine with budget notebooks, but the likes of Toshiba and Sony are not getting nearly the amount of attention they used to on campus.
"As the 18-25 year olds graduate from college, get jobs, and get promoted, the difference in price between a Mac and a cheap PC becomes less and less significant."
Not only that - youngsters have always proven themselves very adept at spending money. While a Mac Pro is outside the average college student's range, a MacBook or Mac Mini is not. Being in college right now, I'm seeing droves of my colleagues switch over the last year, the vast majority going to the MacBooks. Nowadays in college, if you're getting a new laptop, it's either a Mac, some ludicrous gaming laptop, or an extreme low-end Dell. Contrary to popular belief (hehe, good one), college students are not in fact rational consumers. The Mighty Mouse is a pretty crappy mouse in all honesty, but I know a ton of people who have it simply because it looks so much sexier than Generic Bluetooth Mouse #21286.
Apple's got themselves in a fine position here. The youngsters want it, the ones that have a job will get it; the hip-craving baby boomers have all the cash in the world to get it; and us techies recommend it to gramps so we're not caught deleting junk from their machines every 3 weeks.
"Let me ask you this: Should the cops have just left? When someone is where they are not supposed to be, acting belligerent and confrontational, refusing to cooperate, should the police just leave? Maybe the police should only arrest those that are cooperative."
And what part of arresting this individual necessitated five repeated tasings, including four while the individual was already in handcuffs and subdued? The guy, from what we have seen and what we have read in any article on this matter, did not physically threaten the officers nor the students in the library. He refused to leave. This would make him a trespasser, the usual result of which is an arrest and a quick trip down to the station. He did not fight the cops, nor did he make any threatening moves after he had been handcuffed. In fact, he was handcuffed before he was officially arrested!
You're attacking a straw man. Nobody is saying that the cops should have "just left", we're saying that they should've slapped some cuffs on this guy, loaded him into the back of the car, and gave him a good night's stay with the rest of the kids down at the precinct. Tasering was entirely and completely overkill, and I would classify this as "torture" or at the very very least "gross negligence and abuse of power". I hope these cops do time for this - their position as law enforcers make them even more accountable than the average man.
Slashdot Mirror
"Computer, how many crew members on board are human, female, and single? Oh, and with big boobs?"
"I think you want to query the crew database, filtering for species: human, gender: female, marital status: single, physical attributes: big-breasted. If this is correct please say yes."
We *have* these systems, but their error rates are high enough that the computer must take ages to confirm every single minor action with the user, this is beyond annoying. Once we can trust the computer to never (or rather, almost never) misinterpret our words, then the Trek-ian world might be a reality.
While it's true that most of the 360's current titles are FPS/action games, I don't think it's fair to call R6:V and GOW "archetypical" and "generic". Both of these games have mechanics that have not been tried before - most notably the cover-system (which IMHO was better done in GOW than R6:V, though I enjoy both games immensely). I firmly believe that GOW and R6:V stand as two of the most innovative shooters done in the last couple of years. It seems to me that you don't like shooters, which is fair enough, but don't confuse GOW and R6:V with your stereotypical sequel-itis "shovelware".
And DOA4 - while I won't make any defenses for its... beatoff-ish content, it is a capable of fighter. Not the best and certainly no match for the big PS2 fighting games, but a good one nonetheless, and one that is impossible to win with pure button-mashing. DOA has always been about impeccable timing and knowing your character like the back of your hand. It's one of those games where simple button mashing won't get you 3 levels into story mode.
IMO the 360 has plenty of good games going for it, sequel or no. COD2 was amazing (though lacking in replay value), GRAW was deeply satisfying, GOW was simply breathtaking from the first minute to the last, and R6:V got me excited about the whole franchise again. I'm a shooter junkie, and I've played my share of horrid shooters in my time, and the 360 has a lot of GREAT shooters going for it.
No, the PS3 *will have* stuff going for it. Personally I've never been enough of a fan of FF or MGS to get a console solely based on those games - but even for those that would, there's no reason to buy now. There hasn't even been a PS3 FF project announced, not to mention dated, and MGS4 is rumoured to still be quite early in development. Until both of those games are on store shelves ready to buy, I see no reason to throw down for a PS3.
The difference here is that MacHeist do not have such a stranglehold over the software industry such that it is impossible (or even significantly more difficult) to get exposure without them. This is merely the first attempt at something which may in time become the most popular way for small-time software developers to market their wares. There are a large number of people and organizations in this world that can market something like MacHeist - they are not the only ones. With competition we will eventually arrive at a happy equilibrium between the promoter's margin and the developer's margin.
Until MacHeist starts demonstrating that they are intending to monopolize the whole "pack 'n sell" shareware market, I have no concerns.
Another poster below you also pointed out the same strategy. It is a valid notion, I admit, but considering our software is targeted at average users who may not be technically inclined, I believe ours is the right decision. I believe you are grossly underestimating the intelligence, or dare I suggest, honesty of the average software user.
If you give them the option to install, they will ignore any and all warnings and call you anyway when they run into problems. Worse yet, they will fly off the hook and begin slandering your software to anyone who will listen, and you bet your ass that their version of the story won't contain the fact that they're running on an unsupported OS.
Some won't even understand what the warning means, or some won't even read it - the "OK" button is just too large and tempting to click.
The install/runtime check is more of a preventative motion than anything else. We don't want to present a negative image of our product when know-nothing users decide to run it on unsupported hardware/software and get stuck. We don't want support calls related to this - even listening to them long enough to kick them off the line costs us valuable dollars and cents. We want nothing to do with this possibility - and the number of honest consumers who will legitimately accept the lack of support and run it on an old OS is small enough that we really don't want to open ourselves to that risk. Honestly, if there were a significant number of people still using the OS, we wouldn't drop support for it.
Disclaimer: The above is a personal opinion and in no way represents the views of my employer.
Evil? Not in the best interest of legacy OS users for sure, but evil? Where in blue blazes do you get off on calling that evil?
Get off the high horse and realize that just because we refuse to support your usage of an ancient OS, and we refuse to spend millions in man-hours QA'ing for it when you represent an infinitesimal portion of our customer base, doesn't mean we're evil. For cryin' out loud the damn thing is 7 years old! You don't expect Doom 3 to run on your Nvidia TNT2 do you?
From the summary: "other software (like MS's anti-spyware product) will install and run flawlessly -- but only if you remove an explicit check for Windows 2000 in the installer."
I work for a software company - and I suspect many Slashdotters do also, and there are extremely good reasons for this. My company's software dropped support for OSX Panther in our last release, even though in all likelihood there wouldn't be any trouble running it on Panther - we weren't using anything that would specifically be known to break Panther, right?
But one has to realize that to release software on a mass scale involves a lot of QA work. You cannot say "we're not using any XP-only features, so it must work on 2K also!", you have to rigorously test your software on all supported platforms. Failure to do so is irresponsible and unprofessional. This means that, if you wish the drop the overhead of testing in 2K, then you stop supporting 2K, and to prevent consumers from installing your software and then coming back to complain about it (or worse, posting a scathing blog entry about your software's suckitude), you simply block the installation of the software on the older OS.
There's nothing evil about this, this is a simple business decision: you cannot support every legacy OS forever, and as new OS'es get released, your QA load increases. At some point you have to drop support for legacy OS'es, even if they are still technologically compatible with your software.
Mass resignations or not, SiN is on the chopping block anyways. The first episode was generally not well-perceived, and I don't expect the second episode to do that well either.
Chicken and egg situation. If consumers were presented with the opportunity to run, say, Ubuntu on their machines, would they choose this over Windows? I agree that the ignorance of alternative OSes is at least in part due to the lack of availability in popular OEMs, but that's really only part of it. There's simply not enough software and the incidences of not being able to run something they bought off the shelf at Best Buy will turn most consumers off any 'nix-based OS. The dominance of Windows is only in part due to hardware OEM support - another large part is simply the lack of software choices for average users. Sure, as a server or professional platform we have a wide selection of FOSS to select from, but what about, say, QuickTax? That new Sims game sure looks cool... Wait, can't run it? Your customers won't have any of THAT.
Practically the only reason Mac OSX even gets away with it is because it's just so damned stylish. Unfortunately I don't think Ubuntu shares the same fashion cachet :P
"What are you basing your hypothesis on? HP doesn't manufacture any machines with Ubuntu preinstalled, so of course nobody buys them."
You are correct, I have no empirical data to back up my hypothesis, but nonetheless from what I have seen of average computer buyers, the vast majority are Windows users exclusively, while the vast minority are OSX users. The number of Linux/UNIX/etc users are so small that I do not believe there would be a significant market.
The likes of HP and Dell are here to service the average computer user - the ones who may just buy a machine without an OS to shave a few bucks off the pricetag, and then feel the need the call up the support line incessantly questioning why their shiny new hardware doesn't work.
I know if it were me, I'd offer the blank-HDD option, but also strongly warn that there will be no software support provided for such orders, only hardware. But that's HP/Dell/etc's choice, and I personally feel it's not really such a bad one.
Because there's a cost associated with offering different peripherals, both in terms of increased complexity on the production line and also future support. The number of people buying, say, Ubuntu installed on HP desktops is too small to justify the additional support and manufacturing commitment; whereas, say, enough people choose between the NVidia ATI cards.
There isn't *always* an evil nefarious conspiracy out to get you, y'know.
Additionally, go to an OEM like Dell and look at their choices. You will notice that, for each performance and product level, there is usually only one choice. You don't see an ATI X1900 being offered alongside the GeForce 7900 - there is no reason to complicate your operations by offering two competing products that are arguably in the exact same performance category.
IMHO the series is in dire need of a reboot, which is why I find myself enjoying Atlantis more than SG1. With a show like SG1 it's far too easy to rely on prior-knowledge and previous episodes, which rewards long-time fans but make the show increasingly unapproachable by new viewers. Since the show isn't gaining many fans, it experiences a net loss of viewers until it inevitably starves itself out and gets canned.
With Atlantis character development has to be pushed, enemies are still fresh, mysterious, and menacing. Part of the thing with the Goa'uld at the beginning was how little we knew about them. We didn't know their customs, we didn't know too much about their physiology, and we certainly had no idea how to beat them. Part of the problem right now is that they've killed off all the bad guys, necessitating the need to create ever more powerful bad guys - and now we're literally fighting gods. The show's also drifted away from the Stargate-y roots. I enjoyed episodes where the gate would meet strange new enemies through the gate, not... by going to hyperspace and waging intergalactic war in ginormous battlecruisers. Please. Leave that to Star Trek.
If MS can hit the mark with games which sell well in both Japan and the West, the money won't be wasted.
Except 80K units in the first week is pretty low for a game with both Toriyama and Uematsu's names attached ot it (art and music, respectively). This is like a Spielberg movie grossing $10M on the opening weekend - sure, not bad for your average *movie*, but it's still completely below par given the talent associated.
I really do hope MS can make the 360 work in Japan, at least as a 2nd-place contender, but it's really not looking good. God knows how much Toriyama cost to bring over, and 80K units, or perhaps 200K lifetime units, will simply not cut it.
"This sounds like the kind of wishful-thinking with which most Slashdot readers react to anti-porn news of any kind."
I'm not going to suggest that child porn somehow *alleviates* a molester's desire to molest. But it still comes down to the classic chick and egg situation: did the child porn lead to the act? Or did the guy's screwed up little mind lead to both child porn *and* the act?
Not so clear now, is it? Correlation doesn't represent causality, yadi yada.
Agreed. This whole thing is a bit ridiculous. I'm a X360 fanboy and all, and it'd rock for the 360 to succeed in Japan. But really, to pretend that the 360 is anything but a gigantic failure in Japan is just delusional thinking. If MS can release a Blue Dragon equivalent every month, maybe they'd have a chance of getting a minority market share, but at this rate it's just going to be a lot of money wasted for almost no gain in market share.
Come on, 80K units? How many units of 360's are actually in Japan? 200K? That's pathetic, the DS Lite sells more units in a WEEK than MS has sold all YEAR.
How direct do you want to get? People killed per day by American troops? Or people killed per day by American weapons - regardless of who is wielding it? Or people killed per day by weapons that may be derived from American military research?
Let's say we count weapons that American dollars R&D'ed directly. I'm willing to bet that medical technology that are a result of American military R&D saves more lives per day than American guns and weapons can take away; by a wide margin.
"Anything else divided by zero can be defined as giving infinity or -infinity, which can be used in further calculations just fine, even coming to the correct result."
False. While in some applications it may be useful to allow a divide by zero to go to +- infinity, this wreaks havoc with a ton of other applications. /0 is undefined for a very good reason.
For your arctan example - arctan *is* in fact undefined at 90 + 180n degrees, where n is a whole number. tan = opposite / adjacent, when the x component of your vector is 0, tan does not exist.
If we were to divide by a number *approaching* zero, however, we could very well end up with +- infinity, which in itself is a concept and not an actual number. In these cases it is often necessary to know which direction you're approaching from. Take the function 1/x for example. If you were to divide by 0- (that is, a negative value that is infinitely close to zero), it would be -INF. If you were to divide by 0+, it would be INF.
It is important to know that 0- and 0+ are not zero. These concepts need to stay very clearly separate. A divide by zero should stay undefined, not arbitrarily pinned to +-INF.
Apple is still a computing company first. Moving to x86 is probably the single most important thing they've done in YEARS. The possibility of running Windows on a Mac is what has converted many of my colleagues to Mac over the last year. The Switch is occurring much faster than it has ever before, and much of that is thanks to the Intel move.
Apple... bit player?
A little too much ganja, mon?
Yes, we all know Apple only has one good product at the top of its class. Nevermind the MacBooks that're selling like hotcakes... or the fact that it has multiple iPod products, each of which is at the top of their respective classes...
Any path is good, so long as you're taking the initiative to pave it yourself. One of the advantages of internship programs is that it's quite easy to get multiple job offers before graduation that way. Unless your intentions are entrepreneurial, this is quite a nice position to be in at graduation, especially if you have student loans built up.
I've worked as an education outreach assistant, a mechanical engineer in an automotive plant, and a number of programming internships, and I've got a couple solid job offers to return-upon-graduation that I'm considering - and I've got 2 more internship terms to go through before I even graduate. Unless I turn into a royal ass overnight, I'm practically guaranteed a job at graduation, and that's a lot of peace of mind, especially when said companies are some of the big hitters in industry.
The fact that you refer to soft skills as "PHB corporate-speak" speaks volumes about your current predicament. These soft skills - like the ability to gauge personalities, reactions, and simply get along with others - are perhaps more important than any technical skill that you possess.
Did you participate in internships during your time at college? If you didn't, smack yourself upside the head. For those reading that are entering or in college right now in a tech-related field, realize this: internships and other forms of "real" experience are a heck of a lot more important than that shiny diploma you get at the end. I picked my school because of its well-organized and well-respected co-op/internship placement program. There were many other schools that were, in manners of quality of education, comparable (if not superior) to my college, but none of them had an internship program worth a damn, and that's worth a lot nowadays.
While I love Canada, it's not all sugar and spice over here you know... Waiting lists for some major procedures are a mile long. It's great if you get the odd cold - drive on down to the doctor and make sure you don't have strep throat. No cost there. Need an MRI? Well, rewind the clock 9 months, 'cos that's how long you need to wait.
A while back there was a major crisis in emergency rooms. Not enough doctors, not enough beds, and at one point people were actually dying while waiting. Granted, these were isolated cases, but just remember that in public health care capacity will always be a problem.
The question I want answered is: The capacity problem isn't nearly as bad in the USA. Is it because you guys have much better capacity-per-capita, or is it just because a smaller proportion of your population can afford to use the services they need? I imagine a lot of people getting MRI's in Canada wouldn't come close to being able to afford it in the US.
Actually, I'm in engineering ;) The whole "switch to Mac" thing has been slowly taking over, and it's really ballooned since the MacBook came out. The artsies have been making the Mac jump for the last couple years as it was, and now it's only faster.
The CS'ers all have their l33t rigs that they game on, with their custom paintjobs and other pizzaz. For us engineers we don't need that type of power in a laptop. The school provides (extremely powerful) drafting terminals for the heavy-duty work, such that most of us do light code, word processing, and other such miscellaneous tasks on our laptops. A MacBook is more than good enough to handle a few drawings, blueprints, and MatLab.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, from what I see at my school, anyone whose degree is not directly tied to computing is switching, and people who have never considered Macs as a real choice a year before are dying to get their hands on a MacBook now. Things are looking good for Apple, and not-so-good for mid-high end PC laptop manufacturers. I'm sure Dell will be just fine with budget notebooks, but the likes of Toshiba and Sony are not getting nearly the amount of attention they used to on campus.
"As the 18-25 year olds graduate from college, get jobs, and get promoted, the difference in price between a Mac and a cheap PC becomes less and less significant."
Not only that - youngsters have always proven themselves very adept at spending money. While a Mac Pro is outside the average college student's range, a MacBook or Mac Mini is not. Being in college right now, I'm seeing droves of my colleagues switch over the last year, the vast majority going to the MacBooks. Nowadays in college, if you're getting a new laptop, it's either a Mac, some ludicrous gaming laptop, or an extreme low-end Dell. Contrary to popular belief (hehe, good one), college students are not in fact rational consumers. The Mighty Mouse is a pretty crappy mouse in all honesty, but I know a ton of people who have it simply because it looks so much sexier than Generic Bluetooth Mouse #21286.
Apple's got themselves in a fine position here. The youngsters want it, the ones that have a job will get it; the hip-craving baby boomers have all the cash in the world to get it; and us techies recommend it to gramps so we're not caught deleting junk from their machines every 3 weeks.
"Let me ask you this: Should the cops have just left? When someone is where they are not supposed to be, acting belligerent and confrontational, refusing to cooperate, should the police just leave? Maybe the police should only arrest those that are cooperative."
And what part of arresting this individual necessitated five repeated tasings, including four while the individual was already in handcuffs and subdued? The guy, from what we have seen and what we have read in any article on this matter, did not physically threaten the officers nor the students in the library. He refused to leave. This would make him a trespasser, the usual result of which is an arrest and a quick trip down to the station. He did not fight the cops, nor did he make any threatening moves after he had been handcuffed. In fact, he was handcuffed before he was officially arrested!
You're attacking a straw man. Nobody is saying that the cops should have "just left", we're saying that they should've slapped some cuffs on this guy, loaded him into the back of the car, and gave him a good night's stay with the rest of the kids down at the precinct. Tasering was entirely and completely overkill, and I would classify this as "torture" or at the very very least "gross negligence and abuse of power". I hope these cops do time for this - their position as law enforcers make them even more accountable than the average man.