Dunno about the writing and acting, I would not define them as the "best on TV" although they have done very well at dealing with some really serious topics like the death of Buffy's Mom. The only problem is that they really failed to capitalize on some of this stuff. I mean where is the supernatural baddie that tries to capitalize on this grief or cut a deal with buffy to bring her Mom back? That could have been worked into the overarching plotline so much better.
In the end Buffy is a show without internal conflict, the gang fights evil and does the right thing. Sure Giles suffocates the villian, but it "had to be done". On the otherhand Angel is dripping with internal conflict. Damn near all the characters have some major failings in their past or major either/or tensions. Sometime you just don't know what they are going to do. Would Buffy have let two vampires feast on a room full of blackhearted lawyers? I think not.
Yeah mine is the 3700, the earlier model. I got one of the first P3 units that came out a year and a half ago. Like I said I soon will be on my fourth LCD and keyboard. I don't treat it that hard either. I don't stand on it as one previous poster suggested although I do keep it running for 8 hours at a stretch. Frankly I don't consider that overwork.
Ugghh, dell laptops. I bought one after some friends and the computer press had informed me that they were the bomb. PIII, lots of RAM, big hard drive, etc. Now its a year and a half later and my third LCD screen has died and my third keyboard is giving out. Needless to say I'm really glad I got an extended warranty or I would be broke fixing the thing. Dell isn't making any money off me.
I look forward to the day it finally dies and I can justify buying a new laptop of hopefully better reliability.
Wow great, that means Saddam actually might be able to make a supercomputer out of all those PS2s he allegedly purchased/purloined when they first came out in the States. Talk about making a beowulf cluster of those...
Re:Andromeda disappoints me.
on
Andromeda
·
· Score: 1
Dunno, so far the loopholes have been few and far between. The crew seems to be more concerned with thinking its way out of a situation rather than rewriting the scenario at the end to allow them to win like in typical Star Trek episodes.
Frankly, the transporter thing basically only worked once and probably won't show up again for a while if ever. I liked the slipstream loophole because it showed the writers were thinking. What is to stop an AI from putting a brain in a jar and using it as a slipstream pilot? Nothing and the big bad resourceful AI did it. Cool, good for them for thinking about the rules of the universe and how a character would try to work around them.
Anyway, Andromeda has good points. Neitzchian culture rocks. The Magog are damn cool. It also has bad points like any show involving Beka's family. All in all I will continue to watch.
I'm not interested in this because its Star Wars or a MMORPG. Thats fine and dandy but what really makes me happy is that they are not using a D&D based 4-6 attribute level advancement system. Woo Hoo! Finally online roleplaying might get out of the dark ages that pen and paper left years ago. I am so hoping that this will set a trend towards good points based roleplaying systems in future RPG computer games. Not that 3rd edition rules aren't a big step forward from the 2nd, but you're still stuck with character classes and the like.
As for the whole what will keep everyone from becoming a Jedi question, I believe the limiting factor is the cost. Anyone can become a Jedi, but to get to the point where it becomes practical and survivable is tough. Its a very costly character advancement path. Hence being a bounty hunter or a smuggler may be a much better choice.
Dunno about that. There are only 2 or 3 professional grade CGI packages and its in their best interest to keep them expensive until such time as they are indistinguishable from the "amateur" grade stuff. Beside the only thing they really have to make cheap is the renderer which they basically already have. The actual development stuff will probably stay expensive until the growth curve flattens out.
What is holding OS gaming back? I mean really? Its not the lack of an engine or coding base. There are already a number of engines available that could do the job like CrystalSpace and the Quake 1 engine. Its not the lack of gifted programmers. OS has those too.
The thing that is holding OS gaming back that game creation is a manufacturing process and OS development is a service process. How many programmers created the Quake III? Not that many. How many artists, 3d modelers, sound editors, level designers, and writers (ok maybe not writers:) )created Quake III? A freaking huge number thats what. The engine is not the problem, its a relatively small part of the development pie. What we need are more artists and level designers to contribute to the projects.
Alrighty I think I'm going to just reply to everyone at once.
You have to realize the types of equipment that the studios are using Linux for. For the most part their big use of Linux is probably in huge rendering farms for CGI work. You get some nice FP hardware, tons of ram, and a good hard disk and slap linux on it. Similar concept to a beowulf cluster but different application. Price point is already a proven winner.
This is not bringing down the cost of tools for the independent film maker. Their software is almost guaranteed to be proprietary and expensive. Their main workstations may run linux, but may also be SGIs or Suns. If they are using Linux on them its only because the they can build a PC workstation for so much less than SGI would charge.
In short, linux is a good thing for the movie industry. This does not mean linux is a good thing for the independent film maker. People are not making Shrek with Blender after all.
Modern smokeless gun powder was invented in the late 1800s. I know in America the patent is held by one of the Duponts, either Lammot or his son Pierce IIRC.
As for the 4wd, the first really popular one was the Jeep which essentially ushered the horse out of modern warfare in 1941. I'm sure someone made one before that. Note that the Germans were still using horses in WWII to pull artillery and such.
Basically what these guys seem to be doing is using a part of the stiffness matrix most people avoid to create aerodynamic tailoring. Basically the stiffness matrix of every structure has components which not only control bending and stretching, but also couple the two. So if you pull on a structure with a non-zero B portion of the stiffness matrix, it bends. If you twist it, it stretches. Normally people do their damnedest to avoid this (they make sure the B terms are zero) as it makes the structure act really weird, but if you use it you can create tailoring effects for different loads and behaviors. The biggest area I've heard of them using it was tailoring helicoptor rotors for rotational speed. Looks like someone wants to use it for aircraft wings.
All this of course runs into the problem that for most structural materials you really can't change the shape that much since you are essentially deforming the structure. There are elastic limits to this sort of thing beyond which parts break. So unless you intend to build that plane out of rubber you might be in trouble.
Yeah, I'm on my 3rd keyboard and LCD screen on my 1 year old Inspirion 3700. The current LCD (#3) is broken and only works intermittently, but I just hooked up an old monitor I had lying around and am using that when the LCD is illegible. The keyboard seems to have stayed fixed this time though so hooray for that.
So, in short, don't but Dell laptops. It the like the computer version of Russian Roulette.
Well technically this sort of thing has been done once already. As the article mentions, a group of robotics researchers already sent a 29 pound aircraft to make the same flight in 1998. Here is a link. I believe they are now planning a Pacific crossing. Their original Atlantic plane cost around $10,000 dollars though, its now hanging in a flight museum in the Pacific Northwest somewhere. The plane, named "Laima" after a Latvian Goddess of Good Luck, was the third of four of their planes to attempt the crossing. The first and fourth were lost in transit and the second died because of a flight computer malfunction shortly after takeoff. Now this smaller craft has all the same problems of size Laima did, but with the added problem of significantly flimsier construction and probably weaker flight AI. Somehow I doubt its going to make it but good luck all the same.
Brand loyalty is brand loyalty. Its not about how much you have its about what you buy. BTW to my knowledge I only know one person with an N64, everyone else has playstations and has no intention to shell out the money for the N64 to play Pokemon, Zelda, and Goldeneye.
Sure it is. Video games used to be "for kids". Now I know lots of 30 somethings that own playstations for their own use. There may be a big supply of new kids but there is also a large user base of adults who used to be those kids ten or twenty years ago. When the video gaming phenomenon started this was not really the case, but it is now.
No, I'm noting that these companies are being insensitive to the fact that their customer base is aging. The most profitable group of people to aim for is not necessarily teenagers and young kids, its single adults. Sure a teenagers money is mostly disposable income to buy toys, but a 24 year old has significantly more income even if a smaller portion of it is disposable. In the end brand loyalty is nothing if you don't have anything to back it up.
Just one problem. The program has access to the humans game history, the moves he prefers and openings he usually uses. It can be programmed to take this into account. The human should have an equivalent understanding of the computer. Chess masters don't go into their matches cold after all. Perhaps the source code wasn't the best way to do this, but it is a step in the right direction.
The US bought Iridium because 70% of the earth is water. Therefore for 70% you need a satelite communications network in low earth orbit in order to make a call using a reasonable amount of power. As it is Iridium is soon going to be used by a host of civil robotic aircraft in order to give telemetry and real time weather data for use in forecasting.
Yeah maybe, but if you know your government has cameras/microphones everywhere in public then I think it is safe to say that the assumption of privacy is a bad one. Innocence shattered perhaps, but in the end lives will be saved or at the very least the guilty will be caught. Its a trade off, but perhaps a worthwhile one.
There is just one problem with your argument. These cameras would be in public places like schools and government buildings. Privacy is something you should expect to have in private, not in public. If you are in a situation where anyone can overhear what you are saying and see what you are doing, then why is it wrong for the authorities to have an eye and an ear there? You do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in these places so it can't be wrong for them to be monitored. In short if anyone could be watching then why is it wrong is someone is watching?
An analogy would be for the RIAA to be able to monitor what you post in a chat room or on slashdot. Or to have them be able to access your public ftp site. Of course they can already do these things so if you have a problem with it you had better get moving.
I believe the big thing thats standing in SETIs way is that the signal to noise ratio of transmissions from other planets (or even those we are sending out) is so low that their signals can't be separated from normal stellar noise at the interstellar distances we are talking about.
This is not an original thought though, does anyone have a good link?
What should happen if my memory of the psychrometric chart is right is that room temp air is drawn in and cooled. At this point the excess water will begin condensing out. The ductwork immediately after this should be built to allow this excess water to drain away harmlessly before it exits the cooling aparatus. The cool air enters the case and is warmed up by the parts. It could actually pick up some water at this point because it is moves below 100% relative humidity as it warms.
The interesting thing is that when the cold air hits the warm air in the case when the whole aparatus first starts up, then you could get some condensation inside the case no matter what you do. A good exhaust fan for the case and a gradual cool-down when the system starts should help this though.
My point is that a well designed system can be made so that the condensation happens in a place where it is safe rather than inside the computer case where it is not.
I haven't looked at the design, but in general your going to get condensation where the air is cooled, not where the cool air is pumped. When the air temp drops in the chiller section it will cause any water above and beyond the new lower temps saturation level to condense out. Provided the system is designed well though, this condensation should remain in the chiller section and should be gone by the time the cold air exits the chiller unit. As the air warms up passing through the case it will actually get drier in relative humidity terms and so less likely to cause condensation. So the condensation should be at a minimum as you can keep the two separate. For a real world example, notice that the condensation in air conditioners comes out the back of the unit while the cold air exits the front.
Just one issue here. How much land does it take to grow a gallon of agriculturally derived fuel? The US uses 30 million barrels of oil a day so can you scale this technology up to accommodate a large portion of this?
I am always wary of people running around spouting great cost analyses of these technologies. Why? Because they usually get their fuel oils for free from resaurants and fast food joints who would otherwise have to pay to get rid of it. What happens when everyone is driving these cars and that process of acquiring fuel no longer scales? Then how much does it cost? Can we actually grow enough vegetables to supply Americas vegetable oil needs?
Slashdot Mirror
Dunno about the writing and acting, I would not define them as the "best on TV" although they have done very well at dealing with some really serious topics like the death of Buffy's Mom. The only problem is that they really failed to capitalize on some of this stuff. I mean where is the supernatural baddie that tries to capitalize on this grief or cut a deal with buffy to bring her Mom back? That could have been worked into the overarching plotline so much better.
In the end Buffy is a show without internal conflict, the gang fights evil and does the right thing. Sure Giles suffocates the villian, but it "had to be done". On the otherhand Angel is dripping with internal conflict. Damn near all the characters have some major failings in their past or major either/or tensions. Sometime you just don't know what they are going to do. Would Buffy have let two vampires feast on a room full of blackhearted lawyers? I think not.
Yeah mine is the 3700, the earlier model. I got one of the first P3 units that came out a year and a half ago. Like I said I soon will be on my fourth LCD and keyboard. I don't treat it that hard either. I don't stand on it as one previous poster suggested although I do keep it running for 8 hours at a stretch. Frankly I don't consider that overwork.
Ugghh, dell laptops. I bought one after some friends and the computer press had informed me that they were the bomb. PIII, lots of RAM, big hard drive, etc. Now its a year and a half later and my third LCD screen has died and my third keyboard is giving out. Needless to say I'm really glad I got an extended warranty or I would be broke fixing the thing. Dell isn't making any money off me.
I look forward to the day it finally dies and I can justify buying a new laptop of hopefully better reliability.
Wow great, that means Saddam actually might be able to make a supercomputer out of all those PS2s he allegedly purchased/purloined when they first came out in the States. Talk about making a beowulf cluster of those...
Dunno, so far the loopholes have been few and far between. The crew seems to be more concerned with thinking its way out of a situation rather than rewriting the scenario at the end to allow them to win like in typical Star Trek episodes.
Frankly, the transporter thing basically only worked once and probably won't show up again for a while if ever. I liked the slipstream loophole because it showed the writers were thinking. What is to stop an AI from putting a brain in a jar and using it as a slipstream pilot? Nothing and the big bad resourceful AI did it. Cool, good for them for thinking about the rules of the universe and how a character would try to work around them.
Anyway, Andromeda has good points. Neitzchian culture rocks. The Magog are damn cool. It also has bad points like any show involving Beka's family. All in all I will continue to watch.
I'm not interested in this because its Star Wars or a MMORPG. Thats fine and dandy but what really makes me happy is that they are not using a D&D based 4-6 attribute level advancement system. Woo Hoo! Finally online roleplaying might get out of the dark ages that pen and paper left years ago. I am so hoping that this will set a trend towards good points based roleplaying systems in future RPG computer games. Not that 3rd edition rules aren't a big step forward from the 2nd, but you're still stuck with character classes and the like.
As for the whole what will keep everyone from becoming a Jedi question, I believe the limiting factor is the cost. Anyone can become a Jedi, but to get to the point where it becomes practical and survivable is tough. Its a very costly character advancement path. Hence being a bounty hunter or a smuggler may be a much better choice.
Dunno about that. There are only 2 or 3 professional grade CGI packages and its in their best interest to keep them expensive until such time as they are indistinguishable from the "amateur" grade stuff. Beside the only thing they really have to make cheap is the renderer which they basically already have. The actual development stuff will probably stay expensive until the growth curve flattens out.
What is holding OS gaming back? I mean really? Its not the lack of an engine or coding base. There are already a number of engines available that could do the job like CrystalSpace and the Quake 1 engine. Its not the lack of gifted programmers. OS has those too.
The thing that is holding OS gaming back that game creation is a manufacturing process and OS development is a service process. How many programmers created the Quake III? Not that many. How many artists, 3d modelers, sound editors, level designers, and writers (ok maybe not writers :) )created Quake III? A freaking huge number thats what. The engine is not the problem, its a relatively small part of the development pie. What we need are more artists and level designers to contribute to the projects.
Alrighty I think I'm going to just reply to everyone at once.
You have to realize the types of equipment that the studios are using Linux for. For the most part their big use of Linux is probably in huge rendering farms for CGI work. You get some nice FP hardware, tons of ram, and a good hard disk and slap linux on it. Similar concept to a beowulf cluster but different application. Price point is already a proven winner.
This is not bringing down the cost of tools for the independent film maker. Their software is almost guaranteed to be proprietary and expensive. Their main workstations may run linux, but may also be SGIs or Suns. If they are using Linux on them its only because the they can build a PC workstation for so much less than SGI would charge.
In short, linux is a good thing for the movie industry. This does not mean linux is a good thing for the independent film maker. People are not making Shrek with Blender after all.
Just one problem with the whole river scheme, environmentalists are already criticizing nuclear plants for doing this. Its called thermal pollution.
Modern smokeless gun powder was invented in the late 1800s. I know in America the patent is held by one of the Duponts, either Lammot or his son Pierce IIRC.
As for the 4wd, the first really popular one was the Jeep which essentially ushered the horse out of modern warfare in 1941. I'm sure someone made one before that. Note that the Germans were still using horses in WWII to pull artillery and such.
Basically what these guys seem to be doing is using a part of the stiffness matrix most people avoid to create aerodynamic tailoring. Basically the stiffness matrix of every structure has components which not only control bending and stretching, but also couple the two. So if you pull on a structure with a non-zero B portion of the stiffness matrix, it bends. If you twist it, it stretches. Normally people do their damnedest to avoid this (they make sure the B terms are zero) as it makes the structure act really weird, but if you use it you can create tailoring effects for different loads and behaviors. The biggest area I've heard of them using it was tailoring helicoptor rotors for rotational speed. Looks like someone wants to use it for aircraft wings.
All this of course runs into the problem that for most structural materials you really can't change the shape that much since you are essentially deforming the structure. There are elastic limits to this sort of thing beyond which parts break. So unless you intend to build that plane out of rubber you might be in trouble.
Yeah, I'm on my 3rd keyboard and LCD screen on my 1 year old Inspirion 3700. The current LCD (#3) is broken and only works intermittently, but I just hooked up an old monitor I had lying around and am using that when the LCD is illegible. The keyboard seems to have stayed fixed this time though so hooray for that.
So, in short, don't but Dell laptops. It the like the computer version of Russian Roulette.
Well technically this sort of thing has been done once already. As the article mentions, a group of robotics researchers already sent a 29 pound aircraft to make the same flight in 1998. Here is a link. I believe they are now planning a Pacific crossing. Their original Atlantic plane cost around $10,000 dollars though, its now hanging in a flight museum in the Pacific Northwest somewhere. The plane, named "Laima" after a Latvian Goddess of Good Luck, was the third of four of their planes to attempt the crossing. The first and fourth were lost in transit and the second died because of a flight computer malfunction shortly after takeoff. Now this smaller craft has all the same problems of size Laima did, but with the added problem of significantly flimsier construction and probably weaker flight AI. Somehow I doubt its going to make it but good luck all the same.
Brand loyalty is brand loyalty. Its not about how much you have its about what you buy. BTW to my knowledge I only know one person with an N64, everyone else has playstations and has no intention to shell out the money for the N64 to play Pokemon, Zelda, and Goldeneye.
Sure it is. Video games used to be "for kids". Now I know lots of 30 somethings that own playstations for their own use. There may be a big supply of new kids but there is also a large user base of adults who used to be those kids ten or twenty years ago. When the video gaming phenomenon started this was not really the case, but it is now.
No, I'm noting that these companies are being insensitive to the fact that their customer base is aging. The most profitable group of people to aim for is not necessarily teenagers and young kids, its single adults. Sure a teenagers money is mostly disposable income to buy toys, but a 24 year old has significantly more income even if a smaller portion of it is disposable. In the end brand loyalty is nothing if you don't have anything to back it up.
Just one problem. The program has access to the humans game history, the moves he prefers and openings he usually uses. It can be programmed to take this into account. The human should have an equivalent understanding of the computer. Chess masters don't go into their matches cold after all. Perhaps the source code wasn't the best way to do this, but it is a step in the right direction.
The US bought Iridium because 70% of the earth is water. Therefore for 70% you need a satelite communications network in low earth orbit in order to make a call using a reasonable amount of power. As it is Iridium is soon going to be used by a host of civil robotic aircraft in order to give telemetry and real time weather data for use in forecasting.
Yeah maybe, but if you know your government has cameras/microphones everywhere in public then I think it is safe to say that the assumption of privacy is a bad one. Innocence shattered perhaps, but in the end lives will be saved or at the very least the guilty will be caught. Its a trade off, but perhaps a worthwhile one.
There is just one problem with your argument. These cameras would be in public places like schools and government buildings. Privacy is something you should expect to have in private, not in public. If you are in a situation where anyone can overhear what you are saying and see what you are doing, then why is it wrong for the authorities to have an eye and an ear there? You do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in these places so it can't be wrong for them to be monitored. In short if anyone could be watching then why is it wrong is someone is watching?
An analogy would be for the RIAA to be able to monitor what you post in a chat room or on slashdot. Or to have them be able to access your public ftp site. Of course they can already do these things so if you have a problem with it you had better get moving.
I believe the big thing thats standing in SETIs way is that the signal to noise ratio of transmissions from other planets (or even those we are sending out) is so low that their signals can't be separated from normal stellar noise at the interstellar distances we are talking about.
This is not an original thought though, does anyone have a good link?
What should happen if my memory of the psychrometric chart is right is that room temp air is drawn in and cooled. At this point the excess water will begin condensing out. The ductwork immediately after this should be built to allow this excess water to drain away harmlessly before it exits the cooling aparatus. The cool air enters the case and is warmed up by the parts. It could actually pick up some water at this point because it is moves below 100% relative humidity as it warms.
The interesting thing is that when the cold air hits the warm air in the case when the whole aparatus first starts up, then you could get some condensation inside the case no matter what you do. A good exhaust fan for the case and a gradual cool-down when the system starts should help this though.
My point is that a well designed system can be made so that the condensation happens in a place where it is safe rather than inside the computer case where it is not.
I haven't looked at the design, but in general your going to get condensation where the air is cooled, not where the cool air is pumped. When the air temp drops in the chiller section it will cause any water above and beyond the new lower temps saturation level to condense out. Provided the system is designed well though, this condensation should remain in the chiller section and should be gone by the time the cold air exits the chiller unit. As the air warms up passing through the case it will actually get drier in relative humidity terms and so less likely to cause condensation. So the condensation should be at a minimum as you can keep the two separate. For a real world example, notice that the condensation in air conditioners comes out the back of the unit while the cold air exits the front.
Nah think moon mounted laser cannons...
"The Alan Parson's Project"
Just one issue here. How much land does it take to grow a gallon of agriculturally derived fuel? The US uses 30 million barrels of oil a day so can you scale this technology up to accommodate a large portion of this?
I am always wary of people running around spouting great cost analyses of these technologies. Why? Because they usually get their fuel oils for free from resaurants and fast food joints who would otherwise have to pay to get rid of it. What happens when everyone is driving these cars and that process of acquiring fuel no longer scales? Then how much does it cost? Can we actually grow enough vegetables to supply Americas vegetable oil needs?