I agree. I'm sick of walking into stores and not being able to just look for a thing without being asked "Is there something I can help you with, sir?" The worst is RadioShack - I seriously don't go there anymore because spending two minutes comparing one device or cable against another must be seen by the employees as a sign of incompetence, and they MUST help you with your problem because only THEY, with their great RADIOSHACK training have the answer.
What they're announcing is that in the lab, they HAVE produced solar cells in which the raw materials for the process cost 10x less than silicon. They've already proven it. They aren't addressing economic viability, if they were, it would be a company's press release.
You're tired of researchers saying these things that may never work in the consumer market. The reason they keep saying these things is because it's their fucking job, you twit.
Yeah. Unfortunately there's a lot of research going on with Cadmium (and Selenium, a slightly less toxic metal), since some of the first nanotechnological research in light absorption and emission (CdSe quantum dots) was done with them. I mean, you could try to make a case for solar cells based on Cd (it's been used in batteries, as well), but the cost of making damn sure that it doesn't leach out into the soil or groundwater, or the environmental cost of not making sure, limits the cost-effectiveness of the technology in the extreme.
I'm still holding out on the organic photovoltaics. Processing polymers is a snap, the question is just if they can get efficiencies into the double digits.
Nothing. It was a question of what being good at math or english has to do with people's opinions and/or logic on whether he was right or wrong.
Though I think our author is guilty of perhaps the same faults that the Tennessee DA falls prey to in the pursuit of this case. The Tennessee DA _really_ doesn't like child porn, and so prosecutes anything and everything resembling it.
Mr. Haselton _really_ likes math, or math people (or _really_ hates english, or english people - I'm making some assumptions here) and so attempts to irrefutably prove that predilections towards math make one's opinions "more correct."
Seems like everyone's up in arms about the car costing 2.1 million dollars, or the engineering being used to solve problems that are pointless to solve.
I'm just pissed that the world is touting this car as the "greatest car ever made" - and it has sub-Hummer fuel efficiency (~7 city/11 hwy). I don't give a damn about emissions handling if the thing is going to eat gas like Takeru Kobayashi eats hot dogs. Even worse, the article doesn't even MENTION the thing's fuel efficiency. When are all these rich bastards and the people who worship/want to be them (as well as the assholes wasting their degrees in mechanical engineering designing stupid shit for them) going to realize that gas is a finite resource?
I think you're being tremendously obtuse, and haven't read a damn thing I wrote. You play the role of the character by enacting his/her actions, and "playing" their "role" as part of the story. Whether or not you have free will is irrelevant to the question of whether you're playing a role, just as an actor has no choice in what their character must do. As I said, the previous poster's (and apparently, your) definition of the word "roleplaying" is extraordinarily narrow.
And, in any case, I was responding to the previous post (not yours), if you'd care to actually read the thread before whipping out your oh-so-biting nerd-sarcasm.
Regardless, those ten years of random deaths IS grinding. Meta-grinding - grinding for _actual_ experience - perhaps, but still grinding. A 10 year learning curve for the game mechanic to become facile, and to most, "fun," is absurd to anyone but (as the parent said) the heavily obsessive.
I think this D&D definition of "roleplaying" is really limited.
The word means "to play a role." It's just another form of acting. And you don't call dramatic actors "not actors" because there's a script. Likewise, improv actors are not "real" or "better" actors because they do improv. Is an actor no longer acting if he is performing a monologue
Likewise, why should the existence of a "scripted monologue" in JRPGs or the existence of a "script" in Western RPGs prevent the player from "playing" the "role" of the character in the game? Really, it seems like you're using the word as a vehicle for multiplayer elitism.
In his (and my) defense, "pushing the envelope" is in the hand of the mailer.
JRPGs and Western RPGs are not the same games, and they're largely incomparable. Sure, they both have characters, levels, advancement, and worlds. But the similarities really end there. Contrary to what TFA does, lumping the two together in an attempt to produce a "grand theory of RPG design" is not really productive. They're different games for different people, and trying to claim one genre is better than the other is just childish and annoying. You might as well try to claim that science fiction is better than fantasy.
Sure, you're not having traditional "grinding" behavior in the game, but you are grinding the game.
Six ascensions in a row? Yikes. For all outward appearances, you're grinding NetHack in real life for bragging rights. I mean, I guess for you that might be fun, but I guarantee your experience is not the norm. NetHack, to 95% of the people who play it, is a cruel, exacting master. Most people don't want hyper-realism in a game, they want what they can't get in life: realism plus some degree of player control in failure. NetHack provides exactly the opposite - a reality in which the consequences for failure are always "maimed, crippled, or killed," and failure is, oftentimes, not at all under the player's control.
I think the important thing to note here is that people are looking for higher challenges, not higher difficulty. (The way I'm using these words: challenge is on a relative scale, difficulty is absolute.) There are tons of difficult games out there (NetHack), but not so many challenging ones - ones that have dynamically adaptive difficulty. While this isn't a necessarily "dynamic example," I think one of the most successful takes on challenge has been the Metal Gear Solid series. A modern video game, but they pull their difficulty schematic from their old-school counterparts, such as Doom or Quake - four or five levels of difficulty. The difference being, in this case, that changes between difficulty levels are not simply "enemies do more damage," "less available medpacks," "more enemies," but distinct changes in AI intelligence, enemy capabilities, and consequences of failure (not just "death"). Thus, the game requires four or five different methods of play to achieve success in each level of difficulty.
I find that the games I'm most interested in are the ones that have more enriched worlds. Not graphics, necessarily, not character ability or growth, but a varied, interesting, and realistic response to actions in the game. It's like table-top RPGs - if your DM sucks, and can't give you realistic responses to your actions (either being too nice, or too harsh), the game won't be fun. When your DM doesn't suck, the game is engaging because the world is just as alive as you are.
I'm not sure that no-infrastructure internet is possible in a heavily-bureaucratized, corporate-dominated country like this.
Unless you're talking about just the "unreliable" infrastructure part. In which case it's still impossible in a heavily-bureaucratized, corporate-dominated country like this.
It's unclear whether self-replicating "nanobots" are even possible to engineer, let alone possible to engineer in the next 50 years. We barely have MEMS, let alone NEMS, and as far as I know, virtually all of those MEMS systems are fabricated top-down (using focused ion beam milling and other such high-energy laboratory devices) not bottom-up. Self-replication is another thing entirely.
I understand that NASA is founded on "long-view" principles, but seriously, sometimes we need to understand the current status of the research and weed out what is reasonable and what is (unfortunately) still science fiction.
Go back to the 90s. Netscape is dead, so is Novell.
Saying that the browser should have been stripped ten years ago is ignoring the problem with the EC's decision. Microsoft did precisely what it could do, 3 months before a launch, and the EC decided it wasn't enough. Seriously, they're trying to blame Microsoft for their own crappy reasoning.
Bundling, in the era of the internet, means absolutely nothing for monopoly. IE, for a number of people, is just a means to get a different browser.
Also, your opinion is not humble. It is brazen, fueled by hatred, and logically flawed. IMO, you should stop saying IMHO.
Before we get too caught up in the traditional WINDOWS SUX MAC SUX shouting match, let us also not forget that their market share means malware writers code primarily to attack Windows machines. Seriously, how do you "get rid" of the malware problem in an OS? There are always exploits, even in the most airtight code - programmers are not machines, and they can't catch everything.
Also, security updates exist. They may suck, they may be too little too late, but you can't honestly say that Microsoft makes no effort whatsoever to make their OS more secure.
I still say Pescatore's analogy is idiotic because it presumes monopoly. Really, this is what's going on: "You have a rotten-egg smell in your water. The water company says they'll fix it for free, but an outside contractor says they'll fix it for $50. Do you trust the water company, who put the smell there in the first place, or trust the outside contractor?" It's a very different question.
Oh, give me a break. Journalists do NOT spend their time scouring scientific journals looking for the next new science sensation. If they did, the media might not suck as much as it does. They have to be pointed in the right direction, and they're always pointed by scientists. And if not by scientists, then by the PR departments of the particular university or industrial entity that the research comes from.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I'm sick of walking into stores and not being able to just look for a thing without being asked "Is there something I can help you with, sir?" The worst is RadioShack - I seriously don't go there anymore because spending two minutes comparing one device or cable against another must be seen by the employees as a sign of incompetence, and they MUST help you with your problem because only THEY, with their great RADIOSHACK training have the answer.
Because you first get the technology to work with whatever chemicals you can.
Then you find environmentally-safe alternatives.
Ten times less than the cost of silicon. The article says it in the headline.
And you do know what "ten times less" means, since you remarked that it should have read "one tenth as much"
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for proper grammar, but this one isn't a real serious infraction. What the speaker means is incredibly easy to derive.
The real question is "how plentiful is ANYTHING relative to silicon?"
The answer: really, really, goddamned scarce, unless you're oxygen.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/tables/elabund.html
What they're announcing is that in the lab, they HAVE produced solar cells in which the raw materials for the process cost 10x less than silicon. They've already proven it. They aren't addressing economic viability, if they were, it would be a company's press release.
You're tired of researchers saying these things that may never work in the consumer market. The reason they keep saying these things is because it's their fucking job, you twit.
Yeah. Unfortunately there's a lot of research going on with Cadmium (and Selenium, a slightly less toxic metal), since some of the first nanotechnological research in light absorption and emission (CdSe quantum dots) was done with them. I mean, you could try to make a case for solar cells based on Cd (it's been used in batteries, as well), but the cost of making damn sure that it doesn't leach out into the soil or groundwater, or the environmental cost of not making sure, limits the cost-effectiveness of the technology in the extreme.
I'm still holding out on the organic photovoltaics. Processing polymers is a snap, the question is just if they can get efficiencies into the double digits.
Nothing. It was a question of what being good at math or english has to do with people's opinions and/or logic on whether he was right or wrong.
Though I think our author is guilty of perhaps the same faults that the Tennessee DA falls prey to in the pursuit of this case. The Tennessee DA _really_ doesn't like child porn, and so prosecutes anything and everything resembling it.
Mr. Haselton _really_ likes math, or math people (or _really_ hates english, or english people - I'm making some assumptions here) and so attempts to irrefutably prove that predilections towards math make one's opinions "more correct."
Big surprise that his results were inconclusive.
Seems like everyone's up in arms about the car costing 2.1 million dollars, or the engineering being used to solve problems that are pointless to solve.
I'm just pissed that the world is touting this car as the "greatest car ever made" - and it has sub-Hummer fuel efficiency (~7 city/11 hwy). I don't give a damn about emissions handling if the thing is going to eat gas like Takeru Kobayashi eats hot dogs. Even worse, the article doesn't even MENTION the thing's fuel efficiency. When are all these rich bastards and the people who worship/want to be them (as well as the assholes wasting their degrees in mechanical engineering designing stupid shit for them) going to realize that gas is a finite resource?
I think you're being tremendously obtuse, and haven't read a damn thing I wrote. You play the role of the character by enacting his/her actions, and "playing" their "role" as part of the story. Whether or not you have free will is irrelevant to the question of whether you're playing a role, just as an actor has no choice in what their character must do. As I said, the previous poster's (and apparently, your) definition of the word "roleplaying" is extraordinarily narrow.
And, in any case, I was responding to the previous post (not yours), if you'd care to actually read the thread before whipping out your oh-so-biting nerd-sarcasm.
Regardless, those ten years of random deaths IS grinding. Meta-grinding - grinding for _actual_ experience - perhaps, but still grinding. A 10 year learning curve for the game mechanic to become facile, and to most, "fun," is absurd to anyone but (as the parent said) the heavily obsessive.
I think this D&D definition of "roleplaying" is really limited.
The word means "to play a role." It's just another form of acting. And you don't call dramatic actors "not actors" because there's a script. Likewise, improv actors are not "real" or "better" actors because they do improv. Is an actor no longer acting if he is performing a monologue
Likewise, why should the existence of a "scripted monologue" in JRPGs or the existence of a "script" in Western RPGs prevent the player from "playing" the "role" of the character in the game? Really, it seems like you're using the word as a vehicle for multiplayer elitism.
In his (and my) defense, "pushing the envelope" is in the hand of the mailer.
JRPGs and Western RPGs are not the same games, and they're largely incomparable. Sure, they both have characters, levels, advancement, and worlds. But the similarities really end there. Contrary to what TFA does, lumping the two together in an attempt to produce a "grand theory of RPG design" is not really productive. They're different games for different people, and trying to claim one genre is better than the other is just childish and annoying. You might as well try to claim that science fiction is better than fantasy.
Which is why there's such polarization over WoW. It's Facebook/MySpace with levels.
Sure, you're not having traditional "grinding" behavior in the game, but you are grinding the game.
Six ascensions in a row? Yikes. For all outward appearances, you're grinding NetHack in real life for bragging rights. I mean, I guess for you that might be fun, but I guarantee your experience is not the norm. NetHack, to 95% of the people who play it, is a cruel, exacting master. Most people don't want hyper-realism in a game, they want what they can't get in life: realism plus some degree of player control in failure. NetHack provides exactly the opposite - a reality in which the consequences for failure are always "maimed, crippled, or killed," and failure is, oftentimes, not at all under the player's control.
I think the important thing to note here is that people are looking for higher challenges, not higher difficulty. (The way I'm using these words: challenge is on a relative scale, difficulty is absolute.) There are tons of difficult games out there (NetHack), but not so many challenging ones - ones that have dynamically adaptive difficulty. While this isn't a necessarily "dynamic example," I think one of the most successful takes on challenge has been the Metal Gear Solid series. A modern video game, but they pull their difficulty schematic from their old-school counterparts, such as Doom or Quake - four or five levels of difficulty. The difference being, in this case, that changes between difficulty levels are not simply "enemies do more damage," "less available medpacks," "more enemies," but distinct changes in AI intelligence, enemy capabilities, and consequences of failure (not just "death"). Thus, the game requires four or five different methods of play to achieve success in each level of difficulty.
I find that the games I'm most interested in are the ones that have more enriched worlds. Not graphics, necessarily, not character ability or growth, but a varied, interesting, and realistic response to actions in the game. It's like table-top RPGs - if your DM sucks, and can't give you realistic responses to your actions (either being too nice, or too harsh), the game won't be fun. When your DM doesn't suck, the game is engaging because the world is just as alive as you are.
I'm not sure that no-infrastructure internet is possible in a heavily-bureaucratized, corporate-dominated country like this.
Unless you're talking about just the "unreliable" infrastructure part. In which case it's still impossible in a heavily-bureaucratized, corporate-dominated country like this.
It's unclear whether self-replicating "nanobots" are even possible to engineer, let alone possible to engineer in the next 50 years. We barely have MEMS, let alone NEMS, and as far as I know, virtually all of those MEMS systems are fabricated top-down (using focused ion beam milling and other such high-energy laboratory devices) not bottom-up. Self-replication is another thing entirely.
I understand that NASA is founded on "long-view" principles, but seriously, sometimes we need to understand the current status of the research and weed out what is reasonable and what is (unfortunately) still science fiction.
Malcolm Gladwell reads like gay flame fest.
(FTFY)
Try "The Tipping Point."
Screw n-cube. I want TIME-CUBE.
Go back to the 90s. Netscape is dead, so is Novell.
Saying that the browser should have been stripped ten years ago is ignoring the problem with the EC's decision. Microsoft did precisely what it could do, 3 months before a launch, and the EC decided it wasn't enough. Seriously, they're trying to blame Microsoft for their own crappy reasoning.
Bundling, in the era of the internet, means absolutely nothing for monopoly. IE, for a number of people, is just a means to get a different browser.
Also, your opinion is not humble. It is brazen, fueled by hatred, and logically flawed. IMO, you should stop saying IMHO.
Diruretics are urine. Caffeine is a diuretic, it makes you pee more.
I don't know the answer, but sulfur can't give you diarrhea if it's a diuretic, it'd have to be a laxative.
Let me know when you publish your no-patch absolute-secure OS.
Before we get too caught up in the traditional WINDOWS SUX MAC SUX shouting match, let us also not forget that their market share means malware writers code primarily to attack Windows machines. Seriously, how do you "get rid" of the malware problem in an OS? There are always exploits, even in the most airtight code - programmers are not machines, and they can't catch everything.
Also, security updates exist. They may suck, they may be too little too late, but you can't honestly say that Microsoft makes no effort whatsoever to make their OS more secure.
I still say Pescatore's analogy is idiotic because it presumes monopoly. Really, this is what's going on: "You have a rotten-egg smell in your water. The water company says they'll fix it for free, but an outside contractor says they'll fix it for $50. Do you trust the water company, who put the smell there in the first place, or trust the outside contractor?" It's a very different question.
... It IS a casual gamer box. It was designed, marketed, and sold on that premise.
Oh, give me a break. Journalists do NOT spend their time scouring scientific journals looking for the next new science sensation. If they did, the media might not suck as much as it does. They have to be pointed in the right direction, and they're always pointed by scientists. And if not by scientists, then by the PR departments of the particular university or industrial entity that the research comes from.