A cut scene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has little or no control, often breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot, present character development, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue and clues. Cut scenes can either be animated or use live action footage.
[...] Cut scenes are sometimes also referred to by other terms such as cinematics or in game movies. Cut scenes that are streamed from a video file are sometimes also referred to as full motion video or FMV.
I also hear there's another movie called "Wh*res of Warcraft" if that's more what you're looking for. More like a naked blood elf chick dancing on a letterbox and less like an epic world in conflict though.
I think that's kinda the point - that it's something that would be hard to detect compared to traditional radio, for the same reason that laser speed traps are harder to detect than radar speed traps. This would be a very brief flash, presumably fairly directional, that would only be detectable by someone who was explicitly looking for it.
Serious answer - I've had a long-time scheme to build an electric go-kart track using basically this idea (stationary power supply, with pickups to get the power to the karts). I was more imagining a high ceiling with a bumper-car style electrified mesh on it, though. For full sized track racing it doesn't make much sense but for an indoor kart track it's a perfect fit. You can dial your karts' speed settings individually for the drivers (hence don't need to have more than 2 different ranks of kart, rather than the 3-4 that most places have), you don't need to worry about ventilation so much, no ongoing fuel costs, no expensive engine maintenance, easy remote activation of 'limp home' mode for yellow flags.
Oh, I know that if she'd been more responsible (or marginally luckier) she probably would have been alive today. Personally I have used MDMA before but only through a 'reputable' source, who had a long track record with my friends - the e community seems a lot more 'friend of a friend' and a lot less 'dealer pushing onto vulnerable people' than other drug communities but I digress... If I were ever to wish to take drugs again I would at least use a test kit, or at best just make the stuff myself.
The fact is, if the legalization crowd keeps coming out saying nothing more than, "we should end the war on drugs because it's bad," they will not succeed for a long time. As a political reality, they will need to satisfy to at least a moderate degree the concerns of the average American. This is called compromise. You want to do drugs, most people want to avoid dealing with crackheads, crackbabies, etc. If you can find a way to arrange things so most people are satisfied, then you can probably get what you want. Otherwise you won't, at least not for a long time, because again most Americans are opposed to drug legalization.
Thanks for clarifying - it wasn't until I posted my response that I saw about 50 replies saying essentially the same thing, so at least I'm not alone.:P I assume the core of your point is what I've quoted?
If so, the "concerns of the average American" can be split into two halves. The first half relates to the personal and societal impact that drug users have on them. As most posts here point out, a large proportion of this impact is due to the prohibition of the drugs rather than the drugs themselves. The second half relates to the Puritan view that 'they shouldn't be allowed to do that' and that 'for their own good', other people should be restricted to activities approved by the person in question. This second half tends to be dismissed out of hand by libertarians, and most slashdotters lean that way from what I've seen.
So basically it boils down to an ideological question of whether individuals, or society as a whole, have the right to dictate to other individuals what they may or may not do. Or, to put it another way, if I want to drink bleach, what right do you have to stop me?
Sadly, while almost everyone finds some aspect of our laws frustrating, we're all more than happy to vote for laws to stop other people from doing stuff we don't like, and we're all even happier to inform ourselves purely from schlock television. So yes, while ideologically I still hold that legalisation and regulation is the best and healthiest path for humanity as a whole, I concur that politically, that's not going to happen without the foundation of a new country.
Black market meth is generally synthesised from pseudoephedrine which is in turn refined from cough medicines like Tylenol (as you'd probably know if you've watched Terminator 3:) Inconveniently if you happen to want to make a batch of meth, the police are well aware of this fact and require apothecaries to report any large sales of pseudoephedrine-containing medicines.
Given that the cheapest price I can find online is US $7 for 8 fl. oz. and you need quite a lot* to manufacture a small amount of the drug, I'm pretty sure it's going to cost a lot more to do it yourself than just buy it. Sort of like the way very few people run illegal moonshine stills - the easy, legal availability of the product, coupled with the illegality and pain-in-the-ass factor of doing it yourself, means using the legal product is a much more attractive option. And it's a lot, LOT more effort to make meth than it is to make moonshine.
* (I'm not sure how much, because I've never made meth and don't really want to research it here at work for obvious reasons, but I'd guess at least ten bottles' worth, given that the amount per dose is single-digit milligrams.)
You just described India - the most capitalist nation on earth - and still one of the poorest.
Sorry, but India's current lack of personal wealth is more attributable to their status as a British colony, and after that to their incredible population explosion, than to their economic structure.
Compare India now to India 10 years ago, and make the same comparison with the USA. Scared yet? Think what India and China are going to be in 20 years time in comparison to the States.
Sadly, in sports the reason for a positive test doesn't seem to matter. I remember at least one case where a cyclist in the Tour de France or something was handed a bottle of caffeinated water by an anonymous track marshal, finished first, and was stripped of her title due to the caffeine. I doubt they'd be more forgiving of cocaine.
Is street drinking legal where you live? Where I live, you can get anything from a stern order to pour your drink out to a hefty on-the-spot fine, depending on how sober and polite you are to the police officer.
I will tell you why I am against legalization of drugs (although this is an unpopular stance on slashdot):
I will tell you why I am for legalization of drugs, and hopefully you will see that my reasons are exactly the same as yours:
Because when I have crackheads walking down the street all the time to the house on the corner, I want to be able to call the police and have them be able to do something about it.
Because if crack were legal, crackheads wouldn't walk to that house, they'd drop into a chemist and pay $24.95 for a clean, measured dose. They wouldn't have to deal with dealers price gouging them once they get hooked, so they wouldn't have to steal your bigscreen TV to pay for their next hit. If they get wired and screw up in public, then arrest them for their behaviour. If they don't cause any public nuisance then why is it any of your damn business what they do?
When my neighbor's meth lab burns his house to the ground, I want him to go away, not build a new, better one.
Why would your neighbour bother to run a meth lab if he can buy some cheaply and legally? I don't see him running an illegal still in his basement.
These are not made up issues. Drugs suck. They cause sucky things in society. And a lot of people, probably the majority, feel this way.
These are not made up issues, but they are caused by prohibition, not by the drugs themselves.
The only reason that legalisation ISN'T good is that people who get addicted would not have so much pressure to quit. I say that is their personal choice and they should take personal responsibility.
Annoyingly, this is often implicated in MDMA deaths. In fact I don't think I've read a highly publicised case of "ecstasy death" that didn't resolve to either hyperhydration or the pill actually containing something completely fucking different (the most recent one in Australia was a girl who bought a pill that she thought was MDMA and turned out to be a combination of GBH and Ketamine... and yet it was widely reported as "teen ecstasy death").
Gnome has been in for as long as I've used it, Xfce doesn't have any samba integration though, which will probably eventually drive me from xubuntu back to vanilla ubuntu (or something else just to make me look all "lawl im so pro lineux" and less "I use Ubuntu because I cbf configuring anything else".:P )
Sorry, I was merely pointing out that programs to control lion-shaped meatpuppets in the act of catching yummy meatgazelles already exist and run on the wetware of many lions. I missed the bit that non-consciousness is an actual requirement for the robolion.
I guess it never occurred to me, though, that consciousness could be a tool usable to help create such a program, rather than being an additional requirement of said program. It's an interesting thought, anyway, that it might actually be _easier_ to build a conscious artificial entity to perform a particular task than it would be to design a non-conscious algorithm to perform the same task.
But could you write such a program on wetware, where the speed is much less? I dob't believe that there were silicon-based life forms a million years ago.
Evidently, yes you could. Unless you claim that something magical and irreproducable in silicon is happening inside that wetware. Lions exist, that's a fact.
If the islanders had access to aluminium rivet construction techniques, beefy radial engines, the scientific method, and a supply of avgas, their approach might well have worked.
If you can't build a duck, then build something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and does everything else like a duck. The question of whether or not it actually IS a duck becomes somewhat academic.
Slashdot Mirror
A cut scene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has little or no control, often breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot, present character development, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue and clues. Cut scenes can either be animated or use live action footage.
[...]
Cut scenes are sometimes also referred to by other terms such as cinematics or in game movies. Cut scenes that are streamed from a video file are sometimes also referred to as full motion video or FMV.
So... yeah.
Yeah, if only they were working on a WoW movie...
I also hear there's another movie called "Wh*res of Warcraft" if that's more what you're looking for. More like a naked blood elf chick dancing on a letterbox and less like an epic world in conflict though.
I think that's kinda the point - that it's something that would be hard to detect compared to traditional radio, for the same reason that laser speed traps are harder to detect than radar speed traps. This would be a very brief flash, presumably fairly directional, that would only be detectable by someone who was explicitly looking for it.
Serious answer - I've had a long-time scheme to build an electric go-kart track using basically this idea (stationary power supply, with pickups to get the power to the karts). I was more imagining a high ceiling with a bumper-car style electrified mesh on it, though. For full sized track racing it doesn't make much sense but for an indoor kart track it's a perfect fit. You can dial your karts' speed settings individually for the drivers (hence don't need to have more than 2 different ranks of kart, rather than the 3-4 that most places have), you don't need to worry about ventilation so much, no ongoing fuel costs, no expensive engine maintenance, easy remote activation of 'limp home' mode for yellow flags.
Damn, I should get onto that sometime.
Oh, I know that if she'd been more responsible (or marginally luckier) she probably would have been alive today. Personally I have used MDMA before but only through a 'reputable' source, who had a long track record with my friends - the e community seems a lot more 'friend of a friend' and a lot less 'dealer pushing onto vulnerable people' than other drug communities but I digress... If I were ever to wish to take drugs again I would at least use a test kit, or at best just make the stuff myself.
The fact is, if the legalization crowd keeps coming out saying nothing more than, "we should end the war on drugs because it's bad," they will not succeed for a long time. As a political reality, they will need to satisfy to at least a moderate degree the concerns of the average American. This is called compromise. You want to do drugs, most people want to avoid dealing with crackheads, crackbabies, etc. If you can find a way to arrange things so most people are satisfied, then you can probably get what you want. Otherwise you won't, at least not for a long time, because again most Americans are opposed to drug legalization.
Thanks for clarifying - it wasn't until I posted my response that I saw about 50 replies saying essentially the same thing, so at least I'm not alone. :P I assume the core of your point is what I've quoted?
If so, the "concerns of the average American" can be split into two halves. The first half relates to the personal and societal impact that drug users have on them. As most posts here point out, a large proportion of this impact is due to the prohibition of the drugs rather than the drugs themselves. The second half relates to the Puritan view that 'they shouldn't be allowed to do that' and that 'for their own good', other people should be restricted to activities approved by the person in question. This second half tends to be dismissed out of hand by libertarians, and most slashdotters lean that way from what I've seen.
So basically it boils down to an ideological question of whether individuals, or society as a whole, have the right to dictate to other individuals what they may or may not do. Or, to put it another way, if I want to drink bleach, what right do you have to stop me?
Sadly, while almost everyone finds some aspect of our laws frustrating, we're all more than happy to vote for laws to stop other people from doing stuff we don't like, and we're all even happier to inform ourselves purely from schlock television. So yes, while ideologically I still hold that legalisation and regulation is the best and healthiest path for humanity as a whole, I concur that politically, that's not going to happen without the foundation of a new country.
Black market meth is generally synthesised from pseudoephedrine which is in turn refined from cough medicines like Tylenol (as you'd probably know if you've watched Terminator 3 :) Inconveniently if you happen to want to make a batch of meth, the police are well aware of this fact and require apothecaries to report any large sales of pseudoephedrine-containing medicines.
Given that the cheapest price I can find online is US $7 for 8 fl. oz. and you need quite a lot* to manufacture a small amount of the drug, I'm pretty sure it's going to cost a lot more to do it yourself than just buy it. Sort of like the way very few people run illegal moonshine stills - the easy, legal availability of the product, coupled with the illegality and pain-in-the-ass factor of doing it yourself, means using the legal product is a much more attractive option. And it's a lot, LOT more effort to make meth than it is to make moonshine.
* (I'm not sure how much, because I've never made meth and don't really want to research it here at work for obvious reasons, but I'd guess at least ten bottles' worth, given that the amount per dose is single-digit milligrams.)
You just described India - the most capitalist nation on earth - and still one of the poorest.
Sorry, but India's current lack of personal wealth is more attributable to their status as a British colony, and after that to their incredible population explosion, than to their economic structure.
Compare India now to India 10 years ago, and make the same comparison with the USA. Scared yet? Think what India and China are going to be in 20 years time in comparison to the States.
And that's called Quantum Mechanics.
I now feel disturbingly compelled to make an adventure game wherein you must rescue the heroin.
I though 'New Coke' was a smokescreen to cover their switch from cane sugar to HFCS?
Red Bull is a homeopathic stimulant!
You, sir, made me "laugh out loud". An internets to you!
Sadly, in sports the reason for a positive test doesn't seem to matter. I remember at least one case where a cyclist in the Tour de France or something was handed a bottle of caffeinated water by an anonymous track marshal, finished first, and was stripped of her title due to the caffeine. I doubt they'd be more forgiving of cocaine.
Is street drinking legal where you live? Where I live, you can get anything from a stern order to pour your drink out to a hefty on-the-spot fine, depending on how sober and polite you are to the police officer.
I will tell you why I am against legalization of drugs (although this is an unpopular stance on slashdot):
I will tell you why I am for legalization of drugs, and hopefully you will see that my reasons are exactly the same as yours:
Because when I have crackheads walking down the street all the time to the house on the corner, I want to be able to call the police and have them be able to do something about it.
Because if crack were legal, crackheads wouldn't walk to that house, they'd drop into a chemist and pay $24.95 for a clean, measured dose. They wouldn't have to deal with dealers price gouging them once they get hooked, so they wouldn't have to steal your bigscreen TV to pay for their next hit. If they get wired and screw up in public, then arrest them for their behaviour. If they don't cause any public nuisance then why is it any of your damn business what they do?
When my neighbor's meth lab burns his house to the ground, I want him to go away, not build a new, better one.
Why would your neighbour bother to run a meth lab if he can buy some cheaply and legally? I don't see him running an illegal still in his basement.
These are not made up issues. Drugs suck. They cause sucky things in society. And a lot of people, probably the majority, feel this way.
These are not made up issues, but they are caused by prohibition, not by the drugs themselves.
The only reason that legalisation ISN'T good is that people who get addicted would not have so much pressure to quit. I say that is their personal choice and they should take personal responsibility.
Hey man, chill! I don't want no trouble with no reefer addicts!
Annoyingly, this is often implicated in MDMA deaths. In fact I don't think I've read a highly publicised case of "ecstasy death" that didn't resolve to either hyperhydration or the pill actually containing something completely fucking different (the most recent one in Australia was a girl who bought a pill that she thought was MDMA and turned out to be a combination of GBH and Ketamine... and yet it was widely reported as "teen ecstasy death").
Gnome has been in for as long as I've used it, Xfce doesn't have any samba integration though, which will probably eventually drive me from xubuntu back to vanilla ubuntu (or something else just to make me look all "lawl im so pro lineux" and less "I use Ubuntu because I cbf configuring anything else". :P )
Thankyou for edumacating me a movie, good sir.
Sorry, I was merely pointing out that programs to control lion-shaped meatpuppets in the act of catching yummy meatgazelles already exist and run on the wetware of many lions. I missed the bit that non-consciousness is an actual requirement for the robolion.
I guess it never occurred to me, though, that consciousness could be a tool usable to help create such a program, rather than being an additional requirement of said program. It's an interesting thought, anyway, that it might actually be _easier_ to build a conscious artificial entity to perform a particular task than it would be to design a non-conscious algorithm to perform the same task.
What's wrong with Merlot? I mean, I prefer Cab. Sav. personally but Merlot isn't bad once in a while...
Would you like some Cheese with your Wine? ;)
But could you write such a program on wetware, where the speed is much less? I dob't believe that there were silicon-based life forms a million years ago.
Evidently, yes you could. Unless you claim that something magical and irreproducable in silicon is happening inside that wetware. Lions exist, that's a fact.
If the islanders had access to aluminium rivet construction techniques, beefy radial engines, the scientific method, and a supply of avgas, their approach might well have worked.
If you can't build a duck, then build something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and does everything else like a duck. The question of whether or not it actually IS a duck becomes somewhat academic.
At least, when judgement day comes, we'll be able to make the robots run around in circles by twiddling a laser pointer while we make our escape.