A friend of mine, who ironically is a tanker in the military fully believes that robotech battlemechs will one day be a reality. Surprisingly, he does not realize that one of the advantages that a tank has is a low profile. Granted, it does not have legs to walk around with, so it a little less mobile. However, if you are dealing with insurgents who have RPG's, or even other tanks, having a high profile is BAD. Even if you had armor that was strong enough to withstand multiple hits, the sheer force of a hit would cause a mech to topple, or at the very least lose balance.
While large mechs would be cool, they would be all to prone to getting blown up. Just giant walking targets. Now, smaller mechs, about the size of an Abrams would be mobile, and act as armor for troops would be more practical than building size robots - but Giant Mechs? Not likely. (All the above is assuming you over come all the other physical limits such as structural stress etc...)
Good point. I would guess that everyone with one feels that way. Still, I got really tired of sleeping in a compact car after long drives to go whitewater kayaking. I got annoyed after I tore the entire exhaust system (except the manifold) from my compact while trying to navigate a logging road (this does not count the times I got stuck).
I also found I could not carry 9 kayaks on/in a compact car.
So, I could go back to a fuel efficent compact for my weekend trips, but it would be fairly unpleasant.
I finished the game on hard on Friday, here is my take.
Pros: - Graphics and facial animations. Wow. I do mean WOW. (I would have liked more interactions with the characters in terms of plot and what the hell is going on... These moments were great.)
- Level design - the belivability of the world is unmatched. City 17 looks and feels like a real place.
- New weapons, the gravity gun.
- (Other "new" weapon near endgame, I won't mention the details of it here so as not to be a spoiler, but those of you have used it know!) That part was too fun for words.
Cons:
- The AI did not seem as good as in HL 1, rather, it does not seem to have the same level of self preservation.
- You should be able to give your team the order "STAY HERE AND DON'T FUCKING MOVE!"
- The levels while awesome, keep you confined to a narrow tunnel. There is no exploring a-la Far Cry. I would have liked to have seen this on the buggy level.
- Lack of plot. The plot is very thin, and comes in bits. I really wanted to know what was going on, and while you can piece together an idea from the clues Valve gives you, much is left unsaid and really needs the gaps filled in.
- The game is too damn short. It is about 1/3 as long as the first one.
BTW/OT: A lot fewer people need SUVs than think they need them. SUVs are responsible for most highway deaths in the Whistler area and the Cheakamus and Nahatalach are both very 2WD accessible (for example).
Very true - when I lived in the Okanagan skiing at Apex and Silver Star, almost universally the vehicles that were rolled or in ditches were 4X4 capable. People don't seem to realize that 4X4 helps you go it does not help you stop. This is why I drive in 2WD until I get stuck, then turn on 4WD.
Well, occasional is how you look at it I guess! When the water is up (kayaking season) I use it for that every weekend - when it is not whitewater season, I use it only occasionally off road.
Given that I try to do this stuff every weekend, and that I am a Whitewater Kayak instructor, yes, I do need to own one of these vehicles. During the last few summers I had need for carrying a large number of kayaks and 4X4 every weekend for 4 months straight. Granted, when I first started I used a beat up 1988 Hyundai, but now that I do harder rivers, I need to get into tighter places. It costs too much to rent an SUV every weekend. The total purchase cost of my truck was $8000 CDN.
Also, when out on trips I can sleep in the truck, which is a huge bonus for comfort and time savings.
Of course they are. Electric cars may be more efficient and cheaper to build, but you have to plug them in and wait. That's not acceptable, if only once every year when your friend/family member needs a ride.
I disagree - I would happily have one. First, it looks wicked! And second, by far the majority of my driving is less than 50 km / day on weekdays. There would be no problem using it as a commuting vehicle for me.
What I think really needs to change, is in the insurance arena. I own a 1989 Toyota 4runner. Reliable, but hellish on gas. I own this vehicle, because there are occasions when I *NEED* the carrying capacity and 4WD (hiking, whitewater kayaking etc). Yes, I own a SUV, and I am one of the few with a legitimate use for it.
Having said this, I don't need an SUV to commute to work. If it were possible for me to switch my plates to a more fuel efficent car - without taking out a separate policy - and only use my SUV when I needed it, I would be saving myself money, and doing a great deal for the environment. As it is, here in BC, if you have two vehicles, you have two insurance policies, there is no sharing allowed.
Get the ones that are *NOT* made in China. They cost more, but they last longer, are brighter and have a much nicer colour quality.
There are different variants of the ESB's, both good and bad.
Then again, I love my Petzel LED headlamp. I have both a zoom and a Tika. Granted, the Zoom gives more light than the Tika, but the Tika lasts for 150 HOURS on 2 AAA batteries, that is nothing to scoff at. It is small, and works as a great backup and reading light. In fact, I had it stashed in a pocket on a recent hiking trip, and we got back 4 hours late, everyone was really glad I had it as no one else had a source of light. (I was prepared, they were not.)
So, maybe I am more tolerant of the other mediums, I don't know. Personally I am happy with ESB's in my kitchen and my Petzel Tika.
I encounter this bug, however, I ONLY encounter it if I set my graphics to be HIGHER than the reccomended amount for my system. Then this becomes immediately apparent. If, however, I leave the settings at the reccomended level, then this problem does not occur, and the level loading times are quite short.
Pay close attention to what Valve has suggested for your video card, and follow it. If you don't like it, well, buy a better card and or machine. Granted, I have a medium spec machine, and the game runs very well ( the only issue being occasional hard lockups ).
The instant I set some of my settings for video to be higher than reccomended... Stuttering bug.
FYI, my specs:
Athlon 2500 @ 3200 on an Asus k7n8x-deluxe 512 MB ram ATI all in wonder 9800 Pro 128MB 250 GB HDD
The game runs well at a combination of high and medium settings as reccomended by valve.
If you are talking about screenshots - yes, Doom 3 looks better. However, given that I am playing the game at around 100 fps I can tell you that the characters in Half Life look better than those in Doom 3. Why? They move properly, and they actually seem to display emotion. In fact, right at the beginning in the train when you go up to the others in the train the people look disturbingly real. Their eyes follow you, their whole faces change, you can SEE that they are miserable, and you just know by how they look that something is wrong.
In Doom 3, everyone looked great - like a marble statue compared with the models in Half Life 2.
The only reason I am typing this is because during the first 30 min my system locked while playing - I had to hard reset. No big deal (I am one of those dangerous overclockers;)
But *WOW* This game has already destroyed Doom 3 in the FIRST HALF HOUR OF PLAY!
You will excuse me, I have uh, important uh, stuff to uh, go and do now...
I was going to buy the hard copy of Half Life 2 - however I just fired up steam. I don't care if it takes longer (which it probably won't) to get to play it. I am not giving you my money.
Especially after reading This article about Valve and Half Life 2. I now sympathize with Gabe and the delays the game had. I don't really fault him - people make mistakes.
Granted I understand Vivendi's side - but if a publisher only gets $7.00 from a retail game, you start to remind me of the RIAA Vivendi... Download here I come.
The trouble is alot of people want that bigger house or flashy car without thinking about how exactly there going to pay it off.
I'd rather have less (condo) and not have to worry about a huge mortgage/car payments. Gives you more time and freedom.
Agreed!
One of the things I do (and any slashdotter should consider as well) is I rent my house. I own it, and I live in it, but I have a basement suite, and a roomate upstairs. My mortgage and taxes on the house are paid for by my tennant and roomate. I just pay the cable bill, internet, and power bills. In fact, if it were not for those expenses, I would be turning a profit.
You should lower your debts - your *BAD* debts. That is, any debt you have where it is costing you money in interest is bad. Whereas, I have a mortgage, and that is debt - but I am making money above the mortgage, so I don't have any plans of paying it off soon (that would kill my ROI).
After you get your credit in order, it is important to understand the difference between good and bad debts, and go into good debt (leverage) and use it to make money. Either that or you can slave away to a corporation for years. (I would, in all honesty rather own the corp.)
If the item gets returned - you get the comission removed from your pay. Therefore, somedays you have negative pay.
Granted salespeople at Future Shop used to be much more aggressive, but then they were told to be. I no longer have a problem with comissioned sales people, and, if given the choice at a store such as Future Shop I will pick one. The reason is - better service. Generally the comissioned people try really hard to help because they want you to come back to them, and use them as your contact point. Some of them are pushy assholes, but I found that they did not last long - too many returns would eat them up.
This unfortunately is not surprising. One thing I have noticed about modern corporation customer relations is that when the customer is clearly going to be screwed, they always try to spin it as some sort of benefit. Comcast does it when they have their annual 20% rate hike.
I decided to learn more about sales, and since I was laid off from my Nix sysadmin job, I took a sales job at Future Shop, which is a division of Best Buy. Future Shop has commissioned sales people, and you do ok... Or you did... There was recently a 30% pay cut (actually larger, but I won't bother you with the math.) And they were trying to spin it as a benifit. It was amazing the amount of work that went into the internal marketing campaign to make it look as if this was a great thing. It is a good thing for the shareholders of Best Buy. Suffice it to say, after that change came down, and I felt I had learned enough about sales and dealing with people, I have gone back to Nix Admin work.
FYI - People at Future Shop with Dark Blue Shirts are on commission - people in Light Blue are not. (Some stores out east are not yet on this program.) If you are going to buy something from Future Shop, consider giving the business to the guys in the Dark Blue shirts, you don't pay any more for the item, but at least the employees get some of the profit, and not all to Best Buy.
... all the traffic this little incident has caused? SuicideGirls has now been slashdotted TWICE within a week:)
Well, given that slashdot is read by geeks hidden in dark caves gathering monitor tans... I suspect that their bandwith will be paid back by geeks subscribing to goth porn.
Coming from a background in Bash
on
Learning PHP 5
·
· Score: 1
I like this book, I picked it up the other week as my new job requires me to work with PHP. 90% of my prior work was all in bash with occasional touches of perl or C.
I don't understand why people are critical of this book. It is basic, yes, but it is targeted for beginners anyhow. Is it comprehensive? No, but then there are hardly any books that are on a given language.
Hell, even John Carmack bought the "Camel Book" when he needed to learn perl, and as he said, leigons of people would have laughed, or been shocked when he followed the examples in the book and first wrote "Hello, world!" in perl.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and this book is geared to be easy from the start. I certanly don't feel like starting PHP by picking up the cookbook first. Will I read it? Sure - but not until I have finished the beginner books.
I have been waiting for one of these to come along. As an avid Whitewater Kayaker, I always wanted a MP3 player that I could listen to when paddling. This seems like just the solution, however, I could not see from the picture how the earpieces were attached... It seemed like the band of the swimgoogles was holding them on? Not certain there...
For those out there who are paddlers like myself, I would only use it at places like surfing long beach Vancouver Island. Using it during a class IV+ run or something would be irresponsible IMO.
Anyone have any ideas of how to secure the headphones when you are dressed like this? and yes, I really do have Tux on my whitewater helmet... While kayaking in Washington state I got some really nasty comments from some people who lived around the Redmond area... Seems they did not like me "taking jobs" away from their area...
5) She, like other dogs, after adequate programming (RTFM in point #2 above;) performs well according to input givem from the user. Like any canine, with bad programming or inadequate data, she will not behave correctly. A canine that bluescreens is not a good dog.
6) She is not a cat.
In all seriousness though, get that book and train your dog. Yorkies or any other dog will not pee on your carpet if you train them appropriately. Note, some dogs may have medical reasons that cause inadvertant leakage, you may need to check with your vet about this.
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine, who ironically is a tanker in the military fully believes that robotech battlemechs will one day be a reality. Surprisingly, he does not realize that one of the advantages that a tank has is a low profile. Granted, it does not have legs to walk around with, so it a little less mobile. However, if you are dealing with insurgents who have RPG's, or even other tanks, having a high profile is BAD. Even if you had armor that was strong enough to withstand multiple hits, the sheer force of a hit would cause a mech to topple, or at the very least lose balance.
While large mechs would be cool, they would be all to prone to getting blown up. Just giant walking targets. Now, smaller mechs, about the size of an Abrams would be mobile, and act as armor for troops would be more practical than building size robots - but Giant Mechs? Not likely. (All the above is assuming you over come all the other physical limits such as structural stress etc...)
Mech wheelchairs are a good idea however.
You uhh... You just slashdotted cmdrtaco.net
Good point. I would guess that everyone with one feels that way. Still, I got really tired of sleeping in a compact car after long drives to go whitewater kayaking. I got annoyed after I tore the entire exhaust system (except the manifold) from my compact while trying to navigate a logging road (this does not count the times I got stuck).
I also found I could not carry 9 kayaks on/in a compact car.
So, I could go back to a fuel efficent compact for my weekend trips, but it would be fairly unpleasant.
15-17 hours on hard, probably less.
I finished the game on hard on Friday, here is my take.
Pros:
- Graphics and facial animations. Wow. I do mean WOW. (I would have liked more interactions with the characters in terms of plot and what the hell is going on... These moments were great.)
- Level design - the belivability of the world is unmatched. City 17 looks and feels like a real place.
- New weapons, the gravity gun.
- (Other "new" weapon near endgame, I won't mention the details of it here so as not to be a spoiler, but those of you have used it know!) That part was too fun for words.
Cons:
- The AI did not seem as good as in HL 1, rather, it does not seem to have the same level of self preservation.
- You should be able to give your team the order "STAY HERE AND DON'T FUCKING MOVE!"
- The levels while awesome, keep you confined to a narrow tunnel. There is no exploring a-la Far Cry. I would have liked to have seen this on the buggy level.
- Lack of plot. The plot is very thin, and comes in bits. I really wanted to know what was going on, and while you can piece together an idea from the clues Valve gives you, much is left unsaid and really needs the gaps filled in.
- The game is too damn short. It is about 1/3 as long as the first one.
My review:
9/10
A must play game.
BTW/OT: A lot fewer people need SUVs than think they need them. SUVs are responsible for most highway deaths in the Whistler area and the Cheakamus and Nahatalach are both very 2WD accessible (for example).
Very true - when I lived in the Okanagan skiing at Apex and Silver Star, almost universally the vehicles that were rolled or in ditches were 4X4 capable. People don't seem to realize that 4X4 helps you go it does not help you stop. This is why I drive in 2WD until I get stuck, then turn on 4WD.
Well, occasional is how you look at it I guess! When the water is up (kayaking season) I use it for that every weekend - when it is not whitewater season, I use it only occasionally off road.
See my reply above - I need an SUV more often than that on weekends.
Given that I try to do this stuff every weekend, and that I am a Whitewater Kayak instructor, yes, I do need to own one of these vehicles. During the last few summers I had need for carrying a large number of kayaks and 4X4 every weekend for 4 months straight. Granted, when I first started I used a beat up 1988 Hyundai, but now that I do harder rivers, I need to get into tighter places. It costs too much to rent an SUV every weekend. The total purchase cost of my truck was $8000 CDN.
Also, when out on trips I can sleep in the truck, which is a huge bonus for comfort and time savings.
Of course they are. Electric cars may be more efficient and cheaper to build, but you have to plug them in and wait. That's not acceptable, if only once every year when your friend/family member needs a ride.
I disagree - I would happily have one. First, it looks wicked! And second, by far the majority of my driving is less than 50 km / day on weekdays. There would be no problem using it as a commuting vehicle for me.
What I think really needs to change, is in the insurance arena. I own a 1989 Toyota 4runner. Reliable, but hellish on gas. I own this vehicle, because there are occasions when I *NEED* the carrying capacity and 4WD (hiking, whitewater kayaking etc). Yes, I own a SUV, and I am one of the few with a legitimate use for it.
Having said this, I don't need an SUV to commute to work. If it were possible for me to switch my plates to a more fuel efficent car - without taking out a separate policy - and only use my SUV when I needed it, I would be saving myself money, and doing a great deal for the environment. As it is, here in BC, if you have two vehicles, you have two insurance policies, there is no sharing allowed.
An electric car would be perfect for that.
Get the ones that are *NOT* made in China. They cost more, but they last longer, are brighter and have a much nicer colour quality.
There are different variants of the ESB's, both good and bad.
Then again, I love my Petzel LED headlamp. I have both a zoom and a Tika. Granted, the Zoom gives more light than the Tika, but the Tika lasts for 150 HOURS on 2 AAA batteries, that is nothing to scoff at. It is small, and works as a great backup and reading light. In fact, I had it stashed in a pocket on a recent hiking trip, and we got back 4 hours late, everyone was really glad I had it as no one else had a source of light. (I was prepared, they were not.)
So, maybe I am more tolerant of the other mediums, I don't know. Personally I am happy with ESB's in my kitchen and my Petzel Tika.
I encounter this bug, however, I ONLY encounter it if I set my graphics to be HIGHER than the reccomended amount for my system. Then this becomes immediately apparent. If, however, I leave the settings at the reccomended level, then this problem does not occur, and the level loading times are quite short.
Pay close attention to what Valve has suggested for your video card, and follow it. If you don't like it, well, buy a better card and or machine. Granted, I have a medium spec machine, and the game runs very well ( the only issue being occasional hard lockups ).
The instant I set some of my settings for video to be higher than reccomended... Stuttering bug.
FYI, my specs:
Athlon 2500 @ 3200 on an Asus k7n8x-deluxe
512 MB ram
ATI all in wonder 9800 Pro 128MB
250 GB HDD
The game runs well at a combination of high and medium settings as reccomended by valve.
So, now people with disabilities can shoot at animals and thereby give them disabilities?
If you are talking about screenshots - yes, Doom 3 looks better. However, given that I am playing the game at around 100 fps I can tell you that the characters in Half Life look better than those in Doom 3. Why? They move properly, and they actually seem to display emotion. In fact, right at the beginning in the train when you go up to the others in the train the people look disturbingly real. Their eyes follow you, their whole faces change, you can SEE that they are miserable, and you just know by how they look that something is wrong.
In Doom 3, everyone looked great - like a marble statue compared with the models in Half Life 2.
The only reason I am typing this is because during the first 30 min my system locked while playing - I had to hard reset. No big deal (I am one of those dangerous overclockers ;)
But *WOW* This game has already destroyed Doom 3 in the FIRST HALF HOUR OF PLAY!
You will excuse me, I have uh, important uh, stuff to uh, go and do now...
*starts steam again*
Hey - Vivendi!
I was going to buy the hard copy of Half Life 2 - however I just fired up steam. I don't care if it takes longer (which it probably won't) to get to play it. I am not giving you my money.
Especially after reading This article about Valve and Half Life 2. I now sympathize with Gabe and the delays the game had. I don't really fault him - people make mistakes.
Granted I understand Vivendi's side - but if a publisher only gets $7.00 from a retail game, you start to remind me of the RIAA Vivendi... Download here I come.
To quote George Broussard:
Fuck you.
The trouble is alot of people want that bigger house or flashy car without thinking about how exactly there going to pay it off.
I'd rather have less (condo) and not have to worry about a huge mortgage/car payments. Gives you more time and freedom.
Agreed!
One of the things I do (and any slashdotter should consider as well) is I rent my house. I own it, and I live in it, but I have a basement suite, and a roomate upstairs. My mortgage and taxes on the house are paid for by my tennant and roomate. I just pay the cable bill, internet, and power bills. In fact, if it were not for those expenses, I would be turning a profit.
You should lower your debts - your *BAD* debts. That is, any debt you have where it is costing you money in interest is bad. Whereas, I have a mortgage, and that is debt - but I am making money above the mortgage, so I don't have any plans of paying it off soon (that would kill my ROI).
After you get your credit in order, it is important to understand the difference between good and bad debts, and go into good debt (leverage) and use it to make money. Either that or you can slave away to a corporation for years. (I would, in all honesty rather own the corp.)
If the item gets returned - you get the comission removed from your pay. Therefore, somedays you have negative pay.
Granted salespeople at Future Shop used to be much more aggressive, but then they were told to be. I no longer have a problem with comissioned sales people, and, if given the choice at a store such as Future Shop I will pick one. The reason is - better service. Generally the comissioned people try really hard to help because they want you to come back to them, and use them as your contact point. Some of them are pushy assholes, but I found that they did not last long - too many returns would eat them up.
This unfortunately is not surprising. One thing I have noticed about modern corporation customer relations is that when the customer is clearly going to be screwed, they always try to spin it as some sort of benefit. Comcast does it when they have their annual 20% rate hike.
I decided to learn more about sales, and since I was laid off from my Nix sysadmin job, I took a sales job at Future Shop, which is a division of Best Buy. Future Shop has commissioned sales people, and you do ok... Or you did... There was recently a 30% pay cut (actually larger, but I won't bother you with the math.) And they were trying to spin it as a benifit. It was amazing the amount of work that went into the internal marketing campaign to make it look as if this was a great thing. It is a good thing for the shareholders of Best Buy. Suffice it to say, after that change came down, and I felt I had learned enough about sales and dealing with people, I have gone back to Nix Admin work.
FYI - People at Future Shop with Dark Blue Shirts are on commission - people in Light Blue are not. (Some stores out east are not yet on this program.) If you are going to buy something from Future Shop, consider giving the business to the guys in the Dark Blue shirts, you don't pay any more for the item, but at least the employees get some of the profit, and not all to Best Buy.
My eyes! The googles! They do nothing!!!
Well, given that slashdot is read by geeks hidden in dark caves gathering monitor tans... I suspect that their bandwith will be paid back by geeks subscribing to goth porn.
I like this book, I picked it up the other week as my new job requires me to work with PHP. 90% of my prior work was all in bash with occasional touches of perl or C.
I don't understand why people are critical of this book. It is basic, yes, but it is targeted for beginners anyhow. Is it comprehensive? No, but then there are hardly any books that are on a given language.
Hell, even John Carmack bought the "Camel Book" when he needed to learn perl, and as he said, leigons of people would have laughed, or been shocked when he followed the examples in the book and first wrote "Hello, world!" in perl.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and this book is geared to be easy from the start. I certanly don't feel like starting PHP by picking up the cookbook first. Will I read it? Sure - but not until I have finished the beginner books.
I have been waiting for one of these to come along. As an avid Whitewater Kayaker, I always wanted a MP3 player that I could listen to when paddling. This seems like just the solution, however, I could not see from the picture how the earpieces were attached ... It seemed like the band of the swimgoogles was holding them on? Not certain there...
For those out there who are paddlers like myself, I would only use it at places like surfing long beach Vancouver Island. Using it during a class IV+ run or something would be irresponsible IMO.
Anyone have any ideas of how to secure the headphones when you are dressed like this? and yes, I really do have Tux on my whitewater helmet... While kayaking in Washington state I got some really nasty comments from some people who lived around the Redmond area... Seems they did not like me "taking jobs" away from their area...
Here is a short summary of the man page for my dog.
;) performs well according to input givem from the user. Like any canine, with bad programming or inadequate data, she will not behave correctly. A canine that bluescreens is not a good dog.
I have a Yorkie-Mini Schnauzer cross, and she has the following features:
1) Incredibly cute. Daisy's Picture
2) Does not pee on the carpet. I strongly reccomend this book, an absolute must for humanely and effectively training your dog.
3) She triggers no cat allergies whatsoever.
4) She did not cost $3500.
5) She, like other dogs, after adequate programming (RTFM in point #2 above
6) She is not a cat.
In all seriousness though, get that book and train your dog. Yorkies or any other dog will not pee on your carpet if you train them appropriately. Note, some dogs may have medical reasons that cause inadvertant leakage, you may need to check with your vet about this.
However, you got the patents on the Rocket and the Airplane.*
Obscure Richard P. Feynman reference. Hopefully some on slashdot will get it.