But if they are able to improve engine efficiency and bring the cost to a reasonable level, the math may work out.
Regardless, this is why we do research, people. Tons of technologies have been discovered by accident or adapted from less promising research. There doesn't always have to be an instant benefit for research to be worthwhile.
Nowhere does anybody say that wood has to be the only material used. It doesn't have to be all one thing or the other. Also, it appears from the unfortunately sparse article that the steel only helps to keep the building from rocking excessively. It doesn't support the weight. A building like this would likely be a good bit cheaper than a similar steel building.
Will anything be built like this? Maybe not, but it's interesting anyway.
Simulations are nice and all, but it's a bit inaccurate to say it "survived a 7.5 magnitude quake" when it didn't actually.
You're just arguing semantics. The forces applied by these shake tables are close enough to the real thing to give us a good idea of what the building can survive. Yes, you can argue "it's not a real quake," but that's pointless. Are they supposed to wait for a real quake for their test?
Also, adding in 63 steel rods seems to defeat the purpose of calling it a "wooden building".
As others have said, they're just trying to provide evidence that wood is a viable building material for larger buildings.
Voluntary compliance works for most things because those things are understood by the public and pretty much universally believed to be in everyone's best interests. Murder, for example, is very much frowned upon in every modern society I'm aware of because it goes against the community/teamwork that makes up those societies beneficial to their members. I suspect that a lot of that is due to evolution or at least social conditioning.
I would guess that the reason DRM, copyrights, and other similar things aren't working is because they go beyond human nature and survival instincts. The community feelings and beliefs don't come into play because there's no immediate benefit to either side from an evolutionary perspective. I don't think the situation can really be compared to murder or other serious crimes.
He doesn't like the thought that all people (including himself) are like that, so he points to the USA.
Some would argue that it's human nature to blame someone else in order to protect yourself. It's especially common to blame an authority figure. It makes it seem like the matter is out of your hands and couldn't possibly be your fault. Teenagers blame their parents and teachers, a guy caught speeding will blame the cop who pulled him over, and the world community blames the last remaining superpower (arguably, there are other powers catching up, but that's a discussion for another day).
While the US does sometimes create some funny examples, it did not invent this kind of idiocy. Disputes like this have always happened, between lots of different groups. It's just a new battleground now, which is more visible to the younger generations than previous examples. And of course, the young people see the internet differently than the older generations.
Older folks continue to try to control it like they've controlled things in the past. Younger folks proclaim the internet to be completely free and without restrictions. While I would prefer the younger folks' ideal view, the truth will end up somewhere between the two, at least for the near future.
There is a wider variety of higher quality beer brewed in the United States than any other country. You just have to buy beer somewhere other than Big-Box-Mart. Buy from a micro-brewery. I wish people would stop this lie that the best beer comes from Europe, when it no longer does. Our microbreweries are as wonderful as our macrobreweries suck -- a whole lot. DFH ftw.
I'm not a big fan of generalizations like this, but parent is right that there are some truly spectacular microbrews in the US. Worth pointing out, even if it is a bit off topic.
Until we (people) get our act together, I'd rather have the option to move to a place where things are run differently. That way, I'm stuck if and when system in my home country goes completely crazy.
One bloated and mismanaged government is not better than lots of smaller bloated and mismanaged governments. They might all suck, but at least they suck in different ways, giving us choices. Hey, it's kind of like Linux.
Okay, so I'll get modded down for that last sentence, but the rest needs to be said. It's worth the karma hit.
The thing is that people potentially post these pictures ANYWHERE. While the RIAA (or whoever) can target and attempt to shut down sites that host.torrent files, they can't easily do that for sites that are hosting pictures. As far as links, many forums delete posts with links to torrents, while images might slip through fine, at least until people start checking images before they're posted. Even then, there's nothing to stop someone from claiming ignorance in that case.
Sure, the RIAA can try to target everyone who does that, but they'd have to shut down most (if not all) of the internet to pull it off. Images can't simply be turned off on the internet. With that loss of control, either the RIAA will lose its ability to bully people or the public will have to start paying more attention to the RIAA's practices.
I'm not pro-piracy and I don't see this as a silver bullet solution, but there is potential for some change with this kind of thing.
Apparently you're not the type who wants a touch screen. There's a world outside your mom's basement and some of us want touch screens.
I have an HP tablet and I love it. I use the touch screen all the time. I don't even use it for drawing/handwriting that much and I still wouldn't trade it, even if you offered me something with 5 times the computing power. I have a desktop if I need raw power.
The people who were giving the orders will no doubt be held responsible in some way by the corporation. True, it'll likely be more because they got caught than because of what they did, but you can be sure they'll hear about it. Unless it was coming from the highest levels of the company, in which case the fine is already correctly targeting them.
Yes, because no sane person could ever disagree with you.
While there are probably MS shills out there (just like every other major company), the fact that you specifically target them in a story not at all about Microsoft suggests that you're just anti-Microsoft, which really isn't much different from being a shill.
Obviously C&C 4 will not be appearing on the list of potential 'something newer', as I *refuse* to connect any wintendo machine to the Internet.
Refusing to connect a computer to the internet purely because it runs Windows is silly. That might be somewhat valid for Win98, but certainly not XP+. Of course, if you were the type to listen to logic and learn things other than your own opinion, you probably wouldn't call them 'Wintendo machines'
So consoles are better because they never had those features? You're just as limited on a console (if not more so). The only thing is that people expect it and are apparently okay with it. And nobody's ever pushed console graphics before...
There's nothing wrong with better graphics unless/until they affect the quality of the rest of the game. Blizzard definitely can't be accused of that, with the testing and demonstrations they've been doing. Now, obviously I don't know the exact requirements for SC2, but they've been reported to be pretty reasonable. How about we wait and see what they are before you get worked up about them?
As far as graphics and PC requirements... if they never increased, hardware advances (especially consumer products) wouldn't happen as quickly. Maybe that'd be good from the perspective of some businesses and non-gamers, but certainly it'd be bad for the overall industry. Personally, I'd rather put up with upgrading or buying a mid-range PC every 3 years-ish than have the PC and game industries stagnate (yes, hardware advances do more than allow prettier graphics).
Since you're so smart, how would you change things?
I was similar with games when I was younger, so maybe I can give you a little perspective on this. Maybe it's relevant to him, maybe not. Anyway...
I cheated fairly frequently at single player games. Maybe not as quickly as he seems to, but I generally went looking as soon as I ran into any significant trouble. This is what I've figured out about myself:
First (and this is still true for me), I was more interested in the story than grinding out days or weeks of gameplay to find out what happens next. So, with games that had an interesting story, I cheated out of curiosity and impatience. I played the games to relax and be entertained, not to spend hours finding a solution to a puzzle that's now impossible because I didn't follow the developer's intended path in the game (another habit of mine...).
Second, until I got to the real world and had the money and ability to make my own challenging projects, I had never really been truly challenged by much of anything. Not to say I am/was a prodigy or anything, but I breezed through school, was an adept (if unspectacular) soccer player, and was generally good [enough] at anything I put my mind to. The structured life of school and sports was, for lack of a better word, easy.
Anyway, when I came across these games/puzzles/whatever that I couldn't solve instantly, I didn't know how to approach them. They often made little sense to me. The trouble I had with them wasn't that they were overly difficult or that I was too lazy to solve them. It was that they were generally meant to be solved in a specific way. What got me through school and what helped me excel at other things was that I tend to see things differently from most people. My outside the box thinking often made the straightforward puzzles harder or even impossible.
I would guess that your son is similar in his feelings of games. If you're concerned, perhaps try an activity with him that tests his determination/motivation/whatever, but as long as this pattern doesn't emerge with things that matter, it doesn't seem like anything to worry about.
Side note: I don't recall seeing your son's age anywhere. As someone who frequently works with 12-18 year olds, that apparent laziness is extremely common in that stretch and I personally don't think it's anything to worry about. If you can line up your interests, father-son projects can help, but be careful to guide, not push. Kids push back, but will gladly follow. They often don't even know they're doing it. (Why do you think people end up talking/acting like their parents when they grow up?)
True, most of them probably don't care much about users. However, the stance of Apple and Microsoft in your post clearly is clearly negative for developers and users because it locks everybody into paying them. Google, Opera, and Mozilla, while they don't necessarily actively HELP users, they're not actively hurting them either.
I'm not normally the 'rah rah open source' type, but the way you present that, one of the choices is clearly better.
All that said, I think it's just fine to remove codecs from the standard. At least the way I understand things, they're keeping the audio and video tags and giving people a choice of codecs. Firefox is too big to ignore now, so most major sites will support them. Similarly, they can't ignore Microsoft or Apple, so everyone gets supported, people actually follow the standard, and we're hopefully all able to enjoy our new audio/video content.
Not only that, but if 64 bit were the only option, it would have to be at least as well supported as 32 bit is now.
Why 64bit ONLY? Given the amount of compatibility problems I've read with 64bit OS's, and some games developers state in the system requirements 64bit is NOT supported.
I agree with the rest, but curious why you're essentially saying "And I want a whole bunch of software to NOT WORK".
Read? You mean you haven't even used them? Then who are you to complain?
I've used nothing but 64 bit operating systems for the last several years, with my server being the only exception (32 bit processor). I haven't had a single issue related to 64 bit operating systems. The only reason people are still able to complain about these things is because they refuse to adopt the new technology and FORCE manufacturers to support both 32 bit and 64 bit. Just switch already so we can all take advantage of the new stuff.
Barbed wire, metal detectors, and security might not be uncommon in cities, but I'd hardly call that the typical school. No suburban school I've heard of has near the level of security you're describing. Either you're exaggerating or you have a limited knowledge of schools in this country. Yes, I am regularly in contact with a number of teachers in at least four different states (friends and relatives who are teachers).
People love to paint the US school system as a huge clusterfuck with armed guards and gang wars. Things do happen, unfortunately, but it's certainly not as bad as some people make it sound.
well, it's just a minor upgrade to windows vista, so...? It's a good upgrade to vista, they've taken care of many of the big grievances.
Windows 7 is not that big a change, so it hasn't cost that much to develop, so it's cheaper.
Or more likely, they want it to be a little bit easier for people to get 7. The beating they took with Vista means they have to be a little nicer for this one to avoid losing people.
My post may have been slightly misleading. I didn't mean to imply that the stability was affected only by speed, just that it can be a significant factor.
Other people are right that many of the modern stealthy designs were built to be stealthy first and made to fly after. We have that luxury now with our modern control systems, but they certainly would not have done it that way in the 40s.
Not exactly. It is possible to build a flying wing type aircraft that is stable. They're generally not as easy to fly as more traditional designs, but it's possible. Also keep in mind that aircraft of that era flew much slower. Part of the difficulty with modern designs is with the insane speeds they can reach. The aerodynamics of very fast (ie. supersonic) craft are much different from slower craft.
Slashdot Mirror
But if they are able to improve engine efficiency and bring the cost to a reasonable level, the math may work out.
Regardless, this is why we do research, people. Tons of technologies have been discovered by accident or adapted from less promising research. There doesn't always have to be an instant benefit for research to be worthwhile.
Nowhere does anybody say that wood has to be the only material used. It doesn't have to be all one thing or the other. Also, it appears from the unfortunately sparse article that the steel only helps to keep the building from rocking excessively. It doesn't support the weight. A building like this would likely be a good bit cheaper than a similar steel building.
Will anything be built like this? Maybe not, but it's interesting anyway.
Simulations are nice and all, but it's a bit inaccurate to say it "survived a 7.5 magnitude quake" when it didn't actually.
You're just arguing semantics. The forces applied by these shake tables are close enough to the real thing to give us a good idea of what the building can survive. Yes, you can argue "it's not a real quake," but that's pointless. Are they supposed to wait for a real quake for their test?
Also, adding in 63 steel rods seems to defeat the purpose of calling it a "wooden building".
As others have said, they're just trying to provide evidence that wood is a viable building material for larger buildings.
Voluntary compliance works for most things because those things are understood by the public and pretty much universally believed to be in everyone's best interests. Murder, for example, is very much frowned upon in every modern society I'm aware of because it goes against the community/teamwork that makes up those societies beneficial to their members. I suspect that a lot of that is due to evolution or at least social conditioning.
I would guess that the reason DRM, copyrights, and other similar things aren't working is because they go beyond human nature and survival instincts. The community feelings and beliefs don't come into play because there's no immediate benefit to either side from an evolutionary perspective. I don't think the situation can really be compared to murder or other serious crimes.
He doesn't like the thought that all people (including himself) are like that, so he points to the USA.
Some would argue that it's human nature to blame someone else in order to protect yourself. It's especially common to blame an authority figure. It makes it seem like the matter is out of your hands and couldn't possibly be your fault. Teenagers blame their parents and teachers, a guy caught speeding will blame the cop who pulled him over, and the world community blames the last remaining superpower (arguably, there are other powers catching up, but that's a discussion for another day).
Hmmmm... it seems that maybe the Borg solved the issue of scalability? Maybe we could copy them!
If you listen to some people around here, they're trying.
While the US does sometimes create some funny examples, it did not invent this kind of idiocy. Disputes like this have always happened, between lots of different groups. It's just a new battleground now, which is more visible to the younger generations than previous examples. And of course, the young people see the internet differently than the older generations.
Older folks continue to try to control it like they've controlled things in the past. Younger folks proclaim the internet to be completely free and without restrictions. While I would prefer the younger folks' ideal view, the truth will end up somewhere between the two, at least for the near future.
It makes me think of the Family Guy episode where Peter annexed Joe's pool. Is that close enough?
Stupid Flanders.
There is a wider variety of higher quality beer brewed in the United States than any other country. You just have to buy beer somewhere other than Big-Box-Mart. Buy from a micro-brewery. I wish people would stop this lie that the best beer comes from Europe, when it no longer does. Our microbreweries are as wonderful as our macrobreweries suck -- a whole lot. DFH ftw.
I'm not a big fan of generalizations like this, but parent is right that there are some truly spectacular microbrews in the US. Worth pointing out, even if it is a bit off topic.
Until we (people) get our act together, I'd rather have the option to move to a place where things are run differently. That way, I'm stuck if and when system in my home country goes completely crazy.
One bloated and mismanaged government is not better than lots of smaller bloated and mismanaged governments. They might all suck, but at least they suck in different ways, giving us choices. Hey, it's kind of like Linux.
Okay, so I'll get modded down for that last sentence, but the rest needs to be said. It's worth the karma hit.
No, just a Slashdot poster. What's this 'outside' thing I keep hearing about?
The thing is that people potentially post these pictures ANYWHERE. While the RIAA (or whoever) can target and attempt to shut down sites that host .torrent files, they can't easily do that for sites that are hosting pictures. As far as links, many forums delete posts with links to torrents, while images might slip through fine, at least until people start checking images before they're posted. Even then, there's nothing to stop someone from claiming ignorance in that case.
Sure, the RIAA can try to target everyone who does that, but they'd have to shut down most (if not all) of the internet to pull it off. Images can't simply be turned off on the internet. With that loss of control, either the RIAA will lose its ability to bully people or the public will have to start paying more attention to the RIAA's practices.
I'm not pro-piracy and I don't see this as a silver bullet solution, but there is potential for some change with this kind of thing.
Apparently you're not the type who wants a touch screen. There's a world outside your mom's basement and some of us want touch screens.
I have an HP tablet and I love it. I use the touch screen all the time. I don't even use it for drawing/handwriting that much and I still wouldn't trade it, even if you offered me something with 5 times the computing power. I have a desktop if I need raw power.
The people who were giving the orders will no doubt be held responsible in some way by the corporation. True, it'll likely be more because they got caught than because of what they did, but you can be sure they'll hear about it. Unless it was coming from the highest levels of the company, in which case the fine is already correctly targeting them.
Yes, because no sane person could ever disagree with you.
While there are probably MS shills out there (just like every other major company), the fact that you specifically target them in a story not at all about Microsoft suggests that you're just anti-Microsoft, which really isn't much different from being a shill.
Obviously C&C 4 will not be appearing on the list of potential 'something newer', as I *refuse* to connect any wintendo machine to the Internet.
Refusing to connect a computer to the internet purely because it runs Windows is silly. That might be somewhat valid for Win98, but certainly not XP+. Of course, if you were the type to listen to logic and learn things other than your own opinion, you probably wouldn't call them 'Wintendo machines'
So consoles are better because they never had those features? You're just as limited on a console (if not more so). The only thing is that people expect it and are apparently okay with it. And nobody's ever pushed console graphics before...
There's nothing wrong with better graphics unless/until they affect the quality of the rest of the game. Blizzard definitely can't be accused of that, with the testing and demonstrations they've been doing. Now, obviously I don't know the exact requirements for SC2, but they've been reported to be pretty reasonable. How about we wait and see what they are before you get worked up about them?
As far as graphics and PC requirements... if they never increased, hardware advances (especially consumer products) wouldn't happen as quickly. Maybe that'd be good from the perspective of some businesses and non-gamers, but certainly it'd be bad for the overall industry. Personally, I'd rather put up with upgrading or buying a mid-range PC every 3 years-ish than have the PC and game industries stagnate (yes, hardware advances do more than allow prettier graphics).
Since you're so smart, how would you change things?
I was similar with games when I was younger, so maybe I can give you a little perspective on this. Maybe it's relevant to him, maybe not. Anyway...
I cheated fairly frequently at single player games. Maybe not as quickly as he seems to, but I generally went looking as soon as I ran into any significant trouble. This is what I've figured out about myself:
First (and this is still true for me), I was more interested in the story than grinding out days or weeks of gameplay to find out what happens next. So, with games that had an interesting story, I cheated out of curiosity and impatience. I played the games to relax and be entertained, not to spend hours finding a solution to a puzzle that's now impossible because I didn't follow the developer's intended path in the game (another habit of mine...).
Second, until I got to the real world and had the money and ability to make my own challenging projects, I had never really been truly challenged by much of anything. Not to say I am/was a prodigy or anything, but I breezed through school, was an adept (if unspectacular) soccer player, and was generally good [enough] at anything I put my mind to. The structured life of school and sports was, for lack of a better word, easy.
Anyway, when I came across these games/puzzles/whatever that I couldn't solve instantly, I didn't know how to approach them. They often made little sense to me. The trouble I had with them wasn't that they were overly difficult or that I was too lazy to solve them. It was that they were generally meant to be solved in a specific way. What got me through school and what helped me excel at other things was that I tend to see things differently from most people. My outside the box thinking often made the straightforward puzzles harder or even impossible.
I would guess that your son is similar in his feelings of games. If you're concerned, perhaps try an activity with him that tests his determination/motivation/whatever, but as long as this pattern doesn't emerge with things that matter, it doesn't seem like anything to worry about.
Side note: I don't recall seeing your son's age anywhere. As someone who frequently works with 12-18 year olds, that apparent laziness is extremely common in that stretch and I personally don't think it's anything to worry about. If you can line up your interests, father-son projects can help, but be careful to guide, not push. Kids push back, but will gladly follow. They often don't even know they're doing it. (Why do you think people end up talking/acting like their parents when they grow up?)
True, most of them probably don't care much about users. However, the stance of Apple and Microsoft in your post clearly is clearly negative for developers and users because it locks everybody into paying them. Google, Opera, and Mozilla, while they don't necessarily actively HELP users, they're not actively hurting them either.
I'm not normally the 'rah rah open source' type, but the way you present that, one of the choices is clearly better.
All that said, I think it's just fine to remove codecs from the standard. At least the way I understand things, they're keeping the audio and video tags and giving people a choice of codecs. Firefox is too big to ignore now, so most major sites will support them. Similarly, they can't ignore Microsoft or Apple, so everyone gets supported, people actually follow the standard, and we're hopefully all able to enjoy our new audio/video content.
Not only that, but if 64 bit were the only option, it would have to be at least as well supported as 32 bit is now.
Why 64bit ONLY? Given the amount of compatibility problems I've read with 64bit OS's, and some games developers state in the system requirements 64bit is NOT supported.
I agree with the rest, but curious why you're essentially saying "And I want a whole bunch of software to NOT WORK".
Read? You mean you haven't even used them? Then who are you to complain?
I've used nothing but 64 bit operating systems for the last several years, with my server being the only exception (32 bit processor). I haven't had a single issue related to 64 bit operating systems. The only reason people are still able to complain about these things is because they refuse to adopt the new technology and FORCE manufacturers to support both 32 bit and 64 bit. Just switch already so we can all take advantage of the new stuff.
Barbed wire, metal detectors, and security might not be uncommon in cities, but I'd hardly call that the typical school. No suburban school I've heard of has near the level of security you're describing. Either you're exaggerating or you have a limited knowledge of schools in this country. Yes, I am regularly in contact with a number of teachers in at least four different states (friends and relatives who are teachers).
People love to paint the US school system as a huge clusterfuck with armed guards and gang wars. Things do happen, unfortunately, but it's certainly not as bad as some people make it sound.
well, it's just a minor upgrade to windows vista, so...?
It's a good upgrade to vista, they've taken care of many of the big grievances.
Windows 7 is not that big a change, so it hasn't cost that much to develop, so it's cheaper.
Or more likely, they want it to be a little bit easier for people to get 7. The beating they took with Vista means they have to be a little nicer for this one to avoid losing people.
I really should mod you down for that, but I'll let you slide just one time...
My post may have been slightly misleading. I didn't mean to imply that the stability was affected only by speed, just that it can be a significant factor.
Other people are right that many of the modern stealthy designs were built to be stealthy first and made to fly after. We have that luxury now with our modern control systems, but they certainly would not have done it that way in the 40s.
Not exactly. It is possible to build a flying wing type aircraft that is stable. They're generally not as easy to fly as more traditional designs, but it's possible. Also keep in mind that aircraft of that era flew much slower. Part of the difficulty with modern designs is with the insane speeds they can reach. The aerodynamics of very fast (ie. supersonic) craft are much different from slower craft.