Oh, yes it will blow. But it could be worth renting. You know, popcorn movie at home, rainy night, seen all the others....
Besides the fact that like I said already, your answer is.. for you.
There are plenty of people out there who liked Day After Tommorow. Sure, it was an incredible exaggeration of something that's actually remotely possible, but hey, it's a movie right?
I can't say I loved the movie, but again, that's my opinion. YMMV
Publisher: Let me check if we can do that (pretends to be calling some programmer, faint sound of dialtone still audible through whole conversation). Ahh, we're sorry, that simply is not possible at this time. (besides, you already bought it, suckers!! *evil publisher squeal laugh*)
On another note.. Someone explain to me how changing out a font or two constitutes a large patch without there first being some ridiculous method of storing said text in the first place? Like maybe storing every dialog box as a separate JPEG...
Seriously, this is just plain stupid. An OS should be able to protect itself from malicious programs etc. If something or someone is preventing my OS from running the way it should be, or running at all, I sure as heck want the OS to be able to fix itself or prevent it from ever happening in the first place. I'd rather not have to wait for a third-party vendor's program to get updated etc.
Can someone tell me why nobody is going after Apple? It seems like the EU is persecuting Microsoft for trying to make a good product. Apple's OS sure doesn't leave a lot of room for antivirus/spyware companies to make products... Yet the EU isn't bitching and moaning about it, are they?
I'm tired of their whining. Microsoft, I hope you ignore them, by making your product more secure (as long as you aren't selling the security separate, BIG point there) you are in the right, and I hope you tell the EU to take a hike. Nobody I know is going to NOT buy your product because it's more secure.
I think the best way to tell if a movie is going to suck is up to the individual.
Here is my progression to ask myself if the gamovie will be good:
- Do you like the game/genre in the first place? - If yes, does the game have a good amount of storyline? - If yes, do you like the producer who is doing the movie? - If yes, do you like the director? - If yes, do you like the actors/actresses (if known)?
Generally speaking, if you can answer yes to over 3/5 of those, I think you'll like the movie.
And, in other words, don't listen to critics. Be your own critic.
It's all well and good to have an opinion on something. However, like the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink. I can't tell where this guy's opinion ends and real unbiased scientific scrutiny and experimentation begins. TBH, I would have to disagree wholeheartedly with the statement "death of childhood". Childhood may be changing, perhaps in many different ways, but that does not mean it's dying.
Part of me wants to dismiss his entire argument as nonsensical luddite ramblings. Another part of me wonders if he might have at least a small point. But it's where those two parts of me meet and ask "where's the proof?" that I finall come to the conclusion there is nothing to see here, move along.
At least, from the children I know and observe, I don't see them suffering developmentally from the fact that they can play their PSP all day. What I mean is, don't blame the PSP. The fact is, I think through simple, good, old fashioned parenting, a child can have a better upbringing today than ever before, as long as the parent is able to understand and integrate today's technology, within moderation, with the raising of their child(ren).
Maybe too many parents are becoming lazy, thinking technology can replace them in areas of parenting where it should not. But like I said above, about opinions.....
- Backlight died after a few weeks. - Durable construction? You could scratch the screen with cotton. - "Innovative" touch pad.. try scrolling through ten thousand songs precisely. Not. Happening. - iTunes (though it's easily circumventable) - Overall versatility only increases when you hax0r it (this might actually be a plus;P) - Price
This is just stream of consciousness so don't be alarmed if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, if any.
Flexible, grown computer chips: the future as we have yet to know it? Bio-engineered to grow with the right inputs and outputs to grow massively parallel wafers or discs. Using the tools nature has spent billions of years developing we can build computers which outperform any handheld we have today by orders of magnitude, just as long as you remember to give them light and water. What you call a hydroponics vat I call my laptop recharger. Well hell they're both, now.
Your computer takes a power plant, maybe run by coal and putting harmful emissions into the atmosphere, and it's all silicon transistor and metal. My computer I grew in my backyard greenhouse and my power plant is 93 million miles away. My computer actually makes the world a better place by cleaning the atmosphere of CO2 and helping out with the greenhouse effect, ironic too, since my computer was grown in a greenhouse.
My display is made of phosphorescent material engineered from plankton and genetically spliced into this flexible yet durable version of hemp which grows flat and wide and thin. Your display has dead pixels and so does mine, but my display regenerates the dead ones over time.
What, my computer is obsolete because there are better ones out there? No problem here, I'll throw mine into the compost heap and use it to grow my new one. Yours, well you know.
"Researchers at the German Honeynet Project have discovered that a malicious script-kiddie earned about $430 in a single day installing spyware on computers in the latest Windows worm attack."
I seriously doubt this guy deserves the moniker "hacker". More like thieving annoyance to all of humanity.
I have read Dune four times, each time enjoying it greatly.
I agree that today's games don't necessarily implement the aforementioned concept completely. They have had to find a happy medium (sometimes not so happy) between the story telling and the technical aspects of coordinating millions of people at once without costing millions of dollars a day. I could use the standard "in the future games will have (insert feature that they don't have today)...." ad infinitum, but we all know that no matter how advanced games get people will still eventuallysee them as missing something or being able to be better in some way.
That being said, they think WoW is addictive now.. just wait. WoW is only the end of the beginning of MMORPGS.
You see, while you are right that nobody will ever be able to 'beat wow', there are still parts of WoW you can beat. For instance, every large 40 man raid comes with a story, some better than others of course. Look at Nefarian and Blackwing Lair. There is a LONG story behind that dragon, the lair, the orcs, and the surrounding zones (searing gorge and burning steppes). In fact, before you ever get to step foot in blackwing lair you have to go through some quests that highlight some of the story and lore. And if you want, you can read up on the particular lore of the encounter you are doing.
Some say "BUT!! BUT!! Once you kill Nefarian he isn't REALLY dead!"
Yea, well, once you read a good book, guess what, you can read it again. This is no different really.
Then I will start calling my fridge a 'wellspring of eternal beers' since, most of the time, there's beer in there. Except on RARE occasions when there's not because some 'guest' drank it all.
"A casual gamer would encounter this same section and leave the game behind entirely."
I completely disagree. A casual game could casually approach the aforementioned task. That it will take them longer (of IRL time, not necessarily play time) to achieve that goal they fully understand.. but that they COULD achieve that goal and not spend an inordinate percentage of their daily life doing so is what makes them casual IMHO.
Regarding your statement that they are genres... I agree. And they're also markets. Each genre represents a segment of consumer economics. Thus, each genre is a separate market within the industry of games in general. But feel free to argue that a genre cannot correlate to a specific market...I have a feeling that we could sift through some economic data that fully and unambigiously fits the definition of market to the definition of each genre by allowing us to differentiate between them.
Constant, year round sunlight... Except when the Moon is in the Earth's shadow.. you know, a lunar eclipse? Granted, not a long time, but FFS, at least don't make grand sweeping statements that are patently false. This should be called a "Peak of Almost But Not Quite Eternal Light".
I had a nicely drawn ASCII diagram drawn for this until I remembered the lameness of the/. lameness filter. I want my 37 minutes back, CowboyNeal!
Anyway, those aren't gamer markets in any sense of the word market. They are gamer stereotypes or styles. Gamer markets are already well established: Sports, RTS, RPG, MMORPG, FPS, etc etc.
One cannot wisely design a game completely around a style, such as "people who only play games incidentally are really going to like this game". Why spend countless hours developing a game that only a small segment of the consumer market is going to enjoy when you can make a game that the very same segment enjoys equally but is also enjoyed by the REST OF THE F'N MARKET, thus increasing sales tremedously.
I thought the whole idea behind what makes a GOOD game was that every style of player can enjoy it. Not that if you are a 'dormant' or 'hardcore' gamer you won't like it because you aren't also an 'incidental' or 'social' gamer. Remember, behind all these fancy adjectives, these people are still GAMERS.
I hate to bring it up, because it's almost cliché, but WoW is such a game. You can play it casually and like it (unless you are an immature kid who thinks you deserve the same rewards for less time than someone who literally has spent the last two years of their life raiding). We call those people whiners. I think pretty much all other gamers call those people whiners. They're the ones with excuses to explain why they aren't as good as someone else. They're the ones on the forums more than the game, spouting off at the mouth a stream of useless complaints that really only wind up pointing directly back at themselves.
And back to the point. So you make a game trying to satisfy those immature kids. Everyone gets whatever they want. Essentially, nobody is different than anybody else. Wow, I am sure that game is going to really pull in the money.
Anyway, I guess what I am saying is, congrats to the writer of that article. You sure know how to state the obvious in new and wonderful ways.
I find this kind of research amazing. It's like nature has given us a hint at something, something on the tip a vastly larger and more profound realization. The ability to recognize these natural patterns, such as the Fibonacci sequence, is IMHO one of the fundamental qualities of intelligence and sentience. It seems to be something tied to the very basis of existence, upon which our human minds are a layer with a depth that may indeed have no bounds or may merely be a small slice. The potential infinity of it all is staggering, and yet beautiful, and is the primary reason I chose this handle which I use here.
Here we witness the micro through the macro, through all scales of physical dimension, in an interplay of force, energy and motion, with the final result happening both all at once and forever spread over time. Incredible.
Last I recall, the gaming business is HUGE.. and growing still.
Who says if Microsoft makes a bundle of money that there won't still be a bundle for Sony and Nintendo left over? I mean, I think all of the companies can turn a profit in this industry.
And besides, the PS3 is far from just a gaming console. The Blu Ray player capability is what some might call Sony's 'stratz 4 teh win'. I have never owned a Playstation or an Xbox (I play PC games) but even I am thinking about getting a PS3 now. Though I doubt I will, there's no reason for me to want Blu Ray until major rental outlets carry them in my area. I am not someone that wants to watch a movie a hundred times, so renting them is my game.
Anyway, like I said, there's enough pie for them all to get a nice piece IMHO.
Ahh hmm. It was my understanding that the accretion disk of our solar system (the planets) formed due to the combination of gravity and inertia/velocity. I.E. that's why they're all in the same orbital plane.
The reason your explanation doesn't work for why the planetary bodies are on the same plane is because they are all in stable orbits. To plane out into a disc they would need to still be falling towards the sun.
But aren't they getting close to the sun all the time? In effect still falling towards it? Seems like it would be perpetual motion were they not?
No. If these are you're "intelligent" questions, go read a high school science book.
Hey, I never said they were intelligent questions. Step back a minute would ya?
The reason that the planets generally roate on a single plane is because all the planets and the sun formed out of a spiraling mass of dust. Think of the milky way on a much smaller scale. The dust formed clumps which became planets. that's why, not some magical gyroscopic effect.
First, why would this 'spiraling mass of dust' form as a flat plane? I think the answer is gravity. As the accretion disk forms the mass falls towards a common center of gravity. While orbiting around that common center the mass falls into another common, a shape that eventually forms a ring. I think of it like this: If there's a common center spinning around another common center, eventually a ring will form as the most natural state. And I never claimed it WAS gyroscopic, I said it was LIKE gyroscopics. What causes a gyroscope effect? Intertia, I believe. And there's no reason to not relate that to gravitation and orbits IMHO.
But sorry if my not "intelligent" questions were so hard for you to read.
. ..pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos", which are not bound to stars.
So I guess the only new thing about this is that someone is calling them planemos now?
But about their abundance, any ideas on the dark matter question? And if they were really abundant that might pose a problem for interstellar travel. Could suck to slowly accelerate up to 90% of c and then collide with Pluto or something similar... ok, no, it would suck real bad. At least you'd never know what happened I guess.
Ok so our Solar System is mostly flat. I mean, the orbits of the planets tend to follow the same orbital plane, with a notable exception of course.
The reason the planets orbit in the same plane is the same reason rings around celestial bodies like Saturn eventually fall into a common orbital plane: gravity. As the mass collects there is something like a gyroscopic effect, causing a general influence towards the common plane.
But.. if that's the case, why do we have a planet that doesn't follow the plane? And, also, is it slowly falling into line with the rest? (I think the answer is yes, it is, but I don't know for sure.. at least I think it should be).
Which leads me to ask.. Was Pluto originally extra-solar? Could it have developed in this eccentric orbit if it were originally part of the solar system when it formed? Is it possible that Pluto somehow, amongst the billions of years our system has been around, floated into orbit here for good, from Out There?
And if so, if there are enough of these free-floating masses out there, what kind of percentage of the unobservable 'dark matter' might this account for?
About this part: "What guarantees network neutrality is your ability to switch to a neutral ISP if you don't get the access you want. That only works if you have competition among ISPs, which too many people don't."
So if NN is important enough to people, then a neutral ISP will win market share. But if some ISPs are quasi-NN, i.e. they aren't net neutral but the majority of consumers won't even notice, they will probably win more share and make more money?
It's an interesting topic. I wonder, if bandwidth could ever be cheap enough to make this a non-issue. Seems like no matter how much bandwidth we have, we find ways to use it up.
Seems like the human psyche, especially in gamers, is fascinated with the future. So put your console in what looks like a box that should come from the future and what you've got is a device with capabilities which are artificially inflated to be better, merely because it looks like it's from the future. Which makes people think it's even better than it really might be. It's just marketing and business, and I think if you look around you'll see the same trend in almost every product. Look at boom boxes for example. Some of them really do look like spaceships. It's just too bad they can't fly.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, yes it will blow. But it could be worth renting. You know, popcorn movie at home, rainy night, seen all the others....
Besides the fact that like I said already, your answer is.. for you.
There are plenty of people out there who liked Day After Tommorow. Sure, it was an incredible exaggeration of something that's actually remotely possible, but hey, it's a movie right?
I can't say I loved the movie, but again, that's my opinion. YMMV
TLF
Fans: This game we bought needs to be fixed!
Publisher: Let me check if we can do that (pretends to be calling some programmer, faint sound of dialtone still audible through whole conversation). Ahh, we're sorry, that simply is not possible at this time. (besides, you already bought it, suckers!! *evil publisher squeal laugh*)
On another note..
Someone explain to me how changing out a font or two constitutes a large patch without there first being some ridiculous method of storing said text in the first place? Like maybe storing every dialog box as a separate JPEG...
TLF
Seriously, this is just plain stupid. An OS should be able to protect itself from malicious programs etc. If something or someone is preventing my OS from running the way it should be, or running at all, I sure as heck want the OS to be able to fix itself or prevent it from ever happening in the first place. I'd rather not have to wait for a third-party vendor's program to get updated etc.
Can someone tell me why nobody is going after Apple? It seems like the EU is persecuting Microsoft for trying to make a good product. Apple's OS sure doesn't leave a lot of room for antivirus/spyware companies to make products... Yet the EU isn't bitching and moaning about it, are they?
I'm tired of their whining. Microsoft, I hope you ignore them, by making your product more secure (as long as you aren't selling the security separate, BIG point there) you are in the right, and I hope you tell the EU to take a hike. Nobody I know is going to NOT buy your product because it's more secure.
TLF
I think the best way to tell if a movie is going to suck is up to the individual.
Here is my progression to ask myself if the gamovie will be good:
- Do you like the game/genre in the first place?
- If yes, does the game have a good amount of storyline?
- If yes, do you like the producer who is doing the movie?
- If yes, do you like the director?
- If yes, do you like the actors/actresses (if known)?
Generally speaking, if you can answer yes to over 3/5 of those, I think you'll like the movie.
And, in other words, don't listen to critics. Be your own critic.
TLF
It's all well and good to have an opinion on something. However, like the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink. I can't tell where this guy's opinion ends and real unbiased scientific scrutiny and experimentation begins. TBH, I would have to disagree wholeheartedly with the statement "death of childhood". Childhood may be changing, perhaps in many different ways, but that does not mean it's dying.
Part of me wants to dismiss his entire argument as nonsensical luddite ramblings. Another part of me wonders if he might have at least a small point. But it's where those two parts of me meet and ask "where's the proof?" that I finall come to the conclusion there is nothing to see here, move along.
At least, from the children I know and observe, I don't see them suffering developmentally from the fact that they can play their PSP all day. What I mean is, don't blame the PSP. The fact is, I think through simple, good, old fashioned parenting, a child can have a better upbringing today than ever before, as long as the parent is able to understand and integrate today's technology, within moderation, with the raising of their child(ren).
Maybe too many parents are becoming lazy, thinking technology can replace them in areas of parenting where it should not. But like I said above, about opinions.....
TLF
Couple of reasons, in no order of importance:
;P)
- Backlight died after a few weeks.
- Durable construction? You could scratch the screen with cotton.
- "Innovative" touch pad.. try scrolling through ten thousand songs precisely. Not. Happening.
- iTunes (though it's easily circumventable)
- Overall versatility only increases when you hax0r it (this might actually be a plus
- Price
TLF
This is just stream of consciousness so don't be alarmed if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, if any.
Flexible, grown computer chips: the future as we have yet to know it? Bio-engineered to grow with the right inputs and outputs to grow massively parallel wafers or discs. Using the tools nature has spent billions of years developing we can build computers which outperform any handheld we have today by orders of magnitude, just as long as you remember to give them light and water. What you call a hydroponics vat I call my laptop recharger. Well hell they're both, now.
Your computer takes a power plant, maybe run by coal and putting harmful emissions into the atmosphere, and it's all silicon transistor and metal. My computer I grew in my backyard greenhouse and my power plant is 93 million miles away. My computer actually makes the world a better place by cleaning the atmosphere of CO2 and helping out with the greenhouse effect, ironic too, since my computer was grown in a greenhouse.
My display is made of phosphorescent material engineered from plankton and genetically spliced into this flexible yet durable version of hemp which grows flat and wide and thin. Your display has dead pixels and so does mine, but my display regenerates the dead ones over time.
What, my computer is obsolete because there are better ones out there? No problem here, I'll throw mine into the compost heap and use it to grow my new one. Yours, well you know.
Ehh, well, just some thoughts,
TLF
"Researchers at the German Honeynet Project have discovered that a malicious script-kiddie earned about $430 in a single day installing spyware on computers in the latest Windows worm attack."
I seriously doubt this guy deserves the moniker "hacker". More like thieving annoyance to all of humanity.
TLF
I have read Dune four times, each time enjoying it greatly.
I agree that today's games don't necessarily implement the aforementioned concept completely. They have had to find a happy medium (sometimes not so happy) between the story telling and the technical aspects of coordinating millions of people at once without costing millions of dollars a day. I could use the standard "in the future games will have (insert feature that they don't have today)...." ad infinitum, but we all know that no matter how advanced games get people will still eventuallysee them as missing something or being able to be better in some way.
That being said, they think WoW is addictive now.. just wait. WoW is only the end of the beginning of MMORPGS.
TLF
Stories within stories. Subplots. Etc...
You see, while you are right that nobody will ever be able to 'beat wow', there are still parts of WoW you can beat. For instance, every large 40 man raid comes with a story, some better than others of course. Look at Nefarian and Blackwing Lair. There is a LONG story behind that dragon, the lair, the orcs, and the surrounding zones (searing gorge and burning steppes). In fact, before you ever get to step foot in blackwing lair you have to go through some quests that highlight some of the story and lore. And if you want, you can read up on the particular lore of the encounter you are doing.
Some say "BUT!! BUT!! Once you kill Nefarian he isn't REALLY dead!"
Yea, well, once you read a good book, guess what, you can read it again. This is no different really.
TLF
Then I will start calling my fridge a 'wellspring of eternal beers' since, most of the time, there's beer in there. Except on RARE occasions when there's not because some 'guest' drank it all.
TLF
"A casual gamer would encounter this same section and leave the game behind entirely."
I completely disagree. A casual game could casually approach the aforementioned task. That it will take them longer (of IRL time, not necessarily play time) to achieve that goal they fully understand.. but that they COULD achieve that goal and not spend an inordinate percentage of their daily life doing so is what makes them casual IMHO.
Regarding your statement that they are genres... I agree. And they're also markets. Each genre represents a segment of consumer economics. Thus, each genre is a separate market within the industry of games in general. But feel free to argue that a genre cannot correlate to a specific market...I have a feeling that we could sift through some economic data that fully and unambigiously fits the definition of market to the definition of each genre by allowing us to differentiate between them.
TLF
Constant, year round sunlight... Except when the Moon is in the Earth's shadow.. you know, a lunar eclipse? Granted, not a long time, but FFS, at least don't make grand sweeping statements that are patently false. This should be called a "Peak of Almost But Not Quite Eternal Light".
TLF
I had a nicely drawn ASCII diagram drawn for this until I remembered the lameness of the /. lameness filter. I want my 37 minutes back, CowboyNeal!
Anyway, those aren't gamer markets in any sense of the word market. They are gamer stereotypes or styles. Gamer markets are already well established: Sports, RTS, RPG, MMORPG, FPS, etc etc.
One cannot wisely design a game completely around a style, such as "people who only play games incidentally are really going to like this game". Why spend countless hours developing a game that only a small segment of the consumer market is going to enjoy when you can make a game that the very same segment enjoys equally but is also enjoyed by the REST OF THE F'N MARKET, thus increasing sales tremedously.
I thought the whole idea behind what makes a GOOD game was that every style of player can enjoy it. Not that if you are a 'dormant' or 'hardcore' gamer you won't like it because you aren't also an 'incidental' or 'social' gamer. Remember, behind all these fancy adjectives, these people are still GAMERS.
I hate to bring it up, because it's almost cliché, but WoW is such a game. You can play it casually and like it (unless you are an immature kid who thinks you deserve the same rewards for less time than someone who literally has spent the last two years of their life raiding). We call those people whiners. I think pretty much all other gamers call those people whiners. They're the ones with excuses to explain why they aren't as good as someone else. They're the ones on the forums more than the game, spouting off at the mouth a stream of useless complaints that really only wind up pointing directly back at themselves.
And back to the point. So you make a game trying to satisfy those immature kids. Everyone gets whatever they want. Essentially, nobody is different than anybody else. Wow, I am sure that game is going to really pull in the money.
Anyway, I guess what I am saying is, congrats to the writer of that article. You sure know how to state the obvious in new and wonderful ways.
TLF
I find this kind of research amazing. It's like nature has given us a hint at something, something on the tip a vastly larger and more profound realization. The ability to recognize these natural patterns, such as the Fibonacci sequence, is IMHO one of the fundamental qualities of intelligence and sentience. It seems to be something tied to the very basis of existence, upon which our human minds are a layer with a depth that may indeed have no bounds or may merely be a small slice. The potential infinity of it all is staggering, and yet beautiful, and is the primary reason I chose this handle which I use here.
Here we witness the micro through the macro, through all scales of physical dimension, in an interplay of force, energy and motion, with the final result happening both all at once and forever spread over time. Incredible.
TLF
I want holographic displays!
TLF
Last I recall, the gaming business is HUGE.. and growing still.
Who says if Microsoft makes a bundle of money that there won't still be a bundle for Sony and Nintendo left over? I mean, I think all of the companies can turn a profit in this industry.
And besides, the PS3 is far from just a gaming console. The Blu Ray player capability is what some might call Sony's 'stratz 4 teh win'. I have never owned a Playstation or an Xbox (I play PC games) but even I am thinking about getting a PS3 now. Though I doubt I will, there's no reason for me to want Blu Ray until major rental outlets carry them in my area. I am not someone that wants to watch a movie a hundred times, so renting them is my game.
Anyway, like I said, there's enough pie for them all to get a nice piece IMHO.
TLF
Yea you're right. I guess one of my weaknesses is an intolerance of people who hypocritically insult the intelligence of others.
I shall endeavour to be more thick-skinned in regards to this topic henceforth.
TLF
Ahh hmm. It was my understanding that the accretion disk of our solar system (the planets) formed due to the combination of gravity and inertia/velocity. I.E. that's why they're all in the same orbital plane.
The reason your explanation doesn't work for why the planetary bodies are on the same plane is because they are all in stable orbits. To plane out into a disc they would need to still be falling towards the sun.
But aren't they getting close to the sun all the time? In effect still falling towards it? Seems like it would be perpetual motion were they not?
TLF
No. If these are you're "intelligent" questions, go read a high school science book.
Hey, I never said they were intelligent questions. Step back a minute would ya?
The reason that the planets generally roate on a single plane is because all the planets and the sun formed out of a spiraling mass of dust. Think of the milky way on a much smaller scale. The dust formed clumps which became planets. that's why, not some magical gyroscopic effect.
First, why would this 'spiraling mass of dust' form as a flat plane? I think the answer is gravity. As the accretion disk forms the mass falls towards a common center of gravity. While orbiting around that common center the mass falls into another common, a shape that eventually forms a ring. I think of it like this: If there's a common center spinning around another common center, eventually a ring will form as the most natural state. And I never claimed it WAS gyroscopic, I said it was LIKE gyroscopics. What causes a gyroscope effect? Intertia, I believe. And there's no reason to not relate that to gravitation and orbits IMHO.
But sorry if my not "intelligent" questions were so hard for you to read.
TLF
. . .pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos", which are not bound to stars.
So I guess the only new thing about this is that someone is calling them planemos now?
But about their abundance, any ideas on the dark matter question? And if they were really abundant that might pose a problem for interstellar travel. Could suck to slowly accelerate up to 90% of c and then collide with Pluto or something similar... ok, no, it would suck real bad. At least you'd never know what happened I guess.
TLF
Ok so our Solar System is mostly flat. I mean, the orbits of the planets tend to follow the same orbital plane, with a notable exception of course.
The reason the planets orbit in the same plane is the same reason rings around celestial bodies like Saturn eventually fall into a common orbital plane: gravity. As the mass collects there is something like a gyroscopic effect, causing a general influence towards the common plane.
But.. if that's the case, why do we have a planet that doesn't follow the plane? And, also, is it slowly falling into line with the rest? (I think the answer is yes, it is, but I don't know for sure.. at least I think it should be).
Which leads me to ask.. Was Pluto originally extra-solar? Could it have developed in this eccentric orbit if it were originally part of the solar system when it formed? Is it possible that Pluto somehow, amongst the billions of years our system has been around, floated into orbit here for good, from Out There?
And if so, if there are enough of these free-floating masses out there, what kind of percentage of the unobservable 'dark matter' might this account for?
Just a few of my questions,
TLF
Thanks for the quick answer.
About this part: "What guarantees network neutrality is your ability to switch to a neutral ISP if you don't get the access you want. That only works if you have competition among ISPs, which too many people don't."
So if NN is important enough to people, then a neutral ISP will win market share. But if some ISPs are quasi-NN, i.e. they aren't net neutral but the majority of consumers won't even notice, they will probably win more share and make more money?
It's an interesting topic. I wonder, if bandwidth could ever be cheap enough to make this a non-issue. Seems like no matter how much bandwidth we have, we find ways to use it up.
TLF
Heh the ovals would be worth more than the dreamcasts :P
Hell I would buy a couple, just for the ovals. Not sure why, but something about an aluminum oval just says "I AM FROM TEH FUTURE" and I want one.
TLF
Seems like the human psyche, especially in gamers, is fascinated with the future. So put your console in what looks like a box that should come from the future and what you've got is a device with capabilities which are artificially inflated to be better, merely because it looks like it's from the future. Which makes people think it's even better than it really might be. It's just marketing and business, and I think if you look around you'll see the same trend in almost every product. Look at boom boxes for example. Some of them really do look like spaceships. It's just too bad they can't fly.
TLF