Yes, it is all about natural language parsing, but I think the most interesting feat was actually the seeding of Watson's database. Millions of documents (books, wikipedia, scholarly articles) were "fed" into Watson which become it's knowledge base. So to me, it's not so impressive that Watson understand the questions, but is able to utilize human knowledge that is in a natural-language form.
I agree, it's not an attack on humanity. The PBS Nova episode about Watson explores the issues rather thoroughly, but the videos on IBM's site go into the technicalities a little better. The NOVA ep does do a good job of comparing Watson to competing AI programs out there, though.
I find it exciting that a Watson-like program will eventually be able to answer technical questions for people (like doctors) who don't have time to scan through the thousands of scholarly articles of latest research -- you know, applying Watson's capabilities to a realm that humans need help in.
How long will it be before IBM puts up an "ask Watson" web page, I wonder?
The concept of road trains and super-smart-highways was presaged in John Varley's excellent 2004 novel Red Thunder. In the book, cars with higher optimal speeds (where aerodynamic drag and mileage gains of higher gear ratios cancel out) form faster trains, where inefficient vehicles are put in slower trains. The superhighways required cars to be equipped with the system to enter them, of course.
I concur with your projections, if only to add that social pressure not to waste fuel (by driving your SUV at 70mph rather than 50mph) will likely add the extra caveat of forcing one to drive at a reasonable speed.
And with all the automation of highways, we'll all get to our destinations faster, regardless.
Responding to Nintendo's market dominance, due to the hugely popular "Wii-mote" control scheme, Sony executives unveiled the Bodyshokk (tm) controller for the PS3.
"The user will put on this controller like a jumpsuit," explained Sony executive Ken Kutaragi. "They will then be able to control the actions of on-screen characters through physical gestures."
The Bodyshokk (tm) resembles a neon-pink wetsuit and can be customized with a variety of attractive racing stripes. During the demonstration, Kutaragi played a demo of God of War 3, in which the main character fought off a dozen assailants. He danced around the stage, then clutched his chest and screamed in pain when an enemy character struck his onscreen avatar with a large glowing weapon.
"Muscular feedback electrodes are built right into the controller," said Kutaragi. "In this case, a hit on the chest is translated into a tazer-level shock through the wearer's nipples. Force-feedback and motion tracking is the wave of the future. People want to feel their games, not just play them." Kutaragi then jerked spasmodically, as his game character was assaulted by multiple enemies, before his assistants could pause the game.
Executives at Microsoft are just as optimistic about their upcoming UltraPrecision series of console peripherals. Recently demoed was a life-sized robot, nicknamed "The RealFoe", which resembled a crash-test dummy. Programmers then punched and kicked the robot, and on the screen behind them the robot's cowering actions were displayed, as well as bruises forming on the in-game avatar, which resembled a middle-aged blond woman.
"You don't get that kind of force-feedback from just a controller's vibration," said one of the demo-givers, who wished to remain anonymous. He then turned towards the robot and delivered a backhanded slap. "Git your ass off the floor and make me some breakfast!"
On the screen, the virtual woman shakily got up, synchronized to the robot's actions, and stumbled towards a virtual kitchen. The game being demoed was The Sims 3 - Domestic Drama. The robot even slouched its shoulders in the same way the character was animated.
"You see that realism? Some people might complain that [these new controllers] take too much physical exertion, but once you actually play the game, the immersion is incredible!"
fun and games with bluetooth
on
Wii-mote In Action
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
A: (shouting) "For fuck's sake, I needed those girls by Sunday! How can you just lose a cargo container full of twelve-year-olds!?"
B: "Uh, excuse me, what are you talking about?"
A: (turns head, points to bluetooth headset) "Ahem! Okay...uh-huh...all right. We'll tell the captain he can keep the skim..." (covers microphone) "Do you mind?"
B: (laughing nervously) "Oh, my bad. How rude of me to interrupt!"
I can't imagine a corporate risk and cost analysis that would give the thumbs-up to space exploration. Space tourism, maybe, but even if it only cost $1000, what's the point? The only point of manned flights is to research manned space flight to make way for what...Mars landings? Colonizing Alpha Centari? Not to disparage those purposes, but what profit would private enterprise possibly see in those ends? That would be like waiting 30 years (at least) for the return on the investment, which no company is willing to do unless it's controlled by some Howard Hughes type (eccentric weirdo). Shareholders will not vote for long term space exploration.
How about this: Instead of paying the gov't tax dollars to plunder natural resources, we decide where our "surplus" income goes to? What if the tax form included a checklist where you decided yea or nay on things like social security, defense spending, paying back national debt, NASA's budget and so forth?
Even better, how about some Non-governmental, non-profit space agency that gets funded by a bunch of geeks with nothing better to spend their money on? (and by the way, avoid paying taxes altogether) I bet there's already a web site...
Yes, the I believe the real cause stems from the fact that all these MMORPG's place so much emphasis on material gain. There is no object in these games than other to gain wealth/fame/power or whatnot. If the game is a simulcra of a materialistic society, how is it any different from the actual materialistic society that created it? Currency, in the big picture, serves the same purpose in the game world as it does the real -- what reason is there to prohibit or frown upon exchanges back and forth?
If you want to be philosophical about it, the material gain in the game world is every bit as fulfilling and satisfying as material gain in the real world: in other words, fleeting and dissatisfactory. We all die, sooner or later.
I was once involved in creating a MMORPG based on Buddhist principles, but then I thought, what the hell is the point? Maybe I should revive the project, if only to teach people the meaninglessness of their fantasies.
Ah, my fantasy is to be the destroyer of fanciful materialistic escapism! Bwahahahahahaaaa!
An old Warhammer 40K spin-off, Space Hulk. The board looks damnned similar. I wonder if Doom 3: The Boardgame (dah dah DuuuHHHMMM!!) allows you to put your characters on "overwatch".
I'd like to see some sort of internal professional relations software (open source, universal standards) that would be used by all corporations to publically document things like promotions, reports of sexual harassment, grounds for dismissal, payroll reports, and the like. I mean, it's already to the point where private investigators or subpeonas can get all that info anyhow--so why not open it up so everyone can review it at any time?
Don't get me wrong, I'm as anti-big-brother as the next person, but in a society where privacy cannot be garunteed, the next best thing is to have as much as public as possible. Therefore the things that get entered into records would be done under the understanding that anyone could log in and check up on it instantly.
Examples:
You're trying to unionize your workplace and your boss finds out about it. They want to fire you by citing other reasons (attendance issues or something trivial). Any person in the world could check the data and see that you had an outstanding personnel record and that the firing is totally inconsistant with past relations to the company, making it obvious that they were firing you for union activities (firing for that reason is illegal) and they know that.
The company wants to make shoes in Indonesia for a total material and labor cost of $20/pair and sell them in the USA for $120/pair. The consideration of this would be documented and available online (the internal cost analysis report, for instance). Any fool could see that this a profiteering rip-off. Consequences: shoes get cheaper or anti-sweatshop activists lobby the company to keep production local (and union!).
Corporate execs like would have to document all decisions and so forth on the system so there is a big incentive for them to not make shady deals (or at least disguise them better).
I guess what I'm getting at is that transparency builds trust, but it has to be TOTAL and there needs to be some sort of expected standard of corporate transparency, not like the blackboxes they are today. It would be like a public ISO 9000 test. No more non-disclosure agreements!
I hope I live to see it happen, but I suspect that corporations themselves will go extinct before they adopt such structures.
I believe that the guy sent his diagrams to a machine shop that cut the aluminum frame for him (very sensible, but expensive) as well as the stainless steel side panels.
Aluminum is really hard to cut right unless you have the proper tools, and most shop tools (in a woodshop) are essentially useless and will make a mess of the aluminum. T1-4 can be cut with a die grinder with a carbon blade or a 20-tooth(per inch) hacksaw blade. Even doing that will take a few hours of extra burnishing to get the edges straight (large screwdriver--run the round part of the shaft down the burrs on the edge). Forget about working with T6. Using a sawsall, jigsaw, or regular grinder will just create a nasty, jagged edge.
I've heard that machine shop guys will take a table saw blade and turn backwards--can anyone confirm this?
Just the amount of work he did with the plexiglass alone was incredible! Not to mention removing and polishing the stainless steel casing for his HD's and DVD-drives.
Scene: Backstage White House Press Room Carl Rove: Where's the President now? Aide #1: Umm, I think he just went to make a press statement about the increase in NASA's budget...? Carl Rove spots unused, filled syringe lying on table CR: Oh God! You forgot to give him the injection!
Scene: White House Press Conference President GWB: Thank you Americans and members of the Press. The exploration of the Outer Spaces is an important initiative in these dangerous and uncertain times. We have enemies abroad and ih our homes. We have enemies visible and indivisible. Enemies that wish to do us harm, and enemies that don't. Pauses, blinks.
That is why I am giving my authorization to increase funding to the Nationalized Air and Space Association, because we need to bring the fight to the enemy. Right now, we don't have a man on the Mars. This is embarrassing! We've been to Mars and by God we ought to stay there! In the days since my father ended the Cold War, we've relaxed our posture on the Space Chase, but now a new enemy is on our doorstep. He's in our backyard, too because he climbed over the fence without asking. dramatic pause. squints at audience.
My friends, now isn't the time to fall behind and ignore these things--we must act. We must bring the fight to the enemy whenever and wherever he appears, be it in Omaha, Wisconsin or on the Mars. We cannot wait until he has the advantage and saps our precious vital fluids while we sleep. (Carl Rove is seen edging towards the President)
Now, you may think that with our current deploymentization in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ko-Rea we can't sustain a fight for Mars. But I'm telling you, it's not about the numbers--we have smart weapons, smart troops, and smart ideas on how to Win the Peace on Mars, by winning their hearts and minds. You see, they envy our freedom and our way of life. They envy our precious vital fluids and we... Carl Rove moves behind the President and plunges a syringe into his buttocks.
Thank you, that's all I have to say...
...in which short story anthology, I can't tell you (powers of recall dimming).
Anyhow, on a post-apocalyptic Earth (as always) the saviors of humankind are these huge bloblike aliens who fabricate anything people want from them out of dust. Cars, houses, clothes, food, etc. Problem is people have been depending on these aliens for so many generations that they have no idea how make anything, and they aliens are starting to die off (and all the things the aliens conjured are falling apart)--panic ensues. Enter the hero who shows people an ugly, crude clay mug that he made himself.
Is that why people (well, anime-geeks) find anime-girls so attractive? Are we programmed to select women for the amount of light they can focus on their retinas with their tea-saucer sized eyes?
I see police surveillence cameras in Chicago nowadays (mostly in "bad" neighborhoods) in clearly public spaces, and there's literally millions of surveillence cameras all over public spaces nowadays so it would be clearly hypocritical for some sort of regulation banning picture-phones or cameras or whatnot in public places, not to mention totally impractical.
I remember reading a story about some skateboarders travelling to Beiruit and not getting in trouble for skating, but getting in trouble for filming (the Hizbollah would confiscate their cameras but not their boards). No, public filming for private use is here to stay as I doubt any of our governments (as in Westernized governments, I'm assuming of/.'ers) would do something so Orwellian.
Privacy is and shall be no more! (I guess that's my point?)
Parallel to this will be an increase in interest in retaining privacy in private areas (think jammers, scramblers, encryption, and all the counters and counter-counters to that). Why, I even read what you wrote before you posted it with my VanEck-phreaking-unmanned-aircraft. You should invest in a TEMPEST helmet before someone sells your deepest sexual fantasies on DVD on a NYC streetcorner with Mandarin AND Cantonese subtitles...
Consider that video games like H2, HL2, D3, etc. probably get played for, hmm, i dunno -- 40 hours each? (yes I'm counting all those minutes of gameplay that get replayed over and over until the 'perfect' runthrough and the players saves the game, not the $timetotal+=$timeoflastsavefile reflected in the savefile counter) Now do the math (with arbitrary numbers I just made up, heh):
Movie ticket price ($10) / Movie length (120') ~ 12 min/$
Game cost ($50) / Average Singleplayer Finishtime (2400') ~ 0.021 min/$
(taking longer than 40 hrs only increases cost efficiency of video games)
Hell, what about games that people never stop playing? (but not subscription service games, that's a different equation altogether) I didn't pay for Enemy Territory but I love it because I'm poor and it's the most cost-effective time-waster ever.
Of course, you may argue that these big-budget simgle-player games have story and meaning, etc. (at least on par with Hollywood (as in very little (suddenly this has become like a LISP program (sorry)))) but who can really measure the unit price of cultural value?
Sure, you have your visionary directors and video game honchos of the same artistic bent, but Hollywood and the video game industry usually subsumes those efforts with its endless tide of committee-written, market-driven, eye-candy deliverin', blood-splatterin', highly entertaining drivel purely for the sake of the bottom line (profit).
CG will not be able to render that, but then again, it would take a really good actor to impersonate Gally on the big screen.
Just a hunch, but I suspect Gally will be a hybrid of human actor footage (the face) composited onto a CG body that is merely superimposed over a motion-capture suit anyway (ala Gollum), at least for medium-to-tight shots. The technique of facial expression capture is far from satisfying, such as in the case of Final Fantasy. The stills from F.F. looked pretty good but the actual animation made me cringe.
I believe the technique used in FF (yes I watched all the DVD extras) was to have a bunch of lights highlighting points on the actors' faces and using those to motion capture the movement of their facial muscles to map onto the CG model (sorry bout the run-on). Nice idea, but ultimately flawed. The skin and underlying muscle stretches and distorts in ways that simple surface references cannot emulate unless you were to simply scan in the entire actor's face and render it. However rigging an actor up to such a thing (it looks rather cumbersome and the actors cannot move while in it) also has the disadvantage of dissasociating them from the movements of the scene that they are in, not to mention points of focus for their eyes, effects of head movement via the muscles of the neck.
In conclusion, Mr. Cameron (yes, now I'm writing directly to you) your best bet with current technology is to do what Spielburg did with a minor character in AI (remember the preview: robo-body with human face runs at camera, then turns to reveal just a face supported by a few odds and ends). Human actor in motion capture suit with face exposed the CG body composited on(but leave the clothing real, please).
disclaimer: I'm not going to detail WHY Kozmo failed; i'm writing about it from another angle.
I started out in the tech sector. Unix helpdesk manager was my previous job. After the bubble burst and the WTC went down I quit the desk job and bummed around for a while until I became a bicycle messenger (that's a whole nother story).
Anyhow, because of my new job, I've met a lot of ex-Kozmo messengers (in Chicago). They talk about how great it was to get tipped (messengers generally don't) and how dangerous it was to ride at night (when everyone was at home ordering movies). They talk about the times they spent bumming around their base getting paid to do nothing and seeing the company buy progressively more and more shit that wasn't going anywhere. They saw management buy scooters that nobody used, hire extra messengers they didn't need, and all manner of completely idiot things that management types tend to do.
Coming from this all discussion betwixt the lower ranks is a simple conclusion: the people who started it had no idea what they were doing. It's not a matter of having a business plan drawing a napkin as you say; I mean Kozmo had marketers galore and real potential.
Too big, too fast. How did they grow so much without profit? Enormous Venture Capital flow. Sure, it seemed like a good idea, heck it was a good idea, but greed was the real impetus and thus its downfall.
My point is that Kozmo could have succeeded, like ebay, and radically transformed the world of home delivery options. Unlike ebay, it was grown way too fast because of investors looking for quick returns. And possibly CEO's and VP's wanting to make it to that IPO and cash out quick.
C'mon, didn't you ever see Bubblegum Crisis episode 6 (original series)? They're only bad if a meglomaniacal bionic superhuman somehow gains total control of them with his mind...
...not the button-sequence memorization required today ala Tekken 4 or whatever's out nowadays. Seriously, some 13-year-old kid may be able to beat your pants off in the arcade with the latest glitzy fighting mutation, but just see how well that kid does against you in Demon Attack, or Keystone Capers...
Seriously, those old, super-simple games like Pitfall or Chopper Command relied on raw eye-hand coordination, not some lame formula you've memorized. Partially because most of those games encompassed only one lousy screen at a time (what was that one where you use the paddles to catch bombs?), there was a high degree of randomness that didn't allow for any kind of strategy, just gut reaction.
Of course Nintendo with it's fancy amount of memory changed all that.
I think a lot of people play through FPS games in a way that smacks of perfectionism, ie: "leave no enemy alive, no ammo ungathered." I observed a friend of mine creeping through Half-Life, saving after just about every kill they make, meticulously reloading if they "used up too much ammo/health". I can't stand this style of playing. I used to be like that myself, then I realized I should be having fun, not getting stressed out about virtual bullet conservation.
I recently purchased and played through System Shock 2, which is quite a difficult game, actually (even on "Normal") and I realized that instead of the casual, "kill some but run from most" style I was used to, I was lapsing into the perfectionist mode.
However, thinking about it more lead me to conclude that the difficulty of the game forced you to save after every successful deed, as if it was part of the game design or something. After a while, hitting quick save and quick reload became reflexive, and the loading bar became the majority of my game experience.
The problem with FPS, I think, is giving the player far too much control and leaving almost nothing up to chance. I mean, in a RTS no saved game plays out the same -- the little critters or machines don't move/die/kill exactly the same each time, so it's not like you can blame yourself. However, the RTS is built for twitchy people, and twitchy people alone dominate the Counterstrike servers.
That being the case, I think that's why the cheating struck him as wrong. He wanted to prove his skill to himself. Cheating in a RTS game would mean something else entirely, but in a FPS it's like your not really playing. Everything feels cheapened.
I totally forgot what my point was, actually. -1, braindead.
I had a Casio (forget model number) which seemed nicer than the TI-81's of the time (1995)--it was slimmer and had graphical matrix representation, but it used only large watch batteries. The night before the AP Calculus test, I loaded the thing with every trigonomic identity and useful formula possible.
The test arrived. I turned it on. The power drain was so great that it was unusable. I sighed and stuck a paperclip into the reset hole.
I got a 3, though. Good enough to skip a semester at college!
I know it may not be possible for your area, but hell, there are plenty of ISP's that do allow VPN, even AOL! My company has quite a few clients that access our systems via VPN so we let them know ahead of time: "if your ISP doesn't support VPN, switch!" And let them know why you switched, too. It won't be long until they get it through their thick skulls that singling out certain ports to charge access to isn't going to work.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is all about natural language parsing, but I think the most interesting feat was actually the seeding of Watson's database. Millions of documents (books, wikipedia, scholarly articles) were "fed" into Watson which become it's knowledge base. So to me, it's not so impressive that Watson understand the questions, but is able to utilize human knowledge that is in a natural-language form.
I agree, it's not an attack on humanity. The PBS Nova episode about Watson explores the issues rather thoroughly, but the videos on IBM's site go into the technicalities a little better. The NOVA ep does do a good job of comparing Watson to competing AI programs out there, though.
I find it exciting that a Watson-like program will eventually be able to answer technical questions for people (like doctors) who don't have time to scan through the thousands of scholarly articles of latest research -- you know, applying Watson's capabilities to a realm that humans need help in.
How long will it be before IBM puts up an "ask Watson" web page, I wonder?
The concept of road trains and super-smart-highways was presaged in John Varley's excellent 2004 novel Red Thunder. In the book, cars with higher optimal speeds (where aerodynamic drag and mileage gains of higher gear ratios cancel out) form faster trains, where inefficient vehicles are put in slower trains. The superhighways required cars to be equipped with the system to enter them, of course.
I concur with your projections, if only to add that social pressure not to waste fuel (by driving your SUV at 70mph rather than 50mph) will likely add the extra caveat of forcing one to drive at a reasonable speed.
And with all the automation of highways, we'll all get to our destinations faster, regardless.
Responding to Nintendo's market dominance, due to the hugely popular "Wii-mote" control scheme, Sony executives unveiled the Bodyshokk (tm) controller for the PS3.
"The user will put on this controller like a jumpsuit," explained Sony executive Ken Kutaragi. "They will then be able to control the actions of on-screen characters through physical gestures."
The Bodyshokk (tm) resembles a neon-pink wetsuit and can be customized with a variety of attractive racing stripes. During the demonstration, Kutaragi played a demo of God of War 3, in which the main character fought off a dozen assailants. He danced around the stage, then clutched his chest and screamed in pain when an enemy character struck his onscreen avatar with a large glowing weapon.
"Muscular feedback electrodes are built right into the controller," said Kutaragi. "In this case, a hit on the chest is translated into a tazer-level shock through the wearer's nipples. Force-feedback and motion tracking is the wave of the future. People want to feel their games, not just play them." Kutaragi then jerked spasmodically, as his game character was assaulted by multiple enemies, before his assistants could pause the game.
Executives at Microsoft are just as optimistic about their upcoming UltraPrecision series of console peripherals. Recently demoed was a life-sized robot, nicknamed "The RealFoe", which resembled a crash-test dummy. Programmers then punched and kicked the robot, and on the screen behind them the robot's cowering actions were displayed, as well as bruises forming on the in-game avatar, which resembled a middle-aged blond woman.
"You don't get that kind of force-feedback from just a controller's vibration," said one of the demo-givers, who wished to remain anonymous. He then turned towards the robot and delivered a backhanded slap. "Git your ass off the floor and make me some breakfast!"
On the screen, the virtual woman shakily got up, synchronized to the robot's actions, and stumbled towards a virtual kitchen. The game being demoed was The Sims 3 - Domestic Drama. The robot even slouched its shoulders in the same way the character was animated.
"You see that realism? Some people might complain that [these new controllers] take too much physical exertion, but once you actually play the game, the immersion is incredible!"
A: (shouting) "For fuck's sake, I needed those girls by Sunday! How can you just lose a cargo container full of twelve-year-olds!?"
B: "Uh, excuse me, what are you talking about?"
A: (turns head, points to bluetooth headset) "Ahem! Okay...uh-huh...all right. We'll tell the captain he can keep the skim..." (covers microphone) "Do you mind?"
B: (laughing nervously) "Oh, my bad. How rude of me to interrupt!"
Back in the day, my dad would give me a bunch of magazines and a Vic-20 with a cassette tape drive.
"Here you go son, I got some new games for you."
"But there's only a memory cartridge in the machine!"
"No, the games are in here," he'd say, patting the stack of magazines. "Let me know when you have something typed, in so we can play together."
How about this: Instead of paying the gov't tax dollars to plunder natural resources, we decide where our "surplus" income goes to? What if the tax form included a checklist where you decided yea or nay on things like social security, defense spending, paying back national debt, NASA's budget and so forth?
Even better, how about some Non-governmental, non-profit space agency that gets funded by a bunch of geeks with nothing better to spend their money on? (and by the way, avoid paying taxes altogether) I bet there's already a web site...
If you want to be philosophical about it, the material gain in the game world is every bit as fulfilling and satisfying as material gain in the real world: in other words, fleeting and dissatisfactory. We all die, sooner or later.
I was once involved in creating a MMORPG based on Buddhist principles, but then I thought, what the hell is the point? Maybe I should revive the project, if only to teach people the meaninglessness of their fantasies.
Ah, my fantasy is to be the destroyer of fanciful materialistic escapism! Bwahahahahahaaaa!
An old Warhammer 40K spin-off, Space Hulk. The board looks damnned similar. I wonder if Doom 3: The Boardgame (dah dah DuuuHHHMMM!!) allows you to put your characters on "overwatch".
Don't get me wrong, I'm as anti-big-brother as the next person, but in a society where privacy cannot be garunteed, the next best thing is to have as much as public as possible. Therefore the things that get entered into records would be done under the understanding that anyone could log in and check up on it instantly.
Examples:
You're trying to unionize your workplace and your boss finds out about it. They want to fire you by citing other reasons (attendance issues or something trivial). Any person in the world could check the data and see that you had an outstanding personnel record and that the firing is totally inconsistant with past relations to the company, making it obvious that they were firing you for union activities (firing for that reason is illegal) and they know that.
The company wants to make shoes in Indonesia for a total material and labor cost of $20/pair and sell them in the USA for $120/pair. The consideration of this would be documented and available online (the internal cost analysis report, for instance). Any fool could see that this a profiteering rip-off. Consequences: shoes get cheaper or anti-sweatshop activists lobby the company to keep production local (and union!).
Corporate execs like would have to document all decisions and so forth on the system so there is a big incentive for them to not make shady deals (or at least disguise them better).
I guess what I'm getting at is that transparency builds trust, but it has to be TOTAL and there needs to be some sort of expected standard of corporate transparency, not like the blackboxes they are today. It would be like a public ISO 9000 test. No more non-disclosure agreements!
I hope I live to see it happen, but I suspect that corporations themselves will go extinct before they adopt such structures.
Wow, I haven't used that syntax since 1993...
I believe that the guy sent his diagrams to a machine shop that cut the aluminum frame for him (very sensible, but expensive) as well as the stainless steel side panels.
Aluminum is really hard to cut right unless you have the proper tools, and most shop tools (in a woodshop) are essentially useless and will make a mess of the aluminum. T1-4 can be cut with a die grinder with a carbon blade or a 20-tooth(per inch) hacksaw blade. Even doing that will take a few hours of extra burnishing to get the edges straight (large screwdriver--run the round part of the shaft down the burrs on the edge). Forget about working with T6. Using a sawsall, jigsaw, or regular grinder will just create a nasty, jagged edge.
I've heard that machine shop guys will take a table saw blade and turn backwards--can anyone confirm this?
Just the amount of work he did with the plexiglass alone was incredible! Not to mention removing and polishing the stainless steel casing for his HD's and DVD-drives.
Carl Rove: Where's the President now?
Aide #1: Umm, I think he just went to make a press statement about the increase in NASA's budget...?
Carl Rove spots unused, filled syringe lying on table
CR: Oh God! You forgot to give him the injection!
Scene: White House Press Conference
President GWB: Thank you Americans and members of the Press. The exploration of the Outer Spaces is an important initiative in these dangerous and uncertain times. We have enemies abroad and ih our homes. We have enemies visible and indivisible. Enemies that wish to do us harm, and enemies that don't.
Pauses, blinks.
That is why I am giving my authorization to increase funding to the Nationalized Air and Space Association, because we need to bring the fight to the enemy. Right now, we don't have a man on the Mars. This is embarrassing! We've been to Mars and by God we ought to stay there! In the days since my father ended the Cold War, we've relaxed our posture on the Space Chase, but now a new enemy is on our doorstep. He's in our backyard, too because he climbed over the fence without asking.
dramatic pause. squints at audience.
My friends, now isn't the time to fall behind and ignore these things--we must act. We must bring the fight to the enemy whenever and wherever he appears, be it in Omaha, Wisconsin or on the Mars. We cannot wait until he has the advantage and saps our precious vital fluids while we sleep.
(Carl Rove is seen edging towards the President)
Now, you may think that with our current deploymentization in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ko-Rea we can't sustain a fight for Mars. But I'm telling you, it's not about the numbers--we have smart weapons, smart troops, and smart ideas on how to Win the Peace on Mars, by winning their hearts and minds. You see, they envy our freedom and our way of life. They envy our precious vital fluids and we...
Carl Rove moves behind the President and plunges a syringe into his buttocks.
Thank you, that's all I have to say...
Anyhow, on a post-apocalyptic Earth (as always) the saviors of humankind are these huge bloblike aliens who fabricate anything people want from them out of dust. Cars, houses, clothes, food, etc. Problem is people have been depending on these aliens for so many generations that they have no idea how make anything, and they aliens are starting to die off (and all the things the aliens conjured are falling apart)--panic ensues. Enter the hero who shows people an ugly, crude clay mug that he made himself.
Is that why people (well, anime-geeks) find anime-girls so attractive? Are we programmed to select women for the amount of light they can focus on their retinas with their tea-saucer sized eyes?
(so off-topic, but what the hell...)
I remember reading a story about some skateboarders travelling to Beiruit and not getting in trouble for skating, but getting in trouble for filming (the Hizbollah would confiscate their cameras but not their boards). No, public filming for private use is here to stay as I doubt any of our governments (as in Westernized governments, I'm assuming of /.'ers) would do something so Orwellian.
Privacy is and shall be no more! (I guess that's my point?)
Parallel to this will be an increase in interest in retaining privacy in private areas (think jammers, scramblers, encryption, and all the counters and counter-counters to that). Why, I even read what you wrote before you posted it with my VanEck-phreaking-unmanned-aircraft. You should invest in a TEMPEST helmet before someone sells your deepest sexual fantasies on DVD on a NYC streetcorner with Mandarin AND Cantonese subtitles...
oops, my maths are totally fucked in that there above equation-thingie.
That's 0.083 min/$ for movies.
Movie ticket price ($10) / Movie length (120') ~ 12 min/$
Game cost ($50) / Average Singleplayer Finishtime (2400') ~ 0.021 min/$
(taking longer than 40 hrs only increases cost efficiency of video games)
Hell, what about games that people never stop playing? (but not subscription service games, that's a different equation altogether) I didn't pay for Enemy Territory but I love it because I'm poor and it's the most cost-effective time-waster ever.
Of course, you may argue that these big-budget simgle-player games have story and meaning, etc. (at least on par with Hollywood (as in very little (suddenly this has become like a LISP program (sorry)))) but who can really measure the unit price of cultural value?
Sure, you have your visionary directors and video game honchos of the same artistic bent, but Hollywood and the video game industry usually subsumes those efforts with its endless tide of committee-written, market-driven, eye-candy deliverin', blood-splatterin', highly entertaining drivel purely for the sake of the bottom line (profit).
I believe the technique used in FF (yes I watched all the DVD extras) was to have a bunch of lights highlighting points on the actors' faces and using those to motion capture the movement of their facial muscles to map onto the CG model (sorry bout the run-on). Nice idea, but ultimately flawed. The skin and underlying muscle stretches and distorts in ways that simple surface references cannot emulate unless you were to simply scan in the entire actor's face and render it. However rigging an actor up to such a thing (it looks rather cumbersome and the actors cannot move while in it) also has the disadvantage of dissasociating them from the movements of the scene that they are in, not to mention points of focus for their eyes, effects of head movement via the muscles of the neck.
In conclusion, Mr. Cameron (yes, now I'm writing directly to you) your best bet with current technology is to do what Spielburg did with a minor character in AI (remember the preview: robo-body with human face runs at camera, then turns to reveal just a face supported by a few odds and ends). Human actor in motion capture suit with face exposed the CG body composited on(but leave the clothing real, please).
I started out in the tech sector. Unix helpdesk manager was my previous job. After the bubble burst and the WTC went down I quit the desk job and bummed around for a while until I became a bicycle messenger (that's a whole nother story).
Anyhow, because of my new job, I've met a lot of ex-Kozmo messengers (in Chicago). They talk about how great it was to get tipped (messengers generally don't) and how dangerous it was to ride at night (when everyone was at home ordering movies). They talk about the times they spent bumming around their base getting paid to do nothing and seeing the company buy progressively more and more shit that wasn't going anywhere. They saw management buy scooters that nobody used, hire extra messengers they didn't need, and all manner of completely idiot things that management types tend to do.
Coming from this all discussion betwixt the lower ranks is a simple conclusion: the people who started it had no idea what they were doing. It's not a matter of having a business plan drawing a napkin as you say; I mean Kozmo had marketers galore and real potential.
Too big, too fast. How did they grow so much without profit? Enormous Venture Capital flow. Sure, it seemed like a good idea, heck it was a good idea, but greed was the real impetus and thus its downfall.
My point is that Kozmo could have succeeded, like ebay, and radically transformed the world of home delivery options. Unlike ebay, it was grown way too fast because of investors looking for quick returns. And possibly CEO's and VP's wanting to make it to that IPO and cash out quick.
hmm...
Seriously, those old, super-simple games like Pitfall or Chopper Command relied on raw eye-hand coordination, not some lame formula you've memorized. Partially because most of those games encompassed only one lousy screen at a time (what was that one where you use the paddles to catch bombs?), there was a high degree of randomness that didn't allow for any kind of strategy, just gut reaction.
Of course Nintendo with it's fancy amount of memory changed all that.
I recently purchased and played through System Shock 2, which is quite a difficult game, actually (even on "Normal") and I realized that instead of the casual, "kill some but run from most" style I was used to, I was lapsing into the perfectionist mode.
However, thinking about it more lead me to conclude that the difficulty of the game forced you to save after every successful deed, as if it was part of the game design or something. After a while, hitting quick save and quick reload became reflexive, and the loading bar became the majority of my game experience.
The problem with FPS, I think, is giving the player far too much control and leaving almost nothing up to chance. I mean, in a RTS no saved game plays out the same -- the little critters or machines don't move/die/kill exactly the same each time, so it's not like you can blame yourself. However, the RTS is built for twitchy people, and twitchy people alone dominate the Counterstrike servers.
That being the case, I think that's why the cheating struck him as wrong. He wanted to prove his skill to himself. Cheating in a RTS game would mean something else entirely, but in a FPS it's like your not really playing. Everything feels cheapened.
I totally forgot what my point was, actually. -1, braindead.
The test arrived. I turned it on. The power drain was so great that it was unusable. I sighed and stuck a paperclip into the reset hole.
I got a 3, though. Good enough to skip a semester at college!
I know it may not be possible for your area, but hell, there are plenty of ISP's that do allow VPN, even AOL! My company has quite a few clients that access our systems via VPN so we let them know ahead of time: "if your ISP doesn't support VPN, switch!" And let them know why you switched, too. It won't be long until they get it through their thick skulls that singling out certain ports to charge access to isn't going to work.
M$ Maketeer#1 : Joe responds favorably to funny commercials, epecially those about hot grits.
M$ Maketeer#2 : How do you know that?
M$ Maketeer#1: Because he gave commercial #12513GHH001 a + 2, Funny