I doubt that stock equipment is so bad that you can increase its performance by any significant amount (50% or so) before hitting the physical limit.
Oh, but you can. You can do *much* better than a 50% improvement.
The stock equipment was designed to be low-cost and long-life. If you are willing to spend more for more complex components, and spend more often to replace components that wear out quickly, you can quadruple - or more - your grip on the road, and your brake performance on most stock cars.
Certainly, if you are purchasing a performance car, some of the easy improvements will already be done, and it's not really practical for the average driver to do things like change their tires and brake pads every five thousand miles... But people *do* do these things for recreation on street legal vehicles... Just because they want to drive fast doesn't mean they have a death wish, and they certainly don't want to hit anything with their precious car.
Braking distance is a function of velocity squared. Same goes for kinetic energy.
That doesn't excuse you from being bad at math.
The function of velocity squared that you mention is velocity squared divided by two times the rate of deceleration. If you want to stop in less time, you can go slower, sure... Or you can increase the performance of your brakes and tires sufficiently to take the velocity squared part of the equation into account.
Just like somebody with an agenda (wanting people to drive slower) to tout an equation while neglecting to consider one of the variables.
So what you're saying is that we can take as much of your salary away for the "public good" as we want, and you don't really care what the money is used for, as long as it's done in $2/month line items?
If they rely on drive-by surfers, that would put them out of business. If they target a tightly knit market, where people who shop also communicate, it's a different matter.
I know I'm not alone in this: My definition of the ideal search engine is one that never links to that type of site.
Rather than working on increasing their pagerank, they should work on their business model.
The irony of your response is clearly lost on you, so I'll ignore it any ask another hypothetical question instead.
Are any of the users that your site has from an artificially increased pagerank actually worth anything to you if all they do is click, see that your site is crap, and then go back to google to click the next link down?
I played Zelda. Why would I get Madden for the Wii when I could play it in HD? No, I don't like Metroid Prime. And it's not that I don't like the Minigames.. I just don't want to spend upwards of $30 on the same old ones re-hashed, when I could be playing $5 games on another system.
But you've probably never even tried the other systems, or you'd have know all that. Really, which games in your list have come out since june. Just Strikers and Metroid. Wow. Two games. I'm blown away.
I have barely used by Wii since I got my PS3 in June. Why? Nothing good has come out for it, plain and simple.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm running home to play with the PS3 every night either, but there has been a fairly steady stream of PS3-specific downloadable tiles for the PS3, and all the Wii's got is more mini-games, and the virtual console stuff. Stuff on the shelves at the store isn't compelling at the listed pricepoint, Zelda doesn't have very much replay value, and downloadable Wii titles don't exist...
Sure, when there are people over, we'll play on the Wii. But other than that, I'm waiting for the games.
A sequel that uses the same engine with new content and a few token new features isn't called a sequel. It's called an expansion pack, and players expect it to be priced appropriately.
Who said anything about "sequels"? You *can* write a new game with all new plot, characters, art, etc., and use the same engine. That's neither a sequel nor an expansion pack, and except for a small number of whiners in online forums, I'm sure that most people would understand the difference.
Let me give you a real life example. Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate II used essentially the same engine, and were priced as different games. Would you consider one of those to be an 'expansion pack'?
What about King's Quest 2 and 3? GTA 3 & Vice City?
There are still games that follow the model I'm suggesting. They're just the exception, not the rule.
Sure it's their prerogative, but why shouldn't the game industry be concerned about it?
My claim wasn't that it would be wrong for retailers to do this... It's a valid concern of the game industry that this might happen... But my main point was that it is disingenuous to assert that the only reason the game industry would oppose this legislation is that they want to sell 'M' rated games to children; which is exactly what this politician said.
I fail to see how your comment is a response to my comment in any way, other than to raise an implied strawman argument, after quoting me out of context.
Re:Reinventing the game wheel for copyright reason
on
Gaming Usability 101
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· Score: 1
You're talking mainly about graphics engines. That's really, really different.
Look at games series like Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy (since 8), Elder Scrolls, hell, even Madden.... Sure, they might leverage some of the older bits, but the games focus as much or more on additional features as they do additional story. Unreal, Source, Quake/doom engines? Sure they got reused, but not for more of the same gameplay with different content.. They got re-used for their ability to push polygons onto the screen, and that's it. It's very unlike how SCUMM, or the like were used back in the day.
I think he craftily dodged the point, and steered the interviewer away from asking the hard questions as only a good politician can.
He turned it around on the industry, claiming that they can only oppose the law if they actually want to sell these games to children... But that's not why the industry opposes the rule. The industry is afraid, rightfully so, that many stores will stop carrying M rated titles to avoid the risk of prosecution.
Re:Subtitles for deaf people vs. for foreigners
on
Gaming Usability 101
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· Score: 1
I think the gist is that games should be less complicated, at least through the early levels. Using features on the other buttons should be an option, not a requirement. For instance, I've seen a video on YouTube of someone beating Super Mario Bros. without pressing the B button (except for one "press B to continue" screen).
This wouldn't be a necessary requirement if we didn't have an industry obsession with implementing a new game engine for every game. It didn't used to be that way. we used to get 12-15 adventure games/RPGs/etc on a single engine all with the same controls. It was OK if the controls were complex, because you knew what they did from the last game you played.
Now, we have a situation that is like learning to read every time you pick up a book. It's insane. There is no reason we can't generate more content with the same gameplay and still produce fun, engaging titles. Sometimes the only whiz-bang new feature a new game needs is a new plot/set of characters/etc.
Alas, games are reviewed based on how perky the breasts are in the screenshot, and "more of the same" is treated as a negative. And "additional content" is considered an afterthought, and something to be sold on the cheap in small doses.
Oh well . . . still no decent MMORPG on the horizon. I guess we'll have to wait until 2009 for something to pop up.
I think the whole genre just has some inherent flaws. There's no way anybody's thought of yet to get around the fact that there are other people doing things in the game that you already did... It's like there are a bunch of people playing a single player/minimally multi-player game on the same map at the same time, but with a unified economy. I think that Puzzle Pirates is the closest anybody has come to making it seem that you as an individual actually have the impact on the world the role you take on represents. Most of these other games are simply "massive" to allow chat, mid-sized (Yes, 40-80 players is mid-sized) PvP, and an excuse to collect a monthly fee.
That's not to say there's no value in playing these games, but I don't think they come anywhere close to living up to the "massive" hype. I wouldn't hold up too much hope for 2009. You're better off hoping that Fallout 3 is good, and stop worrying so much about whether there are a bunch of other people around you destroying suspension of disbelief.
Heh. That and the damned battery.... Those machines don't boot up without it. I finally rigged it up to a transformer connected to the UPS output. Mine is completely yellow on the front too.
I did finally retire it recently though. It's just too little computing per-watt, and faster hardware pays for itself in electricity savings.
I just wish I had done something as lucrative with mine as Rob did with his. I bet we bought them from the same online auction. I made a site that served up surface images of mars processed off CDs from NASA. Turns out, geek news was more lucrative.
Now on 'indefinite hold', it appears a game just weeks or months away from release will never see commercial production.
They probably realized that it would take much longer than a few weeks or months for the development to catch up to the hype/marketing. A more accurate statement would likely be "A game we were led to believe was just weeks or months away from release..."
I know not many places have this yet, but it's expanding...
I've got 20Mbit down... I routinely get 1.8MB/second from the playstation store. If I wanted to spend $10/month more I could have 50MB/second. 4GB for a game download is no big deal. Especially when the game downloads in the background while you're playing another game. Admittedly if I had to watch Mario hit ? blocks while I was waiting it would be a different story...
Regardless, I'm not talking about first-tier, content heavy games. I'm talking about little things. The download size for things like GripShift, and Super-rub-a-dub, Stardust, and Flow weren't very big at all. They were worth the price, they took advantage of all the "next-gen" features of the system, and I bet they were big moneymakers for their publishers and for Sony. Don't you think Nintendo could fit something like one of the games from Wii Play into a download in the 20MB range? Now consider if they started sharing resources (3D models, textures, sounds) between some of those downloadables. Hell, they could make you put the Wii Sports disc in while you play and use stuff you've already got... Or store a library of common resources on the SD card. The size could come down dramatically, as would their distribution costs. The only thing going up would be their profit. Now imagine a 20GB hard drive plugged in to the USB port on the back...
Sure, you'll still be heading out to the store to buy a content-heavy title like Bioshock. But you shouldn't have to if what you're looking for is something smaller. And you shouldn't have to settle for an emulated re-release.
You answered your own question already. People don't have the right to be dumb and self destructive when the cost of those actions is shared by everyone (or anyone) else. If you want to act dumb and self destuctive, do so in a way that is a cost only to you.
It seems then, that in a free society the solution shouldn't be to ban said behaviors, but to eliminate the entitlement to the services which "cost" in those situations.
The parent poster asked you:
"What makes you think people having health care gives you the right to start controlling what they do, simply because you also pay for health care?"...and your answer is essentially "yes, I have the right because I pay for their health care"?
I can't think of a nice way to say this: "Fuck you. I don't want you to tell me what to do. I'd rather you take your universal health care and shove it up your ass. That way I get to keep my freedom."
Without seat belts, you're far more likely to be ejected or impact the steering column with your face. I acknowledge your right to freedom, but at the same time I have no wish to fund your care while you spend 30 years fading to black in a vegetative state because your brain got scrambled in a relatively minor accident.
That's a really really terrible argument for seat belt laws, and a really really excellent argument against universal health care.
Caused yourself expensive injuries by violating traffic laws? Insurance claim rejected. Plug pulled. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, but you can. You can do *much* better than a 50% improvement.
The stock equipment was designed to be low-cost and long-life. If you are willing to spend more for more complex components, and spend more often to replace components that wear out quickly, you can quadruple - or more - your grip on the road, and your brake performance on most stock cars.
Certainly, if you are purchasing a performance car, some of the easy improvements will already be done, and it's not really practical for the average driver to do things like change their tires and brake pads every five thousand miles... But people *do* do these things for recreation on street legal vehicles... Just because they want to drive fast doesn't mean they have a death wish, and they certainly don't want to hit anything with their precious car.
And I didn't mention that just because you *can* make your vehicle better at stopping from high speeds, doesn't mean you should drive fast.
If you're on a wide straight road with little traffic, you're not going to be testing your reflexes if you are driving smart.
That doesn't excuse you from being bad at math.
The function of velocity squared that you mention is velocity squared divided by two times the rate of deceleration. If you want to stop in less time, you can go slower, sure... Or you can increase the performance of your brakes and tires sufficiently to take the velocity squared part of the equation into account.
Just like somebody with an agenda (wanting people to drive slower) to tout an equation while neglecting to consider one of the variables.
So what you're saying is that we can take as much of your salary away for the "public good" as we want, and you don't really care what the money is used for, as long as it's done in $2/month line items?
I know I'm not alone in this: My definition of the ideal search engine is one that never links to that type of site.
Rather than working on increasing their pagerank, they should work on their business model.
The irony of your response is clearly lost on you, so I'll ignore it any ask another hypothetical question instead.
Are any of the users that your site has from an artificially increased pagerank actually worth anything to you if all they do is click, see that your site is crap, and then go back to google to click the next link down?
Of all 5 responses to my comment, you're the only one who "got it".
If people designed their websites to serve their users instead of GoogleBot, would it matter that their pagerank was a little lower?
That article is talking desktops.
I'm sure that the "tax" is much higher for servers, depending on which variety of Windows Server you get, and how many licenses you add.
I played Zelda. Why would I get Madden for the Wii when I could play it in HD? No, I don't like Metroid Prime. And it's not that I don't like the Minigames.. I just don't want to spend upwards of $30 on the same old ones re-hashed, when I could be playing $5 games on another system.
But you've probably never even tried the other systems, or you'd have know all that. Really, which games in your list have come out since june. Just Strikers and Metroid. Wow. Two games. I'm blown away.
Hi, nice to meet you.
I have barely used by Wii since I got my PS3 in June. Why? Nothing good has come out for it, plain and simple.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm running home to play with the PS3 every night either, but there has been a fairly steady stream of PS3-specific downloadable tiles for the PS3, and all the Wii's got is more mini-games, and the virtual console stuff. Stuff on the shelves at the store isn't compelling at the listed pricepoint, Zelda doesn't have very much replay value, and downloadable Wii titles don't exist...
Sure, when there are people over, we'll play on the Wii. But other than that, I'm waiting for the games.
Two things:
It's *huge*.
It flys for about a minute.
If the government has something 1000x better than that, I'm still not worried about them doing any useful reconnaissance with it.
Who said anything about "sequels"? You *can* write a new game with all new plot, characters, art, etc., and use the same engine. That's neither a sequel nor an expansion pack, and except for a small number of whiners in online forums, I'm sure that most people would understand the difference.
Let me give you a real life example. Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate II used essentially the same engine, and were priced as different games. Would you consider one of those to be an 'expansion pack'?
What about King's Quest 2 and 3? GTA 3 & Vice City?
There are still games that follow the model I'm suggesting. They're just the exception, not the rule.
Sure it's their prerogative, but why shouldn't the game industry be concerned about it?
My claim wasn't that it would be wrong for retailers to do this... It's a valid concern of the game industry that this might happen... But my main point was that it is disingenuous to assert that the only reason the game industry would oppose this legislation is that they want to sell 'M' rated games to children; which is exactly what this politician said.
I fail to see how your comment is a response to my comment in any way, other than to raise an implied strawman argument, after quoting me out of context.
You're talking mainly about graphics engines. That's really, really different.
Look at games series like Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy (since 8), Elder Scrolls, hell, even Madden.... Sure, they might leverage some of the older bits, but the games focus as much or more on additional features as they do additional story. Unreal, Source, Quake/doom engines? Sure they got reused, but not for more of the same gameplay with different content.. They got re-used for their ability to push polygons onto the screen, and that's it. It's very unlike how SCUMM, or the like were used back in the day.
I think he craftily dodged the point, and steered the interviewer away from asking the hard questions as only a good politician can.
He turned it around on the industry, claiming that they can only oppose the law if they actually want to sell these games to children... But that's not why the industry opposes the rule. The industry is afraid, rightfully so, that many stores will stop carrying M rated titles to avoid the risk of prosecution.
This wouldn't be a necessary requirement if we didn't have an industry obsession with implementing a new game engine for every game. It didn't used to be that way. we used to get 12-15 adventure games/RPGs/etc on a single engine all with the same controls. It was OK if the controls were complex, because you knew what they did from the last game you played.
Now, we have a situation that is like learning to read every time you pick up a book. It's insane. There is no reason we can't generate more content with the same gameplay and still produce fun, engaging titles. Sometimes the only whiz-bang new feature a new game needs is a new plot/set of characters/etc.
Alas, games are reviewed based on how perky the breasts are in the screenshot, and "more of the same" is treated as a negative. And "additional content" is considered an afterthought, and something to be sold on the cheap in small doses.
Where? Are you sure they're really small?
I only ask, because I've never seen such an ad, and if it's real I want to buy one.
I think the whole genre just has some inherent flaws. There's no way anybody's thought of yet to get around the fact that there are other people doing things in the game that you already did... It's like there are a bunch of people playing a single player/minimally multi-player game on the same map at the same time, but with a unified economy. I think that Puzzle Pirates is the closest anybody has come to making it seem that you as an individual actually have the impact on the world the role you take on represents. Most of these other games are simply "massive" to allow chat, mid-sized (Yes, 40-80 players is mid-sized) PvP, and an excuse to collect a monthly fee.
That's not to say there's no value in playing these games, but I don't think they come anywhere close to living up to the "massive" hype. I wouldn't hold up too much hope for 2009. You're better off hoping that Fallout 3 is good, and stop worrying so much about whether there are a bunch of other people around you destroying suspension of disbelief.
Heh. That and the damned battery.... Those machines don't boot up without it. I finally rigged it up to a transformer connected to the UPS output. Mine is completely yellow on the front too.
I did finally retire it recently though. It's just too little computing per-watt, and faster hardware pays for itself in electricity savings.
I just wish I had done something as lucrative with mine as Rob did with his. I bet we bought them from the same online auction. I made a site that served up surface images of mars processed off CDs from NASA. Turns out, geek news was more lucrative.
They probably realized that it would take much longer than a few weeks or months for the development to catch up to the hype/marketing. A more accurate statement would likely be "A game we were led to believe was just weeks or months away from release..."
I know not many places have this yet, but it's expanding...
I've got 20Mbit down... I routinely get 1.8MB/second from the playstation store. If I wanted to spend $10/month more I could have 50MB/second. 4GB for a game download is no big deal. Especially when the game downloads in the background while you're playing another game. Admittedly if I had to watch Mario hit ? blocks while I was waiting it would be a different story...
Regardless, I'm not talking about first-tier, content heavy games. I'm talking about little things. The download size for things like GripShift, and Super-rub-a-dub, Stardust, and Flow weren't very big at all. They were worth the price, they took advantage of all the "next-gen" features of the system, and I bet they were big moneymakers for their publishers and for Sony. Don't you think Nintendo could fit something like one of the games from Wii Play into a download in the 20MB range? Now consider if they started sharing resources (3D models, textures, sounds) between some of those downloadables. Hell, they could make you put the Wii Sports disc in while you play and use stuff you've already got... Or store a library of common resources on the SD card. The size could come down dramatically, as would their distribution costs. The only thing going up would be their profit. Now imagine a 20GB hard drive plugged in to the USB port on the back...
Sure, you'll still be heading out to the store to buy a content-heavy title like Bioshock. But you shouldn't have to if what you're looking for is something smaller. And you shouldn't have to settle for an emulated re-release.
That's because stupidity riders on insurance policies are illegal.
It's not your job to save the lives of people who don't want your help.
It seems then, that in a free society the solution shouldn't be to ban said behaviors, but to eliminate the entitlement to the services which "cost" in those situations.
The parent poster asked you:
"What makes you think people having health care gives you the right to start controlling what they do, simply because you also pay for health care?"
I can't think of a nice way to say this: "Fuck you. I don't want you to tell me what to do. I'd rather you take your universal health care and shove it up your ass. That way I get to keep my freedom."
That's a really really terrible argument for seat belt laws, and a really really excellent argument against universal health care.
Caused yourself expensive injuries by violating traffic laws? Insurance claim rejected. Plug pulled. Problem solved.