Those games got panned by the gaming press as boring, boring, boring. They actually required people to think, account for all the variables, and then be satisfied when they merely score a correct hit. Just like real life. The gamers, however, wanted things to move faster. They wanted more Bang! Splat! Oof! to go with their game play. The notion of actually taking something close to real-life time to set up a shot was, to them, just needless tedium.
So, no, I don't think if you make the difficulty of in-game shooting more accurately mirror real life, gamers will be happy.
What you end up is sort of like all our racing games. Big simulations for all the behind the scenes crap for folks that are into that, but somewhat ignorable by everyone that just wants to grab a car and floor it around a track for a few minutes. Most weapons in games are not life like at all. There are a class of them that tries to pretend to be a bit more life like. Those games could use the behind the scenes stuff to model every shot and make them all fairly life like. You'd find out in short order that many gamers can't aim worth crap or yank the gun when they shouldn't. You just have to accept in a mass market game, that most people would treat life like physics as just added difficulty and not added fun. Come on how often has the average gamer ever shot a real gun? That's the only reason all these games can actually get away with not being life like. Only hunters or sport shooters know how guns really work, and they'd rather actually go out and shoot real guns. That's why those sim gun games the The National Rifle Association sticks their logo are considered boring. Real life stuff is generally boring and difficult if you have to do all the hard stuff.
Why should I climb the tallest tower in the furthest castle, if I get the same stuff as from the chest behind the entrance door?
Because you are a completionist and there happens to be a percentage of found items and you just have to find 100% of every item in every dungeon that you come across. Not that you ever really "have to" just for those near worthless items.
Why should I conquer the strongest enemies and explore their castle if I'm better off killing millions of rats, then open a chest in the tavern cellar? Well, you can't fight a million rats at once. Fighting some of those secret bosses is about that difficult and gives you about that much experience/gold in one shot. The sad thing are games like dragon quest that after a certain point you just don't get the experience from any monsters except for a handful of special cases that give you far more experience than anything else in the game. (I hate metal slimes, liquid metal slimes, and king metal slimes.) In some games, killing one random enemy of a higher area is about worth killing 1k-2k basic rats.
WTF? A hunter can miss a shot because the game catches his scent and gets away. A hunter can miss a shot because his hand slips a little before pulling the trigger. For _some_ weapons and _some_ distances things like gusts of wind may play a role, but most definitely not always. In a computer game, pointing/clicking two pixels to the left of your opponent is the equivalent to the hunter's hand slipping. And this is when you miss, even with a "perfect" weapon. Nobody guarantees you that in the heat of action your [the player's] every action will be perfect. Precise weapons do _not_ make _you_ precise, and this is why it does not break an action game if the weapons in it are precise.
Are there any FPS where you have to field strip and clean weapons that are jamming or won't fire for some reason? Every FPS that I've ever played, you only worry about finding the weapon, ammo, and aiming. In some games, it would work quite well if you had an armorer some where cleaning all the weapons or that in bad environments that the weapons become unusable unless you take it apart and know how to fix it. We've been spoiled by having super tech weapons more robust then AK47s. If anything that's unlikely, but it is fun to with.
You have your choice: energy efficiency OR omnidirectional transmission. The two are mutually exclusive. Plus, I along with many, many others would not like to have my reproductive organs anywhere near such a device.
How about you not liking this tech, but your neighbor's kid's remote controlled car or plane uses it so you get the effects without the benefits. Or maybe your gadget hungry neighbors bought a new robot lawn mower, and it is powered via this method as well as their yard or Christmas lights.
Of course being the true scientist, you'd wait until neighbor's kid has some offspring and see if they are deformed or not before really trusting the tech yourself.
Wasteful, but extremely useful for certain purposes. Most electric toothbrushes are a perfect example, if solved slightly differently - you don't want unsealed electrical points on a device that gets wet in normal use. Any other sealed device that needs charging could possibly benefit from this.
So you have a wireless power transmitter in the bathroom integrated in the normal electrical outlet. What powered bathroom devices could we power this way? Tooth brushes, razors, vanity mirrors, shower radios, all sorts of kids toys, and that adult bath toy the battery powered vibrator.
Cell phones, cordless phones, and remotes might also be good to charge via this method as well.
Heck, making AA, AAA, C, and D sized "batteries" that just receives "wireless power" from the "wireless transmitter" would let you power some of those kids toys for as long as you have the wireless transmitter plugged in. That would be much better than running down the batteries really quickly and then either having to recharge or get new ones.
This tech will really take off when a store owner can train a min. wage worker to walk through their store in the morning in about 10-15 minutes and have an app auto update the model, the store inventory list, a list of everything known that was sold yesterday, and a list of everything missing in the the store that wasn't sold.
For bonus points, it would scan through yesterdays security recordings for everyone passing in front of the "missing items" and auto report shop lifted items with a list of subjects to the local police department. If you even want to help the police even more, you could have the system match up every person with check/credit sales receipts for names for the people as well.
I thought we learned in the 90s that virtual representations of physicals things, be they stores, libraries -- whatever, are simply not the most useful way to access information. I don't want to go wandering around virtual stores to find the things I want to buy. What I want is something that lets me specify the thing I want, and tells me the cheapest place to buy it -- Google Products already does that quite well.
For what most of us buy on the web or are willing to wait to have shipped to us, that's mostly true. There are many other areas where other methods of shopping would be much more useful. I've always wanted to store grocery lists at walmart and have them pull the items ready for me to pick up when I get off work. Heck, with walmart I've always wanted to link all my store receipts together through a my walmart page and at a glance or very little paging through screens just pull up out lists of what I purchased, when, and for what prices. I'd also like longer descriptions than what's on the store receipts and 6 views of nearly every product boxed and unboxed with the ability to zoom in/out and around. (Walmart could just require their various vendors to provide that info for their various products and just dump it straight into their backend. Think of it as requiring "useful" views of products.)
There are times that I've wanted a virtual map of a store. I don't really want to hunt items. I want to have my list and have them give me a map and show me where the heck that they've placed every item on my list in their store. If virtual store browsing was actually quicker than real world store browsing, it might be useful. Let's be honest, in 1996 that wasn't really possible. Now a days with web enabled cell phones, DSL and cable broadband, it is more likely to atleast be possible of getting it to load and browse quickly.
Let's be honest Google Earth takes awhile to load and run even if you do it at work on a fast machine. How long do you think it would take you to click on say 3-4 stores on your way home, load their virtual store and quickly look through their inventory? Ideally, you'd want to quickly scan through every thing just to see if anything catches your eye, but you'd really want to spend say less than 2 minutes at each store doing your browsing. If anything registers in your head, you ain't going to buy it through the virtual store, you are going to stop on the way home and pick up the few items actually where they are. The easiest way that I could see most stores doing this is to some how have some of their instore security cameras web enabled so folks can just look in the shop. You wouldn't want all your cameras web enabled, but you'd want a camera pointed down each of your major sellers and one showing generally how busy the inside of the store is, and another showing how free the parking currently is. Oh, and that whole pack deal needs to cost a store less than say 4-5K to do per store.
Believe what you want. In my case, it's not a religious remark. I'm a security professional, thank you very much. They're telling you like it is. YOUR remark is the mantra of the religion of putting more into the government- there's no reasoning, no contemplation of what the consequences might be, nothing. Just a blind faith that the government that brought you the current economic crisis (don't buy that it was the Republicans OR the Democrats- both parties' people are to blame here...) and a whole host of other things are going to get this right.
Blinks. O.k. from a security P.O.V. yes it is likely to be easier to hack. From a usability P.O.V. though, it should be much easier to ID a bad fake ID. Do you know what all 50 DL formats are? Well may be sense you are in the security industry you do. Most people like clerks cashing checks, cops, or anywhere that asks for a DL for something is likely only to know their state DL. I know my state has atleast a half dozen DL formats as well for how that info could be on the card. The goal is to make using the DL as actual valid form of ID easy across the board. You'll still be giving out the same info to the same agencies regardless.
Heck, it's not even putting more into government. It's make the government that we already have uniform. Apparently that's whats the big thing people hate. They hate all other 49 states except for their own state and their state's ideas.
What economic crises? I'm not having any economic problems. I don't have any friends or family that are having immediate hard times. My local city is doing fairly well at the moment so I'm not seeing any local economic crises. With gas prices lower, I'm actually doing better in this so called "economic crises."
I'm actually ticked at my local health inspector because they don't make this easy for my city. It's easy to look up this sort of info at other places http://www.txkusa.org/health/Food_Report.pdf
Here is the real slashdot test. What did this guy happen to score on his local health inspection and how easy is that for his usual customers to obtain and see his results?
I actually think the judge needs to throw this right out. This is an opinion about a food serving place and it isn't even that harsh. If he doesn't want to hear what his customers think of his place, then he doesn't need to listen to them. Maybe, just maybe he needs to clean up his shop and present a better public image for his customers?
I wouldn't be surprised if his competitors are eating him alive.
They might was well try banning clothing and forcing everyone to have all body hair removed and bar codes labeled across the head so you know that'd be far easier to instantly ID them on video camera. You also outlaw hats or any form of covering of the bar code as an illegal ID hiding device. You must be a terrorist or other criminal with something to hide if you where a hat in one of those cold northern states.
You're advocating a national ID card, essentially. That's one stop shopping for identity thieves--just like social security numbers are now--and it won't do a thing to stop "terrorists" and other malfeasant souls. It's also terribly close to the "papers, please" seen in many places throughout time.
See that's the religious mantra that people on slashdot and small religious churches use to bash this. I've always thought that the way we've done a few things was totally screwy. What things? DLs, car titles, social security cards as a form of id, birth certs as a form of id, and that's just the easy stuff.
I've always believed those things should be more federally managed. Not really required to have and present any time. More of a heck we aren't going to have 50 different ways to do the same of each of these processes we are going to unify it. There are days when I feel folks around here would rather us be 50 different countries. Some things it makes sense for the feds to have a bit of say in esp those things that can easily cross all state lines.
I'd actually be half way excited if this entire thing was open source hardware. I could see that getting posted to slashdot. I just don't see why this even should hold my attention after 10 seconds of reading comments on it. It's just about a manufacturers press release of something that's not too exciting any way.
Real ID should make any sensible person cringe. Take five minutes and read how the federal government has mandated a variety of criteria for states' drivers licenses, the cost of which to the states is in the millions and is entirely unfunded (not to mention unconstitutional!) and poorly executed in states where it has been effected.
I think opposing Real ID should make any sensible person cringe. Why? Because it doesn't mandate any "new" criteria that almost every state isn't already collecting on you if you have a drivers license. What it is doing is trying to make the 50 states DLs uniform. Those that really oppose it don't like it solely based on money issues. Privacy issues aren't even a real issue with it as you are already submitting that same info to the state any way. Now why do states oppose this based on money issues? Base some states have had statewide RMSs for police for years and it fairly trival in their state for their police to read their state DL licenses and import into their RMSs and it's mainly been paid for once. The thing is it would be nice if the police from TX, CA, FL, NY could just as easily read other states as their own. That's the entire issue that some already have their system in place and don't want to change even if the feds paid every penny.
I think this'll something like NIBRS or UCR where the feds would like the states to do it, but realistically it won't be until the next big change in RMS for those states that currently oppose this to even consider adopting it. At that time, they'll whine that they want to keep their current format as well.
So: - Pollution prevention programs and other environmental reforms increase in public desirability and effect. - The harm from such toxins is reduced for the society at large, whether gay or not. - We still have gay people. Presumably, those who continue to be gay will derive happiness from it.
It seems like the world would benefit from this. The genetic harms that would be prevented (or at least reduced) in the "crusade" to prevent gayness (which I doubt would work) seems like a great result.
I think that it's sad that we'd do things for those reasons. We wouldn't overall support pollution controls, but if it might prevent us from being like "them", then we'd do it in a heart beat. The really bad part is that I put in "if" because I think that it would actually take some strong proof that such and such pollution actually does cause that type of behavior before the whole religious community really gets mad. I wouldn't be surprised if something like pollution causes an increase in percentage of the homosexual population. I've always thought that the percentage was far to little to be normally noticeable except now that we've got 6 billion of us we've just got a larger raw number of that normally unnoticeable population. Our modern communications systems make those folks find each other and organize better than they did in the past as well. It would be interesting to actually "know" if homosexuality was a genetic, cultural, environmental, or personal thing. I think that its a little of each of them.
Correct. And everyone pretends it doesn't happen until somebody gets caught. Then said person has to face the consequences, which are sometimes severe. Remember Gary Powers and the U2 incident?
That was way before my time. I think all nations and their spying organizations actually "like" this whole cyber spying thing. Why? I've got several great reasons. 1. It's very deniable. 2. We didn't do it; it was that third party. 3. Most of your cyber spies stay home except for a few military folks that might cut into some fiber and lay down special black boxes. 4. The public doesn't need to know or panic about whats going on. 5. Both our enemies and our allies can find out things about us that we may or may not have that our public doesn't know about, but those other countries know or suspect that we have. 6. It's profitable for some domestic individuals/companies. 7. Even if you lose vast stores of personal or company info based in your country, you won't be too harmed by it. Your citizens would get some extra spam; generally the other governments would avoid the whole ID theft thing except to "track" "important" individuals, the company info would be shared to their national companies, but if it was for domestic products like toasters or cell phones or anything that has a short product cycle, then the product would be out on the market before their country could really make use of the data. It only really helps them, if its military stuff that civilians can't purchase or export at all. 8. Less of your people are likely to get caught.
Given that the Iraq war has cost a bit over six hundred billion dollars so far, and is estimated to top out at over 1.2 trillion dollars, "from stopping the Iraq war" is a good start to answering the question where the money will come from. You know, you could do a lot with four hundred million dollars a day.
Anybody here old enough to remember the candidates talking about what they were going to do with the budget surplus, back in 2000? Or is that just some forgotten ancient history? Surplus... what a concept!
I don't worry about it at all. For the simple reason, that I have no clue where they get any of their money in the first place. Why not just build $100 billion in windmills, $100 billion in broadband projects, $100 billion in scooters, and a super cellphone/PDA for everyone with in the US (that should only cost 350 Million * 50 per month =17,500 Million so 17.5 Billion per month for everyone to have that toy.) Oh let's give every household a 50" LCD TV while we are at it.
We'll end up with some of those toys despite the government not because of it.
So, we go from a guy who cuts taxes and then over-spends to a guy who won't cut taxes but still over-spends. Time will tell, but I have a feeling that Obama's spending will exceed Bush's, just as George "Smaller Government" Bush's exceeded Clinton's. I have a feeling Obama's will be roughly in proportion to the difference in their tax policies. I suppose this is an improvement. Kinda.
My wife and I both voted against Obama. We hate almost every single one of his policies. Our gas prices are now $1.56 so I don't care what else he does just being "different and the same" has been enough to half gas prices. If gas prices are like this for the next 4 years, he can go ahead and have orgies in the Oval office for all I care. Now, if gas prices go back to $3 or so... then he can burn in hell for bringing us the bad gas prices, but until then I'd give him free reign to do what ever he wants. There is a part of me wondering how much Obama is actually afraid of the change of gas prices. If they can stay down for the next year or so, he's got it made. He'd be re-elected as long he doesn't do anything obviously too stupid.
Chinese and Indian schools value the academic achievers, while American schools value the funny, the athletic and the socially gifted. That is why those countries are beating us.
The obvious thing to do is bribe alot of Indian and Chinese elementary and middle school teachers/principles to come over here and teach our kids. Might as well teach the little ones whatever Indians and Chinese speak and write as well in addition to English. Maybe we'd get that good old US work ethic back as well.
Legalize everything and supply and demand will take care of that problem for you. With a wide choice of alternatives at competitive prices, meth's popularity would dwindle, if only because of the health consequences.
I only drink water or soft drinks and don't smoke anything. I support legalization of drugs for several reasons. The main reason is that it makes like easier for everyone. We should treat it like tobacco products. Tobacco products are only expensive because of taxes, and everyone knows it. It's socially accepted that tobacco users are getting taxed heavily for their habit. There is a part of me that would just like almost all recreational drugs to be sold in the drug part of walmart for about the same as other drugs and the only things that the stores need to really check for is that the drugs aren't shoplifted and that drivers licenses are checked for age verification at the check out. There is a multibillion dollar market that is currently being served that isn't getting taxed or regulated at all.
We'd really kill all those illegal outfits if we just let our legal drug companies produce the same stuff and sell it for cheap except for whatever we choose to tax it at. The really bad guys profit would go down and our drug companies would have another profitable product line. I think that we should re-think all our drug law stuff and change it to a generic unreasonable addiction.
I also noticed that people's heads are larger than they used to be. And there seem to be a lot more homosexuals and lesbians, although that may be that they've just come out of the closet.
What I want to know is if we're going to do anything about it?
If it was "discovered" that a huge percentage of homosexual behavior was directly caused by chemical pollution, I don't know which community would go crazy the most, the homosexuals or the religious folks. You'd suddenly find the vast religious right pushing for environmental controls that even current greens would think are extreme. You'd have the parents of many homosexuals start suing and winning the nearest chemical plants that may have been at fault for causing their child to become homosexual. I think that the homosexual community would panic more than go crazy. You'd find a large portion of them just vanishing back into the closet.
you read the article you'd understand there is a cyber war and it isn't just script kiddies or digital anarchists attacking secure computer systems. Secure NASA systems were rooted by a guy who sent 30 gigabytes of data to a location in Taiwan, where it probably was sent to China. That's not anarchy; it's an attempt to steal confidential data.
Um, I hope that I'm not the only one to say it, but that's not war. That's just friendly neighborhood spying that nations always do to each other.
Holder is in favor of censorship, massive gun control, a drug war hawk... and you *ahem* hoped for change from Obama. How is this any different than Gonzalez, Ashcroft or Reno, except maybe a squeamishness about torture?
Seriously, I will be surprised if we don't trade Gitmo and secret CIA prisons for a second round of Waco and Ruby Ridge if this is the start that Obama is off on with his DoJ appointments.
You know if I had a choice, I'd rather have neither, but between those two sets of choices I'd rather have Gitmo rather than Waco. Waco is around 7.5 hours from where I live. Gitmo might as well be on the moon. If Obama encourages our domestic nut jobs, all hell will break loose sooner or later. As long as all hell is breaking loose atleast 2 full days of travel away from me, I can live with it.
Domestic censorship, gun control and the drug war are all things that raises domestic unrest. I'd rather legalize just about every drug and treat them like beer and tobacco. We tax it heavily and have signs banning folks from doing it any where public and big public groups opposing using it in your car or around your kids or neighbor or government/public buildings. No one cares when the government goes after tax evaders. No on gun control.
We shouldn't really worry about guns out there. Every cop just about wants only cops and the military to be the only armed force in the US. That ain't happening. We need to learn to live with it or try to change the bill of rights. On Domestic see my previous sentence. Actually its simpler than that. No one likes any one else telling them what they can or can't say. It causes tension and unrest if you even try. It's much more successful to just ignore content that you don't like.
If your goal is to have a society of social misfits that would rather text each other than ever speak to another person again, you are on the right track.
Half of the companies I work with on a regular basis are staffed by people that simply do not know how to get along with others. Face it, you have to deal with the people you would rather not see again. If you can't learn that skill it is a shame and society at large has failed you. Don't make it worse.
We already have that society. I hate talking on the phone. I'd much rather e-mail folks. The sad part is that folks like my boss can't even write in complete sentences. (The guy supposedly has a masters.) We don't need English any more. That's kinda obsolete. We need translation of boss idiot speak into some what employee do able processes. Doesn't matter if the boss speaks English, Spanish, Japanese, or Chinese, or that the student speaks English, Spanish, or Chinese we've all got to figure out what the heck the boss wants us to do this week. The most important skill students learn from having 6 different teachers per semester is how to please 6 various BS wanting bosses with absolute minimal effort. We need classes in "small talk" or "safe" employee to employee communications that the bosses or corporate won't penalize us for having at work. We also need classes in dating/mate selection and how to tactfully/gracefully refuse unwanted advances and also how to recognize that you've been blown off and not to be a stalker or jerk about it.
I hate sports with a passion. I'm not fond of discussions with computers lately either. Mainly because the only computer talk the average employee around here wants to discuss is whatever happens to be walmart's cheapest bargain at the moment. (Nothing wrong with that, but they assume that I just know everything that walmart electronics stocks and have an opinion on each and every item.) I'd much rather talk about the weather that we are having at the moment. It's cold dark and gloomy out there today. Its a nice day out there. There is a part of me that thinks this is why schools focus so much on sports. It gives everyone some small talk to discuss.
Few other nations (perhaps Canada) can credibly claim this. France similiarly claims to base its nationalaity on political ideas and common citizenship, but ethnicity and 'being French' seems to still be very important to them (although they deny it).
I think this is the funniest post that I've ever read on slashdot. Why? Because your average US citizen thinks being an American is very important to them as well. We don't base it on ethnicity; its just who we are.
Now some like to think that being a white christian with one of two sets of political beliefs defines an American. Those folks are idiots. One of the reasons the middle east really hates us is that we use our American citizenship as a sort of social club to whack them with. You might not like our political/social beliefs, but you've got to admit that we usually hold a surprising amount of national sentiment regardless of other issues. Example Katrina or any hurricane or earth quake, flood or tornado in the US. We don't just help one group; we pull together and over come the forces of nature.;) Now, it takes things like the flag, bill of rights, pledge of allegiance, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, "The Christmas holidays," memorial day, and labor day to really define who we are as a nation. Heck even those stupid TV shows at certain times of year help to define us. We might not like all of our cultural crap, but some times you've got to set most of your dislike down for a few days and enjoy your days off. (Yes, I know that's difficult when visiting family, but that's also a US tradition.)
many of us began each day saying the pledge of allegiance
Which also I find quite bizarre. Talk about indoctrination from an early age. But I also find the obsession in the US with flags a little disturbing. In the UK, you won't see hardly any flags. Maybe on a few government buildings etc. It's seen as rather tasteless, rather low-brow. Duh, me Tarzan, me light fire, me wave flag.
I always hated the damn thing when I was in school, but if I had to do it, then my kids shouldn't just get out of saying as well. On the flip side, we put so much lip service to our flag, pledge of allegiance, and bill of rights because that's about all we are really proud about our government. Just watch SNL for about 30 seconds that'll show you about how much stock we actually put in our government whoever happens to be in there at the moment. Let's face it, we hate most of our government mainly because we hate our neighbors and how they think we should run our lives. Democracy has a tendency to suck occasionally when all those people that you don't like vote in some else you don't like so it's no wonder we actually hate most of the people currently in office at any given time. Reference SNL again. Now just because we hate them, doesn't mean we don't respect the offices that they hold in the abstract. Heck the worst Bush hater still respected the office of the president. That's why we focus so much on the flag... It's cause we are really hate our politicians and don't even want to think about them.
Slashdot Mirror
Those games got panned by the gaming press as boring, boring, boring. They actually required people to think, account for all the variables, and then be satisfied when they merely score a correct hit. Just like real life. The gamers, however, wanted things to move faster. They wanted more Bang! Splat! Oof! to go with their game play. The notion of actually taking something close to real-life time to set up a shot was, to them, just needless tedium.
So, no, I don't think if you make the difficulty of in-game shooting more accurately mirror real life, gamers will be happy.
What you end up is sort of like all our racing games. Big simulations for all the behind the scenes crap for folks that are into that, but somewhat ignorable by everyone that just wants to grab a car and floor it around a track for a few minutes. Most weapons in games are not life like at all. There are a class of them that tries to pretend to be a bit more life like. Those games could use the behind the scenes stuff to model every shot and make them all fairly life like. You'd find out in short order that many gamers can't aim worth crap or yank the gun when they shouldn't. You just have to accept in a mass market game, that most people would treat life like physics as just added difficulty and not added fun. Come on how often has the average gamer ever shot a real gun? That's the only reason all these games can actually get away with not being life like. Only hunters or sport shooters know how guns really work, and they'd rather actually go out and shoot real guns. That's why those sim gun games the The National Rifle Association sticks their logo are considered boring. Real life stuff is generally boring and difficult if you have to do all the hard stuff.
Why should I climb the tallest tower in the furthest castle, if I get the same stuff as from the chest behind the entrance door?
Because you are a completionist and there happens to be a percentage of found items and you just have to find 100% of every item in every dungeon that you come across. Not that you ever really "have to" just for those near worthless items.
Why should I conquer the strongest enemies and explore their castle if I'm better off killing millions of rats, then open a chest in the tavern cellar?
Well, you can't fight a million rats at once. Fighting some of those secret bosses is about that difficult and gives you about that much experience/gold in one shot. The sad thing are games like dragon quest that after a certain point you just don't get the experience from any monsters except for a handful of special cases that give you far more experience than anything else in the game. (I hate metal slimes, liquid metal slimes, and king metal slimes.) In some games, killing one random enemy of a higher area is about worth killing 1k-2k basic rats.
WTF? A hunter can miss a shot because the game catches his scent and gets away. A hunter can miss a shot because his hand slips a little before pulling the trigger. For _some_ weapons and _some_ distances things like gusts of wind may play a role, but most definitely not always. In a computer game, pointing/clicking two pixels to the left of your opponent is the equivalent to the hunter's hand slipping. And this is when you miss, even with a "perfect" weapon. Nobody guarantees you that in the heat of action your [the player's] every action will be perfect. Precise weapons do _not_ make _you_ precise, and this is why it does not break an action game if the weapons in it are precise.
Are there any FPS where you have to field strip and clean weapons that are jamming or won't fire for some reason? Every FPS that I've ever played, you only worry about finding the weapon, ammo, and aiming. In some games, it would work quite well if you had an armorer some where cleaning all the weapons or that in bad environments that the weapons become unusable unless you take it apart and know how to fix it. We've been spoiled by having super tech weapons more robust then AK47s. If anything that's unlikely, but it is fun to with.
You have your choice: energy efficiency OR omnidirectional transmission. The two are mutually exclusive. Plus, I along with many, many others would not like to have my reproductive organs anywhere near such a device.
How about you not liking this tech, but your neighbor's kid's remote controlled car or plane uses it so you get the effects without the benefits. Or maybe your gadget hungry neighbors bought a new robot lawn mower, and it is powered via this method as well as their yard or Christmas lights.
Of course being the true scientist, you'd wait until neighbor's kid has some offspring and see if they are deformed or not before really trusting the tech yourself.
Wasteful, but extremely useful for certain purposes. Most electric toothbrushes are a perfect example, if solved slightly differently - you don't want unsealed electrical points on a device that gets wet in normal use. Any other sealed device that needs charging could possibly benefit from this.
So you have a wireless power transmitter in the bathroom integrated in the normal electrical outlet. What powered bathroom devices could we power this way? Tooth brushes, razors, vanity mirrors, shower radios, all sorts of kids toys, and that adult bath toy the battery powered vibrator.
Cell phones, cordless phones, and remotes might also be good to charge via this method as well.
Heck, making AA, AAA, C, and D sized "batteries" that just receives "wireless power" from the "wireless transmitter" would let you power some of those kids toys for as long as you have the wireless transmitter plugged in. That would be much better than running down the batteries really quickly and then either having to recharge or get new ones.
This tech will really take off when a store owner can train a min. wage worker to walk through their store in the morning in about 10-15 minutes and have an app auto update the model, the store inventory list, a list of everything known that was sold yesterday, and a list of everything missing in the the store that wasn't sold.
For bonus points, it would scan through yesterdays security recordings for everyone passing in front of the "missing items" and auto report shop lifted items with a list of subjects to the local police department. If you even want to help the police even more, you could have the system match up every person with check/credit sales receipts for names for the people as well.
I thought we learned in the 90s that virtual representations of physicals things, be they stores, libraries -- whatever, are simply not the most useful way to access information. I don't want to go wandering around virtual stores to find the things I want to buy. What I want is something that lets me specify the thing I want, and tells me the cheapest place to buy it -- Google Products already does that quite well.
For what most of us buy on the web or are willing to wait to have shipped to us, that's mostly true. There are many other areas where other methods of shopping would be much more useful. I've always wanted to store grocery lists at walmart and have them pull the items ready for me to pick up when I get off work. Heck, with walmart I've always wanted to link all my store receipts together through a my walmart page and at a glance or very little paging through screens just pull up out lists of what I purchased, when, and for what prices. I'd also like longer descriptions than what's on the store receipts and 6 views of nearly every product boxed and unboxed with the ability to zoom in/out and around. (Walmart could just require their various vendors to provide that info for their various products and just dump it straight into their backend. Think of it as requiring "useful" views of products.)
There are times that I've wanted a virtual map of a store. I don't really want to hunt items. I want to have my list and have them give me a map and show me where the heck that they've placed every item on my list in their store. If virtual store browsing was actually quicker than real world store browsing, it might be useful. Let's be honest, in 1996 that wasn't really possible. Now a days with web enabled cell phones, DSL and cable broadband, it is more likely to atleast be possible of getting it to load and browse quickly.
Let's be honest Google Earth takes awhile to load and run even if you do it at work on a fast machine. How long do you think it would take you to click on say 3-4 stores on your way home, load their virtual store and quickly look through their inventory? Ideally, you'd want to quickly scan through every thing just to see if anything catches your eye, but you'd really want to spend say less than 2 minutes at each store doing your browsing. If anything registers in your head, you ain't going to buy it through the virtual store, you are going to stop on the way home and pick up the few items actually where they are. The easiest way that I could see most stores doing this is to some how have some of their instore security cameras web enabled so folks can just look in the shop. You wouldn't want all your cameras web enabled, but you'd want a camera pointed down each of your major sellers and one showing generally how busy the inside of the store is, and another showing how free the parking currently is. Oh, and that whole pack deal needs to cost a store less than say 4-5K to do per store.
Believe what you want. In my case, it's not a religious remark. I'm a security professional, thank you very much. They're telling you like it is. YOUR remark is the mantra of the religion of putting more into the government- there's no reasoning, no contemplation of what the consequences might be, nothing. Just a blind faith that the government that brought you the current economic crisis (don't buy that it was the Republicans OR the Democrats- both parties' people are to blame here...) and a whole host of other things are going to get this right.
Blinks. O.k. from a security P.O.V. yes it is likely to be easier to hack. From a usability P.O.V. though, it should be much easier to ID a bad fake ID. Do you know what all 50 DL formats are? Well may be sense you are in the security industry you do. Most people like clerks cashing checks, cops, or anywhere that asks for a DL for something is likely only to know their state DL. I know my state has atleast a half dozen DL formats as well for how that info could be on the card. The goal is to make using the DL as actual valid form of ID easy across the board. You'll still be giving out the same info to the same agencies regardless.
Heck, it's not even putting more into government. It's make the government that we already have uniform. Apparently that's whats the big thing people hate. They hate all other 49 states except for their own state and their state's ideas.
What economic crises? I'm not having any economic problems. I don't have any friends or family that are having immediate hard times. My local city is doing fairly well at the moment so I'm not seeing any local economic crises. With gas prices lower, I'm actually doing better in this so called "economic crises."
I'm actually ticked at my local health inspector because they don't make this easy for my city. It's easy to look up this sort of info at other places
http://www.txkusa.org/health/Food_Report.pdf
Here is the real slashdot test. What did this guy happen to score on his local health inspection and how easy is that for his usual customers to obtain and see his results?
I actually think the judge needs to throw this right out. This is an opinion about a food serving place and it isn't even that harsh. If he doesn't want to hear what his customers think of his place, then he doesn't need to listen to them. Maybe, just maybe he needs to clean up his shop and present a better public image for his customers?
I wouldn't be surprised if his competitors are eating him alive.
They might was well try banning clothing and forcing everyone to have all body hair removed and bar codes labeled across the head so you know that'd be far easier to instantly ID them on video camera. You also outlaw hats or any form of covering of the bar code as an illegal ID hiding device. You must be a terrorist or other criminal with something to hide if you where a hat in one of those cold northern states.
You're advocating a national ID card, essentially. That's one stop shopping for identity thieves--just like social security numbers are now--and it won't do a thing to stop "terrorists" and other malfeasant souls. It's also terribly close to the "papers, please" seen in many places throughout time.
See that's the religious mantra that people on slashdot and small religious churches use to bash this. I've always thought that the way we've done a few things was totally screwy. What things? DLs, car titles, social security cards as a form of id, birth certs as a form of id, and that's just the easy stuff.
I've always believed those things should be more federally managed. Not really required to have and present any time. More of a heck we aren't going to have 50 different ways to do the same of each of these processes we are going to unify it. There are days when I feel folks around here would rather us be 50 different countries. Some things it makes sense for the feds to have a bit of say in esp those things that can easily cross all state lines.
I'd actually be half way excited if this entire thing was open source hardware. I could see that getting posted to slashdot. I just don't see why this even should hold my attention after 10 seconds of reading comments on it. It's just about a manufacturers press release of something that's not too exciting any way.
Real ID should make any sensible person cringe. Take five minutes and read how the federal government has mandated a variety of criteria for states' drivers licenses, the cost of which to the states is in the millions and is entirely unfunded (not to mention unconstitutional!) and poorly executed in states where it has been effected.
I think opposing Real ID should make any sensible person cringe. Why? Because it doesn't mandate any "new" criteria that almost every state isn't already collecting on you if you have a drivers license. What it is doing is trying to make the 50 states DLs uniform. Those that really oppose it don't like it solely based on money issues. Privacy issues aren't even a real issue with it as you are already submitting that same info to the state any way. Now why do states oppose this based on money issues? Base some states have had statewide RMSs for police for years and it fairly trival in their state for their police to read their state DL licenses and import into their RMSs and it's mainly been paid for once. The thing is it would be nice if the police from TX, CA, FL, NY could just as easily read other states as their own. That's the entire issue that some already have their system in place and don't want to change even if the feds paid every penny.
I think this'll something like NIBRS or UCR where the feds would like the states to do it, but realistically it won't be until the next big change in RMS for those states that currently oppose this to even consider adopting it. At that time, they'll whine that they want to keep their current format as well.
So:
- Pollution prevention programs and other environmental reforms increase in public desirability and effect.
- The harm from such toxins is reduced for the society at large, whether gay or not.
- We still have gay people. Presumably, those who continue to be gay will derive happiness from it.
It seems like the world would benefit from this. The genetic harms that would be prevented (or at least reduced) in the "crusade" to prevent gayness (which I doubt would work) seems like a great result.
I think that it's sad that we'd do things for those reasons. We wouldn't overall support pollution controls, but if it might prevent us from being like "them", then we'd do it in a heart beat. The really bad part is that I put in "if" because I think that it would actually take some strong proof that such and such pollution actually does cause that type of behavior before the whole religious community really gets mad. I wouldn't be surprised if something like pollution causes an increase in percentage of the homosexual population. I've always thought that the percentage was far to little to be normally noticeable except now that we've got 6 billion of us we've just got a larger raw number of that normally unnoticeable population. Our modern communications systems make those folks find each other and organize better than they did in the past as well. It would be interesting to actually "know" if homosexuality was a genetic, cultural, environmental, or personal thing. I think that its a little of each of them.
Correct. And everyone pretends it doesn't happen until somebody gets caught. Then said person has to face the consequences, which are sometimes severe. Remember Gary Powers and the U2 incident?
That was way before my time. I think all nations and their spying organizations actually "like" this whole cyber spying thing. Why? I've got several great reasons.
1. It's very deniable.
2. We didn't do it; it was that third party.
3. Most of your cyber spies stay home except for a few military folks that might cut into some fiber and lay down special black boxes.
4. The public doesn't need to know or panic about whats going on.
5. Both our enemies and our allies can find out things about us that we may or may not have that our public doesn't know about, but those other countries know or suspect that we have.
6. It's profitable for some domestic individuals/companies.
7. Even if you lose vast stores of personal or company info based in your country, you won't be too harmed by it. Your citizens would get some extra spam; generally the other governments would avoid the whole ID theft thing except to "track" "important" individuals, the company info would be shared to their national companies, but if it was for domestic products like toasters or cell phones or anything that has a short product cycle, then the product would be out on the market before their country could really make use of the data. It only really helps them, if its military stuff that civilians can't purchase or export at all.
8. Less of your people are likely to get caught.
Given that the Iraq war has cost a bit over six hundred billion dollars so far, and is estimated to top out at over 1.2 trillion dollars, "from stopping the Iraq war" is a good start to answering the question where the money will come from. You know, you could do a lot with four hundred million dollars a day.
Anybody here old enough to remember the candidates talking about what they were going to do with the budget surplus, back in 2000? Or is that just some forgotten ancient history? Surplus... what a concept!
I don't worry about it at all. For the simple reason, that I have no clue where they get any of their money in the first place. Why not just build $100 billion in windmills, $100 billion in broadband projects, $100 billion in scooters, and a super cellphone/PDA for everyone with in the US (that should only cost 350 Million * 50 per month =17,500 Million so 17.5 Billion per month for everyone to have that toy.) Oh let's give every household a 50" LCD TV while we are at it.
We'll end up with some of those toys despite the government not because of it.
So, we go from a guy who cuts taxes and then over-spends to a guy who won't cut taxes but still over-spends. Time will tell, but I have a feeling that Obama's spending will exceed Bush's, just as George "Smaller Government" Bush's exceeded Clinton's. I have a feeling Obama's will be roughly in proportion to the difference in their tax policies. I suppose this is an improvement. Kinda.
My wife and I both voted against Obama. We hate almost every single one of his policies. Our gas prices are now $1.56 so I don't care what else he does just being "different and the same" has been enough to half gas prices. If gas prices are like this for the next 4 years, he can go ahead and have orgies in the Oval office for all I care. Now, if gas prices go back to $3 or so... then he can burn in hell for bringing us the bad gas prices, but until then I'd give him free reign to do what ever he wants. There is a part of me wondering how much Obama is actually afraid of the change of gas prices. If they can stay down for the next year or so, he's got it made. He'd be re-elected as long he doesn't do anything obviously too stupid.
Chinese and Indian schools value the academic achievers, while American schools value the funny, the athletic and the socially gifted. That is why those countries are beating us.
The obvious thing to do is bribe alot of Indian and Chinese elementary and middle school teachers/principles to come over here and teach our kids. Might as well teach the little ones whatever Indians and Chinese speak and write as well in addition to English. Maybe we'd get that good old US work ethic back as well.
Legalize everything and supply and demand will take care of that problem for you. With a wide choice of alternatives at competitive prices, meth's popularity would dwindle, if only because of the health consequences.
I only drink water or soft drinks and don't smoke anything. I support legalization of drugs for several reasons. The main reason is that it makes like easier for everyone. We should treat it like tobacco products. Tobacco products are only expensive because of taxes, and everyone knows it. It's socially accepted that tobacco users are getting taxed heavily for their habit. There is a part of me that would just like almost all recreational drugs to be sold in the drug part of walmart for about the same as other drugs and the only things that the stores need to really check for is that the drugs aren't shoplifted and that drivers licenses are checked for age verification at the check out. There is a multibillion dollar market that is currently being served that isn't getting taxed or regulated at all.
We'd really kill all those illegal outfits if we just let our legal drug companies produce the same stuff and sell it for cheap except for whatever we choose to tax it at. The really bad guys profit would go down and our drug companies would have another profitable product line. I think that we should re-think all our drug law stuff and change it to a generic unreasonable addiction.
I also noticed that people's heads are larger than they used to be. And there seem to be a lot more homosexuals and lesbians, although that may be that they've just come out of the closet.
What I want to know is if we're going to do anything about it?
If it was "discovered" that a huge percentage of homosexual behavior was directly caused by chemical pollution, I don't know which community would go crazy the most, the homosexuals or the religious folks. You'd suddenly find the vast religious right pushing for environmental controls that even current greens would think are extreme. You'd have the parents of many homosexuals start suing and winning the nearest chemical plants that may have been at fault for causing their child to become homosexual. I think that the homosexual community would panic more than go crazy. You'd find a large portion of them just vanishing back into the closet.
you read the article you'd understand there is a cyber war and it isn't just script kiddies or digital anarchists attacking secure computer systems. Secure NASA systems were rooted by a guy who sent 30 gigabytes of data to a location in Taiwan, where it probably was sent to China. That's not anarchy; it's an attempt to steal confidential data.
Um, I hope that I'm not the only one to say it, but that's not war. That's just friendly neighborhood spying that nations always do to each other.
Holder is in favor of censorship, massive gun control, a drug war hawk... and you *ahem* hoped for change from Obama. How is this any different than Gonzalez, Ashcroft or Reno, except maybe a squeamishness about torture?
Seriously, I will be surprised if we don't trade Gitmo and secret CIA prisons for a second round of Waco and Ruby Ridge if this is the start that Obama is off on with his DoJ appointments.
You know if I had a choice, I'd rather have neither, but between those two sets of choices I'd rather have Gitmo rather than Waco. Waco is around 7.5 hours from where I live. Gitmo might as well be on the moon. If Obama encourages our domestic nut jobs, all hell will break loose sooner or later. As long as all hell is breaking loose atleast 2 full days of travel away from me, I can live with it.
Domestic censorship, gun control and the drug war are all things that raises domestic unrest. I'd rather legalize just about every drug and treat them like beer and tobacco. We tax it heavily and have signs banning folks from doing it any where public and big public groups opposing using it in your car or around your kids or neighbor or government/public buildings. No one cares when the government goes after tax evaders. No on gun control.
We shouldn't really worry about guns out there. Every cop just about wants only cops and the military to be the only armed force in the US. That ain't happening. We need
to learn to live with it or try to change the bill of rights. On Domestic see my previous sentence. Actually its simpler than that. No one likes any one else telling them what they can or can't say. It causes tension and unrest if you even try. It's much more successful to just ignore content that you don't like.
If your goal is to have a society of social misfits that would rather text each other than ever speak to another person again, you are on the right track.
Half of the companies I work with on a regular basis are staffed by people that simply do not know how to get along with others. Face it, you have to deal with the people you would rather not see again. If you can't learn that skill it is a shame and society at large has failed you. Don't make it worse.
We already have that society. I hate talking on the phone. I'd much rather e-mail folks. The sad part is that folks like my boss can't even write in complete sentences. (The guy supposedly has a masters.) We don't need English any more. That's kinda obsolete. We need translation of boss idiot speak into some what employee do able processes. Doesn't matter if the boss speaks English, Spanish, Japanese, or Chinese, or that the student speaks English, Spanish, or Chinese we've all got to figure out what the heck the boss wants us to do this week. The most important skill students learn from having 6 different teachers per semester is how to please 6 various BS wanting bosses with absolute minimal effort. We need classes in "small talk" or "safe" employee to employee communications that the bosses or corporate won't penalize us for having at work. We also need classes in dating/mate selection and how to tactfully/gracefully refuse unwanted advances and also how to recognize that you've been blown off and not to be a stalker or jerk about it.
I hate sports with a passion. I'm not fond of discussions with computers lately either. Mainly because the only computer talk the average employee around here wants to discuss is whatever happens to be walmart's cheapest bargain at the moment. (Nothing wrong with that, but they assume that I just know everything that walmart electronics stocks and have an opinion on each and every item.) I'd much rather talk about the weather that we are having at the moment. It's cold dark and gloomy out there today. Its a nice day out there. There is a part of me that thinks this is why schools focus so much on sports. It gives everyone some small talk to discuss.
Few other nations (perhaps Canada) can credibly claim this. France similiarly claims to base its nationalaity on political ideas and common citizenship, but ethnicity and 'being French' seems to still be very important to them (although they deny it).
I think this is the funniest post that I've ever read on slashdot. Why? Because your average US citizen thinks being an American is very important to them as well. We don't base it on ethnicity; its just who we are.
Now some like to think that being a white christian with one of two sets of political beliefs defines an American. Those folks are idiots. One of the reasons the middle east really hates us is that we use our American citizenship as a sort of social club to whack them with. You might not like our political/social beliefs, but you've got to admit that we usually hold a surprising amount of national sentiment regardless of other issues. Example Katrina or any hurricane or earth quake, flood or tornado in the US. We don't just help one group; we pull together and over come the forces of nature. ;) Now, it takes things like the flag, bill of rights, pledge of allegiance, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, "The Christmas holidays," memorial day, and labor day to really define who we are as a nation. Heck even those stupid TV shows at certain times of year help to define us. We might not like all of our cultural crap, but some times you've got to set most of your dislike down for a few days and enjoy your days off. (Yes, I know that's difficult when visiting family, but that's also a US tradition.)
many of us began each day saying the pledge of allegiance
Which also I find quite bizarre. Talk about indoctrination from an early age. But I also find the obsession in the US with flags a little disturbing. In the UK, you won't see hardly any flags. Maybe on a few government buildings etc. It's seen as rather tasteless, rather low-brow. Duh, me Tarzan, me light fire, me wave flag.
I always hated the damn thing when I was in school, but if I had to do it, then my kids shouldn't just get out of saying as well. On the flip side, we put so much lip service to our flag, pledge of allegiance, and bill of rights because that's about all we are really proud about our government. Just watch SNL for about 30 seconds that'll show you about how much stock we actually put in our government whoever happens to be in there at the moment. Let's face it, we hate most of our government mainly because we hate our neighbors and how they think we should run our lives. Democracy has a tendency to suck occasionally when all those people that you don't like vote in some else you don't like so it's no wonder we actually hate most of the people currently in office at any given time. Reference SNL again. Now just because we hate them, doesn't mean we don't respect the offices that they hold in the abstract. Heck the worst Bush hater still respected the office of the president. That's why we focus so much on the flag... It's cause we are really hate our politicians and don't even want to think about them.