Yeah, but the "m" in that kinetic energy equation is the mass of the object, which although likely a much smaller value than the square of the velocity, is still a contributing factor to the amount of kinetic energy that a moving object possesses. Also, for reference: it _is_ this kinetic energy equation which is used when dealing with collisions between two masses, but there are many other factors which determine the type and strength of a collision.
an MSNBC article on the object (...) points out that the threat has now been downgraded to a more comforting level.
It's a good thing we can trust them to tell the truth; after all, Big Brother would certainly consider it worth the risk of causing a huge panic by telling us the truth if they really did think we were in potential danger...right?
The biggest problem with this, of course, is that fossil fuels are - for all intents and purposes - NOT renewable resources. In other words, it takes so long for fossil fuels to be created, and the process is so slow, that we'll never be able to slow down enough to keep from running out.
Which brings me to my favorite theory of what will happen in the not-too-distant future, which was presented in the Fallout series of CRPGs from Interplay/Black Isle Studios: The world will soon run dangerously low on fossil fuels, causing China and the U.S. to enter a race to grab up as many oil-producing "hot-spots" as possible. The U.S. and China will stop exporting oil, pissing off everyone else who doesn't want to be annexed into one of those two empires (Canada is one of the most notable countries to be annexed into the United States). Getting even more desperate, the U.S. and China race to build deep-sea oil drilling platforms - each country covertly sabotaging the other until the U.S. finally finishes their platform first. China gets really pissed and the mother of all wars, World War III, finally breaks out - only between China and the U.S. because they are the only real superpowers left. BOOM! Nuclear bombs ravage the Earth, turning it into a desolate wasteland full of mutated creatures and scattered, vulnerable communities of humans trying to start over again nearly from scratch.
This isn't my favourite theory because I want it to happen (it would be HORRIBLE, which is why it makes a good RPG and not a good real-life scenario), but rather because it is LIKELY to happen. And I don't see any way to stop it - don't give me crap about electric cars; there's just too much money tied up in oil for that to become a reality before the oil runs out, and you can bet your ass that the people involved are going to want to squeeze every last drop before starting over again with another fuel source. It's textbook greed, folks, and you're all driving 10-miles-per-gallon SUVs and pickup trucks to work on the FREEWAY every day to make it all the more profitable for those companies...
"While that's a clever jab, it hardly seems fair to lay the blame at the political party involved here. Seems more like a question of Establishmentarianism -- politicians in office like to remain there, and know about both corporate bread-buttering and the importance of appearing reassuringly normal."
I wonder, would you have said that if it was a Republican administration that had released it? If it's okay for Democrats to engage in "corporate bread-buttering," then I'd better not hear any criticisms of the Republicans in regards to similar activities.
Why don't chip manufacturers like AMD and Intel simply put an instruction in the CPU that can be called to get internal information about the chip? (e.g. Company, intended clock speed, etc.) This especially goes for Intel, seeing as how they've already done it for serial #'s.
If someone is kind enough to share the source to their software or web site, anyone who uses it for something else should return the favor by at least giving credit. Most of the stuff I've created is intended to be used by others, so I'd be happy to see it used in other stuff (and even happier to be notified by the person using it so I can see what they've done with it).
Religious fanatics eh? What about you damn knee-jerk left-wingers that want the government to make laws to take away our CONSTITUTIONAL rights and control everything because you think we individuals aren't responsible enough to do things properly ourselves?
It seems kind of ironic to me how JonKatz and a bunch of the rest of you get up on your pulpit and rail against large corporations (no I don't have any love for them either), yet turn around and look to the federal government to solve all your problems.
P.S. Since I'm talking politics: I'm a native of the Pacific Northwest (born in Seattle), and I just want to ask all of you environmentalists who immigrated from California why the heck you're polluting my (ok, "our") air with your SUVs and pickup trucks >:( I don't even drive!
WOW. The article is about the game industry in general, not just consoles, so if that's interesting to you, go read it!
I've noticed a lot of things mentioned in the article, like how "sequels" are just the same old game with a new coat of paint. In fact, I just bought Half-Life: Opposing Force, which is just another set of levels (only half as many as the original). Good thing I bought it in a 3-pack that included the original Half-Life (and an upgrade CD that installs Team Fortress Classic), since I mostly enjoy Half-Life's TFC and Counter-Strike multiplayer mods.
Anyways, the article does a great job of making sense out of where the gaming industry is today, including why PC games are so buggy and why there are so many of the same types of games for consoles.
Yeah sure, let the government have control of developments in nanotech. Who here doesn't think the President's military advisors aren't drooling over nanotech's bio-warfare potential?
My cousin's girlfriend just went to a place in Canada and got her vision corrected by the laser surgery. He said to check out www.lexingtonlaservision.com and to email him (aaronn@microcrafts.com) if you want to ask him/her any questions.
Upon reading this article, (and hearing about it from several other sources) the following things came to mind:
1. It's about time someone did this! Teaching a single scientific _theory_ as undeniable fact is a horribly unscientific thing to do, and it's always bothered me deeply. Although the current implementation of the theory of evolution (specifically the idea of "man from apes") contradicts my Christian belief in Creation, I am (as a college student enormously interested in the various sciences) actually bothered more by the idea that some group of people would totally break out of the Scientific Method and push ONE, SINGLE _THEORY_ as the One Scientific Truth. Not only do public school curriculi brush under the rug the idea that evolution is merely a THEORY, but they also offer no alternative theories so that they can avoid producing future scientists that can think objectively about theories which contradict evolution. Scientists (if it is them and not Athiest political activists) should be ashamed of themselves for displaying such a lack of objectivity and disregard for the Scientific Method (gather data, formulate a theory, gather more data, refine the theory, gather more data, refine the theory, etc., but NEVER consider nor teach any theories based on empirical evidence to be TRUTH)
2. Charles Darwin was a fool who hated science and thought that chopping off a bird's wing caused any offspring of that bird to also be missing a wing (take note: that's the TRUE Darwinian theory of evolution, ladies and gentlemen; make no mistake about it! That's what _I_ learned in school, and I bet none of you public-schooled people ever learned THAT!) I consider it equally foolish that so many people these days (perhaps in a pitiful, hypocritical attempt to spite Christians) practically worship Darwin as their Athiest God and Saviour. The sheer irony of the scientific community's decision to take under its wing someone who considered himself one of its bitterest enemies makes it extremely hard for me to turn a blind eye to the disappointing thought that today's prominent scientists have lost all objectivity in their work in order to engage in petty, underhanded attacks on the religious community in order to further their Athiest belifs (yes, BELIEFS! Just do me a favor here and apply your critical thinking abilities for a moment so that I can avoid yet another rant;)
3. It burns me REALLY BAD to continuously look at the hypocracy of these liberal activists who accuse us "religious extremists" of being unobjective and unwilling to teach multiple ideas, while they immediately step forward and do exactly that. "Don't teach just abstinence! We want to teach just homosexuality!" "Don't teach Creation! We want to teach just evolution!" "Don't teach Christianity! We want to teach everything but!" "Don't teach children history, science, mathmatics, reading, writing, or anything else! We want to teach just liberal politics and Athiesm!" (and you people wonder why academic performance in public schools is so low - SHAME ON YOU!)
Wow, what a rant! Got a lot off my chest though =)
Consoles will NEVER win over computers again, until everyone has an HDTV to hook them up to, or until consoles come with a high-quality video passthru device so that you can play them on your computer monitor. Why? Because TV's are the crappiest display device you could ever choose to use, especially for games! Anything higher than 320x240 is blurry as heck, and the thing is set at a fixed frequency (can consoles even do 60FPS on an NTSC TV, or are they fixed at the 30FPS that today's consoles use?)
Also, anyone who believes that current consoles are even close to a match for even the low-end of acceptable game-playing PCs should go down to their local Software Etc. and play the N64 version of Pod Racer, followed by the PC version (go ahead and buy the PC version if it's not on display - it's SOOOO cool) The way I see it is this:
N64: 30FPS, 320x240, split screen, 1" analog stick PC: 72FPS+, 1024x768, full screen multiplayer over an IPX network (VERY fun, even with only two people!), joystick as big or small as you want
There just isn't any competition. Now I know what you're about to say: "What about the Dreamcast, PSX 2, and Nintendo's next vaporware system?" Well, they can do as many polygons-per-second or millions-of-CPU-operations-per-second as they want, but I'm NOT going to pay $300 for a system that plugs into a TV that can only do 320x240x30FPS without sacrificing image quality! NO SIR!
I've heard that the brain uses a form of holographic storage to archive its information and I don't know if there is a direct mapping to that and say terabytes of information (warning: I am not an expert!). What do all think?
Wasn't it explained in 2010 (sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) that the HAL 9000 computer uses holograms to store information also?
Could Creative Labs, after going to all the trouble of only letting CL (Creative Labs) video card owners (and only most of them at that) have access to Unified, have been so stupid as to actually use code from the Glide SDK? If so, then they're really dumb, because even _I_ knew that 3dfx would bust their butt for it after what they did to all those other wrappers!
As for 3dfx, they should quit wasting their money protecting Glide and start making better cards! _NOBODY_ uses Glide in new games anymore because not even a majority of people are buying 3dfx cards these days (meaning that companies who want to make the most money off of a game will want to use OpenGL or Direct3D to support as many people as possible - something Epic learned the hard way with Unreal)
I can only hope that 3dfx will spread itself so thin financially by slapping stupid lawsuits on everyone that it will go under (and if that doesn't do it, then hopefully they'll get so mired in legal battles that they won't have time to make new, GOOD hardware) The era of being anal about hardware and proprietary software designed for it is OVER, and Linux (or those who use it actually) is one of the main things we have to thank for discouraging such ridiculous practices!
If you are someone who works for a company that designs computer hardware, PLEASE get the message that these days people are NOT going to use your hardware unless you make a better product! If you're first in a market, use that to your advantage to develop new, improved products before anyone else even makes one to compete with your original - just DON'T try to use proprietary crap and DON'T deny access to important info that software developers need to create software that uses your product! Such practices are just not going to cut it anymore, and I for one am going to do all I can to make sure of that!
(sorry for all the ranting - I'm just in that kind of a mood today =)
The Matrix rocked! The only thing that didn't work for me was the end: it was too vague. It seemed to me like the movie was building towards a huge finale where Neo would take out the Matrix and free humanity, but instead all we got to see were some (cool) scenes of him battling minions in the Matrix, followed by some vague babble at the end. I want a sequel!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but the "m" in that kinetic energy equation is the mass of the object, which although likely a much smaller value than the square of the velocity, is still a contributing factor to the amount of kinetic energy that a moving object possesses. Also, for reference: it _is_ this kinetic energy equation which is used when dealing with collisions between two masses, but there are many other factors which determine the type and strength of a collision.
- HunterZ
an MSNBC article on the object (...) points out that the threat has now been downgraded to a more comforting level.
It's a good thing we can trust them to tell the truth; after all, Big Brother would certainly consider it worth the risk of causing a huge panic by telling us the truth if they really did think we were in potential danger...right?
- HunterZ
Or you can just get it from pigs like in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome =)
The biggest problem with this, of course, is that fossil fuels are - for all intents and purposes - NOT renewable resources. In other words, it takes so long for fossil fuels to be created, and the process is so slow, that we'll never be able to slow down enough to keep from running out.
Which brings me to my favorite theory of what will happen in the not-too-distant future, which was presented in the Fallout series of CRPGs from Interplay/Black Isle Studios: The world will soon run dangerously low on fossil fuels, causing China and the U.S. to enter a race to grab up as many oil-producing "hot-spots" as possible. The U.S. and China will stop exporting oil, pissing off everyone else who doesn't want to be annexed into one of those two empires (Canada is one of the most notable countries to be annexed into the United States). Getting even more desperate, the U.S. and China race to build deep-sea oil drilling platforms - each country covertly sabotaging the other until the U.S. finally finishes their platform first. China gets really pissed and the mother of all wars, World War III, finally breaks out - only between China and the U.S. because they are the only real superpowers left. BOOM! Nuclear bombs ravage the Earth, turning it into a desolate wasteland full of mutated creatures and scattered, vulnerable communities of humans trying to start over again nearly from scratch.
This isn't my favourite theory because I want it to happen (it would be HORRIBLE, which is why it makes a good RPG and not a good real-life scenario), but rather because it is LIKELY to happen. And I don't see any way to stop it - don't give me crap about electric cars; there's just too much money tied up in oil for that to become a reality before the oil runs out, and you can bet your ass that the people involved are going to want to squeeze every last drop before starting over again with another fuel source. It's textbook greed, folks, and you're all driving 10-miles-per-gallon SUVs and pickup trucks to work on the FREEWAY every day to make it all the more profitable for those companies...
Just something to chew on =)
Later,
HunterZ
I wonder, would you have said that if it was a Republican administration that had released it? If it's okay for Democrats to engage in "corporate bread-buttering," then I'd better not hear any criticisms of the Republicans in regards to similar activities.
Why don't chip manufacturers like AMD and Intel simply put an instruction in the CPU that can be called to get internal information about the chip? (e.g. Company, intended clock speed, etc.) This especially goes for Intel, seeing as how they've already done it for serial #'s.
That's "Shadowrun" and "Pen-and-paper" chummer! I can see that he STILL hasn't played it...
Myself and some of my friends have just taken it up again - what a killer game! Magic, machines, virtual reality...
If someone is kind enough to share the source to their software or web site, anyone who uses it for something else should return the favor by at least giving credit. Most of the stuff I've created is intended to be used by others, so I'd be happy to see it used in other stuff (and even happier to be notified by the person using it so I can see what they've done with it).
Religious fanatics eh? What about you damn knee-jerk left-wingers that want the government to make laws to take away our CONSTITUTIONAL rights and control everything because you think we individuals aren't responsible enough to do things properly ourselves?
It seems kind of ironic to me how JonKatz and a bunch of the rest of you get up on your pulpit and rail against large corporations (no I don't have any love for them either), yet turn around and look to the federal government to solve all your problems.
P.S. Since I'm talking politics: I'm a native of the Pacific Northwest (born in Seattle), and I just want to ask all of you environmentalists who immigrated from California why the heck you're polluting my (ok, "our") air with your SUVs and pickup trucks >:( I don't even drive!
Greetings Dr. Falken. How about a nice game of chess?
Later. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.
Hehe
Darn right! I can't believe they wrote another book with the same name... Now it'll be even harder to get people to read Levy's book =(
WOW. The article is about the game industry in general, not just consoles, so if that's interesting to you, go read it!
I've noticed a lot of things mentioned in the article, like how "sequels" are just the same old game with a new coat of paint. In fact, I just bought Half-Life: Opposing Force, which is just another set of levels (only half as many as the original). Good thing I bought it in a 3-pack that included the original Half-Life (and an upgrade CD that installs Team Fortress Classic), since I mostly enjoy Half-Life's TFC and Counter-Strike multiplayer mods.
Anyways, the article does a great job of making sense out of where the gaming industry is today, including why PC games are so buggy and why there are so many of the same types of games for consoles.
Yeah sure, let the government have control of developments in nanotech. Who here doesn't think the President's military advisors aren't drooling over nanotech's bio-warfare potential?
Okay, that's enough X-Files paranoia for now =)
My cousin's girlfriend just went to a place in Canada and got her vision corrected by the laser surgery. He said to check out www.lexingtonlaservision.com and to email him (aaronn@microcrafts.com) if you want to ask him/her any questions.
Upon reading this article, (and hearing about it from several other sources) the following things came to mind:
;)
1. It's about time someone did this! Teaching a single scientific _theory_ as undeniable fact is a horribly unscientific thing to do, and it's always bothered me deeply. Although the current implementation of the theory of evolution (specifically the idea of "man from apes") contradicts my Christian belief in Creation, I am (as a college student enormously interested in the various sciences) actually bothered more by the idea that some group of people would totally break out of the Scientific Method and push ONE, SINGLE _THEORY_ as the One Scientific Truth. Not only do public school curriculi brush under the rug the idea that evolution is merely a THEORY, but they also offer no alternative theories so that they can avoid producing future scientists that can think objectively about theories which contradict evolution. Scientists (if it is them and not Athiest political activists) should be ashamed of themselves for displaying such a lack of objectivity and disregard for the Scientific Method (gather data, formulate a theory, gather more data, refine the theory, gather more data, refine the theory, etc., but NEVER consider nor teach any theories based on empirical evidence to be TRUTH)
2. Charles Darwin was a fool who hated science and thought that chopping off a bird's wing caused any offspring of that bird to also be missing a wing (take note: that's the TRUE Darwinian theory of evolution, ladies and gentlemen; make no mistake about it! That's what _I_ learned in school, and I bet none of you public-schooled people ever learned THAT!) I consider it equally foolish that so many people these days (perhaps in a pitiful, hypocritical attempt to spite Christians) practically worship Darwin as their Athiest God and Saviour. The sheer irony of the scientific community's decision to take under its wing someone who considered himself one of its bitterest enemies makes it extremely hard for me to turn a blind eye to the disappointing thought that today's prominent scientists have lost all objectivity in their work in order to engage in petty, underhanded attacks on the religious community in order to further their Athiest belifs (yes, BELIEFS! Just do me a favor here and apply your critical thinking abilities for a moment so that I can avoid yet another rant
3. It burns me REALLY BAD to continuously look at the hypocracy of these liberal activists who accuse us "religious extremists" of being unobjective and unwilling to teach multiple ideas, while they immediately step forward and do exactly that. "Don't teach just abstinence! We want to teach just homosexuality!" "Don't teach Creation! We want to teach just evolution!" "Don't teach Christianity! We want to teach everything but!" "Don't teach children history, science, mathmatics, reading, writing, or anything else! We want to teach just liberal politics and Athiesm!" (and you people wonder why academic performance in public schools is so low - SHAME ON YOU!)
Wow, what a rant! Got a lot off my chest though =)
Consoles will NEVER win over computers again, until everyone has an HDTV to hook them up to, or until consoles come with a high-quality video passthru device so that you can play them on your computer monitor. Why? Because TV's are the crappiest display device you could ever choose to use, especially for games! Anything higher than 320x240 is blurry as heck, and the thing is set at a fixed frequency (can consoles even do 60FPS on an NTSC TV, or are they fixed at the 30FPS that today's consoles use?)
Also, anyone who believes that current consoles are even close to a match for even the low-end of acceptable game-playing PCs should go down to their local Software Etc. and play the N64 version of Pod Racer, followed by the PC version (go ahead and buy the PC version if it's not on display - it's SOOOO cool) The way I see it is this:
N64: 30FPS, 320x240, split screen, 1" analog stick
PC: 72FPS+, 1024x768, full screen multiplayer over an IPX network (VERY fun, even with only two people!), joystick as big or small as you want
There just isn't any competition. Now I know what you're about to say: "What about the Dreamcast, PSX 2, and Nintendo's next vaporware system?" Well, they can do as many polygons-per-second or millions-of-CPU-operations-per-second as they want, but I'm NOT going to pay $300 for a system that plugs into a TV that can only do 320x240x30FPS without sacrificing image quality! NO SIR!
I've heard that the brain uses a form of holographic storage to archive its information and I don't know if there is a direct mapping to that and say terabytes of information (warning: I am not an expert!). What do all think?
Wasn't it explained in 2010 (sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) that the HAL 9000 computer uses holograms to store information also?
Don't do it Eric! They're going to abduct you and turn you into a Microsoft Borg(TM) that preaches the benefits of Windows to the masses! ;)
Could Creative Labs, after going to all the trouble of only letting CL (Creative Labs) video card owners (and only most of them at that) have access to Unified, have been so stupid as to actually use code from the Glide SDK? If so, then they're really dumb, because even _I_ knew that 3dfx would bust their butt for it after what they did to all those other wrappers!
As for 3dfx, they should quit wasting their money protecting Glide and start making better cards! _NOBODY_ uses Glide in new games anymore because not even a majority of people are buying 3dfx cards these days (meaning that companies who want to make the most money off of a game will want to use OpenGL or Direct3D to support as many people as possible - something Epic learned the hard way with Unreal)
I can only hope that 3dfx will spread itself so thin financially by slapping stupid lawsuits on everyone that it will go under (and if that doesn't do it, then hopefully they'll get so mired in legal battles that they won't have time to make new, GOOD hardware) The era of being anal about hardware and proprietary software designed for it is OVER, and Linux (or those who use it actually) is one of the main things we have to thank for discouraging such ridiculous practices!
If you are someone who works for a company that designs computer hardware, PLEASE get the message that these days people are NOT going to use your hardware unless you make a better product! If you're first in a market, use that to your advantage to develop new, improved products before anyone else even makes one to compete with your original - just DON'T try to use proprietary crap and DON'T deny access to important info that software developers need to create software that uses your product! Such practices are just not going to cut it anymore, and I for one am going to do all I can to make sure of that!
(sorry for all the ranting - I'm just in that kind of a mood today =)
Later,
HunterZ
"The new Nintendo game system is going to be made with the PowerPC architecture, as well as DVD and networking from Matsushita."
Sure, and the SNES was supposed to have a CD-ROM addon done by Sony, and now we have something called the PlayStation instead... Heh heh
The Matrix rocked! The only thing that didn't work for me was the end: it was too vague. It seemed to me like the movie was building towards a huge finale where Neo would take out the Matrix and free humanity, but instead all we got to see were some (cool) scenes of him battling minions in the Matrix, followed by some vague babble at the end. I want a sequel!
Nice one, CT, but when's YOUR birthday? ;) ;) ;)
P.S. Happy birthday Hemo!