... and I'll say it again... Oracle is in trouble. They charge too much for their products, they treat customers badly, and now apparently they are admitting that they think they can plug security holes with legal crap.
If that worked you could dispense with bank vaults, put the millions of dollars in gold bars in box on someone's desk... and then just put a sticker on it that said "don't steal me."
Why do we go to the trouble of having steel plated concrete reinforced walls? Why are we putting 2~3 foot bank vault doors on with timed locks? Why do we have redundant security alarms where the two alarms talk to each other and either one goes dark the other flips out? Why are we staffing the place with men carrying guns that are trained to shoot people?
Apparently all we need is a sticker that says "don't steal me."
The juxtaposition of being told endlessly that we don't have enough women in tech... and then reading dumb comments from this women... kids, if you're the security officer of Oracle then you had better be an iron for blood security MONSTER. And this chick... comical.
Customers are doing her job for her? Finding bugs in her software? For free? And she complains? Fired. Get the fuck out of the building. We'll have security clean your desk out and UPS your crap to your mailing address.
Why is rocket science to people? I'm not beating up on the Japanese here. The American people are pretty f'ing clueless on this score as well.
Cut supply... prices go up. Increase demand... prices go up. increase supply... prices go down. cut demand... prices go down.
So what did we do with housing issue? We pumped money into the market... aka demand... without doing anything meaningful to increase supply... result... prices went up until we had that little market crash.
What are we doing with education? Pumping money into loans and subsidies without expanding the university system instead... result... prices go up. Shocker.
And medical care... how much energy has been put into expanding the number of hospitals? Increasing the number of doctors? Seeing that new pharmacy factories have been built to increase the drug supply? Nothing?
No... well just throw more money at it... which is just demand.
People understand that if the supply of oil goes up on the global market that prices come down. Everyone knows this... we see examples of supply and demand in our market all the time and people understand.
But when it comes to a few issues... energy is one of them... people's little brains turn off.
"oh lets turn off the nuclear reactors that are pumping out 4000 mega watts. We'll just make up the difference with wind"... You're going straight to coal.
The anti nuclear lobby needs to change from their PETA like radicalism and just advocate SAFE nuclear power and there is such a thing. Just do that. I'll join you. Everyone wants safe. Safe is great. But abolition of nuclear power? Just stop it.
... no... just keep in mind that your transponder system only manages law abiding civilians.
It has no ability to manage smugglers, criminals, or foreign powers that might want to scare the pee out of you for some reason.
My worry with systems like this is that credulous people seem to think that because X works under Y condition that it works under all conditions.
its that same idiotic mentality that gets people to think "well we don't want people to shoot people here so we'll just make this a gun free area."
As if hanging a sign up does anything to stop gun violence.
I'm sure you're not getting what I'm saying... which is more frustrating for me than you... I assure you.
Try this analogy on for size, what if instead of putting gold in a bank vault guarded by a dude with a machine gun that is trained and authorized to shoot people in the dome if they try get by him... what if instead... we put the money in a cardboard box Buuuuut... we put a signs all over the box that say "robbery free zone"...
Bingo. No need for expensive bank vault with anal retentive security people always going on about their timed locks and redundant alarms. No need for the upsetting people with guns that... heavens to Betsy might actually shoot someone.
Just a box... and a sign that says "please don't fuck me in the ass"... and that's how I feel about the transponders.
Now does that mean I want a full tactical radar net for the whole country? Nah. But a perimeter seems reasonable as well as a fairly robust system for tracking people at cruising altitude.
So for example if you come in low anywhere along the US boarder... north, south, east, west, Hawaii, Alaska included... I want you tracked. Do you need to put radar stations like that along the northern alaskan border? At the very least I'd like them near inhabited border regions up there. Again... Russians.
And if you do that... smuggling something in with your transponder off is going to get you flagged as a UFO... which means I get to blast you out of the sky with a death ray. Because that's what perverts from Uranus get. And within the borders... a higher altitude system is fine. I'm less concerned about what's getting smuggled from Los Angeles to New York.
As to drones... we're talking about retards that fire bird shot at drones. This is not rocket science. You arrest them for being stupid. Problem solved.
And what happens if you just switch the transponders off?
Go watch that video I sent you of the fellow that was smuggling cocaine into the US.
He was an expert pilot and he owned a company that customized airplanes. He upgraded the fuel on a small plane so it was basically a flying gas can.
This allowed him to fly directly from Columbia to New England without stopping for fuel. The primary radar stations for the US along the southern border were in Florida. So what he did was he flew AROUND Florida... then came into the US flying low. He would then fly very near an abandoned airport... basically get within a foot of the run way. Then he'd turn on his transponders, fly up to an attitude where the radar could see him... and pretend like he just took off. Then he'd land his plane at his regular airfield.
Then when he wanted to go back to Colombia he'd reverse the process.
Now your system relies on these little spies aboard the plane not being subverted which is inexcusable because you should know the first law of computer security.
First law is PHYSICAL security. If you do not physically control a system then you don't control it. The simple fact that these little boxes are in my sweaty little hand means you're fucked right out of the gate.
Now you say "oh these things have to be reporting similar whatever... not a big deal. Then you say "well they only have so much range so they can only lie to a certain extent.... yeah but what is your detection range for your radar in any case?... and lets add to that what your detection range is if I'm being a sneaky piece of shit?
Seriously think like an asshole for a second... a criminal... a terrorist... an enemy spy... someone that wants to steal all your lucky charms (trademark). Can you please just play devil's advocate for a second and see how wide fucking open this is to assholes?
We recently had another of those hacker conventions in Las Vegas. Wall of sheep... cars being auto hacked into with little war driving kits... people showing they could take control of water treatment systems and nuclear reactors.
I mean... come on. Please. And you want an air traffic control system that ultimately relies on trusting the planes are honestly reporting their position?
Fuck no. I want to know where they are using my own instrumentation. Not their self reported positions.
Are you watching what the Russians are doing in Europe and Japan? They're flying bombers and scouts and fighters through their airspace with the transponders off just to intimidate our allies. We've got Russian attack submarines surfacing off Denmark just to fuck with them.
I'm sorry... but this "lets assume everyone is of good will" shit should be a crime punishable by instant slow public strangulation. Its dumb. We can't afford to be this stupid. I know a lot of people find the idiocracy comforting but I'm not living on taco bell and energy drinks. There needs to be some standards. And inconvenient thought it may be, some people need to ACTUALLY do their fucking jobs.
We're spending about 3.5ish of GDP on our military which is not remarkable all things considered.
There's no credible military power that has ever spent less than that. The British Empire used to spend something like that on defense as well.
Comparing the US military spending with Sweden or something is not valid. Sweden doesn't have a credible military power.
The latest report from the Swedish military was that if they might be able to fight one battle for about 2 weeks. They lack the logistics and numbers to be able to do more than that. 20 years ago they had a pretty strong military. But since the end of the cold war, Europe's miltiaries have atrophied into uselessness.
I mean... completely worthless. So if we exclude all the miltiaries that actually can't fight anymore... you'll find the US spending as per GDP is actually a great deal lower than any of the other military powers that can actually fight.
And that being the case... I don't really credit this notion that my mentality leads to spending everything on the military. You're basically making an reductio ad absurdum fallacy.
As to surviving WW3... *laughs* well... you're not going to do it by being weak... unless you want to survive on your knees and make a face like a donut.;-)
as to some people not being able to handle malware... I'm going to refer back to the "don't shit in your drinking water" point I made above. There are believe it or not people that don't know that still. Those epidemics you see in africa are frequently caused by contaminated drinking water and that's typically because they let their live stock bath in it or they bath in it or they wash their clothes in it.
This is something that was bypassed like...6000 years ago. A stepped fountain does a very good job of dealing with the problem. You have a top level that is for drinking water only. You have a step below that is for human bathing/washing clothing/etc, then the third step is for animals etc.
Its not perfect but if you see what people are doing in many places in the world... you have to conclude they have it coming when the viral/bacterial outbreak happens. I mean... you were fucking warned.
This is the 21st century. I live in the First world... I consider malware management etc to be akin to not pissing in your drinking water. If you do... then I'm going to have a very very hard time feeling anything but disgust.
As to gamepads with android... bluetooth gamepads or OTG cables are how I do that when I am so inclined. There are a lot of specialized bluetooth controllers that are designed to hold an iphone or android phone. You click them into the gamepad and there is a joystick on the left and some buttons on the right... and often some triggers.
Loads of them. I personally use an OTG cable and a USB gamepad I've had for ages because... 1 dollar is what the OTG cable cost and I had a game pad I could use with my phone.:D
... in no way does it do that. If it did that then Aegis Destroyers would shift to that and drop all that fancy radar. You're assuming that the transponders are reporting accurate position information.
I can LIE to the traffic control system and if you're not keeping radar tabs on me then how exactly are you going to know what I've done? I can take off in mexico somewhere, say through the transponder that I'm flying to another airport in mexico, land in an airfield in the US, unload... I don't know... dirt bombs... sex slaves... 20 tons of heroine... whatever... and then take off, saying I'm taking off at that same mexican airfield, then land back in where I started. And your stupid system wouldn't have even realized I crossed the border.
And that's assuming I'm not being especially sneaky.
Your system is not an innovation. It is a fig leaf on budget cuts excused by this system that only works if the transponders are all left on and aren't tampered with.
I could smuggle anything anywhere under this system simply by having the transponder misreport my position.
As to unicorns, fine... unicorns would have to include the full price of the PC... its at most the same price as a console so... you still gain no advantage.
As to malware existing... Its the 21st century. As past generations were expected to not shit in their drinking water, I expect modern generations to know not to install malware or if they do to know how to remove it. Its not hard. I have a little cousin that keeps his system clean just fine. I've never really understood the "I'm not smart enough to use a PC" argument... I mean... confessing to stupidity isn't exactly a winning move. An no... we're not talking about insults. I'm not saying "if you disagree with me you're stupid"... you're the one saying you can't handle malware. And small children can handle that. So... I'm just not understanding what is going on here.
The examples of same IP often have licenses. Where they don't... meh... really your game is basically the sims only you fight your sims against each other. Only pokemon works that way. There's no other console game that does that. And frankly I think that's because there isn't a huge demand for it. The PC gaming community is extremely competitive and it delivers any game the people that use it actually want to play.
As to the zillion rebuttal where in you say it is an advantage to have fewer titles. No. You might have an argument if the console games were all good but they're not. There are lots of shit console game which means you need to sift through both of them. And if you want to know which PC games are good we have metacritic, youtube reviews, and all sorts of shit. So you can figure it out pretty easily.
As to copying roms... to copy neogeo titles you need a special bit of hardware to do the copying process. Obviously most people just download the roms. NeoGeo made their money ages ago. I'm not crying for the abandonware titles. If they wanted to make a buck in the 21st century they could release emulators themselves and sell the games RIGHT NOW and people would buy them. They don't. In any environment where the content holders are not offering a title, I have little recourse but to slap an eye patch on. If they want to offer the games up for sale... I'll buy them. If they don't... oh wells.
In all frankness, the only games I really use with an emulator are old NES and SNES games... maybe some Sega Genesis thrown in there and some NeoGeo. That's it. And its mostly for nostagia. I remember the arcade days with the NeoGeo and i personally owned an NES and a Sega Genesis... I didn't get an SNES. But I do play a few roms from that era.
My favorite emulator is actually ScummVM which I mostly use on my phone so I can play Lucas Arts Adventure games on my phone. I mean... look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That kicks the fucking piss, shit, bile, and brains out of most android games.
As to 10 random PC games having the same quality as 10 random console games... you're relying on the fact that it is harder to make console games because it is more expensive. Consult steam and metacritic... any fool can find some good games. The popular ones are generally good.
I am concerned that the transponder system is being used to justify having less effective radar. The issue is that you're depending on the transponders to locate and keep track of planes. I'm okay with the transponders being used to identify planes but I am less okay with using them to actually plot their position. That is, I want the location of planes to be handled by ground site radar. The planes can tell me where they are as well if they like but I need to not rely on that.
An unscrupulous person could very carefully broadcast nonsense for positional data which could be used for smuggling etc.
If the air traffic system is getting overwhelmed by the number of targets it has to track then it needs to be upgraded... ON THE GROUND.
And here someone is going to say "but that costs money"... well, stop stealing the fees collected from airliners to misappropriate into other programs and spend the money on what it was supposed to be spent on instead.
If the government collects a tax or fee to sustain a given service you can bet your ass it isn't all going to that service.
There are a lot of PC co-op games. And lets not pretend that the consoles are especially great at supporting that at this point.
There are single player console games, multiplayer over the internet console games, and co-op split screen games. And not all console games fall into the final category.
There are PC games that do that... either because they ported the console concept or because they do have split screen or screen sharing ability.
Trine is such a game. There are a lot more of them than you'd realize. The single player or online multiplayer PC games don't let you do that but then neither do the console versions of the same games so it is more of a wash than you'd realize.
As to people getting by without a PC but having a console... I've never seen that and I frankly suspect you're talking about unicorns.
As to a member of the family hogging the PC... get them a tablet. That will cost you 100 dollars and lets be honest they were probably just looking at webpages on the PC anyway.
As to your point about waiting 5 years etc... this would make any sense if the consoles were not replaced with subsequent generations at around that interval. Lets look at the console replacement intervals: Playstation 1994 Playstation 2 2000 Playstation 3 2006 Playstation 4 2013
Basically every 6 years you get another console.
So... can a 6 year old PC compete with a 6 year old console? Easily.
Your argument there is at best a wash and at worst you lose because I can upgrade the PC with a new graphics card, ram, etc without having to wait for the console companies to move the bar. You're not going to match PCs on graphics dollar for dollar or at time of sale or over the time of the unit. The PCs win all of that and pretty much have since the first graphics cards started coming out.
As to your comment about malware... I don't know what you're talking about. Clarify your position.
As to are there games like this on the PC?... yes.
Your first link was funny because the PC had a game almost exactly like that way before that called Audio Surf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Next we have "Katamari Damacy" which is a puzzle action game... and there are tons of those on the PC. Wouldn't portal 1/2 count? I mean... I can probably cite a dozen puzzle action games. Is it literally the exact same IP as Katamari Damacy? No. I didn't claim it would be though. I claimed it would be the same sort of game and that there would be more of them. And there are.
As to super mario brothers, you're talking about 2d platformers... do we have those? Of fucking course we do. We have shovel knight, braid, Fez... the whole 2d platformer thing is really popular with the indy developers because its easier to make them.
As to other games like that... it's basically a digital pet game crossed with an RPG... with maybe some puzzle mechanics in it. Arguably most of these would fit the bill: http://www.listal.com/list/bes...
Animal crossing appears to be an open world RPG... we have zillions of those. Are they as cute as that game? There are a few that are... let see... Trove and cubeworld appear to be more open world than anything before them, pretty cutesy... same basic thing from what I can tell. Does mr squirrel give you his nuts? That's more a Sims thing. I think your animal crossing game is sort a cuter version of the sims... with fewer options and less depth.
Sound deadeners... we're talking about foam mostly. No? Also the fabric only flaps around like that if it isn't taught. If it is nice and tight its isn't going anywhere.
I don't know... maybe you're entirely right here and I'm being stubborn. I'd like to see it tried.
Well... I think the FAA doesn't want these things flying above 500'. Maybe the Amazon drones they'll be okay with that but I'm sort of dubious on that point. Commercial jets etc are so high up there that who cares. But helicopters etc could be bumping into these things at that altitude.
As to flying over roads. I think that might be the winning solution so long as the roads aren't totally stupid. If you're flying 100~200 feet above the road... they should leave you alone.
I've always wondered why we use metal skins on cars at all. Why not use stretched fabric over a metal skeleton?
Bumps and dings don't happen because the fabric bends. Replacing fabric is cheap. Its way lighter than anything else which was why we used it on early aircraft.
I mean... just do that. You get a rip in the fabric? Its modular... order another sheet of whatever, unclip the ripped cloth, stretch the new stuff over the bit of frame you had a rip on... move on.
A reasonable point... though it increases the time to target and uses additional fuel. I would think 200 feet would be high enough that people would just leave it alone.
I'm just imagining people shoot down those amazon drones. Maybe if the auto pilots on the drones followed roads rather than just going as the crow flies? Sure, they could still shoot them down but maybe people would be less inclined to shoot if they didn't trespass on their airspace.
I'm a little disappointed that carbon fiber can't take a bird shot hit at 300 feet.
PC sales are a lot stronger than the console people would like to admit. Roughly about as strong as any of the consoles... and that is just counting console ports.
There was some interesting sales information that showed the xbox one was having a very hard time... the PS4 is doing pretty good... and the PC is generally identical to the PS4 merely accounting for ports. If you include all the things that are on PC and not the console, the PC game market dwarfs the PS4... and likely the entire console market collectively.
Not a fan of the business model. It would be better if all this crap were on the PC. Here someone will say something like "but I like to play on the couch"... then get a gaming laptop and plug it into your tv when you want to do that. You can plug game pads into a PC as easily as anything. And you have a great deal more freedom about it than you do on the console.
Here someone will say "but gaming PCs are expensive"... if you take the consoles as the benchmark of what constitutes acceptable graphics, you can throw together a gaming PC for about 400 dollars. What is more, the cost of a gaming PC is not the cost of the entire machine. Because you're going to have a PC regardless. Who has a console but doesn't have a PC at all? That's rare. So the cost of the gaming PC is not the cost of the machine but rather the cost of turning the PC you're going to buy anyway into a gaming PC. Which means your costs drop to perhaps 100 to 200 dollars if your goal is merely to keep pace with the consoles. if you want to go beyond that you have that flexibility which is not something the console people can say.
Then you'll hear someone say "but PCs are hard"... well... ten year olds can figure it out. So I don't know what to tell you.
And then you'll hear "but none of the exclusive games I want are on the PC"... well, you're a victim of advertising because name the genre and there is probably lots of PC games that are every bit as good if not better. They're just not promoted on the super bowl like that last xbox crap game was... you know the one that had tyrion lannister narrating for it for no reason. And as I remember most people realized it was over hyped, over priced, garbage. The PC also has a lot of games that you're just not going to find on the console. MMOs if you like that. RTS games if you like that. RPGs are quite a big stronger on the PC. The PC has legacy support back to DOS... so backward compatibility to the beginning of time. You can also install emulators that let you play pretty much everything. Sadly emulators for more modern consoles are absent for some reason. I blame ninja death squads from MS and Sony for that. Its sort of inexplicable otherwise.
Anywho... yeah... exclusive content is bullshit and rather than compel me to buy service Y, it just makes me ignore content X.
... just against bird shot or something. Its going to be annoying for Amazon etc if people are shooting delivery drones down. No one is likely to hit these drones at altitude with anything but bird shot. So if you can make the drone hardened against tiny pellets... they might just be fine.
I'm not unconditionally hostile to the status quo media distribution business model. My problem with them is that they tend to make content X exclusive to service Y when I am most interested in using service Z.
You see this with lots of media outlets. You see it on consoles a lot in games. They pay publisher of X content lots of money to make the game exclusive to Y console when I use a Z PC. And here's the thing... while I'd love to play that game and would be happy to buy it... I am not buying Y console. It would give me hand herpes... and there is no cure.
And the same thing is true with the TV, sports, movies, etc.
I would love to get sports on my streaming service and I would pay more for that package. However... I am not going to get a cable subscription just for the sports. Because while I care... I don't "need". I'm very happy with a thousand other entertainment medias. And that assumes I even want to entertain myself that way. I have so many f'ing projects and hobbies that when all is said and done... you have to actually be interesting make me show up.
Anyway, glad the old business model is dying... not because I like to see them die but because they were too stubborn to port their content to platforms I wanted to use at a competitive rate.
Again, there's a lot of persuasion science out there and if we threw it all out... I don't think the New York Times would happy about that.
Its hypocritical to throw it out in Coca Cola's case but not all the others.
As to slashdotters... I don't see how they're any worse than the general public. The only issue we really have here is that people are very easily cowed by Ad verecundiam... or argument from authority. A lot of people in general... not just on slashdot, think that because X person has a degree in Y that whatever they say cannot be questioned.
Fallacies are fallacies.
As to your belief that Coca Cola can shift impressions that easily... that's clearly nonsense. Were that the case the Tobacco industries would won.
Please don't engage in hyperbole. Its not constructive.
Science isn't right or wrong if someone backs it. Lets be frank here... the f'ing NAZIs did some very solid science.
Science isn't about your petty factions or your morality. Its about truth and falsehood.
Now is there a clear conflict of interest here with Coca-Cola having a vested interest in people believing that their sugar water is the best thing ever?
Yes. Obvious conflict of interest noted.
However, the scientists also have a conflict of interest here in that they're getting funded by people with this known bias.
Okay...
But is that uncommon? How many studies are funded by interest groups? How many studies are funded by government agencies with declared desired outcomes?
Pick the field... whomever is giving you the money probably would prefer one sort of outcome rather than another. And it is known that some grants are given on a quid pro quo basis... that is... there is an understanding that the study MUST support a given position or further grants will not happen.
Unethical? Of course. However, more common than most people would like to admit.
It is incumbent upon the community of scientists... all of them... to audit such things. True, you can bribe a lot of them but you generally can't bribe all of them.
And even then... science is not a democracy. That one person you didn't bribe can rip your fucking bullshit to shreds.
So where am I going with this? Let Coca Cola make their study. I don't see how it hurts anything. If their study is crap then make an argument on the basis of the science as to why it is crap.
Simply dismissing it out of hand on the basis that it is funded by the sugar water merchants is a logical fallacy.
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... and I'll say it again... Oracle is in trouble. They charge too much for their products, they treat customers badly, and now apparently they are admitting that they think they can plug security holes with legal crap.
If that worked you could dispense with bank vaults, put the millions of dollars in gold bars in box on someone's desk... and then just put a sticker on it that said "don't steal me."
Why do we go to the trouble of having steel plated concrete reinforced walls? Why are we putting 2~3 foot bank vault doors on with timed locks? Why do we have redundant security alarms where the two alarms talk to each other and either one goes dark the other flips out? Why are we staffing the place with men carrying guns that are trained to shoot people?
Apparently all we need is a sticker that says "don't steal me."
The juxtaposition of being told endlessly that we don't have enough women in tech... and then reading dumb comments from this women... kids, if you're the security officer of Oracle then you had better be an iron for blood security MONSTER. And this chick... comical.
Customers are doing her job for her? Finding bugs in her software? For free? And she complains? Fired. Get the fuck out of the building. We'll have security clean your desk out and UPS your crap to your mailing address.
Good fucking day, sir.
Why is rocket science to people? I'm not beating up on the Japanese here. The American people are pretty f'ing clueless on this score as well.
Cut supply... prices go up.
Increase demand... prices go up.
increase supply... prices go down.
cut demand... prices go down.
So what did we do with housing issue? We pumped money into the market... aka demand... without doing anything meaningful to increase supply... result... prices went up until we had that little market crash.
What are we doing with education? Pumping money into loans and subsidies without expanding the university system instead... result... prices go up. Shocker.
And medical care... how much energy has been put into expanding the number of hospitals? Increasing the number of doctors? Seeing that new pharmacy factories have been built to increase the drug supply? Nothing?
No... well just throw more money at it... which is just demand.
People understand that if the supply of oil goes up on the global market that prices come down. Everyone knows this... we see examples of supply and demand in our market all the time and people understand.
But when it comes to a few issues... energy is one of them... people's little brains turn off.
"oh lets turn off the nuclear reactors that are pumping out 4000 mega watts. We'll just make up the difference with wind"... You're going straight to coal.
The anti nuclear lobby needs to change from their PETA like radicalism and just advocate SAFE nuclear power and there is such a thing. Just do that. I'll join you. Everyone wants safe. Safe is great. But abolition of nuclear power? Just stop it.
... no... just keep in mind that your transponder system only manages law abiding civilians.
It has no ability to manage smugglers, criminals, or foreign powers that might want to scare the pee out of you for some reason.
My worry with systems like this is that credulous people seem to think that because X works under Y condition that it works under all conditions.
its that same idiotic mentality that gets people to think "well we don't want people to shoot people here so we'll just make this a gun free area."
As if hanging a sign up does anything to stop gun violence.
I'm sure you're not getting what I'm saying... which is more frustrating for me than you... I assure you.
Try this analogy on for size, what if instead of putting gold in a bank vault guarded by a dude with a machine gun that is trained and authorized to shoot people in the dome if they try get by him... what if instead... we put the money in a cardboard box Buuuuut... we put a signs all over the box that say "robbery free zone"...
Bingo. No need for expensive bank vault with anal retentive security people always going on about their timed locks and redundant alarms. No need for the upsetting people with guns that... heavens to Betsy might actually shoot someone.
Just a box... and a sign that says "please don't fuck me in the ass"... and that's how I feel about the transponders.
Now does that mean I want a full tactical radar net for the whole country? Nah. But a perimeter seems reasonable as well as a fairly robust system for tracking people at cruising altitude.
So for example if you come in low anywhere along the US boarder... north, south, east, west, Hawaii, Alaska included... I want you tracked. Do you need to put radar stations like that along the northern alaskan border? At the very least I'd like them near inhabited border regions up there. Again... Russians.
And if you do that... smuggling something in with your transponder off is going to get you flagged as a UFO... which means I get to blast you out of the sky with a death ray. Because that's what perverts from Uranus get. And within the borders... a higher altitude system is fine. I'm less concerned about what's getting smuggled from Los Angeles to New York.
As to drones... we're talking about retards that fire bird shot at drones. This is not rocket science. You arrest them for being stupid. Problem solved.
And what happens if you just switch the transponders off?
Go watch that video I sent you of the fellow that was smuggling cocaine into the US.
He was an expert pilot and he owned a company that customized airplanes. He upgraded the fuel on a small plane so it was basically a flying gas can.
This allowed him to fly directly from Columbia to New England without stopping for fuel. The primary radar stations for the US along the southern border were in Florida. So what he did was he flew AROUND Florida... then came into the US flying low. He would then fly very near an abandoned airport... basically get within a foot of the run way. Then he'd turn on his transponders, fly up to an attitude where the radar could see him... and pretend like he just took off. Then he'd land his plane at his regular airfield.
Then when he wanted to go back to Colombia he'd reverse the process.
Now your system relies on these little spies aboard the plane not being subverted which is inexcusable because you should know the first law of computer security.
First law is PHYSICAL security. If you do not physically control a system then you don't control it. The simple fact that these little boxes are in my sweaty little hand means you're fucked right out of the gate.
Now you say "oh these things have to be reporting similar whatever... not a big deal. Then you say "well they only have so much range so they can only lie to a certain extent.... yeah but what is your detection range for your radar in any case?... and lets add to that what your detection range is if I'm being a sneaky piece of shit?
Seriously think like an asshole for a second... a criminal... a terrorist... an enemy spy... someone that wants to steal all your lucky charms (trademark). Can you please just play devil's advocate for a second and see how wide fucking open this is to assholes?
We recently had another of those hacker conventions in Las Vegas. Wall of sheep... cars being auto hacked into with little war driving kits... people showing they could take control of water treatment systems and nuclear reactors.
I mean... come on. Please. And you want an air traffic control system that ultimately relies on trusting the planes are honestly reporting their position?
Fuck no. I want to know where they are using my own instrumentation. Not their self reported positions.
Are you watching what the Russians are doing in Europe and Japan? They're flying bombers and scouts and fighters through their airspace with the transponders off just to intimidate our allies. We've got Russian attack submarines surfacing off Denmark just to fuck with them.
I'm sorry... but this "lets assume everyone is of good will" shit should be a crime punishable by instant slow public strangulation. Its dumb. We can't afford to be this stupid. I know a lot of people find the idiocracy comforting but I'm not living on taco bell and energy drinks. There needs to be some standards. And inconvenient thought it may be, some people need to ACTUALLY do their fucking jobs.
I posted a video of someone doing it with basic equipment. I think they were saying it cost about 500 dollars.
The issue is apparently that the wire is softer and so you have to be careful with that. But if you manage that... apparently it isn't a giant deal.
No it doesn't.
We're spending about 3.5ish of GDP on our military which is not remarkable all things considered.
There's no credible military power that has ever spent less than that. The British Empire used to spend something like that on defense as well.
Comparing the US military spending with Sweden or something is not valid. Sweden doesn't have a credible military power.
The latest report from the Swedish military was that if they might be able to fight one battle for about 2 weeks. They lack the logistics and numbers to be able to do more than that. 20 years ago they had a pretty strong military. But since the end of the cold war, Europe's miltiaries have atrophied into uselessness.
I mean... completely worthless. So if we exclude all the miltiaries that actually can't fight anymore... you'll find the US spending as per GDP is actually a great deal lower than any of the other military powers that can actually fight.
And that being the case... I don't really credit this notion that my mentality leads to spending everything on the military. You're basically making an reductio ad absurdum fallacy.
As to surviving WW3... *laughs* well... you're not going to do it by being weak... unless you want to survive on your knees and make a face like a donut. ;-)
I don't believe life works that way.
as to some people not being able to handle malware... I'm going to refer back to the "don't shit in your drinking water" point I made above. There are believe it or not people that don't know that still. Those epidemics you see in africa are frequently caused by contaminated drinking water and that's typically because they let their live stock bath in it or they bath in it or they wash their clothes in it.
This is something that was bypassed like...6000 years ago. A stepped fountain does a very good job of dealing with the problem. You have a top level that is for drinking water only. You have a step below that is for human bathing/washing clothing/etc, then the third step is for animals etc.
Its not perfect but if you see what people are doing in many places in the world... you have to conclude they have it coming when the viral/bacterial outbreak happens. I mean... you were fucking warned.
This is the 21st century. I live in the First world... I consider malware management etc to be akin to not pissing in your drinking water. If you do... then I'm going to have a very very hard time feeling anything but disgust.
As to gamepads with android... bluetooth gamepads or OTG cables are how I do that when I am so inclined. There are a lot of specialized bluetooth controllers that are designed to hold an iphone or android phone. You click them into the gamepad and there is a joystick on the left and some buttons on the right... and often some triggers.
Example:
http://www.amazon.com/MOGA-Mob...
http://www.amazon.com/Megadrea...
Loads of them. I personally use an OTG cable and a USB gamepad I've had for ages because... 1 dollar is what the OTG cable cost and I had a game pad I could use with my phone. :D
... in no way does it do that. If it did that then Aegis Destroyers would shift to that and drop all that fancy radar. You're assuming that the transponders are reporting accurate position information.
I can LIE to the traffic control system and if you're not keeping radar tabs on me then how exactly are you going to know what I've done? I can take off in mexico somewhere, say through the transponder that I'm flying to another airport in mexico, land in an airfield in the US, unload... I don't know... dirt bombs... sex slaves... 20 tons of heroine... whatever... and then take off, saying I'm taking off at that same mexican airfield, then land back in where I started. And your stupid system wouldn't have even realized I crossed the border.
And that's assuming I'm not being especially sneaky.
Check this guy out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Your system is not an innovation. It is a fig leaf on budget cuts excused by this system that only works if the transponders are all left on and aren't tampered with.
I could smuggle anything anywhere under this system simply by having the transponder misreport my position.
As to unicorns, fine... unicorns would have to include the full price of the PC... its at most the same price as a console so... you still gain no advantage.
As to malware existing... Its the 21st century. As past generations were expected to not shit in their drinking water, I expect modern generations to know not to install malware or if they do to know how to remove it. Its not hard. I have a little cousin that keeps his system clean just fine. I've never really understood the "I'm not smart enough to use a PC" argument... I mean... confessing to stupidity isn't exactly a winning move. An no... we're not talking about insults. I'm not saying "if you disagree with me you're stupid"... you're the one saying you can't handle malware. And small children can handle that. So... I'm just not understanding what is going on here.
The examples of same IP often have licenses. Where they don't... meh... really your game is basically the sims only you fight your sims against each other. Only pokemon works that way. There's no other console game that does that. And frankly I think that's because there isn't a huge demand for it. The PC gaming community is extremely competitive and it delivers any game the people that use it actually want to play.
As to the zillion rebuttal where in you say it is an advantage to have fewer titles. No. You might have an argument if the console games were all good but they're not. There are lots of shit console game which means you need to sift through both of them. And if you want to know which PC games are good we have metacritic, youtube reviews, and all sorts of shit. So you can figure it out pretty easily.
As to copying roms... to copy neogeo titles you need a special bit of hardware to do the copying process. Obviously most people just download the roms. NeoGeo made their money ages ago. I'm not crying for the abandonware titles. If they wanted to make a buck in the 21st century they could release emulators themselves and sell the games RIGHT NOW and people would buy them. They don't. In any environment where the content holders are not offering a title, I have little recourse but to slap an eye patch on. If they want to offer the games up for sale... I'll buy them. If they don't... oh wells.
In all frankness, the only games I really use with an emulator are old NES and SNES games... maybe some Sega Genesis thrown in there and some NeoGeo. That's it. And its mostly for nostagia. I remember the arcade days with the NeoGeo and i personally owned an NES and a Sega Genesis... I didn't get an SNES. But I do play a few roms from that era.
My favorite emulator is actually ScummVM which I mostly use on my phone so I can play Lucas Arts Adventure games on my phone. I mean... look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That kicks the fucking piss, shit, bile, and brains out of most android games.
As to 10 random PC games having the same quality as 10 random console games... you're relying on the fact that it is harder to make console games because it is more expensive. Consult steam and metacritic... any fool can find some good games. The popular ones are generally good.
How could we maintain the universe indefinitely? All those stars burning and burning... it can't go on forever.
Hopefully by the time it matters our descendents have figured out how to avoid oblivion.
I am concerned that the transponder system is being used to justify having less effective radar. The issue is that you're depending on the transponders to locate and keep track of planes. I'm okay with the transponders being used to identify planes but I am less okay with using them to actually plot their position. That is, I want the location of planes to be handled by ground site radar. The planes can tell me where they are as well if they like but I need to not rely on that.
An unscrupulous person could very carefully broadcast nonsense for positional data which could be used for smuggling etc.
If the air traffic system is getting overwhelmed by the number of targets it has to track then it needs to be upgraded... ON THE GROUND.
And here someone is going to say "but that costs money"... well, stop stealing the fees collected from airliners to misappropriate into other programs and spend the money on what it was supposed to be spent on instead.
If the government collects a tax or fee to sustain a given service you can bet your ass it isn't all going to that service.
asphalt mixed into the fabric or built into sound deadening panels? To be avoided.
There are a lot of PC co-op games. And lets not pretend that the consoles are especially great at supporting that at this point.
There are single player console games, multiplayer over the internet console games, and co-op split screen games. And not all console games fall into the final category.
There are PC games that do that... either because they ported the console concept or because they do have split screen or screen sharing ability.
Trine is such a game. There are a lot more of them than you'd realize. The single player or online multiplayer PC games don't let you do that but then neither do the console versions of the same games so it is more of a wash than you'd realize.
As to people getting by without a PC but having a console... I've never seen that and I frankly suspect you're talking about unicorns.
As to a member of the family hogging the PC... get them a tablet. That will cost you 100 dollars and lets be honest they were probably just looking at webpages on the PC anyway.
As to your point about waiting 5 years etc... this would make any sense if the consoles were not replaced with subsequent generations at around that interval. Lets look at the console replacement intervals:
Playstation 1994
Playstation 2 2000
Playstation 3 2006
Playstation 4 2013
Basically every 6 years you get another console.
So... can a 6 year old PC compete with a 6 year old console? Easily.
Your argument there is at best a wash and at worst you lose because I can upgrade the PC with a new graphics card, ram, etc without having to wait for the console companies to move the bar. You're not going to match PCs on graphics dollar for dollar or at time of sale or over the time of the unit. The PCs win all of that and pretty much have since the first graphics cards started coming out.
As to your comment about malware... I don't know what you're talking about. Clarify your position.
As to are there games like this on the PC?... yes.
Your first link was funny because the PC had a game almost exactly like that way before that called Audio Surf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Next we have "Katamari Damacy" which is a puzzle action game... and there are tons of those on the PC. Wouldn't portal 1/2 count? I mean... I can probably cite a dozen puzzle action games. Is it literally the exact same IP as Katamari Damacy? No. I didn't claim it would be though. I claimed it would be the same sort of game and that there would be more of them. And there are.
As to super mario brothers, you're talking about 2d platformers... do we have those? Of fucking course we do. We have shovel knight, braid, Fez... the whole 2d platformer thing is really popular with the indy developers because its easier to make them.
As to third person RPGs... f'ing trillions and zillions of them:
http://www.metacritic.com/brow...
As to cockfighting RPGs... there are literally pokemon games... same IP on the PC:
http://www.gameyum.com/pokemon...
As to other games like that... it's basically a digital pet game crossed with an RPG... with maybe some puzzle mechanics in it.
Arguably most of these would fit the bill:
http://www.listal.com/list/bes...
Animal crossing appears to be an open world RPG... we have zillions of those. Are they as cute as that game? There are a few that are... let see...
Trove and cubeworld appear to be more open world than anything before them, pretty cutesy... same basic thing from what I can tell. Does mr squirrel give you his nuts? That's more a Sims thing. I think your animal crossing game is sort a cuter version of the sims... with fewer options and less depth.
If you want to play who is weirder... I me
Sound deadeners... we're talking about foam mostly. No? Also the fabric only flaps around like that if it isn't taught. If it is nice and tight its isn't going anywhere.
I don't know... maybe you're entirely right here and I'm being stubborn. I'd like to see it tried.
As to mig welding aluminum...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It appears to not be that hard. I'm seeing lots of people do it with mig welders. Explain the issue. ?
Well... I think the FAA doesn't want these things flying above 500'. Maybe the Amazon drones they'll be okay with that but I'm sort of dubious on that point. Commercial jets etc are so high up there that who cares. But helicopters etc could be bumping into these things at that altitude.
As to flying over roads. I think that might be the winning solution so long as the roads aren't totally stupid. If you're flying 100~200 feet above the road... they should leave you alone.
I've always wondered why we use metal skins on cars at all. Why not use stretched fabric over a metal skeleton?
Bumps and dings don't happen because the fabric bends. Replacing fabric is cheap. Its way lighter than anything else which was why we used it on early aircraft.
I think I saw a BMW do a concept car on this concept... here is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I mean... just do that. You get a rip in the fabric? Its modular... order another sheet of whatever, unclip the ripped cloth, stretch the new stuff over the bit of frame you had a rip on... move on.
A reasonable point... though it increases the time to target and uses additional fuel. I would think 200 feet would be high enough that people would just leave it alone.
I'm just imagining people shoot down those amazon drones. Maybe if the auto pilots on the drones followed roads rather than just going as the crow flies? Sure, they could still shoot them down but maybe people would be less inclined to shoot if they didn't trespass on their airspace.
I'm a little disappointed that carbon fiber can't take a bird shot hit at 300 feet.
PC sales are a lot stronger than the console people would like to admit. Roughly about as strong as any of the consoles... and that is just counting console ports.
There was some interesting sales information that showed the xbox one was having a very hard time... the PS4 is doing pretty good... and the PC is generally identical to the PS4 merely accounting for ports. If you include all the things that are on PC and not the console, the PC game market dwarfs the PS4... and likely the entire console market collectively.
Not a fan of the business model. It would be better if all this crap were on the PC. Here someone will say something like "but I like to play on the couch"... then get a gaming laptop and plug it into your tv when you want to do that. You can plug game pads into a PC as easily as anything. And you have a great deal more freedom about it than you do on the console.
Here someone will say "but gaming PCs are expensive"... if you take the consoles as the benchmark of what constitutes acceptable graphics, you can throw together a gaming PC for about 400 dollars. What is more, the cost of a gaming PC is not the cost of the entire machine. Because you're going to have a PC regardless. Who has a console but doesn't have a PC at all? That's rare. So the cost of the gaming PC is not the cost of the machine but rather the cost of turning the PC you're going to buy anyway into a gaming PC. Which means your costs drop to perhaps 100 to 200 dollars if your goal is merely to keep pace with the consoles. if you want to go beyond that you have that flexibility which is not something the console people can say.
Then you'll hear someone say "but PCs are hard"... well... ten year olds can figure it out. So I don't know what to tell you.
And then you'll hear "but none of the exclusive games I want are on the PC"... well, you're a victim of advertising because name the genre and there is probably lots of PC games that are every bit as good if not better. They're just not promoted on the super bowl like that last xbox crap game was... you know the one that had tyrion lannister narrating for it for no reason. And as I remember most people realized it was over hyped, over priced, garbage. The PC also has a lot of games that you're just not going to find on the console. MMOs if you like that. RTS games if you like that. RPGs are quite a big stronger on the PC. The PC has legacy support back to DOS... so backward compatibility to the beginning of time. You can also install emulators that let you play pretty much everything. Sadly emulators for more modern consoles are absent for some reason. I blame ninja death squads from MS and Sony for that. Its sort of inexplicable otherwise.
Anywho... yeah... exclusive content is bullshit and rather than compel me to buy service Y, it just makes me ignore content X.
... just against bird shot or something. Its going to be annoying for Amazon etc if people are shooting delivery drones down. No one is likely to hit these drones at altitude with anything but bird shot. So if you can make the drone hardened against tiny pellets... they might just be fine.
I'm not unconditionally hostile to the status quo media distribution business model. My problem with them is that they tend to make content X exclusive to service Y when I am most interested in using service Z.
You see this with lots of media outlets. You see it on consoles a lot in games. They pay publisher of X content lots of money to make the game exclusive to Y console when I use a Z PC. And here's the thing... while I'd love to play that game and would be happy to buy it... I am not buying Y console. It would give me hand herpes... and there is no cure.
And the same thing is true with the TV, sports, movies, etc.
I would love to get sports on my streaming service and I would pay more for that package. However... I am not going to get a cable subscription just for the sports. Because while I care... I don't "need". I'm very happy with a thousand other entertainment medias. And that assumes I even want to entertain myself that way. I have so many f'ing projects and hobbies that when all is said and done... you have to actually be interesting make me show up.
Anyway, glad the old business model is dying... not because I like to see them die but because they were too stubborn to port their content to platforms I wanted to use at a competitive rate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Not really.
Again, there's a lot of persuasion science out there and if we threw it all out... I don't think the New York Times would happy about that.
Its hypocritical to throw it out in Coca Cola's case but not all the others.
As to slashdotters... I don't see how they're any worse than the general public. The only issue we really have here is that people are very easily cowed by Ad verecundiam... or argument from authority. A lot of people in general... not just on slashdot, think that because X person has a degree in Y that whatever they say cannot be questioned.
Fallacies are fallacies.
As to your belief that Coca Cola can shift impressions that easily... that's clearly nonsense. Were that the case the Tobacco industries would won.
Please don't engage in hyperbole. Its not constructive.
Science isn't right or wrong if someone backs it. Lets be frank here... the f'ing NAZIs did some very solid science.
Science isn't about your petty factions or your morality. Its about truth and falsehood.
Now is there a clear conflict of interest here with Coca-Cola having a vested interest in people believing that their sugar water is the best thing ever?
Yes. Obvious conflict of interest noted.
However, the scientists also have a conflict of interest here in that they're getting funded by people with this known bias.
Okay...
But is that uncommon? How many studies are funded by interest groups? How many studies are funded by government agencies with declared desired outcomes?
Pick the field... whomever is giving you the money probably would prefer one sort of outcome rather than another. And it is known that some grants are given on a quid pro quo basis... that is... there is an understanding that the study MUST support a given position or further grants will not happen.
Unethical? Of course. However, more common than most people would like to admit.
It is incumbent upon the community of scientists... all of them... to audit such things. True, you can bribe a lot of them but you generally can't bribe all of them.
And even then... science is not a democracy. That one person you didn't bribe can rip your fucking bullshit to shreds.
So where am I going with this? Let Coca Cola make their study. I don't see how it hurts anything. If their study is crap then make an argument on the basis of the science as to why it is crap.
Simply dismissing it out of hand on the basis that it is funded by the sugar water merchants is a logical fallacy.