But suppose you could get one of these for $300? You could sit around and play Monopoly without having someone be the banker.
Admittedly, I don't think Monopoly is where this would shine. More complicated games (e.g., Risk) would be good.
I could see lite D&D-type games implemented for this being a lot of fun. Anyone remember Hero Quest? You could play it on this without a DM.
Any traditional board game *can* be implemented on this and maintain the "tabletop" feel, which is important. Additionally, there might be some really cool things you could do with this that wouldn't be possible with traditional board games.
Anyway...my wife and I thought about something like this over a year ago and were really excited about the idea, but didn't know where to start and didn't follow through with it. I'm glad someone else did:)
Regarding the three dimensions: true, you can move up or down to avoid a collision...but you also have to worry about people hitting you from above or below and about intersecting another car's path since there won't be stop lights and intersections.
Of course, there would be a lot more empty space too. Maybe it will be safer after all:)
By the way...I'm not saying I wouldn't like to be an early adopter of the flying car technology! Like you say, it'll be neat before it gets crowded.
I just wouldn't want to trust my life to the autopilot until version 3 or so is all.
From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon.
I'll grant that this is probably just hype...BUT...
Only being able to travel on roads is a major inefficiency of cars. How much gas is wasted on all those turns and curves, not to mention traffic bottlenecks, etc? They bring this issue up if you follow the link. Also, the roads have to be maintained and that uses fossil fuels as well.
Even if this doesn't quite get 28 MPG in a realistic situation for a commuter, it might actually use less gas than a car does now, since fewer miles would be traveled. My boss "commutes" from Kansas City to Oklahoma City every week. He drives a big ol' truck. I'm sure that his situation isn't unique and would probably benefit in a number of ways from one of these cars.
It would be more environmentally responsible if he just moved the business to Kansas or himself to Oklahoma, but...whatever...I don't want to move;)
As for danger...you're right. Especially if there was heavy traffic above, you'd always have to worry about a car falling out of the sky even if you weren't in one yourself. And driving in three dimensions is ofcourse trickier than two. And a flying craft is going to be less responsive to changes in direction, etc.
Some of that could be addressed with autopilots that fed each other with updates, but I'll admit I wouldn't want to be an early adopter of that technology.
Well, I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with you. Personally, I'd side with the scientist/engineer on instinct.
BUT...
If I invented something like this and my employer handed me $10 million (or more), I might not stick around.
Even if I wanted to continue doing research...with $10 million I can do my research on my own terms...and keep the riches from any future inventions to myself. Of course, for some types of research $10 million may not actually be enough to do your own research. So maybe that is some incentive to stay.
But anyway...if a business makes its employees financially independent (whether or not this is the right thing to do), they risk losing them.
Given the context of the article, when they say "without the need for refuelling" they are referring to manual fueling by a cooperative human.
Your comment about perpetual motion machines misses the point entirely. New energy is added to the system from apples and dead insects.
The plan is for the robot to be autonomous so, among other things, it will be able to find fuel sources on its own and extract energy from them without human intervention.
Actually...I think, in the case of Colombia, this can be forgiven.
Note that Columbia is spelled very similarly to Colombia, sounds the same when pronounced, probably(?) references the same historical figure, and the usage which we Americans often employ is the vastly more common in our culture.
I'll agree that Americans are generally ignorant and arrogant, but I don't think that this particular nitpick of yours is a very good example.
These are your "issues" with polygamy? How to divide the estate, who makes decisions about medical care? If those are the best you could come up with, maybe you haven't thought it through yet.
So, when the wife dies the husband gets the estate. Great. But what happens when the husband dies? By your logic, every couple should only be allowed to have one child, because otherwise it make figuring out the inheritance too complicated.
Oh, shit! What if they both die childless and all four of their parents are still alive!?! What if they have a 17-year old child who will turn 18 next month, no living parents, but both have a 30-year old sibling?
You see...we already have to deal with these problems. Banning polygamy doesn't make them disappear.
And besides - the members of the polygamy could simply have a document that specified these things. That's the we way handle it now anyway.
However, if they were smart enough to find a way to this island, couldn't they just do another island-hoping to a bigger island like Sumantra, or even Australia?
Well, maybe they did...but that doesn't debunk the theory. Europeans found their way to the Americas, but there are still Europeans in Europe.
What I got instead was, in essence, a pretty standard RPG with time passage - annoyingly fast time passage, by the way, where you can age years just completing one mission if you stop to play with the environment even a little bit.
Well, maybe he was just trying to be realistic.
It took me four years to complete the "Acquire Computer Science Degree" quest and I hadn't even stopped to play with the environment all that much!
I mean, I was 18 and fresh out of highschool and POOF! I was 22, trying to remember the names of the people I went to highschool with;)
Some of my friends who stopped to play with "the environment" still haven't finished yet.
And, some who did, actually hit a bug in the system. They completed the "Acquire Computer Science Degree" quest, but no new quest paths opened up!
No, there's no point in making veiled (and probably idle) threats.
It's in your best interests to remain polite. The company might come back with a legitimate patent infringement. Just because you're not aware that you've infringed on a patent doesn't mean you haven't done so. There are patented algorithms (the "marching cubes" algorithm for voxel rendering comes to mind). Even if you independently develop such an algorithm, you'd be infringing the patent by using it.
Now, if you never hear from them again after challenging them and feel you have a moral obligation to strike back (on behalf of future victims or something)...and after you've done your research and you're sure that the company isn't legit...then you should contact a lawyer and see what he or she suggests as a course of action.
And if you're not willing to retain a lawyer, then what are you going to do? Call them names? Idle threats won't stop them. Do something useful about it, or just forget it and move on.
Those were due to the stupidity of the user and a general inability to read and follow fairly simple directions.
I hope you're not an engineer.
The one thing I took away from my "User Interface" class in college is that if someone has trouble using something, it's the fault of the designer and not the fault of the user.
I assume you have, at least once, pulled on a door, only to look down and see a big "PUSH" sign on it. A door can (and should) be designed so that you would never try to pull on it in the first place (e.g., don't put anything you can grab on the "push" side).
The same with the Florida ballots in the last election. They were, quite simply, poorly designed. Yes, you can figure them out by looking at them closely and following the directions. That's not the point.
Just as when you walked up to pull on the "PUSH" door, you didn't expect to need to read a sign to use it, the voters didn't expect to need to read the directions in order to punch in the correct hole. So they didn't...
So, adding "c = (a * b) + 53" as a comment makes the no-overloaded-operator one more readable?
That exact string "c = (a * b) + 53" appears as the last line in the version with operator overloading. As an added bonus, no comment is needed and (therefore) the programmer doesn't need to worry about keeping the comment in sync with the code in case of changes.
I'll agree that people get crazy with it and define operators that aren't clear. I saw such an example of exactly this earlier today - I had to pick up from context clues what the operator did. If I was actually going to use that code, I would have had to look up its implementation to make sure.
Maybe this one fact is even worth denying the ability to use operator overloading in Java. I don't think it is, but I could buy an argument along those lines.
But if you're going to claim that it's easier to read even in simple cases like the one above, you'll need to provide me with a bit more explanation. I'm too stupid to figure out how your code + comment is easier to read than code that reads...as is...like the comment you used to explain it.
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Well, for $3000 this will never fly.
:)
But suppose you could get one of these for $300? You could sit around and play Monopoly without having someone be the banker.
Admittedly, I don't think Monopoly is where this would shine. More complicated games (e.g., Risk) would be good.
I could see lite D&D-type games implemented for this being a lot of fun. Anyone remember Hero Quest? You could play it on this without a DM.
Any traditional board game *can* be implemented on this and maintain the "tabletop" feel, which is important. Additionally, there might be some really cool things you could do with this that wouldn't be possible with traditional board games.
Anyway...my wife and I thought about something like this over a year ago and were really excited about the idea, but didn't know where to start and didn't follow through with it. I'm glad someone else did
Out of curiousity, what kind of work are you doing that you have lots of complex data that you want to store inline with the code?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
Maybe it's not, but then neither is the fact that he's an associate professor at the Mathematics Department of the University of Utah.
It's pretty common to mention where people are from when giving a news story. It's part of the human interest.
I mean, look at the "Science" page RIGHT NOW:
"First hypothesized to be possible 30 years ago by Russian physicist Victor Veselago, meta-material..."
See? Russian physicist.
Are you trying to imply there's some sort of racial overtone to the article? I don't get it.
Regarding the three dimensions: true, you can move up or down to avoid a collision...but you also have to worry about people hitting you from above or below and about intersecting another car's path since there won't be stop lights and intersections.
:)
Of course, there would be a lot more empty space too. Maybe it will be safer after all
By the way...I'm not saying I wouldn't like to be an early adopter of the flying car technology! Like you say, it'll be neat before it gets crowded.
I just wouldn't want to trust my life to the autopilot until version 3 or so is all.
I'll grant that this is probably just hype...BUT...
Only being able to travel on roads is a major inefficiency of cars. How much gas is wasted on all those turns and curves, not to mention traffic bottlenecks, etc? They bring this issue up if you follow the link. Also, the roads have to be maintained and that uses fossil fuels as well.
Even if this doesn't quite get 28 MPG in a realistic situation for a commuter, it might actually use less gas than a car does now, since fewer miles would be traveled. My boss "commutes" from Kansas City to Oklahoma City every week. He drives a big ol' truck. I'm sure that his situation isn't unique and would probably benefit in a number of ways from one of these cars.
It would be more environmentally responsible if he just moved the business to Kansas or himself to Oklahoma, but...whatever...I don't want to move
As for danger...you're right. Especially if there was heavy traffic above, you'd always have to worry about a car falling out of the sky even if you weren't in one yourself. And driving in three dimensions is ofcourse trickier than two. And a flying craft is going to be less responsive to changes in direction, etc.
Some of that could be addressed with autopilots that fed each other with updates, but I'll admit I wouldn't want to be an early adopter of that technology.
Just becaue the game doesn't "install" to the harddrive doesn't mean it doesn't use the harddrive.
For instance: the game loader could check the computer for "override" directories and use binaries/data from there before using the ones on the DVD.
See? Trivial. Some games already do this.
Furthermore - 80% of the movies I download I don't watch more than 15 minutes...
So...80% of the movies you watch are porn?
Just because they did a terrible job the first time does NOT mean they should try again.
Well, I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with you. Personally, I'd side with the scientist/engineer on instinct.
BUT...
If I invented something like this and my employer handed me $10 million (or more), I might not stick around.
Even if I wanted to continue doing research...with $10 million I can do my research on my own terms...and keep the riches from any future inventions to myself. Of course, for some types of research $10 million may not actually be enough to do your own research. So maybe that is some incentive to stay.
But anyway...if a business makes its employees financially independent (whether or not this is the right thing to do), they risk losing them.
Given the context of the article, when they say "without the need for refuelling" they are referring to manual fueling by a cooperative human.
Your comment about perpetual motion machines misses the point entirely. New energy is added to the system from apples and dead insects.
The plan is for the robot to be autonomous so, among other things, it will be able to find fuel sources on its own and extract energy from them without human intervention.
Anyone heard about that?
Yeah, but it was in the novel "Galapagos" by Kurt Vonnegut.
And the guy that invented it was Japanese. Go figure.
Is this meant as contradiction or support? Godfather Part III sucked.
Actually...I think, in the case of Colombia, this can be forgiven.
Note that Columbia is spelled very similarly to Colombia, sounds the same when pronounced, probably(?) references the same historical figure, and the usage which we Americans often employ is the vastly more common in our culture.
I'll agree that Americans are generally ignorant and arrogant, but I don't think that this particular nitpick of yours is a very good example.
The rest of the world takes a calculated blind eye on terrorism...
I'd say that pretty much describes the United States before 9/11/2001, wouldn't you?
Storing two hashes isn't worthwhile. At best it can only double the amount of time taken to come up with a matching password.
Might as well just check the SHA1 hash. You won't gain anything by checking the MD5 hash as well.
These are your "issues" with polygamy? How to divide the estate, who makes decisions about medical care? If those are the best you could come up with, maybe you haven't thought it through yet.
So, when the wife dies the husband gets the estate. Great. But what happens when the husband dies? By your logic, every couple should only be allowed to have one child, because otherwise it make figuring out the inheritance too complicated.
Oh, shit! What if they both die childless and all four of their parents are still alive!?! What if they have a 17-year old child who will turn 18 next month, no living parents, but both have a 30-year old sibling?
You see...we already have to deal with these problems. Banning polygamy doesn't make them disappear.
And besides - the members of the polygamy could simply have a document that specified these things. That's the we way handle it now anyway.
However, if they were smart enough to find a way to this island, couldn't they just do another island-hoping to a bigger island like Sumantra, or even Australia?
Well, maybe they did...but that doesn't debunk the theory. Europeans found their way to the Americas, but there are still Europeans in Europe.
What I got instead was, in essence, a pretty standard RPG with time passage - annoyingly fast time passage, by the way, where you can age years just completing one mission if you stop to play with the environment even a little bit.
;)
Well, maybe he was just trying to be realistic.
It took me four years to complete the "Acquire Computer Science Degree" quest and I hadn't even stopped to play with the environment all that much!
I mean, I was 18 and fresh out of highschool and POOF! I was 22, trying to remember the names of the people I went to highschool with
Some of my friends who stopped to play with "the environment" still haven't finished yet.
And, some who did, actually hit a bug in the system. They completed the "Acquire Computer Science Degree" quest, but no new quest paths opened up!
No, there's no point in making veiled (and probably idle) threats.
It's in your best interests to remain polite. The company might come back with a legitimate patent infringement. Just because you're not aware that you've infringed on a patent doesn't mean you haven't done so. There are patented algorithms (the "marching cubes" algorithm for voxel rendering comes to mind). Even if you independently develop such an algorithm, you'd be infringing the patent by using it.
Now, if you never hear from them again after challenging them and feel you have a moral obligation to strike back (on behalf of future victims or something)...and after you've done your research and you're sure that the company isn't legit...then you should contact a lawyer and see what he or she suggests as a course of action.
And if you're not willing to retain a lawyer, then what are you going to do? Call them names? Idle threats won't stop them. Do something useful about it, or just forget it and move on.
Those were due to the stupidity of the user and a general inability to read and follow fairly simple directions.
I hope you're not an engineer.
The one thing I took away from my "User Interface" class in college is that if someone has trouble using something, it's the fault of the designer and not the fault of the user.
I assume you have, at least once, pulled on a door, only to look down and see a big "PUSH" sign on it. A door can (and should) be designed so that you would never try to pull on it in the first place (e.g., don't put anything you can grab on the "push" side).
The same with the Florida ballots in the last election. They were, quite simply, poorly designed. Yes, you can figure them out by looking at them closely and following the directions. That's not the point.
Just as when you walked up to pull on the "PUSH" door, you didn't expect to need to read a sign to use it, the voters didn't expect to need to read the directions in order to punch in the correct hole. So they didn't...
The good news is she didn't get overwhelmed by psychos.
And then you posted a link to her profile on Slashdot.
Maybe he used to get mad at his school, the teachers that taught him weren't cool?
You know, they actually did that back in the "old days" in Athens. It wasn't at all uncommon for very popular people to be exiled.
I've forgotten what the justification was, but I suspect the idea was to avoid demagogues.
So, adding "c = (a * b) + 53" as a comment makes the no-overloaded-operator one more readable?
That exact string "c = (a * b) + 53" appears as the last line in the version with operator overloading. As an added bonus, no comment is needed and (therefore) the programmer doesn't need to worry about keeping the comment in sync with the code in case of changes.
I'll agree that people get crazy with it and define operators that aren't clear. I saw such an example of exactly this earlier today - I had to pick up from context clues what the operator did. If I was actually going to use that code, I would have had to look up its implementation to make sure.
Maybe this one fact is even worth denying the ability to use operator overloading in Java. I don't think it is, but I could buy an argument along those lines.
But if you're going to claim that it's easier to read even in simple cases like the one above, you'll need to provide me with a bit more explanation. I'm too stupid to figure out how your code + comment is easier to read than code that reads...as is...like the comment you used to explain it.