Yes, Loch Ness does sit slap-bang on top of the Great Glen Fault - but an earthquake in Scotland means about 1R... Hardly an event that's felt, never mind the frequency of these (non)events.
I read a similar article yesterday that stated that the surface disturbances weren't caused by the movement of the tremor, but by gasses that escaped from fissues or somesuch during the quake.
So why, if they've accepted this is an unpopular concept, have they taken it out only to keep it in scope for future versions? What does this say about how much attention they really pay to what users want?
It was hyped as a "great thing" in the new version of IE. Nobody liked it. MS realized the mistake of having hyped it to begin with. MS "withdraws" it from the gold code. Six months later, MS sneaks it into an IE service pack and doesn't tell anybody. Since it doesn't get hyped or announced, the uproar is minimal and it sticks around. If they get burned really badly by sneaking it in later, they can blame it on sloppy coding by claiming that IE6 SP1 was already in development before the IE6 code went gold, and they "forgot" to take it out of the SP code.
We can at least hope. Maybe, eventually, they'll even get rid of Clippy.
Um...don't you remember the news? Clippy got canned from Office XP. MS even had a web page set up that was supposed to be like a "Clippy web log" that had his "resume" and other stupid crap on it. It was generally hailed as one of the best moves that MS has ever made. If it wasn't for the fact that Office XP is even more big-brother-like than previous versions of Office, it might be worth the upgrade just to get rid of him. In fact, I wouldn't be suprised to find out that MS planned on it being a "key feature" of the upgrade for many users.
Hmmm.. how do SmartTags stand when it comes to IP and copywrite? They are, in effect, taking the web page you have published and changing it (by adding the keyword sensitive links), and then displaying it to the end user.
Yes, it's like intercepting your local TV station's signal and inserting advertisements for your company, and then broadcasting it to the rest of the city. I'm pretty sure that is illegal. What they are essentially doing is stealing advertising space from your web page without compensating you. I think that there could be a lot of copyright issues here.
I wonder what happens if I make the word "Redhat" a link to www.redhat.com and the MS-default smart tags make the keyword "Redhat" into a link to Craig Mundie's anti-GPL/open source speeches? Which link wins out win you click on it?
What if I make an image a link to a web site? Maybe I have a "powered by Apache" logo that links back to www.apache.org. Will it parse the filename of the image looking for keywords and make my apache.png a link to the IIS web site? Will it parse my ALT tags for that link as well?
How about, to preserve the integrity of an author's design? Smart Tags are a way for an outside agency to modify my pages on the fly, in ways I do not approve of. Why should I, or any author, surrender that control? How can it possibly be good for a third party to intervene between me and my readers?
I think that there should be a web page designed by the open source community and copyrighted. Then when people view it with MS Smart Tag enabled browsers and tags start popping up that point to other sites, we can sue them for copyright violation. Or file some suits that claim that their use of smart tags violates the look and feel of our web design.
I mean, sure you can opt out of it. But that's like saying that you can opt out of junk mail or telephone solicitiors. You shouldn't *HAVE* to opt out. It should be an opt-in if you want Smart Tags to be able to deface...er...modify the appearance of your page. Especially since a cleverly designed smart tag could easily completely change the idea, purpose, or concept that you are trying to get aross to your page viewers.
Most commercial web sites (in order to protect their integrity) will notify you if a link that they provide leads to another web site (and that they don't control or necessarily even endorse what is written there). They don't want to create even the impression that they support everything that they link to. How can you combat that with Smart Tags? Put a disclaimer at the top of your page saying that any link on your page probably goes somewhere that you didn't intend it to, nor want it to, nor do you control the content of the site linked to or even your own site? Once again, you can opt out. But if MS really believes that this is in the users' and the content providers' best interests, then they will make sure that it ISN'T the default and make sure that it IS opt-in only. Then let the market judge it on it's merits.
...to let the coders have time to finish the rest of the technology that goes with the smart tags, the smart-image, for example. Yes that's right, no longer will you have to worry about non-microsoft related content on your website, smart-image will instantly replace your graphics with better and prettier microsoft ones.
Lemme guess...images from Corbis? And then they send me the bill/lawsuit?
Of course, what they're really doing is secretly re-writing the smart tag code so that the META tag doesn't work. Then they'll sneak it out in a "service pack" for IE 6. Yeah, that's it!
How's that? Informative AND a parnoid flame, all in one post!
As if Columbine has not taught us a single thing, here come ID with another Nazi-glorifying festival of blood, guts and gore.
Yeah, I remember Columbine! I can't wait for this game to come out so that I can be persuaded to don a trenchcoat and shoot all of my high school classmates!!! This will be so awesome!!!
Oh wait...I'm 28 years old and not in high school. Damn. Now what? Hold on...the 10-year class reunion is coming up! Kick ass!
(And yes, this was supposed to be sarcastic. I'm not a violent person at all.)
It's not about the engine, it's about the gameplay experience. Having the latest and greatest 3D effects and the prettiest pictures don't mean jack if the gameplay sucks. This is where I'm hoping RTCW excels, and if the graphics look really good then that's just a bonus.
Most people don't play games just to look at the pictures.
Yeah. When the hell are the full immersion games showing up? We've been promised for years. I want the gogles and the surround video effect! I'm sick of staring at a monitor, I want to lay back in a lazy boy, slap on the goggles, and have some (clean, non x-rated) fun.
Non-xrated fun? You must be either gay or a woman! (Just kidding...don't kill me.)
Seriously though, there is more to a game than just how pretty it looks. There are some games that are very highly immersive without having to use Else 3D glasses or multi-million dollar VR technology. "Half-life" was fair at it when it came to immersiveness. But the all-out champion in the category was "Thief: The Dark Project." I don't think that there has been a game since (with the exception of Thief 2)that has come close to creating such an intense sense of environment (especially when played with EAX audio). It was unbelievable. Granted, the graphics weren't all that hot, but the gameplay + the immersiveness of the game was enough to get me hooked.
The comments about using stealth and the various "states" of the guards awareness are very much like the way that Thief worked. I'm hoping that RTCW will be a nice Half-life/Thief hybrid. Looks like fun. That, and the pictures are pretty.
But with that same reasoning you can also postulate that the ancient Egyptians also crossed the Atlantic since they were capable of building large boats. They certainly had the materials, the tools and the manpower to do it. You CAN demonstrate using materials in the region and establish a proof of concept. BUT THAT DOESN'T PROVE they went to the Americas.
You may find it interesting to note that there are some cultural similarities between ancient Egyptians and Ancient South Americans, not to mention that there is evidence of having been cocao plants, the source of choclate and cocaine, in ancient Egypt. Please note that these plants are indigenous to South America, not Africa. So there does appear to be some evidence to indicate that the Egyptians, or somebody that the Egyptians traded with, did in fact travel to and from South America.
Lack of proof means just that. LACK OF PROOF. That's the scientific method.
I almost agree with you, with one exception. The scientific method allows that what is currently accepted as truth or fact may in fact be incorrect. The scientific method is a method by which we can challenge accepted theory and hopefully prove new theories. It is not a method by which we can just sit back and say, "we already know everything about this topic and future postulation is therefore useless."
You're using the proof of one concept to demonstrate proof of another. It may be possible to demonstrate the building a kite-powered lifting scaffold - and THAT may prove it was possible, but it doesn't mean the Egyptians actually did it.
That's exactly what I've been saying. It doesn't prove that it *DID* happen, it merely proves that it was possible. Since we don't have any concrete evidence to the contrary nor do we have any concrete documentation as to how they were built, any reasonable speculation is perfectly acceptable. What I deem reasonable speculation is that which is a) proven to be technically feasible and b) that which isn't plainly proven by some sort of evidence to be untrue. The kite theory certainly fits that profile.
The absence of proof doesn't make an idea automatically crackpot. It's the continued pushing of that idea in spite of an absence of proof that makes it crackpot.
This is incorrect in principle and as it applies to this discussion. As it applies to this discussion, I am not "pushing" this theory. I am merely pointing out that it would be wrong to eliminate it from possibility just because it is unconventional. In principle, it's the wrong approach because it eliminates a lot of basic thinking that goes into research. When a scientist sees unexplained phenomena, he tries to make theories to explain the phenomena based on other knowledge that he has of similar situations. Then he tests his theories. If he waited until he had hard facts or evidence that explained the phenomena, there would be no such thing as theory. Theory is based on speculation, the same kind of speculation that the kite-flyers have offered here.
Actually, Cleopatra was a 7th generation incestual descendant of Ptolomy, a general of Alexander the Great's. She (probably) wasn't related to any of the people she ruled.
Good for her, but I think that it was obvious to anybody who read the post that I wasn't speaking in a strictly genetic since but in a cultural sense. Though she "probably" wasn't genetically Egyptian, she is considered by most to be Egyptian and for my purposes of comparing generations of Egyptians and Greeks made a good reference point. And since you're such the historian, shame on you for not knowing that the pyramid-builders were not contemporaries with Greek historians.
The advantage of using any tool lies in the ability of it to project a controlled amount of force along a certain direction. The wind is unstable at best; you can't control it and you can't predict it. That means it's force waxes and wanes. It also changes direction. This scafford not only holds the rock, it also holds the kite. The kite places a certain amount of force in a certain place on the scaffold as it lifts the rock. If that force changes, you stand a chance of demolishing your scaffold. All of this uncertainty makes it unworkable.
It certainly doesn't appear to be all that unworkable, especially seeing as someone has already done it. If you'll recall, that was the point of the article.
Besides, just WHERE is it in the culture? If they actually used kites, where is the literature describing them? To the ancients, it would have seemed like the power of the gods (the wind) was helping them to raise their buildings. This theme would have been repeated in their literature and described by foreigners (ie Greek historians). There would have been wind and kite festivals (like in China). Little children of today would still be flying kites, like their ancestors. But none of this exists. There is NO ancient cultural tradition of kite flying in egypt - at least that I'm aware of. Show me EVIDENCE of such a tradition and I might believe it.
I'm not saying that the Egyptians built it this way. I merely pointing out that it is certainly quite feasible. You see an absence of concrete proof and automatically write it off as some crackpot idea that is impossible. I see a proof-of-concept experiment that demoinstrates the feasibility of an idea and think, "Hey, it's possible."
Just because there is no evidence that Egyptians flew kites 6000 years ago doesn't mean that they didn't fly kites. There are very large portions of the historical record that did not survive until the present day intact. If we did have all of the historical records, we would know for a fact how it was done. Remember that when we speak of the pyramid builders we aren't talking about a people who were contemporaries with Greek historians (or any other historians from whom we have writings). We are talking about a civilization that predates the Greeks by several thousand years. These are not the Egyptians of Cleopatra. They are the ancient ancestors of Cleopatra.
now i really dont understand, how can they kick you off a system that you pay to (ab)use? what good what 500k/sec be to me, if it wasnt available ALL THE TIME, for me to use ALL THE TIME.. i pay for a constant connection to the internet, to say that i can no longer use something that i pay for.. well, to me, that's theft!
Nah. Just read your T&Cs, and you'll see a clause in there about using the service in such a way that it adversely affects the availability of the service for other subscribers. They usually use this clause to prevent folks from running http/ftp/irc, etc servers and hogging the badwidth. All they'll do is claim that your utilizing that much bandwidth causes a performance issue for other users on the network and then boot you off. Or more likely, that you and the 150 other subscribers who use that much bandwidth are adversely affecting the 10,000 subscribers who aren't.
Simply put, this whole idea runs back into the same problem that lead scientists to believe that the ancient Egyptians used mud instead of wood for scaffolding- that there just wasn't enough timber available.
I think that people overplay the lack of timber. Egypt was a large kingdom that traded with many other people in the Mediteranean. Lebanon was reknowned for their trees. Lebanon is not that far away from Egypt, especially if you wanted to ship overseas and then up the nile. For such an extravagant project, I can't imagine that they'd spare much expense. Especially if it would make things easier.
The culture in Amerikkka is so racist that things like the casual racism in everyday phrases can go unnoticed. My point is, would it be so hard for you white people to call it 'unlit fiber' ? Its one more character I know, but it means the same, and you would avoid pissing off 10% of the US population for no reason.
I pulled out the trusty dictionary and this is what it has to say on the subject of "dark":
dark (därk)
adj. darker, darkest
1. Lacking or having very little light: a dark corner.
2. Lacking brightness: a dark day.
3. Reflecting only a small fraction of incident light.
4. Of a shade tending toward black in comparison with other shades. Used of a color.
5. Having a complexion that is not fair; swarthy.
6. Served without milk or cream: dark coffee.
7. Characterized by gloom; dismal: took a dark view of the consequences.
8. Sullen or threatening: a dark scowl.
9. Difficult to understand; obscure: stories that are large in scope and dark in substance.
10. Concealed or secret; mysterious: "the dark mysteries of Africa and the fabled wonders of the East" (W. Bruce Lincoln).
11. Lacking enlightenment, knowledge, or culture: a dark age in the history of education.
12. Exhibiting or stemming from evil characteristics or forces; sinister: "churned up dark undercurrents of ethnic and religious hostility" (Peter Maas).
13. Being or characterized by morbid or grimly satiric humor.
14. Having richness or depth: a dark, melancholy vocal tone.
15. Not giving performances; closed: The movie theater is dark on Mondays.
16. Linguistics. Pronounced with the back of the tongue raised toward the velum. Used of the sound (l) in words like full.
Out of the 16 definitions of "dark" when used in the adjective form, not one of them is "African-American." Not one of them is tied in any way to anything racial or ethnic. So get your head out of your ass. If your argument was correct, we should be able to call it "African-American fiber" and it would make sense. It doesn't. Since dark can mean an absence of light, there's nothing wrong with calling it dark fiber. Especially since this is a technical term used to describe an object that has no moral value. Get over it.
Let's see here...Interent end-users don't want to see advertising in their mailboxes, on the webpages, or anywhere else.
Advertising agencies don't understand that we don't want to see their ads.
Somebody cooks up yet another way to get advertising from people who "don't get it" to people who don't want to see adverts. Then they make a company to sell it.
I can't wait for this company to tank. The only thing that I can't understand is why a technical person (presumably a person who uses the Internet) would actually want to work for a company where their job is to devise new ways to pump spam to people who don't want it. Just goes to show you that the world is full of whores.
OK, so my specific example probably wasn't the best, but you've still done nothing to contradict the concept that I was trying to get across. Not every action in the life of Egypt was recorded in hieroglyphs or carvings. Not all of the hieroglyphs and carvings ever made have survived to the present day. Lack of a depiction in known current-day hieroglyphs or carvings does not mean that something didn't exist in ancient times.
There are specific examples where carvings and hieroglyphs have been intentionally destroyed by the ancient Egyptions in order to obliterate any reference to a particular person or topic, so even if such carvings had existed they could easily have fallen prey to personal prejudice, weather, or numerous other destructive forces.
Put a simple ratchet system (ever seen a trebuchet or a catapult?) in your pulley/scaffold system and then if the wind dies the obelisk stays in its semi-erected state.
WHY is it so hard to believe that ancient Egyptians used their brains and muscle to build these things.
It's not. But why is it so hard to believe that they used their brains more than they used their muscles?
Beyond that, you make the same mistake as about 99% of the Slashdot posters here. You ASSume that they tied a rock to a kite, flew the kite, then skillfully positioned the kite to drop the rock where they wanted it. That's not what the article described. It only touched on the concept, but they built a tower where they wanted the obelisk. They ran a rope through the tower (via a network of pulleys) down to the obelisk. The kite was at the top of the tower (where there was more wind) and was presumably launched from there. With the kite tethered in this manner, you don't need to control where the kite goes so long as it keeps going up or in a direction away from the tower. This will pull the ropes, thus lifting the stone (or the obelisk). Stacking stones in this case is even simpler because the tower will allow the stones to be lifted to nearly the exact same location on the horizontal plane.
Why is it that nobody ever reads the articles anymore before shooting off their mouth? It plainly talks about pulleys and scaffolds.
WHat did she make her kites out of? Probably, ripstop nylon or some other modern, lightweight, strong fabric.
Now, if she can make her kites out of materials the ancient Egyptians had, using techniques they had, and perform the same feat, then I'll be impressed. Not before.
This is a common post for this article. In the article (you did read the article, didn't you?) it stated that their next step was to replicate the experiment with kit made from materials that would have been available to the ancients. Just keep in mind that the Japanese have been flying kits (and some really big ones) for a couple thosand years now, so it's not as far-fetched as all that.
I wonder if you could do the same thing with a windmill instead...
Another example of someone forgetting that if a simple explanation and a complicated explanation exist, then the simple one is almost always right. So when you have a situation where there's sand and a lot of people available, a solution that uses those elements makes more sense than kites, aliens, or cantilevered structures that take calculus to design.
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification of Occam's Razor. But what's more important is to remember that there were definitely engineers present. That is obvious from the math involved in the ratios of the pyramids sides and their alignment, etc. There really is a lot of complicated geometry and trigonometry in there. Take a look at the so-called "bent" pyramid, and you will see the learning process that the engineer went through once he determind that his original design wasn't done properly (or perhaps he predecessor's design).
At any rate, if engineers in ancient Egypt were anything at all like their modern brethren, then you can screw Occam's Razor. They would have done it the most efficient and clever way that they could devise, not by using the K.I.S.S. method. And then they would have bragged about it down at the pub afterwards.:-)
actually when the pyramids line up with some of the stars in the Orion constellation (presumbably not all, I'm sure Orion wasn't one of THEIR constellations
Getting closer. The three main pyramids at Giza line up (once you wind back the sky to the time that the pyramids were built) almost perfectly with the three main stars in "Orion's belt." This is not only in geographical alignment but also in relative size, i.e., the size of the pyramid is proportional to the relative brightness of its corresponding star.
Then there are seveal other pyramids that were built far away from Giza that also match up to stars in the constellation of Orion. According to the Egyptologists, what we refer to as the constellation of Orion was referred to by the Egyptians as the constellation of Osiris, the Egyptian deity that governed death and rebirth. Since the pyramids were tombs and the Egyptians believed that death was a transition to another world, it only made sense that if you were to build pyramids that lined up with any stars you would choose the ones that were related to Osiris.
i also remember that i heard she lost all of here funding because the ultra prejudiced director of the cairo museum made it his personal mission to destroy her reputation because he believes that ramps were used and that its the only possible option... this guy is the same one who refuses to allow a robotic camera into the uncharted shaft in the great pyramid, simply because "there's nothing there", even though its hasn't been explored beyond measuring its length, which isn't even necessarily accurate.
I distinctly recall seeing a program where a crawler with a camera attached was sent up the shaft of the great pyramid and it turned out to be a dead end. I wonder if that was very recently done? Or maybe it wasn't the great pyramid after all. But somebody did once sent a robotic crawler up the shaft of one of the larger pyramids once to see what was there. I remember watching with great anticipation.
I remember trying to fly cheap kites as a kid, fifteen years ago - it wasn't a very successful pastime. The ones I fly these days have hemp cored carbon fibre poles and all kinds of high tech fabrics which is what makes them so much easier to fly.
Interesting. I recall having no problems flying traditional balsa wood and cloth kites when I was a kid 2-25 years ago. I've even built some kite-like devices of my (basically wings that generate life) from paper and wood today, though only small ones. In ancient Japan, kites were regularly built from light wood and paper. The Japanese have a very long tradition of flying kites.
Even with the best will in the world, I'm kind of curious how the Egyptians, with their technology, could have got a kite of that size to stay together in thirty mile an hour winds, let alone fly in any controlled fashion. And then have the strength to lift a several hundred ton obelisk?
I think that you are assuming that they used a kite in the traditional way, only they tied an obelish to it instead of holding onto the kite string to lift it up. This is not what the article proposed.
The technique that they mentioned involved building a tower next to the obelisk and attaching the kite to the obelisk via a rope that runs through network of pulleys in the tower. Then the kite is moved to the top of the tower where it can catch the wind and it takes off. The lift of the kite pulls the rope through the pulleys, which magnify the amount of force that the kite is exerting (which minimizes the size of the kite that is needed). They don't need to control where the kite goes. It doesn't matter which direction or how far off-center the kite goes as long as it is always pulling the rope through the pulleys to lift the obelisk. The only real problem is that if the wind dies down the obelisk may drop and shatter. I imagine that a few well-placed ratchets (of the type used in primitive trebuchets and catapults) would probably be helpful here.
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To say E&S has never been heard from again is silly considering how large of a company it is and how many contracts they have out.
I think that what he was saying is that E&S never came knocking on their doors again about that particular "patent."
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Yes, Loch Ness does sit slap-bang on top of the Great Glen Fault - but an earthquake in Scotland means about 1R... Hardly an event that's felt, never mind the frequency of these (non)events.
I read a similar article yesterday that stated that the surface disturbances weren't caused by the movement of the tremor, but by gasses that escaped from fissues or somesuch during the quake.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
So why, if they've accepted this is an unpopular concept, have they taken it out only to keep it in scope for future versions? What does this say about how much attention they really pay to what users want?
It was hyped as a "great thing" in the new version of IE. Nobody liked it. MS realized the mistake of having hyped it to begin with. MS "withdraws" it from the gold code. Six months later, MS sneaks it into an IE service pack and doesn't tell anybody. Since it doesn't get hyped or announced, the uproar is minimal and it sticks around. If they get burned really badly by sneaking it in later, they can blame it on sloppy coding by claiming that IE6 SP1 was already in development before the IE6 code went gold, and they "forgot" to take it out of the SP code.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
We can at least hope. Maybe, eventually, they'll even get rid of Clippy.
Um...don't you remember the news? Clippy got canned from Office XP. MS even had a web page set up that was supposed to be like a "Clippy web log" that had his "resume" and other stupid crap on it. It was generally hailed as one of the best moves that MS has ever made. If it wasn't for the fact that Office XP is even more big-brother-like than previous versions of Office, it might be worth the upgrade just to get rid of him. In fact, I wouldn't be suprised to find out that MS planned on it being a "key feature" of the upgrade for many users.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Hmmm.. how do SmartTags stand when it comes to IP and copywrite? They are, in effect, taking the web page you have published and changing it (by adding the keyword sensitive links), and then displaying it to the end user.
Yes, it's like intercepting your local TV station's signal and inserting advertisements for your company, and then broadcasting it to the rest of the city. I'm pretty sure that is illegal. What they are essentially doing is stealing advertising space from your web page without compensating you. I think that there could be a lot of copyright issues here.
I wonder what happens if I make the word "Redhat" a link to www.redhat.com and the MS-default smart tags make the keyword "Redhat" into a link to Craig Mundie's anti-GPL/open source speeches? Which link wins out win you click on it?
What if I make an image a link to a web site? Maybe I have a "powered by Apache" logo that links back to www.apache.org. Will it parse the filename of the image looking for keywords and make my apache.png a link to the IIS web site? Will it parse my ALT tags for that link as well?
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
How about, to preserve the integrity of an author's design? Smart Tags are a way for an outside agency to modify my pages on the fly, in ways I do not approve of. Why should I, or any author, surrender that control? How can it possibly be good for a third party to intervene between me and my readers?
I think that there should be a web page designed by the open source community and copyrighted. Then when people view it with MS Smart Tag enabled browsers and tags start popping up that point to other sites, we can sue them for copyright violation. Or file some suits that claim that their use of smart tags violates the look and feel of our web design.
I mean, sure you can opt out of it. But that's like saying that you can opt out of junk mail or telephone solicitiors. You shouldn't *HAVE* to opt out. It should be an opt-in if you want Smart Tags to be able to deface...er...modify the appearance of your page. Especially since a cleverly designed smart tag could easily completely change the idea, purpose, or concept that you are trying to get aross to your page viewers.
Most commercial web sites (in order to protect their integrity) will notify you if a link that they provide leads to another web site (and that they don't control or necessarily even endorse what is written there). They don't want to create even the impression that they support everything that they link to. How can you combat that with Smart Tags? Put a disclaimer at the top of your page saying that any link on your page probably goes somewhere that you didn't intend it to, nor want it to, nor do you control the content of the site linked to or even your own site? Once again, you can opt out. But if MS really believes that this is in the users' and the content providers' best interests, then they will make sure that it ISN'T the default and make sure that it IS opt-in only. Then let the market judge it on it's merits.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
...to let the coders have time to finish the rest of the technology that goes with the smart tags, the smart-image, for example. Yes that's right, no longer will you have to worry about non-microsoft related content on your website, smart-image will instantly replace your graphics with better and prettier microsoft ones.
Lemme guess...images from Corbis? And then they send me the bill/lawsuit?
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
According to MS, that is the correct META tag. The relevant link to Microsoft's site is: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/preview/smartt ags/default.asp
Of course, what they're really doing is secretly re-writing the smart tag code so that the META tag doesn't work. Then they'll sneak it out in a "service pack" for IE 6. Yeah, that's it!
How's that? Informative AND a parnoid flame, all in one post!
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
As if Columbine has not taught us a single thing, here come ID with another Nazi-glorifying festival of blood, guts and gore.
Yeah, I remember Columbine! I can't wait for this game to come out so that I can be persuaded to don a trenchcoat and shoot all of my high school classmates!!! This will be so awesome!!!
Oh wait...I'm 28 years old and not in high school. Damn. Now what? Hold on...the 10-year class reunion is coming up! Kick ass!
(And yes, this was supposed to be sarcastic. I'm not a violent person at all.)
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
It's not about the engine, it's about the gameplay experience. Having the latest and greatest 3D effects and the prettiest pictures don't mean jack if the gameplay sucks. This is where I'm hoping RTCW excels, and if the graphics look really good then that's just a bonus.
Most people don't play games just to look at the pictures.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Yeah. When the hell are the full immersion games showing up? We've been promised for years. I want the gogles and the surround video effect! I'm sick of staring at a monitor, I want to lay back in a lazy boy, slap on the goggles, and have some (clean, non x-rated) fun.
Non-xrated fun? You must be either gay or a woman! (Just kidding...don't kill me.)
Seriously though, there is more to a game than just how pretty it looks. There are some games that are very highly immersive without having to use Else 3D glasses or multi-million dollar VR technology. "Half-life" was fair at it when it came to immersiveness. But the all-out champion in the category was "Thief: The Dark Project." I don't think that there has been a game since (with the exception of Thief 2)that has come close to creating such an intense sense of environment (especially when played with EAX audio). It was unbelievable. Granted, the graphics weren't all that hot, but the gameplay + the immersiveness of the game was enough to get me hooked.
The comments about using stealth and the various "states" of the guards awareness are very much like the way that Thief worked. I'm hoping that RTCW will be a nice Half-life/Thief hybrid. Looks like fun. That, and the pictures are pretty.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
But with that same reasoning you can also postulate that the ancient Egyptians also crossed the Atlantic since they were capable of building large boats. They certainly had the materials, the tools and the manpower to do it. You CAN demonstrate using materials in the region and establish a proof of concept. BUT THAT DOESN'T PROVE they went to the Americas.
You may find it interesting to note that there are some cultural similarities between ancient Egyptians and Ancient South Americans, not to mention that there is evidence of having been cocao plants, the source of choclate and cocaine, in ancient Egypt. Please note that these plants are indigenous to South America, not Africa. So there does appear to be some evidence to indicate that the Egyptians, or somebody that the Egyptians traded with, did in fact travel to and from South America.
Lack of proof means just that. LACK OF PROOF. That's the scientific method.
I almost agree with you, with one exception. The scientific method allows that what is currently accepted as truth or fact may in fact be incorrect. The scientific method is a method by which we can challenge accepted theory and hopefully prove new theories. It is not a method by which we can just sit back and say, "we already know everything about this topic and future postulation is therefore useless."
You're using the proof of one concept to demonstrate proof of another. It may be possible to demonstrate the building a kite-powered lifting scaffold - and THAT may prove it was possible, but it doesn't mean the Egyptians actually did it.
That's exactly what I've been saying. It doesn't prove that it *DID* happen, it merely proves that it was possible. Since we don't have any concrete evidence to the contrary nor do we have any concrete documentation as to how they were built, any reasonable speculation is perfectly acceptable. What I deem reasonable speculation is that which is a) proven to be technically feasible and b) that which isn't plainly proven by some sort of evidence to be untrue. The kite theory certainly fits that profile.
The absence of proof doesn't make an idea automatically crackpot. It's the continued pushing of that idea in spite of an absence of proof that makes it crackpot.
This is incorrect in principle and as it applies to this discussion. As it applies to this discussion, I am not "pushing" this theory. I am merely pointing out that it would be wrong to eliminate it from possibility just because it is unconventional. In principle, it's the wrong approach because it eliminates a lot of basic thinking that goes into research. When a scientist sees unexplained phenomena, he tries to make theories to explain the phenomena based on other knowledge that he has of similar situations. Then he tests his theories. If he waited until he had hard facts or evidence that explained the phenomena, there would be no such thing as theory. Theory is based on speculation, the same kind of speculation that the kite-flyers have offered here.
Actually, Cleopatra was a 7th generation incestual descendant of Ptolomy, a general of Alexander the Great's. She (probably) wasn't related to any of the people she ruled.
Good for her, but I think that it was obvious to anybody who read the post that I wasn't speaking in a strictly genetic since but in a cultural sense. Though she "probably" wasn't genetically Egyptian, she is considered by most to be Egyptian and for my purposes of comparing generations of Egyptians and Greeks made a good reference point. And since you're such the historian, shame on you for not knowing that the pyramid-builders were not contemporaries with Greek historians.
The advantage of using any tool lies in the ability of it to project a controlled amount of force along a certain direction. The wind is unstable at best; you can't control it and you can't predict it. That means it's force waxes and wanes. It also changes direction. This scafford not only holds the rock, it also holds the kite. The kite places a certain amount of force in a certain place on the scaffold as it lifts the rock. If that force changes, you stand a chance of demolishing your scaffold. All of this uncertainty makes it unworkable.
It certainly doesn't appear to be all that unworkable, especially seeing as someone has already done it. If you'll recall, that was the point of the article.
Besides, just WHERE is it in the culture? If they actually used kites, where is the literature describing them? To the ancients, it would have seemed like the power of the gods (the wind) was helping them to raise their buildings. This theme would have been repeated in their literature and described by foreigners (ie Greek historians). There would have been wind and kite festivals (like in China). Little children of today would still be flying kites, like their ancestors. But none of this exists. There is NO ancient cultural tradition of kite flying in egypt - at least that I'm aware of. Show me EVIDENCE of such a tradition and I might believe it.
I'm not saying that the Egyptians built it this way. I merely pointing out that it is certainly quite feasible. You see an absence of concrete proof and automatically write it off as some crackpot idea that is impossible. I see a proof-of-concept experiment that demoinstrates the feasibility of an idea and think, "Hey, it's possible."
Just because there is no evidence that Egyptians flew kites 6000 years ago doesn't mean that they didn't fly kites. There are very large portions of the historical record that did not survive until the present day intact. If we did have all of the historical records, we would know for a fact how it was done. Remember that when we speak of the pyramid builders we aren't talking about a people who were contemporaries with Greek historians (or any other historians from whom we have writings). We are talking about a civilization that predates the Greeks by several thousand years. These are not the Egyptians of Cleopatra. They are the ancient ancestors of Cleopatra.
now i really dont understand, how can they kick you off a system that you pay to (ab)use? what good what 500k/sec be to me, if it wasnt available ALL THE TIME, for me to use ALL THE TIME.. i pay for a constant connection to the internet, to say that i can no longer use something that i pay for.. well, to me, that's theft!
Nah. Just read your T&Cs, and you'll see a clause in there about using the service in such a way that it adversely affects the availability of the service for other subscribers. They usually use this clause to prevent folks from running http/ftp/irc, etc servers and hogging the badwidth. All they'll do is claim that your utilizing that much bandwidth causes a performance issue for other users on the network and then boot you off. Or more likely, that you and the 150 other subscribers who use that much bandwidth are adversely affecting the 10,000 subscribers who aren't.
Simply put, this whole idea runs back into the same problem that lead scientists to believe that the ancient Egyptians used mud instead of wood for scaffolding- that there just wasn't enough timber available.
I think that people overplay the lack of timber. Egypt was a large kingdom that traded with many other people in the Mediteranean. Lebanon was reknowned for their trees. Lebanon is not that far away from Egypt, especially if you wanted to ship overseas and then up the nile. For such an extravagant project, I can't imagine that they'd spare much expense. Especially if it would make things easier.
The culture in Amerikkka is so racist that things like the casual racism in everyday phrases can go unnoticed. My point is, would it be so hard for you white people to call it 'unlit fiber' ? Its one more character I know, but it means the same, and you would avoid pissing off 10% of the US population for no reason.
I pulled out the trusty dictionary and this is what it has to say on the subject of "dark":
dark (därk)
adj. darker, darkest
1. Lacking or having very little light: a dark corner.
2. Lacking brightness: a dark day.
3. Reflecting only a small fraction of incident light.
4. Of a shade tending toward black in comparison with other shades. Used of a color.
5. Having a complexion that is not fair; swarthy.
6. Served without milk or cream: dark coffee.
7. Characterized by gloom; dismal: took a dark view of the consequences.
8. Sullen or threatening: a dark scowl.
9. Difficult to understand; obscure: stories that are large in scope and dark in substance.
10. Concealed or secret; mysterious: "the dark mysteries of Africa and the fabled wonders of the East" (W. Bruce Lincoln).
11. Lacking enlightenment, knowledge, or culture: a dark age in the history of education.
12. Exhibiting or stemming from evil characteristics or forces; sinister: "churned up dark undercurrents of ethnic and religious hostility" (Peter Maas).
13. Being or characterized by morbid or grimly satiric humor.
14. Having richness or depth: a dark, melancholy vocal tone.
15. Not giving performances; closed: The movie theater is dark on Mondays.
16. Linguistics. Pronounced with the back of the tongue raised toward the velum. Used of the sound (l) in words like full.
Out of the 16 definitions of "dark" when used in the adjective form, not one of them is "African-American." Not one of them is tied in any way to anything racial or ethnic. So get your head out of your ass. If your argument was correct, we should be able to call it "African-American fiber" and it would make sense. It doesn't. Since dark can mean an absence of light, there's nothing wrong with calling it dark fiber. Especially since this is a technical term used to describe an object that has no moral value. Get over it.
Let's see here...Interent end-users don't want to see advertising in their mailboxes, on the webpages, or anywhere else.
Advertising agencies don't understand that we don't want to see their ads.
Somebody cooks up yet another way to get advertising from people who "don't get it" to people who don't want to see adverts. Then they make a company to sell it.
I can't wait for this company to tank. The only thing that I can't understand is why a technical person (presumably a person who uses the Internet) would actually want to work for a company where their job is to devise new ways to pump spam to people who don't want it. Just goes to show you that the world is full of whores.
OK, so my specific example probably wasn't the best, but you've still done nothing to contradict the concept that I was trying to get across. Not every action in the life of Egypt was recorded in hieroglyphs or carvings. Not all of the hieroglyphs and carvings ever made have survived to the present day. Lack of a depiction in known current-day hieroglyphs or carvings does not mean that something didn't exist in ancient times.
There are specific examples where carvings and hieroglyphs have been intentionally destroyed by the ancient Egyptions in order to obliterate any reference to a particular person or topic, so even if such carvings had existed they could easily have fallen prey to personal prejudice, weather, or numerous other destructive forces.
Lookout, the wind is dropping!
Huh? _*SPLAT*_
Put a simple ratchet system (ever seen a trebuchet or a catapult?) in your pulley/scaffold system and then if the wind dies the obelisk stays in its semi-erected state.
WHY is it so hard to believe that ancient Egyptians used their brains and muscle to build these things.
It's not. But why is it so hard to believe that they used their brains more than they used their muscles?
Beyond that, you make the same mistake as about 99% of the Slashdot posters here. You ASSume that they tied a rock to a kite, flew the kite, then skillfully positioned the kite to drop the rock where they wanted it. That's not what the article described. It only touched on the concept, but they built a tower where they wanted the obelisk. They ran a rope through the tower (via a network of pulleys) down to the obelisk. The kite was at the top of the tower (where there was more wind) and was presumably launched from there. With the kite tethered in this manner, you don't need to control where the kite goes so long as it keeps going up or in a direction away from the tower. This will pull the ropes, thus lifting the stone (or the obelisk). Stacking stones in this case is even simpler because the tower will allow the stones to be lifted to nearly the exact same location on the horizontal plane.
Why is it that nobody ever reads the articles anymore before shooting off their mouth? It plainly talks about pulleys and scaffolds.
WHat did she make her kites out of? Probably, ripstop nylon or some other modern, lightweight, strong fabric. Now, if she can make her kites out of materials the ancient Egyptians had, using techniques they had, and perform the same feat, then I'll be impressed. Not before.
This is a common post for this article. In the article (you did read the article, didn't you?) it stated that their next step was to replicate the experiment with kit made from materials that would have been available to the ancients. Just keep in mind that the Japanese have been flying kits (and some really big ones) for a couple thosand years now, so it's not as far-fetched as all that.
I wonder if you could do the same thing with a windmill instead...
Another example of someone forgetting that if a simple explanation and a complicated explanation exist, then the simple one is almost always right. So when you have a situation where there's sand and a lot of people available, a solution that uses those elements makes more sense than kites, aliens, or cantilevered structures that take calculus to design.
:-)
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification of Occam's Razor. But what's more important is to remember that there were definitely engineers present. That is obvious from the math involved in the ratios of the pyramids sides and their alignment, etc. There really is a lot of complicated geometry and trigonometry in there. Take a look at the so-called "bent" pyramid, and you will see the learning process that the engineer went through once he determind that his original design wasn't done properly (or perhaps he predecessor's design).
At any rate, if engineers in ancient Egypt were anything at all like their modern brethren, then you can screw Occam's Razor. They would have done it the most efficient and clever way that they could devise, not by using the K.I.S.S. method. And then they would have bragged about it down at the pub afterwards.
actually when the pyramids line up with some of the stars in the Orion constellation (presumbably not all, I'm sure Orion wasn't one of THEIR constellations
Getting closer. The three main pyramids at Giza line up (once you wind back the sky to the time that the pyramids were built) almost perfectly with the three main stars in "Orion's belt." This is not only in geographical alignment but also in relative size, i.e., the size of the pyramid is proportional to the relative brightness of its corresponding star.
Then there are seveal other pyramids that were built far away from Giza that also match up to stars in the constellation of Orion. According to the Egyptologists, what we refer to as the constellation of Orion was referred to by the Egyptians as the constellation of Osiris, the Egyptian deity that governed death and rebirth. Since the pyramids were tombs and the Egyptians believed that death was a transition to another world, it only made sense that if you were to build pyramids that lined up with any stars you would choose the ones that were related to Osiris.
i also remember that i heard she lost all of here funding because the ultra prejudiced director of the cairo museum made it his personal mission to destroy her reputation because he believes that ramps were used and that its the only possible option... this guy is the same one who refuses to allow a robotic camera into the uncharted shaft in the great pyramid, simply because "there's nothing there", even though its hasn't been explored beyond measuring its length, which isn't even necessarily accurate.
I distinctly recall seeing a program where a crawler with a camera attached was sent up the shaft of the great pyramid and it turned out to be a dead end. I wonder if that was very recently done? Or maybe it wasn't the great pyramid after all. But somebody did once sent a robotic crawler up the shaft of one of the larger pyramids once to see what was there. I remember watching with great anticipation.
I remember trying to fly cheap kites as a kid, fifteen years ago - it wasn't a very successful pastime. The ones I fly these days have hemp cored carbon fibre poles and all kinds of high tech fabrics which is what makes them so much easier to fly.
Interesting. I recall having no problems flying traditional balsa wood and cloth kites when I was a kid 2-25 years ago. I've even built some kite-like devices of my (basically wings that generate life) from paper and wood today, though only small ones. In ancient Japan, kites were regularly built from light wood and paper. The Japanese have a very long tradition of flying kites.
Even with the best will in the world, I'm kind of curious how the Egyptians, with their technology, could have got a kite of that size to stay together in thirty mile an hour winds, let alone fly in any controlled fashion. And then have the strength to lift a several hundred ton obelisk?
I think that you are assuming that they used a kite in the traditional way, only they tied an obelish to it instead of holding onto the kite string to lift it up. This is not what the article proposed.
The technique that they mentioned involved building a tower next to the obelisk and attaching the kite to the obelisk via a rope that runs through network of pulleys in the tower. Then the kite is moved to the top of the tower where it can catch the wind and it takes off. The lift of the kite pulls the rope through the pulleys, which magnify the amount of force that the kite is exerting (which minimizes the size of the kite that is needed). They don't need to control where the kite goes. It doesn't matter which direction or how far off-center the kite goes as long as it is always pulling the rope through the pulleys to lift the obelisk. The only real problem is that if the wind dies down the obelisk may drop and shatter. I imagine that a few well-placed ratchets (of the type used in primitive trebuchets and catapults) would probably be helpful here.