Fires at ~90 MPH. Unlikely to outrun. Also unlikely to be lethal, but c'est la vie. Just a prototype.
Probably less damage than baseball (same speed, less mass). Potential for more damage though, on penetration. Is there an official damage conversion chart : Piercing vs Bludgeoning? D&D maybe.
Either way, piercing unlikely. No rifle-spin to maintain trajectory. Still would rather not get shot with.
I'm actually thinking we need less beef to make it more deadly. Specifically in the ammunition
Kinetic energy is Mass x Velocity-Squared. Velocity (being squared) is the biggest driver. A smaller projectile might pick up more speed and thus improve the overall kinetic energy.
Maybe not... can't really be sure. A smaller object might not pick up as much magnetic pull (is there a saturation point? IANAScientist... I just play one on TV) Either way, probably worth investigating. And a smaller object would probably have better penetration against soft targets like skin... though it probably wouldn't be as impressive against an LCD screen.
While it won't feed directly into the "3D printed" part of the controversy, this is still arguably a fully automatic rifle (aka "assault weapon") that someone built in his spare time, at home. (depending on your definition of what exactly constitutes a gun... launching a handful of nails at 90 mph is painful, but not terribly deadly)
And of course, this is hardly the only gun someone has ever made at home. From zip guns to STEN, and a lot more can be made in the comfort of your own home... and that's not even taking into account the possibilities if you happen to own a drill press.
But all of that is moot in today's society of 24/7 shock and awe news that borders on terrorism in and of itself. "Home made assault weapon with scary sounding name : GAUSSIAN!" will make the rounds on news networks, probably with pictures of the killer robot future from Terminator. And politicians will glomp onto the scare to pass more 2nd amendment crippling legislature. We need a hacksaw registration database! Ban magnets, I don't even care how they work.
[quote]The scientific discoveries can be done much less expensively with probes from Earth[/quote]
Are you sure about that?
Of course, sending an individual probe will be less expensive than each individual human... but you have to balance that against the amount of work that each would accomplish. Tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of Curiosity landing on mars. In that year, it has traveled a whopping 700 meters, and snapped a few pictures. Something a human astronaut could have accomplished in a day.
Probes and rovers are a decent start, a good way to get preliminary testing and surveys... but eventually you need boots on the ground to get any real information.
Interesting that you compare Wii U to iPad, and then complain about price. The deluxe Wii U package deal thing is still cheaper than a 2-generation old iPad.
Ouya + Nexus 7 might be an interesting concept (if the two can work together.) Haven't done too much tinkering with my Ouya yet (DAMN YOU STEAM SALE) but the few games I've downloaded are incredibly fun. Towerfall and Stalagflight are amazing as multiplayer games. Gives me hope that the Ouya experiment might bear fruit long term. Fingers crossed.
The GBA - Gamecube hookup was a half baked add-on halfway through the development cycle that required additional hardware (the GBAs of course, and the cables, which were hard to find) and had the wired-distance limitation. Wii U is starting with that concept out the gate, but hasn't done much with it beyond a few cute minigames. I'm sure they'll incorporate the tablet into other games a little bit (Dungeon Maps for Link, weapon selection for Samus, etc) but they need games that really explore the potential.
Maybe it flops. Maybe the single-tablet limitation proves to be a killer, or some other aspect just never clicks (like a lack of freaking games)... certainly a possibility. But right now, they're not even trying. They built a console around a new gimmick, but didn't build any games that really take advantage of that gimmick. It would be like Wii without Wii Bowling. You've made a tablet based system Nintendo. You should already have games that make us go "This tablet thing is cool." That's why the Wii was such a huge success. Wii Bowling, Archery, etc. made people say "Motion controls are fun" even if they aren't nearly as accurate or reliable as good old analog stick and buttons.
P.S. Crystal Chronicles with 4 people was still pretty sweet. Chaotic as all hell, but lots of fun.
The analogy isn't perfect, but it captures the spirit of the incident. Standing by idly (which is exactly what MIT did) while someone else is brutalized defies every bit of human decency. Yes, the guy broke the law, but his crimes were relatively minor, and didn't warrant the attention they were given.
Yes, Aaron Swartz is the one who killed himself, but the prosecution is the one who made that an attractive option. They hounded, harassed, browbeat, threatened, embarrassed and otherwise did everything they could to make him miserable, and paint a bleak future for him with little to no hopes of ever escaping the stigma placed upon him. All for the crime of, basically, breaking into a library and xeroxing some books.
MIT, the "victim" of his crimes, is an institution with enough clout to actually step in and temper the witchhunt. They could have calmed things down, they could have ensured a fair trial and fitting punishment. But they didn't. They watched as Ortiz systematically destroyed a man's life, and continued to watch as that man ended it.
You are correct about most things, but will disagree on your assessment of the Wii U tablet. If used properly, it could offer some very unique game play.
They've started to scratch the surface of that potential in a few "Nintendoland" minigames; the Luigi Ghost game and Metroid most notably. Being able to host competitive multiplayer on actual separate screens is a new development in console gaming.
Of course, these two little games aren't nearly enough to sell a system, or completely validate the concept... but it's a start. We need developers to actually utilize this technology to make new, interesting games. Imagine a dungeon crawler game, one person with the Tablet is the Dungeon Master, controlling hordes of orcs/zombies/etc like an RTS while up to 4 players on normal controllers try and make it through the dungeon, or save the princess, or whatever. The concept works for any cooperative multiplayer game... just let one person act as the opponent in place of the computer. Left 4 Dead does a similar thing, but it requires every player to have their own copy of the game, and be sitting on their own TV, with their own console/computer, etc. Wii U could bring that concept to a single living room couch.
Another big step will be the possibility of hosting multiple tablets on a single system. Especially for sports games, where your tablet can serve as your playbook. No more picking plays onscreen where the other player can clearly see what you're running. The TV can be dedicated to the actual on-field situation, with substitutions, sneak plays, formations, etc handled on the tablet. Hell, this could make for actual compelling "Video Games as a spectator sport." Two players have their tablets, control the plays, etc while a crowd watches a TV. To them, it looks like a regular game, with slightly awkward running motions at times.
However lets look at this from the perspective of human decency. If, for instance, a stray dog took shelter on your porch, do you have any responsibility to protect it from the neighborhood bully that's chasing it with a baseball bat? Hell, the dog is trespassing. Breaking the law! Hand it over to whoever is pursuing it and let the punishment commence. As you watch the animal getting battered and beaten, does that make you a bad person?
Or do you just keep telling yourself : Not my responsibility
3-4% of what total? The entire store's business? And to whom does this money go? Once the bills are paid, and all other expenses accounted for, is that 4% just flowing straight into the owners' pockets?
Quick napkin math : If we ballpark around $100 of sales per minute (combined amongst all of the registers, I've no idea how accurate this is, but it feels a bit conservative) for a 12 hour day... you're looking at around 750k per day. Of which 4% would be $3000. Well over 1 million per year, depending on holiday spikes and things like that. Not bad for "just 3-4%"
All about aerodynamics, and walking the razor's edge... how low can you dial the engine power, and still get reasonable performance.
The Chargers, Challengers, GTOs, Camaros, Barracudas, etc of old contained so much raw power that they could push around big flat-faced grills, hood scoops, and a few extra tons of pig iron without missing a beat (well, your heart might skip a beat when you consider the single-digit mpg those behemoths pulled) This little 100 hp engine couldn't get a chassis like that out of the driveway, let alone up to freeway speeds.
Or tour. Play a gig every couple days. Build a fan-base. If a band has a big enough hit that they're worried about royalties from radio play, they should be able to fill a local bar gig.
Being a song writer or musician with 1 or 2 radio hits shouldn't be an automatic ticket to the a lifetime of relaxation, Money for Nothing, etc. Almost every career profession requires ~40 hours a week of work, plus some of your own time dedicated to honing your craft, learning and growing. Why should singing, song-writing, etc be any different?
"Might" cost more than they save based on data gleaned from coal burning plants. I was going to call this an apples-to-oranges comparison, but those two things are actually fairly similar. This is more of an apples-to-hemidemisemiquaver comparison.
It's not exactly hard. Have an solid parent/child relationship, where your kids feel comfortable asking you questions about non-sexual things, and when sex related topics come up, they might feel comfortable talking to you about those, too.
Or you could always just keep a couple classy Playboys "hidden" in locations where the kids are bound to find them. Skew their priorities towards airbrushing instead of fisting..
I do wonder how the metrics are gathered. Not much detail in TFA or the actual survey which is linked in TFA. (two levels of TFA deep, pretty sure the/. police are coming after me soon)
I'd wager that part of our "problem" is early adoption, combined with sheer size. I don't think many people in Prague were connected during the dial-up days. Earthlink probably doesn't have much of a foothold over there, even today. Here in the US, however, there are probably still hundreds of thousands of people connecting via phone lines which bring our average down. And so I wonder, if all of those dialup connections were hypothetically terminated would our average speed go down (56.6k is still better than 0) or would those non-connections drop off the radar, thus improving our standing?
This is compounded even further with mobile phones, explicitly not a part of this survey. If you want a mediocre internet connection these days, why even bother with dialup? Just get AT&T, or the Latvian equivalent.
Most of that has already been solved via voice commands, or tactile buttons on the wheel. I don't even have to take a hand off the wheel to adjust my nav system or music.
Patent trolls don't profit my necessarily winning their cases against big corps. They mostly just need to keeping themselves employed as lawyers, so they can destroy little companies and lick up the splattered entrails.
HBO would be fine, as long as they actually paid attention and didn't send out DCMA notices for "All The Things!"
Greed is directed at yourself, at the expense of others.
If I get my road repaved because I hate all these god damned potholes... it could be completely for my own benefit, everyone else is purely tangential. No one would call me greedy.
Slashdot Mirror
Fires at ~90 MPH. Unlikely to outrun. Also unlikely to be lethal, but c'est la vie. Just a prototype.
Probably less damage than baseball (same speed, less mass). Potential for more damage though, on penetration. Is there an official damage conversion chart : Piercing vs Bludgeoning? D&D maybe.
Either way, piercing unlikely. No rifle-spin to maintain trajectory. Still would rather not get shot with.
Are you sure he claimed exactly 9000 fps?
Or is the power level OVER NINE THOUSAND!
I'm actually thinking we need less beef to make it more deadly. Specifically in the ammunition
Kinetic energy is Mass x Velocity-Squared. Velocity (being squared) is the biggest driver. A smaller projectile might pick up more speed and thus improve the overall kinetic energy.
Maybe not... can't really be sure. A smaller object might not pick up as much magnetic pull (is there a saturation point? IANAScientist ... I just play one on TV) Either way, probably worth investigating. And a smaller object would probably have better penetration against soft targets like skin... though it probably wouldn't be as impressive against an LCD screen.
While it won't feed directly into the "3D printed" part of the controversy, this is still arguably a fully automatic rifle (aka "assault weapon") that someone built in his spare time, at home. (depending on your definition of what exactly constitutes a gun ... launching a handful of nails at 90 mph is painful, but not terribly deadly)
And of course, this is hardly the only gun someone has ever made at home. From zip guns to STEN, and a lot more can be made in the comfort of your own home... and that's not even taking into account the possibilities if you happen to own a drill press.
But all of that is moot in today's society of 24/7 shock and awe news that borders on terrorism in and of itself. "Home made assault weapon with scary sounding name : GAUSSIAN!" will make the rounds on news networks, probably with pictures of the killer robot future from Terminator. And politicians will glomp onto the scare to pass more 2nd amendment crippling legislature. We need a hacksaw registration database! Ban magnets, I don't even care how they work.
Are you sure about that?
Of course, sending an individual probe will be less expensive than each individual human ... but you have to balance that against the amount of work that each would accomplish. Tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of Curiosity landing on mars. In that year, it has traveled a whopping 700 meters, and snapped a few pictures. Something a human astronaut could have accomplished in a day.
Probes and rovers are a decent start, a good way to get preliminary testing and surveys ... but eventually you need boots on the ground to get any real information.
Selfishness in general will help to advance the species.
Selfishness in pairs or small teams is just more effective than selfishness alone.
So yeah ... "Duh?"
Interesting that you compare Wii U to iPad, and then complain about price. The deluxe Wii U package deal thing is still cheaper than a 2-generation old iPad.
Ouya + Nexus 7 might be an interesting concept (if the two can work together.) Haven't done too much tinkering with my Ouya yet (DAMN YOU STEAM SALE) but the few games I've downloaded are incredibly fun. Towerfall and Stalagflight are amazing as multiplayer games. Gives me hope that the Ouya experiment might bear fruit long term. Fingers crossed.
The GBA - Gamecube hookup was a half baked add-on halfway through the development cycle that required additional hardware (the GBAs of course, and the cables, which were hard to find) and had the wired-distance limitation. Wii U is starting with that concept out the gate, but hasn't done much with it beyond a few cute minigames. I'm sure they'll incorporate the tablet into other games a little bit (Dungeon Maps for Link, weapon selection for Samus, etc) but they need games that really explore the potential.
Maybe it flops. Maybe the single-tablet limitation proves to be a killer, or some other aspect just never clicks (like a lack of freaking games) ... certainly a possibility. But right now, they're not even trying. They built a console around a new gimmick, but didn't build any games that really take advantage of that gimmick. It would be like Wii without Wii Bowling. You've made a tablet based system Nintendo. You should already have games that make us go "This tablet thing is cool." That's why the Wii was such a huge success. Wii Bowling, Archery, etc. made people say "Motion controls are fun" even if they aren't nearly as accurate or reliable as good old analog stick and buttons.
P.S. Crystal Chronicles with 4 people was still pretty sweet. Chaotic as all hell, but lots of fun.
The analogy isn't perfect, but it captures the spirit of the incident. Standing by idly (which is exactly what MIT did) while someone else is brutalized defies every bit of human decency. Yes, the guy broke the law, but his crimes were relatively minor, and didn't warrant the attention they were given.
Yes, Aaron Swartz is the one who killed himself, but the prosecution is the one who made that an attractive option. They hounded, harassed, browbeat, threatened, embarrassed and otherwise did everything they could to make him miserable, and paint a bleak future for him with little to no hopes of ever escaping the stigma placed upon him. All for the crime of, basically, breaking into a library and xeroxing some books.
MIT, the "victim" of his crimes, is an institution with enough clout to actually step in and temper the witchhunt. They could have calmed things down, they could have ensured a fair trial and fitting punishment. But they didn't. They watched as Ortiz systematically destroyed a man's life, and continued to watch as that man ended it.
You are correct about most things, but will disagree on your assessment of the Wii U tablet. If used properly, it could offer some very unique game play.
They've started to scratch the surface of that potential in a few "Nintendoland" minigames; the Luigi Ghost game and Metroid most notably. Being able to host competitive multiplayer on actual separate screens is a new development in console gaming.
Of course, these two little games aren't nearly enough to sell a system, or completely validate the concept... but it's a start. We need developers to actually utilize this technology to make new, interesting games. Imagine a dungeon crawler game, one person with the Tablet is the Dungeon Master, controlling hordes of orcs/zombies/etc like an RTS while up to 4 players on normal controllers try and make it through the dungeon, or save the princess, or whatever. The concept works for any cooperative multiplayer game... just let one person act as the opponent in place of the computer. Left 4 Dead does a similar thing, but it requires every player to have their own copy of the game, and be sitting on their own TV, with their own console/computer, etc. Wii U could bring that concept to a single living room couch.
Another big step will be the possibility of hosting multiple tablets on a single system. Especially for sports games, where your tablet can serve as your playbook. No more picking plays onscreen where the other player can clearly see what you're running. The TV can be dedicated to the actual on-field situation, with substitutions, sneak plays, formations, etc handled on the tablet. Hell, this could make for actual compelling "Video Games as a spectator sport." Two players have their tablets, control the plays, etc while a crowd watches a TV. To them, it looks like a regular game, with slightly awkward running motions at times.
Responsibility: No.
However lets look at this from the perspective of human decency. If, for instance, a stray dog took shelter on your porch, do you have any responsibility to protect it from the neighborhood bully that's chasing it with a baseball bat? Hell, the dog is trespassing. Breaking the law! Hand it over to whoever is pursuing it and let the punishment commence. As you watch the animal getting battered and beaten, does that make you a bad person?
Or do you just keep telling yourself : Not my responsibility
3-4% of what total? The entire store's business? And to whom does this money go? Once the bills are paid, and all other expenses accounted for, is that 4% just flowing straight into the owners' pockets?
Quick napkin math : If we ballpark around $100 of sales per minute (combined amongst all of the registers, I've no idea how accurate this is, but it feels a bit conservative) for a 12 hour day ... you're looking at around 750k per day. Of which 4% would be $3000. Well over 1 million per year, depending on holiday spikes and things like that. Not bad for "just 3-4%"
All about aerodynamics, and walking the razor's edge ... how low can you dial the engine power, and still get reasonable performance.
The Chargers, Challengers, GTOs, Camaros, Barracudas, etc of old contained so much raw power that they could push around big flat-faced grills, hood scoops, and a few extra tons of pig iron without missing a beat (well, your heart might skip a beat when you consider the single-digit mpg those behemoths pulled) This little 100 hp engine couldn't get a chassis like that out of the driveway, let alone up to freeway speeds.
Or tour. Play a gig every couple days. Build a fan-base. If a band has a big enough hit that they're worried about royalties from radio play, they should be able to fill a local bar gig.
Being a song writer or musician with 1 or 2 radio hits shouldn't be an automatic ticket to the a lifetime of relaxation, Money for Nothing, etc. Almost every career profession requires ~40 hours a week of work, plus some of your own time dedicated to honing your craft, learning and growing. Why should singing, song-writing, etc be any different?
"Might"
"Might" cost more than they save based on data gleaned from coal burning plants. I was going to call this an apples-to-oranges comparison, but those two things are actually fairly similar. This is more of an apples-to-hemidemisemiquaver comparison.
Thanks to Kerbals, I actually know what you're talking about!
Yay
When you can ensure that all cars on the road are similarly airgapped, then we can be certain of our safety in this one area.
Until then, that airgap might quickly and violently shrink when someone else's car gets compromised, and they crash into you at 65 MPH.
Only if the NSA is willing to sign, notarize, etc. a document clearly spelling out exactly how much is required, to whom it must be paid, when, etc.
Otherwise : I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.
Complaining about the fact that everything is a crime will be viewed as a form of verbal littering, which is also a crime.
In full effect
That's what parents are for.
It's not exactly hard. Have an solid parent/child relationship, where your kids feel comfortable asking you questions about non-sexual things, and when sex related topics come up, they might feel comfortable talking to you about those, too.
Or you could always just keep a couple classy Playboys "hidden" in locations where the kids are bound to find them. Skew their priorities towards airbrushing instead of fisting..
I do wonder how the metrics are gathered. Not much detail in TFA or the actual survey which is linked in TFA. (two levels of TFA deep, pretty sure the /. police are coming after me soon)
I'd wager that part of our "problem" is early adoption, combined with sheer size. I don't think many people in Prague were connected during the dial-up days. Earthlink probably doesn't have much of a foothold over there, even today. Here in the US, however, there are probably still hundreds of thousands of people connecting via phone lines which bring our average down. And so I wonder, if all of those dialup connections were hypothetically terminated would our average speed go down (56.6k is still better than 0) or would those non-connections drop off the radar, thus improving our standing?
This is compounded even further with mobile phones, explicitly not a part of this survey. If you want a mediocre internet connection these days, why even bother with dialup? Just get AT&T, or the Latvian equivalent.
Most of that has already been solved via voice commands, or tactile buttons on the wheel. I don't even have to take a hand off the wheel to adjust my nav system or music.
Patent trolls don't profit my necessarily winning their cases against big corps. They mostly just need to keeping themselves employed as lawyers, so they can destroy little companies and lick up the splattered entrails.
HBO would be fine, as long as they actually paid attention and didn't send out DCMA notices for "All The Things!"
Greed is directed at yourself, at the expense of others.
If I get my road repaved because I hate all these god damned potholes ... it could be completely for my own benefit, everyone else is purely tangential. No one would call me greedy.