You must be young. Almost all indy titles today are shovelware using asset stores for their code, art and sounds. Games are being thrown together by everyone with a view of creation lots of titles hoping one is a hit
I used to scour BBS on my 14.4 modem looking for indy games to download, so I think I'm old enough to tell you to stop looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. There was an indy PC game movement in the 80's and 90's that created some great things but there was plenty of forgettable shovelware too, you just forgot about that (go figure). Those old games also recycled plenty of their own code, art, and sounds. Also, 80's/90's indy developers were almost completely shut out of the console markets, but not so today. 80's/90's indy developers were also much more limited by the technology available, and not just graphics, but also the interface was mostly limited to keyboard/mouse and maybe a joystick. Today's indy developers has so much more available to them to use creatively. Graphics is obvious, but also things like Wii-Mote, Kinect, mobile phone capabilities (cameras, GPS, etc.), and new VR tech. Then you've got Kickstarter, digital distribution, and flexible pricing to get indy developer ideas/projects off the ground. Yeah there are going to be plenty of indy game turds, but there always have been.
Personally I'll take the smaller screen and portability of the smart phone over carrying two devices around any day. If I can't fit the device comfortably my pocket and make phone calls then it doesn't do me much good.
It's not clear to me why NASA wants to retrieve a sample, other than they think it's an interesting technological hurdle. I'm pretty sure it's much easier and cheaper to land whatever instruments you need on the surface. By the time viable exporting from Mars is realistic technology will be so much farther ahead that I doubt the work for this prize will even matter. I'd love be convinced otherwise though...
For the record I'm a supporter of the space program and scientific research in general, and understand that scientific leaps in understanding can occur in unexpected places, but I think it is possible to direct funds to where the most potential is.
I agree, but come up with some better evidence... like Netflix and Amazon streaming services and good original shows (i.e. House of Cards), Hulu streaming for major networks, and Apple TV. If you're going to mention YouTube then bring up the YouTube music awards moving in on traditional cable-dominated turf.
It doesn't surprise me that there's no noticeable difference between Stradivarius and well-made modern violin. But I wonder if there are other intangible benefits owning a Stradivarius, like boosts to the player's confidence and drive to excel. At any high-level musical play the differences between "very good" and "great" musicians are often very subtle.
I would also be willing to bet that that professional violin judges have some unintended bias towards players they see have a Stradivarius. Maybe this data will level the playing field though...
AND, there are lots of other interesting moons out that way. good to establish a precedent that this far out exploration can be done.
You aren't paying nearly enough attention.
1) NASA already landed a probe on Titan (the Huygens probe) so there's your precedent.
2) The previous point above that it's "goddam cold" is exactly right. Power sources, electronics, moving parts/mechanisms, etc. don't operate well (understatement) at the extreme cold that would be encountered at Europa. The Huygens probe was only expected to last mere minutes of operation at Titan's surface due to the extreme cold, and you can expect the same from Europa. So, there's a heck of a lot more engineering involved in getting to and then do anything useful on Europa vs Mars.
biting flies have an aversion to landing on striped surfaces.
Biting flies can't evolve?
I found the whole thing very unconvincing.
Agreed. I find it a little difficult to believe that biting flies couldn't evolve past this stripe defense. There are thousands, maybe millions, of generations of flies in one just one zebra lifespan, so flies clearly have the evolutionary advantage. Granted I don't know tsetse fly biology well, but I know many other biting flies can detect body heat and carbon dioxide from animals, which would reduce effectiveness of the stripe defense significantly, assuming the flies don't rely on vision alone to find prey/hosts. Furthermore, if zebras can evolve bug repellant stripes, why haven't other animals living in the same areas done the same? I don't think the bugs are that picky about which species they bite.
Have there been any studies to correlate populations of predators to striped zebras to put to rest the old claim that stripes help the zebras blend together as a herd to confuse predators, which rely 100% on sight to make a kill? That still seems like a more plausible explanation to me, and any bug repellant properties of stripes just be a welcome side-effect.
Most investors have their money in large diversified managed accounts that are indexes or target retirement funds (i.e. 401K, IRA, etc.). Due to the size of those funds when a fund manager places an order that order it often needs to be filled on several stock exchanges. The High Frequency Traders are racing those orders to the next exchange and artificially influencing the price for their gain. So the fund manager pays more or sells for less, which means all the investors get screwed too, and the high frequency traders skim from everyone in the fund.
And just like MUDs this sort of game is only going to appeal to a very niche market of RPG nerds. Maybe that's all they need to keep this game afloat, but I doubt it. Today's MMORPGs require huge amounts of upfront development work ($$$) and when it hits the market there's a lot of competition. Good luck...they'll need it.
What would happen if while law enforcement was hacking into a suspect's computer, or multiple suspected computers as proposed by the DOJ in the article, evidence of a different type of criminal activity was observed than originally suspected under the warrant? I can understand that with current technology law enforcement could justify broader warrants to hack into multiple computers potentially related to a suspect, but that would also exponentially increase the chances of finding other unrelated criminal activities on those computers. It sounds like this could easily be abused into essentially cyber-fishing for criminals. Does anyone know how law enforcement would have to deal with that situation? I'm not intimately familiar with cyber-law, but I would assume there's something in the law books already for hacking into a single computer that would be a precedent.
Sarcastic, flame-bait responses are unnecessary...
You've also got lame players who aren't cheating. Campers in a first-person shooter and the like.
I hear you... but I always considered "lame" tactics (like camping) as either failures of the game's design or a failure of other opposing players to adapt to counter the lame tactic properly. For example in most well-made FPS games there are ways to counter or completely avoid a camper, but it can require a significant adaption, which many players aren't willing to do, so they just complain about the camper instead. If there really is no way to counter a lame tactic then that's on the developers for poor game design and I probably won't be playing said game much longer.
At least not for animals like moose. Here in Maine I've never known anyone who's had a moose tag and come back without one. Maybe in Alaska it's different, but they don't appear to be all that hard to hunt (though I've never had a moose tag myself).
Yeah the only thing hard about hunting a moose is dragging that massive carcass out of the woods/swamp. A full-grown moose has no fear of a silly little hairless creature pointing a weird stick at them, then BOOM!
There are 2 steps to what is called 'hunting' here...There is the hunting part, then there is the killing part...As other have pointed out the killing part is no different from raising a cow to be killed for food, and it happens millions of times every day, totally accepted and part of human life...Then there is the hunting part. You do not have to kill, that is a separate event. In non-fatal hunting lies the 'sport'. And like all sports, you can play with no props (wrestling), you can play with a ball (football/soccer), you can play with a ball and a bat (baseball), or you can even play with a 8 cylinder gasoline powered engine (nascar).
I'm totally with you to here. You're right. The non-fatal hunt is the sport.
What friggin law of sports says tossing in a good drone causes it to no longer be a sport?
One could find the animal with a drone and basically walk directly to the target's location and shoot. If you want to walk/run/ski and then shoot, there are several real Olympic sports for those activities, but none of them are called hunting.
What alaska is doing, is forcing their view of what the sport should look like on their population. A typical big government liberal agenda.
Or they are protecting the sport from being ruined by a minority of people, who really just want to shoot animals, and skip the hunting part (i.e. the "sport" part). I'm sure when portable spot-lights hit the market we had the same discussions, and most states decided spot-lighting deer shouldn't be allowed.
Actually, you might be surprised how much of the US population still hunts for food. Granted these are generally poor rural people and thus are poorly represented on the internet and media so they are somewhat invisible, but there is a significant number of them spread around the country and they hunt more frequently then the recreational crowd.
I don't think those poor rural hunters who supplement their food with game are using $1,000+ drones. $1,000 could buy a lot of other necessities, food or otherwise. I'm not saying your wrong and I wouldn't stop those people from hunting, but the argument doesn't apply to this situation.
I sort of answered this in another post below, but there are plenty of reasons to limit technology in hunting for the purpose of sport and to give the animals a chance. If herd populations warrant additional culling and more technology is needed then fine, but I think that should be on a case-by-case basis.
I won't pretend to know anything about the health of Alaska's game herds (I live in PA), but I would guess the herds there are in a much more natural balance than other more populated states and giving hunters extra advantage isn't really in the interest of the herds. If anything, with tech like this I would expect more "trophy-hunters" who are just going after the biggest and strongest of the animals... not culling of the weak/sick animals as should happen naturally.
Nope, I read the article just fine and didn't assume anything. We don't let hunters use automatic rifles. Many states out-law "spot-lighting" of deer for good reason. We don't let fisherman use electro-shock or dynamite to catch fish. There are reasons to limit technology in hunting for the purpose of sport and to give the animals a chance.
And that's probably why I'm going to stop watching Cosmos. There's nothing there new for me, I'm not the type to just sit around slack-jawed because some media celebrity is telling me what I already now...
I agree, but highly scientifically-educated people probably isn't the target audience. Cosmos has to appeal to a broader audience, which probably has less scientific background and knowledge than the average reader of Slashdot's science stories. The show is a good level for middle-school and high-school kids too. If I had a child who showed any interest in Cosmos, I'd be damn sure to sit down with them and watch every week, even if I was a little bored at times.
I agree that Apple's designs are very good, but they still make plenty of mistakes that Apple enthusiasts overlook... The roll-out of their GPS road map software was so buggy they even recommended customers use other services temporarily. Apple had that antenna issue where if you held the iPhone incorrectly it hung up on you. That bug probably would have bankrupted another Android-based company, but it was barely a blip on their earnings because Apple has hordes of people locked into their systems. But worse is Apple's controls over their system and 3rd parties is simply anti-consumer...from iTunes control, attempts to manipulate e-book markets, litigiously pursuing their overly broad patents to stifle competition, to their non-removable batteries. Not even Microsoft was/is as bad as Apple with the manipulation and control. And then there's the Apple price tag. No thank you.
Atheism and religion are more similar than either group cares to admit.
1) Science has yet to prove or disprove the existence of a God, Creator, or other supernatural deity. Therefore, individuals who choose to completely reject the possibility of God are doing so without factual proof. If you can't prove something factually, but believe that it's true anyway that's called "faith." I would argue placing faith in science is no more or less than the faith one puts into a religion.
2) Every normal person feels to more or less degree a desire to belong to a group or community and retain a sense of identity. Historically this was dominated by various religion, but as others have pointed out it's clear that many who believe in atheism are actively seeking very similar communities.
Atheism and religion are two sides of the same coin in many ways (faith, community, identity, etc.) I honestly don't think faith in a religion or atheism/agnosticism is more or less valid than the another. The attacks and conflict between belief structures are human failures, not necessarily failures of the beliefs.
As technologically exciting as triangulating broadcasts may be, prisons could go the more mundane route and just install more cameras. They might not be able to get the person on the outside controlling the drone, but if they see the delivery, see who picks it up, and get them right away that seems almost as good and relatively low cost.
Slashdot Mirror
You must be young. Almost all indy titles today are shovelware using asset stores for their code, art and sounds. Games are being thrown together by everyone with a view of creation lots of titles hoping one is a hit
I used to scour BBS on my 14.4 modem looking for indy games to download, so I think I'm old enough to tell you to stop looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. There was an indy PC game movement in the 80's and 90's that created some great things but there was plenty of forgettable shovelware too, you just forgot about that (go figure). Those old games also recycled plenty of their own code, art, and sounds. Also, 80's/90's indy developers were almost completely shut out of the console markets, but not so today. 80's/90's indy developers were also much more limited by the technology available, and not just graphics, but also the interface was mostly limited to keyboard/mouse and maybe a joystick. Today's indy developers has so much more available to them to use creatively. Graphics is obvious, but also things like Wii-Mote, Kinect, mobile phone capabilities (cameras, GPS, etc.), and new VR tech. Then you've got Kickstarter, digital distribution, and flexible pricing to get indy developer ideas/projects off the ground. Yeah there are going to be plenty of indy game turds, but there always have been.
Personally I'll take the smaller screen and portability of the smart phone over carrying two devices around any day. If I can't fit the device comfortably my pocket and make phone calls then it doesn't do me much good.
It's not clear to me why NASA wants to retrieve a sample, other than they think it's an interesting technological hurdle. I'm pretty sure it's much easier and cheaper to land whatever instruments you need on the surface. By the time viable exporting from Mars is realistic technology will be so much farther ahead that I doubt the work for this prize will even matter. I'd love be convinced otherwise though...
For the record I'm a supporter of the space program and scientific research in general, and understand that scientific leaps in understanding can occur in unexpected places, but I think it is possible to direct funds to where the most potential is.
I agree, but come up with some better evidence... like Netflix and Amazon streaming services and good original shows (i.e. House of Cards), Hulu streaming for major networks, and Apple TV. If you're going to mention YouTube then bring up the YouTube music awards moving in on traditional cable-dominated turf.
Probably not.
Thanks for the clarification. I don't mean to take anything away from other's achievements.
It doesn't surprise me that there's no noticeable difference between Stradivarius and well-made modern violin. But I wonder if there are other intangible benefits owning a Stradivarius, like boosts to the player's confidence and drive to excel. At any high-level musical play the differences between "very good" and "great" musicians are often very subtle.
I would also be willing to bet that that professional violin judges have some unintended bias towards players they see have a Stradivarius. Maybe this data will level the playing field though...
but it doesn't have oceans.
AND, there are lots of other interesting moons out that way. good to establish a precedent that this far out exploration can be done.
You aren't paying nearly enough attention.
1) NASA already landed a probe on Titan (the Huygens probe) so there's your precedent.
2) The previous point above that it's "goddam cold" is exactly right. Power sources, electronics, moving parts/mechanisms, etc. don't operate well (understatement) at the extreme cold that would be encountered at Europa. The Huygens probe was only expected to last mere minutes of operation at Titan's surface due to the extreme cold, and you can expect the same from Europa. So, there's a heck of a lot more engineering involved in getting to and then do anything useful on Europa vs Mars.
biting flies have an aversion to landing on striped surfaces.
Biting flies can't evolve?
I found the whole thing very unconvincing.
Agreed. I find it a little difficult to believe that biting flies couldn't evolve past this stripe defense. There are thousands, maybe millions, of generations of flies in one just one zebra lifespan, so flies clearly have the evolutionary advantage. Granted I don't know tsetse fly biology well, but I know many other biting flies can detect body heat and carbon dioxide from animals, which would reduce effectiveness of the stripe defense significantly, assuming the flies don't rely on vision alone to find prey/hosts. Furthermore, if zebras can evolve bug repellant stripes, why haven't other animals living in the same areas done the same? I don't think the bugs are that picky about which species they bite.
Have there been any studies to correlate populations of predators to striped zebras to put to rest the old claim that stripes help the zebras blend together as a herd to confuse predators, which rely 100% on sight to make a kill? That still seems like a more plausible explanation to me, and any bug repellant properties of stripes just be a welcome side-effect.
Most investors have their money in large diversified managed accounts that are indexes or target retirement funds (i.e. 401K, IRA, etc.). Due to the size of those funds when a fund manager places an order that order it often needs to be filled on several stock exchanges. The High Frequency Traders are racing those orders to the next exchange and artificially influencing the price for their gain. So the fund manager pays more or sells for less, which means all the investors get screwed too, and the high frequency traders skim from everyone in the fund.
And just like MUDs this sort of game is only going to appeal to a very niche market of RPG nerds. Maybe that's all they need to keep this game afloat, but I doubt it. Today's MMORPGs require huge amounts of upfront development work ($$$) and when it hits the market there's a lot of competition. Good luck...they'll need it.
What would happen if while law enforcement was hacking into a suspect's computer, or multiple suspected computers as proposed by the DOJ in the article, evidence of a different type of criminal activity was observed than originally suspected under the warrant? I can understand that with current technology law enforcement could justify broader warrants to hack into multiple computers potentially related to a suspect, but that would also exponentially increase the chances of finding other unrelated criminal activities on those computers. It sounds like this could easily be abused into essentially cyber-fishing for criminals. Does anyone know how law enforcement would have to deal with that situation? I'm not intimately familiar with cyber-law, but I would assume there's something in the law books already for hacking into a single computer that would be a precedent. Sarcastic, flame-bait responses are unnecessary...
I'll bet they got a lot of good leads from their imbedded World of Warcraft agents! ( http://games.slashdot.org/stor... )
You've also got lame players who aren't cheating. Campers in a first-person shooter and the like.
I hear you... but I always considered "lame" tactics (like camping) as either failures of the game's design or a failure of other opposing players to adapt to counter the lame tactic properly. For example in most well-made FPS games there are ways to counter or completely avoid a camper, but it can require a significant adaption, which many players aren't willing to do, so they just complain about the camper instead. If there really is no way to counter a lame tactic then that's on the developers for poor game design and I probably won't be playing said game much longer.
At least not for animals like moose. Here in Maine I've never known anyone who's had a moose tag and come back without one. Maybe in Alaska it's different, but they don't appear to be all that hard to hunt (though I've never had a moose tag myself).
Yeah the only thing hard about hunting a moose is dragging that massive carcass out of the woods/swamp. A full-grown moose has no fear of a silly little hairless creature pointing a weird stick at them, then BOOM!
There are 2 steps to what is called 'hunting' here...There is the hunting part, then there is the killing part...As other have pointed out the killing part is no different from raising a cow to be killed for food, and it happens millions of times every day, totally accepted and part of human life...Then there is the hunting part. You do not have to kill, that is a separate event. In non-fatal hunting lies the 'sport'. And like all sports, you can play with no props (wrestling), you can play with a ball (football/soccer), you can play with a ball and a bat (baseball), or you can even play with a 8 cylinder gasoline powered engine (nascar).
I'm totally with you to here. You're right. The non-fatal hunt is the sport.
What friggin law of sports says tossing in a good drone causes it to no longer be a sport?
One could find the animal with a drone and basically walk directly to the target's location and shoot. If you want to walk/run/ski and then shoot, there are several real Olympic sports for those activities, but none of them are called hunting.
What alaska is doing, is forcing their view of what the sport should look like on their population. A typical big government liberal agenda.
Or they are protecting the sport from being ruined by a minority of people, who really just want to shoot animals, and skip the hunting part (i.e. the "sport" part). I'm sure when portable spot-lights hit the market we had the same discussions, and most states decided spot-lighting deer shouldn't be allowed.
Actually, you might be surprised how much of the US population still hunts for food. Granted these are generally poor rural people and thus are poorly represented on the internet and media so they are somewhat invisible, but there is a significant number of them spread around the country and they hunt more frequently then the recreational crowd.
I don't think those poor rural hunters who supplement their food with game are using $1,000+ drones. $1,000 could buy a lot of other necessities, food or otherwise. I'm not saying your wrong and I wouldn't stop those people from hunting, but the argument doesn't apply to this situation.
I sort of answered this in another post below, but there are plenty of reasons to limit technology in hunting for the purpose of sport and to give the animals a chance. If herd populations warrant additional culling and more technology is needed then fine, but I think that should be on a case-by-case basis. I won't pretend to know anything about the health of Alaska's game herds (I live in PA), but I would guess the herds there are in a much more natural balance than other more populated states and giving hunters extra advantage isn't really in the interest of the herds. If anything, with tech like this I would expect more "trophy-hunters" who are just going after the biggest and strongest of the animals... not culling of the weak/sick animals as should happen naturally.
Or did you assume there was a gun on it?
Nope, I read the article just fine and didn't assume anything. We don't let hunters use automatic rifles. Many states out-law "spot-lighting" of deer for good reason. We don't let fisherman use electro-shock or dynamite to catch fish. There are reasons to limit technology in hunting for the purpose of sport and to give the animals a chance.
Because at some point you can't call this "hunting" anymore. Good for Alaska.
And that's probably why I'm going to stop watching Cosmos. There's nothing there new for me, I'm not the type to just sit around slack-jawed because some media celebrity is telling me what I already now...
I agree, but highly scientifically-educated people probably isn't the target audience. Cosmos has to appeal to a broader audience, which probably has less scientific background and knowledge than the average reader of Slashdot's science stories. The show is a good level for middle-school and high-school kids too. If I had a child who showed any interest in Cosmos, I'd be damn sure to sit down with them and watch every week, even if I was a little bored at times.
I agree that Apple's designs are very good, but they still make plenty of mistakes that Apple enthusiasts overlook... The roll-out of their GPS road map software was so buggy they even recommended customers use other services temporarily. Apple had that antenna issue where if you held the iPhone incorrectly it hung up on you. That bug probably would have bankrupted another Android-based company, but it was barely a blip on their earnings because Apple has hordes of people locked into their systems. But worse is Apple's controls over their system and 3rd parties is simply anti-consumer...from iTunes control, attempts to manipulate e-book markets, litigiously pursuing their overly broad patents to stifle competition, to their non-removable batteries. Not even Microsoft was/is as bad as Apple with the manipulation and control. And then there's the Apple price tag. No thank you.
Atheism and religion are more similar than either group cares to admit. 1) Science has yet to prove or disprove the existence of a God, Creator, or other supernatural deity. Therefore, individuals who choose to completely reject the possibility of God are doing so without factual proof. If you can't prove something factually, but believe that it's true anyway that's called "faith." I would argue placing faith in science is no more or less than the faith one puts into a religion. 2) Every normal person feels to more or less degree a desire to belong to a group or community and retain a sense of identity. Historically this was dominated by various religion, but as others have pointed out it's clear that many who believe in atheism are actively seeking very similar communities. Atheism and religion are two sides of the same coin in many ways (faith, community, identity, etc.) I honestly don't think faith in a religion or atheism/agnosticism is more or less valid than the another. The attacks and conflict between belief structures are human failures, not necessarily failures of the beliefs.
As technologically exciting as triangulating broadcasts may be, prisons could go the more mundane route and just install more cameras. They might not be able to get the person on the outside controlling the drone, but if they see the delivery, see who picks it up, and get them right away that seems almost as good and relatively low cost.
This just in... there was a follow-up raid of South Korean troops dressed up as animals to evade Kinect detection!