Though it will most likely be capable of gliding considerable distance with no engine power.
Not exactly. Don't forget that it is only a few feet above the water in most cases. Thus, without engine power, it may have the best glide ratio on the planet... but you can't glide far when the water is only 10 feet below you.
An Opportunity, not a Penalty
on
Tron 2.0 Game
·
· Score: 1
This is a benefit, not a limitation.
Because they do not have to worry about making the most detailed drawing of every area, they are free to show VAST DISTANCES, and put more energy into cool texture effects and vaster worlds.
In short, this limitation does not relly limit anything... it merely changes the focus from what is 'normal' in todays games (high detail, realistic graphics) to something completely different (vast panoramas, unreal graphics)
The city defends its decision to abandon its support contract: He said any expert who suggests the city spend the extra money should realize that "they don't have to pay for it."
Of course, they neglect to mention that any sane proposal to abandon their AS/400 and its service contract would have included being up and running on their "new and improved" PC system BEFORE dropping the support for the old system.
As noted in the article: Since then, because the city doesn't have a maintenance agreement with IBM to repair the computer and retrieve the data, five city hall employees have spent their days typing more than 25,000 names, addresses and tax information onto two personal computers.
Do they think these employees have nothing better to do? What about all the other hassles and pain caused by retraining, PC downtime, and all the other costs associated with their choice.
The government at that city obviously has NOT taken any classes on economics. They sound like my old boss... any hidden cost is not really a cost at all.
I don't really have the perseverence for programming, I don't have the work ethic for long projects, and I am not self motivated enough to do most jobs that have you working on your own.
But Support... I can program, I can manage servers, I can do networking (I was sole techie at a very small ISP for 6 years), but I would RATHER help Susan from Spokane get her ISDN line up and running again. I would RATHER teach 84 year old James how to view a picture emailed to him by his granddaughter. I just get such a warm fuzzy helping people use their computers.
And I'm lucky to be working at a business that allows me the luxury to take the time and help where I choose.
I work at a small ISP (only about 10K customers or so) in Wisconsin. I have the luxury of not having anyone count my call time... I can spend three minutes with a customer, or thirty, and nobody cares.
I have the highest call length average in the call center ('call center' being a euphomism, since there are only 5 fulltime techs and 10 employees:-) and that's ok, because I also have the most customer compliments.
I truly enjoy my job, I like helping customers, and it shows. I'm never flustered, no matter how upset the customer. I am good with computers in general, good at sales, programming, etc... but my true talent is in Customer Support. I could work in Customer Support (of some sort or another) for my entire life and be satisfied, hehe.
As long as I don't have to do paperwork... I literally PAY one of my coworkers to do my paperwork for me, I hate it so much. If I can't type it, I won't do it.
But it helps that I *am* a tech support guy. I have frequently lied to the tech about what I see, I just quote what they want to hear from memory. I have led other people through the same kinds of procedures so often I can see the screens in my mind.
I would not be surprised if the turns are exactly six seconds long. That would be quite satisfying to me.
For those not aware, D&D3E rules have 10 rounds in a minute, and normally you can take one action per round (more as you gain higher levels and get multiple attacks and similar things). Six seconds would mean that the animation would be a reasonable approximation of what you are supposed to believe happens in those six seconds that actually take about 3 or 4 minutes to arbitrate in pen and paper gaming.
It's out, now, in a highly entertaining and usable format. It's called HLTV, and it comes with the current version of Half Life. It is similar to some proxy programs written for Quake World way-back-when.
With HLTV, the TV server connects to the server hosting the game. Then viewers connect to the HLTV server and can watch the action. Not only can they see the game through the players eyes, but they can switch to chase cam view, and an overhead map view that looks like an animated football-play diagram, with little circles running around the map.
In addition, because the HLTV server delays what you see by several seconds, it can find the most 'exciting' content and switch you to it before it happens... did some player get 3 kills in a row? Jump to that! Is a counter terrorist defusing the bomb? Let's see if he makes it!
Imagine if car races had cameras that could be anywhere at any time, and the race was delayed by 30 seconds so they could find the coolest shots before they happened... never miss the beginning shot of the crash again!
I cannot wait to see technology like this spread to other game types other than first person shooters.
So, the moon receives 13000TW of power, and we only need 1% of that? Let's do a little math eh...
Solar cells are at best about 20% efficient. For the sake of my argument, that's the number I'm using. The argument stands even if you could imagine getting 50% efficiency from the falling sunlight.
They would need to cover 1% of the lunar surface on BOTH sides of the moon, because only half of the solar panels would be in sunlight at a time.
They would need to cover 5% of the surface, because the cells are only 20% efficient.
Combine those two problems, and you have 10% of the surface of the moon covered in solar panels. Add another 5% because not every portion of the surface is suitable for placing panels. Multiply the result (15% of the lunar surface covered) by about 1.5, to make up for the transmission loss from the moon to earth, and through the atmosphere. Result... over 20% of the moons surface, its TOTAL surface both visible and non, covered with solar panels to get that 130TW the author stated.
Imagine the moon with a bright shiny ring of solar sails all along the left and right edge. If you can't hear every environmentalist and presevationist crying out simultaneously in anger, you are deaf.
Microsoft has pretty consistently touted the networked XML web services part of the.NET framework as the 'best part'. Which I think is complete bullshit. The 'best part' about.NET is the fact that it is compiled, managed, sandboxed code with a truly awesome set of tools to play with. Improved data management, almost every object in it is serializable (you can save it to the HD in text or binary format, and reload it later, built in, no extra coding).
There are a lot of reasons to like.NET... in fact, the only reason I know of NOT to like.NET is the usual 'Windows Only' bullshit. But it's a MS product... that's a given.
I'm amused that people do not notice satire when they see it... this thing should be +3 Funny, not +2 Insightful. And all those serious replies... sigh.
The fact that the writer does not even coherently stick to the same point from beginning of post to end should clue people in that it was meant as humor.
Most CDs provided to customers by ISPs are useless. Those that are not useless... will be in three months when the CD is out of date.
I believe that anything beyond a simple CD with the most current Windows dialer/browser is pointless. And I say Windows browser NOT because it has IE, but because it also updates the dialer stack and the UI for setting up dialup.
I work at a small local ISP. A remote diagnostic tool is pointless 90% of the time because they cannot connect and that is why they are calling in the first place.
In addition, I dislike CDs because we get users with their four year old CD installing some horribly old version of IE and NS, and then I just have to walk them through upgrading again. They have horribly old dialup settings... ugh. I just hate CDs provided to customers in general. They cause me so much hassle. I'd rather they called me and had me fix it RIGHT over the phone than try and fix it themselves with some outdated CD.
I believe the goal of this stupidity is to prevent people from making perfect copies of the CD, directly from Windows to MP3 format. The stupidity of it is that since MP3 is a somewhat lossy format anyway, the minor additional loss caused by ripping the output of a Stereo is no big deal. In addition, even if 99% of the people with the CD are unable to copy it, all it takes is a few making a good digital copy, and uploading it.
ONE good upload of the CD, and that good copy will spread and spread. So what did the RIAA gain? Nothing except pissed off customers. They did not even prevent it being shared in a high quality format.
This smacks of stupidity. Gross stupidity on their part. Even putting aside their evil, it is sad to see them so incapable of working out the basic facts of reality.
I have about 50 or so accounts on various servers that I use frequently. I use about 10 passwords on those various services. Half of them would be considered 'strong'... liberal use of the shift key, number keys, etc. The other half are middling to weak.
On most of the sites, I use a single, weak password... on every site that I do not trust, or do not care about. On the important ones, I use one of the strong passwords, or a variation (shifted in different spot, etc).
As I am assigned passwords at work, I add them to my list of 'strong' passwords. I get a new random password yearly, so I have a long time to memorize it. Once it is no longer my work password, I add it to my farm of passwords I use elsewhere.
So for sites that don't matter, I use the poorest password manners possible... one weak password shared all over. But for important stuff (paypal, online banking, email, shells, etc) I use strong passwords that rarely duplicate.
For me, this is the best combination of convenience and security.
First, recognize that the original article is wrong. The game does not have deflation.
It has inflation, coupled with fast item depreciation. The depreciation occurs faster than inflation. Thus, you do not have the ideal situation in which to bank money... you have the WORST situation in which to bank money. Any goods you buy will be worth 30% less in a year... you did not gain money, you lost it.
Your best investment, as an EQ player, would be to sell your character, then buy it back in a year for 30% less than you sold it for.
SW:G is not out yet, but a lot of attention is being spent discussing the economy that will take shape when it does.
The developers (and the thousands of fans trolling the boards) are spending a lot of effort analyzing the fountains (things that bring money and resources into the economy) and drains (things that remove money and resources from the economy) in an attempt to make a relatively stable player economy.
In current Massively Multiplayer Onling RPGs (MMORPGs) nearly everyone is a fighter, and those that are not fighters are usually mules to help support the player's fighter character. One of the primary goals for the developers is to make crafting, and associated skills (such as mining) interesting enough in their own right to be viable alternatives to fighting characters. For this to work, they need a viable, working player economy... so they have far more incentive to get it right than most MMORPGs do.
You can read more on the developer's forum or in the FAQ. It is not expected to be out till late 2002, or early 2003 if it slips a bit, so we'll see how it turns out in reality... but I can hope...
The tests seem to hold promise, but it is not confirmed yet. But if it works... ooh, the excitement. 'Free' stem cells, with no issues about embryos and cloning is a dream come true to scientists working in this field.
I wonder how long before practical applications of this research become available... five years? Ten?
Microsoft will pump money into the XBox as long as necessary to make it successful. They'll buy developers, lower prices, burn advertising, and do whatever it takes to make the XBox popular.
Think Internet Explorer. Version 1.0 SUCKED. Netscape laughed at it.
Actually, that is exactly the opposite of what Carmack said. Coming up with an original, creative idea is easy... carrying that idea through with team building, product milestones, good advertising, careful budgeting, time management, quality assurance... THAT is hard.
My boss, who now owns her own secretarial company, was forced out of a job under similar circumstances naerly 15 years ago.
She started working at a company as a suitably menial worker. Through hard work and intelligence, she rose to a position where she the equivalent of a network administrator, though they had some odd title for it. New VP gets put over the MIS department, and started kicking out all the people who did not have bachelors degrees... perhaps he felt it unfair that competant people hold high paying jobs that should be given to college graduates.
Whatever the idiot thought, he forced out half the upper IS staff and hired in (less competant, younger, higher paid) replacements. My boss was one of the last to be let go, on a faked accusation of company theft. What amazes me is that she was friends with the CEO... and the CEO knew the charges were false yet still let her be fired. He gave her an excellent severance package, but he still allowed her to be forced out of the company by an elitist asshole. Why he valued a hard working, intelligent employee and friend less than a lying, close minded beaurocrat... bah.
It is stories like this, and that of the poster, that reinforce my resolve to never, ever, work in a corporate environment.
From what I have seen, eDonkey2000 is a much better P2P that allows anyone to setup a central server... not only that, but a central server uses very little bandwidth. You can serve 100 clients on a MODEM for pete's sake. There is very little minute-to-minute traffic when using eDonkey2000, unlike Gnutella based clients.
eDonkey is quite stable. All it needs to really succeed is shorter connection timeouts and some automatic retry functionality... in particular, you have to manually expand a search, and it takes some time.
All irrelevant. One satellite is in geostationary orbit, at about 38000km up. In other words, relative to the ground, it isn't moving at all. The 7000km/hr figure is for the low orbit satellite, which is orbiting quite fast. This ain't no record player... they are not orbiting at different speeds. Thus, the circumfrence of their orbit has little to do with the speed at which they orbit. I don't know the orbital equations, but I know that much.
The 'stationary' satellite and the low orbit satellite only communicate for short periods, in which the low orbit satellite uploads its accumulated data to the stationary one, which then relays it to the ground.
Communicating with low orbit satellites has always been a pain. You need to track them accurately as they zoom across the sky. This new technology lets the ground crew track the stationary satellite instead, saving them lots of effort, and probably reducing costs.
Slashdot Mirror
a vehicle that can drive itself 99% is going to crash an awful lot when the driver/pilot needs to add that last 1%.
Leading to the question of what argument the designers have against boats, being another craft that fits this same description.
Though it will most likely be capable of gliding considerable distance with no engine power.
Not exactly. Don't forget that it is only a few feet above the water in most cases. Thus, without engine power, it may have the best glide ratio on the planet... but you can't glide far when the water is only 10 feet below you.
This is a benefit, not a limitation.
Because they do not have to worry about making the most detailed drawing of every area, they are free to show VAST DISTANCES, and put more energy into cool texture effects and vaster worlds.
In short, this limitation does not relly limit anything... it merely changes the focus from what is 'normal' in todays games (high detail, realistic graphics) to something completely different (vast panoramas, unreal graphics)
The city defends its decision to abandon its support contract: He said any expert who suggests the city spend the extra money should realize that "they don't have to pay for it."
Of course, they neglect to mention that any sane proposal to abandon their AS/400 and its service contract would have included being up and running on their "new and improved" PC system BEFORE dropping the support for the old system.
As noted in the article: Since then, because the city doesn't have a maintenance agreement with IBM to repair the computer and retrieve the data, five city hall employees have spent their days typing more than 25,000 names, addresses and tax information onto two personal computers.
Do they think these employees have nothing better to do? What about all the other hassles and pain caused by retraining, PC downtime, and all the other costs associated with their choice.
The government at that city obviously has NOT taken any classes on economics. They sound like my old boss... any hidden cost is not really a cost at all.
I don't really have the perseverence for programming, I don't have the work ethic for long projects, and I am not self motivated enough to do most jobs that have you working on your own.
But Support... I can program, I can manage servers, I can do networking (I was sole techie at a very small ISP for 6 years), but I would RATHER help Susan from Spokane get her ISDN line up and running again. I would RATHER teach 84 year old James how to view a picture emailed to him by his granddaughter. I just get such a warm fuzzy helping people use their computers.
And I'm lucky to be working at a business that allows me the luxury to take the time and help where I choose.
I work at a small ISP (only about 10K customers or so) in Wisconsin. I have the luxury of not having anyone count my call time... I can spend three minutes with a customer, or thirty, and nobody cares.
:-) and that's ok, because I also have the most customer compliments.
I have the highest call length average in the call center ('call center' being a euphomism, since there are only 5 fulltime techs and 10 employees
I truly enjoy my job, I like helping customers, and it shows. I'm never flustered, no matter how upset the customer. I am good with computers in general, good at sales, programming, etc... but my true talent is in Customer Support. I could work in Customer Support (of some sort or another) for my entire life and be satisfied, hehe.
As long as I don't have to do paperwork... I literally PAY one of my coworkers to do my paperwork for me, I hate it so much. If I can't type it, I won't do it.
But it helps that I *am* a tech support guy. I have frequently lied to the tech about what I see, I just quote what they want to hear from memory. I have led other people through the same kinds of procedures so often I can see the screens in my mind.
I would not be surprised if the turns are exactly six seconds long. That would be quite satisfying to me.
For those not aware, D&D3E rules have 10 rounds in a minute, and normally you can take one action per round (more as you gain higher levels and get multiple attacks and similar things). Six seconds would mean that the animation would be a reasonable approximation of what you are supposed to believe happens in those six seconds that actually take about 3 or 4 minutes to arbitrate in pen and paper gaming.
It's out, now, in a highly entertaining and usable format. It's called HLTV, and it comes with the current version of Half Life. It is similar to some proxy programs written for Quake World way-back-when.
With HLTV, the TV server connects to the server hosting the game. Then viewers connect to the HLTV server and can watch the action. Not only can they see the game through the players eyes, but they can switch to chase cam view, and an overhead map view that looks like an animated football-play diagram, with little circles running around the map.
In addition, because the HLTV server delays what you see by several seconds, it can find the most 'exciting' content and switch you to it before it happens... did some player get 3 kills in a row? Jump to that! Is a counter terrorist defusing the bomb? Let's see if he makes it!
Imagine if car races had cameras that could be anywhere at any time, and the race was delayed by 30 seconds so they could find the coolest shots before they happened... never miss the beginning shot of the crash again!
I cannot wait to see technology like this spread to other game types other than first person shooters.
So, the moon receives 13000TW of power, and we only need 1% of that? Let's do a little math eh...
Solar cells are at best about 20% efficient. For the sake of my argument, that's the number I'm using. The argument stands even if you could imagine getting 50% efficiency from the falling sunlight.
They would need to cover 1% of the lunar surface on BOTH sides of the moon, because only half of the solar panels would be in sunlight at a time.
They would need to cover 5% of the surface, because the cells are only 20% efficient.
Combine those two problems, and you have 10% of the surface of the moon covered in solar panels. Add another 5% because not every portion of the surface is suitable for placing panels. Multiply the result (15% of the lunar surface covered) by about 1.5, to make up for the transmission loss from the moon to earth, and through the atmosphere. Result... over 20% of the moons surface, its TOTAL surface both visible and non, covered with solar panels to get that 130TW the author stated.
Imagine the moon with a bright shiny ring of solar sails all along the left and right edge. If you can't hear every environmentalist and presevationist crying out simultaneously in anger, you are deaf.
Microsoft has pretty consistently touted the networked XML web services part of the .NET framework as the 'best part'. Which I think is complete bullshit. The 'best part' about .NET is the fact that it is compiled, managed, sandboxed code with a truly awesome set of tools to play with. Improved data management, almost every object in it is serializable (you can save it to the HD in text or binary format, and reload it later, built in, no extra coding).
.NET... in fact, the only reason I know of NOT to like .NET is the usual 'Windows Only' bullshit. But it's a MS product... that's a given.
There are a lot of reasons to like
I'm amused that people do not notice satire when they see it... this thing should be +3 Funny, not +2 Insightful. And all those serious replies... sigh.
The fact that the writer does not even coherently stick to the same point from beginning of post to end should clue people in that it was meant as humor.
Most CDs provided to customers by ISPs are useless. Those that are not useless... will be in three months when the CD is out of date.
I believe that anything beyond a simple CD with the most current Windows dialer/browser is pointless. And I say Windows browser NOT because it has IE, but because it also updates the dialer stack and the UI for setting up dialup.
I work at a small local ISP. A remote diagnostic tool is pointless 90% of the time because they cannot connect and that is why they are calling in the first place.
In addition, I dislike CDs because we get users with their four year old CD installing some horribly old version of IE and NS, and then I just have to walk them through upgrading again. They have horribly old dialup settings... ugh. I just hate CDs provided to customers in general. They cause me so much hassle. I'd rather they called me and had me fix it RIGHT over the phone than try and fix it themselves with some outdated CD.
I believe the goal of this stupidity is to prevent people from making perfect copies of the CD, directly from Windows to MP3 format. The stupidity of it is that since MP3 is a somewhat lossy format anyway, the minor additional loss caused by ripping the output of a Stereo is no big deal. In addition, even if 99% of the people with the CD are unable to copy it, all it takes is a few making a good digital copy, and uploading it.
ONE good upload of the CD, and that good copy will spread and spread. So what did the RIAA gain? Nothing except pissed off customers. They did not even prevent it being shared in a high quality format.
This smacks of stupidity. Gross stupidity on their part. Even putting aside their evil, it is sad to see them so incapable of working out the basic facts of reality.
I have about 50 or so accounts on various servers that I use frequently. I use about 10 passwords on those various services. Half of them would be considered 'strong'... liberal use of the shift key, number keys, etc. The other half are middling to weak.
On most of the sites, I use a single, weak password... on every site that I do not trust, or do not care about. On the important ones, I use one of the strong passwords, or a variation (shifted in different spot, etc).
As I am assigned passwords at work, I add them to my list of 'strong' passwords. I get a new random password yearly, so I have a long time to memorize it. Once it is no longer my work password, I add it to my farm of passwords I use elsewhere.
So for sites that don't matter, I use the poorest password manners possible... one weak password shared all over. But for important stuff (paypal, online banking, email, shells, etc) I use strong passwords that rarely duplicate.
For me, this is the best combination of convenience and security.
No, it should have been previewed... both times.
Without protected memory space? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your disagreement, but OSX *does* have protected memory. It is OS9 and prior that do not.
Not exactly.
First, recognize that the original article is wrong. The game does not have deflation.
It has inflation, coupled with fast item depreciation. The depreciation occurs faster than inflation. Thus, you do not have the ideal situation in which to bank money... you have the WORST situation in which to bank money. Any goods you buy will be worth 30% less in a year... you did not gain money, you lost it.
Your best investment, as an EQ player, would be to sell your character, then buy it back in a year for 30% less than you sold it for.
Raven
SW:G is not out yet, but a lot of attention is being spent discussing the economy that will take shape when it does.
The developers (and the thousands of fans trolling the boards) are spending a lot of effort analyzing the fountains (things that bring money and resources into the economy) and drains (things that remove money and resources from the economy) in an attempt to make a relatively stable player economy.
In current Massively Multiplayer Onling RPGs (MMORPGs) nearly everyone is a fighter, and those that are not fighters are usually mules to help support the player's fighter character. One of the primary goals for the developers is to make crafting, and associated skills (such as mining) interesting enough in their own right to be viable alternatives to fighting characters. For this to work, they need a viable, working player economy... so they have far more incentive to get it right than most MMORPGs do.
You can read more on the developer's forum or in the FAQ. It is not expected to be out till late 2002, or early 2003 if it slips a bit, so we'll see how it turns out in reality... but I can hope...
Raven
The tests seem to hold promise, but it is not confirmed yet. But if it works... ooh, the excitement. 'Free' stem cells, with no issues about embryos and cloning is a dream come true to scientists working in this field.
I wonder how long before practical applications of this research become available... five years? Ten?
Raven
Microsoft will pump money into the XBox as long as necessary to make it successful. They'll buy developers, lower prices, burn advertising, and do whatever it takes to make the XBox popular.
Think Internet Explorer. Version 1.0 SUCKED. Netscape laughed at it.
Sone = Netscape. Fear the future.
Actually, that is exactly the opposite of what Carmack said. Coming up with an original, creative idea is easy... carrying that idea through with team building, product milestones, good advertising, careful budgeting, time management, quality assurance... THAT is hard.
The Raven
My boss, who now owns her own secretarial company, was forced out of a job under similar circumstances naerly 15 years ago.
She started working at a company as a suitably menial worker. Through hard work and intelligence, she rose to a position where she the equivalent of a network administrator, though they had some odd title for it. New VP gets put over the MIS department, and started kicking out all the people who did not have bachelors degrees... perhaps he felt it unfair that competant people hold high paying jobs that should be given to college graduates.
Whatever the idiot thought, he forced out half the upper IS staff and hired in (less competant, younger, higher paid) replacements. My boss was one of the last to be let go, on a faked accusation of company theft. What amazes me is that she was friends with the CEO... and the CEO knew the charges were false yet still let her be fired. He gave her an excellent severance package, but he still allowed her to be forced out of the company by an elitist asshole. Why he valued a hard working, intelligent employee and friend less than a lying, close minded beaurocrat... bah.
It is stories like this, and that of the poster, that reinforce my resolve to never, ever, work in a corporate environment.
Raven
From what I have seen, eDonkey2000 is a much better P2P that allows anyone to setup a central server... not only that, but a central server uses very little bandwidth. You can serve 100 clients on a MODEM for pete's sake. There is very little minute-to-minute traffic when using eDonkey2000, unlike Gnutella based clients.
eDonkey is quite stable. All it needs to really succeed is shorter connection timeouts and some automatic retry functionality... in particular, you have to manually expand a search, and it takes some time.
Vote eDonkey for P2P president!
All irrelevant. One satellite is in geostationary orbit, at about 38000km up. In other words, relative to the ground, it isn't moving at all. The 7000km/hr figure is for the low orbit satellite, which is orbiting quite fast. This ain't no record player... they are not orbiting at different speeds. Thus, the circumfrence of their orbit has little to do with the speed at which they orbit. I don't know the orbital equations, but I know that much.
The 'stationary' satellite and the low orbit satellite only communicate for short periods, in which the low orbit satellite uploads its accumulated data to the stationary one, which then relays it to the ground.
Communicating with low orbit satellites has always been a pain. You need to track them accurately as they zoom across the sky. This new technology lets the ground crew track the stationary satellite instead, saving them lots of effort, and probably reducing costs.
Raven