I'm just saying. Everything we know points to it being deliberately handicapped. The game actually runs better when you enable the settings that made it look gorgeous at E3. It runs better with better graphical fidelity.
The only excuse for disabling that is intentional malice or extreme incompetence. Ubisoft has a history of either of those in regards to PC gamers. If it were an isolated event, I'd go with incompetence, but this is no longer coincidence. I'm pretty sure it's malice due to it's repetition. l
Just a thought: It's also possible to stream a Youtube video with VLC media player by drag/dropping the link into the player. Which effectively lets you avoid the adds and have normal playback (i.e. no "smart" buffering).
I wouldn't be surprised if there were some way you could use that to download the video too, since, effectively, that's what a stream is. Downloading the video.
Assuming it can become the norm everywhere (huge assumption there)...
I imagine we will replace our coal plants with large battery plants to store all the extra power we get during the day so that these things can function well at night (having to only power sections of road with vehicles on them would probably make that very feasible).
Then the electricity bill wouldn't be for the actual electricity. It'd be for maintaining these large battery store houses and maintaining these roads. I mean really, if we laid out a ton of this stuff across the US (the desert regions specifically), I figure electricity would be dirt cheap if not free (aside from the aforementioned maintenance).
The only way I can see this actually happening is if the solar panel roads become ubiquitous, which as I said, is a huge assumption. The oil industry won't have it, and getting the capital to produce enough panels to make it worth while, then lay them across major highways would be massive. Then there's building the battery centers so that they can actually function at night (or we can shift to coal power for night time).
I think this is something that would definitely pay off in the long run, but probably won't happen for the same reasons other things similar to it didn't happen. i.e. big business and lobbyists.
Isn't a Download Accelerator, if used by many people to the same location, effectively a DoS attack? I get this from "Multiple connections to the same file".
Obviously pretty much everyone would need to start using them, but I'm just saying, the potential is there.
Exactly. It almost feels like this was made just to make headlines. Don't get me wrong, progress is awesome, but at least be honest about it. For example, I'd consider honesty feeling the need to mention their considerations on Dark Matter and why/how they interpreted it in this model.
I don't feel like that's asking for too much personally.
Because (ignore quotes) "bob is a dork and i hate my job" is largely easier to remember and more powerful than, "Tr0ub3c43r#$" [insert obligatory XKCD].
I mean really. If a person makes a passphrase as a full sentence (i.e. spaces, punctuation, capitalization, all the things grammar teachers teach), then that will give some part of school you likely never cared about some meaning in your life, and it would make your passphrases much more secure and easier to remember (i.e. it tells you a lot about your passphrase already).
Although the most annoying part (as always) is typos.
Please do not use homophobia when describing such people.
TFA is talking about phobias as genetic. i.e. they aren't something you choose. They are what you are born with.
Homophobia, as you are talking about (AFAIK) is the kind of hatred that is a choice. It isn't fear. It's downright hatred. Fear can lead to hatred, but I think phobias aren't directly tied to that.
In other words, there is a thing that is homophobia, a literal fear of gays that is akin to fear of heights and spiders. But that is a genetic thing apparently and not the same thing as the "homophobia" taught by many conservatives.
They just accept their brainwashing to hate homosexuals, or fail to see it, or something similar. I say this as someone who identifies as a conservative. And as someone who sincerely believes he has homophobia in the sense of what that word really means. I get the flight or fight response when near someone I know that is openly homosexual unless I'm trained to do otherwise. I know this by way of an old friend I grew up with in high school who came out as soon as he graduated. It still bothers me to be around him, but I can be. Others like him cause a sort of panic response in me.
I'm just saying. Please stop making homophobia an insult to the morality of a person when the actual word means something different. It's what happened to retarded (mental retardation was a completely legit medical term once), and I don't see how those who make this word an insult are any different from those who made gay an insult personally.
I am fine with sacrificing user friendliness for my privacy. Do not track me or I won't use your services. I have two yahoo emails which incidentally are used as account/spam dumps. I won't even use them for that if this is how Yahoo has chosen to do things.
But that's where one of the, imo, impossible questions to answer comes up. What happens if the Universe is self-correcting like in all those Sci-Fi movies?
Like in time travel shows, where if you make a paradox, the universe corrects it in some fashion or another so it doesn't exist. Or at least accounts for it.
If that were somehow true in reality, then as the constants changed, they would adjust things as they were to be seen as if they hadn't changed. Effectively rewriting the evidence of the current universe to reflect how the universe would have been if constants were indeed constant even if that's not really the truth.
I know. That's a convoluted response, but while I don't particularly support that idea myself, it sort of shows what I think is important to consider about the idea that the constants aren't constant. That, logically, if they change, they will inevitably erase the evidence of the fact they changed in some way or another.
We have to use the constants to measure the constants. Which is sort of the equivalent of us using our senses to observe the world even though we all know they can be fooled [Insert Matrix connection here].
Simply put, there are certain... "variations" of rules the Universe could go by that could very well prevent us from understanding it's past.
What you have to realize is that all the information we have obtained for the universe was obtained since recorded history started. i.e. not very long in the universe's lifetime. While we may be able to look at galaxies in the past since the light must travel and that takes time, that doesn't mean what we see is the same as the light was when it left (i.e. thousands to millions to billions to ?????? of years ago).
If we are to assume that the constants don't change based on space difference (i.e. 1 kilo is 1 kilo no matter where you are in the universe), but they can change (for whatever reason) as time passes, then if the light leaves and shows one thing, then, somehow, what makes light light changes (for example light's nature [photon & wave], or perhaps light's maximum speed, or something similarly basic or intrinsic to what light "is"].
If that were to somehow happen, what the light shows may or may not be different because it would change all light everywhere simultaneously regardless of how much time it's spent flying through space.
Maybe even the big bang isn't as we see it, and that was just a point where these constants changed from a universe we couldn't see or understand to one we can. Or something similar.
Basically, when the rules can change and we don't know why, the possibilities are endless in what could be the "absolute" truth about how the universe got from it's beginning to where it is now. It's not really different from the idea that we all just popped into existence, memories and all, 2 seconds before you read this message. We can't test it because we rely on the rules to test it, and that ends up being circular logic by default. Not that we shouldn't try, but I believe we need something that isn't tied to this universe to really understand it as it really is, but then we wouldn't understand it because we live in this universe.
And so, imo, the question is impossible to answer by the ways of science and how things work. But, we should still try anyway. It's what we do.
One problem with that is that whatever system we used would have to have two ends. One to get us up to 2 million MPH and another to stop us.
i.e. since the summary mentions two supermassive black holes probably having something to do with getting to that speed, we'd probably need something similar or equivalent to slow down within a reasonable timeframe from that speed.
Doing something like that within our solar system would be somewhat difficult I think. Even if we could somehow compact that much power into something we could build near Earth, we'd need an equivalent one wherever we are going in the solar system.
It's like Mass Effect. You can only go to places using the Mass Relay beacons that also have Mass Relay beacons. You need breaks as much as, if not more than, gas.
Because the US is moving slowly more and more towards a police state. Between the NSA doing what it does, Net Neutrality being butchered, Police brutality and authority overreach occurring more and more often, and other similar events, people don't want anything that can help the situation get worse.
And while I agree terrorizing a marketing drone is unreasonable and unacceptable, at the same time, I also don't think it's unreasonable or unacceptable for us to be so "against" this type of technology.
It existing and becoming prevalent in society will just give politicians with agendas ideas about enforcing it upon us. And their track record tells us they can do such things fine on their own as it is and are willing to. Extra initiative is bad. We have enough to deal with and giving people technology like this can make things worse more than it can make things better imo.
I personally wish this technology wasn't even a thing and that the people who own this company didn't want to make it mainstream. I'm not going to go as far as terrorizing them for it, but I stand by that choice to be completely against the idea of these type of weapons.
I have considered this before and it threw me for a loop, if you will.
Our understanding of everything about the past (i.e. big bang, evolution, etc) are hinged upon the idea that these constants are just that. Constants.
Now, if they aren't, then what happens to our measurements (i.e. age verification on fossils via radioactive decay and measuring the cosmic background) is these constants are not constants? Simple, they become wrong.
If, say, the constants changed considerably, rather than slightly, they would effectively erase the evidence of the fact they existed at all because the only way we can measure the universe is using them. Which incidentally would make certain things seem wonky (i.e.everything we "know" about the big bang, the missing mass in the universe, etc).
I agree that it isn't science by default, because it's impossible to measure something when you can only measure things with that something (i.e. it becomes circular logic as that something proves itself). Because of this, I personally have become increasingly skeptical of any science that involves talking about ancient things beyond the usual amount I give everything.
I'm very interested with where this might go. It's a concept that many are quick to discount because it's "unscientific", but it's a question that must be asked if we are to accept what the evidence suggests about the past and what our universe is doing or has done.
As someone else said, when you need a gun, really need it, you don't want something technical like a dead battery or a bug from stopping you on top of the other things that can happen (i.e. malfunction, it being taken, etc).
This is why the police don't use technologies made to help them prevent criminals from gaining the upper hand like magazine safeties and such. It's just another thing that could get in the way of when you need it most.
If the professionals aren't willing to use this type of stuff, I don't see why average citizens should be forced [Note the "forced"] to as well personally. It's fine as an offering, but even then, it's still terrible for the same reasons.
I like to think of it, using his barometer reference, as a tug of war where one side has a natural advantage (elevation). Imagine it so that the two barometers are pushing against each other (where the siphon works) and the top one is winning due to it's advantage causing the liquid to be transferred down.
Then that brings up the question of how the siphon actually pulls the liquid up and over.
Gravity pulls the liquid down on the back end, but the front end needs to be pulled up by something and that's the pressure differential penguinoid mentioned. So you are incorrect, as a siphon requires the pressure created by the gravity pulling the liquid down to pull the liquid up the front end. Or it can't siphon.
This can work in an environment without an atmosphere but with gravity, obviously, but not the point. You still need pressure. Just not explicitly atmospheric pressure.
It is bonded together with Covalent Hydrogen bonds. Which are very weak. Thus, liquid. It doesn't mean they aren't bonded. It means the bonds are easily broken and have little effect (i.e. the substance doesn't change).
.... In a strict open "You VS Us" kind of way, sure.
But apparently you missed what happened in the Middle-East, Vietnam, etc. Guerilla warfare is a game changer if done right. If every able bodied man and woman in the US fought against the US military using Guerilla Wafare tactics, the military would be screwed.
The biggest question becomes "Who do I shoot and who don't I shoot?"
I agree with you, in part. I disagree also, in part.
While I think it's actually noble of people to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, I think his argument comparing it to him asking to be killed is not the same thing. One has potential large tangible benefits for humanity (pushing science's boundaries), the other doesn't (he dies, doesn't use the resources he would have, and that's it).
The thing is, is that a large portion of the time, a person committing suicide is usually caused by temporary circumstance. Don't get me wrong. Depression sucks, but more often than not, it's temporary. I'll just use the old adage "a permanent solution to a temporary problem". There are obviously exceptions, such as terminal illness, chronic depression, and other things that we can't really fix (though medication can sometimes help), but since that isn't always how it is, I think you can't just go "It's their life." and pull the trigger without considering these things to define if it's ethical for you. It should be a last choice, because there is no going back (yet).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just saying. Everything we know points to it being deliberately handicapped. The game actually runs better when you enable the settings that made it look gorgeous at E3. It runs better with better graphical fidelity.
The only excuse for disabling that is intentional malice or extreme incompetence. Ubisoft has a history of either of those in regards to PC gamers. If it were an isolated event, I'd go with incompetence, but this is no longer coincidence. I'm pretty sure it's malice due to it's repetition. l
Sounds like he's in the middle of some Space Civ V and he has a winning strategy, at least for the foreseeable future.
Apparently they will do the same to Far Cry 4, specifically this article from Forbes about that subject.
Oh, and that update on Alex Hutchinson's Twitter response? Bollocks.
This one knows.
Windows 8.X can have a start menu with a simple download from (AFAIK) a trustable site.
I don't understand how techies can't do that. I can understand how the average Joe can't do that.
Just a thought: It's also possible to stream a Youtube video with VLC media player by drag/dropping the link into the player. Which effectively lets you avoid the adds and have normal playback (i.e. no "smart" buffering).
I wouldn't be surprised if there were some way you could use that to download the video too, since, effectively, that's what a stream is. Downloading the video.
Assuming it can become the norm everywhere (huge assumption there)...
I imagine we will replace our coal plants with large battery plants to store all the extra power we get during the day so that these things can function well at night (having to only power sections of road with vehicles on them would probably make that very feasible).
Then the electricity bill wouldn't be for the actual electricity. It'd be for maintaining these large battery store houses and maintaining these roads. I mean really, if we laid out a ton of this stuff across the US (the desert regions specifically), I figure electricity would be dirt cheap if not free (aside from the aforementioned maintenance).
The only way I can see this actually happening is if the solar panel roads become ubiquitous, which as I said, is a huge assumption. The oil industry won't have it, and getting the capital to produce enough panels to make it worth while, then lay them across major highways would be massive. Then there's building the battery centers so that they can actually function at night (or we can shift to coal power for night time).
I think this is something that would definitely pay off in the long run, but probably won't happen for the same reasons other things similar to it didn't happen. i.e. big business and lobbyists.
...
Isn't a Download Accelerator, if used by many people to the same location, effectively a DoS attack? I get this from "Multiple connections to the same file".
Obviously pretty much everyone would need to start using them, but I'm just saying, the potential is there.
,,,
Isn't "one choice" an oxymoron?
No fast lanes. Period.
You get what you pay for. That's it. Anything less and the FCC can screw off.
Is it hot in here, or is it just the thermal induction?
Exactly. It almost feels like this was made just to make headlines. Don't get me wrong, progress is awesome, but at least be honest about it. For example, I'd consider honesty feeling the need to mention their considerations on Dark Matter and why/how they interpreted it in this model.
I don't feel like that's asking for too much personally.
Where the extra matter went and how the universe expanded faster than the speed of light, temporarily?
Because something tells me TFA is missing that bit or exaggerating in their last line about puzzles.
passphrases.
Because (ignore quotes) "bob is a dork and i hate my job" is largely easier to remember and more powerful than, "Tr0ub3c43r#$" [insert obligatory XKCD].
I mean really. If a person makes a passphrase as a full sentence (i.e. spaces, punctuation, capitalization, all the things grammar teachers teach), then that will give some part of school you likely never cared about some meaning in your life, and it would make your passphrases much more secure and easier to remember (i.e. it tells you a lot about your passphrase already).
Although the most annoying part (as always) is typos.
Please do not use homophobia when describing such people.
TFA is talking about phobias as genetic. i.e. they aren't something you choose. They are what you are born with.
Homophobia, as you are talking about (AFAIK) is the kind of hatred that is a choice. It isn't fear. It's downright hatred. Fear can lead to hatred, but I think phobias aren't directly tied to that.
In other words, there is a thing that is homophobia, a literal fear of gays that is akin to fear of heights and spiders. But that is a genetic thing apparently and not the same thing as the "homophobia" taught by many conservatives.
They just accept their brainwashing to hate homosexuals, or fail to see it, or something similar. I say this as someone who identifies as a conservative. And as someone who sincerely believes he has homophobia in the sense of what that word really means. I get the flight or fight response when near someone I know that is openly homosexual unless I'm trained to do otherwise. I know this by way of an old friend I grew up with in high school who came out as soon as he graduated. It still bothers me to be around him, but I can be. Others like him cause a sort of panic response in me.
I'm just saying. Please stop making homophobia an insult to the morality of a person when the actual word means something different. It's what happened to retarded (mental retardation was a completely legit medical term once), and I don't see how those who make this word an insult are any different from those who made gay an insult personally.
I am fine with sacrificing user friendliness for my privacy. Do not track me or I won't use your services. I have two yahoo emails which incidentally are used as account/spam dumps. I won't even use them for that if this is how Yahoo has chosen to do things.
But that's where one of the, imo, impossible questions to answer comes up. What happens if the Universe is self-correcting like in all those Sci-Fi movies?
Like in time travel shows, where if you make a paradox, the universe corrects it in some fashion or another so it doesn't exist. Or at least accounts for it.
If that were somehow true in reality, then as the constants changed, they would adjust things as they were to be seen as if they hadn't changed. Effectively rewriting the evidence of the current universe to reflect how the universe would have been if constants were indeed constant even if that's not really the truth.
I know. That's a convoluted response, but while I don't particularly support that idea myself, it sort of shows what I think is important to consider about the idea that the constants aren't constant. That, logically, if they change, they will inevitably erase the evidence of the fact they changed in some way or another.
We have to use the constants to measure the constants. Which is sort of the equivalent of us using our senses to observe the world even though we all know they can be fooled [Insert Matrix connection here].
Simply put, there are certain ... "variations" of rules the Universe could go by that could very well prevent us from understanding it's past.
What you have to realize is that all the information we have obtained for the universe was obtained since recorded history started. i.e. not very long in the universe's lifetime. While we may be able to look at galaxies in the past since the light must travel and that takes time, that doesn't mean what we see is the same as the light was when it left (i.e. thousands to millions to billions to ?????? of years ago).
If we are to assume that the constants don't change based on space difference (i.e. 1 kilo is 1 kilo no matter where you are in the universe), but they can change (for whatever reason) as time passes, then if the light leaves and shows one thing, then, somehow, what makes light light changes (for example light's nature [photon & wave], or perhaps light's maximum speed, or something similarly basic or intrinsic to what light "is"].
If that were to somehow happen, what the light shows may or may not be different because it would change all light everywhere simultaneously regardless of how much time it's spent flying through space.
Maybe even the big bang isn't as we see it, and that was just a point where these constants changed from a universe we couldn't see or understand to one we can. Or something similar.
Basically, when the rules can change and we don't know why, the possibilities are endless in what could be the "absolute" truth about how the universe got from it's beginning to where it is now. It's not really different from the idea that we all just popped into existence, memories and all, 2 seconds before you read this message. We can't test it because we rely on the rules to test it, and that ends up being circular logic by default. Not that we shouldn't try, but I believe we need something that isn't tied to this universe to really understand it as it really is, but then we wouldn't understand it because we live in this universe.
And so, imo, the question is impossible to answer by the ways of science and how things work. But, we should still try anyway. It's what we do.
One problem with that is that whatever system we used would have to have two ends. One to get us up to 2 million MPH and another to stop us.
i.e. since the summary mentions two supermassive black holes probably having something to do with getting to that speed, we'd probably need something similar or equivalent to slow down within a reasonable timeframe from that speed.
Doing something like that within our solar system would be somewhat difficult I think. Even if we could somehow compact that much power into something we could build near Earth, we'd need an equivalent one wherever we are going in the solar system.
It's like Mass Effect. You can only go to places using the Mass Relay beacons that also have Mass Relay beacons. You need breaks as much as, if not more than, gas.
Because the US is moving slowly more and more towards a police state. Between the NSA doing what it does, Net Neutrality being butchered, Police brutality and authority overreach occurring more and more often, and other similar events, people don't want anything that can help the situation get worse.
And while I agree terrorizing a marketing drone is unreasonable and unacceptable, at the same time, I also don't think it's unreasonable or unacceptable for us to be so "against" this type of technology.
It existing and becoming prevalent in society will just give politicians with agendas ideas about enforcing it upon us. And their track record tells us they can do such things fine on their own as it is and are willing to. Extra initiative is bad. We have enough to deal with and giving people technology like this can make things worse more than it can make things better imo.
I personally wish this technology wasn't even a thing and that the people who own this company didn't want to make it mainstream. I'm not going to go as far as terrorizing them for it, but I stand by that choice to be completely against the idea of these type of weapons.
As is said, "Keep it simple, stupid."
Yes! Finally, people are talking about this!
I have considered this before and it threw me for a loop, if you will.
Our understanding of everything about the past (i.e. big bang, evolution, etc) are hinged upon the idea that these constants are just that. Constants.
Now, if they aren't, then what happens to our measurements (i.e. age verification on fossils via radioactive decay and measuring the cosmic background) is these constants are not constants? Simple, they become wrong.
If, say, the constants changed considerably, rather than slightly, they would effectively erase the evidence of the fact they existed at all because the only way we can measure the universe is using them. Which incidentally would make certain things seem wonky (i.e.everything we "know" about the big bang, the missing mass in the universe, etc).
I agree that it isn't science by default, because it's impossible to measure something when you can only measure things with that something (i.e. it becomes circular logic as that something proves itself). Because of this, I personally have become increasingly skeptical of any science that involves talking about ancient things beyond the usual amount I give everything.
I'm very interested with where this might go. It's a concept that many are quick to discount because it's "unscientific", but it's a question that must be asked if we are to accept what the evidence suggests about the past and what our universe is doing or has done.
What Whatsisname said.
In theory, it's a win/win. In practice, it's not.
As someone else said, when you need a gun, really need it, you don't want something technical like a dead battery or a bug from stopping you on top of the other things that can happen (i.e. malfunction, it being taken, etc).
This is why the police don't use technologies made to help them prevent criminals from gaining the upper hand like magazine safeties and such. It's just another thing that could get in the way of when you need it most.
If the professionals aren't willing to use this type of stuff, I don't see why average citizens should be forced [Note the "forced"] to as well personally. It's fine as an offering, but even then, it's still terrible for the same reasons.
Right, I was wrong.
I like to think of it, using his barometer reference, as a tug of war where one side has a natural advantage (elevation). Imagine it so that the two barometers are pushing against each other (where the siphon works) and the top one is winning due to it's advantage causing the liquid to be transferred down.
It's really quite something.
Then that brings up the question of how the siphon actually pulls the liquid up and over.
Gravity pulls the liquid down on the back end, but the front end needs to be pulled up by something and that's the pressure differential penguinoid mentioned. So you are incorrect, as a siphon requires the pressure created by the gravity pulling the liquid down to pull the liquid up the front end. Or it can't siphon.
This can work in an environment without an atmosphere but with gravity, obviously, but not the point. You still need pressure. Just not explicitly atmospheric pressure.
Uh...
It is bonded together with Covalent Hydrogen bonds. Which are very weak. Thus, liquid. It doesn't mean they aren't bonded. It means the bonds are easily broken and have little effect (i.e. the substance doesn't change).
.... In a strict open "You VS Us" kind of way, sure.
But apparently you missed what happened in the Middle-East, Vietnam, etc. Guerilla warfare is a game changer if done right. If every able bodied man and woman in the US fought against the US military using Guerilla Wafare tactics, the military would be screwed.
The biggest question becomes "Who do I shoot and who don't I shoot?"
I agree with you, in part. I disagree also, in part.
While I think it's actually noble of people to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, I think his argument comparing it to him asking to be killed is not the same thing. One has potential large tangible benefits for humanity (pushing science's boundaries), the other doesn't (he dies, doesn't use the resources he would have, and that's it).
The thing is, is that a large portion of the time, a person committing suicide is usually caused by temporary circumstance. Don't get me wrong. Depression sucks, but more often than not, it's temporary. I'll just use the old adage "a permanent solution to a temporary problem". There are obviously exceptions, such as terminal illness, chronic depression, and other things that we can't really fix (though medication can sometimes help), but since that isn't always how it is, I think you can't just go "It's their life." and pull the trigger without considering these things to define if it's ethical for you. It should be a last choice, because there is no going back (yet).