With Epic on the job, I've no (or at least little) doubt the gameplay will be good, easily worth what I'll be paying for it.:-) That said, I just hope the propaganda is not blatant "The Army rocks, join the army, the army is your friend, being in the army is cool and fun." That's an idiotic approach. Far better is simply to emphasize the realism of your games in press releases, then make darn sure the games are fun and have a good storyline, which will encourage the player to identify with their side of the game - in this case, the military. Subtlety, that's the ticket. Oh, and maybe some ad banners in-game. Those I could deal with.
Way I'd do it: When a user dies, require him to walk back to a real-world location indicated by AR beacons. Upon reaching this point, the player would be "reintegrated" into the game world, but not until then.
Hawking DID go on the simpsons. Doesn't that suggest the sort of quirky, fun-loving humor that characterizes a "geek"? For that matter, doesn't the betting likewise qualify. Furthermore, I'd point out live interviews are probably a bitch for Hawking - how fast do you think he can type?
Damnit. You know, I'd heard of Gould before, never really cared one way or the other about him. I didn't even realize the significance of Gould on that Simpsons episode. But now, reading all these articles on CNN, NYtimes, even/. posts - I really regret the fact I'll never have the chance to take a class taught by this man, or have a one-in-a-million chance to run into him on the street. Why the hell is it that death seems to be the most effective form of publicity for the most interesting people?
I seem to recall reading an essay about this a while back. Basically, the problem is it takes time even to adapt to moving in space and getting over space-sickness - puke globules are NOT sexy. Furthermore, you'd have to use some sort of straps to hold you on to your mate - "equal and opposite reactions" would make staying in proximity to each other a challenge.
There really aren't many things we (human beings) can't do in regards to putting people in orbit, on the moon, or even other places in the solar system. The question is simply one of how much time and effort we are willing to invest in the project. A don't know how self-sufficient the Chinese moon base would be, but the US has had the technology to put people on the moon for decades, and to keep people in space for months on end. A long-term moonbase would be a hassle in terms of cost, maintenance, and operation, but there's not much new here technologically.
Doesn't this question assume that we have money? Considering the huge numbers of high school and college students on slashdot, that seems like an unfounded assumption.
That said, I currently use a free-as-in-beer napkin, which I scrawl down my balance on periodically.
One to declare the constant. Another to print it - if your program can't tell anyone the Secret of Life, the Universe, and Anything, it's useless. The remaining two lines are a loop allowing you to either exit the program, or print the Ultimate Number again (if for some reason the user wants to double-check).
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall from my physics paper that this explosion provided the inspiration for the Manhatten Project's Hundred-Ton test (of conventional explosives), designed to help figure out what a multi-kiloton explosion would be like.
Agreed, Pinochet is bad, and the fact the author chose him as an example suggests poor understanding of certain historical and political facts. But there is the grain of a good point here: it is possible to have a fairly benign dictatorship which is not brutal, not cruel or power-mad, and generally tries to improve the lives of most of the citizens. Singapore would be an admittedly imperfect, but acceptable example of this. Certainly better than the Pinochet regime.
Why not use one PIC and one speaker for each and every laser "string"? Yes, it sounds kludgy - and it is - but there are some real advantages. First of all, it greatly simplifies both programming and circuit design - just have a bunch of mostly independent laser-sensor-PIC-speaker units that just share a power source. This also gives you a much more modular design - once you teach yourself to play this well, you can scale it up relatively easily. Also, using seperate speakers for each string will make it behave more like a string intsrument - the sound in a violin comes in part from the resonance chamber, but originates with a single string, not one central speaker for all the strings.
Finally, using one cheap speaker for each string could give you a greater tone range - use cheaper, smaller speakers for the higher registers, and some "more expensive" (maybe $5) ones to get a more satisfying bass on your lower strings.
As I've said, I realize this is not elegant, but it will be quicker and easier to build and debug than a "one-PIC-to-bind-them" approach. Important, since you've got maybe a month until graduation.
"We have all become very marker-prone, but shouldn't we nevertheless admit that, in the end, despite all we try to do, the most effective "marker" for any intruders will be a relatively limited amount of sickness and death caused by the radioactive waste?" - from the WIPP marker paper.
No, not really. Radiation sickness, unless you take a huge dose, does not kill all that quickly. It can take days to develop symptoms, and weeks to die. That's too big a stretch of time for people - especially in a non-technological, non-scientific society - to form a causal link. It sounds silly, but as late as the 1800s people were drinking from contaminated wells in England and other "civilized" countries, getting sick, and not realizing there was a causal link.
And bear in mind, human beings in 10,000 years may be no more than savages. It seems unreasonable to expect such people to reason that only those who wander through the Forbidden Scary Place get sick. Especially when one considers, also, that radiation poisoning would probably not seem all that distinctive in a non-technological society. The victim has a rash, and lessions. These can be caused by anything from poor sanitation, to scurvy, to many other illnesses. The victims suffer naseau, diahrea, and death. But in a world without technology, without modern medicine, pretty much everything does that.
In short, people stumbling on the site and getting sick is only self-correcting if the people are sufficiently advanced to make the neccessary reasoning, and have sufficient medicine that the symptoms of radiation poisoning are unique, or at least peculiar.
Immense lightning-shaped earthworks radiating out of an open-centered Keep. It is very powerful when seen both from the air and from the vantage points on the tops of the four highest earthworks, the ones just off the corners of the square Keep. Walking through it, at ground level, the massive earthworks crowd in on you, dwarfing you, cutting off your sight to the horizon, a loss of connection to any sense of place.
I could be speaking out of left field here, but doesn't this a rather temptingly defensible location? No use if people ten thousand years from now still have aircraft, but if we drop down to the technological level of say, the Aztec Empire - which is entirely concievable in 10,000 years - then I'd think this could be used for a very nice complex of fortifications. The scaryiness of the complex would only make it more attractive as a defensive position - "Our enemies will be afraid even to attempt an attack on us here."
Smith's wife hid in a side closet which had a storm drain or vent or something in it, if memory serves. She had access to more air than was in the little closet.
As of Jolie's chest, there are any number of bras designed for the express purpose of keeping boobs upright and perky. Not an issue, provided you accept Jolie's character is wearing such a bra.
Tell your principal that people trade porn on p2p networks (true) and come up with a (greatly exagerated) number of porn files on a given network on any day. Yank that number out of your rear - it should have an impressive number of zeroes in it, though. Knee-jerk reaction will kick in, and the software will be banned instantly. Just make damn sure you will never, ever have a legitimate need for p2p on your network - once it's gone, it's gone.
The sysadmin's biggest gripe at my school - well, one of several - is that teachers are really a worse problem in terms of browsing "inappropriate" sites in school than students, but the teachers need to be handeled with kid gloves when caught.
Like I've said in a previous post, I don't think games are harmful. But I do think parents should be able to decide what games their children are exposed to. So long as parent thinks the game is okay, they could always go pick up the game for their kid, with Uncle Sam none the wiser, and no harm done. This just lets parents know exactly what their kids are playing.
On the one hand, I really do not believe violent video games are harmful. And this criteria for banning games would make almost every game other than Tetris illegal. Oh, and Pong would still be okay too, I guess.
But on the other hand, I'm 18, so it matters exactly squat to me what happens with this bill.
If this judge had reviewed, say, System Shock 2, or even Half-Life, he might have had a higher opinion of computer gaming. Heck, even Starcraft would have gone a long way towards convincing the judge that games can be as legitimate a story-telling format as any book, and should be entitled to the same rights. So where did he get the idea to review these specific games?
I doubt the rats object to the experience too much, or that they consider it cruel. In exchange for moving the way the goofy humans want them to, they get a really nice high. Good deal for the rat.
Guys, this isn't something that will be showing up in our homes - or even large corporate offices - for years. Decades, maybe. Once this moves out of Los Alamos and into what I will call, for want of a better term, the "real world", there may be export restrictions on this, just as with PGP. That's all, I'll bet. And for now, I doubt there will be *any* legistlation.
Life is one thing, intelligent life quite another
on
Rare Earth
·
· Score: 2
The problem is this: Yes, we can posit any number of life-forms that don't need air, or water, or DNA, or even a planet. Good for us, I say - that's remarkably open-minded.
But...
To have intelligent life, there needs to be some advantage to intelligence. You can have a Funky Space Alien Bug (FSAB) that is twice as smart as all the others - but what good is that if all it does is, say, float through space collecting hydrogen using an electromagnetic field? Not much- - it doesn't help the bug eat or get laid, so there's no more chance for it's genes to be carried to the next generation than the other, dumber bugs.
To have intelligence, you need life in a place where intelligence matters. There needs to be some possibility that if you're a little smarter, if you can think abstractly, if you can teach your offspring and learn from your parents - heck, if you can learn at all! -, there has to be something to gain from these abilities in terms of staying alive.
Am I making any sense here? What I'm trying to say is that sure, there may be life in environments we may consider so hostile to life, there's no way it could exist. But that life may adapt to that extreme environment by becoming so well adjusted, no further cognitive effort is needed for survival.
Slashdot Mirror
With Epic on the job, I've no (or at least little) doubt the gameplay will be good, easily worth what I'll be paying for it. :-) That said, I just hope the propaganda is not blatant "The Army rocks, join the army, the army is your friend, being in the army is cool and fun." That's an idiotic approach. Far better is simply to emphasize the realism of your games in press releases, then make darn sure the games are fun and have a good storyline, which will encourage the player to identify with their side of the game - in this case, the military. Subtlety, that's the ticket. Oh, and maybe some ad banners in-game. Those I could deal with.
Way I'd do it: When a user dies, require him to walk back to a real-world location indicated by AR beacons. Upon reaching this point, the player would be "reintegrated" into the game world, but not until then.
Hawking DID go on the simpsons. Doesn't that suggest the sort of quirky, fun-loving humor that characterizes a "geek"? For that matter, doesn't the betting likewise qualify. Furthermore, I'd point out live interviews are probably a bitch for Hawking - how fast do you think he can type?
Damnit. You know, I'd heard of Gould before, never really cared one way or the other about him. I didn't even realize the significance of Gould on that Simpsons episode. But now, reading all these articles on CNN, NYtimes, even /. posts - I really regret the fact I'll never have the chance to take a class taught by this man, or have a one-in-a-million chance to run into him on the street. Why the hell is it that death seems to be the most effective form of publicity for the most interesting people?
"Chicks dig programmers." It's even true, at least at my high school.
I seem to recall reading an essay about this a while back. Basically, the problem is it takes time even to adapt to moving in space and getting over space-sickness - puke globules are NOT sexy. Furthermore, you'd have to use some sort of straps to hold you on to your mate - "equal and opposite reactions" would make staying in proximity to each other a challenge.
There really aren't many things we (human beings) can't do in regards to putting people in orbit, on the moon, or even other places in the solar system. The question is simply one of how much time and effort we are willing to invest in the project. A don't know how self-sufficient the Chinese moon base would be, but the US has had the technology to put people on the moon for decades, and to keep people in space for months on end. A long-term moonbase would be a hassle in terms of cost, maintenance, and operation, but there's not much new here technologically.
"What finance software are you using now?"
Doesn't this question assume that we have money? Considering the huge numbers of high school and college students on slashdot, that seems like an unfounded assumption.
That said, I currently use a free-as-in-beer napkin, which I scrawl down my balance on periodically.
One to declare the constant. Another to print it - if your program can't tell anyone the Secret of Life, the Universe, and Anything, it's useless. The remaining two lines are a loop allowing you to either exit the program, or print the Ultimate Number again (if for some reason the user wants to double-check).
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall from my physics paper that this explosion provided the inspiration for the Manhatten Project's Hundred-Ton test (of conventional explosives), designed to help figure out what a multi-kiloton explosion would be like.
Agreed, Pinochet is bad, and the fact the author chose him as an example suggests poor understanding of certain historical and political facts. But there is the grain of a good point here: it is possible to have a fairly benign dictatorship which is not brutal, not cruel or power-mad, and generally tries to improve the lives of most of the citizens. Singapore would be an admittedly imperfect, but acceptable example of this. Certainly better than the Pinochet regime.
Why not use one PIC and one speaker for each and every laser "string"? Yes, it sounds kludgy - and it is - but there are some real advantages. First of all, it greatly simplifies both programming and circuit design - just have a bunch of mostly independent laser-sensor-PIC-speaker units that just share a power source. This also gives you a much more modular design - once you teach yourself to play this well, you can scale it up relatively easily. Also, using seperate speakers for each string will make it behave more like a string intsrument - the sound in a violin comes in part from the resonance chamber, but originates with a single string, not one central speaker for all the strings.
Finally, using one cheap speaker for each string could give you a greater tone range - use cheaper, smaller speakers for the higher registers, and some "more expensive" (maybe $5) ones to get a more satisfying bass on your lower strings.
As I've said, I realize this is not elegant, but it will be quicker and easier to build and debug than a "one-PIC-to-bind-them" approach. Important, since you've got maybe a month until graduation.
"We have all become very marker-prone, but shouldn't we nevertheless admit that, in the end, despite all we try to do, the most effective "marker" for any intruders will be a relatively limited amount of sickness and death caused by the radioactive waste?" - from the WIPP marker paper.
No, not really. Radiation sickness, unless you take a huge dose, does not kill all that quickly. It can take days to develop symptoms, and weeks to die. That's too big a stretch of time for people - especially in a non-technological, non-scientific society - to form a causal link. It sounds silly, but as late as the 1800s people were drinking from contaminated wells in England and other "civilized" countries, getting sick, and not realizing there was a causal link.
And bear in mind, human beings in 10,000 years may be no more than savages. It seems unreasonable to expect such people to reason that only those who wander through the Forbidden Scary Place get sick. Especially when one considers, also, that radiation poisoning would probably not seem all that distinctive in a non-technological society. The victim has a rash, and lessions. These can be caused by anything from poor sanitation, to scurvy, to many other illnesses. The victims suffer naseau, diahrea, and death. But in a world without technology, without modern medicine, pretty much everything does that.
In short, people stumbling on the site and getting sick is only self-correcting if the people are sufficiently advanced to make the neccessary reasoning, and have sufficient medicine that the symptoms of radiation poisoning are unique, or at least peculiar.
Can we make any black dye that won't fade in 10,000 years?
Immense lightning-shaped earthworks radiating out of an open-centered Keep. It is very powerful when seen both from the air and from the vantage points on the tops of the four highest earthworks, the ones just off the corners of the square Keep. Walking through it, at ground level, the massive earthworks crowd in on you, dwarfing you, cutting off your sight to the horizon, a loss of connection to any sense of place.
I could be speaking out of left field here, but doesn't this a rather temptingly defensible location? No use if people ten thousand years from now still have aircraft, but if we drop down to the technological level of say, the Aztec Empire - which is entirely concievable in 10,000 years - then I'd think this could be used for a very nice complex of fortifications. The scaryiness of the complex would only make it more attractive as a defensive position - "Our enemies will be afraid even to attempt an attack on us here."
That chick was hot, gentlemen.
Smith's wife hid in a side closet which had a storm drain or vent or something in it, if memory serves. She had access to more air than was in the little closet.
As of Jolie's chest, there are any number of bras designed for the express purpose of keeping boobs upright and perky. Not an issue, provided you accept Jolie's character is wearing such a bra.
Tell your principal that people trade porn on p2p networks (true) and come up with a (greatly exagerated) number of porn files on a given network on any day. Yank that number out of your rear - it should have an impressive number of zeroes in it, though. Knee-jerk reaction will kick in, and the software will be banned instantly. Just make damn sure you will never, ever have a legitimate need for p2p on your network - once it's gone, it's gone.
The sysadmin's biggest gripe at my school - well, one of several - is that teachers are really a worse problem in terms of browsing "inappropriate" sites in school than students, but the teachers need to be handeled with kid gloves when caught.
Like I've said in a previous post, I don't think games are harmful. But I do think parents should be able to decide what games their children are exposed to. So long as parent thinks the game is okay, they could always go pick up the game for their kid, with Uncle Sam none the wiser, and no harm done. This just lets parents know exactly what their kids are playing.
On the one hand, I really do not believe violent video games are harmful. And this criteria for banning games would make almost every game other than Tetris illegal. Oh, and Pong would still be okay too, I guess.
But on the other hand, I'm 18, so it matters exactly squat to me what happens with this bill.
If this judge had reviewed, say, System Shock 2, or even Half-Life, he might have had a higher opinion of computer gaming. Heck, even Starcraft would have gone a long way towards convincing the judge that games can be as legitimate a story-telling format as any book, and should be entitled to the same rights. So where did he get the idea to review these specific games?
I doubt the rats object to the experience too much, or that they consider it cruel. In exchange for moving the way the goofy humans want them to, they get a really nice high. Good deal for the rat.
Guys, this isn't something that will be showing up in our homes - or even large corporate offices - for years. Decades, maybe. Once this moves out of Los Alamos and into what I will call, for want of a better term, the "real world", there may be export restrictions on this, just as with PGP. That's all, I'll bet. And for now, I doubt there will be *any* legistlation.
The problem is this: Yes, we can posit any number of life-forms that don't need air, or water, or DNA, or even a planet. Good for us, I say - that's remarkably open-minded.
But...
To have intelligent life, there needs to be some advantage to intelligence. You can have a Funky Space Alien Bug (FSAB) that is twice as smart as all the others - but what good is that if all it does is, say, float through space collecting hydrogen using an electromagnetic field? Not much- - it doesn't help the bug eat or get laid, so there's no more chance for it's genes to be carried to the next generation than the other, dumber bugs.
To have intelligence, you need life in a place where intelligence matters. There needs to be some possibility that if you're a little smarter, if you can think abstractly, if you can teach your offspring and learn from your parents - heck, if you can learn at all! -, there has to be something to gain from these abilities in terms of staying alive.
Am I making any sense here? What I'm trying to say is that sure, there may be life in environments we may consider so hostile to life, there's no way it could exist. But that life may adapt to that extreme environment by becoming so well adjusted, no further cognitive effort is needed for survival.