Re:Other mechanicalized video games?
on
Mechanical Pong
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Both of these have been done - too lazy/not enough time to find links, but there was some kind of pacman board game which used marbles for the dots, and pacman kinda rolled around on it on wheels, as did the ghosts - hence they always moved in his general direction, chasing him (clever solution to the AI) you played by tilting the board with a joystick
As for real life pacman.. this was covered on Slashdot a while back.. a bunch of people dressed as pacman and ghosts went running around New York or somewhere.. I think they got GPS gear into it and all sorts
I'm replying to my own post, because wow, I didn't expect that first line to generate so much heat... thou shalt not speak of Klingon or memetics in any less than revered tones, I guess
It was meant as a tongue in cheek line - and for what it's worth, I find memetics a very interesting subject, along with plenty of other geeky things (i'll.. uh.. pass on the Klingon though, thanks)
My point was simply that Wikipedia, by it's very nature, tends to lend itself to being extremely detailed in specific areas of interest that appeal to it's readership and contributor-ship (such as Klingon or memetics). That's not necessarily any bad thing, and in fact, you probably won't find any other encyclopedia anywhere with such a level of detail on some of the more obscure subjects in Wikipedia.. however, my main point (which I don't think I emphasised enough looking back on it) stands.. that Wikipedia is NOT a replacement to more traditional information resources, but a very good compliment to them
and as for the guy who said I was just going for a "+5 not completely stupid", feel free to mod me overrated if you want.. personally I don't think my first post should be at +5 either, but then I've long since given up on understanding/. moderators logic.. but at least it's better than another GNAA trollfest
Probably the most important just now is virtual studios and automatic classification of video clips (automatically convert a video stream into a text description).
I've already developed a solution to that! My licence fees are very reasonable if you want to use it.. here's some sample output from a test run:
Video file: TestMovie.AVI Description: First frame, first line: Grey pixel, grey pixel, slightly darker grey pixel, green pixel, greenish-grey pixel, black pixel,.... next line: grey pixel, orange pixel... etc
The BBC is funded by people paying a licence to watch TV in the UK (it is illegal not to have one and watch TV in your place of residences).
Just wanted to point out the parent is being a little misleading here (unintentionally, I think) - from that it sounds like it's illegal NOT to watch TV in the UK.. rather a chilling 1984-esque concept.. families gathered round the TV set, guns to their heads, beads of sweat forming on their brows as they concentrate intently on soap operas and gameshows, not daring to blink..
um, but I digress.. the actual state of play is that if you have a television set in your house at all, even if you don't use it to watch TV, you HAVE to pay an annual TV licence fee - just the one fee no matter how many tellys you have, mind, but auntie (the BBC) will not be cheated.. they even send out people in detector vans to find people who don't pay their licence - and no foil hat will save you from that.
But how much do we REALLY need to know about Klingon or memetics?
Woah, hold off with that "-1 troll", I'm joking - albeit semi-seriously. Wikipedia is a great resource, and so far seems to do a pretty good job of keeping itself in check by the sheer volume of people checking each other's work.. but there is also the risk of important aspects being missed, or errors creeping in unchecked, as highlighted in a previous slashdot story.
Still a great resource though, but one best used in conjunction with more traditional ones than as a replacement to them, IMO
I'm a heavy user of XP pro, I run many and varied apps, and while I experience the occasional application crash I have to say I'm usually pretty impressed at how well XP handles it - I can't even remember the last time I had to reboot XP for anything like that. I'd suggest a lot of this is down to people just being clueless about setting windows up properly, rather than the OS itself
There are already headgear-free 3D LCDs out there - lots of companies make them now, here's one
They basically work with a lenticular lens which directs alternate lines of the screen in different directions, so one eye sees half the lines and the other sees the other half
Ah-ha! That's where it came from I'd seen it as a cartoon printed out on an office wall once.. I'd have given credit if I knew where it came from. I guess I should've at least said it wasn't mine, but fwiw now: it wasn't mine.
Modern voice dictation software is pretty good I'm using viavoice now to write this and I find bark bark shaddup I find that it bark bark shut up damnit bark bark don't make me come down there I find that bark bark okay that's it I'm coming down there argh crash thud bark bark bark bark bark bark
Guns don't kill people, rappers do Ask any politician and he'll tell you it's true It's a fact - music makes you violent Like Michael Jackson telling little Timmy to stay silent
Microsoft: you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Actually yes. Yes, we can. You see, we are considerably richer than you. Do you like my hat? It's made out of money.. you can stay for lunch if you like - I think we're having money
Sincerely, Bill Gates (with apologies to Penny Arcade)
But the facts are simple: if radio stations had REAL DJs that were allowed to play whatever the fuck they wanted to
Try listening to BBC Radio 1's John Peel show sometime - you can hear it as a realaudio stream (quality kinda sucks, but) at the radio 1 website, www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel Just take a look at the track listings from his previous shows on his page of the site to see what I mean
Hang on, this thing has a built in *microphone*? So now not only can they track your movements with it and watch you on the camera, they can hear what you're up to as well...
Next they'll be.. god.. I dunno.. putting little speakers in them so they can.. somehow wirelessly send their voices through the phone and tell you what to do
This is just a guess, but from the (very limited) description on the site - particularly the bit about only needing 2 Mb of drive space - I suspect than rather than keeping a rollback log, instead it redirects all writes elsewhere and somehow fools the system into combining them
I don't really know if that makes sense, but basically what I'm saying is I think instead of allowing changes to the stuff that's already on the drive, instead it makes the system write the changes to a "scratch space", as it were, and when it comes to read back files, it takes that into account... when you reboot, it wipes the scratch space (which just contains the differenced versions of the files)
The difference between the two methods is the differencing system doesn't take any "extra" space, as anything you're saving/installing you'll be taking into account in your HD space, whereas a changes log could grow huge, fast, and take up a lot of unaccounted-for-by-the-user-space
Wow.. reading this back, it's a really mangled and incomprehensible way of explaining a simple concept. I should write manuals for a living!
I came across a really good mousepad solution a while back You know those transparent polythene pockets you get for putting paper into binders?.. I've got one of those taped flat to my desk.. it gives a really good smooth surface for my mouse (Logitech MX700 wireless, fwiw).. when it gets too stretched/cruddy (usually once every 6 months or so) I just tear it up and tape a new one down.. and by printing out an image onto an A4 sheet and putting it inside the pocket before I tape it down I can have any design I want in it.
Really though, it's the best thing I've found.. it's got a really smooth glidey feel to it, but with just enough texture to avoid the mouse slipping about unintentionally. It's also really cheap - 25 polypockets will set you back about 50p from Tesco's stationery aisle.
IANA Quantum Physicist, but... I gather that time travel is basically impossible, at least for any meaningful kind of matter as it involves going faster than the speed of light.. but what about on a quantum scale?
Would it be possible to use any of these funky quantum effects (as is, I beleve, the correct and technical term) to send data back in time? I mean, say you can alter the spin-state of something in the past.. well, that's a bit, which gives you a byte, whcih means you could use that to effectively uh.. email yourself next week's lottery results.
Slashdot Mirror
Both of these have been done - too lazy/not enough time to find links, but there was some kind of pacman board game which used marbles for the dots, and pacman kinda rolled around on it on wheels, as did the ghosts - hence they always moved in his general direction, chasing him (clever solution to the AI) you played by tilting the board with a joystick
As for real life pacman.. this was covered on Slashdot a while back.. a bunch of people dressed as pacman and ghosts went running around New York or somewhere.. I think they got GPS gear into it and all sorts
I'm replying to my own post, because wow, I didn't expect that first line to generate so much heat... thou shalt not speak of Klingon or memetics in any less than revered tones, I guess
/. moderators logic.. but at least it's better than another GNAA trollfest
It was meant as a tongue in cheek line - and for what it's worth, I find memetics a very interesting subject, along with plenty of other geeky things (i'll.. uh.. pass on the Klingon though, thanks)
My point was simply that Wikipedia, by it's very nature, tends to lend itself to being extremely detailed in specific areas of interest that appeal to it's readership and contributor-ship (such as Klingon or memetics). That's not necessarily any bad thing, and in fact, you probably won't find any other encyclopedia anywhere with such a level of detail on some of the more obscure subjects in Wikipedia.. however, my main point (which I don't think I emphasised enough looking back on it) stands.. that Wikipedia is NOT a replacement to more traditional information resources, but a very good compliment to them
and as for the guy who said I was just going for a "+5 not completely stupid", feel free to mod me overrated if you want.. personally I don't think my first post should be at +5 either, but then I've long since given up on understanding
Maybe you should give an actual example to give some substance to your concern.
ok then
Probably the most important just now is virtual studios and automatic classification of video clips (automatically convert a video stream into a text description).
I've already developed a solution to that!
My licence fees are very reasonable if you want to use it.. here's some sample output from a test run:
Video file: TestMovie.AVI
Description:
First frame, first line:
Grey pixel, grey pixel, slightly darker grey pixel, green pixel, greenish-grey pixel, black pixel,.... next line: grey pixel, orange pixel... etc
The BBC is funded by people paying a licence to watch TV in the UK (it is illegal not to have one and watch TV in your place of residences).
Just wanted to point out the parent is being a little misleading here (unintentionally, I think) - from that it sounds like it's illegal NOT to watch TV in the UK.. rather a chilling 1984-esque concept.. families gathered round the TV set, guns to their heads, beads of sweat forming on their brows as they concentrate intently on soap operas and gameshows, not daring to blink..
um, but I digress.. the actual state of play is that if you have a television set in your house at all, even if you don't use it to watch TV, you HAVE to pay an annual TV licence fee - just the one fee no matter how many tellys you have, mind, but auntie (the BBC) will not be cheated.. they even send out people in detector vans to find people who don't pay their licence - and no foil hat will save you from that.
But how much do we REALLY need to know about Klingon or memetics?
Woah, hold off with that "-1 troll", I'm joking - albeit semi-seriously. Wikipedia is a great resource, and so far seems to do a pretty good job of keeping itself in check by the sheer volume of people checking each other's work.. but there is also the risk of important aspects being missed, or errors creeping in unchecked, as highlighted in a previous slashdot story.
Still a great resource though, but one best used in conjunction with more traditional ones than as a replacement to them, IMO
..but how does raytraced Quake 3 grab you?
International Talk Like A Pirate Day isn't until tomorrow, (Sunday Spet 19th)
I'm a heavy user of XP pro, I run many and varied apps, and while I experience the occasional application crash I have to say I'm usually pretty impressed at how well XP handles it - I can't even remember the last time I had to reboot XP for anything like that. I'd suggest a lot of this is down to people just being clueless about setting windows up properly, rather than the OS itself
There are already headgear-free 3D LCDs out there - lots of companies make them now, here's one
They basically work with a lenticular lens which directs alternate lines of the screen in different directions, so one eye sees half the lines and the other sees the other half
Ah-ha! That's where it came from
I'd seen it as a cartoon printed out on an office wall once.. I'd have given credit if I knew where it came from. I guess I should've at least said it wasn't mine, but fwiw now: it wasn't mine.
Modern voice dictation software is pretty good I'm using viavoice now to write this and I find bark bark shaddup I find that it bark bark shut up damnit bark bark don't make me come down there I find that bark bark okay that's it I'm coming down there argh crash thud bark bark bark bark bark bark
Guns don't kill people, rappers do
Ask any politician and he'll tell you it's true
It's a fact - music makes you violent
Like Michael Jackson telling little Timmy to stay silent
Microsoft: you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Actually yes. Yes, we can.
You see, we are considerably richer than you.
Do you like my hat? It's made out of money.. you can stay for lunch if you like - I think we're having money
Sincerely, Bill Gates
(with apologies to Penny Arcade)
But the facts are simple: if radio stations had REAL DJs that were allowed to play whatever the fuck they wanted to
Try listening to BBC Radio 1's John Peel show sometime - you can hear it as a realaudio stream (quality kinda sucks, but) at the radio 1 website, www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel
Just take a look at the track listings from his previous shows on his page of the site to see what I mean
Think of this as an opportunity.. after all, now MS can't object to other people doing this to them..
:)
"Linux - MSFT Microsoft Windows Less Security Holes, Where do you want to go today?"
Bet they'd love that
Hang on, this thing has a built in *microphone*?
So now not only can they track your movements with it and watch you on the camera, they can hear what you're up to as well...
Next they'll be.. god.. I dunno.. putting little speakers in them so they can.. somehow wirelessly send their voices through the phone and tell you what to do
This is just a guess, but from the (very limited) description on the site - particularly the bit about only needing 2 Mb of drive space - I suspect than rather than keeping a rollback log, instead it redirects all writes elsewhere and somehow fools the system into combining them
I don't really know if that makes sense, but basically what I'm saying is I think instead of allowing changes to the stuff that's already on the drive, instead it makes the system write the changes to a "scratch space", as it were, and when it comes to read back files, it takes that into account... when you reboot, it wipes the scratch space (which just contains the differenced versions of the files)
The difference between the two methods is the differencing system doesn't take any "extra" space, as anything you're saving/installing you'll be taking into account in your HD space, whereas a changes log could grow huge, fast, and take up a lot of unaccounted-for-by-the-user-space
Wow.. reading this back, it's a really mangled and incomprehensible way of explaining a simple concept. I should write manuals for a living!
Just a guess.. but you don't happen to have pointy hair?
But you need several inconveniently large buildings to house the cooling system...
I'm curious how the iPod and hpPod differ.
Well...
One brings to mind images of young, trendy upwardly mobile people with style, taste and disposable income...
The other sounds like a hip replacement operation.
Those bits weren't "meaningless" -- they meant something very clear and important:
Ch3ap vi@.gra?
I actually read the article (I am new here) but didn't see anything mentioning what class of laser it uses.
According to the specs it's a 31 gigawatt military grade ion-pulsed trilithium laser. It can burn holes in the moon and come out the other side*
(*yeah, okay, I made that up)
I came across a really good mousepad solution a while back
You know those transparent polythene pockets you get for putting paper into binders?.. I've got one of those taped flat to my desk.. it gives a really good smooth surface for my mouse (Logitech MX700 wireless, fwiw).. when it gets too stretched/cruddy (usually once every 6 months or so) I just tear it up and tape a new one down.. and by printing out an image onto an A4 sheet and putting it inside the pocket before I tape it down I can have any design I want in it.
Really though, it's the best thing I've found.. it's got a really smooth glidey feel to it, but with just enough texture to avoid the mouse slipping about unintentionally. It's also really cheap - 25 polypockets will set you back about 50p from Tesco's stationery aisle.
IANA Quantum Physicist, but...
I gather that time travel is basically impossible, at least for any meaningful kind of matter as it involves going faster than the speed of light.. but what about on a quantum scale?
Would it be possible to use any of these funky quantum effects (as is, I beleve, the correct and technical term) to send data back in time? I mean, say you can alter the spin-state of something in the past.. well, that's a bit, which gives you a byte, whcih means you could use that to effectively uh.. email yourself next week's lottery results.