Go to bing.com and click on video search. Then type in "naked women" and hit enter. Hover your mouse over each thumbnail. Now you should understand why google is scared shitless of bing, they are already destroying them where it counts, as a porn search engine.
let me put it in american context - ahmedinajad getting 55% vote in azerbaijani parts of iran means barack obama getting 55%+ vote in any part of redneck midwest with little black population.
That actually happened. Imagine someone in a time machine coming back to tell you in 2000 that Bush would be so bad that this country would elect to replace him a black democrat whose middle name is Hussein. You'd have laughed the guy out of the house.
Probably a better comparison for "something's amiss" is Jews voting for Nazi apologist Pat Buchanan.
Careful there, Sparky, you are not as anonymous as you think you are, and as a private citizen, assisting and acting to bring down a government can be considered a criminal act. In most countries, US, Canada, UK, etc, a private citizen cannot be involved in acts of hostility towards another government, even if its an enemy government.
Yeah, but can you imagine the bragging rights?
Geek: What are you in for?
Thug 1: Rape.
Thug 2: Murder.
Thug 3: Rape and murder. What are you in for?
Geek: Toppling a government.
Thugs back away from Geek, leaving him plenty of space.
To me, the best pro-piracy argument is it allows people to not reward people for making shit products. If piracy wasn't available, I'd have to pay $60 to find out that new game is absolute ass-nuggets,
This is why I love game demos on the 360. Finally, on a console! I've loved them for years on the PC for this very reason -- it's as good as piracy without the hassle. Game companies are leery of demos for the same reason -- if a game is shit, the demo is the fart, the warning stench. Sturegon's Law holds true for many things and it seems like over 90% of games are total shit. If a company won't release a demo, it either means their game is so shitty they wouldn't dare or so awesome they don't care. As I recall, Oblivion didn't have a 360 demo and GTAIV didn't. Both games are 10/10 on the system so I guess they didn't think it worth the effort.
Obviously another journo-troll saying something stupid to get people worked up. Fuck it, I'll bite.
The gaming arms race has been about fancier graphics, bigger worlds, and more shiny. Consoles are fucking expensive these days! Seriously expensive. Games cost a mint and don't even get me started on the dev costs. GTAIV cost $100 million to make? Insane. Good game but insane. But this is the battle Sony and Microsoft wanted to fight.
Nintendo said "Hey, is shiny shooter 2.0 any better than shiny shooter 1.0? If the gameplay is pretty much the same but the graphics look better, does that make it more fun? What if all the budget was spent on the shiny and nothing was left to pay for fun?" So their idea was to not go for the high-end. There were two consoles already competing on shiny. Nintendo decided to do something very, very different with the motion controller.
What's the end result? Games unlike what's available on the other consoles, at least when it's done right. By keeping the specs on the machine down, not going HD, Nintendo said they were emphasizing affordability. It can certainly run games that would have been considered shiny last generation but it can't keep up with the ps3 and 360, it wasn't meant to. Complaining that the Wii can't handle a AAA title originally meant for those two systems is missing the point in the most spectacular fail tradition imaginable.
The man is a tremendous douche who always writes ridiculous articles so that people get their dander up and drive traffic. He's nothing more than a journo-troll.
And this whole cyber-crap thing misses the mark. First off, nix the cyber. Nothing makes you sound less knowledgeable than using cyber when talking about computers. Second off, computer warfare is just another way of fucking with the enemy's infrastructure. If anything, you could classify it a subset of cold warfare. That's anything that's indirect, doesn't involve the acting killing of others, but is a true struggle between nations. Economic warfare is the usual manifestation with trade wars, resource wars, and political maneuvering. It's not some crazy new thing that's all black leather and sexy computer chicks.
Did you steal info from a poorly-secured computer system? Great, that's just digital espionage. You could have sent a guy in with a camera to photograph stuff 30 years ago but you did it with a computer now. Same idea, different tools. Did you crash his telcom system? Great. Could have been done with a saboteur 30 years ago (generally poor luck with that sort of thing) but you managed it from your desk. Excellent.
While there will always be security holes in software, most of this exposure can be mitigated against with simple, sensible procedures. The thing we tend to forget is real life ain't like Hollywood. It may be cool in Chuck to think that a guy with a supercomputer armband can hijack a Predator whenever he feels like it but that's not reality. It may be cool to think that a hacker could pick any target he wants and break in but it's usually more a matter of running scripts and finding holes where you can get them, very luck of the draw.
When it comes to infrastructure attacks, I'm far less concerned with computer attacks. Throughout this country, we have a number of single points of failure that would be difficult to replace. Any civil engineer could draw up a hitlist in five minutes far more knowledgeable than I'm going to suggest here.
1. Long-haul transmission lines. It wouldn't take that much explosive to bring a tower down and they're often running through isolated areas. Knock a few towers down, then we're stuck spending billions to guard the rest.
2. While everyone is preoccupied with towers, hit the...crap, I'm forgetting the name. My memory is wonky here but there's some expensive stuff used in electrical distribution that has very long lead times for ordering replacements. Blow up one of these, it could be a year before the new one arrives.
3. While everyone is preoccupied with that, send a few Lee Malvo teams to randomly snipe people around the country. Doesn't matter that the average commuter is ten times more likely to die in a crash that day than get sniped, everyone will panic.
4. While everyone is preoccupied with snipers, one of the other soft targets can be hit. Seriously, one electrical line failing took out New York. Making that happen again would have to be easier than plots like blowing up tanker trucks in the tunnels.
By all means, let's protect the computers but it's attacks like I've outlined above that I think would prove far more deadly. Of course, if I were the terrorist, I'd rather fart around with computer attacks from the safety of my cave than risk entering the target country but that's just me. I think people should be ridiculed for their political views, not killed. I'd make a lousy terrorist.
* Khingan-Mukden Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 - September 2, 1945)
* Harbin-Kirin Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 - September 2, 1945)
* Sungari Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 - September 2, 1945)
* South Sakhalin Army Group Offensive Operation (August 11, 1945 - August 25, 1945)
* Seisin Landing Operation (August 13, 1945 - August 16, 1945)
* Kurile Landing Operation (August 18, 1945 - September 1, 1945)
Point being, the Japanese were rolled over by Soviet armor. Armor didn't really play as much of a role in the island-hopping campaigns and so their infantry was able to put up more of a fight in the jungles. In the open against tanks, they were woefully unprepared.
The exo-skeletal combat suit will happen, just not in the way people want it to. Units like this would be of great use for land forces during occupation or high intensity situations where robots are not suited to be due to the mixed set of combatants and non-combatants that are common to urban warfare. Special Forces will most likely some day have breach and patrol squads of these for specialized purposes like breach and sweep missions or scout and intercept. While robots are good at killing, they'll likely never be suited for situations where death isn't the sole option. Mixed situations like this is where mobile suits like this would excel. I don't ever see the application of giant robot suits the size of cities mind you, but small combat suits that allow a man to get in and out of buildings without taking the roof off (or perhaps breaching the roof as an option?) would be a boon for the military (which is why they are developing them!)
But there's no need to put the person inside. You could operate them by remote and make them smaller, no need to fit the human form so they can be optimally shaped for the mission. That's the part that people keep overlooking, that the remote control or autonomous AI could get that good.
This will be a reboot of Futurama with a new cast, and more action (and sex) to excite a younger more modern audience. The Planet Express spaceship's bridge will look like the Apple Store, Leela will be having a secret affair with Bender. It will be shot in realistic shakey-cam. And there will be lots of lens flare...
I always thought it was because of Japan's samurai tradition/mythos (like the US has a Wild West gun mythos).
Yup, there's the big fascination with the warrior who can defeat all odds if he's super-pissed off enough. The Japanese Army in WWII thought they could make up for their material inferiority as compared with the US and Soviet troops simply by fighting harder and showing more spirit. That can work to a degree against a numerically superior but less hardened foe, causing them to break before you do. But if they're just as hardcore, the outcome is inevitable defeat.
As to why the Japanese hero robot has to be gigantic, I think it's just a cultural fascination with giganticism. Their Tokyo-eating monsters are huge, their weird heroes who fight them like Ultraman are huge, and thus their hero robots would be huge as well. I admit there's something transfixing when looking at a humanoid robotic form laying waste to everything around it.
The whole idea of mecha robots is plain wrong. It's not necessary to make an exoskeleton that big. In a military (or 'gaming') situation it'd just present a bigger target. All you need is a minimal amount of armour with enough power to augment picking up large amounts of weight, and possibly some system to dampen recoil if you're holding a projectile weapon.
The basic concept of the exo-skeleton is you get to be superman without having to be a kryptonian. You're as powerful as a tank, can blast things just by moving your arms, it's scifi fantasy.
Those trying to come up with a practical justification say it's the next advancement of the tank which is all about letting a human being go into combat with serious protection. But if you think about it, the only reason why tanks are manned is because automated systems aren't good enough to let them operate autonomously. Every gun on a WWII warship needed human to load the weapons, manually aim them, pull the trigger, etc. Now warship turrets are highly automated and only need humans to reload the enormous ammo hoppers, perform maintenance, etc.
The exoskeletal combat suit is likely never going to happen. The basic elements of combat are finding out where the enemy is and hitting him in the most vulnerable place possible. The technology of the time will dictate the weapons at hand. We're going to see a lot more robotic scouting systems, more potential for bot-on-bot action. But in a situation like Iraq, we won't see someone waddling into combat in power armor, they'll be remotely controlling the robot that's exposed to fire. The best comparison I can offer you are the Automated Weapons Platforms from the old PC game Xcom. You had human squads in the fight but the AWP carried the heaviest weapons and kept them mobile. Humans carrying that kind of firepower would have to unload and fight from a fixed position, not on the move.
We'll likely see exoskeletons in the civilian world. I could see them really being worth the cost in construction and other situations where very awkward loads need to be carried through confined spaces. More maneuverable than a forklift, simple enough for illegal labor to use, and not all that expensive. If it can't meet those criteria, it ain't happening.
Now that I think about it, I nearly busted a gut laughing at Galaxy Quest [wikipedia.org], so I guess by your measure that must suck harder than a Thai ladyboy trying to fund her final op.
Wow. I certainly would never admitted to knowing what that was like. You are very brave.
Disney has been churning out utter dreck for years. Go ahead, what was the last good original animated Disney movie (not counting those made by Pixar)? I don't know, but I'm estimating something like 20 years ago. It's common knowledge that Disney had been pressuring Pixar to do sequels to all their hits because Disney can't think of or even appreciate new ideas. The big question a few years back was, "When Disney buys Pixar, will Pixar be able to maintain their independence, or will Disney's 'creative' minds start steering the ship?"
Disney's formula has pretty much been lame-ass princess romance stories unless they feel like branching out and ripping off some anime. Lion King was Kimba, the one with what was it, Atlantis? That was ripping off another anime with a hero with glasses who had the hots for some native-type chick in a bikini.
What was great about Pixar is their ideas were so fresh and original, they were the sorts of things you only wished you could think up. If they go the route of by-the-numbers mechanical exploitation of the "franchises," that's going to be a sad day. The death of the Disney theme parks is when they stopped doing it for the fun and started doing it for the money. I was a tyke when they were still great and I remembered them as what Heaven should be, better than life and maintaining standards royalty couldn't fault. By the time I became an adult they'd decayed to crass, plastic, mass-market trash. It was disgusting, like dying and meeting St. Pete at the Pearly Gates only to see a "sponsored by Starbucks" sticker plastered across.
Pixar is going to begin the slow circling of the drain. Watch the talent defect to a new studio with heart and integrity.
The Xbox I picked up has a 20gb HDD. With online distribution a major feature for the console, this is just criminally small. Yes, yes, I'm sure it was huge back when they put the specs together but it's pathetic these days. There's a 120gb model you can buy but it's like four times what a comparable drive could cost in the PC world. These drives are the razors, Microsoft, the downloads are the blades! Make a drive that expensive and I'm just not going to download much. When I can get a 1.5tb drive for $100, they should be selling drive upgrades for Xbox at around a $50 price point. They'll be buying in bulk and make their money back.
Wow, I never did understand that bit in the polka. It might be kind of sad that in the last few Weird Al albums, I've never heard most of the original songs. I'm getting old, huh?
You and me both. The last Weird Al parody I've heard before he did it (talking recent music) was for Amish Paradise. I had no idea what raps All About the Pentiums and White and Nerdy were based on. I consider this to be a good thing. You know what's considered artistic in rap? Buster Rimes, he has a track on GTAIV. It's a soulful little ditty called "where my money" where he goes ranting about how he's taller than a hall of midgets and if he doesn't get his cake he's gonna kill bitches and niggas, where my fucking money?
I'd like to think if MLK came back from the dead he'd go all Cosby and start smacking these idiots upside the head.
The only part of the supergun the Army was looking into that I thought was neat was the use of onboard laser and GPS to send fire orders. If you see the target, you can lase it, know it's exact position on the grid coordinates and rounds can be incoming in seconds. That's a pointer!
I understand what Valve is saying but I think they may be making a douche move here.
Back when Half-Life came out I was saying to myself how it would be great if they released episodic content on the same engine. The story was so huge in Half-Life, it was fully half of the gameplay. I would have been interested to see more of what was happening with Gordon Freeman. Charge $50 for the first game which covers the cost of engine development, release two or three quality add-ons over the next few years, not the faffing about like OpFor and Blue Shit but real, proper new chapters, just as long as the original game, and then when the tech has improved that's when you release the sequel for $50 again. They tried this with HL2's episodic content except those games were expensive, short, and take just as long to come out as a real game.
When looking at the hardcore wargamer market, it seemed reasonable that something like this could be handled along a subscription model. You pay $50 a year and get a constant stream of updates, more scenarios and models and such. Every five years or so the engine gets an overhaul to bring it up to date and that's part of the release cycle. I figured this sort of thing would make sense in the internet age because there would be such close contact between developer and fanbase. But what this sort of thing has devolved to in real life is like the sports games where a new engine is created for a new console and then the only thing that really changes each year are the team rosters and stats and you get charged full price for that minuscule update.
I can tell you what the game publishers are probably drooling at replicating here -- game store revenues. That's what DLC is about. When you're a D&D player or, God help you, a Warhammer guy, you're constantly shelling out money each month. New books, new figurines, dice, etc. What the publishers like is even if the physical game is resold, it doesn't come with that DLC. (the only exception is when they decide to release a game of the year edition that specifically includes all the add-ons.) So if the game is resold, the DLC doesn't go with it and so the same content can be resold to the new player. Eventually they're hoping for physical media to go away altogether and all distribution will be online with no right of resale. Expect major dick moves all the way along here.
I wonder how successful episodic gaming could really be, if the episodes were priced very low and the publisher kept up a consistent release schedule with relatively short intervals. I know I almost never buy a game at full-price and usually pick them up for $20. If a publisher released quality episodes for $10 a pop and each episode was about a sixth the length of a full game, I could easily end up paying the full $60. If the episodes were good enough, I wouldn't even mind.
and: "the FTC's authority gives it the power to shut down companies that appear to be engaged in unfair and deceptive practices"
Deceptive practices? Well, we've all heard about the crackwhore complaining to the cops about being sold bogus rocks. I can just imagine how this went.
perv: Dude, I paid mad money for this CP and it turns out the girl was 18. They ripped me off!
ftc: Gee, how awful. What was that url again? We'll look into this immediately.
I don't agree. Let's suppose owned a prime piece of real estate right next to an interstate exit ramp. So far nobody's offered anything, but if an Exxon or McDonalds approached me, am I "scum" because I ask for a lot of money to sell my real estate? No it's kind opportunity cost. If they want to setup show in a highly-visible location, then they'll have to pay for it.
Or they could put their station/restaurant someplace else (1 mile away) that's less-visible but cheaper to buy. Same applies to website real estate. You want exxon-exit100.com, then you'll have to pay for it. If you don't, buy a cheaper website like gastation163418.com - less prime but saves money.
It's nothing personal; just business.
Go die in a fire. Nothing personal, just business.
Who does the writer think make the current crop of rockets - some bureaucrats in DC?
Space X is just another space vehicle manufacturer, same as Boeing and others.
By that logic, Google circa 1999 was just another computer company. The key difference I think is a younger company with less entrenched bureaucracy. It seems inevitable that companies will grow, expand, and become bureaucratic in time. Our defense conglomerates were once innovative and cutting edge but you get corporate mediocrity infecting any mature company. Boeing built the B-17 on spec because they felt the Army Air Corps would need it, there wasn't a contract. Think something like that would happen today? I think a part of this is the benign dictatorship of the company founder at work. This sort of influence can make or break companies to be true but it's certainly not going to be seen in risk-adverse corporate environments.
Google probably won't be immune to this sort of thing. Give it another 30 years and the founders will retire, then the management will be by consensus with corporate types who really don't understand the business and technology trying to make the safest decisions possible to keep the gravy train going. Everything will be decision by committee and there will be enough red tape to stifle the brightest minds they can hire, snuffing out anything smacking of vision and innovation. That's what we're seeing at Microsoft right now. The only question is how long this sort of shambling, zombie-like existence can be maintained before the rotting skull is smashed in. With the American car companies, I'd say the rot set in by the 60's but wasn't fully apparent until the 80's when the Japanese started eating their lunches. After that point, the only question was how long it would take for them to fail. Turns out it was still a damned long time.
Slashdot Mirror
Go to bing.com and click on video search. Then type in "naked women" and hit enter. Hover your mouse over each thumbnail. Now you should understand why google is scared shitless of bing, they are already destroying them where it counts, as a porn search engine.
Perhaps they should have called it Fap.
let me put it in american context - ahmedinajad getting 55% vote in azerbaijani parts of iran means barack obama getting 55%+ vote in any part of redneck midwest with little black population.
That actually happened. Imagine someone in a time machine coming back to tell you in 2000 that Bush would be so bad that this country would elect to replace him a black democrat whose middle name is Hussein. You'd have laughed the guy out of the house.
Probably a better comparison for "something's amiss" is Jews voting for Nazi apologist Pat Buchanan.
WTF is "after the age of HAM"?
*chuck heston voice with lots of reverb* The Age of BEEF!
Careful there, Sparky, you are not as anonymous as you think you are, and as a private citizen, assisting and acting to bring down a government can be considered a criminal act. In most countries, US, Canada, UK, etc, a private citizen cannot be involved in acts of hostility towards another government, even if its an enemy government.
Yeah, but can you imagine the bragging rights?
Geek: What are you in for?
Thug 1: Rape.
Thug 2: Murder.
Thug 3: Rape and murder. What are you in for?
Geek: Toppling a government.
Thugs back away from Geek, leaving him plenty of space.
To me, the best pro-piracy argument is it allows people to not reward people for making shit products. If piracy wasn't available, I'd have to pay $60 to find out that new game is absolute ass-nuggets,
This is why I love game demos on the 360. Finally, on a console! I've loved them for years on the PC for this very reason -- it's as good as piracy without the hassle. Game companies are leery of demos for the same reason -- if a game is shit, the demo is the fart, the warning stench. Sturegon's Law holds true for many things and it seems like over 90% of games are total shit. If a company won't release a demo, it either means their game is so shitty they wouldn't dare or so awesome they don't care. As I recall, Oblivion didn't have a 360 demo and GTAIV didn't. Both games are 10/10 on the system so I guess they didn't think it worth the effort.
... and I DON'T KNOW is on third.
Let's just get that out of the way first and foremost.
But what's the name of the band on stage?
Who.
The name of the band.
Who.
No, I want to know who's on stage.
Yes.
So you're saying Yes is on stage?
No, Yes isn't even at this concert.
Obviously another journo-troll saying something stupid to get people worked up. Fuck it, I'll bite.
The gaming arms race has been about fancier graphics, bigger worlds, and more shiny. Consoles are fucking expensive these days! Seriously expensive. Games cost a mint and don't even get me started on the dev costs. GTAIV cost $100 million to make? Insane. Good game but insane. But this is the battle Sony and Microsoft wanted to fight.
Nintendo said "Hey, is shiny shooter 2.0 any better than shiny shooter 1.0? If the gameplay is pretty much the same but the graphics look better, does that make it more fun? What if all the budget was spent on the shiny and nothing was left to pay for fun?" So their idea was to not go for the high-end. There were two consoles already competing on shiny. Nintendo decided to do something very, very different with the motion controller.
What's the end result? Games unlike what's available on the other consoles, at least when it's done right. By keeping the specs on the machine down, not going HD, Nintendo said they were emphasizing affordability. It can certainly run games that would have been considered shiny last generation but it can't keep up with the ps3 and 360, it wasn't meant to. Complaining that the Wii can't handle a AAA title originally meant for those two systems is missing the point in the most spectacular fail tradition imaginable.
The man is a tremendous douche who always writes ridiculous articles so that people get their dander up and drive traffic. He's nothing more than a journo-troll.
And this whole cyber-crap thing misses the mark. First off, nix the cyber. Nothing makes you sound less knowledgeable than using cyber when talking about computers. Second off, computer warfare is just another way of fucking with the enemy's infrastructure. If anything, you could classify it a subset of cold warfare. That's anything that's indirect, doesn't involve the acting killing of others, but is a true struggle between nations. Economic warfare is the usual manifestation with trade wars, resource wars, and political maneuvering. It's not some crazy new thing that's all black leather and sexy computer chicks.
Did you steal info from a poorly-secured computer system? Great, that's just digital espionage. You could have sent a guy in with a camera to photograph stuff 30 years ago but you did it with a computer now. Same idea, different tools. Did you crash his telcom system? Great. Could have been done with a saboteur 30 years ago (generally poor luck with that sort of thing) but you managed it from your desk. Excellent.
While there will always be security holes in software, most of this exposure can be mitigated against with simple, sensible procedures. The thing we tend to forget is real life ain't like Hollywood. It may be cool in Chuck to think that a guy with a supercomputer armband can hijack a Predator whenever he feels like it but that's not reality. It may be cool to think that a hacker could pick any target he wants and break in but it's usually more a matter of running scripts and finding holes where you can get them, very luck of the draw.
When it comes to infrastructure attacks, I'm far less concerned with computer attacks. Throughout this country, we have a number of single points of failure that would be difficult to replace. Any civil engineer could draw up a hitlist in five minutes far more knowledgeable than I'm going to suggest here.
1. Long-haul transmission lines. It wouldn't take that much explosive to bring a tower down and they're often running through isolated areas. Knock a few towers down, then we're stuck spending billions to guard the rest.
2. While everyone is preoccupied with towers, hit the ...crap, I'm forgetting the name. My memory is wonky here but there's some expensive stuff used in electrical distribution that has very long lead times for ordering replacements. Blow up one of these, it could be a year before the new one arrives.
3. While everyone is preoccupied with that, send a few Lee Malvo teams to randomly snipe people around the country. Doesn't matter that the average commuter is ten times more likely to die in a crash that day than get sniped, everyone will panic.
4. While everyone is preoccupied with snipers, one of the other soft targets can be hit. Seriously, one electrical line failing took out New York. Making that happen again would have to be easier than plots like blowing up tanker trucks in the tunnels.
By all means, let's protect the computers but it's attacks like I've outlined above that I think would prove far more deadly. Of course, if I were the terrorist, I'd rather fart around with computer attacks from the safety of my cave than risk entering the target country but that's just me. I think people should be ridiculed for their political views, not killed. I'd make a lousy terrorist.
Soviet troops
Huh? The Sovs had their hands full with Jerry, and didn't declare war on Japan until Aug. 8, 1945.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria
* Khingan-Mukden Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 - September 2, 1945)
* Harbin-Kirin Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 - September 2, 1945)
* Sungari Offensive Operation (August 9, 1945 - September 2, 1945)
* South Sakhalin Army Group Offensive Operation (August 11, 1945 - August 25, 1945)
* Seisin Landing Operation (August 13, 1945 - August 16, 1945)
* Kurile Landing Operation (August 18, 1945 - September 1, 1945)
Point being, the Japanese were rolled over by Soviet armor. Armor didn't really play as much of a role in the island-hopping campaigns and so their infantry was able to put up more of a fight in the jungles. In the open against tanks, they were woefully unprepared.
The exo-skeletal combat suit will happen, just not in the way people want it to. Units like this would be of great use for land forces during occupation or high intensity situations where robots are not suited to be due to the mixed set of combatants and non-combatants that are common to urban warfare. Special Forces will most likely some day have breach and patrol squads of these for specialized purposes like breach and sweep missions or scout and intercept. While robots are good at killing, they'll likely never be suited for situations where death isn't the sole option. Mixed situations like this is where mobile suits like this would excel. I don't ever see the application of giant robot suits the size of cities mind you, but small combat suits that allow a man to get in and out of buildings without taking the roof off (or perhaps breaching the roof as an option?) would be a boon for the military (which is why they are developing them!)
But there's no need to put the person inside. You could operate them by remote and make them smaller, no need to fit the human form so they can be optimally shaped for the mission. That's the part that people keep overlooking, that the remote control or autonomous AI could get that good.
This will be a reboot of Futurama with a new cast, and more action (and sex) to excite a younger more modern audience. The Planet Express spaceship's bridge will look like the Apple Store, Leela will be having a secret affair with Bender. It will be shot in realistic shakey-cam. And there will be lots of lens flare...
You forgot the blackjack and hookers.
I always thought it was because of Japan's samurai tradition/mythos (like the US has a Wild West gun mythos).
Yup, there's the big fascination with the warrior who can defeat all odds if he's super-pissed off enough. The Japanese Army in WWII thought they could make up for their material inferiority as compared with the US and Soviet troops simply by fighting harder and showing more spirit. That can work to a degree against a numerically superior but less hardened foe, causing them to break before you do. But if they're just as hardcore, the outcome is inevitable defeat.
As to why the Japanese hero robot has to be gigantic, I think it's just a cultural fascination with giganticism. Their Tokyo-eating monsters are huge, their weird heroes who fight them like Ultraman are huge, and thus their hero robots would be huge as well. I admit there's something transfixing when looking at a humanoid robotic form laying waste to everything around it.
The whole idea of mecha robots is plain wrong. It's not necessary to make an exoskeleton that big. In a military (or 'gaming') situation it'd just present a bigger target. All you need is a minimal amount of armour with enough power to augment picking up large amounts of weight, and possibly some system to dampen recoil if you're holding a projectile weapon.
The basic concept of the exo-skeleton is you get to be superman without having to be a kryptonian. You're as powerful as a tank, can blast things just by moving your arms, it's scifi fantasy.
Those trying to come up with a practical justification say it's the next advancement of the tank which is all about letting a human being go into combat with serious protection. But if you think about it, the only reason why tanks are manned is because automated systems aren't good enough to let them operate autonomously. Every gun on a WWII warship needed human to load the weapons, manually aim them, pull the trigger, etc. Now warship turrets are highly automated and only need humans to reload the enormous ammo hoppers, perform maintenance, etc.
The exoskeletal combat suit is likely never going to happen. The basic elements of combat are finding out where the enemy is and hitting him in the most vulnerable place possible. The technology of the time will dictate the weapons at hand. We're going to see a lot more robotic scouting systems, more potential for bot-on-bot action. But in a situation like Iraq, we won't see someone waddling into combat in power armor, they'll be remotely controlling the robot that's exposed to fire. The best comparison I can offer you are the Automated Weapons Platforms from the old PC game Xcom. You had human squads in the fight but the AWP carried the heaviest weapons and kept them mobile. Humans carrying that kind of firepower would have to unload and fight from a fixed position, not on the move.
We'll likely see exoskeletons in the civilian world. I could see them really being worth the cost in construction and other situations where very awkward loads need to be carried through confined spaces. More maneuverable than a forklift, simple enough for illegal labor to use, and not all that expensive. If it can't meet those criteria, it ain't happening.
Now that I think about it, I nearly busted a gut laughing at Galaxy Quest [wikipedia.org], so I guess by your measure that must suck harder than a Thai ladyboy trying to fund her final op.
Wow. I certainly would never admitted to knowing what that was like. You are very brave.
Disney has been churning out utter dreck for years. Go ahead, what was the last good original animated Disney movie (not counting those made by Pixar)? I don't know, but I'm estimating something like 20 years ago. It's common knowledge that Disney had been pressuring Pixar to do sequels to all their hits because Disney can't think of or even appreciate new ideas. The big question a few years back was, "When Disney buys Pixar, will Pixar be able to maintain their independence, or will Disney's 'creative' minds start steering the ship?"
Disney's formula has pretty much been lame-ass princess romance stories unless they feel like branching out and ripping off some anime. Lion King was Kimba, the one with what was it, Atlantis? That was ripping off another anime with a hero with glasses who had the hots for some native-type chick in a bikini.
What was great about Pixar is their ideas were so fresh and original, they were the sorts of things you only wished you could think up. If they go the route of by-the-numbers mechanical exploitation of the "franchises," that's going to be a sad day. The death of the Disney theme parks is when they stopped doing it for the fun and started doing it for the money. I was a tyke when they were still great and I remembered them as what Heaven should be, better than life and maintaining standards royalty couldn't fault. By the time I became an adult they'd decayed to crass, plastic, mass-market trash. It was disgusting, like dying and meeting St. Pete at the Pearly Gates only to see a "sponsored by Starbucks" sticker plastered across.
Pixar is going to begin the slow circling of the drain. Watch the talent defect to a new studio with heart and integrity.
The Xbox I picked up has a 20gb HDD. With online distribution a major feature for the console, this is just criminally small. Yes, yes, I'm sure it was huge back when they put the specs together but it's pathetic these days. There's a 120gb model you can buy but it's like four times what a comparable drive could cost in the PC world. These drives are the razors, Microsoft, the downloads are the blades! Make a drive that expensive and I'm just not going to download much. When I can get a 1.5tb drive for $100, they should be selling drive upgrades for Xbox at around a $50 price point. They'll be buying in bulk and make their money back.
Think you're smart, kid? Well, I can still kick your ass at teatherball. (I hope.)
Wow, I never did understand that bit in the polka. It might be kind of sad that in the last few Weird Al albums, I've never heard most of the original songs. I'm getting old, huh?
You and me both. The last Weird Al parody I've heard before he did it (talking recent music) was for Amish Paradise. I had no idea what raps All About the Pentiums and White and Nerdy were based on. I consider this to be a good thing. You know what's considered artistic in rap? Buster Rimes, he has a track on GTAIV. It's a soulful little ditty called "where my money" where he goes ranting about how he's taller than a hall of midgets and if he doesn't get his cake he's gonna kill bitches and niggas, where my fucking money?
I'd like to think if MLK came back from the dead he'd go all Cosby and start smacking these idiots upside the head.
The only part of the supergun the Army was looking into that I thought was neat was the use of onboard laser and GPS to send fire orders. If you see the target, you can lase it, know it's exact position on the grid coordinates and rounds can be incoming in seconds. That's a pointer!
*creepy smile* black hole sun, black hole sun
I've submitted stories before to only have them accepted up to four days later. That's probably what happened here. Shame the editors didn't catch it.
Lucky you. I've got a submission over a year old. I'm guessing it's like emails at the bottom of the pile, they just get lost in the layers of time.
I understand what Valve is saying but I think they may be making a douche move here.
Back when Half-Life came out I was saying to myself how it would be great if they released episodic content on the same engine. The story was so huge in Half-Life, it was fully half of the gameplay. I would have been interested to see more of what was happening with Gordon Freeman. Charge $50 for the first game which covers the cost of engine development, release two or three quality add-ons over the next few years, not the faffing about like OpFor and Blue Shit but real, proper new chapters, just as long as the original game, and then when the tech has improved that's when you release the sequel for $50 again. They tried this with HL2's episodic content except those games were expensive, short, and take just as long to come out as a real game.
When looking at the hardcore wargamer market, it seemed reasonable that something like this could be handled along a subscription model. You pay $50 a year and get a constant stream of updates, more scenarios and models and such. Every five years or so the engine gets an overhaul to bring it up to date and that's part of the release cycle. I figured this sort of thing would make sense in the internet age because there would be such close contact between developer and fanbase. But what this sort of thing has devolved to in real life is like the sports games where a new engine is created for a new console and then the only thing that really changes each year are the team rosters and stats and you get charged full price for that minuscule update.
I can tell you what the game publishers are probably drooling at replicating here -- game store revenues. That's what DLC is about. When you're a D&D player or, God help you, a Warhammer guy, you're constantly shelling out money each month. New books, new figurines, dice, etc. What the publishers like is even if the physical game is resold, it doesn't come with that DLC. (the only exception is when they decide to release a game of the year edition that specifically includes all the add-ons.) So if the game is resold, the DLC doesn't go with it and so the same content can be resold to the new player. Eventually they're hoping for physical media to go away altogether and all distribution will be online with no right of resale. Expect major dick moves all the way along here.
I wonder how successful episodic gaming could really be, if the episodes were priced very low and the publisher kept up a consistent release schedule with relatively short intervals. I know I almost never buy a game at full-price and usually pick them up for $20. If a publisher released quality episodes for $10 a pop and each episode was about a sixth the length of a full game, I could easily end up paying the full $60. If the episodes were good enough, I wouldn't even mind.
and:
"the FTC's authority gives it the power to shut down companies that appear to be engaged in unfair and deceptive practices"
Deceptive practices? Well, we've all heard about the crackwhore complaining to the cops about being sold bogus rocks. I can just imagine how this went.
perv: Dude, I paid mad money for this CP and it turns out the girl was 18. They ripped me off!
ftc: Gee, how awful. What was that url again? We'll look into this immediately.
I don't agree. Let's suppose owned a prime piece of real estate right next to an interstate exit ramp. So far nobody's offered anything, but if an Exxon or McDonalds approached me, am I "scum" because I ask for a lot of money to sell my real estate? No it's kind opportunity cost. If they want to setup show in a highly-visible location, then they'll have to pay for it.
Or they could put their station/restaurant someplace else (1 mile away) that's less-visible but cheaper to buy. Same applies to website real estate. You want exxon-exit100.com, then you'll have to pay for it. If you don't, buy a cheaper website like gastation163418.com - less prime but saves money.
It's nothing personal; just business.
Go die in a fire. Nothing personal, just business.
Who does the writer think make the current crop of rockets - some bureaucrats in DC?
Space X is just another space vehicle manufacturer, same as Boeing and others.
By that logic, Google circa 1999 was just another computer company. The key difference I think is a younger company with less entrenched bureaucracy. It seems inevitable that companies will grow, expand, and become bureaucratic in time. Our defense conglomerates were once innovative and cutting edge but you get corporate mediocrity infecting any mature company. Boeing built the B-17 on spec because they felt the Army Air Corps would need it, there wasn't a contract. Think something like that would happen today? I think a part of this is the benign dictatorship of the company founder at work. This sort of influence can make or break companies to be true but it's certainly not going to be seen in risk-adverse corporate environments.
Google probably won't be immune to this sort of thing. Give it another 30 years and the founders will retire, then the management will be by consensus with corporate types who really don't understand the business and technology trying to make the safest decisions possible to keep the gravy train going. Everything will be decision by committee and there will be enough red tape to stifle the brightest minds they can hire, snuffing out anything smacking of vision and innovation. That's what we're seeing at Microsoft right now. The only question is how long this sort of shambling, zombie-like existence can be maintained before the rotting skull is smashed in. With the American car companies, I'd say the rot set in by the 60's but wasn't fully apparent until the 80's when the Japanese started eating their lunches. After that point, the only question was how long it would take for them to fail. Turns out it was still a damned long time.