"That you no longer have property rights to do what you please with your property you own. You can't build without a permit, you can't build without getting your plans ok'ed by local zoning boards. You can't develop on your land if it isn't zoned right."
Out of curiosity, did you ever see that episode of Family Guy where Peter tried to make his own pool and blacked out his block?
What good is having property if your neighbor can give you an ulcer over it?
" Why do people accept regular phone poles but make such a fuss over cel towers? "
I could venture a couple of gueses:
1.) They grew up with power lines.
2.) Power/telephone lines deliver a necessity to their homes.
It's an interesting discussion in my mind. My boss lives in an area with NO poles. I think the neighborhood is relatively new. I'm guessing when they built it, everything was put underground. I could see that neighborhood getting uppity about a cell phone tower, but in that case it wouldn't be absurd behaviour.
Heck, for all I know, it could simply be the height of poles. If cell towers can be seen from farther away...
Eh, I dunno. I don't understand what's such an eye sore about it. Then again, I grew up in a neighborhood that had quite a few amateur radio operators with towers attached to their houses. Maybe my first guess has some basis in reality.
"People object to his stories because rather than linking to the original news, he links to his site, which in itself is a slashdot metanews-type-site, with a few paragraphs from each article, links to the real news, and some syntatic sugar to glue it together."
"Jesus guys, you may as well change it to "Googledot: Google google Googles. Google google googles." Every single day another story about how absolutely marvellous Google is and how they're going to make the whole Internet better and they're doing it all out of the kindness of their hearts."
It's a pleasant change from "Microsoft does everything wrong" and "here's our 303rd story about how SCO hasn't produced any evidence." stories that perpetually orbited Slashdot.
It's not that I disagree with you, but Slashdot always has a fad to chase. I remember when every week it was headline news that Mozilla incremented the version number.
"Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened. If you travel back in time, then you're participating in events however, your paticipation would already have happened. Therefore, anything you've already done would already have happened."
Depends on what you believe, I suppose. For all we know, travelling in time means creating a new time line. What happened before you travelled still happened, but then you created a new time line and altered it instead.
I may be full of shit, but it seems to me that we, as a species, have a lot to learn about what time actually is and how to change our point in it. I just hope that if it's the sort of thing that would destroy the universe (i.e. paradox), that the the universe would have some sort of protection against that. Either in the form of impossibility, or that it can support paradoxes in some form.
"320x200 pixels, (or even 640x480) might be ok when it's on a monitor - 10% of your field of view, but when it's your entire field of view, as with VR glasses, it's horrible."
VR Glasses don't take over your field of view. I have a pair of 'vr glasses' for watching movies on. (I.e. they have an SVideo input, as opposed to VGA. The target audience was people watching movies privately on plane trips or something.) They did 640 by 480, but it was more like sitting 5 feet in front of a big screen TV than it was an attempt to take over your whole PoV.
The resolution more or less worked. It was certainly enough. It could have been better, but I wouldn't say that's the biggest limiting factor.
Frankly, I think the biggest limiting factor is that VR is not a great means for playing a game. You can't be Mario. You can't be Keanu Reeves. Maybe if they made a Dilbert game...
"When some unemployed punk in Trenton, New Jersey can buy a plug-in for $29.95 that allows him to make love to Cindy Crawford, Virtual Reality is going to make crack look like Sanka."
That's true. Have you seen what $30 hookers look like in New Jersey?
"Developers probably don't want to take any inovative "risks"...remember what happened with the Virtual Boy, so that's my guess as to why we haven't seen a lot of VR stuff."
Well... a few attempts were made after the VB. I have a 'glove' sitting behind me that was made a year or two ago. That reminds me, I really should open the box.
"Nintendo killed it when they released the Virtual Boy."
Bullshit. That's like saying Enterprise killed the lauching of Titans in Cape Canaveral.
Here's a few questions for you all:
1.) How many of you actaully played anything based on Virtual Reality? (If no, did you ever even have an OPPORTUNITY to play VR?)
2.) Of those of you that have, did you actually have any fun?
3.) Did any of you enjoy paying $5 for a minute of entertainment?
4.) Did VR bring you an interesting gaming experience that you couldn't have enjoyed better?
5.) Was it anything like Hollywood?
Here, I'll answer my own questions:
1.) Yes, I have. They set up a VR arcade at a mall near where I lived.
2.) No. I had to wait in line, put on this bulky ass equipment and visor that detected my motion. Despite being weighed down so much, not a lot more was offered than I could have gotten on my PC. I could turn my head and look any direction. Unfortunately, the tracking on it was primitive. (I could have dismissed that, though, because technology always gets better.) Sadly, I had cables running down the back of my head that made me feel like Dave Lister. Whenever I turned my head I was AWARE of the cables and it limited my movement. The display used color LCD and it was in stereo. Let me tell you something, the Virtual Boy was definitely not to everybody's taste, but at least it produced a clear stereo image. LCDs have a quirk that a row of single color LEDs dont: It takes 3 sub-pixels to make one color. An all red screen with an LCD looks a little like a checkerboard. When you magnify it, then put one over each eye, it looks like you're looking through a screen door. The VB may have been headache inducing for a lot of people, but color would NOT have solved that. It would have made it worse. Increasing the DPI of LCDs would help significantly, but they also have to be really small to work. In short, it was hard to see what you were looking at. Believe it or not, it would have been a LOT easier to see if they DIDN'T have that stereo component.
There was a belt around my waist that detected which way my body was facing. Pivot your body, and you're turning left and right. However, that stupid cable problem was there... again. (Not to mention that it was heavy.) Try turning 720 degrees and then trying to step over the cable you can't see because you have Laforge's 2 decade old visor over your head. On top of that, there was a safety railing around the play area that was easy to bump into. Ugh. Imagine playing Q3 with that setup.
There was a handheld unit for firing. Basically, you held your hand out like a gun, that's how you aimed. That's also how you walked. So despite being in "Virtual Reality!!!", you had to turn your body, then use your thumb to run. I mentioned primitive tracking before...
Did I have fun? No. Even if I were more athletic, it was still hard to play. When I saw Lawnmower Man, I thought I'd get in this rig and have a new exciting game experience. Nopers. Not even close.
3.) Fuck no. Truth be told, if this thing were in my house where I could play it all I wanted, I doubt it would have lasted more than a few days before being sold or stored. Even the geek in me couldn't love this thing.
4.) I'm hard pressed to think of a game that would have benefitted from this. Even with perfect tracking, no wires, and gloves, there's still the limit of having to stand in a particular area. Even a room to walk around in would have been problematic.
5.) No. Even today, I can't imagine somebody could build a VR unit that was as exciting as what we've seen in Hollywood.
My opinion on Virtual Reality was soured BEFORE the VB actually came out. Frankly, the Virtual Boy was a lot better experience. It had a good stereoscopic display, *and* the games could still be fun because they used tried-and-true controls we all loved. The
The Dreamcast had a respectable user base when the PS2 came along, it was cheaper, and the graphics on it were better than what was typically shown on the PS2 for it's first and second generation games. Granted, it is doubtful the DC would have beaten the PS2, but if Sega had more money I bet you it'd most definitely be around today.
As for the DVD player, I agree that had a strong effect on getting the PS2 off the ground, but realistically speaking that is NOT what's carrying the weight of the system. I would be REALLY curious to see if the XBOX remote control that enables DVD playing was sold with a lot with the 1st year of its sales.
Frankly, I'm saddened by the death of the Dreamcast. It was the first real hardware I truely appreciated from Sega. The others really felt like they cut too many corners. (Well.. maybe not the Genesis. I didn't like that machine a whole lot, but by the time I came on board the SNES was out.)
Huh? The DC died because Sega couldn't keep producing machines to sell. It's a widely regarded tragedy, not a mass exodus to a machine that Sega was hyping up.
I'm not really well studied enough to give you a useful answer either way. I will say this, though: Too much faith can lead to danger. You've heard stories of people who refuse medical treatment because they believe God will help them? A few years ago, Slashdot had a story about how there were plans to build some sort of gizmo that would result in the appearance of sound coming from the sky. The idea was to use it as a psychological weapon, make people think God was talking to them.
If you think of God as a parent, then it's reasonable to assume that there might be some mis-information in place to make us good children. I don't know how dinosaurs play into that (I don't buy the 'test of faith' argument), but it is interesting that by the year 2000 (roughly the time Judgement Day is supposed to happen...) we use the remains of those dinos as a source of fuel. Interestingly enough, the oil is causing tension across the world. Now, maybe I'm full of shit, but it seems as though dinosaurs have resulted in a very important element of our civilization. Like a trust-fund, in a way.
"BTW, why does the Lord's Prayer (which you pray to God, remember) contain the plea "...lead us not into tempation..." I mean, why are you asking (begging!) GOD not to tempt you??? Satan is supposed to be the evil on and do the tempting./"Eye. Warship. Satin?"
I'll take a stab at answering, but first I should let you know that I have not studied religion. I believe in God and a lot of my values are Christian in belief, but I'm not well studied. I figure you should know that before taking what I have to say into consideration.
Temptation is dangerous. I think this point is understood. Greed, for example, has caused much suffering to people. "Lead us not into temptation", to me, reads like "keep us away from it." Sort of like saying "I'm on a diet, please don't leave cupcakes around."
A lot of people look to God for a direction to go. They're willing to do the right thing along the way, but they'd like to be kept safe. That sorta make sense?
Slashdot Mirror
" Wireless Bartender not only comes with a comprehensive list of drinks, but allows you to create new and exciting drinks."
Blech. It's tea sucks!!
"Juice may be a small thing now, but as we go on trying to make perfect stuff using machines and not with human hands.."
Uh, what's so scary about this? I ask because I'm making a rather risky assumption here that you drink cola or other bottled beverages.
"That you no longer have property rights to do what you please with your property you own. You can't build without a permit, you can't build without getting your plans ok'ed by local zoning boards. You can't develop on your land if it isn't zoned right."
Out of curiosity, did you ever see that episode of Family Guy where Peter tried to make his own pool and blacked out his block?
What good is having property if your neighbor can give you an ulcer over it?
" Why do people accept regular phone poles but make such a fuss over cel towers? "
I could venture a couple of gueses:
1.) They grew up with power lines.
2.) Power/telephone lines deliver a necessity to their homes.
It's an interesting discussion in my mind. My boss lives in an area with NO poles. I think the neighborhood is relatively new. I'm guessing when they built it, everything was put underground. I could see that neighborhood getting uppity about a cell phone tower, but in that case it wouldn't be absurd behaviour.
Heck, for all I know, it could simply be the height of poles. If cell towers can be seen from farther away...
Eh, I dunno. I don't understand what's such an eye sore about it. Then again, I grew up in a neighborhood that had quite a few amateur radio operators with towers attached to their houses. Maybe my first guess has some basis in reality.
"but some, like Sammy Barsa from NYT article, find themselves persona non grata in the community."
That's easy to fix. If anybody complains, threaten to turn up the power!
"People object to his stories because rather than linking to the original news, he links to his site, which in itself is a slashdot metanews-type-site, with a few paragraphs from each article, links to the real news, and some syntatic sugar to glue it together."
Like Slashdot.
"Jesus guys, you may as well change it to "Googledot: Google google Googles. Google google googles." Every single day another story about how absolutely marvellous Google is and how they're going to make the whole Internet better and they're doing it all out of the kindness of their hearts."
It's a pleasant change from "Microsoft does everything wrong" and "here's our 303rd story about how SCO hasn't produced any evidence." stories that perpetually orbited Slashdot.
It's not that I disagree with you, but Slashdot always has a fad to chase. I remember when every week it was headline news that Mozilla incremented the version number.
You do realize that was a piece of satire, right?
"Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened. If you travel back in time, then you're participating in events however, your paticipation would already have happened. Therefore, anything you've already done would already have happened."
Depends on what you believe, I suppose. For all we know, travelling in time means creating a new time line. What happened before you travelled still happened, but then you created a new time line and altered it instead.
I may be full of shit, but it seems to me that we, as a species, have a lot to learn about what time actually is and how to change our point in it. I just hope that if it's the sort of thing that would destroy the universe (i.e. paradox), that the the universe would have some sort of protection against that. Either in the form of impossibility, or that it can support paradoxes in some form.
I hate talking about this shit.
"from the British Red Dwarf series. Need I say more?"
Heh. Yeah, imagine the shock of coming out of a game for 4 years and finding out we're all Slashdot posters!
"320x200 pixels, (or even 640x480) might be ok when it's on a monitor - 10% of your field of view, but when it's your entire field of view, as with VR glasses, it's horrible."
VR Glasses don't take over your field of view. I have a pair of 'vr glasses' for watching movies on. (I.e. they have an SVideo input, as opposed to VGA. The target audience was people watching movies privately on plane trips or something.) They did 640 by 480, but it was more like sitting 5 feet in front of a big screen TV than it was an attempt to take over your whole PoV.
The resolution more or less worked. It was certainly enough. It could have been better, but I wouldn't say that's the biggest limiting factor.
Frankly, I think the biggest limiting factor is that VR is not a great means for playing a game. You can't be Mario. You can't be Keanu Reeves. Maybe if they made a Dilbert game...
"Who needs virtual reality when you have reality tv?"
I'm not sure I understand your point. Is it that reality TV fills the same needs, or that it makes you realize you DON'T want to be other people?
Actually I could get behind that. "Reality TV killed Virtual Reality." Sorta like how the Matrix killed Kung-fu!
"When some unemployed punk in Trenton, New Jersey can buy a plug-in for $29.95 that allows him to make love to Cindy Crawford, Virtual Reality is going to make crack look like Sanka."
That's true. Have you seen what $30 hookers look like in New Jersey?
"What about the patent Sony has on the Matrix-esque technology?"
I saw the movies, they can have it.
"I Googled "Virtual Reality" Results 18,100,000 Hits for Virtual Reality. It seems the technology is everywhere."
This is the same site that returns 5 million hits for "episode i was a good movie".
"Developers probably don't want to take any inovative "risks"...remember what happened with the Virtual Boy, so that's my guess as to why we haven't seen a lot of VR stuff."
Well... a few attempts were made after the VB. I have a 'glove' sitting behind me that was made a year or two ago. That reminds me, I really should open the box.
"The Matrix scared everyone."
I agree. I don't know why anyone would want to hook into a first person sci-fi snoozer where you play Keanu Reeves.
Bullshit. That's like saying Enterprise killed the lauching of Titans in Cape Canaveral.
Here's a few questions for you all:
1.) How many of you actaully played anything based on Virtual Reality? (If no, did you ever even have an OPPORTUNITY to play VR?)
2.) Of those of you that have, did you actually have any fun?
3.) Did any of you enjoy paying $5 for a minute of entertainment?
4.) Did VR bring you an interesting gaming experience that you couldn't have enjoyed better?
5.) Was it anything like Hollywood?
Here, I'll answer my own questions:
My opinion on Virtual Reality was soured BEFORE the VB actually came out. Frankly, the Virtual Boy was a lot better experience. It had a good stereoscopic display, *and* the games could still be fun because they used tried-and-true controls we all loved. The
"I think it's time I spent my precious picoseconds looking at some other website."
If typos are such a sore spot with you, why come down into the forum area of Slashdot?
"Um, it's only hypocracy if the same person says it."
Hypocracy or not, it's still a double standard.
The Dreamcast had a respectable user base when the PS2 came along, it was cheaper, and the graphics on it were better than what was typically shown on the PS2 for it's first and second generation games. Granted, it is doubtful the DC would have beaten the PS2, but if Sega had more money I bet you it'd most definitely be around today.
As for the DVD player, I agree that had a strong effect on getting the PS2 off the ground, but realistically speaking that is NOT what's carrying the weight of the system. I would be REALLY curious to see if the XBOX remote control that enables DVD playing was sold with a lot with the 1st year of its sales.
Frankly, I'm saddened by the death of the Dreamcast. It was the first real hardware I truely appreciated from Sega. The others really felt like they cut too many corners. (Well.. maybe not the Genesis. I didn't like that machine a whole lot, but by the time I came on board the SNES was out.)
"This story is just a marketing attempt..."
Maybe, but if it's interesting, who gives a flying fuck?
"Oh no! Somebody wants my attention! Well I better tune them out!!"
"Tell that to the Sega Dreamcast."
Huh? The DC died because Sega couldn't keep producing machines to sell. It's a widely regarded tragedy, not a mass exodus to a machine that Sega was hyping up.
"Recent sales are low because everyone is anticipating XBOX2. Why not?"
Because people play games and not machines?
"SO, god is trying to trick us? He's LYING to us?
/"Eye. Warship. Satin?"
Doesn't sound like a god I'd like to worship."
I'm not really well studied enough to give you a useful answer either way. I will say this, though: Too much faith can lead to danger. You've heard stories of people who refuse medical treatment because they believe God will help them? A few years ago, Slashdot had a story about how there were plans to build some sort of gizmo that would result in the appearance of sound coming from the sky. The idea was to use it as a psychological weapon, make people think God was talking to them.
If you think of God as a parent, then it's reasonable to assume that there might be some mis-information in place to make us good children. I don't know how dinosaurs play into that (I don't buy the 'test of faith' argument), but it is interesting that by the year 2000 (roughly the time Judgement Day is supposed to happen...) we use the remains of those dinos as a source of fuel. Interestingly enough, the oil is causing tension across the world. Now, maybe I'm full of shit, but it seems as though dinosaurs have resulted in a very important element of our civilization. Like a trust-fund, in a way.
"BTW, why does the Lord's Prayer (which you pray to God, remember) contain the plea "...lead us not into tempation..." I mean, why are you asking (begging!) GOD not to tempt you??? Satan is supposed to be the evil on and do the tempting.
I'll take a stab at answering, but first I should let you know that I have not studied religion. I believe in God and a lot of my values are Christian in belief, but I'm not well studied. I figure you should know that before taking what I have to say into consideration.
Temptation is dangerous. I think this point is understood. Greed, for example, has caused much suffering to people. "Lead us not into temptation", to me, reads like "keep us away from it." Sort of like saying "I'm on a diet, please don't leave cupcakes around."
A lot of people look to God for a direction to go. They're willing to do the right thing along the way, but they'd like to be kept safe. That sorta make sense?