I did a six week rotation at Barnes-Jewish (where Wash U does their RadOnc treatments) for my Radiation Therapy degree last December / January and witnessed one of these being done on an Edge machine. It's the most refined version of Varian's linear accelerators that they commonly use for Radiosurgery. It's on-board CT is really high resolution and nice gating capabilities (ability to turn it on only when the target area is in the right position) to allow for pretty precise delivery. I believe an additional EKG component was added to the CT based gating to ensure the radiation delivery was timed with the heart beat. Alternately, they have a ViewRay in the RadOnc department which has real-time MRI capabilities which should be able to do similar guidance.
It depended on the location. Some of them were quite liquid. Some were not. I understand the Pittsburgh location was in the red to the tune of $40k per month prior to its closure. If you already have a lot of debt from expansion costs, that sort of negative cash flow is killer. The St. Louis shop where I was a member was 18 months old and just hitting the black. When you have a big corporate debt, all the locations producing a small profit isn't enough:(
I recently purchased a 2012 GLI with a SatNav package. I wasn't planning on paying the upgrade fee for the SatNav, but it was implemented so well that I decided it was worth it. While it does have a touch screen for the "fiddly bits", i.e. setting up navigation, searching your mp3 player, navigating your phonebook, etc, the screen is mostly used to display information. The climate controls are all nicely laid out buttons that you don't need to use the screen for, but when you make changes to the climate settings additional information is shown on the screen for a few seconds that confirms your changes. While the radio station presets are on the screen (in an easily usable format), the back and forward buttons for tuning (which are also context sensitive for CD and mp3 play) are discrete buttons just above the screen and replicated on the steering wheel. Likewise the volume control is a discrete knob that also doubles as the map zoom control while in nav mode. As an added bonus, information is replicated in a smaller panel inside the driver's gauge area for even less time spent with eyes off the road. In practice I've found that I'm much less likely to miss my turn due to that second info panel, as it is completely under the driver's direct control. All in all, it is one of the best modern car info system that I have seen. The stereo is co-branded with Fender, and per a 2 minute Google search, developed with Panasonic. They did a nice job.
The picture has already been removed from the "offending" blog post on Boing Boing. I don't know the exact timeline, but I would be willing to bet it was pulled within an hour of the story going live on Slashdot. My guess is asking politely would have had a similar effect, as some folks *do* respect the wishes of content creators without requiring invocation the litigation boogeyman.
GPS is only a tool for navigation. It will *probably* help you find a route, but ultimately it is your responsibility as a driver to use what it tells you safety and effectively. If your SatNav tells you to go down a remote mountain logging road during a snowstorm, you should probably not do that. Likewise, the smart traveler should probably decide on his/her route prior to getting in the car so that you don't have any nasty surprises. Even the crappiest SatNav or phone navigation program puts a lot of information at your fingertips, so by all means use them. Just use them with a grain of salt.
Now for my rant. I have a Tom Tom OneXL, and while I initially liked it, the more I use it the more I find in inadequate. Both the unit itself and the maps. While my map update is admittedly more than a year old, it frequently misses "new" roads that have been in place for 5-10 years. This is annoying but understandable. I was sold a product that was incomplete. Nothing new from technology companies:)
But what really bugs me is the TomTom One's poor GUI (map navigation is a nightmare and you can't set the zoom level while in 2-D mode) and terrible route time estimation. I travel a lot (both work and to visit far flung families and friends) and so spend a lot of time in the car. There have been several times when I have let my TomTom talk me into questionable routing that cost me many miles and not a few hours. That is because it has really, really bad route estimation settings that you can't change in the head unit. It normally doubles estimate vs. the actual time for 2 lane/rural travel and will therefore drive you WAY out of you way to use the interstate rather than just drive a more direct route. I don't know how many times more that this will happen before I can no longer restrain the urge to disassemble it into the finest pieces with a hammer and mail it back to TomTom in a shoebox. But I already have the note planned: "Dear TomTom. This is not a warranty issue..."
I like your ideas, but I think they are not as scalable as your arguments seem to imply. Distributed power generation only works when you have a distributed population. I.e., you might be able to coat every roof of every house in the burbs with solar cells, and fill the country-sides with wind turbines, but this still won't provide enough power for the CITIES. Especially when you are talking about cities in northern latitudes or countryside in gentle climes. For that you need concentrated energy generation capacity (ideally nuclear for base load with gas for peak capacity).
This type of concentrated capacity necessitates high capital investments, either private or government. So while I very much like the idea of the Utopian aggrarian/distributed model, it is simply not realistic. At least not for our current society. Maybe in a couple hundred years as the draw of cities slowly wains and technology allows us to experiment with different social models. But not in the short term. Not even in the medium term. We have too many other things to spend our funds on.
(BTW, I think that we should absolutely switch as much of our power generation to solar and wind as possible. Once the nanotube / multicolor absobtion based solar cells hits the market at reasonable buy-back costs it will make a lot more sense and the Pickens Plan is a great if expensive idea for reducing the importation of oil and reduction in pollution)
It is my understanding that Gotham has always been the parallel for Chicago. Much like the Metropolis, even though it is an awful short commute to Smallville, is the stand in for New York.
Yes, there is. That being said, the house is totally badass! Terrabyte upon terrabytes of storage, integrated expert systems twenty years ahead of the best that we have today, and a fully functional fabrication system in the garage. All that with scenic ocean views? Hell, yeah.
Re:I found this film dull (Spoilers)
on
Iron Man Released
·
· Score: 1
A) Yes, the movie does portray the US Military in a good light. So what? I am not saying that they don't do anything wrong in RL. That is obviously not the case. But in this story, as in RL, they are not all villains. I personally know a couple dozen of them, and they are for the most part, stand-up guys. As far as the movie goes though, the US military is barely in it after the first ten minutes (other than a short dog-fight scene), and rather non-consequential to the overall plot.
B) Um, no. Actually, when Tony Stark finds out that weapons created by his company are in the hands of "The Ten Rings", his action is to suspend creation and distribution to ALL PARTIES, including the US Military. Now if you want to make an argument that the ethnic groups that made up "The Ten Rings" were mostly non-anglo, that you could do factually. I inferred that reason that Iron Man chose to go after the "The Ten Rings" was because they were conquering defenseless villages and killing innocents rather than because most of its members weren't WASPS, but that is what I took away from the movie. That logic wasn't explicitly stated. You could also say that Iron Man was doing it for revenge, but in my mind that has more to do with the fact that they kept him in a cave for three months and killed is only friend there then the color of their skin or their mode of dress.
C) Yes, it is hard to miss the subtext that rich guys find it easier to sleep with pretty women. This is hardly news. But you would have to not be paying ANY attention to note the overiding subtext that despite all of Tony Stark's wealth, power, and prestige, he is desperately lovely and unfulfilled. Otherwise Ms. Potts wouldn't be "all that he has".
Its the Internet, so argue all you want. But please try to at least be accurate when framing your arguments.
Don't forget one of the most important things: Demographics. A school with a unbalanced guy/girl ratio can mean a one way trip to the celibacy zone. Either that or a 4-5 year term as the "Mayor of Friend-town". Neither of which will add much to your college experience. You can always make more money later. Make sure you enjoy the social aspects of your college years, and you will always look back at your choice of school with fondness.
It's actually not a bad idea for part of a blended shielding solution. The fuel itself (assuming U or Pu) is a pretty high density material, although some of the daughter products might start producing significant bremsstrahlung radiation if there was too much high z material facing the cabin. Unfortunately, damage to that shielding (micrometeorite punctures or the like) would cause radiological contamination and that might outweigh the benefits.
Oh come on. Sure it's the internet and everything, but someone trashtalking about your recently dead loved ones, even if that someone is an anonymous stranger, can be upsetting. That is not being overly sensitive. That is just being human.
And while the vast majority of posters on slashdot never met the guy, being a fan for multiple decades does tend to make folks feel connected to an author. So they have every right not to want to see the name of a man they admired drug through the mud. There is not much that they can do about it, but that doesn't automatically make them overly sentimental.
Regardless of whether or not all of a given person's electricity is coming from green sources or not, using electricity to power your vehicle most definitely *IS* a cleaner solution. Even assuming 100% coal power, and taking into account transmission losses, your total energy use is half that of using gasoline (~26% for coal w/ transmission losses, 12% for ICE), even before you take into account the energy used to supply the gasoline in the first place. The reduction in pollution released to the atmosphere is potentially even greater (50% - 80% depending on whose numbers you are using). Slap a solar cell on your roof for point generation, and you are that much further along.
While the Nobunaga's Ambition series certainly was groundbreaking, and introduced a generation of gamers to the "Warring States" period of Japanese history, it had some problems. When you raised the tax rate REALLY REALLY high, your popularity would go so low that it would "wrap-around" going from near-revolt to ecstatically happy in a short period. And if you left the tax rate up that high, it would do it again. And again...
The AI wasn't too great either. The game compensated for this by turning up what we referred to the "dick factor". Playing at difficulty level 5 was a exercise in masochism that normally didn't take that long. It was routine to have computer armies with lower training levels route armies 10 times their size. Good times. Good times...
I picked up about three weeks ago, and have been very impressed with it. It is simply one of the best examples of "design" that I have seen in a game for a while.
It is chocked full of funny jokes and odd references, and it has been a very enjoyable experience. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
My only quibble is that it gets frustratingly, ridiculously, stupidly hard near the end of the game. When finishing the game is more chore then joy, you have f'd up somewhere along the way.
But, with that one thing aside, the 20+ hours that I have gotten to enjoy the unique level designs and quirky humor make it well worth a purchase. Especially now that it is cheap. As an example: Use telekinesis to hurl a squirrel against a tree, and your 10-year character yells "See you in hell!" in his sing-song voice. Twisted funny.
That is a fine, fine idea. A MMO is far to big to have all of fine details get the Whedon polish, but if the overall story arc and editorial control were in his hands, that would be a step in the right direction.
Well, I would say that the fact that Multiverse coaxed the gaming rights out of Fox is somewhat newsworthy. Front page newsworthy? That's a bit more tricky.
I have been playing "Necessary Evil" campaign of Savage Worlds lately. It is even more streamlined in D20, with initiative based on old fashioned playing cards, no hit points to speak of, robust character creation, and really fast battles. It is a great system that works well with the setting. I use is a great example of the good stuff that is out there right now. I don't there should be any problem acknowledging that fact that without "hatin" on the D20 system. Now if you want to bitch about the quality of some of the WOTC products, that is a whole different topic.
I couldn't disagree more, not necessarily with your observations, but with most of your conclusions.
Feats and class abilities
Can they be used to make cheese-monkey uber-twinkie characters? Yes. Can they also be used to individualize a character, so that YOUR 8th lvl fighter is different from all of those other 8th level fighters? Yes, Yes, Yes! In 1st / 2nd Ed there were not a lot of difference (mechanically) from one fighter to the next. In 3.5, you can create the character that YOU want to play. There are still plenty of room for house rules and imagination. You just have a lot more flexibility, more options in the core mechanics.
2) The D20 System
A lot of people complain that it is a dumbed down system consuming all the competition, but in fact the game is marvelously elegant in it's execution. There is a reason so many systems have jumped on the bandwagon. It's a good place to be. Saves, Attacks, Skills are all resolved via the same streamlined method. Except grapple checks:) Those are just silly.
The skills are so easy to use once you understand them fully, allowing for a lot of flexibility in what your players can accomplish. Compared to the clumsiness of non-weapon proficiencies? Like night and day. I don't know where all of your bean counting comes in, but the skills system we use doesn't slow down play a bit. I am not saying that there isn't some math once a level, but come on, it's 3rd grade math. Once a level. Sure, large combats with high level characters do take a while, but it isn't the math that is slowing things down. It's all the players. You know, the ones playing the system you hate and they seem to enjoy.
I am not saying that 3E is perfect. But from one crotchety old fan-boy to another, it's actually pretty good.
If you are interesting in trying Living Greyhawk, check out the RPGA site. There are probably gamedays in your area, just check out the campaign rules and join the relevant yahoo group for your area.
Slashdot Mirror
I did a six week rotation at Barnes-Jewish (where Wash U does their RadOnc treatments) for my Radiation Therapy degree last December / January and witnessed one of these being done on an Edge machine. It's the most refined version of Varian's linear accelerators that they commonly use for Radiosurgery. It's on-board CT is really high resolution and nice gating capabilities (ability to turn it on only when the target area is in the right position) to allow for pretty precise delivery. I believe an additional EKG component was added to the CT based gating to ensure the radiation delivery was timed with the heart beat. Alternately, they have a ViewRay in the RadOnc department which has real-time MRI capabilities which should be able to do similar guidance.
It depended on the location. Some of them were quite liquid. Some were not. I understand the Pittsburgh location was in the red to the tune of $40k per month prior to its closure. If you already have a lot of debt from expansion costs, that sort of negative cash flow is killer. The St. Louis shop where I was a member was 18 months old and just hitting the black. When you have a big corporate debt, all the locations producing a small profit isn't enough :(
I recently purchased a 2012 GLI with a SatNav package. I wasn't planning on paying the upgrade fee for the SatNav, but it was implemented so well that I decided it was worth it. While it does have a touch screen for the "fiddly bits", i.e. setting up navigation, searching your mp3 player, navigating your phonebook, etc, the screen is mostly used to display information. The climate controls are all nicely laid out buttons that you don't need to use the screen for, but when you make changes to the climate settings additional information is shown on the screen for a few seconds that confirms your changes. While the radio station presets are on the screen (in an easily usable format), the back and forward buttons for tuning (which are also context sensitive for CD and mp3 play) are discrete buttons just above the screen and replicated on the steering wheel. Likewise the volume control is a discrete knob that also doubles as the map zoom control while in nav mode. As an added bonus, information is replicated in a smaller panel inside the driver's gauge area for even less time spent with eyes off the road. In practice I've found that I'm much less likely to miss my turn due to that second info panel, as it is completely under the driver's direct control. All in all, it is one of the best modern car info system that I have seen. The stereo is co-branded with Fender, and per a 2 minute Google search, developed with Panasonic. They did a nice job.
Nope, still condescension. Unless someone has elected you high emperor of hipstertopia. Then its "noblesse oblige" :)
The picture has already been removed from the "offending" blog post on Boing Boing. I don't know the exact timeline, but I would be willing to bet it was pulled within an hour of the story going live on Slashdot. My guess is asking politely would have had a similar effect, as some folks *do* respect the wishes of content creators without requiring invocation the litigation boogeyman.
GPS is only a tool for navigation. It will *probably* help you find a route, but ultimately it is your responsibility as a driver to use what it tells you safety and effectively. If your SatNav tells you to go down a remote mountain logging road during a snowstorm, you should probably not do that. Likewise, the smart traveler should probably decide on his/her route prior to getting in the car so that you don't have any nasty surprises. Even the crappiest SatNav or phone navigation program puts a lot of information at your fingertips, so by all means use them. Just use them with a grain of salt.
:)
..."
Now for my rant. I have a Tom Tom OneXL, and while I initially liked it, the more I use it the more I find in inadequate. Both the unit itself and the maps. While my map update is admittedly more than a year old, it frequently misses "new" roads that have been in place for 5-10 years. This is annoying but understandable. I was sold a product that was incomplete. Nothing new from technology companies
But what really bugs me is the TomTom One's poor GUI (map navigation is a nightmare and you can't set the zoom level while in 2-D mode) and terrible route time estimation. I travel a lot (both work and to visit far flung families and friends) and so spend a lot of time in the car. There have been several times when I have let my TomTom talk me into questionable routing that cost me many miles and not a few hours. That is because it has really, really bad route estimation settings that you can't change in the head unit. It normally doubles estimate vs. the actual time for 2 lane/rural travel and will therefore drive you WAY out of you way to use the interstate rather than just drive a more direct route. I don't know how many times more that this will happen before I can no longer restrain the urge to disassemble it into the finest pieces with a hammer and mail it back to TomTom in a shoebox. But I already have the note planned: "Dear TomTom. This is not a warranty issue
Latin is such an awesome language!
I like your ideas, but I think they are not as scalable as your arguments seem to imply. Distributed power generation only works when you have a distributed population. I.e., you might be able to coat every roof of every house in the burbs with solar cells, and fill the country-sides with wind turbines, but this still won't provide enough power for the CITIES. Especially when you are talking about cities in northern latitudes or countryside in gentle climes. For that you need concentrated energy generation capacity (ideally nuclear for base load with gas for peak capacity). This type of concentrated capacity necessitates high capital investments, either private or government. So while I very much like the idea of the Utopian aggrarian/distributed model, it is simply not realistic. At least not for our current society. Maybe in a couple hundred years as the draw of cities slowly wains and technology allows us to experiment with different social models. But not in the short term. Not even in the medium term. We have too many other things to spend our funds on. (BTW, I think that we should absolutely switch as much of our power generation to solar and wind as possible. Once the nanotube / multicolor absobtion based solar cells hits the market at reasonable buy-back costs it will make a lot more sense and the Pickens Plan is a great if expensive idea for reducing the importation of oil and reduction in pollution)
It is my understanding that Gotham has always been the parallel for Chicago. Much like the Metropolis, even though it is an awful short commute to Smallville, is the stand in for New York.
Yes, there is. That being said, the house is totally badass! Terrabyte upon terrabytes of storage, integrated expert systems twenty years ahead of the best that we have today, and a fully functional fabrication system in the garage. All that with scenic ocean views? Hell, yeah.
A) Yes, the movie does portray the US Military in a good light. So what? I am not saying that they don't do anything wrong in RL. That is obviously not the case. But in this story, as in RL, they are not all villains. I personally know a couple dozen of them, and they are for the most part, stand-up guys. As far as the movie goes though, the US military is barely in it after the first ten minutes (other than a short dog-fight scene), and rather non-consequential to the overall plot. B) Um, no. Actually, when Tony Stark finds out that weapons created by his company are in the hands of "The Ten Rings", his action is to suspend creation and distribution to ALL PARTIES, including the US Military. Now if you want to make an argument that the ethnic groups that made up "The Ten Rings" were mostly non-anglo, that you could do factually. I inferred that reason that Iron Man chose to go after the "The Ten Rings" was because they were conquering defenseless villages and killing innocents rather than because most of its members weren't WASPS, but that is what I took away from the movie. That logic wasn't explicitly stated. You could also say that Iron Man was doing it for revenge, but in my mind that has more to do with the fact that they kept him in a cave for three months and killed is only friend there then the color of their skin or their mode of dress. C) Yes, it is hard to miss the subtext that rich guys find it easier to sleep with pretty women. This is hardly news. But you would have to not be paying ANY attention to note the overiding subtext that despite all of Tony Stark's wealth, power, and prestige, he is desperately lovely and unfulfilled. Otherwise Ms. Potts wouldn't be "all that he has". Its the Internet, so argue all you want. But please try to at least be accurate when framing your arguments.
Don't forget one of the most important things: Demographics. A school with a unbalanced guy/girl ratio can mean a one way trip to the celibacy zone. Either that or a 4-5 year term as the "Mayor of Friend-town". Neither of which will add much to your college experience. You can always make more money later. Make sure you enjoy the social aspects of your college years, and you will always look back at your choice of school with fondness.
It's actually not a bad idea for part of a blended shielding solution. The fuel itself (assuming U or Pu) is a pretty high density material, although some of the daughter products might start producing significant bremsstrahlung radiation if there was too much high z material facing the cabin. Unfortunately, damage to that shielding (micrometeorite punctures or the like) would cause radiological contamination and that might outweigh the benefits.
And while the vast majority of posters on slashdot never met the guy, being a fan for multiple decades does tend to make folks feel connected to an author. So they have every right not to want to see the name of a man they admired drug through the mud. There is not much that they can do about it, but that doesn't automatically make them overly sentimental.
I was always more a fan of Abby Winters myself...
Regardless of whether or not all of a given person's electricity is coming from green sources or not, using electricity to power your vehicle most definitely *IS* a cleaner solution. Even assuming 100% coal power, and taking into account transmission losses, your total energy use is half that of using gasoline (~26% for coal w/ transmission losses, 12% for ICE), even before you take into account the energy used to supply the gasoline in the first place. The reduction in pollution released to the atmosphere is potentially even greater (50% - 80% depending on whose numbers you are using). Slap a solar cell on your roof for point generation, and you are that much further along.
While the Nobunaga's Ambition series certainly was groundbreaking, and introduced a generation of gamers to the "Warring States" period of Japanese history, it had some problems. When you raised the tax rate REALLY REALLY high, your popularity would go so low that it would "wrap-around" going from near-revolt to ecstatically happy in a short period. And if you left the tax rate up that high, it would do it again. And again...
The AI wasn't too great either. The game compensated for this by turning up what we referred to the "dick factor". Playing at difficulty level 5 was a exercise in masochism that normally didn't take that long. It was routine to have computer armies with lower training levels route armies 10 times their size. Good times. Good times...
More info on Space HoRSE
S E/1.htm
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/gilligames/Space_HoR
At $34.95 it seems kinda expensive to me for an indy update-type title, but I am forced to be a cheap bastard these days.
My only quibble is that it gets frustratingly, ridiculously, stupidly hard near the end of the game. When finishing the game is more chore then joy, you have f'd up somewhere along the way.
But, with that one thing aside, the 20+ hours that I have gotten to enjoy the unique level designs and quirky humor make it well worth a purchase. Especially now that it is cheap. As an example: Use telekinesis to hurl a squirrel against a tree, and your 10-year character yells "See you in hell!" in his sing-song voice. Twisted funny.
That is a fine, fine idea. A MMO is far to big to have all of fine details get the Whedon polish, but if the overall story arc and editorial control were in his hands, that would be a step in the right direction.
Well, I would say that the fact that Multiverse coaxed the gaming rights out of Fox is somewhat newsworthy. Front page newsworthy? That's a bit more tricky.
Feats and class abilities
Can they be used to make cheese-monkey uber-twinkie characters? Yes. Can they also be used to individualize a character, so that YOUR 8th lvl fighter is different from all of those other 8th level fighters? Yes, Yes, Yes! In 1st / 2nd Ed there were not a lot of difference (mechanically) from one fighter to the next. In 3.5, you can create the character that YOU want to play. There are still plenty of room for house rules and imagination. You just have a lot more flexibility, more options in the core mechanics.
2) The D20 System
A lot of people complain that it is a dumbed down system consuming all the competition, but in fact the game is marvelously elegant in it's execution. There is a reason so many systems have jumped on the bandwagon. It's a good place to be. Saves, Attacks, Skills are all resolved via the same streamlined method. Except grapple checks :) Those are just silly.
The skills are so easy to use once you understand them fully, allowing for a lot of flexibility in what your players can accomplish. Compared to the clumsiness of non-weapon proficiencies? Like night and day. I don't know where all of your bean counting comes in, but the skills system we use doesn't slow down play a bit. I am not saying that there isn't some math once a level, but come on, it's 3rd grade math. Once a level. Sure, large combats with high level characters do take a while, but it isn't the math that is slowing things down. It's all the players. You know, the ones playing the system you hate and they seem to enjoy.
I am not saying that 3E is perfect. But from one crotchety old fan-boy to another, it's actually pretty good.
I would start here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome
Good luck, and happy gaming.
Should have read: (Luddite, or at least scientifically uneducated)