OT, but: how the hell are the Free Republic crowd conservative? What exactly are they trying to conserve? Authoritarian, yes, reactionary undoubtedly, but they're scarcely conservative. These people are radicals.
If we posit an infinite number of existing alternative universes, how can we speak of creating more with the choices we make today? How can you add to infinity?
Quite easily. Infinity + 1 = infinity. Infinity * 2 = infinity. Infinity * infinity = infinity. And they're all the same infinity.
Example of the first case: take the infinite set of integers [2, 3, 4, 5...]. Add the integer 1 to this set to give the infinite set of integers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5...].
Example of the second case: take the infinite set of integers [2, 4, 6, 8...]. Add the infinite set of integers [1, 3, 5, 7...] to this set to give the infinite set of integers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...].
Example of the third case: see Cantor's proof that the rationals are denumerable, as it's rather hard to type in a/. post.
And the whole dark matter/dark energy thing strikes me as a load of humbug... saying there must be some undetectable, magical force acting on all the matter in the universe because the calculations we've come up with so far are inaccurate strikes me as lazy and uncreative.
It worked once before. Calculations of the orbit of the planet Uranus were noticeably inaccurate; the planet wasn't quite where it ought to have been. One explanation was that this was the result of the gravitational effect of a large amount of dark matter. This dark matter was later found and named Neptune.
Ever mistakenly called an Irishman British - or worse, English? Remember the reaction you got?
Right. Now, you know Finland? You know what they think about Russia? Yep.
Oh, by the way, the Finns make about the best hunting rifles in the world. Pretty much everybody has one. And silencers are perfectly legal and uncontroversial.
Now, go away and sit in the corner and think about what you did, and don't come back until you're ready to say sorry.
This is like the drug dealer calling the cops because someone stole his stash.
This is like the Amsterdam coffee-shop proprietor calling the cops because someone keeps trying to break into his premises, and stalking his customers.
Remember, The Pirate Bay is doing nothing that is illegal in Sweden.
So what if I made a space station and had my little minions fly there first. Just to be sure, the space station would be in orbit around the Sun, not the Earth. Then, once on that space station, terrestrial laws no longer apply, right? From there one could launch a vehicle to the moon. Would that work?
As the article says, going to the Moon in particular doesn't need any kind of permission from anyone, but getting off Earth in the first place is subject to regulation by the appropriate nation - which will be the nation you're launching from, and maybe also the nation where your project is based if that's different.
Whether your space-station plan would work really depends on the regulations that country cares to impose. If they specify you're cleared to fly to LEO only, then they might want words with you on your return if you went to the Moon. If instead they say you're cleared to launch such-and-such a mass to LEO with no further stipulations, then you can presumably do as you please with that mass, and if it happens to be mostly fuel for a Moon ship then good luck to you.
Super Mario Sunshine??? Take Mario 64 and give him a water pistol! Mario Galaxy, put Mario 64 in Space.
I see your point there. Miyamoto has taken no risks at all with Nintendo's central franchises. That's why Mario Galaxy is just the same as the previous games, but in space. You'd think they'd at least go 3D, or maybe try to come up with an innovative control system, or something... All this old-fashioned 'run-to-the-left' gaming is getting old.
Drop me in the middle of nowhere and give me a wooden sword. No talk bubbles to click through, no horribly mindless errands to run for characters about which I couldn't be bothered to give a damn. Just let me go on my way!
Actually, I like the talk and the errands. Hyrule in Zelda 1 was kind of desolate. The entire country had a population of maybe twenty people; hardly worth going to all this effort to save the damn place! Adding more people to talk to with lives of their own gets you involved, it lets you see what you're actually fighting for. Coming back to Lon Lon Ranch in the future in Ocarina really bloody hurt, and provided all the motivation I needed to want to chop Ganon up into lots of little bits.
But you're right about the freedom to roam. Too-obvious artificial restrictions annoy me. Maybe I physically can't reach a certain area without a certain item - that's OK. That was there on the NES - items like the Ladder or Raft opened up whole new sections of the realm to explore. And maybe if I do go to some areas too soon I'll be slaughtered by monsters I'm nowhere near equipped to face. But if I think I'm hard enough I shouldn't be prevented from challenging them. I don't like the King of Red Lions saying 'Nope, it's too early to go this way - let's go here instead!' Fuck you, boat - I see land over there and I want to explore it! Who's the one with the magic wand controlling the wind? NOT YOU.
I didn't think it was a bomb. It's clearly a completely harmless blinking thing, and a cute shirt. She should learn how to package her products better - if the wiring was on the inside, then it wouldn't have even been noticed. Maybe that's a problem there.
Brothers! Again the infidels foolishly give away their secrets! Our martyrdom agents are being foiled because their holy martyrdom devices are improperly packaged; if we make certain all the wiring is on the inside, then insh'allah the evil kuffar guards will never suspect that the wrath of Allah awaits them! Allahu akbar!
I don't think so. You opened the CD, you accepted the license. If you don't want the CD, then don't engage in the contract with Sony.
What contract would this be? When I buy a CD, I enter into a contract for sale of goods with a record store. I don't enter into any negotiations of any kind with Sony.
If you read the actual William Gibson short story, (and forget about the crappy movie) you'll know that it wasn't a "laser rope" it was a monomolecular filament, which makes a whole lot more sense than the movie rendition.
Larry Niven's protagonists sometimes make use of a similar weapon - a monofilament wire wrapped in a stasis field to hold it rigid. In other words, a lightsaber with marginally more plausible physics:-)
People dueling each other using the Wii remote better be prepared to stand pretty close to each other. The Wii remote range isn't that far horizontally.
The Wiimote's range in terms of communications is pretty good, actually. I doubt they'll use the sensor bar - that's for using the thing as a pointer, like a mouse. If you're using the Wiimote as a lightsaber, you're holding it in your fist and it's probably pointing at the ceiling. You'll be tracking its motion using the internal accelerometers, by dead reckoning; think Wii Baseball for how it might work.
That gives you plenty of room to bounce around, but I just question if they can get the precision they'll need. Wii Baseball is bloody terrible for that. (The other possibility is that I'm bloody terrible at Wii Baseball, but that's unthinkable...)
I can meet all the other goals outlined, but no way would I be willing to go the distance on the tilt-a-whirl (whirl and hurl?). I prefer my insides stay inside.
Some of us actually pay for rides on that kind of thing. And if you're scared to ride NASA's merry-go-round, why are you even contemplating getting aboard a Soyuz?
Before the internet, we'd sneak a look at our dad's (or a friend's dad's/big brother's) stash of Playboys. I'm pretty sure my childhood friends didn't suffer any psychological damage from it.
There is Playboy. And then there is/b/. One contains titties, the other contains unholy horrors which once seen can never be un-seen.
I agree with the sentiment, but if you're equating the Internet to Playboy then you really need to look around the place a bit more. Playboy never had loli dickgirls being tied down and raped by mudkips.
I see the analogy of Wii as one like Windows versus Linux. Windows has an interface that is easy for users to USE. Linux is much sturdier in most sense, but the learning curve is steeper. MS did the smart marketing and made an easy to use system that is "playing catch-up" on security and other "hardcore" features. Linux was for hardcore people and is playing catch-up on ease of use. Which is more popular?
Correct. For the mass market it's all about the ease of use. That's why Apple dominates the market.
Manhunt 2, ratings controversy aside, apparantly makes use of the motion controls quite impressively. Swing the remote, and you get to smash someones head in. But outside of that game, I have not heard much coming out for the Wii that appeals to my particular tastes of a gamer.
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition. OK-ish GTA clone, but with absolutely glorious hand-to-hand violence.
That's cute when you have an ISP with a decent news server, or are willing to spend money on Giganews, etc. For the rest of us who aren't twitching with impatience, a good private BT tracker works wonderfully.
True enough. I haven't really used newsgroups myself since 2003, when the BBC put Buffy on hold in the middle of season 6. P2P'd the rest of that season, caught up to the US, and found the binaries group that had new episodes a couple of days before the US airdate.
As for other shows: popular anime is always well seeded, and comes in large blocks of many episodes so you're not downloading stuff with the intention to watch it all right now. The only time I'm in a rush is when I've somehow managed to miss an episode of Heroes (following the BBC again here - I don't want to catch up to the US with this one, I'd be all spoileriffic). And if ever there was a well-seeded torrent, it's an episode of Heroes.
Newsgroups are far faster. A 45min program takes roughly a day for me via BT. It takes around 11min with a multi-threaded newsreader.
Usenet? What is this Usenet? There is no Usenet. You do not talk about Usenet.
The truth of the matter is, kids, that newsgroups are old-fashioned, slow, full of spam, and incredibly fiddly to use at all. And nobody really does any more because we're all Web 2.0 nowadays. Don't bother with it. Go back to thepiratebay. Nothing for you to see here. Nope. Nothing. Really.
When I heard the idea - an overclocked Gamecube with a novelty control system involving waving one's hands around - I thought Nintendo were doomed. One U-Force was bad enough.
When I heard details of the novelty control system, I thought it ridiculous for about two minutes, then began thinking it through a little. Several words came through my mind... 'bat, racket, gunsight... fucking lightsaber...' - I thought Nintendo might have something big on their hands, especially given what the DS was doing by then.
When I heard about the name, I though Nintendo were doomed.
When I was queueing outside the store on a damn cold night playing wireless Mario Kart with the other fanboys (all of us there to get our hands on Twilight Princess) and we saw the demo installation through the big window, and we saw how many passers-by were stopping to see what all the fuss was about and seeing the guys inside bowling... I thought Nintendo might have something very big.
When I saw how many of my utterly non-gamer relatives simply would not put down Wii Tennis... wow.
One thing that has shocked me about the Wii is how it can still be perpetually out of stock 10 months after being released.
Is that still the situation there? In the UK there have been plenty around. One weekend, all of a sudden everywhere had Wii in stock, and it's stayed that way ever since.
Now, if only Nintendo were as efficient at getting games to Europe...
Slashdot Mirror
OT, but: how the hell are the Free Republic crowd conservative? What exactly are they trying to conserve? Authoritarian, yes, reactionary undoubtedly, but they're scarcely conservative. These people are radicals.
Quite easily. Infinity + 1 = infinity. Infinity * 2 = infinity. Infinity * infinity = infinity. And they're all the same infinity.
Example of the first case: take the infinite set of integers [2, 3, 4, 5...]. Add the integer 1 to this set to give the infinite set of integers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5...]. /. post.
Example of the second case: take the infinite set of integers [2, 4, 6, 8...]. Add the infinite set of integers [1, 3, 5, 7...] to this set to give the infinite set of integers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...].
Example of the third case: see Cantor's proof that the rationals are denumerable, as it's rather hard to type in a
And they were quite right to say just that. Then the evidence was presented. That's science. It works, bitches.
It worked once before. Calculations of the orbit of the planet Uranus were noticeably inaccurate; the planet wasn't quite where it ought to have been. One explanation was that this was the result of the gravitational effect of a large amount of dark matter. This dark matter was later found and named Neptune.
Come to think of it, that's the space race we should be considering here. Never mind the Moon; who'll be first to Europa?
Ever mistakenly called an Irishman British - or worse, English? Remember the reaction you got?
Right. Now, you know Finland? You know what they think about Russia? Yep.
Oh, by the way, the Finns make about the best hunting rifles in the world. Pretty much everybody has one. And silencers are perfectly legal and uncontroversial.
Now, go away and sit in the corner and think about what you did, and don't come back until you're ready to say sorry.
This is like the Amsterdam coffee-shop proprietor calling the cops because someone keeps trying to break into his premises, and stalking his customers.
Remember, The Pirate Bay is doing nothing that is illegal in Sweden.
As the article says, going to the Moon in particular doesn't need any kind of permission from anyone, but getting off Earth in the first place is subject to regulation by the appropriate nation - which will be the nation you're launching from, and maybe also the nation where your project is based if that's different.
Whether your space-station plan would work really depends on the regulations that country cares to impose. If they specify you're cleared to fly to LEO only, then they might want words with you on your return if you went to the Moon. If instead they say you're cleared to launch such-and-such a mass to LEO with no further stipulations, then you can presumably do as you please with that mass, and if it happens to be mostly fuel for a Moon ship then good luck to you.
I see your point there. Miyamoto has taken no risks at all with Nintendo's central franchises. That's why Mario Galaxy is just the same as the previous games, but in space. You'd think they'd at least go 3D, or maybe try to come up with an innovative control system, or something... All this old-fashioned 'run-to-the-left' gaming is getting old.
Actually, I like the talk and the errands. Hyrule in Zelda 1 was kind of desolate. The entire country had a population of maybe twenty people; hardly worth going to all this effort to save the damn place! Adding more people to talk to with lives of their own gets you involved, it lets you see what you're actually fighting for. Coming back to Lon Lon Ranch in the future in Ocarina really bloody hurt, and provided all the motivation I needed to want to chop Ganon up into lots of little bits.
But you're right about the freedom to roam. Too-obvious artificial restrictions annoy me. Maybe I physically can't reach a certain area without a certain item - that's OK. That was there on the NES - items like the Ladder or Raft opened up whole new sections of the realm to explore. And maybe if I do go to some areas too soon I'll be slaughtered by monsters I'm nowhere near equipped to face. But if I think I'm hard enough I shouldn't be prevented from challenging them. I don't like the King of Red Lions saying 'Nope, it's too early to go this way - let's go here instead!' Fuck you, boat - I see land over there and I want to explore it! Who's the one with the magic wand controlling the wind? NOT YOU.
Brothers! Again the infidels foolishly give away their secrets! Our martyrdom agents are being foiled because their holy martyrdom devices are improperly packaged; if we make certain all the wiring is on the inside, then insh'allah the evil kuffar guards will never suspect that the wrath of Allah awaits them! Allahu akbar!
What contract would this be? When I buy a CD, I enter into a contract for sale of goods with a record store. I don't enter into any negotiations of any kind with Sony.
General Grievous, is that you?
Larry Niven's protagonists sometimes make use of a similar weapon - a monofilament wire wrapped in a stasis field to hold it rigid. In other words, a lightsaber with marginally more plausible physics :-)
Darth Traya, is that you?
The Wiimote's range in terms of communications is pretty good, actually. I doubt they'll use the sensor bar - that's for using the thing as a pointer, like a mouse. If you're using the Wiimote as a lightsaber, you're holding it in your fist and it's probably pointing at the ceiling. You'll be tracking its motion using the internal accelerometers, by dead reckoning; think Wii Baseball for how it might work.
That gives you plenty of room to bounce around, but I just question if they can get the precision they'll need. Wii Baseball is bloody terrible for that. (The other possibility is that I'm bloody terrible at Wii Baseball, but that's unthinkable...)
Some of us actually pay for rides on that kind of thing. And if you're scared to ride NASA's merry-go-round, why are you even contemplating getting aboard a Soyuz?
Remember the days before custom ringtones? When everyone had one of the same five or six Nokia tunes?
Scene: a crowded lift. A telephone rings. EVERYONE reaches for their pocket.
If you hear a phone ringing nowadays, you know immediately whether or not it's yours.
There is Playboy. And then there is /b/. One contains titties, the other contains unholy horrors which once seen can never be un-seen.
I agree with the sentiment, but if you're equating the Internet to Playboy then you really need to look around the place a bit more. Playboy never had loli dickgirls being tied down and raped by mudkips.
Correct. For the mass market it's all about the ease of use. That's why Apple dominates the market.
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition. OK-ish GTA clone, but with absolutely glorious hand-to-hand violence.
True enough. I haven't really used newsgroups myself since 2003, when the BBC put Buffy on hold in the middle of season 6. P2P'd the rest of that season, caught up to the US, and found the binaries group that had new episodes a couple of days before the US airdate.
As for other shows: popular anime is always well seeded, and comes in large blocks of many episodes so you're not downloading stuff with the intention to watch it all right now. The only time I'm in a rush is when I've somehow managed to miss an episode of Heroes (following the BBC again here - I don't want to catch up to the US with this one, I'd be all spoileriffic). And if ever there was a well-seeded torrent, it's an episode of Heroes.
Usenet? What is this Usenet? There is no Usenet. You do not talk about Usenet.
The truth of the matter is, kids, that newsgroups are old-fashioned, slow, full of spam, and incredibly fiddly to use at all. And nobody really does any more because we're all Web 2.0 nowadays. Don't bother with it. Go back to thepiratebay. Nothing for you to see here. Nope. Nothing. Really.
When I heard the idea - an overclocked Gamecube with a novelty control system involving waving one's hands around - I thought Nintendo were doomed. One U-Force was bad enough.
When I heard details of the novelty control system, I thought it ridiculous for about two minutes, then began thinking it through a little. Several words came through my mind... 'bat, racket, gunsight... fucking lightsaber...' - I thought Nintendo might have something big on their hands, especially given what the DS was doing by then.
When I heard about the name, I though Nintendo were doomed.
When I was queueing outside the store on a damn cold night playing wireless Mario Kart with the other fanboys (all of us there to get our hands on Twilight Princess) and we saw the demo installation through the big window, and we saw how many passers-by were stopping to see what all the fuss was about and seeing the guys inside bowling... I thought Nintendo might have something very big.
When I saw how many of my utterly non-gamer relatives simply would not put down Wii Tennis... wow.
Is that still the situation there? In the UK there have been plenty around. One weekend, all of a sudden everywhere had Wii in stock, and it's stayed that way ever since.
Now, if only Nintendo were as efficient at getting games to Europe...