And thusly return us to the original short answer, that is: Troops in Iraq wear body armor that takes multiple 7.62-mm rounds.
Mr Blair, when we discuss giving the troops adequate equipment to do their jobs, this is what we're talking about. One flak jacket between three really isn't good enough nowadays.
That Mario shit is about as interesting to me as Barney the dinosaur is.
I would like to encourage as many people as possible to follow this line of thinking. That way, on March 30, my chances of getting hold of a copy of Super Mario Galaxy will be maximised. I'll put it alongside Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario 64 and New Super Mario Bros. on my shelf of 'Games That Will Be Relinquished Over My Cold Dead Hands'.
Master of Magic. Oh, how easily abused it was. But how very much fun lay in creating the most munchkin unit imaginable.
Like taking thirteen Death books and just summoning Wraiths from the first turn. Or casting Flight on warships and using them to attack on land. Or Halfling Slingers with adamantium bullets, Flame Blade, Giant Strength, Heroism during a Crusade for a Warlord wizard plus blessing effects from Torin and an Archangel for about a billion damage a turn. Or abusing the wizard skills system to create a wizard who can scrap magic items and get more mana out than it took to create them. Or an invisible flying Malleus the Magician with the kind of stat-boosting artefacts that Celebrimbor himself would fear to forge. Or giving Jaer the Wind Mage the Pathfinding spell plus every speed boost you possibly can and using him to ship entire armies across vast oceans in a single turn...
So many memories. So many obscene mutilations of the rules. The time I nuked the crap out of Ariel's last city, corrupted her whole land, inflicted both the curses of Famine and Plague, and then left the last few huddled survivors to suffer in misery and terror beneath my Eternal Night while I pursued my great aim of capturing every magic node on both worlds... that's still a warm and happy thought to this day.
Games like Civilization and Colonization have done this to some extent for me when I was learning history at school.
Among other things I didn't know before:
- When the Royal Navy used to send gigantic steel warships to shell the crap out of some primitive town from several miles offshore, they had to take precautions against being sunk by the local spearmen.
- The tobacco and cotton plantations of the American colonies were worked mainly by Indian converts and by transported criminals; no slave labour was used at any time.
A game in which you repeat the same short time period over and over experimenting with different approaches until you finally manage to resolve the problems of everybody in town? Nah. It'd never work. Now, if you make one with cute cartoon graphics and lots of fun sailing interludes, THAT would rock.
(Current mood: heroic. Current music: Duran Duran, Hungry like the Wolf.)
* To avoid a slander lawsuit, I note that the misspelling of "mafia" with an additional "a" is intentional and is a known term on this discussion forum. It does not mean the Cosa Nostra.
Unnecessary. The Mafia don't sue for slander. If you've upset them they'll deal with you through different channels.
So, let me see if I understand you...We need a Star Wars Zero?
A prequel to the prequels? Perhaps following around the Jedi Knights in the days of the Old Republic? Fighting the Sith Lords? Cool idea. Throw in some Mandalorians and killer droids and you might have something there.
Make sure you get the ending right, though; that's always the most important bit. Nothing more annoying than a bunch of incomplete plotlines and loose ends at the end.
The original VHS (or if you were lucky to own an LD and convert it to DVD PLEASE for the love of all that's holy hook me up)
The limited-edition DVD releases from last autumn came with bonus DVDs which contained the original films. A lot of fans complained about the quality; apparently the DVDs actually were direct transfers of the laserdisc version.
The main discs have yet to even be loaded into my player, but those bonus DVDs have had a good deal of use:-)
I know that time dialation has been observed, but when have we observed the relativity of simultaneity? How could that be observed?
I'd argue that the relativity of simultaneity is a special case of time dilation; they go together. Take the Michelson-Morley experiment, for instance. In a frame in which the Earth is stationary, two photons reach two mirrors simultaneously. In a frame in which the Earth is moving, the photon heading 'backwards' hits the mirror before the photon heading 'forwards' does so. That's relativity of simultaneity right there.
I imagine it would be possible to devise a direct observation of the phenomenon using atomic clocks aboard widely separated spacecraft, but also very expensive... Can't find much on the issue of direct observations of relativity of simultaneity, but I did find this argument to the effect that stellar aberration is a result of relativity of simultaneity, and might well have been what led Einstein onto the idea in the first place.
The first doesn't require a conscious choice, the second does.
I am curious about this idea that we choose our beliefs.
Consider: I would very much like to believe that human beings are basically good and decent. That although we are flawed there is a limit to what we are prepared to do to one another, to how bad we can become.
I cannot, however, believe this, because half an hour's perusal of any history of the twentieth century proves otherwise in the most horrible detail. We're capable of every horror imaginable. I hate it but it's true, and I have no choice to believe it because it happened, over and over again.
Or similarly: I offer you a million dollars to believe that the sky is green. Can you comply? Sure, you can lie to me to get my money, but can you truly look at the sky and believe it is green, if I offer you a large enough sum to do so?
Newton's "laws" had been experimentally verified innumerable times and been put to quite a few practical uses. Who's to say another theory won't come along and supplant relativity?
In the limit of low velocities and weak gravitational fields, Einstein's theory reduces to Newton's. It didn't supplant Newtonian physics so much as extend it. At low speeds and weak gravities, Newtonian mechanics still hold; relativistic effects are negligible except for extremely high-precision applications (such as GPS).
Similarly any quantum or other theory of gravity that replaces relativity must agree with relativity in the limit as quantum or other effects become insignificant. It must predict the observed facts such as time dilation, length contraction and in particular the relativity of simultaneity which is the subject of the current discussion. No new theory is going to do away with time dilation, any more than it is going to do away with gravity, or prove that the sky is green.
At any rate the point of my post was that 'it's not even a law' is meaningless. There's no committee deciding what's a Theory and what's a Law, and no such heirarchy in which Laws are surer than Theories.
Besides that, top scientists once agreed that it was impossible for any physical object to travel faster then the speed of sound without breaking the laws of physics.
Citation please. Engineers may have thought it impossible in practice to build a supersonic aircraft, but I know of no claims that it was physically impossible in theory for an object to move at supersonic speeds.
Realtivity is not even a law yet for crying out loud.
That's true; it has to be publicly debated in both Oxford and Cambridge universities, then go before the House of Lords for review, be amended by the Swedish Academy, and finally be signed by the President of the USA. THEN it becomes a law.
Or maybe not. Maybe relativity is the foundation of all modern physics above the quantum scale, and maybe it's been experimentally verified innumerable times to the best accuracy obtainable in just about every last aspect. Maybe every GPS satellite relies upon it to maintain correct timing. Maybe you're an idiot for thinking that there's some committee somewhere that decides when to upgrade a 'theory' to a 'law'. Maybe you also think that evolution by natural selection is 'just a theory'...
Man, what a difference 20 years can make. I remember when real hackers and geeks thought Novel and IBM were the enemy of independent, freedom-minded programmers.:-)
So true. Last couple of years on/., watching hackers cheer on the Nazgul, it's been strange. But there's a terrible thrill to it. It's Satan's own legal team, but for once it happens to be on our side, and it's fascinating to watch...
Note however that these are not pints as you know them. Not the pitiful 473ml servings that pass for pints in the colonies. Oh no. One proper pint is 568ml.
This may be why we've never quite gone for the metric system here. We'd end up being served beer in 500ml glasses and that simply won't do. That extra 68ml is important, even if in most pubs it just accounts for the head...
Then again, anybody who's more than 30 ly away won't be able to have a meaningful conversation with us over the course of a single researcher's lifetime . ..
Real-time conversation is unnecessary - and a bad idea with such a signal lag. Why fall silent while awaiting a reply? Build a massive signal laser. Put it on the roof of Google HQ. Send everything. Continuously.
How about a trade-in program so those of us with the original NES/SNES/N64/Sega/NEC game cartridges can exchange the old physical game carts for their Wii virtual console counterparts?
Let's see if I have this straight. In exchange for the 500 Wii points it costs to download Zelda, you propose that I hand over the cartridge? The gold one? The one that sells secondhand at the same price I bought it for some fifteen years ago?
The phrase 'cold dead hands' springs to mind from somewhere.
Star Trek would probably translate better into an adventure game series (like Space Quest) since the shows revolve far more around talking (philosophy) than battling foes (action).
Hence the mention of A Final Unity, which was basically a point-'n-click adventure game in the SCUMM mould. There was occasional ship-to-ship combat, but much of your time was spent flying from planet to planet and conducting away missions, while unlocking the mysteries of the ancient civilisation and their Unity Device. Like KOTOR, but a different universe:-)
Well, I'm certainly surprised. Microsoft aren't popular at all, so surely people could think up a 361st achievement which is more popular than them? Only to be able to imagine 360 achievements which are more popular than Microsoft is kind of poor going.
Slashdot Mirror
If they can get more games to support 1440x900 they've got my vote...
Mr Blair, when we discuss giving the troops adequate equipment to do their jobs, this is what we're talking about. One flak jacket between three really isn't good enough nowadays.
I would like to encourage as many people as possible to follow this line of thinking. That way, on March 30, my chances of getting hold of a copy of Super Mario Galaxy will be maximised. I'll put it alongside Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario 64 and New Super Mario Bros. on my shelf of 'Games That Will Be Relinquished Over My Cold Dead Hands'.
Like taking thirteen Death books and just summoning Wraiths from the first turn. Or casting Flight on warships and using them to attack on land. Or Halfling Slingers with adamantium bullets, Flame Blade, Giant Strength, Heroism during a Crusade for a Warlord wizard plus blessing effects from Torin and an Archangel for about a billion damage a turn. Or abusing the wizard skills system to create a wizard who can scrap magic items and get more mana out than it took to create them. Or an invisible flying Malleus the Magician with the kind of stat-boosting artefacts that Celebrimbor himself would fear to forge. Or giving Jaer the Wind Mage the Pathfinding spell plus every speed boost you possibly can and using him to ship entire armies across vast oceans in a single turn...
So many memories. So many obscene mutilations of the rules. The time I nuked the crap out of Ariel's last city, corrupted her whole land, inflicted both the curses of Famine and Plague, and then left the last few huddled survivors to suffer in misery and terror beneath my Eternal Night while I pursued my great aim of capturing every magic node on both worlds... that's still a warm and happy thought to this day.
Phasing Cloak. Time Warp Facilitator. You're now invincible. Get some sleep.
Among other things I didn't know before:
- When the Royal Navy used to send gigantic steel warships to shell the crap out of some primitive town from several miles offshore, they had to take precautions against being sunk by the local spearmen.
- The tobacco and cotton plantations of the American colonies were worked mainly by Indian converts and by transported criminals; no slave labour was used at any time.
After iD released the source code to Doom, the engine got some rewrites. IIRC, Doom Legacy supports solid corpses. Enjoy.
A game in which you repeat the same short time period over and over experimenting with different approaches until you finally manage to resolve the problems of everybody in town? Nah. It'd never work. Now, if you make one with cute cartoon graphics and lots of fun sailing interludes, THAT would rock.
(Current mood: heroic. Current music: Duran Duran, Hungry like the Wolf.)
Unnecessary. The Mafia don't sue for slander. If you've upset them they'll deal with you through different channels.
A prequel to the prequels? Perhaps following around the Jedi Knights in the days of the Old Republic? Fighting the Sith Lords? Cool idea. Throw in some Mandalorians and killer droids and you might have something there.
Make sure you get the ending right, though; that's always the most important bit. Nothing more annoying than a bunch of incomplete plotlines and loose ends at the end.
The limited-edition DVD releases from last autumn came with bonus DVDs which contained the original films. A lot of fans complained about the quality; apparently the DVDs actually were direct transfers of the laserdisc version.
The main discs have yet to even be loaded into my player, but those bonus DVDs have had a good deal of use :-)
I'd argue that the relativity of simultaneity is a special case of time dilation; they go together. Take the Michelson-Morley experiment, for instance. In a frame in which the Earth is stationary, two photons reach two mirrors simultaneously. In a frame in which the Earth is moving, the photon heading 'backwards' hits the mirror before the photon heading 'forwards' does so. That's relativity of simultaneity right there.
I imagine it would be possible to devise a direct observation of the phenomenon using atomic clocks aboard widely separated spacecraft, but also very expensive... Can't find much on the issue of direct observations of relativity of simultaneity, but I did find this argument to the effect that stellar aberration is a result of relativity of simultaneity, and might well have been what led Einstein onto the idea in the first place.
I am curious about this idea that we choose our beliefs.
Consider: I would very much like to believe that human beings are basically good and decent. That although we are flawed there is a limit to what we are prepared to do to one another, to how bad we can become.
I cannot, however, believe this, because half an hour's perusal of any history of the twentieth century proves otherwise in the most horrible detail. We're capable of every horror imaginable. I hate it but it's true, and I have no choice to believe it because it happened, over and over again.
Or similarly: I offer you a million dollars to believe that the sky is green. Can you comply? Sure, you can lie to me to get my money, but can you truly look at the sky and believe it is green, if I offer you a large enough sum to do so?
In the limit of low velocities and weak gravitational fields, Einstein's theory reduces to Newton's. It didn't supplant Newtonian physics so much as extend it. At low speeds and weak gravities, Newtonian mechanics still hold; relativistic effects are negligible except for extremely high-precision applications (such as GPS).
Similarly any quantum or other theory of gravity that replaces relativity must agree with relativity in the limit as quantum or other effects become insignificant. It must predict the observed facts such as time dilation, length contraction and in particular the relativity of simultaneity which is the subject of the current discussion. No new theory is going to do away with time dilation, any more than it is going to do away with gravity, or prove that the sky is green.
At any rate the point of my post was that 'it's not even a law' is meaningless. There's no committee deciding what's a Theory and what's a Law, and no such heirarchy in which Laws are surer than Theories.
Citation please. Engineers may have thought it impossible in practice to build a supersonic aircraft, but I know of no claims that it was physically impossible in theory for an object to move at supersonic speeds.
That's true; it has to be publicly debated in both Oxford and Cambridge universities, then go before the House of Lords for review, be amended by the Swedish Academy, and finally be signed by the President of the USA. THEN it becomes a law.
Or maybe not. Maybe relativity is the foundation of all modern physics above the quantum scale, and maybe it's been experimentally verified innumerable times to the best accuracy obtainable in just about every last aspect. Maybe every GPS satellite relies upon it to maintain correct timing. Maybe you're an idiot for thinking that there's some committee somewhere that decides when to upgrade a 'theory' to a 'law'. Maybe you also think that evolution by natural selection is 'just a theory'...
So true. Last couple of years on /., watching hackers cheer on the Nazgul, it's been strange. But there's a terrible thrill to it. It's Satan's own legal team, but for once it happens to be on our side, and it's fascinating to watch...
In pints.
Note however that these are not pints as you know them. Not the pitiful 473ml servings that pass for pints in the colonies. Oh no. One proper pint is 568ml.
This may be why we've never quite gone for the metric system here. We'd end up being served beer in 500ml glasses and that simply won't do. That extra 68ml is important, even if in most pubs it just accounts for the head...
Prayer?
This implies that data can be transmitted backward in time; the two are equivalent. Are you prepared to accept the consequences of this possibility?
Real-time conversation is unnecessary - and a bad idea with such a signal lag. Why fall silent while awaiting a reply? Build a massive signal laser. Put it on the roof of Google HQ. Send everything. Continuously.
Let's see if I have this straight. In exchange for the 500 Wii points it costs to download Zelda, you propose that I hand over the cartridge? The gold one? The one that sells secondhand at the same price I bought it for some fifteen years ago?
The phrase 'cold dead hands' springs to mind from somewhere.
Hence the mention of A Final Unity, which was basically a point-'n-click adventure game in the SCUMM mould. There was occasional ship-to-ship combat, but much of your time was spent flying from planet to planet and conducting away missions, while unlocking the mysteries of the ancient civilisation and their Unity Device. Like KOTOR, but a different universe :-)
I suspect that would be the European Union now. And before too long, it'll be China.
Well, I'm certainly surprised. Microsoft aren't popular at all, so surely people could think up a 361st achievement which is more popular than them? Only to be able to imagine 360 achievements which are more popular than Microsoft is kind of poor going.