Well, to point out the inconsistency of your statement... every subject and object in your quoted sentence is definitely and definitively subjective. When did New Zealand become an independent country? What is a New Zealander? What does flight mean, what is a 'flying machine'?
Sorry but that question is a subjective one and there are many, many precedents to verify that (for instance, why isn't a hot-air balloon considered a 'flying machine'? it has all the contituents of one, ie: controlled flight by means of mechanical aid...).
Unfortunately there's no edit for/. posts, so a mistake will remain a mistake. Honestly, I know that New Zealand is the size of California, which is pretty damn big in the relative sizes of countries out there. Read below for apology to NZ.
Whoops, some 'typos'. Sorry to all you NZ nationals out there, it's late here (2 am, now 3 am).
Surely you don't think that Christmas was REALLY the day of Christ's birth? And yet we (Americans? World?) celebrate as such.
Anyways, the point is that celebration of anything is a subjective experience. America's independence day is not the same as elsewhere, first flight isn't either...
Da Vinci had plans for flight, helicopters WELL before any of these actual flights. The idea was ancient before anyone accomplished the task. Who's on first? If Da Vinci had 'patented' his idea first would he be getting credit?
Yep! Did I mention that celebrating events or people is a subjective experience? I thought I did, *pheu*... that was almost stressful. I'm glad you noticed how subjective a cultural experience can be.
In regards to history, still relative. History has never been based on so called facts. I'm the first to agree that the drivel we pass off as American history is given to our children as 'fact'.
In regards to Chinese new year, well I did say it is a matter of personal regard. Yes America is multi-cultural but as a nation we do not celebrate other nation's holidays (grain of salt).
Yet again another claim to prior art in a world stuck on 'One-up-manship'.
This is obviously related to NASA's celebration (along with the rest of us Americans) of the centennial of flight, as measured in years from the first Wright Brothers flight. Reminds me of the other stories of the italian fellow who did radio first and the british fellow who did a version of television first.
Here in America we also celebrate Independence Day on the 4rth of July (unlike many other countries), we consider Ford's Model T to be the first car (we all know it wasn't), we take credit for baseball (a derivative of cricket and many other earlier games)and claim a lot of other national achievements which are just that, American 'achievements'.
What we don't do is tell the rest of the world to celebrate these individuals or events along with us in the same way that we, as a nation, don't celebrate French holidays or Chinese new year, unless it's out of personal regard.
You can argue that we attempt to force our events and holidays down the world's throat via media, etc. but that is all subjective. An example is MY birthday. It's important to me and my friends and family but you probably don't care too much. Now if I was a celebrity you might pay attention for entertainment's sake but that's your choice.
None of these people, Wright Brothers, this Australian fellow or any of the people I mention or who were involved in the events mentioned asked for your attention. They did what they did because they wanted to achieve their goals. Who's on First? Who cares! If you think the person is interesting and should be celebrated for their achievement then do so.
It's all subjective in the end so do what you think is best, give credit based on your own views and let others do the same.
Licensing (Commercial)
- OS
- Database
- Admin seats
- User seats
- Storage Admin Software
- Admin seats
Administration
- Salary
- QA at 60k/yr
- Admin at 75k/yr
- Manager at 80k/yr
These are all very ball-park, but you can see that there is a lot more than $1/GB involved here.
Sure you can buy a hard drive for about $1/GB for personal use but you don't count all the man hours involved in maintenance or you don't have enugh activity to need maintenance or any of the other tasks involved with serious database activity.
I hope this starts you thinking about all the effort that goes into keeping a very active DB going.
There's more, much more to say about this but I'm done for now.
Remember that this is all being kept in a COMMERCIAL database, the kind with licensing fees and really good performance. TCO isn't just the hard disk storage space. Think administration, think redundancy (as in mirroring), think backup, think load balancing, add in bandwidth costs for balancing, mirroring, etc. and shit adds up.
I work for a storage technology company. These are real details that do cost cash. BTW this is the short list of expenses.
You missed the commentary on how the data is stored, db records, distributed, load balanced database records. In the future a distributed non-db storage scheme is plausible, but for current game architecture, apparently it's not.
Second, to add to the resolution, it's not just storage space with the database model, it is also licensing fees (a much larger portion of the actual TCO).
if they want this to work like the real world, as far as economy goes at least, tehn we should have financial protection as well.
I want life insurance policies, FDIC insured bank accounts, credit fraud reimbursement, and a living trust, not to mention offshore accounts, holding companies and tax havens.
If this was set in the middle ages or ancient babylonia i'd understand why you could only carry around your wealth to insure it's safety but that's why we developed all these other paradigms, to protect ourselves from bandits, outlaws and thieves. Just cause it's sci-fi doesn't mean it's post apocolyptic! Where's the civilization?
Also how do these things degrade? Can we repair them? or can we just buy Good(TM) stuff that doesn't degrade? I know people who buy cheap stuff and yeah it's pretty much crap before it degrades but it also degrades much much more quickly than most of the stuff I buy, like furniture, clothing, electronics, appliances, etc. Any of the rest of you people out there still have something you bought even five years ago that is in mint condition? ten years..
Are you trying to say that Stamps are not a "complicated trust-checking initiative and process"?
Seems to me that when you look at the infrastructure in place to deal with Stamps, you'll realize that they are just as complicated and trust-checking (they must be certified and for businesses must be in connection with a valid return address) as anything this guy has come up with.
Seriously, how many millions of dollars go each year to the production and processing of various types of postage?
If you could just put a piece of paper with a number value on it and get your stuff mailed, well that would be kinda like e-mail.
I was just saying that for example, we humans convert and transfer a lot of energy every day but you don't see us getting kick back checks from the power grid for contributions. On the other hand windmills are very direct and effective at converting and transferring wind power to the power grid. These machines Theo has put together are more like humans than windmills. They are designed for kinetic energy... which is why they are so unique.
Is that you Seth Green? your grandma called the other day asking where you'd run off to. She needs her crack pipe back and you forgot that friday was 'vericose vein massage day'.
I wouldn't be surprised if our Dutchman doesn't get a call from NASA or affiliates... with the addition of a small power supply, think solar, these things or their descendants could do a very good job of exporing Mars.
You could fit a hundred folded up versions of these into the space required for one rover. All of them together would still probably weigh less than a rover if made out of carbon fibre/nano-tubules.
Well creating energy is a wonderful goal but really these types of mechanics aren't well suited to converting wind energy into electrical energy...too much will be lost in the conversion to be of any use, whereas converting to the demonstrated kinetic energy is still viable, though certainly not for moving any amount of extra mass. Remember that these machines are only moving themselves, no payload.
If Theo can get efficient storage in place then this may change. Still it would require a whole lot of stored energy to do more than they are currently or to have any left over for the rest of us.
Just to summarize, it looks like he's using windpower instead and/or in addition to gravity(ie: pendulum) to power what are essentially spring and lever actuations, resulting in forward movement. Quite complex relationships to be sure. The fact that he's getting them to do anything is impressive, though less so knowing that he's used extensive computer modeling as a crutch. viva la renaissance!
Much like the sands of the hourglass... blah blah... seriously though, very cool work, just wish the flash control jscript worked on my mac... can't get beyond the funky video of the crank...
I can see how he plans to store the windpower in the pistons though, springy.
I like the pictures of the beetles the best... love how he's using ground effects to generate leg movin' vibrations. Makes ya think about bumblebee turbulence, etc. a little.
So air flows over the tops of these slinkies and creates downward momentum that's converted into forward momentum via lovely sets of lever mechanisms... again, very clockwork. Very cool.
Gotta love simply principles of physics applied creatively to mechanics.
I hope they realize that they are passing legislation which disallows linking to international sites, even if they are kid safe... i guess our kids will only be getting US approved history as usual.
Well hopefully the librarians at schools will keep at least one or two computers available for doing real research on sites like BBC, etc. who may not feel the need to create a special US version of their material available just for kids in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
thanks! bleh... I've been bested at my own game....
Well, to point out the inconsistency of your statement... every subject and object in your quoted sentence is definitely and definitively subjective. When did New Zealand become an independent country? What is a New Zealander? What does flight mean, what is a 'flying machine'?
Sorry but that question is a subjective one and there are many, many precedents to verify that (for instance, why isn't a hot-air balloon considered a 'flying machine'? it has all the contituents of one, ie: controlled flight by means of mechanical aid...).
Unfortunately there's no edit for /. posts, so a mistake will remain a mistake. Honestly, I know that New Zealand is the size of California, which is pretty damn big in the relative sizes of countries out there. Read below for apology to NZ.
Whoops, some 'typos'. Sorry to all you NZ nationals out there, it's late here (2 am, now 3 am).
Surely you don't think that Christmas was REALLY the day of Christ's birth? And yet we (Americans? World?) celebrate as such.
Anyways, the point is that celebration of anything is a subjective experience. America's independence day is not the same as elsewhere, first flight isn't either...
Da Vinci had plans for flight, helicopters WELL before any of these actual flights. The idea was ancient before anyone accomplished the task. Who's on first? If Da Vinci had 'patented' his idea first would he be getting credit?
Yep! Did I mention that celebrating events or people is a subjective experience? I thought I did, *pheu*... that was almost stressful. I'm glad you noticed how subjective a cultural experience can be.
In regards to history, still relative. History has never been based on so called facts. I'm the first to agree that the drivel we pass off as American history is given to our children as 'fact'.
In regards to Chinese new year, well I did say it is a matter of personal regard. Yes America is multi-cultural but as a nation we do not celebrate other nation's holidays (grain of salt).
Yet again another claim to prior art in a world stuck on 'One-up-manship'.
This is obviously related to NASA's celebration (along with the rest of us Americans) of the centennial of flight, as measured in years from the first Wright Brothers flight. Reminds me of the other stories of the italian fellow who did radio first and the british fellow who did a version of television first.
Here in America we also celebrate Independence Day on the 4rth of July (unlike many other countries), we consider Ford's Model T to be the first car (we all know it wasn't), we take credit for baseball (a derivative of cricket and many other earlier games)and claim a lot of other national achievements which are just that, American 'achievements'.
What we don't do is tell the rest of the world to celebrate these individuals or events along with us in the same way that we, as a nation, don't celebrate French holidays or Chinese new year, unless it's out of personal regard.
You can argue that we attempt to force our events and holidays down the world's throat via media, etc. but that is all subjective. An example is MY birthday. It's important to me and my friends and family but you probably don't care too much. Now if I was a celebrity you might pay attention for entertainment's sake but that's your choice.
None of these people, Wright Brothers, this Australian fellow or any of the people I mention or who were involved in the events mentioned asked for your attention. They did what they did because they wanted to achieve their goals. Who's on First? Who cares! If you think the person is interesting and should be celebrated for their achievement then do so.
It's all subjective in the end so do what you think is best, give credit based on your own views and let others do the same.
Anyone interested in knowing how much it takes to maintain Terabytes of database storage:
Hardware
- Storage
- CPUs
- NIC cards
- Cables
- Electricity ($$$)
Licensing (Commercial)
- OS
- Database
- Admin seats
- User seats
- Storage Admin Software
- Admin seats
Administration
- Salary
- QA at 60k/yr
- Admin at 75k/yr
- Manager at 80k/yr
These are all very ball-park, but you can see that there is a lot more than $1/GB involved here.
Sure you can buy a hard drive for about $1/GB for personal use but you don't count all the man hours involved in maintenance or you don't have enugh activity to need maintenance or any of the other tasks involved with serious database activity.
I hope this starts you thinking about all the effort that goes into keeping a very active DB going.
There's more, much more to say about this but I'm done for now.
Remember that this is all being kept in a COMMERCIAL database, the kind with licensing fees and really good performance. TCO isn't just the hard disk storage space. Think administration, think redundancy (as in mirroring), think backup, think load balancing, add in bandwidth costs for balancing, mirroring, etc. and shit adds up.
I work for a storage technology company. These are real details that do cost cash. BTW this is the short list of expenses.
"I believe SCS was just a simple way of getting this game out earlier because they are running out of time to impliment any of these logical systems."
Sounds likely to me.
You missed the commentary on how the data is stored, db records, distributed, load balanced database records. In the future a distributed non-db storage scheme is plausible, but for current game architecture, apparently it's not.
Second, to add to the resolution, it's not just storage space with the database model, it is also licensing fees (a much larger portion of the actual TCO).
if they want this to work like the real world, as far as economy goes at least, tehn we should have financial protection as well.
I want life insurance policies, FDIC insured bank accounts, credit fraud reimbursement, and a living trust, not to mention offshore accounts, holding companies and tax havens.
If this was set in the middle ages or ancient babylonia i'd understand why you could only carry around your wealth to insure it's safety but that's why we developed all these other paradigms, to protect ourselves from bandits, outlaws and thieves. Just cause it's sci-fi doesn't mean it's post apocolyptic! Where's the civilization?
Also how do these things degrade? Can we repair them? or can we just buy Good(TM) stuff that doesn't degrade? I know people who buy cheap stuff and yeah it's pretty much crap before it degrades but it also degrades much much more quickly than most of the stuff I buy, like furniture, clothing, electronics, appliances, etc. Any of the rest of you people out there still have something you bought even five years ago that is in mint condition? ten years..
I do.
Are you trying to say that Stamps are not a "complicated trust-checking initiative and process"?
Seems to me that when you look at the infrastructure in place to deal with Stamps, you'll realize that they are just as complicated and trust-checking (they must be certified and for businesses must be in connection with a valid return address) as anything this guy has come up with.
Seriously, how many millions of dollars go each year to the production and processing of various types of postage?
If you could just put a piece of paper with a number value on it and get your stuff mailed, well that would be kinda like e-mail.
Did you see the video of the UFO he unleashed on his home town? hilarious! looks like it flew around causing panic for quite some time....
Thank you JEBUS!!!!! This is my new screensaver... yes, on OS X you can use movies as a screensaver, or a desktop pic (though quite distracting).
Sorry i was using the 'vernacular'.
I was just saying that for example, we humans convert and transfer a lot of energy every day but you don't see us getting kick back checks from the power grid for contributions. On the other hand windmills are very direct and effective at converting and transferring wind power to the power grid. These machines Theo has put together are more like humans than windmills. They are designed for kinetic energy... which is why they are so unique.
Is that you Seth Green? your grandma called the other day asking where you'd run off to. She needs her crack pipe back and you forgot that friday was 'vericose vein massage day'.
Great idea.
I wouldn't be surprised if our Dutchman doesn't get a call from NASA or affiliates... with the addition of a small power supply, think solar, these things or their descendants could do a very good job of exporing Mars.
You could fit a hundred folded up versions of these into the space required for one rover. All of them together would still probably weigh less than a rover if made out of carbon fibre/nano-tubules.
Well creating energy is a wonderful goal but really these types of mechanics aren't well suited to converting wind energy into electrical energy...too much will be lost in the conversion to be of any use, whereas converting to the demonstrated kinetic energy is still viable, though certainly not for moving any amount of extra mass. Remember that these machines are only moving themselves, no payload.
If Theo can get efficient storage in place then this may change. Still it would require a whole lot of stored energy to do more than they are currently or to have any left over for the rest of us.
There is i believe a similar architecture involved but the main difference is that Theo's machines move against the wind not with it.
Just to summarize, it looks like he's using windpower instead and/or in addition to gravity(ie: pendulum) to power what are essentially spring and lever actuations, resulting in forward movement. Quite complex relationships to be sure. The fact that he's getting them to do anything is impressive, though less so knowing that he's used extensive computer modeling as a crutch. viva la renaissance!
Much like the sands of the hourglass... blah blah... seriously though, very cool work, just wish the flash control jscript worked on my mac... can't get beyond the funky video of the crank...
I can see how he plans to store the windpower in the pistons though, springy.
I like the pictures of the beetles the best... love how he's using ground effects to generate leg movin' vibrations. Makes ya think about bumblebee turbulence, etc. a little.
So air flows over the tops of these slinkies and creates downward momentum that's converted into forward momentum via lovely sets of lever mechanisms... again, very clockwork. Very cool.
Gotta love simply principles of physics applied creatively to mechanics.
Crazy Dutchman!!!!
hmmmm tried it again and all is well... maybe a /. 'side-effect'.
The large QT link seems corrupted somehow, last part is missing, try the small (file size) link, though you're not missing too much.
;-/
In a related story: conspiracy theorists claim this footage is fake because you can't see any stars in the background.....
I hope they realize that they are passing legislation which disallows linking to international sites, even if they are kid safe... i guess our kids will only be getting US approved history as usual.
Well hopefully the librarians at schools will keep at least one or two computers available for doing real research on sites like BBC, etc. who may not feel the need to create a special US version of their material available just for kids in the US.