One might argue that many drivers on the roads today already aren't particularly proficient at controlling their vehicles. While it might be that some persons skills would grow worse with disuse, I think there are a goodly number of individuals out there who would be safer 'drivers' if they weren't in direct control over their cars themselves. And I don't mean just those who have poor eyesight or slow reflexes.
Still being made and used by historical buffs (I've talked with a guy who was actively making stone tools to show how it was done), and a pair of anthropologists go around demonstrating how stone knives could be very good at taking apart animals that hunters had brought down. All that stuff is still being made and used, if only to show how it was made and used.
Not to mention, some of my better photos have been ones that I hadn't meant to take, or turned out wrong on first look, but a bit of cropping and playing turned it into something I really liked. The only time I actually delete a photo is if it's completely and totally worthless (like a completely blurry picture of my foot, or something, from when I'm walking across a field.)
I built a fairly simple computer with a low-wattage Athlon X2 on a Micro-ATX motherboard. I put a fanless Radeon HD 3450 in as well as a BD drive and put OEM Windows 7 Home Premium on it. I control it with a wireless media keyboard w/ trackball
If you read the article, they are talking about having one mirror per scan-line... and talking about oscillating the mirrors at a rate of 2.5 kHz. So it would be drawing 2,500 times a second. And they're also saying it would be one mirror per line, so you'd be seeing the entire display refresh 2,500 times a second. Considering that movies are projected at twenty four frames per second and our persistance of vision handles that with relative ease, I suspect a scan rate of 2.5 kHz would be more than adequate to create a very solid-looking image.
And I have to disagree with this. I know all too well that different people learn with different methods. I can't, no matter how much I try, teach my mother to do something by having her sit down and do it. She needs the steps written out. Then she can learn it.
Some people learn from written word, some from spoken word, some from trial and error. The instructor's job is NOT to enforce a particular learning method because that will all but guarantee people who do not learn well in that manner get poor grades.
I, for one, almost never took any real notes in classes because I just don't write quickly. If I tried to write down notes about the lecture, I'd very quickly lose track of what the instructor was saying. Thus, most of my learning was through spoken word - whether or not that worked well for me, that was the reality of it. In my case, efficiency of typing would leave me MORE time to think about the material being presented and still provide me with something written later to reference.
Bully for her, wanting students to actually think about what they're being told. But a blanket ban on computers is not the answer. It'll help some but it's a barrier to others.
Whoops. Yes, he did mention it. But where he calls it "too chaotic to be fun", I call it fun. If you're playing well, you're jumping around, using your tumble skill to avoid blows and so on. It's more like a first-person shooter in that regard. You actually have to work at it to do it well.
The author only has it half right. There is, indeed, an auto-attack mode, which can be turned on by the press of a hotkey (by default, "1") or by double-clicking on the creature you wish to attack.
What I did not see mentioned in my quick glance through the article is that the NPCs you fight are actually somewhat intelligent. They will move around, try to get behind you. It's very interactive in that manner. You have to keep the creature in front of you, and it's going to try to keep NOT in front of you.
How about a video distribution system where you carry an RFID "key" with you and as you move from room to room, the TV/stereo in the one you just left turns on and the one in the room you entered into turns on and tunes itself to the station/dvd/whatever you were watching in the other location - so you can keep watching as you move about doing other things.
I'd love to have a system which would turn lights on/off ahead/behind me that's smart enough to know that if I was just in my bed to keep things dim, but could be overridden at any lightswitch.
Sadly, I doubt you ever will see a 6-pin Firewire connector on a notebook. Firewire is falling out of favor, becoming a "video professional only" connection. Not only that, six-pin means... powered. And we all know how power-hungry notebooks already are these days. Can't be powering devices off them as well.
You can play games online. You can chat within those games or with GameSpy or Y!IM or whatever. But you can't take a break from the internet game and go out to have a smoke with your opponent. Or stand around the grill with your fellow players while you char some bratwurst. You can't walk over to someone's machine when he says, "Woah! Check THIS out!" and it's very difficult to coordinate a whole group of people switching from game A to game B all at the same time.
When you play on the internet, your latency is different from everyone else's. Those who have the fastest connections to the server get an advantage. At a LAN Party, everyone's on the same local network. Everyone's fast. There may be differences in hardware, but the network is the same for everyone.
For me, like other posters, our monthy LAN Parties are social gatherings as much as anything. We get together, eat food, shoot the shit AND each other. We show off cool videos we've found, share casemod photos we've stumbled on. I've brought my airsoft guns to show off, another guy is big into model kits and has been talking about taking a large RC Jeep body and putting a media computer inside it. Last time, I fired up some Eddie Izzard for people to listen to while everyone was waiting for the last few players to arrive. You know... A DVD. On my monitor. For everyone to watch or ignore as they saw fit.
Tell me you can get all that from some game on the internet. Tell me you can have a good/friendship/ with your foes on some random internet server. Or, well, maybe some people care more about their score than the people they're playing with.
The difference being that the previous services was you put in a number code from your physical CD and you get access to music THEY encoded and uploaded. This one YOU are uploading your music to their service
The problem before, as argued in court, is that they did not have permission from the rightsholders to rip and distribute the music. This time, they've taken themselves out of the equation. They're simply a storage facility with tools for playing the music. If YOU upload something you don't own, that's your fault. With the previous system, you just needed to have the number from the CD, whether you'd bought it or not, and you could trick the system into thinking you owned it.
That's "engineers", not "designers". Engineers make the hardware work, designers make the hardware look. Apple wants people experienced with cramming performance into very thin notebook form-factors. Sony's been doing that for a couple years, now.
I've got a B.S. in Tech. Illusration/Graphic Design and I'm writing code, managing servers and supporting a network for a living. Haven't gotten any certifications, either.
Bicycles and walking only work when you live reasonably close to your destination and the weather is clement. So, hey. I know, how about we all ride the bus/subway/whatever? Don't know about you, but I live... Oh... twenty blocks from the nearest bus stop and the busses don't go anywhere near my place of employ.
No, these things only work with compact cities and/or with reasonable climates. When you live in Omaha, Nebraska, everything is far too spread out to bicycle hardly anywhere, unless you're the type to ride bicycle races. And most US cities defy cycling for the same reasons (weather, distance, topography).
In my mind, what is needed is figuring out how to get fuel cell vehicles working, and THEN figure out a non-polluting way to mass produce electricity (and thus convert water to hydrogen for the fuel cells). Anything short of that is either going to still polute nearly as much, can't produce the amount required OR won't be affordable or useful to a large portion of the population.
-V
Actually, wouldn't many of the original gun games (I seem to recall a certain game in the student union back in the late 80s or early 90s that had an UZI that you pointed at the screen to aim and when you pulled the trigger it shook. Or more recent gun-games where the gun is connected by a cord and the gun still shook?
The problem is about HOW the controller shakes. Open up an XBox controller or the like and you'll find a small electric motor with an off-center hunk of metal on the shaft. There's a pair, one with a smaller and one larger hunk, and they each shake independantly or together to provide small, medium and large shaking.
The patents have to do with shaking by offset hunks of metal on rotating shafts. If the rumble-packs that Nintendo had don't fit that description, then they don't violate these patents. Plain and simple.
Re:So they don't poop.
on
Animal Robots
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· Score: 1
I don't see how this is a concern... When was the last time you saw a kid WANT to give a pet a bath?
I remember seeing a bit on one of the learning type networks (TLC, Discovery, History, whatever) about a new 'paintball' which was loaded with something like pepperspray. And it didn't even need to impact the target... just close enough that they could breathe in the mist.
Doors that swish open when you walk toward them - Haven't visted a grocery store recently have you?
People that play 3-D chess - Hey, I've got the rules around here somewhere. Printed them out with a 9-pin dot-matrix printer ages ago. You could learn it, if you wanted. http://www.chessvariants.com/3d.dir/startrek.html
Defensive/Deflector Shields - In the works? http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/cold_plasma_000724.html
Radiation Sickness Treatment - http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 93745 perhaps?
-V
Ah-hah. So there IS a retailer online who sells them. I was more thinking of in shops, where I tend to do most of my shopping.
One thing that I note, though, is that the iPod's battery is supposedly this crazy thing that's hardly more than a sheet of plastic in size. I don't know any of the details, having not replaced mine, but when the iPod first came out, I do remember them making a big deal about how the battery was revolutionary because of its shape and type or something.
That's just the point. Searches DON'T turn up $10 cell phone batteries like the original poster said theirs was bought at. People are making a huge deal about the price of the iPod's batteries while they're spending quite a bit on replacement batteries for other things without griping.
Slashdot Mirror
One might argue that many drivers on the roads today already aren't particularly proficient at controlling their vehicles. While it might be that some persons skills would grow worse with disuse, I think there are a goodly number of individuals out there who would be safer 'drivers' if they weren't in direct control over their cars themselves. And I don't mean just those who have poor eyesight or slow reflexes.
Still being made and used by historical buffs (I've talked with a guy who was actively making stone tools to show how it was done), and a pair of anthropologists go around demonstrating how stone knives could be very good at taking apart animals that hunters had brought down. All that stuff is still being made and used, if only to show how it was made and used.
Not to mention, some of my better photos have been ones that I hadn't meant to take, or turned out wrong on first look, but a bit of cropping and playing turned it into something I really liked. The only time I actually delete a photo is if it's completely and totally worthless (like a completely blurry picture of my foot, or something, from when I'm walking across a field.)
My netbook may only have 1 GB of RAM, but I watch Youtube, Hulu and Netflix on it in standard definition, no real troubles?
I built a fairly simple computer with a low-wattage Athlon X2 on a Micro-ATX motherboard. I put a fanless Radeon HD 3450 in as well as a BD drive and put OEM Windows 7 Home Premium on it. I control it with a wireless media keyboard w/ trackball
A quick Google Images search turns up...
http://www.sjgames.com/ill/img/2008/sultan.jpg
and just plain google turns up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgwg5779i0M
But yeah, their own website needs photos.
98% of users... because we know this whole world is bloody insane...
If you read the article, they are talking about having one mirror per scan-line... and talking about oscillating the mirrors at a rate of 2.5 kHz. So it would be drawing 2,500 times a second. And they're also saying it would be one mirror per line, so you'd be seeing the entire display refresh 2,500 times a second. Considering that movies are projected at twenty four frames per second and our persistance of vision handles that with relative ease, I suspect a scan rate of 2.5 kHz would be more than adequate to create a very solid-looking image.
-V
And I have to disagree with this. I know all too well that different people learn with different methods. I can't, no matter how much I try, teach my mother to do something by having her sit down and do it. She needs the steps written out. Then she can learn it.
Some people learn from written word, some from spoken word, some from trial and error. The instructor's job is NOT to enforce a particular learning method because that will all but guarantee people who do not learn well in that manner get poor grades.
I, for one, almost never took any real notes in classes because I just don't write quickly. If I tried to write down notes about the lecture, I'd very quickly lose track of what the instructor was saying. Thus, most of my learning was through spoken word - whether or not that worked well for me, that was the reality of it. In my case, efficiency of typing would leave me MORE time to think about the material being presented and still provide me with something written later to reference.
Bully for her, wanting students to actually think about what they're being told. But a blanket ban on computers is not the answer. It'll help some but it's a barrier to others.
-V
Whoops. Yes, he did mention it. But where he calls it "too chaotic to be fun", I call it fun. If you're playing well, you're jumping around, using your tumble skill to avoid blows and so on. It's more like a first-person shooter in that regard. You actually have to work at it to do it well.
The author only has it half right. There is, indeed, an auto-attack mode, which can be turned on by the press of a hotkey (by default, "1") or by double-clicking on the creature you wish to attack.
What I did not see mentioned in my quick glance through the article is that the NPCs you fight are actually somewhat intelligent. They will move around, try to get behind you. It's very interactive in that manner. You have to keep the creature in front of you, and it's going to try to keep NOT in front of you.
How about a video distribution system where you carry an RFID "key" with you and as you move from room to room, the TV/stereo in the one you just left turns on and the one in the room you entered into turns on and tunes itself to the station/dvd/whatever you were watching in the other location - so you can keep watching as you move about doing other things.
I'd love to have a system which would turn lights on/off ahead/behind me that's smart enough to know that if I was just in my bed to keep things dim, but could be overridden at any lightswitch.
-V
Sadly, I doubt you ever will see a 6-pin Firewire connector on a notebook. Firewire is falling out of favor, becoming a "video professional only" connection. Not only that, six-pin means... powered. And we all know how power-hungry notebooks already are these days. Can't be powering devices off them as well.
-V
Why, yes. Yes they are.
/friendship/ with your foes on some random internet server. Or, well, maybe some people care more about their score than the people they're playing with.
You can play games online. You can chat within those games or with GameSpy or Y!IM or whatever. But you can't take a break from the internet game and go out to have a smoke with your opponent. Or stand around the grill with your fellow players while you char some bratwurst. You can't walk over to someone's machine when he says, "Woah! Check THIS out!" and it's very difficult to coordinate a whole group of people switching from game A to game B all at the same time.
When you play on the internet, your latency is different from everyone else's. Those who have the fastest connections to the server get an advantage. At a LAN Party, everyone's on the same local network. Everyone's fast. There may be differences in hardware, but the network is the same for everyone.
For me, like other posters, our monthy LAN Parties are social gatherings as much as anything. We get together, eat food, shoot the shit AND each other. We show off cool videos we've found, share casemod photos we've stumbled on. I've brought my airsoft guns to show off, another guy is big into model kits and has been talking about taking a large RC Jeep body and putting a media computer inside it. Last time, I fired up some Eddie Izzard for people to listen to while everyone was waiting for the last few players to arrive. You know... A DVD. On my monitor. For everyone to watch or ignore as they saw fit.
Tell me you can get all that from some game on the internet. Tell me you can have a good
-V
The difference being that the previous services was you put in a number code from your physical CD and you get access to music THEY encoded and uploaded. This one YOU are uploading your music to their service
The problem before, as argued in court, is that they did not have permission from the rightsholders to rip and distribute the music. This time, they've taken themselves out of the equation. They're simply a storage facility with tools for playing the music. If YOU upload something you don't own, that's your fault. With the previous system, you just needed to have the number from the CD, whether you'd bought it or not, and you could trick the system into thinking you owned it.
That's "engineers", not "designers". Engineers make the hardware work, designers make the hardware look. Apple wants people experienced with cramming performance into very thin notebook form-factors. Sony's been doing that for a couple years, now.
Thanks for trying. Do play again...
-V
I've got a B.S. in Tech. Illusration/Graphic Design and I'm writing code, managing servers and supporting a network for a living. Haven't gotten any certifications, either.
-V
Why bother with Virtual PC? If you can get Windows to run, you can dual-boot. Whoops. Don't like rebooting? http://www.vmware.com/
Bicycles and walking only work when you live reasonably close to your destination and the weather is clement. So, hey. I know, how about we all ride the bus/subway/whatever? Don't know about you, but I live... Oh... twenty blocks from the nearest bus stop and the busses don't go anywhere near my place of employ. No, these things only work with compact cities and/or with reasonable climates. When you live in Omaha, Nebraska, everything is far too spread out to bicycle hardly anywhere, unless you're the type to ride bicycle races. And most US cities defy cycling for the same reasons (weather, distance, topography). In my mind, what is needed is figuring out how to get fuel cell vehicles working, and THEN figure out a non-polluting way to mass produce electricity (and thus convert water to hydrogen for the fuel cells). Anything short of that is either going to still polute nearly as much, can't produce the amount required OR won't be affordable or useful to a large portion of the population. -V
Actually, wouldn't many of the original gun games (I seem to recall a certain game in the student union back in the late 80s or early 90s that had an UZI that you pointed at the screen to aim and when you pulled the trigger it shook. Or more recent gun-games where the gun is connected by a cord and the gun still shook?
The problem is about HOW the controller shakes. Open up an XBox controller or the like and you'll find a small electric motor with an off-center hunk of metal on the shaft. There's a pair, one with a smaller and one larger hunk, and they each shake independantly or together to provide small, medium and large shaking.
The patents have to do with shaking by offset hunks of metal on rotating shafts. If the rumble-packs that Nintendo had don't fit that description, then they don't violate these patents. Plain and simple.
I don't see how this is a concern... When was the last time you saw a kid WANT to give a pet a bath?
I remember seeing a bit on one of the learning type networks (TLC, Discovery, History, whatever) about a new 'paintball' which was loaded with something like pepperspray. And it didn't even need to impact the target... just close enough that they could breathe in the mist.
Probably not available to the public, though.
-V
Doors that swish open when you walk toward them - Haven't visted a grocery store recently have you? People that play 3-D chess - Hey, I've got the rules around here somewhere. Printed them out with a 9-pin dot-matrix printer ages ago. You could learn it, if you wanted. http://www.chessvariants.com/3d.dir/startrek.html Defensive/Deflector Shields - In the works? http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /cold_plasma_000724.html
Radiation Sickness Treatment - http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 93745 perhaps?
-V
Ah-hah. So there IS a retailer online who sells them. I was more thinking of in shops, where I tend to do most of my shopping.
One thing that I note, though, is that the iPod's battery is supposedly this crazy thing that's hardly more than a sheet of plastic in size. I don't know any of the details, having not replaced mine, but when the iPod first came out, I do remember them making a big deal about how the battery was revolutionary because of its shape and type or something.
-V
That's just the point. Searches DON'T turn up $10 cell phone batteries like the original poster said theirs was bought at. People are making a huge deal about the price of the iPod's batteries while they're spending quite a bit on replacement batteries for other things without griping.
-V