I didn't quite understand from the article why this procedure was prevented in the US, aside from cost.
This is more or less the same technique that's been researched for decades - I saw a film (as opposed to videotape) of it in junior high when I was a kid.
There are a number of problems - as others have mentioned, it tends to cause seizures in its users. IIRC this is because the apparatus itself is fairly crude and overloads the part of the brain it's connected to. It also doesn't work very well - the resolution now is not a whole lot better than back then.
Obviously an argument can be made that someone who loses their sight may consider any visual ability valuable enough to outweigh the risks, but in this case I think the FDA is right. This particular technology is not mature enough to allow as a commercial product. There are others in development that IMO are more promising.
When I was reading previews for Oblivion, I distinctly remember reading that barding (or "horse armor") was included and thinking, "oh, that's a nice touch." While someone somewhere may have reported that it was content not included with the retail game, I certainly have no recollection of it in the coverage I read.
I saw it mentioned in a number of previews. Part of the reason I bought the PC version instead of 360 was so I could get player-made mods instead of wasting my money on things like horse armour.
Maybe I'm in the minority, because I don't buy things like cell ringtones, but I refuse to be nickel-and-dimed to death. The 360 is technologically impressive, but I'm very hesitant about ever buying one because the philosophy of squeezing every possible penny out of consumers seems to be its main focus.
I think many of the big corporations are listening too much to their shareholders' demands for increasing short-term profitability at the expense of the long-term. As someone else said, this kind of behaviour utterly destroys brand loyalty.
Of course, maybe that's the whole point- to really show off your wealth, you need to not only indulge in conspicuous consumption, but stupid conspicuous consumption. You don't buy fancy expensive stuff that's high quality and will last, you buy fancy, expensive stuff that's low quality and disposable. That'll really show off how rich you are.
Exactly.
Seeing this article made me wonder whatever happened to the gold-plated, diamond-encrusted Sega Game Gear from the early 90s. Melted down to recover the gold, I assume.
I think you've got your pink glasses on there, mate.
No kidding.
I've administered a network of Macs. I used them for years for multimedia work, because there is some great software available for them. However, the OS prior to X was a pile of crap with a (sort of*) pretty UI.
* I still think the single menubar at the top of the screen that switches for apps is one of the worst UI elements ever, and the best thing Apple could do is wipe it out in the next release of OS X.
Since the new company will be headquartered in Paris, it would have to be French Electric.
If you ever go to Harbor Freight Tools, take a look at the brands sometime. Everything is from China, but they're all named things like "Chicago Power Tools" or "American Air Compressors."
You know, that's an interesting point. I hate pronouncing OLE "oh-lay" and I want to punch people who pronounce URL like the title "Earl." So why do I pronounce SQL "sequel"?
I think it's because it seems fairly benign and neutral. "Oh-lay" makes me picture someone dancing around with a sombrero on their head, a rapier in one hand, and a jar of expensive face cream in the other. "Earl" is very close to both "Urkel" and the "durrrrrrrrrr" that implies drool running down one's face.
It only requires 15 people to support the entire environment.
We use Exchange to support email and calendaring for at least twice that number, and it takes 1-2 of us to support it part time. It pretty much takes care of itself. The only downtime we've had since upgrading to 2003 was when a third-party backup app started locking up one of the servers every weekend.
I'm not a huge MS fan, and I do tend to like IBM, but Notes is a pile of shit. The only thing I ever liked about it was the hieroglyphics when I entered my password, and I still thought that didn't belong in an enterprise desktop app. It's not a matter of redesigning it or adding new features - the whole concept is flawed. Email and calendar apps go together - that's why Outlook is so popular. Email, calendar apps, the worst database product evar, and whatever else IBM decided to shovel into Notes for the releases after 5 do not belong in the same executable.
Notes is such a terrible product that I thought this article was one of the April Fools' jokes.
Backwards compatibility is a relatively new idea with gaming consoles.
The Atari 7800 was backwards-compatible with the 2600 out of the box.
The Atari 5200, ColecoVision, and IntelliVision all had add-on modules to play 2600 games (although this was basically just a 2600 that used the controllers and video output of the newer console).
Similarly, the Sega Genesis had an add-on module to play Master System games.
As someone else mentioned, the Gameboy has always been backwards-compatible.
Based on my days in the arcade industry, I truly believe this could be designed, programmed, and built for ten opr twenty grand at most.
You could do it for ten or twenty *dollars* if you used secondhand hardware like the Power Glove. Or, better yet, why not just buy a gyroscopic mouse or a graphics tablet and use Photoshop/GIMP?
Analogue cell phones sound better to some people because they use more bandwidth - which is also why the service was more expensive and phased out in favour of digital. Unless you're using your cellphone to listen to a concert, you don't need hi-fidelity reproduction when it costs significantly more.
Given a choice between analogue and digital consumer formats for e.g. movies, digital is the clear winner. To get something as good as DVD video in analogue format, you'd be looking at a super-expensive, big, high-speed tape system like studios used to use, or film, which has the same drawbacks.
Not in general. CRT television sets may be around that frequency (I think PAL is at 16 kHz, don't know NTSC), but computer monitors are usually in the 60--80 kHz range, except for very old VGA screens that were 31.5 kHz.
I don't think the audible whine is based on the refresh rate. I'm 27, and I can hear it from just about any CRT, whether it's a TV or a computer monitor.
Re:Less challenges on the moon?
on
US Plans Lunar Motel
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Backhoes work on Earth largely because Earth's gravity is stronger than the force of the earth-moving arm exerted against the ground. Bulldozers work because Earth's gravity overcomes the forward force of the dozer, giving traction sufficient to move soil.
I am imagining something like porcupine quills, only much bigger. The moon-based construction equipment shoots a couple into the ground when it needs purchase. If the construction were planned well, the equipment could be detached and the quills used again when something else needs to work in that same spot.
For a bulldozer, you could use the quills as mount points for a modified railroad track that was added on to as the bulldozer needed to move further. Unlike a railroad track on Earth, this one would also be anchoring the vehicles that ran on it.
The dust and problems with hydraulics are big concerns, though. I think it will be interesting to see how those are overcome.
The traditional one, yes. I was mostly joking, but the boring repetition is why I've given up most RPGs over time. I thought Morrowind did a good job of eliminating the level-grind aspect, so that's the one kind I'll still play.
I guess they could let them down to break rocks, but that's not nearly as entertaining.
Hey, that's a great idea.
Rather than ban the player for seven days, send them to a prison where they're released once they perform boring, repetitive tasks until they earn their freedom.
Hmm, actually, I guess that basically describes most of the MMORPG experience, so nevermind.
What you're describing is essentially Morrowind. It uses text, but I didn't mind because the result was that sort of open-ended game world.
I think it will be a considerable amount of time before a speech synthesizer can convincingly stand in for a real voice actor. Even now in the 21st century, the best we have are the phoneme-clip based systems that still sound like robots. There isn't even a voice synthesizer equivalent of William Shatner, let alone Ian McKellan.
IT's not uncommon for people to do that. Even smart rational people have been know the think they still have time.
Yeah. It's easy to mock people for doing things that seem stupid, but most of the common "stupid" things that get people killed don't seem that way when it's you that's doing them.
It's not an asinine comment. A stopped car in the right lane isn't an emergency. They need to get their asses out of the car or move the car to the shoulder.
In the areas of the US I'm familiar with, it's actually illegal to leave your car when it's on the freeway, because you will probably be run down. This is why people whose cars break down leave them stopped where they are and call 911.
Re:A lot less than meets the eye
on
Region-free PS3
·
· Score: 1
That doesn't mean the PS3 is capable of putting out both PAL and NTSC.
The PS2 is, so I assume it's more cost-effective to make one piece of video hardware that can output both than two different models.
i think they do just fine scaring people away from e-filing on their own... e-filing costs ~$30 (part irs, part h&r/intuit) while paper filing costs ~30 seconds or print time, ink, and a stamp.
I e-filed on the H&R Block site this year for something like $4.99. I won't next year if they get to sell my data, however.
You've read too many comicbooks and science fictions.
No, the GP is correct.
An extra X chromosome in females (XXX, w00t) does cause serious problems, but an extra Y in males tends to make them more muscular, more aggressive, and generally more generically "masculine," although according to Wikipedia, there is debate on this subject. I'm going with the supporting argument side because we learned about it in one of my science classes years ago.
There's a brief reference to this in Alien 3, when someone refers to Fury 161 as a prison for "double-Y chromies" or somesuch.
Nietzsche coined the term "Übermensch", which translates to "Overman" not "Superman". I'm pretty sure no Nazi every used the english word "Superman" either.
The literal translation between two languages is not always the most accurate one.
For example, up here in Seattle, a girl wanted a name for her industrial band. She decided to go for "Sub-Zero" (like the temperature), but in German. She picked "Unter Null," because it literally means "below zero." However, what it *actually* means in German is more accurately translated as "loser," ("less than nothing," I presume) or "shithead." Fortunately, her music is good and she was able to turn it into a bit of a joke.
Similarly, "Ubermensch" may literally translate as "Overman," but "Superman" is a more *accurate* translation of its meaning in English, since in our common usage, "over" and "super" are fairly distinct, even if literally they're almost the same word.
Personally, I think the Germans got "uber" as a corruption of the Latin "super."
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't quite understand from the article why this procedure was prevented in the US, aside from cost.
This is more or less the same technique that's been researched for decades - I saw a film (as opposed to videotape) of it in junior high when I was a kid.
There are a number of problems - as others have mentioned, it tends to cause seizures in its users. IIRC this is because the apparatus itself is fairly crude and overloads the part of the brain it's connected to. It also doesn't work very well - the resolution now is not a whole lot better than back then.
Obviously an argument can be made that someone who loses their sight may consider any visual ability valuable enough to outweigh the risks, but in this case I think the FDA is right. This particular technology is not mature enough to allow as a commercial product. There are others in development that IMO are more promising.
When I was reading previews for Oblivion, I distinctly remember reading that barding (or "horse armor") was included and thinking, "oh, that's a nice touch." While someone somewhere may have reported that it was content not included with the retail game, I certainly have no recollection of it in the coverage I read.
I saw it mentioned in a number of previews. Part of the reason I bought the PC version instead of 360 was so I could get player-made mods instead of wasting my money on things like horse armour.
Maybe I'm in the minority, because I don't buy things like cell ringtones, but I refuse to be nickel-and-dimed to death. The 360 is technologically impressive, but I'm very hesitant about ever buying one because the philosophy of squeezing every possible penny out of consumers seems to be its main focus.
I think many of the big corporations are listening too much to their shareholders' demands for increasing short-term profitability at the expense of the long-term. As someone else said, this kind of behaviour utterly destroys brand loyalty.
Of course, maybe that's the whole point- to really show off your wealth, you need to not only indulge in conspicuous consumption, but stupid conspicuous consumption. You don't buy fancy expensive stuff that's high quality and will last, you buy fancy, expensive stuff that's low quality and disposable. That'll really show off how rich you are.
Exactly.
Seeing this article made me wonder whatever happened to the gold-plated, diamond-encrusted Sega Game Gear from the early 90s. Melted down to recover the gold, I assume.
I always find it strange how Sun's business model seems to constantly be evolving towards developing products that either
a) no one wants, or
b) have already been made.
You mean you're not reading Slashdot on a Sun NC?
I think you've got your pink glasses on there, mate.
No kidding.
I've administered a network of Macs. I used them for years for multimedia work, because there is some great software available for them. However, the OS prior to X was a pile of crap with a (sort of*) pretty UI.
* I still think the single menubar at the top of the screen that switches for apps is one of the worst UI elements ever, and the best thing Apple could do is wipe it out in the next release of OS X.
Since the new company will be headquartered in Paris, it would have to be French Electric.
If you ever go to Harbor Freight Tools, take a look at the brands sometime. Everything is from China, but they're all named things like "Chicago Power Tools" or "American Air Compressors."
You know, that's an interesting point. I hate pronouncing OLE "oh-lay" and I want to punch people who pronounce URL like the title "Earl." So why do I pronounce SQL "sequel"?
I think it's because it seems fairly benign and neutral. "Oh-lay" makes me picture someone dancing around with a sombrero on their head, a rapier in one hand, and a jar of expensive face cream in the other. "Earl" is very close to both "Urkel" and the "durrrrrrrrrr" that implies drool running down one's face.
Well, neither in a computer science department or commercial firms have I ever heard it called sequel, I think it's not in common use in the U.K.
That may be. However, I'm in the US, and every DBA I've worked with has pronounced it "sequel." I think it sounds a lot better than another TLA too.
It only requires 15 people to support the entire environment.
We use Exchange to support email and calendaring for at least twice that number, and it takes 1-2 of us to support it part time. It pretty much takes care of itself. The only downtime we've had since upgrading to 2003 was when a third-party backup app started locking up one of the servers every weekend.
I'm not a huge MS fan, and I do tend to like IBM, but Notes is a pile of shit. The only thing I ever liked about it was the hieroglyphics when I entered my password, and I still thought that didn't belong in an enterprise desktop app. It's not a matter of redesigning it or adding new features - the whole concept is flawed. Email and calendar apps go together - that's why Outlook is so popular. Email, calendar apps, the worst database product evar, and whatever else IBM decided to shovel into Notes for the releases after 5 do not belong in the same executable.
Notes is such a terrible product that I thought this article was one of the April Fools' jokes.
What do you need for a save game? A whole bunch of state variables? That's not really data intensive.
Gamers have gotten a lot less tolerant of save points, and save-anywhere functionality requires much more space.
Backwards compatibility is a relatively new idea with gaming consoles.
The Atari 7800 was backwards-compatible with the 2600 out of the box.
The Atari 5200, ColecoVision, and IntelliVision all had add-on modules to play 2600 games (although this was basically just a 2600 that used the controllers and video output of the newer console).
Similarly, the Sega Genesis had an add-on module to play Master System games.
As someone else mentioned, the Gameboy has always been backwards-compatible.
So, no, it's not really a new idea.
Based on my days in the arcade industry, I truly believe this could be designed, programmed, and built for ten opr twenty grand at most.
You could do it for ten or twenty *dollars* if you used secondhand hardware like the Power Glove. Or, better yet, why not just buy a gyroscopic mouse or a graphics tablet and use Photoshop/GIMP?
Analogue cell phones sound better to some people because they use more bandwidth - which is also why the service was more expensive and phased out in favour of digital. Unless you're using your cellphone to listen to a concert, you don't need hi-fidelity reproduction when it costs significantly more.
Given a choice between analogue and digital consumer formats for e.g. movies, digital is the clear winner. To get something as good as DVD video in analogue format, you'd be looking at a super-expensive, big, high-speed tape system like studios used to use, or film, which has the same drawbacks.
Not in general. CRT television sets may be around that frequency (I think PAL is at 16 kHz, don't know NTSC), but computer monitors are usually in the 60--80 kHz range, except for very old VGA screens that were 31.5 kHz.
I don't think the audible whine is based on the refresh rate. I'm 27, and I can hear it from just about any CRT, whether it's a TV or a computer monitor.
Backhoes work on Earth largely because Earth's gravity is stronger than the force of the earth-moving arm exerted against the ground. Bulldozers work because Earth's gravity overcomes the forward force of the dozer, giving traction sufficient to move soil.
I am imagining something like porcupine quills, only much bigger. The moon-based construction equipment shoots a couple into the ground when it needs purchase. If the construction were planned well, the equipment could be detached and the quills used again when something else needs to work in that same spot.
For a bulldozer, you could use the quills as mount points for a modified railroad track that was added on to as the bulldozer needed to move further. Unlike a railroad track on Earth, this one would also be anchoring the vehicles that ran on it.
The dust and problems with hydraulics are big concerns, though. I think it will be interesting to see how those are overcome.
No, that describes the RPG experience.
The traditional one, yes. I was mostly joking, but the boring repetition is why I've given up most RPGs over time. I thought Morrowind did a good job of eliminating the level-grind aspect, so that's the one kind I'll still play.
I guess they could let them down to break rocks, but that's not nearly as entertaining.
Hey, that's a great idea.
Rather than ban the player for seven days, send them to a prison where they're released once they perform boring, repetitive tasks until they earn their freedom.
Hmm, actually, I guess that basically describes most of the MMORPG experience, so nevermind.
What you're describing is essentially Morrowind. It uses text, but I didn't mind because the result was that sort of open-ended game world.
I think it will be a considerable amount of time before a speech synthesizer can convincingly stand in for a real voice actor. Even now in the 21st century, the best we have are the phoneme-clip based systems that still sound like robots. There isn't even a voice synthesizer equivalent of William Shatner, let alone Ian McKellan.
IT's not uncommon for people to do that. Even smart rational people have been know the think they still have time.
Yeah. It's easy to mock people for doing things that seem stupid, but most of the common "stupid" things that get people killed don't seem that way when it's you that's doing them.
It's not an asinine comment. A stopped car in the right lane isn't an emergency. They need to get their asses out of the car or move the car to the shoulder.
In the areas of the US I'm familiar with, it's actually illegal to leave your car when it's on the freeway, because you will probably be run down. This is why people whose cars break down leave them stopped where they are and call 911.
That doesn't mean the PS3 is capable of putting out both PAL and NTSC.
The PS2 is, so I assume it's more cost-effective to make one piece of video hardware that can output both than two different models.
i think they do just fine scaring people away from e-filing on their own... e-filing costs ~$30 (part irs, part h&r/intuit) while paper filing costs ~30 seconds or print time, ink, and a stamp.
I e-filed on the H&R Block site this year for something like $4.99. I won't next year if they get to sell my data, however.
Did she get sued by the Sub-Zero refrigerator company?
No, but she had to learn some martial arts skills to fight off Raiden.
You've read too many comicbooks and science fictions.
No, the GP is correct.
An extra X chromosome in females (XXX, w00t) does cause serious problems, but an extra Y in males tends to make them more muscular, more aggressive, and generally more generically "masculine," although according to Wikipedia, there is debate on this subject. I'm going with the supporting argument side because we learned about it in one of my science classes years ago.
There's a brief reference to this in Alien 3, when someone refers to Fury 161 as a prison for "double-Y chromies" or somesuch.
Nietzsche coined the term "Übermensch", which translates to "Overman" not "Superman". I'm pretty sure no Nazi every used the english word "Superman" either.
The literal translation between two languages is not always the most accurate one.
For example, up here in Seattle, a girl wanted a name for her industrial band. She decided to go for "Sub-Zero" (like the temperature), but in German. She picked "Unter Null," because it literally means "below zero." However, what it *actually* means in German is more accurately translated as "loser," ("less than nothing," I presume) or "shithead." Fortunately, her music is good and she was able to turn it into a bit of a joke.
Similarly, "Ubermensch" may literally translate as "Overman," but "Superman" is a more *accurate* translation of its meaning in English, since in our common usage, "over" and "super" are fairly distinct, even if literally they're almost the same word.
Personally, I think the Germans got "uber" as a corruption of the Latin "super."