So I ask again, what makes you think that they won't work on improving this particular technology? There's obviously demand for it. And as other posters have pointed out, there are already industrial facilities that can do the same type of process with metals and specialized concrete. You act like they're within 95% of the absolute limit of this technology, except you have no evidence for thinking that.
I know people have successfully returned their "mandatory" copies of windows to Dell and the like because they wanted to run Linux instead. I imagine it's just as easy to do in order to downgrade to XP.
On a side note, it's pretty ridiculous for manufacturers to FORCE a system upgrade on customers who may not want it. If enough people start returning Vista and let them know it's because they want XP instead, maybe they'll get the message.
So far. But 2d printers couldn't do photo-paper, or color, or even smooth edges at first either. What makes you think nobody's going to work on improving this technology?
It's the optimist in me. Although now that you bring it up, I'm reminded of the truism that half the population has an IQ under 100. And that's freaking scary.
Er. "The measurement you're referring to is the plumbness of a column from building top to building floor." I should think it clear that I understood that quite thoroughly. What I'm trying to explain to you is that you're looking at the wrong direction. You don't measure vertical drift against building height, you measure it against building width; the issue is the angle of the floor. The floor of a 50 story building which is higher on one side by two inches is no less uneven than a 20 story building which is higher on one side by two inches. The height of the building has nothing to do with it.
You keep saying this, and you're mixing two things which shouldn't be mixed. Plumbness refers to deviation from perfectly straight, correct? So the document I linked, and my own statements, were both referring to a maximum 75mm deviation from perfectly straight, along the entire length of the vertical beam. But then you go saying things like "if one side of each floor was 75mm higher than the other, the whole building would be uneven by 12 feet when you reached the top". The measurements I'm talking about have nothing to do with height. I don't know why you keep insisting it does, or insisting that MY statements do, but you're clearly misunderstanding something. I've not been talking about height differences at any point.
The numbers do not uphold it, nor does common sense, nor have you cited an authority giving anything other than raw measurements. I don't see any reason for you to believe this. There is no authorative document comparing the pyramids' accuracy to those of any other building, nor did the supposed accuracy of the building have anything to do with the original topic.
Actually they do. Look in almost any text and you'll find it. Attempts have been made to explain it away, too: for example, one widely held theory is that a ditch was dug around the base, flooded, and the surface of the water used to create such an amazingly level foundation for the structure. And the OP asked what about the building made it seem too difficult for an army of manual workers with copper tools. This is a perfectly valid reply to that question.
I don't think the majority of the population is quite that stupid. What seems more likely to me is that people don't stop to think about it either way.
While I'm certainly prepared to believe that fabrication plants are extremely precise, I'm having a hard time picturing why the Boeing site, for example, NEEDS a floor that deviates by less than half a millimeter over 98 acres. It would be phenomenally expensive to create such a structure. In addition, your last paragraph completely misunderstands the document I linked. The 75mm limit was over the entire height of the building, as was clearly stated.
Anyway, the original statement of "most precise building in the world" is overkill, true or not. However, it doesn't seem like it's inappropriate to point out that it's more precise (by several powers of 10) than all but the most advanced modern buildings, all of which are built with modern technology. That's still amazing, even if they aren't as precise as ultra-modern fab plants and such.
If you have sources for any of that I'd love to see it, because most of what I posted above is from actual engineers...
For example, off the top of my head, this specifies that a 20 story building (~200 feet) can have a deviance of up to 75mm in the steel support structure. That works out to about 0.2% deviance. By contrast, the pyramid has deviances on the order of 0.25 inches over 350 feet, or about 0.006%. You said scrapers over 50 stories... so say, 50 stories (about 500 feet), assuming the same 75mm tolerance, would still give 0.05%. To be as precise as the Giza pyramid, a 500 foot tall steel support would have to deviate from true straight by less than 10mm. We just don't build our structures to that level of precision, even multi-hundred story skyscrapers.
The passages inside the pyramid are all extremely straight and precise, such that the longest of them, referred to as the descending passage, which is 350' 0.25" long deviates from being truly straight by less than 0.25 inches, while one of the shorter passages with a length of just over 150 feet deviates from being truly straight by a mere 0.020 inches.
That's from Wikipedia, but similar measurements are available in basically any exhaustive reference on the pyramids. Similar precision is shown in every aspect of the construction. In contrast, extremely modern buildings such as skyscrapers etc can deviate from true straight by several inches over the same distance. We could make them more precise, but we don't because A) it's expensive to do so, and B) we don't need to.
I wonder which part of piling sand onto the side of rocks in the desert you think couldn't be handled by tens of thousands of slaves over the course of decades.
The part where it's the most accurately constructed building in the world today by a factor of 10.
Maybe the rest of them aren't but this one's pretty subtle (so subtle that it doesn't yet have april fools tags), and clever. I, for one, am going to be upgrading my web space workflow with the Synergy 2.0a plugin. What snakes are on YOUR plane?
To be fair, it's mostly a small but vocal minority that keeps spewing such rabid nationalism. There's a fair number of people who understand that all those empty sentiments are damaging, and they may even outnumber the first group. Stupidity tends to win on talk shows and "news" discussions, just because it has smaller soundbites.
You should probably clarify that these aren't pure guesses, but estimates based on as much data as was available at the time. And even then, it's relatively shaky logic to carry one instance through to the rest of reality.
The point of the OLPC project isn't just to train children to enter a technical workforce. It's to bring the benefits of digital technology to underdeveloped nations, presumably in the hopes that it will push a generation to learn and advance faster than they could otherwise.
I don't really want either. My favorite are games where you're the lone hero, working through a detailed and interesting story. Deus Ex, Half Life / Half Life 2, even the Halo 1 single player was pretty good in that regard. Beyond Good And Evil was also good in that sense. I'm just sick of people trying to excuse half-assed story with "but it has a multi-player mode!!"
Generally people who are bad at games feel this way. Some people are just naturally better. My brother and I could probably hop in to any random FPS and within an hour be better than a majority of the players. It is a wrong assumption to think all these people are teens with a lot of time. I think it is more likely that you have poor reflexes.
Assumptions are fun!
I'm actually relatively good at games, and my reflexes are fine, thank you. Your mistake is assuming that all gaming should be is a PvP frag-match. Yeah, I can plow through a Halo 2 server and run circles around people racking up killing sprees with nothing but the sword. But that's only fun playing against people I know in real life, and even then it gets boring pretty quickly. Some of us enjoy playing a game where you work your way through a carefully constructed story, figure out how to fight your way through new scenarios rather than playing on the same 5 maps over and over again, and generally experience something new.
My comment about pre-teens with too much time on their hands wasn't even complaining about opponents being "too tough". What I was saying was this: if I'm looking for an interesting story to play through, throwing me on yet another multi-player map with yet another batch of adolescents to mow down is absolutely NOT going to provide a satisfying experience.
Basically, there's the "immature gamer" who's happy as long as they can taunt people while blowing them up with a rocket launcher. And the "mature gamer", someone who's looking for gameplay and a story with some substance. Online play has yet to reach the second group.
I'd second the sentiment that online play pisses me off. If it's done well, as an added mode on top of a great game, then fine. But a lot of developers these days are using it as an excuse to deliver extremely half-assed single player content. I don't know how many times I've heard, "The story mode for Gears of War is kinda short and not that interesting, but the multiplayer is a lot of fun." Somehow, playing against a trash-talking pre-teen with nothing better to do than practice 8 hours a day just doesn't interest me in the same way as a well written story mode.
The 360 has been out for nearly two years. They've sold somewhere under 11 million units. The Wii has been out for all of 4-5 months and they've sold over 5 million. And they still can't keep them on the shelves. Since they make a profit on their hardware, unlike MS and Sony, this is basically like printing money to them. I think demand has just exceeded everyone's expectations.
The Beatles are an exception, true. I think that's because they didn't care for the attention, stopped touring after a couple years, and just focused on the music. And sure, there have been other bands that have done the same thing. But the music industry was a lot more willing to wait on bands trying out new things back in the 60s and 70s than they are today, too. The tendancy is still to push too much attention too soon, and then chase the passing wave of interest and leave musicianship by the wayside.
First, if your standard for new, good albums is really that low, you have probably been listening to nothing but what the major labels try to shove down your throat. There are plenty of new concept albums out there, and even more that lack an overarching story or theme but still stand out as fantastic works when taken as a whole. You can certainly find dozens of new albums that are more than just a couple good songs and some filler. You just have to look elsewhere than the latest Justin Timberlake or Gwen Stephani disc.
But mainly I wanted to comment on your statements about marketing. It seems that bands can make a decent living without advertising, but they have to have something pretty unique. Then with a little time and some well placed live shows, they tend to develop a following with no major advertising of their own. I know the last five or six new bands I've found have all been through word of mouth. Sure, they're not as big as top 40 bands, but they have a devoted fan base that's far less fickle than the masses that like someone simply because they're the "next new thing".
Maybe it's the music snob in me, but I tend to think that the only bands that really need marketing to survive are those that aren't much good to begin with, or want to be bigger, faster than good music will get you on its own. In the first case the marketing is counterproductive (blocks air-time and brain space that could be used by better bands), and in the second it seems like all the advertisement does is turn a band with potential into a one-hit-wonder that goes on to release a couple mediocre follow-ups and then implode. Even a great band can never match the insane expectations set by a marketing-driven surge of popularity, because 3/4 of the crowd will move on to the next new face, and the label will push for a repeat instead of letting the music mature.
The guy who drafted the DMCA came out last week admitting publicly that it had been a huge failure, and that it had been badly abused. It's one thing to pass a law hoping it will work as you intend, it's another to sit back and watch it being abused and not take any measures to fix the problem. So who should we blame, again?
The key thing that remains like the real world, though, is location. Proximity to the "good neighborhoods", the center of the mainland, etc. When they add land, they do it at the edges of the mainland, or in islands (as I understand, I've never played). But if there's a viable "commercial district", owning land in it will actually make a difference. Just like in Stephenson's "Snow Crash", there's essentially unlimited space to expand on the outskirts, but all the old clubs, cool stores, events, and "in crowd" people are located much closer together.
You assume a slow mode of travel (relative to those distances). IF aliens are really here, it's pretty obvious that they're not riding in generation ships, which would indicate FTL travel in some capacity. Not that I think they have either, but from common reports you can state a few reliable hypotheticals.
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So I ask again, what makes you think that they won't work on improving this particular technology? There's obviously demand for it. And as other posters have pointed out, there are already industrial facilities that can do the same type of process with metals and specialized concrete. You act like they're within 95% of the absolute limit of this technology, except you have no evidence for thinking that.
I know people have successfully returned their "mandatory" copies of windows to Dell and the like because they wanted to run Linux instead. I imagine it's just as easy to do in order to downgrade to XP.
On a side note, it's pretty ridiculous for manufacturers to FORCE a system upgrade on customers who may not want it. If enough people start returning Vista and let them know it's because they want XP instead, maybe they'll get the message.
So far. But 2d printers couldn't do photo-paper, or color, or even smooth edges at first either. What makes you think nobody's going to work on improving this technology?
It's the optimist in me. Although now that you bring it up, I'm reminded of the truism that half the population has an IQ under 100. And that's freaking scary.
Actually they do. Look in almost any text and you'll find it. Attempts have been made to explain it away, too: for example, one widely held theory is that a ditch was dug around the base, flooded, and the surface of the water used to create such an amazingly level foundation for the structure. And the OP asked what about the building made it seem too difficult for an army of manual workers with copper tools. This is a perfectly valid reply to that question.
I don't think the majority of the population is quite that stupid. What seems more likely to me is that people don't stop to think about it either way.
While I'm certainly prepared to believe that fabrication plants are extremely precise, I'm having a hard time picturing why the Boeing site, for example, NEEDS a floor that deviates by less than half a millimeter over 98 acres. It would be phenomenally expensive to create such a structure. In addition, your last paragraph completely misunderstands the document I linked. The 75mm limit was over the entire height of the building, as was clearly stated.
Anyway, the original statement of "most precise building in the world" is overkill, true or not. However, it doesn't seem like it's inappropriate to point out that it's more precise (by several powers of 10) than all but the most advanced modern buildings, all of which are built with modern technology. That's still amazing, even if they aren't as precise as ultra-modern fab plants and such.
If you have sources for any of that I'd love to see it, because most of what I posted above is from actual engineers...
For example, off the top of my head, this specifies that a 20 story building (~200 feet) can have a deviance of up to 75mm in the steel support structure. That works out to about 0.2% deviance. By contrast, the pyramid has deviances on the order of 0.25 inches over 350 feet, or about 0.006%. You said scrapers over 50 stories... so say, 50 stories (about 500 feet), assuming the same 75mm tolerance, would still give 0.05%. To be as precise as the Giza pyramid, a 500 foot tall steel support would have to deviate from true straight by less than 10mm. We just don't build our structures to that level of precision, even multi-hundred story skyscrapers.
I didn't say alignment, I said construction. 0.25 inches from true straight over the full length is a lot better than 12 feet like you're saying.
Maybe the rest of them aren't but this one's pretty subtle (so subtle that it doesn't yet have april fools tags), and clever. I, for one, am going to be upgrading my web space workflow with the Synergy 2.0a plugin. What snakes are on YOUR plane?
To be fair, it's mostly a small but vocal minority that keeps spewing such rabid nationalism. There's a fair number of people who understand that all those empty sentiments are damaging, and they may even outnumber the first group. Stupidity tends to win on talk shows and "news" discussions, just because it has smaller soundbites.
You should probably clarify that these aren't pure guesses, but estimates based on as much data as was available at the time. And even then, it's relatively shaky logic to carry one instance through to the rest of reality.
The point of the OLPC project isn't just to train children to enter a technical workforce. It's to bring the benefits of digital technology to underdeveloped nations, presumably in the hopes that it will push a generation to learn and advance faster than they could otherwise.
I don't really want either. My favorite are games where you're the lone hero, working through a detailed and interesting story. Deus Ex, Half Life / Half Life 2, even the Halo 1 single player was pretty good in that regard. Beyond Good And Evil was also good in that sense. I'm just sick of people trying to excuse half-assed story with "but it has a multi-player mode!!"
I'm actually relatively good at games, and my reflexes are fine, thank you. Your mistake is assuming that all gaming should be is a PvP frag-match. Yeah, I can plow through a Halo 2 server and run circles around people racking up killing sprees with nothing but the sword. But that's only fun playing against people I know in real life, and even then it gets boring pretty quickly. Some of us enjoy playing a game where you work your way through a carefully constructed story, figure out how to fight your way through new scenarios rather than playing on the same 5 maps over and over again, and generally experience something new.
My comment about pre-teens with too much time on their hands wasn't even complaining about opponents being "too tough". What I was saying was this: if I'm looking for an interesting story to play through, throwing me on yet another multi-player map with yet another batch of adolescents to mow down is absolutely NOT going to provide a satisfying experience.
Basically, there's the "immature gamer" who's happy as long as they can taunt people while blowing them up with a rocket launcher. And the "mature gamer", someone who's looking for gameplay and a story with some substance. Online play has yet to reach the second group.
My mistake. I saw "unveiled on MTV in May" in the wikipedia article and misread it.
I'd second the sentiment that online play pisses me off. If it's done well, as an added mode on top of a great game, then fine. But a lot of developers these days are using it as an excuse to deliver extremely half-assed single player content. I don't know how many times I've heard, "The story mode for Gears of War is kinda short and not that interesting, but the multiplayer is a lot of fun." Somehow, playing against a trash-talking pre-teen with nothing better to do than practice 8 hours a day just doesn't interest me in the same way as a well written story mode.
The 360 has been out for nearly two years. They've sold somewhere under 11 million units. The Wii has been out for all of 4-5 months and they've sold over 5 million. And they still can't keep them on the shelves. Since they make a profit on their hardware, unlike MS and Sony, this is basically like printing money to them. I think demand has just exceeded everyone's expectations.
The Beatles are an exception, true. I think that's because they didn't care for the attention, stopped touring after a couple years, and just focused on the music. And sure, there have been other bands that have done the same thing. But the music industry was a lot more willing to wait on bands trying out new things back in the 60s and 70s than they are today, too. The tendancy is still to push too much attention too soon, and then chase the passing wave of interest and leave musicianship by the wayside.
First, if your standard for new, good albums is really that low, you have probably been listening to nothing but what the major labels try to shove down your throat. There are plenty of new concept albums out there, and even more that lack an overarching story or theme but still stand out as fantastic works when taken as a whole. You can certainly find dozens of new albums that are more than just a couple good songs and some filler. You just have to look elsewhere than the latest Justin Timberlake or Gwen Stephani disc.
But mainly I wanted to comment on your statements about marketing. It seems that bands can make a decent living without advertising, but they have to have something pretty unique. Then with a little time and some well placed live shows, they tend to develop a following with no major advertising of their own. I know the last five or six new bands I've found have all been through word of mouth. Sure, they're not as big as top 40 bands, but they have a devoted fan base that's far less fickle than the masses that like someone simply because they're the "next new thing".
Maybe it's the music snob in me, but I tend to think that the only bands that really need marketing to survive are those that aren't much good to begin with, or want to be bigger, faster than good music will get you on its own. In the first case the marketing is counterproductive (blocks air-time and brain space that could be used by better bands), and in the second it seems like all the advertisement does is turn a band with potential into a one-hit-wonder that goes on to release a couple mediocre follow-ups and then implode. Even a great band can never match the insane expectations set by a marketing-driven surge of popularity, because 3/4 of the crowd will move on to the next new face, and the label will push for a repeat instead of letting the music mature.
The guy who drafted the DMCA came out last week admitting publicly that it had been a huge failure, and that it had been badly abused. It's one thing to pass a law hoping it will work as you intend, it's another to sit back and watch it being abused and not take any measures to fix the problem. So who should we blame, again?
The key thing that remains like the real world, though, is location. Proximity to the "good neighborhoods", the center of the mainland, etc. When they add land, they do it at the edges of the mainland, or in islands (as I understand, I've never played). But if there's a viable "commercial district", owning land in it will actually make a difference. Just like in Stephenson's "Snow Crash", there's essentially unlimited space to expand on the outskirts, but all the old clubs, cool stores, events, and "in crowd" people are located much closer together.
You assume a slow mode of travel (relative to those distances). IF aliens are really here, it's pretty obvious that they're not riding in generation ships, which would indicate FTL travel in some capacity. Not that I think they have either, but from common reports you can state a few reliable hypotheticals.