I'd bet there would be a way to radio an emergency and have ATC send a revised flight plan giving permission to fly through a restricted area, eliminating the soft wall.
Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age dealt with tons of nanotech applications. I thought it was fantastically creative, and highly plausible for the most part. I can't recall if it touched on actual viruses or not, but I do recall the 'drummers,' people with nanotubes in their bloodstream who processed information through orgies.
Being a geek would be pretty groovy then, eh?
The Lesson Of The Chicken
on
Chicken Run
·
· Score: 1
Neverwhere was definitely a solid story, but I think Gaiman's writing style in AG was more mature. Perhaps I'm missing the point of Neverwhere, but I found it to be incoherent at times. Not that this detracts from the story, I guess it's a matter of personal taste that I liked AG better. Also worth reading is Star....Stardust? It's a love story, I guess, and it reads like a feature-length fairy tale, but I enjoy that sort of thing now and then.
Has anyone else read his take on the Snow White story? It was very twisted, and very very good.
Whoo, Jordan and Goodkind. Both rather long-winded. Jordan's plot gets so tangled and complicated as the story goes on, but I'll definitely give him credit for keeping it interesting. The series (Wheel of Time) is great if you enjoy some politics with your sword and sworcerwy.
Goodkind's Sword of Truth is also good, but IMO his dialogue sounds like orators firing speeches back and forth at each other. If you can ignore that, the books are very solid. I don't know if I would consider Sword of Truth a ripoff of WoT, though they have their similarities.
As far as Discworld...every fantasy/sci-fi reader must read at least a few! Pratchett's twist on the genres is hilarious, though some are better than others. I would highly recommend Thief of Time as the best Discworld I've read (keep in mind that the total number is Four, a low amount). If you're in for a modern-day humorous apocalypse, check out Good Omens, co-written by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, writer of the absolutely phenominal "American Gods," the best story I've read.
The relevant bits are in the first paragraph. Basically, if we make a black hole with the same mass as a small dog, then the Earth will not get sucked in by it, just as the Earth does not get sucked in by a small dog.
Now that I've written this, I'm not actually sure that it applies to your question, but I got to link to the Straight Dope, anyway.
The article focuses mainly on installing multiple OSs with Grub as the boot loader. This information is widely available (and without registration). The section I was interested in was on Samba. Which it doesn't talk about except to say "here's a tutorial, because I don't feel like writing about this stuff."
My point was to show that the parent's statement was bordering on nonsense.
"EVERY great story, from Shakesphere to Comic Books, is great because it says something. The Matrix has as much a "philisophical meaning" as anything else that's ever been written--that is to say, the authors mean it to say something, and they pull it off with a fair bit of success."
Not everything has some deep, philosophical meaning under the surface. The Matrix may or may not, I'm not concerned with that. I simply disagree with the quoted statement, and used a nonsensical anecdote to (attempt to) illustrate my point.
I had a professor discuss the philosophical ramifications and the themes of violent escalation and truth in fiction presented in Dr. Seuss's "The Butter Battle Book" for an entire session. Yet this is regarded as a children's book!
We really must get over our prejudices of labeling such a great work as children's literature.
Does anybody else find it highly uncoincidental that games.slashdot.org was formed scarce weeks before E3 began? I wonder if it will stay after E3 ends, or if it was just some editors who really wanted to go and found their golden ticket in a URL =)
It's just as much the link submitters' fault. You'd think maybe common courtesy would be present, and we could ask the owners of such sites for permission to link, or mirror. Whatever.
Problem is, according to the text, "An old Mozilla exploit continues to crash almost any version/flavor of Mozilla" (emphasis mine)
Isn't open source where we're supposed to find stuff and fix it quick? Yes, it's a pretty inconsequential bug, but so was the MS one! And, to top it off, the MS bug was a new bug, so there's a better excuse for its not being fixed - it just recently surfaced.
I don't expect unbiased judgment, but when the case is this stacked against Moz, it's even worse to hear the righteousness of open source development.
And what exactly is wrong with the RIAA's goal? They're trying to cut down on piracy. They have a legitimate claim against illegal file sharing & ripping. You may not agree with their actions, I know I don't, but you can't fault them for wanting to get money for their product, as worthless as it may be.
Having said that, I think their message gets through even if this kid gets plenty of support - word still gets around that 4 students were singled out by the RIAA.
It's actually a very solid system for your average desktop musician. I have a friend who uses PTfree to make and sell music on MP3.com. Yes, it's more limited, but for the most part you simply can't have as many tracks as the pro version, and as someone said above, a real ProTools setup includes the hardware interface, which is where a lot of the cost comes from.
The problem with PTFree is that it only runs on Macs or Win98 machines. I know it's overkill to ask for a Linux version, but there isn't one for NT family either.
If a piece is written in C flat major, one wouldn't write a B natural, though the frequencies are the same. Similarly, in a C major scale, the one Western non-musical people are generally most familiar with (all white keys on a piano), the root note (C) would not be written as a B sharp.
Basically, because it's not in the scale.
As to why anyone would write in Cb instead of B...good question. =)
Battlefield 1492 is, of course, the exciting multiplayer simulation of Columbus' harrowing journey across the Atlantic, numerous battles with pirates, and the Kraken.
Forget the maze part. Some friends and I went to Boston for Spring Break last year, and driving in that city is nonsensical. Examples:
There are roads which have no lines in them, and it's left up to the current drivers as to how many lanes they are. The first time I was on a street, it was 2 lanes. When I ended up there again (because of the mazes mentioned in parent) it was 3 lanes - two on the pavement, and one on the streetcar tracks.
We also encountered a dumpster sitting in the middle of the road with no construction in sight. And it wasn't even a big construction dumpster - it was the kind you'd see behind a 7-11. Just sitting there in the street...
It blew my mind. We ended up parking outside the city and using mass transit.
"We live in a society where there is no law in making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity," Hanks said. "There are a lot of things you can say never happened. You can go as relatively quasi-harmless as saying no one went to the moon. But you also can say that the Holocaust never happened."
Followed by a quote from some guy at the Holocaust memorial. Isn't bringing the Holocaust into something as unrelated and relatively trivial as this a big no-no? I always thought so...
None of the games in the Metroid series were done by Miyamoto. He was head of R&D 1 (or 4, in which case the below is 1), which was responsible for the Mario series, Zelda series, etc. R&D 4 came up with Metroid and Kid Icarus. Very different styles and themes.
People want PIANOs that can produce a wide range of sounds.
This may be true, but only in very few cases. The majority of keyboards/synths that have weighted keys and a ful 88-key keyboard are actually electric pianos and contain ~6 sounds, or they rae digital workstations designed for studio use. Most actual keyboards/synths do _not_ have the full range board and do _not_ have weighted keys. In my experience, the only people who want weighted keys are those who are actually pianists that want to be hip by getting into "the digital age."
As for touch sensitivity, it's an actual enhancement that does not increase the overall size of the unit (as an 88-key board would). It adds expressiveness, as well as more customization options depending on the synth you're using (such as Korg MS2000, which has things like LFO speed and Cutoff patchable to velocity). Support for this hypothesis can be found in that of Aftertouch, which is another key-related parameter. Velocity sense (touch-sensitivity in your case) is how fast you press the key, Aftertouch is actually how hard you press the key, and can be modulated after any velocity effects have taken place. You can't do that on a piano, but it's still key-related.
People seem to think that synthesizers are just electronic pianos, but they are not. You can use them that way, but you lose much of the incredible sonic potential at your hands.
most good keyboard players get their keyboards with all of these features
Wrong. Most piano players get their keys with all of these features. The majority of synth players are just that - synth players. Perhaps they've had some classical piano training or experience, but when one migrates to a synth, one has to change playing styles as well. Compare a violin to an upright bass. They appear to be the same instrument, only one's 50x as large. Playing styles tend to differ, wouldn't you agree? Just because the interface is similar on a superficial level doesn't mean it's the same thing
I am a synth player, and I don't like weighted keys because their response isn't as fast, limiting playing. 88-key boards are also quite cumbersome - 49 or 61 key boards are excellent for range & space. A piano player has (basically) one sound to work with, and has plenty of control over that sound. A synth player has even more control options and usually at least 128 base sounds to work with, some so radically different they may require a different play style of their own.
A synth no more a multi-sound piano than is an upright bass an oafish violin.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd bet there would be a way to radio an emergency and have ATC send a revised flight plan giving permission to fly through a restricted area, eliminating the soft wall.
Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age dealt with tons of nanotech applications. I thought it was fantastically creative, and highly plausible for the most part. I can't recall if it touched on actual viruses or not, but I do recall the 'drummers,' people with nanotubes in their bloodstream who processed information through orgies.
Being a geek would be pretty groovy then, eh?
A text-based adventure here
I highly recommend this piece. Very well-written, brings up interesting points, both technological and philosophical.
Neverwhere was definitely a solid story, but I think Gaiman's writing style in AG was more mature. Perhaps I'm missing the point of Neverwhere, but I found it to be incoherent at times. Not that this detracts from the story, I guess it's a matter of personal taste that I liked AG better. Also worth reading is Star....Stardust? It's a love story, I guess, and it reads like a feature-length fairy tale, but I enjoy that sort of thing now and then.
Has anyone else read his take on the Snow White story? It was very twisted, and very very good.
Whoo, Jordan and Goodkind. Both rather long-winded. Jordan's plot gets so tangled and complicated as the story goes on, but I'll definitely give him credit for keeping it interesting. The series (Wheel of Time) is great if you enjoy some politics with your sword and sworcerwy.
Goodkind's Sword of Truth is also good, but IMO his dialogue sounds like orators firing speeches back and forth at each other. If you can ignore that, the books are very solid. I don't know if I would consider Sword of Truth a ripoff of WoT, though they have their similarities.
As far as Discworld...every fantasy/sci-fi reader must read at least a few! Pratchett's twist on the genres is hilarious, though some are better than others. I would highly recommend Thief of Time as the best Discworld I've read (keep in mind that the total number is Four, a low amount). If you're in for a modern-day humorous apocalypse, check out Good Omens, co-written by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, writer of the absolutely phenominal "American Gods," the best story I've read.
linked
The relevant bits are in the first paragraph. Basically, if we make a black hole with the same mass as a small dog, then the Earth will not get sucked in by it, just as the Earth does not get sucked in by a small dog.
Now that I've written this, I'm not actually sure that it applies to your question, but I got to link to the Straight Dope, anyway.
The article focuses mainly on installing multiple OSs with Grub as the boot loader. This information is widely available (and without registration). The section I was interested in was on Samba. Which it doesn't talk about except to say "here's a tutorial, because I don't feel like writing about this stuff."
Waste of time.
My point was to show that the parent's statement was bordering on nonsense.
"EVERY great story, from Shakesphere to Comic Books, is great because it says something. The Matrix has as much a "philisophical meaning" as anything else that's ever been written--that is to say, the authors mean it to say something, and they pull it off with a fair bit of success."
Not everything has some deep, philosophical meaning under the surface. The Matrix may or may not, I'm not concerned with that. I simply disagree with the quoted statement, and used a nonsensical anecdote to (attempt to) illustrate my point.
I had a professor discuss the philosophical ramifications and the themes of violent escalation and truth in fiction presented in Dr. Seuss's "The Butter Battle Book" for an entire session. Yet this is regarded as a children's book!
We really must get over our prejudices of labeling such a great work as children's literature.
Does anybody else find it highly uncoincidental that games.slashdot.org was formed scarce weeks before E3 began? I wonder if it will stay after E3 ends, or if it was just some editors who really wanted to go and found their golden ticket in a URL =)
It's just as much the link submitters' fault. You'd think maybe common courtesy would be present, and we could ask the owners of such sites for permission to link, or mirror. Whatever.
Try this one: the set of all even numbers. Now find a prime number. 2.
It's the only prime in this set, but primes are not excluded by definition, because 2 is a prime.
What do you think?
Problem is, according to the text, "An old Mozilla exploit continues to crash almost any version/flavor of Mozilla" (emphasis mine)
Isn't open source where we're supposed to find stuff and fix it quick? Yes, it's a pretty inconsequential bug, but so was the MS one! And, to top it off, the MS bug was a new bug, so there's a better excuse for its not being fixed - it just recently surfaced.
I don't expect unbiased judgment, but when the case is this stacked against Moz, it's even worse to hear the righteousness of open source development.
And what exactly is wrong with the RIAA's goal? They're trying to cut down on piracy. They have a legitimate claim against illegal file sharing & ripping. You may not agree with their actions, I know I don't, but you can't fault them for wanting to get money for their product, as worthless as it may be.
Having said that, I think their message gets through even if this kid gets plenty of support - word still gets around that 4 students were singled out by the RIAA.
When I was 6, my mother told me never to stare at the sun.
One day, I did.
That's when the headaches started.
- pi
Movie was terrible. Check out the Gibson short story though - much better. It's in the collection "Burning Chrome."
It's actually a very solid system for your average desktop musician. I have a friend who uses PTfree to make and sell music on MP3.com. Yes, it's more limited, but for the most part you simply can't have as many tracks as the pro version, and as someone said above, a real ProTools setup includes the hardware interface, which is where a lot of the cost comes from.
The problem with PTFree is that it only runs on Macs or Win98 machines. I know it's overkill to ask for a Linux version, but there isn't one for NT family either.
If a piece is written in C flat major, one wouldn't write a B natural, though the frequencies are the same. Similarly, in a C major scale, the one Western non-musical people are generally most familiar with (all white keys on a piano), the root note (C) would not be written as a B sharp.
Basically, because it's not in the scale.
As to why anyone would write in Cb instead of B...good question. =)
team games like RTCW and BF1492
Battlefield 1492 is, of course, the exciting multiplayer simulation of Columbus' harrowing journey across the Atlantic, numerous battles with pirates, and the Kraken.
Forget the maze part. Some friends and I went to Boston for Spring Break last year, and driving in that city is nonsensical. Examples:
There are roads which have no lines in them, and it's left up to the current drivers as to how many lanes they are. The first time I was on a street, it was 2 lanes. When I ended up there again (because of the mazes mentioned in parent) it was 3 lanes - two on the pavement, and one on the streetcar tracks.
We also encountered a dumpster sitting in the middle of the road with no construction in sight. And it wasn't even a big construction dumpster - it was the kind you'd see behind a 7-11. Just sitting there in the street...
It blew my mind. We ended up parking outside the city and using mass transit.
"We live in a society where there is no law in making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity," Hanks said. "There are a lot of things you can say never happened. You can go as relatively quasi-harmless as saying no one went to the moon. But you also can say that the Holocaust never happened."
Followed by a quote from some guy at the Holocaust memorial. Isn't bringing the Holocaust into something as unrelated and relatively trivial as this a big no-no? I always thought so...
None of the games in the Metroid series were done by Miyamoto. He was head of R&D 1 (or 4, in which case the below is 1), which was responsible for the Mario series, Zelda series, etc. R&D 4 came up with Metroid and Kid Icarus. Very different styles and themes.
As for touch sensitivity, it's an actual enhancement that does not increase the overall size of the unit (as an 88-key board would). It adds expressiveness, as well as more customization options depending on the synth you're using (such as Korg MS2000, which has things like LFO speed and Cutoff patchable to velocity). Support for this hypothesis can be found in that of Aftertouch, which is another key-related parameter. Velocity sense (touch-sensitivity in your case) is how fast you press the key, Aftertouch is actually how hard you press the key, and can be modulated after any velocity effects have taken place. You can't do that on a piano, but it's still key-related.
People seem to think that synthesizers are just electronic pianos, but they are not. You can use them that way, but you lose much of the incredible sonic potential at your hands.
Wrong. Most piano players get their keys with all of these features. The majority of synth players are just that - synth players. Perhaps they've had some classical piano training or experience, but when one migrates to a synth, one has to change playing styles as well. Compare a violin to an upright bass. They appear to be the same instrument, only one's 50x as large. Playing styles tend to differ, wouldn't you agree? Just because the interface is similar on a superficial level doesn't mean it's the same thing
I am a synth player, and I don't like weighted keys because their response isn't as fast, limiting playing. 88-key boards are also quite cumbersome - 49 or 61 key boards are excellent for range & space. A piano player has (basically) one sound to work with, and has plenty of control over that sound. A synth player has even more control options and usually at least 128 base sounds to work with, some so radically different they may require a different play style of their own.
A synth no more a multi-sound piano than is an upright bass an oafish violin.
Filo