I resent that ! No real man would ever need a drill... all you need is your toothbrush (as drilling tool), your laptop or cellphone (for better applied pressure) and an iron will.
-- This comment is to be regarded entirely as a joke....no real man would need a CP or LT for better pressure !
...personally, anything beyong C&C Gold (and I mean the SVGA version of the original C&C) is crappy.
Is it only me, or did ONLY the original C&C series and Total Annihilation have a non-pre-determined "to hit" factor built-in when it comes to RTSs ? I mean, except those two, have you ever had a game where you could actually EVADE a shot with skilled control ? Any game where (with excrciating and painstaking carefulness) you could destroy a piece of heavy armor with a single bazooka (or equivalent) trooper ???
As the title says it, consumerism is the doom of us all... RIP skilled arcade gamer, long live the new statistic-rule-it-all generation:/
I mean, what's the point of all this anyway ? Christmas present for a significant other, soon-to-be-past elitism or what ? Am I the ONLY person in this world to find this is "less than news-worthy" ???
There's five things a "real man" needs: his desktop (for home), his laptop (almost always), his cellphone (now almost as complex and expensive as a laptop), his toothbrush (never leave home more than one day without it), and prefered USB(and more) storage device (dooh).
That about does it, until they find a way to use nanotech to interface data and processing power directly to the brain, than you'll only need the toothbrush;)
The parent is nothing more than a troll (meant that in the good way, as in "fishing for silly answer"). And you gave him that silly answer:P
Some prions are *linked* to (causes of) diseases, but they're not necessarily always "bad things". It's like saying "oh no, I won't eat cow meat anymore, because some cows have the MadCowDisease", or even more obvious, "I'll never eat anything organic again, because it has genes, and some genes cause genetic disorders, so I'm afraid".
This wouldn't be the first time they "discovered" that something that is "bad" in some cases is "good" in others.
So what does that article tell us? That, by having a protein (infectious variant prion) that causes others to malfunction (generating altered proteins), so, in some cases, it *can* cause a "spontaneous" (read:accidental) mutation/selection that will (in the short run) allow that cell to survive when it normally wouldn't have, thus creating a evolutionary "short-cut".
Wellcome to the "Darwin's Evolutionary Theory", advanced applied random methods of selection.
Yeah, I know:) And also, paranoia mode settings: only requested popups opened, all 3rd party cookies refused, clear cache/cookies on exit, no wand passwords, *java & javascript disabled*, plugins disabled, etc.
I use Opera (the non-java edition) for 99% of my browsing, I get on IE only when something is displayed "very fishy" in Opera (or when I have to use two browsers at once to *gasp* cheat *gasp* in free online games... anonymous proxies rule, lol).
Rambling aside, this should be the BIGGEST slap on M$'s cheek since they got slapped with the anti-trust DoJ thingy (or heck, even bigger than that).
Intel (as Microsoft and other "dinosaurs") will never get "really low in stockprice", because they have too much accumulated wealth to get out of most situations. Personally, I have used a mix of all kinds of MoBos and CPUs from everybody (yeah, even a Cyrix) and I can't say I have been extremely pleased nor displeased by any of them. The only news here is (therefore) that a new "cooler" (pun intended) CPU is here for the laptop market, hence prices will go down... shoppers rejoice:)
No, really, I *would* love an extensible ergonomic chair/bed with sanitation extensions and maybe a mini-bar... that will allow me to never ever leave my cubicle again...
[naive girl mode] Wow, so, you mean, like, I can watch TV, play games and listen to music all the same? And maybe also write e-mail, browse the 'net and maybe do my homweork? Wow, this is, like, totally cool! [/naive]
Now, let's look at this in a critical way: Music - wondering if I saw a PC lately without a sound card... hmm, gues not TV - snap a 20-40$ TV-tuner into your PC... tada, you got a TV DVDs/etc - (almost) any PC can do that Computing - Email, internet, a word processor, spreadsheets, image editing? You don't need more CPU power than a PS1 for that... Gaming - THIS is the most CPU- and graphics-intensive part
So, in one word: add a TVTuner to ANY console nowadays, make a handfull of tweaks, and whoops you have it - the all-in-one wonderfull device everybody craves.
Guess the ONLY limiting issue here is cost (remember X-Box under-the-limit price?) I'll take my PC over any of those. But "ordinary people" like John Smith would go for the "all-in-one-thingy". Guess it's only a matter of taste or advertising...
As the author says in the article, on one hand there's the player and the whole virtual community's interests (have fun mainly, but sometimes actually make real money for themselves), and on the other had the interest of the game company (make a lot of money for themselves).
As EA's TSO is not a succesfull money-maker (quite the opposite actually), do you wonder that such things happend?
The issue here is wether or not somebody can SUCCESFULLY SUE the company in real-life for in-game things (remember the kid suing the company for the "dissapearance of biological weapons"? or the companies suing "sweatshop" owners in UO?)
"Put it in the streets" ??? It's an electrode sticking behind your ear, dammit!
It needs physical contact, you need the consent of the person to have him wear it... How could you control a crowd with such a thing? "Please, everybody, now stick this device to your ear so we can make you dizzy" ???
This "technology" as you call it is NOTHING new or innovative "per se". It's just how it's applied.
Electricity, Electrodes, Electrodes behind the ear? Ban/boycott which of the previous "technologies"?
Give me ONE example on why I should suspect this new invention even COULD be used for "mass control" or something like that and I'm not going to call you paranoid... Hey, maybe you know a lot more than I do... So, go ahead, PLEASE EXPLAIN.
Anybody seen people use AbGymnics or whatever those electrode-muscle-training gimmics are called in your country?
Same argument on both devices. Do people use the AbGymnic? Some do. Do they know the risk? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe there's no risk for most, maybe there is.
Point is, a LOT of people will rather experience everything in a game, while less concerned with their long-term health. Until this new device is proven to be at least 95+% "safe" for average-duration use, and no short-or-long-term damage is done (using volunteers, of course), they won't even go into mass-production anyway.
I guess it won't be so hard to make "them lil' devices" work in a game only with some kind of pre-tuning for each game... and only work in approved strap-on seats, lol.
"You will be experiencing a 30' left tilt......now a 60' left tilt......now a 90' left tilt..." [twiddle intensity] "...now right tilt..."... [twiddle, twiddle] "calibration complete. Test settings ? y/n... 90' clockwise turn, 180' anticlockwise turn, 90' clockwise turn... Re-calibrate? y/n"
Or something like that. So users will be able to comfortably tune it to whatever they feel like acceptabe yet still enough to get the feeling.
Um, it's generally called "(Quake-)motion sickness" actually... I never heard about it happend in Doom and it really became wide-spread only with Quake.
I only get it by WATCHING long times somebody play FPSs, I never got it (yet) when I played them...
I'm not a medic, but I guess it's linked to the fact that you SEE something that your brain perceives as "motion" yet you don't get the sensation of inertia, and that the action on the screed is a few msecs delayed from the expected game's output your kbd/mouse output... which is of course worse (I guess) if you don't expect any response at all (also, never heard of drivers getting car-sick... only passengers).
I heard though (on Discovery ch. a few days ago) reports about "lag" in older real, big, expensive flight-sims causing the same effect (sickness/quesiness/etc). The "cure" was to reduce the lag of visual/gravific feedback under 50 msec. So I guess they'll encounter a symillar problem here soon... but much worse (muscles inertia bound to be above 100msec).
So I'm quite eager so see how this turns out AFTER some real-life games tests;)
You can't just turn 2*H2O into 1*O2 and 2*H2 by use of HEAT alone... you have to "add" some kind of catalyst too (ever heard of electrolysis? it gets better as water gets warmer, but only when you don't get bubbles over your electrodes)
Hmmz, let's see... spark, H2 and O2? Boom! Now, you'd have to channel the H2 and O2 in two different directions (O2 outlet near ground level, H2 outlet somewhere high) and let gravity do the rest (H2 goes off into the stratosphere and even up to outer space).
Treating a transplant patient in advance of the operation with cells from the donor could reduce the need for powerful drugs afterwards.
The treatment "redirects" the immune system so it does not launch an attack on the donor organ.
Researchers from three UK universities have found a key gene signal that may help protect the new kidney.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could lead to fewer side-effects for patients.
The number of organs transplanted from live donors is increasing as other supplies of organs diminish.
However, in the absence of a perfect match, patients still have to take high doses of drugs to suppress their immune systems so the organ is not rejected.
Taking such high doses of drugs is counterproductive - they may even increase the chances of cancer in some cases - and scientists are looking for alternative ways to reduce the chance of immune rejection.
The team from Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, and Imperial College London, may have found a way to change the manner in which the body responds to a new organ.
Chemical messages
They have found a key chemical signalling system, called Notch, which appears to govern how immune cells develop.
When they exposed mice to a combination of this signal, and material from the donor-to-be, about two weeks before the actual transplant operation, they generated an immune response.
However, when it came to putting in the new organ, they found that the immune system, rather than attacking it, seemed to have been "educated" to turn a blind eye.
Mice given a heart transplant following such treatment found that the length of time the new organ stayed unmolested by the immune system increased fourfold compared with untreated animals.
The treatment appears to encourage the development of one type of immune cells - T suppressor cells, that put the brakes on any immune response.
It also seems to reduce production of T helper cells, which help drive powerful immune reactions.
Gentle therapy
Professor Maggie Dallman, from Imperial College, was one of the scientists leading the experiments.
She said: "Today, even with extensive efforts to find the best possible immunological match between donor and recipient, organ transplantation consigns the recipient to a lifetime of powerful immunosuppressive drugs that have many unwanted side-effects.
"Increasingly organ transplants, in the case of kidneys, liver or lung tissue occur between living relatives, so you know in advance who the donor and recipient are.
"Our strategy opens up the possibility of offering gentler postoperative therapy by redirecting the recipient's immune system in advance of the transplant."
Health risk
Dr Anthony Warrens, a specialist in renal medicine and immunology at London's Hammersmith Hospital, said that it might be possible to use a variety of methods to reduce the need for immunosuppression drugs in the future.
"We already offer a very good service to transplant patients - we're just looking to make it better."
He said that the problems caused by long-term immunosuppression - cancer, vulnerability to infection and accelerated heart disease, meant that one of the main reasons for transplant "failure" was the death of the patient from other causes, even though the transplanted organ remained in good condition.
Another method being investigated, he said, was giving a "mini" bone marrow transplant prior to the operation to reprogramme the immune system - or even a short course of treatment to the would-be donor which reduces the risk of rejection.
I can only repeat what I just posed in reply to the above post: theoretically, it could (read my reply on above "root" post for more info, or just read the article).
But this could yield unwanted side-effects - an artificially "too strong" or "too weak" immune system should have the same problems: either attacking everything, including you possibly (stronger one) or not attacking what it should at all (weaker one).
The "treatment" as-it-is decreases the rejection chance (four-fold if we are to believe these guys), but also (what's not specifically pointed at too much in the article) will decrease the body's immune system response OVERALL.
So it's basically just a tradeoff... as most (not all) modern treatments.
All I can say is: "marginally funny". It clearly states in the article that this so-called "system" is based on pumping up the developement of certain immune cells (T suppressor cells) that "that put the brakes on any immune response".
So, obviously, it can be used for increasing your immune response directly, BUT this would mean your own body's T-cells *could* start attacking you instead of your "enemies" (viruses, whatever).
Slashdot Mirror
I resent that !
...no real man would need a CP or LT for better pressure !
No real man would ever need a drill... all you need is your toothbrush (as drilling tool), your laptop or cellphone (for better applied pressure) and an iron will.
--
This comment is to be regarded entirely as a joke.
...personally, anything beyong C&C Gold (and I mean the SVGA version of the original C&C) is crappy.
:/
Is it only me, or did ONLY the original C&C series and Total Annihilation have a non-pre-determined "to hit" factor built-in when it comes to RTSs ?
I mean, except those two, have you ever had a game where you could actually EVADE a shot with skilled control ? Any game where (with excrciating and painstaking carefulness) you could destroy a piece of heavy armor with a single bazooka (or equivalent) trooper ???
As the title says it, consumerism is the doom of us all... RIP skilled arcade gamer, long live the new statistic-rule-it-all generation
Stupid me, what would you need a toothbrush for then anyway ? If they can do that, they would have already made mouth cleaning 'nites already...
I mean, what's the point of all this anyway ?
;)
Christmas present for a significant other, soon-to-be-past elitism or what ?
Am I the ONLY person in this world to find this is "less than news-worthy" ???
There's five things a "real man" needs: his desktop (for home), his laptop (almost always), his cellphone (now almost as complex and expensive as a laptop), his toothbrush (never leave home more than one day without it), and prefered USB(and more) storage device (dooh).
That about does it, until they find a way to use nanotech to interface data and processing power directly to the brain, than you'll only need the toothbrush
Hehe, guess the slashdotting effect applies now to sourceforge too
"." = point ? ;)
The parent is nothing more than a troll (meant that in the good way, as in "fishing for silly answer"). And you gave him that silly answer :P
Some prions are *linked* to (causes of) diseases, but they're not necessarily always "bad things". It's like saying "oh no, I won't eat cow meat anymore, because some cows have the MadCowDisease", or even more obvious, "I'll never eat anything organic again, because it has genes, and some genes cause genetic disorders, so I'm afraid".
Yup... lack of logic can be damaging to your .
This wouldn't be the first time they "discovered" that something that is "bad" in some cases is "good" in others.
;)
So what does that article tell us?
That, by having a protein (infectious variant prion) that causes others to malfunction (generating altered proteins), so, in some cases, it *can* cause a "spontaneous" (read:accidental) mutation/selection that will (in the short run) allow that cell to survive when it normally wouldn't have, thus creating a evolutionary "short-cut".
Wellcome to the "Darwin's Evolutionary Theory", advanced applied random methods of selection.
In other words: wellcome to 100 years ago.
Duuh
Yeah, I know :)
And also, paranoia mode settings: only requested popups opened, all 3rd party cookies refused, clear cache/cookies on exit, no wand passwords, *java & javascript disabled*, plugins disabled, etc.
I use Opera (the non-java edition) for 99% of my browsing, I get on IE only when something is displayed "very fishy" in Opera (or when I have to use two browsers at once to *gasp* cheat *gasp* in free online games... anonymous proxies rule, lol).
Rambling aside, this should be the BIGGEST slap on M$'s cheek since they got slapped with the anti-trust DoJ thingy (or heck, even bigger than that).
Intel (as Microsoft and other "dinosaurs") will never get "really low in stockprice", because they have too much accumulated wealth to get out of most situations. Personally, I have used a mix of all kinds of MoBos and CPUs from everybody (yeah, even a Cyrix) and I can't say I have been extremely pleased nor displeased by any of them. The only news here is (therefore) that a new "cooler" (pun intended) CPU is here for the laptop market, hence prices will go down... shoppers rejoice :)
No, really, I *would* love an extensible ergonomic chair/bed with sanitation extensions and maybe a mini-bar... that will allow me to never ever leave my cubicle again...
Hmmz, I guess I really hate spamming my own posts, but I tend to post then remember some other stuff...
[mental image]
Imagine sidetalkin' with a Laptop 8-|
[/mental image]
...is that if you like it really nice and compact, you could put it in a small-size nice-looking case that would even go mobile and...
:)
Oh, wait, isn't that called a "Laptop"?
[naive girl mode]
Wow, so, you mean, like, I can watch TV, play games and listen to music all the same? And maybe also write e-mail, browse the 'net and maybe do my homweork?
Wow, this is, like, totally cool!
[/naive]
Now, let's look at this in a critical way:
Music - wondering if I saw a PC lately without a sound card... hmm, gues not
TV - snap a 20-40$ TV-tuner into your PC... tada, you got a TV
DVDs/etc - (almost) any PC can do that
Computing - Email, internet, a word processor, spreadsheets, image editing? You don't need more CPU power than a PS1 for that...
Gaming - THIS is the most CPU- and graphics-intensive part
So, in one word: add a TVTuner to ANY console nowadays, make a handfull of tweaks, and whoops you have it - the all-in-one wonderfull device everybody craves.
Guess the ONLY limiting issue here is cost (remember X-Box under-the-limit price?)
I'll take my PC over any of those.
But "ordinary people" like John Smith would go for the "all-in-one-thingy".
Guess it's only a matter of taste or advertising...
Or isn't?
As the author says in the article, on one hand there's the player and the whole virtual community's interests (have fun mainly, but sometimes actually make real money for themselves), and on the other had the interest of the game company (make a lot of money for themselves).
As EA's TSO is not a succesfull money-maker (quite the opposite actually), do you wonder that such things happend?
The issue here is wether or not somebody can SUCCESFULLY SUE the company in real-life for in-game things (remember the kid suing the company for the "dissapearance of biological weapons"? or the companies suing "sweatshop" owners in UO?)
"Put it in the streets" ???
It's an electrode sticking behind your ear, dammit!
It needs physical contact, you need the consent of the person to have him wear it...
How could you control a crowd with such a thing?
"Please, everybody, now stick this device to your ear so we can make you dizzy" ???
This "technology" as you call it is NOTHING new or innovative "per se". It's just how it's applied.
Electricity, Electrodes, Electrodes behind the ear? Ban/boycott which of the previous "technologies"?
Give me ONE example on why I should suspect this new invention even COULD be used for "mass control" or something like that and I'm not going to call you paranoid... Hey, maybe you know a lot more than I do... So, go ahead, PLEASE EXPLAIN.
Anybody seen people use AbGymnics or whatever those electrode-muscle-training gimmics are called in your country?
Same argument on both devices.
Do people use the AbGymnic? Some do.
Do they know the risk? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe there's no risk for most, maybe there is.
Point is, a LOT of people will rather experience everything in a game, while less concerned with their long-term health.
Until this new device is proven to be at least 95+% "safe" for average-duration use, and no short-or-long-term damage is done (using volunteers, of course), they won't even go into mass-production anyway.
I guess it won't be so hard to make "them lil' devices" work in a game only with some kind of pre-tuning for each game... and only work in approved strap-on seats, lol.
...now a 60' left tilt... ...now a 90' left tilt..." ... ... ...
"You will be experiencing a 30' left tilt...
[twiddle intensity]
"...now right tilt..."
[twiddle, twiddle]
"calibration complete.
Test settings ? y/n
90' clockwise turn, 180' anticlockwise turn, 90' clockwise turn
Re-calibrate? y/n"
Or something like that.
So users will be able to comfortably tune it to whatever they feel like acceptabe yet still enough to get the feeling.
Not?
Um, it's generally called "(Quake-)motion sickness" actually...
;)
I never heard about it happend in Doom and it really became wide-spread only with Quake.
I only get it by WATCHING long times somebody play FPSs, I never got it (yet) when I played them...
I'm not a medic, but I guess it's linked to the fact that you SEE something that your brain perceives as "motion" yet you don't get the sensation of inertia, and that the action on the screed is a few msecs delayed from the expected game's output your kbd/mouse output... which is of course worse (I guess) if you don't expect any response at all (also, never heard of drivers getting car-sick... only passengers).
I heard though (on Discovery ch. a few days ago) reports about "lag" in older real, big, expensive flight-sims causing the same effect (sickness/quesiness/etc). The "cure" was to reduce the lag of visual/gravific feedback under 50 msec.
So I guess they'll encounter a symillar problem here soon... but much worse (muscles inertia bound to be above 100msec).
So I'm quite eager so see how this turns out AFTER some real-life games tests
You can't just turn 2*H2O into 1*O2 and 2*H2 by use of HEAT alone... you have to "add" some kind of catalyst too (ever heard of electrolysis? it gets better as water gets warmer, but only when you don't get bubbles over your electrodes)
Hmmz, let's see... spark, H2 and O2? Boom!
Now, you'd have to channel the H2 and O2 in two different directions (O2 outlet near ground level, H2 outlet somewhere high) and let gravity do the rest (H2 goes off into the stratosphere and even up to outer space).
Treating a transplant patient in advance of the operation with cells from the donor could reduce the need for powerful drugs afterwards.
The treatment "redirects" the immune system so it does not launch an attack on the donor organ.
Researchers from three UK universities have found a key gene signal that may help protect the new kidney.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could lead to fewer side-effects for patients.
The number of organs transplanted from live donors is increasing as other supplies of organs diminish.
However, in the absence of a perfect match, patients still have to take high doses of drugs to suppress their immune systems so the organ is not rejected.
Taking such high doses of drugs is counterproductive - they may even increase the chances of cancer in some cases - and scientists are looking for alternative ways to reduce the chance of immune rejection.
The team from Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, and Imperial College London, may have found a way to change the manner in which the body responds to a new organ.
Chemical messages
They have found a key chemical signalling system, called Notch, which appears to govern how immune cells develop.
When they exposed mice to a combination of this signal, and material from the donor-to-be, about two weeks before the actual transplant operation, they generated an immune response.
However, when it came to putting in the new organ, they found that the immune system, rather than attacking it, seemed to have been "educated" to turn a blind eye.
Mice given a heart transplant following such treatment found that the length of time the new organ stayed unmolested by the immune system increased fourfold compared with untreated animals.
The treatment appears to encourage the development of one type of immune cells - T suppressor cells, that put the brakes on any immune response.
It also seems to reduce production of T helper cells, which help drive powerful immune reactions.
Gentle therapy
Professor Maggie Dallman, from Imperial College, was one of the scientists leading the experiments.
She said: "Today, even with extensive efforts to find the best possible immunological match between donor and recipient, organ transplantation consigns the recipient to a lifetime of powerful immunosuppressive drugs that have many unwanted side-effects.
"Increasingly organ transplants, in the case of kidneys, liver or lung tissue occur between living relatives, so you know in advance who the donor and recipient are.
"Our strategy opens up the possibility of offering gentler postoperative therapy by redirecting the recipient's immune system in advance of the transplant."
Health risk
Dr Anthony Warrens, a specialist in renal medicine and immunology at London's Hammersmith Hospital, said that it might be possible to use a variety of methods to reduce the need for immunosuppression drugs in the future.
"We already offer a very good service to transplant patients - we're just looking to make it better."
He said that the problems caused by long-term immunosuppression - cancer, vulnerability to infection and accelerated heart disease, meant that one of the main reasons for transplant "failure" was the death of the patient from other causes, even though the transplanted organ remained in good condition.
Another method being investigated, he said, was giving a "mini" bone marrow transplant prior to the operation to reprogramme the immune system - or even a short course of treatment to the would-be donor which reduces the risk of rejection.
I can only repeat what I just posed in reply to the above post: theoretically, it could (read my reply on above "root" post for more info, or just read the article).
But this could yield unwanted side-effects - an artificially "too strong" or "too weak" immune system should have the same problems: either attacking everything, including you possibly (stronger one) or not attacking what it should at all (weaker one).
The "treatment" as-it-is decreases the rejection chance (four-fold if we are to believe these guys), but also (what's not specifically pointed at too much in the article) will decrease the body's immune system response OVERALL.
So it's basically just a tradeoff... as most (not all) modern treatments.
All I can say is: "marginally funny".
It clearly states in the article that this so-called "system" is based on pumping up the developement of certain immune cells (T suppressor cells) that "that put the brakes on any immune response".
So, obviously, it can be used for increasing your immune response directly, BUT this would mean your own body's T-cells *could* start attacking you instead of your "enemies" (viruses, whatever).