Well, if Obama wins you can kiss this "ionized liquid telescope" idea goodbye. We all know the unionized liquid lobbies have the Dems in their pockets.
I've yet to see him say he is anti-net-neutrality, or that he wants government regulation.
Well those are really opposites, or at least orthogonal. In this case, it is government regulation that would theoretically enforce net neutrality by making it illegal for ISPs to throttle packets based on their source and charge said source extra to get better service. By saying that he doesn't want government regulation, he's at best saying he trusts private businesses not to do this, and at worst saying he thinks it's fine if they do whatever they want, and either way he doesn't support taking action to stop them from doing it. While not exactly anti-neutrality, it is definitely not a pro-neutrality stance.
Obama was very pro-net-neutrality, so he gets points for that, except the stance disappeared from his website, so the promise is less clear. This is also a guy who promised to vote against the FISA bill over and over again, even the day before the vote, and then voted for it.
Obama's stance has not change, it only became described in simpler terms on the website (and the old lengthy description is still available there). His vote for FISA was extremely disappointing. I don't think it means his position has changed, I think it means he's a politician (with all the negative connotations) running for office and he needed to deny ammunition to his opponent. Sad, but on the other hand, I'm sick of the kind of idealist who thinks the first thing you need to do is throw all practical considerations in the name of sticking to principles and thus ends up failing to accomplish anything. "Change I can believe in" to me means "Change that can win", even if that change isn't as awe-inspiring as my hypothetical ideal.
From the first link: In 1796, life expectancy hovered around 24 years. A hundred years later it doubled to 48. In our modern world of air conditioners, hand washing and booster shots, you have a good chance of living 63 years, which is the world average. However, for those fortunate enough to live in a first-world country, lifespan jumps considerably.
and before that: It is difficult to imagine, but most of our ancestors kicked the bucket before our modern legal drinking age.
Life expectancy figures are misleading because they tend to be dominated by the infant mortality rate. People tend to interpret this number as if it means "about how long a healthy individual might live before dying of 'natural causes'" but it is really just a statistical average of life spans. So when lots of infants are dying before the age of 1, that drags the average down. Sure modern medicine has allowed old people to become even older, and sure people died young of other things that are less of an issue now, but if you survived to adolescence, and didn't get sent to war, and didn't catch a plague, living into your 60s or 70s wasn't unheard of. It's not like in the year 1796, 24 was considered old and having one foot in the grave!
In may lazy search for a graph to demonstrate this, this was the best I found, infant mortality in LA county since 1920. When 50% or 75% of your babies are dying shortly after delivery, life expectancy is going to be low even if, should you survive your own birth, you have a good chance of living to be 80.
Nevertheless the harshness of life probably did play a role in people getting married and having children at what would be considered today a young age. I think it has more to do with the nature of societies in the past, and the fact that the most natural age for any species to begin reproducing is shortly after reaching sexual maturity. Regardless of what the life expectancy meant, people were having families in their teens and early 20s, and Mr. Scientist is full of it.
Though I'll have to remember his imminently convincing argument for the health of the human race when I'm 60. =D
So what? It's not about the kid or his retarded behavior, it's about his words and the sentiment they express that transcends town hall jackassery. "From the mouths of babes".
How sure are you that the first guy who said "Don't Tread On Me" wasn't just as big an ass? Yet who cares -- we weren't fighting for his cause.
"Don't tase me, bro" is the modern reincarnation of that old call, and with any luck those words will be remembered long after we've forgotten all about the jerk who said it. It's the meaning, of fear of oppression by law enforcement and an appeal to their humanity, that matters.
CLETS is just another state law enforcement messaging system - not a single database. I'm pretty sure every state has one and they talk to each other via NLETS (National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System). Nothing new. NLETS itself has been around in various forms since the 60s and several of the state systems originated before that.
Yeah, and law enforcement tracking and harassing peaceful activists is nothing new either. They've been doing it since well before the 60s. I guess I'm not supposed to worry, because they added computer databases to their toolbox for doing this a long time ago?
A cop being able to "write anything about you" means that whatever state/local agency is running the system that data gets put in isn't properly auditing their system. Something that actually pisses off the Feds.
I'm sure they do, in so far as the factual data (location, occupation etc) is inaccurate, or any information doesn't actually lead them to any person they are really interested in. Who likes that?
On the other hand, if it is someone they're interested in (for political not criminal reasons) but don't have any actual dirt on, and what is written in the database gives them an excuse to have a little fun RICO- or USAPATRIOT-style, then that lack of proper auditing is a boon, now isn't it?
And don't tell me I'm being paranoid, police and the feds have both been caught abusing their powers vis-a-vis those two laws to act against benign and harmless but anti-establishment activist groups repeatedly. Hell, the FBI has submitted reports to Congress stating their use of USAPATRIOT powers in such cases, that's how ballsy they are about it. So I'm bracketing that on one side with MLK Jr. on the other and saying that's not paranoia in between, it's business as usual.
In the states I've worked in, a person's access is limited based on their role and what they've been certified for. Your average cop wouldn't be able to enter or modify data, just query it, and even there they normally wouldn't be able to query all systems. A highway patrol officer, for example, would most likely only be able to query DMV, Wants/Warrants, and Stolen Vehicles - and that's assuming they have the ability to access it themselves instead of having to call it in to a dispatcher.
Well someone had write access and put these activists names on the list, and classified them as terrorists. Somebody had the write access to create the categories "terrorism-anti-government" and "terrorism-anti-war protesters". So your assurances, even coming as they do from personal experience, don't mean very much to me.
My cousin worked for the NSA. He told me if I knew what they really did, I'd be very disappointed. I trust him so I bet from his perspective that's true. Which would mean they must not have invited him into the wiretapping-millions-of-Americans room and told him what they were up to.
I'll also not miss the compensation they put in for that (the 1 hit and your dead otherwise Diablo can't kill you). I don't like anything that can one shot that's not avoidable.
Exactly, it was a ludicrous way to balance. I'm almost surprised that at the point where they had to jack up his damage so it could one shot you because otherwise it was negligible they didn't realize they had a problem and done something about it. But oh well, they are in the sequel.
BTW, speaking of silly things, instead of reducing the number of TP trips to unload loot with bigger bags, how about monsters just drop less trash? I mean does there really need to be a gray two handed sword nobody would ever use (outside of a cheap iron golem which I'm guessing doesn't exist)? Get rid of the vendor trash, replace it with extra gold, bam half the trips to town avoided.
We don't need to send people there. It's far away, really cold, and subject to intense radiation. Getting a human there would be expensive and of questionable value, especially given the sophistication of robots these days.
What's important is the data, not one or a small handful of humans having the privilege of wandering about the place.
No, no, we do need to send a human there. But we don't need to send that human until we've exhausted everything that can be done with robots, that will take a long time, and the amount of things that can be done by robots will increase.
Having a human on the planet, though, would exponentially improve our capabilities as it would completely avoid all the issues of controlling robots from earth (delay due to c, limited visibility, limited bandwidth, energy cost of communication) and would be vastly more productive. Also, the challenge of planting a human on a body that far removed from our own so they can lead a science mission on another world is one we will want to eventually tackle.
But not soon. I think 1000 robots sounds about right.;)
There is no practical, meaningful difference between the plan not working at all and the plan taking so long that you'd be an old man before you were done. He doesn't have to make up his mind, you need to understand what he's saying and it's very plain. You can try to cram a semantic crowbar into the gap between subjective words, but all you're doing is widening the amount by which you're missing the point.
To use your hilariously spurious butt rape analogy, what's the difference between not being sodomized, and said sodomy being initiated so slowly that at no point does your hypothetical rapist ever come in contact with you? I would say that in the latter case that said sodomy is, in fact, "made up".
Damn you for not providing more information! How can he provide resurrection in space: the d20s will float away! Will they provide slighty magnetized dice and a ferrous gameboard? Velcro-covered dice and playing field? Dice in a centrifuge?
He doesn't need dice. He just needs blood moss, garlic, and ginseng.
I don't think it will be slower at all, especially from wathing the game footage. Running back to town to stock up on potions that took 1/3rd of my inventory repeatedly durring a dungeon was indeed slowing me down, especially when different party members would run out at different times.
Yeah if you count the time spent making and stocking up on rejuvies, there's little chance the new system will be slower. The actual combat itself may be, but I doubt it as well.
If this is like many other games thet employ similar systems, you may occasionally have to run away to allow natural regenration to make up some of the difference, or move to positions that are better defended (bottle neck the bastards to keep from being fully surrounded). I don;t think this is a bad tradeoff as I enjoy the challenge and don;t think it will detract much at all from game pace.
Yeah I certainly like the idea of having to use more strategy rather than simply brute-forcing your way through crowds with one finger slamming the 1 key.
Anyone else thinking that this is just a smokescreen to develop the most awesomest Battlebot ever?
It could be. That's certainly what the Martians think, which is the real reason it's being canceled. They were okay with us sending a few probes and rovers, but nuclear-powered laser-bots are where they draw the line. So in the name of interplanetary relations the project has to die. Budget overruns is just the cover story, since they can't very well admit that the whole "looking for signs of life" thing is BS as they've known about life on Mars since the 50s. People would either riot and burn down the governments, or come together in a new spirit of love and togetherness amongst humankind. Neither is acceptable.
This is all in TFA, btw, you just have to read between the lines.
The problem is that the potions were a reaction to rapid health loss by a player. This is all too common in a D2 because of the hordes of enemies and relative high speed of the game.
My question is: Now that you have abolished the potion system in favour of the "health(or mana) orb" system, aren't you afraid that this will affect the speed of the game? The fact that you lose a lot of health was part of the exciting rush in the game resulting in the player always being alert to any danger.
The thing is, as long as you had a belt full of rejuvies, you weren't in any danger (and as soon as you get low you'd Town Portal and burn a couple more to make sure you got through to restock).
Which means that the only method they had of actually putting you in danger/killing you was to do ludicrous amounts of damage in an extremely short amount of time. i.e. MSFELE or even worse MSLE with anti-resist aura, or the necro boss's corpse explosion, and so on. Things that felt extremely cheap, especially because 90% of the time there was no danger whatsoever. I hated e.g. running up to a pack where unbeknownst to me there was a similarly-shaded boss stuck in the middle and click once and *wham* You Have Died "WTF?!"
When describing the new system, the devs mentioned this fact explicitly, that the only way to "challenge" you was to outright kill you and that they think this was silly, which makes me very happy.
I do share your concern it may make the game slower, but if done right they can keep the pace going nicely. They just need to balance the amount of health orbs that drop. As long as your survival is dependent on you taking down enemies (or hurting the boss if as I assume they drop orbs on taking damage) as fast as they are hurting you, then it could still be frantic but even more challenging (or at least, challenging more of the time instead of super-easy most of the time and insanely cheap the rest).
Supercavitation would allow submarines to move at supersonic (with reference to water) speeds while submerged
Wait, you mean faster than the speed of sound under water? If that's what you meant, no way, we can't make things move that fast in air, so how can an object basically traveling in an underwater air bubble move that fast? The fastest torpedo listed on the wiki page is a 2004 German torpedo which it says reaches 800km/h, which is 3/4ths the speed of sound in air, which is itself around 1/5th the speed of sound in water.
Regardless, though, supercavitation is pretty awesome. =D
They're saying how the requirements for submersibles and aircraft are diametrically opposed. That's good! If they were only kinda in opposite directions, that'd be a challenge. But calling on my vast electrical engineering knowledge (and what is mechanical engineering but electrical engineering with molecules instead of electrons?), I can tell you this is easy. What do you do if you discover that your current is diametrically opposed to what you want? That's right, you flip the terminals around, and bam your current is spot on!
So, using the same principle. In air you want the plane light and lift high because gravity means the natural tendency of the plane is to go downward and you want to go up. Underwater, gravity turns into buoyancy and your plane would naturally want to go up when you want it to go down. This sounds like our current problem -- we have a plane that flies perfectly in air, but in water goes the opposite direction of what we want. So what do we do? Yeah, we just flip it. Now the "lift" of the wings is pointed down. All you need then is an engine that works in air and water, and either a crew compartment that rotates to stay vertical, or sturdy straps and training for pilots to maneuver while upside-down. Done!
I just but the reversed-wing thing is actually used in some high speed submersible. Exercise on how to make it work in either direction above/below water left as an exercise for the DARPA grantee.
This was Fossett's project I believe. They already have a design and partial prototype yes?
I think they've built a prototype, yes. Unfortunately, the test of the prototype of Fossett's follow-on project, an airplane that can fly underground, ended in disaster.
I can coast downhill at 55 mph almost 15 miles from my house into town but that doesn't make my car anything but a ICE that happens to be coasting.
If you could get back home the same way, then your car would definitely be more than an ICE that happens to be coasting.
I'm just saying that in order to call something an electric vehicle, it can't have a gas tank.
Even if it is practical to leave the gas tank empty except for road trips?
Sorry, I don't agree. Think of it this way: You have a pure EV. You're on a road trip across nebraska, and your charge gets low, so you pull into a farm house. You ask the owner if you can plug your car in. He says no, but you can use his diesel generator and pay for the gas. You do so, and since you have a ways to go, you decide to buy the diesel generator off him and put it in your trunk for the next time you need a recharge.
Did your car just became a petro-electric? Even on the last leg of your journey when the generator's tank is empty and it's just sitting in your trunk? I'm just not seeing how that's an accurate way to describe the car.
It may be semantics, but I think that "EV with gas range extender" is much better in explaining what this actually is than "gas-electric". Because "gas-electric", such as when used to describe trains, implies that the gas engine is always running in order to supply the electric motor. That is simply not the case here. If you don't go beyond the electric range, then the gas engine never turns on, so how exactly is it gas-electric if there's no gas being used?
Slashdot Mirror
Tom Tucker: Yes they did, and we go to Ollie Williams with the Black-U-Weather Mercury Forecast. Ollie?
Ollie Williams: It's hot!
Tom Tucker: Thank you, Ollie.
How about scientist cows and mad bipeds (presumably because they lost their science jobs to cows)?
Well, if Obama wins you can kiss this "ionized liquid telescope" idea goodbye. We all know the unionized liquid lobbies have the Dems in their pockets.
That was an epic pun. Good work, sir.
I've yet to see him say he is anti-net-neutrality, or that he wants government regulation.
Well those are really opposites, or at least orthogonal. In this case, it is government regulation that would theoretically enforce net neutrality by making it illegal for ISPs to throttle packets based on their source and charge said source extra to get better service. By saying that he doesn't want government regulation, he's at best saying he trusts private businesses not to do this, and at worst saying he thinks it's fine if they do whatever they want, and either way he doesn't support taking action to stop them from doing it. While not exactly anti-neutrality, it is definitely not a pro-neutrality stance.
Obama was very pro-net-neutrality, so he gets points for that, except the stance disappeared from his website, so the promise is less clear. This is also a guy who promised to vote against the FISA bill over and over again, even the day before the vote, and then voted for it.
Obama's stance has not change, it only became described in simpler terms on the website (and the old lengthy description is still available there). His vote for FISA was extremely disappointing. I don't think it means his position has changed, I think it means he's a politician (with all the negative connotations) running for office and he needed to deny ammunition to his opponent. Sad, but on the other hand, I'm sick of the kind of idealist who thinks the first thing you need to do is throw all practical considerations in the name of sticking to principles and thus ends up failing to accomplish anything. "Change I can believe in" to me means "Change that can win", even if that change isn't as awe-inspiring as my hypothetical ideal.
From the first link: In 1796, life expectancy hovered around 24 years. A hundred years later it doubled to 48. In our modern world of air conditioners, hand washing and booster shots, you have a good chance of living 63 years, which is the world average. However, for those fortunate enough to live in a first-world country, lifespan jumps considerably.
and before that: It is difficult to imagine, but most of our ancestors kicked the bucket before our modern legal drinking age.
Life expectancy figures are misleading because they tend to be dominated by the infant mortality rate. People tend to interpret this number as if it means "about how long a healthy individual might live before dying of 'natural causes'" but it is really just a statistical average of life spans. So when lots of infants are dying before the age of 1, that drags the average down. Sure modern medicine has allowed old people to become even older, and sure people died young of other things that are less of an issue now, but if you survived to adolescence, and didn't get sent to war, and didn't catch a plague, living into your 60s or 70s wasn't unheard of. It's not like in the year 1796, 24 was considered old and having one foot in the grave!
In may lazy search for a graph to demonstrate this, this was the best I found, infant mortality in LA county since 1920. When 50% or 75% of your babies are dying shortly after delivery, life expectancy is going to be low even if, should you survive your own birth, you have a good chance of living to be 80.
Nevertheless the harshness of life probably did play a role in people getting married and having children at what would be considered today a young age. I think it has more to do with the nature of societies in the past, and the fact that the most natural age for any species to begin reproducing is shortly after reaching sexual maturity. Regardless of what the life expectancy meant, people were having families in their teens and early 20s, and Mr. Scientist is full of it.
Though I'll have to remember his imminently convincing argument for the health of the human race when I'm 60. =D
It's FAR SIDE people! Far Side, Far Side, Far Side. Like the cartoon.
So... you're saying it's populated by bipedal cows and mad scientists?
So what? It's not about the kid or his retarded behavior, it's about his words and the sentiment they express that transcends town hall jackassery. "From the mouths of babes".
How sure are you that the first guy who said "Don't Tread On Me" wasn't just as big an ass? Yet who cares -- we weren't fighting for his cause.
"Don't tase me, bro" is the modern reincarnation of that old call, and with any luck those words will be remembered long after we've forgotten all about the jerk who said it. It's the meaning, of fear of oppression by law enforcement and an appeal to their humanity, that matters.
I laughed.
Paranoid much?
CLETS is just another state law enforcement messaging system - not a single database. I'm pretty sure every state has one and they talk to each other via NLETS (National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System). Nothing new. NLETS itself has been around in various forms since the 60s and several of the state systems originated before that.
Yeah, and law enforcement tracking and harassing peaceful activists is nothing new either. They've been doing it since well before the 60s. I guess I'm not supposed to worry, because they added computer databases to their toolbox for doing this a long time ago?
A cop being able to "write anything about you" means that whatever state/local agency is running the system that data gets put in isn't properly auditing their system. Something that actually pisses off the Feds.
I'm sure they do, in so far as the factual data (location, occupation etc) is inaccurate, or any information doesn't actually lead them to any person they are really interested in. Who likes that?
On the other hand, if it is someone they're interested in (for political not criminal reasons) but don't have any actual dirt on, and what is written in the database gives them an excuse to have a little fun RICO- or USAPATRIOT-style, then that lack of proper auditing is a boon, now isn't it?
And don't tell me I'm being paranoid, police and the feds have both been caught abusing their powers vis-a-vis those two laws to act against benign and harmless but anti-establishment activist groups repeatedly. Hell, the FBI has submitted reports to Congress stating their use of USAPATRIOT powers in such cases, that's how ballsy they are about it. So I'm bracketing that on one side with MLK Jr. on the other and saying that's not paranoia in between, it's business as usual.
In the states I've worked in, a person's access is limited based on their role and what they've been certified for. Your average cop wouldn't be able to enter or modify data, just query it, and even there they normally wouldn't be able to query all systems. A highway patrol officer, for example, would most likely only be able to query DMV, Wants/Warrants, and Stolen Vehicles - and that's assuming they have the ability to access it themselves instead of having to call it in to a dispatcher.
Well someone had write access and put these activists names on the list, and classified them as terrorists. Somebody had the write access to create the categories "terrorism-anti-government" and "terrorism-anti-war protesters". So your assurances, even coming as they do from personal experience, don't mean very much to me.
My cousin worked for the NSA. He told me if I knew what they really did, I'd be very disappointed. I trust him so I bet from his perspective that's true. Which would mean they must not have invited him into the wiretapping-millions-of-Americans room and told him what they were up to.
Maybe it's a sign of an upcoming dark horse Presidential candidate?
Steven Seagal is... Out for Votes.
Steven Seagal is... Hard to Elect.
Steven Seagal is... Under Investigation by the Congressional Oversight Committee.
Steven Seagal is... Under Investigation by the Congressional Oversight Committee... 2.
I'll also not miss the compensation they put in for that (the 1 hit and your dead otherwise Diablo can't kill you). I don't like anything that can one shot that's not avoidable.
Exactly, it was a ludicrous way to balance. I'm almost surprised that at the point where they had to jack up his damage so it could one shot you because otherwise it was negligible they didn't realize they had a problem and done something about it. But oh well, they are in the sequel.
BTW, speaking of silly things, instead of reducing the number of TP trips to unload loot with bigger bags, how about monsters just drop less trash? I mean does there really need to be a gray two handed sword nobody would ever use (outside of a cheap iron golem which I'm guessing doesn't exist)? Get rid of the vendor trash, replace it with extra gold, bam half the trips to town avoided.
Atheist Mom didn't remind Atheist Son to use protection when he screwed the hooker!
Yeah, I often get the common words "command" and "dyne" confused as well...
We don't need to send people there. It's far away, really cold, and subject to intense radiation. Getting a human there would be expensive and of questionable value, especially given the sophistication of robots these days.
What's important is the data, not one or a small handful of humans having the privilege of wandering about the place.
No, no, we do need to send a human there. But we don't need to send that human until we've exhausted everything that can be done with robots, that will take a long time, and the amount of things that can be done by robots will increase.
Having a human on the planet, though, would exponentially improve our capabilities as it would completely avoid all the issues of controlling robots from earth (delay due to c, limited visibility, limited bandwidth, energy cost of communication) and would be vastly more productive. Also, the challenge of planting a human on a body that far removed from our own so they can lead a science mission on another world is one we will want to eventually tackle.
But not soon. I think 1000 robots sounds about right. ;)
AMD is maintaining a minority interest - the Foundry Company has a 55% majority on the spunoff part.
My understanding is that while it's only 45% of the stock, not all stock is equal and AMD is keeping a majority of the voting rights.
There is no practical, meaningful difference between the plan not working at all and the plan taking so long that you'd be an old man before you were done. He doesn't have to make up his mind, you need to understand what he's saying and it's very plain. You can try to cram a semantic crowbar into the gap between subjective words, but all you're doing is widening the amount by which you're missing the point.
To use your hilariously spurious butt rape analogy, what's the difference between not being sodomized, and said sodomy being initiated so slowly that at no point does your hypothetical rapist ever come in contact with you? I would say that in the latter case that said sodomy is, in fact, "made up".
Damn you for not providing more information! How can he provide resurrection in space: the d20s will float away! Will they provide slighty magnetized dice and a ferrous gameboard? Velcro-covered dice and playing field? Dice in a centrifuge?
He doesn't need dice. He just needs blood moss, garlic, and ginseng.
I don't think it will be slower at all, especially from wathing the game footage. Running back to town to stock up on potions that took 1/3rd of my inventory repeatedly durring a dungeon was indeed slowing me down, especially when different party members would run out at different times.
Yeah if you count the time spent making and stocking up on rejuvies, there's little chance the new system will be slower. The actual combat itself may be, but I doubt it as well.
If this is like many other games thet employ similar systems, you may occasionally have to run away to allow natural regenration to make up some of the difference, or move to positions that are better defended (bottle neck the bastards to keep from being fully surrounded). I don;t think this is a bad tradeoff as I enjoy the challenge and don;t think it will detract much at all from game pace.
Yeah I certainly like the idea of having to use more strategy rather than simply brute-forcing your way through crowds with one finger slamming the 1 key.
Anyone else thinking that this is just a smokescreen to develop the most awesomest Battlebot ever?
It could be. That's certainly what the Martians think, which is the real reason it's being canceled. They were okay with us sending a few probes and rovers, but nuclear-powered laser-bots are where they draw the line. So in the name of interplanetary relations the project has to die. Budget overruns is just the cover story, since they can't very well admit that the whole "looking for signs of life" thing is BS as they've known about life on Mars since the 50s. People would either riot and burn down the governments, or come together in a new spirit of love and togetherness amongst humankind. Neither is acceptable.
This is all in TFA, btw, you just have to read between the lines.
The problem is that the potions were a reaction to rapid health loss by a player. This is all too common in a D2 because of the hordes of enemies and relative high speed of the game.
My question is: Now that you have abolished the potion system in favour of the "health(or mana) orb" system, aren't you afraid that this will affect the speed of the game? The fact that you lose a lot of health was part of the exciting rush in the game resulting in the player always being alert to any danger.
The thing is, as long as you had a belt full of rejuvies, you weren't in any danger (and as soon as you get low you'd Town Portal and burn a couple more to make sure you got through to restock).
Which means that the only method they had of actually putting you in danger/killing you was to do ludicrous amounts of damage in an extremely short amount of time. i.e. MSFELE or even worse MSLE with anti-resist aura, or the necro boss's corpse explosion, and so on. Things that felt extremely cheap, especially because 90% of the time there was no danger whatsoever. I hated e.g. running up to a pack where unbeknownst to me there was a similarly-shaded boss stuck in the middle and click once and *wham* You Have Died "WTF?!"
When describing the new system, the devs mentioned this fact explicitly, that the only way to "challenge" you was to outright kill you and that they think this was silly, which makes me very happy.
I do share your concern it may make the game slower, but if done right they can keep the pace going nicely. They just need to balance the amount of health orbs that drop. As long as your survival is dependent on you taking down enemies (or hurting the boss if as I assume they drop orbs on taking damage) as fast as they are hurting you, then it could still be frantic but even more challenging (or at least, challenging more of the time instead of super-easy most of the time and insanely cheap the rest).
Supercavitation would allow submarines to move at supersonic (with reference to water) speeds while submerged
Wait, you mean faster than the speed of sound under water? If that's what you meant, no way, we can't make things move that fast in air, so how can an object basically traveling in an underwater air bubble move that fast? The fastest torpedo listed on the wiki page is a 2004 German torpedo which it says reaches 800km/h, which is 3/4ths the speed of sound in air, which is itself around 1/5th the speed of sound in water.
Regardless, though, supercavitation is pretty awesome. =D
They're saying how the requirements for submersibles and aircraft are diametrically opposed. That's good! If they were only kinda in opposite directions, that'd be a challenge. But calling on my vast electrical engineering knowledge (and what is mechanical engineering but electrical engineering with molecules instead of electrons?), I can tell you this is easy. What do you do if you discover that your current is diametrically opposed to what you want? That's right, you flip the terminals around, and bam your current is spot on!
So, using the same principle. In air you want the plane light and lift high because gravity means the natural tendency of the plane is to go downward and you want to go up. Underwater, gravity turns into buoyancy and your plane would naturally want to go up when you want it to go down. This sounds like our current problem -- we have a plane that flies perfectly in air, but in water goes the opposite direction of what we want. So what do we do? Yeah, we just flip it. Now the "lift" of the wings is pointed down. All you need then is an engine that works in air and water, and either a crew compartment that rotates to stay vertical, or sturdy straps and training for pilots to maneuver while upside-down. Done!
I just but the reversed-wing thing is actually used in some high speed submersible. Exercise on how to make it work in either direction above/below water left as an exercise for the DARPA grantee.
This was Fossett's project I believe. They already have a design and partial prototype yes?
I think they've built a prototype, yes. Unfortunately, the test of the prototype of Fossett's follow-on project, an airplane that can fly underground, ended in disaster.
Too soon?
I can coast downhill at 55 mph almost 15 miles from my house into town but that doesn't make my car anything but a ICE that happens to be coasting.
If you could get back home the same way, then your car would definitely be more than an ICE that happens to be coasting.
I'm just saying that in order to call something an electric vehicle, it can't have a gas tank.
Even if it is practical to leave the gas tank empty except for road trips?
Sorry, I don't agree. Think of it this way: You have a pure EV. You're on a road trip across nebraska, and your charge gets low, so you pull into a farm house. You ask the owner if you can plug your car in. He says no, but you can use his diesel generator and pay for the gas. You do so, and since you have a ways to go, you decide to buy the diesel generator off him and put it in your trunk for the next time you need a recharge.
Did your car just became a petro-electric? Even on the last leg of your journey when the generator's tank is empty and it's just sitting in your trunk? I'm just not seeing how that's an accurate way to describe the car.
It may be semantics, but I think that "EV with gas range extender" is much better in explaining what this actually is than "gas-electric". Because "gas-electric", such as when used to describe trains, implies that the gas engine is always running in order to supply the electric motor. That is simply not the case here. If you don't go beyond the electric range, then the gas engine never turns on, so how exactly is it gas-electric if there's no gas being used?
I dunno, does the train commute short distances without the diesel generator?