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User: exp(pi*sqrt(163))

exp(pi*sqrt(163))'s activity in the archive.

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Comments · 3,281

  1. What do stories have to do with games? on Games Need More Artfully Story-Entwined Gameplay · · Score: 1

    I simply don't get it. Games form an interactive medium. The story is what should emerge as a result of you playing the game, not be some ingredient that's stuffed in at the outset. Modern high-profile games are awful, not because of a presence or lack of a story, but because game companies keep selling us the same gameplay over and over again.

  2. Re:Might have found ice? on Phoenix Mars Lander Deploys Robotic Arm, Possibly Finds Ice · · Score: 2, Insightful
    > A few days from now, I'll bet you we'll know there'll definitely be ice on Mars.

    Clearly the information from this probe is of no use to you. You know the answer already. But I'm still waiting.

  3. Might have found ice? on Phoenix Mars Lander Deploys Robotic Arm, Possibly Finds Ice · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Before the lander even took off, we all knew it might find ice. Now it's landed there's a press release saying it might have found ice. Is there any news content here? Maybe what's different is that previously we knew it might have found something that might be ice, but now it's definitely found something that might be ice. But previously we also knew it might have found something that was definitely ice. Might be definitely, definitely might be? Please, someone wake me when it's definitely definite.

  4. Re:That's silly. on Doughnut-Shaped Universe Back In the Race · · Score: 1

    I think HG Wells did something similar too.

  5. Re:That's silly. on Doughnut-Shaped Universe Back In the Race · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes. There's no need for these long-winded explanations. Asteroids is played on a 2-torus and if it were a 3D game where going off the 'front' brought you on at the 'back' then it'd be played on a 3-torus. Interestingly, asteroids played on a circular screen where going off one side brought you back on the other would be on a completely different topological space, the cross cap. But if you think about it there's an interesting issue with that: going off one side would bring you back on the other side reflected. There would be some pretty weird consequences if our universe were like that.

  6. What a loser this guy is on Atari Founder Proclaims the End of Gaming Piracy · · Score: 1

    You'd think that someone who has made as much money as this guy would rise above pettiness like whether there are some people out there who haven't paid for computer games. How can you be this (apparently) successful and still have that kind of resentment against people who are much less well off than you. What a loser.

  7. Re:earthly parallels to the Spot? on Jupiter's Third Red Spot · · Score: 1
    > it's hard to think of a good scaling argument for why the size, thickness, mass et cetera of the atmosphere should dictate the scale of the duration of events in it.

    Eh? From properties like size, thickness (viscosity?), mass and a few others like planetary rotation velocity it's trivial to construct lots of independent quantities with the dimension of time. So it's obvious that the duration of storms could depend on such factors.

  8. Re:Now... Will they be indexed... on Indian Tech Universities Put Lectures Online For Free · · Score: 1

    Sure. That would be Josephson's group.

  9. Re:Now... Will they be indexed... on Indian Tech Universities Put Lectures Online For Free · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At Cambridge (the UK one) you get a BA in *science*. And it's still called Natural Science.

  10. Re:Obligatory Back to the Future joke on Supernova Birth Observed From Orbiting Telescope · · Score: 1

    Doesn't seem like much at all. Put it this way, just about anything that has ever happened on Earth has been powered by the Sun. Only a tiny fraction of the Sun's output lands on Earth and yet the Earth has been powered for more than a couple of billion years. Yet you're saying that the final death throes of a star in which it's doing the most intense thing that every happen in its lifetime that it throws of enough energy to feed a single 21st century nation for a few million years. Paltry!

  11. Re:CGI on Spoiler-Free Review of Indiana Jones · · Score: 1
    > A conscious decision in production was made to steer clear of CGI effects when possible and perform stunts the old-fashioned way

    More like "a conscious decision was made by the marketing team to make press releases claiming that the production steered clear of CGI". Watch the movie and you'll see.

  12. Center blocked? Only for EM communications. on ET Will Phone Home Using Neutrinos, Not Photons · · Score: 1

    ...the centre of the galaxy blocks [photons] entirely.
    I don't have direct line of sight to Australia but I can email people there. Even sending signals in and out of the galactic center itself is no big deal. Standing on Earth looking in it might seem like a dense mess, but a sequence of relays reaching to the core that are hundreds or even thousands of light years apart could easily be within line of sight of each other.
  13. Re:And on the plus side. of plus-size.. on Fat People Cause Global Warming, Higher Food Prices · · Score: 1
    > neither of my parents has anything to do with either of my children. by choice mind you, they're just "too busy".

    Sounds like you're involved in rearing your children so you've demonstrated that your commitment extends beyond pure reproduction. What point were you trying to make?

  14. Re:And on the plus side. of plus-size.. on Fat People Cause Global Warming, Higher Food Prices · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > Oh, so you don't really understand Darwinism. Unless you get heart disease or have a stroke before you hit sexual maturity, this is irrelevant. No, I think you don't understand. What matters is not how many offspring there are, but whether they survive to sexual maturity. You might not have noticed this feature of homo sapiens but (1) parents rear kids (2) grandparents are involved in the rearing of their grandchildren, and this is true all the way across human culture. In other words, diseases of old age (or at least older age) *do* matter.

  15. My Uncle Algae isn't too happy about this on Honeywell & Airbus To Turn Algae Into Jet Fuel · · Score: 1

    I don't think he was even consulted.

  16. Re:astronomer my asshole. on Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The important message is that good scientific ideas can come from anywhere, even from Catholic priests, and you don't judge an idea by where it came from, but by whether or not it does a good job, for example by making falsifiable predictions.

  17. Re:Catholics and condoms on Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible · · Score: 1

    I believe the Vatican did exactly this. Collecting sperm in the obvious way for the purpose of artificial insemination is taboo for Catholics. But I believe it's acceptable to use a 'leaky' condom that gives each individual spermatozoon a chance of causing conception while leaving a usable residue in the condom.

  18. Re:Might be life? on Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible · · Score: 1

    Actually, I think God is pretty plainspoken. The problem was that Jesus chap.

  19. Re:doubtful on Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible · · Score: 1

    That's a strange thing to say. There have been countless people on Earth who have never heard of Jesus and there may even be some left. The situation is no different to that of extraterrestrials on another planet. So there's no need for anything new to be addressed here.

  20. Plausible!=not impossible on Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible · · Score: 2, Informative

    It takes only the most basic of reading and comprehension skills to understand that nobody was saying that extraterrestrial life was 'plausible'. I guess that's expecting too much around here.

  21. Re:distance vs age? on Youngest Galactic Supernova Found, But No Aliens · · Score: 1
    > ...does that mean we won't see it for another 27,860 years?

    Nothing travels faster than light. We won't know anything at all about this supernova for 28,860 years.

  22. Re:Unless it's a unanimous 100%, on 85% of Chinese Citizens Like Internet Censorship · · Score: 1

    And who gets to define 'justified', 'right' and 'infringement'? You?

  23. Re:Annoying on Spore, Mass Effect DRM Phone Home For Single-Player Gaming · · Score: 1
    > It never hurts the pirates, it only hurts the legitimate customers.

    The universe isn't partitioned into two types of people fixed for all times: pirates and legitimate customers. So stop talking like it is. As long as you talk like that you give the impression that DRM has no effect because the pirates will still go on being pirates and legitimate users will continue being legitimate users. That isn't the case at all. A large segment of society consists of casual would-be copiers who'll make a copy for a friend if it's no effort, and won't copy if it requires googling to find out how, or even worse, firing up a debugger and single stepping through some executable. If the game/song/video is easy to copy then there will be many casual pirates. If it's hard to copy the casual pirates will go away. Yes, it makes things harder for legitimate users. But if it still results in higher overall sales then it's good for the seller.

  24. Re:Not an especially unique theory. on Earth May Once Have Had Multiple Moons · · Score: 1
    > it grew so big that the lagrangian points couldn't hold it any more, and it flew into orbit with earth.

    These days they have scientific theories about the orbits of planets and nobody talks about planets flying around any more.

  25. Re:At the risk of being arrested... on CCTVs Don't Work in the UK · · Score: 1
    You mean like this?

    It's called the Data Protection Act.