None of the Gibson books had magic either. The point was the setting was the same, as well as how they portrayed the matrix was the same as cyberspace in Neuromancer et al. Also, razorgirls, bionic parts, corporations controlling everything, body-market, dystopian future, yeah, I'd say it reeks of Gibson. They just added magic, which made it (IMHO) even cooler. Honestly, if you wanted to leave out the magic in it you could with little problem. Just allow humans (or mutants) and no magical groups.
Well, I AM a Rocket Scientist, and there are two major problems with your idea.
First, there is no "dark side", just a FAR side of the moon. Because of gravitational incongruities, the moon always has one side near us, another far, but both sides still get light on a 28 day cycle.
Second, even using the idea of a small nuclear reactor (btw, ever tried to get one of those up? Small is relative, and a few groups seem to hate the idea of nuclear anything in space), and assuming that we can somehow get a large enough one up to power the entire station (can you say expensive in launch fuel?) how would you contact with Earth? Last time I checked, we would still need LOS, and moon based orbiters have notoriously short lifespans, and I assume that any station would be expected to be long term.
We would need to either establish some TRDSS system for the moon (look it up, under "space network") or a network of bases on the moon. Better places would be the poles, where water is confirmed by the Clementine project and Lunar Prospector. Not in a usable form, but learning how to harvest it could be the first step in a permanent presence on the moon.
Yeah HDD is only standard on the premium system, and you can buy a HDD later for the core system if you want. I don't understand why you are annoyed about the HDD size though, since the entire thing is used primarily as a cache (a la the Xbox) and a way to store all your dl'ed content. As far as I can tell, most people will buy the premium system anyway, and the core will be sold to newbies/parents for their small children who will later grow up and get a HDD and who prolly don't have an xbox anyway. 20 gigs is plenty of space, and using a smaller drive keeps the price down.
It was impossible to include hardware backwards compatilbility because of the hardware shift. Sony, who owns their own chip designs (and now so does microsoft) could just use old PS chips in the hardware itself. Notice this still didn't allow for full compatibility. Now that the new Xbox is run on PowerPC instead of Intel, it would mean that for hardware emulation they would need to have what amounts to an entire Xbox in there (not to mention another Geforce3). Software was the right choice, and as long as it doesn't look any different, whats the difference? It even allows for patches (another reason MS went with Silver and Gold Live services, to be able to provide content to ALL users.)
Looks like the entire thing will be (as expected) run off of software emulation. Really, considering the technical challenges involved (I know, software emulation isn't impossible, but the fact that it can run the system at full speed on a completly different hardware type is nice) I'm pleasently surprised at the number of games already available. I also like the fact that the system will run all your old games in HiDef and add a layer of FSAA (almost like the old Sega 32x).
First, yes, anti-matter can't touch anything at all, otherwise boom. Best way to contain it would be magnetic bottles in vacuumed areas.
Second, using it as a weapon. There would not be radiation, just lots of light, because it isn't radioactive in any real sense. It doesn't leave any trace at all, just a large flash of light and then a hole where there used to be normal matter. You can't even detect anti-matter in its normal state since it doesn't emit anything. It would be like trying to detect hydrogen (easiest antimatter to make for obvious reasons).
Now, the potential for a weapon is absolute. People will worry about that, since its so easy to make as long as you have antimatter. Just make the containment field turn off as soon as it hits. Its an understandably dangerous idea, but we have to realize that its this way with any power source. First, you learn to use it without control. Then you learn to control it to fuel a power source. Take fission. First the bomb. Later, nuke plants. Now fusion. We have hydrogen bombs, we are trying to make (controlled) fusion plants now. So first we use it as a weapon, then we learn how to control it (to make the Enterprise).
Now, as a weapon, I can't imagine its the worst thing in the world. Only large, (presumably) responsible countries could make it. We have somthing close to its destructive power now with the H bomb, but this one would have no radiation afterward causing untold pain and suffereing from fallout. Just the initial flash. And we haven't used the H bomb yet, god-willing we will never use this. If the war ever comes and Mars attacks though, I would love to have something other than the common cold to fall back on.
Slashdot Mirror
None of the Gibson books had magic either. The point was the setting was the same, as well as how they portrayed the matrix was the same as cyberspace in Neuromancer et al. Also, razorgirls, bionic parts, corporations controlling everything, body-market, dystopian future, yeah, I'd say it reeks of Gibson. They just added magic, which made it (IMHO) even cooler. Honestly, if you wanted to leave out the magic in it you could with little problem. Just allow humans (or mutants) and no magical groups.
Well, I AM a Rocket Scientist, and there are two major problems with your idea.
First, there is no "dark side", just a FAR side of the moon. Because of gravitational incongruities, the moon always has one side near us, another far, but both sides still get light on a 28 day cycle.
Second, even using the idea of a small nuclear reactor (btw, ever tried to get one of those up? Small is relative, and a few groups seem to hate the idea of nuclear anything in space), and assuming that we can somehow get a large enough one up to power the entire station (can you say expensive in launch fuel?) how would you contact with Earth? Last time I checked, we would still need LOS, and moon based orbiters have notoriously short lifespans, and I assume that any station would be expected to be long term.
We would need to either establish some TRDSS system for the moon (look it up, under "space network") or a network of bases on the moon. Better places would be the poles, where water is confirmed by the Clementine project and Lunar Prospector. Not in a usable form, but learning how to harvest it could be the first step in a permanent presence on the moon.
Yeah HDD is only standard on the premium system, and you can buy a HDD later for the core system if you want. I don't understand why you are annoyed about the HDD size though, since the entire thing is used primarily as a cache (a la the Xbox) and a way to store all your dl'ed content. As far as I can tell, most people will buy the premium system anyway, and the core will be sold to newbies/parents for their small children who will later grow up and get a HDD and who prolly don't have an xbox anyway. 20 gigs is plenty of space, and using a smaller drive keeps the price down.
It was impossible to include hardware backwards compatilbility because of the hardware shift. Sony, who owns their own chip designs (and now so does microsoft) could just use old PS chips in the hardware itself. Notice this still didn't allow for full compatibility. Now that the new Xbox is run on PowerPC instead of Intel, it would mean that for hardware emulation they would need to have what amounts to an entire Xbox in there (not to mention another Geforce3). Software was the right choice, and as long as it doesn't look any different, whats the difference? It even allows for patches (another reason MS went with Silver and Gold Live services, to be able to provide content to ALL users.)
Looks like the entire thing will be (as expected) run off of software emulation. Really, considering the technical challenges involved (I know, software emulation isn't impossible, but the fact that it can run the system at full speed on a completly different hardware type is nice) I'm pleasently surprised at the number of games already available. I also like the fact that the system will run all your old games in HiDef and add a layer of FSAA (almost like the old Sega 32x).
First, yes, anti-matter can't touch anything at all, otherwise boom. Best way to contain it would be magnetic bottles in vacuumed areas.
Second, using it as a weapon. There would not be radiation, just lots of light, because it isn't radioactive in any real sense. It doesn't leave any trace at all, just a large flash of light and then a hole where there used to be normal matter. You can't even detect anti-matter in its normal state since it doesn't emit anything. It would be like trying to detect hydrogen (easiest antimatter to make for obvious reasons).
Now, the potential for a weapon is absolute. People will worry about that, since its so easy to make as long as you have antimatter. Just make the containment field turn off as soon as it hits. Its an understandably dangerous idea, but we have to realize that its this way with any power source. First, you learn to use it without control. Then you learn to control it to fuel a power source. Take fission. First the bomb. Later, nuke plants. Now fusion. We have hydrogen bombs, we are trying to make (controlled) fusion plants now. So first we use it as a weapon, then we learn how to control it (to make the Enterprise).
Now, as a weapon, I can't imagine its the worst thing in the world. Only large, (presumably) responsible countries could make it. We have somthing close to its destructive power now with the H bomb, but this one would have no radiation afterward causing untold pain and suffereing from fallout. Just the initial flash. And we haven't used the H bomb yet, god-willing we will never use this. If the war ever comes and Mars attacks though, I would love to have something other than the common cold to fall back on.
The Virginia Tech Supercomputer (take 2) is due to be clocked soon, and its also a huge off-the-shelf system. I'd like to see how they compare.
Also, I'll be big money its already been used for gaming. What college studeny could resist?