Perhaps I am in a minority, but I actually enjoy watching a well played frag fest.
Seriously, sometimes I've made myself a nice, warm bowl of soup and maybe a muffin or a crepe and I can't be bothered to actually play the game. So I'll just log into a large server and spectate the match.
I've actually often wished that there was a fragcaster who would fly the free-cam around to catch the better action from above.
I know it's common amoungst my friends for more people to be watching the computer screen than the Television. I mean, these online games are the only thing that I can throw around jargon with the boys about. American Football I like occasionally, basketball a bit less and baseball and I had a serious falling-out after the strikes.
This is wunderbar! I see these future "cyberatheletes" as something of a fusion between athelete and actor - maybe the better word is "performer". After all, what's more fun that watching someone get pwned (that means "owned")? I'll tell you, watching someone whine whilst recieving the pwnage - that's what:D
The need to repair that shuttle comes from, what I think is, the primary design flaw of the shuttle.
Well, it's really a re-design flaw.
The original orbiter should have, and would have, been carried aloft via a secondary, jumbo-jet-sized, lifter vehicle.
The vietnam war, and little scuffles about bus-seating back in the 60's and 70's caused a great deal of capital to be reallocated. Hence NASA goes to the airforce, strikes a deal, and with a lower budget and military-grade load requirements the shuttle is moved 90 degrees from it's original design orientation...come on engineers, that couldn't possibly come with any consequences...could it?
Anyhow, big-ass crumbly fuel-tank, very-good ( but somewhat finiky) boosters and a turtle essentially on it's back: The Space Shuttle.
Wow, I'm thick with irony today.
Anyhow, in my perfect scenario we would continue to use the orbiter. only we would create a nuclear-rocket lifter vehicle to take off from a runway like a 747 and take the shuttle up to a nice...oh, I'm no expert, but I think a couple hundred miles altitude would be pretty much enough for the orbiter to make it's way up to the IIS or whatever.
Yes. Nuclear...Love the atom, not the bomb.
Both shuttle disasters have in no part been the fault of the actual orbiter itself.
Change the orientation, lower the chaotic stresses (slower, more gradual ascent) and debris potential.
AAAAAAAND, get a baddass nuclear lifter to boot:)
Sounds like a plan to me...just that darn nuclear part.
Firstly, we need nuclear power. Kind of a "fight fire with fire" approach.
For mars habitation, build a base underground?
For the journey, build the spacecraft out of very, very thick material? Not some exotic material, just a thick layer of rock would suffice, yes?
use our nuclear generators to create a massive magnetic field around the spacecraft.
It must be possible to overcome these problems. After all, we are traveling on a spaceship right now, and it's doing a pretty good job of shielding us from radiation.
But that information doesn't want to be used as fodder for extortion.
if the hacker had just made the find publicly available that would have been one thing. but, rather, the hacker choose to use his find to threaten the researchers.
I remember this story on slashydot a while back that got me all excited telling my co-workers and anyone on the street that would listen.
Of course, they will be starting human testing soon. so let's just hope the reason we don't see these treaments used on people sooner is simply a result of the beaurucratic slowdowns of groups like the USA's FDA.
(of course, it's unwise to just start handing out treatments like they are popsicles without testing - but sometimes 5 years before approval seems a bit extreme).
ok, time is a dimension. if you go back in time and kill your father then go back to the future you will simply return to a future in which your father was killed.
in fact, once you go into the past you change the state of that universe (since there are many) and can never return to the state of the universe from which you left.
I abide by this simple thought concerning paradoxes: if someone is ever going to create a machine to go back in time and create a paradox which destroys the universe then they already would have.
The universe is here so obviously there is no worry about universe-destroying paradoxes.
However, thinking that the laws of physics would be able to keep you, after traveling back in time!, from putting a bullet in dear old dad...that just seems ridiculous to me.
anyhow, not a physicist - but then again, what are quantum pysicists doing speculating about time? they can't even get gravity (a proven time warper) straight!:P (hey, no disrepect my uncertain homies!)
the trick is not to download your brain, but to slowly upgrade it.
basically if you replace your brain one neuron at a time over say, a few years, then eventually the whole brain will be replaced - and you will be guaranteed to be in it. this is the only way I would replace my brain.
Security through obscurity is one of those strange concepts.
Imagine every person in the world standing in a gigantic field. In the direct center of everyone is a rifle pointed at the sky.
When the rifle fires, the bullet will go up and then come down and hit some poor sap. But if one were standing in that crowd one could virtually count one's self out as being crowned that sap.
Virtually, but not completely.
That's the problem with security by obscurity. Sure it lowers the chances of being hit. But it's not really security at all.
I know, I know - it's just the old, "if you don't like it, SHUT UP!" || "if you like it then post on a fanboi forum! and SHUT UP" arguments.
But seriously, you cannot fault the technical achievements of these movies.
And I know that many (if not most) are of the opinion that movies are primarily about the characters and the story, but I am of very different taste.
you see, I am the kind of guy who sits down with EPII attack of the clones and pauses the corusant scenes and goes frame by frame through them to just admire all the amazing design and creation.
I love to stare in awe at the new particle systems, the accuracy of the human computer models and the beautiful, alien landscapes painted before my eyes.
But that's me, and I am of a small minority I know. I am that small minority that actually doesn't really care for chatty movies. Didn't really think the godfather was really all that. Never sees a movie unless there are spaceships and explosions - and then only if the movie is about that universe and not just the people in it.
Nevertheless I feel that those like me should have something of a voice.
There are three movie types in my world: 1) Movies about people 2) Movies about events 3) Movies about ideas
I prefer the order of importance to be 3,2,1 and Star Wars seems to fit that type for me quite well.
You know, this random generated article being accepted reminds me of this idea I once had.
I thought it would be rather interesting to create a program the randomly creates musical works. In fact, I would like it to create millions or billions of these works and to submit them for copyright:)
I think it would be possible to create every possible permutation of a 4 bar, or heck up to 16 bar melody, rhythm and harmony.
Then I could sue any new release by any record company 8D
so long as we remember and make sure to cite and post what we remember and write articles for wikipedia on what we remember then such things will not be forgotten or overlooked.
these days "they" are less and less often the media and the journals.
why would the visual cortex have to be the only place to process vision? Why would those neural routes have to be the only ones to carry vision signals?
yes, I know the types of neurons in the back of the brain are best suited for this type of processing. but what is to say that other regions of the brain couldn't handle some of the tasks.
someone blind from birth can still navigate around by touch. Could we not someday make an "eye" which allows them to more "feel" things at distances than "see"?
I think just because a kitten's neurons prefer to take the path of least resistance is no reason to just throw in the towel on allowing someone blind from birth at least the remote possibility of sight.
after all, the final bit of what you actually "see" takes place in the frontal lobe. why couldn't we just shortcut the occipital lobe altogether? pre-process the signals for the frontal lobe? (my favorite lobe btw:)
The "recording artist" is becomming something of an anacronism - or will become so IMO.
We are returning to a time when musicians get payed to actually perform their music, not just record it.
Ask a signed band, and the record company always, always gets the biggest cut of the money from record sales.
the band just counts on the sales driving concert attendance...but it's not really SALES driving the attendence, it's the people hearing the music.
and that hearing can now be achieved without the expenses of distribution from a decade ago.
that's truely why the Recording Industry is going to the toilet. The fleets of trucks driving to the stores and the warehouses of duplicatation equipment are already outdated - and that was really all that we needed those guys for. They didn't MAKE artists, the found and held them - like a zoo animal.
Give your music away, if you love it set it free. They will come to see you play if you rock:)
you know Mr.AC, somewhere in between your joking of quantum, my half-reading of this article and then my meandering over their interesting image I was struck with how strange this curling of DNA looked.
I mean, on one hand it looks tangled and inelegant. But then I think how it twists this way because of the fundamental laws of my favorite place (the universe).
Which then led to my recollection of the following (hope this image hosting doesn't bork:/)
I've just always wondered what the heck those curly clouds are? this is a high-altitude test of a megaton hydrogen bomb (this is the last atmospheric test by the united states, operation name "tightrope") so that blast is many kilometers (which are like miles) in diameter. those curly clouds intrigue me to no end.
Slashdot Mirror
I got modded "troll" and "overratted" for a perfectly valid HHGTG reference? on Slashdot!?
The times they are a changin', eh?
Perhaps I am in a minority, but I actually enjoy watching a well played frag fest.
:D
Seriously, sometimes I've made myself a nice, warm bowl of soup and maybe a muffin or a crepe and I can't be bothered to actually play the game. So I'll just log into a large server and spectate the match.
I've actually often wished that there was a fragcaster who would fly the free-cam around to catch the better action from above.
I know it's common amoungst my friends for more people to be watching the computer screen than the Television. I mean, these online games are the only thing that I can throw around jargon with the boys about. American Football I like occasionally, basketball a bit less and baseball and I had a serious falling-out after the strikes.
This is wunderbar! I see these future "cyberatheletes" as something of a fusion between athelete and actor - maybe the better word is "performer". After all, what's more fun that watching someone get pwned (that means "owned")? I'll tell you, watching someone whine whilst recieving the pwnage - that's what
Shall we also send the phone sanitizers?
What possible ill could come of that?
are you implying that there will only ever be ONE space elevator.
I venture that once the first elevator goes up, hundreds or thousands more will be deployed at a fraction the price of the original.
so, are there hundreds of rocket launces every day?
and explain again why a rocket - which is singular - is parallel.
"If you don't have a consensus that it's nonsense, you don't have a breakthrough." - Burt Rutan
:)
Keep up the thinking, Jim
The need to repair that shuttle comes from, what I think is, the primary design flaw of the shuttle.
:)
Well, it's really a re-design flaw.
The original orbiter should have, and would have, been carried aloft via a secondary, jumbo-jet-sized, lifter vehicle.
The vietnam war, and little scuffles about bus-seating back in the 60's and 70's caused a great deal of capital to be reallocated. Hence NASA goes to the airforce, strikes a deal, and with a lower budget and military-grade load requirements the shuttle is moved 90 degrees from it's original design orientation...come on engineers, that couldn't possibly come with any consequences...could it?
Anyhow, big-ass crumbly fuel-tank, very-good ( but somewhat finiky) boosters and a turtle essentially on it's back: The Space Shuttle.
Wow, I'm thick with irony today.
Anyhow, in my perfect scenario we would continue to use the orbiter. only we would create a nuclear-rocket lifter vehicle to take off from a runway like a 747 and take the shuttle up to a nice...oh, I'm no expert, but I think a couple hundred miles altitude would be pretty much enough for the orbiter to make it's way up to the IIS or whatever.
Yes. Nuclear...Love the atom, not the bomb.
Both shuttle disasters have in no part been the fault of the actual orbiter itself.
Change the orientation, lower the chaotic stresses (slower, more gradual ascent) and debris potential.
AAAAAAAND, get a baddass nuclear lifter to boot
Sounds like a plan to me...just that darn nuclear part.
Firstly, we need nuclear power. Kind of a "fight fire with fire" approach.
For mars habitation, build a base underground?
For the journey, build the spacecraft out of very, very thick material? Not some exotic material, just a thick layer of rock would suffice, yes?
use our nuclear generators to create a massive magnetic field around the spacecraft.
It must be possible to overcome these problems. After all, we are traveling on a spaceship right now, and it's doing a pretty good job of shielding us from radiation.
true, but you can't eat a fishing pole either.
No doubt one of the activities of microsoft's linux lab is testing the security of linux.
My question is this: if you find a security vulnerability in linux, do you inform the linux community about it?
well, yes.
But that information doesn't want to be used as fodder for extortion.
if the hacker had just made the find publicly available that would have been one thing. but, rather, the hacker choose to use his find to threaten the researchers.
That's a very good question.
I remember this story on slashydot a while back that got me all excited telling my co-workers and anyone on the street that would listen.
Of course, they will be starting human testing soon. so let's just hope the reason we don't see these treaments used on people sooner is simply a result of the beaurucratic slowdowns of groups like the USA's FDA.
(of course, it's unwise to just start handing out treatments like they are popsicles without testing - but sometimes 5 years before approval seems a bit extreme).
ok, time is a dimension. if you go back in time and kill your father then go back to the future you will simply return to a future in which your father was killed.
:P (hey, no disrepect my uncertain homies!)
in fact, once you go into the past you change the state of that universe (since there are many) and can never return to the state of the universe from which you left.
I abide by this simple thought concerning paradoxes: if someone is ever going to create a machine to go back in time and create a paradox which destroys the universe then they already would have.
The universe is here so obviously there is no worry about universe-destroying paradoxes.
However, thinking that the laws of physics would be able to keep you, after traveling back in time!, from putting a bullet in dear old dad...that just seems ridiculous to me.
anyhow, not a physicist - but then again, what are quantum pysicists doing speculating about time? they can't even get gravity (a proven time warper) straight!
you'll enjoy this then :)
¦D hehe
Fry: [talking fast] These languages are on the fast-track to the it list; blastfax kudos all around.
Leela: Uuh, hello! We haven't made one program since you two took over.
"That Guy": Programming has nothing to do with the Programming business. buzzwords, people, buzzwords!
the trick is not to download your brain, but to slowly upgrade it.
basically if you replace your brain one neuron at a time over say, a few years, then eventually the whole brain will be replaced - and you will be guaranteed to be in it. this is the only way I would replace my brain.
Security through obscurity is one of those strange concepts.
Imagine every person in the world standing in a gigantic field. In the direct center of everyone is a rifle pointed at the sky.
When the rifle fires, the bullet will go up and then come down and hit some poor sap. But if one were standing in that crowd one could virtually count one's self out as being crowned that sap.
Virtually, but not completely.
That's the problem with security by obscurity. Sure it lowers the chances of being hit. But it's not really security at all.
Is it?
good point: on re-reading my post your observation does seem accurate.
I should have specified this is my preference for Science Fiction movies.
You made me think and I realized that I love Indiana Jones, which seems much more like a 1,2,3 type.
Also I like Porn, which is decidedly a 1,2 type.
I know, I know - it's just the old, "if you don't like it, SHUT UP!" || "if you like it then post on a fanboi forum! and SHUT UP" arguments.
But seriously, you cannot fault the technical achievements of these movies.
And I know that many (if not most) are of the opinion that movies are primarily about the characters and the story, but I am of very different taste.
you see, I am the kind of guy who sits down with EPII attack of the clones and pauses the corusant scenes and goes frame by frame through them to just admire all the amazing design and creation.
I love to stare in awe at the new particle systems, the accuracy of the human computer models and the beautiful, alien landscapes painted before my eyes.
But that's me, and I am of a small minority I know. I am that small minority that actually doesn't really care for chatty movies. Didn't really think the godfather was really all that. Never sees a movie unless there are spaceships and explosions - and then only if the movie is about that universe and not just the people in it.
Nevertheless I feel that those like me should have something of a voice.
There are three movie types in my world:
1) Movies about people
2) Movies about events
3) Movies about ideas
I prefer the order of importance to be 3,2,1 and Star Wars seems to fit that type for me quite well.
what's so bad about fixing the price of software?
You know, this random generated article being accepted reminds me of this idea I once had.
:)
I thought it would be rather interesting to create a program the randomly creates musical works. In fact, I would like it to create millions or billions of these works and to submit them for copyright
I think it would be possible to create every possible permutation of a 4 bar, or heck up to 16 bar melody, rhythm and harmony.
Then I could sue any new release by any record company 8D
well, are you going to forget? I'm not.
so long as we remember and make sure to cite and post what we remember and write articles for wikipedia on what we remember then such things will not be forgotten or overlooked.
these days "they" are less and less often the media and the journals.
"They" is becomming "us", and I love it.
why would the visual cortex have to be the only place to process vision? Why would those neural routes have to be the only ones to carry vision signals?
:)
yes, I know the types of neurons in the back of the brain are best suited for this type of processing. but what is to say that other regions of the brain couldn't handle some of the tasks.
someone blind from birth can still navigate around by touch. Could we not someday make an "eye" which allows them to more "feel" things at distances than "see"?
I think just because a kitten's neurons prefer to take the path of least resistance is no reason to just throw in the towel on allowing someone blind from birth at least the remote possibility of sight.
after all, the final bit of what you actually "see" takes place in the frontal lobe. why couldn't we just shortcut the occipital lobe altogether? pre-process the signals for the frontal lobe? (my favorite lobe btw
play shows.
:)
:D
That's all.
The "recording artist" is becomming something of an anacronism - or will become so IMO.
We are returning to a time when musicians get payed to actually perform their music, not just record it.
Ask a signed band, and the record company always, always gets the biggest cut of the money from record sales.
the band just counts on the sales driving concert attendance...but it's not really SALES driving the attendence, it's the people hearing the music.
and that hearing can now be achieved without the expenses of distribution from a decade ago.
that's truely why the Recording Industry is going to the toilet. The fleets of trucks driving to the stores and the warehouses of duplicatation equipment are already outdated - and that was really all that we needed those guys for. They didn't MAKE artists, the found and held them - like a zoo animal.
Give your music away, if you love it set it free. They will come to see you play if you rock
and I hope you do
link to your bands website?
I mean, on one hand it looks tangled and inelegant. But then I think how it twists this way because of the fundamental laws of my favorite place (the universe).
Which then led to my recollection of the following (hope this image hosting doesn't bork:/)
I've just always wondered what the heck those curly clouds are? this is a high-altitude test of a megaton hydrogen bomb (this is the last atmospheric test by the united states, operation name "tightrope") so that blast is many kilometers (which are like miles) in diameter. those curly clouds intrigue me to no end.
the curves of nature amaze me...even if the math sometimes draws my antipathy.