Gravitation is the best happy game I've ever played, entertainment games included. It's a small art game by Jason Rohrer, a leading figure in video game art. Download it and try it for yourself first (it's only 500KBytes). http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/
I came to this game skeptical about it, after having played Passage, from the same developer, a few months ago, ending it dumbfounded about how the game meant anything at all and completely unconvinced about it being any good. So I was ready to dismiss it and only started playing it for time killing purposes.
When you start playing Gravitation, you'll notice a timer relentlessly counting down. This obviously means the time you have left to live in the game. The screen is limited and you only see yourself and a fireplace. I moved around and saw a ball flying, and instinctively pressed SPACE to jump at it; I missed the ball. There was this little girl and I saw she had thrown me the ball. There wasn't anything else to see, so I reasoned I had to play with her to move the game forward. She threw me the ball again, and I jumped and grabbed it; it went back to her and a little heart appeared. My own heart warmed a little. I played with her some more and, suddenly, the music got wilder, the screen got bigger and I was on fire: I saw an exit where, before, only darkness existed, and when I jumped for it. I forgot the little girl and I flew through space; leapt from platform to platform collecting stars that seemed to get me more energy, and I leapt and leapt; until it all came crashing down. The screen got smaller and I got weaker. I had to go back down to the little girl, I reasoned, and play with her some more; she's useful to me. But when I came back, there were these blocks of ice blocking the way and I couldn't play with her. I pushed them, which wasn't easy, and they melted in the fireplace. For the effort, I lost a little life, but for the effort, I got to play with the girl. She was beginning to be more than just useful: I was beginning to get fond of her. But still, I wanted to see more, so when the music got crazy, I left her for the heights again. A routine started to emerge: I would go exploring, then I would get back, break some blocks of ice and play with the girl.
I thought it would last forever.
But, some time later, when I came back from my frenzy, she was gone; only her little ball remained. It struck something deep in me, a loss and lost kind of feeling. She was gone. While I was going on a manic spree, climbing platforms in search of achievements, I dismissed her. She was what kept me going through all this and I abandoned her. I thought I could just work a little harder to melt the ice and she would take me back, and love me. But no.
She was gone.
I still had 20 more seconds to live and plenty of energy to jump, but it seemed pointless to go on. I just stood there, looking at where she once was, regretting ever leaving her. After a while, I went to the fireplace in tears. The timer reached zero. My life faded. Gravitation.
All this in under 5 minutes. Notice that I kept saying "I", as if it happened to me. I think that's key to the reason I was completely immersed in the experience so quickly, and I think that's something no other art medium can do. You're not just seeing it, or reading it, or hearing it: you're living it.
And that is why Gravitation is the best game I've ever played.
Well, I wrote this on reddit.com (a likes-to-think-it's-classier-than-Fark-or-Digg-or-Slashdot-but-doesn't-even-come-near-Metafilter site), and have since came back to the game to play through it again.
The second time, I stayed playing with the girl. You feel energetic the whole time, but nothing else happens. Really cute and boring; I was expecting more from the girl.
The third time, I decided ignoring the girl. She didn't go away and cried all the time, and asides from alternating between manic and depressed, nothing happened. She
Violence in the media does not translate directly into violence in the real world. It has other, more subtle effects.
In other words, you won't kill someone if you play GTA, but you certainly don't end up a better person (I would love reading someone honestly, and reasonably, write that violent video games are good for you [make you happier, more satisfied, more complete, more empathetic, you know, good things -- no, entertained doesn't count], instead of just name dropping Jack Thompson and saying how games are not bad for you [yes, there's a difference]).
You're judging him based on "facts" taken from a blog article; can't you see the error in that?
And even if it was an article taken from a "serious" newspaper, it shouldn't be a surprise anymore these days that you can't really trust newspapers on any issue: just look at the horrible coverage they make of technological issues, for example; do you really think that it's any different for articles about economy, politics, or, as in this case, crime?
If you really want to try to find out the facts, do what every journalist does: investigate it yourself.
Carbon nanotube-based membranes will dramatically cut the cost of desalination.
A water desalination system using carbon nanotube-based membranes could significantly reduce the cost of purifying water from the ocean. The technology could potentially provide a solution to water shortages both in the United States, where populations are expected to soar in areas with few freshwater sources, and worldwide, where a lack of clean water is a major cause of disease.
The new membranes, developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), could reduce the cost of desalination by 75 percent, compared to reverse osmosis methods used today, the researchers say. The membranes, which sort molecules by size and with electrostatic forces, could also separate various gases, perhaps leading to economical ways to capture carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.
The carbon nanotubes used by the researchers are sheets of carbon atoms rolled so tightly that only seven water molecules can fit across their diameter. Their small size makes them good candidates for separating molecules. And, despite their diminutive dimensions, these nanopores allow water to flow at the same rate as pores considerably larger, reducing the amount of pressure needed to force water through, and potentially saving energy and costs compared to reverse osmosis using conventional membranes.
Indeed, the LLNL team measures water flow rates up to 10,000 times faster than would be predicted by classical equations, which suggest that flow rates through a pore will slow to a crawl as the diameter drops. "It's something that is quite counter-intuitive," says LLNL chemical engineer Jason Holt, whose findings appeared in the 19 May issue of Science. "As you shrink the pore size, there is a huge enhancement in flow rate."
The surprising results might be due to the smooth interior of the nanotubes, or to physics at this small scale -- more research is needed to understand the mechanisms involved. "In some physical systems the underlying assumptions are not valid at these smaller length scales," says Rod Ruoff, a physical chemist and professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University (who was not involved with the work).
To make the membranes, the researchers started with a silicon wafer about the size of a quarter, coated with a metal nanoparticle catalyst for growing carbon nanotubes. Holt says the small particles allow the nanotubes to grow "like blades of grass -- vertically aligned and closely packed." Once grown, the gaps between the nanotubes are filled with a ceramic material, silicon nitride, which provides stability and helps the membrane adhere to the underlying silicon wafer. The field of nanotubes functions as an array of pores, allowing water and certain gases through, while keeping larger molecules and clusters of molecules at bay.
Holt estimates that these membranes could be brought to market within the next five to ten years. "The challenge is to scale up so we can produce usable amounts of these membrane materials for desalination, or gas separation, the other high-impact application for these membranes," he says, adding that the fabrication process is "inherently scalable."
Eventually, the membranes could be adapted for a variety of applications, ranging from pharmaceuticals to the food industry, where they could be used to separate sugars, for example, says co-author Olgica Bakajin, a physicist at LLNL. "Practically, the next step is figuring out how to take a general concept and modify it to a specific application," Bakajin says.
"There are many studies that one can imagine to build upon this study," says Northwestern's Ruoff. "Our understanding of molecular processes will be helped by experiments of this type. There are interesting possibilities for nanofluidic applications, such as in nanoelectromechanical systems and in 'smart' switching [on and off] of the flow through such small channels."
As far as I'm concerned this film has some major challenges to face that are integral to remaining true to the book. 1. The characters age from 6yrs old to 12 yrs old. That's a HUGE swing. Them being children and developing are two important themes that need to remain.
Obviously, this being big budget, they're not going to be 6 to 12 year olds anymore. They're going to be the age of the target audience, for sure. I don't see the point of doing something like in Die Hard (or any other action movie since) where the main character is much older than the target audience (teenagers), but acts likes one (so they can identify with him).
If you want to see 6 year olds in your movies, go to Japan.
"I don't see why editing your bio, espcially to correct errors, would be such a terrible crime worthy of news."
Except he wasn't correcting any error, he was deleting embarassing information about his past as a softcore pornographer and also inserting himself as the only founder of Wikipedia.
He was rewritting history, like in 1984; this is only one example of how easy it is to do that with Wikipedia. That's what's worthy of The News.
Then you better explain that "science" is only a pragmatic, physical explanation of observed results -- it can make no claim to being "truth". Science is useful, since it's the best way of analyzing things. But it's entirely possible that a deity created the universe as it is such that science reports these results, and science is too small in scope to be able to refute that possibility.
You're talking about the possibility that one or more gods created the universe (most scientists are agnostic anyways), NOT about creationism, which is, and I quote dictionary.com, "[the] belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible."
Quite a difference.
(I'll let someone else refute the rest of your nonsense...)
Prove to me that I can legally play HL2 five years from now.
I can't prove you anything, because I'm not Valve, but it stands to reason that, when the authentication servers are taken down, Valve will probably release some sort of patch to disable their piracy protection system.
Now all you need is some sort of statement from Valve confirming this...
That blob is neither China itself, nor Eastern Russia, nor the east side of a russian, but a graphical representation of NO2 pollution levels over a region of China./grammar nazi, joke
Slashdot Mirror
Gravitation is the best happy game I've ever played, entertainment games included. It's a small art game by Jason Rohrer, a leading figure in video game art. Download it and try it for yourself first (it's only 500KBytes). http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/
I came to this game skeptical about it, after having played Passage, from the same developer, a few months ago, ending it dumbfounded about how the game meant anything at all and completely unconvinced about it being any good. So I was ready to dismiss it and only started playing it for time killing purposes.
When you start playing Gravitation, you'll notice a timer relentlessly counting down. This obviously means the time you have left to live in the game. The screen is limited and you only see yourself and a fireplace. I moved around and saw a ball flying, and instinctively pressed SPACE to jump at it; I missed the ball. There was this little girl and I saw she had thrown me the ball. There wasn't anything else to see, so I reasoned I had to play with her to move the game forward. She threw me the ball again, and I jumped and grabbed it; it went back to her and a little heart appeared. My own heart warmed a little. I played with her some more and, suddenly, the music got wilder, the screen got bigger and I was on fire: I saw an exit where, before, only darkness existed, and when I jumped for it. I forgot the little girl and I flew through space; leapt from platform to platform collecting stars that seemed to get me more energy, and I leapt and leapt; until it all came crashing down. The screen got smaller and I got weaker. I had to go back down to the little girl, I reasoned, and play with her some more; she's useful to me. But when I came back, there were these blocks of ice blocking the way and I couldn't play with her. I pushed them, which wasn't easy, and they melted in the fireplace. For the effort, I lost a little life, but for the effort, I got to play with the girl. She was beginning to be more than just useful: I was beginning to get fond of her. But still, I wanted to see more, so when the music got crazy, I left her for the heights again. A routine started to emerge: I would go exploring, then I would get back, break some blocks of ice and play with the girl.
I thought it would last forever.
But, some time later, when I came back from my frenzy, she was gone; only her little ball remained. It struck something deep in me, a loss and lost kind of feeling. She was gone. While I was going on a manic spree, climbing platforms in search of achievements, I dismissed her. She was what kept me going through all this and I abandoned her. I thought I could just work a little harder to melt the ice and she would take me back, and love me. But no.
She was gone.
I still had 20 more seconds to live and plenty of energy to jump, but it seemed pointless to go on. I just stood there, looking at where she once was, regretting ever leaving her. After a while, I went to the fireplace in tears. The timer reached zero. My life faded. Gravitation.
All this in under 5 minutes. Notice that I kept saying "I", as if it happened to me. I think that's key to the reason I was completely immersed in the experience so quickly, and I think that's something no other art medium can do. You're not just seeing it, or reading it, or hearing it: you're living it.
And that is why Gravitation is the best game I've ever played.
Well, I wrote this on reddit.com (a likes-to-think-it's-classier-than-Fark-or-Digg-or-Slashdot-but-doesn't-even-come-near-Metafilter site), and have since came back to the game to play through it again.
The second time, I stayed playing with the girl. You feel energetic the whole time, but nothing else happens. Really cute and boring; I was expecting more from the girl.
The third time, I decided ignoring the girl. She didn't go away and cried all the time, and asides from alternating between manic and depressed, nothing happened. She
Violence in the media does not translate directly into violence in the real world. It has other, more subtle effects.
In other words, you won't kill someone if you play GTA, but you certainly don't end up a better person (I would love reading someone honestly, and reasonably, write that violent video games are good for you [make you happier, more satisfied, more complete, more empathetic, you know, good things -- no, entertained doesn't count], instead of just name dropping Jack Thompson and saying how games are not bad for you [yes, there's a difference]).
The kids are OK.
You're judging him based on "facts" taken from a blog article; can't you see the error in that?
And even if it was an article taken from a "serious" newspaper, it shouldn't be a surprise anymore these days that you can't really trust newspapers on any issue: just look at the horrible coverage they make of technological issues, for example; do you really think that it's any different for articles about economy, politics, or, as in this case, crime?
If you really want to try to find out the facts, do what every journalist does: investigate it yourself.
OK, so don't sell violent games to minors AND don't let them see violent tv. Sex is okay. Problem solved.
Cheap Drinking Water from the Ocean
Carbon nanotube-based membranes will dramatically cut the cost of desalination.
A water desalination system using carbon nanotube-based membranes could significantly reduce the cost of purifying water from the ocean. The technology could potentially provide a solution to water shortages both in the United States, where populations are expected to soar in areas with few freshwater sources, and worldwide, where a lack of clean water is a major cause of disease.
The new membranes, developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), could reduce the cost of desalination by 75 percent, compared to reverse osmosis methods used today, the researchers say. The membranes, which sort molecules by size and with electrostatic forces, could also separate various gases, perhaps leading to economical ways to capture carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.
The carbon nanotubes used by the researchers are sheets of carbon atoms rolled so tightly that only seven water molecules can fit across their diameter. Their small size makes them good candidates for separating molecules. And, despite their diminutive dimensions, these nanopores allow water to flow at the same rate as pores considerably larger, reducing the amount of pressure needed to force water through, and potentially saving energy and costs compared to reverse osmosis using conventional membranes.
Indeed, the LLNL team measures water flow rates up to 10,000 times faster than would be predicted by classical equations, which suggest that flow rates through a pore will slow to a crawl as the diameter drops. "It's something that is quite counter-intuitive," says LLNL chemical engineer Jason Holt, whose findings appeared in the 19 May issue of Science. "As you shrink the pore size, there is a huge enhancement in flow rate."
The surprising results might be due to the smooth interior of the nanotubes, or to physics at this small scale -- more research is needed to understand the mechanisms involved. "In some physical systems the underlying assumptions are not valid at these smaller length scales," says Rod Ruoff, a physical chemist and professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University (who was not involved with the work).
To make the membranes, the researchers started with a silicon wafer about the size of a quarter, coated with a metal nanoparticle catalyst for growing carbon nanotubes. Holt says the small particles allow the nanotubes to grow "like blades of grass -- vertically aligned and closely packed." Once grown, the gaps between the nanotubes are filled with a ceramic material, silicon nitride, which provides stability and helps the membrane adhere to the underlying silicon wafer. The field of nanotubes functions as an array of pores, allowing water and certain gases through, while keeping larger molecules and clusters of molecules at bay.
Holt estimates that these membranes could be brought to market within the next five to ten years. "The challenge is to scale up so we can produce usable amounts of these membrane materials for desalination, or gas separation, the other high-impact application for these membranes," he says, adding that the fabrication process is "inherently scalable."
Eventually, the membranes could be adapted for a variety of applications, ranging from pharmaceuticals to the food industry, where they could be used to separate sugars, for example, says co-author Olgica Bakajin, a physicist at LLNL. "Practically, the next step is figuring out how to take a general concept and modify it to a specific application," Bakajin says.
"There are many studies that one can imagine to build upon this study," says Northwestern's Ruoff. "Our understanding of molecular processes will be helped by experiments of this type. There are interesting possibilities for nanofluidic applications, such as in nanoelectromechanical systems and in 'smart' switching [on and off] of the flow through such small channels."
It isn't different. That's why we don't like it.
I'm going to put that on a bumpersticker.
As far as I'm concerned this film has some major challenges to face that are integral to remaining true to the book.
1. The characters age from 6yrs old to 12 yrs old. That's a HUGE swing. Them being children and developing are two important themes that need to remain.
Obviously, this being big budget, they're not going to be 6 to 12 year olds anymore. They're going to be the age of the target audience, for sure. I don't see the point of doing something like in Die Hard (or any other action movie since) where the main character is much older than the target audience (teenagers), but acts likes one (so they can identify with him).
If you want to see 6 year olds in your movies, go to Japan.
"I don't see why editing your bio, espcially to correct errors, would be such a terrible crime worthy of news."
Except he wasn't correcting any error, he was deleting embarassing information about his past as a softcore pornographer and also inserting himself as the only founder of Wikipedia.
He was rewritting history, like in 1984; this is only one example of how easy it is to do that with Wikipedia. That's what's worthy of The News.
"Firstly, Rogers appears to be running a GSM network [...]"
7 /rogers051217.html , the cloning happened in 1997, when Rogers was using analogue phones; here's the relevant quote:
But, according to http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/12/1
"Rogers admits its top executives were victims of a security breach, but that was back in 1997, when they used analogue phones."
If you're going to diss a journalist for lack of research, at least do some research yourself.
Then why are you typing this in Slashdot? Wikipedia allows users to comment how it should work, go there and copy+paste what you said here.
The Register/The Inquirer is just The Sun for geeks.
"But he cautions the data is based on only one pass over the region and could be caused by another material."
Of course that didn't stopped the Slashdot editors from giving the story the cocksure "Vast Subsurface Martian Ice Discovered" title.
Slashdot editors are lying bastards, news at 11:01 EST with Facel Vega as special guest (don't miss).
Yeah, right, like I'm gonna give my phone number to Google for them to give to advertisers (or for Google to keep, more likely, the bastards).
Google keeps getting scarier day by day...
"I don't see anything in TFA about coercion ... where did that part come from?"
From the Slashdot editors. They're lying bastards; you must be new here.
I even had to head to the archives to get this one: Lifelike Robot Repliee Q1 May Need Voight-Kampff Test. It even has the same reference to Blade Runner.
-1, you fail to realize that the claim is just more of the typical Slashdot yellow journalism.
1/455=~0,002
Which gives us a 99.99% chance of survival.
For more information, please read How to lie with statistics.
(I'll let someone else refute the rest of your nonsense...)
The SCI.SKEPTIC faq/Creationism
The Skeptical Creationism Website
And much more at: Google, You Fool!
Then you better explain that "science" is only a pragmatic, physical explanation of observed results -- it can make no claim to being "truth". Science is useful, since it's the best way of analyzing things. But it's entirely possible that a deity created the universe as it is such that science reports these results, and science is too small in scope to be able to refute that possibility.
You're talking about the possibility that one or more gods created the universe (most scientists are agnostic anyways), NOT about creationism, which is, and I quote dictionary.com, "[the] belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible."
Quite a difference.
(I'll let someone else refute the rest of your nonsense...)
There's very little really good liars, because the ones that are smart enough to be good at it, are smart enough to know when to tell the truth.
How can they tell the difference? They can't.
Prove to me that I can legally play HL2 five years from now.
I can't prove you anything, because I'm not Valve, but it stands to reason that, when the authentication servers are taken down, Valve will probably release some sort of patch to disable their piracy protection system.
Now all you need is some sort of statement from Valve confirming this...
That blob is neither China itself, nor Eastern Russia, nor the east side of a russian, but a graphical representation of NO2 pollution levels over a region of China. /grammar nazi, joke