Your post concerns me because of the far-reaching consequences it implies. What you are suggesting is that a corporation has more power than a government, and can indeed blackmail that government into giving it amnesty for any crime.
Whether or not I agree with this particular prosecution, the thought that Google would have the power to undermine the efforts of a government scares me. Even more frightening is that many Slashdotters here agree that your suggestion not only would work, but is also a reasonable course of action!
Have you not seen Star Trek: The Next Generation? Patrick Stuart's voiceover in the title credits had already changed it to "where no one has gone before" in 1987. Considering this game takes place 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (a Next Generation movie), it's fitting to use the Next Generation wording.
You'd better hope a system the government would use for something like RealID is secure, or a lot of "savvy" people will be stealing your identity, destroying your credit, emptying your bank account, or committing crimes in your name.
I'm not saying she did this, but I imagine any scientific study of such would have a set of code chunks such that 50% were written by men, and 50% by women, not by ratio of percentage of men programmers to women programmers. Of course, any comment that says "Written by Mary" would also have to be removed.
Capt. Picard: Data, I understand your objections. But I have to consider Star Fleet's interests. What if Commander Maddox is correct - there is a possibility that many more beings like yourself can be constructed? Lt. Commander Data: Sir, Lieutenant La Forge's eyes are far superior to human biological eyes, true? Capt. Picard: Mm-hmm. Lt. Commander Data: Then why are not all human officers required to have their eyes replaced with cybernetic implants? [Picard considers this, pauses, then looks away from Data] Lt. Commander Data: I see. It is precisely because I am *not* human.
Jesus was a Mage because he could make bread from his own being. Jesus was a Priest because he could cure any disease. Jesus was a Warrior because he took the pain for other's sins. Jesus was a Shaman because he could walk on water and self-ressurect.
But Jesus was definitely NOT a Paladin, because he didn't bubble-hearth away when the Romans were after him.
It's also written "Thou shall not kill", there is no exception for anything, whether it be "unless you are the leader of a country", "your kids are hungry", or "even if what you are killing is just a plant"...
It does say in the Christain interpretations "You shall not kill," but it also states: Note, although many translations use the word "kill", many historians equate this to "murder" - that is, the intentional and premeditated killing of individuals. War is not considered a breaking of this commandment by many Christians.
One of the programmers for Rock Star San Diego (the team that made table tennis) came and talked at my university about the technology behind the game. It was actually very interesting, and screenshots don't do it justice. There is beautiful cloth and hair simulation, sweat, high resolution normal mapping, global illumination, and more. On top of all that, this is all on the Xbox 360... all the engines you mentioned were developed for the PC. I highly doubt there are any good engines being sold for the Xbox 360 at this point, considering it came out so recently.
As for whether it's good for outdoors.. all those technologies apply equally well indoors and outdoors, except possibly the global illumination. It doesn't surprise me that the engine will be used for more games.
Do parents really think that their children won't find out that they can be tracked via their cellphone? That means that if they want to go do something without their parents finding out, then they will simply leave it at their friend's house who they are "staying overnight with" and go do what they want. Except now, they don't have the ability to use their cellphone to get help if they get into trouble - which is why they have it in the first place. It seems to be more detrimental than helpful.
Here is the fix, from the linked article in case you DNRTFA:
---- According to iDefense, Windows users can disable the rendering of WMF files using the following hack:
1. Click on the Start button on the taskbar. 2. Click on Run... 3. Type "regsvr32/u shimgvw.dll" to disable. 4. Click ok when the change dialog appears.
iDefense notes that this workaround may interfere with certain thumbnail images loading correctly, though I have used the hack on my machine and haven't had any problems yet. The company notes that once Microsoft issues a patch, the WMF feature may be enabled again by entering the command "regsvr32 shimgvw.dll" in step three above. ----
I'm not sure if you need to type this every reboot, or just once. Since it requires re-enabling, I'm hoping it's just once.
At the same velocity, two bullets of the same size/shape have the same drag on them due to air regardless of mass. Drag increases by the square of the velocity.
No matter what the mass of the bullet, the gun is going to impart the same force onto it. As you stated, a = f/m and so the lighter bullet will end up experiencing more drag than a heavier bullet (due to drag increasing as v^2).
However, E = mv^2 / 2, and a heavier bullet will gain less velocity in general and so less energy.
It's basically a balance between the drag equation and the energy equation. For a given force of a gun, shape of a bullet, and distance of the target, you could probably calculate the exact desired mass of the bullet for the biggest impact. Speaking of impact, the density of the bullet would also change impact time, which could change the behavior of the bullet as well (less impact time = more damage). It's an interesting problem, but I'm sure it's been solved already by smarter people than I:)
You're most likely correct in that it's an aggregate under ideal traffic conditions. It would probably act similarly to generators powered by wind, or to a bike, where a turbine continues to spin after you've stopped pedalling.
So, a car rolls over the ramp, causing the turbine to start spinning, and then it slowly winds down, generating power as it slows. When the next car rolls over it, it spins up some more. The faster it is spinning, the more power is generated.
The power could easily fluctuate between 0kW and 50kW depending on traffic, but unfortunately I don't think the weight of the car has anything to do with it, so a 2 door coupe would generate as much power as an 18-wheeler (well, I guess an 18 wheeler would roll over it more times and so would generate more power that way).
The only soluton to this I can think of is if they created some kind of weight sensor (before the vehicle rolls over the bump) and had a quick gear system, they could get more energy from heavier vehicles. With an efficient system, they might get a good percentage of the potential energy stored in the vehicle. However, I doubt such a system is plausible. It's most likely a constant amount of energy no matter the weight of the vehicle, and the rest is simply lost.
Watching movies on the iPod or cellphone are nice in many situations. How many times have you been bored sitting around somewhere for hours with nothing to do? You might decide to quell the boredom by bringing along a book or an mp3 player, etc... but now you can, if you want to, bring along your video iPod or even just your cellphone and watch a movie.
As for watching movies on your computer - well, most video cards these days come with svideo out (including laptop video cards). I'm sure your big screen hi-def tv has svideo in. You do the math.
You forgot the service that Napster (as well as some others, like Yahoo) provide, which is funny because the article is about Napster.
Pay a flat price per month (ranges from $5-$15 depending on the service and what they offer), and you can download and listen to as much music as you want. The higher cost services even allow you to put all the music on your mp3 player (as long as it supports DRM'd WMVs).
You can't burn to CD unless you pay $.99 per song, and a low percentage of music is buy-only, but for the most part it's a pretty good deal. If only Napster would increase their selection of soundtracks and rare (less popular) music.
According to this Wikipedia article: Taikonaut is sometimes used in English for astronauts from China by Western news media. The term was coined in May 1998 by Chiew Lee Yih from Malaysia, who used it first in newsgroups. Almost simultaneously, Chen Lan coined it for use in the Western media based on the term tàikng (), Chinese for space. In Chinese itself, however, a single term yháng yuán (, "universe navigator") has long been used for astronauts and cosmonauts. The closest term using taikong is a colloquialism tàikng rén (, "space human") which refers to people who have actually been in space. Official English text issued by the Chinese government uses astronaut.
So I suppose astronaut would be as good a term as any.
I'd just roll over and pull the sheets over my head. There's no way this would wake me up. I frequently sleep through the real sun shining right into my (closed) eyes. I also sleep perfectly well with the light on.
When I wake up, I generally have no idea who I am, where I am, what I'm supposed to be doing... I sometimes have the feeling that if I could just get out of bed, things would become more clear, but I can't remember how to do that. I've slept through about anything you can think of, including fire alarms and earthquakes.
As for naturally waking up with the sun rise, I think my wires are crossed. I generally start getting tired at sunrise, and wake up at sunset.
My internal clock also likes to play pranks on me. Like if I have something really, really important and I have to be there at 10:00, then I'll sleep through my many alarms and wake up naturally at 10:00 sharp. Except it takes me 30 minutes to actually get there. Gee, thanks internal clock.
I also can't use any method of tricking myself. I just can't do it. I'm much more witty at finding excuses to stay in bed than I am at tricking myself out of bed. On top of that, if I sleep naturally I frequently sleep for 16 hours straight. I don't even wake up to pee - I manage to hold it in somehow.
I've seriously run out of options, short of hiring someone to come into my room, drag me out of bed, and stick me into a tub of freezing water. Even then, I'd probably manage to fall asleep in the tub of water.
I don't think you really thought this through. Who, exactly, makes the value judgement for who is more "worthy" of life than others? Since you've already Godwined this thread, I might as well mention the Nazis - remember that they had all kinds of propoganda that claimed scientists had proven that Jews and Blacks were inferior to the Arian race.
I am, however, not comparing you to a Nazi. There were many other social pressures and reasons that the Holocaust happened, and many do not apply to what you're saying.
You did say, however, that you would prefer that 1900 "retards" die rather than 100 "normal" people, if you could choose (I'm taking these numbers since you said that it wasn't until the ratio was 20:1 that you'd start to reconsider, which seems to be an odd ratio - would you prefer 1.9 billion "retards" over 100 million "normal" people?). What's your definition of a "retard" and what's your definition of a "normal" person? Do we use "scientific" analysis to figure this out? Intuition? Maybe if we just don't like the way the person acts? Would an "idiot savant" be considered retarded? How about someone who's depressed? A crippled person in a wheelchair, a blind person, deaf, dumb? Someone with a terminal disease? What about a 5 year old child who seems to be "retarded" but later in life it turns out to be a late bloomer? How long do we wait before deciding that someone is retarded? Do we pull the plug on someone who's in a coma? How long do they have to be in it before we decide to kill them? 1 year? 10 years? 50 years? I could go on and on about this, but I think I've shown my point.
I mean, really, there's nothing rational at all about your argument if you think about it without such a closed-minded agenda of being anti-PC.
After submitting I realized I wasn't really continuing the conversation, but I wanted to see your response before getting back on track.
It seems, to me, that drivers licenses aren't a very effective means of tracking people. First of all, they aren't required, second of all, each state has different requirements and laws related to it, and, finally, most people are already registered with an SSN, they're registered to vote, they have credit cards, bank accounts, and even if none of that is true - they order pizza. In fact, to even get a license you have to already have 2 forms of identification that the government already tracks you by.
Yes, drivers licenses can be used to track people, however I don't believe that that was the "true" intent of the law. Cars, trucks, etc are very dangerous weapons in the hands of someone who's incompetant at using them. They can cause the deaths of many people, as well as property damage. For something less extreme, one person who doesn't understand traffic laws can cause backups and confusion on the road - now imagine if everyone was like this.
Getting a license is pretty easy for a "normal" person who's over the required age, however it does guarantee a few things: 1) you have the mental capicity necessary to drive 2) you have the physical ability to drive, including good enough eyesight to read the signs, 3) you know the relavent traffic laws 4) you have had the necessary practice with an already licensed adult in the car so you can gain good driving habits.
It would be impossible for the police to ensure this in real-time on the road, so it's much more effective to require you to get a license.
On top of that, the state isn't about to give licenses to people who are not allowed to be in the country, though California even dabbled with that for a bit.
It matters when you get into an accident. Even if it would have been considered your fault, if the other driver was driving illegally (unlicensed, no insurance, not registered, whatever) then it's automatically his or her fault.
No one is a perfect driver - everyone gets pulled over at least once in their driving career, most likely for speeding or going through a red light/stop sign. If you're unlicensed when that happens, get ready to use your argument of "my car still starts without a license" and see what the response is.
In California, to get a driver's license all you need is 1 item that has your proof of birthdate and legal presence in the US (such as your birth certificate) and proof that you have a Social Security Number (SSN card works) or that you are legally present in the US, but inelligable for an SSN. I don't see this as unreasonable at all, since there is an age requirement to drive, as well as that you have to be a legal resident of the US to get a US driver's license.
More info at: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/dl/dl_info.htm#SSN
Slashdot Mirror
Your post concerns me because of the far-reaching consequences it implies. What you are suggesting is that a corporation has more power than a government, and can indeed blackmail that government into giving it amnesty for any crime.
Whether or not I agree with this particular prosecution, the thought that Google would have the power to undermine the efforts of a government scares me. Even more frightening is that many Slashdotters here agree that your suggestion not only would work, but is also a reasonable course of action!
Have you not seen Star Trek: The Next Generation? Patrick Stuart's voiceover in the title credits had already changed it to "where no one has gone before" in 1987. Considering this game takes place 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (a Next Generation movie), it's fitting to use the Next Generation wording.
You'd better hope a system the government would use for something like RealID is secure, or a lot of "savvy" people will be stealing your identity, destroying your credit, emptying your bank account, or committing crimes in your name.
I'm not saying she did this, but I imagine any scientific study of such would have a set of code chunks such that 50% were written by men, and 50% by women, not by ratio of percentage of men programmers to women programmers. Of course, any comment that says "Written by Mary" would also have to be removed.
This reminds me of the Star Trek: TNG episode, "The Measure of a Man"
Quote taken from: http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0001459/quotes
Capt. Picard: Data, I understand your objections. But I have to consider Star Fleet's interests. What if Commander Maddox is correct - there is a possibility that many more beings like yourself can be constructed?
Lt. Commander Data: Sir, Lieutenant La Forge's eyes are far superior to human biological eyes, true?
Capt. Picard: Mm-hmm.
Lt. Commander Data: Then why are not all human officers required to have their eyes replaced with cybernetic implants?
[Picard considers this, pauses, then looks away from Data]
Lt. Commander Data: I see. It is precisely because I am *not* human.
Jesus was a Mage because he could make bread from his own being.
Jesus was a Priest because he could cure any disease.
Jesus was a Warrior because he took the pain for other's sins.
Jesus was a Shaman because he could walk on water and self-ressurect.
But Jesus was definitely NOT a Paladin, because he didn't bubble-hearth away when the Romans were after him.
It's also written "Thou shall not kill", there is no exception for anything, whether it be "unless you are the leader of a country", "your kids are hungry", or "even if what you are killing is just a plant"...
d itional_division_and_interpretation
What do you eat?
The actual translation from the Hebrew is more like "Thou shalt not murder," which has a very different connotation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_commandments#Tra
It does say in the Christain interpretations "You shall not kill," but it also states:
Note, although many translations use the word "kill", many historians equate this to "murder" - that is, the intentional and premeditated killing of individuals. War is not considered a breaking of this commandment by many Christians.
It's called pulling the plug out of the wall socket.
One of the programmers for Rock Star San Diego (the team that made table tennis) came and talked at my university about the technology behind the game. It was actually very interesting, and screenshots don't do it justice. There is beautiful cloth and hair simulation, sweat, high resolution normal mapping, global illumination, and more. On top of all that, this is all on the Xbox 360... all the engines you mentioned were developed for the PC. I highly doubt there are any good engines being sold for the Xbox 360 at this point, considering it came out so recently.
As for whether it's good for outdoors.. all those technologies apply equally well indoors and outdoors, except possibly the global illumination. It doesn't surprise me that the engine will be used for more games.
Do parents really think that their children won't find out that they can be tracked via their cellphone? That means that if they want to go do something without their parents finding out, then they will simply leave it at their friend's house who they are "staying overnight with" and go do what they want. Except now, they don't have the ability to use their cellphone to get help if they get into trouble - which is why they have it in the first place. It seems to be more detrimental than helpful.
Here is the fix, from the linked article in case you DNRTFA:
/u shimgvw.dll" to disable.
----
According to iDefense, Windows users can disable the rendering of WMF files using the following hack:
1. Click on the Start button on the taskbar.
2. Click on Run...
3. Type "regsvr32
4. Click ok when the change dialog appears.
iDefense notes that this workaround may interfere with certain thumbnail images loading correctly, though I have used the hack on my machine and haven't had any problems yet. The company notes that once Microsoft issues a patch, the WMF feature may be enabled again by entering the command "regsvr32 shimgvw.dll" in step three above.
----
I'm not sure if you need to type this every reboot, or just once. Since it requires re-enabling, I'm hoping it's just once.
Wow, you're definitely right. Thanks for pointing that out for me. I knew I was missing something :)
I could be wrong, but here are my thoughts.
:)
At the same velocity, two bullets of the same size/shape have the same drag on them due to air regardless of mass. Drag increases by the square of the velocity.
No matter what the mass of the bullet, the gun is going to impart the same force onto it. As you stated, a = f/m and so the lighter bullet will end up experiencing more drag than a heavier bullet (due to drag increasing as v^2).
However, E = mv^2 / 2, and a heavier bullet will gain less velocity in general and so less energy.
It's basically a balance between the drag equation and the energy equation. For a given force of a gun, shape of a bullet, and distance of the target, you could probably calculate the exact desired mass of the bullet for the biggest impact. Speaking of impact, the density of the bullet would also change impact time, which could change the behavior of the bullet as well (less impact time = more damage). It's an interesting problem, but I'm sure it's been solved already by smarter people than I
You're most likely correct in that it's an aggregate under ideal traffic conditions. It would probably act similarly to generators powered by wind, or to a bike, where a turbine continues to spin after you've stopped pedalling.
So, a car rolls over the ramp, causing the turbine to start spinning, and then it slowly winds down, generating power as it slows. When the next car rolls over it, it spins up some more. The faster it is spinning, the more power is generated.
The power could easily fluctuate between 0kW and 50kW depending on traffic, but unfortunately I don't think the weight of the car has anything to do with it, so a 2 door coupe would generate as much power as an 18-wheeler (well, I guess an 18 wheeler would roll over it more times and so would generate more power that way).
The only soluton to this I can think of is if they created some kind of weight sensor (before the vehicle rolls over the bump) and had a quick gear system, they could get more energy from heavier vehicles. With an efficient system, they might get a good percentage of the potential energy stored in the vehicle. However, I doubt such a system is plausible. It's most likely a constant amount of energy no matter the weight of the vehicle, and the rest is simply lost.
Watching movies on the iPod or cellphone are nice in many situations. How many times have you been bored sitting around somewhere for hours with nothing to do? You might decide to quell the boredom by bringing along a book or an mp3 player, etc... but now you can, if you want to, bring along your video iPod or even just your cellphone and watch a movie.
As for watching movies on your computer - well, most video cards these days come with svideo out (including laptop video cards). I'm sure your big screen hi-def tv has svideo in. You do the math.
You forgot the service that Napster (as well as some others, like Yahoo) provide, which is funny because the article is about Napster.
Pay a flat price per month (ranges from $5-$15 depending on the service and what they offer), and you can download and listen to as much music as you want. The higher cost services even allow you to put all the music on your mp3 player (as long as it supports DRM'd WMVs).
You can't burn to CD unless you pay $.99 per song, and a low percentage of music is buy-only, but for the most part it's a pretty good deal. If only Napster would increase their selection of soundtracks and rare (less popular) music.
All the objects are lying on the table, and the picture is from overhead.
According to this Wikipedia article:
Taikonaut is sometimes used in English for astronauts from China by Western news media. The term was coined in May 1998 by Chiew Lee Yih from Malaysia, who used it first in newsgroups. Almost simultaneously, Chen Lan coined it for use in the Western media based on the term tàikng (), Chinese for space. In Chinese itself, however, a single term yháng yuán (, "universe navigator") has long been used for astronauts and cosmonauts. The closest term using taikong is a colloquialism tàikng rén (, "space human") which refers to people who have actually been in space. Official English text issued by the Chinese government uses astronaut.
So I suppose astronaut would be as good a term as any.
I'd just roll over and pull the sheets over my head. There's no way this would wake me up. I frequently sleep through the real sun shining right into my (closed) eyes. I also sleep perfectly well with the light on.
When I wake up, I generally have no idea who I am, where I am, what I'm supposed to be doing... I sometimes have the feeling that if I could just get out of bed, things would become more clear, but I can't remember how to do that. I've slept through about anything you can think of, including fire alarms and earthquakes.
As for naturally waking up with the sun rise, I think my wires are crossed. I generally start getting tired at sunrise, and wake up at sunset.
My internal clock also likes to play pranks on me. Like if I have something really, really important and I have to be there at 10:00, then I'll sleep through my many alarms and wake up naturally at 10:00 sharp. Except it takes me 30 minutes to actually get there. Gee, thanks internal clock.
I also can't use any method of tricking myself. I just can't do it. I'm much more witty at finding excuses to stay in bed than I am at tricking myself out of bed. On top of that, if I sleep naturally I frequently sleep for 16 hours straight. I don't even wake up to pee - I manage to hold it in somehow.
I've seriously run out of options, short of hiring someone to come into my room, drag me out of bed, and stick me into a tub of freezing water. Even then, I'd probably manage to fall asleep in the tub of water.
I don't think you really thought this through. Who, exactly, makes the value judgement for who is more "worthy" of life than others? Since you've already Godwined this thread, I might as well mention the Nazis - remember that they had all kinds of propoganda that claimed scientists had proven that Jews and Blacks were inferior to the Arian race.
I am, however, not comparing you to a Nazi. There were many other social pressures and reasons that the Holocaust happened, and many do not apply to what you're saying.
You did say, however, that you would prefer that 1900 "retards" die rather than 100 "normal" people, if you could choose (I'm taking these numbers since you said that it wasn't until the ratio was 20:1 that you'd start to reconsider, which seems to be an odd ratio - would you prefer 1.9 billion "retards" over 100 million "normal" people?). What's your definition of a "retard" and what's your definition of a "normal" person? Do we use "scientific" analysis to figure this out? Intuition? Maybe if we just don't like the way the person acts? Would an "idiot savant" be considered retarded? How about someone who's depressed? A crippled person in a wheelchair, a blind person, deaf, dumb? Someone with a terminal disease? What about a 5 year old child who seems to be "retarded" but later in life it turns out to be a late bloomer? How long do we wait before deciding that someone is retarded? Do we pull the plug on someone who's in a coma? How long do they have to be in it before we decide to kill them? 1 year? 10 years? 50 years? I could go on and on about this, but I think I've shown my point.
I mean, really, there's nothing rational at all about your argument if you think about it without such a closed-minded agenda of being anti-PC.
After submitting I realized I wasn't really continuing the conversation, but I wanted to see your response before getting back on track.
It seems, to me, that drivers licenses aren't a very effective means of tracking people. First of all, they aren't required, second of all, each state has different requirements and laws related to it, and, finally, most people are already registered with an SSN, they're registered to vote, they have credit cards, bank accounts, and even if none of that is true - they order pizza. In fact, to even get a license you have to already have 2 forms of identification that the government already tracks you by.
Yes, drivers licenses can be used to track people, however I don't believe that that was the "true" intent of the law. Cars, trucks, etc are very dangerous weapons in the hands of someone who's incompetant at using them. They can cause the deaths of many people, as well as property damage. For something less extreme, one person who doesn't understand traffic laws can cause backups and confusion on the road - now imagine if everyone was like this.
Getting a license is pretty easy for a "normal" person who's over the required age, however it does guarantee a few things:
1) you have the mental capicity necessary to drive
2) you have the physical ability to drive, including good enough eyesight to read the signs,
3) you know the relavent traffic laws
4) you have had the necessary practice with an already licensed adult in the car so you can gain good driving habits.
It would be impossible for the police to ensure this in real-time on the road, so it's much more effective to require you to get a license.
On top of that, the state isn't about to give licenses to people who are not allowed to be in the country, though California even dabbled with that for a bit.
It matters when you get into an accident. Even if it would have been considered your fault, if the other driver was driving illegally (unlicensed, no insurance, not registered, whatever) then it's automatically his or her fault.
No one is a perfect driver - everyone gets pulled over at least once in their driving career, most likely for speeding or going through a red light/stop sign. If you're unlicensed when that happens, get ready to use your argument of "my car still starts without a license" and see what the response is.
You don't. Unless you want to drive. If you just want it for ID, then you can get an ID card from the state.
In California, to get a driver's license all you need is 1 item that has your proof of birthdate and legal presence in the US (such as your birth certificate) and proof that you have a Social Security Number (SSN card works) or that you are legally present in the US, but inelligable for an SSN. I don't see this as unreasonable at all, since there is an age requirement to drive, as well as that you have to be a legal resident of the US to get a US driver's license.
More info at:
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/dl/dl_info.htm#SSN
Considering the parent poster used the word "crap" in his post, I'm not sure he considers that "bad language."