Now, how do we get people to add these 'upgrades'? Oh, simple... charge them $39.95 for the next 'version'.
Since this is in the online version, these will presumably be part of a world which is downloaded from the game server... and therefore easily changable. Quoting from the article (you did read it, right? oops):
[EA spokesman Jeff Brown] also said more product placement deals were likely to be announced before the game's launch, and that its online nature makes it easy for further products to be inserted later.
I can imagine this being like stadium names, where companies sign contracts for their product to be part of the online Sim universe for N months. That would make it a nice continual stream of income for EA, and the products that are in the universe are always contemperary. No extra money from the user necessary - which is probably a selling point for the companies paying for the advertising.
But I think the point I was trying to make is that, to a small degree, it displaces the actual purchase of music. If someone "might" have purchased something, they may be more content to do without if they have an electronic copy.
(preface: never take a personal testimonial as signifying any trend)
For me, it's exactly the opposite. I will not purchase a CD that I haven't heard at least 2-3 tracks of - usually from downloading mp3s (since the sort of music I most often buy is rare to non-existent on the radio). So it in no way displaces an actual purchase for me - it's a necessary step in the decision to purchase.
On another note, I agree wholeheartedly that looking at the continuum of music-buying and downloading behaviour is important. The best way of finding the true trends is to not bias yourself to only look at differences between preconceived classes.
The important thing to realize is that you're measuring the spectrum integrated over the entire surface of the star WEIGHTED BY THE FLUX (read: brightness) AT THAT PART OF THE SURFACE.
The star is rotating, so part of the star is moving away from us and is red-shifted, while part is moving toward us and is blue-shifted. If the surface were all radiating at the same level, then we'd always see part of the spectrum blue-shifted and part red-shifted.
Now stick a big starspot on. The starspot is fainter than the rest of the star. When the starspot is on the approaching side of the star, there is less blue-shifted light and so the net spectrum appears slightly red-shifted. Half a period later, the starspot is on the receding side of the star so there is less red-shifted light, and the net spectrum appears slightly blue-shifted.
The end result is a spectrum that systematically shifts back and forth, very similar to that of a star with an orbiting planet.
To anyone interested in a very good discussion about the Fermi paradox, I recommend Nick Bostrom's essay on it. I'm not much of a fan of transhumanism, but I think it's an excellent essay on the details and hidden assumptions involved.
I'm also only using Windows for audio production, but unfortunately software isn't the only problem - at least for me, my audio board has no drivers and isn't likely to ever. Which is unfortunate.
Do you have examples of important, computation-intensive problems for which the recursive formulation is far better than an iterative formulation?
N-body tree codes leap to mind... admittedly, because that's what I do, but the idea of trying to implement one in FORTRAN would give me nightmares for years.
Many machines ONLY provide data on 3.5" floppies (e.g., some synthesizers and lab data recorders); if you want to get their data, you need a floppy.
This is the big one for me. If the only machines I had with floppy drives were my computers, I could imagine doing without them. But synthesizers and samplers also rely on floppy drives to get data in and out.
Now if we would all set up our satellite dishes to point in the same direction, link them through the internet and call it Broadband Integrated Network Of Common Use Large Array Radio Scopes.
A little less silly, but you might be amused to know that the Large Binocular Telescope is currently under construction.
So you do have a picture of the poster! If you look in my office, the list of email addresses of people who wanted copies might still be there... probably in the short gray shelf to the left of my desk. Feel free to forward it onto them if you find it...
I would have thought that a bigger space based telescope would be better.
One is being planned. However, there's absolutely no way you're going to put a mirror that big in space. So if you care more about number of photons and less about resolution (for example, if you're taking spectra of distant point sources like quasars or planets), it's better (and cheaper!) to do it from the ground.
SmartFilter is sold as "business productivity software"... ie. to keep your employees doing work rather than surfing the net all day. If your business doesn't involve art, someone visiting an art site is most likely not working.
I did that earlier today. Here's the response I just got:
Thank you for your interest in sharing your music on the Audiogalaxy
website. Unfortunately we do not have the resources at this time to
verify copyright ownership of song files with 100% certainty. We hope to
have a system in place in the near future.
Or maybe more of the advertising becomes within-show and sponsorship-related. No ad-zappers will zap out the logo on the can of pop the actor is drinking. Or the title of the show.
Some are good - the industrial AC/DC tribute, uh... "Covered In Black" is real good, particularly Razed In Black's cover of "Hell's Bells" - but some are crap.
I've liked every single Razed In Black cover I've ever heard... if only Romell could write music as well as he performs it!
As for Cleopatra... they used to be great, but lately they seem to have fallen into the tribute rut and seem to be making enough money off that that they don't spend much time/effort on finding new talent. Which is too bad...
- It is possible to both like NIN and like more traditional industrial. Trent's a great musician.
- A good fraction of what Metropolis puts out these days is just re-licensed from Bloodline and a couple other European labels... which isn't to say that it isn't good, but they're not doing as much at advancing the scene as the labels that are really discovering the bands.
Anyway, if people are interested in good industrial and goth, a few other recommendations (in addition to the many good bands Phexro mentions):
- Nitzer Ebb
- The Crüxshadows
- Rosetta Stone
- Endanger
- Covenant
- Recoil
- OMNIbOX
- And One
- Einstürzende Neubauten
- Collide
- Flesh Field
- Battery
- Seabound
Could go on for a while more, but that should give you a good start.:-)=
The nice thing about Nature is that the articles are generally readable by any scientist, no matter what field. It's certainly much more academic than Scientific American, but it doesn't require being as much of a specialist in the field as the individual discipline journals do.
No, it hasn't been shifted at all... but UGC 10214 is only at redshift 0.03, so its colours appear more or less normal. Since all of the other galaxies are in the background (with the possible exception of the two dwarf spheroidals just below UGC 10214, and the other large spiral near the bottom-left of the image), they all are at higher redshift.
Ah yes... my all-time favourite crank website.:-)= It has the rare combination of both being completely and utterly off its rocker, and yet being in coherent grammatical English! Generally the craziest ones are also incomprehensible.
For a great list of crackpot websites, take a look at crank.net.
I think more of that is the fault of the journalists than the scientists, though a lot of scientists are quite guilty of it too.
The problem, of course, is that scientists tend to see the question "what is it good for, practically?" as an assault on all scientific research funding, and so the question puts them in paranoid mode where they want to make it sound as applicable to ordinary life as possible. Who's going to fund the scientist who's quoted saying "There's no obvious practical benefit to random people's lives that I've discovered -----"?
Which is ironic, considering that the degree to which a scientific discovery captures the imagination of the public seems to be independent of whether or not it has practical applications. Some do (eg. artificial intelligence) and some don't (eg. black holes).
And then there's the journalist (or more likely, editor) selection effect, that the more sensational the story seems, the more likely it is to be printed.
So while that's an essential goal, I'm not sure how you go about doing it in practice, aside from making sure that you personally don't get carried away in any public statements you make.
(on a more surreal note, that's the second time in the past 12 months I've seen someone mention science paparazzi...)
I have not been able to read the site as it's down but looking at the images I'd guess that not much has been done other than to "unshift" where needed because of doppler.
No, there has been no "unshifting". Of the background galaxies that are red, some are red because they have intrinsically red colours, and some are red because they are red-shifted due to the expansion of the universe. In fact, there's a gorgeous group just to the left of the Tadpole that (at least using photo-z-by-eye) are all at the same redshift.
Heck, some of the folks at Arizona briefly had a telescope with a deformable primary running, just to prove the concept. ('course, it had a two centimeter aperture - I never said it was a *big* primary.;-)
Yeah, that was fun to see... of course, they had to strap it to the side of the 21" teaching telescope for pointing.:-)=
Slashdot Mirror
The one piece of hope I have that Lucas might actually do it is that it would finally explain why he filmed Episode IV first...
However I don't agree that it resolves everything... in particular, it doesn't explain why Yoda tells Luke about Leia.
[TMB]
Since this is in the online version, these will presumably be part of a world which is downloaded from the game server... and therefore easily changable. Quoting from the article (you did read it, right? oops):
I can imagine this being like stadium names, where companies sign contracts for their product to be part of the online Sim universe for N months. That would make it a nice continual stream of income for EA, and the products that are in the universe are always contemperary. No extra money from the user necessary - which is probably a selling point for the companies paying for the advertising.
[TMB]
(preface: never take a personal testimonial as signifying any trend)
For me, it's exactly the opposite. I will not purchase a CD that I haven't heard at least 2-3 tracks of - usually from downloading mp3s (since the sort of music I most often buy is rare to non-existent on the radio). So it in no way displaces an actual purchase for me - it's a necessary step in the decision to purchase.
On another note, I agree wholeheartedly that looking at the continuum of music-buying and downloading behaviour is important. The best way of finding the true trends is to not bias yourself to only look at differences between preconceived classes.
[TMB]
(preface: yes, I Am An Astronomer)
The important thing to realize is that you're measuring the spectrum integrated over the entire surface of the star WEIGHTED BY THE FLUX (read: brightness) AT THAT PART OF THE SURFACE.
The star is rotating, so part of the star is moving away from us and is red-shifted, while part is moving toward us and is blue-shifted. If the surface were all radiating at the same level, then we'd always see part of the spectrum blue-shifted and part red-shifted.
Now stick a big starspot on. The starspot is fainter than the rest of the star. When the starspot is on the approaching side of the star, there is less blue-shifted light and so the net spectrum appears slightly red-shifted. Half a period later, the starspot is on the receding side of the star so there is less red-shifted light, and the net spectrum appears slightly blue-shifted.
The end result is a spectrum that systematically shifts back and forth, very similar to that of a star with an orbiting planet.
[TMB]
To anyone interested in a very good discussion about the Fermi paradox, I recommend Nick Bostrom's essay on it. I'm not much of a fan of transhumanism, but I think it's an excellent essay on the details and hidden assumptions involved.
[TMB]
I'm also only using Windows for audio production, but unfortunately software isn't the only problem - at least for me, my audio board has no drivers and isn't likely to ever. Which is unfortunate.
[TMB]
N-body tree codes leap to mind... admittedly, because that's what I do, but the idea of trying to implement one in FORTRAN would give me nightmares for years.
[TMB]
This is the big one for me. If the only machines I had with floppy drives were my computers, I could imagine doing without them. But synthesizers and samplers also rely on floppy drives to get data in and out.
[TMB]
Admittedly, she was best known back in the 70s (At Seventeen is probably her best known song), but she's certainly not unknown...
[TMB]
A little less silly, but you might be amused to know that the Large Binocular Telescope is currently under construction.
[TMB]
Hi Craig! :-)=
So you do have a picture of the poster! If you look in my office, the list of email addresses of people who wanted copies might still be there... probably in the short gray shelf to the left of my desk. Feel free to forward it onto them if you find it...
[TMB] (Jer)
Er... that didn't come out quite right. Let's try again: "if you're taking spectra of faint point sources like planets or distant quasars". :-)=
[TMB]
One is being planned. However, there's absolutely no way you're going to put a mirror that big in space. So if you care more about number of photons and less about resolution (for example, if you're taking spectra of distant point sources like quasars or planets), it's better (and cheaper!) to do it from the ground.
[TMB]
For those interested in true volumetric displays, this is a nice overview of the current state.
[TMB]
SmartFilter is sold as "business productivity software"... ie. to keep your employees doing work rather than surfing the net all day. If your business doesn't involve art, someone visiting an art site is most likely not working.
[TMB]
I did that earlier today. Here's the response I just got:
[TMB]
Or maybe more of the advertising becomes within-show and sponsorship-related. No ad-zappers will zap out the logo on the can of pop the actor is drinking. Or the title of the show.
[TMB]
I've liked every single Razed In Black cover I've ever heard... if only Romell could write music as well as he performs it!
As for Cleopatra... they used to be great, but lately they seem to have fallen into the tribute rut and seem to be making enough money off that that they don't spend much time/effort on finding new talent. Which is too bad...
[TMB]
A couple of points...
:-)=
- It is possible to both like NIN and like more traditional industrial. Trent's a great musician.
- A good fraction of what Metropolis puts out these days is just re-licensed from Bloodline and a couple other European labels... which isn't to say that it isn't good, but they're not doing as much at advancing the scene as the labels that are really discovering the bands.
Anyway, if people are interested in good industrial and goth, a few other recommendations (in addition to the many good bands Phexro mentions):
- Nitzer Ebb
- The Crüxshadows
- Rosetta Stone
- Endanger
- Covenant
- Recoil
- OMNIbOX
- And One
- Einstürzende Neubauten
- Collide
- Flesh Field
- Battery
- Seabound
Could go on for a while more, but that should give you a good start.
[TMB]
The nice thing about Nature is that the articles are generally readable by any scientist, no matter what field. It's certainly much more academic than Scientific American, but it doesn't require being as much of a specialist in the field as the individual discipline journals do.
[TMB]
No, it hasn't been shifted at all... but UGC 10214 is only at redshift 0.03, so its colours appear more or less normal. Since all of the other galaxies are in the background (with the possible exception of the two dwarf spheroidals just below UGC 10214, and the other large spiral near the bottom-left of the image), they all are at higher redshift.
[TMB]
Ah yes... my all-time favourite crank website. :-)= It has the rare combination of both being completely and utterly off its rocker, and yet being in coherent grammatical English! Generally the craziest ones are also incomprehensible.
For a great list of crackpot websites, take a look at crank.net.
[TMB]
I think more of that is the fault of the journalists than the scientists, though a lot of scientists are quite guilty of it too.
The problem, of course, is that scientists tend to see the question "what is it good for, practically?" as an assault on all scientific research funding, and so the question puts them in paranoid mode where they want to make it sound as applicable to ordinary life as possible. Who's going to fund the scientist who's quoted saying "There's no obvious practical benefit to random people's lives that I've discovered -----"?
Which is ironic, considering that the degree to which a scientific discovery captures the imagination of the public seems to be independent of whether or not it has practical applications. Some do (eg. artificial intelligence) and some don't (eg. black holes).
And then there's the journalist (or more likely, editor) selection effect, that the more sensational the story seems, the more likely it is to be printed.
So while that's an essential goal, I'm not sure how you go about doing it in practice, aside from making sure that you personally don't get carried away in any public statements you make.
(on a more surreal note, that's the second time in the past 12 months I've seen someone mention science paparazzi...)
[TMB]
No, there has been no "unshifting". Of the background galaxies that are red, some are red because they have intrinsically red colours, and some are red because they are red-shifted due to the expansion of the universe. In fact, there's a gorgeous group just to the left of the Tadpole that (at least using photo-z-by-eye) are all at the same redshift.
[TMB]
Yep.
Yeah, that was fun to see... of course, they had to strap it to the side of the 21" teaching telescope for pointing. :-)=
[TMB]