"Perhaps Lucas has forgotten that he's in the marketplace -- where democracy indeed rules, and the cash register is the ballot box."
Have you been to the cinema lately or watched any TV? The voting public is not terribly critical, which is why crap keeps selling. The public is buying it.
Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90 percent of anything is crap.
This thing is going to piss off every elephant in the neighborhood! On top of that, Nissan will have to start worrying about ruptured birds crashing into their cars. "We don't understand it! Whales have been beaching themselves all over the lot!"
Meanwhile PLENTY of errors have been made by people (admittedly with weak math skills) incorrectly adding fractions. I've seen decimal inch rulers; why couldn't that be the norm? But no, wacky fractions like 7/54 are so much more fun. In an effort to avoid metric I'm surprised no one has suggested binary rulers. Water freezes at 32F and boils at 212F -- who came up with that?
In Frederik Pohl's MAN PLUS astronaut Roger Torroway "volunteers" to become a cyborg for a one-way mission to Mars. Since supporting a man on Mars would be so cost prohibitive, they decided to send as little "man" as possible. It's a fascinating read for the human aspects of Torroway becoming a cyborg and leaving his wife behind. The real twist is that going to Mars was not a human agenda.
(The sequel MARS PLUS is entertaining enough, but not as compelling.)
Great, so everyone outside will be able to see what you're looking at on your computer (in reverse of course). The FBI warning on videotapes and DVDs states that the program is only for private home use. Will playing a movie on one of these window/screens be a violation?:)
I have no idea what the ride was called, but it was far too big to have in a normal mall-size arcade. The centrifuge had a boom about 7 or 8 meters in diameter with a pod on each end. (Two players, two separate games.) The pods were ugly on the outside, totally enclosed, and you didn't want to be standing anywhere near this thing when it was whirling. (Serious RPMs.) It generated enough "Gs" to pin you to the pod wall if you got into a flat spin. The traveling VR show had the rig roped off like an amusement park ride.
Many years ago a traveling VR "arcade" visited my city. (This was easily 10 years ago, but I can't recall the exact date.) One of the rides that stood out in my mind was a fighter plane sim with G-forces. The player sat in a spherical pod at the end of a centrifuge arm. The game screen remained black while the carousel built up to speed. The default orientation of the pod kept the G-forces "eyes down" through the seat of the pants. In other words, the player would feel a bit heavier than normal as the game built up to speed.
Once at speed, the game started. Moving the joystick re-oriented the pod. For example, a "climb" rolled the pod downward so that the player felt the G-forces "eyes out" against his back. Similar shifts applied to other maneuvers, thus giving realtime feedback. It was not exactly like being in a plane (I've been in aerobatic planes), but the suggestion of maneuver accelerations was deceptively good. (Sorry, no inverted flight. The harness wasn't up to it.)
I'm sure the military grade simulator in the article is much fancier than the VR ride. (I could not hit the site -- it has been Slashdotted.) But to put it bluntly, "been there, done that."
I've seen that so-called "invisible" cloak before, and I wish they'd stop calling it that. It is a special effects technique nearly as old as cinematography. Someone wears reflex material while a scene is front-projected onto them. I don't think much of it as a stealth technique.
FX man (walking up to armed guard at secure installation): 'scuse me, would you mind looking through this beam splitter while I set up a projector at your feet? Thanks!
--Metryq
Slashdot Mirror
Those detectors at Walmart are not anti-theft gates, they're warnings that a customer is leaving the store with money still in his pocket!
"Perhaps Lucas has forgotten that he's in the marketplace -- where democracy indeed rules, and the cash register is the ballot box."
Have you been to the cinema lately or watched any TV? The voting public is not terribly critical, which is why crap keeps selling. The public is buying it.
Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90 percent of anything is crap.
This is just one alternative cosmology; probably the most "down to Earth" of the alternatives:
P ri nciples.asp
http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/PhysicsHasIts
This thing is going to piss off every elephant in the neighborhood! On top of that, Nissan will have to start worrying about ruptured birds crashing into their cars. "We don't understand it! Whales have been beaching themselves all over the lot!"
I knew a myrmecologist in school. Everytime I saw him I'd ask, "how's your aunt?"
Meanwhile PLENTY of errors have been made by people (admittedly with weak math skills) incorrectly adding fractions. I've seen decimal inch rulers; why couldn't that be the norm? But no, wacky fractions like 7/54 are so much more fun. In an effort to avoid metric I'm surprised no one has suggested binary rulers. Water freezes at 32F and boils at 212F -- who came up with that?
I'll take metric, thanks.
In Frederik Pohl's MAN PLUS astronaut Roger Torroway "volunteers" to become a cyborg for a one-way mission to Mars. Since supporting a man on Mars would be so cost prohibitive, they decided to send as little "man" as possible. It's a fascinating read for the human aspects of Torroway becoming a cyborg and leaving his wife behind. The real twist is that going to Mars was not a human agenda.
(The sequel MARS PLUS is entertaining enough, but not as compelling.)
Great, so everyone outside will be able to see what you're looking at on your computer (in reverse of course). The FBI warning on videotapes and DVDs states that the program is only for private home use. Will playing a movie on one of these window/screens be a violation? :)
I have no idea what the ride was called, but it was far too big to have in a normal mall-size arcade. The centrifuge had a boom about 7 or 8 meters in diameter with a pod on each end. (Two players, two separate games.) The pods were ugly on the outside, totally enclosed, and you didn't want to be standing anywhere near this thing when it was whirling. (Serious RPMs.) It generated enough "Gs" to pin you to the pod wall if you got into a flat spin. The traveling VR show had the rig roped off like an amusement park ride.
Many years ago a traveling VR "arcade" visited my city. (This was easily 10 years ago, but I can't recall the exact date.) One of the rides that stood out in my mind was a fighter plane sim with G-forces. The player sat in a spherical pod at the end of a centrifuge arm. The game screen remained black while the carousel built up to speed. The default orientation of the pod kept the G-forces "eyes down" through the seat of the pants. In other words, the player would feel a bit heavier than normal as the game built up to speed.
Once at speed, the game started. Moving the joystick re-oriented the pod. For example, a "climb" rolled the pod downward so that the player felt the G-forces "eyes out" against his back. Similar shifts applied to other maneuvers, thus giving realtime feedback. It was not exactly like being in a plane (I've been in aerobatic planes), but the suggestion of maneuver accelerations was deceptively good. (Sorry, no inverted flight. The harness wasn't up to it.)
I'm sure the military grade simulator in the article is much fancier than the VR ride. (I could not hit the site -- it has been Slashdotted.) But to put it bluntly, "been there, done that."
While watching THE TERMINATOR my brother was joking about Reese passing his arm over the UPC scanner in a supermarket...
"Can I get a price check on one soldier?"
I've seen that so-called "invisible" cloak before, and I wish they'd stop calling it that. It is a special effects technique nearly as old as cinematography. Someone wears reflex material while a scene is front-projected onto them. I don't think much of it as a stealth technique. FX man (walking up to armed guard at secure installation): 'scuse me, would you mind looking through this beam splitter while I set up a projector at your feet? Thanks! --Metryq