Re:Borrowed very, very heavily
on
D&D Is 30
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· Score: 1
"Of course not, foolish Took," the high-level mage chided him. "The copyright to the 'Balrog' name is owned by the Tolkien estate. Gygax had to call it 'Balor' or a 'Type VI demon' when he put the MM together."
And 'Balor' is actually lifted straight from Irish mythology. He was a king of the race of demon Fomorians who lived on Tory Island. Had a bit of a falling-out with the Tuatha De Danann when they arrived, but needless to say he got whupped.
Check out 'Slaine - The Horned God' graphic novels by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley. They don't tell the story exactly, but draw so heavily from that series of legends ('The Mythological Cycle') that most of the characters are recognizable.
"Mechanically, the 1.5-inch diameter rotors are within 40 atomic layers (0.3 millionths of an inch) of a perfect sphere, rounder than anything within many light-years distance from us....Only neutron stars are rounder."
Now I know that here on slashdot such things as neutron stars are always only a synapse or two away from our collective consciousness, but I have to say that reading those words sent a shiver up my spine. A sentence that would feel right at home in an Iain M. Banks novel is being used to describe something happening right now.
When a collegue of Einstein's suggested that it was impossible for an object with mass to reach light speed, Einstein felt compelled to point out that a photon has mass and it travels at light speed.
A photon has mass? When did this happen? Is this the mass implied by E=mc**2 equation applied to its energy?
Or like this modification, which I've discussed with my friends ad nauseum:
Each person on the network can give every other person a 'score'. What the score actually signifies is completely up to the people in the network. Now obviously the scores can be totalled for each person and you get a ranking for all the people on the network. So far, pretty hum-drum.
But what happens if you repeat the aggregation round, except this time the score any person A gives any other person B is weighted according to the total score person A got from everyone else. In other words, if your network decided that scores meant 'leadership qualities' then those people who were respected by others as leaders would in turn have more say when it comes to who they think make good leaders. You could possibly repeat the aggregation rounds many times.
Of course, you would have to take care of things such as loops etc., but I get the feeling that if you have a large enough group of people, even if they're allowed to change their scores for others in real time, the system might still be relatively stable.
It's like feudalism in reverse - the end structure is a tree, but the people at the bottom of the tree have the ultimate say on the shape of the tree.
Just imagine the karma whoring!
Does anyone know if something like this has been done? Sites like this one use something like this for mod points and karma (I think), but how about a real-time social network where there are no actual articles being modded, but the other people?
"...in that Empire, the Cartographer's art achieved such a degree of perfection that the Map of a single Province occupied an entire City, and the Map of the Empire, an entire Province. In time, these vast Maps were no longer sufficient. The Guild of Cartographers created a Map of the Empire, which perfectly coincided with the Empire itself. But Succeeding Generations, with diminished interest in the Study of Cartography, believed that this immense Map was of no use, and not Impiously, they abandoned it to the Inclemency of the Sun and of numerous Winters."
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course not, foolish Took," the high-level mage chided him. "The copyright to the 'Balrog' name is owned by the Tolkien estate. Gygax had to call it 'Balor' or a 'Type VI demon' when he put the MM together."
And 'Balor' is actually lifted straight from Irish mythology. He was a king of the race of demon Fomorians who lived on Tory Island. Had a bit of a falling-out with the Tuatha De Danann when they arrived, but needless to say he got whupped.
Check out 'Slaine - The Horned God' graphic novels by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley. They don't tell the story exactly, but draw so heavily from that series of legends ('The Mythological Cycle') that most of the characters are recognizable.
From the article A Near-Perfect Gyroscope provided by another poster:
"Mechanically, the 1.5-inch diameter rotors are within 40 atomic layers (0.3 millionths of an inch) of a perfect sphere, rounder than anything within many light-years distance from us....Only neutron stars are rounder."
Now I know that here on slashdot such things as neutron stars are always only a synapse or two away from our collective consciousness, but I have to say that reading those words sent a shiver up my spine. A sentence that would feel right at home in an Iain M. Banks novel is being used to describe something happening right now.
Cool.
When a collegue of Einstein's suggested that it was impossible for an object with mass to reach light speed, Einstein felt compelled to point out that a photon has mass and it travels at light speed.
A photon has mass? When did this happen? Is this the mass implied by E=mc**2 equation applied to its energy?
Or like this modification, which I've discussed with my friends ad nauseum:
Each person on the network can give every other person a 'score'. What the score actually signifies is completely up to the people in the network. Now obviously the scores can be totalled for each person and you get a ranking for all the people on the network. So far, pretty hum-drum.
But what happens if you repeat the aggregation round, except this time the score any person A gives any other person B is weighted according to the total score person A got from everyone else. In other words, if your network decided that scores meant 'leadership qualities' then those people who were respected by others as leaders would in turn have more say when it comes to who they think make good leaders. You could possibly repeat the aggregation rounds many times.
Of course, you would have to take care of things such as loops etc., but I get the feeling that if you have a large enough group of people, even if they're allowed to change their scores for others in real time, the system might still be relatively stable.
It's like feudalism in reverse - the end structure is a tree, but the people at the bottom of the tree have the ultimate say on the shape of the tree.
Just imagine the karma whoring!
Does anyone know if something like this has been done? Sites like this one use something like this for mod points and karma (I think), but how about a real-time social network where there are no actual articles being modded, but the other people?
"...in that Empire, the Cartographer's art achieved such a degree of perfection that the Map of a single Province occupied an entire City, and the Map of the Empire, an entire Province. In time, these vast Maps were no longer sufficient. The Guild of Cartographers created a Map of the Empire, which perfectly coincided with the Empire itself. But Succeeding Generations, with diminished interest in the Study of Cartography, believed that this immense Map was of no use, and not Impiously, they abandoned it to the Inclemency of the Sun and of numerous Winters."