They already do it in Missouri. Check out the Taum Sauk pumped storage plant. Pump the water up the hill during the night when there's excess power and dump it back through some turbines during the day when you need it.
The best thing about solar, though, is that peak demand is in the middle of the day...when solar is generating the most it can. So you just flip the system around. Use storage methods like on Taum Sauk to stockpile nighttime power to pick up the solar shortfall then.
Shit runs downhill, those "molecules" will end up somewhere. Probably in the fish (and, in turn, the other foods) you eat. And how might these new hydroxil radicals affect animal life? If it breaks down organic compounds, I don't really want it floating around in the air...
Which looks just fine on my 720p capable TV, and the TV does all the scaling. Get some decent anti-aliasing in there and you're good to go.
I actually like Nintendo's tactic here, it is much like AMD's wait to support DDR2 sceme. Let your competitors spend the capital to build the market, then step in when its ready and start making cash without the initial investment.
Since "because OpenGL 2.0 wasn't done yet" they developed NWN2 with DirectX. Will there be a linux port? Possibly. Likely? Not really.
I am starting to think that, on the surface, OpenGL isn't dominating because there's no money behind it for games. Windows has a vested interest, if they can lock games to windows, people will buy windows. For OpenGL, the only people really putting money into it aren't gaming companies, they're 3D/CAD companies. And they don't really care about features in the same way gamers do.
I think that the game companies need to actively participate in the OpenGL standard and throw a little money behind it (I'm looking at you EA) and we might be able to get a truly cross-platform standard.
Myth also has tools to fix that as well. I always load up the cutlist after I've watched the show (since it has always been accurate enough for me to watch the show and not miss anything). Then I adjust the cutlist to optimize it and do the transcode, which uses the cutlist to chop the files down and compress them to a nice size. I usually come up with somewhere between 200-250 megs for a half hour TV show, which is fine for a decent amount of storage space. And DVD burners are cheap, you could put 18 or so high quality 30 min tv shows on a single DVD.
I have a brother there, and have visited and enjoyed the country. And with an education and experience in the aerospace industry, I doubt I'd have a hard time finding a job there.
But that would be giving up on America, which I'm not ready to do quite yet.
Best voting advice you could be given. My opinion is the same, the less they agree, the less likely they are to screw anything up. The important things still get through and we don't lose freedoms in the process.
My mother used to say (and I suspect many did) that if I put half the effort of getting out of doing something into getting it done, I'd be done with it. I think the MPAA needs to listen to moms everywhere and put some energy into creating a business model that actually works with the changing times, not against it.
You mention the "mechanism of election" yet you mention two completely different systems. Democracies don't elect representatives to make the laws, people make them. And yes, it is defensless against the "mob mentality." But a deomcratic republic isn't the same as a democracy.
The saddest parts about the system though, is that republics (democratic or not) are just as defensless against it, just in a different way. Now, instead of the "think of the children!" actions that might be taken in a real democracy, we have the "voting for someone other than republicans or democrats is just a waste of a vote" blind sheeple statements. They're both born of the mob mentality and they can be equally destructive to liberties.
As you can see, its not the elected officials that are the problem, its the people that are the problem. Will that change? As long as they have their bread and circuses, probably not.
The shock wave from running 23 times the speed of sound, at ground level, is going to be an interesting problem to overcome as well. Considering that the pressure differential across the shock wave at Mach 23 is HUGE. I don't really feel like solving the equation, but for example, the pressure differential across the shock at mach 2 at sea level for a 20 degree body (40 degree wedge) is somewhere around 3 atm. So, a 3 times atmospheric pressure wave is going to hit whatever is near that thing, and that's just at mach 2. Also, the temperature behind that shock is 400K (that's 127 celsius).Shocks (and temps) get much stronger the higher the mach. (I'm just reading off the table in my textbook) The normal shock pressure and temp differentials for Mach 23 are around 618x and 104x, respectively. That's times whatever pressure and temp they start at. Those are not small numbers.
They've got a LOT to overcome...(also, IAARS as well;).
1. Make it illegal to gamble online, since you can't figure out how to tax it. 2. Force the credit card companies to enforce the law you made. 3. Profit!
The profit being that law enforcement doesn't have to figure out how to trace it, they just have the credit card companies monitor for the activity, and make the arrest.
I ran some rough numbers a while back and if you melt all the ice in antarctica alone, taking into account nothing else, it would raise the sea level at least 60 feet. You can run the numbers yourself, just take the area of antarctica, the average ice thickness and convert that to liquid water and spread it over the oceans. Of course, that doesn't take into account the glacial melt and all those other things you mentioned, so the actual figure is probably closer to 100 feet or more. Not enough to sink the midwest (which is on average ~1000 feet above sea level) but you've sunk a lot of coast at that point.
Given that at least 1/3 of the worlds population lives in a coastal area by most estimates, you could reasonably expect to have to displace that many people. Cities will be abandoned. The cost to displace that many people could probably be reasonably calculated, but i don't have a dollar figure to attach to that number. Cost varies by area a LOT, so someone who knows more than me is going to have to rough that number out. Cost of lives should be relatively low, considering that it would happen over a span of at least 20 years, barring major events like hurricanes.
As far as cost goes, it is relatively cheap to reduce the amount of energy people use. I actually had an article in my hands earlier today talking about how, with technology coming as far as it has, it is generally cheaper to reduce the energy needs of the average person's living quarters due to efficient building design. Of course you'll hear people shout "solar cells are expensive!" but that's really the only banner they have. And I've seen several cost analyses that state that because of subsidies, solar cells will pay for themselves in short order (10 years or less) and last much longer than that. The building design/construction would only be expensive due to the economics of scale, i.e. not many people do it now, so it is harder to find people to design and build such structures.
I didn't try to answer the few I couldn't put some facts forth (like carbon sequestration). I agree with your interpretation of the mentality, though I don't really find it to be a good thing. If we can get people to care a little, it would go a long way. Even if people planted more trees, that wouldn't be a bad thing, right?
I think the biggest changes we would see in everyday life would be transportation. This is where it is going to cost the most and be most noticable to the average person and this is the hot-button. I have seen estimates that roads account for approximately 1/3 of a city's area. So if you could shrink a city by a sixth and reduce the road need by half, there would be benefits to space required, maintinance costs, noise, etc. Some places already have decent mass transit, its just getting people to rely on them. Right now, gas is cheap enough that people opt for the car.
And one of them was me. I've been building and admining systems for close to 10 years now, and I didn't even know it was there until a few nights ago. And it is on by default. Granted, I don't use WMP to rip stuff and I was looking for some other option at the time, but I found it on accident. At least half the people that use windows will not know it is there and on either.
I hope everyone here knows you can rip CDs at 8x with winamp for free, and get OGG/FLAC and other plugins to rip them to...
Get a high quality analog-to-digital converter (a high-end VCR with svideo output should do the trick) and a video card with VIVO (video-in, video-out) so that it can take the input. This might be a good place to start: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11259_7-5705957-1.htm l?tag=bnav
I don't know much about bitrates, compression and whatnot, but I'm sure a little websearching will point you in the right direction. And don't forget the torrent!;)
The parent never said smaller, just quieter. You can't use the same metrics because it is a different kind of market. The PC games market has a broader base than the console market, but when you're just comparing AAA titles, it looks smaller. And most AAA titles (read: sequels) aren't worth a shit anyway, so who cares?
I own a PC and game with it because it fits my style and has a better control scheme for the games I like to play (RTS, RPG). Then there's MMOs, web puzzle games, and a host of others that I have access to also. The console is only beginning to approach this, and is arguably a poorer solution for it.
And it isn't. Not when I have read studies that showed that most people, from normal viewing distances, couldn't tell the difference between DVD and HD content. Not when an HTPC or a proper TV scaler can upscale DVD content so that it looks just as good. And not when you have to buy so much new hardware for it to even work as advertised.
Sure there will be people that will buy it. I suspect most of them will have a need to archive things, not to watch movies. I personally won't, I don't even need the space a CD provides to archive things. I would even believe that the archive need will be small when you can get hard drives for less than a dollar a gig.
Would I like 720p movies? (the max my current TV can support) Sure I would. Is it worth it? Not even close. DVDs will be around long enough to ensure HDCP is cracked and the price comes down, then I (and I suspect most) will consider using it. HDCP has already been proven to have holes in it, it is just a matter of time before someone pokes their finger through.
which means you have to build off a franchise
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
like WoW does. If you had said Warcraft 5 years ago, how many people would know what you were talking about? Lots. They already had the brand recognition and that sold a lot of copies for them right there. I think the next big MMO you'll see will also be built off of another franchise game (and NOT starcraft!). DDO's only real attribute is because it has D&D in the name. That sold it to a lot of people right off the bat, even though it is just enough D&D to be confusing to newcomers and not enough for a lot of fans of D&D to like playing it. Most of the other MMO's you see out there don't have that recognition (puzzle pirates, eve, guild wars, etc.) and an MMO is a hard place to build brand recognition these days.
Digital distribution will become the norm eventually, and
should
become cheaper than it currently is since the disc pressing costs and whatnot have been removed. It is there with music right now. A disc at the store will cost you 13-18 dollars, a digital download will cost you 10. Granted, it isn't lossless like you get from the disc, but if that's a big deal to you, then just buy the disc.
I just hope that platform-independant shops like allofmp3 become the standard.
At least from a file support standpoint, their user guide says it only supports MP3, WMA and WMA+DRM. Who in their right mind uses linux and defaults to mp3 if they have a choice? The only thing this thing is is more storage capacity, and in a world where you can get a 60 gig player, its not really that spectacular of a product. Biggest flash player? Big deal, at least from Conwon you can get OGG support...
I challenge these developers to actually go to a store (yes, get in your car and drive there) and tell me how many PC games you see on the shelf that are NOT sequels. Its going to be around 25%, if that. People are tired of playing the same games you keep dumping out with different graphics and a number one bigger than the last attached to them. There's no innovation, just IP farming.
People play MMO's because they embrace the spirit of the console in PC form. A bunch of people playing together and having fun. Its not sitting in a dark office at 1 AM playing a game by yourself. That and almost all the game development innovation has been happening in MMO form lately.
I never really learned to type well until I got into IM. I even tried the typing classes in school, still couldn't do it well. Only after extended use did I notice that my typing speed went up dramatically. I tend to think that it was because it was something I wanted to do (talk to friends), not something I HAD to do (typing class). Grammar didn't suffer at all, though I started much later than kids do now (late high school vs. 5th grade). I'd say as long as the schools are teaching them good grammar, it will come through in the typing.
Since you can get the source, compile, configure your kernel, then install the packages you want. Using a stage 3 install is optional. And ubuntu already does it. There is very little configuring at all for it.
We already have some of the most draconian copyright laws around.
I'm still hoping that two things will happen: 1)Bands will distribute their own music digitally (creating the need for more small recording studios), bypassing the need for a contract with a label, and 2)radio stations get their balls back and start actually doing their jobs. And by their jobs, I mean sampling as much music that is out there that they can and playing what they think is best, not just what they get handed by the corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
They already do it in Missouri. Check out the Taum Sauk pumped storage plant. Pump the water up the hill during the night when there's excess power and dump it back through some turbines during the day when you need it.
The best thing about solar, though, is that peak demand is in the middle of the day...when solar is generating the most it can. So you just flip the system around. Use storage methods like on Taum Sauk to stockpile nighttime power to pick up the solar shortfall then.
Shit runs downhill, those "molecules" will end up somewhere. Probably in the fish (and, in turn, the other foods) you eat. And how might these new hydroxil radicals affect animal life? If it breaks down organic compounds, I don't really want it floating around in the air...
Which looks just fine on my 720p capable TV, and the TV does all the scaling. Get some decent anti-aliasing in there and you're good to go.
I actually like Nintendo's tactic here, it is much like AMD's wait to support DDR2 sceme. Let your competitors spend the capital to build the market, then step in when its ready and start making cash without the initial investment.
Since "because OpenGL 2.0 wasn't done yet" they developed NWN2 with DirectX. Will there be a linux port? Possibly. Likely? Not really.
I am starting to think that, on the surface, OpenGL isn't dominating because there's no money behind it for games. Windows has a vested interest, if they can lock games to windows, people will buy windows. For OpenGL, the only people really putting money into it aren't gaming companies, they're 3D/CAD companies. And they don't really care about features in the same way gamers do.
I think that the game companies need to actively participate in the OpenGL standard and throw a little money behind it (I'm looking at you EA) and we might be able to get a truly cross-platform standard.
Myth also has tools to fix that as well. I always load up the cutlist after I've watched the show (since it has always been accurate enough for me to watch the show and not miss anything). Then I adjust the cutlist to optimize it and do the transcode, which uses the cutlist to chop the files down and compress them to a nice size. I usually come up with somewhere between 200-250 megs for a half hour TV show, which is fine for a decent amount of storage space. And DVD burners are cheap, you could put 18 or so high quality 30 min tv shows on a single DVD.
I have a brother there, and have visited and enjoyed the country. And with an education and experience in the aerospace industry, I doubt I'd have a hard time finding a job there.
But that would be giving up on America, which I'm not ready to do quite yet.
Best voting advice you could be given. My opinion is the same, the less they agree, the less likely they are to screw anything up. The important things still get through and we don't lose freedoms in the process.
My mother used to say (and I suspect many did) that if I put half the effort of getting out of doing something into getting it done, I'd be done with it. I think the MPAA needs to listen to moms everywhere and put some energy into creating a business model that actually works with the changing times, not against it.
The only teeth strong enough to eat other teeth!
You mention the "mechanism of election" yet you mention two completely different systems. Democracies don't elect representatives to make the laws, people make them. And yes, it is defensless against the "mob mentality." But a deomcratic republic isn't the same as a democracy.
The saddest parts about the system though, is that republics (democratic or not) are just as defensless against it, just in a different way. Now, instead of the "think of the children!" actions that might be taken in a real democracy, we have the "voting for someone other than republicans or democrats is just a waste of a vote" blind sheeple statements. They're both born of the mob mentality and they can be equally destructive to liberties.
As you can see, its not the elected officials that are the problem, its the people that are the problem. Will that change? As long as they have their bread and circuses, probably not.
The shock wave from running 23 times the speed of sound, at ground level, is going to be an interesting problem to overcome as well. Considering that the pressure differential across the shock wave at Mach 23 is HUGE. I don't really feel like solving the equation, but for example, the pressure differential across the shock at mach 2 at sea level for a 20 degree body (40 degree wedge) is somewhere around 3 atm. So, a 3 times atmospheric pressure wave is going to hit whatever is near that thing, and that's just at mach 2. Also, the temperature behind that shock is 400K (that's 127 celsius).Shocks (and temps) get much stronger the higher the mach. (I'm just reading off the table in my textbook) The normal shock pressure and temp differentials for Mach 23 are around 618x and 104x, respectively. That's times whatever pressure and temp they start at. Those are not small numbers.
;).
They've got a LOT to overcome...(also, IAARS as well
1. Make it illegal to gamble online, since you can't figure out how to tax it.
2. Force the credit card companies to enforce the law you made.
3. Profit!
The profit being that law enforcement doesn't have to figure out how to trace it, they just have the credit card companies monitor for the activity, and make the arrest.
I'll try to answer a few of these.
I ran some rough numbers a while back and if you melt all the ice in antarctica alone, taking into account nothing else, it would raise the sea level at least 60 feet. You can run the numbers yourself, just take the area of antarctica, the average ice thickness and convert that to liquid water and spread it over the oceans. Of course, that doesn't take into account the glacial melt and all those other things you mentioned, so the actual figure is probably closer to 100 feet or more. Not enough to sink the midwest (which is on average ~1000 feet above sea level) but you've sunk a lot of coast at that point.
Given that at least 1/3 of the worlds population lives in a coastal area by most estimates, you could reasonably expect to have to displace that many people. Cities will be abandoned. The cost to displace that many people could probably be reasonably calculated, but i don't have a dollar figure to attach to that number. Cost varies by area a LOT, so someone who knows more than me is going to have to rough that number out. Cost of lives should be relatively low, considering that it would happen over a span of at least 20 years, barring major events like hurricanes.
As far as cost goes, it is relatively cheap to reduce the amount of energy people use. I actually had an article in my hands earlier today talking about how, with technology coming as far as it has, it is generally cheaper to reduce the energy needs of the average person's living quarters due to efficient building design. Of course you'll hear people shout "solar cells are expensive!" but that's really the only banner they have. And I've seen several cost analyses that state that because of subsidies, solar cells will pay for themselves in short order (10 years or less) and last much longer than that. The building design/construction would only be expensive due to the economics of scale, i.e. not many people do it now, so it is harder to find people to design and build such structures.
I didn't try to answer the few I couldn't put some facts forth (like carbon sequestration). I agree with your interpretation of the mentality, though I don't really find it to be a good thing. If we can get people to care a little, it would go a long way. Even if people planted more trees, that wouldn't be a bad thing, right?
I think the biggest changes we would see in everyday life would be transportation. This is where it is going to cost the most and be most noticable to the average person and this is the hot-button. I have seen estimates that roads account for approximately 1/3 of a city's area. So if you could shrink a city by a sixth and reduce the road need by half, there would be benefits to space required, maintinance costs, noise, etc. Some places already have decent mass transit, its just getting people to rely on them. Right now, gas is cheap enough that people opt for the car.
And one of them was me. I've been building and admining systems for close to 10 years now, and I didn't even know it was there until a few nights ago. And it is on by default. Granted, I don't use WMP to rip stuff and I was looking for some other option at the time, but I found it on accident. At least half the people that use windows will not know it is there and on either.
I hope everyone here knows you can rip CDs at 8x with winamp for free, and get OGG/FLAC and other plugins to rip them to...
Get a high quality analog-to-digital converter (a high-end VCR with svideo output should do the trick) and a video card with VIVO (video-in, video-out) so that it can take the input. This might be a good place to start:m l?tag=bnav
;)
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11259_7-5705957-1.ht
I don't know much about bitrates, compression and whatnot, but I'm sure a little websearching will point you in the right direction. And don't forget the torrent!
The parent never said smaller, just quieter. You can't use the same metrics because it is a different kind of market. The PC games market has a broader base than the console market, but when you're just comparing AAA titles, it looks smaller. And most AAA titles (read: sequels) aren't worth a shit anyway, so who cares?
I own a PC and game with it because it fits my style and has a better control scheme for the games I like to play (RTS, RPG). Then there's MMOs, web puzzle games, and a host of others that I have access to also. The console is only beginning to approach this, and is arguably a poorer solution for it.
And it isn't. Not when I have read studies that showed that most people, from normal viewing distances, couldn't tell the difference between DVD and HD content. Not when an HTPC or a proper TV scaler can upscale DVD content so that it looks just as good. And not when you have to buy so much new hardware for it to even work as advertised.
Sure there will be people that will buy it. I suspect most of them will have a need to archive things, not to watch movies. I personally won't, I don't even need the space a CD provides to archive things. I would even believe that the archive need will be small when you can get hard drives for less than a dollar a gig.
Would I like 720p movies? (the max my current TV can support) Sure I would. Is it worth it? Not even close. DVDs will be around long enough to ensure HDCP is cracked and the price comes down, then I (and I suspect most) will consider using it. HDCP has already been proven to have holes in it, it is just a matter of time before someone pokes their finger through.
like WoW does. If you had said Warcraft 5 years ago, how many people would know what you were talking about? Lots. They already had the brand recognition and that sold a lot of copies for them right there. I think the next big MMO you'll see will also be built off of another franchise game (and NOT starcraft!). DDO's only real attribute is because it has D&D in the name. That sold it to a lot of people right off the bat, even though it is just enough D&D to be confusing to newcomers and not enough for a lot of fans of D&D to like playing it. Most of the other MMO's you see out there don't have that recognition (puzzle pirates, eve, guild wars, etc.) and an MMO is a hard place to build brand recognition these days.
Watch for a big name title to go MMO...
- should
become cheaper than it currently is since the disc pressing costs and whatnot have been removed. It is there with music right now. A disc at the store will cost you 13-18 dollars, a digital download will cost you 10. Granted, it isn't lossless like you get from the disc, but if that's a big deal to you, then just buy the disc.I just hope that platform-independant shops like allofmp3 become the standard.
At least from a file support standpoint, their user guide says it only supports MP3, WMA and WMA+DRM. Who in their right mind uses linux and defaults to mp3 if they have a choice? The only thing this thing is is more storage capacity, and in a world where you can get a 60 gig player, its not really that spectacular of a product. Biggest flash player? Big deal, at least from Conwon you can get OGG support...
I challenge these developers to actually go to a store (yes, get in your car and drive there) and tell me how many PC games you see on the shelf that are NOT sequels. Its going to be around 25%, if that. People are tired of playing the same games you keep dumping out with different graphics and a number one bigger than the last attached to them. There's no innovation, just IP farming.
People play MMO's because they embrace the spirit of the console in PC form. A bunch of people playing together and having fun. Its not sitting in a dark office at 1 AM playing a game by yourself. That and almost all the game development innovation has been happening in MMO form lately.
The real question is, are they sending any whalers there?
I never really learned to type well until I got into IM. I even tried the typing classes in school, still couldn't do it well. Only after extended use did I notice that my typing speed went up dramatically. I tend to think that it was because it was something I wanted to do (talk to friends), not something I HAD to do (typing class). Grammar didn't suffer at all, though I started much later than kids do now (late high school vs. 5th grade). I'd say as long as the schools are teaching them good grammar, it will come through in the typing.
Since you can get the source, compile, configure your kernel, then install the packages you want. Using a stage 3 install is optional. And ubuntu already does it. There is very little configuring at all for it.
We already have some of the most draconian copyright laws around.
I'm still hoping that two things will happen: 1)Bands will distribute their own music digitally (creating the need for more small recording studios), bypassing the need for a contract with a label, and 2)radio stations get their balls back and start actually doing their jobs. And by their jobs, I mean sampling as much music that is out there that they can and playing what they think is best, not just what they get handed by the corporations.