If the enemy flies in a random pattern you'll have trouble hitting him, no matter how fast your weapon is. If you cause heat emissions the enemy will know your position (and can track it until your weapon has cooled down significantly) and assuming that the first hit is swallowed by the armor you will have to prepare for a drawn out battle even if you hit first.
And I'm not sure if gas pressure wouldn't cause neutral gas clouds to disperse over distance if you want to give them enough mass to do any significant damage.
As for the energy cost, any space-based warship will have fusion/fission or better power.
Can those really output enough to keep the weapons firing? Accelerating matter to c/2 takes a lot of energy and will most likely cause a lot of loss, even more if you want to keep your accellerator small.
Radar-guided missiles won't work.
Then use IR or laser guided, the latter will work as long as your targeting system can keep the laser on the enemy and even if you lose track for a moment the missile could just assume linear movement for the target until you mark it again. With a good targeting system that should deliver enough payload to any large vessel, if in doubt let it blow when it's close enough, with a nuke on board that should melt the target's armor (or at least heat it up for easy tracking) if your target guidance wasn't too bad.
Of course you most likely won't see a target that isn't stupid in first place, a vessel ordered to avoid detection could probably get close enough to any stationary target to deploy heavy weapons without prior detection. You could probably even send the missiles without any starship around them. So how would you defend a planet if you can't spot enemy WMDs before they reach the atmosphere?
You might argue that a stock-holder knew what s/he was getting into while buying the stock, but not providing enough data defeats the primary purpose that one buys the stock for.
If the product offered by a company does not fulfill your requirements then don't buy it (or would you buy a TV that has no screen?). If Google's conduct defeats the primary purpose you'd buy their shares for then don't buy their shares. There are enough other shares available for you to buy so you can stay clear of the ones that don't provide what you want in a share.
We have a right in this industry to make and market our product in an unregulated manner.
No. The law will not limit your creativity but it will certainly regulate e.g. how you can treat your employees and that you cannot market your product by spraying graffiti on public property.
I think this isn't the same Prey those reports were about. They probably cancelled the game and just recently dug out the design document again and made a new Prey.
The first Golden Sun ended when the introduction was over. I didn't buy GS2 because that pissed me off. I'm not supporting the business model of "The first half is done, let's ship it at full price and work on the second half!".
The company is still working on games, I think the rumour is that they're making an RPG for the Revolution console. Another rumour says it's related to Golden Sun but not a direct sequel.
Ion beams. They start charged. them you merge 2 of them. It is called a neutral beam then.
Then it's a kinetic weapon. Has to be aimed very well and assume that the enemy doesn't change course. I'm not too sure on the impact it'd have on the hull and it would be an energy transfer weapon, i.e. impact energy <= energy drained from your power supply. I'd be more partial towards explosives accellerated with chemical reactions (i.e. conventional weapons), they are more space efficient and can be fired rapidly.
Or go with homing missiles (using radar or IR tracking, the latter only for targets that fired their thrusters recently). Build pods of these things (kinda like torpedo mines that launch a torpedo at certain sounds) that can be launched into space and fired from a position far away from your own and the things will still find the enemy even if he changes course.
Of course the problem is detecting the enemy in first place. A craft that does not want to be seen will be hard to see. Unless it uses its engines (not necessarily happening) or has really bad insulation you can't use its emissions and radar gives away your position. A radar drone that would send out the radar signals could be used to lure the enemy away but would still tell him that someone's nearby. Of course you can just have active radar all the time if your radar range is big enough to spot targets before they are within range but it would still alert everyone to your presence.
If those were just gameplay similarities I'd agree but these are fairly specific plot elements within games that have pretty much the most freedom for plot design of all genres. These days I'm seeing more interesting storylines in RTS games than japanese RPGs. The two commanders in Dawn of War were more interesting characters than most Final Fantasy heroes.
With games that have storylines like "The president has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to save him?" or "Aliens are invading Earth! You are our last hope to destroy the invasion fleet in a single fighter craft!" it's no wonder that many games have similar storylines but when your story reaches novel format there is just no reason to use the same cast of characters for every game.
It's not about discrepancies, it's about similarities. Seriously, with that list you can see any plot turn in any japanese RPG coming from half the game away. "Gosh! Who'd a thunk the church I relied upon would betray me to control the dark powers/follow a misguided attempt at saving the world!" "What? The Mana tree is dead and my girlfriend must be sacrificed to make it regrow? I didn't expect that!" You could probably write an algorithm that selects a number of clichees, makes a story out of it and noone would be able to tell it from a normal jRPG.
Never mind that the japanese don't seem to be able to grasp the concept of foreshadowing needing to be subtle. They're about as subtle as "nudge nudge wink wink" most of the time and the main character must be plain retarded to not understand things until they are spelled out in short, simple words for him. Tidus should've noticed a few hours earlier that Yuna would have to sacrifice herself and that Auron is dead (come on, those aren't spoilers, they'll hammer the foreshadowing in your face after the first few hours!).
Even if they priced this at $350-$400, how many parents would balk at that price?
Not many more than already balked at the XBox 360. The only one going for a reasonable price seems to be Nintendo. I know that was the reason I got a Gamecube back then, 200 is a lot and more than that is plain insane.
It doesn't take advantage of HDTV (PS3 and 360 do), it doesn't play the brilliant GTA games (PS3 will, and 360 will a few months later), no high-def DVD player (PS3 will ship with Blu-Ray, 360 will be updated with whichever format catches on) and, most importantly, it doesn't actually exist yet.
It delivers 480p, seems to be good enough for most people.
GTA 3 is a current gen game, if you want to play that you can grab a current gen console.
The 360 is not guaranteed to be upgraded and more importantly it won't help those who already bought one.
The Revolution has specs since it has final (or near final) devkits that have been shipped already. Nintendo just doesn't release specs to the public because the public has no use for the specs. They're given to developers that are bound by NDAs.
The PS3 is going through some delays due to the lag in Blu-Ray support, but it has an actual spec, and games are actually being written for it right now.
Guess what, the Revolution does, too. Except for the Bluray delay, of course.
Nobody seems to even have a clue what the controller will look like at this point.
You may have missed all those pictures released since last year's E3, there are pictures of the controller.
You mean like the file system patents they rediscovered recently and started charging fees for? Or other patents they basically lincense in a way that everyone except opensource can use it (Office XML)?
Please stop this "we are not a democracy" crap. Democracy isn't just direct democracy, a representative democracy is pretty much identical to a republic.
The constitution could be abolished if everyone wanted that to happen. But it is the most "sacred" law of the country and the majority will hold it as the highest law. Even though they might not like some applications of it noone would agree to a proposal to abolish the constitution. But as long as they don't see or realize it as an attack on the constitution they will not protest. Even a judge only has his power because the people decide to obey.
Government is consent of the people and as long as the consent with the structure of the government is greater than the dissent with the actions of the government, the law will remain in place.
What makes Iran a Superpower and Pakistan not? Even if they can get the raw materials for a nuke they have to deliver the warheads somehow and ICBMs seem to be a bit more complicated than normal missiles. North Korea has the bomb but they don't have ICBMs. You can't load these things onto a bomber, that won't make it far. You can't transport them over ground without being noticed (unlike normal explosives these things have to be delivered from Iran instead of made locally in the target country). And launching an ICBM only nets you a return strike. They won't be able to develop ICBMs without any test launches and at that point you can nail 'em.
All they could try is get a missile to have enough range to reach Israel but the Patriot system is fairly effective at taking down such missiles (it can't handle ICBMs well but normal missiles don't pose a problem).
Slashdot Mirror
If the enemy flies in a random pattern you'll have trouble hitting him, no matter how fast your weapon is. If you cause heat emissions the enemy will know your position (and can track it until your weapon has cooled down significantly) and assuming that the first hit is swallowed by the armor you will have to prepare for a drawn out battle even if you hit first.
And I'm not sure if gas pressure wouldn't cause neutral gas clouds to disperse over distance if you want to give them enough mass to do any significant damage.
As for the energy cost, any space-based warship will have fusion/fission or better power.
Can those really output enough to keep the weapons firing? Accelerating matter to c/2 takes a lot of energy and will most likely cause a lot of loss, even more if you want to keep your accellerator small.
Radar-guided missiles won't work.
Then use IR or laser guided, the latter will work as long as your targeting system can keep the laser on the enemy and even if you lose track for a moment the missile could just assume linear movement for the target until you mark it again. With a good targeting system that should deliver enough payload to any large vessel, if in doubt let it blow when it's close enough, with a nuke on board that should melt the target's armor (or at least heat it up for easy tracking) if your target guidance wasn't too bad.
Of course you most likely won't see a target that isn't stupid in first place, a vessel ordered to avoid detection could probably get close enough to any stationary target to deploy heavy weapons without prior detection. You could probably even send the missiles without any starship around them. So how would you defend a planet if you can't spot enemy WMDs before they reach the atmosphere?
Pour holy water over it, if it doesn't evaporate it's not the devil incarnate.
Nope, at least not when you're logged in.
You might argue that a stock-holder knew what s/he was getting into while buying the stock, but not providing enough data defeats the primary purpose that one buys the stock for.
If the product offered by a company does not fulfill your requirements then don't buy it (or would you buy a TV that has no screen?). If Google's conduct defeats the primary purpose you'd buy their shares for then don't buy their shares. There are enough other shares available for you to buy so you can stay clear of the ones that don't provide what you want in a share.
We have a right in this industry to make and market our product in an unregulated manner.
No. The law will not limit your creativity but it will certainly regulate e.g. how you can treat your employees and that you cannot market your product by spraying graffiti on public property.
I think this isn't the same Prey those reports were about. They probably cancelled the game and just recently dug out the design document again and made a new Prey.
The first Golden Sun ended when the introduction was over. I didn't buy GS2 because that pissed me off. I'm not supporting the business model of "The first half is done, let's ship it at full price and work on the second half!".
The company is still working on games, I think the rumour is that they're making an RPG for the Revolution console. Another rumour says it's related to Golden Sun but not a direct sequel.
Ion beams. They start charged. them you merge 2 of them. It is called a neutral beam then.
Then it's a kinetic weapon. Has to be aimed very well and assume that the enemy doesn't change course. I'm not too sure on the impact it'd have on the hull and it would be an energy transfer weapon, i.e. impact energy <= energy drained from your power supply. I'd be more partial towards explosives accellerated with chemical reactions (i.e. conventional weapons), they are more space efficient and can be fired rapidly.
Or go with homing missiles (using radar or IR tracking, the latter only for targets that fired their thrusters recently). Build pods of these things (kinda like torpedo mines that launch a torpedo at certain sounds) that can be launched into space and fired from a position far away from your own and the things will still find the enemy even if he changes course.
Of course the problem is detecting the enemy in first place. A craft that does not want to be seen will be hard to see. Unless it uses its engines (not necessarily happening) or has really bad insulation you can't use its emissions and radar gives away your position. A radar drone that would send out the radar signals could be used to lure the enemy away but would still tell him that someone's nearby. Of course you can just have active radar all the time if your radar range is big enough to spot targets before they are within range but it would still alert everyone to your presence.
NPD doesn't even track Walmart AFAIK.
If those were just gameplay similarities I'd agree but these are fairly specific plot elements within games that have pretty much the most freedom for plot design of all genres. These days I'm seeing more interesting storylines in RTS games than japanese RPGs. The two commanders in Dawn of War were more interesting characters than most Final Fantasy heroes.
With games that have storylines like "The president has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to save him?" or "Aliens are invading Earth! You are our last hope to destroy the invasion fleet in a single fighter craft!" it's no wonder that many games have similar storylines but when your story reaches novel format there is just no reason to use the same cast of characters for every game.
Not much because I still managed to get 35 games for it, ~80% of which ran me 60 Euros each.
I think Japan only has one WiFi game more than the US at the moment, the Bleach DS game.
I'd be scared if Nintendo could provide any more accurate data. After all, we like our privacy 'round here.
It's not about discrepancies, it's about similarities. Seriously, with that list you can see any plot turn in any japanese RPG coming from half the game away. "Gosh! Who'd a thunk the church I relied upon would betray me to control the dark powers/follow a misguided attempt at saving the world!" "What? The Mana tree is dead and my girlfriend must be sacrificed to make it regrow? I didn't expect that!" You could probably write an algorithm that selects a number of clichees, makes a story out of it and noone would be able to tell it from a normal jRPG.
Never mind that the japanese don't seem to be able to grasp the concept of foreshadowing needing to be subtle. They're about as subtle as "nudge nudge wink wink" most of the time and the main character must be plain retarded to not understand things until they are spelled out in short, simple words for him. Tidus should've noticed a few hours earlier that Yuna would have to sacrifice herself and that Auron is dead (come on, those aren't spoilers, they'll hammer the foreshadowing in your face after the first few hours!).
Even if they priced this at $350-$400, how many parents would balk at that price?
Not many more than already balked at the XBox 360. The only one going for a reasonable price seems to be Nintendo. I know that was the reason I got a Gamecube back then, 200 is a lot and more than that is plain insane.
It doesn't take advantage of HDTV (PS3 and 360 do), it doesn't play the brilliant GTA games (PS3 will, and 360 will a few months later), no high-def DVD player (PS3 will ship with Blu-Ray, 360 will be updated with whichever format catches on) and, most importantly, it doesn't actually exist yet.
It delivers 480p, seems to be good enough for most people.
GTA 3 is a current gen game, if you want to play that you can grab a current gen console.
The 360 is not guaranteed to be upgraded and more importantly it won't help those who already bought one.
The Revolution has specs since it has final (or near final) devkits that have been shipped already. Nintendo just doesn't release specs to the public because the public has no use for the specs. They're given to developers that are bound by NDAs.
The PS3 is going through some delays due to the lag in Blu-Ray support, but it has an actual spec, and games are actually being written for it right now.
Guess what, the Revolution does, too. Except for the Bluray delay, of course.
Nobody seems to even have a clue what the controller will look like at this point.
You may have missed all those pictures released since last year's E3, there are pictures of the controller.
He's still claiming that it's better than the XBox 360.
But that would mean you're transparent, not that you glow in the dark.
Imagine you were a virus or bacterium that was raised inentionally crippled to work as a vaccine for some human. Yeah, that would suck.
There was some robot deathmatch mod for Unreal Tournament where observers could set off traps located throughout the arena.
You mean like the file system patents they rediscovered recently and started charging fees for? Or other patents they basically lincense in a way that everyone except opensource can use it (Office XML)?
Please stop this "we are not a democracy" crap. Democracy isn't just direct democracy, a representative democracy is pretty much identical to a republic.
The constitution could be abolished if everyone wanted that to happen. But it is the most "sacred" law of the country and the majority will hold it as the highest law. Even though they might not like some applications of it noone would agree to a proposal to abolish the constitution. But as long as they don't see or realize it as an attack on the constitution they will not protest. Even a judge only has his power because the people decide to obey.
Government is consent of the people and as long as the consent with the structure of the government is greater than the dissent with the actions of the government, the law will remain in place.
Iran + Nuclear weapons = Islamic Superpower
Islamic Superpower + Western world = Armageddon
What makes Iran a Superpower and Pakistan not? Even if they can get the raw materials for a nuke they have to deliver the warheads somehow and ICBMs seem to be a bit more complicated than normal missiles. North Korea has the bomb but they don't have ICBMs. You can't load these things onto a bomber, that won't make it far. You can't transport them over ground without being noticed (unlike normal explosives these things have to be delivered from Iran instead of made locally in the target country). And launching an ICBM only nets you a return strike. They won't be able to develop ICBMs without any test launches and at that point you can nail 'em.
All they could try is get a missile to have enough range to reach Israel but the Patriot system is fairly effective at taking down such missiles (it can't handle ICBMs well but normal missiles don't pose a problem).
Where's the functional difference between the Marines and the Army?
If you censor for streaming, shouldn't the reason the filter gives be "streaming"? Instead the filter says it's political and therefore not allowed.