I don't really think ID is being anything at all. This is baseless extrapolation based on previous history. It's analagous to looking at Valve's release dates, and figuring out that HalfLife3 will be released in 2025. It RandomInternetGeek's comedic guestimation, not a company press release.
DOE is more than capable of doing this and have done so for many years. Admittedly there have been a few problems but it never started a real situation of calamatious proportions.
Last I checked, the DoE ran the Pantex nuclear weapons plant. The same site with some obscene safety issues. Accidentally drilling into the core of a nuclear device resulted in the evacuation of the entire plant. Securing a warhead with duct tape increased the chances of a flat out nuclear explosion. And that's ignoring the clichéd "OMG THREE MILE ISLAND" commentary.
+++Warning to any fool that thinks it's easy to steal radioactive material from one of these teams. You'll die twice before you get to pull your trigger once!+++
Now, you're absolutely right in the fact that we need to get that waste cleaned up. But thinking that the DoE, NNSA, or the US government on the whole is "more than capable" is bullshit. We're flirting with disaster. If we take the outlook that everything is fine and dandy, we're going to quickly hit the point where someone will cause a situation of calamatious proportions.
Main press is more interested in hype stuff (like the lastest Ipod model...
Thank god we don't peruse places that hype the latest iPod model. No siree. We subscribe to Slashdot: Bastion of Stuff that Matters.
Please. Slashdot is just as interested in hype, fluff, and FUD as any other big news source. We just want ours geek flavored. Compare any article with the headline/summary, and it's pretty obvious. This is an entertainment website. While it certainly serves lots of news, let's not jump on the high horses. Slashdot is just as vulnerable as the other news sources.
Games like PoP, DE:IW, and Thief3 don't run on GF4MX's. Because they're a piece of shit graphics card ? Well, yes. But the problem is usually attributed to the game's mandatory pixel shaders. The GF4MX's don't have any pixel shading whatsoever. So if you design a game that you cannot turn off the shaders, it's not going to run without a GPU that supports them.
ID simply coded their engine to use different rendering paths depending on what card you're using. So if you lack the pixel shaders, it will still run without them.
I just (finally) finished perusing that whole original document. Incredibly fascinating. As you mentioned, the concept art was morbidly beautiful. I must say, it did an impressive job at conveying what they wanted. (But like any Sci-Fi/Horror loving geek, I can't say it would stop me =] )
The very concept of designing something to convey a message to others ten thousand years in the future is a wonderful mental exercise. That's longer than our current recorded history, for Pete's sake ! Even if such efforts are unnecessary due to the technological conditions you mentioned.
I'll readily admit, I had to google for the meaning behind your post. Here's some info for those more lazy.
The spiel mentioned above is the message that the Yucca Mountain design is intended to convey to future civilizations. Namely to those that show up 10K+ years from now. (Yucca being the designated site for the United States' Radioactive waste. It will be quite hazardous for an amazingly long amount of time.) The text is not really supposed to be an inscription per say, but simply the overall concept behind the structure of the entire complex.
The original research was done by Sandia national labs. A significant portion of the document can be found here.
Madcap googling resulted in an easy to read summary here. May god have mercy on the poor soul that gets slashdotted.
BTW Tackhead, kudos on the obscure (?) reference. Forced me to learn. =)
When they say "compatible", I think they meant in a User Interfacelook/name sort of way. It probably appeared they were designing a non-Blizzard WarCraft.
His character jokes around too much for a Colonel in the Air Force
Bah, I think a bit of eccentricity is a prerequisite for the USAF. Zipping about at the controls of an oversized Buick travelling several multiples of the speed of sound must rattle the brain. Or require a rattled one to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I'm the son of a USAF pilot, I've got nothing against them. But they've got a pretty distinct type of humor. Jack O'Neil seems to portray a good deal of that. (Admittedly, maybe this is the sort of thing that tapers off as one ascends the chain of command ?)
But otherwise, I agree with you wholeheartedly on the WormHoleAtlantis X-Tream fears. I guess only time will tell. Afterall, not every spinoff sucks.
Making money is about offering a superior product, not doing the least amount of work to create the cheapest product.
No, actually making money is about making money. Only the most fanatic of capitalists would honestly believe that profit is equal to objective quality, and nothing but objective quality. (and vice-versa) There are plenty of ways to make money. Releasing high-quality, well tested products is one of them. Lowering overhead, and delivering a cheap & convenient service/product (which is usually relatively crappy) to the consumer is another. Since Microsoft and WalMart both apply the latter concept, and are ungodly profitable, it's pretty retarded to claim that making money is about superior product.
Software companies drop off the map very quickly if they don't keep putting out new products that are popular.
Yeah, like Blizzard. Or Bungie. Both of them recognize that it's not the quality that matters, it's the frequency of their releases. It's also well known that most of their games are coded during crunchtime, in order to meet a pre-defined deadline.
Low-frequency quality releases is far from a worthless buisiness model. The problem is more related to the fact that people constantly buy crappy games, and inconsistantly purchase decent ones.
...the excellent Descent: Freespace licenses come to mind. Ran those into the ground pretty spectacularly.
How exactly was FreeSpace 'run into the ground' ? FreeSpace2 was the best space sim I've ever played in my entire life. No matter your opinion, most anyone can agree that both games were of the highest quality.
Or were you merely faulting Interplay for failing to make a third in the series ?
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"
When people use IE, they have chosen conveniance. They choose to use IE because they don't want to dick around with all the other possibilities. Unlike us hobbyists, they don't want to deal with anything of that sort. And convinience is basically Microsoft's largets goal/gain. Not security. They have consciously chosen not to educate themselves in their computer. Most people don't use IE with the expectation that it's the most secure choice. (Other than a generic naive 'everything is secure !')
Speaking of Rush, was I the only person who was completely freaked out when they learned the lead singer was male ? How the heck that wasn't a chick is beyond me. (May not be a sex joke, but it is a gender one. Close enough, no ? =])
It's a highly effective way (at least in the sims) of getting some dude who's in your rear cone off your ass--and in fact, if you time it right, a cobra will essentially reverse your positions in that situation. I.e., you're now on the other guy's tail and in missile-firing position. Even if you can't get behind them, a Cobra puts your engine exhaust facing away from your tail and thereby reduces the chance of a successful IR shot.
Even if a Cobra maneuver is successful in getting someone off your ass, there's (usually) his wingman to worry about. So if he doesn't take the opportunity to light up your now immoble behind, his buddy probably will. And is it truely that effecting at lowering your IR signature ? Once you're perpindicular to your direction of travel, all that hot air winds up just swirling about you in a big cloud. That could provide just as good a target. And either way, you've got a LOT bigger radar signature to worry about.
Speed isn't life with 4th and 5th generation fighters--maneuverability and altitude are.
That I won't argue. However, I think my father would have had a much harder time working that sort of mantra into daily life. Probably would have made his teachings on how to drive a car/snowmobile a lot easier, though. Saved cash on all the speeding tickets to boot.
A Cobra maneuver is only impressive in an airshow. In a true combat situation it's beyond useless. While it looks extremely cool, it basically leaves you all but stationary. This is an rediculously vulnerable position to be in for a dogfight.
As my USAF father kept telling me, "Airspeed is life".
I remember back when that whole Elian Gonzalez debacle was busy...well, debacling. When the Feds finally came took him away at gunpoint, I recall looking at the infamous picture and saying "Hey, I recognize that gun from CounterStrike. That's an MP5 ! Quick, flashbang that sucker and cap him with your Desert Eagle !!!"
Joking aside, games can be a source of factual information. Just like any other form of media. And any new information is going to influence your outlook on everything. Assuming you're actually capable of seperating the fact from the fiction, this is a good thing.
Interplay has all but died, but we don't see them selling off their worthwhile licenses. Instead, they're just leveraging the FallOut name to garner new investment.
I'm afraid the demise of poorly managed companies just leads to the firing of the real employees, but leaves the poorly managed franchises. Hence, the necrophilic anal-raping that FallOut is getting.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really think Id is being unreasonable
I don't really think ID is being anything at all. This is baseless extrapolation based on previous history. It's analagous to looking at Valve's release dates, and figuring out that HalfLife3 will be released in 2025. It RandomInternetGeek's comedic guestimation, not a company press release.
--LordPixie
DOE is more than capable of doing this and have done so for many years. Admittedly there have been a few problems but it never started a real situation of calamatious proportions.
Last I checked, the DoE ran the Pantex nuclear weapons plant. The same site with some obscene safety issues. Accidentally drilling into the core of a nuclear device resulted in the evacuation of the entire plant. Securing a warhead with duct tape increased the chances of a flat out nuclear explosion. And that's ignoring the clichéd "OMG THREE MILE ISLAND" commentary.
+++Warning to any fool that thinks it's easy to steal radioactive material from one of these teams. You'll die twice before you get to pull your trigger once!+++
Perhaps you reached this conclusion because the security teams were cheating during their security drills ? Cheating. for twenty years. It's not too hard to look impenetrable when you know the exact building and wall where an attack will take place. A DoE whistleblower admitted to a 50% success rate for security tests. Special forces teams were able to penetrate Los Alamos and wander off with enough material to create a nuclear bomb. Even an freakin' journalist was able to sneak into Los Alamos. There are plenty of other issues raised over at the Project On Governmental Oversight. Again, that's ignoring all the major security issues with CREM's going on over the last month.
Now, you're absolutely right in the fact that we need to get that waste cleaned up. But thinking that the DoE, NNSA, or the US government on the whole is "more than capable" is bullshit. We're flirting with disaster. If we take the outlook that everything is fine and dandy, we're going to quickly hit the point where someone will cause a situation of calamatious proportions.
--LordPixie
Main press is more interested in hype stuff (like the lastest Ipod model...
Thank god we don't peruse places that hype the latest iPod model. No siree. We subscribe to Slashdot: Bastion of Stuff that Matters.
Please. Slashdot is just as interested in hype, fluff, and FUD as any other big news source. We just want ours geek flavored. Compare any article with the headline/summary, and it's pretty obvious. This is an entertainment website. While it certainly serves lots of news, let's not jump on the high horses. Slashdot is just as vulnerable as the other news sources.
--LordPixie
Eventaully he caught up to the gazalle and was able to basically do wahtever he wanted to it.
What the hell kind of experiment was this ?!? People having their way with Gazelles...that's just wrong. Wrong!!
What ? I can't be the only one who read that and cracked up. There have to be other dirty minded Slashdotters.
--LordPixie
Kind of sad when you don't know that one of your favorite bands is releasing a new album soon until you read it on Slashdot.
It's kind of sad when one of your favorite bands is U2 !!! *rimshot*
Heh, sorry. Couldn't resist. =) I didn't need that Karma anyways.
--LordPixie
Weren't you tipped off that something might be wrong when your tin-foil hat anti-corperation post on the NASA thread also got modded as offtopic ? =)
--LordPixie
Games like PoP, DE:IW, and Thief3 don't run on GF4MX's. Because they're a piece of shit graphics card ? Well, yes. But the problem is usually attributed to the game's mandatory pixel shaders. The GF4MX's don't have any pixel shading whatsoever. So if you design a game that you cannot turn off the shaders, it's not going to run without a GPU that supports them.
ID simply coded their engine to use different rendering paths depending on what card you're using. So if you lack the pixel shaders, it will still run without them.
--LordPixie
I just (finally) finished perusing that whole original document. Incredibly fascinating. As you mentioned, the concept art was morbidly beautiful. I must say, it did an impressive job at conveying what they wanted. (But like any Sci-Fi/Horror loving geek, I can't say it would stop me =] )
The very concept of designing something to convey a message to others ten thousand years in the future is a wonderful mental exercise. That's longer than our current recorded history, for Pete's sake ! Even if such efforts are unnecessary due to the technological conditions you mentioned.
--LordPixie
I'll readily admit, I had to google for the meaning behind your post. Here's some info for those more lazy.
The spiel mentioned above is the message that the Yucca Mountain design is intended to convey to future civilizations. Namely to those that show up 10K+ years from now. (Yucca being the designated site for the United States' Radioactive waste. It will be quite hazardous for an amazingly long amount of time.) The text is not really supposed to be an inscription per say, but simply the overall concept behind the structure of the entire complex.
The original research was done by Sandia national labs. A significant portion of the document can be found here.
Madcap googling resulted in an easy to read summary here. May god have mercy on the poor soul that gets slashdotted.
BTW Tackhead, kudos on the obscure (?) reference. Forced me to learn. =)
--LordPixie
That's what I got out of it too.
When they say "compatible", I think they meant in a User Interfacelook/name sort of way. It probably appeared they were designing a non-Blizzard WarCraft.
--LordPixie
His character jokes around too much for a Colonel in the Air Force
Bah, I think a bit of eccentricity is a prerequisite for the USAF. Zipping about at the controls of an oversized Buick travelling several multiples of the speed of sound must rattle the brain. Or require a rattled one to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I'm the son of a USAF pilot, I've got nothing against them. But they've got a pretty distinct type of humor. Jack O'Neil seems to portray a good deal of that. (Admittedly, maybe this is the sort of thing that tapers off as one ascends the chain of command ?)
But otherwise, I agree with you wholeheartedly on the WormHoleAtlantis X-Tream fears. I guess only time will tell. Afterall, not every spinoff sucks.
--LordPixie
Since this is Slashdot, he's probably been busy trying to build a child in the basement.
--LordPixie
Making money is about offering a superior product, not doing the least amount of work to create the cheapest product.
No, actually making money is about making money. Only the most fanatic of capitalists would honestly believe that profit is equal to objective quality, and nothing but objective quality. (and vice-versa) There are plenty of ways to make money. Releasing high-quality, well tested products is one of them. Lowering overhead, and delivering a cheap & convenient service/product (which is usually relatively crappy) to the consumer is another. Since Microsoft and WalMart both apply the latter concept, and are ungodly profitable, it's pretty retarded to claim that making money is about superior product.
--LordPixie
Software companies drop off the map very quickly if they don't keep putting out new products that are popular.
Yeah, like Blizzard. Or Bungie. Both of them recognize that it's not the quality that matters, it's the frequency of their releases. It's also well known that most of their games are coded during crunchtime, in order to meet a pre-defined deadline.
Low-frequency quality releases is far from a worthless buisiness model. The problem is more related to the fact that people constantly buy crappy games, and inconsistantly purchase decent ones.
--LordPixie
...the excellent Descent: Freespace licenses come to mind. Ran those into the ground pretty spectacularly.
How exactly was FreeSpace 'run into the ground' ? FreeSpace2 was the best space sim I've ever played in my entire life. No matter your opinion, most anyone can agree that both games were of the highest quality.
Or were you merely faulting Interplay for failing to make a third in the series ?
--LordPixie
Parent post deserves an Allusion to excellent but underknown video game +5.
A shame that someone is going to go burn their points on some hacked SovietRussia/???-Profit/overlord joke. Damn you, Slashdot. Damn you!!
--LordPixie
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"
When people use IE, they have chosen conveniance. They choose to use IE because they don't want to dick around with all the other possibilities. Unlike us hobbyists, they don't want to deal with anything of that sort. And convinience is basically Microsoft's largets goal/gain. Not security. They have consciously chosen not to educate themselves in their computer. Most people don't use IE with the expectation that it's the most secure choice. (Other than a generic naive 'everything is secure !')
Speaking of Rush, was I the only person who was completely freaked out when they learned the lead singer was male ? How the heck that wasn't a chick is beyond me. (May not be a sex joke, but it is a gender one. Close enough, no ? =])
--LordPixie
It's a highly effective way (at least in the sims) of getting some dude who's in your rear cone off your ass--and in fact, if you time it right, a cobra will essentially reverse your positions in that situation. I.e., you're now on the other guy's tail and in missile-firing position. Even if you can't get behind them, a Cobra puts your engine exhaust facing away from your tail and thereby reduces the chance of a successful IR shot.
Even if a Cobra maneuver is successful in getting someone off your ass, there's (usually) his wingman to worry about. So if he doesn't take the opportunity to light up your now immoble behind, his buddy probably will. And is it truely that effecting at lowering your IR signature ? Once you're perpindicular to your direction of travel, all that hot air winds up just swirling about you in a big cloud. That could provide just as good a target. And either way, you've got a LOT bigger radar signature to worry about.
Speed isn't life with 4th and 5th generation fighters--maneuverability and altitude are.
That I won't argue. However, I think my father would have had a much harder time working that sort of mantra into daily life. Probably would have made his teachings on how to drive a car/snowmobile a lot easier, though. Saved cash on all the speeding tickets to boot.
--LordPixie
A Cobra maneuver is only impressive in an airshow. In a true combat situation it's beyond useless. While it looks extremely cool, it basically leaves you all but stationary. This is an rediculously vulnerable position to be in for a dogfight.
As my USAF father kept telling me, "Airspeed is life".
--LordPixie
I remember back when that whole Elian Gonzalez debacle was busy...well, debacling. When the Feds finally came took him away at gunpoint, I recall looking at the infamous picture and saying "Hey, I recognize that gun from CounterStrike. That's an MP5 ! Quick, flashbang that sucker and cap him with your Desert Eagle !!!"
Joking aside, games can be a source of factual information. Just like any other form of media. And any new information is going to influence your outlook on everything. Assuming you're actually capable of seperating the fact from the fiction, this is a good thing.
--LordPixie
To steal. It's slang, and I don't think it carries any real crime connotatiom.
Silly Brits, and their made up English words.
--LordPixie
Interplay has all but died, but we don't see them selling off their worthwhile licenses. Instead, they're just leveraging the FallOut name to garner new investment.
I'm afraid the demise of poorly managed companies just leads to the firing of the real employees, but leaves the poorly managed franchises. Hence, the necrophilic anal-raping that FallOut is getting.
--LordPixie
That's one booth babe that probably has accses to beta builds of Doom III. And Half Life II. And just about anything else out there.
--LordPixie
If only this guy had a laptop. EQ would have been a minor infraction compared to his chosen alternative.
Long live the US Justice system !
--LordPixie
You had to survive as long as you could before the next cout de etat.
Coup d'état
I'm not trying to be a spelling Nazi, just spreading the knowledge.
--LordPixie