The Magic Mouse is physically capable of doing most of, if not all, the things you mentioned. It's just a matter of responding to the input from the driver side, which the default Apple driver does not. Perhaps there is some legal problem with patents that's holding it up?
But google for "BetterTouchTool". It's a freeware tool that lets you customize the mouse (and trackpad, if you have a laptop) to do all sorts of cool things. I have my mouse set up so that two-finger click is a middleclick, and three-finger click toggles exposé. There's also stuff like multi-finger swipes, and tapping (as opposed to clicking). But not pinch or rotate yet.
This idea relies on the assumption that the dust is all charged positive or negative (I don't know if it is all charged one way or not, that is just what this hinges on). Ionize the robot the same polarity as the charge particles.
Have we learned nothing from Star Trek? Just reverse the polarity...
Re:That might not be possible.
on
Glass In Spaaaaace
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Indeed--
Also intriguing to space researchers is fluoride glass. A blend of zirconium, barium, lanthanum, sodium and aluminum, this type of glass (also known as "ZBLAN") is a hundred times more transparent than silica-based glass. It would be exceptional for fiber optics.
A fluoride fiber would be so transparent, says Day, that light shone into one end, say, in New York City, could be seen at the other end as far away as Paris. With silicon glass fibers, the light signal degrades along the way.
Exageration, unforgivable?! Where is your appreciation for stories?
It all makes sense now. All that stuff from Bush and co. about WMDs was really their contribution to the magical world of storytelling. Tuly a labor of love. The rest of the world should be so fortunate to have literary geniuses such as them in power.
The combination of hi and lo tech just looked silly - it was like... spaceships landing in the wild west and being met with men on horses. It was an inconsistent and totally implausible view of the future.
Perhaps you should go see Star Wars again. In a galaxy of high tech laser blasters, the Tusken Raiders used still used bullets. Just because technology has advanced a great deal doesn't mean that everyone has access to it.
As for horses, they would be very handy in a place without an abundant supply of oil or uranium for fuel, like those colonies on the outer planets, for example. Animals find their own fuel, repair and reproduce on their own, are able to return to home base autonomously, and have built-in safety mechanisms that prevent them from say, running off a cliff. Plus, they can come in handy in some other tight spots--again from Star Wars, anyone remember those Tontons?
"The idea that they may have invented cool lasers but not everybody can afford them is sort of the premise on which we work. Lasers take you to a science-fiction place that I feel has been covered too much." - Joss Whedon
A game like Street Fighter, I'm sorry to say, does not have much in the skill department. You anticipate the move by your opponent, and do the designated counter move. You do a move, your opponent counters, etc.
You could say the same about tennis, chess, or any game of "skill". If you take the time to get past the button-mashing phase of Street Fighter, you will find that it has much depth.
So you anticipate your opponent's move to throw a fireball, and you jump over it to land your massive combo. But he has read you and was faking you out. He only wanted you to think he was going to throw the fireball. So now you're floating down from your jump... right into his 28-hit anti-air super combo.
And it doesn't stop at the mind games. Positioning really counts. Get yourself backed into the corner and you have a big disadvantage. Let Zangief close in on you, or score a knock-down hit, and it could be all over. And don't forget to manage your power bar. A charged bar could mean the difference between defeat and making a comeback victory from 2% life left.
That's an interesting point, especially since Nebuchadnezzar was the name of one of the kings who ruled in the original Babylon. And if the matrix-in-a-matrix scenario actually is the case, then it would all make even more sense. Zion, the Judeo-Christian (and Rastafarian?) city of freedom, turns out to be Babylon, the place of Israelite exile and captivity.
Henry Raddick's works are an example of reviews as an entertainment media. Every one of his reviews are insidiously funny, yet giving the impression of being informative at the same time. I seriously doubt that he has read any of the books he reviews. Here's another example:
"The Maltese : Diminutive Aristocrat" by Vicki Abbott, George Gwilliam
A first rate guide to this extraordinary breed. The book deals with all aspects of ownership and care with admirable thoroughness it even gives tips on how to spot when your dog is liquefying into a pool of itself.
He's also the same person who wrote the Andrew Lloyd Weber reviews that were taken down by Amazon. Funny stuff.
People keep on talking about U7 being the best. Clearly Ultima 5 Warriors of Destiny is. U7 had no challenge element.
Speaking of having no challenge element, this reminds me of something I used to do back in the Ultima 5 days. I'd save my game, quit and load up PC-Tools for the hex editor. Then I'd change the save file such that the amount of gold my party had was -1. Restart U5 and never worry about gold again.
It seems the U5 money algorithms only check if your gold reaches 0, but doesn't care if it drops below that, since that isn't supposed to happen. The result? Unlimited spending power! I could keep buying food, potions, and weapons without my gold ever reaching 0.
Of course these days, games like Starcraft already have similar capabilities built in. "Power overwhelming, "Show me the money", etc.
What matters is how many of us with Nielson boxen watch. Which raises the question, "how many Slashdotters have a Nielson box?"
Now there's a Slashdot poll I'd like to see. Though I think there would be a non-disclosure agreement of some kind involved when one gets a Nielsen box.
I'm venturing on to a gray area of on-topicness, but...
For those of you who don't know, Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also has another genre show called Firefly.
I just watched the latest episode (War Stories) tonight, and believe me when I tell you that if it hasn't aired in your timezone yet, you do not want to miss it. This one episode has got more character development, action (and I mean combat) and humor (and none of that slapstick stuff) than the entire season of Enterprise so far.
Again, if you like Buffy (and even if you don't), don't miss tonight's Firefly. This one deserves high ratings, but that can only happen if people know it's being aired. So now you know.
Imagine a robot like this in 20odd years time stronger and faster than any guard dog and able to call the police once the burglar has been taken down.
Neal Stephenson, in his book Snow Crash, writes about just that. They run at supersonic speeds and can disarm a gang of armed thugs in an instant. They were nuclear powered, though. And required an actual canine brain in the machinery. Each Rat Thing could communicate with other Rat Things through wireless connections, forming a network. Virtual barking over this network alerted Rat things in neighbouring vicinities to come and lend help if needed.
Imagine a robotic servant which can clean your house, make the tea and which you can later plug a joypad into to play GTA12 on the Playstation 19.
And greatly increase the mutation rate. While this won't do much beyond raising the cancer rate in any given generation, it will mean that a lot of genetic defects will start piling up over the years.
I'm no expert in this field, but it got me thinking. Recent hypotheses in evolutionary theory (such as Punctuated Equilibrium) suggest that evolution takes place in sporadic bursts rather than a slow and steady flow. Seeing that the magnetic poles flip every so often, and these flips could be accompanied by widespread genetic mutation, it seems likely that this would account for the evolutionary phenomenon mentioned above.
Can anyone verify the plausibility of this? Perhaps the next evolutionary step for humanity may not be far away. Or how about this scenario:
The people of the first world countries are relatively safe from the mutating effects of radiation due to the accessibility shelters, medical treatment, portable shielding, etc. The masses of the third world countries become subject to geneteic mutation. Most of it is harmful, and even fatal, but a small minority develop advantageous traits, including perhaps immunity to the bad effects of radiation. With the excess population gone, the homo-superiors (a term from X-men) from the third world become a force to be reckoned with. The first world responds with increased R&D in genetic engineering, creating their own breed of superhumans.
[joke]Just in time to ward off the Krull invasion.[/joke]
Having a sense of aesthetics doesn't make it anime! Being japanese animation makes something anime, looking cool existed before the japs ever chot their first cell.
The Matrix is not animated, so it isn't anime.
My intended meaning wasn't that aesthetics equals anime. The Matrix had a certain feel to it. The way characters move. The flow of each scene. These were not seen before to this extent, except in anime. Certainly the Matrix is not an animation, but it has qualities that can otherwise be found only anime. So it's like an anime, except it's live action. Hence live action anime.
So, the animated Matrix shows would be animated-live-action-animé then?
FYI, WB will be releasing a set of Matrix anime in 2003, and it will be called
Animatrix.
To consider these movies to be animé is to be both ignorant and illogical. These show are much more related to hong-kong action movies than to japanese cartoons.
The Matrix follows very much in the style of action anime. And it's not just the fight scenes. The way the characters move when they are in the Matrix is quite distinct from real life. It's all very purposeful, direct, and aesthetic. In other words, very much like how anime characters move.
I suspect one of the reasons why this happens in anime is that it's easier to animate characters if they don't make all the uneccessary movements that real people make. It also looks cooler. Action anime characters tend to look like they're posing all the time. Every cell of animation is drawn to deliver the most aesthetic appeal. You will find that Matrix characters are similar in this respect. Some examples are Trinity's "Doge this!" scene, and the Morpheus (and gang) "We're in" picking-up-the-phone scene. In the latter, the characters in the background don't even move, just like in an anime.
Vash the Stampede! He'd reduce the whole city to rubble and blast a hole into the moon, but amazingly there would be no casualties.
Or Alucard from Hellsing. He'd get his head blown off 13 times in the process, laughing a little bit louder each time. But by the end of it all his oponents would be shaking at the knees and screaming "...Monster!"
I can't believe you left out Alfred "I kill you filthy" Bester. The Demolished Man is a classic, and the first book to win a Hugo ever. J Michael Straczynski even named the head
Psi Cop in Babylon 5 after the guy.
Slashdot Mirror
The Magic Mouse is physically capable of doing most of, if not all, the things you mentioned. It's just a matter of responding to the input from the driver side, which the default Apple driver does not. Perhaps there is some legal problem with patents that's holding it up?
But google for "BetterTouchTool". It's a freeware tool that lets you customize the mouse (and trackpad, if you have a laptop) to do all sorts of cool things. I have my mouse set up so that two-finger click is a middleclick, and three-finger click toggles exposé. There's also stuff like multi-finger swipes, and tapping (as opposed to clicking). But not pinch or rotate yet.
"Yoga Fire."
"Yoga Fire."
"Yoga Flame!"
xterm + bash
works for me :)
It all makes sense now. All that stuff from Bush and co. about WMDs was really their contribution to the magical world of storytelling. Tuly a labor of love. The rest of the world should be so fortunate to have literary geniuses such as them in power.
For some reason reading that gave me the image of Elrond saying something about "casting it back into the fires from whence it came..."
Perhaps you should go see Star Wars again. In a galaxy of high tech laser blasters, the Tusken Raiders used still used bullets. Just because technology has advanced a great deal doesn't mean that everyone has access to it.
As for horses, they would be very handy in a place without an abundant supply of oil or uranium for fuel, like those colonies on the outer planets, for example. Animals find their own fuel, repair and reproduce on their own, are able to return to home base autonomously, and have built-in safety mechanisms that prevent them from say, running off a cliff. Plus, they can come in handy in some other tight spots--again from Star Wars, anyone remember those Tontons?
"The idea that they may have invented cool lasers but not everybody can afford them is sort of the premise on which we work. Lasers take you to a science-fiction place that I feel has been covered too much." - Joss Whedon
Actually, it's the Sanskrit name for the Buddhist doctrine of no-self or no-soul. Atman is the self/soul, and An is the negation of that.
Disclaimer: IANAB (I am not a Buddhist).
Evangelion
RahXephon
Robotech
Gundam
A game like Street Fighter, I'm sorry to say, does not have much in the skill department. You anticipate the move by your opponent, and do the designated counter move. You do a move, your opponent counters, etc.
You could say the same about tennis, chess, or any game of "skill". If you take the time to get past the button-mashing phase of Street Fighter, you will find that it has much depth.
So you anticipate your opponent's move to throw a fireball, and you jump over it to land your massive combo. But he has read you and was faking you out. He only wanted you to think he was going to throw the fireball. So now you're floating down from your jump... right into his 28-hit anti-air super combo.
And it doesn't stop at the mind games. Positioning really counts. Get yourself backed into the corner and you have a big disadvantage. Let Zangief close in on you, or score a knock-down hit, and it could be all over. And don't forget to manage your power bar. A charged bar could mean the difference between defeat and making a comeback victory from 2% life left.
That's an interesting point, especially since Nebuchadnezzar was the name of one of the kings who ruled in the original Babylon. And if the matrix-in-a-matrix scenario actually is the case, then it would all make even more sense. Zion, the Judeo-Christian (and Rastafarian?) city of freedom, turns out to be Babylon, the place of Israelite exile and captivity.
He's also the same person who wrote the Andrew Lloyd Weber reviews that were taken down by Amazon. Funny stuff.
It seems the U5 money algorithms only check if your gold reaches 0, but doesn't care if it drops below that, since that isn't supposed to happen. The result? Unlimited spending power! I could keep buying food, potions, and weapons without my gold ever reaching 0.
Of course these days, games like Starcraft already have similar capabilities built in. "Power overwhelming, "Show me the money", etc.
I'm venturing on to a gray area of on-topicness, but...
For those of you who don't know, Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also has another genre show called Firefly.
I just watched the latest episode (War Stories) tonight, and believe me when I tell you that if it hasn't aired in your timezone yet, you do not want to miss it. This one episode has got more character development, action (and I mean combat) and humor (and none of that slapstick stuff) than the entire season of Enterprise so far.
Again, if you like Buffy (and even if you don't), don't miss tonight's Firefly. This one deserves high ratings, but that can only happen if people know it's being aired. So now you know.
How about Americans with Russian-sounding names:
J Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, Spiderman)
Larry & Andy Wachowski (The Matrix)
Neal Stephenson, in his book Snow Crash , writes about just that. They run at supersonic speeds and can disarm a gang of armed thugs in an instant. They were nuclear powered, though. And required an actual canine brain in the machinery. Each Rat Thing could communicate with other Rat Things through wireless connections, forming a network. Virtual barking over this network alerted Rat things in neighbouring vicinities to come and lend help if needed.
Reminds me of Ping of Megatokyo.
As usual, speculative fiction paves the way to the future.
I'm no expert in this field, but it got me thinking. Recent hypotheses in evolutionary theory (such as Punctuated Equilibrium) suggest that evolution takes place in sporadic bursts rather than a slow and steady flow. Seeing that the magnetic poles flip every so often, and these flips could be accompanied by widespread genetic mutation, it seems likely that this would account for the evolutionary phenomenon mentioned above.
Can anyone verify the plausibility of this? Perhaps the next evolutionary step for humanity may not be far away. Or how about this scenario:
The people of the first world countries are relatively safe from the mutating effects of radiation due to the accessibility shelters, medical treatment, portable shielding, etc. The masses of the third world countries become subject to geneteic mutation. Most of it is harmful, and even fatal, but a small minority develop advantageous traits, including perhaps immunity to the bad effects of radiation. With the excess population gone, the homo-superiors (a term from X-men) from the third world become a force to be reckoned with. The first world responds with increased R&D in genetic engineering, creating their own breed of superhumans.
[joke]Just in time to ward off the Krull invasion.[/joke]
The Matrix is not animated, so it isn't anime.
My intended meaning wasn't that aesthetics equals anime. The Matrix had a certain feel to it. The way characters move. The flow of each scene. These were not seen before to this extent, except in anime. Certainly the Matrix is not an animation, but it has qualities that can otherwise be found only anime. So it's like an anime, except it's live action. Hence live action anime.
As we know, the FBI has been monitoring online communications to gain leads on terrorist cells. From the Onion: Kevin Bacon linked to Al-Qaeda.
FYI, WB will be releasing a set of Matrix anime in 2003, and it will be called Animatrix.
To consider these movies to be animé is to be both ignorant and illogical. These show are much more related to hong-kong action movies than to japanese cartoons.
Check out the Matrix / Ghost in the Shell Comparison. It's quite clear that the Wachowski brothers were influenced by anime.
The Matrix follows very much in the style of action anime. And it's not just the fight scenes. The way the characters move when they are in the Matrix is quite distinct from real life. It's all very purposeful, direct, and aesthetic. In other words, very much like how anime characters move.
I suspect one of the reasons why this happens in anime is that it's easier to animate characters if they don't make all the uneccessary movements that real people make. It also looks cooler. Action anime characters tend to look like they're posing all the time. Every cell of animation is drawn to deliver the most aesthetic appeal. You will find that Matrix characters are similar in this respect. Some examples are Trinity's "Doge this!" scene, and the Morpheus (and gang) "We're in" picking-up-the-phone scene. In the latter, the characters in the background don't even move, just like in an anime.
Vash the Stampede!
He'd reduce the whole city to rubble and blast a hole into the moon, but amazingly there would be no casualties.
Or Alucard from Hellsing. He'd get his head blown off 13 times in the process, laughing a little bit louder each time. But by the end of it all his oponents would be shaking at the knees and screaming "...Monster!"
Also known as Darth Fences of Microsith, sworn enemy of the Jedix, and commander of the NTie fighter squadrons.
I can't believe you left out Alfred "I kill you filthy" Bester. The Demolished Man is a classic, and the first book to win a Hugo ever. J Michael Straczynski even named the head Psi Cop in Babylon 5 after the guy.