Sucks to be them. Poke the giant, and not expect to get swatted is plain stupid. Quite honestly, i'm very surprised that the US didn't have the testicular fortitude to do it again. IMO, they should've turned iraq/bagdad into a parking lot 5 years ago.
What does Iraq has to do with 9/11?! What have they done that you define as "Poke the giant"?
Afghanistan is another story: They refused to hand over the person responsible for planning the attack.
I'm not unskilled: I'm a Ph.D.'d molecular biologist with a long list of publications and a couple patents.
Wow. things in the US must be shit indeed.
Have you tried to search some overseas positions? With such qualifications and especially records of patents, perhaps they will pay for your travel expenses. Of course changing the country is a very massive change (Different culture, loss of friends, etc), but you are as free now as you ever will be.
The hypothesis that Titan may have liquids present has been around for a long time. And it used the orbit shape since its basis from the very beginning. That is why Huygens atmospheric probe was designed to float just in case.
However Huygens landed on a solid surface even though it was aimed at an area that had an appearance of a liquid. As far as I know the probe did not detect any evidence of liquids near the landing site nor from the aerial imagery. As such, I was under the impression that this hypothesis was disproved.
If there were underground bodies of water present, surely Huygens would of picked up evidence of this in the atmosphere. Just seems like rather than working on other explanations for the orbit scientists still cling to the same assumptions with a little more justification.
Again, the world is not a stable place. Things change. Now get off your ass, and try to make those changes benefit you and your offspring. Stop whining.
Every country and culture has brave, heroic and selfless people. So unfortunate that majority of the time the news are filled with the exact opposite examples, just to bring ratings with drama.
If only I would of found out about the supernova back in January! Never seen one before and it is possible that there won't be another within my lifetime. At least I can still find this one in the sky before it completely fades.
Obviously Slashdot can't be relied upon to give us up-to-date news. What sites do you use to be notified of non-mainstream events like this as they happen?
You misunderstood. I was only critizising the rose-tinted glasses old games wear when they reminiscence ancient games and imagine that they really played them for 500 hours. This just isn't true and those games never existed. Take a realistic angle andlook through your own list again.
I will agree. Re-reading the post you replied to, he did say "100+ hours per". At first I thought he meant that combined hours of re-playing would equals at least 100 hours. And also I will agree that all examples I provided last less than 100 consecutive hours of gameplay.
Still I can come up with an example to disprove your such-a-game-never-existed claim: Morrowind. That world really was gigantic and took me well over a month with one character before I finally explored all contents of it. Believe me it was much more than 100 hours. And all of it was put in by game designers and not generated by other people. In terms of replay, I probably done it twice again, but I can see someone that really loved it to repeat it five times in order to achieve different goals for himself.
Though I never played it, it has been told that Daggerfall had a MUCH bigger world than Morrowind.
Baldur's Gate also was quite large world with quite a bit of depth and depending on your play style will take you longer than 100 hours for a single play through. Also very re-playable due to different starting choices and companions.
- Planescape Torment
~30 hours to finish, each subsequent replay much faster as you skip most of the dialogue (the main content of the game).
I will agree that Torment will take less than 100 hours to finish, I would still put it more than 30 hours especially if you take the time to follow all threads and locate all the hidden gems. As for replay: Why do you think I would ever skip any dialogue? This is the reason I replay it for! You said it yourself that it is the content of the game itself.
In my opinion, games wherein the plot is not the driving factor (for ex. UFO Enemy Unknown and perhaps Civ games for those who like inane micromanagement) give the best replay value, as you're not just skipping dialogue that you've read multiple times over. These don't last forever either, as all strategy games against a computer are ultimately unsatisfying, but they go a long way if the mechanics are well thought out.
Well yes, this is your opinion. But please do not just make conclusion that just because these kind of games do not appeal to you that it is impossible for someone to spend 100+ hours on them and enjoy every second. Starcraft and Total Annihilation for example have quite a reputation to be compelling enough for such a passion.
As an aside: Please check out Alpha Centauri. Yes it is a strategy game, but it has a very profound and inspiring story and philosophical viewpoints to go with it. Particularly the amount of quotes that comes with technology and secret project completion. Really this is just to show you that there really are unique gems made in the past that are virtually absent from today's mainstream gaming.
The whole mentality that 50 bucks should buy 500 hours of single player entertainment is deeply flawed and delusional. Yet every time a game article goes up, someone brings it up and starts blabbering about supposed past games that easily fulfilled this criteria. Face it. The only way 50 bucks buys 500 hours of quality entertainment is when you play Starcraft or Tem Fortress or some other title wherein other people supply the competition and social aspect, which game designers are and have always been unable to provide.
While I will agree that calls for "Every new game must be an absolute high-quality, replayable marvel that will stand the test of time" are uncalled for, I do not think there people out there making such proclamations. If there are, they are most likely trolls or someone aiming for a Funny post.
- Planescape Torment - Deus Ex - Alpha Centauri - Knights of the Old Republic - Thief series - The Witcher - Baldur's Gate series
Those above (Not exclusive list, but main ones that come to mind right away) I have replayed many many times. Call me neurotic if you will, but I did not play them to "beat it", I played them again to see other choices and completed story. Exhausting that, I replay them now and again just to enjoy the storytelling, the atmosphere and gameplay.
It is like a very great book. According to what you say people should only read it once and throw it in the trash. After all it doesn't change between readings! Yet I can safely bet quite a bit of money that I wasn't the only one that re-read Lord of the Rings many times.
Essentially if the female is unable to find any mate in this year's mating season, it still have the option to reproduce regardless. There is a penalty of having exactly the same genetic code, but I guess it is a much better option than dying without passing any genes at all.
At the same time if the male is available, she can make use of all the advantages of extra genotype permutations that comes with sexual reproduction. It really is a win-win!
This raises the question though: Since it is such an advantage, why is it so rare to in nature to have the ability to reproduce asexually and sexually? Wouldn't evolution favor species that can reproduce with less obstacles?
You are right. Water shortages are more tricky than power and will give us trouble much sooner.
Worst comes to worst: If you got power, you can go desalination. If you got no water and overly expensive power, then you have to really hope that your waterways are not too polluted. Yeah... Fat chance. A lot of cities will become uninhabitable and abandoned very quickly.
You mentioned chiropractors in your list of frauds. I was always under the impression that all chiropractors do is pop your joins back to how they supposed to be after you been an idiot by sitting in that uncomfortable chair for several days. Nothing more.
Is there some mystical part to the field being pushed that I am not aware of? Do they claim to do more besides physical task of setting your bones straight?
The villain already had his fun and finished with her. The hero ends up with the nagging wife and screaming kids.
And win? Do you want to quickly die at the peak of your life doing what you love most of your own purpose, or wither away of old age in an old-people home (With slow death from Alzheimer or Parkinson) like a hero?
Another option to go for when mouse hand pain starts is a trackball.
Logitech Trackman Wheel is the first I tried and still with it. After a while of practice I can even competitively play FPSes in a LAN with it. Only downside is the occasional ball/roller cleaning due to the design, but it is very easily done.
That is actually a very clever way to wage war providing your opponent is forced to follow international law.
There bound to be some clause somewhere against such a use of civilian population. Forced deportation bound to raise issues and China wouldn't want to deal with the interference from UN or entirety of NATO.
I just can't comprehend quantum computing and quantum mechanics in general.
What absolutely derails me is the talk about randomness, probability and statistics inherent with this field. The word chance gets mentioned a lot and that just stops me in my tracks.
In programming there is simply no room for chance. Algorithm must always return the same result given same parameters. 1 + 1 must always return an exact, perfect value of 2 no matter how many times it is executed.
But from what I read, in quantum world you can only say that this particular action will result in probability of 0.99999999999 (Number of nines vary per setup) of returning that particular result. Very large amount of nines sounds reassuring, but given the speed of CPU's processing an instructions billions of times per millisecond, give enough execution time and eventually you will hit that one time when the result will not be what is expected.
And one wrong result will put the entire program into an undefined state.
When every instruction has a chance (VERY minute but still) of failing how do you even start to approach an issue of debugging. In order to plan my program flow I need the stability of my assumptions. And this is even before we start talking about the really weird parts of quantum mechanics (Superposition of states, etc).
Perhaps I just don't understand the field of probability and statistics. Quantum computation is a reality thus randomness is not an insurmountable hurdle that my mind makes it to be. I would really appreciate if someone with some knowledge in the area would try to explain (Or provide me with a link that directly addresses this issue) how the chances of particle states get converted into solid 100% reliable predictability.
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Sucks to be them. Poke the giant, and not expect to get swatted is plain stupid. Quite honestly, i'm very surprised that the US didn't have the testicular fortitude to do it again. IMO, they should've turned iraq/bagdad into a parking lot 5 years ago.
What does Iraq has to do with 9/11?! What have they done that you define as "Poke the giant"?
Afghanistan is another story: They refused to hand over the person responsible for planning the attack.
I'm not unskilled: I'm a Ph.D.'d molecular biologist with a long list of publications and a couple patents.
Wow. things in the US must be shit indeed.
Have you tried to search some overseas positions? With such qualifications and especially records of patents, perhaps they will pay for your travel expenses. Of course changing the country is a very massive change (Different culture, loss of friends, etc), but you are as free now as you ever will be.
The hypothesis that Titan may have liquids present has been around for a long time. And it used the orbit shape since its basis from the very beginning. That is why Huygens atmospheric probe was designed to float just in case.
However Huygens landed on a solid surface even though it was aimed at an area that had an appearance of a liquid. As far as I know the probe did not detect any evidence of liquids near the landing site nor from the aerial imagery. As such, I was under the impression that this hypothesis was disproved.
If there were underground bodies of water present, surely Huygens would of picked up evidence of this in the atmosphere. Just seems like rather than working on other explanations for the orbit scientists still cling to the same assumptions with a little more justification.
Again, the world is not a stable place. Things change. Now get off your ass, and try to make those changes benefit you and your offspring. Stop whining.
Amen!
Thank you for those links.
When looking at the pictures, did anyone else was reminded of underground labs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Metro 2033?
It's slashdot. People here think they know what everyone else should do.
It's religion. People there think they know what everyone else should do.
FTFY
Therefore slashdot is religion.
QED.
Perhaps someone more creative than I can come up with Lord's Prayer that replaces "father" with "CmdTaco".
Very true.
Every country and culture has brave, heroic and selfless people. So unfortunate that majority of the time the news are filled with the exact opposite examples, just to bring ratings with drama.
Why not go all the way and seal the eye socket? Just like Molly in Neuromancer.
If only I would of found out about the supernova back in January! Never seen one before and it is possible that there won't be another within my lifetime. At least I can still find this one in the sky before it completely fades.
Obviously Slashdot can't be relied upon to give us up-to-date news. What sites do you use to be notified of non-mainstream events like this as they happen?
You misunderstood. I was only critizising the rose-tinted glasses old games wear when they reminiscence ancient games and imagine that they really played them for 500 hours. This just isn't true and those games never existed. Take a realistic angle andlook through your own list again.
I will agree. Re-reading the post you replied to, he did say "100+ hours per". At first I thought he meant that combined hours of re-playing would equals at least 100 hours. And also I will agree that all examples I provided last less than 100 consecutive hours of gameplay.
Still I can come up with an example to disprove your such-a-game-never-existed claim: Morrowind. That world really was gigantic and took me well over a month with one character before I finally explored all contents of it. Believe me it was much more than 100 hours. And all of it was put in by game designers and not generated by other people. In terms of replay, I probably done it twice again, but I can see someone that really loved it to repeat it five times in order to achieve different goals for himself.
Though I never played it, it has been told that Daggerfall had a MUCH bigger world than Morrowind.
Baldur's Gate also was quite large world with quite a bit of depth and depending on your play style will take you longer than 100 hours for a single play through. Also very re-playable due to different starting choices and companions.
- Planescape Torment
~30 hours to finish, each subsequent replay much faster as you skip most of the dialogue (the main content of the game).
I will agree that Torment will take less than 100 hours to finish, I would still put it more than 30 hours especially if you take the time to follow all threads and locate all the hidden gems. As for replay: Why do you think I would ever skip any dialogue? This is the reason I replay it for! You said it yourself that it is the content of the game itself.
In my opinion, games wherein the plot is not the driving factor (for ex. UFO Enemy Unknown and perhaps Civ games for those who like inane micromanagement) give the best replay value, as you're not just skipping dialogue that you've read multiple times over. These don't last forever either, as all strategy games against a computer are ultimately unsatisfying, but they go a long way if the mechanics are well thought out.
Well yes, this is your opinion. But please do not just make conclusion that just because these kind of games do not appeal to you that it is impossible for someone to spend 100+ hours on them and enjoy every second. Starcraft and Total Annihilation for example have quite a reputation to be compelling enough for such a passion.
As an aside: Please check out Alpha Centauri. Yes it is a strategy game, but it has a very profound and inspiring story and philosophical viewpoints to go with it. Particularly the amount of quotes that comes with technology and secret project completion. Really this is just to show you that there really are unique gems made in the past that are virtually absent from today's mainstream gaming.
The whole mentality that 50 bucks should buy 500 hours of single player entertainment is deeply flawed and delusional. Yet every time a game article goes up, someone brings it up and starts blabbering about supposed past games that easily fulfilled this criteria. Face it. The only way 50 bucks buys 500 hours of quality entertainment is when you play Starcraft or Tem Fortress or some other title wherein other people supply the competition and social aspect, which game designers are and have always been unable to provide.
While I will agree that calls for "Every new game must be an absolute high-quality, replayable marvel that will stand the test of time" are uncalled for, I do not think there people out there making such proclamations. If there are, they are most likely trolls or someone aiming for a Funny post.
Majority of the time we
- Planescape Torment
- Deus Ex
- Alpha Centauri
- Knights of the Old Republic
- Thief series
- The Witcher
- Baldur's Gate series
Those above (Not exclusive list, but main ones that come to mind right away) I have replayed many many times. Call me neurotic if you will, but I did not play them to "beat it", I played them again to see other choices and completed story. Exhausting that, I replay them now and again just to enjoy the storytelling, the atmosphere and gameplay.
It is like a very great book. According to what you say people should only read it once and throw it in the trash. After all it doesn't change between readings! Yet I can safely bet quite a bit of money that I wasn't the only one that re-read Lord of the Rings many times.
This is quite amazing.
Essentially if the female is unable to find any mate in this year's mating season, it still have the option to reproduce regardless. There is a penalty of having exactly the same genetic code, but I guess it is a much better option than dying without passing any genes at all.
At the same time if the male is available, she can make use of all the advantages of extra genotype permutations that comes with sexual reproduction. It really is a win-win!
This raises the question though: Since it is such an advantage, why is it so rare to in nature to have the ability to reproduce asexually and sexually? Wouldn't evolution favor species that can reproduce with less obstacles?
Fascinating. You bio-engineers must have all kinds of fun.
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We discovered plenty of hydrocarbons on Titan. Where are the liberation convoys? Time to get cracking boys!
Why is this modded as Flamebait? There is nothing in Xaedalus'es post that is inciting an argument. If anything it should be Insightful.
You are right. Water shortages are more tricky than power and will give us trouble much sooner.
Worst comes to worst: If you got power, you can go desalination. If you got no water and overly expensive power, then you have to really hope that your waterways are not too polluted. Yeah... Fat chance. A lot of cities will become uninhabitable and abandoned very quickly.
You probably did too.
Unfortunately no.
At least I am at home here.
Offtopic:
You mentioned chiropractors in your list of frauds. I was always under the impression that all chiropractors do is pop your joins back to how they supposed to be after you been an idiot by sitting in that uncomfortable chair for several days. Nothing more.
Is there some mystical part to the field being pushed that I am not aware of? Do they claim to do more besides physical task of setting your bones straight?
The villain already had his fun and finished with her. The hero ends up with the nagging wife and screaming kids.
And win? Do you want to quickly die at the peak of your life doing what you love most of your own purpose, or wither away of old age in an old-people home (With slow death from Alzheimer or Parkinson) like a hero?
Hindenburg paint as the cause of the disaster is a myth that has been debunked but alas still persists.
This is a good page I found with a quick Google search. Follow the links inside for in-detail information and maybe hopefully we can put this to rest.
http://www.airships.net/hindenburg-paint/
Another option to go for when mouse hand pain starts is a trackball.
Logitech Trackman Wheel is the first I tried and still with it. After a while of practice I can even competitively play FPSes in a LAN with it. Only downside is the occasional ball/roller cleaning due to the design, but it is very easily done.
YMMV of course.
That is actually a very clever way to wage war providing your opponent is forced to follow international law.
There bound to be some clause somewhere against such a use of civilian population. Forced deportation bound to raise issues and China wouldn't want to deal with the interference from UN or entirety of NATO.
First there was the carrying of messages.
Then came the telegraph with the morse code.
Then finally came speech over the wire and radio wave.
And now we are back to text?
I guess this is my age showing, but what is the advantage of sending text when I can just make a call?
I just can't comprehend quantum computing and quantum mechanics in general.
What absolutely derails me is the talk about randomness, probability and statistics inherent with this field. The word chance gets mentioned a lot and that just stops me in my tracks.
In programming there is simply no room for chance. Algorithm must always return the same result given same parameters. 1 + 1 must always return an exact, perfect value of 2 no matter how many times it is executed.
But from what I read, in quantum world you can only say that this particular action will result in probability of 0.99999999999 (Number of nines vary per setup) of returning that particular result. Very large amount of nines sounds reassuring, but given the speed of CPU's processing an instructions billions of times per millisecond, give enough execution time and eventually you will hit that one time when the result will not be what is expected.
And one wrong result will put the entire program into an undefined state.
When every instruction has a chance (VERY minute but still) of failing how do you even start to approach an issue of debugging. In order to plan my program flow I need the stability of my assumptions. And this is even before we start talking about the really weird parts of quantum mechanics (Superposition of states, etc).
Perhaps I just don't understand the field of probability and statistics. Quantum computation is a reality thus randomness is not an insurmountable hurdle that my mind makes it to be. I would really appreciate if someone with some knowledge in the area would try to explain (Or provide me with a link that directly addresses this issue) how the chances of particle states get converted into solid 100% reliable predictability.
So how do fusion bombs work? Did they lie to us and they are actually fission?