Re:Oh good! The trolls are out in full force!
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iOS 4 Releases Today
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· Score: 1
To be fair, the high end iPad costs only $829.00 plus a 3G contract. As computers go that's really cheap. Someone will point out that the 3G contract is more expensive then the computer, but you don't have to get a 3G contract to have a functional iPad. The last computer I bought cost over $3000.00. They basically do the same things. Almost equally well. It's kinda depressing.
Apple disappointed everyone (except the 2 million or so people that bought an iPad) by releasing a horribly locked down device. Everyone wanted a tablet that ran OSX. Except all the people that couldn't give less of a shit and bought one anyway.
Shiny touch-screens. Don't ask me why but they are incredibly energetic and delicate. Watch your iPhone, the slightest bump and it could go off like a you're a redshirt at an engineering station.
Well the conduits all are supposedly powered by superheated plasma which is pumped through them, rather then say good old AC. Every time there's even slight overpressure in the system: BANG! there goes an ensign! Clearly crew safety will be of secondary concern to 24th century engineers.
They probably spend all their time on getting the ship to make really pretty banking turns.
I always figured that all the noises and being thrown around the ship was a features of the ships "GUI". It gives the crew visceral feedback in situations where the forces involved would be incomprehensible to the human brain. A few bumps and bruises are a small price to pay for the realization that the weird blue beam being fired at you is several orders of magnitude more energetic then it looks
Reverse engineering things like Star Trek to come up with plausible explanations is lots of fun.
Reverse engineering things like Star Trek to come up with plausible explanations is fucking stupid.
Just because something is stupid doesn't mean it isn't fun. Don't be a party pooper. Star Trek was good enough science fiction that many, many people working in both physics and engineering will point to Star Trek as inspiring them to pay attention in science class.
These days I prefer my reading a little more challenging, but if it wasn't for my Dad waking me up early to watch Captain Kirk shoot phasers at Klingons and punch out guys in rubber suits, I probably would have just learned how to play baseball or something.
Oh don't be such a buzzkill. So long as everyones gaming licenses are in order, and you're in Nevada or another locality which doesn't ban gambling, let people have their fun.
Sure, glass is the most important thing when it comes to sharpness, but image resolution can really save your ass sometimes. There are times you're just not going to be close enough or fast enough to get the shot, or your going to find something in the background that really adds to the shoot (I'm talking event here). In those cases being able to crop in and maintain sharpness can save your ass.
Pros are pragmatic, and very often improvise, but I've never known a photographer that didn't want the best equipment that they could get their hands on. My fiancee is a professional photographer and I have a BFA in photography, in fact most people I know are either artists or professional photographers. My fiancee will shoot with her old Nikon D70 (hell she'll shoot with my F3 sometimes) if she has to, but she'd rather use her D300.
As far as VR goes, sure you need a lot more resolution then you'll ever need on a cell phone. My point is that the companies making the screens for the cell phones are the same companies that will be making the screens for VR. Its not just technological cross pollination, its money for R and D.
I just hope the megapixel story won't be repeated with cellphone resolution, and we are not going to see stuff like 400-dpi 3" screens.
On the contrary, I hope we do! Resolution like that would make the VR goggle aspirations of the 90s and augmented reality aspirations of the present a reality. If the initial resolution war is fought on cell phone screens, so be it.
Not only that, but while your casual snapshot taker doesn't need more then 5 megapixels, your professional photographer certainly does. Generally speaking, "the money is at the bottom". Selling a million iPhones at $200 could allow the development of $2000 HMD where you can't see the pixels at 1" from your eye.
I got stopped back in the 90s while going 97 in a 65 according to the ticket. The officer asked me: "Do you know how fast you were going?" and being a smart assed teenager I responded: "No sir, the speedometer only goes up to 85".
$480 speeding ticket. I was lucky it was the back in the 90s, if I did that today I'd probably lose my license.
Measuring the distance between 2 objects, calculate the time needed to transverse that space at the speed limit. Use a stop watch to measure how fast a car transverses it. It's not rocket science. Even if you got all Cs in high school like a cop you can still work it out.
My ex got pulled over for "breaking the speed limit" based on the sound her car made. She was driving a 15 year old Toyota with a rusted out muffler. She was turning right onto a throughway from a dead stop at a stop sign. The cop was at the next cross street and pulled her over immediately. Based on the maximum acceleration of her car according to Toyota and the distance between the streets according to a map, it was physically impossible for her to be speeding where he claimed she was, even if she had the throttle fully open.
I had a nice little presentation prepared for her. The case would have been thrown out of court, had the cop shown up, which he didn't. So it was thrown out anyway. I still want the damn time I spent researching it back.
She should have been issued a repair order not a speeding ticket.
I'd say the opposite. 120 is good in small amounts (4-6oz) on special occasions, sipped like cognac. 90 is too sweet to drink as a everyday beer, but lacks the uniqueness of the 120, it falls into the no man's land of "why bother". 60 obviously is an everyday beer.
Fun fact: In 1909 Coca-Cola was sued in Federal Court under the Pure Food and Drug act. Not because of the cocaine that was still in it at that time but because of the caffeine. In the end the whole thing never went to trial, not because they showed that caffeine was safe, but because it was determined by a judge to not be an additive.
I actually attended a lecture by Dr. Carl Hart at The Secret Science Club. His lecture was pretty interesting, namely the experiments they preformed where they give moderate to large amounts of orally administered methamphetamine to human research subjects. The majority of them administered it early in the day just like you would a cup of coffee. The expected "Binge" activity was actually pretty uncommon in the majority of the test subjects.
Obviously you've never heard of the automotive company "Ferrari".
Some of their most sought after cars have massive engineering flaws and require continuous maintenance (I know this because I know a guy who's entire job was just to maintain a private collection of Ferraris). They guzzle gas, are designed to entice their drivers to drive in an unsafe manner, are not particularly safe (especially the classics), never seat more then 2 people, cannot even be operated in anything less then optimum conditions without minor damage (don't drive a low slung Ferrari down a pothole ridden cobblestone road), are expensive to own and insure.
By nearly any measure, for simply getting from point A to point B, compared to a Ford Fiesta any Ferrari is going to be inferior to the Ford. Unless that measure is Looking Awesome, Sounding Awesome, Driving Awesome. Though the Ford would be much better for running away from baddies in a shopping center.
The problem is that AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Sprint, etc are legally protected monopolies, so the free market doesn't really enter into this. In my opinion, since the are legal monopolies which "own" various natural resources such as parts of the electromagnetic spectrum or telephone poles, they should not be able to operate as other "free market" for-profit corporations. Instead, they should all be collapsed into a single entity: "American Bandwidth Provider". They will do nothing but provide bandwidth (no selling phones, no generating content, etc), and they will provide this bandwidth at cost. Costs including R and D, network expansion, employee compensation, etc which will be determined by "American Bandwidth Auditor" a government agency composed of locally elected officials, that all get to fight to get the bandwidth improved in the area they were elected in.
We've already socialized these natural resource (and really we needed to). We might as well might as well get a good deal on them, rather then have them run by companies who's only responsibilities are to their share holders.
Not to mention the hooker out behind the gas station negotiates up front and generally delivers services as negotiated. Who knows if the sorostitute you're buying expensive girly drinks for at the bar will ever put out. The STDs tend to be more bang for your buck too.
Mostly these high ABV beers are just novelties. I've had a few good ones from Dogfish Head, but you have to sip them like you would scotch or brandy. Usually its customary to split a single 12 ounce bottle with one or two other people. If you are looking to get drunk on the cheap, malt liquor is the way to go as the high ABV beers are generally really expensive.
If they start getting up to the 50% mark, you might get some interesting mixed drinks out of them. At that point they would start resembling whiskey, except with hops. I could see that mixing well, though it would take some experimentation to find out what.
Dogfish Head 120 is pretty decent as far as "high test" beers go, and you're right about how its best enjoyed. Honestly everything Dogfish Head makes is pretty decent. I'd even go so far as to say my favorite beer of all beers is their 60 Minute IPA.
Oh man jungle juice was the worst. I was once at a party at the University of Delaware, mostly engineering undergrads. They filled a bathtub with Everclear and CoolAid powder, no water at all except melting ice. Then they played "beer" pong with it. I have absolutely no idea how no one died.
I once read somewhere that the fundamental difference between something with mass and something without mass is that "at rest" (a purely theoretical state) an object with mass it would be stationary (that is to say absolute zero motion and temperature). An object without mass "at rest" would move at the speed of light. It would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, and an infinite amount of energy to decelerate an object without mass to absolute zero.
I have no idea if there is any validity to this, and I can't recall where I read it, but I've always thought it was an interesting thing to think about. Perhaps someone can correct me or fill in the blanks.
Yeah San Andreas did implement that poorly, and Fable 2 for that matter was also annoying. Having to micromanage your character's physique is never fun. Few people take true pleasure in micromanaging their physique even in real life, and I have a feeling their aren't the target demographic for most video games. (I'm not making the lame joke that gamers are all fat slobs; in fact I just got back from the gym... I just hated every boring minute of it.)
With the maintaining you heath (as opposed to physique) issue, its kind of like the age old geek question "where are all the toilets on the Enterprise?" Five different series, and not once does the Captain stop to take a leak. The reason they don't have them? It doesn't add to the plot. In the GTA franchise, you're in an urban environment, so being a "survivalist" doesn't add to the game. You can just assume your character does their business during the fade to blacks between the cut scenes. I feel in RDR it is missing, as the environment the game is set in raises the issue. Making your way across the New Mexican desert is hard, even without someone shooting at you.
As far as being a complete badass with Deadeye, it would be nice if they did it in a way that didn't make the rest of the games combat mechanics obsolete. Fallout 3 characters become nearly invincible too when leveled up to 20-30, and its fun. In RDR, the only thing standing between you and invincibility is about $250, or about one hour of gameplay. It's not as satisfying.
Actually I didn't mean it as a criticism, just as a fact. I meant to say that neither company was introducing significant, new technology; something I would take into account when making a comparison between two games. By using the word blatant I meant "openly" not "unashamedly".
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To be fair, the high end iPad costs only $829.00 plus a 3G contract. As computers go that's really cheap. Someone will point out that the 3G contract is more expensive then the computer, but you don't have to get a 3G contract to have a functional iPad. The last computer I bought cost over $3000.00. They basically do the same things. Almost equally well. It's kinda depressing.
Apple disappointed everyone (except the 2 million or so people that bought an iPad) by releasing a horribly locked down device. Everyone wanted a tablet that ran OSX. Except all the people that couldn't give less of a shit and bought one anyway.
Shiny touch-screens. Don't ask me why but they are incredibly energetic and delicate. Watch your iPhone, the slightest bump and it could go off like a you're a redshirt at an engineering station.
Well the conduits all are supposedly powered by superheated plasma which is pumped through them, rather then say good old AC. Every time there's even slight overpressure in the system: BANG! there goes an ensign! Clearly crew safety will be of secondary concern to 24th century engineers.
They probably spend all their time on getting the ship to make really pretty banking turns.
I always figured that all the noises and being thrown around the ship was a features of the ships "GUI". It gives the crew visceral feedback in situations where the forces involved would be incomprehensible to the human brain. A few bumps and bruises are a small price to pay for the realization that the weird blue beam being fired at you is several orders of magnitude more energetic then it looks
Reverse engineering things like Star Trek to come up with plausible explanations is lots of fun.
Reverse engineering things like Star Trek to come up with plausible explanations is fucking stupid.
Just because something is stupid doesn't mean it isn't fun. Don't be a party pooper. Star Trek was good enough science fiction that many, many people working in both physics and engineering will point to Star Trek as inspiring them to pay attention in science class.
These days I prefer my reading a little more challenging, but if it wasn't for my Dad waking me up early to watch Captain Kirk shoot phasers at Klingons and punch out guys in rubber suits, I probably would have just learned how to play baseball or something.
Oh don't be such a buzzkill. So long as everyones gaming licenses are in order, and you're in Nevada or another locality which doesn't ban gambling, let people have their fun.
Sure, glass is the most important thing when it comes to sharpness, but image resolution can really save your ass sometimes. There are times you're just not going to be close enough or fast enough to get the shot, or your going to find something in the background that really adds to the shoot (I'm talking event here). In those cases being able to crop in and maintain sharpness can save your ass.
Pros are pragmatic, and very often improvise, but I've never known a photographer that didn't want the best equipment that they could get their hands on. My fiancee is a professional photographer and I have a BFA in photography, in fact most people I know are either artists or professional photographers. My fiancee will shoot with her old Nikon D70 (hell she'll shoot with my F3 sometimes) if she has to, but she'd rather use her D300.
As far as VR goes, sure you need a lot more resolution then you'll ever need on a cell phone. My point is that the companies making the screens for the cell phones are the same companies that will be making the screens for VR. Its not just technological cross pollination, its money for R and D.
I just hope the megapixel story won't be repeated with cellphone resolution, and we are not going to see stuff like 400-dpi 3" screens.
On the contrary, I hope we do! Resolution like that would make the VR goggle aspirations of the 90s and augmented reality aspirations of the present a reality. If the initial resolution war is fought on cell phone screens, so be it.
Not only that, but while your casual snapshot taker doesn't need more then 5 megapixels, your professional photographer certainly does. Generally speaking, "the money is at the bottom". Selling a million iPhones at $200 could allow the development of $2000 HMD where you can't see the pixels at 1" from your eye.
I got stopped back in the 90s while going 97 in a 65 according to the ticket. The officer asked me: "Do you know how fast you were going?" and being a smart assed teenager I responded: "No sir, the speedometer only goes up to 85".
$480 speeding ticket. I was lucky it was the back in the 90s, if I did that today I'd probably lose my license.
Measuring the distance between 2 objects, calculate the time needed to transverse that space at the speed limit. Use a stop watch to measure how fast a car transverses it. It's not rocket science. Even if you got all Cs in high school like a cop you can still work it out.
My ex got pulled over for "breaking the speed limit" based on the sound her car made. She was driving a 15 year old Toyota with a rusted out muffler. She was turning right onto a throughway from a dead stop at a stop sign. The cop was at the next cross street and pulled her over immediately. Based on the maximum acceleration of her car according to Toyota and the distance between the streets according to a map, it was physically impossible for her to be speeding where he claimed she was, even if she had the throttle fully open.
I had a nice little presentation prepared for her. The case would have been thrown out of court, had the cop shown up, which he didn't. So it was thrown out anyway. I still want the damn time I spent researching it back.
She should have been issued a repair order not a speeding ticket.
I'd say the opposite. 120 is good in small amounts (4-6oz) on special occasions, sipped like cognac. 90 is too sweet to drink as a everyday beer, but lacks the uniqueness of the 120, it falls into the no man's land of "why bother". 60 obviously is an everyday beer.
Damnit where are my mod points when I need them!
+1 Funny
Fun fact: In 1909 Coca-Cola was sued in Federal Court under the Pure Food and Drug act. Not because of the cocaine that was still in it at that time but because of the caffeine. In the end the whole thing never went to trial, not because they showed that caffeine was safe, but because it was determined by a judge to not be an additive.
I actually attended a lecture by Dr. Carl Hart at The Secret Science Club. His lecture was pretty interesting, namely the experiments they preformed where they give moderate to large amounts of orally administered methamphetamine to human research subjects. The majority of them administered it early in the day just like you would a cup of coffee. The expected "Binge" activity was actually pretty uncommon in the majority of the test subjects.
Obviously you've never heard of the automotive company "Ferrari".
Some of their most sought after cars have massive engineering flaws and require continuous maintenance (I know this because I know a guy who's entire job was just to maintain a private collection of Ferraris). They guzzle gas, are designed to entice their drivers to drive in an unsafe manner, are not particularly safe (especially the classics), never seat more then 2 people, cannot even be operated in anything less then optimum conditions without minor damage (don't drive a low slung Ferrari down a pothole ridden cobblestone road), are expensive to own and insure.
By nearly any measure, for simply getting from point A to point B, compared to a Ford Fiesta any Ferrari is going to be inferior to the Ford. Unless that measure is Looking Awesome, Sounding Awesome, Driving Awesome. Though the Ford would be much better for running away from baddies in a shopping center.
The problem is that AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Sprint, etc are legally protected monopolies, so the free market doesn't really enter into this. In my opinion, since the are legal monopolies which "own" various natural resources such as parts of the electromagnetic spectrum or telephone poles, they should not be able to operate as other "free market" for-profit corporations. Instead, they should all be collapsed into a single entity: "American Bandwidth Provider". They will do nothing but provide bandwidth (no selling phones, no generating content, etc), and they will provide this bandwidth at cost. Costs including R and D, network expansion, employee compensation, etc which will be determined by "American Bandwidth Auditor" a government agency composed of locally elected officials, that all get to fight to get the bandwidth improved in the area they were elected in.
We've already socialized these natural resource (and really we needed to). We might as well might as well get a good deal on them, rather then have them run by companies who's only responsibilities are to their share holders.
Not to mention the hooker out behind the gas station negotiates up front and generally delivers services as negotiated. Who knows if the sorostitute you're buying expensive girly drinks for at the bar will ever put out. The STDs tend to be more bang for your buck too.
Mostly these high ABV beers are just novelties. I've had a few good ones from Dogfish Head, but you have to sip them like you would scotch or brandy. Usually its customary to split a single 12 ounce bottle with one or two other people. If you are looking to get drunk on the cheap, malt liquor is the way to go as the high ABV beers are generally really expensive.
If they start getting up to the 50% mark, you might get some interesting mixed drinks out of them. At that point they would start resembling whiskey, except with hops. I could see that mixing well, though it would take some experimentation to find out what.
Dogfish Head 120 is pretty decent as far as "high test" beers go, and you're right about how its best enjoyed. Honestly everything Dogfish Head makes is pretty decent. I'd even go so far as to say my favorite beer of all beers is their 60 Minute IPA.
Oh man jungle juice was the worst. I was once at a party at the University of Delaware, mostly engineering undergrads. They filled a bathtub with Everclear and CoolAid powder, no water at all except melting ice. Then they played "beer" pong with it. I have absolutely no idea how no one died.
I once read somewhere that the fundamental difference between something with mass and something without mass is that "at rest" (a purely theoretical state) an object with mass it would be stationary (that is to say absolute zero motion and temperature). An object without mass "at rest" would move at the speed of light. It would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, and an infinite amount of energy to decelerate an object without mass to absolute zero.
I have no idea if there is any validity to this, and I can't recall where I read it, but I've always thought it was an interesting thing to think about. Perhaps someone can correct me or fill in the blanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockstar_Advanced_Game_Engine
Yeah San Andreas did implement that poorly, and Fable 2 for that matter was also annoying. Having to micromanage your character's physique is never fun. Few people take true pleasure in micromanaging their physique even in real life, and I have a feeling their aren't the target demographic for most video games. (I'm not making the lame joke that gamers are all fat slobs; in fact I just got back from the gym... I just hated every boring minute of it.)
With the maintaining you heath (as opposed to physique) issue, its kind of like the age old geek question "where are all the toilets on the Enterprise?" Five different series, and not once does the Captain stop to take a leak. The reason they don't have them? It doesn't add to the plot. In the GTA franchise, you're in an urban environment, so being a "survivalist" doesn't add to the game. You can just assume your character does their business during the fade to blacks between the cut scenes. I feel in RDR it is missing, as the environment the game is set in raises the issue. Making your way across the New Mexican desert is hard, even without someone shooting at you.
As far as being a complete badass with Deadeye, it would be nice if they did it in a way that didn't make the rest of the games combat mechanics obsolete. Fallout 3 characters become nearly invincible too when leveled up to 20-30, and its fun. In RDR, the only thing standing between you and invincibility is about $250, or about one hour of gameplay. It's not as satisfying.
Actually I didn't mean it as a criticism, just as a fact. I meant to say that neither company was introducing significant, new technology; something I would take into account when making a comparison between two games. By using the word blatant I meant "openly" not "unashamedly".