yeah, okay, rereading the descriptions, I'll concede you're right there too. Incidentally, the "tying pedal positions to the maximum allowed angle" is how it was done on A300 models up to the -600, and it's how Boeing does it. The "Variable Stop" solution is a cheaper and simpler design, but still works counter to what pilots (with experience on several types) expect.
I wouldn't worry about it. Given how long Longhorn/Vista's taken, Microsoft Ulcer will be many years in development. Meanwhile, Google Ulcer will rule all while still in beta!
I stand corrected. Page 3, last paragraph lists the A300-600 breakout force as constant at 22 lbs of foot pressure. At 165 kts IAS, the foot pressure required for full deflection is 65 pounds for 4 inches of pedal travel. at 250 kts IAS, the required pressure for full deflection is 32 pounds for 1.3 inches of pedal travel.
So I was incorrect: it wasn't less force, but imperceptibly more. On the other hand, the system is not "too sensitive in general", but rather is as I described it: it gets more sensitive with speed; and it is "as monumentallly stupid as having the rudder immediately deflect fully". As an Air Safety Week analysis (March 29, 2004) put it:
At airspeeds in the range of 250 knots, where Flight 587 was operating at the time of the accident, it is virtually impossible for the pilot to command anything other than full rudder once he or she applies any rudder pedal force in excess of breakout.
Re:There are far worse problems with Scarebus...
on
Airbus A380 Under Fire
·
· Score: 2, Informative
*excessive* rudder inputs?
The A300-600 had a redesign on the rudder pedals, so that, the faster the aircraft was going, the less rudder input you needed to get full deflection. (To understand this, think of power-assist steering turned on its head: at low speeds, you need to crank the wheel all the way to turn full left. At 100 mph, touching the wheel will give you full left. smart design, huh?) At the speed they were going, the force required to achieve full rudder deflection was *less* than the "breakout" force -- i.e., the force required to deflect the rudders at all. Once the pilot elected to use the rudder, it was over.
It's not boeing vs. scarebus here, it's just dumb-ass design.
I like the damn thing, and think it's pretty cool, but I ain't gonna hold that against you or anyone else.
That said, I do find the "pump up the hardcore" publicity campaign a little disturbing for exactly that reason: The whole point of Firefly and, I assume, the film is that it's not so much about the "alternate reality" as it is about decent characters in an environment that has the flexibility that only science fiction can offer (=read what that mormon dude said about '40s science fiction done well: you invest in the characters, the world is secondary to genre exercises: heists, submarine films, westerns, you name it). Yeah, this was probably what drove star trek too, at some point. So I gotta say, playing to the hardcore, with their whole "I saw the original series when it broadcast, and was the first to carry Nathan Fillion's love child" attitude (okay, I saw the broadcast too, but **edited creepy stuff about cast members**), can probly turn off many mainstream fans, who have to sit next to them the first weekend? ("There was this smelly bearded geek sitting next to me, cackling at all the wrong moments.") I mean, who wants to be looking at the joke through a microscope anyway?
"natural problem solving ability"? something like that. I'd saying "hacking" is the application of a natural ability, or even desire that humans have. That is, all humans by nature desire to know. And, when put in a system where we don't know all the rules, we hack, and build up experience. Eventually, we get a series of patterns and actions that "work" for a given situation. This is how far "hacking" can take us. Then we make some sort of leap -- or the mind does -- and we infer the principles behind what we've been doing: we get the rules. Once we have knowledge of the principles, we can figure out how to act in individual cases without resorting to hacking. We can even teach others those principles.
At least, that's what my budddy Harry says, when he finally finishes talking about the physics.
Big-ass airships man. They got a hangar for one. The Navy's abandoned airships for 65 years -- probably as a result of a horrendous Ronald Reagan movie -- it's time for Google to bring it back and show us how it's done. I mean, how cool is that? A Zeppelin dude, to travel in style. Stick inside a wet bar, lounge area, and sell tickets via invite only (n.b., boarding verification requires a celphone). Paint it up with a google logo on the side. Will it make money? Will it crash in a horrific fireball? Who cares! Just slap a big "BETA" logo on the side.
And no doubt, the production Ebooks out there are pretty darn expensive too, and will be for a couple years.
But hell, if you want to slap together a startup, and have a small, dedicated team work on this sort of technology for a couple years, building and field testing some supercool apps, and learning _now_ how to harness the idiosyncrasies of the hardware, $3000 a pop is cheap.
Of course, if you're serious about a startup, you'd probly go out and get your own gumstix.
Or if you're a serious nerd, $3000 is nothing. Hell, how much did a Black Apple cost, adjusted for inflation?
Super Long Play (or whatever) would give you six; already early on in the format wars. Sure, it was crappy quality, but it meant you could set your VCR to record a one hour show every day of the workweek, then view them later, vs. constant fiddling with the beta machine.
Of course, if you wanted to [em]pause[/em] playback, then beta was your format.
Heck, if the Wikipedia article does not provide this evidence, then he really does need a better legal team. Heck, all he needed to do was ring me up, slip me a few bills (say,$5000 and free usage of the trademark in australia), and I would have made the appropriate modifications, complete with a whole mess of alt-0153s. That is, if his team was too lazy to do it themselves. So I'm saying that Wikipedia's very openness and flexibility mitigates its value as a good source of evidence of general public perception?
come to think of it, the last thing we need is for Wikipedia to become a court-accepted indicator of public perception, since then many contributors would be people trying to manufacture just such perception.
well, okay, until the 500 pages of bickering in the article history pages also gets submitted.
Well, for some reason, 3 out of 4 moderators thought your post was funny.
By the way, the fanboi/infidel fights are really getting entertaining now. I'm rather surprised at Nintendo's offering, since it gives substance to the long-whining group of nintendo lovers, who have been preaching the gospel of the Little Playing Card Company that could. I mean, they've taken beating after beating -- heck, even the Seattle Mariners have had more success lately than Nintendo -- and now, finally, they get their wish: something that looks really cool, at the same time the other two competitors are fighting to see who can make the most recondite, byzantine hardware.
But as the rabid nintendogs have been barking all along, it's not about the hardware, but about the games, and, incidentally, how well they play. Anybody can do a demo at a tradeshow under controlled conditions without problems (well, except microsoft), but what's it going to be like when the thing ships across the world.
I am hoping it's intuitive, interesting, and a huge success, so I can get me one o' them controllers for the PC.
Of course, it could be another Nintendo screen pistol: a limited use gimmick.
... or the fact that most of the entries can be altered by anybody at any time, regardless of their qualifications or competence.
Wikipedia is great, and its design allows for flexibility and rapid development of articles. It's fun for a lot of things, but anything that requires authority or critical rigor, such as court cases or research papers, should steer the hell away.
It's kinda like those slashdot posters who seem to be professionally involved in everything.
1). Wireless efficiency. The PC Jr. had a wireless keyboard. Is this thing going to work in a crowded house with lots of peanut butter flying around?
2) Durability. Speaking of which, how hard can you beat on these things? What's the MWBF (Mean Waves Between Failure) on this thing? Are people going to just wave them right into the rubbish bin?
3) Endurance. How long can a twelve-year-old boy wave his arms before fatigue sets in? Has anybody done any reasonable studies? What about 30-year-old overweight slashdot nerds longing for their misspent youth?
4) They are shipping at least two controllers per unit, right? 'cos if there's just one, then designers can't rely on the numchuck configuration.
That's what the article's about (or rather the article's parent on the major news feeds). iPod generation my butt. We're just getting the data in from the "Walkman generation", and sure enough:
Hearing specialists say they're also seeing more people in their 30s and 40s -- many of them among the first Walkman users -- who suffer from more pronounced tinnitus, an internal ringing or even the sound of whooshing or buzzing in the ears.
I didn't use my walkman that much, so my tinnitus isn't that bad.
Yeah. Let's cut the crap about intentionality, "what Steve wanted", and look at what he got:
A) A device that has all the drawbacks of cellphone provider monopolies B) It also gives the user the battery life of an "always on" phone C) The need to connect to a PC for its music player functionality. D) The need to use the vendor's network for all its cellphone functionality. E) iTunes software, without its most intuitive interface element. F) a crippling 100-song limit so the thing does not compete with iPods stuff.
This, folks, isn't some diabolical marketing strategy; it's a real turd cooked up through design-by-committee. Forget the convergence arguments for a second -- they don't apply. This is as convergent as one loud family and one filthy family living in a duplex: the filthy ones don't get any sleep, and the loud ones get sick from the roaches.
I love how people stretch for marketing. The ROKR's massive marketing will drive people to better products like the RAZR and the iPod nano? Yeah? Or how about a Nokia and a Creative Zen? People are going to buy the ROKR, warts and all, for access to Apple's exclusive catalog? Or maybe, now that Apple's in bed with Motorola for at least a few months, some other online music provider will take the ROKR's failure as an opportunity to team up with a successful cellphone maker, and use the leverage to increase their own catalog and market?
Give me a break. I'm with y'all when you need to look for an intelligent explanation for decisions, but every corporation makes some dumb decisions; and, no offense, but Apple's made some really dumb ones in the past. Some folks there are like the kid whom researchers put in a white room filled with horseshit. He jumps in, and starts digging with hands, feet, teeth, everything, and digs furiously. After about an hour, the scientists ask him why he's digging. "There's gotta be a horse in here somewhere!" Keep looking.
Nah, they're playing to a solid-state, no-moving-part gizmo's strengths. Hell, on my cheap mobile phone (Motorola V171) I once was troubleshooting what ended up being poor interface design (if the PIN is entered within the first 30 seconds of the "Enter PIN" message appearing, the thing would accept it, start up, wait 10 seconds, find no network, reboot and ask for the PIN again). I had gotten to the point in the troubleshooting tree that reads: 14) Throw phone out of Fifth-story window
Darn thing didn't even scratch.
I dunno about the nano, but if it's anything like similarly-shaped solid state consumer electronic devices, the weak spot is gonna be sustained torque. Take that thing, and put it in a vice to simulate supertight pants. Apply sustained forces for long periods and see if the case deforms, loosening a critical connection. Put it in one of those paint-shakers for a couple hours to simulate it being worn by a pogo-mad punkrockers.
Blunt trauma kills, but most of my devices die from "a long illness".
Alright -- first off, Ebay's gotta be out of their mind if they think Skype can somehow help as a "Convergent" technology. It probably can't. Just glance through this -- VoIP auctions combine the best of all worlds: the incomprehensibility of people who don't share a native tongue, the time constraints of a live auction, and the anonymity and uncertainty of the internet.
So why buy skype? Why shell out 1.3 billion bucks for a piece of software, especially one so commonplace as Skype?
Skype is a great piece of software, but no doubt better can be made. But Skype has other things going for it: A) It's got reasonably secure encryption -- unlike practically every other chat and VoIP client out there. B) It's great at getting around firewalls C) As decentralized as it is, it requires minimal resources -- it hits one IP in Denmark and it's on its way. D) It has 40+ million users, of which 3 million are online at any given time, and the numbers are growing.
So skype delivers a lot of regular users at minimal cost. Heck, you don't even need to run adds on the Skype client itself, if you control the help, community and download pages. Controlling the #1 PC-to-PC VoIP client out there gives access to all kinds of non-obvious revenue streams, very few of which have anything to do with auctions.
Excellent ideas. New Orleans wasn't built below sea level -- parts of it got that way because of measures in place to reduce natural disasters. Building away from hurrican-prone areas is a good idea; while we're at it, let's add earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, monsoons, flood zones, proximity to religious wackos, volcanoes, hydroelectric dams, nuclear power plants to the list, and cross out any place without an adequate supply of groundwater. Now let's go there, kill the people already there, and build our city. It'll be a beacon to all civilization.
On the submarines (or the windmills for that matter): how much water do you need to turn over to get the needed effect? The proposal is missing a few key points, like energy required to do it, and the desired result? Besides, Nuclear Subs and all that dragging will generate heat. Maybe what we need is a giant swizzle stick with a Handle of God on one end.
The sciam article was great too... they get to the point of "what is the cost", and casually mention a series of earth-orbiting solar collectors beaming massive amounts of energy around.
I'm suprised nobody came up with other crackpot ideas, like airdropping into hurricanes swarms of dumb, flying wind-powered O2 generators, separated Carbon from O2, reversing the greenhouse effect, and using the carbon and the massive energy of hurricanes to produce industrial-grade diamonds in the process: fly over a hurricane, dump these guys out the back, and have them fly home, maybe doing on the way a victory roll over the nearest international airport to show Man's dominance over Nature. Now that is what a crackpot idea should be like.
Well, for a produt that has been delayed, (and "praised" for delays...), they've got the unenviable position of having started the marketing machine. They've now got to sustain a buzz until the spring.
"Autoduel"-style games are great, and much needed, but the particular implementation will have to be seen. MMP FPSs have been around for some time, contrary to popular belief. Heck, even that train-wreck of a release World War Two Online is still around with a devoted following (disclosure: I am not a follower, let alone a devoted one) after 4 years of being a MMORPG/FPS -- they're even getting ready for another release (or maybe they've released it already). What's missing is a wildly successful MMORPG/FPS.
Then again, Auto Assault is supposed to be third-person from behind the cars, so it's not an FPS either.
And, like most hype articles, the claim here is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Those big-ass games that people play, have something called "leveling" that stands in for talent and narrative -- spend enough time, you go up a level, get new abilities, and new access to narrative content. So: leveling = new narrative + new abilities. Take away either one of these things, and people complain. Narrative is one of your biggest costs in these MMP games -- come up with ridiculous stories and maintain interest over time. Making people do repetitive tasks is a way to stretch the narrative out.
The claim of making leveling "fun", as well as everything else, suggests 100% narrative. The subtext suggests 100% automotive fights. Now, these are going to be simple enough that your average moron can pull them off -- otherwise, some people won't level, and you'll lose your sub base (a la WW2OL). So how's it gonna work?
Yes, and the sports scores are printed the next day too.
And we all die at some point
Life isn't about the end result, it's about fighting the fight to get there. Slashdot is a glorified chatroom that periodically uses newsfeeds to continue long-going and pointless arguments. Hell, some people make a good living trolling these slashdot discussions.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, okay, rereading the descriptions, I'll concede you're right there too. Incidentally, the "tying pedal positions to the maximum allowed angle" is how it was done on A300 models up to the -600, and it's how Boeing does it. The "Variable Stop" solution is a cheaper and simpler design, but still works counter to what pilots (with experience on several types) expect.
I wouldn't worry about it. Given how long Longhorn/Vista's taken, Microsoft Ulcer will be many years in development.
Meanwhile, Google Ulcer will rule all while still in beta!
So I was incorrect: it wasn't less force, but imperceptibly more. On the other hand, the system is not "too sensitive in general", but rather is as I described it: it gets more sensitive with speed; and it is "as monumentallly stupid as having the rudder immediately deflect fully". As an Air Safety Week analysis (March 29, 2004) put it:
The viewer brings up at the bottom:
The Website www.slashdot.org does exist.
*excessive* rudder inputs?
The A300-600 had a redesign on the rudder pedals, so that, the faster the aircraft was going, the less rudder input you needed to get full deflection. (To understand this, think of power-assist steering turned on its head: at low speeds, you need to crank the wheel all the way to turn full left. At 100 mph, touching the wheel will give you full left. smart design, huh?) At the speed they were going, the force required to achieve full rudder deflection was *less* than the "breakout" force -- i.e., the force required to deflect the rudders at all. Once the pilot elected to use the rudder, it was over.
It's not boeing vs. scarebus here, it's just dumb-ass design.
Dude, de gustibus non est disputandum.
I like the damn thing, and think it's pretty cool, but I ain't gonna hold that against you or anyone else.
That said, I do find the "pump up the hardcore" publicity campaign a little disturbing for exactly that reason: The whole point of Firefly and, I assume, the film is that it's not so much about the "alternate reality" as it is about decent characters in an environment that has the flexibility that only science fiction can offer (=read what that mormon dude said about '40s science fiction done well: you invest in the characters, the world is secondary to genre exercises: heists, submarine films, westerns, you name it). Yeah, this was probably what drove star trek too, at some point. So I gotta say, playing to the hardcore, with their whole "I saw the original series when it broadcast, and was the first to carry Nathan Fillion's love child" attitude (okay, I saw the broadcast too, but **edited creepy stuff about cast members**), can probly turn off many mainstream fans, who have to sit next to them the first weekend? ("There was this smelly bearded geek sitting next to me, cackling at all the wrong moments.") I mean, who wants to be looking at the joke through a microscope anyway?
"natural problem solving ability"? something like that. I'd saying "hacking" is the application of a natural ability, or even desire that humans have. That is, all humans by nature desire to know. And, when put in a system where we don't know all the rules, we hack, and build up experience. Eventually, we get a series of patterns and actions that "work" for a given situation. This is how far "hacking" can take us. Then we make some sort of leap -- or the mind does -- and we infer the principles behind what we've been doing: we get the rules. Once we have knowledge of the principles, we can figure out how to act in individual cases without resorting to hacking. We can even teach others those principles.
At least, that's what my budddy Harry says, when he finally finishes talking about the physics.
I don't see a problem, if they've already been "mated" with it.
Big-ass airships man. They got a hangar for one. The Navy's abandoned airships for 65 years -- probably as a result of a horrendous Ronald Reagan movie -- it's time for Google to bring it back and show us how it's done. I mean, how cool is that? A Zeppelin dude, to travel in style. Stick inside a wet bar, lounge area, and sell tickets via invite only (n.b., boarding verification requires a celphone). Paint it up with a google logo on the side. Will it make money? Will it crash in a horrific fireball? Who cares! Just slap a big "BETA" logo on the side.
Yeah, $3000 for a Dev board.
And no doubt, the production Ebooks out there are pretty darn expensive too, and will be for a couple years.
But hell, if you want to slap together a startup, and have a small, dedicated team work on this sort of technology for a couple years, building and field testing some supercool apps, and learning _now_ how to harness the idiosyncrasies of the hardware, $3000 a pop is cheap.
Of course, if you're serious about a startup, you'd probly go out and get your own gumstix.
Or if you're a serious nerd, $3000 is nothing. Hell, how much did a Black Apple cost, adjusted for inflation?
Super Long Play (or whatever) would give you six; already early on in the format wars. Sure, it was crappy quality, but it meant you could set your VCR to record a one hour show every day of the workweek, then view them later, vs. constant fiddling with the beta machine.
Of course, if you wanted to [em]pause[/em] playback, then beta was your format.
Heck, if the Wikipedia article does not provide this evidence, then he really does need a better legal team. Heck, all he needed to do was ring me up, slip me a few bills (say,$5000 and free usage of the trademark in australia), and I would have made the appropriate modifications, complete with a whole mess of alt-0153s. That is, if his team was too lazy to do it themselves. So I'm saying that Wikipedia's very openness and flexibility mitigates its value as a good source of evidence of general public perception?
come to think of it, the last thing we need is for Wikipedia to become a court-accepted indicator of public perception, since then many contributors would be people trying to manufacture just such perception.
well, okay, until the 500 pages of bickering in the article history pages also gets submitted.
Well, for some reason, 3 out of 4 moderators thought your post was funny.
By the way, the fanboi/infidel fights are really getting entertaining now. I'm rather surprised at Nintendo's offering, since it gives substance to the long-whining group of nintendo lovers, who have been preaching the gospel of the Little Playing Card Company that could. I mean, they've taken beating after beating -- heck, even the Seattle Mariners have had more success lately than Nintendo -- and now, finally, they get their wish: something that looks really cool, at the same time the other two competitors are fighting to see who can make the most recondite, byzantine hardware.
But as the rabid nintendogs have been barking all along, it's not about the hardware, but about the games, and, incidentally, how well they play. Anybody can do a demo at a tradeshow under controlled conditions without problems (well, except microsoft), but what's it going to be like when the thing ships across the world.
I am hoping it's intuitive, interesting, and a huge success, so I can get me one o' them controllers for the PC.
Of course, it could be another Nintendo screen pistol: a limited use gimmick.
... or the fact that most of the entries can be altered by anybody at any time, regardless of their qualifications or competence.
Wikipedia is great, and its design allows for flexibility and rapid development of articles. It's fun for a lot of things, but anything that requires authority or critical rigor, such as court cases or research papers, should steer the hell away.
It's kinda like those slashdot posters who seem to be professionally involved in everything.
interesting tech, but what we don't know:
1). Wireless efficiency. The PC Jr. had a wireless keyboard. Is this thing going to work in a crowded house with lots of peanut butter flying around?
2) Durability. Speaking of which, how hard can you beat on these things? What's the MWBF (Mean Waves Between Failure) on this thing? Are people going to just wave them right into the rubbish bin?
3) Endurance. How long can a twelve-year-old boy wave his arms before fatigue sets in? Has anybody done any reasonable studies? What about 30-year-old overweight slashdot nerds longing for their misspent youth?
4) They are shipping at least two controllers per unit, right? 'cos if there's just one, then designers can't rely on the numchuck configuration.
Mod parent -1 sick please.
and buddy your URL is missing a T.
I didn't use my walkman that much, so my tinnitus isn't that bad.
Yeah. Let's cut the crap about intentionality, "what Steve wanted", and look at what he got:
A) A device that has all the drawbacks of cellphone provider monopolies
B) It also gives the user the battery life of an "always on" phone
C) The need to connect to a PC for its music player functionality.
D) The need to use the vendor's network for all its cellphone functionality.
E) iTunes software, without its most intuitive interface element.
F) a crippling 100-song limit so the thing does not compete with iPods stuff.
This, folks, isn't some diabolical marketing strategy; it's a real turd cooked up through design-by-committee. Forget the convergence arguments for a second -- they don't apply. This is as convergent as one loud family and one filthy family living in a duplex: the filthy ones don't get any sleep, and the loud ones get sick from the roaches.
I love how people stretch for marketing. The ROKR's massive marketing will drive people to better products like the RAZR and the iPod nano? Yeah? Or how about a Nokia and a Creative Zen? People are going to buy the ROKR, warts and all, for access to Apple's exclusive catalog? Or maybe, now that Apple's in bed with Motorola for at least a few months, some other online music provider will take the ROKR's failure as an opportunity to team up with a successful cellphone maker, and use the leverage to increase their own catalog and market?
Give me a break. I'm with y'all when you need to look for an intelligent explanation for decisions, but every corporation makes some dumb decisions; and, no offense, but Apple's made some really dumb ones in the past. Some folks there are like the kid whom researchers put in a white room filled with horseshit. He jumps in, and starts digging with hands, feet, teeth, everything, and digs furiously. After about an hour, the scientists ask him why he's digging.
"There's gotta be a horse in here somewhere!"
Keep looking.
Nah, they're playing to a solid-state, no-moving-part gizmo's strengths. Hell, on my cheap mobile phone (Motorola V171) I once was troubleshooting what ended up being poor interface design (if the PIN is entered within the first 30 seconds of the "Enter PIN" message appearing, the thing would accept it, start up, wait 10 seconds, find no network, reboot and ask for the PIN again). I had gotten to the point in the troubleshooting tree that reads:
14) Throw phone out of Fifth-story window
Darn thing didn't even scratch.
I dunno about the nano, but if it's anything like similarly-shaped solid state consumer electronic devices, the weak spot is gonna be sustained torque. Take that thing, and put it in a vice to simulate supertight pants. Apply sustained forces for long periods and see if the case deforms, loosening a critical connection. Put it in one of those paint-shakers for a couple hours to simulate it being worn by a pogo-mad punkrockers.
Blunt trauma kills, but most of my devices die from "a long illness".
No, but within a 60-mile-radius of my house, there are 4 major ancient cities that were wiped out by Earthquakes.
The world is a dangerous place. Of course, "Act of God" is no excuse for lack of preparedness and crappy execution.
Now I want my swarm of HurriBees!
Alright -- first off, Ebay's gotta be out of their mind if they think Skype can somehow help as a "Convergent" technology. It probably can't. Just glance through this -- VoIP auctions combine the best of all worlds: the incomprehensibility of people who don't share a native tongue, the time constraints of a live auction, and the anonymity and uncertainty of the internet.
So why buy skype? Why shell out 1.3 billion bucks for a piece of software, especially one so commonplace as Skype?
Skype is a great piece of software, but no doubt better can be made. But Skype has other things going for it: A) It's got reasonably secure encryption -- unlike practically every other chat and VoIP client out there. B) It's great at getting around firewalls C) As decentralized as it is, it requires minimal resources -- it hits one IP in Denmark and it's on its way. D) It has 40+ million users, of which 3 million are online at any given time, and the numbers are growing.
So skype delivers a lot of regular users at minimal cost. Heck, you don't even need to run adds on the Skype client itself, if you control the help, community and download pages. Controlling the #1 PC-to-PC VoIP client out there gives access to all kinds of non-obvious revenue streams, very few of which have anything to do with auctions.
Hehe. Okay, I shouldn't feed the troll.
Excellent ideas. New Orleans wasn't built below sea level -- parts of it got that way because of measures in place to reduce natural disasters.
Building away from hurrican-prone areas is a good idea; while we're at it, let's add earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, monsoons, flood zones, proximity to religious wackos, volcanoes, hydroelectric dams, nuclear power plants to the list, and cross out any place without an adequate supply of groundwater. Now let's go there, kill the people already there, and build our city. It'll be a beacon to all civilization.
On the submarines (or the windmills for that matter): how much water do you need to turn over to get the needed effect? The proposal is missing a few key points, like energy required to do it, and the desired result? Besides, Nuclear Subs and all that dragging will generate heat. Maybe what we need is a giant swizzle stick with a Handle of God on one end.
The sciam article was great too... they get to the point of "what is the cost", and casually mention a series of earth-orbiting solar collectors beaming massive amounts of energy around.
I'm suprised nobody came up with other crackpot ideas, like airdropping into hurricanes swarms of dumb, flying wind-powered O2 generators, separated Carbon from O2, reversing the greenhouse effect, and using the carbon and the massive energy of hurricanes to produce industrial-grade diamonds in the process: fly over a hurricane, dump these guys out the back, and have them fly home, maybe doing on the way a victory roll over the nearest international airport to show Man's dominance over Nature. Now that is what a crackpot idea should be like.
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
Well, for a produt that has been delayed, (and "praised" for delays...), they've got the unenviable position of having started the marketing machine. They've now got to sustain a buzz until the spring.
"Autoduel"-style games are great, and much needed, but the particular implementation will have to be seen.
MMP FPSs have been around for some time, contrary to popular belief. Heck, even that train-wreck of a release World War Two Online is still around with a devoted following (disclosure: I am not a follower, let alone a devoted one) after 4 years of being a MMORPG/FPS -- they're even getting ready for another release (or maybe they've released it already). What's missing is a wildly successful MMORPG/FPS.
Then again, Auto Assault is supposed to be third-person from behind the cars, so it's not an FPS either.
And, like most hype articles, the claim here is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Those big-ass games that people play, have something called "leveling" that stands in for talent and narrative -- spend enough time, you go up a level, get new abilities, and new access to narrative content. So: leveling = new narrative + new abilities. Take away either one of these things, and people complain. Narrative is one of your biggest costs in these MMP games -- come up with ridiculous stories and maintain interest over time. Making people do repetitive tasks is a way to stretch the narrative out.
The claim of making leveling "fun", as well as everything else, suggests 100% narrative. The subtext suggests 100% automotive fights. Now, these are going to be simple enough that your average moron can pull them off -- otherwise, some people won't level, and you'll lose your sub base (a la WW2OL). So how's it gonna work?
Yes, and the sports scores are printed the next day too.
And we all die at some point
Life isn't about the end result, it's about fighting the fight to get there.
Slashdot is a glorified chatroom that periodically uses newsfeeds to continue long-going and pointless arguments. Hell, some people make a good living trolling these slashdot discussions.