It's one thing to vibrate a broomstick in that manner, and quite another to do so with a 36,000 km space elevator. No matter what material you're using, you're looking at a very large mass; wikipedia estimates "a minimal, very low payload space elevator 'seed ribbon' could have a mass of at least 18,000 kg." -- or just shy of 20 tons. For hauling passengers and goods, you'll need much more. Now, we're talking about accelerating and decelerating this mass of at least 20 tons multiple times per second.
Think about that. We're talking bringing something the weight of a big-rig, accelerating it to a decent speed, and then bringing it back to a stop in a fraction of a second. That requires incredible force. Now, think about the time it takes to accelerate a big rig to highway speeds, and then bring it to a full stop. Now, remember, that's the *minimum* mass we're dealing with. A full-scale elevator is likely to be quite a bit heavier. For another point of reference, the 250 ton commuter train I ride to work every day, if it applies full breaking force in an emergency situation, takes roughly 2,500 feet to come to a complete stop.
And not only do you have to do that, you have to not shake the thing apart in the process. And on top of that, you have to do that without exerting too much force on your passengers; humans can't handle much more than a few Gs.
The other glaring hole is the brush bristles. It's one thing for a coarse brush to support a few ounces of wood, and quite another for it to support a multi-ton cargo container while undergoing rapid acceleration multiple times per second.
Has anyone done the math necessary to show that this idea can actually scale? Because at first blush, it sounds ridiculous.
That's closely related to my initial reaction to this article.
There have been many stories about automatic breaking for collision avoidance in the last few years. TFS even goes as far as to suggest that this is a large part of preventing automobile accidents entirely.
However, in reality, automatic breaking will only prevent a small number of accidents. It does you no good in many cases, including mechanical failure, such as the one you experienced. Once one of these auto-breaking volvos probably won't do you much good when you have a tire blow out, your breaks fail, the breaking system itself fails, etc.
If you don't drive like an idiot, mechanical failure is going to be one of the most likely reasons you'll end up in a collision.
The reason that BitTorrent is getting more attention is because it's more practical for the illegal spread of such files. HTTP/FTP involves the use of specific servers that have limited bandwidth, so it can't send to unlimited users.
Also, it's a lot easier to get a single HTTP/FTP server taken down, causing hundreds or thousands of clients to lose access. In contrast, taking down a single bittorrent node only disables that one node.
When you download a game with GameTap, they give you two options: download the whole game, or just the bare minimum. I was playing on a laptop with low free space, so I tried the later.
If you select the bare minimum, then it leaves a bunch of graphic and sound assets, etc. on their servers, and adds a layer to the game that fetches those assets the first time they're requested. The thing is, it takes several seconds to fetch something from the server, and the game you're playing is inevitably designed with the assumption that fetching art assets won't take more than a few milliseconds, at worst.
Several games I played would lock up for several seconds every time it tried to play a sound that hadn't been downloaded yet. It was miserable.
Only games that are actually designed and tested to be progressively downloaded during gameplay will work well in such a context.
Use the Macrovision technology where the audio is distorted in a way which is not detectable by the human ear, but by which trying to feed the audio out signal into a CD record/computer results in a useless copy.
That's not how Macrovision works, and I don't think what you describe is possible.
Even if it were, I'm pretty sure that technique would be trivially defeated with high-pass and low-pass filters filtering out all inaudible frequencies.
Additionally, I believe MP3 applies such filters as part of its compression process.
Don't buy an SSD to store a large database that gets lots of updates!
Don't buy a cheap, consumer grade SSD for a large database that gets lots of updates.
On the other hand, if it's in your budget, and you don't have any other options, *do* buy an enterprise SSD array that's actually up to the task -- CCP claims a 4000% increase in performance after switching to an SSD-based solution for their game, EVE Online.
However, the solution they're working with was priced somewhere around $150 per gig as of a year ago. Consumer SSDs are currently priced around $2-3/gig, based on newegg price quotes elsewhere in this thread.
Another 30% will say "don't bother, because the kids will just go around your blockages."(thinking that all school kids are as adept as the ubergeeks here are)
Have you been in a school in the last 20 years?
In the early '90s, in elementary school, my parents bought me a copy of Oregon Trail. The manual included the default password that allowed you to configure the game -- "BOOM". Lo and behold, the copies of Oregon Trail at school used the default password as well. I told a few friends, and next thing you know, every kid in class was dicking around in the password-protected game config panel.
In 1994, the district administrator password was well known by half of my 6th grade class. Some kid just watched over the tech's shoulder as she typed it in, and then word spread like wildfire.
A few years later, in highschool, someone figured out you could bypass the security software on the Windows 9X PCs by entering safemode (within a few days of said software being installed). Again, word spread, and at least half the class knew within a week.
Only one kid has to figure out how to circumvent the system (through ubergeekdom, luck, or determination). The knowledge is valuable enough that it practically spreads itself from there. No one I went to school with ever really found the school's security measures to be much of a impediment -- ubergeek or not.
Even as a huge fan of AJAX web applications and javascript libraries, I don't understand why'd you'd pick javscript over flash for developing anything any more complex than tetris.
Anything javascript can do, flash can do better and faster. And the number of flash-capable browsers out there is almost as high as the number of javascript-capable browsers. Flash gives you far, far better image handling capabilities, and more.
Other than the "haha, I did X on a platform that isn't really meant for it" factor, why would any serious game developer choose the javascript-in-a-browser platform?
Like or hate social networking. Facebook has gone a long way in showing how well PHP can be made to scale.
Anything can be made to scale if you have millions of dollars worth of servers providing terrabytes of memcached instances. Scalability is an architecture problem, not a language problem.
My original reaction to the headline was "Why? Doesn't everyone who cares own this?"
No. A lot of people have no idea how much they'll enjoy it until they've tried it. And the start-up cost is high -- you've got to be willing to shell out at least $80 to get started. Right now, the only way for most semi-interested people to try the game out is to play with someone who already has a copy.
You'd be amazed how viral these games are. Even my parents' generation (age 45-65), the most of them not really gamers, really gets into it, if they get a chance to try it out.
My coworker's brought Guitar Hero to his 50-something father's house for Christmas last year. His father bought himself a copy afterward. My folks (in their 40s) are pretty much in the same boat.
Both developers and designers cost somewhere between $150-200 per hour.
That's straight bullshit. The median wage for programmers is well under $50/hr. Only expensive consultants bill anywhere near the rates quoted.
It's not hard to find developers here in the U.S. for half the rate quoted in TFA. And that's before you consider the fact that much of the shovelware in the iTunes store is outsourced.
The game Guitar Hero was based on, GuitarFreaks has been in arcades for 10 years now.
It is pretty hard to find in American arcades, though. The only place I've seen it was in a Golf Land in San Jose -- but then again I haven't spent much time in arcades since childhood.
At any rate, it is a bit surprising it took 'em so long to come around to building an arcade unit, given the success GuitarFreaks has had in Japan.
An interesting thing to be noted in "Lich King" is the use of the "phasing technology". There are issues with the way it works as implemented now but I really see this as a jump in the technology of MMOs because it provides direct feedback to the player while doing quest progression.
Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online have had their own "phasing" systems for a while now -- and those are just two examples I've personally run into in the last few years. And I'm sure earlier games have used similar mechanics as well.
Don't get me wrong, Blizzard still gets credit for using it effectively, and for a larger audience, but they don't really get credit for initiating this "technological jump".
You will only disarm the law-abiding. No serious career criminal will give a shit about any weapons ban.
The "law abiding"/"career criminal" dichotomy is a false one. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in between. If you've ever gotten a speeding ticket, or a parking ticket, you're somewhere between. There are millions of one-time offenders who commit "crimes of opportunity", and never offend again. Many, if not most, Americans fail to be perfect, law-abiding citizens all of the time. We don't intentionally own illegal objects, but we may do something stupid now and then. It's those people who could, for the benefit of all, be prevented from owning guns.
With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed.
Also, in what scenario do you envision a person walking down the street, possibly about to commit a crime, when all of the sudden the police arrest them? Contrived.
Straw man. The GP wasn't talking about the police magically whisking in seconds before a crime occurs. A gun ban would allow guns to be taken from people days, weeks, or years before they would have been used.
Frankly, I'm not sure where I fall on the gun control issue, but your arguments against the GP's first point don't hold water.
A kid raped by her father who gets an abortion is a despicable murderer. But... we should arm more people with guns whose only real purpose is to kill another human being.
Life is sacred 'till you're born. Then you're fair game?
The logic essentially boils down to: babies are innocent and killing innocents is bad; criminals, on the other hand, are incurably evil, and therefor fair game.
The whole idea of criminals is more of a liberal concept. That's why conservatives keep pushing those scarlet-letter sex offender laws that follow people for life for public urination -- if you violate the law, it's not a lapse in judgement, it's because you're evil....and yes, this is a blatant generalization that in no way represents all conservatives.
I pulled out Fast Company #128, found the relevant line, googled it, and finally found a citation -- it's published as a separate article online.
Washington spends $16,698 per student, the second highest in the country after Boston, yet:
In 2007, 61% of D.C.'s fourth graders scored below basic level in reading, and 51% below basic in math.
Of America's 100 largest school districts, D.C. Public Schools spent the most on administration (56% of budget) and the least on instruction (41%), in 2004 -- 2005.
Twenty-nine percent of D.C. high-school grads enroll in college within 18 months versus 48% nationwide, and only 9% of them graduate within five years.
D.C. seniors in the class of 2007 had the second-lowest SAT reading scores in the country (after Maine) and the worst math scores.
Thirty-six percent of Washingtonians are functionally illiterate. The national average is 21%.
direct comparisons between schools of today and the schools of the 70s is completely unrealistic and ignores huge societal changes that have impacted the role of school in society.
That's definitely true. However, if that spending growth were due only to societal changes, you'd expect similar spending changes worldwide over the same time period. Instead, our spending has grown faster than that of our peer nations. We now have the highest per-student spending rate in the world, and only average academic results (U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores). Our schools are providing a far poorer return on investment than those of other first world nations. We're doing something wrong.
You also make a statement that "most of it goes to administration". Of course, since you don't provide actual budget percentages, it would be hard to gauge the veracity of this statement, as well.
The print version of the Fast Company article I linked claims (in an info box not present in the online version) more than 50% (51%, IIRC) of the D.C. district budget goes to administration.
I was unable to find an online citation for that statistic, but you can find it in Fast Company Issue 128.
Numbers, taken out of context, are worthless
All the citations I provided overwhelmingly demonstrate that these administrators are overpaid -- again, their district spends more on administration than any other district in the country as a percentage, has the third highest spending over all, and performs extremely poorly. That's certainly enough context to demonstrate that the district as a whole is paying a lot, and getting very little in return -- the very definition of overpaid.
Slashdot Mirror
It's one thing to vibrate a broomstick in that manner, and quite another to do so with a 36,000 km space elevator. No matter what material you're using, you're looking at a very large mass; wikipedia estimates "a minimal, very low payload space elevator 'seed ribbon' could have a mass of at least 18,000 kg." -- or just shy of 20 tons. For hauling passengers and goods, you'll need much more. Now, we're talking about accelerating and decelerating this mass of at least 20 tons multiple times per second.
Think about that. We're talking bringing something the weight of a big-rig, accelerating it to a decent speed, and then bringing it back to a stop in a fraction of a second. That requires incredible force. Now, think about the time it takes to accelerate a big rig to highway speeds, and then bring it to a full stop. Now, remember, that's the *minimum* mass we're dealing with. A full-scale elevator is likely to be quite a bit heavier. For another point of reference, the 250 ton commuter train I ride to work every day, if it applies full breaking force in an emergency situation, takes roughly 2,500 feet to come to a complete stop.
And not only do you have to do that, you have to not shake the thing apart in the process. And on top of that, you have to do that without exerting too much force on your passengers; humans can't handle much more than a few Gs.
The other glaring hole is the brush bristles. It's one thing for a coarse brush to support a few ounces of wood, and quite another for it to support a multi-ton cargo container while undergoing rapid acceleration multiple times per second.
Has anyone done the math necessary to show that this idea can actually scale? Because at first blush, it sounds ridiculous.
That's closely related to my initial reaction to this article.
There have been many stories about automatic breaking for collision avoidance in the last few years. TFS even goes as far as to suggest that this is a large part of preventing automobile accidents entirely.
However, in reality, automatic breaking will only prevent a small number of accidents. It does you no good in many cases, including mechanical failure, such as the one you experienced. Once one of these auto-breaking volvos probably won't do you much good when you have a tire blow out, your breaks fail, the breaking system itself fails, etc.
If you don't drive like an idiot, mechanical failure is going to be one of the most likely reasons you'll end up in a collision.
Most people go for CS degrees because they want to work in IT, or write code.
You may want to take a step back, figure out what you *do* want to do with the rest of your life, and switch majors.
Sorry, they lost "the benefit of the doubt" when the warrantless domestic wiretapping started.
It's a bit naive to assume good will when evil has already been purported.
Also, it's a lot easier to get a single HTTP/FTP server taken down, causing hundreds or thousands of clients to lose access. In contrast, taking down a single bittorrent node only disables that one node.
When you download a game with GameTap, they give you two options: download the whole game, or just the bare minimum. I was playing on a laptop with low free space, so I tried the later.
If you select the bare minimum, then it leaves a bunch of graphic and sound assets, etc. on their servers, and adds a layer to the game that fetches those assets the first time they're requested. The thing is, it takes several seconds to fetch something from the server, and the game you're playing is inevitably designed with the assumption that fetching art assets won't take more than a few milliseconds, at worst.
Several games I played would lock up for several seconds every time it tried to play a sound that hadn't been downloaded yet. It was miserable.
Only games that are actually designed and tested to be progressively downloaded during gameplay will work well in such a context.
Wish I had a mod point for you.
Even if it were, I'm pretty sure that technique would be trivially defeated with high-pass and low-pass filters filtering out all inaudible frequencies.
Additionally, I believe MP3 applies such filters as part of its compression process.
A fair point, although most of them don't support all that much javascript either, especially if you aim for the lowest common denominator.
Sorry, I neglected to include the link for the CCP performance increase article
Don't buy a cheap, consumer grade SSD for a large database that gets lots of updates.
On the other hand, if it's in your budget, and you don't have any other options, *do* buy an enterprise SSD array that's actually up to the task -- CCP claims a 4000% increase in performance after switching to an SSD-based solution for their game, EVE Online.
However, the solution they're working with was priced somewhere around $150 per gig as of a year ago. Consumer SSDs are currently priced around $2-3/gig, based on newegg price quotes elsewhere in this thread.
Have you been in a school in the last 20 years?
In the early '90s, in elementary school, my parents bought me a copy of Oregon Trail. The manual included the default password that allowed you to configure the game -- "BOOM". Lo and behold, the copies of Oregon Trail at school used the default password as well. I told a few friends, and next thing you know, every kid in class was dicking around in the password-protected game config panel.
In 1994, the district administrator password was well known by half of my 6th grade class. Some kid just watched over the tech's shoulder as she typed it in, and then word spread like wildfire.
A few years later, in highschool, someone figured out you could bypass the security software on the Windows 9X PCs by entering safemode (within a few days of said software being installed). Again, word spread, and at least half the class knew within a week.
Only one kid has to figure out how to circumvent the system (through ubergeekdom, luck, or determination). The knowledge is valuable enough that it practically spreads itself from there. No one I went to school with ever really found the school's security measures to be much of a impediment -- ubergeek or not.
Even as a huge fan of AJAX web applications and javascript libraries, I don't understand why'd you'd pick javscript over flash for developing anything any more complex than tetris.
Anything javascript can do, flash can do better and faster. And the number of flash-capable browsers out there is almost as high as the number of javascript-capable browsers. Flash gives you far, far better image handling capabilities, and more.
Other than the "haha, I did X on a platform that isn't really meant for it" factor, why would any serious game developer choose the javascript-in-a-browser platform?
Anything can be made to scale if you have millions of dollars worth of servers providing terrabytes of memcached instances. Scalability is an architecture problem, not a language problem.
No. A lot of people have no idea how much they'll enjoy it until they've tried it. And the start-up cost is high -- you've got to be willing to shell out at least $80 to get started. Right now, the only way for most semi-interested people to try the game out is to play with someone who already has a copy.
You'd be amazed how viral these games are. Even my parents' generation (age 45-65), the most of them not really gamers, really gets into it, if they get a chance to try it out.
My coworker's brought Guitar Hero to his 50-something father's house for Christmas last year. His father bought himself a copy afterward. My folks (in their 40s) are pretty much in the same boat.
That's straight bullshit. The median wage for programmers is well under $50/hr. Only expensive consultants bill anywhere near the rates quoted.
It's not hard to find developers here in the U.S. for half the rate quoted in TFA. And that's before you consider the fact that much of the shovelware in the iTunes store is outsourced.
The game Guitar Hero was based on, GuitarFreaks has been in arcades for 10 years now.
It is pretty hard to find in American arcades, though. The only place I've seen it was in a Golf Land in San Jose -- but then again I haven't spent much time in arcades since childhood.
At any rate, it is a bit surprising it took 'em so long to come around to building an arcade unit, given the success GuitarFreaks has had in Japan.
Her tuition goes to pay the staff in question. Part of faculty's job description includes communicating with students.
I think it would be a bit of a stretch to claim that she has no right to email the faculty.
Wow. How long has this one been going around? I know the first time I saw it was in 1998...
Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online have had their own "phasing" systems for a while now -- and those are just two examples I've personally run into in the last few years. And I'm sure earlier games have used similar mechanics as well.
Don't get me wrong, Blizzard still gets credit for using it effectively, and for a larger audience, but they don't really get credit for initiating this "technological jump".
The "law abiding"/"career criminal" dichotomy is a false one. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in between. If you've ever gotten a speeding ticket, or a parking ticket, you're somewhere between. There are millions of one-time offenders who commit "crimes of opportunity", and never offend again. Many, if not most, Americans fail to be perfect, law-abiding citizens all of the time. We don't intentionally own illegal objects, but we may do something stupid now and then. It's those people who could, for the benefit of all, be prevented from owning guns.
Straw man. The GP wasn't talking about the police magically whisking in seconds before a crime occurs. A gun ban would allow guns to be taken from people days, weeks, or years before they would have been used.
Frankly, I'm not sure where I fall on the gun control issue, but your arguments against the GP's first point don't hold water.
The logic essentially boils down to: babies are innocent and killing innocents is bad; criminals, on the other hand, are incurably evil, and therefor fair game.
The whole idea of criminals is more of a liberal concept. That's why conservatives keep pushing those scarlet-letter sex offender laws that follow people for life for public urination -- if you violate the law, it's not a lapse in judgement, it's because you're evil. ...and yes, this is a blatant generalization that in no way represents all conservatives.
I pulled out Fast Company #128, found the relevant line, googled it, and finally found a citation -- it's published as a separate article online.
That's definitely true. However, if that spending growth were due only to societal changes, you'd expect similar spending changes worldwide over the same time period. Instead, our spending has grown faster than that of our peer nations. We now have the highest per-student spending rate in the world, and only average academic results ( U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores ). Our schools are providing a far poorer return on investment than those of other first world nations. We're doing something wrong.
The print version of the Fast Company article I linked claims (in an info box not present in the online version) more than 50% (51%, IIRC) of the D.C. district budget goes to administration.
I was unable to find an online citation for that statistic, but you can find it in Fast Company Issue 128.
All the citations I provided overwhelmingly demonstrate that these administrators are overpaid -- again, their district spends more on administration than any other district in the country as a percentage, has the third highest spending over all, and performs extremely poorly. That's certainly enough context to demonstrate that the district as a whole is paying a lot, and getting very little in return -- the very definition of overpaid.