From the Somebody-started-reading-50's-pulp-sci-fi Dept.
Christ, how is THIS news? People have been speculating about this kind of thing since the theorization of Black Holes. Carl Sagan talks about in one of the more trippy, pot induced segments of 1980's Cosmos!
I think I'm getting too damn old. The entire internet is looking like a dupe to me.
Rather than just modding me up, I wish somebody could have commented on my query. It really would be interesting to know if companies are trying to sponsor or set up events at PAX.
Actually, despite other errors in the GP post, you're missing something important. Scattering even by molecules of air is significant at power levels much lower than this thing operates at. Watch videos at http://www.wickedlasers.com/. Their 100mw pen sized lasers scatter enough to look like a fucking light saber swinging around, and this laser rifle is probably hundreds of times more powerful. If its in the visible range (although probably it isn't) in battlefield condition it would probably make a flash like some kind of Anime Superweapon. Even if its not in the visible range, the same effect is going to apply, it'll just need special gear to see it, something like night vision for IR lasers, and for UV it'd be easy enough to rig something up (it's not like plenty of types of sensors aren't UV sensitive). Also, unlike a ballistic sniper rifle, Anybody watching with such a system will instantly know the exact location of the sniper.
And you need to read up on something called "Pits of Despair." That was the name for an isolation cage used by Dr. Harry Harlow in an attempt to model human depression. In my opinion, it was a better model in some respects, than he realized. I think its an excellent model for what a lot of people go through in High School. Humans will be destroyed the situation just like any other primate, that's my take on it anyway. Dr. Harlow found that none of the monkeys he subjected to the isolation cages ever recovered. It's all very well to say "It'll be over quickly." The truth is that its such a traumatic period that many either commit suicide or never recover fully. And its the system that is at fault.
Its a Republican hatchet job, just like Martha Stewart. She was sent to jail over $50,000. She's worth what? Tens of millions, Hundreds, Billions? Do you really believed she intended to defraud share holders out of a pissy 50 grand? Personally, I think she sold some stock to buy a new car, or remodel her house or buy a painting or something, that is she just wanted some pocket change, and sold the stock without any consideration of what was going on. Which isn't illegal.
Note that this whole Apple stock "scandal" is about something that isn't even illegal. The only thing they did wrong was to file taxes on the stock issues incorrectly, which is wrong, BUT they self reported to the SEC and the IRS. There absolutely no evidence of any intentional wrongdoing.
I say both are more related to the US Attorney purge than anything else. The Chair of the SEC is trying to "do his job" by applying heat to prominent liberal democrat contributors (which stewart, and jobs and Apple are). That's what I think is going on.
I've been kind of wondering about that. IF I was an executive of, say, Nvidia, or ATI/AMD, or Microsoft, or Nintendo, or even some small Indie/Asian Developer,I would think that PAX would be a GREAT place to exhibit and hold promotional events (second perhaps only to the major Comic Cons in Japan). You've got a huge event, with lots of attendees, who are interested in the products of your industry, that gets LOTS of press coverage, and is likely to get even more now that the major trade show for your industry has just downsized, how is that not a huge opportunity?
Who gives two shits about E3? Its only going to have a couple thousand people. Why not do something at PAX which has tens of thousands of attendees, a large percentage of which will post about the event on their Website/Blog/Podcast/Vidcast/Etc. Why not get them to write about YOUR company too?
I agree. Their show on the Hindenburg particularly disappointed me. They built the experimental rigs, showed that the mixture used to water proof the Balloon would in fact form thermite, showed that a scale model covered in the mixture and filled with hydrogen burned much faster than than a scale model filled with hydrogen alone. Conclusion? The water proofing mixture wasn't at fault, and it was hydrogen than caused the disaster. WTF?! How do you reach that conclusion in direct opposition to what your experiments showed?
Good grief, nobody ever claimed that the coating was solely responsible for the disaster, only that it made it much, much worse, which is exactly what they observed. Yet they proudly declare "Myth Busted!" at the end.
I can see a number of problems with that. One of them is that *spoiler alert* after merging with the trancendent one, the Nameless one would have about as many hit die and class levels as the Greater Gods did in 2nd Edition. The avatar of Correllon Larathian (the head of the elven pantheon) has around 80 class levels. If we assume the Nameless One had around 17 levels total in each class (which is probably a HUGE underestimate) that puts him at around 50 Class Levels. To put that in further perspective, that's much more than elminster had in 2nd Edition stat blocks. Think elminster could smack around demon lords? I'd guess so. Just imagine "Elminster goes to Hell" as a game, and the substitute in a player character even more powerful.
The outsides are plastic, the innards are protected by a magnesium alloy casing. That's only true for the thinkpad-branded Lenovo notebooks, which may be why the other reply to my post thinks I'm insane. I like them and I recommend them to anyone who requires a Windows based portable.
Um, I'm a Mac User, but I'll say this: The Lenovo Thinkpads are every bit the equal of Apple Macbook Pro's Hardware quality wise. Of Course, Thinkpad's carry a price premium too. Also, I've never used a Fujitsu Toughbook, but for they charge for them, they ought to be solid machines.
Yes, I've finished it, multiple times. Which ending? You think it would make an interesting game to play the story of the Nameless one serving in the Blood War? Best I can tell, that was the canonical ending (Although I would argue it is NOT consistent with D&D cosmology, the dead who sell their souls to demons/devils generally end up as Lemures/Dretches which would be even more uninteresting)
And when I see "Bethesda" on the box, I think unrealized potential. I've played Bethesda games since Daggerfall (which I waited for years to see ship, and yes I keep going back, I'm a glutton for punishment) and they are always very impressive technically. Daggerfall was a technical demo that blew my mind. An entire expansive country that featured towns and cities and dungeons and thousands of NPCs. It was 3D (or what counted for 3D at the time, Doom style sprites with a 3d environment) They even released a patch so that enemies showed locational damage as you hit them with your weapons! It was incredible. Daggerfall was incredible it contained many more features than the sequels that followed, Morrowind and Oblivion.
However, in all of that, they neglected to make the game fun. The NPCs were completely bland. The cities were dull, lifeless, and all the same. The dungeons suffered from severe bugs in their generation routines such that they could be unexplorable (walls or stairs blocking doors). The Fallout Series, on the other hand, was a beautifully handcrafted world. There were fewer NPCs and the world was smaller, yes, but all of it was alive. Alive and interesing, unique.
Ultimately I see this union as a very poor match. The only thing I can imagine that would be worse is if it was announced that Wizards of the Coast had licensed Bethesda to make a "Planescape: Torment" sequel. (Thankfully, I think this is highly unlikely, not only was the game written to be very self contained, Wizards has all but retired the Planescape setting.)
The only iMac with a GPU that is not soldered onto the motherboard the 24" iMac. The 24" iMac uses a GPU on a card plugged into an MXM slot. So you could void the warranty and upgrade the graphics, IF you could find any company selling an after market MXM graphics card! Good luck with that one!
I didn't say "most," I said "many" There's a difference, most being a plurality, many being a "large" number less than a plurality. The "many" I refer to is the population which cries out for an xMac, or the return of the Cube.
As for what connectivity is missing from the iMac, generally RAM capacity, The lack of any type of PCI or ExpressCard expandability. Insufficient number of either ethernet ports or USB/Firewire ports with independent controllers. Which is to say, the kinds of high bandwidth expandability that make a computer useful in the age of digital A/V connectivity.
Your response to this is likely to be that "we", the xMac crowd, simply need to buy Mac Pros and get over it. I think this attitude is rediculously unfair. What we want is not that bizarre, in fact, its the most commonly sold type of desktop machine in the personal computing market. We want a Mac Minitower. A machine, smaller, lighter, and with less expandability than a Pro workstation, but with more than an iMac.
The Mac Mini is extremely crippled. The iMac has the wrong features. The Macbook has shit for a GPU just like the Mini. The options for a Mac with a decent (not great, just decent) GPU are: The iMac, the Mac Pro, and the Macbook Pro. That situation is unacceptable to many people. The Mac Pro is too big, too heavy, and is way more computer than most people need. The Macbook Pro is great, if you need a business class notebook, which is far from being everyone. The iMac, and to an even greater extent the Mac Mini, are sacrifice machines. Both are sealed boxes, in many ways just a step up from dumb terminals. Neither has the capability or the connectivity to make them truly useful to many people.
Apple needs to rerelease the Cube. In dual and quad configurations, with a PCI express x16 slot, 1 x1 slot, 4 ram slots, Firewire 800 and USB.
If you guys thought gold farming was a problem before, you ain't seen nothing yet. There are going to be people making money (real money) manipulating the virtual AH and player markets in order to extract more cash more corporate sponsored flunkies. The implications for unsponsored players are pretty devastating in my opinion. I expect all (of what tiny amount ever existed anyway) of the fun to be extracted from WoW and pumped right into a chinese bank account.
This isn't a "sign" of things to come. It's just another event in the continuing trail of tears that has been the PS3 launch. Sony has already lost several third party exclusives, to developers announcing they are going cross platform or even 360 exclusive. Sony has two real holds at the moment. The Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war is still very much undecided, and may swing in their favor. The other is Final Fantasy. Sony is hoping at this point that the launch of Final Fantasy XIII is going to sell 10-20 million PS3s. If *I* were head of Microsoft games division, I'd be offering Squeenix a deal, FFXIII goes cross platform, or 360 exclusive, and they get a blank check on which to write the biggest number they can think of. The rushing sound heard immediately afterward would be Sony's future swirling down the proverbial toilet bowl.
Sony really needs to get in gear. Playstation HOME and LittleBigPlanet were a *Start*. They need more announcements of top tier exclusives, not defection and waffling on the part of developers.
Mass market HD video is a very dangerous thing to bet on. Most people are not videophiles. DVD is "good 'nuff" for the majority of people. Communicating the benefit of ever escalating resolutions when most consumers are still squinting at a 25" to 30" screen from 8' to 10' is really, really hard. Big Screens just don't have the market penetration to make HD an easy sell, and if the people backing the HD formats don't watch it, DVD and digital distribution may eat their lunch before breakfast time.
Macro is probably the best example of when split prisms could potentially cause problems. But animals, and other natural objects don't have perfectly horizontal lines that frequently.
I really think that camera manufacturers reluctance to make split prism finders as an accessory tells us more about their desire to have us purchase brand new, expensive autofocus lenses, and ignore the vast numbers of perfectly usable (and often optically excellent) used manual focus lenses.
"Recompose?" I realize that's the proper term for it, but you're deliberately trying to make the process sound much more complex than it actually is. Functionally its as simple as "tilt, twist (focus), tilt" which is about as simple as it gets. As for impacting autofocus performance, I've never heard of anyone using 3rd party split prism finders complain about difficulties with their autofocus lenses. Unusable in low light is an unfair accusations for two reasons: new, modern coatings have greatly improved low light performance of split prism finders, and autofocus systems also have notorious problems with low light. Never had an autofocus system hunt around in low light trying to figure out what to focus on? Neither system is perfect, and both definitely have their uses. I find it telling that demand for split prism finders for DSLRs is large enough to keep multiple companies in business supplying them.
A certain middle eastern country backed by the monetary and military support of one of the most powerful nations on earth? Wow, that's impressive there. Kind of the Microsoft gaining a purchase in the console Marketplace, they're only running massive losses made possible through hugely profitable monopolies in Operating Systems and Office Software, What an impressive achievement!
Your comparison of France in World War II with Israel's situation is outright foolish, and your jingoistic fervor is quite troubling.
Wrong. Gaming is an adult hobby and always has been. That the advertising material is targeted at males in the 13-20 age group tells you nothing about who actually plays games, or who always has. The average gamer has always to tended to be around 28-30. Surveys pop up about once a year revealing this startling revelation. They have been since the late 80's. Everyone always acts surprised and then promptly forgets about it and assumes gamers are all 15 year old adolescents. Now as to why immature 12 year olds are so prevalent, because it only takes a tiny minority to poison a community, and the immature 12 year olds are the loudest, most obnoxious contingent.
No, No, No, you don't understand at all. It's the content OWNER'S who have rejected the contract. They have rejected the provisions of the contract stipulating that their works will eventually fall into the public domain, and thus in lieu of the Social Contract providing for copyright, the default state, in which information is freely transmissible and redistributable applies. There is a Natural right to free speech. There is no natural right to Copyright, Copyright comes only via a social contract providing for it. Reject the social contract, and copyright is no longer valid. Note that this is a moral argument, not a legal one.
Unfortunately, lawyers aren't musicians, and tend to be a bit better at negotiating contracts. Thus, if a lawyer is anything other than a blithering incompetant (and there are some of those around) they tend to make sure they get paid above all else.
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Christ, how is THIS news? People have been speculating about this kind of thing since the theorization of Black Holes. Carl Sagan talks about in one of the more trippy, pot induced segments of 1980's Cosmos!
I think I'm getting too damn old. The entire internet is looking like a dupe to me.
Rather than just modding me up, I wish somebody could have commented on my query. It really would be interesting to know if companies are trying to sponsor or set up events at PAX.
Actually, despite other errors in the GP post, you're missing something important. Scattering even by molecules of air is significant at power levels much lower than this thing operates at. Watch videos at http://www.wickedlasers.com/. Their 100mw pen sized lasers scatter enough to look like a fucking light saber swinging around, and this laser rifle is probably hundreds of times more powerful. If its in the visible range (although probably it isn't) in battlefield condition it would probably make a flash like some kind of Anime Superweapon. Even if its not in the visible range, the same effect is going to apply, it'll just need special gear to see it, something like night vision for IR lasers, and for UV it'd be easy enough to rig something up (it's not like plenty of types of sensors aren't UV sensitive). Also, unlike a ballistic sniper rifle, Anybody watching with such a system will instantly know the exact location of the sniper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_Despair
Note that this whole Apple stock "scandal" is about something that isn't even illegal. The only thing they did wrong was to file taxes on the stock issues incorrectly, which is wrong, BUT they self reported to the SEC and the IRS. There absolutely no evidence of any intentional wrongdoing.
I say both are more related to the US Attorney purge than anything else. The Chair of the SEC is trying to "do his job" by applying heat to prominent liberal democrat contributors (which stewart, and jobs and Apple are). That's what I think is going on.
Who gives two shits about E3? Its only going to have a couple thousand people. Why not do something at PAX which has tens of thousands of attendees, a large percentage of which will post about the event on their Website/Blog/Podcast/Vidcast/Etc. Why not get them to write about YOUR company too?
Is anybody actually doing this at PAX?
Good grief, nobody ever claimed that the coating was solely responsible for the disaster, only that it made it much, much worse, which is exactly what they observed. Yet they proudly declare "Myth Busted!" at the end.
I can see a number of problems with that. One of them is that *spoiler alert* after merging with the trancendent one, the Nameless one would have about as many hit die and class levels as the Greater Gods did in 2nd Edition. The avatar of Correllon Larathian (the head of the elven pantheon) has around 80 class levels. If we assume the Nameless One had around 17 levels total in each class (which is probably a HUGE underestimate) that puts him at around 50 Class Levels. To put that in further perspective, that's much more than elminster had in 2nd Edition stat blocks. Think elminster could smack around demon lords? I'd guess so. Just imagine "Elminster goes to Hell" as a game, and the substitute in a player character even more powerful.
The outsides are plastic, the innards are protected by a magnesium alloy casing. That's only true for the thinkpad-branded Lenovo notebooks, which may be why the other reply to my post thinks I'm insane. I like them and I recommend them to anyone who requires a Windows based portable.
Um, I'm a Mac User, but I'll say this: The Lenovo Thinkpads are every bit the equal of Apple Macbook Pro's Hardware quality wise. Of Course, Thinkpad's carry a price premium too. Also, I've never used a Fujitsu Toughbook, but for they charge for them, they ought to be solid machines.
Yes, I've finished it, multiple times. Which ending? You think it would make an interesting game to play the story of the Nameless one serving in the Blood War? Best I can tell, that was the canonical ending (Although I would argue it is NOT consistent with D&D cosmology, the dead who sell their souls to demons/devils generally end up as Lemures/Dretches which would be even more uninteresting)
However, in all of that, they neglected to make the game fun. The NPCs were completely bland. The cities were dull, lifeless, and all the same. The dungeons suffered from severe bugs in their generation routines such that they could be unexplorable (walls or stairs blocking doors). The Fallout Series, on the other hand, was a beautifully handcrafted world. There were fewer NPCs and the world was smaller, yes, but all of it was alive. Alive and interesing, unique.
Ultimately I see this union as a very poor match. The only thing I can imagine that would be worse is if it was announced that Wizards of the Coast had licensed Bethesda to make a "Planescape: Torment" sequel. (Thankfully, I think this is highly unlikely, not only was the game written to be very self contained, Wizards has all but retired the Planescape setting.)
The only iMac with a GPU that is not soldered onto the motherboard the 24" iMac. The 24" iMac uses a GPU on a card plugged into an MXM slot. So you could void the warranty and upgrade the graphics, IF you could find any company selling an after market MXM graphics card! Good luck with that one!
As for what connectivity is missing from the iMac, generally RAM capacity, The lack of any type of PCI or ExpressCard expandability. Insufficient number of either ethernet ports or USB/Firewire ports with independent controllers. Which is to say, the kinds of high bandwidth expandability that make a computer useful in the age of digital A/V connectivity.
Your response to this is likely to be that "we", the xMac crowd, simply need to buy Mac Pros and get over it. I think this attitude is rediculously unfair. What we want is not that bizarre, in fact, its the most commonly sold type of desktop machine in the personal computing market. We want a Mac Minitower. A machine, smaller, lighter, and with less expandability than a Pro workstation, but with more than an iMac.
Apple needs to rerelease the Cube. In dual and quad configurations, with a PCI express x16 slot, 1 x1 slot, 4 ram slots, Firewire 800 and USB.
Who is donoting blood? Homophobes, and Bible-thumpers most likely. Screw that, I'd rather bleed to death. Whatever they've got might be contagious.
If you guys thought gold farming was a problem before, you ain't seen nothing yet. There are going to be people making money (real money) manipulating the virtual AH and player markets in order to extract more cash more corporate sponsored flunkies. The implications for unsponsored players are pretty devastating in my opinion. I expect all (of what tiny amount ever existed anyway) of the fun to be extracted from WoW and pumped right into a chinese bank account.
That tanari'i hussy?! Annah was MUCH hotter!
Sony really needs to get in gear. Playstation HOME and LittleBigPlanet were a *Start*. They need more announcements of top tier exclusives, not defection and waffling on the part of developers.
Mass market HD video is a very dangerous thing to bet on. Most people are not videophiles. DVD is "good 'nuff" for the majority of people. Communicating the benefit of ever escalating resolutions when most consumers are still squinting at a 25" to 30" screen from 8' to 10' is really, really hard. Big Screens just don't have the market penetration to make HD an easy sell, and if the people backing the HD formats don't watch it, DVD and digital distribution may eat their lunch before breakfast time.
I really think that camera manufacturers reluctance to make split prism finders as an accessory tells us more about their desire to have us purchase brand new, expensive autofocus lenses, and ignore the vast numbers of perfectly usable (and often optically excellent) used manual focus lenses.
"Recompose?" I realize that's the proper term for it, but you're deliberately trying to make the process sound much more complex than it actually is. Functionally its as simple as "tilt, twist (focus), tilt" which is about as simple as it gets. As for impacting autofocus performance, I've never heard of anyone using 3rd party split prism finders complain about difficulties with their autofocus lenses. Unusable in low light is an unfair accusations for two reasons: new, modern coatings have greatly improved low light performance of split prism finders, and autofocus systems also have notorious problems with low light. Never had an autofocus system hunt around in low light trying to figure out what to focus on? Neither system is perfect, and both definitely have their uses. I find it telling that demand for split prism finders for DSLRs is large enough to keep multiple companies in business supplying them.
Your comparison of France in World War II with Israel's situation is outright foolish, and your jingoistic fervor is quite troubling.
Wrong. Gaming is an adult hobby and always has been. That the advertising material is targeted at males in the 13-20 age group tells you nothing about who actually plays games, or who always has. The average gamer has always to tended to be around 28-30. Surveys pop up about once a year revealing this startling revelation. They have been since the late 80's. Everyone always acts surprised and then promptly forgets about it and assumes gamers are all 15 year old adolescents. Now as to why immature 12 year olds are so prevalent, because it only takes a tiny minority to poison a community, and the immature 12 year olds are the loudest, most obnoxious contingent.
No, No, No, you don't understand at all. It's the content OWNER'S who have rejected the contract. They have rejected the provisions of the contract stipulating that their works will eventually fall into the public domain, and thus in lieu of the Social Contract providing for copyright, the default state, in which information is freely transmissible and redistributable applies. There is a Natural right to free speech. There is no natural right to Copyright, Copyright comes only via a social contract providing for it. Reject the social contract, and copyright is no longer valid. Note that this is a moral argument, not a legal one.
Unfortunately, lawyers aren't musicians, and tend to be a bit better at negotiating contracts. Thus, if a lawyer is anything other than a blithering incompetant (and there are some of those around) they tend to make sure they get paid above all else.