The GameCube did 480p at launch (mine does), but the later versions ($99) lost the port required, and so only do 480i.
GameCube doesn't do 5.1 audio either!
Honestly, I think N is pretty smart. There is only a small amount of games that are improved by HDTV, especially if you can't assume the user has it, only support it optionally. If it helps them make their console cost less so they can sell more, I'm all for it. But I'd be disappointed if all the console makers went this route. There should be a console for those of us with money burning a hole in our pockets who want to max our our TVs. Sony and MS are taking that tack for us.
You can run the games at higher screen resolutions. But in most games the textures and models aren't any higher rez than before. So it's like running Half-Life (not 2) in 1600x1200 on your PC. It doesn't look significantly better than it did at 800x600, because although the screen is high res, the only thing that gets sharper is the edges, the textures don't look any better, and the models are still low poly count. It is very similar to uprezzing a DVD.
I believe they updated the collateral (textures and perhaps character models) on Halo/Halo 2 so they would look better. They probably took the collateral from the PC versions of these games.
I hope they update the collateral on Forza Motorsport. That game already suffered from low-res (non-car) textures, and it only supported 480p.
Also note Xbox 1 supposedly was HDTV compatible, but most games couldn't use it due to memory or performance limitations.
That was in my original post. Not sure why you need to go two rounds to try to hammer one of my points home to me.
I was talking about the princple in general, then this case in specifics. It doesn't sound like we disagree on this case in specific, it does seem suspicious they waited so long to remove her if she couldn't fulfill her job requirements.
But that's all for the lawyers to decide. My main point was about job requirements and equal opportunity not meaning job guarantees.
Your socket 7 has a 32-bit wide bus. This socket has a 64-bit wide bus. That's 32 new pins. And there's more stuff where that came from.
Intels slot was just a plan to get more revenue. By moving the CPU and cache onto the card, they got to sell you the cache chips, when previously the motherboard vendor sold you the cache chips. Once the cache was on the chip, there was no reason to have the slot, so they went back to the socket.
I have to ask, do you really care if the new socket has more pins? I mean, if it's incompatible anyway, why stress over the pin count? And it has to be incompatible to bring the new RAM types and thus bandwidth.
I don't think CPUs have integrated SATA controllers (yet). But they do have memory controllers and soon perhaps PCI-E bridges. Maybe SATA some day.
It adds bandwidth, so basically, your machine would be crap if the socket always stayed the same. You'd have a fast processor with only 133MB/sec of memory bandwidth (instead of 10GB/sec+).
You can't even feed the instruction pipeline on a current processor from those old busses, let alone provide the data to process.
Thanks. I didn't make a mistake here. Play the New York level on GT4 in (pseudo) 1080i on PS2. Then play the New York level on Forza on Xbox in 480p.
Yes, the PS2 version is a bit flickery (the curse of the PS2), but it's definitely better looking. The textures are higher res, the cars look better, the road surface looks better (although is actually less detailed).
Don't get me wrong, Forza is a great game, in many ways better than GT4. But the graphics are inferior. The track area looks washed out, the textures are low res, the GAME is low res (no HD), the car models are not as pleasing as GT4 (although pretty damn good), and everything outside the track area is less detailed than on GT4.
It's shocking to me, since Rallisport Challenge 2 is the best looking racing game on any console and this is made by the same people on the same console. Why did the graphics drop in quality so much? And how come no HDTV support? It kind of looks to me like they just ran out of time to spend on it.
It doesn't matter too much, it has little effect on game play. The track/walls muddiness makes it difficult to discern the track ahead in certain circumstances (like the street course track, Australia?) but honestly in these kind of games, you have to memorize the tracks to do well anyway, so it's not a big deal in the end. Other than that, it creates no problems.
I never said she did a bad job, you inserted that yourself.
No, it doesn't mean she can't be friendly. No, it doesn't mean she can't sell food like a champ.
What it does mean is she can't fill the job description.
It doesn't mean the company isn't making a mistake removing her from this job.
If what I am doing is discrimination, then not hiring very nice, very smart 300lb people with flying experience as flight attendants because they can't fit down the aisles is also discrimination. The Air Force not hiring people over 6'4" as pilots because they don't fit in the cockpits is discrimination. CostCo not hiring blind people as forklift drivers because they can't maneuver them around is discrimination.
These aren't isotopes, you can't make that parallel. Isotopes pick up extra neutrons, this is a system collecting energy and holding it until a miracle catalyst releases it.
These are quantum states. If the radius of the electron falling released energy, why doesn't it fall in nature? Why do we always see it higher than it could be?
If hydrogen could fall farther, we'd expect to see other elements that when we find them in nature, they're at a higher quantum level than their ground state. Can you name any of those?
If solar radiation or heat tends to raise hydrogen to a higher level, how come it would fall in this experiment? The system runs above ambient temperature (at least a little) and so should absorb heat to re-raise itself if heat is what raises it. As to light, I doubt this lab is as brightly lit as outdoors, but even if it were, if it takes energy from the lights in the lab to get the "excess energy", then the energy isn't excess at all, you're putting it in.
I feel sorry for the woman. She shouldn't be discriminated against, she should be able to get any job she is capable of doing.
But she isn't capable of doing this one.
Equal opportunity means that. It doesn't mean a free pass for something you can't do.
I hope they offered her other positions at the company.
I have to say having RTFA now, it seems like they'll have a tougher time of it than my explanation makes it out. If she couldn't smile, why did they keep her on for a couple years, then fire her? But I stand by my statement that just you don't deserve compensation for being fired for not doing a job that has requirements you cannot satisfy. I mean, it is well known that people with disabilities cannot do every job able-bodied people can. If this weren't the case, there'd be no Social Security money paid to disabled people.
No useful results that is. They were unable to measure the exhaust velocity (produced energy) in the thruster. Yet they suggest it is worth putting more money in. I'd say that too if I were going to be the one to receive the money.
This study does claim to reproduce other aspects of Mills work. But honestly, from the descriptions, it sounds suspiciously like they just reused the same equipment Mills had already used (it definitely reuses the charts and diagrams). It certainly doesn't sound like skeptical, independent work.
I do agree Quantum Mechanics is under strong attack lately. But the real impacts are being made by people other than crackpots such as this. It isn't by people who state that hydrogen seems to rest indefinitely and routinely in a state other than its lowest energy state.
I did note the article mentions Mills by name. It also explicitly mentions he isn't receiving the money from NASA (although he apparently did indirectly receive at least $7500, as he sold equipment to the researchers).
The operative point here is Mills says that NASA has independently verified his results, when the actual results are completely inconclusive. Non-hucksters don't need to misrepresent their positions and who supports them. Furthermore, this doesn't give me good feelings about his other results cited.
He's been on the board since 1991. It's a startup? When are they going to start?
As to the scientific community not publishing reports saying he is a charlatan. Well, that's how the respectable scientific community treats crackpots. Now, as to you saying there isn't proof he's a total charlatan? How about a reaction that produces 100X more heat than it should? That's all the proof actual scientists need. They aren't going to give this man any respect by bothering to discuss his idiocy.
If this man is for real, let him prove it in the regular, scientific way. Not in the press and blogs.
I apologize over the lab thing, I looked at his website (and I feel unclean for it), but under the "science" link there wasn't anything about independent verification. I just couldn't find it. I'm sorry. I should have done a search (as I did below).
The major operative factor here is gullibility. Yours included. There is no scientific acceptance of Hydrinos. How you construe this as somehow not refuting what this man says, I dunno.
The real thing is that if hydrogen could assume this quantum state, it would in nature. I mean, it would be the lowest energy state of hydrogen, the rest state. How come we never find hydrogen in that state? No hydrogen atom never dropped to that state on its own? Or if it did, how did it get back out, as it requires a lot of energy to get back.
Here's a nice link http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51792,00 .html?tw=wn_story_related for you which both speaks of NASA spending $75K on Hydrions (but not with this man) and also two experts in the the field (whom you say have never attacked him) calling him a "crackpot" and his work "voodoo". It is significant to note that unlike what he says, NASA has not independently verified or proved Mill's statements. Well, at least we have no info that they did, since the link on their site http://www.blacklightpower.com/techarchive.shtml is 404.
Yeah, per capita if you count the peasants from the interior of China who are brought to the coast to create industrial products, but who are forbidden to remain there because the Chinese know that if the wealth generated were shared with all 1 billion Chinese no one would make much money.
They're enslaving their own people.
I agree it's tough to industrialize. And you're gonna pollute doing it. But to exclude large portions of the population from the spoils of it is a shame.
His process makes new, unexplored materials? So that means this process has never occured naturally before, at least on Earth? Otherwise we would have seen these materials before. Why do I think that's unlikely?
As to him not angling for money, a common angle for money is to claim you don't need it. "I don't need your money." "I don't need your money." "I don't need your money." "Well, we're entering a greater phase of development. And although I don't need your money, with it we could accelerate our plans." Classic con. I mean, people are more happy to give their money to someone who already has some, not someone who is desparate for it.
His stuff has been verified by a NASA lab? You think they would have come forward and said it isn't true if it weren't true. Well, I have to ask, if it isn't true, who would have come forward? He says "a NASA lab", not a specific one. Did you expect there is someone out there who checks with all NASA labs every time someone says they worked with any of them? Same with the other labs he mentions. Being non-specific is the scammers' best friend.
Additionally, I want to mention that rumors of US government involvement or funding of his projects also means nothing. The government funded HAARP and MKULTRA.
Except the part where Sony couldn't have an online system in less than a year. It isn't particularly difficult to set one up. They just need a game that makes people want to get on it. Sony has several front-line titles that could probably swing this.
For what it matters, Sony say the PS3 is a year away in the US (probably more like 11 months) anyway. So even if it takes a year like you say, it won't hold them back here.
Live is okay. I dunno about awesome. It'd perhaps be awesome if they had a better way of being sure you're not playing against asswipes. I mean, they don't really ban cheaters or anything on Live. So it's the same as any other slice of internet gamers, which just isn't worth paying for to me. It is great for playing games against your friends. But it doesn't take Live to allow you to make up buddy lists. I just don't see the cost value in Live.
I suppose PS2 games are struggling against hardware more often the Xbox games, more and more lately. But Xbox has this problem too somewhat, witness lack of HD in Forza and presence of it in GT4. But when I play a game like God of War I realize that the hardware doesn't have nearly as much influence as to how fun or engaging a game is as it might appear.
Xbox 360 has limitations, for sure. Some are already enumerated. But there's no reason to think that PS3 will be without limitations any than the later console (Xbox) in this round was.
Honestly, I'm prepared to be disappointed by both machines. The cost of making a game that fully utilizes either of them will be so high that it I truly think few titles (A-list titles) will attempt it. Heck, J Allard has already said not to judge 360 by the first titles, and I can see why, with things like the Madden that has been shown. MS is moving first, but it's very possible that the platform will just sit still while we wait for titles that justify its existence. This is very common for platforms that are launched simultaneous instead of coming out first in one area (typically Japan) and building up a database of titles there before world-wide release. The DS, PSP and Xbox all have suffered from this and it looks like 360 is going to follow along.
Immersive is nice, but it only applies to certain kinds of games. Many great games were never meant to be real. And many real-type games are not great.
Super Bomberman was one of the best games ever made, and it was not immersive. Most puzzle-type games are far from immersive.
In order to be good (or great), a game needs to be engaging like Super Bomberman is, like Robotron is, like Mario Kart is, like Halo at its best (not in the library) is.
Quake 2's immersion made it more engaging than it would have been otherwise. But it didn't seem to work for Doom 3. Doom 3 is immersive, but it's a long way from engaging.
As to PS3 not having an online service, how do you know that? Has Sony said? Personally, I think that PS3 will have good online play, even if it doesn't have an online service. PS2's online play has gone from awful to decent, and there's no reason to think it won't get even better with PS3.
As an aside (and perhaps a contentious point), do you prefer Gran Turismo 4 to Forza due to it's noticeably better graphics? Personally, I like them both, probably liking Forza's driving better, despite the oddly inferior graphics. I mean, Rallisport Challenge 2 looked better than Forza! What happened?
Finally, did you like God of War? Great game. Best game in a while, very engaging. It's graphics are good, not quite Xbox quality in resolution of textures or models. But in other ways, the graphics are utilized well that it sets a standard no Xbox platformer can touch (perhaps GC's Metroid Prime comes close though).
For the most of the life of the two consoles (GC and Xbox), the GC outsold the Xbox. Yes, GC has tailed off badly recently, so Xbox will end up with more sales overall. But a sale of a console at the end of its life is not nearly as valueable as a sale at the start of its life. This is because you have less time to buy games on this console before you replace it with another. And since the money is made on the games...
I think that given that N didn't give money away with each console, and yet the Xbox barely outsold the GC, the GC has to be considered the more succesful console.
Additionally, remember that when N introed the GC, they spoke of not even needing 3rd party developers for their platform. They did accept some 3rd party developers, but it's true, they don't have nearly as much shovelware as the PS2, or even as much as the Xbox. How much did that hurt them?
As to other posters saying that N screwed up with their design, I think that's wrong. Yes, they didn't go for the total technological slam dunk, but by leaving stuff off, they may have increased their profit. N said, do you really need another DVD player, and I think they were right. The smaller size of the unit certainly saved them money in production and shipping.
I do recognize that MS did make some investments. Yeah, I'm sure they own racks of obsolete PCs that ocmprise the Live infrastructure. But really, the only think they gained from that was experience. They also bought several developers in a big to get some quality exclusive games for their console in the early days. Sadly, that mostly means RARE and Oddworld Inhabitants, neither of which has made a decent game since MS owned them. And they surely didn't generate any kind of positive return. Bungie has worked well for them, they still may not have generated an actual profit themselves, but they definitely sold a lot of consoles, which brought other developers to Xbox, which put money in MS pocket. And there's that movie deal too... All in all, I'd say buying Bungie was a positive.
But all this investment in infrastructure is only useful it if makes them money in the long run. And there's no guarantee of that at all. It's quite possible MS has merely built up an infrastructure for releasing more money losers in the future.
And finally, Xbox may not out-and-out suck, but it more than makes up for it in money loss. It's huge, poorly designed and insecure to boot! Also, it's the only current console that has had multiple primary controllers in its lifetime. And it is definitely because the first version of the controller out and out sucked.
We'll see how 360 ends up. It has to do a lot better than Xbox has in order to justify the huge losses MS has incurred. That's not guaranteed, but they sure seem to be in a lot better position to succeed than they were last time around. I'll be surprised if they lose as much on 360 as on Xbox, mostly because they seem to have designed it such that they aren't giving away money with the console this time around.
I'm sure there's some fudging I'm missing in these numbers, but I don't see how those devices you list are super-efficient. Efficient, yes. Super-efficient, I just don't see it.
Luxeon LED lighting is fine, but white LEDs (these included) aren't as efficient as fluorescent lighting.
You're right about my post re: HD. I shortened my thoughts too much. I did mean to say what you said, that it was the comparison that was stupid, not that DC not having HD was stupid. Sorry about that. Also, it was supposed to be somewhat humorous and point out how you were perhaps taking the article too seriously, that is shows its ridiculousness many times over.
I can't agree with what you say about PS3 and Xbox 360. On paper, the PS3 is far faster. It is "apparently far superior". The PS3 CPU was designed to be the GPU, and it would have done okay. But when J Allard started spouting about how bad-ass the 360 just before E3, Sony went to NVidia and got a highly capable GPU also. So the PS3 is definitely way overpowered.
Now, will the games be better because of it? No, not necessarily, because it may be too difficult to program for. But the 360 is no picnic either, so it's going to be a real horse race to see what happens. Additionally, both are so powerful that many developers don't every try very hard to work them out. Additionally, the cost of making the collateral (textures, etc.) for an HDTV system is so high that all non-first party titles will have to run on both platforms. And that means the games will only be as good as the lesser of the two is capable of doing anyway. So, I expect the playing field to be pretty level.
I agree MS will work very hard on the online service. It's key to their platform. To be honest, "free Live" is mainly a vehicle for delivering bug fixes to their games (the launch titles will certainly be quite buggy, given the short development times) and collecting micropayments (track packs). Did you see the presentations at E3? MS was showing how basically you can set up "shops" selling clothing for characters on their services. And certainly they'll take a cut. The eBay model.
Honestly, my biggest beef with Xbox 360 is J Allard's big promises at E3 versus the reality.
J Allard: wireless controllers included! reality: optional at extra cost J Allard: hard drive too! reality: optional at extra cost J Allard: free Live! reality: you can't do anything on Live silver that Live was traditionally defined to mean, except for download game patches and pay for track packs. Actually, useful Live prices went up 50%. J Allard (or somebody): It'll probably, maybe, have HD-DVD. reality: nope (that one was perhaps a little sketchy to start with because HD-DVD wasn't going to be cost effective or even available before the end of 2005)
I don't mind that it doesn't have HD-DVD actually, it's just isn't possible in the timeframe. I do mind that they still want to charge me for an online experience I get for free with PC games (and get a cut-down version of for free with PS2). I don't mind (much) that it doesn't have digital video output (thus precluding HD-DVD playback). I do very much mind that J Allard made many many empty promises, seemingly to get the hype machine rolling at the only E3 that 360 would be at (even in prototype form) without the presence of the PS3. Please MS (Allard specifically), respect your customers more than that.
Additionally, paying up front raises your costs. I mean, a dollar 20 years from now is a lot less than a dollar today.
I don't agree with your contract thing. I am comparing cost of PV power versus regular power, to get an idea of whether it makes sense for the person who is already accustomed to regular electric rates. Additionally, California is considering limiting the ability of anyone (even companies) to sign power contracts outside the regular system, so that might not even be an option for me soon.
I redid the numbers a bit, after reading more info on solarbuzz.com. It says that in large installation (meaning like a house setup, not a couple watt setup), the cells are more like $3.80 per peak Watt, not $5.20. The bad news is that it also says the cells are only half the cost of the system. So I redid the numbers, and they break even after 30 years, not 20.
This is disturbingly outside the expected lifetime of the systems of approximately 25 years. And that's before replacing batteries every 4-5 years. And omitting the mention that the output of the cells will drop 0-20% over their 25 year lifetime.
Still, all is not lost, PV solar has advanced so much in the last 5 years, things will likely look different in another 5. So I guess I'll keep waiting.
Additional notes: Solarbuzz says that a cloudy location generates almost half as much in a year as a sunny location. All I can say about that is that I must have grown up in a very cloudy location. Because I'd say about half the days are overcast in Michigan in the summer, and very few days aren't significantly cloudy. Knowing that this will reduce power output at least 80% on those cloudy and overcast days, I can't see how it makes half as much power as here in California, where we have clear skies 90% of the time and the sunlight is just plain stronger anyway (closer to the equator).
Finally, the post I had responded to talked about total energy output of a panel versus energy put in. Solarbuzz says that the cells will output as much energy in 2-4 years (depending) as was created to make them.
It became available between the time of the design of the product and the time of the original launch. But there were several games already under development before launch of course, they didn't have a chance to use CE, as it wasn't ready yet. Then a few things came out with CE (browser, Sega Rally, as you say, perhaps one or two others), and then CE disappeared again.
This is because all of this happened early in the product cycle, you seemed to have missed that in my post. This whole episode was over and done with before DC launched in the US (as evidenced by the labelling on the US DCs vis-a-vis CE). And yes, at that point, Sega developer relations was telling developers not to use CE, as I said. They didn't want their devlopers making games that would be used against them to launch MS' console. This was all close to "from the start", as you make it out to be.
It does not surprise someone could port a dating simulator to CE in the relatively short period in which CE was available before the Japanese launch. Dating simulators don't take a lot of work to bring up.
As to your #3, you're mistaken there. All of this happened very early on in the product lifecycle, even before it launched in the US.
Moving the center of mass doesn't really change the horizontal part. All it does is keep you from flipping over really. If your center of mass is ever outside the outside line of tires in a turn, your vehicle will begin to rotate (flip) greatly. Thus motorcycles must lean in to keep from falling over. Cars have their center of mass between the left and right set of wheels, so the center of mass is never outside the outside wheels.
So leaning over isn't a positive, it's a compensation for a negative.
The real problem with motorcycles and turns is that since a motorcycle leans over, the tires must be very rounded. And the more you turn, the smaller patch of rubber you are running on. With cars, since they don't lean a lot, the bottoms of the wheels can be flat and thus you keep most of the rubber on the road in a turn.
It's a huge advantage for the car.
A two-wheeled vehicle would have an advantage in that less rubber on the road means less friction, which is very important in a gravity race.
But I think the real reasons bike riders can go faster than these vehicles are two-fold. First is that they have a lot longer slope (and probably steeper) to go down. This course was a half-mile long. That means, they are on-course perhaps 80 seconds, and drop perhaps 800 feet in that time? Second is that the bikes are not strictly gravity powered. They pedal at the top to get up speed quicker and they can pedal after every corner they brake at to get their speed back quicker.
They really should have let two bicyclists do this course, one with pedaling and another with gravity only. That would give us some more info to analyze and BS about.
Acutally, it isn't like they destroyed this hill after the race. Someone could go down there and try it...
You say the lack of HD is moronic, but then skip over the item that says they are similar because Verne Troyer and J Allard are both bald?
Also, for what it matters, the article is careful to say "apparently far superior" in reference to the PS3 (and PS2). Personally, I think the PS3 is super to the Xbox 360 also, but as you correctly point out, time will tell better than predictions do. (Before you call me a hater, I have had a 360 on order for months already.) No video game mag/site is going to openly attack one console or another,no matter what they might think. It's just not good for business. It offends potential advertisers and some sensitive readers.
Slashdot Mirror
Sea launch http://www.sea-launch.com/ successfully launched an almost 6,000kg EADS-built satellite to orbit for Inmarsat.
Sea Launch continues their record of being one of the most (the most?) reliable satellite launching system and the most cost-effective.
And they also show that despite what other posters have said, the US is not far behind in this area.
But note that Sea Launch isn't an American company only. In fact, their successes have been atop Russian and Russian-derived launch vehicles.
The GameCube did 480p at launch (mine does), but the later versions ($99) lost the port required, and so only do 480i.
GameCube doesn't do 5.1 audio either!
Honestly, I think N is pretty smart. There is only a small amount of games that are improved by HDTV, especially if you can't assume the user has it, only support it optionally. If it helps them make their console cost less so they can sell more, I'm all for it. But I'd be disappointed if all the console makers went this route. There should be a console for those of us with money burning a hole in our pockets who want to max our our TVs. Sony and MS are taking that tack for us.
You can run the games at higher screen resolutions. But in most games the textures and models aren't any higher rez than before. So it's like running Half-Life (not 2) in 1600x1200 on your PC. It doesn't look significantly better than it did at 800x600, because although the screen is high res, the only thing that gets sharper is the edges, the textures don't look any better, and the models are still low poly count. It is very similar to uprezzing a DVD.
I believe they updated the collateral (textures and perhaps character models) on Halo/Halo 2 so they would look better. They probably took the collateral from the PC versions of these games.
I hope they update the collateral on Forza Motorsport. That game already suffered from low-res (non-car) textures, and it only supported 480p.
Also note Xbox 1 supposedly was HDTV compatible, but most games couldn't use it due to memory or performance limitations.
That was in my original post. Not sure why you need to go two rounds to try to hammer one of my points home to me.
I was talking about the princple in general, then this case in specifics. It doesn't sound like we disagree on this case in specific, it does seem suspicious they waited so long to remove her if she couldn't fulfill her job requirements.
But that's all for the lawyers to decide. My main point was about job requirements and equal opportunity not meaning job guarantees.
Your socket 7 has a 32-bit wide bus. This socket has a 64-bit wide bus. That's 32 new pins. And there's more stuff where that came from.
Intels slot was just a plan to get more revenue. By moving the CPU and cache onto the card, they got to sell you the cache chips, when previously the motherboard vendor sold you the cache chips. Once the cache was on the chip, there was no reason to have the slot, so they went back to the socket.
I have to ask, do you really care if the new socket has more pins? I mean, if it's incompatible anyway, why stress over the pin count? And it has to be incompatible to bring the new RAM types and thus bandwidth.
I don't think CPUs have integrated SATA controllers (yet). But they do have memory controllers and soon perhaps PCI-E bridges. Maybe SATA some day.
SDRAM->DDR->DDR2
It adds bandwidth, so basically, your machine would be crap if the socket always stayed the same. You'd have a fast processor with only 133MB/sec of memory bandwidth (instead of 10GB/sec+).
You can't even feed the instruction pipeline on a current processor from those old busses, let alone provide the data to process.
Thanks. I didn't make a mistake here. Play the New York level on GT4 in (pseudo) 1080i on PS2. Then play the New York level on Forza on Xbox in 480p.
Yes, the PS2 version is a bit flickery (the curse of the PS2), but it's definitely better looking. The textures are higher res, the cars look better, the road surface looks better (although is actually less detailed).
Don't get me wrong, Forza is a great game, in many ways better than GT4. But the graphics are inferior. The track area looks washed out, the textures are low res, the GAME is low res (no HD), the car models are not as pleasing as GT4 (although pretty damn good), and everything outside the track area is less detailed than on GT4.
It's shocking to me, since Rallisport Challenge 2 is the best looking racing game on any console and this is made by the same people on the same console. Why did the graphics drop in quality so much? And how come no HDTV support? It kind of looks to me like they just ran out of time to spend on it.
It doesn't matter too much, it has little effect on game play. The track/walls muddiness makes it difficult to discern the track ahead in certain circumstances (like the street course track, Australia?) but honestly in these kind of games, you have to memorize the tracks to do well anyway, so it's not a big deal in the end. Other than that, it creates no problems.
But that doesn't make it not so.
It's fantastic (and available on GC). And this is better?
Whether this is better or not, I'll go seek it out. There just aren't enough good shooters nowadays.
Thanks for the tip.
She can't smile, she can't do the job.
Q.E.D.
I never said she did a bad job, you inserted that yourself.
No, it doesn't mean she can't be friendly. No, it doesn't mean she can't sell food like a champ.
What it does mean is she can't fill the job description.
It doesn't mean the company isn't making a mistake removing her from this job.
If what I am doing is discrimination, then not hiring very nice, very smart 300lb people with flying experience as flight attendants because they can't fit down the aisles is also discrimination. The Air Force not hiring people over 6'4" as pilots because they don't fit in the cockpits is discrimination. CostCo not hiring blind people as forklift drivers because they can't maneuver them around is discrimination.
These aren't isotopes, you can't make that parallel. Isotopes pick up extra neutrons, this is a system collecting energy and holding it until a miracle catalyst releases it.
These are quantum states. If the radius of the electron falling released energy, why doesn't it fall in nature? Why do we always see it higher than it could be?
If hydrogen could fall farther, we'd expect to see other elements that when we find them in nature, they're at a higher quantum level than their ground state. Can you name any of those?
If solar radiation or heat tends to raise hydrogen to a higher level, how come it would fall in this experiment? The system runs above ambient temperature (at least a little) and so should absorb heat to re-raise itself if heat is what raises it. As to light, I doubt this lab is as brightly lit as outdoors, but even if it were, if it takes energy from the lights in the lab to get the "excess energy", then the energy isn't excess at all, you're putting it in.
Quackery.
I feel sorry for the woman. She shouldn't be discriminated against, she should be able to get any job she is capable of doing.
But she isn't capable of doing this one.
Equal opportunity means that. It doesn't mean a free pass for something you can't do.
I hope they offered her other positions at the company.
I have to say having RTFA now, it seems like they'll have a tougher time of it than my explanation makes it out. If she couldn't smile, why did they keep her on for a couple years, then fire her? But I stand by my statement that just you don't deserve compensation for being fired for not doing a job that has requirements you cannot satisfy. I mean, it is well known that people with disabilities cannot do every job able-bodied people can. If this weren't the case, there'd be no Social Security money paid to disabled people.
No useful results that is. They were unable to measure the exhaust velocity (produced energy) in the thruster. Yet they suggest it is worth putting more money in. I'd say that too if I were going to be the one to receive the money.
This study does claim to reproduce other aspects of Mills work. But honestly, from the descriptions, it sounds suspiciously like they just reused the same equipment Mills had already used (it definitely reuses the charts and diagrams). It certainly doesn't sound like skeptical, independent work.
I do agree Quantum Mechanics is under strong attack lately. But the real impacts are being made by people other than crackpots such as this. It isn't by people who state that hydrogen seems to rest indefinitely and routinely in a state other than its lowest energy state.
I did note the article mentions Mills by name. It also explicitly mentions he isn't receiving the money from NASA (although he apparently did indirectly receive at least $7500, as he sold equipment to the researchers).
The operative point here is Mills says that NASA has independently verified his results, when the actual results are completely inconclusive. Non-hucksters don't need to misrepresent their positions and who supports them. Furthermore, this doesn't give me good feelings about his other results cited.
He's been on the board since 1991. It's a startup? When are they going to start?
0 .html?tw=wn_story_related for you which both speaks of NASA spending $75K on Hydrions (but not with this man) and also two experts in the the field (whom you say have never attacked him) calling him a "crackpot" and his work "voodoo". It is significant to note that unlike what he says, NASA has not independently verified or proved Mill's statements. Well, at least we have no info that they did, since the link on their site http://www.blacklightpower.com/techarchive.shtml is 404.
As to the scientific community not publishing reports saying he is a charlatan. Well, that's how the respectable scientific community treats crackpots. Now, as to you saying there isn't proof he's a total charlatan? How about a reaction that produces 100X more heat than it should? That's all the proof actual scientists need. They aren't going to give this man any respect by bothering to discuss his idiocy.
If this man is for real, let him prove it in the regular, scientific way. Not in the press and blogs.
I apologize over the lab thing, I looked at his website (and I feel unclean for it), but under the "science" link there wasn't anything about independent verification. I just couldn't find it. I'm sorry. I should have done a search (as I did below).
The major operative factor here is gullibility. Yours included. There is no scientific acceptance of Hydrinos. How you construe this as somehow not refuting what this man says, I dunno.
The real thing is that if hydrogen could assume this quantum state, it would in nature. I mean, it would be the lowest energy state of hydrogen, the rest state. How come we never find hydrogen in that state? No hydrogen atom never dropped to that state on its own? Or if it did, how did it get back out, as it requires a lot of energy to get back.
Here's a nice link http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51792,0
Yeah, per capita if you count the peasants from the interior of China who are brought to the coast to create industrial products, but who are forbidden to remain there because the Chinese know that if the wealth generated were shared with all 1 billion Chinese no one would make much money.
They're enslaving their own people.
I agree it's tough to industrialize. And you're gonna pollute doing it. But to exclude large portions of the population from the spoils of it is a shame.
His process makes new, unexplored materials? So that means this process has never occured naturally before, at least on Earth? Otherwise we would have seen these materials before. Why do I think that's unlikely?
As to him not angling for money, a common angle for money is to claim you don't need it. "I don't need your money." "I don't need your money." "I don't need your money." "Well, we're entering a greater phase of development. And although I don't need your money, with it we could accelerate our plans." Classic con. I mean, people are more happy to give their money to someone who already has some, not someone who is desparate for it.
His stuff has been verified by a NASA lab? You think they would have come forward and said it isn't true if it weren't true. Well, I have to ask, if it isn't true, who would have come forward? He says "a NASA lab", not a specific one. Did you expect there is someone out there who checks with all NASA labs every time someone says they worked with any of them? Same with the other labs he mentions. Being non-specific is the scammers' best friend.
Additionally, I want to mention that rumors of US government involvement or funding of his projects also means nothing. The government funded HAARP and MKULTRA.
Except the part where Sony couldn't have an online system in less than a year. It isn't particularly difficult to set one up. They just need a game that makes people want to get on it. Sony has several front-line titles that could probably swing this.
For what it matters, Sony say the PS3 is a year away in the US (probably more like 11 months) anyway. So even if it takes a year like you say, it won't hold them back here.
Live is okay. I dunno about awesome. It'd perhaps be awesome if they had a better way of being sure you're not playing against asswipes. I mean, they don't really ban cheaters or anything on Live. So it's the same as any other slice of internet gamers, which just isn't worth paying for to me. It is great for playing games against your friends. But it doesn't take Live to allow you to make up buddy lists. I just don't see the cost value in Live.
I suppose PS2 games are struggling against hardware more often the Xbox games, more and more lately. But Xbox has this problem too somewhat, witness lack of HD in Forza and presence of it in GT4. But when I play a game like God of War I realize that the hardware doesn't have nearly as much influence as to how fun or engaging a game is as it might appear.
Xbox 360 has limitations, for sure. Some are already enumerated. But there's no reason to think that PS3 will be without limitations any than the later console (Xbox) in this round was.
Honestly, I'm prepared to be disappointed by both machines. The cost of making a game that fully utilizes either of them will be so high that it I truly think few titles (A-list titles) will attempt it. Heck, J Allard has already said not to judge 360 by the first titles, and I can see why, with things like the Madden that has been shown. MS is moving first, but it's very possible that the platform will just sit still while we wait for titles that justify its existence. This is very common for platforms that are launched simultaneous instead of coming out first in one area (typically Japan) and building up a database of titles there before world-wide release. The DS, PSP and Xbox all have suffered from this and it looks like 360 is going to follow along.
It isn't like this guy published in a referred journal. He's just making press releases.
And besides, it doesn't take a genius to realize that if it sounds too good to be true, it is.
Immersive is nice, but it only applies to certain kinds of games. Many great games were never meant to be real. And many real-type games are not great.
Super Bomberman was one of the best games ever made, and it was not immersive. Most puzzle-type games are far from immersive.
In order to be good (or great), a game needs to be engaging like Super Bomberman is, like Robotron is, like Mario Kart is, like Halo at its best (not in the library) is.
Quake 2's immersion made it more engaging than it would have been otherwise. But it didn't seem to work for Doom 3. Doom 3 is immersive, but it's a long way from engaging.
As to PS3 not having an online service, how do you know that? Has Sony said? Personally, I think that PS3 will have good online play, even if it doesn't have an online service. PS2's online play has gone from awful to decent, and there's no reason to think it won't get even better with PS3.
As an aside (and perhaps a contentious point), do you prefer Gran Turismo 4 to Forza due to it's noticeably better graphics? Personally, I like them both, probably liking Forza's driving better, despite the oddly inferior graphics. I mean, Rallisport Challenge 2 looked better than Forza! What happened?
Finally, did you like God of War? Great game. Best game in a while, very engaging. It's graphics are good, not quite Xbox quality in resolution of textures or models. But in other ways, the graphics are utilized well that it sets a standard no Xbox platformer can touch (perhaps GC's Metroid Prime comes close though).
For the most of the life of the two consoles (GC and Xbox), the GC outsold the Xbox. Yes, GC has tailed off badly recently, so Xbox will end up with more sales overall. But a sale of a console at the end of its life is not nearly as valueable as a sale at the start of its life. This is because you have less time to buy games on this console before you replace it with another. And since the money is made on the games...
I think that given that N didn't give money away with each console, and yet the Xbox barely outsold the GC, the GC has to be considered the more succesful console.
Additionally, remember that when N introed the GC, they spoke of not even needing 3rd party developers for their platform. They did accept some 3rd party developers, but it's true, they don't have nearly as much shovelware as the PS2, or even as much as the Xbox. How much did that hurt them?
As to other posters saying that N screwed up with their design, I think that's wrong. Yes, they didn't go for the total technological slam dunk, but by leaving stuff off, they may have increased their profit. N said, do you really need another DVD player, and I think they were right. The smaller size of the unit certainly saved them money in production and shipping.
I do recognize that MS did make some investments. Yeah, I'm sure they own racks of obsolete PCs that ocmprise the Live infrastructure. But really, the only think they gained from that was experience. They also bought several developers in a big to get some quality exclusive games for their console in the early days. Sadly, that mostly means RARE and Oddworld Inhabitants, neither of which has made a decent game since MS owned them. And they surely didn't generate any kind of positive return. Bungie has worked well for them, they still may not have generated an actual profit themselves, but they definitely sold a lot of consoles, which brought other developers to Xbox, which put money in MS pocket. And there's that movie deal too... All in all, I'd say buying Bungie was a positive.
But all this investment in infrastructure is only useful it if makes them money in the long run. And there's no guarantee of that at all. It's quite possible MS has merely built up an infrastructure for releasing more money losers in the future.
And finally, Xbox may not out-and-out suck, but it more than makes up for it in money loss. It's huge, poorly designed and insecure to boot! Also, it's the only current console that has had multiple primary controllers in its lifetime. And it is definitely because the first version of the controller out and out sucked.
We'll see how 360 ends up. It has to do a lot better than Xbox has in order to justify the huge losses MS has incurred. That's not guaranteed, but they sure seem to be in a lot better position to succeed than they were last time around. I'll be surprised if they lose as much on 360 as on Xbox, mostly because they seem to have designed it such that they aren't giving away money with the console this time around.
I looked at that web page. They don't give their capacity units, but I'm gonna have to assume it is in liters.
f rig.display_products_html, the freezer at the top of the list uses 45.46666667 KWH/cu ft/year, which is 10% less.
That means the freezer on that vestfrost site uses 51.13904511 KWH/cu ft/year.
Now, at the energy star site http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=re
I'm sure there's some fudging I'm missing in these numbers, but I don't see how those devices you list are super-efficient. Efficient, yes. Super-efficient, I just don't see it.
Luxeon LED lighting is fine, but white LEDs (these included) aren't as efficient as fluorescent lighting.
You're right about my post re: HD. I shortened my thoughts too much. I did mean to say what you said, that it was the comparison that was stupid, not that DC not having HD was stupid. Sorry about that. Also, it was supposed to be somewhat humorous and point out how you were perhaps taking the article too seriously, that is shows its ridiculousness many times over.
I can't agree with what you say about PS3 and Xbox 360. On paper, the PS3 is far faster. It is "apparently far superior". The PS3 CPU was designed to be the GPU, and it would have done okay. But when J Allard started spouting about how bad-ass the 360 just before E3, Sony went to NVidia and got a highly capable GPU also. So the PS3 is definitely way overpowered.
Now, will the games be better because of it? No, not necessarily, because it may be too difficult to program for. But the 360 is no picnic either, so it's going to be a real horse race to see what happens. Additionally, both are so powerful that many developers don't every try very hard to work them out. Additionally, the cost of making the collateral (textures, etc.) for an HDTV system is so high that all non-first party titles will have to run on both platforms. And that means the games will only be as good as the lesser of the two is capable of doing anyway. So, I expect the playing field to be pretty level.
I agree MS will work very hard on the online service. It's key to their platform. To be honest, "free Live" is mainly a vehicle for delivering bug fixes to their games (the launch titles will certainly be quite buggy, given the short development times) and collecting micropayments (track packs). Did you see the presentations at E3? MS was showing how basically you can set up "shops" selling clothing for characters on their services. And certainly they'll take a cut. The eBay model.
Honestly, my biggest beef with Xbox 360 is J Allard's big promises at E3 versus the reality.
J Allard: wireless controllers included!
reality: optional at extra cost
J Allard: hard drive too!
reality: optional at extra cost
J Allard: free Live!
reality: you can't do anything on Live silver that Live was traditionally defined to mean, except for download game patches and pay for track packs. Actually, useful Live prices went up 50%.
J Allard (or somebody): It'll probably, maybe, have HD-DVD.
reality: nope (that one was perhaps a little sketchy to start with because HD-DVD wasn't going to be cost effective or even available before the end of 2005)
I don't mind that it doesn't have HD-DVD actually, it's just isn't possible in the timeframe. I do mind that they still want to charge me for an online experience I get for free with PC games (and get a cut-down version of for free with PS2). I don't mind (much) that it doesn't have digital video output (thus precluding HD-DVD playback). I do very much mind that J Allard made many many empty promises, seemingly to get the hype machine rolling at the only E3 that 360 would be at (even in prototype form) without the presence of the PS3. Please MS (Allard specifically), respect your customers more than that.
Additionally, paying up front raises your costs. I mean, a dollar 20 years from now is a lot less than a dollar today.
I don't agree with your contract thing. I am comparing cost of PV power versus regular power, to get an idea of whether it makes sense for the person who is already accustomed to regular electric rates. Additionally, California is considering limiting the ability of anyone (even companies) to sign power contracts outside the regular system, so that might not even be an option for me soon.
I redid the numbers a bit, after reading more info on solarbuzz.com. It says that in large installation (meaning like a house setup, not a couple watt setup), the cells are more like $3.80 per peak Watt, not $5.20. The bad news is that it also says the cells are only half the cost of the system. So I redid the numbers, and they break even after 30 years, not 20.
This is disturbingly outside the expected lifetime of the systems of approximately 25 years. And that's before replacing batteries every 4-5 years. And omitting the mention that the output of the cells will drop 0-20% over their 25 year lifetime.
Still, all is not lost, PV solar has advanced so much in the last 5 years, things will likely look different in another 5. So I guess I'll keep waiting.
Additional notes:
Solarbuzz says that a cloudy location generates almost half as much in a year as a sunny location. All I can say about that is that I must have grown up in a very cloudy location. Because I'd say about half the days are overcast in Michigan in the summer, and very few days aren't significantly cloudy. Knowing that this will reduce power output at least 80% on those cloudy and overcast days, I can't see how it makes half as much power as here in California, where we have clear skies 90% of the time and the sunlight is just plain stronger anyway (closer to the equator).
Finally, the post I had responded to talked about total energy output of a panel versus energy put in. Solarbuzz says that the cells will output as much energy in 2-4 years (depending) as was created to make them.
Late is relative.
It became available between the time of the design of the product and the time of the original launch. But there were several games already under development before launch of course, they didn't have a chance to use CE, as it wasn't ready yet. Then a few things came out with CE (browser, Sega Rally, as you say, perhaps one or two others), and then CE disappeared again.
This is because all of this happened early in the product cycle, you seemed to have missed that in my post. This whole episode was over and done with before DC launched in the US (as evidenced by the labelling on the US DCs vis-a-vis CE). And yes, at that point, Sega developer relations was telling developers not to use CE, as I said. They didn't want their devlopers making games that would be used against them to launch MS' console. This was all close to "from the start", as you make it out to be.
It does not surprise someone could port a dating simulator to CE in the relatively short period in which CE was available before the Japanese launch. Dating simulators don't take a lot of work to bring up.
As to your #3, you're mistaken there. All of this happened very early on in the product lifecycle, even before it launched in the US.
Moving the center of mass doesn't really change the horizontal part. All it does is keep you from flipping over really. If your center of mass is ever outside the outside line of tires in a turn, your vehicle will begin to rotate (flip) greatly. Thus motorcycles must lean in to keep from falling over. Cars have their center of mass between the left and right set of wheels, so the center of mass is never outside the outside wheels.
So leaning over isn't a positive, it's a compensation for a negative.
The real problem with motorcycles and turns is that since a motorcycle leans over, the tires must be very rounded. And the more you turn, the smaller patch of rubber you are running on. With cars, since they don't lean a lot, the bottoms of the wheels can be flat and thus you keep most of the rubber on the road in a turn.
It's a huge advantage for the car.
A two-wheeled vehicle would have an advantage in that less rubber on the road means less friction, which is very important in a gravity race.
But I think the real reasons bike riders can go faster than these vehicles are two-fold. First is that they have a lot longer slope (and probably steeper) to go down. This course was a half-mile long. That means, they are on-course perhaps 80 seconds, and drop perhaps 800 feet in that time? Second is that the bikes are not strictly gravity powered. They pedal at the top to get up speed quicker and they can pedal after every corner they brake at to get their speed back quicker.
They really should have let two bicyclists do this course, one with pedaling and another with gravity only. That would give us some more info to analyze and BS about.
Acutally, it isn't like they destroyed this hill after the race. Someone could go down there and try it...
You say the lack of HD is moronic, but then skip over the item that says they are similar because Verne Troyer and J Allard are both bald?
Also, for what it matters, the article is careful to say "apparently far superior" in reference to the PS3 (and PS2). Personally, I think the PS3 is super to the Xbox 360 also, but as you correctly point out, time will tell better than predictions do. (Before you call me a hater, I have had a 360 on order for months already.) No video game mag/site is going to openly attack one console or another,no matter what they might think. It's just not good for business. It offends potential advertisers and some sensitive readers.