I has a look at the wikipedia store the other day to see if they had a DVD copy of wikipedia available for sale, however it appears they only sell t-shirts and other stuff with logos on it. I fail to see how this would not be a good option for people wanting to support them and obtain a great offline reference. They could also sell the (more or less) completed wikibooks on CD as sections.
I realise they'd need to bring out a new version each year, but it seems to me it would be trivial to create such a product. Anyone know the reason why they don't?
Who knows, they could even find a market for dead-tree versions.
I think most people here are missing the point about "permadeath". The problem is the levelling-grind itself. I want a game where I can start doing interesting things from the start, not have to spend weeks levelling up before I can take on the next section of the world. You shouldn't have to "invest 8 months of time" before you start having fun.
As an alternative, have some persistent experience system - your starting character's experience depends on how much time I've put into the game. Dieing still sucks, but I have something for my effort.
how about this instead - you find out the location of your quest from an NPC or item, it's different for each person who asks. The monster, or whatever, spawns when that person gets to the right location. You's still have the possibility of stealing, but it's not realistic to completely exclude that. Roaming big-bads can be solved by having them disappear after a delay if the questor is killed or leaves the area.
Or, have a large dungeon where the special mob leaves a trail which is only obvious by tracking - there's no need to wait between spawns or even have only one at one time.
Or, use a collection or puzzle-based quest to regulate the spawning / timing of the spawn. The puzzle will be camped, but as it involves running around and investigation it's unlikely to cause conflicts.
There are a large number of ways to solve this problem, instancing seems like a very lazy and unrealistic way to do it. However, I'm sure more advanced games will make things better - it will just take time and a lot of feedback.
I agree with most of this article, but I think that even experienced players drive bad design in MMO games. The reason is that almost all players will prefer a feature that helps them over one that makes for a good world.
Player death is a good example - I can see how it would make the game world better, however the idea of continually accreting power is incredibly seductive. Of course, the root problem may be the huge range of powel levels in these games, if I have to play for months just to get to a stage I can challenge any interesting monsters I'm certainly not going to accept player death.
Mod chips allow me to play imported games which will never be available in my region, by the command of Sony. Many other people use them for this purpose. There is no mention in this ruling that modchips which only allow the removal of these restrictions are legal.
Could you explain how playing a game I purchased from another country is illegal or immoral?
You do exactly the same thing, the only difference is you have to install ImageMagick on Windows. Besides, this has nothing to do with the kernel.
Now if you want to say Linux is more efficient because you can compile only what you need into the kernel, that would be valid, although I'm not sure if Windows has something like modules.
Yeah, I enjoyed it for a few hours before it started crashing all the time. Then after I fixed that problem I got stuck on the edge of a lift permanently.
I think I'll wait for the second round of patches before buying HL2. Might have a chance at finishing it then.
Except that H2G2 is not action, it's a subtle comedic satire, and the chances of movie-makers understanding it, let alone wanting to make such a movie is pretty slim. I can't think of any recent american-made comedy movie which isn't based on slapstick and obscenity (not that there's anything wrong with slapstick and obscenity).
Just look at cars - time was the only thing many people would look at is cubic inches or horsepower. Now most people who buy a car are more concerned with other features - passenger comfort, style, efficiency. I would guess this is a shift from car-oriented people buying cars to everyone buying cars as they became more of a necessity.
Computer manufacturers are only just starting to see this, making smaller, quieter, cooler-running machines. Hopefully they'll continue to look at what their customers actually need rather than simply putting out chips with higher clock speeds.
Absolutely, I did some work on computer vision systems. A lot of the papers I read used jet planes and tanks as examples. I was interested in general vision systems, not guided missiles, however I'm sure my work could be useful for military applications.
Any technology can be dangerous, it is up to everyone to decide what applications are developed and how it is going to be used. Obviously some knowledge is best kept out of the hands of those who would abuse it, but the fault is with the people who build the bombs not the researchers who discover how to do it. The only other way is to retard progress.
Before such measures have any effect on global warming, the following will have to take place:
The emission of greenhouse gases will have to significantly decrease. I don't think a 20% reduction by one country is really significant, particularly when emissions from many other countries are still increasing.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will have to decrease, either absorbed by plants or dissolved into water. I don't know how long this would take, probably decades.
The world's temperature and weather patterns wwill return to normal. Due to the heat already absorbed by the oceans, this will be decades.
As we are not even approaching the first step, we have to face the fact that these changes are coming. Not that we shouldn't try to change things - we'll have to have other forms of power when fossil fuels start to run out anyway. But these changes are coming and it is now out of our power to stop them.
The real question is, how is the world's food production going to be affected by the climate changes? From the current predictions, it seems that most intensive farming areas of the world are going to have less water, which is an extremely bad sign. I hope people start planning for this soon.
The most ironic part of the article is the continued push against nuclear power, which is currently the only technology which could produce a significant amount of Britain's power without CO2 emission. We have truly dug a deep hole for ourselves.
(Sorry if this is a bit bleak, it's monday morning here.)
Why on earth would these buildings need networking? I assume they are tourist attractions, what could be needed that can't be done stand alone? I assume they don't even have phones ATM (or you could use those lines).
Re:Costs more in energy then what is produced...
on
Ethanol Not A Total Loss
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There is more than 1 source of energy:
Solar via plants
Fuel for processing and vehicles
Manufacturing
etc
When looking at a possible "energy source" we only look at the energy we use up - ie. fuel, not that which we get for free - ie. solar. The claim is that the fuel used has more energy than the ethanol produced - which can still be economically viable due to subsidies.
This report is very good news (if it is true) because it means that if ethanol and other corn derivatives can fuel their own extraction process (quite possible), then lots of ethanol is produced from a self-sustaining farm.
The energy "produced" comes originally from the sun, as do all forms of energy used by man, apart from geothermal and probably nuclear.
A an aside, shoal oil (I believe) is an example of a fuel which requires more energy to get out of the ground than it produces. In Canada "stranded gas" (no pipeline) is used to extract the oil (which is easier to transport). Take this with a grain of salt, as I don't have references with me.
File-sharing may have a detrimental effect on sales. Then again, it may be helpful to sales. Either way, most file-sharing is theft - plain and simple.
I fail to see how it is theft, particularly if it helps sales.
Here's a solution which will work - a p2p service available for a subscription fee, which allows users to share any music they want. The service will also track what is traded (possibly with some help from users), and pay the artists in proportion to how much their songs are traded. Better still, have the songs available from a central server as high-quality mp3s. The key here is compulsory licencing - that way you don't have to worry about identifying tracks, watermarking and a lot of other bs.
Many people have proposed something like this, both on Slashdot and elsewhere. However, this solution will never fly with the powers that be because it cut out their source of power. The closest thing to this ATM is emusic, which is still very limited and beholden to ASCAP/BMI/RIAA.
60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year.
Yeah, we should really change it to 100 days per year, that would be much easier. The only time we may need a new time format is if we seriously get into space, and I can't see that happening in my lifetime.
Personally, I'd just be happy if people started writing dates and times in a common format, even if it's the USA's confusing mm/dd/yyyy version.
What I meant to say was, the (estimated) actual production is about 1/10th of the maximum - reasonable considering the cycle of the sun throughout the day.
Being generous, a normal domestic cycle will give you a similar figure, so we can calculate the number of houses catered for:
630kW = 1090A, 3 phase
1 house = 35A single phase
1090A = 125 houses (75% diversification)
The 35A above is for a small, all-electric house.
So, not terribly much electricity for such an impressive looking structure, is it? Of course, this is leaving out the problem of all the electricity being generated in the day, rather than morning and late evening when it's most needed.
Which brings me to my main point - why are we spending so much time and money on PV cells when they suck? There are plenty of technologies out there which may have far more potential, but need development. Our current fetish with PV cell indicates to me that people are more concerned with PR and the appearance of "greeness" than actually solving our energy problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite, a refridgerator (or heat pump) can have over 100% efficiency. It all depends what you are measuring.
I has a look at the wikipedia store the other day to see if they had a DVD copy of wikipedia available for sale, however it appears they only sell t-shirts and other stuff with logos on it. I fail to see how this would not be a good option for people wanting to support them and obtain a great offline reference. They could also sell the (more or less) completed wikibooks on CD as sections.
I realise they'd need to bring out a new version each year, but it seems to me it would be trivial to create such a product. Anyone know the reason why they don't?
Who knows, they could even find a market for dead-tree versions.
If it's a book presenting all of the hard evidence behind creation science it might be too small to put a sticker on.
I think most people here are missing the point about "permadeath". The problem is the levelling-grind itself. I want a game where I can start doing interesting things from the start, not have to spend weeks levelling up before I can take on the next section of the world. You shouldn't have to "invest 8 months of time" before you start having fun.
As an alternative, have some persistent experience system - your starting character's experience depends on how much time I've put into the game. Dieing still sucks, but I have something for my effort.
These methods still seem pretty limited.
how about this instead - you find out the location of your quest from an NPC or item, it's different for each person who asks. The monster, or whatever, spawns when that person gets to the right location. You's still have the possibility of stealing, but it's not realistic to completely exclude that. Roaming big-bads can be solved by having them disappear after a delay if the questor is killed or leaves the area.
Or, have a large dungeon where the special mob leaves a trail which is only obvious by tracking - there's no need to wait between spawns or even have only one at one time.
Or, use a collection or puzzle-based quest to regulate the spawning / timing of the spawn. The puzzle will be camped, but as it involves running around and investigation it's unlikely to cause conflicts.
There are a large number of ways to solve this problem, instancing seems like a very lazy and unrealistic way to do it. However, I'm sure more advanced games will make things better - it will just take time and a lot of feedback.
I agree with most of this article, but I think that even experienced players drive bad design in MMO games. The reason is that almost all players will prefer a feature that helps them over one that makes for a good world.
Player death is a good example - I can see how it would make the game world better, however the idea of continually accreting power is incredibly seductive. Of course, the root problem may be the huge range of powel levels in these games, if I have to play for months just to get to a stage I can challenge any interesting monsters I'm certainly not going to accept player death.
Sony: We're going to sell your movie in the US and keep all the money. Actually, you'll have to pay us to do it.
Producer: Ok, that sounds fair.
Why would a producer do this?
Mod chips allow me to play imported games which will never be available in my region, by the command of Sony. Many other people use them for this purpose. There is no mention in this ruling that modchips which only allow the removal of these restrictions are legal.
Could you explain how playing a game I purchased from another country is illegal or immoral?
You do exactly the same thing, the only difference is you have to install ImageMagick on Windows. Besides, this has nothing to do with the kernel.
Now if you want to say Linux is more efficient because you can compile only what you need into the kernel, that would be valid, although I'm not sure if Windows has something like modules.
Yeah, I enjoyed it for a few hours before it started crashing all the time. Then after I fixed that problem I got stuck on the edge of a lift permanently.
I think I'll wait for the second round of patches before buying HL2. Might have a chance at finishing it then.
Except that H2G2 is not action, it's a subtle comedic satire, and the chances of movie-makers understanding it, let alone wanting to make such a movie is pretty slim. I can't think of any recent american-made comedy movie which isn't based on slapstick and obscenity (not that there's anything wrong with slapstick and obscenity).
I'll have to remember it's spelled "Kroc of shit" from now on.
Just look at cars - time was the only thing many people would look at is cubic inches or horsepower. Now most people who buy a car are more concerned with other features - passenger comfort, style, efficiency. I would guess this is a shift from car-oriented people buying cars to everyone buying cars as they became more of a necessity.
Computer manufacturers are only just starting to see this, making smaller, quieter, cooler-running machines. Hopefully they'll continue to look at what their customers actually need rather than simply putting out chips with higher clock speeds.
So if your virus can't be cured, you can always slap a lawsuit on it - good to know.
Absolutely, I did some work on computer vision systems. A lot of the papers I read used jet planes and tanks as examples. I was interested in general vision systems, not guided missiles, however I'm sure my work could be useful for military applications.
Any technology can be dangerous, it is up to everyone to decide what applications are developed and how it is going to be used. Obviously some knowledge is best kept out of the hands of those who would abuse it, but the fault is with the people who build the bombs not the researchers who discover how to do it. The only other way is to retard progress.
Before such measures have any effect on global warming, the following will have to take place:
As we are not even approaching the first step, we have to face the fact that these changes are coming. Not that we shouldn't try to change things - we'll have to have other forms of power when fossil fuels start to run out anyway. But these changes are coming and it is now out of our power to stop them.
The real question is, how is the world's food production going to be affected by the climate changes? From the current predictions, it seems that most intensive farming areas of the world are going to have less water, which is an extremely bad sign. I hope people start planning for this soon.
The most ironic part of the article is the continued push against nuclear power, which is currently the only technology which could produce a significant amount of Britain's power without CO2 emission. We have truly dug a deep hole for ourselves.
(Sorry if this is a bit bleak, it's monday morning here.)
OK, you can do array bounds checking extremely easily in C++, and garbage collection with a bit more work.
Tell me, how do you turn them off in Java when you don't want them?
I guess since the invention of the internet the aliens can observe our "love" without bothering to enter the atmosphere.
Sorry, it's early here. I still want to know why it's needed.
and they need to be networked together, somehow.
Why on earth would these buildings need networking? I assume they are tourist attractions, what could be needed that can't be done stand alone? I assume they don't even have phones ATM (or you could use those lines).
There is more than 1 source of energy:
When looking at a possible "energy source" we only look at the energy we use up - ie. fuel, not that which we get for free - ie. solar. The claim is that the fuel used has more energy than the ethanol produced - which can still be economically viable due to subsidies.
This report is very good news (if it is true) because it means that if ethanol and other corn derivatives can fuel their own extraction process (quite possible), then lots of ethanol is produced from a self-sustaining farm.
The energy "produced" comes originally from the sun, as do all forms of energy used by man, apart from geothermal and probably nuclear.
A an aside, shoal oil (I believe) is an example of a fuel which requires more energy to get out of the ground than it produces. In Canada "stranded gas" (no pipeline) is used to extract the oil (which is easier to transport). Take this with a grain of salt, as I don't have references with me.
File-sharing may have a detrimental effect on sales. Then again, it may be helpful to sales. Either way, most file-sharing is theft - plain and simple.
I fail to see how it is theft, particularly if it helps sales.
Here's a solution which will work - a p2p service available for a subscription fee, which allows users to share any music they want. The service will also track what is traded (possibly with some help from users), and pay the artists in proportion to how much their songs are traded. Better still, have the songs available from a central server as high-quality mp3s. The key here is compulsory licencing - that way you don't have to worry about identifying tracks, watermarking and a lot of other bs.
Many people have proposed something like this, both on Slashdot and elsewhere. However, this solution will never fly with the powers that be because it cut out their source of power. The closest thing to this ATM is emusic, which is still very limited and beholden to ASCAP/BMI/RIAA.
60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year.
Yeah, we should really change it to 100 days per year, that would be much easier. The only time we may need a new time format is if we seriously get into space, and I can't see that happening in my lifetime.
Personally, I'd just be happy if people started writing dates and times in a common format, even if it's the USA's confusing mm/dd/yyyy version.
John Cage himself has been silent on the issue.
Yeah, I screwed that up - blame monday morning.
What I meant to say was, the (estimated) actual production is about 1/10th of the maximum - reasonable considering the cycle of the sun throughout the day.
Being generous, a normal domestic cycle will give you a similar figure, so we can calculate the number of houses catered for:
630kW = 1090A, 3 phase
1 house = 35A single phase
1090A = 125 houses (75% diversification)
The 35A above is for a small, all-electric house.
So, not terribly much electricity for such an impressive looking structure, is it? Of course, this is leaving out the problem of all the electricity being generated in the day, rather than morning and late evening when it's most needed.
Which brings me to my main point - why are we spending so much time and money on PV cells when they suck? There are plenty of technologies out there which may have far more potential, but need development. Our current fetish with PV cell indicates to me that people are more concerned with PR and the appearance of "greeness" than actually solving our energy problems.