Joe Blow: Uhhhh...I....uuhhhh...it's compiler dependent!!
Even the result of
...
i = 0;
i = i + 1; ...
is compiler-dependent. If i is anything other than 1 after these two lines, your compiler is probably buggy as heck, but that doesn't change the fact that the outcome is compiler-dependent. Therefore, don't ask "what is the result of *code*?" but "according to the C standard, what should be the result of *code*?".
Our immune system costs us a fairly constant amount of energy...
... and it also has quite a bit of genetic information that needs to be maintained, and additionally it has several nasty failure modes (allergies, autoimmune diseases, leukemia, etc).
In a world where we didn't need an immune system to survive, we'd be better off without it.
A coincidence, or fear mongering unscientific FUD?
Unscientific FUD. Either she has no clue what an antibiotic is, or she's intentionally twisting the facts around. An oxidizer isn't an antibiotic, it's a disinfectant if anything. What's the big difference you ask? Well, try drinking some H2O2 or sodium hypochlorite (both are strong oxidizers and disinfectant) to treat a bacterial infection.
It's been known for ages that titanium dioxide is a photooxidizer.
Also, mentioning superbugs in this context doesn't make sense. Killing superbugs _outside the human body_ is no problem at all, and they will not be able to develop any kind of resistance against most forms of disinfection (that includes using oxidizers). Saying that they might become resistant to something that oxidizes the shit out of them is like saying they might become resistant to being heated to 200C - there's a few physical and chemical processes that no life form on Earth tolerates very well.
If only there was a way the developers of this device could do some testing, maybe with a random sample of drunk people and sober people. Then they could compare the machine results against the known value.
That has a good chance of missing the occasional "once a week" glitch in the firmware.
In current games it won't. We're talking about games where it eventually will.
And trying to put in a system so starting area genocide would somehow affect max-level players is way more trouble than it's worth.
Yes, but mostly because systems theory isn't on the usual lists of game designer skills. Let someone without a clue about systems theory design such a game, and it'll be either a complete mess or simple never finished.
Clearly you don't understand griefers. They don't care what future impact their actions will have. If the game quits being fun, they'll just move on to another game after they've destroyed the last one.
They'll be looking for the games with game mechanics (or lack thereof) that are conducive to griefing. If game mechanics make griefing too boring or tedious... yes, they'll move to another game. And good riddance.
For all practical purposes, what you describe here is exactly what every MMO uses.
No it's not. Most MMOs completely lack feedback loops. That makes them completely different beasts from any game that would.
Unless of course you're suggesting a fixed reproduction rate that would counter the maximum amount of slaughter that could theoretically be done to that species, which would result in the whole server being over-run by that species in no time. You really do need to take more time to think things through before you hit Submit.
I'm not suggesting any of that, but the scope of a slashdot posting is too limited to provide even a brief introduction into systems theory and feedback control. But here's a very simple example (I hope you're not afraid of differential equations): The reproduction rate of a certain mob specied could be a function of the current population of this mob, with a sharp rise as the population goes towards zero (many species react this way), an equilibrium point where the reproduction rate is zero, and a negative reproduction rate above this equilibrium point to take the effects of overpopulation into account. Now you only need to make sure that the reproduction rate, at some point before the population reaches zero, exceeds the worst-case maximum kill rate the players can achieve.
You mean like big quests involving dozens of people without requiring you to form any kind of group?
That would be fairly trivial to add to WoW. In fact, there already were quests like that, remember the prelude to Ahn'Qiraj ? Other games also have this type of quest, for example the zone-specific events in CoX.
Or balanced PvP?
Other games than WoW offer much better balanced PvP. Balanced PvP was never a really big design concern for WoW.
Or large-scale RvR?
DAOC has that, but it's getting kinda old. Eve also has some fairly large battles.
Whoops, I think you just lost 2 of the other 3 people who were interested in your game.
Yeah, because no one was playing D2 HC, right ? I mean, your precious collection of bits could die permanently, even to things like bad luck, bugs, lag or even the occasional professional ganker. Just like no one's playing Nethack, etc.
And if every big feature of your game goes against mainstream popular demand, guess what - your game will appeal to very very very few players.
I think that if the game gets a few basic things right (for example not being buggy as heck at release, or not having a kludge as an UI), players will notice it.
And what causes the current to flow? The voltage. If there is a way to cause a curent to flow without a voltage, then we'd all be fascinated to hear about it.
It's called a "superconductor", and quite fascinating indeed. You can keep a current flowing in it without any voltage.
It's electrical current flow that cause the danger, not voltage, and to an extent, not wattage. Current flow is measured by amperage.
And current is meaningless unless you know either the resistance of the part of the circuit through which is flows, or the voltage drop across it. With either of these, you can calculate the power. P = I^2 / R, or P = U * I, take your pick, but if you've got no information about R or U, you're out of luck. Knowing that 100A flow somewhere is meaningless. It doesn't tell you how much power is dissipated by itself. That number can be hugely different if you use a superconductor, a solid block of copper, or a thin wire.
Do you really think max level players in top gear are really going to sit around in starting areas waiting for other max level players to stop them from doing genocide?
They will, if they know that it will eventually affect them. Also, maybe the griefer guild will be more careful on the next server after they find out the impact that their actions have on their own members.
Then again, the in-game ecology can be made large enough that genocide isn't possible. You know the maximum number of players on the server, you can estimate that rate at which they can kill stuff - so you just need to tweak the reproduction curve of the mobs accordingly. It's just a matter of doing some fairly simple math, but most people don't want to bother with anything that even looks like a differential equation.
I'm absolutely certain the vast majority of players would much rather just have infinite mobs on a set respawn timer.
Unfortunately, if you want to make a MMORPG that appeals to the "vast majority of players", you'll have to compete with WoW and it will probably wipe the floor with you, unless Blizzard manages to screw up royally at some point. If you want to start your own MMORPG - don't compete with WoW in the beginning. It's like trying to take the bananas away from a 600-pound gorilla in a bad mood.
Instead, find some features that WoW does not offer, and never will. I'd happily try out and play a MMOG with perma-death for example (nothing gave me adrenaline rushes like D2 HC back then), since I usually get bored with a char after a few weeks and don't really like the system where your reward is mainly a function of how long you play, and only somewhat related to skill. If doing stupid things (or just plain bad luck) gets your character killed permanently, being the top dog on the server will mean more than "yeah, I spend 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in front of the computer".
So what happens when a griefer guild shows up and slaughters all the wolves and bears in your forest?
That's what open PvP is for. Also, implement some measures to make this harder (how about royal decrees to leave the wolves and bears alone, and big nasty NPC rangers on the lookout for poachers?)
Well Toyota are lying then, I know of a case of someone needing their complete set of batteries replaced after only a couple of years due to some fault.
Which probably didn't count as "normal wear and tear". So, they're not lying.
She's balanced a budget, she's actually gotten more money from "big oil"... she's cut checks to everyone in Alaska out of a surplus that she created...
I'd assume that the budget of Alaska is slightly harder to balance than the budget of, say, Saudi Arabia. In both cases you'll be ok if you can handle numbers with lots of decimal places and don't deliberately waste too much money on golden faucets and the like.
In other cases, giga = 1000000000 and terra = 1000000000000.
No no no. Terra is what you stand on. It's also what's going to be destroyed if the LHC creates a planet-eating micro black hole or negative strangelet.
Both are agressive towards Iran, leaving nothing off the table (including a nuclear first strike).
I'd say that McCains camp would leave direct talks to Ahmadinejad (or whoever else happens to be the head honcho over there at that point) off the table.
Funny how the venus atmosphere at 40km up where it is at 1PSI, is about the same temp as earth 25c.
Average temperature on Earth is quite a bit lower than 25C (14C, IIRC). And Venus absorbs about the same amount of solar power as Earth, so it's _quite_ a bit warmer there, even 40 km up.
And pressure doesn't have to do anything with temperature as long as you're not compressing or expanding the gas in question. See the ideal gas law for clarification.
For the past few months, we even have Global Cooling.
... who blatantly fails at distinguishing weather from climate.
An increase of 0.01% in CO2 is never a problem.
Ah, we're dealing in absolutes ("never"). Very scientific. And is that an absolute or a relative 0.01% ? It also doesn't take atmospheric pressure into account - 0.01% at 1 atm is different from 0.01% at 2 atm.
The green house theory only work if only we have significant amount of C02, which is something like 10% or more.
With 10% CO2 in our atmosphere, our worries about climate are over. Permanently.
The experiment can be done by any lay person with enough initiative.
What if mother nature takes care about the CO2 emissions without us interfering?
That's the thing about mothers - you can try leaving your room messy and wait for her to take care of it, and quite likely that will happen, but you won't like it when it happens.
Not to mention, do you have any idea how hard it is to fire someone that is in a union.
Yeah, that (and some of the other things mentioned) what I meant by "seriously weird". In other countries, unions are mostly about bargaining for more money, and maybe to fight against mass layoffs. It's no problem to fire anyone for poor performance, union or not, provided that everything is properly documented. Heck, you can also chose not to join the union if you're working at some factory here, if you're willing to deal with receiving no compensation when the place is closed down due a strike.
Either your talking shit or you Americans have some weird unions.
Possibly, a little bit of both. The stereotypical conservative American doesn't really know a lot about unions and doesn't want to know - they're a tool of the devil and the same as communism and that's all you need to know and hate them.
And then, yes, unions in America are seriously weird. At least from a non-American perspective.
Lets see, what is the biggest problem facing GM and Ford?
The biggest problem ? They're making crappy products that don't sell.
Unionized workforce, benefits they cant afford to pay and remain profitable.
No, that's not their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is that they're not selling enough of their products, because management has completely missed some of the market trends of the last, oh, two decades at least, and they're rightfully getting spanked by the competition for that.
Automobile workers are highly uniononized in other countries, too, but where the mismanagement wasn't as bad, auto companies aren't that deep in trouble.
Re:The main problem with a professional organizati
on
Should IT Unionize?
·
· Score: 1
The basis for any union is the local workforce on your department, nothing bigger.
So your boss only has to agree to things that are less of a hassle than firing and replacing the whole department. That's... not all that much leverage.
Slashdot Mirror
I have used "effect" as both a noun and a verb for the majority of my life, in both the written and spoken word.
"to effect" is a verb. The only problem is that it is synonymous to "to cause", and not to "to impact".
"The effects of an earthquake can effect large numbers of people."
Which, when replacing "to effect" with its synonym, becomes:
"The effects of an earthquake can cause large numbers of people."
Yes, I assume that after an earthquake, there's not much else to do until the electricity comes back on.
The "correct" form however, offers no justification for itself other than its own inertia.
The "correct" form offers the justification that it has a completely different meaning than the incorrect one. That should be sufficient.
Even the result of
i = 0;
i = i + 1;
is compiler-dependent. If i is anything other than 1 after these two lines, your compiler is probably buggy as heck, but that doesn't change the fact that the outcome is compiler-dependent. Therefore, don't ask "what is the result of *code*?" but "according to the C standard, what should be the result of *code*?".
Our immune system costs us a fairly constant amount of energy ...
In a world where we didn't need an immune system to survive, we'd be better off without it.
A coincidence, or fear mongering unscientific FUD?
Unscientific FUD. Either she has no clue what an antibiotic is, or she's intentionally twisting the facts around. An oxidizer isn't an antibiotic, it's a disinfectant if anything. What's the big difference you ask? Well, try drinking some H2O2 or sodium hypochlorite (both are strong oxidizers and disinfectant) to treat a bacterial infection.
Also, mentioning superbugs in this context doesn't make sense. Killing superbugs _outside the human body_ is no problem at all, and they will not be able to develop any kind of resistance against most forms of disinfection (that includes using oxidizers). Saying that they might become resistant to something that oxidizes the shit out of them is like saying they might become resistant to being heated to 200C - there's a few physical and chemical processes that no life form on Earth tolerates very well.
That has a good chance of missing the occasional "once a week" glitch in the firmware.
In current games it won't. We're talking about games where it eventually will.
And trying to put in a system so starting area genocide would somehow affect max-level players is way more trouble than it's worth.
Yes, but mostly because systems theory isn't on the usual lists of game designer skills. Let someone without a clue about systems theory design such a game, and it'll be either a complete mess or simple never finished.
Clearly you don't understand griefers. They don't care what future impact their actions will have. If the game quits being fun, they'll just move on to another game after they've destroyed the last one.
They'll be looking for the games with game mechanics (or lack thereof) that are conducive to griefing. If game mechanics make griefing too boring or tedious ... yes, they'll move to another game. And good riddance.
For all practical purposes, what you describe here is exactly what every MMO uses.
No it's not. Most MMOs completely lack feedback loops. That makes them completely different beasts from any game that would.
Unless of course you're suggesting a fixed reproduction rate that would counter the maximum amount of slaughter that could theoretically be done to that species, which would result in the whole server being over-run by that species in no time. You really do need to take more time to think things through before you hit Submit.
I'm not suggesting any of that, but the scope of a slashdot posting is too limited to provide even a brief introduction into systems theory and feedback control. But here's a very simple example (I hope you're not afraid of differential equations): The reproduction rate of a certain mob specied could be a function of the current population of this mob, with a sharp rise as the population goes towards zero (many species react this way), an equilibrium point where the reproduction rate is zero, and a negative reproduction rate above this equilibrium point to take the effects of overpopulation into account. Now you only need to make sure that the reproduction rate, at some point before the population reaches zero, exceeds the worst-case maximum kill rate the players can achieve.
You mean like big quests involving dozens of people without requiring you to form any kind of group?
That would be fairly trivial to add to WoW. In fact, there already were quests like that, remember the prelude to Ahn'Qiraj ? Other games also have this type of quest, for example the zone-specific events in CoX.
Or balanced PvP?
Other games than WoW offer much better balanced PvP. Balanced PvP was never a really big design concern for WoW.
Or large-scale RvR?
DAOC has that, but it's getting kinda old. Eve also has some fairly large battles.
Whoops, I think you just lost 2 of the other 3 people who were interested in your game.
Yeah, because no one was playing D2 HC, right ? I mean, your precious collection of bits could die permanently, even to things like bad luck, bugs, lag or even the occasional professional ganker. Just like no one's playing Nethack, etc.
And if every big feature of your game goes against mainstream popular demand, guess what - your game will appeal to very very very few players.
I think that if the game gets a few basic things right (for example not being buggy as heck at release, or not having a kludge as an UI), players will notice it.
And what causes the current to flow? The voltage. If there is a way to cause a curent to flow without a voltage, then we'd all be fascinated to hear about it.
It's called a "superconductor", and quite fascinating indeed. You can keep a current flowing in it without any voltage.
And current is meaningless unless you know either the resistance of the part of the circuit through which is flows, or the voltage drop across it. With either of these, you can calculate the power. P = I^2 / R, or P = U * I, take your pick, but if you've got no information about R or U, you're out of luck. Knowing that 100A flow somewhere is meaningless. It doesn't tell you how much power is dissipated by itself. That number can be hugely different if you use a superconductor, a solid block of copper, or a thin wire.
They will, if they know that it will eventually affect them. Also, maybe the griefer guild will be more careful on the next server after they find out the impact that their actions have on their own members.
Then again, the in-game ecology can be made large enough that genocide isn't possible. You know the maximum number of players on the server, you can estimate that rate at which they can kill stuff - so you just need to tweak the reproduction curve of the mobs accordingly. It's just a matter of doing some fairly simple math, but most people don't want to bother with anything that even looks like a differential equation.
I'm absolutely certain the vast majority of players would much rather just have infinite mobs on a set respawn timer.
Unfortunately, if you want to make a MMORPG that appeals to the "vast majority of players", you'll have to compete with WoW and it will probably wipe the floor with you, unless Blizzard manages to screw up royally at some point. If you want to start your own MMORPG - don't compete with WoW in the beginning. It's like trying to take the bananas away from a 600-pound gorilla in a bad mood.
Instead, find some features that WoW does not offer, and never will. I'd happily try out and play a MMOG with perma-death for example (nothing gave me adrenaline rushes like D2 HC back then), since I usually get bored with a char after a few weeks and don't really like the system where your reward is mainly a function of how long you play, and only somewhat related to skill. If doing stupid things (or just plain bad luck) gets your character killed permanently, being the top dog on the server will mean more than "yeah, I spend 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in front of the computer".
That's what open PvP is for. Also, implement some measures to make this harder (how about royal decrees to leave the wolves and bears alone, and big nasty NPC rangers on the lookout for poachers?)
Which probably didn't count as "normal wear and tear". So, they're not lying.
decimal places
Whoops, that should be digits, of course.
She's balanced a budget, she's actually gotten more money from "big oil"... she's cut checks to everyone in Alaska out of a surplus that she created...
I'd assume that the budget of Alaska is slightly harder to balance than the budget of, say, Saudi Arabia. In both cases you'll be ok if you can handle numbers with lots of decimal places and don't deliberately waste too much money on golden faucets and the like.
In other cases, giga = 1000000000 and terra = 1000000000000.
No no no. Terra is what you stand on. It's also what's going to be destroyed if the LHC creates a planet-eating micro black hole or negative strangelet.
Both are agressive towards Iran, leaving nothing off the table (including a nuclear first strike).
I'd say that McCains camp would leave direct talks to Ahmadinejad (or whoever else happens to be the head honcho over there at that point) off the table.
Funny how the venus atmosphere at 40km up where it is at 1PSI, is about the same temp as earth 25c.
Average temperature on Earth is quite a bit lower than 25C (14C, IIRC). And Venus absorbs about the same amount of solar power as Earth, so it's _quite_ a bit warmer there, even 40 km up.
And pressure doesn't have to do anything with temperature as long as you're not compressing or expanding the gas in question. See the ideal gas law for clarification.
Very unlikely. Viruses need the "higher" stages to reproduce. If the higher stages are not present, any virus that forms will be unable to reproduce.
Global warming is a hoax.
And this comes from someone ...
For the past few months, we even have Global Cooling.
An increase of 0.01% in CO2 is never a problem.
Ah, we're dealing in absolutes ("never"). Very scientific. And is that an absolute or a relative 0.01% ? It also doesn't take atmospheric pressure into account - 0.01% at 1 atm is different from 0.01% at 2 atm.
The green house theory only work if only we have significant amount of C02, which is something like 10% or more.
With 10% CO2 in our atmosphere, our worries about climate are over. Permanently.
The experiment can be done by any lay person with enough initiative.
What experiment ?
What if mother nature takes care about the CO2 emissions without us interfering?
That's the thing about mothers - you can try leaving your room messy and wait for her to take care of it, and quite likely that will happen, but you won't like it when it happens.
Yeah, that (and some of the other things mentioned) what I meant by "seriously weird". In other countries, unions are mostly about bargaining for more money, and maybe to fight against mass layoffs. It's no problem to fire anyone for poor performance, union or not, provided that everything is properly documented. Heck, you can also chose not to join the union if you're working at some factory here, if you're willing to deal with receiving no compensation when the place is closed down due a strike.
Either your talking shit or you Americans have some weird unions.
Possibly, a little bit of both. The stereotypical conservative American doesn't really know a lot about unions and doesn't want to know - they're a tool of the devil and the same as communism and that's all you need to know and hate them.
And then, yes, unions in America are seriously weird. At least from a non-American perspective.
Lets see, what is the biggest problem facing GM and Ford?
The biggest problem ? They're making crappy products that don't sell.
Unionized workforce, benefits they cant afford to pay and remain profitable.
No, that's not their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is that they're not selling enough of their products, because management has completely missed some of the market trends of the last, oh, two decades at least, and they're rightfully getting spanked by the competition for that.
Automobile workers are highly uniononized in other countries, too, but where the mismanagement wasn't as bad, auto companies aren't that deep in trouble.
So your boss only has to agree to things that are less of a hassle than firing and replacing the whole department. That's ... not all that much leverage.
great theory until you realize that most walls also contain electrical outlets which when exposed to water tend to start fires.
Only if the code in your place allows for electrical outlets that tend to start fires instead of blowing a fuse/tripping a breaker.