Well, it depends on exactly the degree of non-lethality guaranteed by this weapon. I have to ask what happens if you focus this device on a person who has a pacemaker installed. Or a cochlear implant. The lesson is that there is no such thing as a non-lethal weapon, only less-lethal weapons.
And regardless, I still can't get what's wrong with the water cannon. It's a tried and true crowd control method, and yet it's not used at all anymore in the U.S. What's cheaper than a water cannon?
Indeed, it seems that the list is mostly well-known flops, with the exception of Action Max. I remember seeing this piece of trash in the back of some electronics store in '88 or '89 (it might've been a Radio Shack, but I was no older than 4, so who knows), but never hearing another word about it until today.
Sounds like someone's trying to build a better mousetrap.
I can see very little to no advantage of this over the mirrors in a box method that you describe... the therapist speaking to the patient could be done with a recording, or with practice the patient could learn to accomplish this themselves through meditation. So the entire argument that this VR method is better because it can be done in the patient's home is largely invalid. A box with mirrors and a tape deck is going to be significantly cheaper than a VR headset, glove and computer.
The only advantage that I might entertain is that if the person is a multiple amputee (i.e., no arms or no legs or something like that), then maybe you could substitute movement from some other body part (i.e., head and neck, or facial twitches) to cause limb movement in the VR environment, where a series of mirrors would not permit this.
Either way, I'm not sure how things work in the UK but in the US, if WebMD were to suddenly gain the US Government as a customer, the government would require that WebMD suddenly adapt to a bunch of contractor regulations that they probably aren't following at the moment.
Plus, politicians could put one of two things on their campaign fliers: "...and strongly worked to get our great nation a site license for WebMD" or "...and strongly worked to build the national physicians communication network" or some such.
The QWERTY "myth" may or may not be so, it's debatable. I wasn't able to find anything on Snopes pertaining to this, so the next best thing was Wikipedia.
I'm more of the opinion "who cares". I've given Dvorak a shot, but I'm too used to QWERTY to change anytime soon. In the end, it's the ubiquity of QWERTY that wins the day.
Now my question is, will they have AZERTYesque keypads for people in France and Belgium?
A prep course isn't absolutely necessary. I didn't take one and did just fine. I'm not saying it would be a waste of time and money, but not everybody else in the world actually takes them.
Either way, do they even offer SAT prep courses in the UK? That's gotta be expensive if they do...
Right- episodic content does take longer to produce than an episode of a TV series. I would argue that each episode of a game is more equivalent to a full broadcast season of a TV show.
This analogy carries, in that, if a TV show has a bad episode, it might not get cancelled (think The Haunting of Deck Twelve from Voyager). On the other hand, if a TV series has a particularly bad season, it might get cancelled. Likewise in gaming, we could see the death of a series if a particular "episode" is not well recieved.
An interesting concept might be to move towards making games even more episodic; say, you purchase the season of the game, and once weekly an episode is released. Sort of like how You Don't Know Jack the Netshow worked, except you're paying something. Then, the publisher could more accurately gear changes to the game and make improvements as is necessary. It would lead to the whole week-long break in gaming, so the stories would have to be geared towards this, but this is true of adapting any story to television in the first place; it's doable for games.
If anything, I'd sooner expect to see a third party GH emulator (like Freetar Hero) get really popular. With how the PC games market is sliding, it probably wouldn't be worth it to Red Octane...
I've gotta say though, I can't wait for third party GH songs to come out.
Honestly, when we live in an era where game designers so pressed for time that they can't even make the game stable, there's no way that they'll have the time to build in accessability features. Or look at the Dead Rising problem; they're not willing to patch an issue that affects a huge group of players, so what's going to happen when people with disabilities want to game?
That being said, it *is* nice to have some of those accessability features, even if you don't really need them. Subtitles/Closed Captioning is incredibly useful when you're gaming in an environment where you can't crank the volume to hear every whisper, for fear of a sudden explosion that'll wake your parents/kids/roommates and cause general problems.
I was wondering how long it would take for another CPU company to make the argument that their CPU is better for reasons other than speed.
I know that AMD has been making the power saving argument for awhile (I saw ads in downtown Chicago at busstops in early July).
Here's info from the article about AMD's CPUs in comparison... "AMD, meanwhile, is currently shipping "energy efficient" desktop chip models that typically draw 65 Watts, instead of 85 Watts. Additionally, the company offers "energy efficient, small form factor" models rated at 35 Watts, although only the single-core Sempron model in this category appears to be shipping -- the long-awaited, 35 Watt, dual-core Athlon64 X2 3800+ model is expected to ship to PC-makers in time to go into holiday-season PCs"
Fowler, the CEO of Jigsaw, is quoted as making an interesting comparison in the article. He likens Jigsaw to Wikipedia in so much as Jigsaw is a user-supported advertisment database, like Wikipedia is a user-supported encyclopedia.
What he fails to realize is just how far this user-supportedness can go. Just like with Wikipedia, I imagine that Jigsaw will be hounded by vandals and the like, dumping loads and loads of false information into Jigsaw's database.
Moreover, since Jigsaw is going against basic principles of privacy, I can imagine that we're going to see a lot more problems than with Wikipedia from "vigilante vandals".
From the article: "It should surprise no one that the system didn't stay patched for long. FairUse4WM 1.2 gets around Microsoft's patch, and also circumvents the copy protection in Windows Media DRM 9 and 11beta2 files."
So it's not totally horrible... though I'm sure (and the article agrees here) that M$ will be quick to fix their fix.
Interesting sidenote in the article not mentioned here: "The laboratory is owned by the US Department of Energy (DOE). Eventually the machine could be used for a programme that ensures the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable, the DOE said in a statement."
Why do I get a weird feeling that I've seen this sort of thing in one too many movies?
They're politicians, not security experts. I hear about this sort of problem all the time... in my own workplace, we talk about the people on the 3rd floor with their one-character passwords and machines that are hacked into on a daily basis.
In the end of course, the system administrator is going to catch heat for not having a strong password policy. Even though he/she would've caught hell if there had been one implemented in the first place.
It strikes me that in this article, they're just using 9/11 to shock people into seeing a problem that was *already there to begin with*.
The warehouse shootout they mentioned probably would've happened the way it did, 9/11 or not, and the departments would still have complained that they needed more funding for better comms gear than they can afford.
If this has any truth, we'll probably soon hear that the protein made by this gene is found primarily, or in high quantities, in areas important to language production like Broca's area or Wernicke's area.
While it's understandable that so many would turn away this oddball magician, I really wonder what would happen if you were to just play the role of a normal person who has (for lack of a better word) a quest that needs completion.
The pessimist inside me wants to say that a real problem would get similar results, but I'd like to see what sorts of people would actually go for a "quest" of sorts...
This article skips an awful lot of consoles. Where the heck is the Atari Jaguar controller? Or the Atari 7800 for that matter? Colecovision and Intellivision are also MIA, though their controllers don't look all that different from other systems of their era.
And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".
US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".
Consider that for a moment.
The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.
However, in the original document (graciously provided by the BBC), the section reads like this:
The EW architecture and investment strategy should:
Cover the full range of EW missions and capabilities, including navigation warfare, offensive counterspace, control of adversary radio frequency systems that provide location and identification of friend and foe, etc.
Provide a future EW capability sufficient to provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, denying, degrading, desrupting, or destroying the full spectrum of globally emerging communication systems, sensors, and weapons system dependant on the electromagnetic spectrum.
Now, the BBC read that section as meaning that this system intends to be able to disrupt systems on a global scale, but I read it as wanting to disrupt systems that are emerging around the globe (i.e., be "compatible" with said systems in disrupting them).
The guy's somewhat right- the projects that he lists are quite impressive in that they promise a hell of a lot. However, in my experience with European developers, even if they have cool features or awesome graphics, their game will smack you down somewhere.
X3 Reunion, for example, suffers from high system requirements and it lacks the features that would make its innovative features great (e.g., you can't relocate or dismantle a station after you've built it). Moreover, the game universe makes freeform play almost too overwhelming to enjoy.
Neocron was plagued by seemingly endless bugs that ruined any coolness that any new patch would add.
I will say that some of the coolest games I've played have come out of Europe (e.g., Uplink), but they've had their fair share of duds (e.g., Iron Storm).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it depends on exactly the degree of non-lethality guaranteed by this weapon. I have to ask what happens if you focus this device on a person who has a pacemaker installed. Or a cochlear implant. The lesson is that there is no such thing as a non-lethal weapon, only less-lethal weapons.
And regardless, I still can't get what's wrong with the water cannon. It's a tried and true crowd control method, and yet it's not used at all anymore in the U.S. What's cheaper than a water cannon?
Indeed, it seems that the list is mostly well-known flops, with the exception of Action Max. I remember seeing this piece of trash in the back of some electronics store in '88 or '89 (it might've been a Radio Shack, but I was no older than 4, so who knows), but never hearing another word about it until today.
I also question that the Jaguar is on there but not Turbo Grafx 16 or Neo Geo.
Sounds like someone's trying to build a better mousetrap.
I can see very little to no advantage of this over the mirrors in a box method that you describe... the therapist speaking to the patient could be done with a recording, or with practice the patient could learn to accomplish this themselves through meditation. So the entire argument that this VR method is better because it can be done in the patient's home is largely invalid. A box with mirrors and a tape deck is going to be significantly cheaper than a VR headset, glove and computer.
The only advantage that I might entertain is that if the person is a multiple amputee (i.e., no arms or no legs or something like that), then maybe you could substitute movement from some other body part (i.e., head and neck, or facial twitches) to cause limb movement in the VR environment, where a series of mirrors would not permit this.
Because that would be way too easy.
Either way, I'm not sure how things work in the UK but in the US, if WebMD were to suddenly gain the US Government as a customer, the government would require that WebMD suddenly adapt to a bunch of contractor regulations that they probably aren't following at the moment.
Plus, politicians could put one of two things on their campaign fliers: "...and strongly worked to get our great nation a site license for WebMD" or "...and strongly worked to build the national physicians communication network" or some such.
The QWERTY "myth" may or may not be so, it's debatable. I wasn't able to find anything on Snopes pertaining to this, so the next best thing was Wikipedia.
I'm more of the opinion "who cares". I've given Dvorak a shot, but I'm too used to QWERTY to change anytime soon. In the end, it's the ubiquity of QWERTY that wins the day.
Now my question is, will they have AZERTYesque keypads for people in France and Belgium?
Yeah, and when AMD comes out with some they'll be called the S-Tair Master. (props to whoever gets this reference)
A prep course isn't absolutely necessary. I didn't take one and did just fine. I'm not saying it would be a waste of time and money, but not everybody else in the world actually takes them.
Either way, do they even offer SAT prep courses in the UK? That's gotta be expensive if they do...
Right- episodic content does take longer to produce than an episode of a TV series. I would argue that each episode of a game is more equivalent to a full broadcast season of a TV show.
This analogy carries, in that, if a TV show has a bad episode, it might not get cancelled (think The Haunting of Deck Twelve from Voyager). On the other hand, if a TV series has a particularly bad season, it might get cancelled. Likewise in gaming, we could see the death of a series if a particular "episode" is not well recieved.
An interesting concept might be to move towards making games even more episodic; say, you purchase the season of the game, and once weekly an episode is released. Sort of like how You Don't Know Jack the Netshow worked, except you're paying something. Then, the publisher could more accurately gear changes to the game and make improvements as is necessary. It would lead to the whole week-long break in gaming, so the stories would have to be geared towards this, but this is true of adapting any story to television in the first place; it's doable for games.
If anything, I'd sooner expect to see a third party GH emulator (like Freetar Hero) get really popular. With how the PC games market is sliding, it probably wouldn't be worth it to Red Octane...
I've gotta say though, I can't wait for third party GH songs to come out.
Honestly, when we live in an era where game designers so pressed for time that they can't even make the game stable, there's no way that they'll have the time to build in accessability features. Or look at the Dead Rising problem; they're not willing to patch an issue that affects a huge group of players, so what's going to happen when people with disabilities want to game?
That being said, it *is* nice to have some of those accessability features, even if you don't really need them. Subtitles/Closed Captioning is incredibly useful when you're gaming in an environment where you can't crank the volume to hear every whisper, for fear of a sudden explosion that'll wake your parents/kids/roommates and cause general problems.
I was wondering how long it would take for another CPU company to make the argument that their CPU is better for reasons other than speed.
I know that AMD has been making the power saving argument for awhile (I saw ads in downtown Chicago at busstops in early July).
Here's info from the article about AMD's CPUs in comparison...
"AMD, meanwhile, is currently shipping "energy efficient" desktop chip models that typically draw 65 Watts, instead of 85 Watts. Additionally, the company offers "energy efficient, small form factor" models rated at 35 Watts, although only the single-core Sempron model in this category appears to be shipping -- the long-awaited, 35 Watt, dual-core Athlon64 X2 3800+ model is expected to ship to PC-makers in time to go into holiday-season PCs"
Fowler, the CEO of Jigsaw, is quoted as making an interesting comparison in the article. He likens Jigsaw to Wikipedia in so much as Jigsaw is a user-supported advertisment database, like Wikipedia is a user-supported encyclopedia.
What he fails to realize is just how far this user-supportedness can go. Just like with Wikipedia, I imagine that Jigsaw will be hounded by vandals and the like, dumping loads and loads of false information into Jigsaw's database.
Moreover, since Jigsaw is going against basic principles of privacy, I can imagine that we're going to see a lot more problems than with Wikipedia from "vigilante vandals".
From the article:
"It should surprise no one that the system didn't stay patched for long. FairUse4WM 1.2 gets around Microsoft's patch, and also circumvents the copy protection in Windows Media DRM 9 and 11beta2 files."
So it's not totally horrible... though I'm sure (and the article agrees here) that M$ will be quick to fix their fix.
Interesting sidenote in the article not mentioned here:
"The laboratory is owned by the US Department of Energy (DOE). Eventually the machine could be used for a programme that ensures the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable, the DOE said in a statement."
Why do I get a weird feeling that I've seen this sort of thing in one too many movies?
Here it is... http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=791.php
They're politicians, not security experts. I hear about this sort of problem all the time... in my own workplace, we talk about the people on the 3rd floor with their one-character passwords and machines that are hacked into on a daily basis.
In the end of course, the system administrator is going to catch heat for not having a strong password policy. Even though he/she would've caught hell if there had been one implemented in the first place.
It strikes me that in this article, they're just using 9/11 to shock people into seeing a problem that was *already there to begin with*.
The warehouse shootout they mentioned probably would've happened the way it did, 9/11 or not, and the departments would still have complained that they needed more funding for better comms gear than they can afford.
If this has any truth, we'll probably soon hear that the protein made by this gene is found primarily, or in high quantities, in areas important to language production like Broca's area or Wernicke's area.
Someone give me an invite!!!111 I neeeeeeed this new enterprise gMail!
While it's understandable that so many would turn away this oddball magician, I really wonder what would happen if you were to just play the role of a normal person who has (for lack of a better word) a quest that needs completion.
The pessimist inside me wants to say that a real problem would get similar results, but I'd like to see what sorts of people would actually go for a "quest" of sorts...
Erk, broken link!
Induction of cancer-specific cytotoxicity towards human prostate and skin cells using quercetin and ultrasound... whoops.
Induction of cancer-specific cytotoxicity towards human prostate and skin cells using quercetin and ultrasound (god that's a mouthful)
This article skips an awful lot of consoles. Where the heck is the Atari Jaguar controller? Or the Atari 7800 for that matter? Colecovision and Intellivision are also MIA, though their controllers don't look all that different from other systems of their era.
We're missing the TurboGrafx 16, the Neo-Geo, the Sega Master System... and quite a few others.
However, in the original document (graciously provided by the BBC), the section reads like this:
Now, the BBC read that section as meaning that this system intends to be able to disrupt systems on a global scale, but I read it as wanting to disrupt systems that are emerging around the globe (i.e., be "compatible" with said systems in disrupting them).
The guy's somewhat right- the projects that he lists are quite impressive in that they promise a hell of a lot. However, in my experience with European developers, even if they have cool features or awesome graphics, their game will smack you down somewhere.
X3 Reunion, for example, suffers from high system requirements and it lacks the features that would make its innovative features great (e.g., you can't relocate or dismantle a station after you've built it). Moreover, the game universe makes freeform play almost too overwhelming to enjoy.
Neocron was plagued by seemingly endless bugs that ruined any coolness that any new patch would add.
I will say that some of the coolest games I've played have come out of Europe (e.g., Uplink), but they've had their fair share of duds (e.g., Iron Storm).