Re:Possible professional sports abuse?
on
Muscle Mice
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· Score: 1
you may well reduce the time that these people have and for what?
If it's only giving an extra month then yes I don't see the point - but if it can give years to many people who otherwise would die before a new drug is available, then that's the sort of thing I consider worth testing. For example drugs that are aimed at curing something as widespread and damaging as AIDS would be well worth testing as soon as possible.
Yes a system like that could easily be abused, though people are already stupid enough to buy "fat pills" and the like..
Re:Possible professional sports abuse?
on
Muscle Mice
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· Score: 1
Unethical? Look at it the other way round; is it ethical to let a million people die an early death just so that one person who is already dying the same early death can live a little longer?
Personally I think taking calculated risks that could help all of them is worth it. The potential test subject and anyone else dying from lack of a potentially working treatment in the next ten years are already going to be dead by the time you've gone through all the "animal study and regulatory bickering".
It's easy to say it's unethical as long as you're in good health, but these people know that they will soon be dead. If any of us were in the same position, we'd probably want to take the risk unless we were already tired of living. As long as the test subject has consented, there is nothing unethical happening.
Re:Possible professional sports abuse?
on
Muscle Mice
·
· Score: 1
"No evidence at all that the treatment had benefited the woman" is a lot different from "killed with stem cell treatments".
People can have chronic kidney disease without ever reaching kidney failure, so if she was worried enough about it that she was willing to risk getting some crazy treatment, it must have been pretty bad already. If someone who's going to die soon wants to risk their already poor health volunteering for a new untested treatment which may or may not cure them, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be allowed to?
True, as a general movie I guess it was okay, saying it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen was a bit harsh. Perhaps should have said one of the most disappointing movies I've ever seen.
This conversation has just reminded me of "9" though. Again it was graphically amazing and had a cool soundtrack, but the plot was so incredibly dumb.. it had no logic to it.
I love sci-fi. I just remember finding the whole movie annoyingly lame after all the hype that was surrounding it. There were ads for it in the cinema something like 5 months before it even came out. I was excited about it for months, though a little annoyed at how much they drew it out.
I also just remembered part of the reason I disliked it so much: the ads made it look like the whole thing was set in a post apocalyptic wasteland with just Wall-E and his girl, but that part didn't last long in the movie, and it ended up turning into a slapstick comedy with a bunch of lazy fat people.. I was disappointed.
I'd think most of us here were brought up watching Warner Brothers cartoons where many of the characters have zero lines of dialogue but still pull off the same trick, so I didn't really think of it as anything new either. Then of course there's R2-D2, and even non geeks love him.
Did you just use Wall-E as an example of "deep writing"? It's the only Pixar movie I don't consider worth buying on DVD. It's visually pretty nice, but I found the plot pretty hard to take seriously. Graphically it was amazing, but other than that I thought it was one of the worst films I've ever seen..
I can suspend disbelief for toys coming to life, but the sentient robots in Wall-E didn't do it for me. Wall-E developing sentience just from being alive for a long time, and on the flip side his gf suddenly becoming anything other than a hard-assed killer in a short amount of time. Sure, similar stuff happened in Short Circuit and Terminator, but they just did it better.
If money was actually fulfilment, I would be working offshore right now, for 10x the amount that I make from coding. I do consider it occasionally to get a bit of a boost to make stuff like buying a house easier, but that's certainly not "fulfilment". It's just security. I already feel relatively secure with the wages I have anyway, and I know I'd have a hard time finding another job where the perks are as good as the one I already have.
I used to hope for something like that myself when I was a teenager, I considered trying to write a racing sim a few times, at least in 2D if not 3D, but that idea ended up falling by the wayside.
Sure, I was addicted to Ridge Racer Revolutions once upon a time, and still enjoy games like Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, but I don't pretend they're real racing games.
The stuff that icebraining mentioned ("the relationship between slip angle, self aligning torque and cornering force") is all pretty standard stuff that even games like Grand Theft Auto simulate well enough. However in the really arcadey games the tyres tend to be much grippier. In something like Gran Turismo if you switch from arcade to expert physics you really notice the tyres having far less grip, so you can't just blast around the track not knowing what corner is coming up next and slam on the brakes at the last second.
I do remember some game years ago simulating tyre temperature in 17 segments around the tyre and that kind of thing. Doing that definitely starts to get more into proper racing simulation territory, but even without that level of detail, cars in computer games these days generally react the same as cars in real life, but without little details like taking into account brake fade, tyre wear, weight of the car changing as fuel is consumed/refuelled, etc.
There's a lot more to an effective army than just having big guns.
Think of this suit as basically a smaller version of a forklift truck. That's not to say that either of these things can't be used as weapons, but they're hardly practical for that purpose. They are, however, good at moving heavy stuff around.
I dislike armies and the results of using armies in general, but military research often results in cool things for the rest of us to use at least.
Yeah the extra button was awkward for me too at first, but after a couple of weeks I started to get it. If you are really interested in playing at higher levels rather then you could just play in practice mode with the speed at 70% or something until you start developing an awareness where all the buttons are.
I used to always purposefully shift my fingers along one button when I wanted to use the orange, but eventually I just started being able to use the extra button without thinking about it, same as I do with a computer's keyboard. When I touch type and play guitar hero, I don't think about where my fingers go, I just know which buttons I want to press, and I don't always use the same fingers for the same buttons.
Interestingly when I tried playing through the game with the other hand, my fingers were already able to use the extra button okay. I thought I'd have to get used to playing again, but it seems my brain was able to carry over the awareness to the other hand. It's still weird though obviously, as I was still feeling the urge to strum with that hand:p
Of course, I have decent rhythm, especially since I started drumming, so that probably makes things easier too.
And you obviously haven't played NFS Pro Street, or NFS Shift.
The stuff the OP mentioned wasn't that advanced, it's just basic stuff you need in a racing game, unless you're playing something absurdly arcadey like Ridge Racer..
They are not real. That is the whole purpose of them.
You haven't had a look at all the "pro" instruments in the latest Rock Band then.
Sure Guitar Hero was a lot more fun that I expected even when it was only pressing buttons in time to the music, but I really loved the drums because it's almost exactly like playing real drums. Now with the keyboard and guitar controllers you also get to learn real keyboard and guitar parts. It's more fun than just learning a song on guitar by yourself because you get a backing track to play along to, and you get graded on your accuracy.
Guess it's no longer just hitting colored pads on a drums (or buttons on the neck) to a beat that doesn't even come close to matching the actual song.
If you play the drums in "expert" difficulty then the beat is usually 100% the same as the actual song. In one song in Rock Band it seemed like you had to play the hi-hat in double time compared to what the actual song was playing but that's about the only difference I noticed.
Even expert guitar is usually very close to the same rhythm as the actual song. It's only on the easier difficulties that they take out notes. I actually find some of the songs more difficult to play on expert guitar in these games than I do on a real guitar, because the fingering is more awkward in the game compared to just holding a barre or power chord and sliding your hand up and down the neck.
Seeing as tyres are the most important part of the simulation, I'm pretty sure all games do that. The self aligning torque is presumably only really important when you have a force feedback steering wheel, but games have been doing that for years too.
I learned to drive rear wheel drive cars in computer games. I now have a rear wheel drive car IRL and the reactions I've learned in game do carry over fine to the real car for controlling power oversteer etc.
I've been a drummer, I wasn't so hot at it, but I do know that any sort of skills you develop with these games are pointless for playing actual music and it doesn't matter how advanced these games get.
I'm a self taught drummer, and I have to say that playing Rock Band did improve my drumming noticeably. I started struggling with the necessary limb coordination about half-way into the set list, but after a couple of months of practice I completed every song in the game on Expert drums and had a lot more independent control of my limbs.
They can only blame themselves for super saturating the market anyways.
Definitely. I don't think I even knew Guitar Hero VI (certainly had never heard the name "Warriors of Rock" before today) was out, though I did get Guitar Hero: Van Halen and Rock Band: Green Day around that time. I did buy Rock Band 3 recently too, but I no longer have the same interest in crushing all the songs on expert drums/guitar that I did with Guitar Hero III, IV and Rock Band 1. Still looking forward a little to the pro guitar coming out though.
A good nature vs nurture experiment! One of the clones is bound to randomly think up some better tactics every so often, and in my case any clones who did well would start to improve in confidence and rise to the top of the ranks, while the others would feel demoralised for a while and have a tougher time of it. It must be pretty embarrassing getting repeatedly beat by yourself.
Yep Kill Bill works fine as two separate movies too - the styles of each half seemed pretty different to me.
Definitely not a sports fan, never have been. I occasionally watch stuff like the Olympics and other international events if Scotland are playing (hardly ever happens, we suck).
companies like Disney who stop selling copies of the old movies before the sequel hits theaters
Didn't know that. Seems like a silly tactic to me, considering they'd presumably make more money from selling the original around the time the sequel is in theaters, for people who've heard a movie is good and want to see the original before the sequel. I wanted to see "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" at the cinema recently - but when I found out it was a sequel, I decided to not watch it until I've seen the first.
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you may well reduce the time that these people have and for what?
If it's only giving an extra month then yes I don't see the point - but if it can give years to many people who otherwise would die before a new drug is available, then that's the sort of thing I consider worth testing. For example drugs that are aimed at curing something as widespread and damaging as AIDS would be well worth testing as soon as possible.
Yes a system like that could easily be abused, though people are already stupid enough to buy "fat pills" and the like..
Unethical? Look at it the other way round; is it ethical to let a million people die an early death just so that one person who is already dying the same early death can live a little longer?
Personally I think taking calculated risks that could help all of them is worth it. The potential test subject and anyone else dying from lack of a potentially working treatment in the next ten years are already going to be dead by the time you've gone through all the "animal study and regulatory bickering".
It's easy to say it's unethical as long as you're in good health, but these people know that they will soon be dead. If any of us were in the same position, we'd probably want to take the risk unless we were already tired of living. As long as the test subject has consented, there is nothing unethical happening.
"No evidence at all that the treatment had benefited the woman" is a lot different from "killed with stem cell treatments".
People can have chronic kidney disease without ever reaching kidney failure, so if she was worried enough about it that she was willing to risk getting some crazy treatment, it must have been pretty bad already. If someone who's going to die soon wants to risk their already poor health volunteering for a new untested treatment which may or may not cure them, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be allowed to?
True, as a general movie I guess it was okay, saying it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen was a bit harsh. Perhaps should have said one of the most disappointing movies I've ever seen.
This conversation has just reminded me of "9" though. Again it was graphically amazing and had a cool soundtrack, but the plot was so incredibly dumb.. it had no logic to it.
I'm happy for you not to agree with my opinion, as long as I don't have to watch it again :)
Indeed, though I'm part of a small minority in many cases.. I enjoy minority browsers, operating systems, TV series, music, and sports.
I didn't like the Lord of the Rings books and movies that much either! *runs before he is set aflame*
I love sci-fi. I just remember finding the whole movie annoyingly lame after all the hype that was surrounding it. There were ads for it in the cinema something like 5 months before it even came out. I was excited about it for months, though a little annoyed at how much they drew it out.
I also just remembered part of the reason I disliked it so much: the ads made it look like the whole thing was set in a post apocalyptic wasteland with just Wall-E and his girl, but that part didn't last long in the movie, and it ended up turning into a slapstick comedy with a bunch of lazy fat people.. I was disappointed.
I'd think most of us here were brought up watching Warner Brothers cartoons where many of the characters have zero lines of dialogue but still pull off the same trick, so I didn't really think of it as anything new either. Then of course there's R2-D2, and even non geeks love him.
Did you just use Wall-E as an example of "deep writing"? It's the only Pixar movie I don't consider worth buying on DVD. It's visually pretty nice, but I found the plot pretty hard to take seriously. Graphically it was amazing, but other than that I thought it was one of the worst films I've ever seen..
I can suspend disbelief for toys coming to life, but the sentient robots in Wall-E didn't do it for me. Wall-E developing sentience just from being alive for a long time, and on the flip side his gf suddenly becoming anything other than a hard-assed killer in a short amount of time. Sure, similar stuff happened in Short Circuit and Terminator, but they just did it better.
If money was actually fulfilment, I would be working offshore right now, for 10x the amount that I make from coding. I do consider it occasionally to get a bit of a boost to make stuff like buying a house easier, but that's certainly not "fulfilment". It's just security. I already feel relatively secure with the wages I have anyway, and I know I'd have a hard time finding another job where the perks are as good as the one I already have.
I did have watery eyes near the end.. didn't quite get to the tears stage though.
Yeah, I don't even like Twitter tbh :p Facebook is occasionally useful and/or fun.
I signed up to at least have a look at it, but they only have releases for OSX and Windows, and the Windows version doesn't work on WINE..
I used to hope for something like that myself when I was a teenager, I considered trying to write a racing sim a few times, at least in 2D if not 3D, but that idea ended up falling by the wayside.
Here's a list of good physics engine type tutorials including many links to Brian Beckman's tutorials, they're great if you want to learn more about car handling or simulation.
If you wanted to see some real code that implements realistic car physics then have a look at TORCS :)
Sure, I was addicted to Ridge Racer Revolutions once upon a time, and still enjoy games like Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, but I don't pretend they're real racing games.
The stuff that icebraining mentioned ("the relationship between slip angle, self aligning torque and cornering force") is all pretty standard stuff that even games like Grand Theft Auto simulate well enough. However in the really arcadey games the tyres tend to be much grippier. In something like Gran Turismo if you switch from arcade to expert physics you really notice the tyres having far less grip, so you can't just blast around the track not knowing what corner is coming up next and slam on the brakes at the last second.
I do remember some game years ago simulating tyre temperature in 17 segments around the tyre and that kind of thing. Doing that definitely starts to get more into proper racing simulation territory, but even without that level of detail, cars in computer games these days generally react the same as cars in real life, but without little details like taking into account brake fade, tyre wear, weight of the car changing as fuel is consumed/refuelled, etc.
That depends if you fold it in the center each time.
Twofold means double, threefold means triple, etc.
There's a lot more to an effective army than just having big guns.
Think of this suit as basically a smaller version of a forklift truck. That's not to say that either of these things can't be used as weapons, but they're hardly practical for that purpose. They are, however, good at moving heavy stuff around.
I dislike armies and the results of using armies in general, but military research often results in cool things for the rest of us to use at least.
Yeah the extra button was awkward for me too at first, but after a couple of weeks I started to get it. If you are really interested in playing at higher levels rather then you could just play in practice mode with the speed at 70% or something until you start developing an awareness where all the buttons are.
I used to always purposefully shift my fingers along one button when I wanted to use the orange, but eventually I just started being able to use the extra button without thinking about it, same as I do with a computer's keyboard. When I touch type and play guitar hero, I don't think about where my fingers go, I just know which buttons I want to press, and I don't always use the same fingers for the same buttons.
Interestingly when I tried playing through the game with the other hand, my fingers were already able to use the extra button okay. I thought I'd have to get used to playing again, but it seems my brain was able to carry over the awareness to the other hand. It's still weird though obviously, as I was still feeling the urge to strum with that hand :p
Of course, I have decent rhythm, especially since I started drumming, so that probably makes things easier too.
And you obviously haven't played NFS Pro Street, or NFS Shift.
The stuff the OP mentioned wasn't that advanced, it's just basic stuff you need in a racing game, unless you're playing something absurdly arcadey like Ridge Racer..
They are not real. That is the whole purpose of them.
You haven't had a look at all the "pro" instruments in the latest Rock Band then.
Sure Guitar Hero was a lot more fun that I expected even when it was only pressing buttons in time to the music, but I really loved the drums because it's almost exactly like playing real drums. Now with the keyboard and guitar controllers you also get to learn real keyboard and guitar parts. It's more fun than just learning a song on guitar by yourself because you get a backing track to play along to, and you get graded on your accuracy.
Guess it's no longer just hitting colored pads on a drums (or buttons on the neck) to a beat that doesn't even come close to matching the actual song.
If you play the drums in "expert" difficulty then the beat is usually 100% the same as the actual song. In one song in Rock Band it seemed like you had to play the hi-hat in double time compared to what the actual song was playing but that's about the only difference I noticed.
Even expert guitar is usually very close to the same rhythm as the actual song. It's only on the easier difficulties that they take out notes. I actually find some of the songs more difficult to play on expert guitar in these games than I do on a real guitar, because the fingering is more awkward in the game compared to just holding a barre or power chord and sliding your hand up and down the neck.
Seeing as tyres are the most important part of the simulation, I'm pretty sure all games do that. The self aligning torque is presumably only really important when you have a force feedback steering wheel, but games have been doing that for years too.
I learned to drive rear wheel drive cars in computer games. I now have a rear wheel drive car IRL and the reactions I've learned in game do carry over fine to the real car for controlling power oversteer etc.
I've been a drummer, I wasn't so hot at it, but I do know that any sort of skills you develop with these games are pointless for playing actual music and it doesn't matter how advanced these games get.
I'm a self taught drummer, and I have to say that playing Rock Band did improve my drumming noticeably. I started struggling with the necessary limb coordination about half-way into the set list, but after a couple of months of practice I completed every song in the game on Expert drums and had a lot more independent control of my limbs.
They can only blame themselves for super saturating the market anyways.
Definitely. I don't think I even knew Guitar Hero VI (certainly had never heard the name "Warriors of Rock" before today) was out, though I did get Guitar Hero: Van Halen and Rock Band: Green Day around that time. I did buy Rock Band 3 recently too, but I no longer have the same interest in crushing all the songs on expert drums/guitar that I did with Guitar Hero III, IV and Rock Band 1. Still looking forward a little to the pro guitar coming out though.
A good nature vs nurture experiment! One of the clones is bound to randomly think up some better tactics every so often, and in my case any clones who did well would start to improve in confidence and rise to the top of the ranks, while the others would feel demoralised for a while and have a tougher time of it. It must be pretty embarrassing getting repeatedly beat by yourself.
Yep Kill Bill works fine as two separate movies too - the styles of each half seemed pretty different to me.
Definitely not a sports fan, never have been. I occasionally watch stuff like the Olympics and other international events if Scotland are playing (hardly ever happens, we suck).
companies like Disney who stop selling copies of the old movies before the sequel hits theaters
Didn't know that. Seems like a silly tactic to me, considering they'd presumably make more money from selling the original around the time the sequel is in theaters, for people who've heard a movie is good and want to see the original before the sequel. I wanted to see "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" at the cinema recently - but when I found out it was a sequel, I decided to not watch it until I've seen the first.