I did a bit of research on this sort of thing. Apparently that 10K or more gallons per-hectare - not acre, according to everything else I've read so far - is achieved yearly.
Kind of impressive, considering how small a chunk of land that is.
Something that should be kept in mind is that new technologies have emerged since then that could enable us to grow and process biofuels more efficiently. (Slashdot featured an article some time ago that featured a credit card sized biodeisel reactor that could be assembled with other such units into a stack to process large volumes of fuel efficiently.) Given all the past and present research into biofuels and the apparent growing demand for it, it might not be such a bad idea to find a way to make this cost effective, especially considering that algae is thus far the most potentially productive biofuel feedstock we know of.
Okay, I know the pitch they're going for here is a nature-resistant nail that can withstand powerful storms and regular tremors... But I hope I'm not the first person who thought of a certain nail-gun from a certain game when I heard the name of this product.
Just out of curiosity, were there any juicy details he shared with you that would be safe to post here? (Or do you know of any good sources for this information right off the top of your head, preferrably verified news reports?) I'm curious about this... And no, not for criminal reasons.
Not only do these bacteria use radiation as their primary source of energy, the byproducts they generate sustain other organisms as well. An entire radioactive ecosystem hidden underground... Fascinating. I wonder if there's stuff like this at the bottom of the ocean, too. You know, like those radioactive snails from a while back, only... useful.
You know, before now I wasn't especially interested in 2142. I thought BF2's multiplayer was pretty weak and can't run it on my home computer anyway, so naturally I wasn't looking forward to what amounts to a retail mod of a game I already didn't like. After this, though, I'll be telling all my friends - including a few avid BF2 players who have been anticipating this release - to avoid this shit like the plague, at least until a hack is released that disables this dandy little 'feature' EA has decided to so graciously bestow upon this highly anticipated title. (As though they actually need more money. What, is EA poor or something? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember EA being in fairly good shape, huge and happy as ever. Seriously though, targeted in-game advertising? Look, if you want more money from someone after they buy your shitty game, make them subscribe to it or something, don't cram out of place car billboards and dick-pill banners down their throats.)
I'll laugh my ass off if they start banning people for blocking the in-game spam and spyware, too. Though I can't say I'd be in such good spirits if I happened to be one of the folks unfortunate enough to have pre-ordered this online, not knowing I'd be allowing this garbage onto my computer but still wanting to play. That would be grounds for massive E-rage, and frankly, I think anyone who pre-ordered should be investigating the possibility of a refund as soon as possible.
My guess is that the Slashdot smear campaign against Sony is about a 50-50 mix of Zonk's blatant Nintendo fanboyism and Sony's string of recent and highly publicized failures and oversights, starting with or perhaps preceding the XCP rootkit scandal last year. At this point in time, Sony isn't being viewed by many people in an especially positive light, and with good reason. Frankly, I'm not especially confident in Sony's offerings either, especially after that whole flaming battery thing, but I digress...
Even if from time to time it looks like the PS3 will barely make it out of the gate, it's impossible to judge a product that hasn't yet been released. (It could wind up either kicking or sucking huge amounts of ass, or some bizarre combination of ass kick-suckery in between.) Yet, it would seem that this post was crafted specifically to make the PS3 look bad by comparing it's controller - which was mentioned in TFA-1 as being awkward and uncomfortable, though still usable - to the Wii's controller, described in TFA-2 as being comfortable easy to use, even though the remainder of TFA-1 showed that not only did the writer approve of the PS3, he fucking loved it. (On a slightly unrelated note, why the fuck would I want to take any site devoted to gaming journalism seriously anyway, when it's been proven time and again that gaming journalism might as well be considered freelance fiction work?) In spite of all this, it'd seem that whoever posted this stuff almost hoped we'd just take their word for it instead of R'ing either TFA, and just take their own 'flimsy' inference as gospel. None of it makes sense, until you look at who posted it.
I'm in the same boat as you, though I have much fonder memories of Sega. I love Nintendo as much as the next guy, and they haven't pissed me off nearly as much as Sony has over the past year, but come the fuck on. This is like Anti-Sony propaganda now, and almost all of it is spouted from the pen - or should I say keyboard - of Zonk. It would've been fine enough to post the articles individually. A mostly glowing review of the PS3, and a nice piece on the Wii's controller, but no. He just had to roll them all into one speculative clusterfuck of bullshit and fail in a thinly veiled fit of fanboyism disguised as reporting. It's this kind of shit that makes Slashdot look less like a news site and more like a retarded fanclub.
Seeing as he can't do it himself, I think someone needs to put a cap on Zonk's shit, or at least give him a stern talking to about the virtues of shutting the fuck up until he has something intelligent to say.
"Control of space means control of the world." - Lyndon Johnson
Considering the Bush administration's track record on scientific research and exploration, I'd have to say this probably has less to do with science and entrepreneurship and more to do with tactical superiority. I know I'd sure love to have a sniper tower that high, especially when my weapon of choice happens to be a nuclear bunker buster. (If anyone here used to read Popular Science, they've run articles about this before, and none of it looked pretty.) Not to sound like I'm beating my chest here, but I'm guessing all that stuff about science is just a cover.
After all, who gives a shit about things like, oh let's say, global warming? Not this government.
High definition television, while quite impressively crisp, clear, and sharp, is about as necessary for gaming as it is necessary for watching television. The only people I know who actually own or want to buy high definition televisions are sports buffs, oddly enough, and like to use their screens to view an entirely different kind of game. You know, a real one. Most people I know, gamers included, not only don't care about high definition televisions, they don't want them. They're too expensive, and there's too little special programming available to justify owning them. The promise of HD-Gaming doesn't seem to be swaying my acquaintances much if at all.
The problem here as I see it is that there's just a diminishing return on graphical improvements. We're really getting to the point now where the graphics of most game titles are 'almost real'. (I can think of a few 'almost real' titles from the past couple years right off the top of my head, including Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil 4.) This comes over ten years after we first started seeing rendered 3-D graphics in games featured on consoles and computers. What I'm saying is that I honestly think people are too used to this stuff to really want to dump that much money into a new television for it. Back in 1994 or 1999, this might've been a different story, but let's face it. Titles don't sell anymore just because they have '3-D' in their name, so why the hell is a game console going to sell a television for essentially the same reason?
That high definition television might make the game look better, but until it is a required pre-requisite for playing any and all games for a particular wave of consoles, it's just a selling point - an expensive and unnecessary luxury at best. As for me, I'll stick with my shitty analog television for now. I kind of like how it didn't cost me an arm and a leg and still looks dandy when I play stuff on it.
Who here remembers the Shareware boom? You know, back when studios like Id were still in their infancy, and Apogee and Epic Megagames were big players in the PC game industry? Back then, not only were games released in episodes, you got the first one for free. Each successive episode was about $15 to $20, or you could get hard-copies of all three games and some other goodies for $30 to $35. Sound familiar? It should.
While I'm thinking I might not be reading enough into this, it really looks like that business model is making a return, but with one big catch. You have to pay for the first episode now, and it's usually the biggest and most expensive of all the episodes. This is the only difference I've seen thus far, and it really wouldn't surprise me if game studios reverted back to that old model of 'episodic content' now that it's become the in-thing to do again. I'm not complaining, I'd really like to try a game before I wind up wasting my money on it. I'm just wondering why they're treating it as though it's some big, new thing, when not only is it an old practice, it also hasn't been in style for about ten years. Just my take on it.
Presumably, one of these plastic bridges is going to stick around for a very, very long time. The only time we'd have to worry about recycling or disposing of a plastic bridge is if it completely fails and collapses. Depending on what the bridge is made of, the materials from the bridge may or may not be recycled - I'm sure there's a way, though. In the very least, it can be ground up into tiny bits and used for insulation or something.
That said, I don't think anyone is wondering what we're going to do with the Golden Gate Bridge once we're done with it. Structures like these are made to last, not to be thrown away.
That's actually the idea - to make radioactive substances even more radioactive under controlled conditions so as to decay them into safer forms over a much shorter period of time, decreasing the amount of dangerously radioactive waste that has to be disposed of. Sure, it becomes more radioactive, but only under specific conditions and within a small timespan.
I just think it's a shame the Integral Fast Reactor project got canned back in Clinton's day. If it hadn't been shut down, maybe nuclear waste wouldn't be nearly as huge a problem now...
Agreed. Having gone to a public school, I can safely say that lack of motivation, the absence of parental involvement, or overbearing parental involvement will drive any student to the bottom of the class pretty quickly. (That, or to the bottom of a bottle. Do you ever wonder why so many jocks become alcoholics? It's not because they're having a good time. Not that I actually pitied the jerks, but it's not like anyone with half a brain couldn't see that they were miserable from being pushed too hard by their parents, coaches, and peers.)
I knew a lot of 'dumb' kids who didn't do well in class. These are the kind of people you'd expect to be total losers and not know a thing in the whole damn world, and with some of them, that was the case. On the other hand, you would just as frequently encounter the other extreme - kids who could easily be at the top of their classes if they saw any reason to perform. Many of these kids came from broken homes, had little to no parental involvement or supervision, and usually had few to no dreams or ambitions in life. Their reason for going to school was to get the very same diploma the genius-kids got, which they could do just by skimming along the bottom of the ranks in class while putting forth only minimal effort. (A 'D' average is still passable in my school system, and not very difficult to achieve. It's the path of least resistance.)
There are a whole slew of common social and psychological problems affecting today's youth, much of it stemming from experiences at home. If you want to see the single biggest reason our educational system is falling behind, you need only go as far as your own neighborhood. The disintegration of the family unit is the biggest problem of all. A laptop can't replace your parents.
Now you've really gone and done it. Now these 'neophiles' have a fucking EXCUSE for it. Do you guys have any idea what kind of dumbassery you have justified?
On the other hand, maybe it's treatable now that we know what it is that causes it. I have a friend who could use some 'deprogramming' before he winds up going broke - again.
I swear, the military is pulling ideas from video games and children's cartoons now.
Who here remembers Ikari Warriors? Old quarter-gobbler in the arcades, also available in a lower-quality form for the NES. Now, who remembers how hellish crossing a body of water was, thanks to - you guessed it - moving mines? (If I remember correctly, some of these may have existed on land also.)
Next thing you know, there will be trip-beacons for personell and vehicles that'll cause an oversized missile to automatically launch at your position. They'll be represented by what appears to be a blinking roulette table, just to confuse the living hell out of everyone before they realize that they're faced with impending doom.
I honestly don't know anyone whose gaming habit costs them $50 or more 'every few weeks', but I do know people whose gaming habit costs them $180 a year. Those are my 'World of Warcraft' addicted friends. It wasn't that way a couple years ago, though.
Before 'World of Warcraft', my crew wouldn't bother buying up dozens of new titles. We were almost exclusively PC gamers, and what few console titles we did acquire we usually made sure we'd thoroughly enjoy first. The same thing went for our PC library. We had a few titles we liked that had a very long life, primarily because of a regular influx of new content and fun maps and mods, as well as plenty of people to play with online. 'Counter Strike 1.5' immediately comes to mind, being uncumbersome and extremely content-rich. (I would say rest in peace, but I do wish more people would jump on the WON2 bandwagon. 1.6 just isn't the same.) 'Starcraft' was another old favorite that still offers plenty. Our RPG of choice was 'Diablo 2', and while hardly content-rich, it had massive replay value and was plenty casual and genuinely fun if you had a lot of friends around. When 'World of Warcraft' came along that one fateful winter two years ago, however, all this changed.
Even after we had moved on to 'Counter Strike: Source', lured by the promise of rich new worlds and innovative new gameplay features - it failed miserably to deliver, but 'Half-Life 2 Deathmatch' was much more entertaining - there was a void in our game library left behind by 'Diablo 2'. We'd practically sworn a vow against it - people were beginning to buy items on eBay so they could be lame in player-versus-player, and it just ruined the fun of it. When 'World of Warcraft' came along, that void was masterfully filled, and then some. Suddenly, all we were playing - all we had time to play - was 'World of Warcraft'. Even after our interest in the game began to wane, even after several of us quit, there was still never enough time, never enough people. Only recently after the latest patch did virtually everyone in my crew actually drop the game. We've found ourselves retreating to the oldie-but-goodies we used to enjoy.
The point here is that games like 'World of Warcraft' don't rob people of money, but rather, of time. I'd even wager that the game is addictive by design, to keep people doing the very same thing over and over again without realizing that the game is a champion of monotony. (This is one of the reasons I could never get into it.) When people begin to play 'World of Warcraft', they forget the other games they had, not because they'd rather be not be playing them but because 'World of Warcraft' is a mandatory time-sink. A bulk of the players treat it as a chore, a job they simply must do, not a game. To get anywhere, to be better than anyone, to feel that you've accomplished something, you absolutely have to sink at least 20 hours a week into this game, or else you're a loser, you can't play, and your character is going to suck and be completely useless. I won't go into how many psychological complexes this plays off of, but I'll say this:
For such a boring, monotonous, undynamic, snail-paced game, 'World of Warcraft' succeeds where other games before it have failed, and that's in keeping people playing for every reason besides fun. It's frustrating. It plays on people's insecurities and materialism. It keeps you there, and it really does mess with your head in a myriad of subtle ways. I thought it was pretty messed up, too, but it happens a lot more than I'd like to see. If it required less time, maybe it wouldn't be such a problem. If individual quests didn't last five hours or more, maybe people would actually get up and leave the game, and go do something else since what they were attempting to accomplish is now complete. 'World of Warcraft', like most of the MMORPG genre, is a time-grab. This is why people playing games like it not only lose interest in other games, but the rest of their lives as well.
That aside, if there were new games worth playing, the people
Okay. Let's take this very same car, and double the engine capacity. (Granted I'm not taking a lot of things into consideration, but let's just look at this in a very basic way.) This cuts it's fuel efficiency in half - something around 1,500 or 1,600 MPG - but would presumably also double it's top speed and the engine's ability to move a load. If this machine did travel at an average speed of at least 15 MPH, one with twice the engine power would travel at 30 MPH. Not quite a car, but respectable. If the average speed of this vehicle was even higher - somewhere in the 25 MPH range - then you could possibly take this thing over the 45 MPH mark - possibly 50 MPH or higher - which is getting pretty close to highway speeds.
With double the power, it could also presumably accelerate twice as fast - something you should definitely consider when designing or purchasing a vehicle. If it could accelerate and respond quick enough to be road safe, that's one more problem out of the way. (If it already achieved this end, that's also good.) If it could move double the previous load, bringing it's maximum load up to 260 pounds, that means a big guy like myself would be able to get in with about 80 pounds to spare - enough for a suitcase on a road trip, or a PC tower for a LAN party. See where I'm going with this?
Now let's double the double. 750 MPG, but with a top speed of at least 60 MPH and a maximum load of 520 pounds. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.
The idea here is to push the limits of fuel efficiency not only to prove that it can be done, but to find an application for it somewhere else. If the 'doubled double' version of this vehicle was more comfortable, road-safe, and cheap, I don't think anyone would object to getting one. Even if fuel efficiency doesn't scale directly up or down in the way I put it - I'm almost certain it doesn't - you could shave even half the MPG off of that final number and still achieve phenomenal efficiencies for a single-person vehicle - 375 MPG. Multiply the initial final number by four gallons and you get a maximum operating range of 3,000 miles. That's a long way to travel without having to fill up.
Once again, hardly an expert, but it's food for thought. I also agree that the people participating in this contest shouldn't be limited to just one kind of engine. I'd kind of like to see a contest to find out who can build the most fuel efficient engine, and then tack it onto one of these cars. That'd be neat.
Slashdot Mirror
I did a bit of research on this sort of thing. Apparently that 10K or more gallons per-hectare - not acre, according to everything else I've read so far - is achieved yearly.
Kind of impressive, considering how small a chunk of land that is.
Something that should be kept in mind is that new technologies have emerged since then that could enable us to grow and process biofuels more efficiently. (Slashdot featured an article some time ago that featured a credit card sized biodeisel reactor that could be assembled with other such units into a stack to process large volumes of fuel efficiently.) Given all the past and present research into biofuels and the apparent growing demand for it, it might not be such a bad idea to find a way to make this cost effective, especially considering that algae is thus far the most potentially productive biofuel feedstock we know of.
Okay, I know the pitch they're going for here is a nature-resistant nail that can withstand powerful storms and regular tremors... But I hope I'm not the first person who thought of a certain nail-gun from a certain game when I heard the name of this product.
Hurriquake nails - nails for real gamers.
Just out of curiosity, were there any juicy details he shared with you that would be safe to post here? (Or do you know of any good sources for this information right off the top of your head, preferrably verified news reports?) I'm curious about this... And no, not for criminal reasons.
(In before, "Sure you're not.")
More like AIDS is closed, due to AIDS.
Obligatory time para- *Classic division-by-zero implosion complete with event-horizon*
Not only do these bacteria use radiation as their primary source of energy, the byproducts they generate sustain other organisms as well. An entire radioactive ecosystem hidden underground... Fascinating. I wonder if there's stuff like this at the bottom of the ocean, too. You know, like those radioactive snails from a while back, only... useful.
You know, before now I wasn't especially interested in 2142. I thought BF2's multiplayer was pretty weak and can't run it on my home computer anyway, so naturally I wasn't looking forward to what amounts to a retail mod of a game I already didn't like. After this, though, I'll be telling all my friends - including a few avid BF2 players who have been anticipating this release - to avoid this shit like the plague, at least until a hack is released that disables this dandy little 'feature' EA has decided to so graciously bestow upon this highly anticipated title. (As though they actually need more money. What, is EA poor or something? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember EA being in fairly good shape, huge and happy as ever. Seriously though, targeted in-game advertising? Look, if you want more money from someone after they buy your shitty game, make them subscribe to it or something, don't cram out of place car billboards and dick-pill banners down their throats.)
I'll laugh my ass off if they start banning people for blocking the in-game spam and spyware, too. Though I can't say I'd be in such good spirits if I happened to be one of the folks unfortunate enough to have pre-ordered this online, not knowing I'd be allowing this garbage onto my computer but still wanting to play. That would be grounds for massive E-rage, and frankly, I think anyone who pre-ordered should be investigating the possibility of a refund as soon as possible.
My guess is that the Slashdot smear campaign against Sony is about a 50-50 mix of Zonk's blatant Nintendo fanboyism and Sony's string of recent and highly publicized failures and oversights, starting with or perhaps preceding the XCP rootkit scandal last year. At this point in time, Sony isn't being viewed by many people in an especially positive light, and with good reason. Frankly, I'm not especially confident in Sony's offerings either, especially after that whole flaming battery thing, but I digress...
Even if from time to time it looks like the PS3 will barely make it out of the gate, it's impossible to judge a product that hasn't yet been released. (It could wind up either kicking or sucking huge amounts of ass, or some bizarre combination of ass kick-suckery in between.) Yet, it would seem that this post was crafted specifically to make the PS3 look bad by comparing it's controller - which was mentioned in TFA-1 as being awkward and uncomfortable, though still usable - to the Wii's controller, described in TFA-2 as being comfortable easy to use, even though the remainder of TFA-1 showed that not only did the writer approve of the PS3, he fucking loved it. (On a slightly unrelated note, why the fuck would I want to take any site devoted to gaming journalism seriously anyway, when it's been proven time and again that gaming journalism might as well be considered freelance fiction work?) In spite of all this, it'd seem that whoever posted this stuff almost hoped we'd just take their word for it instead of R'ing either TFA, and just take their own 'flimsy' inference as gospel. None of it makes sense, until you look at who posted it.
I'm in the same boat as you, though I have much fonder memories of Sega. I love Nintendo as much as the next guy, and they haven't pissed me off nearly as much as Sony has over the past year, but come the fuck on. This is like Anti-Sony propaganda now, and almost all of it is spouted from the pen - or should I say keyboard - of Zonk. It would've been fine enough to post the articles individually. A mostly glowing review of the PS3, and a nice piece on the Wii's controller, but no. He just had to roll them all into one speculative clusterfuck of bullshit and fail in a thinly veiled fit of fanboyism disguised as reporting. It's this kind of shit that makes Slashdot look less like a news site and more like a retarded fanclub.
Seeing as he can't do it himself, I think someone needs to put a cap on Zonk's shit, or at least give him a stern talking to about the virtues of shutting the fuck up until he has something intelligent to say.
"Control of space means control of the world." - Lyndon Johnson
Considering the Bush administration's track record on scientific research and exploration, I'd have to say this probably has less to do with science and entrepreneurship and more to do with tactical superiority. I know I'd sure love to have a sniper tower that high, especially when my weapon of choice happens to be a nuclear bunker buster. (If anyone here used to read Popular Science, they've run articles about this before, and none of it looked pretty.) Not to sound like I'm beating my chest here, but I'm guessing all that stuff about science is just a cover.
After all, who gives a shit about things like, oh let's say, global warming? Not this government.
High definition television, while quite impressively crisp, clear, and sharp, is about as necessary for gaming as it is necessary for watching television. The only people I know who actually own or want to buy high definition televisions are sports buffs, oddly enough, and like to use their screens to view an entirely different kind of game. You know, a real one. Most people I know, gamers included, not only don't care about high definition televisions, they don't want them. They're too expensive, and there's too little special programming available to justify owning them. The promise of HD-Gaming doesn't seem to be swaying my acquaintances much if at all.
The problem here as I see it is that there's just a diminishing return on graphical improvements. We're really getting to the point now where the graphics of most game titles are 'almost real'. (I can think of a few 'almost real' titles from the past couple years right off the top of my head, including Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil 4.) This comes over ten years after we first started seeing rendered 3-D graphics in games featured on consoles and computers. What I'm saying is that I honestly think people are too used to this stuff to really want to dump that much money into a new television for it. Back in 1994 or 1999, this might've been a different story, but let's face it. Titles don't sell anymore just because they have '3-D' in their name, so why the hell is a game console going to sell a television for essentially the same reason?
That high definition television might make the game look better, but until it is a required pre-requisite for playing any and all games for a particular wave of consoles, it's just a selling point - an expensive and unnecessary luxury at best. As for me, I'll stick with my shitty analog television for now. I kind of like how it didn't cost me an arm and a leg and still looks dandy when I play stuff on it.
Meanwhile, in South Korea...
"Nuclear launch detected."
Haven't these people ever heard of an access control list before? Really now.
Who here remembers the Shareware boom? You know, back when studios like Id were still in their infancy, and Apogee and Epic Megagames were big players in the PC game industry? Back then, not only were games released in episodes, you got the first one for free. Each successive episode was about $15 to $20, or you could get hard-copies of all three games and some other goodies for $30 to $35. Sound familiar? It should.
While I'm thinking I might not be reading enough into this, it really looks like that business model is making a return, but with one big catch. You have to pay for the first episode now, and it's usually the biggest and most expensive of all the episodes. This is the only difference I've seen thus far, and it really wouldn't surprise me if game studios reverted back to that old model of 'episodic content' now that it's become the in-thing to do again. I'm not complaining, I'd really like to try a game before I wind up wasting my money on it. I'm just wondering why they're treating it as though it's some big, new thing, when not only is it an old practice, it also hasn't been in style for about ten years. Just my take on it.
"Buy what I'm into... from a major corporation!"
Isn't MySpace owned by Fox?
Presumably, one of these plastic bridges is going to stick around for a very, very long time. The only time we'd have to worry about recycling or disposing of a plastic bridge is if it completely fails and collapses. Depending on what the bridge is made of, the materials from the bridge may or may not be recycled - I'm sure there's a way, though. In the very least, it can be ground up into tiny bits and used for insulation or something.
That said, I don't think anyone is wondering what we're going to do with the Golden Gate Bridge once we're done with it. Structures like these are made to last, not to be thrown away.
That's actually the idea - to make radioactive substances even more radioactive under controlled conditions so as to decay them into safer forms over a much shorter period of time, decreasing the amount of dangerously radioactive waste that has to be disposed of. Sure, it becomes more radioactive, but only under specific conditions and within a small timespan.
I just think it's a shame the Integral Fast Reactor project got canned back in Clinton's day. If it hadn't been shut down, maybe nuclear waste wouldn't be nearly as huge a problem now...
Microsoft continues to play catch-up with Google...
Agreed. Having gone to a public school, I can safely say that lack of motivation, the absence of parental involvement, or overbearing parental involvement will drive any student to the bottom of the class pretty quickly. (That, or to the bottom of a bottle. Do you ever wonder why so many jocks become alcoholics? It's not because they're having a good time. Not that I actually pitied the jerks, but it's not like anyone with half a brain couldn't see that they were miserable from being pushed too hard by their parents, coaches, and peers.)
I knew a lot of 'dumb' kids who didn't do well in class. These are the kind of people you'd expect to be total losers and not know a thing in the whole damn world, and with some of them, that was the case. On the other hand, you would just as frequently encounter the other extreme - kids who could easily be at the top of their classes if they saw any reason to perform. Many of these kids came from broken homes, had little to no parental involvement or supervision, and usually had few to no dreams or ambitions in life. Their reason for going to school was to get the very same diploma the genius-kids got, which they could do just by skimming along the bottom of the ranks in class while putting forth only minimal effort. (A 'D' average is still passable in my school system, and not very difficult to achieve. It's the path of least resistance.)
There are a whole slew of common social and psychological problems affecting today's youth, much of it stemming from experiences at home. If you want to see the single biggest reason our educational system is falling behind, you need only go as far as your own neighborhood. The disintegration of the family unit is the biggest problem of all. A laptop can't replace your parents.
You mean from charging the thing, or...?
"I liked this game better when it was called Turok 2."
Now you've really gone and done it. Now these 'neophiles' have a fucking EXCUSE for it. Do you guys have any idea what kind of dumbassery you have justified?
On the other hand, maybe it's treatable now that we know what it is that causes it. I have a friend who could use some 'deprogramming' before he winds up going broke - again.
I swear, the military is pulling ideas from video games and children's cartoons now.
Who here remembers Ikari Warriors? Old quarter-gobbler in the arcades, also available in a lower-quality form for the NES. Now, who remembers how hellish crossing a body of water was, thanks to - you guessed it - moving mines? (If I remember correctly, some of these may have existed on land also.)
Next thing you know, there will be trip-beacons for personell and vehicles that'll cause an oversized missile to automatically launch at your position. They'll be represented by what appears to be a blinking roulette table, just to confuse the living hell out of everyone before they realize that they're faced with impending doom.
This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'tap that ass'.
I honestly don't know anyone whose gaming habit costs them $50 or more 'every few weeks', but I do know people whose gaming habit costs them $180 a year. Those are my 'World of Warcraft' addicted friends. It wasn't that way a couple years ago, though.
Before 'World of Warcraft', my crew wouldn't bother buying up dozens of new titles. We were almost exclusively PC gamers, and what few console titles we did acquire we usually made sure we'd thoroughly enjoy first. The same thing went for our PC library. We had a few titles we liked that had a very long life, primarily because of a regular influx of new content and fun maps and mods, as well as plenty of people to play with online. 'Counter Strike 1.5' immediately comes to mind, being uncumbersome and extremely content-rich. (I would say rest in peace, but I do wish more people would jump on the WON2 bandwagon. 1.6 just isn't the same.) 'Starcraft' was another old favorite that still offers plenty. Our RPG of choice was 'Diablo 2', and while hardly content-rich, it had massive replay value and was plenty casual and genuinely fun if you had a lot of friends around. When 'World of Warcraft' came along that one fateful winter two years ago, however, all this changed.
Even after we had moved on to 'Counter Strike: Source', lured by the promise of rich new worlds and innovative new gameplay features - it failed miserably to deliver, but 'Half-Life 2 Deathmatch' was much more entertaining - there was a void in our game library left behind by 'Diablo 2'. We'd practically sworn a vow against it - people were beginning to buy items on eBay so they could be lame in player-versus-player, and it just ruined the fun of it. When 'World of Warcraft' came along, that void was masterfully filled, and then some. Suddenly, all we were playing - all we had time to play - was 'World of Warcraft'. Even after our interest in the game began to wane, even after several of us quit, there was still never enough time, never enough people. Only recently after the latest patch did virtually everyone in my crew actually drop the game. We've found ourselves retreating to the oldie-but-goodies we used to enjoy.
The point here is that games like 'World of Warcraft' don't rob people of money, but rather, of time. I'd even wager that the game is addictive by design, to keep people doing the very same thing over and over again without realizing that the game is a champion of monotony. (This is one of the reasons I could never get into it.) When people begin to play 'World of Warcraft', they forget the other games they had, not because they'd rather be not be playing them but because 'World of Warcraft' is a mandatory time-sink. A bulk of the players treat it as a chore, a job they simply must do, not a game. To get anywhere, to be better than anyone, to feel that you've accomplished something, you absolutely have to sink at least 20 hours a week into this game, or else you're a loser, you can't play, and your character is going to suck and be completely useless. I won't go into how many psychological complexes this plays off of, but I'll say this:
For such a boring, monotonous, undynamic, snail-paced game, 'World of Warcraft' succeeds where other games before it have failed, and that's in keeping people playing for every reason besides fun. It's frustrating. It plays on people's insecurities and materialism. It keeps you there, and it really does mess with your head in a myriad of subtle ways. I thought it was pretty messed up, too, but it happens a lot more than I'd like to see. If it required less time, maybe it wouldn't be such a problem. If individual quests didn't last five hours or more, maybe people would actually get up and leave the game, and go do something else since what they were attempting to accomplish is now complete. 'World of Warcraft', like most of the MMORPG genre, is a time-grab. This is why people playing games like it not only lose interest in other games, but the rest of their lives as well.
That aside, if there were new games worth playing, the people
I'm no expert, but...
Okay. Let's take this very same car, and double the engine capacity. (Granted I'm not taking a lot of things into consideration, but let's just look at this in a very basic way.) This cuts it's fuel efficiency in half - something around 1,500 or 1,600 MPG - but would presumably also double it's top speed and the engine's ability to move a load. If this machine did travel at an average speed of at least 15 MPH, one with twice the engine power would travel at 30 MPH. Not quite a car, but respectable. If the average speed of this vehicle was even higher - somewhere in the 25 MPH range - then you could possibly take this thing over the 45 MPH mark - possibly 50 MPH or higher - which is getting pretty close to highway speeds.
With double the power, it could also presumably accelerate twice as fast - something you should definitely consider when designing or purchasing a vehicle. If it could accelerate and respond quick enough to be road safe, that's one more problem out of the way. (If it already achieved this end, that's also good.) If it could move double the previous load, bringing it's maximum load up to 260 pounds, that means a big guy like myself would be able to get in with about 80 pounds to spare - enough for a suitcase on a road trip, or a PC tower for a LAN party. See where I'm going with this?
Now let's double the double. 750 MPG, but with a top speed of at least 60 MPH and a maximum load of 520 pounds. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.
The idea here is to push the limits of fuel efficiency not only to prove that it can be done, but to find an application for it somewhere else. If the 'doubled double' version of this vehicle was more comfortable, road-safe, and cheap, I don't think anyone would object to getting one. Even if fuel efficiency doesn't scale directly up or down in the way I put it - I'm almost certain it doesn't - you could shave even half the MPG off of that final number and still achieve phenomenal efficiencies for a single-person vehicle - 375 MPG. Multiply the initial final number by four gallons and you get a maximum operating range of 3,000 miles. That's a long way to travel without having to fill up.
Once again, hardly an expert, but it's food for thought. I also agree that the people participating in this contest shouldn't be limited to just one kind of engine. I'd kind of like to see a contest to find out who can build the most fuel efficient engine, and then tack it onto one of these cars. That'd be neat.