Yes, I would wear this every time that I played Bad Company 2 because it would provide me with more precise feedback as to which direction I'm taking fire from than just having my screen flash for a split-second. I don't even care if it feels in any way realistic as long as it is noticeable and doesn't make a crapload of noise like some similar vest that is commercially available now.
"Let's face it, high-performance PC games are truly failing in the market place. (Flash games are another story.)"
Yet another example of your personal experience being translated to a broad generalization about everyone's experience. I don't want to speak for my brethren over at DICE, but I think that given the recent blowout success of the PC version of Bad Company 2 that they might strongly object to the insinuation of failure. I'm sorry that you had issues that presented a sufficiently high barrier to you to swear off of PC gaming, but not all of us have these problems. Forgive me if I sound accusatory or derogatory in any way as that isn't my intent; I've simply grown tired of hearing this general purpose indictment of a particular subset of the computing experience, in this particular instance high quality PC gaming, because some either have bad luck or are incapable of administrating their systems.
Note that I am not accusing you of being incapable and do not begrudge your decision to stick with console gaming in any way. Above all else, I like that the there are options available for a wide variety of experiences. All that I ask is that you recognize that there are a great many of us who enjoy the PC gaming experience FAR more than console gaming and either have incredible luck or possess sufficient technical proficiency to readily overcome issues that we experience before they come close to detracting from that experience more than playing the same game on a console would. It is the same reason why people use different operating systems, different smartphones, different web browsers, etc.
tl;dr: High-end PC gaming isn't failing, it's just not for everyone. Nothing is for everyone.
Perhaps you'll find more utility in the tools that you purchase if you stop thinking about them in terms of what a marketer told you and what its potential actually is.
Ah, now it makes sense. I guess I missed the part about people flipping the fuck out, or the claim that this breakthrough was destined to save mankind.
Come to think of it, I still can't find these anywhere, just a story providing a brief overview of this discovery and how it might someday result in some unspecified degree of power generation from noisy sources, along with some discussion and nerd jokes about that story in this thread.
As for the concerns that jmorris42 listed, they are just as vague and baseless as any claim to the contrary and so are just as pointless, except that he went the extra mile to denigrate those interested in the subject. I'm not saying he's a troll, since that usually also insinuates insincerity and I see nothing to indicate that he is insincere, but I will say that the derogatory tone and arguments based upon broad generalizations were both very trollish.
Screw that. 6.5+ billion people on this planet, many with a propensity toward cutting, scarring, beating, or even killing themselves, and we can't find just one who will volunteer to have this done so that we can see what will happen in a human? Christ, I could find a couple of dozen people in the next hour who would be willing to go on a suicide mission to Mars. Doing this kind of thing to an unwilling victim is straight-up evil, but finding volunteers really can't be that hard. Let's just answer the real question that we're trying to solve for rather than relying on these half-assed measures that take years to get to the point.
But that's crazy talk! Considering how often those terms are used, that would mean that the United States is chock full of fucking morons, and that couldn't possibly be the case. You must be a pinko or a terrorist or... wait, who are we scared of right now?
Your life will probably be much more satisfying if you start to buy products based upon what they do today and not what you think that they'll do someday based upon what other products do.
I'm looking forward to the official 2.1 release from Motorola/Verizon for my Droid, but it isn't like my Droid magically became any less functional when the Nexus One came out with Android 2.1 installed on it. It's does exactly what I bought it to do and is still pretty freakin' awesome, and gets more awesome all the time as I find or make new apps that become a regular part of my usage.
Ah, no. The article and summary both explain that more snow CAN result from rising global temperature. In other words, despite how much the ignorant love to look at pictures of snow and, "hurr durr, looky, no global warming!" the fact of the matter is that high levels of snowfall are in no way contradictory to an overall rise in global temperature. Therefore, in regard to the accuracy of the summary and article, it doesn't even matter whether any of the popularly espoused climate change theories are true or not.
There is no claim that global warming is causing greater amounts of snowfall in the summary or article. In fact, the article even quotes:
"In that kind of a climate, you will have more frequent extreme events, heat waves and so on, but again, none of those individual events is proof itself that climate is changing," Masters says.
And then states:
"Climate scientists say they can't prove any single weather event is due to climate change."
Do us a favor and have your mom look into scoring you some Hooked on Phonics. Has reading comprehension really gotten this fucking bad, especially on a website which supposedly caters to nerds?
I can't imagine any large scale game being designed by the programmers. That's what designers and producers do; programmers and artists then take the design and make it work on screen as close to the design as possible.
And now you read Slashdot, while the girls that you wished would talk to you while you were in that age range are sharing information about what they had for dinner with their friends on Facebook. You ain't the target demo, regardless of age.
"Besides who needs to access 4chan from their phone anyway"
I don't, but I'd prefer to nip this little urge for some dipshit who takes my money to decide what websites I should be accessing before they go blocking access to something that I do have interest in accessing from my phone.
Not gambling at all. Derivatives are a sure thing. You trade and trade and trade until the value of the underlying goes to shit and then let the government backstop the otherwise-worthless paper so that it doesn't get marked to market. All profit, no risk. Of course, you have to be a multi-billion dollar financial institution to play, so start saving your pennies and get ready to write those checks to your favorite, and not-so-favorite, politicians.
Incomparable references, unless your sole purpose of purchasing a book is for its physical uses. Applications developed for mobile platforms are very rarely sold on desktops/laptops as well, and even when they are it is almost always as the mobile version versus the full version. The content of a book, on the other hand, is exactly the same regardless of the medium by which it is consumed.
A lot of people have serious problems when attempting to read from LCD for an extended period of time, so it is important to denote the difference even if there are some of us who can read for hours on an LCD with little ill effect.
Regardless of renewal requirements for a cert, I think most careers have a point where interviewers no longer give a crap about entry level certs or degrees, although there may be more advanced ones that apply to a particular track. If a potential employer insisted that I have an A+ to interview for a job with my current experience, I'd buy myself a nice lunch with the $100+ that I saved on skipping the test and laugh all the way to the next interview.:)
For most certs, I would agree, but the A+ is a joke. Actually, that's not fair; the A+ is a capability exam, like if you can pass the A+ then I'd be willing to interview you for an IT position as help desk or something else entry-level. Passing the A+ shows that you have the ability and the willingness to learn things about tech. I'd still expect you to have the skills that I put in the ad for the position, but personal experience and practice may be perfectly suitable.
More advanced positions, on the other hand, are gonna need something a little more robust, like recent work experience and a positive phone interview, before I'll even get off of my ass and head down to the lobby to say hello. In those cases, I would definitely consider the age of the cert if one were listed on the resume.
So you're more concerned that the managers in for-profit companies, who live and die by the bottom line and would be financially devastated by an accident of the magnitude in your examples, would be more negligent in terms of engineering efficiency and safety than managers in a government office that simply has taxpayer money handed to them via Congressional mandate? Or is it that you believe that those of us who work in the private sector value human life less than government employees? I could understand if you had concerns about project prioritization, but you specifically referenced catastrophic accidents.
Just played some Dungeon Keeper and Fallout 2 this weekend. Other older games like Quake/Quake 2, Unreal, and Outpost 1 and 2 regularly get loaded back up as well. The older city builders are almost always superior to their modern versions.
The oldest game that I play through every year or two would probably be Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic, which came out in 1989. Played it as a kid and then found it a few years ago in the bargain bin at a K-Mart for 99 cents. Probably the only time I've entered a K-Mart in the past decade, so astounding fortune on that one.:)
"Well considering the satellites need to beam the power down to earth based generation stations and these earth based stations will need to be close to population centers to avoid transmission losses, there is a reason to be afraid of this technology."
Caution, perhaps, but fear seems to be a bit excessive. Then again, it does seem to be the natural response of people to be afraid of nearly anything that doesn't come with an absolute guarantee of safety, even though pretty much nothing in existence can be guaranteed to be harmless.
This seems to be particularly excessive in the case of a beam that can quite literally be made to simply go away in milliseconds should safeguards in place, which are trivial and cheap to implement with redundancy when it comes to lasers, indicate that the beam isn't pointing within millimeters of its target. An automobile carries the potential to kill accidentally through mechanical failure or operator error, and they do so every single hour of every single day, but we let them carpet our cities anyhow.
So no, I don't actually find cause to be afraid of some very narrow beams of questionable risk that can disappear at a moment's notice being directed at a single point on the outskirts of town.
"Astrium says the latter can be addressed by using infrared lasers which, if misdirected, would not risk "cooking" anyone in their path."
"So a 20kw microwave beam can cook you, but a 20kw infrared beam will feel like getting hit by fluffy bunnies? If you are transmitting large amounts of power it will be dangerous. If it's a wide beam then it is inefficient but less dangerous, if it is a narrow beam then it is more efficient but more dangerous. I can only imagine the public outcry the first time an aircraft runs into one of these beams."
I usually prefer hard science, but I suppose that broad generalizations are fun, too. On a serious note, I'm not going to debate the specifics of the inherent risk of a theoretical design for a particular infrared laser versus a theoretical design for a particular maser in any manner since we'd both just be pulling assumptions out of our asses.
Regarding public outcry, of course there will be public outcry. That's a given any time that new scientific endeavors are tested. Christ, there are still a crapton of people flipping out over the impended destruction of the universe as a result of the Large Hadron Collider going online. Perhaps if aircraft respect the miniscule no-fly zone that would surround the path of the beams, like they have to with any other power line, then your hypothetical example won't be an issue.
"We still have nothing showing that this technology has the potential to be cheaper than earth based solar."
Ah well, if researchers can't prove that they can save a buck, I guess they'd better give up on the experiments.
I'm saying that I like the odds that in the event of an unforeseen accident that horrible devastation, or even mild inconvenience, won't be inflicted upon the human race and that I'm not going to cower in fear over an event that has less likelihood of occurring than someone driving into my bedroom while I'm sleeping. Of course, I personally know two people that has happened to, so maybe bedroom vehicular encounters aren't all that unlikely.
In any case, despite your bizarre and utterly failed attempt to reword my opinion into a completely different sentiment, I continue to personally support the notion of Astrium carrying this out, just as other people are entitled to voice their fears of the possible consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I would wear this every time that I played Bad Company 2 because it would provide me with more precise feedback as to which direction I'm taking fire from than just having my screen flash for a split-second. I don't even care if it feels in any way realistic as long as it is noticeable and doesn't make a crapload of noise like some similar vest that is commercially available now.
"Let's face it, high-performance PC games are truly failing in the market place. (Flash games are another story.)"
Yet another example of your personal experience being translated to a broad generalization about everyone's experience. I don't want to speak for my brethren over at DICE, but I think that given the recent blowout success of the PC version of Bad Company 2 that they might strongly object to the insinuation of failure. I'm sorry that you had issues that presented a sufficiently high barrier to you to swear off of PC gaming, but not all of us have these problems. Forgive me if I sound accusatory or derogatory in any way as that isn't my intent; I've simply grown tired of hearing this general purpose indictment of a particular subset of the computing experience, in this particular instance high quality PC gaming, because some either have bad luck or are incapable of administrating their systems.
Note that I am not accusing you of being incapable and do not begrudge your decision to stick with console gaming in any way. Above all else, I like that the there are options available for a wide variety of experiences. All that I ask is that you recognize that there are a great many of us who enjoy the PC gaming experience FAR more than console gaming and either have incredible luck or possess sufficient technical proficiency to readily overcome issues that we experience before they come close to detracting from that experience more than playing the same game on a console would. It is the same reason why people use different operating systems, different smartphones, different web browsers, etc.
tl;dr: High-end PC gaming isn't failing, it's just not for everyone. Nothing is for everyone.
Same here, which is why I returned it within 30 days and waited for the Droid to come out. Been perfectly happy with that since.
Perhaps you'll find more utility in the tools that you purchase if you stop thinking about them in terms of what a marketer told you and what its potential actually is.
Ah, now it makes sense. I guess I missed the part about people flipping the fuck out, or the claim that this breakthrough was destined to save mankind.
Come to think of it, I still can't find these anywhere, just a story providing a brief overview of this discovery and how it might someday result in some unspecified degree of power generation from noisy sources, along with some discussion and nerd jokes about that story in this thread.
As for the concerns that jmorris42 listed, they are just as vague and baseless as any claim to the contrary and so are just as pointless, except that he went the extra mile to denigrate those interested in the subject. I'm not saying he's a troll, since that usually also insinuates insincerity and I see nothing to indicate that he is insincere, but I will say that the derogatory tone and arguments based upon broad generalizations were both very trollish.
Screw that. 6.5+ billion people on this planet, many with a propensity toward cutting, scarring, beating, or even killing themselves, and we can't find just one who will volunteer to have this done so that we can see what will happen in a human? Christ, I could find a couple of dozen people in the next hour who would be willing to go on a suicide mission to Mars. Doing this kind of thing to an unwilling victim is straight-up evil, but finding volunteers really can't be that hard. Let's just answer the real question that we're trying to solve for rather than relying on these half-assed measures that take years to get to the point.
But that's crazy talk! Considering how often those terms are used, that would mean that the United States is chock full of fucking morons, and that couldn't possibly be the case. You must be a pinko or a terrorist or... wait, who are we scared of right now?
Your life will probably be much more satisfying if you start to buy products based upon what they do today and not what you think that they'll do someday based upon what other products do.
I'm looking forward to the official 2.1 release from Motorola/Verizon for my Droid, but it isn't like my Droid magically became any less functional when the Nexus One came out with Android 2.1 installed on it. It's does exactly what I bought it to do and is still pretty freakin' awesome, and gets more awesome all the time as I find or make new apps that become a regular part of my usage.
Ah, no. The article and summary both explain that more snow CAN result from rising global temperature. In other words, despite how much the ignorant love to look at pictures of snow and, "hurr durr, looky, no global warming!" the fact of the matter is that high levels of snowfall are in no way contradictory to an overall rise in global temperature. Therefore, in regard to the accuracy of the summary and article, it doesn't even matter whether any of the popularly espoused climate change theories are true or not.
There is no claim that global warming is causing greater amounts of snowfall in the summary or article. In fact, the article even quotes:
"In that kind of a climate, you will have more frequent extreme events, heat waves and so on, but again, none of those individual events is proof itself that climate is changing," Masters says.
And then states:
"Climate scientists say they can't prove any single weather event is due to climate change."
Do us a favor and have your mom look into scoring you some Hooked on Phonics. Has reading comprehension really gotten this fucking bad, especially on a website which supposedly caters to nerds?
I can't imagine any large scale game being designed by the programmers. That's what designers and producers do; programmers and artists then take the design and make it work on screen as close to the design as possible.
And now you read Slashdot, while the girls that you wished would talk to you while you were in that age range are sharing information about what they had for dinner with their friends on Facebook. You ain't the target demo, regardless of age.
"Besides who needs to access 4chan from their phone anyway"
I don't, but I'd prefer to nip this little urge for some dipshit who takes my money to decide what websites I should be accessing before they go blocking access to something that I do have interest in accessing from my phone.
Not gambling at all. Derivatives are a sure thing. You trade and trade and trade until the value of the underlying goes to shit and then let the government backstop the otherwise-worthless paper so that it doesn't get marked to market. All profit, no risk. Of course, you have to be a multi-billion dollar financial institution to play, so start saving your pennies and get ready to write those checks to your favorite, and not-so-favorite, politicians.
Incomparable references, unless your sole purpose of purchasing a book is for its physical uses. Applications developed for mobile platforms are very rarely sold on desktops/laptops as well, and even when they are it is almost always as the mobile version versus the full version. The content of a book, on the other hand, is exactly the same regardless of the medium by which it is consumed.
A lot of people have serious problems when attempting to read from LCD for an extended period of time, so it is important to denote the difference even if there are some of us who can read for hours on an LCD with little ill effect.
You are obsolete. You just choose to look at a very tiny piece of the timeline in order to delude yourself otherwise.
For iTunes, it's letting him off easy.
Regardless of renewal requirements for a cert, I think most careers have a point where interviewers no longer give a crap about entry level certs or degrees, although there may be more advanced ones that apply to a particular track. If a potential employer insisted that I have an A+ to interview for a job with my current experience, I'd buy myself a nice lunch with the $100+ that I saved on skipping the test and laugh all the way to the next interview. :)
For most certs, I would agree, but the A+ is a joke. Actually, that's not fair; the A+ is a capability exam, like if you can pass the A+ then I'd be willing to interview you for an IT position as help desk or something else entry-level. Passing the A+ shows that you have the ability and the willingness to learn things about tech. I'd still expect you to have the skills that I put in the ad for the position, but personal experience and practice may be perfectly suitable.
More advanced positions, on the other hand, are gonna need something a little more robust, like recent work experience and a positive phone interview, before I'll even get off of my ass and head down to the lobby to say hello. In those cases, I would definitely consider the age of the cert if one were listed on the resume.
So you're more concerned that the managers in for-profit companies, who live and die by the bottom line and would be financially devastated by an accident of the magnitude in your examples, would be more negligent in terms of engineering efficiency and safety than managers in a government office that simply has taxpayer money handed to them via Congressional mandate? Or is it that you believe that those of us who work in the private sector value human life less than government employees? I could understand if you had concerns about project prioritization, but you specifically referenced catastrophic accidents.
Just played some Dungeon Keeper and Fallout 2 this weekend. Other older games like Quake/Quake 2, Unreal, and Outpost 1 and 2 regularly get loaded back up as well. The older city builders are almost always superior to their modern versions.
The oldest game that I play through every year or two would probably be Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic, which came out in 1989. Played it as a kid and then found it a few years ago in the bargain bin at a K-Mart for 99 cents. Probably the only time I've entered a K-Mart in the past decade, so astounding fortune on that one. :)
Some games just stay fun.
"Well considering the satellites need to beam the power down to earth based generation stations and these earth based stations will need to be close to population centers to avoid transmission losses, there is a reason to be afraid of this technology."
Caution, perhaps, but fear seems to be a bit excessive. Then again, it does seem to be the natural response of people to be afraid of nearly anything that doesn't come with an absolute guarantee of safety, even though pretty much nothing in existence can be guaranteed to be harmless.
This seems to be particularly excessive in the case of a beam that can quite literally be made to simply go away in milliseconds should safeguards in place, which are trivial and cheap to implement with redundancy when it comes to lasers, indicate that the beam isn't pointing within millimeters of its target. An automobile carries the potential to kill accidentally through mechanical failure or operator error, and they do so every single hour of every single day, but we let them carpet our cities anyhow.
So no, I don't actually find cause to be afraid of some very narrow beams of questionable risk that can disappear at a moment's notice being directed at a single point on the outskirts of town.
"Astrium says the latter can be addressed by using infrared lasers which, if misdirected, would not risk "cooking" anyone in their path."
"So a 20kw microwave beam can cook you, but a 20kw infrared beam will feel like getting hit by fluffy bunnies? If you are transmitting large amounts of power it will be dangerous. If it's a wide beam then it is inefficient but less dangerous, if it is a narrow beam then it is more efficient but more dangerous. I can only imagine the public outcry the first time an aircraft runs into one of these beams."
I usually prefer hard science, but I suppose that broad generalizations are fun, too. On a serious note, I'm not going to debate the specifics of the inherent risk of a theoretical design for a particular infrared laser versus a theoretical design for a particular maser in any manner since we'd both just be pulling assumptions out of our asses.
Regarding public outcry, of course there will be public outcry. That's a given any time that new scientific endeavors are tested. Christ, there are still a crapton of people flipping out over the impended destruction of the universe as a result of the Large Hadron Collider going online. Perhaps if aircraft respect the miniscule no-fly zone that would surround the path of the beams, like they have to with any other power line, then your hypothetical example won't be an issue.
"We still have nothing showing that this technology has the potential to be cheaper than earth based solar."
Ah well, if researchers can't prove that they can save a buck, I guess they'd better give up on the experiments.
I'm saying that I like the odds that in the event of an unforeseen accident that horrible devastation, or even mild inconvenience, won't be inflicted upon the human race and that I'm not going to cower in fear over an event that has less likelihood of occurring than someone driving into my bedroom while I'm sleeping. Of course, I personally know two people that has happened to, so maybe bedroom vehicular encounters aren't all that unlikely.
In any case, despite your bizarre and utterly failed attempt to reword my opinion into a completely different sentiment, I continue to personally support the notion of Astrium carrying this out, just as other people are entitled to voice their fears of the possible consequences.
Far enough to get me to work, although I'd have to recharge here before heading home.
Yeah, NESoid and SNESoid are awesome, but I wouldn't mind if they released these updated versions to run natively in Android as well.