"I'm interested to hear Mr Savain give an alternate explanation for how GPS works."
Ah, this is the first time I have the honour to tell this to a/.er.
RTFA
I'm being unfair, since it was on an unlinked page on the same site
"Time does not dilate for the simple reason that time, by definition, cannot change. The slowing of clocks is more likely due to energy conservation principles that come into play when a huge number of particles are interacting locally." http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/devil.htm
"Hiring good employees, not bad employees. Brilliant!"
Tell Microsoft.
More seriously, everyone is aware that have good employees is better than have bad employees. However, alot of companies underestimate the difference it can make.
"By now the reader should realize that there is no such thing as spacetime and that gravity does not have anything to do with the curvature of a physical spacetime"
Are my ears the only ones out there to be delighted by these sweet words of obvious common sence? Wake me up, wake me up, it's too good to be real. All I need to hear now is that photons do have a mass and that they are deviated by heavy objects (or even any objects) because they are influenced by gravity like any other object. Oh yeah!! OH YEAH!!!
Maybe, but as Steve Jobs pointed out in the past, it's more specific to the IT world. The Good Hire/Bad Hire ratio must be at the highest in this world
Oh yeah I knew that one too:-). I was mainly proposing a solution to make the travel feel instantaneous (since usually time travels are to time what teleportation is to space)
It seems that Google follows the path of our beloved Steve Jobs by looking for the best hires. I see that as a big common point between Google and Apple actually, smart people hiring lots of even smarter people.
Sounds like it's the magic formula in the IT world.
"The only problem, of course, is that you'd probably want to set it in San Francisco, which is what they did last time."
Yeah, now I understand why you suggested San Andreas to be set in the 1960's. Which makes me by the way wonder, how big will be the next GTA? Will it be so-called "state-sized", in other words 3 miles by 3? (take a car at some end of the map, make it fly by typing CHITTYCHITTYBANGBANG on a PC, fly to the other end, and read the distance. And they dare calling that a state! It's about 130 times smaller than Rhode Island)
Undoubtfully. But will we complain of physics providing us too much fun? I've seen worse physics tho, remember Driver 1? The least bump would make you fly above a half-dozen cars before you'd hit the building at the end of the street.
Let's say the following : GTA's physics are both realistic enough for being credible, and unrealistic enough to make it fun.
"quirk: well, glitch. I don't know if it's "realistic" physics or a rounding error that would make a cycle spin quite so much. Maybe/"
Why not. But most of the time, I have the feeling that the spinning is right. Except once, I was on one wheel, with the back of the bike making sparks on the concrete, and bent frontward in order to bring my bike back into a more horizontal position, and I hit a car head-on. Result : Distance : 9.26 m Height : 1.5m Rotation : 1014 degrees. Quite surprising result, so yeah that may have to be due to a glitch.
Other than that, most of the time, the physics feel right. But after all, they're *only* computing it with floats (it seems)
well yeah, although I'm not sure to know what the words quirk, nook or cranny means, basically, they made this game with physics so you can do stuff you almost could do (provided that falling off the top of the Golden Gate bridge on a bike and that it doesn't hurt you or your bike when you land can be considered feasible) in reality with the real physics. I think that's how you make a game that allows you to do things you didn't even think about, you try to extensively simulate aspects of reality, and in the end you end up with a game with great and unexpected possibilites.
As for the video, well idk if the computer it's on is supposed to be on is on, but if so then I'd set it up as a FTP server with FileZilla and share all my drives on it (protected by an account with a pwd off course). I been doing that myself and it's quite fun to get files off your hard disks from anywhere you're connecting yourself from without having to plan anything really.
"Well, obviously the designers had stunting in mind a bit, which is why they stuck a number of ramps about, as well as "insane stunt" bonuses."
Personally, never use them. The reason for that is that there's nothing impressive about performing these insane stunts. You can get much better stunt out of rolling on the back wheel of your bike on the wrong way on the freeway and hit cars head on (basically it makes you spin in the air) or even run your car into what separates the two ways of the Las Venturas freeway to make it take off/spin/hit a light and spin faster/etc.. and I don't think that the designers had this in mind when they designed that part of the freeway, or anything else.
"I love the one video that has an intermission that gets the cops to do lots of stupid stuff, usually ending up with them in the water, either in their car or not..."
I don't think that GTA should ever go back earlier than the 70's. I once thought that it could be cool if we could have a Untouchables-style GTA, set in some kind of Chicago in the 1930's, the problem is that, besides the fact that the music on the radios wouldn't be much appreciated by players, we're used to such things as helicopters, cell phones and fast cars, and we'd be missing that. We probably can make comparable objections to a GTA set in the 60's (although it has already be done once, now we're used to things we don't wanna see disappear)
As for San Andreas, I think it was a must it had to be put right in the middle of the gangsta rap era
Ever heard about stunting? A whole lot of people use GTA to make stunts in them and make videos out of them.
Actually I knew well what I'm talkin about since I'm doing a video too (to be released around when the next GTA comes out), and that's pretty much all I'm doing in GTA.
Was what what the game was designed to do? Was it really meant to be such a great stunting game? I doubt it, and that's what's cool about GTA, you can find it uses that the game wasn't designed for, and that you might call open-ended
What a depressing budget, cancelling/delaying some of the coolest projects out there (mostly the ones about earth-sized exoplanets and black holes) and funding that crap ass shuttle thing and even the HST.
The HST!! When will they realize that this piece of crap is only good at taking useless nice-looking colourful pictures and throw this money hungry telescope in the Pacific.
And no, the next "See, the HST made us discover something that we couldn't have discovered without it" Slashdot article won't change my mind.
Totally agree with you, although I don't have your insight. And even when it comes to shooting, I don't see what aiming with a crosshair with your mouse has to do anything with holding an actual gun, let alone operating it, you can play as many FPS's as you like, you still won't know how to operate a gun, besides pulling the trigger, provided that that's all it takes to shoot.
I may be a bit off topic by talking about the whole problem between science and religion in general.
I still can't understand how the scientists can tolerate the intrusion of religion. OK, there is pressure, but, we're supposed to ignore them whatever they say. If they want to remind us that there are alternatives to our "theories", or that our theories are theories, why should we give a fuck?
We don't give a fuck about them, they can keep talking and even make up pseudo-scientifical theories, we don't give a fuck about them, because they're not doing science.
"The astronauts could see Surveyor 3 from their lunar module Intrepid. "I remember the first time I looked at it," recalls Bean. "I thought it was on a slope of 40 degrees. How are we going to get down there? I remember us talking about it in the cabin, about having to use ropes."
But "it turned out [the ground] was real flat," rejoined Conrad."
Good news, no need to find yourself a job at Apple Computer anymore to experience the Reality Distortion Field, you just gotta go to the moon
You see, there is such a thing as AI, like, when it comes to neural networks and stuff like that. In this domain, you definitly could see improvements over the years, and make stuff like OCR, voice recognition, language translation or video game AI better.
But other than that, I don't think machines will ever read books, or will ever program computer programs (or they could, but to a very small extend I think).
When Dyson says "We could construct a machine that is more intelligent than we can understand. It's possible Google is that kind of thing already. It scales so fast." I think his last statement is bullshit. As I said many times out here, a popular belief is that a large network of powerful computers is enough to see intelligence emerge. But it's full wrong. Intelligence cannot emerge without an appropriate algorithm, provided that there can be one. You can have the universe most powerful network, it will still only be good at doing what it's supposed to do, like crawling web pages for example.
Maybe I went a bit too far by claiming that this part of TFA was completly ridiculous, but sitll, I maintain that imagining that intelligence will emerge from Google is ridiculous. You see, you often hear that by 2050 computers will be smarter than humans, I think it's BS, the reason for that is that now, you can't program something like a bug (understand an insect-like machine) that can walk around and avoid obstacles without programming it for walking around and avoidsing obstacles.
See that's what "true" intelligence consists off, we and animals, even as simple as bugs, do things we were not programmed to do. Was my cat programmed to watch TV? Was some code in our DNA there to make us build technology so we could go to the moon, or make computers? Of course no, we and the animals do all these things because we are intelligent, we don't need to be programmed for playing violin to one day play violin.
So the Google guys can make their computers read books, but the computers will only able to make off the information they read what they have been programmed for.
The difference between our brains and computers is that in our brains, we are both the computer and the user
Wow, do you also have the Y-axis inverted while using your mouse in Windows? Because to me aiming at someone in a FPS is just like pointing at some icon or button in Windows, so you might liek to have Y-axis inverted on Windows too (makes sence)
lol sorry to be off-topic but I just love your sig. Probably the best I seen out there
Btw, Deus Ex had a bit of what you're suggesting, only to a lesser extent, I remember having both my legs in the black, so the only way I could go on was to crawl on the ground.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say um... wait, a Slashdotter with a girlfriend, haha, you were about to fool me there
Ah, this is the first time I have the honour to tell this to a /.er.
RTFA
I'm being unfair, since it was on an unlinked page on the same site
"Time does not dilate for the simple reason that time, by definition, cannot change. The slowing of clocks is more likely due to energy conservation principles that come into play when a huge number of particles are interacting locally." http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/devil.htm
Tell Microsoft.
More seriously, everyone is aware that have good employees is better than have bad employees. However, alot of companies underestimate the difference it can make.
Are my ears the only ones out there to be delighted by these sweet words of obvious common sence? Wake me up, wake me up, it's too good to be real. All I need to hear now is that photons do have a mass and that they are deviated by heavy objects (or even any objects) because they are influenced by gravity like any other object. Oh yeah!! OH YEAH!!!
Maybe, but as Steve Jobs pointed out in the past, it's more specific to the IT world. The Good Hire/Bad Hire ratio must be at the highest in this world
Oh yeah I knew that one too :-). I was mainly proposing a solution to make the travel feel instantaneous (since usually time travels are to time what teleportation is to space)
Let's talk about that last statement again when we manage to freeze a man and unfreeze him alive a few decades or centuries later.
Sounds like it's the magic formula in the IT world.
Yeah, now I understand why you suggested San Andreas to be set in the 1960's. Which makes me by the way wonder, how big will be the next GTA? Will it be so-called "state-sized", in other words 3 miles by 3? (take a car at some end of the map, make it fly by typing CHITTYCHITTYBANGBANG on a PC, fly to the other end, and read the distance. And they dare calling that a state! It's about 130 times smaller than Rhode Island)
Let's say the following : GTA's physics are both realistic enough for being credible, and unrealistic enough to make it fun.
Why not. But most of the time, I have the feeling that the spinning is right. Except once, I was on one wheel, with the back of the bike making sparks on the concrete, and bent frontward in order to bring my bike back into a more horizontal position, and I hit a car head-on. Result : Distance : 9.26 m Height : 1.5m Rotation : 1014 degrees. Quite surprising result, so yeah that may have to be due to a glitch.
Other than that, most of the time, the physics feel right. But after all, they're *only* computing it with floats (it seems)
Oh ok, why not the 60's then. Dunno much about the 60's, never been there. Let's say not earlier than the late 60's then, do we agree on this one?
As for the video, well idk if the computer it's on is supposed to be on is on, but if so then I'd set it up as a FTP server with FileZilla and share all my drives on it (protected by an account with a pwd off course). I been doing that myself and it's quite fun to get files off your hard disks from anywhere you're connecting yourself from without having to plan anything really.
Personally, never use them. The reason for that is that there's nothing impressive about performing these insane stunts. You can get much better stunt out of rolling on the back wheel of your bike on the wrong way on the freeway and hit cars head on (basically it makes you spin in the air) or even run your car into what separates the two ways of the Las Venturas freeway to make it take off/spin/hit a light and spin faster/etc.. and I don't think that the designers had this in mind when they designed that part of the freeway, or anything else.
"I love the one video that has an intermission that gets the cops to do lots of stupid stuff, usually ending up with them in the water, either in their car or not..."
Provide a link! :)
As for San Andreas, I think it was a must it had to be put right in the middle of the gangsta rap era
Actually I knew well what I'm talkin about since I'm doing a video too (to be released around when the next GTA comes out), and that's pretty much all I'm doing in GTA.
Was what what the game was designed to do? Was it really meant to be such a great stunting game? I doubt it, and that's what's cool about GTA, you can find it uses that the game wasn't designed for, and that you might call open-ended
There's been a thread on it on some popular GTA forum, and we all agreed to say that setting it in the future would suck.
However, the destructible environnement thing that respawns magically is a good idea, although you're not the first one to have it ;)
The HST!! When will they realize that this piece of crap is only good at taking useless nice-looking colourful pictures and throw this money hungry telescope in the Pacific.
And no, the next "See, the HST made us discover something that we couldn't have discovered without it" Slashdot article won't change my mind.
Dump the muthafucka in the Pacific ocean, now!
A FPS player's two cents
What are we waiting for to send bulldozers over there?
I still can't understand how the scientists can tolerate the intrusion of religion. OK, there is pressure, but, we're supposed to ignore them whatever they say. If they want to remind us that there are alternatives to our "theories", or that our theories are theories, why should we give a fuck?
We don't give a fuck about them, they can keep talking and even make up pseudo-scientifical theories, we don't give a fuck about them, because they're not doing science.
Well that's how it should be..
But "it turned out [the ground] was real flat," rejoined Conrad."
Good news, no need to find yourself a job at Apple Computer anymore to experience the Reality Distortion Field, you just gotta go to the moon
But other than that, I don't think machines will ever read books, or will ever program computer programs (or they could, but to a very small extend I think).
When Dyson says "We could construct a machine that is more intelligent than we can understand. It's possible Google is that kind of thing already. It scales so fast." I think his last statement is bullshit. As I said many times out here, a popular belief is that a large network of powerful computers is enough to see intelligence emerge. But it's full wrong. Intelligence cannot emerge without an appropriate algorithm, provided that there can be one. You can have the universe most powerful network, it will still only be good at doing what it's supposed to do, like crawling web pages for example.
Maybe I went a bit too far by claiming that this part of TFA was completly ridiculous, but sitll, I maintain that imagining that intelligence will emerge from Google is ridiculous. You see, you often hear that by 2050 computers will be smarter than humans, I think it's BS, the reason for that is that now, you can't program something like a bug (understand an insect-like machine) that can walk around and avoid obstacles without programming it for walking around and avoidsing obstacles.
See that's what "true" intelligence consists off, we and animals, even as simple as bugs, do things we were not programmed to do. Was my cat programmed to watch TV? Was some code in our DNA there to make us build technology so we could go to the moon, or make computers? Of course no, we and the animals do all these things because we are intelligent, we don't need to be programmed for playing violin to one day play violin.
So the Google guys can make their computers read books, but the computers will only able to make off the information they read what they have been programmed for.
The difference between our brains and computers is that in our brains, we are both the computer and the user
Wow, do you also have the Y-axis inverted while using your mouse in Windows? Because to me aiming at someone in a FPS is just like pointing at some icon or button in Windows, so you might liek to have Y-axis inverted on Windows too (makes sence)
Btw, Deus Ex had a bit of what you're suggesting, only to a lesser extent, I remember having both my legs in the black, so the only way I could go on was to crawl on the ground.