In principle, Digital Angel has been tossed about in theory for years as a way of providing security for high-level execs travelling to foreign countries, etc. If you're someone like Lou Gerstner or Rupert Murdoch, you're a company asset which could inflict more damage by being kidnapped from your own home than any other (lower) employee calling in sick.
But on the other hand, this tech makes corporate spying much EASIER, not by keeping tabs on the lower peons, but by establishing the overall location of an operative's rendezvous -- sending an IBM or Fox rep under alias to work for Toshiba as a temp for two years for example. The gruntwork would be done by the employee, while the "Angel" establishes that they're in Toshiba's New England or Tokyo plant.
Like another poster mentioned, it would find heavy use on suspected drug offenders, but more importantly, anyone who posts bail, goes on parole, or heck, any computer user "suspicious" enough to be compares to John Wayne Gacy or Kevin Mitnick.
Heh-heh-heh...if memory serves me correctly, the clock runs out on Mickey's copyright in less than 30 or so years. A special waiver was written during the Reagan years which extended Disney's ownership a bit, but nothing lasts forever.
And the same thing will happen to a lot of other characters, unless they're altered enough to gain a new copyright/trademark license (ie., Turner's colorization of old MGM films.)
Another problem would be the accuracy of these satellites. If they miss the debris they're targeted to latch onto, that's more revenue lost.
Even if the debris can be approached, a slight miscalculation in telemetry could bump the target away from the recovery craft, where it could remain in orbit with an even less likely chance of plummeting into our atmosphere.
No, but perhaps the military might...after all, there were those four army personnel that got killed in a JATO bottle-powered Jeep (which actually counts as the definative "Original Rocket Car Legend" (tm).
What they learned was that many higher institutions can be bought out for the right price, as demonstrated by the "academic research" chairs many Fortune 500 companies have helped finance.
And much like the Pepsi Arena, whomever's renting the tent for a show can drink whatever they like...those iMacs wouldn't have been covered if a "donation" by Steve Jobs had helped put paint new lines in the faculty parking lot.
Part of the problem was due to the expense (in terms of $$$ as well as resources and actual manhours) involved in creating new boards; in addition to designing new bumper and ramp layouts, licening fees (for tie-in games, music, etc.) and transport damage caused by distributors to arcades/bars/etc. also added to the toll.
Most of the titles over the past two decades have been more prone to having the ball crack and shatter backglass due to the higher elevation of the ramps, which were raised for the extra flipper/bumper setups. Williams and Gottleib, in an effort to save on expenses, would canabalize the leftovers of many titles in order to reduce the manufacturing labor on newer tables ("Cue Ball Wizard" was an anniversary redress of "2001").
Compare that to video arcade games, where new motherboards and marquees are tossed into older console shell, and you can see how pinball companies stuck with doing a lot more work for the same market.
"This is NOT spam! One of our subsidiaries which you have done business with received your legally binding signature...to withdraw from our mailing list, merely click the link below, where you will receive instructions to verify your decision to op-out by providing your (wait for it)..."
The faster spin I was referring to was only in terms of a few hours per day; it was supposed to have been less than 16 hours from sunrise to sunset, but that's hardly enough to cause anything (other than excess gas molecules of oxygen & helium) to be liberated from the planet's gravity.
Part of the Great Comet theory does mention the slowdown of rotation as an effect, and the Earth's "wobble" adjustment accounts for this as well.
IANAP (I am not a palentologist, but the Earth at the time was figured to be rotating at a faster rate, while some scientists have felt the spin itself wasn't perfectly horizontal but more of a "wobble".
Nonetheless, as far as the larger sauropods and gravity are concerned, a couple theories have stressed that the tail and head movements of the creatures enabled it to survive. Like the physics that enable a bumblebee to remain aloft, the tail portion would've been in motion a great deal of the time, while the neckbones acted as a fulcrum.
Back around '81, Roger Zelazny came up with a story element that featured a microchip inside the cover and spine of a hardcover book. Like a PDA or MP3 device, it had an IR interface and could play music. Voice and fingerprint recognition were included as well.
The books that were used were titles from the Western Canon; that way, a "title" would gain sentimental value in more ways than one, and in time, "older" editions could be traded like books or passed down like heirlooms.
Paired with some of WSG's "Sandminers" type interfaces, you would porbabally have one hell of a workstation going =)
...Unlike Auctionwatch and other tracking sites, Bidder's Edge was tracking in realtime, making the act of "sniping" so much easier for bidders who would otherwise have to log onto eBay directly.
In such a setup, a bid is cast (usually at an abnormally high rate) within the final hour of the auction, in many cases, within the last 2 minutes to 3 seconds. Anyone else who bid on the item early on in the auction (like a day or four) gets screwed. This also rasise suspicions of "shill" bids, bids cast by the seller & their associates to jack up the price (& hopefully demand) of the item.
While eBay goes to some lengths in saying they disapprove of shilling, they absolutely love sniping. It's where much of their revenue comes from, as hot items like Pokemon, Voodoo X cards, etc. can attract a Dutch tulip-like frenzy.
Meaning more customers, more items in demand for eBay's prersonalized (read: proprietary) site trackers to keep you informed of, more opportunities for folks to bring their crap to eBay, etc.
Bidder's Edge, therefore, was doing two thirds of all their work for them. No wonder eBay was pissed.
Actually, it wasn't just the Dark engine itself which added to the game's problems; excluding the spiders and the undead, the AI scripting of most the characters wasn't well planned.
One of the most notorious examples of this was in the innocent bystanders' behaviors, which were identical to the guards' templates. Hence they were often pacing about with invisible swords clutched in their hands.
1) The "Wazzup" piece was "original" enough in its presentation to qualify under Supreme Court rulings of the 1st Amendment as satire; if Saturday Night Live, the Fox Network, or the Onion had thrown up something similar, any argument by the AP could've been thrown out of court.
2) The AP is receiving enough attention as it is in the wake of its recent changes; after (repeatedly) switching owners as a result of losing their finances the years, the last thing they need as a "trusted source of news" is to generate publicity from a lawsuit they couldn't afford to lose revenue on.
Mind you, it's a @#*%! hat-trick and a half trying to launch yourself vertically into that crevice, but it'll drain almost all of your life as you get pelted on by all the other monsters trying to take you out.
It took me just over a month to finish that without god mode or any other cheast...one lucky bastard I know did it in eight days.
True, but part of the setup does rely upon "Interactive TV", which would imply some type of video signal compatable to US (NTSC), UK (PAL) and other broadcast formats, which all have different scan/refresh rates, and color intensity levels. While some of the means of the AT&T technology may be exclusive to their broadband service, the entire format itn't going to be entirely PC based, proprietary, or MPEG, Quicktime, etc.
>2) It isn't WebTV
Fair enough; "WebTV", like "Kleenex" and "Xerox" is a registered trademark, but the underlying principle is the same: a set-top client with a simplified browser, linked to a the provider's own (proprietary) portals.
As the HP printer uses a four-color inkjet, I would safely say that even at PC-compatable levels, images from Metal Gear Solid won't be anywhere as good as the images you'd actually see onscreen.
IMSO, (In My Snotty Opinion),the picture this paints seems a bit blurry. (Crap pun intended.)
Standard NTSC resoloution isn't all that hot to begin with, and the printer will produce (no doubt dithered) inkjet images. In spite of HP's confidence in color saturation, there's no mention of how - or what rate - the broadcast signals will be converted and rendered for the final result.
Toshiba had something similar put out a few years back, except that it used photographic paper and had a price range in the way of 5 digit US $ figures...a few places, like chip manufacturing plants and research labs keep 'em on hand for electron microscope images, but other than that, their sales were dismal.
This is no doubt a ploy to make the Web TV crowd feel more like actual computer users.
This type of edit console is mainly intended for the "prosumer" market, which is to say local cable affiliates, college campuses, & small independent videomakers who can afford waveform monitors, higher-end cameras with built-in test patterns/time base correction, and all that other Max Headroom tech.
Like S-HVS, 8mm and SuperBetamaxTM), these units are obscure and in some cases "obsolete" to the average joe over at Circuit City, but for regional cable stations, this is how their bread & butter are earned.
The MPEG-2 is roughly equivalent to the D-2 standard of video editing, which also uses "digital" tape; Phillips is no doubt counting on this as their lower-cost alternative, as well as a means of gaining an edge over with Sony & Matsuschita.
"Previous observations show that billions of years ago this missing matter formed vast complexes of hydrogen clouds -- but since then has vanished. Even Hubble's keen eye didn't see the hydrogen directly because it is too hot and rarified."
If much of the gas was in plasma form, it should be interesting to see if Chandra can fill in a few more details.
From the looks of it, Ultracade is trying to tap into the bar/nightclub market.
There's a couple of other vendors using multiple-title formats, albeit with trivia/swat the fly/tetris clone games ported into the console, but once those drinks start taking effect, the curiousity & nostalgia factors of the customers will kick in, making these consoles a better money draw for the establishment than salted nuts or pretzels.
Anyone notice the games were mainly old Taito titles? You can be sure that if Ultracade has the rights to the rest of the titles, demands for personalized custom packs will rise [like having Knights of the Round (available) paired with Magic Sword, or Elevator Action with "that other Otto" title, Bezerk].
Slashdot Mirror
Old man on steetcorner:
"What's that you got there? A barn coat?"
Young tech:
"No, actually it's an EIA/TIA-568B pullover!"
Most likely, netiher.
In principle, Digital Angel has been tossed about in theory for years as a way of providing security for high-level execs travelling to foreign countries, etc. If you're someone like Lou Gerstner or Rupert Murdoch, you're a company asset which could inflict more damage by being kidnapped from your own home than any other (lower) employee calling in sick.
But on the other hand, this tech makes corporate spying much EASIER, not by keeping tabs on the lower peons, but by establishing the overall location of an operative's rendezvous -- sending an IBM or Fox rep under alias to work for Toshiba as a temp for two years for example. The gruntwork would be done by the employee, while the "Angel" establishes that they're in Toshiba's New England or Tokyo plant.
Like another poster mentioned, it would find heavy use on suspected drug offenders, but more importantly, anyone who posts bail, goes on parole, or heck, any computer user "suspicious" enough to be compares to John Wayne Gacy or Kevin Mitnick.
Heh-heh-heh...if memory serves me correctly, the clock runs out on Mickey's copyright in less than 30 or so years. A special waiver was written during the Reagan years which extended Disney's ownership a bit, but nothing lasts forever.
And the same thing will happen to a lot of other characters, unless they're altered enough to gain a new copyright/trademark license (ie., Turner's colorization of old MGM films.)
This Russian project sure sounds a lot like Tom Swift's Jetmarine!
Another problem would be the accuracy of these satellites. If they miss the debris they're targeted to latch onto, that's more revenue lost.
Even if the debris can be approached, a slight miscalculation in telemetry could bump the target away from the recovery craft, where it could remain in orbit with an even less likely chance of plummeting into our atmosphere.
That's great!
Now I can...read books and flip levers.
No, but perhaps the military might...after all, there were those four army personnel that got killed in a JATO bottle-powered Jeep (which actually counts as the definative "Original Rocket Car Legend" (tm).
What they learned was that many higher institutions can be bought out for the right price, as demonstrated by the "academic research" chairs many Fortune 500 companies have helped finance.
And much like the Pepsi Arena, whomever's renting the tent for a show can drink whatever they like...those iMacs wouldn't have been covered if a "donation" by Steve Jobs had helped put paint new lines in the faculty parking lot.
Part of the problem was due to the expense (in terms of $$$ as well as resources and actual manhours) involved in creating new boards; in addition to designing new bumper and ramp layouts, licening fees (for tie-in games, music, etc.) and transport damage caused by distributors to arcades/bars/etc. also added to the toll.
Most of the titles over the past two decades have been more prone to having the ball crack and shatter backglass due to the higher elevation of the ramps, which were raised for the extra flipper/bumper setups. Williams and Gottleib, in an effort to save on expenses, would canabalize the leftovers of many titles in order to reduce the manufacturing labor on newer tables ("Cue Ball Wizard" was an anniversary redress of "2001").
Compare that to video arcade games, where new motherboards and marquees are tossed into older console shell, and you can see how pinball companies stuck with doing a lot more work for the same market.
"This is NOT spam! One of our subsidiaries which you have done business with received your legally binding signature...to withdraw from our mailing list, merely click the link below, where you will receive instructions to verify your decision to op-out by providing your (wait for it)..."
The faster spin I was referring to was only in terms of a few hours per day; it was supposed to have been less than 16 hours from sunrise to sunset, but that's hardly enough to cause anything (other than excess gas molecules of oxygen & helium) to be liberated from the planet's gravity.
Part of the Great Comet theory does mention the slowdown of rotation as an effect, and the Earth's "wobble" adjustment accounts for this as well.
IANAP (I am not a palentologist, but the Earth at the time was figured to be rotating at a faster rate, while some scientists have felt the spin itself wasn't perfectly horizontal but more of a "wobble".
Nonetheless, as far as the larger sauropods and gravity are concerned, a couple theories have stressed that the tail and head movements of the creatures enabled it to survive. Like the physics that enable a bumblebee to remain aloft, the tail portion would've been in motion a great deal of the time, while the neckbones acted as a fulcrum.
What I meant to say in that last sentance was "server", not workstation! I gotta proofread before I post!
Back around '81, Roger Zelazny came up with a story element that featured a microchip inside the cover and spine of a hardcover book. Like a PDA or MP3 device, it had an IR interface and could play music. Voice and fingerprint recognition were included as well.
The books that were used were titles from the Western Canon; that way, a "title" would gain sentimental value in more ways than one, and in time, "older" editions could be traded like books or passed down like heirlooms.
Paired with some of WSG's "Sandminers" type interfaces, you would porbabally have one hell of a workstation going =)
...Unlike Auctionwatch and other tracking sites, Bidder's Edge was tracking in realtime, making the act of "sniping" so much easier for bidders who would otherwise have to log onto eBay directly.
In such a setup, a bid is cast (usually at an abnormally high rate) within the final hour of the auction, in many cases, within the last 2 minutes to 3 seconds. Anyone else who bid on the item early on in the auction (like a day or four) gets screwed. This also rasise suspicions of "shill" bids, bids cast by the seller & their associates to jack up the price (& hopefully demand) of the item.
While eBay goes to some lengths in saying they disapprove of shilling, they absolutely love sniping. It's where much of their revenue comes from, as hot items like Pokemon, Voodoo X cards, etc. can attract a Dutch tulip-like frenzy.
Meaning more customers, more items in demand for eBay's prersonalized (read: proprietary) site
trackers to keep you informed of, more opportunities for folks to bring their crap to eBay, etc.
Bidder's Edge, therefore, was doing two thirds of all their work for them. No wonder eBay was pissed.
Actually, it wasn't just the Dark engine itself which added to the game's problems; excluding the spiders and the undead, the AI scripting of most the characters wasn't well planned.
One of the most notorious examples of this was in the innocent bystanders' behaviors, which were identical to the guards' templates. Hence they were often pacing about with invisible swords clutched in their hands.
IANAL, but the AP didn't pursure for two reasons:
1) The "Wazzup" piece was "original" enough in its presentation to qualify under Supreme Court rulings of the 1st Amendment as satire; if Saturday Night Live, the Fox Network, or the Onion had thrown up something similar, any argument by the AP could've been thrown out of court.
2) The AP is receiving enough attention as it is in the wake of its recent changes; after (repeatedly) switching owners as a result of losing their finances the years, the last thing they need as a "trusted source of news" is to generate publicity from a lawsuit they couldn't afford to lose revenue on.
Actually, in Doom II, you can.
Mind you, it's a @#*%! hat-trick and a half trying to launch yourself vertically into that crevice, but it'll drain almost all of your life as you get pelted on by all the other monsters trying to take you out.
It took me just over a month to finish that without god mode or any other cheast...one lucky bastard I know did it in eight days.
>It isn't
>
>1) NTSC or PAL/etc compatible.
True, but part of the setup does rely upon "Interactive TV", which would imply some type of video signal compatable to US (NTSC), UK (PAL) and other broadcast formats, which all have different scan/refresh rates, and color intensity levels. While some of the means of the AT&T technology may be exclusive to their broadband service, the entire format itn't going to be entirely PC based, proprietary, or MPEG, Quicktime, etc.
>2) It isn't WebTV
Fair enough; "WebTV", like "Kleenex" and "Xerox" is a registered trademark, but the underlying principle is the same: a set-top client with a simplified browser, linked to a the provider's own (proprietary) portals.
As the HP printer uses a four-color inkjet, I would safely say that even at PC-compatable levels, images from Metal Gear Solid won't be anywhere as good as the images you'd actually see onscreen.
Don't forget Ticketmaster!
IMSO, (In My Snotty Opinion),the picture this paints seems a bit blurry. (Crap pun intended.)
Standard NTSC resoloution isn't all that hot to begin with, and the printer will produce (no doubt dithered) inkjet images. In spite of HP's confidence in color saturation, there's no mention of how - or what rate - the broadcast signals will be converted and rendered for the final result.
Toshiba had something similar put out a few years back, except that it used photographic paper and had a price range in the way of 5 digit US $ figures...a few places, like chip manufacturing plants and research labs keep 'em on hand for electron microscope images, but other than that, their sales were dismal.
This is no doubt a ploy to make the Web TV crowd feel more like actual computer users.
This type of edit console is mainly intended for the "prosumer" market, which is to say local cable affiliates, college campuses, & small independent videomakers who can afford waveform monitors, higher-end cameras with built-in test patterns/time base correction, and all that other Max Headroom tech.
Like S-HVS, 8mm and SuperBetamaxTM), these units are obscure and in some cases "obsolete" to the average joe over at Circuit City, but for regional cable stations, this is how their bread & butter are earned.
The MPEG-2 is roughly equivalent to the D-2 standard of video editing, which also uses "digital" tape; Phillips is no doubt counting on this as their lower-cost alternative, as well as a means of gaining an edge over with Sony & Matsuschita.
From the article:
"Previous observations show that billions of years ago this
missing matter formed vast complexes of hydrogen clouds -- but
since then has vanished. Even Hubble's keen eye didn't see the
hydrogen directly because it is too hot and rarified."
If much of the gas was in plasma form, it should be interesting to see if Chandra can fill in a few more details.
This particular title's still being played right now, after almost four years in the running!
This is often confused with Duke Nukem Forever, which is actually more of a strategy game =)
From the looks of it, Ultracade is trying to tap into the bar/nightclub market.
There's a couple of other vendors using multiple-title formats, albeit with trivia/swat the fly/tetris clone games ported into the console, but once those drinks start taking effect, the curiousity & nostalgia factors of the customers will kick in, making these consoles a better money draw for the establishment than salted nuts
or pretzels.
Anyone notice the games were mainly old Taito titles? You can be sure that if Ultracade has the rights to the rest of the titles, demands for personalized custom packs will rise [like having Knights of the Round (available) paired with Magic Sword, or Elevator Action with "that other Otto" title, Bezerk].