Zoom right in on the bits that you think are white, so that they fill your entire monitor. They're obviously blue. For a lot of us, that's the colour that we see when we look at it in context as well. I can see how you'd interpret it as being white by overcompensating for the colour in the bottom right, but that doesn't stop you from being wrong. The gold bits are gold when you zoom in (mostly, some are black), but a shiny black often looks yellow-gold in overexposed photos.

Ah, that's annoying. We can't play directly from BRDs? Bah.

Technically, yes, with the caveat that you'd need regular floating reboost platforms with significant power generation scattered all throughout the Pacific, and of course maintaining the track perfectly straight while floating (one presumes at a fixed depth under the water) provides its own engineering challenges. But room-temperature rarified hydrogen instead of rarified air would allow one to make the journey at about Mach 4. Faster if it's hot hydrogen.

Are you under the misconception that hyperloop is a pneumatic tube system?

Hyperloop is a magnetically-accelerated a ground-effect aircraft operating in the sort of extremely rarified air normally only found at high altitudes. The tube's purpose is to provide such a rarified atmosphere near the ground. It's not a pneumatic train. It's not a vactrain. It's not maglev. It's a ground-effect aircraft.

Branching would be really tricky, but there's no physical barriers. Note that even Musk's proposal isn't as far as you can take the concept. If you fill the tube with very low pressure water vapor instead of very low pressure air (via more pumping to overwhelm leaks, plus water vapor injection), your top speed jumps 40%. Fill it with hydrogen and it jumps 300% (normally hydrogen is a real pain to work with due to flammability, embrittlement, etc, but the densities in question are so low that such issues are mostly avoided). So we're talking the potential for hyperloop "speedways" for long distance runs that could blow airplanes out of the water.

The low numbers of passengers per capsule is really key to making the concept economical. Compare, say, monorail track with a full sized rail bridge. The former is vastly cheaper per unit distance because the peak loadings are so much lower, because the mass of the monorail trains are so much lower. A computer-controlled high launch rate of small, high speed capsules means you're spreading the loading out greatly, which means greatly reduced loading and thus materials costs.

Still, while Musk has been thinking of Hyperloop stations in the "airport" concept, he really needs to get out of that mindset. His proposed plan had them on the outskirts of cities. Airports are only on the outskirts of cities because they *must* be. You greatly reduce your utility by doing that, by making people catch connecting trains. Hyperloop can extend just fine into towns; with his two proposed endpoints in particular there are excellent rail routes into town that are quite straight that it could be built over.

.\\// from http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

Or from rbot:
[12:01am] @movietitle
12:01AM Ant: Title: LETHAL WARNING XVII
[12:01am] @movieplot
12:01AM Ant: Summary: He's an impetuous guerilla sorceror looking for the Big
                    One. She's an artistic thirtysomething detective from Mars. They fight crime.

What about playing encrypted BRDs? :(

But that's just where the usefulness ends. Sure, you now appreciate rock music, but can you play it in real life on real instruments?

Umm, yeah, and how many video game skills do you apply to daily life?

Are you an awesome assassin? A race car driver? A pilot? A marine? Are you actually Batman?

It's a frickin game. It is play. Nobody gives a crap in this context about playing an actual instrument. It's frickin air guitar. It's intended to be fun.

Millions of kids bought Guitar Hero and Rock Band to realize their dreams of actually becoming ROCK MUSICIANS.

Horseshit. Millions of kids bought GTA and Saints Row to realize their dreams of become thugs, mac daddies, and pimps.

Do you think any of them actually expect to have that happen? (Well, I guess in some cases the just might.)

Sadly, all the games do is to train you to press colored buttons in sequence with colored lights. Those skills are not transferable to real instruments, and in fact, won't even get you an audition.

Dude, in the 80s there used to be this game called Simon. It had four colored lights to press. You can still buy it.

This is shared fun, with "press colored buttons in sequence with colored lights" but with music and animations. It's not sophisticated or real. It's not for hardcore gamers.

Most 'skills' you practice in video games will never translate into real world skills or get you an interview. So why is this any different?

You don't need to like it or understand it, but it's not completely without entertainment value to some people ... even if they don't actually become Rock Bands. Which, none of them actually expect to.

No more than any other game with a "make pretend" aspect to it.

Cheers

If they're "high-prestige" why aren't you willing to move? It's not like you own that apartment you're renting. Move out when your lease comes up and make sure you tell management why you're doing it. Good tenants are hard to find, if you complain infrequently and pay your rent on time (less common than you'd think) they'll be sorry to see you go and will listen to your reasons for doing so.

Doesn't solve your problem in the short term but it's more effective for long term change than griping about the problem on Slashdot.

Because corporations bad, mmm'kay?

That's really the crux of it. Any argument against this ruling is immediately shouted down. I posited this question on another forum and received the equivalent of -1, Troll: Why is everybody cheering a ruling that attacks hypothetical problems (the oft discussed "fast lane" has yet to actually happen) while ignoring the actual problems that are impeding innovation? The "killer app" that started this whole argument is streaming video, so ask yourself which of these two things are a greater threat to that: The data caps that are currently being imposed or the fast lane that only exists on paper?

LOL ... I do now. Prior to rock band, absolutely not. Now based on drum rate I can tell old v new Metallica -- or at least know it's either Metallica or Anthrax (based on what else is in my collection that is).

And, obviously, I do not think real drumming is easy, not by a bloody long shot ... but she's hella good at it in the game. Way way better than I ever got. She was rocking it on expert and I was in awe.

But prior to that, it was all a blur of screeching noise that I couldn't stand.

Now? Metallica and a bunch of hard core punk are likely to be on my iPod.

As I said, my wife is eternally grateful for the game, as my musical horizons have blown past what they had been.

I used http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-C... but it didn't work on my king ant's very old ProStar lappy's HDD. I had to use my friend's different brand and model device to work. He told me that not all of them will work too even on desktop HDDs. :(

I agree. He might be able to run it in a VM too. Why UPS though? :P

LOL ... well then, carry on by all means.