There's two big problems with this though... first, the majority of the sound that comes from a moving car is from the tires (I didn't believe it at first, but roll you window down and listen some time), so this whole point seems moot. Second, do we really want the sound of thousands of Jetsons' cars on a crowded 5pm traffic jam? Expect road rage incidents to go through the roof.

J

What?? NO!!! It's *our* fault... stupid scientists didn't get the memo, *WE* cause every iota of enviromental change on the planet because we're evil greedy self-consumed capitalist polluting pigs...I thought Al Gore covered this.

J

For the love of GOD someone mod parent as funny.

J

In AC language, basically, to sell to a power grid you must have a rather standard amount of wattage that your providing... when the wind doesn't blow, that wattage is supplied by the hydrocarbon powered motors that spin the blades and the turbines generating electricity... that's pretty much standard anywhere you go.

Resultant conclusion, you still need oil/gas to run a windfarm. No matter how green you want to be.

J

The company has also leased 38,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico, where it hopes to build hundreds of 300-foot wind turbines that can each generate up to 5 megawatts of power to support additional facilities. Baryonyx plans to sell excess capacity to the local utility, which it will use as a backup when the wind dies down.

Wind generators are required to have (usually gasoline or diesel) motor backups when the "wind dies down" because they are required to maintain a certain amount of power at all times... they have to keep producing electricity whether the wind is spinning the blades or whether the motor is.

Will it still use THREE TIMES the RAM that my Ubuntu desktop uses (same functional apps running)?

J

The only upkeep needed in SWG was paying maintenance fees on structures... if you ignore your sim, they die. Huge difference.

The Sims is not a role playing game, its a voyeurist game. You don't control your Sim's actions, you control its environment to see how much you can fuck with it. An RPG is the opposite.

J

This was kind of my point. It's too much like RL. When most people play games, they don't WANT to decide what they want to do. If I wanted to plan out my day, I'd get stuff done in RL. You have to have a pretty robust quest system to keep people involved.

"twice the size of the Barrens?" I don't think so, the average SWG planet was about the size of Hellfire Peninsula (IIRC, I'd have to check to be sure, but I don't remember it taking more than 15 min to run across Tatooine).

I don't see how SWG was immersive in its own context. It was immersive in the sense that it seemed like RL, with real merchants and play created content, but even my SW friend who waited in line 12 hours to see Episode III, owns all the toys (he's 32), and his online name is always a variant on "Anakin" couldn't get interested in the game, because, once you get a house, and armor, and some weapons, unless you wanted to grind out a Jedi, there was nothing to do.

FYI, I was a player in the first year, well before the prevalence of Jedi or the NGE, or any of the changes, I'm referring to the total sandbox style that they made the game with originally. I can honestly say, in retrospect, that I thought SWG was a good MMO until I got WoW on that first week it was out. I had no idea how shitty SWG really was until I stayed up all night that first night with WoW, being amazed at Teldrassil's huge trees, the music that seemed perfect, and that endless push of the questlines that guided me through the game.

I don't play anymore, but love it or hate it, WoW was an amazing game, executed and polished as they come.

J

On the topic of the necessity of quests/questing in an MMO,

I think an interesting example to look at was Star Wars: Galaxies... They tried an almost completely free sand-box style of play, and had arguably the best theme for an MMO ever, and it totally sucked. Once you'd visited all the places from the movies, and seen the characters, there was nothing to do. It was too much like real life. You could go into business for yourself, buy a house, get involved in community politics, and live out a life vicariously .... with nothing to do. The quests were a joke, the pvp was a joke (especially when you added Jedi to the mix), and you couldn't jump. No vertical movement at all. They went to all that trouble to make this game, but you couldn't jump.

Love it or hate it, Blizzard has kept people involved in their game for a LONG time, multiple lifetimes when compared to other MMO's...if the game doesn't push and pull you into some direction, you do the same shit you do in real life, get bored.

This seems to be a great example of how people refuse to acknowledge we live in a natural world of change... the side of the mountain fails, it's nature... the planet decides to warm half a degree, and it's our fault?

j

It's not embezzlement. It's just unscrupulous.

Embezzlement involves stealing from a business. It does not cover setting up a vendor on the side... that's legal, just "dirty," depending on who knows. It could be totally OK, with full disclosure.

J

First of all, try it... I don't know how I ever did without 2 monitors.

Say one screen is vertically bigger (in pixels), say it's taller than its sister monitor, so if you move your mouse along the top of the taller screen over to the shorter display, there is an imaginary space the mouse is in that doesn't show up, since the shorter display isn't that tall... the mouse itself moves seamlessly between displays, as do windows.... the mouse doesn't get *stuck* so much as it is unseen.

Wow, rereading that, apparently i'm not in a very eloquent mood, but i think it gets the point across.

J

So the four* UN Resolutions demanding that Saddam "disarm" and allow inspectors back in _or else_ was just what? US driven posturing? The UN hates the US, that's dum.

* it was either 3 or 4, I'm not interested enough to go look it up.

J

I say this with love... keep your day job.