More and more companies are dropping co-op games (except for strategy games), pushing off PC onto consoles (or at least developing on consoles so the control schema sucks), and now droping LAN games?

It seems like the industry is trying desperately to get me to stop playing games.

Oh, and it won't really do much to damp piracy, just shift it from stolen images to stolen keys, thus increasing the harm to legit gamers. Not having a whole "way to go" moment here.

Recently got UT3, BTW, which is so buggy as to be more frustrating than fun. Thank goodness it was only $10. Does play LAN games, but the settings are arbitrarily restricted (and seemingly somewhat random re: options and difficulty).

Is it just me, or is gaming in general going downhill?

The article mentioned tethered turbines.

I criticized the journalists, apparently appropriately.

Even with turbines on the ground, we're talking massive tethers with a pretty high probability of substantial damage and/or loss of life if 20,000 feet plus of it comes crashing down, and that doesn't even depend on a mechanical failure, it could be a steering failure.

Even if you put the turbine on the ground, it's still a spectacularly useless idea. Call it flamebait if you will, I don't have the time to craft posts to deliver the least possible offense to people who think hope can conquer physics.

Go ahead, build the lightest turbine you can, then tether it with the lightest 20,000-foot-long cable you can make that can transmit the electricty, and you won't be anywhere NEAR an amount of weight you can lift with anything short of a MASSIVE thinwing glider, which will catch the wind wrong for a second, the lift will slide off the wings and it will death-spiral along with that cable, beelining for a residential neighborhood near you.

Even if they had micro-nanotubes that could support the weight and deliver the power, or wireless power, or whatever, you'd still have mechanical failures and huge turbines plummeting into buildings (or ships if you put them over water).

This gets proposed every year somwhere, and it's just as dumb. There are a lot of good ideas out there and it's somewhat infuriating that perpetual-motion machines and microwave diamonds keep getting the attention.

Science journalists need to start INVESTIGATING things, not just mindlessly reporting the same nonsense every year.

I see, so doing what works is "corrupting," doing what fails isn't.

Kind of the core of why academia has been on a downhill slope for decades.

As someone once said, "the word "academic" is a well-known synonym for the word "meaningless.""

That being said, I don't think that, for the most part, the public school system can be fixed with "band-aids."

If words meant things, we wouldn't have this argument twice a week. Unfortunately, it's an unenforceable suggestion - people use words as they please.

I prefer to think of this as storing something in three geometric dimensions and two buzzword/marketing dimensions.

As to the time-as-a-dimension thing, was there ever anything so completely wrong? Do things change over time in the second or fourth geometric dimensions? Whoops.

I have to learn to admit to myself that the dimension discussion, like the "what's a planet" discussion, has become political and therefore entered the realm of the perpetually insoluble.

1) The vehicle code says pedestrians have the right of way. Physics says the 3000lb vehicle has the right of way. One of those rules may override the other.

2) I see more and more idiot pedestians walking or riding bikes out in front of cars, and kids playing in the street. You can try to protect everyone from stupidity, but you're going to fail, because nothing is more ingenious than an idiot.

3) Yes, drivers need to be more careful. But pedestrians, carrying around the short end of the momentum stick, need to be even more more careful.

... so let me just say, do you remember that guy down the street who was always talking about building a helicopter hat, or having brushes under all the cars to keep the street clean, or making self-zipping pants?

Aren't you glad he didn't run for office and get into a position of political power?

He what?

Damnit.

Seriously, folks, it's a dunderheaded idea - I'm not saying all rail is, but we've got too much ground to cover and too many people spread out too far. As much as some people would like to, we're not going to move everybody around so they fit the needs of a rail system. And we aren't going to build a rail system big and complex enough to serve enough people.

I don't want people to give up their dreams, I just don't want to pay for them - especially for the really silly ones.

A misleading headline, jumping to conclusions like mad hares, and mad conspiracy theories about "the man?"

On slashdot?

The deuce you say!

While I complained about the coverage, I don't have a problem with the ambition behind the project. I don't know how it will end, but I don't have a problem with building something to last 10,000 years to prove it can be done, or because you want your name up in lights or whatever. It will probably require renovations (like Jens Olsen's 25ky clock linked elsewhere here), but it's still an audacious concept, and admirable for that.

Want!

Sorry I wasn't specific enough. The pictures (in the article) are largely small parts disassociated from their function or other parts they may be attached to. It's like the photographer was obsessed with the gears themselves and didn't care about the machine.

It seemed kind of more-artsy and less-informative.

You'd think I would appreciate lots of close-up pictures of dissociated machine parts, but today, not so much. Must be taxes, but that gallery just looks like a lot of meaningless gears.

Even pictures need context.

No, wear-leveling just delays the inevitable. Eventually, the last "spare" block is written to, and after that you have a write failure. One more failed block and you could have catastrophic failure, exactly as described (depending on which block failed).

To go even more sideways on the topic, I have a Viper 550 alarm on my car (older model). The remote went through the washer and dryer twice. Still works fine.

Also, my dollar-store 10-pack "Clip Click" pens seem to be able to survive washing without staining anything, and still work afterward.

Somehow, modern technology started becoming reliable and durable when I wasn't looking.

Nice bat, horrible music. Worst TV theme song ever.

No wonder the bat wanted to get into space.