If we could accelerate to relativistic velocity, the only other things stopping us might be relativistic dust specks, each and every one of which is now a bomb. For reference, see what could have been a deadly ding to the window of the Space Shuttle. If the object was larger, it might have penetrated. IIRC, it was thought to be caused by a paint chip. Velocity? Nowhere near relativistic.

A. Knock-knock. B. Who's there? A. To get to the other side.

No. Wait. Dammit. I suck at this.

'back into' oligarchy? Because somehow the pitifully small and ineffective MPAA is the bogeyman here?

Funny how Google can't be oligarchy. Compared the market capitalization lately?

This is a very silly objection, and I'll tell you why.

I routinely start watching a set of Minecraft youtubers for a thing called 'Mindcrack UHC'. I know the playstyles of many of the players, what can be expected of them, even some of the unusual team-ups worthy of a pro wrestling storyline (hi, Vechs/BTC/Nebs!).

They are BOXES running around. I have no idea what they actually look like, nor am I really interested.

Video games have the capacity to become the athletics version of Asian avatar popstars: it helps if there's character customization, but even so, if you want musclebound superheroes doing superhuman feats, reality can't possibly live up to computer generation. You'll find in movies now the big stars and their action scenes are largely videogames, and nobody complains and that's not even interactive. How much cooler is it, if the superhuman avatars are actually being controlled by dedicated human athletes straining their abilities to the limit to prevail? If it's not pre-scripted?

Imagine competitive Rubik's Cube solving to make it more understandable. That clearly involves intense physical dexterity, but also extremely rapid situational analysis and execution. It might not look as entertaining as football because it's way harder to know where the athlete is going with their cube (in football, you can see what's intended from the outside) but it's more or less the same type of thing.

Same with competitive gaming, with the advantage that if you know the game you can (like football) follow along and imagine how things might be executed, and see whether the players execute them. It's not 'can he run faster than the linebacker chasing him' but 'can he dodge this attack or pull off this complicated move'.

E-games are going to have to become more 'readable' to outsiders to go properly mainstream, but there's no conceptual problem with it. It's purely a matter of how audience-friendly you can make the concept of 'challenge' when it's a matter of situational analysis, threat and reaction. One awkward bit is that videogames can move too fast for the layman: but in the Michael Bay era, that's being steadily reinterpreted, people expect more demanding visual data.

Whaddya mean 'if'? ;)

At that point it becomes a prerequisite: you gotta be a great gamer, know your stuff, practice AND have ADHD. So much of it that you function normally on bucketloads of Adderall. You're the twitchy equivalent of a Kenyan long-distance runner with the toothpicks for legs, you've reached your final form ;)

It's horrible but it's also interesting. I've studied this stuff a bit. It doesn't bother me when you have categorical advantage but it gets more worrying when part of the 'qualification' is a dark history that leaves the hapless 'competer' human wreckage with nothing to live for but the will to win, forever unsatisfied unless they are crushing their opponents. Yet that's part of the formula, and a surprising amount of sports and entertainment is the wrangling of these freakish entities and trying to keep them from wrecking their teams, their bands, their lives etc.

You can't get away from this in any competitive sphere including life itself: when it comes down to the cult of the individual, it is ALWAYS possible to guarantee victory if you're okay with it being Pyrhhic. A sense of self-preservation or honoring the sport/context/environment is a handicap, and so you get Lance Armstrong every time, to a greater or lesser extent. That's what winning IS.

Interesting expressing these thoughts for the first time on a site where (a) there's huge respect for the cult of the winner and (b) there's also an entire subculture of shared cooperating, open source, and truly free software that is literally the opposite approach: trying to tear down all barriers to produce a context where anything is possible to anyone, without obstacle.

Nah. They give those things to any bozo these days ;)

Dude. Just take a stapler and some pens or something. Everything has limits.

Remember, your autonomous roving drone with a Beretta and solenoid is not an automatic weapon unless you code the trigger as a do/while loop!

Unroll the loop, so it counts as ten individual fire events that just happen to trigger really really fast ;P

Welp, now those firefighting helicopters are in REAL trouble

The first thing I thought of was the Magic software that ran support when I was there. This was the late 90s and it was already considered old.

After I looked up that link, I realized that I had written some FORTRAN during an internship. That was in the mid 80s, and the install may have been a few years old for all I knew.

All this plus drones flown by arrogant fools to get impressive camera footage will actively try to be IN the vicinity of anything on the scene. If there is an aircraft trying to make a firefighting pass, every single drone being flown with this agenda will try to get NEARER to the plane than all the other drones to ensure there aren't extra drones in the shot.

They'll not only try to get in the way but they'll try to get closer than the other drones for bragging rights. It's certainly not 'cool' to be the drone farthest away from the shot. Hence, human intervention actively making the problem worse.

Also bear in mind what a drone is. These five drones were competing with each other to get better footage. Dramatic close footage of helicopters is clearly good footage, and the kind of person who fights to get camera drones into the middle of a situation like this is the kind of person who'd try to get the helicopters and everything else in the shot good and tight. Close-up of the helicopter dumping water? Score!

These aren't stray animals, they are provably human beings on the scene somewhere, putting themselves and others in danger in order to be annoying paparazzi and excessively-wealthy-Silicon-valley-cocks AT THE SAME TIME.

By all means, shoot the drones on sight. No human paparazzi need be harmed, unless they croak from getting in the way of a massive fire on purpose.

I'm alarmed and impressed that they managed to get FIVE competing drones, all getting in the way as they tried to be 21st century paparazzi-by-wire. Literally, five rich people were doing this at the same time? What were they, waiting for the rich drone pilot bat-signal?

"DANGER on the freeway. Quick! Get in the way, and film it to post on rich douches of Instagram!"

Not that I'm bitter :D

Clearly, cow-ception. :)