Posts by DropBear

Re: "[...] his methods for making the Kessel run in 12 parsecs."

"Kessel is surrounded by a cluster of black holes and most ships have to take the "long way round"..."

Naaah, it's just that the Kessel run is actually an elaborate "travelling salesman" trial where you need to hit all checkpoints in arbitrary order and the remark was meant to compliment the prowess of the ship's navigation software and its manoeuvrability rather than raw speed...

PS - Disney, this idea is hereby declared public domain and free to use... ;)

Just to get this straight - am I in mortal danger carrying around a Super Soaker too if it looks vaguely realistic? How about one of those novelty "cigarette lighter" 'guns'? Or a complete "dummy" piece of casting...? Not talking about trying to draw one on a cop, mind you - just having it visibly on my person. Is this really where we're at? ...Srsly?!?

I'll be sure to remember to call a licensed electrician to replace that not-quite-broken light switch in the hallway. I've heard I could get electrocuted / spontaneously combust / catch both HIV and Ebola / create a tiny black hole that could destroy the known universe if I tried to do it myself... Maybe I'll call two of them, just to be on the safe side - or better yet: three, plus a safety inspector...!

Re: Goodness.

Actually, the need to reinstall all the time is the exact single reason that keeps me from installing Mint, which is otherwise exactly what I want (a traditional desktop environment). As it is, I'll have to fing something else that gives me the same kind of environment but lets me upgrade indefinitely, since that's a bigger deal-breaker for me than even Unity is...

"As far as I'm concerned, "robot" doesn't imply any intelligence at all"

Right, and those glorified DIY RC cars / tanks with a hammer / circular saw / flame thrower tacked on they keep passing off as "robot wars / battles" year after year are certainly also robots. Suuuuuuuuuure...

Re: “serious emotional distress”

"A better approach might be to first remove internet anonymity. People behave much better when they are themselves."

People also talk a LOT LESS when they are themselves. I'm perfectly willing to see whatever I write online affect the reputation of a persistent but anonymous alias, but I sure as hell wouldn't risk any consequences spilling over into real-life if I had no choice - I'd just keep my mouth shout as best I could*.

* I'm obviously not endorsing flat-out threatening other people and such hiding behind anonymity, but I'm definitely not willing to let any authority make a judgement call on what I'm "not allowed to say, or else" either (fine, the relevant admin is welcome to kick me out if he thinks he must).

Oh, I use advanced technology to do that, too. That device over there ("glass", they call it?) --->

Re: Sorry Julian....

Sure, so he can get slapped with 17329 consecutive life sentences without parole for swatting a fly or somesuch, like a certain other (not particularly-) distinguished gentleman recently. Clearly, murdering some people would have been preferable for him - that way he'd be out in ten years, tops. One has to get one's priorities right after all, and there's hardly anything more important than making an example of any dissenter people might possibly be inclined to sympathize with - or worse, much worse: follow...

If it's Depeche Mode, I prefer "Enjoy the silence" on Fridays...

"All I ever wanted

All I ever needed

Is here in my arms..." -->

Re: Road Network

I'm relieved to see they're not using Ethernet networking...

I'm sure you're aware (one of) the most widely used automotive networking standards is CAN - which cheerfully allows collisions on the presumption that the dominant party powers through while the other one gets... well... "collided", welcome to try again later if it still feels like trying; which is to say, it works _exactly_ like in real life, isn't it?

"The government is to blame for this. If something is illegal and yet it continues to happen - expand even - then someone is not doing their job."

Indeed. It shows they had no business outlawing something that the masses want to keep doing. If everyone is cutting straight across a patch of grass in the park, what you do is NOT put up a sign with "KEEP OFF THE GRASS OR ELSE". What you do is build a path across it.

Ooops, pet peeve triggered

To this day I remain mystified by games forcing the player to replay known parts over and over as some sort of punishment for failure. Fine, I understand one is not supposed to let the player waltz through a game essentially unopposed, but I consider artificially extending gameplay by mandatory replay of arbitrarily long previous sections a particularly cheap and nasty trick.

I know I'm not going to be popular with this view, but here's the thing: I play to have fun, to be entertained. I have less than zero interest in finely honing arbitrary leet skillz of pressing A + B + stick-up-and-left + right-trigger just the right millisecond in the upper right corner of screen 281. Some might take pride in such aptitudes, that's fine; I just see no reason to play anything that erects tall barriers I must be able to overcome if I want to progress. I have no desire to prove anything to anybody, if I want to get frustrated that's what real life is for. I don't need a game to realize I'd make a piss-poor silent assassin or F1 pilot in ultra-realistic real-life conditions, so please stop trying to train me to be one, okay? Instead, I prefer to be challenged at just about my skill level - make me work for progress, but not harder than I'm capable of. Sadly, too many games take the easy road of "creating playtime" by obstacle-stacking over the (admittedly harder / more expensive) option of a larger world and more meaningful gameplay... </rant>

Re: For fuck's sake.

"It's kHz, not KHz."

Yeah, yeah, sure, but which one is 1.000 kilocycles and which one is 1.024...?

Re: 16 years ago?

Soooo, um, at what age do we get to start to pretend that something was actually an artefact of our _parent's_ times instead of our as a coping mechanism against having to admit we're becoming older than dirt...? I mean, preferably _before_ Alzheimer makes us actually believe it too...?

Re: Botched Llanding?!?

"If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing..."

Sure, that's one perfectly valid way to look at it, hence no downvote from me. On the other hand, one can equally validly look at it as "the single one good thing about that landing is that the probe is still in one piece and sheer luck has more to do with it than planning does", which justifies the original assessment just fine. In absolute terms, it's an incredible triumph. I relative terms, there's hardly anything that didn't go wrong with that landing.

Wait - you mean there's some way to go to a webpage directly, without passing through Google? But isn't Google what we call the Internet?!? </sarcasm> Seriously, the tiny bit of faith in humanity I have left dies a little more every time I see yet another person who doesn't seem to have the faintest idea what that long text field at the top of the browser window might be for...

Re: OOH OOH!!! I know what the weak point is

"How could that ever be a good idea?"

Fiscally. They call them "revenue streams".

Re: No human will ride

They should be fine as long as there aren't any flies trapped with them in the pod. ...Huh? What? Oh, different pod? Sorry...

Re: Will there now be a "cash call" for implementing this?

"Will there now be a "cash call" for implementing this?"

Why, did the previous one end yet? Wouldn't know, considering I explicitly filter anything that sounds like a 'fund-raising' or 'central message' div for that site on all my computers ever since the latest missive of that useless bunch of money-wasting bureaucrats (who could easily run the servers for another decade with what they already have) covered over half of my entire screen. When they'll downsize to the personnel strictly needed to run the hardware and manage to prove they've spent all they had on strictly running the hardware and they stop using huge-ass banners 24/7/365 (once a year as in all throughout the year) I'll be happy to reconsider.

Re: De-indexing is not the same as removing

I suppose Microsoft should feel insulted because nobody seems to mind Bing still finds the same thing just fine...?

Re: Not much detail yet, then.

Yeah, that would be shiny. You know - faster would be better.... Also, what's this "deconvolution" nonsense - don't they just say "enhance"...?!?

Re: it's the US...

"You think that Kickstarter is just as bad as IndieGoGo?"

Yes. Yes, I do.

"Kickstarter require a feasible, working prototype"

In theory. Whereas, in practice it is "You MUST have a working prototype (but absolutely nobody will ever bother you actually asking for one should you have none - we certainly won't, not even if expressly notified of that)"

"do, at least, listen when there are significant complaints or the media get involved"

FTFY.

"Think of an idea that everyone loves the idea of but is on the very outer bounds of possibility - you don't need any way of actually making it."

How many "free energy" projects running right now on KS do you want me to link to call that bullshit? Think of a number, any number...

Re: Removing character limit

No, but I wouldn't mind a service that would invisibly intercept any mail coming from Facebook and automatically send a reply to every mail address detected in it with the message "This user doesn't have a Facebook account, doesn't want to get one, and is definitely not interested in seeing countless photos of your precious spawn or latest meal so kindly bugger off..."

Re: Risky thing to say as a man, I know but...

Hang on - that camel thing was crazy...?

Re: Said it before...

Very much so - unfortunately, I haven't the faintest idea how this could be helped... and the fact that these days one often has to write a short essay before one can put a single pixel on the screen isn't exactly helping either.