Messages

51

General Chat / Re: Holy Crap! *New Tech/Gadget Thread*

« on: October 06, 2010, 09:45:48 PM »

Which is frankly sort of weird.  Why would a robot need a heads-up display?  You could just feed the data directly into the processor.  If we had a way to feed data directly into our brain I guarantee you we wouldn't be using heads-up displays.  The processor has to take the time to generate and render the, modify the image, then turns around and spends the time to interpret those modifications, then read the text back in again.  If it has access to the data necessary to generate the heads-up display and the text, it should be able to just make use of the data directly. 

It is like routing the data coming out of your CD-ROM drive to a server in Siberia, having the server convert it to an ISO file, then emailing the ISO back to the original computer.   The data has to travel through your CPU before you can send it over the web anyway, why not just use it there?

Sorry for the rant, that scene always bothered me.  It looks cool but it makes absolutely no sense.

52

General Gaming / Re: Pachter: Apple will have a game console soon

« on: October 06, 2010, 09:39:25 PM »

I've been hearing rumors of an apple game system since at least the N64 era, so forgive me if I don't take this very seriously.

53

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: October 06, 2010, 09:37:57 PM »

I have had a couple hard drives fail, as has my father and some of my friends, but I have only had 1 flash memory card fail on me.

54

General Chat / Re: Holy Crap! *New Tech/Gadget Thread*

« on: October 05, 2010, 09:02:56 PM »

I think AR is different from what you're talking about, it may be more of the 'sixth sense' BnM mentioned. AR is seeing something that isn't physically there. Your mention of books on a bookshelf, would be AR if your device's camera was looking over a book listing that changed into a bookshelf on the device to show you where the book is, that would be AR.

I was more talking about the device's camera looking at the bookshelf, scanning the books' titles, finding the one you are looking for, and then having the screen highlight the book in the picture and continue to do so in real-time as you move your camera closer to the book in question.  For the factory, the camera would identify its orientation and position, figure out which machines it is looking at, wirelessly retrieve the machines' status, then overlay that status on the image it is displaying of those machines, and do so in real time as you walk around through the factory.  The recipe thing would overlay a text bubble with an arrow pointing to the ingredient in question, as would the chemical safety issue.  The fault line one would overlay a marker on the screen showing the previous position of the objects (along with textual information on how far separated they are), or even an interpolated video showing its movement, all independent of the orientation of the camera, and the pipe crack one would overlay a picture of the previous crack, or perhaps also a semi-transparent animation showing the crack's progression overlayed on the live picture of the current crack.  The resistor one would take a picture, categorize the resistors, show a list of them next to the live video from the camera, then when you click on one of the resistors in the list it would highlight all instances of that resistor in the live video of the pile.

55

General Chat / Re: Holy Crap! *New Tech/Gadget Thread*

« on: October 05, 2010, 07:03:54 PM »

I think the practical uses of augmented reality go far beyond gaming and social networking.  Using the real-time display from your cell phone's camera, you could do things like pulling up status of machines in a factory, count the number of each type of resistor in a big pile in a desk, quickly find the book you are looking for on a bookshelf, pull up recipes you could make with a particular ingredient on a store shelf, keep track of the movement of two street signs on either side of a tectonic fault line, keep track of the propagation of cracks in a pipe, or pull up chemical safety data at a spill site using a tanker truck's warning markings.

56

NWR Forums ID Verification / Re: We need to make a thread for hilarious YouTube videos.

« on: October 03, 2010, 12:16:08 PM »

The mouse that roared, an epic battle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6kjC9y6Hrc&NR=1

57

General Gaming / Re: Place Yer Bets: Round 1: Super Mario All-Stars

« on: September 30, 2010, 06:24:23 PM »

I'm confused.  Has this been announced for the U.S. or not?  If not I put another 5 on "won't be announced"

58

General Chat / Another one bites the dust

« on: September 23, 2010, 11:34:24 PM »

I have to live in one of the most accident-prone blocks in the world.  In the 5 years I have lived here there have been 3 lethal fires on my block alone. 

Further, there is a car accident on the block while I am home on average about once every week and a half.  Another just happened.  And, as is typical, while I am typing this a fire truck pulls up.  Now the drivers are yelling at each other.  I don't even have to look out my window to know what is happening anymore, I can tell just from the sounds.

59

General Chat / Re: Dying relatives

« on: September 21, 2010, 10:55:35 PM »

I'm very sorry, TJ, I know it can't be easy.  I think your mother's suggestion is very good.

60

General Chat / Re: If you had the resources to take over/revive a TV show....

« on: September 20, 2010, 04:17:01 PM »

I'd really like to see a giant rubber monster suit battle with Cthulhu. Too bad the Power Rangers would all go insane in the battle. We'd have to have...

Godzilla vs. Cthulhu!

No, it has to be Bambi vs. Cthulhu!!!

61

General Gaming / Re: FoldIt

« on: September 20, 2010, 02:11:18 AM »

I know it has been out for a while, but I didn't see any mention of it.

62

General Gaming / FoldIt

« on: September 19, 2010, 10:33:51 PM »

Anyone remember the Folding@Home distributed protein folding screensaver?  The people behind it have now come out with FoldIt, the same basic idea but in game form.  Instead of having your computer do the folding in the background, the goal is to have you do the folding yourself.  It is essentially a puzzle game, trying to rearrange the protein backbone and functional groups to get a higher "score" (or minimize the free energy, if you know molecular biology).    You need to make sure bits of the structure don't overlap, that certain parts are towards the middle and others towards the edge, and try to get particular bits to line up. 

The program itself is pretty sophisticated, with an almost infinite undo/redo, and a graph showing your score per move that lets you easily go back to a particular point.  There are online leaderboards, the ability to work off of other peoples' results, live chat between players, co-op and versus mode, and a bunch of other features.  The game is free on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Here is a screenshot:


And Here is a youtube video showing the gameplay.

Note that these are both from much older versions of the game, the current version has a lot better graphics, and doesn't have the cell-shaded look.

What are the Goals of Foldit? Goals of the Intro Puzzles The Intro Puzzles are meant to familiarize new players with the basic concepts and tools they'll need to start folding proteins in Foldit's Science Puzzles.
 Goals of the Science Puzzles The current series of Science Puzzles, the Grand Challenges, are meant to generate the evidence needed to prove that human protein folders can be more effective than computers at certain aspects of protein structure prediction. That's what all the puzzles in Foldit are about right now: predicting the structure of a protein based on its amino acid sequence. The three rules mentioned above describe the characteristics of correct protein structures.
 Goals of Foldit For protein structure prediction, the eventual goal is to have human folders work on proteins that do not have a known structure. This would require first attracting the attention of scientists and biotech companies and convincing them that the process is effective. Another goal is to take folding strategies that  human players have come up with while playing the game, and automate these strategies to make protein-prediction software more effective. These two goals are more or less independent and either or both may happen.
The more interesting goal for Foldit, perhaps, is not in protein prediction but protein design. Designing new proteins may be more directly practical than protein prediction, as the problem you must solve as a protein designer is basically an engineering problem (protein engineering), whether you are trying to disable a virus or scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It's also a relatively new field compared to protein prediction. There aren't a lot of automated approaches to protein design, so Foldit's human folders will have less competition from the machines.

63

General Chat / Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread

« on: September 19, 2010, 01:56:12 PM »

Russel's Tea pot: Bertrand Russel used a teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars to explain why he rejected religion.  I can't say more without violating board rules.  The Wikipedia article on the subject is good.

Invisible Unicorn: The Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is a parody religion, similar to Russel's teapot in principle but put in a form more similar to real religions.  There is a link to the article on it, and several similar parody religions, on the Russel's teapot wikipedia article above.

The Four Humors: It was thought that the bloodstream was composed of four humours, or fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.  Disease was thought to be due to an imbalance in the humours, and bloodletting was intended to restore this balance.  Despite being the dominant medical system in Europe for thousands of years it doesn't actually bear any resemblance to reality in any way.

Classical Periodic Table: It was known for a long time that light was composed of waves, but since all other known waves were distortions in a medium (like sounds wave are distortions in air), it was thought that light was a distortion in a medium called "Ether" or "Aether".  However, very sensitive experiments were unable to detect it.  Massless aether and quantum mechanics made the same predictions, so aether was abandoned as unnecessary (see Occam's razor).

Time Cube: Time cube is possibly the most deranged crackpot site on the entire internet.  It is also unintelligible, racist, and genocidal.  For instance, the guy who is behind it thinks everyone who won't accept it (which is pretty much everyone in the world) should be killed.  He even reject basic arithmetic, claiming that the idea that -1*-1=1 is the result of a conspiracy.  "Timecubes" is a unit of measure for how nutty a crackpot idea is, with values ranging from 0 to 10.

& is the Alchemy one Lead --> Gold?:  Correct

64

General Chat / Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread

« on: September 19, 2010, 11:43:55 AM »

Those are great.  Which ones don't you get?  I could explain if you want.

65

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: September 17, 2010, 09:06:16 PM »

The solution the show settled on was a high-velocity kinetic impactor (basically a hunk of metal accelerated to really high speeds), which would push the asteroid out of the way at least for the impending impact.  This would be a lot more effective than a nuke, because a lot more of the energy would go into pushing the asteroid.  Then they would put a gravity tug next to it to pull it into a safe orbit over a longer period of time.  A gravity tug is just a satellite with a weak, long-lasting ion engine that you park next to the asteroid then use the thrusters to prevent the two from touching.  I think ideally we would crash it into the moon or one of the other planets just to be safe.  Throwing every nuke we could at it would be a last resort.

66

General Chat / Re: If you had the resources to take over/revive a bald...

« on: September 17, 2010, 09:05:42 PM »

67

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: September 16, 2010, 11:29:34 PM »

There would be a tiny amount of gas, but nowhere near enough to carry a noticeable shockwave due to the very low density (it would be a vacuum) and the total kinetic energy would approximately zilch due to the really low mass (relative to the mass of the asteroid). 

With a nuke, metal dust would become gas, and if the gas is what you are looking for you are better of lining the walls of the nuke with a solid shell of depleted uranium or some other really dense material.  It doesn't really matter what you do, it would still be vaporized.  Of course nukes have that anyway because they need to keep the bomb together long enough for the nuclear reaction to take place (it's called a tamper).  But the affect of the gas would still be pretty much negligible because of the tiny mass and very low density.

68

General Chat / Re: If you had the resources to take over/revive a TV show....

« on: September 15, 2010, 09:14:16 PM »

I would also not have canceled Numb3rs.  The existing premise was getting old, but with the last episode they were practically begging for a reboot.  Most of the original cast was moving away, with the Charlie and Amita moving overseas and most of the FBI group leaving for various places.  The show could have continued with Larry and his friend taking over as the analysts, eliminate the math-solving-crime angle and switch it to physics and engineering-solving-crime angle.  This would allow for a whole different set of approaches and whole different set of cases.  This would give the Dad, who is staying around, a chance to be more involved.  Then they bring in a new head for the FBI group to replace Don and several additional new members, leaving those familiar with how effective Charlie and his colleagues had been in a small minority. 

Instead of having Don pushing for Charlie from the top, you have the remaining lower-level guys having to push for Larry to be accepted by the incredulous new guys and their especially incredulous new boss.  Plus Charlie, despite being a genius, rarely acted that strange and could explain stuff to laymen well, but with Larry's eccentric behavior and difficult explaining stuff it would be much more difficult for the old guys to convince the new guys to let him get involved, and the old guys would have to do a lot of translation.  This would force Larry to develop better communication skills over time since he no longer has Charlie and Amita to translate for him and even the Don had difficult understanding him.  Charlie and Amita could still appear as occasional guests giving advice remotely, but their involvement would need to be kept to a minimum and phased out over time.

69

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: September 15, 2010, 02:36:04 PM »

The problem with using explosives, and the reason the impact is a good model, is that there is no air in space.  That means there is nothing to carry the shockwave like there is on earth, all of the energy would be dumped into the asteroid at the point of the explosion (minus some negligible radiation damage).  In air the shockwave would be carried by the air as well, which completely changes how the damage is distributed.  So a kinetic energy impact against a solid object is a pretty good model for a nuke in a vacuum, much better than an explosion in air would be.

That is another problem with the show, he doesn't always do the best job of explaining why they used certain approaches.  He also doesn't explain much about the kinetic impactor model, the size, weight, or makeup of the model asteroid in that case (or why those parameters were selected), how they know how much it needed it to move, and so on.  Considering that is really the only approach that actually worked, they should have explained it in more detail perhaps at the expense of some of the other bits.

70

General Chat / Re: If you had the resources to take over/revive a TV show....

« on: September 14, 2010, 11:56:52 PM »

I'd bring back Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, and Darkwing Duck.

I just gave you a slow clap, yes, yes, yes. This is what the world needs.

Wha?  What about Duck Tales?  What about the Gummi Bears?  I'm ticked that Disney never released all of episodes of Gummi Bears on DVD.

And David and the Gnomes.  My mom has the book this show was based on, she was given it as a kid.  I was quite excited when they came out with the show, since I had really liked the book.  The show ended up being extremely faithful.

71

General Chat / Re: If you had the resources to take over/revive a TV show....

« on: September 14, 2010, 11:34:20 PM »

Freakazoid!  I can't believe they canceled after only two seasons, it was great.  From what I heard the only reason they canceled it was because the marketing was for little kids but the show was popular with college-age kids.  I'm not sure why that was surprising, considering stuff like the "Frenching with Freakazoid" segment and him gawking at hula girls in another.  Although I wouldn't be able to get the same sort of stars on the show Spielberg did.

72

TalkBack / Re: Zombie BBQ Heading for DSiWare

« on: September 14, 2010, 11:29:00 PM »

Title of the article: pun intended?

73

General Chat / Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread

« on: September 13, 2010, 08:25:13 PM »

A recent article is saying that Tricerotops are actually juveniles of what was thought to be a different genus of ceratopsian, Torosaurus.  It was known that Tricerotops changes its frill and horn shape and layout over time, but after surveying a large number of individuals the scientists say that these changes gradually turn a Tricerotops into a Torosaurus.  Due to the rules of naming, since Tricerotops was named first it will get to keep its name while Torosaurus will have to give up its name.  It's hard to think of an animal the size of a small bus as a juvenile.

74

General Gaming / Re: If you had the money to seize and old or missused gaming IP...

« on: September 13, 2010, 08:02:51 PM »

Space Station Silicon Valley.  I would be happy with just a VC port, but the idea has a huge amount of untapped potential.  There were some ideas discussed in early interviews that didn't make it into the game but could add a lot to a sequel, like robots changing between different forms with different abilities, more interactive environments that could be used (for instance an interview mentioned rolling snowballs around to make them bigger in order to trap a fleeing penguin so it could be taken over). 


There are also potential for a lot more robot animals with a new abilities, for instance" a hawk with high-speed jet engines, a spider that could walk on walls and ceilings, a mole with a drill on its head that can dig through the ground, a dolphin with propellers and a spike on its nose for ramming, a mantis with buzz saws on its front legs that can cut down bushes and trees, a bat that uses sonar (turning the screen black-and-white but letting you see invisible things and see in the dark), a flying fish that can transition between swimming in the water and flying through the air, a remora with a magnet cup on its head that can attach to other fish robots or machines in the environment and use them to get through strong currents or sneak through defenses, and a jerboa with a rocket boost that can jump really high.

There is also potential for new environments, like dark areas that require animals with special abilities to navigate (bats for echolocation, owls for good night vision, dogs for smell), areas with wonky gravity (no gravity, changing gravity, different gravity in different parts).

There could also be rouge enemy microchips or viruses that compete for robot animals and change their behavior.

75

NWR Forums ID Verification / Re: The Guide to Being a Video Game Villain

« on: September 13, 2010, 07:42:41 PM »

If you have specific suggestions I would be glad to incorporate them.