The Return of Testing Chat Thread

[adr]

do you ever find yourself doing css rules with a certain selector not because of any semantic meaning

but specifically because you have to get higher specificity to avoid being overridden by future c0de

?

[Oxymoron]

I don't do CSS and have never done it

[Oxymoron]

re : alcubierre drive


If I read the article right, they aren't trying to use "exotic matter" to do their stuff.

Instead they're exploring the possibility of playing with magnetic fields and Casimir Cavities to fuck with the [air quote]quantum vacuum[/air quote] thingy in order to get these negative charges or whatever they need.

[Civil War Man]

Assuming the engine actually is feasible, I think the biggest hurdle will actually be navigation.

Think about it. In order to get from A to B, we need to know the distance as we see it, the time lag in getting that information, how fast that distance is changing (and how fast that rate is changing for really long distances), and the direction that distance is changing.

So, Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away. So we basically know where it was 4.3 years ago, and the computers on this ship need to figure out where it will be 2 weeks from now.

[Darksi4190]

Ugh. God damn you adr. Your incessant discussion of it has actually got me watching NCIS again. Do you know how long it took me to quit that god-awful show?

I just watched an utterly atrocious two-parter and it's all your fault.

[Oxymoron]

Apparently there's a little -catch- to the design of an alcubierre drive

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1406 ... you-arrive

Basically the FTL equivalent of a sonic bang, only that it apply only when you turn off the warp bubble and that instead of being one long continuous rumble, all the "sonic bang" energy accumulated during flight is released at once.

Oops.

[adr]

I just watched an utterly atrocious two-parter and it's all your fault.

don't blame me, I only reliably get reception on three channels! (CBS, Fox, and the CW) I watch what I can get

blame the FCC!!!!!!!!!!

anyway what episode was it?

[Dooey Jo]

"guys you gotta make the game feel more like a free to play game right now the player is not encouraged enough to spend money, have the 'spend real money' shop come up randomly"

says producer

except it's not a free to play game, sooooo...

gotta make the game fucking annoying?


ah the wonderful influence of the profit motive on the creative arts

as if the ridiculous deadlines hadn't fucked the game up enough

[adr]

Basically the FTL equivalent of a sonic bang, only that it apply only when you turn off the warp bubble and that instead of being one long continuous rumble, all the "sonic bang" energy accumulated during flight is released at once.

I'm not convinced that'd be a big deal (though I didn't read the scientist's paper). There's two reasons: 1) how much energy are we really talking about in random particles being caught up? It seems unlikely to me that we're looking at catastrophes. and 2) a potential fix comes to mind immediately: stop every so often and release the stored shit before moving on to the next leg of the trip. idk how easy that is, but if we can make the journey, surely we can break it up too.

So I doubt it'd be a dealbreaker, tech wise. Banning it because you don't want some asshole using it as a doomsday weapon... well that might be a problem.

[Dooey Jo]

seems to me that bullshit could make a fine power generator

but i do like how the discussion is always like one guy coming up with solutions and 90 guys going "nope no no no won't work it's gonna make a huge death laser don't even try"

[Oxymoron]

I suppose we are talking, for starter, about any and all photons that came from the star you're going toward in the time-distance covered. And the same thing with the light coming from the surrounding stars, I'd guess.

And if all that energy where to be released in a cone... Well, an easy fix is to travel not toward the star, but toward a point in its oort cloud in such a way that the cone center is tangent relative to the direction to the star.

Then depending on the technologies at your disposal and the constraints of the drive you can either make the final stretch inside the system with sub-light engines, or by making a few FTL hops, always careful not to exit with your exit cone toward an inhabitated zone of space.

[Dooey Jo]

ah the wonderful influence of the profit motive on the creative arts

as if the ridiculous deadlines hadn't fucked the game up enough

btw more lol

"guys can you remove the 'back' buttons in the menus and have them close by just clicking outside? it feels more like pc interface than touch right now"

later

"ok guys you have made it possible to click outside the menus to close them - which is GREAT - but can you add an x button in the corner which will also close the menu?"

buttons that say "back" != touch

buttons that say "x" == touch

ps it was always possible to close them by clicking outside


"yeaaahhh btw can we remake all menus to use grids instead of lists right now it feels more pc or console than touch"

sure why not it only took me five years to make all those menus to the previous specifications then got rid of half of them based on the new specifications, so why just remake the rest from scratch too

[adr]

story of my life too

[RogueIce]

"guys you gotta make the game feel more like a free to play game right now the player is not encouraged enough to spend money, have the 'spend real money' shop come up randomly"

says producer

except it's not a free to play game, sooooo...

gotta make the game fucking annoying?


ah the wonderful influence of the profit motive on the creative arts

as if the ridiculous deadlines hadn't fucked the game up enough

Can you share the name of this game (if not now then at some point) so we will all know to avoid it?

[Darksi4190]

don't blame me, I only reliably get reception on three channels! (CBS, Fox, and the CW) I watch what I can get

blame the FCC!!!!!!!!!!

anyway what episode was it?

The latest one.

It actually started out decent, seeming like they were going to have a serious discussion about PTSD and how the Iraq war fucked up so many people who fought in it.

THE TEAMtm gets called in to investigate the death of a marine in an ally brawl. and over the course of the episode it's discovered that he died while trying to restrain a PTSD-suffering squadmate that had a freak out. The squad mate saw some dude in a convenience store, thought he recognized him as the enemy, and freaked out due to his untreated PTSD. He chased the dude into an alley and tried to beat him to death. The dead marine took a fatal blow to the back of the head while trying to break up the fight.

All in all it was a decent episode that dealt seriously with the reality of people coming back from war broken, and if it had ended there, it would've been good. But in NCIS-land, you cannot have a worthless leeching civillian kill a NOBLE MARINEtm purely by accident due to a tragic misunderstanding, so in the last five minutes of the episode, it is discovered that the PTSD-suffering marine was in fact correct, and that the guy in the convenience store was an EVIL TERRORISTtm who had ambushed them in Iraq. The team tracks him down to his residence, and discovers he is planning some sort of attack on American soil.

[adr]

Yeah, I watched part one of that, but didn't catch part two.

Gotta love that recurring shit, hell, that's older than NCIS. JAG did it at times too.

[Darksi4190]

It seems like that universe has a recurring theme of MILITARY=noble and just, CIVILLIANS=worthless interlopers that pisses me off to no end.

[Aaron]

Lol, the actual military is like that.

Still, sounds like they shit all over a good story.

[Darksi4190]

It's annoying because it seems like they were trying to have a serious discussion about PTSD, and then they shit all over it with another one of their standard "lol terrorism" plots.

As if fucking NCIS would be dealing with terrorism anyways. IRL all that agency does is investigate payroll theft and recruitment fraud, but in the show they treat them like they're the goddamn FBI, who, by the way are utterly worthless and ineffective, since they're a civillian law enforcement agency.

[Losonti Tokash]

that is not an accurate picture of what they do at all and even looking at the first paragraph on their wikipedia page should tell you that

[adr]

i think my work client changes things just for the sake of change

ugh

[Crazedwraith]

well. saw skyfall. spoiler tagged just to be super cautious...

the ending scene... is just me or do they want to reset us to connery/moore bond stylings? Monypenny, male M, that office. Really screamed we want to back in the good old days.

[evilsoup]

yeah, this film felt more like a part of the James Bond franchise, rather than a sequel to casino royale/QoS - all the too old for this shit stuff just felt incongruous with the 'Bond as a new agent' thing

[Crazedwraith]

You know I was really interested in Mr White and Quantum and they dropped it all. Which is sad. but i guess they were just making it all up as they went along anyway.

[RogueIce]

I'm guessing that MGM bankruptcy stuff and the time lapse is what did it in.

But then this could be considered as something that "just happened" because it's not like we know what Bond, Monneypenny and those dead agents were doing in Istanbul in the first place. So maybe Quantum could be brought up again.

PS: I enjoyed Skyfall I don't care what anyone says.