I'm assuming since it's Asus made they did not want to interrupt sales of transformer primes (essentially the same specs with a larger screen/keyboard-plugin). I would love to see a 10" transformer as the next Nexus tablet device.
I would at least like to see the data they already have from Goggles in a live overlay; that way it could at least identify and display information about notable landmarks/stores/etc, but I'm sure they're struggling enough with getting the hardware and the basic OS working that they probably have not had time to refine the content beyond basic camera/G+ functionality.
A well-developed AI is not without merit. Many players enjoy higher difficulty settings despite the added time/effort needed to complete a task due to a greater feeling of accomplishment. A good AI can offer the same inflated sense of reward.
Playing Diablo III recently was a poignant reminder to me of how badly RPG developers need to consider fleshing out their AI. In the endgame kiting again predictably emerged as the dominant strategy; developers are apparently oblivious to as to how to prevent the epidemic. Is it not worth it to program some basic responses to being kited by a player?
This got me thinking about whether "fly-by-wire" vision will ever be viable (or preferable) to human vision and how various sight impairments would be dealt with using such a system. Certainly myopia would be a trivial fix since the image could be placed directly in front of the eye, but how would you correct for hyperopia without a convex lens between the eye and the display?
Cultural bias always shifts abruptly and unapologetically with utility. It was once considered "dorky" to own a cellular phone. The question is not whether they can build/market it subtly enough to shirk societal ridicule, but whether they can make it practical enough to rewrite existing mores.
The Segway obviously lacked that practicality, as did the Oakleys. True augmented reality glasses would certainly not, but I don't know how far along they are towards that goal.
I've tried this before while reconnoitering new cities. I have a far better setup for stealthy, comfortable car-camping than this poor chap and I typically end up breaking down and staying at a hostel or finding a furnished craigslist/couchsurfing room anyway. The money you end up spending while loitering around coffee shops and burning through gas does not justify the savings over finding a cheap place to crash.
It's a gedankenexperiment and he's invoking ceteris paribus. It's no different than isolating the velocity of two balls rolling down a slope by opting to ignore things like friction & drag in a physics problem.
"...attract[s] more venture capital dollars per person than any country — 2.5 times the U.S., 30 times Europe, 80 times India, and 300 times China."
Guh, could we stop it already with the country-level statistics? Per capita or not, you can't just go comparing a largely urban nation of 7.1 million people with massive nation-states like the US, EU, India & China which have huge rural/agrarian areas. How do you think this would read if he had compared it to the venture dollars per capita for the 7.15 million people living in the bay area?
While multiple terms definitely incentivize, it also presents the problem of forcing the politicians to begin campaigning for their next term while still in office (quite possibly hindering performance). Maybe the best solution from an economist's prospective would be to leave out the term limits but to somehow boost the popularity of recall elections.
There's already a number of board games out there where you are essentially buying the rulebook and are asked to provide your own game pieces (pennies, figurines, whatever). Yes, they're very easy to pirate, but they usually have a low enough price point that piracy is not a huge issue.
I'm not sure that profit is relevant here; you would have to look at revenue or (even better) head-counts of moviegoers. My understanding is that domestic (US) ticket sales peaked in 2002 at 1.58B while revenue continued to rise until 2009 due to rising ticket prices. Source:
Anyway, my original point was that if you assume aggregate leisure time has changed little over the last decade -- it's impossible to ignore competition from other entertainment activities vying for the same space -- especially when you've got absolutely meteoric growth in the gaming industry.
That said, there's only a certain amount of time each person can spend on escapism. If gaming is occupying more of that space it is intrinsically encroaching on other forms of entertainment. Ebert is notorious for writing off the gaming industry, so I'm not surprised it wasn't mentioned in this article.
I voted for asteroids as the most statistically feared existential risk in one of the LW surveys and was shocked when the results came back:
"Of possible existential risks, the most feared was a bioengineered pandemic, which got 194 votes (17.8%) - a natural pandemic got 89 (8.2%), making pandemics the overwhelming leader. Unfriendly AI followed with 180 votes (16.5%), then nuclear war with 151 (13.9%), ecological collapse with 145 votes (12.3%), economic/political collapse with 134 votes (12.3%), and asteroids and nanotech bringing up the rear with 46 votes each (4.2%)."
The article mentioned tungsten, which has an absolutely preposterous melting point. I doubt it would melt moving at typical orbital velocities, but even if it were to be moving faster you could easily make the front of the projectile ablative.
Check the bottom of the page for the list of "Things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written".
