Randox

Not entirely my point, or true. Sure, we do a fairly good job on the killing, not so much on the whole living conditions, or lab animals, or other scientific studies in the wild. There is a lot of room for improvement on that front. What I am getting at though is that you (I assume) and I are part of a culture that views forcing animals to suffer as wrong, and perhaps a culture that allows it out of a combination of ignorance and convenience. But I don't believe that we are in a position to look down on other cultures, because they can only do right by their own beliefs and values. I might like to believe that our empathy driven urge to not cause undue suffering in others might be the high ground, but in truth, it's an emotional thing, not a logical one. To me, rather than judge other cultures, you must trust that this is a natural progression, and let people come to the conclusion for themselves, or arrive at something even better. I also bleieve that trying to push beliefs is counter productive at best, but that's another debate for another time. Do I like the bull fights? No, I'd be quite happy if they stopped. But I have no logical ground on which to call my point of view superior, and doing so on emotional grounds goes against my own values. They are doing right by them, who am I to say they're wrong?

I might look at it a different way. First, ignore youtube comments because they are full of trolls reflecting imaginary human personas, not a reflection of actual human behavior. You also have to look at the magnitude of the injury, and dehumanization. Something like Wipeout is funny because it looks spectacular without people actually getting hurt. Amercas Funniest Home videos works on much the same principal. People might get bruised (physically or emotionally), but they aren't showing people breaking bones, losing limbs, or getting killed. I suppose it still says something about us that we can get pleasure from watching even that, but it's a far cry from people watching torture for entertainment. As for animals, that would be the dehumanizing I suppose, and a sense of normalcy. In western culture, you grow up with the understanding that cows are for food, and dogs are pets, which seems to segue into branding cows makes you a farmer, while branding a dog means you are a monster. Animals are categorized in our heads, and what is and isn't okay for us depends on how they are categorized. If you grow up in a culture where bullfighting is normal, then the idea that it's not okay would be just as alien as perhaps the idea that dogs should be food. In this category, you can't hold anything to be an absolute truth. In fact, in that realm, about as far as you can get is "I think therefore I am". Even assuming the world exists is an assumption you can't prove. As it applies to this picture, what is right and what is wrong is entirely influenced by cultural perceptions. Why shouldn't we kill and torture other animals? Why is that wrong? I'm not a supporter of animal cruelty, not by any means. Frankly, I consider abusing a cat or a dog a bigger crime than the same to another human, but I wouldn't hold that it's a rational system. Why am I okay with people who hunt animals for food, but not for sport? How can I hold harming a cat/dog as such a grievous offence while eating meat as a staple of my diet? It's subjective, and arbitrary.

If you can solve the issues of Nukes being heavy, and that you would need to embed them in the asteroid to make them truly effective (I think, seeing as a vacuum leaves to medium for the concussive force to act through), then fragmentation should be extremly effective. Sure, you might still have pieces large enough to make impact through our atmosphere, but unless the asteroid was so massive that it's gravity could hold the debris together in a group, then the pieces will drift away over time. Earth is not that big, so I would think that even given just a year from detonation, the pieces should miss quite nicely. It would be like someone shooting at you with a shotgun from 1km away (with buckshot). The debris you will be hit with, and even the chance of being hit at all, goes way down. And if you options are 'get hit with a gigantic asteroid' or 'get hit with the collective half of said gigantic asteroid', the latter is still your better option, because your getting hit with less, and increasing the effectiveness of the earths atmosphere as a device to incinerate incoming objects (even if every pieces hits you, there will still be a more favorable ratio of asteroid converted to dust just by breaking it apart). I actually like the idea of heating up one side to make the asteroid generate some thrust of it's own. Just saying, fragmentation makes things better, not worse (I am also considering that a bunch of pieces wiping out several major population centers is still favorable to one big piece causing an extinction level event).

I guess for me, I would be most interested in an OS specifically designed for gaming. I'm not really sure exactly what the scope of possible improvements are in that area, but it's enough to get my attention. Of course, right now the closest thing I have to a living room is the TV perpendicular to my computer, facing the couch. Given that I normally use a keyboard, I am rarely tempted to use the TV instead of my monitor (the TV is always hooked up for streaming through), and sitting at my desk gives me a screen that is about the same apparent size I think. So if I went for this, it would probably be as an alternate OS, or just something for the next time I change OS (free also gets my interest, depending on how capable it is as a general OS). In the future, with a house all to myself, the whole two computer thing is not at all appealing, not until the TV itself can be that second computer streaming from the gaming rig. Of course, that might just be the reality by the time that happens. Also, Valve probably has a better shot than anyone at actually getting games onto Linux, and I have to figure that this is the opening move in a years long plan. I also have to figure that Valve is in an excellent position to try and bring Linux into the mainstream properly, both because they are potentially in a position to provide incentives to the gaming masses (if they can bring the games), and because it will be a Linux OS developed by a body that is already experienced with designing programs for the masses, so I think they could create something that people might find easier to use. They'll very much want to make the transition as easy as possible, rather than computer enthusiasts making an OS for other enthusiasts.

My interest would depend on the rest of the game. If it's just minecraft in space, then no. If it's one part of a larger game, than perhaps I would be interested. That said, Miner Wars in an of itself is not a shining resume to me from the developer. It's a neat enough game in it's own way, but things like the mission scripting ensured I never got past the demo. Looking a bit more at what the developer said about that game, and what people (and supposed ex-staff) are saying about the developer, I don't feel particularly inclined to go for it. One of the things I look for with new games is the community, in particular, the relationship between the gamers and the developer. When I see a community that seems to universally despise the developer of the game, I know something is up. It doesn't need to be all sunshine and rainbows, I expect far less, but I do expect more than universal hatred to inspire some confidence.

Not entirely sure if this is helpful or not, so I'll just throw it out there. Also a little confused on your use of rendering. A video file has an encoded frame rate, and this is a constant for the entire file. If you tell WMM to make a part faster, it does this by removing frames until it achieves the target time multiplier, it does not just cause them to be played faster. Similarly, slowing the movie down will add duplicate frames. If you slow a section to half speed, all the frames will be duplicated, causing that section of the recording to fill twice the amount of time in playback. If you are planning on significantly speeding up a movie in post production (that is, post recording, manipulating the movie file the recorder made), you might want to change the recording frame rate (and keep the playback speed the same) instead. If you are recording at 20fps and playing back at the same when you make the file, then you could say change it to record only 5fps, and keep the playback at 20, and the movie will play back at 4x speed without manipulation or lost frames. From here, you should be able to tweak it a bit in either direction as desired. Post rendering, that is, once you have made all the changes in WMM and had the program re-render the entire movie into the final file, the playback speed can be altered by a program like windows media player or youtube (which also has a playback speed option). This actually affects the frame rate (and also the audio playback, of course), and is the equivalent of fastforwarding a video cassette (where speeding up in a movie editor is more like fast forwarding on a DVD).

I couldn't recommend Amnesia: Descent of Darkness enough. Not a game I have played, or you could pay me to play, but I am having a lot of fun watching Gopher play it on youtube (he was the first person I found who actually got into the game, is legitimately being scared by it, and by extension, his audience gets to feel a lot of the same tension and atmosphere). From personal experience, I suppose the Deadspace games fall into that category, though I think the feer might lose something when you can always back into a corner and panic fire until everything dies (the fully upgraded pulse rifle in the second game is amazing for this, and I have totally had moments with various guns where I just started shooting blindly until the bad things were vaporized). I've seen slender as well (EatMyDiction), a more casual one, but definitely tense (like Amnesia, you can't really defend yourself, just try to run).

Tough call. I've been watching Kinetic Void, trying to decide when I want to jump into that. I've been on a very long search for a more modular space combat and trading game, and that one might just be the ticket in the end. I think Arma 3 is taking the cake right now, even though the game actually is out. My problem is that right now I am waiting on a better internet connection, so I wont be playing for at least a couple weeks when I should be able to handle multiplayer. Also, my computer is aging, and I am waiting on a new GPU for christmas, probably an HD 7870 or 7950. I don't mind the wait though, I am hoping to grab that one on sale. I think there is also a Mount and Blade 2 on the very distant horizon.

This is my issue with it as well, that it is Peter Molyneux. Now, I am a big fan of the B&W games, as horrible at them as I am, but I am not a fan of the hype that hits me as being quite dishonest at times. I might take a look at the game once it's a full release, and I am perfectly willing to judge the game on it's merits and disregard the man behind it, but I find myself incapable of trusting anything said about what the game will be, any promised features that it doesn't already have and so on. The worst part is, I don't think Peter is a dishonest person, I think he has a lot of incredible ideas and a massive amount of passion for making games, and he gets ahead of himself and promises the light of the sun when all he can deliver is a full moon. If it truly turns out to be a B&W 3 in spirit, I will certainly be interested down the line. I will probably be waiting to see someone else play it though.

I can't say I find the craters make any difference to me. The Mun is a pretty easy body to move around over during descent, and it's still mostly flat and level, or close enough for the purposes of landing. The real distinction to me would be the advent of landing gear, and I think that makes landing substantially easier. Also, experience. I used to struggle to keep a strait down descent while keeping fine control on the speed. Not so much anymore.

Completed most of the testing phase for a Duna mission. Found out that My orbital tug with a Kethane mining module handles like a garbage truck. Part of the mission profile was for it to be able to land on Duna in the event a surface evac was required, and I'm not convinced it could come even close to this, given that the Kethane gear has the landing equipment as well. I was going to ditch it for the flight up, but I don't think I can land it, so I am looking at adding an engine module to the ship for it to use, if needed. The space station/refinery it's carrying around also could be lighter, and it needs to have LV-N engines installed. It might be departing with engine pods. These revisions will not require testing. There are also some questions about whether the ship, as tested, even carries enough fuel to get anyplace. My guess is it's going to get about halfway to Duna, so my Kerbals are currently acquiring Kerbal Engineer to answer this question. However, during the testing, Bob Kerman decided that a mission to the Mun was pretty pedestrian, and that he should absolutely set some sort of record while he was there. Category of choice? EVA travel. Up till now, the longest flight I can remember making in any version was perhaps 2.2km one way (ship to ship on the Mun), and 1.4km when investigating the Mun arch (which holds the current altitude record for the Mun I think, for me). After planting a flag a good 1.2km from the Miner and flying back, he saw he had like, 40% of the tank left, and he'd been goofing off a bit. So we set out again, to fly to the other side of the crater/valley I had landed next to, planning to head back no later than 50%. It wasn't a strait path, he decided to go further about halfway. Tried to turn around at about 55% fuel left. It took until 48% to be headed back the 5.4km to the mining rig. Not good. No one else is on the Mun, and the station in orbit wasn't capable of any kind of landing. If he got stuck in the crater, it would be a long wait for help. Going in a strait, getting up to a good speed, and praying really hard got him pretty close. He crashed into a small very steep slope using the last fumes of fuel to slow him down, still about 200m out. It didn't really work... Three large bounces off the surface later, he was nearly a km away from the miner, and had to walk all the way back. It was worth it though, because he absolutely shattered the round trip record (an estimated 10.8km, accounting for the original change of direction), and going 'super fast'.

I have to laugh at the modified Portal song. That actually does fit fairly well. Ignoring for a minute that Two Steps from Hell is all the soundtrack you could ever need to all things epic (including songs that make mundane things, like eating a sandwich, feel epic). For a more...conventional sound track, I often turn to Streetlight Manifesto. Watch it Crash might be particularly appropriate: As a perhaps grand feel the the epic genre that Two Steps does so much of, the band Hybrid. The song Keep it in the Family will make you feel like a supervillain if played in orbit (I find that it usually evokes the image of perhaps a giant floating airship slowly eclipsing the sun). I find most of their stuff wouldn't be great for launch, though Hooligan Spirit might be an exception. This is perhaps one of the best songs for getting 'in the zone' I have ever heard.

Subassemblies sound awesome, especially being able to move between the SPH and VAB. Also like the idea of the specimen containers. Again, it's something to do, and that's always fun.

I could add that I usually have the terminal velocity values handy during launch, and I'll frequently refer to them to check my own velocity, up until 15-20 km at which point it's really about going as fast as I can without breaking the ship (on Kerbin). I usually check the numbers for each km, especially at first when you can waste a lot of fuel.

Brapness, I want to launch a piracy mission and steal that ship. I guess at 260 tonnes, what's a command bridge or two Also a good reminder that I could swap out my poodle engine my station for some LV-N's without a headache, which might be enough to shave an entire engine pod off my craft. I am interested to know how it handles, given the different sized landers on the bow. Must have been a real treat to put that together. I think there is definitely something right about taking such a ship on a tour of the system. Maybe it's the feeling that a big mission deserves a big trip, or a feeling of safety. A small ship is all you have. You have the ship you brought. Something goes sideways flying that ship and you have options for setting down someplace or building a different ship, stuff like that.

I think it could actually be interesting if the community created classes for types of craft that would allow people to, at a glance, have some idea of capabilities and performance, provided that such a system doesn't end with people feeling like they need to build a certain type of craft. Mostly I just have design specifications for the craft I build, that my craft are supposed to be able to meet. Of course, I don't always feel like such extensive testing, and sometimes it's more fun when you have surprises. I grade most of my planes on how tight they can turn without going into a death spin, because most of what I do with planes is fly around the space center while doing loops.

My gravity turns reflect my early rocket flying style. I started by doing strait shots to the Mun, no turn, no orbit. There were flaws with the way I balanced and steered my ships in the air which prevented them from safely performing a gravity turn before at least 20km up. When I practiced orbital rendezvous in 0.16, I had to make a special smaller launch rocket beause nothing in my current fleet could actually establish an orbit in the 90 to 110km range without falling back into it, and I needed that range because I had the numbers and guides for it. I still usually establish orbits in the 100 to 110 range, and never lower than 90, out of habbit, and I still gravity turn late. My lifters are currently turning no earlier than 15km, and they have to wait until Ap to do the bulk of the orbital velocity component. Might try bringing myself to start turning around 12km, and to roll over a bit further, past 45.

When I launched my Kethane mining into orbit, I used my heavy lifter (jump + 32 rockomax tanks, mainsail, with 6 of the same as boosters all feeding the central stack). Given that the Kethane miner was pretty light on launch (doesn't carry much fuel, and the Kethane tanks are empty and weighted all of 1.6 on launch), and the boosters still had some fumes in them when I got to orbital height and was starting to burn for the rest of orbital velocity. Without thinking, I put the hammer down all the way I think while in map mode, and the ship exploded. This is what I caught of the aftermath, I didn't even read the freaking flight log because I guess I was so confused at the time. This is what it looked like when I launched it: This is what it looked like after: I'm not entirely sure how the crash played out. I'm sort of kicking myself for not reading the flight log on that one. I think the boosters broke free first, and two of them must have collided with the rocket itself. Perhaps there was even a staging error or something and the nuclear engines turned on during seperation, which would neatly explain why 4 survived, and the explosion could have taken out something above the jumpbo tank and caused the rest of the ship to be destroyed. Even the forward docking port came off. Unfortunately, it was also a foreshadowing event. I successfully relaunched it, but had to bring the ship back to Kerbin with plans to put the crew on an upgraded version. It ran out of fuel on the way down, and the nacelle mounted parachutes consequently tore the ship apart when they fully opened, despite the best efforts of the RCS system which was a last ditch hope to both slow it down, and lighten the ship by venting as much fuel as possible. Unfortunately, with the Kethane tanks still one third full, without the main engines, I don't think it ever had a chance. Getting to orbit, or returning from it, the crew of this ship was not destined to survive (they would have died after that explosion no matter what, I wasn't going to be able to bring another ship in to retrieve them, the ship was already descending back into the atmosphere from about 95km).

I think I might change from rendezvous to planet transfers. It's not like I can't rendezvous. It's one of my harder tasks sure, but I have done it enough now that it's not a huge issue for me. It's more bordering on tedious than anything else, the time it takes to get the orbits correct and wait for the tea leaves to say that my rockets are the right distance for a transfer burn, and yada yada. But planetary transfers are something I have really done a lot of. The last time I tried, I was using a mod that pretty much crashed me before I got to another planet, so I can get intercepts, but I've never actually made it so far as I can remember. I use an online calculator thing to give me the angles between the planets that I should be aiming for, as well as the point in the planetary orbit that I should be leaving from. The part that really gets me is that the target is pretty small at such range, and I am not entirely comfortable leaving without a confirmed intercept. The map showing patched conics has spoiled me in this regard, and gone are the days where I might arrive at the Mun a bit early and use my engine for station keeping as I waited to be sucked up by it. It is a matter of experience though. I haven't tried this very much at all, thus I am not yet confident in my competence at the task. I have no doubt I will get to other planets, I just expect I am going to run into problems.

This one has bugged me from time to time. My solution is to pop into an IVA view. One of the instruments on the dashboard inside the command pods is a radar altimeter. The range is only 3km or so, but it can be a real help when deciding when to slow from say 70 to 170 m/s to 5.

Meanwhile, my testing rover is ripping it's 2x3 panels off at...10 m/s or so Maybe the big ones are a lot stronger, I don't think I have ever had them out in atmo. I've tried deploying the 1x6 and 2x3 panels before as impromptu air brakes with predictable results.

A couple I would like to see. I wouldn't mind a larger planet with a moon that also has a moon (maybe make it retrograde fro kicks). But something I would love to see even more is a planet with a really low moon. Something really small, and with a super low density (think a moon made of styrofoam). What I would like is to really be able to see the moon pass over when your on the surface, and I'm trying to decide if having the moons SOI extend to the planet surface would be really cool or just horrifying (imagine landing on the planet only to have the moon roar past and essentially fling your ship into the 'air' (this seems more plausible without an actual atmosphere). To be clear, I am thinking a moon in the tens of kilometers off the surface, maybe lower hundreds. Just think it would be really neat to watch, and the idea that you could get hurled into the sky or smacked out of it by a mountain hugging moon is kind of neat.

I've found one of them on accident, on the equator (I wasn't sure there was more than one, no idea where the others are). I don't think yours is the one I found. I normally land it, it's something to do, and it's roughly where I used to like landing when I did my straight shots to the Mun. I usually land within a km or two, and send a kerbal out on EVA to go visit it and fly around. If I remember correctly, something like 300m tall.

Rendezvous for me as well. Docking is alright, especially with docking cams, but it's getting inside that last km or so (depending on the size/capabilities of the ship) that can drive me nuts. What I do still have is a docking table which gives the distance to target for when you should burn to match orbits for varying heights (for Kerbin only, I need to find the equation so I can apply it to other bodies) to get close and efficient transfers. Using the table, if the orbits are solid and I don't goof the transfer or circularization burns, I can usually land inside a kilometre.

Last night I designed and launched a mining rig to Minimus. Being the genius that I am at night, I was being weight conscious of the mining rig since the Kethane tanks get pretty heavy. Figuring that Minimus has so little gravity that things practically float away unpowered, and that nuclear engines are pretty efficient, I didn't include any refining mechanism on the miner itself, instead relying solely on the large one my station is carrying (I also redesigned my small station for orbital mining, and it works like a dream). Now, even though the miner is not super heavy, it did use nearly half the fuel reserves on the trip to Minimus, and landing, and when I launched for the station 100km up, I found out that I had a little fuel to spare, as long as all I wanted to do was intercept the station. I was woefully short on the fuel needed to actually match speed, as I realized past the point of no return. This morning, I decided to try again from my quick save right after managing to establish a very near intercept, and decided that rather than try to land the miner when it came back down like I had been thinking about, I would use the orbital refinery as a rescue pursuit craft. It worked fairly well, the refinery is a capable ship in it's own right, though I have all the RCS ports mounted at angles where I had space, and that bugged me when I tried to dock it. Fortunately, part of the station redesign was adding a senior port on the front, intended to hold fuel tanks for refueling. The miner is intended to dock with a normal port on the front, but it has a senior port on the back, mostly incase I ever needed to tow fuel tanks with it. Brought the miner in from about 250m out, turned it around right at the end and backed up into the station. I had to leave off here, but the refinery is currently working to replenish all fuel reserves for both craft, and given the 6000 units of Kethane on board, I should have a bit to spare. I will of course have to send this miner home and requisition an updated design to include a smaller refinery for personal use (also, some freaking landing lights). I'm pretty sure this can land on Kerbin safely.