Results 211 to 240 of 247
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2019-12-27, 05:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2009
- Location
- Maryland
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
It is difficult to imagine a circumstance for which you could use a pack of dinosaurs to kill someone, and not, say, an air strike.
And if "it's covert" is mentioned, there is literally everything suspicious about seeing a room full of people ripped apart by raptors. I can't think of anyone that would shrug that off as normal instead of freaking out. The whole "evil government" aspect of the more recent Jurassic Park films does seem strange.
I can buy lax safety standards comparatively easily. People get lazy and screw stuff up all the time. They made an attempt at security, and thought they did have good security, but they bungled it. That's very, very human.
Also, with regards to big birds, had an uncle that raised Emus for a while there. Emus, Ostriches, etc...all have the potential to be very, very mean. I wouldn't much care to annoy one.
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2019-12-27, 08:20 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2012
- Location
- Tharggy, on Tellene
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
If we're being fair to Terror Birds, they had a good run even after they ran into the big cats. I believe the generally agreed upon reason was climactic shifts hitting them harder than cats. Also, a few of them are still living and doing their thing, they're just a bit smaller so they can fly as an escape option.
As for something on topic: Armor that is completely worthless. Seriously, Mail stops swords, it's not just pretty costuming!
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2019-12-28, 09:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Well, that's anticlimactic.
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2019-12-30, 04:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Yet, Mr Evil Crew-cut goes on to exactly specify the situation he has considered where wants a pack of super raptors and it does make perfect sense if you assume his absolute belief in that the way he sees things will work out.
Have you watched anything out of Hollywood the last... mmmm... 40 years?
Or the news.
And that's probably more than I can say.
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2019-12-30, 10:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
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Yeah, other than the breeding dimosaurs (which is a MAJOR security issue), the rest of the security is actually pretty good. They lose it because of backdoors installed by the person who designed the system (or at least the software part). Generally speaking, it's hard to design a system that the designer can't beat, ESPECIALLY if they are planning on doing so before it is complete."That's a horrible idea! What time?"
T-Shirt given to me by a good friend.. "in fairness, I was unsupervised at the time".
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2019-12-30, 10:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-01-02, 08:34 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Cippa's River Meadow
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Option 2a: Mix up existing methodologies so that they don't accidentally teach the viewers something illegal in the name of authenticity.
Best example is Breaking Bad where they deliberate conflate the various chemical synthesis routes because understandably, they don't want to actually teach people how to cook methamphetamine or ricin using only household chemicals.
Another example of Option 2 was the proposed episode of Mythbusters where they wanted to examine RFID chip security. Supposedly they were blocked by the Discovery Channel after getting calls from the lawyers of credit card companies, but the actual reason seems to be more bizarre and not actually disclosed.
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2020-01-02, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Even then, there's a difference between knowing and doing. You could have the full ingredient list for Coca-Cola, for example, but not be able to replicate the recipe. For example, Mythbusters took on Archimedes' death ray mirror. They determined that it was a myth, whereas I determined that Jamie and Adam were no Archimedes .
For reals, though, deliberately showing wrong ways to do certain things is absolutely a solid route.Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-01-02, 12:43 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Cippa's River Meadow
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Really? I thought MIT found it to be feasibly possible (link), just that they didn't have the manpower of an entire city state, Mediterranean climate/sun and time limitations for project completion.
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2020-01-02, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
- Location
- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Option 2a is why Fight Club was about stealing human fat to make explosives and selling the rest product as soap. Someone has the bright idea to not use an actual recipe for explosives in a movie that speaks to disgruntled and disillusioned individuals.
The reason it's noteworthy is that they could have not used a real recipe and then draw as little attention to that as possible. Just leave it at "we made explosives". Instead they leaned into it, going as far as making movie posters about soap, despite the soap angle being completely made up.The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2020-01-02, 01:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Last edited by Peelee; 2020-01-02 at 01:03 PM.
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-01-02, 01:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- right behind you
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
They did it twice, once when obama asked them to revist it. I think they actually DID manage to create a dangerous level of heat once, but it was so impractical that a single fire arrow was like 100x more efficient at wiping out a navy. But speaking of not showing you how to break the law, was anyone surprised that none of their "beat the breathalyzer" techniques worked? Same for the lie detector, not that its reliable anyways. Most of their security system beating methods were either absurd or most likely out of date at best.
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2020-01-02, 01:35 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
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2020-01-02, 01:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
"Lie detector" is a bad word for that machine. "Polygraph" is much better, since it measures blood pressure, pulse, and skin conductivity. All of which are about as accurate at determining lies as just looking at the person and watching if they exhibit any other common signs of lying. Which is to say, very inaccurate.
There's a reason those things are not admissible evidence in court.
Again, they are no Archimedes!
Yeah, I know it's just really colorful history, but I maintain that's a good line.Last edited by Peelee; 2020-01-02 at 01:51 PM.
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-01-02, 02:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
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2020-01-02, 02:22 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Can't say without knowing exactly what they're doing? Is it an actual DNA test, which takes time to perform and is very accurate? Is it a blood test that's just matching up blood types, and is very accurate but doesn't actually give any information for the purpose they're using it for? Anything else I may not be thinking of? Just because they claim they're doing DNA testing doesn't mean they actually are.
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-01-02, 02:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
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2020-01-02, 02:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Location
- Sharangar's Revenge
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Early (30 or so years ago) DNA tests would come back with like a 95% DNA match, which is really convincing until you realize that a 95% DNA match still includes like 50% of the population (specific numbers pulled from my very faulty memory, so take them with a grain of salt), Tests today are more accurate, and usually come with a percent chance of a match, rather than a percent of the DNA that matches.
Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
My Spelljammer stuff (including an orbit tracker), 2E AD&D spreadsheet, and Vault of the Drow maps are available in my Dropbox. Feel free to use or not use it as you see fit!
Thri-Kreen Ranger/Psionicist by me, based off of Rich's A Monster for Every Season
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2020-01-02, 03:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-01-02, 04:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Cippa's River Meadow
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
To a degree. Modern DNA testing relies very heavily on the polymerase chain reaction, which has its flaws that TV shows gloss over as they're very technical and has a large degree of probability of mathematical elimination; about as far as they go is the certainty of a match and neglect the several important assumptions like amplification of the right strand of DNA and the DNA being a pure sample without cross contamination.
Forensics and paternity testing is easier as you generally have a smaller pool of viable suspects/fathers, so if the test indicates the suspect/father has genetic marker A and only one potential suspect/father has that same marker, it lets you focus your resources on other evidence to support the result.
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2020-01-03, 03:36 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Which they also bring up, and note that the real Archimedes woulda known this was stupidly impractical and could have and likely did think of a dozen other much better working weapons of war.
Also had it actually worked the Romans woulda stolen the idea. The one thing they were absolutely unquestionaby masters of.
And a 93% DNA match would include all chimps too...Last edited by snowblizz; 2020-01-03 at 03:37 AM.
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2020-01-03, 06:09 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2020
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Anything that has computer hardware/software as being durable over the long term.
That stuff breaks way too often for me to believe that it will last long, and I have no confidence that modern software will last without the infrastructure that supports it.
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2020-01-03, 07:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
The Romans stole ideas that were practical, however. They never did a pike phalanx, for example, in spite of it being super effective (as long as cohesion held, probably too much of a weakness in their eyes).
I think that the mirrors could have been a good idea in a besieged city, but completely useless for the Romans. Women taking part to the defence is generally a sign of desperation in ancient times. Women using their bronze not to arm more men, but to create some odd contraption would mean a city where all able men already mobilised and appropriately armed, which could have been possible for a rich city state like Syracuse.
It's probably worth adding that ancient ships were covered with a protective painting, which consisted mainly of wax, which burns at 120°C, and whose flash point is at 204°C.
This doesn't mean that the trick worked. But the narrative makes sense, and maybe an attempt was really made.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2020-01-03, 10:50 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2010
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Unless it's specifically designed for that, of course.
For a significant premium price you can buy radiation hardened processors, memory, etc. that are designed for use in outer space. They tend to use larger transistors and slightly updated 1990s era designs so that they are less sensitive to radiation flipping bits, etc. Also, they sometimes use more radiation resistant semiconductors.
Also, 1980s and early 1990s hardware is quite durable for the same reason, with the exception of storage technology. If you want a simple, half-####d solution for a low-spec computer that will last a long time, get an early 90s PC, and replace the hard drive with a Compact Flash card and adapter. Oh, might want to install a modern power supply that's a bit over-specced for the system, too.
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2020-01-03, 03:31 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
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2020-01-03, 11:18 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Washington D.C.
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-01-04, 02:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
Technically, though, isn't it supposed to make things worse? The moist air in your breath corrodes the contacts over time.
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2020-01-04, 06:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2010
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2020-01-04, 08:38 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2009
- Location
- Brazil
- Gender
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
The Heplion Contingency - Low-tech Cyberpunk with Psychic Powers!
D&D Creations / Homebrewing
The Haliburn Galaxy: D&D Reinvented as Science-Fiction
Book-Learnin' - Extended rules for the Knowledge skill
General Fiction
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2020-01-04, 09:51 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
Re: Professionals Annoyed By Entertainment
The anachronism is for show; I perform additional (proper) maintenance tasks on both the deck and the cartridges before and after use.
To tie other playthings into the topic, I was greatly amused when Unbreakable came out and the toy nerds I knew online were annoyed that the kid was playing with Green Vapor inappropriately.