The magnets prefer to stick to your fingers rather than to the glue, and they prefer to stick to other magnets above all else.
Can't that be solved this way?
------------------
magnet to be glued
+ + + + + + + + +
------------------
| | |
V V V
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
layer of glue
==================
substrate
==================
------------------
- - - - - - - - -
another magnet to
attract the first
------------------
As for the rest, coupling strength can potentially be improved if more powerful magnets are used. I probably won't be able to help with any other suggestions. :\
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Well, this is surely a nice step forward since EPX and HQ*x. I particularly like how it handles wiggly contours.
However, as for adopting it for high-resolution encodes, I suggest not doing so for two reasons.
First, there is still a loss and/or deformation of detail, which is pretty much inevitable due to how these algorithms work. Even the test cases in the abstract have numerous artifacts (except for the simplest forms), and complex sprites make it more obvious. Nearest neighbor upscaling we're currently using, while looks blocky, preserves all of the detail because it doesn't transform pixel boundaries.
Second, low-res pixel graphics is custom-made for certain conditions, it's never a downscale of a higher-res artwork. Our perception makes allowance for that and fills in the details automatically. When you upscale it like this, shades and certain contours "remain" unnatural, but there is no more noise "hiding" the details, thus no gap filling done by brain. The resulting image looks like bad watercoloring or stencil drawing (see the Doom guy's head for a good example). Who's to say a Space Invader should have curves so smooth? Maybe it did have flat surfaces — at least Taito has never drawn it otherwise.
At best you're trading authenticity for compressibility. The games don't look better like this; they look differently, and by my taste it's considerably worse.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Fusion does involve mildly radioactive materials (namely tritium, an unstable hydrogen isotope, and deuterium, which is stable but slightly toxic), but their amount required to sustain a reaction is too small for radioactivity to be a concern even in the case of an accident. Magnets exploding with a very strong blast wave is more of a concern.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Er, wait, that giant ball of plasma you're talking about isn't self-sustainable without external power supplement, it cools down very rapidly if the power supply is interrupted.
Also, going through to the center of the Earth isn't really a good idea. :D
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
At least we should have hesitated to make use of it at such a relatively large scale. We'll be able to generate energy much more safely pretty soon. So why are we taking the risk, no matter how small? I simply see no need to.
Let me help with this one. We simply won't be able to arrive at a safer, more efficient energy extraction technologies without having taken the risk of diving into existing technologies. In order, say, to achieve sustained nuclear fusion power generation, we had to have decades of thoroughly explored nuclear fission as a stepping stone. Just skipping over a step is not how things work unfortunately, cause I'd sure love to go from blimps and steam engines straight to antigrav vehicles. :)
That being said, the death toll of nuclear power (at least 90% of which is attributed to Chernobyl alone)—even in the dubious state we have now—is quite comparable to how many people coal mining industry is killing annually around the world. If anything, we should have banned that.
Now, lowering the living standards sounds like a very cute idea coming from an Austria resident. :) Sarcastic as it may sound, around 6 billion people worldwide are living by way lower welfare standards than you do. You could just move away from large cities and see those standards drop with every kilometer. You may have this kind of headroom to give up, but for many of them lowering the standards further would entail, directly or otherwise, exactly what Warp describes: death. Fukushima accident's (a result of a natural disaster expected to kill people and do massive damage, mind you!) effects have been less adverse, and, assuming things will evolve as they do now, will be less adverse than a decision to just abandon nuclear power altogether without instating an alternative source of energy first. The problem is that there's no such source of energy that is neither nuclear nor fossil fuel, that will serve as an adequate substitute without creating even larger problems, yet.
Taking 20-25% off the electricity grid is also really not as easy as not using an electric kettle, turning the lights off an hour earlier, or not browsing the favorite site. It will mean entirely changing the way of life. Hell, 20 years ago, when we had neither mobiles nor the Internet, already seem like dark ages of mankind by those who are not yet in their forties. And that's but a small, if perhaps the most strikingly obvious, facet of how technological progress is shaping humanity. But the party who will suffer the most from this lack of energy will be the industries, as most enterprises will not be able to do as much in the same time frame, thus instantly inflating prices and suffering bankruptcies, and some will just not be able to go on (think desalination plants, so many people will have to do without fresh water). All but the most backwater economies will instantly collapse or be in chaos. Some of the EU countries (like Greece) already tend to suffer that even without such drastic measures, and the only thing that helps them is that weakening is non-uniform.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
That supercomputer is also prone to lagging really bad on inefficient code, like simple physics-based games (Trash Panic being one, and that's an in-house-developed title). Should be a breeze on a 8-core CPU, yet the system struggles with something even a senile Pentium 4 could do. Not sure what Sony software engineers' problem is.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
If you want noise reduction, there are plenty of solutions for that, like mass-loaded vinyl and highway-style sound barriers. Assuming the proper countermeasures are taken, noise is not a good argument against progressive technology.
Have you seen any such solutions for wind farms yet?
Again, it's not an argument against progressive technology. It's an inherent trait of a high-power wind turbine. Besides, the technology itself is rather old and has only seen incremental progress throughout its history. An argument against wind power would be, "it's not enough": a single advanced NPP could produce 2 to 20 times the amount of sustained electric power of an average wind farm, will serve at least twice longer due to lesser wear-and-tear, will have less potentially dangerous accidents on average, and will provide electricity to a larger amount of households while itself occupying a lesser area.
Though to disclaim, I'm not even against wind power. It's a cool and trustworthy technology, but I maintain that it has been and will always be nothing but an auxiliary power source. In any case, when sustained fusion is successfully achieved, it will make any other power source obsolete in terms of both safety and productivity. There will just be no contest.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Side Note: I recall reading an article about how living within a mile or two of a wind farm seems to have a tendency to induce headaches and sleep problems in the population nearby. Could just be speculation though.
Although the connection has not been conclusively proven, said effect is attributed to subtle noise and low-frequency vibration, which the wind turbines do indeed generate. There have been papers written on the subject suggesting that the effect on human health is insignificant and living near a busy street produces one at least comparable, if not worse, but I don't see how adding any noise sources is anything good per se. If anything, we should reduce the noise pollution, not "insignificantly" add to it.
Your first paragraph I fully agree with, though.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
We most certainly can't do without nuclear power at this point. We're rapidly running out of fossil fuels, and humanity's energy demands are constantly growing, which non-renewable sources, let alone wind/solar/geothermal/tidal, are unable to accommodate for in long term. Fusion power would have solved it easily, being both the safest and the highest net-generating, but we won't have operational fusion reactors until mid-2030s at the earliest, at which point we're certainly going to run out of options not having "nuclear" in their names. We will have 8+ billion people living on the planet by then if the birth rate sustained since 1950s is to continue.
Of course this is the major picture, certain smaller countries (Iceland, for one) should be able to carry on with minimal increase in energy demand.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Solar and wind could be a lot better if it was done right. If every home had some minimum of solar panels on its roof and the grid was built right we wouldn't need (as many) centralized power stations.
The problem with solar cells is that, while their operation per se is eco-friendly, their production involves a shitload of toxic chemicals that need to be harvested, processed, and disposed of afterwards, which ironically makes it not eco-friendly at all.
Wind turbines have a host of problems of their own, albeit rather minor in comparison with pretty much everything else. The main ones are: if too small, they aren't a reliable energy source; if too close, they are disturbing (noise, vibration, shadow flicker, dead birds everywhere); if sited well, they won't produce as much as an advanced nuclear plant would. Also hard to extinguish if caught on fire. There are certainly advantages, though, such as low production and operation cost, and being able to operate pretty much everywhere as long as there is wind.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Actually, while we're on topic of shmups and depth, Battle Garegga is one of the most seminal games the genre has seen, and also named the best shmup, period, by many arcade enthusiasts. It features some of the best graphic design to that point, and utterly amazing soundtrack. It's also very unforgiving and requires a lot of dedication to get anywhere in terms of both scoring and survival. Neither that nor Einhänder were the games that introduced the boss dismantling, though: for instance, Darius Gaiden extensively used it back in 1994.
Derakon wrote:
I wouldn't personally consider the Exile series (or its remakes, the Avernum series) to be roguelikes; they're more classic-style CRPGs with an emphasis on combat (and, despite that, quite solid writing).
Well, the gameplay is very similar for most intents and purposes, with the only notable differences being able to save, and tile-based graphics instead of ASCII. The rest is very much the same, including depth of detail that classic-style CRPGs normally lack.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Ok, let's start.
UnReal World — a very unconventional quasi-roguelike set in 12th century Finland, rather than a generic dungeon system, with survival as the main gameplay vessel. Be ready to die to the first lynx you meet. A lot. ;_; It costs $3 for the current version, but to be able to get every subsequent upgrade you'll have to pay $55, and it's updated pretty often, so that's somewhat of a disadvantage I guess.
Exile series — another quasi-roguelike with a very decent plot and hilarious sound effects (I mean it).
Huh, guess the easy way to name something obscure is to pick an obscure genre in the first page. Ok, let's try something more conventional then.
Least Best Room — a small arcade-like game with overwhelming fun/simplicity ratio and kickass music. From the creator of rRootage and Tumiki Fighters.
Bridge Construction Set — a physics-based puzzle game I've spent many hours on. There are many free maps and challenges to undertake if you're good enough to solve all of the maps.
Blast Miner — another great physics-based puzzle from the artist of Gish.
Even more conventional...
MDK — a third-person shooter/platformer that largely set standards for the genre and still lives up to them. Fast-paced, flashy, well-designed, spruced up with lots of Shiny's trademark sense of humor. The game that inspired Jet Force Gemini (which turned out very similar, but inferior in most respects).
Elasto Mania — physics-based moto-trial. I spent months on this game.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent — bar none, the best survival horror on my memory.
I guess I shouldn't name classics from the DOS era? Or are games like Star Control, X-com, or Railroad Tycoon deemed unknown by now?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Now, I don't consider myself a fanboy of any console, however, ever since the rootkit debacle, I've enjoyed watching Sony failing.
Heh, likewise. Forced closure of Lik Sang was the last drop. Generally the stuff they release seems to be up to date in regards to technology used, but gets progressively worse in other respects: price, durability, compatibility, usability, etc..
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
