The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXII

[Borachio]

University students are the dumbest of the lot. According to some.

 

[Synobun]

They're university students, studying creative writing and film and game studies amongst other things, so they're far smarter than I could ever be.

Their ability to memorize content is not intelligence. The sheer volume of density and ignorance they're displaying is not intelligence either.

I'd say you're a little above on the ladder.

 

[Traitorfish]

Have they given their own explanation for why games and CGI costs so much?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

They're university students, studying creative writing and film and game studies amongst other things, so they're far smarter than I could ever be.

Wait wait wait

That's what they are studying, and you think they're smart?

No, I'm sorry, but they study those things because one or more of the following applies:

1)Too lazy for hard subject matter
2)Too dumb for hard subject matter

I'm thinking it's 2) for certain, quite possilby 1) as well.

Honest to god those are joke degrees and completely worthless. Pat yourself on the back for avoiding the mountain of debt they are taking on for nothing.

Oh wait, doesn't the government pay for College in the UK? Argh, your taxpayers are getting the shaft on that deal in that case.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Their ability to memorize content is not intelligence. The sheer volume of density and ignorance they're displaying is not intelligence either.

I'd say you're a little above on the ladder.

I don't have any intelligence.

 

[Farm Boy]

They play mostly Nintendo games and Japanese RPGs. They tried The Elder Scrolls series and the Fallout series and use that as an example of why non-linear games are false.

If they played the Elder Scrolls series you can let them know that a random guy on the internet is legitimately befuddled how they missed the fact that Skyrim is 16 square miles worth of individually placed plants/books/apples/people/mountains/rocks - everything. If it's in Skyrim and you can see it, somebody placed that item exactly there, then they did that for every single detail for 16 square miles. That's before you even start getting into needing to design how things move and interact which complicates things my multiple magnitudes.

Are you sure they're not just being dorks and messing with you?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

If they played the Elder Scrolls series you can let them know that a random guy on the internet is legitimately befuddled how they missed the fact that Skyrim is 16 square miles worth of individually placed plants/books/apples/people/mountains/rocks - everything. If it's in Skyrim and you can see it, somebody placed that item exactly there, then they did that for every single detail for 16 square miles. That's before you even start getting into needing to design how things move and interact which complicates things my multiple magnitudes.

Are you sure they're not just being dorks and messing with you?

I don't know. That's just the game world and not the plot of the main quest itself.

The thing they always bring up about the Elder Scrolls is that "it's lack of charm is it's charm", then make fun of the terrible voice acting.

 

[Quackers]

Are these the same people who want to detatch Britain from Europe and sail it out to the North Atlantic to "get away from europe"?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Are these the same people who want to detatch Britain from Europe and sail it out to the North Atlantic to "get away from europe"?

They are the same people.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't know. That's just the game world and not the plot of the main quest itself.

The thing they always bring up about the Elder Scrolls is that "it's lack of charm is it's charm", then make fun of the terrible voice acting.

Interesting. The main quest is one piece of writing and several dozen scripted events. True. But the main quest is nowhere near approaching the totality of the content provided. You can set the game to easy, pick up a sword, and with some careful clicking beat the main plot while experiencing somewhere around what, maybe 3-5% of the content provided? If you want to wander around randomly then there are individually designed little riverbanks, and dungeons, and cottages, and peasants everywhere. The game world isn't limitless but it's probably dozens to a hundred times larger than what you see if you only beat the game once in the most linear path possible.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Interesting. The main quest is one piece of writing and several dozen scripted events. True. But the main quest is nowhere near approaching the totality of the content provided. You can set the game to easy, pick up a sword, and with some careful clicking beat the main plot while experiencing somewhere around what, maybe 3-5% of the content provided? If you want to wander around randomly then there are individually designed little riverbanks, and dungeons, and cottages, and peasants everywhere. The game world isn't limitless but it's probably dozens to a hundred times larger than what you see if you only beat the game once in the most linear path possible.

They say all that is just a distraction, and that the main quest is the point of every game.

There is another thing they don't like about the Elder Scrolls and most modern games, in that they let you create your own character. According to them, the central part of any story is the characters, so if you let they player create a character, then there's no story.

 

[Farm Boy]

They say all that is just a distraction, and that the main quest is the point of every game.

The point may be the point - like orgasm is the "point" to sex, but getting there can involve more than 7 seconds of pelvic gyrations. Skyrim, to stretch this tortured analogy, provides you with an optional vacation on the Rhine, several multiple course dinners, a selection of romantic movies and a trip to a wine tasting event and erotic novel shoppe. You don't have to do any of these things to experience the "point." But it might even cook breakfast for you when you're done if you want it to. While asking if you want ham or eggs.

 

[Quackers]

They are the same people.

You need to get some new friends who aren't so dogmatic / weird.

 

[Radio Noer]

Are there limits on the noodles you can use? Are you just keeping the sled from hitting them? Assuming limitless noodles, brute forcing the situation is admittedly inelegant, but probably effective.

There is a weight limit of 1 kg, the only objective is to make sure the egg survives.

 

[Cutlass]

So, once again I have a physics project I'm looking for opinions on. This time I have to protect 2 eggs from a 5 kg sled moving at about 3 m/s using noodles and straws, so here's what I have so far.

Spoiler :

The black is my main frame (except the farthest right line, that was just an arbitrary cutoff because I didn't want to draw the other side). The light blue will be straws bent into a pyramidal shape, yellow represents a column of elbow macaroni noodles (chosen for their hollowness and relative crushability), and red is spaghetti noodles, the slightly longer dashes representing two noodles glue together.

Pack it in cooked macaroni.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Pack it in cooked macaroni.

This. Possibly par boiled, but either way it's probably better than uncooked.

 

[timtofly]

There is a weight limit of 1 kg, the only objective is to make sure the egg survives.

How high is the sled? Can you get the egg high enough to roll over the top of the sled?

 

[Radio Noer]

Pack it in cooked macaroni.

This. Possibly par boiled, but either way it's probably better than uncooked.

Unfortunately, no two cooked noodles can touch each other, to avoid this strategy

How high is the sled? Can you get the egg high enough to roll over the top of the sled?

The sled is 30x30x30cm, and the egg must stay in the device at all times.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

layer them like so c=cooked r=raw
r-c-r-c-r with a toothpick. The cooked noodles will compress and absord some of the impact, the raw ones will proved a framework or something.

 

[sophie]

I don't know. Anything to do with buying new technology can be dismissed as a one off cost. If I mention someone spending hours a day for years writing code then I'll get the question of why a book doesn't cost tens of millions to write. Cost of electricity I'm not sure about, but it still won't explain the high costs.

Some scientific journals can be extraordinarily expensive to publish. Some of the biggest projects require million-dollar grants to see through to completion.