Have you tried any of the speed test sites, for example http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks ISPs know all the speed test sites and will not throttle speed test packets.
I'm all but convinced that this is true - there's been several times where my connection to every major site was absolutely crawling to the point of absurdity but good ol' speakeasy came in just fine to ease my mind and tell me that my connection was great
I absolutely agree with that. I should have mentioned that in my description that I do not trust either the speed test sites or my ISP tarcking requests for and to speed test sites.
I think we need to distinguish the road technology from the solar technology. Is this a viable road technology when decoupled from the solar technology? Is this mechanism of solar collection/distribution more or less effective than other efforts? Clearly, our paved-over world could be put to better use, but is this approach a net gain or is it just solar buzz?
About the collection. In general the photovoltaic technology efficiency is about 17%, commercially it's about 27% and there's technology reaching up to 45% but not commercially available.
There's another problem, the efficiency drops with temperature. I don't know what kind of heat dissipation this technology is capable of but assuming the worst case scenario the solar panels will surpass boiling point temperature. This means that without cooling the system in the solar peak it will have the worst efficiency by a huge margin. A typical solar panel is cooled by air, this possibly is siting in a heat insulator.
Another problem are the scratches. Ideally the glass need to be clear, but over time it will lose it's transparency so there is another mayor drop in the production.
There's another problem. As you can see in the video, using these roads you need to transport energy in or out. For do that you need wires, many, but they are expensive. Consider you don't use the energy generation... you still need wires to use the leds.
I consider more intelligent put photovoltaic cells in every building in the city. As you use the same power infrastructure you don't need to worry to install new wires. As the cities concentrate the use of energy then the lose of power due to heat (Joule Law) it's reduced. It's a plus in efficiency. As daily beings even if we don't save the energy collected (because batteries are expensive) is a win. We could use other energy sources during the night. There's another possibility, some scientist are trying to create a photovoltaic paint, this will be even more cheap but also less efficient.
Another ideas. Use the heat produced in thermal plants (Gas/carbon/Dissel). For example to heat the roadways or houses in cold areas (you will heat you house anyway). Use the heat for industries: smelters, oil refineries, glass makers among other. Remember the heat is a waste anyway, but is useful in many industries.
Use the sewer waste to produce biomass energy. Think about it, if your feces produce methane in your body before you poop... The idea is, in general the energy we use is carbon buried eons ago. Methane does not add carbon the the atmosphere only use carbon already there. Then add the previous idea and... imagine how much petroleum you can cut with this.
More important than price is engagement value. If I spend four months with a game, I don't mind the $60 price. Some notable examples for me: Skyrim, GTA-V, and Dark Souls 2. However, I have played games with little or no engagement value. BioShock 2 lasted less than 2 weeks (2 play throughs).
If you want to talk about low value for a high price point, look no further than X:Rebirth. I'm hard pressed to believe the developers didn't know what an absolute mess they were pegging as a top dollar game; more than any question of price I'm wondering what happened to the demo THEN buy procedure that, at least for the games I cared about, seemed to be the norm. Nowadays it's prerendered trailer after prerendered trailer, and you may not have any idea what you're buying until the money has already changed hands.
Most empty action games I play (CoD series, Halo, etc.) I view as interactive blockbusters. So, if it costs $20 for a 2 hour movie, I'm getting my money's worth from a 6 hour game that costs $60.
That said, I actually enjoy good games, so I take my money elsewhere and buy little indie titles for $15-20 intead, and only occasionally buy a AAA theme park.
Unfortunately engagement value is only weakly linked to the price tag. It's expected a AAA title costing $60 to give at least 70 hours of entertainment, but beyond that it varies vastly across titles and players.
Usually, games with multiplayer features last significantly longer than single player games, but there are exceptions like the ones you listed which all have high replay values. Also, genres matter, open-world sandbox games lack the intensity but enjoys longevity, the price could hardly reflect that.
Then there's Minecraft, which keeps its charm after months, for some people even years. And it cost a lot less than the typical AAA titles.
I feel the pricing model in gaming industry is so rigid and backwards (although no so much for casual games, eg. in app purchase and mulitplayer games eg. esport games and MMORPGS). Some movement toward more flexible pricing mechanisms to reflect games' contents will undoubted benefit both game makers and players.
> It's expected a AAA title costing $60 to give at least 70 hours of entertainment
Does that include multiplayer? Personally I'd be surprised to find a majority of AAA single-player games to have that much content, barring the Skyrims and Fallouts. For me, playing the same game past around the 20 hour mark starts to feel like a chore.
Exactly. There is room in the world for big and expansive (and expensive) games like TES, Borderlands, and StarCraft and small one-off (and cheaper) games like all the indies. I would have loved the current game ecosystem when I was growing up 10-15 years ago.
When approach X isn't followed, approach X breaks down? True for all approaches, no?
Any language can be written poorly. I don't think any language will ever be able to force good coding style on programmers. Though Haskell comes closer to that impossible goal than many other languages, due to its type system, functional purity, and mandatory indentation.
The difference is that in lisp you cannot chose to not "follow the approach" because the approach is fundamental. So you will never look at anyone else's lisp code and see that they chose not to use parentheses uniformly.
Well, technically it's possible if someone used macros to embed a DSL that is paren free, but it just doesn't happen in the vast majority of cases. Whereas if you try to follow the approach of using parens everywhere in Haskell, the vast majority of other code you attempt to read will still be awkward for you.
