I just recently got Amplitube5. SO far, I'm really liking it, but it is a bit overwhelming. Anyone else use this program.

S3... We were told this game would be released in thirds basically. And apparently it has. But what if things change in auto racing? Not just electric cars as the physics would still pretty much be the same, but hovering cars? Would there be additional work for that? Or would it be like "F%$# that! I did my time and ain't doing any more!"? I'm just speculating of course. I don't expect to see hover cars, much less hover car racing in my lifetime. But if by some miracle it popped up in the next couple of years, what then?

Quote from Avraham Vandezwin :

You are tough on us. Ouch ! But it reassuring that you haven't learned anything here.


And SamH is right to ask you for a link. Without a link no one can understand what you are talking about? Trees absorb CO2 and also release it. Especially when they are cut or burned.

@#$!!!! what happened to my post? Oh well try again
https://scitechdaily.com/should-we-cut-down-all-the-oak-trees-the-unexpected-link-between-trees-and-air-pollution/
sorry about that.

I read something else about dead trees in Northern Canada and being preserved under the permafrost. and as that permafrost, those trees give off methane gasses. Must've screwed up somewhere. Also. I've been reading about the possible collapse of the gulf stream by 2025. They stated that the current is less powerful than in years past. My guess on that is the drought we had/have in the Gulf Coast of the southern USofA. When there's not much river water running into the gulf of Mexico, the salt water runs inland. I think that's where the loss in current is coming from

Trying to read this thread is right up there with watching paint dry. I've been reading something about the dangers of planting new trees. That there is something in the trees that are actually worse than the greenhouse gases the cars put out. It's not all trees, it appears to be hardwood species like Oaks. Isoprene.... LOL sounds like some sort of ointment for sore muscles.

Global warming..... I think is definitely happening. I like History, especially local history. I read an except from journal of a Confederate Naval Captain from our civil war. He was commenting on how boat traffic was hampered by Ice sheets coming from inland rivers and into the bay in the area I live. And apparently this was a regular occurrence in the winter a 150 years ago. I have NEVER seen anything like that at all. And with the exception of a couple of cold snaps, we might get two or three freezing days a year here. As far as Man caused? No. I do think we're helping it along though. I went to an observatory once. They really can't use it too much due to light pollution. They had these photos taken by satellite over a period of 20 - 25 years showing light from the planet surface at night it increased a whole lot over the years. Think of all the energy generated to make those lights. That's heat at night time when night time is supposed to dissipate heat. then think about all those cities and all that concrete and how concrete deals with heat. I don't know much about greenhouse gasses or what the so-called experts say. This is just stuff I stumbled upon that really hadn't had anything to do with climate change in and of itself. But it is how I came to that conclusion.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

Regardless of my opinion, I think the market should show everything. And its has already shown quite well, for 10 years Tesla has proved that electric cars are the future, no matter how I feel about it. I think in 10 years, ICE cars will be rare and expensive objects for connoisseurs, and I'm not sure that they can be used on public roads,(if yes, then with big taxes) this is what everything is going to now.

I agree with this - mostly. I think it'll be a couple more decades than just ten years though. Here in the USofA, we have a couple of issues that need ironing out. Most of our highway maintenance is funded by gasoline taxes. Nice simple system. Electric cars don't need gasoline obviously, so something else needs to be done to make up for the loss of funding. Some states, like mine, are having electric car owners pay a yearly fee to make up for that. Trouble is, unlike the gas tax, you have to pay that in one lump sum and its a few hundred dollars. Most work commuters can't afford that. And at least with gasoline, drivers basically pay as they go based on miles driven. Electric cars have to pay a set fee so unless you're really into road trips, you might not be getting a good deal with this. And charging stations. At this point there are way more teslas than charging places and I think the closest charging station near me is 15 miles away. So I think that at least here, we still have a ways to go. Plus, until they come up with better source materials for the batteries, there's still more oil than rare earth metals required for all those batteries.... Whatever happened to hydrogen fuel cells?

Congratulations! Now you can sit around with the rest of us and whine for S4... Wait. Is there gonna be an S4?

I played last Sunday. I operated the shifting, breaking and throttle, my grand daughter did the steering. Don't worry. All y'alls WRs are safe.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

So you have no facts to prove that NATO wanted to admit Russia into its ranks I asked, okay.

Matt Gaetz is just a Republican far-right congressman, he is not affiliated with NATO, ...

No. I don't think NATO wanted this. Actually I thought Our boy Gaetz was simply grandstanding for attention. It's just that reading that article after discussing the previous one I read. I thought it was interesting.

Uh as far as NATO goes. The only real thing I know about them is a part of my tax dollars pays for it.

RT. When we had cable TV all the certain types of channels were numbered together. Like all the sports channels were numbers 23-50 or something like that. Same with News channels. We had CNN, FOX and a whole host of others. Not RT. Where was it? It was in the section of channels in between churches and channels geared for rural farmer types. Weird huh? Why wasn't it with the other news networks? I found it by accident looking for rodeo.

Do you keep up with American news much? It seems Congressman Matt Gaetz brought up Switching support and having Russia.... Yep... join NATO. Only I don't think his reasoning is correct at this time. Putin & Company meddled in our elections and now we got a few of his cheerleaders in office. I should elaborate more on this, but I have to go to work.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

What? I was talking about not trusting politicians in the context of what Putin and Clinton said about Russia joining the NATO.



Do you really consider the article in the newspaper as an argument?
Why can't I then cite Russian propaganda as an argument?

And what is the evidentiary basis for these claims? How can we talk about an allegation that has not been made publicly, but was in your paper?

Sorry for the delay...
"Do you really consider the article in the newspaper as an argument?
Why can't I then cite Russian propaganda as an argument?"

Well it was a news story. Just a news story. Nothing to shape opinion or control the masses. Just someone stating something. Just like the triple homicide story on the other page. They didn't drill it in on us. It was replaced by the next day's news once it became yesterday's news. It was something I read and just so happened to remember. And I remember back then as us being more worried about jihad than a Former KGB pencil pusher and a psycho caterer.

But who said you couldn't cite propaganda? What propaganda are you trying to cite? I thought you were just putting out your point of view.
What is Steven Segal doing anyways?

I hope everyone I deal with from over there come through this OK. My main interest of the war itself is the end game and the aftermath.

I tried to simulate an auto trannie with a shift kit put in a long time ago. I never could get it to overdrive the right amount before shifting.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

Basically yes.

But I'm not used to trusting the words of politicians, I think if NATO wanted to see Russia as a member, it could publicly declare it. Just like it was recently with Sweden and Finland. But there was nothing like that.

Uh... I'm not a secret government agent. I found this out reading the newspaper, riding a bus on my way to work. This was like right after or at the tail end of the Balkans wars. They didn't grandstand it like with Finland and Sweden. Probably cause at the same time that was going on, the internet was happening. Nobody cared. We were too concerned with how to get our computers off of dial up.

LOL you know what it means when a politician says trust me?

So Prigozhin is going to Belarus. What does that really mean? At the most, it means he's been sidelined without getting executed. but that's just Prigozhin. All this has a long term negative effect on Putin's regime. It won't take long for Kadyrov to figure out he doesn't have to be a Putin cheerleader to get Chechnia and that if he continues to do so, he'll never get it. Western agitation? Since we can't meddle in elections that are already rigged....
You know the funny thing about all of this? It was all this paranoia about NATO expansion was stupid. NATO? At the time we did want to expand. We wanted Russia and the former Soviet republics to be a part of NATO. You heard that right. We wanted Russia to be a member state. We had a much more serious threat at the time. Islamic Fundamentalism. Weird how that all changed.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

Eeeh.. i mean yes you right, but I think that maybe we should discuss more relevant things, for example, there is an attempted military coup in my country right now..just saying.

I'm sorry. I was going to, but I read these posts. Yeah. I hope you're doing OK. I knew Prigozhin was gonna be a problem - but wow. And apparently, this coup attempt is poised to have a cascade effect all over the country.

Quote from ACCAkut :

As a guy who was brought up all his life in atonement for what the Nazis did, who was again and again being told that it happened because those that opposed the Nazis or were indifferent kept quiet for too long, including my direct ancestors, it feels pretty hard to just go "it's Russian government that's responsible, not the people."

We see the Russian cyber commands trying to meddle with our domestic politics,

So in short, I don't hate Russians. I hate what they allowed to happen. But the longer this goes on, the harder it becomes to keep that distinction.

(For what it's worth I have the exact same sentiment towards the rise of christo-fascism in the USA. And other domestic political currents. I'm probably just a bitter old **** these days)

You Germans and Nazis.... We have the same thing if our ancestors fought for the Confederacy. It pisses me off that these defects will have and still have these statues of confederate generals and what not. They'll give you every sort of excuse to justify having these pieces of garbage without really knowing the history of the origins of the statues to begin with. Could you imagine going to work everyday and driving by a statue of - I dunno - Himmler on a horse. And some toothless meth head telling you how the guy fought for "States' Rights"? Yeah.
I do wanna keep these confederate statues too though. Only I want to change the dedication plaques to read "Here's the scumbag that suckered our ancestors to become cannon fodder so he could own people".

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

The fact is that I communicate with foreign players mainly only in LFS and discord servers dedicated to the game.
I see how the level of xenophobia and discrimination against Russians has increased many times. I often see people saying "I hate Russians", "Russian monkeys" and so on.
As an absolutist of the right to freedom of speech, I want to give these people a platform to speak out, to understand what led them to this, and why they have such positions. So that they could express their positions in detail and meaningfully without insults and excessive emotions, so that a meaningful discussion could be born.

As we all understand, most of these sentiments are due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. But is worth understanding that the absolute majority of Russians did not start this war, it was started by the government leadership. I hope you understand that Government is not equal to the country. Like many Russians, I am against it. But the interesting thing is that many Western people are for it, even if they say "no war" with words, they say "yes war" with deeds.

In my opinion, as I said earlier about the situation, Putin and the current regime there largely appeared because of Western policy towards Russia. There was a time in Russia when it could have become a liberal-demacratic country. But instead, from the West there was only a violation of the agreements that led to what we have today. If simplify it a lot, that's how Putin appeared.

But many from the West are still helping him even during this war, for example, sanctions on disabling Swift, and disabling Russian visa and master card. These sanctions do not affect Putin and his entourage in any way, but affect ordinary people as a measure of collective responsibility.
After February 24, many Russians began to sell their assets and leave the country. And this could significantly hit the country's economy and Putin's ability to wage war. But the West has imposed these sanctions, and ordinary people have lost the opportunity to do this. I.e., the West wants to accomulate all the money inside Russia, so that it would be easier for Putin to wage war.
Also, the West has forced many companies to leave Russia, as another measure of collective responsibility for ordinary people. Which pushed the Russian market to its production of many goods.
Many countries have banned Russians from entering their countries. Many flights from Russia have been banned.
Each such measure of collective responsibility unites the people of Russia for Putin and his actions.

Collective responsibility is a measure of tatolitarian regimes from the 20th century. " We used to think that this is wrong.
And I have always believed that collective responsibility is wrong, I have always believed that only the criminal is to blame for the crime. And only he needs to be punished. (and not his whole people, his whole family, etc.) But the West does not think so. And I don't understand why so many people think this is right. Thus uniting the people with Putin, and they prolong the war even more. That still doesn't make me a Putin supporter. But this makes me doubt the West.

Is this my take on the situation. I would like to know yours.

I grew up during the Cold War. Having Nuke drills in school? Well. I actually got to meet Russians after all that ended. Y'all had a guy named Yeltsin as President then. I thought y'all were some of the craziest M/Fers I ever met. Man these guys partied. But they were decent folks too.

"And I have always believed that collective responsibility is wrong, I have always believed that only the criminal is to blame for the crime. And only he needs to be punished. (and not his whole people, his whole family, etc.) But the West does not think so."
I think it depends on who you ask. Me? It depends on who all's involved and at what level. The Everyday Russian? Nah... You have as much control over Putin's nonsense as I do. These knuckleheads that just blatantly go off on y'all about this are clueless. It's that sort of mindset that causes a lot of these conflicts to begin with. They need to focus on "who the criminal is".

But the economic part.... Yeah that affects the oligarchs, And it limits how much $$$ Putin can raise to arm his war machine. The sad thing is how it also affects the Russian people, mainly your middle class. It also makes me wonder if he'll try to grant concessions to certain countries and regional power people to try and survive.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

I'm sorry, but your presentation of information is a little confused, I don't quite understand what you're trying to say.



What are you talking about? What guy? What conspiracy theory?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was the question of the distribution of nuclear weapons. Naturally the rest of the world did not want nuclear weapons to be divided among the 4 countries that had collapsed. It seems obvious to me that the more nuclear powers there are, the more likely it is that something could go wrong in the world.

That's why everybody wanted the newly created Russian Federation to keep the nuclear weapons, so the Budapest Memorandum was signed. The treaty implies not only transfer of nuclear weapons to Russia but also non-development of new nuclear weapons. In response, the U.S., Britain and Russia undertook obligations to respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine and to refrain from threats or use of force and economic pressure, and in case of any threats to Ukraine using nuclear weapons - to demand immediate action from the UN Security Council.
In fact this very part was violated by Russia first in 2014 and then in 2022, which means that technically Ukraine can develop nuclear weapons as Zelensky stated just before the full-scale invasion in 2022, And this very quote by Zelensky was used by Putin as one of the Casus belli for the invasion of Ukraine

This is not a conspiracy theory, these are facts.





Again. What latest developments with Wagner group?

Try to understand please, we are in a daily stream of news about the DNR-LNR, Bakhmut, Wagner, Prigozhin, Shaigu, Solovyov and his gulagunet, Strelkov-Girken and recently here's Prigozhin having a new skirmish with Gen. Sobolev, or new attacks in Ukraine, and Russian soldiers fleeing, and there are attacks even on Russia. And Prigozhin is trying to make a point about every single one of these things. And at the same time you pull out any one news item about Prigozhin and talk as if you all know what it's about. There the news gets so passionate, it's worse than a Spanish soap opera. There are literally a bunch of news items on Prigozhin and Wagner every day. At least tell us the point more or less to understand what you are talking about.

On China it could be, China is constantly trying to turn events to its advantage, which is understandable. But speaking of the future we start to put a crystal ball on the table, I would prefer not to do that.

"What are you talking about? What guy? What conspiracy theory?" The guy I was talking about is Prigozhin, The notorious Wagner Whiner. Conspiracy theory? No. I meant THEORIES. You don't have a bunch of them over there? Isn't that part of the planet where half of the conspiracy theories originate? Oh well we have all kinds over here. You debunk one, they just go and flock to another one.

And the rumor I was talking about is the one where Prigozhin offered to give up Russian positions to the Ukraine military. You haven't heard that one? This dude has been bad mouthing the Russian military every other hour. He is more critical than Nelvany is. So yeah, I figure he's gonna get taken out one way or the other.

"China is constantly trying to turn events to its advantage, which is understandable. But speaking of the future we start to put a crystal ball on the table, I would prefer not to do that." I dunno. Better to be prepared.
Uh yeah... About that.... When Putin crashes and burns, it won't just be the Chinese. All of us are gonna want a piece of that pie. Even Ghana and Bolivia! And seeing all the oligarghs will be wanting their boats and their money back, they'll be more than happy to cooperate. But seriously you're gonna have problems with China as well as Iran and maybe Turkey trying to get influence in that region around Armenia

I read an article about this a few days ago. This guy was spot on. He stated it was the west's fault that Putin's aggressions came about. He was right. It was because the western nations convinced the Ukraine to give their nukes back to the Russian Federation. All those nonsensical conspiracy theories about this or that when that's the real reason this happened. You think that Putin would take on a nuclear armed country?
I do think these latest developments with Wagner group is pretty interesting. Even if the rumor is false, I still think Prigozhi is gonna have one those oligargh accidents. I don't even think Canada's Trudeau would put up with an embarrassment like that dude.

China... China. I still think they are gonna try to use this for leverage on whoever is running Russia when this is all over. I think that the timing of how it winds down will factor in as well.

Quote from detail :

Historical parallels aren't a good tool, but you can see how involved parties interact if a situation repeats.

Analogy 1: Stalin destroyed all competitors and surrounded himself with sycophants, but when he died, his right hand Beriya, leader of the security services (supposedly his successor to then tradition, as he was organizing the funeral) was killed within couple of months. The fight for the leadership lasted 3 years, till Khrushchov finally won in 1956.

Analogy 2: The collapse and dissolution of the USSR happened when 2 conditions happened: (A) by 1989 the country went bankrupt (that's why they couldn't support puppet regimes in Eastern Europe), (B) local national elites became consolidated.

While (A) will likely be the case, (B) isn't seen on the horizon. Current Federal government took a lot of effort for the last 15 years to eradicate local elites networks, e.g. by firing local governors (by agreement or by made-up criminal charges). There is indeed some resentment to Moscow in many regions, especially national republics, but local elites don't look strong now. In the 1990s, Russia was broke for years, and yet nobody except Chechnya tried to separate.

So you're thinking some sort of coup will happen and it will be limited to only the very top levels of the gov't and the elites? It's possible. It makes sense that things would play out that way. But if that were to happen, they wouldn't have 3 years to settle things. And this would have to be limited to only the very top levels of power. The further down the govt pipeline this goes and the longer it takes to assert authority, the more likely things spiral out of control There's going to be all sorts of nations, not just mine and China's (maybe even yours), corporations and extremists that will want a piece of Russia. And if there's a power vacuum for too long things will get nasty. And then lets not forget Navalny. If he isn't executed outright or has a "fatal accident", he could use the vacuum to his advantage and empower the opposition movements into waging a civil war. I don't see the Russian Opposition and reform movements getting what they want peacefully. Especially when the people they are opposing would be looking at serious jail time.

But I do think we're overlooking something here. Where does Steven Segal fit into all of this?

Quote from MousemanLV :

Just can wait till the day comes for Putin. This man is completely mental and he doesn't care anyone but himself.

I miss Boris Yeltsin. He came here to Houston and wasn't nearly as impressed with NASA as he was the grocery store nearby. He seemed like the type of person you could have a beer with and go bowling. Putin, Putin, Putin. The problem with Putin is who's gonna replace him when the time comes? And for the Russian people my worry is how far down will the infighting resulting from that go? Will Chechnya try to break away again if Kadyrov gets whacked? Will Iran and China make power moves to have more influence in Russia? Will the oligarchs play nice with the west to get their boats back?
Then there's Syria. When the Putin regime comes to an end, what happens there? Like it or not, Russia is the stabilizing nation involved in that mess. They keep us and the Iranians from getting into it. They keep the Turks and Kurds from going at it And they help keep that idiot dictator in some sort of control as opposed to ISIS or some other bunch of nut cases. All that goes away once Putin does.

"EDIT: The exact wording is "please note that we will be required to forward your notice, including some of your personal information, to the alleged infringer."

So obviously that could apply the brakes on a lot of takedown requests. No way can I consent to my home address and phone number being sent to a criminal, that's just stupid."

What could possibly be their justification in that? There should be a better route for you to use if you want to go after them.

"I have one life and the main thing for me is to spend as much of that life as possible doing good things, not dealing with thieves and their accomplices."
I dunno. sometimes that's fun too.

Quote from Gutholz :

It does not really make sense
It is hard to understand what you write.
What do you mean by difference between "driver" and "car"?


According to version history, AI can drive mods since 0.7B Feb 14, 2022.

"According to version history, AI can drive mods since 0.7B Feb 14, 2022."
The last time I actually played was in July maybe. I didn't use the mods.

"It is hard to understand what you write."
Sorry. It's hard for me to describe as I'm not all that great with a computer and when I've typed, I just woke up.

What do you mean by difference between "driver" and "car"?
When you play single player, what is it that you are playing against?
And I was pretty much wondering how hard would it be to have a.i. drivers that actually drove the car instead of just holding onto the wheel and could do so at a decent enough level.
I figure it can be done, but is it practical to do so. LOL would it be easier to program A.I. drivers than tire physics?

Well first off. I was wrong about a.i. not using mod cars. Hadn't played in a while. They didn't used to. When did that get fixed?
Anyways, basically what I was saying, trying to say was have all those inputs you code for the a.I. car and put it in a driver. Does that make sense? When the car is being used by a human, the car performs based on whatever we want it to do through various input devices. Like a wheel, a mouse, a whatever. I was saying have the a.i. driver operate the car in the same fashion only like the car, the A.I. driver's input is based on the racing line. I'm sorry, the technical end of this is over my head. What I really mean is having a race in single player where you're racing against the sim Drivers instead of the cars.

[quote="Gutholz;2037397"]Can you clarify what you mean by "coding the driver instead"?

AI is just a form of algorithms and math, like any other program code.
I have not seen LFS's code but generally AI in video games works like this:

The AI-code takes some data as input and outputs data as control.
In a racing game the input might be:
-car speed
-engine rpm
-car position
-track layout
-car properties (weight, condition of tires, center of gravity,...)
The more input data is taken into account, the more detailed the calculations can be.

and the output would be:
-steering wheel angle
-throttle position
-brake position
-all the other driving controls, like clutch, gearbox etc
Notice that for a non-cheating AI, this would be the same as for humans.