There have been reports all over the world that the reactor in question has been near melt-down since early this month and that the U.S. had a media black-out in place.
Source? Oh, right, media black-out. The absence of confirmation is clear proof.
Woot mdsolar is posting another article about nuclear power to spread more FUD!!!
I can understand slashdot taking lame submissions from techie magazines and such; presumably they're getting something for it, whether it's cash or (more likely) simple referrals and linkbacks.
But why this crap? Mdsolar is known here. He's just a guy with a bent agenda. He's made it clear in his comments that he won't take correction, and ignores any facts that don't fit his ideology. What does slashdot get from taking his dreck? Do they just want the flurry of posters calling out the submission as nonsense?
The worst magazine I've ever seen is Fast Company. The most shallow content imaginable, presented as managerial wisdom. I can't imagine a quicker way to kill a company than to take advice from that damned magazine.
It's really Voodoo, sympathetic magic. Google succeeds, and you want to succeed like Google, so you need to wear tennis shoes like Sergei does. Repulsive.
he more or less lays out why he settled - he figured out he was indeed in the wrong.
'But this is important: the fact that I settled is not an admission of guilt. My lawyers and I firmly believe that the pixel art is "fair use" and Maisel and his counsel firmly disagree. I settled for one reason: this was the least expensive option available.'
Oddly, you quoted the piece from the article that directly refutes what you're claiming. You'd be fun to debate.
Unless he was offering "should" as an opinion, which is entirely unclear from his or her comment.
There's no other way to interpret his use of 'should'. If he had said it 'IS' out of copyright, he would be factually wrong. He didn't, instead (obviously deliberately) used 'SHOULD', which means that your correction of him is factually wrong.
I think a modified version is preferable: Loser pays, up to the amount that the loser themselves paid.
For example, if a company spent a million dollars suing me, and I spent $10,000 defending, I would be on the hook for $10,000 of their legal bill if I lost. If I won, they would be on the hook for $10,000 of mine.
Game theory-wise, this would incent people to spend approximately equivalent amounts on lawyers, which is a good thing.
And so, out of the 100 million military personal active during WW2, women account for 0.2%. Individually, every woman that served is just as important as every man; but en masse, their contribution was very small. (In the active military. Their contribution overall, including at home, was invaluable).
If you wanted games to reflect reality, one out of every 500 WW2 games would feature a female protagonist.
They seems to be picking games that are suitable for the distribution method. Action-adventure, puzzle, arcade, FPS, family games, etc.
We were having some friends over, and so I rented "Jeopardy," the quiz show game, on a lark. Not something I would EVER buy, even used... but spending $2 for play it with some friends for an hour was fun. I wouldn't have spent $8 or whatever Blockbuster charges for game rentals.
It's not a bad service. All the local machines seem to be stock about 75% PS3 games, though; I'm not sure if that's because they stock a lot of them because of high demand, or that they're left in stock because of low demand.
At $2 per day, though, you don't want to rent it for more than a few days. That's fine for some games, insufficient for others. I wouldn't mind spending $2 just to play a little bit of Duke Nukem Forever, for instance. I wouldn't rent a long RPG or sandbox game, though.
I know that you like to post in any thread that involves space, using your 'Space Nutter' catchphrase. Although you're posting anonymously, you should be aware that it's painfully obvious that it's always the same person. You won't start a movement.
You're a very poor proponent for your cause. You find people on the other side, and then write posts that make them seem better in comparison; it's happened several times in this thread.
Your side would be better served if you let a better writer respond, someone with a less insulting and juvenile style, and more able to calmly and clearly give facts.
Some of those are targeted because they conflict with religious doctrine, for sure, but why should so many conservatives have so much of an emotional stake in climate science?
I'm semi conservative (of a libertarian bent), and quite atheist. I'm probably closer to a denier than a believer.
My exact position is that global warming certainly seems to be happening, and that it is probably partly fueled by mankind. I think the scale of it and man's role in it is being exaggerated, and that the predictions of upcoming cataclysmic effects are laughably overstated, and the current proposals to change it are dangerously heavy-handed.
One point I'd like to make is that an 'emotional stake in climate science' is by no means limited to just deniers. Browse this thread for obvious proof.
I think that, while nearly all Americans have respect for science, they are much more skeptical as regards scientists. Science works, and is our key to progress. Scientists, though, individually, are as prone to hubris, arrogance, lying, stubborness, and pride as anybody else. In the current climate, it's not hard to imagine the psychological pressures that would effect many of them. Not all of us are experts at climatology (deniers and believers alike). Normally, in that case, we will listen to the advice of experts. However, when there seem to be some strong evidence of groupthink and exclusionary thinking, bandwagon riding-upon, clear efforts at propagandizing, and suggested remedies that are strongly politically charged, our heels dig in.
Frankly, I would just like more study. We are talking about minor fluctuations in systems that have major factors that aren't yet understood. I could be convinced.
Besides, the answer is simply to go nuclear, and that's where we should go whether climate change is real or not... so what's the problem?
Yes, if you're pedantic, but in reality when someone on the news says "congressman" they are talking about somebody from the House, not the Senate.
I don't believe this is the case at all. Senators and Representatives are both Congressmen. Just as 'a bill in congress' could refer to a bill in either the house or the senate.
Think in principles. There qualitative issue is whether people with a certain level of wealth deserve to be stripped of privacy. The quantitative issue is what that level of wealth should be, and that's a far less important question.
I.E., the OP wants to strip rights based on wealth. The respondent was only haggling.
Are they really trying to claim that developing a proprietary disc format, and having the hardware used to read it custom made is going to be cheaper than just using a format which already exists, and for which drives are already being mass produced cheaply?
Yes, and they're correct. Development costs (which are minimal, because they're tweaking pre-existing formats, not reinventing) would have to be in the order of $500,000,000 or more to be as expensive as licensing. Or, to put it another way, the development cost per console only has to be under $5 or so to make it cost-effective. And... it will be.
It's odd, isn't it? I seem to expect slashdotters to have a memory spanning back at least ten years or so; it's odd to realize there's a new influx of kids coming on and posting here. Every so often, somebody will say something that makes it obvious they only have heard second hand stories about anything tech related from 2005 and earlier.
Ah, well. It's probably the same feeling the early slashdotters get when I talk about the early IBM mainframes or Apollo launches, and so on.
Your memory fails you, in both cases. Dreamcast was had the highest launch sales of any console to date, and sold well for the following year. It was killed by Piracy and the hype around the upcoming PS2.
And the Gamecube was basically flat in sales with the X-Box (with the PS2 far in advance). It certainly made more money for Nintendo than X-Box did for MS.
The fact that the PS2 could play DVDs certainly did hurt the Dreamcast, but it wasn't because of any problem with the GD-ROM format; most early PS2 games would have fit on a GD-Rom. It was purely because of the lack of movie playback, and at the time the Dreamcast was designed, putting a DVD into it would have been flatly impossible.
Physical education/health yes, but sports have no place in public education. None whatsoever.
I somewhat agree. Kids need to be given some sort of physical activity; this could be as simple as running circles around the playground, or could be organized into games or sports; the latter makes some sense, since most kids enjoy that.
But the idea of having having sports teams, competing with other schools, I agree; it's ridiculous and has nothing to do with the purpose of school. It's an anachronistic holdover.
And then, when it comes time for them to create their own causal chains, when it comes time for them to put 5 into x and then print it out on the screen, they are utterly lost - they have no idea what the immutable will of the Universe is in this case, so they just guess. And then sometimes it works, hallelujah amen, and sometimes it doesn't and they'll never know why.
That's very eloquently stated.
Maria Montessori tells the story of a woman with a young child. The child had put their dirty shoes on their bed; the mother scolded the child, put the shoes on the floor and then brushed all the dirt off the bed.
The next day, the child took off his shoes, proudly placed them on the floor, and then went to his bed and brushed it vigorously, to get rid of the non-existent dirt.
It's not surprising that a child learns to replicate particular behaviors, rather than learning and acting based on the reasons for those behaviors. As you grow, you should learn to examine lessons more deeply; unfortunately, that appears to be a skill that some people have a very hard time learning.
Programming in itself isn't a necessary thing to learn; but if programming can be utilized as a tool to give people experience with these reasoning techniques, it may certainly be helpful... in the same way learning a second language can be immensely valuable, even if it is never learned... or how learning to play chess can assist your judgement.
The language will be obsolete, but so what? The language is not the important thing you learn from a programming class.
What you learn is the concept of unambiguously breaking a process down into discrete steps. Abstracting a general behavior from a bunch of particulars. This is good for everybody to learn, even if they will never touch a computer again. It's valuable in nearly any job you're ever going to work.
It certainly shouldn't be a university-level course; if you don't already know how to program when you get to college, I doubt you'll ever learn to be a competent programmer.
I think those people that you talk about would have benefited greatly from a little programming course in their high-school days... even if it was an early version of BASIC that was long obsolete.
They all are. They just differ in how good of a cultural work they are. DNF is a cultural work on par with, say, Scary Movie. Bioshock has value, but I don't think it is something that should be held up as a pinnacle of the genre... they set their sights high, but fell shot, imo. The story got ridiculous past the half-way point, and the gameplay was more shallow than I expected. System Shock 2, which it was modeled after, was more impressive. Still, though, a respectable game. If we are looking for a movie comparison, I'd compare it to... maybe... Pirates of the Caribbean?
If we are looking for a game that could be compared to some of the best of cinema, I'd probably point to Planescape:Torment.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been reports all over the world that the reactor in question has been near melt-down since early this month and that the U.S. had a media black-out in place.
Source? Oh, right, media black-out. The absence of confirmation is clear proof.
Woot mdsolar is posting another article about nuclear power to spread more FUD!!!
I can understand slashdot taking lame submissions from techie magazines and such; presumably they're getting something for it, whether it's cash or (more likely) simple referrals and linkbacks.
But why this crap? Mdsolar is known here. He's just a guy with a bent agenda. He's made it clear in his comments that he won't take correction, and ignores any facts that don't fit his ideology. What does slashdot get from taking his dreck? Do they just want the flurry of posters calling out the submission as nonsense?
Government will always fail once the rich discover they can purchase themselves entitlements
What are the largest components of the US budget?
The worst magazine I've ever seen is Fast Company. The most shallow content imaginable, presented as managerial wisdom. I can't imagine a quicker way to kill a company than to take advice from that damned magazine.
It's really Voodoo, sympathetic magic. Google succeeds, and you want to succeed like Google, so you need to wear tennis shoes like Sergei does. Repulsive.
he more or less lays out why he settled - he figured out he was indeed in the wrong.
'But this is important: the fact that I settled is not an admission of guilt. My lawyers and I firmly believe that the pixel art is "fair use" and Maisel and his counsel firmly disagree. I settled for one reason: this was the least expensive option available.'
Oddly, you quoted the piece from the article that directly refutes what you're claiming. You'd be fun to debate.
Unless he was offering "should" as an opinion, which is entirely unclear from his or her comment.
There's no other way to interpret his use of 'should'. If he had said it 'IS' out of copyright, he would be factually wrong. He didn't, instead (obviously deliberately) used 'SHOULD', which means that your correction of him is factually wrong.
I think a modified version is preferable: Loser pays, up to the amount that the loser themselves paid.
For example, if a company spent a million dollars suing me, and I spent $10,000 defending, I would be on the hook for $10,000 of their legal bill if I lost. If I won, they would be on the hook for $10,000 of mine.
Game theory-wise, this would incent people to spend approximately equivalent amounts on lawyers, which is a good thing.
And so, out of the 100 million military personal active during WW2, women account for 0.2%. Individually, every woman that served is just as important as every man; but en masse, their contribution was very small. (In the active military. Their contribution overall, including at home, was invaluable).
If you wanted games to reflect reality, one out of every 500 WW2 games would feature a female protagonist.
They seems to be picking games that are suitable for the distribution method. Action-adventure, puzzle, arcade, FPS, family games, etc.
We were having some friends over, and so I rented "Jeopardy," the quiz show game, on a lark. Not something I would EVER buy, even used... but spending $2 for play it with some friends for an hour was fun. I wouldn't have spent $8 or whatever Blockbuster charges for game rentals.
It's not a bad service. All the local machines seem to be stock about 75% PS3 games, though; I'm not sure if that's because they stock a lot of them because of high demand, or that they're left in stock because of low demand.
At $2 per day, though, you don't want to rent it for more than a few days. That's fine for some games, insufficient for others. I wouldn't mind spending $2 just to play a little bit of Duke Nukem Forever, for instance. I wouldn't rent a long RPG or sandbox game, though.
I know that you like to post in any thread that involves space, using your 'Space Nutter' catchphrase. Although you're posting anonymously, you should be aware that it's painfully obvious that it's always the same person. You won't start a movement.
You're a very poor proponent for your cause. You find people on the other side, and then write posts that make them seem better in comparison; it's happened several times in this thread.
Your side would be better served if you let a better writer respond, someone with a less insulting and juvenile style, and more able to calmly and clearly give facts.
Some of those are targeted because they conflict with religious doctrine, for sure, but why should so many conservatives have so much of an emotional stake in climate science?
I'm semi conservative (of a libertarian bent), and quite atheist. I'm probably closer to a denier than a believer.
My exact position is that global warming certainly seems to be happening, and that it is probably partly fueled by mankind. I think the scale of it and man's role in it is being exaggerated, and that the predictions of upcoming cataclysmic effects are laughably overstated, and the current proposals to change it are dangerously heavy-handed.
One point I'd like to make is that an 'emotional stake in climate science' is by no means limited to just deniers. Browse this thread for obvious proof. I think that, while nearly all Americans have respect for science, they are much more skeptical as regards scientists. Science works, and is our key to progress. Scientists, though, individually, are as prone to hubris, arrogance, lying, stubborness, and pride as anybody else. In the current climate, it's not hard to imagine the psychological pressures that would effect many of them. Not all of us are experts at climatology (deniers and believers alike). Normally, in that case, we will listen to the advice of experts. However, when there seem to be some strong evidence of groupthink and exclusionary thinking, bandwagon riding-upon, clear efforts at propagandizing, and suggested remedies that are strongly politically charged, our heels dig in.
Frankly, I would just like more study. We are talking about minor fluctuations in systems that have major factors that aren't yet understood. I could be convinced.
Besides, the answer is simply to go nuclear, and that's where we should go whether climate change is real or not... so what's the problem?
That's exactly the reason why people call them anthropogenic global warming denialists, and not skeptics.
No, they're called denialists instead of skeptics because it's more insulting. Don't whitewash.
When does a small tree become a big tree? Is there an intermediate sized tree in between?
That should demonstrate the concept. Indistinct boundaries between terms don't mean the terms are meaningless.
Yes, if you're pedantic, but in reality when someone on the news says "congressman" they are talking about somebody from the House, not the Senate.
I don't believe this is the case at all. Senators and Representatives are both Congressmen. Just as 'a bill in congress' could refer to a bill in either the house or the senate.
There should be a word for when one is both in error and arrogant, such as "errogant".
Amusingly, that's one of the most common problems with slashdot posters; they're frequently wrong, often stupid, and always convinced of their truth.
Think in principles. There qualitative issue is whether people with a certain level of wealth deserve to be stripped of privacy. The quantitative issue is what that level of wealth should be, and that's a far less important question.
I.E., the OP wants to strip rights based on wealth. The respondent was only haggling.
Are they really trying to claim that developing a proprietary disc format, and having the hardware used to read it custom made is going to be cheaper than just using a format which already exists, and for which drives are already being mass produced cheaply?
Yes, and they're correct. Development costs (which are minimal, because they're tweaking pre-existing formats, not reinventing) would have to be in the order of $500,000,000 or more to be as expensive as licensing. Or, to put it another way, the development cost per console only has to be under $5 or so to make it cost-effective. And... it will be.
It's odd, isn't it? I seem to expect slashdotters to have a memory spanning back at least ten years or so; it's odd to realize there's a new influx of kids coming on and posting here. Every so often, somebody will say something that makes it obvious they only have heard second hand stories about anything tech related from 2005 and earlier.
Ah, well. It's probably the same feeling the early slashdotters get when I talk about the early IBM mainframes or Apollo launches, and so on.
Your memory fails you, in both cases. Dreamcast was had the highest launch sales of any console to date, and sold well for the following year. It was killed by Piracy and the hype around the upcoming PS2.
And the Gamecube was basically flat in sales with the X-Box (with the PS2 far in advance). It certainly made more money for Nintendo than X-Box did for MS. The fact that the PS2 could play DVDs certainly did hurt the Dreamcast, but it wasn't because of any problem with the GD-ROM format; most early PS2 games would have fit on a GD-Rom. It was purely because of the lack of movie playback, and at the time the Dreamcast was designed, putting a DVD into it would have been flatly impossible.
Physical education/health yes, but sports have no place in public education. None whatsoever.
I somewhat agree. Kids need to be given some sort of physical activity; this could be as simple as running circles around the playground, or could be organized into games or sports; the latter makes some sense, since most kids enjoy that.
But the idea of having having sports teams, competing with other schools, I agree; it's ridiculous and has nothing to do with the purpose of school. It's an anachronistic holdover.
And then, when it comes time for them to create their own causal chains, when it comes time for them to put 5 into x and then print it out on the screen, they are utterly lost - they have no idea what the immutable will of the Universe is in this case, so they just guess. And then sometimes it works, hallelujah amen, and sometimes it doesn't and they'll never know why.
That's very eloquently stated.
Maria Montessori tells the story of a woman with a young child. The child had put their dirty shoes on their bed; the mother scolded the child, put the shoes on the floor and then brushed all the dirt off the bed.
The next day, the child took off his shoes, proudly placed them on the floor, and then went to his bed and brushed it vigorously, to get rid of the non-existent dirt.
It's not surprising that a child learns to replicate particular behaviors, rather than learning and acting based on the reasons for those behaviors. As you grow, you should learn to examine lessons more deeply; unfortunately, that appears to be a skill that some people have a very hard time learning.
Programming in itself isn't a necessary thing to learn; but if programming can be utilized as a tool to give people experience with these reasoning techniques, it may certainly be helpful... in the same way learning a second language can be immensely valuable, even if it is never learned... or how learning to play chess can assist your judgement.
The language will be obsolete, but so what? The language is not the important thing you learn from a programming class.
What you learn is the concept of unambiguously breaking a process down into discrete steps. Abstracting a general behavior from a bunch of particulars. This is good for everybody to learn, even if they will never touch a computer again. It's valuable in nearly any job you're ever going to work.
It certainly shouldn't be a university-level course; if you don't already know how to program when you get to college, I doubt you'll ever learn to be a competent programmer.
I think those people that you talk about would have benefited greatly from a little programming course in their high-school days... even if it was an early version of BASIC that was long obsolete.
Bioshock was a cultural work.
They all are. They just differ in how good of a cultural work they are. DNF is a cultural work on par with, say, Scary Movie. Bioshock has value, but I don't think it is something that should be held up as a pinnacle of the genre... they set their sights high, but fell shot, imo. The story got ridiculous past the half-way point, and the gameplay was more shallow than I expected. System Shock 2, which it was modeled after, was more impressive. Still, though, a respectable game. If we are looking for a movie comparison, I'd compare it to... maybe... Pirates of the Caribbean?
If we are looking for a game that could be compared to some of the best of cinema, I'd probably point to Planescape:Torment.