It took that long to fold the laundry, too.
I think the problem lies in the inability of the robot to process 'visual' input (ie, the door handle, the beer bottles) and respond at the pace of a human brain. It has to be programmed to recognize these things, and the programming has limitations. With a little more work, I expect they'll get it down to a much faster response time. At this point, the fact that it does it at all is kickass!
It's not sterile, but it doesn't produce "true". F1 (first generation) hybrids bred together will not produce seeds that have the same high yield or in some cases even the same taste and look as their parent crop. Soybeans are like this. You buy high-yield seed from Monsanto. If you choose to use the seed produced by your crop, it won't grow the same high-yield plants that it came from. I'm pretty sure the reason for this is that the plants won't self-pollinate. They cross-pollinate, and the hybrids that Monsanto sells don't produce good seed after the initial cross.
You can test genetics with some store-bought produce. Hybrids are all over in the produce department and their seeds often grow a plant entirely different than the parent. I've seen it happen with apples and pears, melons, and squash... I'm sure it happens with many other plants. Monsanto can control quite a few crops by providing plants that won't produce true, and the farmers can't do much about it, short of spending a lot of time and money on trying to breed new high-producers for themselves. Self-pollinating crops might be harder to control, but I'm sure they'll figure out a way to do it...
I don't trust lab-modified foods. We've been genetically engineering our food supply for higher yield, taste, color, and insect resistance ever since the first seed was planted. Artificial selection of traits is part of why human agriculture was so successful. However, we have only recently started tampering with the genetic code directly. We don't usually eat poisonous caterpillars or pesticide-resistant weeds; why should we blindly accept that the things that we have inserted into our crops are "only poisonous to pests"? I'm not going to accept "The FDA says it's edible", because I don't trust the FDA either.
I don't think that a game necessarily needs to avoid Phoenix down or rocket launchers in order to maintain better internal consistency. The items can be very useful, and if done right they don't remove from "immersion" but add complexity to the world and the characters' interactions. As above posters have said, there are ways around these items, if only the designers would bother with an explanation. Maybe using Phoenix down is too easy. If we couldn't use it during battles but rather had to carry a 'dead' character to a temple or nearby wandering healer, or deal with a ghost instead of just dropping phoenix feathers on the body, we could then agree that if the character's body was unrecoverable and/or their ghost was unavailable the character couldn't be resurrected. Or maybe it takes time to use; the recovery isn't immediate and when a character in a cutscene dies we are led to believe that we simply didn't have enough time for the spell/item to take effect. It might add to the internal consistency of the game this way; instead of guessing at the circumstances in which certain items can be used, you get answers which make sense within the game-world and yet limit the powers of the items.
Then clearly you're the only smart person on the internet, although I think I'd disagree with you that the 'net is made charming by idiot posturing over salaries. (I make $200k/year sitting on my ass in my undies! HAH!)
You're right that tiptoeing around strong words just because we're worried they'll offend someone is not the way to go; I use strong statements in Facebook notes and in other communication, but I usually try to do so in a way that doesn't attack others - for instance, I wrote a note the other day bashing a certain Christian woman for getting on my nerves regarding birth control ("if you loved him you'd have his babies!"). My Christian friends were not offended by it because despite my strong feelings toward that particular subject it was clear that my attack wasn't directed at them. It's not that hard to make statements that acknowledge someone else's views (you did it in the post above!).
I can't count the number of times I've had this conversation with my fiance. He'll say something dumb/offensive/aggressive online, and mean it to be completely harmless or sarcastic. He jokes all the time; he expects everyone to know this. He doesn't get that everyone interprets things differently (especially in a mostly textual medium like the internet) and that what he thinks is a joke could be taken seriously by a lot of people who will then turn their perception of his words into a perception of him, get pissed off, and think he's a complete asshole.
This guy clearly wasn't thinking when he put this in his profile. "If you have the balls to get in my face, I'll kick your ass into submission. " is the kind of statement I'd take seriously, especially if I didn't know the guy. Short of sticking several "lol"s and smilies on the end of that statement, it's really hard to NOT make it sound aggressive, and aggression can signal anger management issues. A lot of people take what you say online at face value because they lack other social cues with which to interpret it.
If you want something you post to be taken as 'not serious', then you better start putting flashing lights and signs around it, or make it so over-the-top in comparison to everything else you present on your profile that most sensible people have no choice but to recognize it as flippant. As much as we are predisposed to ignore the perceptions of those around us in favor of our own, other peoples' perceptions do differ from ours, and one way they differ is that they aren't inside our heads and can't read "I will kick your ass!" in the silly voice with which you intended it to be read. If you don't like it, don't put anything up that you don't want to be taken seriously.
I occasionally get skips in video (but not audio) when it's opening/buffering (so really, all it skips is the ad at the start). During actual streaming of the video I've rarely had a problem. Quality is good, audio is synced, and while I'm not thrilled by the in-browser screen size, it -does- fit perfectly on my netbook screen!
I'm satisfied with Hulu, although I doubt I'd pay for the service. If I get more than 5 episodes behind on any given show, I probably don't care enough about it to catch up, especially if it costs me $10 to do so.
That's great, but I doubt people "all over the world" are all awake and active at the computer when you are; that or you spend way too much time online. When I'm actually awake and at home (right now), my friend in NZ is not. Neither are my cousin in China or my sister in Colorado (she's in class). I can't use IM because nobody I actually want to talk to is online at the same times I am. Instead, I check Facebook for updates and use email for conversations. It's far more convenient, and it means that both my friends and I can actually go outside instead of waiting for someone to log into a messenger service.
The only DSL subscriber I know (just north of us) pings out of IRC 60 times a day; and that's probably an understatement. Service around here is ridiculous in terms of both speed and uptime. It's not practical, at least in my experience with it. We are lucky and Verizon's run FIOS out here; as much as I dislike Verizon's termination fees and customer service, Comcast is worse and DSL isn't worth looking at.
Clearly, as I was able to avoid people, trees, benches and cracks in the sidewalk, I was paying more attention than some!
I'll admit I wasn't looking straight ahead but rather down at the book, and using my peripheral vision to catch obstacles. I did also look up every so often to double-check my intended course. However, I had a good record of not running into anything or anyone, and that's better than a lot of the kids who would step into traffic with their headphones on. At least I wasn't dumb enough to cross the street without looking first!
Makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why so many new parents feel overwhelmed with the first kid, but breeze through the next one. Trying to make breakfast while the dog's whining at the door and Timmy's refusing to get out of his pj's isn't something you can practice, but once you can do it, it seems rather mundane.
I'd like them to do a long-term study on multitasking now. Once learned, is a series of tasks that we do frequently (like paying the bills while talking on the phone, or checking the news and eating breakfast) something we will never forget, or must it be continued in order to maintain adequate multitasking? I've been very good at various multitasking sets in the past but have since discontinued them; if I tried to do them again would I be able to pick up where I left off, or can the brain only manage a certain number of sets?
I can read books and walk at the same time! Used to do it on campus; got pretty good at dodging people with headphones on who weren't looking where they were going!
And if TFA is right and the yellows ARE too short the lines aren't going to make one whit of difference. I've known lights where the lines are completely irrelevant because they are either too far back for traffic flow (ie, I could make the yellow clear, and be out the other side by the time it went red, from the line, at the speed limit), or too far forward (even if I was doing the limit, I'd never hit my brakes in time before it went red). I tend to ignore them, except when approaching unknown lights.
It wouldn't surprise me if either the chemicals in cigarettes or the sheer amount of oxygen denied to your bloodstream by your blackened, tar-filled lungs actually kill off or otherwise damage your neural connections.
Purplemath.com will get you a review of everything algebra through trig and simple log functions. It includes full lessons, descriptions, examples and practice work with explanations. It's free and you can take it at your own pace and/or review only what you need.
You have sugar in bread?...fermented wheat flour...
Doesn't fermentation of carbohydrates end with sugars? As far as I knew, all bread needed some kind of sugary addition in order to feed the yeast and encourage proper rising. I add either sugar or honey to my bread when I make it at home; small amounts which provide enough for the yeast to break down without sweetening the dough. The bread does not taste sugary (in fact, it tastes better and less sweet than the store-bought wheat breads).
This.
I was perfectly capable of dressing myself, getting breakfast and walking to the bus stop several blocks away (in a small community) at 10 years old, without parental supervision or nagging once they'd dragged me out of bed. I wasn't pushed into maturity or neglected; it was simply expected that once I had learned to dress myself and pick out an outfit I'd continue to do it for myself. If a kid at 13 couldn't be trusted to get cereal, get dressed and walk out the front door to the bus I'd suspect he was developmentally delayed.
Now, I wouldn't trust a kid that young with more than an hour to himself (assuming parents don't leave the house till slightly before 8, it's no big deal to make sure your kid's still snoring and that his alarm is set), and I'd most certainly call the school and warn them that he was coming in on his own, and that unless they were warned prior to the bus pickup he would be expected to get on that bus, arrive at school, etc. Making sure that both you and the school have set expectations for a kid that young is helpful, but there's no need to hover.
I celebrate and enjoy almost every sex act I've been a part of in regards to the physical experience. Sex is fun, and enjoyable. I do however regret a few occasions where the decision to have sex, no matter how fun it was, led to complications with the people involved. It's not the sex I regret, it's the choice of partner, place and time. Unfortunately, unless you're masturbating the choice of partner is always going to be part of the sexual experience. Instead of simply encouraging sex, we should take a two-prong approach: sex is fun, but the who, when and where are just as important as the what when you look back at past engagements. I bet that most women who regret having sex don't regret the act itself as much as the interactions surrounding it, which they have associated with the sex.
Reading and partaking of other media in Chinese (or any other language you decide to learn) is a great idea. Seconding the movies, radio and newspapers. Also, have them write. Writing in another language is really tough, because it not only requires the learner to come up with the right vocabulary but to put it down on paper, which gives you more practice not only remembering but producing the proper spellings, accents, etc (and in this case, remembering and producing the correct symbols).
I'm not sure about sea-steading as a reliable way of life but escaping tyrannical gov'ts might be an interesting exercise. As far as I understand, the coastal shelf is in most areas 'claimed' already by one country or another, and I don't think we have the technology to build far enough away from the "shallow" water over the shelves to reasonably escape gov't claims to the area. I could be wrong - I've never seen maps of the sea borders of coastal countries, nor do I know what the laws are regarding owning "land" in areas off the coast, and whether you could declare undeveloped seabed as unclaimed for the purposes of claiming it as an independent nation.
You're really on point there - might as well buy your way into a nicer country, assuming you can find one.
The parents may be drawing conclusions blindly, but that doesn't mean they're the wrong conclusions.
Facts are:
1. Child was used to playing with a black, gun-like wiimote
2. Children at 3 years old might not immediately see the difference between black wiimote and gun, a convincing argument that she could have mistaken the gun for the toy at first glance.
3. Children at 3 years old have weak hands/wrists. It's been noted that she might have had trouble picking up and firing the gun. Think about the last time you saw a toddler hold something new, especially something heavy. Their wrists are weak; their usual reaction is to cradle the item near their body to support it. My bet is that she picked up the gun with a finger/thumb through the trigger guard, whether or not she knew it was the controller, and before she even thought to turn it toward the screen (or look at it more) she tried to manage the weight by holding it tightly and bringing it up to her chest... bang.
Whether or not she thought it was a controller, the child was clearly not able to control the gun (nor would I expect a 3 year old to), and the parents were clearly not paying attention to their daughter (of course, any parent who lets their toddler play unsupervised in the first place is suspect, whether or not they own a gun or let the kid play something violent). I'd say that as much of an "accident" as this was, what the media should focus on is the fact that parents these days seem to need a lot more incentive to focus on their kids.
Why are we ignoring the mother? You know, the one who was 3 feet from her daughter when this happened? Yes, the stepfather left the gun out. If you were in the household would you expect the second adult there to simply shut up and wait for the gun owner to put it away? If it were me, I'd have said something if not put it away myself.
If you want to punish one parent, might as well punish both. Honestly, I wouldn't let them sit in jail - as parent post said they are both probably in a world of hurt right now, if they cared at all about the child. I'd put them in parental counseling though, and remove the 1 year old to a responsible relative for a while until the parents were over their grief and ready to resume care. There is little worse than being in the position of being a child, especially one so young who needs a lot of care and attention, in a home which has just lost a loved one. Even the death of an older adult can cause parents to suffer from depression and stop properly caring for their kids; losing a child is immeasurably painful and can cause serious issues with caring for other dependents.
Slashdot Mirror
It took that long to fold the laundry, too. I think the problem lies in the inability of the robot to process 'visual' input (ie, the door handle, the beer bottles) and respond at the pace of a human brain. It has to be programmed to recognize these things, and the programming has limitations. With a little more work, I expect they'll get it down to a much faster response time. At this point, the fact that it does it at all is kickass!
You can test genetics with some store-bought produce. Hybrids are all over in the produce department and their seeds often grow a plant entirely different than the parent. I've seen it happen with apples and pears, melons, and squash... I'm sure it happens with many other plants. Monsanto can control quite a few crops by providing plants that won't produce true, and the farmers can't do much about it, short of spending a lot of time and money on trying to breed new high-producers for themselves. Self-pollinating crops might be harder to control, but I'm sure they'll figure out a way to do it...
I don't trust lab-modified foods. We've been genetically engineering our food supply for higher yield, taste, color, and insect resistance ever since the first seed was planted. Artificial selection of traits is part of why human agriculture was so successful. However, we have only recently started tampering with the genetic code directly. We don't usually eat poisonous caterpillars or pesticide-resistant weeds; why should we blindly accept that the things that we have inserted into our crops are "only poisonous to pests"? I'm not going to accept "The FDA says it's edible", because I don't trust the FDA either.
I don't think that a game necessarily needs to avoid Phoenix down or rocket launchers in order to maintain better internal consistency. The items can be very useful, and if done right they don't remove from "immersion" but add complexity to the world and the characters' interactions. As above posters have said, there are ways around these items, if only the designers would bother with an explanation. Maybe using Phoenix down is too easy. If we couldn't use it during battles but rather had to carry a 'dead' character to a temple or nearby wandering healer, or deal with a ghost instead of just dropping phoenix feathers on the body, we could then agree that if the character's body was unrecoverable and/or their ghost was unavailable the character couldn't be resurrected. Or maybe it takes time to use; the recovery isn't immediate and when a character in a cutscene dies we are led to believe that we simply didn't have enough time for the spell/item to take effect. It might add to the internal consistency of the game this way; instead of guessing at the circumstances in which certain items can be used, you get answers which make sense within the game-world and yet limit the powers of the items.
(As to -why- people take things seriously? I have no clue. If I knew, I'd probably be making a lot of money off the knowledge!)
You're right that tiptoeing around strong words just because we're worried they'll offend someone is not the way to go; I use strong statements in Facebook notes and in other communication, but I usually try to do so in a way that doesn't attack others - for instance, I wrote a note the other day bashing a certain Christian woman for getting on my nerves regarding birth control ("if you loved him you'd have his babies!"). My Christian friends were not offended by it because despite my strong feelings toward that particular subject it was clear that my attack wasn't directed at them. It's not that hard to make statements that acknowledge someone else's views (you did it in the post above!).
This guy clearly wasn't thinking when he put this in his profile. "If you have the balls to get in my face, I'll kick your ass into submission. " is the kind of statement I'd take seriously, especially if I didn't know the guy. Short of sticking several "lol"s and smilies on the end of that statement, it's really hard to NOT make it sound aggressive, and aggression can signal anger management issues. A lot of people take what you say online at face value because they lack other social cues with which to interpret it.
If you want something you post to be taken as 'not serious', then you better start putting flashing lights and signs around it, or make it so over-the-top in comparison to everything else you present on your profile that most sensible people have no choice but to recognize it as flippant. As much as we are predisposed to ignore the perceptions of those around us in favor of our own, other peoples' perceptions do differ from ours, and one way they differ is that they aren't inside our heads and can't read "I will kick your ass!" in the silly voice with which you intended it to be read. If you don't like it, don't put anything up that you don't want to be taken seriously.
I'm satisfied with Hulu, although I doubt I'd pay for the service. If I get more than 5 episodes behind on any given show, I probably don't care enough about it to catch up, especially if it costs me $10 to do so.
That's great, but I doubt people "all over the world" are all awake and active at the computer when you are; that or you spend way too much time online. When I'm actually awake and at home (right now), my friend in NZ is not. Neither are my cousin in China or my sister in Colorado (she's in class). I can't use IM because nobody I actually want to talk to is online at the same times I am. Instead, I check Facebook for updates and use email for conversations. It's far more convenient, and it means that both my friends and I can actually go outside instead of waiting for someone to log into a messenger service.
The only DSL subscriber I know (just north of us) pings out of IRC 60 times a day; and that's probably an understatement. Service around here is ridiculous in terms of both speed and uptime. It's not practical, at least in my experience with it. We are lucky and Verizon's run FIOS out here; as much as I dislike Verizon's termination fees and customer service, Comcast is worse and DSL isn't worth looking at.
Clearly, as I was able to avoid people, trees, benches and cracks in the sidewalk, I was paying more attention than some!
I'll admit I wasn't looking straight ahead but rather down at the book, and using my peripheral vision to catch obstacles. I did also look up every so often to double-check my intended course. However, I had a good record of not running into anything or anyone, and that's better than a lot of the kids who would step into traffic with their headphones on. At least I wasn't dumb enough to cross the street without looking first!
And if you ever doubt it, try listening to something in another language (especially one you've just started learning).
Makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why so many new parents feel overwhelmed with the first kid, but breeze through the next one. Trying to make breakfast while the dog's whining at the door and Timmy's refusing to get out of his pj's isn't something you can practice, but once you can do it, it seems rather mundane. I'd like them to do a long-term study on multitasking now. Once learned, is a series of tasks that we do frequently (like paying the bills while talking on the phone, or checking the news and eating breakfast) something we will never forget, or must it be continued in order to maintain adequate multitasking? I've been very good at various multitasking sets in the past but have since discontinued them; if I tried to do them again would I be able to pick up where I left off, or can the brain only manage a certain number of sets?
I can read books and walk at the same time! Used to do it on campus; got pretty good at dodging people with headphones on who weren't looking where they were going!
And if TFA is right and the yellows ARE too short the lines aren't going to make one whit of difference. I've known lights where the lines are completely irrelevant because they are either too far back for traffic flow (ie, I could make the yellow clear, and be out the other side by the time it went red, from the line, at the speed limit), or too far forward (even if I was doing the limit, I'd never hit my brakes in time before it went red). I tend to ignore them, except when approaching unknown lights.
It wouldn't surprise me if either the chemicals in cigarettes or the sheer amount of oxygen denied to your bloodstream by your blackened, tar-filled lungs actually kill off or otherwise damage your neural connections.
Purplemath.com will get you a review of everything algebra through trig and simple log functions. It includes full lessons, descriptions, examples and practice work with explanations. It's free and you can take it at your own pace and/or review only what you need.
You have sugar in bread? ...fermented wheat flour...
Doesn't fermentation of carbohydrates end with sugars? As far as I knew, all bread needed some kind of sugary addition in order to feed the yeast and encourage proper rising. I add either sugar or honey to my bread when I make it at home; small amounts which provide enough for the yeast to break down without sweetening the dough. The bread does not taste sugary (in fact, it tastes better and less sweet than the store-bought wheat breads).
This. I was perfectly capable of dressing myself, getting breakfast and walking to the bus stop several blocks away (in a small community) at 10 years old, without parental supervision or nagging once they'd dragged me out of bed. I wasn't pushed into maturity or neglected; it was simply expected that once I had learned to dress myself and pick out an outfit I'd continue to do it for myself. If a kid at 13 couldn't be trusted to get cereal, get dressed and walk out the front door to the bus I'd suspect he was developmentally delayed.
Now, I wouldn't trust a kid that young with more than an hour to himself (assuming parents don't leave the house till slightly before 8, it's no big deal to make sure your kid's still snoring and that his alarm is set), and I'd most certainly call the school and warn them that he was coming in on his own, and that unless they were warned prior to the bus pickup he would be expected to get on that bus, arrive at school, etc. Making sure that both you and the school have set expectations for a kid that young is helpful, but there's no need to hover.
I celebrate and enjoy almost every sex act I've been a part of in regards to the physical experience. Sex is fun, and enjoyable. I do however regret a few occasions where the decision to have sex, no matter how fun it was, led to complications with the people involved. It's not the sex I regret, it's the choice of partner, place and time. Unfortunately, unless you're masturbating the choice of partner is always going to be part of the sexual experience. Instead of simply encouraging sex, we should take a two-prong approach: sex is fun, but the who, when and where are just as important as the what when you look back at past engagements. I bet that most women who regret having sex don't regret the act itself as much as the interactions surrounding it, which they have associated with the sex.
Tl;dr. Can we get a /. summary?
Reading and partaking of other media in Chinese (or any other language you decide to learn) is a great idea. Seconding the movies, radio and newspapers. Also, have them write. Writing in another language is really tough, because it not only requires the learner to come up with the right vocabulary but to put it down on paper, which gives you more practice not only remembering but producing the proper spellings, accents, etc (and in this case, remembering and producing the correct symbols).
That's VERY useful to know, thank you!
I'm not sure about sea-steading as a reliable way of life but escaping tyrannical gov'ts might be an interesting exercise. As far as I understand, the coastal shelf is in most areas 'claimed' already by one country or another, and I don't think we have the technology to build far enough away from the "shallow" water over the shelves to reasonably escape gov't claims to the area. I could be wrong - I've never seen maps of the sea borders of coastal countries, nor do I know what the laws are regarding owning "land" in areas off the coast, and whether you could declare undeveloped seabed as unclaimed for the purposes of claiming it as an independent nation.
You're really on point there - might as well buy your way into a nicer country, assuming you can find one.
The parents may be drawing conclusions blindly, but that doesn't mean they're the wrong conclusions.
Facts are:
1. Child was used to playing with a black, gun-like wiimote
2. Children at 3 years old might not immediately see the difference between black wiimote and gun, a convincing argument that she could have mistaken the gun for the toy at first glance.
3. Children at 3 years old have weak hands/wrists. It's been noted that she might have had trouble picking up and firing the gun. Think about the last time you saw a toddler hold something new, especially something heavy. Their wrists are weak; their usual reaction is to cradle the item near their body to support it. My bet is that she picked up the gun with a finger/thumb through the trigger guard, whether or not she knew it was the controller, and before she even thought to turn it toward the screen (or look at it more) she tried to manage the weight by holding it tightly and bringing it up to her chest... bang.
Whether or not she thought it was a controller, the child was clearly not able to control the gun (nor would I expect a 3 year old to), and the parents were clearly not paying attention to their daughter (of course, any parent who lets their toddler play unsupervised in the first place is suspect, whether or not they own a gun or let the kid play something violent). I'd say that as much of an "accident" as this was, what the media should focus on is the fact that parents these days seem to need a lot more incentive to focus on their kids.
Why are we ignoring the mother? You know, the one who was 3 feet from her daughter when this happened? Yes, the stepfather left the gun out. If you were in the household would you expect the second adult there to simply shut up and wait for the gun owner to put it away? If it were me, I'd have said something if not put it away myself.
If you want to punish one parent, might as well punish both. Honestly, I wouldn't let them sit in jail - as parent post said they are both probably in a world of hurt right now, if they cared at all about the child. I'd put them in parental counseling though, and remove the 1 year old to a responsible relative for a while until the parents were over their grief and ready to resume care. There is little worse than being in the position of being a child, especially one so young who needs a lot of care and attention, in a home which has just lost a loved one. Even the death of an older adult can cause parents to suffer from depression and stop properly caring for their kids; losing a child is immeasurably painful and can cause serious issues with caring for other dependents.