The good news is that the internet is quickly making old style peer review obsolete. Like it or not, the entire world is our peer. If you got something good to offer, fight like hell to promote it and, if it's any good, the world will acknowledge your effort and compensate you accordingly. Just come out into the playground and show us what you got.
Says someone who is obviously not an evolutionary biologist...
How come every single biology article, even the recent one about discovery of 120,000 year old bacteria, gets tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" but books that tell kids how to "Purify alcohol by distillation, Produce hydrogen and oxygen gas by electrolysis, Smelt metallic copper from copper ore you make yourself" doesn't?
There are billions of much more highly evolved bacteria in you right now than what scientists dug up. On the other hand, my next door neighbors can't cook bacon without the whole place filling up with smoke, if they tried to purify their own alchohol, I'm quite certain they would die of methanol poisoning, blow up the building, or both simultaneously. And then homeland security would arrive just in time to arrest me.
I guess it comes down to Hollywood has never made a movie about the potential dangers of home copper smelting.
Isn't this mostly just swapping one form of addiction with another?
Well, gaming doesn't destroy your liver or leave you intoxicated as long as you don't try to go for 40 hours without getting up. So if it is, it's a healthier addiction.
Also, if studies could identify which elements of gameplay (if any) allowed one to break the addiction, you might be able to make a theraputic game that would have those elements but wouldn't be addictive. In other words, these researchers probably aren't just handing drunks a computer with WOW and saying "When I come back next week you better have your palladin at level 60 and be sober."
Little was known about the modern action-adventure game other than the fact that it was to be set in a photorealistic London.
Sounds like all the programmers stopped working and started playing GTA4 once it came out. It's probably pretty hard to work on a cheap ripoff of a game when a good sequel to the original comes out.
On the plus side, they could just add brittish accents and take out the map system. That's basically what they did with the original getaway and GTAIII.
Konami has historically decided what we need is 3d releases for the console only, despite how much we don't want it and refuse to buy the 3d ones. So, I would assume they would be hesitant to put it on the wii because it doesn't offer as hardware for overkill on 3d graphics which no one will buy.
Also they know we would like a castlevania for the wii, so they may have decided we need it exclusively for one of the less popular consoles. Possibly the phantom console. I'm suprised they haven't declared their intention to only make 2d handheld games for the Ngage.
Yeah, but how do you think they proved the age of these bacterium? It's either through carbon dating or by looking at the layers of ice, both of which young earth creationists have repeatedly disproven with scripture quotes and reductio ad absurdum.
Of course the bible quotes don't really prove anything unless you already believe it litterally, and the reductio ad absurdum arguments are pretty much always based off of misunderstandings of carbon dating and determining age based off of layers. But the bible tells me to belive the bible and not anything else.
Well see, that should be one of the things the researchers don't mention to the military when making their pitch for funding: clearly why they posted it here.
Was I the only one who read the title and first thought it meant a game was being made in a pidgin language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin)?
Then I woke up and realized, no, this is slashdot, 10% really interesting news stories, 90% linux gibberish (to me personally, not trying to flamebait here).
Additionally, knowing what one would want to go into after grad school is essential for making choices about grad school. It's not like he's considering going for a generic "PhD, good for all things that a PhD is good for."
I am an academic, so I only know academia and a little biotech, but I do know that if you have a good background in computers and a good background in biology, you will be able to find lots great jobs for the next 10 years at least in academia or in biotech.
Genomics or protein biochemistry are probably the best fields to head toward.
Genomics will be more skewed toward academia I would think, but there would be a job for you at monsanto if you were interested in corn genomes. Nonetheless, research into genomes is all computer driven and in constant need of people who are more computer minded, and is of course very important.
Protein folding would get you a very good job at any major academic institution and would probably get you a really high paying job at any pharmecutical.
If you're equally interested in both, I would say go toward protein folding, as you're going to be able to find a good post-doc in more places and/or get hired immediately by a pharmecutical for lots of bling.
I wouldn't think that biotech startups would be as a general rule as good to shoot for right after grad school, but that really depends on the startup. It just seems to me that an established pharmecutical giant would be a sure thing, and you would have more funding.
It's really just a function of 1. Consumers having too much time and 2. Corporations and elected officials realizing that people were more likely to buy/vote in their favor if they didn't offend them.
Fortunately, that's also the only real upshot of PC. The two men you mentioned you wouldn't like to see making out aren't trying to pass laws forcing you to watch them any more than the man and woman you mentioned you don't want to see making out are. You're really making much ado about nothing, provided you're not working in PR or are an elected official. If you are, well you chose that field and you can take comfort on your yacht.
They want to show Africa as being predominantly black? Guess what? It is! I think it would be MORE racist to have a game set in Africa and show NO black people!
Yeah, if you bothered paying attention to the actual concerns people had rather than just assuming they were upset about some PC thing, you'd realize that wasn't the issue. I think it's more that the game is giving kids the situation where a bunch of poor black savages need to be dealt with through the buisness end of a shotgun. Its true that you have to take it out of context for that, but it's also true that most people who have concerns over this game are voicing them rationally with measured critiques. No one is calling for a boycott, Jesse Jackson is not delivering speeches. It's mostly just people saying "hey, this is troubling to me, here's why..."
In other words, you're making an ass of yourself by assuming this is an unreasonable protest.
Turok and Hawking hope that Aimss students will help to overturn the negative stereotypes of Africa that were recently given expression by James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA.
Not to go off on a tangent, but I wouldn't call Watson the "co-discovererer of DNA," for two reasons.
1. My understanding of research history was that DNA was discovered long before, and also long before was identified as the genetic material. 2. He likely didn't even co-discover the STRUCTURE of DNA so much as steal credit for that from Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling.
Well, most of doom was "shoot the monsters." And they shot monsters. The only real differences between the movie and the game were
-The movie had a plot -Most of the movie was not first person perspective (although the best part was) -The monsters were aliens, not demons -The Rock was not in the game
Most of those were kind of inevitable in the transition, a movie that was just killing demons would be kind of like girls gone wild: extremely boring after 5 minutes.
The demons to aliens thing was a significant change, I'll give you that, but the premise of finding demons on mars would have probably seemed all the more ridiculous in a 2 hour movie.
Were you making some type of joke about vaporware and the low boiling point of alchohol, or are you saying booze is vaporware? Because belive me, it's made it to production. Like thousands of years ago. I'm drunk off my ass rright now.
I agree, MADD has really fallen off their game. For instance, why switch from "mothers against drunk driving" to "mothers against destructive decisions?" Did they solve the problem of drunk driving?
Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable.
100 percent preventable? That's just an overstatement. There has been at least one case of someone HAVING to drive drunk. Like maybe they were at a bar and a psychopath killer was chasing after them.
I have an idea: maybe all the other earlier space-colonizing races started wondering why there weren't more space-colonizing races, came up with an idea of "the great filter" and died of stress related to worrying about the great filter.
I am very sure this will come to be. With identification as powerful as DNA, the government must salivate at the opportunities it will create to control a population. It didn't used to be like this. Besides the obvious point of DNA analysis not being practical, we had leaders with a little more ethics, a little more respect for the Constitution, and a little more accountability. But as crime became more of a threat, and politicians wanted more power, we now have DNA databases, printers that encode unique signatures into everything they print, and with the wholesale monitoring of the internet, a way to track whoever they want.
Well, this was the result of a referendum, so I think the "government trying to control us" is a little innacurate. It would have been more appropriate to say that the sheeps are looking forward for the opportunity to sell more of their rights to broaden the illusion of safety.
I do worry about what will happen when genomic sequencing and analysis becomes so cheap and easy that it will be standard practice to fully sequence your genome if and when you are arrested or apply for a job. DNA fingerprinting, while bad enough, does not tell the government what genes you have. If and when they get that capability, you can bet someone is going to find a set of genes that are correlated with criminal behavior.
It will be very controversial and all of course, but as long as that process doesn't highlight too many people, the public will be okay with treating those individuals as destined to be criminals. I wonder if we'll have them electronically monitored or maybe wear an identifying badge?
I don't know a lot about physics, does the "hydrodynamic" part refer to the fluidity of the molten metal? Just confused about the "hydro" part of that.
Also, what's the advantage of making it molten? Wouldn't a sharp, solid hunk of metal that is aerodynamic be better for, say, piercing a tank or spaceship?
Slashdot Mirror
You are a gamer and therefore have nothing BUT evil intentions.
How come every single biology article, even the recent one about discovery of 120,000 year old bacteria, gets tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" but books that tell kids how to "Purify alcohol by distillation, Produce hydrogen and oxygen gas by electrolysis, Smelt metallic copper from copper ore you make yourself" doesn't?
There are billions of much more highly evolved bacteria in you right now than what scientists dug up. On the other hand, my next door neighbors can't cook bacon without the whole place filling up with smoke, if they tried to purify their own alchohol, I'm quite certain they would die of methanol poisoning, blow up the building, or both simultaneously. And then homeland security would arrive just in time to arrest me.
I guess it comes down to Hollywood has never made a movie about the potential dangers of home copper smelting.
Well, gaming doesn't destroy your liver or leave you intoxicated as long as you don't try to go for 40 hours without getting up. So if it is, it's a healthier addiction.
Also, if studies could identify which elements of gameplay (if any) allowed one to break the addiction, you might be able to make a theraputic game that would have those elements but wouldn't be addictive. In other words, these researchers probably aren't just handing drunks a computer with WOW and saying "When I come back next week you better have your palladin at level 60 and be sober."
Now I don't get that. Are you complaining about the direction the 2d games have taken since 94? You like the extemely linear, repetitive early games?
Sounds like all the programmers stopped working and started playing GTA4 once it came out. It's probably pretty hard to work on a cheap ripoff of a game when a good sequel to the original comes out.
On the plus side, they could just add brittish accents and take out the map system. That's basically what they did with the original getaway and GTAIII.
Konami has historically decided what we need is 3d releases for the console only, despite how much we don't want it and refuse to buy the 3d ones. So, I would assume they would be hesitant to put it on the wii because it doesn't offer as hardware for overkill on 3d graphics which no one will buy.
Also they know we would like a castlevania for the wii, so they may have decided we need it exclusively for one of the less popular consoles. Possibly the phantom console. I'm suprised they haven't declared their intention to only make 2d handheld games for the Ngage.
Yeah, but how do you think they proved the age of these bacterium? It's either through carbon dating or by looking at the layers of ice, both of which young earth creationists have repeatedly disproven with scripture quotes and reductio ad absurdum.
Of course the bible quotes don't really prove anything unless you already believe it litterally, and the reductio ad absurdum arguments are pretty much always based off of misunderstandings of carbon dating and determining age based off of layers. But the bible tells me to belive the bible and not anything else.
"That's no moon"
is probably something the researchers didn't say when looking at these samples for the first time.
Well see, that should be one of the things the researchers don't mention to the military when making their pitch for funding: clearly why they posted it here.
Was I the only one who read the title and first thought it meant a game was being made in a pidgin language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin)?
Then I woke up and realized, no, this is slashdot, 10% really interesting news stories, 90% linux gibberish (to me personally, not trying to flamebait here).
If grand theft auto actually did teach you how to steal cars and shoot cops, I would respect it.
Additionally, knowing what one would want to go into after grad school is essential for making choices about grad school. It's not like he's considering going for a generic "PhD, good for all things that a PhD is good for."
I am an academic, so I only know academia and a little biotech, but I do know that if you have a good background in computers and a good background in biology, you will be able to find lots great jobs for the next 10 years at least in academia or in biotech.
Genomics or protein biochemistry are probably the best fields to head toward.
Genomics will be more skewed toward academia I would think, but there would be a job for you at monsanto if you were interested in corn genomes. Nonetheless, research into genomes is all computer driven and in constant need of people who are more computer minded, and is of course very important.
Protein folding would get you a very good job at any major academic institution and would probably get you a really high paying job at any pharmecutical.
If you're equally interested in both, I would say go toward protein folding, as you're going to be able to find a good post-doc in more places and/or get hired immediately by a pharmecutical for lots of bling.
I wouldn't think that biotech startups would be as a general rule as good to shoot for right after grad school, but that really depends on the startup. It just seems to me that an established pharmecutical giant would be a sure thing, and you would have more funding.
It's really just a function of 1. Consumers having too much time and 2. Corporations and elected officials realizing that people were more likely to buy/vote in their favor if they didn't offend them.
Fortunately, that's also the only real upshot of PC. The two men you mentioned you wouldn't like to see making out aren't trying to pass laws forcing you to watch them any more than the man and woman you mentioned you don't want to see making out are. You're really making much ado about nothing, provided you're not working in PR or are an elected official. If you are, well you chose that field and you can take comfort on your yacht.
Yeah, if you bothered paying attention to the actual concerns people had rather than just assuming they were upset about some PC thing, you'd realize that wasn't the issue. I think it's more that the game is giving kids the situation where a bunch of poor black savages need to be dealt with through the buisness end of a shotgun. Its true that you have to take it out of context for that, but it's also true that most people who have concerns over this game are voicing them rationally with measured critiques. No one is calling for a boycott, Jesse Jackson is not delivering speeches. It's mostly just people saying "hey, this is troubling to me, here's why..."
In other words, you're making an ass of yourself by assuming this is an unreasonable protest.
Not to go off on a tangent, but I wouldn't call Watson the "co-discovererer of DNA," for two reasons.
1. My understanding of research history was that DNA was discovered long before, and also long before was identified as the genetic material.
2. He likely didn't even co-discover the STRUCTURE of DNA so much as steal credit for that from Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling.
Well, most of doom was "shoot the monsters." And they shot monsters. The only real differences between the movie and the game were
-The movie had a plot
-Most of the movie was not first person perspective (although the best part was)
-The monsters were aliens, not demons
-The Rock was not in the game
Most of those were kind of inevitable in the transition, a movie that was just killing demons would be kind of like girls gone wild: extremely boring after 5 minutes.
The demons to aliens thing was a significant change, I'll give you that, but the premise of finding demons on mars would have probably seemed all the more ridiculous in a 2 hour movie.
Were you making some type of joke about vaporware and the low boiling point of alchohol, or are you saying booze is vaporware? Because belive me, it's made it to production. Like thousands of years ago. I'm drunk off my ass rright now.
100 percent preventable? That's just an overstatement. There has been at least one case of someone HAVING to drive drunk. Like maybe they were at a bar and a psychopath killer was chasing after them.
I have an idea: maybe all the other earlier space-colonizing races started wondering why there weren't more space-colonizing races, came up with an idea of "the great filter" and died of stress related to worrying about the great filter.
Well, this was the result of a referendum, so I think the "government trying to control us" is a little innacurate. It would have been more appropriate to say that the sheeps are looking forward for the opportunity to sell more of their rights to broaden the illusion of safety.
I do worry about what will happen when genomic sequencing and analysis becomes so cheap and easy that it will be standard practice to fully sequence your genome if and when you are arrested or apply for a job. DNA fingerprinting, while bad enough, does not tell the government what genes you have. If and when they get that capability, you can bet someone is going to find a set of genes that are correlated with criminal behavior.
It will be very controversial and all of course, but as long as that process doesn't highlight too many people, the public will be okay with treating those individuals as destined to be criminals. I wonder if we'll have them electronically monitored or maybe wear an identifying badge?
Would have been better with a 1984 reference. I mean, this doesn't really have anything to do with communism, it's big brother.
I am the varcher75 anonymous coward, but not the varcher75 who forgot to login. Mod me up so that I'll still get some credit.
I don't know a lot about physics, does the "hydrodynamic" part refer to the fluidity of the molten metal? Just confused about the "hydro" part of that.
Also, what's the advantage of making it molten? Wouldn't a sharp, solid hunk of metal that is aerodynamic be better for, say, piercing a tank or spaceship?
How very insightful indeed.
A thought provoking little bit of trolling right there. Like right now, I'm thinking "why would someone waste their time like this?"