The tissue samples we're seeing are from guys who, for the most part, played in the 70's and 80's, back when "shut up and play you pussy, you just 'got your bell rung'" was a way of life. Now, concussions are handled with considerably more care. Is it enough? I don't know that anyone is sure yet. But at least they're being treated like the legitimate, serious injury they are.
My father was a linebacker for 8 years in the '80s, and he says something very similar. He had several concussions himself, and only when he suffered the one or two major ones did he come out of the game. He's coached for a high school and a smaller college team recently and says that even at that level everyone is so much more aware of injuries, and other dangers like dehydration and heat exhaustion, than they were when he played professionally. And before that it was worse...when he was in high school they used to take salt pills instead of water breaks.
Anyway, he's 50 now, his knees and back are shot so he walks like a 75 year old. Maybe it's because he just turned 50, but the NFLPA has recently gotten serious about former player health, so they've begun periodically checking his heart and other health problems. But thankfully the only mental problem I've noticed is that he votes Republican.
I'm just shocked that all literate people in the Western world wouldn't be familiar with any country in Europe. That seems like a reasonable baseline expectation for any adult in Europe or North America.
It may seem reasonable to you, but as an American I can tell you we rarely hear anything about most of the European countries. If you're in a country that hasn't significantly affected anything in our history books or on our news stations, the only time we might even hear the name of your country is during the Olympics, or if some famous person hails from your country. If that's the case, chances are you'd be left out if you asked us to list the European countries. Scrolling down this list, I could probably have named about half if I thought real hard. Some of them I'd never even heard of before looking at that list, and I probably won't remember.
Portugal, however, is one of the more well known ones here, if only because they turned down Christopher Columbus' request to fund his voyages here, and their famous explorers are always featured in our typical elementary school curriculum.
It pre-corrects a future corruption in the as-yet-unimplemented third layer of metadata. Kernel developers have decided to add the third layer and accept the patch on the grounds that the corruption might still have occurred even if Oracle hadn't said anything.
The question isn't whether or not SpaceX progressed more rapidly than NASA did over 40 years ago (with a real federal budget). The question is whether or not SpaceX is ahead of NASA right now. NASA hasn't truly developed a new propulsion device to get the Shuttle into orbit, nor have they designed a replacement for the Shuttle. A craft, may I remind you, that has been having technical difficulties of late and caused more deaths than the original lunar capsule.
SpaceX really is our only hope to continue manned space flight in the foreseeable future ('our' meaning the US). They are definitely ahead of NASA who hasn't even gone past the theory stage as far as we know, and even that seems optimistic.
Which is why they aren't going to develop a new rocket to get the shuttle in space, nor will they develop a similar craft. The Delta-IV Heavy and other products in the pipeline already allow similarly-sized or larger payloads, and we'll be sending astronauts up separately in Orion, which is far beyond the theory stage at this point. That, or my coworkers at a major subcontractor on the project are lying to us.
Oh and remember, the Ares I is a expendable lifter like the Falcon 9. You can't compare it to the Draco as its not intended for manned use. NASA just flat out can't compete currently with this kind of thruster development, and they are going to have to rely on it unless Russia (who seems to have some animosity for America still and the Cold War is still fresh in both nation's eyes) gets buddy-buddy with us since the Shuttle is being retired!
That first bit doesn't make a lick of sense, so I'll ignore it. The Falcon 9 and the Ares I are both scheduled for their first test flights in 2009. SpaceX has successfully tested their Draco thrusters, NASA has successfully tested their Launch Abort System, and the main propulsion system for Orion is heritage stuff. How is this not competing? It should also be noted that only the Falcon 9 Heavy has a comparable payload capacity, and that does not have a scheduled maiden launch. The only place where SpaceX is supposedly ahead is not in thruster development; the Dragon capsule is scheduled for it's first flight in 2009 as well, while Orion's isn't scheduled until 2014. Dragon has passed its critical design review, so it'll be interesting to watch but in this industry slipping schedules and cost creep are not uncommon...especially when astronauts' lives are at stake.
The point is that NASA and its contractors do a hell of a lot more than the public thinks they do, they just don't trumpet their successes as loudly. Not that it's a bad thing of course; anything to get people excited about space again, since the general public stopped caring about NASA 30 years ago.
Second off, I'm a musician on the side, and I put out albums on a regular basis which make money here on a local level. If my band's album is downloaded on a college campus, is some of that tax going to go to me, if I have no affiliation with Warner? NO! So not only are they getting money for music that may or may not even be downloaded, they're getting money for content that isn't even theirs to profit on.
Oh don't worry, from the previous/. story:
The idea is that students would be free to file share, but the university needs to monitor and track everything, create a pool of money, hand it over to a recording industry entity that promises to distribute the proceeds fairly.
100-to-1 says this entity is the RIAA and "distributing the proceeds fairly" means funding litigation against students from universities that haven't agreed. You know, just like the "proceeds" from their lawsuits to date. Of course the inevitable end result is that nobody will pirate your music anymore, and you make more money! Beautiful, isn't it?
Yes, teachers can confiscate pretty much anything. The child or his/her parents have a right to have it back, but anything that the teacher deems to be unlawful or harmful or disruptive can be confiscated. Sure, this teacher made a mistake, but if they were treading on eggshells all the time then their job would be impossible.
Exactly, it seems that many commenters have been out of high school for too long. It's been less than a decade for me (and I have a brother who just graduated high school last year), so I clearly remember the difference in leniency between high school and college. You can't just go to the restroom, you have to ask, you have to have a hall pass if your in the hall during class, if your cell phone rings, say goodbye to that until the end of class. It doesn't even have to be unrelated to school...I once had my TI-89 confiscated in my 12th grade English class.
It was for good reason, I must admit, as I was programming certain physics equations into it and definateyl not payying atenshun.
I hate having to explain very basic geometry time and again. It does not matter much what the launch place is, it's the target. Vandenburg can only only protect a relatively small area around itself. It's doubtful it can hit anything targeted at LA. An LA targeted missile will be slewing several degrees across range.
The basic geometry and economics of the situation has been know for over 100 years. You may note a certain lack of solutions to similar problems that are 100's of times simpler, like anti-artillery artillery.
Man, I thought aerospace engineering was pretty difficult, and all along it's basic geometry!
First of all, if you think that the target missile was actually aimed at Vandenburg at any point in the test, you've got another thing coming. They wouldn't aim the target anywhere near there, not even for the first few seconds of flight.
Secondly, artillery shells are miniscule compared to these giant target missiles, they are not in the air long, and they fly low. No, developing anti-artillery weapons is just as difficult, if not more so (I say "is" because they have programs for that too).
From a different post:
Folks like JR Oppenheimer and Von Neumann did the math in their heads circa 1950 and they both advised the govt the concept was totally ridiculous.
Ah yes, fine proof you've supplied there. Of course, targeting and control systems have improved slightly in the intervening six decades.
Disclaimer: I work for a major subcontractor involved in this program (though I don't work on it myself).
Honestly, if they try to turn the book's events into a game, it will probably tank, as per usual. RJ was painfully meticulous in his description of events in the book, and developing a game within such strict limitations will not succeed, at least not with the fans who've read the series on multiple occasions.
What they should really do is set a game earlier than what is described in detail in the books, say when one of the false dragons was around. That way there is plenty of conflict, but the game designers have much more leeway on the events and story in the game.
Dimples increase surface drag, yes, but they greatly reduce what is almost always the most significant drag force, the drag caused by the flow separating from the ball.
The reason we don't use dimples on cars or planes is because the situation is reversed - the surface drag is the most significant factor, so it's better to have a mostly smooth surface.
Damn. If someone could let me know why Slashdot would let me use neither quotation marks nor paragraph tags on the above post, I'd appreciate it. Couldn't get the preview to come up.
I got something similar to these from some website that I have long forgotten:
alias AvadaKedavra kill -9
alias Obliviate rm -rf
alias Alohomora chmod -Rf ug+w
alias Accio grep -Ir \!:1
In high school I ran track with a guy who is now listed as a sex offender. In college I graduated with a guy who is now listed as a sex offender. I routinely interacted with these two people at the time, though I rarely see them now.
Only in politics could a large percentage of the nation be brainwashed into thinking that this fact somehow reflects badly on one's character. The sheer stupidity of people in the US during presidential elections sickens me. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were either making a joke or playing devil's advocate, but stupid rednecks in my hometown in Ohio lap this idiocy right up.
Despite the fact that you are wrong, I trust Wikipedia more than most other sources of information. In fact, I would trust Wikipedia before some of the textbooks here in the US. Back in the small town I grew up in we were using really old textbooks in some classes. Of course we rarely got to the end of them, but we thought it pretty funny when we noticed Gerald Ford was the last President mentioned in one of our middle school history books (and this was mid-90's).
The author of the article is the developer of Unangband, and it's officially part of his "Designing a Magic System" series, part 12. It doesn't really fit in with the rest, but it's still an interesting read. I recommend checking out his blog, as he's got several other very interesting articles for game devs, such as 20 Underused Game Mechanics and earlier parts of his magic system series.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this how we're going to avoid any Eclipse based entanglements? Sounds like a lot of Tibanna Gas.
All of these comments and this is the first Star Wars joke. I find our lack of faith disturbing.
The tissue samples we're seeing are from guys who, for the most part, played in the 70's and 80's, back when "shut up and play you pussy, you just 'got your bell rung'" was a way of life. Now, concussions are handled with considerably more care. Is it enough? I don't know that anyone is sure yet. But at least they're being treated like the legitimate, serious injury they are.
My father was a linebacker for 8 years in the '80s, and he says something very similar. He had several concussions himself, and only when he suffered the one or two major ones did he come out of the game. He's coached for a high school and a smaller college team recently and says that even at that level everyone is so much more aware of injuries, and other dangers like dehydration and heat exhaustion, than they were when he played professionally. And before that it was worse...when he was in high school they used to take salt pills instead of water breaks.
Anyway, he's 50 now, his knees and back are shot so he walks like a 75 year old. Maybe it's because he just turned 50, but the NFLPA has recently gotten serious about former player health, so they've begun periodically checking his heart and other health problems. But thankfully the only mental problem I've noticed is that he votes Republican.
I'm just shocked that all literate people in the Western world wouldn't be familiar with any country in Europe. That seems like a reasonable baseline expectation for any adult in Europe or North America.
It may seem reasonable to you, but as an American I can tell you we rarely hear anything about most of the European countries. If you're in a country that hasn't significantly affected anything in our history books or on our news stations, the only time we might even hear the name of your country is during the Olympics, or if some famous person hails from your country. If that's the case, chances are you'd be left out if you asked us to list the European countries. Scrolling down this list, I could probably have named about half if I thought real hard. Some of them I'd never even heard of before looking at that list, and I probably won't remember.
Portugal, however, is one of the more well known ones here, if only because they turned down Christopher Columbus' request to fund his voyages here, and their famous explorers are always featured in our typical elementary school curriculum.
It pre-corrects a future corruption in the as-yet-unimplemented third layer of metadata. Kernel developers have decided to add the third layer and accept the patch on the grounds that the corruption might still have occurred even if Oracle hadn't said anything.
The question isn't whether or not SpaceX progressed more rapidly than NASA did over 40 years ago (with a real federal budget). The question is whether or not SpaceX is ahead of NASA right now. NASA hasn't truly developed a new propulsion device to get the Shuttle into orbit, nor have they designed a replacement for the Shuttle. A craft, may I remind you, that has been having technical difficulties of late and caused more deaths than the original lunar capsule.
SpaceX really is our only hope to continue manned space flight in the foreseeable future ('our' meaning the US). They are definitely ahead of NASA who hasn't even gone past the theory stage as far as we know, and even that seems optimistic.
Which is why they aren't going to develop a new rocket to get the shuttle in space, nor will they develop a similar craft. The Delta-IV Heavy and other products in the pipeline already allow similarly-sized or larger payloads, and we'll be sending astronauts up separately in Orion, which is far beyond the theory stage at this point. That, or my coworkers at a major subcontractor on the project are lying to us.
Oh and remember, the Ares I is a expendable lifter like the Falcon 9. You can't compare it to the Draco as its not intended for manned use. NASA just flat out can't compete currently with this kind of thruster development, and they are going to have to rely on it unless Russia (who seems to have some animosity for America still and the Cold War is still fresh in both nation's eyes) gets buddy-buddy with us since the Shuttle is being retired!
That first bit doesn't make a lick of sense, so I'll ignore it. The Falcon 9 and the Ares I are both scheduled for their first test flights in 2009. SpaceX has successfully tested their Draco thrusters, NASA has successfully tested their Launch Abort System, and the main propulsion system for Orion is heritage stuff. How is this not competing? It should also be noted that only the Falcon 9 Heavy has a comparable payload capacity, and that does not have a scheduled maiden launch. The only place where SpaceX is supposedly ahead is not in thruster development; the Dragon capsule is scheduled for it's first flight in 2009 as well, while Orion's isn't scheduled until 2014. Dragon has passed its critical design review, so it'll be interesting to watch but in this industry slipping schedules and cost creep are not uncommon...especially when astronauts' lives are at stake.
The point is that NASA and its contractors do a hell of a lot more than the public thinks they do, they just don't trumpet their successes as loudly. Not that it's a bad thing of course; anything to get people excited about space again, since the general public stopped caring about NASA 30 years ago.
Second off, I'm a musician on the side, and I put out albums on a regular basis which make money here on a local level. If my band's album is downloaded on a college campus, is some of that tax going to go to me, if I have no affiliation with Warner? NO! So not only are they getting money for music that may or may not even be downloaded, they're getting money for content that isn't even theirs to profit on.
Oh don't worry, from the previous /. story:
The idea is that students would be free to file share, but the university needs to monitor and track everything, create a pool of money, hand it over to a recording industry entity that promises to distribute the proceeds fairly.
100-to-1 says this entity is the RIAA and "distributing the proceeds fairly" means funding litigation against students from universities that haven't agreed. You know, just like the "proceeds" from their lawsuits to date. Of course the inevitable end result is that nobody will pirate your music anymore, and you make more money! Beautiful, isn't it?
Yes, teachers can confiscate pretty much anything. The child or his/her parents have a right to have it back, but anything that the teacher deems to be unlawful or harmful or disruptive can be confiscated. Sure, this teacher made a mistake, but if they were treading on eggshells all the time then their job would be impossible.
Exactly, it seems that many commenters have been out of high school for too long. It's been less than a decade for me (and I have a brother who just graduated high school last year), so I clearly remember the difference in leniency between high school and college. You can't just go to the restroom, you have to ask, you have to have a hall pass if your in the hall during class, if your cell phone rings, say goodbye to that until the end of class. It doesn't even have to be unrelated to school...I once had my TI-89 confiscated in my 12th grade English class.
It was for good reason, I must admit, as I was programming certain physics equations into it and definateyl not payying atenshun.
I hate having to explain very basic geometry time and again. It does not matter much what the launch place is, it's the target. Vandenburg can only only protect a relatively small area around itself. It's doubtful it can hit anything targeted at LA. An LA targeted missile will be slewing several degrees across range.
The basic geometry and economics of the situation has been know for over 100 years. You may note a certain lack of solutions to similar problems that are 100's of times simpler, like anti-artillery artillery.
Man, I thought aerospace engineering was pretty difficult, and all along it's basic geometry!
First of all, if you think that the target missile was actually aimed at Vandenburg at any point in the test, you've got another thing coming. They wouldn't aim the target anywhere near there, not even for the first few seconds of flight.
Secondly, artillery shells are miniscule compared to these giant target missiles, they are not in the air long, and they fly low. No, developing anti-artillery weapons is just as difficult, if not more so (I say "is" because they have programs for that too).
From a different post:
Folks like JR Oppenheimer and Von Neumann did the math in their heads circa 1950 and they both advised the govt the concept was totally ridiculous.
Ah yes, fine proof you've supplied there. Of course, targeting and control systems have improved slightly in the intervening six decades.
Disclaimer: I work for a major subcontractor involved in this program (though I don't work on it myself).
You think your arachnophobia is bad now...
Apple seemingly skimped on one of the most important, but usually easiest to implement parts of their system: good, up to date documentation!
Are you really a developer? :)
Haven't you read Feynmann? Astronomical numbers are no longer the largest arbitrary class of numbers. That's an economical number.
Ice-nine was the first one I thought of when I read the headline, but I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Little Doctor.
Honestly, if they try to turn the book's events into a game, it will probably tank, as per usual. RJ was painfully meticulous in his description of events in the book, and developing a game within such strict limitations will not succeed, at least not with the fans who've read the series on multiple occasions.
What they should really do is set a game earlier than what is described in detail in the books, say when one of the false dragons was around. That way there is plenty of conflict, but the game designers have much more leeway on the events and story in the game.
Considering that books 6-10 describe what happens over a span of about 3 days, there won't need to be nearly so many movies.
The reason we don't use dimples on cars or planes is because the situation is reversed - the surface drag is the most significant factor, so it's better to have a mostly smooth surface.
This link explains it well.
Diamonds make girls easier to sleep with; tequila makes girls easier to sleep with. We really should have seen this earlier.
I can't decide whether it's funny or sad that this was modded informative.
Damn. If someone could let me know why Slashdot would let me use neither quotation marks nor paragraph tags on the above post, I'd appreciate it. Couldn't get the preview to come up.
I got something similar to these from some website that I have long forgotten: alias AvadaKedavra kill -9 alias Obliviate rm -rf alias Alohomora chmod -Rf ug+w alias Accio grep -Ir \!:1
A relatively sharp-edged rectangular prism, pale cream in color. I think it'll be immensely popular.
In high school I ran track with a guy who is now listed as a sex offender. In college I graduated with a guy who is now listed as a sex offender. I routinely interacted with these two people at the time, though I rarely see them now.
Only in politics could a large percentage of the nation be brainwashed into thinking that this fact somehow reflects badly on one's character. The sheer stupidity of people in the US during presidential elections sickens me. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were either making a joke or playing devil's advocate, but stupid rednecks in my hometown in Ohio lap this idiocy right up.
I have nothing to hide and believe in personal transparency at all times, in all things.
I would share too, because that's only because I represent genetic perfection, and I want all the ladies to know it.
No more orbiting in fear, wondering when you'll cross groundtracks with the wrong satellite.
Despite the fact that you are wrong, I trust Wikipedia more than most other sources of information. In fact, I would trust Wikipedia before some of the textbooks here in the US. Back in the small town I grew up in we were using really old textbooks in some classes. Of course we rarely got to the end of them, but we thought it pretty funny when we noticed Gerald Ford was the last President mentioned in one of our middle school history books (and this was mid-90's).
I'm so glad to live in Europe. The utterly retarded US mobile phone customers never cease to amaze me.
There, fixed that for you.
The author of the article is the developer of Unangband, and it's officially part of his "Designing a Magic System" series, part 12. It doesn't really fit in with the rest, but it's still an interesting read. I recommend checking out his blog, as he's got several other very interesting articles for game devs, such as 20 Underused Game Mechanics and earlier parts of his magic system series.