Solo? What leadership ability did he display? Fighting ability: sure. Flying ability: hell yes! Combat thinking: you bet. But politics, diplomacy, real leadership: no, at least not in the movies.
Captain Sheridan is indeed still the supreme commander to me. Politics, diplomacy, internal strife, war design, battle strategy, and in-the-heat-of-the-moment battle tactics. He could do it all. Man, I have to get Babylon 5 on DVD.
"Now, a little bit more detail: on ATA drives we implement F_FULLFSYNC with the FLUSH_TRACK_CACHE command. All drives sold by Apple will honor this command. Unfortunately quite a few firewire drive vendors disable this command and do not pass it to the drive. This means that most external firewire drives are not reliable if you lose power or the system crashes. We can't work-around that unless we ask the drive to disable the write cache completely (which hurts performance quite badly -- and even that may not be enough as some drives will ignore that request too).... On MacOS X fsync() behaves the same as it does on all Unices. That's not good enough if you really care about data integrity and so we also provide the F_FULLFSYNC fcntl. As far as I know, MacOS X is the only OS to provide this feature for apps that need to truly guarantee their data is on disk."
You are still assuming that the fighters are going to have your level of skill. Remember that this discussion was about the novice fighter. For a novice, a gun would be safer to use and be possible to incapacitate. A novice with a sword (especially with a lightsaber) is just asking for trouble. Also, I have never disagreed with your battle simulations, just in your statement that a gun only has one purpose. That said, in your discussion on sword/pistol:
If we assume a round up the spout, the hammer forward, and the safety on, I was able to get a round centre of mass on a man-sized target at 10m from a cold draw in about a second.
There's no time for much more than reflex, because the target is closing quickly, and if he gets withing lunge distance, you're hosed. It's hard to parry well with a pistol.... not more than once, anyway.
No time for more than reflex? Reflex actions occur in less than a second. Assume for an extreme that we (with the gun) are facing a speed runner already running towards us a full clip with sword out. The fastest recorded running speed is ~10 meters/second. If we were to turn around and there is a silent speeding guy ten meters away there would still be time for more than reflex, but barely. And that's an absolute extreme. (Well no, the absolute extreme we don't see the guy because to not hear someone running 10 meters/sec we're having some kind of hearing problem and we're dead.) If we saw him 20 meters away: two seconds. Now there's enough time to hit legs.
Since we're at extremes; think about this with swords, the closing time would be the same and there would still not be enough time for much more than reflex at the max. It gets worse with a sword because we'd have to wait for the attacker to close (and be thus lethal) before responding.
In all but these extremes, there would be plenty of time for the gun wielder to hit the sword wielder. Come across, gun (blaster) in holster, sword in sheath (or turned off as with a lightsaber---which is what we were discussing remember). That blaster can come out as fast as the sword, and closing time is moot.
In all of these cases we are assuming that the attackers are both aware of each other. You have already stated that a gun can incapacitate at range; that's all I was pointing out.
As far as longer weapons... you ever have an axe head fly off when you are chopping wood? It doesn't fly at the tree; it takes off at the tangent point to the arc of the swing when the connection is broken. If I parry a swinging halbard or whatever with a lightsabre, taking the head of the weapon off, it will fly outboard of me, not at me.
Exactly, the axe flies past the tree because I would have essentially missed the tree---the only way for it to hit would be to fly backwards. But think about the trajectory a flail or hauberk if I were swinging at you. Sure if you managed to hit the weapon if it's at or before it was at 135 degrees relative to our sight-line, or were able to close fast enough for the swing to be missing you anyway, then the weapons trajectory would fly right past you. But in that case you wouldn't need to parray because the threat is behind you and my gut is rather exposed. If the swing was past the was past that point (when many parries happen) then the tangent line would be pointing at you.
I suppose that with special training and jedi skill then "safe" parry techniques could be used.
Nice descriptions, but again you are using yourself and your degree of skill as an example. Perhaps from your army training, you also assume that the two combatants have the same weapons and similar levels of skill.
If I had a gun and you had a sword, it would be pretty easy for me to wound you into incapacity. If reversed, the swords noble defensive capabilities you espouse are pretty much out the window (unless I'm a jedi with a lightsaber, but... hmm blocking a bullet with a lightsaber would cause some wicked molten metal flying at me I think...whatever, I'm getting more offtopic). My only chance would be to get as close as possible as fast as possible and cut whatever I could get to; not really selective now. Suddenly the sword is much more lethal and less selective than a gun. It all depends on the situation.
Regardless, we are also getting waaay off our already offtopic discussion. Which was my strong gripe your your blanket statement:
By comparison, a gun (or blaster) is an all-or-nothing deal. You can kill with it by blowing a hole in someone... and that's about it. You cannot parry with a gun. It's nearly impossible to selectively wound with a gun. And aside from its intended purpose, a gun can't do anything else.
Those bolded statements are simply wrong, and you haven't yet said anything to convince me otherwise.
Finally, I think a lightsabre makes a better selective response weapon than a real sword.... with a lightsabre, not only can I remove an appendage without the danger of you bleeding to death, I can also cut the weapon itself - remove the head of the axe, slice the banana, and now you are no longer a threat to me.
Good points, but when you move to lightsaber territory and I'm not coming at you with a lightsaber or energy blaster, then your defensive options are gone. You can't parry anymore so your only hope is to use those jedi skills and remove my weapon before a start an attack. If I came at you with a good reach melee weapon like a hauberk, long sword, or flail and got an offensive swing off and you tried to parry with a lightsaber the saber would make its handy razor-thin instantaneous cut through the metal...and the top half of my weapon would keep moving towards you. You also lose all ability to riposte.
There are many kinds of locks, and ways to shoot them for rapid entry.
That said, lock/tire shooting were merely examples of practicals, there are many more. I'm surprised that the army (apparently) doesn't include training for any of them.
Not all scifi. Television scifi you could argue. But even then I'd have to present the new Battlestar Galactica which is surprisingly decent.
Although it does fall into the other scifi trap into bite-sizing planets. I.e. all characters involved in a planet happen to be near each other (or happen to crash land next to the plot point, etc.).
Sure. You obviously trained for a certain aspect of shooting, one meant to be lethal. That doesn't mean that that is the only way a gun can be used. I'm surprised and dismayed that the army doesn't include non-lethal gun techniques (including practicals like locks, tires, etc.) in its training.
If you were on a college fencing team then you fall into the expert user category I described. An expert can turn a sword into a maiming tool. The novice would find a sword much more difficult to control.
With a gun all you have to do is not hit the torso or head and you've got a non-lethal wound. (Unless you manage to hit a major artery of course.) Granted, an epee would indeed probably be ok in the hands of a novice looking to wound. Do but can you really compare a lightsaber with its all-sided-more-than-razor-sharp edge to an epee?
Right, because all planetary societies are one cohesive unit. Like Earth.
Or maybe that's just the biggest problem with most scifi. The condensation of planets into nations. For all but the most extraordinary writers, it would be very difficult to conceptualize dozens of nations on dozens of planets all in one story.
Kim Stanley Robinson did an amazing job of this, but it was "just" Mars and Earth. Even then, Earth had to be conceptualized as a semi-cohesive unit because of the perspective of the characters. Too much more detail would have lost the story. But it didn't try to pretend that all of Earth (or all of human civilization) was the same culture, that's just a crutch.
It can also be used as a general purpose cutting tool - good for cutting through doors, cables, or whatnot.... It's nearly impossible to selectively wound with a gun.
I'm going to go out on a small limp and assume that by stating this you have never shot a gun and have likely never even held a gun. Guns aren't like videogame guns, it is incredibly tough to kill us humans. Shooting to wound is standard practice. Shooting through a lock is common practice. Selectively wounding with a sword (or lightsaber) would require extreme skill, not only to control the damage you do to your opponent but that you could do to yourself. Selectively wounding with a gun just requires decent aim.
Do go on. I am always willing to listen to those with more expertise.
What's the deal with the Guangdong Special Economic Zones? If not to allow bubbles of capitalism in the nominally communist China?
Is there a planned phase out date for the region's special status?
If you live in HK, how is public sentiment towards China now as opposed to the resentment at unification? If you live on the mainland, what is the public perception of HK. It is still "Hong Kong" or is it "China"?
Wow, that's an odd thing to harp on. Especially considering the many other benefits brought by OS X. Does the resolution when using OS X really restrict you that much? I guess you're just more 'leet than I.
Yeah, just imagine if we (Americans) got to work a six hour day and get real vacation time...that'd be ever so sweet. I already spend two hours a day at work zoning out/chatting/popcaping/slashdotting/homestarrunnin g/emailing/etceteraing. I'd much rather spend that time at home. Three hours, fifteen minute lunch, three hours. I could work three hard hours straight without blinking.
If it was introduced by trial and productivity had to stay the same or increase, you bet your shoes that I'd make it increase and keep it there.
Ah, no. As stated in an earlier post I know one of the scientists working on this at Duke (Dook). The monkey learns to control the robot arm completely. That means precise, intentional movements. The *really* cool bit is that once the monkey realized it could control the robot arm it stopped using its own arm when it wasn't necessary. But don't take my word, I'll force you to RTFA:
The scientists next removed the joystick, after which the monkeys continued to move their arms in mid-air to manipulate and "grab" the cursor, thus controlling the robot arm. However, after a few days, the monkeys realized that they did not need to move their own arms. Their arm muscles went completely quiet, they kept the arm at their side, and they controlled the robot using only their brain and visual feedback.
Does that sound like an on/off switch to you? You must have some freakin' awesome lights.
"Mikhail's analysis of the brain signals associated with use of the robotic and animals' actual arms revealed that the animal was simultaneously doing one thing with its own arm and something else with the robotic arm," he said. "So, our hypothesis is that the adaptation of brain structures allows the expansion of capability to use an artificial appendage with no loss of function, because the animal can flip back and forth between using the two. Depending on the goal, the animal could use its own arm or the robotic arm, and in some cases both.
Do you have any glimmering of how mind-bogglingly revolutionary this is? Can you think of any real world applications? No? Then there's even MORE....new experiments in his laboratory seek to enable the brain to perceive a feedback sensation from neuroprosthetic devices. Such feedback might be in the form of visual information on the effects of moving a robotic arm. Or, it might be tactile feedback fed as signals into electrodes implanted in the brain.
Such feedback would greatly enhance people's ability to learn and use the devices, said Nicolelis. Also, such feedback would expand use of neuroprosthetics to amputees, because the devices would include all the features -- including feedback -- of real appendages.
Goodbye loss of hand, hello Luke Skywalker robot arm! Or robotic surgery where surgeons could actually feel what their scapels are cutting. Or soldiers mentally controlling battle droids. Get the toughness of metal with the adaptability of the human mind! Or don't just drive, plug in and really feel the car operate. You could get neurological feedback on any problems the car might be developing. Or just use the interface to get awesome control.
They have ****** shown that the mind can incorporate a robotic appendage and use it in addition to the ones we already have! How is this not groundbreaking research in psychology, physics, biology, etc? Even Philosophy! What does it mean that our sense of self is so easily extended?
Awesome, just awesome. When I saw the Firefly article, I resigned myself to explaining the realism of Firefly's tech yet again. You have done it better than I could have. Thank you!
Depends on that libraries you are talking about. If you mean public county/city libraries then yes. If by government you mean your local officials and taxes. It's not like the money all comes from DC you know.
DRM is the future, you can't stop it. Your children in 20 years won't be able to buy plain old music CDs anymore because the RIAA won't release it unsecured like that.
Then, much like now, the RIAA won't get a dime of my money. There are a lot of extremely talented independent artists out there. Try CD Baby.
Wow, you must be completely unfamiliar with huge swaths of history. And as a guy with a history degree, that really grates on me.
Read about Courtesans in China and Byzantium, read about Geisha culture in Japan. Then explain how your human psychology studies fail to explain their high class status.
In China. these women were the counsels of rulers and nobility, trained to be artistic, clever, insightful, and cunning conversationalists. They were supposed to be relaxing counsel with no strings attached. Many of the gentry class preferred to hang with the courtesans because they could have actual conversations, because women were still prohibited from getting "normal" schooling. So the elite house of pleasure was the only way to actually have an equally educated conversation between the sexes.
BTW, Inara wasn't a whore. That was a derogatory term that Mal used, and one she didn't particularly care for. While there were whores in the sense that you mean, she was a Companion which meant a lot more than sex.
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Solo? What leadership ability did he display? Fighting ability: sure. Flying ability: hell yes! Combat thinking: you bet. But politics, diplomacy, real leadership: no, at least not in the movies.
I know you're fishing, so here:
Torrent Spy. Still the only torrent site worth visiting in my book.
Captain Sheridan is indeed still the supreme commander to me. Politics, diplomacy, internal strife, war design, battle strategy, and in-the-heat-of-the-moment battle tactics. He could do it all. Man, I have to get Babylon 5 on DVD.
Ranking the captains by their displayed ability:
Sheridan > Sisko > Sinclair > Picard > Kirk
Or should there be a special really_fsync() call?
... On MacOS X fsync() behaves the same as it does on all Unices. That's not good enough if you really care about data integrity and so we also provide the F_FULLFSYNC fcntl. As far as I know, MacOS X is the only OS to provide this feature for apps that need to truly guarantee their data is on disk."
Apple has one:
"Now, a little bit more detail: on ATA drives we implement F_FULLFSYNC with the FLUSH_TRACK_CACHE command. All drives sold by Apple will honor this command. Unfortunately quite a few firewire drive vendors disable this command and do not pass it to the drive. This means that most external firewire drives are not reliable if you lose power or the system crashes. We can't work-around that unless we ask the drive to disable the write cache completely (which hurts performance quite badly -- and even that may not be enough as some drives will ignore that request too).
No I don't get it. These theoretical combat descriptions are a lot of fun, but do you admit that guns have more uses than killing or not?
You are still assuming that the fighters are going to have your level of skill. Remember that this discussion was about the novice fighter. For a novice, a gun would be safer to use and be possible to incapacitate. A novice with a sword (especially with a lightsaber) is just asking for trouble. Also, I have never disagreed with your battle simulations, just in your statement that a gun only has one purpose. That said, in your discussion on sword/pistol:
If we assume a round up the spout, the hammer forward, and the safety on, I was able to get a round centre of mass on a man-sized target at 10m from a cold draw in about a second.
There's no time for much more than reflex, because the target is closing quickly, and if he gets withing lunge distance, you're hosed. It's hard to parry well with a pistol.... not more than once, anyway.
No time for more than reflex? Reflex actions occur in less than a second. Assume for an extreme that we (with the gun) are facing a speed runner already running towards us a full clip with sword out. The fastest recorded running speed is ~10 meters/second. If we were to turn around and there is a silent speeding guy ten meters away there would still be time for more than reflex, but barely. And that's an absolute extreme. (Well no, the absolute extreme we don't see the guy because to not hear someone running 10 meters/sec we're having some kind of hearing problem and we're dead.) If we saw him 20 meters away: two seconds. Now there's enough time to hit legs.
Since we're at extremes; think about this with swords, the closing time would be the same and there would still not be enough time for much more than reflex at the max. It gets worse with a sword because we'd have to wait for the attacker to close (and be thus lethal) before responding.
In all but these extremes, there would be plenty of time for the gun wielder to hit the sword wielder. Come across, gun (blaster) in holster, sword in sheath (or turned off as with a lightsaber---which is what we were discussing remember). That blaster can come out as fast as the sword, and closing time is moot.
In all of these cases we are assuming that the attackers are both aware of each other. You have already stated that a gun can incapacitate at range; that's all I was pointing out.
As far as longer weapons... you ever have an axe head fly off when you are chopping wood? It doesn't fly at the tree; it takes off at the tangent point to the arc of the swing when the connection is broken. If I parry a swinging halbard or whatever with a lightsabre, taking the head of the weapon off, it will fly outboard of me, not at me.
Exactly, the axe flies past the tree because I would have essentially missed the tree---the only way for it to hit would be to fly backwards. But think about the trajectory a flail or hauberk if I were swinging at you. Sure if you managed to hit the weapon if it's at or before it was at 135 degrees relative to our sight-line, or were able to close fast enough for the swing to be missing you anyway, then the weapons trajectory would fly right past you. But in that case you wouldn't need to parray because the threat is behind you and my gut is rather exposed. If the swing was past the was past that point (when many parries happen) then the tangent line would be pointing at you.
I suppose that with special training and jedi skill then "safe" parry techniques could be used.
Nice descriptions, but again you are using yourself and your degree of skill as an example. Perhaps from your army training, you also assume that the two combatants have the same weapons and similar levels of skill.
... hmm blocking a bullet with a lightsaber would cause some wicked molten metal flying at me I think...whatever, I'm getting more offtopic). My only chance would be to get as close as possible as fast as possible and cut whatever I could get to; not really selective now. Suddenly the sword is much more lethal and less selective than a gun. It all depends on the situation.
... with a lightsabre, not only can I remove an appendage without the danger of you bleeding to death, I can also cut the weapon itself - remove the head of the axe, slice the banana, and now you are no longer a threat to me.
If I had a gun and you had a sword, it would be pretty easy for me to wound you into incapacity. If reversed, the swords noble defensive capabilities you espouse are pretty much out the window (unless I'm a jedi with a lightsaber, but
Regardless, we are also getting waaay off our already offtopic discussion. Which was my strong gripe your your blanket statement:
By comparison, a gun (or blaster) is an all-or-nothing deal. You can kill with it by blowing a hole in someone... and that's about it. You cannot parry with a gun. It's nearly impossible to selectively wound with a gun. And aside from its intended purpose, a gun can't do anything else.
Those bolded statements are simply wrong, and you haven't yet said anything to convince me otherwise.
Finally, I think a lightsabre makes a better selective response weapon than a real sword.
Good points, but when you move to lightsaber territory and I'm not coming at you with a lightsaber or energy blaster, then your defensive options are gone. You can't parry anymore so your only hope is to use those jedi skills and remove my weapon before a start an attack. If I came at you with a good reach melee weapon like a hauberk, long sword, or flail and got an offensive swing off and you tried to parry with a lightsaber the saber would make its handy razor-thin instantaneous cut through the metal...and the top half of my weapon would keep moving towards you. You also lose all ability to riposte.
There are many kinds of locks, and ways to shoot them for rapid entry.
That said, lock/tire shooting were merely examples of practicals, there are many more. I'm surprised that the army (apparently) doesn't include training for any of them.
Not all scifi. Television scifi you could argue. But even then I'd have to present the new Battlestar Galactica which is surprisingly decent.
Although it does fall into the other scifi trap into bite-sizing planets. I.e. all characters involved in a planet happen to be near each other (or happen to crash land next to the plot point, etc.).
Sure. You obviously trained for a certain aspect of shooting, one meant to be lethal. That doesn't mean that that is the only way a gun can be used. I'm surprised and dismayed that the army doesn't include non-lethal gun techniques (including practicals like locks, tires, etc.) in its training.
If you were on a college fencing team then you fall into the expert user category I described. An expert can turn a sword into a maiming tool. The novice would find a sword much more difficult to control.
With a gun all you have to do is not hit the torso or head and you've got a non-lethal wound. (Unless you manage to hit a major artery of course.) Granted, an epee would indeed probably be ok in the hands of a novice looking to wound. Do but can you really compare a lightsaber with its all-sided-more-than-razor-sharp edge to an epee?
Small limp, small! That means a muscle pull, charlie horse or similar. So hit appropriately.
Right, because all planetary societies are one cohesive unit. Like Earth.
Or maybe that's just the biggest problem with most scifi. The condensation of planets into nations. For all but the most extraordinary writers, it would be very difficult to conceptualize dozens of nations on dozens of planets all in one story.
Kim Stanley Robinson did an amazing job of this, but it was "just" Mars and Earth. Even then, Earth had to be conceptualized as a semi-cohesive unit because of the perspective of the characters. Too much more detail would have lost the story. But it didn't try to pretend that all of Earth (or all of human civilization) was the same culture, that's just a crutch.
It can also be used as a general purpose cutting tool - good for cutting through doors, cables, or whatnot. ... It's nearly impossible to selectively wound with a gun.
I'm going to go out on a small limp and assume that by stating this you have never shot a gun and have likely never even held a gun. Guns aren't like videogame guns, it is incredibly tough to kill us humans. Shooting to wound is standard practice. Shooting through a lock is common practice. Selectively wounding with a sword (or lightsaber) would require extreme skill, not only to control the damage you do to your opponent but that you could do to yourself. Selectively wounding with a gun just requires decent aim.
Do go on. I am always willing to listen to those with more expertise.
What's the deal with the Guangdong Special Economic Zones? If not to allow bubbles of capitalism in the nominally communist China?
Is there a planned phase out date for the region's special status?
If you live in HK, how is public sentiment towards China now as opposed to the resentment at unification? If you live on the mainland, what is the public perception of HK. It is still "Hong Kong" or is it "China"?
Wow, that's an odd thing to harp on. Especially considering the many other benefits brought by OS X. Does the resolution when using OS X really restrict you that much? I guess you're just more 'leet than I.
Yeah, just imagine if we (Americans) got to work a six hour day and get real vacation time...that'd be ever so sweet. I already spend two hours a day at work zoning out/chatting/popcaping/slashdotting/homestarrunnin g/emailing/etceteraing. I'd much rather spend that time at home. Three hours, fifteen minute lunch, three hours. I could work three hard hours straight without blinking.
If it was introduced by trial and productivity had to stay the same or increase, you bet your shoes that I'd make it increase and keep it there.
Why not be portable and show off and get an Apple *book?
Ah, no. As stated in an earlier post I know one of the scientists working on this at Duke (Dook). The monkey learns to control the robot arm completely. That means precise, intentional movements. The *really* cool bit is that once the monkey realized it could control the robot arm it stopped using its own arm when it wasn't necessary. But don't take my word, I'll force you to RTFA:
...new experiments in his laboratory seek to enable the brain to perceive a feedback sensation from neuroprosthetic devices. Such feedback might be in the form of visual information on the effects of moving a robotic arm. Or, it might be tactile feedback fed as signals into electrodes implanted in the brain.
The scientists next removed the joystick, after which the monkeys continued to move their arms in mid-air to manipulate and "grab" the cursor, thus controlling the robot arm. However, after a few days, the monkeys realized that they did not need to move their own arms. Their arm muscles went completely quiet, they kept the arm at their side, and they controlled the robot using only their brain and visual feedback.
Does that sound like an on/off switch to you? You must have some freakin' awesome lights.
"Mikhail's analysis of the brain signals associated with use of the robotic and animals' actual arms revealed that the animal was simultaneously doing one thing with its own arm and something else with the robotic arm," he said. "So, our hypothesis is that the adaptation of brain structures allows the expansion of capability to use an artificial appendage with no loss of function, because the animal can flip back and forth between using the two. Depending on the goal, the animal could use its own arm or the robotic arm, and in some cases both.
Do you have any glimmering of how mind-bogglingly revolutionary this is? Can you think of any real world applications? No? Then there's even MORE.
Such feedback would greatly enhance people's ability to learn and use the devices, said Nicolelis. Also, such feedback would expand use of neuroprosthetics to amputees, because the devices would include all the features -- including feedback -- of real appendages.
Goodbye loss of hand, hello Luke Skywalker robot arm! Or robotic surgery where surgeons could actually feel what their scapels are cutting. Or soldiers mentally controlling battle droids. Get the toughness of metal with the adaptability of the human mind! Or don't just drive, plug in and really feel the car operate. You could get neurological feedback on any problems the car might be developing. Or just use the interface to get awesome control.
They have ****** shown that the mind can incorporate a robotic appendage and use it in addition to the ones we already have! How is this not groundbreaking research in psychology, physics, biology, etc? Even Philosophy! What does it mean that our sense of self is so easily extended?
Why SD? You like slow cards that are a weird mix of large and thin? Why not the faster and smaller xD?
I know one of the guys working on this!
Just wait until we plug into mechs with this technology. Sweet.
Awesome, just awesome. When I saw the Firefly article, I resigned myself to explaining the realism of Firefly's tech yet again. You have done it better than I could have. Thank you!
Depends on that libraries you are talking about. If you mean public county/city libraries then yes. If by government you mean your local officials and taxes. It's not like the money all comes from DC you know.
Or it would be if all those people didn't have white earphones hanging out of their ears.
The white headphones make subscription services unattractive? Snap!
DRM is the future, you can't stop it. Your children in 20 years won't be able to buy plain old music CDs anymore because the RIAA won't release it unsecured like that.
Then, much like now, the RIAA won't get a dime of my money. There are a lot of extremely talented independent artists out there. Try CD Baby.
Wow, you must be completely unfamiliar with huge swaths of history. And as a guy with a history degree, that really grates on me.
Read about Courtesans in China and Byzantium, read about Geisha culture in Japan. Then explain how your human psychology studies fail to explain their high class status.
In China. these women were the counsels of rulers and nobility, trained to be artistic, clever, insightful, and cunning conversationalists. They were supposed to be relaxing counsel with no strings attached. Many of the gentry class preferred to hang with the courtesans because they could have actual conversations, because women were still prohibited from getting "normal" schooling. So the elite house of pleasure was the only way to actually have an equally educated conversation between the sexes.
BTW, Inara wasn't a whore. That was a derogatory term that Mal used, and one she didn't particularly care for. While there were whores in the sense that you mean, she was a Companion which meant a lot more than sex.