> So if we have 6 billion people, we could provide say 5 tons of carbon in the form of useful stuff for each person each year.
What you seem to forget, is that it costs energy to make stuff out of carbon. If it costs more energy to produce 5 tons of useful stuff per person per year than we get by burning fossil fuels than we should just stop burning fossil fuels (assuming we want to go carbon neutral). And guess what plants use energy to store CO2 as glucose, more energy than we got by producing that CO2 in the first place.
> Why not grow the algae, dry it out, and burn it in the power plant?
Because solar panels are more efficient than the algae. Growing plants for no other reason than to burn them is madness.
> So, for the last 70 years, nuclear has been more radioactive than coal.
Due to a single accident that is extremely unlikely to happen with modern nuclear reactors. But let's rephrase GP for you: shutting down most coal plants and replacing them with nuclear plants would decrease the amount radioactive stuff that is released in the atmosphere each year.
>> The mess is caused by people getting carbon from outside our environment (deep underground) and putting it IN our environment. Plants did NOT get us in this mess.
> If coal is made of plants, then coal is part of our environment. It's just part that has been turned into rock for a long time.
And since it has been turned to rock and is, in many cases, burried so deep that is does not significantly affect the rest of the world (it might as well have been burried on mars), then I think we may consider that coal not to be part of our current environment. But you are right that is was part of the environment in the past. I guess we're going to disagree about the precise definition of 'environment', so what I meant to say was that the burried coal did not affect us when it was burried, but it does now.
> Think about an atom of carbon in a hunk of coal. Imagine it being dug up and transported to a power plant and burned. It meets an oxygen molecule, and they join up to form a carbon dioxide molecule. That's pretty much all most people think about when they talk about global warming.
I know this (although they really should think about methane in addition to carbon dioxide).
> Here's the other part of the story that most people aren't thinking about. Instead of thinking about the atom of carbon in the present and in the future, think about its past. Think about where it came from.
> The carbon atom in the hunk of coal was once a carbon atom in a plant, most likely about 300 million to 360 million years ago. That plant was turned into coal by being covered in mud and squashed for hundreds of millions of years.
> The carbon atom must have been in the atmosphere or in the ocean in order to get absorbed by the plant. Those are pretty much the only places that plants get carbon dioxide. Therefore, carbon dioxide levels must have been much higher hundreds of millions of years ago. There had to be heaps of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the ocean in order for all that coal and other fossil fuel to form. It didn't just get put there by aliens. Fossil fuels are made of dead squished up plants and animals. Coal, oil, and natural gas were once alive.
> So the only way that all the carbon could have gotten into the coal, oil, etc, is if it was all in the atmosphere and the ocean, and then plants sucked it out, and deposited their bodies to form future coal. For example, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the Cambrian period [wikipedia.org] averaged 4500ppm, over 10 times higher than current levels.
> There is no way we could possibly get the atmosphere back up to 4500ppm. We would have to find, dig up and burn all the fossil fuel on the planet. And even that wouldn't be enough. We would also have to burn all the rock that has formed in the last billion years. Rock is made of calcium carbonate. The large sheets of limestone show that areas of the planet were covered with an ocean with a huge amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in it. That's how limestone gets formed. And limestone is partially solid carbon dioxide.
While this is all very interesting (I'm serious, the atmosphere was indeed different back then and I find that fascinating, I hear oxygen levels were higher too?), I don't really see how this is relevant. We don't live hundreds of millions of years ago.
> There is no need to keep a piece of paper forever. Suppose a ton of paper contains 250kg of carbon atoms. Suppose it takes ten years for a ton of paper to rot and convert into carbon dioxide. If you produce 100 tons of paper per year, you will end up with about 1000 tons of paper on hand at any time. That paper will contain 250 tons of carbon atoms. Those carbon atoms won't be in the atmosphere, because they are in the paper.
The problem is we produce billions of tons of CO2 each year. Suppose your paper is made out of pure CO2. Even if we produced a 1000 tons of paper each year and kept that paper forever, that is less than 0.1% of the CO2 we produce every ye
> But, and this is a weird idea, what if we combined that with the idea of putting it in the ocean? What if we made, for example, grew a bunch of plants with it, and then simply stuck them underwater to rot? Such, they'd decay down there...but seems like it's be easier than trying to pump CO2 into the ocean.
You know what happens when stuff rots? It uses oxygen. Pretty much all creatures near those rotting plants are going to die.
> Or, combine it with the article, and put them in water storage underground. Most oil wells already pump salt water down there, so you'd just need to 'pump' the plants down there. You'd obviously have to use algae or something, but it could work. Pump it down there and let it die from lack of sun.
Those plants used energy to store that CO2. How about we instead use the ground that you suggested we use for growing CO2-absorbing plants and fill that ground with solar panels and use the produced energy so we need less coal? Putting plants under the ground is like putting perfectly good fuel under the ground.
> It wouldn't even require much change of plans. Instead of storing compressed CO2, operate a CO2 greenhouse over a 'scummy swimming pool' (For lack of a better term) and keep scraping off the algae to pump down there. (In a high-enough CO2 environment, you'd have to do it pretty continuously.)
Those plants would probably have to absorb more sun-energy to store enough CO2 than you gain by getting that oil/gas/coal. And at that point we might as well have placed solar panels on an area as large as the algae-compensation-thing required, instead of drilling for oil/gas and mining for coal.
> Consider a cotton plant. When the cotton is picked from the plant, it contains carbon that the plant absorbed from the atmosphere. Let's assume that 4 tons of cotton contains 1 ton of carbon. That means that all the carbon from burning 1 ton of coal is stored in 4 tons of cotton. If we use the 4 tons of cotton to make clothes and other things, that stores the carbon in a form where it's not in the atmosphere. If the carbon isn't in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it can't cause global warming.
Nobody is going to use that cotton forever. At some point bacteria will eat it and they will release CO2.
> And it's not just cotton. Every plant product contains stored carbon. To get the carbon, the plant had to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or from the ocean. Since this problem is all about balance, we should in theory be able to balance the amount of carbon being dug up and burned with the amount we store by harvesting plants and using them for long-lasting things. Even products like paper are useful, as long as they aren't burned once they aren't wanted any more.
Only if we start using a LOT less energy than we do now, and NEVER throw anything away. And do you intend to keep that paper forever? It will decay eventually, and release the CO2 again.
> If plant products are going to be burned, they should be burned in a power plant to produce electricity. It should be possible to replace coal with waste paper, and other waste plant products. This is already being done at various places around the world.
I seriously doubt we can fill ALL our energy needs by burning plant products, unless we start using enormous amounts of land to grow plants to burn. But that's stupid since solar cells are more efficient than plants (plants convert light in chemical energy with 6% efficiency under optimal conditions) and are likely to get even more efficient in the comming decades (unlike plants). Note that I support buring old paper and stuff for electricity (after all there is little other use for it), but not using large areas of land to build plants to burn for fuel.
> Of course people will object and say that this can't possibly work.
That's me:)
> How can plants get us out of this mess? If the coal we're burning is made of dead plants, then plants got us into this mess, why can't they get us out?
The mess is caused by people getting carbon from outside our environment (deep underground) and putting it IN our environment. Plants did NOT get us in this mess.
> Plants were able to absorb all of the carbon dioxide needed to make the coal in the first place.
And the whole thing took them hundreds of millions of years.
> Surely with all the agricultural knowledge in the world, we can grow plants and absorb it again.
The problem isn't really convincing plants to absorb the carbon, the problem is keeping it there. It would be awesome if we could somehow remove the carbon from our environment somehow... like storing it underground!
I doubt the growth of plants is limited by the amount of CO2 in the air. Since those plants will at some point either rot or get eaten (thereby releasing the CO2 again) putting produced CO2 in a greenhouse does not offer any advantages over pumping the CO2 into the air.
> Maybe he initially didn't intend to profit from the confusion, maybe he did. But there is no doubt that his domain will be misleading millions and millions of internet users if Chicago does get the 2016 Olympics.
Have you seen his website? It says:
This is NOT the official Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid Committee site. Find them at www.Chicago2016.org
I think it is because nobody in maths really takes algorithms seriously (except for people who do CS). Which is a shame, really, because algorithms are really awesome (and many algorithms have great practical use, which is probably what scares the mathematicians away, hehe). I especially like sorting algorithms, because it is easy to see why you need them and what they have to do.
You are right. Even the article is tagged "correlation is not causation". Nowhere in the article or the summary is said 'Gaming causes X'. If anyone has bothered to read it (Welcome, you must be new here, haha we're having so much fun) they would have noticed that the researchers SPECULATE on causes for the differences between gamers and other people, but they don't say X causes Y. Because they know that they can't prove that. Because they KNOW "correlation is not causation".
GGP says:
> It's a shame, because it affects the conclusion. IMHO it should be -
But there is no conclusion in the article, EXCEPT for concluding that the stereotype of gamers being overweight is incorrect. They support this 'conclusion' by gathering statistics, by making an observation. No correlation or causation was involved.
> because i, and many others i think here on slashdot and elsewhere are pretty sick of the smarmy "correlation is not causation" kneejerk response
Aye. I hate how stories keep getting tagged 'correlationisnotcausation' for no good reason. Whenever a headline says 'X linked to Y' we get that tag, but those articles rarely suggest 'X causes Y', because the scientists ain't crazy either, so the tag just stands there to remind us how clever we all are on/. .
> I understand the concept of escalation, but I fear that you trust criminals too much. In this scenario the person has already chosen to break-in to your (presumably locked) home. And you trust this person to value your life high enough that he won't violate your person despite the fact that he has chosen to violate your property.
Like I said, 'Nothing says 'prioritize me please' to the police like killing people.'. Going around breaking into peoples homes and stealing their stuff will get some attention from the police. By Going around breaking into peoples homes and stealing their stuff and shooting them your are going to get lots and lots of attention from the police, and, in case you get caught, you are going to jail for a very long time (YMMV, depending on laws of your country)*. Every idiot who is smart enough to understand that he can take your stuff should be able to understand that.
> But a criminal has already accepted the error of his ways, and rationalized them. I believe you will not change a criminal once he has made that choice to violate you. And I am not willing to die to show criminals that they are wrong.
The criminal has very little to gain by killing you, and much to lose. Unless you are going to try and shoot him, in that situation he has more to gain by killing you first. I don't intend to show the criminal the error of his ways (It's not going to work, and if the chances of getting caught are low enough the only good reason why he shouldn't steal my stuff is cause it pisses me off, which isn't going to convince him), I just try to get the whole thing over with without people (especially me, since I like me very much) getting shot.
* Somewhat unrelated, but an argument against lifelong imprisonment or capital punishment for rapists is to prevent them from always killing their victims. If you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison when you get caught you might as well dispose of the witness (aka victim). I really like this particular argument and I think in general that punishments in general shouldn't be too harsh, to prevent criminals (especially the stupid ones) from thinking they have nothing to lose.
> And what about for the man who wants one gun (a shotgun) to defend his family with? Not to hunt no other purpose; than self-defence.
Seriously though, how often do criminals invade your house with the intent to the hurt people inside? If someone tries to steal your stuff and they think you might have a gun, they have a lot of incentive to shoot first.
I'd rather get my stuff stolen than get in a firefight. Nothing I own is worth the potential loss of my life (or the thief's life, unless they be stealing a bottle of bitter lemon), and if I don't offer resistance then the person who is stealing my stuff has no reason to kill me. Nothing says 'prioritize me please' to the police like killing people.
> Also, your argument is far from complete (but I'm sure you knew that). While it addresses the means, it does not address the motive. Most crimes are crimes of opportunity. If a criminal is more certain that he can get away with a crime, [s]he is more likely to commit it. If the criminal thinks [s]he will be greeted by a double barrel, then the likelihood drops considerably.
You have a point there, but what if the criminal tries to make it easier to get away with the crime. Suppose he gangs up with 2 other criminals, and they all bring guns. Or they break in during the day (less of a problem if you work at home, they will notice someone is inside and steal from your neighbours instead). I'm from europe and as far as I know few burglars bring guns with them, and if they do they don't usually shoot anyone.
If you are forced to defend yourself with a knife 10 times, maybe it's time to think 'Maybe I'm doing something wrong?' don't you think? It might just be a statistical anomaly, but one should at least consider the possibility that one intentionally seeks dangerous situations and/or has anger management problems?
I think it is safe to say that most of those poor, poor people who have been in a knife-fight 10 times are looking for trouble and an excuse to 'defend' themselves.
> In an evenly matched multiplayer game, your wins are going to be around 50% (thinking first-person shooters here). But that's compensated in part by the satisfaction that you just fragged a real human. Food for thought: are multiplayer games more fun if there are more ways to win than to lose (so everyone can get their wins up to 80%)?
I find that when one team is outnumbered 4 to 1, people win 80% of the time on average. Seriously though, you said it yourself: fragging in multiplayer is nice because you defeat another person. For you to win, at least 1 other person must lose (victory is even better when you make a large number of people fail at the same time). Therefore all players winning 80% of the time in an FPS isn't really doable. I guess you could design a game where you could earn certain things that do not rely on other people losing (achievements?) but if everone can 'win' that way the victory becomes meaningless.
Reading the rest of your post it seems to me that you think the video games are not actually bad for kids, they are just not as good a way to spend your time compared other activities. If that is what you are trying to say, you really shouldn't say games are bad, that would be like saying that playing footbal is bad for kids because they could be spending that time reading and learning, and that reading stuff like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is bad for children because they could have been reading a more educational, non-fiction book instead.
> A lot of things are probably bad, but we do them anyway for enjoyment - eating junk foods, watching TV, etc.
Junk food isn't going to harm you if you eat it once in a while. Watching the news and firefly isn't going to melt your brain (well, the former might). Things usually aren't either 'good' or 'bad' for you, but something in between. To suggest otherwise is usually a gross oversimplification.
> But that being said, I remember when I was young. Me and my friends used to go on bike rides together, we'd play with lego and do all these fun things. Hell, I remember we even went through a woodwork phase where we built shit. My brother just sits on the computer and plays games.
Have you considered that your brother might be different from you? You base your opinion (that games are bad) mostly on the behavior of a single individual (don't go suggesting that your brother (and probably his friends, if any, who are likely to have similar interests) doesn't have a huge influence on your perception of 'today's kids'). Maybe your brother is just lazy and boring.
> By no means ban them from playing, but you can't argue that today's kids seem to have relatively...dull lives compared to our childhoods.
Dude, you're 19. Don't go all 'our childhoods' on us.
> Eventually, a grouping came about (most likely RNA) that could replicate and store information. This grouping may have been formed inside of a 'bubble' of polymer that protected the grouping from the outside world - and the first 'virus' was born.
You really shouldn't call that thing a 'virus'. A virus, by definition, cannot reproduce on its own.
> You can't believe that the world would be better off with you dead - without giving yourself greater importance than EVERYTHING else in the world. You are SO bad for the ENTIRE UNIVERSE that your death will cause a sigh of relief across the all of the existence.
Huh? Just because you think the universe is better off without you doesn't mean you think you are the worst thing in existance. I think the universe would be better off without, lets say, hay fever. Does that in any way imply that I think hay fever is the worst and/or most important thing in the world? No, and such a conclusion would make no sense at all. But if I think the world would be better off without me, then that suddenly means I give myself greater importance than everything else?
> As for grateful... How about for being alive? Yes. Its a pain and a constant struggle but sure beats the alternative.
Grateful for being alive? Why? And to whom should we be grateful? Suppose you think your life sucks. If you are dead, you do not experience anything at all, so I guess being dead qualifies as 'neutral'. Surely if you really dislike your life and see no way to change this, then surely the rational thing is to die since that would be an improvement (it ends your suffering forever).
> I happen to believe that thinking hard- programming- writing- puzzle-solving for hours on end burns way more energy as opposed to sitting on your ass watching a sitcom. It just has to, right?
Depends. Maybe the difference in energy-consumption between a programming brain and a sitcom-watching brain is very small, or even insignificant. Note that while you may not feel like you're thinking much while watching that sitcom, your brain is doing all kinds of (difficult) stuff like facial recognition and speech recognition. While you are programming/writing/puzzle-solving you usually don't have to pay attention to faces and sounds.
Maybe concious activities merely feel more tiring than unconcious ones, but actually aren't.
1. People enjoy violent games (I know I do). 2. Make violent video game. 3. Sell violent video game. 4. ??? 5. Profit!
It's really that simple. I don't mean to suggest that there is no market for smart and witty game concepts (I really enjoyed portal), but many (most?) people enjoy violence. And in a way, this game does have a new and witty concept, that of removing your enemies' appendages.
Aye, and my C-compiler is written in javascript B-)
Seriously though, what I meant with 'C code' was 'executable stuff, the source code of which was written in C'. Perhaps I should have been more clear (although, being blessed with great powers of denial and self-deception, I prefer to think that you are an idiot for not understanding).
I guess C still wins. I bet your computer runs C code all the time. There is a C compiler for just about any device that can add two numbers. Many people know C and, in my opinion, it is worth knowing.
I'd like to see the number of lines of code written in C compared to Javascript.
C, more or less prevalent than javascript? A no-brainer.
Having said that, the website is about programming on the web, and in that context, javascript is pretty prevalent.
Slashdot Mirror
> So if we have 6 billion people, we could provide say 5 tons of carbon in the form of useful stuff for each person each year.
What you seem to forget, is that it costs energy to make stuff out of carbon. If it costs more energy to produce 5 tons of useful stuff per person per year than we get by burning fossil fuels than we should just stop burning fossil fuels (assuming we want to go carbon neutral). And guess what plants use energy to store CO2 as glucose, more energy than we got by producing that CO2 in the first place.
> Why not grow the algae, dry it out, and burn it in the power plant?
Because solar panels are more efficient than the algae. Growing plants for no other reason than to burn them is madness.
> So, for the last 70 years, nuclear has been more radioactive than coal.
Due to a single accident that is extremely unlikely to happen with modern nuclear reactors. But let's rephrase GP for you: shutting down most coal plants and replacing them with nuclear plants would decrease the amount radioactive stuff that is released in the atmosphere each year.
>> The mess is caused by people getting carbon from outside our environment (deep underground) and putting it IN our environment. Plants did NOT get us in this mess.
> If coal is made of plants, then coal is part of our environment. It's just part that has been turned into rock for a long time.
And since it has been turned to rock and is, in many cases, burried so deep that is does not significantly affect the rest of the world (it might as well have been burried on mars), then I think we may consider that coal not to be part of our current environment. But you are right that is was part of the environment in the past. I guess we're going to disagree about the precise definition of 'environment', so what I meant to say was that the burried coal did not affect us when it was burried, but it does now.
> Think about an atom of carbon in a hunk of coal. Imagine it being dug up and transported to a power plant and burned. It meets an oxygen molecule, and they join up to form a carbon dioxide molecule. That's pretty much all most people think about when they talk about global warming.
I know this (although they really should think about methane in addition to carbon dioxide).
> Here's the other part of the story that most people aren't thinking about. Instead of thinking about the atom of carbon in the present and in the future, think about its past. Think about where it came from.
> The carbon atom in the hunk of coal was once a carbon atom in a plant, most likely about 300 million to 360 million years ago. That plant was turned into coal by being covered in mud and squashed for hundreds of millions of years.
> The carbon atom must have been in the atmosphere or in the ocean in order to get absorbed by the plant. Those are pretty much the only places that plants get carbon dioxide. Therefore, carbon dioxide levels must have been much higher hundreds of millions of years ago. There had to be heaps of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the ocean in order for all that coal and other fossil fuel to form. It didn't just get put there by aliens. Fossil fuels are made of dead squished up plants and animals. Coal, oil, and natural gas were once alive.
> So the only way that all the carbon could have gotten into the coal, oil, etc, is if it was all in the atmosphere and the ocean, and then plants sucked it out, and deposited their bodies to form future coal. For example, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the Cambrian period [wikipedia.org] averaged 4500ppm, over 10 times higher than current levels.
> There is no way we could possibly get the atmosphere back up to 4500ppm. We would have to find, dig up and burn all the fossil fuel on the planet. And even that wouldn't be enough. We would also have to burn all the rock that has formed in the last billion years. Rock is made of calcium carbonate. The large sheets of limestone show that areas of the planet were covered with an ocean with a huge amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in it. That's how limestone gets formed. And limestone is partially solid carbon dioxide.
While this is all very interesting (I'm serious, the atmosphere was indeed different back then and I find that fascinating, I hear oxygen levels were higher too?), I don't really see how this is relevant. We don't live hundreds of millions of years ago.
> There is no need to keep a piece of paper forever. Suppose a ton of paper contains 250kg of carbon atoms. Suppose it takes ten years for a ton of paper to rot and convert into carbon dioxide. If you produce 100 tons of paper per year, you will end up with about 1000 tons of paper on hand at any time. That paper will contain 250 tons of carbon atoms. Those carbon atoms won't be in the atmosphere, because they are in the paper.
The problem is we produce billions of tons of CO2 each year. Suppose your paper is made out of pure CO2. Even if we produced a 1000 tons of paper each year and kept that paper forever, that is less than 0.1% of the CO2 we produce every ye
> In a crowded elevator IN china?
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has seen that movie!
> But, and this is a weird idea, what if we combined that with the idea of putting it in the ocean? What if we made, for example, grew a bunch of plants with it, and then simply stuck them underwater to rot? Such, they'd decay down there...but seems like it's be easier than trying to pump CO2 into the ocean.
You know what happens when stuff rots? It uses oxygen. Pretty much all creatures near those rotting plants are going to die.
> Or, combine it with the article, and put them in water storage underground. Most oil wells already pump salt water down there, so you'd just need to 'pump' the plants down there. You'd obviously have to use algae or something, but it could work. Pump it down there and let it die from lack of sun.
Those plants used energy to store that CO2. How about we instead use the ground that you suggested we use for growing CO2-absorbing plants and fill that ground with solar panels and use the produced energy so we need less coal? Putting plants under the ground is like putting perfectly good fuel under the ground.
> It wouldn't even require much change of plans. Instead of storing compressed CO2, operate a CO2 greenhouse over a 'scummy swimming pool' (For lack of a better term) and keep scraping off the algae to pump down there. (In a high-enough CO2 environment, you'd have to do it pretty continuously.)
Those plants would probably have to absorb more sun-energy to store enough CO2 than you gain by getting that oil/gas/coal. And at that point we might as well have placed solar panels on an area as large as the algae-compensation-thing required, instead of drilling for oil/gas and mining for coal.
Short answer: no.
Long answer:
> Consider a cotton plant. When the cotton is picked from the plant, it contains carbon that the plant absorbed from the atmosphere. Let's assume that 4 tons of cotton contains 1 ton of carbon. That means that all the carbon from burning 1 ton of coal is stored in 4 tons of cotton. If we use the 4 tons of cotton to make clothes and other things, that stores the carbon in a form where it's not in the atmosphere. If the carbon isn't in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it can't cause global warming.
Nobody is going to use that cotton forever. At some point bacteria will eat it and they will release CO2.
> And it's not just cotton. Every plant product contains stored carbon. To get the carbon, the plant had to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or from the ocean. Since this problem is all about balance, we should in theory be able to balance the amount of carbon being dug up and burned with the amount we store by harvesting plants and using them for long-lasting things. Even products like paper are useful, as long as they aren't burned once they aren't wanted any more.
Only if we start using a LOT less energy than we do now, and NEVER throw anything away. And do you intend to keep that paper forever? It will decay eventually, and release the CO2 again.
> If plant products are going to be burned, they should be burned in a power plant to produce electricity. It should be possible to replace coal with waste paper, and other waste plant products. This is already being done at various places around the world.
I seriously doubt we can fill ALL our energy needs by burning plant products, unless we start using enormous amounts of land to grow plants to burn. But that's stupid since solar cells are more efficient than plants (plants convert light in chemical energy with 6% efficiency under optimal conditions) and are likely to get even more efficient in the comming decades (unlike plants). Note that I support buring old paper and stuff for electricity (after all there is little other use for it), but not using large areas of land to build plants to burn for fuel.
> Of course people will object and say that this can't possibly work.
That's me :)
> How can plants get us out of this mess? If the coal we're burning is made of dead plants, then plants got us into this mess, why can't they get us out?
The mess is caused by people getting carbon from outside our environment (deep underground) and putting it IN our environment. Plants did NOT get us in this mess.
> Plants were able to absorb all of the carbon dioxide needed to make the coal in the first place.
And the whole thing took them hundreds of millions of years.
> Surely with all the agricultural knowledge in the world, we can grow plants and absorb it again.
The problem isn't really convincing plants to absorb the carbon, the problem is keeping it there. It would be awesome if we could somehow remove the carbon from our environment somehow... like storing it underground!
I doubt the growth of plants is limited by the amount of CO2 in the air. Since those plants will at some point either rot or get eaten (thereby releasing the CO2 again) putting produced CO2 in a greenhouse does not offer any advantages over pumping the CO2 into the air.
> Maybe he initially didn't intend to profit from the confusion, maybe he did. But there is no doubt that his domain will be misleading millions and millions of internet users if Chicago does get the 2016 Olympics.
Have you seen his website? It says:
This is NOT the official Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid Committee site.
Find them at www.Chicago2016.org
In big, friendly, red letters.
I think it is because nobody in maths really takes algorithms seriously (except for people who do CS). Which is a shame, really, because algorithms are really awesome (and many algorithms have great practical use, which is probably what scares the mathematicians away, hehe). I especially like sorting algorithms, because it is easy to see why you need them and what they have to do.
You are right. Even the article is tagged "correlation is not causation". Nowhere in the article or the summary is said 'Gaming causes X'. If anyone has bothered to read it (Welcome, you must be new here, haha we're having so much fun) they would have noticed that the researchers SPECULATE on causes for the differences between gamers and other people, but they don't say X causes Y. Because they know that they can't prove that. Because they KNOW "correlation is not causation".
GGP says:
> It's a shame, because it affects the conclusion. IMHO it should be -
But there is no conclusion in the article, EXCEPT for concluding that the stereotype of gamers being overweight is incorrect. They support this 'conclusion' by gathering statistics, by making an observation. No correlation or causation was involved.
> because i, and many others i think here on slashdot and elsewhere are pretty sick of the smarmy "correlation is not causation" kneejerk response
Aye. I hate how stories keep getting tagged 'correlationisnotcausation' for no good reason. Whenever a headline says 'X linked to Y' we get that tag, but those articles rarely suggest 'X causes Y', because the scientists ain't crazy either, so the tag just stands there to remind us how clever we all are on /. .
> I understand the concept of escalation, but I fear that you trust criminals too much. In this scenario the person has already chosen to break-in to your (presumably locked) home. And you trust this person to value your life high enough that he won't violate your person despite the fact that he has chosen to violate your property.
Like I said, 'Nothing says 'prioritize me please' to the police like killing people.'. Going around breaking into peoples homes and stealing their stuff will get some attention from the police. By Going around breaking into peoples homes and stealing their stuff and shooting them your are going to get lots and lots of attention from the police, and, in case you get caught, you are going to jail for a very long time (YMMV, depending on laws of your country)*. Every idiot who is smart enough to understand that he can take your stuff should be able to understand that.
> But a criminal has already accepted the error of his ways, and rationalized them. I believe you will not change a criminal once he has made that choice to violate you. And I am not willing to die to show criminals that they are wrong.
The criminal has very little to gain by killing you, and much to lose. Unless you are going to try and shoot him, in that situation he has more to gain by killing you first. I don't intend to show the criminal the error of his ways (It's not going to work, and if the chances of getting caught are low enough the only good reason why he shouldn't steal my stuff is cause it pisses me off, which isn't going to convince him), I just try to get the whole thing over with without people (especially me, since I like me very much) getting shot.
* Somewhat unrelated, but an argument against lifelong imprisonment or capital punishment for rapists is to prevent them from always killing their victims. If you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison when you get caught you might as well dispose of the witness (aka victim). I really like this particular argument and I think in general that punishments in general shouldn't be too harsh, to prevent criminals (especially the stupid ones) from thinking they have nothing to lose.
Well, since a murder was comitted, what do you suggest IS going to help the victim?
> And what about for the man who wants one gun (a shotgun) to defend his family with? Not to hunt no other purpose; than self-defence.
Seriously though, how often do criminals invade your house with the intent to the hurt people inside? If someone tries to steal your stuff and they think you might have a gun, they have a lot of incentive to shoot first.
I'd rather get my stuff stolen than get in a firefight. Nothing I own is worth the potential loss of my life (or the thief's life, unless they be stealing a bottle of bitter lemon), and if I don't offer resistance then the person who is stealing my stuff has no reason to kill me. Nothing says 'prioritize me please' to the police like killing people.
> Also, your argument is far from complete (but I'm sure you knew that). While it addresses the means, it does not address the motive. Most crimes are crimes of opportunity. If a criminal is more certain that he can get away with a crime, [s]he is more likely to commit it. If the criminal thinks [s]he will be greeted by a double barrel, then the likelihood drops considerably.
You have a point there, but what if the criminal tries to make it easier to get away with the crime. Suppose he gangs up with 2 other criminals, and they all bring guns. Or they break in during the day (less of a problem if you work at home, they will notice someone is inside and steal from your neighbours instead). I'm from europe and as far as I know few burglars bring guns with them, and if they do they don't usually shoot anyone.
If you are forced to defend yourself with a knife 10 times, maybe it's time to think 'Maybe I'm doing something wrong?' don't you think? It might just be a statistical anomaly, but one should at least consider the possibility that one intentionally seeks dangerous situations and/or has anger management problems?
I think it is safe to say that most of those poor, poor people who have been in a knife-fight 10 times are looking for trouble and an excuse to 'defend' themselves.
> In an evenly matched multiplayer game, your wins are going to be around 50% (thinking first-person shooters here). But that's compensated in part by the satisfaction that you just fragged a real human. Food for thought: are multiplayer games more fun if there are more ways to win than to lose (so everyone can get their wins up to 80%)?
I find that when one team is outnumbered 4 to 1, people win 80% of the time on average. Seriously though, you said it yourself: fragging in multiplayer is nice because you defeat another person. For you to win, at least 1 other person must lose (victory is even better when you make a large number of people fail at the same time). Therefore all players winning 80% of the time in an FPS isn't really doable. I guess you could design a game where you could earn certain things that do not rely on other people losing (achievements?) but if everone can 'win' that way the victory becomes meaningless.
> IMO, video games *are* bad for kids.
Reading the rest of your post it seems to me that you think the video games are not actually bad for kids, they are just not as good a way to spend your time compared other activities. If that is what you are trying to say, you really shouldn't say games are bad, that would be like saying that playing footbal is bad for kids because they could be spending that time reading and learning, and that reading stuff like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is bad for children because they could have been reading a more educational, non-fiction book instead.
> A lot of things are probably bad, but we do them anyway for enjoyment - eating junk foods, watching TV, etc.
Junk food isn't going to harm you if you eat it once in a while. Watching the news and firefly isn't going to melt your brain (well, the former might). Things usually aren't either 'good' or 'bad' for you, but something in between. To suggest otherwise is usually a gross oversimplification.
> But that being said, I remember when I was young. Me and my friends used to go on bike rides together, we'd play with lego and do all these fun things. Hell, I remember we even went through a woodwork phase where we built shit. My brother just sits on the computer and plays games.
Have you considered that your brother might be different from you? You base your opinion (that games are bad) mostly on the behavior of a single individual (don't go suggesting that your brother (and probably his friends, if any, who are likely to have similar interests) doesn't have a huge influence on your perception of 'today's kids'). Maybe your brother is just lazy and boring.
> By no means ban them from playing, but you can't argue that today's kids seem to have relatively...dull lives compared to our childhoods.
Dude, you're 19. Don't go all 'our childhoods' on us.
> Eventually, a grouping came about (most likely RNA) that could replicate and store information. This grouping may have been formed inside of a 'bubble' of polymer that protected the grouping from the outside world - and the first 'virus' was born.
You really shouldn't call that thing a 'virus'. A virus, by definition, cannot reproduce on its own.
> You can't believe that the world would be better off with you dead - without giving yourself greater importance than EVERYTHING else in the world.
You are SO bad for the ENTIRE UNIVERSE that your death will cause a sigh of relief across the all of the existence.
Huh? Just because you think the universe is better off without you doesn't mean you think you are the worst thing in existance. I think the universe would be better off without, lets say, hay fever. Does that in any way imply that I think hay fever is the worst and/or most important thing in the world? No, and such a conclusion would make no sense at all. But if I think the world would be better off without me, then that suddenly means I give myself greater importance than everything else?
> As for grateful... How about for being alive?
Yes. Its a pain and a constant struggle but sure beats the alternative.
Grateful for being alive? Why? And to whom should we be grateful?
Suppose you think your life sucks. If you are dead, you do not experience anything at all, so I guess being dead qualifies as 'neutral'. Surely if you really dislike your life and see no way to change this, then surely the rational thing is to die since that would be an improvement (it ends your suffering forever).
You'd be his age by the time you get a reply.
> They aren't our genes... We are their replication machines.
And we're so very pretty!
In a way we are the result of a few million years of feature creep.
> I happen to believe that thinking hard- programming- writing- puzzle-solving for hours on end burns way more energy as opposed to sitting on your ass watching a sitcom. It just has to, right?
Depends. Maybe the difference in energy-consumption between a programming brain and a sitcom-watching brain is very small, or even insignificant. Note that while you may not feel like you're thinking much while watching that sitcom, your brain is doing all kinds of (difficult) stuff like facial recognition and speech recognition. While you are programming/writing/puzzle-solving you usually don't have to pay attention to faces and sounds.
Maybe concious activities merely feel more tiring than unconcious ones, but actually aren't.
1. People enjoy violent games (I know I do).
2. Make violent video game.
3. Sell violent video game.
4. ???
5. Profit!
It's really that simple. I don't mean to suggest that there is no market for smart and witty game concepts (I really enjoyed portal), but many (most?) people enjoy violence. And in a way, this game does have a new and witty concept, that of removing your enemies' appendages.
Aye, and my C-compiler is written in javascript B-)
Seriously though, what I meant with 'C code' was 'executable stuff, the source code of which was written in C'. Perhaps I should have been more clear (although, being blessed with great powers of denial and self-deception, I prefer to think that you are an idiot for not understanding).
I guess C still wins. I bet your computer runs C code all the time. There is a C compiler for just about any device that can add two numbers. Many people know C and, in my opinion, it is worth knowing.
I'd like to see the number of lines of code written in C compared to Javascript.
C, more or less prevalent than javascript? A no-brainer.
Having said that, the website is about programming on the web, and in that context, javascript is pretty prevalent.
Only on slashdot would that comment be modded both informative and insightful.