I had seen a student who knew very little about biology do her homework by scanning in her book for specific phrases mentioned in the questions and looking for some semblance of an answer once she's found the phrases. By the time she was done, she hasn't even read the chapter but her answers would probably get her a "C"
This is the way I always did it, and it got me A's. In fact I was taught to do this in a 6th grade "Study Skills" class. Ironically, it's a very good skill to have in the "real world" as it's a way of quickly obtaining the information you need. You could even draw a parallel between this and Googling something or any kind of computer "find" or "search".
The ability to skim for an answer is not a problem. It's one of the solutions that children employ to deal with a school system that puts more emphasis on grades rather than inspiring them to actually learn a subject. The "inspiration" to get good grades works for some (especially with parental support), but with "average" being a 'C' (often a very shallow understanding), it can be argued that it's not working for most.
As you said, "It took a college education and many years of reading to undo these "lessons" and really discover the joy of writing essays."
Skimming is a skill. Learning a system, and figuring out to survive in it is also a skill. The emphasis on that 'joy' is what's usually lacking. Get a student inspired and the rest usually takes care of itself.
It's not as though TiVo is any less unknown or strange.
Wooooh... TiVo is a very well known word for something and nearly everyone who watches TV often uses it or knows it by name. In fact, many people call any DVR a "TiVo" just as people use "Xerox" for copiers or "Kleenex" for tissues. Nearly everyone knows or has some experience with something they call a TiVo.
The word "Linux" is much, much less widely heard. It does not have a specific purpose that non-computer people can identify with. I have to strongly disagree with you on the TiVo/Linux thing. Your other comments are good though.
With non-technical people, I've gotten a lot more interest when I call distributions by their short name (ie: Mint or Puppy). Whenever I say "Linux Mint" or "Puppy Linux" the cute/cool factor dies away fast. In my personal experience, I've had non-technical women ask a number of questions, or ask me to explain more about those 2 names especially. I've been asked to install "Mint" on a few computers because of it.
I'm not really clear why the courts have been treating peer to peer software as different from client-server software.
Because most people (judges and juries included) don't understand what you just said.
So lawyers try to explain it to them while spinning the explanation towards their side.
I was more on the line of that neither is ok, and that if one considers only one or a few as being ok he/she is rather self centered.
Then the question comes to: who or what defines "ok"? As you've used the word in a way meaning "acceptable", it would be wise to follow through with that logic and find where you get that definition.
There are only 3 places where people can derive what they believe to be "acceptable" whether they realize it or not.
A "higher power" decides for them
What benefits the masses is defined as "good"
What benefits a certain individual is defined as "good"
Often it's a mixture of these 3. I don't know you, but your answer seems to draw from the 2nd one.
But that doesn't matter, because if one does not have a higher power to fall back on, then "good" or "bad" is purely formed by the minds of humans. There is nothing more than human "wants". There is no higher morality saying what is "ok" or "acceptable", only human individuals or groups saying they like or don't like something. Nothing is good or bad, including murderous rampages, we humans just don't "like" them.
The phrase: "neither is ok" implies a higher morality, put into place by some power outside of human beings. If instead you meant that you would not want to live in a society where people believe in crazy things, then it would be more accurate to phrase it that way.
Because without a higher reference to back you up, EVERYTHING is "ok", and you're simply stating a preference.
But the same thing is happening with milk and other food producers seeking to change the definition of "organic" so they can sell more food without actually being organic.
'Organic' means carbon based.
"I sprinkled some anthrax onto your salad. It's organic!"
As far as I understand it, anyone can slap the label "organic food" onto ANYTHING. There has never been a real 'food' definition. Governments give certification, so you can use the a label like "USDA certified organic". But it's not illegal to simply put 'organic' on any food.
I compared what the US did (put power into the hands of the locals) to what other nations have done throughout history (keep the power for themselves).
You're main argument is "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." But 3 things keep me optimistic, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The US still have military bases there but every decision for day to day living is up to those people. In all other examples throughout history, when countries have conquered, they have kept control. If you want to claim that Germany, Japan, and South Korea are just US puppets, go ahead, but I highly disagree.
The other point I'd like to make is that when even one individual is oppressed, that's one too many. When someone is not free to decide their fate, when someone else decides what they can or cannot do, they are enslaved, and that is not what I call "peace".
The only restrictions on an individual should be so they do not restrict OTHER people's ability to decide their fates. For example, if they are murdering or kidnapping others, they need to be removed from society as they are taking away the freedoms of others.
There is no nation on Earth that is perfect in this regard, but the Taliban's POLICY was to take away the freedom of anyone they disagreed with. Now many individuals in Afghanistan are still not free to decide their fates due to social stigmas, and this will take much time, but the policy has changed whether or not all de facto activities have. This allows them to slowly work towards having true control over their own individual lives, just as the people in 1st world nations are still working towards that goal.
The story is that stabilizing Afghanistan is supposed to stop the terrorists from attacking us.
What about the idea of helping to stabilize Afghanistan for the purpose of stabilizing Afghanistan? I'd rather live in a stable country. Maybe there are some individuals in Afghanistan that feel the same.
Actually it may be possible according to a hypothesis.
Some postulate that there is a finite size at which point we can get no smaller. If this is the case, and those tiny spaces are arranged in a 3d grid, we can define a meter by a number of those and create the exact cm. A perfect circle would not be possible if space is a 3d grid however.
Of course we'll never know if there's anything smaller than what we can measure (because we can't measure it!), so we'll never truly know if space is divided into tiny finite amounts.
Personally, I believe the universe is just the interplay of mathematical formulas within God's mind. Just like characters we dream in our own minds or like Sims in a video game, we are bound by the environment, can interact with it, and have no way of perceiving anything else; our own individual group of patterns interacting with the rest of the pattern.
In that case, there is no reality beyond mathematical patterns, and those can be infinitely large or small. A circumference can have an infinite pattern behind it. And while there would be 1cm lengths that are infinitely similar to each other, we could never measure them to be sure, without taking infinite time to do so.
It's not the first time amino acids were found to be formed under extraterrestrial conditions. It's the first time amino acids were found on a comet. Many meteors have been found with amino acids, most notably the Murchison Meteorite of 1969.
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A question for anyone who has studied the subject: do we have any idea why there is a difference between terrestrial and extraterrestrial carbon isotope ratios?
To answer your question from what I understand:
Atmospheric CO2 contains the naturally occurring carbon isotopes C12, C13, and C14 in the proportions 98.9%, 1.1% & 10 to the -10%, respectively.
Plants take in CO2 with both C12 and C13 isotopes, but about 7 million years ago, the predominant flora evolved so that they absorbed more CO2 with C13 than their predecessors. It was actually a stunningly quick change evolutionarily, about the span of a couple of million years. I don't remember why this benefited the plants, but it did, and that's what happened.
So I believe a lot of terrestrial C13 is trapped because our plants have preferred it for 7 million years.
Incidentally, this is how we know that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by fossil fuel burning. The plants that created fossil fuels are much older than this 7 million year mark and trapped a higher ratio of C12. There's an increase of C12 isotope in the atmospheric ratio that starts around 1850 (the beginning of the industrial revolution). In other words, the trapped C12 isotopes are escaping in higher ratios when we burn those old plants. And we can figure out the timing of all of this because of Carbon dating using C14. Gotta love those isotopes!
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Or for that matter, the higher presence of iridium in space rocks, etc?
It is thought that the overall concentration of iridium on Earth is much higher than what is observed in crustal rocks, but because of the density and siderophilic ("iron-loving") character of iridium, it descended below the crust and into the Earth's core when the planet was still molten.
The article spends 3 paragraphs on that! I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's not a long article (>_<)
Earlier, preliminary analysis in the Goddard labs detected glycine in both the foil and a sample of the aerogel. However, since glycine is used by terrestrial life, at first the team was unable to rule out contamination from sources on Earth. "It was possible that the glycine we found originated from handling or manufacture of the Stardust spacecraft itself," said Elsila. The new research used isotopic analysis of the foil to rule out that possibility.
Isotopes are versions of an element with diffehttp://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/18/1357243/NASA-Discovers-Lifes-Building-Block-In-Comet#rent weights or masses; for example, the most common carbon atom, Carbon 12, has six protons and six neutrons in its center (nucleus). However, the Carbon 13 isotope is heavier because it has an extra neutron in its nucleus. A glycine molecule from space will tend to have more of the heavier Carbon 13 atoms in it than glycine thatâ(TM)s from Earth. That is what the team found. âoeWe discovered that the Stardust-returned glycine has an extraterrestrial carbon isotope signature, indicating that it originated on the comet,â said Elsila.
The team includes Daniel Glavin and Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard. "Based on the foil and aerogel results it is highly probable that the entire comet-exposed side of the Stardust sample collection grid is coated with glycine that formed in space," adds Glavin.
Maybe I'm missing something (and point it out if I am) but from what I'm reading this does NOT support what Dr. Elsila is saying in the article:
"Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."
Instead it only supports what Dr. Pilcher says in the article:
"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare."
In other words, it's just saying that amino acids are not that rare. If they're not that rare, why can't Earth have made them on it's own?
After all the Miller/Urey experiment in 1953 showed that amino acids can be produced fairly easily if a few simple conditions are met.
Miller took molecules which were believed to represent the major components of the early Earth's atmosphere and put them into a closed system
The gases they used were methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and water (H2O). Next, he ran a continuous electric current through the system, to simulate lightning storms believed to be common on the early earth. Analysis of the experiment was done by chromotography. At the end of one week, Miller observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed some of the amino acids which are used to make proteins.
Maybe comets and meteors with amino acids were hitting earth as well. But finding them all over space also strengthens the idea that they're not uncommon to produce, and therefore also strengthens the theory that Earth could have produced them by itself. Either way seems like a guess to me.
Fun fact for the day: The Murchison meteorite which fell in Australia in 1969 also contained common amino acids such as glycine, alanine and glutamic acid as well as unusual ones like isovaline and pseudoleucine.
I'm sick of this kind of bigotry. I deal with it a lot as an American living in an Asian country. It's not done out of malice, it's just plain ignorance.
There are some very subtle differences between human groups that in a few cases call for slightly different types or dosages of medical treatments. If you really want to nitpick, every individual human body works slightly differently. But for the most part, human bodies all work in the same way.
Your blanket statement that Asians can't metabolize alcohol well is incorrect. There are plenty of Asians that have the enzyme to break down alcohol perfectly fine. And there are also westerners that do NOT have this enzyme. Statistically there are far more Asians that do not have the enzyme than people of western descent. The alcohol does not get broken down and goes straight to the blood. It's a form of alcohol poisoning, and it's easy to see on many of my friends here, whose faces get flushed as soon as they start drinking.
That doesn't invalidate any experiment that has to do with metabolism. It simply adds an extra element (in this case an enzyme) into the equation. The mechanism of metabolism is the same.
Many people here have told me their intestines are longer than westerners and therefore fat has more effect on them than me (because it sits in their intestines longer). I've also been told that they have to cover their stomachs with warmers or else they'll get a cold (again because of this long intestine).
I've also been told I need to wear sunglasses because my eyes are blue and the sun has more effect on them.
When I remind these people that the black cornea is the part that takes in light (not the colored iris), or that it's quite possible that my intestines may actually be longer (since I'm about a foot taller), most will politely tell me I'm wrong.
This "metabolism is different between different human groups" idea is logically just as silly.
There's a big jump between experimenting on mice and experimenting on primates. There's even a big jump between results from chimps and humans. But there is not a large jump when experimenting between human groups. In fact, most of the health differences between human groups can be attributed to diet. When diet is controlled (as it was in this experiment) the results become even more valid across cultures.
Nevermind that they haven't even published the human results yet, which you'd know if you read TFA.
For clarification, we'll have to split the term "game play" into various points.
One point is the controller. There's no way to use Wii-like gamepads for SWF.
Another point is what actions are done with the controller. For a number of games, the Wii controller is used in a point and shoot method. This is easily done with a mouse and target. Any of the gamepad button actions can be done with a keyboard. What a mouse and keyboard can't do is the spatial motion movement. For some Wii games, that's the whole point. For others it's a gimmick. And still for others it's not needed.
So the controller part of "game play" can only sometimes be done with mouse and a keyboard. But one could argue that the whole point of any Wii game is to stand up, flailing your arms about.
Other aspects of gameplay are how well you can move about and do actions, responsiveness, repetitive and non-repetitive actions, etc, etc.
While the complexity of the top end Wii games are not found in Flash games (who would want to wait for a 1GB Flash game to load in their browser?), many, many Wii games are not complex at all, and Nintendo makes quite a bit of cash from these. Hence, people are buying them because they don't need such complexity.
There are tons of 2d games, or barely 3d games for the Wii and SWF.
These may not be the games that you might buy, or even the ones that get good reviews, but many people do buy them as they line the walls of the game shops. A lot of Wii buyers are looking for these "easy access" games. I assume the audience for most of these games are children before adolescence and adults who only casually play games.
These can be called "throwaway games". The Wii is saturated with them. I'm surprised the Wii audience expects to pay more than $0.00 for these games. Perhaps many are attracted by the gimmick of the Wii controller. But also many of them are actually "fun"! At least for a little while.
For one anecdotal example, I really like the so-called "brain training" games on the Wii and the DS, but they can easily be done in Flash.
So, their revenue model is still working for now, but people are buying games that can now be reproducible in something as simple as Flash. And since the market is saturated in similar games, they are not as valuable as the money people are shelling out for them. More importantly, people are having FUN with these games. So the graphics and complexity are now at a point where many people can have fun without needing more. As KDR_11K put it in the post above you, these games are "still not too low for the customer's demands so the big guy just spent a whole lot of money on something that failed to give him a competitive advantage". They've "overshot the majority of customers".
I haven't even started on independent developers like S2 Games that actually make decent 3d multiplayer games like Savage 2 and Heroes of Newerth (still in closed beta). But these kinds of games play a roll as well.
I find that very interesting and agree with the mods.
But what I was trying to say is that, in many cases, people can make similar games for Flash or some other medium. They don't need to make something for the Wii specifically. Yet they can meet the requirements their audience has for graphics, game play, and complexity.
Graphics
When SNES came out, the fact that it looked so much better than the NES added to the enjoyment. Now graphics are at a point where we can move characters around in something akin to what we'd see in a CG movie. We've hit a peek where cartoonish graphics can't really get much better.
Expansiveness
Next we have huge sandbox games. Again we've hit a peek, where the worlds are so expansive that by the time you've explored everything you're either addicted (like an MMO), or you've spent so much time doing the same things that the gameplay becomes repetitive.
Complexity
Then we've got games that take months to learn all the possible moves and combos.
Flair is no longer as important
So the old adage of more is better is no longer valid with video games. We've hit a peek in many areas where more is simply not necessary. Now we can focus specifically on what makes something "fun" besides the flair.
This is why the Wii is so popular. And as technology keeps getting better, it becomes easier and easier for independent developers to produce graphics, game play, and complexity that are passable, so that audiences will just focus on if it's fun or not.
Of course big game companies may soon be in trouble. A lot of their main commodities (graphics, expansiveness, complexity) are getting easier and easier to reproduce to an appropriate level. This makes what they produce less valuable. It's progress.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. But I feel like you're trying to disagree with something, so I'm confused =p
I even agree that the last example was a bit "pop psychologish", and that we don't know exactly what kind of influence that specific example would have. But if the behavior of the adult was repeated often enough, I believe there would be some kind of influence on that child's psyche. It's also the one example I'm not in favor of, as I believe it encourages "entitlement" whereas the other examples do not.
I also completely agree that extra positive attention makes a child less demanding of it. However the examples I was trying to focus on are in the development of the child's will; his ability to strive for and reach goals. This can be hindered by adults doing things for them, thinking that they're helping them. In reality they're often hurting the development of the child because the child doesn't get used to doing things for themselves.
Allowing the child to do things for themselves, does not contradict giving attention. We can love, hug, talk to, play with, etc. as much as we want, but when the child has an attainable task in mind, even if it's as simple as "get the ball that rolled away", a simple "You can do it!" is better for their development than giving in and doing it for them.
I appreciate your stance, and it may be correct. But there is also the possibility that the behaviour was ingrained when you were very small and your brain was still in development.
For example:
When a baby is less than a year old and crawling for a ball, does the caregiver consistently get the ball for them, or is the baby allowed to make the effort to realise his own goal.
When a child starts walking proficiently, do the parents keep them in strollers or allow the time for the child to move place to place on their own.
If something is taken away, is it then given back after the baby has a fit? This could also ingrain the sense of, "I have to work to hold on to the things I want".
etc.
While I do think genetics definitely plays a role, I believe the importance of the first months & years of development is often seriously misunderstood.
In fact, many healthy and unhealthy traits seem to develop between 0-3 and many behavioural patterns can be changed up to age 6. But after 6, it is extremely difficult to change many things. This is most profoundly seen in children who were raised by animals and have no speech. Those helped after 6 years of age can gain massive vocabularies, but their grammar is always lacking. Those helped before 6 can acclimate fairly well.
This is also seen in cultural memes (such as the different body language of different cultures). Children will show definite cultural patterns in the first few years, and they are malleable (for example, if they are put into a different culture) until around age 6.
We are both saying a lot of the same thing, so it's important to clarify exactly what the difference is.
Let's take a look at the first bold bit there; protecting the rights of the creator is one hell of an incentive to publish their works
Here is the subtle difference I feel is so important. The law was not originally intended to protect the rights of a creator. It was intended as a restriction of the rights of others for the overall betterment of society.
The bastardisation is found directly in the term "copyright", which is a fairly recent term that shifts the focus away from the restrictions, and creates the idea of an intrinsic right to own an idea.
Originally Posted by karellen:
their choices regard their work, not mine. they have no right to tell me what to do with my intellectual creation, and nor do I. if something is forcing me to restrain what I do with my work, well...let's not call it freedom...
saulgoode's response:
The point isn't that anyone is telling you what you can do with your work, it is that copyright law is restricting what others can do with your work. Your "freedom" isn't restricted by someone humming a tune which you wrote, or telling a story which you authored, or sharing an application which you programmed. Copyright isn't about what the author of a work can do with his work, it is about what others can't do.
This restriction upon the activities of others is not an inherent "right", it is a temporary subsidy granted to you by society as an incentive to your sharing works publicly. It is only to the extent that society benefits from this subsidization of the arts and sciences that the restriction of the rights of others can be justified.
Copyright laws, as originally written and intended, were to prevent someone from taking the printed words or phonographed music of one person, and claiming it as their own, to make it a profit. It's been bastardized to excess now, though...
This was NOT the original intention of copyright or patents (ie: intellectual property). The original intention was to give an incentive for people to publish their work for the betterment of society as a whole, rather than keeping it to themselves. It was also meant to encourage people to think of inventions that provide utility for many people.
While I would like people to get credit for their work, this is not a sufficient reason for a government to restrict others from using our ideas/inventions freely. It is a government granted monopoly for a limited time to encourage the creation and distribution of useful ideas/inventions in order to benefit society as a whole. If creation and distribution are occurring without the need of encouragement (ie: a large number of people publishing on the internet without monetary incentive), then the validity of this monopoly is called into question.
The intention HAS been so bastardized that most people now think as you do (myself included, until I read up on it).
Here's a quote from Thomas Jefferson (emphasis mine)
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
There's an award winning anime/manga series called Planetes that deals with this very problem. It's about the people whose job it will be to dispose of the detected debris (usually by burning it via atmospheric reentry or through salvage) before it collides into something.
Einstein's belief in God is what lead him to make his stupid "God doesn't play dice" comment. If one of the greatest scientific minds ever to exist can be crippled by religion, then I have good evidence science and religion are incompatible.
Einstein was against organised religion.
His belief was that the universe was ordered (a belief that can exist with or without God). It wasn't because of any religious dogma and he received no angelic visitations telling him what to believe. The statement actually shows two separate beliefs, one in God, and one in a non-random universe.
Religion and Science are 100% incompatible. Religion = "I Believe", Science = "I can show/demonstrate/repeat".
This is actually why religion and science ARE compatible.
The people that proclaim "Earth is 6000 yrs old" are the minority, but they are very loud, noticeable, and annoying while we generally don't here from the rest. To those people they're incompatible since they are intolerantly caught up in details of stories.
But believe it or not, most religious people (like the last 2 popes of the very conservative Catholic church for example) understand and accept things like evolution. For them religion answers 2 basic questions, "How did creation begin?" and "Is there a purpose for us being here?".
Either some form of existence has always been present, or existence started. In both cases, there is no cause. There is only the effect of existence. Either there is no cause for God, or there is no cause for the beginning of the Universe. You go back far enough and you always run into this 'uncaused cause' of existence.
To say that creation began because of God, or without a God is a BELIEF. The only way to think about creation without BELIEF, is to be agnostic, and simply say, 'I don't know'.
Mark Twain wrote: "Respect those who seek the truth, be wary of those who claim to have found it."
The root of atheism is a belief, like any religion. Like any religion atheism claims to know the answer to "How did creation begin?" and "Is there a purpose for us being here?".
Science is more of a controlled observation. We will never be able to observe evidence of a time when there was nothing, because there was nothing, no evidence. If we find the universe is eternally cyclical, we won't be able to answer how something always existed without a beginning.
Science asks about things we can observe. Religion asks about things we cannot possibly observe.
Science and this common thread of religion never overlap and do not need to coexist. They ask completely different questions.
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I had seen a student who knew very little about biology do her homework by scanning in her book for specific phrases mentioned in the questions and looking for some semblance of an answer once she's found the phrases. By the time she was done, she hasn't even read the chapter but her answers would probably get her a "C"
This is the way I always did it, and it got me A's. In fact I was taught to do this in a 6th grade "Study Skills" class. Ironically, it's a very good skill to have in the "real world" as it's a way of quickly obtaining the information you need. You could even draw a parallel between this and Googling something or any kind of computer "find" or "search".
The ability to skim for an answer is not a problem. It's one of the solutions that children employ to deal with a school system that puts more emphasis on grades rather than inspiring them to actually learn a subject. The "inspiration" to get good grades works for some (especially with parental support), but with "average" being a 'C' (often a very shallow understanding), it can be argued that it's not working for most.
As you said, "It took a college education and many years of reading to undo these "lessons" and really discover the joy of writing essays."
Skimming is a skill. Learning a system, and figuring out to survive in it is also a skill. The emphasis on that 'joy' is what's usually lacking. Get a student inspired and the rest usually takes care of itself.
It's not as though TiVo is any less unknown or strange.
Wooooh... TiVo is a very well known word for something and nearly everyone who watches TV often uses it or knows it by name. In fact, many people call any DVR a "TiVo" just as people use "Xerox" for copiers or "Kleenex" for tissues. Nearly everyone knows or has some experience with something they call a TiVo.
The word "Linux" is much, much less widely heard. It does not have a specific purpose that non-computer people can identify with. I have to strongly disagree with you on the TiVo/Linux thing. Your other comments are good though.
With non-technical people, I've gotten a lot more interest when I call distributions by their short name (ie: Mint or Puppy). Whenever I say "Linux Mint" or "Puppy Linux" the cute/cool factor dies away fast. In my personal experience, I've had non-technical women ask a number of questions, or ask me to explain more about those 2 names especially. I've been asked to install "Mint" on a few computers because of it.
I'm not really clear why the courts have been treating peer to peer software as different from client-server software.
Because most people (judges and juries included) don't understand what you just said.
So lawyers try to explain it to them while spinning the explanation towards their side.
I was more on the line of that neither is ok, and that if one considers only one or a few as being ok he/she is rather self centered.
Then the question comes to: who or what defines "ok"? As you've used the word in a way meaning "acceptable", it would be wise to follow through with that logic and find where you get that definition.
There are only 3 places where people can derive what they believe to be "acceptable" whether they realize it or not.
Often it's a mixture of these 3. I don't know you, but your answer seems to draw from the 2nd one.
But that doesn't matter, because if one does not have a higher power to fall back on, then "good" or "bad" is purely formed by the minds of humans. There is nothing more than human "wants". There is no higher morality saying what is "ok" or "acceptable", only human individuals or groups saying they like or don't like something. Nothing is good or bad, including murderous rampages, we humans just don't "like" them.
The phrase: "neither is ok" implies a higher morality, put into place by some power outside of human beings. If instead you meant that you would not want to live in a society where people believe in crazy things, then it would be more accurate to phrase it that way.
Because without a higher reference to back you up, EVERYTHING is "ok", and you're simply stating a preference.
But the same thing is happening with milk and other food producers seeking to change the definition of "organic" so they can sell more food without actually being organic.
'Organic' means carbon based.
"I sprinkled some anthrax onto your salad. It's organic!"
As far as I understand it, anyone can slap the label "organic food" onto ANYTHING. There has never been a real 'food' definition. Governments give certification, so you can use the a label like "USDA certified organic". But it's not illegal to simply put 'organic' on any food.
I agree with all your other points though.
Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
You can't compare them to Afghanistan. At all.
I didn't.
I compared what the US did (put power into the hands of the locals) to what other nations have done throughout history (keep the power for themselves).
You may be right, and time will tell, however...
You're main argument is "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." But 3 things keep me optimistic, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The US still have military bases there but every decision for day to day living is up to those people. In all other examples throughout history, when countries have conquered, they have kept control. If you want to claim that Germany, Japan, and South Korea are just US puppets, go ahead, but I highly disagree.
The other point I'd like to make is that when even one individual is oppressed, that's one too many. When someone is not free to decide their fate, when someone else decides what they can or cannot do, they are enslaved, and that is not what I call "peace".
The only restrictions on an individual should be so they do not restrict OTHER people's ability to decide their fates. For example, if they are murdering or kidnapping others, they need to be removed from society as they are taking away the freedoms of others.
There is no nation on Earth that is perfect in this regard, but the Taliban's POLICY was to take away the freedom of anyone they disagreed with. Now many individuals in Afghanistan are still not free to decide their fates due to social stigmas, and this will take much time, but the policy has changed whether or not all de facto activities have. This allows them to slowly work towards having true control over their own individual lives, just as the people in 1st world nations are still working towards that goal.
The story is that stabilizing Afghanistan is supposed to stop the terrorists from attacking us.
What about the idea of helping to stabilize Afghanistan for the purpose of stabilizing Afghanistan? I'd rather live in a stable country. Maybe there are some individuals in Afghanistan that feel the same.
Actually it may be possible according to a hypothesis.
Some postulate that there is a finite size at which point we can get no smaller. If this is the case, and those tiny spaces are arranged in a 3d grid, we can define a meter by a number of those and create the exact cm. A perfect circle would not be possible if space is a 3d grid however.
Of course we'll never know if there's anything smaller than what we can measure (because we can't measure it!), so we'll never truly know if space is divided into tiny finite amounts.
Personally, I believe the universe is just the interplay of mathematical formulas within God's mind. Just like characters we dream in our own minds or like Sims in a video game, we are bound by the environment, can interact with it, and have no way of perceiving anything else; our own individual group of patterns interacting with the rest of the pattern.
In that case, there is no reality beyond mathematical patterns, and those can be infinitely large or small. A circumference can have an infinite pattern behind it. And while there would be 1cm lengths that are infinitely similar to each other, we could never measure them to be sure, without taking infinite time to do so.
Agreed. But it's always good to have news of these kinds of things, so we can pick a company that doesn't censor as indiscriminately.
I know if it had happened to Bush, the neocons would have had pitchforks in hand.
Just do a Google image search.
George Bush Joker
Vanity fair even published it on their website.
_
A question for anyone who has studied the subject: do we have any idea why there is a difference between terrestrial and extraterrestrial carbon isotope ratios?
To answer your question from what I understand:
So I believe a lot of terrestrial C13 is trapped because our plants have preferred it for 7 million years.
Incidentally, this is how we know that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by fossil fuel burning. The plants that created fossil fuels are much older than this 7 million year mark and trapped a higher ratio of C12. There's an increase of C12 isotope in the atmospheric ratio that starts around 1850 (the beginning of the industrial revolution). In other words, the trapped C12 isotopes are escaping in higher ratios when we burn those old plants. And we can figure out the timing of all of this because of Carbon dating using C14. Gotta love those isotopes!
_
Or for that matter, the higher presence of iridium in space rocks, etc?
Found this one on Wikipedia =)
It is thought that the overall concentration of iridium on Earth is much higher than what is observed in crustal rocks, but because of the density and siderophilic ("iron-loving") character of iridium, it descended below the crust and into the Earth's core when the planet was still molten.
Earlier, preliminary analysis in the Goddard labs detected glycine in both the foil and a sample of the aerogel. However, since glycine is used by terrestrial life, at first the team was unable to rule out contamination from sources on Earth. "It was possible that the glycine we found originated from handling or manufacture of the Stardust spacecraft itself," said Elsila. The new research used isotopic analysis of the foil to rule out that possibility.
Isotopes are versions of an element with diffehttp://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/18/1357243/NASA-Discovers-Lifes-Building-Block-In-Comet#rent weights or masses; for example, the most common carbon atom, Carbon 12, has six protons and six neutrons in its center (nucleus). However, the Carbon 13 isotope is heavier because it has an extra neutron in its nucleus. A glycine molecule from space will tend to have more of the heavier Carbon 13 atoms in it than glycine thatâ(TM)s from Earth. That is what the team found. âoeWe discovered that the Stardust-returned glycine has an extraterrestrial carbon isotope signature, indicating that it originated on the comet,â said Elsila.
The team includes Daniel Glavin and Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard. "Based on the foil and aerogel results it is highly probable that the entire comet-exposed side of the Stardust sample collection grid is coated with glycine that formed in space," adds Glavin.
"Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."
Instead it only supports what Dr. Pilcher says in the article:
"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare."
In other words, it's just saying that amino acids are not that rare. If they're not that rare, why can't Earth have made them on it's own?
After all the Miller/Urey experiment in 1953 showed that amino acids can be produced fairly easily if a few simple conditions are met.
Miller took molecules which were believed to represent the major components of the early Earth's atmosphere and put them into a closed system
The gases they used were methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and water (H2O). Next, he ran a continuous electric current through the system, to simulate lightning storms believed to be common on the early earth. Analysis of the experiment was done by chromotography. At the end of one week, Miller observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed some of the amino acids which are used to make proteins.
Maybe comets and meteors with amino acids were hitting earth as well. But finding them all over space also strengthens the idea that they're not uncommon to produce, and therefore also strengthens the theory that Earth could have produced them by itself. Either way seems like a guess to me.
Fun fact for the day: The Murchison meteorite which fell in Australia in 1969 also contained common amino acids such as glycine, alanine and glutamic acid as well as unusual ones like isovaline and pseudoleucine.
I'm sick of this kind of bigotry. I deal with it a lot as an American living in an Asian country. It's not done out of malice, it's just plain ignorance.
There are some very subtle differences between human groups that in a few cases call for slightly different types or dosages of medical treatments. If you really want to nitpick, every individual human body works slightly differently. But for the most part, human bodies all work in the same way.
Your blanket statement that Asians can't metabolize alcohol well is incorrect. There are plenty of Asians that have the enzyme to break down alcohol perfectly fine. And there are also westerners that do NOT have this enzyme. Statistically there are far more Asians that do not have the enzyme than people of western descent. The alcohol does not get broken down and goes straight to the blood. It's a form of alcohol poisoning, and it's easy to see on many of my friends here, whose faces get flushed as soon as they start drinking.
That doesn't invalidate any experiment that has to do with metabolism. It simply adds an extra element (in this case an enzyme) into the equation. The mechanism of metabolism is the same.
Many people here have told me their intestines are longer than westerners and therefore fat has more effect on them than me (because it sits in their intestines longer). I've also been told that they have to cover their stomachs with warmers or else they'll get a cold (again because of this long intestine).
I've also been told I need to wear sunglasses because my eyes are blue and the sun has more effect on them.
When I remind these people that the black cornea is the part that takes in light (not the colored iris), or that it's quite possible that my intestines may actually be longer (since I'm about a foot taller), most will politely tell me I'm wrong.
This "metabolism is different between different human groups" idea is logically just as silly.
There's a big jump between experimenting on mice and experimenting on primates. There's even a big jump between results from chimps and humans. But there is not a large jump when experimenting between human groups. In fact, most of the health differences between human groups can be attributed to diet. When diet is controlled (as it was in this experiment) the results become even more valid across cultures.
Nevermind that they haven't even published the human results yet, which you'd know if you read TFA.
For clarification, we'll have to split the term "game play" into various points.
One point is the controller. There's no way to use Wii-like gamepads for SWF. Another point is what actions are done with the controller. For a number of games, the Wii controller is used in a point and shoot method. This is easily done with a mouse and target. Any of the gamepad button actions can be done with a keyboard. What a mouse and keyboard can't do is the spatial motion movement. For some Wii games, that's the whole point. For others it's a gimmick. And still for others it's not needed.
So the controller part of "game play" can only sometimes be done with mouse and a keyboard. But one could argue that the whole point of any Wii game is to stand up, flailing your arms about.
Other aspects of gameplay are how well you can move about and do actions, responsiveness, repetitive and non-repetitive actions, etc, etc.
While the complexity of the top end Wii games are not found in Flash games (who would want to wait for a 1GB Flash game to load in their browser?), many, many Wii games are not complex at all, and Nintendo makes quite a bit of cash from these. Hence, people are buying them because they don't need such complexity.
There are tons of 2d games, or barely 3d games for the Wii and SWF.
These may not be the games that you might buy, or even the ones that get good reviews, but many people do buy them as they line the walls of the game shops. A lot of Wii buyers are looking for these "easy access" games. I assume the audience for most of these games are children before adolescence and adults who only casually play games.
These can be called "throwaway games". The Wii is saturated with them. I'm surprised the Wii audience expects to pay more than $0.00 for these games. Perhaps many are attracted by the gimmick of the Wii controller. But also many of them are actually "fun"! At least for a little while.
For one anecdotal example, I really like the so-called "brain training" games on the Wii and the DS, but they can easily be done in Flash.
So, their revenue model is still working for now, but people are buying games that can now be reproducible in something as simple as Flash. And since the market is saturated in similar games, they are not as valuable as the money people are shelling out for them. More importantly, people are having FUN with these games. So the graphics and complexity are now at a point where many people can have fun without needing more. As KDR_11K put it in the post above you, these games are "still not too low for the customer's demands so the big guy just spent a whole lot of money on something that failed to give him a competitive advantage". They've "overshot the majority of customers".
I haven't even started on independent developers like S2 Games that actually make decent 3d multiplayer games like Savage 2 and Heroes of Newerth (still in closed beta). But these kinds of games play a roll as well.
I find that very interesting and agree with the mods.
But what I was trying to say is that, in many cases, people can make similar games for Flash or some other medium. They don't need to make something for the Wii specifically. Yet they can meet the requirements their audience has for graphics, game play, and complexity.
This is the natural way it's supposed to happen.
Graphics
When SNES came out, the fact that it looked so much better than the NES added to the enjoyment. Now graphics are at a point where we can move characters around in something akin to what we'd see in a CG movie. We've hit a peek where cartoonish graphics can't really get much better.
Expansiveness
Next we have huge sandbox games. Again we've hit a peek, where the worlds are so expansive that by the time you've explored everything you're either addicted (like an MMO), or you've spent so much time doing the same things that the gameplay becomes repetitive.
Complexity
Then we've got games that take months to learn all the possible moves and combos.
Flair is no longer as important
So the old adage of more is better is no longer valid with video games. We've hit a peek in many areas where more is simply not necessary. Now we can focus specifically on what makes something "fun" besides the flair.
This is why the Wii is so popular. And as technology keeps getting better, it becomes easier and easier for independent developers to produce graphics, game play, and complexity that are passable, so that audiences will just focus on if it's fun or not.
Of course big game companies may soon be in trouble. A lot of their main commodities (graphics, expansiveness, complexity) are getting easier and easier to reproduce to an appropriate level. This makes what they produce less valuable. It's progress.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. But I feel like you're trying to disagree with something, so I'm confused =p
I even agree that the last example was a bit "pop psychologish", and that we don't know exactly what kind of influence that specific example would have. But if the behavior of the adult was repeated often enough, I believe there would be some kind of influence on that child's psyche. It's also the one example I'm not in favor of, as I believe it encourages "entitlement" whereas the other examples do not.
I also completely agree that extra positive attention makes a child less demanding of it. However the examples I was trying to focus on are in the development of the child's will; his ability to strive for and reach goals. This can be hindered by adults doing things for them, thinking that they're helping them. In reality they're often hurting the development of the child because the child doesn't get used to doing things for themselves.
Allowing the child to do things for themselves, does not contradict giving attention. We can love, hug, talk to, play with, etc. as much as we want, but when the child has an attainable task in mind, even if it's as simple as "get the ball that rolled away", a simple "You can do it!" is better for their development than giving in and doing it for them.
For example:
While I do think genetics definitely plays a role, I believe the importance of the first months & years of development is often seriously misunderstood.
In fact, many healthy and unhealthy traits seem to develop between 0-3 and many behavioural patterns can be changed up to age 6. But after 6, it is extremely difficult to change many things. This is most profoundly seen in children who were raised by animals and have no speech. Those helped after 6 years of age can gain massive vocabularies, but their grammar is always lacking. Those helped before 6 can acclimate fairly well.
This is also seen in cultural memes (such as the different body language of different cultures). Children will show definite cultural patterns in the first few years, and they are malleable (for example, if they are put into a different culture) until around age 6.
Let's take a look at the first bold bit there; protecting the rights of the creator is one hell of an incentive to publish their works
Here is the subtle difference I feel is so important. The law was not originally intended to protect the rights of a creator. It was intended as a restriction of the rights of others for the overall betterment of society.
The bastardisation is found directly in the term "copyright", which is a fairly recent term that shifts the focus away from the restrictions, and creates the idea of an intrinsic right to own an idea.
saulgoode's response here says it better than I can:
Originally Posted by karellen:
their choices regard their work, not mine. they have no right to tell me what to do with my intellectual creation, and nor do I. if something is forcing me to restrain what I do with my work, well...let's not call it freedom...
saulgoode's response:
The point isn't that anyone is telling you what you can do with your work, it is that copyright law is restricting what others can do with your work. Your "freedom" isn't restricted by someone humming a tune which you wrote, or telling a story which you authored, or sharing an application which you programmed. Copyright isn't about what the author of a work can do with his work, it is about what others can't do.
This restriction upon the activities of others is not an inherent "right", it is a temporary subsidy granted to you by society as an incentive to your sharing works publicly. It is only to the extent that society benefits from this subsidization of the arts and sciences that the restriction of the rights of others can be justified.
Copyright laws, as originally written and intended, were to prevent someone from taking the printed words or phonographed music of one person, and claiming it as their own, to make it a profit. It's been bastardized to excess now, though...
This was NOT the original intention of copyright or patents (ie: intellectual property). The original intention was to give an incentive for people to publish their work for the betterment of society as a whole, rather than keeping it to themselves. It was also meant to encourage people to think of inventions that provide utility for many people.
While I would like people to get credit for their work, this is not a sufficient reason for a government to restrict others from using our ideas/inventions freely. It is a government granted monopoly for a limited time to encourage the creation and distribution of useful ideas/inventions in order to benefit society as a whole. If creation and distribution are occurring without the need of encouragement (ie: a large number of people publishing on the internet without monetary incentive), then the validity of this monopoly is called into question.
The intention HAS been so bastardized that most people now think as you do (myself included, until I read up on it).
Here's a quote from Thomas Jefferson (emphasis mine)
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Here are some more letters between Jefferson and Madison discussing intellectual property.
There's an award winning anime/manga series called Planetes that deals with this very problem. It's about the people whose job it will be to dispose of the detected debris (usually by burning it via atmospheric reentry or through salvage) before it collides into something.
Einstein's belief in God is what lead him to make his stupid "God doesn't play dice" comment. If one of the greatest scientific minds ever to exist can be crippled by religion, then I have good evidence science and religion are incompatible.
Einstein was against organised religion.
His belief was that the universe was ordered (a belief that can exist with or without God). It wasn't because of any religious dogma and he received no angelic visitations telling him what to believe. The statement actually shows two separate beliefs, one in God, and one in a non-random universe.
Religion and Science are 100% incompatible. Religion = "I Believe", Science = "I can show/demonstrate/repeat".
This is actually why religion and science ARE compatible.
The people that proclaim "Earth is 6000 yrs old" are the minority, but they are very loud, noticeable, and annoying while we generally don't here from the rest. To those people they're incompatible since they are intolerantly caught up in details of stories.
But believe it or not, most religious people (like the last 2 popes of the very conservative Catholic church for example) understand and accept things like evolution. For them religion answers 2 basic questions, "How did creation begin?" and "Is there a purpose for us being here?".
Either some form of existence has always been present, or existence started. In both cases, there is no cause. There is only the effect of existence. Either there is no cause for God, or there is no cause for the beginning of the Universe. You go back far enough and you always run into this 'uncaused cause' of existence.
To say that creation began because of God, or without a God is a BELIEF. The only way to think about creation without BELIEF, is to be agnostic, and simply say, 'I don't know'.
Mark Twain wrote: "Respect those who seek the truth, be wary of those who claim to have found it."
The root of atheism is a belief, like any religion. Like any religion atheism claims to know the answer to "How did creation begin?" and "Is there a purpose for us being here?".
Science is more of a controlled observation. We will never be able to observe evidence of a time when there was nothing, because there was nothing, no evidence. If we find the universe is eternally cyclical, we won't be able to answer how something always existed without a beginning.
Science asks about things we can observe. Religion asks about things we cannot possibly observe.
Science and this common thread of religion never overlap and do not need to coexist. They ask completely different questions.