Well, if hydrogen stations are significantly more dangerous, which just going by the statistics they are (though obviously the small sample size means it's harder to analyze statistically), that would be a good reason why we couldn't similarly live in harmony with hydrogen stations.
But how many hydrogen stations are there in the US? According to the National Hydrogen Association, there are 60. One blew up. Therefore, 1/60 hydrogen stations have exploded, or about 1.6%. There does not seem a source for the number of gas stations in the US, but figures put it at at least 120,000 a fewe years ago, so probably more than that. Taking 120,000 as a conservative guess, you would need 1,920 gas stations to have exploded in order for gas stations to reach hydrogen stations' explosion record. And that's not even correcting for the fact that gas stations have been around for decades, while hydrogen stations are almost brand new, which would increase gas stations' relative propensity not to explode rating in comparison with hydrogen stations.
For a few seasons DS9 was really excellent, probably consistently better than any of the other series. At one point I seem to remember the writing teams trading places with Voyager, at which point Voyager actually started being somewhat decent, and DS9 started sucking. The new DS9 writing staff seemed mortally offended that there might be morally ambiguous characters, so everyone had to be shoehorned into clear good or evil boxes. Gul Dukat was a pretty cool character until they decided to make him over the top evil. Garrick and Quark were interesting until he had to become unambiguously good.
Tough shit. You claim you're the best country god gave this world...then we're going to hold you to your own standards.
Nothing wrong with holding us up to higher standards, unfortunately a lot of Europeans seem to use that as an excuse to abdicate responsibility for anything themselves. Also, while the US fairly deserves a lot of criticism, a lot of it coming from Europe tends to be incredibly ignorant, which was my point, which you seemed to miss.
Yep, I never really thought that badly about ST:TNG until I saw Battlestar Galactica and how real moral ambiguity could play out. The thing about ST is they always won; even when they made the "tough moral decisions" everything still worked out in the end, which got annoying.
I'd criticize Star Trek for it's character flaws before I'd criticize it for technobabble. How many times did Worf miss attackers that were boarding the Enterprise? Exactly how do you become the Chief of Security for the flagship of the Federation if you can't hit a man sized target from 20 feet away with a small arm? How many times did Riker get the Enterprise whipped in battle? How did Kirk not get drummed out of Starfleet after being caught by Khan with his shields down? How many of his crew paid the ultimate price for that command failure? What would happen to a US Military Officer who made a similar mistake?
Picard should have been drummed out multiple times over for his incompetent leadership in battle. It became almost a cliche; the Enterprise is attacked. Ensigns-of-the-week are thrown about the bridge. Shields are down to 50%. Picard sits there, looking worried. He's informed they're opening fire again. Picard just sits there. They get hit, and an ensign-of-the-week is blown up by his or her apparently dynamite-filled console. Shields are down to 20%. Picard finally orders the crew to return fire, but at that point weapon systems are offline, which I always suspect was what Picard was hoping for.
Test? What test? The Act pretty solidly protects techdirt from the UK parties seeking to enforce a judgment in the US. It doesn't protect them overseas though, but as long as they don't have assets in a country where the judgment can be enforced they shouldn't have a problem. But you're not going to see some dramatic legal case where this is tested.
You mean like the pulp books about Mars that were based on the scientific assumptions of the day, where people are walking around breathing air? And they talk about the differences in atmosphere because of Martian daylength and so on? Yeah, those were terrible. They only gave birth to a genre.
You're missing the point; I loved the John Carter books (well, the first few). The scientific errors didn't negatively impact the plot because they were asides. If Burroughs had made the plot of an entire book revolve around the length of the Martian day, I'd have the same criticism.
Inventing Particle A which is fixed by Particle B may not be a good story in itself, but how Kirk, Spock, Bones et al deal with the situation is why I like ST over SW.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about; unfortunately, in later ST, especially TNG, Particle A and Particle B became the stories within themselves.
Both are entertainment. If you know anything about the relevant science they spout off, I hope you're not taking notes for future reference.
Well that's exactly my point; there's no entertainment value in fake science, by itself? Are you really going to be on the edge of your seats over a fake particle? The fake science is fine, if it exists to move the plot along, rather than be PART of the plot. There's no such thing as warp drives. But you kind of need them to move the plot along, so they're fine. Even a warp drive about to explode can be a valid plot device; you can connect that to real-life occurrences and tensions. Engines can blow up. But the fake particles or the changing of the frequency of the fake particles is idiotic when it becomes, rather than serves, the plot.
One of the things that Star Wars had over Star Trek is the fact that the science, or lack of it, was never a critical point of the story. Nothing wrong with bad science with your fantasy, but Star Trek tried making the bad science part of the plotline which was idiotic. Making up a particle that causes some problem, then making up another particle that fixes the problem caused by the first fake particle is beyond stupid. You don't gain anything from it.
I always thought facebooks and yearbooks were different; facebooks would be given to you when you first entered school to let you know who people were. Of course, I never even heard of facebooks until I went to law school, none of my previous schools had them.
I agree with every point you've made here. I don't have much time for gaming, so when I do play I want to be impressed, I want soaring visuals, great music, immersive environments, not another tower defense game cranked out by some hipster coder who thinks "indie" means making a game exactly like 1,000 other indie games.
You are not really trying to say that there isn't a large faction of the population that hates technology, and are actively trying to get people to use less because they have some misguided belief that it is bad are you?
No, I don't think it's a "large fraction" of the population, I don't think their belief is particularly misguided, and I CERTAINLY don't believe they're sponsoring biased research.
Maybe I'm a bit older than most slashdotters, and thus remember more of the olden days of gaming, but you all are imagining a golden age that didn't exist. The average game now is far better than the average game was 20 years ago. The best games now are frequently better than the best games were back then. You can't tell me Fallout 3 or Mass Effect or Starcraft 2 are bad games simply because a lot of money went into making them and the graphics are good. I won't believe you.
I lost count of the number of times I heard that about the iPod...
Depends on how you characterize "competition"; if you mean products that in terms of quality and feature sets compete with ipods, there are plenty. In terms of commercial success, probably a fair amount less.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if hydrogen stations are significantly more dangerous, which just going by the statistics they are (though obviously the small sample size means it's harder to analyze statistically), that would be a good reason why we couldn't similarly live in harmony with hydrogen stations.
I'm not real sure what the point is. Are you alleging that hydrogen stations today are more dangerous than gasoline stations today?
Uhhh, yes. Someone suggested that criticism of hydrogen stations was invalid because gas stations are not safe. I was comparing the two.
But how many hydrogen stations are there in the US? According to the National Hydrogen Association, there are 60. One blew up. Therefore, 1/60 hydrogen stations have exploded, or about 1.6%. There does not seem a source for the number of gas stations in the US, but figures put it at at least 120,000 a fewe years ago, so probably more than that. Taking 120,000 as a conservative guess, you would need 1,920 gas stations to have exploded in order for gas stations to reach hydrogen stations' explosion record. And that's not even correcting for the fact that gas stations have been around for decades, while hydrogen stations are almost brand new, which would increase gas stations' relative propensity not to explode rating in comparison with hydrogen stations.
Someone will probably try to use this to say hydrogen is dangerous. I'd like to remind you gasoline is dangerous
And that's why gasoline stations blow up every day, right?
For a few seasons DS9 was really excellent, probably consistently better than any of the other series. At one point I seem to remember the writing teams trading places with Voyager, at which point Voyager actually started being somewhat decent, and DS9 started sucking. The new DS9 writing staff seemed mortally offended that there might be morally ambiguous characters, so everyone had to be shoehorned into clear good or evil boxes. Gul Dukat was a pretty cool character until they decided to make him over the top evil. Garrick and Quark were interesting until he had to become unambiguously good.
Which is why I didn't say "all," and why I did say "seem."
Tough shit. You claim you're the best country god gave this world...then we're going to hold you to your own standards.
Nothing wrong with holding us up to higher standards, unfortunately a lot of Europeans seem to use that as an excuse to abdicate responsibility for anything themselves. Also, while the US fairly deserves a lot of criticism, a lot of it coming from Europe tends to be incredibly ignorant, which was my point, which you seemed to miss.
Yep, I never really thought that badly about ST:TNG until I saw Battlestar Galactica and how real moral ambiguity could play out. The thing about ST is they always won; even when they made the "tough moral decisions" everything still worked out in the end, which got annoying.
I'd criticize Star Trek for it's character flaws before I'd criticize it for technobabble. How many times did Worf miss attackers that were boarding the Enterprise? Exactly how do you become the Chief of Security for the flagship of the Federation if you can't hit a man sized target from 20 feet away with a small arm? How many times did Riker get the Enterprise whipped in battle? How did Kirk not get drummed out of Starfleet after being caught by Khan with his shields down? How many of his crew paid the ultimate price for that command failure? What would happen to a US Military Officer who made a similar mistake?
Picard should have been drummed out multiple times over for his incompetent leadership in battle. It became almost a cliche; the Enterprise is attacked. Ensigns-of-the-week are thrown about the bridge. Shields are down to 50%. Picard sits there, looking worried. He's informed they're opening fire again. Picard just sits there. They get hit, and an ensign-of-the-week is blown up by his or her apparently dynamite-filled console. Shields are down to 20%. Picard finally orders the crew to return fire, but at that point weapon systems are offline, which I always suspect was what Picard was hoping for.
Asimov's "The Dying Night"?
You'll never convince a European of that; the vast majority seem utterly convinced they are experts on American culture (and what's wrong with it).
Test? What test? The Act pretty solidly protects techdirt from the UK parties seeking to enforce a judgment in the US. It doesn't protect them overseas though, but as long as they don't have assets in a country where the judgment can be enforced they shouldn't have a problem. But you're not going to see some dramatic legal case where this is tested.
You mean like the pulp books about Mars that were based on the scientific assumptions of the day, where people are walking around breathing air? And they talk about the differences in atmosphere because of Martian daylength and so on? Yeah, those were terrible. They only gave birth to a genre.
You're missing the point; I loved the John Carter books (well, the first few). The scientific errors didn't negatively impact the plot because they were asides. If Burroughs had made the plot of an entire book revolve around the length of the Martian day, I'd have the same criticism.
Inventing Particle A which is fixed by Particle B may not be a good story in itself, but how Kirk, Spock, Bones et al deal with the situation is why I like ST over SW.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about; unfortunately, in later ST, especially TNG, Particle A and Particle B became the stories within themselves.
Both are entertainment. If you know anything about the relevant science they spout off, I hope you're not taking notes for future reference.
Well that's exactly my point; there's no entertainment value in fake science, by itself? Are you really going to be on the edge of your seats over a fake particle? The fake science is fine, if it exists to move the plot along, rather than be PART of the plot. There's no such thing as warp drives. But you kind of need them to move the plot along, so they're fine. Even a warp drive about to explode can be a valid plot device; you can connect that to real-life occurrences and tensions. Engines can blow up. But the fake particles or the changing of the frequency of the fake particles is idiotic when it becomes, rather than serves, the plot.
One of the things that Star Wars had over Star Trek is the fact that the science, or lack of it, was never a critical point of the story. Nothing wrong with bad science with your fantasy, but Star Trek tried making the bad science part of the plotline which was idiotic. Making up a particle that causes some problem, then making up another particle that fixes the problem caused by the first fake particle is beyond stupid. You don't gain anything from it.
I always thought facebooks and yearbooks were different; facebooks would be given to you when you first entered school to let you know who people were. Of course, I never even heard of facebooks until I went to law school, none of my previous schools had them.
and had more fun from games coming from companies like Valve
You do realize that Half-Life 2 was perhaps the epitome of the Hollywoodization of games, right?
I agree with every point you've made here. I don't have much time for gaming, so when I do play I want to be impressed, I want soaring visuals, great music, immersive environments, not another tower defense game cranked out by some hipster coder who thinks "indie" means making a game exactly like 1,000 other indie games.
You are not really trying to say that there isn't a large faction of the population that hates technology, and are actively trying to get people to use less because they have some misguided belief that it is bad are you?
No, I don't think it's a "large fraction" of the population, I don't think their belief is particularly misguided, and I CERTAINLY don't believe they're sponsoring biased research.
Maybe I'm a bit older than most slashdotters, and thus remember more of the olden days of gaming, but you all are imagining a golden age that didn't exist. The average game now is far better than the average game was 20 years ago. The best games now are frequently better than the best games were back then. You can't tell me Fallout 3 or Mass Effect or Starcraft 2 are bad games simply because a lot of money went into making them and the graphics are good. I won't believe you.
Uhhh yeah...it must be the sitting-on-the-sofa-collecting-your-thoughts-for-a-few-minutes lobby, releasing a biased report to support their industry.
I lost count of the number of times I heard that about the iPod...
Depends on how you characterize "competition"; if you mean products that in terms of quality and feature sets compete with ipods, there are plenty. In terms of commercial success, probably a fair amount less.
Actually most of us already knew what the graphics were like from reading the review in Computer Gaming World...
My school had coed bathrooms but the shower stalls were separate so it didn't really do anything...