Biodiesel has been somewhat of a disappointment, because those who brew their own, have inevitably run into quality problems (unless they are completely anal about their own production process) - which can give you a quick ticket to engine damage. ($$$).
I have even read cases where industrially sourced biodiesel has had quality problems, leading to engine damage.
In my case, my injector pump's seals were damaged prematurely, but I can't say whether that was due to crappy quality original parts, (VW), or due to my occasional use of ULSD (when B99 was not available), or. . . ? This was, thankfully, not catastrophic, and I was able to rebuild the unit for just a couple hundred dollars. A blown IP could have been $1500.
In the case of alcohol, in existing gas-powered cars, that's nice and all. But will existing fuel lines, injector seals, etc. hold up? Will drivers require expensive retrofits, computer re-programming, (God forbid they would have to switch back and forth between gasoline and alcohol). - Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great thing. But lets not over-hype the utility of alternate fuels. It's not all that simple.
Well, it seemed like a simple exercise for them to port back and forth to PPC when they maintained an nt kernel and migrated xbox to xbox 360. But by then, PPC had changed from a pure RISC architecture to a completely different animal anyway. (ironic how Apple migrated the opposite direction at about the same time, pretty much with similar ease, based on maintenance of legacy NeXT x86 code they had in their back pocket. . . I'll say that my 8 year old dual G5 may be slow compared to a brand new Power Mac, but it still rips CD's about 4 times faster because of those motorola vector units.:)
While you are absolutely correct; your use of the term "mob rule" is really kind of an ugly, elitist slur.
And you're especially correct when you state that it is "an attempt to avoid the common problems..." - because in the end, as our last president pointed out, the Constitution is "just a piece of paper". We sure worship it, but we sure don't seem to give a crap about what's really in our Constitution, and have not in a very long time. The pragmatists are ready to press the reset button; but nobody wants anybody's hand *near* that damn thing.
EVERYONE learns this in Freshman - I'm talking HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN - Science class. The Scientific method is a process. You write your hypothesis. You design your experiment. You collect your data. You eliminate outliers and match the data to a model that helps predict - according to your hypothesis and formula(e). Will the predicted FUTURE data have outliers that don't come out of your formula(e)? Of course. But if the gathered data fit the curve, that's a pretty good indicator that your hypothesis was a good guess. This is like, the most basic concept in Science that there is. It's not fraud in any sense of the word.
Everyone learns this. Everyone is required to take at least this minimal level of Science education; at least to get the High School diploma.
Compare this . . . to the blatant skullduggery that goes on in the pseudoscience of Economics. . . the counterargument that limiting Carbon via Economic Policy - is going to "harm our economic growth". (as if deregulation and tax cuts from 2000-2008 have not CLEARLY and demonstrably done so!). Go on, Doctor Economics. Take your payoff from the Heritage Foundation for your "consultation" - and don't bother to cite your affiliation on your "scientific paper". We believe you. And your Invisible Hand.
Hell. Let's call this a basic reasoning FAIL - on the part of an entire nation. An entire civilization. An entire species. WTF?
I agree with much of what you say; but a deeper understanding of what inflated and popped the original dotcom boom comes from the inherent UNDER estimation of the risk involved in using advertisement as one's SOLE means of income generation, on an internet-based media, where the end-user can control the content. (ie: AdBlock, FlashBlock, etc.)
The fundamental logical flaw was: everyone thought that software was going to provide investors with a captive audience via unrestrained Monopoly Power. (like Microsoft). They didn't look at history, and see that the Internet had succeeded precisely because the closed business model (CompuServe, AOL) had FAILED MISERABLY in the 1980's. Openness was the magic formula that made the Internet succeed, it is what delivered customers. Therefore, your customers are never going to be "captive".
Your customers are always going to be free to leave for another vendor, another system, another provider.
Google realized this.
Now; the landscape HAS changed.
In the US, there are far fewer providers (ISP's). The technology of control has gotten far more sophisticated, and the technology of end-user enablement has become much more difficult to use. (more people use FireFox, or Opera, or Safari: true - but how many of them actually use AdBlock, or NoScript?)
Facebook has provided the Business Model Illusion that there is a way to capture audiences. But Facebook customers have demonstrated repeatedly - that when FB fails to balance the users' interests with the interests of advertisers, the users go "meh" and leave.
Not en-masse. Not yet.
The other MAJOR factor in the inflation and popping of the dotcom bubble (at the technical-trading level) - was the deregulation of the IPO market, and the subsequent rampant fraudulent abuse of the deregulated system, by WorldCom, Enron, etc. A lot of people became extremely wealthy - and then lost it all. A few people became astronomically hugely wealthy; were already wealthy to begin with, and walked away with it. Dead bodies everywhere. Who lost? Innovation lost. Companies lost. The industry lost. Investors lost. America lost it's leadership and competitiveness. And we deserved to. We didn't even bother FIXING the system after we broke it. We punished a few token offenders, the most egregious.
Wow, that takes me back. A/. discussion where someone brings up Lynx. It's been a while. Maybe a couple of years even. Back to when we used to wear onions on our belt. But back in those days, we could only get the yellow onions. . . you kids and your white onions.
Well, to be fair; "saving polar bears" could very well be saving our own hides.
Preservation of biodiversity, as a general practice, is probably a good idea - but simply due to the interconnected way in which many species live and function, (a particularly good example is how whales, algae, and plankton, interact to regulate iron content, and therefore the ability of the ocean to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide) - there are numerous other examples, for instance some of the things we're doing with pesticides that are impacting bee populations, etc. where we're more or less directly signing our own death warrant.
Yes; molten salt thorium reactors are probably a good part of the solution to some of the ways we're mass-extincting all life on this planet (mostly the result of our consumption of fossil fuels). Can't disagree with that.
I did this for 15 years without a degree; and while it was sufficient to HAVE the job and work, there was always a barrier to advancement, or being taken seriously when I had input - based on years of experience, not on any education. It started to be painful, watching people learn lessons I had learned, the hard-way, 5 years, 10 years earlier. And I was sick of being stuck on the bottom rung.
Then, the requirements of my employer changed, and it became necessary for me to pursue the degree. So I did. It's possible I would be gathered up in the next round of layoffs without the degree. (or that may happen anyway). Every little bit helps. But with the degree, I do find that people are a little more willing to listen and take me seriously. But to be quite honest, I did not learn much in five years of classes, that I had not learned in 15 years on the job, and my years of self-guided hacking around before that. At least it made school. ..VERY easy. That was rather disappointing. The degree thing really is a form of class-bigotry. It's not at all about competence, or knowledge, or skill.
So. . . now, I'm planning on going to grad school. Maybe I'll get some actual good out of that. Because that seems to be the next "minimum requirement" for being a worthwhile employee, these days.
WTF? Chinese people are completely incapable of designing their own planes? Is this true? Really? Because when they come over to the US, and put their kids in our schools, they completely outclass us in math and science.
So we have to concoct some weird explanation that they must have stolen materials from a downed F-117; a plane that's been obsolete for 20 years; and whose stealth technology is based on completely different principles (geometry of reflective facets)? Or that they obtained designs from a someone else's hard disk drive that wiped?
You realize that between 2001 and 2008, the United States' manufacturing infrastructure shipped 40,000 factories to China. Not jobs. Factories. The US' trade deficit with China has been at a record high every single one of those years, and each in the preceding decade.
We can't imagine that China has the domestic brainpower and industrial resources to come up with shit on their own? Even under their brutally repressive authoritarian government - they're eventually going to re-invent the wheel, the nuclear reactor, the stealth fighter, the satellite interceptor missile. Eventually. It's not like they're some inferior species of subhumans over there. We like to imagine that they are. Believe me when I tell you: they (generally) like to imagine that we are (inferior, racially) as well.
Continuing this US-centric viewpoint is what's going to do us in, in the end.
It surely remains to be seen if China's stealth fighter is a strategic worry. But honestly - this was an inevitable eventual consequence of the building up of China's industrial economy that resulted from globalism, begun by Nixon, and vastly expanded over the following decades of American anti-protectionist policy.
The best thing about all this is: the US's oil production has been in sharp decline since 1973. So, really, nobody's going to want to take us over. China may contest our imperial command of foreign resources - which is why, if we're smart, we'll begin to seriously consider alternatives. (because fighting to maintain control has never proven to be a winning strategy, long term - our token involvement in WWII notwithstanding). But I think the penis-wavers and closet white-supremicists among us probably can't handle thinking about that, and will prefer going toe-to-toe with an enemy that outnumbers us 100-to-1, 10,000 miles away. Hence: they concoct these goofy stories about stolen spy information to try to support this mythology of our inherent superiority. (I wonder if they realize - genetically, how many Americans are of Chinese descent? Let alone other non-European origins.)
Cutting off military imports to these guys won't work, I suspect even if you removed all the weapons they'd still throw rocks at each other...
I doubt it.
I think that if the PROFIT were taken out of this killing business, people would turn over to some other profitable business, like living.
People eventually get sick and tired of this stuff, and eventually, if left alone, will go and live their lives peacefully. The problem is - people are being denied basic freedoms, the ability to have a stake in their own destinies.
I mean: the British burned down the White House in 1812 - so why did we turn around and help them in WWI, WWII, and them us in Iraq? Because we had better things to do than fight the British. We weren't stepping on their interests in Canada, and they weren't stepping on our interests on our territories. So we're best buds with Britain now. Right? So; just as soon as Israel stops building settlements where they're actually not allowed to or supposed to be building them, and as soon as the Palestinians are allowed to travel freely, build, open businesses, get food, have lives, I'm sure you'll see some isolated groups that won't let go of their hate for maybe a generation or so, but it'll die out, and eventually these two people will be living in peace together.
Frankly; Israel inflicting Collective Punishment on the Palestinian people, violates the Geneva conventions, and it's merely perpetuating the conflict. Has any of it stopped the violence? No. Never in the history of the world has this ever worked. It prolongs the suffering on both sides. The only people profiting are the arms suppliers.
What you are saying is - Content Creation -> Desktop, Workstation. Content CONSUMPTION -> Tablet. (well, I beg to differ, actually, because the 'audiophile/videophile' crowd tend to like higher quality display and speakers; but let's talk mainstream consumption market. ..)
== yes. probably true.
And when you compare the market size - content producers to content consumers is probably. . . well, the Internet was designed with a ratio of 1:1 in mind, wasn't it?
So - either everyone's going to be a Content Creator AND Consumer: and our tools are going to facilitate that.. . and the internet is going to be one of those tools.
OR:
The internet is going to bifurcate - into Consumers and Producers. Operating on different devices, using different protocols. . . (see: The mainframe era, Cellphones, traditional Media Industry - RIAA/MPAA, App Store, iTMS. ..)
OR:
People are going to produce on their desktops. And retire to the couch, bedroom, backyard, beach, city park, etc. with their Tablet (mobile devices), to Consume.
Indeed. Here's my prediction: in 5 year's time, most people will still be using desktops/laptops running Windows on an Intel chip. The rise of tablets really isn't going to disrupt things as much as columnists like to claim.
. . . as they rappy-tap away on their wintel/mactel desktop/laptop (which they probably hate, and don't realize is, indeed: technologically, the currently optimal solution for the task they have at hand).
Or, you know, it could be that people with mental problems also have a predisposition to become video game addicts.
. . . or perhaps more accurately put: more likely to have a predisposition to avoid contacts with human beings, because such encounters tend to be awkward, painful, difficult, fraught with peril, etc. - - - therefore, the only sane and rational way to interact with other humans, is via a computer interface, which at least gives a person an opportunity for some illusion of anonymity, or ability to escape, you know, some kind of way to manage anxiety (which is about 90% of the issues with mental problems; not as a root cause, but at least as a symptom creating difficulty with human interaction).
This is why disturbed people might turn to games or computers. It could work as a crutch, make their problems worse. . . or it could help them ease into skills that help them manage their problems. (I doubt violent video games are going to teach worthwhile people skills, but in the right peer group. . . maybe.)
Many mental health care professionals have suggested that computers could make a good therapeutic tool, and test studies have bolstered that theory.
Given the kind of person who gets into the astronaut corps...
You make a completely valid and believable point. Not just that, but it's probably also a very high-stress job. I could imagine the temptation to yield to self-reward. If there were a way to prove it, I'd even put money on same-sex pairings having happened.
I wonder what they call it.
The 200-mile-high-club?
Seriously.
There *was* that thing with the wacko one a few years back who planned to abduct another trainee over a lover's quarrel. . .
On the other hand, there WAS a nice little side-benefit to his scam.
IMHO; more money was spent on research to find the real cause (and treatments) for Autism (and related disorders) than would otherwise have been spent. I think that some of the genetic studies that were done probably would *not* have been done, or would not have been done with as large (and as decisive) a sample group, had the waters not been muddied up by this prior false data.
The other side-benefit, is that it also drew attention to the use of mercury compounds as preservatives in medical solutions (not just vaccines). Many people ARE sensitive and allergic to these compounds, (particularly contact lens cleaning solutions), and I think that the industry developed alternatives as a result of the negative (if false) attention, brought by this scam-study.
(I'm not advocating scam-studies as a way to bring attention to matters that our for-profit health industry would otherwise ignore. I'm just making lemonade out of the horrible lemons this man brought us.)
Slashdot Mirror
Biodiesel has been somewhat of a disappointment, because those who brew their own, have inevitably run into quality problems (unless they are completely anal about their own production process) - which can give you a quick ticket to engine damage. ($$$).
I have even read cases where industrially sourced biodiesel has had quality problems, leading to engine damage.
In my case, my injector pump's seals were damaged prematurely, but I can't say whether that was due to crappy quality original parts, (VW), or due to my occasional use of ULSD (when B99 was not available), or. . . ? This was, thankfully, not catastrophic, and I was able to rebuild the unit for just a couple hundred dollars. A blown IP could have been $1500.
In the case of alcohol, in existing gas-powered cars, that's nice and all. But will existing fuel lines, injector seals, etc. hold up? Will drivers require expensive retrofits, computer re-programming, (God forbid they would have to switch back and forth between gasoline and alcohol). - Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great thing. But lets not over-hype the utility of alternate fuels. It's not all that simple.
Whether that empathy carries any value to the recipient, depends entirely upon the recipient's naivete.
naw, the rock is silicon.
Well, it seemed like a simple exercise for them to port back and forth to PPC when they maintained an nt kernel and migrated xbox to xbox 360. But by then, PPC had changed from a pure RISC architecture to a completely different animal anyway. (ironic how Apple migrated the opposite direction at about the same time, pretty much with similar ease, based on maintenance of legacy NeXT x86 code they had in their back pocket. . . I'll say that my 8 year old dual G5 may be slow compared to a brand new Power Mac, but it still rips CD's about 4 times faster because of those motorola vector units. :)
While you are absolutely correct; your use of the term "mob rule" is really kind of an ugly, elitist slur.
And you're especially correct when you state that it is "an attempt to avoid the common problems..." - because in the end, as our last president pointed out, the Constitution is "just a piece of paper". We sure worship it, but we sure don't seem to give a crap about what's really in our Constitution, and have not in a very long time. The pragmatists are ready to press the reset button; but nobody wants anybody's hand *near* that damn thing.
I can't decide whether it's Object Oriented Programming, or Relational Databases, that are the bigger threat to humanity.
But I know in my heart of hearts, that both are evil, and that I will die trying to destroy them.
No, not belts. You know. Like, rings, dude. You know that's what Kepler's *really* for, right?
EVERYONE learns this in Freshman - I'm talking HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN - Science class. The Scientific method is a process. You write your hypothesis. You design your experiment. You collect your data. You eliminate outliers and match the data to a model that helps predict - according to your hypothesis and formula(e). Will the predicted FUTURE data have outliers that don't come out of your formula(e)? Of course. But if the gathered data fit the curve, that's a pretty good indicator that your hypothesis was a good guess. This is like, the most basic concept in Science that there is. It's not fraud in any sense of the word.
Everyone learns this. Everyone is required to take at least this minimal level of Science education; at least to get the High School diploma.
Compare this . . . to the blatant skullduggery that goes on in the pseudoscience of Economics. . . the counterargument that limiting Carbon via Economic Policy - is going to "harm our economic growth". (as if deregulation and tax cuts from 2000-2008 have not CLEARLY and demonstrably done so!). Go on, Doctor Economics. Take your payoff from the Heritage Foundation for your "consultation" - and don't bother to cite your affiliation on your "scientific paper". We believe you. And your Invisible Hand.
Hell. Let's call this a basic reasoning FAIL - on the part of an entire nation. An entire civilization. An entire species. WTF?
I agree with much of what you say; but a deeper understanding of what inflated and popped the original dotcom boom comes from the inherent UNDER estimation of the risk involved in using advertisement as one's SOLE means of income generation, on an internet-based media, where the end-user can control the content. (ie: AdBlock, FlashBlock, etc.)
The fundamental logical flaw was: everyone thought that software was going to provide investors with a captive audience via unrestrained Monopoly Power. (like Microsoft). They didn't look at history, and see that the Internet had succeeded precisely because the closed business model (CompuServe, AOL) had FAILED MISERABLY in the 1980's. Openness was the magic formula that made the Internet succeed, it is what delivered customers. Therefore, your customers are never going to be "captive".
Your customers are always going to be free to leave for another vendor, another system, another provider.
Google realized this.
Now; the landscape HAS changed.
In the US, there are far fewer providers (ISP's). The technology of control has gotten far more sophisticated, and the technology of end-user enablement has become much more difficult to use. (more people use FireFox, or Opera, or Safari: true - but how many of them actually use AdBlock, or NoScript?)
Facebook has provided the Business Model Illusion that there is a way to capture audiences. But Facebook customers have demonstrated repeatedly - that when FB fails to balance the users' interests with the interests of advertisers, the users go "meh" and leave.
Not en-masse. Not yet.
The other MAJOR factor in the inflation and popping of the dotcom bubble (at the technical-trading level) - was the deregulation of the IPO market, and the subsequent rampant fraudulent abuse of the deregulated system, by WorldCom, Enron, etc. A lot of people became extremely wealthy - and then lost it all. A few people became astronomically hugely wealthy; were already wealthy to begin with, and walked away with it. Dead bodies everywhere.
Who lost? Innovation lost. Companies lost. The industry lost. Investors lost. America lost it's leadership and competitiveness. And we deserved to. We didn't even bother FIXING the system after we broke it. We punished a few token offenders, the most egregious.
4-digit UID here.
Wow, that takes me back. /. discussion where someone brings up Lynx. It's been a while. Maybe a couple of years even. Back to when we used to wear onions on our belt. But back in those days, we could only get the yellow onions. . . you kids and your white onions.
A
Well, to be fair; "saving polar bears" could very well be saving our own hides.
Preservation of biodiversity, as a general practice, is probably a good idea - but simply due to the interconnected way in which many species live and function, (a particularly good example is how whales, algae, and plankton, interact to regulate iron content, and therefore the ability of the ocean to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide) - there are numerous other examples, for instance some of the things we're doing with pesticides that are impacting bee populations, etc. where we're more or less directly signing our own death warrant.
Yes; molten salt thorium reactors are probably a good part of the solution to some of the ways we're mass-extincting all life on this planet (mostly the result of our consumption of fossil fuels). Can't disagree with that.
. . . no wait. I love saying that. :)
I did this for 15 years without a degree; and while it was sufficient to HAVE the job and work, there was always a barrier to advancement, or being taken seriously when I had input - based on years of experience, not on any education. It started to be painful, watching people learn lessons I had learned, the hard-way, 5 years, 10 years earlier. And I was sick of being stuck on the bottom rung.
Then, the requirements of my employer changed, and it became necessary for me to pursue the degree. So I did. It's possible I would be gathered up in the next round of layoffs without the degree. (or that may happen anyway). Every little bit helps. But with the degree, I do find that people are a little more willing to listen and take me seriously. But to be quite honest, I did not learn much in five years of classes, that I had not learned in 15 years on the job, and my years of self-guided hacking around before that. At least it made school. . .VERY easy. That was rather disappointing. The degree thing really is a form of class-bigotry. It's not at all about competence, or knowledge, or skill.
So. . . now, I'm planning on going to grad school. Maybe I'll get some actual good out of that. Because that seems to be the next "minimum requirement" for being a worthwhile employee, these days.
WTF? Chinese people are completely incapable of designing their own planes? Is this true? Really? Because when they come over to the US, and put their kids in our schools, they completely outclass us in math and science.
So we have to concoct some weird explanation that they must have stolen materials from a downed F-117; a plane that's been obsolete for 20 years; and whose stealth technology is based on completely different principles (geometry of reflective facets)? Or that they obtained designs from a someone else's hard disk drive that wiped?
You realize that between 2001 and 2008, the United States' manufacturing infrastructure shipped 40,000 factories to China. Not jobs. Factories. The US' trade deficit with China has been at a record high every single one of those years, and each in the preceding decade.
We can't imagine that China has the domestic brainpower and industrial resources to come up with shit on their own? Even under their brutally repressive authoritarian government - they're eventually going to re-invent the wheel, the nuclear reactor, the stealth fighter, the satellite interceptor missile. Eventually. It's not like they're some inferior species of subhumans over there. We like to imagine that they are. Believe me when I tell you: they (generally) like to imagine that we are (inferior, racially) as well.
Continuing this US-centric viewpoint is what's going to do us in, in the end.
It surely remains to be seen if China's stealth fighter is a strategic worry.
But honestly - this was an inevitable eventual consequence of the building up of China's industrial economy that resulted from globalism, begun by Nixon, and vastly expanded over the following decades of American anti-protectionist policy.
The best thing about all this is: the US's oil production has been in sharp decline since 1973. So, really, nobody's going to want to take us over. China may contest our imperial command of foreign resources - which is why, if we're smart, we'll begin to seriously consider alternatives. (because fighting to maintain control has never proven to be a winning strategy, long term - our token involvement in WWII notwithstanding). But I think the penis-wavers and closet white-supremicists among us probably can't handle thinking about that, and will prefer going toe-to-toe with an enemy that outnumbers us 100-to-1, 10,000 miles away. Hence: they concoct these goofy stories about stolen spy information to try to support this mythology of our inherent superiority. (I wonder if they realize - genetically, how many Americans are of Chinese descent? Let alone other non-European origins.)
That's why they should hand the whole project over to George Lucas immediately.
If they're going to go BAD. They should go REAL BAD.
Neo, meet agent Jar-Jar.
"meesa know kung fu!"
Cutting off military imports to these guys won't work, I suspect even if you removed all the weapons they'd still throw rocks at each other...
I doubt it.
I think that if the PROFIT were taken out of this killing business, people would turn over to some other profitable business, like living.
People eventually get sick and tired of this stuff, and eventually, if left alone, will go and live their lives peacefully. The problem is - people are being denied basic freedoms, the ability to have a stake in their own destinies.
I mean: the British burned down the White House in 1812 - so why did we turn around and help them in WWI, WWII, and them us in Iraq? Because we had better things to do than fight the British. We weren't stepping on their interests in Canada, and they weren't stepping on our interests on our territories. So we're best buds with Britain now. Right? So; just as soon as Israel stops building settlements where they're actually not allowed to or supposed to be building them, and as soon as the Palestinians are allowed to travel freely, build, open businesses, get food, have lives, I'm sure you'll see some isolated groups that won't let go of their hate for maybe a generation or so, but it'll die out, and eventually these two people will be living in peace together.
Frankly; Israel inflicting Collective Punishment on the Palestinian people, violates the Geneva conventions, and it's merely perpetuating the conflict. Has any of it stopped the violence? No. Never in the history of the world has this ever worked. It prolongs the suffering on both sides. The only people profiting are the arms suppliers.
Well:
What you are saying is - .)
Content Creation -> Desktop, Workstation.
Content CONSUMPTION -> Tablet. (well, I beg to differ, actually, because the 'audiophile/videophile' crowd tend to like higher quality display and speakers; but let's talk mainstream consumption market. .
== yes.
probably true.
And when you compare the market size - content producers to content consumers is probably. . . well, the Internet was designed with a ratio of 1:1 in mind, wasn't it?
So - either everyone's going to be a Content Creator AND Consumer: and our tools are going to facilitate that.. . and the internet is going to be one of those tools.
OR:
The internet is going to bifurcate - into Consumers and Producers. Operating on different devices, using different protocols. . . .)
(see: The mainframe era, Cellphones, traditional Media Industry - RIAA/MPAA, App Store, iTMS. .
OR:
People are going to produce on their desktops.
And retire to the couch, bedroom, backyard, beach, city park, etc. with their Tablet (mobile devices), to Consume.
Indeed. Here's my prediction: in 5 year's time, most people will still be using desktops/laptops running Windows on an Intel chip. The rise of tablets really isn't going to disrupt things as much as columnists like to claim.
. . . as they rappy-tap away on their wintel/mactel desktop/laptop (which they probably hate, and don't realize is, indeed: technologically, the currently optimal solution for the task they have at hand).
um, you mean, like, the S&L crisis?
Who knew there was gambling going on at Ricks.
Frankly, I am shocked.
Or, you know, it could be that people with mental problems also have a predisposition to become video game addicts.
. . . or perhaps more accurately put: more likely to have a predisposition to avoid contacts with human beings, because such encounters tend to be awkward, painful, difficult, fraught with peril, etc. - - - therefore, the only sane and rational way to interact with other humans, is via a computer interface, which at least gives a person an opportunity for some illusion of anonymity, or ability to escape, you know, some kind of way to manage anxiety (which is about 90% of the issues with mental problems; not as a root cause, but at least as a symptom creating difficulty with human interaction).
This is why disturbed people might turn to games or computers. It could work as a crutch, make their problems worse. . . or it could help them ease into skills that help them manage their problems. (I doubt violent video games are going to teach worthwhile people skills, but in the right peer group. . . maybe.)
Many mental health care professionals have suggested that computers could make a good therapeutic tool, and test studies have bolstered that theory.
The code I LEAST enjoy debugging, is my own: after marathon all-night coding sessions.
I seriously can't code for shit past 5-6 hrs.
My own blind-spots are the hardest to spot.
Which is why I break and document frequently.
Given the kind of person who gets into the astronaut corps...
You make a completely valid and believable point. Not just that, but it's probably also a very high-stress job. I could imagine the temptation to yield to self-reward. If there were a way to prove it, I'd even put money on same-sex pairings having happened.
I wonder what they call it.
The 200-mile-high-club?
Seriously.
There *was* that thing with the wacko one a few years back who planned to abduct another trainee over a lover's quarrel. . .
On the other hand, there WAS a nice little side-benefit to his scam.
IMHO; more money was spent on research to find the real cause (and treatments) for Autism (and related disorders) than would otherwise have been spent. I think that some of the genetic studies that were done probably would *not* have been done, or would not have been done with as large (and as decisive) a sample group, had the waters not been muddied up by this prior false data.
The other side-benefit, is that it also drew attention to the use of mercury compounds as preservatives in medical solutions (not just vaccines). Many people ARE sensitive and allergic to these compounds, (particularly contact lens cleaning solutions), and I think that the industry developed alternatives as a result of the negative (if false) attention, brought by this scam-study.
(I'm not advocating scam-studies as a way to bring attention to matters that our for-profit health industry would otherwise ignore. I'm just making lemonade out of the horrible lemons this man brought us.)
It's Verizon's standard "Unlimited Billing" plan.