I think the "problem" (if you or I call it that) that many people are facing is that liberal (massive) amounts of interactive and uncencsored media is significantly different than liberal (political belief).
My parents' generation has been subconciously indoctrinated on many issues, from nuclear power, to use of environmental resources, to validity of unions, to educational policies, etc. Now we know that nuclear plants put out less radiation into the atmosphere than coal, that logging and oil drilling are good policies for public land, that the unions don't always represent their constituents, that educational systems are failing and alternatives exist, etc. Only with the internet and bottom-up media distribution can the public hope to see differing philosophies and alternative policies... which is partly why the conservative (commercial) and libertarian (political) parties have fluxed so strongly towards the internet.
I'm no linguist (elec eng w/ neural net studies), but I would argue that the ability to perceive concatenated sentences like that is a function of the ability of the brain/eye to focus on a particular range and filter out "distractions" (letters to the left and right). Padding our words with spaces helps the brain to quicker define the focus boundaries, after which we can process the text range for meaning...
I imagine the brain's focus as little perception boxes, scanning up and down the concatenated sentence until enough symbols are aligned to fire a recognition signal... As I read your post above, I find my eyes darting about a little more, actually darting to the center of the "word" once recognition is made.
runonsentencewithlowercase -- here's your letter by letter scan "mode"
runonsentencewithcoloring -- slightly easier to define word boundaries by color
runonSENTENCEwithuppercase -- it's easier to locate the word SENTENCE because we perceive a boundary beween small letters and upper letters.
runo nsente ncewit hbads pacing -- pain in the ass, but we still comprehend
run on sentence with lowercase -- whitespace speeds compehension.
For example, most people don't know that you have to nudge the stick, then move it back into a straight position to properly execute a bank.
Well, isn't this just an interface problem? The whole concept of "stick" is left over from the early flight days... just as you could design a car that ran off of a joystick instead of a wheel, the underlying mechanics are all computer interpreted for control anyways.
Put a wheel into your "car-plane" such that the angle of rotation is proportional to the lateral rotation of the plane... let the computer control all of the roll-pitch-yaw flaps to maintain a constant altitude. Then add a second lever that lets the computer change altitude in 100ft increments, so as to better maintain orderly flight lanes. Hell, better yet, define each increment as a "speed lane", faster = higher.
Bingo, you now have an interface that the majority of people already trained their lifetimes to understand, and it'll keep everything in 2 dimensional planes. At some point, I'd just say why not turn everything into a source-destination system, and let the computers handle the inbetweens, but people still like to believe they have some say in their travel pattern.
"Here's how the device, which Falk says "is like a flying motorcycle," works: A person is strapped to what looks like a sturdy metal tower with a rotor on top.""
Funny you mention that, since Aluminum recycling is one of the few materials that are actually cost-effective to recycle vs produce from raw ore. Most things, like PET plastic use more energy in the recycling process than manufacturing the things from scratch (once you include sorting and transportation costs, which are not insignificant).
Exactly. In United States history, I would say there has been more effort put into managing fires than actual prevention. How do you reduce widespread fires? Education of humans only goes so far, since nature likes to toss around lightning strikes. That means to stop fires you have to reduce the number of trees.
Of course, some reports say increased logging causes fires, but you have to read why. In rainforest areas, haphazard logging can dry out the vegetation, which makes them more susceptible to widespread fire. But the argument doesn't hold true for temperate climates like the US, where our forests are typically (dryer) evergreen. Some argue that controlled logging protects areas by thinning the tree population and reducing brush, something the current administration has been pushing for a while with little success from the opposing party in congess. (Funny that this was removed from the CNN's live site and search history, but the web never forgets).
Re:Why it spins.
on
Solder in Space
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I think the point is that the modern "standard democracy" are not pure democracies by the definition of "majority rules".
You are also correct, in that Athens was an oligarchy, a "government of the few", who also tend to be the priviledged few. I believe it was Aristotle who didn't want salaries for government senators, since then only the rich could afford to take the time to govern the people, hence aristocracy.
Actually, I would consider City of Heroes to be a decent blend of Skill and Time.
Character actions run in a "queue" where, you select a power, there is an activation (warmup) period, the event, then a recharge period before reuse. Each delay is determined by (1) character level then (2) power enhancements with level-capped effects (a lvl 10 can't use an enhancement > level 13). Here's where the time invested comes in, those that spend more time playing tend to be in more missions, and have gathered better enhancements. This effectively improves their "stats", but the level caps keeps the powergamers within ability range of the casual players like me.
So, during combat, there is a fixed activations per minute rate for every power, and it is up to the player to determine when and how to use the powers. I tend to play a Blaster with AreaEffect specialties, such that most of my play is depends on my skill at getting all the enemies in the blast radius or cone effect at the same time. Like an arcade game, maximizing effects come down to proper timing; some people are just better at this than others.
You have Chirac (right of center by French standards / left wing by US standards), Jospin (left / ultra-left wing) and LePen (far right / fascist) in the "first round". Chirac gets 20%, LePen gets 17%, Jospin gets 16%. Now suddenly the election is between Chirac and LePen, and Chirac is now the shoe-in even though the majority of the voters originally wanted "Anything but Chirac" (sound familiar?).
I would like to point out that it is not only "big brother" (aka the government) who is driving the data retention policies... it's the litigation brought on against private industries, in order to determine fault for civil cases.
When it comes to Enron or Big Tobacco, we'll embarrass them, put their statistics in commercials, their phone coversations on the evening news, just so another group can turn around and start civil suits against them. Our society seems to have this drive to find out exactly who was in the drivers seat when decisions were made, down to Who sent what email When to Whom... yet we still allow our governement representatives to take "voice votes" so we don't know who voted on what laws? You would think that that's something we want to hold people accountable for...
They've been showing previews for it since the Stargate SG1/Atlantis season premier weekend... and pretty much every other hour of the day... can't miss it.
I hate to be a cynic, but I think the whole point of news reporting is to attract your attention to those crucial 8 minutes every half hour... the commerical sponsors.
What happens inbetween commercials only exists to get you to turn to their channel... after all thats why (1) products like TIVO scare the crap out of them for its ability to hide commercials, and (2) product placement in the shows themselves allows commercial time to blend with content time. Hell, CBS was running programs about books that the parent company published, and calling it news... And after all, why are the news readers so pretty... so you'll tune in.
This is also why I believe news reporters tend to become politically biased over time towards their local markets... it is their job to retain viewers/customers, and so you preach to your local markets. The political landscape is strongly correllated with urban concentrations, as are the "big" markets. The "old" big 3 broadcast media meets the needs of the cities, with its liberal leanings. Those living away from urban areas have to rely on cable and satelite, which "new" big media promptly cornered the market, and tilted their content towards their libertarian/conservative consumers. The people like like Jennings's leanings will tend to flip on ABC, and ABC gets viewers to watch its commercials, and those of the other leanings will flip on Fox, and Fox gets viewers for its commercials. Companies win, educating citizens loses.
Of the extrasolar star systems that we are able to analyze using current methodologies, we have only been able to identify the solar systems that contain gas giants. The only method we have is to take a photograph, wait a while, then photograph the star again, and hope that we can see some variation in the brightness that indicates a large rotating object. That's why the first planet discoveries were of binary arrangements, with gas giants in close orbits around their parent stars, since they had fast orbits, we could (more) easily compare over shorter time. So, given that all the recent discoveries are of inhospitable gas giant system, I can understand why some uneducated reporters might get discouraged.
One writeup on Yahoo made a good point... we have only had the technology to observe at this level of detail for about a decade, while the only directly observable gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) have orbits of 12 and 26 earth years, respectively. So, in the next few years, expect a lot more "gas giant" discoveries, assuming that the orbits of gas giants in "life-friendly" systems are relatively equivalent to ours.
Then, we'll have to wait until we have telescopes with better resolution and/or more megapixels, so we can resolve better detail of smaller earth-sized objects...
My counter-argument then is that by tapping into the internet and community logs like Slashdot, you have gained access to a distributed television-content relay, which has the ability to convey more information at once in a shorter amount of time than one person can do alone watching news feeds.
I can only watch one TV channel at a time, two with picture in picture. With a message board, in one refresh, I can see how the news is (1) reported and (2) received in florida, washington, new york, palistine... I may get leads on the story where the news room in Washington has more information about the crash at the pentagon than the other channel who's spending all their time covering the crash in western Pennsylvania... but thoughtful people accross the nation will type what they see into the digest, and I get it all in one HTTP request.
As for quality of information, just because you saw it reported on TV by a "reputable news source" does not make it fact... what you see is information conveyed to the best of their knowledge at the time the reports were made. And that's not even factoring in outright biases to content delivery...
And to think that at MY work, the I.T. department just went and uninstalled the "games" package from all the Windows work computers... After all, you're there to do work.
No need for inethical behaviour, no need for random spying on your superiors, and you're following written company policy to boot. If the boss complains, point at the policy.
When do we get to vote on how the military handles housekeeping?
How about every two or six years? Remember, the Congress approves how the military spends its money, and they define the laws by which the military must operate.
Bring this issue up to your representative's office, and let them know that we don't approve the lax I.T. policies. Or how about write to someone on the Armed Services Oversight Committee, inform them that things like this are taking place, that national security is at risk. If they can shut down Los Alamos over floppy disks, then something needs to change here.
Slashdot Mirror
Lost stability... cut then engines for safety... looks like a failure folks.
I think the "problem" (if you or I call it that) that many people are facing is that liberal (massive) amounts of interactive and uncencsored media is significantly different than liberal (political belief).
My parents' generation has been subconciously indoctrinated on many issues, from nuclear power, to use of environmental resources, to validity of unions, to educational policies, etc. Now we know that nuclear plants put out less radiation into the atmosphere than coal, that logging and oil drilling are good policies for public land, that the unions don't always represent their constituents, that educational systems are failing and alternatives exist, etc. Only with the internet and bottom-up media distribution can the public hope to see differing philosophies and alternative policies... which is partly why the conservative (commercial) and libertarian (political) parties have fluxed so strongly towards the internet.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." -- George Patton
"It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end."
I'm no linguist (elec eng w/ neural net studies), but I would argue that the ability to perceive concatenated sentences like that is a function of the ability of the brain/eye to focus on a particular range and filter out "distractions" (letters to the left and right). Padding our words with spaces helps the brain to quicker define the focus boundaries, after which we can process the text range for meaning...
I imagine the brain's focus as little perception boxes, scanning up and down the concatenated sentence until enough symbols are aligned to fire a recognition signal... As I read your post above, I find my eyes darting about a little more, actually darting to the center of the "word" once recognition is made.
runonsentencewithlowercase -- here's your letter by letter scan "mode"
runonsentencewithcoloring -- slightly easier to define word boundaries by color
runonSENTENCEwithuppercase -- it's easier to locate the word SENTENCE because we perceive a boundary beween small letters and upper letters.
runo nsente ncewit hbads pacing -- pain in the ass, but we still comprehend
run on sentence with lowercase -- whitespace speeds compehension.
.. in Boston, they caged the protesters before they had a chance to do anything... how's that for the freedoms of speech and assembly!
For example, most people don't know that you have to nudge the stick, then move it back into a straight position to properly execute a bank.
Well, isn't this just an interface problem? The whole concept of "stick" is left over from the early flight days... just as you could design a car that ran off of a joystick instead of a wheel, the underlying mechanics are all computer interpreted for control anyways.
Put a wheel into your "car-plane" such that the angle of rotation is proportional to the lateral rotation of the plane... let the computer control all of the roll-pitch-yaw flaps to maintain a constant altitude. Then add a second lever that lets the computer change altitude in 100ft increments, so as to better maintain orderly flight lanes. Hell, better yet, define each increment as a "speed lane", faster = higher.
Bingo, you now have an interface that the majority of people already trained their lifetimes to understand, and it'll keep everything in 2 dimensional planes. At some point, I'd just say why not turn everything into a source-destination system, and let the computers handle the inbetweens, but people still like to believe they have some say in their travel pattern.
"Here's how the device, which Falk says "is like a flying motorcycle," works: A person is strapped to what looks like a sturdy metal tower with a rotor on top.""
Can anyone say M.A.S.K. ? It's a motorcycle and a helicopter !
Funny you mention that, since Aluminum recycling is one of the few materials that are actually cost-effective to recycle vs produce from raw ore. Most things, like PET plastic use more energy in the recycling process than manufacturing the things from scratch (once you include sorting and transportation costs, which are not insignificant).
Shit, stay away from Firefly then...
Exactly. In United States history, I would say there has been more effort put into managing fires than actual prevention. How do you reduce widespread fires? Education of humans only goes so far, since nature likes to toss around lightning strikes. That means to stop fires you have to reduce the number of trees.
Of course, some reports say increased logging causes fires, but you have to read why. In rainforest areas, haphazard logging can dry out the vegetation, which makes them more susceptible to widespread fire. But the argument doesn't hold true for temperate climates like the US, where our forests are typically (dryer) evergreen. Some argue that controlled logging protects areas by thinning the tree population and reducing brush, something the current administration has been pushing for a while with little success from the opposing party in congess. (Funny that this was removed from the CNN's live site and search history, but the web never forgets).
You'll notice in the video he's wearing goggles.
I think the point is that the modern "standard democracy" are not pure democracies by the definition of "majority rules".
You are also correct, in that Athens was an oligarchy, a "government of the few", who also tend to be the priviledged few. I believe it was Aristotle who didn't want salaries for government senators, since then only the rich could afford to take the time to govern the people, hence aristocracy.
Actually, I would consider City of Heroes to be a decent blend of Skill and Time.
Character actions run in a "queue" where, you select a power, there is an activation (warmup) period, the event, then a recharge period before reuse. Each delay is determined by (1) character level then (2) power enhancements with level-capped effects (a lvl 10 can't use an enhancement > level 13). Here's where the time invested comes in, those that spend more time playing tend to be in more missions, and have gathered better enhancements. This effectively improves their "stats", but the level caps keeps the powergamers within ability range of the casual players like me.
So, during combat, there is a fixed activations per minute rate for every power, and it is up to the player to determine when and how to use the powers. I tend to play a Blaster with AreaEffect specialties, such that most of my play is depends on my skill at getting all the enemies in the blast radius or cone effect at the same time. Like an arcade game, maximizing effects come down to proper timing; some people are just better at this than others.
What, so you could have something happen like what happened in France in 2002?
You have Chirac (right of center by French standards / left wing by US standards), Jospin (left / ultra-left wing) and LePen (far right / fascist) in the "first round". Chirac gets 20%, LePen gets 17%, Jospin gets 16%. Now suddenly the election is between Chirac and LePen, and Chirac is now the shoe-in even though the majority of the voters originally wanted "Anything but Chirac" (sound familiar?).
There are three tracks on the magstripe. Each track is
Track one is 210 bits per inch (bpi), and holds 79 six-bit plus parity bit read-only characters.
Track two is 75 bpi, and holds 40 four-bit plus parity bit characters.
Track three is 210 bpi, and holds 107 four-bit plus parity bit characters.
I would like to point out that it is not only "big brother" (aka the government) who is driving the data retention policies... it's the litigation brought on against private industries, in order to determine fault for civil cases.
When it comes to Enron or Big Tobacco, we'll embarrass them, put their statistics in commercials, their phone coversations on the evening news, just so another group can turn around and start civil suits against them. Our society seems to have this drive to find out exactly who was in the drivers seat when decisions were made, down to Who sent what email When to Whom... yet we still allow our governement representatives to take "voice votes" so we don't know who voted on what laws? You would think that that's something we want to hold people accountable for...
Also of note:
Farscape is coming back as Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars. Old News.
New series based on Ursula K LeGuin's EarthSea coming in December. Old News.
Firefly is coming back in movie form as Serenity next summer. Old News.
SciFi channel is also contemplating a Larry Niven Ringworld miniseries. Old News.
And most likely, there's going to be another 8 or so Tremors spinoffs...
I hate to be a cynic, but I think the whole point of news reporting is to attract your attention to those crucial 8 minutes every half hour... the commerical sponsors.
What happens inbetween commercials only exists to get you to turn to their channel... after all thats why (1) products like TIVO scare the crap out of them for its ability to hide commercials, and (2) product placement in the shows themselves allows commercial time to blend with content time. Hell, CBS was running programs about books that the parent company published, and calling it news... And after all, why are the news readers so pretty... so you'll tune in.
This is also why I believe news reporters tend to become politically biased over time towards their local markets... it is their job to retain viewers/customers, and so you preach to your local markets. The political landscape is strongly correllated with urban concentrations, as are the "big" markets. The "old" big 3 broadcast media meets the needs of the cities, with its liberal leanings. Those living away from urban areas have to rely on cable and satelite, which "new" big media promptly cornered the market, and tilted their content towards their libertarian/conservative consumers. The people like like Jennings's leanings will tend to flip on ABC, and ABC gets viewers to watch its commercials, and those of the other leanings will flip on Fox, and Fox gets viewers for its commercials. Companies win, educating citizens loses.
Of the extrasolar star systems that we are able to analyze using current methodologies , we have only been able to identify the solar systems that contain gas giants. The only method we have is to take a photograph, wait a while, then photograph the star again, and hope that we can see some variation in the brightness that indicates a large rotating object. That's why the first planet discoveries were of binary arrangements, with gas giants in close orbits around their parent stars, since they had fast orbits, we could (more) easily compare over shorter time. So, given that all the recent discoveries are of inhospitable gas giant system, I can understand why some uneducated reporters might get discouraged.
One writeup on Yahoo made a good point... we have only had the technology to observe at this level of detail for about a decade, while the only directly observable gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) have orbits of 12 and 26 earth years, respectively. So, in the next few years, expect a lot more "gas giant" discoveries, assuming that the orbits of gas giants in "life-friendly" systems are relatively equivalent to ours.
Then, we'll have to wait until we have telescopes with better resolution and/or more megapixels, so we can resolve better detail of smaller earth-sized objects...
My counter-argument then is that by tapping into the internet and community logs like Slashdot, you have gained access to a distributed television-content relay, which has the ability to convey more information at once in a shorter amount of time than one person can do alone watching news feeds.
I can only watch one TV channel at a time, two with picture in picture. With a message board, in one refresh, I can see how the news is (1) reported and (2) received in florida, washington, new york, palistine... I may get leads on the story where the news room in Washington has more information about the crash at the pentagon than the other channel who's spending all their time covering the crash in western Pennsylvania... but thoughtful people accross the nation will type what they see into the digest, and I get it all in one HTTP request.
As for quality of information, just because you saw it reported on TV by a "reputable news source" does not make it fact... what you see is information conveyed to the best of their knowledge at the time the reports were made. And that's not even factoring in outright biases to content delivery...
And to think that at MY work, the I.T. department just went and uninstalled the "games" package from all the Windows work computers... After all, you're there to do work.
No need for inethical behaviour, no need for random spying on your superiors, and you're following written company policy to boot. If the boss complains, point at the policy.
If your heart is still contracting and it is not connected to the bloodstream, does it make a sound?
When do we get to vote on how the military handles housekeeping?
How about every two or six years? Remember, the Congress approves how the military spends its money, and they define the laws by which the military must operate.
Bring this issue up to your representative's office, and let them know that we don't approve the lax I.T. policies. Or how about write to someone on the Armed Services Oversight Committee, inform them that things like this are taking place, that national security is at risk. If they can shut down Los Alamos over floppy disks, then something needs to change here.
Once again, Futurama has beat us all to the punch with "The Problem with Popplers".