Ahhh religion, where changing flesh into bread and blood into wine isnt considered "witchcraft". Yet all other "magics" was at one time punishable. Hypocrisy, it loves religion
Ahhh science, where one logical theory is considered wrong but another one can be considered right. Hypocrisy loves science too when you oversimplify like you did with religion.
I think we're already seeing that. The average life expectancy is much longer than it used to be. Go way back and I'd assume infectious diseases, wars, and animal attacks would be the primary causes of death. Today it's heart disease, automobile accidents, and cancer.
I'm guessing if we cure cancer and heart disease, we'll be seeing a lot more neurological diseases though. I'd expect there's some natural upper limit to how old your brain can be before it's toast, and I'd expect that we aren't really living long enough to see it yet.
Does alzheimers affect one specific, more central part of the brain? Do most brain cancers spring up more from some regions of the brain than others?
Meningiomas are brain cancers from the meninges, the covering of the brain, so I'd assume that if cell phone radiation could penetrate through the skull and -if- it did lead to increased risk of cancer, meningiomas are one it could cause. On the other hand, my understanding of adult neuron production is that they come from deeper in the brain, by the ventricles. I'd guess that a medulloblastoma would be more likely to come from such a site, as this is where the neuronal precursor/ neuronal stem cells are, so if cell phone radiation didn't penetrate that far, you wouldn't see an increased risk for that type. I don't know much about where glial cells of various flavors replicate, I'd hazard a guess that they replicate in most regions of the brain.
Anyway, given that they probably strapped active cell phones to these mices heads for days at a time, I wouldn't expect much difference on the alzheimers from using a cell phone to talk occasionally. Same thing with cancer. Maybe if you live with a cell phone right next to your ear, you wouldn't be decreasing your chances of alzheimers, and you'd only slightly if at all be increasing your risk of certain types of brain cancer.
Why is basically screaming "FOUL!" the first post? The constitutionality of this is the most boring aspect for me personally, and almost none of us are really lawyers let alone supreme court justices. I'm sure the legislators would tell you it's a publicity stunt to raise the issue to a generally apathetic public. Next they might try some type of tie in with the "Jersey Shore" cast.
If we're going to get bogged down on constitutionality, what can Minnesota do constitutionally to accomplish it's goals? Cry while the power companies dance around saying "Ha ha you can't touch me! Lalalalal! Burning coal in a different state! Suck it environmentalists!"
Based on what I've seen, the vast majority of people already wanted the newest one. The price for used madden whatever the current release was about 5 dollars less. Last year's used was I think about half price. Two years was somewhere around $5. Gamestop would buy back two year old maddens, for about a quarter. People lined up for hours yearly to get it.
I don't play sports games or watch them, so maybe it is a big deal to have current rosters, the latest players, but there was otherwise very little difference from what I could see. It's madden football. Buy the 3 year old copy for a smile, it's the same game being simulated, and there have been no major advancements in the simulation. Pretend that one football player's name is actually another current football players name. That doesn't seem to be going on at all, kids turned their noses up at the used copies. Madden fans would sooner sell one of their two current gen systems rather than play a year old madden.
This is basically RIAA level greedy on the part of EA, they're playing sleazy to get only slightly more sales.
I guess an argument could be made that they are saving money by not maintaining the servers. But I really don't think they're going to get many more sales.
Yes, everything from the hilton to the capsule hotels and below. In kyoto, I stayed in a non-enclosed hostel that was about 10 dollars a night, holes in the walls were patched with cardboard but very clean. Mats on the floor and kersonene powered space heater. I didn't see any cheap hostels with western-style mattresses, the western hotels do of course.
You could also do pretty much the same at Internet Cafes. I've found the accommodation (couch+cubicle+snacks+internet+manga+games) to be far better than even most first-class flight cabins. You still need your everyday clothes on, so I'd stay there max 2 days
And at least a few years ago, free all-you-can-drink mellon flavored slurpies.
They want instant results, not results that take 24, 48, or 72-hours to take effect. Doctors, as much as they would love to tell you, can't say you're over reacting go home and call me in a week. That's an awsome way to get sued in the US.
You meant "lose a little business in the US." That's what drives the overperscription, not fear of being sued. Doctors get sued for malpractice for everything, and IANAL, but I think refusing to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics is one of the easier cases to win. It's about greed, not fear of liability.
Taking drugs means your body never learns to fend for itself, like a spoiled brat.
I don't know much about immunology, but that doesn't sound exactly accurate. Anyway, the overperscription of antibiotics is often for the flu. Since antibiotics do nothing against viruses, you still get just as sick, your immune system has to work just as hard to fight it off.
Too many non productive "things" are becoming parts of a virtual economy. What is this? We are still living in RL, this isn't the Matrix and even if, the Matrix still has an RL "dynamic" that keeps it running. Real products (hard machines or what have you) need to be produced and sold to make an economy (and indeed humanity) better. Not virtual "stuff"....
Stuff like movies, software, and research findings? I wouldn't be surprised if "virtual" products combined have been right up there with agriculture with staples of our economy for a while.
It's very easy to defend free speech from your comfortable home in a stable society, but if you live in a less fortunate country then you have to take a different route to prevent people dying unnecessarily.
I'm sure it is much harder when that is the case, but going along with censorship to placate the violent idiots will only strengthen them long term. Hypocrites like religious fundamentalists are wrong and attempt to steer society in wrong directions. They need to be criticized, mocked, and exposed to fight back. They won't like it, sometimes they'll be violent about it. If you don't though, they won't stop.
We have a limited number of effective antibiotics. Once a bacteria is immune to an antibiotic, there are fewer effective antibiotics you can treat it with, and if you can't find an effective antibiotic for the next infection, the patient dies.
I don't know much about computer security, but you can't convince me that there are a limited number of ways to fight botnets.
Furthermore, the way to prevent antibiotic resistance is to reserve antibiotics for when they're necessary AND use them in a way that is effective.
This seems about as necessary as fighting botnets come, this was a big botnet that was actually doing damage. This sounds like it was used as effectively as it could have been.
And I'm guessing if he only told the responsible companies, they'd ignore it rather than spend any money fixing it before it becomes a problem. Or maybe even say it's illegal and try to have him punished anyway. It's a little like how if you see a politician taking bribes, you tell the media, not the politician himself.
Many Americans seem to think their country is the best and most advanced in the world. They are brainwashed by the mass media's propaganda.
That's true for many more countries. I understand that even under the taliban, there were quite a few people who thought Afghanistan was pretty nice to live in.
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
Shakespeare was writing plays with thinly veiled messages: entertainment overlapped with preaching long before you were around. If you're expecting movies to never preach to you, that's your misinterpretation of what the arts are supposed to be.
"I wanted to create a game that had both an entertaining adventure but also hold true to the commandment of 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.'"
Done: I am unaware of any game in which you actually kill people. Plenty of games in which your fictional character kills other fictional characters, but they're videogames, not real life.
It's odd to me that religious types sometimes seem to put more emphasis on morality in fiction than they do in real life. It's not real. Why is this a thing to them? No one has ever demonstrated that violence in videogames or movies actually leads to desensitization for real-life violence, so that's not a valid reason. There's plenty of real-world violence going on, that should be higher priority.
Virtual violence is repugnant to them is what I think it comes down to. That's fine, they should not play games with violence. I think this guy is basically doing the right thing, he's making his own game to fit his tastes, which is great. There aren't enough games like that. I still have to object to the mindset he seems to have: that virtual, in-game violence is somehow morally wrong.
And most in-game violence to me seems pretty justified. Most involve shooting bad guys or bad aliens. GTA allows you to kill innocent bystanders, sure, but so far that's always been a player using free will to do so. The main story does involve murder, but nine times out of ten it's justified. Not great morality there, but pretty good considering it's not real.
Some games actually suceed in making you feel guilty. Fallout 3 had oodles of opportunities to do evil, and plenty of times I ended up feeling pretty guilty.
Having played some of those wisdom tree games, I very much doubt people who are out to make games as a vehicle to promote their own morality have NEARLY the skill it would take to make a game in which a player felt guilty for committing virtual sins, but that is a possibility.
"It was important to do so, and it is not easy. You can defend yourself by stunning Enforcers, or thugs for a very brief time. The goal is the mission, and to avoid direct contact with the enemy as much as possible."
That sounds like a watered down version of mirror's edge, a FPS/FPA* which combines parkour with bad guys with guns. You can stun an enemy to take his gun, then use it on other bad guys for a few shots, but the game really encourages you at most parts to flee and stun rather than get into a shootout. Not for morality reasons though, it's just easier that way.
*I don't want to get into a semantic argument over marketing terms here, you know what I'm talking about.
I admit, that this sounds religion-motivated, but that's hardly a drawback of an argument...
Yes, it is, becuase I don't share your religious view (or it seems many of your other views on life) so the underpinnings to your argument are shit to me.
Now, what is the justification for a cocaine-user's pleasure? What did he do to deserve, what a Trainspotting's [imdb.com] character describes as "thousand times the most intense orgasm you've ever experienced"?
Pretty sure that quote was talking about heroin, not cocaine. Anyway, when talking about someone doing something to themselves, they shouldn't HAVE to justify something to anyone but themselves. If I think "I should be able to do coke, because I got out of bed this morning," then that's the justification I'm going with, and the judges (me) are going to agree with me.
Of course, one needn't necessarily have earned all the pleasures of life — as long as one's habits don't interfere with others, one ought to be able to enjoy them. This is an individualist view, and I don't fully disagree. I would, however, be rather wary of such people: I wouldn't want one of them to marry my daughter, for example, as he may decide one day to stop caring for her.
What makes you say that last part? How do you go from "You haven't earned that feeling" to "You're gonna stop caring about my daughter." I don't follow the logic if there is any there.
I wouldn't want my daughter to become such a person either, because I not only want my own grandchildren, I also want the Humanity to continue to exist (preferably — my brand of it, the Western Civilization).
We've justified the cocaine-user's pleasure, what justifies you to make decrees on the future of civilization and humanity?
I don't know about anyone else but every person I know who uses drugs on a regular basis is a complete moron and doesn't have anything better to do than getting doped up and hanging out and talking with their friends for hours about nothing.
Most people you know who you say "do drugs" are probably doing pot, which yeah, is not very conducive to doing much productive in most fields anyway. Caffine is the most widely used stimulant, so I'd argue that most of the people you know are people who do mild stimulants.
It's worth pointing out that according to one poll 20% of our scientists already take "brain enhancing drugs," like ritalin. From personal experience I can tell you at least 20% of graduate students in the sciences and many more senior scientists do recreational drugs too, That portion that uses recreational drugs doesn't completely overlap with the portion that use brain enhancing drugs, and neither are the least productive portions of scientists.
So that's probably why we're stuck in the stone age, our scientists are too busy being morons and getting high. Or maybe you just don't really know what you're talking about.
Why do you, Americans, put up with your mobile operators specifically disabling features (like tethering or bluetooth) on phones being sold via contracts?
A -few- of us see cell phones as interesting toys at best. Sure, I like all the features, and I do obviously read some of the slashdot news articles on mobile phones because I'm a nerd, but I'm not going to march on washington just because my mobile options are more limited than they are in other markets.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahhh religion, where changing flesh into bread and blood into wine isnt considered "witchcraft". Yet all other "magics" was at one time punishable.
Hypocrisy, it loves religion
Ahhh science, where one logical theory is considered wrong but another one can be considered right.
Hypocrisy loves science too when you oversimplify like you did with religion.
I'd go original Star Trek style, and it would just be hot chicks in body paint, wearing not much of anything.
And where do I find these hot chicks? Oh wait, I think I remember a website that had to do with that...
I think we're already seeing that. The average life expectancy is much longer than it used to be. Go way back and I'd assume infectious diseases, wars, and animal attacks would be the primary causes of death. Today it's heart disease, automobile accidents, and cancer.
I'm guessing if we cure cancer and heart disease, we'll be seeing a lot more neurological diseases though. I'd expect there's some natural upper limit to how old your brain can be before it's toast, and I'd expect that we aren't really living long enough to see it yet.
Does alzheimers affect one specific, more central part of the brain? Do most brain cancers spring up more from some regions of the brain than others?
Meningiomas are brain cancers from the meninges, the covering of the brain, so I'd assume that if cell phone radiation could penetrate through the skull and -if- it did lead to increased risk of cancer, meningiomas are one it could cause. On the other hand, my understanding of adult neuron production is that they come from deeper in the brain, by the ventricles. I'd guess that a medulloblastoma would be more likely to come from such a site, as this is where the neuronal precursor/ neuronal stem cells are, so if cell phone radiation didn't penetrate that far, you wouldn't see an increased risk for that type. I don't know much about where glial cells of various flavors replicate, I'd hazard a guess that they replicate in most regions of the brain.
This image I found of an alzheimer brain scan compared to a normal brain scan makes it look like the area primarily affected isn't right by your ears.
Anyway, given that they probably strapped active cell phones to these mices heads for days at a time, I wouldn't expect much difference on the alzheimers from using a cell phone to talk occasionally. Same thing with cancer. Maybe if you live with a cell phone right next to your ear, you wouldn't be decreasing your chances of alzheimers, and you'd only slightly if at all be increasing your risk of certain types of brain cancer.
Why is basically screaming "FOUL!" the first post? The constitutionality of this is the most boring aspect for me personally, and almost none of us are really lawyers let alone supreme court justices. I'm sure the legislators would tell you it's a publicity stunt to raise the issue to a generally apathetic public. Next they might try some type of tie in with the "Jersey Shore" cast.
If we're going to get bogged down on constitutionality, what can Minnesota do constitutionally to accomplish it's goals? Cry while the power companies dance around saying "Ha ha you can't touch me! Lalalalal! Burning coal in a different state! Suck it environmentalists!"
Based on what I've seen, the vast majority of people already wanted the newest one. The price for used madden whatever the current release was about 5 dollars less. Last year's used was I think about half price. Two years was somewhere around $5. Gamestop would buy back two year old maddens, for about a quarter. People lined up for hours yearly to get it.
I don't play sports games or watch them, so maybe it is a big deal to have current rosters, the latest players, but there was otherwise very little difference from what I could see. It's madden football. Buy the 3 year old copy for a smile, it's the same game being simulated, and there have been no major advancements in the simulation. Pretend that one football player's name is actually another current football players name. That doesn't seem to be going on at all, kids turned their noses up at the used copies. Madden fans would sooner sell one of their two current gen systems rather than play a year old madden.
This is basically RIAA level greedy on the part of EA, they're playing sleazy to get only slightly more sales.
I guess an argument could be made that they are saving money by not maintaining the servers. But I really don't think they're going to get many more sales.
Yes, everything from the hilton to the capsule hotels and below. In kyoto, I stayed in a non-enclosed hostel that was about 10 dollars a night, holes in the walls were patched with cardboard but very clean. Mats on the floor and kersonene powered space heater. I didn't see any cheap hostels with western-style mattresses, the western hotels do of course.
You could also do pretty much the same at Internet Cafes. I've found the accommodation (couch+cubicle+snacks+internet+manga+games) to be far better than even most first-class flight cabins. You still need your everyday clothes on, so I'd stay there max 2 days
And at least a few years ago, free all-you-can-drink mellon flavored slurpies.
there's plenty of "love hotels" to be found. :)
In my experience, some of them don't allow gaijin either.
They want instant results, not results that take 24, 48, or 72-hours to take effect. Doctors, as much as they would love to tell you, can't say you're over reacting go home and call me in a week. That's an awsome way to get sued in the US.
You meant "lose a little business in the US." That's what drives the overperscription, not fear of being sued. Doctors get sued for malpractice for everything, and IANAL, but I think refusing to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics is one of the easier cases to win. It's about greed, not fear of liability.
Taking drugs means your body never learns to fend for itself, like a spoiled brat.
I don't know much about immunology, but that doesn't sound exactly accurate. Anyway, the overperscription of antibiotics is often for the flu. Since antibiotics do nothing against viruses, you still get just as sick, your immune system has to work just as hard to fight it off.
Too many non productive "things" are becoming parts of a virtual economy. What is this? We are still living in RL, this isn't the Matrix and even if, the Matrix still has an RL "dynamic" that keeps it running.
Real products (hard machines or what have you) need to be produced and sold to make an economy (and indeed humanity) better. Not virtual "stuff"....
Stuff like movies, software, and research findings? I wouldn't be surprised if "virtual" products combined have been right up there with agriculture with staples of our economy for a while.
It's very easy to defend free speech from your comfortable home in a stable society, but if you live in a less fortunate country then you have to take a different route to prevent people dying unnecessarily.
I'm sure it is much harder when that is the case, but going along with censorship to placate the violent idiots will only strengthen them long term. Hypocrites like religious fundamentalists are wrong and attempt to steer society in wrong directions. They need to be criticized, mocked, and exposed to fight back. They won't like it, sometimes they'll be violent about it. If you don't though, they won't stop.
We have a limited number of effective antibiotics. Once a bacteria is immune to an antibiotic, there are fewer effective antibiotics you can treat it with, and if you can't find an effective antibiotic for the next infection, the patient dies.
I don't know much about computer security, but you can't convince me that there are a limited number of ways to fight botnets.
Furthermore, the way to prevent antibiotic resistance is to reserve antibiotics for when they're necessary AND use them in a way that is effective.
This seems about as necessary as fighting botnets come, this was a big botnet that was actually doing damage. This sounds like it was used as effectively as it could have been.
If he can do it, so can the bad guys.
And I'm guessing if he only told the responsible companies, they'd ignore it rather than spend any money fixing it before it becomes a problem. Or maybe even say it's illegal and try to have him punished anyway. It's a little like how if you see a politician taking bribes, you tell the media, not the politician himself.
Many Americans seem to think their country is the best and most advanced in the world. They are brainwashed by the mass media's propaganda.
That's true for many more countries. I understand that even under the taliban, there were quite a few people who thought Afghanistan was pretty nice to live in.
When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.
Shakespeare was writing plays with thinly veiled messages: entertainment overlapped with preaching long before you were around. If you're expecting movies to never preach to you, that's your misinterpretation of what the arts are supposed to be.
Well, no, I'm saying the people you kill are not real people. They're fictional. It's not murder because no murders are taking place.
"I wanted to create a game that had both an entertaining adventure but also hold true to the commandment of 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.'"
Done: I am unaware of any game in which you actually kill people. Plenty of games in which your fictional character kills other fictional characters, but they're videogames, not real life.
It's odd to me that religious types sometimes seem to put more emphasis on morality in fiction than they do in real life. It's not real. Why is this a thing to them? No one has ever demonstrated that violence in videogames or movies actually leads to desensitization for real-life violence, so that's not a valid reason. There's plenty of real-world violence going on, that should be higher priority.
Virtual violence is repugnant to them is what I think it comes down to. That's fine, they should not play games with violence. I think this guy is basically doing the right thing, he's making his own game to fit his tastes, which is great. There aren't enough games like that. I still have to object to the mindset he seems to have: that virtual, in-game violence is somehow morally wrong.
And most in-game violence to me seems pretty justified. Most involve shooting bad guys or bad aliens. GTA allows you to kill innocent bystanders, sure, but so far that's always been a player using free will to do so. The main story does involve murder, but nine times out of ten it's justified. Not great morality there, but pretty good considering it's not real.
Some games actually suceed in making you feel guilty. Fallout 3 had oodles of opportunities to do evil, and plenty of times I ended up feeling pretty guilty.
Having played some of those wisdom tree games, I very much doubt people who are out to make games as a vehicle to promote their own morality have NEARLY the skill it would take to make a game in which a player felt guilty for committing virtual sins, but that is a possibility.
"It was important to do so, and it is not easy. You can defend yourself by stunning Enforcers, or thugs for a very brief time. The goal is the mission, and to avoid direct contact with the enemy as much as possible."
That sounds like a watered down version of mirror's edge, a FPS/FPA* which combines parkour with bad guys with guns. You can stun an enemy to take his gun, then use it on other bad guys for a few shots, but the game really encourages you at most parts to flee and stun rather than get into a shootout. Not for morality reasons though, it's just easier that way.
*I don't want to get into a semantic argument over marketing terms here, you know what I'm talking about.
I watched spinal tap on VHS well before my parents got dialup. I hope that puppy eats your testicles.
I admit, that this sounds religion-motivated, but that's hardly a drawback of an argument...
Yes, it is, becuase I don't share your religious view (or it seems many of your other views on life) so the underpinnings to your argument are shit to me.
Now, what is the justification for a cocaine-user's pleasure? What did he do to deserve, what a Trainspotting's [imdb.com] character describes as "thousand times the most intense orgasm you've ever experienced"?
Pretty sure that quote was talking about heroin, not cocaine. Anyway, when talking about someone doing something to themselves, they shouldn't HAVE to justify something to anyone but themselves. If I think "I should be able to do coke, because I got out of bed this morning," then that's the justification I'm going with, and the judges (me) are going to agree with me.
Of course, one needn't necessarily have earned all the pleasures of life — as long as one's habits don't interfere with others, one ought to be able to enjoy them. This is an individualist view, and I don't fully disagree. I would, however, be rather wary of such people: I wouldn't want one of them to marry my daughter, for example, as he may decide one day to stop caring for her.
What makes you say that last part? How do you go from "You haven't earned that feeling" to "You're gonna stop caring about my daughter." I don't follow the logic if there is any there.
I wouldn't want my daughter to become such a person either, because I not only want my own grandchildren, I also want the Humanity to continue to exist (preferably — my brand of it, the Western Civilization).
We've justified the cocaine-user's pleasure, what justifies you to make decrees on the future of civilization and humanity?
I don't know about anyone else but every person I know who uses drugs on a regular basis is a complete moron and doesn't have anything better to do than getting doped up and hanging out and talking with their friends for hours about nothing.
Most people you know who you say "do drugs" are probably doing pot, which yeah, is not very conducive to doing much productive in most fields anyway. Caffine is the most widely used stimulant, so I'd argue that most of the people you know are people who do mild stimulants.
It's worth pointing out that according to one poll 20% of our scientists already take "brain enhancing drugs," like ritalin. From personal experience I can tell you at least 20% of graduate students in the sciences and many more senior scientists do recreational drugs too, That portion that uses recreational drugs doesn't completely overlap with the portion that use brain enhancing drugs, and neither are the least productive portions of scientists.
So that's probably why we're stuck in the stone age, our scientists are too busy being morons and getting high. Or maybe you just don't really know what you're talking about.
I've known some women who report similar results with a "TENS" unit.
I'd like my orgasmatron to go up to "ELEVENS" personally.
1) Many, MANY games don't feature oversexualized women. You have games like Civ 4
I dunno, cleopatra is pretty smokin hot on the DS version. And she makes kissy faces at you under some victory conditions.
There have been a few low points in my life...
Why do you, Americans, put up with your mobile operators specifically disabling features (like tethering or bluetooth) on phones being sold via contracts?
A -few- of us see cell phones as interesting toys at best. Sure, I like all the features, and I do obviously read some of the slashdot news articles on mobile phones because I'm a nerd, but I'm not going to march on washington just because my mobile options are more limited than they are in other markets.