I suppose the alternative is that merit is the only factor in evaluating people in the field and that fewer women enter the field for whatever reason. You could similarly say that merit is the only factor in library science and I wouldn't immediately assume that you're saying men make awful librarians.
We have a lot of ambiguity in this discussion, I think. How close is "close"? A big enough nuke might melt a ship if it misses by a mile. If your target effectively becomes two miles in diameter, it's a lot easier to hit.
Also, how cheap is "cheap"? Even now, we're perfectly happy to spend quite a lot of extra money if it gives us an edge. If a capital ship costs a trillion dollars to manufacture, spending a billion dollars on a projectile that makes your capital ship more likely to win seems reasonable. There's a cost/benefit analysis to be done there that's beyond the scope of this discussion
Also, the nuke does spread damage. A kinetic energy weapon will likely destroy or disable a single ship. If the ship is modular, it may even be able to contain breaches and continue functioning after sustaining heavy damage, particularly if the kinetic weapon passes through without imparting most of its energy. But the nuke could even disable or destroy a group of vessels.
But all I really meant to do was question the assertion that they'd be ineffective. He seemed to be arguing that the expanding gases would just dissipate over the hull, and the threat seems to me to be the massive burst of energy
His argument for why the nuke would be ineffective was that a ship's hull could dissipate the expanding gases. Scattered plasma from iron balls would be along the lines of what he was envisioning, and if it was close enough, the nuke would just melt the ship anyway.
Of course the metal balls would be vaporized and not provide effective shrapnel. Which is what makes me wonder why nukes wouldn't be effective. Ok, there's no shockwave, but there's so much energy involved, if they detonate near the enemy ship, I'd expect the nuke to melt the ship. It's not like you can safely fly your ship close to the sun just because it's not getting buffeted with shockwaves.
Wait, what? That's your response? I'm just observing that we as a culture, put the two crimes together as though they are similarly bad. Even you put them together in the post I responded to. Have you changed your mind since then? Do you no longer think that it makes sense to lump rape in with murder? Exactly what part of my post do you object to, anyway? The part where I say the punishments for rape and murder are universally equivalent in the American justice system? Because that part doesn't exist.
Interesting, so you would suggest, as I mentioned in a separate post, it comes back to maidenhood. But that's not really what I'm getting at. I mean, while I do have curiosity as to the sociocultural background that led us to thinking rape is so bad, I'm more interested in questioning the modern justification for that thinking. Rape rarely results in pregnancy today, and even if it did, it would not make the woman unfit for marriage. For that matter, by the reasoning you give, no one should give a fuck when a woman on birth control is raped.
What makes rape worthy of being lumped in with murder? When you kill someone, you take away everything they are and everything they will ever be. When you rape someone, you take away their dignity and possibly cause them physical harm. This is bad. It should definitely be a crime. But in our grand hall of the horrors of humanity, what puts rape on the pedestal next to murder? Is it our traditional notions of crimes against women being worse than crimes against men? Would we think raping a man is as grave a crime as raping a woman? Does it come back to purity, chastity, and maidenhood?
I wonder about this sometimes. We, as a society, seem to think rape is as grave a crime as one can commit. A person who is raped is scarred for life, and only the most serious of punishments is appropriate. But I know that if I were given the choice of 44 years in prison or being raped multiple times, it would require me no time at all to pick the multiple rapes. It would suck, but I'd get over it in a hell of a lot less than 44 years. Is there anyone here who would pick the prison time?
Now murder, I can see. Naturally, I'd rather spend 44 years in prison than be murdered, but we have this idea that rape is somehow as grave a crime as murder. If a woman is murdered, we think that's bad. But if a woman is raped, we are appalled. Yet I suspect most women would rather be raped than murdered. It has never exactly made sense to me.
Is that carried to other crimes? What about assault? (I'm going to kick you in the nuts) Robbery? (I think I'll go hold up a liquor store tomorrow) Copyright infringement? (I'm going to download some mp3s tonight) Drunk driving? (I'm going to get shitfaced and joyride this weekend)
If not, what makes murder so special? What if there's a conditional? Like "Call me stupid one more time and I'll kill you" If that's still illegal, does it depend on the conditional? Like a justifying conditional: "Attack me with that knife and I'll kill you" or an impossible conditional: "Transform into a kangaroo and I'll kill you"
This is a long shot, but maybe this would level the playing field in terms of physical appearance. Then it would all come down to money and personality, and surely Slashdot readers would benefit.
I wouldn't get my hopes too high just yet, though.
The terminology seems odd here. Isn't suspended animation pretty much the opposite of being a zombie? I mean zombies are the animated dead. Suspended animation makes you the unanimated living.
I tend to disagree. I think this is more of a recent cultural shift. You're right that protecting children is a fundamental human instinct, but we have, in the past, been far more trusting of strangers than we are today. My girlfriends' mom was terrified of the prospect of her being kidnapped as a child, largely because of horror stories to that effect that were prevalent on the news. Such an event, however, is statistically very improbable. And she was far less concerned about her daughter being injured in a car accident, which is fairly likely. My mom, on the other hand, who was raised with a larger extended family and in a more open sort of community was relatively unconcerned with me speaking to adults. Our concern for our children is commonly misplaced, and it isn't our instincts that are to blame. Among other things, it's news media that distorts the danger by overreporting these sorts of crimes.
Interesting thought, though I would expect the difference to be one of magnitude. That is, if cell phones cause cancer, recent ubiquity would cause *more* cancer than the relatively less common use of them years ago. But I would expect there to be a measured, statistically significant increase regardless.
Unless you think it works like a sort of critical mass where you aren't at an increased risk until it gets to a certain level
Strictly speaking, yes, this is true. For practical purposes, however, the results are still encouraging. You can be confident that, in today's world, despite the alleged dangers of cell phones, you are no more at risk of brain cancer than your parents were.
So, conversely, in order to have positive life experience, you have to have negative levels in the game, which is not possible. No, he meant inversely.
I can't seem to come up with the name for the effect (named for the researchers who observed it), but I'm fairly sure there's research out there that suggests that people who have great confidence in their performance on cognitive tests disproportionately tend to have scored poorly. In short, stupid people don't know that they're stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose the alternative is that merit is the only factor in evaluating people in the field and that fewer women enter the field for whatever reason. You could similarly say that merit is the only factor in library science and I wouldn't immediately assume that you're saying men make awful librarians.
We have a lot of ambiguity in this discussion, I think. How close is "close"? A big enough nuke might melt a ship if it misses by a mile. If your target effectively becomes two miles in diameter, it's a lot easier to hit.
Also, how cheap is "cheap"? Even now, we're perfectly happy to spend quite a lot of extra money if it gives us an edge. If a capital ship costs a trillion dollars to manufacture, spending a billion dollars on a projectile that makes your capital ship more likely to win seems reasonable. There's a cost/benefit analysis to be done there that's beyond the scope of this discussion
Also, the nuke does spread damage. A kinetic energy weapon will likely destroy or disable a single ship. If the ship is modular, it may even be able to contain breaches and continue functioning after sustaining heavy damage, particularly if the kinetic weapon passes through without imparting most of its energy. But the nuke could even disable or destroy a group of vessels.
But all I really meant to do was question the assertion that they'd be ineffective. He seemed to be arguing that the expanding gases would just dissipate over the hull, and the threat seems to me to be the massive burst of energy
His argument for why the nuke would be ineffective was that a ship's hull could dissipate the expanding gases. Scattered plasma from iron balls would be along the lines of what he was envisioning, and if it was close enough, the nuke would just melt the ship anyway.
Of course the metal balls would be vaporized and not provide effective shrapnel. Which is what makes me wonder why nukes wouldn't be effective. Ok, there's no shockwave, but there's so much energy involved, if they detonate near the enemy ship, I'd expect the nuke to melt the ship. It's not like you can safely fly your ship close to the sun just because it's not getting buffeted with shockwaves.
Wait, what? That's your response? I'm just observing that we as a culture, put the two crimes together as though they are similarly bad. Even you put them together in the post I responded to. Have you changed your mind since then? Do you no longer think that it makes sense to lump rape in with murder? Exactly what part of my post do you object to, anyway? The part where I say the punishments for rape and murder are universally equivalent in the American justice system? Because that part doesn't exist.
Interesting, so you would suggest, as I mentioned in a separate post, it comes back to maidenhood. But that's not really what I'm getting at. I mean, while I do have curiosity as to the sociocultural background that led us to thinking rape is so bad, I'm more interested in questioning the modern justification for that thinking. Rape rarely results in pregnancy today, and even if it did, it would not make the woman unfit for marriage. For that matter, by the reasoning you give, no one should give a fuck when a woman on birth control is raped.
What makes rape worthy of being lumped in with murder? When you kill someone, you take away everything they are and everything they will ever be. When you rape someone, you take away their dignity and possibly cause them physical harm. This is bad. It should definitely be a crime. But in our grand hall of the horrors of humanity, what puts rape on the pedestal next to murder? Is it our traditional notions of crimes against women being worse than crimes against men? Would we think raping a man is as grave a crime as raping a woman? Does it come back to purity, chastity, and maidenhood?
I wonder about this sometimes. We, as a society, seem to think rape is as grave a crime as one can commit. A person who is raped is scarred for life, and only the most serious of punishments is appropriate. But I know that if I were given the choice of 44 years in prison or being raped multiple times, it would require me no time at all to pick the multiple rapes. It would suck, but I'd get over it in a hell of a lot less than 44 years. Is there anyone here who would pick the prison time?
Now murder, I can see. Naturally, I'd rather spend 44 years in prison than be murdered, but we have this idea that rape is somehow as grave a crime as murder. If a woman is murdered, we think that's bad. But if a woman is raped, we are appalled. Yet I suspect most women would rather be raped than murdered. It has never exactly made sense to me.
Is that carried to other crimes? What about assault? (I'm going to kick you in the nuts) Robbery? (I think I'll go hold up a liquor store tomorrow) Copyright infringement? (I'm going to download some mp3s tonight) Drunk driving? (I'm going to get shitfaced and joyride this weekend)
If not, what makes murder so special? What if there's a conditional? Like "Call me stupid one more time and I'll kill you" If that's still illegal, does it depend on the conditional? Like a justifying conditional: "Attack me with that knife and I'll kill you" or an impossible conditional: "Transform into a kangaroo and I'll kill you"
This is a long shot, but maybe this would level the playing field in terms of physical appearance. Then it would all come down to money and personality, and surely Slashdot readers would benefit.
I wouldn't get my hopes too high just yet, though.
Use body heat from meatbags as a power source in case we accidentally block out the sun with pollution?
Wait, no, that's stupid. My mistake
The terminology seems odd here. Isn't suspended animation pretty much the opposite of being a zombie? I mean zombies are the animated dead. Suspended animation makes you the unanimated living.
My girlfriends' mom[...]
Evidently I have multiple girlfriends who share the same mother. That would be pretty awesome if it were true. Well... maybe.
I tend to disagree. I think this is more of a recent cultural shift. You're right that protecting children is a fundamental human instinct, but we have, in the past, been far more trusting of strangers than we are today. My girlfriends' mom was terrified of the prospect of her being kidnapped as a child, largely because of horror stories to that effect that were prevalent on the news. Such an event, however, is statistically very improbable. And she was far less concerned about her daughter being injured in a car accident, which is fairly likely. My mom, on the other hand, who was raised with a larger extended family and in a more open sort of community was relatively unconcerned with me speaking to adults. Our concern for our children is commonly misplaced, and it isn't our instincts that are to blame. Among other things, it's news media that distorts the danger by overreporting these sorts of crimes.
Yeah, they sure as hell don't want to lose the "single person consisting of you" demographic.
Wonder what effect this will have on plots in 30 Rock. Is Jack going to gun for CEO of Comcast now? That lacks the same punch.
Interesting thought, though I would expect the difference to be one of magnitude. That is, if cell phones cause cancer, recent ubiquity would cause *more* cancer than the relatively less common use of them years ago. But I would expect there to be a measured, statistically significant increase regardless.
Unless you think it works like a sort of critical mass where you aren't at an increased risk until it gets to a certain level
Strictly speaking, yes, this is true. For practical purposes, however, the results are still encouraging. You can be confident that, in today's world, despite the alleged dangers of cell phones, you are no more at risk of brain cancer than your parents were.
They seem pretty competent to me on the spam blocking at least.
Ha! If so, I suppose you should keep your character at level 79
So, conversely, in order to have positive life experience, you have to have negative levels in the game, which is not possible. No, he meant inversely.
Basic things like that slip through spell checks all the time, and I'm always seeing otherwise literature people misusing words like that.
self-referential?
Aha! Thank you. This was what I was trying to come up with. If only I had hit refresh an extra time rather than posting down below.
I can't seem to come up with the name for the effect (named for the researchers who observed it), but I'm fairly sure there's research out there that suggests that people who have great confidence in their performance on cognitive tests disproportionately tend to have scored poorly. In short, stupid people don't know that they're stupid.
Personally I even support people's right to [...] say the sky is red..
Isn't it sometimes?