(I knew you couldn't resist. Way too much ego for that.)
Imagine - oil would no longer have much value, and so the Middle East would no longer be a constant battleground. We would no longer have to worry about global warming because CO2 production would go right down. And increasingly resource hungry emerging economies like China and India would no longer be such a threat to "our" oil resources.
If the USA spent 10% of it's military budget on alternative energy sources then this nut could be cracked quickly...
He didn't say spending 10% on cold fusion would give us usable cold fusion. His claim was that spending 10% on alternative energy source research would reduce the world tension caused by the scarcity of energy. Even if cold fusion turns out to be complete bunk, we'll find that out faster and shift our focus to other alternative energy sources.
I don't think this post has had enough 5th grade wit, so...And you're a poo-poo-ca-ca-head!
The real difference between you and i is that i know this is a ridiculous argument that's going nowhere and i'm treating it as such. You still think there's something to be gained by winning it. The fact that you're A:wrong and B:a pinhead don't help. Please respond again - i haven't had this much fun in a long time. If you could start picking on my spelling or grammer or compare me to Hitler in some way it would really make my day.
Well, quickly is an overly-broad term - even 50 years might be quick to go from a wonky idea to usable cold fusion. (Or something equally dramatic.) The only real point is that the extra money would get us results faster than current funding levels will.
Certainly transistors could not have been invented in 1804, but there were a lot of factors contributing to that impossibility beyond funding - organizational structures and methodologies to support the research needed just didn't exist. They would have had to begin by doing research on better ways to do research!
We have the organizations in place to support the research - money is the only limiting factor we can identify here. There is no absolute timeline for discovery.
Even if you assume that none of what we have right now is even close, more money would help us find out faster which theoretical bases were not going to work, allowing us to focus more on the ones that looks promising.
This debate is really a moot point though - the real question is would the money we would have to spend be greater than the benefits we would reap. Could that money be put to better uses?
(Here's the post where i respond to the stuff i gloated about ignoring in my last post.)
Throwing money at a problem rarely yields a solution,
Bullshit. Throwing money at a problem when money isn't the problem doesn't help, but when progress is slow because the endeavor has been underfunded, then throwing money at it does help. Projects that have more money at their disposal than they actually could use are the minority.
anyone who says we could do something if we just increased spending needs to supply evidence that funding is currently a problem.
Here's where we go back to the most basic of all rebuttals: RTFA. "A positive Department of Energy review would open the door to badly needed research support."
Dig the hole deeper Spock - i dare ya. (See? I'm taunting you! Now you're in a pickle - respond and continue the farce or ignore it and risk having people think i won this argument? Whatever will he do? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!)
Yeah, that's why i included the specific knowledge part. Tip: if you're going to be intellectually dishonest and only address half an argument, don't include the whole argument in your reply. (See how i completely ignored part of your argument? Totally pretended like it didn't exist? That's how it's done. Pfft. Amateur.)
Hey Mister Spock: you may be happy with your logical victory, but that doesn't mean you're right, it just means you're a pedantic twit.
The original poster's claim is intuitive and meshes both with my common-sense knowledge about the way the world works and my specific knowledge about how research is conducted. That makes the detractor's claim the one that requires proof.
An analogous situation: I have a picture of a house. The parts i can see are all painted blue and the picture was taken by me this morning. If i make the claim that it's a blue house, and you say that i'm wrong, you are logically correct because the other sides might be painted a different color or it might have been repainted since the picture was taken.
Should i be taking you out to find the actual house so i can prove my claim? No. What i should do is mock you by calling you Mister Spock, then explain to you why your misguided adherence to formal logic in this case makes you a pedantic twit.;)
"Please" as in "please don't confuse research with development". The pace of development scales almost directly with money spent. Research is, by its very nature, unknown. Saying that research will magically produce results if only we put 10% of the defense budget into it completely fails to understand the nature of research.
Now that's an argument worthy of the insightful mod. I still think you're wrong, but at least there's something to work with now.
Research is not a finite number of scientists sitting around thinking about a problem. If it was, then you're right - more money would not make them think faster.
Research in this case is people doing experiments, gathering data, writing, publishing, reviewing and then doing it all again. More money means more people to run the experiments, gather the data, and write, edit, and review the papers. It also means better, faster, and more reliable equipment, more experimental runs from which they can draw data, and fewer outside requirements upon the researchers, allowing them to devote more time to this task. (To address another reply you made: they'll identify the bottlenecks faster and get to solving them sooner.)
Even though the end result of the research is unknown, i see no reason to believe that more funds would not get us there faster. Unless you believe that all the funds that can be effectively devoted to the problem already are devoted to the problem - a claim i don't think anyone can reasonably make.
Massively Multiplayer Game. NWN rocks, but it's not a MMG. 64 is bigger than most games, but MMGs are all about thousands of players.
While you're at it, have a look at how all that user-created content is delivered. Players have to go out and download it and install it in what can be a confusing process if the module uses lots of custom content.
MMGs deliver their new content (except outright expansions) to all the players automagically with no outside work required. Not in the same league.
It is of the benefit that they would be in compliance with the law and wouldn't get fined by the government. The cost of implementation is as trivial as the process itself, therefore they would have little excuse for not doing it.
The reason for doing this has as much or more to do with making deceitful software makers accountable as it does with educating the consumer.
Require that the icons be prominently displayed on a special confirmation page before purchase or download can occur. Require a similar screen as a part of any installer.
My point is that if a game is designed to be free-form, you can't "abuse" that freedom because it's a part of the game. My idea of 'abuse' is exploiting a bug or hole in the game in order to do something that wasn't originally intended to happen. But if the player is allowed to pump up their character like that, then what's the problem? Perhaps people who want a more "realistic' game should move to another game or stop whining. Perhaps these two styles of play can't co-exist.
Abuse doesn't just refer to breaking the rules. In this case it's about breaking the spirit of the game. A free-form game is not an anything-goes game. It still has guidelines, they just aren't enforced with mechanics and game-masters.
It's absolutely true that those play styles can't coexist, but it's not the moderates who need a more restrictive system, it's the Mary-Sues. The moderates use the freedom to explore different possibilities and collaborate on a story. The Mary-Sues abuse the freedom to inflict their fantasies on the other players. They just want attention - an audience for their ego-trip. Even a more restrictive system won't stop someone from playing a Mary-Sue, it just makes it more obvious when they're doing so.
But if we step back a bit, this kind of superficial 'code of conduct' that has evolved in these types of games is an example of an interesting social phenomenon akin to what we know as 'morality' and 'chivalry.' Interesting how this pops up everywhere.
You're right there, it is interesting, but i don't think it's fundamentally different from the problems all groups of people face when they get together. Codes of conduct, etiquette, ethics, and morality - all forms of social control of behavior.
The problem arises in interaction between two or more different playing styles. The person who creates a balanced, moderate character isn't likely to ruin the fun of everyone else, but the Mary-Sue that comes in and slays all the dragons with a wave of their pinky has just ended that story for all the other players.
If a game was designed to be free-form and one of the players abuses that freedom then it's not the game's fault - it's not a design issue. A game that doesn't cater to all playing styles isn't flawed, it's just not meant for all players.
Mary-Sues are players who are in the wrong game, but the open nature of the games they are in only makes that fact obvious to the other players, not to the Mary-Sue.
Despite his flamebait tone, the parent post has a good point.
We shouldn't forget that this is the company that was using illegal immigrants as below-minimum-wage night custodians. When the feds raided them they claimed ignorance of the illegals, blamed it on a sub-contractor, and made sure the feds didn't arrest the illegals until the end of their shift so the stores were bright and shiny the next day.
Your version of "knowing" java is like saying that the ability to hook up a power supply, motherboard, processor, and hard drive and install Windows on it makes you a system administrator.
You know how to administer a Java app, but you don't know Java. If that's not what it says on your resume then you are lying. Your skills are needed and they're non-trivial - i'm Sun certified in Java programming and i don't know all the stuff you know - but if an employer says they want someone who knows Java then you're just wasting their time.
Except for XML and Mac OS X, the X doesn't make any sense...
Right, because the obvious acronym for Extensible Markup Language is XML, and OS 10 would've been completely confusing for Mac users who were used to things like System 7, OS 8, OS 9. Switching to roman numerals is a much better option, especially since OS X...X.1...X.2 would look stupid, so instead you rely on the ever-so-obvious fact that Panthers are clearly better than Jaguars. (BTW, what's next, Cougar? Leopard? Cheetah? Thundercats Ho!)
"Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, an opponent of the amendment and a black lawmaker, invoked the civil rights struggles of the 1960s in which he took part. "I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on same sex marriage," he said."
Being black doesn't innoculate you from being a bigot.
They think homosexuality is a choice and therefore dismiss its comparability, but even if you ignore the indications that it's at least partly biological, discrimination against gays is still wrong. Being Christian is a choice, but discrimination against Christians would be wrong.
They are trying to use their religious definition of marriage to restrict the secular, civil definition of marriage. In this, they are no different from white Christians (and indeed, they use the dsame arguments) who are arguing against same-sex marriage.
They say: "To equate a lifestyle choice to racism demeans the work of the entire civil rights movement."
I say: To invoke the proud history of the civil rights movement to try to deny civil rights to any group of people demeans the work of the entire civil rights movement.
I liked the third movie - much moreso than the second, but predictably, much less than the first. It wasn't perfect, but it was IMO good.
I think this game's sales are going to be largely unaffected by the movies' successes and failures. The lag-time between the last movie and the release of this will ensure that word-of-mouth is going to make or break the game unless they market the hell out of it, which i don't see happening. If it plays well it will do well.
Hurt feelings and fear are the results the insults have on their targets and on those they impugn - gays in general.
Homophobia is what brought about the malign use of the words and a permissive attitude towards both homophobia itself and the use of homophobic slurs encourages the continuance of bigotry.
Homophobia does literally mean fear of homosexuality, but how people respond to that fear is also included in the usage of the term. Fear is often at the root of many different actions and emotions, including contempt, anger, hatred, and violence.
The people who have the most drastic and violent reactions to homosexuality are usually the ones who are most insecure in their own sexuality.
Therefore the word "analysis", "analyst" and derivatives have been declared indecent & profane and shall be removed from the English language forthwith.
I'm sure that Bush & Co. handlers would agree that there should be no analysis - only compliance. After all, you're either with them or you're a terrorist.
Slashdot Mirror
(I knew you couldn't resist. Way too much ego for that.)
Imagine - oil would no longer have much value, and so the Middle East would no longer be a constant battleground. We would no longer have to worry about global warming because CO2 production would go right down. And increasingly resource hungry emerging economies like China and India would no longer be such a threat to "our" oil resources.
If the USA spent 10% of it's military budget on alternative energy sources then this nut could be cracked quickly...
He didn't say spending 10% on cold fusion would give us usable cold fusion. His claim was that spending 10% on alternative energy source research would reduce the world tension caused by the scarcity of energy. Even if cold fusion turns out to be complete bunk, we'll find that out faster and shift our focus to other alternative energy sources.
I don't think this post has had enough 5th grade wit, so...And you're a poo-poo-ca-ca-head!
The real difference between you and i is that i know this is a ridiculous argument that's going nowhere and i'm treating it as such. You still think there's something to be gained by winning it. The fact that you're A:wrong and B:a pinhead don't help. Please respond again - i haven't had this much fun in a long time. If you could start picking on my spelling or grammer or compare me to Hitler in some way it would really make my day.
Well, quickly is an overly-broad term - even 50 years might be quick to go from a wonky idea to usable cold fusion. (Or something equally dramatic.) The only real point is that the extra money would get us results faster than current funding levels will.
Certainly transistors could not have been invented in 1804, but there were a lot of factors contributing to that impossibility beyond funding - organizational structures and methodologies to support the research needed just didn't exist. They would have had to begin by doing research on better ways to do research!
We have the organizations in place to support the research - money is the only limiting factor we can identify here. There is no absolute timeline for discovery.
Even if you assume that none of what we have right now is even close, more money would help us find out faster which theoretical bases were not going to work, allowing us to focus more on the ones that looks promising.
This debate is really a moot point though - the real question is would the money we would have to spend be greater than the benefits we would reap. Could that money be put to better uses?
(Here's the post where i respond to the stuff i gloated about ignoring in my last post.)
Throwing money at a problem rarely yields a solution,
Bullshit. Throwing money at a problem when money isn't the problem doesn't help, but when progress is slow because the endeavor has been underfunded, then throwing money at it does help. Projects that have more money at their disposal than they actually could use are the minority.
anyone who says we could do something if we just increased spending needs to supply evidence that funding is currently a problem.
Here's where we go back to the most basic of all rebuttals: RTFA. "A positive Department of Energy review would open the door to badly needed research support."
Dig the hole deeper Spock - i dare ya. (See? I'm taunting you! Now you're in a pickle - respond and continue the farce or ignore it and risk having people think i won this argument? Whatever will he do? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!)
Common sense is often orthogonal to reality.
Yeah, that's why i included the specific knowledge part. Tip: if you're going to be intellectually dishonest and only address half an argument, don't include the whole argument in your reply. (See how i completely ignored part of your argument? Totally pretended like it didn't exist? That's how it's done. Pfft. Amateur.)
Hey Mister Spock: you may be happy with your logical victory, but that doesn't mean you're right, it just means you're a pedantic twit.
;)
The original poster's claim is intuitive and meshes both with my common-sense knowledge about the way the world works and my specific knowledge about how research is conducted. That makes the detractor's claim the one that requires proof.
An analogous situation: I have a picture of a house. The parts i can see are all painted blue and the picture was taken by me this morning. If i make the claim that it's a blue house, and you say that i'm wrong, you are logically correct because the other sides might be painted a different color or it might have been repainted since the picture was taken.
Should i be taking you out to find the actual house so i can prove my claim? No. What i should do is mock you by calling you Mister Spock, then explain to you why your misguided adherence to formal logic in this case makes you a pedantic twit.
"Please" as in "please don't confuse research with development". The pace of development scales almost directly with money spent. Research is, by its very nature, unknown. Saying that research will magically produce results if only we put 10% of the defense budget into it completely fails to understand the nature of research.
Now that's an argument worthy of the insightful mod. I still think you're wrong, but at least there's something to work with now.
Research is not a finite number of scientists sitting around thinking about a problem. If it was, then you're right - more money would not make them think faster.
Research in this case is people doing experiments, gathering data, writing, publishing, reviewing and then doing it all again. More money means more people to run the experiments, gather the data, and write, edit, and review the papers. It also means better, faster, and more reliable equipment, more experimental runs from which they can draw data, and fewer outside requirements upon the researchers, allowing them to devote more time to this task. (To address another reply you made: they'll identify the bottlenecks faster and get to solving them sooner.)
Even though the end result of the research is unknown, i see no reason to believe that more funds would not get us there faster. Unless you believe that all the funds that can be effectively devoted to the problem already are devoted to the problem - a claim i don't think anyone can reasonably make.
You think the reason alternative energy projects are moving slowly is lack of money? Please.
Please what?
Please provide some evidence to back up your claim that lack of funding is not the problem?
Please mod me up because i'm cool and disdainful?
Please explain to me how a comment that can be accurately and completely translated as "you're wrong" can be modded insightful?
I got that spam yesterday. It was right next to "BIGGER.B00BS.ALL.NATURAL!"
Massively Multiplayer Game. NWN rocks, but it's not a MMG. 64 is bigger than most games, but MMGs are all about thousands of players.
While you're at it, have a look at how all that user-created content is delivered. Players have to go out and download it and install it in what can be a confusing process if the module uses lots of custom content.
MMGs deliver their new content (except outright expansions) to all the players automagically with no outside work required. Not in the same league.
It is of the benefit that they would be in compliance with the law and wouldn't get fined by the government. The cost of implementation is as trivial as the process itself, therefore they would have little excuse for not doing it.
The reason for doing this has as much or more to do with making deceitful software makers accountable as it does with educating the consumer.
Require that the icons be prominently displayed on a special confirmation page before purchase or download can occur. Require a similar screen as a part of any installer.
Trivial.
My point is that if a game is designed to be free-form, you can't "abuse" that freedom because it's a part of the game. My idea of 'abuse' is exploiting a bug or hole in the game in order to do something that wasn't originally intended to happen. But if the player is allowed to pump up their character like that, then what's the problem? Perhaps people who want a more "realistic' game should move to another game or stop whining. Perhaps these two styles of play can't co-exist.
Abuse doesn't just refer to breaking the rules. In this case it's about breaking the spirit of the game. A free-form game is not an anything-goes game. It still has guidelines, they just aren't enforced with mechanics and game-masters.
It's absolutely true that those play styles can't coexist, but it's not the moderates who need a more restrictive system, it's the Mary-Sues. The moderates use the freedom to explore different possibilities and collaborate on a story. The Mary-Sues abuse the freedom to inflict their fantasies on the other players. They just want attention - an audience for their ego-trip.
Even a more restrictive system won't stop someone from playing a Mary-Sue, it just makes it more obvious when they're doing so.
But if we step back a bit, this kind of superficial 'code of conduct' that has evolved in these types of games is an example of an interesting social phenomenon akin to what we know as 'morality' and 'chivalry.' Interesting how this pops up everywhere.
You're right there, it is interesting, but i don't think it's fundamentally different from the problems all groups of people face when they get together. Codes of conduct, etiquette, ethics, and morality - all forms of social control of behavior.
The problem arises in interaction between two or more different playing styles. The person who creates a balanced, moderate character isn't likely to ruin the fun of everyone else, but the Mary-Sue that comes in and slays all the dragons with a wave of their pinky has just ended that story for all the other players.
If a game was designed to be free-form and one of the players abuses that freedom then it's not the game's fault - it's not a design issue. A game that doesn't cater to all playing styles isn't flawed, it's just not meant for all players.
Mary-Sues are players who are in the wrong game, but the open nature of the games they are in only makes that fact obvious to the other players, not to the Mary-Sue.
Despite his flamebait tone, the parent post has a good point.
We shouldn't forget that this is the company that was using illegal immigrants as below-minimum-wage night custodians. When the feds raided them they claimed ignorance of the illegals, blamed it on a sub-contractor, and made sure the feds didn't arrest the illegals until the end of their shift so the stores were bright and shiny the next day.
And that's just one of many problems at Wal-Mart.
Your version of "knowing" java is like saying that the ability to hook up a power supply, motherboard, processor, and hard drive and install Windows on it makes you a system administrator.
You know how to administer a Java app, but you don't know Java. If that's not what it says on your resume then you are lying. Your skills are needed and they're non-trivial - i'm Sun certified in Java programming and i don't know all the stuff you know - but if an employer says they want someone who knows Java then you're just wasting their time.
Except for XML and Mac OS X, the X doesn't make any sense...
Right, because the obvious acronym for Extensible Markup Language is XML, and OS 10 would've been completely confusing for Mac users who were used to things like System 7, OS 8, OS 9. Switching to roman numerals is a much better option, especially since OS X...X.1...X.2 would look stupid, so instead you rely on the ever-so-obvious fact that Panthers are clearly better than Jaguars. (BTW, what's next, Cougar? Leopard? Cheetah? Thundercats Ho!)
; )
"Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, an opponent of the amendment and a black lawmaker, invoked the civil rights struggles of the 1960s in which he took part. "I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on same sex marriage," he said."
e ss .gay.marriage.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/23/congr
Being black doesn't innoculate you from being a bigot.
They think homosexuality is a choice and therefore dismiss its comparability, but even if you ignore the indications that it's at least partly biological, discrimination against gays is still wrong. Being Christian is a choice, but discrimination against Christians would be wrong.
They are trying to use their religious definition of marriage to restrict the secular, civil definition of marriage. In this, they are no different from white Christians (and indeed, they use the dsame arguments) who are arguing against same-sex marriage.
They say: "To equate a lifestyle choice to racism demeans the work of the entire civil rights movement."
I say: To invoke the proud history of the civil rights movement to try to deny civil rights to any group of people demeans the work of the entire civil rights movement.
This fine is nothing more than a nuisance to them.
He does. Sort of.
or a strike from some rouge asteriod!
Fucking red asteroids! Why are they always coming after us? What did we ever do to them?!?
I liked the third movie - much moreso than the second, but predictably, much less than the first. It wasn't perfect, but it was IMO good.
I think this game's sales are going to be largely unaffected by the movies' successes and failures. The lag-time between the last movie and the release of this will ensure that word-of-mouth is going to make or break the game unless they market the hell out of it, which i don't see happening. If it plays well it will do well.
Hurt feelings and fear are the results the insults have on their targets and on those they impugn - gays in general.
Homophobia is what brought about the malign use of the words and a permissive attitude towards both homophobia itself and the use of homophobic slurs encourages the continuance of bigotry.
Homophobia does literally mean fear of homosexuality, but how people respond to that fear is also included in the usage of the term. Fear is often at the root of many different actions and emotions, including contempt, anger, hatred, and violence.
The people who have the most drastic and violent reactions to homosexuality are usually the ones who are most insecure in their own sexuality.
I must remember to say "Fuck the fucking fucked-up fuckers at FCC."
Therefore the word "analysis", "analyst" and derivatives have been declared indecent & profane and shall be removed from the English language forthwith.
I'm sure that Bush & Co. handlers would agree that there should be no analysis - only compliance. After all, you're either with them or you're a terrorist.