In a free society, I shouldn't have to justify what I want to do to you or why I want to own something to anybody. It's none of your business.
Well, this in principle is wrong. To use hyperbole, there will never be a large, functional society that allows you to posses weapons-grade uranium without justifying it. This is because the risk to society is too great. Any time possession of something causes a significant risk to society, then yes, it becomes all of our business. Generally items should be banned when their danger to society outweighs both their usefulness to individuals, and the rights of individuals to "have stuff" without being bothered about it.
Problems occur when things cause a perceived risk to society, and where the perception is not universal. Lots of controversial issues are not an issue in principle, only an issue of degree.
I have been a victim so to speak. You see, I got a job but the employer wanted me to get "up-to-date" certification at my cost, at my time and then commit to working 5 days a week and being on-call at least one weekend every 6 weeks for the first year, then on-call for one of the weekends in two months.
Needless to say, I declined the offer....still looking.
This may have been sarcasm, and if so, a big whoosh to me, but if you seriously declined a job offer because they wanted you to get some certifications and be on call for 9 weekends per year, you evidently don't really need a job.
GNU Chess played at it's highest level on a 2.4ghz P4 seems to play somewhere around a 2200 rating.
If you are beating highest-level GNU Chess on a decent CPU with any regularity then yes, you are certainly a "good player". Even if you beat it rarely, you're still probably a "good player".
I can't find any data on Battle Chess but IIRC it wasn't that strong.
Also, these moves, which can be equated to "experience", is often fed to the computer by a human.
Modern techniques often uses a mix of random chance, adaption, human fed experience, statistical experience etc.
Hence it'll play "humanly", it'll play "ruley", it'll play "alien"... Maybe that can be concidered "computery". But there is overlaps with humans in the "humanly" department, and if humans study statistically proven moves, then there's more... Etc.
It's not "moves" that can be memorized that would distinguish a computer from a human player. It is when the player makes entire series of moves that make no sense until you can see 14 moves ahead.
they have some vague idea that the wins are statistically unlikely
I wouldn't call it a 'vague idea'. Ivanov, while being a very good player at a 2227 'master' rating, was playing at an estimated level of over 3000 over the course of an entire tournament (until they cut the internet feed). This would make him the best player in the world by far, and also the greatest player the world has ever seen.
This would be like a college basketball small forward chosen number 10 or so in the NBA draft beating Lebron James 1on1 9 times in a row.
To quote the article:
Either:
1 Borislav Ivanov is probably the first adult (as opposed to a junior talent) with a confirmed low rating ever to achieve a 2600+ GM norm performance in an event of nine rounds or more or
2 [He] is the first player ever to successfully cheat at a major tournament over multiple rounds without the cheating mechanism being detected.
humans currently can beat a computer playing Go, even if we lose in Chess.
FTFY. Go, like Chess, is theoretically solvable, since it is, after all, a game of perfect information. Perhaps neither game will ever be truly solved, but even in Go computers are very likely to become unbeatable eventually, and probably sooner rather than later.
Today, I bounce up and down between a low of 180 and a high of 195. At six feet tall, that's not "fat", but I'm certainly not the lean mean fighting machine who proudly wore his uniform around the world.
You make the call - overweight, or fat? I call it overweight.
Of course height-weight is just a useful ballpark measurement. To get exact numbers you would need to take into consideration body fat ratios and other measurements.
First off, the human-like creatures in star wars are canonically human
Your source is incorrect. It says "Humans were the galaxy's most numerous and politically dominant sentient species with millions of major and minor colonies galaxywide. Believed to have originated on the galactic capital of Coruscant..." but it's supposed to be set "in a galaxy far, far away." Interstellar travel is enough of a stretch, intergalactic is WAY out of bounds. It might have been plausable if set in the Milky Way, but...
Intergalactic travel is certainly implausible, and the Star Wars universe has an interesting sort of reverse deus ex machina preventing most hyperspace travel outside the galaxy. There are, however, certain encroachments from outside the galaxy. Nevertheless, everything in canon indicates that the Star Wars humans are intended to be the same species (or at least, an evolutionary variant) as humans IRL. The connection to Earth is currently unexplained, as I mentioned before.
(sorry for the nerding-out here)
The thing that turned me off about the Ewoks were the cheesy costumes. Honestly, I've seen little kids dressed up for Halloween with better costumes.
I like the ewok costumes, but that's just me.
Don't get me started on how Lucas raped EPIV when they remastered that one. Not only the "Han shot first" bullshit (and Han shooting first was the least of the damage done to that scene; in the theater it cut to outside and you saw smoke and it looked like Greedo had killed Han. Plus adding that Jabba the Hut scene. Glad I still have the original, unraped tape.
Yes, and yet, if you try to tell them american's that their health care system (or lack thereof) sucks and that Obama is trying to take a step into the right direction, they'll yell at you
Well, President Obama did win the last election with more than 50% of the popular vote, so most Americans seem to be open to his ideas. He also pushed through a massive healthcare reform package in his first term (though it was decidedly crippled via lack of a public option, and suffers from other troublesome issues).
Oh please. This geek culture icon has already been thoroughly ruined by the Prequel movies.
It's been my observation that the only ones who share your opinion were children when EPIV came out. I was in my twenties, and about the only difference I saw was the effects and costumes were far better in the prequels.
As an adult watching them, the one that ruined the franchise was EPVI. I mean, Jesus... those midgets in the cheezy bear costumes were REALLY lame. I had to forget just how bad VI was to even watch EPI; if that had come out two years after EPVI I probably wouldn't even have watched it.
IMO, EPIII was excellent, especially the opening scene with the big space battle, and the fight between Obi-Wan and Vader. I see bitching about the "mitichlorians" but you have to remember, these aren't human, they're aliens from another time and another galaxy. That alone demands a HUGE suspension of disbelief -- a race from another galaxy looks exactly like us?? That's harder to swallow than FTL travel.
Woah woah wee-woah woah. First off, the human-like creatures in star wars are canonically human. Theories regarding their connection to earth are diverse, but the connection has not been explained in canon.
Regarding the movies - EPVI is a personal favorite of mine, though I will concede that many fans (especially those who were adults when EPVI was released) are turned off by the Ewoks. I also enjoyed some scenes in EPIII, specifically the ones you mention. There were actually scenes in all three of the prequels that were well done and thoroughly enjoyable (ref. DM vs. QGJ in EPI). The primary complaints, especially from the more "hard-core" fanbase are with silly plot and lore related changes that were made for seemingly no good reason. Also, casting for some critical characters was worse-than-terrible (e.g. Anakin).
" is largely responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of his party "
I think you've got that skewed. The party more likely dictates the presidents agenda. They leave him a lot of leeway, to be sure, but the party has an "agreement" in place before they ever nominate the guy for office.
Well, that was a quote, but yes I think it's likely that whomever is elected president has had his agenda dictated by many factors, including his political party. He still has significant day-to-day authority, much of which he delegates to some of his four million employees.
The situation could be imperfectly compared to that of a very large corporation, where the President would be the equivalent of a CEO, a combination of his party leaders and congress would be board-of-directors, and the voting public would be shareholders.
Sending mountains of mined ore back down is free. Don't give me that look.
Free? Explain to me how you are going to get a 10 ton chunk of iron down from orbit without the huge explosion when it hits the ground. Explain to me how you assure nation states that you really aren't going to drop that chunk of ore on their capital.
Ah, the old adage, "It is much easier to apologize than to ask permission."
Anything sent into space only needs to withstand only one to zero atmospheres of pressure, while sea mining requires pressure changes hundreds to thousands of times larger.
Unfortunately there seem to be other non-trivial engineering difficulties to contend with in space.
I'm regularly astounded at how little the US posters know about their own country. The State governments and Congress runs the country. Obama is in control of foreign policy and defence only. He has buggerall to do with the internal affairs of the USA.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your point that most Americans believe that the president has more power than he actually does, and I am continually exasperated by political discussion that vividly illustrates this point, your statement is not entirely accurate.
The POTUS is directly responsible for a very large segment of the government. In addition, to quote wikipedia "each modern president, despite possessing no formal legislative powers beyond signing or vetoing congressionally passed bills, is largely responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of his party and the foreign and domestic policy of the United States." The influence of the POTUS has grown substantially since FDR's presidency.
The plural of anecdote is not evidence. Provide some actual evidence that more than a tiny minority of workers actually do this. I won't hold my breath.
I can't find much statistical data on this (the difficulty in conducting a study on these types of activities should be evident), but this Monster.com survey indicates 8% of workers call out "sick" at least twice per summer, "to enjoy the summer weather", while 11% do it about once per year. This is a pretty unrepresentative data point, but read into it what you wish.
Be interesting if people started making citizen's arrests for same, but I'm not holding my breath.
Perhaps for certain definitions of "interesting"....I don't think a citizen's arrest for a civil rights violation would hold up. Especially since the arresting "citizen" would likely need to commit a felony in the process.
There is legal equality in developed countries right now, but this has not been the case for very long and there are still very significant cultural issues that impact women's ability to excel in or even enter many fields.
I never said that individuals cannot be exceptions. The fact that there were not that many brilliant, creative women throughout history, does prove my point and not yours.
What definition of "not that many" are you using?? At what number threshold would your point not be "proven"? You are taking your incomplete knowledge of history and making a determination from arrogance that there have been "not enough" successful women. Women are of course underrepresented in many areas throughout history, for reasons I have mentioned.
There is nothing wrong or misogynic in recognizing that there are differences, especially if like me you defend the strict equality of legal rights and opportunities, which we fortunately have achieved in most contemporary civilizations.
There is certainly nothing wrong with recognizing differences. Your misogyny is being expressed through your ridiculous categorization of women as intellectually inferior, based on no evidence aside from your personal perusal of human history.
But by all means keep finding excuses to justify your dogmas.
Have you had teenagers? At that point in life peers have much more influence in a juvenile's lives than their parents.
I do not dispute this. However, to be categorized as "great" I would contend that parents need to be able to overcome these types of difficulties in raising their children. It is certainly possible that the parents in question are perfectly adequate.
You also missed the main points of my post.
1. It seems that you think assumptions are bad unless you are the one making them.
2. It seems that you think the only explanations are the ones you agree with.
You are incorrect on both points.
I am not interested in these points. I assume (har har) that they are meant for the AC who you replied to.
Slashdot Mirror
If we can breed with it, it's human.
Weeeelllll....we are likely able to breed with apes, though this has (maybe?) never been accomplished.
Should apes be considered human?
I dunno what an AMH is.
Anatomically modern human.
In a free society, I shouldn't have to justify what I want to do to you or why I want to own something to anybody. It's none of your business.
Well, this in principle is wrong. To use hyperbole, there will never be a large, functional society that allows you to posses weapons-grade uranium without justifying it. This is because the risk to society is too great. Any time possession of something causes a significant risk to society, then yes, it becomes all of our business. Generally items should be banned when their danger to society outweighs both their usefulness to individuals, and the rights of individuals to "have stuff" without being bothered about it.
Problems occur when things cause a perceived risk to society, and where the perception is not universal. Lots of controversial issues are not an issue in principle, only an issue of degree.
Roddenberry worried about it some, but never let it get in the way of a good story.
Or a really shitty story.
It's not doing fantastic (5 years in) and I'll be able to retire in a few months if I choose to. I'm 28.
What the hell definition of "fantastic" are you using??
I have been a victim so to speak. You see, I got a job but the employer wanted me to get "up-to-date" certification at my cost, at my time and then commit to working 5 days a week and being on-call at least one weekend every 6 weeks for the first year, then on-call for one of the weekends in two months.
Needless to say, I declined the offer....still looking.
This may have been sarcasm, and if so, a big whoosh to me, but if you seriously declined a job offer because they wanted you to get some certifications and be on call for 9 weekends per year, you evidently don't really need a job.
True, but that's the only solid data I could find :(
GNU Chess played at it's highest level on a 2.4ghz P4 seems to play somewhere around a 2200 rating.
If you are beating highest-level GNU Chess on a decent CPU with any regularity then yes, you are certainly a "good player". Even if you beat it rarely, you're still probably a "good player".
I can't find any data on Battle Chess but IIRC it wasn't that strong.
Also, these moves, which can be equated to "experience", is often fed to the computer by a human.
Modern techniques often uses a mix of random chance, adaption, human fed experience, statistical experience etc.
Hence it'll play "humanly", it'll play "ruley", it'll play "alien"... Maybe that can be concidered "computery". But there is overlaps with humans in the "humanly" department, and if humans study statistically proven moves, then there's more... Etc.
It's not "moves" that can be memorized that would distinguish a computer from a human player. It is when the player makes entire series of moves that make no sense until you can see 14 moves ahead.
they have some vague idea that the wins are statistically unlikely
I wouldn't call it a 'vague idea'. Ivanov, while being a very good player at a 2227 'master' rating, was playing at an estimated level of over 3000 over the course of an entire tournament (until they cut the internet feed). This would make him the best player in the world by far, and also the greatest player the world has ever seen.
This would be like a college basketball small forward chosen number 10 or so in the NBA draft beating Lebron James 1on1 9 times in a row. To quote the article:
Either:
1 Borislav Ivanov is probably the first adult (as opposed to a junior talent) with a confirmed low rating ever to achieve a 2600+ GM norm performance in an event of nine rounds or more or
2 [He] is the first player ever to successfully cheat at a major tournament over multiple rounds without the cheating mechanism being detected.
humans currently can beat a computer playing Go, even if we lose in Chess.
FTFY. Go, like Chess, is theoretically solvable, since it is, after all, a game of perfect information. Perhaps neither game will ever be truly solved, but even in Go computers are very likely to become unbeatable eventually, and probably sooner rather than later.
Today, I bounce up and down between a low of 180 and a high of 195. At six feet tall, that's not "fat", but I'm certainly not the lean mean fighting machine who proudly wore his uniform around the world.
You make the call - overweight, or fat? I call it overweight.
195lbs. and 6' tall would be at the low end of "overweight".
Of course height-weight is just a useful ballpark measurement. To get exact numbers you would need to take into consideration body fat ratios and other measurements.
First off, the human-like creatures in star wars are canonically human
Your source is incorrect. It says "Humans were the galaxy's most numerous and politically dominant sentient species with millions of major and minor colonies galaxywide. Believed to have originated on the galactic capital of Coruscant..." but it's supposed to be set "in a galaxy far, far away." Interstellar travel is enough of a stretch, intergalactic is WAY out of bounds. It might have been plausable if set in the Milky Way, but...
Intergalactic travel is certainly implausible, and the Star Wars universe has an interesting sort of reverse deus ex machina preventing most hyperspace travel outside the galaxy. There are, however, certain encroachments from outside the galaxy. Nevertheless, everything in canon indicates that the Star Wars humans are intended to be the same species (or at least, an evolutionary variant) as humans IRL. The connection to Earth is currently unexplained, as I mentioned before.
(sorry for the nerding-out here)
The thing that turned me off about the Ewoks were the cheesy costumes. Honestly, I've seen little kids dressed up for Halloween with better costumes.
I like the ewok costumes, but that's just me.
Don't get me started on how Lucas raped EPIV when they remastered that one. Not only the "Han shot first" bullshit (and Han shooting first was the least of the damage done to that scene; in the theater it cut to outside and you saw smoke and it looked like Greedo had killed Han. Plus adding that Jabba the Hut scene. Glad I still have the original, unraped tape.
Agree :(:(
Unfortunately my state is a "right to work" state.
I think you mean "at-will employment" instead of "right to work".
The terms are unrelated, but often confused.
Yes, and yet, if you try to tell them american's that their health care system (or lack thereof) sucks and that Obama is trying to take a step into the right direction, they'll yell at you
Well, President Obama did win the last election with more than 50% of the popular vote, so most Americans seem to be open to his ideas. He also pushed through a massive healthcare reform package in his first term (though it was decidedly crippled via lack of a public option, and suffers from other troublesome issues).
Oh please. This geek culture icon has already been thoroughly ruined by the Prequel movies.
It's been my observation that the only ones who share your opinion were children when EPIV came out. I was in my twenties, and about the only difference I saw was the effects and costumes were far better in the prequels.
As an adult watching them, the one that ruined the franchise was EPVI. I mean, Jesus... those midgets in the cheezy bear costumes were REALLY lame. I had to forget just how bad VI was to even watch EPI; if that had come out two years after EPVI I probably wouldn't even have watched it.
IMO, EPIII was excellent, especially the opening scene with the big space battle, and the fight between Obi-Wan and Vader. I see bitching about the "mitichlorians" but you have to remember, these aren't human, they're aliens from another time and another galaxy. That alone demands a HUGE suspension of disbelief -- a race from another galaxy looks exactly like us?? That's harder to swallow than FTL travel.
Woah woah wee-woah woah. First off, the human-like creatures in star wars are canonically human . Theories regarding their connection to earth are diverse, but the connection has not been explained in canon.
Regarding the movies - EPVI is a personal favorite of mine, though I will concede that many fans (especially those who were adults when EPVI was released) are turned off by the Ewoks. I also enjoyed some scenes in EPIII, specifically the ones you mention. There were actually scenes in all three of the prequels that were well done and thoroughly enjoyable (ref. DM vs. QGJ in EPI). The primary complaints, especially from the more "hard-core" fanbase are with silly plot and lore related changes that were made for seemingly no good reason. Also, casting for some critical characters was worse-than-terrible (e.g. Anakin).
" is largely responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of his party "
I think you've got that skewed. The party more likely dictates the presidents agenda. They leave him a lot of leeway, to be sure, but the party has an "agreement" in place before they ever nominate the guy for office.
Well, that was a quote, but yes I think it's likely that whomever is elected president has had his agenda dictated by many factors, including his political party. He still has significant day-to-day authority, much of which he delegates to some of his four million employees.
The situation could be imperfectly compared to that of a very large corporation, where the President would be the equivalent of a CEO, a combination of his party leaders and congress would be board-of-directors, and the voting public would be shareholders.
Sending mountains of mined ore back down is free. Don't give me that look.
Free? Explain to me how you are going to get a 10 ton chunk of iron down from orbit without the huge explosion when it hits the ground. Explain to me how you assure nation states that you really aren't going to drop that chunk of ore on their capital.
Ah, the old adage, "It is much easier to apologize than to ask permission."
Anything sent into space only needs to withstand only one to zero atmospheres of pressure, while sea mining requires pressure changes hundreds to thousands of times larger.
Unfortunately there seem to be other non-trivial engineering difficulties to contend with in space.
I'm regularly astounded at how little the US posters know about their own country. The State governments and Congress runs the country. Obama is in control of foreign policy and defence only. He has buggerall to do with the internal affairs of the USA.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your point that most Americans believe that the president has more power than he actually does, and I am continually exasperated by political discussion that vividly illustrates this point, your statement is not entirely accurate.
The POTUS is directly responsible for a very large segment of the government. In addition, to quote wikipedia "each modern president, despite possessing no formal legislative powers beyond signing or vetoing congressionally passed bills, is largely responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of his party and the foreign and domestic policy of the United States." The influence of the POTUS has grown substantially since FDR's presidency.
The plural of anecdote is not evidence. Provide some actual evidence that more than a tiny minority of workers actually do this. I won't hold my breath.
I can't find much statistical data on this (the difficulty in conducting a study on these types of activities should be evident), but this Monster.com survey indicates 8% of workers call out "sick" at least twice per summer, "to enjoy the summer weather", while 11% do it about once per year. This is a pretty unrepresentative data point, but read into it what you wish.
Be interesting if people started making citizen's arrests for same, but I'm not holding my breath.
Perhaps for certain definitions of "interesting"....I don't think a citizen's arrest for a civil rights violation would hold up. Especially since the arresting "citizen" would likely need to commit a felony in the process.
Is there a decent WiFi adapter for this thing?
There is a list here
Sure: right now in all developed countries.
There is legal equality in developed countries right now, but this has not been the case for very long and there are still very significant cultural issues that impact women's ability to excel in or even enter many fields.
I never said that individuals cannot be exceptions. The fact that there were not that many brilliant, creative women throughout history, does prove my point and not yours.
What definition of "not that many" are you using?? At what number threshold would your point not be "proven"? You are taking your incomplete knowledge of history and making a determination from arrogance that there have been "not enough" successful women. Women are of course underrepresented in many areas throughout history, for reasons I have mentioned.
There is nothing wrong or misogynic in recognizing that there are differences, especially if like me you defend the strict equality of legal rights and opportunities, which we fortunately have achieved in most contemporary civilizations.
There is certainly nothing wrong with recognizing differences. Your misogyny is being expressed through your ridiculous categorization of women as intellectually inferior, based on no evidence aside from your personal perusal of human history.
But by all means keep finding excuses to justify your dogmas.
Excuses and reasons are not the same thing.
Have you had teenagers? At that point in life peers have much more influence in a juvenile's lives than their parents.
I do not dispute this. However, to be categorized as "great" I would contend that parents need to be able to overcome these types of difficulties in raising their children. It is certainly possible that the parents in question are perfectly adequate.
You also missed the main points of my post.
1. It seems that you think assumptions are bad unless you are the one making them. 2. It seems that you think the only explanations are the ones you agree with. You are incorrect on both points.
I am not interested in these points. I assume (har har) that they are meant for the AC who you replied to.