All this is, of course, a delicate proposition. In some ways, an overactive immune system is as much of a risk as an underactive one: more than a million people worldwide a year die from collateral damage, like septic shock after bacterial infection, and inflammations that may ultimately induce chronic illness such as heart disease and perhaps even cancer.
This is just one possible outcome to programming new antibodies. I'd also be concerned with how the treatments mitigate any risk to shutting down our own immune system.
Hypothetical speculation: Say the treatment works well while you're taking regular doses of new Immunity 2.0 shots, but as soon as you can't afford to pay anymore, you're off the Immunity 2.0 shots. Well, it's been a while since your real immune system has had to work, so the next mutation of a virus comes along and 'oops'.
Most questions to risk will probably be found in lab research and trials, but it's still something to think about.
Excellent post, I agree with you on a lot of your points; especially about the dialog (Best in class, imho) and ranking/experience system (ugh). I hate it personally when a RPG studio decides that they need to dump-down the leveling/ability structure to "reach a wider audience". It makes the game feel hollow.
What makes less sense is you use the same ammo for all of your guns, and yet when you pick it up, it gets automatically allocated to one, and you can't use it in any of the others.
I maybe mistaken (or picked up so many that I tricked myself into thinking something opposite), but I think when you pick up a 'heat-sink' clip it does apply to other weapons on a smaller scale. At the very least, I believe the game will top off your current weapon, and then start filling up your auxiliary weapons that have depleted ammunition. Also, all weapons will get some sort of recharge when you find a "Power Cell" box.
It's a good plotline, that expands as you go on through the game. That said, it does feel a little weaker than the original. There seems to me to be less of the main plotline than in the original, which is dissapointing.
I feel like this game actually provides a lot of main-plot forward motion. I consider it to be the "Empire Strikes Back" of the ME trilogy, and Bioware delivers in spades. (Can't go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil it for others).
One question that comes to mind for me: Did they play ME 1, and import their character?
My personal feelings are that ME2 is more rich and enjoyable, if you have a character from ME1 that you transfer over to ME2. It adds extra depth to the game.
If I'm in a public place such as a casual restaurant and I need to take a brief call, I answer in very low tones and the person on the other end can understand me just as well. My tone of voice is indistinguishable from other conversations happening in the area, and in fact is usually quieter.
This is perfectly acceptable. My choice is to sometimes (depending on the restaurant and situation) as a courtesy to the people at the same table, excuse myself and go outside or stand in the hallway next to the restrooms.
If you're in a noisy situation, or in a delicate one (sans movie theatre) where you're not in a one-on-one conversation with someone. Silent Mode + Text Messaging = Everyone else is happy, and you're able to communicate freely.
Oh wait, i forgot about PHBs that need to be reminded that they're not the only people on the planet... nevermind, carry on.
In fact, the opposite is true: businesses contracting for the government have a strong profit incentive to drive costs up.
This is the truth. They'll get a cost plus contract and then throw as many fresh out of college graduates at the program to charge as many hours as possible. Quality doesn't go up at all, but the bill to the government does.
I see geothermal power as a bit of a trade off, especially for IT needs; you get a nice sustainable power source, but you're probably in an area where the activity could just as soon destroy your data as well as power it. Then again, if you hosted your Data Center in Iceland, you could probably afford to have backups in another country far, far away from any 'event'.
Look, the main thing is we forgot that terrorism is a tactic, and let ourselves get swept up in Fear.
In my opinion, I don't believe that most people ever knew this tidbit of information in the first place. Sure some people would parrot what they heard on the network news after 9/11, "I won't be afraid and let them take my freedoms!", but then they blindly support the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act.
I agree with you 100% though. People being retarded and killing other people is a fact of life that is perfectly handled by proper detective work.
Also, people need to realize that 'terrorism' is being used by both sides of the fence. The best example, the 'national threat level' has never been set to Blue or Green. This is a system meant to make the citizens of their own country 'feel safe' but all it does is make people think, "Hey.. you gonna get blowed up real-good-like someday.".
Connor: Do ya know what we need, man? Some rope.
Murphy: Absolutely. What are ya, insane?
Connor: No I ain't. Charlie Bronson's always got rope.
Murphy: What?
Connor: Yeah. He's got a lot of rope strapped around him in the movies, and they always end up using it.
With all that fancy visual stuff going on, it could be easy for the technician to overlook a pushed pin or a pinch in the cable which could be causing a problem.
With subsystem sensors, for analog components, becoming more and more digital, I'd hope that problems like that would be isolated using a maintenance panel/IBIT combination that could feed that information into the ARMAR.
I agree that's how patents are intended, most definitely. I've just become jaded by the industry standard practice to file a patent for something obvious and non-novel, and then sue the heck out of companies actually doing something. As it turns out my knee jerk reaction was exactly as advertised.
After reading the abstract, background, and summary of the invention it appears that Kodak 'built a better mouse trap', and then patented it. Also, TFS doesn't properly define the 'preview' functionality, Kodak uses 'preview' in the sense that you use the eye viewfinder to 'preview' your photo before it is taken. So what they really patented was a method in the hardware to deliver quickly and efficiently the image you're about to capture to a low-res LCD, and then use a more power-intensive algorithm to generate the high-res still photo.
The advantage of the invention is that the two modes can be tailored for a relatively low quality "motion" mode and a much higher quality "still" mode. The motion mode images from the CCD sensor are processed by a hardwired digital signal processing circuit that generates low resolution, spatially subsampled digital image data which can directly drive the relatively low resolution LCD display. This reduces the complexity and clock frequency of the required circuitry, compared to generating an NTSC format signal, as is normally done in the prior art. The still mode image from the CCD sensor is processed by a general purpose processor (CPU) which executes an image processing software program in order to produce a high quality digital still image.
My knee jerk reaction to this (no patent is given directly in TFA) is this: How is the act of previewing a photo novel? I could see that having a *specific technology* that enables this patented, but not the act of allowing the user to preview the photo. Plus, it's something that everyone since the personal camera came out wanted. I remember when you had to wait to develop a whole roll of film and hope that the exposure/lighting was correct while thinking to yourself, "Man, I wish i could see the photo i just took without taking it to the store and getting it developed."
Prior art on the analog side? Polaroid allowed 'photo preview' with their cameras before it was available in a digital format
What about an air-droppable military grade (i.e., MIL-STD) device with a generator/battery/solar power source that sets up a cellular phone hot spot, and can link with the national carrier?
There are plenty of technical hurdles to overcome, but if they're recoverable and 'inexpesive' enough to deploy on a one-to-two week bases. It would allow for rapid dissemination of communication signals across a disaster area while the more permanent infrastructure is brought back online.
So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.
I'm not sure I agree with the moral of that story (as it is presented in your comment) - the real problem (from a business perspective) is that parents picking up kids late means lost revenue in terms of having to keep a proportional number of employees (possibly paying OT) to the number of kids that haven't been picked up yet. So by charging a fee, I can at least cover my costs of retaining my employees, if not charge a little extra to make a bigger margin on the truant parents.
Similarly, Comcast could use the behavior everyone is hypothesizing to show that they need more bailout money because, "Gosh, Mr./Mrs. Congress Critter - We've been trying to implement better connectivity, but usage keeps going way, way up! We need more money to increase infrastructure!" At which point they pocket 99% of any corporate welfare money they get, and use the remaining 1% to increase the cap by 25GB/month.
On the Technical side, this isn't any major feat. You're correct.
However, this is a tool that they'll start using to socially condition people into tiered plans. Imagine an ad from comcast in the near future, "Be Green! Lower your monthly usage! To find out how, check our Tips and Tricks section, and track your online usage using our 'IntelliGreen Online Usage Tracker'*"
*use of the IntelliGreen Online Usage Tracker will count toward your monthly usage cap at 1/2 the byte rate because it's Green!
While I agree 100% with your assessment that it would benefit the consumer to have simple well defined payment options. It doesn't benefit the carriers bottom line.
This type of behavior happens in many other markets - not just the cellphone arena. Think car buying, or the recent Mortgage glut. People were so focused on the 'out-the-door' cost, they weren't thinking total cost of ownership.
Also, to back up the surrounding posters - you can get the Unsubsidized phone + 'Even More Plus' T-Mobile service for cheaper than the subsidized version.
Slashdot Mirror
FTA:
All this is, of course, a delicate proposition. In some ways, an overactive immune system is as much of a risk as an underactive one: more than a million people worldwide a year die from collateral damage, like septic shock after bacterial infection, and inflammations that may ultimately induce chronic illness such as heart disease and perhaps even cancer.
This is just one possible outcome to programming new antibodies. I'd also be concerned with how the treatments mitigate any risk to shutting down our own immune system.
Hypothetical speculation: Say the treatment works well while you're taking regular doses of new Immunity 2.0 shots, but as soon as you can't afford to pay anymore, you're off the Immunity 2.0 shots. Well, it's been a while since your real immune system has had to work, so the next mutation of a virus comes along and 'oops'.
Most questions to risk will probably be found in lab research and trials, but it's still something to think about.
For this to work, we'd need RNA Shots and a knowledge that the state has use for an empty man.
What makes less sense is you use the same ammo for all of your guns, and yet when you pick it up, it gets automatically allocated to one, and you can't use it in any of the others.
I maybe mistaken (or picked up so many that I tricked myself into thinking something opposite), but I think when you pick up a 'heat-sink' clip it does apply to other weapons on a smaller scale. At the very least, I believe the game will top off your current weapon, and then start filling up your auxiliary weapons that have depleted ammunition. Also, all weapons will get some sort of recharge when you find a "Power Cell" box.
It's a good plotline, that expands as you go on through the game. That said, it does feel a little weaker than the original. There seems to me to be less of the main plotline than in the original, which is dissapointing.
I feel like this game actually provides a lot of main-plot forward motion. I consider it to be the "Empire Strikes Back" of the ME trilogy, and Bioware delivers in spades. (Can't go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil it for others).
One question that comes to mind for me: Did they play ME 1, and import their character?
My personal feelings are that ME2 is more rich and enjoyable, if you have a character from ME1 that you transfer over to ME2. It adds extra depth to the game.
If I'm in a public place such as a casual restaurant and I need to take a brief call, I answer in very low tones and the person on the other end can understand me just as well. My tone of voice is indistinguishable from other conversations happening in the area, and in fact is usually quieter.
This is perfectly acceptable. My choice is to sometimes (depending on the restaurant and situation) as a courtesy to the people at the same table, excuse myself and go outside or stand in the hallway next to the restrooms.
How is most of this 'list' news?
If you're in a noisy situation, or in a delicate one (sans movie theatre) where you're not in a one-on-one conversation with someone. Silent Mode + Text Messaging = Everyone else is happy, and you're able to communicate freely.
Oh wait, i forgot about PHBs that need to be reminded that they're not the only people on the planet... nevermind, carry on.
In fact, the opposite is true: businesses contracting for the government have a strong profit incentive to drive costs up.
This is the truth. They'll get a cost plus contract and then throw as many fresh out of college graduates at the program to charge as many hours as possible. Quality doesn't go up at all, but the bill to the government does.
How soon until Laki blows again?
I see geothermal power as a bit of a trade off, especially for IT needs; you get a nice sustainable power source, but you're probably in an area where the activity could just as soon destroy your data as well as power it. Then again, if you hosted your Data Center in Iceland, you could probably afford to have backups in another country far, far away from any 'event'.
Look, the main thing is we forgot that terrorism is a tactic, and let ourselves get swept up in Fear.
In my opinion, I don't believe that most people ever knew this tidbit of information in the first place. Sure some people would parrot what they heard on the network news after 9/11, "I won't be afraid and let them take my freedoms!", but then they blindly support the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act.
I agree with you 100% though. People being retarded and killing other people is a fact of life that is perfectly handled by proper detective work.
Also, people need to realize that 'terrorism' is being used by both sides of the fence. The best example, the 'national threat level' has never been set to Blue or Green. This is a system meant to make the citizens of their own country 'feel safe' but all it does is make people think, "Hey.. you gonna get blowed up real-good-like someday.".
Connor: Do ya know what we need, man? Some rope.
Murphy: Absolutely. What are ya, insane?
Connor: No I ain't. Charlie Bronson's always got rope.
Murphy: What?
Connor: Yeah. He's got a lot of rope strapped around him in the movies, and they always end up using it.
With all that fancy visual stuff going on, it could be easy for the technician to overlook a pushed pin or a pinch in the cable which could be causing a problem.
With subsystem sensors, for analog components, becoming more and more digital, I'd hope that problems like that would be isolated using a maintenance panel/IBIT combination that could feed that information into the ARMAR.
I agree that's how patents are intended, most definitely. I've just become jaded by the industry standard practice to file a patent for something obvious and non-novel, and then sue the heck out of companies actually doing something. As it turns out my knee jerk reaction was exactly as advertised.
After reading the abstract, background, and summary of the invention it appears that Kodak 'built a better mouse trap', and then patented it. Also, TFS doesn't properly define the 'preview' functionality, Kodak uses 'preview' in the sense that you use the eye viewfinder to 'preview' your photo before it is taken. So what they really patented was a method in the hardware to deliver quickly and efficiently the image you're about to capture to a low-res LCD, and then use a more power-intensive algorithm to generate the high-res still photo.
The advantage of the invention is that the two modes can be tailored for a relatively low quality "motion" mode and a much higher quality "still" mode. The motion mode images from the CCD sensor are processed by a hardwired digital signal processing circuit that generates low resolution, spatially subsampled digital image data which can directly drive the relatively low resolution LCD display. This reduces the complexity and clock frequency of the required circuitry, compared to generating an NTSC format signal, as is normally done in the prior art. The still mode image from the CCD sensor is processed by a general purpose processor (CPU) which executes an image processing software program in order to produce a high quality digital still image.
(Emphasis mine)
My knee jerk reaction to this (no patent is given directly in TFA) is this: How is the act of previewing a photo novel? I could see that having a *specific technology* that enables this patented, but not the act of allowing the user to preview the photo. Plus, it's something that everyone since the personal camera came out wanted. I remember when you had to wait to develop a whole roll of film and hope that the exposure/lighting was correct while thinking to yourself, "Man, I wish i could see the photo i just took without taking it to the store and getting it developed."
Prior art on the analog side? Polaroid allowed 'photo preview' with their cameras before it was available in a digital format
What about an air-droppable military grade (i.e., MIL-STD) device with a generator/battery/solar power source that sets up a cellular phone hot spot, and can link with the national carrier?
There are plenty of technical hurdles to overcome, but if they're recoverable and 'inexpesive' enough to deploy on a one-to-two week bases. It would allow for rapid dissemination of communication signals across a disaster area while the more permanent infrastructure is brought back online.
You'd probably want to get the Tapas addon.
So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.
I'm not sure I agree with the moral of that story (as it is presented in your comment) - the real problem (from a business perspective) is that parents picking up kids late means lost revenue in terms of having to keep a proportional number of employees (possibly paying OT) to the number of kids that haven't been picked up yet. So by charging a fee, I can at least cover my costs of retaining my employees, if not charge a little extra to make a bigger margin on the truant parents.
Similarly, Comcast could use the behavior everyone is hypothesizing to show that they need more bailout money because, "Gosh, Mr./Mrs. Congress Critter - We've been trying to implement better connectivity, but usage keeps going way, way up! We need more money to increase infrastructure!" At which point they pocket 99% of any corporate welfare money they get, and use the remaining 1% to increase the cap by 25GB/month.
the web of 1999 is what comcast is using to measure todays content.
And their delivering it all on the infrastructure of 1994 (this is what gets me angry mostly).
On the Technical side, this isn't any major feat. You're correct.
However, this is a tool that they'll start using to socially condition people into tiered plans. Imagine an ad from comcast in the near future, "Be Green! Lower your monthly usage! To find out how, check our Tips and Tricks section, and track your online usage using our 'IntelliGreen Online Usage Tracker'*"
*use of the IntelliGreen Online Usage Tracker will count toward your monthly usage cap at 1/2 the byte rate because it's Green!
Why can't we go to a simple system
Answer: Profit.
While I agree 100% with your assessment that it would benefit the consumer to have simple well defined payment options. It doesn't benefit the carriers bottom line.
This type of behavior happens in many other markets - not just the cellphone arena. Think car buying, or the recent Mortgage glut. People were so focused on the 'out-the-door' cost, they weren't thinking total cost of ownership.
Also, to back up the surrounding posters - you can get the Unsubsidized phone + 'Even More Plus' T-Mobile service for cheaper than the subsidized version.