Right. Most of slashdot is dead set against Yau without even having read his claims. But if you actually read his letter, his story is quite plausible and more importantly, verifiable. There are several factual claims in his letter -- that other impartial parties quoted in the article say their statements were misinterpreted, that false quotes were used, and that that Yau explicitly and in writing said the opposite of certain beliefs that were attributed to him. If these claims check out to be true (which shouldn't be very hard to verify to those with access to the documents and people in question), then Yau has a case.
At this point, all we can say for sure is that one of the two parties is lying and misrepresenting a lot. We can't say yet whether it's Yau or Nasar, but some pretty simple facts are at issue and the truth will come out soon enough. Until it does, stop attacking Yau guys.
Mod this guy up. Apparently the/. community is taking it on faith from the New Yorker that this guy is what they say that he is. I have no facts at all, but have read the guy's letter. Honestly, after seeing the picture of a Chinese guy, my first instinct was that the New Yorker was trying to either create US/Chinese tensions or blacken this guys name on the behalf of the Chinese government. Reading the guy's legal letter, apparently he has been fighting to correct what he sees as corruption in China. This would seem to make the New Yorker a tool of the Chinese government. So much becomes clear now.
Search for "lidice" and "game" and you got your "realistic" ww2 game were you play the nazi's in a masacre. This is the internet. Everything you can imagine has already been done.
Um, not yet. I can imagine a Civ/Age of Empires game where the main focus of the warfare was the rape, pillage, and burning. Let's call it "Bad things Humans Do." Adult-Only or Mature Only. I'd also love to see Civ with really different culture outlooks. Like coup warfare, raiding neighboring villages for wives, enslaving or discriminating against anyone not of your culture's traditional religion. Genoicide. Not just you raze a city for some little bit of gold. I mean the organized long term slaughter of those of different ethinic groups or those that just don't agree with those in power. Civ abstracts far too much. I'd want something closer to Age of Empire where you order your troops into that other village and then watch as they don't just kill off the uniform workers, they kill off the males and rape the females. What about heads on stakes or skinning alive for either religious or terror reasons?/. Has produced 2 games that I've never heard of as counter examples that their are Nazi death camp games out there. Sure, From reading about each, it sounds like one was similiar to this columbine RPG and just to spark comment. It was a basic resource management game except you were running a death camp. The other this lidice game sounds like it was made primarily for educational purposes. I'd never heard of Lidice before reading this. Honestly, I'm more surprised that similiar games haven't popped up sooner.
Most of my reading of low tech / pre gun powder European troops where that they came through and this would happen to anyone still in the small village. That apparently happened on both allied and enemy ground. It was only the peasants that had boltholes or knew when the right time to run that survived. I'd love to think that we've matured alittle bit from that time.
We need these aspects in our games and not to glorify the negatives of war. I'm thinking just exposing the worst of wars past to modern adults. We gloss over alot and make the past prettier than it actually was. I'd be curious how many people would be horrified at razing a city in Civ if they had to actually watch it? Would you sit peacefully and happily raze city after city or would you be horrified because that's just as brutal as war tradionally has been?
I guess we need a game called "Illegal Orders." That is a military ethics game. You are a private and you have to follow orders. You will be given what we'd call "illegal orders" through out several missions. The goal would be to train folks to recongize when not to obey an order or mission objective.
While the New Yorker article was not particularly favorable to Dr. Yau, it didn't seem to me that it could be called defamation. Indeed, to the extent that it says negative things about him, they seem to be coming from his peers in mathematics - and not from the writer of the article. Is that a sufficient defense against a legal claim of defamation? I guess that is for the courts to decide.
More importantly, by suing for defamation, Dr. Yau appears to be manifesting exactly the kind of behavior that he was described as having in the article.
Did no one else read Dr. Yau's website and his pdf letter to the New Yorker? In that letter Dr. Yau's agents have contacted most of those sources and according to Dr. Yau's letter they were all misquotes or slated in a manner to make him look bad. Read his pdf letter http://www.doctoryau.com/9.18.06.pdf . It is only 12 pages, but it is quiet calmly written. I would hope that if the facts are on Dr. Yau's side then the New York will fire on so called reporter and have to pay heavy damages to this individual.
It sounds like the article was set out to discredit this guy. I'd honestly want more sources than either the New Yorker, this guy's website or wikipedia. Honestly, I don't really care about it that much except that I hope that the facts come out and that the New Yorker will be punished if they are in the wrong. Actually, I'm thrilled that some is standing up to "the press" for a change. I'd think that if the content of the article was actually true, then he'd have a difficult time when under peer review of his future papers.
Like their best R&D people are going to waste a year of their lives in a public school in Baltimore teaching gang-bangers while their skills atrophy and their knowledge of "state of the art" becomes dated?
Give me a break. If they really are the best they'll job-hop and double their salary.
I was thinking of something along the lines of it being a mark of being the best or brightest that you were asked to teach one year or just one class. Heck, I wouldn't even consider wasn't my pet project on general ed or the lower rung folks. I'd want advanced, honor students, or AP classes at first. 9 months or one semster isn't that long. I'd envision them teaching part time just one class or something and having a reduced work load at their primary job. You seem to think said Phd or Master should just job hop for more money. I'm wanting that Master's or Phd person to infuse 15-20 minds with the intense interest in following a math, biology, chemistry or other science based course of study. Heck, if they could just bring in their work, or have the class also be thinking about bleeding edge tech in that field rather than the absolute basics than maybe we'd get alot of students interested in science.
Congratulations, jackass: you just gave the largest industrial manufacturers in the world every reason to spend billions to convince everyone that global warming doesn't exist. Think the anti-intellectual movement is bad now? Wait until GM's "Chicken Little" series of advertisements encourages SUV owners to run over anyone carrying a book.
Un-frickin'-believable. If you thought major corporations were bad before, see what happens when you give them an enormous financial incentive to be even worse.
You know what's really bad? It would be cheaper long term for the manufacturers to spend 1-2 billion improving the average understanding of science in the US. I read http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/putting_h is_money_where_his_ma.php article today about a Math Billionaire that is trying to get Math People that have BS or Masters in Math actually teaching math and paid alot doing it. He was trying for 1.6 Billion for Federal money trying to expand his program nation wide. What if our really cool leading edge companies required their best R&D people to teach one year or one class at their local highschool? Would it increase interest in science? Hopefully.
Jeez, sometimes I feel like I am getting squeezed on the far left by goofy loonies like Lockyer and pushed out of the picture by power hungry neocon fundies on the extreme right. What happened to the middle ground where people of reason and careful thought worked through compromise to help advance progress?
Shh, we are hiding. Plus we are mainly a big, but quiet group. We don't make waves so you don't hear from us. I'm personally for what I call conservate ecoism. I don't want what Greens want. I just want cheaper/cleaner/or less power hungery products that do the same things that my current products do. I don't really care about the environment for near religious reasons or just because it looks pretty. I'm just a cheap bastard that wants everything that I buy to last and be efficient.
I imagine this could happen to anybody who develops games based on historical events, than enact violence. I'm sure there's WWII games where you played on the German side. There's always video games where you play the bad guy. He shouldn't feel guilty because someone who enjoyed playing his game was also crazy. Maybe it's what pushed him over the edge, maybe it's not. I highly suspect that this kid was really messed up even before played the game.
Let's be honest: We don't have accurate games. I love WWII games as much as the next guy, but I don't recall a single one where you were an SS officer incharge or part of running a Nazi death camp. I recall some of Japanese airplane games of WWII of them bombing Pearl Harbor. Any air plane bombing game should be fairly ok. We don't have war sims that show what really happened when your army captured an enemies city/village/town. We have the burning and occasionally we do have looting in games. I have, yet to see Civ, Age of Empires or any other game do the full rape, pillage, and burn rountine. Let's face it; our games are much cleaner than they could be. I personally don't like shooters because I'm not good at them. They aren't really meant to have a story other than hey I need a somewhat morally good excuse to shoot everyone in front me. I'd say games like Wolf3D and Doom where you are shooting genetically modified humans, or aliens/demons gave the player moral absolution from slaughtering everything in their path. If I picked up a school shooter and it was modded to use us my classmates from highschool and the teachers, I'd have a very difficult time just randomly shooting people that pissed me off before the police came and gave me a head shoot. That game wouldn't be very fun for me. Now a game where I get to play with the drill team or cheerleaders or just Sim Drill Team with lots of bouncy 15-18 year old girls I could see outselling Mario. I may have had off days, but I never had that kind of downward spiral or wanted to go through it. Now, I could see a really well done RPG with extensive plot and background with 50-60 hours of play and the climax ending is the player breaking killing relatively random main or supporting characters. Actually, the more that I think about it the more that it seems like really good RPG material if done right. The problem is every RPG that I've played has some from of leveling and I don't see how a school shooting based RPG would have that phase. A mainly social interaction RPG with your character breaking and going crazy does sound like an interesting twist.
Nothing against the guy, but I'm startled that any college or university would give him a degree with most of the course credit being AP credits. Unlike the rest of/., I don't think that this kid has missed out on much. I had more of a social life attending classes than the hours between classes or just hanging out time. I took an average of 18 hours a semester and would have taken more. I found it difficult to though to schedule any more classes, get advisor approval to take that many classes and I had alot of social pressure to taken only 15-18 hours a semester from parents, class mates, grads, and professors. I've occasionally thought about takening a few more CS classes at my local community college just to met 10-15 people with similiar interests. If this guy did all the college work on his own and without the input of peers, then he wouldn't have any social life, Last I noticed most of college was centered around forcing a social life on students reguardless if they want it. I never wanted to attend pep rallies or any sporting events in college. I hated that the one question every one asked me about my university was if I chose it because some X sports person went there. No, I chose that university because they gave me the best scholarship offer and 10-15 others from my HS also were planning on attending that same university. Frieends and money and 2.5 hours away from mom were the factors that I used for choosing my university. This guy apparently picked the one place that would accept all his AP credits. I bet if many more try it, they'll quietly make a rule that they have to have more hours from that university before graduating.
The casing is made of a type of foam that is very good at absorbing impacts, and the whole thing doesn't weigh very much. If it landed on you with the parachute open you'd just brush it off. If it landed on you without the parachute you'd get a bruised head but would be okay.
I'd love to see a video of your group testing that. I can't help but think that Nerf bats hurt. I'm sure your numbers are o.k.,but I wouldn't want to be under anything other than natural rain/sleet/snow that falls from a high distance above ground.
It seems to me that the "core group" they are referring to do exist and in my experience play many more hours per day, with some playing the whole weekends away. They exhibit classic signs of addiction like only associating with people who play the game on a daily basis and hiding the "playing of the game" from family and friends who do not partake in it.
Um, maybe they don't want to associate with their family, or so-called friends that call their hobbies "addictions." I know that I'm anti-social and really could care less about being around people other than at work. I plan on going home and either reading on my home computer or playing games from 6:00 pm to about 10:30 pm. I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer or addicted. I consider myself bored silly doing anything else. I don't want to socialize with others or get out and play sports or excerise. Can't you just leave my demographic alone?
No not wallmart. They would not let democrats in on voting day.
Um, I'd think Wal-Mart would just let everyone except store employees in to vote. They wouldn't even have any problems with store employees voting during break or after/before their shift. The problem isn't that Walmart would help democrats or republicans. The problem with highly accessible voting locations is that third party or indepedents could much more likely win. Our two inplace power blocks have a vested interest in not really getting the general public to vote. The Democrats only want democrat voters to show up. Republicans only want republican voters to show up. Independents would like that the two main parties mainly just stay at home this election. Those that get the voter consisting voting for them don't want to add the total number of unknowns to the mix. New comers might have an edge with additional voter turnout though.
So I guess you think that all roads should be privately funded, instead of funded by the public. So doesnt the gov control the transport now, since they build most of the roads
No, they don't. The closest thing to government control of transport is traffic lights, one way streets, highways and everyone driving on the same side of street. Now if the government took out that manual steering ability on your car and replaced it by a gov. run auto steering device that would be gov control of transport. Right now, it is impossible to monitor everything that is on the roads from walkers, bikers, to cars. In 20-30 years? Could we have the tech to monitor everything that steps on a publicly owned road? I actually don't mind those lights that are triggered because of cars setting at the intersection. I don't want anything more than that though.
China's not communist by any reasonable definition of the word. Their welfare state makes America's look comprehensive - no state education, no state healthcare, no unemployment benefit. You're on your own, pal. Private enterprise is common and becoming more so, and people have the right to own property. It's not communist, it's just got a very authoritarian government that calls itself communist.
Shh, I hope our government doesn't take any lessons from them. Though we'll just arrange our system where people still have freedom of speech, and can blog and complain on the internet with all the millions of other US residents. Heck, we can even still do our voting along our tradional lines since it's understood by those in power and it's hard for your average disgrunted citizen to actually change anything. They have to form a group or party and go through our organized political process. That weeds out all the lazy right there. Everyone who won't go through the "democratic" process can just be labeled an extremist and ignored by most of the citizenery.
Piracy is when you copy content yourself for free. With piracy, no one profits off someone else's hard work. Counterfitting is when someone runs illegal copies and then sells the copies for their own profit.
Dude, I've never heard of counterfit used in the manner you believe. I have seen in many places for piracy and pirated copies being used in that manner. I've always been told that Piracy is copying media and then selling it. Copying content and not selling it isn't piracy. It may be copyright infringement, but it isn't piracy.
Actually, it's been shown that if you jog moderately, on average you'll increase your lifespan by approximately the time you spent jogging. Not a dramatic outcome, unfortunately.
The important thing that we really need to know is the sex better between the ages of 50-80 if you jog/walk routinely from 25-50? Can we coast by in our old age?
Ahh yes, I can just see all the videos now that the 16 year old video nuts recut Madonna videos and make her do things offensive.
It will also allow YouTube to remove user-generated clips based on Warner material that the company deems offensive. Madonna would NEVER do anything offensive.
Um, how would tell its a user generated offensive video and not just an original offensive video?
Don't get me wrong. I love Nintendo, and hope the Wii is a success... I plan on getting one. And I DON'T have a 360. But I still think that MS is not trying to profit on the 360, at least the system itself. They're trying to build a brand that's successful with gamers and synonymous with fun/good product. And if Sony and Nintendo don't do that this generation, then Microsoft, by default, wins in that arena.
You make a sound case that if Wii & PS3 don't sell well then MS would have to win. Here is something that you may not have thought of though. What if the leading 3 game systems come this Christmas are Game Cube, PS2, and Xbox rather than Wii, PS3, and 360? I know that's completly different from the geek/nerd POV. Only at/. would people actually consider buying all the systems. I'm personally going to buy the Wii this time around for the backwards compat. with the GC. I bought the PS2 for all the PS1 FF games that I could play. There are 4-5 GC games that I'd buy and play on the Wii and there are atleast 4 good playing Wii games coming out. I don't buy 10-20 games, I might only buy 5 games for a system so I pick what I know that I'll play 100+ hours on per game. PS2 has done it for me with FFX, FFX2, KH, & KH2. I really haven't needed much more than that. Wii will do it for me for all the "family games" that I can let my kids play or that I could have fun playing with them. That alone will be worth the purchase.
I would gladly pay $6/gallon if it would get all the jackasses driving Yukons with one passenger off the road. The public transit would be nice, but it would require everyone to not live on 3/4 acre in a development 35 miles from the center of the city for it to be even plausable.
I'm glad that I live in the "rural" state of Arkansas. 35 miles is a bit far of a commute, but some will do it without thinking about it. I live about 10 minutes away at 45 mph from my work place. I previously lived at 18 miles from my work place and it took roughly 20 minutes to drive to or from work. I'd advise us not to develop any of these ancient building ideas known as cities. Europe likes cities because they've had them for hundreds of years. They think these thing we call a car is just a passing fad. Well, to them, it may be. I don't want to get on any form of mass transit to go to work. I dislike the idea of publicly funded buses. I like having my privately owned transport. We need a poll of who likes having a their own transport, who wants companies to own all transport, those that think that the government should control all transport, or those that think that we should just walk everywhere since the government can't cut off all of our legs.
Because the majority of people in the U.S. are fucking idiots, that's why. As long as they get their daily update on the antics of Paris Hilton, football on tv, etc... they don't care. You can park a fucking tank on every street corner, and they wouldn't care.
Well, in Arkansas we'd atleast demand to be able to drive the tanks around abit... To have some fun with. O.k. Maybe just cameras would be safer.
Britons support CCTV that catches other people breaking the law. Not them, when they were breaking the speed limit, but in an informed and responsible way.
This is part of my wish to have my entire property and my vehicle wired up to record everything others do that are crimes so that I have CYA. I don't want the government or others to have access to that data though. Basically, I'd like to record those around my house and potentially those that break into my house or car. Now, if I beat my wife or abuse my kids or do something in my home and isn't loud enough for the neighbors to call the cops, well, they shouldn't have the ability or right to use that against me. Note: I don't abuse my wife or kids, but that's the one example that popped into my head. I also don't want others like my mom or mother-in-law to have access to rights to any of that video. If I decide to share family video segments, that's one thing. If my wife and I are having sex on the living room floor, I don't want my mom or mother-in-law to be able to just use the internal webcam and watch. Heck, I don't even care about random Feds that are may or not be watching as long as that don't call and interrupt.
Just pull into the polling place on your way to the supermarket.
Easy, simple, effective. There is no way it will get done.
I'll do you one better. Make Wal-Mart one of the places to vote rather than schools or government buildings. Like those without kids know where the schools are or do most people have any idea where the government buildings are? But everyone knows where their local Wal-Mart is. Next put them in gas stations. I think that I'd like web voting, or atleast logging on to a website checking a few boxes and then going about my busniess. No, I'm too familiar with computers, I don't ever want website voting after really thinking about it.
Voting should be compulsory - if only to guarantee that the government can't take short cuts.
I'm thinking that they should just tie it in with IRS returns and the census. The government wants to know everything about you anyway. So let's give them all our money info, then our personal info, then let's vote all on the same form. Of course it would be months til we ever find out "who" won any given election since there will be people filing late or filing extensions.
Democrats and their supporters alike can't seem to wrap their heads around this, but every time they lose an election they blame it on people who vote on "cultural issues". Perhaps if they learned that these cultural issues were really, truly important to many voters they could win votes, but noooo... instead, we hear the same mantra of, "stupid rednecks only care about x!" each election cycle. These stupid rednecks are voters, you know, and cultural issues are important to people, no matter how much the Democrats want to deny it. Responding to elections lost due to cultural issues by reaffirming your stance on these issues will NOT somehow magically bring people to your point of view.
Ahh, they are just mad cause the red necks will vote for your enemy if they are spited. Calling them dumb rednecks at the end of one election is likely to lose that voting block for the next 2-3 elections. Rednecks aren't forgetful; they are very spiteful. They'll vote against the party that insults them on that prinicple alone. The only good thing about that, is that applies to every minority group. If they feel that a candiate or pary is insulting them, you can kiss their votes goodbye for atleast 2 election cycles. With enough butt kissing you might get them back, if you are willing to pay the price.
Ok, tinfoil hat off... We geeks are probably just as gullible as everyone else and even easier to control... Just promise us dates if we go along with you...
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Most of slashdot is dead set against Yau without even having read his claims. But if you actually read his letter, his story is quite plausible and more importantly, verifiable. There are several factual claims in his letter -- that other impartial parties quoted in the article say their statements were misinterpreted, that false quotes were used, and that that Yau explicitly and in writing said the opposite of certain beliefs that were attributed to him. If these claims check out to be true (which shouldn't be very hard to verify to those with access to the documents and people in question), then Yau has a case.
/. community is taking it on faith from the New Yorker that this guy is what they say that he is. I have no facts at all, but have read the guy's letter. Honestly, after seeing the picture of a Chinese guy, my first instinct was that the New Yorker was trying to either create US/Chinese tensions or blacken this guys name on the behalf of the Chinese government. Reading the guy's legal letter, apparently he has been fighting to correct what he sees as corruption in China. This would seem to make the New Yorker a tool of the Chinese government. So much becomes clear now.
At this point, all we can say for sure is that one of the two parties is lying and misrepresenting a lot. We can't say yet whether it's Yau or Nasar, but some pretty simple facts are at issue and the truth will come out soon enough. Until it does, stop attacking Yau guys.
Mod this guy up. Apparently the
Search for "lidice" and "game" and you got your "realistic" ww2 game were you play the nazi's in a masacre. This is the internet. Everything you can imagine has already been done.
/. Has produced 2 games that I've never heard of as counter examples that their are Nazi death camp games out there. Sure, From reading about each, it sounds like one was similiar to this columbine RPG and just to spark comment. It was a basic resource management game except you were running a death camp. The other this lidice game sounds like it was made primarily for educational purposes. I'd never heard of Lidice before reading this. Honestly, I'm more surprised that similiar games haven't popped up sooner.
Um, not yet. I can imagine a Civ/Age of Empires game where the main focus of the warfare was the rape, pillage, and burning. Let's call it "Bad things Humans Do." Adult-Only or Mature Only. I'd also love to see Civ with really different culture outlooks. Like coup warfare, raiding neighboring villages for wives, enslaving or discriminating against anyone not of your culture's traditional religion. Genoicide. Not just you raze a city for some little bit of gold. I mean the organized long term slaughter of those of different ethinic groups or those that just don't agree with those in power. Civ abstracts far too much. I'd want something closer to Age of Empire where you order your troops into that other village and then watch as they don't just kill off the uniform workers, they kill off the males and rape the females. What about heads on stakes or skinning alive for either religious or terror reasons?
Most of my reading of low tech / pre gun powder European troops where that they came through and this would happen to anyone still in the small village. That apparently happened on both allied and enemy ground. It was only the peasants that had boltholes or knew when the right time to run that survived. I'd love to think that we've matured alittle bit from that time.
We need these aspects in our games and not to glorify the negatives of war. I'm thinking just exposing the worst of wars past to modern adults. We gloss over alot and make the past prettier than it actually was. I'd be curious how many people would be horrified at razing a city in Civ if they had to actually watch it? Would you sit peacefully and happily raze city after city or would you be horrified because that's just as brutal as war tradionally has been?
I guess we need a game called "Illegal Orders." That is a military ethics game. You are a private and you have to follow orders. You will be given what we'd call "illegal orders" through out several missions. The goal would be to train folks to recongize when not to obey an order or mission objective.
While the New Yorker article was not particularly favorable to Dr. Yau, it didn't seem to me that it could be called defamation. Indeed, to the extent that it says negative things about him, they seem to be coming from his peers in mathematics - and not from the writer of the article. Is that a sufficient defense against a legal claim of defamation? I guess that is for the courts to decide.
More importantly, by suing for defamation, Dr. Yau appears to be manifesting exactly the kind of behavior that he was described as having in the article.
Did no one else read Dr. Yau's website and his pdf letter to the New Yorker? In that letter Dr. Yau's agents have contacted most of those sources and according to Dr. Yau's letter they were all misquotes or slated in a manner to make him look bad. Read his pdf letter http://www.doctoryau.com/9.18.06.pdf . It is only 12 pages, but it is quiet calmly written. I would hope that if the facts are on Dr. Yau's side then the New York will fire on so called reporter and have to pay heavy damages to this individual.
It sounds like the article was set out to discredit this guy. I'd honestly want more sources than either the New Yorker, this guy's website or wikipedia. Honestly, I don't really care about it that much except that I hope that the facts come out and that the New Yorker will be punished if they are in the wrong. Actually, I'm thrilled that some is standing up to "the press" for a change. I'd think that if the content of the article was actually true, then he'd have a difficult time when under peer review of his future papers.
Like their best R&D people are going to waste a year of their lives in a public school in Baltimore teaching gang-bangers while their skills atrophy and their knowledge of "state of the art" becomes dated?
Give me a break. If they really are the best they'll job-hop and double their salary.
I was thinking of something along the lines of it being a mark of being the best or brightest that you were asked to teach one year or just one class. Heck, I wouldn't even consider wasn't my pet project on general ed or the lower rung folks. I'd want advanced, honor students, or AP classes at first. 9 months or one semster isn't that long. I'd envision them teaching part time just one class or something and having a reduced work load at their primary job. You seem to think said Phd or Master should just job hop for more money. I'm wanting that Master's or Phd person to infuse 15-20 minds with the intense interest in following a math, biology, chemistry or other science based course of study. Heck, if they could just bring in their work, or have the class also be thinking about bleeding edge tech in that field rather than the absolute basics than maybe we'd get alot of students interested in science.
Congratulations, jackass: you just gave the largest industrial manufacturers in the world every reason to spend billions to convince everyone that global warming doesn't exist. Think the anti-intellectual movement is bad now? Wait until GM's "Chicken Little" series of advertisements encourages SUV owners to run over anyone carrying a book.
h is_money_where_his_ma.php article today about a Math Billionaire that is trying to get Math People that have BS or Masters in Math actually teaching math and paid alot doing it. He was trying for 1.6 Billion for Federal money trying to expand his program nation wide. What if our really cool leading edge companies required their best R&D people to teach one year or one class at their local highschool? Would it increase interest in science? Hopefully.
Un-frickin'-believable. If you thought major corporations were bad before, see what happens when you give them an enormous financial incentive to be even worse.
You know what's really bad? It would be cheaper long term for the manufacturers to spend 1-2 billion improving the average understanding of science in the US. I read http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/putting_
Jeez, sometimes I feel like I am getting squeezed on the far left by goofy loonies like Lockyer and pushed out of the picture by power hungry neocon fundies on the extreme right. What happened to the middle ground where people of reason and careful thought worked through compromise to help advance progress?
Shh, we are hiding. Plus we are mainly a big, but quiet group. We don't make waves so you don't hear from us. I'm personally for what I call conservate ecoism. I don't want what Greens want. I just want cheaper/cleaner/or less power hungery products that do the same things that my current products do. I don't really care about the environment for near religious reasons or just because it looks pretty. I'm just a cheap bastard that wants everything that I buy to last and be efficient.
I used to be a dedicated gamer (have a wife and kids, so I only play after 8pm on most days, now-a-days), and am eagerly waiting for the Wii...
I'm awaiting for the Wii so that I can play really fun family games with the kids.
I imagine this could happen to anybody who develops games based on historical events, than enact violence. I'm sure there's WWII games where you played on the German side. There's always video games where you play the bad guy. He shouldn't feel guilty because someone who enjoyed playing his game was also crazy. Maybe it's what pushed him over the edge, maybe it's not. I highly suspect that this kid was really messed up even before played the game.
Let's be honest: We don't have accurate games. I love WWII games as much as the next guy, but I don't recall a single one where you were an SS officer incharge or part of running a Nazi death camp. I recall some of Japanese airplane games of WWII of them bombing Pearl Harbor. Any air plane bombing game should be fairly ok. We don't have war sims that show what really happened when your army captured an enemies city/village/town. We have the burning and occasionally we do have looting in games. I have, yet to see Civ, Age of Empires or any other game do the full rape, pillage, and burn rountine. Let's face it; our games are much cleaner than they could be. I personally don't like shooters because I'm not good at them. They aren't really meant to have a story other than hey I need a somewhat morally good excuse to shoot everyone in front me. I'd say games like Wolf3D and Doom where you are shooting genetically modified humans, or aliens/demons gave the player moral absolution from slaughtering everything in their path. If I picked up a school shooter and it was modded to use us my classmates from highschool and the teachers, I'd have a very difficult time just randomly shooting people that pissed me off before the police came and gave me a head shoot. That game wouldn't be very fun for me. Now a game where I get to play with the drill team or cheerleaders or just Sim Drill Team with lots of bouncy 15-18 year old girls I could see outselling Mario. I may have had off days, but I never had that kind of downward spiral or wanted to go through it. Now, I could see a really well done RPG with extensive plot and background with 50-60 hours of play and the climax ending is the player breaking killing relatively random main or supporting characters. Actually, the more that I think about it the more that it seems like really good RPG material if done right. The problem is every RPG that I've played has some from of leveling and I don't see how a school shooting based RPG would have that phase. A mainly social interaction RPG with your character breaking and going crazy does sound like an interesting twist.
Nothing against the guy, but I'm startled that any college or university would give him a degree with most of the course credit being AP credits. Unlike the rest of /., I don't think that this kid has missed out on much. I had more of a social life attending classes than the hours between classes or just hanging out time. I took an average of 18 hours a semester and would have taken more. I found it difficult to though to schedule any more classes, get advisor approval to take that many classes and I had alot of social pressure to taken only 15-18 hours a semester from parents, class mates, grads, and professors. I've occasionally thought about takening a few more CS classes at my local community college just to met 10-15 people with similiar interests. If this guy did all the college work on his own and without the input of peers, then he wouldn't have any social life, Last I noticed most of college was centered around forcing a social life on students reguardless if they want it. I never wanted to attend pep rallies or any sporting events in college. I hated that the one question every one asked me about my university was if I chose it because some X sports person went there. No, I chose that university because they gave me the best scholarship offer and 10-15 others from my HS also were planning on attending that same university. Frieends and money and 2.5 hours away from mom were the factors that I used for choosing my university. This guy apparently picked the one place that would accept all his AP credits. I bet if many more try it, they'll quietly make a rule that they have to have more hours from that university before graduating.
The casing is made of a type of foam that is very good at absorbing impacts, and the whole thing doesn't weigh very much.
If it landed on you with the parachute open you'd just brush it off. If it landed on you without the parachute you'd get a bruised head but would be okay.
I'd love to see a video of your group testing that. I can't help but think that Nerf bats hurt. I'm sure your numbers are o.k.,but I wouldn't want to be under anything other than natural rain/sleet/snow that falls from a high distance above ground.
It seems to me that the "core group" they are referring to do exist and in my experience play many more hours per day, with some playing the whole weekends away. They exhibit classic signs of addiction like only associating with people who play the game on a daily basis and hiding the "playing of the game" from family and friends who do not partake in it.
Um, maybe they don't want to associate with their family, or so-called friends that call their hobbies "addictions." I know that I'm anti-social and really could care less about being around people other than at work. I plan on going home and either reading on my home computer or playing games from 6:00 pm to about 10:30 pm. I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer or addicted. I consider myself bored silly doing anything else. I don't want to socialize with others or get out and play sports or excerise. Can't you just leave my demographic alone?
No not wallmart. They would not let democrats in on voting day.
Um, I'd think Wal-Mart would just let everyone except store employees in to vote. They wouldn't even have any problems with store employees voting during break or after/before their shift. The problem isn't that Walmart would help democrats or republicans. The problem with highly accessible voting locations is that third party or indepedents could much more likely win. Our two inplace power blocks have a vested interest in not really getting the general public to vote. The Democrats only want democrat voters to show up. Republicans only want republican voters to show up. Independents would like that the two main parties mainly just stay at home this election. Those that get the voter consisting voting for them don't want to add the total number of unknowns to the mix. New comers might have an edge with additional voter turnout though.
So I guess you think that all roads should be privately funded, instead of funded by the public. So doesnt the gov control the transport now, since they build most of the roads
No, they don't. The closest thing to government control of transport is traffic lights, one way streets, highways and everyone driving on the same side of street. Now if the government took out that manual steering ability on your car and replaced it by a gov. run auto steering device that would be gov control of transport. Right now, it is impossible to monitor everything that is on the roads from walkers, bikers, to cars. In 20-30 years? Could we have the tech to monitor everything that steps on a publicly owned road? I actually don't mind those lights that are triggered because of cars setting at the intersection. I don't want anything more than that though.
China's not communist by any reasonable definition of the word. Their welfare state makes America's look comprehensive - no state education, no state healthcare, no unemployment benefit. You're on your own, pal. Private enterprise is common and becoming more so, and people have the right to own property. It's not communist, it's just got a very authoritarian government that calls itself communist.
Shh, I hope our government doesn't take any lessons from them. Though we'll just arrange our system where people still have freedom of speech, and can blog and complain on the internet with all the millions of other US residents. Heck, we can even still do our voting along our tradional lines since it's understood by those in power and it's hard for your average disgrunted citizen to actually change anything. They have to form a group or party and go through our organized political process. That weeds out all the lazy right there. Everyone who won't go through the "democratic" process can just be labeled an extremist and ignored by most of the citizenery.
Piracy is when you copy content yourself for free. With piracy, no one profits off someone else's hard work.
Counterfitting is when someone runs illegal copies and then sells the copies for their own profit.
Dude, I've never heard of counterfit used in the manner you believe. I have seen in many places for piracy and pirated copies being used in that manner. I've always been told that Piracy is copying media and then selling it. Copying content and not selling it isn't piracy. It may be copyright infringement, but it isn't piracy.
Actually, it's been shown that if you jog moderately, on average you'll increase your lifespan by approximately the time you spent jogging. Not a dramatic outcome, unfortunately.
The important thing that we really need to know is the sex better between the ages of 50-80 if you jog/walk routinely from 25-50? Can we coast by in our old age?
Ahh yes, I can just see all the videos now that the 16 year old video nuts recut Madonna videos and make her do things offensive.
It will also allow YouTube to remove user-generated clips based on Warner material that the company deems offensive.
Madonna would NEVER do anything offensive.
Um, how would tell its a user generated offensive video and not just an original offensive video?
Don't get me wrong. I love Nintendo, and hope the Wii is a success... I plan on getting one. And I DON'T have a 360. But I still think that MS is not trying to profit on the 360, at least the system itself. They're trying to build a brand that's successful with gamers and synonymous with fun/good product. And if Sony and Nintendo don't do that this generation, then Microsoft, by default, wins in that arena.
/. would people actually consider buying all the systems. I'm personally going to buy the Wii this time around for the backwards compat. with the GC. I bought the PS2 for all the PS1 FF games that I could play. There are 4-5 GC games that I'd buy and play on the Wii and there are atleast 4 good playing Wii games coming out. I don't buy 10-20 games, I might only buy 5 games for a system so I pick what I know that I'll play 100+ hours on per game. PS2 has done it for me with FFX, FFX2, KH, & KH2. I really haven't needed much more than that. Wii will do it for me for all the "family games" that I can let my kids play or that I could have fun playing with them. That alone will be worth the purchase.
You make a sound case that if Wii & PS3 don't sell well then MS would have to win. Here is something that you may not have thought of though. What if the leading 3 game systems come this Christmas are Game Cube, PS2, and Xbox rather than Wii, PS3, and 360? I know that's completly different from the geek/nerd POV. Only at
I would gladly pay $6/gallon if it would get all the jackasses driving Yukons with one passenger off the road. The public transit would be nice, but it would require everyone to not live on 3/4 acre in a development 35 miles from the center of the city for it to be even plausable.
I'm glad that I live in the "rural" state of Arkansas. 35 miles is a bit far of a commute, but some will do it without thinking about it. I live about 10 minutes away at 45 mph from my work place. I previously lived at 18 miles from my work place and it took roughly 20 minutes to drive to or from work. I'd advise us not to develop any of these ancient building ideas known as cities. Europe likes cities because they've had them for hundreds of years. They think these thing we call a car is just a passing fad. Well, to them, it may be. I don't want to get on any form of mass transit to go to work. I dislike the idea of publicly funded buses. I like having my privately owned transport. We need a poll of who likes having a their own transport, who wants companies to own all transport, those that think that the government should control all transport, or those that think that we should just walk everywhere since the government can't cut off all of our legs.
Because the majority of people in the U.S. are fucking idiots, that's why. As long as they get their daily update on the antics of Paris Hilton, football on tv, etc... they don't care. You can park a fucking tank on every street corner, and they wouldn't care.
Well, in Arkansas we'd atleast demand to be able to drive the tanks around abit... To have some fun with. O.k. Maybe just cameras would be safer.
Britons support CCTV that catches other people breaking the law. Not them, when they were breaking the speed limit, but in an informed and responsible way.
This is part of my wish to have my entire property and my vehicle wired up to record everything others do that are crimes so that I have CYA. I don't want the government or others to have access to that data though. Basically, I'd like to record those around my house and potentially those that break into my house or car. Now, if I beat my wife or abuse my kids or do something in my home and isn't loud enough for the neighbors to call the cops, well, they shouldn't have the ability or right to use that against me. Note: I don't abuse my wife or kids, but that's the one example that popped into my head. I also don't want others like my mom or mother-in-law to have access to rights to any of that video. If I decide to share family video segments, that's one thing. If my wife and I are having sex on the living room floor, I don't want my mom or mother-in-law to be able to just use the internal webcam and watch. Heck, I don't even care about random Feds that are may or not be watching as long as that don't call and interrupt.
Just pull into the polling place on your way to the supermarket.
Easy, simple, effective. There is no way it will get done.
I'll do you one better. Make Wal-Mart one of the places to vote rather than schools or government buildings. Like those without kids know where the schools are or do most people have any idea where the government buildings are? But everyone knows where their local Wal-Mart is. Next put them in gas stations. I think that I'd like web voting, or atleast logging on to a website checking a few boxes and then going about my busniess. No, I'm too familiar with computers, I don't ever want website voting after really thinking about it.
Voting should be compulsory - if only to guarantee that the government can't take short cuts.
I'm thinking that they should just tie it in with IRS returns and the census. The government wants to know everything about you anyway. So let's give them all our money info, then our personal info, then let's vote all on the same form. Of course it would be months til we ever find out "who" won any given election since there will be people filing late or filing extensions.
Democrats and their supporters alike can't seem to wrap their heads around this, but every time they lose an election they blame it on people who vote on "cultural issues". Perhaps if they learned that these cultural issues were really, truly important to many voters they could win votes, but noooo... instead, we hear the same mantra of, "stupid rednecks only care about x!" each election cycle. These stupid rednecks are voters, you know, and cultural issues are important to people, no matter how much the Democrats want to deny it. Responding to elections lost due to cultural issues by reaffirming your stance on these issues will NOT somehow magically bring people to your point of view.
Ahh, they are just mad cause the red necks will vote for your enemy if they are spited. Calling them dumb rednecks at the end of one election is likely to lose that voting block for the next 2-3 elections. Rednecks aren't forgetful; they are very spiteful. They'll vote against the party that insults them on that prinicple alone. The only good thing about that, is that applies to every minority group. If they feel that a candiate or pary is insulting them, you can kiss their votes goodbye for atleast 2 election cycles. With enough butt kissing you might get them back, if you are willing to pay the price.
Ok, tinfoil hat off... We geeks are probably just as gullible as everyone else and even easier to control... Just promise us dates if we go along with you...
Shh, there you go telling our secret weakness.