It's important to remember that this is the consensus of "predation dissenters" like Prof. Jack Horner... those who don't think that T-Rex was a predator. So, that list is a little biased. And, as my paleontology professor told me, "Jack doesn't like T-Rex because it eats his duckbills..."
Yes, T-Rex's vision may not have been great, and the forelimbs are human-sized (as in, you'd have a 50/50 chance of beating T-Rex in arm wrestling...). None of this really argues against predation though.
T-Rex may not have been a hawk, but it didn't have to spot miniscule prey from hundreds of feet in the air... A lot of large predators pick off the sick and injured, and a good sense of smell is more important for that anyway.
I'd call the arms useless and vestigial. But if you think arms are necessary for taking down prey though, look at that hawk again. No arms, and a very efficient predator. It's got oversized legs (I don't recall them being oversized... but proportional to a very heavy body), imagine it knocking over a duckbill and stepping on the body to pin it down (like a hawk or eagle), while tearing away with the teeth... I'd say it's possible.
As for running speed, there's a great paper published in Nature a bit back arguing that T-Rex's morphology didn't allow fast running. So T-Rex couldn't catch the jeep... oh well. I doubt that disallows predation. It just narrows your targets a bit. It's like the old camping adage: You don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the guy behind you... A lot of prey isn't very fast... they travel in groups so the group will survive, even if the slow (or just unlucky) don't.
As for not finding any healed T-Rex tooth marks, that could just mean that T-Rex when T-Rex caught you, you did *not* escape to tell the tale. Given tooth size (and the frightening idea of pack hunting), this would not really suprise me.
First, the professor was requesting a grant for a sociological study, not a scientific one. He wanted to study the impact of US creationists on Canadian science. Why the grant board denied him a grant on the ground that he assumed evolution to be correct. What confuses me is why that matters in the slightest. The validity of evolution or creationism is irrelevant in a sociological study. If someone did a study on "the impact of people who believe in the Loch Ness monster on tourism in Scotland", it shouldn't be rejected because Nessie doesn't actually exist (or does).
Second, at the risk of beating a very old, dead horse, it bugs me that here's a professor who teaches at Harvard, who testified as an 'expert' in the recent creationism/evolution in school case, and still insists that "evolution is scientific fact"... dammit, it's a theory! I guess that's what happens when a professor of sociology is your evolution expert. Grrrr.
To be fair, this isn't about blaming everyone except the person who did the act. If you read TFA, you'd notice that when the kid's lawyer raised it as a defense, the judge threw it out. The kid who pulled the trigger was convicted and, as this happened in Alabama, the kid was sentanced to death. Believe me, he's getting his fair share of the blame.
What this *is* about is a seperate civil case based on the same facts. The lawyers for the victims are saying to Take-Two "Hey, you helped this happen; you should share the burden too." There are plenty of people who are going to argue both sides... whether playing GTA constantly gave the kid ideas, or made him more efficient, or had nothing to do with it. All that happened is a judge said that it's possible, and that a jury has to decide it.
Read TFA next time and save yourself from being overly disgusted with the world. There are some flaws in the legal system, but it's not *that* bad.
It was a good show. One nifty bit of engineering from the Stanford team was to overlay a video camera image over laser-generated map, use a color-matching system to determine what colors of the video were level and safe to drive on, and then extrapolate what areas of the video image were safe.
The main difficulty that I see, going forward, is that the laser-rangefinder systems that these robots all relied on all function by looking for obstacles and attempting to avoid them. They can spot vertical anomalies, such as hay bales, other cars, poles, etc., but that's about it. None of these systems can actually determine road conditions. A rangefinder can't tell if the smooth road up ahead is actually a ginormous pothole filled with water, or if the road ahead is covered with a thick layer of ice. All it knows is that the area ahead is flat and clear... accelerate at will. Under such circumstances, any of these robots would run into serious difficulty, even if the course were relatively flat and straight.
As impressive as driving a windy road autonomously is, there's a long way to go before these things see commercial, or even military, use.
Sorry to be cynical... but I'm just having one of those days.
On the list of parent's "near-term big things":
1. Worldwide internet communication allows large numbers of international friendships, dampening public support for all geopolitical war.
Except in the case of those countries that restrict internet access, or block outside communication... in regards to those countries, geopolitical war is still quite possible. Moreover, just because you have friends in a country doesn't mean you aren't willing to go to war with them. See the U.S. Civil War (or just about any civil war... it wasn't "brother vs. brother" for nothing).
2. Cheap connectivity makes government propaganda impractical in every country
Alternatively, it makes government propaganda a requirement for every country, the government's home country included. If communication is easy, it may just mean that you have to hold your cards closer to the vest. Besides, cheap connectivity may simply lead to propaganda from everyone: governments, corporations, individuals... see trends in "spin" in modern society for ideas.
3. Nearly all software becomes free, as the impracticality of selling infinitely copyable material becomes evident.
Red Queen theory begs to differ. Try telling a gazelle about the impracticality of ever evolving a permanent defense against lions. Anything the gazelle evolves as a defense, lions (or other predators) will eventually evolve a way around. We may be doomed to a future of DRM schemes hatched, broken, and redesigned ad infinitum. DRM isn't going anywhere. It may not stop everyone, but it's stopping enough to be kept around.
4. Pop culture dies for the same reason, and is replaced by amateur arts and culture Ummm... with *very* few exceptions, have you *seen* amateur arts and culture? Every sat through a play or musical written, choreographed, and acted entirely by amateurs? Pop Culture is around because it's actually popular. Just because it's not suited to your particular aesthetic doesn't somehow mean that you're in the majority.
5. AIDS vaccine is found, triggering second sexual revolution
Huh? The sexual revolution was based on women freeing themselves from stereotypes in the workplace and the household. While you can argue its relation to the "free-love" movement and HIV, it's ultimately irrelevant. Women are about as sexually free as men these days, and I don't think finding a cure for HIV is going to change anything significantly.
6. Tech advances too fast for traditional college to keep up. Other methods of training become more prominent.
Great... so we'll end up with a bunch of drones who can use technology but have no appreciation of history, art, literature, or their relation with the rest of the world. The point of "traditional college" was to give the student a "liberal education" and help them learn how to ask questions... to learn how to learn. If your suggestion is that advancing technology will lead to technical schools for everyone, I would hope not... at least not without a serious re-arranging of lower-level education.
7. Privacy dies. Morality becomes more utilitarian as "public face" becomes impossible
Well... you might have something here... but "utilitarian" morality is awfully vague, no?
There are a lot of things that will change over time, but as they say, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'. When predicting the future, you've got to be aware of inertia. It applies to more than just physical bodies... it applies to social and political frameworks as well. A new technology isn't going to change everyone, and a lot of people will actively resist change. In the end, you'll have compromises, and a *lot* of lost efficiency in the transfers.
When I'm in a mood like this, I just look forward to having a space elevator, taking myself, my family, and friends to a remote location with adequate resources, and just starting from scratch. It's the closest thing to a tabula rasa we're likely to find anytime soon.
I know a bunch of medics who, during the long periods of time between calls, will go and catch a movie with their pagers/cell phones on. They know that if a call comes in, they will get it and be on their way out in seconds. I also know a lot of physicians who will spend time with their families while on-call. Being on-call means that you're reachable 24 hours... not that you live in the hospital waiting for someone to come in. These people depend on pagers and cell-phones to keep them connected. If they were informed that their cell-phones or pagers could not receive a call inside, they wouldn't go in...
So, if such a thing happened, yes, there would be a lawsuit... and it would most likely go somewhere.
You've got to start looking outside of your own personal experience.
Forget replicating the look of the TV show... focus on building a decent game. It's not like if they get the lighting in the game world 'just so', they'll have a smash hit that people want to play... or these days, maybe they will.
I don't have many of the citations with me, and it seems the NASA sites have apparently taken down some of the initial research reports, so I'm doing this mostly from memory...
To sum it up, you take a cable, send it to geosynch orbit, and start spooling one end of the cable down towards Earth, while spooling the other end into space. As long as the center of gravity stays at GEO, the whole structure 'hangs' in orbit. It never has to touch the ground.
If the cable is severed, the portion close to the ground will fall to the Earth, wrapping around the equator. The upper portion will float out into space. Now, by retracting the end of the cable past GEO, the space-bound portion can keep its center of mass in GEO, and not float away. The lower portion can be slowed, cushioned, or even caught (one estimate I saw put the weight of the entire cable at 9.2 tons if constructed of nanotubes... even if that's off by an order of magnitude, a good helicopter or blimp could probably hold the thing up, or at least slow it down 'till a fix is done.)
At the GEO point, you put a station. From here, you can easily shuttle out for anything in orbit... the far end of the cable can use its speed as a very efficient launch mechanism... think about a giant slingshot, flinging supplies at distant outposts.
Although it's not going to be fast travel (even with a mag-lev system for a climber, you'd still be looking at a couple of days to orbit), it is efficient. Right now, cost is between $20,000 and $60,000 per pound to orbit aboard most rockets. Estimates for the space elevator drop that to about $100 per pound to orbit... and that's the initial costs. NASA seems to think that the cost would eventually drop to around $10 per pound to orbit. And that's LEO or GEO...
My personal view is: screw Mars, screw going back to the moon. Our next Apollo program/Manhattan project should be the space elevator. If the scientific community rallied around building this thing, and had the funding we gave those other projects, we'd have this thing figured out and built in a couple of decades... Then the moonbases and Mars outposts and everything become easy and sustainable. Worried about radiation on the trip? At $100/lb you can afford to send up water, or lead, or whatever for shielding... doing that on a rocket is not really possible. People may have stopped laughing at the idea, but they're still not really taking it seriously yet.
I don't know why people keep getting into arguments over whether climate-change/global-warming is caused by humanity or not. Does it really matter? When the house is burning down, does it matter at that moment if it's arson or just an accident? No... the thing that's important is: put out the damn fire.
Right now, I don't care if we're the ones responsible for climate-change. I just don't want to deal with the consequences of it. Let's cut back on CO2 emissions... not because they may or may not have caused this climate change, but because by cutting back we can compensate for the changes that are happening.
I don't think anyone is really disputing that the changes are happening... they're disputing whether we're responsible or not. And that's just ridiculous. Fix the problem first. Then figure out who to blame... not the other way around.
The problem is that the market assumes total & free flow of information. Yes, if Verizon throttles back speeds, us technical-types will recognize what's going on, who to blame, and will switch to another service.
Consider this though: when the cup-holder breaking, tech-support calling, joe average notices that his access to eBay slowed down, do you think that he'll know Verizon is responsible?
Okay, here's another one for you: explain gravity. It either works or it doesn't. There is no explanation in physics that explains where it comes from, so how could it exist?
I don't disbelieve gravity but neither do I blindly believe everything the scientists tell me is fact...
As an aside: I hate the logic of people who claim that just because we don't understand everything about something, that we should instead believe in magic. We can't explain what causes gravity, but all of the data says we're on the right track. Nor do we believe that God is running around, pulling objects towards other, larger objects. Evolution in biology is no different. No, we don't know some of the details about how some of the things developed. That doesn't mean that no evolutionary mechanism exists... just that we haven't found it out yet.
200 years ago, we couldn't explain electricity or magnetism either. But scientists kept studying, and kept experimenting, and they figured it out. Give biologists some time, and they'll figure out the evolution of the eye. And stop teaching kids that if something hasn't been figured out yet, it must've been God. Otherwise, the next generation of scientists won't be able to figure anything out, and we'll be back to praying for rain.
Moving the burning of fossil fuels from cars to a power plant is actually a really big deal with a huge benefit. Large power plants are generally much more efficient then small gasoline engines. The amount of pollution they generate is pretty small compared to the electricity they generate. Conversely, small engines produce a lot of pollution for their energy output. This alone makes electrical or fuel-cell powered vehicles great innovations.
Not only are large power plants more efficient, they are more easily upgraded. Granted, such upgrades take a lot of time and money. But it's actually cheaper and faster to legislate and enforce upgrades on a few power plants than it is on millions of cars and trucks. If a power plant is polluting more than allowed levels, it is relatively easy to spot. It's also fairly easy to force the plant to correct the problem. On the other hand, despite years of ads, required smog checks (at least here in California), and hotlines to report polluting vehicles, there are still *lots* of vehicles that spew lots of foul exhaust.
So, regulation of a few large sources of pollution is easier, cheaper, and more effective than regulating millions of point-sources of pollution. It's that simple.
It reminds me of when people say hydrogen burning cars will solve all emition problems because they produce water. They don't count the emissions that may be needed to produce, compress and ship the hydrogen to the nearest gas station.
The problem with this argument is that it entirely ignores the switch from having millions of point sources of pollution, to having a small handfull of point sources of pollution. Yes, those few sources will be much more significant, but they will be fewer. This makes regulation, control, and upgrading much easier.
Think of it this way... what's better: having one power plant that provides energy for heating, or having every house in a city using a wood burning fireplace every day? The single power plant can be cleaner and more efficient then what the average homeowner can afford. Moreover, if new and cleaner technology comes around, it's easier to make the power plant upgrade then it is to make every single homeowner upgrade.
If you suddenly found a new technology that made cars 20% cleaner, but reduced horsepower by 5%, how easy would it be to get every car-owner to upgrade their cars? How expensive would it be to do? How would you possibly enforce it? How many people don't live up to, or actively cheat around the current smog controls?
If you had only a handful of power plants, and new technology came around that was 20% cleaner but dropped output by 5%, it would be a lot easier to regulate and enforce the upgrade. Moreover, I would bet that it'd be cheaper to build more power plants to make up that lost 5% then it would be to enforce regulations on millions of car-owners.
Yes, it may take CO2-producing power plants to generate the hydrogen. But the fact that you switch from millions of sources of pollution to just a few is *hugely* important.
I believe the traditional reply at this point is: "Fine, fossils can form relatively quickly, but the rocks you find them in can't."
Not being a geologist, I wouldn't know. Some of the geologists present care to elaborate?
Well, from what I remember from undergrad at Cal, mummification can happen fairly quickly under the right conditions, but fossilization is a whole other story. Fossilization is the replacement of biological structures in bone with mineral deposits... the bone actually turns to stone. This takes some time... more than just a little while.
More importantly, the real issue is how people who hold to Young-Earth Creationism deal with radioactive dating techniques. For example, with really old fossils, they use the decay of Potassium-40 to Argon-40... half-life of over a billion years, so it's easy to get accurate readings dating fossils at well over 6000yrs. Check http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/radiodte.htm
If you presuppose an infinitely powerful being, evolution seems like so much wasted effort.
I dunno... if you presuppose an infinitely powerful being, by definition nothing would be a waste of effort.
Just as a note... when quoting sources, make sure that you're using those that are non-partisan. CATO is *not* non-partisan. The numbers usually bandied about show that the Republican party takes in more money than the Democrats from businesses, though the numbers are somewhat close.
I dunno. I've always thought that this was ridiculous. We've heard this type of FUD about the link between violence in entertainment and violence in real life, and we've always been quick to deny it. We watch movies, we play games, and we're not violent. Case closed.
Recently, I've been reconsidering. While things like this law in Conn were certainly way over the top, I'm not sure that the issue is as black and white as we previously thought.
The thing that set me thinking was the following quote:
There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in
the streets? - Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate.
This was in response to charges that violence in movies led to violence in the streets. And the response is, well, of course not. Except for that time when I was in grade school talking about the Simpson's episode the night before... actually, that happened a lot, didn't it.. I guess we also joked about some of the other TV we were watching... or told jokes and repeated gags from movies we'd seen. We weren't in the streets (crosswalk monitor would've had a fit), but I suppose it was close enough. We also imitated stunts from movies or cartoons... so, yeah, things we watched certainly had an impact. Learned curses from TV and movies. I still joke with friends about the Simpson's (or Kermit the Frog's interview on the Daily Show... anyone have that on mp3?).
Have the movies we've seen had the same effect? Apparently not... probably because we're not taught to 'not be funny', though we are taught to 'not be violent'. If it wasn't for that, then maybe we would be... And if this is the case, what about the people who haven't had these moral barriers against violence put up strongly enough? Perhaps they would be more prone towards violence. It doesn't seem too out of reach.
Does this mean the government needs to step in and take over parenting from parents? Hell no. But if they can make it easier, they should. They should institute a labeling system for games, or at least threaten to so that the game companies will self-regulate (see MPAA ratings)... same deal with TV. I don't want to see V-Chips taking over the role of parenting from parents. But I would like to see them warn parents of what's going on and help them keep track. Life is too busy for parents to be around *constantly*... what might have been possible once is no longer with the rise of 2-parent income families. Not only that, but media is so pervasive now that it's now a monumental task to keep track over what kids are doing... parents can't hear the music kids listen to on their headphones, can't watch every game a kid plays when he cycles through 4 games in an hour or two, can't keep track of every show the kid watches over the course of a week. Even if the parents spend lots of time with the kids, they're not able to keep tabs on everything. And I think that's what lawmakers are starting to realize. They need to do something, but they're overreaching and pushing too far. I think they need to help parents parent, but not take over the role themselves.
Actually, the reason that we have the DMCA and the Bono act is not that we're not a democracy... the reason is that the majority of the public doesn't care about it. Thus, it's easy to pass it.
The average American doesn't know about the DMCA, hasn't heard of DeCSS or 2600, and hasn't a clue about Open Source. You think that, given this, a politician would stand up to the RIAA and MPAA? Why bother? If the public cared about these things, they wouldn't have happened. But the fact is that the public doesn't follow the chain from the Bono Act to lousy entertainment.
Now, one of the things that bugs me is how movies like Pearl Harbor can break box-office records. I'd like to see them calibrate the take to Mean Disposable Income... see how these schlock-flicks compare to decent movies that aren't formulaic.
Re:Can't they look at their own experience?
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Killing Video Games
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Actually, the US has always been a litigious society. You know that saying, "Good fences make good neighbors"? That originated in the colonial US; i.e. before the revolution. It came about because peoples livestock would wander into the neighbors yard and eat their plants. The neighbor would then sue. Apparently this kind of thing happened a lot... We've always been sue-happy here.
What's changed between then and now? Well, for one thing, it's a much smaller world. Perhaps this kind of thing happened back then too.. we just didn't hear about it because news didn't travel too far past the local area. Now, something happens in Colorado, and it's instantly news across the country.
As far as the fact that's cited above; I dunno. I haven't seen anything that suggests that school shootings are more common now than before.
Re:Single point of failure necessary for stability
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IETF vs. ICANN
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The internet is a free software phenomenon. A bazaar. Collaborative development. That kind of thing is co-ordinated, not led. If you lead, nobody's going to follow. IBM noticed that in the late 80's...
The internet is a lot of things... it's also a site of business opportunity, a growing economic center, a gathering point for both anti-capitalist and libertarian groups, and, of course, the focal point of Jon Katz's revolution.
This kind of thing is not coordinated. That's the problem. You try to coordinate anything here, and it goes nowhere. Too many divided interests... and they're far from equal in voice.
What's needed is leadership. Not what ICANN is doing ('Hey! We're here to lead, so follow us!), but actual leadership. That entails someone who has a vision of what the internet is, and what it should be... and someone who can convince the various groups that this is their vision too. Call it politics if you like (I wish... politics would be so much better with some decent leaders), but it's leadership.
IBM may have created it, but that by itself doesn't grant them the mantle of leadership. ICANN may have held that ability for awhile, but they seem to have forgotten their mandate. Now that they're focused on maintaining their position, they're no longer leading.
What's needed is someone, some organization, some non-profit, that can say "We've got a solution to these problems, and here it is... it's fair to the individual, it's fair to business, it's open-minded, and here's how we can implement it. Oh, and it's easy to learn."
Personally, I don't see why we're sticking with this arbitrary system of names and numbers. Why not map the whole thing to a virtual space. We've all read SnowCrash... same deal. If the VR is too much to implement, do it 2D and without the avatars; the key idea is the physical allocation of 'geographical' space. Map it to real estate and then the rules map as well.... clears up lots of problems.
Thats why in the end of the war they had suicide pilots (named after the supernatural forces they believed defended them). They were training civilians, women, to fight the Americans when they came. Running out of metal...
See the contradiction? If they were training all of these suicide pilots, what were they going to suicide in?
Actually, many of Japan's later-war aircraft were made from wood... wooden frames, paper/canvas siding. All in the interests of conserving resources. When you're running kamikaze's, you're not relying on the plane impact to do the damage, rather the large set of explosives carried. I forget the names, but several of these (Ohno's?) were actually carried into the air by Japanese bombers, and then released when near American fleets; at which point the kamikaze would attempt to pilot his wooden plane at a carrier.
... they resorted to building balloons out of cloth and wood with incendiary payloads, and tried to float them over to North America to start massive forest fires.
Ah, they were suicide balloonists, trained to float through the skys like a deadly horde of jellyfish, waiting for the chance to swoop down on helpless American fighters and explode.
Nope, the Japanese actually used unmanned balloons to attack the US during WWII... and they did so successfully (more or less). They used helium balloons carrying explosives, and launched them into the jetstream, which runs over the Pacific towards N.America. They designed the balloons to head towards the forests of the western USA, and then descend and detonate. The idea was to ignite massive forest fires that would consume American resources to fight. Several of these balloons actually made it across and exploded. What the Japanese didn't understand, however, was how big these forests are in the Pacific Northwest/Sierras/Rockies. Dry as a summer might get, it's not going to create that kind of firestorm... As a side note, one of these actually killed a family... the balloon exploded near their car.
The Emperor knew things were lost, but go read what he said he was dealing with in the end: A pack of generals who were still adamant that they would WIN the war, not just successfully defend Japan.
And they would still have held this belief without any means of offence or defence? Would it have even mattered at this point? Containment would have been slower, but more humane.
But by dropping the atomic bomb, a weapon of unforseen destructive power, their mindset was broken.
Along with a fair old chunk of the civilian population.
So whenever you weep for those slain by the bomb (and you should), dont forget that it likely saved a lot more human life on both sides of the conflict, by bringing a swifter end to the war. (I admit though that I dont know why the second bomb was dropped.)
Yes, it is odd how that has never really been explained now isn't it? Maybe the data from the first one wasn't sufficient... after all, a single datum isn't good statistics.
I don't want to get into a whole thing over why the second bomb was dropped. The political leadership of the Allies decided on unconditional victory, and it's the job of the military to achieve that. If they determine that the best way to do that is to drop an atomic bomb, then that's what happens. The dropping of the atomic bomb, therefore, was a political decision at heart. You may decide that you don't agree with the military's assessment that it was the best choice, but you have the benefit of hindsight. They didn't.
That aside, I don't think that the reasoning was poor. We had seen the levels of casualties that the Japanese were willing to sustain. We also knew the levels of casualties that we were willing to take. We were not the Russians, who accepted their horrendous losses to the Germans in WWII because they had been invaded. The US was never at risk, so why would we be willing to sacrafice a million GI's for Japan? (that was the estimate of AMERICAN losses, not total) Furthermore, the losses to the Atomic Bomb were in the region of 35,000 (IIRC). The number of civilian losses in the Tokyo firebombings that occurred a few weeks earlier were in the region of 250,000. Order of magnitude higher. If Japanese leadership was willing to continue the war after that, why would the loss of 35,000 faze them?
BTW, if you want to debate anything about Allied strategy,
1 - Talk about the decision to conduct 'strategic bombing... not the decision to drop 'the bomb'
2 - This probably isn't the forum for it...
Re:Well, I see the usual anti-union bushwah
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IT Unions?
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Wait 'till the thousands of CS majors out there graduate and flood the market with talented programmers. Wait 'till there are *hundreds* of qualified applicants for all the available positions you're looking at. Wait 'till there are dozens of applicants for that job that are as good as you are or better. Then try to make some demand on management without a union. Good luck.
Right now, there are fewer of you than there are jobs. But that's changing. Then you will effectively be, compared to the huge pool of programmers looking for work, an incompetant hack. When your boss then demands that you work 70hr weeks standard... are you going to argue? Or are you going to sit and do as he says because there are hundreds of programmers out there who want your job and will work those hours for it. Then you'll want a union to give you some bargaining power.
Re:Well, I see the usual anti-union bushwah
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IT Unions?
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Basics of negotiations: It's easier to negotiate individual changes/benefits if you are an individual. You have to be different from everyone else so you can justify these changes. Why do you deserve a raise? Because you're better/more efficient/more skilled/more important/etc. If you're not, then you're no different from the others who are not getting raises, and you won't get one either.
That's part one. Here's part two. You have to be different in the eyes of those you're negotiating with. You may think you're the shit, but if your employer doesn't think so, you aren't getting that raise. This has an important side-effect: if you are really good and deserve some benefit, but your employer doesn't realize this because he a)doesn't know you, b)is clueless, c)whatever other reason, you aren't getting the bennies because you're no different in *his* eyes than anyone else.
Should that be the case, unions come in and can improve the negotiations by making you (along with all the others 'just like you') important to the company.
Granted, no system is perfect, but Unions have their place. Is that place IT? At this point in time, with relatively low supply of IT people and high demand, probably not. Should this change, it wouldn't suprise me to see more unionization for just these reasons. You become easily replaceable to the company, and there's no reason for them to give you a good contract when there's someone else who will do the same work at the same quality with fewer perks. You still won't be able to negotiate with management because you'll have no power over them. Hopefully, union management will be decent and won't cost you too much (however, don't confuse the goals and functions of unions with those of a few corrupt/poorly managed Unions). Until that time, feel free to do what you want.
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It's important to remember that this is the consensus of "predation dissenters" like Prof. Jack Horner... those who don't think that T-Rex was a predator. So, that list is a little biased. And, as my paleontology professor told me, "Jack doesn't like T-Rex because it eats his duckbills..."
Yes, T-Rex's vision may not have been great, and the forelimbs are human-sized (as in, you'd have a 50/50 chance of beating T-Rex in arm wrestling...). None of this really argues against predation though.
T-Rex may not have been a hawk, but it didn't have to spot miniscule prey from hundreds of feet in the air... A lot of large predators pick off the sick and injured, and a good sense of smell is more important for that anyway.
I'd call the arms useless and vestigial. But if you think arms are necessary for taking down prey though, look at that hawk again. No arms, and a very efficient predator. It's got oversized legs (I don't recall them being oversized... but proportional to a very heavy body), imagine it knocking over a duckbill and stepping on the body to pin it down (like a hawk or eagle), while tearing away with the teeth... I'd say it's possible.
As for running speed, there's a great paper published in Nature a bit back arguing that T-Rex's morphology didn't allow fast running. So T-Rex couldn't catch the jeep... oh well. I doubt that disallows predation. It just narrows your targets a bit. It's like the old camping adage: You don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the guy behind you... A lot of prey isn't very fast... they travel in groups so the group will survive, even if the slow (or just unlucky) don't.
As for not finding any healed T-Rex tooth marks, that could just mean that T-Rex when T-Rex caught you, you did *not* escape to tell the tale. Given tooth size (and the frightening idea of pack hunting), this would not really suprise me.
That's what I get for trying to be smart this early in the morning... and yes, I know it's 2pm.
First, the professor was requesting a grant for a sociological study, not a scientific one. He wanted to study the impact of US creationists on Canadian science. Why the grant board denied him a grant on the ground that he assumed evolution to be correct. What confuses me is why that matters in the slightest. The validity of evolution or creationism is irrelevant in a sociological study. If someone did a study on "the impact of people who believe in the Loch Ness monster on tourism in Scotland", it shouldn't be rejected because Nessie doesn't actually exist (or does).
Second, at the risk of beating a very old, dead horse, it bugs me that here's a professor who teaches at Harvard, who testified as an 'expert' in the recent creationism/evolution in school case, and still insists that "evolution is scientific fact"... dammit, it's a theory! I guess that's what happens when a professor of sociology is your evolution expert. Grrrr.
To be fair, this isn't about blaming everyone except the person who did the act. If you read TFA, you'd notice that when the kid's lawyer raised it as a defense, the judge threw it out. The kid who pulled the trigger was convicted and, as this happened in Alabama, the kid was sentanced to death. Believe me, he's getting his fair share of the blame.
What this *is* about is a seperate civil case based on the same facts. The lawyers for the victims are saying to Take-Two "Hey, you helped this happen; you should share the burden too." There are plenty of people who are going to argue both sides... whether playing GTA constantly gave the kid ideas, or made him more efficient, or had nothing to do with it. All that happened is a judge said that it's possible, and that a jury has to decide it.
Read TFA next time and save yourself from being overly disgusted with the world. There are some flaws in the legal system, but it's not *that* bad.
No, but finding aliens, a la Species, is.
It was a good show. One nifty bit of engineering from the Stanford team was to overlay a video camera image over laser-generated map, use a color-matching system to determine what colors of the video were level and safe to drive on, and then extrapolate what areas of the video image were safe.
The main difficulty that I see, going forward, is that the laser-rangefinder systems that these robots all relied on all function by looking for obstacles and attempting to avoid them. They can spot vertical anomalies, such as hay bales, other cars, poles, etc., but that's about it. None of these systems can actually determine road conditions. A rangefinder can't tell if the smooth road up ahead is actually a ginormous pothole filled with water, or if the road ahead is covered with a thick layer of ice. All it knows is that the area ahead is flat and clear... accelerate at will. Under such circumstances, any of these robots would run into serious difficulty, even if the course were relatively flat and straight.
As impressive as driving a windy road autonomously is, there's a long way to go before these things see commercial, or even military, use.
Sorry to be cynical... but I'm just having one of those days.
On the list of parent's "near-term big things":
1. Worldwide internet communication allows large numbers of international friendships, dampening public support for all geopolitical war.
Except in the case of those countries that restrict internet access, or block outside communication... in regards to those countries, geopolitical war is still quite possible. Moreover, just because you have friends in a country doesn't mean you aren't willing to go to war with them. See the U.S. Civil War (or just about any civil war... it wasn't "brother vs. brother" for nothing).
2. Cheap connectivity makes government propaganda impractical in every country
Alternatively, it makes government propaganda a requirement for every country, the government's home country included. If communication is easy, it may just mean that you have to hold your cards closer to the vest. Besides, cheap connectivity may simply lead to propaganda from everyone: governments, corporations, individuals... see trends in "spin" in modern society for ideas.
3. Nearly all software becomes free, as the impracticality of selling infinitely copyable material becomes evident.
Red Queen theory begs to differ. Try telling a gazelle about the impracticality of ever evolving a permanent defense against lions. Anything the gazelle evolves as a defense, lions (or other predators) will eventually evolve a way around. We may be doomed to a future of DRM schemes hatched, broken, and redesigned ad infinitum. DRM isn't going anywhere. It may not stop everyone, but it's stopping enough to be kept around.
4. Pop culture dies for the same reason, and is replaced by amateur arts and culture
Ummm... with *very* few exceptions, have you *seen* amateur arts and culture? Every sat through a play or musical written, choreographed, and acted entirely by amateurs? Pop Culture is around because it's actually popular. Just because it's not suited to your particular aesthetic doesn't somehow mean that you're in the majority.
5. AIDS vaccine is found, triggering second sexual revolution
Huh? The sexual revolution was based on women freeing themselves from stereotypes in the workplace and the household. While you can argue its relation to the "free-love" movement and HIV, it's ultimately irrelevant. Women are about as sexually free as men these days, and I don't think finding a cure for HIV is going to change anything significantly.
6. Tech advances too fast for traditional college to keep up. Other methods of training become more prominent.
Great... so we'll end up with a bunch of drones who can use technology but have no appreciation of history, art, literature, or their relation with the rest of the world. The point of "traditional college" was to give the student a "liberal education" and help them learn how to ask questions... to learn how to learn. If your suggestion is that advancing technology will lead to technical schools for everyone, I would hope not... at least not without a serious re-arranging of lower-level education.
7. Privacy dies. Morality becomes more utilitarian as "public face" becomes impossible
Well... you might have something here... but "utilitarian" morality is awfully vague, no?
There are a lot of things that will change over time, but as they say, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'. When predicting the future, you've got to be aware of inertia. It applies to more than just physical bodies... it applies to social and political frameworks as well. A new technology isn't going to change everyone, and a lot of people will actively resist change. In the end, you'll have compromises, and a *lot* of lost efficiency in the transfers.
When I'm in a mood like this, I just look forward to having a space elevator, taking myself, my family, and friends to a remote location with adequate resources, and just starting from scratch. It's the closest thing to a tabula rasa we're likely to find anytime soon.
I know a bunch of medics who, during the long periods of time between calls, will go and catch a movie with their pagers/cell phones on. They know that if a call comes in, they will get it and be on their way out in seconds. I also know a lot of physicians who will spend time with their families while on-call. Being on-call means that you're reachable 24 hours... not that you live in the hospital waiting for someone to come in. These people depend on pagers and cell-phones to keep them connected. If they were informed that their cell-phones or pagers could not receive a call inside, they wouldn't go in...
So, if such a thing happened, yes, there would be a lawsuit... and it would most likely go somewhere.
You've got to start looking outside of your own personal experience.
You don't use it, you eat it. Mmmmm... egg bread. (P.S. - I think the emphasis is on the first syllable)
Forget replicating the look of the TV show... focus on building a decent game. It's not like if they get the lighting in the game world 'just so', they'll have a smash hit that people want to play... or these days, maybe they will.
I don't have many of the citations with me, and it seems the NASA sites have apparently taken down some of the initial research reports, so I'm doing this mostly from memory...
A good place to start would be here.
To sum it up, you take a cable, send it to geosynch orbit, and start spooling one end of the cable down towards Earth, while spooling the other end into space. As long as the center of gravity stays at GEO, the whole structure 'hangs' in orbit. It never has to touch the ground.
If the cable is severed, the portion close to the ground will fall to the Earth, wrapping around the equator. The upper portion will float out into space. Now, by retracting the end of the cable past GEO, the space-bound portion can keep its center of mass in GEO, and not float away. The lower portion can be slowed, cushioned, or even caught (one estimate I saw put the weight of the entire cable at 9.2 tons if constructed of nanotubes... even if that's off by an order of magnitude, a good helicopter or blimp could probably hold the thing up, or at least slow it down 'till a fix is done.)
At the GEO point, you put a station. From here, you can easily shuttle out for anything in orbit... the far end of the cable can use its speed as a very efficient launch mechanism... think about a giant slingshot, flinging supplies at distant outposts.
Although it's not going to be fast travel (even with a mag-lev system for a climber, you'd still be looking at a couple of days to orbit), it is efficient. Right now, cost is between $20,000 and $60,000 per pound to orbit aboard most rockets. Estimates for the space elevator drop that to about $100 per pound to orbit... and that's the initial costs. NASA seems to think that the cost would eventually drop to around $10 per pound to orbit. And that's LEO or GEO...
My personal view is: screw Mars, screw going back to the moon. Our next Apollo program/Manhattan project should be the space elevator. If the scientific community rallied around building this thing, and had the funding we gave those other projects, we'd have this thing figured out and built in a couple of decades... Then the moonbases and Mars outposts and everything become easy and sustainable. Worried about radiation on the trip? At $100/lb you can afford to send up water, or lead, or whatever for shielding... doing that on a rocket is not really possible. People may have stopped laughing at the idea, but they're still not really taking it seriously yet.
I don't know why people keep getting into arguments over whether climate-change/global-warming is caused by humanity or not. Does it really matter? When the house is burning down, does it matter at that moment if it's arson or just an accident? No... the thing that's important is: put out the damn fire.
Right now, I don't care if we're the ones responsible for climate-change. I just don't want to deal with the consequences of it. Let's cut back on CO2 emissions... not because they may or may not have caused this climate change, but because by cutting back we can compensate for the changes that are happening.
I don't think anyone is really disputing that the changes are happening... they're disputing whether we're responsible or not. And that's just ridiculous. Fix the problem first. Then figure out who to blame... not the other way around.
The problem is that the market assumes total & free flow of information. Yes, if Verizon throttles back speeds, us technical-types will recognize what's going on, who to blame, and will switch to another service.
Consider this though: when the cup-holder breaking, tech-support calling, joe average notices that his access to eBay slowed down, do you think that he'll know Verizon is responsible?
To rephrase the argument of the above poster:
Okay, here's another one for you: explain gravity. It either works or it doesn't. There is no explanation in physics that explains where it comes from, so how could it exist?
I don't disbelieve gravity but neither do I blindly believe everything the scientists tell me is fact...
As an aside: I hate the logic of people who claim that just because we don't understand everything about something, that we should instead believe in magic. We can't explain what causes gravity, but all of the data says we're on the right track. Nor do we believe that God is running around, pulling objects towards other, larger objects. Evolution in biology is no different. No, we don't know some of the details about how some of the things developed. That doesn't mean that no evolutionary mechanism exists... just that we haven't found it out yet.
200 years ago, we couldn't explain electricity or magnetism either. But scientists kept studying, and kept experimenting, and they figured it out. Give biologists some time, and they'll figure out the evolution of the eye. And stop teaching kids that if something hasn't been figured out yet, it must've been God. Otherwise, the next generation of scientists won't be able to figure anything out, and we'll be back to praying for rain.
Moving the burning of fossil fuels from cars to a power plant is actually a really big deal with a huge benefit. Large power plants are generally much more efficient then small gasoline engines. The amount of pollution they generate is pretty small compared to the electricity they generate. Conversely, small engines produce a lot of pollution for their energy output. This alone makes electrical or fuel-cell powered vehicles great innovations.
Not only are large power plants more efficient, they are more easily upgraded. Granted, such upgrades take a lot of time and money. But it's actually cheaper and faster to legislate and enforce upgrades on a few power plants than it is on millions of cars and trucks. If a power plant is polluting more than allowed levels, it is relatively easy to spot. It's also fairly easy to force the plant to correct the problem. On the other hand, despite years of ads, required smog checks (at least here in California), and hotlines to report polluting vehicles, there are still *lots* of vehicles that spew lots of foul exhaust.
So, regulation of a few large sources of pollution is easier, cheaper, and more effective than regulating millions of point-sources of pollution. It's that simple.
The problem with this argument is that it entirely ignores the switch from having millions of point sources of pollution, to having a small handfull of point sources of pollution. Yes, those few sources will be much more significant, but they will be fewer. This makes regulation, control, and upgrading much easier.
Think of it this way... what's better: having one power plant that provides energy for heating, or having every house in a city using a wood burning fireplace every day? The single power plant can be cleaner and more efficient then what the average homeowner can afford. Moreover, if new and cleaner technology comes around, it's easier to make the power plant upgrade then it is to make every single homeowner upgrade.
If you suddenly found a new technology that made cars 20% cleaner, but reduced horsepower by 5%, how easy would it be to get every car-owner to upgrade their cars? How expensive would it be to do? How would you possibly enforce it? How many people don't live up to, or actively cheat around the current smog controls?
If you had only a handful of power plants, and new technology came around that was 20% cleaner but dropped output by 5%, it would be a lot easier to regulate and enforce the upgrade. Moreover, I would bet that it'd be cheaper to build more power plants to make up that lost 5% then it would be to enforce regulations on millions of car-owners.
Yes, it may take CO2-producing power plants to generate the hydrogen. But the fact that you switch from millions of sources of pollution to just a few is *hugely* important.
Well, from what I remember from undergrad at Cal, mummification can happen fairly quickly under the right conditions, but fossilization is a whole other story. Fossilization is the replacement of biological structures in bone with mineral deposits... the bone actually turns to stone. This takes some time... more than just a little while.
More importantly, the real issue is how people who hold to Young-Earth Creationism deal with radioactive dating techniques. For example, with really old fossils, they use the decay of Potassium-40 to Argon-40... half-life of over a billion years, so it's easy to get accurate readings dating fossils at well over 6000yrs. Check http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/243
I dunno... if you presuppose an infinitely powerful being, by definition nothing would be a waste of effort.
Just as a note... when quoting sources, make sure that you're using those that are non-partisan. CATO is *not* non-partisan. The numbers usually bandied about show that the Republican party takes in more money than the Democrats from businesses, though the numbers are somewhat close.
Recently, I've been reconsidering. While things like this law in Conn were certainly way over the top, I'm not sure that the issue is as black and white as we previously thought.
The thing that set me thinking was the following quote:
This was in response to charges that violence in movies led to violence in the streets. And the response is, well, of course not. Except for that time when I was in grade school talking about the Simpson's episode the night before... actually, that happened a lot, didn't it.. I guess we also joked about some of the other TV we were watching... or told jokes and repeated gags from movies we'd seen. We weren't in the streets (crosswalk monitor would've had a fit), but I suppose it was close enough. We also imitated stunts from movies or cartoons... so, yeah, things we watched certainly had an impact. Learned curses from TV and movies. I still joke with friends about the Simpson's (or Kermit the Frog's interview on the Daily Show... anyone have that on mp3?).
Have the movies we've seen had the same effect? Apparently not... probably because we're not taught to 'not be funny', though we are taught to 'not be violent'. If it wasn't for that, then maybe we would be... And if this is the case, what about the people who haven't had these moral barriers against violence put up strongly enough? Perhaps they would be more prone towards violence. It doesn't seem too out of reach.
Does this mean the government needs to step in and take over parenting from parents? Hell no. But if they can make it easier, they should. They should institute a labeling system for games, or at least threaten to so that the game companies will self-regulate (see MPAA ratings)... same deal with TV. I don't want to see V-Chips taking over the role of parenting from parents. But I would like to see them warn parents of what's going on and help them keep track. Life is too busy for parents to be around *constantly*... what might have been possible once is no longer with the rise of 2-parent income families. Not only that, but media is so pervasive now that it's now a monumental task to keep track over what kids are doing... parents can't hear the music kids listen to on their headphones, can't watch every game a kid plays when he cycles through 4 games in an hour or two, can't keep track of every show the kid watches over the course of a week. Even if the parents spend lots of time with the kids, they're not able to keep tabs on everything. And I think that's what lawmakers are starting to realize. They need to do something, but they're overreaching and pushing too far. I think they need to help parents parent, but not take over the role themselves.
The average American doesn't know about the DMCA, hasn't heard of DeCSS or 2600, and hasn't a clue about Open Source. You think that, given this, a politician would stand up to the RIAA and MPAA? Why bother? If the public cared about these things, they wouldn't have happened. But the fact is that the public doesn't follow the chain from the Bono Act to lousy entertainment.
Now, one of the things that bugs me is how movies like Pearl Harbor can break box-office records. I'd like to see them calibrate the take to Mean Disposable Income... see how these schlock-flicks compare to decent movies that aren't formulaic.
What's changed between then and now? Well, for one thing, it's a much smaller world. Perhaps this kind of thing happened back then too.. we just didn't hear about it because news didn't travel too far past the local area. Now, something happens in Colorado, and it's instantly news across the country.
As far as the fact that's cited above; I dunno. I haven't seen anything that suggests that school shootings are more common now than before.
The internet is a lot of things... it's also a site of business opportunity, a growing economic center, a gathering point for both anti-capitalist and libertarian groups, and, of course, the focal point of Jon Katz's revolution.
This kind of thing is not coordinated. That's the problem. You try to coordinate anything here, and it goes nowhere. Too many divided interests... and they're far from equal in voice.
What's needed is leadership. Not what ICANN is doing ('Hey! We're here to lead, so follow us!), but actual leadership. That entails someone who has a vision of what the internet is, and what it should be... and someone who can convince the various groups that this is their vision too. Call it politics if you like (I wish... politics would be so much better with some decent leaders), but it's leadership.
IBM may have created it, but that by itself doesn't grant them the mantle of leadership. ICANN may have held that ability for awhile, but they seem to have forgotten their mandate. Now that they're focused on maintaining their position, they're no longer leading.
What's needed is someone, some organization, some non-profit, that can say "We've got a solution to these problems, and here it is... it's fair to the individual, it's fair to business, it's open-minded, and here's how we can implement it. Oh, and it's easy to learn."
Personally, I don't see why we're sticking with this arbitrary system of names and numbers. Why not map the whole thing to a virtual space. We've all read SnowCrash... same deal. If the VR is too much to implement, do it 2D and without the avatars; the key idea is the physical allocation of 'geographical' space. Map it to real estate and then the rules map as well.... clears up lots of problems.
Actually, many of Japan's later-war aircraft were made from wood... wooden frames, paper/canvas siding. All in the interests of conserving resources. When you're running kamikaze's, you're not relying on the plane impact to do the damage, rather the large set of explosives carried. I forget the names, but several of these (Ohno's?) were actually carried into the air by Japanese bombers, and then released when near American fleets; at which point the kamikaze would attempt to pilot his wooden plane at a carrier.
Nope, the Japanese actually used unmanned balloons to attack the US during WWII... and they did so successfully (more or less). They used helium balloons carrying explosives, and launched them into the jetstream, which runs over the Pacific towards N.America. They designed the balloons to head towards the forests of the western USA, and then descend and detonate. The idea was to ignite massive forest fires that would consume American resources to fight. Several of these balloons actually made it across and exploded. What the Japanese didn't understand, however, was how big these forests are in the Pacific Northwest/Sierras/Rockies. Dry as a summer might get, it's not going to create that kind of firestorm... As a side note, one of these actually killed a family... the balloon exploded near their car.
I don't want to get into a whole thing over why the second bomb was dropped. The political leadership of the Allies decided on unconditional victory, and it's the job of the military to achieve that. If they determine that the best way to do that is to drop an atomic bomb, then that's what happens. The dropping of the atomic bomb, therefore, was a political decision at heart. You may decide that you don't agree with the military's assessment that it was the best choice, but you have the benefit of hindsight. They didn't.That aside, I don't think that the reasoning was poor. We had seen the levels of casualties that the Japanese were willing to sustain. We also knew the levels of casualties that we were willing to take. We were not the Russians, who accepted their horrendous losses to the Germans in WWII because they had been invaded. The US was never at risk, so why would we be willing to sacrafice a million GI's for Japan? (that was the estimate of AMERICAN losses, not total) Furthermore, the losses to the Atomic Bomb were in the region of 35,000 (IIRC). The number of civilian losses in the Tokyo firebombings that occurred a few weeks earlier were in the region of 250,000. Order of magnitude higher. If Japanese leadership was willing to continue the war after that, why would the loss of 35,000 faze them?
BTW, if you want to debate anything about Allied strategy,
1 - Talk about the decision to conduct 'strategic bombing... not the decision to drop 'the bomb'
2 - This probably isn't the forum for it...
Right now, there are fewer of you than there are jobs. But that's changing. Then you will effectively be, compared to the huge pool of programmers looking for work, an incompetant hack. When your boss then demands that you work 70hr weeks standard... are you going to argue? Or are you going to sit and do as he says because there are hundreds of programmers out there who want your job and will work those hours for it. Then you'll want a union to give you some bargaining power.
That's part one. Here's part two. You have to be different in the eyes of those you're negotiating with. You may think you're the shit, but if your employer doesn't think so, you aren't getting that raise. This has an important side-effect: if you are really good and deserve some benefit, but your employer doesn't realize this because he a)doesn't know you, b)is clueless, c)whatever other reason, you aren't getting the bennies because you're no different in *his* eyes than anyone else.
Should that be the case, unions come in and can improve the negotiations by making you (along with all the others 'just like you') important to the company.
Granted, no system is perfect, but Unions have their place. Is that place IT? At this point in time, with relatively low supply of IT people and high demand, probably not. Should this change, it wouldn't suprise me to see more unionization for just these reasons. You become easily replaceable to the company, and there's no reason for them to give you a good contract when there's someone else who will do the same work at the same quality with fewer perks. You still won't be able to negotiate with management because you'll have no power over them. Hopefully, union management will be decent and won't cost you too much (however, don't confuse the goals and functions of unions with those of a few corrupt/poorly managed Unions). Until that time, feel free to do what you want.