He's an American citizen being detained during the Olympic Games. He's not going to disappear. They'll question him for several hours, probably including sleep deprivation and a lot of yelling, and then kick him out of the country. There was another guy earlier on in the Olympics that got detained for trying to protest, and that's pretty much what happened to him.
The Chinese are trying to look good in front of the world, "disappearing" a foreign national, especially an American, during the Olympics would not be in line with that goal.
Personally, as an American it bothers me that they cheated, but it doesn't really surprise me since the entire sport of gymnastics has been rife with various scandals and corruption charges for decades. However, I'm content with how the US team performed anyway, so it's not a huge deal. I would be a lot more upset if I were in one of the countries that finished in 4th place in any of the events.
All of what the other posters said, plus the fact that younger girls are naturally more flexible, which can give them an advantage over older competitors. There's also the idea that younger girls are better able to handle stress (maybe because they don't fully realize the magnitude of what they're doing), and can thus theoretically perform better, but that one may or may not have any basis in reality (but it has been repeated by the NBC commentators).
Like he said in TFA, they didn't have a post-release plan or budget, and they never bothered to figure out if they'd be cash-positive, or even if they'd be profitable.
Which is really stupid, because if they had spent just a few weeks or months putting together a solid business plan, they could have come up with the financial statements necessary to either a.) show considerable growth potential and attract VC funding or b.) convince themselves the idea was unworkable and quit while they were ahead.
With the combination of their previous resumes at Blizzard and a solid business plan, they would have been fighting off VCs with a stick. Unfortunately, they did none of that, and ended up having to rely on loans using the keys to the kingdom (IP for the games) as collateral. This means that once the loan holders decided to call in the collateral, they were utterly hosed and had nowhere else to go.
I could see this story showing up in an Entrepreneurial Management course as a case study in how not to start a company.
Have you seen the ticket prices on a round-trip to Mars lately? No to mention if you don't upgrade to first class you get to spend the next 6 months with some guy drooling on you in his sleep from the seat next to you and some brat kicking the back of your chair the entire time. Not to mention, the hotel accommodations on Mars are poor at best, and ridiculously overpriced.
Seriously man, maybe if the spacelines and the hotels could get their shit together and make it a worthwhile experience, you might see more astronauts willing to go up there to collect some rocks (did I mention the cargo fees on getting that stuff back? If it doesn't fit in your carry-on, you might as well just forget it!). As it is, it takes some doing just to convince lifeless robots to go up there, and even then they bitch the whole time.
Only in the short term. In the long term, it entrenches the idea in peoples' minds that newer is not necessarily better when it's coming from Microsoft, which is not a mindset MS wants people to have. The debacle of Vista makes people more wary of new offerings from MS, and will harm them in the long run.
Well, I thought it would be funny to post an xkcd comment in response to the rant about xkcd. Unfortunately, I wasn't dedicated enough to the joke to go searching for something really appropriate, so I just posted the first tangentially related one I came across.
Re:Next, Lego Will Make It a Creativity-Free Kit
on
Beijing 2008 In Lego
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Also, there are a lot more kids on my lawn these days, and they won't get off.
Seriously, have you ever actually seen kids playing with toys? The imagination is definitely there, and they do freely mix and match toys to fit whatever game they're playing, which is often something they're making up on the spot.
I have a 9 year old and a 6 year old, and they're constantly engaged in some form of imaginative play. Just because the play sets these days tend to be trying to encourage playing to a specific story line, kids rarely do that.
The "when does life begin" question was clearly intended to give the assembled crowd (all rabidly pro-life evangelicals) a canned applause line for McCain and an uncomfortable moment for Obama. Obama fumbled with it because he couldn't just come out and say he was pro-choice in a crowd full of pro-lifers that he was attempting to pander to, and he couldn't have said "life begins at conception" like McCain did because he would alienate his base. Of course, McCain's response, although beloved by the "moral majority" types, is also wrought with potential craziness (is a miscarriage neglicent homicide?).
"Above my pay grade" is a pretty silly response for someone running for the highest office in the land (although I think he was probably trying to say that only God can make that determination, rather than saying some higher Earthly official could do so), but it's difficult to say what a good answer would have been in that particular circumstance.
Maybe you have your comment threshold set too high? If you browse at +2, that might explain it. I browse at -1, and see everything (for better or worse).
It does when the whole argument revolves around presenting it in a science class. The media spent plenty of time on that issue, and often took great pains to make it seem like the arguments for and against ID in science classes were both equally valid, and should be given equal time.
We also have to stop thinking that there must be 2 sides to every issue and that both sides are equally valid. That sort of thinking is where you get things like the media treating Intelligent Design as a valid scientific theory, because they're convinced that every issue must have two equally valid sides, even when only one side is actually supported by any kind of scientific evidence.
The idle section won't reduce the trolling on "regular" Slashdot even a little bit. It will just give the trolls yet another place to go. If the introduction of the "Politics" section wasn't sufficient to isolate the trolls then nothing will be.
Wasn't Call of Duty 3 a launch title for the Wii? Wasn't that violent, or did they replace the machine guns with rainbow launchers and the Nazis with puppies for the Wii version?
It was. While Colbert and Stewart have appeared on each others' shows multiple times, I doubt they ever would have gotten Conan on board if it wasn't for the writers' strike.
You could make the argument that wars are better for infrastructure, but probably not in the way you would like.
Basically, if your infrastructure is totally decimated by war, you're going to have to rebuild it, and you'll probably rebuild it with modern technology rather than putting in the old crap that got blown up. So, the fact that many Japanese and European cities were reduced to rubble around 60 years ago allowed them to be rebuilt with modern (for the day) construction and planning.
So, our best bet for our crumbling infrastructure is to get involved in a war on our own soil and lose. After our cities and major roads and railways are completely destroyed, they'll get rebuilt good as new!
There might be some minor negative side effects to this plan, but I'm sure you'll agree the up side is tremendous!
Slashdot Mirror
He's an American citizen being detained during the Olympic Games. He's not going to disappear. They'll question him for several hours, probably including sleep deprivation and a lot of yelling, and then kick him out of the country. There was another guy earlier on in the Olympics that got detained for trying to protest, and that's pretty much what happened to him.
The Chinese are trying to look good in front of the world, "disappearing" a foreign national, especially an American, during the Olympics would not be in line with that goal.
I do too have a girlfriend, you insensitive clod!
She lives in Canada. You wouldn't know her.
It's not that they live so much longer, it's that the time passes so much slower for them.
It's like trying to reduce the vibrations in your Chevette by encasing it in lead: probably effective, but your gas mileage is going to suck.
Personally, as an American it bothers me that they cheated, but it doesn't really surprise me since the entire sport of gymnastics has been rife with various scandals and corruption charges for decades. However, I'm content with how the US team performed anyway, so it's not a huge deal. I would be a lot more upset if I were in one of the countries that finished in 4th place in any of the events.
All of what the other posters said, plus the fact that younger girls are naturally more flexible, which can give them an advantage over older competitors. There's also the idea that younger girls are better able to handle stress (maybe because they don't fully realize the magnitude of what they're doing), and can thus theoretically perform better, but that one may or may not have any basis in reality (but it has been repeated by the NBC commentators).
Like he said in TFA, they didn't have a post-release plan or budget, and they never bothered to figure out if they'd be cash-positive, or even if they'd be profitable.
Which is really stupid, because if they had spent just a few weeks or months putting together a solid business plan, they could have come up with the financial statements necessary to either a.) show considerable growth potential and attract VC funding or b.) convince themselves the idea was unworkable and quit while they were ahead.
With the combination of their previous resumes at Blizzard and a solid business plan, they would have been fighting off VCs with a stick. Unfortunately, they did none of that, and ended up having to rely on loans using the keys to the kingdom (IP for the games) as collateral. This means that once the loan holders decided to call in the collateral, they were utterly hosed and had nowhere else to go.
I could see this story showing up in an Entrepreneurial Management course as a case study in how not to start a company.
Have you seen the ticket prices on a round-trip to Mars lately? No to mention if you don't upgrade to first class you get to spend the next 6 months with some guy drooling on you in his sleep from the seat next to you and some brat kicking the back of your chair the entire time. Not to mention, the hotel accommodations on Mars are poor at best, and ridiculously overpriced.
Seriously man, maybe if the spacelines and the hotels could get their shit together and make it a worthwhile experience, you might see more astronauts willing to go up there to collect some rocks (did I mention the cargo fees on getting that stuff back? If it doesn't fit in your carry-on, you might as well just forget it!). As it is, it takes some doing just to convince lifeless robots to go up there, and even then they bitch the whole time.
Only in the short term. In the long term, it entrenches the idea in peoples' minds that newer is not necessarily better when it's coming from Microsoft, which is not a mindset MS wants people to have. The debacle of Vista makes people more wary of new offerings from MS, and will harm them in the long run.
Well, I thought it would be funny to post an xkcd comment in response to the rant about xkcd. Unfortunately, I wasn't dedicated enough to the joke to go searching for something really appropriate, so I just posted the first tangentially related one I came across.
http://xkcd.com/406/
Also, there are a lot more kids on my lawn these days, and they won't get off.
Seriously, have you ever actually seen kids playing with toys? The imagination is definitely there, and they do freely mix and match toys to fit whatever game they're playing, which is often something they're making up on the spot.
I have a 9 year old and a 6 year old, and they're constantly engaged in some form of imaginative play. Just because the play sets these days tend to be trying to encourage playing to a specific story line, kids rarely do that.
The "when does life begin" question was clearly intended to give the assembled crowd (all rabidly pro-life evangelicals) a canned applause line for McCain and an uncomfortable moment for Obama. Obama fumbled with it because he couldn't just come out and say he was pro-choice in a crowd full of pro-lifers that he was attempting to pander to, and he couldn't have said "life begins at conception" like McCain did because he would alienate his base. Of course, McCain's response, although beloved by the "moral majority" types, is also wrought with potential craziness (is a miscarriage neglicent homicide?).
"Above my pay grade" is a pretty silly response for someone running for the highest office in the land (although I think he was probably trying to say that only God can make that determination, rather than saying some higher Earthly official could do so), but it's difficult to say what a good answer would have been in that particular circumstance.
Maybe you have your comment threshold set too high? If you browse at +2, that might explain it. I browse at -1, and see everything (for better or worse).
This response sums up pretty well why meaningful debate on the Israeli/Palestinian issue remains impossible.
Come on man, just google for Latin to English translators.
It means "Anyone protection ipsos protection" according to the one I found. So, yah...pretty deep.
It does when the whole argument revolves around presenting it in a science class. The media spent plenty of time on that issue, and often took great pains to make it seem like the arguments for and against ID in science classes were both equally valid, and should be given equal time.
We also have to stop thinking that there must be 2 sides to every issue and that both sides are equally valid. That sort of thinking is where you get things like the media treating Intelligent Design as a valid scientific theory, because they're convinced that every issue must have two equally valid sides, even when only one side is actually supported by any kind of scientific evidence.
Why wouldn't be "light" edition of Slashdot for pointless surfing and pointless discussions?
We already have that, it's called "slashdot.org".
It's vi, Firefox, Gnome, Kirk you mouth-breathing idiot. Go back to idle.slashdot.org!
Your naivete is adorable.
The idle section won't reduce the trolling on "regular" Slashdot even a little bit. It will just give the trolls yet another place to go. If the introduction of the "Politics" section wasn't sufficient to isolate the trolls then nothing will be.
Wasn't Call of Duty 3 a launch title for the Wii? Wasn't that violent, or did they replace the machine guns with rainbow launchers and the Nazis with puppies for the Wii version?
It was. While Colbert and Stewart have appeared on each others' shows multiple times, I doubt they ever would have gotten Conan on board if it wasn't for the writers' strike.
We shouldn't let journalists dope either. Case in point: this article.
You could make the argument that wars are better for infrastructure, but probably not in the way you would like.
Basically, if your infrastructure is totally decimated by war, you're going to have to rebuild it, and you'll probably rebuild it with modern technology rather than putting in the old crap that got blown up. So, the fact that many Japanese and European cities were reduced to rubble around 60 years ago allowed them to be rebuilt with modern (for the day) construction and planning.
So, our best bet for our crumbling infrastructure is to get involved in a war on our own soil and lose. After our cities and major roads and railways are completely destroyed, they'll get rebuilt good as new!
There might be some minor negative side effects to this plan, but I'm sure you'll agree the up side is tremendous!