"God lied (having said the fruit would kill them),"
Actually, the text says, if they eat of the tree "dying, you shall die."
The implications are simple to someone with basic doctrinal understanding of the Bible. Unfortunately the translations most people read are inadequate on this point, and the requisite doctrinal knowledge and understanding of Hebrew is rarelty posessed by people who are antagonistic to the Bible.
Anyways, "dying, you shall die" refers to the Bible's position that man was created with a spiritual component. That spiritual component, which was an integral and necessary part of mankind, was destroyed the moment that man was disobedient to God. So, we can re-translate the sentence to this: "dying (spiritually), you will (eventually) die (physically.)" Since the Bible also discribes that man was originally created to live forever this death was, even though delayed, absolutely a consequence of the action of disobeying God.
"That's what my Bible says"
Bingo. Bad translations, lack of systematic theology, etc. will lead to fundamental interpretation errors. Every time.
Forget robots, how about an industry that surely will be of greater and greater demand. Remotely powered exoskeletons for the physically impaired and elderly.
Without the overhead of carrying your powersource the devices could be much lighter weight. With a properly designed home (or shoping mall!) you could have nonagenarians and centenarians taking care of themselves and not having to wory about falling and not being able to get up.
People are living longer and longer. Just look at the recent news stories about the average age of the Japaneese, not to mention the encroachment of the baby boomers on the 80+ range coming up. With rising medical costs on one side of the equation, and the added benefit to personal liberty on the other side, I think this could work out.
Look on the bright side. Some of those kids respected those teachers and probably put them on a pedestal far above where they deserved to be.
In the future they will probably be suspicious of authority figures. Hopefully they will also understand that everyone, regardless of position, is a person and therefore capable of acting like a complete and utter shithead at the slightest provocation. If it makes them wary and it makes them alert to abuses of power that is great, too. Also, if it shows them how to seek redress from grievances against people who are in authority over them it will be good as well. Too many people are abused by their superiors and never get or even seek justce because they do not know how to or cannot bring themselves to contradict that person because of their position (teachers, priests, parents, etc.)
All in all I think it was a colossally moronic and cruel thing to do. Anyone that knew anything about it in advance at the school should be terminated and never let near children again. However, this does not mean that the children who experienced this will not be better (in some ways) for it. Not trusting teachers is a good thing. Case in point.
Not a good analogy. You completely ignore the crux of the matter which is the offence in question has effects that go well beyond the borders of Australia. Not to mention the motivation of the person comitting the act. I am sure this guy didn't accidentally violate these IP laws as a matter of daily convention (driving on one side of the road, making out with his girlfriend, etc.)
Now if you were standing just outside the borders of Indonesia and continually spitting over the line onto their country's streets, that might be objectionalbe in similar manner. Or if you were projecting pornographic images onto buildings in a border town of Saudi Arabia from another country, again this might be a closer analogy as well.
Forget analogies, lets go to the apparent facts (not yet bourne out in court). This guy was breaking US (and AU) IP laws in a country that has extradition treaties with the US and is on generally good terms with the US. What did he, and now you and everyone else, expect?
Furthermore, if you look closely at Australia they are fast becoming a powerhouse of IP creation themsleves. They could be in a quid pro quo situation with the US very soon. Chances are the AU government made this decision for good reason, even beyond the fact that protecting a criminal is beneath them.
Whatever the reason for your obfuscation and apparent lack of rigour there appear to be many like minded and sympathetic souls here on/. for you to feed.
Personally, I can't get past the fact that people will jump up to the soapbox to defend the actions of a suspected criminal whose own country has rejected his appeals for clemency. Then they will condemn his own country for not putting their integrity on the line for a suspected criminal, and worst of all, they overwhelmingly condemn the offended party for asking for justice.
Just remember that there would be much less of a problem securing fourth ammendment rights if the police had not found child pronography in his home, ie. the exact crime they were searching for.
Chances are, if he had no child porn, but say had an unlicensed handgun, it would be a much more interesting case. Even then probable cause in this case seems cut and dried. Something illegal was sent from that IP. Police should be able to search it. The fact that it was an open WAP doesn't excuse him from investigation.
It could, however, provide reasonable doubt. If child porn was not found in his home or resident on his computer he could probably get off due to the open WAP. However, it pretty much fucks your case when you have DVDs full of the shit in your bedroom.
"This is closely akin to washing oil off some ducks while christening a new oil tanker and sending it off to do its part in polluting the globe. Except it's more personal."
And you, shedding a sanctimonious crocodile tear for the little duck, using his destroyed little body to advance sympathy for your viewpoint, and then getting in your car and starting it is like jerking off to pictures of your mother-in-law from over the mantle then claiming it is ok because you can just wipe the semen off of the glass covers.
In other words, if you drive a car, use plastics, enjoy electricity or any of the other myriad products of our modern society you personally killed that little duck. You demanded it, and paid the killer yourself with your hard earned money then enjoyed every gas guzzling second of it.
Similarly, with your arrogance you forgot to realize that the market forces at your command have created the plant that gives little kids in Africa "the cough." It is refining the oil for the shit that you consume in staggeringly corpulent quantities. There would be nothing there for the Gates foundation to invest in if it wasn't for the market that you scream for and reinforce with every grossly negligent and avaricious purchase you make.
Please set aside your self aggrandizing, hypocritical, and slanderous viewpoint and remember to wipe the human gore and blood from your own hands before pointing it out on others. You sick little planet destroying monkey.
Many people (myself for example) who partied and played with hedonistic drive during their adolescent/young adult years, and who subsequently grew up sometimes want to try to go back and recapture the feeling of that time in life.
and, if you are anything like me and some of my close friends, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, in whatever quantities (!) you cannot reclaim that feeling you had.
There is this certain feeling you are missing and it has nothing to do with the clothes you wore, the way you did your hair, the music you listened to, the sex you had, the alcohol you drank, or the drugs you did. I will tell you now why that is. The missing ingredient that you will never have again: Complete and total lack of responsibility.
Enjoy it while you can kids, cuz its never coming back.
"The climatologists job, on the other hand, is to say if you turn up the heat by 50%, the water will boil in X minutes, and if you also cover the pan with a lid, the water will boil in Y minutes (were Y X). The climatologist can predict this with a fairly good degree of accuracy..."
Not if the homeowner where the experiment is being run hasn't paid the electric and they shut it off while the experiment is running.
That is exactly the problem with your expample. We are observing a long term phenomena with many unknows and dynamic inputs. Our sample size is small and has conflicting and confusing leading indicators. There is new data coming along daily and sometimes it is drastic in it's appearance. And yet, no one alters their opinion or acknowledges that predictions may need more work.
"try to develop a healthy attitude about the reality of global warming"
My attitude is very healthy.
My attitude is that shorts are more comfortable than long pants.
My attitude is that no one wears a tie near the equator.
My attitude is that politics has taken up the standard of global warming and therefore no human will ever be able to objectively observe the phenomena again.
My attitude is that whatever happens: cooling, warming, or static temperature, each political party will claim that is what they predicted and the benefits are due to their prescient actions and the drawbacks are due to the other party.
My attitude is that buying "carbon credits" is like "selling indulgences."
My attitude is that if you live anywhere there is electricity, automobiles, plastic, cows, airconditioning, or smog you are personally responsible for the supposed basis for human created global warming and therefore have no right to tell other people how to live.
My attitude is not that we are powerless it is just that no one would pay the necessary price to reverse human created global warming (if it is real.)
Actually you do know. Eviction is tightly regulated to prevent landlords from tossing people easily. Usually, when someone stops paying there are 2-3 court dates that have to pass before you can even get a constable out to the residence to remove the person. This can take upwards of 3 months in some places due to court caseloads.
Add to that the fact that many landlords will give the transgressing tennant up to 90 days to catch up and you are probably looking at half a year to remove someone from propery that YOU OWN. Meanwhile they are probably trashing the place.
If you add it up, lawyer fees, past due rent, and dammage to the property, it is easy to see how a tennant can royally screw a landlord. If someone is the "victim" of eviction they really had to do something to get into that position becuase the process is not easy.
I am saddened that your "Christian" friends treated you that way. Souds like they were trying to guilt you into staying in the cult. Heinous and sick if you ask me.
Just remember that one of the basic tennents of Christianity is that mankind is imperfect and subject to what we will call wishy-washyness. Someone who declares themself a Christian, and then is caught doing things that are decidedly un-Christian, is only a living example of the doctrines of the Bible. Their actions after they do these un-Christian things reveal their strength of character and recognition of the ideals they portray as valuable to themselves. It is easy to point fingers and scream "hypocrite." It is much harder to acknowledge that all people are posessed of a nature that is fraugt with imperfections and a yearning to do what is right that is many times unfulfilled. It is even harder for people to acknowledge this knowledge in a deep and personal way.
Even more interesting is the fact that other people will reveal their character in their reaction to that transgressing person. In ohter words, what you think about someone else (especially someone else in an all too embarrasing human situaion) says more about yourself than it does about them.
I have never seen game AI that worked intelligently. My gaming cycle goes like this: learn the controls, remap the controls to optimize, get specific reaction time down, figure out the basic AI repitoire, learn the "maps", master reaction times, learn to trick the AI or "squeeze between the cracks" of the AI.
People learn to do tricks the computer doesn't do. This is the draw of online FPS games like Quake, Counterstrike, etc.
If developers wanted to make good AI they would beta test the Player vs player version before the full game and model the tactics of the better players with their AI.
I work at a MINI dealership and we had a similar situation.
One client was continually getting upset because his MINI alarm would go off repeatedly in the middle of the night, seemingly at random intervals. This was perplexing because MINI uses internal motion sensors for their alarms which are not prone to false alarms. Most cars use crappy vibration sensors that will go off at the slightest provocation (thunder, cars too close, birds landing on the roof, etc.) The electrical system, coding, and settings for the alarm were checked and rechecked but nothing was found to be faulty.
Our service technicians tried unsuccessfully to replicate the phenomena, even going so far as to put the car into their own garage at night to listen for the alarm going off. Alas this was all in vain. No one could get this to replicate and the cuystomer got more and more upset until one day he arrived at our dealership after a semi-sleepless night, threw the keys on the service manager's desk, and said fix it or else.
Only this time, in his haste and anger, he neglected to take his trusty DISCO BALL with him. Apparently, our fastidious client had been removing the aforementioned accessory from his MINI'S rearview mirror before bringing it in for service. The reasons for this are the subject of much juvenile speculation. Regardless, it turns out that the subtle motions of the disco ball were activating the alarm.
You don't happen to have a disco ball on your mirror, do you Ian?:)
My '87 nissan Stanza had a bug/feature in the stereo system.
I noticed on a friends Maxima with the "upgraded" factory stereo that they looked identical except for the dolby NR button on the face plate. Mine just had a little plastic punchout cover on it where the Dolby button was. Funny thing was, when the light was just right I could see edge-on the dolby icon unilluminated on the display plate. As a cynical and suspicious bastard this piqued my curiosity.
Soooo, one day I am listening to Mozart on my cassets deck in the car to try to remain calm in traffic, only it isn't working because of the huge hissing noise from the cassette player. Between that and a little help from the asshole drivers in front of me my road rage boiled over a tad. Next thing I know I am punching the shit out of the stereo cuz I am completely pissed off. Lo and behold, I smacked it in just the right spot and the hiss dies and the little Dolby icon, heretofore unilluminated, pops right on.
Another shining example of percussive maintenance in action, thought I think this would be better described as a percussive field upgrade, or some such.
Antoher easy to edit save game was Bards Tale. I just popped open the save game files with K-edit and there was the ascii strings for equipment, experience, health, money, levels, everything. Just fing the corresponding trait you want to alter, atl-x and something between 0 and 255 and presto!
It was usually necessary to level up once and to have at least one inventory item so the file would format correctly. You could also edit the items.dat file. This listed the items that were avaiable in the store. It was usefeul because you could not buy items that you had not first found in the game, and the game kept track of discreet number of items sold to the vendor.
Of course I have to tell you that cheating ruins the fun of a game, and there were plenty of fun ways to completely dominate the game and powerlevel yourself in entertaining ways without resorting to cheats. However it was a blast to manipulate the files and to figure out the savegame conventions.
"Perhaps by introducing the genes into cells in the affected area using a retrovirus?"
Ya, and in exchange for your epilepsy relief (dubious) you get brain cancer. For those ready to commit suicide from the effects of debilitating epilepsy this might be a more painful and degrading way to go.
Besides, if you could use a retrovirus to introduce a snipped of DNA and then use that DNA to treat the symptom, why not use a retrovirus to treat the cause directly. That way you only have side effects from one phase treatment. Otherwise you have side effects from the retrovirus, the surgery to implant the lights, and the actual light treatment when it is used.
As someone who lives with epilepsy on a daily basis I think that this will fall into the category of interesting medical minutae. Whether or not scientists say that this is effective in treatment of humans is irrelevant (they have to say that to get more funding.) The tech needed to get this on the field of battle will make it obsolete.
Until people realize that the belief system they choose is inexorably tied to their ego they will be vulnerable to the temptations of over-proselytizing.
For most strong believers their entire self concept is wrapped up in not only their belief in God/no god, but also in the necessity of having others see them as a good little christian/properly angsty atheist, etc.
In other words, many people are dependent on how they appear to others in order to feel fulfilled with their own beliefs. You see this in the atheists you describe that constantly reveal their unbelief in an attempt to get into arguments. You also see it in the Christians who assault you with pleas for your salvation and threats of eternal damnation and who are all too ready to argue back. Both are annoying to people for the overt reasons of their actions, but more subtly so because we recognize the sophomoric attention-getting mechanisms they use to satisfy their egos.
An argument is only a reflection of an ego that needs stroking to feel fulfilled. It is the outward manifestattion of someone who is looking for both positive and negative reinforcement. If you really care about what you believe, and therefore want other people to believe it too, then avoid confrontation. The fastest way to get somone to listen to what you believe in is to ask them about what they believe and listen.
If one progresses past this juvenile stage epitomized by the constant search for justification for beliefs from others (through acceptance of peers or through rejection of those who are antagonistic), most people will settle into a either apathy, bitterness, or a sense of self-fulfillment.
It sounds like you have found the self-fulfillment option and I commend you. It is usually the most rewarding outcome.
I thought the Kyoto treaty would put more restrictive air quality measures in developed countries because they are the worst polluters.
Now you're telling me that the US already has less of the nasty pollutants coming from its smokestacks than un-industrialized countries while the developing countries are royally screwing us all in the air quality sphincter and it's only gonna get worse? What myopic amoeba thought it would be a good idea to hand a free pass to the worst polluters in the world and, at the same time, choke the hell out of the established infrastructure of developed nations?
And people ridicule the US for not signing on to the Kyoto protocol? Holy fucking fuck monkeys, Batman.
I dont think that conservatives are happy with status quo and I think liberals want change but in certain areas more than others.
It might be better to say that the conservatives want to return to the days of yesteryear that never were. They see a pristine ideals embodied in certain virtuous elements of the past and want to create the present and the future in that image.
And, it might be better to say that liberals want to move beyond the trappings and obvious failings of the past. They see the sordid weaknesses and misuse of power in almost every example from the past and desire to eliminate those mistakes in the present and future.
Slashdot Mirror
"God lied (having said the fruit would kill them),"
Actually, the text says, if they eat of the tree "dying, you shall die."
The implications are simple to someone with basic doctrinal understanding of the Bible. Unfortunately the translations most people read are inadequate on this point, and the requisite doctrinal knowledge and understanding of Hebrew is rarelty posessed by people who are antagonistic to the Bible.
Anyways, "dying, you shall die" refers to the Bible's position that man was created with a spiritual component. That spiritual component, which was an integral and necessary part of mankind, was destroyed the moment that man was disobedient to God. So, we can re-translate the sentence to this: "dying (spiritually), you will (eventually) die (physically.)" Since the Bible also discribes that man was originally created to live forever this death was, even though delayed, absolutely a consequence of the action of disobeying God.
"That's what my Bible says"
Bingo. Bad translations, lack of systematic theology, etc. will lead to fundamental interpretation errors. Every time.
Forget robots, how about an industry that surely will be of greater and greater demand. Remotely powered exoskeletons for the physically impaired and elderly.
Without the overhead of carrying your powersource the devices could be much lighter weight. With a properly designed home (or shoping mall!) you could have nonagenarians and centenarians taking care of themselves and not having to wory about falling and not being able to get up.
People are living longer and longer. Just look at the recent news stories about the average age of the Japaneese, not to mention the encroachment of the baby boomers on the 80+ range coming up. With rising medical costs on one side of the equation, and the added benefit to personal liberty on the other side, I think this could work out.
Then again I was always idealistic.
"Stupid WoW reference crits you for 1337 damage! You die."
Being Too Young To Remember Text Based RPG's mollywhops you for infinity. You die.
Look on the bright side. Some of those kids respected those teachers and probably put them on a pedestal far above where they deserved to be.
In the future they will probably be suspicious of authority figures. Hopefully they will also understand that everyone, regardless of position, is a person and therefore capable of acting like a complete and utter shithead at the slightest provocation. If it makes them wary and it makes them alert to abuses of power that is great, too. Also, if it shows them how to seek redress from grievances against people who are in authority over them it will be good as well. Too many people are abused by their superiors and never get or even seek justce because they do not know how to or cannot bring themselves to contradict that person because of their position (teachers, priests, parents, etc.)
All in all I think it was a colossally moronic and cruel thing to do. Anyone that knew anything about it in advance at the school should be terminated and never let near children again. However, this does not mean that the children who experienced this will not be better (in some ways) for it. Not trusting teachers is a good thing. Case in point.
Not a good analogy. You completely ignore the crux of the matter which is the offence in question has effects that go well beyond the borders of Australia. Not to mention the motivation of the person comitting the act. I am sure this guy didn't accidentally violate these IP laws as a matter of daily convention (driving on one side of the road, making out with his girlfriend, etc.)
/. for you to feed.
Now if you were standing just outside the borders of Indonesia and continually spitting over the line onto their country's streets, that might be objectionalbe in similar manner. Or if you were projecting pornographic images onto buildings in a border town of Saudi Arabia from another country, again this might be a closer analogy as well.
Forget analogies, lets go to the apparent facts (not yet bourne out in court). This guy was breaking US (and AU) IP laws in a country that has extradition treaties with the US and is on generally good terms with the US. What did he, and now you and everyone else, expect?
Furthermore, if you look closely at Australia they are fast becoming a powerhouse of IP creation themsleves. They could be in a quid pro quo situation with the US very soon. Chances are the AU government made this decision for good reason, even beyond the fact that protecting a criminal is beneath them.
Whatever the reason for your obfuscation and apparent lack of rigour there appear to be many like minded and sympathetic souls here on
Personally, I can't get past the fact that people will jump up to the soapbox to defend the actions of a suspected criminal whose own country has rejected his appeals for clemency. Then they will condemn his own country for not putting their integrity on the line for a suspected criminal, and worst of all, they overwhelmingly condemn the offended party for asking for justice.
Just remember that there would be much less of a problem securing fourth ammendment rights if the police had not found child pronography in his home, ie. the exact crime they were searching for.
Chances are, if he had no child porn, but say had an unlicensed handgun, it would be a much more interesting case. Even then probable cause in this case seems cut and dried. Something illegal was sent from that IP. Police should be able to search it. The fact that it was an open WAP doesn't excuse him from investigation.
It could, however, provide reasonable doubt. If child porn was not found in his home or resident on his computer he could probably get off due to the open WAP. However, it pretty much fucks your case when you have DVDs full of the shit in your bedroom.
Idiot! You make the mistake of reading a translation. In the original Klingon there are actually 7!
"This is closely akin to washing oil off some ducks while christening a new oil tanker and sending it off to do its part in polluting the globe. Except it's more personal."
And you, shedding a sanctimonious crocodile tear for the little duck, using his destroyed little body to advance sympathy for your viewpoint, and then getting in your car and starting it is like jerking off to pictures of your mother-in-law from over the mantle then claiming it is ok because you can just wipe the semen off of the glass covers.
In other words, if you drive a car, use plastics, enjoy electricity or any of the other myriad products of our modern society you personally killed that little duck. You demanded it, and paid the killer yourself with your hard earned money then enjoyed every gas guzzling second of it.
Similarly, with your arrogance you forgot to realize that the market forces at your command have created the plant that gives little kids in Africa "the cough." It is refining the oil for the shit that you consume in staggeringly corpulent quantities. There would be nothing there for the Gates foundation to invest in if it wasn't for the market that you scream for and reinforce with every grossly negligent and avaricious purchase you make.
Please set aside your self aggrandizing, hypocritical, and slanderous viewpoint and remember to wipe the human gore and blood from your own hands before pointing it out on others. You sick little planet destroying monkey.
Many people (myself for example) who partied and played with hedonistic drive during their adolescent/young adult years, and who subsequently grew up sometimes want to try to go back and recapture the feeling of that time in life.
and, if you are anything like me and some of my close friends, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, in whatever quantities (!) you cannot reclaim that feeling you had.
There is this certain feeling you are missing and it has nothing to do with the clothes you wore, the way you did your hair, the music you listened to, the sex you had, the alcohol you drank, or the drugs you did. I will tell you now why that is. The missing ingredient that you will never have again: Complete and total lack of responsibility.
Enjoy it while you can kids, cuz its never coming back.
"The climatologists job, on the other hand, is to say if you turn up the heat by 50%, the water will boil in X minutes, and if you also cover the pan with a lid, the water will boil in Y minutes (were Y X). The climatologist can predict this with a fairly good degree of accuracy..."
Not if the homeowner where the experiment is being run hasn't paid the electric and they shut it off while the experiment is running.
That is exactly the problem with your expample. We are observing a long term phenomena with many unknows and dynamic inputs. Our sample size is small and has conflicting and confusing leading indicators. There is new data coming along daily and sometimes it is drastic in it's appearance. And yet, no one alters their opinion or acknowledges that predictions may need more work.
"try to develop a healthy attitude about the reality of global warming"
My attitude is very healthy.
My attitude is that shorts are more comfortable than long pants.
My attitude is that no one wears a tie near the equator.
My attitude is that politics has taken up the standard of global warming and therefore no human will ever be able to objectively observe the phenomena again.
My attitude is that whatever happens: cooling, warming, or static temperature, each political party will claim that is what they predicted and the benefits are due to their prescient actions and the drawbacks are due to the other party.
My attitude is that buying "carbon credits" is like "selling indulgences."
My attitude is that if you live anywhere there is electricity, automobiles, plastic, cows, airconditioning, or smog you are personally responsible for the supposed basis for human created global warming and therefore have no right to tell other people how to live.
My attitude is not that we are powerless it is just that no one would pay the necessary price to reverse human created global warming (if it is real.)
Actually you do know. Eviction is tightly regulated to prevent landlords from tossing people easily. Usually, when someone stops paying there are 2-3 court dates that have to pass before you can even get a constable out to the residence to remove the person. This can take upwards of 3 months in some places due to court caseloads.
Add to that the fact that many landlords will give the transgressing tennant up to 90 days to catch up and you are probably looking at half a year to remove someone from propery that YOU OWN. Meanwhile they are probably trashing the place.
If you add it up, lawyer fees, past due rent, and dammage to the property, it is easy to see how a tennant can royally screw a landlord. If someone is the "victim" of eviction they really had to do something to get into that position becuase the process is not easy.
BZZZT!
Median age quotient error detected. Please reformat your post to include 1 (one) of the following:
Jack Bauer
Chuck Norris
Thank you.
Damn straigh brother.
I can watch that movie over and over. My kids even love it.
Oh, and realizing that the captain actually IS Leslie Nielsen was a great movie moment for me.
I am saddened that your "Christian" friends treated you that way. Souds like they were trying to guilt you into staying in the cult. Heinous and sick if you ask me.
Just remember that one of the basic tennents of Christianity is that mankind is imperfect and subject to what we will call wishy-washyness. Someone who declares themself a Christian, and then is caught doing things that are decidedly un-Christian, is only a living example of the doctrines of the Bible. Their actions after they do these un-Christian things reveal their strength of character and recognition of the ideals they portray as valuable to themselves. It is easy to point fingers and scream "hypocrite." It is much harder to acknowledge that all people are posessed of a nature that is fraugt with imperfections and a yearning to do what is right that is many times unfulfilled. It is even harder for people to acknowledge this knowledge in a deep and personal way.
Even more interesting is the fact that other people will reveal their character in their reaction to that transgressing person. In ohter words, what you think about someone else (especially someone else in an all too embarrasing human situaion) says more about yourself than it does about them.
I have never seen game AI that worked intelligently. My gaming cycle goes like this: learn the controls, remap the controls to optimize, get specific reaction time down, figure out the basic AI repitoire, learn the "maps", master reaction times, learn to trick the AI or "squeeze between the cracks" of the AI.
People learn to do tricks the computer doesn't do. This is the draw of online FPS games like Quake, Counterstrike, etc.
If developers wanted to make good AI they would beta test the Player vs player version before the full game and model the tactics of the better players with their AI.
I work at a MINI dealership and we had a similar situation.
:)
One client was continually getting upset because his MINI alarm would go off repeatedly in the middle of the night, seemingly at random intervals. This was perplexing because MINI uses internal motion sensors for their alarms which are not prone to false alarms. Most cars use crappy vibration sensors that will go off at the slightest provocation (thunder, cars too close, birds landing on the roof, etc.) The electrical system, coding, and settings for the alarm were checked and rechecked but nothing was found to be faulty.
Our service technicians tried unsuccessfully to replicate the phenomena, even going so far as to put the car into their own garage at night to listen for the alarm going off. Alas this was all in vain. No one could get this to replicate and the cuystomer got more and more upset until one day he arrived at our dealership after a semi-sleepless night, threw the keys on the service manager's desk, and said fix it or else.
Only this time, in his haste and anger, he neglected to take his trusty DISCO BALL with him. Apparently, our fastidious client had been removing the aforementioned accessory from his MINI'S rearview mirror before bringing it in for service. The reasons for this are the subject of much juvenile speculation. Regardless, it turns out that the subtle motions of the disco ball were activating the alarm.
You don't happen to have a disco ball on your mirror, do you Ian?
My '87 nissan Stanza had a bug/feature in the stereo system.
I noticed on a friends Maxima with the "upgraded" factory stereo that they looked identical except for the dolby NR button on the face plate. Mine just had a little plastic punchout cover on it where the Dolby button was. Funny thing was, when the light was just right I could see edge-on the dolby icon unilluminated on the display plate. As a cynical and suspicious bastard this piqued my curiosity.
Soooo, one day I am listening to Mozart on my cassets deck in the car to try to remain calm in traffic, only it isn't working because of the huge hissing noise from the cassette player. Between that and a little help from the asshole drivers in front of me my road rage boiled over a tad. Next thing I know I am punching the shit out of the stereo cuz I am completely pissed off. Lo and behold, I smacked it in just the right spot and the hiss dies and the little Dolby icon, heretofore unilluminated, pops right on.
Another shining example of percussive maintenance in action, thought I think this would be better described as a percussive field upgrade, or some such.
Antoher easy to edit save game was Bards Tale. I just popped open the save game files with K-edit and there was the ascii strings for equipment, experience, health, money, levels, everything. Just fing the corresponding trait you want to alter, atl-x and something between 0 and 255 and presto!
It was usually necessary to level up once and to have at least one inventory item so the file would format correctly. You could also edit the items.dat file. This listed the items that were avaiable in the store. It was usefeul because you could not buy items that you had not first found in the game, and the game kept track of discreet number of items sold to the vendor.
Of course I have to tell you that cheating ruins the fun of a game, and there were plenty of fun ways to completely dominate the game and powerlevel yourself in entertaining ways without resorting to cheats. However it was a blast to manipulate the files and to figure out the savegame conventions.
"Perhaps by introducing the genes into cells in the affected area using a retrovirus?"
Ya, and in exchange for your epilepsy relief (dubious) you get brain cancer. For those ready to commit suicide from the effects of debilitating epilepsy this might be a more painful and degrading way to go.
Besides, if you could use a retrovirus to introduce a snipped of DNA and then use that DNA to treat the symptom, why not use a retrovirus to treat the cause directly. That way you only have side effects from one phase treatment. Otherwise you have side effects from the retrovirus, the surgery to implant the lights, and the actual light treatment when it is used.
As someone who lives with epilepsy on a daily basis I think that this will fall into the category of interesting medical minutae. Whether or not scientists say that this is effective in treatment of humans is irrelevant (they have to say that to get more funding.) The tech needed to get this on the field of battle will make it obsolete.
Until people realize that the belief system they choose is inexorably tied to their ego they will be vulnerable to the temptations of over-proselytizing.
For most strong believers their entire self concept is wrapped up in not only their belief in God/no god, but also in the necessity of having others see them as a good little christian/properly angsty atheist, etc.
In other words, many people are dependent on how they appear to others in order to feel fulfilled with their own beliefs. You see this in the atheists you describe that constantly reveal their unbelief in an attempt to get into arguments. You also see it in the Christians who assault you with pleas for your salvation and threats of eternal damnation and who are all too ready to argue back. Both are annoying to people for the overt reasons of their actions, but more subtly so because we recognize the sophomoric attention-getting mechanisms they use to satisfy their egos.
An argument is only a reflection of an ego that needs stroking to feel fulfilled. It is the outward manifestattion of someone who is looking for both positive and negative reinforcement. If you really care about what you believe, and therefore want other people to believe it too, then avoid confrontation. The fastest way to get somone to listen to what you believe in is to ask them about what they believe and listen.
If one progresses past this juvenile stage epitomized by the constant search for justification for beliefs from others (through acceptance of peers or through rejection of those who are antagonistic), most people will settle into a either apathy, bitterness, or a sense of self-fulfillment.
It sounds like you have found the self-fulfillment option and I commend you. It is usually the most rewarding outcome.
Wait, wait, wait.
I thought the Kyoto treaty would put more restrictive air quality measures in developed countries because they are the worst polluters.
Now you're telling me that the US already has less of the nasty pollutants coming from its smokestacks than un-industrialized countries while the developing countries are royally screwing us all in the air quality sphincter and it's only gonna get worse? What myopic amoeba thought it would be a good idea to hand a free pass to the worst polluters in the world and, at the same time, choke the hell out of the established infrastructure of developed nations?
And people ridicule the US for not signing on to the Kyoto protocol? Holy fucking fuck monkeys, Batman.
I dont think that conservatives are happy with status quo and I think liberals want change but in certain areas more than others.
It might be better to say that the conservatives want to return to the days of yesteryear that never were. They see a pristine ideals embodied in certain virtuous elements of the past and want to create the present and the future in that image.
And, it might be better to say that liberals want to move beyond the trappings and obvious failings of the past. They see the sordid weaknesses and misuse of power in almost every example from the past and desire to eliminate those mistakes in the present and future.
What else is there to do when you are flat on your back all night except study the sky?
Why use Harvard? Just look at the policies of immigration in Australia. They are more restrictive than the US but curiously, no one mentions them.