Nothing prevents you from renting pornography, bringing it home, and letting your children watch it. All the ratings system does is reduce the liklihood that strangers will show this stuff to your kids.
I for one am grateful of the movie rating system. This means, that I can, assume that after watching a G-rated movie in the other room, my six year old won't wander into the dining room where I'm entertaining co-workers and ask me, "What's anal sex?".
*And* I won't have to watch the movie beforehand to know that. Which, believe me, I *really* do not want to do.
More important is what the ratings system rates. Sex and violence? Possibly scariness factor for tiny children.
But, it doesn't rate the objectification of women, racism, religious ideology (or lack-there-of) and consummerism. It just means there will be mostly no sex and not too graphic violence, so, "holy crap!", if I really want to my children to have a good moral/civic/ethical/whatever grounding, I still have to watch the drivel before the kids do.
Just out of curiousity-- how old are the people complaining about age-limits? Me, I'm an adult so in the US, if I care to, I can smoke, drink, watch porn, buy games, fly to Amsterdam and do all the drugs I can. So, what, exactly, is the problem?
As soon as an adult is prevented from buying one of these games, the decision will be overturned.
What articles, who wrote them, who do they work for, then we can start to think about who their bosses/owners work for.
I work for a company that has been receiving some press itself lately, and to my amazement, every article about what's going on here has interviewed the same 3 or 4 people, and we're up to at least ten articles. They all interview the same "expert", when I know there are thousands of experts in this field.
It seems like the "business press" as it is related to my company's story is lazy and stupid. They don't, as far as I can see, do any research (except maybe the first guy, and he's probably just re-wording a press release). Then all the other "reporters" just re-word the first story.
What makes you think it will be any different when they write about MS?
Amoebas are single-celled organisms-- they do not have "specialised cell groupings" They have organelles-- in this case I think you're looking for the word "vacuole"
Amoebas eat by phagocytosis, in which they surround a prey item with their cell membrane and then join the surrounding membrane together.
The result-- is a ballon floating inside the amoeba containing the prey. They they inject that balloon with nasty chemicals.
They also do pinocytosis(I think)-- which is pretty similar, but it's a bunch of tiny bubbles made from tiny prey (chemicals, chunks of prey).
However, to see a real world example of the specialised cells-- look at the portuguese man-o-war.
Also the see cucumber and sponges are pretty illustrative of the gradual stomach deal-- then advance to annelids, arthropods, vertebrates.
Lotsa of steps in between of course.
Note that human cells also do phagocytosis and pinocytosis. If that matters to anybody.
Also note that the very existence of mitochondria and chloroplasts is believed to have arisen from the gatronomic accident of eating bacteria that didn't get digested, but rather offered their services in exchange for protection.
Interesting that you should bring up wings-- because the UCSD press release seems to be hung up on the fact that the fruit fly has six legs.
They overlook the fact that there are two other pairs of appendages on the thorax-- namely the wings and the halteres (which in other flying insects are another pair of wings).
That's 5 pairs of appendages on the thorax.
Aquatic crustaceans (crabs and lobsters) also have 5 pairs of appendages on their thorax-- four pairs of legs and one pair of claws.
Arachnids also have five pair, 4 sets of legs plus one pair of pedipalps-- most noticible as the claws on a scorpion or whip scorpion. Admittedly-- I'm not totally sure the pedipalps derive from the thoracic segments-- a little help someone?
It seems like the magic number here is five pair rather than 3 pair on the thorax.
On the other hand though-- you can find many combinations in between-- some of the "lower" arthropods have six or more pairs. Centipedes have a pair every other segment, while millipededs have a pair every segment.
Maybe your creator is just heavily into code re-use. Personally, I know it was a lot easier to make orcs from elves than it would have been to start from scratch. Thanks Illuvatar!
And existing diesil engines can pretty easily be converted to bio-diesil. That's a lot of infrastructure right there.
The real reason there is such interest in H as a fuel is that it would be a collosal pain in the ass for the consumer to deal with-- so the people who can deal with it will control it and make money.
Biodiesil however (vegetable oil) has been produced for millenia by Joe Farmer around the world. So, you don't hear corporations talking about that eh?
I'm not saying anyone is *suppressing* these alternative fuels, they're just not being played up in the press by corporations because they're not good for the corporations-- they're good for people. Imigine if every corn farmer realized that the farm could produce all its own fuel...
As for energy in general-- houses are already being built that are net energy producers (excluding manufacture cost admittedly) and this is without the savings of up and coming LED lighting.
There is no energy shortage. There are just people who use too much energy. However, because of the obvious military applications, orbitting lasers will happen, and probably within our lifetimes.
I think the problems are in the the number of "main" characters-- 13 dwarves, 1 hobbit, 1 wizard. 15 v 9.
Also, it seems like there's a lot more dialog with non-main characters-- goblins, gollum, smaug, what's-his-name the archer, Elf king, elves, Beorn, spiders, trolls.
I'm interpreting "more difficult" as "more expensive". I could be wrong, but it seems like it would cost more to have an actor on site for who knows how long than to render them on a computer.
Plus-- lots of the monsters speak-- so you have to pay voice actors. "I say we roast 'em" has got to cost more than "aarrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!"
Once out of the Shire-- FOTR wasn't that hard (for the acting anyway). Ok now walk around outside. Ok-- now run away looking scared. Now fight these guys. Swell music, landscape shot.
The Hobbit has a lot of character nuance that I don't recall in the LoTR-- but I've read the Hobbit many more times than LoTR.
Hey-- what do I know-- my feet were chopped off and I was hurled into the Void long before the Rings of Power were made.
Why would Linux users, in a gui, need to understand any of the "problems" you suggested.
A gui is a gui. Some are prettier and better designed. But come on, point and click. Everybody uses it.
I seriously doubt that school systems are using computers for TeX and vi. I doubt anyone sees a MS command line anymore in a school system, why would they have to see bash?
mouse click FILE->Print works the same in Linux as it does in MS OSs.
I used Word and WordPerfect (5.1 in DOS and 6 something in a gui) simulataneously for a couple of years, and remarkably, I did not die.
If a person is going to become incapacitated because their new job uses a different GUI, perhaps they should look for a job that doen't use a computer.
Popular software changes, but computer literacy is still increasingly a necessity.
Granted, good software should be user friendly and require little education to use, but that's not the case yet.
Someone needs to write that software, and those people need to be comfortable with the state of the art.
Computer use still requires reading and writing. But computers are cheaper than the ancient alternatives.
I'd much rather have had access to many many multimedia presentations like my children will have, than to have sat through all those horrible tape and filmstrip nightmares of my youth.
Word Processing is a tiny chunk of computing. And word processing is probably the least necessary. Does every child's report on Dickens need a bold 6 pt title? Nope. And you didn't get that with pad and pen. And you don't need it with a computer. \n and \t are sufficient typesetting for nearly any student paper.
I used word processors extensively for writing (in college and HS) but now I only use them to read what other people write. I write email and plain text (code) in various text editors. Emacs isn't going anywhere. Nor vi. Nor cat . Nor ed. Nor sed...
Speaking of class action... what happened to the price fixing lawsuit against CD manufacturers?
I almost never buy CDs (I buy lots and lots of records for $1 a piece at thrift stores though), so I was really surprised to notice that CDs are still really expensive-- at seem to be getting more so.
I was under the impression that there had been a victory against the manufacturers with regards to price fixing...
sorry-- forgot to replay to the "perpetual" comment in the general reply. There's a continuous influx of solar energy. There's no attempt to recapture energy or keep the system going with a limited amount of energy.
The kite would be using energy that would otherwise be wasted because it wasn't used to turn the turbines.
Please read "cloth" as any flexible substance (plastic, aerogel, whatever).
All of the lift would not need to come from the terminus. In fact that's probably a bad idea.
A better idea would be modular, tubular hotair balloons connected to form an enormous chimney. In the event of catostrophe, the individual sections would be bouyant, or close to weightless, so there would be little danger from the fall-out.
Sections could be replaced rather than replacing the entire structure. (Materials could change depending upon altitude, solar exposure,temparature).
The kite could be a robot glider with solar-powered motor backup for recovery from lateral winds. (these already exist I think).
I still think the tube up a mountain is the best/ lowest maintenance idea (just not as interesting).
If you do use the same path that the phone lines use, be careful not to burn holes in the insulation with the friction of pulling the CAT5 over the phone lines.
Pulling one wire over another will make the stationary insulation very hot very fast. Pull slowly. Take breaks to allow the wire to cool down.
I've been thinking about this for a while-- for both power generation and city-wide air conditioning-- (though there are obvious dangers and complications.
Use a cloth tunnel that is raised by dirigibles as the chimney. Install the generators at the base.
The cloth chimney would presumably be cheaper-- although obviously less durable. But it would open the possiblilit for chimneys miles long.
I've also though that a kite at the end of the chimney (buffetted by the chimney's exhaust) could suppport the entire structure.
A light transparent, IR opaque chimney could increase the heat inside the chimney itself-- regardless of the area theat it draws from.
What is the advantage of having the generators off the ground? As long as the air flows through does it make a difference?
Another alternative would be ground based tunnels.
Erect an arched greenhouse-- and make it several hundred kilometers long-- run it up the side of a mountain. Instantly, LA could have cool ocean breezes, no temperature inversions and the American West would receive more rainfall (and smog).
But then-- what would happen to the rest of the world?
sink holes. (Florida's nearby) Is this also on limestone?
landslides-- the islands of Hawaii occaisionally slough off huge chunks of land. Cuba's an island. Although hard to believe-- what if a large piece of land slowly slid off the island into the sea?
But have you ever heard of Pino Signoretto? No? But, he made light bulbs too!.
Whoopee! They risk their lives (and spend our money) to run other people's experiments in a floating school bus-- but mostly they're just truckers and mechanics.
I worked in hospitals for 5 years. In my experience, Doctors (and nurses and Physical therapists and lots of other people) enter in notes by hand. Now that I've been working on computers for a while, I type faster than I write by hand.
I don't think the $8/hour receptionists would be doing the notes-- I'd imagine the caregiver would be entering the notes unless the caregiver refuses to change over to typing, and only doctors would realistically have that option-- everyone else would be ordered to do so...
I'd imagine there is more cost savings in tight scheduling of the highly paid caregiver's time than there is in hypothetical transcription fees.
Computer notes have some other advantages-- foremost being legibility. It is true that some doctors (and other caregivers) have nearly illegible handwriting. That wastes other people's (highly paid) time, especially when those illegible notes are orders for other people.
This may also allow a way to "diagnosis check" the notes, raising warnings when something nonsensical is entered in the chart. For instance, if a patient comes in for debridement of a decubitus on the right foot, mention of the left foot should raise a warning.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the punishment for distributing nethack then?
I guess that would go to the UN.
sigh.
Nothing prevents you from renting pornography, bringing it home, and letting your children watch it. All the ratings system does is reduce the liklihood that strangers will show this stuff to your kids.
I for one am grateful of the movie rating system. This means, that I can, assume that after watching a G-rated movie in the other room, my six year old won't wander into the dining room where I'm entertaining co-workers and ask me, "What's anal sex?".
*And* I won't have to watch the movie beforehand to know that. Which, believe me, I *really* do not want to do.
More important is what the ratings system rates. Sex and violence? Possibly scariness factor for tiny children.
But, it doesn't rate the objectification of women, racism, religious ideology (or lack-there-of) and consummerism. It just means there will be mostly no sex and not too graphic violence, so, "holy crap!", if I really want to my children to have a good moral/civic/ethical/whatever grounding, I still have to watch the drivel before the kids do.
Just out of curiousity-- how old are the people complaining about age-limits? Me, I'm an adult so in the US, if I care to, I can smoke, drink, watch porn, buy games, fly to Amsterdam and do all the drugs I can. So, what, exactly, is the problem?
As soon as an adult is prevented from buying one of these games, the decision will be overturned.
Please define "the general business press".
What articles, who wrote them, who do they work for, then we can start to think about who their bosses/owners work for.
I work for a company that has been receiving some press itself lately, and to my amazement, every article about what's going on here has interviewed the same 3 or 4 people, and we're up to at least ten articles. They all interview the same "expert", when I know there are thousands of experts in this field.
It seems like the "business press" as it is related to my company's story is lazy and stupid. They don't, as far as I can see, do any research (except maybe the first guy, and he's probably just re-wording a press release). Then all the other "reporters" just re-word the first story.
What makes you think it will be any different when they write about MS?
If Jeri Ryan indeed has implants, watch Boston Public-- looks like she still does.
biological nitpick:
Amoebas are single-celled organisms-- they do not have "specialised cell groupings" They have organelles-- in this case I think you're looking for the word "vacuole"
Amoebas eat by phagocytosis, in which they surround a prey item with their cell membrane and then join the surrounding membrane together.
The result-- is a ballon floating inside the amoeba containing the prey. They they inject that balloon with nasty chemicals.
They also do pinocytosis(I think)-- which is pretty similar, but it's a bunch of tiny bubbles made from tiny prey (chemicals, chunks of prey).
However, to see a real world example of the specialised cells-- look at the portuguese man-o-war.
Also the see cucumber and sponges are pretty illustrative of the gradual stomach deal-- then advance to annelids, arthropods, vertebrates.
Lotsa of steps in between of course.
Note that human cells also do phagocytosis and pinocytosis. If that matters to anybody.
Also note that the very existence of mitochondria and chloroplasts is believed to have arisen from the gatronomic accident of eating bacteria that didn't get digested, but rather offered their services in exchange for protection.
Interesting that you should bring up wings-- because the UCSD press release seems to be hung up on the fact that the fruit fly has six legs.
They overlook the fact that there are two other pairs of appendages on the thorax-- namely the wings and the halteres (which in other flying insects are another pair of wings).
That's 5 pairs of appendages on the thorax.
Aquatic crustaceans (crabs and lobsters) also have 5 pairs of appendages on their thorax-- four pairs of legs and one pair of claws.
Arachnids also have five pair, 4 sets of legs plus one pair of pedipalps-- most noticible as the claws on a scorpion or whip scorpion. Admittedly-- I'm not totally sure the pedipalps derive from the thoracic segments-- a little help someone?
It seems like the magic number here is five pair rather than 3 pair on the thorax.
On the other hand though-- you can find many combinations in between-- some of the "lower" arthropods have six or more pairs. Centipedes have a pair every other segment, while millipededs have a pair every segment.
Maybe your creator is just heavily into code re-use. Personally, I know it was a lot easier to make orcs from elves than it would have been to start from scratch. Thanks Illuvatar!
And existing diesil engines can pretty easily be converted to bio-diesil. That's a lot of infrastructure right there.
The real reason there is such interest in H as a fuel is that it would be a collosal pain in the ass for the consumer to deal with-- so the people who can deal with it will control it and make money.
Biodiesil however (vegetable oil) has been produced for millenia by Joe Farmer around the world. So, you don't hear corporations talking about that eh?
I'm not saying anyone is *suppressing* these alternative fuels, they're just not being played up in the press by corporations because they're not good for the corporations-- they're good for people. Imigine if every corn farmer realized that the farm could produce all its own fuel...
As for energy in general-- houses are already being built that are net energy producers (excluding manufacture cost admittedly) and this is without the savings of up and coming LED lighting.
There is no energy shortage. There are just people who use too much energy. However, because of the obvious military applications, orbitting lasers will happen, and probably within our lifetimes.
I think the problems are in the the number of "main" characters-- 13 dwarves, 1 hobbit, 1 wizard. 15 v 9.
Also, it seems like there's a lot more dialog with non-main characters-- goblins, gollum, smaug, what's-his-name the archer, Elf king, elves, Beorn, spiders, trolls.
I'm interpreting "more difficult" as "more expensive". I could be wrong, but it seems like it would cost more to have an actor on site for who knows how long than to render them on a computer.
Plus-- lots of the monsters speak-- so you have to pay voice actors. "I say we roast 'em" has got to cost more than "aarrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!"
Once out of the Shire-- FOTR wasn't that hard (for the acting anyway). Ok now walk around outside. Ok-- now run away looking scared. Now fight these guys. Swell music, landscape shot.
The Hobbit has a lot of character nuance that I don't recall in the LoTR-- but I've read the Hobbit many more times than LoTR.
Hey-- what do I know-- my feet were chopped off and I was hurled into the Void long before the Rings of Power were made.
>> (he has been banned from the school grounds)
You can't just say that and not tell the story.
what?
Do Win95 users need to understand the registry?
Why would Linux users, in a gui, need to understand any of the "problems" you suggested.
A gui is a gui. Some are prettier and better designed. But come on, point and click. Everybody uses it.
I seriously doubt that school systems are using computers for TeX and vi. I doubt anyone sees a MS command line anymore in a school system, why would they have to see bash?
mouse click FILE->Print works the same in Linux as it does in MS OSs.
I used Word and WordPerfect (5.1 in DOS and 6 something in a gui) simulataneously for a couple of years, and remarkably, I did not die.
If a person is going to become incapacitated because their new job uses a different GUI, perhaps they should look for a job that doen't use a computer.
Popular software changes, but computer literacy is still increasingly a necessity.
Granted, good software should be user friendly and require little education to use, but that's not the case yet.
Someone needs to write that software, and those people need to be comfortable with the state of the art.
Computer use still requires reading and writing. But computers are cheaper than the ancient alternatives.
I'd much rather have had access to many many multimedia presentations like my children will have, than to have sat through all those horrible tape and filmstrip nightmares of my youth.
Word Processing is a tiny chunk of computing. And word processing is probably the least necessary. Does every child's report on Dickens need a bold 6 pt title? Nope. And you didn't get that with pad and pen. And you don't need it with a computer. \n and \t are sufficient typesetting for nearly any student paper.
I used word processors extensively for writing (in college and HS) but now I only use them to read what other people write. I write email and plain text (code) in various text editors. Emacs isn't going anywhere. Nor vi. Nor cat . Nor ed. Nor sed...
Speaking of class action... what happened to the price fixing lawsuit against CD manufacturers?
I almost never buy CDs (I buy lots and lots of records for $1 a piece at thrift stores though), so I was really surprised to notice that CDs are still really expensive-- at seem to be getting more so.
I was under the impression that there had been a victory against the manufacturers with regards to price fixing...
sorry-- forgot to replay to the "perpetual" comment in the general reply. There's a continuous influx of solar energy. There's no attempt to recapture energy or keep the system going with a limited amount of energy.
The kite would be using energy that would otherwise be wasted because it wasn't used to turn the turbines.
Thanks for the feed back.
Please read "cloth" as any flexible substance (plastic, aerogel, whatever).
All of the lift would not need to come from the terminus. In fact that's probably a bad idea.
A better idea would be modular, tubular hotair balloons connected to form an enormous chimney. In the event of catostrophe, the individual sections would be bouyant, or close to weightless, so there would be little danger from the fall-out.
Sections could be replaced rather than replacing the entire structure. (Materials could change depending upon altitude, solar exposure,temparature).
The kite could be a robot glider with solar-powered motor backup for recovery from lateral winds. (these already exist I think).
I still think the tube up a mountain is the best/ lowest maintenance idea (just not as interesting).
If you do use the same path that the phone lines use, be careful not to burn holes in the insulation with the friction of pulling the CAT5 over the phone lines.
Pulling one wire over another will make the stationary insulation very hot very fast. Pull slowly. Take breaks to allow the wire to cool down.
Why build a permanent tower?
I've been thinking about this for a while-- for both power generation and city-wide air conditioning-- (though there are obvious dangers and complications.
Use a cloth tunnel that is raised by dirigibles as the chimney. Install the generators at the base.
The cloth chimney would presumably be cheaper-- although obviously less durable. But it would open the possiblilit for chimneys miles long.
I've also though that a kite at the end of the chimney (buffetted by the chimney's exhaust) could suppport the entire structure.
A light transparent, IR opaque chimney could increase the heat inside the chimney itself-- regardless of the area theat it draws from.
What is the advantage of having the generators off the ground? As long as the air flows through does it make a difference?
Another alternative would be ground based tunnels.
Erect an arched greenhouse-- and make it several hundred kilometers long-- run it up the side of a mountain. Instantly, LA could have cool ocean breezes, no temperature inversions and the American West would receive more rainfall (and smog).
But then-- what would happen to the rest of the world?
sink holes. (Florida's nearby) Is this also on limestone?
landslides-- the islands of Hawaii occaisionally slough off huge chunks of land. Cuba's an island. Although hard to believe-- what if a large piece of land slowly slid off the island into the sea?
You don't get any points, but then, you just want to kill right?
After about thirty seconds, you may start giggling uncontrollably, so don't play at work.
http://www.bossmonster.com/games/antcity.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/20/044524 2&mode=flat
Betcha know who Thomas Edison is.
But have you ever heard of Pino Signoretto? No? But, he made light bulbs too!.
Whoopee! They risk their lives (and spend our money) to run other people's experiments in a floating school bus-- but mostly they're just truckers and mechanics.
A Soviet pilot defected in a brand new, top-secret MiG-25 and landed in Japan.
The pilot was defecting, so he asked for and was granted asylum.
Of course the Soviets were angry and demanded the MiG-25 back (which was almost totally unknown to Western intelligence at the time).
The US and Japan claimed that the plane was "evidence" in a trespassing (or something) case, and they refused to return the plane.
The plane was completely disassembled, photagraphed, reassembled, and returned a couple of weeks later.
I'd imagine something similar is going on in China now.
This is not about an apology. It's about time.
The crew and plane will be returned after all the parts have been examined.
I don't think the $8/hour receptionists would be doing the notes-- I'd imagine the caregiver would be entering the notes unless the caregiver refuses to change over to typing, and only doctors would realistically have that option-- everyone else would be ordered to do so...
I'd imagine there is more cost savings in tight scheduling of the highly paid caregiver's time than there is in hypothetical transcription fees.
Computer notes have some other advantages-- foremost being legibility. It is true that some doctors (and other caregivers) have nearly illegible handwriting. That wastes other people's (highly paid) time, especially when those illegible notes are orders for other people. This may also allow a way to "diagnosis check" the notes, raising warnings when something nonsensical is entered in the chart. For instance, if a patient comes in for debridement of a decubitus on the right foot, mention of the left foot should raise a warning.