Obviously not. But I'm not likely to get lucky either. Thing is, there is no such thing as a straight-only bar, just that it's a lot harder for gays to find dates that way. I's a matter of convenience and practicality, and while I admit it's a good solution, it does bother me a little.
A bit beside the point maybe, but the: - Posting anonymously so their GMs don't *find* some reason to kick me out of the game. annoys me a lot. From my limited experience with online gaming, GM's tend to behave like 12 year olds' lots of times (regardless of weather they are 12 year old or not). Thing is, this kind of online community is anything but open or self-regulated. It's artificial, and based on the earnings of a company. So don't have big expectations.
And also beside the point: I'm awfully iritated by the "gay only" thing. Weather it's a bar or a guild, it's the best way to shut out non-gays. I guess it's easier to find potential partners, but it can get tiresome - like can't go out with my gay friend 'cause he/she is going in a gay singles' bar.
Personal feelings aside, in an open community the right to associate with whoever you want should be respected. It's kinda stupid really... you can't be in the same guild 'cause you're all gay...
Ok, lots of people said this is a stupid ideea, that a net connection is a net connection and so on. Fact is, I worked at an ISP for about half of last year, and what happened to me happened to most ou out new clients: soon after getting connected, we were hit by baf stuff. Really hard. Why? Several reasons, as far as I can tell. First, the dial-up ISP usually tends to do a lot of firewalling on your behalf. Second, the connection (especially local one) beeing a lot faster, hits came a lot sooner and more often. And third there is a lot of bad stuff on the local ethernet connection which cannot be firewalled in any way by the ISP (us), even if they wanted to.
Point is, I agree with what most people said: beeing on dial-up is not safe. However, getting a broadband connection is likely going to make things interesting in a very short time:)
Ok, I post something half asleep and I get 6 replays:). Now, let's see.
1. I'm not talking about modern man, used to eating tv dinners. Think for a moment, if your *life*, and the life of your family would depend on your ability to hunt and defend from predators, and that from birth, how good would you get? Scary good, isn't it?
2. Wolfes are small. Wolfes are chicken when alone. (in most cases anyways). Yes, they do hunt in packs but so do we. And I was only making a point that few large animals are actually a threat.
3. We don't eat deer. We eat rabbit. Lot easyer to catch, cook, eat etc. (And btw, so do wolves).
Yes, I was a bit off topic in respect to the parent post, but I always see us portrayed as small defenceless monkeys, and it simply isn't true. Hint on not beeing afraid of dogs: think who's taller and heavier. Of course if you try to bite them dogs win:) but that's because you're stupid, not because you can't fight dogs effectively (google a bit). Just don't mess with rotweilers and such... they're bred and trained to fight, you're bred and trained to program computers... not fair;)
Thing is... are we really that weak? For one, we're pretty big. Average healthy male, accounting for "growth" in the last century, is about 50-60 kilos right? Most animals are actually less. And with hands and feet we have longer reach and more possibilities then any. If you compare with bears.. of course we lose! but for example a wolf... I can't really see a wolf attaking and killing, alone, a grown human male. Not on a regular basis. So in most climates we'd be at the top of the food chain, or close. Any place where there are no felines humans don't have natural predators. Bears? Boars? Poisonos snakes? Not really in their menu.
And about competitions... a think it was our own species. Man is man greatest enemy they say? It's true. Wars, competition for resources, competition for a mate, all lead to winners and loosers. If animals were our greatest problem, we'd all have fangs;)
I seem to remember one episode of seinfeld used to cost about 2 mil in actor's fees only. One episode of a good show can be quite expensive. On the other hand, you don't really have 10 percent of the total population watching it. Of the total number of people who watch TV regulary in that timeslot you have a lot of competing channels, so it's more like 70% watch TV, 20% of that watch at that particular time, and 10% of that watch that show, so it can be as low as 1-2% or less. And 2$ per episode is a lot, it's like 5 bucks a day or 150$ a month.
Ok, so I'm not very convincing, the numbers look like they can add up, but i just realised... this system would promote only good shows and would bury very very fast less then good ones. Which is not what the studios want... what they want is what they have now: everybody watches TV, regardless of content, so they make money. If people paid for shows, they would tend to watch TV less, except for really good stuff. So, less money with greater effort.
Everything we do today that is outside the reach of common experience is effectively based on belief, just like a philosophy or even a religion is. Science allows us to demonstrate that things are possible, but the fact is that most people, even scientists in other disciplines, frequently have to take certain things on faith, because there is no way that you will ever be able to actually demonstrate the experiments to them.
That's why you have common sense. You get a feeling for the kind of people who don't beleave in moon landings, see how they react when some of their objections/beleaves are cleared up, and decide it's more likely a psychological thing then onest scepticism. So while you can't verify moon landings yourself, the fact that this people are... loonies can be a strong argument for it. Or at least for the absence of good reasons to doubt it.
Actually, I'd rather hire a guy with a lower IQ for a job (and I am in a position to hire, too). If he's equally qualified, it usually means he's more hard-working and reliable. If he's less qualified, I can afford to invest time in training him/her for a particular position, knowing it'll be harder to move to another job. High IQ guys are necessary in a lot less numbers then you might think, for most busineses. They tend to bring or cause trouble, they're expensive, need stuff to keep them busy etc. Granted, when they are necessary they really are, but not everybody is google and needs only phds...
I'm a bit ashamed to know this in such detail, but Harry has both his parent's fortune, hinted to be rather large, and is the only heir to the "most noble house of Black", after his godfather died, which is more then hinted to be quite a lot (the house alone is probably worth millions). So no, he's not really poor;)
The moral of the story is of course, that Windows is surprisingly resilient in terms of running as vital system files are deleted from underneath it.
Yeah, back in Windows 3.1 days a good friend of mine started to clean his disks. And of course among the useless files he deleted, like.bak and.tmp were also a lot of.dll files;) He was pretty happy about the amount of free space he got;)
Those were the days... many years after that we used to "kill" windows installations by deleting the dlls before formatting them. I guess we were a bit sadistic but what the hell... it was windows after all...
And how exactly is a childless marriage a "link"? I don't have a SO, and if by any chance I wouldn't have close family either I'd like to give some of these rights to my best friend. Such as "family" status in a hospital. Or maybe the possibility to own property together. What does anybody has to say as to weather we have sex or not? We're close enough and that's what it should matter. And it completely solves the "same sex" issue: it's not about sex. It's about people.
Instead of gay marriages maybe a better option would be to just be able to give this rights to any person over 21... that would cover pretty much the real injustice and pass over the flamed debates.
Adoptions are a problem though... could be solved the same way but there will be some real opposition though...
As a gay man, I wholehearted support your right to believe anything you wish. What I don't understand is why you think you have the right to "share" with me what you think of my "lifestyle," unless I've specifically asked you to do so.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but isn't this a public forum? isn't its point to "share" opinions?
Never was really sure they were brothers... but anyways, Bruce Campbell & comp are kinda Raimi's favorite bunch and have a place in all his productions. Joss has his bunch too, but at this hour in the morning I can't give you any names:)
Oh no! you'll be targeted! For the love of god, for the children, don't let them target you!!!
Come on, do you really want to watch detergent commercials? Targeted ads are definitely not evil, and they have the potential to be quite a good and useful thing. There are a lot of products and services i don't know anything about and i wouldn't mind them beeing promted to me, preferably google-style, ie unobtrousivly. Anyways it'a lot better then seeing the same crap over and over again (I DON'T LIKE BRITNEY SPEARS!!!)
If i'm not mistaking, that's clorhidric acid inside us which is pretty nasty stuff. I mean burns your firgerprints alog with your fingers nasty;) Dilluted of course but still stronger than coke. Coke is bad cause it's a lot, and the caffeine in it also increases natural acidity in the stomach, and so all of it adds up and in the long term.
In my experience i can drink pretty much whatever i want as long as i'm not in any stress. Once I have deadlines and things going wrong, every glass of cola or wine couns.
"We think Star Trek and especially its latest incarnation, Enterprise is the kind of TV that should be aired more often."
Have they watched it? If so, have they ever seen things like ST:TNG, Babylon 5, Firefly, or even Battlestar Galactica?
If they had, they'd realise there's better things to do with their money, no matter how much "better" this last season was.
Think how close to home the theme of the show hits this kind of people. It's about space exploration at its beginings, that's why it's especiallyEnterprise.
Personally, I don't recognise kiddie porn. I recognise rape. I understand that even consentual sex may not be correct if the situation is such that consent is not informed (rape drugs, retarded adults, young children), but that is only loosly correlated with age.
I agree. It's true that because young children are so easy to persuade/force it's a blur line between consent and rape, but there are other things I beleve should be considered:
- Girls as young as 12 or 13 have a period and are capable of having children. Now, I find it very fishy to not only forbid but also demonise sex at that age. True, potential for abuse is great. True, it's possible and maybe likely that sex at this age may have bad psychological consequences. BUT IT'S NOT A GIVEN FACT. It simply may not. 12 as an age for sex may shock you, we all have a personal "limit" (mine is around 16, but I accept that there can be younger girls more mature then I). But still, to forbid the sex life of someone who is ready and willing... it's not ok.
- For the life of god i can't fanthom how downloading a picture hurts anything else then people's sensibilities. It's ok to watch snuff films, it's ok to watch terrorists decapitating people, but to have on your computer a girl in various degrees of nudity is a crime, and a serious one at that. Why?!
- There is very very little information in the media (and elswhere) about the psihological damage caused by sex (not rape, not sex with a relative, just sex) at various young ages. We probably all agree that sex at 6 is (besides gross) bad for the child, but what about 9? 12? 14? 16? How and why is it bad? Doesn't it make anyone curious or is it that just asking is a tabu? Or a risk?
- And let me conclude with a bit of conspiracy teory here. Exactly how many electronic surveillance systems were installed because of this fear? How easy it is to destroy a public/private person with unproved accusation? It seems to be an awfully convenient tool... makes one almost think if it didn't exist it should be invented.
Well, Slashdot probably is mainstream by now (sigh...) but there's nothing pseudoscientific about this article. The "sixth sense" and "tsunami" topics are only for show and probably added by the magazine. The meat of their research is rather different, and quite interesting.
If it has anything to do with the paranormal is that once complete it may help to explain away some paranormal phenomenon, not confirm them as supernatural.
Anyways, I find fascinating the levels contemporary scince is reaching. It's pretty much knocking on doors i used to dream about when i was a kid, and no one is paying atention... i wonder why... I mean, i really wonder why:) Maybe because we got tired to keep waiting for them? Or we're just too sure they'll come?
Call me a bitch about details, but... (I know, someone else will be a detail bitch about my details.)
Well, at least it's not a surprise;)
Around bigger black holes, the matter doesn't just fall into but creates a vortex, a high-velocity disc around the black hole. Bigger the black hole, faster the disk and (like with our "outcast" star) some of the matter just spins too fast and escapes. Now the interesting bit is that with really big black holes like quasars the amount of energy around the black hole, kinetic or otherwise, is so great about half the matter escapes. Which let scientist to beleve for a while that quasars are actually white holes.
I started learning japanese a couple of month ago (with a manual). All went well... for the first few lessons until I was expected to understand hiragana;) Which of course I didn't, and learning it was way harder then anything japanese grammer or vocabulary could throw at me. It was kinda frustrating. And then I had an ideea... I didn't really want to learn to write japanese (my handwriting is bad as it is) just read it... so couldn't I make a piece of software to help me do that? The fortunate thing was the same week I had an exam and I would have done anything except learning;) I put the end result on the web.
And now for the conclusions: First, it worked. I mean, really solved my problem. In about 3 days, 1-3 hours per day I learned hiragana. All I knew before were the vowels (5 symbols out of 46), and after I could read a text slowly. Also, it was fun - the "pleasantly frustrtrated" feeling mention in the article made it feel more like a game then work. Not that it was easy, but with some effort it was doable - way better then without.
Now, how applicable is it? And why I haven't found something like that on the net? Well, it has downsides. First, it doesn't work on everyone. If I were a psych student I'd probably try to explain it somehow, but i'm a programmer so I can only tell it works on less then half the people I tried it on. (I think that's ok though, because they - like me - are the ones less likely to be confortable with classic methods).
The other downside is that by itself it doesn't fixate the info in long term memory, and you start forgetting everything in about a week if you dont't do some reading exercise at the same time.
How well this kind of thing would apply in different problems I don't really know. But I do beleve that this kind of small and targeted tools would be much more succesful then trying to convert big games like half life into learning tools. The only caveat is that probably no one tool would work on everybody - in this case some people for example might be more confortable hearing the meaning of a symbol then seeing it. Maybe prefacing each step with a test to determine the best tool for the job could be a solution.
what is stopping? nothing really. what's stopping them from gassing some public place? nothing really. what is stopping a not-fit-for-driving driver from driving into a crowd by accident ? nothing really.
Nice to see a bit of common sense in this matter. I keep hearing about bad uses for about every new technology or invention, and after a while it seems to me the point most people are missing is that the world is not inherently safe. There is a good chance that bad things will happen, things you can't prevent, or can only with too great effort and cost. Now if you choose to get really scared and cry "Oh! think of the children!" well, it's kinda hard to argue with that. But my gut tells me that's the wrong attitude.
And about loading the glider with explosives and setting white house as "home"... every time i hear something like that i remember that story about the kingdom where one night a year the king had to walk the streets of the city, alone and without armor, and the the people were alowed to bear arms and couldn't be stopped and questioned. If the king survived the night he was considered a good king...
I was watching a movie a couple of years ago... I think it was Vidoq. Anyways, the good guys found out that the bad guy gave them the slip and went to murder somebody. So they all got into a carriage and hurried as fast as their horses would take them (the action takes place around 1700).
Until then I had been completely imersed in the movie, but at that particular moment I was struk by the fact that none of them would take out their bloody phone and call the victim-to-be from the carriage. And then I realised that sure, it was like middle ages and they don't even have electricity.
How was that quote? "Of course he has a knife! It's 1100 year and we are barbarians!" Same here. It's 2000 and we all have cell phones. In most of Europe at least. It's simply bound to became as common as having a wrist watch, and in some places it is (and I'm not even talking about Japan;)
Point is, if you had a child you should get him a _pre-paid_ cell phone for just the same reason you'd get him a watch - it's useful. And btw, you can turn of the sound on sunday mornings and sip your coffe in quiet, and when you have time you can check who's called in the meantime and return their calls. That's what I do.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously not. But I'm not likely to get lucky either. Thing is, there is no such thing as a straight-only bar, just that it's a lot harder for gays to find dates that way. I's a matter of convenience and practicality, and while I admit it's a good solution, it does bother me a little.
A bit beside the point maybe, but the:
- Posting anonymously so their GMs don't *find* some reason to kick me out of the game.
annoys me a lot. From my limited experience with online gaming, GM's tend to behave like 12 year olds' lots of times (regardless of weather they are 12 year old or not). Thing is, this kind of online community is anything but open or self-regulated. It's artificial, and based on the earnings of a company. So don't have big expectations.
And also beside the point: I'm awfully iritated by the "gay only" thing. Weather it's a bar or a guild, it's the best way to shut out non-gays. I guess it's easier to find potential partners, but it can get tiresome - like can't go out with my gay friend 'cause he/she is going in a gay singles' bar.
Personal feelings aside, in an open community the right to associate with whoever you want should be respected. It's kinda stupid really... you can't be in the same guild 'cause you're all gay...
Ok, lots of people said this is a stupid ideea, that a net connection is a net connection and so on. Fact is, I worked at an ISP for about half of last year, and what happened to me happened to most ou out new clients: soon after getting connected, we were hit by baf stuff. Really hard. Why? Several reasons, as far as I can tell. First, the dial-up ISP usually tends to do a lot of firewalling on your behalf. Second, the connection (especially local one) beeing a lot faster, hits came a lot sooner and more often. And third there is a lot of bad stuff on the local ethernet connection which cannot be firewalled in any way by the ISP (us), even if they wanted to.
Point is, I agree with what most people said: beeing on dial-up is not safe. However, getting a broadband connection is likely going to make things interesting in a very short time
Ok, I post something half asleep and I get 6 replays
1. I'm not talking about modern man, used to eating tv dinners. Think for a moment, if your *life*, and the life of your family would depend on your ability to hunt and defend from predators, and that from birth, how good would you get? Scary good, isn't it?
2. Wolfes are small. Wolfes are chicken when alone. (in most cases anyways). Yes, they do hunt in packs but so do we. And I was only making a point that few large animals are actually a threat.
3. We don't eat deer. We eat rabbit. Lot easyer to catch, cook, eat etc. (And btw, so do wolves).
Yes, I was a bit off topic in respect to the parent post, but I always see us portrayed as small defenceless monkeys, and it simply isn't true. Hint on not beeing afraid of dogs: think who's taller and heavier. Of course if you try to bite them dogs win
Just don't mess with rotweilers and such... they're bred and trained to fight, you're bred and trained to program computers... not fair
Thing is... are we really that weak? For one, we're pretty big. Average healthy male, accounting for "growth" in the last century, is about 50-60 kilos right? Most animals are actually less. And with hands and feet we have longer reach and more possibilities then any. If you compare with bears.. of course we lose! but for example a wolf... I can't really see a wolf attaking and killing, alone, a grown human male. Not on a regular basis. So in most climates we'd be at the top of the food chain, or close. Any place where there are no felines humans don't have natural predators. Bears? Boars? Poisonos snakes? Not really in their menu.
And about competitions... a think it was our own species. Man is man greatest enemy they say? It's true. Wars, competition for resources, competition for a mate, all lead to winners and loosers. If animals were our greatest problem, we'd all have fangs
I seem to remember one episode of seinfeld used to cost about 2 mil in actor's fees only. One episode of a good show can be quite expensive. On the other hand, you don't really have 10 percent of the total population watching it. Of the total number of people who watch TV regulary in that timeslot you have a lot of competing channels, so it's more like 70% watch TV, 20% of that watch at that particular time, and 10% of that watch that show, so it can be as low as 1-2% or less. And 2$ per episode is a lot, it's like 5 bucks a day or 150$ a month.
Ok, so I'm not very convincing, the numbers look like they can add up, but i just realised... this system would promote only good shows and would bury very very fast less then good ones. Which is not what the studios want... what they want is what they have now: everybody watches TV, regardless of content, so they make money. If people paid for shows, they would tend to watch TV less, except for really good stuff. So, less money with greater effort.
Everything we do today that is outside the reach of common experience is effectively based on belief, just like a philosophy or even a religion is. Science allows us to demonstrate that things are possible, but the fact is that most people, even scientists in other disciplines, frequently have to take certain things on faith, because there is no way that you will ever be able to actually demonstrate the experiments to them.
That's why you have common sense. You get a feeling for the kind of people who don't beleave in moon landings, see how they react when some of their objections/beleaves are cleared up, and decide it's more likely a psychological thing then onest scepticism. So while you can't verify moon landings yourself, the fact that this people are... loonies can be a strong argument for it. Or at least for the absence of good reasons to doubt it.
Actually, I'd rather hire a guy with a lower IQ for a job (and I am in a position to hire, too). If he's equally qualified, it usually means he's more hard-working and reliable. If he's less qualified, I can afford to invest time in training him/her for a particular position, knowing it'll be harder to move to another job. High IQ guys are necessary in a lot less numbers then you might think, for most busineses. They tend to bring or cause trouble, they're expensive, need stuff to keep them busy etc. Granted, when they are necessary they really are, but not everybody is google and needs only phds...
I'm a bit ashamed to know this in such detail, but Harry has both his parent's fortune, hinted to be rather large, and is the only heir to the "most noble house of Black", after his godfather died, which is more then hinted to be quite a lot (the house alone is probably worth millions). So no, he's not really poor
I agree about Fry though...
The moral of the story is of course, that Windows is surprisingly resilient in terms of running as vital system files are deleted from underneath it.
Yeah, back in Windows 3.1 days a good friend of mine started to clean his disks. And of course among the useless files he deleted, like
Those were the days... many years after that we used to "kill" windows installations by deleting the dlls before formatting them. I guess we were a bit sadistic but what the hell... it was windows after all...
And how exactly is a childless marriage a "link"?
I don't have a SO, and if by any chance I wouldn't have close family either I'd like to give some of these rights to my best friend. Such as "family" status in a hospital. Or maybe the possibility to own property together. What does anybody has to say as to weather we have sex or not? We're close enough and that's what it should matter. And it completely solves the "same sex" issue: it's not about sex. It's about people.
Instead of gay marriages maybe a better option would be to just be able to give this rights to any person over 21... that would cover pretty much the real injustice and pass over the flamed debates.
Adoptions are a problem though... could be solved the same way but there will be some real opposition though...
As a gay man, I wholehearted support your right to believe anything you wish. What I don't understand is why you think you have the right to "share" with me what you think of my "lifestyle," unless I've specifically asked you to do so.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but isn't this a public forum? isn't its point to "share" opinions?
Well with war and famine and the surviving politicians.. it just might exterminate us.
Never was really sure they were brothers... but anyways, Bruce Campbell & comp are kinda Raimi's favorite bunch and have a place in all his productions. Joss has his bunch too, but at this hour in the morning I can't give you any names
You're mixing them up. That was Sam Raimi
Oh no! you'll be targeted! For the love of god, for the children, don't let them target you!!!
Come on, do you really want to watch detergent commercials? Targeted ads are definitely not evil, and they have the potential to be quite a good and useful thing. There are a lot of products and services i don't know anything about and i wouldn't mind them beeing promted to me, preferably google-style, ie unobtrousivly. Anyways it'a lot better then seeing the same crap over and over again (I DON'T LIKE BRITNEY SPEARS!!!)
If i'm not mistaking, that's clorhidric acid inside us which is pretty nasty stuff. I mean burns your firgerprints alog with your fingers nasty
In my experience i can drink pretty much whatever i want as long as i'm not in any stress. Once I have deadlines and things going wrong, every glass of cola or wine couns.
"We think Star Trek and especially its latest incarnation, Enterprise is the kind of TV that should be aired more often."
Have they watched it? If so, have they ever seen things like ST:TNG, Babylon 5, Firefly, or even Battlestar Galactica?
If they had, they'd realise there's better things to do with their money, no matter how much "better" this last season was.
Think how close to home the theme of the show hits this kind of people. It's about space exploration at its beginings, that's why it's especiallyEnterprise.
Personally, I don't recognise kiddie porn. I recognise rape. I understand that even consentual sex may not be correct if the situation is such that consent is not informed (rape drugs, retarded adults, young children), but that is only loosly correlated with age.
I agree. It's true that because young children are so easy to persuade/force it's a blur line between consent and rape, but there are other things I beleve should be considered:
- Girls as young as 12 or 13 have a period and are capable of having children. Now, I find it very fishy to not only forbid but also demonise sex at that age. True, potential for abuse is great. True, it's possible and maybe likely that sex at this age may have bad psychological consequences. BUT IT'S NOT A GIVEN FACT. It simply may not. 12 as an age for sex may shock you, we all have a personal "limit" (mine is around 16, but I accept that there can be younger girls more mature then I). But still, to forbid the sex life of someone who is ready and willing... it's not ok.
- For the life of god i can't fanthom how downloading a picture hurts anything else then people's sensibilities. It's ok to watch snuff films, it's ok to watch terrorists decapitating people, but to have on your computer a girl in various degrees of nudity is a crime, and a serious one at that. Why?!
- There is very very little information in the media (and elswhere) about the psihological damage caused by sex (not rape, not sex with a relative, just sex) at various young ages. We probably all agree that sex at 6 is (besides gross) bad for the child, but what about 9? 12? 14? 16? How and why is it bad? Doesn't it make anyone curious or is it that just asking is a tabu? Or a risk?
- And let me conclude with a bit of conspiracy teory here. Exactly how many electronic surveillance systems were installed because of this fear? How easy it is to destroy a public/private person with unproved accusation? It seems to be an awfully convenient tool... makes one almost think if it didn't exist it should be invented.
Well, Slashdot probably is mainstream by now (sigh...) but there's nothing pseudoscientific about this article. The "sixth sense" and "tsunami" topics are only for show and probably added by the magazine. The meat of their research is rather different, and quite interesting.
If it has anything to do with the paranormal is that once complete it may help to explain away some paranormal phenomenon, not confirm them as supernatural.
Anyways, I find fascinating the levels contemporary scince is reaching. It's pretty much knocking on doors i used to dream about when i was a kid, and no one is paying atention... i wonder why... I mean, i really wonder why
Call me a bitch about details, but... (I know, someone else will be a detail bitch about my details.)
Well, at least it's not a surprise
Around bigger black holes, the matter doesn't just fall into but creates a vortex, a high-velocity disc around the black hole. Bigger the black hole, faster the disk and (like with our "outcast" star) some of the matter just spins too fast and escapes. Now the interesting bit is that with really big black holes like quasars the amount of energy around the black hole, kinetic or otherwise, is so great about half the matter escapes. Which let scientist to beleve for a while that quasars are actually white holes.
I started learning japanese a couple of month ago (with a manual). All went well... for the first few lessons until I was expected to understand hiragana
And now for the conclusions: First, it worked. I mean, really solved my problem. In about 3 days, 1-3 hours per day I learned hiragana. All I knew before were the vowels (5 symbols out of 46), and after I could read a text slowly. Also, it was fun - the "pleasantly frustrtrated" feeling mention in the article made it feel more like a game then work. Not that it was easy, but with some effort it was doable - way better then without.
Now, how applicable is it? And why I haven't found something like that on the net? Well, it has downsides. First, it doesn't work on everyone. If I were a psych student I'd probably try to explain it somehow, but i'm a programmer so I can only tell it works on less then half the people I tried it on. (I think that's ok though, because they - like me - are the ones less likely to be confortable with classic methods).
The other downside is that by itself it doesn't fixate the info in long term memory, and you start forgetting everything in about a week if you dont't do some reading exercise at the same time.
How well this kind of thing would apply in different problems I don't really know. But I do beleve that this kind of small and targeted tools would be much more succesful then trying to convert big games like half life into learning tools. The only caveat is that probably no one tool would work on everybody - in this case some people for example might be more confortable hearing the meaning of a symbol then seeing it. Maybe prefacing each step with a test to determine the best tool for the job could be a solution.
what is stopping? nothing really.
what's stopping them from gassing some public place? nothing really.
what is stopping a not-fit-for-driving driver from driving into a crowd by accident ? nothing really.
Nice to see a bit of common sense in this matter. I keep hearing about bad uses for about every new technology or invention, and after a while it seems to me the point most people are missing is that the world is not inherently safe. There is a good chance that bad things will happen, things you can't prevent, or can only with too great effort and cost. Now if you choose to get really scared and cry "Oh! think of the children!" well, it's kinda hard to argue with that. But my gut tells me that's the wrong attitude.
And about loading the glider with explosives and setting white house as "home"... every time i hear something like that i remember that story about the kingdom where one night a year the king had to walk the streets of the city, alone and without armor, and the the people were alowed to bear arms and couldn't be stopped and questioned. If the king survived the night he was considered a good king...
I was watching a movie a couple of years ago... I think it was Vidoq. Anyways, the good guys found out that the bad guy gave them the slip and went to murder somebody. So they all got into a carriage and hurried as fast as their horses would take them (the action takes place around 1700).
;)
Until then I had been completely imersed in the movie, but at that particular moment I was struk by the fact that none of them would take out their bloody phone and call the victim-to-be from the carriage. And then I realised that sure, it was like middle ages and they don't even have electricity.
How was that quote? "Of course he has a knife! It's 1100 year and we are barbarians!" Same here. It's 2000 and we all have cell phones. In most of Europe at least. It's simply bound to became as common as having a wrist watch, and in some places it is (and I'm not even talking about Japan
Point is, if you had a child you should get him a _pre-paid_ cell phone for just the same reason you'd get him a watch - it's useful. And btw, you can turn of the sound on sunday mornings and sip your coffe in quiet, and when you have time you can check who's called in the meantime and return their calls. That's what I do.