It seems like the press has run out of new interesting things to report with regards to spy agencies, so rather than do some informed discussion on the stories or something, they are digging for shit.
Yes, we know, spy agencies spy. That is their purpose, that is the reason they get funding. If this shocks you then you've had your head in the sand. Now if you think governments shouldn't have spy agencies, ok, but that is a different argument (and you might want to look in to why they do). But acting all surprised that they spy, and use known tricks to spy, is stupid.
It also takes away from the real issue, the story that needs to be discussed: That spy agencies were illegally spying on their own populace. THAT is the story that should be getting coverage. However it seems like the press did their thing on it, and now wants to move on to "something new" no matter how irrelevant it is.
If the GCHQ is spying on other countries, Brits shouldn't be concerned. That is why they have a GCHQ. If the GCHQ is spying on their own subjects, they should be concerned, since that is illegal.
A game engine is a very, VERY big enterprise to make, particularity if you are talking one with modern 3D graphics. It is a big undertaking even for a company who's done it before and has a decent team of people. You will spend a lot of time and effort on it, and it still might not end up being very good.
Game engines get a lot of that low level hard work out of the way. That's why they are so used. You see even large development studios with big budgets license an engine because the cost of doing so is far less than the cost of properly developing their own.
If you want to build a game engine, that's great, but make that your goal. Build an engine for its own sake then, if you have one that seems to work well, think about using it for a game. Don't set off to make a game form the ground up, it isn't likely to happen.
The whole Middle East is a wonderful argument against using exposure to war as a deterrent to war. There is generational hatred there, the wish to kill people for wrongs going back decades or centuries. Conflicts that breed more hatred and new conflicts. Violence being seen not just as a feasible solution, but the first line.
If exposure to war was such a good cure for future wars, the ME would be extremely peaceful right now. Instead, it is one of the most violent places in the world.
As you say, what it does is lets people see it as a viable option. It also desensitizes them to war. You kill a man, it messes with your head. You kill your 100th man, it is just something you do. If death, destruction, and suffering is the norm, then what's it matter if you cause some?
You can see this same kind of thing in terms of kids who come from the ghetto. You might think "Man, they will really hate that and work hard to stay away from drugs and crime, get an education, and get out." Instead it is the only life they know, and they most often get caught up in it. You get generations of problems because the children grow up knowing an environment of crime, poverty, etc and that is just how things are for them.
Think of the fact that something like this might give them PTSD. Dealing with a war zone can be traumatic for adults with training, experience, and perspective. It can be far worse for children.
Also it does rather seem to be an unnecessary risk. While childhood has risks to be sure, part of your duty as a guardian is to minimize those risks as feasible. You weigh risks vs rewards, and try to find safe options when possible.
So maybe taking kids to a war zone is not the best idea. Maybe a better idea is to talk to them, watch some movies, read books, perhaps have a friend who's a war vet have a conversation.
Of course this strikes me as a journalist being a press whore. He's doing this because he can make it a story, not because he's being a good father.
The DoD has developed one video game, America's Army. It is not particularly popular, in part because they seem to be overly concerned with keeping things somewhat true to the army. You have to do a basic training set before it'll let you play, like you have to go and qualify using the rifle in game. Can't play unless you do. Wanna be a medic? You have to take an in game class that lasts like a half an hour, and then take a test. In the game itself it works similar to actual military wargames in that you always are the US Army, and you play again "OPFOR" the Army's professional opposing force (basically you see your team as army, the enemy as OPFOR).
It isn't "realistic" because really nothing can accurately simulate the horrors of combat, but it is really not something that glorifies combat. It could be called an elaborate army training simulator. Want a taste of what training in the army might be like? This is a reasonable starting point.
As you say, CoD is NOT developed, or endorsed, by the government. Call of Duty is owned by Activision Blizzard, a public company in California. It is developed by 3 teams (alternating years) Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games, all California companies that are subsidiaries of Activision Blizzard.
Are they realistic to war? Of course not. But then, I haven't seen any games that are realistic to anything. Their point is to be fun, not realistic.
You seem to be fairly typical for the military types I know (which is more than a couple) in that they quite enjoy the make believe of FPS games, despite having experienced the reality of combat.
While not quite as extreme, I can point to myself and enjoying computer/hacker games like Introversion's Uplink. I'm a network and systems administrator professionally. I know quite a bit about network security and how this stuff really works, and I don't at all believe black hat hackers that bust in to systems are glamours, they are criminal dickheads. However, I enjoy Uplink. It is not at ALL realistic. It is a fictional version of hacking on fictional computers ins a fictional Internet. And it's fun.
I'm not sure why people get so worked up about FPS games, like they are changing attitudes on war or anything. No, they are just games, and it turns out humans really can tell the difference between fiction and reality.
What we can do is hire students. We rarely get female applicants. We hired the last one who applied, she was the daughter of our business manager. She stuck around for like a year, but decided she wanted a job that had night hours (we are a day only shop) and left.
We also are not allowed to discriminate and offer positions to only one gender, or race. EEOC is really big here. If we open a position, it must be open to all.
The result is just one of gradually falling prices, but it is one where it is cheap enough to interest more people. At that price the drives are now "cheap enough" for them.
Not the fact that wifi routers degrade, you are totally right about that, but that people will replace them. I'm amazed at how shitty someone's Internet can be and they have an "Oh well, whatever," attitude about it.
A good example near and dear to me is my parents. They moved in to their current place about 7 years ago and got a cheapass Linksys router to handle their NAT and WiFi. It has been giving them enough grief for me to hear about it for at least 3 years. They are not poor, a new router is not a big deal, yet they didn't get one. So I got tired of it, and also had an easy solution: When they were visiting me this June I upgraded my WAP to a new 802.11ac one and gave them my old one, which was working great.
They still haven't installed it. It's not like they don't have time, mom is retired and dad is semi-retired, it's not like it is hard, it is much simpler to set up than their old model and they can always call me. They just haven't bothered. Their router acts up, they go reset it, and don't bother to replace it.
Another somewhat related example would be a friend of mine. He's a young guy, under 30, and quite technically savvy. He's complained to me that the Internet at his house is not meeting advertised speeds, going quite well below it. Strange, since we are both on the same ISP, and live only a couple miles from each other and my experience has been that they always are right around max. I inquire a bit more and find out he still has a DOCSIS 2 modem. Ahh ok, well that is probably the issue. Though his connection is of a speed that a single DOCSIS channel can handle (25mbps), that modem has one one channel to choose from and it could well be too loaded down by other people on the segment. So my recommendation was to get a DOCSIS 3 modem. An 8x4 modem that is compatible can be had for like $80. That should solve any speed issues since now there's a bunch of channels to choose from, and will be compatible when they bump the speeds in the future.
He didn't want to spend the money, and so just complains occasionally about the speed.
For whatever reason, there are more than a few people who will just use old, failing, technology and bitch about it rather than fix the issue.
This is a real question: Do you know what IPv6 does instead of BGP? Because as far as I know, IPv6 is still using BGP, and that is what this is a problem with. In fact I can only see IPv6 making things worse in that regard because tons more address space means that more AS assignments would be easy to do.
So if it really does offer a solution, please enlighten me I'd be very interested. If this is just an example of trying to use a problem to push a favoured agenda, then please knock it off.
I do IT work at a state university. As you'd expect with government institutions, we are really big on the EEOC rules and such. However, we can't force people to apply and for IT stuff, you get mostly men. Last round, it was all men. I don't mean we chose to interview all men, I mean no women applied, or if they did apply, HR filtered them out (HR does a basic "resume vs qualifications" check). Our IT group (we are only one of many IT groups on campus, there are women in other groups) is all male, at present. We had a female webmaster, however her fiance got a job in New York, so they moved there and of course she quit.
What, precisely, are we supposed to do to be more diverse? There are just not many women who seem to have the skills and wish to apply. We can't go and force people to apply, nor can we (legally or practically) say we'll waive the requirements for the job if you are a woman.
You can't hire those that don't apply.
So in terms of all this fluff up over Silicon Valley and diversity, I'd say how does their workforce numbers compare to their applicants? If in general it is the same, meaning say 30% of applicants are female and 30% of employees are female, 9% of applicants are black and 8% of employees are black, well then there probably isn't any discrimination going on. The fact that the numbers do not reflect demographics doesn't mean any discrimination on their part if they are simply not getting the applicants.
Also with regards to race, I'm not seeing why the 55% white number is problematic. According to Wikipedia, 72% of the US is white. If you count being hispanic as not being white (remember hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race) then the number is 64%. So per overall breakdown of the population, white people would be underrepresented in Apple by a fair bit.
That is also something I think people forget: The US does not have an even balance of all groups. Male/female has about a 50/50 split, but racial/ethnic groups are not nearly so even. It is still a nation dominated by fair skinned people of European ancestry, aka "white". The amount varies by state, of course, but it is quite a consistent majority.
You may have qualified on shooting a rifle, you apparently didn't qualify on reading since you are criticizing me by repeating things I said, like the fact that M4/16 are very accurate to long ranges, and that there are larger rounds in use for longer ranges. So perhaps spend more time reading and comprehending, and less time pulling out your (alleged) credentials and repeating what was already said as though it is something new.
As for fragmentation first off you act as though it is a bad thing when talking about a target. Quite the opposite. A round that fragments, expands, or tumbles in a person does much more damage and thus has a higher probability of stopping the target in a single shot.
In terms of fragmentation on other barriers: Try it. Shoot through a window, a couple sheets of drywall, etc. Put a paper target a bit behind it so you can see what happens. At short (less than 100m) range, the round will usually fragment on account of its high velocity. Depends on the round composition, of course, 62gr M855 will fragment less than a 75gr BTHP round. They don't explode in to tiny specs if that is what you are thinking but they break apart.
It is amazing how much misinformation flies around about guns. One of the common ones is "OMG the M4/16 is such crap, the AK is so much bettar!"
You are quite correct about the range. The AR-15 platform weapons are much more accurate. Anyone who has ever fired both can easily tell that.
The issue that people like the grandparent conflate is the lethality of the 5.56x45mm round at longer ranges. Though the M16 can easily hit a target at long range (with a skilled marksman operating it), because of the small size and low mass of the round, it is often not as effective as you would want. If the bullet does not fragment or tumble, it can go right through someone and the small hole does little damage.
That is the issue it has at range, not accuracy or ability to reach that range.
Also this isn't like it is some completely unknown, or unsolvable, thing. The military also has weapons that use 7.62x51mm rounds which are larger rifle bullets and have much greater range, mass, and kinetic energy. For longer engagements still things like 8.58Ã--70mm and 12.7Ã--99mm are used.
Of course as you move up in caliber and amount of propellant, weapons become bigger and heavier, and have larger amounts of recoil to deal with, it is always a tradeoff and is one reason why the standard personal weapons use 5.56.
In terms of 5.56x45mm vs 7.62Ã--39mm (which is what the AK uses, is is not the same as the larger NATO round) the real issues come up at medium range (100-300m) and with barrier penetration. The light, high velocity 5.56 round tends to be fantastically lethal below 100m because the high velocity results in fragmentation when it hits the target. However since military rounds may not be specifically designed to fragment or expand (the Geneva convention prohibits it, civilian and police rounds are available that do), as it slows down at greater ranges they lose that ability and are not as damaging. Also, because of their low mass and tendency to fragment they are poor performers when shooting through barriers like windshields, doors, and so on.
THAT is the issue the rounds have in general use vs 7.62Ã--39mm rounds. Not long ranges. While they aren't super effective beyond 300m, they are reasonably accurate at least, which is not the case with the 7.62 rounds. At a long range engagement an M4 would be at a decided advantage to an AK-47.
However neither was designed for long range use. They are carbines, made for medium range and below. They trade overall power and range for smaller size, lower weight, and better portability. As their widespread use in many conflicts around the world indicates, they do well in that arena.
Hopefully. Something they learn. Is how to make proper paragraphs.
In all seriousness though you need to get down off your high horse before you fall and break your neck. I've heard this BS of "Oh our homeschooled kids are SO much better than public school kids!" However I work at a university, and our admissions don't seem to bear that out. Homeschool kids often end up getting stuck in remedial classes, particularly English, because their skills are not up to the level required. To me that is particularly shocking, since I consider our entrance requirements to be pretty damn lax.
The problem I think is in part attitudes like yours: You seem to be very caught up in how smart your kids are, and how great you are for teaching them yourself. You are not looking at the situation through a lens of objectivity and thus are likely missing deficiencies in what you teach and what they learn. These will be laid bare if they choose to go to university, because they don't give a shit how special you think your snowflakes are, they will be required to meet certain standards like everyone else.
None of this even touches on the social learning aspects of public school. Just remember: Some day your kids will have to go out in to the wider world, and will no longer be accountable to you. If you've shielded them and controlled their lives, well they may go way more wild than you ever thought possible.
I don't agree with cutting taxes to schools, but I do agree school administrators need to be held to account. I remember when we passed an increase for schools and the money was specially provisioned for various things: Teacher salary increases, labs for students, etc. It has specific provisions of what to spend it on. So what happened? The administrators gave themselves nice raises and had to get sued over it.
The answer in my opinion is not to reduce school funding, but to increase administrator accountability.
I have a BP machine at home. Why? Because I have what my doctor calls "white coat hypertension." What that means is I get nervous when I go in to the doctor's office and my BP goes up. Measured at home, my BP is on the high side of normal, but fine. At the Dr's office it is at the high side of prehypertension or low side of hypertension. It's not a difference in the machines, they have me bring mine in to check the calibration.
Ok well that means they can't keep an accurate record from their measurements. So they need me to measure it myself, which I do, and then let them see the results. These days such a thing is very feasible since electronics technology means we can produce quite accurate automated systems, that aren't that much.
For that matter a large part of your physical can be, and is, automated that being the blood test. You need a skilled person to draw the blood, but after that it is usually a computerized system that does all the analysis. It can be done by a separate lab from your doctor.
You still need to see them in person for plenty of things, but there is plenty of stuff that can be reported to them remotely and they can just look at the results. I don't see this as a bad thing, personally.
You find that for Windows and OS-X, support is pretty broad. Stated as things like "Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8" and pretty lax hardware allowances. However when you look at games for Linux they are things like "SteamOS" or "Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Steam OS" and sometimes specific hardware that is supported.
Why is that? Compatibility issues. They aren't going to go and support every varied Linux distro out there. They've found a couple that work (and the same thing really, SteamOS descends from Ubutnu LTS) and that's what they are going to support. Doesn't mean it won't necessarily work on other stuff, but they aren't going to take any calls on it.
You see it in enterprise software too. The engineering programs we have tend to have a couple extremely specific enterprise Linux distros they support and that's it. Call them running anything else, they'll tell you to go away.
Linux users just have to accept this as one of the costs of openness. If you have an OS that anyone can fork, anyone can redsign, anyone can do their own things, well then support will get limited to chosen configurations. The more complex the software and its interactions with the OS, the more limited the configurations that will be supported.
I work for an engineering college at a big research university. As such, lots of computers, some of them Linux. Despite the smug assurances you may see online that Linux users don't need support, nothing could be further from the truth. Some people who choose to use Linux at work do it because they've a lot of experience with it, and aren't much trouble. However many more do it either because:
1) They have a tool that only runs on Linux, or more accurately that they can only figure out how to make run on Linux. It is usually something cobbled together by a researcher at another university for Ubuntu and only compiles easily on that. If you knew what you were doing you could modify it for something else, but they don't. They usually end up needing a moderate amount of support.
2) They have the idea that Linux is the "l33t professional" OS and it's what you need to use if you want to be a serious computer user, so they want it. No thought goes in to it, they have no experience with it, no understanding, they figure it'll just be easy. These kinds need a ton of support.
A few examples:
--A grad student said she needed Linux on the computer she had bought and configured (without consulting IT). All the software she wanted run on Windows and out Linux guy even told her she'd be better off with Windows. Nope, had to have Linux. We got a continual stream of tickets when she couldn't figure things out, had problems with the AMD driver and so on, and he finally told her "Let us install Windows or go away."
--A professor who bought a system and FPGA card, again without consulting us, and then said he needed Linux. This was after his grad student tried and failed to install it, hosing the system in the process. We put Linux on, and then it turns out neither he nor his grad student have any idea how to make the FPGA card work. It has no programming, you have to do it from scratch. They also don't know how to use Linux to the point they whined about "not having admin" on the Linux install which they had full control on, they just couldn't work out sudo.
--A couple of grad students that insisted a new server needed to be Linux "for best performance". This was during a time when we didn't have a Linux guy (we are a small team, and our last one had left we were in the process of hiring the current one) so I looked in to it, and found the lead and recommended platform was Windows. I talked to the professor about it and she said go ahead with Windows, they grad students could deal, since support would be easier on Windows. Got the server up and running, first thing they wanted? Two programs that are Windows only and were mandatory to what they were doing. Had we given them Linux, we would have been reinstalling the server right away because it literally couldn't run the software they needed.
The flipside of Linux seeing increasing use is that there are plenty of clueless Linux users. They don't go in to Linux saying "I really enjoy computers and learning about them, I want to learn all about this OS, how it works, how to support it, how to modify it, etc." Rather they go in saying "Oh Linux is free!" or "Oh Linux is what hackers use!" and have no idea what the fuck they are doing, and need help.
Not hating on pro gamers, I think it is great that there's a market for this and personally I enjoy watching pro gaming content. But they aren't athletes. It is a word with a pretty specific definition. It means, well, someone who is athletic. You don't have to be professional to be an athlete, and just doing something competitive doesn't make you an athlete.
They are gamers. Professional gamers to be sure, but gamers. That isn't a positive or negative trait, it is just a descriptor. They play games, hence are gamers, and do it for money, hence are professionals in that regard. Professional gamers. Same thing with anything else. I'm a Professional systems and network administrator. The reason is I administer servers and a network, and I get paid to do so. I'm also a gamer, but not a professional one, nobody pays me to play games.
Words mean something, let's try not to blatantly misuse them. If you want gaming to get more respect as a hobby and as a profession, the correct method is to own it, not to try and pretend it is something it isn't.
Valve has real problems with focus. The thing is that they have Steam as this massive cash cow. They make so much money, tens of millions of dollars per employee, that they needn't do anything else. Every other project can fail and bleed cash and they'll be fine. You then combine that with their "no management" structure where everything is done by cliques and you have a situation for things to get abandoned. They go after what various people are interested in, and if interest drops, the project stalls or disappears. There's no one in charge to keep things on track, and no financial incentive to do so.
So as for Source, it'll depend on if there's interest. They've been pretty lackadaisical about keeping it current, hence why it sees few license compared to something like Unreal Engine. It may just peter out at some point and stop getting any real updates. They probably won't make any official cancellation, it'll just be abandoned as they chase after whatever new thing catches their fancy.
1) Failure due to heat. When you start trying to jam all the components in to one box, it gets hot. They can't go for a big case or fans or something like that, because consumers won't like it. So they run hot, and tend to fail sooner. No guarantees of course, but my informal observation shows that separate units work for longer.
2) Limited and expensive upgrade path. If one component of the system is outdated and you want to replace it, well you get to toss the whole thing and buy a new unit... assuming you can even get one. Like on Cox, all their all-in-ones are still only N wireless, no AC available. If you have separate units, you can upgrade them as you need/want to.
I find it much nicer to pay more up front, and have the better setup and options. Personally I have a Cisco cable modem, Edgerouter Lite router, and Netgear R7000 wifi bridge (it could act as a router, but is set not to). They work nice and stable, never needing reboots, I have the latest WiFi technology, and I can upgrade any piece as I wish. As a practical matter the WiFi will probably get upgraded first, in a few years, the cable modem next, whenever they start offering speeds in excess of what an 8x modem can handle, and the router not for a very long time, since it can handle a gig of throughput.
So while my up front costs were high, there's no monthly charge, I have excellent performance and stability, and support for the latest stuff.
Namely the "no refunds EVAR" on games that retailers seem to take. Even if it doesn't work, oh well too bad it's software so you can't have your money back. It really shouldn't be allowed. Anything else you can take back if there's a problem, but not software because "Oh you might be an evil pirate!"
Not only is the cost non-trivial but there is the issue of where do they go? People don't like cell towers. They whine that they are ugly, they NIMBY about them. Now all in all it isn't a huge problem, you can find enough commercial properties that are happy to lease you space on their building. However if you want to build out past a certain point, you run out of good spots. It becomes harder, or impossible, to find more and more expensive to do so.
There's also the issue of interference and overlap, as well as cell hopping. There are practical limits to how small you can make a segment. You try and stick a ton of really tiny low power ones around and they'll start stepping on each other and phones may have fits as they hop all the time.
The real answer is what we have already: Short range wireless, aka WiFi, for higher bandwidth transfers in selected locations and longer range wireless for general coverage. I don't find my data cap of 1GB on Tmobile to be problematic because I use WiFi at home and at work. When there's an area I know I'll be in a lot, setting up WiFi is cheap and easy, not to mention faster.
The easiest way really is for people to just play nice, however some folks have a problem doing that. They get an entitled attitude and decide to use whatever they can (as you can see from other posts in this topic). That creates a problem.
You may remember the Shannonâ"Hartley theorem from engineering class as it relates to the bandwidth of a given channel. Well with radio transmission, this becomes something you really have to think about. SNR is set by environmental noise and FCC transmission limits. Spectrum is something you only have a license to a small amount of. As such, the total bandwidth you can put out has a hard limit on it. Everyone on a tower shares that bandwidth and there's just nothing you can do to increase it. You can't "lay more fiber" or "use another laser" or anything like that which you can do on wired connections. On a given segment, there is just only so much bandwidth nature and regulations will let you have.
So the more grabby people get with that bandwidth, the less there is to go around. If someone is using as much as they can because they have their phone hooked to their computer doing torrents, that slows everyone else down, even if you are are just using it in small spurts to check your e-mail.
That's the thing with RF communications. There is only so much spectrum that is useful (different frequencies have different transmission characteristics), everyone wants a piece, so there is only so much you can get, and everyone on a given system shares the same stuff. You have to share and play nice, you can't just build out more capacity to easily solve the problem.
It is realistic to tell a cable company with an overloaded segment "just allocate more channels to DOCSIS" because they can do that. They have the bandwidth on the wire. You can't tell the phone company "just use more spectrum" because they only have so much they are licensed to use.
And makes sense too. The cost in a reactor is mostly construction and decommissioning, with maintenance/operation being a somewhat distant third. There's not a lot of fuel costs. I mean heck, you look at new Navy reactors and they actually don't accept new fuel, the reactor lasts the life of the ship.
They cost a lot to build and a lot to tear down, but not a ton to operate. Of course those build and teardown costs have to be included in lifetime costs, like any fixed cost does in production.
If you were to break down power costs further, and separate out generation, transmission, and taxes, you'd probably find that construction and decommissioning were a decent bit of the generation costs, with operational costs and profit making up the rest.
As you pointed out: Just because those costs are a lot, doesn't mean it is an issue since the plant generates a lot of power. You see the same kind of thing with chip fabs. Intel's latest 14nm fabs cost them multiple billions to build. Well, that's fine, because they are going to use them to make and sell a lot of chips, so the per unit cost doesn't end up being that bad.
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It seems like the press has run out of new interesting things to report with regards to spy agencies, so rather than do some informed discussion on the stories or something, they are digging for shit.
Yes, we know, spy agencies spy. That is their purpose, that is the reason they get funding. If this shocks you then you've had your head in the sand. Now if you think governments shouldn't have spy agencies, ok, but that is a different argument (and you might want to look in to why they do). But acting all surprised that they spy, and use known tricks to spy, is stupid.
It also takes away from the real issue, the story that needs to be discussed: That spy agencies were illegally spying on their own populace. THAT is the story that should be getting coverage. However it seems like the press did their thing on it, and now wants to move on to "something new" no matter how irrelevant it is.
If the GCHQ is spying on other countries, Brits shouldn't be concerned. That is why they have a GCHQ. If the GCHQ is spying on their own subjects, they should be concerned, since that is illegal.
A game engine is a very, VERY big enterprise to make, particularity if you are talking one with modern 3D graphics. It is a big undertaking even for a company who's done it before and has a decent team of people. You will spend a lot of time and effort on it, and it still might not end up being very good.
Game engines get a lot of that low level hard work out of the way. That's why they are so used. You see even large development studios with big budgets license an engine because the cost of doing so is far less than the cost of properly developing their own.
If you want to build a game engine, that's great, but make that your goal. Build an engine for its own sake then, if you have one that seems to work well, think about using it for a game. Don't set off to make a game form the ground up, it isn't likely to happen.
The whole Middle East is a wonderful argument against using exposure to war as a deterrent to war. There is generational hatred there, the wish to kill people for wrongs going back decades or centuries. Conflicts that breed more hatred and new conflicts. Violence being seen not just as a feasible solution, but the first line.
If exposure to war was such a good cure for future wars, the ME would be extremely peaceful right now. Instead, it is one of the most violent places in the world.
As you say, what it does is lets people see it as a viable option. It also desensitizes them to war. You kill a man, it messes with your head. You kill your 100th man, it is just something you do. If death, destruction, and suffering is the norm, then what's it matter if you cause some?
You can see this same kind of thing in terms of kids who come from the ghetto. You might think "Man, they will really hate that and work hard to stay away from drugs and crime, get an education, and get out." Instead it is the only life they know, and they most often get caught up in it. You get generations of problems because the children grow up knowing an environment of crime, poverty, etc and that is just how things are for them.
Think of the fact that something like this might give them PTSD. Dealing with a war zone can be traumatic for adults with training, experience, and perspective. It can be far worse for children.
Also it does rather seem to be an unnecessary risk. While childhood has risks to be sure, part of your duty as a guardian is to minimize those risks as feasible. You weigh risks vs rewards, and try to find safe options when possible.
So maybe taking kids to a war zone is not the best idea. Maybe a better idea is to talk to them, watch some movies, read books, perhaps have a friend who's a war vet have a conversation.
Of course this strikes me as a journalist being a press whore. He's doing this because he can make it a story, not because he's being a good father.
The DoD has developed one video game, America's Army. It is not particularly popular, in part because they seem to be overly concerned with keeping things somewhat true to the army. You have to do a basic training set before it'll let you play, like you have to go and qualify using the rifle in game. Can't play unless you do. Wanna be a medic? You have to take an in game class that lasts like a half an hour, and then take a test. In the game itself it works similar to actual military wargames in that you always are the US Army, and you play again "OPFOR" the Army's professional opposing force (basically you see your team as army, the enemy as OPFOR).
It isn't "realistic" because really nothing can accurately simulate the horrors of combat, but it is really not something that glorifies combat. It could be called an elaborate army training simulator. Want a taste of what training in the army might be like? This is a reasonable starting point.
As you say, CoD is NOT developed, or endorsed, by the government. Call of Duty is owned by Activision Blizzard, a public company in California. It is developed by 3 teams (alternating years) Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games, all California companies that are subsidiaries of Activision Blizzard.
Are they realistic to war? Of course not. But then, I haven't seen any games that are realistic to anything. Their point is to be fun, not realistic.
You seem to be fairly typical for the military types I know (which is more than a couple) in that they quite enjoy the make believe of FPS games, despite having experienced the reality of combat.
While not quite as extreme, I can point to myself and enjoying computer/hacker games like Introversion's Uplink. I'm a network and systems administrator professionally. I know quite a bit about network security and how this stuff really works, and I don't at all believe black hat hackers that bust in to systems are glamours, they are criminal dickheads. However, I enjoy Uplink. It is not at ALL realistic. It is a fictional version of hacking on fictional computers ins a fictional Internet. And it's fun.
I'm not sure why people get so worked up about FPS games, like they are changing attitudes on war or anything. No, they are just games, and it turns out humans really can tell the difference between fiction and reality.
What we can do is hire students. We rarely get female applicants. We hired the last one who applied, she was the daughter of our business manager. She stuck around for like a year, but decided she wanted a job that had night hours (we are a day only shop) and left.
We also are not allowed to discriminate and offer positions to only one gender, or race. EEOC is really big here. If we open a position, it must be open to all.
The result is just one of gradually falling prices, but it is one where it is cheap enough to interest more people. At that price the drives are now "cheap enough" for them.
Not the fact that wifi routers degrade, you are totally right about that, but that people will replace them. I'm amazed at how shitty someone's Internet can be and they have an "Oh well, whatever," attitude about it.
A good example near and dear to me is my parents. They moved in to their current place about 7 years ago and got a cheapass Linksys router to handle their NAT and WiFi. It has been giving them enough grief for me to hear about it for at least 3 years. They are not poor, a new router is not a big deal, yet they didn't get one. So I got tired of it, and also had an easy solution: When they were visiting me this June I upgraded my WAP to a new 802.11ac one and gave them my old one, which was working great.
They still haven't installed it. It's not like they don't have time, mom is retired and dad is semi-retired, it's not like it is hard, it is much simpler to set up than their old model and they can always call me. They just haven't bothered. Their router acts up, they go reset it, and don't bother to replace it.
Another somewhat related example would be a friend of mine. He's a young guy, under 30, and quite technically savvy. He's complained to me that the Internet at his house is not meeting advertised speeds, going quite well below it. Strange, since we are both on the same ISP, and live only a couple miles from each other and my experience has been that they always are right around max. I inquire a bit more and find out he still has a DOCSIS 2 modem. Ahh ok, well that is probably the issue. Though his connection is of a speed that a single DOCSIS channel can handle (25mbps), that modem has one one channel to choose from and it could well be too loaded down by other people on the segment. So my recommendation was to get a DOCSIS 3 modem. An 8x4 modem that is compatible can be had for like $80. That should solve any speed issues since now there's a bunch of channels to choose from, and will be compatible when they bump the speeds in the future.
He didn't want to spend the money, and so just complains occasionally about the speed.
For whatever reason, there are more than a few people who will just use old, failing, technology and bitch about it rather than fix the issue.
This is a real question: Do you know what IPv6 does instead of BGP? Because as far as I know, IPv6 is still using BGP, and that is what this is a problem with. In fact I can only see IPv6 making things worse in that regard because tons more address space means that more AS assignments would be easy to do.
So if it really does offer a solution, please enlighten me I'd be very interested. If this is just an example of trying to use a problem to push a favoured agenda, then please knock it off.
I do IT work at a state university. As you'd expect with government institutions, we are really big on the EEOC rules and such. However, we can't force people to apply and for IT stuff, you get mostly men. Last round, it was all men. I don't mean we chose to interview all men, I mean no women applied, or if they did apply, HR filtered them out (HR does a basic "resume vs qualifications" check). Our IT group (we are only one of many IT groups on campus, there are women in other groups) is all male, at present. We had a female webmaster, however her fiance got a job in New York, so they moved there and of course she quit.
What, precisely, are we supposed to do to be more diverse? There are just not many women who seem to have the skills and wish to apply. We can't go and force people to apply, nor can we (legally or practically) say we'll waive the requirements for the job if you are a woman.
You can't hire those that don't apply.
So in terms of all this fluff up over Silicon Valley and diversity, I'd say how does their workforce numbers compare to their applicants? If in general it is the same, meaning say 30% of applicants are female and 30% of employees are female, 9% of applicants are black and 8% of employees are black, well then there probably isn't any discrimination going on. The fact that the numbers do not reflect demographics doesn't mean any discrimination on their part if they are simply not getting the applicants.
Also with regards to race, I'm not seeing why the 55% white number is problematic. According to Wikipedia, 72% of the US is white. If you count being hispanic as not being white (remember hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race) then the number is 64%. So per overall breakdown of the population, white people would be underrepresented in Apple by a fair bit.
That is also something I think people forget: The US does not have an even balance of all groups. Male/female has about a 50/50 split, but racial/ethnic groups are not nearly so even. It is still a nation dominated by fair skinned people of European ancestry, aka "white". The amount varies by state, of course, but it is quite a consistent majority.
You may have qualified on shooting a rifle, you apparently didn't qualify on reading since you are criticizing me by repeating things I said, like the fact that M4/16 are very accurate to long ranges, and that there are larger rounds in use for longer ranges. So perhaps spend more time reading and comprehending, and less time pulling out your (alleged) credentials and repeating what was already said as though it is something new.
As for fragmentation first off you act as though it is a bad thing when talking about a target. Quite the opposite. A round that fragments, expands, or tumbles in a person does much more damage and thus has a higher probability of stopping the target in a single shot.
In terms of fragmentation on other barriers: Try it. Shoot through a window, a couple sheets of drywall, etc. Put a paper target a bit behind it so you can see what happens. At short (less than 100m) range, the round will usually fragment on account of its high velocity. Depends on the round composition, of course, 62gr M855 will fragment less than a 75gr BTHP round. They don't explode in to tiny specs if that is what you are thinking but they break apart.
It is amazing how much misinformation flies around about guns. One of the common ones is "OMG the M4/16 is such crap, the AK is so much bettar!"
You are quite correct about the range. The AR-15 platform weapons are much more accurate. Anyone who has ever fired both can easily tell that.
The issue that people like the grandparent conflate is the lethality of the 5.56x45mm round at longer ranges. Though the M16 can easily hit a target at long range (with a skilled marksman operating it), because of the small size and low mass of the round, it is often not as effective as you would want. If the bullet does not fragment or tumble, it can go right through someone and the small hole does little damage.
That is the issue it has at range, not accuracy or ability to reach that range.
Also this isn't like it is some completely unknown, or unsolvable, thing. The military also has weapons that use 7.62x51mm rounds which are larger rifle bullets and have much greater range, mass, and kinetic energy. For longer engagements still things like 8.58Ã--70mm and 12.7Ã--99mm are used.
Of course as you move up in caliber and amount of propellant, weapons become bigger and heavier, and have larger amounts of recoil to deal with, it is always a tradeoff and is one reason why the standard personal weapons use 5.56.
In terms of 5.56x45mm vs 7.62Ã--39mm (which is what the AK uses, is is not the same as the larger NATO round) the real issues come up at medium range (100-300m) and with barrier penetration. The light, high velocity 5.56 round tends to be fantastically lethal below 100m because the high velocity results in fragmentation when it hits the target. However since military rounds may not be specifically designed to fragment or expand (the Geneva convention prohibits it, civilian and police rounds are available that do), as it slows down at greater ranges they lose that ability and are not as damaging. Also, because of their low mass and tendency to fragment they are poor performers when shooting through barriers like windshields, doors, and so on.
THAT is the issue the rounds have in general use vs 7.62Ã--39mm rounds. Not long ranges. While they aren't super effective beyond 300m, they are reasonably accurate at least, which is not the case with the 7.62 rounds. At a long range engagement an M4 would be at a decided advantage to an AK-47.
However neither was designed for long range use. They are carbines, made for medium range and below. They trade overall power and range for smaller size, lower weight, and better portability. As their widespread use in many conflicts around the world indicates, they do well in that arena.
Hopefully.
Something they learn.
Is how to make proper paragraphs.
In all seriousness though you need to get down off your high horse before you fall and break your neck. I've heard this BS of "Oh our homeschooled kids are SO much better than public school kids!" However I work at a university, and our admissions don't seem to bear that out. Homeschool kids often end up getting stuck in remedial classes, particularly English, because their skills are not up to the level required. To me that is particularly shocking, since I consider our entrance requirements to be pretty damn lax.
The problem I think is in part attitudes like yours: You seem to be very caught up in how smart your kids are, and how great you are for teaching them yourself. You are not looking at the situation through a lens of objectivity and thus are likely missing deficiencies in what you teach and what they learn. These will be laid bare if they choose to go to university, because they don't give a shit how special you think your snowflakes are, they will be required to meet certain standards like everyone else.
None of this even touches on the social learning aspects of public school. Just remember: Some day your kids will have to go out in to the wider world, and will no longer be accountable to you. If you've shielded them and controlled their lives, well they may go way more wild than you ever thought possible.
I don't agree with cutting taxes to schools, but I do agree school administrators need to be held to account. I remember when we passed an increase for schools and the money was specially provisioned for various things: Teacher salary increases, labs for students, etc. It has specific provisions of what to spend it on. So what happened? The administrators gave themselves nice raises and had to get sued over it.
The answer in my opinion is not to reduce school funding, but to increase administrator accountability.
I have a BP machine at home. Why? Because I have what my doctor calls "white coat hypertension." What that means is I get nervous when I go in to the doctor's office and my BP goes up. Measured at home, my BP is on the high side of normal, but fine. At the Dr's office it is at the high side of prehypertension or low side of hypertension. It's not a difference in the machines, they have me bring mine in to check the calibration.
Ok well that means they can't keep an accurate record from their measurements. So they need me to measure it myself, which I do, and then let them see the results. These days such a thing is very feasible since electronics technology means we can produce quite accurate automated systems, that aren't that much.
For that matter a large part of your physical can be, and is, automated that being the blood test. You need a skilled person to draw the blood, but after that it is usually a computerized system that does all the analysis. It can be done by a separate lab from your doctor.
You still need to see them in person for plenty of things, but there is plenty of stuff that can be reported to them remotely and they can just look at the results. I don't see this as a bad thing, personally.
You find that for Windows and OS-X, support is pretty broad. Stated as things like "Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8" and pretty lax hardware allowances. However when you look at games for Linux they are things like "SteamOS" or "Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Steam OS" and sometimes specific hardware that is supported.
Why is that? Compatibility issues. They aren't going to go and support every varied Linux distro out there. They've found a couple that work (and the same thing really, SteamOS descends from Ubutnu LTS) and that's what they are going to support. Doesn't mean it won't necessarily work on other stuff, but they aren't going to take any calls on it.
You see it in enterprise software too. The engineering programs we have tend to have a couple extremely specific enterprise Linux distros they support and that's it. Call them running anything else, they'll tell you to go away.
Linux users just have to accept this as one of the costs of openness. If you have an OS that anyone can fork, anyone can redsign, anyone can do their own things, well then support will get limited to chosen configurations. The more complex the software and its interactions with the OS, the more limited the configurations that will be supported.
I work for an engineering college at a big research university. As such, lots of computers, some of them Linux. Despite the smug assurances you may see online that Linux users don't need support, nothing could be further from the truth. Some people who choose to use Linux at work do it because they've a lot of experience with it, and aren't much trouble. However many more do it either because:
1) They have a tool that only runs on Linux, or more accurately that they can only figure out how to make run on Linux. It is usually something cobbled together by a researcher at another university for Ubuntu and only compiles easily on that. If you knew what you were doing you could modify it for something else, but they don't. They usually end up needing a moderate amount of support.
2) They have the idea that Linux is the "l33t professional" OS and it's what you need to use if you want to be a serious computer user, so they want it. No thought goes in to it, they have no experience with it, no understanding, they figure it'll just be easy. These kinds need a ton of support.
A few examples:
--A grad student said she needed Linux on the computer she had bought and configured (without consulting IT). All the software she wanted run on Windows and out Linux guy even told her she'd be better off with Windows. Nope, had to have Linux. We got a continual stream of tickets when she couldn't figure things out, had problems with the AMD driver and so on, and he finally told her "Let us install Windows or go away."
--A professor who bought a system and FPGA card, again without consulting us, and then said he needed Linux. This was after his grad student tried and failed to install it, hosing the system in the process. We put Linux on, and then it turns out neither he nor his grad student have any idea how to make the FPGA card work. It has no programming, you have to do it from scratch. They also don't know how to use Linux to the point they whined about "not having admin" on the Linux install which they had full control on, they just couldn't work out sudo.
--A couple of grad students that insisted a new server needed to be Linux "for best performance". This was during a time when we didn't have a Linux guy (we are a small team, and our last one had left we were in the process of hiring the current one) so I looked in to it, and found the lead and recommended platform was Windows. I talked to the professor about it and she said go ahead with Windows, they grad students could deal, since support would be easier on Windows. Got the server up and running, first thing they wanted? Two programs that are Windows only and were mandatory to what they were doing. Had we given them Linux, we would have been reinstalling the server right away because it literally couldn't run the software they needed.
The flipside of Linux seeing increasing use is that there are plenty of clueless Linux users. They don't go in to Linux saying "I really enjoy computers and learning about them, I want to learn all about this OS, how it works, how to support it, how to modify it, etc." Rather they go in saying "Oh Linux is free!" or "Oh Linux is what hackers use!" and have no idea what the fuck they are doing, and need help.
Not hating on pro gamers, I think it is great that there's a market for this and personally I enjoy watching pro gaming content. But they aren't athletes. It is a word with a pretty specific definition. It means, well, someone who is athletic. You don't have to be professional to be an athlete, and just doing something competitive doesn't make you an athlete.
They are gamers. Professional gamers to be sure, but gamers. That isn't a positive or negative trait, it is just a descriptor. They play games, hence are gamers, and do it for money, hence are professionals in that regard. Professional gamers. Same thing with anything else. I'm a Professional systems and network administrator. The reason is I administer servers and a network, and I get paid to do so. I'm also a gamer, but not a professional one, nobody pays me to play games.
Words mean something, let's try not to blatantly misuse them. If you want gaming to get more respect as a hobby and as a profession, the correct method is to own it, not to try and pretend it is something it isn't.
Valve has real problems with focus. The thing is that they have Steam as this massive cash cow. They make so much money, tens of millions of dollars per employee, that they needn't do anything else. Every other project can fail and bleed cash and they'll be fine. You then combine that with their "no management" structure where everything is done by cliques and you have a situation for things to get abandoned. They go after what various people are interested in, and if interest drops, the project stalls or disappears. There's no one in charge to keep things on track, and no financial incentive to do so.
So as for Source, it'll depend on if there's interest. They've been pretty lackadaisical about keeping it current, hence why it sees few license compared to something like Unreal Engine. It may just peter out at some point and stop getting any real updates. They probably won't make any official cancellation, it'll just be abandoned as they chase after whatever new thing catches their fancy.
Which you can do if you buy your own.
Those all-in-ones are trouble in two big ways:
1) Failure due to heat. When you start trying to jam all the components in to one box, it gets hot. They can't go for a big case or fans or something like that, because consumers won't like it. So they run hot, and tend to fail sooner. No guarantees of course, but my informal observation shows that separate units work for longer.
2) Limited and expensive upgrade path. If one component of the system is outdated and you want to replace it, well you get to toss the whole thing and buy a new unit... assuming you can even get one. Like on Cox, all their all-in-ones are still only N wireless, no AC available. If you have separate units, you can upgrade them as you need/want to.
I find it much nicer to pay more up front, and have the better setup and options. Personally I have a Cisco cable modem, Edgerouter Lite router, and Netgear R7000 wifi bridge (it could act as a router, but is set not to). They work nice and stable, never needing reboots, I have the latest WiFi technology, and I can upgrade any piece as I wish. As a practical matter the WiFi will probably get upgraded first, in a few years, the cable modem next, whenever they start offering speeds in excess of what an 8x modem can handle, and the router not for a very long time, since it can handle a gig of throughput.
So while my up front costs were high, there's no monthly charge, I have excellent performance and stability, and support for the latest stuff.
Namely the "no refunds EVAR" on games that retailers seem to take. Even if it doesn't work, oh well too bad it's software so you can't have your money back. It really shouldn't be allowed. Anything else you can take back if there's a problem, but not software because "Oh you might be an evil pirate!"
Not only is the cost non-trivial but there is the issue of where do they go? People don't like cell towers. They whine that they are ugly, they NIMBY about them. Now all in all it isn't a huge problem, you can find enough commercial properties that are happy to lease you space on their building. However if you want to build out past a certain point, you run out of good spots. It becomes harder, or impossible, to find more and more expensive to do so.
There's also the issue of interference and overlap, as well as cell hopping. There are practical limits to how small you can make a segment. You try and stick a ton of really tiny low power ones around and they'll start stepping on each other and phones may have fits as they hop all the time.
The real answer is what we have already: Short range wireless, aka WiFi, for higher bandwidth transfers in selected locations and longer range wireless for general coverage. I don't find my data cap of 1GB on Tmobile to be problematic because I use WiFi at home and at work. When there's an area I know I'll be in a lot, setting up WiFi is cheap and easy, not to mention faster.
The easiest way really is for people to just play nice, however some folks have a problem doing that. They get an entitled attitude and decide to use whatever they can (as you can see from other posts in this topic). That creates a problem.
You may remember the Shannonâ"Hartley theorem from engineering class as it relates to the bandwidth of a given channel. Well with radio transmission, this becomes something you really have to think about. SNR is set by environmental noise and FCC transmission limits. Spectrum is something you only have a license to a small amount of. As such, the total bandwidth you can put out has a hard limit on it. Everyone on a tower shares that bandwidth and there's just nothing you can do to increase it. You can't "lay more fiber" or "use another laser" or anything like that which you can do on wired connections. On a given segment, there is just only so much bandwidth nature and regulations will let you have.
So the more grabby people get with that bandwidth, the less there is to go around. If someone is using as much as they can because they have their phone hooked to their computer doing torrents, that slows everyone else down, even if you are are just using it in small spurts to check your e-mail.
That's the thing with RF communications. There is only so much spectrum that is useful (different frequencies have different transmission characteristics), everyone wants a piece, so there is only so much you can get, and everyone on a given system shares the same stuff. You have to share and play nice, you can't just build out more capacity to easily solve the problem.
It is realistic to tell a cable company with an overloaded segment "just allocate more channels to DOCSIS" because they can do that. They have the bandwidth on the wire. You can't tell the phone company "just use more spectrum" because they only have so much they are licensed to use.
And makes sense too. The cost in a reactor is mostly construction and decommissioning, with maintenance/operation being a somewhat distant third. There's not a lot of fuel costs. I mean heck, you look at new Navy reactors and they actually don't accept new fuel, the reactor lasts the life of the ship.
They cost a lot to build and a lot to tear down, but not a ton to operate. Of course those build and teardown costs have to be included in lifetime costs, like any fixed cost does in production.
If you were to break down power costs further, and separate out generation, transmission, and taxes, you'd probably find that construction and decommissioning were a decent bit of the generation costs, with operational costs and profit making up the rest.
As you pointed out: Just because those costs are a lot, doesn't mean it is an issue since the plant generates a lot of power. You see the same kind of thing with chip fabs. Intel's latest 14nm fabs cost them multiple billions to build. Well, that's fine, because they are going to use them to make and sell a lot of chips, so the per unit cost doesn't end up being that bad.