The dangers of these radioisotopes have been highly overrated. You'd do just as much damage by dispersing a lot of the toxic chemicals that are in today's batteries.
Yes, the perception that setting off a dirty bomb will result in a mass of slow radiation burn deaths is overblown, but the psychological and economic damages of a dirty bomb are very, very real. If SRGs became publicly available, dirty bombs could become as common as suicide bombers are right now, and the effects of said bombs are far more damaging to a community while costing far less life up-front. As one of the article you reference in your second reply points out, any contaminated structures would have to be demolished and stored as radioactive waste. This is due to both government regulations and the fact that said land would be worthless until worked over thanks to public perception. Imagine the long-term effects on New York if a dirty bomb contaminated Wall Street. Consider that people wouldn't want to go there anymore, even after much renovation.
On the other hand, I'm far more concerned about consumer-portable SRG slowly contaminating the water supply after being tossed into a dump much like NiCds are doing today.
As I said in my previous post, I'd be ecstatic if the military was the first market to use said batteries. Then they could stop worrying about how to power a soldier's equipment for 3 days, and start worrying about keeping his carry on food supplies large enough to keep up with his equipment.
Considering that the technology in the article is intended for consumer use, it's not unreasonable to expect that a call for the use of nuclear batteries included a call for their use in the same application space.
I was going to complain than an SRG is way too heavy, but some digging found that a 55 W SRG prototype was only about 27 kg. Not really man-portable for infantry purposes, but infantry electronics are designed for lower power usage, so a smaller one could be created. However, energy density and light weight are the main advantages of the so-called "nanobattery." I don't think that they'll compete in the same space, especially in the space of powering man-portable equipment. A soldier doesn't need a 10-40 year life span on his portable equipment. A few days to a few months is reasonable, and the "nanobattery" -- wow, I hate that word -- is lighter.
Now for vehicles, you might have something there -- just not for civillian cars, in my opinion.
It's marked funny because it's an obviously idiotic suggestion that people assumed was a joke.
Really, you want to put plutonium, polonium, or other dirty bomb materials in the hands of the general public? The same public that currently tosses NiCd batteries into the trash when they're done with them? SRGs are a wonderful idea for military, for space, and for other heavily regulated and monitored uses (where RTGs are already used), but they're a horrible idea for the mass market.
Your question was whether or not boiler style plants "put a dent" in the 3.7 million megawatt-hours. No. Of course they don't; I think there's less than 5 in the entire nation. However, the lack of presence does not inherently mean that they are a flawed solution -- hence the local shop/national chain illustration of the Appeal to Popularity argument.
The proper question would have been, "Can plants like those meet the needs of the US energy supply?" not, "Do they?" The latter presupposes that since they don't already, they can't. I argue that they can be useful. Otherwise, I wouldn't have included them as an example.
Okay, so cite some numbers. Do the boiler-style solar plants make a significant dent in the 3.7 million megawatt-hours used by the U.S. in 2001?
No. So what? My favorite local burger shop doesn't make a significant dent in the amount of ground beef sold in the US thanks to the juggernaut that is McDonalds. This is an Appeal to Popularity.
And please don't just suggest that the U.S. must first lower their usage to below 1 million megawatt-hours.
Why the fsck is it that allegedly-educated people HAVE NO FSCKING CLUE about the fact that there are days when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine? What the fsck do they want to use for power generation on those days? Or do they just believe Man should take a vacation, and civilization should stop, on rainy days or at night? Explain that to the guy whose wife is in intensive care, on a ventilator, that HAS to run 24 hours a day, WITHOUT FAIL.
*sigh* At the risk of being LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS, I will point out that there are numerous energy storage methods for dealing with off-peak production periods. For example, near my hometown, we have a place where during off-peak hours water is pumped from a large lake to a smaller one up on a hill. When extra power is needed, the pumps turn into a turbines as all that water flows back down into the lower lake. This is merely one way of storing energy.
As another earlier post pointed out, some boiler-style solar plants heat up molten salts to huge temperatures and then bleed heat off of them over night. Some places compress air into caverns and then release the pressure. There are all sorts of ways to deal with this.
*cough* I'm sorry -- "THIS IS *ALL* FRESHMAN STUFF, PEOPLE. SHUT THE FSCK UP UNTIL YOU HAVE DONE YOUR FSCKING HOMEWORK!!!" Is that better?
How high do you think the percentage of moviegoers will be that match the following criteria:
A) Like this butchery of a movie enough to seek out related material. B) Is inclined to read and to enjoy SF.
I think the intersection of all of these is going to be very, very small -- especially to the people who come away from the movie having learned that robots are dangerous instead of that robots can be made safely.
Having been a chemistry major in my earlier years of college, I can vouch for that. I've had acid and base burns both, and they feel about the same.
Also, if you catch light amount of sulfuric acid on your fingers quickly enough, you get the same slippery melting skin effect before it gets down to the nerves. I tell you, that was a scary moment of realization, but I got it before it did any serious damage.
Re:Bad economics and incorrect facts.
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 1
I'd just like to say that those are all excellent arguments. The only thing that I can add are that I haven't read much about a recent demand spike that would explain the numbers from the consumer end. You seem to be better informed than many; could you point me to an article describing consumer-end effects on the price of gas right now?
Yeah, I'd be wasting money, you are absolutely right. Keep that old P2 running starcraft, and stay competitive......for the next two years its still in competition. Now while the intelligent gamers were upgrading to play games like Doom3 professionally, you are stuck with superb skills in starcraft, a five year old machine, and 2 years behind your competition.
You have given me excellent reason to continue mocking you.
A) RTS games like StarCraft are not in the same category as FPS games like Doom 3. The existence of Doom 3 will not hurt StarCraft's appeal anymore than baseball hurts football. They are completely different experiences. Otherwise, shouldn't Half-Life, Counterstrike, and Quake III already have destroyed StarCraft in the 5-6 years since its debut?
B) StarCraft is already old and people still watch matches. New games do not instantly obsolete old games or Spike TV's ludicrous basketball on trampolines game would've already put the NBA out of business. People still play chess and go professionally even though more modern strategy games exist. Hell, if your premise were true, why aren't Korean's watching people play Warcraft III right now?
C) In case you still haven't read the article, the players train constantly at their game of choice. Training in potential new games which aren't proven to be crowd-pleasers would mean not training in the game that they are paid to be an expert in and an atrophy of the skills that seperate them from the second-tier of games earning a tenth of their earnings. It would be professional suicide in what is already acknowledged to be a young man's game. They know they're going to burn out eventually just like pro atheletes, so why bother wasting time training for the next big thing which they might not have the talent for by the time it gets big?
D) StarCraft is a massively popular brand in Korea. There is a national TV channel pretty much dedicated to watching StarCraft matches, and StarCraft has endorsed snack chips, drinks, and shoes over there like a movie or major athlete would here. Its popularity has not faded; six years is enormous in the online gaming world. At this rate, it may become the first computer game to become an eternal classic like chess or go.
E) Regardless of all these other concerns, you still are an idiot for claiming that upgrading constantly would significantly eat into a six-figure salary. You don't see the wisdom in not fixing what's not broken and keeping around a perfectly functioning system, and I still wouldn't trust you with an IT budget.
"Gaming" is a modern term that refers to the explosion of new games invented in the 20th century. It typically refers to console/computer games, modern (non-kid oriented) board games, modern card games not played on the traditional 52-card deck, and role-playing games -- all modern games.
Older games, such as card games, chess, go, and the like have established terminology -- "playing cards/go/chess/etc." and "gambling." "Gaming" almost never involved gambling with money, unlike Poker. Even computer variants of old games aren't typically counted. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion.
Ironically, the word "gaming's" classical usage explicitly refers to gambling. However, that use has fallen out of common usage today.
Sure, the TOP GAMERS make over 200k a year (BTW - being a pro gamer also means you need to buy bleeding edge technology, so that 200k isn't much after you subtract your monthly computer upgrade budget), but most hardly make any... not to mention that you not only have to be fabulous with one game, but with at least one new game ever year or so. If you take a break, or have an off year or two, you are in debt.
You do realize that these Korean players are playing StarCraft, game for which a machine from five years ago was overkill. I mean the game requires a Pentium 90, 16 MB of RAM, and a 2X CD-ROM! The game is five years old!
Even if you were member of some sort of mythical pro gaming league that adopted new games as soon as they came out, I can't seriously imagine spending more than $5000 a year on upgrading hardware and buying the latest games. On a $300,000/year budget, that's chump change. Hell, on that kind of budget you could buy a sports car or two each year without feeling the strain.
I'll stick to my day job, thanks.
Geez, I hope it has nothing to do with making purchasing decisions for your company if you think you have to throw a significant portion of a 6-figure salary at staying competitive in StarCraft.
Excellent set of posts. I've been reading up on this for a while myself and would like to know if I can find the articles you cited online. Do you have any links to help find them?
Oh yeah, bring up the atomic bomb when you want to make apolitical engineers not look like dangerous schmucks.
"Based off of" or "a rape of?"
on
Video T-shirts
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Don't worry -- it's not really a movie based off of a book either.
I swear. This is going to be a worse rape of a book than Starship Troopers. Take one wide-eyed, enthusiastic book about a future of living with robots and turn it into a Frankenstein/Terminator science horror movie with Will Smith once again somehow dragging racism into the plot like he did with Wild Wild West. I felt sick after seeing the trailer. Honestly, next time Hollywood licenses a SF/F book that I've enjoyed, I'm burning the studios down proactively.
Re:Transportation is an expense multiplier.
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 1
It's more expensive for both reasons, but you are correct to say that the closing of dairy farms is far, far more significant of an influence.
I just picked dairy goods as an example because reading an earlier post had it stuck in my mind and it was a good example of a good whose price fluctuates more frequently than most goods thanks to being a perfectly competed commodity with next to no profit margin. The same argument could've worked for corn syrup and candy, lumber and paper, etc.
Classic George Carlin bit: "And now, a message from the National Apple Institute: FUCK PEARS!!"
Re:This is true, but how much is the increase?
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I mean, how much milk and ice cream can you eat in a month? Even if the price doubles...how much more is that out of your pocket?
The point is that everything that is shipped by truck, plane, train, or sea increases in price when oil prices rise. Everything. Milk and ice cream are just concrete examples. Do I need to demonstrate the supply chain for every product sold in the US, or are you going to quit being myopic about the network effect of transportation costs?
I just don't see the temporary increase being all that much!
Many other parts of the economy act on a completely different timeframe from the ephemeral consumable goods markets. Take your phone company, for example. The cost of repairs and other maintenance work on their network goes up as the cost of driving around their repair vehicles goes up and as the cost of electricity in areas with oil-burning power plants goes up. If the company's planners do not see these higher prices as a temporary thing but instead as a long-term increase, your phone bill will go up.
This same sort of planning affects every industry in the nation as they must cope with effects from the subtle ones on the banking and healthcare industries to the massive disruption of airline and petrochemical fertilizer and pesticide suppliers.
I feel people have become complacent on a stable economy...they've forgotten that things can happen to throw it out of wack, and they've stopped preparing for such situations.
While the price rise is real, I feel it is poor spending habits that give the rises the enormous impacts they do.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, but to dismiss outright the effects of surges in oil prices as nothing to worry about if you've got some financial sense is a bit naive. Transportation costs will hit the values of your stocks and bonds as they hit corporate and government purses. Never forget too that the consumption of many of these poor planners are the driving force of our economy. If they get into the trouble, it will have ripple effects on you even if they don't leap out in your face.
Bad economics and incorrect facts.
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
1. Environmental regulations preventing the building of new refineries.
Oh, of courrrse.... A lack of refineries makes their input product (crude oil) more expensive? Shouldn't a lack of demand drive down the price of a supplied good? Perhaps you flunked the supply and demand portion of macroeconomics.
2. Environmental regulations forcing specialized, region-specific formulations across the country.
This effects the $40/barrel price of crude oil how? Hell, it doesn't even effect the gas price of people outside of those regions much, and if it did, the answer would be to adopt the better standards rather than to increase the smog in the big cities.
3. OPEC fighting against us in Iraq with the one effective weapon they have.
Transportation is an expense multiplier.
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
As one of the first posts in the article indicates, prices for all goods are going up because it costs more to ship them. Milk is more expensive because refueling milk tanker trucks is more expensive. Products derived from milk, like ice cream, take on the burden of the expense to ship the milk to the factory (which is passed on to the customers) and then pass on the cost of shipping THAT product to the stores' warehouses to the customers while the stores pass the cost of shipping from the warehouse to the retail stores to the customer. This is slightly multiplied by each company in the chain desiring to maintain the same relative profit margins.
I remember only a few years ago -- sometime before 2000 -- there was a summer where gas prices dipped below a dollar in my area. Gas prices are now twice that, and diesel prices are in the $1.50-1.60 range. A 50% increase in the cost of transportation hits the prices of everything hard. Oil prices have a ripple effect on the entire economy, not just the ~$20-40 you spend refilling a gas tank.
Guardians of Order has secured the rights to publish all of Phage Press's product line. Mark McKinnon, the founder of GoO, was a regular on the Amber mailing list about the same time as I was many years ago. With Tekumel, Nobilis, and Amber, GoO is basically becoming a clearing-house for underappreciated yet brilliant games.
Oh, and Amber player automatically go on my Friends list.
Of course, Schmeiser disputes that claim on his own site, but he's hardly an impartial source. He claims that samples he had independently tested show less than 8% contamination except in one sample taken from the area where he first noticed the crop growing adjacent to the property of his neighbor that was growing the stuff. He also claims that the sample used in the trial was not clearly identifiable as his and was missing chaff unlike the material he had turned into the mill years before.
On the other hand, I would take anything off of junkscience.com with a huge grain of salt. The owner has a definite agenda and bias, and crank.net gives the site a low-level "cranky" rating instead of an "anti-crank" or even "fringe" rating.
So Monsanto used GM agricultural products to screw a farmer through the patent and legal system.
Ignoring the fact that similar "piracy" and "theft" issues may exist for future nanotechnology, the main thrust of the argument was that containment of GM crops and their polllen is a huge problem, and the legal system doesn't seem to consider contamination of crops to be damage done to the farmer but theft by the farmer. There are plants being created today that produce drugs which are not safe to enter the general food supply. It contamination issues are not taken care of with the burden resting on the creators or buyers of GM food crops instead of the victims of contamination, there could be serious consequences.
What the grandparent was no doubt referring to is that nobody has ever suffered physical harm (illness or injury) as a consequence of GM foods. I can't think of a counterexample; I'm curious if anyone knows of one...?
Sure. Roundup ready crops are a fine example of a dangerous and irresponsible use of GM crops. Essentially, glyphosate is already an environmental contaminant in the US that has received far too little attention. Monsanto's Roundup Ready Soya (RRS) promotes even more use of the chemical which Monsanto makes a fortune selling. Glyphosate is known to cause kidney and liver problems in rats and is the 3rd most common cause of pesticide-related illness in agricultural labor in California. Roundup has never killed anyone, but an increase in its use will lead to greater subtle harm to workers and US consumers. This is a direct consequence of using RRS.
What about the case of Monsanto vs. Schmeiser where a Canadian canola farmer's crop was contaminated by Monsanto's Round-Up Ready crop and who was subsequently sued by Monsanto for violating their patents by growing seed with their designed genes without a license. The farmer lost, but is still appealing.
Keep in mind two things. First, this case entirely derives from the fact that a GMO designed to resist excessive use of herbicides contamined a non-GMO crop. (I'm not going to even go into the merit of designed a food crop to resist the use of more of a chemical known to cause human health problems.) Second, biochem companies are right now testing GMOs that are designed to grow drugs -- crops that could also contaminate the human food supply.
The problem is not the technology. It's using the technology in an utterly irresponsible manner and then lobbying to cover up any problems that occur.
1) In America, schools are not allowed to ban students from wearing clothing that expressed political or religious beliefs -- it's specifically banned, and the ACLU has fought numerous cases to preserve that right. Here, the state cannot infringe on the right to hold and to express one's beliefs, and that includes state-sponsored schools.
2) This is the same sort of argument as saying, "A law banning all dark hair from schools is not related to any particular race: a white person with black hair has just the same problem as a black or Asian person." Discriminating equally against all religions is still religious discrimination. It's state sponsorship of atheism, and it's disrespectful to force people to act against their religious beliefs for the purpose of shielding kids from the fact that others around them might somehow be different from them.
IMHO, religion is a serious matter that the state should keep their hands off of. Children are not immune to the same spiritual concerns that adults have, and the view that religion shouldn't be allowed to "corrupt" them at an early age shows a bias towards atheism. I don't see why the state should be allowed to tamper with the religious beliefs of its citizens nor why it should shield children from the fact that there are differences between them.
Conformity is an illusion and a dangerous, polarizing ideal. Children not exposed to differing opinions tend to grow up intolerant of differences. Exposing kids to diversity and letting them make friends with diverse people raises their tolerance (or at least lets them think of more kinds of people as part of their in-group).
Religion is just one thing "making differences between children within a state school." Everything from race to economic status to the quality of parenting results in differences between children. There's no reason to hide this fact, and cultures that have prided conformity of thought in their children have produced dangerous adults. France doesn't have to look far back into Europe's past to see the devastating effects of intolerance for divergent beliefs.
Slashdot Mirror
The dangers of these radioisotopes have been highly overrated. You'd do just as much damage by dispersing a lot of the toxic chemicals that are in today's batteries.
Yes, the perception that setting off a dirty bomb will result in a mass of slow radiation burn deaths is overblown, but the psychological and economic damages of a dirty bomb are very, very real. If SRGs became publicly available, dirty bombs could become as common as suicide bombers are right now, and the effects of said bombs are far more damaging to a community while costing far less life up-front. As one of the article you reference in your second reply points out, any contaminated structures would have to be demolished and stored as radioactive waste. This is due to both government regulations and the fact that said land would be worthless until worked over thanks to public perception. Imagine the long-term effects on New York if a dirty bomb contaminated Wall Street. Consider that people wouldn't want to go there anymore, even after much renovation.
On the other hand, I'm far more concerned about consumer-portable SRG slowly contaminating the water supply after being tossed into a dump much like NiCds are doing today.
As I said in my previous post, I'd be ecstatic if the military was the first market to use said batteries. Then they could stop worrying about how to power a soldier's equipment for 3 days, and start worrying about keeping his carry on food supplies large enough to keep up with his equipment.
Considering that the technology in the article is intended for consumer use, it's not unreasonable to expect that a call for the use of nuclear batteries included a call for their use in the same application space.
I was going to complain than an SRG is way too heavy, but some digging found that a 55 W SRG prototype was only about 27 kg. Not really man-portable for infantry purposes, but infantry electronics are designed for lower power usage, so a smaller one could be created. However, energy density and light weight are the main advantages of the so-called "nanobattery." I don't think that they'll compete in the same space, especially in the space of powering man-portable equipment. A soldier doesn't need a 10-40 year life span on his portable equipment. A few days to a few months is reasonable, and the "nanobattery" -- wow, I hate that word -- is lighter.
Now for vehicles, you might have something there -- just not for civillian cars, in my opinion.
It's marked funny because it's an obviously idiotic suggestion that people assumed was a joke.
Really, you want to put plutonium, polonium, or other dirty bomb materials in the hands of the general public? The same public that currently tosses NiCd batteries into the trash when they're done with them? SRGs are a wonderful idea for military, for space, and for other heavily regulated and monitored uses (where RTGs are already used), but they're a horrible idea for the mass market.
Your question was whether or not boiler style plants "put a dent" in the 3.7 million megawatt-hours. No. Of course they don't; I think there's less than 5 in the entire nation. However, the lack of presence does not inherently mean that they are a flawed solution -- hence the local shop/national chain illustration of the Appeal to Popularity argument.
The proper question would have been, "Can plants like those meet the needs of the US energy supply?" not, "Do they?" The latter presupposes that since they don't already, they can't. I argue that they can be useful. Otherwise, I wouldn't have included them as an example.
Okay, so cite some numbers. Do the boiler-style solar plants make a significant dent in the 3.7 million megawatt-hours used by the U.S. in 2001?
No. So what? My favorite local burger shop doesn't make a significant dent in the amount of ground beef sold in the US thanks to the juggernaut that is McDonalds. This is an Appeal to Popularity.
And please don't just suggest that the U.S. must first lower their usage to below 1 million megawatt-hours.
Straw Man argument.
Why the fsck is it that allegedly-educated people HAVE NO FSCKING CLUE about the fact that there are days when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine? What the fsck do they want to use for power generation on those days? Or do they just believe Man should take a vacation, and civilization should stop, on rainy days or at night? Explain that to the guy whose wife is in intensive care, on a ventilator, that HAS to run 24 hours a day, WITHOUT FAIL.
*sigh* At the risk of being LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS, I will point out that there are numerous energy storage methods for dealing with off-peak production periods. For example, near my hometown, we have a place where during off-peak hours water is pumped from a large lake to a smaller one up on a hill. When extra power is needed, the pumps turn into a turbines as all that water flows back down into the lower lake. This is merely one way of storing energy.
As another earlier post pointed out, some boiler-style solar plants heat up molten salts to huge temperatures and then bleed heat off of them over night. Some places compress air into caverns and then release the pressure. There are all sorts of ways to deal with this.
*cough* I'm sorry -- "THIS IS *ALL* FRESHMAN STUFF, PEOPLE. SHUT THE FSCK UP UNTIL YOU HAVE DONE YOUR FSCKING HOMEWORK!!!" Is that better?
How high do you think the percentage of moviegoers will be that match the following criteria:
A) Like this butchery of a movie enough to seek out related material.
B) Is inclined to read and to enjoy SF.
I think the intersection of all of these is going to be very, very small -- especially to the people who come away from the movie having learned that robots are dangerous instead of that robots can be made safely.
Having been a chemistry major in my earlier years of college, I can vouch for that. I've had acid and base burns both, and they feel about the same.
Also, if you catch light amount of sulfuric acid on your fingers quickly enough, you get the same slippery melting skin effect before it gets down to the nerves. I tell you, that was a scary moment of realization, but I got it before it did any serious damage.
I'd just like to say that those are all excellent arguments. The only thing that I can add are that I haven't read much about a recent demand spike that would explain the numbers from the consumer end. You seem to be better informed than many; could you point me to an article describing consumer-end effects on the price of gas right now?
Yeah, I'd be wasting money, you are absolutely right. Keep that old P2 running starcraft, and stay competitive... ...for the next two years its still in competition. Now while the intelligent gamers were upgrading to play games like Doom3 professionally, you are stuck with superb skills in starcraft, a five year old machine, and 2 years behind your competition.
You have given me excellent reason to continue mocking you.
A) RTS games like StarCraft are not in the same category as FPS games like Doom 3. The existence of Doom 3 will not hurt StarCraft's appeal anymore than baseball hurts football. They are completely different experiences. Otherwise, shouldn't Half-Life, Counterstrike, and Quake III already have destroyed StarCraft in the 5-6 years since its debut?
B) StarCraft is already old and people still watch matches. New games do not instantly obsolete old games or Spike TV's ludicrous basketball on trampolines game would've already put the NBA out of business. People still play chess and go professionally even though more modern strategy games exist. Hell, if your premise were true, why aren't Korean's watching people play Warcraft III right now?
C) In case you still haven't read the article, the players train constantly at their game of choice. Training in potential new games which aren't proven to be crowd-pleasers would mean not training in the game that they are paid to be an expert in and an atrophy of the skills that seperate them from the second-tier of games earning a tenth of their earnings. It would be professional suicide in what is already acknowledged to be a young man's game. They know they're going to burn out eventually just like pro atheletes, so why bother wasting time training for the next big thing which they might not have the talent for by the time it gets big?
D) StarCraft is a massively popular brand in Korea. There is a national TV channel pretty much dedicated to watching StarCraft matches, and StarCraft has endorsed snack chips, drinks, and shoes over there like a movie or major athlete would here. Its popularity has not faded; six years is enormous in the online gaming world. At this rate, it may become the first computer game to become an eternal classic like chess or go.
E) Regardless of all these other concerns, you still are an idiot for claiming that upgrading constantly would significantly eat into a six-figure salary. You don't see the wisdom in not fixing what's not broken and keeping around a perfectly functioning system, and I still wouldn't trust you with an IT budget.
"Gaming" is a modern term that refers to the explosion of new games invented in the 20th century. It typically refers to console/computer games, modern (non-kid oriented) board games, modern card games not played on the traditional 52-card deck, and role-playing games -- all modern games.
Older games, such as card games, chess, go, and the like have established terminology -- "playing cards/go/chess/etc." and "gambling." "Gaming" almost never involved gambling with money, unlike Poker. Even computer variants of old games aren't typically counted. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion.
Ironically, the word "gaming's" classical usage explicitly refers to gambling. However, that use has fallen out of common usage today.
Sure, the TOP GAMERS make over 200k a year (BTW - being a pro gamer also means you need to buy bleeding edge technology, so that 200k isn't much after you subtract your monthly computer upgrade budget), but most hardly make any... not to mention that you not only have to be fabulous with one game, but with at least one new game ever year or so. If you take a break, or have an off year or two, you are in debt.
You do realize that these Korean players are playing StarCraft, game for which a machine from five years ago was overkill. I mean the game requires a Pentium 90, 16 MB of RAM, and a 2X CD-ROM! The game is five years old!
Even if you were member of some sort of mythical pro gaming league that adopted new games as soon as they came out, I can't seriously imagine spending more than $5000 a year on upgrading hardware and buying the latest games. On a $300,000/year budget, that's chump change. Hell, on that kind of budget you could buy a sports car or two each year without feeling the strain.
I'll stick to my day job, thanks.
Geez, I hope it has nothing to do with making purchasing decisions for your company if you think you have to throw a significant portion of a 6-figure salary at staying competitive in StarCraft.
Excellent set of posts. I've been reading up on this for a while myself and would like to know if I can find the articles you cited online. Do you have any links to help find them?
Oh yeah, bring up the atomic bomb when you want to make apolitical engineers not look like dangerous schmucks.
Don't worry -- it's not really a movie based off of a book either.
I swear. This is going to be a worse rape of a book than Starship Troopers. Take one wide-eyed, enthusiastic book about a future of living with robots and turn it into a Frankenstein/Terminator science horror movie with Will Smith once again somehow dragging racism into the plot like he did with Wild Wild West. I felt sick after seeing the trailer. Honestly, next time Hollywood licenses a SF/F book that I've enjoyed, I'm burning the studios down proactively.
It's more expensive for both reasons, but you are correct to say that the closing of dairy farms is far, far more significant of an influence.
I just picked dairy goods as an example because reading an earlier post had it stuck in my mind and it was a good example of a good whose price fluctuates more frequently than most goods thanks to being a perfectly competed commodity with next to no profit margin. The same argument could've worked for corn syrup and candy, lumber and paper, etc.
Pears are better than apples...
Classic George Carlin bit:
"And now, a message from the National Apple Institute: FUCK PEARS!!"
I mean, how much milk and ice cream can you eat in a month? Even if the price doubles...how much more is that out of your pocket?
The point is that everything that is shipped by truck, plane, train, or sea increases in price when oil prices rise. Everything. Milk and ice cream are just concrete examples. Do I need to demonstrate the supply chain for every product sold in the US, or are you going to quit being myopic about the network effect of transportation costs?
I just don't see the temporary increase being all that much!
Many other parts of the economy act on a completely different timeframe from the ephemeral consumable goods markets. Take your phone company, for example. The cost of repairs and other maintenance work on their network goes up as the cost of driving around their repair vehicles goes up and as the cost of electricity in areas with oil-burning power plants goes up. If the company's planners do not see these higher prices as a temporary thing but instead as a long-term increase, your phone bill will go up.
This same sort of planning affects every industry in the nation as they must cope with effects from the subtle ones on the banking and healthcare industries to the massive disruption of airline and petrochemical fertilizer and pesticide suppliers.
I feel people have become complacent on a stable economy...they've forgotten that things can happen to throw it out of wack, and they've stopped preparing for such situations.
While the price rise is real, I feel it is poor spending habits that give the rises the enormous impacts they do.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, but to dismiss outright the effects of surges in oil prices as nothing to worry about if you've got some financial sense is a bit naive. Transportation costs will hit the values of your stocks and bonds as they hit corporate and government purses. Never forget too that the consumption of many of these poor planners are the driving force of our economy. If they get into the trouble, it will have ripple effects on you even if they don't leap out in your face.
1. Environmental regulations preventing the building of new refineries.
Oh, of courrrse.... A lack of refineries makes their input product (crude oil) more expensive? Shouldn't a lack of demand drive down the price of a supplied good? Perhaps you flunked the supply and demand portion of macroeconomics.
2. Environmental regulations forcing specialized, region-specific formulations across the country.
This effects the $40/barrel price of crude oil how? Hell, it doesn't even effect the gas price of people outside of those regions much, and if it did, the answer would be to adopt the better standards rather than to increase the smog in the big cities.
3. OPEC fighting against us in Iraq with the one effective weapon they have.
It seems that in talks to increase production. Only Venezuela and Iran are vocally against this.
As one of the first posts in the article indicates, prices for all goods are going up because it costs more to ship them. Milk is more expensive because refueling milk tanker trucks is more expensive. Products derived from milk, like ice cream, take on the burden of the expense to ship the milk to the factory (which is passed on to the customers) and then pass on the cost of shipping THAT product to the stores' warehouses to the customers while the stores pass the cost of shipping from the warehouse to the retail stores to the customer. This is slightly multiplied by each company in the chain desiring to maintain the same relative profit margins.
I remember only a few years ago -- sometime before 2000 -- there was a summer where gas prices dipped below a dollar in my area. Gas prices are now twice that, and diesel prices are in the $1.50-1.60 range. A 50% increase in the cost of transportation hits the prices of everything hard. Oil prices have a ripple effect on the entire economy, not just the ~$20-40 you spend refilling a gas tank.
Mine was always a gzipped, uuencoded .wav file of me saying, "You really have a lot of time on your hands, don't you?"
Guardians of Order has secured the rights to publish all of Phage Press's product line. Mark McKinnon, the founder of GoO, was a regular on the Amber mailing list about the same time as I was many years ago. With Tekumel, Nobilis, and Amber, GoO is basically becoming a clearing-house for underappreciated yet brilliant games.
Oh, and Amber player automatically go on my Friends list.
Of course, Schmeiser disputes that claim on his own site, but he's hardly an impartial source. He claims that samples he had independently tested show less than 8% contamination except in one sample taken from the area where he first noticed the crop growing adjacent to the property of his neighbor that was growing the stuff. He also claims that the sample used in the trial was not clearly identifiable as his and was missing chaff unlike the material he had turned into the mill years before.
On the other hand, I would take anything off of junkscience.com with a huge grain of salt. The owner has a definite agenda and bias, and crank.net gives the site a low-level "cranky" rating instead of an "anti-crank" or even "fringe" rating.
So Monsanto used GM agricultural products to screw a farmer through the patent and legal system.
Ignoring the fact that similar "piracy" and "theft" issues may exist for future nanotechnology, the main thrust of the argument was that containment of GM crops and their polllen is a huge problem, and the legal system doesn't seem to consider contamination of crops to be damage done to the farmer but theft by the farmer. There are plants being created today that produce drugs which are not safe to enter the general food supply. It contamination issues are not taken care of with the burden resting on the creators or buyers of GM food crops instead of the victims of contamination, there could be serious consequences.
What the grandparent was no doubt referring to is that nobody has ever suffered physical harm (illness or injury) as a consequence of GM foods. I can't think of a counterexample; I'm curious if anyone knows of one...?
Sure. Roundup ready crops are a fine example of a dangerous and irresponsible use of GM crops. Essentially, glyphosate is already an environmental contaminant in the US that has received far too little attention. Monsanto's Roundup Ready Soya (RRS) promotes even more use of the chemical which Monsanto makes a fortune selling. Glyphosate is known to cause kidney and liver problems in rats and is the 3rd most common cause of pesticide-related illness in agricultural labor in California. Roundup has never killed anyone, but an increase in its use will lead to greater subtle harm to workers and US consumers. This is a direct consequence of using RRS.
So, GM food never harmed anybody?
What about the case of Monsanto vs. Schmeiser where a Canadian canola farmer's crop was contaminated by Monsanto's Round-Up Ready crop and who was subsequently sued by Monsanto for violating their patents by growing seed with their designed genes without a license. The farmer lost, but is still appealing.
Keep in mind two things. First, this case entirely derives from the fact that a GMO designed to resist excessive use of herbicides contamined a non-GMO crop. (I'm not going to even go into the merit of designed a food crop to resist the use of more of a chemical known to cause human health problems.) Second, biochem companies are right now testing GMOs that are designed to grow drugs -- crops that could also contaminate the human food supply.
The problem is not the technology. It's using the technology in an utterly irresponsible manner and then lobbying to cover up any problems that occur.
1) In America, schools are not allowed to ban students from wearing clothing that expressed political or religious beliefs -- it's specifically banned, and the ACLU has fought numerous cases to preserve that right. Here, the state cannot infringe on the right to hold and to express one's beliefs, and that includes state-sponsored schools.
2) This is the same sort of argument as saying, "A law banning all dark hair from schools is not related to any particular race: a white person with black hair has just the same problem as a black or Asian person." Discriminating equally against all religions is still religious discrimination. It's state sponsorship of atheism, and it's disrespectful to force people to act against their religious beliefs for the purpose of shielding kids from the fact that others around them might somehow be different from them.
IMHO, religion is a serious matter that the state should keep their hands off of. Children are not immune to the same spiritual concerns that adults have, and the view that religion shouldn't be allowed to "corrupt" them at an early age shows a bias towards atheism. I don't see why the state should be allowed to tamper with the religious beliefs of its citizens nor why it should shield children from the fact that there are differences between them.
Conformity is an illusion and a dangerous, polarizing ideal. Children not exposed to differing opinions tend to grow up intolerant of differences. Exposing kids to diversity and letting them make friends with diverse people raises their tolerance (or at least lets them think of more kinds of people as part of their in-group).
Religion is just one thing "making differences between children within a state school." Everything from race to economic status to the quality of parenting results in differences between children. There's no reason to hide this fact, and cultures that have prided conformity of thought in their children have produced dangerous adults. France doesn't have to look far back into Europe's past to see the devastating effects of intolerance for divergent beliefs.