Automobiles are not a necessary part of life. Ask the Europeans that constantly tell us Americans we are too enslaved to the notion that we all need our own car.
Well being European I can answer that for you. The "notion" which so seem to have missed, is that Americans are too focused on the car, without looking at other transport alternatives. Not that there should be no cars.
Hell all the best cars in the world are European so it's something we clearly know more than you about. Even in the most hippie pinko socialist parts of Europe, automobiles make life easier for the greater community, I've never seen a case in a civilised country anywhere of a gun making life easier for the average person.
Um, I hope you read past that paragraph. Please tell me you didn't just stop there?
Just for you:
"Lott claimed to have undertaken a national survey of 2,424 respondents in 1997, the results of which were the source for claims he had made beginning in 1997. However, in 2000 Lott was unable to produce the data, or any records showing that the survey had been undertaken."
Hardly what I'd call diligent.
"In 2001, Rutgers University sociology professor Ted Goertzel considered multiple regression to be not of much use in proving causal arguments in studies by Lott"
So pretty much useless...
"Lott created and used "Mary Rosh" as a sock puppet to defend his own works on Usenet and elsewhere. After investigative work by blogger Julian Sanchez, Lott admitted to use of the Mary Rosh persona.Sanchez also pointed out that Lott, posing as Rosh, not only praised his own academic writing, but also called himself "the best professor I ever had"."
And this is known as lying. Great hero you have for your cause...
Same. But cap guns, water pistols, cowboys and Indians are all a little different for realistic graphic violence of today's video games.
I have no problem once they're teenagers, but just like with sex, kids need to be allowed to be kids, at least until high school.
Relatively speaking I meant. If I'm paying $1500/year for coal, but can get Solar for much less than that, then relatively speaking, solar power is free...
If coal based grid power costs me $1500/year, and Solar cost me $3000 for approx 20 years use then it is effectively free (in a relative sense - as in it costs no more than what I'm already paying).
It is against the law pretty much everywhere. However that law is enforced pretty much nowhere. It is just simply too difficult to enforce it,
Actually it's trivial to catch a lot of people doing this, I ride a motorbike and zip through traffic everyday and get up and close to drivers as I pass them (all crawling along at 20km/h). A fair few of them are using their phones, so all it would take is a fleet of bike cops, preferably undercover, on smaller bikes like scooters for maximum maneuverability, with cameras on the bike and helmet for collecting evidence. All the cop has to do is zip through traffic, while another is parked up the road with a video feed and pull all the offenders over.
Do this for a few weeks, rinse and repeat randomly ever couple of months and see how it changes mobile phone use.
Most traffic issues are behaviour based which can be fixed by closer monitoring of driver behaviour. Unfortunately our police depts only seem interested in easy catches such as speeding and drink driving.
If gun ownership were more tightly controlled, the 60,000 to 2,500,000 annual incidents of firearms self-defense (yes, huge error bars) would be reduced -- more people would be murdered, raped, and robbed from. Lives would be lost.
Just like in all those countries that do already have tighter controls you mean? Oh wait...
Yes, we have more violence than other wealthy nations. We also have more of a problem with an unaddressed legacy of slavery and segregation, ongoing racism, ongoing economic injustice, and lack of access to useful mental health care than those nations do. Those factors have far more to do with our violence problem than access to firearms does.
I agree with you here. The problem is not just lots of guns, but all those guns do contribute. Merely banning guns won't solve anything, but weapon control is part of the puzzle. I've never heard of a strong social community that also involved high weapon ownership. Something about owning a weapon for protection (as opposed to say hunting) naturally implies fear, which implies something in your society is broken. The countries I've lived in I've never had that feeling. But every one of those had strong universal health and education systems, so maybe American could start there.
More people are killed by the freaking morons that drive cars every month than gun violence. yet I dont see any of these bleeding heart idiots clamoring for tougher drivers license restrictions.
Maybe you should get out more. There's been more laws devoted to control and regulation of the automotive industry than any other in human civilisation. In fact in most law enforcement departments, the branch dedicated is traffic control is the largest. So yeah, maybe it's just you....
The difference of course is that construction and automobiles are a necessary part of life so accept the risks that come with their use. But because of those risks, we also happily accept controls and regulations to assist minimise the dangers.
As with every other country in the world, weapons are dangerous and are therefore controlled and regulated to minimise the damage done. Why is this such a hard concept for Americans to understand?
in actually doing the due diligence of getting as much data as possible and explaining both his analytical methods and any potential weaknesses they might have.
Lies. Has has be proven to make up data and conceals data that doesn't fit his ideology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
Go back to Creationist land where your brand of "science" means something...
I can't see how this would be that hard, especially when you consider DOD projects are used to costing tens of billions and lasting for decades (Think JSF, Nuke sub etc) Compared to those budgets and time frames, a big data store of most of everything online would be relatively trivial. Google and Facebook are probably already doing something similar.
Blank spots stay blank. Example - Android phones have had NFC since Gingerbread, so if two operatives want to exchange data (photos of a target, NSA documents, etc), they can do it in person just by using Android Beam or Bump-to-Exchange, without saying a word to each other, just standing in line to pay for a newspaper.
\
Or you can, you know, just swap a paper envelope full of printed documents. This solution to this problem has already be in use for centuries...
I'm no expert on media, but have found BBC(UK), NPR(US), ABC (Australia), and Al Jazeera(Qatar) to be up there in terms of the best quality.
There's also just switching off. Really, since when has listening to the news ever helped anyway? In fact there's a lot of evidence that it is contributing to the problem. BE AFRAID!!!!
Whenever I go on holiday I switch off and don't miss it. But for some reason I feel compelled to switch back on as if I'm somehow missing out on something. It's a bit like the Facebook effect, I hate FB but always seem to find myself scrolling through pages of food and baby photos. There must be some intrinsic human fear of missing out that these companies exploit as their business model.
The batteries in those cars are the same as the ones in the $100 phones and Laptops. And I'm pretty sure the market for phones is a lot bigger than the market for Tesla cars.
Australia was too until the conservatives got into power and decided the Coal barons might lose too much money.
The Average house here averages about 20kwh/day give or take, which would be covered by a 3kw system. These retail for about $3k which pays itself off in less than 3 years.
So some simple maths means that if every domestic house installed a 3kw system, and govt funded a scheme to distribute that energy where it's needed, then we can all live on free energy (ie at home at least).
Obviously there's more to it than that (baseloading, time of usage etc), but it passes the back of the napkin test, and the free energy is there to be taken. The only issue now it purely political.
Your definition of success is clearly different from mine, not every business need profits of hundreds of million of dollars to be successful. And I'm not pretending it will be as successful as Call of Duty. But there is a market for it, just enough for someone somewhere to make some money. Maybe not enough to retire but since when should that be the only motivation for creating a computer game?
You're just not using your imagination. Sure it won't appeal to the Michael Bay market, but Wes Anderson makes profitable movies too.
As I commented in another reply, a game that involves competing for finding and collecting some sort of resource (Sonic style coin collecting, with 'weapons' being shrink ray, freeze rays, blinding rays etc could easily come up with a formula that is fun and gets the same feel of mayhem without the murder.
Exactly. Instead of a gun that kills, you could have a special effect weapon, ie a slow beam, a shrink beam, a blinding beam, a transport to somewhere useless beam. Have a range of special effects weapons with different effects with a bit of balance and humour and let the fun commence. The aim of the game could be to find and collect things and by shooting your opposition you retard their ability to collect. All the fun of a FPS without the murder.
Slashdot Mirror
That news story was by the leading CEO of 2D games. Now you know how the world works...
Slashdot needs to close comments as soon as things like this are identified. No further comment needed.
Segway?
Flying Car?
It doesn't. This is why it's called marketing and not science.
Automobiles are not a necessary part of life. Ask the Europeans that constantly tell us Americans we are too enslaved to the notion that we all need our own car.
Well being European I can answer that for you. The "notion" which so seem to have missed, is that Americans are too focused on the car, without looking at other transport alternatives. Not that there should be no cars.
Hell all the best cars in the world are European so it's something we clearly know more than you about. Even in the most hippie pinko socialist parts of Europe, automobiles make life easier for the greater community, I've never seen a case in a civilised country anywhere of a gun making life easier for the average person.
They are a convenience, bordering on a luxury.
Just like running water right?
Um, I hope you read past that paragraph. Please tell me you didn't just stop there?
Just for you:
"Lott claimed to have undertaken a national survey of 2,424 respondents in 1997, the results of which were the source for claims he had made beginning in 1997. However, in 2000 Lott was unable to produce the data, or any records showing that the survey had been undertaken."
Hardly what I'd call diligent.
"In 2001, Rutgers University sociology professor Ted Goertzel considered multiple regression to be not of much use in proving causal arguments in studies by Lott"
So pretty much useless...
"Lott created and used "Mary Rosh" as a sock puppet to defend his own works on Usenet and elsewhere. After investigative work by blogger Julian Sanchez, Lott admitted to use of the Mary Rosh persona.Sanchez also pointed out that Lott, posing as Rosh, not only praised his own academic writing, but also called himself "the best professor I ever had"."
And this is known as lying. Great hero you have for your cause...
Same. But cap guns, water pistols, cowboys and Indians are all a little different for realistic graphic violence of today's video games. I have no problem once they're teenagers, but just like with sex, kids need to be allowed to be kids, at least until high school.
Relatively speaking I meant. If I'm paying $1500/year for coal, but can get Solar for much less than that, then relatively speaking, solar power is free...
If coal based grid power costs me $1500/year, and Solar cost me $3000 for approx 20 years use then it is effectively free (in a relative sense - as in it costs no more than what I'm already paying).
It is against the law pretty much everywhere. However that law is enforced pretty much nowhere. It is just simply too difficult to enforce it,
Actually it's trivial to catch a lot of people doing this, I ride a motorbike and zip through traffic everyday and get up and close to drivers as I pass them (all crawling along at 20km/h). A fair few of them are using their phones, so all it would take is a fleet of bike cops, preferably undercover, on smaller bikes like scooters for maximum maneuverability, with cameras on the bike and helmet for collecting evidence. All the cop has to do is zip through traffic, while another is parked up the road with a video feed and pull all the offenders over. Do this for a few weeks, rinse and repeat randomly ever couple of months and see how it changes mobile phone use. Most traffic issues are behaviour based which can be fixed by closer monitoring of driver behaviour. Unfortunately our police depts only seem interested in easy catches such as speeding and drink driving.
If gun ownership were more tightly controlled, the 60,000 to 2,500,000 annual incidents of firearms self-defense (yes, huge error bars) would be reduced -- more people would be murdered, raped, and robbed from. Lives would be lost. Just like in all those countries that do already have tighter controls you mean? Oh wait...
Yes, we have more violence than other wealthy nations. We also have more of a problem with an unaddressed legacy of slavery and segregation, ongoing racism, ongoing economic injustice, and lack of access to useful mental health care than those nations do. Those factors have far more to do with our violence problem than access to firearms does.
I agree with you here. The problem is not just lots of guns, but all those guns do contribute. Merely banning guns won't solve anything, but weapon control is part of the puzzle. I've never heard of a strong social community that also involved high weapon ownership. Something about owning a weapon for protection (as opposed to say hunting) naturally implies fear, which implies something in your society is broken. The countries I've lived in I've never had that feeling. But every one of those had strong universal health and education systems, so maybe American could start there.
More people are killed by the freaking morons that drive cars every month than gun violence. yet I dont see any of these bleeding heart idiots clamoring for tougher drivers license restrictions.
Maybe you should get out more. There's been more laws devoted to control and regulation of the automotive industry than any other in human civilisation. In fact in most law enforcement departments, the branch dedicated is traffic control is the largest. So yeah, maybe it's just you....
The difference of course is that construction and automobiles are a necessary part of life so accept the risks that come with their use. But because of those risks, we also happily accept controls and regulations to assist minimise the dangers. As with every other country in the world, weapons are dangerous and are therefore controlled and regulated to minimise the damage done. Why is this such a hard concept for Americans to understand?
in actually doing the due diligence of getting as much data as possible and explaining both his analytical methods and any potential weaknesses they might have.
Lies. Has has be proven to make up data and conceals data that doesn't fit his ideology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... Go back to Creationist land where your brand of "science" means something...
Presumably that's because stupid people are more willing than other market segments to pay to repair or replace broken items.
FTFY
I can't see how this would be that hard, especially when you consider DOD projects are used to costing tens of billions and lasting for decades (Think JSF, Nuke sub etc) Compared to those budgets and time frames, a big data store of most of everything online would be relatively trivial. Google and Facebook are probably already doing something similar.
Blank spots stay blank. Example - Android phones have had NFC since Gingerbread, so if two operatives want to exchange data (photos of a target, NSA documents, etc), they can do it in person just by using Android Beam or Bump-to-Exchange, without saying a word to each other, just standing in line to pay for a newspaper.
\ Or you can, you know, just swap a paper envelope full of printed documents. This solution to this problem has already be in use for centuries...
I'm no expert on media, but have found BBC(UK), NPR(US), ABC (Australia), and Al Jazeera(Qatar) to be up there in terms of the best quality. There's also just switching off. Really, since when has listening to the news ever helped anyway? In fact there's a lot of evidence that it is contributing to the problem. BE AFRAID!!!!
Whenever I go on holiday I switch off and don't miss it. But for some reason I feel compelled to switch back on as if I'm somehow missing out on something. It's a bit like the Facebook effect, I hate FB but always seem to find myself scrolling through pages of food and baby photos. There must be some intrinsic human fear of missing out that these companies exploit as their business model.
The batteries in those cars are the same as the ones in the $100 phones and Laptops. And I'm pretty sure the market for phones is a lot bigger than the market for Tesla cars.
Australia was too until the conservatives got into power and decided the Coal barons might lose too much money. The Average house here averages about 20kwh/day give or take, which would be covered by a 3kw system. These retail for about $3k which pays itself off in less than 3 years.
So some simple maths means that if every domestic house installed a 3kw system, and govt funded a scheme to distribute that energy where it's needed, then we can all live on free energy (ie at home at least).
Obviously there's more to it than that (baseloading, time of usage etc), but it passes the back of the napkin test, and the free energy is there to be taken. The only issue now it purely political.
Your definition of success is clearly different from mine, not every business need profits of hundreds of million of dollars to be successful. And I'm not pretending it will be as successful as Call of Duty. But there is a market for it, just enough for someone somewhere to make some money. Maybe not enough to retire but since when should that be the only motivation for creating a computer game?
You're just not using your imagination. Sure it won't appeal to the Michael Bay market, but Wes Anderson makes profitable movies too. As I commented in another reply, a game that involves competing for finding and collecting some sort of resource (Sonic style coin collecting, with 'weapons' being shrink ray, freeze rays, blinding rays etc could easily come up with a formula that is fun and gets the same feel of mayhem without the murder.
So do I, but I don't want my kids exposed to that until they are teenagers. And Nerf Arena sucked arse...
Exactly. Instead of a gun that kills, you could have a special effect weapon, ie a slow beam, a shrink beam, a blinding beam, a transport to somewhere useless beam. Have a range of special effects weapons with different effects with a bit of balance and humour and let the fun commence. The aim of the game could be to find and collect things and by shooting your opposition you retard their ability to collect. All the fun of a FPS without the murder.
I have it and it sucks, but it was the best non violent shooter I could find...