she would be well and truly fucked because apparently all cops are stupid idiots who just go "the computer says it was you, so we're not even going to bother asking you that question you seen on TV - you know, the one going 'where were you on the night of', or even gather evidence for a solid care or present that evidence to a judge - we're just going to lock you up, for life, right away".
oh wait. that's not how that stuff happens in any reasonable nation.
In fact.. -because- that's NOT how that stuff happens is that they realized there's gotta be something going on with the swabs themselves.. as opposed to, say, the DNA lab handling them. Or that the same woman really -was- involved in the actual crimes themselves.
I know it's popular to say that DNA evidence is being used to lock people up left and right, but very few cases -hinge- on that DNA evidence (some exceptions are e.g. rape cases where DNA from a sperm sample collected is pretty strong evidence that moves the question of "did the woman even have sex with that man?" to "was the sex that she had with that man a case of sexual violation?")
That's not to say that I'm in favor of a building a DNA database with everybody's samples in them - but to make it seem like it will auto-jail people is naive in all but the strangest nations where you probably wouldn't get much of a due process regardless of DNA tests being involved or not.
I think the key phrase here is.. "You got my money - leave me alone!"
Perhaps you shouldn't give your money to those you know will -not- leave you alone.
I know, lesser of a bunch of evils and all that, but there -are- games that don't require you to connect to the internet, that you can copy around all you want and that do, at most, just bug you for some serial number on install/first run.
Basically my reply asks this question: - Isn't buying a violent game entirely your own choice?
And posits the following: - If you buy a game that is based on some form of violence, then you shouldn't be surprised to find violence.
I omitted a question - though I swear I did write it, must have gotten lost in deleting a part of my post to concatenate things a bit: - What games have you played where you have found the violence 'too much' for your taste?
His post doesn't already address these issues.
He states that people who want to shoot pixels should be allowed to do so and the gov't should stay out of it. That doesn't say anything about how he believes that developers could do with adding a little less violence because he doesn't like it very much in "his games". Hence the question that I omitted.
It also doesn't say anything about whether or not it is one's own free choice to decide on a game, or whether violence is something that one should expect in a 'shooter'... and if one doesn't like violence, thus shouldn't buy a 'shooter' game.
Thanks for asking, though - hopefully I've clarified my post and hopefully GP will be able to reply better:)
Huh... well that's not how 'our' traffic light cameras work. They basically trigger on the conditions that.. 1. the light -is- red and 2. somebody is actually crossing something like 2 meters past the hold line -while- that light is red.
You could still argue the case that you crossed it because an 18 wheeler was coming up behind you and didn't seem to be slowing down at all, or that you were getting out of the way of an ambulance.. the latter would have records, the former not so much. But it's not quite as bad as the case you present where you actually crossed during a green and got snapped while stuck on the intersection.
Though if you're stuck on an intersection, perhaps that photo is the least of your problems... what, with traffic about to come at you from one of the other directions and all.
I do absolutely agree that ultimately, it's the person wielding the tool that is to blame.. not the tool, not any external influences or whatever - just the person. But I think it's naive to think the tool used for the murder doesn't matter at all. Yes, there's killings with knives now.. as there always has been since knives were invented, I'd imagine. Personally I don't see anything wrong with banning people from walking around with machetes clung to their chest, but that's me. However, even with those machetes - they're going to have to come up close to their victims to actually make a kill. Not so with a gun (or crossbow, bow & arrow, or even a well-designed slingshot). Any time guns are defended by means of "look - people are still killing each other anyway, so why not just allow guns?", you'll probably see a "so everybody should just get nukes".. I'll not put it quite so extreme, but the argument holds. The reason for banning guns is the idea that -less- people get killed on the whole than if you were to allow guns. You can agree or disagree with that notion, but whether it is actually true or not is something that you would only be able to find out by actually implementing/removing such a ban in the locale of interest (e.g. Australia 'did it' for automatic rifles and a few lower classes, but that's Australia which is culturally very different from the UK). And the problem in the case of the UK is that currently they -are- banned. They're not super-difficult to get, but difficult enough that Joe Blow can't just pick one up at random. If you make them legal as some sort of test, everybody has them, and turns out more people -do- get killed.. how are you going to get rid of the guns again? It was monstrous effort and not even 100% successful in Australia.. I can't imagine it ever working in the UK no matter how much surveillance they've got going on.
Yes, but unlike a knife - unless the guy had some mad ninja skills or something - you don't really get a whole lot of time to rush toward the assailant and e.g. tackle them to the floor.
If you have a knife, you barge into a classroom and.. then what? You go for the person closest to you... STAB, in the jugular.. NEXT! STAB! in the chest if you're lucky.. NE..whoops.. in the half a minute it took you to do that, the rest of the class had a chance to rush toward you, pushed you to the ground, and only if you're lucky left you alive.
If you have a gun, however, you barge into the classroom and.. you don't move. You just aim *BANG*, aim again, half a second later, *BANG*. The classroom is already scared shitless at this point but some dude's being a hero and makes a move *BANG!* not anymore.
So for you to kinda shove part of the responsibility to the 'bystanders' - who were victims just as much, I'd say, except that they lived - is woefully negligent of how these things happen.
Note that I don't really mean to single out 'the gun'; anytime the assailing party has the upper hand -by far-, bystanders are unlikely to try anything. Just see the whole biker thing in that Australian airport; there the upper hand was caused by the fact that it was a group of rather muscular burly men that probably wouldn't have any qualms bating the living daylights out of some little old lady that would 'tut tut' them.
You can call that cowardice, I can call that 'shock' or something... whatever it is.. it simply is.. and it's never an active party to killings.
Of course.. you probably meant "but if ALL of them had guns, they could've shot him!".. sure.. if they're fast enough to grab their gun before he offs vics 2 and 3, probably more. On the other hand.. more of these troubled teens would suddenly have guns readily at their disposal.
"I would personally appreciate if computer game makers could cut down on the violence a little, I don't like it very much in my games."
Isn't it entirely your choice to acquire such a game, though? Perhaps you didn't know ahead of time that the game would be quite so violent - in which case.. yeah, that happens. Sometimes I don't know ahead of time that a game is going to suck.. even if I enjoyed the demo very much. But there are a plethora of games out there that have very mild violence or even no violence at all. They're not likely to be shooters - or if they are 'shooters' you're going to be shooting with something rather abstract (or not-so-abstract, like a paintball game) - so if you like shooters.. I think 'violence' rather comes with the territory.
well, to stick with the car analogy.. if you -are- gonna head out with your head still in a state of Carmageddon, at least it'd be good if you didn't have an M1A2 Abrams conveniently parked right outside your door.
You'd have to offset how many people were saved by the police using their gun (either entirely passively by would-be perps knowing that the cops carry guns, or actively by the police actually shooting the guns as a warning or to incapacitate), by how many people were actually killed by the police using their guns or perps getting a hold of a cop's gun and using it.
Of course it's impossible to gauge that accurately - how convenient for your statement.
"Why would you want these shutter speeds?" Because I do. Why should I be disallowed from having them just because a photography buff said 640k is en.. 1/750 and 1/1000 is enough for anyone? More succinctly - the dynamic range of a sensor is limited. 10bit, 12bit if you're lucky. If I can fit the range I want within that limited space as best as possible, and not as best as I'm allowed to, I would like to do so.
"Read about Program mode in your manual. It sets aperture and shutter speed automatically and lets you adjust the ratio." No, most dSLRs do not let you pick the ratio. That's the whole point.. Aperture priority mode - you pick the aperture, the camera picks the shutter time for a given EV Shutter priority mode - you pick the shutter, the camera picks the aperture for a given EV Program priority mode - you only pick the EV, the camera automatically adjusts aperture and shutter. The problem is that most often, you don't get to dictate -how- it picks those. Some cameras first close down the aperture before even touching the aperture, or the other way around, or they do something inbetween. Whatever way it does it, odds are it doesn't do it in exactly the way you'd want it to. If your camera can - great:)
"I find with these controls that once set you can generally just leave them that way as long as you don't change location" Or subject. For example, say you're out on a portrait shoot.. that's one set of settings. You'll "leave them that way" until your shoot at some factory. But wait, what's that!? Holy crap is that tiny bird trying to lift a carp out of the water? *point camera* aw crap! zoom, zoom, zoom, focus, focus, change shutter, shit whitebalance is still off, click, menu, dropdown, dial dial dial, yes, that one, aim camera again, aaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! Or you'd simply change to what -USED- to be aperture priority mode, but you re-programmed it to do all of the above and called it "my awesome nature photography mode".
CHDK, which others have mentioned (thanks, guys!), shows what is already possible if you at least get -some- access.. now imagine full access. It might not be for everyone - it might not be for traditional photographers, or even the occasional shutterfly.. but there's a market for it.. even if that market were just me;)
I so *wish* I was kidding. I hate the taste of most fizzy drinks in the U.S. everything's got 'high fructose corn syrup' in it. Disguise it as you might try, there's that hint of raw corn (grab some raw corn on the cob, squish the juice out of some of the corns, taste.. that's what it tastes like) that ruins the drink for me. I actually -prefer- the 'soda fountain' drinks over bottled/canned drinks for that reason - they seem to use different sweeteners.
Maybe I'd get used to it over time, but I'd rather not.. that's like saying I should just get used to the fact that water there tastes like chlorine (unless you install a brita filter - in which case, why bother chlorinating the water to begin with? *sigh*)
I like corn.. cooked, on the cob, slab of bread with butter on it, some salt - aw yeah, good eats. But please keep it the heck out of my drinks, candies, etc. But alas, all that subsidized corn has gotta go *somewhere*.
Maybe they should figure out a way to grow sesame seed instead. Should make McDonald's, Burger King, etc. happy if they could get that cheaper domestically than having to ship it over from China/India/etc. ( as long as they don't end up putting high fructose sesame seed oil in my drinks, that is )
What I mean isn't so much hardware as firmware, by the way... basically you can deconstruct a cameras into 4 pieces.. 1. Lens. 2. Sensor 3. Body 4. PU+Firmware
dSLRs already have interchangeable lenses.. although you can't put a canon mount one on a nikon mount one, for various reason beyond the "we like them to be exclusive, thus causing lock-in, because nobody is going to switch to Nikon after buying $3,000 in Canon mount lenses" crap...
The sensor you currently can't easily exchange.. if you tried, most like you'll have destroyed your focus.
The body is what it is, unless you want to take a hacksaw to it.
Leaves the firmware. There is so much room for customizability in firmware that I don't even know where to begin with that. I'll just point to DD-WRT and its ilk as great examples of what can be done when a device can be completely customized in terms of internal behavior. No longer would I be limited by whatever shutter time presets are in the firmware.. if it offers nothing inbetween 1/750 and 1/1000, I'll just load firmware that gives me 1/800, 1/850, 1/900 and 1/950 as well. If the auto exposure mode currently favors closing the aperture over shortening the exposure time, and I want it the other way around, I would no longer be SOL - I'd just load the firmware that gives me that. If I want to reprogram the various modes on the dial so that I can quickly switch between 3 common setups I use so that I no longer have to enter manual mode and adjust 3-4 options myself (aperture, shutter time, ISO, white balance), then I -could-.
But, again, it'd make a whole range of cameras obsolete and makes people less likely to buy a future model if their current model can already do it with a firmware change... so, NEVER gonna happen. Not from the big names anyway.
It's a bit of a not-so-well-defined term, really, but within the context of current generation renderers, global illumination involves calculating not just direct lighting (i.e. a spot lighting a wall), but also diffuse indirect lighting (the light hitting the wall (dimly) illuminating the rest of the room) and even specular indirect lighting (such as caustics - like the light patterns you see in pools).
You mention that things have 'moved on' from ray tracing to GI - but keep in mind that most GI methods (and certainly QMC sampling) -are- largely based on ray tracing. When people say 'ray tracing', we're not just talking about chrome spheres or perfect glass..glasses. It's the fundamental concept of 'tracing a ray' in the scene - and that fundamental concept applies not just to direct surface (illumination) calculations and reflections/refractions, but also to fuzzy reflections/refractions, area-sampled shadows, area lighting, sky/dome lighting, global illumination, sub-surface scattering, photon mapping (the photon tracing stage, that is) and so forth and so on.
Can you honestly call it the same show with the giant gaps in execution?
StarGate SG-1 rightfully was the "longest-running science fiction show (consecutive)". It didn't need to go off-screen repeatedly only for somebody to say "wouldn't it be fun if we resurrected...?", and then claim they were really just continuing the same show.
Nothing against Dr. Who, but would anybody in their right mind suggest that Knight Rider is now in its umpteenth year, just because it's the same general concept and has the same title? Pshaw, I say.
Similarly, I don't count Continuum or The Ark of Truth as part of the SG-1 -series-.. they're continuations of the storyline, but they're certainly not part of the same show.
And that's a good place to move it because science can give pretty good answers to that.
Yet you don't also address my statement regarding FAS. If they can give pretty good answers, then I'd like to see them.
Science cannot give a precise point in time when a person begins because there isn't one.
I never asked them to give the point at which life, or a person if you so prefer, begins. All I'm saying is that when they themselves -set- such a point, no matter how arbitrary, it at least be an exact point.
I.e. when is a meal finished? The current scientific answer would be "when sufficient food has been eaten". That's great, but how much is that? Is it 1 bite? Is it when the plate is completely empty? What if there's one bite left, out of a total of a 50? Now if science said "A meal is eaten when 85% or more by volume has been consumed", then that is exact, and that is something laws, regulations, etc. can be formed around. People may disagree and say it should be 80% or 95% or whatever, but then people disagree with maximum speeds on roads.. that hasn't stopped laws from being formed around exact data there either.
No, brain capability is a pretty poor metric, short of 'brain dead', clearly.
hop to it, Nintendo! Clearly the Wii is *not* a target of these ads as the Wii is probably the top-most incentive to get -some- exercise in since.. well I'm not sure -what- in the last 20 years (probably before, but I'm not that old) has inspired people to exercise, despite countless 'government' campaigns to try and achieve exactly that.
Actually, I suppose there was that short-lived Dance Dance Revolution fad...
"Until they get a developed human brain" But then you just move the whole issue of "where does life begin" to "when is a human brain 'developed'"?
E.g. the brains of children born under Fetal Alcohol Syndrome are generally regarded as 'underdeveloped'. Are they then not alive?
I'm not a pro-lifer trying to split hairs, but I do think that any definition of "Life begins at..." needs to set -very- exact parameters and "developed brain" is not very exact.
Hate to break it to you, but GP (LordKazan) did say the following:
it's not a discrete life until it can survive outside of its host (mother) without teh aid of modern medical technology.
(emphasis mine)
His statement only refers to the possibility of survival outside of its host without the aid of (modern) technology. A healthy child carried full term -can- survive once born. Sure, if you then leave them in a trash bin, they're likely to die, but if taken proper care for, it should grow up quite nicely.. whether that be in the care of the biological mother or another person. A child brought into the world after only the first trimester, however, simply stands no chance whatsoever.. not even -with- current technology, I reckon. Ergo, that would not be discrete life.
He also mentions 'until'. So to some of the below replies - no, his statement has no bearing on those who have -already- been quite capable of surviving.
I agree with you that the term 'parasite' can be taken quite broadly (as per another replyer below, one might argue that embryonic stem cell researchers taking government funds are 'parasites' of society), and thus disagree with the use of this term by LordKazan. His main point, however, stands... he believes that life only begins IF and when the child would reasonably be capable of survival and brought into the world, under natural circumstances. It's not what I, personally, believe (I do think that technological advances stretch where the definition of 'life' begins, although I wouldn't go so far as believing that any fertilized egg fits the definition of life if scientists develop an artificial womb at some point; where I would draw the line? No idea.), but I respect what he believes and don't think his opinion deserves being twisted around to fit situations he clearly did not intend for his opinion to be applied to.
''However, are we REALLY so drunk on "stimulus" spending for everything under the sun these days, that refusing to subsidize a particular item means that item is actively "restricted"?''
"A particular item", no... "a whole group of research", uhm.. yes?
This isn't a particular researcher going to their fund creditor and asking if they can allocate government funds for them and getting denied... this is -all such research- getting denied by decree of the administration. That's not always a bad thing - I'm sure they've got a 'ban' on research that uses raping young girls as a methodology as well - but usually that comes with arguments (i.e. raping young girls is illegal, therefore your research method would be illegal, and therefore we cannot fund it).. the arguments - if any - against embryonic stem cell research are weak at best.
The stem cell 'ban' has great parallels with the (foreign) abortion funding ban. No U.S. company would receive -any- government funding, for any purpose whatsoever, if that company was even remotely involved in 'promoting' abortion in foreign countries / on international waters. This included abortions offered to rape victims, etc. Yes, I'm pulling the rape card; take the case of that 9-year old girl in Brazil who was abused and had the twin embryos aborted as her own life would be in danger, etc. etc. No U.S. company would be allowed to help fund that abortion, post-abortion councelling, etc. without risking losing any government funding, period.
If you don't think that's 'restricting' because.. hey, they company could just get private funding for the term in which they would be prohibited from government funding.. then feel free to do so, and I'll tell you that you can go to your bathroom only on the condition that you then give up on having sex. You're more than welcome to then use the bathroom at your neighbor's or something, I'm not restricting you in any way, nosiree. Yes, imho, it really *is* that ridiculous.
Isn't there a solution proposed in many legal systems? Put oversimplified: "You cannot profit from the crime you committed"?
I.e. they would have to give back* the 1.8 million pounds PLUS the 5 thousand pound fine. More than likely they don't have that 1.8 million laying around somewhere, having spent much of it in time, so that'll be fun to pay back... that 5 thousand would look rather trivial in comparison. This extends to doing interviews, selling movie rights, etc. - all of it would go back into paying off that 1.8 million (and 5k in change).
* the only problem in these types of cases is.. who do you give it back to? certainly not to the companies who purchased that data. recompense those affected? how to determine if they -were- in fact affected? etc.
more or less clever than detecting traffic speeds (and thus jams) by tracking cellphone signals from the stations - as is already used / in trials?
Knowing that -a- train passed by point X at time Y is great... knowing -which- train that is, however, is a lot more important.
In addition, that only gives you the realtime information... if I want to travel tomorrow, how's the situation -right now- going to help me? I'd still want to be able to look at the scheduled time table - no matter how far off that may be from tomorrow's actual situation - so I can at least plan ahead. I can then use the realtime information -tomorrow- to see if the train's actually going to be on time or whether I can stay a bit longer and say my goodbyes to my daughter 5, 10 minutes later.
I think those legal sources do exist... the problem is the qualifications needed to get them...
e.g. - pay a huge chunk of money - be a broadcaster or - publish a TV magazine
So the barrier to entry is high, but it's not impossible to get this data legally.
The above is based on The Netherlands, however, and on relatively recent news of a major newspaper publisher possibly getting TV timetable information now that a subsidiary of theirs -may- enter the public broadcasting network (and is thus entitled to that information).
Slashdot Mirror
she would be well and truly fucked because apparently all cops are stupid idiots who just go "the computer says it was you, so we're not even going to bother asking you that question you seen on TV - you know, the one going 'where were you on the night of', or even gather evidence for a solid care or present that evidence to a judge - we're just going to lock you up, for life, right away".
oh wait. that's not how that stuff happens in any reasonable nation.
In fact.. -because- that's NOT how that stuff happens is that they realized there's gotta be something going on with the swabs themselves.. as opposed to, say, the DNA lab handling them. Or that the same woman really -was- involved in the actual crimes themselves.
I know it's popular to say that DNA evidence is being used to lock people up left and right, but very few cases -hinge- on that DNA evidence (some exceptions are e.g. rape cases where DNA from a sperm sample collected is pretty strong evidence that moves the question of "did the woman even have sex with that man?" to "was the sex that she had with that man a case of sexual violation?")
That's not to say that I'm in favor of a building a DNA database with everybody's samples in them - but to make it seem like it will auto-jail people is naive in all but the strangest nations where you probably wouldn't get much of a due process regardless of DNA tests being involved or not.
I think the key phrase here is.. "You got my money - leave me alone!"
Perhaps you shouldn't give your money to those you know will -not- leave you alone.
I know, lesser of a bunch of evils and all that, but there -are- games that don't require you to connect to the internet, that you can copy around all you want and that do, at most, just bug you for some serial number on install/first run.
Yes I did. Why do you ask?
Basically my reply asks this question:
- Isn't buying a violent game entirely your own choice?
And posits the following:
- If you buy a game that is based on some form of violence, then you shouldn't be surprised to find violence.
I omitted a question - though I swear I did write it, must have gotten lost in deleting a part of my post to concatenate things a bit:
- What games have you played where you have found the violence 'too much' for your taste?
His post doesn't already address these issues.
He states that people who want to shoot pixels should be allowed to do so and the gov't should stay out of it. That doesn't say anything about how he believes that developers could do with adding a little less violence because he doesn't like it very much in "his games". Hence the question that I omitted.
It also doesn't say anything about whether or not it is one's own free choice to decide on a game, or whether violence is something that one should expect in a 'shooter'... and if one doesn't like violence, thus shouldn't buy a 'shooter' game.
Thanks for asking, though - hopefully I've clarified my post and hopefully GP will be able to reply better :)
Huh... well that's not how 'our' traffic light cameras work. They basically trigger on the conditions that..
1. the light -is- red
and
2. somebody is actually crossing something like 2 meters past the hold line -while- that light is red.
You could still argue the case that you crossed it because an 18 wheeler was coming up behind you and didn't seem to be slowing down at all, or that you were getting out of the way of an ambulance.. the latter would have records, the former not so much. But it's not quite as bad as the case you present where you actually crossed during a green and got snapped while stuck on the intersection.
Though if you're stuck on an intersection, perhaps that photo is the least of your problems... what, with traffic about to come at you from one of the other directions and all.
I do absolutely agree that ultimately, it's the person wielding the tool that is to blame.. not the tool, not any external influences or whatever - just the person. But I think it's naive to think the tool used for the murder doesn't matter at all. Yes, there's killings with knives now.. as there always has been since knives were invented, I'd imagine. Personally I don't see anything wrong with banning people from walking around with machetes clung to their chest, but that's me. However, even with those machetes - they're going to have to come up close to their victims to actually make a kill. Not so with a gun (or crossbow, bow & arrow, or even a well-designed slingshot).
Any time guns are defended by means of "look - people are still killing each other anyway, so why not just allow guns?", you'll probably see a "so everybody should just get nukes".. I'll not put it quite so extreme, but the argument holds. The reason for banning guns is the idea that -less- people get killed on the whole than if you were to allow guns. You can agree or disagree with that notion, but whether it is actually true or not is something that you would only be able to find out by actually implementing/removing such a ban in the locale of interest (e.g. Australia 'did it' for automatic rifles and a few lower classes, but that's Australia which is culturally very different from the UK). And the problem in the case of the UK is that currently they -are- banned. They're not super-difficult to get, but difficult enough that Joe Blow can't just pick one up at random. If you make them legal as some sort of test, everybody has them, and turns out more people -do- get killed.. how are you going to get rid of the guns again? It was monstrous effort and not even 100% successful in Australia.. I can't imagine it ever working in the UK no matter how much surveillance they've got going on.
Yes, but unlike a knife - unless the guy had some mad ninja skills or something - you don't really get a whole lot of time to rush toward the assailant and e.g. tackle them to the floor.
If you have a knife, you barge into a classroom and.. then what? You go for the person closest to you... STAB, in the jugular.. NEXT! STAB! in the chest if you're lucky.. NE..whoops.. in the half a minute it took you to do that, the rest of the class had a chance to rush toward you, pushed you to the ground, and only if you're lucky left you alive.
If you have a gun, however, you barge into the classroom and.. you don't move. You just aim *BANG*, aim again, half a second later, *BANG*. The classroom is already scared shitless at this point but some dude's being a hero and makes a move *BANG!* not anymore.
So for you to kinda shove part of the responsibility to the 'bystanders' - who were victims just as much, I'd say, except that they lived - is woefully negligent of how these things happen.
Note that I don't really mean to single out 'the gun'; anytime the assailing party has the upper hand -by far-, bystanders are unlikely to try anything. Just see the whole biker thing in that Australian airport; there the upper hand was caused by the fact that it was a group of rather muscular burly men that probably wouldn't have any qualms bating the living daylights out of some little old lady that would 'tut tut' them.
You can call that cowardice, I can call that 'shock' or something... whatever it is.. it simply is.. and it's never an active party to killings.
Of course.. you probably meant "but if ALL of them had guns, they could've shot him!".. sure.. if they're fast enough to grab their gun before he offs vics 2 and 3, probably more. On the other hand.. more of these troubled teens would suddenly have guns readily at their disposal.
"I would personally appreciate if computer game makers could cut down on the violence a little, I don't like it very much in my games."
Isn't it entirely your choice to acquire such a game, though? Perhaps you didn't know ahead of time that the game would be quite so violent - in which case.. yeah, that happens. Sometimes I don't know ahead of time that a game is going to suck.. even if I enjoyed the demo very much. But there are a plethora of games out there that have very mild violence or even no violence at all. They're not likely to be shooters - or if they are 'shooters' you're going to be shooting with something rather abstract (or not-so-abstract, like a paintball game) - so if you like shooters.. I think 'violence' rather comes with the territory.
well, to stick with the car analogy.. if you -are- gonna head out with your head still in a state of Carmageddon, at least it'd be good if you didn't have an M1A2 Abrams conveniently parked right outside your door.
[citation needed]
You'd have to offset how many people were saved by the police using their gun (either entirely passively by would-be perps knowing that the cops carry guns, or actively by the police actually shooting the guns as a warning or to incapacitate), by how many people were actually killed by the police using their guns or perps getting a hold of a cop's gun and using it.
Of course it's impossible to gauge that accurately - how convenient for your statement.
"Why would you want these shutter speeds?"
Because I do. Why should I be disallowed from having them just because a photography buff said 640k is en.. 1/750 and 1/1000 is enough for anyone?
More succinctly - the dynamic range of a sensor is limited. 10bit, 12bit if you're lucky. If I can fit the range I want within that limited space as best as possible, and not as best as I'm allowed to, I would like to do so.
"Read about Program mode in your manual. It sets aperture and shutter speed automatically and lets you adjust the ratio." :)
No, most dSLRs do not let you pick the ratio. That's the whole point..
Aperture priority mode - you pick the aperture, the camera picks the shutter time for a given EV
Shutter priority mode - you pick the shutter, the camera picks the aperture for a given EV
Program priority mode - you only pick the EV, the camera automatically adjusts aperture and shutter. The problem is that most often, you don't get to dictate -how- it picks those. Some cameras first close down the aperture before even touching the aperture, or the other way around, or they do something inbetween. Whatever way it does it, odds are it doesn't do it in exactly the way you'd want it to. If your camera can - great
"I find with these controls that once set you can generally just leave them that way as long as you don't change location"
Or subject. For example, say you're out on a portrait shoot.. that's one set of settings. You'll "leave them that way" until your shoot at some factory. But wait, what's that!? Holy crap is that tiny bird trying to lift a carp out of the water? *point camera* aw crap! zoom, zoom, zoom, focus, focus, change shutter, shit whitebalance is still off, click, menu, dropdown, dial dial dial, yes, that one, aim camera again, aaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!
Or you'd simply change to what -USED- to be aperture priority mode, but you re-programmed it to do all of the above and called it "my awesome nature photography mode".
CHDK, which others have mentioned (thanks, guys!), shows what is already possible if you at least get -some- access.. now imagine full access. It might not be for everyone - it might not be for traditional photographers, or even the occasional shutterfly.. but there's a market for it.. even if that market were just me ;)
I so *wish* I was kidding. I hate the taste of most fizzy drinks in the U.S. everything's got 'high fructose corn syrup' in it. Disguise it as you might try, there's that hint of raw corn (grab some raw corn on the cob, squish the juice out of some of the corns, taste.. that's what it tastes like) that ruins the drink for me. I actually -prefer- the 'soda fountain' drinks over bottled/canned drinks for that reason - they seem to use different sweeteners.
Maybe I'd get used to it over time, but I'd rather not.. that's like saying I should just get used to the fact that water there tastes like chlorine (unless you install a brita filter - in which case, why bother chlorinating the water to begin with? *sigh*)
I like corn.. cooked, on the cob, slab of bread with butter on it, some salt - aw yeah, good eats. But please keep it the heck out of my drinks, candies, etc. But alas, all that subsidized corn has gotta go *somewhere*.
Maybe they should figure out a way to grow sesame seed instead. Should make McDonald's, Burger King, etc. happy if they could get that cheaper domestically than having to ship it over from China/India/etc.
( as long as they don't end up putting high fructose sesame seed oil in my drinks, that is )
oh wait, NEVER gonna happen.
What I mean isn't so much hardware as firmware, by the way... basically you can deconstruct a cameras into 4 pieces..
1. Lens.
2. Sensor
3. Body
4. PU+Firmware
dSLRs already have interchangeable lenses.. although you can't put a canon mount one on a nikon mount one, for various reason beyond the "we like them to be exclusive, thus causing lock-in, because nobody is going to switch to Nikon after buying $3,000 in Canon mount lenses" crap...
The sensor you currently can't easily exchange.. if you tried, most like you'll have destroyed your focus.
The body is what it is, unless you want to take a hacksaw to it.
Leaves the firmware. There is so much room for customizability in firmware that I don't even know where to begin with that. I'll just point to DD-WRT and its ilk as great examples of what can be done when a device can be completely customized in terms of internal behavior.
No longer would I be limited by whatever shutter time presets are in the firmware.. if it offers nothing inbetween 1/750 and 1/1000, I'll just load firmware that gives me 1/800, 1/850, 1/900 and 1/950 as well.
If the auto exposure mode currently favors closing the aperture over shortening the exposure time, and I want it the other way around, I would no longer be SOL - I'd just load the firmware that gives me that.
If I want to reprogram the various modes on the dial so that I can quickly switch between 3 common setups I use so that I no longer have to enter manual mode and adjust 3-4 options myself (aperture, shutter time, ISO, white balance), then I -could-.
But, again, it'd make a whole range of cameras obsolete and makes people less likely to buy a future model if their current model can already do it with a firmware change... so, NEVER gonna happen. Not from the big names anyway.
"Global Illumination"
It's a bit of a not-so-well-defined term, really, but within the context of current generation renderers, global illumination involves calculating not just direct lighting (i.e. a spot lighting a wall), but also diffuse indirect lighting (the light hitting the wall (dimly) illuminating the rest of the room) and even specular indirect lighting (such as caustics - like the light patterns you see in pools).
You must have misread the article... it reads "20x", not "20%".
I.e. a 1900% increase. Or however one would put that. 20 times faster.. much easier. Still within the margin of error? :)
( also per the article, they're actually pondering 200x faster down the line. )
You mention that things have 'moved on' from ray tracing to GI - but keep in mind that most GI methods (and certainly QMC sampling) -are- largely based on ray tracing. When people say 'ray tracing', we're not just talking about chrome spheres or perfect glass..glasses. It's the fundamental concept of 'tracing a ray' in the scene - and that fundamental concept applies not just to direct surface (illumination) calculations and reflections/refractions, but also to fuzzy reflections/refractions, area-sampled shadows, area lighting, sky/dome lighting, global illumination, sub-surface scattering, photon mapping (the photon tracing stage, that is) and so forth and so on.
Can you honestly call it the same show with the giant gaps in execution?
StarGate SG-1 rightfully was the "longest-running science fiction show (consecutive)". It didn't need to go off-screen repeatedly only for somebody to say "wouldn't it be fun if we resurrected...?", and then claim they were really just continuing the same show.
Nothing against Dr. Who, but would anybody in their right mind suggest that Knight Rider is now in its umpteenth year, just because it's the same general concept and has the same title? Pshaw, I say.
Similarly, I don't count Continuum or The Ark of Truth as part of the SG-1 -series-.. they're continuations of the storyline, but they're certainly not part of the same show.
Yet you don't also address my statement regarding FAS. If they can give pretty good answers, then I'd like to see them.
I never asked them to give the point at which life, or a person if you so prefer, begins. All I'm saying is that when they themselves -set- such a point, no matter how arbitrary, it at least be an exact point.
I.e. when is a meal finished? The current scientific answer would be "when sufficient food has been eaten".
That's great, but how much is that? Is it 1 bite? Is it when the plate is completely empty? What if there's one bite left, out of a total of a 50?
Now if science said "A meal is eaten when 85% or more by volume has been consumed", then that is exact, and that is something laws, regulations, etc. can be formed around. People may disagree and say it should be 80% or 95% or whatever, but then people disagree with maximum speeds on roads.. that hasn't stopped laws from being formed around exact data there either.
No, brain capability is a pretty poor metric, short of 'brain dead', clearly.
hop to it, Nintendo! Clearly the Wii is *not* a target of these ads as the Wii is probably the top-most incentive to get -some- exercise in since.. well I'm not sure -what- in the last 20 years (probably before, but I'm not that old) has inspired people to exercise, despite countless 'government' campaigns to try and achieve exactly that.
Actually, I suppose there was that short-lived Dance Dance Revolution fad...
"Until they get a developed human brain"
But then you just move the whole issue of "where does life begin" to "when is a human brain 'developed'"?
E.g. the brains of children born under Fetal Alcohol Syndrome are generally regarded as 'underdeveloped'. Are they then not alive?
I'm not a pro-lifer trying to split hairs, but I do think that any definition of "Life begins at..." needs to set -very- exact parameters and "developed brain" is not very exact.
Hate to break it to you, but GP (LordKazan) did say the following:
(emphasis mine)
His statement only refers to the possibility of survival outside of its host without the aid of (modern) technology. A healthy child carried full term -can- survive once born. Sure, if you then leave them in a trash bin, they're likely to die, but if taken proper care for, it should grow up quite nicely.. whether that be in the care of the biological mother or another person. A child brought into the world after only the first trimester, however, simply stands no chance whatsoever.. not even -with- current technology, I reckon. Ergo, that would not be discrete life.
He also mentions 'until'. So to some of the below replies - no, his statement has no bearing on those who have -already- been quite capable of surviving.
I agree with you that the term 'parasite' can be taken quite broadly (as per another replyer below, one might argue that embryonic stem cell researchers taking government funds are 'parasites' of society), and thus disagree with the use of this term by LordKazan. His main point, however, stands... he believes that life only begins IF and when the child would reasonably be capable of survival and brought into the world, under natural circumstances. It's not what I, personally, believe (I do think that technological advances stretch where the definition of 'life' begins, although I wouldn't go so far as believing that any fertilized egg fits the definition of life if scientists develop an artificial womb at some point; where I would draw the line? No idea.), but I respect what he believes and don't think his opinion deserves being twisted around to fit situations he clearly did not intend for his opinion to be applied to.
Oh I dunno... some of the 'health care' systems out there would certainly answer positively to your (rhetorical?) question.
''However, are we REALLY so drunk on "stimulus" spending for everything under the sun these days, that refusing to subsidize a particular item means that item is actively "restricted"?''
"A particular item", no... "a whole group of research", uhm.. yes?
This isn't a particular researcher going to their fund creditor and asking if they can allocate government funds for them and getting denied... this is -all such research- getting denied by decree of the administration. That's not always a bad thing - I'm sure they've got a 'ban' on research that uses raping young girls as a methodology as well - but usually that comes with arguments (i.e. raping young girls is illegal, therefore your research method would be illegal, and therefore we cannot fund it).. the arguments - if any - against embryonic stem cell research are weak at best.
The stem cell 'ban' has great parallels with the (foreign) abortion funding ban. No U.S. company would receive -any- government funding, for any purpose whatsoever, if that company was even remotely involved in 'promoting' abortion in foreign countries / on international waters. This included abortions offered to rape victims, etc. Yes, I'm pulling the rape card; take the case of that 9-year old girl in Brazil who was abused and had the twin embryos aborted as her own life would be in danger, etc. etc. No U.S. company would be allowed to help fund that abortion, post-abortion councelling, etc. without risking losing any government funding, period.
If you don't think that's 'restricting' because.. hey, they company could just get private funding for the term in which they would be prohibited from government funding.. then feel free to do so, and I'll tell you that you can go to your bathroom only on the condition that you then give up on having sex. You're more than welcome to then use the bathroom at your neighbor's or something, I'm not restricting you in any way, nosiree. Yes, imho, it really *is* that ridiculous.
Isn't there a solution proposed in many legal systems? Put oversimplified: "You cannot profit from the crime you committed"?
I.e. they would have to give back* the 1.8 million pounds PLUS the 5 thousand pound fine. More than likely they don't have that 1.8 million laying around somewhere, having spent much of it in time, so that'll be fun to pay back... that 5 thousand would look rather trivial in comparison. This extends to doing interviews, selling movie rights, etc. - all of it would go back into paying off that 1.8 million (and 5k in change).
* the only problem in these types of cases is.. who do you give it back to? certainly not to the companies who purchased that data. recompense those affected? how to determine if they -were- in fact affected? etc.
more or less clever than detecting traffic speeds (and thus jams) by tracking cellphone signals from the stations - as is already used / in trials?
Knowing that -a- train passed by point X at time Y is great... knowing -which- train that is, however, is a lot more important.
In addition, that only gives you the realtime information... if I want to travel tomorrow, how's the situation -right now- going to help me? I'd still want to be able to look at the scheduled time table - no matter how far off that may be from tomorrow's actual situation - so I can at least plan ahead. I can then use the realtime information -tomorrow- to see if the train's actually going to be on time or whether I can stay a bit longer and say my goodbyes to my daughter 5, 10 minutes later.
I think those legal sources do exist... the problem is the qualifications needed to get them...
e.g.
- pay a huge chunk of money
- be a broadcaster
or
- publish a TV magazine
So the barrier to entry is high, but it's not impossible to get this data legally.
The above is based on The Netherlands, however, and on relatively recent news of a major newspaper publisher possibly getting TV timetable information now that a subsidiary of theirs -may- enter the public broadcasting network (and is thus entitled to that information).