You don't need to be a CS jock, or mathematician, or electrical engineer to have a successful career in IT. You just need to be a good sysadmin. Having an education in any of those would help, to be sure, but none are necessary.
To be a good sysadmin, you need to be able to:
- Think logically and abstractly about issues. As a psychologist, your exposure to experiment design and hypothesis formation will serve you well.
- Deal with the slings and arrows of your outraged (and outrageous) users. As a psychologist, you've probably had to study some child psychology. Don't sell those books back to the bookstore, yet.
-Deal with PHBs and middle management types effectively. A semester or two of poli-sci on top of the aforementioned child psychology courses will be extremely helpful. If you didn't get any poli-sci while pursuing your psychology degree, read "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, and "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Mushashi for some keen insights into how to deal with an adversarial environment not entirely of your own making.
NB: You said IT career -- coding is not IT, nor is computer science or electrical engineering. IT is about how technologies are used to manage the flow of information, and the person who is ultimately responsible for that is the sysadmin. Everybody else in IT exists so that the sysadmin can do his job.
If you told me there was a near 100% chance I'd die, I'd still volunteer to go into space just for the chance to do it. If I could die knowing I was contributing something useful to science, even better.
There'll always be people like me.
uh, I like your sentiment, but natural selection is a bitch. Your final assertion should read: There'll always be poeple like me if they reproduce before they volunteer to go into space. People who voluntarily cut their reproductive probablilites to near zero will have legends, not descendants.
No one that drinks coffee for the taste drinks "flavored coffee". They'd rather drink coffee that was pooped out of a monkey than drink vanilla flavored coffee.
Kopi Luwak is the world's most expensive coffee, and it is indeed "pooped out of" an animal. Try not to let your cultural biases cloud your thinking.
Exactly right. Not by coincidence, I have 17lbs of various single-source green decafs coming on Friday. The beans run about $7/lb, and that's for the more expensive beans that aren't decaffeinated with methylene chloride.
I wind up figuring out a blend that's as good as the $32/lb fancy decaf from Italy.
My 'fancy' coffee roasting gear consists of a dutch oven on a gas grill.
Indeed. We did the dutch oven thing, and then tried a hot-air popcorn popper. We buy premium fair trade decaf beans from our local organic market ($8/lb for the really good stuff) and roast them ourselves in a (very slightly) modified hot-air popcorn popper that cost us $19 to buy and $3 to modify (added a thermometer.) It takes me about an hour to roast a month's supply, but it costs us less (not to mention tasting *much* better) than a week's supply of the least expensive decaf beans from the Wal-Mart down the street, whose beans are neither fair trade nor organic. We drink caf and decaf in my house; the savings on the caf by roasting them ourselves are similarly stunning.)
Sensible to you maybe. The American way reads the way the date is normally spoken. We usually say "March 14th 2012", not "the 14th of March 2012. Sometimes other people do things differently. We also drive on the wrong side of the road! Get over it.
I'm American, and I say "14 March 2012." So do millions and millions of my fellow American veterans, because that is the way you say it in the US military. No need for extraneous noises like "th" or "rd" on your numbers, a fact early radio operators noted and approved of. That's my oral convention; I wish the American written convention was like the EU's: Decreasing significance makes sorting things by date *so* much easier. Btw, since you brought it up -- driving on the right hand side of the road means most people are actually steering with their non-dominant hand while they are working the gears. That was an asinine design flaw that could have been fixed but wasn't, and not just some benign example of an American idiosyncrasy.
I think the good people of Chicago-land should look at what happened with Arizona's attempt to boost revenue with photo enforcement zones, and take steps now to keep their pols from wasting more of their tax dollars than they already have. Various municipalities in Az have contracted since 2008 with Redflex for a photo enforcement system consisting of 40 mobile and 38 fixed position cameras that are deployed mostly in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas, where 80% of Arizona's population live and work. The states auditor general's sunset study produced in 2010 when the Az Department of Public Safety declined to renew their contract with Redflex revealed some interesting things about the revenue generating abilities of photo enforcement zones. Drivers learned to route around both the fixed cameras and mobile cameras, the latters' locations being routinely broadcast during commute time radio shows, and drivers who received citations but failed to respond soon discovered there were no legal repercussions for failing to respond, largely because Redflex's cameras are not the same as a county mounty with a badge and ticket book, when it comes to legal jurisdiction.
Some cities in Az continue to use photo enforcement zones, but last year in June, SB 1398 was signed into law by governor Jan Brewer, which explicitly affirmed that recipients of a mailed photo enforcement citation are not obligated in any way to respond to it. More importantly, SB 1398 required that language to that effect be prominently printed on the mailed citation. According to the sunset study, only about a third of the mailed citations ever got a response; I imagine SB 1398 is going to effectively kill even that low rate, and the state is eventually going to have to go back to the old-fashioned way of having cops write tickets, if they actually want to generate a revenue stream from traffic citations.
Anecdotally, I've been popped half a dozen times since the system went operational in 2008 and have yet to pay a single dime in fines. I received the citations in the mail the first three times; they went directly from mail box to recycle bin because my attorney told me after I received the first one that they had no legal standing. I've been popped three times since SB 1398 went into effect; I'm still waiting for either a mailed citation or a knock on the door for any of these three, though I know that two of the three are beyond the 90 day statute of limitations (also reaffirmed in SB 1398, btw) so I doubt I'll see anything.
All in all, it looks like (at least here in Az) that photo-enforcement zones are not the revenue producers that Redflex would like to think they are. Indeed -- Chandler and Mesa are actually operating in the red, with Mesa reporting almost $1M in red ink over the last three years for their Redflex photo enforcement system.
...DaVinci trumps Vasari. If Vasari's work can be preserved while extracting DaVinci's, fantastic. All due care should be taken, but give me a damaged DaVinci over an intact Vasari, any day of the week.
This is one of the areas that the DMCA creates an illusory right. The law specifically states that the right to fair use, which includes time and format shifting, is not to be affected by the law. The law also prohibits anyone from assisting in removing copy protection.
The key is that the ability to remove the protection for fair use _must_ be available and reasonable for the average person who has paid for the product, or the right to format shift in accordance with fair use doctrine is purely illusory. This is pretty common, and when it comes up in contract law, it's pretty straightforward - you can't give illusory rights.
IA(of course)NAL, and even lawyers will disagree, but the law explicitly states a right (fair use) that is not to be altered, and then effectively alters that right by making it illegal for nearly everyone to obtain access to it.
I would like to see the law struck down - or at least the traffiking in copy protection removal devices and software removed for any fair use right, including personal use.
Just one minor nitpick: Fair use does not include format shifting. According the EFF Fair Use FAQ the legal basis for format shifting "...is not completely settled yet..."
I can see why it isn't settled yet. The proliferation of standards and viewing devices presents a golden opportunity for content providers. Content providers want to get paid as many times as they can for the same content -- that's simply good business. The idea is the same one that requires you to buy a ticket each time you watch a movie in a theater. As far as content providers are concerned, shifting your Blu-Ray content to your iPod is no different than paying for a ticket to see a movie and then staying in the theater to watch it again without paying again. Nobody argues that the latter is a fair use of your movie ticket; why should the former be treated any differently, if it has the effect on the content provider's bottom line? Content providers can (and should) do anything they can to protect such a lucrative market, and who can blame them?
Sony's computer-related devices (for even very loose definitions of "computer") are only a part of their revenue stream. Sony's real money comes from producing and distributing content, so measures to protect that revenue stream are in order, even if it negatively impacts some other revenue stream. Certainly, Sony's draconian DRM has alienated some fraction (even a large fraction) of people who have purchased Sony computer-related products, but that is not that big a deal to Sony management, because they listen to their accountants, not their conscience. The bad PR over the root kit deployment was pretty much confined to that (vanishingly small) fraction of their total market demographic that even knows (or cares) what a root kit is. Business is business -- corporations who think profit has to be moral (for whatever value of moral you care to use) are going to make a lot less profit than those who aren't similarly encumbered.
I think some people have the wrong view on why we don't do things that we have done before. The simplest reason is, been there, done that.
As in, the challenge has been met. Now lets find a new challenge. Is there a compelling reason to go to the floor of the ocean? The moon? Yeah it would be cool and there is good science in both, but is there a need.
Back in the fifties and sixties, if not the seventies, it was about East versus West. Funny how an arms race turned into a game of one up man ship along peaceful lines.
Heh. I'll try to remember that when mass drivers in orbit have replaced ground-based nukes as our species' self-termination option.
he made a MOVIE about Titanic. He didn't find it. The guy who did was Robert Ballard.
Cameron's just a guy who makes movies. Some of them good (Terminator 2), some of them shit (Avatar). He ain't King of the World, no matter what he thinks.
Well, Cameron "gets" technology. He's raised the bar a few times when it comes to deploying advanced video capture technologies to create *great* FX. He also *gets* storytelling (can't believe you left "Aliens" off!) which is something that makes all of his films eminently watchable.
I'm a red head, and while I've had my share of stupid nicknames ("The Towering Inferno" and "Flame Brain" being a couple of the more neutral examples) the one that I treasure the most was not derived from the color of my hair, but one I picked up when I was in the USAF during the Reagan administration. My fellow combat controllers called me the "Stoic" because of my apparent ability to suck up pain and complete missions. A guy who was a much better warrior than I could ever be gave me this tag -- and I treasure it today. It is interesting to see that my red hair may have had a hand in it. I've always been able to ignore pain and press on. This is anecdotal, I know, but I'll bet a more rigorous analysis might reveal some interesting corroboration for the findings in the study. As I recall, I was not the only red-head in spec ops -- in fact, one SEAL team that we did a joint op with was entirely red-headed. I don't know what the population distribution of red hair is supposed to be, but I'd bet that six guys with the same hair color in a job where ignoring pain is a very good talent to have is probably a significant correlation.
I know Slashdotters reflexively make anti-US statements every time the US is even mentioned, but I'm really struggling to see the relevance of this complaint.
The topic is a game that has the American Revolution as its background. An American might surely be forgiven if the word "patriotism" comes to mind in that context. As I pointed out in my reply to the original poster, he is in error when he equates patriotism with nationalism. I think that this discussion is well within the bounds of the topic.
Incidentally, I currently have moderator points, so I'm faced with the usual dilemma: do I comment, or mod? I prefer to comment. I'm wondering if there should not be a sanctioned way to have your cake and eat it too: abolish the rule that you can't comment if you have modded anything in the thread. To prevent abuse, the fact that you have modded the thread should be pointed out (e.g. "modded OP -1 Flamebait" after your name and slashdot number). Heck, maybe commenting should be compulsory after you mod...maybe you should have to justify why you modded a post up or down.
That's what meta-moderation is for. Perhaps not as direct and effective as what you suggest, but effective enough, I think.
Anyway -- "patriot" and "traitor" are semantically null terms. The positive or negative connotations conferred by each term are completely determined by the context in which they are used. George Washington and Ben Franklin were "traitors" to the exact same extent that they were "patriots;" whether or not one approves of their actions is determined by one's POV, and only by one's POV. A game that promotes one POV over another risks alienating a significant portion of the target demographic. I doubt Ubisoft is going to let that happen -- look at what happened when a certain game company decided to allow players to play from the Taliban POV successfully against American soldiers.
The Assasin's Creed games are not to my taste, but I approve of the main character being an Algonquin. The history of the aboriginal people of the United States and Canada has not gotten the attention it deserves, and its great to see it used as background in a popular work.
I'm pretty certain the attention that Ubisoft is going to give it isn't going to be all that much different than the attention it has already received. To be honest, the collision between Northern European culture and North American aboriginal culture has gotten at least some attention -- what happens when a technologically inferior culture gets between a technologically superior culture and their manifest destiny has been documented extensively in the popular media. I have a certain stereotypical image of how the interface between North American aboriginal culture and Northern European culture played out, and I'd be willing to wager that you share it as well, even if neither of us necessarily approves of it. I think the same can be said of a large number of people in Ubisoft's target demographic for this game. Even if we know *now* that the cowboys-and-indians aesthetic that dominated our childhood Saturday afternoons at the theater is not historically accurate, that doesn't mean that we weren't entertained by it. I'm pretty certain that if Ubisoft doesn't cleave to the popular stereotype closely enough, their game is going to tank. Historically accurate portrayals of such cultural collisions don't tend to do well at the box office -- last time I checked, Ubisoft's bottom line is driven by entertaining people, not by correcting stereotypes.
...anybody know a deaf person that wants to make some side cash by attending political rallies with me? The pay will be commensurate with their auditory deficit. Wait, scratch that -- just found my Sennheiser buds with the active noise canx.
How much is an "incredible amount" of air? Can someone possibly explain this "air floating" concept in terminology of cars? Thanks.
I'll give it a shot... Wide tires don't need nearly as much pressure for "air floating" the car as do narrower tires. My 'Vette masses around 1600kg with me aboard, but it is "air floated" by four (really wide) tires inflated to 185 kPa each. My Ducati 1098 (not a car, but I don't think it represents a significant loss in car-analogy-appropriateness) can "air float" the mass of the bike+me system (280kg) on two (pretty narrow) tires with 285 kPa of pressure each. The pressure I need for "air floating" my vehicles above the road is inversely proportional to the area of the tires that are touching the road, the so-called contact patch -- in general, the more contact patch, the less pressure I need for "air floating" the vehicle. Even though the Ducati masses less than the 'Vette, it has a significantly smaller contact patch (on the order of one or two magnitudes less) so it needs more pressure to accomplish the "air floating." The contact patch of a 100 m^2 house is about 4 orders of magnitude larger than a 'Vette's contact patch, but the house only masses maybe two orders of magnitude more than the 'Vette, so the amount of pressure I need for "air floating" my house above the earthquake is around two orders of magnitude less than what's needed for "air floating" the 'Vette above the road. As somebody demonstrated above, that pressure is obtainable with my own lungs. The amount of air I would need to move under the house though, is formidable. A 3cm tall column of air under a 100m^2 house has a volume of 3000 liters; if I can move 400 ml with each breath (probably less, I smoke) it would take about eight thousand breaths to fill it. If I breathe about six times a minute (don't want to get dizzy) it would take me about 1500 minutes, or about a day, to move that much air with just my lungs.
I don't think that the capability to support the complex needs of a living organism is in any way special. It's an engineering requirement, just like many others. You won't be putting it on a space telescope or on a robotic mission because it's not needed -- not because it's somehow supercomplex.
The intent of my post was to highlight the difference between how excited I can get over a routine robotic mission compared to a manned mission, with the additional caveat that I actually can get excited over both, and that we should lobby the gov to fund both. Sorry you missed that. Thanks for playing, though.
wants to name his sub "Scarlett" after Scarlett Johansson—that's how sexy this vehicle is
So... not that sexy? Perhaps that's a bit rough - she's okay - but seriously?
Offhand, I can easily think of several other women, and a couple of Italian motorcycles, that are way sexier.:-)
I think that Hubble, the Mars rovers, and the upcoming JWST are much bigger accomplishments. Mission to the Moon was the biggest feat at the time, but the world doesn't sit still, yaknow. Hubble and JWST are more complex than the Apollo stack by almost any measure you would select.
uhhhh, okay -- I'll bite. How about the capability to support the complex needs of a living organism against the harsh rigors of space? Hubble and JWST don't even have that capability, nor can they ever acquire it. What they are capable of is still fantastic, but if you are going to make comparisons, make sure you are not comparing apples to oranges. I think you just brought into sharp relief (cutting edge metaphor is good, let's stick with it) the difference between robotic missions and manned missions. I can't get as excited about another robotic mission as I could about a manned mission to Mars, though I have more than enough enthusiasm for science to get excited about both. We should be hammering on politicians' doors night and day demanding to know why we are being forced to choose one over the other when there is plenty of interest, collective wealth, and expertise to accomplish both with style and panache.
...is money in the bank for the people declaring the war. By treating an abstraction like "Anonymous" as if it were something fungible instead of the complex nexus of behaviors, motivations, and means that actually characterize the Anonymous collective, it allows them a lot of freedom to switch targets at will to demonize anything Anonymous does. It's worked wonders for the neocons with their "War on Terror" in the US. By declaring war on what amounts to a tactic, it allows the neocons to ignore the legitimate differences in methods and motivations between various anti-American groups, and lump them all together as "terrorists." To put not too fine a point on it, the "War on Terror" allowed the neocons to generate enough fear of being branded anti-American to get the heinous Patriot Act passed with just a single nay vote. Declaring wars on abstractions is turning out to be a very powerful political tool, and you can be certain that it will continue to be used by anybody who wants to accrue political power.
I'm sure the friendly folks at the New Avalon Institute of Science will happily install a DNI for you. Unless your real name is Burke Kale, of course...:)
I showed your post to an MD, who said that while everything you asserted is more or less true, what you failed to assert far outweighs the value of the information you did provide. Melatonin has documented negative interactions with Coumadin, Warfarin, and Aspirin, which are widely prescribed anti-coagulants. Melatonin will also nullify the effects of any corticosteriods you happen to be on. So -- do us all a favor, eh, and don't leave off the bad parts just because you are a fanboi of the good parts.
Slashdot Mirror
- Think logically and abstractly about issues. As a psychologist, your exposure to experiment design and hypothesis formation will serve you well.
- Deal with the slings and arrows of your outraged (and outrageous) users. As a psychologist, you've probably had to study some child psychology. Don't sell those books back to the bookstore, yet.
-Deal with PHBs and middle management types effectively. A semester or two of poli-sci on top of the aforementioned child psychology courses will be extremely helpful. If you didn't get any poli-sci while pursuing your psychology degree, read "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, and "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Mushashi for some keen insights into how to deal with an adversarial environment not entirely of your own making.
NB: You said IT career -- coding is not IT, nor is computer science or electrical engineering. IT is about how technologies are used to manage the flow of information, and the person who is ultimately responsible for that is the sysadmin. Everybody else in IT exists so that the sysadmin can do his job.
If you told me there was a near 100% chance I'd die, I'd still volunteer to go into space just for the chance to do it. If I could die knowing I was contributing something useful to science, even better.
There'll always be people like me.
uh, I like your sentiment, but natural selection is a bitch. Your final assertion should read: There'll always be poeple like me if they reproduce before they volunteer to go into space. People who voluntarily cut their reproductive probablilites to near zero will have legends, not descendants.
...moon lands on you!
No one that drinks coffee for the taste drinks "flavored coffee". They'd rather drink coffee that was pooped out of a monkey than drink vanilla flavored coffee.
Kopi Luwak is the world's most expensive coffee, and it is indeed "pooped out of" an animal. Try not to let your cultural biases cloud your thinking.
Exactly right. Not by coincidence, I have 17lbs of various single-source green decafs coming on Friday. The beans run about $7/lb, and that's for the more expensive beans that aren't decaffeinated with methylene chloride.
I wind up figuring out a blend that's as good as the $32/lb fancy decaf from Italy.
My 'fancy' coffee roasting gear consists of a dutch oven on a gas grill.
Indeed. We did the dutch oven thing, and then tried a hot-air popcorn popper. We buy premium fair trade decaf beans from our local organic market ($8/lb for the really good stuff) and roast them ourselves in a (very slightly) modified hot-air popcorn popper that cost us $19 to buy and $3 to modify (added a thermometer.) It takes me about an hour to roast a month's supply, but it costs us less (not to mention tasting *much* better) than a week's supply of the least expensive decaf beans from the Wal-Mart down the street, whose beans are neither fair trade nor organic. We drink caf and decaf in my house; the savings on the caf by roasting them ourselves are similarly stunning.)
Sensible to you maybe. The American way reads the way the date is normally spoken. We usually say "March 14th 2012", not "the 14th of March 2012. Sometimes other people do things differently. We also drive on the wrong side of the road! Get over it.
I'm American, and I say "14 March 2012." So do millions and millions of my fellow American veterans, because that is the way you say it in the US military. No need for extraneous noises like "th" or "rd" on your numbers, a fact early radio operators noted and approved of. That's my oral convention; I wish the American written convention was like the EU's: Decreasing significance makes sorting things by date *so* much easier. Btw, since you brought it up -- driving on the right hand side of the road means most people are actually steering with their non-dominant hand while they are working the gears. That was an asinine design flaw that could have been fixed but wasn't, and not just some benign example of an American idiosyncrasy.
I think the good people of Chicago-land should look at what happened with Arizona's attempt to boost revenue with photo enforcement zones, and take steps now to keep their pols from wasting more of their tax dollars than they already have. Various municipalities in Az have contracted since 2008 with Redflex for a photo enforcement system consisting of 40 mobile and 38 fixed position cameras that are deployed mostly in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas, where 80% of Arizona's population live and work. The states auditor general's sunset study produced in 2010 when the Az Department of Public Safety declined to renew their contract with Redflex revealed some interesting things about the revenue generating abilities of photo enforcement zones. Drivers learned to route around both the fixed cameras and mobile cameras, the latters' locations being routinely broadcast during commute time radio shows, and drivers who received citations but failed to respond soon discovered there were no legal repercussions for failing to respond, largely because Redflex's cameras are not the same as a county mounty with a badge and ticket book, when it comes to legal jurisdiction.
Some cities in Az continue to use photo enforcement zones, but last year in June, SB 1398 was signed into law by governor Jan Brewer, which explicitly affirmed that recipients of a mailed photo enforcement citation are not obligated in any way to respond to it. More importantly, SB 1398 required that language to that effect be prominently printed on the mailed citation. According to the sunset study, only about a third of the mailed citations ever got a response; I imagine SB 1398 is going to effectively kill even that low rate, and the state is eventually going to have to go back to the old-fashioned way of having cops write tickets, if they actually want to generate a revenue stream from traffic citations.
Anecdotally, I've been popped half a dozen times since the system went operational in 2008 and have yet to pay a single dime in fines. I received the citations in the mail the first three times; they went directly from mail box to recycle bin because my attorney told me after I received the first one that they had no legal standing. I've been popped three times since SB 1398 went into effect; I'm still waiting for either a mailed citation or a knock on the door for any of these three, though I know that two of the three are beyond the 90 day statute of limitations (also reaffirmed in SB 1398, btw) so I doubt I'll see anything.
All in all, it looks like (at least here in Az) that photo-enforcement zones are not the revenue producers that Redflex would like to think they are. Indeed -- Chandler and Mesa are actually operating in the red, with Mesa reporting almost $1M in red ink over the last three years for their Redflex photo enforcement system.
Humans: Millions of years
Computers: Tens of years.
Not sure there is a story, here...
...DaVinci trumps Vasari. If Vasari's work can be preserved while extracting DaVinci's, fantastic. All due care should be taken, but give me a damaged DaVinci over an intact Vasari, any day of the week.
This is one of the areas that the DMCA creates an illusory right. The law specifically states that the right to fair use, which includes time and format shifting, is not to be affected by the law. The law also prohibits anyone from assisting in removing copy protection.
The key is that the ability to remove the protection for fair use _must_ be available and reasonable for the average person who has paid for the product, or the right to format shift in accordance with fair use doctrine is purely illusory. This is pretty common, and when it comes up in contract law, it's pretty straightforward - you can't give illusory rights.
IA(of course)NAL, and even lawyers will disagree, but the law explicitly states a right (fair use) that is not to be altered, and then effectively alters that right by making it illegal for nearly everyone to obtain access to it.
I would like to see the law struck down - or at least the traffiking in copy protection removal devices and software removed for any fair use right, including personal use.
Just one minor nitpick: Fair use does not include format shifting. According the EFF Fair Use FAQ the legal basis for format shifting "...is not completely settled yet..."
I can see why it isn't settled yet. The proliferation of standards and viewing devices presents a golden opportunity for content providers. Content providers want to get paid as many times as they can for the same content -- that's simply good business. The idea is the same one that requires you to buy a ticket each time you watch a movie in a theater. As far as content providers are concerned, shifting your Blu-Ray content to your iPod is no different than paying for a ticket to see a movie and then staying in the theater to watch it again without paying again. Nobody argues that the latter is a fair use of your movie ticket; why should the former be treated any differently, if it has the effect on the content provider's bottom line? Content providers can (and should) do anything they can to protect such a lucrative market, and who can blame them?
Sony's computer-related devices (for even very loose definitions of "computer") are only a part of their revenue stream. Sony's real money comes from producing and distributing content, so measures to protect that revenue stream are in order, even if it negatively impacts some other revenue stream. Certainly, Sony's draconian DRM has alienated some fraction (even a large fraction) of people who have purchased Sony computer-related products, but that is not that big a deal to Sony management, because they listen to their accountants, not their conscience. The bad PR over the root kit deployment was pretty much confined to that (vanishingly small) fraction of their total market demographic that even knows (or cares) what a root kit is. Business is business -- corporations who think profit has to be moral (for whatever value of moral you care to use) are going to make a lot less profit than those who aren't similarly encumbered.
I think some people have the wrong view on why we don't do things that we have done before. The simplest reason is, been there, done that.
As in, the challenge has been met. Now lets find a new challenge. Is there a compelling reason to go to the floor of the ocean? The moon? Yeah it would be cool and there is good science in both, but is there a need.
Back in the fifties and sixties, if not the seventies, it was about East versus West. Funny how an arms race turned into a game of one up man ship along peaceful lines.
Heh. I'll try to remember that when mass drivers in orbit have replaced ground-based nukes as our species' self-termination option.
he made a MOVIE about Titanic. He didn't find it. The guy who did was Robert Ballard.
Cameron's just a guy who makes movies. Some of them good (Terminator 2), some of them shit (Avatar). He ain't King of the World, no matter what he thinks.
Well, Cameron "gets" technology. He's raised the bar a few times when it comes to deploying advanced video capture technologies to create *great* FX. He also *gets* storytelling (can't believe you left "Aliens" off!) which is something that makes all of his films eminently watchable.
I'm a red head, and while I've had my share of stupid nicknames ("The Towering Inferno" and "Flame Brain" being a couple of the more neutral examples) the one that I treasure the most was not derived from the color of my hair, but one I picked up when I was in the USAF during the Reagan administration. My fellow combat controllers called me the "Stoic" because of my apparent ability to suck up pain and complete missions. A guy who was a much better warrior than I could ever be gave me this tag -- and I treasure it today. It is interesting to see that my red hair may have had a hand in it. I've always been able to ignore pain and press on. This is anecdotal, I know, but I'll bet a more rigorous analysis might reveal some interesting corroboration for the findings in the study. As I recall, I was not the only red-head in spec ops -- in fact, one SEAL team that we did a joint op with was entirely red-headed. I don't know what the population distribution of red hair is supposed to be, but I'd bet that six guys with the same hair color in a job where ignoring pain is a very good talent to have is probably a significant correlation.
I know Slashdotters reflexively make anti-US statements every time the US is even mentioned, but I'm really struggling to see the relevance of this complaint.
The topic is a game that has the American Revolution as its background. An American might surely be forgiven if the word "patriotism" comes to mind in that context. As I pointed out in my reply to the original poster, he is in error when he equates patriotism with nationalism. I think that this discussion is well within the bounds of the topic.
Incidentally, I currently have moderator points, so I'm faced with the usual dilemma: do I comment, or mod? I prefer to comment. I'm wondering if there should not be a sanctioned way to have your cake and eat it too: abolish the rule that you can't comment if you have modded anything in the thread. To prevent abuse, the fact that you have modded the thread should be pointed out (e.g. "modded OP -1 Flamebait" after your name and slashdot number). Heck, maybe commenting should be compulsory after you mod...maybe you should have to justify why you modded a post up or down.
That's what meta-moderation is for. Perhaps not as direct and effective as what you suggest, but effective enough, I think.
Anyway -- "patriot" and "traitor" are semantically null terms. The positive or negative connotations conferred by each term are completely determined by the context in which they are used. George Washington and Ben Franklin were "traitors" to the exact same extent that they were "patriots;" whether or not one approves of their actions is determined by one's POV, and only by one's POV. A game that promotes one POV over another risks alienating a significant portion of the target demographic. I doubt Ubisoft is going to let that happen -- look at what happened when a certain game company decided to allow players to play from the Taliban POV successfully against American soldiers.
The Assasin's Creed games are not to my taste, but I approve of the main character being an Algonquin. The history of the aboriginal people of the United States and Canada has not gotten the attention it deserves, and its great to see it used as background in a popular work.
I'm pretty certain the attention that Ubisoft is going to give it isn't going to be all that much different than the attention it has already received. To be honest, the collision between Northern European culture and North American aboriginal culture has gotten at least some attention -- what happens when a technologically inferior culture gets between a technologically superior culture and their manifest destiny has been documented extensively in the popular media. I have a certain stereotypical image of how the interface between North American aboriginal culture and Northern European culture played out, and I'd be willing to wager that you share it as well, even if neither of us necessarily approves of it. I think the same can be said of a large number of people in Ubisoft's target demographic for this game. Even if we know *now* that the cowboys-and-indians aesthetic that dominated our childhood Saturday afternoons at the theater is not historically accurate, that doesn't mean that we weren't entertained by it. I'm pretty certain that if Ubisoft doesn't cleave to the popular stereotype closely enough, their game is going to tank. Historically accurate portrayals of such cultural collisions don't tend to do well at the box office -- last time I checked, Ubisoft's bottom line is driven by entertaining people, not by correcting stereotypes.
...anybody know a deaf person that wants to make some side cash by attending political rallies with me? The pay will be commensurate with their auditory deficit. Wait, scratch that -- just found my Sennheiser buds with the active noise canx.
How much is an "incredible amount" of air? Can someone possibly explain this "air floating" concept in terminology of cars? Thanks.
I'll give it a shot... Wide tires don't need nearly as much pressure for "air floating" the car as do narrower tires. My 'Vette masses around 1600kg with me aboard, but it is "air floated" by four (really wide) tires inflated to 185 kPa each. My Ducati 1098 (not a car, but I don't think it represents a significant loss in car-analogy-appropriateness) can "air float" the mass of the bike+me system (280kg) on two (pretty narrow) tires with 285 kPa of pressure each. The pressure I need for "air floating" my vehicles above the road is inversely proportional to the area of the tires that are touching the road, the so-called contact patch -- in general, the more contact patch, the less pressure I need for "air floating" the vehicle. Even though the Ducati masses less than the 'Vette, it has a significantly smaller contact patch (on the order of one or two magnitudes less) so it needs more pressure to accomplish the "air floating." The contact patch of a 100 m^2 house is about 4 orders of magnitude larger than a 'Vette's contact patch, but the house only masses maybe two orders of magnitude more than the 'Vette, so the amount of pressure I need for "air floating" my house above the earthquake is around two orders of magnitude less than what's needed for "air floating" the 'Vette above the road. As somebody demonstrated above, that pressure is obtainable with my own lungs. The amount of air I would need to move under the house though, is formidable. A 3cm tall column of air under a 100m^2 house has a volume of 3000 liters; if I can move 400 ml with each breath (probably less, I smoke) it would take about eight thousand breaths to fill it. If I breathe about six times a minute (don't want to get dizzy) it would take me about 1500 minutes, or about a day, to move that much air with just my lungs.
I don't think that the capability to support the complex needs of a living organism is in any way special. It's an engineering requirement, just like many others. You won't be putting it on a space telescope or on a robotic mission because it's not needed -- not because it's somehow supercomplex.
The intent of my post was to highlight the difference between how excited I can get over a routine robotic mission compared to a manned mission, with the additional caveat that I actually can get excited over both, and that we should lobby the gov to fund both. Sorry you missed that. Thanks for playing, though.
wants to name his sub "Scarlett" after Scarlett Johansson—that's how sexy this vehicle is
So... not that sexy? Perhaps that's a bit rough - she's okay - but seriously? Offhand, I can easily think of several other women, and a couple of Italian motorcycles, that are way sexier. :-)
couldn't agree more (pats ducati 1098 lovingly.)
I think that Hubble, the Mars rovers, and the upcoming JWST are much bigger accomplishments. Mission to the Moon was the biggest feat at the time, but the world doesn't sit still, yaknow. Hubble and JWST are more complex than the Apollo stack by almost any measure you would select.
uhhhh, okay -- I'll bite. How about the capability to support the complex needs of a living organism against the harsh rigors of space? Hubble and JWST don't even have that capability, nor can they ever acquire it. What they are capable of is still fantastic, but if you are going to make comparisons, make sure you are not comparing apples to oranges. I think you just brought into sharp relief (cutting edge metaphor is good, let's stick with it) the difference between robotic missions and manned missions. I can't get as excited about another robotic mission as I could about a manned mission to Mars, though I have more than enough enthusiasm for science to get excited about both. We should be hammering on politicians' doors night and day demanding to know why we are being forced to choose one over the other when there is plenty of interest, collective wealth, and expertise to accomplish both with style and panache.
...is money in the bank for the people declaring the war. By treating an abstraction like "Anonymous" as if it were something fungible instead of the complex nexus of behaviors, motivations, and means that actually characterize the Anonymous collective, it allows them a lot of freedom to switch targets at will to demonize anything Anonymous does. It's worked wonders for the neocons with their "War on Terror" in the US. By declaring war on what amounts to a tactic, it allows the neocons to ignore the legitimate differences in methods and motivations between various anti-American groups, and lump them all together as "terrorists." To put not too fine a point on it, the "War on Terror" allowed the neocons to generate enough fear of being branded anti-American to get the heinous Patriot Act passed with just a single nay vote. Declaring wars on abstractions is turning out to be a very powerful political tool, and you can be certain that it will continue to be used by anybody who wants to accrue political power.
I'm sure the friendly folks at the New Avalon Institute of Science will happily install a DNI for you. Unless your real name is Burke Kale, of course... :)
I showed your post to an MD, who said that while everything you asserted is more or less true, what you failed to assert far outweighs the value of the information you did provide. Melatonin has documented negative interactions with Coumadin, Warfarin, and Aspirin, which are widely prescribed anti-coagulants. Melatonin will also nullify the effects of any corticosteriods you happen to be on. So -- do us all a favor, eh, and don't leave off the bad parts just because you are a fanboi of the good parts.
Worms are people too you insensitive clod!
Hey! That clod is my home, you insensitive clod! oh, wait...