I agree. Weapons are never necessary, until someone has one. Then you have 3 options: hope they don't want to use them, submit to them, or get some of your own. Just a couple months ago, a report was released pointing out the advances into space weaponry that China has made. If the US does back off, is China? Unlikely. If you believe they will, then I've got a bridge in New York I'd like to sell to you.
We tried that in the 70's. They put up speed limit signs in metric and people shot holes in them. I guess they decided it was "too hard". And now, thanks to the inbred rednecks in this country, I have to convert units whenever I try to do science.
If there really were a correlation between video game violence and the violence committed by players, I should be one of the worst mass murderers of all time. I don't play much GTA or FPS games, but I love strategy games. I love commanding whole armies to hack and shoot at each other. I'm still playing Rome:Total War with some frequency and I think the death count so far numbers in the hundreds of thousands (mostly my enemies). Same thing with Civilization. Soften up enemy defenses with nukes (and incidentally kill off half the civilian population) Or 4X space games, where bombarding a planet to dust is just another strategy. I've laid waste to entire civilizations and species on my computer, so if the correlation holds, I should be out committing single-handed genocide.
Shit, all I ask is that Hollywood actually TRY to get some of the science right. Asteroid the size of Texas? And you're going to blow it up with a couple nukes? And the two pieces just HAPPEN to go on either side of the Earth? I can barely watch movies anymore without groaning because some "scientist" spouts off stuff that makes the pseudoscience whackos look intelligent.
I know the other two people who replied to your entry have said pretty much what I wanted to say, but I'll add this one bit: the SRB's have been redesigned (thanks in part to the recommendations of one Dr. Richard Feynman) and they do have a solid track record (nearly 100 launches with no glitches).
I don't think Orion was ever intended to be a launch system. For one thing, it would be hella expensive (nukes are NOT cheap). For another, conventional rockets work much better. Now, if you're trying to get to interstellar space, then Orion may be the way to go, though there are also other solutions that are far more feasible (nuclear thermal propulsion, fusion, solar sails).
And it's not like this was some big discovery that was actually going to change the average person's life... they aren't sitting on the cure for cancer or something.
Hell, even if they (or any other researcher) were sitting on a cure for cancer, they would have to analyse and test and be damned sure of the discovery because getting it wrong could a. wreck their careers b. kill people (possibly through unforseen side effects, etc) or c. not work at all.
I've been reading the threads and there seem to be two camps: the "they're bad people for withholding this information, information wants to be free" camp and the "well, they're just trying to confirm what they think they know" camp. I fall on the side of the latter camp. If anyone was unethical, it was the "hackers" who threatened to go public with incomplete information.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still think we should have stuck to the old Greek/Roman mythology naming scheme. Alas, times have changed and now we have moons named after characters by this guy named Shakespeare and minor planets named after Inuit and Native American mythological figures. Still, I think Larry Niven's name for a hypothetical Planet X (read "The Borderlands of Sol", it's quite good) was a good choice. So, I nominate "Persephone" as the name for this new object.
I did actually RTFA and their methodology still seems suspect to me, even if I'm not a biologist. It's reminiscent of those studies that show saccharine is a carcinogen even though the amounts fed to their lab rats scaled up to a human size are several orders of magnitude beyond what a normal human would consume. Yes, I realize they're trying to isolate an effect, that effect in reality is likely to be much smaller in real-world situations. As another user pointed out, cell-phones are not new technology, and there are people who have been using them for more than a decade. Studying these people would probably carry more weight than a study on cultured organs.
Let me know when they develop a female android that is also an assassin and has an invisibility cloak and can jack into the net and drives around in AI tanks. Then I'll be impressed.
a week or so ago, basically saying 1/3 of all medical studies are pure bs? I know that's a horrendous paraphrase, but I still think it captures the gist of it. In addition, they did this experiment on lenses taken from dead cows. Of course they're not going to heal, they're from dead animals! I'd be more impressed if the study was done on live animals (I can just imagine a chimp with a cell phone strapped to its head). I mean, last time I heard, dead people don't heal themselves, but live people do.
I am an adult (legally if not emotionally). I hear about this new mod for a game I had wanted to get. People freak out about the mod because it introduces SEX into the game. I'm more interested in the game now. I don't have 50 bucks at the moment. Bang! Game gets pulled off shelves faster than an altar-boy's robe. Now, after payday, I have 50 bucks. But I, as an adult, am no longer able to purchase said game with said offending content (which I should be legally able to do) at the local Target or Best Buy. Now, my only options are to buy it online or, if I were so bold, download it illegally (the torrent is well over 3 gigabytes). But that's okay, cuz kids will no longer be exposed to pixellated sex. They'll have to download nudie pictures for free from any multitude of sites for free. The day is saved!
Re:Some folks still contest the "landing"
on
Google Moon Debuts
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· Score: 1
I see there's already a dog pile going on, but I have just one thing to add regarding point 4: If the moon "landing" was filmed on a soundstage in Burbank like some people claim, then why the hell would there be any wind at all?
What a difference a year apparently makes. M is supposed to be for 17 and up, but the addition of a little sex is "supposed" to up the rating to AO, which is for 18 and up. I don't know the exact statistics, but I think 50% of people aged 16 have had sex by now. They're legally able to have sex (and have been physically able to for several years by that point), but oh! we CAN'T let them simulate sex in a video game. I do think there needs to be a little modification of the ratings system in this case (get rid of AO altogether since it's actually pretty redundant if you think about it) but the fact still remains that the responsibility lies with the parents to do their job and the responsibility lies with society as a whole to realize that sex isn't evil, especially when compared to all the violence to which no one seems to bat an eye. With that, I think I'll play me a little Vice City, have sex with my girlfriend and NOT kill someone today.
For one thing, they've already found 30+ planets in binary systems. Granted, they're all wide binaries, but they're still binaries. The stability problem depends on the size of the orbit of the planet and how far from the primary star the secondary orbits. For instance, the Alpha Centauri sytem, a trinary system, has a yellow star slightly heavier than our sun, an orange star slighly lighter than our sun orbiting at an average distance of 23 AU (about the same size as Uranus from the sun) and a much lighter star orbiting at 15000 AU (so we can basically ignore it). Numerical simulations have suggested that planets could have stable orbits within 3AU of each of the bigger stars (about the distance of the asteroid belt) making it entirely possible for earth-like planets to be found there. Another stable configuration would be two stars orbiting extremely closely while the planet orbits further out. This is kind of like the Tatooine system, though it is bound to be much rarer. And there's your astronomy lesson for the day.
They'll still have to pass those courses in which they don't excel, though, as they would be a requirement for graduation. If need be, have them take summer courses in those subjects.
I usually hated my gym classes, but I do recognize at least some need for them. In a nation of fat-asses, some knowledge of basic fitness is a must. Teach the basics, like running, biking, calisthenics, stretching, the basics of the main sports. In health class, teach nutrition, eating right, and their importance. Of course, if the students choose to ignore the knowledge they've been given, they'll suffer the consequences, but at least they won't be able to say they weren't given the opportunity. Who knows, maybe it'll do some good.
I would tend to agree. Once the basics of arithmetic are learned (emphasis on learned) the calculator merely becomes a tool to speed through the rote arithmetic and on to more important concepts. Once you get into things like trig or logs, it's far better to use a calculator to chug through the digits than to laboriously calculate it all by hand or look it up in a table. Hell, I managed to get a degree in physics without ever using a slide rule. Yes, I know people would say that doesn't mean much, but that doesn't mean I can't do the same process the long way. Really, though, the whole point of technology is to make a task easier and if I can program a calculator to chug through a hundred simple integrals and spend the night applying those to a real problem as opposed to spending the whole night working on those integrals by hand and spending the NEXT nigth applying those to the problem, then my choice is clear.
I remember nearly a decade ago playing SimCity2000 quite often. Always, whenever I would install a nuclear fission plant, the damned thing would blow sky high. ALWAYS. Honestly, how often do nuclear plants actually blow up? Only one has actually had an explosion (not counting the few occurrences where some radiation was released, but the physical structure was intact) out of the hundreds of plants running for the past 50+ years. It's not a reflection of reality, but more likely of the designer's bias against nuclear energy. One could also argue that FPS games have a bias against small arms. Bias in a game isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if we're positing that games are a form of expression.
Could be worse. They could name operations like they name medications. Soon, we'll have Operation Viagra, Operation Valtrex, and Operation Zoltan. Come to think of it, the guys who name medications are probably the same guys who name sci-fi/fantasy villians, like Zocor, Destroyer of Worlds or Zanax, Emperor of Ritalin.
Slashdot Mirror
I got you beat. I bought GTA:San Andreas and applied the Hot Coffee "mod". That makes me public enemy #0.
I agree. Weapons are never necessary, until someone has one. Then you have 3 options: hope they don't want to use them, submit to them, or get some of your own. Just a couple months ago, a report was released pointing out the advances into space weaponry that China has made. If the US does back off, is China? Unlikely. If you believe they will, then I've got a bridge in New York I'd like to sell to you.
We tried that in the 70's. They put up speed limit signs in metric and people shot holes in them. I guess they decided it was "too hard". And now, thanks to the inbred rednecks in this country, I have to convert units whenever I try to do science.
If there really were a correlation between video game violence and the violence committed by players, I should be one of the worst mass murderers of all time. I don't play much GTA or FPS games, but I love strategy games. I love commanding whole armies to hack and shoot at each other. I'm still playing Rome:Total War with some frequency and I think the death count so far numbers in the hundreds of thousands (mostly my enemies). Same thing with Civilization. Soften up enemy defenses with nukes (and incidentally kill off half the civilian population) Or 4X space games, where bombarding a planet to dust is just another strategy. I've laid waste to entire civilizations and species on my computer, so if the correlation holds, I should be out committing single-handed genocide.
Shit, all I ask is that Hollywood actually TRY to get some of the science right. Asteroid the size of Texas? And you're going to blow it up with a couple nukes? And the two pieces just HAPPEN to go on either side of the Earth? I can barely watch movies anymore without groaning because some "scientist" spouts off stuff that makes the pseudoscience whackos look intelligent.
I know the other two people who replied to your entry have said pretty much what I wanted to say, but I'll add this one bit: the SRB's have been redesigned (thanks in part to the recommendations of one Dr. Richard Feynman) and they do have a solid track record (nearly 100 launches with no glitches).
I don't think Orion was ever intended to be a launch system. For one thing, it would be hella expensive (nukes are NOT cheap). For another, conventional rockets work much better. Now, if you're trying to get to interstellar space, then Orion may be the way to go, though there are also other solutions that are far more feasible (nuclear thermal propulsion, fusion, solar sails).
And it's not like this was some big discovery that was actually going to change the average person's life... they aren't sitting on the cure for cancer or something.
Hell, even if they (or any other researcher) were sitting on a cure for cancer, they would have to analyse and test and be damned sure of the discovery because getting it wrong could a. wreck their careers b. kill people (possibly through unforseen side effects, etc) or c. not work at all.
I've been reading the threads and there seem to be two camps: the "they're bad people for withholding this information, information wants to be free" camp and the "well, they're just trying to confirm what they think they know" camp. I fall on the side of the latter camp. If anyone was unethical, it was the "hackers" who threatened to go public with incomplete information.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still think we should have stuck to the old Greek/Roman mythology naming scheme. Alas, times have changed and now we have moons named after characters by this guy named Shakespeare and minor planets named after Inuit and Native American mythological figures. Still, I think Larry Niven's name for a hypothetical Planet X (read "The Borderlands of Sol", it's quite good) was a good choice. So, I nominate "Persephone" as the name for this new object.
I did actually RTFA and their methodology still seems suspect to me, even if I'm not a biologist. It's reminiscent of those studies that show saccharine is a carcinogen even though the amounts fed to their lab rats scaled up to a human size are several orders of magnitude beyond what a normal human would consume. Yes, I realize they're trying to isolate an effect, that effect in reality is likely to be much smaller in real-world situations. As another user pointed out, cell-phones are not new technology, and there are people who have been using them for more than a decade. Studying these people would probably carry more weight than a study on cultured organs.
Let me know when they develop a female android that is also an assassin and has an invisibility cloak and can jack into the net and drives around in AI tanks. Then I'll be impressed.
a week or so ago, basically saying 1/3 of all medical studies are pure bs? I know that's a horrendous paraphrase, but I still think it captures the gist of it.
In addition, they did this experiment on lenses taken from dead cows. Of course they're not going to heal, they're from dead animals! I'd be more impressed if the study was done on live animals (I can just imagine a chimp with a cell phone strapped to its head). I mean, last time I heard, dead people don't heal themselves, but live people do.
I am an adult (legally if not emotionally). I hear about this new mod for a game I had wanted to get. People freak out about the mod because it introduces SEX into the game. I'm more interested in the game now. I don't have 50 bucks at the moment. Bang! Game gets pulled off shelves faster than an altar-boy's robe. Now, after payday, I have 50 bucks. But I, as an adult, am no longer able to purchase said game with said offending content (which I should be legally able to do) at the local Target or Best Buy. Now, my only options are to buy it online or, if I were so bold, download it illegally (the torrent is well over 3 gigabytes). But that's okay, cuz kids will no longer be exposed to pixellated sex. They'll have to download nudie pictures for free from any multitude of sites for free. The day is saved!
I see there's already a dog pile going on, but I have just one thing to add regarding point 4:
If the moon "landing" was filmed on a soundstage in Burbank like some people claim, then why the hell would there be any wind at all?
What a difference a year apparently makes. M is supposed to be for 17 and up, but the addition of a little sex is "supposed" to up the rating to AO, which is for 18 and up. I don't know the exact statistics, but I think 50% of people aged 16 have had sex by now. They're legally able to have sex (and have been physically able to for several years by that point), but oh! we CAN'T let them simulate sex in a video game.
I do think there needs to be a little modification of the ratings system in this case (get rid of AO altogether since it's actually pretty redundant if you think about it) but the fact still remains that the responsibility lies with the parents to do their job and the responsibility lies with society as a whole to realize that sex isn't evil, especially when compared to all the violence to which no one seems to bat an eye. With that, I think I'll play me a little Vice City, have sex with my girlfriend and NOT kill someone today.
6 suns, actually.
For one thing, they've already found 30+ planets in binary systems. Granted, they're all wide binaries, but they're still binaries. The stability problem depends on the size of the orbit of the planet and how far from the primary star the secondary orbits.
For instance, the Alpha Centauri sytem, a trinary system, has a yellow star slightly heavier than our sun, an orange star slighly lighter than our sun orbiting at an average distance of 23 AU (about the same size as Uranus from the sun) and a much lighter star orbiting at 15000 AU (so we can basically ignore it). Numerical simulations have suggested that planets could have stable orbits within 3AU of each of the bigger stars (about the distance of the asteroid belt) making it entirely possible for earth-like planets to be found there.
Another stable configuration would be two stars orbiting extremely closely while the planet orbits further out. This is kind of like the Tatooine system, though it is bound to be much rarer. And there's your astronomy lesson for the day.
They'll still have to pass those courses in which they don't excel, though, as they would be a requirement for graduation. If need be, have them take summer courses in those subjects.
I usually hated my gym classes, but I do recognize at least some need for them. In a nation of fat-asses, some knowledge of basic fitness is a must. Teach the basics, like running, biking, calisthenics, stretching, the basics of the main sports. In health class, teach nutrition, eating right, and their importance. Of course, if the students choose to ignore the knowledge they've been given, they'll suffer the consequences, but at least they won't be able to say they weren't given the opportunity. Who knows, maybe it'll do some good.
I would tend to agree. Once the basics of arithmetic are learned (emphasis on learned) the calculator merely becomes a tool to speed through the rote arithmetic and on to more important concepts. Once you get into things like trig or logs, it's far better to use a calculator to chug through the digits than to laboriously calculate it all by hand or look it up in a table. Hell, I managed to get a degree in physics without ever using a slide rule. Yes, I know people would say that doesn't mean much, but that doesn't mean I can't do the same process the long way. Really, though, the whole point of technology is to make a task easier and if I can program a calculator to chug through a hundred simple integrals and spend the night applying those to a real problem as opposed to spending the whole night working on those integrals by hand and spending the NEXT nigth applying those to the problem, then my choice is clear.
I remember nearly a decade ago playing SimCity2000 quite often. Always, whenever I would install a nuclear fission plant, the damned thing would blow sky high. ALWAYS. Honestly, how often do nuclear plants actually blow up? Only one has actually had an explosion (not counting the few occurrences where some radiation was released, but the physical structure was intact) out of the hundreds of plants running for the past 50+ years. It's not a reflection of reality, but more likely of the designer's bias against nuclear energy. One could also argue that FPS games have a bias against small arms. Bias in a game isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if we're positing that games are a form of expression.
Could be worse. They could name operations like they name medications. Soon, we'll have Operation Viagra, Operation Valtrex, and Operation Zoltan. Come to think of it, the guys who name medications are probably the same guys who name sci-fi/fantasy villians, like Zocor, Destroyer of Worlds or Zanax, Emperor of Ritalin.
Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that one. The VAB is still probably a lot more impressive in person, though.
In a similar vein, "lubrication" is another euphemism for alcohol.
Nearby, you'll find the Vehicle Assembly Building, which IIRC is the largest enclosed space in the world. Compare this
3 1&spn=0.010906,0.015044&t=k&hl=en
0 &spn=0.010906,0.015044&t=k&hl=en
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=28.584023,-80.6529
to the obligatory Pyramids of Giza at the same zoom level
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=29.975252,31.13328