I'm not sure what your point here is. Money put into space exploration also goes back into the economy. It creates jobs designing the rockets and related space technology. It creates more jobs for researchers. The knowledge we gain from experiments conducted in space can lead to breakthroughs in say material science, or biology, which can have FAR reaching effects on our economy. And we gain more knowledge of the world around us and the space above us to boot!
I don't see how circulating money frivolessly by buying luxury items and paying sports players enourmous sums of money gains us any in the end. It would be far better to circulate that money in areas such as research and exploration which can directly benifit us. I'm not suggesting we spend nothing on art of course. I love art. But these days we tend to be spending money on fluff rather than art.
I was general with regards to war for a reason. I didn't want to write an essay on what what is nessary and what isn't. That sort of thing simply starts terribly huge discussions where people end up disagreeing anyways and simply like to hear themselves argue. I do agree that not all wars are necessary, but as long as morons go spending money on stupid new weapons, the rest of us have to do the same to defend ourselves. Sad, but reality.
Hmm. Strange. I moved from Unix to Apple and everything seemed to "just work" for me. I had to learn a few new things... but nothing drastic.
Here is an example of how this "just work".
Say I hook my laptop up to a projector. On a PC, regardless of what OS it runs, I have to hit some key combination, or dig through menus, to get the display working. When I disconnect it, chances are I again have to do some tricky stuff.
Let's do the same thing with my powerbook. I plug in the projector cable and then.... damn. It works. Just like that. No menus, no key combos nothing. It automatically detects the projector and goes dual monitor instantly. Ok.. so let's say I've moved windows to the projector, perhaps a presentation. Now I unplug the projector. But wait! My windows are still on it! No problem. Once again, it "just works". The absence of the projector is detected and all the windows are automatically moved back to the laptop screen and I am no longer in dual screen mode.
This is what people mean by "just works". They do not mean that using the apple key instead of alt, or using the menu bar at the top versus on each window is somehow better. It's the integration that counts.
I fail to understand why it should matter to me John Q. Britisher would rather I voted Democrat.
Because like it or not, the USA is part of a world community. If you take that attitude, and don't give a shit about how your government treats others, then don't be suprised when you are spit upon when travelling abroad, or even denied entry to some contries.
Also, you should not be surprised when people from the rest of the world consider your country to be 'criminal'. Do you know why the US will not abide by the world court? Because it's already been fount guilty of 'international terrorism'. Many also think the war in Iraq is illegal.
Like it or not, you are constantly judged by the rest of the world. Your attitude, and the way you vote, confirms the opinion of people around the world who think that Americans are ego centric jerks.
Being an athiest, I obviously disagree on the church thing, but I still respect your opinion. If you beleive in church doctrine, it is indeed consistent with those beliefs to give the church money.
Yes, giving to the poor is nice. It would be even nicer to fix the infrastructure of poor countries so that they can supply themselves though. And quickly looking at your page, you seem to agree!
No, the waste is all the money we spend on britney spears and sports players. It's the money we spend on luxury items, it's the money we spend on pointless worship of mythical beings.
Space exploration gives us knowledge. War is unfortunate, but sometimes necessary. I wish we didn't have to spend money on war. But humans are vile creatures when it comes down to it, and so we need to spend money to kill and prevent being killed.
I have not seen Moore's film, but I have seen at least parts of the documentary which you mention.
Moore may be biased and sensationalist, but then so is the Republican party (and Democrat party). If people allow Republican sensationalism on TV and elsewhere, then they should also allow moore's sensationalism.
Sadly, facts do not speak to some people. For these people, we can only hope that there are equal amounts of sensationalist material from both sides.
My only quarrel with your statement was that you claimed it was well known about the passports. I had never heard of it until your post, and a quick google search did not turn up the hundreds of links you would expect for something that is "well known".
I bet you did not expect me to read the stuff on that site. I did not find the evidence which you claim. I did however find this relavant paragraph:
"The memo found no "compelling case" that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7) and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons."
The evidence you provided confirmed the general notion held by the rest of the world: Iraq did not have anything to do with 9/11, and Bin Laden did not like Saddam Hussein.
So Bill Clinton, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln should never have been President?
My point being that you would rather have a "Commander and Chief" (implying you are referring to war duties I suppose) with no battle experience and therefore little concept of the true inpact of war, than a man with battle experience in one of the worst executed wars the US has been involved in.
Sure, he was involved in some crimes that he regrets. But battle can do bad things to peoples sanity. I'd say that Kerry's experience gives him a better understanding of the horrors that are involved in wars, and also of the types of things that can go wrong, such as soldiers committing atrocities.
You also seem to make quite light of the situation in that prison under US control. There were people there who were saying that it was worse under US control than under Saddam. At least with Saddam they knew what to expect. What the US soldiers did was pychological torture.
You also exaggerate the corruption in Saddam's regiem.
30,000 people killed per year?
Too bad they only found 5,000 bodies as of July 14th. I guess you got your information from the incredbily unbias source known as the current government?
First, anyone who seriously thinks that WinFS is truly vaporware has a significantly impared view of reality.
Second, by WinFS, these sites are not really talking about just a file system with metadata. That is not a difficult problem and has already been done in BeFS long before ReiserFS 4. The difficult problem is creating a fast and usefull interface for it. Thi is something which has NOT yet been done.
I have yet to see any proof that integrating database like features into the filesystem is any better than having a separate indexing system and then providing a transparent filesystem api for the combination. In fact, I'd think that the later more modular approach would be easier to maintain and manage. Properties you really want in filesystem code.
And someone who has never seen combat IS fit to be Commander and Cheif?
What a joke.
I see that Bush really helped prevent further atrocities in that prison in Iraq. Anyone who grins like a mad man while talking about killing is not fit to be Commander in Chief, nor any sort of other person in power. Seriously, Bush probably thinks it's all some big game of Command and Conquer.
It may look nice, but lately, it sure is crap. My ibook as now broken for the second time, and judging from many reports, it will continue breaking endlessly.
One bum model does not invalidate the quality of the rest of the line you know. Besides, a bad part does not mean a *design* is bad. By design I am referring to the level of integration, where ports or located, size of the machine... etc etc
My powerbook, for instance, is utterly fantastic. I have never seen or used a laptop this well put together. Sure you could argue about processor speeds. But that is not what I mean by design really.
That's not to say decent PC hardware does not exist of course. It certainly does, but I've yet to see the same level of 'integration' on the PC side of things.
Now we just need to wait for Adobe and Macromedia to endorse Linux and it'll steal the graphic design folks from Apple.
Apple computers are so much more than just drop shadows and translucency. To get the designers, you would also need hardware as well designed as Apple hardware (read: designer hardware), you need to completely remove the need to go to the command line, you need to simplify the interface.
But most importantly, X needs proper colour matching support. Designers need to work with ICC profiles. Otherwise matching colours properly is not possible!!
War games are *not* always about the US beating somebody up. Trying playing a few more.
Yay, let's take another chance to bash America, right?
I admit my bias against America. But there seriously ARE a ton of games where you play an american soldier. This is maybe not surprising, since most wars since WWII seem to primarily involve America: Vietnam, Gulf, Afganistan, Iraq (I don't consider bombing Kosovo a 'war').
In America, war is avoided up to the point where the cost of not going to war is higher than the cost of going to war. Since war is sometimes necessary, and we are very thankful to those who fight for us, we glorify the soldiers, and hence, the acts of warfare in which they engage. This is a healthy way to protect America's national interests, so I have no problem with video games that refelect these same values.
This is an interesting view. I guess I would question whether this is the best way to thank the soldiers for what they have done. Would these soldiers want war glorified in order to make them out to be heros? Or would they rather people learn the true horrors of way, to better understand the real sacrifices made by troops abroad?
Another point which many outside the US would question is when war is necessary. Arguably many of the wars fought by the US were not necessary. Obviously some of them are, but the US has been involved in many questionable wars as well. Vietnam is a great example. Other lesser known military operations are Panama and Nicaragua. In the US these are seen as justified actions, but the rest of the world does not see it quite the same way. Just because the US is the most powerfull country, does not mean that it's opinion is more 'correct' than the rest of the world's. It only means it's opinion is more enforcable.
You do realize that the US is not the only 'good guy' in wars like WW2? In fact, the US only jumped into WW2 near the end. There are plenty of other 'winners' for WW1 and WW2.
Also, the US never 'won' Vietnam. They pulled out. This is partly why Vietnam was seen as one of the worst wars the US ever involved itself in. But I guess revisionist history now paints Vientam as a stunning display of US power.
You are a perfect example of the ill effects of war games.
If you like an artist, I mean REALLY like an artist, you will be happy to pay for their music. Can't call yourself a fan of some music if you're not willing to pay for it
It is not so much that people are not willing to pay for music. It's that people are not willing to pay 75USD for only 4 CDs. And especially when those CDs come with copy protection which prevents people from using them on a number of playback devices. Consider also that a very small fraction of that 75USD goes to your favorite band. A small fraction is also for manufacturing. The VAST majority of it goes to the record label, and various middle men allowing them to make BILLIONS in profit.
Finally, I any many others do not listen to *pop* music. Why would I give money to a group which tries it's best to brainwash me into buying pop, and uses unfair tactics to dissuade me from buying music I like? Electronica music is often far more expensive than pop, and imports (read non-US) are often DOUBLE. I live in Canada. The lables have the nerve to label a Canadian group I like as an IMPORT ?! and charge me double to buy it, in CANADA.
Am I really supporting my favorite artist by giving money this way? The RIAA will not promote them. In fact, they try their best to make it hard for people to even buy their music. And why have all the music stores in Canada dropped any non-RIAA music? I am now forced to order such music from abroad.
Perhaps you should give more thought to who you are really supporting here. Promotion money for Briteny Spears? Or are you paying to see your favourite band buried?
I agree, but personally, I think making any *game* out of real historical wars is wrong.
It is decidedly easy to make fictional war games, and I'd say they would even be more interesting. There are a number of problems with real war games.
For instance, 90% of the horrors of war are not shown. What are we trying to say? That our grandparents experiences were 'fun competition?' That war is fun in general? There is no way that a game can simulate the real fear of dying that soldiers face, or losing a best friend, or family member.
Another problem with war games is that they are *always* about the US beating somebody up. Not being from the USA, playing games which are 'ra ra usa' is simply not fun. Sure, some of the multiplayer games allow you to be the enemy... but this is small consolation for non US gamers.
The lack of non-US war games is also illustrative of the war like nature of the American culture. While most societies feel war is to be avoided at all costs, American society is rife with things glorifying war, and games are the biggest souce of such propaganda.
Since this site is US centric, I am sure I will get lots of responses showing that there *ARE* non-US based war games. And other societies DO glorify war. I have no doubt such examples exist, but the fact remains that the vast majority of war games are American, and make light of very serious topic.
This is offtopic somewhat, but shoulder checking is a myth popularized by the government. In fact, shoulder checking can be dangerous.
First, it *is* possible to adjust your mirrors so that you have no blind spot. Unfortunately, 90% of people don't do this, hence why the government promotes shoulder checks. Second, it's well known by performance drivers that you tend to steer the car towards what you are looking at. In collision avoidance schools, this is why they teach you *not* to look at a car that you are in danger of hitting, but rather look in the direction you want to escape.
A shoulder check tends to cause you to turn slightly towards the lane you are checking. If you are not careful, the car can change direction a fairly large amount. Further, it takes time to turn your head and get a good look during a shoulder check. During this time you are not looking ahead of you, neither directly nor with your peripheral vision. An emergency brake by the car in front of you during this time is far more likely to cause a collision than if you had done a quick check using your mirrors.
Here is an article detailing how to adjust your mirrors:
http://www.canadiandirect.com/Renderer.jhtml.89. ht ml
Of course, this idea is still quite radical, and it even has it's 'famous' detractors as you will see if you search the web. However, a study done by, I think the British government, did verify that the blind spot is eliminated by setting your mirrors correctly. Detractors arguments are fairly weak (despite them writing many words), and it is probably that these people simply don't want to admit that what they have been teaching for 40+ years is wrong.
The insurance companies think that the following things are "dangerous" and worthy of high rates: speeding and fast cornering.
The truth is that neigher is *at all dangerous* when done in safe situations. What is dangerous, are people who: tailgate, don't watch traffic (people going slow tend to do this), are indesicive when driving, weave, drive on shoulders, drive up onramps to push in front of traffic lines.
None of these things can be measured with a black box. This solution assume people who drive and corner fast are the same people who tailgate and weave. While this might be true in some cases, it is certainly not true in the majority of cases. I've seen drivers who follow the speed limit, yet are still some of the most dangerous on the road since they enter a zombie state where they are not looking around, and are probably focused only on the car in front of them that they are following far too closely.
Well, first, I am not arguing for or against using cars. There are certainly illogical environmentalists as you describe. Lots of them. But there are big governments that do tend to handwave away the idea we are causing harm. Mostly because these governments have a lot of their economy invested into a given energy source or what not. But that's offtopic.
You could argue that this person is selfish, and should be more considerate, but that's not about logic. Most game theory assumes each player selects the outcome which is most directly beneficial to them.
But here is exactly what I am talking about. Early man did indeed fit the game theory model, and emotions play perfectly into that. But we have since formed communities. Some emotions also play into *small* communites, but not for the large communites we now have. It is highly benificial to work together and not be 100% greedy.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what your point here is. Money put into space exploration also goes back into the economy. It creates jobs designing the rockets and related space technology. It creates more jobs for researchers. The knowledge we gain from experiments conducted in space can lead to breakthroughs in say material science, or biology, which can have FAR reaching effects on our economy. And we gain more knowledge of the world around us and the space above us to boot!
I don't see how circulating money frivolessly by buying luxury items and paying sports players enourmous sums of money gains us any in the end. It would be far better to circulate that money in areas such as research and exploration which can directly benifit us. I'm not suggesting we spend nothing on art of course. I love art. But these days we tend to be spending money on fluff rather than art.
I was general with regards to war for a reason. I didn't want to write an essay on what what is nessary and what isn't. That sort of thing simply starts terribly huge discussions where people end up disagreeing anyways and simply like to hear themselves argue. I do agree that not all wars are necessary, but as long as morons go spending money on stupid new weapons, the rest of us have to do the same to defend ourselves. Sad, but reality.
Hmm. Strange. I moved from Unix to Apple and everything seemed to "just work" for me. I had to learn a few new things... but nothing drastic.
Here is an example of how this "just work".
Say I hook my laptop up to a projector. On a PC, regardless of what OS it runs, I have to hit some key combination, or dig through menus, to get the display working. When I disconnect it, chances are I again have to do some tricky stuff.
Let's do the same thing with my powerbook. I plug in the projector cable and then.... damn. It works. Just like that. No menus, no key combos nothing. It automatically detects the projector and goes dual monitor instantly. Ok.. so let's say I've moved windows to the projector, perhaps a presentation. Now I unplug the projector. But wait! My windows are still on it! No problem. Once again, it "just works". The absence of the projector is detected and all the windows are automatically moved back to the laptop screen and I am no longer in dual screen mode.
This is what people mean by "just works". They do not mean that using the apple key instead of alt, or using the menu bar at the top versus on each window is somehow better. It's the integration that counts.
The GUI metaphor is a totally different story.
I fail to understand why it should matter to me John Q. Britisher would rather I voted Democrat.
Because like it or not, the USA is part of a world community. If you take that attitude, and don't give a shit about how your government treats others, then don't be suprised when you are spit upon when travelling abroad, or even denied entry to some contries.
Also, you should not be surprised when people from the rest of the world consider your country to be 'criminal'. Do you know why the US will not abide by the world court? Because it's already been fount guilty of 'international terrorism'. Many also think the war in Iraq is illegal.
Like it or not, you are constantly judged by the rest of the world. Your attitude, and the way you vote, confirms the opinion of people around the world who think that Americans are ego centric jerks.
Being an athiest, I obviously disagree on the church thing, but I still respect your opinion. If you beleive in church doctrine, it is indeed consistent with those beliefs to give the church money.
Yes, giving to the poor is nice. It would be even nicer to fix the infrastructure of poor countries so that they can supply themselves though. And quickly looking at your page, you seem to agree!
No, the waste is all the money we spend on britney spears and sports players. It's the money we spend on luxury items, it's the money we spend on pointless worship of mythical beings.
Space exploration gives us knowledge. War is unfortunate, but sometimes necessary. I wish we didn't have to spend money on war. But humans are vile creatures when it comes down to it, and so we need to spend money to kill and prevent being killed.
I don't think the words hip and slashdot belong together.
I have not seen Moore's film, but I have seen at least parts of the documentary which you mention.
Moore may be biased and sensationalist, but then so is the Republican party (and Democrat party). If people allow Republican sensationalism on TV and elsewhere, then they should also allow moore's sensationalism.
Sadly, facts do not speak to some people. For these people, we can only hope that there are equal amounts of sensationalist material from both sides.
My only quarrel with your statement was that you claimed it was well known about the passports. I had never heard of it until your post, and a quick google search did not turn up the hundreds of links you would expect for something that is "well known".
I bet you did not expect me to read the stuff on that site. I did not find the evidence which you claim. I did however find this relavant paragraph:
"The memo found no "compelling case" that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7) and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons."
The evidence you provided confirmed the general notion held by the rest of the world: Iraq did not have anything to do with 9/11, and Bin Laden did not like Saddam Hussein.
So Bill Clinton, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln should never have been President?
5 6, 1263901,00.html
My point being that you would rather have a "Commander and Chief" (implying you are referring to war duties I suppose) with no battle experience and therefore little concept of the true inpact of war, than a man with battle experience in one of the worst executed wars the US has been involved in.
Sure, he was involved in some crimes that he regrets. But battle can do bad things to peoples sanity. I'd say that Kerry's experience gives him a better understanding of the horrors that are involved in wars, and also of the types of things that can go wrong, such as soldiers committing atrocities.
You also seem to make quite light of the situation in that prison under US control. There were people there who were saying that it was worse under US control than under Saddam. At least with Saddam they knew what to expect. What the US soldiers did was pychological torture.
You also exaggerate the corruption in Saddam's regiem.
30,000 people killed per year?
Too bad they only found 5,000 bodies as of July 14th. I guess you got your information from the incredbily unbias source known as the current government?
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,129
First, anyone who seriously thinks that WinFS is truly vaporware has a significantly impared view of reality.
Second, by WinFS, these sites are not really talking about just a file system with metadata. That is not a difficult problem and has already been done in BeFS long before ReiserFS 4. The difficult problem is creating a fast and usefull interface for it. Thi is something which has NOT yet been done.
I have yet to see any proof that integrating database like features into the filesystem is any better than having a separate indexing system and then providing a transparent filesystem api for the combination. In fact, I'd think that the later more modular approach would be easier to maintain and manage. Properties you really want in filesystem code.
And someone who has never seen combat IS fit to be Commander and Cheif?
What a joke.
I see that Bush really helped prevent further atrocities in that prison in Iraq. Anyone who grins like a mad man while talking about killing is not fit to be Commander in Chief, nor any sort of other person in power. Seriously, Bush probably thinks it's all some big game of Command and Conquer.
So well known that you can't even provide a link to a reputable source with this information?
Forgive my cluelessness, but how is one karma bombed?
It may look nice, but lately, it sure is crap. My ibook as now broken for the second time, and judging from many reports, it will continue breaking endlessly.
One bum model does not invalidate the quality of the rest of the line you know. Besides, a bad part does not mean a *design* is bad. By design I am referring to the level of integration, where ports or located, size of the machine... etc etc
My powerbook, for instance, is utterly fantastic. I have never seen or used a laptop this well put together. Sure you could argue about processor speeds. But that is not what I mean by design really.
That's not to say decent PC hardware does not exist of course. It certainly does, but I've yet to see the same level of 'integration' on the PC side of things.
Now we just need to wait for Adobe and Macromedia to endorse Linux and it'll steal the graphic design folks from Apple.
Apple computers are so much more than just drop shadows and translucency. To get the designers, you would also need hardware as well designed as Apple hardware (read: designer hardware), you need to completely remove the need to go to the command line, you need to simplify the interface.
But most importantly, X needs proper colour matching support. Designers need to work with ICC profiles. Otherwise matching colours properly is not possible!!
Rome Total War? Even Rise of Nations?
These are ancient wars. I don't count these since these countries don't exist anymore.
Even Warcraft? Even Worms 3D?
Umm...these are fictional. The topic was war games involving current countries. At least I figured the current countries part was implied.
War games are *not* always about the US beating somebody up. Trying playing a few more.
Yay, let's take another chance to bash America, right?
I admit my bias against America. But there seriously ARE a ton of games where you play an american soldier. This is maybe not surprising, since most wars since WWII seem to primarily involve America: Vietnam, Gulf, Afganistan, Iraq (I don't consider bombing Kosovo a 'war').
In America, war is avoided up to the point where the cost of not going to war is higher than the cost of going to war. Since war is sometimes necessary, and we are very thankful to those who fight for us, we glorify the soldiers, and hence, the acts of warfare in which they engage. This is a healthy way to protect America's national interests, so I have no problem with video games that refelect these same values.
This is an interesting view. I guess I would question whether this is the best way to thank the soldiers for what they have done. Would these soldiers want war glorified in order to make them out to be heros? Or would they rather people learn the true horrors of way, to better understand the real sacrifices made by troops abroad?
Another point which many outside the US would question is when war is necessary. Arguably many of the wars fought by the US were not necessary. Obviously some of them are,
but the US has been involved in many questionable wars as well. Vietnam is a great example. Other lesser known military operations are Panama and Nicaragua. In the US these are seen as justified actions, but the rest of the world does not see it quite the same way. Just because the US is the most powerfull country, does not mean that it's opinion is more 'correct' than the rest of the world's. It only means it's opinion is more enforcable.
Hm, I guess I was thinking of WWI then. I obviously need to brush up on history. Sorry.
You do realize that the US is not the only 'good guy' in wars like WW2? In fact, the US only jumped into WW2 near the end. There are plenty of other 'winners' for WW1 and WW2.
Also, the US never 'won' Vietnam. They pulled out. This is partly why Vietnam was seen as one of the worst wars the US ever involved itself in. But I guess revisionist history now paints Vientam as a stunning display of US power.
You are a perfect example of the ill effects of war games.
If you like an artist, I mean REALLY like an artist, you will be happy to pay for their music. Can't call yourself a fan of some music if you're not willing to pay for it
It is not so much that people are not willing to pay for music. It's that people are not willing to pay 75USD for only 4 CDs. And especially when those CDs come with copy protection which prevents people from using them on a number of playback devices. Consider also that a very small fraction of that 75USD goes to your favorite band. A small fraction is also for manufacturing. The VAST majority of it goes to the record label, and various middle men allowing them to make BILLIONS in profit.
Finally, I any many others do not listen to *pop* music. Why would I give money to a group which tries it's best to brainwash me into buying pop, and uses unfair tactics to dissuade me from buying music I like? Electronica music is often far more expensive than pop, and imports (read non-US) are often DOUBLE. I live in Canada. The lables have the nerve to label a Canadian group I like as an IMPORT ?! and charge me double to buy it, in CANADA.
Am I really supporting my favorite artist by giving money this way? The RIAA will not promote them. In fact, they try their best to make it hard for people to even buy their music. And why have all the music stores in Canada dropped any non-RIAA music? I am now forced to order such music from abroad.
Perhaps you should give more thought to who you are really supporting here. Promotion money for Briteny Spears? Or are you paying to see your favourite band buried?
I agree, but personally, I think making any *game* out of real historical wars is wrong.
It is decidedly easy to make fictional war games, and I'd say they would even be more interesting. There are a number of problems with real war games.
For instance, 90% of the horrors of war are not shown. What are we trying to say? That our grandparents experiences were 'fun competition?' That war is fun in general? There is no way that a game can simulate the real fear of dying that soldiers face, or losing a best friend, or family member.
Another problem with war games is that they are *always* about the US beating somebody up. Not being from the USA, playing games which are 'ra ra usa' is simply not fun. Sure, some of the multiplayer games allow you to be the enemy... but this is small consolation for non US gamers.
The lack of non-US war games is also illustrative of the war like nature of the American culture. While most societies feel war is to be avoided at all costs, American society is rife with things glorifying war, and games are the biggest souce of such propaganda.
Since this site is US centric, I am sure I will get lots of responses showing that there *ARE* non-US based war games. And other societies DO glorify war. I have no doubt such examples exist, but the fact remains that the vast majority of war games are American, and make light of very serious topic.
This is offtopic somewhat, but shoulder checking is a myth popularized by the government. In fact, shoulder checking can be dangerous.
. ht ml
First, it *is* possible to adjust your mirrors so that you have no blind spot. Unfortunately, 90% of people don't do this, hence why the government promotes shoulder checks. Second, it's well known by performance drivers that you tend to steer the car towards what you are looking at. In collision avoidance schools, this is why they teach you *not* to look at a car that you are in danger of hitting, but rather look in the direction you want to escape.
A shoulder check tends to cause you to turn slightly towards the lane you are checking. If you are not careful, the car can change direction a fairly large amount. Further, it takes time to turn your head and get a good look during a shoulder check. During this time you are not looking ahead of you, neither directly nor with your peripheral vision. An emergency brake by the car in front of you during this time is far more likely to cause a collision than if you had done a quick check using your mirrors.
Here is an article detailing how to adjust your mirrors:
http://www.canadiandirect.com/Renderer.jhtml.89
Of course, this idea is still quite radical, and it even has it's 'famous' detractors as you will see if you search the web. However, a study done by, I think the British government, did verify that the blind spot is eliminated by setting your mirrors correctly. Detractors arguments are fairly weak (despite them writing many words), and it is probably that these people simply don't want to admit that what they have been teaching for 40+ years is wrong.
Except that this is not an acceptable solution.
The insurance companies think that the following things are "dangerous" and worthy of high rates: speeding and fast cornering.
The truth is that neigher is *at all dangerous* when done in safe situations. What is dangerous, are people who: tailgate, don't watch traffic (people going slow tend to do this), are indesicive when driving, weave, drive on shoulders, drive up onramps to push in front of traffic lines.
None of these things can be measured with a black box. This solution assume people who drive and corner fast are the same people who tailgate and weave. While this might be true in some cases, it is certainly not true in the majority of cases. I've seen drivers who follow the speed limit, yet are still some of the most dangerous on the road since they enter a zombie state where they are not looking around, and are probably focused only on the car in front of them that they are following far too closely.
Well, first, I am not arguing for or against using cars. There are certainly illogical environmentalists as you describe. Lots of them. But there are big governments that do tend to handwave away the idea we are causing harm. Mostly because these governments have a lot of their economy invested into a given energy source or what not. But that's offtopic.
You could argue that this person is selfish, and should be more considerate, but that's not about logic. Most game theory assumes each player selects the outcome which is most directly beneficial to them.
But here is exactly what I am talking about. Early man did indeed fit the game theory model, and emotions play perfectly into that. But we have since formed communities. Some emotions also play into *small* communites, but not for the large communites we now have. It is highly benificial to work together and not be 100% greedy.