I shared one example of this with birds on an isolated island in a different post. While they're not different species, they are vastly different looking.... enough that the layperson would mistake them as different species. Only a few more changes like that and it is likely they would no longer be compatible breeding mates to their original ancenstors and hence, a different species.
In fact, it happens a lot... but the time scales are usually a few hundred years. It takes a unique environment and a small population for it to happen in a decade. Since the theories of natural selection and evolution haven't been around and widely understood for much over a century, such macro-evolutionary processes are VERY unlikely to have been seen... but we've seen plenty examples of microevolution on a decade-long scale.
Given a period of drastic climate change and extinction events, its not unreasonable to imagine these changes that happened in a decade continuing to cause divergent evolution over the course of a few thousand years... and resulting in literally HUNDREDS of small changes to the creatures.... my example in another post is the evolution from a finch to an eagle... it is likely the collection of 20 or 30 evolutionary mutations, that likely took place over a few thousand years.... the evolution from a fish to a "walking fish" to an amphibian was likely a similar period with just a couple of mutations in the process. Eventually one of the fish had a really fucked up fin on it that looked more like a twig... but amazingly, it worked better for propulsion on land, and was therefore more capable of survival out of the water.... therefore it was able to breed more effectively and spawned a whole race of amphibians from a race of fish.... wow!
The concept isn't difficult... It has been witnessed on non-trivial scales in higher-order lifeforms within your lifetime. How many of your lifetimes fit into 300 million years?
Also isn't one of the major foundations of evolution that life cannot de-evolve? It always goes from lower to higher?
This is grossly false and the result of either.... lazy reading.... poor education.... or deliberate obfuscation.
Which is it?
Evolution is not a direction, it is merely a set of changes that result in a species being more suitable for an environment.
If the earth's atmosphere were suddenly injected with a lethal dose of methane from a space rock, mammals would die.... unless there was a rare genetic mutation that allowed a certain group of reptiles to survive in a methane-rich environment.
They would then reproduce and result in a gross change to the world's biosphere. There would have been a global 'extinction event' would have evolved, but an entirely new set of plants and animals would take hold and have resources, space and time to spread out and grow. If the climate changed by a few degrees, a new set of environmental adaptations would take place and select for those plants/animals with the best resistance to temperature, killing those with low resistance. Just because a cactus might survive where a Redwood might die doesn't make it "de-evolution"...
Just because they don't drive a Toyota or have body hair or suckle their young doesn't mean they've NOT evolved... they adapted to the circumstances and survived, through a random genetic mutation. That is evolution.
It has NOTHING (aboslutely nothing) to do with "better" or "worse" or "progress" or "forward" or "up" or "down"... That whole concept and thought-process is made up bunk... either designed as a lame way to discredit the concept, or invented out of pure ignorance of the ideas behind it. It is just random genetic mutations being more able to survive in a given environment. Period.
There was an interesting evolutionary event seen recently on an isolated pacific island. It has two variations of a bird, one with a long beak and one with a short beak. The beak had grown long through some quirk or mutation at some point in the last 100 years (the long beak variation was not recorded in biological records before then). There were only a few of these birds.
Then one day, there was a disease that struck their primary food source. There were alternate sources of food, but the short-beaked birds were not able to reach many of them. Most of the short-beaked birds died, except those that were mating with long beaked birds and were therefore taken care of by the better equipped mates. Through breeding, the long-beaked variation became the dominant characteristic on the island within a few years. Eventually, food sources returned, but the short-beaked birds were now a small minority of the population on the island.
Now, if food sources changed again and for whatever reason, the long beak was no longer best suited for foraging, the process could reverse. On the other hand, had the food shortage continued for several more generations, the short-beaked birds would have almost completely been wiped out and the species would now be the "long beaked bird" rather than the "short beaked bird" and would remain that way until an evolutionary mutation changed them again...
Hence, the process of evolution was witnessed, where a species of bird changed from a short beak to a long beak over the course of a few generations.
Sum 10,000 of these small changes over the course of 2 million years and it's easy to see.... a long legged bird, a bird that can fly faster. A bird that has better eyes. A bird that is white, a bird with sharp talons, a bird that is bigger, a bird that eats seafood, a bird that can nest on a cliff, rather than in the sand.... these are all subtle changes that may have happened over time... suddenly we just transformed a finch into an eagle.
The whole "disproving evolution" thing and claiming it is "not a scientific procecss" beacause we cannot actually take a clam and evolve it into a marmot in a lab setting is really really silly.
It's easily demonstrable and easily repeatable on small scales. It merely requires a small expansion of your mind to consider it over the long-term.
I find it highly ironic that you're holding the "geocentric model of the universe" up as an example where religion trumps science, since the "geocentric model of the universe" comes VERBATIM from the bible.
Genesis 15:12
sheesh...
And "evolve" is not a synonym for "change". You merely made a gross logical leap in an half-witted attempt to prove dogma.
When referring to biology and genetics, evolution is defined as "periodic genetic mutations that result in changes to a species over time" (or some similar variation).
This is not synonymous with "change" ("to alter or become different"), it is a specific, measurable and precise term that you clearly don't understand. Because bacteria multiply many times per hour, their "evolution" is extremely rapid and can be easily measured by laboratory sciences, unlike a species that multiples only a few times per century such as mammals, whos evolutionary cycles will last millenia rather than days.
But I do appreciate your glorious justification.:-)
Windows has this setting. It also has a setting to enable single click throughout the Explorer structure, just like a web hyperlink. It even will underline the clickable text like a hyperlink and change the mouse pointer, just as it does in IE and has done since IE4 came out on Win95.
Typing this on a D620. I can push 100wpm when I'm going at it and the laptop can run two VMs, a portscanner, print job and a dozen or so different programs without losing my typing.
It can have direct consequences to things such as quantum computing and nuclear fusion, both of which may be critical to manned spaceflight in the future.
And with earthlings as stupid as we seem to be, it might be necessary for our species to master spaceflight in the future, lest we cause our own extinctio.
I've copied a few large passages below, but here is the two sentence meat of the discussion:
Rind et al. (1998) similarly concluded that students with childhood sexual abuse histories were slightly less well adjusted than controls, but that this was more likely attributable to family environment than abuse experiences per se. These assertions are consistent with other studies that have noted when other abuse (i.e., physical, emotional) experiences are held constant, childhood sexual-abuse-symptom relations frequently disappear (e.g., Cole, 1987; Eckenrode, Laird, & Doris, 1993; Higgins & McCabe, 1994; Ney et al., 1994).
Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels' (1994) random probability U.S. sample found that men with sexual abuse histories reported three out of nine sexually related problems and women reported four out of eight problems, the differences between sexually abused and non-sexually-abused groups were small.
With an eye for statistical logic, what this says is that.... a small group of those abused have severe problems. The majority, however, have no problems at all and bring the "median" of the group back to almost the same as non-abused samples.
(from the same article) A number of researchers have reported that the relation between childhood sexual abuse and later adult adjustment (broadly defined) appears to be accounted for, to a large extent, by family background rather than sexual abuse per se. For example, using path analysis to examine child sexual abuse-adjustment relations among female students across 32 U.S. colleges, Wisniewski (1989) concluded that factors such as family violence had a greater impact on current emotional adjustment than did the specific effects of sexual abuse. Tromovitch (1997) concluded that "the results from psychological adjustment measures imply that, childhood sexual abuse is related to poorer adjustment in the general population, the magnitude of this relation is small... [and] cannot safely be assumed to reflect causal effects of the childhood sexual abuse" (p. 253). The authors suggested that differences in adjustment between sexually abused persons and controls observed in national samples may be attributable to larger differences in social environment, rather than to the sexual abuse. In a later meta-analyses of 59 studies based on college samples, Rind et al. (1998) similarly concluded that students with childhood sexual abuse histories were slightly less well adjusted than controls, but that this was more likely attributable to family environment than abuse experiences per se. These assertions are consistent with other studies that have noted when other abuse (i.e., physical, emotional) experiences are held constant, childhood sexual-abuse-symptom relations frequently disappear (e.g., Cole, 1987; Eckenrode, Laird, & Doris, 1993; Higgins & McCabe, 1994; Ney et al., 1994).
The only conclusion I can come to is that there can be some effect and other studies I recall (I cannot find a reference) show that harm is more common with girls, more damaging when they are very young and manifest more severely when incest is involved. With the "I did my teacher" example of a teenage boy willingly engaging an unrelated woman, the long-term perceptions and adjustment coorilates actually show those relationships to be viewed (from the "victims" point of view) as usually a positive experience.
I can tell you from experience that several of my friends had older lovers in their young teens. As those relationships were neve
Actually, DoJ reports state that most child sexual abuse is the non-violent "fondling" sort. The second most common is the non-violent "seducing/coercing" sort (aka "I slept with my teacher isn't that cool?"). The third most common is exhibitionism... where a guy exposes himself to a kid or a bunch of kids (and yes, that is recorded as "Child Sexual Assault" in most US jurisdictions).
Less than 5% of child sexual assault is the result of violence. Less than 15% result from the threat of violence.
An interesting aside that some researchers pointed out recently in a journal article is that studies show that kids who come from "bad homes" where they are subject to physical or emotional abuse, or simply left with fewer life ambitions and choices (hence, poverty generally) are TWICE as likely to experience sexual abuse. Interestingly enough, people who fall into this "bad homes" category have 20% higher rates of substantial sexual and psychological dysfunction and average 3-4 more sexual partners over a lifetime. Interestingly enough, if you isolate this variable ("bad homes" vs "good homes") in studies of sexual abuse victims, you find that there is a far stronger coorilation between psychological problems as an adult to "coming from a bad home" than there is to "was sexually abused as a child". The studies that show physical abuse maladjustment more severe than sexual abuse maladjustment are a bit of a paradox to most researchers, since they don't make sense in light of studies that show sex abuse victims having reasonably high rates of maladjustment as well. However, when you adjust for "family enviornment" you find that the sexual abuse itself has a relatively low coorilation.
In addition, on the topic, most recent studies of recividism amongst criminals show that Sex Offenders have the lowest rates of recividism amongst all classes of individuals. Since a few studies from the 1970s of high offender recividism are frequently used as the keystone for draconian "think of the children" legislation, these tend to be submarined by politicians. It is interesting to note the comments in the following AP article about a recent study from Alaska:
This Department of Justice study shows that same-crime recividism of Child Molesters is around 3.3% (re-arrested for another sex offence on a child), whereas the same-crime recividism for most other classes of criminals is around 40% and sometimes as high as 80% in the case of robbery.
In addition, more than 60% of "recividist" (people re-arrested after being released for a felony) sex assault cases come from non-sex offenders. The one thing it points out is that statistically, sex offenders are more likely to be re-arrested for a sex offense, but their numbers are substantially lower than the class of all other criminals, therefore, the majority risk of sex offenders comes from people who were previously not convicted as sex offenders.
I'm wandering, so I'll just end it.
Remember, think of the children next time you vote.
Actually, several recent research studies have shown that physical abuse is far worse, in terms of long-term social adjustment and psychological issues, than sexual abuse.
One of the studies actually concluded that *emotional* abuse, such as verbal abuse and emotional neglect is actually somewhat worse for long-term adjustment than sexual abuse.
That's not to say it's not harmful, but I don't see a public register of parents who virtually named their kids 'fucktard' when they were 7 (and yes, I've met one of those, and yes, their kid is fucked up). I don't see us making motions to call for the death penalty for striking a crying kid with a belt. Sure it may land you a year of probation... maybe jailtime if you do it repeatedly over a few years, but seriously?
Just FYI, Eve runs on an absolutely state-of-the-art cluster of several hundred high end multi-processor servers, using a solid-state RAMSAN array to store critical database tables (as 18k RPM SCSI drives simply aren't fast enough random seek times).
But splitting a new shard has advantages in multiple ways....
One might thing the Caldari would have a problem with an all-controlling corporation challenging the creation and spread of new corporate influence, especially caldari state influence... seeing that many of the large Alliance leaders are Kill-On-Site within Caldari space because of their low security standing.
To be clear, you do not lose your character, nor any skills trained because of the "clone" system.
Even without a clone, you only lose 60% of your highest-level skill... which usually amounts to less than 3% of your total skill base.
The loss of a ship may be painful, but the "Insurance" system makes it so that you generally only lose 30% of the value of the ship and the "loot drop" system ensures that only about 60% of the modules on the ship are "lost".
In all, it's quite fair and makes it a non-trivial thing to lose a ship, but not devistating to your long-term gameplay.
This is perfect....
One of CCP's mottos is "there is no 'easy' button".
It is nice to recognize the recent increase in starting skillpoints, and the benefit this provides for newer users.
However, because of the mechanics of skill training and the fact that CCP has continued to increase the number of skills and the rank of those skills... and also increased the power of ships and modules obtained through these higher level skills, is there a point at which we can say that the game is no longer appealing to new users?
When the new people are 4-5 years behind the highest level players with really no way of gaining ground (especially since very old users will have high level learning skills and implants to boot), what is the point that you consider creating a new shard and "starting over" as it were, with a totally fresh world.
While my character in the current system is fairly high level, I have discussed with a lot of newer players (even those in game for 6-12 months) who would jump at the opportunity to "start over" in a fresh world where there are no SirMolle's with 95 million skillpoints.
What are your long term plans or thoughts in this regard?
In any real world government, there are controls and laws in place to prevent monopolies.
Once one entity controls all of a commodity, they have an unfair and potentially economically devistating control over the free market for an object.
The same would likely apply to space, in the case of Eve.
What controls are in place, or what discussions have been had in the event that a single entity gains control over *all* of a certain blueprint original, or *all* of un-policed 0.0 space?
As we saw with the recent near complete destruction of two of the largest "carebear" (industrial-focused, rather than PvP) alliances, ASCN and ISS, and the relative ineffectiveness of ASCN's defenses in the face of BoB's military prowess (and apparent knowledge of game architecture, using coordinated crashing of server nodes as an offensive ploy), what would be done in the event that an alliance like BoB were to wipe out all of the other major alliances and begin exacting taxes for travel through and existence within all of 0.0 space?
Elementary schools? How many second graders are on MySpace?
In fact, how many elementary schools even have computers that allow "un directed" Internet access?
MySpace is primarily a highschool thing.... and in highschools, where there are open computer terminals to use, this is the target.
How many elementary schools allow 7 year olds to wander around and sit down at a random computer terminal and type a random URL today? I would wager not too many, and even if they did, how many actually get used that way? A 7 year old would type "fart" into the URL and get some jokes page. Somehow I doubt they're myspace addicts.
Maybe the FCC is too busy looking at boobies on TV and wringing their hands while they pander to right wing talking heads who demand we all watch "Saving Grace" and "Touched by an Angel" (while we trade gay sex for meth in the basement) and levy hefty fines every time a nipple appears on our screens... and censor our content and chase people around who download content, and sue people for their wireless and hmmm wait... broadband?
I've been in plenty of positions where I gave notice because I knew my employer could not replace me "out of the box". Out of sheer goodwill and a desire to remain on good standing with them, I willingly offered to help interview my replacement and to train him for a week or two on the daily activities..... rather than my being escorted out the door and then the new guy getting to figure out my job the hard way over the next 3 months while customers suffer because of his lack of experience.
Somehow, I think you run a call center or some such. A skilled job can't simply be "replaced" out of the box, no matter how "good" your replacement is, there is a learning curve that can be drastically decreased by just a week or two of training from someone with experience.
It should be patently obvious that there is some collusion going on when you are threatened with criminal sanctions for modifying a device they purchased and own legally.
The extreme example might be........ Toyota gets a law passed that we MUST use their $500 oil filters in our SUVs, or face criminal charges... If they engineer their cars to do so, we may have trouble using other filters, but we should not be criminally liable for modifying our property to use a sock filter. That is absurd.
The biggest problem, as it has been said before, is that there are many laws that are so vague, that virtually ALL citizens of the US and the UK are guilty of violating at least one of them regularly.
the problem is that laws and sentences are set up with a strong consideration to the fact that we only catch someone one out of 10 times.
The exponential progression of "mandatory minimums" and "strict sentencing guidelines" came about out of desire to use the sentence as a deterrent, rather than a punishment, under the assumption that we cannot have 100% enforcement, therefore we must find other ways to prevent crime.
So in the scenario of 100% enforcement, perhaps we need to seriously look at the effects.
In the United States, more than 15% of the population will serve time in jail during their lifetime. More than 4% of the population is serving an extended jail sentence.
Criminologists agree that less than 10% of "real" crimes are actually brought to a successful guilty verdect.
Extrapolating, with 100% enforcement, does this not mean that 35% of the population of the United States would be serving jail time? Is this desirable? or does it illustrate a flaw in our thinking about what is punishable and illegal?
Stew is a pedophile, so we must dismiss his commentary about freedom.
Did you miss my ardent discussion of personal liberty in the DCMA threads? What about in the Patriot Act threads?
I just happen to think that 'save the children' "burn the pedos" is the height of moral McCarthyism in our society today so it tends to push my buttons.
Slashdot Mirror
FYI,
B has already happened...
many times.
I shared one example of this with birds on an isolated island in a different post. While they're not different species, they are vastly different looking.... enough that the layperson would mistake them as different species. Only a few more changes like that and it is likely they would no longer be compatible breeding mates to their original ancenstors and hence, a different species.
In fact, it happens a lot... but the time scales are usually a few hundred years. It takes a unique environment and a small population for it to happen in a decade. Since the theories of natural selection and evolution haven't been around and widely understood for much over a century, such macro-evolutionary processes are VERY unlikely to have been seen... but we've seen plenty examples of microevolution on a decade-long scale.
Given a period of drastic climate change and extinction events, its not unreasonable to imagine these changes that happened in a decade continuing to cause divergent evolution over the course of a few thousand years... and resulting in literally HUNDREDS of small changes to the creatures.... my example in another post is the evolution from a finch to an eagle... it is likely the collection of 20 or 30 evolutionary mutations, that likely took place over a few thousand years.... the evolution from a fish to a "walking fish" to an amphibian was likely a similar period with just a couple of mutations in the process. Eventually one of the fish had a really fucked up fin on it that looked more like a twig... but amazingly, it worked better for propulsion on land, and was therefore more capable of survival out of the water.... therefore it was able to breed more effectively and spawned a whole race of amphibians from a race of fish.... wow!
The concept isn't difficult... It has been witnessed on non-trivial scales in higher-order lifeforms within your lifetime. How many of your lifetimes fit into 300 million years?
Stew
This is grossly false and the result of either.... lazy reading.... poor education.... or deliberate obfuscation.
Which is it?
Evolution is not a direction, it is merely a set of changes that result in a species being more suitable for an environment.
If the earth's atmosphere were suddenly injected with a lethal dose of methane from a space rock, mammals would die.... unless there was a rare genetic mutation that allowed a certain group of reptiles to survive in a methane-rich environment.
They would then reproduce and result in a gross change to the world's biosphere. There would have been a global 'extinction event' would have evolved, but an entirely new set of plants and animals would take hold and have resources, space and time to spread out and grow. If the climate changed by a few degrees, a new set of environmental adaptations would take place and select for those plants/animals with the best resistance to temperature, killing those with low resistance. Just because a cactus might survive where a Redwood might die doesn't make it "de-evolution"...
Just because they don't drive a Toyota or have body hair or suckle their young doesn't mean they've NOT evolved... they adapted to the circumstances and survived, through a random genetic mutation. That is evolution.
It has NOTHING (aboslutely nothing) to do with "better" or "worse" or "progress" or "forward" or "up" or "down"... That whole concept and thought-process is made up bunk... either designed as a lame way to discredit the concept, or invented out of pure ignorance of the ideas behind it. It is just random genetic mutations being more able to survive in a given environment. Period.
Stew
There was an interesting evolutionary event seen recently on an isolated pacific island. It has two variations of a bird, one with a long beak and one with a short beak. The beak had grown long through some quirk or mutation at some point in the last 100 years (the long beak variation was not recorded in biological records before then). There were only a few of these birds.
Then one day, there was a disease that struck their primary food source. There were alternate sources of food, but the short-beaked birds were not able to reach many of them. Most of the short-beaked birds died, except those that were mating with long beaked birds and were therefore taken care of by the better equipped mates. Through breeding, the long-beaked variation became the dominant characteristic on the island within a few years. Eventually, food sources returned, but the short-beaked birds were now a small minority of the population on the island.
Now, if food sources changed again and for whatever reason, the long beak was no longer best suited for foraging, the process could reverse. On the other hand, had the food shortage continued for several more generations, the short-beaked birds would have almost completely been wiped out and the species would now be the "long beaked bird" rather than the "short beaked bird" and would remain that way until an evolutionary mutation changed them again...
Hence, the process of evolution was witnessed, where a species of bird changed from a short beak to a long beak over the course of a few generations.
Sum 10,000 of these small changes over the course of 2 million years and it's easy to see.... a long legged bird, a bird that can fly faster. A bird that has better eyes. A bird that is white, a bird with sharp talons, a bird that is bigger, a bird that eats seafood, a bird that can nest on a cliff, rather than in the sand.... these are all subtle changes that may have happened over time... suddenly we just transformed a finch into an eagle.
The whole "disproving evolution" thing and claiming it is "not a scientific procecss" beacause we cannot actually take a clam and evolve it into a marmot in a lab setting is really really silly.
It's easily demonstrable and easily repeatable on small scales. It merely requires a small expansion of your mind to consider it over the long-term.
Stew
I find it highly ironic that you're holding the "geocentric model of the universe" up as an example where religion trumps science, since the "geocentric model of the universe" comes VERBATIM from the bible.
:-)
Genesis 15:12
sheesh...
And "evolve" is not a synonym for "change". You merely made a gross logical leap in an half-witted attempt to prove dogma.
When referring to biology and genetics, evolution is defined as "periodic genetic mutations that result in changes to a species over time" (or some similar variation).
This is not synonymous with "change" ("to alter or become different"), it is a specific, measurable and precise term that you clearly don't understand. Because bacteria multiply many times per hour, their "evolution" is extremely rapid and can be easily measured by laboratory sciences, unlike a species that multiples only a few times per century such as mammals, whos evolutionary cycles will last millenia rather than days.
But I do appreciate your glorious justification.
Stew
Windows has this setting. It also has a setting to enable single click throughout the Explorer structure, just like a web hyperlink. It even will underline the clickable text like a hyperlink and change the mouse pointer, just as it does in IE and has done since IE4 came out on Win95.
Stew
Typing this on a D620. I can push 100wpm when I'm going at it and the laptop can run two VMs, a portscanner, print job and a dozen or so different programs without losing my typing.
There is something wrong with your software.
Stew
It can have direct consequences to things such as quantum computing and nuclear fusion, both of which may be critical to manned spaceflight in the future.
And with earthlings as stupid as we seem to be, it might be necessary for our species to master spaceflight in the future, lest we cause our own extinctio.
Stew
Here is a second hand discussion and summary of the current state of psychological research on the topic (published in the Journal of Sex Research):
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is _4_36/ai_58459540
I've copied a few large passages below, but here is the two sentence meat of the discussion:
Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels' (1994) random probability U.S. sample found that men with sexual abuse histories reported three out of nine sexually related problems and women reported four out of eight problems, the differences between sexually abused and non-sexually-abused groups were small.
... [and] cannot safely be assumed to reflect causal effects of the childhood sexual abuse" (p. 253).
With an eye for statistical logic, what this says is that.... a small group of those abused have severe problems. The majority, however, have no problems at all and bring the "median" of the group back to almost the same as non-abused samples.
(from the same article) A number of researchers have reported that the relation between childhood sexual abuse and later adult adjustment (broadly defined) appears to be accounted for, to a large extent, by family background rather than sexual abuse per se. For example, using path analysis to examine child sexual abuse-adjustment relations among female students across 32 U.S. colleges, Wisniewski (1989) concluded that factors such as family violence had a greater impact on current emotional adjustment than did the specific effects of sexual abuse.
Tromovitch (1997) concluded that "the results from psychological adjustment measures imply that, childhood sexual abuse is related to poorer adjustment in the general population, the magnitude of this relation is small
The authors suggested that differences in adjustment between sexually abused persons and controls observed in national samples may be attributable to larger differences in social environment, rather than to the sexual abuse. In a later meta-analyses of 59 studies based on college samples, Rind et al. (1998) similarly concluded that students with childhood sexual abuse histories were slightly less well adjusted than controls, but that this was more likely attributable to family environment than abuse experiences per se. These assertions are consistent with other studies that have noted when other abuse (i.e., physical, emotional) experiences are held constant, childhood sexual-abuse-symptom relations frequently disappear (e.g., Cole, 1987; Eckenrode, Laird, & Doris, 1993; Higgins & McCabe, 1994; Ney et al., 1994).
The only conclusion I can come to is that there can be some effect and other studies I recall (I cannot find a reference) show that harm is more common with girls, more damaging when they are very young and manifest more severely when incest is involved. With the "I did my teacher" example of a teenage boy willingly engaging an unrelated woman, the long-term perceptions and adjustment coorilates actually show those relationships to be viewed (from the "victims" point of view) as usually a positive experience.
I can tell you from experience that several of my friends had older lovers in their young teens. As those relationships were neve
Actually, DoJ reports state that most child sexual abuse is the non-violent "fondling" sort. The second most common is the non-violent "seducing/coercing" sort (aka "I slept with my teacher isn't that cool?"). The third most common is exhibitionism... where a guy exposes himself to a kid or a bunch of kids (and yes, that is recorded as "Child Sexual Assault" in most US jurisdictions).
Less than 5% of child sexual assault is the result of violence. Less than 15% result from the threat of violence.
An interesting aside that some researchers pointed out recently in a journal article is that studies show that kids who come from "bad homes" where they are subject to physical or emotional abuse, or simply left with fewer life ambitions and choices (hence, poverty generally) are TWICE as likely to experience sexual abuse. Interestingly enough, people who fall into this "bad homes" category have 20% higher rates of substantial sexual and psychological dysfunction and average 3-4 more sexual partners over a lifetime. Interestingly enough, if you isolate this variable ("bad homes" vs "good homes") in studies of sexual abuse victims, you find that there is a far stronger coorilation between psychological problems as an adult to "coming from a bad home" than there is to "was sexually abused as a child". The studies that show physical abuse maladjustment more severe than sexual abuse maladjustment are a bit of a paradox to most researchers, since they don't make sense in light of studies that show sex abuse victims having reasonably high rates of maladjustment as well. However, when you adjust for "family enviornment" you find that the sexual abuse itself has a relatively low coorilation.
In addition, on the topic, most recent studies of recividism amongst criminals show that Sex Offenders have the lowest rates of recividism amongst all classes of individuals. Since a few studies from the 1970s of high offender recividism are frequently used as the keystone for draconian "think of the children" legislation, these tend to be submarined by politicians. It is interesting to note the comments in the following AP article about a recent study from Alaska:
Study: Sex offender recidivism lowest among released convicts
This Department of Justice study shows that same-crime recividism of Child Molesters is around 3.3% (re-arrested for another sex offence on a child), whereas the same-crime recividism for most other classes of criminals is around 40% and sometimes as high as 80% in the case of robbery.
In addition, more than 60% of "recividist" (people re-arrested after being released for a felony) sex assault cases come from non-sex offenders. The one thing it points out is that statistically, sex offenders are more likely to be re-arrested for a sex offense, but their numbers are substantially lower than the class of all other criminals, therefore, the majority risk of sex offenders comes from people who were previously not convicted as sex offenders.
I'm wandering, so I'll just end it.
Remember, think of the children next time you vote.
Stew
Actually, several recent research studies have shown that physical abuse is far worse, in terms of long-term social adjustment and psychological issues, than sexual abuse.
One of the studies actually concluded that *emotional* abuse, such as verbal abuse and emotional neglect is actually somewhat worse for long-term adjustment than sexual abuse.
That's not to say it's not harmful, but I don't see a public register of parents who virtually named their kids 'fucktard' when they were 7 (and yes, I've met one of those, and yes, their kid is fucked up). I don't see us making motions to call for the death penalty for striking a crying kid with a belt. Sure it may land you a year of probation... maybe jailtime if you do it repeatedly over a few years, but seriously?
Stew
Just FYI, Eve runs on an absolutely state-of-the-art cluster of several hundred high end multi-processor servers, using a solid-state RAMSAN array to store critical database tables (as 18k RPM SCSI drives simply aren't fast enough random seek times).
But splitting a new shard has advantages in multiple ways....
worth a thought.
Stew
They did let you decide. You decide either to take a chance on the dangerous shortcut, or take the long and safe way.
Why is that a problem? Sounds like a neat feature to me.
Eve is all about choices. If there is no 'shortcut' then why make that choice?
If that lowsec didn't exist and you had to fly the extra 12 jumps, you'd be complaining that there should be a shortcut.
Stew
One might thing the Caldari would have a problem with an all-controlling corporation challenging the creation and spread of new corporate influence, especially caldari state influence... seeing that many of the large Alliance leaders are Kill-On-Site within Caldari space because of their low security standing.
Stew
To be clear, you do not lose your character, nor any skills trained because of the "clone" system.
Even without a clone, you only lose 60% of your highest-level skill... which usually amounts to less than 3% of your total skill base.
The loss of a ship may be painful, but the "Insurance" system makes it so that you generally only lose 30% of the value of the ship and the "loot drop" system ensures that only about 60% of the modules on the ship are "lost".
In all, it's quite fair and makes it a non-trivial thing to lose a ship, but not devistating to your long-term gameplay.
This is perfect....
One of CCP's mottos is "there is no 'easy' button".
Stew
It is nice to recognize the recent increase in starting skillpoints, and the benefit this provides for newer users.
However, because of the mechanics of skill training and the fact that CCP has continued to increase the number of skills and the rank of those skills... and also increased the power of ships and modules obtained through these higher level skills, is there a point at which we can say that the game is no longer appealing to new users?
When the new people are 4-5 years behind the highest level players with really no way of gaining ground (especially since very old users will have high level learning skills and implants to boot), what is the point that you consider creating a new shard and "starting over" as it were, with a totally fresh world.
While my character in the current system is fairly high level, I have discussed with a lot of newer players (even those in game for 6-12 months) who would jump at the opportunity to "start over" in a fresh world where there are no SirMolle's with 95 million skillpoints.
What are your long term plans or thoughts in this regard?
Stew
This is an absolutely brilliant essay, but totally off topic...
Stew
CCP.
In any real world government, there are controls and laws in place to prevent monopolies.
Once one entity controls all of a commodity, they have an unfair and potentially economically devistating control over the free market for an object.
The same would likely apply to space, in the case of Eve.
What controls are in place, or what discussions have been had in the event that a single entity gains control over *all* of a certain blueprint original, or *all* of un-policed 0.0 space?
As we saw with the recent near complete destruction of two of the largest "carebear" (industrial-focused, rather than PvP) alliances, ASCN and ISS, and the relative ineffectiveness of ASCN's defenses in the face of BoB's military prowess (and apparent knowledge of game architecture, using coordinated crashing of server nodes as an offensive ploy), what would be done in the event that an alliance like BoB were to wipe out all of the other major alliances and begin exacting taxes for travel through and existence within all of 0.0 space?
Just curious...
Stew
Elementary schools? How many second graders are on MySpace?
In fact, how many elementary schools even have computers that allow "un directed" Internet access?
MySpace is primarily a highschool thing.... and in highschools, where there are open computer terminals to use, this is the target.
How many elementary schools allow 7 year olds to wander around and sit down at a random computer terminal and type a random URL today? I would wager not too many, and even if they did, how many actually get used that way? A 7 year old would type "fart" into the URL and get some jokes page. Somehow I doubt they're myspace addicts.
you're reaching.
Stew
Maybe the FCC is too busy looking at boobies on TV and wringing their hands while they pander to right wing talking heads who demand we all watch "Saving Grace" and "Touched by an Angel" (while we trade gay sex for meth in the basement) and levy hefty fines every time a nipple appears on our screens... and censor our content and chase people around who download content, and sue people for their wireless and hmmm wait... broadband?
I've been in plenty of positions where I gave notice because I knew my employer could not replace me "out of the box". Out of sheer goodwill and a desire to remain on good standing with them, I willingly offered to help interview my replacement and to train him for a week or two on the daily activities..... rather than my being escorted out the door and then the new guy getting to figure out my job the hard way over the next 3 months while customers suffer because of his lack of experience.
Somehow, I think you run a call center or some such. A skilled job can't simply be "replaced" out of the box, no matter how "good" your replacement is, there is a learning curve that can be drastically decreased by just a week or two of training from someone with experience.
Stew
Actually, my processor was mostly designed in Israel (Pentium M, Core duo, etc).
:-)
Yours might have had much of its design done in Dresden (AMD Sempron, Opteron).
not to split hairs or anything...
The education system here is pretty borked... gotta admit it's really down the tubes because of the beurocratic micromanagement from every level.
but yeah anyway.... stupid stupid article. Stupid comment too.
aren't we all feeling smarter now?
Stew
Number 1 is quite difficult when you have almost 1000 people working on it on a daily basis.
Leaks happen.
Stew
It should be patently obvious that there is some collusion going on when you are threatened with criminal sanctions for modifying a device they purchased and own legally.
The extreme example might be........ Toyota gets a law passed that we MUST use their $500 oil filters in our SUVs, or face criminal charges... If they engineer their cars to do so, we may have trouble using other filters, but we should not be criminally liable for modifying our property to use a sock filter. That is absurd.
So is the DVD example... absurd.
Stew
The biggest problem, as it has been said before, is that there are many laws that are so vague, that virtually ALL citizens of the US and the UK are guilty of violating at least one of them regularly.
the problem is that laws and sentences are set up with a strong consideration to the fact that we only catch someone one out of 10 times.
The exponential progression of "mandatory minimums" and "strict sentencing guidelines" came about out of desire to use the sentence as a deterrent, rather than a punishment, under the assumption that we cannot have 100% enforcement, therefore we must find other ways to prevent crime.
So in the scenario of 100% enforcement, perhaps we need to seriously look at the effects.
In the United States, more than 15% of the population will serve time in jail during their lifetime. More than 4% of the population is serving an extended jail sentence.
Criminologists agree that less than 10% of "real" crimes are actually brought to a successful guilty verdect.
Extrapolating, with 100% enforcement, does this not mean that 35% of the population of the United States would be serving jail time? Is this desirable? or does it illustrate a flaw in our thinking about what is punishable and illegal?
Stew
Oh that's a grand argument.
Stew is a pedophile, so we must dismiss his commentary about freedom.
Did you miss my ardent discussion of personal liberty in the DCMA threads? What about in the Patriot Act threads?
I just happen to think that 'save the children' "burn the pedos" is the height of moral McCarthyism in our society today so it tends to push my buttons.
But thanks for the personal attack, it was grand.
Stew