If there are many more then post them. Those two are quite old (from 2000 & 1997 respectively). The first relates only to cell phones. The same site has an update from 2003. The update cites a CAA study about cell phones, anecdotal evidence, and experiments done by the magazine, but not published anywhere like the CAA study.
The second source is mostly speculation and anecdotal, the author even states this.
For someone so concerned about how geeks ignore evidence, you're not giving us much to go on.
Quit posting how simple it was, that you just googled "PED study". You googled "personal electronic devices study". The former gives pediatric results, the latter the topic we're concerned about. Define your acronyms or quit deriding others about how simple finding this information is. You're the one making the case, the onus is on you to define your acronyms so we know what the hell you're talking about.
Also, from reading some of the reports, it looks like most of these incidents are really software problems. Any software control system that accepts an input radically different from the previous input really needs to be re-thought.
And now you finally post your sources, after 4 or 5 other posts that were basically flamebait. If you had done this in your first post on this topic, maybe the rest of us wouldn't have dismissed you as the raving loony you appeared to be.
Earlier I googled "PED study" like you said and got results about pediatric studies. For someone that raves against geeks and their ignoring evidence, you could have posted some relevant information much, much earlier and *then* if it was ignored you might have looked credible.
The great thing about US laws is that they are (supposed) to be generalized to assume innocence and not guilt. While some creeps/criminals can hide behind them, the idea is to protect us from ourselves, i.e. convict only when we have overwhelming evidence of guilt. It doesn't always work, but I'd rather have a system setup to absolutely minimize false convictions while letting some criminals go than the reverse.
I agree. I was really looking forward to Spore too. After reading the forum posts from Derek and others, it's clear these are games I can't support. One-time activation is not so bad, but continuous activation (every time you run the game) with a 10 day window where you can play without having activated is just ridiculous.
As an addendum, worriers will worry. If you think the scan would harm you by causing you to worry more than it would help by providing you the opportunity to screen and possibly catch diseases or cancers earlier than you would otherwise, then don't get it, but don't dismiss the whole thing just because you *could* live in worry about the results. You *could* also get great news that you have a special gene that regenerates your limbs like on "Heroes". You *could* also overcome the worry. It's not the test that's the problem, it's the root of why you worry so much that's the problem.
Yeah 'cause knowing I have a higher probability of developing testicular (or any other) cancer wouldn't help me at all. Too bad they don't have screenings, exams, or other tests I can do annually to try and catch the cancer early. Oh wait, they do! So now, with my annual physical or other exam I could get screened for whatever cancer it is. Since early detection is key with a lot of types of cancer, this is valuable information.
I'm not planning on getting this DNA scan done (maybe when it's cheaper and, if I did it would be primarily for the ancestry part), but to say that knowing you have a higher probability of a certain type of cancer is knowledge you can't use in "any smart way" is ridiculous. That's why women whose mothers or grandmothers had breast cancer are recommended to start mammograms earlier than other women. It's why doctors ask you about your family's medical history.
I'm fairly certain you can run your games in "offline" mode even if they disable your steam account. This won't do any good for online games, but it'll work for single-player. I have mixed feelings about Steam, but I purchased the Orange Box from it 'cause I got to play the TF2 beta for a week before the real deal came out. That was my first Steam purchase. I still might pick up a physical copy when it goes to the bargain bin (like I said I have mixed feelings) just to have the physical disc, but I'm not sure yet and that's a ways away.
I was with you up until "abolish copyright". Paying people for services, i.e. only when they perform the work doesn't work for most of the industries that use copyright most. I'm as opposed to the Mafiaa as the next guy, but that's the dumbest idea I've heard in awhile. Take an author for example, he could get paid for writing the book only, but who would pay him? A publishing company is only going to publish books it thinks will make them a profit. If they can't protect their books from being copied and published by some cheaper publisher, when they're the ones that paid for the writing of the book, why publish at all? They won't recoup their payment to the author, much less make a profit. They'll either publish cheaper authors/books or none at all. All of which leads to fewer ideas and less creativity. I'm for reducing the length of copyright, its length in the U.S. is ridiculous now, but abolishing it just ignores the good it does simply because the RIAA and MPAA abuse it. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
"Guns kill people, they don't create democracies."
They gave us the ability to create ours (USA). Oh, and guns don't kill people, that's the person holding the gun and pulling the trigger or the person who fails to teach their children about gun safety.
"A government should fear the people, not because the people might kill them, but because the people have the power to remove them. If the government has to be removed with guns you already live in a dictatorship."
You just made the argument for gun ownership. Governments should fear us for our right to remove them. If you don't have guns and it comes to the point where having them is the only way to remove the government, then you're screwed. It's true that, at that point, you probably are in a dictatorship, but that's when you need guns most. Giving them up early on, just because you're not in a dictatorship now makes no sense. As the saying goes, "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -- Ed Howdershelt
"Only the Elite supports 1080p."
Actually, all 360s have supported 1080p since a software update in late 2006. The Elite is the only one with HDMI, but you can get 1080p over component. I've done it. You should probably get your facts straight before you go accusing others of FUD. You should also probably stop presenting it as a fact that the PS3 controller is "perfect", give me a break, it's a matter of opinion. For the record, I own neither a 360 or a PS3, but I did borrow a friend's 360 for a bit to test the HD-DVD drive and I decided I'd rather wait for the standalone players to drop in price a bit instead.
"Ideally, tech people and managerial-types would each do the work that the other didn't want to do. It often fails to work out that way."
The problem comes when the managerial-type tries to dictate to the techie how exactly to do a job. I, like others, shudder at the thought of some of the women I encountered in my studies managing technical projects. There were terrible guys I wouldn't want to manage either, but the article seems to show that women prefer to go for manager positions more than the average techie. Personally, everything else being equal, I'd rather have a techie who didn't plan on going into management than someone who never enjoyed the techie side and only ever wanted to be a manager. The former might take a little while to learn how to manage well, but at least they understand the techie side. The latter, in my experience, are the types who are more apt to have unrealistic schedule expectations, insist on a particular approach or piece of hardware that some smooth-talking vendor suggested, or just plain annoy the techie underlings by not understanding the technical challenges they face.
I thought something similar when I read that. I can understand emphasizing algorithms, compiler or operating system design, or similar things, but you still need to be able to code your solutions. Plus, my university emphasized all those things, and made sure we could actually implement our solutions in whatever language made sense. I'd be surprised if any other university really was using their CS program to churn out "code monkeys". I think it's more the perception of geeks sitting behind their computers coding 12 hours a day with no design work or any of the science in computer science. It could also be that many entry-level jobs for CS majors are really "code monkey" positions (at least that's how it was when I was looking for my first job a few years ago).
Can you cite a source for this assertion? A shipment from China to North America has to cross the Pacific Ocean. A shipment from China to the British Isles has to cross both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. You do realize you don't have to travel east all the time? You could, maybe, I dunno, go west. Anyways, GP was just rationalizing his piracy because he's impatient.
Not me. You're right on. I am moving over to Linux as well, probably Kubuntu. I tried Vista RC2 for awhile and it was pretty, but when all I hear about Vista is that it still has the same driver availability problems it had back then and is still that unstable, I decided my next upgrade would be to go all GNU/Linux. I'd delayed because of gaming, but Wine now supports most, if not all, of the games I want to play and I figure someone will have figured out DX10 in a few years when there's actually a decent catalog of DX10 games out. If not, there's always dual-booting.
To be fair, TFA makes it seem like the guilds were just having fun playing, getting "World Firsts" and all and Team Pandemic and CheckSix just approached the guilds. Also, this has nothing to do with ad-sponsored gaming. Blizzard didn't team up with the sponsors to offer ads in-game. TFA specifically states that you won't see "big companies logos placed all over your character's armor like a NASCAR driver's suit". If I was in one of the top WoW guilds and someone approached my guild and said that they'd give us money to continue doing what we've already been doing, I'd be stupid to turn it down. I'm not sure exactly what Team Pandemic and CheckSix are getting out of this deal since there isn't in-game advertising, from their websites it looks like they're hoping for advertising at big LAN tournaments. They both mention rumors of WoW being included in such tournaments so I imagine they've got some inside information. They're trying to grow their business and WoW is huge so why not try this?
Are you using it for HTPC or gaming? I had to swap an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro for an Nvidia FX5200 just a few months ago because Nvidia has video hardware acceleration that allows me to play HDTV realtime where the ATI card made me transcode down to below 720p before it would play without stuttering. Part of this was my CPU isn't terribly fast, but you'd think that a 9800pro would wipe the floor with an FX5200, but, under Linux, that's only true for 3D rendering, not video playback. And yes I tried the open source drivers and the direct from Ati drivers.
Disclaimer: I work for DoD, but not on the Raptor program. All I know about the Raptor is gleaned from public sources.
Yeah, because a glitch capable of dropping a missile could never arm it, aim it, and drop it. No, it couldn't. The pilot would have to have already armed the weapons with a physical switch whose state would be read in a completely different routine and you'd better believe that routine has the hell tested out of it. He'd also have to hit a button to fire the weapon, again, different routine, lots of testing. Even if all that happened, a target would have to be acquired which, once again, requires pilot intervention, many routines, lots more testing. You're deluding yourself if you think the testing for weapons systems isn't more stringent than a date checking routine.
Sure, nav systems are separate from flight systems. Except that they're not really because as the in-flight-entertainment crash showed, even systems that aren't connected are. You're comparing a commercial jetliner with a military jet. Also, it doesn't seem like you read the in-flight entertainment article since even a cursory glance lets you know that the entertainment system is completely separated from the flight and nav systems, it's even in the slashdot summary.
This is exactly what you get if you hire a bunch of hacks who live in their parents' basements - critical software that obviously doesn't have a test plan. Obvious troll.
I'm a little surprised that they've never simulated this, or their simulator isn't. Either way it's laughable. You never finished your second thought. I'm surprised they didn't test something like this either. I have a feeling CNN is wrong about this.
You're placing a lot of trust in design principles that, if they really were followed, would have presented the failure just witnessed. Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to shake your faith. Except that design and software development practices will almost assuredly never catch every flaw. That said, I find it hard to believe that the nav computers weren't designed for a situation like this and reset themselves and bring critical systems online first following the reset since that's a standard failsafe design practice. Since no one has actually confirmed that this is the case, and given the media's horrible grasp of technology related matters, I'd bet that what really happened is that the nav computers reset once and it was decided that it was more important to find out what caused the reset than to continue on. Even more likely is that the computer didn't even reset, but the pilots saw a big enough display problem that it needed to be corrected. The military is pretty careful when it comes to new systems and would prefer to scratch a mission than risk a fancy new jet and its pilot.
My main objection was to this hypothesis that people don't learn stick because they think it's too hard, which I thought was silly. You're planning on learning though. The people I've encountered, and I think it's a decent hypothesis that just doesn't apply to you since you will learn, that don't and probably won't ever learn stick cite difficulty when asked why they won't learn.
Also, as someone else responded, it is not about the one day of learning how to drive stick shift cars. If you live somewhere where you do lots of stop and go traffic, stick shifts can get annoying. Even worse is if you live someplace where there's lots of traffic. I remember a while back when I'd commute 35-40 mins each way, and on one of the interstates the traffic would vary between 5mph and 45mph, sometimes peaking up to high way speeds. Driving a stick shift in this sort of traffic was absolutely miserable. You were constantly changing gears. Also, driving a stick shift gets annoying when you're trying to multitask and eat a hamburger or something. Also if you live somewhere with a lot of hills, it can be quite annoying to drive (parallel parking on a hill sucks). I use that time to practice shifting more smoothly. It really helps. After awhile you don't even notice the "hassle" anymore. You can always use your knees for multitasking though I like manual transmission in that it reduces your desire to multitask. Just wait for a light, parking lot, or get a hands-free set for returning those phone calls.
Slashdot Mirror
If there are many more then post them. Those two are quite old (from 2000 & 1997 respectively). The first relates only to cell phones. The same site has an update from 2003. The update cites a CAA study about cell phones, anecdotal evidence, and experiments done by the magazine, but not published anywhere like the CAA study.
The second source is mostly speculation and anecdotal, the author even states this. For someone so concerned about how geeks ignore evidence, you're not giving us much to go on.
Quit posting how simple it was, that you just googled "PED study". You googled "personal electronic devices study". The former gives pediatric results, the latter the topic we're concerned about. Define your acronyms or quit deriding others about how simple finding this information is. You're the one making the case, the onus is on you to define your acronyms so we know what the hell you're talking about.
Also, from reading some of the reports, it looks like most of these incidents are really software problems. Any software control system that accepts an input radically different from the previous input really needs to be re-thought.
And now you finally post your sources, after 4 or 5 other posts that were basically flamebait. If you had done this in your first post on this topic, maybe the rest of us wouldn't have dismissed you as the raving loony you appeared to be. Earlier I googled "PED study" like you said and got results about pediatric studies. For someone that raves against geeks and their ignoring evidence, you could have posted some relevant information much, much earlier and *then* if it was ignored you might have looked credible.
You can disable automatic updates for each game and you can play in offline mode.
Technically it's a democratic Republic.
The great thing about US laws is that they are (supposed) to be generalized to assume innocence and not guilt. While some creeps/criminals can hide behind them, the idea is to protect us from ourselves, i.e. convict only when we have overwhelming evidence of guilt. It doesn't always work, but I'd rather have a system setup to absolutely minimize false convictions while letting some criminals go than the reverse.
Yes, you can. You have to connect to Steam to setup offline mode, but after that you're set. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555
I agree. I was really looking forward to Spore too. After reading the forum posts from Derek and others, it's clear these are games I can't support. One-time activation is not so bad, but continuous activation (every time you run the game) with a 10 day window where you can play without having activated is just ridiculous.
As an addendum, worriers will worry. If you think the scan would harm you by causing you to worry more than it would help by providing you the opportunity to screen and possibly catch diseases or cancers earlier than you would otherwise, then don't get it, but don't dismiss the whole thing just because you *could* live in worry about the results. You *could* also get great news that you have a special gene that regenerates your limbs like on "Heroes". You *could* also overcome the worry. It's not the test that's the problem, it's the root of why you worry so much that's the problem.
Yeah 'cause knowing I have a higher probability of developing testicular (or any other) cancer wouldn't help me at all. Too bad they don't have screenings, exams, or other tests I can do annually to try and catch the cancer early. Oh wait, they do! So now, with my annual physical or other exam I could get screened for whatever cancer it is. Since early detection is key with a lot of types of cancer, this is valuable information. I'm not planning on getting this DNA scan done (maybe when it's cheaper and, if I did it would be primarily for the ancestry part), but to say that knowing you have a higher probability of a certain type of cancer is knowledge you can't use in "any smart way" is ridiculous. That's why women whose mothers or grandmothers had breast cancer are recommended to start mammograms earlier than other women. It's why doctors ask you about your family's medical history.
I'm fairly certain you can run your games in "offline" mode even if they disable your steam account. This won't do any good for online games, but it'll work for single-player. I have mixed feelings about Steam, but I purchased the Orange Box from it 'cause I got to play the TF2 beta for a week before the real deal came out. That was my first Steam purchase. I still might pick up a physical copy when it goes to the bargain bin (like I said I have mixed feelings) just to have the physical disc, but I'm not sure yet and that's a ways away.
I was with you up until "abolish copyright". Paying people for services, i.e. only when they perform the work doesn't work for most of the industries that use copyright most. I'm as opposed to the Mafiaa as the next guy, but that's the dumbest idea I've heard in awhile. Take an author for example, he could get paid for writing the book only, but who would pay him? A publishing company is only going to publish books it thinks will make them a profit. If they can't protect their books from being copied and published by some cheaper publisher, when they're the ones that paid for the writing of the book, why publish at all? They won't recoup their payment to the author, much less make a profit. They'll either publish cheaper authors/books or none at all. All of which leads to fewer ideas and less creativity. I'm for reducing the length of copyright, its length in the U.S. is ridiculous now, but abolishing it just ignores the good it does simply because the RIAA and MPAA abuse it. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
"Guns kill people, they don't create democracies."
They gave us the ability to create ours (USA). Oh, and guns don't kill people, that's the person holding the gun and pulling the trigger or the person who fails to teach their children about gun safety.
"A government should fear the people, not because the people might kill them, but because the people have the power to remove them. If the government has to be removed with guns you already live in a dictatorship."
You just made the argument for gun ownership. Governments should fear us for our right to remove them. If you don't have guns and it comes to the point where having them is the only way to remove the government, then you're screwed. It's true that, at that point, you probably are in a dictatorship, but that's when you need guns most. Giving them up early on, just because you're not in a dictatorship now makes no sense. As the saying goes, "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -- Ed Howdershelt
"Only the Elite supports 1080p." Actually, all 360s have supported 1080p since a software update in late 2006. The Elite is the only one with HDMI, but you can get 1080p over component. I've done it. You should probably get your facts straight before you go accusing others of FUD. You should also probably stop presenting it as a fact that the PS3 controller is "perfect", give me a break, it's a matter of opinion. For the record, I own neither a 360 or a PS3, but I did borrow a friend's 360 for a bit to test the HD-DVD drive and I decided I'd rather wait for the standalone players to drop in price a bit instead.
"Ideally, tech people and managerial-types would each do the work that the other didn't want to do. It often fails to work out that way." The problem comes when the managerial-type tries to dictate to the techie how exactly to do a job. I, like others, shudder at the thought of some of the women I encountered in my studies managing technical projects. There were terrible guys I wouldn't want to manage either, but the article seems to show that women prefer to go for manager positions more than the average techie. Personally, everything else being equal, I'd rather have a techie who didn't plan on going into management than someone who never enjoyed the techie side and only ever wanted to be a manager. The former might take a little while to learn how to manage well, but at least they understand the techie side. The latter, in my experience, are the types who are more apt to have unrealistic schedule expectations, insist on a particular approach or piece of hardware that some smooth-talking vendor suggested, or just plain annoy the techie underlings by not understanding the technical challenges they face.
I don't know if it is the latest game to do so, but Quake 4 runs natively in Linux.
I thought something similar when I read that. I can understand emphasizing algorithms, compiler or operating system design, or similar things, but you still need to be able to code your solutions. Plus, my university emphasized all those things, and made sure we could actually implement our solutions in whatever language made sense. I'd be surprised if any other university really was using their CS program to churn out "code monkeys". I think it's more the perception of geeks sitting behind their computers coding 12 hours a day with no design work or any of the science in computer science. It could also be that many entry-level jobs for CS majors are really "code monkey" positions (at least that's how it was when I was looking for my first job a few years ago).
Cheney? Is that you?
Not me. You're right on. I am moving over to Linux as well, probably Kubuntu. I tried Vista RC2 for awhile and it was pretty, but when all I hear about Vista is that it still has the same driver availability problems it had back then and is still that unstable, I decided my next upgrade would be to go all GNU/Linux. I'd delayed because of gaming, but Wine now supports most, if not all, of the games I want to play and I figure someone will have figured out DX10 in a few years when there's actually a decent catalog of DX10 games out. If not, there's always dual-booting.
To be fair, TFA makes it seem like the guilds were just having fun playing, getting "World Firsts" and all and Team Pandemic and CheckSix just approached the guilds. Also, this has nothing to do with ad-sponsored gaming. Blizzard didn't team up with the sponsors to offer ads in-game. TFA specifically states that you won't see "big companies logos placed all over your character's armor like a NASCAR driver's suit". If I was in one of the top WoW guilds and someone approached my guild and said that they'd give us money to continue doing what we've already been doing, I'd be stupid to turn it down. I'm not sure exactly what Team Pandemic and CheckSix are getting out of this deal since there isn't in-game advertising, from their websites it looks like they're hoping for advertising at big LAN tournaments. They both mention rumors of WoW being included in such tournaments so I imagine they've got some inside information. They're trying to grow their business and WoW is huge so why not try this?
Are you using it for HTPC or gaming? I had to swap an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro for an Nvidia FX5200 just a few months ago because Nvidia has video hardware acceleration that allows me to play HDTV realtime where the ATI card made me transcode down to below 720p before it would play without stuttering. Part of this was my CPU isn't terribly fast, but you'd think that a 9800pro would wipe the floor with an FX5200, but, under Linux, that's only true for 3D rendering, not video playback. And yes I tried the open source drivers and the direct from Ati drivers.
We're fat and lazy. We need the extra hand to hold our double Big Mac and/or cell phone. You need to study up on your American stereotypes :)