The real problem nobody dares speak of is that the world is OVERPOPULATED.
Who seriously thought that overpopulation would be a simplistic scenario?? The poor suffer 1st the middle get cramped and the rich are largely unaware and slowly it progresses until the middle are just a better kind of poor. The climate gets screwed up from too many humans... Their prey dies off; they kill off plants... Its happening already; rich nations are less aware and don't want to give anything up for something they don't really understand (or want to.)
The solutions involve Soylent Green... eating a kind of MRE and finding ways to move the chemicals around in our life so we can live reasonably healthy (reasonable including diseases we get as a result that can boost our economy in treating them.) All this because we can't stop people from ignorantly or arrogantly popping out children.
Pay for voting by making lazy people pay a fine for not showing up. Then they can contribute in some way. The idiots and fanatics tend to cancel out - the parties try to split the vote and the "undecided" (who are not so bright either) decide the elections. This happens today and would continue to happen; however, it might be more difficult to fool that many "undecided" voters than it is today.
I voted for Obama because he clearly was the better one (unless you are ignorant or stupid.) My doubts are that McCain might have been better in that he would most likely have been HOOVER #2 and wreaked the nation ---> in the end, it might have been better to crash, burn and rebuild than having Obama plug the leaks in the dam with his fingers... Or calmly crash landing us into the Hudson river. He won't get credit unless he starts performing miracles (which won't happen this is reality not the Bible.)
Obama doesn't have the power; the broken system that the public helped create is bigger than Obama. He could be the smartest leader EVER but without help he won't gain much ground against the current system. Obama can't act like Bush and get anywhere near that amount of work done by the simple fact: the entrenched powers are only YOURS when you do their bidding. Bush was on the side of the winners, they even did a lot of his job for him so he took record long vacations. Obama is tacking against hurricane winds; he must go with the flow or not make any headway. He has already taken on the biggest most powerful groups in the USA in the 1st year. The pathetic healthcare bill is the most that can be done in the current system; doesn't matter what he wants and I think it was wise to distance himself hoping people would see the corruption at work and learn. Instead the pussy Americans are put off from fixing anything because politics is too dirty.
We have a bunch of wimpy suburbanites who can't deal with the reality of our situation which they helped cause. Its a stupid mob mentality-- help us! we screwed ourselves and need somebody to fix our mess and to shift blame towards! Don't EVER tell us we caused this problem! Especially don't EVER tell us we have to change our ways! Hence the need for a smack in the face - to wake up America. Hoover #2 is probably the only thing that will fix America; as long as Americans have disposable income/debt they will give up life, liberty, and the real pursuit of happiness.
You'd think all these right-wing leaders would disregard all polling instead of basing most their actions upon it. Polling is way less accurate but similar to a lot of scientific predictions. Such as long term climate predictions.
The truth is many of them believe the stuff, they just don't care and can make money opposing it (or exploiting it) -- after all, most are LAWYERS and are trained to fight for BS even when in personal disagreement OR they leverage what facts they can to meet the goal --- the goal being to make money by getting the client what they want. The client is supposed to be the voters.... (which is bad enough, since they don't care about their distant neighbors enough either.)
Government infringes upon too much and the public is too complacent to do anything about it.
Corporations are not people; they are a social virus that like fire which can fuel some growth but also just as readily will burn any number of people without any remorse.
Government defined and enforces the creation of the modern corporation; it is essentially a government entity that is privately managed. Government is a product of the society whether or not it represents its people; now it tends to represent the corporations. This is even worse because all the problems that let people support governments who do evil things (by abstraction/removal from the act) are ALSO the things that happen in corporations (smaller but then they also share the benefits.) But I digress, anyhow your interpretation is false corporations have no freedom, no rights and are fully open to any form of regulation. The very existence of the corporation is by regulation/enforcement.
Its not government telling you that you can't ruin your neighbors resources or your those left for your children it is telling industry it can not do so (or trying to do that) and you simply are a 3rd party "victim" to the results of that. Its another issue altogether about your rights to infringe upon others and how the government acts as the referee (at least conceptually.)
I could argue government is infringing on my right to buy Soylent Green or buy human organs or cheap SLAVE harvested products; but then I might fuel you free market zealots with some new ideas.
It should be a crime to have sex with a Foolish person.
Foolish people shouldn't have kids for multiple reasons; we need to prevent that because they are too busy trying to catch up with the rest of us.
Foolish people say stupid shit and need to be punished with zero tolerance so someday they learn to act the way we want them to in if not from learning then by fear (terror) of being punished again.
All people do Foolish things sometimes but it does not make them Foolish unless they are that way most or all the time.
point:
Replace Foolish with child/teen because they are more "foolish" than their adult counterparts (in general) and its easy to measure by age than by how foolish or responsible they are. Their brains are not fully developed until the early 20s but it does not mean they develop in the same order-- and generally we judge by the level of socialization how "mature" somebody is - but age is more simple.
Essentially, it comes down to how humans think; we are wired to make correlations and we often make simple and false ones (far more than statisticians.) From lucky rituals & charms to red-heads having bad tempers. An island of clones would be forced to develop them based upon other traits because its human to do so.
A sane person would go to the source of the problem not to the enforcer drones which constantly re-spawn. You think the ones at the top really give a rip about their worker drones as long as they can keep replacing them?
A nut goes into an IRS building; hell, going after the IRS in the 1st place is crazy.
If we want any hope, we must get our government back-- as in from the corporations who've taken it over increasingly since... well that point is debatable. It started after the civil war with the war profiteers and went from there - who cares where you draw the line, look where we are now. If you oppose them and their corporate faith you are an evil populist, anti-capitalist, socialist, commie... etc. and someday soon I bet you that the terrorism label will be mainstreamed. The bush admin spent a lot of time trying to label environmental activists labeled as terrorists already. Simply for the threat of property damage or lost profits. Filming in a movie theater is terrorism from the corporation's viewpoint...
If you can be terrorized and that is their intent then they are terrorists. You do not have to be killed for it to be terrorism.
A team of industry lawyers taking you for everything you have, your time, possibly your freedom and now even more criminal law. They want to make examples and terrorize their customers. "Hired guns" now wear suits but the phrase lives on for a reason.
Its going to get worse unless we can curb the corporate takeover. Its hardly our government anymore - and resembles more of a trade group.
What big government? The corporations almost run the government; soon they will become the government--- well not completely because that would be too obvious and people would revolt-- its a charade to fool the gullible as is the left/right false dichotomy -- they really need to make a few more viable political parties because its just too obvious for many of us. Anyhow- if they get full WORKING control over it-- is it really our government? is it actually government or some enforcer cartel? Its not a legitimate democracy at that point but just another means of control. A Corporate Theocracy? A Corporate Plutocracy?
Much of the bailout was payed back. just saying. the fact they got fractional lending (10x or higher) on that money which means they could have given it back immediately is a bigger mess...
The people who REALLY fought, suffered and died for our rights were PEOPLE not professional military and certainly not government. We didn't get the bill of rights handed to us, it was fought for and people died (AFTER the constitution.) Normal people working against the system fought to change the system, not politicians and not professional soldiers. Their importance is greatly overstated unquestioningly and few have the courage to take on this myth.
Joe is just one of the more nutty Glen Beck fans; it is not a mass movement. Healthcare is much more of a problem for more people and they've not had enough wrong to get the people to force change on that issue...
Glen Beck is a clown; an entertainer for a gullible audience and himself privately likely is way different than his act on TV.
Beck isn't anything; either its an act or he is nuts. Having seen some of his early stuff, I would have to say its most likely an act. He doesn't even have to put in a whole lot of effort either.
I for one was happy about the lack of "NEWS" on this nutty programmer suicide. Its NOT that big of a deal; people who are nuts and want to off themselves shouldn't have their big issues made into huge media storms highlighting their causes - it only encourages the next nut to do the same thing!
We've seen an increase over the years since the media has gone down in quality and focused upon this and anything else to drive ratings - most often FEAR related because that primitive emotion is easily exploited for profit. The result has been more nuts going down in glory - sure, legal drugs have contributed to this, especially teens - however, becoming a reality star that people try to understand upon death has also contributed to this. A LOT of these people want to be understood / noticed and their grievances heard. Its a two-for-one.
This is no more "news" than a local shooting - the weapon was just a tiny plane. It could have been a van full of explosives.... We didn't start doing stupid security checks to DRIVE as a result of that one either. I don't think the number of deaths should impact the treatment much either unless there are some worthy underlying issues involved.
You can't secure against everything; no matter how controlled the environment (which in some cases encourages even more trouble.) Flipping out and doing EXACTLY what Bin Ladden wanted means terrorism works extremely well on Americans - a proven example for half-rational nuts and very rational fanatics to look at.
There are plenty of bad science things going on in the old doctors. For example the old 60s radio show too much of it takes place in this solar system and Mars is a threat... We pretty much knew there wasn't armies on mars back then. come on. The doctor's regeneration has never been believable except perhaps the 1st few which were slower and had side effects etc. Some stuff is just to help the plot.
Wince moments of too much melodrama are a much much bigger problem in the new Who show as well as trying to top the previous season in disaster and its continued heavy focus on the UK. We need more alien locations; all that tech and the older shows traveled more... The recent stuff has gone downhill... Hollywood influence? Unobtainium is blatantly saying it-- so THEN its ok? You want the writer's to point out they know its impossible?
The "science" of Dr Who is largely over-your-head type stuff with minimal BS to explain anything - you are not supposed to know the kind of BS descriptions they cram into NG Star Trek, neoStarWars or even the Vampires focus on the medical condition bringing that into modern "science ficiton" instead of just being mythical horror. (Although "I Am Legend" was good - no the book, not the stupid movie.)
We don't need the CGI or the BS explanations - classic mythology and story telling lacks all of these and are..."classic" as well as the place where everything gets ripped off from. Hercules is part god, thats enough to know. The Dr comes in, like a know-it-all says a bunch of technical stuff out of your depth and fixes it like it was simple, like a geek fixing his grandmother's computer... Except the doctor keeps talking aloud and isn't upset that nobody follows a word he says or cares to understand.
Except for a really simple program, we can not produce "perfect" software and there is provably no way to validate the software is error free. So, we can't know if something is perfect if in fact it is. If it is perfect, we will likely have a % of users that will have perceived "bugs" (user error) as well as possibly a few developers who think it can be perfected further to address the complaints of those users (or imaginary ones or themselves) and soil an otherwise perfect program.
Vast numbers of "bugs" that are really just user error and misunderstanding - which one can subjectively blame on interface design - the perfect program would handle everything thrown at it according to specifications. The specifications would be extremely detailed and also would have to be perfect.
There are 3 sides: human requirements (flawed; vague; not clear on specs) human interaction (really flawed; larger group) implementation "bugs" (most are shallow - come on, we all know programming is mostly debugging.)
We used to joke with their employees who shared the building (who joined in:) Concast Commiecast (we were calling each other comrade too.) Comquest (I think their line should be "All your internet belong to us.")
- Xe didn't help that corps image. People still call it Black Water.
Well, Arther Anderson pulled it off-- how many forgot they are now known as Accenture? (The people who brought you Enron.) -
The rest the world has to deal with english, American technical terms, corporations, IP laws, military bases, a hysterical anti-terror crusade and occasionally our messed up measurement system. Yet Americans can't handle having to transition to metric because it would be too hard and too difficult. The greatest generation could have done it, but not the current ones - its beyond their abilities.
Legacy parts? live with it. Eventually, they stop being produced anyhow. It can take decades to move hardware but a ton of stuff can be moved quickly.
Well my own study shows it works. those "careful" studies are frauds OR they are testing quacks.
There are plenty of medical quacks that can be taken down and then used as an example for whole profession. Its not a representative sample; I have first hand proof so you can't convince me it does not work.
The largest "proof" is when insurance covers it - in the USA the insurance corps love to screw you out of coverage for long-established proven cures if you cost them too much money. They are not inclined to pay for things that do nothing; after all, they don't like to pay for stuff that works either.
I tried chiropractic when my doctor sent me to one unofficially because at that time it was still taboo. It was that or risky back surgery. My chiropractor was a former back surgeon, phd etc. Problem solved.
Ever have oral surgery? Ever use acupuncture instead of being drugged?
The Weather Service is in its infancy.... according to your reasoning it is already akin to an Astrology Service. Just about any argument you pose for the weather service I can use for the climate prediction service.
These are both fluid dynamics problems - mankind will NEVER get out of infancy given the level of complexity and chaos involved. If we got the math down 100% we'd not be able to fully compute the problems.
The climate predictions have been largely accurate - much much higher than Astrology. Yes, there is a smaller dataset than weather; we may be no better in a 1000 years of data points than we are today. But we are better than random guessing or Astrology!
There is this thing that is sometimes done in the public sector called LONG TERM planning - and I would rather they asked experts than flipped a coin or asked an astrologist (either of which may be better than asking the politician to "guess.") The expert educated opinion is better than the alternatives - that alone is reason enough! How can such an anti-science position get mod 5 Insightful?? on slashdot?
I've not seen the climate predictions go wrong yet; sure there are some typos and over simplifications but that isn't the field, its just a small sample of a larger field. Easy to say computers suck by looking at e-machines running windows ME... The main temp chart included a RANGE and we've been within range the whole time - the simple stuff for the slow people has been too optimistic or too dire depending on context and source but the science covers a broad range which STILL is specific enough to be quite useful.
I've been following Global Warming not the so-called debate. If you think that silly idiocy going on the last 10 years is debate, then you are a waste of time - go get educated and come back when you have something constructive to say. Don't educate yourself, I don't think you can do that yet... get expert help.
The legit Chiropractors and Acupuncturists work for many things. period. Its not superstition; its your ignorance. Simply because something is ahead of science and not understood does not make it false. Simply because you are BEHIND does not mean it has not been proven. Do you realize many so-called discoveries are merely describing something that worked which was being used for generations? Nature has done billions of things for billions of years without science there to prove it and make an abstraction (which is then frequently revised until settling.)
I don't even believe in god (had a catholic christian) so I'm NOT going in as a sucker. I have tried both and I'm a scientist. Yes, you theists are the real suckers -there I just said it! Psychics are nowhere near alternative medicine - both of which are constantly being studied by science; psychics consistently do poorly. Alt medicine often produced "new" drugs.
Science is merely a testing process; there are more untested than tested theories. If something works, we don't need to understand it to use it; its up to science to eventually explain why it works (and humans have limits and therefore science won't be able to solve everything that is testable.) Science can help decide if something is effective without knowing why. Many "effective" things are actually less effective than their socially stigmatized alternatives. (Now we are using leaches for blood letting again... double points for that one.)
In fact, we get into plenty of trouble applying discoveries that are not mature enough when it comes to biology. The many failures of technology to be responsibly delayed for further research has caused people to lose faith in established science. Its not science's fault but it gets the blame; its no wonder we have a movement away from science - there was a whole generation who was promised houses on the moon by now; "science" didn't deliver on the hype. (again it wasn't science itself to blame here.) The reality is that people can't know it all and most must place faith in the experts in science like they do their experts in god. I don't have faith in science or religion but I know that science's positions are the best guesses humans have and I could study it myself and come out with the same answers (unlike religion's constant contradictions which produces different output to fight over.) That is me-- many people don't think it out; its just faith and therefore quite similar to religion from their perspective.
The witchdoctor shouldn't be dismissed but should be studied and explained. In the mean time, we can function just fine in ignorance with reasonably predictable outcomes. I suppose you do not think hypnosis exists? Yet hypnosis works and we have a better understanding of it despite not having a clue of what is actually going on - the explanations out there are no worse than what acupuncture has. It is UNSCIENTIFIC to just dismiss something; as the parent post does - (psychics should be obvious given their poor history; but clearly the poster is a few decades behind on the others.)
There are quacks everywhere - medical docs can/do scam people too. My HMO now does acupuncture and chiropractic work and its because they see actual results in the statistics - it is not to make the customers they screw over happy! We do not have a good system in place for most alternative medicines - before doctors had one there was a bigger range in the quality of "doctor" out there. I've been to good ones of both with easy clear cut test cases and clear results.
I agree the USA has a science / reasoning problem culturally among many other issues that have been leading to its downfall. If people just believed in results it would be a better nation - wouldn't hurt if we didn't get so suckered by hyped expectations either...
I think someone at DARPA saw the Kurt Russel film Soldier: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157 and doesn't want any of their supermen doing anything good that is against orders.
Flash was a nice vector animation format that turned into a backdoor for everything JAVA Applets were not and the pain and poor integration of all the video plug-ins. Sure, the others helped make the need but Flash turned into a bloated security hole, browser crasher, and privacy problem.
HTML 5 and SVG will help to fix this.
Video shouldn't require a messy container kludge to run or a virtual machine. Have you ever noticed how much CPU flash kills trying to playback video that should hardly phase the system?
Why support Flash just for its lame video support? The real reason we use it is because everybody has the plug in already and we can save bandwidth by hosting video elsewhere for free while creating a larger exposure to the net... (you tube, the 2nd largest search engine.)
Youtube is going to html5 + h.264- the rest will follow; flash served its good, it can die soon.
Sure, software records are a problem. But the problems will be noticed and accounted with more detail than the paper systems currently in use.
When something wrong in paper it is noticed eventually but we don't track the thing as well and have less data to help contribute to avoiding a repeat. There is less error checking possible as well- its not digital.
Software bugs tend to stick out and get feedback because its unhuman and people don't have to deal with blame games (blame the computer.)
Don't know about you, but I've never heard of a checklist that doesn't come up for review. Errors/bugs are part of the revision process, just like software development except its not anywhere near as complex.
It is not a modern LAW. Pilot lists don't stop pilot error - they don't fly the jet either (although in software they do a whole lot more of the work for the pilot.)
Somebody messes up left/right and the list gets an entry or two for verifying which side is which in a CLEAR way. Standardized lists leverage everybody's experience. Computers could act like dictionaries - but could attach to the digital record system we don't have yet.
Nintendo does a compromise where kids with lower motivation and skill can still be rewarded while classic gamers can shift their goals slightly.
The collection system since Mario64: These are NOT your typical collection quest. They cleverly recycle content while adding actual gameplay skill challenges. Sure, they have a few of the typical hidden, timed, or multiple path situations but the majority challenge your skills like a more difficult level would (but without adding 30 levels.) These goals are fun and not condescending drudgery with a carrot.
The NSMB for the 1st time includes VIDEOS encouraging people to try to show off their skills - its a direct response to the YEARS of Mario contests, Speed Runs and YouTube show offs.
Nintendo then keeps BOTH sides happy.
I don't play games much anymore; however, I spent every weekend since it came out playing it with friends and haven't had so much fun with a game in 15 years - including mariokart!
The only thing NSMB could add is online multiplayer, emailing USER gameplay videos, online contests, and more amazing gameplay videos.
Slashdot Mirror
The real problem nobody dares speak of is that the world is OVERPOPULATED.
Who seriously thought that overpopulation would be a simplistic scenario?? The poor suffer 1st the middle get cramped and the rich are largely unaware and slowly it progresses until the middle are just a better kind of poor. The climate gets screwed up from too many humans... Their prey dies off; they kill off plants... Its happening already; rich nations are less aware and don't want to give anything up for something they don't really understand (or want to.)
The solutions involve Soylent Green... eating a kind of MRE and finding ways to move the chemicals around in our life so we can live reasonably healthy (reasonable including diseases we get as a result that can boost our economy in treating them.) All this because we can't stop people from ignorantly or arrogantly popping out children.
Pay for voting by making lazy people pay a fine for not showing up. Then they can contribute in some way. The idiots and fanatics tend to cancel out - the parties try to split the vote and the "undecided" (who are not so bright either) decide the elections. This happens today and would continue to happen; however, it might be more difficult to fool that many "undecided" voters than it is today.
I voted for Obama because he clearly was the better one (unless you are ignorant or stupid.) My doubts are that McCain might have been better in that he would most likely have been HOOVER #2 and wreaked the nation ---> in the end, it might have been better to crash, burn and rebuild than having Obama plug the leaks in the dam with his fingers... Or calmly crash landing us into the Hudson river. He won't get credit unless he starts performing miracles (which won't happen this is reality not the Bible.)
Obama doesn't have the power; the broken system that the public helped create is bigger than Obama. He could be the smartest leader EVER but without help he won't gain much ground against the current system. Obama can't act like Bush and get anywhere near that amount of work done by the simple fact: the entrenched powers are only YOURS when you do their bidding. Bush was on the side of the winners, they even did a lot of his job for him so he took record long vacations. Obama is tacking against hurricane winds; he must go with the flow or not make any headway. He has already taken on the biggest most powerful groups in the USA in the 1st year. The pathetic healthcare bill is the most that can be done in the current system; doesn't matter what he wants and I think it was wise to distance himself hoping people would see the corruption at work and learn. Instead the pussy Americans are put off from fixing anything because politics is too dirty.
We have a bunch of wimpy suburbanites who can't deal with the reality of our situation which they helped cause. Its a stupid mob mentality-- help us! we screwed ourselves and need somebody to fix our mess and to shift blame towards! Don't EVER tell us we caused this problem! Especially don't EVER tell us we have to change our ways! Hence the need for a smack in the face - to wake up America. Hoover #2 is probably the only thing that will fix America; as long as Americans have disposable income/debt they will give up life, liberty, and the real pursuit of happiness.
You'd think all these right-wing leaders would disregard all polling instead of basing most their actions upon it. Polling is way less accurate but similar to a lot of scientific predictions. Such as long term climate predictions.
The truth is many of them believe the stuff, they just don't care and can make money opposing it (or exploiting it) -- after all, most are LAWYERS and are trained to fight for BS even when in personal disagreement OR they leverage what facts they can to meet the goal --- the goal being to make money by getting the client what they want. The client is supposed to be the voters.... (which is bad enough, since they don't care about their distant neighbors enough either.)
Government infringes upon too much and the public is too complacent to do anything about it.
Corporations are not people; they are a social virus that like fire which can fuel some growth but also just as readily will burn any number of people without any remorse.
Government defined and enforces the creation of the modern corporation; it is essentially a government entity that is privately managed. Government is a product of the society whether or not it represents its people; now it tends to represent the corporations. This is even worse because all the problems that let people support governments who do evil things (by abstraction/removal from the act) are ALSO the things that happen in corporations (smaller but then they also share the benefits.) But I digress, anyhow your interpretation is false corporations have no freedom, no rights and are fully open to any form of regulation. The very existence of the corporation is by regulation/enforcement.
Its not government telling you that you can't ruin your neighbors resources or your those left for your children it is telling industry it can not do so (or trying to do that) and you simply are a 3rd party "victim" to the results of that. Its another issue altogether about your rights to infringe upon others and how the government acts as the referee (at least conceptually.)
I could argue government is infringing on my right to buy Soylent Green or buy human organs or cheap SLAVE harvested products; but then I might fuel you free market zealots with some new ideas.
It should be a crime to have sex with a Foolish person.
Foolish people shouldn't have kids for multiple reasons; we need to prevent that because they are too busy trying to catch up with the rest of us.
Foolish people say stupid shit and need to be punished with zero tolerance so someday they learn to act the way we want them to in if not from learning then by fear (terror) of being punished again.
All people do Foolish things sometimes but it does not make them Foolish unless they are that way most or all the time.
point:
Replace Foolish with child/teen because they are more "foolish" than their adult counterparts (in general) and its easy to measure by age than by how foolish or responsible they are. Their brains are not fully developed until the early 20s but it does not mean they develop in the same order-- and generally we judge by the level of socialization how "mature" somebody is - but age is more simple.
Essentially, it comes down to how humans think; we are wired to make correlations and we often make simple and false ones (far more than statisticians.) From lucky rituals & charms to red-heads having bad tempers. An island of clones would be forced to develop them based upon other traits because its human to do so.
A sane person would go to the source of the problem not to the enforcer drones which constantly re-spawn. You think the ones at the top really give a rip about their worker drones as long as they can keep replacing them?
A nut goes into an IRS building; hell, going after the IRS in the 1st place is crazy.
If we want any hope, we must get our government back-- as in from the corporations who've taken it over increasingly since... well that point is debatable. It started after the civil war with the war profiteers and went from there - who cares where you draw the line, look where we are now. If you oppose them and their corporate faith you are an evil populist, anti-capitalist, socialist, commie... etc. and someday soon I bet you that the terrorism label will be mainstreamed. The bush admin spent a lot of time trying to label environmental activists labeled as terrorists already. Simply for the threat of property damage or lost profits. Filming in a movie theater is terrorism from the corporation's viewpoint...
If you can be terrorized and that is their intent then they are terrorists. You do not have to be killed for it to be terrorism.
A team of industry lawyers taking you for everything you have, your time, possibly your freedom and now even more criminal law. They want to make examples and terrorize their customers. "Hired guns" now wear suits but the phrase lives on for a reason.
Its going to get worse unless we can curb the corporate takeover. Its hardly our government anymore - and resembles more of a trade group.
What big government? The corporations almost run the government; soon they will become the government--- well not completely because that would be too obvious and people would revolt-- its a charade to fool the gullible as is the left/right false dichotomy -- they really need to make a few more viable political parties because its just too obvious for many of us. Anyhow- if they get full WORKING control over it-- is it really our government? is it actually government or some enforcer cartel? Its not a legitimate democracy at that point but just another means of control. A Corporate Theocracy? A Corporate Plutocracy?
Much of the bailout was payed back. just saying. the fact they got fractional lending (10x or higher) on that money which means they could have given it back immediately is a bigger mess...
The people who REALLY fought, suffered and died for our rights were PEOPLE not professional military and certainly not government. We didn't get the bill of rights handed to us, it was fought for and people died (AFTER the constitution.) Normal people working against the system fought to change the system, not politicians and not professional soldiers. Their importance is greatly overstated unquestioningly and few have the courage to take on this myth.
Joe is just one of the more nutty Glen Beck fans; it is not a mass movement. Healthcare is much more of a problem for more people and they've not had enough wrong to get the people to force change on that issue...
Glen Beck is a clown; an entertainer for a gullible audience and himself privately likely is way different than his act on TV.
Beck isn't anything; either its an act or he is nuts. Having seen some of his early stuff, I would have to say its most likely an act. He doesn't even have to put in a whole lot of effort either.
I for one was happy about the lack of "NEWS" on this nutty programmer suicide. Its NOT that big of a deal; people who are nuts and want to off themselves shouldn't have their big issues made into huge media storms highlighting their causes - it only encourages the next nut to do the same thing!
We've seen an increase over the years since the media has gone down in quality and focused upon this and anything else to drive ratings - most often FEAR related because that primitive emotion is easily exploited for profit. The result has been more nuts going down in glory - sure, legal drugs have contributed to this, especially teens - however, becoming a reality star that people try to understand upon death has also contributed to this. A LOT of these people want to be understood / noticed and their grievances heard. Its a two-for-one.
This is no more "news" than a local shooting - the weapon was just a tiny plane. It could have been a van full of explosives.... We didn't start doing stupid security checks to DRIVE as a result of that one either. I don't think the number of deaths should impact the treatment much either unless there are some worthy underlying issues involved.
You can't secure against everything; no matter how controlled the environment (which in some cases encourages even more trouble.) Flipping out and doing EXACTLY what Bin Ladden wanted means terrorism works extremely well on Americans - a proven example for half-rational nuts and very rational fanatics to look at.
Shit happens. Live with it.
There are plenty of bad science things going on in the old doctors. For example the old 60s radio show too much of it takes place in this solar system and Mars is a threat... We pretty much knew there wasn't armies on mars back then. come on. The doctor's regeneration has never been believable except perhaps the 1st few which were slower and had side effects etc. Some stuff is just to help the plot.
Wince moments of too much melodrama are a much much bigger problem in the new Who show as well as trying to top the previous season in disaster and its continued heavy focus on the UK. We need more alien locations; all that tech and the older shows traveled more... The recent stuff has gone downhill... Hollywood influence? Unobtainium is blatantly saying it-- so THEN its ok? You want the writer's to point out they know its impossible?
The "science" of Dr Who is largely over-your-head type stuff with minimal BS to explain anything - you are not supposed to know the kind of BS descriptions they cram into NG Star Trek, neoStarWars or even the Vampires focus on the medical condition bringing that into modern "science ficiton" instead of just being mythical horror. (Although "I Am Legend" was good - no the book, not the stupid movie.)
We don't need the CGI or the BS explanations - classic mythology and story telling lacks all of these and are ..."classic" as well as the place where everything gets ripped off from. Hercules is part god, thats enough to know. The Dr comes in, like a know-it-all says a bunch of technical stuff out of your depth and fixes it like it was simple, like a geek fixing his grandmother's computer... Except the doctor keeps talking aloud and isn't upset that nobody follows a word he says or cares to understand.
Except for a really simple program, we can not produce "perfect" software and there is provably no way to validate the software is error free. So, we can't know if something is perfect if in fact it is. If it is perfect, we will likely have a % of users that will have perceived "bugs" (user error) as well as possibly a few developers who think it can be perfected further to address the complaints of those users (or imaginary ones or themselves) and soil an otherwise perfect program.
Vast numbers of "bugs" that are really just user error and misunderstanding - which one can subjectively blame on interface design - the perfect program would handle everything thrown at it according to specifications. The specifications would be extremely detailed and also would have to be perfect.
There are 3 sides:
human requirements (flawed; vague; not clear on specs)
human interaction (really flawed; larger group)
implementation "bugs" (most are shallow - come on, we all know programming is mostly debugging.)
Fill in the X for anything you want- its a var!
seXfinity? its where the bandwidth goes.
We used to joke with their employees who shared the building (who joined in:)
Concast
Commiecast (we were calling each other comrade too.)
Comquest (I think their line should be "All your internet belong to us.")
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Xe didn't help that corps image. People still call it Black Water.
Well, Arther Anderson pulled it off-- how many forgot they are now known as Accenture? (The people who brought you Enron.)
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Who set us up the takeover?
The rest the world has to deal with english, American technical terms, corporations, IP laws, military bases, a hysterical anti-terror crusade and occasionally our messed up measurement system. Yet Americans can't handle having to transition to metric because it would be too hard and too difficult. The greatest generation could have done it, but not the current ones - its beyond their abilities.
Legacy parts? live with it. Eventually, they stop being produced anyhow. It can take decades to move hardware but a ton of stuff can be moved quickly.
Bunch of wimps. I know, I live here.
Well my own study shows it works. those "careful" studies are frauds OR they are testing quacks.
There are plenty of medical quacks that can be taken down and then used as an example for whole profession. Its not a representative sample; I have first hand proof so you can't convince me it does not work.
The largest "proof" is when insurance covers it - in the USA the insurance corps love to screw you out of coverage for long-established proven cures if you cost them too much money. They are not inclined to pay for things that do nothing; after all, they don't like to pay for stuff that works either.
I tried chiropractic when my doctor sent me to one unofficially because at that time it was still taboo. It was that or risky back surgery. My chiropractor was a former back surgeon, phd etc. Problem solved.
Ever have oral surgery? Ever use acupuncture instead of being drugged?
Stuff it. punk.
Planetary Science: Ask the people to say why Mercury is colder than Venus.
The Weather Service is in its infancy.... according to your reasoning it is already akin to an Astrology Service.
Just about any argument you pose for the weather service I can use for the climate prediction service.
These are both fluid dynamics problems - mankind will NEVER get out of infancy given the level of complexity and chaos involved. If we got the math down 100% we'd not be able to fully compute the problems.
The climate predictions have been largely accurate - much much higher than Astrology. Yes, there is a smaller dataset than weather; we may be no better in a 1000 years of data points than we are today. But we are better than random guessing or Astrology!
There is this thing that is sometimes done in the public sector called LONG TERM planning - and I would rather they asked experts than flipped a coin or asked an astrologist (either of which may be better than asking the politician to "guess.") The expert educated opinion is better than the alternatives - that alone is reason enough! How can such an anti-science position get mod 5 Insightful?? on slashdot?
I've not seen the climate predictions go wrong yet; sure there are some typos and over simplifications but that isn't the field, its just a small sample of a larger field. Easy to say computers suck by looking at e-machines running windows ME... The main temp chart included a RANGE and we've been within range the whole time - the simple stuff for the slow people has been too optimistic or too dire depending on context and source but the science covers a broad range which STILL is specific enough to be quite useful.
I've been following Global Warming not the so-called debate. If you think that silly idiocy going on the last 10 years is debate, then you are a waste of time - go get educated and come back when you have something constructive to say. Don't educate yourself, I don't think you can do that yet... get expert help.
The legit Chiropractors and Acupuncturists work for many things. period. Its not superstition; its your ignorance. Simply because something is ahead of science and not understood does not make it false. Simply because you are BEHIND does not mean it has not been proven. Do you realize many so-called discoveries are merely describing something that worked which was being used for generations? Nature has done billions of things for billions of years without science there to prove it and make an abstraction (which is then frequently revised until settling.)
I don't even believe in god (had a catholic christian) so I'm NOT going in as a sucker. I have tried both and I'm a scientist. Yes, you theists are the real suckers -there I just said it! Psychics are nowhere near alternative medicine - both of which are constantly being studied by science; psychics consistently do poorly. Alt medicine often produced "new" drugs.
Science is merely a testing process; there are more untested than tested theories. If something works, we don't need to understand it to use it; its up to science to eventually explain why it works (and humans have limits and therefore science won't be able to solve everything that is testable.) Science can help decide if something is effective without knowing why. Many "effective" things are actually less effective than their socially stigmatized alternatives. (Now we are using leaches for blood letting again... double points for that one.)
In fact, we get into plenty of trouble applying discoveries that are not mature enough when it comes to biology. The many failures of technology to be responsibly delayed for further research has caused people to lose faith in established science. Its not science's fault but it gets the blame; its no wonder we have a movement away from science - there was a whole generation who was promised houses on the moon by now; "science" didn't deliver on the hype. (again it wasn't science itself to blame here.) The reality is that people can't know it all and most must place faith in the experts in science like they do their experts in god. I don't have faith in science or religion but I know that science's positions are the best guesses humans have and I could study it myself and come out with the same answers (unlike religion's constant contradictions which produces different output to fight over.) That is me-- many people don't think it out; its just faith and therefore quite similar to religion from their perspective.
The witchdoctor shouldn't be dismissed but should be studied and explained. In the mean time, we can function just fine in ignorance with reasonably predictable outcomes. I suppose you do not think hypnosis exists? Yet hypnosis works and we have a better understanding of it despite not having a clue of what is actually going on - the explanations out there are no worse than what acupuncture has. It is UNSCIENTIFIC to just dismiss something; as the parent post does - (psychics should be obvious given their poor history; but clearly the poster is a few decades behind on the others.)
There are quacks everywhere - medical docs can/do scam people too. My HMO now does acupuncture and chiropractic work and its because they see actual results in the statistics - it is not to make the customers they screw over happy! We do not have a good system in place for most alternative medicines - before doctors had one there was a bigger range in the quality of "doctor" out there. I've been to good ones of both with easy clear cut test cases and clear results.
I agree the USA has a science / reasoning problem culturally among many other issues that have been leading to its downfall. If people just believed in results it would be a better nation - wouldn't hurt if we didn't get so suckered by hyped expectations either...
I think someone at DARPA saw the Kurt Russel film Soldier: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157
and doesn't want any of their supermen doing anything good that is against orders.
Flash was a nice vector animation format that turned into a backdoor for everything JAVA Applets were not and the pain and poor integration of all the video plug-ins. Sure, the others helped make the need but Flash turned into a bloated security hole, browser crasher, and privacy problem.
HTML 5 and SVG will help to fix this.
Video shouldn't require a messy container kludge to run or a virtual machine. Have you ever noticed how much CPU flash kills trying to playback video that should hardly phase the system?
Why support Flash just for its lame video support? The real reason we use it is because everybody has the plug in already and we can save bandwidth by hosting video elsewhere for free while creating a larger exposure to the net... (you tube, the 2nd largest search engine.)
Youtube is going to html5 + h.264- the rest will follow; flash served its good, it can die soon.
Sure, software records are a problem. But the problems will be noticed and accounted with more detail than the paper systems currently in use.
When something wrong in paper it is noticed eventually but we don't track the thing as well and have less data to help contribute to avoiding a repeat. There is less error checking possible as well- its not digital.
Software bugs tend to stick out and get feedback because its unhuman and people don't have to deal with blame games (blame the computer.)
No. they do not. its optional and only some do.
Don't know about you, but I've never heard of a checklist that doesn't come up for review. Errors/bugs are part of the revision process, just like software development except its not anywhere near as complex.
It is not a modern LAW. Pilot lists don't stop pilot error - they don't fly the jet either (although in software they do a whole lot more of the work for the pilot.)
Somebody messes up left/right and the list gets an entry or two for verifying which side is which in a CLEAR way. Standardized lists leverage everybody's experience. Computers could act like dictionaries - but could attach to the digital record system we don't have yet.
Nintendo does a compromise where kids with lower motivation and skill can still be rewarded while classic gamers can shift their goals slightly.
The collection system since Mario64:
These are NOT your typical collection quest. They cleverly recycle content while adding actual gameplay skill challenges. Sure, they have a few of the typical hidden, timed, or multiple path situations but the majority challenge your skills like a more difficult level would (but without adding 30 levels.) These goals are fun and not condescending drudgery with a carrot.
The NSMB for the 1st time includes VIDEOS encouraging people to try to show off their skills - its a direct response to the YEARS of Mario contests, Speed Runs and YouTube show offs.
Nintendo then keeps BOTH sides happy.
I don't play games much anymore; however, I spent every weekend since it came out playing it with friends and haven't had so much fun with a game in 15 years - including mariokart!
The only thing NSMB could add is online multiplayer, emailing USER gameplay videos, online contests, and more amazing gameplay videos.