Interesting list of features. So what do you do when you've set all that up ? Sit back and watch ?
Don't get me wrong, they sound useful, but a lot of the 'challenge' of these games is how quickly you can react to control vast numbers of units at a time. If you can just set up your parameters ahead of time, you could potentially just be sitting back watching the game for most of it, rather than actually playing it...
I forgot to mention "Crazy Ivan" (as those of you who've watched Hunting Red October should remember) is a term used in submarine combat. Generally there's a sonar shadow in direct line behind most older boats. A good submarine skipper can hide in this shadow, avoiding detection. The Soviets standard operating procedure is to periodically perform a "Crazy Ivan" and turn suddenly and sharply. This is supposed to catch any pursuers off guard and reveal them in the SONAR wake. A fully executed Crazy Ivan is supposed to end with the torpedo tubes trained on the newly revealed pursuer.
While I really liked Firefly, you can't pretend that it was significantly sci-fi. Space was just the setting. It was far more of a "Western Wagons through the Stars".
Sure the writing was good, and the plot progress kept you interested, and it did postulate some minor ramifications to society due to certain technologies becoming common, which is more than I've come to expect... but there wasn't exactly a lot of "science" to it.
Yeah, yeah. Every generation looks down with dread on the coming chaos. I'm sure your great grandparents expected the world to disintegrate when their children grew of age too.
Seriously, it's only 25 years from now. I look back with my rose coloured glasses 25 years and I see.. <shudder> the 80's.
And you think things are getting worse?
Re:Polluting other planets
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Own"er*ship\, n. The state of being an owner; the right to own; exclusive right of possession; legal or just claim or title; proprietorship.
Or alternatively
1: possession with the right to transfer possession to others 2: the act of possessing; "they took possession of the ball" [syn: possession] 3: the state or fact of being an owner
Ownership in the sense of some recognized right to possess is a human construct. The male chimp doesn't own the female, and I think you'll find that the female in nature is the often the gatekeeper of any reproductive rights given to males, who compete with each other to display their viability as a mate. (either being a better protector, or, in the case of peacocks - by being pretty.. something that has nothing to do with how tough they are.).
What you're talking about is sheer "might makes right" possession. That sort of thing can only be physically enforced. In order to do it, you have to have a physical presence. Your own examples make this point for me. "if I'm in a position to defend" Jupiter... You have only the rights to Jupiter that you can enforce yourself.
However, say you own a house. What gives you that ownership? The legal system of your country protects your right to possess and utilize property. If someone comes along and squats in it, someone bigger and meaner than you who threatens you bodily harm if you ever come back, this does not mean they now own your house. They have possession of it for sure, but ownership is something different.
Re:Polluting other planets
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
You have to hold on to it before I can take it away from you:)
That's all I'm saying.
It's as ludicrous as that guy who claims he owns the moon. Until he can get up there and set up a He3 mine or a Motel 6, it's a pointless thing to say.
In the same way, you can say we own the whole solar system, (the universe?) - but until you can do something with it, you just sound like a fool.
The concept of 'ownership' is purely human, but so is the concept of 'responsiblity' - and I'm just advocating we take some when we're out there playing around in places we didn't grow up on.
Re:Wiping out life on Europa
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps - but we don't know much about life on Europa, which is why we don't want to spoil our opportunity to observe it (if it exists) by altering the conditions more than necessary.
Life there could be very delicate, protected by the shield of the ice crust, and prone to destruction or worse yet - alteration - by exposure to outside contaminants (including radiation.. but worse yet, heavy metal leakage)
It's like any good scientific experiment - try and control and limit as many variables as possible. That way you can study the others with a higher degree of confidence that you're seeing the 'natural' state.
Re:Polluting other planets
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Guess what, we humans, as a race, own everything in the solar system. It is ours to do with as we see fit... other planets are being wasted until we make full use of them for humanity as a whole. Until and unless I'm shown proof of life on another planet, and it would probably have to be a somewhat substantially high order of life, I'm going to argue that it's our position to decide the destiny of every bit of metal, gas and rock that's floating in orbit around our sun.
Guess what... the concept of ownership is completely human. In reality, we can't lay claim to anything we can't hold on to. Perhaps I'm reading too far between the lines of your post, but I'd prefer to say that humanity has the potential to utilize other planets, in this system or another. Whether we ever fulfill that potential is another matter.
Furthermore, your post implies (to me) a lack of concern for other environments. I'm not one to suggest that we should not visit or utilize these other worlds, but we need to take responsibility for our actions, and the ramifications they cause. Consider the research we may be denied the opportunity for, if we were to rampantly spread and 'contaminate' other environments. We've done it over and over again on this planet, usually before we knew any better. Lets try not to do it in the future, ok ?
BTW = This is a practical concern, not some sort of fluffy feel-good 'lets not harm the martians' kind of thing.
Well, I would have modded it funny, if it weren't for the fact that this sort of "barrage-of-nonsense -masquerading-as-real-content to-catch-the-stupid-mods" post is hardly original. It was funny the first time I read one of these, now it's just boring. You might as well have added "in soviet russia" for all the amusement and hilarity that instantly accrues.
There are no such things as those elements to which you refer, and Anser albifrons is the scientific name for the White-fronted goose (which, by the way, lives nowhere near Greece, as it is a native of the northern Americas, concentrated around Alaska and Greenland where it breeds and migrating down to Texas).
Considering these facts, and the otherwise content-free nature of your post, I think a troll moderation was kind.
Apart from the military applications, autonomous vehicle development is likely to have spill-over into other areas. For example, reliable and cheap guidance and collision detection, consumer-level autonomous transport, hazardous environment traversal (including other planets) etc.
Just because the military is spending money on it doesn't mean no one else will benefit. It's not like these kids are building new types of weapons.
While I tend to agree with your points re:getting to Mars needs money... I think you're being naive in suggesting that having a colony on Mars is going to help humanity when the big one strikes.
And how do you know it isn't? Even if there was evidence, that only makes it plausible, not correct. Well I was being partly tongue in cheek there, but my point is that Evolution actually does a good job of being a useful theory - both in explaining existing evidence and predicting how new discoveries will fit. Anything that does that is most likely not "completely wrong" - although that's no guarantee that it is completely correct, as you point out.
And if you'd read past my next comment "Creation-Science isn't science", you'd realize that you're simply repeating what I just said.
First of all, there are lots of components and sub-theories that get lumped together as the theory of evolution... You can test some of these, such as the ability for parents to pass on traits to their offspring. You can also artificially create selection pressure through selective breeding. These are experiments that support several key parts of the theory of evolution. They are as verifying as any lab experiment you can perform for the laws of thermodynamics.
You see, scientific theories can only ever be disproven, not proven. So while you can verify the laws of thermodynamics in a lab, the true test is if you can disprove them. Same for Evolution. It's a working theory, which explains all of the evidence so far accumulated. It futher can predict other discoveries, and these discoveries fall into its fold nicely.
The only thing we need to poke holes into Evolution would be any evidence that disproves it.Until such evidence arises, it's still the best model we have.
Actually, the scientists are still arguing about what the *effects* of global warming will be, not about whether it is being observed. Observations can't be denied, but predictions can be argued against.
Sorry I wasn't clear.
Oh - and I take no position on those theories, since I haven't read all the latest evidence, or the theories explaining it either...
Evolution is theory taught in our schools as fact, this is what really gets those of us who believe in creation or creational-evolution "in a twist". Nice one. So you slip in Evolution with Junk Science, and hope that this makes you sound reasonable.
Evolution is taught as fact in the same way that gravity is taught as fact. The theory of Evolution is as valid based on our current evidence as the three laws of thermodynamics. Now Einstein came along and said "hey - what about this relativity thing I've come up with?" and lo and behold, Isaacs theories didn't go far enough. Does that mean we all float off into space because gravity doesn't work ? Does that mean I can't use a parabola to descibe the motion of a ball thrown through the air ? Nope. Same thing with Evolution. The evidence is there, and hundreds of scientific disciplines rely on this same evidence that supports Evolution for everything from dating ancient objects, to geological surveying and microbiology. Evolution happened... although the specifics of how are still very much under the microscope...
The suggestion that Global warming idea is on the same footing as the Theory of Evolution is a neat distraction, but it doesn't fly.
It's fine to doubt the integrity of specific scientists, or even the political process within the community at large - doubt is a good thing. But lets look at the evidence.. can you point to a specific failure ? Where did the scientific process fall down exactly ? Cold Fusion... nope, their peers caught that.. Global Warming, huh? Jury is still out on that one, waiting for more evidence...
No, I'm not buying it. Even if the Theory of Evolution is completely wrong*, creationism cannot be pedalled as a scientific theory. There's absolutely no way of falsifying it. It's not testable, because it can never be revised upon discovering new evidence. It remains immutable, and evidence is routinely discarded or rationalized to fit the theory, rather than the other way around.
Creation-Science isn't science.
_______________________________________________ * it isn't.
I've known plenty of coke (or meth, or heroin) addicts who were quite affluent and never felt the need to break into someone's home. Some of them were complete bastards without their fix, and yet they never resorted to violence to get it. Same as many caffeine addicts I know.
It's got everything to do with the legality of the drug.
Because it's illegal, it's expensive and supply is uncertain.
Most people who break into somewhere to get cash to "feed their habit" are just as likely to be the kind of people who would break in "for kicks" or "to feed their family"... It's got very little to do with the actual drug or it's addictiveness, and everything to do with the criminals socio-economic background and current circumstances.
I will certainly agree to disagree on this, and with much respect.
Fortunately, it appears you've thought very deeply about this topic - which is all we can hope for when faced with questions that appear currently unanswerable.
And, yes I've taken some introductory philosophy classes, as well as some cognitive science. They were years ago, and now I'm merely a concerned amateur.
Well, the premise Jesus != fiction is also debatable. There is significant question as to whether Jesus actually existed, notably since there is a distinct lack of first century writings about him. Certainly if he accomplished all that he did in his lifetime, one might expect more evidence of it. But that is a different topic for another day.
Slashdot Mirror
It might be the same as long as you sold it for free :)
I see your "stupif fuckker" and raise you a "sardonic remark"
Interesting list of features.
So what do you do when you've set all that up ? Sit back and watch ?
Don't get me wrong, they sound useful, but a lot of the 'challenge' of these games is how quickly you can react to control vast numbers of units at a time. If you can just set up your parameters ahead of time, you could potentially just be sitting back watching the game for most of it, rather than actually playing it...
(Not that there's anything wrong with that)
Of course they will - but they will call it a "release" and you'll have to pay to test :)
I forgot to mention "Crazy Ivan" (as those of you who've watched Hunting Red October should remember) is a term used in submarine combat.
Generally there's a sonar shadow in direct line behind most older boats. A good submarine skipper can hide in this shadow, avoiding detection.
The Soviets standard operating procedure is to periodically perform a "Crazy Ivan" and turn suddenly and sharply. This is supposed to catch any pursuers off guard and reveal them in the SONAR wake. A fully executed Crazy Ivan is supposed to end with the torpedo tubes trained on the newly revealed pursuer.
While I really liked Firefly, you can't pretend that it was significantly sci-fi. Space was just the setting. It was far more of a "Western Wagons through the Stars".
Sure the writing was good, and the plot progress kept you interested, and it did postulate some minor ramifications to society due to certain technologies becoming common, which is more than I've come to expect... but there wasn't exactly a lot of "science" to it.
Yeah, yeah.
Every generation looks down with dread on the coming chaos.
I'm sure your great grandparents expected the world to disintegrate when their children grew of age too.
Seriously, it's only 25 years from now. I look back with my rose coloured glasses 25 years and I see.. <shudder> the 80's.
And you think things are getting worse?
Own"er*ship\, n. The state of being an owner; the right to own; exclusive right of possession; legal or just claim or title; proprietorship.
Or alternatively
1: possession with the right to transfer possession to others 2: the act of possessing; "they took possession of the ball" [syn: possession] 3: the state or fact of being an owner
Ownership in the sense of some recognized right to possess is a human construct. The male chimp doesn't own the female, and I think you'll find that the female in nature is the often the gatekeeper of any reproductive rights given to males, who compete with each other to display their viability as a mate. (either being a better protector, or, in the case of peacocks - by being pretty.. something that has nothing to do with how tough they are.).
What you're talking about is sheer "might makes right" possession. That sort of thing can only be physically enforced. In order to do it, you have to have a physical presence. Your own examples make this point for me. "if I'm in a position to defend" Jupiter... You have only the rights to Jupiter that you can enforce yourself.
However, say you own a house. What gives you that ownership? The legal system of your country protects your right to possess and utilize property. If someone comes along and squats in it, someone bigger and meaner than you who threatens you bodily harm if you ever come back, this does not mean they now own your house. They have possession of it for sure, but ownership is something different.
You have to hold on to it before I can take it away from you :)
That's all I'm saying.
It's as ludicrous as that guy who claims he owns the moon. Until he can get up there and set up a He3 mine or a Motel 6, it's a pointless thing to say.
In the same way, you can say we own the whole solar system, (the universe?) - but until you can do something with it, you just sound like a fool.
The concept of 'ownership' is purely human, but so is the concept of 'responsiblity' - and I'm just advocating we take some when we're out there playing around in places we didn't grow up on.
Perhaps - but we don't know much about life on Europa, which is why we don't want to spoil our opportunity to observe it (if it exists) by altering the conditions more than necessary.
Life there could be very delicate, protected by the shield of the ice crust, and prone to destruction or worse yet - alteration - by exposure to outside contaminants (including radiation.. but worse yet, heavy metal leakage)
It's like any good scientific experiment - try and control and limit as many variables as possible. That way you can study the others with a higher degree of confidence that you're seeing the 'natural' state.
Guess what, we humans, as a race, own everything in the solar system. It is ours to do with as we see fit... other planets are being wasted until we make full use of them for humanity as a whole. Until and unless I'm shown proof of life on another planet, and it would probably have to be a somewhat substantially high order of life, I'm going to argue that it's our position to decide the destiny of every bit of metal, gas and rock that's floating in orbit around our sun.
... the concept of ownership is completely human. In reality, we can't lay claim to anything we can't hold on to.
Guess what
Perhaps I'm reading too far between the lines of your post, but I'd prefer to say that humanity has the potential to utilize other planets, in this system or another. Whether we ever fulfill that potential is another matter.
Furthermore, your post implies (to me) a lack of concern for other environments. I'm not one to suggest that we should not visit or utilize these other worlds, but we need to take responsibility for our actions, and the ramifications they cause. Consider the research we may be denied the opportunity for, if we were to rampantly spread and 'contaminate' other environments. We've done it over and over again on this planet, usually before we knew any better. Lets try not to do it in the future, ok ?
BTW = This is a practical concern, not some sort of fluffy feel-good 'lets not harm the martians' kind of thing.
Well, I would have modded it funny, if it weren't for the fact that this sort of "barrage-of-nonsense -masquerading-as-real-content to-catch-the-stupid-mods" post is hardly original.
It was funny the first time I read one of these, now it's just boring.
You might as well have added "in soviet russia" for all the amusement and hilarity that instantly accrues.
Nice reply to your own post.
There are no such things as those elements to which you refer, and Anser albifrons is the scientific name for the White-fronted goose (which, by the way, lives nowhere near Greece, as it is a native of the northern Americas, concentrated around Alaska and Greenland where it breeds and migrating down to Texas).
Considering these facts, and the otherwise content-free nature of your post, I think a troll moderation was kind.
Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
Apart from the military applications, autonomous vehicle development is likely to have spill-over into other areas.
For example, reliable and cheap guidance and collision detection, consumer-level autonomous transport, hazardous environment traversal (including other planets) etc.
Just because the military is spending money on it doesn't mean no one else will benefit. It's not like these kids are building new types of weapons.
It's not exactly fait accompli that the Red Teams Sandstorm will definitely complete the course at all, let alone on time.
If it was, DARPA would have just given them a contract for more vehicles like it.
It's only a qualifying round.
Look at it this way - it's more fun to watch them fail in your dust behind you as you streak past them into the distance than it is to race alone.
After all, if they couldn't qualify, but are allowed to race anyway, what chance do they have of beating the better designs ? Very little.
While I tend to agree with your points re:getting to Mars needs money... I think you're being naive in suggesting that having a colony on Mars is going to help humanity when the big one strikes.
And how do you know it isn't? Even if there was evidence, that only makes it plausible, not correct.
Well I was being partly tongue in cheek there, but my point is that Evolution actually does a good job of being a useful theory - both in explaining existing evidence and predicting how new discoveries will fit. Anything that does that is most likely not "completely wrong" - although that's no guarantee that it is completely correct, as you point out.
And if you'd read past my next comment "Creation-Science isn't science", you'd realize that you're simply repeating what I just said.
First of all, there are lots of components and sub-theories that get lumped together as the theory of evolution...
You can test some of these, such as the ability for parents to pass on traits to their offspring. You can also artificially create selection pressure through selective breeding. These are experiments that support several key parts of the theory of evolution. They are as verifying as any lab experiment you can perform for the laws of thermodynamics.
You see, scientific theories can only ever be disproven, not proven. So while you can verify the laws of thermodynamics in a lab, the true test is if you can disprove them.
Same for Evolution. It's a working theory, which explains all of the evidence so far accumulated. It futher can predict other discoveries, and these discoveries fall into its fold nicely.
The only thing we need to poke holes into Evolution would be any evidence that disproves it.Until such evidence arises, it's still the best model we have.
Actually, the scientists are still arguing about what the *effects* of global warming will be, not about whether it is being observed. Observations can't be denied, but predictions can be argued against.
Sorry I wasn't clear.
Oh - and I take no position on those theories, since I haven't read all the latest evidence, or the theories explaining it either...
I bet every day she gets some moron with a bad case of body odor leering suggestively at her saying "You can lick my wick anytime baby"
Evolution is theory taught in our schools as fact, this is what really gets those of us who believe in creation or creational-evolution "in a twist".
Nice one. So you slip in Evolution with Junk Science, and hope that this makes you sound reasonable.
Evolution is taught as fact in the same way that gravity is taught as fact. The theory of Evolution is as valid based on our current evidence as the three laws of thermodynamics. Now Einstein came along and said "hey - what about this relativity thing I've come up with?" and lo and behold, Isaacs theories didn't go far enough. Does that mean we all float off into space because gravity doesn't work ? Does that mean I can't use a parabola to descibe the motion of a ball thrown through the air ? Nope. Same thing with Evolution. The evidence is there, and hundreds of scientific disciplines rely on this same evidence that supports Evolution for everything from dating ancient objects, to geological surveying and microbiology. Evolution happened... although the specifics of how are still very much under the microscope...
The suggestion that Global warming idea is on the same footing as the Theory of Evolution is a neat distraction, but it doesn't fly.
It's fine to doubt the integrity of specific scientists, or even the political process within the community at large - doubt is a good thing. But lets look at the evidence.. can you point to a specific failure ? Where did the scientific process fall down exactly ? Cold Fusion... nope, their peers caught that.. Global Warming, huh? Jury is still out on that one, waiting for more evidence...
No, I'm not buying it.
Even if the Theory of Evolution is completely wrong*, creationism cannot be pedalled as a scientific theory. There's absolutely no way of falsifying it. It's not testable, because it can never be revised upon discovering new evidence. It remains immutable, and evidence is routinely discarded or rationalized to fit the theory, rather than the other way around.
Creation-Science isn't science.
_______________________________________________
* it isn't.
I've known plenty of coke (or meth, or heroin) addicts who were quite affluent and never felt the need to break into someone's home. Some of them were complete bastards without their fix, and yet they never resorted to violence to get it. Same as many caffeine addicts I know.
:)
It's got everything to do with the legality of the drug.
Because it's illegal, it's expensive and supply is uncertain.
Most people who break into somewhere to get cash to "feed their habit" are just as likely to be the kind of people who would break in "for kicks" or "to feed their family"... It's got very little to do with the actual drug or it's addictiveness, and everything to do with the criminals socio-economic background and current circumstances.
Drugs don't break into houses : people do.
I will certainly agree to disagree on this, and with much respect.
Fortunately, it appears you've thought very deeply about this topic - which is all we can hope for when faced with questions that appear currently unanswerable.
And, yes I've taken some introductory philosophy classes, as well as some cognitive science. They were years ago, and now I'm merely a concerned amateur.
Regards,
David.
Well, the premise Jesus != fiction is also debatable.
There is significant question as to whether Jesus actually existed, notably since there is a distinct lack of first century writings about him. Certainly if he accomplished all that he did in his lifetime, one might expect more evidence of it.
But that is a different topic for another day.
Moses and the exodus is even harder to pin down.