If you look at concentrated ethnic inner-city groups in the U.S. (primarily hispanic and black, but I'm told there are comparable caucasian groups)... they're self-selecting for early breeding age, tougher bodies, and more violent mentality.
Gang life makes for a nice potential little sub-species. I'm not saying it's happened (certainly we're nowhere near the stage of no longer being able to interbreed), but the selection pressures are there.
On the other hand, the upper middle classes are selecting for later and fewer births - a reproductive strategy known to have strong evolutionary effects attached to it.
Try printing from MS Publisher or editing an MS Org chart in PowerPoint; Neither will work unless you have admin privilege, because both expect to write to %systemroot%.
If MS doesn't care about the problem (and these two examples are still present in the latest version without any apparent intention of being fixed), why should 3rd party software develpers care?
It all went south with RotJ, which was an unashamed attempt to sell as many action figures and toys as absolutely possible to kids. With PM, we saw large portions of the movie given over to selling a video game.
Star Wars nerds ruined Star Wars the same way that Trek nerds ruined Trek - by accepting any shit thrust upon them with the appropriate branding, the producers felt free to sacrifice quality in order to broaden appeal and merchandise the hell out of the product.
In both cases, we get bland crap that doesn't stand up well to the original. Greedy producers, stupid nerds... a fatal combination.
Naw - we need to apply this tech to a SMALLER format disk and put it in a caddy - like a 3.5" floppy case. Something to ensure that the written portion of the media never comes into physical contact with anything but air and a few photons.
Doesn't matter, though - in a few more years, nanotube memory will wipe out everything else anyway.
As an extremely crappy web site maintainer (I maintain a moderately unimportant site as the last and least significant of many duties)...
The first thing I did on taking over the job was convince my boss that I needed to install Firefox and a Tidy-based HTML validator to ensure the site had been coded correctly... it wasn't. Several things didn't work properly, and a few things here and there just didn't load at all.
Now that I have Firefox on my PC, I use it by default, and pop up IE to check the site for IE compatibility. Firefox is just a better freakin' product, especially with my four or five fave extensions.
You have read the extensive documents put out by the proponents of the elevator that cover your points, right? Oh, no, you haven't. You can hardly Google the elevator project without coming across point-by-point rebuttals for the hordes of laymen who came before you and made the same observations.
Seriously, though... they would be really good points if they hadn't already been considered by a large bunch of scientists and engineers with lots of letters after their names.
There are several 'senses' that are really just reprocessing of information gathered from other senses.
When something is right in front of you, the sound around you changes - there is a dead spot where you were previously hearing things. Similar 'dead spot' effects can be caused by a shadow over your eyes or the hairs on your skin being protected from whatever air currents were previously there.
I personally find that passive echo location works well for me when I'm in a dark room. I don't squeek like a bat or anything... just hearing the changes in ambient sound can tell you when you're near a wall or something.
On the weight issue - the lighter the limb, the less energy required to move it. That is why fast animals have next to nothing in their legs (think deer or horses).
The torso mass keeps moving in an almost straight line, requiring little energy to maintain its momentum against drag. Legs actually reverse direction every stride, which takes time and energy.
The theoretical Klingon WOULD be talking about himself.
You can expand that phrase to, "Today is a good day to risk death in pursuit of my goals"... only that's not quite as catchy or macho, which tends to make the average Klingon warrior furrow his brow ridges - which is very painful because they're made of bone.
I don't know what gamers are like, but when I worked in an IT department with a 50/50 mix of *nix and Windows techies... it took all of a week from the first gun fight before we'd disassembled our guns and overridden every safety feature.
We had to wrap the foam darts in tape so the pressure wouldn't blow them apart the moment they left the confines of the barrel, and getting hit meant a welt.
This 'discussion' is handled the same way as the standard 'black/white/asian' IQ issue... which is to say with a lot of name calling and very little examination of the substance.
I read one bit about the racial IQ argument that I liked, and it applies to the gender vs mathematics ability argument: It's all about bell curves. If men are on average better at math than women, you still know nothing about the potential of any given individual, especially as the bell curves for both groups aren't that far apart.
I don't have a problem with the standard line that women are wired for complex social networking and nurturing whereas guys are wired for aggression... and that the wiring involved happens to grant men greater aptitude for math. The human brain is a pretty flexible thing, and certainly there are plenty of examples on either side of the gender line that show exceptions to the rule aren't particularly rare.
If someone wants to do actual research on the subject, that's fine - it's up to the rest of us to make sure that research isn't used as a justification for returning women to a second class status. It's NOT a good reason to quash all attempts to look into the theory.
It takes humans a fair amount of time to learn to recognise specific objects... more than three weeks. And once it's done, it's pretty starts to undo within 70-80 years.
I see a pistol grip, collapsable stock, and a scope as excellent mods for this laser. A 'clip' could be added to replace the regular batteries with something with better capacity.
Mount three or four lasers with a dialable control to adjust the range at which the beams cross.
Imagine, burning a guy from kilometers away without having to worry about drop, drift, or leading the target. No spent cartridges, no rifling marks on a projectile.
Sweet.
To quote George Carlin, "The world isn't going anywhere... we are!"
Just because it's unlikely we'll screw up the environment enough to sterilize the planet doesn't mean there isn't a significant chance we'll screw it up enough it kill off humanity.
I believe it failed because they used incredibly rich soil to give the plants a boost at building biomass - which used up a LOT of oxygen. The source of the oxygen loss was initially hidden by the complete lack of an increase in carbon dioxide (normally, you'd expect to see CO2 as O was used). As it turns out, the CO2 was being absorbed by the concrete structure.
The Biosphere2 management made the huge mistake of pumping in oxygen without telling the media, which made the whole thing into a total farce and rendered the results untrustworthy. In short, it failed because there were no top-quality life support systems scientists involved. The mistakes made should have been obvious to anyone who actually knew what they were doing.
I'd certainly bet that if NASA wanted to, they could build another Biosphere project on a much smaller scale that would last much longer as a closed environment before becoming unsuitable for humans.
I've gotten so sick of stupid moderations that I post far less frequently (I've had posts modded Troll by multiple mods who disagree with me).
I've also given up on moderating when I get mod points, simply because my drop in the bucket is usually immediately rendered useless by the next couple of guys with mod points and low IQs.
I suspect a large number of other Slashdotters have developed similar attitudes. It's like CB radio - no matter what you do, as the population of users grows, the subpopulation of idiots grows faster.
Now THIS post should be modded offtopic. Let's see.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the traits that make good engineers also may result in more frequent occurences of autism in their children...
If you look at concentrated ethnic inner-city groups in the U.S. (primarily hispanic and black, but I'm told there are comparable caucasian groups)... they're self-selecting for early breeding age, tougher bodies, and more violent mentality.
Gang life makes for a nice potential little sub-species. I'm not saying it's happened (certainly we're nowhere near the stage of no longer being able to interbreed), but the selection pressures are there.
On the other hand, the upper middle classes are selecting for later and fewer births - a reproductive strategy known to have strong evolutionary effects attached to it.
Try printing from MS Publisher or editing an MS Org chart in PowerPoint; Neither will work unless you have admin privilege, because both expect to write to %systemroot%.
If MS doesn't care about the problem (and these two examples are still present in the latest version without any apparent intention of being fixed), why should 3rd party software develpers care?
It all went south with RotJ, which was an unashamed attempt to sell as many action figures and toys as absolutely possible to kids. With PM, we saw large portions of the movie given over to selling a video game.
Star Wars nerds ruined Star Wars the same way that Trek nerds ruined Trek - by accepting any shit thrust upon them with the appropriate branding, the producers felt free to sacrifice quality in order to broaden appeal and merchandise the hell out of the product.
In both cases, we get bland crap that doesn't stand up well to the original. Greedy producers, stupid nerds... a fatal combination.
My father has always told me those three laws regarded relationships with women.
Naw - we need to apply this tech to a SMALLER format disk and put it in a caddy - like a 3.5" floppy case. Something to ensure that the written portion of the media never comes into physical contact with anything but air and a few photons.
Doesn't matter, though - in a few more years, nanotube memory will wipe out everything else anyway.
Did you RTFA? Right in there they say they're developing a 4-floor version and a wheelchair-capable version.
As an extremely crappy web site maintainer (I maintain a moderately unimportant site as the last and least significant of many duties)...
The first thing I did on taking over the job was convince my boss that I needed to install Firefox and a Tidy-based HTML validator to ensure the site had been coded correctly... it wasn't. Several things didn't work properly, and a few things here and there just didn't load at all.
Now that I have Firefox on my PC, I use it by default, and pop up IE to check the site for IE compatibility. Firefox is just a better freakin' product, especially with my four or five fave extensions.
You have read the extensive documents put out by the proponents of the elevator that cover your points, right? Oh, no, you haven't. You can hardly Google the elevator project without coming across point-by-point rebuttals for the hordes of laymen who came before you and made the same observations.
Seriously, though... they would be really good points if they hadn't already been considered by a large bunch of scientists and engineers with lots of letters after their names.
There are several 'senses' that are really just reprocessing of information gathered from other senses. When something is right in front of you, the sound around you changes - there is a dead spot where you were previously hearing things. Similar 'dead spot' effects can be caused by a shadow over your eyes or the hairs on your skin being protected from whatever air currents were previously there. I personally find that passive echo location works well for me when I'm in a dark room. I don't squeek like a bat or anything... just hearing the changes in ambient sound can tell you when you're near a wall or something.
On the weight issue - the lighter the limb, the less energy required to move it. That is why fast animals have next to nothing in their legs (think deer or horses).
The torso mass keeps moving in an almost straight line, requiring little energy to maintain its momentum against drag. Legs actually reverse direction every stride, which takes time and energy.
The theoretical Klingon WOULD be talking about himself.
You can expand that phrase to, "Today is a good day to risk death in pursuit of my goals"... only that's not quite as catchy or macho, which tends to make the average Klingon warrior furrow his brow ridges - which is very painful because they're made of bone.
I don't know what gamers are like, but when I worked in an IT department with a 50/50 mix of *nix and Windows techies... it took all of a week from the first gun fight before we'd disassembled our guns and overridden every safety feature.
We had to wrap the foam darts in tape so the pressure wouldn't blow them apart the moment they left the confines of the barrel, and getting hit meant a welt.
This 'discussion' is handled the same way as the standard 'black/white/asian' IQ issue... which is to say with a lot of name calling and very little examination of the substance.
I read one bit about the racial IQ argument that I liked, and it applies to the gender vs mathematics ability argument: It's all about bell curves. If men are on average better at math than women, you still know nothing about the potential of any given individual, especially as the bell curves for both groups aren't that far apart.
I don't have a problem with the standard line that women are wired for complex social networking and nurturing whereas guys are wired for aggression... and that the wiring involved happens to grant men greater aptitude for math. The human brain is a pretty flexible thing, and certainly there are plenty of examples on either side of the gender line that show exceptions to the rule aren't particularly rare.
If someone wants to do actual research on the subject, that's fine - it's up to the rest of us to make sure that research isn't used as a justification for returning women to a second class status. It's NOT a good reason to quash all attempts to look into the theory.
If ever I need a woman to estimate the size of my erect member, I want it to be you! :)
It takes humans a fair amount of time to learn to recognise specific objects... more than three weeks. And once it's done, it's pretty starts to undo within 70-80 years.
Never mind the joints - if you tried to pick up a car or something you'd likely exceed the psi rating of the material upon which you are standing.
Besides, joint research isn't so far behind artificial muscle research these days.
Do you know if people want fire that can be fitted nasally?
I see a pistol grip, collapsable stock, and a scope as excellent mods for this laser. A 'clip' could be added to replace the regular batteries with something with better capacity. Mount three or four lasers with a dialable control to adjust the range at which the beams cross. Imagine, burning a guy from kilometers away without having to worry about drop, drift, or leading the target. No spent cartridges, no rifling marks on a projectile. Sweet.
25 years to plan a mission to capture this bad boy. Even redirecting it to impact the moon for future study would be neat.
How could the parent possibly be considered flamebait? It seemed like a perfectly straight forward comment to me.
To quote George Carlin, "The world isn't going anywhere... we are!"
Just because it's unlikely we'll screw up the environment enough to sterilize the planet doesn't mean there isn't a significant chance we'll screw it up enough it kill off humanity.
I believe it failed because they used incredibly rich soil to give the plants a boost at building biomass - which used up a LOT of oxygen. The source of the oxygen loss was initially hidden by the complete lack of an increase in carbon dioxide (normally, you'd expect to see CO2 as O was used). As it turns out, the CO2 was being absorbed by the concrete structure.
The Biosphere2 management made the huge mistake of pumping in oxygen without telling the media, which made the whole thing into a total farce and rendered the results untrustworthy. In short, it failed because there were no top-quality life support systems scientists involved. The mistakes made should have been obvious to anyone who actually knew what they were doing.
I'd certainly bet that if NASA wanted to, they could build another Biosphere project on a much smaller scale that would last much longer as a closed environment before becoming unsuitable for humans.
I've gotten so sick of stupid moderations that I post far less frequently (I've had posts modded Troll by multiple mods who disagree with me).
I've also given up on moderating when I get mod points, simply because my drop in the bucket is usually immediately rendered useless by the next couple of guys with mod points and low IQs.
I suspect a large number of other Slashdotters have developed similar attitudes. It's like CB radio - no matter what you do, as the population of users grows, the subpopulation of idiots grows faster.
Now THIS post should be modded offtopic. Let's see.