"You can't even buy Fosters Lager in most parts of Australia. Most Australians wouldn't touch it."
Let's not be snobs. The crappy macrobrews in Australia are just like the crappy macrobrews here, just more expensive. Is 4X or VB preferable to Fosters? I saw a 6pack of Bud Light for sale in a grocery store in Townsville for $20 AUD. Granted Townsville is a little touristy. But for the record, I've seen a lot of Australians drinking Fosters. I think they accidentally imported too many of our commercials.
It's weird that we have two opposing problems - too much energy in the atmoshpere and constant demand for energy to power our cars/homes/electric razors. is there a way to capture energy by dumping atmospheric heat into space?
I'm picturing big heat sinks in the upper atmoshpere, connected to heat collectors on the ground. heat goes up and we get energy from the seebeck effect. getting a bunch of heat sinks into the upper atmosphere should be easy... right?
NASA had much better technology in the early 80s. Remember Space Camp they had a robot and Tom Scarett. Also, the shuttle was robust and user friendly enough that a bunch of kids could fly it while simultaneously learning to work as a team. What ever happened to that space station they were building anyway?
Kary Mullis is the most important inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction. This is the fundamental technology behind DNA sequencing, some DNA fingerprinting, Pathogen screening (like some HIV tests) and lots of other cool things. Also, his autobiography, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, sounds like it was written by Hunter S. Thompson. We're talking about a dude who made his own LSD derivatives for fun. Every third grader should read it.
There have been a few arguments along the lines of - "but my totally vital software requires all of its inputs in all caps!!" This is dumb. There are 2 reasons for such a requirement to exist in a piece of software:
if software is not going to take case into account in a search query (or whatever) it should accept either case. The capslock key is pointless and annoying.
What do you bet the end result of this is going to be nothing more than a shitload of innocent people getting put on "The List" because of false positives?
considering the origin of the information, I wonder if they'll call it "The Crab List". Nobody deserves that.
It seems like the animal test are inherently flawed because of the nature of the drug. Many drugs are chemical agents and need to be tested for toxicity. In that case animal tests are pretty useful - if a lot of something kills a mouse, then a little of it is probably bad for a human.
This drug is different. It's an antibody that specifically binds to a human protein. Even if the antibody itself is not toxic (and there's no reason to think it would be) it's biological effects will not be explored through animal testing.
from Wikipedia: An immunologist contacted by New Scientist and who wished to be anonymous has commented that "You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out what will happen if you non-specifically activate every T cell in the body."
It's also pretty obvious that, even if the antibody is capable of causing a cytokine storm in people, it's very unlikely that it would have the same effect in another organism. I wonder if they knew whether the antibody recognized the CD28 receptors of the primates that used. If so, then the reaction in humans would be more of a surprize.
I don't think DRM is going anywhere. Now that every computer is on the internet almost all the time, companies can start demanding that you remotely validate your software every time you run it.
I hate Steam. I just hate everything about it - clumsy interface, annoying ads, whining message boxes when it can't find the intenet. guess what Steam, I know when I'm connected and when I'm not, but thanks.
Yet I tolerated it so I could play Halflife 2. I have even purchased half-life add-ons that I might not have purchased otherwise. As odious as it is, it worked on me.
I also think the argument could be made that people will tolerate technology that annoys them if that technology seems to provide an indispensible convenience. how many blood pressure raising dropped calls have you had this month? going to get rid of your cell phone? yeah, me neither.
Eventually the industry will collude to force you to upgrade. new games won't run right. new versions of file formats won't display correctly and all of the other kids will make fun of you. I'm not even sure why I upgraded from Windows 2000. XP doesn't have any visible features that matter to me. Eventually stuff just didn't quite work right anymore and I got tired of playing warcraft 2.
The vast majority of games with unlockable content don't give a good enough incentive to do so because the features add nothing to the game once it has been completed
fun is of course subjective but in my opinion:
collect 1000 oysters/packages/whatever = not fun
search a certain spot with w/ a very low probability (1/1000 or worse) until you find something = not fun
waiting until a certain level to be able to use a particular weapon/unit: often fun
finding something in a non-obvious location: fun in small doses (especially if there's a hint about where to go)
I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe the human Deckard had been killed recently, and a replicant Deckard was created specifically for the Roy case. If I remember correctly, when we first see Deckard, he's walking in Chinatown and sits at a sidewalk stand to eat some noodles. Ask yourself this: How did the cops find him just like that (snaps fingers) in the mind-boggling maze that is LA's Chinatown? Now picture this: The replicant Deckard was activated one block away, then picked up five minutes later to take the Roy case.
Cool theory, but I sort of doubt that was the filmmaker's intent. It's not surprizing that the cops were able to find Deckard in the sprawl. The idea of a character having a favorite bar or diner (or in this case noodle stand) where he can always be found is a pretty well worn cliche in film noir. In either case if Deckard is really just a replicant copy of a dead human Deckard, that would really need to be spelled out for it to be a meaningful twist.
I read a bit of the book, but lost my copy somewhere. Deffinitly a very different sort of story.
I hate to say it, but I think part of it is cell phones. Students just have a lot more freedom now than ever before. When I was in HS, less than a decade ago, it was a big deal to have your own phone line. Now every kid has a cell phone, often in jr high or earlier. It's not a new phenomenon that kids care more about their social lives than about school work. that's normal. but i think cell phones intesify it at least a little. maybe a lot.
I think, in general, giving people more freedom is a good thing. we may just need to re-adjust our expectations about what kids will be able to do and when.
I totally agree. The voicover gave the movie an atmosphere of cheezey noir that really made the story work. without it, the movie just seem slow and faux deep and seems to take itself much more seriously.
After seeing the director's cut I still wasn't convinced. If you assume that he is a replicant, you can find a few 'clues' to support that, but it seems intentionally ambiguous to me. for example, the unicorn dream and unicorn origami are not super convincing. an alternate explanation is that a unicorn is a symbol of Rachel's uniqueness. The fact that it is expressed by two different characters may just be the heavy handed expression of that theme throughout the movie.
Deckard being a replicant really opens up more questions than it answers. How did Gaf know? What about the other bladerunners? are they replicants? what about the other cops? why do they have replicants hunting replicants on earth? Isn't that illegal? Aren't these new memory implanted replicants pretty new and experimental? Doesn't it seem like Deckard has been around for a while? Even if most of his memories are implanted, he seems to have relationships with a few characters that took a while to form. It upsets the whole universe of the movie. Which is fine, but we need to know more for it to be a satisfying and convincing twist.
In the end, by far the strongest argument for Deckard being a replicant is: "But wouldn't it be sooo trippy if he were!?" It just seems so ironic - a replicant who's only task is to kill other replicants. For now, I'm just not sure.
There's a tiny flaw in the use of 'metamaterials' to make objects invisible... we don't HAVE metamaterials.
Yeah, I have an idea for cloaking a tank:
1) invent some invisible paint
2) paint the tank
The article is a little light on details, but it seems to imply that it would only work for spherical or cylendrical objects. is anyone else picturing tanks rolling around in giant hampster balls?
swallow evil ride the sky, cross my heart and hope to die, i lose my self in a crowded room, you fool it will be here soon, it comes alive, and i die a little more, it comes alive and each moment here i die a little more, and then the unnamed feeling it comes alive, and the unnamed feeling its take me away...
Wow, I just decided, FEMA sucks. I could stand the callous indifference, incompetent management and sluggish response, but this browser incompatibility problem is just too much.
I think the current administration is really onto something here. when the earth gets too hot for penguins to survive, we'll just send them to the moon. it's pretty cold there.
I'm not trying to be an asshat. of course I understand what someone means when they call their boss a psychopath. it's fine for you or me to use the. but this guy is a psych professional. it hurts his cred. especially since there have been important shifts in psychology since then. it's like a test asking "Does your wife have hysterical neurosis?" or "are you a schizophenegenic mother?"
The reason I disliked it in The Corporation was that they really tried to make it seem like they were going through diagnostics steps. they weren't. they were just making a half assed metaphor with outdated diagnostic tools.
Slashdot Mirror
"You can't even buy Fosters Lager in most parts of Australia. Most Australians wouldn't touch it."
Let's not be snobs. The crappy macrobrews in Australia are just like the crappy macrobrews here, just more expensive. Is 4X or VB preferable to Fosters? I saw a 6pack of Bud Light for sale in a grocery store in Townsville for $20 AUD. Granted Townsville is a little touristy. But for the record, I've seen a lot of Australians drinking Fosters. I think they accidentally imported too many of our commercials.
My advice is to drink wine there.
I can't give you credit for making up that word. It was obvious.
It's weird that we have two opposing problems - too much energy in the atmoshpere and constant demand for energy to power our cars/homes/electric razors. is there a way to capture energy by dumping atmospheric heat into space?
I'm picturing big heat sinks in the upper atmoshpere, connected to heat collectors on the ground. heat goes up and we get energy from the seebeck effect. getting a bunch of heat sinks into the upper atmosphere should be easy... right?
NASA had much better technology in the early 80s. Remember Space Camp they had a robot and Tom Scarett. Also, the shuttle was robust and user friendly enough that a bunch of kids could fly it while simultaneously learning to work as a team. What ever happened to that space station they were building anyway?
Kary Mullis is the most important inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction. This is the fundamental technology behind DNA sequencing, some DNA fingerprinting, Pathogen screening (like some HIV tests) and lots of other cool things. Also, his autobiography, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, sounds like it was written by Hunter S. Thompson. We're talking about a dude who made his own LSD derivatives for fun. Every third grader should read it.
There have been a few arguments along the lines of - "but my totally vital software requires all of its inputs in all caps!!" This is dumb. There are 2 reasons for such a requirement to exist in a piece of software:
-The capslock key already exists
-people code lazily. (especially small market software)
if software is not going to take case into account in a search query (or whatever) it should accept either case. The capslock key is pointless and annoying.
Celebrities shouldn't insight DOS attacks. It's not nice.
What do you bet the end result of this is going to be nothing more than a shitload of innocent people getting put on "The List" because of false positives?
considering the origin of the information, I wonder if they'll call it "The Crab List". Nobody deserves that.
It seems like the animal test are inherently flawed because of the nature of the drug. Many drugs are chemical agents and need to be tested for toxicity. In that case animal tests are pretty useful - if a lot of something kills a mouse, then a little of it is probably bad for a human.
This drug is different. It's an antibody that specifically binds to a human protein. Even if the antibody itself is not toxic (and there's no reason to think it would be) it's biological effects will not be explored through animal testing.
from Wikipedia:
An immunologist contacted by New Scientist and who wished to be anonymous has commented that "You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out what will happen if you non-specifically activate every T cell in the body."
It's also pretty obvious that, even if the antibody is capable of causing a cytokine storm in people, it's very unlikely that it would have the same effect in another organism. I wonder if they knew whether the antibody recognized the CD28 receptors of the primates that used. If so, then the reaction in humans would be more of a surprize.
I don't think DRM is going anywhere. Now that every computer is on the internet almost all the time, companies can start demanding that you remotely validate your software every time you run it.
I hate Steam. I just hate everything about it - clumsy interface, annoying ads, whining message boxes when it can't find the intenet. guess what Steam, I know when I'm connected and when I'm not, but thanks.
Yet I tolerated it so I could play Halflife 2. I have even purchased half-life add-ons that I might not have purchased otherwise. As odious as it is, it worked on me.
I also think the argument could be made that people will tolerate technology that annoys them if that technology seems to provide an indispensible convenience. how many blood pressure raising dropped calls have you had this month? going to get rid of your cell phone? yeah, me neither.
The microsoft genuine advantage bubble told me some very positive sounding things and used the word 'security' a lot, so I'm sure I'm safe.
Eventually the industry will collude to force you to upgrade. new games won't run right. new versions of file formats won't display correctly and all of the other kids will make fun of you. I'm not even sure why I upgraded from Windows 2000. XP doesn't have any visible features that matter to me. Eventually stuff just didn't quite work right anymore and I got tired of playing warcraft 2.
The vast majority of games with unlockable content don't give a good enough incentive to do so because the features add nothing to the game once it has been completed
fun is of course subjective but in my opinion:
collect 1000 oysters/packages/whatever = not fun
search a certain spot with w/ a very low probability (1/1000 or worse) until you find something = not fun
waiting until a certain level to be able to use a particular weapon/unit: often fun
finding something in a non-obvious location: fun in small doses (especially if there's a hint about where to go)
Wait? There's a choice? There is a store where we "legally" can buy non-DRM'ed music? sweet. where is this store. do they sell HL2 without steam?
...placing limits on something I own that I didn't ask for...
Not to mention charging me, the end user, for the R&D into such 'features'.
I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe the human Deckard had been killed recently, and a replicant Deckard was created specifically for the Roy case. If I remember correctly, when we first see Deckard, he's walking in Chinatown and sits at a sidewalk stand to eat some noodles.
Ask yourself this: How did the cops find him just like that (snaps fingers) in the mind-boggling maze that is LA's Chinatown?
Now picture this: The replicant Deckard was activated one block away, then picked up five minutes later to take the Roy case.
Cool theory, but I sort of doubt that was the filmmaker's intent. It's not surprizing that the cops were able to find Deckard in the sprawl. The idea of a character having a favorite bar or diner (or in this case noodle stand) where he can always be found is a pretty well worn cliche in film noir. In either case if Deckard is really just a replicant copy of a dead human Deckard, that would really need to be spelled out for it to be a meaningful twist.
I read a bit of the book, but lost my copy somewhere. Deffinitly a very different sort of story.
I hate to say it, but I think part of it is cell phones. Students just have a lot more freedom now than ever before. When I was in HS, less than a decade ago, it was a big deal to have your own phone line. Now every kid has a cell phone, often in jr high or earlier. It's not a new phenomenon that kids care more about their social lives than about school work. that's normal. but i think cell phones intesify it at least a little. maybe a lot.
I think, in general, giving people more freedom is a good thing. we may just need to re-adjust our expectations about what kids will be able to do and when.
I totally agree. The voicover gave the movie an atmosphere of cheezey noir that really made the story work. without it, the movie just seem slow and faux deep and seems to take itself much more seriously.
After seeing the director's cut I still wasn't convinced. If you assume that he is a replicant, you can find a few 'clues' to support that, but it seems intentionally ambiguous to me. for example, the unicorn dream and unicorn origami are not super convincing. an alternate explanation is that a unicorn is a symbol of Rachel's uniqueness. The fact that it is expressed by two different characters may just be the heavy handed expression of that theme throughout the movie.
Deckard being a replicant really opens up more questions than it answers. How did Gaf know? What about the other bladerunners? are they replicants? what about the other cops? why do they have replicants hunting replicants on earth? Isn't that illegal? Aren't these new memory implanted replicants pretty new and experimental? Doesn't it seem like Deckard has been around for a while? Even if most of his memories are implanted, he seems to have relationships with a few characters that took a while to form. It upsets the whole universe of the movie. Which is fine, but we need to know more for it to be a satisfying and convincing twist.
In the end, by far the strongest argument for Deckard being a replicant is: "But wouldn't it be sooo trippy if he were!?" It just seems so ironic - a replicant who's only task is to kill other replicants. For now, I'm just not sure.
There's a tiny flaw in the use of 'metamaterials' to make objects invisible... we don't HAVE metamaterials.
Yeah, I have an idea for cloaking a tank:
1) invent some invisible paint
2) paint the tank
The article is a little light on details, but it seems to imply that it would only work for spherical or cylendrical objects. is anyone else picturing tanks rolling around in giant hampster balls?
swallow evil ride the sky, cross my heart and hope to die, i lose my self in a crowded room, you fool it will be here soon, it comes alive, and i die a little more, it comes alive and each moment here i die a little more, and then the unnamed feeling it comes alive, and the unnamed feeling its take me away...
so... wait. was he expelled for bad poetry?
Wow, I just decided, FEMA sucks. I could stand the callous indifference, incompetent management and sluggish response, but this browser incompatibility problem is just too much.
I think the current administration is really onto something here. when the earth gets too hot for penguins to survive, we'll just send them to the moon. it's pretty cold there.
it's hard enough maintaining my sanity without a licencing fee.
I'm not trying to be an asshat. of course I understand what someone means when they call their boss a psychopath. it's fine for you or me to use the. but this guy is a psych professional. it hurts his cred. especially since there have been important shifts in psychology since then. it's like a test asking "Does your wife have hysterical neurosis?" or "are you a schizophenegenic mother?"
The reason I disliked it in The Corporation was that they really tried to make it seem like they were going through diagnostics steps. they weren't. they were just making a half assed metaphor with outdated diagnostic tools.
(oh, and did I mention, IANAP)