"A distributed system of cheap locally produced wind turbines and solar panels would make a lot more sense."
The problem is that 'cheap locally produced wind turbines' arent nearly as economical as large conventional generation facilties. The bigger a generation faclity the less the energy it produces costs; it's the economy of scale, and that's the reason why in the West wind power is declining in cost, we can make the windmills huge.
A turbine with 50m blades ontop of a 150m tower will be far more efficent than anything smaller than it, but one thing making a 50m blade dosent take is labor. It takes a few guys who know what they're doing and a boatload of fiberglass. Putting them up dosent even take that much labor. It takes as many guys as it takes to operate a crane. To make the generators that sit on top you dont need a huge labor force, you need one company that has the ability to make really gigantic generators.
In other words, to make wind power as economical as nuclear power they need to make the wind plants huge which requires the same kind (or more) of technological captial investment and thier large labor force means diddly-squat.
So, in a choice between spending $2billion on a nuclear plant and $2billion-plus on wind turbines, they chose the nuclear plant.
"The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA's overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion."
Then, two paragraphs down.
"The agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, says NASA needs the money to keep the space shuttle fleet aloft, complete the International Space Station and build a new crew exploration vehicle to replace the shuttle."
So, if I interpret your comment correctly, not only are G.W. Bush and 'the R3' time travelers (how else is there to explain the existence of the ISS and Space Shuttle if not to rob NASA of funding in the future), but they are such geniuses on a level we mortals cannot understand that their plan to destroy NASA's science funding includes *increasing* it's budget.
"Of course, a meltdown near a big city can be devastating."
You mean an uncontrolled release of nuclear materials from a plant can be devistating.
In a meltdown everything stays inside the containment buildling. The core *melts down* and sits in a pool of slag at the bottom of the containment building inside a big pit constructed soley in case the reactor ever melted down. This is exactaly what happened at Three Mile Island. No release of anything nasty (tritium is rather benighn).
The RBMK type reactor in Chernobyl that exploded was built by the Soviets for the sole purpose of making plutonium. The probems that reactor design had with stability were ignored because it could be refuled without shutting down. What happened at Chernobyl was not a melt down but a steam explosion caused by running the reactor at too low power *AND* not having a containment building.
The steam explosion hazard present with the RBMK type reactor is not present in any commerical reactor in the United States.
It would take several simultanious acts of God to make most Western reactors release any really dangerous materials.
Right, so... about 78% of it, then. 77.5% is currently produced by oil, gas and coal and roughly 1% is nuclear. That's still not looking too rosy.
Coal is here to stay, I only included that since it really dosent matter how you cut it. In the end there is still a huge surplus of nuclear fuel on earth that could sustain us for hundereds of years.
If we just replaced all oil and gas generation with nuclear we'd still end up with a hugely long lifespan for nuclear power while decreasing our dependancy on oil and gas which is exactally what we've been trying to do.
Did you happen to notice those were 2000 figures? You think we're using more or less now?
If you wanted me to concider more recent figures perhaps you should have used them in your argument in the first place.
I never said otherwise. If you read my post, I even assumed 100% perfect conversion to fissionable Uranium, and added the total Thorium to the total Uranium.
Excpt you ignored the %age of fissionable materials in both. 1% of Uranium is fissionable. 100% of transmuted Thorium is fissionable. That means we can extract ~100 times the energy from all the Thorium that we can from all the Uranium.
That's a nice trick. How does one make 100 tons of Uranium from 1 ton of Thorium?
Well, if you had read what I said, you would have seen that I said it takes 1 tonne of Thorium to make 100 tonnes of fuel.
99% of an uninriched nuclear fuel rod is inert. It's bupkiss. It does nothing energy-wise. It sits there as filler for the 1% of the rod that will be producing the energy. The filler is not consumed in the nuclear process. It stays the same and can be reused over and over again, the only part of great concern is the 1% that is consumed.
Since uninriched fuel is only 1% fissionable Uranium we only need to enrich totally depleted uranium to 1% u233 to make it useful as fuel. Since the transmutation of thorium to U233 is close to 100% we can make close to 100 tonnes of nuclear fuel out of every tonne of Thorium.
"Reasonably assured reserves" aka "what we are pretty sure we can get if we dig for it" aka "what's still in the ground needing to be mined." Those are not figures like it's sitting in a warehouse somewhere. That's all this planet's got to offer. Your oil/oil-sand comparison doesn't work because oil sand... well... isn't exactly oil, is it? That's why it's not counted in the reserve figures.
You dont know how this 'reserves' thing works, do you?
Reserves == (All the material we know about) - (the stuff we are technologically unable to get at) - (the stuff that is uneconomical to get at).
So, Total oil reserves == (All the oil we know about) - (the oil we can't get to) - (the oil that's too expensive to get)
That's why oil 'reserves' are higher now that the price of oil is higher. There was some oil that we knew about, and could get to but was just too expensive to get. Now that the price of oil is higher, it's not too expensive so that oil is now included in the 'reserves'.
That's why Alberta's oil reserves just skyrocketed. The oil-sands were there, accessable but formerly just too expensive (because of the processing cost). With a higher price of oil they aren't too expensive and so they become counted in the reserve.
The same for any resoruce, including Uranium and Thorium.
Reserves are categorically NOT 'all this planet's got to offer'.
The first problem I see is the assumption that we are going to replace all power sources wtih nuclear. Thats just like talking about the 'unviability' of alternative energies since the number of wind turbines etc you'd need to replace *all* power sources in the world is astronimical.
We're not talking about replacing all power sources here though just electrical generation run by oil and gas and maybe coal.
At this point nuclear would be a suppliment since the other sources are still available. The point is to decrease dependance on oil and gas and to extend the length that proven reserves can be tapped.
Secondly, your math is lacking. Thorium does not transmute to 99% DU and 1% fissionable Uranium, it transmutes to ~100% fissionable Uranium. So adding Thorium reserves to Uranium reserves using CANDU reactors we do not get 43% more fuel, but close to 4300% more fuel, since fuel can be made by combining 1% U233 with 99% DU (or other inert material).
One single tonne of Thorium can make close to one hundred tonnes of fuel.
Even if we assume that half the energy in the Thorium will be lost in reprocessing and transmutation (very unlikely) and working on the faulty assumption that the world would use nuclear for *all* of it's energy needs, we have enough fuel to last for at least the next 500 odd years on Thorium reserves alone, all by your calculation methods.
And let's not forget that those figures for Uranium and Thorium are only *reserves*. Should the price go up (a-la demand goes up with increasing useage) the *reservers* will jump too. This is the same reason why Alberta is now only hovering slighly south of Saudi Arabia in terms of oil *reserves*. With the price of oil so high thier tarsands became viable and became *reserves* instead of just 'oil we know about'.
The fact of the matter is that the nuclear option needs some serious exploration. Denying it attention simply because some people find the word 'nuclear' scary isnt going to help any of us.
Unless you add reprocessing, breeder reactors and other fissionable materials such as Thorium to the mix, then nuclear power ends up being viable for quite some time.
But it seems to me that the same people that push for solar/wind/wave power are generally the same that object to any sort of reprocessing scheme, thorium mines and even nuclear power research in general.
Nuclear power is viable if you want it to be and even if you dont, it will eventually have to be so we'd best start looking into it now. It's just like everyone has been saying: take a proactive approach to oil conservation.
FMV in games can be a positive influence that increases the richness of a game but in the last couple of years they have become in increasing burden that the rest of the game has to make up for.
When FMV really became popular/possible around the N64/playstation time there were good reasons to have it. Twenty seconds of FMV can explain more about a situation, the motivation of the character, the relationships between the characters and why the player should give a damn than a half dozen pages of text (which the player wont read anyway) ever could. It's the 'a picture is worth a thousand words' thing and 'don't tell when you can show'.
At the same time if a FMV doesn't explain anything pertinent to the situation it detracts from the game since it is essentially a waste of time. Imagine a Final Fantasy intro to a game of Tetris. It doesn't work because nothing in the intro can have any relevance to falling blocks. Simply dramatizing the blocks doesn't work since the player would rather be playing than watching and dramatizing such a trivial thing approaches mock-epic.
There are also multiple ways of showing things. Game producers dont need to rely on FMV all the time. If an RPG needs to have an army getting ripped to shreds the designer does not need a five minute FMV showing it getting ripped to shreds. A thirty second intro to the battle then allowing the player to take part in the battle while other soldiers make passing comments like "Retreat!" or even "We're getting ripped to shreds!" works just fine. It shows there is a battle and allows the player the play the game while conveying the needed information (IE. They're losing. Badly.)
The point of a game is to play it and FMV should aid game play, not the other way around. It seems that many game designers want to be directors and are fashioning games to show off their directorial prowess. In the beginning FMV had to be short because of hardware limitations but as that progressed they got longer and more frequent to the point where at least parts of games can be more FMV than game. Ironically, these are usually the parts of the game that are supposed to be the most exciting to play but end up frustrating because the player is constantly being interrupted from playing by being shown yet another dramatic entrance of the villain.
Game designers are even trying to turn dialogue exchanges into FMV. A prime example is in StarOcean:TEOT where all the dialogue breaks are directed and shown from multiple camera angles to make it really pretty to watch. Whatever happened to short, snappy dialogue that gets the point across and lets the player continue playing? Pretty FMV dialouge scenes dont dont do anything that NES text boxes didnt do while making the player wait even longer to continue playing.
FMV can be a benefit games but they're being used far past their ability to aid games to the point that they are hurting them.
So what your saying is that in BF1942 on the Omaha beach map, the trick that allowed someone to get *under* one of the bunkers and shoot with impunity was all well and good?
There is the letter of the law - the written rules - and the spirit of the law. What you seem to be saying is that the letter of the rules is all that matters and if the spirit the rules were written in differs, too bad.
When you play a game with other people you agree to a certain extent to adhear to the spirit of the rules. This extent will change depending on the crowd you happen to be playing with at the moment, but you do agree to the spirit. If you go on a noob server and start OwZoring B17ch35 by sniping from the hidden (though accessable to everyone) platform you found in the sky you are not obeying the spirit of the rules. You will be booted, and rightfully so.
When people complain about someone exploiting grenade jumps or other tricks to do things that are not specifically defined in the written rules what they are really complining about is that someone is not playing according to the same spirit they are. Their complaint is valid, since the spirit of the rules is just as valid in a game as the letter. Similarly, they must also take into account your version of the spirit of the rules and take it as a part of the sport that they will be occasionally blasted by said sky-sniper. However, having to take others into account neither gives them the right to arbitrarily prevent you from using those eploits (forcing you to use thier interperitation) nor does it allow you the right to arbitraraly use them (forcing them to use your interperitation). What it says is that both sides must take into account the prevailing spirit of the game when playing.
In other words, practice the dicipline of sportsmanship.
How about "no". Why? Because it's pointless. Stereotypes are simply the normal process of categorization that goes on in the human brain applied to people. As long as humans are not completely and utterly uniform in all perceivable aspects there will be stereotypes and attempting to fight stereotypes will only add (or emphasize) "whiney" to the long list of stereotypical characteristics a gamer has.
The other reason it's pointless is that it is only the most prominent figures in any particular group that create the stereotypes for it. When you think of a motor-sport driver you think of the calm and collected drivers of F1, not the whisky swilling red-necks who blast around Mississippi on their custom lawn mowers. When you think of gaming, you think of the people that make, test and write about games, that is gamers.
Now, it's possible to argue that the gaming media should make different kinds of people more prominent, but then again, who but gamers read gaming magazines? Visit gaming websites? Talk loudly and at length about their Ogre-Slaying knife with the +9 against ogres? Not only would attempting to change the image of gamers simply be an excercise in preaching to the choir, but the general characteristics of gamers would shine through in any case.
The only sure way to change the gamer stereotype is to get different people into gaming and you're not going to convince people to take up a hobby they don't like any more than you can re-wire their brains to avoid stereotyping gamers.
Human intelligence has nothing to do with visual pattern recognition or any other fluff that people commonly mistake as being part of human intelligence. At the moment, human intelligence is thought of as a "black box" by all but a few psychological theories. Only Freudian and Jungian (an offshoot of Freud) psychologies really theorize on how the mind (human intelligence) actually works. Most fields of psychology limit themselves to what goes in and what comes out, never actually even thinking about what goes on in the middle.
It would be impossible to assemble a team of sceintits to build an AI becuae most have choosen not to even concider the minds existance in any meaningful way. Yes, we have made great leaps and bounds in the field of neurology (pattern recognition in the brain, for instance), but neurology only tells us to a small degree how the brain is organized, not how the mind works.
In addition, wanting to build a mind assumes that a mind can be built, but thats an entierly different discussion altogether.
To build an artifical intelligence, we first would have to understand how human intelligence worked, and if you know anything about psychology, you know we're pretty far from that.
Like someone else has already said, its not going to be as simple as building a machine, throwing the switch and marveling at our own magnificence as we give birth to AI. Anyone who hopes to make a machine that has intelligence will have to program it to do things we dont know are going on in our own heads right now.
Having a bunch of computers simulate different brain areas and then hooking them up to each other isnt going to do any good either. All those pretty picures you've seen of "acitve" areas of brain are about as useful as phrenology. The only thing they do is show patterns of greater activation when compared to another state. They say very little about the actual pattern or direction (exhitatory or inhibitory) or the brain activty.
I am more worried about the lack of real intelligence in the human race than I am about the prospect of any artifical intelligence ever arising.
Its got nothing to do with "this stimulus is more interesting than that one", the problem is with ADHD kids is that they cant properly distinguish between stimuli that are genuinly interesting - the ones they want to concentrait on - and all other stimuli in the envrionment - the ones they dont want to concentrait on.
It just so happens that videogames are such a huge stimulus that they can block out every other stimulus in the envrionment.
Its a brain dysfunction and has nothing to do with the childs like or dislike for the classroom material.
If you're trying to say that ADHD meds are overprescribed, yes, they probably are, but for those who have ADHD, they are vital.
Not really. ADHD is caused by the brains inability to distinguish between stimuli it should ignore, and stimuli it should pay attention to. The brain sees any stimulus thats stands out from the background in any minor way and instantly says "pay attention to that!!!!" whether it be a lightbulb, a crack in the floor, a piece of paper, the pinging sound that comes up the heat registers after the furnace has stopped etc, etc, etc.
The reason why ADHD kids play more, and like videogames is because they are a HUGE stimulus. So big that they block out everything else in the room and lo-and-behold, they can concentrait on them, which feels good.
Imagine if you were forced to wear a heatset that randomly played static into your ears. Thats how ADHD kids live. Now imagine if when you played videogames, you could muster up enough concentration to ignore that static. You can bet that you'd like videogames too.
As for the medication causing the increase in videogame palying as opposed to the disorder. I would say that it could be partially correct, but you seem to be ignoring the fact that ADHD could play a role. If there are two groups, A and B. and two differences between two groups, X and Y. You cannot simply dismiss one. Your right in saying the difference could be the medication, but the disorder is also a perfectly valid explanation for the results.
Slashdot Mirror
"A distributed system of cheap locally produced wind turbines and solar panels would make a lot more sense."
The problem is that 'cheap locally produced wind turbines' arent nearly as economical as large conventional generation facilties. The bigger a generation faclity the less the energy it produces costs; it's the economy of scale, and that's the reason why in the West wind power is declining in cost, we can make the windmills huge.
A turbine with 50m blades ontop of a 150m tower will be far more efficent than anything smaller than it, but one thing making a 50m blade dosent take is labor. It takes a few guys who know what they're doing and a boatload of fiberglass. Putting them up dosent even take that much labor. It takes as many guys as it takes to operate a crane. To make the generators that sit on top you dont need a huge labor force, you need one company that has the ability to make really gigantic generators.
In other words, to make wind power as economical as nuclear power they need to make the wind plants huge which requires the same kind (or more) of technological captial investment and thier large labor force means diddly-squat.
So, in a choice between spending $2billion on a nuclear plant and $2billion-plus on wind turbines, they chose the nuclear plant.
"The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA's overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion." Then, two paragraphs down. "The agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, says NASA needs the money to keep the space shuttle fleet aloft, complete the International Space Station and build a new crew exploration vehicle to replace the shuttle." So, if I interpret your comment correctly, not only are G.W. Bush and 'the R3' time travelers (how else is there to explain the existence of the ISS and Space Shuttle if not to rob NASA of funding in the future), but they are such geniuses on a level we mortals cannot understand that their plan to destroy NASA's science funding includes *increasing* it's budget.
"Of course, a meltdown near a big city can be devastating."
You mean an uncontrolled release of nuclear materials from a plant can be devistating.
In a meltdown everything stays inside the containment buildling. The core *melts down* and sits in a pool of slag at the bottom of the containment building inside a big pit constructed soley in case the reactor ever melted down. This is exactaly what happened at Three Mile Island. No release of anything nasty (tritium is rather benighn).
The RBMK type reactor in Chernobyl that exploded was built by the Soviets for the sole purpose of making plutonium. The probems that reactor design had with stability were ignored because it could be refuled without shutting down. What happened at Chernobyl was not a melt down but a steam explosion caused by running the reactor at too low power *AND* not having a containment building.
The steam explosion hazard present with the RBMK type reactor is not present in any commerical reactor in the United States.
It would take several simultanious acts of God to make most Western reactors release any really dangerous materials.
That was a steam explosion, not a melt-down.
Right, so... about 78% of it, then. 77.5% is currently produced by oil, gas and coal and roughly 1% is nuclear. That's still not looking too rosy.
Coal is here to stay, I only included that since it really dosent matter how you cut it. In the end there is still a huge surplus of nuclear fuel on earth that could sustain us for hundereds of years.
If we just replaced all oil and gas generation with nuclear we'd still end up with a hugely long lifespan for nuclear power while decreasing our dependancy on oil and gas which is exactally what we've been trying to do.
Did you happen to notice those were 2000 figures? You think we're using more or less now?
If you wanted me to concider more recent figures perhaps you should have used them in your argument in the first place.
I never said otherwise. If you read my post, I even assumed 100% perfect conversion to fissionable Uranium, and added the total Thorium to the total Uranium.
Excpt you ignored the %age of fissionable materials in both. 1% of Uranium is fissionable. 100% of transmuted Thorium is fissionable. That means we can extract ~100 times the energy from all the Thorium that we can from all the Uranium.
That's a nice trick. How does one make 100 tons of Uranium from 1 ton of Thorium?
Well, if you had read what I said, you would have seen that I said it takes 1 tonne of Thorium to make 100 tonnes of fuel.
99% of an uninriched nuclear fuel rod is inert. It's bupkiss. It does nothing energy-wise. It sits there as filler for the 1% of the rod that will be producing the energy. The filler is not consumed in the nuclear process. It stays the same and can be reused over and over again, the only part of great concern is the 1% that is consumed.
Since uninriched fuel is only 1% fissionable Uranium we only need to enrich totally depleted uranium to 1% u233 to make it useful as fuel. Since the transmutation of thorium to U233 is close to 100% we can make close to 100 tonnes of nuclear fuel out of every tonne of Thorium.
"Reasonably assured reserves" aka "what we are pretty sure we can get if we dig for it" aka "what's still in the ground needing to be mined." Those are not figures like it's sitting in a warehouse somewhere. That's all this planet's got to offer. Your oil/oil-sand comparison doesn't work because oil sand... well... isn't exactly oil, is it? That's why it's not counted in the reserve figures.
You dont know how this 'reserves' thing works, do you?
Reserves == (All the material we know about) - (the stuff we are technologically unable to get at) - (the stuff that is uneconomical to get at).
So, Total oil reserves == (All the oil we know about) - (the oil we can't get to) - (the oil that's too expensive to get)
That's why oil 'reserves' are higher now that the price of oil is higher. There was some oil that we knew about, and could get to but was just too expensive to get. Now that the price of oil is higher, it's not too expensive so that oil is now included in the 'reserves'.
That's why Alberta's oil reserves just skyrocketed. The oil-sands were there, accessable but formerly just too expensive (because of the processing cost). With a higher price of oil they aren't too expensive and so they become counted in the reserve.
The same for any resoruce, including Uranium and Thorium.
Reserves are categorically NOT 'all this planet's got to offer'.
The first problem I see is the assumption that we are going to replace all power sources wtih nuclear. Thats just like talking about the 'unviability' of alternative energies since the number of wind turbines etc you'd need to replace *all* power sources in the world is astronimical.
We're not talking about replacing all power sources here though just electrical generation run by oil and gas and maybe coal.
At this point nuclear would be a suppliment since the other sources are still available. The point is to decrease dependance on oil and gas and to extend the length that proven reserves can be tapped.
Secondly, your math is lacking. Thorium does not transmute to 99% DU and 1% fissionable Uranium, it transmutes to ~100% fissionable Uranium. So adding Thorium reserves to Uranium reserves using CANDU reactors we do not get 43% more fuel, but close to 4300% more fuel, since fuel can be made by combining 1% U233 with 99% DU (or other inert material).
One single tonne of Thorium can make close to one hundred tonnes of fuel.
Even if we assume that half the energy in the Thorium will be lost in reprocessing and transmutation (very unlikely) and working on the faulty assumption that the world would use nuclear for *all* of it's energy needs, we have enough fuel to last for at least the next 500 odd years on Thorium reserves alone, all by your calculation methods.
And let's not forget that those figures for Uranium and Thorium are only *reserves*. Should the price go up (a-la demand goes up with increasing useage) the *reservers* will jump too. This is the same reason why Alberta is now only hovering slighly south of Saudi Arabia in terms of oil *reserves*. With the price of oil so high thier tarsands became viable and became *reserves* instead of just 'oil we know about'.
The fact of the matter is that the nuclear option needs some serious exploration. Denying it attention simply because some people find the word 'nuclear' scary isnt going to help any of us.
Unless you add reprocessing, breeder reactors and other fissionable materials such as Thorium to the mix, then nuclear power ends up being viable for quite some time.
But it seems to me that the same people that push for solar/wind/wave power are generally the same that object to any sort of reprocessing scheme, thorium mines and even nuclear power research in general.
Nuclear power is viable if you want it to be and even if you dont, it will eventually have to be so we'd best start looking into it now. It's just like everyone has been saying: take a proactive approach to oil conservation.
FMV in games can be a positive influence that increases the richness of a game but in the last couple of years they have become in increasing burden that the rest of the game has to make up for.
When FMV really became popular/possible around the N64/playstation time there were good reasons to have it. Twenty seconds of FMV can explain more about a situation, the motivation of the character, the relationships between the characters and why the player should give a damn than a half dozen pages of text (which the player wont read anyway) ever could. It's the 'a picture is worth a thousand words' thing and 'don't tell when you can show'.
At the same time if a FMV doesn't explain anything pertinent to the situation it detracts from the game since it is essentially a waste of time. Imagine a Final Fantasy intro to a game of Tetris. It doesn't work because nothing in the intro can have any relevance to falling blocks. Simply dramatizing the blocks doesn't work since the player would rather be playing than watching and dramatizing such a trivial thing approaches mock-epic.
There are also multiple ways of showing things. Game producers dont need to rely on FMV all the time. If an RPG needs to have an army getting ripped to shreds the designer does not need a five minute FMV showing it getting ripped to shreds. A thirty second intro to the battle then allowing the player to take part in the battle while other soldiers make passing comments like "Retreat!" or even "We're getting ripped to shreds!" works just fine. It shows there is a battle and allows the player the play the game while conveying the needed information (IE. They're losing. Badly.)
The point of a game is to play it and FMV should aid game play, not the other way around. It seems that many game designers want to be directors and are fashioning games to show off their directorial prowess. In the beginning FMV had to be short because of hardware limitations but as that progressed they got longer and more frequent to the point where at least parts of games can be more FMV than game. Ironically, these are usually the parts of the game that are supposed to be the most exciting to play but end up frustrating because the player is constantly being interrupted from playing by being shown yet another dramatic entrance of the villain.
Game designers are even trying to turn dialogue exchanges into FMV. A prime example is in StarOcean:TEOT where all the dialogue breaks are directed and shown from multiple camera angles to make it really pretty to watch. Whatever happened to short, snappy dialogue that gets the point across and lets the player continue playing? Pretty FMV dialouge scenes dont dont do anything that NES text boxes didnt do while making the player wait even longer to continue playing.
FMV can be a benefit games but they're being used far past their ability to aid games to the point that they are hurting them.
So what your saying is that in BF1942 on the Omaha beach map, the trick that allowed someone to get *under* one of the bunkers and shoot with impunity was all well and good?
There is the letter of the law - the written rules - and the spirit of the law. What you seem to be saying is that the letter of the rules is all that matters and if the spirit the rules were written in differs, too bad.
When you play a game with other people you agree to a certain extent to adhear to the spirit of the rules. This extent will change depending on the crowd you happen to be playing with at the moment, but you do agree to the spirit. If you go on a noob server and start OwZoring B17ch35 by sniping from the hidden (though accessable to everyone) platform you found in the sky you are not obeying the spirit of the rules. You will be booted, and rightfully so.
When people complain about someone exploiting grenade jumps or other tricks to do things that are not specifically defined in the written rules what they are really complining about is that someone is not playing according to the same spirit they are. Their complaint is valid, since the spirit of the rules is just as valid in a game as the letter. Similarly, they must also take into account your version of the spirit of the rules and take it as a part of the sport that they will be occasionally blasted by said sky-sniper. However, having to take others into account neither gives them the right to arbitrarily prevent you from using those eploits (forcing you to use thier interperitation) nor does it allow you the right to arbitraraly use them (forcing them to use your interperitation). What it says is that both sides must take into account the prevailing spirit of the game when playing.
In other words, practice the dicipline of sportsmanship.
How about "no". Why? Because it's pointless. Stereotypes are simply the normal process of categorization that goes on in the human brain applied to people. As long as humans are not completely and utterly uniform in all perceivable aspects there will be stereotypes and attempting to fight stereotypes will only add (or emphasize) "whiney" to the long list of stereotypical characteristics a gamer has.
The other reason it's pointless is that it is only the most prominent figures in any particular group that create the stereotypes for it. When you think of a motor-sport driver you think of the calm and collected drivers of F1, not the whisky swilling red-necks who blast around Mississippi on their custom lawn mowers. When you think of gaming, you think of the people that make, test and write about games, that is gamers.
Now, it's possible to argue that the gaming media should make different kinds of people more prominent, but then again, who but gamers read gaming magazines? Visit gaming websites? Talk loudly and at length about their Ogre-Slaying knife with the +9 against ogres? Not only would attempting to change the image of gamers simply be an excercise in preaching to the choir, but the general characteristics of gamers would shine through in any case.
The only sure way to change the gamer stereotype is to get different people into gaming and you're not going to convince people to take up a hobby they don't like any more than you can re-wire their brains to avoid stereotyping gamers.
GTA: Vice City?
It would be impossible to assemble a team of sceintits to build an AI becuae most have choosen not to even concider the minds existance in any meaningful way. Yes, we have made great leaps and bounds in the field of neurology (pattern recognition in the brain, for instance), but neurology only tells us to a small degree how the brain is organized, not how the mind works.
In addition, wanting to build a mind assumes that a mind can be built, but thats an entierly different discussion altogether.
Like someone else has already said, its not going to be as simple as building a machine, throwing the switch and marveling at our own magnificence as we give birth to AI. Anyone who hopes to make a machine that has intelligence will have to program it to do things we dont know are going on in our own heads right now.
Having a bunch of computers simulate different brain areas and then hooking them up to each other isnt going to do any good either. All those pretty picures you've seen of "acitve" areas of brain are about as useful as phrenology. The only thing they do is show patterns of greater activation when compared to another state. They say very little about the actual pattern or direction (exhitatory or inhibitory) or the brain activty.
I am more worried about the lack of real intelligence in the human race than I am about the prospect of any artifical intelligence ever arising.
It just so happens that videogames are such a huge stimulus that they can block out every other stimulus in the envrionment.
Its a brain dysfunction and has nothing to do with the childs like or dislike for the classroom material.
If you're trying to say that ADHD meds are overprescribed, yes, they probably are, but for those who have ADHD, they are vital.
The reason why ADHD kids play more, and like videogames is because they are a HUGE stimulus. So big that they block out everything else in the room and lo-and-behold, they can concentrait on them, which feels good.
Imagine if you were forced to wear a heatset that randomly played static into your ears. Thats how ADHD kids live. Now imagine if when you played videogames, you could muster up enough concentration to ignore that static. You can bet that you'd like videogames too.
As for the medication causing the increase in videogame palying as opposed to the disorder. I would say that it could be partially correct, but you seem to be ignoring the fact that ADHD could play a role. If there are two groups, A and B. and two differences between two groups, X and Y. You cannot simply dismiss one. Your right in saying the difference could be the medication, but the disorder is also a perfectly valid explanation for the results.