I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a legitimate argument or a fantastic piece of trolling, but if it's trolling then I'm impressed. You've combined free speech, activism, minorities, anti-corportism and anti-social behaviour into one slick package without differentiating any of their goals or means.
There is no concordance between peaceful protest and hacking a webpage to spread a message. One just makes noise, the other interferes with the lives and property of other people. The ends do not justify the means.
Why should knowledge need a gatekeeper in the first place? People say "We can't let this fall into the wrong hands!" but security through obscurity is a losing strategy, if that's all you're doing. I'm not advocating we have no secrets, but I think we have more to gain by disclosing and improving than we do through hiding what we know under a white sheet in the hopes that nobody else knows about it. Remember, if we figured it out, they can figure it out - and then we'll still have the problem but nobody else will be informed or prepared when the hammer falls.
Wait, wait. How is messing with other people's stuff on the net from safely behind a computer 'gutsy'? Sounds like cowardice to me. I don't care what their message - if they're fucking with my, or other people's, stuff then whatever their argument is will go unheard. If their message is clear, concise and not disagreeable, why can't they convince us with a logical argument?
It's a fair idea, and I've thought about something similar before - something like an artificial organism that could live in the blood and consume free glucose, thus leading to a release of glucagon and lipolysis. I could never figure out how this might be achieved, though.
Ah, but I can talk like that about chubby people 'cus I'm one of them! I'm not too sensitive about it, and I take my size in good stride.;)
Doesn't mean I wouldn't mind an 'easy' way to shed some kilos, though.
Is this something that has to be engineered into an organism, or can it be applied after-market? From the sounds of it, it's a genetic splice and not something easily applied to preexisting organisms. TFA doesn't seem to say. Anyone know?
Great news for the fatties of tomorrow, but what about the porkers of today?
From what I recall, the TW/MC had some omni slots, but limited slots as well, which made no sense. The Mad Cat is my ride of choice so I was very disappointed by this.
Let's hope a Mechcommander sequel is a sequel to MC, not MC2... that abortion of a game needs to be erased from history. The original Mechcommander was fun and polished. It was dreadfully underrated.
MW2 really represented the tabletop design mechanics quite well. This was its great strength to me - it gave you freedom to experiment and find out what worked. MW4 was completely different and took away a great deal of freedom, and I agree that it was a poor design decision.
I absolutely HATED that aspect of MW4. For me, it ruined the game. I love the boardgame and the great depth of modification you can go to, which was preserved in MW2 and MW3. The hardpoint system in MW4 could have made sense, but it oversimplified things for the console dweebs and lost its impact. Even then, the system didn't make sense in the continuity when you consider that omnimechs should have been able to have any weapon in their hardpoints, unlike conventional 'mechs that ar emuch more constained. It just stank to me.
As a matter of fact, you're spot on when you say "All it takes is a phone call". My colleagues in defence research do rely on the golden phone call when going for jobs; most private industry employers will be satisfied with that. However, that doesn't help you when you're going for something like a tenured faculty position which relies on things like extensive publication history and peer review.
It's easy to close doors in academia if you aren't continuously publishing; I made a very concious decision in my career to leave a potentially lucrative private industry job (but not military related) simply so that I could continue to write the papers need to secure further academic research positions in the future.
Taking three or more years 'off' without a paper is career suicide if you have your sights set on professorship.
True, except that the atomic research that produced The Bomb was conducted under supreme secrecy. The foundational research was widely known to all (hint: the secret is to bang the glowing rocks together).
In the case of UAVs, it is not a trivial thing to take a specific finding from a paper and implement it in a working UAV. Furthermore, we are not currently at war with a beligerent power like in WWII and, as I stated in my original post, the really important military specific stuff does not generally get disclosed.
The sorts of things that do get published in journals are the kinds of thing that have broader application and which don't rely on existing classified info. You can write a perfectly good UAV paper that advances the state of the art without using or divulging military secrets.
I find it ironic that you say people distrust academics, when they're the only people who really do make a full disclosure of their work. If it wasn't for researchers we would not have the cutting edge technology you enjoy today.
He made a poor choice, for sure, but a lot of academics live and work in a 'publish freely, collaborate frequently' mind-set that helps share knowledge and advance human understanding. The whole culture of scientific openness, testability and peer review is strongly at odds with the secrecy-is-paramount function of military endeavours. The two must work together if militaries are to benefit from the latest scientific knowledge but the goals of academics and military are not the same and I'm not surprised it leads to such mistakes.
I'm a university UAV researcher myself; I know lots of folks who work with the military to get funding to do research they think is important. It comes with the territory, and most of us are pretty cluey about the defense applications of what we do. I have been to plenty of conferences where the guys from Iran and China are presenting trivial results or not bothering to present at all, only to attend every potentially valuable seminar they can. We know they're trying to use our stuff, they know they're trying to use our stuff, but we feel that sharing knowledge and putting it out there is crucial for the science.
For that reason people are careful about the alliances they make with the military. Working on national security stuff generally means you can't publish anything valuable you come up. I know a few collegues well who can't say what they did between years X and Y when they go for a job interview - it can be kryptonite to your career.
I don't think this guy was necessarily stupid or foolish - I think he was careless after being so used to the routine of publish or perish that he forgot who his collaborators were, and that was his mistake.
And even if that's the case, so long as nobody was forced into something, and no minors were actually mollested, what's the problem? Being abnormal isn't inherently bad (hey, geeks aren't normal either folks!). Oh, and 'normal' isn't an immediate stamp of approval, either - I know lots of normal people with serious problems.
Sounds like you've met my mother. Her argument against gays is entirely the 'it's not normal!' liturgy. Seems strange, since I've introduced her to friends of mine who are gay but they weren't sufficiently abnormal for her to detect.
Exactly what that means is very subjective, but since almost everyone looks at porn, 'obscene' porn is usually regarded as porn that most people dont look at
Wait... wait... so what you're saying is that if we get everyone to look at it, it's not obscene anymore? I think I've found a loophole!
First they came for the porn stars, but I did nothing because I was not a porn star. Then they came for the dirty magazine publishers, but I did nothing because I am not a dirty magazine publisher. Then they came for the pin-up girls, but I did nothing because I am not a pin-up girl.
It's closer than you think. Just consider the disturbingly named 'EATR': http://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/EATR Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot. Strikes me that this 'tactical' robot is one programming glitch away from Robocalypse Now.
Small talent pools are good for that - in academic circles it's rather expected that you have to pay money to get the top people from around the world. I recently moved to the USA for work (alas, not much robotics happening back in the old US of Oz) and my employer footed the bill. If you have the right qualifications they can open many doors for you.
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I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a legitimate argument or a fantastic piece of trolling, but if it's trolling then I'm impressed. You've combined free speech, activism, minorities, anti-corportism and anti-social behaviour into one slick package without differentiating any of their goals or means. There is no concordance between peaceful protest and hacking a webpage to spread a message. One just makes noise, the other interferes with the lives and property of other people. The ends do not justify the means.
Why should knowledge need a gatekeeper in the first place? People say "We can't let this fall into the wrong hands!" but security through obscurity is a losing strategy, if that's all you're doing. I'm not advocating we have no secrets, but I think we have more to gain by disclosing and improving than we do through hiding what we know under a white sheet in the hopes that nobody else knows about it. Remember, if we figured it out, they can figure it out - and then we'll still have the problem but nobody else will be informed or prepared when the hammer falls.
Wait, wait. How is messing with other people's stuff on the net from safely behind a computer 'gutsy'? Sounds like cowardice to me. I don't care what their message - if they're fucking with my, or other people's, stuff then whatever their argument is will go unheard. If their message is clear, concise and not disagreeable, why can't they convince us with a logical argument?
It's a fair idea, and I've thought about something similar before - something like an artificial organism that could live in the blood and consume free glucose, thus leading to a release of glucagon and lipolysis. I could never figure out how this might be achieved, though.
Ah, but I can talk like that about chubby people 'cus I'm one of them! I'm not too sensitive about it, and I take my size in good stride. ;)
Doesn't mean I wouldn't mind an 'easy' way to shed some kilos, though.
Is this something that has to be engineered into an organism, or can it be applied after-market? From the sounds of it, it's a genetic splice and not something easily applied to preexisting organisms. TFA doesn't seem to say. Anyone know? Great news for the fatties of tomorrow, but what about the porkers of today?
So many parachutes! It was like the Rube Goldberg machine of escape systems. It was a glorious thing to watch unfold.
From what I recall, the TW/MC had some omni slots, but limited slots as well, which made no sense. The Mad Cat is my ride of choice so I was very disappointed by this.
Let's hope a Mechcommander sequel is a sequel to MC, not MC2... that abortion of a game needs to be erased from history. The original Mechcommander was fun and polished. It was dreadfully underrated.
I -thought- I saw a Warhammer in TFA. I couldn't believe my eyes, and now I know it is truth. Thanks for the clarification!
MW2 really represented the tabletop design mechanics quite well. This was its great strength to me - it gave you freedom to experiment and find out what worked. MW4 was completely different and took away a great deal of freedom, and I agree that it was a poor design decision.
I absolutely HATED that aspect of MW4. For me, it ruined the game. I love the boardgame and the great depth of modification you can go to, which was preserved in MW2 and MW3. The hardpoint system in MW4 could have made sense, but it oversimplified things for the console dweebs and lost its impact. Even then, the system didn't make sense in the continuity when you consider that omnimechs should have been able to have any weapon in their hardpoints, unlike conventional 'mechs that ar emuch more constained. It just stank to me.
It's easy to close doors in academia if you aren't continuously publishing; I made a very concious decision in my career to leave a potentially lucrative private industry job (but not military related) simply so that I could continue to write the papers need to secure further academic research positions in the future.
Taking three or more years 'off' without a paper is career suicide if you have your sights set on professorship.
Because coming up with new, innovative ideas is hard and risky. Keeping everyone on the hardware upgrade treadmill is a time-proven cash cow.
In the case of UAVs, it is not a trivial thing to take a specific finding from a paper and implement it in a working UAV. Furthermore, we are not currently at war with a beligerent power like in WWII and, as I stated in my original post, the really important military specific stuff does not generally get disclosed.
The sorts of things that do get published in journals are the kinds of thing that have broader application and which don't rely on existing classified info. You can write a perfectly good UAV paper that advances the state of the art without using or divulging military secrets.
I find it ironic that you say people distrust academics, when they're the only people who really do make a full disclosure of their work. If it wasn't for researchers we would not have the cutting edge technology you enjoy today.
all experiments might not be accurate
All experiments are inaccurate to a given degree. It's just a question of how accurate you need to be to demonstrate the principles at hand.
I'm a university UAV researcher myself; I know lots of folks who work with the military to get funding to do research they think is important. It comes with the territory, and most of us are pretty cluey about the defense applications of what we do. I have been to plenty of conferences where the guys from Iran and China are presenting trivial results or not bothering to present at all, only to attend every potentially valuable seminar they can. We know they're trying to use our stuff, they know they're trying to use our stuff, but we feel that sharing knowledge and putting it out there is crucial for the science.
For that reason people are careful about the alliances they make with the military. Working on national security stuff generally means you can't publish anything valuable you come up. I know a few collegues well who can't say what they did between years X and Y when they go for a job interview - it can be kryptonite to your career.
I don't think this guy was necessarily stupid or foolish - I think he was careless after being so used to the routine of publish or perish that he forgot who his collaborators were, and that was his mistake.
And even if that's the case, so long as nobody was forced into something, and no minors were actually mollested, what's the problem? Being abnormal isn't inherently bad (hey, geeks aren't normal either folks!). Oh, and 'normal' isn't an immediate stamp of approval, either - I know lots of normal people with serious problems.
Sounds like you've met my mother. Her argument against gays is entirely the 'it's not normal!' liturgy. Seems strange, since I've introduced her to friends of mine who are gay but they weren't sufficiently abnormal for her to detect.
Exactly what that means is very subjective, but since almost everyone looks at porn, 'obscene' porn is usually regarded as porn that most people dont look at
Wait... wait... so what you're saying is that if we get everyone to look at it, it's not obscene anymore? I think I've found a loophole!
And then we had no porn, and no one came for me.
It's closer than you think. Just consider the disturbingly named 'EATR': http://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/EATR Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot. Strikes me that this 'tactical' robot is one programming glitch away from Robocalypse Now.
Wait... then, does that mean the Taliban are pro-choice? I'm so confused!
I know Windows bashing is frowned on
Hi, you must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot.
Small talent pools are good for that - in academic circles it's rather expected that you have to pay money to get the top people from around the world. I recently moved to the USA for work (alas, not much robotics happening back in the old US of Oz) and my employer footed the bill. If you have the right qualifications they can open many doors for you.