PlanetSide has a solution for this sort of thing as well: almost no power curve. Meaning that high and low level characters have access to roughly the same stuff (and without the Gygaxian straight jacket of classes). So if you signed up today, you could get a tank. i, after 5 years, would have access to the same tank. Being higher level allows me to have a tank, and a jet, and a sniper rifle and so on. Advancement gives you flexibility rather than godlike power.
The chickening idea is awesome. When i played WoW and the 70s would come a ganking, i'd either sit or do the chicken emote over and over.
Actually, pr0n is the second use of ALL media. Cave drawings, sculpture, printing press and so on. They were invented to do one thing, and all were appropriated for use in pr0n0grapy almost immediately thereafter.
no doubt this has been a very worthwhile experiment, pushing forward the boundaries of science, enhancing our understanding of how the cosmos was created... but surely these massive brains could have been put to better use figuring out how we can now avoid destroying it all? seems like a teensy waste of money if you ask me... just a good job they didn't create a great big black hole and obliterate us after all! "OOOOPS! sorry about that..."
Fairly important, I'd say. As it appears to have set off earthquakes in Japan and Indonesia later the same day. Coincidence or something far sinister ? Conclusion: "don't do it again ?"
"I think that scientist must do their experiment"..... but they shouldn't be do it against nature.Let these things remains in hands of God.....Ok
What a colossal waste of money - who cares how the universe started - if we had applied the cash used to construct this geek's dream gadget to something like AIDS research or some of the huge environmental problems threatening to detroy our planet it would have been far better spent.
isnt the big bang still a theory? the way these scientists are describing the LHC you'd think it was a proven scientific fact! i'm sure it will be excellent value for money - a handful of scientists get paid hansomely for doing a hobby based on supposition. forget poverty, starvation and disease - this purposeless experiment is far more important(!)
I have always believed that it is "gravity" that makes mass and not the reverse. I also believe that the universe is like a ballon, and each piece of matter, regardless of size, leaves a foot print that extends throughout the universe. The foot print is made of "waves" that we cannot see or measure. If the LHC works, it will radically change our way of life, making space travel and even the tele-transporation of matter possible. Dease and illness could become a state of the past.
All good to test things. But not at the financial cost they spend on somthing 90% of the population of the world do not under stand. I. Science can't proof the the beginning as it has one flaw in the big bang theory. "In the beginning there was nothing" Nothing can't creat any thing. The Bible say "that the earth was here and it describe how the eath looked before God spoke a few word to create what we see now. God rules! Science?
They have spent £5 bn pounds on the experiment just to know the past. They should have thought about the future instead and sent the same amount to the areas where this money was much needed. People in Africa and Asia are dying of hunger, cold, and diseases. They need the money and our support rather than few experiments about the planet's past. Some of them don't even know that these experiments are happening.
I cant believe they would put our lives at danger! They could have had a world wide vote to see what everyone thought just like they did for england with terminal 5.They put billions of lives at risk more lives then how much money they spent one the experiment in the first place ? Why the world is gonna stop anyway so whats the point on spending the money when other people need that money to survive.What went through their heads i do not know but next time is there is one STOP & THINK AGAIN!
It's very interesting, but it's about as important as the colour of my underpants. £5billion could be spent a lot more wisely.
I think the experiment is total waste of time and money. I don't care if the earth is gonna blow up or not, but, you know, just think about the starving people in Africa. We can help them a lot by not to spending on that experiment. Advancement in science is good. But the tiny particle cannot provide them a life. That's what I thought when I heard that the supermassive amount of money were spent to them.
When all the hype has died down and when the project leaders and contractors are all happily retired on the fees they have raked in, I suspect this expensive machine will be regarded as the European Millenium Dome.
i'd like to see this experiment conducted in my beloved PlanetSide. Most of the time the avatar's skin isn't visible. It's also purely PvP, so it's very us against them. Meaning, either you are an ally, or you are an enemy. There are no AIs. People of the same empire are either too busy to help or they are helpful. If i heal so and so, he can rejoin the fight sooner. If you're not of my empire you are walking XP... or a threat to my mission (so i turn on Sensor Shield, crouch and wait for you to leave).
Within an empire, there are many outfits (guilds). Most of the time, they get along, but there are rivalries and outfits with dubious leaders. Most of the time, between individuals, such affiliations are less important than the greater imperial affiliation.
In Real Life (tm), people are more likely to be helpful to people who are important (looking) or are attractive. It's not always about race or tribalism, and not even always about sex. Good looking guys of equal talent get better raises and faster promotions than average looking guys (even if guys are deciding who gets what). Nature is advancing the desirable traits.
If you're looking for grind/twink/farmer free pure PvP... try PlanetSide. It's an MMFPS of 24/7 sci-fi warfare. Strategy, tactics, skill and cooperation win the day.
As for MRPGs, i'm waiting for NWN meets WoW but without player trade or grinding. i want to play a game, not have a second job (that *costs* money).
The PvP aspect of WoW was a turn off for me. Spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, die, log off. Running quests with friends was fun.
And i totally agree with you, trying to make WoW2 is virtually futile. WoW has a magic combination of traits that can be imitated, but the imitation would be transparent (and require players to start over in a game few their friends are *not* playing).
i'd like to give the game a try, but i'm not going to spend 50$ to do it.
"It worked! Engineers activated the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and it worked! Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring (and we're all still alive too!)."
Does artificial mean "assembled by people" or "not real/authentic"?
If this biologist combine a dash of this and dash of that and life arises, is that artificial? The molecules are just doing what they are supposed to do. If you throw sodium metal into water, it's quite natural for there to be an explosion, even though it was a person getting the whole thing started.
My gf is a geophysicist and she tells me there's no such thing as an artificial diamond. If it was created in a lab, it's a carbon crystal. Diamonds are minerals, minerals come from the ground, not labs. The two materials are chemically identical.
i'm not trying to make either case, just musing on what we mean by artificial.
Re:Are Quests in MMOGs doable?
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Quests
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Guild Wars had a neat feature that sort of dealt with this. For levels 1 through 7 (or so) you are in Ascalon. When you finish the mainline quests you move on to Ascalon (that's been blasted to hell). Same notional place, but everything is different. You've moved forward in the story.
It would be tricky, but one idea i had for an MMO would be that as you make choices (real choices) you move into parts of that world's history where others have made the same choice. For instance let the players decide whether Whatsia goes to war with Whosia. You then go to Whatsia at peace, or Whatsia at war. Those who chose war would end up in Whatsia won or Whatsia lost. Players could summon each other from one story line to another. But if i'm in Whatsia won and you are in Whatsia lost, i can run around with you, but i'd have to go back to my storyline to progress through the game. Or we could go with a theory of "parallel universes" and magic lets us move between them.
(i'm at work, alt tabbing and such, i apologize in advance for rambling incoherency)
i think we might be talking about different issues through the same topic.
"Fund research and development, yes. By all means. But also do some simple maths before actually doing it. If the maths says it doesn't work yet, don't be a dumbass, basically."
Sure. Version 2 is usually better than version 1. Version 1 has to come first.
"And at any rate, heck, is there a problem with discussing the potential shortcomings here? I mean, best case scenario, the researchers have already thought of that and are working on a solution. Worst case scenario, someone goes "duh" and starts working on a solution. Sounds like win-win to me."
Discussing shortcomings is one thing, rejecting out of hand is another (which you personally might not be doing). i've observed a trend (in the US, at least) toward anything we do/think about doing to thwart terrorists being met with kneejerk cries of invasion of privacy and abuse of authority. Sure, humans can and will muck up/abuse anything. My objection to these reflexive responses is that they seem to be based on politics: Bush is evil and stupid, Bush is the gov't ergo, Gov't is evil and stupid. i agree with the first part, but i try to be objective about the rest. Which is not to say i agree with everything (or even most of) what he's done.
As teens we bemoan our parents being nosy and promise ourselves that when we are parents that we'll respect our kids privacy. When we become parents we realized that there ARE dangers a child might not be prepared to handle, that we are responsible for the development and safety of our kids and that we are the ones who are most capable of doing something. Since the 2000 election, much of the left has been like that teen. More concerned with raging against the machine than in seeing the big picture. The right has gone with "we have to DO something, anything is something, so let's do that!"
It used to be the right whining about big brother and invasions of privacy... claiming we were headed for Marxism. The right used to decry interventionism (Somalia, Yugoslavia etc). Power changed hands, planes hit buildings, suddenly things change. Now the left is saying "no foreign entanglements" and railing against just about anything the gov't does to combat terrorism. i find it immensely frustrating.
"Theoretically everything is possible, but it depends. Sometimes using 5 flawed systems is actually worse than using just one.
At any rate, I have nothing against that idea. But, again, I'd expect someone to first prove that that composite thing delivers a usable degree of accuracy, and a small controlled trial, before it's used as more than a cute tech demo."
i was thinking of some sort of heuristic method. Audio database says 'sounds like a duck'. Camera says 'looks like a duck'. X ray says 'has the bones of a goose'. He's flying from Tulsa to Austin (not LA NYC or DC), so with 2/3 we can let this one pass.
"The rant about Obama and paranoia must have confused me."
My voting record: Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama (primary). i'll vote for Obama in November. i'm a liberal, but i don't let my party do my thinking. i'm not that loyal i guess. Just today my carpool partner said that Sarah Palin shouldn't be running, that she should be taking care of her baby with downs. Why should she have that responsibility? Because she's the mother and that's the mother's role? Why not let her husband to that? Why not let nannies deal with it, like many other working women? Suddenly women should drop their careers and raise babies. His position struck me a purely partisan. She's a republican, she's the enemy, I want her to lose/be out of the race. If it was Jeff Palin with a downs baby i doubt he'd question putting career over family, or letting someone else take care of the child while he does something that's kinda... important.
Back in my college, after the 2000 election, i started seeing flyers about t
What are the security people at the airports suggesting?
"Wait. Did you just invoke airport security as a source of expertise? I'm being trolled, aren't I?"
No, that was Moraelin.;)
i'm not trolling there. Moraelin said that airport security guys didn't like these systems. i'm curious about what they think would help. Sometimes the guys on the ground have good ideas based on experience. *shrugs*
i think it's better to try something and see how it works than to reject it because it might have the same problems as another system. If it fails, it fails. Pay some settlements and try something else.
What if we had several systems working together? Databases, IDs, face recognition, x-rays, gait analysis and so on working together? Could that cut down on the false positives? Systems that prevent the specific act (like reinforced doors) are fine, but i think it's worth the (some) effort to catch them on the ground.
What are the security people at the airports suggesting?
The Nirvana fallacy is the logical error of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume that there is a perfect solution to a particular problem.
By creating a false dichotomy that presents one choice which is obviously advantageous--while at the same time being completely implausible--a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea (reformed social welfare programs, for example) because it is imperfect. The choice is not between real world solutions and utopia; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic possibility and another which is merely better.
An example of the nirvana fallacy would be opposing a policy that reduces poverty because it does not completely eliminate poverty.
__
Also, what control does this give the gov't? To make you walk funny? "Better that a thousand terrorists go freely about their bloody business than for one free person to have a recorded gait"?
While we're at it, we should remove all the wire taps we're using against the mafia and gangs, 'cause we're violating their privacy. They should be able to conduct their business without the prying eyes and ears of big brother.
*groan* i can't wait for Obama to swear in so all this paranoia and ego-centrism might go down a notch.
Make sending unsolicited mail slightly criminal. Say, one minute in prison per recipient. 1M spams would be 695 days in jail.
Spam and viruses cost people money that they could have spent elsewhere. When a company buys a spam filter and hires people to run it, that's money that could have been profit or could have been spent on something useful to the company. Maybe that budget could go to making the health insurance a bit cheaper. Or give the receptionists a raise. Put a foosball table in the break room. 1K$/year is 1K$/year too much to spend on something you never wanted. Spammers are making people/companies/agencies throw away time and money. The only way to not get spam is to not have an address.
Hell, make it the penalty the sum of the amount other peoples time they wasted, 1 second per recipient. Even that would get people to think twice.
Alas, the spam from outside the US and extradition friendly countries would not be unabated, but it would be something.
Maybe such a law would be wrong/unethical, but it would give us some kind of satisfaction. i don't know, i'm speaking mostly out of frustration here. When i was a sys admin dealing with spam was a frustrating waste of my time and the time of my users.
Any law grokkers on hand to tell us what laws and penalties are in place?
Yes. Hundreds of thousands of people are playing MMs as you read this. Maybe that time could be used for something else. But books, movies, comics and TV are all passive single player entertainment. MMs are (somewhat) interactive, what the player does (sort of) changes the story.
Not all MMs are time sinks. PlanetSide is an MMFPS (the O is a given) that i play to *play*, not to gain this or that widget or epeener, only to get the next widget. Been playing that every Thursday night for about 5 years and most of the time i love it.
You could always move to Montana and live off the land. Then you'd have virtually no interaction with the evil government (no income = no taxes). That's about as close as one can get to anarchy, short of buying an island. Maybe John Galt has some room in his place for you.
The Rose Tinting Effect of Memory. You remember the games/movies/albums you liked in those days, and tend to forget the rest. The signal to noise ratio has always been the same, you're just forgetting the noise. Also, your tastes and standards change over time. As a kid, Tron was orgasmic to me. Watching it now i could see more flaws and not be as entertained by this or that.
Also, the expansion takes the form of things moving away from each other, not themselves getting bigger. Black holes don't suck things in anymore than the Earth sucks in the moon. If you get close enough, yeah, you'll fall in. But it's not like water going down a drain, or a vacuum. There are black holes in the center of the galaxy that are frighteningly huge, millions of solar masses... that aren't gobbling up stars. While their gravity is strong, the distances involved quickly makes the pull very weak. That and there are other objects pulling in every other direction.
Interesting side bit - Small black holes evaporate over time. Virtual particles pop outside the event horizon and sometimes escape, becoming real. Over enough time the black hole fizzles away. How that works exactly you'd have to ask Hawking.
Any physicists on hand to clarify/correct?/long fascinated by black holes
Re:Who needs privacy when people are so predictabl
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Blown to Bits
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*sigh* i never have mod points when i really want them. Objectivity is a rare gift.
+1 Insightful
Reminds me of my old saying:
"Voting is the act of supporting the person whose bullshit smells the most like your own." - Apeiron, 2004
Slashdot Mirror
PlanetSide has a solution for this sort of thing as well: almost no power curve. Meaning that high and low level characters have access to roughly the same stuff (and without the Gygaxian straight jacket of classes). So if you signed up today, you could get a tank. i, after 5 years, would have access to the same tank. Being higher level allows me to have a tank, and a jet, and a sniper rifle and so on. Advancement gives you flexibility rather than godlike power.
The chickening idea is awesome. When i played WoW and the 70s would come a ganking, i'd either sit or do the chicken emote over and over.
Coulda swore the the solar cells on my calculator had some third dimension. Otherwise we could stack infinite layers of them on top of each other.
And i suppose the new solar cells also go to 11.
Reminds me of a quote: When your enemy chooses war, you cannot choose peace.
My version of that is: When your enemy chooses war, your only choice is to resist or submit.
Actually, pr0n is the second use of ALL media. Cave drawings, sculpture, printing press and so on. They were invented to do one thing, and all were appropriated for use in pr0n0grapy almost immediately thereafter.
no doubt this has been a very worthwhile experiment, pushing forward the boundaries of science, enhancing our understanding of how the cosmos was created... but surely these massive brains could have been put to better use figuring out how we can now avoid destroying it all? seems like a teensy waste of money if you ask me... just a good job they didn't create a great big black hole and obliterate us after all! "OOOOPS! sorry about that..."
Fairly important, I'd say. As it appears to have set off earthquakes in Japan and Indonesia later the same day. Coincidence or something far sinister ? Conclusion: "don't do it again ?"
"I think that scientist must do their experiment"..... but they shouldn't be do it against nature.Let these things remains in hands of God.....Ok
What a colossal waste of money - who cares how the universe started - if we had applied the cash used to construct this geek's dream gadget to something like AIDS research or some of the huge environmental problems threatening to detroy our planet it would have been far better spent.
isnt the big bang still a theory?
the way these scientists are describing the LHC you'd think it was a proven scientific fact!
i'm sure it will be excellent value for money - a handful of scientists get paid hansomely for doing a hobby based on supposition.
forget poverty, starvation and disease - this purposeless experiment is far more important(!)
I have always believed that it is "gravity" that makes mass and not the reverse. I also believe that the universe is like a ballon, and each piece of matter, regardless of size, leaves a foot print that extends throughout the universe. The foot print is made of "waves" that we cannot see or measure. If the LHC works, it will radically change our way of life, making space travel and even the tele-transporation of matter possible. Dease and illness could become a state of the past.
All good to test things. But not at the financial cost they spend on somthing 90% of the population of the world do not under stand. I.
Science can't proof the the beginning as it has one flaw in the big bang theory. "In the beginning there was nothing" Nothing can't creat any thing. The Bible say "that the earth was here and it describe how the eath looked before God spoke a few word to create what we see now. God rules! Science?
They have spent £5 bn pounds on the experiment just to know the past. They should have thought about the future instead and sent the same amount to the areas where this money was much needed. People in Africa and Asia are dying of hunger, cold, and diseases. They need the money and our support rather than few experiments about the planet's past. Some of them don't even know that these experiments are happening.
I cant believe they would put our lives at danger!
They could have had a world wide vote to see what everyone thought just like they did for england with terminal 5.They put billions of lives at risk more lives then how much money they spent one the experiment in the first place ? Why the world is gonna stop anyway so whats the point on spending the money when other people need that money to survive.What went through their heads i do not know but next time is there is one STOP & THINK AGAIN!
It's very interesting, but it's about as important as the colour of my underpants. £5billion could be spent a lot more wisely.
I think the experiment is total waste of time and money. I don't care if the earth is gonna blow up or not, but, you know, just think about the starving people in Africa. We can help them a lot by not to spending on that experiment. Advancement in science is good. But the tiny particle cannot provide them a life. That's what I thought when I heard that the supermassive amount of money were spent to them.
When all the hype has died down and when the project leaders and contractors are all happily retired on the fees they have raked in, I suspect this expensive machine will be regarded as the European Millenium Dome.
i'd like to see this experiment conducted in my beloved PlanetSide. Most of the time the avatar's skin isn't visible. It's also purely PvP, so it's very us against them. Meaning, either you are an ally, or you are an enemy. There are no AIs. People of the same empire are either too busy to help or they are helpful. If i heal so and so, he can rejoin the fight sooner. If you're not of my empire you are walking XP... or a threat to my mission (so i turn on Sensor Shield, crouch and wait for you to leave).
Within an empire, there are many outfits (guilds). Most of the time, they get along, but there are rivalries and outfits with dubious leaders. Most of the time, between individuals, such affiliations are less important than the greater imperial affiliation.
In Real Life (tm), people are more likely to be helpful to people who are important (looking) or are attractive. It's not always about race or tribalism, and not even always about sex. Good looking guys of equal talent get better raises and faster promotions than average looking guys (even if guys are deciding who gets what). Nature is advancing the desirable traits.
Right, because we can only deal with one thing at a time.
If you're looking for grind/twink/farmer free pure PvP... try PlanetSide. It's an MMFPS of 24/7 sci-fi warfare. Strategy, tactics, skill and cooperation win the day.
As for MRPGs, i'm waiting for NWN meets WoW but without player trade or grinding. i want to play a game, not have a second job (that *costs* money).
The PvP aspect of WoW was a turn off for me. Spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, die, log off. Running quests with friends was fun.
And i totally agree with you, trying to make WoW2 is virtually futile. WoW has a magic combination of traits that can be imitated, but the imitation would be transparent (and require players to start over in a game few their friends are *not* playing).
i'd like to give the game a try, but i'm not going to spend 50$ to do it.
You must first open your heart to her, and then her pinkness (and the number of her horns) will be undeniable!
(maybe her alpha channel is set to 0% opacity)
"It worked! Engineers activated the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and it worked! Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring (and we're all still alive too!)."
Stupid passive voice.
[/nitpick]
Check out the bizarre comments on BBC:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=5325&edition=2&ttl=20080910154235
Seems people think this is a waste of money and an affront to the invisible pink unicorn.
Does artificial mean "assembled by people" or "not real/authentic"?
If this biologist combine a dash of this and dash of that and life arises, is that artificial? The molecules are just doing what they are supposed to do. If you throw sodium metal into water, it's quite natural for there to be an explosion, even though it was a person getting the whole thing started.
My gf is a geophysicist and she tells me there's no such thing as an artificial diamond. If it was created in a lab, it's a carbon crystal. Diamonds are minerals, minerals come from the ground, not labs. The two materials are chemically identical.
i'm not trying to make either case, just musing on what we mean by artificial.
Guild Wars had a neat feature that sort of dealt with this. For levels 1 through 7 (or so) you are in Ascalon. When you finish the mainline quests you move on to Ascalon (that's been blasted to hell). Same notional place, but everything is different. You've moved forward in the story.
It would be tricky, but one idea i had for an MMO would be that as you make choices (real choices) you move into parts of that world's history where others have made the same choice. For instance let the players decide whether Whatsia goes to war with Whosia. You then go to Whatsia at peace, or Whatsia at war. Those who chose war would end up in Whatsia won or Whatsia lost. Players could summon each other from one story line to another. But if i'm in Whatsia won and you are in Whatsia lost, i can run around with you, but i'd have to go back to my storyline to progress through the game. Or we could go with a theory of "parallel universes" and magic lets us move between them.
So how is he ever going to afford his Vette?
Humanoid + robot = android.
(Or to be precise, man shaped)
(i'm at work, alt tabbing and such, i apologize in advance for rambling incoherency)
i think we might be talking about different issues through the same topic.
"Fund research and development, yes. By all means. But also do some simple maths before actually doing it. If the maths says it doesn't work yet, don't be a dumbass, basically."
Sure. Version 2 is usually better than version 1. Version 1 has to come first.
"And at any rate, heck, is there a problem with discussing the potential shortcomings here? I mean, best case scenario, the researchers have already thought of that and are working on a solution. Worst case scenario, someone goes "duh" and starts working on a solution. Sounds like win-win to me."
Discussing shortcomings is one thing, rejecting out of hand is another (which you personally might not be doing). i've observed a trend (in the US, at least) toward anything we do/think about doing to thwart terrorists being met with kneejerk cries of invasion of privacy and abuse of authority. Sure, humans can and will muck up/abuse anything. My objection to these reflexive responses is that they seem to be based on politics: Bush is evil and stupid, Bush is the gov't ergo, Gov't is evil and stupid. i agree with the first part, but i try to be objective about the rest. Which is not to say i agree with everything (or even most of) what he's done.
As teens we bemoan our parents being nosy and promise ourselves that when we are parents that we'll respect our kids privacy. When we become parents we realized that there ARE dangers a child might not be prepared to handle, that we are responsible for the development and safety of our kids and that we are the ones who are most capable of doing something. Since the 2000 election, much of the left has been like that teen. More concerned with raging against the machine than in seeing the big picture. The right has gone with "we have to DO something, anything is something, so let's do that!"
It used to be the right whining about big brother and invasions of privacy... claiming we were headed for Marxism. The right used to decry interventionism (Somalia, Yugoslavia etc). Power changed hands, planes hit buildings, suddenly things change. Now the left is saying "no foreign entanglements" and railing against just about anything the gov't does to combat terrorism. i find it immensely frustrating.
"Theoretically everything is possible, but it depends. Sometimes using 5 flawed systems is actually worse than using just one.
At any rate, I have nothing against that idea. But, again, I'd expect someone to first prove that that composite thing delivers a usable degree of accuracy, and a small controlled trial, before it's used as more than a cute tech demo."
i was thinking of some sort of heuristic method. Audio database says 'sounds like a duck'. Camera says 'looks like a duck'. X ray says 'has the bones of a goose'. He's flying from Tulsa to Austin (not LA NYC or DC), so with 2/3 we can let this one pass.
"The rant about Obama and paranoia must have confused me."
My voting record: Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama (primary). i'll vote for Obama in November. i'm a liberal, but i don't let my party do my thinking. i'm not that loyal i guess. Just today my carpool partner said that Sarah Palin shouldn't be running, that she should be taking care of her baby with downs. Why should she have that responsibility? Because she's the mother and that's the mother's role? Why not let her husband to that? Why not let nannies deal with it, like many other working women? Suddenly women should drop their careers and raise babies. His position struck me a purely partisan. She's a republican, she's the enemy, I want her to lose/be out of the race. If it was Jeff Palin with a downs baby i doubt he'd question putting career over family, or letting someone else take care of the child while he does something that's kinda... important.
Back in my college, after the 2000 election, i started seeing flyers about t
What are the security people at the airports suggesting?
"Wait. Did you just invoke airport security as a source of expertise? I'm being trolled, aren't I?"
No, that was Moraelin. ;)
i'm not trolling there. Moraelin said that airport security guys didn't like these systems. i'm curious about what they think would help. Sometimes the guys on the ground have good ideas based on experience. *shrugs*
i think it's better to try something and see how it works than to reject it because it might have the same problems as another system. If it fails, it fails. Pay some settlements and try something else.
What if we had several systems working together? Databases, IDs, face recognition, x-rays, gait analysis and so on working together? Could that cut down on the false positives? Systems that prevent the specific act (like reinforced doors) are fine, but i think it's worth the (some) effort to catch them on the ground.
What are the security people at the airports suggesting?
Who said anything about liberals?
The Nirvana fallacy is the logical error of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume that there is a perfect solution to a particular problem.
By creating a false dichotomy that presents one choice which is obviously advantageous--while at the same time being completely implausible--a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea (reformed social welfare programs, for example) because it is imperfect. The choice is not between real world solutions and utopia; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic possibility and another which is merely better.
An example of the nirvana fallacy would be opposing a policy that reduces poverty because it does not completely eliminate poverty.
__
Also, what control does this give the gov't? To make you walk funny? "Better that a thousand terrorists go freely about their bloody business than for one free person to have a recorded gait"?
While we're at it, we should remove all the wire taps we're using against the mafia and gangs, 'cause we're violating their privacy. They should be able to conduct their business without the prying eyes and ears of big brother.
*groan* i can't wait for Obama to swear in so all this paranoia and ego-centrism might go down a notch.
Also, not all slopes are slippery... or sloped.
Make sending unsolicited mail slightly criminal. Say, one minute in prison per recipient. 1M spams would be 695 days in jail.
Spam and viruses cost people money that they could have spent elsewhere. When a company buys a spam filter and hires people to run it, that's money that could have been profit or could have been spent on something useful to the company. Maybe that budget could go to making the health insurance a bit cheaper. Or give the receptionists a raise. Put a foosball table in the break room. 1K$/year is 1K$/year too much to spend on something you never wanted. Spammers are making people/companies/agencies throw away time and money. The only way to not get spam is to not have an address.
Hell, make it the penalty the sum of the amount other peoples time they wasted, 1 second per recipient. Even that would get people to think twice.
Alas, the spam from outside the US and extradition friendly countries would not be unabated, but it would be something.
Maybe such a law would be wrong/unethical, but it would give us some kind of satisfaction. i don't know, i'm speaking mostly out of frustration here. When i was a sys admin dealing with spam was a frustrating waste of my time and the time of my users.
Any law grokkers on hand to tell us what laws and penalties are in place?
Yes. Hundreds of thousands of people are playing MMs as you read this. Maybe that time could be used for something else. But books, movies, comics and TV are all passive single player entertainment. MMs are (somewhat) interactive, what the player does (sort of) changes the story.
Not all MMs are time sinks. PlanetSide is an MMFPS (the O is a given) that i play to *play*, not to gain this or that widget or epeener, only to get the next widget. Been playing that every Thursday night for about 5 years and most of the time i love it.
You could always move to Montana and live off the land. Then you'd have virtually no interaction with the evil government (no income = no taxes). That's about as close as one can get to anarchy, short of buying an island. Maybe John Galt has some room in his place for you.
With that kind of resolution you could recognize individual crab lice and watch them migrate from Jenna to Ron.
The Rose Tinting Effect of Memory. You remember the games/movies/albums you liked in those days, and tend to forget the rest. The signal to noise ratio has always been the same, you're just forgetting the noise. Also, your tastes and standards change over time. As a kid, Tron was orgasmic to me. Watching it now i could see more flaws and not be as entertained by this or that.
Wish i had mod points for ya.
Also, the expansion takes the form of things moving away from each other, not themselves getting bigger. Black holes don't suck things in anymore than the Earth sucks in the moon. If you get close enough, yeah, you'll fall in. But it's not like water going down a drain, or a vacuum. There are black holes in the center of the galaxy that are frighteningly huge, millions of solar masses... that aren't gobbling up stars. While their gravity is strong, the distances involved quickly makes the pull very weak. That and there are other objects pulling in every other direction.
Interesting side bit - Small black holes evaporate over time. Virtual particles pop outside the event horizon and sometimes escape, becoming real. Over enough time the black hole fizzles away. How that works exactly you'd have to ask Hawking.
Any physicists on hand to clarify/correct? /long fascinated by black holes
*sigh* i never have mod points when i really want them. Objectivity is a rare gift.
+1 Insightful
Reminds me of my old saying:
"Voting is the act of supporting the person whose bullshit smells the most like your own."
- Apeiron, 2004