What do you find "crappy" about the Ford GT's interior? I thought it looked kinda nice, if a little bit plastic-y and vulgar.
The current-generation Corvettes are more interesting to me, though. They don't look as good as the Ford GT on the outside, but I think that's because Chevy let their engineers decide EVERYTHING about that car. It is the only honest-to-god sports car I know of where the design team thought that COST was an important aspect of engineering.
Yes, the interior is cheap chevy parts-bin crap, but it's easier to live with when you know you've got a car that can overtake cars like Ferrari F430s and F360s, Zondas, and Gallardos, all for about $30,000 to $40,000 for one in like-new condition.
war4peace:
I was in your exact position a few months ago. My Core 2 Duo E4300 wasn't cutting it for new games like Crysis 2 or LA Noire even though I had it overclocked +66% to 3000Mhz, fairly close to the same performance as your E6750. So I decided it was time for an upgrade, and I set out looking for the cheapest CPU that could handle any modern game at around 40 fps or more.
I was all set to buy a brand new cpu+motherboard+ram kit from newegg, but at the last minute I checked on eBay and I found it was cheaper to just get a quad-core cpu for my old socket 775 system. After all, I already had plenty of fast DDR2-800 memory and I was 100% satisfied with my Gigabyte 965P-DS3 motherboard, so why chuck them out if I can still make use of them? Instead of paying $230+ for a Sandy Bridge Core i3 2100 kit, I just bought an old Core 2 Quad Q6700 for about $125, and sold my old E4300 a week later for $25 to recoup some of the money I spent. The Q6700 is great... it's basically two E6750s glued together on one package, and at stock clocks it is about 90%-100% as fast in modern multi-threaded games as a core i3 2100, which would have cost just as much as my Q6700 for the cpu alone, never mind the new board and memory I would need. And really I probably paid a little too much for the Q6700 at $125... if you are patient I bet you can get a used Q6700 for $80-$100 off eBay or maybe Craigslist. One tip if you go the used route: make sure the cpu was just pulled out of some some boring office workstation computer from 2007. You do NOT want a cpu that once lived in some 14-year-old's gaming pc that was overclocked to the max with some $20 off-brand power supply.
The TDP for the Q6700 is 95W because it uses the dual-die 65nm "Kentsfield" design, but even so I think your Scythe heatsink (good choice on that, by the way...) should have no trouble handling 95W quietly. But if 95W still sounds like it's just too much heat for you, you might want to look into the 45nm "Yorkfield" chips, if I recall correctly they vary between 65W and 95W. Be aware, though, that not all socket 775 motherboards will support 45nm CPUs, even if you flash to the latest BIOS. You'll want to check with your motherboard vendor to make sure that your model supports 45nm chips (my Gigabyte 965P-DS3 does not support them, else I would have purchased a 45nm Q9650 with a better clock rate and more L2 cache than a Q6700).
Oh, just remembered something about the Q6700 - if you leave it at or below stock frequency (2666 Mhz), it will almost certainly tolerate a good deal of under-volting, (your motherboard almost certainly supports voltage control if you can overclock with it). In my case, stock voltage is 1.27500V, but I got it down to 1.12500V, totally stable through 72 hours of torture testing. This reduced the cpu power consumption from 95 W to 73 W, based on this wattage calculator.
Lately I've been gaming with headphones, so noise is not much of issue anymore, and I've found that I can get my Q6700 up to 3333 Mhz at 1.40000V (this is on a mediocre Thermaltake i1 heatsink) completely stable through 72 hours torture testing, temperatures between 44 C idle and 77 C full load, (last I checked, the "Kentsfield" Core 2 Quads are good to go at any overclock so long as they stay both under 1.50000V and under 80 C). At this overclocked speed, my 5-year-old Q6700 beats out a Core i3 2100 pretty handily. Overclocked, my Q6700 consumes a ton of power at 143 W (+51% more than stock power consumption), but it's getting chilly at my latitude this time of year and I could use a space heater anyway:P. Still, the +25% boost to clock speed is very noticeable when paired with my Radeon 7850 2GB, especially in cpu-heavy games like LA Noire and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Btw, the Radeon 7850 is an unbeatable mid/mid-high range graphics card if heat/power consumption is a concern... it's noticeably faster than a GTX 560 Ti and it trades
After some more thought, I'd like to retract my previous statement. Child porn should be illegal, but we should still focus more on rehabilitating those found guilty of it. People who want to censor child porn aren't bad or evil.
I think I'll go out and take a walk; thinking about this has made me upset...
Using your arguments, kiddie porn is also ok, because no one is going to get hurt if you watch it!
I can't speak for the other poster, but while I don't think kiddie porn is "okay", I don't think it should be illegal, either. Criminalizing child porn creates at least two very, very bad incentives for unsavory types.
A. If possession of child porn alone is a crime, child porn can be used as a weapon. Under 18? Create a photo/video of yourself masturbating and put copies on any and every digital device belonging to the victim (for extra points, burn a hundred CDs or DVDs and place them in the victim's house next to as many mailing envelopes so as to show intent to distribute). Tip off the police. Bam, your victim's career is likely over, and he/she will be on the sex offender registry, allowing pedophile-haters to know which house to send a brick flying through the window.
B. Free countries don't send people to prison for having the wrong kind of pictures. It's a free speech issue. People who hate free speech start by criminalizing the easy targets - "hate speech" and child porn, to set a precedent. When you criminalize child porn, you're sending the message that it's not okay to jack off to children, yes. But you're also sending the message that censorship is okay so long as it's just silencing unpopular stuff.
I read Gladwell's book Outliers a few months back. I thought he made some reasonable, if somewhat obvious points, until he went completely off the rails when he discussed differences in math schooling between China and the US.
In short, he said that the way chinese count gives them an edge in learning calculus, because the chinese say the number 13 as "three and ten", building the number out of simpler, more fundamental numbers, whereas in the US children must learn an entirely new word: "thirteen". He ignored how studying calculus concepts like differentials and integrals at a young age (I think around junior high age) is the norm in China, whereas in the US, students only get a watered-down "pre-calc" in their senior year of high school unless they're really ambitious and they take AP classes in their later teens.
There's an excellent review of Outliers that was published in The New Republic available here, for those with a lugubrious interest in learning precisely why we should ignore Gladwell.
So I can get a year in prison for having a joint on my person, but I can invade someone's privacy and become the cause of their death and just suffer a month? Interesting how that works.
The maximum sentence allowed for an offense is usually much greater than the actual sentence rendered in an individual case. I think that in most states, your example of having a joint would probably get you 6-12 months' probation and an expunged criminal record, with no time in jail other than when you're waiting to get released on bail/bond. This is assuming you accept a plea bargain. Even if you went to trial and lost, you would likely not get the full "therapy".
In my state, someone who commits a class "D" felony *CAN* be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. Class "D" is the least severe type of felony; examples include small-time drug dealing, carrying a gun into a school, and theft of property valued between $1,000 and $10,000). Getting sentenced to the full 5 years only really happens to criminals with long histories. According to the criminal defense attorneys I've spoken to, the sentence for a "D" felony, especially if it is the person's first criminal charge, is almost always 1-2 years' probation. If the person accepts a guilty plea bargain and saves the state the (considerable) expense of going to trial, the person gets the added benefit of having their criminal case history expunged if they complete their probation successfully. Otherwise, there is a "guilty" conviction that requires a pardon from the governor to overturn (good luck with that). Expungement sort of makes it like the whole thing never happened; you are treated as though there was no conviction even though you plead guilty and were given a sentence. Presumably, background checks for rental housing and employment will turn up nothing on you. Of course, if you face ANOTHER criminal charge in the future, the courts will take your previous expunged offense into account and give you a somewhat harsher sentence that time around. I have been told that most states operate more or less like this.
As far as I can tell, the maximum possible sentence is used to scare the hell out of the accused and get them to plead guilty to "make this go away". Nationally, I think 90% of criminal cases are settled by a plea bargain; who knows how many of those people are really guilty (I wonder if pleading guilty to a crime you didn't commit is considered perjury). It saves the courts a lot of money, and many states these days are broke. Slashdot had a story on this recently, I think it was called "How To Crash The Court System".
Engineering, fundamentally, is "the study of solving problems". It's not, strictly speaking, a science, but an application of science to the real world.
You mentioned China as an example of how good a government/society headed by engineers can be. And I think you're right. Sort of. China is rapidly growing, old Chinese people especially are astonished at how much richer they've become, and China is on track to be the world's new #1 financial center. However, that's pretty much all you can say in China's favor. With regard to human/civil rights, the environment (!), income inequality, working hours/conditions, and basically every intangible aspect of the country, they are the same or worse than the US.
This isn't surprising, given the nature of the engineering mindset. Engineering is the study of solving rational, material problems (the budget and military are two areas of government where engineering would excel). To solve problems as effectively as possible, you must presume absolute license. You must also regard the problem unsentimentally - if you get emotionally involved with it, you'll cloud your judgment and overlook what could be a better solution. The engineers I know all view politics as a series of "problems" waiting to be solved, rather than the conflicts they actually are. They prize "social efficiency" and "harmony" above principles like dignity, individualism, or limited government. They have contempt for anyone who makes it harder for them to do their jobs.
The reason the US is going down the tubes is because we're becoming too much like China, with its "one right way" philosophy. If we're "falling behind" China, it is only because we are both in a race to the bottom. The really important things in life are compassion, trust, respect, dignity, self-direction, and laughter. Beyond having a decent place to live, having enough food to eat, having a little extra to help out needy family and neighbors, and having access to adequate medical care, and basically having a way to secure the important stuff, money can do very little for you. If you have these things (and I'm fully aware that not all Americans do), why does it matter if another person or another nation is wealthier than you? I thought envy was supposed to be a character flaw or something.
If you're so impressed with China, I would suggest you move there. The US used to have a decentralized, individualistic society that would have been pretty much perfect if it had only treated minorities and women better. "Falling behind" and "getting back on top" are important concerns for an empire, not for a republic.
"The search for a material paradise is a flight away from humanity into the sterile nonlife of mechanisms where everything is perfect until it becomes junk. " -- John Taylor Gatto
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Diablo III Released
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It wouldn't surprise me if down the road they patched Diablo III to no longer require an internet connection.
I'm pretty confident that's exactly what they'll do in a few years. The day they do that, I will buy at least 1 copy for myself, and possibly more for friends to use at LAN parties or such (screw battle.net, the real Diablo fun goes on entirely in people's basements).
The longer they wait, the lower the price will be when I buy it. So what's it going to be, Blizzard? Want me to give you $50 now or $20 a few years later? I'll be looking at patch logs to see what your answer is.
We also have a great deal of knowledge of ways to head off that danger -- primarily by reducing carbon emissions.
That is the best strategy we can come up with? Punching CTRL-Z on the whole fossil fuel thing and hoping for the best?
Carbon emissions are integral to our whole way of life. If cutting carbon (especially cutting carbon faster than we already are through market forces like nuclear reactors, electric cars, etc) is the best strategy we have, then we need to find a better strategy!. I thought a lot of the predictions for future temperatures were being made by supercomputers that could run simulations of the entire Earth and produce actionable data. As far as I can tell, the scientists running these nearly-omniscient models have never bothered to adjust a variable other than CO2 concentration (what about sulfate aerosols, for instance?). Perhaps the scientists/UN/policymaker crowd could come up with something a little more practical, something that wouldn't impoverish millions/billions of people. And maybe something that doesn't require global shadow government (Goldman Sachs supports cap-and-trade since it would effectively function as a tax levied/collected by banks) and something that won't put the US/Europe at much more of a disadvantage compared to China/India and other countries that don't/won't give a fuck.
First off, the parent post needs to be modded +6 correct. VERY few ordinary people realize how much power they actually have in the American political process because they obsess over choosing "D" or "R" in the poll booth. I voted for Ron Paul in the Iowa primaries last January, and most people I spoke to just didn't feel going to the primaries was "worth it" (regardless of which candidate they liked). Even though Iowa is one of the most (the most?) important, I just couldn't get them interested.
They already know ahead of time who is going to be nominated for what positions, who is going to make motions, who is going to second the motions, who is going to call for votes, who is going to move to end the session.... This is settled well in advance.
I'm pretty suspicious that this happens in US Congress as well. It seems like America is moving away from the somewhat Athenian-ish style of democracy it had in the 18th/19th centuries and toward a more Spartan-style "democracy" where an elite group of Ephors makes all the real decisions behind the scenes. We've certainly adopted Sparta's ideals of strict, hierarchical supervision, along with professional soldiers who take up a large part of the budget...
DOD, and the US Navy in particular, have considered climate change to be a major national security issue for several years.
Precisely why this lawsuit is teaching these kids a very bad lesson.
If these kids are concerned about the climate's future, shouldn't they be studying ways to better predict and manage the climate? Winning the argument in a courtroom matters about as much as winning a debate tournament. Doing research and finding ways to get results could save countless lives.
The Navy should be handing out research grants left and right (if it isn't doing so already) for research on climate management. If all the artic sea ice thawed, it would radically change the face of naval warfare for the US, and not for the better...
Wow, that's roughly one text message every 5-6 minutes, assuming 8 hours' sleep per day, along with a 31-day month.
I'm in my early twenties and I feel like I'm getting old. I miss the '90s when people actually spoke to other people in the same room as them. It seems like everyone was more relaxed, or maybe that's just the economy these days, I don't know. But back in the day, if the conversation lulled, someone would change the subject instead of everyone folding their hands in iphone/android prayer until someone found a meme to share.
... so little true entrepeneurship in Germany. It's striking how many of the biggest tech companies around today (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and I could go on) were founded by innovators who dropped out of college/university/whatever to pursue their ideas. Luckily there are enough people who are more impressed by ideas and hard work than your pile of Bologna.
All excellent points. I'd like to add a couple of my own that are from the same vein...
When I encounter people old enough to start facing age discrimination in their line of work (age 40+, seems like), I notice that all the ones with really successful and lucrative careers have one common trait: they don't need to look to other people for job openings; job openings look for THEM. If you are playing your career right, by the time you're getting old you'll have made as many casual friendships with former co-workers and bosses in as many different businesses/universities/whatever as humanly possible. Even if you're not looking for a new job, hopefully old co-workers from a few years back are calling you out of the blue and offering you interviews for positions. I mean, some of your favorite old co-workers are definitely managers now. When people are starting a new company or a new project and they're looking for people to add to the team, they're asking each other "Who's good? If we could pick anybody we wanted, who would it be?" Even if you're not the most brilliant person they've ever worked with, all people have a favorable bias for someone they've met, unless you were a total dick to them or something. But if they have an opening, I'm sure they would much rather interview you than a bunch of random strangers.
Notice that the words "diploma", "degree", and "title" are missing from the last paragraph? That's because smart, adaptive, practical people (the exact kind of people who will NOT be prejudiced against you if you are old) aren't interested in the "right" degree or the "right" certificate from the "right" institution, they're interested in people who get results, no more, no less. Considering that the entire American system of giant research universities with heavily layered bureaucracy and titles like "PhD" was imported straight from Germany in the early 20th century, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Germany suffers from the same cancer of worship for meaningless titles that you see in so many Fortune 500 and public sector workplaces.
TLDR: A nice diploma from a nice university is useful for gaining access to anti-meritocratic institutions like large corporations that cannot accurately judge employee worth. Practical knowledge, experience, and professional contacts are more valuable if you want to work in a place that doesn't resemble a Dilbert cartoon.
The problem is that those schemes tend to either rely on very expensive catalysts (like platinum ), or they are chemical processes which produce CO2 as a by-product ( steam reforming, in which hydrocarbons are reacted with water to form hydrogen and CO2 ).
(emphasis mine)
What is the problem with expensive catalysts? My chemistry knowledge is not the greatest, but I thought that catalysts were not used up during chemical reactions... meaning that even if you needed to buy an expensive chunk of platinum to get this electrolysis doohickey working, it wasn't a big deal because you could always salvage the platinum and liquidate it (in the financial sense) if you wanted to shut down the operation for whatever reason.
That said, I don't live in places like new york where it costs twice what I described above for rent alone, and I've even told people I know in new york that are in my situation that they're dumb for living there.
You see, there's this interesting concept that people with an IQ above 70 call "living within your means." Provided you do that, you can make a small income and still come out on top.
I've never seen it myself, but I've heard from a few people that many parts of the south, particularly rural Virginia, have replaced de jure segregation with the de facto variety.
Example: You are a white man and you want to get some lunch while you discuss forming a business partnership with your friend (he's black). Since it's the 21st century and jim crow laws are gone and neither you nor your friend are bigots, everything should go great! You go to a charming roadside restaurant and get a table. However, you lose your appetite after a few minutes once you both notice that the people at all the other tables have completely stopped talking and are just staring at the two of you. Replace the white man with a white woman and the situation gets uglier.
TLDR: Legislation does not erase centuries of social attitudes. I don't know what the best way to end racism is, but I'm pretty sure it looks more like what the Freedom Riders did than any law.
Yes, I have a million better things to do; but on a cold rainy Saturday, wasting the afternoon on some Hollywood fluff beats getting stoned and licking 9V batteries.
What planet do you live on?? Careful buddy, you might be taking life seriously. You gotta watch out for that.
Go ahead, prove it to yourself. Buy a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, then buy a bunch of bottles/cans of premium "cola" drinks (especially those made with cane sugar). Throw in a bottle of Pepsi while you're at it. Then do a blind taste test, and see which one you think tastes the best. I can almost *guarantee* that the winner WON'T be "Coca-Cola".
Been there, done that, and I must agree with your results. I don't drink much soda, but I think the worst soda with cane sugar tastes better than the best soda with HFCS.
However, if you think that coca-cola can't ever win a taste test, you might have just never had good coca-cola. A lot of american grocery stores carry coca-cola intended for the mexico market, presumably so mexican-americans can drink the familiar stuff they got back home. It is remarkably better than american coke in every way - it comes in a glass bottle (not plastic), the label is painted on (not glued on), it is a half-liter instead of 12 or 24 ounces (metric > imperial), and the wording is in spanish (being american, it is easy for me to forget other languages exist). But the best part is the taste - it doesn't have that slightly painful chemically tinge that american coke does, and it has cane sugar, not diabetes-in-can HFCS.
Is scopalomine the only glutamate-enhancing treatment you've tried? Also are you dosing high enough to ever have hallucinations from it? I know that in high doses it is a deliriant (frank, often scary hallucinations in lieu of LSD-like technicolor laser beams) just like Benadryl. Does not sound like fun, especially for a severely depressed person. If all you've got is dry mouth, scopalomine sounds like a good deal.
I would be interested to hear about how doctors are administering ketamine to patients (are they IVing 80+ mg all at once to send people to the K-hole or just giving people a slow drip?). The DEA has ketamine in Schedule III and I don't hear about it being used much outside of veterinary hospitals, so I'm curious how they settled on a dosage plan.
I would be interested to know if these doctors can work up a ketamine treatment that offers long-term improvement, whether it's through something like indefinite semi-weekly treatments or a one-time treatment combined with psychiatric counseling to start a new chapter in the patient's life, so to speak. Users of dissociative anesthetics have known about the ketamine/pcp/dextromethorphan "afterglow" for a while now, but they've also known that it fades after a day or two and that paranoid ideation and emotional instability often settle in soon after.
Also, scopalomine occurs naturally in some plants. Have you looked into finding a cheaper source than some pharmaceutical patch? And finally, you should really submit this story to Slashdot. I mean, you're talking about a depression treatment that's not just some stupid SSRI, but something that actually works, right away? This is much more interesting and important than crab-based computing.
I've lost several friends this way. It seems to be the preferred suicide method of talented scientists and engineers:-(
While I'm sorry for your loss, I have to say this is fucked up. You've lost MULTIPLE friends to a single suicide method?? How many people do you know who've offed themselves?
Over the course of 18 months she embezzled over $200,000 from the company via hundreds of transactions. She had been around long enough to know that the individual small amounts would never trigger a review
Unreal Engine 3 came out when? 2007? Does it even have true HDR or just that bloom stuff? Off the top of my head, the game engine from the PC version of Crysis 2 (especially with the DX11 patch that adds high-res textures and tessellation) looks WAY prettier. I'm sure the DoD could easily transform "prettier" into "more realistic".
Slashdot Mirror
What do you find "crappy" about the Ford GT's interior? I thought it looked kinda nice, if a little bit plastic-y and vulgar.
The current-generation Corvettes are more interesting to me, though. They don't look as good as the Ford GT on the outside, but I think that's because Chevy let their engineers decide EVERYTHING about that car. It is the only honest-to-god sports car I know of where the design team thought that COST was an important aspect of engineering.
Yes, the interior is cheap chevy parts-bin crap, but it's easier to live with when you know you've got a car that can overtake cars like Ferrari F430s and F360s, Zondas, and Gallardos, all for about $30,000 to $40,000 for one in like-new condition.
war4peace:
:P. Still, the +25% boost to clock speed is very noticeable when paired with my Radeon 7850 2GB, especially in cpu-heavy games like LA Noire and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Btw, the Radeon 7850 is an unbeatable mid/mid-high range graphics card if heat/power consumption is a concern... it's noticeably faster than a GTX 560 Ti and it trades
I was in your exact position a few months ago. My Core 2 Duo E4300 wasn't cutting it for new games like Crysis 2 or LA Noire even though I had it overclocked +66% to 3000Mhz, fairly close to the same performance as your E6750. So I decided it was time for an upgrade, and I set out looking for the cheapest CPU that could handle any modern game at around 40 fps or more.
I was all set to buy a brand new cpu+motherboard+ram kit from newegg, but at the last minute I checked on eBay and I found it was cheaper to just get a quad-core cpu for my old socket 775 system. After all, I already had plenty of fast DDR2-800 memory and I was 100% satisfied with my Gigabyte 965P-DS3 motherboard, so why chuck them out if I can still make use of them? Instead of paying $230+ for a Sandy Bridge Core i3 2100 kit, I just bought an old Core 2 Quad Q6700 for about $125, and sold my old E4300 a week later for $25 to recoup some of the money I spent. The Q6700 is great... it's basically two E6750s glued together on one package, and at stock clocks it is about 90%-100% as fast in modern multi-threaded games as a core i3 2100, which would have cost just as much as my Q6700 for the cpu alone, never mind the new board and memory I would need. And really I probably paid a little too much for the Q6700 at $125... if you are patient I bet you can get a used Q6700 for $80-$100 off eBay or maybe Craigslist. One tip if you go the used route: make sure the cpu was just pulled out of some some boring office workstation computer from 2007. You do NOT want a cpu that once lived in some 14-year-old's gaming pc that was overclocked to the max with some $20 off-brand power supply.
The TDP for the Q6700 is 95W because it uses the dual-die 65nm "Kentsfield" design, but even so I think your Scythe heatsink (good choice on that, by the way...) should have no trouble handling 95W quietly. But if 95W still sounds like it's just too much heat for you, you might want to look into the 45nm "Yorkfield" chips, if I recall correctly they vary between 65W and 95W. Be aware, though, that not all socket 775 motherboards will support 45nm CPUs, even if you flash to the latest BIOS. You'll want to check with your motherboard vendor to make sure that your model supports 45nm chips (my Gigabyte 965P-DS3 does not support them, else I would have purchased a 45nm Q9650 with a better clock rate and more L2 cache than a Q6700).
Oh, just remembered something about the Q6700 - if you leave it at or below stock frequency (2666 Mhz), it will almost certainly tolerate a good deal of under-volting, (your motherboard almost certainly supports voltage control if you can overclock with it). In my case, stock voltage is 1.27500V, but I got it down to 1.12500V, totally stable through 72 hours of torture testing. This reduced the cpu power consumption from 95 W to 73 W, based on this wattage calculator.
Lately I've been gaming with headphones, so noise is not much of issue anymore, and I've found that I can get my Q6700 up to 3333 Mhz at 1.40000V (this is on a mediocre Thermaltake i1 heatsink) completely stable through 72 hours torture testing, temperatures between 44 C idle and 77 C full load, (last I checked, the "Kentsfield" Core 2 Quads are good to go at any overclock so long as they stay both under 1.50000V and under 80 C). At this overclocked speed, my 5-year-old Q6700 beats out a Core i3 2100 pretty handily. Overclocked, my Q6700 consumes a ton of power at 143 W (+51% more than stock power consumption), but it's getting chilly at my latitude this time of year and I could use a space heater anyway
Thank you. I'm going to remember your articulate argument here the next time some jerk calls me a racist for suggesting that we decentralize gov't.
Wow, I need to lay off the beers.
After some more thought, I'd like to retract my previous statement. Child porn should be illegal, but we should still focus more on rehabilitating those found guilty of it. People who want to censor child porn aren't bad or evil.
I think I'll go out and take a walk; thinking about this has made me upset...
Using your arguments, kiddie porn is also ok, because no one is going to get hurt if you watch it!
I can't speak for the other poster, but while I don't think kiddie porn is "okay", I don't think it should be illegal, either. Criminalizing child porn creates at least two very, very bad incentives for unsavory types.
A. If possession of child porn alone is a crime, child porn can be used as a weapon. Under 18? Create a photo/video of yourself masturbating and put copies on any and every digital device belonging to the victim (for extra points, burn a hundred CDs or DVDs and place them in the victim's house next to as many mailing envelopes so as to show intent to distribute). Tip off the police. Bam, your victim's career is likely over, and he/she will be on the sex offender registry, allowing pedophile-haters to know which house to send a brick flying through the window.
B. Free countries don't send people to prison for having the wrong kind of pictures. It's a free speech issue. People who hate free speech start by criminalizing the easy targets - "hate speech" and child porn, to set a precedent. When you criminalize child porn, you're sending the message that it's not okay to jack off to children, yes. But you're also sending the message that censorship is okay so long as it's just silencing unpopular stuff.
I read Gladwell's book Outliers a few months back. I thought he made some reasonable, if somewhat obvious points, until he went completely off the rails when he discussed differences in math schooling between China and the US.
In short, he said that the way chinese count gives them an edge in learning calculus, because the chinese say the number 13 as "three and ten", building the number out of simpler, more fundamental numbers, whereas in the US children must learn an entirely new word: "thirteen". He ignored how studying calculus concepts like differentials and integrals at a young age (I think around junior high age) is the norm in China, whereas in the US, students only get a watered-down "pre-calc" in their senior year of high school unless they're really ambitious and they take AP classes in their later teens.
There's an excellent review of Outliers that was published in The New Republic available here, for those with a lugubrious interest in learning precisely why we should ignore Gladwell.
So I can get a year in prison for having a joint on my person, but I can invade someone's privacy and become the cause of their death and just suffer a month? Interesting how that works.
The maximum sentence allowed for an offense is usually much greater than the actual sentence rendered in an individual case. I think that in most states, your example of having a joint would probably get you 6-12 months' probation and an expunged criminal record, with no time in jail other than when you're waiting to get released on bail/bond. This is assuming you accept a plea bargain. Even if you went to trial and lost, you would likely not get the full "therapy".
In my state, someone who commits a class "D" felony *CAN* be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. Class "D" is the least severe type of felony; examples include small-time drug dealing, carrying a gun into a school, and theft of property valued between $1,000 and $10,000). Getting sentenced to the full 5 years only really happens to criminals with long histories. According to the criminal defense attorneys I've spoken to, the sentence for a "D" felony, especially if it is the person's first criminal charge, is almost always 1-2 years' probation. If the person accepts a guilty plea bargain and saves the state the (considerable) expense of going to trial, the person gets the added benefit of having their criminal case history expunged if they complete their probation successfully. Otherwise, there is a "guilty" conviction that requires a pardon from the governor to overturn (good luck with that). Expungement sort of makes it like the whole thing never happened; you are treated as though there was no conviction even though you plead guilty and were given a sentence. Presumably, background checks for rental housing and employment will turn up nothing on you. Of course, if you face ANOTHER criminal charge in the future, the courts will take your previous expunged offense into account and give you a somewhat harsher sentence that time around. I have been told that most states operate more or less like this.
As far as I can tell, the maximum possible sentence is used to scare the hell out of the accused and get them to plead guilty to "make this go away". Nationally, I think 90% of criminal cases are settled by a plea bargain; who knows how many of those people are really guilty (I wonder if pleading guilty to a crime you didn't commit is considered perjury). It saves the courts a lot of money, and many states these days are broke. Slashdot had a story on this recently, I think it was called "How To Crash The Court System".
Engineering, fundamentally, is "the study of solving problems". It's not, strictly speaking, a science, but an application of science to the real world.
You mentioned China as an example of how good a government/society headed by engineers can be. And I think you're right. Sort of. China is rapidly growing, old Chinese people especially are astonished at how much richer they've become, and China is on track to be the world's new #1 financial center. However, that's pretty much all you can say in China's favor. With regard to human/civil rights, the environment (!), income inequality, working hours/conditions, and basically every intangible aspect of the country, they are the same or worse than the US.
This isn't surprising, given the nature of the engineering mindset. Engineering is the study of solving rational, material problems (the budget and military are two areas of government where engineering would excel). To solve problems as effectively as possible, you must presume absolute license. You must also regard the problem unsentimentally - if you get emotionally involved with it, you'll cloud your judgment and overlook what could be a better solution. The engineers I know all view politics as a series of "problems" waiting to be solved, rather than the conflicts they actually are. They prize "social efficiency" and "harmony" above principles like dignity, individualism, or limited government. They have contempt for anyone who makes it harder for them to do their jobs.
The reason the US is going down the tubes is because we're becoming too much like China, with its "one right way" philosophy. If we're "falling behind" China, it is only because we are both in a race to the bottom. The really important things in life are compassion, trust, respect, dignity, self-direction, and laughter. Beyond having a decent place to live, having enough food to eat, having a little extra to help out needy family and neighbors, and having access to adequate medical care, and basically having a way to secure the important stuff, money can do very little for you. If you have these things (and I'm fully aware that not all Americans do), why does it matter if another person or another nation is wealthier than you? I thought envy was supposed to be a character flaw or something.
If you're so impressed with China, I would suggest you move there. The US used to have a decentralized, individualistic society that would have been pretty much perfect if it had only treated minorities and women better. "Falling behind" and "getting back on top" are important concerns for an empire, not for a republic.
"The search for a material paradise is a flight away from humanity into the sterile nonlife of mechanisms where everything is perfect until it becomes junk. " -- John Taylor Gatto
It wouldn't surprise me if down the road they patched Diablo III to no longer require an internet connection.
I'm pretty confident that's exactly what they'll do in a few years. The day they do that, I will buy at least 1 copy for myself, and possibly more for friends to use at LAN parties or such (screw battle.net, the real Diablo fun goes on entirely in people's basements).
The longer they wait, the lower the price will be when I buy it. So what's it going to be, Blizzard? Want me to give you $50 now or $20 a few years later? I'll be looking at patch logs to see what your answer is.
We also have a great deal of knowledge of ways to head off that danger -- primarily by reducing carbon emissions.
That is the best strategy we can come up with? Punching CTRL-Z on the whole fossil fuel thing and hoping for the best?
Carbon emissions are integral to our whole way of life. If cutting carbon (especially cutting carbon faster than we already are through market forces like nuclear reactors, electric cars, etc) is the best strategy we have, then we need to find a better strategy!. I thought a lot of the predictions for future temperatures were being made by supercomputers that could run simulations of the entire Earth and produce actionable data. As far as I can tell, the scientists running these nearly-omniscient models have never bothered to adjust a variable other than CO2 concentration (what about sulfate aerosols, for instance?). Perhaps the scientists/UN/policymaker crowd could come up with something a little more practical, something that wouldn't impoverish millions/billions of people. And maybe something that doesn't require global shadow government (Goldman Sachs supports cap-and-trade since it would effectively function as a tax levied/collected by banks) and something that won't put the US/Europe at much more of a disadvantage compared to China/India and other countries that don't/won't give a fuck.
They already know ahead of time who is going to be nominated for what positions, who is going to make motions, who is going to second the motions, who is going to call for votes, who is going to move to end the session.... This is settled well in advance.
I'm pretty suspicious that this happens in US Congress as well. It seems like America is moving away from the somewhat Athenian-ish style of democracy it had in the 18th/19th centuries and toward a more Spartan-style "democracy" where an elite group of Ephors makes all the real decisions behind the scenes. We've certainly adopted Sparta's ideals of strict, hierarchical supervision, along with professional soldiers who take up a large part of the budget...
DOD, and the US Navy in particular, have considered climate change to be a major national security issue for several years.
Precisely why this lawsuit is teaching these kids a very bad lesson.
If these kids are concerned about the climate's future, shouldn't they be studying ways to better predict and manage the climate? Winning the argument in a courtroom matters about as much as winning a debate tournament. Doing research and finding ways to get results could save countless lives.
The Navy should be handing out research grants left and right (if it isn't doing so already) for research on climate management. If all the artic sea ice thawed, it would radically change the face of naval warfare for the US, and not for the better...
Wow, that's roughly one text message every 5-6 minutes, assuming 8 hours' sleep per day, along with a 31-day month.
I'm in my early twenties and I feel like I'm getting old. I miss the '90s when people actually spoke to other people in the same room as them. It seems like everyone was more relaxed, or maybe that's just the economy these days, I don't know. But back in the day, if the conversation lulled, someone would change the subject instead of everyone folding their hands in iphone/android prayer until someone found a meme to share.
It's a lot like Aliens vs. Predator (2004): Whoever wins... we lose.
... so little true entrepeneurship in Germany. It's striking how many of the biggest tech companies around today (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and I could go on) were founded by innovators who dropped out of college/university/whatever to pursue their ideas. Luckily there are enough people who are more impressed by ideas and hard work than your pile of Bologna.
All excellent points. I'd like to add a couple of my own that are from the same vein...
When I encounter people old enough to start facing age discrimination in their line of work (age 40+, seems like), I notice that all the ones with really successful and lucrative careers have one common trait: they don't need to look to other people for job openings; job openings look for THEM. If you are playing your career right, by the time you're getting old you'll have made as many casual friendships with former co-workers and bosses in as many different businesses/universities/whatever as humanly possible. Even if you're not looking for a new job, hopefully old co-workers from a few years back are calling you out of the blue and offering you interviews for positions. I mean, some of your favorite old co-workers are definitely managers now. When people are starting a new company or a new project and they're looking for people to add to the team, they're asking each other "Who's good? If we could pick anybody we wanted, who would it be?" Even if you're not the most brilliant person they've ever worked with, all people have a favorable bias for someone they've met, unless you were a total dick to them or something. But if they have an opening, I'm sure they would much rather interview you than a bunch of random strangers.
Notice that the words "diploma", "degree", and "title" are missing from the last paragraph? That's because smart, adaptive, practical people (the exact kind of people who will NOT be prejudiced against you if you are old) aren't interested in the "right" degree or the "right" certificate from the "right" institution, they're interested in people who get results, no more, no less. Considering that the entire American system of giant research universities with heavily layered bureaucracy and titles like "PhD" was imported straight from Germany in the early 20th century, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Germany suffers from the same cancer of worship for meaningless titles that you see in so many Fortune 500 and public sector workplaces.
TLDR: A nice diploma from a nice university is useful for gaining access to anti-meritocratic institutions like large corporations that cannot accurately judge employee worth. Practical knowledge, experience, and professional contacts are more valuable if you want to work in a place that doesn't resemble a Dilbert cartoon.
The problem is that those schemes tend to either rely on very expensive catalysts (like platinum ), or they are chemical processes which produce CO2 as a by-product ( steam reforming, in which hydrocarbons are reacted with water to form hydrogen and CO2 ).
(emphasis mine)
What is the problem with expensive catalysts? My chemistry knowledge is not the greatest, but I thought that catalysts were not used up during chemical reactions... meaning that even if you needed to buy an expensive chunk of platinum to get this electrolysis doohickey working, it wasn't a big deal because you could always salvage the platinum and liquidate it (in the financial sense) if you wanted to shut down the operation for whatever reason.
That said, I don't live in places like new york where it costs twice what I described above for rent alone, and I've even told people I know in new york that are in my situation that they're dumb for living there.
You see, there's this interesting concept that people with an IQ above 70 call "living within your means." Provided you do that, you can make a small income and still come out on top.
You're my hero.
I've never seen it myself, but I've heard from a few people that many parts of the south, particularly rural Virginia, have replaced de jure segregation with the de facto variety.
Example: You are a white man and you want to get some lunch while you discuss forming a business partnership with your friend (he's black). Since it's the 21st century and jim crow laws are gone and neither you nor your friend are bigots, everything should go great! You go to a charming roadside restaurant and get a table. However, you lose your appetite after a few minutes once you both notice that the people at all the other tables have completely stopped talking and are just staring at the two of you. Replace the white man with a white woman and the situation gets uglier.
TLDR: Legislation does not erase centuries of social attitudes. I don't know what the best way to end racism is, but I'm pretty sure it looks more like what the Freedom Riders did than any law.
Yes, I have a million better things to do; but on a cold rainy Saturday, wasting the afternoon on some Hollywood fluff beats getting stoned and licking 9V batteries.
What planet do you live on?? Careful buddy, you might be taking life seriously. You gotta watch out for that.
Go ahead, prove it to yourself. Buy a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, then buy a bunch of bottles/cans of premium "cola" drinks (especially those made with cane sugar). Throw in a bottle of Pepsi while you're at it. Then do a blind taste test, and see which one you think tastes the best. I can almost *guarantee* that the winner WON'T be "Coca-Cola".
Been there, done that, and I must agree with your results. I don't drink much soda, but I think the worst soda with cane sugar tastes better than the best soda with HFCS.
However, if you think that coca-cola can't ever win a taste test, you might have just never had good coca-cola. A lot of american grocery stores carry coca-cola intended for the mexico market, presumably so mexican-americans can drink the familiar stuff they got back home. It is remarkably better than american coke in every way - it comes in a glass bottle (not plastic), the label is painted on (not glued on), it is a half-liter instead of 12 or 24 ounces (metric > imperial), and the wording is in spanish (being american, it is easy for me to forget other languages exist). But the best part is the taste - it doesn't have that slightly painful chemically tinge that american coke does, and it has cane sugar, not diabetes-in-can HFCS.
I'm gonna take a wild stab here and assume that Ron Paul, R-TX, voted "No" on this shitpile.
Is scopalomine the only glutamate-enhancing treatment you've tried? Also are you dosing high enough to ever have hallucinations from it? I know that in high doses it is a deliriant (frank, often scary hallucinations in lieu of LSD-like technicolor laser beams) just like Benadryl. Does not sound like fun, especially for a severely depressed person. If all you've got is dry mouth, scopalomine sounds like a good deal.
I would be interested to hear about how doctors are administering ketamine to patients (are they IVing 80+ mg all at once to send people to the K-hole or just giving people a slow drip?). The DEA has ketamine in Schedule III and I don't hear about it being used much outside of veterinary hospitals, so I'm curious how they settled on a dosage plan.
I would be interested to know if these doctors can work up a ketamine treatment that offers long-term improvement, whether it's through something like indefinite semi-weekly treatments or a one-time treatment combined with psychiatric counseling to start a new chapter in the patient's life, so to speak. Users of dissociative anesthetics have known about the ketamine/pcp/dextromethorphan "afterglow" for a while now, but they've also known that it fades after a day or two and that paranoid ideation and emotional instability often settle in soon after.
Also, scopalomine occurs naturally in some plants. Have you looked into finding a cheaper source than some pharmaceutical patch? And finally, you should really submit this story to Slashdot. I mean, you're talking about a depression treatment that's not just some stupid SSRI, but something that actually works, right away? This is much more interesting and important than crab-based computing.
I've lost several friends this way. It seems to be the preferred suicide method of talented scientists and engineers:-(
While I'm sorry for your loss, I have to say this is fucked up. You've lost MULTIPLE friends to a single suicide method?? How many people do you know who've offed themselves?
Over the course of 18 months she embezzled over $200,000 from the company via hundreds of transactions. She had been around long enough to know that the individual small amounts would never trigger a review
How was she eventually caught?
Unreal Engine 3 came out when? 2007? Does it even have true HDR or just that bloom stuff? Off the top of my head, the game engine from the PC version of Crysis 2 (especially with the DX11 patch that adds high-res textures and tessellation) looks WAY prettier. I'm sure the DoD could easily transform "prettier" into "more realistic".