Do you seriously think that most porn comes even remotely close to a genuine display of loving sex between two consenting adults?
What does "love" have to do with it? Are you suggesting that all sexual behavior should involve love? I mean, if that's how you want to behave, why then I think that's how you should behave, but where do you get the idea that your prerequisite of love is something that should be enforced on the rest of humanity? Who died and left you arbiter of sexual correctness? The fact is, plenty of sexual behavior, mutually consenting, goes on that is just for the fun of it, and this has always been the case. If you want to teach your kid that "love" is required (thereby biasing him in such a way that he's going to have a heck of a lot less fun than my kids, for instance) that's certainly your right as a parent. Because you're the parent. Stop assuming you know what's best for other people's kids. You don't. Aside from that, you're not the parent of other people's kids. It is doubtful you know what is best for your own — you just have the power and authority to impose your will on them, that's all. You may be correct. But you may not. You do what you think is best; that's your right, mostly.
Do you really think that even mainstream porn is an accurate depiction of sex?
Some is, some isn't, but the key thing that kills your idea is that it varies by viewer, not by production. Personally, I make it a point to try lots of things I see in porn. My sweetheart encourages this behavior, it has benefited her in the obvious manner many times. We own plenty of toys, films, and in fact, we run a pretty cool online store that in its own humble way, encourages people to enjoy themselves.
If I find a DivX movie of some chick having sex with three guys who ejaculate on her face and then shit on her -- well, I'm going to have to have a talk with the boy;)
So... you went from "Forget the hardcore stuff" to "shit on her"... apparently, you've got a little problem separating the idea of sexuality from that of dangerous behaviors. There's a reason we bury, flush and otherwise dispose of our solid waste products; They are uniformly dangerous. Urine, in a healthy person, is pretty sterile. Fecal matter is not. So what you're talking about here is general education, not unlike condom education, where certain behaviors carry risks. As a parent, it seems to me that your duty is to educate the kid(s) about what the risks are, what the preventative actions for those risks are, and they'll be able to draw decent conclusions from that information.
Aside from that, just as Hunt for Red October and Murder at 1600 were fantasies, so are all other movies with fictional plot lines. Unprotected sex in a movie is, you might want to point out, acting of an unprotected sex scene between individuals who are tested (weekly, I think, but at least monthly) for STDs, and you should probably be able to point out that the adult film community has an excellent record of avoiding STDs because of this testing and certification. The general public does not, and that is the difference between on screen unprotected sex and the same by the general public. Unprotected sex between two committed, tested, monogamous people is just fine by all rational metrics; prevention of unwanted children can be done (and should be done) by means other than condoms; condoms have a pretty poor record of preventing pregnancy. On the other hand, some condoms can be fun, now and then, if you know what you're doing. Just don't count on them to "protect" anyone. They slip off, they tear, they overflow, and they suffer damage when stored improperly (such as in a wallet, where many men often keep them.)
No. Correlation is not causation. My research indicates that the problem is gravity. That's what's holding the air down, which allows the food to grow, enables the majority of unusual sexual practices, etc.
I humbly submit an amendment to ban gravity, that insidious force that pulls all humanity down. It's warped, I tell you!
Hmm. Limiting insidious influences to specific ports. Not a bad idea. Though I really don't think we want to do it to porn, as this could potentially do damage to a major part of the US's, even the world's, e-commerce base, not to mention ruin many people's lives.
Instead, I have a counter-proposal: let's put all the Internet web traffic from Utah on a specific port, say, port 1827. We can call it MINDER (Mormon Isolation Network Denial Enabling Restriction.)
We can follow up with the nationwide program ITSCRAP (Initiative To Stop Christian Religious Abusive Packets) on port 666.
Then, bring in the UN and implement the worldwide system SOMEQUIET (Shut Off Muslim Entreaties Queering Up Internet, Ethernet, and Telnet) on port 569, along with its sister program JUSTSHUTUP (Jewish Uploads Shunted To Some Handler Using TCP User Protection), using port 1000.
In this way, we can prevent superstition, arguably the most divisive and harmful force in our society and the world today, from causing harm to random readers who might stumble over it by accident. We must think of the children: Truly, is it fair to allow the superstitious to present stories with no evidence to impressionable kids, victims, really, undermining any tendencies towards logical and scientific thinking they might have? Of course not. We must proceed!
With religion throttled, we can turn our attention to the next most insidious problem facing the Internet with the new PINHEAD initiative: (Politician Interdiction Network Handler Ends Appalling Deceptions) on port 1600.
In this way, we can make the Internet safe for science, education, commerce, gaming, and of course, pornography, that most important segment of every young man's consumer role: Tissue purchasing.
1% of $400.00 is $4.00, or about a 3.1% increase over the stated $126.00, to $130.00.
Add marketing. Add all these broken units we're hearing about (and I think we're going to see that it's a large number — everyone around here got a unit that died, that's 4 out of four, within the first couple hours of using it. One three light error code, one crash screen, two random junk screens. All ran insanely hot (hot left side when standing up), and not much heat, or air came out the fan duct, despite a whole LOT of fan noise. Hold times for the "help me, my 360 is busted" telephone number were running one to two hours last I heard. Our Wal-mart won't let the 360 demo run because they say that it interferes with the wireless product scanning/inventory management hardware they use. So the 360 sits there, dark and dead, while the old xbox, ps2 and rotundo play merrily away.
Truly, I think MS has screwed the pooch here. Though the hour I got to spend with Project Gotham III was certainly fun... lots-o-dots, no pop-up, and smooth.
Gah. Sorry about the first sentence, that was an editing fragment that slipped by me — I saw it right after I hit "submit." If I'd had more coffee, that would have read "I've read Footfall." I do read anything Niven writes, individually or collaboratively.
I've read them both. The approach was different here. Orbit, or close approach, are not required. The OP made a remark about weapons development which I was countering. If you look over the original context, I think you'll see why I took the approach I did.
"... grandfather liked it," said Chester, averting his eyes from a lithograph titled Rush Hour at the Insemomat.
Read that (The Great Time Machine Hoax) too, along with everything else Keith Laumer ever published.:-)
My understanding is that you'd get ultraviolet, infrared, ionizing radiation, flash, fireball, EMP, ground shock waves, atmospheric shock waves, huge dumps of particulates into the atmosphere and associated interference with solar radiation, "energetic" weather, secondary (but major) lightning and plasma effects, acid rain... "sucks" won't cover it.
Something hitting that hard comes apart into particles going every which way, including into each other. Highly annoyed particles. Lots of energy is released in the process, and I'm not sure that the effects would be much different at all from a really, really, really big nuke, though I don't think we can make nukes that big, at least, not yet.
However, I am only an interested layman (hence my way overguestimating the speed and mass required... looking it over later, it turns out I gave an example that would destroy the planet. Whoops. Sorry.:-) I'm sure there are some serious physics types laughing at me right now, and perhaps one of them can give you a completely accurate summary of the results of a big kinetic impact. I just know it is very, very, very bad and you might rather have had a nuke go off, at least the ones we have had in inventory, just a hundred megatons or so.
It boils down to how massy the impactor is, and how fast it is going.
Maybe so. On the other hand, we're assuming they came here from another galaxy. (hint: Intergalactic war.) So they can already accelerate something pretty darned well. The whole idea of viable intergalactic travel may require that we discard the presumption that C is the max attainable velocity.
Acceleration may not even be the issue. If they travel via a method that allows them to set relative velocity and position at the end of a trip arbitrarily, no acceleration would be required.
As I said above, though, I'm perfectly happy with the amount of energy sub-luminal velocities can impart to an object. 1/2 C will do the job just fine, I'm thinking.
Well, the subject is "intergalactic" travel, right? Either they live as long as a sun, or they can achieve super-luminal velocities (or accumulate the energy equivalent as the object nears C... as Tau gets extreme, effective mass grows and we assume E=mc2.) Or they aren't here at all, which is actually my take on it, but what do I know?
Still, I have no problem with the kinetic energy deliverable by a dense object traveling at 1/2 or 3/4ths C, so if you'd like to postulate that said intergalactic travelers can't break C in "real space", work with that instead. I think Washington's still gone.:-)
Because some postulated forms of space travel don't have "push." So something relatively small, the right vector, and the right velocity, and you're done. I wasn't so much over engineering as I was generalizing against almost any form of space transportation.
except, of course, that teen pregnancy is a demonstrateably real phenomenon, whereas you have to take what others have said on faith in order to believe in aliens
And just because they have the technology to travel to Earth from some distant universe doesn't necessarilly mean they have any decent weapons or protections against types of weapons they've never seen before or developed.
If you are able to place yourself in space, at any relative velocity, at any location relative to another object (which is basically the definition of successful space travel, no matter what the means), then you should probably also be able to place an object, for instance a nice, dense lump of lead with a steel jacket, at any relative position and velocity to another object, in this case, let's say, Earth. Launch position may be arbitrarily distant, if you accept additional time-to-target.
So. Object (eventually, if you like) weighing, say, 1 kiloton (to give you some perspective, the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier, is about 77 kilotons), comes into Earth's atmosphere at a relative velocity of, oh, say 1,000,000 K/sec, coming straight down (to minimize friction and time-in atmosphere.) Object impacts military target, for instance, the Pentagon. Washington, and large amount of the surrounding area, is now missing in action, and we have a large crater (probably a new opening on the sea, actually, thought I've not done the math) we should probably get around to dealing with. The radiation and blast effects may require a slight delay, perhaps, oh, I don't know, a few centuries.
Total cost to those accidental discovers of space travel? Some lead or other dense material, a steel or other relatively tough jacket, and whatever space drive resources it takes to get to where launching it delivers enough energy to target. But remember — if they can get here and arrange a relative stop, then they can just as easily get anywhere else in the solar system at any other relative velocity. If they decide we're toast... we're toast, and there isn't squat we can do about it.
Basically, the fact is if you assume interstellar space travel with any vehicle larger than a telephone booth, then you have to assume military superiority as well, and to a degree that is difficult to comprehend and requires no additional technology beyond moving inert materials around.
Talk about a simplistic analysis! Aside from having to build, ship and market the console, all of which add significant and continuously incurred costs per unit, the retail price doesn't go to Microsoft, it goes to the retailer. There's almost certainly a discount per unit that the retailer gets from Microsoft, and if the unit goes through distribution as well, there will be another discount there. Someone might jump in here if they know what the distribution chain is. In any case, though, you have to add the discounts for the businesses between Microsoft and the consumer. One thing you can get from all this is that they'd better sell a lot of games, or the 360 will be another corporate leak for Microsoft, even in the long term.
There may be more to this, though. We can't tell yet if the reports of 360's having problems is a general issue, or if it is just the result of a few really vocal complainers. If there are actual design problems, the cost goes up yet again. If they're really bad, the console could falter in the marketplace (no one really wants to fight with overheating or random crashing.) If that happens, the opportunity to recoup costs with games is in trouble too.
Funny. A couple of days ago, I was musing to myself that Sony's DRM idiocy might actually affect the viability of the PS3 if Sony manages to reach the status of corporate pariah and the public holds them to it. Now I wonder if Microsoft has managed to give them back an opportunity by missing the reliability mark. Interesting times.:-)
The facts don't bear your claims out. First of all, each situation needs to be evaluated on its own, which is exactly what I said in the grandparent. There are differences from person to person and sex to sex and race to race. There is nothing you can do to eliminate them; specifically, ignoring them does not eliminate them. What you need to do is take advantage of differences when they apply to the situation at hand and ignore them otherwise. The sexes: Study after study has identified differences between the sexes as fundamental as brain mass and brain component distribution, massively differing hormone levels and loading, visual and sound processing, ability to concentrate on multiple tasks, and more. These differences can often be masked by attempting to perform to a standard, but they are still there and we do ourselves no favor to ignore them in many cases.
The problem is, and has always been, that people — men and women, this race and that race — should be given equal opportunity, not that they should be considered equal at any level. That's just a trite homily for the low-functioning. It's not true and it never has been true. If you want to think that you're "the same" as a person of the opposite sex, that's certainly your privilege — but you're still wrong. If, and this is a big if, you narrow your view to the task at hand, it may well be that for that task, you are equal with the other person — but this does not support your thesis, it is simply a minor exception in the big picture.
As far as races go, starting with the biological, we can indeed observe broad differences that affect function. Some of them are very significant. One recently confirmed example is the generally higher intelligence of the Ashkenazi jews. This is going to affect how their performance compares to yours, and no amount of whining about it will serve to change this fact. Now, it is easy, in fact, pleasant, to talk about a race which carries such a genetic advantage. It is not easy to talk about a race that carries a genetic disadvantage, though if we stay away from intelligence the PC types don't get too crazy. So, for instance, I can look you in the eye and tell you that folks who come from asian stock have a genetic disadvantage for some tasks: They are shorter than most other races. This, for instance, gives them problems when attempting to compete at basketball. On the other hand, I can bluntly turn around the Ashkenazi example and say that American Indians aren't as smart as Ashkenazi Jews, taken in groups. This is demonstrably true and it blows your argument out of the water. Yes indeed, there are exceptions, both ways, within both groups, but we do not and should not make our way through our lives assuming every person we meet is an exception. We have very useful general expectations built from experience (or we should, at least), and from time to time these will be exceeded (both ways) and at that point we should readjust our conclusions about the individual at hand, which again, is the argument I've made from the beginning: When it comes to a particular task being filled in life, we need to look at the individual in terms of what they bring to that task. Which is the polar opposite of assuming everyone is the same. It is the sensible, useful, practical application of the idea that everyone is not the same.
To sum up: Individuals are different. Races are different. Everyone deserves equal opportunity. What they make of those opportunities reflects those differences, and I celebrate both the results and the differences. The politically correct factions that want to mask all of this; they want to use misdirection and muddy thinking to hide it — they're doing no one any favors.
Stop trying to cookie-cutter human beings. It won't work. It is politically correct tripe, no more. There's nothing wrong with people being different from one another. That's just hysteria.
Just because we can't rebuild an item doesn't mean that we don't understand how it works.
I'm not sure what point you're making here with regard to my post. I don't disagree with your statement, and I don't see that this contradicts or reinforces what I said previously. Would you care to elaborate?
It is not reasonable to compare an item that has self-constructing abilities (eg a cell or an entity made up of more than one cell) to a watch, which does not. Biological items are not the same as mechanical items. Mechanical items do not, to date, normally carry their own blueprints, assembly machinery, re-configuration abilities, reproduction mechanisms, and materials refineries. Biological systems do.
Therefore, if one were to find a mechanical device such as a watch on a beach, one can reasonably assume that somewhere, those missing resources are, or were, present.
In the case of discovering a never before seen organism on that same beach, one does not have to imagine that there are hidden manufacturing facilities, refineries, blueprints, or a designer. They're not needed. That is why fundamentalist religion has such a deep fear of evolution.
The problem with philosophy (and by inference, metaphysics) is that it is a dumping ground for ideas that won't work under scientific scrutiny, and that in turn means that a lot of the ideas (though not all) are no more than bunk.
Essentialism is a lie that people like Adolf Hitler used to justify terrible attrocities. For you to pipe up in support of essentialism is a mark of how little you have researched your own opinions.
That's way too generalized to reflect reality.
Biological differences can (and do) lead to differences in emotional depth and "emotional intelligence", cognitive abilities, athletic potentials both realized and nascent, immune system / disease resistance, height, intelligence, secondary sexual characteristics, bone structure, child bearing / rearing capabilities, eye color, bone density, resistance to pain... the list is endless because it includes everything.
It is politically correct nonsense to say that biological differences, miscast in PC terms as "essentialism", are non-existant or irrelevant. In real human terms, differences matter when they are significant; and they they are certainly significant when they are pivotal, or fundamental, in degree with regard to a particular situation. If you ignore differences, you may be shooting yourself right in the foot; taking them too seriously when it is not warranted can just as easily lead to problems. The bottom line is you have to think about every situation and decide if the differences at hand are relevant to the problems and issues at hand. The answer, however, is not to declare that observing differences is "essentialism."
Albert Einstein was not the "equal" of any random Down's syndrome child you care to pick. And why? Bloody biology, that's why. Likewise, women are not and never will be, barring genetic manipulation, "the same" as men. The expectation that they should be is absolutely ludicrous. This does not rule out any particular role or capability; what it says is that the fit to a particular cognitive, physical, emotional, or artistic target is going to be different between men and women because of biological differences. This, in turn, should encourage us to consider every situation as a unique challenge to meet it with the best fit we can. Not to cleave to some politically correct but scientifically bewildered mode of thinking.
To which, of course, we can add environmental influences from nutrition to parenting and schooling. The very concept that people are, or even could be, "the same" is just plain medieval.
There's nothing like politically correct psychobabble to blind us to reality.
...did British society as we know it today begin begin in the dark ages, did it begin 1000 years ago or is it really so fundamentally different now to what it was then that we can't call it the same society?
It began when the British empire collapsed. Prior to that, British society was something else completely. Specifically, a monarchy and an empire, neither of which it is today in anything but name. It is, just as you say, "fundamentally different" today.
I don't think so. I think we already have grammar analyzers that can catch random strings of (key)words as opposed to well formed sentences, we are already able to discern what words are general and what are topic-specific, we can determine if spelling is reasonable or 133t-5h173 or uneddikashunal, we can see if some rational proportion of links from a particular site go to sites that have something to do with what the original site had to do with, we can figure out if the site is full of links or full of content or full of linked content, we can pass along sites that appear to be link farms to a human who can make a final determination before the entire domain is blacklisted from the search engine (I figure a single human can reliably blacklist domains at about 1 every few seconds if the connection is fast enough) or maybe we can get that reliable so that a link farm is hammered the second it is spidered. I certainly don't see why not. Yes, we're talking about a lot of computing and analysis. So? It gets less expensive every day.
Some combination of this, with the appropriate amount of computer power, will almost certainly do a better job than counting the number of incoming links and measuring the length of registration for a domain name. Once we start down this road, the analysis will get better, and so forth.
Does any of that mean that the search engine will understand what it is parsing? No. There's not even the slightest hint that this kind of thing would render humans pointless via that route. Furthermore, just as if I learn something, it doesn't relive you of the need to learn, an AI learning won't either.
Now, real AI may indeed solve all these problems; but that's not what we're talking about here, certainly not in the first few generations, anyway. If you do create a real AI, I'm not sure it'd tolerate being a search engine anyway. It'd have to read every web page out there and I'm sure an argument for torture could easily be made.
I don't know of a better engine. I didn't mean to imply that I did. I don't use search engines much, period. I prefer to follow links selected by people. To that end, I use del.icio.us, various blogs that follow issues of interest to me, mailing lists, RSS feeds from sites that specialize in areas of interest, and company web sites and message boards for the products I own. I pay attention to links I find on slashdot, too.:-)
I don't need to suppose; I've been on the web since very early days and online prior to the web on networks such as CompuServe and BIX, bulletin boards, ham radio packet systems (AA7AS) and so forth. People linked from here to there anyway; and early on, there were far more technical types who were already in a "web" of email and forum communications to let each other know when something new started up. The web was not the first web, in other words.
There is no question that google is actually useful to a degree (as opposed to "what people use because it's all they know how to do"), but there is also no question that the web would also be useful without google. As easily demonstrated by the fact that some people never use it, and others, even technical others (like myself) rarely use it (because the results have been getting worse and worse.
The day that google figures out how to evaluate site content instead of using indirect and gamable measures of site popularity will be a wonderful day for those seeking answers at google's search portals.
There is no promise that your site will get to at the top of the search pile because you made it.
More to the point, there is no promise that your site will get to the top of the search results if your site is the most useful. The reason for this is the absolute, incontrovertible truth that:
most-linked != most-useful
The newest, least linked site google has may, in fact, be the most useful result. Since google does not (cannot, apparently... so much for those PHDs) evaluate the site for its actual information content, they rely on a metric which has long since been gamed. That's why we see (first) link farms, totally lame junk "explanation" pages written by novices and know-nothings (like www.about.com's, for instance) and so on.
The fact is, just because someone is capable of putting a link from here to there does not reflect either their ability to pre-qualify the content on the site in question, or the specific site's usefulness, and while this has never really been true, it is less true these days as less and less skilled individuals are enabled to make links (via blogs and other non-technical enabling tools) and more and more "spam" links are emplaced by those whose urge to be seen, and tools enabling being seen, far outstrip the quality of what they have to offer.
Popularity, in the end, is about marketing. Formulate a winning strategy. Get the idea/meme out. Traffic will come. Google specifically enables this by focusing on popularity (number of incoming links), length of site registration (amount of money you have to put into your web site) and other metrics that in no case directly measure usefulness.
In the end, the only time that Google, or any other search engine, can actually give you the "best" results first out of a largish selection of them is when it takes into account site content and not site popularity, as well as the specific interests of the searcher, to whatever degree they can be known. Google, and as far as I know any other engine either, doesn't even try to do this on any exposed portal.
Slashdot Mirror
What does "love" have to do with it? Are you suggesting that all sexual behavior should involve love? I mean, if that's how you want to behave, why then I think that's how you should behave, but where do you get the idea that your prerequisite of love is something that should be enforced on the rest of humanity? Who died and left you arbiter of sexual correctness? The fact is, plenty of sexual behavior, mutually consenting, goes on that is just for the fun of it, and this has always been the case. If you want to teach your kid that "love" is required (thereby biasing him in such a way that he's going to have a heck of a lot less fun than my kids, for instance) that's certainly your right as a parent. Because you're the parent. Stop assuming you know what's best for other people's kids. You don't. Aside from that, you're not the parent of other people's kids. It is doubtful you know what is best for your own — you just have the power and authority to impose your will on them, that's all. You may be correct. But you may not. You do what you think is best; that's your right, mostly.
Some is, some isn't, but the key thing that kills your idea is that it varies by viewer, not by production. Personally, I make it a point to try lots of things I see in porn. My sweetheart encourages this behavior, it has benefited her in the obvious manner many times. We own plenty of toys, films, and in fact, we run a pretty cool online store that in its own humble way, encourages people to enjoy themselves.
So... you went from "Forget the hardcore stuff" to "shit on her"... apparently, you've got a little problem separating the idea of sexuality from that of dangerous behaviors. There's a reason we bury, flush and otherwise dispose of our solid waste products; They are uniformly dangerous. Urine, in a healthy person, is pretty sterile. Fecal matter is not. So what you're talking about here is general education, not unlike condom education, where certain behaviors carry risks. As a parent, it seems to me that your duty is to educate the kid(s) about what the risks are, what the preventative actions for those risks are, and they'll be able to draw decent conclusions from that information.
Aside from that, just as Hunt for Red October and Murder at 1600 were fantasies, so are all other movies with fictional plot lines. Unprotected sex in a movie is, you might want to point out, acting of an unprotected sex scene between individuals who are tested (weekly, I think, but at least monthly) for STDs, and you should probably be able to point out that the adult film community has an excellent record of avoiding STDs because of this testing and certification. The general public does not, and that is the difference between on screen unprotected sex and the same by the general public. Unprotected sex between two committed, tested, monogamous people is just fine by all rational metrics; prevention of unwanted children can be done (and should be done) by means other than condoms; condoms have a pretty poor record of preventing pregnancy. On the other hand, some condoms can be fun, now and then, if you know what you're doing. Just don't count on them to "protect" anyone. They slip off, they tear, they overflow, and they suffer damage when stored improperly (such as in a wallet, where many men often keep them.)
I humbly submit an amendment to ban gravity, that insidious force that pulls all humanity down. It's warped, I tell you!
Instead, I have a counter-proposal: let's put all the Internet web traffic from Utah on a specific port, say, port 1827. We can call it MINDER (Mormon Isolation Network Denial Enabling Restriction.)
We can follow up with the nationwide program ITSCRAP (Initiative To Stop Christian Religious Abusive Packets) on port 666.
Then, bring in the UN and implement the worldwide system SOMEQUIET (Shut Off Muslim Entreaties Queering Up Internet, Ethernet, and Telnet) on port 569, along with its sister program JUSTSHUTUP (Jewish Uploads Shunted To Some Handler Using TCP User Protection), using port 1000.
In this way, we can prevent superstition, arguably the most divisive and harmful force in our society and the world today, from causing harm to random readers who might stumble over it by accident. We must think of the children: Truly, is it fair to allow the superstitious to present stories with no evidence to impressionable kids, victims, really, undermining any tendencies towards logical and scientific thinking they might have? Of course not. We must proceed!
With religion throttled, we can turn our attention to the next most insidious problem facing the Internet with the new PINHEAD initiative: (Politician Interdiction Network Handler Ends Appalling Deceptions) on port 1600.
In this way, we can make the Internet safe for science, education, commerce, gaming, and of course, pornography, that most important segment of every young man's consumer role: Tissue purchasing.
Add marketing. Add all these broken units we're hearing about (and I think we're going to see that it's a large number — everyone around here got a unit that died, that's 4 out of four, within the first couple hours of using it. One three light error code, one crash screen, two random junk screens. All ran insanely hot (hot left side when standing up), and not much heat, or air came out the fan duct, despite a whole LOT of fan noise. Hold times for the "help me, my 360 is busted" telephone number were running one to two hours last I heard. Our Wal-mart won't let the 360 demo run because they say that it interferes with the wireless product scanning/inventory management hardware they use. So the 360 sits there, dark and dead, while the old xbox, ps2 and rotundo play merrily away.
Truly, I think MS has screwed the pooch here. Though the hour I got to spend with Project Gotham III was certainly fun... lots-o-dots, no pop-up, and smooth.
Read the thread. This has already been covered several times, several ways.
I've read them both. The approach was different here. Orbit, or close approach, are not required. The OP made a remark about weapons development which I was countering. If you look over the original context, I think you'll see why I took the approach I did.
Read that (The Great Time Machine Hoax) too, along with everything else Keith Laumer ever published. :-)
Something hitting that hard comes apart into particles going every which way, including into each other. Highly annoyed particles. Lots of energy is released in the process, and I'm not sure that the effects would be much different at all from a really, really, really big nuke, though I don't think we can make nukes that big, at least, not yet.
However, I am only an interested layman (hence my way overguestimating the speed and mass required... looking it over later, it turns out I gave an example that would destroy the planet. Whoops. Sorry. :-) I'm sure there are some serious physics types laughing at me right now, and perhaps one of them can give you a completely accurate summary of the results of a big kinetic impact. I just know it is very, very, very bad and you might rather have had a nuke go off, at least the ones we have had in inventory, just a hundred megatons or so.
It boils down to how massy the impactor is, and how fast it is going.
Acceleration may not even be the issue. If they travel via a method that allows them to set relative velocity and position at the end of a trip arbitrarily, no acceleration would be required.
As I said above, though, I'm perfectly happy with the amount of energy sub-luminal velocities can impart to an object. 1/2 C will do the job just fine, I'm thinking.
Still, I have no problem with the kinetic energy deliverable by a dense object traveling at 1/2 or 3/4ths C, so if you'd like to postulate that said intergalactic travelers can't break C in "real space", work with that instead. I think Washington's still gone. :-)
*cough*religion*cough*
If you are able to place yourself in space, at any relative velocity, at any location relative to another object (which is basically the definition of successful space travel, no matter what the means), then you should probably also be able to place an object, for instance a nice, dense lump of lead with a steel jacket, at any relative position and velocity to another object, in this case, let's say, Earth. Launch position may be arbitrarily distant, if you accept additional time-to-target.
So. Object (eventually, if you like) weighing, say, 1 kiloton (to give you some perspective, the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier, is about 77 kilotons), comes into Earth's atmosphere at a relative velocity of, oh, say 1,000,000 K/sec, coming straight down (to minimize friction and time-in atmosphere.) Object impacts military target, for instance, the Pentagon. Washington, and large amount of the surrounding area, is now missing in action, and we have a large crater (probably a new opening on the sea, actually, thought I've not done the math) we should probably get around to dealing with. The radiation and blast effects may require a slight delay, perhaps, oh, I don't know, a few centuries.
Total cost to those accidental discovers of space travel? Some lead or other dense material, a steel or other relatively tough jacket, and whatever space drive resources it takes to get to where launching it delivers enough energy to target. But remember — if they can get here and arrange a relative stop, then they can just as easily get anywhere else in the solar system at any other relative velocity. If they decide we're toast... we're toast, and there isn't squat we can do about it.
Basically, the fact is if you assume interstellar space travel with any vehicle larger than a telephone booth, then you have to assume military superiority as well, and to a degree that is difficult to comprehend and requires no additional technology beyond moving inert materials around.
Sorry to burst your bubble. ;-)
There may be more to this, though. We can't tell yet if the reports of 360's having problems is a general issue, or if it is just the result of a few really vocal complainers. If there are actual design problems, the cost goes up yet again. If they're really bad, the console could falter in the marketplace (no one really wants to fight with overheating or random crashing.) If that happens, the opportunity to recoup costs with games is in trouble too.
Funny. A couple of days ago, I was musing to myself that Sony's DRM idiocy might actually affect the viability of the PS3 if Sony manages to reach the status of corporate pariah and the public holds them to it. Now I wonder if Microsoft has managed to give them back an opportunity by missing the reliability mark. Interesting times. :-)
The problem is, and has always been, that people — men and women, this race and that race — should be given equal opportunity, not that they should be considered equal at any level. That's just a trite homily for the low-functioning. It's not true and it never has been true. If you want to think that you're "the same" as a person of the opposite sex, that's certainly your privilege — but you're still wrong. If, and this is a big if, you narrow your view to the task at hand, it may well be that for that task, you are equal with the other person — but this does not support your thesis, it is simply a minor exception in the big picture.
As far as races go, starting with the biological, we can indeed observe broad differences that affect function. Some of them are very significant. One recently confirmed example is the generally higher intelligence of the Ashkenazi jews. This is going to affect how their performance compares to yours, and no amount of whining about it will serve to change this fact. Now, it is easy, in fact, pleasant, to talk about a race which carries such a genetic advantage. It is not easy to talk about a race that carries a genetic disadvantage, though if we stay away from intelligence the PC types don't get too crazy. So, for instance, I can look you in the eye and tell you that folks who come from asian stock have a genetic disadvantage for some tasks: They are shorter than most other races. This, for instance, gives them problems when attempting to compete at basketball. On the other hand, I can bluntly turn around the Ashkenazi example and say that American Indians aren't as smart as Ashkenazi Jews, taken in groups. This is demonstrably true and it blows your argument out of the water. Yes indeed, there are exceptions, both ways, within both groups, but we do not and should not make our way through our lives assuming every person we meet is an exception. We have very useful general expectations built from experience (or we should, at least), and from time to time these will be exceeded (both ways) and at that point we should readjust our conclusions about the individual at hand, which again, is the argument I've made from the beginning: When it comes to a particular task being filled in life, we need to look at the individual in terms of what they bring to that task. Which is the polar opposite of assuming everyone is the same. It is the sensible, useful, practical application of the idea that everyone is not the same.
To sum up: Individuals are different. Races are different. Everyone deserves equal opportunity. What they make of those opportunities reflects those differences, and I celebrate both the results and the differences. The politically correct factions that want to mask all of this; they want to use misdirection and muddy thinking to hide it — they're doing no one any favors.
Stop trying to cookie-cutter human beings. It won't work. It is politically correct tripe, no more. There's nothing wrong with people being different from one another. That's just hysteria.
Ah. Yes, I agree, that certainly seems to be the case.
I'm not sure what point you're making here with regard to my post. I don't disagree with your statement, and I don't see that this contradicts or reinforces what I said previously. Would you care to elaborate?
Therefore, if one were to find a mechanical device such as a watch on a beach, one can reasonably assume that somewhere, those missing resources are, or were, present.
In the case of discovering a never before seen organism on that same beach, one does not have to imagine that there are hidden manufacturing facilities, refineries, blueprints, or a designer. They're not needed. That is why fundamentalist religion has such a deep fear of evolution.
The problem with philosophy (and by inference, metaphysics) is that it is a dumping ground for ideas that won't work under scientific scrutiny, and that in turn means that a lot of the ideas (though not all) are no more than bunk.
That's way too generalized to reflect reality.
Biological differences can (and do) lead to differences in emotional depth and "emotional intelligence", cognitive abilities, athletic potentials both realized and nascent, immune system / disease resistance, height, intelligence, secondary sexual characteristics, bone structure, child bearing / rearing capabilities, eye color, bone density, resistance to pain... the list is endless because it includes everything.
It is politically correct nonsense to say that biological differences, miscast in PC terms as "essentialism", are non-existant or irrelevant. In real human terms, differences matter when they are significant; and they they are certainly significant when they are pivotal, or fundamental, in degree with regard to a particular situation. If you ignore differences, you may be shooting yourself right in the foot; taking them too seriously when it is not warranted can just as easily lead to problems. The bottom line is you have to think about every situation and decide if the differences at hand are relevant to the problems and issues at hand. The answer, however, is not to declare that observing differences is "essentialism."
Albert Einstein was not the "equal" of any random Down's syndrome child you care to pick. And why? Bloody biology, that's why. Likewise, women are not and never will be, barring genetic manipulation, "the same" as men. The expectation that they should be is absolutely ludicrous. This does not rule out any particular role or capability; what it says is that the fit to a particular cognitive, physical, emotional, or artistic target is going to be different between men and women because of biological differences. This, in turn, should encourage us to consider every situation as a unique challenge to meet it with the best fit we can. Not to cleave to some politically correct but scientifically bewildered mode of thinking.
To which, of course, we can add environmental influences from nutrition to parenting and schooling. The very concept that people are, or even could be, "the same" is just plain medieval.
There's nothing like politically correct psychobabble to blind us to reality.
It began when the British empire collapsed. Prior to that, British society was something else completely. Specifically, a monarchy and an empire, neither of which it is today in anything but name. It is, just as you say, "fundamentally different" today.
I don't think so. I think we already have grammar analyzers that can catch random strings of (key)words as opposed to well formed sentences, we are already able to discern what words are general and what are topic-specific, we can determine if spelling is reasonable or 133t-5h173 or uneddikashunal, we can see if some rational proportion of links from a particular site go to sites that have something to do with what the original site had to do with, we can figure out if the site is full of links or full of content or full of linked content, we can pass along sites that appear to be link farms to a human who can make a final determination before the entire domain is blacklisted from the search engine (I figure a single human can reliably blacklist domains at about 1 every few seconds if the connection is fast enough) or maybe we can get that reliable so that a link farm is hammered the second it is spidered. I certainly don't see why not. Yes, we're talking about a lot of computing and analysis. So? It gets less expensive every day.
Some combination of this, with the appropriate amount of computer power, will almost certainly do a better job than counting the number of incoming links and measuring the length of registration for a domain name. Once we start down this road, the analysis will get better, and so forth.
Does any of that mean that the search engine will understand what it is parsing? No. There's not even the slightest hint that this kind of thing would render humans pointless via that route. Furthermore, just as if I learn something, it doesn't relive you of the need to learn, an AI learning won't either.
Now, real AI may indeed solve all these problems; but that's not what we're talking about here, certainly not in the first few generations, anyway. If you do create a real AI, I'm not sure it'd tolerate being a search engine anyway. It'd have to read every web page out there and I'm sure an argument for torture could easily be made.
I don't know of a better engine. I didn't mean to imply that I did. I don't use search engines much, period. I prefer to follow links selected by people. To that end, I use del.icio.us, various blogs that follow issues of interest to me, mailing lists, RSS feeds from sites that specialize in areas of interest, and company web sites and message boards for the products I own. I pay attention to links I find on slashdot, too. :-)
There is no question that google is actually useful to a degree (as opposed to "what people use because it's all they know how to do"), but there is also no question that the web would also be useful without google. As easily demonstrated by the fact that some people never use it, and others, even technical others (like myself) rarely use it (because the results have been getting worse and worse.
The day that google figures out how to evaluate site content instead of using indirect and gamable measures of site popularity will be a wonderful day for those seeking answers at google's search portals.
More to the point, there is no promise that your site will get to the top of the search results if your site is the most useful. The reason for this is the absolute, incontrovertible truth that:
The newest, least linked site google has may, in fact, be the most useful result. Since google does not (cannot, apparently... so much for those PHDs) evaluate the site for its actual information content, they rely on a metric which has long since been gamed. That's why we see (first) link farms, totally lame junk "explanation" pages written by novices and know-nothings (like www.about.com's, for instance) and so on.
The fact is, just because someone is capable of putting a link from here to there does not reflect either their ability to pre-qualify the content on the site in question, or the specific site's usefulness, and while this has never really been true, it is less true these days as less and less skilled individuals are enabled to make links (via blogs and other non-technical enabling tools) and more and more "spam" links are emplaced by those whose urge to be seen, and tools enabling being seen, far outstrip the quality of what they have to offer.
Popularity, in the end, is about marketing. Formulate a winning strategy. Get the idea/meme out. Traffic will come. Google specifically enables this by focusing on popularity (number of incoming links), length of site registration (amount of money you have to put into your web site) and other metrics that in no case directly measure usefulness.
In the end, the only time that Google, or any other search engine, can actually give you the "best" results first out of a largish selection of them is when it takes into account site content and not site popularity, as well as the specific interests of the searcher, to whatever degree they can be known. Google, and as far as I know any other engine either, doesn't even try to do this on any exposed portal.
...I've never seen cheese this old, folded this many times...