According to TFA, she'd never heard about it before, so she was careless when making her order. Hence, her own fault. And as another poster above said, it's likely she decided not to get Windows on it when she called tech support because they told her they'd have to charge her to install windows (since, obviously, Windows is not free). I mean fuck, even the goddamned GeekSquad at Best Buy know how to use and configure linux (or at least, one or two of them usually do, and the rest google it) from what I've seen, so blaming her dropping out on her laptop is the part that's "utter bullshit".
She's stupid because she ordered it with Ubuntu of her own volition. Most websites will give you info on options you're unsure about when you order your computer, and seeing as how you have to actively select "Ubuntu" in the OS list, it's not like she just clicked continue through all the menus. As such, it is not Dell, or Ubuntu's fault that she doesn't know how to order a computer, and obviously didn't ask for help. And seeing as how, according to the article, rather than call Dell to ask "How can I read Word documents?" and call Verizon to ask "How can I connect my DSL without the CD?" she chose to drop out of not 1, but 2 semesters of college... yeah, I'd say she's pretty dumb, and obviously had no real interest in taking those courses. She's just looking to blame it on someone other than herself.
The reasons that it's not used for much else other than piracy, even though it has superior compression, is because most vendors want to lock you into a format. Microsoft would never use it because they have WMV, which has been around for a while and they don't want to ditch it. Apple also has their own proprietary formats, and as the article says, there is no DRM support for the format at the moment. Long story short: All the companies that would "make it popular" have their own formats and DRM schemes. The advantages of using a superior codec aren't worth the effort to switch for them, since they don't care what quality you watch videos in.
As for Bink videos, you can download a free decompressor at Bink's own website. Bink is not used because it's better for video, it's used because it can act as a standalone executable video, and run regardless of the codecs installed on the machine. In addition, the Bink format is designed to run with low decoding requirements, making it nice to use on lower end machines as well. It's way easier to just throw something into Bink and launch an executable for a video, than it is to have to worry about codecs and a lot of other bullshit.
Who would you rather deal with: DMV or your auto-insurance company?
Speaking as the son of the owner of a body shop, you clearly have no idea the hell insurance companies put people through. The DMV can make you wake for 5 hours on a bad day, but the auto-insurance companies will spend months, and I've even seen years, denying or delaying payment. My dad spends just as much time dealing with the insurance companies as he does running the entire shop. Not to mention that they always want to get the cheap, less durable parts, or crappy after market parts, if it saves them any money, regardless of the impact it'd have on safety, or the vehicle for that matter.
And we already have a nanny state. You can't do most drugs, you already get taxed highly on cigarettes, smoking is already banned in public in many municipalities, etc. You realize that there are many industrialized nations which already HAVE universal health care right? It's not like this'd be some grand experiment for us. If anything, we're behind the curve on this.
On a side note, this is NOT Universal Health Care, as you seem to assume. This is standardization. This means everyone'd have the same information and be capable of sending it to other facilities and physicians without absurd hassles and delays which could cost a patient their life.
"Tiered Internet" in this case is not talking about speed, it's talking about content. At the moment, you pay for the connection between you and your ISP, in most places. With a better connection offering better speeds. A "tiered internet" would be if you want to watch YouTube, $5 is added to your bill, or a $2 surcharge for using Google, or an extra $20 to use BitTorrent, etc. It's content based filtering. So you might have like a 25Mb/s line, but not access to the content that'd utilize it. Kind of like the way (at least in the US) cell phone providers charge you separately for text messaging, voice calls, picture messaging, etc.
Net Neutrality is a movement to try to prevent this, and keep the internet the way it is, where all bits are (more or less) equal.
Actually, they mean none of the above. They mean that it will be using Steam's DRM, which is probably some of the most unintrusive DRM out there. Basically, the games you buy are tied to your account, can be redownloaded any time however many times you want, etc etc. It's only restrictive in events where, for instance, Steam's login servers go down (which has only happened once, and they've fixed the problem since then), and it can be a bit of a hassle on slow connections, due to the fact that setting a game to "Offline Mode" is unintuitive. But on the flip side it also adds a lot of convenience that tends to be associated with Digital Distribution, plus a community, friends list, IM client that functions in lots of Steam games, etc. Adding SecuROM or other DRMs on top of it would only make it less effective, and as far as I know, is against Valve's policy for games they allow on Steam.
I'm sorry, but I really do have to disagree with you on several points.
First of all, why is it that this is suddenly a crime when it's done online, but if you're being harassed at school, no one cares? I spent 4 years being picked on every fucking day for no reason. I'd get hit, I had my glasses and possessions broken or thrown into the water, etc. When I went to the cops, do you know what they said? "Maybe you should see a counselor or take up karate" Really? It's not like I'd taken karate for 5 years already, and was trying to avoid fighting on principle. School officials did nothing. The authorities did nothing. And when my parents went to talk to their parents, they found them to be even bigger assholes than their kids. And when I did fight back, _I_ was the one who was punished, or sent to detention. And it kept going until one day, 3 of them decided to pick on me outside of school on the way home from the bus. My expensive new glasses got broken, I snapped, and left all 3 of them crying on the floor. And then it stopped.
There are thousands of kids who live through that every day, who can't fight back the way I was able to, and no one does anything. At best, if you're lucky, they'll send them to the school counselor, who will then proceed to do absolutely nothing. So please enlighten me as to why this is perfectly ok, even though there are a multitude of suicides and self-abuse cases over similar situations, but "cyber-bullying" is somehow so much worse.
As for the rape story, first of all, you seem to be equivocating statutory rape with assault/rape. This is not the case. A very close friend of mine was assaulted and raped when going home one evening and she's still trying to get over it more than 8 years later. To somehow claim that this act is the same as statutory rape is completely absurd. Why do I feel this way, you might ask. The reason being that statutory rape depends on what the state believes the victim's ability to understand the situation and make a valid decision. The problem is that each state can decide this. Why is this a problem? Because, for example, when I was a senior in high school I began seeing a freshman (an age difference of 3 years). The age of consent in New York State is 17. The age of consent in New Jersey, which was a 5 minute drive away, is 16. How, I wonder, does she magically gain maturity and the ability to make a rational decision if we drive a few miles, and then mysteriously lose it when we go home?
Don't get me wrong, I didn't sleep with her until she was of age (which had less to do with the law and more to do with when she was comfortable with it), but that doesn't mean that the law is any less idiotic in that situation. Yes, the GP's friend is an idiot, and he did in fact commit a crime, but the way in which it played out just goes to show how stupid the law is. In another state, likely just a few miles away, it would've been perfectly legal! At least in NY, we make an effort to make some distinction (it's only a misdemeanor if the perp is under 21, and the victim is over 15), and the severity of the charges increases the younger the victim is, but other states have no such provisions, and make little distinction between a 50 year old man who slept with a 10 year old, and an 18 year old boy who slept with his 17 year old girlfriend. And lest we forget that the latter case goes into the sex offender database as well, making it difficult to find work, a house, etc. I know one guy who married the girl who was the "victim" and later couldn't find a job because he was a registered sex offender.
I'm beginning to stray off-topic, but my main point is that equivocating assault/rape to statutory rape, regardless of the circumstances, is an injustice to both victims of rape/assault, and both parties involved in a statutory rape case. Just because they both have the word "rape" in the name does not make them the same thing.
As for the main point of the article, the most sensible solution is to keep both perpetrator and victim's names private, because both are entitled to due process. Too often, society judges us to be guilty regardless of what a court of law has to say, and the media rarely prints retractions on accusations they make.
If my memory serves me correctly, once the game is updated at least once, set it to "Offline Mode" and disable auto-updating for both Steam and the game. Voila! No more updates and you can play offline. I believe they implemented this when a massive lightning storm blacked out the Seattle area and brought down all of their servers. People complained about not being able to play offline games, so they added that ability. You still can't play games online without updating (for obvious reasons), but you'd be able to play HL2 and other SP games...
Admittedly, I've never tried it myself, because I've never had to, but I remember reading about it when they made the change, and even the wiki on it mentions it, so I'm making the assumption that it works.
That being said, I prefer Steam to the majority of other content systems. Their DRM isn't very obtrusive, and I've never had a problem running a game I got from Steam (in contrast to, say, Doom 3, which I had to get a crack for because it didn't like my CD burning software. I still regret buying that piece of recycled garbage). Granted that not having any DRM is still nicer, but if it has to be done, I'd prefer something like Steam. And frankly, by making it a relatively quick and reliable online download and purchase, it's easier than piracy, which is a much bigger deal than most game companies are willing to admit... Why go to the store and buy something when the alternative is clicking a link and replacing some files?
You seem to misunderstand... Anonymous isn't 1 person, it's "they". There were at least 50 people in and out of her email account the night it was hacked... I'm tempted to compare her yahoo account to her daughter, but I'll refrain from jokes in such poor taste.
You're right, a dead organism doesn't necessarily prove it's related to anything, but we know MUCH more than "it died" and the majority of the fossil record isn't animals we find once or twice, but that we find all over the place. Additionally, even if an animal didn't have offspring, we know it must've had an ancestor, and genetic "leaps" aren't all that common. We see, as a said, a slow progression much more often. So to discount the entire fossil record, which, frankly, is ENORMOUS, because things like infertile crossbreeds exist is rather silly. But, for a moment, lets return to the Great Dane and the Pug. They are both dogs, yes, and as such, they can interbreed. That being said, there are 37 different species of deer. Many of those can interbreed and produce fertile offspring as well. So why are they different species? Again we return to the issue of the vagueness of the term. And yes, I did use the word imagine. My mistake. But again, this is only because macroevolution, practically by definition, requires significant spans of time, mostly due to the rarity of advantageous genetic mutations. We've only been playing with the concept of natural selection for about 150 years or so, and it's only in the last 50 that we've really begun to understand genetics.
As for your frog-prince "analogy"... that's not how it works either. The crux of it, which you missed entirely, is environmental factors which give a certain offspring an advantage, which in turn increases its likelihood to reproduce. All evolution says is that organisms that are better suited for their environment will be more likely to produce offspring. Over a longer period of time, these changes can accumulate to the point where we can consider it an entirely new type organism. In Darwin's age, we didn't know where these changes came from, but now genetics shows us spontaneous mutation and exactly how genetic breeding occurs. The mistake you seem to be making is that you believe that there is some goal that evolution works toward. It does not. And the changes themselves are not a product of evolution either. Most mutations cause the organism to die earlier, to be frank (just look at genetic diseases). Some, though, give them an advantage and are more likely to be passed on. There is no real mystery as to how it works, and it's certainly not magic.
You and the Anonymous Coward above amaze me with your lack of reading comprehension. I never said we have SEEN new species appear from another organism, I said the evidence we have suggests that it occurs. Evidence such as fossil evidence, which shows a clear progression between many types of organisms on the planet.
And yes, as another poster above mentioned, the term "Species" really is ill-defined. As for your apparent belief that organisms can't change over time (which is pretty much the entire point of evolution, be it natural selection or artificial selection)... well, have you ever seen a dog? I don't know about you, but the variation between a Pug and a Great Dane is pretty damn huge to me. It's not exactly a stretch to imagine that they can continue changing further until they have even less in common and be considered 2 different species. And we've seen the splintering of dogs and other animals, be it due to environmental factors or factors imposed by man. To say that microevolution is real but that macroevolution is not is almost silly. Macroevolution IS microevolution, just on a significantly longer time frame, and using a more persistent environmental variable to select the survivors of each subsequent generation.
@Zashi: BTW, Darwin DID use the term, but he used it as a metaphor. Your right about Spencer, but he didn't coin the term, he simply used it far more often and named one of his economic theories after it.
This always gets me. That people seem to think that science is about belief and faith. You cannot have a theory without evidence, be it mathematical or physical. A theory without evidence is called a Hypothesis, and those have absolutely no business being taught to students. Someone above mentioned how string theory has no evidence. This is only partially true. It has no physical evidence, but the math says it's possible (proving it, of course, would require something more substantial). Science is not about beliefs. If you have actuall, verifiable data, then we can talk. In the absence of it, however, well, don't be surprised if the scientific community scoffs. Creationism is not a theory, it's a hypothesis, since creationists have been unable to produce enough factual evidence to support it. To teach is to students as an alternative explanation, and to tell them that there is serious debate in the scientific community over its validity, is academically dishonest.
Beliefs belong in a theological studies class, not in a science classroom.
The facts HAVE supported evolution so far. We've witnessed microevolution in animal populations in our own lifetimes, and evidence suggests that macroevolution does indeed take place, which also fits mathematical models as well as... well, common sense. Survival of the fittest, natural selection, works with almost all of the data we have.
The issue about teaching creationism is that the science class room should be about giving students the verifiable facts which we have. The notion of "Letting the children decide" is absurd. They don't have the foundation in logical reasoning yet, nor do they have the resources to verify claims from both sides. Not to mention that facts are not subjective. If we took a vote on which is true, natural selection, or creationism, regardless of how we voted or what we think, that does not change the facts, and that does not change which is, in fact, true.
Creationism is not a "dissenting opinion" as they would have you believe. Creationism is anti-science. Instead of trying to prove their theory right, they try to prove that evolution is wrong, thinking that if they could, it MUST mean creationism is correct. But this is simply not how science works.
Facts do not prove themselves in a classroom, they prove themselves in peer reviewed journals, with copious amounts of data, and logical reasoning. If the Creationism/Intelligent Design movements had ANY of those criteria, then we could have a discussion of its merits. But since it does not, the point is moot, and trying to force it into classrooms, on impressionable students, who have not yet fully understood how science works is simply an underhanded gimmick, and does a disservice to both the scientific community as well as the education system.
So... if Google newsbot picked up the story about Google newsbot's near destruction of United Airlines... would that make it self-aware?:D [/joke]
Anyway, one interesting thing this story brings up is our over-reliance on automated systems... Googlebot picks up the old story, a financial firm's automated query systems sees the story as a recent one, the system spreads the story to its feeds, and it winds up as an alert in Bloomberg (the trading software, for those who've never worked with a trading firm) and other financial systems.
It's such a very fragile structure, wherein a single word can irrevocably alter the fate of a company, or even events around the world (butterfly effect, and a company like UA is a big butterfly). In the end, machines won't have to enslave mankind to take over the world. We've gladly handed them the keys and gone on vacation in the Bahamas...
Actually it was 20 seconds. The video isn't useful because the dust and debris cloud obscures much of the lower floors' collapse.
BTW, the ones who are saying it'd lose force seriously need to buy a newton's cradle... And whoever said that we should "try the experiment with Legos"... I just have no words for how completely stupid you are...
He's answering your question about why a demolition crew doesn't work that way. Try to keep up.
I'm not even going to bother to quote you because you've made it apparent that you know shit all about physics, so I'll just make some points before I proceed to ignore you like the troll you are:
1. I never said that mass causes it to accelerate the collapse, I said mass adds momentum. F=ma. Force = mass * acceleration. The acceleration is constant. I believe that the report cited it as being 40% that of freefall, so 3.92m/s^2. As more and more floors are broken through, the weight of the broken floor itself adds to the mass of the debris that's falling, and since almost every floor is made of, roughly, the same materials, and assuming the fall is constant, that means each time to a floor is broken, the force of the falling debris doubles. So the fifth floor that was broken, for example, had to try to brace 4 times the force of the first floor that broken. It's a linear increase in force as each subsequent floor collapses. This is not "alleged", this is not "a myth". This is simple high school physics, that anyone who's even remotely intelligent can apply to the situation.
2. As c6gunner pointed out, demolition crews don't do this because it leaves a lot up to chance, and they want the demolition to go as smoothly as possible.
3.
More than enough kinetic energy where, and what mass starts moving? In what way does this utterly meaningless and non-defined statement pertain to WTC 7 or any of the other buildings?
Ok, I lied, I had to quote your utter ignorance of anything relating to this topic. To put it simply, kinetic energy is the energy of a moving body. Potential energy is the energy of a stationary body. If you put a book on a shelf, that book now has potential energy equal to its height off of the floor. If it falls, that energy turns into kinetic energy. The mass that begins moving, which c6gunner refers to, is the collapsing upper floors.
Let me put it to you as such: A car stands on a hill, and someone pushes it so that it begins rolling. It's possible that, if you're at the top of the hill, and reach the car soon enough, you can stop the car again with little more effort than pushing it with your finger. Try that at the bottom of the hill though, and you'll get run over.
Now imagine that that car is also getting heavier as it goes downhill. The increased weight doesn't make it faster, but it DOES make it more difficult for something to stop it. Each floor of the WTC was a massive concrete slab. Those weigh A LOT. So assuming that the 3-5 floors that were actually on fire were the only ones weakened, the question because not whether the floor below can support those 3-5 floors, plus whatever was above them, the question is whether the floor below can withstand the IMPACT of that much weight. The answer, as any engineer, and even some high school physics students can tell you, is not a chance.
All of this being said, pancaking did not cause the collapse per se, pancaking basically just made it sudden and violent. The building was already inherently unstable due to the the heat expansion of vertical columns, due to warping of the materials, etc. Nothing had to "melt". Melting points are mostly irrelevant. Heat causes metals, such as steel, to be soft and pliable, as well as expanding them. The pancaking of the upper floors caused even more severe stresses on the support columns to warp even further until they could no longer cope with the massive and sudden strain they were under, and they gave way.
PS- Believe what you like, but your ignorance on the matter, in addition to your insistence that you are correct, makes you a card carrying conspiracy theorists.
Ugh, ok, I'm tired of this, so let me explain to you exactly how the building collapsed from my perspective, watching it across the Hudson a few miles away, and then seeing it up close on the news:
Pancaking, a term which you completely misunderstand, is the event which occurs when you cause the upper floors of a building to collapse suddenly. You question how the fire in the upper floors weakened the lower floors. The answer is that it didn't have to. When the upper floors gave way, they impacted the floors directly beneath them. The kinetic energy that is gained by those floors basically free falling 1 story down is immense, and this cause the floor beneath, also weakened by the fire, to collapse, and so on this process went until it reached low enough that the floor beneath the collapsing floors was undamaged by the impact or fire.
The problem though is two-fold: first of all, those collapsing upper floors sent a huge shockwave of compressing air down the elevator shafts and stairwells, blowing out the windows on the floors below and causing some very minor structural damage. No big deal, but it's what makes people think the lower floors were "blown out". The big thing is that by this point, the upper floors have gained such an incredible amount of momentum from their falling, which is only increasing with their mass, that the lower floors have no hope of "catching" them. I say "catching" because they're not supporting them, they have to stop them from a freefall, and stopping an object in motion, especially an object composed of tons of concrete and steel falling directly downward, requires more structural integrity than any skyscraper has.
This is why the Windsor building is a poor example. This event did not occur. It was the WTC's own height working against it, giving the collapsing segments more and more mass until it was enough energy to break through the structurally sound floors.
People who claim there should have been a core, or or more left of it are people who try to compare this to other events, and often lack an understanding of physics and engineering. ALL of the steel in the WTC towers did not have to melt or be weakened. Only a small portion, in a small area, had to be structurally weakened enough to give way. The rest is simply F=ma
On an electrical engineering exam a friend of mine took, one of the bonus questions asked one they use one particular formula for calculations now in lieu of a different one that was used a few years back.
His response was "Because 9/11 changed everything"
Monarch Butterflies? Really? Of ALL the amazingly psychotic and evil things Monsanto has done, THAT'S what makes you think they're evil?
Personally, I find the creation and sale of Agent Orange to be more vile. It causes death and deformity in countless children, and affects countless more veterans of Vietnam and unknowing users of the herbicide. Internal memos showed that Monsanto was perfectly aware of its carcinogenic effects but did nothing to warn the public.
Or how about the use of rBGH, a bovine growth hormone which cause the cows to grow sick and swollen in the udders. They produced more milk, but they didn't tell the farmers that the hormone could be passed onto consumers through the milk as well, and studies showed that the effect on humans is, surprise surprise, cancerous. This shit was sold in schools to children, and consumed by untold numbers throughout the country.
When Fox news reporters tried to investigate this, Monsanto threatened to pull all of their advertising money from every single News Corp owned station. Fox chickened out, told the reporters to run an "edited" version, which didn't name Monsanto, didn't name rBGH, and didn't say it was cancerous. When the reporters tried to file for whistle blower status, the courts told them that "Publishing misleading news is not illegal" and denied them such status.
And then, of course, the terminator seeds. Seeds that are genetically engineered to function for one harvest and one harvest only. The problem is that, first of all, this is absurd. you think the RIAA is bad? Imagine you purchase a CD and after you listen to each song once, the CD combusts in the drive ala Mission: Impossible, and you're told that you have to buy a new CD if you want to listen to those songs that you just bought again.
and then there's cross pollination, where non-terminator seeds sometimes wander into neighboring farms. this is something that no farmer can really guard against, as this shit is carried by the wind and insects. So when Monsanto sees a farmer who's farm was cross-pollinated by plants from a neighboring Monsanto farm, they sue him for something he can't even do anything against.
I agree that the GP's comment about Aushwitz is absurd, as there is no comparison. But that's not to say this isn't a different form of evil. and I will say this: If there is a corporation similar to the fictional Umbrella anywhere on Earth, it's Monsanto.
Unfortunately the GP seems to completely misunderstand the purpose of the US having elections every 4 years. Next year, for better or for worse, a new "regime" takes office. Although violent revolutions are sometimes necessary, the GP seems to feel it's the only way anything gets done. It is not. As I said, if we keep having terrible administrations, if our economy keeps falling, if we keep finding more and more scandals in the next few administrations, and if we keep losing more and more civil liberties, then yes, eventually people will say "WTF?" and put a stop to it. But until then, while it's still possible to vote them out, then that's what we'll do.
Also, to everyone saying that the US armed forces would not attack civilians, I agree that MOST of them would not, if it were being made obvious... but you neglect mercenary armies. The number of "private security" organizations like Blackwater has swelled to an amazing number in the last few years, and they can hire from any nation, meaning that there is not necessarily an allegiance to the US. And in a few years when that situation only gets worse, when we begin privatizing our army, our intelligence services (Blackwater already has one and we use it), then it's only a matter of time until our own sword turns on us.
Yes, if Iraq, Vientam, and Korea have taught us anything, it is certainly that an organized army can remove insurgent groups in just a few days... right?
A single armed civilian isn't much of a threat. An armed populace is.
First of all, it's BEEN done in this country: it was called the Civil War.
Second of all, we're still relatively democratic. Yes the last 8 years have been horrendous and plagued with awful shit, but this is not the first administration to have widespread corruption, just the most recent. The fact remains that the citizenry are still capable of changing the nation, and THAT is what's important. Do you really think that if we had a president who decided to dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court, that we'd sit idly by? You can argue that doing so over the course of several generations would accomplish the same ends without an uprising, but so long as it has not happened yet, there is no real need for it.
There is always a tipping point. A moment where an event occurs that changes the way we view ourselves and our role in the system. If the next election changes nothing, and the one after that, and the one after that, then there is a problem. But for now, it is not necessary to rise up and do anything more than speak our minds and let our dissent be heard. It is only when that is ignored that it is our civic responsibility as patriots to ensure that the government remembers that they are beholden to the people, and not the other way around.
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According to TFA, she'd never heard about it before, so she was careless when making her order. Hence, her own fault. And as another poster above said, it's likely she decided not to get Windows on it when she called tech support because they told her they'd have to charge her to install windows (since, obviously, Windows is not free). I mean fuck, even the goddamned GeekSquad at Best Buy know how to use and configure linux (or at least, one or two of them usually do, and the rest google it) from what I've seen, so blaming her dropping out on her laptop is the part that's "utter bullshit".
She's stupid because she ordered it with Ubuntu of her own volition. Most websites will give you info on options you're unsure about when you order your computer, and seeing as how you have to actively select "Ubuntu" in the OS list, it's not like she just clicked continue through all the menus. As such, it is not Dell, or Ubuntu's fault that she doesn't know how to order a computer, and obviously didn't ask for help. And seeing as how, according to the article, rather than call Dell to ask "How can I read Word documents?" and call Verizon to ask "How can I connect my DSL without the CD?" she chose to drop out of not 1, but 2 semesters of college... yeah, I'd say she's pretty dumb, and obviously had no real interest in taking those courses. She's just looking to blame it on someone other than herself.
In reply to you and your parent post:
The reasons that it's not used for much else other than piracy, even though it has superior compression, is because most vendors want to lock you into a format. Microsoft would never use it because they have WMV, which has been around for a while and they don't want to ditch it. Apple also has their own proprietary formats, and as the article says, there is no DRM support for the format at the moment. Long story short: All the companies that would "make it popular" have their own formats and DRM schemes. The advantages of using a superior codec aren't worth the effort to switch for them, since they don't care what quality you watch videos in.
As for Bink videos, you can download a free decompressor at Bink's own website. Bink is not used because it's better for video, it's used because it can act as a standalone executable video, and run regardless of the codecs installed on the machine. In addition, the Bink format is designed to run with low decoding requirements, making it nice to use on lower end machines as well. It's way easier to just throw something into Bink and launch an executable for a video, than it is to have to worry about codecs and a lot of other bullshit.
Speaking as the son of the owner of a body shop, you clearly have no idea the hell insurance companies put people through. The DMV can make you wake for 5 hours on a bad day, but the auto-insurance companies will spend months, and I've even seen years, denying or delaying payment. My dad spends just as much time dealing with the insurance companies as he does running the entire shop. Not to mention that they always want to get the cheap, less durable parts, or crappy after market parts, if it saves them any money, regardless of the impact it'd have on safety, or the vehicle for that matter.
And we already have a nanny state. You can't do most drugs, you already get taxed highly on cigarettes, smoking is already banned in public in many municipalities, etc. You realize that there are many industrialized nations which already HAVE universal health care right? It's not like this'd be some grand experiment for us. If anything, we're behind the curve on this.
On a side note, this is NOT Universal Health Care, as you seem to assume. This is standardization. This means everyone'd have the same information and be capable of sending it to other facilities and physicians without absurd hassles and delays which could cost a patient their life.
"Tiered Internet" in this case is not talking about speed, it's talking about content. At the moment, you pay for the connection between you and your ISP, in most places. With a better connection offering better speeds. A "tiered internet" would be if you want to watch YouTube, $5 is added to your bill, or a $2 surcharge for using Google, or an extra $20 to use BitTorrent, etc. It's content based filtering. So you might have like a 25Mb/s line, but not access to the content that'd utilize it. Kind of like the way (at least in the US) cell phone providers charge you separately for text messaging, voice calls, picture messaging, etc.
Net Neutrality is a movement to try to prevent this, and keep the internet the way it is, where all bits are (more or less) equal.
Actually, they mean none of the above. They mean that it will be using Steam's DRM, which is probably some of the most unintrusive DRM out there. Basically, the games you buy are tied to your account, can be redownloaded any time however many times you want, etc etc. It's only restrictive in events where, for instance, Steam's login servers go down (which has only happened once, and they've fixed the problem since then), and it can be a bit of a hassle on slow connections, due to the fact that setting a game to "Offline Mode" is unintuitive. But on the flip side it also adds a lot of convenience that tends to be associated with Digital Distribution, plus a community, friends list, IM client that functions in lots of Steam games, etc. Adding SecuROM or other DRMs on top of it would only make it less effective, and as far as I know, is against Valve's policy for games they allow on Steam.
I'm sorry, but I really do have to disagree with you on several points.
First of all, why is it that this is suddenly a crime when it's done online, but if you're being harassed at school, no one cares? I spent 4 years being picked on every fucking day for no reason. I'd get hit, I had my glasses and possessions broken or thrown into the water, etc. When I went to the cops, do you know what they said? "Maybe you should see a counselor or take up karate" Really? It's not like I'd taken karate for 5 years already, and was trying to avoid fighting on principle. School officials did nothing. The authorities did nothing. And when my parents went to talk to their parents, they found them to be even bigger assholes than their kids. And when I did fight back, _I_ was the one who was punished, or sent to detention. And it kept going until one day, 3 of them decided to pick on me outside of school on the way home from the bus. My expensive new glasses got broken, I snapped, and left all 3 of them crying on the floor. And then it stopped.
There are thousands of kids who live through that every day, who can't fight back the way I was able to, and no one does anything. At best, if you're lucky, they'll send them to the school counselor, who will then proceed to do absolutely nothing. So please enlighten me as to why this is perfectly ok, even though there are a multitude of suicides and self-abuse cases over similar situations, but "cyber-bullying" is somehow so much worse.
As for the rape story, first of all, you seem to be equivocating statutory rape with assault/rape. This is not the case. A very close friend of mine was assaulted and raped when going home one evening and she's still trying to get over it more than 8 years later. To somehow claim that this act is the same as statutory rape is completely absurd. Why do I feel this way, you might ask. The reason being that statutory rape depends on what the state believes the victim's ability to understand the situation and make a valid decision. The problem is that each state can decide this. Why is this a problem? Because, for example, when I was a senior in high school I began seeing a freshman (an age difference of 3 years). The age of consent in New York State is 17. The age of consent in New Jersey, which was a 5 minute drive away, is 16. How, I wonder, does she magically gain maturity and the ability to make a rational decision if we drive a few miles, and then mysteriously lose it when we go home?
Don't get me wrong, I didn't sleep with her until she was of age (which had less to do with the law and more to do with when she was comfortable with it), but that doesn't mean that the law is any less idiotic in that situation. Yes, the GP's friend is an idiot, and he did in fact commit a crime, but the way in which it played out just goes to show how stupid the law is. In another state, likely just a few miles away, it would've been perfectly legal! At least in NY, we make an effort to make some distinction (it's only a misdemeanor if the perp is under 21, and the victim is over 15), and the severity of the charges increases the younger the victim is, but other states have no such provisions, and make little distinction between a 50 year old man who slept with a 10 year old, and an 18 year old boy who slept with his 17 year old girlfriend. And lest we forget that the latter case goes into the sex offender database as well, making it difficult to find work, a house, etc. I know one guy who married the girl who was the "victim" and later couldn't find a job because he was a registered sex offender.
I'm beginning to stray off-topic, but my main point is that equivocating assault/rape to statutory rape, regardless of the circumstances, is an injustice to both victims of rape/assault, and both parties involved in a statutory rape case. Just because they both have the word "rape" in the name does not make them the same thing.
As for the main point of the article, the most sensible solution is to keep both perpetrator and victim's names private, because both are entitled to due process. Too often, society judges us to be guilty regardless of what a court of law has to say, and the media rarely prints retractions on accusations they make.
If my memory serves me correctly, once the game is updated at least once, set it to "Offline Mode" and disable auto-updating for both Steam and the game. Voila! No more updates and you can play offline. I believe they implemented this when a massive lightning storm blacked out the Seattle area and brought down all of their servers. People complained about not being able to play offline games, so they added that ability. You still can't play games online without updating (for obvious reasons), but you'd be able to play HL2 and other SP games...
Admittedly, I've never tried it myself, because I've never had to, but I remember reading about it when they made the change, and even the wiki on it mentions it, so I'm making the assumption that it works.
That being said, I prefer Steam to the majority of other content systems. Their DRM isn't very obtrusive, and I've never had a problem running a game I got from Steam (in contrast to, say, Doom 3, which I had to get a crack for because it didn't like my CD burning software. I still regret buying that piece of recycled garbage). Granted that not having any DRM is still nicer, but if it has to be done, I'd prefer something like Steam. And frankly, by making it a relatively quick and reliable online download and purchase, it's easier than piracy, which is a much bigger deal than most game companies are willing to admit... Why go to the store and buy something when the alternative is clicking a link and replacing some files?
You seem to misunderstand... Anonymous isn't 1 person, it's "they". There were at least 50 people in and out of her email account the night it was hacked... I'm tempted to compare her yahoo account to her daughter, but I'll refrain from jokes in such poor taste.
You're right, a dead organism doesn't necessarily prove it's related to anything, but we know MUCH more than "it died" and the majority of the fossil record isn't animals we find once or twice, but that we find all over the place. Additionally, even if an animal didn't have offspring, we know it must've had an ancestor, and genetic "leaps" aren't all that common. We see, as a said, a slow progression much more often. So to discount the entire fossil record, which, frankly, is ENORMOUS, because things like infertile crossbreeds exist is rather silly. But, for a moment, lets return to the Great Dane and the Pug. They are both dogs, yes, and as such, they can interbreed. That being said, there are 37 different species of deer. Many of those can interbreed and produce fertile offspring as well. So why are they different species? Again we return to the issue of the vagueness of the term. And yes, I did use the word imagine. My mistake. But again, this is only because macroevolution, practically by definition, requires significant spans of time, mostly due to the rarity of advantageous genetic mutations. We've only been playing with the concept of natural selection for about 150 years or so, and it's only in the last 50 that we've really begun to understand genetics.
As for your frog-prince "analogy"... that's not how it works either. The crux of it, which you missed entirely, is environmental factors which give a certain offspring an advantage, which in turn increases its likelihood to reproduce. All evolution says is that organisms that are better suited for their environment will be more likely to produce offspring. Over a longer period of time, these changes can accumulate to the point where we can consider it an entirely new type organism. In Darwin's age, we didn't know where these changes came from, but now genetics shows us spontaneous mutation and exactly how genetic breeding occurs. The mistake you seem to be making is that you believe that there is some goal that evolution works toward. It does not. And the changes themselves are not a product of evolution either. Most mutations cause the organism to die earlier, to be frank (just look at genetic diseases). Some, though, give them an advantage and are more likely to be passed on. There is no real mystery as to how it works, and it's certainly not magic.
You and the Anonymous Coward above amaze me with your lack of reading comprehension. I never said we have SEEN new species appear from another organism, I said the evidence we have suggests that it occurs. Evidence such as fossil evidence, which shows a clear progression between many types of organisms on the planet.
And yes, as another poster above mentioned, the term "Species" really is ill-defined. As for your apparent belief that organisms can't change over time (which is pretty much the entire point of evolution, be it natural selection or artificial selection)... well, have you ever seen a dog? I don't know about you, but the variation between a Pug and a Great Dane is pretty damn huge to me. It's not exactly a stretch to imagine that they can continue changing further until they have even less in common and be considered 2 different species. And we've seen the splintering of dogs and other animals, be it due to environmental factors or factors imposed by man. To say that microevolution is real but that macroevolution is not is almost silly. Macroevolution IS microevolution, just on a significantly longer time frame, and using a more persistent environmental variable to select the survivors of each subsequent generation.
@Zashi: BTW, Darwin DID use the term, but he used it as a metaphor. Your right about Spencer, but he didn't coin the term, he simply used it far more often and named one of his economic theories after it.
Aye, there's the rub: "Alternate beliefs".
This always gets me. That people seem to think that science is about belief and faith. You cannot have a theory without evidence, be it mathematical or physical. A theory without evidence is called a Hypothesis, and those have absolutely no business being taught to students. Someone above mentioned how string theory has no evidence. This is only partially true. It has no physical evidence, but the math says it's possible (proving it, of course, would require something more substantial). Science is not about beliefs. If you have actuall, verifiable data, then we can talk. In the absence of it, however, well, don't be surprised if the scientific community scoffs. Creationism is not a theory, it's a hypothesis, since creationists have been unable to produce enough factual evidence to support it. To teach is to students as an alternative explanation, and to tell them that there is serious debate in the scientific community over its validity, is academically dishonest.
Beliefs belong in a theological studies class, not in a science classroom.
You contradict yourself.
The facts HAVE supported evolution so far. We've witnessed microevolution in animal populations in our own lifetimes, and evidence suggests that macroevolution does indeed take place, which also fits mathematical models as well as... well, common sense. Survival of the fittest, natural selection, works with almost all of the data we have.
The issue about teaching creationism is that the science class room should be about giving students the verifiable facts which we have. The notion of "Letting the children decide" is absurd. They don't have the foundation in logical reasoning yet, nor do they have the resources to verify claims from both sides. Not to mention that facts are not subjective. If we took a vote on which is true, natural selection, or creationism, regardless of how we voted or what we think, that does not change the facts, and that does not change which is, in fact, true.
Creationism is not a "dissenting opinion" as they would have you believe. Creationism is anti-science. Instead of trying to prove their theory right, they try to prove that evolution is wrong, thinking that if they could, it MUST mean creationism is correct. But this is simply not how science works.
Facts do not prove themselves in a classroom, they prove themselves in peer reviewed journals, with copious amounts of data, and logical reasoning. If the Creationism/Intelligent Design movements had ANY of those criteria, then we could have a discussion of its merits. But since it does not, the point is moot, and trying to force it into classrooms, on impressionable students, who have not yet fully understood how science works is simply an underhanded gimmick, and does a disservice to both the scientific community as well as the education system.
So... if Google newsbot picked up the story about Google newsbot's near destruction of United Airlines... would that make it self-aware? :D [/joke]
Anyway, one interesting thing this story brings up is our over-reliance on automated systems... Googlebot picks up the old story, a financial firm's automated query systems sees the story as a recent one, the system spreads the story to its feeds, and it winds up as an alert in Bloomberg (the trading software, for those who've never worked with a trading firm) and other financial systems.
It's such a very fragile structure, wherein a single word can irrevocably alter the fate of a company, or even events around the world (butterfly effect, and a company like UA is a big butterfly). In the end, machines won't have to enslave mankind to take over the world. We've gladly handed them the keys and gone on vacation in the Bahamas...
Actually it was 20 seconds. The video isn't useful because the dust and debris cloud obscures much of the lower floors' collapse.
BTW, the ones who are saying it'd lose force seriously need to buy a newton's cradle... And whoever said that we should "try the experiment with Legos"... I just have no words for how completely stupid you are...
He's answering your question about why a demolition crew doesn't work that way. Try to keep up.
I'm not even going to bother to quote you because you've made it apparent that you know shit all about physics, so I'll just make some points before I proceed to ignore you like the troll you are:
1. I never said that mass causes it to accelerate the collapse, I said mass adds momentum. F=ma. Force = mass * acceleration. The acceleration is constant. I believe that the report cited it as being 40% that of freefall, so 3.92m/s^2. As more and more floors are broken through, the weight of the broken floor itself adds to the mass of the debris that's falling, and since almost every floor is made of, roughly, the same materials, and assuming the fall is constant, that means each time to a floor is broken, the force of the falling debris doubles. So the fifth floor that was broken, for example, had to try to brace 4 times the force of the first floor that broken. It's a linear increase in force as each subsequent floor collapses. This is not "alleged", this is not "a myth". This is simple high school physics, that anyone who's even remotely intelligent can apply to the situation.
2. As c6gunner pointed out, demolition crews don't do this because it leaves a lot up to chance, and they want the demolition to go as smoothly as possible.
3.
Ok, I lied, I had to quote your utter ignorance of anything relating to this topic. To put it simply, kinetic energy is the energy of a moving body. Potential energy is the energy of a stationary body. If you put a book on a shelf, that book now has potential energy equal to its height off of the floor. If it falls, that energy turns into kinetic energy. The mass that begins moving, which c6gunner refers to, is the collapsing upper floors.
Let me put it to you as such: A car stands on a hill, and someone pushes it so that it begins rolling. It's possible that, if you're at the top of the hill, and reach the car soon enough, you can stop the car again with little more effort than pushing it with your finger. Try that at the bottom of the hill though, and you'll get run over.
Now imagine that that car is also getting heavier as it goes downhill. The increased weight doesn't make it faster, but it DOES make it more difficult for something to stop it. Each floor of the WTC was a massive concrete slab. Those weigh A LOT. So assuming that the 3-5 floors that were actually on fire were the only ones weakened, the question because not whether the floor below can support those 3-5 floors, plus whatever was above them, the question is whether the floor below can withstand the IMPACT of that much weight. The answer, as any engineer, and even some high school physics students can tell you, is not a chance.
All of this being said, pancaking did not cause the collapse per se, pancaking basically just made it sudden and violent. The building was already inherently unstable due to the the heat expansion of vertical columns, due to warping of the materials, etc. Nothing had to "melt". Melting points are mostly irrelevant. Heat causes metals, such as steel, to be soft and pliable, as well as expanding them. The pancaking of the upper floors caused even more severe stresses on the support columns to warp even further until they could no longer cope with the massive and sudden strain they were under, and they gave way.
PS- Believe what you like, but your ignorance on the matter, in addition to your insistence that you are correct, makes you a card carrying conspiracy theorists.
Ugh, ok, I'm tired of this, so let me explain to you exactly how the building collapsed from my perspective, watching it across the Hudson a few miles away, and then seeing it up close on the news:
Pancaking, a term which you completely misunderstand, is the event which occurs when you cause the upper floors of a building to collapse suddenly. You question how the fire in the upper floors weakened the lower floors. The answer is that it didn't have to. When the upper floors gave way, they impacted the floors directly beneath them. The kinetic energy that is gained by those floors basically free falling 1 story down is immense, and this cause the floor beneath, also weakened by the fire, to collapse, and so on this process went until it reached low enough that the floor beneath the collapsing floors was undamaged by the impact or fire.
The problem though is two-fold: first of all, those collapsing upper floors sent a huge shockwave of compressing air down the elevator shafts and stairwells, blowing out the windows on the floors below and causing some very minor structural damage. No big deal, but it's what makes people think the lower floors were "blown out". The big thing is that by this point, the upper floors have gained such an incredible amount of momentum from their falling, which is only increasing with their mass, that the lower floors have no hope of "catching" them. I say "catching" because they're not supporting them, they have to stop them from a freefall, and stopping an object in motion, especially an object composed of tons of concrete and steel falling directly downward, requires more structural integrity than any skyscraper has.
This is why the Windsor building is a poor example. This event did not occur. It was the WTC's own height working against it, giving the collapsing segments more and more mass until it was enough energy to break through the structurally sound floors.
People who claim there should have been a core, or or more left of it are people who try to compare this to other events, and often lack an understanding of physics and engineering. ALL of the steel in the WTC towers did not have to melt or be weakened. Only a small portion, in a small area, had to be structurally weakened enough to give way. The rest is simply F=ma
People are STILL compared to Hitler on a daily basis. Believe me, Godwin's Law still holds very true...
On an electrical engineering exam a friend of mine took, one of the bonus questions asked one they use one particular formula for calculations now in lieu of a different one that was used a few years back.
His response was "Because 9/11 changed everything"
Monarch Butterflies? Really? Of ALL the amazingly psychotic and evil things Monsanto has done, THAT'S what makes you think they're evil? Personally, I find the creation and sale of Agent Orange to be more vile. It causes death and deformity in countless children, and affects countless more veterans of Vietnam and unknowing users of the herbicide. Internal memos showed that Monsanto was perfectly aware of its carcinogenic effects but did nothing to warn the public. Or how about the use of rBGH, a bovine growth hormone which cause the cows to grow sick and swollen in the udders. They produced more milk, but they didn't tell the farmers that the hormone could be passed onto consumers through the milk as well, and studies showed that the effect on humans is, surprise surprise, cancerous. This shit was sold in schools to children, and consumed by untold numbers throughout the country. When Fox news reporters tried to investigate this, Monsanto threatened to pull all of their advertising money from every single News Corp owned station. Fox chickened out, told the reporters to run an "edited" version, which didn't name Monsanto, didn't name rBGH, and didn't say it was cancerous. When the reporters tried to file for whistle blower status, the courts told them that "Publishing misleading news is not illegal" and denied them such status. And then, of course, the terminator seeds. Seeds that are genetically engineered to function for one harvest and one harvest only. The problem is that, first of all, this is absurd. you think the RIAA is bad? Imagine you purchase a CD and after you listen to each song once, the CD combusts in the drive ala Mission: Impossible, and you're told that you have to buy a new CD if you want to listen to those songs that you just bought again. and then there's cross pollination, where non-terminator seeds sometimes wander into neighboring farms. this is something that no farmer can really guard against, as this shit is carried by the wind and insects. So when Monsanto sees a farmer who's farm was cross-pollinated by plants from a neighboring Monsanto farm, they sue him for something he can't even do anything against. I agree that the GP's comment about Aushwitz is absurd, as there is no comparison. But that's not to say this isn't a different form of evil. and I will say this: If there is a corporation similar to the fictional Umbrella anywhere on Earth, it's Monsanto.
Fair summary I believe headcase.
Unfortunately the GP seems to completely misunderstand the purpose of the US having elections every 4 years. Next year, for better or for worse, a new "regime" takes office. Although violent revolutions are sometimes necessary, the GP seems to feel it's the only way anything gets done. It is not. As I said, if we keep having terrible administrations, if our economy keeps falling, if we keep finding more and more scandals in the next few administrations, and if we keep losing more and more civil liberties, then yes, eventually people will say "WTF?" and put a stop to it. But until then, while it's still possible to vote them out, then that's what we'll do.
Also, to everyone saying that the US armed forces would not attack civilians, I agree that MOST of them would not, if it were being made obvious... but you neglect mercenary armies. The number of "private security" organizations like Blackwater has swelled to an amazing number in the last few years, and they can hire from any nation, meaning that there is not necessarily an allegiance to the US. And in a few years when that situation only gets worse, when we begin privatizing our army, our intelligence services (Blackwater already has one and we use it), then it's only a matter of time until our own sword turns on us.
Yes, if Iraq, Vientam, and Korea have taught us anything, it is certainly that an organized army can remove insurgent groups in just a few days... right?
A single armed civilian isn't much of a threat. An armed populace is.
Do you honestly believe we'd use half of those things on our own populace? Also, do you honestly believe that the word "nuclear" has a "k" in it?
You miss the point.
First of all, it's BEEN done in this country: it was called the Civil War.
Second of all, we're still relatively democratic. Yes the last 8 years have been horrendous and plagued with awful shit, but this is not the first administration to have widespread corruption, just the most recent. The fact remains that the citizenry are still capable of changing the nation, and THAT is what's important. Do you really think that if we had a president who decided to dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court, that we'd sit idly by? You can argue that doing so over the course of several generations would accomplish the same ends without an uprising, but so long as it has not happened yet, there is no real need for it.
There is always a tipping point. A moment where an event occurs that changes the way we view ourselves and our role in the system. If the next election changes nothing, and the one after that, and the one after that, then there is a problem. But for now, it is not necessary to rise up and do anything more than speak our minds and let our dissent be heard. It is only when that is ignored that it is our civic responsibility as patriots to ensure that the government remembers that they are beholden to the people, and not the other way around.
Insurgent armies don't fight an organized army on fair ground. They don't fight them to win the battle. They fight wars of attrition.