Actually, contrary to the public image, drugs are not always suggested as a treatment.
There's this view, popular among people who dislike psychiatry, that at the first hint of anything ADHD related, out comes the prescription pad for Ritalin (or whatever's fashionable these days). Moreover, there's a notion that ADHD is diagnosed based on perfectly normal childhood traits.
There's a grain of truth to both beliefs. Some doctors (lousy ones) over-medicate. Some ADHD diagnoses are false positives. Some parents call their brats misbehaviour "ADD" as an excuse, often with no formal diagnosis and no genuine symptoms.
TFA suggests there's a lot more misdiagnoses than previously thought. But not all diagnoses of ADHD are wrong, nor is medication needed in all instances. There are plenty of people who do just fine with ADHD, sans medication, and plenty of doctors/parents/educators/whatever with enough sense to realize this. And by "do fine with ADHD" I don't mean do fine with a misdiagnosed version, I mean actual, genuine ADHD.
Not all of the traits it imparts are inherently detrimental. Some are mixed. Hyperfocusing (a common symptom) can be a problem in the wrong context, but an asset elsewhere. Most of the negative traits can be overcome with practice. It's really only the severe cases that actually need meds, and then often only during childhood.
(Yes, I have ADHD, and yes, it's a correct diagnosis in my case. It was also caught late. Never medicated, never needed to, and only one professional has seriously suggested I should consider doing so.)
The problem starts when you want to withdraw money to a bank to get cash - or buy something online which requires shipping.
Or do pretty much anything else with it. Really, try and find a way to actually use money garnered anonymously without leaving a trail for the courts to find.
Breaking a paper trail is damn difficult, and moreover tends to run into laws and agencies regarding money laundering. So if the people mentioned in the article had done so, they'd go from being pursued by Blizzard's lawyers to being pursued by the FBI, IRS or other TLAgency. Not really much of an improvement...
While part of me wants to agree with you, I feel I must point out a serious flaw in your logic.
The hardware needed to run 3/4 of the games offered on GOG is incredibly cheap. You could pick up an Internet capable PC able to run most old games they offer for less than the price of a Wii, and less still if you already had a monitor lying around to use.
For anyone who can run those $60 new releases, cost isn't going to be a problem. If you can drop a grand on hardware, half a hundred to buy a game is a drop in the bucket. Moreover, given the current length of the recession, and the average lifetime of PC hardware, most gamers will have upgraded since the recession began. I know I have.
As an appreciator of classic games, I applaud your efforts to use grand old games and keep yourself amused with gameplay rather than shiny graphics, but I can't agree with the logic you put forward re: new games piracy.
And 60 bucks is only the norm for some games. I've bought games on steam that were new, and cost me less than 20, which I feel is a much more reasonable price.
You're correct that the difference between a 60 dollar game and 20 dollar one is development costs. Bells and whistles aren't cheap. However, some lazy sod who gets the game off BT isn't paying those costs, whereas I am. My point about fewer legitimate users actually footing the bill stands.
If you loath DRMed software to such a degree, then don't buy it. I myself maintain a shitlist of games I will not touch for reasons of DRM. There are a few companies I've also taken a dislike to, for much the same reason. In this regard, I suspect you and I are of a similar mind, merely differing in how strongly we feel on the matter.
But I will say that piracy is not the solution. Don't buy or pirate the games that push your buttons DRM wise. By indie, or play freeware.
When the OP used the phrase "high quality" I read it to mean "expensive, technologically complex and with bells and whistles like voice acting/cut-scenes/whatever".
If your sole measure of quality is gameplay (and that's a damn good thing to base your judgment of a game on incidentally) then you don't need any of the above. Hell, there are games made fifteen years ago I still play. Bells and whistles don't age as well as core game mechanics.
All that being said, I would be a little sad to see the Starcraft 2's of the world die out, or migrate entirely to the consoles. So I'm going to back the person who wrote the article in the first place: Buy your games. I've no problem with people trying before they buy, or pirating abandonware they can't get legitimately (or otherwise unavailable through legal channels), or cracking games you own to get rid of obnoxious DRM schemes. But if all else is equal, we (the computer gaming community) should buy the damn things.
Because otherwise, the cost of making games gets spread around that many less legitimate customers, and I think the people who do pay have a right to be a little pissed off paying for someone else to play for free.
This is why we prefer the term "high temperature superconductor" over "room temperature". Superconductivity at 313K, if even possible, is still a damn big deal.
And for a lot of applications, anywhere near ambient temperature is good enough. If the cooling system needed is no more complex than a home AC unit, you've removed the primary drawback/limit on practical superconductors, namely the need for cyrogenic liquids.
Perma-slide is doable. But to do it, the game needs to lack some other features as well - notably a speedometer and any external cues to velocity (like lines or bits of space junk flying past you). You'd also really want to make the various "fixed" objects like planets move around in their orbits.
What most games don't model is the fact that there is no privileged frame of reference. You can't have a speedometer that doesn't use something external to compare itself to. Aircraft use airspeed measurements, cars measure the speed of the ground beneath them using wheel rotation. Both use the planet around them for their chosen "this is what I'll measure my speed against" reference frame.
In space, you've got nothing of the sort. Ether gave way to vacuum in our knowledge long before the first computer games. Yet modeling a virtual environment without a privileged reference frame is either impossible, or at least extraordinarily difficult. So the games treat space like a freefall atmosphere, complete with airspeed gauge.
Get rid of this, and you've made strides towards realism. At least feign a lack of privileged reference frames. Once you've got that, perma-sliding is easy, because your ship is never really standing still, it's just either coasting or accelerating.
Of course, as I prefaced my original post with, this is really, really hard to do.
Infrared also poses additional problems above and beyond what you've stated, because the light isn't coming from an external source.
Any hot object is going to radiate infrared radiation. That isn't something external being reflected off of it, that's coming from the surface of the radiating object itself. Infrared sensors work on contrast, so if you've got, say, a skin temperature object like a human being in a room temperature environment, it'll show up. Same applies for a room temperature object in an arctic environment - what matters is contrasting temperatures between the object to hide and the world around it.
So how do you mask this? Okay, you keep the infrared from escaping. Totally stopping it is impossible, but reducing it isn't, and "good enough" if it's reduced to the point where it no longer contrasts with its surroundings. Thing is, radiating heat is one of the ways internally heated objects (like human bodies) cool down, so depending on a number of factors, overheating will be an issue.
But you can lose heat in other ways. Conduction and convection dissipate more heat than radiation, at least in a terrestrial environment (space is another story). Except that the medium you're dumping heat into will itself heat up and start radiating in the IR spectrum, just like your hidden whatever would have. So you've mitigated the problem, but not eliminated it.
Now an important thing to note is that all of this applies to complete invisibility to IR. Partial stealth is another matter. Mitigating the problem is good enough if the intent is to make the job of whoever is looking for you harder. Stealth aircraft aren't invisible either, but are stealthy enough to give them an edge over the competition. OTOH, this pretty much kills any chance of making a Star Trek style cloaking device, especially if you want it to work in space.
Honestly? That's your objection, out of everything I wrote?
Okay. You make it so that under the "options" menu, there's a "controls" tab, which lets you do your own keybindings and save them. You know, like every single PC game made in the last decade and a half.
Second on the I-War example, and that actually did have a quite a lot of the features I listed in my hypothetical realistic space sim. Tracking weapons in a forward arc, Newtonian physics, realistic interplanetary distances (even if the actual combat was short ranged). Of course I mostly remember the sequel, not sure how much of that was in the first game. It's about as close to the ideal as any commercial space game I've played.
Freelancer managed mouse+keyboard just fine, and you want your hypothetical control scheme to require as few extraneous peripherals as possible. I know precisely one computer gamer who actually owns a functional joystick - I don't, and neither do a lot of people. And the reason FPS controls are popular is because they work reasonably well for what they do, and work with universally available hardware, hence why I suggested them.
But sure, add joystick support to the game, just don't require a joystick to play, or your audience is going to shrink drastically.
No, a good space game could be both realistic and awesome. It'd just be really, really hard to make.
Look, lets break it down. Purely Newtonian physics is doable. No speedometer, no throttle. WASD for acceleration (plus a couple keys to handle up and down), mouse for pitch and yaw. Turn the mouse to turn your ship, then hold a WASD button to accelerate in the direction specified. Stop accelerating and you fly on whatever trajectory you're on until you accelerate again. Limited delta-v (engines can't fire forever) but you make it so that it regenerates like weapon energy and shields when your engines are idle. Thrust for a player controlled small craft could be measured in 10s of Gs or more, with the pilot's survival in the face of such force handwaved as inertial compensation (a perfectly sensible tech if the setting includes generated gravity). You'd be able to radically change course quickly. Bonus points if the exhaust kills.
This would make landing and other finicky maneuvers tricky, which is why you'd include a good autopilot to handle those. In combat, you wouldn't run the risk of hitting much of anything, at least not if the distances were at all realistic, and the simple notion of pointing yourself toward the enemy and holding W to approach would be easy to understand. More complex maneuvers would be possible, like using side thrusters (A and D) to "jink" out of the way of incoming fire, or turning toward the enemy, hitting S to back up, cutting loose with your guns as you open up the distance.
Realistic distances are manageable without making things too small to see. Objects in the distance are automatically zoomed in for your convenience - a zoomed in representation overlays the ships location in your field of view - since even if your eyeball MK I can't see them, the ship's scopes surely can. Justify this by saying the pilot is actually experiencing spaceflight through something like a VR helmet or direct neural connection, and he/she is in a "virtual cockpit". This can also justify sound in space - the virtual interface is taking advantage of your ears as well as your eyes.
So you can see an object a thousand klicks away as clear as if it were right next door, and close the distance from a relative standstill very fast by pointing your nose at it and holding W. Now all you need are weapons. Make the guns fire in a forward arc, instead of straight ahead, make it such that you pick the target, line your nose up with it, let the guns lock on, and cut loose. Beam weapons could be made realistic, with lasers invisibly covering thousands of kilometers in hundredths of a second, and particle beams for the closer in work. Missiles could be kinetic kill weapons. ECM and ECCM would affect targeting accuracy, as would evasive action. Point defense guns would provide missile defense, and added offense at close range, without having to turn your ship about and bring your big guns to bear.
That would be realistic, at least up to a point. And it would be awesome.
Gonna chime in here and second (or third?) the sentiment that Steam is a good platform for older games. I've picked up at least three games there that I missed in stores, and that were on my bargain bin list. Couple others I probably wouldn't have considered at all if they either hadn't been cheap or on sale. And at least two games I only got after trying the demo on steam (hear that game companies? Demos work. Make them more often).
Apart from the older games, I've also taken a liking to some of the indie titles they have up, which is a habit I'd definitely recommend to anyone feeling a bit sick of the current crop of same-y titles offered by the majors.
And if the active sonar user is a surface ship and part of a fleet (as it was in the example I gave) then that sub is also toast. Torpedo launches give away your location too.
Why did I use a fleet of surface ships in my example? Because the GP was talking about using a chemical sensor to look for a sub, and to do that would require multiple detectors working together to ensure they make a complete sweep of the area. In the case of a surface fleet hunting a sub, a perfectly workable solution is active sonar, rather than an unproven hydrogen sensor, and your objection (that the sub could take out the detector with a torpedo) would only serve the seal the sub's fate.
(Note: this presumes anti-submarine capability on the part of the surface fleet. Which is kinda a given, if we're talking about a fleet of ships detailed to find enemy submarines.)
Even if you use all our nukes someone will still make it.
Depends on how you use them.
If the cold war had gone hot, most of those nukes would have been aimed at targets in the northern hemisphere, with several warheads per target (as insurance, in case some didn't launch, didn't work, or got shot down). Contrary to popular belief, most of the targets were military, rather than civilian - cities were a low priority, missile silos were a high priority, for reasons that should be obvious. Post nuclear losses due to radiation poisoning, starvation and infrastructure collapse would probably have been higher than the actually death toll inflicted by the bombs, and as you correctly say, people would survive. Contrary to some predictions, nuclear winter would not have been likely, but we didn't know that at the time.
Now, if you actually wanted to achieve total human genocide using the worlds current nuclear arsenal, I'm not at all sure you couldn't. Don't bother with the cities, just hit all the arable land, and let starvation take its course. Of course that is a very morbid thing to consider, and is sufficiently horrible, not to mention suicidal, that we'd never actually do it, but you were discussing whether it was possible, rather than whether it was likely.
Sure, if you had some way of searching the ocean for faint traces of hydrogen bubbles, and if said bubbles co-operated by not reacting with anything in the meantime. So far as I know we've never developed anything like that. Now, to put on my paranoid hat for a second, "so far as I know" could just mean that attempts to do this were classified, though I think the easier explanation is that nobody has bothered.
I don't want to say it isn't possible, because that's the sort of sentiment that invites the universe to prove me wrong, but lets just say it's a needle in a haystack sort of problem. You'd be looking for faint chemical trace over a vast area, with the trace in question being chemically reactive enough to virtually guarantee it won't linger. At a minimum, your solution would need to be used over a narrow search region.
Now, look at the problem from the opposite direction. Stealth under water is relative. A submarine, however well designed, however well commanded, can be found using existing methods, provided you know roughly where to look for it. Think of how many shipwrecks have been found by searching the general area they sunk, often decades or more after the fact. Now, factor in that those wrecks are on the ocean floor, meaning it's harder to spot them on active sonar than a sub, that the wrecks are utterly silent instead of just mostly silent, and that many of those wrecks were found using non-military hardware (meaning a few boats with active sonar pinging the ocean floor, instead of a fleet of warships and air-dropped sonar buoys).
The key concept here is knowing where to look. If all you know is that a sub is somewhere in the Atlantic, then you aren't going to have much luck finding it. If you know where to look, you don't need anything like a hypothetical hydrogen searching method when more straightforward options exist.
Not even a little. Nuke plants are noisy. This actually poses a problem aboard nuclear subs. Of course a carrier isn't stealthy to begin with, especially not if deployed in a battle group, so the reactor noise isn't relevant.
The GP asked why the navy would use a nuke if a gas turbine would do the job. Fuel is the biggest answer, as a nuclear reactor needs refueling infrequently, and removing the need for large fuel tanks leaves more room for other stuff - in the case of a carrier, the "other stuff" would include aviation fuel and munitions, two things needed in quantity. In the case of a sub, the reactor is desirable in that it lets you stay submerged more or less indefinitely, since you can electrolyze water for oxygen.
Other than those two situations (carriers and subs), naval nuclear reactors are uncommon for exactly the reason given at the beginning of the thread: cost.
Give me one reason why we shouldn't let parents guarantee the health of their child through fetal screening?
Were it possible, I would agree with you. It isn't. And isn't likely to be in the future either.
Look, your argument seems to be that: A) Serial killers possess a common mental illness. B) This illness is genetic (as in, 100% genetic with no other factors, like down syndrome) C) Prenatal screening will one day be able to test for this illness, allowing a serial killer to be aborted or fixed in utero.
Is this correct? Have I got your argument right?
Now, the problem with this is B. Serial killers likely do share a common, rare mental illness. There is no evidence that it is genetic. In point of fact, most mental illnesses aren't genetic to begin with, as they're non-selective traits.
Illnesses like down syndrome are the exception, not the rule. Down syndrome is 100% genetic, without fail. Autism (to use an example you yourself brought up) is more typical; we've known about it for decades now, studied it extensively, and still don't know for sure what causes it. It's likely a constellation of factors, possibly including more than one distinct diagnosis based on causes that we aren't yet equipped to identify.
In other words, and if you take nothing else from my post please, please understand this, it is very likely that no serial killer gene or genes exist. You cannot screen for genetic factors in a non-genetic illness.
Either we're not speaking the same language, or you're not listening. Or you're REALLY confused, and honestly think that serial killers all suffer from down syndrome. Regardless, judging by your inability to stay on the topic which you yourself started, I doubt that we can have a productive discussion.
He is, insofar as I can understand, stating that both down syndrome and psychopathy are genetic, and that as we can detect and prevent the former, so too should we be able to detect and prevent the latter. And I'm in agreement with you that this stance is an incorrect one, though likely for different reasons.
My personal qualm with is not an ethical one, but a practical one. I sincerely doubt that the propensity for being a serial killer can be linked to a single gene, and I'm not even sure it can be described as genetic. Put simply, I do not think we will ever be able to screen for and prevent such traits.
The comparison to down syndrome is fundamentally incorrect, as down syndrome is entirely determined by a minor mutation on the gamete cell before conception leading to chromosomal trisomy. Meaning it's entirely caused by genetic, and not environmental, factors. Even if there is a genetic complex shared by all serial killers (which there is no evidence to suggest that I am aware of), it is likely that environmental factors in the killer-to-be's upbringing play a bigger role.
Also known as "tunnel vision", and an excellent way to walk into fire hydrants if you forget to turn it off. I can see the lawsuits already.
X-ray vision
And we all despair, as the naughty bits of attractive ladies everywhere get cancer.
thermal vision
Thermographic cameras need to be cooled in order to pick up on heat signatures for objects at body temp. I sincerely hope your eyeball mounted version is well insulated, as the prospect of having one's vitreous fluid frozen solid is enough to make me wince.
And despite all this... Yeah, I want augmented vision too, dammit!:-P
Not sure how well biotech would work for fibreglass. Nylon is hydrocarbon derived, meaning it shares the same basic building blocks as carbon based life, so microorganisms can make use of it. Firbreglass is silicon based. So far as I know, nothing eats that.
Plus, the fibreglass itself is less of a problem than the lead contaminates. If you could weed out those, then you could probably bury the rest safely. So far as I know, bio-remediation of lead is problematic, since it can't be broken down or rendered harmless the way that, for example, petroleum products can.
Right, but see previous about the inability to hook the spine back up again. You're basically creating a short lived paraplegic monkey (short lived because of tissue rejection). If we could get around this, then we'd also have the capacity to reverse paralysis arising from a severed spine.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, contrary to the public image, drugs are not always suggested as a treatment.
There's this view, popular among people who dislike psychiatry, that at the first hint of anything ADHD related, out comes the prescription pad for Ritalin (or whatever's fashionable these days). Moreover, there's a notion that ADHD is diagnosed based on perfectly normal childhood traits.
There's a grain of truth to both beliefs. Some doctors (lousy ones) over-medicate. Some ADHD diagnoses are false positives. Some parents call their brats misbehaviour "ADD" as an excuse, often with no formal diagnosis and no genuine symptoms.
TFA suggests there's a lot more misdiagnoses than previously thought. But not all diagnoses of ADHD are wrong, nor is medication needed in all instances. There are plenty of people who do just fine with ADHD, sans medication, and plenty of doctors/parents/educators/whatever with enough sense to realize this. And by "do fine with ADHD" I don't mean do fine with a misdiagnosed version, I mean actual, genuine ADHD.
Not all of the traits it imparts are inherently detrimental. Some are mixed. Hyperfocusing (a common symptom) can be a problem in the wrong context, but an asset elsewhere. Most of the negative traits can be overcome with practice. It's really only the severe cases that actually need meds, and then often only during childhood.
(Yes, I have ADHD, and yes, it's a correct diagnosis in my case. It was also caught late. Never medicated, never needed to, and only one professional has seriously suggested I should consider doing so.)
The problem starts when you want to withdraw money to a bank to get cash - or buy something online which requires shipping.
Or do pretty much anything else with it. Really, try and find a way to actually use money garnered anonymously without leaving a trail for the courts to find.
Breaking a paper trail is damn difficult, and moreover tends to run into laws and agencies regarding money laundering. So if the people mentioned in the article had done so, they'd go from being pursued by Blizzard's lawyers to being pursued by the FBI, IRS or other TLAgency. Not really much of an improvement...
While part of me wants to agree with you, I feel I must point out a serious flaw in your logic.
The hardware needed to run 3/4 of the games offered on GOG is incredibly cheap. You could pick up an Internet capable PC able to run most old games they offer for less than the price of a Wii, and less still if you already had a monitor lying around to use.
For anyone who can run those $60 new releases, cost isn't going to be a problem. If you can drop a grand on hardware, half a hundred to buy a game is a drop in the bucket. Moreover, given the current length of the recession, and the average lifetime of PC hardware, most gamers will have upgraded since the recession began. I know I have.
As an appreciator of classic games, I applaud your efforts to use grand old games and keep yourself amused with gameplay rather than shiny graphics, but I can't agree with the logic you put forward re: new games piracy.
And 60 bucks is only the norm for some games. I've bought games on steam that were new, and cost me less than 20, which I feel is a much more reasonable price.
You're correct that the difference between a 60 dollar game and 20 dollar one is development costs. Bells and whistles aren't cheap. However, some lazy sod who gets the game off BT isn't paying those costs, whereas I am. My point about fewer legitimate users actually footing the bill stands.
If you loath DRMed software to such a degree, then don't buy it. I myself maintain a shitlist of games I will not touch for reasons of DRM. There are a few companies I've also taken a dislike to, for much the same reason. In this regard, I suspect you and I are of a similar mind, merely differing in how strongly we feel on the matter.
But I will say that piracy is not the solution. Don't buy or pirate the games that push your buttons DRM wise. By indie, or play freeware.
When the OP used the phrase "high quality" I read it to mean "expensive, technologically complex and with bells and whistles like voice acting/cut-scenes/whatever".
If your sole measure of quality is gameplay (and that's a damn good thing to base your judgment of a game on incidentally) then you don't need any of the above. Hell, there are games made fifteen years ago I still play. Bells and whistles don't age as well as core game mechanics.
All that being said, I would be a little sad to see the Starcraft 2's of the world die out, or migrate entirely to the consoles. So I'm going to back the person who wrote the article in the first place: Buy your games. I've no problem with people trying before they buy, or pirating abandonware they can't get legitimately (or otherwise unavailable through legal channels), or cracking games you own to get rid of obnoxious DRM schemes. But if all else is equal, we (the computer gaming community) should buy the damn things.
Because otherwise, the cost of making games gets spread around that many less legitimate customers, and I think the people who do pay have a right to be a little pissed off paying for someone else to play for free.
Implying AC doesn't use cryogenic liquids.
They don't. Not all refrigerants are cryogenic liquids.
This is why we prefer the term "high temperature superconductor" over "room temperature". Superconductivity at 313K, if even possible, is still a damn big deal.
And for a lot of applications, anywhere near ambient temperature is good enough. If the cooling system needed is no more complex than a home AC unit, you've removed the primary drawback/limit on practical superconductors, namely the need for cyrogenic liquids.
Perma-slide is doable. But to do it, the game needs to lack some other features as well - notably a speedometer and any external cues to velocity (like lines or bits of space junk flying past you). You'd also really want to make the various "fixed" objects like planets move around in their orbits.
What most games don't model is the fact that there is no privileged frame of reference. You can't have a speedometer that doesn't use something external to compare itself to. Aircraft use airspeed measurements, cars measure the speed of the ground beneath them using wheel rotation. Both use the planet around them for their chosen "this is what I'll measure my speed against" reference frame.
In space, you've got nothing of the sort. Ether gave way to vacuum in our knowledge long before the first computer games. Yet modeling a virtual environment without a privileged reference frame is either impossible, or at least extraordinarily difficult. So the games treat space like a freefall atmosphere, complete with airspeed gauge.
Get rid of this, and you've made strides towards realism. At least feign a lack of privileged reference frames. Once you've got that, perma-sliding is easy, because your ship is never really standing still, it's just either coasting or accelerating.
Of course, as I prefaced my original post with, this is really, really hard to do.
Infrared also poses additional problems above and beyond what you've stated, because the light isn't coming from an external source.
Any hot object is going to radiate infrared radiation. That isn't something external being reflected off of it, that's coming from the surface of the radiating object itself. Infrared sensors work on contrast, so if you've got, say, a skin temperature object like a human being in a room temperature environment, it'll show up. Same applies for a room temperature object in an arctic environment - what matters is contrasting temperatures between the object to hide and the world around it.
So how do you mask this? Okay, you keep the infrared from escaping. Totally stopping it is impossible, but reducing it isn't, and "good enough" if it's reduced to the point where it no longer contrasts with its surroundings. Thing is, radiating heat is one of the ways internally heated objects (like human bodies) cool down, so depending on a number of factors, overheating will be an issue.
But you can lose heat in other ways. Conduction and convection dissipate more heat than radiation, at least in a terrestrial environment (space is another story). Except that the medium you're dumping heat into will itself heat up and start radiating in the IR spectrum, just like your hidden whatever would have. So you've mitigated the problem, but not eliminated it.
Now an important thing to note is that all of this applies to complete invisibility to IR. Partial stealth is another matter. Mitigating the problem is good enough if the intent is to make the job of whoever is looking for you harder. Stealth aircraft aren't invisible either, but are stealthy enough to give them an edge over the competition. OTOH, this pretty much kills any chance of making a Star Trek style cloaking device, especially if you want it to work in space.
Honestly? That's your objection, out of everything I wrote?
Okay. You make it so that under the "options" menu, there's a "controls" tab, which lets you do your own keybindings and save them. You know, like every single PC game made in the last decade and a half.
Second on the I-War example, and that actually did have a quite a lot of the features I listed in my hypothetical realistic space sim. Tracking weapons in a forward arc, Newtonian physics, realistic interplanetary distances (even if the actual combat was short ranged). Of course I mostly remember the sequel, not sure how much of that was in the first game. It's about as close to the ideal as any commercial space game I've played.
Freelancer managed mouse+keyboard just fine, and you want your hypothetical control scheme to require as few extraneous peripherals as possible. I know precisely one computer gamer who actually owns a functional joystick - I don't, and neither do a lot of people. And the reason FPS controls are popular is because they work reasonably well for what they do, and work with universally available hardware, hence why I suggested them.
But sure, add joystick support to the game, just don't require a joystick to play, or your audience is going to shrink drastically.
No, a good space game could be both realistic and awesome. It'd just be really, really hard to make.
Look, lets break it down. Purely Newtonian physics is doable. No speedometer, no throttle. WASD for acceleration (plus a couple keys to handle up and down), mouse for pitch and yaw. Turn the mouse to turn your ship, then hold a WASD button to accelerate in the direction specified. Stop accelerating and you fly on whatever trajectory you're on until you accelerate again. Limited delta-v (engines can't fire forever) but you make it so that it regenerates like weapon energy and shields when your engines are idle. Thrust for a player controlled small craft could be measured in 10s of Gs or more, with the pilot's survival in the face of such force handwaved as inertial compensation (a perfectly sensible tech if the setting includes generated gravity). You'd be able to radically change course quickly. Bonus points if the exhaust kills.
This would make landing and other finicky maneuvers tricky, which is why you'd include a good autopilot to handle those. In combat, you wouldn't run the risk of hitting much of anything, at least not if the distances were at all realistic, and the simple notion of pointing yourself toward the enemy and holding W to approach would be easy to understand. More complex maneuvers would be possible, like using side thrusters (A and D) to "jink" out of the way of incoming fire, or turning toward the enemy, hitting S to back up, cutting loose with your guns as you open up the distance.
Realistic distances are manageable without making things too small to see. Objects in the distance are automatically zoomed in for your convenience - a zoomed in representation overlays the ships location in your field of view - since even if your eyeball MK I can't see them, the ship's scopes surely can. Justify this by saying the pilot is actually experiencing spaceflight through something like a VR helmet or direct neural connection, and he/she is in a "virtual cockpit". This can also justify sound in space - the virtual interface is taking advantage of your ears as well as your eyes.
So you can see an object a thousand klicks away as clear as if it were right next door, and close the distance from a relative standstill very fast by pointing your nose at it and holding W. Now all you need are weapons. Make the guns fire in a forward arc, instead of straight ahead, make it such that you pick the target, line your nose up with it, let the guns lock on, and cut loose. Beam weapons could be made realistic, with lasers invisibly covering thousands of kilometers in hundredths of a second, and particle beams for the closer in work. Missiles could be kinetic kill weapons. ECM and ECCM would affect targeting accuracy, as would evasive action. Point defense guns would provide missile defense, and added offense at close range, without having to turn your ship about and bring your big guns to bear.
That would be realistic, at least up to a point. And it would be awesome.
Gonna chime in here and second (or third?) the sentiment that Steam is a good platform for older games. I've picked up at least three games there that I missed in stores, and that were on my bargain bin list. Couple others I probably wouldn't have considered at all if they either hadn't been cheap or on sale. And at least two games I only got after trying the demo on steam (hear that game companies? Demos work. Make them more often).
Apart from the older games, I've also taken a liking to some of the indie titles they have up, which is a habit I'd definitely recommend to anyone feeling a bit sick of the current crop of same-y titles offered by the majors.
We're not talking about irradiating the arable land with dirty bombs here. We're talking about glassing it. Chernobyl didn't accomplish that.
And if the active sonar user is a surface ship and part of a fleet (as it was in the example I gave) then that sub is also toast. Torpedo launches give away your location too.
Why did I use a fleet of surface ships in my example? Because the GP was talking about using a chemical sensor to look for a sub, and to do that would require multiple detectors working together to ensure they make a complete sweep of the area. In the case of a surface fleet hunting a sub, a perfectly workable solution is active sonar, rather than an unproven hydrogen sensor, and your objection (that the sub could take out the detector with a torpedo) would only serve the seal the sub's fate.
(Note: this presumes anti-submarine capability on the part of the surface fleet. Which is kinda a given, if we're talking about a fleet of ships detailed to find enemy submarines.)
Even if you use all our nukes someone will still make it.
Depends on how you use them.
If the cold war had gone hot, most of those nukes would have been aimed at targets in the northern hemisphere, with several warheads per target (as insurance, in case some didn't launch, didn't work, or got shot down). Contrary to popular belief, most of the targets were military, rather than civilian - cities were a low priority, missile silos were a high priority, for reasons that should be obvious. Post nuclear losses due to radiation poisoning, starvation and infrastructure collapse would probably have been higher than the actually death toll inflicted by the bombs, and as you correctly say, people would survive. Contrary to some predictions, nuclear winter would not have been likely, but we didn't know that at the time.
Now, if you actually wanted to achieve total human genocide using the worlds current nuclear arsenal, I'm not at all sure you couldn't. Don't bother with the cities, just hit all the arable land, and let starvation take its course. Of course that is a very morbid thing to consider, and is sufficiently horrible, not to mention suicidal, that we'd never actually do it, but you were discussing whether it was possible, rather than whether it was likely.
Sure, if you had some way of searching the ocean for faint traces of hydrogen bubbles, and if said bubbles co-operated by not reacting with anything in the meantime. So far as I know we've never developed anything like that. Now, to put on my paranoid hat for a second, "so far as I know" could just mean that attempts to do this were classified, though I think the easier explanation is that nobody has bothered.
I don't want to say it isn't possible, because that's the sort of sentiment that invites the universe to prove me wrong, but lets just say it's a needle in a haystack sort of problem. You'd be looking for faint chemical trace over a vast area, with the trace in question being chemically reactive enough to virtually guarantee it won't linger. At a minimum, your solution would need to be used over a narrow search region.
Now, look at the problem from the opposite direction. Stealth under water is relative. A submarine, however well designed, however well commanded, can be found using existing methods, provided you know roughly where to look for it. Think of how many shipwrecks have been found by searching the general area they sunk, often decades or more after the fact. Now, factor in that those wrecks are on the ocean floor, meaning it's harder to spot them on active sonar than a sub, that the wrecks are utterly silent instead of just mostly silent, and that many of those wrecks were found using non-military hardware (meaning a few boats with active sonar pinging the ocean floor, instead of a fleet of warships and air-dropped sonar buoys).
The key concept here is knowing where to look. If all you know is that a sub is somewhere in the Atlantic, then you aren't going to have much luck finding it. If you know where to look, you don't need anything like a hypothetical hydrogen searching method when more straightforward options exist.
To minimize sound possibly?
Not even a little. Nuke plants are noisy. This actually poses a problem aboard nuclear subs. Of course a carrier isn't stealthy to begin with, especially not if deployed in a battle group, so the reactor noise isn't relevant.
The GP asked why the navy would use a nuke if a gas turbine would do the job. Fuel is the biggest answer, as a nuclear reactor needs refueling infrequently, and removing the need for large fuel tanks leaves more room for other stuff - in the case of a carrier, the "other stuff" would include aviation fuel and munitions, two things needed in quantity. In the case of a sub, the reactor is desirable in that it lets you stay submerged more or less indefinitely, since you can electrolyze water for oxygen.
Other than those two situations (carriers and subs), naval nuclear reactors are uncommon for exactly the reason given at the beginning of the thread: cost.
Give me one reason why we shouldn't let parents guarantee the health of their child through fetal screening?
Were it possible, I would agree with you. It isn't. And isn't likely to be in the future either.
Look, your argument seems to be that:
A) Serial killers possess a common mental illness.
B) This illness is genetic (as in, 100% genetic with no other factors, like down syndrome)
C) Prenatal screening will one day be able to test for this illness, allowing a serial killer to be aborted or fixed in utero.
Is this correct? Have I got your argument right?
Now, the problem with this is B. Serial killers likely do share a common, rare mental illness. There is no evidence that it is genetic. In point of fact, most mental illnesses aren't genetic to begin with, as they're non-selective traits.
Illnesses like down syndrome are the exception, not the rule. Down syndrome is 100% genetic, without fail. Autism (to use an example you yourself brought up) is more typical; we've known about it for decades now, studied it extensively, and still don't know for sure what causes it. It's likely a constellation of factors, possibly including more than one distinct diagnosis based on causes that we aren't yet equipped to identify.
In other words, and if you take nothing else from my post please, please understand this, it is very likely that no serial killer gene or genes exist. You cannot screen for genetic factors in a non-genetic illness.
Either we're not speaking the same language, or you're not listening. Or you're REALLY confused, and honestly think that serial killers all suffer from down syndrome. Regardless, judging by your inability to stay on the topic which you yourself started, I doubt that we can have a productive discussion.
He is, insofar as I can understand, stating that both down syndrome and psychopathy are genetic, and that as we can detect and prevent the former, so too should we be able to detect and prevent the latter. And I'm in agreement with you that this stance is an incorrect one, though likely for different reasons.
My personal qualm with is not an ethical one, but a practical one. I sincerely doubt that the propensity for being a serial killer can be linked to a single gene, and I'm not even sure it can be described as genetic. Put simply, I do not think we will ever be able to screen for and prevent such traits.
The comparison to down syndrome is fundamentally incorrect, as down syndrome is entirely determined by a minor mutation on the gamete cell before conception leading to chromosomal trisomy. Meaning it's entirely caused by genetic, and not environmental, factors. Even if there is a genetic complex shared by all serial killers (which there is no evidence to suggest that I am aware of), it is likely that environmental factors in the killer-to-be's upbringing play a bigger role.
zoom
Also known as "tunnel vision", and an excellent way to walk into fire hydrants if you forget to turn it off. I can see the lawsuits already.
X-ray vision
And we all despair, as the naughty bits of attractive ladies everywhere get cancer.
thermal vision
Thermographic cameras need to be cooled in order to pick up on heat signatures for objects at body temp. I sincerely hope your eyeball mounted version is well insulated, as the prospect of having one's vitreous fluid frozen solid is enough to make me wince.
And despite all this... Yeah, I want augmented vision too, dammit! :-P
Not sure how well biotech would work for fibreglass. Nylon is hydrocarbon derived, meaning it shares the same basic building blocks as carbon based life, so microorganisms can make use of it. Firbreglass is silicon based. So far as I know, nothing eats that.
Plus, the fibreglass itself is less of a problem than the lead contaminates. If you could weed out those, then you could probably bury the rest safely. So far as I know, bio-remediation of lead is problematic, since it can't be broken down or rendered harmless the way that, for example, petroleum products can.
Right, but see previous about the inability to hook the spine back up again. You're basically creating a short lived paraplegic monkey (short lived because of tissue rejection). If we could get around this, then we'd also have the capacity to reverse paralysis arising from a severed spine.