>>> Don't you think the way for the US to really ensure its population's security >>> would be to try to track down the arsenal of the former USSR? > > Don't you think Putin ought to take nuclear security more seriously?
Yes. But it's stupid to argue whose job it is to close the barn door while the horse is walking out it.
I'd much rather have the US taxpayers (i.e., me) pay for securing ex-USSR nuclear material than not have it secured at all. We can complain that Putin should pay for it---and maybe he should---but we'd be idiots to let large amounts of nuclear material lie around unsecured because of a squabble over what is quite frankly a tiny amount of money in comparison to our other spending.
Some of your rant seems to be a little misinformed. Beyond what others have already pointed out...
> WoTC tried to duplicate that by soliciting submissions from everyone and creating a new line > based on their original home grown idea. They had judges, a competition, etc. I'm surprised > Fox didn't air it. Forgotten Realms was far from dead, and many continued to enjoy playing > in it. They decided to abandon what was working
FR is far from dead - WotC has by no means abandoned it, and it just makes you look silly to claim otherwise. Take a look at the upcoming products - most are generic, one is FR-specific, and one is Eberron-specific. That's pretty typical.
Just because Eberron has been added doesn't mean FR has been removed. Classic false dilemma fallacy.
> Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down > for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability.
Sorry, but you're being way fanboyish.
I like GURPS quite a bit, so I'm hardly "anti-GURPS", but saying it beats any other RPG for simplicity and playability is just not believable. I could never get a game started because almost all the gamers I knew found GURPS way too complicated and too hard to play.
Indeed, that's a key reason GURPS has languished in obscurity for so long, while White Wolf's games became so big---they're so much simpler to understand and play.
More than that, though, a serious problem that GURPS has always had is confusing realistic with complicated. There are detailed rules for all kinds of things, but if you actually check the results of those rules against reality---which I did as a hobby for a while---you'll find they often fail badly. In fact, the fact that the rules are highly detailed often makes them less realistic than more abstract rules, since the "well, maybe this is the reason" explanations that work for abstract rules (e.g., "-6 to hit at long range") are excluded by the greater detail in the GURPS rules (e.g., "-2 for speed + -3 for range + 1 for size + -2 for evasiveness + -1 for light +...").
If you really think GURPS is "realistic", you haven't checked the rules against reality. A great many of them have all the hallmarks of being arbitrary decisions that fail to model the real world.
Now, that doesn't mean GURPS isn't a good system; it just means that if you say it's "hands down" the simplest, most playable, most realistic system out there, well, be prepared to have very few people agree with you, and for very good reasons.
(Keep in mind, I quite like GURPS, but I'm objective enough to recognize these problems. They're not enough to ruin the system for me, but they are for the large majority of gamers. It's worth a try, but don't be surprised if it's not to your taste.
As an aside, it's interesting to note that I've never seen RPG partisans quite so loyal as GURPS fans. I suspect the complexity of the system appeals to a certain type, some of whom feel a fierce pride in having mastered a "superior" system. Reminds me of the more obnoxious "l33t Linux h4x0rs" sometimes. Not the parent poster, just others I've seen.)
> Also, regarding the modern purpose built systems, you will find a lot of ninjutsu in them.
Sambo appears to have no tie to ninjutsu, and yet is very definitely a modern, purpose-built system (and an effective one at that). Neither, it appears, does Krav Maga.
So your claim seems unlikely, unless you mean they contain similar-but-not-derived-from-ninjutsu techniques, which is more possible.
> then visit n Aikido School with a well known Master and get yoour assumptins corrected.
Which assumptions, that size and strength matter in addition to skill, attitude, and training? How, pray tell, would your supposed "demonstration" prove or disprove that?
That more esoteric arts like Aikido have been tested in mostly-realistic conditions like MMA tournaments and found weak is relatively strong evidence that said arts are not as combat-effective as they like to believe. Indeed, the fact that martial arts built for soldiers (Sambo, Krav Maga, Combato,...) are much more similar to the mixed martial arts found in these tournaments than to Aikido strongly suggests that those most closely involved in the "to the death fights" you insist are the only true test have found much more value in MMA than in Aikido.
>>> Fighting is extremely useful for evaluating one's own abilities as well as the usefulness of particular techniques. > > No body doubts this. But in your parent post you wrote: only those who do real fights > can be good, all others must be worse.
I've never said any such thing, and you sound foolish and sloppy for asserting otherwise.
> When you do martial arts seriously: you get BETTER EVERY YEAR. You have the climax of > your "fighting" abilities just a few weeks before you die
Really?
"According to his wife Linda, he had no wish to live to a ripe old age because he could not stand the idea of losing the physical abilities he had strived so hard to achieve." (among others)
When a person ages, they get slower---both muscularly and nerve responses---they get less flexible, they get weaker, they get less coordinated, and in general they become less and less able to fight effectively. Even the fiercely loyal BJJ guys insist their father is the best ever, not the best currently---80 years of martial arts training is, sadly, no match for 90 years of aging.
From your posts, you sound like a very stereotypical "physical conditioning doesn't matter, only technique matters!!" martial artist---emphasis on the "art" part. While it's true that skill and technique can overcome deficits in size, strength, and physical ability, pretending that those latter qualities don't matter at all is simply self-delusion.
> So, how many fights did you survive so far? I mean, all your opponents are dead, aren't they?
How is this "Insightful"? This is just the old "excluded middle" fallacy---falsely claiming that nothing other than to-the-death fights are useful for training or evaluating martial arts, so all modern martial arts must be equally lacking in that regard.
This, of course, is nonsense. Fighting is extremely useful for evaluating one's own abilities as well as the usefulness of particular techniques. Certainly, the closer the fighting is to "real" fighting the better, but it's obvious to anyone who gives it a moment's thought that few-rules fights (like most mixed martial arts competitions) will be much more valuable than pure sport-fighting (like most karate and tae kwon do schools do) which in turn will be much more valuable than the kind of scripted dance that aikido does.
It's just like fighter pilots and on-the-ground cockpit simulations---they're not as good as the real thing, but they're a whole lot better than nothing.
> And while there isn't any chain link fence running for you, there's some wall > climbing and poison dart action in this old video near the end.
This movie is utterly unimpressive. For a start, the "jumping up into a high tree" stunt at the end---the only potentially-amazing part---is jumping DOWN played in reverse. (Watch it a few times, you'll see this---I picked up on it immediately because it's related to my area of research.) Plus, the "bashing head bloody to prove determination" thing at the beginning is also faked - you'd be able to see blood on the guy's forehead if there was as much as the blood spot on the wall suggests.
Other than that, it's basically all scripted demos, which are nothing more than what you'd see in any martial arts flick, and 5 seconds of climbing up a rough wall that anyone I know who does rock climbing could scale.
Totally uninspiring. If this "ninja master" is at all associated with this movie, I find any amazing claims about him highly unlikely.
> you seem to be conflating computer science with the IT field.
Nah - I'm just lazy and "IT" is shorter than "computer science".:)
I agree, though, computer science is not needed by most "CS" jobs. Software engineering would make a whole lot more sense---most of these jobs are not about the science of computation---but a solid way to teach that hasn't been worked out yet. It's in progress at various places, though (and, no, I don't mean ITT/DeVry). I think it'll be good when there's the option for a more professionally-oriented degree as well as a more research-oriented degree, similar to mechanical engineering vs. physics.
Regardless, that's no excuse for mistreating one's employees.
> You believe a vehicle should crumple. Correct for most cars. In this case, the barrier will.
If you believe that your H1 will smash blithely through all barriers, you're an idiot.
Not an "I disagree with you and am calling you names" idiot, but an actual "you have a subnormal IQ in the range technically referred to as 'idiot'" idiot.
Now, an H1 may well smash through more barriers than most civilian vehicles, but it is deeply stupid to assume it will smash through them all---it's unlikely it would come off well from a high-velocity impact with a telephone pole, for example, or a concrete retaining wall, or a rock embankment, or several other things that are pretty common on day-to-day drives. (Keep in mind, the faster you're going the more damage even something you can smash through will do to you - at high speed, even water will crush metal.)
Hitting that concrete wall at some speed will probably be extremely dangerous in an H1, even if the wall does break---there's a good chance the passenger compartment will suffer damage, and---even if it doesn't---the extremely stiff vehicle will make for a very short impact and (hence) extremely high impulses imparted to the passengers (i.e., very high danger of whiplash or similar injuries). In a car with crumple zones, said zones will crumple, prolonging the duration of the impact, reducing the impulses imparted to the passengers, and significantly reducing the chance of injury.
At any rate, I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it think. You are wrong about this, and I've given you enough details and enough links to read up on this and see for yourself how mistaken you are about vehicular safety. If you choose to remain ignorant, hopefully you only endanger yourself.
> Of course, this is purely educated speculation, and I'd certainly like to hear other explanations.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".
Out of millions of cars sold, the Law of Large Numbers means that statistically-unlikely things are likely to happen at least a few times. If (as appears to be the case) it is statistically unlikely that a handful of Toyotas are less reliable than a handful of GMs, then the odds of that happening for a few of the millions of car-observers in the world is much more likely.
Look up "Law of Large Numbers" (third meaning) for a more-plausible alternative explanation.
> Canadians own more guns per capita than people from the US. Bring it on!
False. Per-capita gun ownership in the US is about 3 times higher than in Canada.
Regardless of whether it's higher or lower, though, I'd rather you left it there than brought it on; call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather trade dollars than bullets.
> It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to modify the MIT program to use this > new anti-robot robot to write papers that this anti-robot robot would not be able to detect.
For this specific algorithm, sure. In general, however, it may be intractable.
It's similar to the basis of cryptography---some functions are easy to compute in one direction, but extremely hard to reverse. Consider, for example, a hash-based checksum; it's easy to tell whether the checksum is correct, but extremely hard to create a C file with a specified checksum that also compiles to sensible code.
Similarly, it may be easy to determine whether a document is machine-written, but extremely hard to machine-write a document that has appropriate low-level structure (i.e., compiles) but also has correct high-level structure (i.e., does not look machine-written), even if the checking algorithms are known.
(Of course, finding such testing algorithms may be highly non-trivial.)
> I would take on a concrete wall with much less fear than in a Japanese car or modern crappy SUV Hummer clone.
Sadly, that only goes to show how little you know about vehicular safety.
Modern cars are specifically designed to crumple in an accident---read up on crumple zones. The damage to the car slows down the collision, which means less damaging impact occurs to the people inside the car.
It's exactly the same idea as is behind a motorcycle helmet---they're designed to break in a crash, so the energy of the crash is expended in deforming the helmet rather than your skull. Your (mistaken) belief that a stiff vehicle like a hummer is safer is just as foolish as saying that a solid-steel helmet would be safer than a real motorcycle helmet. The steel one wouldn't break, but it would transfer the force efficiently to your head, so you might well break.
That's not the only problem with a hummer, either; a related problem is that, since the whole vehicle is stiff, if it is involved in a fierce enough collision that some deformation must occur (i.e., a strong wall or another large vehicle), the weak point where that deformation occurs is more likely to be in the passenger compartment---which is where you least want it to be---than in the engine compartment or somewhere similar.
Ironically, when you scoff at a car for suffering damage in a crash, you're laughing at a safety feature---the car suffers damage so you don't have to. If you actually do care about safety, you might want to do some reading---you have some very severe misconceptions.
Forget recruitment into IT for a moment; how is retention in the field?
Are older, more experienced professionals valued for their ability, or spurned for their unwillingness to work 60-hour weeks?
Are IT professionals continuing through a long career in the field, or are they burning out and leaving after 5-10 years?
Is the unmet demand a fundamental problem with supply, or with the price employers are willing to pay, both in terms of wages and in terms of working conditions?
It often sounds (and experts say) that IT in North America is practicing something akin to slash-and-burn agriculture---get the fresh new CS grads, work them like dogs, and throw them away when they burn out 10 years later. (EA---the whole game industry, really---for example, is infamous for this.) Just like slash-and-burn agriculture, burn-and-churn IT is unsustainable, and an inefficient use of resources.
If employees don't want to work for your industry, maybe the problem isn't with the employees.
> String theory is fully compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are actually constant.
It's also, presumably, compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are not constant. If that's the case, then non-constant constants provides trouble for some other theories but not for string theory, making it more likely that string theory is correct.
Basically, you're making an incorrect logical argument. The article is saying...
if (non-const) then (string theory)
...you're taking this to mean...
if (string theory) then (non-const)
...which does not follow. It's the ol' "if A implies B then B implies A" error.
> But say we take, I dunno, the whole planet...and just douse it in some radiation. > > Transiently accelerate evolution, yanno?
If by "transiently accelerate evolution" you mean "give lots of people cancer", then that'd probably work quite well. If you're looking for something more beneficial to humanity than millions of people dying in agony, well, I think you'd best keep looking.
Don't think that because animals can survive in the region it's somehow beneficial to them. They'd still survive and populate the region if you took a machete and hacked pieces off of each animal, but they wouldn't be "improved" by the process. "Crippled but alive" is an improvement over dead, but it's a far cry from "whole and healthy".
No - most people just don't care about computers all that much.
Do you expect people to tinker with their cars? Do you expect people to tinker with their television's wiring? Do you expect people to tinker with their plumbing?
Then why would you expect people to tinker with their computers? For most people, a computer is an appliance, and deserving of no more tinkering than a tv. You can whine about people being "not ready" for computers all you want, but that won't change the basic fact that mature technologies don't need to be babied to function properly.
It isn't people that aren't ready; it's computers.
> Seriously, if people are so adamant about making other people aware of the advantages of Linux
But many of the worst offenders aren't all that interested in spreading the benefits of Linux, and are mostly interested in feeling smugly superior.
This isn't a problem confined to Linux users either, though - I've know people in certain cult-like evangelical Christian groups who---while they claimed to want to spread Christianity---mostly just enjoyed feeling smugly superior because only they had the real Christianity.
Basically, some people are dicks, and an opportunity to be different---which they can delude themselves into thinking means "better"---attracts them like flies to feces. They're loud and make quite an impression, so frankly the onus is on the rest of their broader community to either muzzle them or distance them from the community.
> In internet forums some Linuxers will tell you to RTFM, and some Windowsers will tell > you they don't consult for free. I don't see a heck of a lot of difference
The difference is social graces.
It's like if you're visiting two cities and ask for street directions. In city W, people who don't help you say "I'm sorry, I can't help you." I city L, people say "FUCKING TOURIST GET THE HELL OUT OF MY CITY!".
Technically, these statements are functionally equivalent in terms of giving you directions, but which city do you think is going to leave a better impression on visitors? There's more to human communication than the number of bits of relevant information transferred.
> a locked tire will slow you down faster than ABS in many circumstances.
Not only wrong, but dangerously wrong. This is the kind of incorrect belief that can get people killed.
For car tires, static friction (i.e., when the tire is rolling) is almost always significantly higher than dynamic friction (i.e., when the tire is skidding). In other words, skidding tires brake slower than rolling tires.
ABS makes your car more controllable; it also makes your car stop faster. This is, in almost all situations, not a tradeoff---ABS is simply flat-out better than non-ABS in all meaningful ways.
> I'm not wrong. Canada is the 7th biggest consumer of oil, sure. But it's consumption is > absolutely dwarfed by those above it (and oil is only part of the greenhouse-gas equation).
Yes, actually, you are wrong, for much the same reason people are wrong when they say "it doesn't matter if I recycle, I'm just one person". The effect of one person recycling is multiplied by them being seen to be recycling, and hence providing the last piece of motivation needed to get someone else to recycle, who then motivates people himself, and so on. It's---potentially---a snowball process, meaning that small changes early in the reaction chain will have large effects later on, possibly even determining whether the chain reaction of motivation is self-sustaining.
Moreover, global warming is a cumulative effect to an unstable system, meaning that---since small changes in input can produce large changes in output---small physical changes have a magnified importance, much like the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
As for your other argument, Canada is the 7th-largest consumer of energy of all types, oil or otherwise. While a large portion of that is clean hydroelectric, a substantial portion is greenhouse-causing natural gas, often used to produce oil from the tarsands. Canada certainly can't solve the problem solely by cutting its own emissions, but then again neither can the US---even if it ceased to exist entirely, China and India are rapidly catching up in terms of pollution volume, and will soon surpass the US without some kind of international framework for limiting emissions.
Now, you might argue that the particulars of the Kyoto framework are poorly thought out---and you might well be right---but some international framework needs to exist, and relatively soon. IMHO, the most important part of Kyoto is simply making that international cooperation on global warming more likely.
> Canada is pretty much invisible on the world stage... sorry, that's just the way it is.
You speak with great confidence about the world stage, but you don't seem to know much about it.
As one of the G7 nations---the world's richest industrialized countries---Canada has significant economic presence in world affairs. This is bolstered by its status as one of the largest oil-producing nations, as well as the fact that it's one of the few whose production capacity is increasing, and which is politically stable. Politically, Canada has substantial international goodwill it can rely on the push items of interest, such as the recent landmine ban which was rapidly ratified by almost the entire world (except, ironically, the US). Culturally, Canadians are well-known and well-respected across much of the world, to the extent that there has been a problem with Americans trying to pass themselves off as Canadian to leech off of the goodwill. Even militarily, Canada isn't invisible---they're been in charge of the NATO forces in Afghanistan for about half of the time since the invasion.
Certainly, Canada has a much lower international profile than the US, but so does everyone---there's only one top dog, and right now the US is it. It's not the case that everyone else is irrelevant or invisible, though, and it's simply foolish to make the claim.
> Where did you get the idea that the government requries all satelites to be launched on the shuttle?
Are you sure you responded to the post you meant to respond to? "Satellites" and "shuttles" are complete non-sequitors here, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
Slashdot Mirror
>>> Don't you think the way for the US to really ensure its population's security
>>> would be to try to track down the arsenal of the former USSR?
>
> Don't you think Putin ought to take nuclear security more seriously?
Yes. But it's stupid to argue whose job it is to close the barn door while the horse is walking out it.
I'd much rather have the US taxpayers (i.e., me) pay for securing ex-USSR nuclear material than not have it secured at all. We can complain that Putin should pay for it---and maybe he should---but we'd be idiots to let large amounts of nuclear material lie around unsecured because of a squabble over what is quite frankly a tiny amount of money in comparison to our other spending.
Some of your rant seems to be a little misinformed. Beyond what others have already pointed out...
> WoTC tried to duplicate that by soliciting submissions from everyone and creating a new line
> based on their original home grown idea. They had judges, a competition, etc. I'm surprised
> Fox didn't air it. Forgotten Realms was far from dead, and many continued to enjoy playing
> in it. They decided to abandon what was working
FR is far from dead - WotC has by no means abandoned it, and it just makes you look silly to claim otherwise. Take a look at the upcoming products - most are generic, one is FR-specific, and one is Eberron-specific. That's pretty typical.
Just because Eberron has been added doesn't mean FR has been removed. Classic false dilemma fallacy.
> for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability.
Sorry, but you're being way fanboyish.
I like GURPS quite a bit, so I'm hardly "anti-GURPS", but saying it beats any other RPG for simplicity and playability is just not believable. I could never get a game started because almost all the gamers I knew found GURPS way too complicated and too hard to play.
Indeed, that's a key reason GURPS has languished in obscurity for so long, while White Wolf's games became so big---they're so much simpler to understand and play.
More than that, though, a serious problem that GURPS has always had is confusing realistic with complicated . There are detailed rules for all kinds of things, but if you actually check the results of those rules against reality---which I did as a hobby for a while---you'll find they often fail badly. In fact, the fact that the rules are highly detailed often makes them less realistic than more abstract rules, since the "well, maybe this is the reason" explanations that work for abstract rules (e.g., "-6 to hit at long range") are excluded by the greater detail in the GURPS rules (e.g., "-2 for speed + -3 for range + 1 for size + -2 for evasiveness + -1 for light +
If you really think GURPS is "realistic", you haven't checked the rules against reality. A great many of them have all the hallmarks of being arbitrary decisions that fail to model the real world.
Now, that doesn't mean GURPS isn't a good system; it just means that if you say it's "hands down" the simplest, most playable, most realistic system out there, well, be prepared to have very few people agree with you, and for very good reasons.
(Keep in mind, I quite like GURPS, but I'm objective enough to recognize these problems. They're not enough to ruin the system for me, but they are for the large majority of gamers. It's worth a try, but don't be surprised if it's not to your taste.
As an aside, it's interesting to note that I've never seen RPG partisans quite so loyal as GURPS fans. I suspect the complexity of the system appeals to a certain type, some of whom feel a fierce pride in having mastered a "superior" system. Reminds me of the more obnoxious "l33t Linux h4x0rs" sometimes. Not the parent poster, just others I've seen.)
> Also, regarding the modern purpose built systems, you will find a lot of ninjutsu in them.
Sambo appears to have no tie to ninjutsu, and yet is very definitely a modern, purpose-built system (and an effective one at that). Neither, it appears, does Krav Maga.
So your claim seems unlikely, unless you mean they contain similar-but-not-derived-from-ninjutsu techniques, which is more possible.
Which assumptions, that size and strength matter in addition to skill, attitude, and training? How, pray tell, would your supposed "demonstration" prove or disprove that?
That more esoteric arts like Aikido have been tested in mostly-realistic conditions like MMA tournaments and found weak is relatively strong evidence that said arts are not as combat-effective as they like to believe. Indeed, the fact that martial arts built for soldiers (Sambo, Krav Maga, Combato,
>>> Fighting is extremely useful for evaluating one's own abilities as well as the usefulness of particular techniques.
>
> No body doubts this. But in your parent post you wrote: only those who do real fights
> can be good, all others must be worse.
I've never said any such thing, and you sound foolish and sloppy for asserting otherwise.
> your "fighting" abilities just a few weeks before you die
Really?
"According to his wife Linda, he had no wish to live to a ripe old age because he could not stand the idea of losing the physical abilities he had strived so hard to achieve." (among others)
When a person ages, they get slower---both muscularly and nerve responses---they get less flexible, they get weaker, they get less coordinated, and in general they become less and less able to fight effectively. Even the fiercely loyal BJJ guys insist their father is the best ever, not the best currently---80 years of martial arts training is, sadly, no match for 90 years of aging.
From your posts, you sound like a very stereotypical "physical conditioning doesn't matter, only technique matters!!" martial artist---emphasis on the "art" part. While it's true that skill and technique can overcome deficits in size, strength, and physical ability, pretending that those latter qualities don't matter at all is simply self-delusion.
> So, how many fights did you survive so far? I mean, all your opponents are dead, aren't they?
How is this "Insightful"? This is just the old "excluded middle" fallacy---falsely claiming that nothing other than to-the-death fights are useful for training or evaluating martial arts, so all modern martial arts must be equally lacking in that regard.
This, of course, is nonsense. Fighting is extremely useful for evaluating one's own abilities as well as the usefulness of particular techniques. Certainly, the closer the fighting is to "real" fighting the better, but it's obvious to anyone who gives it a moment's thought that few-rules fights (like most mixed martial arts competitions) will be much more valuable than pure sport-fighting (like most karate and tae kwon do schools do) which in turn will be much more valuable than the kind of scripted dance that aikido does.
It's just like fighter pilots and on-the-ground cockpit simulations---they're not as good as the real thing, but they're a whole lot better than nothing.
> And while there isn't any chain link fence running for you, there's some wall
> climbing and poison dart action in this old video near the end.
This movie is utterly unimpressive. For a start, the "jumping up into a high tree" stunt at the end---the only potentially-amazing part---is jumping DOWN played in reverse. (Watch it a few times, you'll see this---I picked up on it immediately because it's related to my area of research.) Plus, the "bashing head bloody to prove determination" thing at the beginning is also faked - you'd be able to see blood on the guy's forehead if there was as much as the blood spot on the wall suggests.
Other than that, it's basically all scripted demos, which are nothing more than what you'd see in any martial arts flick, and 5 seconds of climbing up a rough wall that anyone I know who does rock climbing could scale.
Totally uninspiring. If this "ninja master" is at all associated with this movie, I find any amazing claims about him highly unlikely.
> you seem to be conflating computer science with the IT field.
:)
Nah - I'm just lazy and "IT" is shorter than "computer science".
I agree, though, computer science is not needed by most "CS" jobs. Software engineering would make a whole lot more sense---most of these jobs are not about the science of computation---but a solid way to teach that hasn't been worked out yet. It's in progress at various places, though (and, no, I don't mean ITT/DeVry). I think it'll be good when there's the option for a more professionally-oriented degree as well as a more research-oriented degree, similar to mechanical engineering vs. physics.
Regardless, that's no excuse for mistreating one's employees.
If you believe that your H1 will smash blithely through all barriers, you're an idiot.
Not an "I disagree with you and am calling you names" idiot, but an actual "you have a subnormal IQ in the range technically referred to as 'idiot'" idiot.
Now, an H1 may well smash through more barriers than most civilian vehicles, but it is deeply stupid to assume it will smash through them all---it's unlikely it would come off well from a high-velocity impact with a telephone pole, for example, or a concrete retaining wall, or a rock embankment, or several other things that are pretty common on day-to-day drives. (Keep in mind, the faster you're going the more damage even something you can smash through will do to you - at high speed, even water will crush metal.)
Hitting that concrete wall at some speed will probably be extremely dangerous in an H1, even if the wall does break---there's a good chance the passenger compartment will suffer damage, and---even if it doesn't---the extremely stiff vehicle will make for a very short impact and (hence) extremely high impulses imparted to the passengers (i.e., very high danger of whiplash or similar injuries). In a car with crumple zones, said zones will crumple, prolonging the duration of the impact, reducing the impulses imparted to the passengers, and significantly reducing the chance of injury.
At any rate, I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it think. You are wrong about this, and I've given you enough details and enough links to read up on this and see for yourself how mistaken you are about vehicular safety. If you choose to remain ignorant, hopefully you only endanger yourself.
> Of course, this is purely educated speculation, and I'd certainly like to hear other explanations.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".
Out of millions of cars sold, the Law of Large Numbers means that statistically-unlikely things are likely to happen at least a few times. If (as appears to be the case) it is statistically unlikely that a handful of Toyotas are less reliable than a handful of GMs, then the odds of that happening for a few of the millions of car-observers in the world is much more likely.
Look up "Law of Large Numbers" (third meaning) for a more-plausible alternative explanation.
> Li in any shape or form is toxic noxious substance
So is lead, but people don't have a problem with that in batteries. Nor do people have a problem successfully recycling it.
Basically, you're just spreading FUD:
"Our initial conclusion is that lead is the worst [environmentally], nickel is next, and lithium is the least harmful [for batteries]"
> Canadians own more guns per capita than people from the US. Bring it on!
False. Per-capita gun ownership in the US is about 3 times higher than in Canada.
Regardless of whether it's higher or lower, though, I'd rather you left it there than brought it on; call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather trade dollars than bullets.
> Standard answer: the last time Canada and USA were at war, it was not Canada's capital that burned.
Actually, both were:
"Meanwhile, in April 1813, Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn's expedition captured Fort Toronto and partially burned York, capital of Upper Canada." link
Be content with throwing back the American invasion; given the relative sizes of the populations and militaries (15-to-1).
> It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to modify the MIT program to use this
> new anti-robot robot to write papers that this anti-robot robot would not be able to detect.
For this specific algorithm, sure. In general, however, it may be intractable.
It's similar to the basis of cryptography---some functions are easy to compute in one direction, but extremely hard to reverse. Consider, for example, a hash-based checksum; it's easy to tell whether the checksum is correct, but extremely hard to create a C file with a specified checksum that also compiles to sensible code.
Similarly, it may be easy to determine whether a document is machine-written, but extremely hard to machine-write a document that has appropriate low-level structure (i.e., compiles) but also has correct high-level structure (i.e., does not look machine-written), even if the checking algorithms are known.
(Of course, finding such testing algorithms may be highly non-trivial.)
> I would take on a concrete wall with much less fear than in a Japanese car or modern crappy SUV Hummer clone.
Sadly, that only goes to show how little you know about vehicular safety.
Modern cars are specifically designed to crumple in an accident---read up on crumple zones. The damage to the car slows down the collision, which means less damaging impact occurs to the people inside the car.
It's exactly the same idea as is behind a motorcycle helmet---they're designed to break in a crash, so the energy of the crash is expended in deforming the helmet rather than your skull. Your (mistaken) belief that a stiff vehicle like a hummer is safer is just as foolish as saying that a solid-steel helmet would be safer than a real motorcycle helmet. The steel one wouldn't break, but it would transfer the force efficiently to your head, so you might well break.
That's not the only problem with a hummer, either; a related problem is that, since the whole vehicle is stiff, if it is involved in a fierce enough collision that some deformation must occur (i.e., a strong wall or another large vehicle), the weak point where that deformation occurs is more likely to be in the passenger compartment---which is where you least want it to be---than in the engine compartment or somewhere similar.
Ironically, when you scoff at a car for suffering damage in a crash, you're laughing at a safety feature---the car suffers damage so you don't have to. If you actually do care about safety, you might want to do some reading---you have some very severe misconceptions.
Are older, more experienced professionals valued for their ability, or spurned for their unwillingness to work 60-hour weeks?
Are IT professionals continuing through a long career in the field, or are they burning out and leaving after 5-10 years?
Is the unmet demand a fundamental problem with supply, or with the price employers are willing to pay, both in terms of wages and in terms of working conditions?
It often sounds (and experts say) that IT in North America is practicing something akin to slash-and-burn agriculture---get the fresh new CS grads, work them like dogs, and throw them away when they burn out 10 years later. (EA---the whole game industry, really---for example, is infamous for this.) Just like slash-and-burn agriculture, burn-and-churn IT is unsustainable, and an inefficient use of resources.
If employees don't want to work for your industry, maybe the problem isn't with the employees.
> String theory is fully compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are actually constant.
...you're taking this to mean...
...which does not follow. It's the ol' "if A implies B then B implies A" error.
It's also, presumably, compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are not constant. If that's the case, then non-constant constants provides trouble for some other theories but not for string theory, making it more likely that string theory is correct.
Basically, you're making an incorrect logical argument. The article is saying...
if (non-const) then (string theory)
if (string theory) then (non-const)
> But say we take, I dunno, the whole planet...and just douse it in some radiation.
>
> Transiently accelerate evolution, yanno?
If by "transiently accelerate evolution" you mean "give lots of people cancer", then that'd probably work quite well. If you're looking for something more beneficial to humanity than millions of people dying in agony, well, I think you'd best keep looking.
Don't think that because animals can survive in the region it's somehow beneficial to them. They'd still survive and populate the region if you took a machete and hacked pieces off of each animal, but they wouldn't be "improved" by the process. "Crippled but alive" is an improvement over dead, but it's a far cry from "whole and healthy".
Don't mistake "not dead" for "new and improved".
> Most people want everything handed to them
No - most people just don't care about computers all that much.
Do you expect people to tinker with their cars?
Do you expect people to tinker with their television's wiring?
Do you expect people to tinker with their plumbing?
Then why would you expect people to tinker with their computers? For most people, a computer is an appliance, and deserving of no more tinkering than a tv. You can whine about people being "not ready" for computers all you want, but that won't change the basic fact that mature technologies don't need to be babied to function properly.
It isn't people that aren't ready; it's computers.
> Seriously, if people are so adamant about making other people aware of the advantages of Linux
But many of the worst offenders aren't all that interested in spreading the benefits of Linux, and are mostly interested in feeling smugly superior.
This isn't a problem confined to Linux users either, though - I've know people in certain cult-like evangelical Christian groups who---while they claimed to want to spread Christianity---mostly just enjoyed feeling smugly superior because only they had the real Christianity.
Basically, some people are dicks, and an opportunity to be different---which they can delude themselves into thinking means "better"---attracts them like flies to feces. They're loud and make quite an impression, so frankly the onus is on the rest of their broader community to either muzzle them or distance them from the community.
> In internet forums some Linuxers will tell you to RTFM, and some Windowsers will tell
> you they don't consult for free. I don't see a heck of a lot of difference
The difference is social graces.
It's like if you're visiting two cities and ask for street directions. In city W, people who don't help you say "I'm sorry, I can't help you." I city L, people say "FUCKING TOURIST GET THE HELL OUT OF MY CITY!".
Technically, these statements are functionally equivalent in terms of giving you directions, but which city do you think is going to leave a better impression on visitors? There's more to human communication than the number of bits of relevant information transferred.
> a locked tire will slow you down faster than ABS in many circumstances.
Not only wrong, but dangerously wrong. This is the kind of incorrect belief that can get people killed.
For car tires, static friction (i.e., when the tire is rolling) is almost always significantly higher than dynamic friction (i.e., when the tire is skidding). In other words, skidding tires brake slower than rolling tires.
ABS makes your car more controllable; it also makes your car stop faster. This is, in almost all situations, not a tradeoff---ABS is simply flat-out better than non-ABS in all meaningful ways.
> absolutely dwarfed by those above it (and oil is only part of the greenhouse-gas equation).
Yes, actually, you are wrong, for much the same reason people are wrong when they say "it doesn't matter if I recycle, I'm just one person". The effect of one person recycling is multiplied by them being seen to be recycling, and hence providing the last piece of motivation needed to get someone else to recycle, who then motivates people himself, and so on. It's---potentially---a snowball process, meaning that small changes early in the reaction chain will have large effects later on, possibly even determining whether the chain reaction of motivation is self-sustaining.
Moreover, global warming is a cumulative effect to an unstable system, meaning that---since small changes in input can produce large changes in output---small physical changes have a magnified importance, much like the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
As for your other argument, Canada is the 7th-largest consumer of energy of all types, oil or otherwise. While a large portion of that is clean hydroelectric, a substantial portion is greenhouse-causing natural gas, often used to produce oil from the tarsands. Canada certainly can't solve the problem solely by cutting its own emissions, but then again neither can the US---even if it ceased to exist entirely, China and India are rapidly catching up in terms of pollution volume, and will soon surpass the US without some kind of international framework for limiting emissions.
Now, you might argue that the particulars of the Kyoto framework are poorly thought out---and you might well be right---but some international framework needs to exist, and relatively soon. IMHO, the most important part of Kyoto is simply making that international cooperation on global warming more likely.
> Canada is pretty much invisible on the world stage
You speak with great confidence about the world stage, but you don't seem to know much about it.
As one of the G7 nations---the world's richest industrialized countries---Canada has significant economic presence in world affairs. This is bolstered by its status as one of the largest oil-producing nations, as well as the fact that it's one of the few whose production capacity is increasing, and which is politically stable. Politically, Canada has substantial international goodwill it can rely on the push items of interest, such as the recent landmine ban which was rapidly ratified by almost the entire world (except, ironically, the US). Culturally, Canadians are well-known and well-respected across much of the world, to the extent that there has been a problem with Americans trying to pass themselves off as Canadian to leech off of the goodwill. Even militarily, Canada isn't invisible---they're been in charge of the NATO forces in Afghanistan for about half of the time since the invasion.
Certainly, Canada has a much lower international profile than the US, but so does everyone---there's only one top dog, and right now the US is it. It's not the case that everyone else is irrelevant or invisible, though, and it's simply foolish to make the claim.
> Where did you get the idea that the government requries all satelites to be launched on the shuttle?
Are you sure you responded to the post you meant to respond to? "Satellites" and "shuttles" are complete non-sequitors here, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.