I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but good for them - it's a move that's likely to lead to higher sales.
I have avoided purchasing games which used egregious copy protection, even though I owned previous games in the series and was quite interested in buying the title. I have been spurred into buying games I was unsure about simply due to the anti-copy-protection stance of the company. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
Not surprising to any of you, of course, but here's a concrete example of how bad copy protection costs sales, which might come in handy when talking to game company folks.
> Matthew, you're suffering from the belief in an incorrect meme that seeks uniform distributions.
No, you just missed his point.
Japan's standard of living is predicated on important vast amounts of foodstuffs and raw materials. It is physically impossible for every region in the world to import and consume raw materials at the pace Japan does, since there must be somewhere else for them to import from.
As a concrete example, Japan is about 0.25% of the world's land area, yet consumes about 7% of the world's oil production. The world would only be able to fit about 15 Japans before it ran out of oil production, even though there is physical space for 400 Japans. By contrast, Mongolia would fit into world oil production about 7,500 times, but there is only landmass space for 90 of them.
This isn't a question of whether Japan is good or bad, and the Khmer Rouge has nothing to do with anything here. This is a question of how many physical resources are available in the world, and what that means for overall consumption. And what that means is this:
The world cannot fit very many Japans.
Due to global trade, an increase in Japan's population directly corresponds to a decrease in the maximum sustainable population of the rest of the world. Rich nations can effectively rent space from other nations, allowing their own populations to grow beyond the carrying capacity of the land inside their borders. So overpopulation is a global consideration, not a local one.
Major river systems in the western US (e.g., the Colorado) are being used up---as in, once-mighty rivers have little or no water that reaches the sea---by residential, industrial, and agricultural consumers. Building reservoirs won't do a thing to fix that - all they do is move the water elsewhere. That's not the problem - the problem is simply that there isn't enough water in the area, and no amount of changing where you catch it will fix that.
> The point is, public transport just isn't available in a very large portion of the US.
No - the point is that the US (as a whole) has made a choice to live an energy-inefficient lifestyle.
You're "forced" to live far from work because of the size and luxury of house/apartment you culturally expect. Most other nations live in more modest dwellings, and hence use their land (and heat/AC) more efficiently. By contrast, the US is built on the assumption of cheap land and cheap energy, with the car allowing the latter to be used to exploit the former. Due to this cultural bias towards the car---which quite honestly has had a symbolic appeal (freedom/individuality) far outside its usefulness in the US for decades---more efficient systems such as passenger rail are not seriously considered.
It's worth noting, though, that about 80% of Americans do live in urban areas---which is the same fraction as in the UK---so most of your attempts to draw contrasts between the two countries are little more than red herrings.
So efficient options like public transit aren't predicated on living in a "tiny country" - they're predicated on public policy makers choosing efficient options. The US - perhaps because of its historical wealth - has done so to a lesser extent than many other industrialized countries. Trying to argue that it can't, though, is simply nonsensical - the near-identical urban-rural demographics between the US and European countries skewers that falsehood.
> The difference is that humans are well adapted to large variances in temperature and climate.
No. The difference is that many climatic systems are unstable, which means that a small change in inputs can cause a large change in outputs.
One of the most alarming possible examples, is the Gulf Stream, which is essentially a huge conveyor belt pumping heat from the tropics to the northern Atlantic. Were this to shut down---as has happened in the past and may be starting now)---bad things would happen. For a start, Europe would get much colder (~9deg F), affecting food production, and the southern US would get warmer, increasing droughts and causing more frequent and more powerful storms (especially hurricanes, which are powered by heat in the ocean).
This isn't a matter of "well, it'll be a little warmer, so we'll just sweat a little more". This is a matter of "weather as we know it will change significantly, and not in a manner we'll like."
> Canada isn't mentioned because (and forgive this), in the larger scheme of things, what > Canada does isn't very important.
Fun to say, but not really true - Canada is one of the top ten consumers of oil in the world. While it can't be personally responsible for a large cut in world emissions itself (as the US can), one of the top-10 energy users taking emissions limits seriously---or not---is symbolically very important.
It's also one of the top-ten oil producers, and a significant portion of its production results in the emissions of large amounts of CO2. Cutting emissions strongly, then, would require Canada to slow or stop its breakneck expansion of Alberta's oil sands, which in turn would cut down on the flow of cheap-to-transport oil into the US. That, in turn, would raise oil prices (all over the world---spare global capacity is significantly less than Canadian oil production---but especially in the US due to the aforementioned transportation-cost issues), and hence trigger increased interest in fuel-efficient machines in the world's largest energy consumer, and hence would have an effect on carbon emissions rather out of proportion with the direct change.
So, basically, you're wrong. Unfortunately, it's moot, since not much is being done about this anyway.
Provided carbon emissions limits can be traded, Canada meeting Kyoto would ironically be harmful to the US - since oil from tarsands would require purchasing carbon credits, its price would go up. Since the US is the largest consumer of tarsands oil and benefits from low transportation costs associated with it, the US would suffer more from that price increase than anyone.
(Yes, I know oil is partly fungible, but transportation costs make it not perfectly so.)
> I seem to recall that every other time we (meaning mankind) have tried to "fix" an > ecological problem, we end up making it about a dozen times worse.
Then I humbly submit you haven't been paying attention.
One obvious example is the Dust Bowl in Depression-era USA. This was a massive ecological disaster---huge areas of farmland had their topsoil blow away in "Black Blizzards"---and it was another situation with both human and natural causes.
Instead of ignoring the problem (it's hard to deny that the sky has turned black) or throwing up their hands and going "oh noes!", though, people eventually figured that something had to be done to stop this, and figured out how. Roosevelt formed the Soil Conservation Service, basically implementing a bunch of government programs to fix the problem (such as planting trees as windbreaks). And fix it it did---Chicago, NYC, and DC are no longer getting Oklahoma topsoil falling out of the sky, and I believe the areas are suitable for farming again.
Quite simply, if you believe that humans can't diagnose and fix an ecological problem without making it worse, you're demonstrably wrong.
You're talking awfully breezily about "serious climatologists you know" and about how the science is "in its infancy" and "is too complicated" to give accurate predictions, and you accuse the Kyoto accord of being a blatant anti-US attack, yet you give no reason to believe a thing you're saying; that something is well-written does not make it true. Indeed, your post comes across as more than a little tinfoil-hattish ("it's all an anti-US conspiracy, man!"), as well as heavily relying on the same "without ironclad proof we must ignore it" pseudo-scientific argument that Intelligent Design champions, so it sounds like little more than regurgitated talking points.
Now, you might very well be right about the things you claim, but you give no evidence to back up your claims, which are made in such a way as to be inherently hard to believe. If you're interested in honest discussion, you would do well to address these problems, and try providing much more in the way of substantiating evidence.
> If you'll notice, the "above ground" region is indeed a hemispherical arc.
a) You're being an idiot, since that's obviously not what they meant.
b) You're not even being an amusing idiot, since mounting the system on the vehicle means that it will be a significant distance off the ground, and hence even your upward-pointing hemisphere will be unable to protect from attacks fired from near ground level. Indeed, since most attacking infantry are likely to be lower than the mount points on the vehicle, such a hemisphere would be largely useless.
We're discussing the merits of the system in a realistic context; do try and keep up.
> The laser pulse is so short and intense that the missile rotation does not matter.
Based on what do you say that? You're directly contradicting all available evidence about the system. For example:
---"It should be made clear at the start what the beam does not do. It does not vaporize or even melt the missile's skin. Instead it heats the skin until whatever internal forces present cause the skin to fail." (link)
---"the main laser is fired for 3 to 5 seconds from a turret located on the aircraft's nose, causing the missile to break up" (link)
---"Once the target "sweet spot" has been designated and the deformable mirror attenuated, the COIL fires, sweeping the target area for several seconds until the enemy missile's heated casing ruptures" (link)
Basically, all evidence suggests you're flat-out wrong: the ABL takes at least several seconds to destroy a target, which is enough time for a rotating target to spread the beam over a wide area. Unless the ground tests have been against rotating targets---which does not seem to be the case based on the photos in the links---rotating targets are likely to significantly affect the viability of the system.
> Even with the small sample size and completely nonrandom sample, where's the hard data > on how MUCH more likely they are to be "permissive" in their attitudes?
That's what the study is about.
Take a group, randomly split that group into two, subject the two halves to different stimuli, and measure the differences in the group. Since the two halves were selected randomly, only random chance or the differing stimuli will account for inter-group differences. Random chance can be accounted for using statistical analysis, meaning that a statistically significant difference is (with high probability) indicative of a difference caused by the differing stimuli.
This is the basic idea of how all studies of this sort work, and I humbly submit that you are largely clueless about how to conduct an effective user study, and that most people here are only complaining because they don't like the results of the study.
If the study had exactly the same methodology but found there to be no difference, would you complain about it as much? Or would you hold it up as evidence that your pre-determined answer to the question being examined is correct? I don't believe that video games cause violence, but I do believe that the kind of irrational knee-jerk bashing going on here is exactly the same kind of head-in-the-sand moaning that people always (rightly) slam Creation Science folks for.
Science doesn't always give you the answer you want. Being a rational, modern human requires accepting that fact.
> So yes, it can handle that... even while moving.
To be fair, TFA does not say that. What TFA says is:
"The Threat Detection and Warning subsystem...[provides] full hemispherical coverage. Once an incoming threat is detected identified and verified, the Countermeasure Assembly is opened, the countermeasure device is positioned in the direction where it can effectively intercept the threat. Then, it is launched..."
Emphasis mine. In particular, note from what I've emphasised:
1) The system can not protect against multiple threats from arbitrary relative angles. Unless all threats lie within a hemispherical arc, the system cannot even theoretically protect against them all.
2) The system has not only informational steps before firing (detect, identify, verify), it has mechanical steps it must perform (open, position), and those can't be done at the speed of electrons. Given that 90% of urban targets are engaged at under 50m and that the most common RPG has a speed of 100-300 m/s, urban combat is going to require reaction times on the order of fractions of a second. That's a tall order for simply the informational parts of the process, much less the mechanical parts.
Basically, the article reads like a marketing pamphlet, and isn't all that informative. Based on the nature of the threats involved, though, it's unlikely that the system will perform as a "protective forcefield" in realistic conditions. It may well be useful and valuable, but I'm very dubious that it will in any way live up to how some people are hyping it.
> It doesn't accumulate more truth by saying it more often. Games make you as violent as D&D did > in the 80s, TV did in the 60s, radio did in the 30s and books did before that.
It's not that simple.
While I don't believe that video games make people more violent, human-motion visual stimuli like video games and TV are indeed qualitatively different from things like D&D, rock music, or radio. Human brains have what are known as "mirror neurons", which essentially allow us to recognize actions that other people are performing. The key is that we do this in large part by triggering the brain activity that would be required to perform those actions ourselves. If we see someone pick up an apple, for example, our brain fires much the same neurons as would be required to pick up the apple ourselves, although the action is suppressed. Basically, we can rapidly and accurately figure out what other people are doing because we simulate it internally.
The problem, then, is watching a human being violent triggers the neural pathways that would be used by performing those violent actions ourselves. Watching lots of human violence on TV or in movies or games will tend to stimulate these circuits much more than would occur otherwise. The argument, then, is that since neural pathways can be strengthened by repeeated use, watching violence leads to more-entrenched pathways for performing violence leads to greater likelihood for actually being violent.
Based on the anecdotal evidence of myself and my friends, I don't believe this hypothesis is correct, and I don't believe that there is a causative relation between adults watching humans being violent and being violent themselves. The hypothesis is not completely nonsensical, though, due to the manner in which human brains are believed to function.
That we have strong opinions on a question should not make us attack those who honestly try to gather data on that question, and that many people spread FUD on this topic does not mean that all people who disagree with us are doing so.
> Even in theory, how could you tell the difference between "evidence in
> favour of your religion," and the prompting of your own imagination?
Same way you tell the difference between your imagination and any other observation - balance of probability.
If your car keeps breaking down every time you lend it to your cousin, you would take that as evidence he or she is mistreating it. Could be pure coincidence, but that's not the way probability points. Similarly, if your friends and relatives keep recovering unusually rapidly from serious illnesses every time you pray for them - unusually rapidly compared to other people with those illnesses, and unusually rapidly compared to before you prayed for people - then you would take that as evidence your prayers are having an effect. Could be pure coincidence, but that's not the way probability points.
There's nothing preventing you from applying the scientific method to observations regarding religion, and it will potentially yield interesting results, just like it does for other observations. There's also nothing claiming the scientific method is sufficient for understanding religious experience, however; science deals with observables and repeatables. If there's something that is not fully observable and not repeatable, it may well be an error to rely on the scientific method to try to understand it.
> Why would someone intelligent believe in an invisible and all-powerful being for whom no evidence exists
Because believing that---since you haven't seen evidence for it, nobody has seen evidence for it---is just as irrational?
Think of it in terms of Bayesian reasoning/probability theory. Suppose, for example, that a person had a cancer that is fatal most of the time, prayed hard for the cancer to go away, and the cancer indeed went away. Since, in the set of worlds where the prayed-to god exists as believed, remission of the cancer is more likely than in no-god worlds, the observation of the cancer going into remission is evidence in favour of the existence of the prayed-to god. Weak evidence, of course, but a rational agent should increase their estimated probability of said god existing based on that evidence.
Now, since evidence in favour of a god can exist, the only question is how much evidence---for and against---other people have seen. If you can't understand why an intelligent person would believe something other than what you do, I humbly suggest you think hard about two things:
1) Other people have lived different lives than you; hence, their experiences---and the beliefs they would rationally obtain from those experiences---will naturally be different from yours.
2) Intelligent people's beliefs may not be entirely rational; in particular, what evidence do you have that nobody has experienced evidence in favour of religion?
> Needle Park is hardly a valid example of actual drug legalization.
Have you a better example?
I was fairly pro-legalization before hearing about Needle Park; now I'm not so sure it's the "obviously good idea" I had naively assumed. That doesn't mean legalization or decriminalization can't work, of course, but it does give one reason to believe that it might not work out as well as proponents suggest. Treatment-based approaches, such as those I mentioned previously, seem to result in better outcomes.
> Go try it with alcohol - come back and tell us how wonderfully it went.
There were countries other than the US who tried it, you know, and it worked out rather better for many of them. That Prohibition failed badly in the US is not necessarily the fault of prohibition.
> If I'm explaining an algorithm in a paper on cryptography, and I want to use an algorithm
> well-known from a distinct and related field
Then you would cite a textbook, or some other authoritative and reliable source which is appropriately specialized to the field in question. An encyclopedia is a general reference, and as such is not an appropriate source to cite for anything other than the most general of knowledge, such as "Russia is the largest country in the world" or "Napoleon was born on Corsica".
Wikipedia, of course, being roughly as accurate as an encyclopedia, is just as inappropriate to cite---there's no particular reason to believe that any entry is either sufficiently complete or sufficiently correct at the moment you read it. Sure, it's probably fine, but that's not enough of a guarantee for it to be a reasonable citation; find something better.
> If the drugs were legal, they shoudl be cheaper...so robery and mugging shouldn't be too much of an issue.
You might think legalization of drugs would prevent many of the ills associated with them. I had wondered that myself. So did the government of Switzerland. So they basically tried it, legalizing most things related to drugs in Needle Park.
It failed. Badly.
Treating drug addiction like a disease, with hardcore users given their drugs under medical supervision seems to be more helpful for society and for the users themselves.
The libertarian notion of "less laws means better living!" is very appealing. It's also very naive.
> Canada is not bigger than the US. By total land volume the US is the largest country in the world.
Forgetting Poland is one thing, but forgetting Russia? It's almost double the US's size!
While you're right that Canada's numerous lakes make it larger in total area but smaller in land area than the USA, you're also forgetting that the USA's numerous lakes make it larger in total area but smaller in land area than China.
Any way you measure physical size of the country[1], the US is in third place.
> If you would study a martial art and had Sho Dan, you would likely agree, that
> Sho Dan means nothing, because its a VERY LOW DEGREE.
Perhaps this is a case of differing opinions on what each marker means. The places I've been or heard much of, shodan was a significant achievement, and considered well above "means nothing". Certain aspects of it were somewhat mechanistic (learn katas/forms X,Y,Z per belt, self defense techniques A,B,C, and so on), but typically significant ability also had to be demonstrated not only in performing those forms, but in (depending on the school) sparring, physical conditioning, teaching, or the like.
I suppose the key comes from what is considered "significant ability". Some schools, such as Gracie Jujutsu, are notoriously stingy about giving out belt levels. Other schools, the extreme of which are McDojos, are notoriously free with them. Getting a black belt from one of the latter may indeed "mean nothing"; in my experience, though, the black belt requirements from good schools make earning a shodan (or the equivalent) from one of them a significant achievement. Not magical, of course, but certainly not trivial.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean your dojo is what I would call a McDojo; perhaps you have excellent instructors or very motivated students. If you say a black belt from your school "means nothing" and is no more impressive than earning a driver's license, though, it seems to me you are setting your standards somewhat lower than the schools with which I'm familiar.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but good for them - it's a move that's likely to lead to higher sales.
I have avoided purchasing games which used egregious copy protection, even though I owned previous games in the series and was quite interested in buying the title. I have been spurred into buying games I was unsure about simply due to the anti-copy-protection stance of the company. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
Not surprising to any of you, of course, but here's a concrete example of how bad copy protection costs sales, which might come in handy when talking to game company folks.
> Matthew, you're suffering from the belief in an incorrect meme that seeks uniform distributions.
No, you just missed his point.
Japan's standard of living is predicated on important vast amounts of foodstuffs and raw materials. It is physically impossible for every region in the world to import and consume raw materials at the pace Japan does, since there must be somewhere else for them to import from.
As a concrete example, Japan is about 0.25% of the world's land area, yet consumes about 7% of the world's oil production. The world would only be able to fit about 15 Japans before it ran out of oil production, even though there is physical space for 400 Japans. By contrast, Mongolia would fit into world oil production about 7,500 times, but there is only landmass space for 90 of them.
This isn't a question of whether Japan is good or bad, and the Khmer Rouge has nothing to do with anything here. This is a question of how many physical resources are available in the world, and what that means for overall consumption. And what that means is this:
The world cannot fit very many Japans.
Due to global trade, an increase in Japan's population directly corresponds to a decrease in the maximum sustainable population of the rest of the world. Rich nations can effectively rent space from other nations, allowing their own populations to grow beyond the carrying capacity of the land inside their borders. So overpopulation is a global consideration, not a local one.
> so correct me if I'm wrong
You're wrong.
Major river systems in the western US (e.g., the Colorado) are being used up---as in, once-mighty rivers have little or no water that reaches the sea---by residential, industrial, and agricultural consumers. Building reservoirs won't do a thing to fix that - all they do is move the water elsewhere. That's not the problem - the problem is simply that there isn't enough water in the area, and no amount of changing where you catch it will fix that.
> The point is, public transport just isn't available in a very large portion of the US.
No - the point is that the US (as a whole) has made a choice to live an energy-inefficient lifestyle.
You're "forced" to live far from work because of the size and luxury of house/apartment you culturally expect. Most other nations live in more modest dwellings, and hence use their land (and heat/AC) more efficiently. By contrast, the US is built on the assumption of cheap land and cheap energy, with the car allowing the latter to be used to exploit the former. Due to this cultural bias towards the car---which quite honestly has had a symbolic appeal (freedom/individuality) far outside its usefulness in the US for decades---more efficient systems such as passenger rail are not seriously considered.
It's worth noting, though, that about 80% of Americans do live in urban areas---which is the same fraction as in the UK---so most of your attempts to draw contrasts between the two countries are little more than red herrings.
So efficient options like public transit aren't predicated on living in a "tiny country" - they're predicated on public policy makers choosing efficient options. The US - perhaps because of its historical wealth - has done so to a lesser extent than many other industrialized countries. Trying to argue that it can't, though, is simply nonsensical - the near-identical urban-rural demographics between the US and European countries skewers that falsehood.
> The difference is that humans are well adapted to large variances in temperature and climate.
No. The difference is that many climatic systems are unstable, which means that a small change in inputs can cause a large change in outputs.
One of the most alarming possible examples, is the Gulf Stream, which is essentially a huge conveyor belt pumping heat from the tropics to the northern Atlantic. Were this to shut down---as has happened in the past and may be starting now)---bad things would happen. For a start, Europe would get much colder (~9deg F), affecting food production, and the southern US would get warmer, increasing droughts and causing more frequent and more powerful storms (especially hurricanes, which are powered by heat in the ocean).
This isn't a matter of "well, it'll be a little warmer, so we'll just sweat a little more". This is a matter of "weather as we know it will change significantly, and not in a manner we'll like."
> Canada actually consumes more energy per person than the US and also produces more CO2 per person.
The first claim is true, but the second---the one pertinent to this discussion---is false, even using the most recent data available (2004).
Canada uses more energy per capita than the US, but has lower CO2 emissions per capita (link1, link2, link3).
> Canada isn't mentioned because (and forgive this), in the larger scheme of things, what
> Canada does isn't very important.
Fun to say, but not really true - Canada is one of the top ten consumers of oil in the world. While it can't be personally responsible for a large cut in world emissions itself (as the US can), one of the top-10 energy users taking emissions limits seriously---or not---is symbolically very important.
It's also one of the top-ten oil producers, and a significant portion of its production results in the emissions of large amounts of CO2. Cutting emissions strongly, then, would require Canada to slow or stop its breakneck expansion of Alberta's oil sands, which in turn would cut down on the flow of cheap-to-transport oil into the US. That, in turn, would raise oil prices (all over the world---spare global capacity is significantly less than Canadian oil production---but especially in the US due to the aforementioned transportation-cost issues), and hence trigger increased interest in fuel-efficient machines in the world's largest energy consumer, and hence would have an effect on carbon emissions rather out of proportion with the direct change.
So, basically, you're wrong. Unfortunately, it's moot, since not much is being done about this anyway.
> Canada's emissions have gone up a lot since then. They use massive amounts of natural gas to
> make steam to extract oil from oil shale.
Most of which, ironically, is exported to the US.
Provided carbon emissions limits can be traded, Canada meeting Kyoto would ironically be harmful to the US - since oil from tarsands would require purchasing carbon credits, its price would go up. Since the US is the largest consumer of tarsands oil and benefits from low transportation costs associated with it, the US would suffer more from that price increase than anyone.
(Yes, I know oil is partly fungible, but transportation costs make it not perfectly so.)
> I seem to recall that every other time we (meaning mankind) have tried to "fix" an
> ecological problem, we end up making it about a dozen times worse.
Then I humbly submit you haven't been paying attention.
One obvious example is the Dust Bowl in Depression-era USA. This was a massive ecological disaster---huge areas of farmland had their topsoil blow away in "Black Blizzards"---and it was another situation with both human and natural causes.
Instead of ignoring the problem (it's hard to deny that the sky has turned black) or throwing up their hands and going "oh noes!", though, people eventually figured that something had to be done to stop this, and figured out how. Roosevelt formed the Soil Conservation Service, basically implementing a bunch of government programs to fix the problem (such as planting trees as windbreaks). And fix it it did---Chicago, NYC, and DC are no longer getting Oklahoma topsoil falling out of the sky, and I believe the areas are suitable for farming again.
Quite simply, if you believe that humans can't diagnose and fix an ecological problem without making it worse, you're demonstrably wrong.
Do you have a source for any of your claims?
You're talking awfully breezily about "serious climatologists you know" and about how the science is "in its infancy" and "is too complicated" to give accurate predictions, and you accuse the Kyoto accord of being a blatant anti-US attack, yet you give no reason to believe a thing you're saying; that something is well-written does not make it true. Indeed, your post comes across as more than a little tinfoil-hattish ("it's all an anti-US conspiracy, man!"), as well as heavily relying on the same "without ironclad proof we must ignore it" pseudo-scientific argument that Intelligent Design champions, so it sounds like little more than regurgitated talking points.
Now, you might very well be right about the things you claim, but you give no evidence to back up your claims, which are made in such a way as to be inherently hard to believe. If you're interested in honest discussion, you would do well to address these problems, and try providing much more in the way of substantiating evidence.
> If you'll notice, the "above ground" region is indeed a hemispherical arc.
a) You're being an idiot, since that's obviously not what they meant.
b) You're not even being an amusing idiot, since mounting the system on the vehicle means that it will be a significant distance off the ground, and hence even your upward-pointing hemisphere will be unable to protect from attacks fired from near ground level. Indeed, since most attacking infantry are likely to be lower than the mount points on the vehicle, such a hemisphere would be largely useless.
We're discussing the merits of the system in a realistic context; do try and keep up.
> The laser pulse is so short and intense that the missile rotation does not matter.
Based on what do you say that? You're directly contradicting all available evidence about the system. For example:
---"It should be made clear at the start what the beam does not do. It does not vaporize or even melt the missile's skin. Instead it heats the skin until whatever internal forces present cause the skin to fail." (link)
---"the main laser is fired for 3 to 5 seconds from a turret located on the aircraft's nose, causing the missile to break up" (link)
---"Once the target "sweet spot" has been designated and the deformable mirror attenuated, the COIL fires, sweeping the target area for several seconds until the enemy missile's heated casing ruptures" (link)
Basically, all evidence suggests you're flat-out wrong: the ABL takes at least several seconds to destroy a target, which is enough time for a rotating target to spread the beam over a wide area. Unless the ground tests have been against rotating targets---which does not seem to be the case based on the photos in the links---rotating targets are likely to significantly affect the viability of the system.
> Even with the small sample size and completely nonrandom sample, where's the hard data
> on how MUCH more likely they are to be "permissive" in their attitudes?
That's what the study is about.
Take a group, randomly split that group into two, subject the two halves to different stimuli, and measure the differences in the group. Since the two halves were selected randomly, only random chance or the differing stimuli will account for inter-group differences. Random chance can be accounted for using statistical analysis, meaning that a statistically significant difference is (with high probability) indicative of a difference caused by the differing stimuli.
This is the basic idea of how all studies of this sort work, and I humbly submit that you are largely clueless about how to conduct an effective user study, and that most people here are only complaining because they don't like the results of the study.
If the study had exactly the same methodology but found there to be no difference, would you complain about it as much? Or would you hold it up as evidence that your pre-determined answer to the question being examined is correct? I don't believe that video games cause violence, but I do believe that the kind of irrational knee-jerk bashing going on here is exactly the same kind of head-in-the-sand moaning that people always (rightly) slam Creation Science folks for.
Science doesn't always give you the answer you want. Being a rational, modern human requires accepting that fact.
To be fair, TFA does not say that. What TFA says is:
"The Threat Detection and Warning subsystem...[provides] full hemispherical coverage. Once an incoming threat is detected identified and verified, the Countermeasure Assembly is opened, the countermeasure device is positioned in the direction where it can effectively intercept the threat. Then, it is launched..."
Emphasis mine. In particular, note from what I've emphasised:
1) The system can not protect against multiple threats from arbitrary relative angles. Unless all threats lie within a hemispherical arc, the system cannot even theoretically protect against them all.
2) The system has not only informational steps before firing (detect, identify, verify), it has mechanical steps it must perform (open, position), and those can't be done at the speed of electrons. Given that 90% of urban targets are engaged at under 50m and that the most common RPG has a speed of 100-300 m/s, urban combat is going to require reaction times on the order of fractions of a second. That's a tall order for simply the informational parts of the process, much less the mechanical parts.
Basically, the article reads like a marketing pamphlet, and isn't all that informative. Based on the nature of the threats involved, though, it's unlikely that the system will perform as a "protective forcefield" in realistic conditions. It may well be useful and valuable, but I'm very dubious that it will in any way live up to how some people are hyping it.
> It doesn't accumulate more truth by saying it more often. Games make you as violent as D&D did
> in the 80s, TV did in the 60s, radio did in the 30s and books did before that.
It's not that simple.
While I don't believe that video games make people more violent, human-motion visual stimuli like video games and TV are indeed qualitatively different from things like D&D, rock music, or radio. Human brains have what are known as "mirror neurons", which essentially allow us to recognize actions that other people are performing. The key is that we do this in large part by triggering the brain activity that would be required to perform those actions ourselves. If we see someone pick up an apple, for example, our brain fires much the same neurons as would be required to pick up the apple ourselves, although the action is suppressed. Basically, we can rapidly and accurately figure out what other people are doing because we simulate it internally.
The problem, then, is watching a human being violent triggers the neural pathways that would be used by performing those violent actions ourselves. Watching lots of human violence on TV or in movies or games will tend to stimulate these circuits much more than would occur otherwise. The argument, then, is that since neural pathways can be strengthened by repeeated use, watching violence leads to more-entrenched pathways for performing violence leads to greater likelihood for actually being violent.
Based on the anecdotal evidence of myself and my friends, I don't believe this hypothesis is correct, and I don't believe that there is a causative relation between adults watching humans being violent and being violent themselves. The hypothesis is not completely nonsensical, though, due to the manner in which human brains are believed to function.
That we have strong opinions on a question should not make us attack those who honestly try to gather data on that question, and that many people spread FUD on this topic does not mean that all people who disagree with us are doing so.
> "Ten euros? How much is that in real money?"
10 Euros = 25.6305 Brazilian Reals
You've got real cojones to ask a question like that, though. 5,963.91 of them, in fact (10 Euro = 5,963.91 CRC).
(Yeah, okay, so they're Costa Rican Colones. Still funny when you haven't had your morning coffee...)
> favour of your religion," and the prompting of your own imagination?
Same way you tell the difference between your imagination and any other observation - balance of probability.
If your car keeps breaking down every time you lend it to your cousin, you would take that as evidence he or she is mistreating it. Could be pure coincidence, but that's not the way probability points. Similarly, if your friends and relatives keep recovering unusually rapidly from serious illnesses every time you pray for them - unusually rapidly compared to other people with those illnesses, and unusually rapidly compared to before you prayed for people - then you would take that as evidence your prayers are having an effect. Could be pure coincidence, but that's not the way probability points.
There's nothing preventing you from applying the scientific method to observations regarding religion, and it will potentially yield interesting results, just like it does for other observations. There's also nothing claiming the scientific method is sufficient for understanding religious experience, however; science deals with observables and repeatables. If there's something that is not fully observable and not repeatable, it may well be an error to rely on the scientific method to try to understand it.
Because believing that---since you haven't seen evidence for it, nobody has seen evidence for it---is just as irrational?
Think of it in terms of Bayesian reasoning/probability theory. Suppose, for example, that a person had a cancer that is fatal most of the time, prayed hard for the cancer to go away, and the cancer indeed went away. Since, in the set of worlds where the prayed-to god exists as believed, remission of the cancer is more likely than in no-god worlds, the observation of the cancer going into remission is evidence in favour of the existence of the prayed-to god. Weak evidence, of course, but a rational agent should increase their estimated probability of said god existing based on that evidence.
Now, since evidence in favour of a god can exist, the only question is how much evidence---for and against---other people have seen. If you can't understand why an intelligent person would believe something other than what you do, I humbly suggest you think hard about two things:
1) Other people have lived different lives than you; hence, their experiences---and the beliefs they would rationally obtain from those experiences---will naturally be different from yours.
2) Intelligent people's beliefs may not be entirely rational; in particular, what evidence do you have that nobody has experienced evidence in favour of religion?
The word is render.
Yes, that is the same word we use for what happens to leftover pieces of livestock after they've been through the slaughterhouse.
And somehow people believe this practice reflects poorly on us. Please excuse me while my mind fails to boggle.
Have you a better example?
I was fairly pro-legalization before hearing about Needle Park; now I'm not so sure it's the "obviously good idea" I had naively assumed. That doesn't mean legalization or decriminalization can't work, of course, but it does give one reason to believe that it might not work out as well as proponents suggest. Treatment-based approaches, such as those I mentioned previously, seem to result in better outcomes.
> Go try it with alcohol - come back and tell us how wonderfully it went.
There were countries other than the US who tried it, you know, and it worked out rather better for many of them. That Prohibition failed badly in the US is not necessarily the fault of prohibition.
He's got no reason to believe it's unbiased without doing additional digging. And, if he has to do additional digging, what good is it as a cite?
> well-known from a distinct and related field
Then you would cite a textbook, or some other authoritative and reliable source which is appropriately specialized to the field in question. An encyclopedia is a general reference, and as such is not an appropriate source to cite for anything other than the most general of knowledge, such as "Russia is the largest country in the world" or "Napoleon was born on Corsica".
Wikipedia, of course, being roughly as accurate as an encyclopedia, is just as inappropriate to cite---there's no particular reason to believe that any entry is either sufficiently complete or sufficiently correct at the moment you read it. Sure, it's probably fine, but that's not enough of a guarantee for it to be a reasonable citation; find something better.
You might think legalization of drugs would prevent many of the ills associated with them. I had wondered that myself. So did the government of Switzerland. So they basically tried it, legalizing most things related to drugs in Needle Park.
It failed. Badly.
Treating drug addiction like a disease, with hardcore users given their drugs under medical supervision seems to be more helpful for society and for the users themselves.
The libertarian notion of "less laws means better living!" is very appealing. It's also very naive.
Forgetting Poland is one thing, but forgetting Russia? It's almost double the US's size!
While you're right that Canada's numerous lakes make it larger in total area but smaller in land area than the USA, you're also forgetting that the USA's numerous lakes make it larger in total area but smaller in land area than China.
Any way you measure physical size of the country[1], the US is in third place.
[1] Not making obesity joke...
> Sho Dan means nothing, because its a VERY LOW DEGREE.
Perhaps this is a case of differing opinions on what each marker means. The places I've been or heard much of, shodan was a significant achievement, and considered well above "means nothing". Certain aspects of it were somewhat mechanistic (learn katas/forms X,Y,Z per belt, self defense techniques A,B,C, and so on), but typically significant ability also had to be demonstrated not only in performing those forms, but in (depending on the school) sparring, physical conditioning, teaching, or the like.
I suppose the key comes from what is considered "significant ability". Some schools, such as Gracie Jujutsu, are notoriously stingy about giving out belt levels. Other schools, the extreme of which are McDojos, are notoriously free with them. Getting a black belt from one of the latter may indeed "mean nothing"; in my experience, though, the black belt requirements from good schools make earning a shodan (or the equivalent) from one of them a significant achievement. Not magical, of course, but certainly not trivial.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean your dojo is what I would call a McDojo; perhaps you have excellent instructors or very motivated students. If you say a black belt from your school "means nothing" and is no more impressive than earning a driver's license, though, it seems to me you are setting your standards somewhat lower than the schools with which I'm familiar.