Log into illumina or any other paper search system. Plug in the terms you're interested in, see what papers come up that are widely used as references, and then who the authors and affiliations on those papers are.
This seems ideal, to me, because it lets you actually read the papers of the people who might be of interest, and it gives you a built in way to check their credibility.
At my university we have a number of faculty who *say* they're pursuing research in certain areas, but when you look at their publications and work, it's clear that only a couple of them are *actually* pursuing that research and are thus worth working with.
I'd like to think that if someone called my employer and said something unsavory about me that it'd be greeted with extreme skepticism, but I know for many people it would be a career ender if there was even the hint of an issue. Perhaps make it so that in order to see someone else's RealID info you would have to make your request visible to them. So if I post something it would show up as "thesandtiger" until someone clicked my name, in which case they'd then see my RealID info, but I'd also know I'd been looked at. Of course, one person could see your name and then post it to the site and then you'd never know who was actually doing the harassing, but I would hope that kind of thing would be limited because, of course, such a posting would open up the person doing it to being harassed.
One thing I would hope could come from this kind of thing would be people taking a more critical eye towards negative things they hear from reasonably anonymous sources about people.
How, exactly, is that any more "chilling" to free speech than any real-life face-to-face interaction with another person is "chilled" by the risk of being punched in the nose if you act like a total douchebag?
God forbid people be held accountable for the things they say. If people want to be trolling, feces-flinging, childish douchebags they certainly can do so, but I'm definitely in favor of people who abuse the privilege of anonymity by hurling abuse at people just because they can being limited in their ability to do so.
People usually don't get up in the middle of a crowded cafe and scream "NIGGERS! NIGGERS! NIGGERS!" just to get a rise out of people in real-life because they're rightly concerned about the consequences of this. Why should online be different?
As someone who doesn't abuse the privilege of anonymity, I'd be bummed that I won't be able to use those forums anymore unless I give up my anonymity, but at the same time I absolutely understand why it's being done, and it'll probably ultimately be for the better.
You're insane if you think that anonymity prevents people from attacking the person rather than their arguments (sorry, couldn't resist the ad hominem there:)) Now I'll attack your argument:
Go to any discussion based website out there where people are able to be anonymous. You will see a staggering number of people being incredible assholes to each other because they can do so without repercussion. Many people couldn't care less about developing a reputation for being an asshole because once the burden associated with a particular nickname becomes too much they can just dump it and make a new account. Many people go out of their way to make "alt" accounts just for the purpose of trolling forums and riling people up for no good reason.
I agree that we *should* pay more attention to the argument than to the identity of a person, but it's been demonstrated that unless the people running a forum are willing to do a LOT of moderation, it's very difficult to have a place that doesn't quickly degenerate into a cesspool when it's anonymous.
With Slashdot, you have karma and meta moderation etc. which kind of helps (slightly), but there are still a staggering number of trolling comments posted in every thread, people still feel perfectly free to post random bullshit as a way to rile people up, the only difference between here and most is that if you set your moderation threshold at 2 or above you can avoid the majority of them. Unfortunately, that also means newbies (who are posting at 1 by default) tend to not have their comments noticed, and so on.
There are lots of problems with real names being used, but I think that one of the advantages you'll see is that people will be less willing to be quite so cavalier about their assholery if they're putting their name on it.
For something like the forums for a video game - and in the specific case of WoW and Blizzard game forums in general those forums are an absolutely worthless cesspool populated by, I assume, angsty children and semi-retarded adults. There's just no other way to account for 99% of the "content" on them.
I'm gonna go off topic here for a sec - why are you being hostile? It's a discussion of a stupid thing in Star Wars, and yet rather than simply voice your opinion with something like "I disagree, here's why," you felt compelled to insult (the "derp") and belittle rather than simply behave like a mensch.
Back to the topic:
If you can see the effects in a 2D universe, sure, you can come up with a theory (or many theories) that attempt to explain what's happening in a higher dimensionality to explain those effects, but you're missing one crucial point: it's the whim of an intelligent being in that higher dimension that is causing this phenomena, and thus it may wind up not being entirely 100% predictable. How do you make a theory around something when the underlying cause of it - the caprice of an intelligent being - is not consistent.
Suddenly, the scientific method isn't completely useful here since one of the big elements of it is repeatability. Suddenly many fundamental theories of physics wind up getting scrapped - the laws of the universe *aren't* the same everywhere because these higher dimensional beings can essentially change them to suit their needs.
However, while the science might wind up not being solid science due to the issue of caprice, maybe you can wind up with a pseudo-science or mystical issue that would allow some people to appeal to the higher-dimensional creatures to do things that would give the illusion of control. For example, maybe there's a state of mind the lower-dimensional creatures can get to that is, for whatever reason, appealing to the higher dimensional creatures and the higher d critters want to encourage that. So a lower d creature gets to this state of mind, say, through meditating, and the higher d creature encourages this by giving the lower d creature something nice (say, extra powers) that make that lower d creature more likely to engage in the good behavior, and so on. Both sides are kind of trying to shape the other.
Suddenly you have the *gasp* science-fantasy world of Star Wars: they're really high tech and able to do a bunch of really cool stuff (warp and so on) but the cool stuff we're talking about is, basically, mystical/magical stuff.
And I have said in every post I've made on this topic that I agree it doesn't need to be explained (or didn't) but it was, and it's *gasp* fun to try and figure out ways to explain things in such a way that they can work with what we know about that world. Honestly, if it just upsets you (which is what it seems to have done) why would you even engage in the discussion? It isn't like it's anything important.
If all you have to contribute is "you're stupid and ignorant, this whole thing is dumb" then that's not particularly fun or interesting - at least, I don't find simply saying "you're stupid and ignorant, this whole thing is dumb" to be terribly fun. And if having a bit of fun trying to cobble together a workable way to have stupid things like midichlorians be related to force stuff makes me a fangirl, then okay, guilty as charged; much better to be a fan of something than a hostile, insulting naysayer who's not contributing anything "constructive" (in quotes because, it's a freakin' discussion of Star Wars so there's a limit to how constructive it can be), dontcha think?
I have one of the 60GB PS3's from the first run - the ones with the hardware PS2 emulation. Recently someone offered me an xbox slim & a ps3 slim for it, which I found hilarious.
Straights can get married or have a civil union in all 50 states, and in all states heterosexual couples are required to be married or in a civil union to get partner benefits. It's the same in states where gay couples can get married or enter into civil unions; domestic partner benefits require that they do so.
If the base law - marriage - weren't discriminatory in the first place - you wouldn't have the so-called discrimination against unmarried heterosexuals you're complaining about. Or let everyone claim their housemates as partners for the point of benefits regardless of status. I personally don't think that would be a big thing.
Actually, if we had proper health care in the US, it wouldn't be an issue at all.
What "we" need is going to vary depending on who you talk to.
At home I've got over 40TB worth of stuff - rips of movies (DVD and then BluRay) I own, entire television series' runs, hundreds of games, thousands of apps, god only knows how many animations & movies I've made as a hobbyist, and about 100k ebooks in various formats, along with tons of documents (everything I've ever written in a digital format, which covers schooling for 4 degrees, journals, blogs, work papers, etc.) and every website I've ever created. Toss in family movies and photos, recordings of my parents' memoirs, photos of various documents... And music... oy.... Crap you download off the internet is hardly the only thing a person is going to want to be able to archive.
All of my movies, music, games and software are on live storage, everything else is archived. I'd love to have it all be live accessible. I'm probably at the outside edge of personal use, though.
But my point is - quantity has a quality all its own, and while more reliable (yes, please) drives would be great, honkin' big ones at a pretty cheap price is nothing to sneer at.
Except it isn't. You're going under the mistaken assumption that "what you see is what you get" when it comes to the universe. Let me give you a thought experiment courtesy of the book Flatland:
Imagine you're a 2-dimensional creature - you live on a plane, everything around you is 2-dimensional, and the concepts of "up" and "down" are ones you can kind of vaguely begin to plumb (kind of like we do with tesserae or hypercubes or other mathematical & geometrical abstractions that sort of give us ideas but don't really make us *feel* a 4th spatial dimension in any visceral way)
Now I, a 3d space creature, can just look down and see you guys easily. So I reach down, grab one of you, pick you up out of your plane, and move you a couple of feet over before setting you down.
Holy shit, the ones of you who saw this might exclaim! Fred just teleported!
You haven't the biology to perceive that 3rd, crucial dimension, so to you, it's freaking magic. You might be extremely technologically advanced within your framework, but some basic stuff that any 3d toddler can do (grab and move something) is like magic to you and completely outside of your powers.
Outside of your powers to perceive, outside of your powers to even really theorize about, outside of your powers to even comfortably *think* about except in the vaguest possible way. I don't care how good you get at manipulating your 2d universe, stuff that happens in the 3d universe is going to be incredibly, INCREDIBLY hard to handle. You might develop a couple of applications that sort of handle the mathematical abstractions of the 3d concept and allow you to kind of do some things to it, but you aren't going to be really good at it.
So, take this into Star Wars territory. I'm going to ignore the blaster comment because I don't think that requires any kind of super-duper technology that means they should be able to handle ANYTHING. I'm going to focus on hyperdrive, "strong" AI and biotech.
1) Warp drive is, possibly, an application of extra-dimensional abstractions to (crudely) manipulate matter in the 3d universe. I say crudely because Solo is terrified of moving through a star, and, frankly, I'm unimpressed by any warp drive that isn't essentially instantaneous once you get it going. If you're traveling outside the universe and going point to point, it should be essentially instant. So sure, they have warp drives, but it isn't all that impressive.
2) "Strong" AI - I don't think so. Oh, sure, 3P0 seems pretty bright, and R2 is a sarcastic, snarky fella, but if they're so smart, why aren't they running the joint? They're essentially immortal, should have physical bodies far exceeding the strength of the meatbags around them, and generally wouldn't have any problem taking over. Yet the droid army (intentionally) lost a war (and those droids were controlled by a central source), numerous times we hear reference to canned phrases like "I'm just a droid and not very good at (whatever is being asked of them outside their purview)" and so on. I think the droids are just extremely good expert systems, but I definitely wouldn't call them "Strong" AI. Another 50-100 years of development here on Earth and I'm willing to bet we'll have non-organic brains as good as or better than their droids.
3) Biotech - this is relevant to the force since the only physical manifestation we know about is those midichlorians. So let's see... They cannot, even with the resources of an entire empire and even when the person needs it badly, regrow limbs or even give someone a skin graft. Hell, when one guy gets smacked in the face by a Wampa they can't even do sufficient plastic surgery to restore his good looks. People get old at the same rate we do. People die in childbirth and stupid platitudes like "she lost the will to live" are offered up rather than any real cause, even to people who should be well educated and bright enough to understand it. *We* are almost to a point of being able to do all of these things easily - so I can say I'm not impres
Actually, if you do plan on doing this, make ABSOLUTELY sure that the artist knows what the hell you're going for and is aware of how the symbols should look. Quite frequently when doing any kind of word or text or numbers that are unfamiliar, there are typos that are made. I have seen, at least 3x in my life, people who have spelling errors in their ink. I can only imagine they'll have plenty of room to screw this up, and you don't want to be the dumbass walking around with, essentially, 2+2=5 on your arm.
Midichlorians may simply be organisms that are capable of exerting heretofore unknown forces in the universe or modifying the interactions of currently known forces (suppressing, increasing, reversing them, whatever). Plants, for example, seem to use quantum entanglement as a part of photosynthesis, according to some recent news stories I've read - why couldn't there be other organisms out there that take advantage of other quirks of physics?
Or maybe they're organisms that have evolved that feed on force energy, and their presence in someone's body isn't giving them the force, but simply a way of getting an idea of whether or not they're strong with it. For example, white blood cell counts are used as a way of inferring whether or not someone has an infection. I think this is a more probable explanation, as, given the fact that Vader lost both arms and legs and was *still* phenomenally powerful, the midichlorians in his arms and legs were probably not contributing to his power.
Personally, I don't think the force needed to be explained, but I don't think that the explanation they gave was as much bullshit as people seem to think.
I'm with you, though, in that I think stories that try to explain why certain features of their universe work tend to really wind up underwhelming. Let magic be magic - we were perfectly OK for 20+ years with the idea that Jedi are basically magic, why spoil it with something mundane?
Personally I think the smugness of the people who assume that because they don't like a product that anyone who does must be an idiot is more annoying than fanboys.
The fact that you imagine no better reason than status why people might want these devices says volumes about you, none of it good.
I'm their boss, make much, much more money than they do, have much brighter career prospects than they do, get a higher tier benefits package, and, if they're cleaning up my messes, I guess I enjoy my work more. I've also got a reputation as the person you call when you want new ideas.
And, it wasn't so much my failures that got me noticed but the fact that I tried new things rather than just doing stuff the same way. When they failed - as I said, more often than not they did - the damage done was pretty minimal. When they succeeded, the benefits were quite large. Overall, as a result of the stuff I tried, we're in a better position than we were before.
Meanwhile, had I simply done what those "smarter" people did, I'd be making about 20% what I make now, have the same career prospects, have a worse benefits package, enjoy work less, and have a reputation for being a "good worker" and little more. My program would be in the exact same space it was before, doing the same things, and not able to take on new projects that would be interesting and useful.
If all those benefits are what come from being dumb, then I'll happily be guilty as charged.
Dilbert jokes aside, people who take more risks are going to be more likely to have spectacular successes as well. For the most part, at lower levels in a corporate hierarchy, people can fail at trying something but it generally can't *really* hurt the company. They can also succeed at trying something, and it may have a rather large effect on the company, or be seen as signs that this person is an up and comer.
Low risk of spectacular failure + decent chance of large success = promotions. The smart ones tone down the risk taking a bit once they can do real damage, and become much better at risk assessment and mitigation.
I can honestly say that in the last 2 years I've made probably 3-4 times as many "mistakes" on the job (ideas that seemed worth looking into but didn't pan out, changes to systems that seemed promising on paper but actually were 1/2 as good as our current methods in practice) for every success I've had. But the successes have been disproportionately large (ideas that allowed us to do research in ways/with populations that we previously had a hard time getting access to, implementation of systems that cut the amount of time needed to do data management across *all* projects by 50% or more, etc.) and as a result I've been bumped up 3 steps in the hierarchy to what in the corporate world would be a vice presidency but at my university is a directorship. And since I've taken on that position I've been a bit more risk averse, and when I do set up a new program I take steps to make sure that even if it fails the negative impact is minimal - I've adjusted the risk profile of the work I do so that I can now keep the job I've got, while still being able to move forward.
Meanwhile, I can look at other people who started at the same time and level I did, and they're still at that entry spot because, while they've done solid work and made fewer errors than I, they also haven't really done anything that stands out as a demonstration that they have the potential to do a lot more.
And it makes sense, too. Who is going to be the better leader, or the better person to bring an organization to the next level: someone who plays it safe or someone who stumbles a few times but also manages to come up with some really good ideas and makes them happen?
Of course, this kind of thinking can backfire when the powers that be see someone who takes all kinds of risks but never manages to make them pay out. If your management is snowed by someone who claims they'll be able to do big things but doesn't have a solid, defensible track-record of actually making things happen, you have the prototypical PHB who'll do everything he or she can to sabotage the work those under him or her do so that when it comes time to be accountable for the failures they can point at their staff and say they're trying *really hard* to motivate those lazy peons, but some people just aren't educable...
It doesn't even have to be dishonesty - it can be a misunderstanding.
If you say "does it hurt when you press on this spot" there are a LOT of assumptions: what does "hurt" mean, really? How much pressure in that spot? Point pressure or spread over a slightly larger area? Hurt *where* - inside or out? What kind of hurt - sharp, stabbing pains or a dull ache or something else? How intense is the pain? What if you're a giant sissie and any kind of pain makes you shriek? What if you're made of cast iron and even something that would cause 99% of the population to pass out is just something you shrug off?
Gates is doing this so he can make scads of money off of alternative energy?
Hm. I guess the billions he's put into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is just a clever ploy to make people think that he's not after money now so that he can... make a few more billion to replace the billions he's given away?
I don't disagree that Gates is no Einstein, and I think it's a really stupid, shallow and weak comparison, but at the same point I think it's been pretty conclusively proven that money, at this point, is not Gates' driving force here. If he wanted more money he could have just given less of it away.
Gates has spent vast sums of money on various projects - sums that, even for small projects, can dwarf the entire endowment of other philanthropic concerns.
For you to suggest that he's attempting to cash in on this is just absurd. If he wanted to "cash in" he simply wouldn't have "cashed out" in the first place. As much of a dick as he's been in the business world, given his actions in the world of philanthropy, you're an idiot if you think he's trying to profit off of this.
The answer is almost certainly "yes" that some lower-paid sales guy could do it, but, wait for it...... if he's as good as that he'll have offers from other companies very quickly, or will be looking to make more money elsewhere.
I've a good friend who does "new business development" for a very large corporation and if his current employer tried to cut his pay, with his track-record of sales he could walk into any other high end firm in the field and get his current salary + a signing bonus. When his previous employer started hinting that they might restructure the commission schedules, the top half of their sales team walked out and all had jobs at the same (or higher) pay within a couple of weeks at competitors. Their former employer wound up taking a pretty massive hit to their bottom line.
Yes, good products will help, but ultimately a business is in business to make money, and any sufficiently large business will take whatever approach will help them make the most of it - and quality doesn't always help (and sometimes hurts) the bottom line, while good sales will *always* help bring in more $$$.
To be blunt, you come off like someone who is proud of simple things like not shitting themselves. You also come off like someone who has completely missed the point. In your previous post you got all righteous about someone who wrote some bot scripts and SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED that they enjoyed the exercise of doing it well, and cited, as evidence, that people thought they did a great job/were thanking their bot.
You spoke about that as if the person were actually "getting off" on the praise when it sounded to me like they were "getting off" on the geekery of figuring something out and executing it well.
Anyway, keep on being proud of yourself for being able to do such complex tasks as simple math or clicking a button AND moving.
Seriously, WoW is such an easy game that the *only* difficult parts of it come from the meta-gaming aspects, like writing bots for it or software that can interact with it. Cheating or no, being proud of being able to play WoW manually is at about the same level as being proud that you can short shiny pebbles by color. Hell, even checkers is a much more challenging game.
Or, you know, he's a geek and into things like designing systems to automate tasks that humans do.
I spend about 60% of my work hours finding ways to have computers automate things that human workers are paid to do, and I find it fascinating. I understand if you think "WoW is serious business" but really - taking something like that game environment and designing scripts that can handle automation within it can be pretty interesting.
To be blunt, if getting praise because *you* personally are able to do something in a battle ground that *I* can write software to do as well or better - that seems like you're the one with the issue. I mean, shouldn't you go and find a hobby that isn't so mindnumbingly stupid and easy that a duffer can write software that is able to outperform you?
If anyone's inadequate, it sounds like you. But hey, that's just my take as someone who could write a script that is "smarter" than you within this game's parameters.
I have maybe 15,000 ebooks from a variety of sources, none of them currently have DRM, though 2 of them originally came from Amazon (bought by friends as gifts). Stripping the DRM from an ebook is pretty trivial. Even if Amazon disappears, I have my DRM-free files now, stored and backed up. Even if Amazon decides to send those books down the memory hole, I still have them.
That's ownership, in my book. Granted, it'd be great if I didn't have to spend the 5 minutes it took to rip the DRM off of them.
The solution to people screaming into their cellphones on planes is clear:
Make a separate compartment on the plane. In one compartment fly individuals without children. In the other compartment fly individuals with children and people who want to use their cellphones. Install massive sound dampening between the compartments. Charge people in the "quiet" compartment $25 to fly in peace, charge people in the "loud" compartment $25 to be able to use their phones. Charge people who wish to go from one compartment to the other $15 per time through the (very solid) door between the two compartments.
Everybody gets what they want and the airlines can make more money. Yay?
Slashdot Mirror
Log into illumina or any other paper search system. Plug in the terms you're interested in, see what papers come up that are widely used as references, and then who the authors and affiliations on those papers are.
This seems ideal, to me, because it lets you actually read the papers of the people who might be of interest, and it gives you a built in way to check their credibility.
At my university we have a number of faculty who *say* they're pursuing research in certain areas, but when you look at their publications and work, it's clear that only a couple of them are *actually* pursuing that research and are thus worth working with.
That's a good point and one I hadn't considered.
I'd like to think that if someone called my employer and said something unsavory about me that it'd be greeted with extreme skepticism, but I know for many people it would be a career ender if there was even the hint of an issue. Perhaps make it so that in order to see someone else's RealID info you would have to make your request visible to them. So if I post something it would show up as "thesandtiger" until someone clicked my name, in which case they'd then see my RealID info, but I'd also know I'd been looked at. Of course, one person could see your name and then post it to the site and then you'd never know who was actually doing the harassing, but I would hope that kind of thing would be limited because, of course, such a posting would open up the person doing it to being harassed.
One thing I would hope could come from this kind of thing would be people taking a more critical eye towards negative things they hear from reasonably anonymous sources about people.
How, exactly, is that any more "chilling" to free speech than any real-life face-to-face interaction with another person is "chilled" by the risk of being punched in the nose if you act like a total douchebag?
God forbid people be held accountable for the things they say. If people want to be trolling, feces-flinging, childish douchebags they certainly can do so, but I'm definitely in favor of people who abuse the privilege of anonymity by hurling abuse at people just because they can being limited in their ability to do so.
People usually don't get up in the middle of a crowded cafe and scream "NIGGERS! NIGGERS! NIGGERS!" just to get a rise out of people in real-life because they're rightly concerned about the consequences of this. Why should online be different?
As someone who doesn't abuse the privilege of anonymity, I'd be bummed that I won't be able to use those forums anymore unless I give up my anonymity, but at the same time I absolutely understand why it's being done, and it'll probably ultimately be for the better.
You're insane if you think that anonymity prevents people from attacking the person rather than their arguments (sorry, couldn't resist the ad hominem there :)) Now I'll attack your argument:
Go to any discussion based website out there where people are able to be anonymous. You will see a staggering number of people being incredible assholes to each other because they can do so without repercussion. Many people couldn't care less about developing a reputation for being an asshole because once the burden associated with a particular nickname becomes too much they can just dump it and make a new account. Many people go out of their way to make "alt" accounts just for the purpose of trolling forums and riling people up for no good reason.
I agree that we *should* pay more attention to the argument than to the identity of a person, but it's been demonstrated that unless the people running a forum are willing to do a LOT of moderation, it's very difficult to have a place that doesn't quickly degenerate into a cesspool when it's anonymous.
With Slashdot, you have karma and meta moderation etc. which kind of helps (slightly), but there are still a staggering number of trolling comments posted in every thread, people still feel perfectly free to post random bullshit as a way to rile people up, the only difference between here and most is that if you set your moderation threshold at 2 or above you can avoid the majority of them. Unfortunately, that also means newbies (who are posting at 1 by default) tend to not have their comments noticed, and so on.
There are lots of problems with real names being used, but I think that one of the advantages you'll see is that people will be less willing to be quite so cavalier about their assholery if they're putting their name on it.
For something like the forums for a video game - and in the specific case of WoW and Blizzard game forums in general those forums are an absolutely worthless cesspool populated by, I assume, angsty children and semi-retarded adults. There's just no other way to account for 99% of the "content" on them.
I'm gonna go off topic here for a sec - why are you being hostile? It's a discussion of a stupid thing in Star Wars, and yet rather than simply voice your opinion with something like "I disagree, here's why," you felt compelled to insult (the "derp") and belittle rather than simply behave like a mensch.
Back to the topic:
If you can see the effects in a 2D universe, sure, you can come up with a theory (or many theories) that attempt to explain what's happening in a higher dimensionality to explain those effects, but you're missing one crucial point: it's the whim of an intelligent being in that higher dimension that is causing this phenomena, and thus it may wind up not being entirely 100% predictable. How do you make a theory around something when the underlying cause of it - the caprice of an intelligent being - is not consistent.
Suddenly, the scientific method isn't completely useful here since one of the big elements of it is repeatability. Suddenly many fundamental theories of physics wind up getting scrapped - the laws of the universe *aren't* the same everywhere because these higher dimensional beings can essentially change them to suit their needs.
However, while the science might wind up not being solid science due to the issue of caprice, maybe you can wind up with a pseudo-science or mystical issue that would allow some people to appeal to the higher-dimensional creatures to do things that would give the illusion of control. For example, maybe there's a state of mind the lower-dimensional creatures can get to that is, for whatever reason, appealing to the higher dimensional creatures and the higher d critters want to encourage that. So a lower d creature gets to this state of mind, say, through meditating, and the higher d creature encourages this by giving the lower d creature something nice (say, extra powers) that make that lower d creature more likely to engage in the good behavior, and so on. Both sides are kind of trying to shape the other.
Suddenly you have the *gasp* science-fantasy world of Star Wars: they're really high tech and able to do a bunch of really cool stuff (warp and so on) but the cool stuff we're talking about is, basically, mystical/magical stuff.
And I have said in every post I've made on this topic that I agree it doesn't need to be explained (or didn't) but it was, and it's *gasp* fun to try and figure out ways to explain things in such a way that they can work with what we know about that world. Honestly, if it just upsets you (which is what it seems to have done) why would you even engage in the discussion? It isn't like it's anything important.
If all you have to contribute is "you're stupid and ignorant, this whole thing is dumb" then that's not particularly fun or interesting - at least, I don't find simply saying "you're stupid and ignorant, this whole thing is dumb" to be terribly fun. And if having a bit of fun trying to cobble together a workable way to have stupid things like midichlorians be related to force stuff makes me a fangirl, then okay, guilty as charged; much better to be a fan of something than a hostile, insulting naysayer who's not contributing anything "constructive" (in quotes because, it's a freakin' discussion of Star Wars so there's a limit to how constructive it can be), dontcha think?
I have one of the 60GB PS3's from the first run - the ones with the hardware PS2 emulation. Recently someone offered me an xbox slim & a ps3 slim for it, which I found hilarious.
Straights can get married or have a civil union in all 50 states, and in all states heterosexual couples are required to be married or in a civil union to get partner benefits. It's the same in states where gay couples can get married or enter into civil unions; domestic partner benefits require that they do so.
If the base law - marriage - weren't discriminatory in the first place - you wouldn't have the so-called discrimination against unmarried heterosexuals you're complaining about. Or let everyone claim their housemates as partners for the point of benefits regardless of status. I personally don't think that would be a big thing.
Actually, if we had proper health care in the US, it wouldn't be an issue at all.
What "we" need is going to vary depending on who you talk to.
At home I've got over 40TB worth of stuff - rips of movies (DVD and then BluRay) I own, entire television series' runs, hundreds of games, thousands of apps, god only knows how many animations & movies I've made as a hobbyist, and about 100k ebooks in various formats, along with tons of documents (everything I've ever written in a digital format, which covers schooling for 4 degrees, journals, blogs, work papers, etc.) and every website I've ever created. Toss in family movies and photos, recordings of my parents' memoirs, photos of various documents... And music... oy.... Crap you download off the internet is hardly the only thing a person is going to want to be able to archive.
All of my movies, music, games and software are on live storage, everything else is archived. I'd love to have it all be live accessible. I'm probably at the outside edge of personal use, though.
But my point is - quantity has a quality all its own, and while more reliable (yes, please) drives would be great, honkin' big ones at a pretty cheap price is nothing to sneer at.
Except it isn't. You're going under the mistaken assumption that "what you see is what you get" when it comes to the universe. Let me give you a thought experiment courtesy of the book Flatland:
Imagine you're a 2-dimensional creature - you live on a plane, everything around you is 2-dimensional, and the concepts of "up" and "down" are ones you can kind of vaguely begin to plumb (kind of like we do with tesserae or hypercubes or other mathematical & geometrical abstractions that sort of give us ideas but don't really make us *feel* a 4th spatial dimension in any visceral way)
Now I, a 3d space creature, can just look down and see you guys easily. So I reach down, grab one of you, pick you up out of your plane, and move you a couple of feet over before setting you down.
Holy shit, the ones of you who saw this might exclaim! Fred just teleported!
You haven't the biology to perceive that 3rd, crucial dimension, so to you, it's freaking magic. You might be extremely technologically advanced within your framework, but some basic stuff that any 3d toddler can do (grab and move something) is like magic to you and completely outside of your powers.
Outside of your powers to perceive, outside of your powers to even really theorize about, outside of your powers to even comfortably *think* about except in the vaguest possible way. I don't care how good you get at manipulating your 2d universe, stuff that happens in the 3d universe is going to be incredibly, INCREDIBLY hard to handle. You might develop a couple of applications that sort of handle the mathematical abstractions of the 3d concept and allow you to kind of do some things to it, but you aren't going to be really good at it.
So, take this into Star Wars territory. I'm going to ignore the blaster comment because I don't think that requires any kind of super-duper technology that means they should be able to handle ANYTHING. I'm going to focus on hyperdrive, "strong" AI and biotech.
1) Warp drive is, possibly, an application of extra-dimensional abstractions to (crudely) manipulate matter in the 3d universe. I say crudely because Solo is terrified of moving through a star, and, frankly, I'm unimpressed by any warp drive that isn't essentially instantaneous once you get it going. If you're traveling outside the universe and going point to point, it should be essentially instant. So sure, they have warp drives, but it isn't all that impressive.
2) "Strong" AI - I don't think so. Oh, sure, 3P0 seems pretty bright, and R2 is a sarcastic, snarky fella, but if they're so smart, why aren't they running the joint? They're essentially immortal, should have physical bodies far exceeding the strength of the meatbags around them, and generally wouldn't have any problem taking over. Yet the droid army (intentionally) lost a war (and those droids were controlled by a central source), numerous times we hear reference to canned phrases like "I'm just a droid and not very good at (whatever is being asked of them outside their purview)" and so on. I think the droids are just extremely good expert systems, but I definitely wouldn't call them "Strong" AI. Another 50-100 years of development here on Earth and I'm willing to bet we'll have non-organic brains as good as or better than their droids.
3) Biotech - this is relevant to the force since the only physical manifestation we know about is those midichlorians. So let's see... They cannot, even with the resources of an entire empire and even when the person needs it badly, regrow limbs or even give someone a skin graft. Hell, when one guy gets smacked in the face by a Wampa they can't even do sufficient plastic surgery to restore his good looks. People get old at the same rate we do. People die in childbirth and stupid platitudes like "she lost the will to live" are offered up rather than any real cause, even to people who should be well educated and bright enough to understand it. *We* are almost to a point of being able to do all of these things easily - so I can say I'm not impres
And then just add things as they are discovered.
Actually, if you do plan on doing this, make ABSOLUTELY sure that the artist knows what the hell you're going for and is aware of how the symbols should look. Quite frequently when doing any kind of word or text or numbers that are unfamiliar, there are typos that are made. I have seen, at least 3x in my life, people who have spelling errors in their ink. I can only imagine they'll have plenty of room to screw this up, and you don't want to be the dumbass walking around with, essentially, 2+2=5 on your arm.
Midichlorians may simply be organisms that are capable of exerting heretofore unknown forces in the universe or modifying the interactions of currently known forces (suppressing, increasing, reversing them, whatever). Plants, for example, seem to use quantum entanglement as a part of photosynthesis, according to some recent news stories I've read - why couldn't there be other organisms out there that take advantage of other quirks of physics?
Or maybe they're organisms that have evolved that feed on force energy, and their presence in someone's body isn't giving them the force, but simply a way of getting an idea of whether or not they're strong with it. For example, white blood cell counts are used as a way of inferring whether or not someone has an infection. I think this is a more probable explanation, as, given the fact that Vader lost both arms and legs and was *still* phenomenally powerful, the midichlorians in his arms and legs were probably not contributing to his power.
Personally, I don't think the force needed to be explained, but I don't think that the explanation they gave was as much bullshit as people seem to think.
I'm with you, though, in that I think stories that try to explain why certain features of their universe work tend to really wind up underwhelming. Let magic be magic - we were perfectly OK for 20+ years with the idea that Jedi are basically magic, why spoil it with something mundane?
Personally I think the smugness of the people who assume that because they don't like a product that anyone who does must be an idiot is more annoying than fanboys.
The fact that you imagine no better reason than status why people might want these devices says volumes about you, none of it good.
Counter-counterpoint:
I'm their boss, make much, much more money than they do, have much brighter career prospects than they do, get a higher tier benefits package, and, if they're cleaning up my messes, I guess I enjoy my work more. I've also got a reputation as the person you call when you want new ideas.
And, it wasn't so much my failures that got me noticed but the fact that I tried new things rather than just doing stuff the same way. When they failed - as I said, more often than not they did - the damage done was pretty minimal. When they succeeded, the benefits were quite large. Overall, as a result of the stuff I tried, we're in a better position than we were before.
Meanwhile, had I simply done what those "smarter" people did, I'd be making about 20% what I make now, have the same career prospects, have a worse benefits package, enjoy work less, and have a reputation for being a "good worker" and little more. My program would be in the exact same space it was before, doing the same things, and not able to take on new projects that would be interesting and useful.
If all those benefits are what come from being dumb, then I'll happily be guilty as charged.
Dilbert jokes aside, people who take more risks are going to be more likely to have spectacular successes as well. For the most part, at lower levels in a corporate hierarchy, people can fail at trying something but it generally can't *really* hurt the company. They can also succeed at trying something, and it may have a rather large effect on the company, or be seen as signs that this person is an up and comer.
Low risk of spectacular failure + decent chance of large success = promotions. The smart ones tone down the risk taking a bit once they can do real damage, and become much better at risk assessment and mitigation.
I can honestly say that in the last 2 years I've made probably 3-4 times as many "mistakes" on the job (ideas that seemed worth looking into but didn't pan out, changes to systems that seemed promising on paper but actually were 1/2 as good as our current methods in practice) for every success I've had. But the successes have been disproportionately large (ideas that allowed us to do research in ways/with populations that we previously had a hard time getting access to, implementation of systems that cut the amount of time needed to do data management across *all* projects by 50% or more, etc.) and as a result I've been bumped up 3 steps in the hierarchy to what in the corporate world would be a vice presidency but at my university is a directorship. And since I've taken on that position I've been a bit more risk averse, and when I do set up a new program I take steps to make sure that even if it fails the negative impact is minimal - I've adjusted the risk profile of the work I do so that I can now keep the job I've got, while still being able to move forward.
Meanwhile, I can look at other people who started at the same time and level I did, and they're still at that entry spot because, while they've done solid work and made fewer errors than I, they also haven't really done anything that stands out as a demonstration that they have the potential to do a lot more.
And it makes sense, too. Who is going to be the better leader, or the better person to bring an organization to the next level: someone who plays it safe or someone who stumbles a few times but also manages to come up with some really good ideas and makes them happen?
Of course, this kind of thinking can backfire when the powers that be see someone who takes all kinds of risks but never manages to make them pay out. If your management is snowed by someone who claims they'll be able to do big things but doesn't have a solid, defensible track-record of actually making things happen, you have the prototypical PHB who'll do everything he or she can to sabotage the work those under him or her do so that when it comes time to be accountable for the failures they can point at their staff and say they're trying *really hard* to motivate those lazy peons, but some people just aren't educable...
It doesn't even have to be dishonesty - it can be a misunderstanding.
If you say "does it hurt when you press on this spot" there are a LOT of assumptions: what does "hurt" mean, really? How much pressure in that spot? Point pressure or spread over a slightly larger area? Hurt *where* - inside or out? What kind of hurt - sharp, stabbing pains or a dull ache or something else? How intense is the pain? What if you're a giant sissie and any kind of pain makes you shriek? What if you're made of cast iron and even something that would cause 99% of the population to pass out is just something you shrug off?
So help me understand...
Gates is doing this so he can make scads of money off of alternative energy?
Hm. I guess the billions he's put into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is just a clever ploy to make people think that he's not after money now so that he can... make a few more billion to replace the billions he's given away?
I don't disagree that Gates is no Einstein, and I think it's a really stupid, shallow and weak comparison, but at the same point I think it's been pretty conclusively proven that money, at this point, is not Gates' driving force here. If he wanted more money he could have just given less of it away.
Gates has spent vast sums of money on various projects - sums that, even for small projects, can dwarf the entire endowment of other philanthropic concerns.
For you to suggest that he's attempting to cash in on this is just absurd. If he wanted to "cash in" he simply wouldn't have "cashed out" in the first place. As much of a dick as he's been in the business world, given his actions in the world of philanthropy, you're an idiot if you think he's trying to profit off of this.
The answer is almost certainly "yes" that some lower-paid sales guy could do it, but, wait for it... ... if he's as good as that he'll have offers from other companies very quickly, or will be looking to make more money elsewhere.
I've a good friend who does "new business development" for a very large corporation and if his current employer tried to cut his pay, with his track-record of sales he could walk into any other high end firm in the field and get his current salary + a signing bonus. When his previous employer started hinting that they might restructure the commission schedules, the top half of their sales team walked out and all had jobs at the same (or higher) pay within a couple of weeks at competitors. Their former employer wound up taking a pretty massive hit to their bottom line.
Yes, good products will help, but ultimately a business is in business to make money, and any sufficiently large business will take whatever approach will help them make the most of it - and quality doesn't always help (and sometimes hurts) the bottom line, while good sales will *always* help bring in more $$$.
It sucks, but thems the breaks.
I'm amazed you even know what one of those is!
Holy shit, you really are just the perfect picture of that blobular creature from the South Park WoW episode, aren't you?
I feel kind of greasy and cheeto stained just from this back and forth with you.
To be blunt, you come off like someone who is proud of simple things like not shitting themselves. You also come off like someone who has completely missed the point. In your previous post you got all righteous about someone who wrote some bot scripts and SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED that they enjoyed the exercise of doing it well, and cited, as evidence, that people thought they did a great job/were thanking their bot.
You spoke about that as if the person were actually "getting off" on the praise when it sounded to me like they were "getting off" on the geekery of figuring something out and executing it well.
Anyway, keep on being proud of yourself for being able to do such complex tasks as simple math or clicking a button AND moving.
Seriously, WoW is such an easy game that the *only* difficult parts of it come from the meta-gaming aspects, like writing bots for it or software that can interact with it. Cheating or no, being proud of being able to play WoW manually is at about the same level as being proud that you can short shiny pebbles by color. Hell, even checkers is a much more challenging game.
Or, you know, he's a geek and into things like designing systems to automate tasks that humans do.
I spend about 60% of my work hours finding ways to have computers automate things that human workers are paid to do, and I find it fascinating. I understand if you think "WoW is serious business" but really - taking something like that game environment and designing scripts that can handle automation within it can be pretty interesting.
To be blunt, if getting praise because *you* personally are able to do something in a battle ground that *I* can write software to do as well or better - that seems like you're the one with the issue. I mean, shouldn't you go and find a hobby that isn't so mindnumbingly stupid and easy that a duffer can write software that is able to outperform you?
If anyone's inadequate, it sounds like you. But hey, that's just my take as someone who could write a script that is "smarter" than you within this game's parameters.
I have maybe 15,000 ebooks from a variety of sources, none of them currently have DRM, though 2 of them originally came from Amazon (bought by friends as gifts). Stripping the DRM from an ebook is pretty trivial. Even if Amazon disappears, I have my DRM-free files now, stored and backed up. Even if Amazon decides to send those books down the memory hole, I still have them.
That's ownership, in my book. Granted, it'd be great if I didn't have to spend the 5 minutes it took to rip the DRM off of them.
Humorously, no. You inspect HV power lines with a Cessna or a helicopter, not a fully loaded 747.
You also are doing the inspection on VFR days, so if VOR gets screwed up it's not that big of a deal.
So you're saying it's not a BFD if the VOR gets FUBAR? Sounds like something that should be in TFM, but IANAP, so YMMV.
The solution to people screaming into their cellphones on planes is clear:
Make a separate compartment on the plane. In one compartment fly individuals without children. In the other compartment fly individuals with children and people who want to use their cellphones. Install massive sound dampening between the compartments. Charge people in the "quiet" compartment $25 to fly in peace, charge people in the "loud" compartment $25 to be able to use their phones. Charge people who wish to go from one compartment to the other $15 per time through the (very solid) door between the two compartments.
Everybody gets what they want and the airlines can make more money. Yay?