If I had modpoints to spend and I hadn't already posted in here, I'd give you +1 insightful. Epic obviously failed on several points of their contract and is guilty of misrepresentation of their product. SK failed at finding programmers who could work with the engine (other companies' products show that it is possible to work with it and get decent output).
If I were on the jury, I would free SK from the contract and refund the portion they paid for the undelivered products. I'm not sure that SK deserves damages for what may be their own fault.
Read the pdf on Kotaku. They lay out a number of claims (more than one instance of missing a code deadline, removing parts of the engine, flat-out lying about what it can do). The main things they want are a nulled contract and the ability to make any and all modifications to UE3.
It is being taken to court. Kotaku is hosting a copy here.
Of course, since you say it's "boring," I'll give you the hint that you should skip to pages 24 ("Epic's Improper Withholding of Updates, Improvements, and Enhancements") and 30 ("Epic's Misrepresentations in Connection With the Unreal Engine 3 and the
Agreement").
Well, here's the test of whether something is "harmful to minors" (Ginsberg v. New York):
"Harmful to minors" means that quality of any description or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse, when it:
(i) predominantly appeals to the prurient, shameful or morbid interest of minors, and
(ii) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors, and
(iii) is utterly without redeeming social importance for minors.
In the eyes of the courts, obscenity refers to sex and obscene materials may be restricted, so long as adults aren't prevented from obtaining said materials (child pornography being an exception). Violence isn't obscenity and so it may not be restricted. TBH, IANAL and I haven't read the whole case, so I'm not sure what the precedents are. I suspect it comes down to what's considered the double standard in American society.
In any case, there are now precedents restricting minors from buying porn and precedents allowing them to buy violent materials. Alcohol and tobacco don't fall under the First Amendment, so that's an entirely different matter.
It undermines the First Amendment with the following:
S 614. No person, partnership, or corporation shall sell or rent or attempt to sell or rent at retail a video game in contravention of the rating affixed thereto.
*slow clap* Congratulations, New York. You're about to waste money on a law that will be struck down as unconstitutional (most recent casualty: Illinois taxpayers are out $510,000).
IANACSBIRTMED (I am not a climate scientist but I read their manuscripts every day), and your comment made me laugh. Cutting-edge climate science requires more than familiarity with half a dozen subjects; the only way to communicate the complexities to a layman involves a professor waving hands and going "Well, most of the models show something in the range of..."
(My favorite grudge I've come across was found in one paper, a comment, and a reply to the comment. Two teams of French geologists were trying very hard to call each other morons without actually using that word.)
The bottom line was that the T. rex's biological signature was most like a bird's, at least based on the first fragmentary data. "It looks like chicken may be the closest among all species that are present in today's databases for proteins and genomes," Asara said. Today's databases being the key words. Our current database of fully sequenced genomes is pathetically small, but most news outlets are reporting "T. rex was giant chicken!" When another dinosaur bone with protein fragments is found, then we'll have a better idea. Seven sequences does not a genome make.
Even if it does pass, the courts will be only too happy smack it down at the first chance they get; they're pretty well known for slapping the legislators when they act out of place.
Ok, here's my disclaimer: I use Windows at home. I use OSX at work.
At my job, I'm in charge of filing lots and lots of papers. I also keep all of the files on my computer. I have my own naming system, and I like to arrange things alphabetically within most of my folders. I download most of my files, and it's fastest to save them to the desktop and move them later.I do not sort the folders on my desktop by name. I group them by type.
When I drag files from the desktop to my folder of choice, I usually like to resort everything alphabetically. Except, of course, that OSX doesn't highlight the folder. It still thinks I want to work on the desktop, even though the desktop might be buried behind several open windows. So when I go View -> Arrange -> by Name, everything on my desktop is reordered.
It doesn't help that the difference between grays means that I can barely tell which window is highlighted. (Is there some way to change this? I haven't been able to find anything.)
And while I'm complaining about rearranging files and folders, why isn't there a shortcut for it? I should think there would be a keyboard shortcut for Arrange, or even just for Clean Up.
I didn't intend to be aggressive or demeaning. I just have an interest in everything, and I always try to challenge what people say in order to have them explain things. I love learning.
Heh, ok. If you have any specific statements you'd like to talk about, I'm available via gmail during work hours (ladlergo).
(Stuff about glasses.)
I think your example is pretty lousy (laser eye surgery, we go back to old-fashioned glasses, etc), but that's a decent point. The resulting change in frequency of A and B would depend on whether it actually reduced fitness. (Again, except for near-blindness, needing glasses is an example of a problem that can be worked around, but making it a bad example. Maybe asthma is better after all.)
Okay, so fitness is the wrong word to use. But I think every reasonable person would rather be not-asthmatic than asthmatic, if given a choice where all other things are equal. My goal is to find something that, without killing people, prevents descendants from having to suffer the genetically-linked diseases of their parents.
Screening is the way to go. However, see my points below.
We don't even have to target all diseases, just highly debilitating (M.S.) or pervasive (heart disease) ones. I would think that if we could find the genetic marker for "predisposition to heart disease" and started preventing the conception of individuals with that marker, our health care system would be better in a generation. And, best of all, individuals who were screened before conception to ensure a healthy human would probably not have to screen their egg/sperm when they go to have a kid, so after a few generations everyone should be descended from almost perfectly healthy humans.
This would be great, except that:
1. How do we decide which diseases should be located and sequenced first? Most common? Worst prognosis? It could be done, but expect less than what everyone's touting. "Sequencing cancer" (HAHAHAHAHAHA) is a good example of this.
2. Screening would have to become extremely cheap and available to everyone. (You did say "everyone.")
3. There is an unknown number of genetic diseases. It is likely to be very high. If you want "almost perfectly healthy humans," you need wipe out most of these.
4. I hope someone has the money to pay for all of the research going into this.
Other than those logistical nightmares, I think it's a great idea.;)
(To the person who spent one of their modpoints marking an earlier post as flamebait: Should I be flattered? I've never had one of those before.)
Pardon me for dealing with the stuff that I feel we can actually come to a civil agreement about. I'm going to go into a bit of detail because I have no idea what you've learned and I default to overkill.
I'm really more interested in this. Basically, you're saying that the percentage of the population with a certain genetic flaw will be constant, since there will be no selection pressure against the existence of the gene?
Yes, the percentage of people carrying that gene will be constant. If 95% of humans have gene condition A and 5% has gene condition B, after N number of generations, there will still be 95% A and 5% B. This assumes random mating and no difference in the reproductive abilities between A and B. This also ignores events that wipe out some section of the population.
Non-random mating: The percentage with B will increase if B suddenly becomes more desirable . Th e percentage with B will decrease if B suddenly becomes less desirable.
Reproductive differentials: If B leaves more offspring, the percentage with B will increase.. If B leaves less offspring, the percentage with B will decrease. This covers disease immunity.
Random events: Sudden change in the makeup of the population. It could be 75%A/25%B or 99%A/1%B afterwards. Natural disasters fall under here.
Previous to treatment for (insert awful genetic disease here), A=/=B with respect to fitness. After the advent of such treatment A=B. A and B remain in equilibrium until something occurs to make A=/=B.
But the fact that we have health care that allows these people to live and create offspring that they otherwise wouldn't have means that both they and their children will need MORE health care than the average individual.
Sure, that's true. But remember that they now have the same reproductive fitness as everyone else. Population B will increase, but population A will as well. There will be the same percentage as before; the raw numbers will just be higher. The only change in the "burden" in the health care system will be when new groups (C, D, E, etc) gain treatment and the cost spikes. It will remain level after that spike, since the percentage of people in each group will not change.
Now, how to control the costs? I'm all for genetic screening, but we could also start by reducing end-of-life treatments. Is it really worth $20,000 to have 6 more months?
Note: I'm not suggesting we kill old people. This would require a shift in philosophies in order to be palatable to everyone. I put the chances of this at... very poor.
I'm also interested in the positive mutations/negative mutations rate. If we have more negative mutations than positive ones, and more of those negative mutations are allowed to persist by not being selected against, would not this indicate that in total negative mutations will accumulate faster than positive ones?
Yes, but that's not going to happen, not in the forseeable future. It would require being able to fully sequence, diagnose, and treat people before permanent damage occurred. It would also require it to be done on a shoestring budget. I suspect the time we get to that point will be long after genetic screening is widespread in the places where such treatment would be performed, and thus the question is moot.
That's my thoughts from 5 minutes. I could be off about the technology. Information about the rate of mutations is also subject to change, so I could be completely wrong; the working assumption is that most mutations that cause an effect cause negative effects.
Also, one additional thing to keep in mind: if an asthmatic happens to be skilled at some activity other than running, there may be no change in fitness (number of offspring). If the average number of kids is 10, and said asthmatic happens to be eaten by a lion after having 10 children grow to maturity, asthma had no impact on fitness. Fitness is all about ha
I don't buy that myopia is a result of environment.
Perhaps "upbringing" is the wrong word, but it's certainly not limited to genetics. The Wikipedia article calls it "school myopia". See the "Theories" section as well.
I'll buy diabesity (diabetes + obesity) being related to upbringing, but I really think we're starting to have a genetic disposition towards obese people, which obese genes would probably have been culled.
Such a "disposition" (and you do realize that the word should not be used when talking about populations of individuals) has mainly occurred in the fairly recent past, such as the past two or three generations.
Asthma is probably the biggest one that's a result of upbringing, and I'll bet there's still a genetic component.
Please read the WP sections on epidemiology and pathogenesis. There are certainly genetic factors, but to suggest that asthma (and allergies in general) wouldn't be a problem if the genes were "culled" is uninformed.
Humans have no natural predators, so we have no one to cull the herd for us.
Bzuh? We certainly used to have (animal) predators, and we still do in certain parts of the world. Diseases can be considered predators (and rather good ones, too). The weather is quite capable of killing us as well. Also, see physical injury and/or death inflicted by other humans.
The external pressures are not as important as they used to be, but that's not to say they don't (or didn't ever) exist.
This, combined with the "every life is precious" view, means that the only solution is to prevent the conception of individuals who would have been culled if not for the marvels of modern society, which I suggest doing by screening for genetic defects before doing in vitro fertilization.
I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, but I have no problem with screening for genetic defects.
Otherwise, we will reach a point where the health care system implodes trying to accommodate the poor genetic code that remains.
Please read about Hardy-Weinberg genetics. If genetic defects have no bearing on one's ability to reproduce (as you say) and who one reproduces with, then it's the same as any other gene and the percentage will remain stable in a population. It will not increase.
As far as having an impact on whether someone can reproduce, the only things I'm aware of are low fertility or sterility. Even someone like Rain Man could impregnate someone these days.
There are behavioral barriers (being too shy to ever get a date and dying a virgin), societal barriers (taboos), and physical barriers (facial disfigurement is hard to ignore).
I see that you're a hardware engineer. I'm a biologist. How about I don't lecture you on physics and you don't lecture me on population genetics?
All of us who wear glasses? We should have been culled. All these people developing diabetes from eating too much sugar? Selected against. Asthma? You get the picture.
I know this is late, but after seeing no one call you on your examples, I have to bring it up.
The three examples you have chosen are highly influenced by upbringing. If you wanted to pick examples of things that should have been "culled", try something that is purely (or even mostly) genetic and drastically reduces the chances of reproducing. You didn't pick anything that actually has an impact. when it comes to reproduction.
Or (3), that the stores realize that some people are willing to put down money now to not have to wait in line in November, but that it would be a bad idea if all of their copies were preordered.., thus leaving none for the people who are happy to wait in line.
Back in the day, opera was considered mass entertainment. Well-known performers, melodramatic plots, and the best special effects in existence were the reasons they appealed to so many people. Rather like today's blockbusters.
If you go actually RTFA, you'd see that he spends fairly little time actually critiquing the game, giving only a few examples of how KD might be critiqued in that style/school. If you, like me, got excited at the post's title, look elsewhere.
I usually prefer to wade into combat when I'm gaming, whether it's MMORPGs or GURPS. While I was originally biased towards playing mages (high INT and low STR in real life), I've found that standing back and shooting off magic missiles just doesn't do it for me.
Actually, Ambrosia has only ported 4 of their 26 games to Windows (a few more if you count the plug-ins to play old ones). I started playing Escape Velocity (the original) on the high school computer club's Mac, and I was in my senior year of college before they finally ported the series for Windows (EV:Nova).
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If I were on the jury, I would free SK from the contract and refund the portion they paid for the undelivered products. I'm not sure that SK deserves damages for what may be their own fault.
Read the pdf on Kotaku. They lay out a number of claims (more than one instance of missing a code deadline, removing parts of the engine, flat-out lying about what it can do). The main things they want are a nulled contract and the ability to make any and all modifications to UE3.
Of course, since you say it's "boring," I'll give you the hint that you should skip to pages 24 ("Epic's Improper Withholding of Updates, Improvements, and Enhancements") and 30 ("Epic's Misrepresentations in Connection With the Unreal Engine 3 and the Agreement").
In the eyes of the courts, obscenity refers to sex and obscene materials may be restricted, so long as adults aren't prevented from obtaining said materials (child pornography being an exception). Violence isn't obscenity and so it may not be restricted. TBH, IANAL and I haven't read the whole case, so I'm not sure what the precedents are. I suspect it comes down to what's considered the double standard in American society.
In any case, there are now precedents restricting minors from buying porn and precedents allowing them to buy violent materials. Alcohol and tobacco don't fall under the First Amendment, so that's an entirely different matter.
IANACSBIRTMED (I am not a climate scientist but I read their manuscripts every day), and your comment made me laugh. Cutting-edge climate science requires more than familiarity with half a dozen subjects; the only way to communicate the complexities to a layman involves a professor waving hands and going "Well, most of the models show something in the range of..."
(My favorite grudge I've come across was found in one paper, a comment, and a reply to the comment. Two teams of French geologists were trying very hard to call each other morons without actually using that word.)
Ok, that made me laugh. I have an image of a T. rex hopping and saying ribbit.
Why did I have to scan most of the way down the page to find this? For shame, people.
Even if it does pass, the courts will be only too happy smack it down at the first chance they get; they're pretty well known for slapping the legislators when they act out of place.
Thanks! Time to start applying it to several dozen folders...
Ok, here's my disclaimer: I use Windows at home. I use OSX at work.
At my job, I'm in charge of filing lots and lots of papers. I also keep all of the files on my computer. I have my own naming system, and I like to arrange things alphabetically within most of my folders. I download most of my files, and it's fastest to save them to the desktop and move them later.I do not sort the folders on my desktop by name. I group them by type.
When I drag files from the desktop to my folder of choice, I usually like to resort everything alphabetically. Except, of course, that OSX doesn't highlight the folder. It still thinks I want to work on the desktop, even though the desktop might be buried behind several open windows. So when I go View -> Arrange -> by Name, everything on my desktop is reordered.
It doesn't help that the difference between grays means that I can barely tell which window is highlighted. (Is there some way to change this? I haven't been able to find anything.)
And while I'm complaining about rearranging files and folders, why isn't there a shortcut for it? I should think there would be a keyboard shortcut for Arrange, or even just for Clean Up.
Heh, ok. If you have any specific statements you'd like to talk about, I'm available via gmail during work hours (ladlergo).
(Stuff about glasses.)I think your example is pretty lousy (laser eye surgery, we go back to old-fashioned glasses, etc), but that's a decent point. The resulting change in frequency of A and B would depend on whether it actually reduced fitness. (Again, except for near-blindness, needing glasses is an example of a problem that can be worked around, but making it a bad example. Maybe asthma is better after all.)
Okay, so fitness is the wrong word to use. But I think every reasonable person would rather be not-asthmatic than asthmatic, if given a choice where all other things are equal. My goal is to find something that, without killing people, prevents descendants from having to suffer the genetically-linked diseases of their parents.Screening is the way to go. However, see my points below.
We don't even have to target all diseases, just highly debilitating (M.S.) or pervasive (heart disease) ones. I would think that if we could find the genetic marker for "predisposition to heart disease" and started preventing the conception of individuals with that marker, our health care system would be better in a generation. And, best of all, individuals who were screened before conception to ensure a healthy human would probably not have to screen their egg/sperm when they go to have a kid, so after a few generations everyone should be descended from almost perfectly healthy humans.This would be great, except that:
1. How do we decide which diseases should be located and sequenced first? Most common? Worst prognosis? It could be done, but expect less than what everyone's touting. "Sequencing cancer" (HAHAHAHAHAHA) is a good example of this.
2. Screening would have to become extremely cheap and available to everyone. (You did say "everyone.")
3. There is an unknown number of genetic diseases. It is likely to be very high. If you want "almost perfectly healthy humans," you need wipe out most of these.
4. I hope someone has the money to pay for all of the research going into this.
Other than those logistical nightmares, I think it's a great idea. ;)
(To the person who spent one of their modpoints marking an earlier post as flamebait: Should I be flattered? I've never had one of those before.)
Pardon me for dealing with the stuff that I feel we can actually come to a civil agreement about. I'm going to go into a bit of detail because I have no idea what you've learned and I default to overkill.
I'm really more interested in this. Basically, you're saying that the percentage of the population with a certain genetic flaw will be constant, since there will be no selection pressure against the existence of the gene?
Yes, the percentage of people carrying that gene will be constant. If 95% of humans have gene condition A and 5% has gene condition B, after N number of generations, there will still be 95% A and 5% B. This assumes random mating and no difference in the reproductive abilities between A and B. This also ignores events that wipe out some section of the population.
Non-random mating: The percentage with B will increase if B suddenly becomes more desirable . Th e percentage with B will decrease if B suddenly becomes less desirable.
Reproductive differentials: If B leaves more offspring, the percentage with B will increase.. If B leaves less offspring, the percentage with B will decrease. This covers disease immunity.
Random events: Sudden change in the makeup of the population. It could be 75%A/25%B or 99%A/1%B afterwards. Natural disasters fall under here.
Previous to treatment for (insert awful genetic disease here), A=/=B with respect to fitness. After the advent of such treatment A=B. A and B remain in equilibrium until something occurs to make A=/=B.
But the fact that we have health care that allows these people to live and create offspring that they otherwise wouldn't have means that both they and their children will need MORE health care than the average individual.
Sure, that's true. But remember that they now have the same reproductive fitness as everyone else. Population B will increase, but population A will as well. There will be the same percentage as before; the raw numbers will just be higher. The only change in the "burden" in the health care system will be when new groups (C, D, E, etc) gain treatment and the cost spikes. It will remain level after that spike, since the percentage of people in each group will not change.
Now, how to control the costs? I'm all for genetic screening, but we could also start by reducing end-of-life treatments. Is it really worth $20,000 to have 6 more months?
Note: I'm not suggesting we kill old people. This would require a shift in philosophies in order to be palatable to everyone. I put the chances of this at... very poor.
I'm also interested in the positive mutations/negative mutations rate. If we have more negative mutations than positive ones, and more of those negative mutations are allowed to persist by not being selected against, would not this indicate that in total negative mutations will accumulate faster than positive ones?
Yes, but that's not going to happen, not in the forseeable future. It would require being able to fully sequence, diagnose, and treat people before permanent damage occurred. It would also require it to be done on a shoestring budget. I suspect the time we get to that point will be long after genetic screening is widespread in the places where such treatment would be performed, and thus the question is moot.
That's my thoughts from 5 minutes. I could be off about the technology. Information about the rate of mutations is also subject to change, so I could be completely wrong; the working assumption is that most mutations that cause an effect cause negative effects.
Also, one additional thing to keep in mind: if an asthmatic happens to be skilled at some activity other than running, there may be no change in fitness (number of offspring). If the average number of kids is 10, and said asthmatic happens to be eaten by a lion after having 10 children grow to maturity, asthma had no impact on fitness. Fitness is all about ha
Perhaps "upbringing" is the wrong word, but it's certainly not limited to genetics. The Wikipedia article calls it "school myopia". See the "Theories" section as well.
I'll buy diabesity (diabetes + obesity) being related to upbringing, but I really think we're starting to have a genetic disposition towards obese people, which obese genes would probably have been culled.Such a "disposition" (and you do realize that the word should not be used when talking about populations of individuals) has mainly occurred in the fairly recent past, such as the past two or three generations.
Asthma is probably the biggest one that's a result of upbringing, and I'll bet there's still a genetic component.Please read the WP sections on epidemiology and pathogenesis. There are certainly genetic factors, but to suggest that asthma (and allergies in general) wouldn't be a problem if the genes were "culled" is uninformed.
Humans have no natural predators, so we have no one to cull the herd for us.Bzuh? We certainly used to have (animal) predators, and we still do in certain parts of the world. Diseases can be considered predators (and rather good ones, too). The weather is quite capable of killing us as well. Also, see physical injury and/or death inflicted by other humans.
The external pressures are not as important as they used to be, but that's not to say they don't (or didn't ever) exist.
This, combined with the "every life is precious" view, means that the only solution is to prevent the conception of individuals who would have been culled if not for the marvels of modern society, which I suggest doing by screening for genetic defects before doing in vitro fertilization.I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, but I have no problem with screening for genetic defects.
Otherwise, we will reach a point where the health care system implodes trying to accommodate the poor genetic code that remains.Please read about Hardy-Weinberg genetics. If genetic defects have no bearing on one's ability to reproduce (as you say) and who one reproduces with, then it's the same as any other gene and the percentage will remain stable in a population. It will not increase.
As far as having an impact on whether someone can reproduce, the only things I'm aware of are low fertility or sterility. Even someone like Rain Man could impregnate someone these days.There are behavioral barriers (being too shy to ever get a date and dying a virgin), societal barriers (taboos), and physical barriers (facial disfigurement is hard to ignore).
I see that you're a hardware engineer. I'm a biologist. How about I don't lecture you on physics and you don't lecture me on population genetics?
I know this is late, but after seeing no one call you on your examples, I have to bring it up.
The three examples you have chosen are highly influenced by upbringing. If you wanted to pick examples of things that should have been "culled", try something that is purely (or even mostly) genetic and drastically reduces the chances of reproducing. You didn't pick anything that actually has an impact. when it comes to reproduction.
I at least hope they're killed before they're fried.
Or (3), that the stores realize that some people are willing to put down money now to not have to wait in line in November, but that it would be a bad idea if all of their copies were preordered.., thus leaving none for the people who are happy to wait in line.
Hah. I'm a few blocks away, and I was wondering whether I should go over.
Hence his comment about PhDs not being suited for the work involved - he has direct experience.
Back in the day, opera was considered mass entertainment. Well-known performers, melodramatic plots, and the best special effects in existence were the reasons they appealed to so many people. Rather like today's blockbusters.
Have a cookie. I wish I had a modpoint.
If you go actually RTFA, you'd see that he spends fairly little time actually critiquing the game, giving only a few examples of how KD might be critiqued in that style/school. If you, like me, got excited at the post's title, look elsewhere.
I usually prefer to wade into combat when I'm gaming, whether it's MMORPGs or GURPS. While I was originally biased towards playing mages (high INT and low STR in real life), I've found that standing back and shooting off magic missiles just doesn't do it for me.
Actually, Ambrosia has only ported 4 of their 26 games to Windows (a few more if you count the plug-ins to play old ones). I started playing Escape Velocity (the original) on the high school computer club's Mac, and I was in my senior year of college before they finally ported the series for Windows (EV:Nova).