Anybody else think that this may just represent soldiers becoming increasing unhinged and mentally unbalanced through being in the stress of a Combat situation over time? Developing that kind of emotional attachment to inanimate objects could just be a sign of hallucinations from emergent schizophrenia, or generally strange behavior from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (i.e. "Shellshock") I mean, I've spoken with plenty of people from the Vietnam generation. The guys that went over there became pretty loopy very often.
This could be useful data about a design flaw in mine-seeking robots. It could very well be that its a bad idea to have them behave like wounded animals. If only because its just another thing to aggravate stress responses in the soldiers using them. If its going to remind them of a wounded dog or cat, I can easily see how that might happen.
It's not a Prisoner's dilemma, because it is iterated. The prisoner's dilemma is one-off. In an iterated situation, there is the possibility of the traitor getting punished, like by being murdered in the prison yard, which is why the Prisoner's dilemma is such a bad model in the first place. In real life, this is what's starting to happen, the networks and advertisers are opting to try and fuck us over, so we're punishing them by skipping commercials and downloading torrents of TV shows.
Is killing for the sake of killing worse than killing foolishly? I'm not sure. Killing an innocent is killing an innocent. I'm also not sure that the holocaust was "killing for the sake of killing" If you believe its possible that people believed the Nazi rhetoric, they were killing the jews, not to kill, but because they believed they were evil and a threat to humanity. They also killed gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, and others for similar reasons. Again, if you believe the account of the stated motivations for the holocaust, then they were killing for horrificly misguided reasons, not just for the hell of it. If thats true, the situation in all wrongful wars is quite comparable.
Unfortunately, that's not a viable solution either. The American "Cult of the Car" (Damn you Eisenhower and your Interstate Highways! You killed the Railroad!) has transformed American society in numerous abnormal ways. We're too spread out, and we have no public transportation. Thus because of the way so many of us live (suburbs, blech!) it is impossible to live without a car. This is a horrible chicken or the egg problem. People won't use public transportation because they drive, and we can't develop it without use. Fortunately, as fuel prices continue to rise, reality may beat some sense into the American people. At least I hope so.
And People, don't try to use the "America's too big! You can't do public transportation!" It's bullshit. America had decent rail transport before, and we could have it again. Suburbs are a blight on the landscape and an abberration. Nobody else live like that. Cars are fucking dangerous. And maybe if some of you actually had to see other human beings on a regular basis, you might care about society again.
Eh? Those CCFL lamps are one of the most power hungry devices on modern laptops, which is why there's been such a push to get them replaced with LEDs (Which operate at normal voltages for Electronics, and batteries). I understand your point, but there are generally problems with efficiency when you start having to convert a 5V or maybe 10V or 12V or so battery source to voltages that high. Inefficiencies in the electronics end up being additional major power users in themselves.
Because the best solution to a problem is expensive. Capitalism doesn't give you "best" it give you cheapest. This guy is experienced and talented, has a family to support, and is therefore expensive. Therefore he is out of work. That fact that one of his units of "work" is worth much, much more than some other schmuck doesn't matter. The same reason generally applies to why American manufacturing is dead. The USA had some of the best and most capable manufacturing industries in the world. That gives you numerous advantages in many areas, but unfortunately doesn't help the bottom line very much. So we let lobbyists convince our government to stop protecting industry, and now our country flips burgers for a living.
Ok, So you hold another contest for somebody to do that. Saying "I'll give $X0,000 to anybody that solve this difficult and expensive problem" is a heck of a lot cheaper than having to pay one, or multiple employees. Welcome to the future, where your job can be replaced by a cash prize contest posted on the internet.
Did you read the statute at all? All that says its that its illegal write a letter saying "I'm going to kill X, Signed Y/Anonymous" It's very specific on this point. Which clearly meant that saying "You fucker, I'm going to kill/shoot you!" was perfectly legal. Which is what the GP was arguing in the first place. Citing a source that directly contradicts your argument isn't a very good way to win. Your other source is a little better, but all you've done is shown that some of the level of paranoia has existed in some states for 20 years. Besides, if someone accused of the "threatening" provisions of the law could convince a judge or jury that the the person feeling "threatened" was just a paranoid baby, they go free, and that was MUCH easier 20 years ago.
Happens all the time though. Plenty of "Pedophiles" set up dates with "Teenage Girls" and end up meeting FBI agents and going to jail. On the intent to have sex with someone who didn't exist in the first place, and was just a persona of an above the of age of consent FBI agent. Stew on that for a while. "Terrorism" and "Think of the Children!" are a very, very effective Denial of Service on our civil liberties.
Why use cellphone wireless when you can do VOIP over WI-FI? I realize there are advantages to cellular, but WI-FI ends up being MUCH cheaper by the byte.
The difference between the UMPC/Internet Tablet and PDAs is that PDA's have smaller, lower resolution screens, that make surfing much less easy on the eyes.
A MID is basically a way to push the UMPC into the consumer range, at around PDA prices. I see it as a competitor to Nokia's internet tablet, of which I own one, and am quite fond of it. A MID is a device that takes into account the shortcomings of Internet Tablet's and addresses them, while still maintaining the appeal of the form factor. It's not a device for hardcore computing, its a device for laying in bed and surfing the net, maybe while listening to some music, or podcasts. That it is also quite portable, and has the capability to also act as a mobile VOIP phone wirelessly connected to a bluetooth headset, or to be a portable movie/music player as well is just icing on the cake.
Re:This makes sense in a lot of ways.
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Treating the Dead
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· Score: 1
About your note about near drownings in frigid water, take a look at this one http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstra ct?fromPage=online&aid=106409 the abstract states the child was submerged for over an hour! They note that recovery wasn't truly complete and that the child had memory difficulties and some other neurological abnormalities, but still, that's pretty freaking amazing. Functional recovery after an hour of no vital signs? Apparently, the near drownings can be for what I'd say are quite extended periods of time.
It would be very interesting to read a really rigorous neurological study of some of the Russian induced-hypothermia patients however.
Hmmm, and yet Americans are usually so much more unhealthy than their European counterparts that have socialized medicine. How do you account for that, if socialized medicine causes people to not give a shit about their health?
Re:This makes sense in a lot of ways.
on
Treating the Dead
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· Score: 1
Wow, that study you linked the abstract to is impressive. Less than 1% in nearly a thousand patients died post op? That sounds pretty good to me, given that we're talking about people with what I would consider a serious medical problem in the first place. Would you happen to know what kind of death rate normal in the states for similar operations?
Because they ARE just attacking their political enemies. Republican appointee US Attorneys have been caught doing it, by their cases getting tossed by judges who are disgusted at their time being wasted when the cases brought before them are rediculously flimsy. Additionally, why should I believe anything an agent of this administration says? It would hardly be the first time they've blatantly lied to the american public. I regard everything that comes from this Government with extreme suspicion, which they have more than earned.
Go easy on big corporations? It depends on what they're doing. Are their actions in abject opposition to the public interest? Like, oh say, Haliburton? or Big Oil? If this is the worst Apple's ever done they've still got a long way to go before they become as corrupt as the agents of the Bush administration.
You've got it dead backwards, I like Apple because I perceive them to be less horrible than others. Not the other way around.
This makes sense in a lot of ways.
on
Treating the Dead
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Trying to chill the body of someone in Cardiac arrest, for example, makes perfect sense. People survive hypothermia, even with after they stop breathing and their heart stops beating, remarkably well. I've read about Russians having used this technique during open heart surgery. They lacked machinery like cardiac pumps, so they cooled the patients down and stopped the heart and breathing, while doing the surgery on a bed of ice. It apparently worked far, far better than our technophile medicine in the USA would lead us to believe.
It even makes sense to me why sudden resumption of oxygen should be lethal. Oxygen is extremely toxic and aerobic organism, such as ourselves, had to evolve complex cellular machinery in order to utilize it for metabolic efficiency, while keeping the oxygen from damaging cellular structures, especially DNA. The sudden surge in oxygenated blood would probably overload this system. Apoptosis in this case may be a protective step by killing the cell before its DNA becomes damaged and possibly cancerous. Thus, flooding the heart with oxygen causes the whole heart to "take one for the team," and shut down completely.
The discovery that the cells are still alive, and can be revived with special treatment is extremely encouraging for the development of better techniques.
Yes, but I've read multiple studies that indicate clearly that purely depressed patients are not violent against other people. Only patients with personality disorders present as complications showed that kind of behavior. There are plenty of depressed people including teens out there, and of the ones that do, the vast majority take their own life without physical violence against anyone else.
Depression, in my opinion, is not sufficient to spark a killing spree, it takes some additional predisposition to violence to actually act out that kind of behavior.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Videogames and taking a shit are "linked," I guarantee you that 100% of people who play games also take a shit at some point. That doesn't mean that videogames cause bowel movements.
The reality is that people who commit acts of violence can be shown, either by previous diagnoses or by forensic analysis to have very severe personality disorders. Those personality disorders can develop due to a variety of causes, physical/sexual abuse are strongly implicated, as is poverty and a number of other situations, there may even be genetic predisposing factors. These people claiming a causative link between between playing games and the development of the kinds of personality disorders linked with violent behavior. Pointing out that guy who went on a killing spree played Counterstike, when he also had a long history of Schizophrenia and Antisocial Personality Disorder just isn't going to cut it.
In every one of these events there are warning signs, which often are ignored by family, peers, and educators (or as was the Case in the VT shooting, botched by the piss poor mental health system in the United States, the shooter had been previously committed, I think they clearly failed to make sure he was stable and on an adequate treatment regime before release.) Show me even one, ONE, case, where a kid is perfectly normal, without clear predisposing factors, and then discovers games and becomes a violent sociopath. Until that happens I remain convinced that Videogaming is no more harmful than a heated game of Checkers or Battleship.
Thank Goodness, I was afraid people would think I was making a serious post! For some reason, sarcasm tends to fly right over people's heads a lot on Slashdot. Something else I thought of while writing this post yesterday. Here's a list:
Lemmings
Cannon Fodder
Starcraft
Day of the Tentacle
Super Mario World
Tetris
Planescape: Torment
Chronotrigger
Gradius III
Simcity
SimEarth
Civilization
That's a list of 2D games of varying ages. Most of them are more than 10 years old, some of them are pushing 20 at this point. They're all considered classics of their various genres. If you can't have fun playing at least of a few of them just because they aren't 3D, then there is something wrong with you; you just aren't a gamer. You're just some kind bleeding edge hardcore techno-wanker.
I do not mean the list to be the best games ever made, and certainly not to assert that they are they the best representatives of their type. Its just a list of titles of games I could think of from various genres that I know are good. Not all of them will appeal to everyone, but a couple of them ought to have some appeal to every gamer. And I'm being Dead serious in this post.
Yes, because once content becomes more than six months old it becomes immediately boring, un-entertaining. No one could ever enjoy playing a retro-styled game, or re-experiencing a game they enjoyed in the past. That's why emulators have no user-base whatsoever. It's also very clear that due to the limitations of 2D graphics, no one could ever invent new and involving forms of game play while limited to 2D, it just wouldn't work at all.
After all, fun analyzing new and more accurate forms of lens flare and ever higher resolution Bump maps! Trace the edges of shadows and how many pixels of blur they've got, and Count those triangles, yeah baby!
If she's such a novice why did she need a >$1500 notebook? Or a notebook at all? Its not like Apple doesn't make cheaper notebooks you know. Yes, when you buy a high end business class machine with an all metal alloy case, it carries a price premium, there's a shocker for you. She needed to be looking either at a Macbook, or preferably a Mac Mini. There's nothing she would have wanted to do that the Mini couldn't.
Also I've had to do tech support on a cheap recent HP notebook, and IMO it was piece of crap. My father bought one for my sister who's in college. The Compaq he bought for my mother has likewise been no end of trouble.
My personal experience tells me that Thinkpads are definitely the machines to get if you need a windows only (or Linux) notebook. All of them I've ever encountered (I've had one, my father has upgraded through several over the past decade) have been very nice, reliable machines. I've not worked with one built since the Lenovo purchase, but from what I hear they're still very solid.
Your point 1 is very true, but I think very easy to counteract. A smoke screen would work just as well if not better in space.
As per your last statement, I don't think space combat is feasible with current technology;) Of course, realistically the only currently viable "space combat" is the use of ICBMs to take out communications/GPS/Spy satellites, which has already been demonstrated to be possible by the Chinese.
OK, so then you have two (or three, or more) locations to hit with mortar shells instead of one? Wow, that's really going to slow them down. I think this is actually a major drawback of laser based weaponry. Unlike ballistic or direct fire projectile weapons, where the enemy would actually have to expend some significant effort in locating your munitions/soldiers a Laser weapons instantly gives away its exact location every time it fires.
This has some fairly interesting implications for space based combat with such weapons that I'm not sure many Sci-fi authors thoroughly thought through. Utilizing high powered lasers by their very nature completely eliminates stealth capabilities.
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This could be useful data about a design flaw in mine-seeking robots. It could very well be that its a bad idea to have them behave like wounded animals. If only because its just another thing to aggravate stress responses in the soldiers using them. If its going to remind them of a wounded dog or cat, I can easily see how that might happen.
It's not a Prisoner's dilemma, because it is iterated. The prisoner's dilemma is one-off. In an iterated situation, there is the possibility of the traitor getting punished, like by being murdered in the prison yard, which is why the Prisoner's dilemma is such a bad model in the first place. In real life, this is what's starting to happen, the networks and advertisers are opting to try and fuck us over, so we're punishing them by skipping commercials and downloading torrents of TV shows.
Is killing for the sake of killing worse than killing foolishly? I'm not sure. Killing an innocent is killing an innocent. I'm also not sure that the holocaust was "killing for the sake of killing" If you believe its possible that people believed the Nazi rhetoric, they were killing the jews, not to kill, but because they believed they were evil and a threat to humanity. They also killed gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, and others for similar reasons. Again, if you believe the account of the stated motivations for the holocaust, then they were killing for horrificly misguided reasons, not just for the hell of it. If thats true, the situation in all wrongful wars is quite comparable.
And People, don't try to use the "America's too big! You can't do public transportation!" It's bullshit. America had decent rail transport before, and we could have it again. Suburbs are a blight on the landscape and an abberration. Nobody else live like that. Cars are fucking dangerous. And maybe if some of you actually had to see other human beings on a regular basis, you might care about society again.
Eh? Those CCFL lamps are one of the most power hungry devices on modern laptops, which is why there's been such a push to get them replaced with LEDs (Which operate at normal voltages for Electronics, and batteries). I understand your point, but there are generally problems with efficiency when you start having to convert a 5V or maybe 10V or 12V or so battery source to voltages that high. Inefficiencies in the electronics end up being additional major power users in themselves.
Because the best solution to a problem is expensive. Capitalism doesn't give you "best" it give you cheapest. This guy is experienced and talented, has a family to support, and is therefore expensive. Therefore he is out of work. That fact that one of his units of "work" is worth much, much more than some other schmuck doesn't matter. The same reason generally applies to why American manufacturing is dead. The USA had some of the best and most capable manufacturing industries in the world. That gives you numerous advantages in many areas, but unfortunately doesn't help the bottom line very much. So we let lobbyists convince our government to stop protecting industry, and now our country flips burgers for a living.
Ok, So you hold another contest for somebody to do that. Saying "I'll give $X0,000 to anybody that solve this difficult and expensive problem" is a heck of a lot cheaper than having to pay one, or multiple employees. Welcome to the future, where your job can be replaced by a cash prize contest posted on the internet.
Did you read the statute at all? All that says its that its illegal write a letter saying "I'm going to kill X, Signed Y/Anonymous" It's very specific on this point. Which clearly meant that saying "You fucker, I'm going to kill/shoot you!" was perfectly legal. Which is what the GP was arguing in the first place. Citing a source that directly contradicts your argument isn't a very good way to win. Your other source is a little better, but all you've done is shown that some of the level of paranoia has existed in some states for 20 years. Besides, if someone accused of the "threatening" provisions of the law could convince a judge or jury that the the person feeling "threatened" was just a paranoid baby, they go free, and that was MUCH easier 20 years ago.
Why? When there are so many out of work engineers in your field that you can just hold a contest, what's the point in hiring somebody?
Happens all the time though. Plenty of "Pedophiles" set up dates with "Teenage Girls" and end up meeting FBI agents and going to jail. On the intent to have sex with someone who didn't exist in the first place, and was just a persona of an above the of age of consent FBI agent. Stew on that for a while. "Terrorism" and "Think of the Children!" are a very, very effective Denial of Service on our civil liberties.
Why use cellphone wireless when you can do VOIP over WI-FI? I realize there are advantages to cellular, but WI-FI ends up being MUCH cheaper by the byte.
The difference between the UMPC/Internet Tablet and PDAs is that PDA's have smaller, lower resolution screens, that make surfing much less easy on the eyes.
A MID is basically a way to push the UMPC into the consumer range, at around PDA prices. I see it as a competitor to Nokia's internet tablet, of which I own one, and am quite fond of it. A MID is a device that takes into account the shortcomings of Internet Tablet's and addresses them, while still maintaining the appeal of the form factor. It's not a device for hardcore computing, its a device for laying in bed and surfing the net, maybe while listening to some music, or podcasts. That it is also quite portable, and has the capability to also act as a mobile VOIP phone wirelessly connected to a bluetooth headset, or to be a portable movie/music player as well is just icing on the cake.
It would be very interesting to read a really rigorous neurological study of some of the Russian induced-hypothermia patients however.
Hmmm, and yet Americans are usually so much more unhealthy than their European counterparts that have socialized medicine. How do you account for that, if socialized medicine causes people to not give a shit about their health?
Wow, that study you linked the abstract to is impressive. Less than 1% in nearly a thousand patients died post op? That sounds pretty good to me, given that we're talking about people with what I would consider a serious medical problem in the first place. Would you happen to know what kind of death rate normal in the states for similar operations?
Go easy on big corporations? It depends on what they're doing. Are their actions in abject opposition to the public interest? Like, oh say, Haliburton? or Big Oil? If this is the worst Apple's ever done they've still got a long way to go before they become as corrupt as the agents of the Bush administration.
You've got it dead backwards, I like Apple because I perceive them to be less horrible than others. Not the other way around.
It even makes sense to me why sudden resumption of oxygen should be lethal. Oxygen is extremely toxic and aerobic organism, such as ourselves, had to evolve complex cellular machinery in order to utilize it for metabolic efficiency, while keeping the oxygen from damaging cellular structures, especially DNA. The sudden surge in oxygenated blood would probably overload this system. Apoptosis in this case may be a protective step by killing the cell before its DNA becomes damaged and possibly cancerous. Thus, flooding the heart with oxygen causes the whole heart to "take one for the team," and shut down completely.
The discovery that the cells are still alive, and can be revived with special treatment is extremely encouraging for the development of better techniques.
Depression, in my opinion, is not sufficient to spark a killing spree, it takes some additional predisposition to violence to actually act out that kind of behavior.
The reality is that people who commit acts of violence can be shown, either by previous diagnoses or by forensic analysis to have very severe personality disorders. Those personality disorders can develop due to a variety of causes, physical/sexual abuse are strongly implicated, as is poverty and a number of other situations, there may even be genetic predisposing factors. These people claiming a causative link between between playing games and the development of the kinds of personality disorders linked with violent behavior. Pointing out that guy who went on a killing spree played Counterstike, when he also had a long history of Schizophrenia and Antisocial Personality Disorder just isn't going to cut it.
In every one of these events there are warning signs, which often are ignored by family, peers, and educators (or as was the Case in the VT shooting, botched by the piss poor mental health system in the United States, the shooter had been previously committed, I think they clearly failed to make sure he was stable and on an adequate treatment regime before release.) Show me even one, ONE, case, where a kid is perfectly normal, without clear predisposing factors, and then discovers games and becomes a violent sociopath. Until that happens I remain convinced that Videogaming is no more harmful than a heated game of Checkers or Battleship.
Lemmings
Cannon Fodder
Starcraft
Day of the Tentacle
Super Mario World
Tetris
Planescape: Torment
Chronotrigger
Gradius III
Simcity
SimEarth
Civilization
That's a list of 2D games of varying ages. Most of them are more than 10 years old, some of them are pushing 20 at this point. They're all considered classics of their various genres. If you can't have fun playing at least of a few of them just because they aren't 3D, then there is something wrong with you; you just aren't a gamer. You're just some kind bleeding edge hardcore techno-wanker.
I do not mean the list to be the best games ever made, and certainly not to assert that they are they the best representatives of their type. Its just a list of titles of games I could think of from various genres that I know are good. Not all of them will appeal to everyone, but a couple of them ought to have some appeal to every gamer. And I'm being Dead serious in this post.
After all, fun analyzing new and more accurate forms of lens flare and ever higher resolution Bump maps! Trace the edges of shadows and how many pixels of blur they've got, and Count those triangles, yeah baby!
Also I've had to do tech support on a cheap recent HP notebook, and IMO it was piece of crap. My father bought one for my sister who's in college. The Compaq he bought for my mother has likewise been no end of trouble.
My personal experience tells me that Thinkpads are definitely the machines to get if you need a windows only (or Linux) notebook. All of them I've ever encountered (I've had one, my father has upgraded through several over the past decade) have been very nice, reliable machines. I've not worked with one built since the Lenovo purchase, but from what I hear they're still very solid.
As per your last statement, I don't think space combat is feasible with current technology ;) Of course, realistically the only currently viable "space combat" is the use of ICBMs to take out communications/GPS/Spy satellites, which has already been demonstrated to be possible by the Chinese.
This has some fairly interesting implications for space based combat with such weapons that I'm not sure many Sci-fi authors thoroughly thought through. Utilizing high powered lasers by their very nature completely eliminates stealth capabilities.