Interesting, you must have missed the recent study that showed a marked decrease in real aggression, stress levels and a reduced temper after playing violent video games. (cite: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/107604.php)
I'd assume that watching porn of various types has similar affects on the individuals tendencies to perform what may be objectionable acts (eg. rape).
Yet we try to ban exposure to things which studies from many psychologists (who aren't affiliated with religious organizations) and sex researchers (Masters and Johnson for example)say may actually decrease crime levels (in all but the real sociopaths).
Umm, it's still scientific fact that man can't fly. Airplanes can fly and you can stick men in them. But last I checked you toss a guy off a building and it's still splat.
Also, man can't survive for more than a few seconds in space. Now man can survive fine in a space suit for a few hours or a space ship until the supplies run out. But in space, it's still exploding human.
Technology has allowed us to either discover more information to allow us to revise our theories/facts or has enabled us to circumvent previous impossibilities.
Unfortunately, you (like most of the populace) fail to grasp the definition of science.
What you describe is not science but experiment. And as I seriously doubt that it would be possible for any intelligent species to conduct any experiment that last over a 1000 years (unless individuals of said species live for significantly long lifespans to reduce the number of interim generations to a manageable number). This is not a possible experiment.
However we've done multiple experiments with worms, fruit flies and bacteria (aka. lesser species) that not only display evolution, but show speciation (cite: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html). So evolution is a fact, unless you contend that humans are not governed by the biological rules affecting all other known lifeforms. The only scientific argument left involves the process of speciation, primarily the theoretical aspects.
Science is not experiment. Science is the process we use to understand how the universe works (why is left to the theologians). Science is looking at observable phenomenon, and then making our best guess as to how it happened, then looking at more phenomena, running some experiments implied by our guess and seeing if we're wrong. We can never truly know if we are right, just that we are not wrong. (weird, huh?)
Anyway, I admire your faith. Just not your reasoning.
US attorney General Alberto Gonzales is unfortunately right, however he is spinning his statement to appear to say something other than it does.
Yes, the constitution doesn't grant any rights explicitly. What Gonzales is implying is that because it doesn't grant rights they don't exist. This is a fallacy of spin. The constitution explicitly specifies when rights may be suspended only. Thereby saying that by virtue of being human you have these rights and they need not be granted by any government.
The founding fathers recognized we are to be subject to the rule of law (verses the whim of the people or king), so they specified when it is in the best interest of the people to remove certain rights for the greater good, and to forbid the government from tampering with them otherwise.
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Most people tend to misunderstand the very few measurable quantities that determine evolutionary success.
1. Net ability to intake energy.
2. Net efficiently at processing energy.
3. Average number of offspring that reproduce.
These are the primary factors determining evolutionary success. Factors such as gestation time, defense against disease or predators, and energy expended finding food, all add up to general efficiency processing energy.
As a hypothetical oversimplified example:
Creature A is a plant eater and gets 100 calories from every 1kg of plant material consumed (numbers are completely fictitious and have no mathematical consistency). Creature B is a carnivore and gets 1k calories for every 1kg of meat consumed. Without factoring for the energy spent gathering or hunting, it looks like the carnivore is a better survivor. However if it takes a hundred times more energy for the carnivore to catch a meal it is now less likely to be a survivor.
Intelligence, size, and speed are important sub-factors. However, they are only contributors to the three measures of species survivability.
Add a css style like to a special browser that interpretes to a hardware device for whatever specific disability you are circumventing. Like a or something.
I wasn't attempting to state they were oppressed. I was attempting to state that they are complacent sheep giving up all their freedoms for a few toys. That, their ignorance and lack of concern for their former right to privacy, free assembly, and free speech, don't seem to matter to them as long as they have their distractions. Unfortunately, one day they just might see why once we fought and died for those freedoms while they watch their family and friends being arrested or killed for "subversive actions".
I've read many of the comments here discussing deregulation, monopoly-abuse, and the need of regulation. I think most of my fellow slashdotters are mistaking the point where monopoly-regulation is good and where it is bad. Monopolies for infrastructure are good, for anything else they tend to be bad. It's ridiculous to think that we need competitive markets for power delivery to your house. One power line is sufficient any more is foolish, the same for any cable or pipe that a business or home needs. One road monopoly; one water; one sewer.
However, there should be strict protection of the right for competition for the providers who supply the materials for those monopolies or the services transported over them.
One Phone line provider is good, one phone service provider is not, and One ISP is not. Anytime you prevent competition among content providers of any medium you limit innovation, inflate cost, and allow abuses of power.
A Ma-Bell providing lines to everyone and maintaining them isn't a bad thing if they have only the providers as clients. Having Bellsouth, or MCI, or who ever hire the ma-bell line men to work on your lines and make sure they work can, and does work. There is a comparable example in some of the natural gas deregulation markets. However, the SNL bit about the phone company is true only if you must use them for service.
Anyway, that's my $2.00's (regulated inflation of my usual $0.02)
*- How do you convince a large enough percentage of the populace that freedom is worth dying for, and especially more than that new Celine Dion CD, and their SUV?
My apologies for using a contrived example. The only reason I used the complete works is that for a simulation you must specify a goal for testing. If you have a simulation with no specific test that you can see, you'll never know when to stop it or if it's working.
In reality there only test is does this mutation convey a energy, defense, offensive, or reproductive advantage. Meaning that if the members of a species with a mutation have any advantage in producing more young or preventing those without the mutation from producing more young, then they are a success. The part that most do not get, is the size of the advantage required. A mutation that gives a 0.0000000000000001 percent advantage (or less) over other members of that species, will after trillions or more generations allow the mutated members to either dominate or be the sole representatives of that species.
The real misconception of evolution is that it involves random chance to go from nothing to a fully formed species in effectively one-step. This is (as the creationist/ID crowd claims) impossible.
The true method of evolution is an immense form of feedback on a timescale that humans are not naturally able to perceive. Since humans don't live for millions of years it is hard for us to observe and comprehend that very minor random changes in one generation multiplied by billions or trillions of generations can cause massive observed change if you can only look at a couple of those billions of generations.
A simple experiment in genetic algorithms will quickly show how this works.
Start with a random string of bits of the same length as the number of bits used to encode the complete works of Shakespeare (cause you have to use the works of Shakespeare in an example) and then retain those bits that match the pattern and position of one (just one) character in the complete works. With each generation randomize (or mutate) a number of the bits that do not match. After a few hundred generations, you will have if not the complete works of Shakespeare, a close approximation.
I've played COH, Galaxies, Dark Age, EverQuest, and Ultima Online and the problem is epidemic. All of them have issues where the designers plan to have a perfect team that fit a certain play style. If you're play style doesn't match their idea of what you should be doing, it's an unbalanced game.
Maybe they should concentrate on adaptive power's/abilities, a few solo powers (just strong enough that as a solo character you can heal yourself enough not to always die and attack with something that will kill things after a decent time), but generally things that can add to or stack with other classes powers.
Using COH for an example, have the fire controller be able to boost a fire tanks abilities if they are grouped, where the damage is doubled or regeneration is quicker or something. So that alone a character is barely playable, but in a group the dynamics become more interesting. Or heck, have an ice controller in the same team have adverse effects on enemies, like lengthen effects or add ice burn damage by increasing temperature extremes the bad guys face.
Actually, just have the powers/abilities be more realistic. Arrows act more arrows instead of hits with arrow graphics, punches like punches, fire bolts like fire bolts, etc...
That would make me play more and love what I play, even if the graphics are less that state of the art. Fixing things like line of sight or having the power sets coherent instead of artificially balanced.
Game Developers, there is no need to arbitrarily add "extra" things to balance characters. Fire characters should take cold damage at a higher level that isn't "nerf"-ing the character types it's making them more meaningful. And yes, it's ok that one type of archer race is a much better archer than another race, inequalities happen in real life all the time. Consistency is what players really wish for, not balanced classes.
This isn't a license to make uber-classes that can take out anything; they should all have fatal vulnerabilities. They should have reasons to team up. Characters that use mostly physical attacks should have issues attacking things that aren't physical, and hitting a rock monster or robot with your fist should do almost as much damage to you as to the monster if there aren't any powers that help.
But in closing, the biggest issue is developers trying to balance characters, instead of improving them. In PVP, a tank should crush a controller, but only when the controller's control of the tank fails. This is due to the nature of the classes, not to an unbalanced game. Don't look at how character A. got crushed in seconds in a fight, look at why. Then fix it only if why doesn't fit with the world of the game.
Personally, I've done a few small internal utility apps in both languages, and I like the api design of java better than c#. However, c# isn't a bad language there are a few features like regions that I like, and some of the api is actually easier to use than java.
My opinion is that for a quick program java is better, however if you need something that is reliable, efficient, and easy use the language with the api that best suits the problem set.
A part of the problem is that was the originally proposed definition when they went about re-defining the fundamental measurements of SI unfortunate that quantity varies with temperature and atmospheric pressure.
Yep, I agree with you the overly-ambitious are much scarier than the lazy, but the stupid are what truly irritate me (probably due to my job at a hell-desk).
For clarification my personal definition of stupid:
Someone who knows the answer to a problem, but refuses to use it.
At least till we replace them with robots/ very small shell scripts.
Seriously though, considering how often it seems that those with no ambition/work ethic fail to perform the basic task of their job.
I think we'd be much better off automating all task that can be automated, providing adequate education
(and the current system is in no way adequate) for those who wish to better themselves. Then providing enclaves/communes for the $DRUG_OF_CHOICE brain-dead masses who wish to watch shows like Jerry and wouldn't notice a lobotomy even if they were "conscious" while they had it preformed.
Re:Typical assinine name-calling
on
State of the Union
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return, 6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't deliver on their promises. Yet a rate of return that high is mathematically impossible unless the economy grows much faster than anyone is now expecting.
is countered by
An investor entering the market at today's high stock prices may earn less
than the long-term historical average. Two fundamental measures for
evaluating stock prices are the dividend yield--the ratio of annual
dividends to stock prices--and the price-earnings ratio. According to an
analysis of historical stock performance, returns on stocks over 10-year
periods have been well below average when the dividend yield was low and the price-earnings ratio was high. Indeed, the stock market has been
at record high levels in recent years, and the dividend yield is below
long-run historical values. Likewise, the price-earnings ratio is well above
its long-run average. Some analysts have estimated that recent
price-earnings ratios would be consistent with a 1 percentage point
decline in the long-run return on stocks; in other words, future stock
returns could decline from the historical real average of 7 percent to
6 percent over the long run.
Given that his first assumption of mathematical impossibility is invalidated by the senate analysis of 1998 (Clinton's second term) regarding the stock market's historical performance and his essay is built on this assumption of impossibility , which an official study by those opposed to privation states is false, it stands to reason that his essay is invalid.
cite url:
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/a398074.pdf
United States General Accounting Office
GAO Report to the Special Committee on
Aging, U.S. Senate
which cited
For example, see John E. Golob and David G. Bishop, "What Long-Run Returns Can Investors Expect
from the Stock Market?" Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Review, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Third
Quarter 1997), pp. 5-20 and John H. Cochrane, "Where is the Market Going? Uncertain Facts and Novel
Theories," Economic Perspectives, Vol. XXI, Issue 6 (November/December 1997), pp. 3-37.
Slashdot Mirror
Just some simple math.... (numbers completely fictitious) your hourly rate $100.00 IT guy rate $50.00
you spending 5 min doing basic troubleshooting $8.34
30 min it takes IT guy to fix it with info from troubleshooting $25.00
-------
total $33.34
1hr it takes IT guy to fix it
(due to lack of an adequate prob. desc.) $50.00
first method cost to customer $33.34
your method cost to customer $50.00
------
you saved the customer -$16.67
Wonderful way to add value to your customers.
FTFY
Interesting, you must have missed the recent study that showed a marked decrease in real aggression, stress levels and a reduced temper after playing violent video games. (cite: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/107604.php)
I'd assume that watching porn of various types has similar affects on the individuals tendencies to perform what may be objectionable acts (eg. rape).
Yet we try to ban exposure to things which studies from many psychologists (who aren't affiliated with religious organizations) and sex researchers (Masters and Johnson for example)say may actually decrease crime levels (in all but the real sociopaths).
Umm, it's still scientific fact that man can't fly. Airplanes can fly and you can stick men in them. But last I checked you toss a guy off a building and it's still splat.
Also, man can't survive for more than a few seconds in space. Now man can survive fine in a space suit for a few hours or a space ship until the supplies run out. But in space, it's still exploding human.
Technology has allowed us to either discover more information to allow us to revise our theories/facts or has enabled us to circumvent previous impossibilities.
Don't read much do you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils
between fish and lizards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungfish
lizards(dinosaurs) and birds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yixianosaurus
rodents and bats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colugo
Unfortunately, you (like most of the populace) fail to grasp the definition of science.
What you describe is not science but experiment. And as I seriously doubt that it would be possible for any intelligent species to conduct any experiment that last over a 1000 years (unless individuals of said species live for significantly long lifespans to reduce the number of interim generations to a manageable number). This is not a possible experiment.
However we've done multiple experiments with worms, fruit flies and bacteria (aka. lesser species) that not only display evolution, but show speciation (cite: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html). So evolution is a fact, unless you contend that humans are not governed by the biological rules affecting all other known lifeforms. The only scientific argument left involves the process of speciation, primarily the theoretical aspects.
Science is not experiment. Science is the process we use to understand how the universe works (why is left to the theologians). Science is looking at observable phenomenon, and then making our best guess as to how it happened, then looking at more phenomena, running some experiments implied by our guess and seeing if we're wrong. We can never truly know if we are right, just that we are not wrong. (weird, huh?)
Anyway, I admire your faith. Just not your reasoning.
US attorney General Alberto Gonzales is unfortunately right, however he is spinning his statement to appear to say something other than it does.
Yes, the constitution doesn't grant any rights explicitly. What Gonzales is implying is that because it doesn't grant rights they don't exist. This is a fallacy of spin. The constitution explicitly specifies when rights may be suspended only. Thereby saying that by virtue of being human you have these rights and they need not be granted by any government.
The founding fathers recognized we are to be subject to the rule of law (verses the whim of the people or king), so they specified when it is in the best interest of the people to remove certain rights for the greater good, and to forbid the government from tampering with them otherwise.
2. Monopolizing trade a felony; penalty
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
I beg to differ
Most people tend to misunderstand the very few measurable quantities that determine evolutionary success.
1. Net ability to intake energy.
2. Net efficiently at processing energy.
3. Average number of offspring that reproduce.
These are the primary factors determining evolutionary success. Factors such as gestation time, defense against disease or predators, and energy expended finding food, all add up to general efficiency processing energy.
As a hypothetical oversimplified example:
Creature A is a plant eater and gets 100 calories from every 1kg of plant material consumed (numbers are completely fictitious and have no mathematical consistency). Creature B is a carnivore and gets 1k calories for every 1kg of meat consumed. Without factoring for the energy spent gathering or hunting, it looks like the carnivore is a better survivor. However if it takes a hundred times more energy for the carnivore to catch a meal it is now less likely to be a survivor.
Intelligence, size, and speed are important sub-factors. However, they are only contributors to the three measures of species survivability.
Just a stupid question, not meant to be a flame, but if you have a close personal active with God, why do you need a book at all?
nay, it's just the editors loosing capitalization skills like the previously lost anti-dupe skills, grammer skills, and spelling skills.
Add a css style like to a special browser that interpretes to a hardware device for whatever specific disability you are circumventing. Like a or something.
I wasn't attempting to state they were oppressed. I was attempting to state that they are complacent sheep giving up all their freedoms for a few toys. That, their ignorance and lack of concern for their former right to privacy, free assembly, and free speech, don't seem to matter to them as long as they have their distractions. Unfortunately, one day they just might see why once we fought and died for those freedoms while they watch their family and friends being arrested or killed for "subversive actions".
I've read many of the comments here discussing deregulation, monopoly-abuse, and the need of regulation. I think most of my fellow slashdotters are mistaking the point where monopoly-regulation is good and where it is bad. Monopolies for infrastructure are good, for anything else they tend to be bad. It's ridiculous to think that we need competitive markets for power delivery to your house. One power line is sufficient any more is foolish, the same for any cable or pipe that a business or home needs. One road monopoly; one water; one sewer.
However, there should be strict protection of the right for competition for the providers who supply the materials for those monopolies or the services transported over them.
One Phone line provider is good, one phone service provider is not, and One ISP is not. Anytime you prevent competition among content providers of any medium you limit innovation, inflate cost, and allow abuses of power.
A Ma-Bell providing lines to everyone and maintaining them isn't a bad thing if they have only the providers as clients. Having Bellsouth, or MCI, or who ever hire the ma-bell line men to work on your lines and make sure they work can, and does work. There is a comparable example in some of the natural gas deregulation markets. However, the SNL bit about the phone company is true only if you must use them for service.
Anyway, that's my $2.00's (regulated inflation of my usual $0.02)
You missed one, the first and most important one.
*- How do you convince a large enough percentage of the populace that freedom is worth dying for, and especially more than that new Celine Dion CD, and their SUV?
Does he say "Ni!"?
it's both, and expansion and a seperate game.
My apologies for using a contrived example. The only reason I used the complete works is that for a simulation you must specify a goal for testing. If you have a simulation with no specific test that you can see, you'll never know when to stop it or if it's working.
In reality there only test is does this mutation convey a energy, defense, offensive, or reproductive advantage. Meaning that if the members of a species with a mutation have any advantage in producing more young or preventing those without the mutation from producing more young, then they are a success. The part that most do not get, is the size of the advantage required. A mutation that gives a 0.0000000000000001 percent advantage (or less) over other members of that species, will after trillions or more generations allow the mutated members to either dominate or be the sole representatives of that species.
The real misconception of evolution is that it involves random chance to go from nothing to a fully formed species in effectively one-step. This is (as the creationist/ID crowd claims) impossible.
The true method of evolution is an immense form of feedback on a timescale that humans are not naturally able to perceive. Since humans don't live for millions of years it is hard for us to observe and comprehend that very minor random changes in one generation multiplied by billions or trillions of generations can cause massive observed change if you can only look at a couple of those billions of generations.
A simple experiment in genetic algorithms will quickly show how this works.
Start with a random string of bits of the same length as the number of bits used to encode the complete works of Shakespeare (cause you have to use the works of Shakespeare in an example) and then retain those bits that match the pattern and position of one (just one) character in the complete works. With each generation randomize (or mutate) a number of the bits that do not match. After a few hundred generations, you will have if not the complete works of Shakespeare, a close approximation.
I've played COH, Galaxies, Dark Age, EverQuest, and Ultima Online and the problem is epidemic. All of them have issues where the designers plan to have a perfect team that fit a certain play style. If you're play style doesn't match their idea of what you should be doing, it's an unbalanced game.
Maybe they should concentrate on adaptive power's/abilities, a few solo powers (just strong enough that as a solo character you can heal yourself enough not to always die and attack with something that will kill things after a decent time), but generally things that can add to or stack with other classes powers.
Using COH for an example, have the fire controller be able to boost a fire tanks abilities if they are grouped, where the damage is doubled or regeneration is quicker or something. So that alone a character is barely playable, but in a group the dynamics become more interesting. Or heck, have an ice controller in the same team have adverse effects on enemies, like lengthen effects or add ice burn damage by increasing temperature extremes the bad guys face.
Actually, just have the powers/abilities be more realistic. Arrows act more arrows instead of hits with arrow graphics, punches like punches, fire bolts like fire bolts, etc...
That would make me play more and love what I play, even if the graphics are less that state of the art. Fixing things like line of sight or having the power sets coherent instead of artificially balanced.
Game Developers, there is no need to arbitrarily add "extra" things to balance characters. Fire characters should take cold damage at a higher level that isn't "nerf"-ing the character types it's making them more meaningful. And yes, it's ok that one type of archer race is a much better archer than another race, inequalities happen in real life all the time. Consistency is what players really wish for, not balanced classes.
This isn't a license to make uber-classes that can take out anything; they should all have fatal vulnerabilities. They should have reasons to team up. Characters that use mostly physical attacks should have issues attacking things that aren't physical, and hitting a rock monster or robot with your fist should do almost as much damage to you as to the monster if there aren't any powers that help.
But in closing, the biggest issue is developers trying to balance characters, instead of improving them. In PVP, a tank should crush a controller, but only when the controller's control of the tank fails. This is due to the nature of the classes, not to an unbalanced game. Don't look at how character A. got crushed in seconds in a fight, look at why. Then fix it only if why doesn't fit with the world of the game.
Personally, I've done a few small internal utility apps in both languages, and I like the api design of java better than c#.
However, c# isn't a bad language there are a few features like regions that I like, and some of the api is actually easier to use than java.
My opinion is that for a quick program java is better, however if you need something that is reliable, efficient,
and easy use the language with the api that best suits the problem set.
A part of the problem is that was the originally proposed definition when they went about re-defining the fundamental measurements of SI unfortunate that quantity varies with temperature and atmospheric pressure.
Yep, I agree with you the overly-ambitious are much scarier than the lazy, but the stupid are what truly irritate me (probably due to my job at a hell-desk).
For clarification my personal definition of stupid:
Someone who knows the answer to a problem, but refuses to use it.
At least till we replace them with robots/ very small shell scripts.
Seriously though, considering how often it seems that those with no ambition/work ethic fail to perform the basic task of their job.
I think we'd be much better off automating all task that can be automated, providing adequate education
(and the current system is in no way adequate) for those who wish to better themselves.
Then providing enclaves/communes for the $DRUG_OF_CHOICE brain-dead masses who wish to watch shows like Jerry and wouldn't notice a lobotomy even if they were "conscious" while they had it preformed.
is countered by
Given that his first assumption of mathematical impossibility is invalidated by the senate analysis of 1998
(Clinton's second term) regarding the stock market's historical performance and his essay is built on this assumption of impossibility
, which an official study by those opposed to privation states is false, it stands to reason that his essay is invalid.
cite url:
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/a398074.pdf
United States General Accounting Office
GAO Report to the Special Committee on Aging, U.S. Senate
which cited