...But isn't the principle behind the "steps" of evolution simply mutation? Couldn't it have been possible that there WAS no missing link, and that suddenly a fish was hatched with legs, capable of breathing air? Does there HAVE to be an intermediate stage?
Or is the idea of an intermediate stage perhaps based upon observations of other species' evolutions'(in which case that sounds like bad science)?
This might be the start of the realization by politicians/anti-gaming activists that gaming is becoming a staple entertainment industry much like movies and television are. Perhaps attempts to regulate gaming will cool down, but I have a feeling it'll be a long process, and this is the first step up an Everest-sized hill.
Plus, if you happen to advance more quickly than her and need to go back to help her out, there's nothing more fun than blasting level 8 Charr with a level 20 character.
One of my favorites was Spear of Destiny... It asked you a random question about something in the manual, but the morons built in a backdoor password that always works. The password was "Joshua," and the game would say, "Greetings Professor Falken, would you like to play a game?"
You missed the most 'obvious' way: the operators can deliberately deactivate and/or ignore the alarms, and override the safety cut-outs. Stupid? Well, yes, but that's how Chernobyl happened.
You could redesign the control systems to avoid such issues.... but pebble bed reactors are a better solution. They don't have meltdown failure modes, they just get cold(ish) and stop working.
1. We've learned a great deal since Chernobyl, and they were experimenting with the reactor, not regulating it for commercial power use.
2. Operators are not by any means corporate people, therefore their first thought when an alarm went off would NEVER be, "Should I ignore this so the plant can make more money, and find out if it is genuine?" Most operators are your average Joe, and when an alarm goes off at a nuke plant, ESPECIALLY a coolant failure alarm, they push the big red button (yes, there really is a big red button that stops everything, I've been in the control room) BUT!!! The plant would shut itself down before that would ever happen, unless the odds win out and the redundancy systems fail (unlikely). Even a minor equipment failure can trip the plant. I've seen it happen.
3. There's an NRC official at every nuclear facility in the country, and if an alarm was ignored or turned off without proper investigation prior to that alarm, (AND the alarm would only be investigated if the sensors around the alarming device all showed that there was nothing wrong... and don't come back with sensor failure b/c each sensor has ususally 6 redundant backups) they would shut the plant down and investigate anyway. If the failure to respect the alarm was big enough, they may even shut the plant down permanently. Bad for business to own a $6 billion facility that's nothing more than a large paperweight. Really, the possibility of meltdown is so low it's not worth measuring.
It amazes me to see so many informed comments, yet none practically based.
How many people here have worked in a nuke plant? How many know the logistics of it?
First off, redundancy factors make failure and meltdown a near impossibility. Unless an operator is asleep in the control room, and then deaf and blind to all of the alarms and lights that go off when a coolant failure might occur, the reactor will be shut down.
Second: Waste storage. Many people don't seem to know what a spent fuel pool is. Everyone's talking about disposing of waste, when all nuclear facilities in this country already have a means of storing the waste for the approximate life of the reactor. The spent fuel pools are huge buildings with a huge pool, where spent Uranium fuel bundles are stored. The walls of this building are solid concrete, approx. 10 ft thick. No radiation is getting out of there.
On top of that, most slashdotters would probably be surprised to know that they pick up more radiation in a year from their computer monitors, cell phones, simple radios, and other devices, than a nuclear employee does from the plant. Everything is carefully monitored with dosimeters (devices that measure your radioactive dose).
Another thing that annoys me: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RADIATION SUIT. The suits that nuclear workers put on are are called "Anti-C's" or anti contamination suits. Inside the reactor building, and in other areas where boric acid is used to absorb radiation, loose radioactive particles are everywhere. Movement of those particles from where they're expected to where they're not desired is called contamination, so these suits are used to prevent the spread of contamination. There's even a special process you are to use in removing these suits which prevents contamination. After that, you enter a scanning device which does a once-over of your entire body to detect contaminants, and if you're contaminated, a number of things can happen. If it's an article of clothing, it's simply disposed of. A shoe or boot, generally on the bottom, the offending region is sliced off. On your skin, anti-contamination soap is used, and if that isn't successful, they bring out the SOS pad.
Also, people don't realize how common Radon is. Often, workers would enter the "hot side"(we call it that because that's the area where exposure to radiation is possible) and come out, having gone nowhere near contamination, and they set off the alarm, mostly on rainy days. That's because of Radon. The water causes the radon to essentially stick to your shoes, and while sticky pads on the floor can help removing this, often a de-ionizing fan is required to get rid of it totally.
This is the extent to which they go to prevent public exposure to radiation/radioactive material from their facility. Environmental concerns are nil.
Fear of meltdown is an irrational, uninformed position, and an easy fear to maintain through ignorance.
I realize the games are rather different in style, and the instanced nature of Guild Wars might change server logistics, but seriously, how come GW, which hit 1,000,000 players I believe, doesn't appear to have more than one server? On top of that, there is no such thing as a queue. It seems to me that WoW, the "ultimate" MMORPG as proclaimed by some players, should be able to match this feat.
So, a shady corporation provided voting software that could have potentially caused voters to lose what little power they have. A man exposes their illegal activites by using means that are also illegal, however, no other means would have ever revealed this breach of the law by the corporation, because they obviously had no problem using the uncertified software. Now the whistleblower is in trouble.
Kind of makes you wonder what these people are thinking these days...
If I'm not mistaken, the Bush administration pushed an ideal shortly after 9/11 that the citizens should report any susupicious activity they might note that could be connected to terrorism. If something like this could happen to a whistleblower protecting the rights of American citizens, what could happen to someone protecting the LIVES of American citizens? Instead, this proliferates the idea that anyone who might report possible terrorist activity could instantly be associated with it and accused themselves, thereby prohibiting their participation in such a situation.
This case should have us all thinking that legal precedent in the U.S. has fallen to nil, and that any angry corporation with enough money can exact revenge on someone doing the right thing, even if they have done the wrong thing. There's no justice in this.
Anyone who went to grade school and high school should remember that the ATHLETES were the violent ones, and the quiet, loner kids who played NES for hours every day at home were... Well, quiet. Not violent.
This law is pointless for one reason and one reason alone: Those parents who care about video game content are already on the ball with ESRB ratings and have probably already tried the game themselves. Those parents who don't care are going to continue not caring, regardless of some obscure legislation.
Most parents who care will probably use some common sense and realize that if their child doesn't play it at home they'll probably end up playing at a friend's house, and it's better to confront the issue in the home, head on, where they can actually do some parenting rather than just let the whole issue slide.
They're actually already supposed to. If you go to your local Wally-World, (AKA Wal-Mart)and buy a mature game, keep an eye on the cashier's screen and you'll see that they're reminded to check for ID. This was also a story on Dateline sometime back, about how they're already supposed to card people who might buy these games, and how often they didn't.
I love too how all of these special interest groups are determined that this kind of thing will be the end of the world. Just like Rock and Roll, of course. Shoot, the Victorians were afraid of seeing the legs of tables because they might suggest a reference to a REAL leg on a man or woman and it might inspire a sexual thought. Violent video games MIGHT give kids ideas about violence that they MIGHT have never had in the first place, but human history has proven we don't need violent video games to come up with violent ideas. *Yawn* Next tired idea, please.
Um... Wouldn't changing the instruction set make anything written for an x86 instruction set unusable on the Trips architecture? Unless the new Trips instruction set INCLUDES x86 instructions as well as their own special instructions?
Slashdot Mirror
...But isn't the principle behind the "steps" of evolution simply mutation? Couldn't it have been possible that there WAS no missing link, and that suddenly a fish was hatched with legs, capable of breathing air? Does there HAVE to be an intermediate stage? Or is the idea of an intermediate stage perhaps based upon observations of other species' evolutions'(in which case that sounds like bad science)?
This might be the start of the realization by politicians/anti-gaming activists that gaming is becoming a staple entertainment industry much like movies and television are. Perhaps attempts to regulate gaming will cool down, but I have a feeling it'll be a long process, and this is the first step up an Everest-sized hill.
McCallum said there would be 'a whole bunch of new characters' and the series would be 'much more dramatic, darker and suck a whole lot.'
Well, at least that might be what McCallum's thinking.
Plus, if you happen to advance more quickly than her and need to go back to help her out, there's nothing more fun than blasting level 8 Charr with a level 20 character.
This sounds very much like creating an MPAA for gamers. Boo.
I'll take pepel.ep.eu
One of my favorites was Spear of Destiny... It asked you a random question about something in the manual, but the morons built in a backdoor password that always works. The password was "Joshua," and the game would say, "Greetings Professor Falken, would you like to play a game?"
He he.
You missed the most 'obvious' way: the operators can deliberately deactivate and/or ignore the alarms, and override the safety cut-outs. Stupid? Well, yes, but that's how Chernobyl happened.
You could redesign the control systems to avoid such issues.... but pebble bed reactors are a better solution. They don't have meltdown failure modes, they just get cold(ish) and stop working.
1. We've learned a great deal since Chernobyl, and they were experimenting with the reactor, not regulating it for commercial power use.
2. Operators are not by any means corporate people, therefore their first thought when an alarm went off would NEVER be, "Should I ignore this so the plant can make more money, and find out if it is genuine?" Most operators are your average Joe, and when an alarm goes off at a nuke plant, ESPECIALLY a coolant failure alarm, they push the big red button (yes, there really is a big red button that stops everything, I've been in the control room) BUT!!! The plant would shut itself down before that would ever happen, unless the odds win out and the redundancy systems fail (unlikely). Even a minor equipment failure can trip the plant. I've seen it happen.
3. There's an NRC official at every nuclear facility in the country, and if an alarm was ignored or turned off without proper investigation prior to that alarm, (AND the alarm would only be investigated if the sensors around the alarming device all showed that there was nothing wrong... and don't come back with sensor failure b/c each sensor has ususally 6 redundant backups) they would shut the plant down and investigate anyway. If the failure to respect the alarm was big enough, they may even shut the plant down permanently. Bad for business to own a $6 billion facility that's nothing more than a large paperweight. Really, the possibility of meltdown is so low it's not worth measuring.
It amazes me to see so many informed comments, yet none practically based.
How many people here have worked in a nuke plant? How many know the logistics of it?
First off, redundancy factors make failure and meltdown a near impossibility. Unless an operator is asleep in the control room, and then deaf and blind to all of the alarms and lights that go off when a coolant failure might occur, the reactor will be shut down.
Second: Waste storage. Many people don't seem to know what a spent fuel pool is. Everyone's talking about disposing of waste, when all nuclear facilities in this country already have a means of storing the waste for the approximate life of the reactor. The spent fuel pools are huge buildings with a huge pool, where spent Uranium fuel bundles are stored. The walls of this building are solid concrete, approx. 10 ft thick. No radiation is getting out of there.
On top of that, most slashdotters would probably be surprised to know that they pick up more radiation in a year from their computer monitors, cell phones, simple radios, and other devices, than a nuclear employee does from the plant. Everything is carefully monitored with dosimeters (devices that measure your radioactive dose).
Another thing that annoys me: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RADIATION SUIT. The suits that nuclear workers put on are are called "Anti-C's" or anti contamination suits. Inside the reactor building, and in other areas where boric acid is used to absorb radiation, loose radioactive particles are everywhere. Movement of those particles from where they're expected to where they're not desired is called contamination, so these suits are used to prevent the spread of contamination. There's even a special process you are to use in removing these suits which prevents contamination. After that, you enter a scanning device which does a once-over of your entire body to detect contaminants, and if you're contaminated, a number of things can happen. If it's an article of clothing, it's simply disposed of. A shoe or boot, generally on the bottom, the offending region is sliced off. On your skin, anti-contamination soap is used, and if that isn't successful, they bring out the SOS pad.
Also, people don't realize how common Radon is. Often, workers would enter the "hot side"(we call it that because that's the area where exposure to radiation is possible) and come out, having gone nowhere near contamination, and they set off the alarm, mostly on rainy days. That's because of Radon. The water causes the radon to essentially stick to your shoes, and while sticky pads on the floor can help removing this, often a de-ionizing fan is required to get rid of it totally.
This is the extent to which they go to prevent public exposure to radiation/radioactive material from their facility. Environmental concerns are nil.
Fear of meltdown is an irrational, uninformed position, and an easy fear to maintain through ignorance.
Let me introduce you to my main man, Edgar!
I realize the games are rather different in style, and the instanced nature of Guild Wars might change server logistics, but seriously, how come GW, which hit 1,000,000 players I believe, doesn't appear to have more than one server? On top of that, there is no such thing as a queue. It seems to me that WoW, the "ultimate" MMORPG as proclaimed by some players, should be able to match this feat.
So, a shady corporation provided voting software that could have potentially caused voters to lose what little power they have. A man exposes their illegal activites by using means that are also illegal, however, no other means would have ever revealed this breach of the law by the corporation, because they obviously had no problem using the uncertified software. Now the whistleblower is in trouble.
Kind of makes you wonder what these people are thinking these days...
If I'm not mistaken, the Bush administration pushed an ideal shortly after 9/11 that the citizens should report any susupicious activity they might note that could be connected to terrorism. If something like this could happen to a whistleblower protecting the rights of American citizens, what could happen to someone protecting the LIVES of American citizens? Instead, this proliferates the idea that anyone who might report possible terrorist activity could instantly be associated with it and accused themselves, thereby prohibiting their participation in such a situation.
This case should have us all thinking that legal precedent in the U.S. has fallen to nil, and that any angry corporation with enough money can exact revenge on someone doing the right thing, even if they have done the wrong thing. There's no justice in this.
Anyone who went to grade school and high school should remember that the ATHLETES were the violent ones, and the quiet, loner kids who played NES for hours every day at home were... Well, quiet. Not violent.
Imperial Earth all the way. Out of print, but my first Clarke novel, and by far my favorite still.
This law is pointless for one reason and one reason alone: Those parents who care about video game content are already on the ball with ESRB ratings and have probably already tried the game themselves. Those parents who don't care are going to continue not caring, regardless of some obscure legislation.
Most parents who care will probably use some common sense and realize that if their child doesn't play it at home they'll probably end up playing at a friend's house, and it's better to confront the issue in the home, head on, where they can actually do some parenting rather than just let the whole issue slide.
They're actually already supposed to. If you go to your local Wally-World, (AKA Wal-Mart)and buy a mature game, keep an eye on the cashier's screen and you'll see that they're reminded to check for ID. This was also a story on Dateline sometime back, about how they're already supposed to card people who might buy these games, and how often they didn't.
I love too how all of these special interest groups are determined that this kind of thing will be the end of the world. Just like Rock and Roll, of course. Shoot, the Victorians were afraid of seeing the legs of tables because they might suggest a reference to a REAL leg on a man or woman and it might inspire a sexual thought. Violent video games MIGHT give kids ideas about violence that they MIGHT have never had in the first place, but human history has proven we don't need violent video games to come up with violent ideas. *Yawn* Next tired idea, please.
Um... Wouldn't changing the instruction set make anything written for an x86 instruction set unusable on the Trips architecture? Unless the new Trips instruction set INCLUDES x86 instructions as well as their own special instructions?