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MechanicalTomPetty posted:Yeah but it cost like billions of dollars to make this one guy so it evens out. As, usual, it's not the mechanical parts themselves that are the obstacle (although price would be an issue), it's the stuff that controls them. Having a robot not flip over when it walks is hard work, actually. And a real-time target recognition algorithm that could work reliably in real life conditions, only target foes, coordinate movement in a tactical situation, and aim a gun quickly and accurately would give a rich army a massive gunboner.
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Jan 6, 2014 19:51
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Arglebargle III posted:Will Smith died? James Avery
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Jan 11, 2014 12:53
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Curse you for playing HoMM3 music, Bobbin! Now I want to play that game again and I don't have the time. 
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Jan 21, 2014 10:33
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OG17 posted:And I don't understand how people are criticizing subjectivity about when you can use a gun, as "when you believe you're going to be killed/raped/etc. if you don't" seems like the best and only possible solution. You still have authorities decide if circumstances objectively justified that belief, it's not like people just say they were scared and then get to home. Didn't "Black people are inherently scary, and dangerous to whites" end up being enough to let someone get away with killing a black teen half a year ago or so? OG17 posted:Though stand-your-ground very obviously can't be used for "warning shots," as if you're shooting at nothing instead of shooting at the threat to your life it's a pretty self-evident confession that you didn't think there actually was a threat to your life This is absolutely insane. A law that actually punishes you for taking a less-than-lethal approach?  And where do you get the idea that firing a warning shot means the shooter didn't think there was a threat to their life? I have no idea if I'd be willing to shoot another human being, even if they were trying to kill me. But I would certainly be able to fire a warning shot in hope of scaring them away.OG17 posted:I don't know why you're conflating "persuasion piece" with "unbiased objective fact" but the Daily Show piece is garbage because it uses garbage arguments, which is a fatal blow when your entire piece is an argument (with jokes!). And one of us is very bad at television if you think Bullshit isn't explicitly trying to promote Penn and Teller's viewpoints, just like Daily Show opinion bits promote those of their own writers. I'm starting to think that your avatar and redtext are well deserved.
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Mar 6, 2014 04:21
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I'm from Serbia. We're just behind US in terms of gun ownership, with more than 50 weapons per 100 people. While we have some of the most liberal guns laws in Europe, our laws are still a heckuva lot stricter than US laws. Our rate of gun homicides is ~0.6 per 100,000 people (comparable to the US states of North Dakota and Iowa). In US, the average rate is around 3.6 (correct me if I'm wrong). Due to a combination of availability of firearms, and the poor condition of our mental health care system, gun suicide rate is a lot higher, at 2.81 (compared to 6.3 in US). There are two crucial things in our gun law system which influence this the most, in my opinion. First: Our laws reward a non-lethal approach and punish a lethal one. You are encouraged to run away if possible, and 'necessary force' is a big deal in our law. The idea here being that it's the job of the police to get you back your stolen stuff, and that your stuff isn't more valuable than someone's life. I assume that the utter lack of trust in the police in parts of US (justified or not) causes a problem with getting stuff like this passed. Second: Our police gets the final say in who can or can't get a gun, every gun purchase is carefully registered, and gun ownership closely monitored. I assume this would be the biggest hurdle for the US gun crowd to accept, 'evil meddling state' and all. Personal attitude: I don't like guns. A friend of mine was nearly caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout a few days ago (a bullet hit the car she hid behind). I believe the right balance between gun control and gun liberties lies further in the direction of limiting guns than it already is, but I think that an improvement to our mental healthcare system would be a more important thing to do, and save a lot more lives. US gun laws are absolutely insane. People act like the current situation in US is one extreme, the proposed increased gun control laws the other extreme, and the right answer somewhere in the middle. Hell no. Even with several of the proposed restrictions to gun ownership in US, you guys would still have an insane set of laws that all but encourage domestic terrorism. When I listen to people talk about "what if" scenarios that justify owning an assault rifle, it's like listening to a 11 year old kid talking about his favorite FPS. Oooh, imagine if 4 faceless baddies charged into my house intending to kill me, while being incompetent and poorly equipped enough to be taken down by one proper citizen armed with the latest in self-defense weaponry. edit: I won't post anything else about gun laws. I apologize if my participation in the discussion contributed to worsening of this thread. my dad fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Mar 6, 2014 |
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Mar 6, 2014 12:07
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DatonKallandor posted:Infolink! Internet access at all times in your head? Awesome! That would also mean that the internet has access to your head at all times.
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Mar 6, 2014 20:10
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Slimnoid posted:Whoa, Michiel van den Bos liked your version? That's some serious props dude. I bet he's reading the thread, the sly bastard. 
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Apr 15, 2014 23:05
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Or is it Sputnik posted:Works for humans too. I learned how to understand English (as a second language) from "The Secret of Monkey Island", and how to speak it from "The A-Team". Yeah, I learned it from cartoons and video games, without any tutors or previous knowledge of the language.
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Apr 23, 2014 18:03
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People usually tend to focus on expensive new gadgets when talking about bionics and implants and poo poo, but great advances are being made in making stuff like that cheaper, too. A couple of researchers at my university are working on making a cheap electrostimulation device that would allow people with nerve damage in their arms to have a limited degree of control over the limb. There's plenty of stuff like that already made, but the idea here is to make it cheap enough to be affordable to poor(ish) hospitals and people and reliable enough not to need frequent replacement. I wanted to get in on the action (as much as possible for an automation student with little knowledge of biomedical engineering), but then we got buried with regular projects and I focused on other things. 
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Apr 28, 2014 22:40
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I think this argument based on literally one word in this week's corner is getting a bit too caustic. How about we drop it here, yeah? There's really no point in arguing about what the White Russians would have done if they'd won considering they didn't and it's been almost a hundred years since they lost. You'd be surprised by how much the knowledge of past (or the lack of it) can change the present.
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May 14, 2014 09:29
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Statistics are fun. And misinterpreted all too often. For example: When modern(ish) soldiers started wearing helmets, the rate of head injuries skyrocketed. The obvious explanation is that helmets cause head injuries. The actual explanation is that lethal headshots don't count as "injuries".
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Jun 10, 2014 15:16
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AugmentedVision posted:Overall, those countries haven't regressed (at least not since colonization), they just haven't progressed as fast as others. There is no such thing as a linear progression or regression of humanity or a part of it. A lot of people think they can kinda-sorta sum up everything they consider important and use that to gauge "progress" but that's a horrible trap for a ridiculous number of reasons. Not the least of which being that that the point of view you have is an incredibly subjective thing, no matter how much you might think that you gained your vies in an 'objective' environment*. The interests of a middle class white American programmer working in a major company, the interests of a Serbian automation student whose studies are being paid by the government but who has to consider his future in a poor country with not exactly thriving industry and who still occasionally gets flashbacks to NATO bombing the poo poo out of said country, the interests of a Roma woman who lives in a shack in my hometown and is mocked for her lack of hygiene and education as if she had a choice and who has to live on scraps found in dumpsters, the interests of a woman in, say, North Korea, and the interests of that same woman should she somehow escape to South Korea, are very, very different. *My personal favorite was some Bible Belt Atheist who thought that the mathematical field of fuzzy logic was an attempt by religious people to undermine 'scientific principles'. Notice how I just implied that certain traits that might have nothing to do with that individual being an idiot are the real reason for their attitude. fool_of_sound posted:The dominant nations have no interest in allowing those nations to 'catch up'. The developed world's high standard of living is based on the labor and resource exploitation of the rest of the world. In a way, colonization never really ended; it's just less obvious now. And this is very much still a thing. This suggestion might sound strange, but I would highly recommend you guys to read the Military History Thread in Ask/Tell. While ~90% of the content is goons yammering about the details of this or that weapon, strategy, general, or hypothetical gay black Hitler, you also get actual historians giving you a lot of slice-of-life details about people in the past. For example, you'll realize just how important access to modern healthcare is (if you didn't already), even the absolutely most basic stuff we have today could have completely changed someone's life. (Like not having to watch your every child die to diseases you would consider easily treatable today. Ugh.) And realize to your horror how much some things haven't changed at all. edit: Me spell gud 
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Jun 10, 2014 20:50
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Silverminnow posted:This is the first solid point I have seen in this argument, it seems pretty obvious after reading it but maybe people weren't thinking about it when reading other peoples' posts. There is really no point in arguing about this due to the fact that nobody here has (or can possibly have) a broad enough scope of knowledge and experience to claim general progression or regression in humanity. All the argument really seems to be boiling down to at this point is just pessimism vs optimism anyway, which is an argument that nobody can "win". This... Isn't quite what I intended to say, but never mind. I'm not sure I could continue to participate in this discussion without it meandering off enough to require a thread of its own, so I'm going to back off.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:49
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Speedball posted:When some of the scientists in this game talk about making a "Non-Mendelian" creature, what do they mean by that? Mendel was the monk who discovered the basic laws of reproductive inheritance by experimenting on pea plants, and is pretty much the father of genetics. (Copied from Wikipedia) Law of Segregation: During gamete formation, the alleles for each gene segregate from each other so that each gamete carries only one allele for each gene. Law of Independent Assortment: Genes for different traits can segregate independently during the formation of gametes. Law of Dominance: Some alleles are dominant while others are recessive; an organism with at least one dominant allele will display the effect of the dominant allele. [/copy-paste] Non-Mendelian inheritance is simply inheritance that doesn't follow these laws. For example, you always get mitochondrial DNA from your mother only, and if you're a cis dude or trans woman, your Y chromosome comes entirely from your father. Certain viruses are also capable of causing non-Mendelian stuff when infected cells reproduce. The list goes on, but that's the basics. So, depending on what they were talking about, it either means that it's a straaaaange, spooooky creature science cannot explain, or absolutely nothing at all. edit: Humans are non-Mendelian creatures in the sense that we have non-Mendelian traits. my dad fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 23:46
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Sample size of six.chiasaur11 posted:Limited sample size and "it just makes sense" leads to, well... half the conspiracy theories in the thread, I suppose. But yeah.
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Jun 19, 2014 08:29
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Seems like we could at least justify a real study at this rate. Goons have trouble remembering names, film at eleven. 
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Jun 19, 2014 08:43
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Xander77 posted:But I'm pretty sure that not being able to remember names has more to do with various social behavior / functioning issues. Or just lovely memory in general. I never said names are the only thing I can't remember.
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Jun 19, 2014 08:51
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Decided to do some digging. Seems it might just be a guy thing (although if you read the statistics it's actually more like an everybody thing). More importantly, there seems to be a strong association between that kind of memory problems and symptoms of depression. As I said, goons.
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Jun 19, 2014 09:37
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Zeroisanumber posted:The most frightening thing about Gekiganger03 is the thought that there's a 01 and 02 out there somewhere. Maybe he's eleven?
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Jul 11, 2014 10:25
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Tiggum posted:Your definition of no blood on your hands is weird. My favourite method is to point a gun at them and pull the trigger. If a bullet somehow comes out and hits them, well, it's not like I killed them directly. Think of it as a "plausible deniability" run.
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Jul 14, 2014 06:43
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counterfeitsaint posted:If you want to set arbitrary rules for yourself that's fine, people do that all the time, but "no blood on your hands" is a misleading description, that's all we're saying. I'll say again, "plausible deniability" is a much better description of such a run.
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Jul 14, 2014 13:57
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Dabir posted:I don't get it. Forward to 1:16
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Jul 16, 2014 20:18
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There really should be more explosives. Imagine if you ran out at some point.
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Jul 21, 2014 18:48
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:PS: Take a close look at the first three digits of the Youtube address. That's one hell of a coincidence. THE CONSPIRACY IS TRUE! 
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Aug 4, 2014 17:26
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Jay Rust posted:Maybe I'm too sensitive to these kinds of things, but I would normally assume that if you were speaking a foreign language with someone, and yet an expression native to yours came up, you would pronounce it naturally, in your native accent? Not necessarily. To use my own language: Serbian and English sound very different. I don't think I can quite explain it, but to me, speaking in English is like I'm trying to whisper loudly while chewing. For example, Serbian 'R' is rolled hard enough to become a vowel of sorts, and the English 'R' is very soft. Switching between those sounds quickly can be problematic, and leads to silly results. So, if I'm speaking an English sentence with English 'R' sounds, and have to say a Serbian word that contains a Serbian 'R' like Beograd (Belgrade), I'll just say it the English way.
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Aug 5, 2014 04:28
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Bobbin, how much do you think the parable of the Grand Inquisitor is relevant to Deus Ex?
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Aug 11, 2014 19:50
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Tiggum posted:Stories don't really engage our emotions the same way real life events do though. If I read a sad story it's nothing like the same as if something sad happens in real life. Just the very fact that anyone would choose to read a sad story should tell you that, because no one would choose to have sad things happen to them. That's just what stories are to you, though. There's still 7 billion other humans to account for.
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Aug 23, 2014 12:42
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FrickenMoron posted:Any reason you didnt try to spook the hologram of Simons in the cathedral? I think thats one of the funniest bugs in the game. Or does it not work anymore? He already showed it off with an earlier hologram.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:31
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No mention of stuff like artificial neurons or fuzzy logic. Stuff like that helps overcome the binary, you know. And no mention of the potential of quantum computing for dealing with that problem, either. You should be ashamed, Bobbin.  Not really
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Sep 8, 2014 21:58
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GoneWithTheTornado posted:On the topic of robots and AI, this video gives an interesting argument that we will soon see a revolution in AIs taking over a lot of jobs, even jobs you might not expect to be replaceable with AIs in the first place, which is something humanity will have to find a way to adapt to. I don't know what to think of how likely these predictions are, but the arguments in the video seem fairly compelling. That video sounds like automation engineer wank fiction, and I'm saying this as a future automation engineer. (It's me, I'm the evil mastermind stealing your jobs) Rigged Death Trap posted:There is a major, major problem with this. Fie and a terrible curse on all the horrible nerds who don't consider this. Horrible nerds have an unfortunate habit of ignoring silly little details like (negative) feedback loops and diminishing returns. There's no working economy if people don't earn enough to afford the stuff produced, so things certainly aren't going to go quite as smoothly as they're presented in the video. Besides, where there's profit, there's taxes. A well functioning state has a duty to take care of its citizens and provide safety and a certain living standard for them (which requires money - lots of it). A type of business that removes the need for a large number of workers (thereby increasing the strain on the state's budget, since the state is going to have to provide some sort of income for the former workers) while earning itself a large profit is going to find itself taxed increasingly more until some sort of balance is reached. my dad fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 23:21
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Small Frozen Thing posted:See, there's the crux of the issue. Yeah, well, that's the crux of almost every issue. 
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Sep 8, 2014 23:37
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Mordaedil posted:Just in between jobs, right? Student.
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Sep 9, 2014 15:27
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Atlantis sunk because Arkantos kicked Poseidon's rear end.
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Oct 13, 2014 17:55
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Jesus Christ undergoes a very special transformation for the sake of mankind, and he's a part of a trinity? They're a bit heavy handed with the symbolism here. Order of preference: Helios - It's a freeform ending. JC shapes the fate of the world, and you are JC. Illuminati - Meh, status quo. Someone will overthrow them eventually, for better or worse. Tong - Gee, an infamous criminal wants a state of anarchy which allows petty warlords to rule their tiny fiefs all over the world? Gee, I wonder why. my dad fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 22:17
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Marker17501 posted:Helios is just a Deus Ex Machina. Gee, really?
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Oct 27, 2014 23:06
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The Trilateral Commission is meeting in Belgrade. They are coming for us. 
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Oct 30, 2014 17:55
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