Recent content by theotherguy

Diarrhea is actually an extremely serious disease in the third world. It kills more children annually than most other diseases. The problem is that water sources are contaminated with protozoans, and diarrhea from the protozoans causes severe dehydration. The children with the disease can't...

Not in the USA. Civil suits can be brought against you for libel or slander, but they will almost always be rejected unless the person bringing up the suit proves that the words are untrue and harmful.

Its extremely naive (and arrogant) to assume that aliens would have any desire to visit this tiny, backwater planet for any reason. Why would they even want to be here? Resources? Nope. There are far more resources in abundance in the universe than on our planet. Water abides in huge...

This is absolutely the right ruling. Thank you Supreme Court for upholding the constitution.

Yep, you could simply cache every point and then apply a scalar offset to each of them. Modern graphics cards are very good at this.

what an utter load of bullshit. Call me back when they explain and demonstrate their product in a SIGGRAPH paper.

making it right now. It's called Moonwalk, and is essentially Mario Galaxy in 2D.

I like the idea, but not really the implementation. The art style is not to my taste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5zh3Pme7PY&feature=player_embedded

It's possible somebody set down the pliers right on top of the camera before the picture was taken. That's my best guess. It's either an intentional joke by Google, an accident, or somebody else was pulling a prank.

Exactly. Not to mention there is no guarantee that individual commanders or units in the American military would remain loyal to the federal government, rather than their home states or region in such a scenario.

Far, far less.

"Setting your goal at maximising well-being" IS a code of ethics, and a very poor one at that! Here's why: The first problem is, you must define "well-being." What exactly is this elusive "well-being?" Is it happiness? Pleasure? Freedom? Some combination of these? Well-being for whom...

Philosophy works with the facts of science to help us make moral choices on global warming. A scientist cannot make any claim about the moral choices involved with global warming unless he is also doing philosophy, or assuming a philosophical claim. EDIT: Oh, and philosophy could answer the...