I respect peoples rights to do whatever the hell they want as long as it harms no one else. But to me, she seems intent on rubbing peoples faces in her modifications/tats rather than as a form of self expression.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but as per your point, she skips the entire cultural reason why tats are frowned upon in general, and there doesn't seem to be any investigation as to why the law says doctors are okay to perform tats but artists are not (guessing it's a thin justification along the lines of a health issue to make it essentially completely illegal).

Um...who called you a pig? The voices in your head? Certainly not me. I don't know why you would say you can't be both though. That's just silly. ;-)


That's a pretty big 'If it can' that's already been proven to be an 'it can't'. Even IF it did everything it was supposed to, yes, it's 10 years too late and at least double an acceptable price tag, and still not ready for prime time, or even the 2am slot.
Yes, modification happens, but the idea is not to produce something that needs to be modified out of the box in order to do anything well.
No, many bombers are in use that were designed as bombers. Sorry, but that's just wrong.
Once again, the idea of the F-35 doesn't grant air superiority, neither does a few of these planes, especially if we are too afraid to lose a $200+ million plane so we just don't use them, which is the most likely outcome. It is in NO way a deterrent to full scale war with any foe we might ever use it against, like Russia. If it was some magic anti-war bullet, that might be money well spent, but is simply isn't in any way and NEVER will be, so that argument is just silly.
In 10 years, the stealth properties of this plane will be 5 years past obsolete....and it may STILL not be in the air.
There are no countries with air forces that can come close to ours, not one. I don't think there's even a group of 10 nations combined that come close to ours. We will NEVER be in a fair fight excepting a nuclear one where every one dies, and we'll still out nuke everyone else 10-1, it just won't matter.
Yes, Trump likely would take us to war, that's no reason to waste more money on unneeded weapons for a possible, unknown, unlikely future conflict with an unknown, unestimated enemy.
Still testing....and still testing....and still testing....$1.3 TRILLION later.....Still testing (and failing those tests)....still testing...still testing. Eventually it should be admitted that it's a failure, more testing won't help (it hasn't yet), and quit throwing mountains of good money after bad.
No, it doesn't. It's TASKED with all the same stuff the aging, multi types of planes do, but it can't do it. Stealth is not something new, BTW, we have many stealth planes already, better ones that work.
Again, out of the box needing to be upgraded is a fail. A massive, indisputable fail. That an engine powerful enough to move this pig like other planes already can doesn't exist should tell you something. It's aerodynamic....great....that's one part of a dozen that have to fit together.
The price tag is multiplied 10 fold because it has a pilot.
You want them to eventually pass ALL required tests...not fail them all, then change the parameters so it isn't canceled.
Nope...Warthog.
Not so far. So far, other stealth planes do what it's supposed to...better. Upgrading them is clearly a better plan.
Not true. All I hear is 'it sucks' because I don't read Lockheed Martin's press releases. When you look at test results, it sucks. When you look at price, it sucks. When you look at upkeep, it sucks ass. When you look at a fleet of them doing everything a dozen different planes today do, we're bankrupt and far less capable militarily, and that sucks.

But it seems no amount of logic and results will dissuade you from your love of this unmitigated debacle. That's your choice, but you aren't convincing anyone else to go along with you.

Kahn is a genetically modified human, a leftover from Earth's Eugenics Wars. Played by Montalban and ruled over Asia and the Middle East before being deposed, some books place him as North Indian and a Sikh, but then who knows what genetic modification might do to someone's racial appearance.
So while Montalban is still not white, he's not Indian either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh

They've sure come a long way... we used to use our old chain driven potato harvester to dig up carrots after a slight modification. With potatoes sitting in a hill and the tops killed with spray before you harvest, it's a little easier as the front blade just cuts through the hill and you sift out the taters with a series of metal belts and a shaker tray, with one or two folks standing on the sideboards tossing out the rocks, dead animals and rotten ones. To do the carrots, we welded a modified ridging plough blade ahead of the scoop to break the land and free up the carrots, and up the conveyor they'd come. Had to move along a bit slower because the tops sometimes got snagged or bunched, but it worked pretty well, and was easier on the back. The potato harvester we had was built in 1928, lots of cast iron parts but held together for at least 46 years.

So is this just software update on existing cars or were they were some hardware modifications too?

I like it.

It looks only to get better with the tweeks and modifications that have been and shall certainly be forthcoming.

Once again, lucky760, thanks...nice work.

I was referring specifically to the (fairly) recent experiment/collab between bethesda/valve/modders to allow mods for Skyrim to be bought for real actual dollars through the Steam Workshop. It was an uncharacteristic (at least, imo) misstep by both companies, but they have both been quite candid in their contrition after the inevitable failure.

Personally I'm not a great fan of the Workshop for multiple, complex modifications. More sophisticated third party tools exist for managing mods and all their idiosyncrasy.

At any rate, I think Bethesda were testing the water for Fallout4. I wonder if they've decided not to pursue modding for the moment, or if they're just not ready to announce anything yet.

Pretty cool, kinda hot, and OUCH!
*quality body modification

I don't understand this desire to try and "one up" scientific thought, as if the concept of a demiurge were religion's alone. It's not for man to decide what is truth and what is not, it is for us to discover only that which we may mechanically use, whether through ystem theories, mathematic constructs, or physically engineered structures.

Science may be harmonious but only if it is honest and seeks only that which is not fueled by attachment to being. Any reward, whether in heaven or on earth is a materialistic concept which separates us from the body of human experience. Rather than naturally progress within our own capabilities, we obsess over grand concepts of our narcissistic, non transitory being and the entity of of a God. Meanwhile, our minds suffer at the leaps and bounds that imagination inflicts upon our honest beings. Behavior modification for the sake of a concept you would seek to elevate over the hard earned work of the scientific process.

Again, I don't understand why you pounce on these sudden epiphany driven straws lying amidst a rigorously disciplined field as the sciences. You have straws with no tangible truth, only the ability to prove that, yes, you are a pattern detecting being. I can find a 1000 faces of a 1000 gods in a spackled piece of drywall, don't mean any one of them is real or if any were, that it's the god that I've put a name to.

Now for a lesson in system analysis: determining whether the pattern you've detected within a metaphysical concept is congruent with reality as we know it, or have you detected a false positive. Also known as the proof between a Christian God and every other concept of the concept of God, through all its faces back to its ultimate being: Infinity. The Infinity could be ANYTHING.

What's the first paragraph of the description say?

"...making Workshop mods now have the *option* for the developer to lock them behind a paywall..."

I understood it to be 25% goes to the mod maker and the remaining 75% goes to valve and bethesda (splitting to 30% to valve and 70% to bethesda). But maybe its 30% to valve then 70% to mod maker and bethesda (splitting it into 25% to mod maker and 75% to bethesda)? Either way its stupid.

Do you think auto repair and service centers should pay the car companies a percentage of their profits when they paint your car or make modifications to it?

The fact is modding has been grand for the last 30+ years without anyone doing it for the money. Some have gone on to make full games based on their mods and sold them, and there's no problem with that, because the mod still remains free.

Game companies like Bethesda release mod tools because it is good business for them. It extends the life of their games, grows their community and brings in more people who buy their games FOR the mods. Just go and have a look on the Nexus to see how many mods there are for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.

Both Valve and Bethesda are now just in PR mode and trying to put out the fires. Do you think their sole intent was purely for the money to go to the mod makers like they say? Then why is the split so heavily in their favor and the mod makers are getting a pissy 25%. Its contradictory.

And if you think it's "playable fan-fiction" then you obviously have no idea what you're talking about

Rumour is that MS's W10 browser will support Chrome extensions. Somehow.

I'm somewhat curious. I'm falling out of favour with Chrome, it gets bogged down and chuggs badly on mobile CPUs when you use font scaling. Also Google's application design is increasingly becoming restrictive and frustrating. Why is there no way to turn off auto-update? Why is the interface locked from modification and I'm forced to squint painfully at the address bar on my 1920x1080p 13 inch laptop?

Firefox has terrible font rendering and I haven't been able to improve it. I originally moved over from it because it seemed to have memory issues where over time videos would randomly freeze for like half a second during play intermittently, dunno if they fixed it.

Opera seems better in these regards but I can't for the life of me get used to browsing without alt + # for switching between tabs.

Meanwhile IE 11 handles font scaling well and memory wise seems fine, but also lacks basic extensions at the moment. If they fix this issue I may switch over at least on my laptop.

We have an empty rock-pool feature in the entrance to one of our warehouses. We've been in discussions on what to do with it for a couple of months. Some silly idea's are to get the water feature going again, or fill it with plants, or have a lighting display. My proposal has been to fill it with ball-pit balls.

The ball-pit idea has a lower running cost, than the other 3 ideas.
The lights and plants have already been rejected.
Water is a slip hazard, rejection is immanent.
My idea has not yet been rejected. Padding modifications are cheap, already have the quotes.

We are still in discussions.
There WILL be balls!

(also, not a joke)

For my two cents...I don't really want to see people banned without giving them a chance to understand the issues with their behavior and fix them. Some people require a hard push to get there. I would rather see a stepped approach, ending in banning if the offensive behavior continues or worsens. I have yet to notice a hobble happen, but many a ban. To me, that seems odd and slightly draconian (although totally understandable when I consider the circumstances of most of those bans).
That said, I have also seen and been a target of abusing the voting system, and the infantile 'quote modification', both of which were out of order IMO. I don't want to see them become the norm here.
Just my feelings on the subject.
Should this become a sift talk?

I agree, but to play devil's advocate here are two counterpoints:

1) The YT-1300 was designed as a freighter, and the Millennium Falcon only became a capable warship after pretty extensive modification by Lando and Han Solo. So, perhaps some of those flaws can be justified with "not really intended to be a combat vessel" rationale.

2) Or even ignoring that, shielding seems to be established as being much more important than armor plating around wires and pipes in the Star Wars universe. TIEs (at least the lower models) have no shielding whatsoever, and the only thing that separates them from just being pure cannon fodder is size, agility, and numbers.

But even in medium fighters that DO have shields, it seems like they at best protect against a very low number of glancing hits -- we see X and Y wings with shields go down after 1-2 hits a LOT in the movies. In that scenario, I guess there isn't a whole lot of need to slow yourself down with heavy armor plating that might let you survive another hit if you are lucky. Kinda like how modern police officers and soldiers don't wear heavy steel plate armor; they either wear kevlar (think "shields") or nothing but clothing/uniform.

So, maybe the larger ships in Star Wars stock up on shields and aren't too fussed about physically covering up systems -- once the shields are down you're pretty much toast anyway.

"If it were done as a single nerve in a direct route, it would be subject to damage from a jerking head motion"

"That doesn't make much sense as all nerves start as large bundles and get smaller as they subdivide."

Correct. My point was only that a shorter route might not be beneficial, even though the right inferior laryngeal nerve goes directly to the larynx. After rethinking that statement, I retract [or redact] it. Either way would work.

Stress relief, however, is in place due to nerve bundling. I haven't done any dissections myself [yet], but from the video, it is apparent that the RLN in the giraffe's neck was well secured in its pathway to the larynx, requiring scalpel separation, rather than hanging loose, and thus well protected from damage due to shock.

I have read where descending aortal repairs in the upper section [arch] can cause damage to the RLN, resulting in subsequent hoarseness to the patient, and I can see why. This is just something that surgeons have to deal with.

But the argument that "no designer would ever make a mistake like that" makes an unfounded assumption, that IF there was a designer involved, that it could/would have been done differently. Dawkins' view of design implementation assumes a bottom up, de novo approach, which is not what ID proposes, at least from my perspective. I view ID as incremental gene tweaking to modify existent physiologies, at least subsequent to the Cambrian era.

"Imperfection is the norm but a lot of it won't cause disease. The idea that you can pick and choose which part of biology a designer intervenes baffles me."

Complex integrated designs like mammalian anatomy will always be subject to imperfections, failures, and can be improved upon. As far as how designs were implemented, the evidence is that they were incremental, and may have varied as to the source, and the methodologies.

Earlier complex designs may have been 'de novo', compound eyes for example, but in later eras, modifications appear to be modifications of what's there. Thus, it's entirely possible that design implementations may have been from various sources, and using various techniques.

But back to the question of 'bad design' as a refutation of design, I do not see the RLN as an indication of that, just a progression from earlier mammalian forms, as well as a necessary result of the descent of a functional heart as the embryo develops. Same for the male vas deferens.