Slashdot Mirror

This article just assumes games should be competitive. There are cooperative games. The Wii is pioneering more such cooperative games. Here is a general site on the topic of cooperative computer games:
    http://www.co-optimus.com/

There are even cooperative board games:
    http://www.familypastimes.com/

One great thing about cooperative games is that they make it easy for players of different skill levels to play together.

From Alfie Kohn's book, "No Contest: The Case Against Competition":
    http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security. ... In closely reasoned argument he shows that, while competition is deeply ingrained, it is also inherently destructive, especially where self-esteem is contingent on winning at the expense of others."

So, there are other ways to have more fun.
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cooperative+games

Low to mid rate MP3s do to cymbals the same thing piezo tweeters do. Reduce the sound to shaped noise. Kinda sad.

And for those trying to figure out what is distortion and what is music, I use a simple standard - what the artist intended is music, anything introduced by the playback mechanism is distortion. MP3 artifacts are distortion, pure and simple. They are the bane of the format, and probably inevitable. Different versions of ATRAC also suffer from this, when the algorithm just gets it wrong.

I'm assuming the mastering process had the artist's approval, in deference to my friend the well-known masterer who nobody knows, in a place nobody goes, unless they want a hit recording.

Ballet Mechanique by George Antheil is almost unbearable, but it is music. Recording it must have been a bitch..

I remember 10 years ago that every nerd had a PGP key and Schneier's Applied Cryptography was a standard text for our crowd. Now, the majority of even the hard-core geeks no longer have much interest in encryption. Somewhere along the way we forgot that every step forward on the net demands a way to guarantee privacy. Berners-Lee might regret the lack of privacy now, but he and other luminaries weren't vocal enough about the need for encryption and lots of it.

Read "Songs from a distant Earth", from Clarke ( http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Distant-Earth-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0345322401 ). You assume too much about me, and lacks a good "lets try, why not?".

You might like this book. Brian Daley wrote three Han Solo prequels and they're collected in that volume. Good, old-fashioned, space opera.

Even if the execs don't realize consciously why they're doing it, I'd say that it's a fairly deliberate effort at some level.

The shows speak to matters, through the sci-fi metaphor, which play quite heavily in this reality. Firefly was very anti-government, anti-establishment. It died. (Compare to something like 24, which is pro-torture, pro-government, pro-homeland security, etc. That show has no trouble holding its air time.)

Fringe is crap, imho, (I hate "dark and gritty" and the ideas are skewed to shit), but it still looks at the world in a way which is anti-establishment and quite accusatory.

Dollhouse is another great example. Mind control is easy; when you deliberately traumatize a child, they dissociate and it is very easy to program alternate personalities. This is by no means rocket science and it is clear enough to anybody who has looked into this matter that the Manchurian Candidate concept is a powerful tool in the game of politics and cultural subversion. (Before you auto-react against that, please do some research into the field. Start with, Marta Stout's Myth of Sanity and read the, Greenbaum speach to get a better perspective.) --Again, while Dollhouse is a sci-fi metaphor, it's not the sort of thing you want the public thinking about too much if you're trying to keep the public deaf and dumb.

So how do you control the release of subversive material? Well, you put it on FOX where the level of negative government alignment is very much entrenched. That way, it's easy to kill a series before it can gain too much traction.

-FL

Ease of portability with a keyboard that can conceivably reach standard keyboard typing speeds is a big draw along with low power consumption to people who do a lot of writing. In the pre-netbook days, I used to have a Vadem Clio tablet which, despite its inadequacies (the biggest being the RS-232 port for transfer in a USB age), was terrific for taking places to write. The battery lasted for hours, it weighed next to nothing and it wasn't all that expensive compared to a full-sized notebook so I wasn't as worried about banging it around or getting it stolen. I added a wi-fi card to it and it enabled me to be extremely productive.

True, most only really think of oil as being the next big thing to cause mass hysteria, but few realize that potable water is a dwindling resource in certain regions. Even the giant Ogallala aquifer in the central United States is showing increased rate of depletion (not to mention pollution).

There are a few books on the subject.

True, most only really think of oil as being the next big thing to cause mass hysteria, but few realize that potable water is a dwindling resource in certain regions. Even the giant Ogallala aquifer in the central United States is showing increased rate of depletion (not to mention pollution).

There are a few books on the subject.

Yes I do. The point is, the current rules do NOT level the playing field, they simply protect the politically favored market players from competition. They are designed to preserve people with a lot of power in place.

The fact of the matter is, cartels, price-collusion, big mergers, they all failed miserably back in the time when we were much closer to true laissez-faire than today, i.e. late 19th century USA. That's because these schemes are very unstable in a free market since participants can always just walk out when it benefits them. Moreover companies that attempted consolidation were consistently undercut by a smaller, more efficient competitors.

So antitrust laws and the rest of the 'progressive' political movement didn't happen because there was monopoly and it needed fixing. It was because of the lack of it. They are a direct result of a reaction from segments of business to declining profits due to the downward pressure on prices that is a direct consequence of free competition. They just wouldn't have that, and went to the government to fix it.

With governmental support, cartels had a way do discipline their members by the force of law. And huge stable corporations become possible once the government issues regulations that used to be in the scope of the market, therefore hindering small companies while giving the big players a comparative advantage.

I'd recommend both Antitrust and Monopoly and In Restraint of Trade as books that go more deep in this subject that I could ever could in a /. comment.

Yes I do. The point is, the current rules do NOT level the playing field, they simply protect the politically favored market players from competition. They are designed to preserve people with a lot of power in place.

The fact of the matter is, cartels, price-collusion, big mergers, they all failed miserably back in the time when we were much closer to true laissez-faire than today, i.e. late 19th century USA. That's because these schemes are very unstable in a free market since participants can always just walk out when it benefits them. Moreover companies that attempted consolidation were consistently undercut by a smaller, more efficient competitors.

So antitrust laws and the rest of the 'progressive' political movement didn't happen because there was monopoly and it needed fixing. It was because of the lack of it. They are a direct result of a reaction from segments of business to declining profits due to the downward pressure on prices that is a direct consequence of free competition. They just wouldn't have that, and went to the government to fix it.

With governmental support, cartels had a way do discipline their members by the force of law. And huge stable corporations become possible once the government issues regulations that used to be in the scope of the market, therefore hindering small companies while giving the big players a comparative advantage.

I'd recommend both Antitrust and Monopoly and In Restraint of Trade as books that go more deep in this subject that I could ever could in a /. comment.

Presumably you mean rewritable discs. At the moment, the cheapest BD-RE discs, at least available through Amazon seems to be about $7.87 apiece.
http://www.amazon.com/Memorex-32020013366-Rewriteable-Blu-Ray-Spindle/dp/B001B98F3I

(I keep hoping eventually a standalone video recorder will show up with BluRay in it -- or at least a convenient way to put recordings from a Tivo on BluRay.)

(No idea why I would need that.)

Ever noticed the content free, early +5 posts pushing some piece of commercial propaganda? Commercial astroturfers use it to frame the discussion. Don't think of the elephant.

In the short-story collection, "I, Robot", the story "Liar" is about just that situation. Through some deviation in the manufacturing process a robot has the ability to read minds.

This leads the robot to have a more expansive interpretation of the first law because it can perceive emotional harm in addition to mere physical harm. Hilarity ensues. Actually not...

But it's a good story. This concept also plays out in one of the novels, I think, "Naked Sun".

A non-mind-reading robot wouldn't be able to perceive emotional harm so would not be inhibited from doing things emotionally harmful until they manifest in some way detectable by the robot.

If you happen to like audiobooks, there is a great version of "I, Robot" read by Scott Brick. I highly recommend it. (http://www.amazon.com/I-Robot-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0739312707/)

There are 8 SPUs on the Cell, but the PS3 dedicates one of them to hold the Game OS. Another one is blocked off because IBM was having yield problems.

So the poster is right. Despite the presence of 8 SPUs on a Cell, only 6 are available on the PS3.

And there's actually a book available on programming the Cell (particularly on the PS3). It's here.

I have no idea if this is what you are looking for or not - however here you go.

http://www.amazon.com/Sunforce-22005-12-Volt-MotoMaster-Eliminator/dp/B000C1Z2LY

I have one of these, works great. I take it camping and/or to the cottage. Its flexible, durable, and non bulky. There are also corresponding storage devices it can be used with, but those are rather bulky and heavy.

I know many of you despise Amazon due to the one-click fiasco (and with good reason). But packing/packaging are one area where they're trying to get things right. When possible, order items that are packed using "frustration-free" packaging.

Al Qaeda is known to have substantial capital

Reading this I rather got the impression that they were strapped for cash most of the time, and what they had they had got through legal dealings with the US of other Bin Laden family parts.

So would Afghan opium, which the Taliban has extensively invested in.

Blatant misrepresentation. By 2000 the Taliban had banned opium production and by 2001,

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

. -- http://opioids.com/afghanistan/index.html

One wonders how important that was for the US to start the war in Afghanistan, considering that a lack of Afghan opium would be a severe problem for the so-called "War on Drugs" in the US, a war that the government wages against its own citizens.

I said in a private offline conversation (so I unfortunately cannot provide a link) at Christmas 2001 that I expected the Afghan opium production to be back at the world's number 1 within five years, and lo and behold,

Illicit opium production, now dominated by Afghanistan, was decimated in 2000 when production was banned by the Taliban, but has increased steadily since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and over the course of the War in Afghanistan

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium (follow the references)

Last year 80% of the world's opium came from Afghanistan and production is up over 239% since 2003, according to U.S. government estimates.

-- http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/2005_Afghan_opium_harvest_begins

1. DVI? Nearly (if not every) HD tv has one. If you don't have that then your tv should at least have s-video. Of course if somehow your computer doesn't even have s-video there are vga to svideo cables. They're like $5.
2. My grandparents don't even own only a single computer. Even if you do you could build another one for pretty cheap who's only function is to have 5TB of space and play HD videos. They sell computer cases for this exact purpose.
3. Can't really respond to this one because I'm not quite sure how your computer can't go 2h without error messages, programs crashing, the video card turning off (while playing a video) or screen savers coming on (again while playing a video).
4. Again if your internet connection goes down every 2h or so then agreed, this option isn't for you. In my experience however, when something happens that makes my DSL shit out, the cable shits out too. The times that each one of those goes out on their own due to some other problem, they dont last long and are very infrequent. They also seem to go out at about the same frequency which is almost never.
5. See point 2.
6. The remote controls your TV. It has nothing to do with which device your TV is receiving input from. If you're talking about being able to tell your computer from your couch which episode you wish to watch then that problem has been solved for a long long time. Computers have been taking wireless input for years, through mouses, keyboards, presentation clickers, TV remotes, wii controllers etc.

And for your final statement, I think the point the parent was trying to make was exactly what you said. It'll be a box and you'll buy from someplace else which you just plug your TV into. It'll be like a ps3 or xbox360 or tivo or a (newer) mac (let the foaming of the fan boy mouths begin), just a fancy box with PC parts inside. Or in other words, a PC.

Not everybody has the money for a second PC to put in the TV room.

This costs about the same as $30/month cable TV service for 10 months. I know, not everybody has an attention span sufficient to take advantage of a 10 month ROI horizon...

I have good results with Brunton Solar

There is a wide variety of sizes and shapes and Brunton has a pretty good rep.

None of the modern missile lock on frenzy games have anywhere near the depth of the old school sims, just can't get into them.

Go get yourself a copy of IL-2 Sturmovik and you will be in Nirvana. It's probably the best serious combat flight sim ever made, and you can set it for anything from moderate realism to full-out, hard-core "I want to adjust the engine mixture myself, thank you very much" realism. Based on your comments I predict you will love it - and as a bonus, you should be able to find it priced at about one-fifth the cost of HAWX.

IL-2 has been expanded and updated many times over the years, so to make sure you get the total package, look for the compilation titled IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946. It includes the core game, all its expansions, the sequel (Pacific Fighters), and a bunch of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe-style late-war wonder jets. Earlier compilations will lack some of these and will require patching to bring up to date, so 1946 is the version to buy.

Ironically, Ubisoft is the North American distributor for the IL-2 series; if you live there, you can buy 1946 as a digital download from Ubi's Web store for USD$10. It's also available on Steam at the same price, and if you prefer physical media, Amazon has the DVD version for $15.

Why would Amazon do this for eBooks but not for physical books?

Sales for the Kindle do not seem to bear this out: Kindle bestsellers. I see no porn in the top 25.

Something about killing superheroes?

Something about how real masked vigilante would be, the fetichist, oversized-ego, psycho-past, nostalgic underwear-over-pants kind, and the problems they would have if they really existed. Add to that an intrigue and a very good naration, and you have one of the most incredible novel ever written.

Oh and it's 11$ on amazon (the whole 12 chapter in one tome) in paperback. Make yourself the pleasure of increasing your culture ;)

In addition to the hassle of listing items and hoping for buyers that other posters mention, there is also the fact that Amazon takes a 15% commission, $0.99 per transaction fee, and $1.35 closing fee (source). That $38 sale price translates into $29.96 for the seller (plus a small amount to cover shipping). $3.46 for a sure thing sale doesn't sound quite so bad.

How to Be Totally Miserable: A Self-Hinder Book!

http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Totally-Miserable-Self-Hinder/dp/1570087245

Haha!

I just bought another book.

http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Poops-My-Body-Science/dp/192913214X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236214575&sr=8-1

Everybody poops.

I highly recommend How to Ruin your Life by Ben Stein.

Excellent read and somewhat motivational. And, of course, it has Ben Stein's great wit throughout.

As already mentioned in a previous comment, the article is somewhat speculative and it is a little bit late to verify the experiment. The standard accepted practice for claiming the detection of a GW is to observe the event with at least 2 detectors which are separated far enough to not measure the same external disturbances (but preferably 3 or more spread around the world so that you can do proper triangulation of the source). One single glitch might be a cosmic ray, lightning, dust falling before your detector, an earthquake, an instrumental error, anything. We see more of those than we like. One glitch measured at different observatories within the time it takes to travel at lightspeed (a few ms) at different observatories around the world might give you a nobel prize.

One book that is high on my 'to read' list is Gravity's shadow, which supposedly describes not only Weber's experiments, but also its reception by the scientific community and the eventual downfall of Weber's reputation.

Google's business plan

It's been done.

How I spent the last 10 minutes.

--------------

Just installed and bought a book. Heading to the bathroom now.

------------

Success! It works like a charm.

(You dont need to buy a kindle)

Reader is decent. Font size is nice. Bookmark feature works. Option to choose the font you like.

You have to buy books from web browser at amazon.com/kindlestore. But it will automatically send it to your iphone kindle app.

Next update (free) may include searching/buying directly from kindle app. But really what is the point? You probably want to use amazon.com/kindlestore to search and browse for new books anyway.

Also the book I purchased is pretty good. A couple "duh" things and a few "doh! Why didn't I think of that" things.

http://www.amazon.com/Upgrade-Your-Life-Lifehacker-Working/dp/B001B1RXOS/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1236190390&sr=1-12

Well, First things first. Freakanomics copied Gladwell's style not visa versa. Gladwell pretty much started the genre back in 2002 with the tipping point.

Freakanomics came much later debuting in 2005.

If you like Tipping Point, read Influence by Robert Cialdini.

It covers similar topics and (I think) does a better job.

Because it's really, really hard to compartmentalize your life that way.

It is a skill that can be taught and learned, just like any other. Compartmentalization is possible, you just have to train yourself to do, speak, and act in certain ways and avoid acting, speaking, or doing things in the wrong ways. If you are interested in learning how to do that then you might want to get started with this book.

Don't forget that when you buy a Kindle book you cannot lend, sell, or give it away. If you purchase an interesting book for your Kindle and your wife wants to read it, she'll have to buy her own copy or borrow your entire Kindle.

Seems to me that this severely reduces the value of eBooks, so they should really cost about 1/3 - 1/2 of the paperback price to make up for it.

Not true. You can, in fact, lend, sell or give your Kindle away. Amazon will in fact help you by removing your info from the device and wiping it from remote. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000FI73MA/ref=/ref=cm_cd_f_pb_un

Actually, the economics of bookstores is not what you suggest.

Bookstores actually have one of the lowest markups in the industry (they buy books at 60% of what they sell them at-- most other businesses are about 50%). Let me explain how this works when I run a micro-run (100 copies) of my book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/) by sales channels.

The micro-run of 100 copies costs me $3.84 per book including shipping to get it to me. I assume the printer makes a little bit there too. So suppose the actual cost is probably closer to $2 regarding base production (no royalties at all in these calculations).

The list price for the book is $15.99. As you will see, this does not allow for a normal distribution chain with many steps. Let's look at how it works depending on where I sell it. If I sell a copy retail, that gives me $12.15 profit per book.

If I sell it to a bookstore, I would sell it at 9.59 per copy. This means I make $5.85 per book in this case (close to my royalties when Booksurge sells a copy through Amazon, which are $5.60).

If I sell copies to a distributor, though, I have to sell it at 40% of list, or $6.39. This would mean I would get $2.55 per book. The distributor only gets about $3 per book too. It is still a lot more than Booksurge pays me when they sell through distributors (I get $1.60 per book there).

So what you generally see is 40% of the list price gets used in production, author royalties, and publisher profits. 20% goes to the distributor, and 40% goes to the bookstore.

In just about every other business, the retail store ends up making 50% of their sale price which can go to operational expenses, etc. For book sales, it is only 40%.

However, as an author, my sense is that the ways the bookstores look at mitigating their risk make sense only in limited cases. For example, most want to do consignment. I will ONLY do consignment if I get prime placement because I don't get any more from consignment than I do from wholesale sales.

You should look at on-demand publishers too. Many will let you set the price of the book and just charge a flat rate for producing it. It cost me $299 to set my book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084) up for print-on-demand through Booksurge. They don't let me set the price, but I get 35% of list price as royalties through retail channels.

I am also looking at creating a publishing business and expect to do some things differently (generally pay authors 20% of list price on every book sale, but asking in return for a certain number of royalty-free copies for promotional use etc). If you do your own book design often times you can get a discount. What we would do is help with editing, design, etc. and coordinate with authors on marketing (we would get a share probably similar to the author on wholesale sales, and less than the author on distributor sales).

Books would be available both in paper and ebook formats (probably PDF) too. No, we won't use DRM either

I know you were joking but people throughout history have shared this view of the number zero. Back in college I read The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero and apparently the number zero was considered to be evil by some since it symbolizes nothingness. Some cultures simply used a blank space to represent "nothing". It has been a while since I read the book but I remember it being very interesting and even insightful for a book about the history of a number.

I agree.

I sent my book to them to have it listed because of the advertising.

Better yet, I get advertising revenues from my book(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/). But I would still have done it even if I didn't get the revenues from the advertising.

POD, micro-runs (100-books or less at a time), LaTeX.... Who needs Random House anymore?

The publishing industry worked very well when the only way you could self-publish was with expensive long offset runs. Nowadays, print on demand is making self-publishing much easier and more affordable. Add to it affordable typesetting/design software, and you have a chance to really crack these cartels.

I recently published my book via a POD publisher (Booksurge). You can see it at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/

I also do micro-runs for wholesale (100 copies of the book at a time).

Interestingly.... I did the entire book design, including the cover, in LaTeX. It came out great. I am extremely happy with the quality that the free software in this area is able to provide. The only few issues are design mistakes I made, and not software limitations (the barcode should be placed differently on the back, etc).

My most recent journal entry includes a follow-up post on advice for people designing books using LaTeX.

Anyone who wishes to claim that the current situation is without precedent must explain http://www.amazon.com/Manias-Panics-Crashes-Financial-Investment/dp/0471389455.

This was a bubble caused by the expansion of credit. Kindleberger argues that _all_ bubbles are created by the expansion of credit. The current situation does not even begin to approach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Mandelbrot some years ago already warned that current financial annalitical methods failed to capture the fractal nature of market oscilations, and that they simplified in excess the model. According to Mandelbrot, not only the amplitude of oscilations behaves as a fractal, but also his time distribution.

Wow -- a discussion about the social construction of financial markets on Slashdot. Sometimes models aren't simplifications -- they can create a context in which their predictions are more applicable. The Wired article draws from Donald Mackenzie's An engine, not a camera.

Three reasons.

1. The media downright worshiped him during the campaign. Read this book and watch this documentary.
2. He's excellent at reading from a teleprompter.
3. The majority of Americans have been dumbed down and poisoned with sodium fluoride to the point that plants are smarter than them.

Also, watch this to see the complete ignorance of Obama voters.

While I like the idea of manned exploration, I think sending in robots, or near autonomous robots first is a good idea. For tasks like this they have great advantages of more simple life sort. I envision a large roomba. PS. It was hard not to just post "Cylons were created by man . . ."

Get this book: Scalable INternet Architectures. Theo will tell how how to approach the problem.

For the volumes that you are talking about, you don't need a huge architecture, unless something is serious funky with your application. You are 3 or 4 orders of magnitude away from a having a hard problem to solve.

What I said before:

While I support embryonic stem cell research, I don't support taxpayer money supporting it. Reduce taxes and let those who want ESC research donate money.

While I do no support government funding of research I don't oppose it either. I'd rather government reduce tax and let others pay for research. Only as a last effort should government fund research. But when government does fund it then the research should be open sourced so anyone could use it.

There is very rarely any corporate funding for something that CAN'T BE PATENTED

Corporations aren't the only ones that fund research. Universities fund research as well. So do charities and non profits. Others fund St Jude's Children's Research Hospital, which then funds research. Before he died Danny Thomas put his heart and soul into starting and supporting St Jude's, as does his daughter Marlo Thomas.

Falcon

As my math prof used to say, "The best way to encourage cheating on a test is as follows: start with a very large class. Announce that there is a test today and it will be graded on a curve. Pass out the test. Say you will be back in 30 minutes to collect the test and leave the room."

(I'm now thinking he was a prophet predicting the current financial mess.) An excellent book on this subject is Punished by Rewards .

And, just yesterday, a doctor I know said he finally decided to retire (well past normal retirement age), not because his skills weren't up to par, but because the pressure of being right 100% of the time was too draining -- it's something that is impossible to do, but when you aren't, a person dies. That's what I want in a doctor, someone who cares... and that's not something you can build through incentives.