Yes, the major part of the story was the recognition thing, BUT the part that's relevant to/. is the filtering part. That's probably why the filtering part was mentioned.
Death is not the only "interesting" thing that can happen in a story! In a virtual world, you can have just as much interpersonal interaction as you can in the real world. People can change mentally, conduct diplomacy, relationships, whatever. All that stuff can definitely be interesting.
Of course, the problem is that we're dealing with VR in an action environment, and in action movies, you DO have to have people dying, I suppose.
But still, I can imagine a story where someone's, say, trapped in a VR world and can't get out and stop the program.. (Yes, I know it's been done.) That's interesting even if there isn't an immediate threat to the person's life. Well, for one thing, their real body is then helpless unless they can escape, and they'd die of starvation/dehydration if they don't escape.. So that'd be one way to have a life-threatening situation without silly dying-in-VR thing.
The difference with what you're saying is that you don't have the right to, say, enter the building in the first place. So without their permission, you're automatically locked out. Now, they say, "you may enter if you don't bring a gun", and allow you to enter. BUT that is not necessarily legal, any more than a "you may enter if you're white" sign. The thing is, in general, the courts have upheld restrictions to the second amendment as special cases.
So what he says about accessing his code may well hold, BUT that's something the courts would have to decide on.
Of course he could cherry pick IDEAS, if he wanted to. Just not the actual source code. If it weren't for being to cherry pick other people's ideas from published scientific literature, games like Quake wouldn't even exist..These games are largely implementions of graphics algorithms invented up to decades ago by academia.
... which is precisely why software patents are evil..
Adam Sandler had this great song called "Ode to My Car" I heard one day on the radio, that roughly went, "Ode to my car, my piece of *honk* car," etc. By the end of the song, there was as much honking of various types of horns as there was singing. It was great!
I found the CD for it, and it was uncensored! That completely ruined the song.:(
Anyway, I hope Parker & company use this as an opportunity to censor the song while making fun of the censorship.
I still can't believe that the biggest dig at the MPAA is actually going to have a song aired at the Oscars. That just rules.:)
I really wonder what the picture quality will be like, though. I mean, typical VCDs now are two-VCDs per movie, which is over a gig. I doubt Yahoo will want tons of people grabbing gigs of data from them, so it'll probably be lower resolution than VCDs.
Not to mention that VCDs can be viewed on a TV with the tons of VCD players people have in Asia. (And many DVD players play VCDs as well.)
I don't think pirate VCDs will die. Well, at least not until pirate DVDs take off...
Still, I like this guy's attitude toward dealing with the problem. I do think this could definitely bite into pirate sales.. and in a way that doesn't piss off legit consumers, too!
Actually, the estimate for the universe has been in the ballpark of 15 billion for some time. It's the Earth that's about 5 billion years old. Perhaps that's what you're remembering?
First of all, "k" should always be lowercase when used as a prefix. (Note that "k" should always be a PREFIX to a unit. "K" being used alone as you do above is merely colloquial and non-standard.)
Secondly, he was talking about the distinction between computer prefixes and SI prefixes. (Ever notice how 1kb is 1024 bytes?) He was joking about the silliness of the computer industry (especially the hard-drive industry) in using two different definitions interchangeably, whichever suits them best.
It makes you look really bad to put people down when you don't even seem to know what you're talking about yourself.
I love being unnecessarily cynical about everything that people do! When on Slashdot, I love to flaunt my obvious superiority by putting down the actions of mindless cretins who dare to have a little fun! I enjoy pointing out that because large corporations do some bad things, everything they do must be inherently evil by association and nothing they create can thus be of any value whatsoever! I really relish insisting that everything everyone does must be global, that no one is allowed to talk about things that are going on in their own country! In fact, I should yell at myself because I'm talking about me, and I only exist in the country I live in. But it doesn't matter, because I'm superior to all of you! Long live unmitigated cynicism! Down with fun!
I would say that film and books are two different media with different properties, and when a film version of a novel fails, it's likely because the filmmaker is not properly taking advantage of the medium.
I can think of two examples of films when stand very well in their own right apart from the books upon which they're based: Contact and Blade Runner. Both films knew just what to chanage to take advantage of the things that film does well (visuals, mood, and emotion) and drop the things which film does not do so well at (detailed debate and internal thoughts).
Both films I believe produce something which is very distinctive. Are they better than their novels? They're different. They're just as good, in a different way. (Well, actually I liked Contact the film better than the novel, personally.)
It has a REALLY smart database of phrases right now, since it's getting started. But that's no reason to be against it.. it's just that it needs a lot more work.
However, in addition, it uses a simply phrase-replacement algorithm that I don't hope to much hope in...
I completely agree. I actually find it odd that Apple doesn't lower their prices more often. I guess the Mac market is inherently more inelastic, since a lot of Mac users will remain Mac users.
Still, it seems to me that it'd make sense to lower prices to attract non-Mac users. But hey, the company is making lots of money, and I'm sure Fred Anderson understands the economics of the situation far better than I. =)
Let's not forget that the current PowerBook models have been out since the summer at the same price, so this is a bad time to buy a PowerBook. If you compare the current prices to the prices of PC laptops during the summer, it was vastly favorable to the Mac.
When the new models come out (presumably some time soon), the price/performance ratio will be much better, and that will be a smarter time to buy a PowerBook.
Mac prices don't change as quickly as PC prices, so it's generally better to buy Macs when they first come out.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the major part of the story was the recognition thing, BUT the part that's relevant to /. is the filtering part. That's probably why the filtering part was mentioned.
Death is not the only "interesting" thing that can happen in a story! In a virtual world, you can have just as much interpersonal interaction as you can in the real world. People can change mentally, conduct diplomacy, relationships, whatever. All that stuff can definitely be interesting.
Of course, the problem is that we're dealing with VR in an action environment, and in action movies, you DO have to have people dying, I suppose.
But still, I can imagine a story where someone's, say, trapped in a VR world and can't get out and stop the program.. (Yes, I know it's been done.) That's interesting even if there isn't an immediate threat to the person's life.
Well, for one thing, their real body is then helpless unless they can escape, and they'd die of starvation/dehydration if they don't escape..
So that'd be one way to have a life-threatening situation without silly dying-in-VR thing.
That's what I was about to say!
:)
The difference with what you're saying is that you don't have the right to, say, enter the building in the first place. So without their permission, you're automatically locked out. Now, they say, "you may enter if you don't bring a gun", and allow you to enter. BUT that is not necessarily legal, any more than a "you may enter if you're white" sign. The thing is, in general, the courts have upheld restrictions to the second amendment as special cases.
So what he says about accessing his code may well hold, BUT that's something the courts would have to decide on.
... which is precisely why software patents are evil..
Adam Sandler had this great song called "Ode to My Car" I heard one day on the radio, that roughly went, "Ode to my car, my piece of *honk* car," etc.
:(
:)
By the end of the song, there was as much honking of various types of horns as there was singing. It was great!
I found the CD for it, and it was uncensored! That completely ruined the song.
Anyway, I hope Parker & company use this as an opportunity to censor the song while making fun of the censorship.
I still can't believe that the biggest dig at the MPAA is actually going to have a song aired at the Oscars. That just rules.
I really wonder what the picture quality will be like, though. I mean, typical VCDs now are two-VCDs per movie, which is over a gig. I doubt Yahoo will want tons of people grabbing gigs of data from them, so it'll probably be lower resolution than VCDs.
Not to mention that VCDs can be viewed on a TV with the tons of VCD players people have in Asia. (And many DVD players play VCDs as well.)
I don't think pirate VCDs will die. Well, at least not until pirate DVDs take off...
Still, I like this guy's attitude toward dealing with the problem. I do think this could definitely bite into pirate sales.. and in a way that doesn't piss off legit consumers, too!
Actually, the estimate for the universe has been in the ballpark of 15 billion for some time. It's the Earth that's about 5 billion years old. Perhaps that's what you're remembering?
Oops! My bad. Sorry about that.
First of all, "k" should always be lowercase when used as a prefix. (Note that "k" should always be a PREFIX to a unit. "K" being used alone as you do above is merely colloquial and non-standard.)
Secondly, he was talking about the distinction between computer prefixes and SI prefixes. (Ever notice how 1kb is 1024 bytes?) He was joking about the silliness of the computer industry (especially the hard-drive industry) in using two different definitions interchangeably, whichever suits them best.
It makes you look really bad to put people down when you don't even seem to know what you're talking about yourself.
I missed the voting, and now vote.pl only says that voting is over.
I can't find a nominees list anyway. Someone want to help me out?
Thanks.
I love being unnecessarily cynical about everything that people do! When on Slashdot, I love to flaunt my obvious superiority by putting down the actions of mindless cretins who dare to have a little fun! I enjoy pointing out that because large corporations do some bad things, everything they do must be inherently evil by association and nothing they create can thus be of any value whatsoever! I really relish insisting that everything everyone does must be global, that no one is allowed to talk about things that are going on in their own country! In fact, I should yell at myself because I'm talking about me, and I only exist in the country I live in. But it doesn't matter, because I'm superior to all of you! Long live unmitigated cynicism! Down with fun!
I liked the cat herding ad too, but I don't think it was very effective in that I've already forgotten what company/product it was for...
Toward this end, I'd reccommend an excellent novel called Permutation City by Greg Egan.
I think that was his entire point.
I would say that film and books are two different media with different properties, and when a film version of a novel fails, it's likely because the filmmaker is not properly taking advantage of the medium.
I can think of two examples of films when stand very well in their own right apart from the books upon which they're based: Contact and Blade Runner. Both films knew just what to chanage to take advantage of the things that film does well (visuals, mood, and emotion) and drop the things which film does not do so well at (detailed debate and internal thoughts).
Both films I believe produce something which is very distinctive. Are they better than their novels? They're different. They're just as good, in a different way. (Well, actually I liked Contact the film better than the novel, personally.)
Film versions of books CAN be done well.
Sadly, the only basis that the public has to judge him on is star wars
He's also in The Pretender, and a few other things.
Aren't you talking about Moonraker?
Moderators, please take a look at the parent to this post and consider moderating it up.
The problem with this is that a band can have a website all they want, but without marketing, no one's going to know about them.
Hell, I have a hard enough time finding music I like as it is.
It's hardly fair to say China has the most executions since it's got over 1/5th of the world's population.
Perhaps it'd be more fair to count PER CAPITA executions? I would be surprised if China still ranks first then.
It has a REALLY smart database of phrases right now, since it's getting started.
But that's no reason to be against it.. it's just that it needs a lot more work.
However, in addition, it uses a simply phrase-replacement algorithm that I don't hope to much hope in...
I completely agree. I actually find it odd that Apple doesn't lower their prices more often. I guess the Mac market is inherently more inelastic, since a lot of Mac users will remain Mac users.
Still, it seems to me that it'd make sense to lower prices to attract non-Mac users. But hey, the company is making lots of money, and I'm sure Fred Anderson understands the economics of the situation far better than I. =)
Imagine hiding easter eggs in junk DNA... Bend the frog's arm the right way and it croaks the genetic engineers' names....
Let's not forget that the current PowerBook models have been out since the summer at the same price, so this is a bad time to buy a PowerBook. If you compare the current prices to the prices of PC laptops during the summer, it was vastly favorable to the Mac.
When the new models come out (presumably some time soon), the price/performance ratio will be much better, and that will be a smarter time to buy a PowerBook.
Mac prices don't change as quickly as PC prices, so it's generally better to buy Macs when they first come out.