The Humble Store is not competing with Steam. Most games that it sells can/have to be activated on Steam.
I must have over one hundred games in my Steam library that come from the Humble Bundle.
That's a lot of games. I'm not sure the Humble Bundle has offered that many games in all the bundles combined, at least since I've been paying attention. Most bundles have around 6-9 games, and many of those weren't on Steam.
Would you care to list those games so we can get an accurate count? (Not a troll - I'm genuinely curious about how many Steam games Humble Bundle has offered in it's history).
FYI: A lot of "single vehicle accidents" are actually (mostly male) suicide attempts.
Not around here. Just idiots driving too fast on mildly curved New England roads, usually in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes coming home from the nearby casinos, sometimes a bar, sometimes just unable to control the vehicle (a surprising number aren't intoxicated when tested). Seems to be about 25% female, but that's just my impression from glancing at police reports in the newspaper for a few years.
Why would a human pay to insure a car that they're not driving? Either I'm driving, and am accountable for my actions, or the computer is driving, and is accountable for it's actions.
As the owner, you could be considered your autonomous vehicler's steward. You are accountable because you purchased the vehicle and choose to allow it to drive on public roadways. It's your property, so your responsibility.
To the question of why a human would pay to insure if not driving? Because autonomous vehicles would reduce the number of variables associated with driving and probably reduce the number of accidents. Even if the software is flawed, it's behavior will be consistent with all the other autonomous vehicles on the road, so the risks are much more quantifiable and predictable. Having every vehicle owner pay a nominal amount to provide for the known flaws in the software that can result in accidents seems vastly superior to the massive crap shoot that is today's insurance landscape.
I never have been able to get my mind around the need for autonomous vehicles anywhere, with the exception of Disney World
Another 64% said computers were not capable of the same quality of decision-making as human drivers.
That's right. Based on my observations of human drivers (not to mention traffic fatality statistics and the nightly "single vehicle accident" reports), the quality would consistently be better. Don't mod me funny, please. I'm not joking.
And Netflix loves to send their version of the DVD that has all the cool extras stripped out.
No, I think it sticks in their craw and chokes them just a little, because those stripped down "for rental only" discs were forced on them by the content providers. I think Netflix would prefer to send the full retail versions.
Yes - comparing Snowden to Assange is reasonable. I think Snowden might be the better man of the two, but it's a close call.
I think that you (and I, and few other people) don't know enough to make that judgement call yet. Apart from the distorted picture the media paints of either of these men, I can honestly say I know almost nothing about them - certainly not enough to decide whether his claimed motivations are actually true. Based solely on the nature of the information released, how it was done, and how it has seemingly been kept out of the 'the wrong hands', Mr. Snowden seems to be the most responsible and thoughtful of the recent 'whistleblowers'. That suggests you may be right, and it might not even be a close call.
I knew everything he was saying before he said it.
A lot of people did. But he offered the first undeniable PROOF.
Did he really? In the absence of independent confirmation, he didn't offer undeniable proof. Just a bunch of electronic documents of unknown provenance. I don't think it would be too hard to invent plausible-sounding documents, since people constantly claim they "knew" it all anyway. Without independent confirmation from, say, other whistleblowers independently producing the same or similar information (or even better video or audio showing government officials discussing the spying programs), it just seemed plausible. The real proof was provided by the reaction of those that recognized the documents and were too stupid to just shut up for awhile and see if it blows over.
You need to know what's going all around you while driving.
You can do that without close examination of the cars behind you. "Car behind me moving normally, no unusual behavior, safe following distance" is good enough when scanning the mirrors. Noting every detail of the vehicle, including whether it's a police vehicle (let's assume unmarked and without lights/sirens) isn't necessary the vast majority of the time.
Good questions. I don't have any good answers, but I have a few anecdotes.
Anecdote 1: I never enjoyed math for it's own sake either - took the biology/chemistry route as well (also due to the influence of a good teacher). Did decently in school, but always had to work hard at it and spend a lot of time studying. In retrospect, a lot of that was due to how it was taught. In calculus class back in college, the instructor was a graduate student who clearly loved the subject and enjoyed teaching it. One of the things he used to do when reviewing the take-home assignments with the class was to present alternate ways to arrive at a solution. It didn't work for every problem, but for many he could show 3 or for ways to arrive at the solution starting from basic principles. When I was struggling to understand a problem, one of those ways usually made more sense to me than the others, and suddenly I understood it. Once I caught on to what was happening, I started watching other people in the class and could see the lightbulbs go off in waves as the instructor described the approach that made the most sense to them. A lot of people that usually struggled with math did quite well that semester.
I took 2 things away from that experience: First, everyone doesn't understand things the same way, so a good teacher is able to bridge the gap between him/herself and the diverse set of minds they are teaching. Second, time, patience and the willingness to work at helping students reach understanding is essential when teaching difficult subjects. Just offering the solution without explanation and accusing the students of "not working hard enough" isn't always the right approach and is probably the reason many students have trouble with certain subjects.
That said...
Anecdote 2: My daughter seems to have an innate affinity for math(s) that isn't shared by her mother and I. When very young, she routinely trounced us in games that were mathematical or strategic in nature (Connect 4 comes to mind). In school, she's never had much trouble with mathematics and seems to have a natural aptitude. She loses marks on assignments now and then because she doesn't show her work. When asked, she said she looks at the problem and "just sees" the answer, so finds unraveling the individual steps and showing them on paper somewhat tedious. She's not a math genius or anything, but she definitely has a knack.
As you say, some people seem to be better visualizers and problem solvers. That makes a big difference with respect to early interest in math, because there is less likelihood the struggle to understand will choke the fun out of learning. Since good teaching also seems to be a factor, those with less innate aptitude (but still perfectly capable of grasping the subject) are less likely to get what they need to build a strong foundation.
OK, see my comment below. Intense interest in science and problem solving, bad training in math. What is it that "math people" are taught about the subject that "non-math people" don't get exposed to?
The comment is titled "What about teaching/exposure?", for those that want to find it easily.
Some mathematicians, however, argue that maths aptitude is not born so much as made. 'I feel that the notion of "talent" may be overrated,' says Michael Hutchings, a mathematician also at Berkeley."
Data trumps 'feelings' and 'opinion' every time. Inconclusive data is better than no data. More data can always be gathered if the results look promising. The mere act of looking might serendipitously turn up something else of interest. Let them conduct their study if they want to and then argue about the results if that's your thing.
Horses for courses. It depends on what sites you prefer to visit, I guess. I tend to regularly visit sites on my tablet that present information for reading (blogs, local newspaper, articles etc), not all-dancing, all-singing multimedia extravaganzas. But to be honest, I run across few pages these days that it has trouble with. Firefox is a little slow to load some pages, but that doesn't really bother me much. Earlier releases were somewhat buggy, but recent releases (in the last 6 months or so) are solid.
You'd have to define the basic features you want in a browser, otherwise people can't make a meaningful assessment of whether Firefox is missing something important. Firefox has some features I don't find in the stock browsers, so I'm not sure where you get "stripped down". I already mentioned extensibility via addons. My favorite feature is the double-tap zoom, which I wish they would add to the desktop version. This zooms the tapped section of the page such as a column of text to the width of the screen for easier reading without distraction from other parts of the page. Double tapping again zooms back out to full page. Also handy for quickly zooming in on a closely clustered set of links when the text/button is too small to accurately tap with a blunt fingertip. Much quicker than pinch to zoom.
I think that most people don't have a problem with *reasonable* profit earned by providing essential things, as hard as reasonable is to define. They have a problem with "gouging you for as much as they can take from you because you need it and have no choice but to die or live a life of suffering". That's no longer profit, that's just plain exploitation.
If you think the US is "laissez-faire anarcho-libertarian" you're stupider than you are a troll.
Read Moryath's post again, Gothmolly.
... the USA which is run by lunatics who still think laissez-faire anarcho-libertarian economic theory does anything...
I suspect Moryath is quite aware of what the US really is, but is also aware that our elected representatives live in a fantasy world that reflects the reality they wish they could live in, not the reality they impose on those they "represent".
Recommended. Firefox on Android still has many issues, but recent stable versions are much, much better than the first beta versions. There aren't that many add-ons available, but the ones that are available make the Android tablet browsing experience much more pleasant. The ones to look for: Adblock Plus, Self-Destructing Cookies, Ghostery and NO Google Analytics. Visit your favorite sites with the stock/vendor browsers, compare with Firefox+addons and decide for yourself.
You forgot Hurricane Irene, which came in August 2011 and did more damage in many areas than the freak Halloween snowstorm. A fair chunk of Connecticut was hit pretty hard because of the winds, since foliage was still on the trees in August. Flooding impacted pretty much the entire state of Vermont. The October snow storm was just icing on the cake. Sandy represented the triple-whammy for many in these regions, and the last straw for quite a few.
Insightful, but I think your two solutions aren't. Solution 1 wouldn't work well - you can't remove incentives, only change them (which is admittedly what you really suggested by a funding overhaul). The trouble with this approach is you trade one set of problems for another set, which could be worse or just different. It's not a solution if it doesn't actually make things better, and that's hard. Solution 2 wouldn't work because you gave an example of a very powerful disincentive: the risk of being exposed as incompetent (or fraudulent). There's not much incentive to share raw data because as has been pointed out already, validation doesn't bring much reward. High risk/low reward means raw data sharing won't happen easily or will be actively fought against. The solution lies elsewhere, I think.
Re:It was already a dangerous site to visit ...
on
PHP.net Compromised
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· Score: 1
I feel like someone made Poe's law into a truck, and hit me with it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Humble Store is not competing with Steam. Most games that it sells can/have to be activated on Steam.
I must have over one hundred games in my Steam library that come from the Humble Bundle.
That's a lot of games. I'm not sure the Humble Bundle has offered that many games in all the bundles combined, at least since I've been paying attention. Most bundles have around 6-9 games, and many of those weren't on Steam.
Would you care to list those games so we can get an accurate count? (Not a troll - I'm genuinely curious about how many Steam games Humble Bundle has offered in it's history).
FYI: A lot of "single vehicle accidents" are actually (mostly male) suicide attempts.
Not around here. Just idiots driving too fast on mildly curved New England roads, usually in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes coming home from the nearby casinos, sometimes a bar, sometimes just unable to control the vehicle (a surprising number aren't intoxicated when tested). Seems to be about 25% female, but that's just my impression from glancing at police reports in the newspaper for a few years.
Why would a human pay to insure a car that they're not driving? Either I'm driving, and am accountable for my actions, or the computer is driving, and is accountable for it's actions.
As the owner, you could be considered your autonomous vehicler's steward. You are accountable because you purchased the vehicle and choose to allow it to drive on public roadways. It's your property, so your responsibility.
To the question of why a human would pay to insure if not driving? Because autonomous vehicles would reduce the number of variables associated with driving and probably reduce the number of accidents. Even if the software is flawed, it's behavior will be consistent with all the other autonomous vehicles on the road, so the risks are much more quantifiable and predictable. Having every vehicle owner pay a nominal amount to provide for the known flaws in the software that can result in accidents seems vastly superior to the massive crap shoot that is today's insurance landscape.
I never have been able to get my mind around the need for autonomous vehicles anywhere, with the exception of Disney World
You must not drive much, or follow the news.
Another 64% said computers were not capable of the same quality of decision-making as human drivers.
That's right. Based on my observations of human drivers (not to mention traffic fatality statistics and the nightly "single vehicle accident" reports), the quality would consistently be better. Don't mod me funny, please. I'm not joking.
And Netflix loves to send their version of the DVD that has all the cool extras stripped out.
No, I think it sticks in their craw and chokes them just a little, because those stripped down "for rental only" discs were forced on them by the content providers. I think Netflix would prefer to send the full retail versions.
Yes - comparing Snowden to Assange is reasonable. I think Snowden might be the better man of the two, but it's a close call.
I think that you (and I, and few other people) don't know enough to make that judgement call yet. Apart from the distorted picture the media paints of either of these men, I can honestly say I know almost nothing about them - certainly not enough to decide whether his claimed motivations are actually true. Based solely on the nature of the information released, how it was done, and how it has seemingly been kept out of the 'the wrong hands', Mr. Snowden seems to be the most responsible and thoughtful of the recent 'whistleblowers'. That suggests you may be right, and it might not even be a close call.
I knew everything he was saying before he said it.
A lot of people did. But he offered the first undeniable PROOF.
Did he really? In the absence of independent confirmation, he didn't offer undeniable proof. Just a bunch of electronic documents of unknown provenance. I don't think it would be too hard to invent plausible-sounding documents, since people constantly claim they "knew" it all anyway. Without independent confirmation from, say, other whistleblowers independently producing the same or similar information (or even better video or audio showing government officials discussing the spying programs), it just seemed plausible. The real proof was provided by the reaction of those that recognized the documents and were too stupid to just shut up for awhile and see if it blows over.
... can finally replace their old beater with something a little more hip and modern. Party at the mansion!
.
.
.
.
http://marvel.wikia.com/X-Men_Blackbird
Why call it Dark-Mail?
Because it was better than the first name the came up with. From TechDirt:
Levison joked that they went with "Dark Mail" because "Black Mail" might have negative connotations.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131030/11091025070/dark-mail-alliance-lavabit-silent-circle-team-up-to-try-to-create-surveillance-proof-email.shtml
You need to know what's going all around you while driving.
You can do that without close examination of the cars behind you. "Car behind me moving normally, no unusual behavior, safe following distance" is good enough when scanning the mirrors. Noting every detail of the vehicle, including whether it's a police vehicle (let's assume unmarked and without lights/sirens) isn't necessary the vast majority of the time.
Good questions. I don't have any good answers, but I have a few anecdotes.
Anecdote 1: I never enjoyed math for it's own sake either - took the biology/chemistry route as well (also due to the influence of a good teacher). Did decently in school, but always had to work hard at it and spend a lot of time studying. In retrospect, a lot of that was due to how it was taught. In calculus class back in college, the instructor was a graduate student who clearly loved the subject and enjoyed teaching it. One of the things he used to do when reviewing the take-home assignments with the class was to present alternate ways to arrive at a solution. It didn't work for every problem, but for many he could show 3 or for ways to arrive at the solution starting from basic principles. When I was struggling to understand a problem, one of those ways usually made more sense to me than the others, and suddenly I understood it. Once I caught on to what was happening, I started watching other people in the class and could see the lightbulbs go off in waves as the instructor described the approach that made the most sense to them. A lot of people that usually struggled with math did quite well that semester.
I took 2 things away from that experience: First, everyone doesn't understand things the same way, so a good teacher is able to bridge the gap between him/herself and the diverse set of minds they are teaching. Second, time, patience and the willingness to work at helping students reach understanding is essential when teaching difficult subjects. Just offering the solution without explanation and accusing the students of "not working hard enough" isn't always the right approach and is probably the reason many students have trouble with certain subjects.
That said ...
Anecdote 2: My daughter seems to have an innate affinity for math(s) that isn't shared by her mother and I. When very young, she routinely trounced us in games that were mathematical or strategic in nature (Connect 4 comes to mind). In school, she's never had much trouble with mathematics and seems to have a natural aptitude. She loses marks on assignments now and then because she doesn't show her work. When asked, she said she looks at the problem and "just sees" the answer, so finds unraveling the individual steps and showing them on paper somewhat tedious. She's not a math genius or anything, but she definitely has a knack.
As you say, some people seem to be better visualizers and problem solvers. That makes a big difference with respect to early interest in math, because there is less likelihood the struggle to understand will choke the fun out of learning. Since good teaching also seems to be a factor, those with less innate aptitude (but still perfectly capable of grasping the subject) are less likely to get what they need to build a strong foundation.
OK, see my comment below. Intense interest in science and problem solving, bad training in math. What is it that "math people" are taught about the subject that "non-math people" don't get exposed to?
The comment is titled "What about teaching/exposure?", for those that want to find it easily.
Exactly. Plus, you need data to do statistics.
They analyzed Einstein's dead brain. After months of intense research, they discovered that it was no smarter than any other dead brain.
Amusing. Studies did show, however, why it might have been smarter than other live brains while it was alive:
http://io9.com/this-is-why-einsteins-brain-was-better-than-yours-1441971724
Maybe she uses it for GPS? How do you know she uses it for something that takes her attention away from driving?
How about the fact that a cop was tailing her for a while and she didn't even notice him?
She was paying attention to the road ahead as she should and not giving undue attention to what was behind?
Some mathematicians, however, argue that maths aptitude is not born so much as made. 'I feel that the notion of "talent" may be overrated,' says Michael Hutchings, a mathematician also at Berkeley."
Data trumps 'feelings' and 'opinion' every time. Inconclusive data is better than no data. More data can always be gathered if the results look promising. The mere act of looking might serendipitously turn up something else of interest. Let them conduct their study if they want to and then argue about the results if that's your thing.
Horses for courses. It depends on what sites you prefer to visit, I guess. I tend to regularly visit sites on my tablet that present information for reading (blogs, local newspaper, articles etc), not all-dancing, all-singing multimedia extravaganzas. But to be honest, I run across few pages these days that it has trouble with. Firefox is a little slow to load some pages, but that doesn't really bother me much. Earlier releases were somewhat buggy, but recent releases (in the last 6 months or so) are solid.
You'd have to define the basic features you want in a browser, otherwise people can't make a meaningful assessment of whether Firefox is missing something important. Firefox has some features I don't find in the stock browsers, so I'm not sure where you get "stripped down". I already mentioned extensibility via addons. My favorite feature is the double-tap zoom, which I wish they would add to the desktop version. This zooms the tapped section of the page such as a column of text to the width of the screen for easier reading without distraction from other parts of the page. Double tapping again zooms back out to full page. Also handy for quickly zooming in on a closely clustered set of links when the text/button is too small to accurately tap with a blunt fingertip. Much quicker than pinch to zoom.
No fine-grained control. Available settings are: Enabled, Enabled, excluding 3rd party, Disabled
Ghostery was added fairly recently. I just never got around to removing the other one. Doesn't seem to hurt anything in any case.
I think that most people don't have a problem with *reasonable* profit earned by providing essential things, as hard as reasonable is to define. They have a problem with "gouging you for as much as they can take from you because you need it and have no choice but to die or live a life of suffering". That's no longer profit, that's just plain exploitation.
If you think the US is "laissez-faire anarcho-libertarian" you're stupider than you are a troll.
Read Moryath's post again, Gothmolly.
... the USA which is run by lunatics who still think laissez-faire anarcho-libertarian economic theory does anything ...
I suspect Moryath is quite aware of what the US really is, but is also aware that our elected representatives live in a fantasy world that reflects the reality they wish they could live in, not the reality they impose on those they "represent".
Recommended. Firefox on Android still has many issues, but recent stable versions are much, much better than the first beta versions. There aren't that many add-ons available, but the ones that are available make the Android tablet browsing experience much more pleasant. The ones to look for: Adblock Plus, Self-Destructing Cookies, Ghostery and NO Google Analytics. Visit your favorite sites with the stock/vendor browsers, compare with Firefox+addons and decide for yourself.
You forgot Hurricane Irene, which came in August 2011 and did more damage in many areas than the freak Halloween snowstorm. A fair chunk of Connecticut was hit pretty hard because of the winds, since foliage was still on the trees in August. Flooding impacted pretty much the entire state of Vermont. The October snow storm was just icing on the cake. Sandy represented the triple-whammy for many in these regions, and the last straw for quite a few.
Insightful, but I think your two solutions aren't. Solution 1 wouldn't work well - you can't remove incentives, only change them (which is admittedly what you really suggested by a funding overhaul). The trouble with this approach is you trade one set of problems for another set, which could be worse or just different. It's not a solution if it doesn't actually make things better, and that's hard. Solution 2 wouldn't work because you gave an example of a very powerful disincentive: the risk of being exposed as incompetent (or fraudulent). There's not much incentive to share raw data because as has been pointed out already, validation doesn't bring much reward. High risk/low reward means raw data sharing won't happen easily or will be actively fought against. The solution lies elsewhere, I think.
I feel like someone made Poe's law into a truck, and hit me with it.
Best post of the thread. A tip of the hat to you.
Moderators, mod parent up, please.