I had roughly the same thought. At some point the human race may have to ask itself, "is this the last new generation of the human race?" We would have to balance overpopulation with replacement due to accidental (or intentional) death. Biological evolution would grind to a halt.
Personally, I think aging and death is a fundamental part of being human. Avoiding death is instinctual, and avoiding aging is personally desirable, but immortality for everyone sounds like a recipe for disaster for civilization. Death of the individual is about renewal of the species and is a fundamental part of how life works. Tinkering with that would have to proceed with extreme caution.
What would you trade to never age, though? Your right to reproduce? Your right to vote? Both of those things might resolve immediate problems of overpopulation and social stagnation, but also make immortality painful or pointless.
Depends what you're trying to figure out. I'm sure WB wants to figure out "how do we get back viewers who have abandoned us for the Internet?" for which such statistics are reasonably useful.
I would like to see patent holders required to license their patents for extremely reasonable fees. How "reasonable" is defined is a bit of a problem - perhaps accurate research costs must be made part of the application process, and a license is a small percentage of that.
Not knowing much about the patent system, isn't that how it's supposed to work? Either you make money selling an invention yourself, or license the rights to somebody else to make it. Preventing others from making something entirely seems to be the exact opposite of the purpose of a patent. It's to encourage and reward invention, not protect a business model.
I keep parsing that as "Cyborg Sells Sense of Humility." Oh well, we can at least hope to see that headline at some point over the course of our lifetimes.:-)
once you get past the poverty line, personal satisfaction and happiness are negatively correlated with income.
Wondering how those statistics were gathered... does that mean that getting married and having two kids and a mortgage is less satisfying than partying and drinking every day in college? Or is this global for any specific age group?
...the JIC couldn't see a use for the radio station...
Curious. I thought in a free country, "because I want to" was sufficient reason to be allowed to do anything, provided it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. Not to speak of something that might be potentially beneficial. Sigh.
I was always the person in my family with an interest in computers, and fortunately my dad had access to the earliest Commodore microcomputers in his line of work. This landed me a Commodore 64 at home in 1983 or so, and I started working in BASIC, trying to put a few games together, but not getting very far.
Then I met a friend in high school who had a C64, and together we learned assembly language and tried to put a few things together, without a great deal of success (using a debug monitor rather than an actual assembler can do that, I now understand).
Then VGA came along and made the PC a viable game system, and I switched over to that. After various false starts joining small game companies destined to failure, and trying to get into shareware, I finally got my BSc. in computer science, and put together a game / advertisement on contract: Humpty's Scramble.
That led to a job with EA where I stayed for quite some time, primarily on SSX. I recently left as part of a new startup (Blue Castle Games) and things are going well there.
Ultimately, I got my start by loving games, and loving programming. Being smart and actually being a good programer also helped of course.:-)
My advice to anyone thinking about the games industry would be the same as it would be for any field: love what you do (and hopefully be good at it). If I didn't love games, I could probably find a more comfortable job programming something else, but it's been in my blood for as long as I can remember. If I was only a mediocre programmer, the games industry would be a meat grinder. If you can handle it though, it can be an immensely satisfying experience.
Ah yes, I remember Kessen being on DVD. From what I recall from a developer's standpoint though, Sony didn't have the manufacturing capacity for DVDs at launch (i.e. only able to support a few titles), DVDs were more expensive anyway, and we could have blown past a CD limit easily with audio data but trimmed back to fit on a CD.
I always find the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in schools to be a bit odd.
The hereditary and speciation parts of evolution would seem to be beyond dispute, although people with an agenda seem to ignore this bit.
Spontaneous creation of the building blocks of life, and subsequent evolution into life as we know it, is probably impossible to actually prove or recreate due the probabilities involved, but if it is probable enough to happen somewhere, then it would at least be considered a possibility. I think it's perfectly reasonable to point out the possible shortcomings with this part of evolution, but it does at least seem to be a viable theory with relative few assumptions.
"Intelligent design" being taught as an equally probable event though? It doesn't really have anything to do with science. It's the god of the gaps problem - anything we don't understand gets attributed to gods or faries or space aliens. It doesn't teach or inform us of anything and makes no useful predictions.
So in short, I would be more than happy to have every shortcoming of evolutionary theory be taught in schools - we can't answer those questions unless everyone understands what they are. ID is a pretty obvious steath operation to get Christianity (not even ID) into classrooms, and it's a bad one at that, because it's not even a scientific topic.
Sony could delay and build a larger launch library
Delay so they can go head to head with Microsoft, who will have also increased their title library since launch, and already have an install base? We'll see how it plays out, sounds like a stupid strategy to me...
When the PS2 shipped, I'm fairly certain that all titles were on CD, even though it was a DVD drive. Once there is manufacturing capacity for HD-DVDs, I imagine that's what they will ship on. It would be beyond stupid for MS to have two incompatible units sold under the same name. I'd be willing to bet the hardware will be HD-DVD even if the initial discs are DVD, which may be the source of the confusion.
Movies are a logical extension of the play, which is a logical extension of the storyteller.
Games are more an extension of playing make-believe. Certainly story can have a significant component in that, but it's more like setting plot points while the player fills in the blanks with their own story.
Harry Potter is an outcast who discovers he has special powers and finds a place to fit in.
Compare to the person who is an outcast at the same age because they are smarter than others, but when they discover computers find that this is a gift, not a curse.
The story appeals to me for this reason, as I'm sure it does to many others here. If you don't get it, perhaps you should simply consider yourself fortunate, rather than hating us for it.
That is kind of odd. I played the entire game on my projector, and I did feel a bit "off" after several hours straight - or maybe that was just hunger.:-) I notice that feeling a bit more when using the projector (100") than just a monitor (19"), but it usually seems worse with older games.
You know, it's rather astonishing how many whiny "purists" have been posting about "inconsistencies," even though most of them have mis-quoted or mis-remembered most of what they are complaining about. Even more ironic is that one of the hallmarks of the series is how inconsistent it is between different media, and there is no "one holy version."
Really, I would have expected that Battlestar Galactica would have demonstrated that changing things can be good. On one hand, everyone seems jaded with the lack of originality in media, but on the other raise a fuss when someone tries something different.
If it's even remotely good, enjoy it. If not, shrug, and life will go on.
I have them pick some favorite line from a movie or book and then use the first letter of each word
I forsee 90% of the Internet's infrastructure being compomised merely by trying "May the Force be with you," "Live long and prosper," and "So long and thanks for all the fish." They're phrases, they must be secure!
While it is an extreme example, a publicly held company could, in theory, be sued for complying with such regulations
I see that get pulled out all the time. How many times has this happened, that a company has been sued for acting in an ethical manner, potentially contrary to maximizing (as in reducing, not eliminating) profits? How many times has it even been threatened?
Not recalling the outrage against the investors for acting so unethically, I have to believe it's "practically never," but I could be mistaken.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, wouldn't it be Windows itself that is violating the DMCA? Those are just the instructions for using the violating technology.
Personally, I think aging and death is a fundamental part of being human. Avoiding death is instinctual, and avoiding aging is personally desirable, but immortality for everyone sounds like a recipe for disaster for civilization. Death of the individual is about renewal of the species and is a fundamental part of how life works. Tinkering with that would have to proceed with extreme caution.
What would you trade to never age, though? Your right to reproduce? Your right to vote? Both of those things might resolve immediate problems of overpopulation and social stagnation, but also make immortality painful or pointless.
Just a few random thoughts...
Not knowing much about the patent system, isn't that how it's supposed to work? Either you make money selling an invention yourself, or license the rights to somebody else to make it. Preventing others from making something entirely seems to be the exact opposite of the purpose of a patent. It's to encourage and reward invention, not protect a business model.
Microsoft: "How many 0's would you like on the end of that?"
I keep parsing that as "Cyborg Sells Sense of Humility." Oh well, we can at least hope to see that headline at some point over the course of our lifetimes. :-)
Wondering how those statistics were gathered... does that mean that getting married and having two kids and a mortgage is less satisfying than partying and drinking every day in college? Or is this global for any specific age group?
Curious. I thought in a free country, "because I want to" was sufficient reason to be allowed to do anything, provided it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. Not to speak of something that might be potentially beneficial. Sigh.
Then I met a friend in high school who had a C64, and together we learned assembly language and tried to put a few things together, without a great deal of success (using a debug monitor rather than an actual assembler can do that, I now understand).
Then VGA came along and made the PC a viable game system, and I switched over to that. After various false starts joining small game companies destined to failure, and trying to get into shareware, I finally got my BSc. in computer science, and put together a game / advertisement on contract: Humpty's Scramble.
That led to a job with EA where I stayed for quite some time, primarily on SSX. I recently left as part of a new startup (Blue Castle Games) and things are going well there.
Ultimately, I got my start by loving games, and loving programming. Being smart and actually being a good programer also helped of course. :-)
My advice to anyone thinking about the games industry would be the same as it would be for any field: love what you do (and hopefully be good at it). If I didn't love games, I could probably find a more comfortable job programming something else, but it's been in my blood for as long as I can remember. If I was only a mediocre programmer, the games industry would be a meat grinder. If you can handle it though, it can be an immensely satisfying experience.
Ah yes, I remember Kessen being on DVD. From what I recall from a developer's standpoint though, Sony didn't have the manufacturing capacity for DVDs at launch (i.e. only able to support a few titles), DVDs were more expensive anyway, and we could have blown past a CD limit easily with audio data but trimmed back to fit on a CD.
The hereditary and speciation parts of evolution would seem to be beyond dispute, although people with an agenda seem to ignore this bit.
Spontaneous creation of the building blocks of life, and subsequent evolution into life as we know it, is probably impossible to actually prove or recreate due the probabilities involved, but if it is probable enough to happen somewhere, then it would at least be considered a possibility. I think it's perfectly reasonable to point out the possible shortcomings with this part of evolution, but it does at least seem to be a viable theory with relative few assumptions.
"Intelligent design" being taught as an equally probable event though? It doesn't really have anything to do with science. It's the god of the gaps problem - anything we don't understand gets attributed to gods or faries or space aliens. It doesn't teach or inform us of anything and makes no useful predictions.
So in short, I would be more than happy to have every shortcoming of evolutionary theory be taught in schools - we can't answer those questions unless everyone understands what they are. ID is a pretty obvious steath operation to get Christianity (not even ID) into classrooms, and it's a bad one at that, because it's not even a scientific topic.
Doubt, not faith, is the path to truth.
Delay so they can go head to head with Microsoft, who will have also increased their title library since launch, and already have an install base? We'll see how it plays out, sounds like a stupid strategy to me...
When the PS2 shipped, I'm fairly certain that all titles were on CD, even though it was a DVD drive. Once there is manufacturing capacity for HD-DVDs, I imagine that's what they will ship on. It would be beyond stupid for MS to have two incompatible units sold under the same name. I'd be willing to bet the hardware will be HD-DVD even if the initial discs are DVD, which may be the source of the confusion.
Games are more an extension of playing make-believe. Certainly story can have a significant component in that, but it's more like setting plot points while the player fills in the blanks with their own story.
Once we can exploit that fully, we'll be set.
News for Nerds...
Harry Potter is an outcast who discovers he has special powers and finds a place to fit in.
Compare to the person who is an outcast at the same age because they are smarter than others, but when they discover computers find that this is a gift, not a curse.
The story appeals to me for this reason, as I'm sure it does to many others here. If you don't get it, perhaps you should simply consider yourself fortunate, rather than hating us for it.
Yes, but the stupid part is, in order to read the article, I had to stop the page loading before the ads appeard.
That is kind of odd. I played the entire game on my projector, and I did feel a bit "off" after several hours straight - or maybe that was just hunger. :-) I notice that feeling a bit more when using the projector (100") than just a monitor (19"), but it usually seems worse with older games.
Except, of course, that it can't be a rectangular image because, well, the number of pixels is PRIME.
Really, I would have expected that Battlestar Galactica would have demonstrated that changing things can be good. On one hand, everyone seems jaded with the lack of originality in media, but on the other raise a fuss when someone tries something different.
If it's even remotely good, enjoy it. If not, shrug, and life will go on.
I thought every car already came with a device that did just that...
I forsee 90% of the Internet's infrastructure being compomised merely by trying "May the Force be with you," "Live long and prosper," and "So long and thanks for all the fish." They're phrases, they must be secure!
Fine... the point was that threat of lawsuit is not the reason companies act unethically, so pulling out this argument to justify it is misguided.
I see that get pulled out all the time. How many times has this happened, that a company has been sued for acting in an ethical manner, potentially contrary to maximizing (as in reducing, not eliminating) profits? How many times has it even been threatened?
Not recalling the outrage against the investors for acting so unethically, I have to believe it's "practically never," but I could be mistaken.