A printed record of your vote is NOT acceptable, and NEVER will be.
This comes up on Slashdot every week. Any record of who you voted for allows fraud and buying of votes.
Imagine a guy standing down the street from the poll location giving people $5 for a record of them voting for candidate A, and you see the problem with the paper verification.
"there's a problem when EA has enough money to buy out any studios that bring out a hit game"
How is this a problem? Sounds like a huge incentive for people to start a small company and create a truly innovative game.
I think the trouble is more that there isn't anybody really capable of turning the industry on its head several times over. Game fans really do want more of the same thing over and over, especially the sports fans. Baseball hasn't changed, why should the video game based on it?
If there really were a market or just a desire for out of the mainstream games, and the talent to produce such games, the open source game efforts wouldn't be so pathetic.
But it's much easier to sit back and whine about how big corporations have made you jaded than it is to be creative.
Maybe you'd stop to consider for a moment why the "good old war" has gone out of fashion.
That's right, because of overwhelming U.S. dominance. Nobody is stupid enough to challenge the U.S. on its own terms.
Now, instead of millions dying in wars, thousands die.
You'd think the so-called "anti-war" crowd would be cheering in the street and screaming for more arms races, but I guess nothing's ever good enough for the peace-nik idealogues.
Thus they reveal themselves to be "anti-this-war," with no regard for, or understanding of, history, human nature, military cause and consequence, and global politics.
As long as there is more than one person on Earth, there are going to be unresolvable disagreements. Wars are going to happen whether you like them or not. I'd rather they be like Iraqi Freedom than WWI, for all sides concerned.
>"Foreign countries are allowed to have weapons, as LONG as they're not as powerful as our own." which is obviously okay with me, as an American, however, so much for a fair playing field.
Isn't the playing field always fair? Nothing is stopping Russia or China from doing the same thing.
It's not a fair game of one on one between me and Michael Jordon, either, because he's practiced a lot harder than I have. Does this make basketball an unfair game? No. Is life essentially unfair because Michael Jordan is better than I? Just the opposite. It would be unfair if he weren't.
In fact, the nature of the U.S. government described by the U.S. Constitution is probably the most fair and just in the world. Not ideal, no, but the best of the rest. It's probably as good as it gets, when practically applied.
Believing that, shouldn't the U.S. strive to have the upper hand at all times when it comes to defense? The amount of unused military power the country currently has available is a testament to the genious and justice of its creation.
Practically, rather than a level playing field, I'd much rather have the U.S. have a ridiculously unfair advantage. You only need to look back as far as WWII to see what happens when it does not. That's what a level playing field brings, and it's not pretty.
"as agents and lawyers try to figure out how an actor can maintain his 'image,' in an interactive environment."
Simple. Make sure the character makes idiotic virtual public statements once in a while and gets divorced at least once during the course of the game.
Re:How does one dispute math as a universal concep
on
The Golden Ratio
·
· Score: 1
That's easy. Math is one of the many devices men have developed in order to subjugate womyn. In fact, the reason logic has a higher importance in our society than intuition is that men have no intuitive ability and have invented logic to maintain this unnatural barbaric societal structure.
(Think I'm joking? Such propaganda exists and quite possibly is a course of study at a college campus near you.)
>Nurses are doing a noble job that me and you sitting on a desk cannot think of.
If that's true, then money isn't really a concern for them, is it?
There are plenty of people who aren't dependent on money who have the capabilities to be a nurse and the desire to help people. That's great, but that doesn't justify paying them enourmous salaries because it makes us feel good.
Paying someone a greater salary necessitates paying someone else less. It would be great if we could give nurses more money without hurting anyone else, but that's not how it works.
Also, the more any authority, even with the best of intentions, tries to step in to manage an economy by relocating dollars, the less efficient and productive that economy becomes.
Why are teachers paid such low salaries? Because of two things: publically funded schools and teachers unions. If everyone had to pay directly for school you'd see a huge increase in the salary of quality teachers because they'd be in such demand. There would be less of a demand for the hangers on who depend on unions and seniority rather than the confidence of those whose children they are teaching.
Pretty much everyone recognizes the importance of teachers and nurses. You obviously do. What we really need is not some political action to throw more money at schools, but to change the underlying system where the best teachers are no more rewarded than the worst. This is why salaries are so low, and why no sane person with any amount of talent would be caught dead in that profession.
>Nurses and Teachers are the people who should be paid better.
Why? Pretty much anybody can do that job. From what I've seen of people in both professions, they teach or nurse because they don't know what else to do.
I'd be much more inclined to pay teachers better if our education system weren't such a joke. Why pay teachers if I have to teach everything to my kids at home anyway?
What happened to Yahoo? It looks and functions the same as it always did, perhaps a little better, and it's got a thousand different services for free, and some for pay.
I don't see that going public hurt Yahoo at all, as far as customers are concerned.
Netflix changes the way you rent movies. I used to be like you, but I'd get to the video store, and forget the ten movies that looked good when I saw the preview six months ago.
Now I just put movies on the Netflix queue whenever I see a decent preview. My queue is huge, and I'm constantly surprised by the DVD's in the mail. "Oh yeah...I wanted to see that."
From what I understand Microsoft learned their lesson from the Xbox and the next generation will not be a glorified PC, but rather a more proprietary platform.
I think this is for a number of reasons, mostly security, but I think cost is a concern too. Using commodity PC hardware didn't really save them much money, in the end, and may have ended up costing them.
Definitely. I'm a casual gamer, and the reason I own a gamecube is because of the zelda bundle for $99. I'm sure I'm typical of the Christmas crowd.
I'm having a lot more fun with it than I thought I would, however. I might jump in early on the next generation...but I can't see myself spending substantially more on a game system than $100-150.
The biggest selling point for the Xbox I think is the hard drive, so you don't have to waste time and money on memory cards. This is one of the hidden costs the casual gamers don't think about, so now I'd lean toward a hard drive based system in the future.
I like laptop keyboards much better. I wish I could find a laptop keyboard equivalent for my desktop...something with short keystrokes, flat keys, and a wrist rest built in.
I think the wrist rest is probably the biggest factor as far as comfort goes. I love the keys on laptops, though.
>Consumer choice is part of the equation as well, and consumers make their choices NOT strictly on price, or everyone would be driving Kia's, or strictly on quality, or everyone would be wearing Carhartt's.
The fact that there are other car companies besides KIA seems to me to be a strong vindication of capitalism.
I have no illusions that Wal-Mart sells absolute crap for the lowest price possible. If their suppliers don't realize that, they deserve to go out of busines from sheer stupidity.
And yet, even though Wal-Mart exists, I can go to Nordstrom and find some of the highest quality clothes sold outside of a large city.
So here I am, in America, not anywhere near a large metropolitan center, and I have multiple options where I can get some of the best and some of the cheapest anyone can offer me. Not to mention, the cost of either one relative to my income is incredibly small.
What makes this possible? The commoditization of the clothing industry, made possible by companies like Wal-Mart, which forces Nordstrom to differentiate itself enough from Wal-Mart in order to get my business. That's why I don't have Levi jeans, and why I don't have a Kia. There are better options because the commoditization of one area opens up new markets where better products exist.
Not only that, Lexus does, in some sense, compete with Kia. If the luxury Lexus provides is not worth the difference in price to me, Kia gets my business. That's not to say there's a substantial opportunity for Lexus to profit, since there are a great many people who do care that the products they buy aren't crap.
But Wal-Mart is NOT the only option, and in remote places where it is, that's a vast improvement over nothing.
If we're ever going to accomplish anything by sending people out there, somebody's going to have to go to stay.
I'd gladly go, if my wife could come along. Just send a whole bunch of supplies there first, plenty of air, water, building material, tools, and generators. Keep sending the stuff, I'd keep building. Send more people eventually. Just don't send a Backstreet Boy for publicity.
With enough time, a return trip might be possible, but if not, imagine the benefit to the country and humanity. What more could you possibly want out of life than to have had the chance to enable a new era for humanity? That's fantastic.
"Information Technology" sounds like a re-branding of the Communications major, possibly with a few more courses thrown in on computers. I don't think the curriculum really matters, as long as you get a degree at the end, right?
But if you seriously want to learn about the technology that drives networks, business, etc., you need to start at the lowest level with an understanding of how binary works and what that means. Then progress to how this works in computers, with bytes, registers, memory, busses, etc.
I think computer science or IT majors could be substantially more helpful if they started with these principles before jumping into the Hello World in Java. At that point, the machines are still a magic black box and the abstraction on it (push the green button to compile) become too ingrained, and it's a lot of work to get a student to see past the abstraction to what's really happening.
I mean, learning about pointers in C before learning assembly language and compiler design seems ludicrous to me, but that's the way most comp sci majors are laid out, apparently. We don't teach math by showing students how to use a calculator to do calculus and then show them "what's really happening inside."
So, if you want a good, useful curriculum, start from the ground up.
The thing that takes the most time is picking a name that doesn't suck.
It's much more efficient to just go with the flow. Creativity is better spent on the design of the app.
This is, of course, why there are so many projects in the "vision" stage on sourceforge and freshmeat. Most people focus on things like a cool name and web site before actually producing something.
Maybe there's something to choosing a dull name...
Slashdot Mirror
A printed record of your vote is NOT acceptable, and NEVER will be.
This comes up on Slashdot every week. Any record of who you voted for allows fraud and buying of votes.
Imagine a guy standing down the street from the poll location giving people $5 for a record of them voting for candidate A, and you see the problem with the paper verification.
That will solve your cat problem.
Step two: get a dog instead.
"there's a problem when EA has enough money to buy out any studios that bring out a hit game"
How is this a problem? Sounds like a huge incentive for people to start a small company and create a truly innovative game.
I think the trouble is more that there isn't anybody really capable of turning the industry on its head several times over. Game fans really do want more of the same thing over and over, especially the sports fans. Baseball hasn't changed, why should the video game based on it?
If there really were a market or just a desire for out of the mainstream games, and the talent to produce such games, the open source game efforts wouldn't be so pathetic.
But it's much easier to sit back and whine about how big corporations have made you jaded than it is to be creative.
Maybe you'd stop to consider for a moment why the "good old war" has gone out of fashion.
That's right, because of overwhelming U.S. dominance. Nobody is stupid enough to challenge the U.S. on its own terms.
Now, instead of millions dying in wars, thousands die.
You'd think the so-called "anti-war" crowd would be cheering in the street and screaming for more arms races, but I guess nothing's ever good enough for the peace-nik idealogues.
Thus they reveal themselves to be "anti-this-war," with no regard for, or understanding of, history, human nature, military cause and consequence, and global politics.
As long as there is more than one person on Earth, there are going to be unresolvable disagreements. Wars are going to happen whether you like them or not. I'd rather they be like Iraqi Freedom than WWI, for all sides concerned.
>"Foreign countries are allowed to have weapons, as LONG as they're not as powerful as our own." which is obviously okay with me, as an American, however, so much for a fair playing field.
Isn't the playing field always fair? Nothing is stopping Russia or China from doing the same thing.
It's not a fair game of one on one between me and Michael Jordon, either, because he's practiced a lot harder than I have. Does this make basketball an unfair game? No. Is life essentially unfair because Michael Jordan is better than I? Just the opposite. It would be unfair if he weren't.
In fact, the nature of the U.S. government described by the U.S. Constitution is probably the most fair and just in the world. Not ideal, no, but the best of the rest. It's probably as good as it gets, when practically applied.
Believing that, shouldn't the U.S. strive to have the upper hand at all times when it comes to defense? The amount of unused military power the country currently has available is a testament to the genious and justice of its creation.
Practically, rather than a level playing field, I'd much rather have the U.S. have a ridiculously unfair advantage. You only need to look back as far as WWII to see what happens when it does not. That's what a level playing field brings, and it's not pretty.
...and I'll bet that somebody's already working on an Emacs syntax highlighting mode that produces different smells based on C types.
Mmmmmmm, unsigned ints....
Maybe using string functions without bounds checking could smell really bad. Then you could really sniff out the bugs. Neat!
"as agents and lawyers try to figure out how an actor can maintain his 'image,' in an interactive environment."
Simple. Make sure the character makes idiotic virtual public statements once in a while and gets divorced at least once during the course of the game.
That's easy. Math is one of the many devices men have developed in order to subjugate womyn. In fact, the reason logic has a higher importance in our society than intuition is that men have no intuitive ability and have invented logic to maintain this unnatural barbaric societal structure.
(Think I'm joking? Such propaganda exists and quite possibly is a course of study at a college campus near you.)
Have a nice day.
>Nurses are doing a noble job that me and you sitting on a desk cannot think of.
If that's true, then money isn't really a concern for them, is it?
There are plenty of people who aren't dependent on money who have the capabilities to be a nurse and the desire to help people. That's great, but that doesn't justify paying them enourmous salaries because it makes us feel good.
Paying someone a greater salary necessitates paying someone else less. It would be great if we could give nurses more money without hurting anyone else, but that's not how it works.
Also, the more any authority, even with the best of intentions, tries to step in to manage an economy by relocating dollars, the less efficient and productive that economy becomes.
Why are teachers paid such low salaries? Because of two things: publically funded schools and teachers unions. If everyone had to pay directly for school you'd see a huge increase in the salary of quality teachers because they'd be in such demand. There would be less of a demand for the hangers on who depend on unions and seniority rather than the confidence of those whose children they are teaching.
Pretty much everyone recognizes the importance of teachers and nurses. You obviously do. What we really need is not some political action to throw more money at schools, but to change the underlying system where the best teachers are no more rewarded than the worst. This is why salaries are so low, and why no sane person with any amount of talent would be caught dead in that profession.
>The style and window decorations are very refined increasing the overall appearance.
That's what KDE has the Gnome doesn't. More appearance, please. I just can't get enough.
>Nurses and Teachers are the people who should be paid better.
Why? Pretty much anybody can do that job. From what I've seen of people in both professions, they teach or nurse because they don't know what else to do.
I'd be much more inclined to pay teachers better if our education system weren't such a joke. Why pay teachers if I have to teach everything to my kids at home anyway?
>"Especially dealing with academics," Mr. Rubenstein added, "you'd think they'd have some ability to deduce or think problems through for a minute."
I disagree with his premise...
What happened to Yahoo? It looks and functions the same as it always did, perhaps a little better, and it's got a thousand different services for free, and some for pay.
I don't see that going public hurt Yahoo at all, as far as customers are concerned.
This is just another excuse for my neighbor who "loves animals" to not remove the half-inch layer of dirt from her windows.
...all are astounded at ambitious alliterations.
Netflix changes the way you rent movies. I used to be like you, but I'd get to the video store, and forget the ten movies that looked good when I saw the preview six months ago.
Now I just put movies on the Netflix queue whenever I see a decent preview. My queue is huge, and I'm constantly surprised by the DVD's in the mail. "Oh yeah...I wanted to see that."
It's fun.
From what I understand Microsoft learned their lesson from the Xbox and the next generation will not be a glorified PC, but rather a more proprietary platform.
I think this is for a number of reasons, mostly security, but I think cost is a concern too. Using commodity PC hardware didn't really save them much money, in the end, and may have ended up costing them.
Definitely. I'm a casual gamer, and the reason I own a gamecube is because of the zelda bundle for $99. I'm sure I'm typical of the Christmas crowd.
I'm having a lot more fun with it than I thought I would, however. I might jump in early on the next generation...but I can't see myself spending substantially more on a game system than $100-150.
The biggest selling point for the Xbox I think is the hard drive, so you don't have to waste time and money on memory cards. This is one of the hidden costs the casual gamers don't think about, so now I'd lean toward a hard drive based system in the future.
I like laptop keyboards much better. I wish I could find a laptop keyboard equivalent for my desktop...something with short keystrokes, flat keys, and a wrist rest built in.
I think the wrist rest is probably the biggest factor as far as comfort goes. I love the keys on laptops, though.
>Consumer choice is part of the equation as well, and consumers make their choices NOT strictly on price, or everyone would be driving Kia's, or strictly on quality, or everyone would be wearing Carhartt's.
The fact that there are other car companies besides KIA seems to me to be a strong vindication of capitalism.
I have no illusions that Wal-Mart sells absolute crap for the lowest price possible. If their suppliers don't realize that, they deserve to go out of busines from sheer stupidity.
And yet, even though Wal-Mart exists, I can go to Nordstrom and find some of the highest quality clothes sold outside of a large city.
So here I am, in America, not anywhere near a large metropolitan center, and I have multiple options where I can get some of the best and some of the cheapest anyone can offer me. Not to mention, the cost of either one relative to my income is incredibly small.
What makes this possible? The commoditization of the clothing industry, made possible by companies like Wal-Mart, which forces Nordstrom to differentiate itself enough from Wal-Mart in order to get my business. That's why I don't have Levi jeans, and why I don't have a Kia. There are better options because the commoditization of one area opens up new markets where better products exist.
Not only that, Lexus does, in some sense, compete with Kia. If the luxury Lexus provides is not worth the difference in price to me, Kia gets my business. That's not to say there's a substantial opportunity for Lexus to profit, since there are a great many people who do care that the products they buy aren't crap.
But Wal-Mart is NOT the only option, and in remote places where it is, that's a vast improvement over nothing.
If we're ever going to accomplish anything by sending people out there, somebody's going to have to go to stay.
I'd gladly go, if my wife could come along. Just send a whole bunch of supplies there first, plenty of air, water, building material, tools, and generators. Keep sending the stuff, I'd keep building. Send more people eventually. Just don't send a Backstreet Boy for publicity.
With enough time, a return trip might be possible, but if not, imagine the benefit to the country and humanity. What more could you possibly want out of life than to have had the chance to enable a new era for humanity? That's fantastic.
Yeah, but you start talking about a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.
"Information Technology" sounds like a re-branding of the Communications major, possibly with a few more courses thrown in on computers. I don't think the curriculum really matters, as long as you get a degree at the end, right?
But if you seriously want to learn about the technology that drives networks, business, etc., you need to start at the lowest level with an understanding of how binary works and what that means. Then progress to how this works in computers, with bytes, registers, memory, busses, etc.
I think computer science or IT majors could be substantially more helpful if they started with these principles before jumping into the Hello World in Java. At that point, the machines are still a magic black box and the abstraction on it (push the green button to compile) become too ingrained, and it's a lot of work to get a student to see past the abstraction to what's really happening.
I mean, learning about pointers in C before learning assembly language and compiler design seems ludicrous to me, but that's the way most comp sci majors are laid out, apparently. We don't teach math by showing students how to use a calculator to do calculus and then show them "what's really happening inside."
So, if you want a good, useful curriculum, start from the ground up.
The thing that takes the most time is picking a name that doesn't suck.
It's much more efficient to just go with the flow. Creativity is better spent on the design of the app.
This is, of course, why there are so many projects in the "vision" stage on sourceforge and freshmeat. Most people focus on things like a cool name and web site before actually producing something.
Maybe there's something to choosing a dull name...
Thanks for the info. Now that's interesting.
I was just trying to be funny, and I get modded interesting. Mod parent up, not me. I have no idea what I'm talking about, it was just a joke.
Someday, though, I'll pull out my dusty old camera and learn about this stuff.