I've often wondered why it is so easy to contest wikipedia content. Malicious (or simply hard headed) users can insert personal beliefs and sentiments that are not widely shared.
While extending extra editorial powers to "experts" as the author suggests, may *seem* like one way to solve the problem, the same issues will ultimately exist between experts. In some ways the 'conflicting content' problem of Wikipedia is just a macrocosmic version of what happens in academia all the time. Wiki illustrates many of the problems with general (non-wiki) encyclopedia creation. (Although the problems with most encyclopedia's are much more minor by comparison).
An alternative solution might be to have all changes subject to a running (democratic) vote by the user base. (Although this too would surely have problems. Religious issues would create a particularly difficult/scary situation for any 'editorial vote' process)
Ultimately the solution will probably be a combination of expert-editorial, user-contributions, and editorial-votes. Until then we'll see a lot of users inserting their personal opinions as universal fact.
This might sound like a stupid question, but I've had my World Community Grid client running since the first time/. covered the subject. But I'm not part of some/. group of WCG users as far as I know... I'm just another individual client app. How is this/. group identified and grouped by the WCG?
I remember reading that traditional "red laser" pointing devices were being banned from British football matches because fans would point them in to the eyes of goalkeepers. Someone told me that they were at a Liverpool match once and one of the goalkeepers had about 8 red dots all over his body when he made a save.
Now we've got something that can fry the friggin ball itself...
Anyone want to bet on the "responsible adult" factor for international soccer fans.
Hell I can describe *exactly* what locations in Zork I, II, III, StarCross, PlanetFall and Enchanter looked like. I remember vividly what color the sky was, what the walls looked like, paintings on the wall, weird machinery, smells, music playing, etc.
I also played the hell out of Wolf3D the day the shareware was released. (We downloaded from BBS's in those days). But I can't say I have the same vivid memories from that game. I can't say I have any sort of emotional attachment to that world at all.
Which makes me wonder if nostalgia will even exist for current games. *Is* there a level of emotional attachment to worlds / characters / situations in today's games? There have been very few games since then that have blown me away on a story / personal imagination level. ("The Dig" from LucasArts was totally underrated on that level).
Looking back on it, *all* of my favorite games have one unifying factor. The graphics weren't really that important. I challenge anyone to name a greater single player RPG than Baldur's Gate II. (Ok mayble Planescape). Those graphics were pretty lame even whent the game was released.
The way I see it, we're doing a lot of things with graphics today _because we can_. We're going through a sort of adolescent flexing of muscles in the gaming industry. There's been so much change in the technical department, that graphics have caught everyone's attention. And we all know where they're going: They're going to look like films. Not just a little bit, they're going to look *exactly* like films. And then we know where they're going to go next: They're going to go Helmet VR. And then when we're all done thumping our chests and graphically beating the pants off last month's graphical wonderkind -- we can get back to writing compelling fiction.
Not to say that its not happening today. Half Life II is currently my happy place. But that's one title in a sea of 3D trash that no one will ever have any emotional attachment to at all.
Operation FastLink II has just been announced and has apparently already located numerous regional underground locations, often called "Libraries" from which thousands of law-breaking users have been flagrantly "sharing" copyrighted material including Books, Videos and Compact Discs.
This so-called "Public Library" system has apparently gone unchecked for hundreds of years, denying authors and owners of copyrights millions of dollars in lost revenue from potential sales.
Over 9,500,000 Librarians and criminal "Library Users" have been identified through user-logs and membership lists. Some users have even so bold as to carry identifying "Library Cards" on their persons.
Book Publishers are quick to point out that participation in this copyright-evasion scheme by these "book-sharers" denies the original copyright holders of their fair due from successive readings.
Thanks to Operation Fastlink II (sponsored in part by Barnes & Noble Booksellers as a public service) these institutions of uncontrolled information exchange are finally being shut down one by one.
God Bless America. Here's to upholding our moral character.
As long as we're going to attempt to apply mathematics to a bunch of unknowable probabilities, why not include the risks of:
1) Transient Black Holes 2) Rapid onset of Global Cooling 3) Preon contamination at a low level on the food chain. 4) Cascade burn off of the ozone layer 5) Critical underslide for the western US continental shelf. 6) Sol supernova 7) Accidental nuclear war 8) Bird flu 9) The rise, conquest and world domination of the great subterranean Gremlin hordes lead by the fearsome ruler Gorlack III. 10) President Schwarzenegger
According to my calculations -- the addition of the above probabilities puts us at a critical risk of self-immolation (with a.01 degree margin of error) this coming Tuesday -- most probably after lunch.
Oh please... the amount of blind mac love on this board is making me want to spew. Let's face it, Apple just pulled a totally anti-competitive move that does nothing but increase its own market share at the expense of its customers. If this had been Microsoft reaming us all there would be maybe 3 people on the 'shut up and take it' side of the argument (and they'd all work for Bill) but change the "Microsoft" to "iPod" and everyone bends over and lubes up.
Sure I think Real is a POS company with POS products and lame business practices. But the one thing that gets me is that as an iPod owner they *did* provide an alternate to iTunes shopping.
How sickening is it when you have a company like Apple who has championed innovation over anti-competitive behaviour, suddenly move to the other side of the bus as soon as the monopoly works in their favour.
Shame shame shame on you Apple. You don't need to play this game. You've innovated your way to hundreds of millions in revenues. Now you're playing like Microsoft, and guess what, you've lost me as a customer. Think I'm going to re-download all those songs from the iTunes store? Not bloody likely! I'll pirate them, or wait for a reverse engineer hack to convert them.
You're actually holding the *consumer* responsible for shopping for the best deal. (Which was Real's music store). Guess what, you and the entire music industry should be bloody well stoked that we were shopping *at all*
You make the point that without 'ownership', there would be little incentive to create more ideas. This point is flawed for two reasons:
1) The motivation to create things doesn't come from profit motives. Look around (look around the internet even) and you'll find tens of thousands of creative works and technological innovations that did not profit (and were not intended to profit) their makers in any way. (e.g. Linux).
2) Ideas are formed on the backs of other ideas. Necessary to advanced intellectual and scientific reasoning is the act of processing, combining, accepting and rejecting thousands of other people's ideas and innovations.
We live in an increcible new world where unprecedented access to vast quantities information enables us to recombine and process faster than ever before. Controlling the rights to information prevents achievement and invention.
When I saw the/. post on "The Future of Student Films" I got excited...
I'm a huge believer of DIY on-the-cheap professional looking effects......but did anyone *not* think both those trailers were god awful? I mean, Star Wars Fan Films made by people who have never seen the inside of a film classroom look 1000 times more professional. Let's call a spade a spade people.
It ain't about having access to the tools, its about knowing how to use them. Occasionally talent and talent-education accidentally meet up, but this is just further proof that talent is talent, and most film schools are filled with an enormous lack of it. Bad effects don't help bad filmmaking.
I'd be embarrassed to put that sh*t online...
The more attractive the industry
on
NYT on EA Games
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The more attractive the industry, the crappier the pay. Is this news to anyone?
Want to work in film? Crap pay. Want to be an accountant? Not crap pay. Want to work for a video game company? Crap pay. Want to work for an insurance company? Not crap pay. Want to work for MTV? Reeeeally crap pay.
Its not just social security either: Many economists now believe that the effect of baby boomers retiring will send shockwaves through every industry.
Healthcare will not escape unscathed, as demand for limited and expensive drugs goes through the roof. The pressure to legislate away the basic economic problems of supply/demand will be near overwhelming -- and either big-pharm will become increasingly socialized, or radical restructuring of medical financing will be required.
Housing and Real-Estate *will* crash as sure as night follows day when retiring baby-boomers, needing extra cash downsize into retirement communities. (Remember that almost 90% of high-end real estate is owned by boomers). The notion that real estate always goes up (while true in the long term) will be challenged by a 20 year downtrend as baby boomers' real estate assets inundate the market in an unprecedented deluge.
And the list of impacts goes on and on... inheritance law, banking, education... everything is going to be affected by this -- the largest of population trends in the next 20 years.
What's really scary are the downstream effects -- like what happens to Freddie and Fannie when the great boomer real-estate liquidation happens... but that's O.T.
Here's the problem with MMORPG's based on fiction properties (Galaxies, MEOL, etc.)
Since MMORPG's must be socialist in their play-balancing, and must be open ended (for revenue reasons) there can be no over-arching saga, no heroes, no theatrical climax and no resolution.
Would LOTR have been at all interesting if Frodo had been one of 1000 ring bearers? And what if they had all just wandered Middle-Earth endlessly, never reaching the end of their quest (but instead, constantly increasing in ability)?
MMORPG's can only ever be generic universes because all they offer is generic experiences. There is a necessary "sameness" to the characters for reasons of playability and that "sameness" destroys any possibility of compelling story-telling.
Middle Earth online will be, at best, Dark Age of Camelot with different 3D models, and a more familiar (albeit less extesible) map.
Yawn. Seen it.
________________________________ Judge a man by his wallet.
Not withstanding Lucas' seemingly awesome ability to f*ck things up... this should come as pretty great news. Why? Because hopefully Lucas will do two things:
1) Hire directors and stay out of the director's chair himself. Lucas is a far better visionary than he is a director. When he gets to close to the director's chair we get cutesy sh*t that even kids think is gay.
2) Draw from any of the truly great (non George Lucas) Star Wars fiction that exists. Let's face it: Timothy Zahn writes better Star Wars than Lucas ever did. Hell, even the Star Wars comic series (Marvel) was better written than anything by Lucas.
Bottom line: Lucas should paint in big strokes. He's got a great talent for epic space opera. He's got a lousy talent for actualizing it.
I can't seem to find a single mention anywhere of one of the major limitations of iTunes for Windows: It requires Windows XP. Older versions of Windows are not supported.
Given the enormous numbers of Windows '98 and Windows ME users still out there - this could be a huge score for Real.
Does anyone know if Harmony requires XP? Or if it requires a previous working install of iTunes? (which would effectively mean the same thing)
If you believe that human experience qualifies as evidence, then you cannot compare the comparitively meager amount of UFO "evidence" with the vast amount of "evidence" for God.
The Drake Equation was published long before the GHZ Theory ("Galactic Habitable Zone").
The GHZ Theory starts with the Drake Equation and greatly reduces the number of planets capable of supporting life. The GHZ takes in to account that the distribution of elements and molecular combinations is not constant throughout the galaxy. We live in a small ring shaped zone that exists a fixed distance from the center of the galaxy which not only has a vast array of molecular differentiation and comparitively low radiation but (relative to the rest of the galaxy) plentiful distribution of most elements.
While it isn't known what format life on other worlds will take -- it *is* thought that certain processes like lipid/water (or ammonic or similar) interaction would be required for a semi-permeable cell membrane structure to form.
If the Drake Equation is recalculated with the GHZ being taken into account the number of potentially life sustaining worlds drops significantly.
In my opinion SETI has long used the Drake Equation as mathematical self-justification. And conversely, by openly accepting the Drake equation's overstated likelihood of ET-life SETI would endanger its own existence.
By the way I'm a big fan of SETI -- but hiding from issues isn't the way to overcome scientific setbacks.
Slashdot Mirror
I've often wondered why it is so easy to contest wikipedia content. Malicious (or simply hard headed) users can insert personal beliefs and sentiments that are not widely shared.
While extending extra editorial powers to "experts" as the author suggests, may *seem* like one way to solve the problem, the same issues will ultimately exist between experts. In some ways the 'conflicting content' problem of Wikipedia is just a macrocosmic version of what happens in academia all the time. Wiki illustrates many of the problems with general (non-wiki) encyclopedia creation. (Although the problems with most encyclopedia's are much more minor by comparison).
An alternative solution might be to have all changes subject to a running (democratic) vote by the user base. (Although this too would surely have problems. Religious issues would create a particularly difficult/scary situation for any 'editorial vote' process)
Ultimately the solution will probably be a combination of expert-editorial, user-contributions, and editorial-votes. Until then we'll see a lot of users inserting their personal opinions as universal fact.
This might sound like a stupid question, but I've had my World Community Grid client running since the first time /. covered the subject. But I'm not part of some /. group of WCG users as far as I know... I'm just another individual client app. How is this /. group identified and grouped by the WCG?
I remember reading that traditional "red laser" pointing devices were being banned from British football matches because fans would point them in to the eyes of goalkeepers. Someone told me that they were at a Liverpool match once and one of the goalkeepers had about 8 red dots all over his body when he made a save.
Now we've got something that can fry the friggin ball itself...
Anyone want to bet on the "responsible adult" factor for international soccer fans.
These things are a bad idea....
Hell I can describe *exactly* what locations in Zork I, II, III, StarCross, PlanetFall and Enchanter looked like. I remember vividly what color the sky was, what the walls looked like, paintings on the wall, weird machinery, smells, music playing, etc.
I also played the hell out of Wolf3D the day the shareware was released. (We downloaded from BBS's in those days). But I can't say I have the same vivid memories from that game. I can't say I have any sort of emotional attachment to that world at all.
Which makes me wonder if nostalgia will even exist for current games. *Is* there a level of emotional attachment to worlds / characters / situations in today's games? There have been very few games since then that have blown me away on a story / personal imagination level. ("The Dig" from LucasArts was totally underrated on that level).
Looking back on it, *all* of my favorite games have one unifying factor. The graphics weren't really that important. I challenge anyone to name a greater single player RPG than Baldur's Gate II. (Ok mayble Planescape). Those graphics were pretty lame even whent the game was released.
The way I see it, we're doing a lot of things with graphics today _because we can_. We're going through a sort of adolescent flexing of muscles in the gaming industry. There's been so much change in the technical department, that graphics have caught everyone's attention. And we all know where they're going: They're going to look like films. Not just a little bit, they're going to look *exactly* like films. And then we know where they're going to go next: They're going to go Helmet VR. And then when we're all done thumping our chests and graphically beating the pants off last month's graphical wonderkind -- we can get back to writing compelling fiction.
Not to say that its not happening today. Half Life II is currently my happy place. But that's one title in a sea of 3D trash that no one will ever have any emotional attachment to at all.
My two cents.
Popo
Operation FastLink II has just been announced and has apparently already located numerous regional underground locations, often called "Libraries" from which thousands of law-breaking users have been flagrantly "sharing" copyrighted material including Books, Videos and Compact Discs.
This so-called "Public Library" system has apparently gone unchecked for hundreds of years, denying authors and owners of copyrights millions of dollars in lost revenue from potential sales.
Over 9,500,000 Librarians and criminal "Library Users" have been identified through user-logs and membership lists. Some users have even so bold as to carry identifying "Library Cards" on their persons.
Book Publishers are quick to point out that participation in this copyright-evasion scheme by these "book-sharers" denies the original copyright holders of their fair due from successive readings.
Thanks to Operation Fastlink II (sponsored in part by Barnes & Noble Booksellers as a public service) these institutions of uncontrolled information exchange are finally being shut down one by one.
God Bless America. Here's to upholding our moral character.
-Popo
As long as we're going to attempt to apply mathematics to a bunch of unknowable probabilities, why not include the risks of:
1) Transient Black Holes
2) Rapid onset of Global Cooling
3) Preon contamination at a low level on the food chain.
4) Cascade burn off of the ozone layer
5) Critical underslide for the western US continental shelf.
6) Sol supernova
7) Accidental nuclear war
8) Bird flu
9) The rise, conquest and world domination of the great subterranean Gremlin hordes lead by the fearsome ruler Gorlack III.
10) President Schwarzenegger
According to my calculations -- the addition of the above probabilities puts us at a critical risk of self-immolation (with a
Woohoo! Hello third mortgage! Suckers!
-Popo
Oh please... the amount of blind mac love on this board is making me want to spew. Let's face it, Apple just pulled a totally anti-competitive move that does nothing but increase its own market share at the expense of its customers. If this had been Microsoft reaming us all there would be maybe 3 people on the 'shut up and take it' side of the argument (and they'd all work for Bill) but change the "Microsoft" to "iPod" and everyone bends over and lubes up.
Sure I think Real is a POS company with POS products and lame business practices. But the one thing that gets me is that as an iPod owner they *did* provide an alternate to iTunes shopping.
Go ahead, try it...
"Anti" then "trust"...
How sickening is it when you have a company like Apple who has championed innovation over anti-competitive behaviour, suddenly move to the other side of the bus as soon as the monopoly works in their favour.
Shame shame shame on you Apple. You don't need to play this game. You've innovated your way to hundreds of millions in revenues. Now you're playing like Microsoft, and guess what, you've lost me as a customer. Think I'm going to re-download all those songs from the iTunes store? Not bloody likely! I'll pirate them, or wait for a reverse engineer hack to convert them.
You're actually holding the *consumer* responsible for shopping for the best deal. (Which was Real's music store). Guess what, you and the entire music industry should be bloody well stoked that we were shopping *at all*
Looks like its back to free music for me.
Shame on you Apple. Shame.
You make the point that without 'ownership', there would be little incentive to create more ideas. This point is flawed for two reasons:
1) The motivation to create things doesn't come from profit motives. Look around (look around the internet even) and you'll find tens of thousands of creative works and technological innovations that did not profit (and were not intended to profit) their makers in any way. (e.g. Linux).
2) Ideas are formed on the backs of other ideas. Necessary to advanced intellectual and scientific reasoning is the act of processing, combining, accepting and rejecting thousands of other people's ideas and innovations.
We live in an increcible new world where unprecedented access to vast quantities information enables us to recombine and process faster than ever before. Controlling the rights to information prevents achievement and invention.
When I saw the /. post on "The Future of Student Films" I got excited...
...but did anyone *not* think both those trailers were god awful? I mean, Star Wars Fan Films made by people who have never seen the inside of a film classroom look 1000 times more professional. Let's call a spade a spade people.
I'm a huge believer of DIY on-the-cheap professional looking effects...
It ain't about having access to the tools, its about knowing how to use them. Occasionally talent and talent-education accidentally meet up, but this is just further proof that talent is talent, and most film schools are filled with an enormous lack of it. Bad effects don't help bad filmmaking.
I'd be embarrassed to put that sh*t online...
The more attractive the industry, the crappier the pay. Is this news to anyone?
Want to work in film? Crap pay.
Want to be an accountant? Not crap pay.
Want to work for a video game company? Crap pay.
Want to work for an insurance company? Not crap pay.
Want to work for MTV? Reeeeally crap pay.
Any questions?
Now even porn is bad for us...
Its not just social security either: Many economists now believe that the effect of baby boomers retiring will send shockwaves through every industry.
Healthcare will not escape unscathed, as demand for limited and expensive drugs goes through the roof. The pressure to legislate away the basic economic problems of supply/demand will be near overwhelming -- and either big-pharm will become increasingly socialized, or radical restructuring of medical financing will be required.
Housing and Real-Estate *will* crash as sure as night follows day when retiring baby-boomers, needing extra cash downsize into retirement communities. (Remember that almost 90% of high-end real estate is owned by boomers). The notion that real estate always goes up (while true in the long term) will be challenged by a 20 year downtrend as baby boomers' real estate assets inundate the market in an unprecedented deluge.
And the list of impacts goes on and on... inheritance law, banking, education... everything is going to be affected by this -- the largest of population trends in the next 20 years.
What's really scary are the downstream effects -- like what happens to Freddie and Fannie when the great boomer real-estate liquidation happens... but that's O.T.
Patents are really screwing up the world.
But wait... the music industry is a big overgrown evil empire.
Who's side should I be on... let's see... "the enemy of my enemy..."
Wait... I know:
I blame Microsoft!
From what I can tell you're right. It almost seems like Firefox has a keywords deal with Google... hmm...
So Rob... how many Oreos can you put away in a single sitting?
Here's the problem with MMORPG's based on fiction properties (Galaxies, MEOL, etc.)
Since MMORPG's must be socialist in their play-balancing, and must be open ended (for revenue reasons) there can be no over-arching saga, no heroes, no theatrical climax and no resolution.
Would LOTR have been at all interesting if Frodo had been one of 1000 ring bearers? And what if they had all just wandered Middle-Earth endlessly, never reaching the end of their quest (but instead, constantly increasing in ability)?
MMORPG's can only ever be generic universes because all they offer is generic experiences. There is a necessary "sameness" to the characters for reasons of playability and that "sameness" destroys any possibility of compelling story-telling.
Middle Earth online will be, at best, Dark Age of Camelot with different 3D models, and a more familiar (albeit less extesible) map.
Yawn. Seen it.
________________________________
Judge a man by his wallet.
Not withstanding Lucas' seemingly awesome ability to f*ck things up... this should come as pretty great news. Why? Because hopefully Lucas will do two things:
1) Hire directors and stay out of the director's chair himself. Lucas is a far better visionary than he is a director. When he gets to close to the director's chair we get cutesy sh*t that even kids think is gay.
2) Draw from any of the truly great (non George Lucas) Star Wars fiction that exists. Let's face it: Timothy Zahn writes better Star Wars than Lucas ever did. Hell, even the Star Wars comic series (Marvel) was better written than anything by Lucas.
Bottom line: Lucas should paint in big strokes. He's got a great talent for epic space opera. He's got a lousy talent for actualizing it.
______
Judge a man by his wallet
...and is therefore in violation of my patent on Ethical Robot Behaviour...
And come to think of it... I also have a problem with his *not* killing anything...
That also violates my patent.
No one in my office liked the smell of
computer hardware. The problem was driving
us all completely crazy, until we found
the answer:
Now everyone in my office just uses one of these!
http://www.approvedgasmasks.com/suit-responderp
"Lycos"
Search engines are generally not money makers.
Search engines that are popular because they are fast -- (and fast because they don't serve graphics) are even worse money makers.
I'll buy at $12
I can't seem to find a single mention anywhere of one of the major limitations of iTunes for Windows: It requires Windows XP. Older versions of Windows are not supported.
Given the enormous numbers of Windows '98 and Windows ME users still out there - this could be a huge score for Real.
Does anyone know if Harmony requires XP? Or if it requires a previous working install of iTunes? (which would effectively mean the same thing)
If you believe that human experience qualifies as evidence, then you cannot compare the comparitively meager amount of UFO "evidence" with the vast amount of "evidence" for God.
Evidence must be provable and repeatable.
UFO sightings are neither.
The Drake Equation was published long before the GHZ Theory ("Galactic Habitable Zone").
The GHZ Theory starts with the Drake Equation and greatly reduces the number of planets capable of supporting life. The GHZ takes in to account that the distribution of elements and molecular combinations is not constant throughout the galaxy. We live in a small ring shaped zone that exists a fixed distance from the center of the galaxy which not only has a vast array of molecular differentiation and comparitively low radiation but (relative to the rest of the galaxy) plentiful distribution of most elements.
While it isn't known what format life on other worlds will take -- it *is* thought that certain processes like lipid/water (or ammonic or similar) interaction would be required for a semi-permeable cell membrane structure to form.
If the Drake Equation is recalculated with the GHZ being taken into account the number of potentially life sustaining worlds drops significantly.
In my opinion SETI has long used the Drake Equation as mathematical self-justification. And conversely, by openly accepting the Drake equation's overstated likelihood of ET-life SETI would endanger its own existence.
By the way I'm a big fan of SETI -- but hiding from issues isn't the way to overcome scientific setbacks.
Late last night I was delusional, near coma, experiencing hallucinations and walking on all fours.
And then *poof!*
This morning I was walking around on two legs!