I dunno if anyone else remembers it, but back in the 80s, Adventure Construction Set shipped with an option to generate an adventure from scratch, including the creation of new content (which, IIRC, was basically choosing some random values for things and rolling them into a new object). I obviously am not comparing the two -- this sounds considerably more advanced -- but the idea sounds the same and the results were probably about as interesting. That the AI relied on a pre-defined dictionary list of what is telling, too. Eventually, the understanding of consciousness will progress to the point where we can understand and analyze it in detail, but any AI is going to be dependent on that understanding before it is a true, complete, game production system.
Yeah, don't take it as a slam on SFB -- I loved the pen and paper versions, and was thrilled when they came out with the computer game versions, and wish they would be updated (nice job of locking down your "IP," Paramount). I was more thinking that Star Command was always a "light" game and would suffer from an excess of detail and tactical decisions, though.
I wouldn't necessarily agree that SC 3 was "botched," although 2 was a better game. A real botch job was Master of Orion 3... That said, it should be interesting to see what Stardock does with this, given their track record with Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire. They need to resist temptation to make the game too "heavy," too -- no real need to turn it into a cartoonish version of SFB or something.
Maybe it has something to do with those two nations being part of a small group that isn't beholden, in one way or another, to the U.S., and therefore would be significantly less likely to put a bag over his head and send him back to the states?
We have a president who, after promising the most open administration ever, has done a complete 180 and tried to limit press coverage, access to records and administration officials, and so on. He has offered pardons to fewer people than any other president. That doesn't sound like a welcoming environment to come home to, when you get right down to it. That said, I've always had mixed feelings about Snowden. To be honest, China and Russia probably know much about what is going on, because they do the same things themselves. In addition, it's not unlike the Wikileaks dump...people in Iraq and Afghanistan know what's going on there...it's the American people who are kept in the dark. On the other hand, we want the "American standard of living," which is no different from the "British Way" back in the 1800s, and so on. We're not a bucolic merchant republic any more. America is a global empire, the Rome of our day, and maintaining that position requires an awful lot of "off the books" action. People scream for more security, lower gas prices, salute the flag all over the place, and don't want to deal with paying taxes to maintain military hegemony, the rabid pursuit of dissent, or the corruption which invariably accompanies a concentration of power.
Honestly, this seems like a natural consequence of the attempt of the news to be more "relevant and entertaining" and the need to compete with other varieties of the media, as well as the dislike of people to follow real, objective news (as opposed to news which satisfies their own cognitive biases). I've heard quite a few people express that the best places to get real news (outside of maybe the weather, and even that is getting goofy, with the Weather Channel naming snowstorms) is the foreign press, where they seem to be able to have more of a dividing line between what is actual news, and what is tabloid journalism.
While I admire the willingness of the tech industry to try to find solutions to some of the issues with education, the real issue that is being missed is that education's problems, at least in America, are cultural, not technical. It's been shown in numerous studies that parental attitude toward education is the single biggest predictor in educational success. Unfortunately, we're a culture where people are focused on entertainment and sports, where parents may be working two or three jobs, and where education itself is looked at by many as a burden, instead of as learning how to use a knowledge as a tool to bring success in life.
Digital currencies carry a risk, but so does any other type of financial transaction or investment. People rely on the perceived integrity of the "issuing" system, the circumstances around the use of the items, and so on. Even mainstream items carry the possibility of risk that people cannot predict or understand. In that light, a bitcoin might not be as secure as buying an ounce of gold and burying it in the backyard, but there's nothing to say someone might not invent a modern Philosopher's Stone and render gold itself worthless overnight. As far as lacking recourse, I'd offer up the point that the price of goods and services in American dollars has been steadily increasing (even though the inflation index doesn't cover food, for example), due in part to quantitative easing, and that's not a whole lot of recourse any of have, short of hoping that our votes actually still matter and someone is paying attention.
I don't really see much point in getting involved in a religious discussion, but just to set the record straight -- most wars are caused by the personal ambition and greed of the ruling class, and seldom have anything to do with religious beliefs of one side or the other. Jonathon Kolkey's World Wide War Project (www.worldwidewarproject.com) contains a body of supporting material for his thesis, which is generally borne out by examining various wars in history. At most, religion seems to be used as part of a vague, cynical appeal to a wide range of values and emotions, including cultural differences, nationality, past grievances, logical fallacies ("they break the small end of the egg, so they're evil!"), and so on. Even the Crusades seemed to be as much about an epic land grab as anything else.
No, I'm not talking about the article or merits of the study. I'm talking about the fact that we, as a civilization and a species, approach these issues without politicizing them, turning them into a referendum on everything from the existence of God to whether or not blind people should be allowed to buy handguns. We live on the Earth -- the only Earth we are currently able to access and inhabit, given our current technology and resources. So why is it that we constantly cannot reach any sort of consensus on how to proceed on these issues? Is making a few trillion more from fossil fuels that important, for those who attack the idea of climate change? Likewise, is the elevation of science to a religion so important to those on the left that this has become a dogmatic, holy cause where dissent is met with ridicule? I understand that American society is awash in stupidity and complete ignorance of even basic principles of logic (anecdotal evidence is the deciding factor about how most people seem to feel about things), but here has to be some point where everyone says enough is enough and starts approaching the issue with a level head and realizing the implications if the science is right and nothing is done. Yeah, sorry for the rant...I'm tired of humanity's inability to get its head out of its butt and look past more than the next Super Bowl or imperial...err...presidential election.
I'm aware of what it involves. I'm also aware that we continually improve and refine these processes, to where they become less invasive and far more convenient and comfortable. Consider, for example, the various psychiatric medications available on the market that are increasingly prescribed for trivial reasons. Modern America is a culture obsessed with escaping discomfort and unpleasantness at all costs, so it is reasonable to expect that something like this -- if refined and convenient enough -- would become over-prescribed as well.
I can understand that something like this would be a boon to veterans with PTSD or survivors of rape or other violent episodes. However, I wonder if this will eventually get more widespread and become used for trivial things, like removing memories of a bad breakup or other parts of life which might be painful, but tolerable. It has been noted here and there before that bouts of depression have made people more artistically productive, but this can disappear with medication...if we likewise remove the negative memories, are we going to start missing heuristics that make us work to improve our lives?
Not long ago I was slamming leftie feminists for comparing criticism of their precious ideology to racism. Now it looks like I'm going to have to turn the guns 180. Ahem...
Are you fucking serious? Are you actually comparing criticism your ideas receive to centuries of antisemitism that culminated (but didn't end) with the Holocaust? Are you that self absorbed? Hang on, you are a libertarian, of course you are.
The fact is, libertarianism is a bad idea. That is why its adherents are over-sensitive and paranoid. Such an idea that cannot be contested on a level playing field probably isn't worth hanging on to.
Yeah. It's funny how persecution starts with demonization. You're ignoring that reality?
Since libertarians are sort of getting to be the "new Jews" (i.e. a misunderstood community targeted on the basis of what their enemies say about them), here's a recap:
1. Libertarians favor peace over war.
2. Libertarians don't want to run other people's lives (or have their own lives run by other people)
3. Libertarians don't trust government because it is made up of individual people and don't understand why those who don't trust individuals trust government.
Libertarian views on bitcoin are divided, much like views on everything else. Trying to say "bitcoin is a libertarian ideal," is the same as saying "war is a government ideal."
Copyright laws are meant to protect an artist's ability to monetize their creations (I won't go into the ethics and morality of copyright). The recordings were of poor quality, so at best, they mostly serve as items of historical interest, not completed, quality works. Otherwise, they would have been released on an album and snapped up by Beatles fans. At best, I'm puzzled why anyone would bother protecting copyright on something that nobody really wanted in the first place and really is more of scholarly interest. Maybe it's time for some copyright holders to start recognizing that certain things should be made freely available, in the interests of culture and historical significance, as opposed to trying to make a buck off of what was a dud back in the day.
I owe readers of my previous comment an apology. Red light cameras were installed in a town near where I live at. At the time, I read a piece about them, including statements that indicated that the contracting company offered incentives to reduce the yellow light time. Unfortunately, I can't find the piece in the time since and so my previous comment is only partly valid. I will point out that several places where these are installed HAVE reduced the yellow light duration -- http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=316418. Again, my apologies.
DOT studies a while back showed that increasing yellow light time by a second or so would reduce red-light accidents. However, RLC contracts often come with a stipulation that yellow light time is reduced, by at least a half second or more, to increase revenues. These things need to go, the sooner the better.
China holds a huge amount of our debt. They want us to buy their stuff and to borrow money from them. Why cripple our economy? Or, even worse, why do something like this that will point a finger back to them and stir up the pot against them? (and possibly lad to embargos, and so on)
The problem with this sort of program is the same problem that no amount of vulnerability fixing will ever address -- the human factor. Just as social engineering is probably the biggest weakness with most systems, something like this is going to be gamed by people who figure out how to profit from a program that companies are forced to participate in.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno if anyone else remembers it, but back in the 80s, Adventure Construction Set shipped with an option to generate an adventure from scratch, including the creation of new content (which, IIRC, was basically choosing some random values for things and rolling them into a new object). I obviously am not comparing the two -- this sounds considerably more advanced -- but the idea sounds the same and the results were probably about as interesting. That the AI relied on a pre-defined dictionary list of what is telling, too. Eventually, the understanding of consciousness will progress to the point where we can understand and analyze it in detail, but any AI is going to be dependent on that understanding before it is a true, complete, game production system.
Yeah, don't take it as a slam on SFB -- I loved the pen and paper versions, and was thrilled when they came out with the computer game versions, and wish they would be updated (nice job of locking down your "IP," Paramount). I was more thinking that Star Command was always a "light" game and would suffer from an excess of detail and tactical decisions, though.
I wouldn't necessarily agree that SC 3 was "botched," although 2 was a better game. A real botch job was Master of Orion 3... That said, it should be interesting to see what Stardock does with this, given their track record with Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire. They need to resist temptation to make the game too "heavy," too -- no real need to turn it into a cartoonish version of SFB or something.
Cold day in January: Crowd #1 sez "There's no global warming!" Hot day in August: Crowd #2 sez "There's global warming!"
In Kafka America, you don't break the law, the law breaks you?
Maybe it has something to do with those two nations being part of a small group that isn't beholden, in one way or another, to the U.S., and therefore would be significantly less likely to put a bag over his head and send him back to the states?
We have a president who, after promising the most open administration ever, has done a complete 180 and tried to limit press coverage, access to records and administration officials, and so on. He has offered pardons to fewer people than any other president. That doesn't sound like a welcoming environment to come home to, when you get right down to it. That said, I've always had mixed feelings about Snowden. To be honest, China and Russia probably know much about what is going on, because they do the same things themselves. In addition, it's not unlike the Wikileaks dump...people in Iraq and Afghanistan know what's going on there...it's the American people who are kept in the dark. On the other hand, we want the "American standard of living," which is no different from the "British Way" back in the 1800s, and so on. We're not a bucolic merchant republic any more. America is a global empire, the Rome of our day, and maintaining that position requires an awful lot of "off the books" action. People scream for more security, lower gas prices, salute the flag all over the place, and don't want to deal with paying taxes to maintain military hegemony, the rabid pursuit of dissent, or the corruption which invariably accompanies a concentration of power.
Honestly, this seems like a natural consequence of the attempt of the news to be more "relevant and entertaining" and the need to compete with other varieties of the media, as well as the dislike of people to follow real, objective news (as opposed to news which satisfies their own cognitive biases). I've heard quite a few people express that the best places to get real news (outside of maybe the weather, and even that is getting goofy, with the Weather Channel naming snowstorms) is the foreign press, where they seem to be able to have more of a dividing line between what is actual news, and what is tabloid journalism.
While I admire the willingness of the tech industry to try to find solutions to some of the issues with education, the real issue that is being missed is that education's problems, at least in America, are cultural, not technical. It's been shown in numerous studies that parental attitude toward education is the single biggest predictor in educational success. Unfortunately, we're a culture where people are focused on entertainment and sports, where parents may be working two or three jobs, and where education itself is looked at by many as a burden, instead of as learning how to use a knowledge as a tool to bring success in life.
Digital currencies carry a risk, but so does any other type of financial transaction or investment. People rely on the perceived integrity of the "issuing" system, the circumstances around the use of the items, and so on. Even mainstream items carry the possibility of risk that people cannot predict or understand. In that light, a bitcoin might not be as secure as buying an ounce of gold and burying it in the backyard, but there's nothing to say someone might not invent a modern Philosopher's Stone and render gold itself worthless overnight. As far as lacking recourse, I'd offer up the point that the price of goods and services in American dollars has been steadily increasing (even though the inflation index doesn't cover food, for example), due in part to quantitative easing, and that's not a whole lot of recourse any of have, short of hoping that our votes actually still matter and someone is paying attention.
I don't really see much point in getting involved in a religious discussion, but just to set the record straight -- most wars are caused by the personal ambition and greed of the ruling class, and seldom have anything to do with religious beliefs of one side or the other. Jonathon Kolkey's World Wide War Project (www.worldwidewarproject.com) contains a body of supporting material for his thesis, which is generally borne out by examining various wars in history. At most, religion seems to be used as part of a vague, cynical appeal to a wide range of values and emotions, including cultural differences, nationality, past grievances, logical fallacies ("they break the small end of the egg, so they're evil!"), and so on. Even the Crusades seemed to be as much about an epic land grab as anything else.
No, I'm not talking about the article or merits of the study. I'm talking about the fact that we, as a civilization and a species, approach these issues without politicizing them, turning them into a referendum on everything from the existence of God to whether or not blind people should be allowed to buy handguns. We live on the Earth -- the only Earth we are currently able to access and inhabit, given our current technology and resources. So why is it that we constantly cannot reach any sort of consensus on how to proceed on these issues? Is making a few trillion more from fossil fuels that important, for those who attack the idea of climate change? Likewise, is the elevation of science to a religion so important to those on the left that this has become a dogmatic, holy cause where dissent is met with ridicule? I understand that American society is awash in stupidity and complete ignorance of even basic principles of logic (anecdotal evidence is the deciding factor about how most people seem to feel about things), but here has to be some point where everyone says enough is enough and starts approaching the issue with a level head and realizing the implications if the science is right and nothing is done. Yeah, sorry for the rant...I'm tired of humanity's inability to get its head out of its butt and look past more than the next Super Bowl or imperial...err...presidential election.
I'm aware of what it involves. I'm also aware that we continually improve and refine these processes, to where they become less invasive and far more convenient and comfortable. Consider, for example, the various psychiatric medications available on the market that are increasingly prescribed for trivial reasons. Modern America is a culture obsessed with escaping discomfort and unpleasantness at all costs, so it is reasonable to expect that something like this -- if refined and convenient enough -- would become over-prescribed as well.
I can understand that something like this would be a boon to veterans with PTSD or survivors of rape or other violent episodes. However, I wonder if this will eventually get more widespread and become used for trivial things, like removing memories of a bad breakup or other parts of life which might be painful, but tolerable. It has been noted here and there before that bouts of depression have made people more artistically productive, but this can disappear with medication...if we likewise remove the negative memories, are we going to start missing heuristics that make us work to improve our lives?
"hey...wait...this looks like the Obamacare website..."
Yeah, me too. The day job is for keeping the lights on. The coding at night is for keeping me sane and happy with the day job.
Not long ago I was slamming leftie feminists for comparing criticism of their precious ideology to racism. Now it looks like I'm going to have to turn the guns 180. Ahem...
Are you fucking serious? Are you actually comparing criticism your ideas receive to centuries of antisemitism that culminated (but didn't end) with the Holocaust? Are you that self absorbed? Hang on, you are a libertarian, of course you are.
The fact is, libertarianism is a bad idea. That is why its adherents are over-sensitive and paranoid. Such an idea that cannot be contested on a level playing field probably isn't worth hanging on to.
Yeah. It's funny how persecution starts with demonization. You're ignoring that reality?
Since libertarians are sort of getting to be the "new Jews" (i.e. a misunderstood community targeted on the basis of what their enemies say about them), here's a recap: 1. Libertarians favor peace over war. 2. Libertarians don't want to run other people's lives (or have their own lives run by other people) 3. Libertarians don't trust government because it is made up of individual people and don't understand why those who don't trust individuals trust government. Libertarian views on bitcoin are divided, much like views on everything else. Trying to say "bitcoin is a libertarian ideal," is the same as saying "war is a government ideal."
Copyright laws are meant to protect an artist's ability to monetize their creations (I won't go into the ethics and morality of copyright). The recordings were of poor quality, so at best, they mostly serve as items of historical interest, not completed, quality works. Otherwise, they would have been released on an album and snapped up by Beatles fans. At best, I'm puzzled why anyone would bother protecting copyright on something that nobody really wanted in the first place and really is more of scholarly interest. Maybe it's time for some copyright holders to start recognizing that certain things should be made freely available, in the interests of culture and historical significance, as opposed to trying to make a buck off of what was a dud back in the day.
I owe readers of my previous comment an apology. Red light cameras were installed in a town near where I live at. At the time, I read a piece about them, including statements that indicated that the contracting company offered incentives to reduce the yellow light time. Unfortunately, I can't find the piece in the time since and so my previous comment is only partly valid. I will point out that several places where these are installed HAVE reduced the yellow light duration -- http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=316418. Again, my apologies.
DOT studies a while back showed that increasing yellow light time by a second or so would reduce red-light accidents. However, RLC contracts often come with a stipulation that yellow light time is reduced, by at least a half second or more, to increase revenues. These things need to go, the sooner the better.
China holds a huge amount of our debt. They want us to buy their stuff and to borrow money from them. Why cripple our economy? Or, even worse, why do something like this that will point a finger back to them and stir up the pot against them? (and possibly lad to embargos, and so on)
This idea is so ridiculous, I can't imagine it's not simply clickbait. And thanks to Slashdot editors, it worked.
Sadly, bad ideas have a way of becoming policy and law, especially when special interests and lobbyists get involved.
The problem with this sort of program is the same problem that no amount of vulnerability fixing will ever address -- the human factor. Just as social engineering is probably the biggest weakness with most systems, something like this is going to be gamed by people who figure out how to profit from a program that companies are forced to participate in.
Okay, sorry. I'll stop doing that in the future.