I've followed the alternative currency movement off and on for some time, and it's interesting to see how governments take issue with them. What is more interesting here is that, while Norway obviously doesn't necessarily recognize a legal bucket a bitcoin can easily fit into, it's nevertheless viewing them as having some worth or profitability, and not participating in the normal flow of currency exchanges. In that sense, at least bitcoins seem to be taking on an intrinsic worth that isn't necessarily a characteristic of fiat currencies. While I don't have experience using bitcoins, this is definitely an interesting development.
...about this. Just about everyone in the world is dependent on computers at some point, whether or not it's an immediate influence on their life. Having at least some clue of what's happening under the hood is a Good Thing for them, even if they are never a professional dev or IT person. I know far too many people who have the "black box" mentality, and as a result, are much poorer at interacting with computers than they would otherwise be.
One of Android's selling points has always been it's open nature, and the fact that it's not as locked down as iOS. This seems like it's taking a step in the direction of locking down the OS for the user, and unlocking it for everyone else...
Wikipedia has become staffed with a sizeable number of edit trolls, who know a lot about a tiny slice of something, and think that gives them great and wise moral authority over the entire domain...somewhat like real academia. I found this out the hard way when I made an edit to an article, which was modest, relevant, and neutral in tone. Immediately, it got removed by someone who left a mini-screed about it. I checked the person's history and found that they had numerous arguments with other users, but apparently still retained their account because they managed to effectively play rules lawyer with Wikipedia's policies. Again, like real academia.
That said, articles like this make me cringe, because it a) turns people off of what is really an excellent resource, and b) makes Wikipedia sound like it is somehow less worthy than traditional reference sources (where no one sees the bile and acrimony that goes into the production of some of those works). It's like anything, some people are bound and determined to play the chemically imbalanced turd in the punchbowl.
Military pilots -- flying multi-million dollar machines loaded with all kinds of nasty stuff -- don't have a problem with heads-up displays and helmet-mounted sights. These are considered to be useful tools. Why doesn't glass fall into the same category? Maybe a driving app coupled to a sensor suite on a car?
There needs to be a distinction made between innovation and refinement. It's true that most "innovation" is just building a better mousetrap. Real innovation is taking a look at a fish and deciding a submarine doesn't need fins to swim -- in other words, first defining a problem, then a new context to solve it in, not steadily deriving from existing processes or devices. If it's a matter of derivation and refinement, this isn't a difficult problem...just determine some "win states" and then let semi-automated software begin to crunch designs. However, being able to properly frame the problem in the first place is where the real difficulty lies, so the person writing a program to "innovate" at that point is already performing the process of innovation, while trying to create a process to perform it..
Thank you for pointing that out again. The marriage laws were also passed in order to control interracial marriage. It's funny how many people run around supporting bad laws and stupid ideas because of prejudice and ignorance a few generations back...maybe it's more evidence for memes, I don't know.
you're either *very* innocent about how the world works or utterly and completely clueless.
I don't think the proper word is "or" but "and".... Very naive AND completely clueless.. Victimless crimes, shesh, Just because you cannot point to a single person or small group that is a victim does not mean the crime is somehow less or that ripping off a large corporation is somehow better than stealing grandma's life savings.
Wrong is wrong and unethical behavior is unethical even if you don't have a clear victim you harmed.
What is "wrong?" Unethical doesn't equal illegal. You can either show damages to another person or you cannot. If I knock down your mailbox with my car, for example, I have damaged your property. If I knocked it over with your hand in it, I've damaged you. If I grab your wallet, then you're a victim of theft. There is a clear victim. I'm at a loss to see anywhere in my posting that I advocated stealing from everyone. As for naive and clueless, name calling just means that you are having a hard time attacking my logic and want to run on emotion instead. If it makes you feel any better, I don't advocate a stateless society because the rights of children, among other things, need to be protected. I do not understand, however, why we waste time fighting a meaningless drug war and screwing with the free market just because we somehow think we can change society by attacking the symptoms of bad behavior, not the underlying reasons.
Uhh, explain to me why prostitution is a crime? If a person is being forced into sex work, this is kidnapping and slavery. If a person embezzles from another person, that is theft. You DO understand the difference between malum prohibitum and malum in se?
The problem with all this is that "money laundering" generally comes from activities which are victimless crimes, and are therefore not a crime because they don't affect anyone but the person doing them. Gambling is illegal because it is market competition with state-run lottos and approved casinos. Drugs besides alcohol and prescribed pills are illegal because they circumvent a distribution apparatus. Etc. So, when you see a story like this, just realize it's because someone with political power is concerned that they might not be getting as much of a cut or sucking down as many tax dollars as they want, not because it is somehow making the world a better place to regulate it even more.
This has nada to do with making guns or whatever. It has everything to do with trying to retain a monopoly or control on production, not unlike VCRs were seen as a threat to the flow of information. A mass shooting will only be used as an excuse to restrict these, which has been the intent all along, just like regulating the internet was the real goal of "protecting the children" or whatever excuse was the cause of the day.
I remember the good ol' EA days, when they had nice fold-open packaging complete with campy pictures of the development team and some other neat odds and ends. In a way, it kind of symbolizes the direction that gaming has gone, from being very much a novel and experimental field, into something which has become ruled by focus groups and boardroom politics (I guess that parallels movies, too). I don't think that firing this guy is going to make much of a difference to EA's business model in the long term, but seeing the titan stumble a little bit may at least signal to indie developers that there is still plenty of room to grow and capitalize on the paralysis at the AAA level. Come to think of it, the last AAA game I played that really screamed "Wow!" was Red Dead Redemption. Since then, I've found things like FTL to be far more compelling. Anyway, get off my lawn, EA execs!
My two cents on the insanely high draconian penalty for this is that we are living in an age where truth has become so malleable than anything which even remotely threatens the apparent integrity of that truth becomes a greater offense than any actual damages committed by that act. In this sense, it is a sort of heresy against the proto-religion of the state and media, where hackers are not unlike astronomers pointing out that the sun does not revolve around the earth. Instead, they are pointing out that the official messaging is so false that it doesn't deserve much more than a joke headline. The same sort of thinking applies to Wikileaks -- everyone overseas pretty much knew what was going on already (I would guess that the Afghanistanis are smart enough to figure out that a gunship blew their family away, not a random lightning bolt), but what they did called into question the "official" flow of information, and ultimately, the "religion of the state." This really isn't much different from the thinking of the Soviet Union back in the day -- anyone disputing the official message was a far greater threat that someone stealing a truck or smuggling goods (the SU had a surprisingly high crime rate in spite of their draconian controls). We've just now gone digital with all this.
I thought about this a while, as I got to the point where I went from having the luxury to go to the gym 3-4 times a week and run daily down to having little time.
My solution was to take a mile walk one or two times a day. This gets me away from the keyboard and gives me a chance to think.
At night, I have some free weights at home and will lift for maybe ten minutes and do some situps, knee bends, etc, just trying to exercise the large muscle groups.
It's not a great or complete workout program, but at least keeps me somewhat fit.
Help me out, but why does a "news" outlet that was a cheerleader for invading Iraq -- which has resulted in real atrocities, such as an increase in rapes and murders of Iraqi civilians -- and has continually voiced a fanboy-like enthusiasm for torture, feel that it has any room or moral high ground to talk about objectionable content in a video game?
Charles Whitman, in 1966, shot and killed 16 people on the University of Texas at Austin campus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) Again, in 1966. I can only speculate -- did people back then blame pinball machines for the violence? Or did they just realize that when someone takes it in their mind to kill someone, they're going to go kill them, and they don't need a video game as their model?
Given that it seems like quite a few cases of people who have illegal porn on their computers are caught when they take their computer in for service, why don't we just pass a law requiring that everyone has to take their computers in for random checks? Really, absurdity doesn't play a role in these decisions, does it?
I couldn't agree more with your post. The Left and the Right both consistently support bigger government -- the Left loves the welfare state, the Right loves the warfare state, and it's really just a matter of which of those two variables in the equation of government gets more emphasis.
The really scary sentence in the article is "And the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence to seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity." So, all of a sudden, we have drones that are flying around and are programmed to look for suspicious behavior...is it suspicious to wave at a drone to show you have nothing to hide? Or is it suspicious to ignore it? Of course, in time, these drones will be armed -- non-lethal munitions at first (like tear gas), then probably something a little more potent as defense contractor sales reps convince police departments they need to deal with American citizens just like the military deals with potential insurgents (you know, someone herding a couple of goats).
This is how it really works:
Hilf: Linux is dead. Since I said Linux is dead, all the Linux users have to switch to another operating system. Therefore, since Vista is the greatest thing to ever hit a desktop, all (former) Linux users are now buying Vista!
Ballmer: I could buy 40 million folding chairs!
Slashdot Mirror
..."Stasibook" and be done with it?
I've followed the alternative currency movement off and on for some time, and it's interesting to see how governments take issue with them. What is more interesting here is that, while Norway obviously doesn't necessarily recognize a legal bucket a bitcoin can easily fit into, it's nevertheless viewing them as having some worth or profitability, and not participating in the normal flow of currency exchanges. In that sense, at least bitcoins seem to be taking on an intrinsic worth that isn't necessarily a characteristic of fiat currencies. While I don't have experience using bitcoins, this is definitely an interesting development.
...about this. Just about everyone in the world is dependent on computers at some point, whether or not it's an immediate influence on their life. Having at least some clue of what's happening under the hood is a Good Thing for them, even if they are never a professional dev or IT person. I know far too many people who have the "black box" mentality, and as a result, are much poorer at interacting with computers than they would otherwise be.
One of Android's selling points has always been it's open nature, and the fact that it's not as locked down as iOS. This seems like it's taking a step in the direction of locking down the OS for the user, and unlocking it for everyone else...
Wikipedia has become staffed with a sizeable number of edit trolls, who know a lot about a tiny slice of something, and think that gives them great and wise moral authority over the entire domain...somewhat like real academia. I found this out the hard way when I made an edit to an article, which was modest, relevant, and neutral in tone. Immediately, it got removed by someone who left a mini-screed about it. I checked the person's history and found that they had numerous arguments with other users, but apparently still retained their account because they managed to effectively play rules lawyer with Wikipedia's policies. Again, like real academia. That said, articles like this make me cringe, because it a) turns people off of what is really an excellent resource, and b) makes Wikipedia sound like it is somehow less worthy than traditional reference sources (where no one sees the bile and acrimony that goes into the production of some of those works). It's like anything, some people are bound and determined to play the chemically imbalanced turd in the punchbowl.
Military pilots -- flying multi-million dollar machines loaded with all kinds of nasty stuff -- don't have a problem with heads-up displays and helmet-mounted sights. These are considered to be useful tools. Why doesn't glass fall into the same category? Maybe a driving app coupled to a sensor suite on a car?
It'll be interesting to see what happens if we eventually get "chipped" -- would that qualify as a medical device or a mobile device? Etc.
There needs to be a distinction made between innovation and refinement. It's true that most "innovation" is just building a better mousetrap. Real innovation is taking a look at a fish and deciding a submarine doesn't need fins to swim -- in other words, first defining a problem, then a new context to solve it in, not steadily deriving from existing processes or devices. If it's a matter of derivation and refinement, this isn't a difficult problem...just determine some "win states" and then let semi-automated software begin to crunch designs. However, being able to properly frame the problem in the first place is where the real difficulty lies, so the person writing a program to "innovate" at that point is already performing the process of innovation, while trying to create a process to perform it..
Thank you for pointing that out again. The marriage laws were also passed in order to control interracial marriage. It's funny how many people run around supporting bad laws and stupid ideas because of prejudice and ignorance a few generations back...maybe it's more evidence for memes, I don't know.
you're either *very* innocent about how the world works or utterly and completely clueless.
I don't think the proper word is "or" but "and".... Very naive AND completely clueless.. Victimless crimes, shesh, Just because you cannot point to a single person or small group that is a victim does not mean the crime is somehow less or that ripping off a large corporation is somehow better than stealing grandma's life savings.
Wrong is wrong and unethical behavior is unethical even if you don't have a clear victim you harmed.
What is "wrong?" Unethical doesn't equal illegal. You can either show damages to another person or you cannot. If I knock down your mailbox with my car, for example, I have damaged your property. If I knocked it over with your hand in it, I've damaged you. If I grab your wallet, then you're a victim of theft. There is a clear victim. I'm at a loss to see anywhere in my posting that I advocated stealing from everyone. As for naive and clueless, name calling just means that you are having a hard time attacking my logic and want to run on emotion instead. If it makes you feel any better, I don't advocate a stateless society because the rights of children, among other things, need to be protected. I do not understand, however, why we waste time fighting a meaningless drug war and screwing with the free market just because we somehow think we can change society by attacking the symptoms of bad behavior, not the underlying reasons.
Uhh, explain to me why prostitution is a crime? If a person is being forced into sex work, this is kidnapping and slavery. If a person embezzles from another person, that is theft. You DO understand the difference between malum prohibitum and malum in se?
The problem with all this is that "money laundering" generally comes from activities which are victimless crimes, and are therefore not a crime because they don't affect anyone but the person doing them. Gambling is illegal because it is market competition with state-run lottos and approved casinos. Drugs besides alcohol and prescribed pills are illegal because they circumvent a distribution apparatus. Etc. So, when you see a story like this, just realize it's because someone with political power is concerned that they might not be getting as much of a cut or sucking down as many tax dollars as they want, not because it is somehow making the world a better place to regulate it even more.
Then how did Game Dev Story get approved??
This has nada to do with making guns or whatever. It has everything to do with trying to retain a monopoly or control on production, not unlike VCRs were seen as a threat to the flow of information. A mass shooting will only be used as an excuse to restrict these, which has been the intent all along, just like regulating the internet was the real goal of "protecting the children" or whatever excuse was the cause of the day.
I remember the good ol' EA days, when they had nice fold-open packaging complete with campy pictures of the development team and some other neat odds and ends. In a way, it kind of symbolizes the direction that gaming has gone, from being very much a novel and experimental field, into something which has become ruled by focus groups and boardroom politics (I guess that parallels movies, too). I don't think that firing this guy is going to make much of a difference to EA's business model in the long term, but seeing the titan stumble a little bit may at least signal to indie developers that there is still plenty of room to grow and capitalize on the paralysis at the AAA level. Come to think of it, the last AAA game I played that really screamed "Wow!" was Red Dead Redemption. Since then, I've found things like FTL to be far more compelling. Anyway, get off my lawn, EA execs!
My two cents on the insanely high draconian penalty for this is that we are living in an age where truth has become so malleable than anything which even remotely threatens the apparent integrity of that truth becomes a greater offense than any actual damages committed by that act. In this sense, it is a sort of heresy against the proto-religion of the state and media, where hackers are not unlike astronomers pointing out that the sun does not revolve around the earth. Instead, they are pointing out that the official messaging is so false that it doesn't deserve much more than a joke headline. The same sort of thinking applies to Wikileaks -- everyone overseas pretty much knew what was going on already (I would guess that the Afghanistanis are smart enough to figure out that a gunship blew their family away, not a random lightning bolt), but what they did called into question the "official" flow of information, and ultimately, the "religion of the state." This really isn't much different from the thinking of the Soviet Union back in the day -- anyone disputing the official message was a far greater threat that someone stealing a truck or smuggling goods (the SU had a surprisingly high crime rate in spite of their draconian controls). We've just now gone digital with all this.
I thought about this a while, as I got to the point where I went from having the luxury to go to the gym 3-4 times a week and run daily down to having little time. My solution was to take a mile walk one or two times a day. This gets me away from the keyboard and gives me a chance to think. At night, I have some free weights at home and will lift for maybe ten minutes and do some situps, knee bends, etc, just trying to exercise the large muscle groups. It's not a great or complete workout program, but at least keeps me somewhat fit.
...registering www.gayspacenazis.com now...
Help me out, but why does a "news" outlet that was a cheerleader for invading Iraq -- which has resulted in real atrocities, such as an increase in rapes and murders of Iraqi civilians -- and has continually voiced a fanboy-like enthusiasm for torture, feel that it has any room or moral high ground to talk about objectionable content in a video game?
Charles Whitman, in 1966, shot and killed 16 people on the University of Texas at Austin campus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) Again, in 1966. I can only speculate -- did people back then blame pinball machines for the violence? Or did they just realize that when someone takes it in their mind to kill someone, they're going to go kill them, and they don't need a video game as their model?
Given that it seems like quite a few cases of people who have illegal porn on their computers are caught when they take their computer in for service, why don't we just pass a law requiring that everyone has to take their computers in for random checks? Really, absurdity doesn't play a role in these decisions, does it?
...Farmville farms you!
I couldn't agree more with your post. The Left and the Right both consistently support bigger government -- the Left loves the welfare state, the Right loves the warfare state, and it's really just a matter of which of those two variables in the equation of government gets more emphasis.
The really scary sentence in the article is "And the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence to seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity." So, all of a sudden, we have drones that are flying around and are programmed to look for suspicious behavior...is it suspicious to wave at a drone to show you have nothing to hide? Or is it suspicious to ignore it? Of course, in time, these drones will be armed -- non-lethal munitions at first (like tear gas), then probably something a little more potent as defense contractor sales reps convince police departments they need to deal with American citizens just like the military deals with potential insurgents (you know, someone herding a couple of goats).
This is how it really works: Hilf: Linux is dead. Since I said Linux is dead, all the Linux users have to switch to another operating system. Therefore, since Vista is the greatest thing to ever hit a desktop, all (former) Linux users are now buying Vista! Ballmer: I could buy 40 million folding chairs!