The difficulty in implementing an AI that does not have full battlefield awareness such as in StarCraft is the difficulty in AI reconnoitering and pathing. IIRC it was this limitation that drove Blizzard to implement AI omniscience in SC - both the coding difficulty as well as the horsepower available at the time.
As far as accuracy of the AI as in shooters, it seems to me we may finally have a use for "fuzzy math"[1]. Let the AI have perfect knowledge of what it can "see", but have the calculation, or indeed the original data, have a "fuzziness" to it. For shooting accuracy that is a closer approximation of human capabilities. Have a built in random error margin. Sometimes it will be accurate enough, sometimes it won't be. Perhaps for some applications having an AI that can adapt to account for said error (again with the adaptation having a built in fuzziness margin) would be appropriate.
For many applications it seems to me something as simple as approximation can help with this problem. Mathematics tends toward perfection, no "good enough". AI's need "ok, that's good enough" ability.
Another possibility for simple expansion is the time factor. Touched upon by the parent is the reaction time. How quickly the AI responds is often an indication of whether it is an AI. If I am playing SC with human and AI enemies, I can tell which it is by how fast it responds to an attack or a two pronged attack. Provide a built in, random, fuzzy delay time to actions.
Combine these with limiting the parallel cognitive abilities of an AI - make it have to choose which attack to ignore or to split it's attention. Shoot for emergent behavior and you'll likely find a more natural response. Intelligence is not precise calculation, it is making correct for the context choices based on fuzzy and limited knowledge. It involves refining of estimates and calculations, and conflicting goals and options.
For military oriented games such as RTS or FPS AIs, give it the ability to be a hero or a coward. IIRC long ago there was a game called Close Combat that did this. Each individual of a unit could panic, carry out orders, or become the Spartan - one soldier taking down a platoon.
But for overall realism, how good the AI is is moot when you can see the guy behind the wall because his helmet is partially sticking through it. That math seems pretty fuzzy, maybe the codebase is already there?;)
Sometimes I'd like to win because I got lucky, or lose because the AI got lucky. When everything is highly precise, luck is excluded.
1. Fuzzy as in "1/4 inch + 1/3" is about half an inch".
Socialism/Fascism/Statism/Communism: I'm form the government, and I'm going to help. Capitalism: Hi, I'm form a business, how can I help?
IMO those calling the second arrogant and insulting are being petty and bigoted. Asking someone if they NEED help is often worse than asking if they would like help or how you can help them. Regardless of the situation if you ask Putin if he NEEDs help he will always say no - no way he would admit to NEEDing help. He *might*, even if highly unlikely admit to wanting help. And the least offensive question is to ask how you can help. That Putin took offense at that is either a fault of translation or nothing less than sheer arrogance.
As a libertarian, I find you Socialist's never ending insistence that non-Socialists are the arrogance- and corruption-mongers hypocritical, self-serving, and demonstrably incorrect. Particularly when in the context of a capitalist offering help versus socialism's mandatory redistribution as alleged help.
If this was Dell offering money to help in the wake of a natural disaster we'd not hear from you. If there was a natural disaster and Dell did not offer help, we'd hear form you. But here we have Dell simply asking how it can help and you people (there are others on this page doing it - Socialist or not), get bent out of shape. Keep going, it merely illustrates the hypocrisy of the failed ideology of mass-Socialism
"Just like with cars, some people are mechanics, some people just change oil and filters and others just drive the car. It's a shame the linux community can't understand the same thing about computers."
There is a distinct difference between understanding and agreeing. You are not saying we should *understand*, but that we should agree - you are just using the word understand incorrectly. To make the illustration clear, I understand why some people are racists, but I do not, as a consequence or otherwise, agree with them.
"why should we blame her if she looked on her computer and *GASP* didn't see Microsoft Word"
Because she somehow "accidentally" clicked through many additional steps to get a non-Microsoft operating system on her computer. No, you don't "accidentally" do that. Then again, taken from another point of view, why should we not point that finger directly at Microsoft. After all, Word/Office does in fact operate on non-MS OSes, but not Linux. That is their choice, not hers. Why should "linux users" be blamed when Microsoft chooses to not make their software available for Linux?
"Is it possible that just maybe, he classes said as a requirement you needed MSWord for the class materials? Maybe there are spreadsheets that are handed out that have tons of formulas and macros in them; is the instructor going to worry about OO macro compatibility."
MSWord doesn't do spreadsheets. But that aside, let us take another PoV again. He shouldn't have to care because spreadsheets should be the same. Yet MS insists on making and keeping theirs non-interoperable. Maybe spreadsheets should be treatable like black boxes. After all, math formulas are math formulas, right? Oh, but this prof is at a *technical* school. He *should* be expected to know and account for such differences, at least he should be if it is a *quality* school. Unless the class is "MS Word" or "MS Excel", it should be vendor agnostic.
Schools are focusing on a single vendor or language and billing it as the broad category. This is wrong. Yes, the prof *should* be better than what you suggest. Mediocrity and false claims are the last thing we need in professors, instructors, or teachers.
And finally, I'm sick of the arrogant "you Linux users are all ignoring the ignorant people" attitude. So what if we/they are? It is an equally valid argument to say the opposite, that people should know how to use things they use. Your continued analogy to "people just drive their car" is false to your claim anyway. People go to classes to learn how to drive the car. You don't just get to fire it up and go. A general purpose computer is nothing until you determine what and how to do something on it. If this woman was going to a driving school that insisted she bring a gasoline powered car, yet she went to a the dealer and insisted on and ordered a diesel powered one, where would you assign the blame when she couldn't fuel up at the school's pump or that the gasoline she put in at the school caused it to not run? Hey, it is clearly the attitude of those who make diesel cars when the rest of the world doesn't want to know what kind of fuel goes in their car they just want to drive it, right?
For all those who think computers, Linux or otherwise, should be so simple that any idiot can walk up, sit down, and use it productively, with no training at all - you can go make one that way. Until you accomplish that, all you have are vague and false platitudes and "comfort theater" - your proclaiming these non-extant virtues serve only to promote a sense of superiority in attitude. Meanwhile, the rest of us are working in reality. We recognize that "one size fits all" is a lie. We recognize that mediocrity is easy, and that handing out gold medals to anyone who tries out for the Olympics is stupid. Some things in life should be a challenge. That some will not succeed is part of life - the game of inches.
Except terminally ill people aren't going to be terribly reliable in that they could croak any moment, such as shortly after launch, thus wasting the resources spent. Further, they may be less motivated to do things that prevent premature death.
"You are forgetting we still haven't actually resolved the problem of preventing crew irradiation during their travel to/from Mars."
No, we have. Indeed, we've even determined it isn't the giant problem Hollywood and the general public people make it out to be.
"That is a show-stopper, 100% chance of being irradiated beats the off-chance to get a new world disease."
Did you walk outside today? Congratulations, you got irradiated. Ever flown transcontinental or transoceanic? Again, you got irradiated. Go read up on the actual science and you'll find that the problem is lesser than imagined, and easily solvable w/o exotic (to today) technologies or materials. Cosmic radiation accounts for about half of the radiation your body will experience over your lifetime.
According to BIER (which determines/states the statistical chances of getting cancer over 30 years) and the amount of radiation likely to be received counting solar flares during transit, spending months on Mars, and getting back the chances for a male astronaut to get cancer over the following 30 years of life rises from 20% to less than 21%. Females are slightly higher due to the increased risk of breast cancer.
Oh, that's huge, right? So scary! Let us put this in perspective. If you were a career Trans-Atlantic airline pilot, a 25 year career would give you more than half of the expected radiation dose of a two and a half year conjunction mission to Mars.
But what about the solar storms? What about sudden doses? Radiation sickness occurs when an burst of radiation around the 75 rem mark is experienced. It varies by individual, but 75 rem is the generally accepted level for immediate or prompt radiation sickness to occur. In a vessel shielded with basic known and proven technology and methods, the most a traveller will experience in a normal range solar flare is about 5 rem, and is accounted for in the above noted 50 rem over 2.5 years conjunction profile mission total.
We can't *prevent* irradiation here on Earth, either. Cosmic rays and local material radiation and all. Indeed it has been found that the body seems to actually need some radiation.
TL;DR: Radiation isn't the bogeyman made out to be, it isn't as lethal as the PP said, and isn't a quagmire.
Unless a strain of bacteria turns up that is resistant to every antibiotic you have on board and you are several light minutes away from an alternative, in which case it's bye bye mr.astronaut. We really haven't evolved that much from 15th century explorers. Take away this vast safety blanket of civilization and we're just as resourceful, and equally helpless as any explorer in the past 50000 years.
As if all bacteria is bad. News flash: it isn't. Travelers will undergo group isolation to acclimate themselves to what each other has before going. Further, if a mysterious killer super bacteria that is resistant (which doesn't mean immune) to everything we have pops up you are as good as dead here on Earth as well. That's the meaning of not being able to treat a deadly bacteria. But again, this is just the boogeyman of bullshit suppositions. The PP is still right. Getting a cut won't lead to amputation or "turn into sepsis or bactaremia and kill you". Your mythical super bug notwithstanding. Hell, I can postulate that a mythical superbug could land on Earth via meteorite and be immune, not just resistant, to all our technology and wipe out all of Earth. But just like yours, such is the realm of Hollywood and bad science fiction, not science reality.
We are far more resourceful than explorers of the past. We have communication methods that do not involve traveling back to your starting point for example. We can take enormous amounts of information with us as well. We can take the necessary machinery and tools to craft new things and effect repairs that were not available to explorers of the 1400s for example, or even the 1800's or early 1900's. It isn't a matter of evolution, it is a matter of capability. If you want to argue that we are no more capable than we were 500 years ago, feel free. But don't expect us to agree with that untenable position. Modern day explorers have far better navigational equipment and capacities. For example, sailors couldn't navigate under cloud covered skies with much accuracy in the 14th century. Today we won't have that problem - even on Earth.
Now if you meant "take away all of our vast array of know-how and technology that we have built up over the last 50k years" then sure, but wtf would be the point in such a stupid comment?
It's a tad worse than the new world. No air and no food.
The ocean did not provide water, and very little food. Think that might have been crucial? Perhaps that is why they took food and water (and rum) on the ships?
Dust doesn't corrode things.
"No Open water" This one always cracks me up, it demonstrates serious ignorance and bias. Go ahead, get in a boat, go out to sea for a few weeks and try to live off the salty seawater you will get. Try to cross the Atlantic w/o taking your own water or desalinisation equipment. Be sure to have your will filled out first.
So much for "open water" being a plus. Mars has the mineral deposits we need to sustain settlement. The ocean does not. Traveling the oceans even today requires taking our own food, fuel, water, and shelter. If you want to "live off the sea" you need special equipment. And you have to deal with whatever air you get, at whatever temperature it happens to be.
Taking our own air is far less of a problem than taking food on the exploration and colony ships the old world sent out centuries ago. We can actually grow our own food on a scale large enough to provide for the people going.
Of course it is an alien environment, but that doesn't mean it is a bad idea, or impossible, or even "really fucking hard". In an interplanetary craft we'll have power, communication, connectivity (lag will suck though), climate controlled atmosphere, food (and the ability to preserve it other than just salting meat for example), an array of entertainment options, medical knowledge and supplies, water, the ability to grow additional food, etc.. If we run into unknowns we'll almost always have the intellectual resources of the folks at mission control and whomever they can get to help.
Compared to say Columbus, it'll be a walk in the park. Forget about Hollywood's take on Mars and go learn the realities of it. The challenge is only grander in scale, not difficulty.
You should lurk on science forums more often if those are your fears, and put less credence in Hollywood's version of science.
a) You are slowly being cooked by solar radiation here on Earth. Cosmic radiation is even getting you right now. The reality is that the radiation problem is more of a minor hurdle. But misinformed or non-informed people fear it because Hollywood tells them to.
b) DId you know the space station leaks? yet they manage. Again, "Hollywood Science" FTL.
c) If you can;'t hack small confines for months at a time, then stay here. Believe it or not, most people who do those things do not go nuts. Some do, and Hollywood capitalizes on that very small subset. Even those who do, tend to do it alone.
d) Mars is far less inhospitable than hard vacuum of space. It *has* and atmosphere. A dome with a diameter of a mere 50 meters would take days to weeks to deflate if you fired a 50 caliber bullet into the dome, for example. The atmosphere it does have provides magnitudes more radiation and temperature buffer than you'll find in open space. Plus it actually has resources. Open space is well, just open space.
Seriously, the first people to go to Mars will not have a deathwish. Those types of people make missions of any kind other than suicide ones (and even some of those) a disaster waiting to happen. Perhaps you should not judge everyone by your foibles, ignorance, and insecurities. We know more about Mars and how to deal with it's challenges than did Columbus about where he was going. Columbus couldn't take 99% of what he was going to need, and as a result had serious and fatal problems. By comparison a trip to Mars, or even settling Mars is a relatively far less challenging for mankind thing to do than setting out blindly across the Atlantic was for the Vikings, Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans.
So stop insulting everyone who doesn't share your "fearful", misinformed, and complacent wish by saying they must have a death wish. Were just not as ignorant and complacent as you, that's all. Seriously.
Is any body giggling when you read this sentence from the article? I was imagining Ballmer looking around for a chair, and the expression on his face would be priceless when he found that all chairs are bolted down:)
Nah, he throws chairs, so I am sure he's watched Wrestling thus would know to look under the ring, errr I mean stage right next to the tables.
It (c|w)ould have worked, if allowed to. But unfortunately, some people are under the delusion that the government creating an insanely large financial company, giving it all sorts of money and preferential treatment, then moving it into a decision that it would not make on the free market (giving loans to people who can't pay them) is staying out of the free market's way.
That's pretty delusional. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were government powered organizations. It was ill-advised (at the time even, not just in hindsight) to provide for a company backed by billions of federal government dollars to wade into a market and create a new market in "bad loans". This notion that the lack of regulation caused this problem is absurd: the financial industry is among the most heavily regulated ones in the US. In particular Freddie and Fannie were overseen by http://www.ofheo.gov/ .
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were started as government entities (New Deal), and after the insane amounts of taxpayer money continually granted to the pair after "privatization" was pushed into holding or guaranteeing fully half of the consumer real estate loans. That is 6 trillion dollars of liability in two government sponsored entities. As GSEs they carried the perception that they were guaranteed by the Federal government, when in fact they were "merely" the beneficiary of billions of government aid. How were they pushed into it? Government regulations requiring the two to have a certain minimum percentage of their purchased mortgages support financing for those at greater credit risk. When that happens it creates and artifical demand for loans that companies woudl not normally make.
So the mortgage companies are willing to make the high-risk loans knowing they won't take the risk because they will sell them to Freddie and Fannie.
The US government has a specific office of oversight just for the financial viability of Freddie and Fannie:
The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 created a regulatory oversight structure for the housing government-sponsored enterprises of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The regulatory oversight was divided to address two functions - their financial safety and soundness and their affordable housing mission. The financial safety and soundness regulation is vested in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO). OFHEO implements, monitors and enforces capital standards for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Between this office and the HUD, we had the government trying to control the demand side of the market by setting what was "affordable" and by creating an artificial floor and demand for loans the market would not make on it's own. This was fuel to the fire of rising prices for housing. As more credit is made available to people that would not ordinarily (in the free market) have it, the amount of money available for housing and the demand for home ownership rises. In fact, even during the vaunted 90's, the price of homes was rising faster than inflation. Combined with this was the fact that people were on average putting a lot less "down" on the home thus making a higher loan to value (LTV) position. This is additional increased risk in a mortgage.
The fact of the matter is that Freddie and Fannie were/are both heavily regulated by the federal government, with quarterly reports and analysis on their financial viability and capital rates required by law. If you were the type of person that likes to make informed decisions and statements then the above link will take you to said reports as they are publicly available.
Ultimately the problem again lies in excessive centralization, and the government provided the means to do so in ways that it would not allow truly private entities to do so, nor should they have. Yet it was government regulation that drove this, not the lack of it.
"If there exists no route from me to another server on the Internet and the reason that route doesn't exist is due to my ISP, I say that ISP has violated Net Neutrality"
And you could be wrong, too. There may be solid technical reasons behind it, or business reasons that have nothing to do with "neutrality". Net Neutrality is not about who you peer with, it is about how you treat traffic. Network peering is an electronic version of individual association.
You still trust Blizzard? Yet Blizzard can ban your WoW account. How is that different from EA banning your EA account? Diablo III or Starcraft II might be the same way.
And yes I too am eagerly awaiting SC2 and D3. But I am under no illusions that Blizzard doesn't have banning policies and methods.
Here you already paid for service and now they're kicking you out based on their interpretation of acceptable free speech.
Like it or not, free speech ONLY applies with respect to governments, not private individuals, companies, or even corporations. The constitution does not say you can say whatever you want wherever you want and however you want. It only says the government can't restrict that. Trust me, you start being an asshat on my porch or my living room and you will be ejected with force if necessary. That isn't a violation of free speech. Banning you from a private forum for *any* reason based on your speech is perfectly moral and legal - because it is their forum.
Paying for the service? Well you also agreed to a the terms of service. If said terms of service have consequences for you breaking them, then tough nuggets, YOU broke them. Paying money does not explicitly grant you the right to be an asshat on someone else's property/forum/show/paper/etc. and ignore agreements you made.
And no it isn't like buying a car. A car is physical property you purchase. Software isn't. All you get to "own" is the disc, and even the license agreement says you will destroy it on request. It is more like paying to stay in a hotel room for the night or week, and you start abusing other guests, making asstons of noise at 2 AM, and they boot you. You agreed to not do those things, and you broke your end of the agreement so they boot you. They may even ban you from their chain. And they would be perfectly in their rights to do so.
This is influenced by another right: the right to association. If EA doesn't want to be associated with asshats, it is their right to dissassociate with asshats and yes that precludes any imagined rights to their service you may have.
I say they should have a more-than-forum ban. Maybe, just maybe, it might help bring some needed decorum to said forums. The main "problem" on the Internet that causes such asshattery is the lack of consequences for the actions people take. "Oh ban me, I'll just make a new account" doesn't quite do it. But tie it to you in a way that is more difficult (and might affect your dad's game time) and there become real consequences.
You payed for the game. It's your goddamned right to play the thing, you gave them money in order for it to become your property.
I take it you didn't read the EULA. Sorry, but no you didn't pay for anything more than the *disc* to be your property, and a *revokable* license to use the software. If they were to actually do this, no lawsuit would be successful as you do NOT own the game, you own a plastic disc shaped object with software that you would not be licensed to use.
"to me this does not include "false information" (more of a good-faith effort to get it right) and does not include "stating something obvious or a truism"."
You are missing the point and assuming assertions not made, The point is that merely supporting your opinion does not make your opinion informative. Doing research and explaining research does not validate an opinion made. Ypu can provide all teh reasons and research that supports your (hypothetical) opinion that the Spaghetti Monster is real, yet that does not make your opinion any more informative. An argument may be entirely logical - it can be logically correct and correctly logical, and still be wrong. If you do not understand that I would recommend some good courses and/or books on logic.
Furtere I did not say stating a truism was what you said. I made an analogy. You have clearly misread that into something it was not. You have then proceeded to raise it as a strawman and then beat your strawman. You then proceeded to make veiled ad hominems based on your strawman. Congratulations are in order for thoroughly trashing your strawman. However, despite providng several reasons supporting your argument against your strawman, your conclusion was in fact incorrect as it was based on false assumptions and interpretations.
Interesting how you are unable to demonstrate the position you argue from. You assume the negative side. Your original argument contained no qualifiers, and therefore does in fact include people who do "careful research" and still get it wrong. For example, One may state "as long as someone does A,B, and C they are entitled to D, without regard to E". Yet this can be wrong, even if logically accurate via supported assertions. Your stated conditions for deserving an Informative tag had several qualifiers yet omitted a very crucial one: veracity of the "information" thus presented.
Consider an argument such as this:
"I have examined the possibility that the Spaghetti Monster exists. In order to to this I have found that at sites A, B, and E Spaghetti Monsters are defines as being bald, shorter than 5'2", and have a propensity to post on slashdot. I fit these criteria as am a spaghetti monster myself. Therefore, I assert the Spaghetti Monsters are real". Let us further assume that the poster also includes many references to sites that describe the mythical monster, and that to keep this form being long I've omitted them from the description. Careful research was done, the assertions were supported. Yet, this does not make the post claiming such things informative. Funny, perhaps, but not informative. By not excluding such (all too common) types posts from your criteria your
At no point did I say your assertions included posting obvious information. Sure, the analogy did not fit the "A is like B' form, but "Just as A -is not B, C is not D" is also an analogy, and this is what I did. For you to misread or twist (your choice) this into "you assumed I meant this" is a mistake on your part and as such no matter how well reasoned your argument against that may be, it does not make your opinion that I did so accurate, informative, or insightful. You prattle on about conflating personal opinion or feelings with the moderation system, and I posted a similar issue with regards to the use of "Insightful". You then proceed to fail to separate your personal feelings on the Informative subject and attack me for making the analogy to the same process for Insightful.
In my opinion posting a "hate filled" post is not "more mature". As you stated yourself, the abuse of the moderation system in your example is most often not intentional. As such it is not a matter of maturity as it is not a conscious choice. Making a conscious choice to post a "hate filled" response is hardly being more mature than simply moderating a post based on personal feelings when you are not conscious of the detail of your actions. Maturity is a matter of opinion, and here we clearly have a differing opinion. That makes neither of our opinions informa
The point wasn't the closeness or not closeness of the dollar amount you get, so that the 5% vs 50% comes out close is not relevant to me preference, though it is quite interesting.
The point was the difference in goals and reasons. I'd choose RRMC (it isn't a diversified holding company it is a fully separate company) over Hyundai because even in the current market conditions they are a more reliable and stable investment (IMO). Hyundai sales are down - this is not unexpected as most consumer automotive spending decreases under these conditions. It isn't just "those big american SUVs" either, even the Mini (also owned by BMW IIRC) has seen a significant drop in sales. But no RRMC - because/their/ market is insulated from these economic events. As a non-day-trader investor, that is just as important as how much I might make. Diversification is about more than simply holding different investments, it is also about holding investments of various risk/stability levels to ensure a minimum performance level and provide opportunity to also grow faster rate with more risk.
The point is that it isn't about raw dollars (pounds, pesos, etc), there are other factors. 5% of Hyundai or 50% or RRMC would be a huge chunk of money to invest and I prefer the strategy of playing game sonly with small chunks of money and putting the larger ones in more solid and recession-resistant ventures. Regarding "RR" having had at least one bankruptcy vs. Hyundai... lets talk again when Hyundai is as old as RR, mkay?
Now how does that relate to Tesla? In a recession/most/ people tend to prefer more "solid" investments, and those on the edge tend to suffer as a result. If Telsa had the name-pull as RR they would not be in the situation. The reality is that Tesla is still a startup and thus doe not have the pull.
As far as comparing an automative company to a diversified holding company not being fair, if you think so then don't compare Hyundai to RRMC. That said, when it comes to holding stock or investing in a company, it is certainly a fair comparison - money is fungible.
All this isn't to say that RRMC is *the best* choice, just that it is not obvious or correct that RRMC is the worst choice when facing Hyundai or that Hyundai is the obvious and best choice. For you perhaps Hyundai is the better option, for me it is clearly not.
And just FTR, I don't own half of RR or RRMC, or 5% of Hyundai. I wouldn't turn down a gift of either (though I would try to parlay Hyundai in to RR or something else better than the two choices you presented of course).;)
"For an unrelated example, did you know that if someone does a good deal of research, shares his findings, and explains why he came to the conclusion that he did, that he deserves an Informative mod even if you hate his fucking guts and can't stand any of his opinions? "
Bull. Opinions are NOT "Informative", everyone has them. False "information" is not informative and does not deserve the tag unless the point of the post is to illustrate or correct false information.
Just as stating something obvious or a truism or perception shared by many is not, by definition, insightful; stating an opinion is not informative. If stating an opinion counts as informative almost very post qualifies. Regardless of how thought out or explained it is, stating an opinion is at best insightful or interesting.
"That if you want to tell him how much you hate and disagree with him, the way to do it is by posting a response and not by abusing the moderation system? I'm just not seeing that kind of maturity and that's a shame, as Slashdot is one of the few places where it could be possible. "
Sure, posting how much you hate and disagree with someone is the height of maturity. Slashdot is generally the home of a lot of nerds that grew up with the abuse of the popular kids and/or athletic ones - or at the least growing up in a place they couldn't voice their opinion due to fear (mocking, beating, whatever) from such kids. To expect "maturity" on a site where you can post pretty anonymously is a bit wishful, IMHO.
To me the mature response is to just shrug off and move on. Without abusing the moderation system or the posting system. You won't "see" that maturity however because by definition the rabid posts don't show up.
"Which would you rather own, 5% of Hyundai Motors, or 50% of Rolls Royce."
Rolls Royce, hands down. Why? Dude they make gas turbines, have hands in civil (and military) nuclear power, have seen an increase fo 20 Billion british pounds this year and are making profit hand over fist. Their dividends are increasing, their sales are increasing, they are built on handling several related industries instea dof catering to consumer.... what oh you mean Rolls-Royce Motor Corp?
I'd still take the RRMC 50% ownership. They cater to people unaffected by such market changes. As such they are very insulated from "minor" factors such as 10 dollar gas or average Joes losing their job and house. When you spend millions on cars w/o thinking about it, more expensive gasoline is appealing because it means you are flaunting your wealth even more so.
And guess what, RR is doing even better this year than last - up around 40%. Hyundai is down about 25% IIRC. Hyundai is subject, like most "consumer" vehicles to the whims of the general public. RR is not. While the so-called "luxury market" is said to be falling hard, the reality is it is only the low-end "luxury market". The true luxury market is powered by people with so much money that they can keep buying what they want while we ordinary people are making decisions. I'd *love* to have a piece of that pie.
I'd take the 50% of RR thank you, and pass on 5% of Hyundai to get it. Then again, I am not a day trader, and prefer companies that steadily pay dividends over stocks that I might someday sell for a higher price. Yeah that requires some thought and some work to figure out who to invest in, but the return is more reliable.
Kinda like how banks got into loaning more money than they had to people who could not pay it back because it was easier and now are "suffering" for it.
Yet credit unions which do not operate on these premises seem to be doing just fine.
Actually, yes it is basically sound. Anyone telling you otherwise has an axe to grind, wants to get in on some government money at your expense, or is a media outlet masquerading as news or journalism - selling your fear the advertisers.
The economy *is* basically, and quite thoroughly sound. The strength of an economy in terms of ability to weather significant changes is related to the diversity of the economy. For example, consider the "company town". A place where there is one big employer; mining, manufacturing, etc.. When that company gets hit hard that town gets hammered. If that town's economy is built on say 20 different companies spread across unrelated industries, then a blow to one is not a death knell for the town and it's inhabitants.
The "global economy" or even that of the US alone is a strong one due to unprecedented diversity. While energy costs are reflected in everything we do, for example, they are a much smaller portion of our expenditure than they once were.
Consider it another way: an economy dominated by an industry or business is a form of pollution. Following the phrase "the solution to pollution is dilution", the diversification of industries in the US economy has diluted the effects of a particular industry, or even a few industries having problems. This is precisely what has happened. Many talk about "manufacturing" and how the US NEEDS to focus on manufacturing. But look at what happens to an economy based on manufacturing when demand drops for those goods. It tanks. Hard. Review history for examples.
But consider today's economy. What economists are calling a "crisis" is in fact not a crisis. Sure, it can be a crisis for those negatively affected, but not overall. The movements we see are sometimes larger than prior movements that did cause national and/or global problems. Others are overblown to sell your fear. "Oh the [insert stock market index] saw a downward movement of 1000 points!" and then they leave out or verbally put it in small print that the net change at close was only a hundred or two points. If that index had only just dropped 200 points it would not have been a footnote.
It is a presidential election year in the US. Claims about a failing economy, or an economy in crisis are bullets the politicians and "press" use to shoot your rational thinking down. Politicians these days only seek to get elected to "solve problems" (that they created usually - by trying to "solve problems"), and the "press" wants to sell your fearful eyeballs by making these things leading reports.
Energy shortage? The rise in oil prices this time was faster than in the 70's when we had literal gas rationing. I know many of you were not even born when you could only fill up base don the odd/even nature of the day and your license plate numbers, or when stations had to use red/yellow/green flags to designate who could buy gas, or if they even had any.
All this is not to say there are not shifts going on. The economic plates are shifting. Oil is going to see a new floor in price not due to any decrease in supply but due to increase in demand by "The Third World" (TTW). Same with food. Interestingly both of these have been kept artificially low by the various governments of the world. Same with the so-called "Credit Crunch" of today. It was centralized further and further over the last couple decades (in the name of regulation or efficiency), and underwritten essentially by government. That is undergoing a shift, but it is not a crisis.
Two years from now this hype of a crisis will be relegated to the back sections of the proverbial paper, and "look back" sections of so-called news shows. It'll be a footnote. Not because of anything the politicians and governments *do*, but in spite of them. And in 2018 we'll see it all over again though with a different industry that is "too big to fail". We have become so accustomed to a specific growth that simply having less growth is seen as a disaster. That perception needs addressed. But good luck getting pundits and politicians to talk about that.
Cute and appropriately paranoid, but wrong. It wouldn't get anyone arrested because 1 GB messages won't be traversing very many public email systems since there will be limitations on email size and the time it would take to send such a message would likely exceed timeouts.
You'd have to break it up in to many more smaller messages.
And you could simply make the messages some random system monitoring information like CPU/DIsk usage stats.
"But they are not going to be reading everyone's emails everyday. That doesn't make the system any more acceptable but it will show that they are not going anywhere near the 'microphone in very home, restaurant etc' claim that someone posted earlier."
Why not? They can simply record the data going into the microphone to be examined later. What would the difference be between "merely" storing every email sent and "merely" recording every conversation? Just the size of the DB really.
Slashdot Mirror
The difficulty in implementing an AI that does not have full battlefield awareness such as in StarCraft is the difficulty in AI reconnoitering and pathing. IIRC it was this limitation that drove Blizzard to implement AI omniscience in SC - both the coding difficulty as well as the horsepower available at the time.
As far as accuracy of the AI as in shooters, it seems to me we may finally have a use for "fuzzy math"[1]. Let the AI have perfect knowledge of what it can "see", but have the calculation, or indeed the original data, have a "fuzziness" to it. For shooting accuracy that is a closer approximation of human capabilities. Have a built in random error margin. Sometimes it will be accurate enough, sometimes it won't be. Perhaps for some applications having an AI that can adapt to account for said error (again with the adaptation having a built in fuzziness margin) would be appropriate.
For many applications it seems to me something as simple as approximation can help with this problem. Mathematics tends toward perfection, no "good enough". AI's need "ok, that's good enough" ability.
Another possibility for simple expansion is the time factor. Touched upon by the parent is the reaction time. How quickly the AI responds is often an indication of whether it is an AI. If I am playing SC with human and AI enemies, I can tell which it is by how fast it responds to an attack or a two pronged attack. Provide a built in, random, fuzzy delay time to actions.
Combine these with limiting the parallel cognitive abilities of an AI - make it have to choose which attack to ignore or to split it's attention. Shoot for emergent behavior and you'll likely find a more natural response. Intelligence is not precise calculation, it is making correct for the context choices based on fuzzy and limited knowledge. It involves refining of estimates and calculations, and conflicting goals and options.
For military oriented games such as RTS or FPS AIs, give it the ability to be a hero or a coward. IIRC long ago there was a game called Close Combat that did this. Each individual of a unit could panic, carry out orders, or become the Spartan - one soldier taking down a platoon.
But for overall realism, how good the AI is is moot when you can see the guy behind the wall because his helmet is partially sticking through it. That math seems pretty fuzzy, maybe the codebase is already there? ;)
Sometimes I'd like to win because I got lucky, or lose because the AI got lucky. When everything is highly precise, luck is excluded.
1. Fuzzy as in "1/4 inch + 1/3" is about half an inch".
Oh the political irony.
Socialism/Fascism/Statism/Communism: I'm form the government, and I'm going to help.
Capitalism: Hi, I'm form a business, how can I help?
IMO those calling the second arrogant and insulting are being petty and bigoted. Asking someone if they NEED help is often worse than asking if they would like help or how you can help them. Regardless of the situation if you ask Putin if he NEEDs help he will always say no - no way he would admit to NEEDing help. He *might*, even if highly unlikely admit to wanting help. And the least offensive question is to ask how you can help. That Putin took offense at that is either a fault of translation or nothing less than sheer arrogance.
As a libertarian, I find you Socialist's never ending insistence that non-Socialists are the arrogance- and corruption-mongers hypocritical, self-serving, and demonstrably incorrect. Particularly when in the context of a capitalist offering help versus socialism's mandatory redistribution as alleged help.
If this was Dell offering money to help in the wake of a natural disaster we'd not hear from you. If there was a natural disaster and Dell did not offer help, we'd hear form you. But here we have Dell simply asking how it can help and you people (there are others on this page doing it - Socialist or not), get bent out of shape. Keep going, it merely illustrates the hypocrisy of the failed ideology of mass-Socialism
"This girl is typical of the mainstream, "
No, she isn't. If she is, then the world is terminally screwed.
"Just like with cars, some people are mechanics, some people just change oil and filters and others just drive the car. It's a shame the linux community can't understand the same thing about computers."
There is a distinct difference between understanding and agreeing. You are not saying we should *understand*, but that we should agree - you are just using the word understand incorrectly. To make the illustration clear, I understand why some people are racists, but I do not, as a consequence or otherwise, agree with them.
"why should we blame her if she looked on her computer and *GASP* didn't see Microsoft Word"
Because she somehow "accidentally" clicked through many additional steps to get a non-Microsoft operating system on her computer. No, you don't "accidentally" do that. Then again, taken from another point of view, why should we not point that finger directly at Microsoft. After all, Word/Office does in fact operate on non-MS OSes, but not Linux. That is their choice, not hers. Why should "linux users" be blamed when Microsoft chooses to not make their software available for Linux?
"Is it possible that just maybe, he classes said as a requirement you needed MSWord for the class materials? Maybe there are spreadsheets that are handed out that have tons of formulas and macros in them; is the instructor going to worry about OO macro compatibility."
MSWord doesn't do spreadsheets. But that aside, let us take another PoV again. He shouldn't have to care because spreadsheets should be the same. Yet MS insists on making and keeping theirs non-interoperable. Maybe spreadsheets should be treatable like black boxes. After all, math formulas are math formulas, right? Oh, but this prof is at a *technical* school. He *should* be expected to know and account for such differences, at least he should be if it is a *quality* school. Unless the class is "MS Word" or "MS Excel", it should be vendor agnostic.
Schools are focusing on a single vendor or language and billing it as the broad category. This is wrong. Yes, the prof *should* be better than what you suggest. Mediocrity and false claims are the last thing we need in professors, instructors, or teachers.
And finally, I'm sick of the arrogant "you Linux users are all ignoring the ignorant people" attitude. So what if we/they are? It is an equally valid argument to say the opposite, that people should know how to use things they use. Your continued analogy to "people just drive their car" is false to your claim anyway. People go to classes to learn how to drive the car. You don't just get to fire it up and go. A general purpose computer is nothing until you determine what and how to do something on it. If this woman was going to a driving school that insisted she bring a gasoline powered car, yet she went to a the dealer and insisted on and ordered a diesel powered one, where would you assign the blame when she couldn't fuel up at the school's pump or that the gasoline she put in at the school caused it to not run? Hey, it is clearly the attitude of those who make diesel cars when the rest of the world doesn't want to know what kind of fuel goes in their car they just want to drive it, right?
For all those who think computers, Linux or otherwise, should be so simple that any idiot can walk up, sit down, and use it productively, with no training at all - you can go make one that way. Until you accomplish that, all you have are vague and false platitudes and "comfort theater" - your proclaiming these non-extant virtues serve only to promote a sense of superiority in attitude. Meanwhile, the rest of us are working in reality. We recognize that "one size fits all" is a lie. We recognize that mediocrity is easy, and that handing out gold medals to anyone who tries out for the Olympics is stupid. Some things in life should be a challenge. That some will not succeed is part of life - the game of inches.
Mussolini kept the trains on schedule ...
Except terminally ill people aren't going to be terribly reliable in that they could croak any moment, such as shortly after launch, thus wasting the resources spent. Further, they may be less motivated to do things that prevent premature death.
"You are forgetting we still haven't actually resolved the problem of preventing crew irradiation during their travel to/from Mars."
No, we have. Indeed, we've even determined it isn't the giant problem Hollywood and the general public people make it out to be.
"That is a show-stopper, 100% chance of being irradiated beats the off-chance to get a new world disease."
Did you walk outside today? Congratulations, you got irradiated. Ever flown transcontinental or transoceanic? Again, you got irradiated. Go read up on the actual science and you'll find that the problem is lesser than imagined, and easily solvable w/o exotic (to today) technologies or materials. Cosmic radiation accounts for about half of the radiation your body will experience over your lifetime.
According to BIER (which determines/states the statistical chances of getting cancer over 30 years) and the amount of radiation likely to be received counting solar flares during transit, spending months on Mars, and getting back the chances for a male astronaut to get cancer over the following 30 years of life rises from 20% to less than 21%. Females are slightly higher due to the increased risk of breast cancer.
Oh, that's huge, right? So scary! Let us put this in perspective. If you were a career Trans-Atlantic airline pilot, a 25 year career would give you more than half of the expected radiation dose of a two and a half year conjunction mission to Mars.
But what about the solar storms? What about sudden doses? Radiation sickness occurs when an burst of radiation around the 75 rem mark is experienced. It varies by individual, but 75 rem is the generally accepted level for immediate or prompt radiation sickness to occur. In a vessel shielded with basic known and proven technology and methods, the most a traveller will experience in a normal range solar flare is about 5 rem, and is accounted for in the above noted 50 rem over 2.5 years conjunction profile mission total.
We can't *prevent* irradiation here on Earth, either. Cosmic rays and local material radiation and all. Indeed it has been found that the body seems to actually need some radiation.
TL;DR: Radiation isn't the bogeyman made out to be, it isn't as lethal as the PP said, and isn't a quagmire.
Unless a strain of bacteria turns up that is resistant to every antibiotic you have on board and you are several light minutes away from an alternative, in which case it's bye bye mr.astronaut. We really haven't evolved that much from 15th century explorers. Take away this vast safety blanket of civilization and we're just as resourceful, and equally helpless as any explorer in the past 50000 years.
As if all bacteria is bad. News flash: it isn't. Travelers will undergo group isolation to acclimate themselves to what each other has before going. Further, if a mysterious killer super bacteria that is resistant (which doesn't mean immune) to everything we have pops up you are as good as dead here on Earth as well. That's the meaning of not being able to treat a deadly bacteria. But again, this is just the boogeyman of bullshit suppositions. The PP is still right. Getting a cut won't lead to amputation or "turn into sepsis or bactaremia and kill you". Your mythical super bug notwithstanding. Hell, I can postulate that a mythical superbug could land on Earth via meteorite and be immune, not just resistant, to all our technology and wipe out all of Earth. But just like yours, such is the realm of Hollywood and bad science fiction, not science reality.
We are far more resourceful than explorers of the past. We have communication methods that do not involve traveling back to your starting point for example. We can take enormous amounts of information with us as well. We can take the necessary machinery and tools to craft new things and effect repairs that were not available to explorers of the 1400s for example, or even the 1800's or early 1900's. It isn't a matter of evolution, it is a matter of capability. If you want to argue that we are no more capable than we were 500 years ago, feel free. But don't expect us to agree with that untenable position. Modern day explorers have far better navigational equipment and capacities. For example, sailors couldn't navigate under cloud covered skies with much accuracy in the 14th century. Today we won't have that problem - even on Earth.
Now if you meant "take away all of our vast array of know-how and technology that we have built up over the last 50k years" then sure, but wtf would be the point in such a stupid comment?
It's a tad worse than the new world. No air and no food.
The ocean did not provide water, and very little food. Think that might have been crucial? Perhaps that is why they took food and water (and rum) on the ships?
Dust doesn't corrode things.
"No Open water" This one always cracks me up, it demonstrates serious ignorance and bias. Go ahead, get in a boat, go out to sea for a few weeks and try to live off the salty seawater you will get. Try to cross the Atlantic w/o taking your own water or desalinisation equipment. Be sure to have your will filled out first.
So much for "open water" being a plus. Mars has the mineral deposits we need to sustain settlement. The ocean does not. Traveling the oceans even today requires taking our own food, fuel, water, and shelter. If you want to "live off the sea" you need special equipment. And you have to deal with whatever air you get, at whatever temperature it happens to be.
Taking our own air is far less of a problem than taking food on the exploration and colony ships the old world sent out centuries ago. We can actually grow our own food on a scale large enough to provide for the people going.
Of course it is an alien environment, but that doesn't mean it is a bad idea, or impossible, or even "really fucking hard". In an interplanetary craft we'll have power, communication, connectivity (lag will suck though), climate controlled atmosphere, food (and the ability to preserve it other than just salting meat for example), an array of entertainment options, medical knowledge and supplies, water, the ability to grow additional food, etc.. If we run into unknowns we'll almost always have the intellectual resources of the folks at mission control and whomever they can get to help.
Compared to say Columbus, it'll be a walk in the park. Forget about Hollywood's take on Mars and go learn the realities of it. The challenge is only grander in scale, not difficulty.
You should lurk on science forums more often if those are your fears, and put less credence in Hollywood's version of science.
a) You are slowly being cooked by solar radiation here on Earth. Cosmic radiation is even getting you right now. The reality is that the radiation problem is more of a minor hurdle. But misinformed or non-informed people fear it because Hollywood tells them to.
b) DId you know the space station leaks? yet they manage. Again, "Hollywood Science" FTL.
c) If you can;'t hack small confines for months at a time, then stay here. Believe it or not, most people who do those things do not go nuts. Some do, and Hollywood capitalizes on that very small subset. Even those who do, tend to do it alone.
d) Mars is far less inhospitable than hard vacuum of space. It *has* and atmosphere. A dome with a diameter of a mere 50 meters would take days to weeks to deflate if you fired a 50 caliber bullet into the dome, for example. The atmosphere it does have provides magnitudes more radiation and temperature buffer than you'll find in open space. Plus it actually has resources. Open space is well, just open space.
Seriously, the first people to go to Mars will not have a deathwish. Those types of people make missions of any kind other than suicide ones (and even some of those) a disaster waiting to happen. Perhaps you should not judge everyone by your foibles, ignorance, and insecurities. We know more about Mars and how to deal with it's challenges than did Columbus about where he was going. Columbus couldn't take 99% of what he was going to need, and as a result had serious and fatal problems. By comparison a trip to Mars, or even settling Mars is a relatively far less challenging for mankind thing to do than setting out blindly across the Atlantic was for the Vikings, Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans.
So stop insulting everyone who doesn't share your "fearful", misinformed, and complacent wish by saying they must have a death wish. Were just not as ignorant and complacent as you, that's all. Seriously.
"I see televised golf tournaments becoming interesting."
Fixed. "more interesting" implies that thee is some level of interestingness to begin with.
Is any body giggling when you read this sentence from the article? I was imagining Ballmer looking around for a chair, and the expression on his face would be priceless when he found that all chairs are bolted down :)
Nah, he throws chairs, so I am sure he's watched Wrestling thus would know to look under the ring, errr I mean stage right next to the tables.
It (c|w)ould have worked, if allowed to. But unfortunately, some people are under the delusion that the government creating an insanely large financial company, giving it all sorts of money and preferential treatment, then moving it into a decision that it would not make on the free market (giving loans to people who can't pay them) is staying out of the free market's way.
That's pretty delusional. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were government powered organizations. It was ill-advised (at the time even, not just in hindsight) to provide for a company backed by billions of federal government dollars to wade into a market and create a new market in "bad loans". This notion that the lack of regulation caused this problem is absurd: the financial industry is among the most heavily regulated ones in the US. In particular Freddie and Fannie were overseen by http://www.ofheo.gov/ .
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were started as government entities (New Deal), and after the insane amounts of taxpayer money continually granted to the pair after "privatization" was pushed into holding or guaranteeing fully half of the consumer real estate loans. That is 6 trillion dollars of liability in two government sponsored entities. As GSEs they carried the perception that they were guaranteed by the Federal government, when in fact they were "merely" the beneficiary of billions of government aid. How were they pushed into it? Government regulations requiring the two to have a certain minimum percentage of their purchased mortgages support financing for those at greater credit risk. When that happens it creates and artifical demand for loans that companies woudl not normally make.
So the mortgage companies are willing to make the high-risk loans knowing they won't take the risk because they will sell them to Freddie and Fannie.
The US government has a specific office of oversight just for the financial viability of Freddie and Fannie:
Between this office and the HUD, we had the government trying to control the demand side of the market by setting what was "affordable" and by creating an artificial floor and demand for loans the market would not make on it's own. This was fuel to the fire of rising prices for housing. As more credit is made available to people that would not ordinarily (in the free market) have it, the amount of money available for housing and the demand for home ownership rises. In fact, even during the vaunted 90's, the price of homes was rising faster than inflation. Combined with this was the fact that people were on average putting a lot less "down" on the home thus making a higher loan to value (LTV) position. This is additional increased risk in a mortgage.
The fact of the matter is that Freddie and Fannie were/are both heavily regulated by the federal government, with quarterly reports and analysis on their financial viability and capital rates required by law. If you were the type of person that likes to make informed decisions and statements then the above link will take you to said reports as they are publicly available.
Ultimately the problem again lies in excessive centralization, and the government provided the means to do so in ways that it would not allow truly private entities to do so, nor should they have. Yet it was government regulation that drove this, not the lack of it.
"If there exists no route from me to another server on the Internet and the reason that route doesn't exist is due to my ISP, I say that ISP has violated Net Neutrality"
And you could be wrong, too. There may be solid technical reasons behind it, or business reasons that have nothing to do with "neutrality". Net Neutrality is not about who you peer with, it is about how you treat traffic. Network peering is an electronic version of individual association.
You still trust Blizzard? Yet Blizzard can ban your WoW account. How is that different from EA banning your EA account? Diablo III or Starcraft II might be the same way.
And yes I too am eagerly awaiting SC2 and D3. But I am under no illusions that Blizzard doesn't have banning policies and methods.
Here you already paid for service and now they're kicking you out based on their interpretation of acceptable free speech.
Like it or not, free speech ONLY applies with respect to governments, not private individuals, companies, or even corporations. The constitution does not say you can say whatever you want wherever you want and however you want. It only says the government can't restrict that. Trust me, you start being an asshat on my porch or my living room and you will be ejected with force if necessary. That isn't a violation of free speech. Banning you from a private forum for *any* reason based on your speech is perfectly moral and legal - because it is their forum.
Paying for the service? Well you also agreed to a the terms of service. If said terms of service have consequences for you breaking them, then tough nuggets, YOU broke them. Paying money does not explicitly grant you the right to be an asshat on someone else's property/forum/show/paper/etc. and ignore agreements you made.
And no it isn't like buying a car. A car is physical property you purchase. Software isn't. All you get to "own" is the disc, and even the license agreement says you will destroy it on request. It is more like paying to stay in a hotel room for the night or week, and you start abusing other guests, making asstons of noise at 2 AM, and they boot you. You agreed to not do those things, and you broke your end of the agreement so they boot you. They may even ban you from their chain. And they would be perfectly in their rights to do so.
This is influenced by another right: the right to association. If EA doesn't want to be associated with asshats, it is their right to dissassociate with asshats and yes that precludes any imagined rights to their service you may have.
I say they should have a more-than-forum ban. Maybe, just maybe, it might help bring some needed decorum to said forums. The main "problem" on the Internet that causes such asshattery is the lack of consequences for the actions people take. "Oh ban me, I'll just make a new account" doesn't quite do it. But tie it to you in a way that is more difficult (and might affect your dad's game time) and there become real consequences.
I take it you didn't read the EULA. Sorry, but no you didn't pay for anything more than the *disc* to be your property, and a *revokable* license to use the software. If they were to actually do this, no lawsuit would be successful as you do NOT own the game, you own a plastic disc shaped object with software that you would not be licensed to use.
"to me this does not include "false information" (more of a good-faith effort to get it right) and does not include "stating something obvious or a truism"."
You are missing the point and assuming assertions not made, The point is that merely supporting your opinion does not make your opinion informative. Doing research and explaining research does not validate an opinion made. Ypu can provide all teh reasons and research that supports your (hypothetical) opinion that the Spaghetti Monster is real, yet that does not make your opinion any more informative. An argument may be entirely logical - it can be logically correct and correctly logical, and still be wrong. If you do not understand that I would recommend some good courses and/or books on logic.
Furtere I did not say stating a truism was what you said. I made an analogy. You have clearly misread that into something it was not. You have then proceeded to raise it as a strawman and then beat your strawman. You then proceeded to make veiled ad hominems based on your strawman. Congratulations are in order for thoroughly trashing your strawman. However, despite providng several reasons supporting your argument against your strawman, your conclusion was in fact incorrect as it was based on false assumptions and interpretations.
Interesting how you are unable to demonstrate the position you argue from. You assume the negative side. Your original argument contained no qualifiers, and therefore does in fact include people who do "careful research" and still get it wrong. For example, One may state "as long as someone does A,B, and C they are entitled to D, without regard to E". Yet this can be wrong, even if logically accurate via supported assertions. Your stated conditions for deserving an Informative tag had several qualifiers yet omitted a very crucial one: veracity of the "information" thus presented.
Consider an argument such as this:
"I have examined the possibility that the Spaghetti Monster exists. In order to to this I have found that at sites A, B, and E Spaghetti Monsters are defines as being bald, shorter than 5'2", and have a propensity to post on slashdot. I fit these criteria as am a spaghetti monster myself. Therefore, I assert the Spaghetti Monsters are real". Let us further assume that the poster also includes many references to sites that describe the mythical monster, and that to keep this form being long I've omitted them from the description. Careful research was done, the assertions were supported. Yet, this does not make the post claiming such things informative. Funny, perhaps, but not informative. By not excluding such (all too common) types posts from your criteria your
At no point did I say your assertions included posting obvious information. Sure, the analogy did not fit the "A is like B' form, but "Just as A -is not B, C is not D" is also an analogy, and this is what I did. For you to misread or twist (your choice) this into "you assumed I meant this" is a mistake on your part and as such no matter how well reasoned your argument against that may be, it does not make your opinion that I did so accurate, informative, or insightful. You prattle on about conflating personal opinion or feelings with the moderation system, and I posted a similar issue with regards to the use of "Insightful". You then proceed to fail to separate your personal feelings on the Informative subject and attack me for making the analogy to the same process for Insightful.
In my opinion posting a "hate filled" post is not "more mature". As you stated yourself, the abuse of the moderation system in your example is most often not intentional. As such it is not a matter of maturity as it is not a conscious choice. Making a conscious choice to post a "hate filled" response is hardly being more mature than simply moderating a post based on personal feelings when you are not conscious of the detail of your actions. Maturity is a matter of opinion, and here we clearly have a differing opinion. That makes neither of our opinions informa
The point wasn't the closeness or not closeness of the dollar amount you get, so that the 5% vs 50% comes out close is not relevant to me preference, though it is quite interesting.
The point was the difference in goals and reasons. I'd choose RRMC (it isn't a diversified holding company it is a fully separate company) over Hyundai because even in the current market conditions they are a more reliable and stable investment (IMO). Hyundai sales are down - this is not unexpected as most consumer automotive spending decreases under these conditions. It isn't just "those big american SUVs" either, even the Mini (also owned by BMW IIRC) has seen a significant drop in sales. But no RRMC - because /their/ market is insulated from these economic events. As a non-day-trader investor, that is just as important as how much I might make. Diversification is about more than simply holding different investments, it is also about holding investments of various risk/stability levels to ensure a minimum performance level and provide opportunity to also grow faster rate with more risk.
The point is that it isn't about raw dollars (pounds, pesos, etc), there are other factors. 5% of Hyundai or 50% or RRMC would be a huge chunk of money to invest and I prefer the strategy of playing game sonly with small chunks of money and putting the larger ones in more solid and recession-resistant ventures. Regarding "RR" having had at least one bankruptcy vs. Hyundai ... lets talk again when Hyundai is as old as RR, mkay?
Now how does that relate to Tesla? In a recession /most/ people tend to prefer more "solid" investments, and those on the edge tend to suffer as a result. If Telsa had the name-pull as RR they would not be in the situation. The reality is that Tesla is still a startup and thus doe not have the pull.
As far as comparing an automative company to a diversified holding company not being fair, if you think so then don't compare Hyundai to RRMC. That said, when it comes to holding stock or investing in a company, it is certainly a fair comparison - money is fungible.
All this isn't to say that RRMC is *the best* choice, just that it is not obvious or correct that RRMC is the worst choice when facing Hyundai or that Hyundai is the obvious and best choice. For you perhaps Hyundai is the better option, for me it is clearly not.
And just FTR, I don't own half of RR or RRMC, or 5% of Hyundai. I wouldn't turn down a gift of either (though I would try to parlay Hyundai in to RR or something else better than the two choices you presented of course). ;)
"For an unrelated example, did you know that if someone does a good deal of research, shares his findings, and explains why he came to the conclusion that he did, that he deserves an Informative mod even if you hate his fucking guts and can't stand any of his opinions? "
Bull. Opinions are NOT "Informative", everyone has them. False "information" is not informative and does not deserve the tag unless the point of the post is to illustrate or correct false information.
Just as stating something obvious or a truism or perception shared by many is not, by definition, insightful; stating an opinion is not informative. If stating an opinion counts as informative almost very post qualifies. Regardless of how thought out or explained it is, stating an opinion is at best insightful or interesting.
"That if you want to tell him how much you hate and disagree with him, the way to do it is by posting a response and not by abusing the moderation system? I'm just not seeing that kind of maturity and that's a shame, as Slashdot is one of the few places where it could be possible. "
Sure, posting how much you hate and disagree with someone is the height of maturity. Slashdot is generally the home of a lot of nerds that grew up with the abuse of the popular kids and/or athletic ones - or at the least growing up in a place they couldn't voice their opinion due to fear (mocking, beating, whatever) from such kids. To expect "maturity" on a site where you can post pretty anonymously is a bit wishful, IMHO.
To me the mature response is to just shrug off and move on. Without abusing the moderation system or the posting system. You won't "see" that maturity however because by definition the rabid posts don't show up.
"Which would you rather own, 5% of Hyundai Motors, or 50% of Rolls Royce."
Rolls Royce, hands down. Why? Dude they make gas turbines, have hands in civil (and military) nuclear power, have seen an increase fo 20 Billion british pounds this year and are making profit hand over fist. Their dividends are increasing, their sales are increasing, they are built on handling several related industries instea dof catering to consumer .... what oh you mean Rolls-Royce Motor Corp?
I'd still take the RRMC 50% ownership. They cater to people unaffected by such market changes. As such they are very insulated from "minor" factors such as 10 dollar gas or average Joes losing their job and house. When you spend millions on cars w/o thinking about it, more expensive gasoline is appealing because it means you are flaunting your wealth even more so.
And guess what, RR is doing even better this year than last - up around 40%. Hyundai is down about 25% IIRC. Hyundai is subject, like most "consumer" vehicles to the whims of the general public. RR is not.
While the so-called "luxury market" is said to be falling hard, the reality is it is only the low-end "luxury market". The true luxury market is powered by people with so much money that they can keep buying what they want while we ordinary people are making decisions. I'd *love* to have a piece of that pie.
I'd take the 50% of RR thank you, and pass on 5% of Hyundai to get it. Then again, I am not a day trader, and prefer companies that steadily pay dividends over stocks that I might someday sell for a higher price. Yeah that requires some thought and some work to figure out who to invest in, but the return is more reliable.
Kinda like how banks got into loaning more money than they had to people who could not pay it back because it was easier and now are "suffering" for it.
Yet credit unions which do not operate on these premises seem to be doing just fine.
"And the economy is basically sound"
Actually, yes it is basically sound. Anyone telling you otherwise has an axe to grind, wants to get in on some government money at your expense, or is a media outlet masquerading as news or journalism - selling your fear the advertisers.
The economy *is* basically, and quite thoroughly sound. The strength of an economy in terms of ability to weather significant changes is related to the diversity of the economy. For example, consider the "company town". A place where there is one big employer; mining, manufacturing, etc.. When that company gets hit hard that town gets hammered. If that town's economy is built on say 20 different companies spread across unrelated industries, then a blow to one is not a death knell for the town and it's inhabitants.
The "global economy" or even that of the US alone is a strong one due to unprecedented diversity. While energy costs are reflected in everything we do, for example, they are a much smaller portion of our expenditure than they once were.
Consider it another way: an economy dominated by an industry or business is a form of pollution. Following the phrase "the solution to pollution is dilution", the diversification of industries in the US economy has diluted the effects of a particular industry, or even a few industries having problems. This is precisely what has happened. Many talk about "manufacturing" and how the US NEEDS to focus on manufacturing. But look at what happens to an economy based on manufacturing when demand drops for those goods. It tanks. Hard. Review history for examples.
But consider today's economy. What economists are calling a "crisis" is in fact not a crisis. Sure, it can be a crisis for those negatively affected, but not overall. The movements we see are sometimes larger than prior movements that did cause national and/or global problems. Others are overblown to sell your fear. "Oh the [insert stock market index] saw a downward movement of 1000 points!" and then they leave out or verbally put it in small print that the net change at close was only a hundred or two points. If that index had only just dropped 200 points it would not have been a footnote.
It is a presidential election year in the US. Claims about a failing economy, or an economy in crisis are bullets the politicians and "press" use to shoot your rational thinking down. Politicians these days only seek to get elected to "solve problems" (that they created usually - by trying to "solve problems"), and the "press" wants to sell your fearful eyeballs by making these things leading reports.
Energy shortage? The rise in oil prices this time was faster than in the 70's when we had literal gas rationing. I know many of you were not even born when you could only fill up base don the odd/even nature of the day and your license plate numbers, or when stations had to use red/yellow/green flags to designate who could buy gas, or if they even had any.
All this is not to say there are not shifts going on. The economic plates are shifting. Oil is going to see a new floor in price not due to any decrease in supply but due to increase in demand by "The Third World" (TTW). Same with food. Interestingly both of these have been kept artificially low by the various governments of the world. Same with the so-called "Credit Crunch" of today. It was centralized further and further over the last couple decades (in the name of regulation or efficiency), and underwritten essentially by government. That is undergoing a shift, but it is not a crisis.
Two years from now this hype of a crisis will be relegated to the back sections of the proverbial paper, and "look back" sections of so-called news shows. It'll be a footnote. Not because of anything the politicians and governments *do*, but in spite of them. And in 2018 we'll see it all over again though with a different industry that is "too big to fail". We have become so accustomed to a specific growth that simply having less growth is seen as a disaster. That perception needs addressed. But good luck getting pundits and politicians to talk about that.
George Orwell was a Brit. He didn't come up with 1984 et al. in a vacuum.
Cute and appropriately paranoid, but wrong. It wouldn't get anyone arrested because 1 GB messages won't be traversing very many public email systems since there will be limitations on email size and the time it would take to send such a message would likely exceed timeouts.
You'd have to break it up in to many more smaller messages.
And you could simply make the messages some random system monitoring information like CPU/DIsk usage stats.
And ... wait there's the door.
"But they are not going to be reading everyone's emails everyday. That doesn't make the system any more acceptable but it will show that they are not going anywhere near the 'microphone in very home, restaurant etc' claim that someone posted earlier."
Why not? They can simply record the data going into the microphone to be examined later. What would the difference be between "merely" storing every email sent and "merely" recording every conversation? Just the size of the DB really.