You misunderstand life. His point is a valid one: if our existence depends on earth, then at some point our existence will end when earth changes enough that we can't adapt.
If we learn to live in our existing environment without making it unusable, and adapt to its changes, we've succeeded.
We've only succeeded in continuing our dependence on something that the fossil record show isn't dependable. Add into it our own lack of dependability and we've got a major problem.
The idea that we must colonise space to validate our existence is a religion, not science.
Not to validate, just to extend and guarantee. We've spread from Africa and put ourselves into every place and biome on the earth, making it so that a catastrophe would have to be global to destroy the species. The next step in making sure the species continues would be to make it so that even a global catastrophe wouldn't be able to destroy the human race.
The nice thing about Hulu is that it has multiple networks signed on. I would love a site that could get every network to sign on with them distributing content, but the only site I've seen so far with full episodes for free from multiple networks is Hulu. I agree with the statement that fragmentation is bad, but the studios are refusing to work together on this and blaming Hulu when they're the closest so far doesn't make much sense to me.
Right now Hulu's in the place that Apple was with music a few years ago. Apple dragged the labels kicking and screaming into the internet age and showed them that there was a better way than blindly fighting everyone on the internet. Hulu's trying to do the same thing with the studios.
Either you didn't give the reason you want to see Hulu fail or you don't know what that word means. Assuming it's the latter, I'm going to have to say that wanting a web site to fail because it only serves a segment of the population you're not in is ridiculous. Hulu is one of my favorite sites right now and the #1 place that I watch movies and TV shows. Hulu's great, and disliking it because of restrictions almost certainly placed on them by the content providers is ridiculous.
Unless the site is more likely to go down during busy times, which would mean that the 1% of downtime it does have would be when a greater percentage (maybe 10%?) are trying to reach it. That would turn 99% uptime into an effective 90% - 95% uptime for their users, which is considerably worse. Having 99% uptime is great, but if the downtime comes when you're the #1 link on digg or slashdot, that means you lose a hell of a lot more traffic than you would have otherwise.
Who's quickly losing that status. Mac's are catching up and Linux distros are *gasp!* actually usable now. Let them engage in these types of business practices while they're at their most vulnerable in decades and they'll learn what the free market's all about.
I agree. The license should reflect what the programmer wants. If you look at closed source software, there are almost as many licenses as there are programs, because each program wants to restrict you differently. With open source that are usually just a few large categories with numerous sub-modifications. The three big categories being completely free (MIT license), free with restrictions (GPL), and finally the ones where the code is open, but you're not necessarily allowed to use it (Microsoft open license types). Subcategories may include differences between personal and profitable use, military vs education, etc. It's amazing how often people argue for freedom, and then criticize people when they use it "wrong".
What's really funny with your criticism is that Darwin himself didn't have any mechanic for passing the traits along, all the evidence for DNA came later. There are many such discoveries in science where they're able to explain what happens long before they explain how.
It's entirely possible that they don't believe a word they're saying but are trying to change the perceptions of the consumers that are on the edge between buying used and buying new. Some people wouldn't buy new at any price, so they'll buy used whatever the game manufacturers say. For other people, however, if they notice a $10 difference but believe that the more expensive option is also the more moral one, they'll take that one instead.
Comparing the console channels which carry less expensive games that appeal to a different core audience to physical games which are subject to resale doesn't seem like the most accurate thing in the world.
My problems with the statement are many and varied, but I'm not going to say that the used game market isn't detrimental to the normal one, because I don't know that. I suspect that they don't know it either, but that's not my problem either. My problem with it is that they're using the same rhetoric, almost word for word, that the RIAA does, only the used game market is completely legal. They would like to find a way to punish people who buy their game. They're starting to regard their customers and players as enemies, and when any industry gets to that point I'm ready to walk away. Steam does a great job of not barring me from playing my games. They take away the freedom to resale my games, but in exchange they make it pretty damn easy to play them on any computer I want to. Not only that, but they're sticking to the PC as their system of choice. The same for Stardock. If game manufacturers are going to start acting like buying a game is taking food out of their families' mouths, then I'm going to stop buying their games.
"I think all of the smart publishers are looking at ways to add-on to existing games," Kramer said. "It stems the flood of used game sales and every used game sale is money out of the pockets of the developer and publisher."
What fucktards. Either they believe the rhetoric that they spew or they expect us to believe it, and either way it makes them look like assholes.
That should work, but (at least in past years) they have cash prizes that are worth far more than the machines they're going to get, so that should be mitigates. Also, they've got a small number of machines for a large number of people trying to penetrate them, so as soon as the more desirable machine is gone everyone should focus on the other machines as much as they focused on the most desirable one. Overall, it seems that the desirability of the machines shouldn't affect the outcome too much.
This has application beyond that of amputees. Brain-technology interfaces could be used with many things even for people who are completely healthy. Imagine being able to control a car, jackhammer, or computer without physical movements. Stem cells won't provide that functionality any time in the near future.
The brain tends to take tools and make them act like they're an extension of your body, ie when you turn the car, you don't think about the arm movement, you think about the car movement. If we get better interfaces between machines and the brain, I can't imagine that it wouldn't be as good as our own bodies, and I can easily see science finding a way to make it so that it becomes more "natural" to use tech than to use your own body.
In many ways this has already happened for me. It's almost as natural to log into my computer and use my web browser as it is to breathe.
Watchmen is a great work, and many of the batman comics that I've read have told a story as well as many books I've read. Have I ever read a comic I consider to be as thought provoking and, well, good as the Count of Monte Cristo? No, of course not, but I've read a few that I would consider as good as Asher Lev, Pride and Prejudice or other critically acclaimed novels.
As for video games, I don't know whether they'll ever be considered art, and I do believe that your comment (though worded badly) is legitimate. In the end, these are games and should be treated with the same respect you'd treat a football game or soccer game. I'm hoping that the industry surprises me with something that tells a story so well that I'd consider it art, but I haven't found one yet.
I can back you up on that. I figure I can have all of my debt paid down with the exception of one car and my house by the end of the year. I'm in the same approximate situation you're in, where I spent too much money and put too much of it on credit cards, etc. I figure if I put my money in the bank, then the bank will have more money to lend and I can stimulate the economy that way. If the economy can't stand to have me saving some of my money and living within my income, then the economy needs to change anyway.
OT, but that's what me and my wife eventually came out to. We have our separate bank accounts so that we can make stupid purchases on our own and not worry the other spouse as much. I can't remember who said it, but the best fiscal advice for married people that I even heard was that both members need to have money that they're not accountable for to the other spouse.
Let's not forget that opera wasn't even free until after firefox started becoming popular. If you accept that firefox become popular because it was free, standards compliant and friendlier to the developer (which are the factors I believe led them to where they are today), then opera missed their chance at widespread desktop popularity.
I disagree. Cents is already an arbitrary cut off for the calculations' accuracy, why not just cut it off at dollars? I do my budget religiously every night and go over everything with my wife a couple of times a month. If every transaction were rounded up to the nearest dollar, it wouldn't destroy my finances. I doubt it would seriously mess up my finances if they were off by $5. Now, if I were able to give up efficiency and accuracy in my financial calculations for something else that I considered valuable (for instance, lower interest in my mortgage or my credit card payments counted for 30x what they did before), then this is something that should seriously be considered.
With regards to music, they're not talking about skips and pops, they're talking about extremely slight modulations in pitch or, in the case of video, a very slight difference in color. If these differences are random and small enough (say, 300 per second), then it averages out to the same thing and our minds can't tell the difference. Hell, if the differences are small enough you wouldn't really notice them anyway. If I could get 30x the battery life out of my laptop by accepting imperfections in the video it displays and in the audio it plays (and I know it wouldn't, but this is a hypothetical), then I'd gladly go for it.
So you move you and your family to an upper class neighborhood in India where they live almost at the same standard of living they do now. In some ways it'll be better, in some ways it'll be worse, but you'll be costing IBM half as much while earning twice as much compared to the cost of living. It's not a tempting offer for me, but at least they're getting the chance to keep their job and try living somewhere else for a while.
However, he's got the point that it introduces problems that might have a workaround, but one that's less efficient/effective than the original problem. Why not just add a library that can be used with the dynamic programs that allows them to do this easily while still retaining the ability to do things the old fashioned way?
In addition, files are absolutely necessary. As someone pointed out, how do you take an object from one program to another? How do you find it to send it to your mom? These are all problems for which the file paradigm works very well. The solution will either be core to the OS that very closely resembles our current situation or specific to each application, requiring you to relearn everything every time. Doesn't sound all that efficient or paradigm changing to me.
That said, I think the idea deserves exploration. I just don't think it's going to revolutionize computing, and that eventually the good ideas will be incorporated into our current offerings and we'll all move on, grateful that they explored the idea but knowing that the original scope of his plans wasn't realized.
Slashdot Mirror
If we learn to live in our existing environment without making it unusable, and adapt to its changes, we've succeeded.
We've only succeeded in continuing our dependence on something that the fossil record show isn't dependable. Add into it our own lack of dependability and we've got a major problem.
The idea that we must colonise space to validate our existence is a religion, not science.
Not to validate, just to extend and guarantee. We've spread from Africa and put ourselves into every place and biome on the earth, making it so that a catastrophe would have to be global to destroy the species. The next step in making sure the species continues would be to make it so that even a global catastrophe wouldn't be able to destroy the human race.
The nice thing about Hulu is that it has multiple networks signed on. I would love a site that could get every network to sign on with them distributing content, but the only site I've seen so far with full episodes for free from multiple networks is Hulu. I agree with the statement that fragmentation is bad, but the studios are refusing to work together on this and blaming Hulu when they're the closest so far doesn't make much sense to me.
Right now Hulu's in the place that Apple was with music a few years ago. Apple dragged the labels kicking and screaming into the internet age and showed them that there was a better way than blindly fighting everyone on the internet. Hulu's trying to do the same thing with the studios.
Either you didn't give the reason you want to see Hulu fail or you don't know what that word means. Assuming it's the latter, I'm going to have to say that wanting a web site to fail because it only serves a segment of the population you're not in is ridiculous. Hulu is one of my favorite sites right now and the #1 place that I watch movies and TV shows. Hulu's great, and disliking it because of restrictions almost certainly placed on them by the content providers is ridiculous.
I can think of several reasons someone might want to do that. At the very least it would help you make better shock sites like Goatse.
Unless the site is more likely to go down during busy times, which would mean that the 1% of downtime it does have would be when a greater percentage (maybe 10%?) are trying to reach it. That would turn 99% uptime into an effective 90% - 95% uptime for their users, which is considerably worse. Having 99% uptime is great, but if the downtime comes when you're the #1 link on digg or slashdot, that means you lose a hell of a lot more traffic than you would have otherwise.
Microsoft is a monopoly.
Who's quickly losing that status. Mac's are catching up and Linux distros are *gasp!* actually usable now. Let them engage in these types of business practices while they're at their most vulnerable in decades and they'll learn what the free market's all about.
And why is that illegal? You've answered the question without telling him what he wanted to know.
I agree. The license should reflect what the programmer wants. If you look at closed source software, there are almost as many licenses as there are programs, because each program wants to restrict you differently. With open source that are usually just a few large categories with numerous sub-modifications. The three big categories being completely free (MIT license), free with restrictions (GPL), and finally the ones where the code is open, but you're not necessarily allowed to use it (Microsoft open license types). Subcategories may include differences between personal and profitable use, military vs education, etc. It's amazing how often people argue for freedom, and then criticize people when they use it "wrong".
What's really funny with your criticism is that Darwin himself didn't have any mechanic for passing the traits along, all the evidence for DNA came later. There are many such discoveries in science where they're able to explain what happens long before they explain how.
How many times do you want to type AVADA_KEDAVRA TABLE?
Just once, but that's all I'll need...
It's entirely possible that they don't believe a word they're saying but are trying to change the perceptions of the consumers that are on the edge between buying used and buying new. Some people wouldn't buy new at any price, so they'll buy used whatever the game manufacturers say. For other people, however, if they notice a $10 difference but believe that the more expensive option is also the more moral one, they'll take that one instead.
Comparing the console channels which carry less expensive games that appeal to a different core audience to physical games which are subject to resale doesn't seem like the most accurate thing in the world.
My problems with the statement are many and varied, but I'm not going to say that the used game market isn't detrimental to the normal one, because I don't know that. I suspect that they don't know it either, but that's not my problem either. My problem with it is that they're using the same rhetoric, almost word for word, that the RIAA does, only the used game market is completely legal. They would like to find a way to punish people who buy their game. They're starting to regard their customers and players as enemies, and when any industry gets to that point I'm ready to walk away. Steam does a great job of not barring me from playing my games. They take away the freedom to resale my games, but in exchange they make it pretty damn easy to play them on any computer I want to. Not only that, but they're sticking to the PC as their system of choice. The same for Stardock. If game manufacturers are going to start acting like buying a game is taking food out of their families' mouths, then I'm going to stop buying their games.
"I think all of the smart publishers are looking at ways to add-on to existing games," Kramer said. "It stems the flood of used game sales and every used game sale is money out of the pockets of the developer and publisher."
What fucktards. Either they believe the rhetoric that they spew or they expect us to believe it, and either way it makes them look like assholes.
That should work, but (at least in past years) they have cash prizes that are worth far more than the machines they're going to get, so that should be mitigates. Also, they've got a small number of machines for a large number of people trying to penetrate them, so as soon as the more desirable machine is gone everyone should focus on the other machines as much as they focused on the most desirable one. Overall, it seems that the desirability of the machines shouldn't affect the outcome too much.
This has application beyond that of amputees. Brain-technology interfaces could be used with many things even for people who are completely healthy. Imagine being able to control a car, jackhammer, or computer without physical movements. Stem cells won't provide that functionality any time in the near future.
The brain tends to take tools and make them act like they're an extension of your body, ie when you turn the car, you don't think about the arm movement, you think about the car movement. If we get better interfaces between machines and the brain, I can't imagine that it wouldn't be as good as our own bodies, and I can easily see science finding a way to make it so that it becomes more "natural" to use tech than to use your own body.
In many ways this has already happened for me. It's almost as natural to log into my computer and use my web browser as it is to breathe.
Watchmen is a great work, and many of the batman comics that I've read have told a story as well as many books I've read. Have I ever read a comic I consider to be as thought provoking and, well, good as the Count of Monte Cristo? No, of course not, but I've read a few that I would consider as good as Asher Lev, Pride and Prejudice or other critically acclaimed novels.
As for video games, I don't know whether they'll ever be considered art, and I do believe that your comment (though worded badly) is legitimate. In the end, these are games and should be treated with the same respect you'd treat a football game or soccer game. I'm hoping that the industry surprises me with something that tells a story so well that I'd consider it art, but I haven't found one yet.
I can back you up on that. I figure I can have all of my debt paid down with the exception of one car and my house by the end of the year. I'm in the same approximate situation you're in, where I spent too much money and put too much of it on credit cards, etc. I figure if I put my money in the bank, then the bank will have more money to lend and I can stimulate the economy that way. If the economy can't stand to have me saving some of my money and living within my income, then the economy needs to change anyway.
OT, but that's what me and my wife eventually came out to. We have our separate bank accounts so that we can make stupid purchases on our own and not worry the other spouse as much. I can't remember who said it, but the best fiscal advice for married people that I even heard was that both members need to have money that they're not accountable for to the other spouse.
Let's not forget that opera wasn't even free until after firefox started becoming popular. If you accept that firefox become popular because it was free, standards compliant and friendlier to the developer (which are the factors I believe led them to where they are today), then opera missed their chance at widespread desktop popularity.
What about "Life of Pi"? That sounds like it's got a lot of math in it.
I disagree. Cents is already an arbitrary cut off for the calculations' accuracy, why not just cut it off at dollars? I do my budget religiously every night and go over everything with my wife a couple of times a month. If every transaction were rounded up to the nearest dollar, it wouldn't destroy my finances. I doubt it would seriously mess up my finances if they were off by $5. Now, if I were able to give up efficiency and accuracy in my financial calculations for something else that I considered valuable (for instance, lower interest in my mortgage or my credit card payments counted for 30x what they did before), then this is something that should seriously be considered.
With regards to music, they're not talking about skips and pops, they're talking about extremely slight modulations in pitch or, in the case of video, a very slight difference in color. If these differences are random and small enough (say, 300 per second), then it averages out to the same thing and our minds can't tell the difference. Hell, if the differences are small enough you wouldn't really notice them anyway. If I could get 30x the battery life out of my laptop by accepting imperfections in the video it displays and in the audio it plays (and I know it wouldn't, but this is a hypothetical), then I'd gladly go for it.
That's a company with a $15 billion market cap. That's quite a chunk of changes in this economy.
So you move you and your family to an upper class neighborhood in India where they live almost at the same standard of living they do now. In some ways it'll be better, in some ways it'll be worse, but you'll be costing IBM half as much while earning twice as much compared to the cost of living. It's not a tempting offer for me, but at least they're getting the chance to keep their job and try living somewhere else for a while.
Think outside the box for a moment
Agreed. We seriously need his synergy.
However, he's got the point that it introduces problems that might have a workaround, but one that's less efficient/effective than the original problem. Why not just add a library that can be used with the dynamic programs that allows them to do this easily while still retaining the ability to do things the old fashioned way?
In addition, files are absolutely necessary. As someone pointed out, how do you take an object from one program to another? How do you find it to send it to your mom? These are all problems for which the file paradigm works very well. The solution will either be core to the OS that very closely resembles our current situation or specific to each application, requiring you to relearn everything every time. Doesn't sound all that efficient or paradigm changing to me.
That said, I think the idea deserves exploration. I just don't think it's going to revolutionize computing, and that eventually the good ideas will be incorporated into our current offerings and we'll all move on, grateful that they explored the idea but knowing that the original scope of his plans wasn't realized.