Hmm. I am not sure this is about stupid. I don't think the web is dumber than Usenet. It just requires a lot less work to find something interesting. On the web you find organized sites that know their topic pretty well and have pre-filtered posts (like Slashdot). You get more bang for your buck, as it will. That's not stupid; it's smart--it's economics.
Usenet is less fragemented, which is an advantage. It's a nexus for discussion of all sorts. You can wander from one genre to the next easily. If conversation was all people wanted--if their primary reason for logging on was to find random users and chat--Usenet would probably be more popular than it is.
I've no doubt that configuration entered into it, but Usenet could have tried to reach its tendrils into the web, to become a more integral part of it. I can't even begin to figure out how that would work, but if Usenet was the primary commenting engine behind web sites, maybe you could navigate to the rest of Usenet from there. I mean, you and I are already in a conversational mood. At this point we're probably both in a space where we would enjoy Usenet for a while.
I understand the technology has benefits. The point is, whether one thinks Usenet > forums or not, Usenet seems to have lost the battle for mindshare. Most relevant discussions seem to be happening elsewhere. I don't have data though, it's just a perception of how my own habits, and the habits of those around me, have changed.
For example, there is this one tech website that gets a lot of comments and is having a discussion exactly like this one right now:)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Usenet is bad, I think the alt-slapping was a stupid idea from wrongheaded people. I am just trying to figure out if I'm just missing a huge giant Usenet bandwagon. It seems like it's just as much a hidden niche of the Internet now as any website.
I used Usenet way back in the day when it was the primary--nay, just about the only way to find like-minded people to discuss topics of interest. Particularly the alt hierarchy.
But now I find that web site forums, Google/Yahoo groups and email lists have supplanted Usenet. I haven't found any content I was looking for for a really long time on Usenet and haven't found a reason to delve there myself. I think the last time a search returned Usenet was a tech support question I asked like 4-5 years ago. We used it a little bit for Mozilla coordination but even then it felt like the bastard child of communication--bug reports, IRC and email lists were the method of choice.
It's definitely a sad day, killing a fly with a sledgehammer, etc. etc.--but how relevant is Usenet anymore really? Is it actually still heavily used and I just don't happen to know anyone who uses it?
The 1911 Britannica, from which most of the articles you mention were "ripped," is in the public domain. And most of thos articles were used as starting points for people to work off, as intended. Knowledge has changed a bit since 1911 man.
The only totally secure way is not to send the data. Everything else, except perhaps the IP address (since it's needed in order to get signals back), can be faked by the client. A Linux box could pretend it was running any card it wanted as long as it knew the hardware ID. It could pretend it was a Mac running Windows if it wanted. The only thing the server can know is what the client tells it, and the client can tell it anything it wants.
And forget bizarre encryption algorithms, too. There is no encryption algorithm or signal on a client that cannot be duplicated if you have root. Note that I did not say "hacked," I said duplicated. If you have to, you can copy the machine code for a particularly difficult encryption algorithm and make your program do exactly the same thing it does even if you don't know shit about how it works.
You might possibly be able to put such an algorithm on hardware to dissuade all but the most insane hackers, but this would exclude everyone who doesn't have the hardware in question and make people not play the game.
The only way to deal with it is for "them" to control the server not to send the positional data which, as you pointed out, could be a real bummer. Min. server requirements: 1 750MHz CPU per 2 players.:) Or perhaps multiple video cards that just calculated stuff and spat back the answer to the program.
The server can do Anything It Wants anyway. It is the ultimate authority on where people go, who lives and who dies, etc. If you're not playing on a trusted server, you're just plain screwed.
The only way is by reducing the network traffic and having the server send the minimum amount of info to the client.
The ultimate question in the server's mind should be "what does the client have to know in order to draw the scene it needs to draw and provide all functions the gamer can use?"
In this case, you have the server figure out whether the client could possibly see the opponent in question and if not, don't send him the location. If the opponent disappears from view, send a "disappear" message and no more location messages until he reappears.
So it can be done. Unfortunately, it requires mondo server power.
There's only one perfect solution that makes seeing invisible people impossible (far as I can see): don't send information about their location to the client.
You'd have to make the game server not send information to a client that a client shouldn't be able to see. Send a "disappear" message when it goes out of view and no more messages after that until it reappears.
Otherwise, you could cheat by having a hacked client anyway. Supermap or something.
Only problem is the crazy amount of processing this would require on the server. It wouldn't be quite as bad as the processing the client must do, but still, you'd have to calculate a view for every player, which would get pretty bad.
I thought from the way they ended the last season that they were priming Skinner for the role. They gave him belief: "I cannot deny what I saw" or something like that. And they gave him a reason: to find out what happened to Mulder, to whom he feels very responsible...
1. He was a MI team member before, he knows you gotta make it look like an accident--thus the destruction of the whole plane. Go in, achieve the goal, get out, leave no traces.
2. The cutting off parts of the finger was the only lunatic part for me. It could be partially explained as him making sure the other members of his "team" trust his judgment implicitly, but even then, I'll give you the point.
The rest of the time, the bad guy was great. Smart, functional, able to deal with heavy situations (witness his not just killing the girl when he found out), etc. Throughout the movie he was true to form as "the anti-Hunt."
He's sane, just he pursues goals without considering "collateral damage". Thus the word "villain".
I presume you're talking about experiments like EPR? You can't communicate information that way. For those unfamiliar with it, the theory goes like this:
- particles 1 and 2 are "linked" but their spin (either up or down) is unknown - particle 2 is transported to another solar system - we measure particle 1's spin - particle 2 gets measured, and it is the opposite spin of particle 1 (instantly!)
Hey, particle 1 and particle 2 are linked! So we could send a steady stream of particles to alpha centauri, keep the linked ones here, and then measure them up or down (0 or 1)!
I'm afraid not. The central problem now is *there is no way to control which way the particle is measured*. In other words, you can't *choose* whether the bit is 0 or 1, it just comes out one or the other.
It ends up just like two different computers in different parts of the world "communicating" with completely synchronized random number generators. Woo hoo! You know what the other guy is seeing on his screen!... but it's still just a stream of random numbers.
Do you always want something intellectually and emotionally challenging? I do most of the time, but there are many times when I just want to see something that doesn't drain me, that doesn't challenge me, that is just fun. And I have noticed that most people don't even want as much challenge as I do.
So in answer to your question, yes it is more profitable in general to have happy endings. People just aren't after a challenge to their worldviews. They're after fun.
How did the the movie have chaos theory correct? It was a nice buzzword to drop in there, but the essence of chaos theory is that very well-ordered phenomena can produce chaotic (semi-random) results.
Please correct me if I'm wrong (it's been a couple of years, but I think the movie was saying that "because of chaos theory, nature will find a way." As though chaos theory is a way of producing specific, ordered results.
Additionally, I have trouble seeing how chaos theory applied in any way to the small population of dinosaurs on the island. The only place it came into play was the bad weather, which made the climax more interesting but not more correct.
That's definitely not the only way to prove stuff like this. It goes back to the fact that you can use a generalized definition to talk about all those numbers up to infinity, and then prove based on the definition instead of on real numbers.
For example, prove that every single possible even number is the sum of two odd numbers. Instead of looking at all the examples, we'll go by definition.
Definition of even number: 2x, where x is an integer.
Definition of odd number: 2y-1, where y is an integer.
So if the even number is 2x, that is the same as 2x-1 + 1, which is two odd numbers added together.
That was a really simply example, but hopefully you get the idea. No matter what even number you choose, it fits that definition. 993928302390 fits the definition, and plugging it into the equation, the two odd numbers are 993928302389 and 1. I just didn't have to do as much work to get there as you will:)
A SIR patent only makes it so that other companies cannot patent it themselves and tell Amazon they cannot use it... but other companies can still use ("steal") the idea.
This is a fundamental difference. Filing the patent they filed allows them to be selective about who uses it, and I believe that is what they were trying to do.
If the tests you have been taking are such that you could simply look up the answers in the book, then you have had some pretty crappy teachers or oversimplified subject matter.
I've had those sorts of classes and teachers before. But for those piddly nuisance questions where you can look up the answers in the book, that's what you're going to be doing in the real world, anyway! Books are there to remember useless trivia for you, you just have to remember where to look.
The real problem that could come up is if the same test is distributed to everyone and the students collaborate and send each other answers. For essay questions, this will obviously not work, but for a lot of the more black-and-white disciplines that have right and wrong answers, it could make things difficult. What these systems really need is a way to record the "scratch paper". If everyone is *working* the problems absolutely identically, something fishy could be going on.
Even once we get to the point where we can extract the weights of the neurons, and simulate all the important parts of their physical properties (including propagation speed), there are still a number of things that make neural nets' thinking much different (I didn't say necessarily better) than humans. These include:
- Hormones. Irrationality. It is not known how much of a positive and how much of a negative force this is in learning, but most people agree it's definitely a factor. Would you have decided on your own theory if it hadn't been for your personal animosity towards your opponent? Would you have spent *more* time thinking about logical stuff if you hadn't spent so much time daydreaming in love? Without these constraining forces a computer would behave radically differently than its original human *even at the very beginning*.
- Sleep and unconsciousness. These provide a "reset period" for the brain that is in some way important to it. I personally think that your subconscious has more of the brain to play with at that point and that that is where a lot of your intuitive and creative leaps come in.
- The input devices we are hooked up to: eyes, ears, mouth, nose, our bodies. A machine without all of these (or without their flaws) would evolve in a different manner than the original person by virtue of the "handicap". People adapt to their problems, and so would a machine. But in so adapting it would become a different person, at least to some extent.
- People would treat the computer differently than they would treat the original, and that has a profound effect on humans, so why not on a computer? The lack of hormones might alleviate this effect somewhat, though--I don't know.
From looking at their business plan, they are going to start out with some kind of porn site as an easy cash flow source, and then transition into something else. The "something else" involves "model handling," so it may be more of the same, just on a larger or more artistic scale. --John
1. Kaffe has existed for a *long* time. This is not a new thing. 2. Kaffe is GPL'd! "Closely held"? Pshaw. 3. Kaffe is ported to many platforms. Actually more than any other VM, as far as I know. Talk about off the mark. Some people should read the company's website before writing article. --John Keiser
Logic can disprove, but never prove. Guesses are all we have, but some guesses predict more than others and some ways of thinking work better.
Even if there are gremlins, if there is no theoretical way to distinguish between the gremlin theory and the sound wave theory, then *it doesn't matter which is true*. Theories are only a means of explaining and predicting things that happen in the real world. They have meaning only in that they help us to perform predictions and they help our anthropomorphic minds latch onto concepts.
If you want your gremlins, go ahead, but the effect of a gremlin and sound waves will be the same, so it doesn't matter which you pick.
I have read that the right to privacy was not actually spelled out in the constitution and, come to think of it, I don't ever remember reading it there.
So far the privacy rights I have seen involve only physical property, requiring a warrant to get it. Do we have any situations where the government was required to get a warrant before getting non-public information on someone?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. I am not sure this is about stupid. I don't think the web is dumber than Usenet. It just requires a lot less work to find something interesting. On the web you find organized sites that know their topic pretty well and have pre-filtered posts (like Slashdot). You get more bang for your buck, as it will. That's not stupid; it's smart--it's economics.
Usenet is less fragemented, which is an advantage. It's a nexus for discussion of all sorts. You can wander from one genre to the next easily. If conversation was all people wanted--if their primary reason for logging on was to find random users and chat--Usenet would probably be more popular than it is.
I've no doubt that configuration entered into it, but Usenet could have tried to reach its tendrils into the web, to become a more integral part of it. I can't even begin to figure out how that would work, but if Usenet was the primary commenting engine behind web sites, maybe you could navigate to the rest of Usenet from there. I mean, you and I are already in a conversational mood. At this point we're probably both in a space where we would enjoy Usenet for a while.
I understand the technology has benefits. The point is, whether one thinks Usenet > forums or not, Usenet seems to have lost the battle for mindshare. Most relevant discussions seem to be happening elsewhere. I don't have data though, it's just a perception of how my own habits, and the habits of those around me, have changed.
For example, there is this one tech website that gets a lot of comments and is having a discussion exactly like this one right now :)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Usenet is bad, I think the alt-slapping was a stupid idea from wrongheaded people. I am just trying to figure out if I'm just missing a huge giant Usenet bandwagon. It seems like it's just as much a hidden niche of the Internet now as any website.
I used Usenet way back in the day when it was the primary--nay, just about the only way to find like-minded people to discuss topics of interest. Particularly the alt hierarchy.
But now I find that web site forums, Google/Yahoo groups and email lists have supplanted Usenet. I haven't found any content I was looking for for a really long time on Usenet and haven't found a reason to delve there myself. I think the last time a search returned Usenet was a tech support question I asked like 4-5 years ago. We used it a little bit for Mozilla coordination but even then it felt like the bastard child of communication--bug reports, IRC and email lists were the method of choice.
It's definitely a sad day, killing a fly with a sledgehammer, etc. etc.--but how relevant is Usenet anymore really? Is it actually still heavily used and I just don't happen to know anyone who uses it?
The 1911 Britannica, from which most of the articles you mention were "ripped," is in the public domain. And most of thos articles were used as starting points for people to work off, as intended. Knowledge has changed a bit since 1911 man.
If that were so, this driver would not be possible (well, not useful anyway). You couldn't see opponents.
--John Keiser
The only totally secure way is not to send the data. Everything else, except perhaps the IP address (since it's needed in order to get signals back), can be faked by the client. A Linux box could pretend it was running any card it wanted as long as it knew the hardware ID. It could pretend it was a Mac running Windows if it wanted. The only thing the server can know is what the client tells it, and the client can tell it anything it wants.
:) Or perhaps multiple video cards that just calculated stuff and spat back the answer to the program.
And forget bizarre encryption algorithms, too. There is no encryption algorithm or signal on a client that cannot be duplicated if you have root. Note that I did not say "hacked," I said duplicated. If you have to, you can copy the machine code for a particularly difficult encryption algorithm and make your program do exactly the same thing it does even if you don't know shit about how it works.
You might possibly be able to put such an algorithm on hardware to dissuade all but the most insane hackers, but this would exclude everyone who doesn't have the hardware in question and make people not play the game.
The only way to deal with it is for "them" to control the server not to send the positional data which, as you pointed out, could be a real bummer. Min. server requirements: 1 750MHz CPU per 2 players.
--John Keiser
The server can do Anything It Wants anyway. It is the ultimate authority on where people go, who lives and who dies, etc. If you're not playing on a trusted server, you're just plain screwed.
--John Keiser
The only way is by reducing the network traffic and having the server send the minimum amount of info to the client.
The ultimate question in the server's mind should be "what does the client have to know in order to draw the scene it needs to draw and provide all functions the gamer can use?"
In this case, you have the server figure out whether the client could possibly see the opponent in question and if not, don't send him the location. If the opponent disappears from view, send a "disappear" message and no more location messages until he reappears.
So it can be done. Unfortunately, it requires mondo server power.
--John Keiser
There's only one perfect solution that makes seeing invisible people impossible (far as I can see): don't send information about their location to the client.
You'd have to make the game server not send information to a client that a client shouldn't be able to see. Send a "disappear" message when it goes out of view and no more messages after that until it reappears.
Otherwise, you could cheat by having a hacked client anyway. Supermap or something.
Only problem is the crazy amount of processing this would require on the server. It wouldn't be quite as bad as the processing the client must do, but still, you'd have to calculate a view for every player, which would get pretty bad.
Just a silly suggestion from a non-game-writer.
--John Keiser
I thought from the way they ended the last season that they were priming Skinner for the role. They gave him belief: "I cannot deny what I saw" or something like that. And they gave him a reason: to find out what happened to Mulder, to whom he feels very responsible ...
--John
It looks like it. You'll notice there is a link to a "wavelet compression tutorial" on the JPEG2000 page.
--John
1. He was a MI team member before, he knows you gotta make it look like an accident--thus the destruction of the whole plane. Go in, achieve the goal, get out, leave no traces.
2. The cutting off parts of the finger was the only lunatic part for me. It could be partially explained as him making sure the other members of his "team" trust his judgment implicitly, but even then, I'll give you the point.
The rest of the time, the bad guy was great. Smart, functional, able to deal with heavy situations (witness his not just killing the girl when he found out), etc. Throughout the movie he was true to form as "the anti-Hunt."
He's sane, just he pursues goals without considering "collateral damage". Thus the word "villain".
--John
I presume you're talking about experiments like EPR? You can't communicate information that way. For those unfamiliar with it, the theory goes like this:
... but it's still just a stream of random numbers.
- particles 1 and 2 are "linked" but their spin (either up or down) is unknown
- particle 2 is transported to another solar system
- we measure particle 1's spin
- particle 2 gets measured, and it is the opposite spin of particle 1 (instantly!)
Hey, particle 1 and particle 2 are linked! So we could send a steady stream of particles to alpha centauri, keep the linked ones here, and then measure them up or down (0 or 1)!
I'm afraid not. The central problem now is *there is no way to control which way the particle is measured*. In other words, you can't *choose* whether the bit is 0 or 1, it just comes out one or the other.
It ends up just like two different computers in different parts of the world "communicating" with completely synchronized random number generators. Woo hoo! You know what the other guy is seeing on his screen!
--John
Do you always want something intellectually and emotionally challenging? I do most of the time, but there are many times when I just want to see something that doesn't drain me, that doesn't challenge me, that is just fun. And I have noticed that most people don't even want as much challenge as I do.
So in answer to your question, yes it is more profitable in general to have happy endings. People just aren't after a challenge to their worldviews. They're after fun.
--JohnHow did the the movie have chaos theory correct? It was a nice buzzword to drop in there, but the essence of chaos theory is that very well-ordered phenomena can produce chaotic (semi-random) results.
Please correct me if I'm wrong (it's been a couple of years, but I think the movie was saying that "because of chaos theory, nature will find a way." As though chaos theory is a way of producing specific, ordered results.
Additionally, I have trouble seeing how chaos theory applied in any way to the small population of dinosaurs on the island. The only place it came into play was the bad weather, which made the climax more interesting but not more correct.
--John
That's definitely not the only way to prove stuff like this. It goes back to the fact that you can use a generalized definition to talk about all those numbers up to infinity, and then prove based on the definition instead of on real numbers.
:)
For example, prove that every single possible even number is the sum of two odd numbers. Instead of looking at all the examples, we'll go by definition.
Definition of even number: 2x, where x is an integer.
Definition of odd number: 2y-1, where y is an integer.
So if the even number is 2x, that is the same as 2x-1 + 1, which is two odd numbers added together.
That was a really simply example, but hopefully you get the idea. No matter what even number you choose, it fits that definition. 993928302390 fits the definition, and plugging it into the equation, the two odd numbers are 993928302389 and 1. I just didn't have to do as much work to get there as you will
--John
A SIR patent only makes it so that other companies cannot patent it themselves and tell Amazon they cannot use it ... but other companies can still use ("steal") the idea.
This is a fundamental difference. Filing the patent they filed allows them to be selective about who uses it, and I believe that is what they were trying to do.
--John Keiser
If the tests you have been taking are such that you could simply look up the answers in the book, then you have had some pretty crappy teachers or oversimplified subject matter.
I've had those sorts of classes and teachers before. But for those piddly nuisance questions where you can look up the answers in the book, that's what you're going to be doing in the real world, anyway! Books are there to remember useless trivia for you, you just have to remember where to look.
The real problem that could come up is if the same test is distributed to everyone and the students collaborate and send each other answers. For essay questions, this will obviously not work, but for a lot of the more black-and-white disciplines that have right and wrong answers, it could make things difficult. What these systems really need is a way to record the "scratch paper". If everyone is *working* the problems absolutely identically, something fishy could be going on.
--John
Even once we get to the point where we can extract the weights of the neurons, and simulate all the important parts of their physical properties (including propagation speed), there are still a number of things that make neural nets' thinking much different (I didn't say necessarily better) than humans. These include:
- Hormones. Irrationality. It is not known how much of a positive and how much of a negative force this is in learning, but most people agree it's definitely a factor. Would you have decided on your own theory if it hadn't been for your personal animosity towards your opponent? Would you have spent *more* time thinking about logical stuff if you hadn't spent so much time daydreaming in love? Without these constraining forces a computer would behave radically differently than its original human *even at the very beginning*.
- Sleep and unconsciousness. These provide a "reset period" for the brain that is in some way important to it. I personally think that your subconscious has more of the brain to play with at that point and that that is where a lot of your intuitive and creative leaps come in.
- The input devices we are hooked up to: eyes, ears, mouth, nose, our bodies. A machine without all of these (or without their flaws) would evolve in a different manner than the original person by virtue of the "handicap". People adapt to their problems, and so would a machine. But in so adapting it would become a different person, at least to some extent.
- People would treat the computer differently than they would treat the original, and that has a profound effect on humans, so why not on a computer? The lack of hormones might alleviate this effect somewhat, though--I don't know.
--John
It appears that you get karma for metamoderating. Just now my karma was 1, then I metamoderated, and immediately it was 2.
--John
From looking at their business plan, they are going to start out with some kind of porn site as an easy cash flow source, and then transition into something else. The "something else" involves "model handling," so it may be more of the same, just on a larger or more artistic scale.
--John
1. Kaffe has existed for a *long* time. This is not a new thing. 2. Kaffe is GPL'd! "Closely held"? Pshaw. 3. Kaffe is ported to many platforms. Actually more than any other VM, as far as I know. Talk about off the mark. Some people should read the company's website before writing article. --John Keiser
Logic can disprove, but never prove. Guesses are all we have, but some guesses predict more than others and some ways of thinking work better.
Even if there are gremlins, if there is no theoretical way to distinguish between the gremlin theory and the sound wave theory, then *it doesn't matter which is true*. Theories are only a means of explaining and predicting things that happen in the real world. They have meaning only in that they help us to perform predictions and they help our anthropomorphic minds latch onto concepts.
If you want your gremlins, go ahead, but the effect of a gremlin and sound waves will be the same, so it doesn't matter which you pick.
--John
grammer -> grammar
:-P
I have read that the right to privacy was not actually spelled out in the constitution and, come to think of it, I don't ever remember reading it there.
So far the privacy rights I have seen involve only physical property, requiring a warrant to get it. Do we have any situations where the government was required to get a warrant before getting non-public information on someone?
--John Keiser