While we are technically a copy of our former selves it doesn't feel that way. If you could - without turning off the brain - take out each part, piece by piece and replace it with something so convincing that the brain accepted it as part of itself then you would never realise that you had become a robot.
However if you built a robot with all your memories, emotions, thoughts and personality then no matter how accurate it was there is no way to transfer the you-ness of you - the real you, the soul or whatever - into the machine. It may think, feel and act exactly like you but there would be no way to experience it. If you were gradually transformed then the "you" experiencing it would never stop experiencing. By the time you are totally changed it would no longer be the original you, but only in the same way that your current body isn't the original you - from your point of view it would still be you.
Thanks for clarifying. That makes a lot of sense and seems a whole lot less big-brother than the summary or my (admittedly brief) skimming of the article seem to suggest.
Yeah, things like this have been around for a while but it really depends on what you're doing.
If you're only mixing they're perfect - you can find a track almost instantly and they save you lugging a load of vinyl around...although it often means you've got lug around a whole different set of kit and you've also got to figure out how and when you're going to plug it all in without stopping the sound from the DJ who is playing before you (I used to work as a sound engineer in a small venue. Trust me, this can be annoying. Not just for the engineer or artist but for the crowd - cutting the music while the next act sets up is a surefire way of emptying the dance floor).
However if you're a scratch DJ it's a different kettle of fish. I'm not a great scratch DJ but put me on, say, Final Scratch (or any one of these, though to be fair I'd expect time-coded vinyl to be slightly more laggy than the HD2500 mentioned below...but I digress...where was I....) and I will suck balls.
People also buy vinyl because it is easier to mix with. You have direct physical control over the movement of the disc and therefore the speed of the music which gives you more control for beat-matching and makes scratching possible/easier. Obviously, it has it's disadvantages. Your bags are heavier, vinyl can get damaged, it takes longer to find a piece of vinyl than search a digital disk etc. but as a tool for this specific job, many still (rightly, in my opinion) consider it superior.
So what is it? An adventure game with an exceptionally fast gameplay and a weak storyline? An on-a-rail third-person shooter with a terrible aiming system?
Ah, sorry, you misunderstand me. I don't think I'm explaining myself very well... I'm not saying that they would respect/learn science less because they didn't learn about evolution (that is obviously absurd). I'm saying that they are less likely to respect/learn science if their science teacher is in such a weakened position that they can't stand behind the findings of the subject they are trying to teach.
I guess I'm making the old "correlation, not causation" argument...
I'm not willing to believe it is even in the top 20 causes for these students performing poorly on tests of scientific knowledge in general.
Not directly, no. I think the point is more that if a science teacher can't stand behind the findings of science (i.e. that evolution is correct) then their students are more likely to have less respect for science and/or not pay as much attention to it as a subject.
I don't know...I live in Europe and think that this whole debate is ridiculous.
Well I doubt it would be to force you to use <quote> instead of <i> as that would be wrong in many ways - quote is block-level and includes a grey bar down the left hand side.
Yes, a lot of the web is not semantic. However, it seems to me that with each revision HTML is becoming more semantic - we no longer have the font or center tags and i and b are deprecated. In fact thanks to CSS, rather than becoming as you say "purely visual", HTML has become less visual. These days it is considered good form to use HTML for semantics and CSS for layout, separating the two entirely. It may not be that way all over the web but it's the way it should be.
HTML is a markup language and should be used for semantic meaning rather than presentation. The <i> and <b> tags have no semantic meaning, they are purely for presentation. While <i> and <b> are not technically deprecated (and should not have been disabled by slashdot) you should be using <em> and <strong>instead.
So, you can--realistically, through reprocessing--have all of the waste for an entire generation from an entire country fit into a very dangerous house
What kind of country are we talking about here? One the size of China? One the size of the UK?
What does programming with VB have to do with anything?
VB specifically? Nothing, but programming in general is complex compared to knowing what file extensions mean. The average Joe, if using a computer in their day job, should understand file extensions but probably doesn't need to understand more advanced computer skills such as programming (in VB or any other language).
Sure, being able to do that would be nice but then no-one would buy new games, they'd just share them between friends.
I think it's a compromise that had to be made.
Sure they could have done that just to be nice. I'm sure it would have garnered them some support from the community but when all's said and done Valve are a business and need to make money..and lets face it they've got enough support from the community as it is. I'm happy to give them a fair price for the games they sell because they give me a service which I like and I'm happy to be the sole user of those games.
If my brother wants to play one then he is welcome to come to my house and try it out. If he wants his own copy then he can go buy one, the scrounging little cheapskate. He'd only mess up my saved games, anyway. Ok, I don't really mean that - I see your point. I just think that some concessions had to be made and they seem to have worked - Steam is very popular.
[Disclaimer: People will probably think I'm working Valve the amount of time I spend on here defending them... I should point out that I'm not affiliated with Valve in any way but I have been using Steam since it was first released and have never had a problem with it.]
"Literally" whoosh? How, exactly? Slashdot comments come with sound effects these days? Someone printed out the comment, folded it into a paper aeroplane and flew it past my ears?
I saw his point and I was responding to it. Despite the fact that all he needed was the CD it doesn't appear to be any easier for him. Sure, he didn't have any trouble being "approved" or anything like that but then neither did I. There are, as I said above, pros and cons with both systems. I am not saying that Steam is perfect but you seem to have decided that it is no good for anyone and I respectfully disagree.
In my example above I would have installed Half Life from a CD but - due to the brilliant freedom of being able to lend it to a friend - I no longer have my CD because some bugger never gave it back to me. So, I've bought two versions of the game because of this freedom that you are touting as a selling point (actually 3, I had two CDs).
Now you may argue that this is my fault - I shouldn't have lost my disk, I should have backed it up or whatever. Well, maybe. Either way, because of Steam, I still have a copy of the game.
You make the oft-repeated point about having to connect to a server to download the game. My response to that is: No shit. It's a download service - that's how it works. But it balances out:
Can you buy a new game on CD at midnight on a Sunday when all the shops are shut? No? I can on Steam.
Can you get a new game and play it quicker than it takes you to go to the shop and back and without even having to even leave your seat? No? I can on Steam.
No server? No game.
Unless I'd already downloaded it and backed it up, which you can do with Steam.
Server doesn't like you.
I've not had this problem. Admittedly there are people that have. I would be very, very interested to see a comparison of the percentage of Steam users who have had trouble accessing games that they have bought against the number of consumers of physical media who have been unable to play for one reason or another (scratch/broken/missing disks etc). As it is I have no idea what the figures are but no-one I know has had any problems.
Server doesn't like your game anymore? No game.
I have heard a lot of people say this but as far as I am aware this has never happened to a game on Steam. Valve have said that they will (though aren't legally bound to) release patches for any games bought through Steam should the service ever be shut down. They are also the most generally nice, most customer-focused tech company I know of so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Tl;dr - If you want ultimate control over your games then buy them on CD, crack the DRM and back them up.
However if, like me, you like to have a remote backup of all your games, no CDs to have to worry about, downloadable AAA games, often for a ridiculously generous discount then you can stick to Steam. Or do both. Whatever, I don't care. I like Steam, therefore I use it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well screw you too, buddy.
While we are technically a copy of our former selves it doesn't feel that way. If you could - without turning off the brain - take out each part, piece by piece and replace it with something so convincing that the brain accepted it as part of itself then you would never realise that you had become a robot.
However if you built a robot with all your memories, emotions, thoughts and personality then no matter how accurate it was there is no way to transfer the you-ness of you - the real you, the soul or whatever - into the machine. It may think, feel and act exactly like you but there would be no way to experience it. If you were gradually transformed then the "you" experiencing it would never stop experiencing. By the time you are totally changed it would no longer be the original you, but only in the same way that your current body isn't the original you - from your point of view it would still be you.
Any part in particular?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Lego has 1x4s too...
Thanks for clarifying. That makes a lot of sense and seems a whole lot less big-brother than the summary or my (admittedly brief) skimming of the article seem to suggest.
Employees are expected, while on the clock, to present a positive image of the man paying them cash.
Conversations are monitored around the clock, regardless of where employees access pages from — work, home or mobile —
And now while off the clock, apparently.
Yeah, things like this have been around for a while but it really depends on what you're doing.
If you're only mixing they're perfect - you can find a track almost instantly and they save you lugging a load of vinyl around...although it often means you've got lug around a whole different set of kit and you've also got to figure out how and when you're going to plug it all in without stopping the sound from the DJ who is playing before you (I used to work as a sound engineer in a small venue. Trust me, this can be annoying. Not just for the engineer or artist but for the crowd - cutting the music while the next act sets up is a surefire way of emptying the dance floor).
However if you're a scratch DJ it's a different kettle of fish. I'm not a great scratch DJ but put me on, say, Final Scratch (or any one of these, though to be fair I'd expect time-coded vinyl to be slightly more laggy than the HD2500 mentioned below...but I digress...where was I....) and I will suck balls.
It, like all things, is subjective.
People also buy vinyl because it is easier to mix with. You have direct physical control over the movement of the disc and therefore the speed of the music which gives you more control for beat-matching and makes scratching possible/easier. Obviously, it has it's disadvantages. Your bags are heavier, vinyl can get damaged, it takes longer to find a piece of vinyl than search a digital disk etc. but as a tool for this specific job, many still (rightly, in my opinion) consider it superior.
Mario Kart is NOT a "racing" game.
So what is it? An adventure game with an exceptionally fast gameplay and a weak storyline? An on-a-rail third-person shooter with a terrible aiming system?
You mean how each Google search results link sends a response to Google when clicked before redirecting you to the actual result?
Isn't that kind of vital for them in order to rank and prioritize search results? Wouldn't their service suck if everyone blocked that?
Ah, sorry, you misunderstand me. I don't think I'm explaining myself very well... I'm not saying that they would respect/learn science less because they didn't learn about evolution (that is obviously absurd). I'm saying that they are less likely to respect/learn science if their science teacher is in such a weakened position that they can't stand behind the findings of the subject they are trying to teach.
I guess I'm making the old "correlation, not causation" argument...
I'm not willing to believe it is even in the top 20 causes for these students performing poorly on tests of scientific knowledge in general.
Not directly, no. I think the point is more that if a science teacher can't stand behind the findings of science (i.e. that evolution is correct) then their students are more likely to have less respect for science and/or not pay as much attention to it as a subject.
I don't know...I live in Europe and think that this whole debate is ridiculous.
Where is creationisms building, I ask you that!
I don't know but if they ever invent such a thing I propose the name "church".
Epic fr0wnage.
Well I doubt it would be to force you to use <quote> instead of <i> as that would be wrong in many ways - quote is block-level and includes a grey bar down the left hand side.
Yes, a lot of the web is not semantic. However, it seems to me that with each revision HTML is becoming more semantic - we no longer have the font or center tags and i and b are deprecated. In fact thanks to CSS, rather than becoming as you say "purely visual", HTML has become less visual. These days it is considered good form to use HTML for semantics and CSS for layout, separating the two entirely. It may not be that way all over the web but it's the way it should be.
HTML is a markup language and should be used for semantic meaning rather than presentation. The <i> and <b> tags have no semantic meaning, they are purely for presentation. While <i> and <b> are not technically deprecated (and should not have been disabled by slashdot) you should be using <em> and <strong>instead.
Test: this should be emphasised
Test: this should be strong
Further discussion on the subject
Privacy or sunshine. Pick one.
Leak it all, let blogs sort it out.
So, you can--realistically, through reprocessing--have all of the waste for an entire generation from an entire country fit into a very dangerous house
What kind of country are we talking about here? One the size of China? One the size of the UK?
Are we expected to get a CS degree before reading Slashdot?
[I know what P!=NP means but only because I read into it after reading a previous Slashdot article.]
I'm on an "unlimited" 500MB deal with Orange. I've yet to reach my limit because there is usually a wifi connection around.
What does programming with VB have to do with anything?
VB specifically? Nothing, but programming in general is complex compared to knowing what file extensions mean. The average Joe, if using a computer in their day job, should understand file extensions but probably doesn't need to understand more advanced computer skills such as programming (in VB or any other language).
Chrome may be open source too
No, it isn't. Chromium is open source and Chrome is based on Chromium but Chrome itself is not open source.
Sure, being able to do that would be nice but then no-one would buy new games, they'd just share them between friends.
I think it's a compromise that had to be made.
Sure they could have done that just to be nice. I'm sure it would have garnered them some support from the community but when all's said and done Valve are a business and need to make money..and lets face it they've got enough support from the community as it is. I'm happy to give them a fair price for the games they sell because they give me a service which I like and I'm happy to be the sole user of those games.
If my brother wants to play one then he is welcome to come to my house and try it out. If he wants his own copy then he can go buy one, the scrounging little cheapskate. He'd only mess up my saved games, anyway. Ok, I don't really mean that - I see your point. I just think that some concessions had to be made and they seem to have worked - Steam is very popular.
[Disclaimer: People will probably think I'm working Valve the amount of time I spend on here defending them... I should point out that I'm not affiliated with Valve in any way but I have been using Steam since it was first released and have never had a problem with it.]
"Literally" whoosh? How, exactly? Slashdot comments come with sound effects these days? Someone printed out the comment, folded it into a paper aeroplane and flew it past my ears?
I saw his point and I was responding to it. Despite the fact that all he needed was the CD it doesn't appear to be any easier for him. Sure, he didn't have any trouble being "approved" or anything like that but then neither did I. There are, as I said above, pros and cons with both systems. I am not saying that Steam is perfect but you seem to have decided that it is no good for anyone and I respectfully disagree.
In my example above I would have installed Half Life from a CD but - due to the brilliant freedom of being able to lend it to a friend - I no longer have my CD because some bugger never gave it back to me. So, I've bought two versions of the game because of this freedom that you are touting as a selling point (actually 3, I had two CDs).
Now you may argue that this is my fault - I shouldn't have lost my disk, I should have backed it up or whatever. Well, maybe. Either way, because of Steam, I still have a copy of the game.
You make the oft-repeated point about having to connect to a server to download the game. My response to that is: No shit. It's a download service - that's how it works. But it balances out:
Can you buy a new game on CD at midnight on a Sunday when all the shops are shut? No? I can on Steam.
Can you get a new game and play it quicker than it takes you to go to the shop and back and without even having to even leave your seat? No? I can on Steam.
No server? No game.
Unless I'd already downloaded it and backed it up, which you can do with Steam.
Server doesn't like you.
I've not had this problem. Admittedly there are people that have. I would be very, very interested to see a comparison of the percentage of Steam users who have had trouble accessing games that they have bought against the number of consumers of physical media who have been unable to play for one reason or another (scratch/broken /missing disks etc). As it is I have no idea what the figures are but no-one I know has had any problems.
Server doesn't like your game anymore? No game.
I have heard a lot of people say this but as far as I am aware this has never happened to a game on Steam. Valve have said that they will (though aren't legally bound to) release patches for any games bought through Steam should the service ever be shut down. They are also the most generally nice, most customer-focused tech company I know of so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Tl;dr - If you want ultimate control over your games then buy them on CD, crack the DRM and back them up.
However if, like me, you like to have a remote backup of all your games, no CDs to have to worry about, downloadable AAA games, often for a ridiculously generous discount then you can stick to Steam. Or do both. Whatever, I don't care. I like Steam, therefore I use it.