They don't care because they think it's not serious, or not happening at all. I'd say that informing citizens about upcoming disaster is a government responsibility.
My history is something like this: enter university, do great. Find out about MUDs. Stop studying. Mistake: lie to parents about study results. Play MUD for three years, while the RL problems and the lies pile up. Stop playing. Finally confess to parents a year later. Spend next three years in a bad depression. Find a good psychologist. Spend next three years rebuilding some self confidence. Eventually, actually find a job and actually finish study. End result: 10 years mostly lost to MUD.
Could anyone have helped, early on? No way, I ignored those people. Besides, all my friends played too, and we were having tremendous fun (really! and it's where I learned how to code well). When not thinking about real life, and the pile of two years worth of mail I didn't dare to open.
If he's like me, he's feeling guilty about missing work and escaping from the guilt by playing more WoW. It's a death spiral. Almost everybody eventually gets out, but it can take years.
But, there is still hope. Are you people (his RL friends) also friends with him in game, ie on Teamspeak together? Then step 1 is to stop playing. All of you. He won't stop to visit you and see you playing; nor can you send him back to a RL where his friends aren't available much because they're playing a game he can't play. And if you don't quit, you'll just be talking about the game when he's around... So stop playing yourself, first. It's only a game to you, right? So that shouldn't be a problem.
Second, be very blunt to him. He needs to quit. At this point, he may choose to ignore you and avoid you from here on. If so, it's out of your hands.
Third, give him a good alternative - fun in real life. I prefer getting board games, booze and a bunch of people around a table regularly. Some girls too (mostly to improve the atmosphere, mixed company is more fun). Or do some outdoors stuff, or whatever... I volunteered for a student bar. Just make it seem worthwhile for him to give up his in game social relations.
And hey, at least it's not heroin. It's slightly cheaper and usually doesn't leave him dead at the end of the ride. It could be worse...
Vernor Vinge, for his attempts at describing really superior intelligence and hive minds in A Fire Upon the Deep, and a bunch of different really hard to write about stuff like Focus and how it is to view a really different alien society through the eyes of really good translators, in A Deepness in the Sky.
Greg Egan, for blowing my mind with ideas like his "dust theory" (in Permutation City), and the extreme consequences of virtual life in Diaspora, to trying to write the impossible in Schild's Ladder (life in a universe with utterly different quantum mechanics). His stories and characters may not be the best ever (according to reviews), I never noticed because I was trying to keep up with the ideas. Far ahead of everybody else.
The problem is that those millions of years were in another environment - we didn't use to live in the enormous year round abundance of food we have now.
Our body's intuition says to stock up on fat for the harsh times, it says sweet = always good, fat = always good. Eat the food you can get before the next famine strikes.
We know what the ideal diet is - eat with the season, in tremendous variety, use meats in moderation, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, prefer wholewheat grains over processed flour, vegetable oils, get those fatty fish while they still exist. Do all those things your mother said you should.
Unfortunately, our body's intuition, given the current environment, causes a large majority of us to overeat and to emphasize the wrong things.
All that said, isolation one molecule that currently looks like it is helpful against a symptom, and fix the bacon so that it contains it... surely that's not the solution.
There exists a pirate MMORPG (MMOArrrrPG) named Puzzle Pirates. It's fun and addictive and different, and in a survey a while back it turned out they had almost exactly 50/50 men and women playing it, that must be pretty unique in online games. It's an MMO not based on killing things for xp, but running ships cooperatively, with everybody doing a puzzle that does something the ship needs, and a player driven economy that also runs on people doing puzzle games.
The company behind PP is named Three Rings; the article is about a presentation about their upcoming new game, Bang! Howdy, which is in some ways completely different and in some ways similar.
One of the interesting things they did with PP was their micropayment system. They have a few different servers, named "oceans". Initially, they had only servers in which you had a week or so free trial, with limited options, and after that you needed to subscribe, for about $10 a month. An all or nothing model.
Then they made "doubloon" servers - you can play without limit for free, but you need to unlock stuff in the game with doubloons you can buy (about $0.25 per doubloon, I think?). You can pick the stuff you want - if you want to be captain, you need an expensive captain badge (that disappears after 30 days of playing, days you don't login don't count), if you're happy being a lowly cabin person, you don't need to spend money. Items like clothes and houses that you buy also have a doubloon cost added to the normal in game money they already cost.
An interesting thing is that you can also trade doubloons with other players for in game money - so kids with too much spare time but no real life money can play all day, and sell their in game money to busy people with wallets. No need for eBay here. You can't turn doubloons into real life money, but you can play for free and do everything, if you want to spend the playing time.
It turns out that the doubloon model servers make them more money than the subscription model servers, they're much more popular. So Bang! Howdy is going to use a similar micropayment method.
I didn't notice anything odd about Zonk's review at all and thought it was very interesting... then I realized that I know a bit more than people who haven't been addicted =)
As far as I know, Morrowind has _eight_ totally different predefined endings, depending on your actions in the game. And there's no need to go for any of them, you can just play and do what you want.
Nietzsche coined the term "Übermensch", which translates to "Overman" not "Superman". I'm pretty sure no Nazi every used the english word "Superman" either.
Well, since "super" also literally means "over", I think they're the same.
I think they were designed so that they were _absolutely certain_ they'd work for 90 days. Which means that, with some luck, they're likely to last a lot longer.
Many researchers are spending lots of time researching AI, and the problems for which the Laws of Robotics are a an attempted solution; Namely how do you keep the robotis from taking over and/or indiscriminately killing mere humans, as seen in so many hollywood movies. So fictional laws are important as experiments in looking at potential solutions to a real problem.
No, researchers in hollywood movies spend time researching that. In the real world, AI deals with computer programs that just do what they say they should do, just like every other computer program. Avoiding the indiscriminate killing of mere humans is not a real problem.
"Asimov's Laws of Robotics" are a _plot device_ that Asimov invented for one reason: to be able to write entertaining stories based on showing the myriad ways in which they don't work. They're far too superficial and simplistic, by design.
So not only are they fictitious, they were invented in order to be wrong...
Wtf? I was going to look at PostgreSQL soon because it has the reputation of being much better quality than MySQL, and we're running into some annoying MySQL stuff. But if it doesn't do replication well... end of story.
... why would a web site trying to avoid being shut down by the MPAA/RIAA/etc. give itself a name called "The PIRATE Bay"??? Isn't this just a case of "Waving a red flag at the bull"?
Have you read their legal page? They're just taunting them, yes. Apparently they have some pretty strong precedent in Swedish law to back them.
You physically own a CD. The contents of that CD, you simply own the right to listen to them. [...] Other people invested large amounts of time, money, and resources into recording and producing the music that you paid for...they are the ones who paid for it, they are the ones who have a right to distribute it.
That is true, they do have that right - but not because they were the ones who paid for it (after all, if I manufacture chairs, pay for the cost, then sell them, I don't have that right), or because it's some sort of natural human right. They have that right because the people decided to make a copyright law, that gives them that right for a limited time. It was a good idea at the time, but, if the people decide that the balance has now gone too far towards the music industry, the laws can be changed and the "right" will be gone.
And it is a weird right - after all, as the grandparent says, something you physically own is usually yours to do with as you please. That's what ownership means, and it's a rather more fundamental right than copyright.
The problem is that the industry is trying to have it both ways. Act as if they're selling a single physical thing, then restrict your use by saying you only bought a license.
I'd be fine with buying a license for music - I'd pay for the license to listen to a song. If that means I can replace a scratched CD for a fee equal to the cost of pressing it; if I could redownload a song whenever I wanted, say if I accidentally deleted it; if I could make personal copies to listen to it on whatever gadget I may own. That'd be fair - I paid for the right to listen to it, so I can listen to it.
The problem is that the industry is trying to have it both ways.
If it's a license I bought, why did I have to buy the CD for the full price when I already owned the LP?
What incentive would, say, Sony BMG have to license music to any French digital music retailer, if that retailer wnated to sell their music in a non-DRM'ed format?
Money? You know, sell stuff? France is a pretty big market.
I'm sure it helps you in school, what I want to know is how in the hell do you do that?
I believe the generic term for this sort of thing is Chunking. Your short term memory is of a limited size, you can only keep track of so many things at once (most commonly you hear 7 +- 2 things).
Now those mnemonic devices are usually related with long term memory, not short term - I don't know if the method is even relevant for long term memory.
But the same goes for the article - they're doing short term memory tests as far as I know, you're talking about long term memory.
Firstly, Islam is not against Jews. The Jews are a people of the book, and therefore pretty close to muslims. Many of them are against the state of Israel, but then that's more a matter of politics than of religion.
And your second point - I don't care if people disagree with a huge religion - I'm a total atheist myself. That doesn't mean I'm against them, that would imply they're an enemy. And to make an enemy of a billion people with a wide variety of religions under one umbrella name "Islam"... that makes no sense.
Close - it's like people who are so enthusiastic about the prospects of space travel, that they believe quantum warp megadrives may well be invented within a few months! And society isn't quite ready for that (perhaps in a couple of years?) - so we'd better call for a moratorium!
In another post you called them Luddites, I think they're just about the total opposite of that. These are the names you always see in the forefront of strong AI and nanotech speculation, the fringe that would be the lunatic fringe if they weren't so ridiculously intelligent. Does KurzweilAI.net look like a Luddite site to you?
The only thing I know that in holland a mere 3-4% of the population seems to be in the news 80% of the time. You can turn on the tv without some program about them. Enough already.
Oh, and those who think that hatred against muslims is extreme right. Consider this. What do nazi's hate? Homosexuals, equal rights for women, jews, etc. What do muslims hate?
Dear countryman,
It is precisely because of the type of statement you just made (ridiculously comparing all muslims to Nazism) that they stay in the news. In fact, why the fuck did you drag your racist view of your perceived Dutch problem into this discussion? Leave them alone already.
If I sound a little angry, it's because the rest of your post attacks the article for something that's not in it at all - the exhibition is in fact about Muslim inventions only. That the submitter of the article wants to talk about "thousands of years" when it's only about 1300ish does not mean you can start ranting about pyramids. If you cared, you'd have read it. If you don't care, then shut up.
Just because your against Bush doesn't mean you have to be pro muslim.
If you believe it's even possible to be for or against a fifth of the world's people, based on their religion - a religion that is much more diverse and varied than, say, Christianity (with all its different sects)... you're just not making sense.
And they'd have no chance. In the last few years, anti-Muslim feelings have run so high in the EU, that asylum policies are really tough. US citizens would never pass the requirements (e.g., currently gays from Iran are happily sent back from the Netherlands).
Stay in the Americas. Canada, or most countries to the south seem good options.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't care because they think it's not serious, or not happening at all. I'd say that informing citizens about upcoming disaster is a government responsibility.
She should get a laptop and some sort of docking station. No problem.
"You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought."
http://www.freelists.org/archives/adeel420/12-2002 /msg00017.html
So the companies outsource to a company in Mexico, who outsource everything to China/India (if needed). Or they don't, and they just get outcompeted.
My history is something like this: enter university, do great. Find out about MUDs. Stop studying. Mistake: lie to parents about study results. Play MUD for three years, while the RL problems and the lies pile up. Stop playing. Finally confess to parents a year later. Spend next three years in a bad depression. Find a good psychologist. Spend next three years rebuilding some self confidence. Eventually, actually find a job and actually finish study. End result: 10 years mostly lost to MUD.
Could anyone have helped, early on? No way, I ignored those people. Besides, all my friends played too, and we were having tremendous fun (really! and it's where I learned how to code well). When not thinking about real life, and the pile of two years worth of mail I didn't dare to open.
If he's like me, he's feeling guilty about missing work and escaping from the guilt by playing more WoW. It's a death spiral. Almost everybody eventually gets out, but it can take years.
But, there is still hope. Are you people (his RL friends) also friends with him in game, ie on Teamspeak together? Then step 1 is to stop playing. All of you. He won't stop to visit you and see you playing; nor can you send him back to a RL where his friends aren't available much because they're playing a game he can't play. And if you don't quit, you'll just be talking about the game when he's around... So stop playing yourself, first. It's only a game to you, right? So that shouldn't be a problem.
Second, be very blunt to him. He needs to quit. At this point, he may choose to ignore you and avoid you from here on. If so, it's out of your hands.
Third, give him a good alternative - fun in real life. I prefer getting board games, booze and a bunch of people around a table regularly. Some girls too (mostly to improve the atmosphere, mixed company is more fun). Or do some outdoors stuff, or whatever... I volunteered for a student bar. Just make it seem worthwhile for him to give up his in game social relations.
And hey, at least it's not heroin. It's slightly cheaper and usually doesn't leave him dead at the end of the ride. It could be worse...
Vernor Vinge, for his attempts at describing really superior intelligence and hive minds in A Fire Upon the Deep, and a bunch of different really hard to write about stuff like Focus and how it is to view a really different alien society through the eyes of really good translators, in A Deepness in the Sky.
Greg Egan, for blowing my mind with ideas like his "dust theory" (in Permutation City), and the extreme consequences of virtual life in Diaspora, to trying to write the impossible in Schild's Ladder (life in a universe with utterly different quantum mechanics). His stories and characters may not be the best ever (according to reviews), I never noticed because I was trying to keep up with the ideas. Far ahead of everybody else.
The problem is that those millions of years were in another environment - we didn't use to live in the enormous year round abundance of food we have now.
Our body's intuition says to stock up on fat for the harsh times, it says sweet = always good, fat = always good. Eat the food you can get before the next famine strikes.
We know what the ideal diet is - eat with the season, in tremendous variety, use meats in moderation, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, prefer wholewheat grains over processed flour, vegetable oils, get those fatty fish while they still exist. Do all those things your mother said you should.
Unfortunately, our body's intuition, given the current environment, causes a large majority of us to overeat and to emphasize the wrong things.
All that said, isolation one molecule that currently looks like it is helpful against a symptom, and fix the bacon so that it contains it... surely that's not the solution.
There exists a pirate MMORPG (MMOArrrrPG) named Puzzle Pirates. It's fun and addictive and different, and in a survey a while back it turned out they had almost exactly 50/50 men and women playing it, that must be pretty unique in online games. It's an MMO not based on killing things for xp, but running ships cooperatively, with everybody doing a puzzle that does something the ship needs, and a player driven economy that also runs on people doing puzzle games.
The company behind PP is named Three Rings; the article is about a presentation about their upcoming new game, Bang! Howdy, which is in some ways completely different and in some ways similar.
One of the interesting things they did with PP was their micropayment system. They have a few different servers, named "oceans". Initially, they had only servers in which you had a week or so free trial, with limited options, and after that you needed to subscribe, for about $10 a month. An all or nothing model.
Then they made "doubloon" servers - you can play without limit for free, but you need to unlock stuff in the game with doubloons you can buy (about $0.25 per doubloon, I think?). You can pick the stuff you want - if you want to be captain, you need an expensive captain badge (that disappears after 30 days of playing, days you don't login don't count), if you're happy being a lowly cabin person, you don't need to spend money. Items like clothes and houses that you buy also have a doubloon cost added to the normal in game money they already cost.
An interesting thing is that you can also trade doubloons with other players for in game money - so kids with too much spare time but no real life money can play all day, and sell their in game money to busy people with wallets. No need for eBay here. You can't turn doubloons into real life money, but you can play for free and do everything, if you want to spend the playing time.
It turns out that the doubloon model servers make them more money than the subscription model servers, they're much more popular. So Bang! Howdy is going to use a similar micropayment method.
I didn't notice anything odd about Zonk's review at all and thought it was very interesting... then I realized that I know a bit more than people who haven't been addicted =)
Good professors hand out lecture notes that have all the information that you need and isn't in the book.
The lecture is there to help you understand that stuff, it's not a lecture notes factory.
As far as I know, Morrowind has _eight_ totally different predefined endings, depending on your actions in the game. And there's no need to go for any of them, you can just play and do what you want.
Nietzsche coined the term "Übermensch", which translates to "Overman" not "Superman". I'm pretty sure no Nazi every used the english word "Superman" either.
Well, since "super" also literally means "over", I think they're the same.
I think they were designed so that they were _absolutely certain_ they'd work for 90 days. Which means that, with some luck, they're likely to last a lot longer.
Huh? Has it ever been shown that porn is harmful for minors?
And how did they check? Almost all people have seen porn as minors...
Many researchers are spending lots of time researching AI, and the problems for which the Laws of Robotics are a an attempted solution; Namely how do you keep the robotis from taking over and/or indiscriminately killing mere humans, as seen in so many hollywood movies. So fictional laws are important as experiments in looking at potential solutions to a real problem.
No, researchers in hollywood movies spend time researching that. In the real world, AI deals with computer programs that just do what they say they should do, just like every other computer program. Avoiding the indiscriminate killing of mere humans is not a real problem.
"Asimov's Laws of Robotics" are a _plot device_ that Asimov invented for one reason: to be able to write entertaining stories based on showing the myriad ways in which they don't work. They're far too superficial and simplistic, by design.
So not only are they fictitious, they were invented in order to be wrong...
Wtf? I was going to look at PostgreSQL soon because it has the reputation of being much better quality than MySQL, and we're running into some annoying MySQL stuff. But if it doesn't do replication well... end of story.
Have you read their legal page? They're just taunting them, yes. Apparently they have some pretty strong precedent in Swedish law to back them.
You physically own a CD. The contents of that CD, you simply own the right to listen to them. [...] Other people invested large amounts of time, money, and resources into recording and producing the music that you paid for...they are the ones who paid for it, they are the ones who have a right to distribute it.
That is true, they do have that right - but not because they were the ones who paid for it (after all, if I manufacture chairs, pay for the cost, then sell them, I don't have that right), or because it's some sort of natural human right. They have that right because the people decided to make a copyright law, that gives them that right for a limited time. It was a good idea at the time, but, if the people decide that the balance has now gone too far towards the music industry, the laws can be changed and the "right" will be gone.
And it is a weird right - after all, as the grandparent says, something you physically own is usually yours to do with as you please. That's what ownership means, and it's a rather more fundamental right than copyright.
The problem is that the industry is trying to have it both ways. Act as if they're selling a single physical thing, then restrict your use by saying you only bought a license.
I'd be fine with buying a license for music - I'd pay for the license to listen to a song. If that means I can replace a scratched CD for a fee equal to the cost of pressing it; if I could redownload a song whenever I wanted, say if I accidentally deleted it; if I could make personal copies to listen to it on whatever gadget I may own. That'd be fair - I paid for the right to listen to it, so I can listen to it.
The problem is that the industry is trying to have it both ways.
If it's a license I bought, why did I have to buy the CD for the full price when I already owned the LP?
What incentive would, say, Sony BMG have to license music to any French digital music retailer, if that retailer wnated to sell their music in a non-DRM'ed format?
Money? You know, sell stuff? France is a pretty big market.
I'm sure it helps you in school, what I want to know is how in the hell do you do that?
I believe the generic term for this sort of thing is Chunking. Your short term memory is of a limited size, you can only keep track of so many things at once (most commonly you hear 7 +- 2 things).
Now those mnemonic devices are usually related with long term memory, not short term - I don't know if the method is even relevant for long term memory.
But the same goes for the article - they're doing short term memory tests as far as I know, you're talking about long term memory.
Firstly, Islam is not against Jews. The Jews are a people of the book, and therefore pretty close to muslims. Many of them are against the state of Israel, but then that's more a matter of politics than of religion.
And your second point - I don't care if people disagree with a huge religion - I'm a total atheist myself. That doesn't mean I'm against them, that would imply they're an enemy. And to make an enemy of a billion people with a wide variety of religions under one umbrella name "Islam"... that makes no sense.
Close - it's like people who are so enthusiastic about the prospects of space travel, that they believe quantum warp megadrives may well be invented within a few months! And society isn't quite ready for that (perhaps in a couple of years?) - so we'd better call for a moratorium!
In another post you called them Luddites, I think they're just about the total opposite of that. These are the names you always see in the forefront of strong AI and nanotech speculation, the fringe that would be the lunatic fringe if they weren't so ridiculously intelligent. Does KurzweilAI.net look like a Luddite site to you?
The only thing I know that in holland a mere 3-4% of the population seems to be in the news 80% of the time. You can turn on the tv without some program about them. Enough already.
Oh, and those who think that hatred against muslims is extreme right. Consider this. What do nazi's hate? Homosexuals, equal rights for women, jews, etc. What do muslims hate?
Dear countryman,
It is precisely because of the type of statement you just made (ridiculously comparing all muslims to Nazism) that they stay in the news. In fact, why the fuck did you drag your racist view of your perceived Dutch problem into this discussion? Leave them alone already.
If I sound a little angry, it's because the rest of your post attacks the article for something that's not in it at all - the exhibition is in fact about Muslim inventions only. That the submitter of the article wants to talk about "thousands of years" when it's only about 1300ish does not mean you can start ranting about pyramids. If you cared, you'd have read it. If you don't care, then shut up.
Just because your against Bush doesn't mean you have to be pro muslim.
If you believe it's even possible to be for or against a fifth of the world's people, based on their religion - a religion that is much more diverse and varied than, say, Christianity (with all its different sects)... you're just not making sense.
There are a few differences in capabilities. The US has high-tech weapons, whereas the middle-east has oil.
Yes, it's going to be a dark century. But after that, everybody will have the bomb, and there won't be any oil left.
And they'd have no chance. In the last few years, anti-Muslim feelings have run so high in the EU, that asylum policies are really tough. US citizens would never pass the requirements (e.g., currently gays from Iran are happily sent back from the Netherlands).
Stay in the Americas. Canada, or most countries to the south seem good options.