And here's the irony: I agree with you that the only possible justified use of these sorts of driving-aid devices would be to help old people (although maybe I'm just callous because I generally think that if they're too old to drive they just shouldn't be driving), but only the young people will be willing to use them. Hell, I'm not even that old and I wouldn't trust some sort of auto-parking thing. Only people who are young when it comes out and grow up with it will be used to it and willing to use it themselves.
I bet it was the same thing with automatic transmission at first. A car changing gears on it's own, many of the people who were only used to manual probably didn't particularly want to make the switch. Some will switch, but the vast majority of the transition depends on time.
Or to make a long story short, new technology can take upwards of a generation to really assimilate into society. But you probably knew that anyway, I just felt like pointing that out as it seemed pertinent or something.
Other possible explanations for the drop in filesharing:
-- July 4th. Even geeks have lives. -- Summer. Same as above. -- Summer. Less college students, who tend to be heavy users. -- No notable "new" stuff, TV series generally aren't releasing new episodes to be downloaded over the summer. -- Simple statistical anomaly. 15% may sound like a lot, but if it's just a weeklong trend it doesn't mean much.
And there are other possibilities too. Be creative, I'm sure you can think of some.
Man, the world would benefit so much if somebody would just take out an ad during the Superbowl or something that would explain in simple terms the difference between correlation and causation. Except such an explanation is likely impossible. Oh well.
First off, ripping my 300 or so cds at high quality VBR would go a decent way to filling that. I'm betting I could definitely fill a healthy chunk of the 60gigs, and it'd be nice to have room to grow, eh?
That, and all this AAC stuff... is a 128kb AAC really as great as Apple insists? From what I've read, it is better than a 128kb MP3, but if you're ripping a decent VBR MP3 then it really isn't any better. That, and MP3s are, well, compatible on with hardware and software. AAC won't be a selling point until I can play them as easily as I can play MP3s, and that'll be awhile yet (seeing as how I'm not a Mac user).
Creative is the king when it comes to sound quality. After all, they do happen to make sound cards as well.
To my understanding, the Zen is just a smaller Nomad Jukebox with slightly less features. I believe that Creative tends to go with Firewire rather than USB2 (most of the Creative Soundcards also include firewire ports these days), although I'd expect this new player to include both.
I've strongly considered buying a hard drive player, but I'm slightly worried about failure. It'd be nice to move my mp3 collection over to a 60gig player and free up some space, but what if the player gets fried? I suppose I could burn backups to CD too, and I suppose I should anyway, but regardless harddrives are very potentially faulty things.
That, and I only want to buy a player that I can plug in and have it show up as an external hard drive. No iTunes, no MusicMatch Jukebox, none of that nonsense. I want to load my tunes on myself, I don't want the player to depend on id3 tags (as many of my mp3s have poor id3 tags), I just want it to use filenames and folders and behave like a sensible external hard drive that also happens to play mp3s. I believe the Archos jukeboxes do this, but I don't know about any other hard drive based players.
And lastly, I believe the iPod has the Zen beat in battery life. Form factor wise, Mac fanboys will slobber over the iPod and say that anything else sucks, but personally I think the Zen or even the Archos are just fine in terms of appearances and usability.
If this new Zen can plug in just like a hard drive, and it really is 60gb for $400, I might have to pick it up myself. 60gb is about the largest I trust hard drives anyway, much less portable ones.
I guess you haven't seen the "Die Jar-Jar!" skit, already implemented by the same guy responsible for all this asciimation in the first place.
It's available here.
Or for those who don't trust html links:
http://asciimation.co.nz/diejarjar.html
FYI, the BSA, AKA "guys we don't like", are spreading FUD using $$$ and buying out the IDC, an industry analyst that government organizations such as the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the DOD, the DOJ, TIPS, the WTO, and perhaps even more will all listen to and as such we will be forced to respond by supporting groups such as the ACLU and the EFF in the fight to maintain our civil rights while also hoping that we're not drafted the SSS and also that the SSA holds together so we can all retire someday.
"The Nazis murdered people of different religions... erm, wait, I seem to remember 80 men, women, and children being burnt to death about a decade ago, so forget that one..."
Yes, the difference is several million people, in that aspect at least.
Sure, you can make the case that the US is going downhill and turning more fascist every day, but it's nowhere near as bad as nazi Germany and will hopefully never reach that point either.
The real answer is these "tablet PCs" probably aren't all that useful to "true geeks", as we're far too keyboard dependent, but could be quite useful to people ranging from graphics artists to grandmothers. There is most definitely a point, even if it's not that useful to us. The original iMac would be quite stupid for a geek to buy as well (unless you stripped it and put LinuxPPC on it or something), but it's definitely useful to grandma.
Amen to Movable Type. Good stuff, easy to set up, yes I know I'm repeating what others are saying but I'll also shamelessly self promote as I run my site with MT:
PS: What I'm saying is I really don't know. I think that there is a perfect game of chess, and it might be a tie, or maybe a white win, or who the hell knows maybe just maybe even a black win. I'm definitely not saying that a human would be capable of playing this perfect game of chess without computer aid, I'm not sure where you got that from.
That quote was from him. I didn't say that. My whole point is *he* thinks that the perfect game is a tie. I'm saying that I don't know, and I disagree with him. So yeah.
Actually, he did say that the perfect game was a tie. And I quote:
"However computers do it, eventually a computer will be designed that can play a perfect game of chess. Against an amazingly talented human it might draw, but it would never lose."
Oh, and even though I'm wasting my 100th post on you here, and yes I know I should have just found all the links first off and put them all in one post, but shrug. I found just one more that you might particularly be interested in. It mentions your precious game theory, and also says that we don't know the end result of a perfect game of chess.
Although I didn't bother to go to the library, I did a quick Google search, and lo and behold, you are dead wrong. What a surprise.
Quote from http://sern.ucalgary.ca/courses/CPSC/533/W99/prese ntations/L1_5A_Szuch_Boyd/game.html
"Deep Blue could calculate the perfect game of chess in approximately 10^100 years to calculate it, considering the age of the universe is in the order of 10^10 years, I don't think that it's going to happen."
Other sites of note: http://chesmayn.valuehost.co.uk/computer-04 .htm http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/news/chess/ web_ro und/web_round12.html http://www.azer.com/aiweb/ca tegories/magazine/33_f older/33_articles/33_kasparovibm.html http://play er2player.net/forums/viewtopic.php?from =viewforum&topic=3886
And that's enough sources for now. Perhaps you can get off your own "lazy ass" and actually research a problem before stating things you can't back up.
So you're claiming chess has been proven and that the perfect game is a tie, but you're not going to find the proof because I'm should get off my "lazy ass"?
Pffft.
Bluff I call on you, bluff I say...
And chess is more complicated than tictactoe, be you a mathematician or not.
That's not a proof. Show me a proof. Just saying "think about it and it's obvious" doesn't work. *You* think about it: White goes first. Mayhaps that's an advantage? Chess is a slightly more complicated game than Tic-Tac-Toe, methinks...
Unless you can show me a mathematical proof that chess can be played perfectly, then I won't believe you.
In fact maybe there's a bit of a miscommunication. I agree that there is a theoretical perfect game of chess, if both sides played perfectly. I just don't necessarily agree that the end result would be a tie: white might be the victor. That's what I'm saying.
Ummm and when exactly was it proven that a perfect game of chess existed? Did I miss something? While I agree it might be possible that the perfect game exists, it hasn't been proven. That aside, I do agree that generally speaking chess isn't a great AI test, but yeah...
And nowhere did I say I disagree with that: I actually agree with it wholeheartedly. But that doesn't change the fact that, generally speaking, heckling is acceptable in baseball and unacceptable in chess. You are quite right: it's a matter of tradition.
Chess and baseball are quite different. Heckling is generally acceptable in baseball. In chess, however, it is unacceptable, especially at the grandmaster level.
Chess is a cerebral game, and taunting and heckling is quite immature in the context of chess I'd say. That, and while Kasparov may count as a poor sport, Kramnik hardly does: as others said in response to you already, he *didn't* protest when *Deep Fritz* was heckling him. Arguably, the computer is the poor sport in this situation.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this isn't man versus computer. This is man versus computer scientist. There's a big difference, and one that I'd hope most/.ers could appreciate.
Man versus computer makes no sense, because there are some things where they beat us period (arithmetic, say) and others where we beat them period (anything besides arithmetic, really). The only reason computers are smart is because they are *programmed* to be that way, and that is not a testament to the machine so much as to the ability of those who programmed it.
Slashdot Mirror
And here's the irony: I agree with you that the only possible justified use of these sorts of driving-aid devices would be to help old people (although maybe I'm just callous because I generally think that if they're too old to drive they just shouldn't be driving), but only the young people will be willing to use them. Hell, I'm not even that old and I wouldn't trust some sort of auto-parking thing. Only people who are young when it comes out and grow up with it will be used to it and willing to use it themselves.
I bet it was the same thing with automatic transmission at first. A car changing gears on it's own, many of the people who were only used to manual probably didn't particularly want to make the switch. Some will switch, but the vast majority of the transition depends on time.
Or to make a long story short, new technology can take upwards of a generation to really assimilate into society. But you probably knew that anyway, I just felt like pointing that out as it seemed pertinent or something.
Other possible explanations for the drop in filesharing:
-- July 4th. Even geeks have lives.
-- Summer. Same as above.
-- Summer. Less college students, who tend to be heavy users.
-- No notable "new" stuff, TV series generally aren't releasing new episodes to be downloaded over the summer.
-- Simple statistical anomaly. 15% may sound like a lot, but if it's just a weeklong trend it doesn't mean much.
And there are other possibilities too. Be creative, I'm sure you can think of some.
Man, the world would benefit so much if somebody would just take out an ad during the Superbowl or something that would explain in simple terms the difference between correlation and causation. Except such an explanation is likely impossible. Oh well.
First off, ripping my 300 or so cds at high quality VBR would go a decent way to filling that. I'm betting I could definitely fill a healthy chunk of the 60gigs, and it'd be nice to have room to grow, eh?
That, and all this AAC stuff... is a 128kb AAC really as great as Apple insists? From what I've read, it is better than a 128kb MP3, but if you're ripping a decent VBR MP3 then it really isn't any better. That, and MP3s are, well, compatible on with hardware and software. AAC won't be a selling point until I can play them as easily as I can play MP3s, and that'll be awhile yet (seeing as how I'm not a Mac user).
Creative is the king when it comes to sound quality. After all, they do happen to make sound cards as well.
To my understanding, the Zen is just a smaller Nomad Jukebox with slightly less features. I believe that Creative tends to go with Firewire rather than USB2 (most of the Creative Soundcards also include firewire ports these days), although I'd expect this new player to include both.
I've strongly considered buying a hard drive player, but I'm slightly worried about failure. It'd be nice to move my mp3 collection over to a 60gig player and free up some space, but what if the player gets fried? I suppose I could burn backups to CD too, and I suppose I should anyway, but regardless harddrives are very potentially faulty things.
That, and I only want to buy a player that I can plug in and have it show up as an external hard drive. No iTunes, no MusicMatch Jukebox, none of that nonsense. I want to load my tunes on myself, I don't want the player to depend on id3 tags (as many of my mp3s have poor id3 tags), I just want it to use filenames and folders and behave like a sensible external hard drive that also happens to play mp3s. I believe the Archos jukeboxes do this, but I don't know about any other hard drive based players.
And lastly, I believe the iPod has the Zen beat in battery life. Form factor wise, Mac fanboys will slobber over the iPod and say that anything else sucks, but personally I think the Zen or even the Archos are just fine in terms of appearances and usability.
If this new Zen can plug in just like a hard drive, and it really is 60gb for $400, I might have to pick it up myself. 60gb is about the largest I trust hard drives anyway, much less portable ones.
Or more likely, Scientology had better lawyers than whoever is trying to sue eBay. Scientology does have a history of lawsuits versus various websites and such...
I guess you haven't seen the "Die Jar-Jar!" skit, already implemented by the same guy responsible for all this asciimation in the first place. It's available here. Or for those who don't trust html links: http://asciimation.co.nz/diejarjar.html
FYI, the BSA, AKA "guys we don't like", are spreading FUD using $$$ and buying out the IDC, an industry analyst that government organizations such as the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the DOD, the DOJ, TIPS, the WTO, and perhaps even more will all listen to and as such we will be forced to respond by supporting groups such as the ACLU and the EFF in the fight to maintain our civil rights while also hoping that we're not drafted the SSS and also that the SSA holds together so we can all retire someday.
Or something.
What, like this one? Very good mod, I hope he comes out with part two soon.
Look on the bright side, at least you should get some karma out of it. ;)
Looks like we have a new candidate for this old poll.
"The Nazis murdered people of different religions... erm, wait, I seem to remember 80 men, women, and children being burnt to death about a decade ago, so forget that one..."
Yes, the difference is several million people, in that aspect at least.
Sure, you can make the case that the US is going downhill and turning more fascist every day, but it's nowhere near as bad as nazi Germany and will hopefully never reach that point either.
The real answer is these "tablet PCs" probably aren't all that useful to "true geeks", as we're far too keyboard dependent, but could be quite useful to people ranging from graphics artists to grandmothers. There is most definitely a point, even if it's not that useful to us. The original iMac would be quite stupid for a geek to buy as well (unless you stripped it and put LinuxPPC on it or something), but it's definitely useful to grandma.
Amen to Movable Type. Good stuff, easy to set up, yes I know I'm repeating what others are saying but I'll also shamelessly self promote as I run my site with MT:
www.proles.net (the one I link to in my sig)
Whee self promotion...
PS: What I'm saying is I really don't know. I think that there is a perfect game of chess, and it might be a tie, or maybe a white win, or who the hell knows maybe just maybe even a black win. I'm definitely not saying that a human would be capable of playing this perfect game of chess without computer aid, I'm not sure where you got that from.
Anyway, yeah.
That quote was from him. I didn't say that. My whole point is *he* thinks that the perfect game is a tie. I'm saying that I don't know, and I disagree with him. So yeah.
Actually, he did say that the perfect game was a tie. And I quote:
"However computers do it, eventually a computer will be designed that can play a perfect game of chess. Against an amazingly talented human it might draw, but it would never lose."
Oh, and even though I'm wasting my 100th post on you here, and yes I know I should have just found all the links first off and put them all in one post, but shrug. I found just one more that you might particularly be interested in. It mentions your precious game theory, and also says that we don't know the end result of a perfect game of chess.
http://xocxoc.home.att.net/math/game_theory.htm
So yeah, maybe you should research a bit, eh?
Although I didn't bother to go to the library, I did a quick Google search, and lo and behold, you are dead wrong. What a surprise.
e ntations/L1_5A_Szuch_Boyd/game.html
4 .htm/ web_ro und/web_round12.htmla tegories/magazine/33_f older/33_articles/33_kasparovibm.htmly er2player.net/forums/viewtopic.php?from =viewforum&topic=3886
Quote from http://sern.ucalgary.ca/courses/CPSC/533/W99/pres
"Deep Blue could calculate the perfect game of chess in approximately 10^100 years to calculate it, considering the age of the universe is in the order of 10^10 years, I don't think that it's going to happen."
Other sites of note:
http://chesmayn.valuehost.co.uk/computer-0
http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/news/chess
http://www.azer.com/aiweb/c
http://pla
And that's enough sources for now. Perhaps you can get off your own "lazy ass" and actually research a problem before stating things you can't back up.
So you're claiming chess has been proven and that the perfect game is a tie, but you're not going to find the proof because I'm should get off my "lazy ass"?
Pffft.
Bluff I call on you, bluff I say...
And chess is more complicated than tictactoe, be you a mathematician or not.
Oh well.
That's not a proof. Show me a proof. Just saying "think about it and it's obvious" doesn't work. *You* think about it: White goes first. Mayhaps that's an advantage? Chess is a slightly more complicated game than Tic-Tac-Toe, methinks...
Unless you can show me a mathematical proof that chess can be played perfectly, then I won't believe you.
In fact maybe there's a bit of a miscommunication. I agree that there is a theoretical perfect game of chess, if both sides played perfectly. I just don't necessarily agree that the end result would be a tie: white might be the victor. That's what I'm saying.
Ummm and when exactly was it proven that a perfect game of chess existed? Did I miss something? While I agree it might be possible that the perfect game exists, it hasn't been proven. That aside, I do agree that generally speaking chess isn't a great AI test, but yeah...
And nowhere did I say I disagree with that: I actually agree with it wholeheartedly. But that doesn't change the fact that, generally speaking, heckling is acceptable in baseball and unacceptable in chess. You are quite right: it's a matter of tradition.
Chess and baseball are quite different. Heckling is generally acceptable in baseball. In chess, however, it is unacceptable, especially at the grandmaster level.
Chess is a cerebral game, and taunting and heckling is quite immature in the context of chess I'd say. That, and while Kasparov may count as a poor sport, Kramnik hardly does: as others said in response to you already, he *didn't* protest when *Deep Fritz* was heckling him. Arguably, the computer is the poor sport in this situation.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this isn't man versus computer. This is man versus computer scientist. There's a big difference, and one that I'd hope most /.ers could appreciate.
Man versus computer makes no sense, because there are some things where they beat us period (arithmetic, say) and others where we beat them period (anything besides arithmetic, really). The only reason computers are smart is because they are *programmed* to be that way, and that is not a testament to the machine so much as to the ability of those who programmed it.
You mean like this?
http://decss.zoy.org/decss-sung.mp3