Yeah..but nobody is telling you what to buy. At worst, they are providing a another disincentive to buy something which is clearly unhealthy.
I agree with your sig, but I wonder whose being fearful in this situation. Is it the public official who "fears" for childhood obesity or is it the libertarian who "fears" that taxes on luxury goods are destroying their freedom. I'd lean towards the later being mind-killed, but that's just me.
Wrong again. Farm subsidies are intended to stabilize the food supply by giving farmers a less variable return on investment. Farmers still need to sell the stuff to come out ahead, but at least they know that a bushel of wheat won't be worth nothing if there's a surplus. The reason subsidies most impact foods like corn, wheat, and soy is because those foods can be put in a silo and remain viable for much longer.
I mean, we are talking about games here. By definition, every one of them is a gimmick. Madden 20XX? Just a gimmick where you get to play a football game as your favorite team/players. COD, just a gimmick where you get to pretend you are fighting in a historical battle. Etc.
Look at controller history, and it's all gimmicks followed by standardization. NES was a two-button gimmick, Genesis a three button gimmick, and SNES a four button (plus shoulders) gimmick. It kept going until somewhere around 6 buttons plus shoulder buttons, it became too much, at which point the industry seems to have standardized more or less on the 4 button approach.
Long story short, the Wiimote was obviously a gimmick, but a highly successful one. Since then, nearly every video game system (including the iPhone) has added some level of accelerometer or "real world action" controls to their system. The Wiimote won't be around forever, but can you imagine the next PS4 dualstick controller being released without 6-axis accelerometers? Even if most games won't use it, the ones that do will benefit, and accelerometers are pretty cheap.
So, call it a gimmick if you like. Complain about the games released for the system too if you must. But back in the real world, we're all a little richer for the fact that Nintendo pushed this gimmick out there and it proved to be successful.
Is anyone surprised? The console history for add-on controls is abysmal. Even the laser-guns during the NES generation were barely used, and many of those were bundled with the console. Even the non-traditional control scheme of the Wii is underutilized, and that was the standard deployment.
The Kinect needed to be released this generation as a "get familiar with this technology", and then they needed to announce the XBox720 half a month later, with promises that every 720 would come with Kinect technology standard (built into the unit). Then, developers could get familiar with it, and you might expect a good roll-out for the next generation. But, it was always doomed on 360.
Or, maybe buy a frisbee instead? There's plenty of fun that can be had for very little cost. It does require a tad bit of effort and sometimes a little creativity.
Oh, wait, this is/. Instead of a frisbee, buy a couple of D&D booklets, some pencils and some notepads and you can have hundreds of hours of entertainment for a fraction of the cost of an XBox with no games.
First of all, if you get your xbox this way, it's warrantied for the two years you're under contract, compared to one year for the usual retail package. The extra year's warranty retails for $50.
Or, get not an XBox, and you're a lot less likely to need that second year of warranty.
This is crazy person logic. You appear to be condoning that people so poor (or frivolous) they can't scrape together $300 in savings should buy multiple game devices on payment plans!?!
It's a game device, not dinner. There's another system available for $99 which does offer split screen play. Many people wouldn't consider the Wii an exact substitution for the X360, but if you cannot afford the later, you do have options.
Microsoft is using a marketing gimmick to extract more money from poor people (or people who can't do math). It's a marketing gimmick used in other arenas (cell phones), but that doesn't mean this is a good deal. The pool of people who should consider this is limited to those who don't have a 360 yet, desperately need one, and expect their net worth or income to be significantly higher in say a year than it is now.
That's misleading, no? The GP clearly intended the hypothetical to be "what if the entire Super Mario Bros concept were invented today". That script was set over two decades ago. The new games needed to have the same spirit or they wouldn't sell.
And, the GP is right. I shuddered a little just imagining what it would be like.
Hopefully, their teachers include the PI controversy in their curriculum so students are aware that while most mathematicians think the number for PI is 3.14159265..., some Christian mathematicians think we should just stick to using 3, like the Bible says.
Sometimes...just sometimes, I wish those of us who actually like mass transit were as big of a------s about all the money "wasted on roads that only a few people use" as guys like you are about mass transit. Maintaining the estimated 4 million miles of road in the US is not free. That costs real money. Real money that is always massively. subsidized to rural areas by urban areas.
it's crap like that is that makes Americans want SUVs. The urban street is increasing turning into an off road experience between the god damn speed bumps and the god damn potholes. Try this guys... flat. Just try it.
[cough, cough]bull[cough, cough]it. American's wants SUVs because 1) they like complaining about "high gas prices" 2) they live so far from work their car has to be a little home and 3) they want to make sure that when they do cause an accident they kill the other guys instead of themselves.
If a section of road is frequently falling apart, that usually means that patch of road just wasn't built robustly enough. E.g. the foundation should have been deeper. That won't stop any potholes, but it is the main issue in some locations.
My hunch is that many of the complaints about GCC being slow come from people who are also compiling with Visual Studio and using precompiled headers. If you always include every header file, your compilation will be slow. That's not really GCC's fault.
Not on scalability, but the language does have an impact on useability and maintainability of multithreaded code. You can write a C program (or even better, C++11 with a standard threading library) code that scales just as well as any erlang. The problem with that, is you'll probably need to rewrite some subset of the erlang language into C. That's hardly insurmountable, but from a development perspective it's clearly suboptimal.
Or just stop caring so much about the little things. Honestly, engineers take things like code optimization too personally. When you get home, let it go.
Wow, really? Because I get 8.5 hours of sleep every weeknight, and sometimes even sleep in on weekends (or take a nap). So, I guess I just proved that programmers average over 8 hours of sleep a night.
GP is right about this. Deaths during birth used to be much higher, and because of improved medical interventions, they are lower. You don't need a "blog" to prove that. It's one thing to say too many c-sections are performed (true) or that women might benefit from fewer epidurals (questionable). But, to argue that home birth is as safe or safer than hospital birth is you pushing a clearly false agenda.
GP doesn't appear to claim paleo diet is == to AGW denial. In the grand scheme, even if people lived 25% shorter on a paleo diet, it's clearly not as bad. But I think the point is that it's the same intellectual flaw that leads down both paths. Antivaccine is often found on the "left" and AGW denial on the "right", but both are caused by a general distrust of experts and reliance on anecdotes and societal pressure over accurate knowledge. In that way, yes the caveman diet fits right in.
Just because science has not discovered something does not mean it doesn't exist. To think otherwise is arrogant.
Is it more arrogant to withhold judgement about the medical efficacy of a substance (or procedure) with no demonstrated improvement over placebo, or is it more arrogant to bitch that people don't nod along with your pet dogma? Science never says an undiscovered thing doesn't exist. It literally can't work that way. But you seem to have a bee up your bonnet because science doesn't validate whatever it is you believe in.
Well, guess what, there's a great process for rectifying that. If your dogma is true, design a scientific experiment that proves it. Contact professors at universities near you, and find one who's sympathetic to your cause and get their input on your experiment. Then run it and publish for the world to see.
In this thread, it appears placebo has been defined as a drug with such advanced efficacy that it cannot be understood by traditional medicine. I.E. a placebo is advanced medicine. E.g. voodoo.
That's a hopelessly simplistic summary. First, all advertising is an attempt to manipulate people. Second, manipulation alone isn't enough to tell you if advertisement is "good" or "bad", to do that you must consider what manipulation is occurring. Arguably, if the fruit and vegetable growers association went to great lengths to manipulate people into eating more vegetables and less meat, that would be good for the individuals (better health) society (lower medical costs) the environment (less land use) global politics (lower oil/phosphate demand) and the economy (cheaper meals would leave people with more money to spend on innovative products instead of food). Such a group could literally implant a chip in your head to make you desire their product, and you'd still have to reach for an explanation of why that would be a bad thing (and I say that as a meat-eater). Conversely, if a jean manufacturer produced ads stating that their jeans aren't actually better than the competitions, but they are cooler and more $$$, that would fit into your informative only category but it hardly sounds like those ads make our lives better.
Backing off of the strawmen arguments, often times people really truly want a product, but they simply don't know it yet. From an economists perspective, any time an ad causes someone to allocate their money towards products that bring them more utility, than whatever they would have spent their money on instead, that ad is a good one. It doesn't matter if it's manipulative or violates your privacy.
Bzzzt wrong. Marketing is for attracting customers. A store like Target is thrilled for you to come buy diapers, milk, and pencils from them instead of Walmart. Of course they'd love to upsell you if you are already a customer, but most of the time they are just happy to have you walk through their doors.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah..but nobody is telling you what to buy. At worst, they are providing a another disincentive to buy something which is clearly unhealthy.
I agree with your sig, but I wonder whose being fearful in this situation. Is it the public official who "fears" for childhood obesity or is it the libertarian who "fears" that taxes on luxury goods are destroying their freedom. I'd lean towards the later being mind-killed, but that's just me.
Wrong again. Farm subsidies are intended to stabilize the food supply by giving farmers a less variable return on investment. Farmers still need to sell the stuff to come out ahead, but at least they know that a bushel of wheat won't be worth nothing if there's a surplus. The reason subsidies most impact foods like corn, wheat, and soy is because those foods can be put in a silo and remain viable for much longer.
Right, just like high cigarette taxes have no relation to the steady decline in smoking...
Why so serious?
I mean, we are talking about games here. By definition, every one of them is a gimmick. Madden 20XX? Just a gimmick where you get to play a football game as your favorite team/players. COD, just a gimmick where you get to pretend you are fighting in a historical battle. Etc.
Look at controller history, and it's all gimmicks followed by standardization. NES was a two-button gimmick, Genesis a three button gimmick, and SNES a four button (plus shoulders) gimmick. It kept going until somewhere around 6 buttons plus shoulder buttons, it became too much, at which point the industry seems to have standardized more or less on the 4 button approach.
Long story short, the Wiimote was obviously a gimmick, but a highly successful one. Since then, nearly every video game system (including the iPhone) has added some level of accelerometer or "real world action" controls to their system. The Wiimote won't be around forever, but can you imagine the next PS4 dualstick controller being released without 6-axis accelerometers? Even if most games won't use it, the ones that do will benefit, and accelerometers are pretty cheap.
So, call it a gimmick if you like. Complain about the games released for the system too if you must. But back in the real world, we're all a little richer for the fact that Nintendo pushed this gimmick out there and it proved to be successful.
Is anyone surprised? The console history for add-on controls is abysmal. Even the laser-guns during the NES generation were barely used, and many of those were bundled with the console. Even the non-traditional control scheme of the Wii is underutilized, and that was the standard deployment.
The Kinect needed to be released this generation as a "get familiar with this technology", and then they needed to announce the XBox720 half a month later, with promises that every 720 would come with Kinect technology standard (built into the unit). Then, developers could get familiar with it, and you might expect a good roll-out for the next generation. But, it was always doomed on 360.
Or, maybe buy a frisbee instead? There's plenty of fun that can be had for very little cost. It does require a tad bit of effort and sometimes a little creativity.
Oh, wait, this is /. Instead of a frisbee, buy a couple of D&D booklets, some pencils and some notepads and you can have hundreds of hours of entertainment for a fraction of the cost of an XBox with no games.
First of all, if you get your xbox this way, it's warrantied for the two years you're under contract, compared to one year for the usual retail package. The extra year's warranty retails for $50.
Or, get not an XBox, and you're a lot less likely to need that second year of warranty.
This is crazy person logic. You appear to be condoning that people so poor (or frivolous) they can't scrape together $300 in savings should buy multiple game devices on payment plans!?!
It's a game device, not dinner. There's another system available for $99 which does offer split screen play. Many people wouldn't consider the Wii an exact substitution for the X360, but if you cannot afford the later, you do have options.
Microsoft is using a marketing gimmick to extract more money from poor people (or people who can't do math). It's a marketing gimmick used in other arenas (cell phones), but that doesn't mean this is a good deal. The pool of people who should consider this is limited to those who don't have a 360 yet, desperately need one, and expect their net worth or income to be significantly higher in say a year than it is now.
That's misleading, no? The GP clearly intended the hypothetical to be "what if the entire Super Mario Bros concept were invented today". That script was set over two decades ago. The new games needed to have the same spirit or they wouldn't sell.
And, the GP is right. I shuddered a little just imagining what it would be like.
Hopefully, their teachers include the PI controversy in their curriculum so students are aware that while most mathematicians think the number for PI is 3.14159265..., some Christian mathematicians think we should just stick to using 3, like the Bible says.
Sometimes...just sometimes, I wish those of us who actually like mass transit were as big of a------s about all the money "wasted on roads that only a few people use" as guys like you are about mass transit. Maintaining the estimated 4 million miles of road in the US is not free. That costs real money. Real money that is always massively. subsidized to rural areas by urban areas.
it's crap like that is that makes Americans want SUVs. The urban street is increasing turning into an off road experience between the god damn speed bumps and the god damn potholes. Try this guys... flat. Just try it.
[cough, cough]bull[cough, cough]it. American's wants SUVs because 1) they like complaining about "high gas prices" 2) they live so far from work their car has to be a little home and 3) they want to make sure that when they do cause an accident they kill the other guys instead of themselves.
If a section of road is frequently falling apart, that usually means that patch of road just wasn't built robustly enough. E.g. the foundation should have been deeper. That won't stop any potholes, but it is the main issue in some locations.
My hunch is that many of the complaints about GCC being slow come from people who are also compiling with Visual Studio and using precompiled headers. If you always include every header file, your compilation will be slow. That's not really GCC's fault.
Not on scalability, but the language does have an impact on useability and maintainability of multithreaded code. You can write a C program (or even better, C++11 with a standard threading library) code that scales just as well as any erlang. The problem with that, is you'll probably need to rewrite some subset of the erlang language into C. That's hardly insurmountable, but from a development perspective it's clearly suboptimal.
Or just stop caring so much about the little things. Honestly, engineers take things like code optimization too personally. When you get home, let it go.
Wow, really? Because I get 8.5 hours of sleep every weeknight, and sometimes even sleep in on weekends (or take a nap). So, I guess I just proved that programmers average over 8 hours of sleep a night.
Woot!
OK, so you've got an axe to grind. Congrats?
GP is right about this. Deaths during birth used to be much higher, and because of improved medical interventions, they are lower. You don't need a "blog" to prove that. It's one thing to say too many c-sections are performed (true) or that women might benefit from fewer epidurals (questionable). But, to argue that home birth is as safe or safer than hospital birth is you pushing a clearly false agenda.
GP doesn't appear to claim paleo diet is == to AGW denial. In the grand scheme, even if people lived 25% shorter on a paleo diet, it's clearly not as bad. But I think the point is that it's the same intellectual flaw that leads down both paths. Antivaccine is often found on the "left" and AGW denial on the "right", but both are caused by a general distrust of experts and reliance on anecdotes and societal pressure over accurate knowledge. In that way, yes the caveman diet fits right in.
Just because science has not discovered something does not mean it doesn't exist. To think otherwise is arrogant.
Is it more arrogant to withhold judgement about the medical efficacy of a substance (or procedure) with no demonstrated improvement over placebo, or is it more arrogant to bitch that people don't nod along with your pet dogma? Science never says an undiscovered thing doesn't exist. It literally can't work that way. But you seem to have a bee up your bonnet because science doesn't validate whatever it is you believe in.
Well, guess what, there's a great process for rectifying that. If your dogma is true, design a scientific experiment that proves it. Contact professors at universities near you, and find one who's sympathetic to your cause and get their input on your experiment. Then run it and publish for the world to see.
In this thread, it appears placebo has been defined as a drug with such advanced efficacy that it cannot be understood by traditional medicine. I.E. a placebo is advanced medicine. E.g. voodoo.
Prohibiting use of "var" is gross over-kill.
Gross overkill is, of course, the main point of most coding standards.
I sure hope you meant size_t.
Are you Rick Santorum?
That's a hopelessly simplistic summary. First, all advertising is an attempt to manipulate people. Second, manipulation alone isn't enough to tell you if advertisement is "good" or "bad", to do that you must consider what manipulation is occurring. Arguably, if the fruit and vegetable growers association went to great lengths to manipulate people into eating more vegetables and less meat, that would be good for the individuals (better health) society (lower medical costs) the environment (less land use) global politics (lower oil/phosphate demand) and the economy (cheaper meals would leave people with more money to spend on innovative products instead of food). Such a group could literally implant a chip in your head to make you desire their product, and you'd still have to reach for an explanation of why that would be a bad thing (and I say that as a meat-eater). Conversely, if a jean manufacturer produced ads stating that their jeans aren't actually better than the competitions, but they are cooler and more $$$, that would fit into your informative only category but it hardly sounds like those ads make our lives better.
Backing off of the strawmen arguments, often times people really truly want a product, but they simply don't know it yet. From an economists perspective, any time an ad causes someone to allocate their money towards products that bring them more utility, than whatever they would have spent their money on instead, that ad is a good one. It doesn't matter if it's manipulative or violates your privacy.
Bzzzt wrong. Marketing is for attracting customers. A store like Target is thrilled for you to come buy diapers, milk, and pencils from them instead of Walmart. Of course they'd love to upsell you if you are already a customer, but most of the time they are just happy to have you walk through their doors.