Don't tell Big Tobacco that smoking kills. Don't tell Big Fast Food that their food is unhealthy. Don't tell Big Pharma that they peddle snake oil pills driven to consumers by fear they (Big Pharma) create.
Apparently we can now add: Don't tell Big Communications that their industry has any sort of faults or makes a buck off the backs of kids in poor-shit-hole-third-world countries.
Also in the agreement: 16.1 Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected When Apple says "Questionable" they don't mean "questionable to the general public" - they mean "questionable to an Apple executive".
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing...
The guy who advocates free speech probably joined the censors to "fight the good fight" from the inside, but of course he will make enemies in there. Who is to say that people on the commission who don't like him or his views don't simply keep dropping his URL into the "super secret box for enemy of the state URLs to verify and block"...
Actually no, it's easier to make stem cells. That's why they take the trouble...
The catch here is this: It is easier to SAY to stop killing them, but it's certainly not as easy to get them to stop being killed.
There is a vast number of reasons:
* The animals could be being poached - African Elephants, Rhinos, Lions etc?
* There may be an introduced predator doing the killing - Cane Toads in Australia for example.
* There could be some disease running rampant through the natural animal population - Tasmanian Devils in Australia are being wiped out by a cancerous growth on their snouts.
For the folks doing this research and development, it is not only easier for them to make stem cells, but it is the thing that they can do personally. A scientist working in a lab may not be able to suddenly pick up a gun and go protecting wildlife in another country - but he might be able to help save some through his medical research.
Normal bacteria can do this right now. It is called a compost bin. Organic waste in, tasty garden food out. The difference is that in a compost bin, the output is stuff that your garden loves, but your car can't run on it. This new strain of bacteria that produces butanol directly. That's basically a huge step forward in the direction that is beneficial to us. It cuts out all the other bacteria steps that we would currently have to use (read: expensive and time consuming and did I say expensive?) if we want to try to convert organic waste materials into stuff that is easy for us to use as a power source.
Disclaimer: I haven't ever played Minecraft, so I might not understand the fuss properly. Please feel free to educate:)
Haven't games within games been around for a heck of a long time? There are loads of mods that either emulate classics or offer a totally new unrelated game to players. Heck, I recall even playing texas hold em with guildies during raids through an ingame mod when I was playing Warcraft.
What is so special about minecraft that it makes so many stories? Is it just purely flexibility and users being imaginative, or is there a particular reason that/. loves it so? I recall a post a few months ago about a guy who recreated a good portion of a Star Trek ship in minecraft. Was it merely a slow news day then as well?
I would assume that there is no way to currently pick who is "with or against" the rebels too easily once you take the folks who appeared on the TV either for or against the rebel cause.
I am much more worried about all the tales of atrocities that will now no doubt come to surface as lines of communication are given back to the population.
Not worried that it is getting out, but more of what has been done no doubt.
They gave lip service to it during the Arab uprisings
You got to be kidding me. They put ona brave smiling face, but when the camera was off, it was much more along the lines of "Oh SHIT! People can really just toss us out of office, power and into prison or exile when enough of them get together! We need to really nip this information thing in the bud NOW!".
Honestly if you don't want or need the new features and have adequately secured your install... Its fine to run older software as long as you aren't being limited by it or are OK with those limitations.
That's exactly what I think. My parents (in their sixties) use Windows XP that I installed, keep as up to date as it can be in terms of patches and the like, set them up with a lovely user account that limits what can be done. For the word processing that mum does, and the occasional bit of surfing that they do, there is totally no need for them to upgrade - and trying to teach them how to make things work ("How do I shut it down now? The button used to be there and look like this...") really isn't worth the neglidgable benefit to them.
It is exactly like the old phones that they have - okay, color screens and the like, but no smartphone, no web surfing. They use it for making calls and the (very) occasional text message. Why on earth would they want to "upgrade" to a new shiny smartphone that they have to learn all over again for the simple features and would never use the additional stuff?
Not to polish and buff your already obvious self importance and ability to scoff at this article, but to someone like myself, who isn't really into the technical aspects or astronomy and the physics behind it - articles such as this one (and many others on that chaps site) a simple layman explanation of something cool that is happening, or freshly discovered is a great source of infotainment.
/. isn't purely about having technical papers. You could link me the paper that was obviously published somewhere on this, and I probably wouldn't understand all the technical astrophysics mumbo jumbo in it, nor would I have time to read what was probably a couple dozen pages at the very least.
So, for me, thank you for posting a brief article, from a source that I can read and understand - and most importantly - still think to myself how space and the universe around us is a wonderful thing that always has a wonderful surprise around the next corner waiting to be discovered.
Okay, so I re-read the article without being disturbed every few minutes and second time round I found the key that I was missing - and what I missed in the summary. The games you folks are making are very "narrow band" in terms of what they are teaching rather than trying to cover all topics, which the/. summary seemed to imply by ommision. I wish you the best of luck, I can only imagine what a nightmare the business model must be.
What the lovely chap in the article seems to forget is that education is probably more about politics than about education. The Creationists, ID-ists and the slew of others nutjobs all having their pound of flesh taught in the US school system seems to show that it certainly isn't simply a matter of getting the right teaching methods. Having that crock taught by a teacher or by an AI makes no difference.
Furthermore, I don't totally disagree that perhaps better teaching methods could be developed. I just think that saying our best teachers, professors and mentors are second rate to an AI is a long stretch.
No, it's not that CD's are lossy. The link you presented (if you read it) would tell you quite clearly that it was simply sold (as a CD) mixed to be as loud as possible on the format. To do this (make it sound louder than your other CDs and at the same time possibly sound louder on the radio) they mixed a version that was louder, but also lossier than the original track recording.
In the article, it actually says that the versions released with Guitar Hero were the original mixes before the fiddling was done, and that a number of fans actually preferred those versions for their different (clearer) sound.
This has nothing to do with the format itself. Your argument is like printing a blurry photoshopped picture on paper and saying that paper is a lossy format because you can get the same picture online and it isn't blurry.
Given that 675,000 credit cards is a ten year prison sentence, I do wonder what the same sentence would have been if it was 675,000 tracks he downloaded - and if the two of these sentences are therefore proof that the law is tilted towards a specific type of industry?
No, it isn't purely about campaign funds (though not saying that it doesn't come into the equation). I see this sort of thing ALL the time at work. I think of it as the "Me too, I have input!" syndrome. Take a middle or senior manager, then talk to them about something they have no clue about or haven't ever spoken about, then count to three and get interrupted at two - at which point the chime in with (most of the time) some totally irrelevant input, sometimes totally wrong input, or bring up a "new" point that was already discussed in detail by people who know what they are talking about in the last meeting.
Do these points bring value to a conversation? Nope. Do they help the rest of the people in a meeting? Nope. Do they make the person look like they are involved? Sure, to others who also have no clue - perhaps they even make the person look smart to others with even less clue.
Now, I present Exhibit A. The career politician. These folks spend their entire lives in the above syndrome. Sadly, most of the time they aren't managed out of the company or in this case voted out of office.
Taking what exists and adding enough innovative twists on it is also good enough. World of Warcraft did that with the Everquest formula, for example.
World of Warcraft wasn't innovative. Not really. It was however VERY well polished. Where Blizzard excelled was constant adjustment of classes to ensure balance, putting in a lot of content and really trying to make it work properly. Now, before you start jumping in and saying how buggy it is come patch time or the like, I am not saying that EVERYTHING works perfectly in it, but I did play it for a number of years, and compared to problems in just about every other MMO, it is right up there as being one of the least buggy - especially in the last few years.
A slight variant on a genre can make either a great game, or a game that just doesn't work. Take Unreal Tournament for example. The original took FPS, looked at the really fun bits, introduced a bunch of new game types that weren't really seen too much, made exciting, fun, tight levels that worked very well for multiplayer and introduced (at the time) amazing bots to play against. It was an AMAZING success. However, the follow-up just missed a few things that made the original so much fun. They focused too much on the technical and overlooked the "fun" aspects. So much so, that they eventually released a patch to make it feel more like the original!!
What I am basically saying is that the marketplace (and certainly publishers) are happy for a little "creativity" at a time, but for them to accept something that is totally different to everything they have played requires something that really is magical.
Being creative is a terribly subjective phrase. As a level designer (I worked with Epic on the Unreal Tournament projects) I think I have a good perspective of this. Most games that come out do follow the general genre that it is made for - but you know what, so does everything else. You don't see Ford lamenting that they aren't "designing a totally new car..." It's a CAR. People expect it to have four wheels, seats and all the usual stuff inside a car. FPS developers are making a game that people who want an FPS will buy. Can you be creative? Absolutely. Look at titles like Theif for example. It is esentially a FPS, but with a brilliant twist. Same goes for Assassins Creed. You run around and (for the most part) kill folks.
The sign of a truly innovative game (and therefore truly amazing developers) is to take a genre, like FPS and make subtle transformations to it to make it a more enjoyable experience for the gamers. Innovation is great, but making something TOTALLY different is a huge risk. Just look at Black and White. While very well done, it was so totally different in UI and concepts that it never became the smash hit that it should have.
It takes a BRILLIANT game to push a genre a few steps to the left or right. You simply can't expect to make a title that is way out in left field and expect it to become an overnight smash hit. Not saying it simply cannot happen, but most of the time (especially when it comes to publishers financially backing games) you need to take small steps in the direction you would LIKE to get to.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – NASA is funded at $16.8 billion in the bill, which is $1.6 billion below last year’s level and $1.9 billion below the President’s request. This funding includes:
$3.65 billion for Space Exploration which is $152 million below last year. This includes funding above the request for NASA to meet Congressionally mandated program deadlines for the newly authorized crew vehicle and launch system.
$4.1 billion for Space Operations which is $1.4 billion below last year’s level. The legislation will continue the closeout of the Space Shuttle program for a savings of $1 billion.
$4.5 billion for NASA Science programs, which is $431 million below last year’s level. The bill also terminates funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.
Meanwhile, in the same document:
Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) – The bill provides $2.7 billion for the PTO – the full requested level. This funding is equal to the estimated amount of fees to be collected by the PTO during fiscal year 2012, and is an increase of $588 million or 28% above last year’s level. The bill also includes language that allows PTO to keep and use any fees in excess of the estimated collected amount, subject to standard Congressional approval, and includes language requiring PTO to report on efforts to reduce the patent application backlog
(Bolding is mine)
Stop a space telescope, cut back NASA funds while retiring a space shuttle... increase patent office funding... This is just a normal day in the office chaps...
I know that I am a skeptic by nature and have no time for fools, but I seriously wonder if I should get a job in the US patent office. I am not quite sure what I would do with all that blow and all those hookers, but surely they come with the position?
Seriously though, I do wonder if anyone in a position to change/improve the patent system ever wonders how all these asinine patents are awarded when there is so much clear prior art or they are so ludicrously common sense applications.
The only way to stop this erosion is to make it to difficult for them to keep going. What's stopping them currently? A little bad press, some dissent amoung minority groups (like the general crowd here) - but not much else.
A few courtcases that end up with solid settlements AGAINST the offices of law enforcement for breaking these liberties will put a bit of a brake on things however. The managers and bosses of these agencies are all about statistics - but only after budgets. Start cutting into their spending money and they will start reacting. Am I saying that it is a good thing for people to start suing the police and FBI? No, I am sure that it does take officers off the streets, but it is also likely one of the few messages that can be sent that will be heard LOUD AND CLEAR by policy makers.
Slashdot Mirror
Simple Rules in business:
Don't tell Big Tobacco that smoking kills.
Don't tell Big Fast Food that their food is unhealthy.
Don't tell Big Pharma that they peddle snake oil pills driven to consumers by fear they (Big Pharma) create.
Apparently we can now add:
Don't tell Big Communications that their industry has any sort of faults or makes a buck off the backs of kids in poor-shit-hole-third-world countries.
Also in the agreement: 16.1 Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected
When Apple says "Questionable" they don't mean "questionable to the general public" - they mean "questionable to an Apple executive".
I believe that a better saying would be:
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing...
The guy who advocates free speech probably joined the censors to "fight the good fight" from the inside, but of course he will make enemies in there. Who is to say that people on the commission who don't like him or his views don't simply keep dropping his URL into the "super secret box for enemy of the state URLs to verify and block"...
Actually no, it's easier to make stem cells. That's why they take the trouble...
The catch here is this: It is easier to SAY to stop killing them, but it's certainly not as easy to get them to stop being killed.
There is a vast number of reasons:
* The animals could be being poached - African Elephants, Rhinos, Lions etc?
* There may be an introduced predator doing the killing - Cane Toads in Australia for example.
* There could be some disease running rampant through the natural animal population - Tasmanian Devils in Australia are being wiped out by a cancerous growth on their snouts.
For the folks doing this research and development, it is not only easier for them to make stem cells, but it is the thing that they can do personally. A scientist working in a lab may not be able to suddenly pick up a gun and go protecting wildlife in another country - but he might be able to help save some through his medical research.
Normal bacteria can do this right now. It is called a compost bin. Organic waste in, tasty garden food out. The difference is that in a compost bin, the output is stuff that your garden loves, but your car can't run on it. This new strain of bacteria that produces butanol directly. That's basically a huge step forward in the direction that is beneficial to us. It cuts out all the other bacteria steps that we would currently have to use (read: expensive and time consuming and did I say expensive?) if we want to try to convert organic waste materials into stuff that is easy for us to use as a power source.
Disclaimer: I haven't ever played Minecraft, so I might not understand the fuss properly. Please feel free to educate :)
Haven't games within games been around for a heck of a long time? There are loads of mods that either emulate classics or offer a totally new unrelated game to players. Heck, I recall even playing texas hold em with guildies during raids through an ingame mod when I was playing Warcraft.
What is so special about minecraft that it makes so many stories? Is it just purely flexibility and users being imaginative, or is there a particular reason that /. loves it so? I recall a post a few months ago about a guy who recreated a good portion of a Star Trek ship in minecraft. Was it merely a slow news day then as well?
I would assume that there is no way to currently pick who is "with or against" the rebels too easily once you take the folks who appeared on the TV either for or against the rebel cause.
I am much more worried about all the tales of atrocities that will now no doubt come to surface as lines of communication are given back to the population.
Not worried that it is getting out, but more of what has been done no doubt.
They gave lip service to it during the Arab uprisings
You got to be kidding me. They put ona brave smiling face, but when the camera was off, it was much more along the lines of "Oh SHIT! People can really just toss us out of office, power and into prison or exile when enough of them get together! We need to really nip this information thing in the bud NOW!".
If you repeat the same lie enough, people will start to believe it.
- We are doing this for YOUR safety. There is nothing here you need to worry about. Everything is OK.
Honestly if you don't want or need the new features and have adequately secured your install ... Its fine to run older software as long as you aren't being limited by it or are OK with those limitations.
That's exactly what I think. My parents (in their sixties) use Windows XP that I installed, keep as up to date as it can be in terms of patches and the like, set them up with a lovely user account that limits what can be done. For the word processing that mum does, and the occasional bit of surfing that they do, there is totally no need for them to upgrade - and trying to teach them how to make things work ("How do I shut it down now? The button used to be there and look like this...") really isn't worth the neglidgable benefit to them.
It is exactly like the old phones that they have - okay, color screens and the like, but no smartphone, no web surfing. They use it for making calls and the (very) occasional text message. Why on earth would they want to "upgrade" to a new shiny smartphone that they have to learn all over again for the simple features and would never use the additional stuff?
Not to polish and buff your already obvious self importance and ability to scoff at this article, but to someone like myself, who isn't really into the technical aspects or astronomy and the physics behind it - articles such as this one (and many others on that chaps site) a simple layman explanation of something cool that is happening, or freshly discovered is a great source of infotainment.
/. isn't purely about having technical papers. You could link me the paper that was obviously published somewhere on this, and I probably wouldn't understand all the technical astrophysics mumbo jumbo in it, nor would I have time to read what was probably a couple dozen pages at the very least.
So, for me, thank you for posting a brief article, from a source that I can read and understand - and most importantly - still think to myself how space and the universe around us is a wonderful thing that always has a wonderful surprise around the next corner waiting to be discovered.
Okay, so I re-read the article without being disturbed every few minutes and second time round I found the key that I was missing - and what I missed in the summary. The games you folks are making are very "narrow band" in terms of what they are teaching rather than trying to cover all topics, which the /. summary seemed to imply by ommision. I wish you the best of luck, I can only imagine what a nightmare the business model must be.
You know, checking the replies to my post, seeing the post you are replying to - and then your reply, just made my day. Thank you.
What the lovely chap in the article seems to forget is that education is probably more about politics than about education. The Creationists, ID-ists and the slew of others nutjobs all having their pound of flesh taught in the US school system seems to show that it certainly isn't simply a matter of getting the right teaching methods. Having that crock taught by a teacher or by an AI makes no difference.
Furthermore, I don't totally disagree that perhaps better teaching methods could be developed. I just think that saying our best teachers, professors and mentors are second rate to an AI is a long stretch.
No, it's not that CD's are lossy. The link you presented (if you read it) would tell you quite clearly that it was simply sold (as a CD) mixed to be as loud as possible on the format. To do this (make it sound louder than your other CDs and at the same time possibly sound louder on the radio) they mixed a version that was louder, but also lossier than the original track recording.
In the article, it actually says that the versions released with Guitar Hero were the original mixes before the fiddling was done, and that a number of fans actually preferred those versions for their different (clearer) sound.
This has nothing to do with the format itself. Your argument is like printing a blurry photoshopped picture on paper and saying that paper is a lossy format because you can get the same picture online and it isn't blurry.
Given that 675,000 credit cards is a ten year prison sentence, I do wonder what the same sentence would have been if it was 675,000 tracks he downloaded - and if the two of these sentences are therefore proof that the law is tilted towards a specific type of industry?
No, it isn't purely about campaign funds (though not saying that it doesn't come into the equation). I see this sort of thing ALL the time at work. I think of it as the "Me too, I have input!" syndrome. Take a middle or senior manager, then talk to them about something they have no clue about or haven't ever spoken about, then count to three and get interrupted at two - at which point the chime in with (most of the time) some totally irrelevant input, sometimes totally wrong input, or bring up a "new" point that was already discussed in detail by people who know what they are talking about in the last meeting.
Do these points bring value to a conversation? Nope. Do they help the rest of the people in a meeting? Nope. Do they make the person look like they are involved? Sure, to others who also have no clue - perhaps they even make the person look smart to others with even less clue.
Now, I present Exhibit A. The career politician. These folks spend their entire lives in the above syndrome. Sadly, most of the time they aren't managed out of the company or in this case voted out of office.
Taking what exists and adding enough innovative twists on it is also good enough. World of Warcraft did that with the Everquest formula, for example.
World of Warcraft wasn't innovative. Not really. It was however VERY well polished. Where Blizzard excelled was constant adjustment of classes to ensure balance, putting in a lot of content and really trying to make it work properly. Now, before you start jumping in and saying how buggy it is come patch time or the like, I am not saying that EVERYTHING works perfectly in it, but I did play it for a number of years, and compared to problems in just about every other MMO, it is right up there as being one of the least buggy - especially in the last few years.
A slight variant on a genre can make either a great game, or a game that just doesn't work. Take Unreal Tournament for example. The original took FPS, looked at the really fun bits, introduced a bunch of new game types that weren't really seen too much, made exciting, fun, tight levels that worked very well for multiplayer and introduced (at the time) amazing bots to play against. It was an AMAZING success. However, the follow-up just missed a few things that made the original so much fun. They focused too much on the technical and overlooked the "fun" aspects. So much so, that they eventually released a patch to make it feel more like the original!!
What I am basically saying is that the marketplace (and certainly publishers) are happy for a little "creativity" at a time, but for them to accept something that is totally different to everything they have played requires something that really is magical.
Being creative is a terribly subjective phrase. As a level designer (I worked with Epic on the Unreal Tournament projects) I think I have a good perspective of this. Most games that come out do follow the general genre that it is made for - but you know what, so does everything else. You don't see Ford lamenting that they aren't "designing a totally new car..." It's a CAR. People expect it to have four wheels, seats and all the usual stuff inside a car. FPS developers are making a game that people who want an FPS will buy. Can you be creative? Absolutely. Look at titles like Theif for example. It is esentially a FPS, but with a brilliant twist. Same goes for Assassins Creed. You run around and (for the most part) kill folks.
The sign of a truly innovative game (and therefore truly amazing developers) is to take a genre, like FPS and make subtle transformations to it to make it a more enjoyable experience for the gamers. Innovation is great, but making something TOTALLY different is a huge risk. Just look at Black and White. While very well done, it was so totally different in UI and concepts that it never became the smash hit that it should have.
It takes a BRILLIANT game to push a genre a few steps to the left or right. You simply can't expect to make a title that is way out in left field and expect it to become an overnight smash hit. Not saying it simply cannot happen, but most of the time (especially when it comes to publishers financially backing games) you need to take small steps in the direction you would LIKE to get to.
From the appropriations document:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – NASA is funded at $16.8 billion in the bill, which is $1.6 billion below last year’s level and $1.9 billion below the President’s request. This funding includes:
$3.65 billion for Space Exploration which is $152 million below last year. This includes funding above the request for NASA to meet Congressionally mandated program deadlines for the newly authorized crew vehicle and launch system.
$4.1 billion for Space Operations which is $1.4 billion below last year’s level. The legislation will continue the closeout of the Space Shuttle program for a savings of $1 billion.
$4.5 billion for NASA Science programs, which is $431 million below last year’s level. The bill also terminates funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.
Meanwhile, in the same document:
Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) – The bill provides $2.7 billion for the PTO – the full requested level. This funding is equal to the estimated amount of fees to be collected by the PTO during fiscal year 2012, and is an increase of $588 million or 28% above last year’s level. The bill also includes language that allows PTO to keep and use any fees in excess of the estimated collected amount, subject to standard Congressional approval, and includes language requiring PTO to report on efforts to reduce the patent application backlog
(Bolding is mine)
Stop a space telescope, cut back NASA funds while retiring a space shuttle... increase patent office funding... This is just a normal day in the office chaps...
I know that I am a skeptic by nature and have no time for fools, but I seriously wonder if I should get a job in the US patent office. I am not quite sure what I would do with all that blow and all those hookers, but surely they come with the position?
Seriously though, I do wonder if anyone in a position to change/improve the patent system ever wonders how all these asinine patents are awarded when there is so much clear prior art or they are so ludicrously common sense applications.
Unless I am having an amazing case of deja vu, I am pretty sure that I read this last Friday right here on /. ?
The only way to stop this erosion is to make it to difficult for them to keep going. What's stopping them currently? A little bad press, some dissent amoung minority groups (like the general crowd here) - but not much else.
A few courtcases that end up with solid settlements AGAINST the offices of law enforcement for breaking these liberties will put a bit of a brake on things however. The managers and bosses of these agencies are all about statistics - but only after budgets. Start cutting into their spending money and they will start reacting. Am I saying that it is a good thing for people to start suing the police and FBI? No, I am sure that it does take officers off the streets, but it is also likely one of the few messages that can be sent that will be heard LOUD AND CLEAR by policy makers.
Your plan is no fun.
My plan is to do so much messed up stuff they decide to ignore it because they don't want to get stuck with the paperwork.
LulzSec, is that you?
No, it just means that the same number of people playing games are a lot older than the average.
I don't know many kids these days that aren't playing consoles, a few of them seem to also play PC games as well.
A power tool may indeed make a builder - I have had some work done recently which implies this is true.
A power tool does not a master builder make.
FTFY.