As for strain on the public purse, in the US the health care system is out to make money.
Maybe in the cosmetic or "luxury" or "brand name" (e.g. Lasik) healthcare they do.
In the US, I had the feeling that the healthcare system charges so much just to survive spurious litigation. Doctors and hospitals don't necessarily need to charge as much as they do for the actual care itself. I think a significant portion ends up in a legal defense fund somewhere.
Re:The best sci fi might still be untranslated.
on
The 2011 Hugo Awards
·
· Score: 1
It's the logical assumption, I agree, but you are focused on the actors and forgetting the stage.
The setting of Vampire Hunter D is one of decline after some sort of Golden Age of space travel, technology and neo-feudalism where a vampire nobility lived in a post-Scarcity economy with humans as cattle. The best quality horses are mostly cybernetic with visors for eyes, there are laser weapons and combustion engines.
The best sci fi might still be untranslated.
on
The 2011 Hugo Awards
·
· Score: 1
You've sideswiped a related point mentioning non-English speaking countries. The Vampire Hunter novels seem very promising (I haven't read them....yet), but have only been translated to English beginning with volume 1 in 2005. And that decision was probably only made worth the investment to Dark Horse because they knew an established fan base that guaranteed some level of ROI that made the risk worthwhile.
Here in the English-speaking world, I really have no idea if we've missed the Japanese equivalent of a Glen Cook somewhere because an anime or OVA was not based on it. Fantastic reading (on my 5th Garret PI novel at the moment) but just so unknown to most sc-fi readers I know.
I really hope you're right. According to the compatible devices list on CyanogenMod, there is still no Cmod available for my Droid/Milestone 2 and it's been out since November 2010. Granted this is a voluntary community and no phone gets tinkered with unless one of the devs actually owns it. But still. No one has even grabbed one off a friend?
One good sata spin drive for $40 and you'll be booting in 2 minutes.
This. Absolutely this. My office uses an outsource IT provider for all machines and general support. We recently upgraded 5 desktops to i5 3GHz machines with DDR3 memory, 4GB standard with a 64bit version of Windows 7. Some improvement in boot time and programme speed. But it ocurred to me too late that while meeting the numbers that look good on the spec sheet in terms of CPU and RAM, the HDDs were all gimped with the cheapest 5400rpm bricks they could get to meet their bottom line.
No...no..not really. 150 years ago...a laughable notion, dinner table talk good for a titter with your bourgeoisie friends. 1,000 years ago and onwards back into human history: Might makes right, always.
What you feel is your natural sense of fairness, which appears to be present amongst all higher animals, not just humans (studies on monkeys sharing food through a little hole where only one gets fed et al.) and it's given these nice Emperor's clothes in the 21st century that calls it "Our Rights" (capitilization important).
Rights will only be "inherent" if we can get a God or a Culture AI to enforce them. And to be ruthless about it. Until then, it's only if the affected group or society agree and proactively enforce it. Usually with threat of legal force....or possible armed force. The more money and power you have, the more "Our Rights" you have.
It would need to be mini-series. One movie or a series of movies just wouldn't work. Broadcast by an HBO-type so the "flirting-with-an-R-rating" stuff can be retained. It would go down well in the US with its peculiar and powerful love/hate relationship with its own Christian culture.
Possibly Lucifer would be equally successful for the same reasons.
You might find the Seburo article on Wikipedia interesting.
Seburo is a fictional small-arms designer and manufacturer present in at least three of his future-earth dystopian universes including Ghost in the Shell. It's quite clear he was also inspired by bull-pup designs and the P90 and he's done some really beautiful creative adaptations of these real guns for his manga.
Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:
Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.
WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.
.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.
Isn't this the irony of the "Guidance Counselor" concept? If you have the advice and the answers to a great career or future....why are you doing this job? Why aren't you out there making your mark on the world?
The position might have some relevance if they allowed ageism and a level of prejudice not generally allowed by labour laws.: Don't allow anyone younger than 45, without a proven career track record, respectable travel experience or at least 3 years living and working abroad to apply. Mixture of corporate and self-employed, white-collar and blue-collar experience is favoured. Wife and children are a bonus to round out the pool of knowledge to pass on. Only then would you have the real world experience to actually advise anybody at all.
Hmmm...that ended up a bigger comment than I first intended.
Voice input is nice, but I'd rather replacing the mouse with an eyeball tracker.
Even this is not going far enough. The ultimate interface is direct mind-computer. Or near-as. I expect most UIs to skip directly to mind-interface as soon as it is commercially and practically possible.
Thinking the words you want typed is faster than speaking them and totally solves GP's issue with privacy. Well...unless they hack the pc side of things...but that's always been an issue anyway just like "privacy" on Facebook.
Thinking to run an OS might be excellent practice for those who have trouble with focusing. For the disabled it would completely remove any obstacle to those with speech problems as part of their condition. It may in fact open up a whole new field of neurology by being able to interact with brains and minds that are cut off or denied the modes of communication we take for granted.
If you have never spoken a word in your life, or heard a word in your entire life...if you are deaf-mute but have vision enough to see a screen and function enough for a mind-computer interface....what "language" does your mind speak? Would an adaptive linguistic weak-AI be able to "learn" the unique inner-mind's language of someone that has had no connection with "English" spoken around them? Is there a common basis to language on a neural level that a mind-interface can latch onto, and in effect, not need to be pre-taught a language? It will learn from whoever's brain it's attached to. For those it can't learn from, what does that mean? What genetic conditions cause the loss of this basis?
Mind-interface is more than just eyeballing targets in an FPS game. There are whole swathes of research opened up.
Football hooligans make ME uncomfortable. Therefore nobody should be allowed to play or watch football.
Most laws that forbid civil liberties are based on this thought process, though they all have completely different ostensible justifications.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not - going AC could mean either - but I must thank you for giving me a pretty good rebuttal that would have excellent effect here in the UK if I ever discuss video games with a self-righteous MP or cleric. He would never countenance his precious F.C. being placed in the same tar and feathers as violent video games.
(add more value) then no one will pirate the inferior version.
Exactly this: "Value Added Services". Crytek will just have to figure out what to do to sweeten the pot for the full-release version. I don't think it will be that difficult. It's not unreasonable with 6 weeks left to come up with several options.
No game is ever released without bugs. It can't be too difficult to set up some sort of checksum that recognises the leaked build and the updater refuses to patch. There is always the manual update that various release groups will provide, but it's the dis-incentive effect we're after. Even if the core game was leaked, the future DLC was not. THAT is still going to make some money. It is not a total loss.
It shouldn't be too difficult to add 3 or 4 weapons without too many balancing or graphical tweak issues exclusive to the premier release and non-functional in a patched version of the leaked pre-release of Crysis 2. Hmm, now that I think about it, if Crytek do enough changes to the game, it will in effect be up to half a version number apart from the leaked version. It would make things easier to hamstring players of the leaked version without inconveniencing users of the full-release version (or indeed pirated versions of it as well but that's an established problem anyway).
Finally some physical, non-digital exclusives bundled with the game even for the vanilla version of the release. Create motivation for both the vanilla and the inevitable collector's edition. No one's figured out a way to download physical items.
1- Don't erase any images from the memory card except the useless ones (like those with the lens cap on). Get a new card when full. This is much cheaper than film and developing was just a few years ago.
This is what my dad does and I used to think it was funny. Like he didn't "get" digital media. When he filled a card up, he'd put little white sticker on it, scribble a date or note, file it away and put in a new one. I now realize he had actually figured out the economics of what you say above as well as solved the storage/posterity question. I don't even remember what old photographic film cost for 36 shots, but you probably can't even compare it to the dozens of 12MP shots he gets on the equivalent-priced SD card. On that point he trumped me, the family geekboy.
Wait what? Even if it is locked-down, you can still install software. They are called "Apps". You get them from a place called "Android Market" or "The iPhone AppStore" or even "Ovi".
I don't care how Guantanamo-Bay-Lock-Down your cellphone is, you can still download 'Intifada Birds 2012' by 'MOSSADSUX-NET Free Software' that promises free pictures of boobs and get a virus that kills your centrifuges.
Surely you mean firmware? And the roms and other output from XDA Developers and CyanogenMod is generally by enthusiasts and developers....not East European digital mafia.
Wait...are you trolling? I really can't tell anymore.
Plus we're not a million miles away from being able to culture meat in vats at this point, which need not produce any greenhouse gases at all if set up right.
Yum! "Cancer-in-a-Bucket". Just a few seed cells of muscle tissue, nutrient bath and growth hormone.
Anyways, you made me think of the Sligs in Frank Herbert's Dune universe: Half-slug, half-pig, fed on the organic waste of civilization. Protected by 4-inches of blubber and slime, impervious to disease and nothing but muscle and an alimentary canal that eats everything and poops out refined fertilizer and trace minerals. And it's meat tastes like the highest quality pork ever conceived.
That said, I really wish more manufacturers would adopt the charging system from the Palm Pre - I love the idea of just popping the phone down on a flat surface and having it start charging.
Is this the induction charging thing? Isn't it quite inefficient and slow?
I have one of those Oral B electric toothbrushes and it uses this tech in it's cradle. Problem is I don't have a convenient setup in my rented house's bathroom to leave my cradle plugged in and mounted permanently. The toothbrush needs to be charged from near-dead (i.e. it stops entirely and gives a low moan of protest whenever turned on) every 3 weeks or so and it takes a solid 48 hours to fully charge. This is pretty disruptive for the daily brushing.
I'm guessing the intended use is for the toothbrush to be put to rest in it's cradle in the bathroom and then induction does a top-up maintenance charge. The Palm Pre likely expects this behaviour whenever you are at your desk where the charge pad is connected. I'm just wary of that situation where a top up charge is not practical.
How long does the Palm Pre take to charge from flat using induction? Is there a separate direct connector? Are you cut-off from third-party options like emergency chargers that suck juice from AA or AAA batteries? How is a charge pad any better when you are travelling? The other end where it plugs into a wall hasn't changed and now you need a surface to put the charge pad on.
Your comment reminded me of an anecdote that apparently, some soldiers in the WWI trenches on both sides intentionally shot to miss. Perhaps when you override that - I'd imagine eventually you do - the amygdala's "firmware" has been altered and one factor of PTSD has possibly been identified.
It makes me think of the initiation/acceptance rituals into certain gangs and crime families where you must kill a man. Then your altered social circuits bond you to other murderers who are your new brothers, and all others outside of the gang are now well and truly the "outsiders". Meaning it's easier to commit greater atrocities for whatever cause driven by a sense of loyalty, tribe and brotherhood.
It would be fascinating if they could get child soldiers from conflicts in Africa in a study like this. One could really get a grasp of what that does to an amygdala when it's not even finished growing. If any person has severe PTSD, it would be a kid who didn't get to grow up "normal".
Well if the real thrill is designing the stuff in the software rather than the printing it out in 3D and want someone else to do it, there is Shapeways. They have several types of plastic and metal to choose from as the RPT material. YMMV for how cost effective it is. I've seen some very cool custom W40K figures made for about the same cost as the stuff in the shops.
An AC mentioned eMachineShop that tends toward more old-school milling and cutting. I figure a very cool resource if you do scale model projects that need an exotic cam or bolt with tight tolerances that a plastic extruder can't give.
From personal experience, AutoCAD Inventor is really easy to use for Shapeways. Blender gave me a headache trying to keep things within size limits and to have some sort of meaningful metric discipline throughout. Sometimes just paying for the right tool is better than trying to force a free tool to do something extra.
Slashdot Mirror
As for strain on the public purse, in the US the health care system is out to make money.
Maybe in the cosmetic or "luxury" or "brand name" (e.g. Lasik) healthcare they do.
In the US, I had the feeling that the healthcare system charges so much just to survive spurious litigation. Doctors and hospitals don't necessarily need to charge as much as they do for the actual care itself. I think a significant portion ends up in a legal defense fund somewhere.
It's the logical assumption, I agree, but you are focused on the actors and forgetting the stage.
The setting of Vampire Hunter D is one of decline after some sort of Golden Age of space travel, technology and neo-feudalism where a vampire nobility lived in a post-Scarcity economy with humans as cattle. The best quality horses are mostly cybernetic with visors for eyes, there are laser weapons and combustion engines.
You've sideswiped a related point mentioning non-English speaking countries. The Vampire Hunter novels seem very promising (I haven't read them....yet), but have only been translated to English beginning with volume 1 in 2005. And that decision was probably only made worth the investment to Dark Horse because they knew an established fan base that guaranteed some level of ROI that made the risk worthwhile.
Here in the English-speaking world, I really have no idea if we've missed the Japanese equivalent of a Glen Cook somewhere because an anime or OVA was not based on it. Fantastic reading (on my 5th Garret PI novel at the moment) but just so unknown to most sc-fi readers I know.
I really hope you're right. According to the compatible devices list on CyanogenMod, there is still no Cmod available for my Droid/Milestone 2 and it's been out since November 2010. Granted this is a voluntary community and no phone gets tinkered with unless one of the devs actually owns it. But still. No one has even grabbed one off a friend?
One good sata spin drive for $40 and you'll be booting in 2 minutes.
This. Absolutely this. My office uses an outsource IT provider for all machines and general support. We recently upgraded 5 desktops to i5 3GHz machines with DDR3 memory, 4GB standard with a 64bit version of Windows 7. Some improvement in boot time and programme speed. But it ocurred to me too late that while meeting the numbers that look good on the spec sheet in terms of CPU and RAM, the HDDs were all gimped with the cheapest 5400rpm bricks they could get to meet their bottom line.
Rights are inherent
No...no..not really. 150 years ago...a laughable notion, dinner table talk good for a titter with your bourgeoisie friends. 1,000 years ago and onwards back into human history: Might makes right, always.
What you feel is your natural sense of fairness, which appears to be present amongst all higher animals, not just humans (studies on monkeys sharing food through a little hole where only one gets fed et al.) and it's given these nice Emperor's clothes in the 21st century that calls it "Our Rights" (capitilization important).
Rights will only be "inherent" if we can get a God or a Culture AI to enforce them. And to be ruthless about it. Until then, it's only if the affected group or society agree and proactively enforce it. Usually with threat of legal force....or possible armed force. The more money and power you have, the more "Our Rights" you have.
Preacher! Oh yes please!
It would need to be mini-series. One movie or a series of movies just wouldn't work. Broadcast by an HBO-type so the "flirting-with-an-R-rating" stuff can be retained. It would go down well in the US with its peculiar and powerful love/hate relationship with its own Christian culture.
Possibly Lucifer would be equally successful for the same reasons.
Heavens to Murgatroid, that picture.
You might find the Seburo article on Wikipedia interesting.
Seburo is a fictional small-arms designer and manufacturer present in at least three of his future-earth dystopian universes including Ghost in the Shell. It's quite clear he was also inspired by bull-pup designs and the P90 and he's done some really beautiful creative adaptations of these real guns for his manga.
Hmmm...I don't see how this tech deals with occluded fingertips...
Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:
Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.
WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.
.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.
The Honorable Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang will see you now. If you would just take a seat here by the Nerve Stapler....
What next? If you run electricity "backwards" through it, you get negative gravity? Repulsor lifts and anti-grav sleds become real?
We insert it into nervous systems and grant telekinesis?
Isn't this the irony of the "Guidance Counselor" concept? If you have the advice and the answers to a great career or future....why are you doing this job? Why aren't you out there making your mark on the world?
The position might have some relevance if they allowed ageism and a level of prejudice not generally allowed by labour laws.:
Don't allow anyone younger than 45, without a proven career track record, respectable travel experience or at least 3 years living and working abroad to apply. Mixture of corporate and self-employed, white-collar and blue-collar experience is favoured. Wife and children are a bonus to round out the pool of knowledge to pass on. Only then would you have the real world experience to actually advise anybody at all.
Hmmm...that ended up a bigger comment than I first intended.
That is a brilliant metaphor. I shall be using it. Thank you sir.
Voice input is nice, but I'd rather replacing the mouse with an eyeball tracker.
Even this is not going far enough. The ultimate interface is direct mind-computer. Or near-as. I expect most UIs to skip directly to mind-interface as soon as it is commercially and practically possible.
Thinking the words you want typed is faster than speaking them and totally solves GP's issue with privacy. Well...unless they hack the pc side of things...but that's always been an issue anyway just like "privacy" on Facebook.
Thinking to run an OS might be excellent practice for those who have trouble with focusing. For the disabled it would completely remove any obstacle to those with speech problems as part of their condition. It may in fact open up a whole new field of neurology by being able to interact with brains and minds that are cut off or denied the modes of communication we take for granted.
If you have never spoken a word in your life, or heard a word in your entire life...if you are deaf-mute but have vision enough to see a screen and function enough for a mind-computer interface....what "language" does your mind speak? Would an adaptive linguistic weak-AI be able to "learn" the unique inner-mind's language of someone that has had no connection with "English" spoken around them? Is there a common basis to language on a neural level that a mind-interface can latch onto, and in effect, not need to be pre-taught a language? It will learn from whoever's brain it's attached to. For those it can't learn from, what does that mean? What genetic conditions cause the loss of this basis?
Mind-interface is more than just eyeballing targets in an FPS game. There are whole swathes of research opened up.
Football hooligans make ME uncomfortable. Therefore nobody should be allowed to play or watch football.
Most laws that forbid civil liberties are based on this thought process, though they all have completely different ostensible justifications.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not - going AC could mean either - but I must thank you for giving me a pretty good rebuttal that would have excellent effect here in the UK if I ever discuss video games with a self-righteous MP or cleric. He would never countenance his precious F.C. being placed in the same tar and feathers as violent video games.
(add more value) then no one will pirate the inferior version.
Exactly this: "Value Added Services". Crytek will just have to figure out what to do to sweeten the pot for the full-release version. I don't think it will be that difficult. It's not unreasonable with 6 weeks left to come up with several options.
No game is ever released without bugs. It can't be too difficult to set up some sort of checksum that recognises the leaked build and the updater refuses to patch. There is always the manual update that various release groups will provide, but it's the dis-incentive effect we're after. Even if the core game was leaked, the future DLC was not. THAT is still going to make some money. It is not a total loss.
It shouldn't be too difficult to add 3 or 4 weapons without too many balancing or graphical tweak issues exclusive to the premier release and non-functional in a patched version of the leaked pre-release of Crysis 2. Hmm, now that I think about it, if Crytek do enough changes to the game, it will in effect be up to half a version number apart from the leaked version. It would make things easier to hamstring players of the leaked version without inconveniencing users of the full-release version (or indeed pirated versions of it as well but that's an established problem anyway).
Finally some physical, non-digital exclusives bundled with the game even for the vanilla version of the release. Create motivation for both the vanilla and the inevitable collector's edition. No one's figured out a way to download physical items.
1- Don't erase any images from the memory card except the useless ones (like those with the lens cap on). Get a new card when full. This is much cheaper than film and developing was just a few years ago.
This is what my dad does and I used to think it was funny. Like he didn't "get" digital media. When he filled a card up, he'd put little white sticker on it, scribble a date or note, file it away and put in a new one. I now realize he had actually figured out the economics of what you say above as well as solved the storage/posterity question. I don't even remember what old photographic film cost for 36 shots, but you probably can't even compare it to the dozens of 12MP shots he gets on the equivalent-priced SD card. On that point he trumped me, the family geekboy.
Wait what? Even if it is locked-down, you can still install software. They are called "Apps". You get them from a place called "Android Market" or "The iPhone AppStore" or even "Ovi".
I don't care how Guantanamo-Bay-Lock-Down your cellphone is, you can still download 'Intifada Birds 2012' by 'MOSSADSUX-NET Free Software' that promises free pictures of boobs and get a virus that kills your centrifuges.
Surely you mean firmware? And the roms and other output from XDA Developers and CyanogenMod is generally by enthusiasts and developers....not East European digital mafia.
Wait...are you trolling? I really can't tell anymore.
Thanks for highlighting that. Disabled it immediately.
Plus we're not a million miles away from being able to culture meat in vats at this point, which need not produce any greenhouse gases at all if set up right.
Yum! "Cancer-in-a-Bucket". Just a few seed cells of muscle tissue, nutrient bath and growth hormone.
Anyways, you made me think of the Sligs in Frank Herbert's Dune universe: Half-slug, half-pig, fed on the organic waste of civilization. Protected by 4-inches of blubber and slime, impervious to disease and nothing but muscle and an alimentary canal that eats everything and poops out refined fertilizer and trace minerals. And it's meat tastes like the highest quality pork ever conceived.
That said, I really wish more manufacturers would adopt the charging system from the Palm Pre - I love the idea of just popping the phone down on a flat surface and having it start charging.
Is this the induction charging thing? Isn't it quite inefficient and slow?
I have one of those Oral B electric toothbrushes and it uses this tech in it's cradle. Problem is I don't have a convenient setup in my rented house's bathroom to leave my cradle plugged in and mounted permanently. The toothbrush needs to be charged from near-dead (i.e. it stops entirely and gives a low moan of protest whenever turned on) every 3 weeks or so and it takes a solid 48 hours to fully charge. This is pretty disruptive for the daily brushing.
I'm guessing the intended use is for the toothbrush to be put to rest in it's cradle in the bathroom and then induction does a top-up maintenance charge. The Palm Pre likely expects this behaviour whenever you are at your desk where the charge pad is connected. I'm just wary of that situation where a top up charge is not practical.
How long does the Palm Pre take to charge from flat using induction? Is there a separate direct connector? Are you cut-off from third-party options like emergency chargers that suck juice from AA or AAA batteries? How is a charge pad any better when you are travelling? The other end where it plugs into a wall hasn't changed and now you need a surface to put the charge pad on.
Your comment reminded me of an anecdote that apparently, some soldiers in the WWI trenches on both sides intentionally shot to miss. Perhaps when you override that - I'd imagine eventually you do - the amygdala's "firmware" has been altered and one factor of PTSD has possibly been identified.
It makes me think of the initiation/acceptance rituals into certain gangs and crime families where you must kill a man. Then your altered social circuits bond you to other murderers who are your new brothers, and all others outside of the gang are now well and truly the "outsiders". Meaning it's easier to commit greater atrocities for whatever cause driven by a sense of loyalty, tribe and brotherhood.
It would be fascinating if they could get child soldiers from conflicts in Africa in a study like this. One could really get a grasp of what that does to an amygdala when it's not even finished growing. If any person has severe PTSD, it would be a kid who didn't get to grow up "normal".
Well if the real thrill is designing the stuff in the software rather than the printing it out in 3D and want someone else to do it, there is Shapeways. They have several types of plastic and metal to choose from as the RPT material. YMMV for how cost effective it is. I've seen some very cool custom W40K figures made for about the same cost as the stuff in the shops.
An AC mentioned eMachineShop that tends toward more old-school milling and cutting. I figure a very cool resource if you do scale model projects that need an exotic cam or bolt with tight tolerances that a plastic extruder can't give.
From personal experience, AutoCAD Inventor is really easy to use for Shapeways. Blender gave me a headache trying to keep things within size limits and to have some sort of meaningful metric discipline throughout. Sometimes just paying for the right tool is better than trying to force a free tool to do something extra.