> Not exactly; in GTA 4, there are surface imperfections that can cause your (stupid fucking) Comet to flip over
But those surface imperfections don't normally cause your joystick/mouse to move and you can remove such feedback if you want (just buy a normal joystick/mouse:) ).
Whereas in a real car on a real road, a bump could cause you to mis-twitch the joystick and lose control of the car (especially if the bumps and twitches end up in some sort of positive feedback loop).
Bumps affect steering wheels too, but the effect is likely to be not as severe.
One solution is for the joystick to be force sensitive (maybe with some force feedback - higher speeds = harder to push) - so you'd have to push really hard to turn the wheels to the max. I believe this is done in some fighter planes.
I doubt Oracle would say stuff like "Our actual plan is to phase out OpenSolaris within the next 3 years" even if that was their plan. Customers would stop buying NOW.
After all there's progress on brain-computer interfaces. People and animals already can control devices with their thoughts, and there is progress in implants that help the blind to see, and the deaf to hear. Google for "seeing tongue" and neural input devices.
So it could start with implants to help people with dementia keep track of where they are and what they are doing, or it could be implants to augment people - help them remember better, share their thoughts and memories, perform tasks of "virtual telepathy" and "virtual telekinesis" (in areas that support it of course), and many other nifty stuff.
Groups like the MPAA/RIAA etc might then insist on DRM on these devices.
A penny for your thoughts? I think they'd charge more and say most of it belongs to them:).
Actually I think Microsoft has been much better at "DO NOT BREAK" than Apple or Linux. Many old viruses still worked on XP (and old applications too):).
BUT I think they decided that it was time to break more stuff starting with Vista ( maybe in more ways than they planned;) )...
Microsoft's big problem is a Windows XP compatible O/S is dangerously close to existing, and if Microsoft does not move the goal posts in time, people might switch to it instead instead of "Vista" or Windows7. Then Microsoft loses significant control of the market.
It's just like Intel trying to get everyone on board the the Itanic, but then AMD came up with AMD64 and everyone jumped on that instead.
If Microsoft doesn't keep breaking stuff "slightly" and keep "moving the goal posts", Windows XP+DirectX9 could become a defacto standard that even they can't escape from, and the Windows market would be like the BIOS market.
Microsoft does not want to be just another BIOS vendor. They'd make a lot less.
But since it isn't, I guess most of the 0.01 buyers didn't do that - otherwise it might explain the two peaks - people buying it for "free" and then buying it again.
If you remember that when you vote the order on the card/display was:
Candidate A = [ ] Candidate B = [ ] Candidate C = [ ]
And when you look it up your vote online it says:
[ ] [x] [ ]
Assuming you don't have bad memory you can prove it to yourself that you voted for "B" but can't prove it to others.
BUT where many fancy systems fail and where pen and paper can win is in one very very important area.
Voting systems do not just have to be correct and "fair", they have to be seen as correct and "fair" enough.
They have to convince the losing parties (and their supporters) they lost "fair and square". Otherwise you get riots like in Iran (where the process and results weren't very convincing;) ).
A good working voting system that's simple enough for the average voter to understand will satisfy that. And in many countries it's just simple as collecting, storing, counting paper ballots in the view of everyone (some could be representatives from various parties and some from independent observers). The counting and verification is being done in parallel. Sure it's not 100%, but it's good enough (and not that expensive).
A good cryptographic voting system might be 100% verifiable in theory, but it's still probably not 100% verifiable in practice since the average person would still need some trusted geek to tell them that "yes, it's correct". That's probably good enough too.
But the current electronic voting systems out there certainly do not satisfy the "seen to be correct" requirement, they're probably not even correct. And a geek who knows his stuff will probably tell anyone who asks that those systems just make it easier to cheat.
Seems to me that Oracle will try to convert as much of MySQL's marketshare to $$$ as possible. Kill/slow development of certain MySQL features, create some easy upgrade paths to Oracle = profit.
Makes a lot more sense than ebay's billion dollar purchase of skype, which somehow left out the important bits:). I'm still not sure how ebay recently managed to convince others to buy skype from them...
The CIA isn't. Some private company is doing it:).
If that's not good enough, I'm sure they can always make some vaguely legal request to the private company to ask another private company/organisation and so on to do the dirty work.
The benefits of outsourcing.
That's why I find it hilarious when the fanatics keep saying small government will be better than big government.
If you really think a small government that outsources all the dirty work to private corporations will be better, you're a fool.
The real problem is quality not quantity. Poor regulation, by the regulators AND by the voters.
Most people don't seem to realize that. I suppose the problem there again is quality and not quantity either... But quantity wins in democracies - and still the ignorant wonder why those in power refuse to educate properly the people who keep voting them back in...
> There are millions of images of the more famous parks
Technologically they can just stitch all those images to recreate 3D models of those parks - there's already tech available that's used in Microsoft Photosynth and other similar stuff.
However, the problem I see is copyright and other laws. Google doesn't have the legal rights to those images that it wants.
In the finance trading world, knowing something 1 day before the rest of the market isn't so different from knowing something 30 milliseconds before everyone else in the market.
1) Their install file downloads sometimes don't work. 2) Patching often requires yet more big downloads. 3) Installation requires admin privileges even though the game shouldn't need admin privileges - in fact I have installed the game using a virtual machine onto a network drive and successfully run it from another machine - so no admin privileges are actually required.
RoM is very gear based so if you want to PvP, be aware that someone willing to spend lots of $$$ is going to pulp you if you don't spend $$$ on gear. A low level player could have gear and weapons loaded with lots of top level stats (transferred and added via the arcane transmutor thingy) - and the resulting differences can be very extreme. There is some skill involved but not much - most of the RoM spells and skills aren't very sophisticated in terms of "interesting interactions". Definitely not as much as say Guild Wars PvP. I'd say RoM PvP is "Gear vs Gear";).
But hey it's free and the RoM PvE servers have many high level players are willing to help out with stuff.
IMO something like my suggestion might help you a lot more than that fancy multitouch stuff.
Doesn't have to be exactly like my proposal (probably shouldn't be the alt key). I may have an updated proposal floating about somewhere, but nobody else seems interested:).
All that zooming in and out and scrolling may look cool, but it's a waste of time to skilled users. Analogy: all that crap is just like a fancy cutscene in a _good_ game that non-noobs want to skip to get to the "real thing". It may be nice to see the first few times, but after the 100th or 1000th time it gets in the way.
Most GUI people design stuff for the "naive" users, but don't cater for trained skill users. Except perhaps for game designers - some of the game UIs allow very many actions-per-second.
A system where poor people have to sit in "Emergency Rooms" for treatment? Or wait till their condition deteriorates into an emergency?
It's cheaper if the USA just quickly killed their poor people who are sick, rather than do it slower like now. And more honest in some ways.
Yes I know if you actually give the poor preventative healthcare they might live way longer and cost the system more (everyone dies eventually - it's just postponing the inevitable).
But one would have thought that the most powerful country in the world could use some of its power to help its poor, needy and weak.
And worse - it seems that the US system still costs a lot even if it isn't giving decent treatment to that many...
> when was the last time you were walking down the street and saw a family sitting on their front porch playing and singing together?
Doesn't that come under "public performance", so they would have to pay for the "privilege" of playing music on their own front porch?;)
Anyway, I doubt "families not sitting together" is just to do with music playing machines, there's plenty of other stuff - TV in every room, PCs, mobile phones, malls, lots of movies+shows that tell kids its ok to not respect their parents[1] etc.
If you really want families that do stuff together a lot, go copy some ideas from the Amish. I believe they have some sort of policy where they do not adopt technologies that tend to weaken family structures. The Amish do have their problems, but there's still stuff to learn from them.
[1] It's not gonna be as easy if the kids are more likely to say "it's a lame idea Dad" (or worse) and then run off.
Sure but he doesn't even look even mid-way in any peace related effort. At this rate they're going to have to give him another prize when he reaches the quarter mark to encourage him further;).
But what's so innovative about intermittent wipers? Yes they're useful. No they're not that innovative.
Most of the patents out there are as innovative and helpful to progress as "Patenting 101 methods of separating egg contents from shell in order to make an omelette...".
The current patent system appears to reward patent trolls.
BTW the patent system also does little to reward "super innovators". They will be more than 20 years ahead of their time. Imagine inventing the mouse, GUI, teleconferencing, working hypertext, groupware in the 1960s... And most people only start using stuff like that more than 20 years later (after the patent expires). It takes decades for the "seeds" to grow. Go look up Douglas Engelbart and his team.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. I can come up with lots of ideas. The trouble is implementing them or getting other people to implement them.
Perhaps they should reward inventors using a method based more on "hindsight". After all, it's easier to get stuff right in hindsight than for a patent examiner to sift through lots of crap, and in fields that he might not be an expert in. If technology and science continue to progress, there will be more and more ultra-specialized fields. How is some random patent examiner going to know whether something is really novel/innovative in that field?
A lot premature. Barack has accomplished very little in terms of peace. They could have just waited 10 years and then give him a prize if he really did anything good. They've been giving many of these prizes years after the actual achievements, so what's the rush?
After all, the USA could still start a war with Iran, and so much for world peace then. You can say they are making nukes for all they want, but there's no real evidence yet[1].
Slashdot Mirror
> Do you write all of your own security tools? If not then kindly go fuck yourself.
You grow your own wheat and grind your own flour? And built your own CPU factory to make the CPU for your computer?
If you do everything yourself, you're certainly the one who should be "fucking yourself".
Seems more logical.
> Not exactly; in GTA 4, there are surface imperfections that can cause your (stupid fucking) Comet to flip over
:) ).
But those surface imperfections don't normally cause your joystick/mouse to move and you can remove such feedback if you want (just buy a normal joystick/mouse
Whereas in a real car on a real road, a bump could cause you to mis-twitch the joystick and lose control of the car (especially if the bumps and twitches end up in some sort of positive feedback loop).
Bumps affect steering wheels too, but the effect is likely to be not as severe.
One solution is for the joystick to be force sensitive (maybe with some force feedback - higher speeds = harder to push) - so you'd have to push really hard to turn the wheels to the max. I believe this is done in some fighter planes.
I doubt Oracle would say stuff like "Our actual plan is to phase out OpenSolaris within the next 3 years" even if that was their plan. Customers would stop buying NOW.
A future like that may not be far.
:).
After all there's progress on brain-computer interfaces. People and animals already can control devices with their thoughts, and there is progress in implants that help the blind to see, and the deaf to hear. Google for "seeing tongue" and neural input devices.
So it could start with implants to help people with dementia keep track of where they are and what they are doing, or it could be implants to augment people - help them remember better, share their thoughts and memories, perform tasks of "virtual telepathy" and "virtual telekinesis" (in areas that support it of course), and many other nifty stuff.
Groups like the MPAA/RIAA etc might then insist on DRM on these devices.
A penny for your thoughts? I think they'd charge more and say most of it belongs to them
Actually I think Microsoft has been much better at "DO NOT BREAK" than Apple or Linux. Many old viruses still worked on XP (and old applications too) :).
;) )...
BUT I think they decided that it was time to break more stuff starting with Vista ( maybe in more ways than they planned
Microsoft's big problem is a Windows XP compatible O/S is dangerously close to existing, and if Microsoft does not move the goal posts in time, people might switch to it instead instead of "Vista" or Windows7. Then Microsoft loses significant control of the market.
It's just like Intel trying to get everyone on board the the Itanic, but then AMD came up with AMD64 and everyone jumped on that instead.
If Microsoft doesn't keep breaking stuff "slightly" and keep "moving the goal posts", Windows XP+DirectX9 could become a defacto standard that even they can't escape from, and the Windows market would be like the BIOS market.
Microsoft does not want to be just another BIOS vendor. They'd make a lot less.
Just buy it twice?
First time buy it for 0.01.
After you play you buy it for whatever.
I'm surprised it's not obvious.
But since it isn't, I guess most of the 0.01 buyers didn't do that - otherwise it might explain the two peaks - people buying it for "free" and then buying it again.
> If I can verify my vote, I can prove to myself after the fact how I voted, and therefore I can prove it to somebody else.
Not true. Plenty of cryptographers have solved that problem- see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s
If you remember that when you vote the order on the card/display was:
Candidate A = [ ]
Candidate B = [ ]
Candidate C = [ ]
And when you look it up your vote online it says:
[ ]
[x]
[ ]
Assuming you don't have bad memory you can prove it to yourself that you voted for "B" but can't prove it to others.
BUT where many fancy systems fail and where pen and paper can win is in one very very important area.
Voting systems do not just have to be correct and "fair", they have to be seen as correct and "fair" enough.
They have to convince the losing parties (and their supporters) they lost "fair and square". Otherwise you get riots like in Iran (where the process and results weren't very convincing ;) ).
A good working voting system that's simple enough for the average voter to understand will satisfy that. And in many countries it's just simple as collecting, storing, counting paper ballots in the view of everyone (some could be representatives from various parties and some from independent observers). The counting and verification is being done in parallel. Sure it's not 100%, but it's good enough (and not that expensive).
A good cryptographic voting system might be 100% verifiable in theory, but it's still probably not 100% verifiable in practice since the average person would still need some trusted geek to tell them that "yes, it's correct". That's probably good enough too.
But the current electronic voting systems out there certainly do not satisfy the "seen to be correct" requirement, they're probably not even correct. And a geek who knows his stuff will probably tell anyone who asks that those systems just make it easier to cheat.
Seems to me that Oracle will try to convert as much of MySQL's marketshare to $$$ as possible. Kill/slow development of certain MySQL features, create some easy upgrade paths to Oracle = profit.
:). I'm still not sure how ebay recently managed to convince others to buy skype from them...
Makes a lot more sense than ebay's billion dollar purchase of skype, which somehow left out the important bits
The CIA, outsourcing dirty work since 1947.
The CIA isn't. Some private company is doing it :).
If that's not good enough, I'm sure they can always make some vaguely legal request to the private company to ask another private company/organisation and so on to do the dirty work.
The benefits of outsourcing.
That's why I find it hilarious when the fanatics keep saying small government will be better than big government.
If you really think a small government that outsources all the dirty work to private corporations will be better, you're a fool.
The real problem is quality not quantity. Poor regulation, by the regulators AND by the voters.
Most people don't seem to realize that. I suppose the problem there again is quality and not quantity either... But quantity wins in democracies - and still the ignorant wonder why those in power refuse to educate properly the people who keep voting them back in...
Progress is slow in hydrocarbon fuel cells though.
> Bigger doesn't equal better in terms of many fruits/plants. Something i wish americans would learn with their produce.
Aren't the "Americans" also growing bigger and not better too?
What else do you want them to "learn with their produce"?
Wonder what would happen if you used a geiger counter on a container filled with brazil nuts :).
> There are millions of images of the more famous parks
Technologically they can just stitch all those images to recreate 3D models of those parks - there's already tech available that's used in Microsoft Photosynth and other similar stuff.
However, the problem I see is copyright and other laws. Google doesn't have the legal rights to those images that it wants.
Many other criminals don't get caught either.
As for insider trading, to me the following is just as unfair and should be as illegal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
So who is going to jail for that?
In the finance trading world, knowing something 1 day before the rest of the market isn't so different from knowing something 30 milliseconds before everyone else in the market.
Installing that game is a pain in the neck tho.
;).
1) Their install file downloads sometimes don't work.
2) Patching often requires yet more big downloads.
3) Installation requires admin privileges even though the game shouldn't need admin privileges - in fact I have installed the game using a virtual machine onto a network drive and successfully run it from another machine - so no admin privileges are actually required.
RoM is very gear based so if you want to PvP, be aware that someone willing to spend lots of $$$ is going to pulp you if you don't spend $$$ on gear. A low level player could have gear and weapons loaded with lots of top level stats (transferred and added via the arcane transmutor thingy) - and the resulting differences can be very extreme. There is some skill involved but not much - most of the RoM spells and skills aren't very sophisticated in terms of "interesting interactions". Definitely not as much as say Guild Wars PvP. I'd say RoM PvP is "Gear vs Gear"
But hey it's free and the RoM PvE servers have many high level players are willing to help out with stuff.
I suggested this some years ago:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121349
IMO something like my suggestion might help you a lot more than that fancy multitouch stuff.
Doesn't have to be exactly like my proposal (probably shouldn't be the alt key). I may have an updated proposal floating about somewhere, but nobody else seems interested :).
All that zooming in and out and scrolling may look cool, but it's a waste of time to skilled users. Analogy: all that crap is just like a fancy cutscene in a _good_ game that non-noobs want to skip to get to the "real thing". It may be nice to see the first few times, but after the 100th or 1000th time it gets in the way.
Most GUI people design stuff for the "naive" users, but don't cater for trained skill users. Except perhaps for game designers - some of the game UIs allow very many actions-per-second.
And you don't think that system is broken?
A system where poor people have to sit in "Emergency Rooms" for treatment? Or wait till their condition deteriorates into an emergency?
It's cheaper if the USA just quickly killed their poor people who are sick, rather than do it slower like now. And more honest in some ways.
Yes I know if you actually give the poor preventative healthcare they might live way longer and cost the system more (everyone dies eventually - it's just postponing the inevitable).
But one would have thought that the most powerful country in the world could use some of its power to help its poor, needy and weak.
And worse - it seems that the US system still costs a lot even if it isn't giving decent treatment to that many...
> when was the last time you were walking down the street and saw a family sitting on their front porch playing and singing together?
Doesn't that come under "public performance", so they would have to pay for the "privilege" of playing music on their own front porch? ;)
Anyway, I doubt "families not sitting together" is just to do with music playing machines, there's plenty of other stuff - TV in every room, PCs, mobile phones, malls, lots of movies+shows that tell kids its ok to not respect their parents[1] etc.
If you really want families that do stuff together a lot, go copy some ideas from the Amish. I believe they have some sort of policy where they do not adopt technologies that tend to weaken family structures. The Amish do have their problems, but there's still stuff to learn from them.
[1] It's not gonna be as easy if the kids are more likely to say "it's a lame idea Dad" (or worse) and then run off.
They're just finding exploits in the law, or nifty tricks and techniques.
Don't slashdotters love hackers?
Sure but he doesn't even look even mid-way in any peace related effort. At this rate they're going to have to give him another prize when he reaches the quarter mark to encourage him further ;).
> As I recall the man who invented it demonstrated it, was blown off, and then the company STOLE the idea.
Well if that happened then I agree he should be compensated.
But if the company really invented it by themselves, I don't think the inventor deserves anything, except credit for being first.
Otherwise you just end up slowing progress.
1) Create religion
2) ???
3) Prophet!
But what's so innovative about intermittent wipers? Yes they're useful. No they're not that innovative.
Most of the patents out there are as innovative and helpful to progress as "Patenting 101 methods of separating egg contents from shell in order to make an omelette...".
The current patent system appears to reward patent trolls.
BTW the patent system also does little to reward "super innovators". They will be more than 20 years ahead of their time. Imagine inventing the mouse, GUI, teleconferencing, working hypertext, groupware in the 1960s... And most people only start using stuff like that more than 20 years later (after the patent expires). It takes decades for the "seeds" to grow. Go look up Douglas Engelbart and his team.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. I can come up with lots of ideas. The trouble is implementing them or getting other people to implement them.
Perhaps they should reward inventors using a method based more on "hindsight". After all, it's easier to get stuff right in hindsight than for a patent examiner to sift through lots of crap, and in fields that he might not be an expert in. If technology and science continue to progress, there will be more and more ultra-specialized fields. How is some random patent examiner going to know whether something is really novel/innovative in that field?
A lot premature. Barack has accomplished very little in terms of peace. They could have just waited 10 years and then give him a prize if he really did anything good. They've been giving many of these prizes years after the actual achievements, so what's the rush?
After all, the USA could still start a war with Iran, and so much for world peace then. You can say they are making nukes for all they want, but there's no real evidence yet[1].
[1] http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/MediaAdvisory/2009/MA200919.html