Um, are you seriously claiming that a substance that affects your brain chemistry and general neurological functions has no inherit danger?
I don't plan to entertain the parent's trolling much, but I believe I never gave anywhere near enough information to deduce that I am as ignorant regarding brain chemistry as the parent is claiming.
Just reread my original claim. What I said does not an any way take a stand on how things can and cannot otherwise go wrong with any number of substances in the brain, natural, synthetic, or otherwise.
Regardless, the parent's post was rather entertaining. I always find it amusing to see how people can deduce your personality from a comment under a hundred words. To each his own, I guess...
Um, are you seriously claiming that a substance that affects your brain chemistry and general neurological functions has no inherit danger? Isn't that a bit clueless?
I mean, people have died from things like alcohol and caffeine... So while some hallucinogens aren't necessarily overly dangerous in a controlled environment saying that there's no inherit danger is a bit over the top maybe? I don't care how non toxic it is or isn't... If it fucks with my brain there's a possibility things can go awry.
I've regularly watched (with my wife) Amazing Race, Survivor, America's Got Talent, Rock Star (cancelled now, I guess?), various Food Network competition RTV programs, Wife Swap, Super Nanny, Biggest Loser and others.
I have to chime in here... There is more than one kind of TV watching. My wife and I also watch a lot of the shows mentioned above, but it isn't passive watching. As we watch we discuss the social dynamics, strategies, and general behaviour of the participants. While reality TV is kindof a sort of social porn, there is more than one way of watching it.
Amazing race is very interesting, especially me not being American. Having traveled a bit myself it's intriguing to see how different people deal with unfamiliar situations out of their comfort zone.
Even though a lot of reality TV is scripted these days, the fact that the participants aren't generally actors does allow you to learn at least something about human interaction if you make an effort to pay attention. I can't say it's that much worse than wasting time on pure fiction...
Depending on what you are trying to do... My original point was that technology like this will make it possible to navigate the swamps of data we're accumulating.
I like having a lot of family photos, but traditional albums won't do when we have literally thousands of them. Stuff like this can make it possible to easily call up photos based on suitable criteria. Like I said we need other parts to, like face recognition, but summing it all up we'll eventually have a feasible way to navigate a huge amount of photographic data.
And THIS is why I tend to take huge numbers of photos and never delete any... Technology like this will account for easy geotagging, date I already have in the EXIF data, whereas people can be tagged with face recognition soon enough.
That done, I'll be able to navigate my tens of thousands of photos by asking for things like photos taken of the kids while outside at the cottage when they were 3 years old.
While I agree that I may have been a bit harsh, I still believe that pretty much anyone who isn't straight off mentally disabled can pick up a second or third language if you actually dedicate yourself a bit and believe in your own ability to learn.
But you are indeed correct that Finnish is a hard language. It took me ages to achieve relative fluency, and I still make a lot of mistakes.
I have a friend who ended up marrying a Japanese girl, and he's been able to pick up quite a bit Japanese just by taking lessons once a week and hearing the language at home. I don't think his Finnish or English skills have really helped either, Japanese is so thoroughly different from western languages.
I may be arrogant, but I guess I'm also a bit idealistic. I think anyone can learn anything if they truly are willing to dedicate themselves to it. But my main point was disagreeing with your original statement that you would need to practically move somewhere with native speakers and live there for years to learn something useful. I just refuse to agree. All my experience, with lots and lots of multilingual people, tell me otherwise.
Multilingualism is not some magical trait that you have to have from a young age. Sure, there are a lot of neurological things that go on (roughly) between the ages of 12 and 25 which have a major impact on how your brain gets wired, but it's not like you hit a brick wall after that.
Finding a way to learn that works for a particular individual, now that is a whole separate chapter... Personally, I think it's also very much the key to any form of efficient time spent learning, well, anything.
Being fluent in Swedish, Finnish, and English, pretty good in French, and having basic communication skills in German, I honestly can't believe how clueless you are.
It is true that having the opportunity to actually use a second, third or fourth language has a huge impact on your proficiency in said language. But never having lived in a English-dominated country and having been told that I have a larger vocabulary than some natives, as well as having a bunch of local friends who speak two or three languages just fine... I'll just repeat myself, you're clueless.
Then again, living in Europe (Finland) being multilingual is no big deal.
If my understanding is correct, Tim Berners-Lee's original vision was not really about the technology. Instead, the idea was that anybody could publish their own content freely. This is a democratic issue, and frankly I feel that the whole "Web 2.0" thing with social networks, blogs, and everything else has in fact empowered users to create their own content.
Granted, much of it is horrible horrible meaningless random thought streams, but that's beside the point. The fact that people can publish their ramblings proves that the web is alive and well.
Sorry no, most of this info is based of TV documentaries, as far as I can remember. But I do believe that women and men "fininsh" process at a different pace, women faster that is... But this is only a very vague recollection...:)
I guess Google would know more if one knew proper terms for this stuff to search with...
It isn't just men's brains. The human brain undergoes some hefty neurological changes starting in the early teens, and finally being complete around 25. Basically a hell of a lot of synapses grow in young people's brains, forming a huge amount of connections. After that they're optimized, so the reason teens seem so fucked up in the head is that their brains are literally reconnecting itself and purging non-needed connections.
Disclaimer: IANAN, IJLT (I Am Not A Neurologist, I Just Like Trivia.)
Traditional web apps are slow, because of all the chatting with a server. But well made AJAX, and frameworks like this one and OpenLazlo, http://www.openlaszlo.org/ are changing that.
Makes me wonder... Maybe soon(ish) a lot of apps which are now strictly in the desktop domain will really be viable through a browserlike environment?
I've been quite skeptical myself, but every time I see something like this it makes me wonder if I'm just not seeing the true possibilities...
...it doesn't mean that you're not more likely to have one while operating any device that takes your eyes off the road.
Mobile phones are still so new that proper statistics don't really exist. (Ever here in Finland, where most in my generation had a mobile in high school, pre Y2K.) But I still don't think it can ever be safer to drive while doing anything else at the same time.
Sometimes it makes the most sense to simply find a place to pull over for a moment, if you really need to do something which will take your attention off the road. As for calling, there's this thing called a "hands free device" which works pretty darn well these days...
While Wine clearly has a place on today's Linux desktop, how do you think Wine will compare to using something like ReactOS combined with virtualization in the future?
ReactOS has the potential to eventually support both applications and drivers relatively effortlessly. And as virtualization becomes cheaper, will Wine still have the advantage in the long run?
Since Java itself never mattered except to sell books, I still don't see why opening it matters.
Isn't that a bit of a flamebait now...?
Java is hugely complex but saying it never mattered is a bit extreme methinks? There is, after all, a huge amount of Java software out there. And Java did do a hell of a lot to popularize virtual machines as well.
Never mattered? While we're at it we could add that the Amiga never mattered because it wasn't ultimately that successful, right?
2. Raytracing scales differently than methods currently used in games. With raytracing, increasing resolution is what adds the processing time, while adding detail is very cheap. Which I'm guessing means that as soon as you get raytracing going in real time at a decent resolution, adding extra quality is cheap. This would radically change the current situation, and possibly drastically bump the quality level. Adding detail is cheap in some situation, and insanely expensive in others. With true raytracing and multiple reflective and/or refractive surfaces an awful lot of rays can be going all over the scene... So adding detail might really give an exponential cost addition in certain scenarios.
3. Raytracing implements effects like shadows and transparency in a straightforward manner, which should make it easier to code. Game developers should like that. Also, in my understanding, raytracing also doesn't need to decompose things like spheres into lots of triangles, so the engine can test a ray's collision with a sphere directly. If you can specify parts of a scene as objects like spheres, toruses and such, it'd result in much finer detail. If you're using CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) it's true that a sphere is in fact a real sphere. But only if you're not starting with a scene with polygons. Most game worlds are polygon based, do going to a largely CSG-based world wouldn't be a trivial task.
Also, some effects, like focal blur for instance, are very expensive to do with full-on raytracing. Shadows, on the other hand, are indeed very cheap.
Unless you're docking and undocking your Vista laptop like me... I have to reset the resolution on one of my monitors every Monday morning. Before it kept swapping my displays (I run 2 external monitors) but it stopped doing that now. *knocks wood*
So let me know when the 2D versions come out? The FA did in fact state that there will be 2D versions of the movies as well. The real question it what will theaters decide to show? Both, or just the newfangled 3D version?
As far as I could tell the term 3D format isn't really well defined. I'm assuming a stereoscopic format of some kind, with something to deliver the correct stream to the correct eye?
I wonder if it well really be worth it depends on the material, I guess. Experience on the subject, anyone? And how about people with glasses?
I believe in a future without a need for labels. I believe that ever developing distribution channels will make it possible for all artists to sell their own works directly. I believe in a future without DRM. Will you believe? If enough will we'll end up with a self fulfilling prophecy on our hands...
Slashdot Mirror
I made a very simple claim:
there's no inherent danger to it.
Um, are you seriously claiming that a substance that affects your brain chemistry and general neurological functions has no inherit danger?
I don't plan to entertain the parent's trolling much, but I believe I never gave anywhere near enough information to deduce that I am as ignorant regarding brain chemistry as the parent is claiming.
Just reread my original claim. What I said does not an any way take a stand on how things can and cannot otherwise go wrong with any number of substances in the brain, natural, synthetic, or otherwise.
Regardless, the parent's post was rather entertaining. I always find it amusing to see how people can deduce your personality from a comment under a hundred words. To each his own, I guess...
there's no inherent danger to it.
Um, are you seriously claiming that a substance that affects your brain chemistry and general neurological functions has no inherit danger? Isn't that a bit clueless?
I mean, people have died from things like alcohol and caffeine... So while some hallucinogens aren't necessarily overly dangerous in a controlled environment saying that there's no inherit danger is a bit over the top maybe? I don't care how non toxic it is or isn't... If it fucks with my brain there's a possibility things can go awry.
I've regularly watched (with my wife) Amazing Race, Survivor, America's Got Talent, Rock Star (cancelled now, I guess?), various Food Network competition RTV programs, Wife Swap, Super Nanny, Biggest Loser and others.
I have to chime in here... There is more than one kind of TV watching. My wife and I also watch a lot of the shows mentioned above, but it isn't passive watching. As we watch we discuss the social dynamics, strategies, and general behaviour of the participants. While reality TV is kindof a sort of social porn, there is more than one way of watching it.
Amazing race is very interesting, especially me not being American. Having traveled a bit myself it's intriguing to see how different people deal with unfamiliar situations out of their comfort zone.
Even though a lot of reality TV is scripted these days, the fact that the participants aren't generally actors does allow you to learn at least something about human interaction if you make an effort to pay attention. I can't say it's that much worse than wasting time on pure fiction...
It looks like taking a video would be easier.
Depending on what you are trying to do... My original point was that technology like this will make it possible to navigate the swamps of data we're accumulating.
I like having a lot of family photos, but traditional albums won't do when we have literally thousands of them. Stuff like this can make it possible to easily call up photos based on suitable criteria. Like I said we need other parts to, like face recognition, but summing it all up we'll eventually have a feasible way to navigate a huge amount of photographic data.
And THIS is why I tend to take huge numbers of photos and never delete any... Technology like this will account for easy geotagging, date I already have in the EXIF data, whereas people can be tagged with face recognition soon enough.
That done, I'll be able to navigate my tens of thousands of photos by asking for things like photos taken of the kids while outside at the cottage when they were 3 years old.
Also, remember to backup! :)
Audio compression, actually. Which is a totally different thing. :)
This is not exactly new, but it's a fun little clip. Karma whoring or not, here's Youtube links in high quality and standard quality.
While I agree that I may have been a bit harsh, I still believe that pretty much anyone who isn't straight off mentally disabled can pick up a second or third language if you actually dedicate yourself a bit and believe in your own ability to learn.
But you are indeed correct that Finnish is a hard language. It took me ages to achieve relative fluency, and I still make a lot of mistakes.
I have a friend who ended up marrying a Japanese girl, and he's been able to pick up quite a bit Japanese just by taking lessons once a week and hearing the language at home. I don't think his Finnish or English skills have really helped either, Japanese is so thoroughly different from western languages.
I may be arrogant, but I guess I'm also a bit idealistic. I think anyone can learn anything if they truly are willing to dedicate themselves to it. But my main point was disagreeing with your original statement that you would need to practically move somewhere with native speakers and live there for years to learn something useful. I just refuse to agree. All my experience, with lots and lots of multilingual people, tell me otherwise.
Multilingualism is not some magical trait that you have to have from a young age. Sure, there are a lot of neurological things that go on (roughly) between the ages of 12 and 25 which have a major impact on how your brain gets wired, but it's not like you hit a brick wall after that.
Finding a way to learn that works for a particular individual, now that is a whole separate chapter... Personally, I think it's also very much the key to any form of efficient time spent learning, well, anything.
Being fluent in Swedish, Finnish, and English, pretty good in French, and having basic communication skills in German, I honestly can't believe how clueless you are.
It is true that having the opportunity to actually use a second, third or fourth language has a huge impact on your proficiency in said language. But never having lived in a English-dominated country and having been told that I have a larger vocabulary than some natives, as well as having a bunch of local friends who speak two or three languages just fine... I'll just repeat myself, you're clueless.
Then again, living in Europe (Finland) being multilingual is no big deal.
If my understanding is correct, Tim Berners-Lee's original vision was not really about the technology. Instead, the idea was that anybody could publish their own content freely. This is a democratic issue, and frankly I feel that the whole "Web 2.0" thing with social networks, blogs, and everything else has in fact empowered users to create their own content.
Granted, much of it is horrible horrible meaningless random thought streams, but that's beside the point. The fact that people can publish their ramblings proves that the web is alive and well.
Sorry no, most of this info is based of TV documentaries, as far as I can remember. But I do believe that women and men "fininsh" process at a different pace, women faster that is... But this is only a very vague recollection... :)
I guess Google would know more if one knew proper terms for this stuff to search with...
It isn't just men's brains. The human brain undergoes some hefty neurological changes starting in the early teens, and finally being complete around 25. Basically a hell of a lot of synapses grow in young people's brains, forming a huge amount of connections. After that they're optimized, so the reason teens seem so fucked up in the head is that their brains are literally reconnecting itself and purging non-needed connections.
Disclaimer: IANAN, IJLT (I Am Not A Neurologist, I Just Like Trivia.)
Traditional web apps are slow, because of all the chatting with a server. But well made AJAX, and frameworks like this one and OpenLazlo, http://www.openlaszlo.org/ are changing that.
Makes me wonder... Maybe soon(ish) a lot of apps which are now strictly in the desktop domain will really be viable through a browserlike environment?
I've been quite skeptical myself, but every time I see something like this it makes me wonder if I'm just not seeing the true possibilities...
...it doesn't mean that you're not more likely to have one while operating any device that takes your eyes off the road.
Mobile phones are still so new that proper statistics don't really exist. (Ever here in Finland, where most in my generation had a mobile in high school, pre Y2K.) But I still don't think it can ever be safer to drive while doing anything else at the same time.
Sometimes it makes the most sense to simply find a place to pull over for a moment, if you really need to do something which will take your attention off the road. As for calling, there's this thing called a "hands free device" which works pretty darn well these days...
While Wine clearly has a place on today's Linux desktop, how do you think Wine will compare to using something like ReactOS combined with virtualization in the future?
ReactOS has the potential to eventually support both applications and drivers relatively effortlessly. And as virtualization becomes cheaper, will Wine still have the advantage in the long run?
Isn't that a bit of a flamebait now...?
Java is hugely complex but saying it never mattered is a bit extreme methinks? There is, after all, a huge amount of Java software out there. And Java did do a hell of a lot to popularize virtual machines as well.
Never mattered? While we're at it we could add that the Amiga never mattered because it wasn't ultimately that successful, right?
Also, some effects, like focal blur for instance, are very expensive to do with full-on raytracing. Shadows, on the other hand, are indeed very cheap.
Only on Slashdot can this be modded as "Informative". :)
Unless you're docking and undocking your Vista laptop like me... I have to reset the resolution on one of my monitors every Monday morning. Before it kept swapping my displays (I run 2 external monitors) but it stopped doing that now. *knocks wood*
As far as I could tell the term 3D format isn't really well defined. I'm assuming a stereoscopic format of some kind, with something to deliver the correct stream to the correct eye?
I wonder if it well really be worth it depends on the material, I guess. Experience on the subject, anyone? And how about people with glasses?
How many of these concerned citizens happen to smoke, I wonder...
I believe in a future without a need for labels. I believe that ever developing distribution channels will make it possible for all artists to sell their own works directly. I believe in a future without DRM. Will you believe? If enough will we'll end up with a self fulfilling prophecy on our hands...
Ah, thanks. Seems Slashdotted or something here, though... Go figure. ;)
Am I the only one not seeing anything else except for the demo-stuff there from way back? Where are these fabled articles? Link, anyone?