There will always be more kids who want to play shoot 'em ups.
But will they always want the newest ones? I know
people who play Duke Nukem, because they'd never
seen it before. The guy who had the disk was
happy to trade for an older game HE had never seen
before. Newer ones have some better graphics,
but they are playing essentially the same game.
And I know a few people who were introduced to
Rogue on the Sun at their university, and haven't
played an FPS in weeks because they're trying to
get the Amulet. None has won, and it's become a
contest to see who'll be the first one to do it.
Graphics get your attention, but they don't make
a terrific game all by themselves.
Adding together all my fiction, reference, and technical books I barely break the 200 count.
Go to flea markets, yard sales, and library sales
(where they get rid of old books that are worn or
no longer popular).
Our older two share a bedroom, and they have over
500 books just on their own shelves. I think the
oldest has probably read 90% of them. My wife
and I have at least 2000 on shelves around the
house.
And yes, we let them play computer games. The
oldest will play Zoombinis for a while, but then
get tired of it and dig out a book. Good fiction
includes complex characters and plots which just
don't exist in the games I've seen, and satisfies
a desire for interesting material in a way that
gaming doesn't.
But we do avoid TV. I think TV is worse than
computer games because they stop every 2 minutes
for a bunch of 15-second commercials in which
a dozen dancing bunnies sing about toilet paper.
It's the constant shifting that wrecks your
attention span -- playing a single game at your
own pace for a while doesn't have the same effect.
It would be hard to convince me that playing
chess against the computer for two hours is as
bad for your brain as watching two hours of
commercial TV.
Whenever they ask for one of these cards, I just look blankly and say "My wife has one, but I, uh...". The cashier pulls out a blank one from her apron, runs it past the machine, and I get the full club member discount. This has never failed.
The lego person cryogenically frozen inside a
mouse was on
Slashdot a couple years ago. I even suggested
that the thing to do would be put a Facehugger
alien on the side, climbing in through the glass.
I agree that it's unlikely any administration would go after them, given that (in modern times)
an honest politician is one who stays bought.
(Before anyone takes umbrage, read over this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/president/.)
But the current administration is beyond merely not
going after criminals: they reward failure and
incompetence. The original poster's remark
that they'd give Darl an award is exactly on
point.
But most depressingly, given how the last
election went, I think the population of the USA
would support giving Darl an award. In
sum, I think the majority of the population no
longer cares about results, and no longer cares
to hold accountable people who screw up. My
sense is that Darwinian principles are due to
kick in any time now.
Re:Unique to 12
on
Apollo 12 at 35
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Another notable is that they accidently ruined the only TV camera they had by pointing it too long at a reflection of the sun off of a peice of equipment. It used new compact color technology and was fragile. Thus, there were no live TV pictures.
The camera in question was designed and built by
my father. After the return to Earth, NASA sent it
back to Westinghouse for inspection and possible
repair.
In what is clearly among the best job perks of
all time, my Dad got moon dust on his hands when
he went to work on the camera.
Today, not a single line of production code
that I've written is running anywhere.
There was a Dilbert comic in the 2nd quarter of
1996, in which Phil, the Prince of Insufficient
Light, appears and says that he's darning Dilbert
to Heck.
His choices: (1) a job in which he does lots of
useful work but never gets credit for it, or
(2) a job in which he will be highly-paid, but
everything he does will be burned before his eyes
at the end of every day.
His reply: "Either one of those is better than
the job I've got now!"
The version of this story that Niklaus Wirth told
me (via e-mail) is that it happened when he was
presenting a paper in New York in 1965. He was
introduced by Aad van Wijngaarden as follows:
And now I introduce to you a man who is a
European and lives in America.
Back home he is known and called "by name", pronounced as "Weert", but here
he is called by value, pronounced as "Worth".
Wirth considered an excellent pun, but he
doesn't take credit for it.
Sorry for the delay; I was away for a few days.
[N]o purpose is served by misleading anyone or stating false "facts."
It was not my intent to state any facts or support
any candidate. My position is that voting on one
issue only is a bad idea. So whatever the job
situation, if you vote only based on how your job
is doing, with no regard to other issues of
national importance, you are not doing well.
The original poster suggested that the only
problem with anecdotal job data is that it's
anecdotal. Even if not anecdotal, I believe
that the tunnel-vision of voting only on one
issue does a disservice to everyone.
Personal anecdotes may suffice for a lot of people, but for it to be a reasoned argument, personal anecdotes alone don't cut it as it falls under the fallacy of insufficient sample.
So, would you accept the argument that everybody
who lost their
job since Bush's inauguration, or who has had to
take a worse job, should vote against Bush? And
everyone whose job is better should vote for him?
That would seem to take care of the "insufficient
sample" problem.
And it is, of course, Reagan's question (given to
him by David Gergen, IIRC), "Are you better off
now than you were four years ago?"
How about this, for Bush: Yaser Hamdi was
imprisoned for two
years, in solitary confinement, without access to
counsel, without ever being charged. Your
administration argued before the Supreme Court
that he was so dangerous he could rightly be
locked up forever, without ever facing trial or
having the opportunity to answer charges against
him. This week your
administration has determined that he is free to
go, and will never be charged with anything. Why,
if he was so dangerous he had to be detained
indefinitely, did you let him go? And why, if he
was so little danger that he will not even be
charged with anything, did you go all the way to
the Supreme Court to defend locking him up
forever?
Signs would have been 10 times better if they
had never answered the question "Were there really
any aliens?" That would have been hard to pull
off, because then the "Swing away" line wouldn't
have gone anywhere, but maybe that could have been
done.
The movie wasn't about the aliens. The signs of
the title had nothing to do with crop circles.
The movie is about "when something good happens,
do you see it as a sign, or do you see it as a
coincidence?"
Mel Gibson begins the movie believing in
coincidences, and finally decides that the things
which happened can't be a coincidence. It would
have been better if someone else had disagreed
with him, saying it proved nothing, but maybe the
idea was that the audience would be the skeptics.
The question How unlikely and important
does it have to be before you don't believe it
is a coincidence? is an interesting question,
and worth a movie. It's worth a better
movie, but it is worth a movie.
I give Signs points for that good idea,
recognising the flaws in execution.
I was wondering if the writer actually believes
that anybody should trust a security product
from Microsoft, or if Slate has an editorial rule
that people have to pretend Microsoft products are
secure and reliable, even though everybody knows
they aren't.
As someone sending e-mail, I'd believe the security
of Microsoft's "no copy or print" software about as
much as I'd believe Outlook has a perfect security
record.
One thing that turned me off about math is the insistence in honoring these long dead people.
In the academic world, plagiarism is second only
to faking results in the list of "worst kind of
misbehaviour". And not far behind is "making up
references".
Citing Euclid, or Gauss, can't do anything about
faking results, but it does at one stroke provide
a reference for your assertion, and ensure that you
do not, even by accident, imply that you did work
which was actually done by another.
Math isn't alone in citing those who did the
work first; I suspect if you ask 100
education majors about the Zone of Proximal
Development, 80 of them will come up with
Vygotsky (but only 40 of them will be able to
spell it 8-).
I understand from my attorney friends that giving
people a zillion documents is known as `papering
them over'. A prosecutor of my acquantance tells
me that well-designed subpoenas try to avoid the
situation where you end up with 23 pallet loads of
paper.
What that says to me is that SCO's lawyers have specifically asked to be papered over, so
as to have lots more billable hours for the time spent reading all the irrelevant paperwork.
It's possible, in fact, that they'll bill for 500 hours of reading these papers when they don't bother to read any of it at all; how would SCO prove that they didn't do it?
They cared about the fact that he lied under oath which is perjury, a felony. If you or I did the same thing in the paula jones trial we'd be in prison.
No we wouldn't; perjury in a civil trial is almost
never prosecuted at all.
You're right that the Republicans didn't care about Clinton having sex, though: they only care about getting in power and staying there. Any tool (no pun intended 8-) which helps them get power and stay there is what they want. The
Democrats are the same way, but they're comparatively incompetent.
I offer for comparison
James Allchin's perjury in the Microsoft Antitrust trial, which involved vastly more serious damage than Clinton was ever alleged to have done
Paula Jones, for far more money, against far more
many people. And yet when George W. Bush took
office, he had the justice department settle with
Microsoft even after the government had won a
conviction on the crime.
Clinton acts like a jerk, but commits no crime
(because acting like a jerk is actually legal), and then lies about acting like a jerk, and the
Republicans have an impeachment trial.
Microsoft destroys companies, hampers competition,
sets the computer industry (and US economy) back
by at least a decade, and then presents bogus
evidence at trial, and the Republicans decide it
shouldn't be prosecuted.
The reason is that Microsoft is rich and powerful
and Bill Gates can be talked into making huge
campaign contributions. Thus, Microsoft can help
the Republicans stay in power, so the Republicans
help Microsoft.
The Democrats do the same thing, just with a
different set of campaign contributors.
Here's one for your consideration: Ken Lay is a
friend of George Bush, and Enron was a contributor
to political campaigns both Democrat and Republican. Ken Lay stole tens of millions of
dollars and put thousands of people out of their
homes. Martha Stuart is accused of insider trading to the tune of about $40,000. Less than
half a percent of what Ken Lay stole, and nobody
has been presented as "This guy lost his house
because Martha Stuart insider traded". But
Martha Stuart isn't a big campaign contributor.
So they're aggressively prosecuting her. When is
Ken Lay is going to trial? Never.
So while you're correct that Republicans didn't
care about Clinton's sex life, you're an idiot if
you believe they cared one bit about Paula Jones.
And you're an idiot if you believe for one second
that any political party cares about you, or for
that matter, anyone else. They care about
themselves and staying in power, and that's all.
Suppose Sci Am rejected Mr. Mims because Mr. Mims were a Moslem? Or, a Buddhist? Or, a Communist? Or, a Nazi?
If a Muslim or Buddhist was going around making
suspect scientific claims which might reflect
badly on SciAm, then they would be within reason to break that association.
As a scientific publication, they broke an association over what-they-believe is bad science.
That's a reasonable thing to do.
If they had fired him merely for being a Christian, that would be unreasonable. But that
is not what happened. (Besides, it wouldn't make
much sense: Creationism is a minority view among
the world's Christians.)
Let's ask it another way: suppose they had fired
a flat-earth believer? Would you say that was
bigotry? If not, who gives you the right to
say for other people which scientific claims are ridiculous and which should be
tolerated, that flat-earthers can be fired but
creationists can't?
If you would claim that firing a
flat-earther is bigotry, then is there any
scientific claim that you believe would
justify breaking their association? Or do the
editors of a scientific publication have no
choice whatever but to accept any scientific
claim no matter how idiotic?
[T]here are apes that can communicate via sign language with trainers in a conversation similar to a child.
This widespread claim is not fully accepted by the scientific community. Cecil Adams notes at
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030328.html
that those who work with the animals are receptive to the idea, but linguists dismiss it as nonsense.
I've read some of these so-called "conversations",
and none of them even begins to approach the level
of a child at 30 months. At 30 months my kids were all capable of completely innovative sentence
structure and word formation ("allbody hug",
"everystuff", "may you pick me up please?").
Go read the discussion at
http://www.koko.org/world/talk_aol.html
and then visit a daycare center for an afternoon.
Tell me if you honestly believe that Koko "talks"
in anything even approaching the level of a child
at 2 1/2.
The claimed conversations that Koko engages in
remind me of nothing so much as "facilitated
communication", a delusion that spread through
the psychiatric community, sucking down millions
of dollars and wrecking people's lives with phony
claims of sexual abuse -- claims supposedly made
by autistic children whose random motions were
interpreted as communication.
Go visit
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/t ranscripts/1202.html
and see if that doesn't look suspiciously like the conversations that Koko is supposedly having.
[Mims] was dropped because he is a Creationist. "Scientific American" is just one of the many bigoted publications that refuses to deal reasonably with the subject of Creationism.
I'm a life-long Southern Baptist, and I wish to
observe that you help nobody when you try to paint
this as flat-out unconscionable bigotry.
Suppose Mr Mims was to publish a creationist book,
or speak at a creationist conference. He could,
in such a situation, cite his association with
SciAm to bolster the credibility of his arguments.
The editors of SciAm have an absolute right NOT to
have their reputation used to support an idea they
reject.
Whatever we may believe about God, those
who do not so believe have an absolute
right to ensure that there's no chance they are
seen as endorsing ideas they reject.
For further reading, Diebold might want to read some of Bruce Schnier's books , which are an interesting read on what can be done with cryptography, and what are its limitations. They might even consider hiring a competant expert, e.g. some of Schneier's peers.
Diebold doesn't care about that. They are in
business to make a profit. They have a product to
sell, and all they care about is convincing people
to buy their product.
Whether it works or not is beside the point.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
They're considering keeping it secret until release so that nobody steals their ideas. KDE, look out.
I suspect that anything Microsoft can do, KDE can
make it work right before Microsoft can make
theirs work right, no matter how much headstart
Microsoft has.
But what happens when you try to have an email discussion about stopping spam, and someone in the discussion says "Well, I filter out any message with the words viagra or penis..."?
Slashdot Mirror
But will they always want the newest ones? I know people who play Duke Nukem, because they'd never seen it before. The guy who had the disk was happy to trade for an older game HE had never seen before. Newer ones have some better graphics, but they are playing essentially the same game.
And I know a few people who were introduced to Rogue on the Sun at their university, and haven't played an FPS in weeks because they're trying to get the Amulet. None has won, and it's become a contest to see who'll be the first one to do it.
Graphics get your attention, but they don't make a terrific game all by themselves.
Go to flea markets, yard sales, and library sales (where they get rid of old books that are worn or no longer popular).
Our older two share a bedroom, and they have over 500 books just on their own shelves. I think the oldest has probably read 90% of them. My wife and I have at least 2000 on shelves around the house.
And yes, we let them play computer games. The oldest will play Zoombinis for a while, but then get tired of it and dig out a book. Good fiction includes complex characters and plots which just don't exist in the games I've seen, and satisfies a desire for interesting material in a way that gaming doesn't.
But we do avoid TV. I think TV is worse than computer games because they stop every 2 minutes for a bunch of 15-second commercials in which a dozen dancing bunnies sing about toilet paper. It's the constant shifting that wrecks your attention span -- playing a single game at your own pace for a while doesn't have the same effect.
It would be hard to convince me that playing chess against the computer for two hours is as bad for your brain as watching two hours of commercial TV.
I can't see any reason why a search engine's output should have a minimum width, but there it is in the CSS file (http://beta.search.msn.com/s/common.css:
Amusing, it's not just us mortals who have to fight with Microsoft's idiotic nonstandard browsers:
I wonder how many man-hours are wasted each year on rubbish like this.
Whenever they ask for one of these cards, I just
look blankly and say "My wife has one, but I,
uh...". The cashier pulls out a blank one from
her apron, runs it past the machine, and I get the
full club member discount. This has never failed.
I think Slashdot is getting retarded.
"Getting"?
The lego person cryogenically frozen inside a mouse was on Slashdot a couple years ago. I even suggested that the thing to do would be put a Facehugger alien on the side, climbing in through the glass.
I agree that it's unlikely any administration would go after them, given that (in modern times) an honest politician is one who stays bought. (Before anyone takes umbrage, read over this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/president/ .)
But the current administration is beyond merely not going after criminals: they reward failure and incompetence. The original poster's remark that they'd give Darl an award is exactly on point.
But most depressingly, given how the last election went, I think the population of the USA would support giving Darl an award. In sum, I think the majority of the population no longer cares about results, and no longer cares to hold accountable people who screw up. My sense is that Darwinian principles are due to kick in any time now.
The camera in question was designed and built by my father. After the return to Earth, NASA sent it back to Westinghouse for inspection and possible repair.
In what is clearly among the best job perks of all time, my Dad got moon dust on his hands when he went to work on the camera.
Today, not a single line of production code that I've written is running anywhere.
There was a Dilbert comic in the 2nd quarter of 1996, in which Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light, appears and says that he's darning Dilbert to Heck.
His choices: (1) a job in which he does lots of useful work but never gets credit for it, or (2) a job in which he will be highly-paid, but everything he does will be burned before his eyes at the end of every day.
His reply: "Either one of those is better than the job I've got now!"
The version of this story that Niklaus Wirth told me (via e-mail) is that it happened when he was presenting a paper in New York in 1965. He was introduced by Aad van Wijngaarden as follows:
Wirth considered an excellent pun, but he doesn't take credit for it.
It was not my intent to state any facts or support any candidate. My position is that voting on one issue only is a bad idea. So whatever the job situation, if you vote only based on how your job is doing, with no regard to other issues of national importance, you are not doing well.
The original poster suggested that the only problem with anecdotal job data is that it's anecdotal. Even if not anecdotal, I believe that the tunnel-vision of voting only on one issue does a disservice to everyone.
So, would you accept the argument that everybody who lost their job since Bush's inauguration, or who has had to take a worse job, should vote against Bush? And everyone whose job is better should vote for him?
That would seem to take care of the "insufficient sample" problem.
And it is, of course, Reagan's question (given to him by David Gergen, IIRC), "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
How about this, for Bush: Yaser Hamdi was imprisoned for two years, in solitary confinement, without access to counsel, without ever being charged. Your administration argued before the Supreme Court that he was so dangerous he could rightly be locked up forever, without ever facing trial or having the opportunity to answer charges against him. This week your administration has determined that he is free to go, and will never be charged with anything. Why, if he was so dangerous he had to be detained indefinitely, did you let him go? And why, if he was so little danger that he will not even be charged with anything, did you go all the way to the Supreme Court to defend locking him up forever?
Signs would have been 10 times better if they had never answered the question "Were there really any aliens?" That would have been hard to pull off, because then the "Swing away" line wouldn't have gone anywhere, but maybe that could have been done.
The movie wasn't about the aliens. The signs of the title had nothing to do with crop circles. The movie is about "when something good happens, do you see it as a sign, or do you see it as a coincidence?"
Mel Gibson begins the movie believing in coincidences, and finally decides that the things which happened can't be a coincidence. It would have been better if someone else had disagreed with him, saying it proved nothing, but maybe the idea was that the audience would be the skeptics.
The question How unlikely and important does it have to be before you don't believe it is a coincidence? is an interesting question, and worth a movie. It's worth a better movie, but it is worth a movie.
I give Signs points for that good idea, recognising the flaws in execution.
As someone sending e-mail, I'd believe the security of Microsoft's "no copy or print" software about as much as I'd believe Outlook has a perfect security record.
In the academic world, plagiarism is second only to faking results in the list of "worst kind of misbehaviour". And not far behind is "making up references".
Citing Euclid, or Gauss, can't do anything about faking results, but it does at one stroke provide a reference for your assertion, and ensure that you do not, even by accident, imply that you did work which was actually done by another.
Math isn't alone in citing those who did the work first; I suspect if you ask 100 education majors about the Zone of Proximal Development, 80 of them will come up with Vygotsky (but only 40 of them will be able to spell it 8-).
I understand from my attorney friends that giving people a zillion documents is known as `papering them over'. A prosecutor of my acquantance tells me that well-designed subpoenas try to avoid the situation where you end up with 23 pallet loads of paper.
What that says to me is that SCO's lawyers have specifically asked to be papered over, so as to have lots more billable hours for the time spent reading all the irrelevant paperwork.
It's possible, in fact, that they'll bill for 500 hours of reading these papers when they don't bother to read any of it at all; how would SCO prove that they didn't do it?
No we wouldn't; perjury in a civil trial is almost never prosecuted at all.
You're right that the Republicans didn't care about Clinton having sex, though: they only care about getting in power and staying there. Any tool (no pun intended 8-) which helps them get power and stay there is what they want. The Democrats are the same way, but they're comparatively incompetent.
I offer for comparison James Allchin's perjury in the Microsoft Antitrust trial, which involved vastly more serious damage than Clinton was ever alleged to have done Paula Jones, for far more money, against far more many people. And yet when George W. Bush took office, he had the justice department settle with Microsoft even after the government had won a conviction on the crime.
Clinton acts like a jerk, but commits no crime (because acting like a jerk is actually legal), and then lies about acting like a jerk, and the Republicans have an impeachment trial.
Microsoft destroys companies, hampers competition, sets the computer industry (and US economy) back by at least a decade, and then presents bogus evidence at trial, and the Republicans decide it shouldn't be prosecuted.
The reason is that Microsoft is rich and powerful and Bill Gates can be talked into making huge campaign contributions. Thus, Microsoft can help the Republicans stay in power, so the Republicans help Microsoft.
The Democrats do the same thing, just with a different set of campaign contributors.
Here's one for your consideration: Ken Lay is a friend of George Bush, and Enron was a contributor to political campaigns both Democrat and Republican. Ken Lay stole tens of millions of dollars and put thousands of people out of their homes. Martha Stuart is accused of insider trading to the tune of about $40,000. Less than half a percent of what Ken Lay stole, and nobody has been presented as "This guy lost his house because Martha Stuart insider traded". But Martha Stuart isn't a big campaign contributor. So they're aggressively prosecuting her. When is Ken Lay is going to trial? Never.
So while you're correct that Republicans didn't care about Clinton's sex life, you're an idiot if you believe they cared one bit about Paula Jones. And you're an idiot if you believe for one second that any political party cares about you, or for that matter, anyone else. They care about themselves and staying in power, and that's all.
If a Muslim or Buddhist was going around making suspect scientific claims which might reflect badly on SciAm, then they would be within reason to break that association.
As a scientific publication, they broke an association over what-they-believe is bad science. That's a reasonable thing to do.
If they had fired him merely for being a Christian, that would be unreasonable. But that is not what happened. (Besides, it wouldn't make much sense: Creationism is a minority view among the world's Christians.)
Let's ask it another way: suppose they had fired a flat-earth believer? Would you say that was bigotry? If not, who gives you the right to say for other people which scientific claims are ridiculous and which should be tolerated, that flat-earthers can be fired but creationists can't?
If you would claim that firing a flat-earther is bigotry, then is there any scientific claim that you believe would justify breaking their association? Or do the editors of a scientific publication have no choice whatever but to accept any scientific claim no matter how idiotic?
This widespread claim is not fully accepted by the scientific community. Cecil Adams notes at http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030328.html that those who work with the animals are receptive to the idea, but linguists dismiss it as nonsense.
I've read some of these so-called "conversations", and none of them even begins to approach the level of a child at 30 months. At 30 months my kids were all capable of completely innovative sentence structure and word formation ("allbody hug", "everystuff", "may you pick me up please?").
Go read the discussion at http://www.koko.org/world/talk_aol.html and then visit a daycare center for an afternoon. Tell me if you honestly believe that Koko "talks" in anything even approaching the level of a child at 2 1/2.
The claimed conversations that Koko engages in remind me of nothing so much as "facilitated communication", a delusion that spread through the psychiatric community, sucking down millions of dollars and wrecking people's lives with phony claims of sexual abuse -- claims supposedly made by autistic children whose random motions were interpreted as communication. Go visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/t ranscripts/1202.html
and see if that doesn't look suspiciously like the conversations that Koko is supposedly having.
I'm a life-long Southern Baptist, and I wish to observe that you help nobody when you try to paint this as flat-out unconscionable bigotry.
Suppose Mr Mims was to publish a creationist book, or speak at a creationist conference. He could, in such a situation, cite his association with SciAm to bolster the credibility of his arguments. The editors of SciAm have an absolute right NOT to have their reputation used to support an idea they reject.
Whatever we may believe about God, those who do not so believe have an absolute right to ensure that there's no chance they are seen as endorsing ideas they reject.
Diebold doesn't care about that. They are in business to make a profit. They have a product to sell, and all they care about is convincing people to buy their product.
Whether it works or not is beside the point.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
I suspect that anything Microsoft can do, KDE can make it work right before Microsoft can make theirs work right, no matter how much headstart Microsoft has.
Don't you mean "Barryed"?
But what happens when you try to have an email
discussion about stopping spam, and someone in
the discussion says "Well, I filter out any
message with the words viagra or penis..."?
Does that get flagged as spam and discarded too?