Basically what he's saying is that any computer - with an accessory keyboard, mouse, and monitor - is a drop-in replacement for any other computer.
In a way, he's right. Most computers are powerful enough to run an application, so if you're interested in running an application, just about any computer will do.
>They basically get kids at 14, 15 yrs old, and train them all day every day until they burnout at age 18/19. At that point they are an expert at the game but knowing nothing else and having a poor education.
Sounds like they are giving them engineering degrees.
>for the vast majority of progamers it's a pretty dismal existence with no future.
>Oddly enough, non-geeks seem to love video conferencing.
You can do without the condescention. I'm actually wondering why I've never seen videoconferencing outside of a Microsoft commercial. I can stream movies faster than real time, what's to stop me from streaming live video? Except that it's never been done.
>For instance, streaming video might work better, with less stuttering and higher resolution. Videoconferencing is difficult on 3G and might work better on 4G.
People videoconference on their cellphones?
People videoconference?!
>Multiplayer video games may benefit too.
People play multiplayer games on their cellphones?!
Is this guy not a tech writer or am I just hopelessly lost? The most exciting thing I've heard done on a Smartphone is Skype.
>Some of the questions, however, seem to require me to choose between "empathy" and rationality:
Here's the good news: You're not required to care.
Psych questions are just fishing bait. Some questions produce results, others don't. It's up to the test-makers to examine the data and decide which questions were useful. You think the question is bad, but hey guess what, we also asked 1000 other people. Maybe you're right. It's aggregate opinions that matter.
This test-maker did something awful, which was to add all the results together - assuming, a priori - that all questions were equally valid, equally scored and equally relevant. This means they really don't care what you think, because they're going to tally the scores regardless of whether you and 1000 other people think the questions were dumb.
You know how you can tell if a question is dumb? Either everyone scores a 5 (the "answer" was obvious) or the results are random (no trend-group figured out the "answer"). In order to do that, you have to look at the results.
>And all the questions are the same.. they could have essentially made the whole thing two questions: 1) are you empathetic 2) are you _NOT_ empathetic
It's very typical Sociology 101 assignment. If you click through to the results, all they did was add up the questions and then compare you to the average. Umm...
This would fail Sociology 101. First of all, the questions are supposed to be cross-referenced to the population groups (age, gender, and ethnicity). You might as well not answer those first three because they didn't use them.
Second, the questions have no absolute value and are certainly not equal in weight. What you're supposed to do is regard each question as a raw data pool and look for trends. If the trends are random or statistically boring, then the question is tossed out.
For example, I'm sure there are certain questions where everybody scores 5. "Do you like good things? Y/N." Conclusion, those questions sucked. When you have a good dispersion, you have a good question and that's where you draw results from.
Here's how you do it: "Mia Farrow is pretty 1-5" cross-indexed by age. If everyone scores 1 it means Mia Farrow is ugly. But if the score increases with age, it means Mia Farrow was pretty in her youth.
I think you're conflating copyrights with patents and DMCA reverse-engineering provisions. There's no question that software should be copyrighted because software is text.
That's because punctuation and paragraphs are designed to improve readability. For example, there is no, fixed rule, for how to use, commas. It's an art to make the written word sound like it's spoken.
A lot of these hand-wringing comments assume that English is written-only, when the reality is that we speak a lot more than we write. The written form probably did peak around 1900. So did classical music for that matter.
Yes, that's basically how quantum mechanics works. You have three states: red, blue, and I-dont-know-yet.
But you can't measure I-dont-know-yet. When you do, you get red or blue.
So how do they know if particles are entangled? It seems they can be created that way.
For example, if you smash a rock with a hammer, you will get two pieces that add up to the whole. You don't have to measure to know they are "entangled."
But as soon as you measure one piece, you can infer the size and shape of the other.
Well you should edit Wikipedia, because their article on Pair Production says:
When this happens in the region around a black hole, one particle may escape, with its antiparticle being captured by the hole.
That's exactly what I remember from the book.
It turns out pair production requires photons, and annihilation produces photons. So while matter can be positive or negative (particle or antiparticle), energy (photons) has only one sign. There is no anti-photon. That's interesting.
My point is that subtracting zero seems like an unlikely method for reducing the mass of something. You can construct a scenario where it happens, but the opposite should happen equally often.
Anyway, this is not even the current theory anymore.
Thanks, but you didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
Yes, the photon took 13b years, and yes it was instantaneous. But the point is this: The distance between us and that quasar is now greater than 13b light-years meaning that the expansion of space happened greater than c.
C limits moving objects, not space itself. The universe is 13.7b years old; do you think it is not 27.4 billion light-years across?
>So, yes, you could have a midi file playing violin robot today
And yet judging from the fact that it took them 3 years to go from one song to the next, they don't. I have a feeling the innards (code) are highly specialized to each song. When they can generalize it to the point of dropping in a midi file - even with a few days of customization - then you can call it an engineered system. 3 years per song is too much like Disneyworld, an art project basically.
Needlessly worry? Dude...1939 called. They want you to come back and shill for the Reich.
>Your phone isn transmitting GPS coordinates to all and sundry all the time.
Actually it is. You can either set it to broadcast to everyone, or you can set it to broadcast to E911. Either way, it IS broadcasting all the time. At least if you want to make calls.
Can you imagine a scenario where E911 would help? Has it ever helped anyone? The very fact that you're calling 911 means you can tell them where you are. Google "E911 saves life" and let me know how many pages of results you click through before you give up.
>It's actually easy to opt out of cellphone GPS and triangulation
By lugging around a laptop? Thanks, I'll keep it in mind.
Good point. Problem is, I already know this, and pretty much everyone is doing it, so I end up reading practically nothing.
I read 2 websites - Slashdot and Huffington Post. On most days, you can read them in 5 minutes each. But at least they are topical.
Let's see what Slate posted on Friday:
* Some guy in Virginia hates jews * A dumb faggot lost his job * A new tv show is about girls in high school * Our supreme court nominee is cool * The oil slick could get worse * Google is crazy awesome!! HOT GRITS. * Obama is online * Sex-scandal quiz * MacGruber sucks * Also MacGruber * Wow, Sarah Palin said something stupid! Let's laugh at her! * You are not allowed to sue your cellphone company * Nobody panicked after War of the Worlds * Wall Street * Democrats * A tv show that nobody watches.
When you look at it that way, Slate (just a random example) seems an awful lot like USA Today, doesn't it?
Indeed. I just read an article on HuffPo about how Zuckerberg stole the code for Facebook in college and then went full-speed into media whoring himself and his company. Turns out stealing users privacy was their gameplan from the beginning. And then an industry insider like O'Reilly is going to say, "Give this guy a fair chance?"
What?!
I guess when you're the CEO of Bosch, Hitler seems like a guy you should stick up for.
Indeed, I never figured out why the Concorde was banned in America. Unless it was purely for economic protectionism. Mythbusters tested sonic booms and they had to fly like 100 feet over a shed to blow out the windows. They started at 1000 feet and got no result. I think the Concorde flew a little higher than that.
On a related note, I'd like to know what China does that is "communist." After all, when I buy a t-shirt made in China, it often says "Nike" on it. Does the t-shirt factory in China have a government quota for how many Nike shirts they produce, and who they can sell them to? When Adidas calls and asks for a t-shirt order, do they have to check with the government first?
Does the Chinese government write checks for all its citizens, promising to take care of them in old age? If I sneak into China on the back of a Mongolian horse-archer, will the government issue me a social security card, a driver's license and the right to vote?
China has a $1T budget and a $5T GDP, for an effective tax rate of 20%. I bet the "socialist" countries in northern Europe that tax at 80% are probably a lot more "communist" than China.
Slashdot Mirror
>but from what I see, the USA was lucky to have good leaders at that point).
It's not that uncommon to have good leaders. There's probably been many enlightened revolutions with good leaders at the helm.
What was uncommon in our case is that they were the best in the world.
Open-source productivity apps did not exist back in the day. They may exist now.
>Really, have you thought about this at all.
Basically what he's saying is that any computer - with an accessory keyboard, mouse, and monitor - is a drop-in replacement for any other computer.
In a way, he's right. Most computers are powerful enough to run an application, so if you're interested in running an application, just about any computer will do.
>They basically get kids at 14, 15 yrs old, and train them all day every day until they burnout at age 18/19. At that point they are an expert at the game but knowing nothing else and having a poor education.
Sounds like they are giving them engineering degrees.
>for the vast majority of progamers it's a pretty dismal existence with no future.
Like I said...engineering.
>Smart people can make very dumb choices in life
No they can't actually, that's the opposite of what "smart" means.
>Oddly enough, non-geeks seem to love video conferencing.
You can do without the condescention. I'm actually wondering why I've never seen videoconferencing outside of a Microsoft commercial. I can stream movies faster than real time, what's to stop me from streaming live video? Except that it's never been done.
Oh wait, you say that it has.
TFA:
>For instance, streaming video might work better, with less stuttering and higher resolution. Videoconferencing is difficult on 3G and might work better on 4G.
People videoconference on their cellphones?
People videoconference?!
>Multiplayer video games may benefit too.
People play multiplayer games on their cellphones?!
Is this guy not a tech writer or am I just hopelessly lost? The most exciting thing I've heard done on a Smartphone is Skype.
>Some of the questions, however, seem to require me to choose between "empathy" and rationality:
Here's the good news: You're not required to care.
Psych questions are just fishing bait. Some questions produce results, others don't. It's up to the test-makers to examine the data and decide which questions were useful. You think the question is bad, but hey guess what, we also asked 1000 other people. Maybe you're right. It's aggregate opinions that matter.
This test-maker did something awful, which was to add all the results together - assuming, a priori - that all questions were equally valid, equally scored and equally relevant. This means they really don't care what you think, because they're going to tally the scores regardless of whether you and 1000 other people think the questions were dumb.
You know how you can tell if a question is dumb? Either everyone scores a 5 (the "answer" was obvious) or the results are random (no trend-group figured out the "answer"). In order to do that, you have to look at the results.
>That's taken into account in the rating, though.
Really? How do my results compare to other black males over 50 years of age?
>And all the questions are the same.. they could have essentially made the whole thing two questions: 1) are you empathetic 2) are you _NOT_ empathetic
It's very typical Sociology 101 assignment. If you click through to the results, all they did was add up the questions and then compare you to the average. Umm...
This would fail Sociology 101. First of all, the questions are supposed to be cross-referenced to the population groups (age, gender, and ethnicity). You might as well not answer those first three because they didn't use them.
Second, the questions have no absolute value and are certainly not equal in weight. What you're supposed to do is regard each question as a raw data pool and look for trends. If the trends are random or statistically boring, then the question is tossed out.
For example, I'm sure there are certain questions where everybody scores 5. "Do you like good things? Y/N." Conclusion, those questions sucked. When you have a good dispersion, you have a good question and that's where you draw results from.
Here's how you do it: "Mia Farrow is pretty 1-5" cross-indexed by age. If everyone scores 1 it means Mia Farrow is ugly. But if the score increases with age, it means Mia Farrow was pretty in her youth.
Dance music is like fashion in that it doesn't go backwards.
I think you're conflating copyrights with patents and DMCA reverse-engineering provisions. There's no question that software should be copyrighted because software is text.
It is a fault of the form. Poetry is lyrics without the music. Just like comic books are movies without actual movement.
That's because punctuation and paragraphs are designed to improve readability. For example, there is no, fixed rule, for how to use, commas. It's an art to make the written word sound like it's spoken.
A lot of these hand-wringing comments assume that English is written-only, when the reality is that we speak a lot more than we write. The written form probably did peak around 1900. So did classical music for that matter.
Yes, that's basically how quantum mechanics works. You have three states: red, blue, and I-dont-know-yet.
But you can't measure I-dont-know-yet. When you do, you get red or blue.
So how do they know if particles are entangled? It seems they can be created that way.
For example, if you smash a rock with a hammer, you will get two pieces that add up to the whole. You don't have to measure to know they are "entangled."
But as soon as you measure one piece, you can infer the size and shape of the other.
Well you should edit Wikipedia, because their article on Pair Production says:
When this happens in the region around a black hole, one particle may escape, with its antiparticle being captured by the hole.
That's exactly what I remember from the book.
It turns out pair production requires photons, and annihilation produces photons. So while matter can be positive or negative (particle or antiparticle), energy (photons) has only one sign. There is no anti-photon. That's interesting.
My point is that subtracting zero seems like an unlikely method for reducing the mass of something. You can construct a scenario where it happens, but the opposite should happen equally often.
Anyway, this is not even the current theory anymore.
Thanks, but you didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
Yes, the photon took 13b years, and yes it was instantaneous. But the point is this: The distance between us and that quasar is now greater than 13b light-years meaning that the expansion of space happened greater than c.
C limits moving objects, not space itself. The universe is 13.7b years old; do you think it is not 27.4 billion light-years across?
Maybe it should have been looking where it was going.
>So, yes, you could have a midi file playing violin robot today
And yet judging from the fact that it took them 3 years to go from one song to the next, they don't. I have a feeling the innards (code) are highly specialized to each song. When they can generalize it to the point of dropping in a midi file - even with a few days of customization - then you can call it an engineered system. 3 years per song is too much like Disneyworld, an art project basically.
Needlessly worry? Dude...1939 called. They want you to come back and shill for the Reich.
>Your phone isn transmitting GPS coordinates to all and sundry all the time.
Actually it is. You can either set it to broadcast to everyone, or you can set it to broadcast to E911. Either way, it IS broadcasting all the time. At least if you want to make calls.
Can you imagine a scenario where E911 would help? Has it ever helped anyone? The very fact that you're calling 911 means you can tell them where you are. Google "E911 saves life" and let me know how many pages of results you click through before you give up.
>It's actually easy to opt out of cellphone GPS and triangulation
By lugging around a laptop? Thanks, I'll keep it in mind.
Good point. Problem is, I already know this, and pretty much everyone is doing it, so I end up reading practically nothing.
I read 2 websites - Slashdot and Huffington Post. On most days, you can read them in 5 minutes each. But at least they are topical.
Let's see what Slate posted on Friday:
* Some guy in Virginia hates jews
* A dumb faggot lost his job
* A new tv show is about girls in high school
* Our supreme court nominee is cool
* The oil slick could get worse
* Google is crazy awesome!! HOT GRITS.
* Obama is online
* Sex-scandal quiz
* MacGruber sucks
* Also MacGruber
* Wow, Sarah Palin said something stupid! Let's laugh at her!
* You are not allowed to sue your cellphone company
* Nobody panicked after War of the Worlds
* Wall Street
* Democrats
* A tv show that nobody watches.
When you look at it that way, Slate (just a random example) seems an awful lot like USA Today, doesn't it?
I think I'm going to get into books.
>Rapidly losing respect for this man.
Indeed. I just read an article on HuffPo about how Zuckerberg stole the code for Facebook in college and then went full-speed into media whoring himself and his company. Turns out stealing users privacy was their gameplan from the beginning. And then an industry insider like O'Reilly is going to say, "Give this guy a fair chance?"
What?!
I guess when you're the CEO of Bosch, Hitler seems like a guy you should stick up for.
Ronald Reagan was a hoax. Does that explain it for you?
Indeed, I never figured out why the Concorde was banned in America. Unless it was purely for economic protectionism. Mythbusters tested sonic booms and they had to fly like 100 feet over a shed to blow out the windows. They started at 1000 feet and got no result. I think the Concorde flew a little higher than that.
On a related note, I'd like to know what China does that is "communist." After all, when I buy a t-shirt made in China, it often says "Nike" on it. Does the t-shirt factory in China have a government quota for how many Nike shirts they produce, and who they can sell them to? When Adidas calls and asks for a t-shirt order, do they have to check with the government first?
Does the Chinese government write checks for all its citizens, promising to take care of them in old age? If I sneak into China on the back of a Mongolian horse-archer, will the government issue me a social security card, a driver's license and the right to vote?
China has a $1T budget and a $5T GDP, for an effective tax rate of 20%. I bet the "socialist" countries in northern Europe that tax at 80% are probably a lot more "communist" than China.