The picture references "a replica of Cinderella's Castle". Funny that, as Cinderella's Castle is a similarly loose replica of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.
Disney has some gall complaining of knock-offs, when most (all?) of their biggest hits are knock-offs.
Recall what happened to a major spammer sometime last year? Seems a lot of people thought it happened because of his spamming, and they were very happy about the results.
It's more like we're making multi-story buildings, and flooring is so complex & costly that we only put flooring where we expect people to walk - then someone has the blindness, gall and/or malice to wander somewhere nobody was meant to go and obviously shouldn't, and ends up where they shouldn't.
Utopian totally-secure software is extremely costly to create. The imperative is to create software that does what it's supposed to (which is hard & expensive enough already); making it work perfectly under all unintended conditions (errors, mistakes, and/or malice) is far more expensive.
It's hard enough to build software that works, without out-thinking those who deliberately & maliciously exploit weaknesses.
This isn't just about DRM, it's about dictating every part of your media playback system: no participation in creating content (home, low-budget & independent movies/music, etc.) nor in creating playback systems (no MythTV, homebrew playback hardware/software, etc.). It's about marginalizing everyone who does not fork over licensing cash - LOTS of it - to those holding the core IP rights. Don't pay? can't play.
From AACS to HDMI via DCMA, they want to own every bit - figurative and literal - of the entertainment center in every living room.
I'm thinking the whole idea of a 6th sense goes along with the idea of quantum mechanics, specifically quantum entanglement.
That's not 6th sense. That's 6th nonsense.
The "don't look at them" thing is a matter of subtle patterns of sounds, smells, lighting, etc. indicative of someone staring - not "quantum entanglement". You've learned to screen out the perceptions you have of people around you who are not going to interact with you; those who stop nearby for unusual periods, move toward you, emit fight/flight-related pheremones (start excreting stinky sweat), disrupt ambient lighting certain ways, etc. all in manners which match patterns of behavior you subconciously act on but consciously ignore, all add up to lower cognitive functions telling higher reasoning "I don't have time to explain this, but... there's someone behind you, he's staring at you, and he's really mad - act accordingly".
No need to explain mundane behavior by linking it to exotic fancy-sounding notions. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's wildly complicated.
The "sixth sense" is your brain absorbing and processing and reacting to inputs which have not been trained enough to result in articulable commentary.
Higher cognitive processes screen out LOTS of material to prevent overloading - that doesn't mean lower cognitive processes aren't getting that material and doing something useful with them. There's a tremendous amount of auditory/visual/etc. stimulus which _does_ have meaning, but which is not rationally considered. You subconciously perceive them, and part of your brain reacts thereto - regardless of whether higher cognitive processes can articulate it better than labelling it a vague "sixth sense".
Even the notable "don't look at your prey, their sixth sense will tip 'em off" thing is likely explained by subtle differences in how you walk, making different sounds, which the prey's baser instincts can differentiate as harmless vs. threatening. Someone walking to you vs. by you will act differently - behavior which in turn can be affected by whether they are looking at you vs. somewhere else.
Go read "The Science and Art of Tracking" by Tom Brown for more insights on this.
It's amazing how little of their environment people pay attention to.
Victory over the existing regime is one thing, achieved a couple years ago.
Filling the resulting power vacuum is something else, still underway.
To use an analogy relevant to/.ers: Just because a product has successfully shipped doesn't mean development work is done. Bug fixes, enhancements, documentation, etc. all follow for a prolonged period.
Likewise, successfully removing a tyrranical dictator from power doesn't mean troops can just go home... there's a long painful period of keeping the would-be dictators, warlords and petty tyrants from making a further mess of thing while the victors proceed to set up a new, effective, and generally moral/decent government to fill the power vacuum.
Pulling out of Iraq now would result in the country collapsing into civil war and prolonged violence; better (for both the citizens and the occupying soldiers) to stay and finish the job right, THEN pull out when a decent self-supporting gov't is in place.
Articulation of perception is just the last step in a long complex mental process.
Just because you can't explain something in a rational symbolic cognitive socially-accepted linguistic framework doesn't mean you haven't perceived it.
Tools that help enhance and articulate these perceptions would be very useful - especially in war.
Most tax prep software companies provide a FREE method. It's not well-advertised (obviously), and doesn't come with any bells or whistles, and may not cover some of the more obscure tax issues (may even be limited to 1040EZ), but is free and functional. Online filing can be free too.
'course, most people just pay for the first thing they can find.
The difference is for those people--ie, most of us--who have fixed schedules like 8-5
Then deal with YOUR schedlue - don't screw up mine. If it takes a literal act of Congress to mess up my schedule this way, then why don't you get an act of Congress that fixes YOUR problem WITHOUT messing up MINE?
Fine. You like more light. GET UP EARLIER. And leave my clock alone.
I _really_ dislike getting up before dawn. I mean deep viceral psychological bio-cycle "why am I getting up at night" kind of dislike. Just when dawn was arriving at a decent time, you "I want more light so I'll force everyone else to change their schedules" people make me get up at 5:00AM EST instead of 6AM (and now you're talking about pushing it back to 4:00AM?!?).
The clock reflects astronomical realities of earth/sun positioning. Noon is supposed to mean the sun is overhead, mid-day. Cocky people then decide they don't like that arrangement, and declare what _is_ shall be different from what they _want_ reality to be. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, and calling dung a "rose" doesn't make it smell any better. Calling 5:00AM "6:00AM Daylight Saving Time" doesn't change the fact that it's really 5:00AM, and the combination of light and circadian rhythms means it's still time to sleep.
It's almost enough to make me move to Arizona where they ignore this nonsense.
Seriously, man - it really messes up my internal clock. Midnight to six is my time to _sleep_; mess with that, and you're messing with my ability to function.
You want more light? YOU get up earlier. Leave my clock alone; I'll be a lot more productive that way.
A vaccine is hard to make. A vaccine is expensive to make.
If there's no profit, there's no incentive. If there's no funding, there's no resources.
Tragic, but you don't want to do the work - no matter how helpful - if it doesn't put food on your table and a movie on your TV. Sure you can volunteer a bit, but only if it doesn't harm your personal bottom line.
What are YOU doing to prepare the Avian Flu vaccine? Thought so. In the long-shot chance you _are_ working on an Avian Flu vaccine, are you doing it for free? Thought so.
Yes, it makes sense for drug companies to charge a fortune for the Avian Flu vaccine - it will cost them a fortune to create it. Yes, it makes sense for Indonesia to make arrangements to assure they get the vaccine (either thru barter or billing). Yes, it sounds perverse to sell the disease to buy the cure. Welcome to the real world. You don't cure a pandemic for free.
My wife dearly wants to play video games. Unfortunately, they all seem to expect the player already has hundreds of hours of experience. Run-jump-twist-shoot-land type movements expected at the start of games are certainly a wall to someone who can barely make the character go thru an open door.
There's a small but potent market of games for adults who have practically no video game skills, but want a grown-up gaming experience.
The PlayStation2 seems prone to corrupted save data.
When I've spent hours working my way thru Harry Potter, DDR *, or other games only to be forced to start over thanks to a corrupted save, there's just no desire to start over only to do hours of what was already achieved, and hesitation to start anything else thanks to perceived inevitability of the same stupid waste.
The player works hard to get to a saved point. That data better be there when he comes back.
I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun. I don't mind hammering on the same terminal challenge for prolonged periods, but when the majority of the gaming session is sitting there doing nothing while waiting for the load meter to progress (or, worse, watching the same uninterruptable cinematics eat up time doing nothing useful (at least load times are loading something)), well, I'll go do something else like wash dishes.
Rather ironic that the supposedly unrelated "fortune" displayed with this story (lower right corner of page) is "Fremen add life to spice!"
(OBexplaination: "Fremen" & "spice" being a reference to the book "Dune" (which you HAVE read, right? no?) which makes a big deal of harvesting moisture.)
Better to stop one tyrant than to ignore them all.
And when choosing which tyrant to stop, best to stop the one most relevant to other interests (yes, self-interest DOES play a role; and yes, oil does matter - or did you bike to work & grow your own food for today?).
Saddam, in one single day, killed some 50,000 people just to test out his nifty new WMD (poison gas). While more & faster than usual, it was not out of character for him to order the deaths of large numbers of people. In his last election, he got 100% of the vote - not because the people liked him, but because the alternative amounted to "please torture me and kill my family."
The option was/is not "N dead or 0 dead." The option was/is "N dead or 100*N dead." Which would you rather see? if the US did nothing, would you criticize the non-involvement?
Question amounts to: "If something that sucks, could be made to not suck, except for where it would continue to suck, would it still suck?"
Charles Babbage noted: "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
Thing is, that other 15% tends to cover the Really Big Issues. On most of the major hot-button litmus-test-type issues, McCain votes left.
When I indicated he tends to the left, I did not use or indicate the modifier "far". He's certainly right of Hillary... but is still enough to the left that should the two compete for President, a lot of right-wing voters won't even bother. Wouldn't call him "far left", but certainly heading that way.
Speaking from the right: We don't want him either.
McCain, Lieberman, Guliani (sp?), etc. actually have a unique opportunity: they are far enough from the core of their respective parties that they could easily and successfully create a 3rd party of "radical centrists".
Ironic. You're peeved off because he's moving way "right". Thing is, much of the "right" is just as peeved at him as you are precisely because he is so far "left" he may as well put a (D) after his name.
Slashdot Mirror
The picture references "a replica of Cinderella's Castle".
Funny that, as Cinderella's Castle is a similarly loose replica of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.
Disney has some gall complaining of knock-offs, when most (all?) of their biggest hits are knock-offs.
Recall what happened to a major spammer sometime last year?
Seems a lot of people thought it happened because of his spamming, and they were very happy about the results.
It's not like we're digging holes deliberately.
It's more like we're making multi-story buildings, and flooring is so complex & costly that we only put flooring where we expect people to walk - then someone has the blindness, gall and/or malice to wander somewhere nobody was meant to go and obviously shouldn't, and ends up where they shouldn't.
Utopian totally-secure software is extremely costly to create.
The imperative is to create software that does what it's supposed to (which is hard & expensive enough already); making it work perfectly under all unintended conditions (errors, mistakes, and/or malice) is far more expensive.
It's hard enough to build software that works, without out-thinking those who deliberately & maliciously exploit weaknesses.
It's about control, and who controls whom.
This isn't just about DRM, it's about dictating every part of your media playback system: no participation in creating content (home, low-budget & independent movies/music, etc.) nor in creating playback systems (no MythTV, homebrew playback hardware/software, etc.). It's about marginalizing everyone who does not fork over licensing cash - LOTS of it - to those holding the core IP rights. Don't pay? can't play.
From AACS to HDMI via DCMA, they want to own every bit - figurative and literal - of the entertainment center in every living room.
I'm thinking the whole idea of a 6th sense goes along with the idea of quantum mechanics, specifically quantum entanglement.
... there's someone behind you, he's staring at you, and he's really mad - act accordingly".
That's not 6th sense.
That's 6th nonsense.
The "don't look at them" thing is a matter of subtle patterns of sounds, smells, lighting, etc. indicative of someone staring - not "quantum entanglement". You've learned to screen out the perceptions you have of people around you who are not going to interact with you; those who stop nearby for unusual periods, move toward you, emit fight/flight-related pheremones (start excreting stinky sweat), disrupt ambient lighting certain ways, etc. all in manners which match patterns of behavior you subconciously act on but consciously ignore, all add up to lower cognitive functions telling higher reasoning "I don't have time to explain this, but
No need to explain mundane behavior by linking it to exotic fancy-sounding notions. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's wildly complicated.
The "sixth sense" is your brain absorbing and processing and reacting to inputs which have not been trained enough to result in articulable commentary.
Higher cognitive processes screen out LOTS of material to prevent overloading - that doesn't mean lower cognitive processes aren't getting that material and doing something useful with them. There's a tremendous amount of auditory/visual/etc. stimulus which _does_ have meaning, but which is not rationally considered. You subconciously perceive them, and part of your brain reacts thereto - regardless of whether higher cognitive processes can articulate it better than labelling it a vague "sixth sense".
Even the notable "don't look at your prey, their sixth sense will tip 'em off" thing is likely explained by subtle differences in how you walk, making different sounds, which the prey's baser instincts can differentiate as harmless vs. threatening. Someone walking to you vs. by you will act differently - behavior which in turn can be affected by whether they are looking at you vs. somewhere else.
Go read "The Science and Art of Tracking" by Tom Brown for more insights on this.
It's amazing how little of their environment people pay attention to.
Victory over the existing regime is one thing, achieved a couple years ago.
/.ers:
... there's a long painful period of keeping the would-be dictators, warlords and petty tyrants from making a further mess of thing while the victors proceed to set up a new, effective, and generally moral/decent government to fill the power vacuum.
Filling the resulting power vacuum is something else, still underway.
To use an analogy relevant to
Just because a product has successfully shipped doesn't mean development work is done. Bug fixes, enhancements, documentation, etc. all follow for a prolonged period.
Likewise, successfully removing a tyrranical dictator from power doesn't mean troops can just go home
Pulling out of Iraq now would result in the country collapsing into civil war and prolonged violence; better (for both the citizens and the occupying soldiers) to stay and finish the job right, THEN pull out when a decent self-supporting gov't is in place.
Articulation of perception is just the last step in a long complex mental process.
Just because you can't explain something in a rational symbolic cognitive socially-accepted linguistic framework doesn't mean you haven't perceived it.
Tools that help enhance and articulate these perceptions would be very useful - especially in war.
On a related note: may I suggest The Science and Art of Tracking.
I expected a listing of the biggest individual cases, not broad categories that pretty much cover everything on or off the 'net.
Much sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Most tax prep software companies provide a FREE method. It's not well-advertised (obviously), and doesn't come with any bells or whistles, and may not cover some of the more obscure tax issues (may even be limited to 1040EZ), but is free and functional. Online filing can be free too.
'course, most people just pay for the first thing they can find.
The difference is for those people--ie, most of us--who have fixed schedules like 8-5
Then deal with YOUR schedlue - don't screw up mine. If it takes a literal act of Congress to mess up my schedule this way, then why don't you get an act of Congress that fixes YOUR problem WITHOUT messing up MINE?
Fine. You like more light. GET UP EARLIER. And leave my clock alone.
I _really_ dislike getting up before dawn. I mean deep viceral psychological bio-cycle "why am I getting up at night" kind of dislike. Just when dawn was arriving at a decent time, you "I want more light so I'll force everyone else to change their schedules" people make me get up at 5:00AM EST instead of 6AM (and now you're talking about pushing it back to 4:00AM?!?).
The clock reflects astronomical realities of earth/sun positioning. Noon is supposed to mean the sun is overhead, mid-day. Cocky people then decide they don't like that arrangement, and declare what _is_ shall be different from what they _want_ reality to be. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, and calling dung a "rose" doesn't make it smell any better. Calling 5:00AM "6:00AM Daylight Saving Time" doesn't change the fact that it's really 5:00AM, and the combination of light and circadian rhythms means it's still time to sleep.
It's almost enough to make me move to Arizona where they ignore this nonsense.
Seriously, man - it really messes up my internal clock. Midnight to six is my time to _sleep_; mess with that, and you're messing with my ability to function.
You want more light? YOU get up earlier. Leave my clock alone; I'll be a lot more productive that way.
Someone have a link to an audio file of this sound? (Sped up to a human-audible rate, of course.)
A vaccine is hard to make.
A vaccine is expensive to make.
If there's no profit, there's no incentive.
If there's no funding, there's no resources.
Tragic, but you don't want to do the work - no matter how helpful - if it doesn't put food on your table and a movie on your TV.
Sure you can volunteer a bit, but only if it doesn't harm your personal bottom line.
What are YOU doing to prepare the Avian Flu vaccine? Thought so.
In the long-shot chance you _are_ working on an Avian Flu vaccine, are you doing it for free? Thought so.
Yes, it makes sense for drug companies to charge a fortune for the Avian Flu vaccine - it will cost them a fortune to create it.
Yes, it makes sense for Indonesia to make arrangements to assure they get the vaccine (either thru barter or billing).
Yes, it sounds perverse to sell the disease to buy the cure.
Welcome to the real world.
You don't cure a pandemic for free.
You got a better idea?
My wife dearly wants to play video games. Unfortunately, they all seem to expect the player already has hundreds of hours of experience. Run-jump-twist-shoot-land type movements expected at the start of games are certainly a wall to someone who can barely make the character go thru an open door.
There's a small but potent market of games for adults who have practically no video game skills, but want a grown-up gaming experience.
Will do. Thanks. You may have just save the hours I've already put into it, and was reluctant to follow up.
(...would have been nice if that was the default...)
The PlayStation2 seems prone to corrupted save data.
When I've spent hours working my way thru Harry Potter, DDR *, or other games only to be forced to start over thanks to a corrupted save, there's just no desire to start over only to do hours of what was already achieved, and hesitation to start anything else thanks to perceived inevitability of the same stupid waste.
The player works hard to get to a saved point. That data better be there when he comes back.
I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun. I don't mind hammering on the same terminal challenge for prolonged periods, but when the majority of the gaming session is sitting there doing nothing while waiting for the load meter to progress (or, worse, watching the same uninterruptable cinematics eat up time doing nothing useful (at least load times are loading something)), well, I'll go do something else like wash dishes.
Rather ironic that the supposedly unrelated "fortune" displayed with this story (lower right corner of page) is "Fremen add life to spice!"
(OBexplaination: "Fremen" & "spice" being a reference to the book "Dune" (which you HAVE read, right? no?) which makes a big deal of harvesting moisture.)
Better to stop one tyrant than to ignore them all.
And when choosing which tyrant to stop, best to stop the one most relevant to other interests (yes, self-interest DOES play a role; and yes, oil does matter - or did you bike to work & grow your own food for today?).
Saddam, in one single day, killed some 50,000 people just to test out his nifty new WMD (poison gas). While more & faster than usual, it was not out of character for him to order the deaths of large numbers of people. In his last election, he got 100% of the vote - not because the people liked him, but because the alternative amounted to "please torture me and kill my family."
The option was/is not "N dead or 0 dead."
The option was/is "N dead or 100*N dead."
Which would you rather see? if the US did nothing, would you criticize the non-involvement?
Question amounts to:
"If something that sucks, could be made to not suck, except for where it would continue to suck, would it still suck?"
Charles Babbage noted:
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
Just to twist knickers, there's Object-oriented COBOL running on the Java Virtual Machine.
Thing is, that other 15% tends to cover the Really Big Issues. On most of the major hot-button litmus-test-type issues, McCain votes left.
... but is still enough to the left that should the two compete for President, a lot of right-wing voters won't even bother. Wouldn't call him "far left", but certainly heading that way.
When I indicated he tends to the left, I did not use or indicate the modifier "far". He's certainly right of Hillary
Speaking from the right: We don't want him either.
McCain, Lieberman, Guliani (sp?), etc. actually have a unique opportunity: they are far enough from the core of their respective parties that they could easily and successfully create a 3rd party of "radical centrists".
Ironic.
You're peeved off because he's moving way "right".
Thing is, much of the "right" is just as peeved at him as you are precisely because he is so far "left" he may as well put a (D) after his name.