On my machine right now, the mouse is plugged into the keyboard via USB, which is plugged into the monitor via USB, which is plugged into the computer via ADC, which is plugged into the wall. That's it. No other plugs.
I guess if you need to escape out of the window real quick for some reason, you won't have to go looking for rope.:)
This would have been great for Idremna.:) But hey, perhaps these linux games could be easily ported to such a console if the future does bring one to life?
I couldn't help but think back to the problem with the Hubble Space Telescope [nevada.edu], wherein after the launch they discovered that the mirror had not been properly ground to specification.
Mod parent up. This is the gaping, Mack Truck-sized hole in the argument.
[...]
If all piracy takes place on P2P networks, there's no cash, and thus no profit for Al-Qaida or Iraq.
I'd like you go back and read the article. Did you see "P2P" at all in it? I didn't. The closest that it came was referencing piracy, which although it implies a reference to people who simply use the software without paying for it, the rest of the article made it clear that was about people who resell the software. The article also said that copyright laws should be stronger, which would hurt those same casual pirates, but did not make any verbal attack at all on those casual pirates.
Yes, the copyright cartel associations are using every trick in the book to make P2P look bad. Talk has even begun about how P2P enables pedophiles. There's little dispute here on Slashdot that they're a rather nasty company, so your flames are welcome here. And I'm sure that somewhere the MPAA is making the argument that P2P does encourage terrorism. However, it was not in this article. So go ahead and bash the MPAA / RIAA / BSA. But could you at least not build your post around a strawman?
Think before you type. The action happens to be more important than karma.
This is an ad hominem attack of the most blatant kind.
Yes, because the RIAA essentially said "Software piracy is bad because software pirates are [stupid / evil / ugly / smelly].
With a torus shape as opposed to a spherical shape (Yes, yes, a hyper-shape but visualize it in 2D/3D) you could go one direction and go "around" the universe a lot faster than if you were to go another direction. But if you were an ant on this universe-ish donut and couldn't see very far, how would you know which direction to go? One way would take you towards the center and around the edge and another would take you lengthwise around the donut. Still others would send you spiraling around the donut in seemingly strange twisty patterns and you would pass close to the point where you started many times and not know it unless you paid close attention. Does this really work with the idea that in space, there is no privileged point of view? This would essentially give space a directional system where we're used to thinking of it as going on and on without a standard up or down, center or edge.
Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?
Absolutely. To make good games, you have to enjoy good games yourself. You have to never lose interest in the grandness of the (once unique) idea that pushing those buttons gives you control over what the character in that fantasy-world known as a video game. People who can't enjoy Atari games probably don't have this trait. For example, I design little mini-games for myself and my friends to play. I tried to design one that my girlfriend would like to play, and after talking to her about it for a while, brainstorming to find something she might like, I realized that she doesn't grasp this simple concept. She gets tired of games really fast (Not an Atari fan). The "coolness" of the game is what pulls her into it. She'd like to play as her favorite rock stars or cartoon characters, but no matter the game, no matter how fun the play or random the levels could be, she'd get tired of it soon. Not surprisingly, she's a big movie buff. She prefers to watch, not interact. And I'm not saying this in a negative way, but she does have a short attention span. Game designers would do best to see her as a target audience instead of a repeat customer.
Miyamoto relies upon the repeat-customer. There's nothing stupid about "For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen." -- it shows that he truly understands what many people don't (and assume they do). Nothing at all.
Could somebody please explain to me the need for "undo" data to be stored within saved MS-Word documents? The same kind of document that I can edit, save, close down, reopen and then not have the option to undo changes I made before that last save?
Sometimes when I'm at work and I come across a particularly complex document, I'll copy everything and paste it into a blank document. The new file is sometimes something like 2KB smaller than the old one.
I still hope and believe that there was nothing inappropriate.
Indeed there was. Why do you think IBM was in such a big hurry to dismantle Deep Blue? There's still a coverup to this day -- turns out that huge "Deep Blue" box was hollow -- Kramnik was hiding inside of it the whole time.
Re:assembly programming NES style
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 1
You want some *really* interesting SMB levels? Find the bytes / characters that show what level you will warp to (I forgot where I found the information, but 2 3 4 were consecutive bytes) Edit these bytes so the characters are _1 or some ridiculous sprite garble. Then play to that point, go down the pipe. Swim in castles. Stomp bloopers. Play ridiculous levels that you can do nothing but fall from the top of the screen to the bottom or that crash when you pass a King Koopa that stands magically in the air. Fun!
What I liked is as soon as Jimmy Woods (The Wizard) got the whistle, the girl with them said "use the whistle to warp to the next level" or something like that and I remember thinking "how the fuck does she know that?"
Because the identical looking flute in the Legend of Zelda, another game by the same company, did (essentially) the same thing? (Same music, too.)
One of the axioms of a perfect voting scheme is that "if every voter prefers candidate A over candidate B, then the final ranking produced by the tally system should place A above B."
I see now, you're right. I read that as everybody prefers this candidate over any others because I did not consider that A applied as a second choice when B is a third.
So there's no "perfect" voting system. Why do you prefer IRV, even with all of it's problems? (www.electionmethods.org)
As with the Borda scheme, the system is vulnerable to bloc voting. If the Gore supporters anticipate the above result, they can drop Nader from their ballot, thus ensuring victory for their #1 choice.
Yet at the same time, reducing their chances of having a what-if say in the matter. That's fine. The reason that Approval voting allows several equal votes is so not that people can say "I want this candidate this much and this candidate this much" but instead "I can live with this candidate if I have to". True compromise. If someone is so desperate not to have the candidate they like second best actually win then they shouldn't vote for them at all. Remember, we're supposed to be voting for someone, not against. Ironically, this system helps people vote against a candidate. We have to recognize that people will try to undermine the system no matter what and that preventing it completely will only make a worse system or one that people will not want to use. With Approval Voting people are faced with a thought-provoking dilema and this dilema will make sure only the candidate who most fairly suits the public's voice will get into office.
For a description of why they are flawed, see: http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_00.html
I'm afraid that after looking through the reference that you gave, I don't see how Approval voting is a flawed system. From the text...
What happens with approval voting? Well, as I have set up the problem so far, we don't have enough information -- we don't know how many electors actively oppose each particular candidate. Let's assume that the Gore supporters and the Nader supporters could live with the others' candidate, but the voters in both groups really don't want to see Bush in the White House. (This is not at all an unreasonable supposition, given the voting preferences we started with, but remember that this is a purely hypothetical example.) In this case, Nader gets 15 million votes, Gore gets 9 million votes, and Bush gets a mere 6 million. All in all, it's beginning to look as though Nader is the one who should receive the Electoral College's votes for California.
This, after the following preferences have been listed:
6 million rank Bush first, then Nader, then Gore.
5 million rank Gore first, then Nader, then Bush.
4 million rank Nader first, then Gore, then Bush.
It seems like most of the voters of California get who they want or could settle for. No problems identified here that I see. (The only logical flaw being that the EC still exists in this hypothetical scenario.)
As for the summary of Arrow's proof, here is how the author describes it:
Sadly -- and surprisingly -- the answer is no. In 1950, the Stanford economist Kenneth Arrow made a startling mathematical discovery -- a discovery for which he was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Suppose, said Arrow, that we want to find a way of tallying the votes in an election. What kinds of conditions must that tallying system satisfy in order for it to give a fair outcome? One obvious condition is that if every voter prefers candidate A over candidate B, then the final ranking produced by the tally system should place A above B.
Condition 1: 100% of voters want candidate A. Everybody casts one vote for candidate A, and most everybody casts an equal vote for someone else. Here's a list of candidates and how many from the voting populace voted for each.
(Note that in these charts, the sum of the percentages should never be more than 100 x Number of candidates. This first chart assumes everybody cast exactly 2 votes, but the rest do not.)
Another obvious requirement is that if the tally system puts candidate A above candidate B, then that ordering between A and B should remain the same if one or more voters changes their mind about some third candidate C.
I'm assuming that the condition claims that the people who are voting only change their preferences for candidate C, not A or B. With approval voting, if you change your mind about a candidate, you simply don't vote for them anymore, or you do. If they were the only person you would have voted for, the condition is then only reasonable if you do not vote. Otherwise you would not only be changing your views on candidate C, but on B or A as well.
Now candidate C is between A and B in ranking, but A and B have not changed and still represent the voting populace's opinion accurately. Candidate A still ranks above candidate B. Condition met. If Arrow is saying that the order of candidates has to remain A -> B -> C or C -> A -> B, allowing the latter of the two but not the 85% situation makes the requirement absurd.
----
So did I do something wrong? Or did the author of the article poorly represent Arrow's claims? If neither, how is Approval voting flawed?
Have you considered Approval voting? Each person gets more than one equal vote. If you can live with another candidate as a compromise, cast one more vote for him or her to say so. A great way to trump both the EC and the standard plurality / majority voting method. And you don't have to have the same candidates on the ballot everywhere or even know every candidate like Condorcet.
The problem is you have to make a Boolean decision based on fuzzy data. It can be proved mathematically that there is no completely fair way to choose a single winner in a 3 party system.
Hmm... Does this mathematical work take into account compromises or simply assume each voter will only settle for one person?
- one could argue that the cards are a little *too* small, and are easy to lose
That's a troll, right?:) I mean... really...
No. Why would you think that? Computer equipment keeps getting smaller and I think there is a practical limit. You don't want to sneeze and lose your entire database backup.:) CF is a little on the small size, if you ask me. 2.5"x2" would be just perfect.
"Vote-swapping" is a way to compensate for the shortcomings of the electoral college. The only reason people vote is to change things the way they want. But if they know the voting system itself is screwed up so much that their vote won't make a bit of difference, why vote? If someone can talk to people around them with similar views and they all agree to vote in a certain way that mutually benefits them all, why is that wrong? Because other people aren't using similar tactics and thus being short-changed by the electoral college? Then the EC needs to change or more people need to start doing the same thing so that everything is fair. Don't forget that the EC is the real problem here, not how people vote.
What has happened here is that a bunch of people with similar views got together and found a way to vote better. It isn't any more wrong than people rearranging their schedules and car-pooling to the polls to make sure they all vote. I wouldn't call either of those things dumb.
An 8MB CF card is equivalent to about 5.5 floppies, which will cost you about $3, making my example about 5x more expensive than a floppy.
Doesn't matter. It's still $15 a pop (and I can actually buy packs of 5 floppies for a low price). Bulk comparisons don't change that. For example, you can praise the virtue of how newer hard drives are $1 a GB but that doesn't mean I could buy a 20 GB hard drive for 20 bucks.
(2MB and 4MB cards are available, and the 5X multiplier seems to apply across the price range).
How long before 2, 4, and even 8 MB cards are impossible to find in stores?
However, a CF card is much smaller than a floppy (let alone FIVE floppies), should last a lot longer (1M+ writes), is far more durable, reads faster, and can be used in a wider variety of devices. And of course, has higher capacity.
I think that of all the mini-cards, CF holds the most potential. (Not dangerously-thin like SmartMedia). But that potential will never be realized if the price never drops. In addition, one could argue that the cards are a little *too* small, and are easy to lose.
Slashdot Mirror
They're rewriting history books? Dammit, now I'll have to re-learn all sorts of things, like who won World War II!
On my machine right now, the mouse is plugged into the keyboard via USB, which is plugged into the monitor via USB, which is plugged into the computer via ADC, which is plugged into the wall. That's it. No other plugs.
:)
I guess if you need to escape out of the window real quick for some reason, you won't have to go looking for rope.
That's right, I couldn't remember how it was spelled. Thanks. :)
This would have been great for Idremna. :) But hey, perhaps these linux games could be easily ported to such a console if the future does bring one to life?
I couldn't help but think back to the problem with the Hubble Space Telescope [nevada.edu], wherein after the launch they discovered that the mirror had not been properly ground to specification.
I think that's just Murphy's law.
- "Everything ready to go?"
- "Check, and double-check, sir!"
- "Great, we'll launch in 10 minutes!"
[15 minutes later...]
- "You mean the checklist page is double-sided?!"
Mod parent up. This is the gaping, Mack Truck-sized hole in the argument.
[...]
If all piracy takes place on P2P networks, there's no cash, and thus no profit for Al-Qaida or Iraq.
I'd like you go back and read the article. Did you see "P2P" at all in it? I didn't. The closest that it came was referencing piracy, which although it implies a reference to people who simply use the software without paying for it, the rest of the article made it clear that was about people who resell the software. The article also said that copyright laws should be stronger, which would hurt those same casual pirates, but did not make any verbal attack at all on those casual pirates.
Yes, the copyright cartel associations are using every trick in the book to make P2P look bad. Talk has even begun about how P2P enables pedophiles. There's little dispute here on Slashdot that they're a rather nasty company, so your flames are welcome here. And I'm sure that somewhere the MPAA is making the argument that P2P does encourage terrorism. However, it was not in this article. So go ahead and bash the MPAA / RIAA / BSA. But could you at least not build your post around a strawman?
Think before you type. The action happens to be more important than karma.
This is an ad hominem attack of the most blatant kind.
Yes, because the RIAA essentially said "Software piracy is bad because software pirates are [stupid / evil / ugly / smelly].
With a torus shape as opposed to a spherical shape (Yes, yes, a hyper-shape but visualize it in 2D/3D) you could go one direction and go "around" the universe a lot faster than if you were to go another direction. But if you were an ant on this universe-ish donut and couldn't see very far, how would you know which direction to go? One way would take you towards the center and around the edge and another would take you lengthwise around the donut. Still others would send you spiraling around the donut in seemingly strange twisty patterns and you would pass close to the point where you started many times and not know it unless you paid close attention. Does this really work with the idea that in space, there is no privileged point of view? This would essentially give space a directional system where we're used to thinking of it as going on and on without a standard up or down, center or edge.
Is the "Dragon" processor big-endian or little-endian? (How else can I judge it unless I know if China is on my side in the endian holy war? ;)
They should be punished by the DOJ based on this decision (since they have been ruled a monopoly).
I doubt anybody questions that they are a monopoly. That's not illegal. I think you meant to say that Microsoft has been ruled an illegal monopoly.
Hmmm, indeed. Is everybody sure this is the actual genius behind the classics like SMB?
Absolutely. To make good games, you have to enjoy good games yourself. You have to never lose interest in the grandness of the (once unique) idea that pushing those buttons gives you control over what the character in that fantasy-world known as a video game. People who can't enjoy Atari games probably don't have this trait. For example, I design little mini-games for myself and my friends to play. I tried to design one that my girlfriend would like to play, and after talking to her about it for a while, brainstorming to find something she might like, I realized that she doesn't grasp this simple concept. She gets tired of games really fast (Not an Atari fan). The "coolness" of the game is what pulls her into it. She'd like to play as her favorite rock stars or cartoon characters, but no matter the game, no matter how fun the play or random the levels could be, she'd get tired of it soon. Not surprisingly, she's a big movie buff. She prefers to watch, not interact. And I'm not saying this in a negative way, but she does have a short attention span. Game designers would do best to see her as a target audience instead of a repeat customer.
Miyamoto relies upon the repeat-customer. There's nothing stupid about "For me, the most interesting thing about video games is taking the controller and using it to move something around on the screen." -- it shows that he truly understands what many people don't (and assume they do). Nothing at all.
Could somebody please explain to me the need for "undo" data to be stored within saved MS-Word documents? The same kind of document that I can edit, save, close down, reopen and then not have the option to undo changes I made before that last save?
Sometimes when I'm at work and I come across a particularly complex document, I'll copy everything and paste it into a blank document. The new file is sometimes something like 2KB smaller than the old one.
Talk about unnecessary garbage...
DVD-R, maybe....but CD-R's are simply too small. Apple and SUSE as an example distribute using DVD.
Sounds like a good way to reduce bloat.
Searched Google for for "Osiriak", like you requested. this is one of the articles I found. Was that the support you wanted for your point?
Moreover, many think it's profoundly unlikely any alien races would be interested in conquering us.
If you had the most advanced warships in the universe and your intergalactic neighbor kept spewing out a constant stream of spam, what would you do?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I still hope and believe that there was nothing inappropriate.
Indeed there was. Why do you think IBM was in such a big hurry to dismantle Deep Blue? There's still a coverup to this day -- turns out that huge "Deep Blue" box was hollow -- Kramnik was hiding inside of it the whole time.
Does Dark Energy suck or blow?
e nergy.html
Blow... sort of. It acts the opposite of gravity, pushing everything apart.
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/dark-
You want some *really* interesting SMB levels? Find the bytes / characters that show what level you will warp to (I forgot where I found the information, but 2 3 4 were consecutive bytes) Edit these bytes so the characters are _1 or some ridiculous sprite garble. Then play to that point, go down the pipe. Swim in castles. Stomp bloopers. Play ridiculous levels that you can do nothing but fall from the top of the screen to the bottom or that crash when you pass a King Koopa that stands magically in the air. Fun!
What I liked is as soon as Jimmy Woods (The Wizard) got the whistle, the girl with them said "use the whistle to warp to the next level" or something like that and I remember thinking "how the fuck does she know that?"
Because the identical looking flute in the Legend of Zelda, another game by the same company, did (essentially) the same thing? (Same music, too.)
Well heck, this thread went on for quite a while. Thanks, it was fun.
One of the axioms of a perfect voting scheme is that "if every voter prefers candidate A over candidate B, then the final ranking produced by the tally system should place A above B."
I see now, you're right. I read that as everybody prefers this candidate over any others because I did not consider that A applied as a second choice when B is a third.
So there's no "perfect" voting system. Why do you prefer IRV, even with all of it's problems? (www.electionmethods.org)
As with the Borda scheme, the system is vulnerable to bloc voting. If the Gore supporters anticipate the above result, they can drop Nader from their ballot, thus ensuring victory for their #1 choice.
Yet at the same time, reducing their chances of having a what-if say in the matter. That's fine. The reason that Approval voting allows several equal votes is so not that people can say "I want this candidate this much and this candidate this much" but instead "I can live with this candidate if I have to". True compromise. If someone is so desperate not to have the candidate they like second best actually win then they shouldn't vote for them at all. Remember, we're supposed to be voting for someone, not against. Ironically, this system helps people vote against a candidate. We have to recognize that people will try to undermine the system no matter what and that preventing it completely will only make a worse system or one that people will not want to use. With Approval Voting people are faced with a thought-provoking dilema and this dilema will make sure only the candidate who most fairly suits the public's voice will get into office.
For a description of why they are flawed, see: http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_00.html
I'm afraid that after looking through the reference that you gave, I don't see how Approval voting is a flawed system. From the text...
What happens with approval voting? Well, as I have set up the problem so far, we don't have enough information -- we don't know how many electors actively oppose each particular candidate. Let's assume that the Gore supporters and the Nader supporters could live with the others' candidate, but the voters in both groups really don't want to see Bush in the White House. (This is not at all an unreasonable supposition, given the voting preferences we started with, but remember that this is a purely hypothetical example.) In this case, Nader gets 15 million votes, Gore gets 9 million votes, and Bush gets a mere 6 million. All in all, it's beginning to look as though Nader is the one who should receive the Electoral College's votes for California.
This, after the following preferences have been listed:
6 million rank Bush first, then Nader, then Gore.
5 million rank Gore first, then Nader, then Bush.
4 million rank Nader first, then Gore, then Bush.
It seems like most of the voters of California get who they want or could settle for. No problems identified here that I see. (The only logical flaw being that the EC still exists in this hypothetical scenario.)
As for the summary of Arrow's proof, here is how the author describes it:
Sadly -- and surprisingly -- the answer is no. In 1950, the Stanford economist Kenneth Arrow made a startling mathematical discovery -- a discovery for which he was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Suppose, said Arrow, that we want to find a way of tallying the votes in an election. What kinds of conditions must that tallying system satisfy in order for it to give a fair outcome? One obvious condition is that if every voter prefers candidate A over candidate B, then the final ranking produced by the tally system should place A above B.
Condition 1: 100% of voters want candidate A. Everybody casts one vote for candidate A, and most everybody casts an equal vote for someone else. Here's a list of candidates and how many from the voting populace voted for each.
(Note that in these charts, the sum of the percentages should never be more than 100 x Number of candidates. This first chart assumes everybody cast exactly 2 votes, but the rest do not.)
Candidate A: 100%
Candidate B: 60%
Candidate C: 40%
Condition 1 has been met.
Another obvious requirement is that if the tally system puts candidate A above candidate B, then that ordering between A and B should remain the same if one or more voters changes their mind about some third candidate C.
I'm assuming that the condition claims that the people who are voting only change their preferences for candidate C, not A or B. With approval voting, if you change your mind about a candidate, you simply don't vote for them anymore, or you do. If they were the only person you would have voted for, the condition is then only reasonable if you do not vote. Otherwise you would not only be changing your views on candidate C, but on B or A as well.
Before the change:
Candidate A: 90%
Candidate B: 80%
Candidate C: 95%
After the change: (Less people vote for C)
Candidate A: 90%
Candidate B: 80%
Candidate C: 85%
Now candidate C is between A and B in ranking, but A and B have not changed and still represent the voting populace's opinion accurately. Candidate A still ranks above candidate B. Condition met. If Arrow is saying that the order of candidates has to remain A -> B -> C or C -> A -> B, allowing the latter of the two but not the 85% situation makes the requirement absurd.
----
So did I do something wrong? Or did the author of the article poorly represent Arrow's claims? If neither, how is Approval voting flawed?
Have you considered Approval voting? Each person gets more than one equal vote. If you can live with another candidate as a compromise, cast one more vote for him or her to say so. A great way to trump both the EC and the standard plurality / majority voting method. And you don't have to have the same candidates on the ballot everywhere or even know every candidate like Condorcet.
The problem is you have to make a Boolean decision based on fuzzy data. It can be proved mathematically that there is no completely fair way to choose a single winner in a 3 party system.
Hmm... Does this mathematical work take into account compromises or simply assume each voter will only settle for one person?
- one could argue that the cards are a little *too* small, and are easy to lose
:)
:) CF is a little on the small size, if you ask me. 2.5"x2" would be just perfect.
That's a troll, right?
I mean... really...
No. Why would you think that? Computer equipment keeps getting smaller and I think there is a practical limit. You don't want to sneeze and lose your entire database backup.
"Vote-swapping" is a way to compensate for the shortcomings of the electoral college. The only reason people vote is to change things the way they want. But if they know the voting system itself is screwed up so much that their vote won't make a bit of difference, why vote? If someone can talk to people around them with similar views and they all agree to vote in a certain way that mutually benefits them all, why is that wrong? Because other people aren't using similar tactics and thus being short-changed by the electoral college? Then the EC needs to change or more people need to start doing the same thing so that everything is fair. Don't forget that the EC is the real problem here, not how people vote.
What has happened here is that a bunch of people with similar views got together and found a way to vote better. It isn't any more wrong than people rearranging their schedules and car-pooling to the polls to make sure they all vote. I wouldn't call either of those things dumb.
An 8MB CF card is equivalent to about 5.5 floppies, which will cost you about $3, making my example about 5x more expensive than a floppy.
Doesn't matter. It's still $15 a pop (and I can actually buy packs of 5 floppies for a low price). Bulk comparisons don't change that. For example, you can praise the virtue of how newer hard drives are $1 a GB but that doesn't mean I could buy a 20 GB hard drive for 20 bucks.
(2MB and 4MB cards are available, and the 5X multiplier seems to apply across the price range).
How long before 2, 4, and even 8 MB cards are impossible to find in stores?
However, a CF card is much smaller than a floppy (let alone FIVE floppies), should last a lot longer (1M+ writes), is far more durable, reads faster, and can be used in a wider variety of devices. And of course, has higher capacity.
I think that of all the mini-cards, CF holds the most potential. (Not dangerously-thin like SmartMedia). But that potential will never be realized if the price never drops. In addition, one could argue that the cards are a little *too* small, and are easy to lose.