Do you think they sleep better because you are afraid of Bill Gates Data mining?
I'll stand on my soap box because I donate to Amnesty international and other such organizations that try to stop such attrocities. Yeah I still go to movies and play video games which doesn't help them much - but at least I'm not complaining when someone wants to patent a marketting ploy.
You are probably poking fun about it, but its not actually as bad as everyone makes it out to seem. My girlfriend for example, she isn't exactly a computer programmer like you or I, but she's more than affluent in its usage. I don't know where you set the standard for the average user, but she's reformatted her hard drive herself, reinstalled the OS and drivers for a fresh start, nothing particularily difficult for anyone who browses this site, but I'd go as far as to say more than the average user. Anyways so she would look up the latest video games, and look at jewelry online, look at clothing, etc.
One day Facebook showed her an Ad for Shanalogic. Those of you not familiar (which I imagine is about 99% of you) its a story generally targetted at females - they go for cute little animals in a sort of Toki Doki Japanese animation style, and they also use some tech pop culture. For example, their Valentines day jewelry they've got on sale right now is the internet famous "Less than three" kind of heart (<3). They put it on rings and necklaces. This just so happens to appeal to my girlfriends taste. Now she had never seen or heard of it before a facebook ad that seemed to be perfectly aimed at her. She has made numerous purchases already. She is happy that she discovered the site.
I don't doubt a bit of data mining went into that. I don't see the harm it could have produced. I only see a successful result, both her and the companies are happier for it.
You may now proceed with the stereotypical "GF? Ya rite!" comments.
Hey, when you look at the lives of the people across the globe, being in a North American Prison is a pretty sweet gig. You don't have to worry about starving, land mines, unlawful execution, etc.
If Bill Gates selling your browser history for marketting reasons is something that serious deters from your quality of life - you have some ridiculously high standards and need to take a look at what is actually happening in the world.
How do you figure? I could see a very high quality of life where you have very little privacy.
Perhaps you should take a moment to define what sets the quality of your life - I define it by clean drinking water, warm shelter, and having access to entertainment.
I agree - I don't understand the marketability of something based on the fact that its "Difficult". ESPECIALLY on such a subjective matter such as that. I have long since been the guy with no difficulty playing video games. Its not that I was always the Best, because I wasn't, but I never had any problems picking up a game and learning its symantics quickly. My friends played Halo 1, 2, and 3 religiously within succession of each other, never spending much time playing online in any other game. I had played Halo 1 for the PC when it came out, for about 4 months, then I hadn't touched it again. Then one day I was living on my own and I wanted to play Rock Band. Halo 3 came with the 360. After a weekend of playing I was in a comparable field with my friends. They didn't understand reaching rank 45 in a week. I had played it every once in a while with them at a party, but I mean a 10 minute round every 2 months was only enough to make me familiar with the controls. So now a days I'm on par with the guys who spent years playing the game whereas I've only spent months.
So my buddy recommends Demons Souls, claiming its the most difficult game he's ever encountered. Spoiler alert ahead for those who haven't played it, you are intended to die on the first boss. It took me about 5 minutes, but I got that boss down to 1/5th health. I felt a little upset, knowing that I had actually bested most people who attempt that boss, and that its a horrible game element when something FORCES you to die when it can leave you wondering if you could have survived. If it had actually been able to drop a 1 hit kill attack across the entire room leaving me with ZERO chance of dodging or surviving, I would understand that fight a whole lot more. As it stands, hopping around for 5 minutes carefully attacking leaving me with the same end result left a dis-satisfied taste in my mouth.
But whatever right? Moving on from that - the game never really got "Difficult", or at least in any of the ways I was expecting. All of the enemies were as easily predictable (even more predictable) than other video games and succeeding in killing them is usually capable with patience with block and attack, or if you know your class you have a few cheap moves at your disposal.
And from there it essentially boiled down to either A) You're strong enough to do this area, congrats easy mode - or B) You're not strong enough to do this area - you got pwned by the boss's undodgable attack and blocking it destroys all your stamina. Try again later. The non-linear level design will accidentally lead noobs onto veteran bosses, which doesn't make the game hard it makes it stupid. It'd be like Super Mario Brothers having a level that you can't complete without a tail so fly to the other side, but leading you along various platforms to make you think there must be a way to complete the level. I don't recall dieing on any part that wasn't a boss fight. If they had set things up so that you were meant to go through the first boss first and the second boss second (like perhaps doors that required the keys of subsequent bosses) than the game would have been no more difficult than any other game to have come out this decade.
Take your favourite game, put it on the hardest difficulty, and see how difficult it really CAN be. Not putting in any difficulty scalability, and then combining it with terrible level layouts does not constitute a "good" game. If their aim was to make the game difficult for the sake of being difficult, than they did it in the worst way possible. And for all the wrong reasons.
I had lucid dreaming perfected during high school, though I'll be honest, I would prefer to work the day and rest in my dream.
My dreams could be anything I wanted them to be. More fantastical than a Role playing game and more stimulating than a girlfriend. Now that I look back on it, I don't think I'd be able to get any work done, even more distractions than the internet.
Can someone outline the flaws in the study? I know we here at/. are experts at things like that. But I also don't want to RTFA.
So why exactly should I not believe the original study? From where I stand (which is little to zero knowledge on the subject) I could conclude that each of the co authors one by one were persuaded by the various pharmaceutical companies which standed to be harmed by this research.
First of all, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I am having a slow day at work.
Second of all, I understand that astronauts are not the only piece of the puzzle, in fact, we have many complex missions in space that involve no astronauts at all. Don't make the assumption that I don't.
Thirdly, I never said anything about this being "For the Country". I am not even American, so to take pride in American Astronauts wouldn't make any sense. When I talk about their contributions I mean to mankind as a whole, as a species.
Engineers and Scientists may work long hours, do harder work, and be rarer than astronauts. None of that changes the fact that they aren't the ones who die when things go wrong.
I think those people who sacrafice their relationships for this are of the opinion that a parade in their honour would be pointless. They'd rather people acknowledge their contributions and support the pursuit of science.
I don't think I see how the second implication is being... implied?
If Open Office can run on Chrome - how hard would it be to make a tablet Port? Would those who write OO not be interested in this? Or whatabout our friends at Microsoft, who are giving away licenses for MS office in the hopes to keep their hold of office applications as tight as possible?
I wasn't even born yet - but I had heard of Challenger and the failure, though I had never seen anything like it. It still strikes me as shocking even though I know whats going to happen. I feel the same sadness now as many must have felt over 20 years ago.
Part of me feels like I've just missed one of the greatest eras of mankind. Space Exploration, Cold war ending, Berlin wall coming down and all that. There was a time when Astronauts were hailed as heros, now our generation views them as simple scientists in the ISS. They're lucky if their launches or arrivals get 15 minutes of airtime. Seems like nothing happens unless there is a disaster. I know this is not true, as there are people still doing missions in space (Hubbles maintenance is the first one that comes to mind). It just saddens me that it is no longer "Big News" sending people into space, only when its a disaster. RIP Challenger Crew. May it not only serve as an example of the dangers involved, but also as a reminder of the men and women who brave those dangers for the pursuit of knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
A part of me just died.
You mean finding one who is as smart as slime mold.
Do you think they sleep better because you are afraid of Bill Gates Data mining?
I'll stand on my soap box because I donate to Amnesty international and other such organizations that try to stop such attrocities. Yeah I still go to movies and play video games which doesn't help them much - but at least I'm not complaining when someone wants to patent a marketting ploy.
You are probably poking fun about it, but its not actually as bad as everyone makes it out to seem. My girlfriend for example, she isn't exactly a computer programmer like you or I, but she's more than affluent in its usage. I don't know where you set the standard for the average user, but she's reformatted her hard drive herself, reinstalled the OS and drivers for a fresh start, nothing particularily difficult for anyone who browses this site, but I'd go as far as to say more than the average user. Anyways so she would look up the latest video games, and look at jewelry online, look at clothing, etc.
One day Facebook showed her an Ad for Shanalogic. Those of you not familiar (which I imagine is about 99% of you) its a story generally targetted at females - they go for cute little animals in a sort of Toki Doki Japanese animation style, and they also use some tech pop culture. For example, their Valentines day jewelry they've got on sale right now is the internet famous "Less than three" kind of heart (<3). They put it on rings and necklaces. This just so happens to appeal to my girlfriends taste. Now she had never seen or heard of it before a facebook ad that seemed to be perfectly aimed at her. She has made numerous purchases already. She is happy that she discovered the site.
I don't doubt a bit of data mining went into that. I don't see the harm it could have produced. I only see a successful result, both her and the companies are happier for it.
You may now proceed with the stereotypical "GF? Ya rite!" comments.
Hey, when you look at the lives of the people across the globe, being in a North American Prison is a pretty sweet gig. You don't have to worry about starving, land mines, unlawful execution, etc.
If Bill Gates selling your browser history for marketting reasons is something that serious deters from your quality of life - you have some ridiculously high standards and need to take a look at what is actually happening in the world.
Essential? What kind of blackjack do you play? I want in on that action.
Yeah, well, Microsoft did it first, Google just did it better.
And for the first time ever, no one had a patent on it before two major companies started these methods.
How do you figure? I could see a very high quality of life where you have very little privacy.
Perhaps you should take a moment to define what sets the quality of your life - I define it by clean drinking water, warm shelter, and having access to entertainment.
I agree - I don't understand the marketability of something based on the fact that its "Difficult". ESPECIALLY on such a subjective matter such as that. I have long since been the guy with no difficulty playing video games. Its not that I was always the Best, because I wasn't, but I never had any problems picking up a game and learning its symantics quickly. My friends played Halo 1, 2, and 3 religiously within succession of each other, never spending much time playing online in any other game. I had played Halo 1 for the PC when it came out, for about 4 months, then I hadn't touched it again. Then one day I was living on my own and I wanted to play Rock Band. Halo 3 came with the 360. After a weekend of playing I was in a comparable field with my friends. They didn't understand reaching rank 45 in a week. I had played it every once in a while with them at a party, but I mean a 10 minute round every 2 months was only enough to make me familiar with the controls. So now a days I'm on par with the guys who spent years playing the game whereas I've only spent months.
So my buddy recommends Demons Souls, claiming its the most difficult game he's ever encountered. Spoiler alert ahead for those who haven't played it, you are intended to die on the first boss. It took me about 5 minutes, but I got that boss down to 1/5th health. I felt a little upset, knowing that I had actually bested most people who attempt that boss, and that its a horrible game element when something FORCES you to die when it can leave you wondering if you could have survived. If it had actually been able to drop a 1 hit kill attack across the entire room leaving me with ZERO chance of dodging or surviving, I would understand that fight a whole lot more. As it stands, hopping around for 5 minutes carefully attacking leaving me with the same end result left a dis-satisfied taste in my mouth.
But whatever right? Moving on from that - the game never really got "Difficult", or at least in any of the ways I was expecting. All of the enemies were as easily predictable (even more predictable) than other video games and succeeding in killing them is usually capable with patience with block and attack, or if you know your class you have a few cheap moves at your disposal.
And from there it essentially boiled down to either A) You're strong enough to do this area, congrats easy mode - or B) You're not strong enough to do this area - you got pwned by the boss's undodgable attack and blocking it destroys all your stamina. Try again later. The non-linear level design will accidentally lead noobs onto veteran bosses, which doesn't make the game hard it makes it stupid. It'd be like Super Mario Brothers having a level that you can't complete without a tail so fly to the other side, but leading you along various platforms to make you think there must be a way to complete the level. I don't recall dieing on any part that wasn't a boss fight. If they had set things up so that you were meant to go through the first boss first and the second boss second (like perhaps doors that required the keys of subsequent bosses) than the game would have been no more difficult than any other game to have come out this decade.
Take your favourite game, put it on the hardest difficulty, and see how difficult it really CAN be. Not putting in any difficulty scalability, and then combining it with terrible level layouts does not constitute a "good" game. If their aim was to make the game difficult for the sake of being difficult, than they did it in the worst way possible. And for all the wrong reasons.
Meh... Better than nothing I suppose...
The Dots.
I had lucid dreaming perfected during high school, though I'll be honest, I would prefer to work the day and rest in my dream.
My dreams could be anything I wanted them to be. More fantastical than a Role playing game and more stimulating than a girlfriend. Now that I look back on it, I don't think I'd be able to get any work done, even more distractions than the internet.
Nothing helps out the community more than slashdotting their forum.
At least they have measures in place for when the site goes down.
All they are saying is that they noted Correlation, not implying causation.
Since when have facts ever got in the way of a 'good' conspiracy theory?
There was one once, but they covered it up, I swear it.
Can someone outline the flaws in the study? I know we here at /. are experts at things like that. But I also don't want to RTFA.
So why exactly should I not believe the original study? From where I stand (which is little to zero knowledge on the subject) I could conclude that each of the co authors one by one were persuaded by the various pharmaceutical companies which standed to be harmed by this research.
Exactly. The spoon and the knife are already laid out.
Norton needs more processing power than any PC could provide.
First of all, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I am having a slow day at work.
Second of all, I understand that astronauts are not the only piece of the puzzle, in fact, we have many complex missions in space that involve no astronauts at all. Don't make the assumption that I don't.
Thirdly, I never said anything about this being "For the Country". I am not even American, so to take pride in American Astronauts wouldn't make any sense. When I talk about their contributions I mean to mankind as a whole, as a species.
Engineers and Scientists may work long hours, do harder work, and be rarer than astronauts. None of that changes the fact that they aren't the ones who die when things go wrong.
I think those people who sacrafice their relationships for this are of the opinion that a parade in their honour would be pointless. They'd rather people acknowledge their contributions and support the pursuit of science.
An authentication device that can be bypassed is a contradiction in terms.
You don't need to see his identification.
I don't think I see how the second implication is being... implied?
If Open Office can run on Chrome - how hard would it be to make a tablet Port? Would those who write OO not be interested in this? Or whatabout our friends at Microsoft, who are giving away licenses for MS office in the hopes to keep their hold of office applications as tight as possible?
You mean like Flash and Silverlite?
Ah, so you're one of those lucky saps that doesn't have any Apple controlled friends.
I wasn't even born yet - but I had heard of Challenger and the failure, though I had never seen anything like it. It still strikes me as shocking even though I know whats going to happen. I feel the same sadness now as many must have felt over 20 years ago.
Part of me feels like I've just missed one of the greatest eras of mankind. Space Exploration, Cold war ending, Berlin wall coming down and all that. There was a time when Astronauts were hailed as heros, now our generation views them as simple scientists in the ISS. They're lucky if their launches or arrivals get 15 minutes of airtime. Seems like nothing happens unless there is a disaster. I know this is not true, as there are people still doing missions in space (Hubbles maintenance is the first one that comes to mind). It just saddens me that it is no longer "Big News" sending people into space, only when its a disaster. RIP Challenger Crew. May it not only serve as an example of the dangers involved, but also as a reminder of the men and women who brave those dangers for the pursuit of knowledge.
Well, I'd be about as ticked off as Steve Woz. Though in his case they simply dismissed it and haven't fixed it.