So, by that logic, if someone wants to buy child pornography from me (no, I'm not selling here people, just need an example) then it has value and thus has a right to exist?
I understand that online characters are sold for money, but I wonder what the people who own the servers that those characters were created on get? Don't they have the right, since they paid for the server, to say what people can and can't do with their characters, which are stored on said server? If a person signs an agreement specifying that they have no rights to sell their character, are their rights being violated? No, definitely not, as they could have not signed the agreement and found a different way to earn their bread and butter.
I think it's kind of ridiculous when someone thinks that their avatar has rights comparable with those that we have as human beings. Who put up the cost to set the earth up for us to habitate? That's a tough question, but you can definitely check off human beings from the list of possible answers. Who set's up the hardware that online avatars "live" on? Human Beings.
Ok, you make a good point, but I think you are wrong. One of the major reasons that the US is going Nutso on these other countries that might or might not deserve it stems from the fact that the US is unchallenged in many areas, including the space race.
I think that a new space challenge would be a perfect thing for an overhyped united states to take on. It has a unifying potential, and it similarly will get a lot of the smart people in the united states thinking about how to get homo sapiens into space as opposed to how to get advantage over other homo sapiens on earth.
All in all, I think it would be a good thing for the US to pick up their part in the space race again, and something tells me that they will, to recover from the bad press associated with the Columbia.
Yeh man, you can't go wrong with Mark Twain.
My suggestion to the person looking for the book to read is maybe to find a good collection of short stories. They're oh so underrated, and not to mention the fact that you can mix up so many of them together...I'll say, that's good.
Good article overall. I like that the author pointed out how the current nanotechnology climate is pointed more towards the "what do we gain sooner, rather than later" as opposed to the regular extropian science-fiction-esque view of the future. Still, the main view people take of things like this is usually the not-so-grounded view of utopia that we will be living in very soon, without considering that there are still some very _real_ problems that need to be tackled before we can truly live in heaven once again.
My problem with the whole concept of reassembling matter is that we still don't have a definite understanding of what fundamentally ties things like ferrari and ice cream together on a quantum level, let alone the skills to observe these tiniest of structures without using some sort of particle acceleration technique. I'm not saying it's impossible to ever be able to manipulate matter to such a simple degree as described by many science popularizations, I'm simply saying that it might take a bit longer than some futurists like to admit. Saying it would be impossible would truly go against my love of science-fiction...and where would I be without that, however seeing that there are some problems yet to be solved goes with my engineering schooling view of the world. We are what we can do.
I'd hate to predict it, but if something like this works out (and gets the proper bumps on the road to keep it moving forward), it could be actually pretty useful for regular people.
As for trying to lock Linux out, that's no big deal. Linux as I can see it, is here to stay. someone will probably keep selling more or less standard x86 hardware for a while yet. And besides, someone will probably get Linux to work on this Athens thing anyways...
OK, OK, I know, it's not a PC game, but as far as first person shooters go it's totally top-notch in terms of graphics, and the story is pretty damn cool too. Not to mention the fact that there's a co-op play feature (really the only way to play mutliplayer IMHO).
Some people say that control for FPS's is better with a keyboard and mouse, but I think I'll have to disagree with them on that one. The controller scheme for Halo was simple, elegant, and it actually feels quite natural once you have used it for a bit. Combine that with the fact that I can sit on a bean bag chair and play the game, as opposed to being at a desk to play, and I'm won over. you should rent an Xbox and try Halo out sometime. I'll guarantee that you won't be disappointed.
I find it hard to believe that it will ever be possible to totally stop the entire human race from pursuing research into certain fields. If there's something to be learned, we'll learn it; if there's something to figure out, we'll figure it out, or die trying (probably not the best cliche to use, but oh well). I just have two points, a practical one, and a nihilist one.
my problem with the point of view being taken by this prominent scientist is that he views all scientific propositions as risky, and there should be some generally agreed upon allowable risk threshold that any experiment should be considered against before it is carried out. The unfortunate thing about this point of view is that it doesn't take into account the potential benefits that could come out of it. Nano-bots destroying cencerous cells would truely make the fact that we live longer and longer much more worthwhile, if those extra years are cancer free, in my opinion. It is probably more worthwhile than creating blckholes on earth, even though the risks might be somewhere in the same range of dangerousness.
my second point, the nihilist one, is in regards to the 'gray goo' that nanotech could turn the planet into. could I stipulate that some sort of evolution could continue, but instead of carbon based cellular processes being the basis, the nanobots would be instead. just a thought.
I used to play video games quite a lot, while I was growing up. It was just a way to pass the time, and I thought the technology was cool enough that I was interested in whatever new stuff came out.
the game playing continued until I went to grad school, where a significant amount of my time is now spent at my computer terminal (my thesis is computer focused). Now I find that when I go home I don't want to sit in front of a screen, even if the games graphics are nice and shiny and all.
I wonder if anyone else is like me and thinks that those people who spend more time on computers during their work-day are less interested in sitting at the computer when they come home, or if it is just the opposite?
I've heard this argument before, but I'm not so sure why some people can be totally sure of it. I can understand that changing of technology is happening at an unprecendented rate, but nothing seems to be reducing the innate human properties of stubbornness and conservativism, not to mention the fact that there are some things that just seem to do enough things easily enough for most people that they stick around (MS windows comes to mind, as does the idea of flipping channels on the TV, or the interface to a car for that matter).
I'd say that we can be sure that life will probably be better for most people in the world, assuming we survive the coming (when?) nanotech era, but why does the fact that we survived mean that human brains and computers will have totally merged?
Of course, arguing against the transhuman argument is pretty pointless because it's probably going to happen sooner or later...so why do I post this??? I wish I knew.
The only market not susceptible to the shift will be gaming and graphics-intensive applications, where the refresh rates of LCDs are not satisfactory yet.
so, I play games every once in a while (thanks Transgaming), and am thinking of getting a new monitor for my home computer. My question is, are the refresh rates so slow that it's practically impossible to play games on them, or is it only a problem for those people who are the gaming equivalent of an audiophile.
considering that I do mostly non-game stuff on my home-computer, I'll probably get an LCD because they're easy on my eyes, and they look so damn cool, but I was just wondering about the gaming degradation factor.
the thing you are ignoring here is that there are some things that IBM will put into Linux that not many teams of dedicated hackers would or could, due to access to large scale hardware along with the funding that goes along with it.
It's well and good to say that ext3 or Reiser beats out JFS, which is probably true, because all installations of linux are going to use those things, including the hacker's box sitting at home. However, not everyone has the time, money, nor interest to develop those areas of Linux that need to be developed in order for it to compete on the level of enterprise class servers. IBM sells those products, and thus they contribute to Linux in ways that a desktop user might not quite see.
Maybe when I'm running a wackload of processors at home on a huge rackspace (when I own my own island too), I can try and contribute to scalability or some such other thing, but until then, IBM fits the bill perfectly.
whoa, is that kind of like charging less or more money depending on certain things that you do in the game? whoa, that kind of gambling would make these things WAY MORE addictive...I could imagine it. Although, that's a pretty cool way of getting people to do parts of the game that are way harder....
My favourite idea along the same gambling kind of lines would be to give everyone on a given server at a certain time a random chance to be a certain hero with destiny or something like that...say there's like a big badass ultra-wizard fortress with tanks and guns and helicopters and a giant moat filled with crocodiles. five random people on the server get chosen to do a mission that will change the face of the map that everyone else is playing on...!!!! wow....i shouldn't have smoked out, man....but this new monitor...17inch LCD is great!
so I got the five day demo disc, and rebooted into XP to try it out. I was immediately impressed. Cool science-fiction worlds, great graphics, pretty standard everquest-style gameplay. Then, after a bit of time, I realized exactly why this game wasn't worth my money.
The world is too static. I can imagine a space game like this one that allows people to travel all over the place, trying to find new things. Granted, it's impossible to allow an infinite amount of places to explore and stuff, but they simply have to start rotating servers, starting the exploration from zero again every once in a while...not let the game get stagnant as it seems to be now.
This follows exactly from what this guy says. To make a game world that's as dynamic and as exciting as I would want would require a huge amount of support, something a lot of people would like to see, but not something that a lot of people would like to pay for.
I guess that those ten reasons to not make an MMOG are simply those, but the more people that waste their time and money trying to make it better, eventually will bring along, not to use a silly pop-culture reference, 'the one' that brings it all together. Then we'll be rocking as everyone else will have to copy that one to make success for themselves.
well, here's hoping that afer the earth and beyond team moves they can start to juice up the sci-fi world they have created in such a way that they really impress people. I've got my fingers crossed.
What's next? Maybe, for his doctoral thesis, he should write a formula for the proper amount of syrup to be used based on it's rate of obsorbtion by the pancake.
As long as he includes the effects of the butter on the pancake, I'd support that doctorate
I think this is actually a lousy thing, and points out the inherent lack of value that governments place on certain things. In a democracy, the way it is supposed to work is that the politicians find the best solution to the voters problems, using the voters money in the most efficient manner. If the government decides to spend way more money to do the same things, they should, in theory not be re-elected...unfortunately, that's not always the case, and potentially money saving things like open-source are ignored. So, now the government spends MORE money putting through bills that say stuff along the lines of "let's save money"...pretty stupid really, but I guess that's what government is all about.
If you want a completely objective review, than you can get any number of people to do the TCO calculation. If you want a completely objective review from someone who knows what IT system administration is all about you're gonna have to find someone that has dealt with either paradigm before, and whatever interaction they had with either platform is going to bias their decision in some way or another.
The only thing that, I think, helps the *nix case is the longevity with which it has been around, so their are definitely going to be more people biased towards out, especially if they are experienced in sys-adminning.
You have a point, but these companies aren't trying to give themselves an advantage right now. Developing all the technology now will pay off later when the second or third generation of games based on that technology are released.
you want compelling games? Try a gamecube:
pikmin, animal crossing, cubivore, not to mention well done classics like metroid, mario sunshine, and a new zelda game. You are never too old for video games, as long as you can let yourself enjoy them.
Well, I guess you gotta take the best you can get...the devilish one that listens to no opposing viewpoints and the devilish one that listens to all viewpoints, ignorant or otherwise...it's your choice.
I like your response to the above comment. I do agree that a large number of stories and postings here sometimes are leaning in direction that might be considered unfair to microsoft. I also like the fact that some people like yourselves are here to maintain an objective view, as that's what makes the slashdot community so great. However, there are some things that I would like to point out about the way the other side works.
First, if this was website was run by microsoft,
it would probably be difficult to make disparaging marks towards them, or to promote something that doesn't fit within the microsoft framework of how things should be. Second, the thing that I really like about being a linux advocate is that I can be a zealot if I want to, or I can be reasonable if I don't want to be. It's all freedom, and that gives me the choice, and I like being free to choose. Saying that the Slashdot community misrepresents Linux in general is a mistake, as you said yourself, Linux represents itself, just as all slashdotters represent themselves.
Getting onto the topic at hand, I just wanted to make the point that the Linux Advocates need to show more objectivity
So should Microsoft, but they aren't (and have never been) free to do so, their business would collapse otherwise, whereas Linux benefits from the flamers and zealots just as much as it does from objective voices such as yours and, I hope, mine.
So, what happens when Mono gets out, onto the net, say? Can a microsoft patent come after anybody that hosts any code, or just the people that initiated the development. The only ones who I think that they can really go after are the distributions that might include a patent-infringing.net runtime.
I like the idea of.net, I'm sure it'll still take a fair amount of time before it becomes fairly prevalent, but I don't think that the Mono project is a waste of time at all.
As a thought experiment, say MS decides to litigate something, then the Mono folks can probably take something out that was infringing on the patent, and being Open Source, can spawn the rest onto the net. It's still all there, and who knows, maybe someone could make it into something really good. You never know.
The last thing I'll say is that I am not sure why MS would want to shut down Mono. They are trying to use.net to battle java, and the open source platform, with it's growing share in server-type environments, could go with either. Servers running.net applications that could potentially serve to windows desktop machines probably seems more reasonable to MS than a heavy java influence on linux.
Anyways, It'll be interesting to see how these things turn out...I'm predicting that open source software will still be going long and strong, loud and proud, etc. etc. for a good long while, mono or not, patent-suits or not. I'm still gonna support every effort the community makes.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that online characters are sold for money, but I wonder what the people who own the servers that those characters were created on get? Don't they have the right, since they paid for the server, to say what people can and can't do with their characters, which are stored on said server? If a person signs an agreement specifying that they have no rights to sell their character, are their rights being violated? No, definitely not, as they could have not signed the agreement and found a different way to earn their bread and butter.
I think it's kind of ridiculous when someone thinks that their avatar has rights comparable with those that we have as human beings. Who put up the cost to set the earth up for us to habitate? That's a tough question, but you can definitely check off human beings from the list of possible answers. Who set's up the hardware that online avatars "live" on? Human Beings.
I think that a new space challenge would be a perfect thing for an overhyped united states to take on. It has a unifying potential, and it similarly will get a lot of the smart people in the united states thinking about how to get homo sapiens into space as opposed to how to get advantage over other homo sapiens on earth.
All in all, I think it would be a good thing for the US to pick up their part in the space race again, and something tells me that they will, to recover from the bad press associated with the Columbia.
Yeh man, you can't go wrong with Mark Twain. My suggestion to the person looking for the book to read is maybe to find a good collection of short stories. They're oh so underrated, and not to mention the fact that you can mix up so many of them together...I'll say, that's good.
My problem with the whole concept of reassembling matter is that we still don't have a definite understanding of what fundamentally ties things like ferrari and ice cream together on a quantum level, let alone the skills to observe these tiniest of structures without using some sort of particle acceleration technique. I'm not saying it's impossible to ever be able to manipulate matter to such a simple degree as described by many science popularizations, I'm simply saying that it might take a bit longer than some futurists like to admit. Saying it would be impossible would truly go against my love of science-fiction...and where would I be without that, however seeing that there are some problems yet to be solved goes with my engineering schooling view of the world. We are what we can do.
Thanks for posting anonymously. We really appreciate the credibility that comes with the anonysmous coward label.
As for trying to lock Linux out, that's no big deal. Linux as I can see it, is here to stay. someone will probably keep selling more or less standard x86 hardware for a while yet. And besides, someone will probably get Linux to work on this Athens thing anyways...
Some people say that control for FPS's is better with a keyboard and mouse, but I think I'll have to disagree with them on that one. The controller scheme for Halo was simple, elegant, and it actually feels quite natural once you have used it for a bit. Combine that with the fact that I can sit on a bean bag chair and play the game, as opposed to being at a desk to play, and I'm won over. you should rent an Xbox and try Halo out sometime. I'll guarantee that you won't be disappointed.
p.s. Zelda is pretty cool too...
my problem with the point of view being taken by this prominent scientist is that he views all scientific propositions as risky, and there should be some generally agreed upon allowable risk threshold that any experiment should be considered against before it is carried out. The unfortunate thing about this point of view is that it doesn't take into account the potential benefits that could come out of it. Nano-bots destroying cencerous cells would truely make the fact that we live longer and longer much more worthwhile, if those extra years are cancer free, in my opinion. It is probably more worthwhile than creating blckholes on earth, even though the risks might be somewhere in the same range of dangerousness.
my second point, the nihilist one, is in regards to the 'gray goo' that nanotech could turn the planet into. could I stipulate that some sort of evolution could continue, but instead of carbon based cellular processes being the basis, the nanobots would be instead. just a thought.
hehe, I've seen the new zelda on the gamecube, and I might have to go in for that one...too bad it's summer.
the game playing continued until I went to grad school, where a significant amount of my time is now spent at my computer terminal (my thesis is computer focused). Now I find that when I go home I don't want to sit in front of a screen, even if the games graphics are nice and shiny and all.
I wonder if anyone else is like me and thinks that those people who spend more time on computers during their work-day are less interested in sitting at the computer when they come home, or if it is just the opposite?
I'd say that we can be sure that life will probably be better for most people in the world, assuming we survive the coming (when?) nanotech era, but why does the fact that we survived mean that human brains and computers will have totally merged?
Of course, arguing against the transhuman argument is pretty pointless because it's probably going to happen sooner or later...so why do I post this??? I wish I knew.
so does that mean that all things that are in the 2.5 kernel will go on to start the 2.6 kernel?
maybe he's selling showers for 14,000 a pop, and Slashdot is giving a good advertising forum for him... that wouldn't surprise me at all...
so, I play games every once in a while (thanks Transgaming), and am thinking of getting a new monitor for my home computer. My question is, are the refresh rates so slow that it's practically impossible to play games on them, or is it only a problem for those people who are the gaming equivalent of an audiophile.
considering that I do mostly non-game stuff on my home-computer, I'll probably get an LCD because they're easy on my eyes, and they look so damn cool, but I was just wondering about the gaming degradation factor.
It's well and good to say that ext3 or Reiser beats out JFS, which is probably true, because all installations of linux are going to use those things, including the hacker's box sitting at home. However, not everyone has the time, money, nor interest to develop those areas of Linux that need to be developed in order for it to compete on the level of enterprise class servers. IBM sells those products, and thus they contribute to Linux in ways that a desktop user might not quite see.
Maybe when I'm running a wackload of processors at home on a huge rackspace (when I own my own island too), I can try and contribute to scalability or some such other thing, but until then, IBM fits the bill perfectly.
My favourite idea along the same gambling kind of lines would be to give everyone on a given server at a certain time a random chance to be a certain hero with destiny or something like that...say there's like a big badass ultra-wizard fortress with tanks and guns and helicopters and a giant moat filled with crocodiles. five random people on the server get chosen to do a mission that will change the face of the map that everyone else is playing on...!!!! wow....i shouldn't have smoked out, man....but this new monitor...17inch LCD is great!
The world is too static. I can imagine a space game like this one that allows people to travel all over the place, trying to find new things. Granted, it's impossible to allow an infinite amount of places to explore and stuff, but they simply have to start rotating servers, starting the exploration from zero again every once in a while...not let the game get stagnant as it seems to be now.
This follows exactly from what this guy says. To make a game world that's as dynamic and as exciting as I would want would require a huge amount of support, something a lot of people would like to see, but not something that a lot of people would like to pay for.
I guess that those ten reasons to not make an MMOG are simply those, but the more people that waste their time and money trying to make it better, eventually will bring along, not to use a silly pop-culture reference, 'the one' that brings it all together. Then we'll be rocking as everyone else will have to copy that one to make success for themselves.
well, here's hoping that afer the earth and beyond team moves they can start to juice up the sci-fi world they have created in such a way that they really impress people. I've got my fingers crossed.
As long as he includes the effects of the butter on the pancake, I'd support that doctorate
I think this is actually a lousy thing, and points out the inherent lack of value that governments place on certain things. In a democracy, the way it is supposed to work is that the politicians find the best solution to the voters problems, using the voters money in the most efficient manner. If the government decides to spend way more money to do the same things, they should, in theory not be re-elected...unfortunately, that's not always the case, and potentially money saving things like open-source are ignored. So, now the government spends MORE money putting through bills that say stuff along the lines of "let's save money"...pretty stupid really, but I guess that's what government is all about.
up 'ere in Canada we get all the snow for free, eh...we don't need no stinking sno-guns...
The only thing that, I think, helps the *nix case is the longevity with which it has been around, so their are definitely going to be more people biased towards out, especially if they are experienced in sys-adminning.
you want compelling games? Try a gamecube: pikmin, animal crossing, cubivore, not to mention well done classics like metroid, mario sunshine, and a new zelda game. You are never too old for video games, as long as you can let yourself enjoy them.
Well, I guess you gotta take the best you can get...the devilish one that listens to no opposing viewpoints and the devilish one that listens to all viewpoints, ignorant or otherwise...it's your choice.
First, if this was website was run by microsoft, it would probably be difficult to make disparaging marks towards them, or to promote something that doesn't fit within the microsoft framework of how things should be. Second, the thing that I really like about being a linux advocate is that I can be a zealot if I want to, or I can be reasonable if I don't want to be. It's all freedom, and that gives me the choice, and I like being free to choose. Saying that the Slashdot community misrepresents Linux in general is a mistake, as you said yourself, Linux represents itself, just as all slashdotters represent themselves.
Getting onto the topic at hand, I just wanted to make the point that the Linux Advocates need to show more objectivity
So should Microsoft, but they aren't (and have never been) free to do so, their business would collapse otherwise, whereas Linux benefits from the flamers and zealots just as much as it does from objective voices such as yours and, I hope, mine.
I like the idea of .net, I'm sure it'll still take a fair amount of time before it becomes fairly prevalent, but I don't think that the Mono project is a waste of time at all.
As a thought experiment, say MS decides to litigate something, then the Mono folks can probably take something out that was infringing on the patent, and being Open Source, can spawn the rest onto the net. It's still all there, and who knows, maybe someone could make it into something really good. You never know.
The last thing I'll say is that I am not sure why MS would want to shut down Mono. They are trying to use .net to battle java, and the open source platform, with it's growing share in server-type environments, could go with either. Servers running .net applications that could potentially serve to windows desktop machines probably seems more reasonable to MS than a heavy java influence on linux.
Anyways, It'll be interesting to see how these things turn out...I'm predicting that open source software will still be going long and strong, loud and proud, etc. etc. for a good long while, mono or not, patent-suits or not. I'm still gonna support every effort the community makes.