I have a cat; works great
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Segway vs. Roomba
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have a cat and one of the newer "Discovery" models. I don't have the bearings-sieze problem, I read that the design changed to avoid this problem. Works great, don't know what I'd do without it.
In the demo, I found myself leaving the base on "Red Alert" so that the minions would be armed, and kill agents on sight. I never quite figured out what the drawback of that would be, surely there is one?
From what I heard on the Star Trek shows, it always seemed to me that the process was analog, not digital, and not duplicatable.
This gets you around that nasty #5, especially if the only known process of *creating* those analog signals that can be reconstructed involves the destruction of the molecules in the first place. That's what I always inferred from the occasional danger of sending things this way: lose the beam in the middle of transfer, and you've lost the person. Or at least a significant part of them.
Analog makes sense because it carries a near-infinite amount of information, to a point where you can't capture the data by sampling. Also, capture attempts of some aspects may disrupt the other aspects. The reconstruction process may well be different from the data-capture process. The reconstruction process could be yet another field-interaction effect, which doesn't generally serve to record data, for example.
Much of this I've made up as I went along, but I think for an explanation of a fictional device, it works well enough.
Col. Sanders keeps saying, "Prepare for..." and Dark Helmet interrupts and says, "Why do you have to prepare for everything?"
This is an interesting example, because I think in the real navy, there's a straightforward answer: Sometimes your preparation fails.
In the example you gave, there are *two* points of failure. The first is that you can't find the directory you pointed at, and the second is that you can't get a listing of it. Making those things be separate forces you to consider the failure cases.
A large part of what Java is about is failsafe enterprise-level applications. When you write to that level of safety, you need to identify the different causes of issues.
In the same way, your day-sailer on a 12' boat doesn't shout to his crewmate "Prepare to tack!" because there isn't any reason to. If you're sailing an 80' schooner, however, you do shout to your crew of six "prepare to tack!" And then you wait in case someone shouts back, "Port side winch is jammed!".
Well, then you'll be a dead terrorist. You're not going to make an armed resistance against the US Government and live.
Interesting statement. How long do you give the Iraqis and the Afghans, exactly? From what I hear, it isn't exactly safe outside of Khabul just yet.
We're a big country, and it's not like the revolutionaries are going to line up in red jackets. Most of the American weaponry (tanks, helicopters, jets, etc) is completely pointless in a civil uprising.
"And you know, I very much have the impression that Java is a language of the month."
Which month would that be, exactly? February 1999, perhaps?
Java's clearly a front runner, if not leader, in enterprise server-side applications. Even you admit its influence. Now the question is: why?
First, wrote-once run-anywhere is very, very true in my experience. I'm curious what you're talking about when you say, "many problems have cropped up in this area". I develop in windows and deploy to unix-based (HPUX) servers, and haven't had any issues in three years. The one issue (the only one I've ever seen) was a threading issue caused by a poor decision on my part (busy waiting with no yield call). What gives you the impression that there are issues? When I was doing client-side development, many of the perceived GUI issues were the result of developers making direct calls from java to the operating system. It's obvious when you're doing this, and it should be obvious that it harms portability.
Write-once run-anywhere is important even for server-side development because the criteria for choosing a development platform are different than those for choosing a server platform. In my corporate environment, Windows is the dev platform. I wish it weren't so, but because of other tools for scheduling, email, and application maintenence, it is. That has not been a barrier to our using unix servers, however, and that's a big deal.
You dismiss the idea of server migration, but that too is a big deal. Even if you've decided to go with unix, are you sure you've picked the flavor that is best with you? We've got HP 3000's still where I work, and there are some interoperability tools available for HP-UX that are important to us. Or they were originally. Once we get all the HP3000 code migrated, I'm sure we'd like to ditch the licensing fees and switch to Linux. Is this a problem for the code that I write? Not at all.
I think you need to present some facts to make your case that C-source is as portable as Java. Most of the C developers that I talk to find that idea pretty laughable. If the write-once-run-anywhere problems you alluded to earlier were primarily GUI-related, please give examples of write-once-run-anywhere fully graphical OS-launched C code. I'm pretty sure that's a rhetorical question.
You seem to ask why LISP isn't used for server-side development. I think that answer is partially the syntax, and largely library support. Java's standard libraries are widely regarded as a step above everything else that's available, both for networking and for basic structures (Collections, etc). You can argue that this sort of stuff is available for LISP, but from the comments I read, it isn't as standardized and approachable as the Java APIs.
Java's combination of garbage-collection, solid and complete libraries, portability, and object-oriented features is clearly powerful. It allows people to ignore these issues, and focus on the more difficult (and more important) business-related issues.
You mention that Java applications on your phone are slow. Perhaps.
Would I recommend Java for a commandline-interface application? Absolutely not. Would I develop my company's new accounting application to be distributed to 200 servers worldwide in LISP? Again, I think I'd say absolutely not.
So you're right. We cheered him when he was attacking the 1980's IBM, which WAS a good thing to do. IBM's business practices and overcontrol were legendary, and harmful.
IBM's practices are much more cooperative, and I have yet to see them doing much major exploitation. In fact, if they beat SCO in court, they'll have done us a favor.
You claim that we shouldn't now demonize Gates for what Microsoft has done, yet you don't explain why. He's a founder, he's still a major decision maker, whatever his title. Microsoft is a harmful monopoly and their technical decisions get in the way of getting things done. Why shouldn't we rail against them and Gates now, just like we did against IBM in the 80's?
All you've pointed out is that our opinions of corporations and individuals change with their behaviors. Isn't that a good thing?
Van Allen answers his own concern, it seems to me. First he says,
"Casting an eye on the space shuttle's contribution to science, van Allen suggests they have been modest, 'and its contribution to utilitarian applications of space technology has been insignificant.'".
Okay, maybe. But then he says:
[the ISS crew] "have barely enough time to manage the station, never mind conduct any significant research."
So.. it seems that he's saying that it hasn't really been tried, so we shouldn't do it. I'll admit the ISS isn't where we wanted it to be, but I hardly think failure to support it makes the case for scrapping manned spaceflight.
The point of giving away his money *after* he dies is that he can give more if he grows it while he's alive. Who else would you want managing your charity's money, really?
And if you're going to rant about his extravagant lifestyle in the meantime, you'd better do your research first. He lives in Omaha, NE in a house he bought in the 50's for about 20k. He drives his own car, and mocks corporations that go in for limousines and fancy meeting rooms. He's not a spender.
I think Mr. Buffett has already made these arrangements.
"His charitable organization, the Buffett Foundation, currently has $25.3 million in assets, and these holdings are expected to swell to $36 billion when Buffett and his wife die and their shares in Berkshire Hathaway go to the Buffett Foundation, which will make it the richest charitable foundation in the world."
Perhaps they'll tell the story from the Romulan point of view. Now, that would be a change.
Holy Cow, that's the best idea I've heard in a long time. Throw in the fact that ToS started a legacy of social commentary, and you could have a hell of a film.
Maybe the Romulans can have a council, a republic of sorts. (I think they already do in some episodes). Then a controversial leader is elected by a narrow margin. Throw in more controversy by the deciding votes being cast in a quadrant overseen by the leader's blood relative.
Then, have the leader coerce the intelligence division of the council into drumming up false evidence against the Federation, showing them to either have or be developing the banned, dangerous, tetrion weaponry. This (if it existed) would be a threat to the entire galaxy, whether used agains the Romulans or not.
Do all this in the first 15 minutes of the film, and pick up when the council uncovers the plot. The rest of the film can be about how the Romulans are committed to a war it no longer believes is justified, and how they deal with that.
It's interesting to see one sterotype (women objectified by male-oriented games) discuss another (many gamers are male, lonely, and have no interaction with women). I'd hoped to hear some kind of positive comments as well, but I suppose when you're modeling, most people don't have long and involved coversations.
I notice at the article ends with, "Hey, why did she get a plushie?" I would've liked to hear the apparently female author give more discussion about what she personally thought about the situation. Clearly, some games objectify women. The racing game's "booth babes" seem to be a clear example. But what did she think about the woman dressed as the sword-wielding character? Was she affected differently than the horse jockeys that seemed to be nearly up for sale? And did she buy what the Swedish developer was saying about "just dressing up in a skintight outfit for fun"?
And why are all outfits in the future skin-tight anyway?:)
"And there are dozens of things to do in game that have nothing to do with building."
Can you elaborate on some of those? I played for about two weeks, but didn't see where it was I should be going other than camp-building and resource-gathering.
I played Tale in the Desert for a good long while, but never managed to get to the fun part.
I made a lot of bricks, picked up a lot of flint, and... some other spinning machines and whatnot, but I never seemed to get to anything that was interesting. Everything I did, while interesting, had been done by every other inhabitant, and what's more, it really had very little to do with me. I could maybe arrange my distaffs in a pattern that nobody else had done, but that was about all I could come up with. And, all I could do was climb that crafting ladder. Why did I *want* bricks? To build a better oven. What do I do with a better oven? Make more bricks. What do I do with more bricks? Build a better (some other thing). It sounds a lot like "kill beast A to get sword B to kill beast B. Rename B to A, repeat" but somehow it was different. Ultimately, killing beasties requires some interaction around swinging the sword, using some kind of blasty magic perhaps, and running away to heal. Making bricks was just running around for materials, then clicking "make bricks".
I can forgive some of that (a lot of that, actually: I made a smith in UO back in the day), but the day I quit was when I found out that my character-long dream to be an architect and create beautiful buildings was stupid. Could I design elaborate frescoes? Record the history of my group in hieroglyphics? Architect new building designs? Nope. I could plop down a pre-designed, unchangeable "camp" then build it up from there to look like everybody else's first pyramid.
I know there's an "artist" track, but I was rather unimpressed there as well. The most public part of it seemed to be making "sculptures" out of stuff that has no business being sculpted. It reminded me more of an eight-year-old's mural of popsicle sticks and elmer's glue.
I sound bitter because I was disappointed. The pitch I heard was great. "There's no combat... but that doesn't mean there's no conflict!" Maybe the wife would play this one with me. And there were real brand new ideas: Voting in new laws seems interesting, and as far as I could tell it was well implemented. The Pharoh election seemed like it was well done, too, from what I read.
But in the end, what was the fun thing I was supposed to be doing, other than roleplaying an Egyptian slave making bricks?
If I remember right, they figured out later that it was Sam's own sense of right and wrong that created that requirement. He failed several times and leaped anyway. It was part of the revelation towards the end that cleared that up. Apparently he got more control over it then, although he continued to try to do the right thing.
I had this wrong for a long time, and I think I can finally articulate the problem.
What I understand to be really happening is that the particles, when subjected to probability situations, always react the same way.
Imagine you've built two identical big mazes, with several decision points along the way. Ignore any idea of an "end", it's not important.
Now, I've got my quantum entagled rat (particle) and you've got yours. We let them both go in our respective mazes, and after a while, look in to see where they are. No matter how far away we are, both our rats will have made the same decisions all along the way, and will be at the same point in the maze. That's spooky.
But it doesn't communicate anything helpful. If I want to tell you to get some milk, we could agree on some part of the maze as being the "get milk" area. The problem is that as soon as I encourage my quantum-entangled rat to go that way (or otherwise interact with it), I've screwed up the quantum entanglement, and our rats don't behave the same way anymore.
wave-tracing's a nice start, but it's still just recorded clips.
I can't find it now, but I've seen at least one gradschool project on generating a new sound from an interaction, based on things like the interacting materials, the speed and location of the impact, etc etc. It was darn cool stuff.
Keep in mind, this is all just rendering in real-time. If you want the reactions to feel right, you've got to be modeling the physical interactions as well.
Doom and Quake aren't bad, but they still leave a lot to be desired.
And don't get me started on how corny the sounds are...
I think the point of this interface is that the data is more easily interpreted, allowing the human-user to notice patterns that automated scripts would miss. This could be done either in real time, or as a visualization tool for historical files. The latter usage seems like it would be of interest if you're trying to determine the source of a break-in.
For real-time monitoring, your point about mutliple systems is very valid, but what if this approach could be scaled up to allow you to visually inspect the whole system for a number of problems? Perhaps an entire array of cubes, each for a subnet or an individual system, focusing on those that pique your interest.
This idea may be able to mesh with the glanceable objects idea (just the idea, not their chicken egg specifically). If it is informative enough, it could allow you to periodically check some aspects of your whole system for things that you either can't write scripts to do, or don't have time to write scripts for.
-Zipwow
Can reporters not afford cameras?
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Video T-shirts
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· Score: 1
I'm frequently frustrated by stories about "New technology X displayed..." but fail to have a photograph of the thing.
Thank goodness for/., at least the posters manage to find a picture.
But which of these other alternatives have a decontamination period in the range of hundreds of thousands of years?
We haven't had a single civilization in history that has gone without warfare or collapse for the amount of time it takes to store this stuff. And I don't believe we can kid ourselves into believing that we can keep it from causing harm for so long.
The scale of nuclear power contamination is so radically different from the others that it doesn't warrant comparison. Should we end our reliance on non-renewables? Absolutely. Is nuclear a way to do it? I say no. I just don't have that much faith in government or business, which are the two entities who will have to deal with it.
I guess we disagree. I believe that women would find it insulting, demeaning, and discriminatory to be told that they're not entitled to use the word "vote". Giving another word that is "just the same" is akin to saying, "well, if we HAVE to... here's something kinda. Now be quiet?"
Would you continue to support segregation if the two sides were actually equal?
Replace "continue to support" with "consider supporting" or "acccept" and I'll agree.
Segregation is just another word for the freedom to assemble. There's nothing wrong with Catholics not letting non-catholics attend their private schools, or an ethnic community holding a function and not letting outsiders in.
You *must* be misunderstanding? I know you're not telling me you'd be willing to return to white-only drinking fountains.
Segregation, when spoken by the legal system, is the opposite of freedom to assemble. It's specifically prohibiting that ability. And since we're talking about the legal definition, that's what people fear.
How to handle discrimination in private groups is an entirely different question. I don't know hot to say where to stop in: white-only clubs, men-only clubs, gay-only clubs, etc.
I agree that federal action is necessary, for just the reasons that you describe.
I don't think you have to go so far as amending the constitution, so long as you use the word "marriage". A federal law worded something like "The right of marriage shall not be prohibited to any couple regardless of gender. No prohibition may be made with respect to the genders of the participants" seems to be effective enough. I'd support that same wording as a constitutional amendment, though.
Wording it as "gay and lesbian people are allowed 'civil unions' which are not marraiges except that they're exactly the same" seems like shaky stuff.
If we have to use a different word to get the effect that we deserve to have for our fellow citizens, then so be it. There are plenty of other legal terms with gender distinctions that are otherwise identical, anyway.
Again, I'm not going to let you argue (in your last statement) that basically "plenty of other stuff is messed up, so we shouldn't worry about this one".
At this point it sounds like a question of 'settling' for something that is almost right (civil unions) or holding out for the right thing (actual gay marriage). It's somewhat a matter of semantics, but I think it's important not to distinguish. To compare it to women's suffrage, what if women were granted the ability to "select" but not to "vote"?
I'd rather hold out for the real thing, with the real words.
Hey PD, always good talking with you. It's good to hear that you're in support of some kind of legal protection for gay people in long-term relationships. After reading other posts, I'd have been suprised if you didn't. I think we still disagree on how protected the word "marriage" ought to be, and I'll make those points here:
Women don't have to register for the draft. Men don't get the same health benefits women do.
I'll agree that the former is unfair, and admit some ignorance of the latter. Even so, what does this have to do with anything? I know you better than to think you're arguing that because some other things are unfair (done wrongly), that these things we're talking about don't deserve to be treated fairly.
I'll grant without quoting that some of the reason that 'separate but equal' was overturned in part because it was inequal. It's a big point about "in part", however. Turn that argument around and you'll see what I mean. Would you continue to support segregation if the two sides were actually equal?
(again, good to hear your support of some kind of matrimonial state -- skipping that part)
Disagree? Still think that there's something different between a "gay marriage" and a "gay civil union?" Then find me a federal court case indicating that "gay marriage" would get legal protections that "civil unions" would not.
There is an inherent evil in "separate but equal", in the discrimination that it implies. "You can't join the marriage club, because you're not like us". Except we're going to treat you just like us in *every legal sense*.
If there's nothing different, then why make up a new legal term? If it's exactly the same, why not call it what it is? Marriage is the word, even if that offends the sensibilities of those who would rather there were no gay people.
Think that "gay marriage" would somehow be equal to "homosexual marriage?" Find me a gay couple that can concieve a child without artifical or outside assistance, or a historic culture that lasted more than a hundred years that had homosexual and heretrosexual relationships as interchangeable.
Did you mean to say "heterosexual marriage" here? I'll read it that way as I respond:
What difference does the ability to produce a child have on anything? If you have a couple who are male and female but "unable to conceive a child without artificial or outside assistance", will you ask them to classify themselves as a "civil union"? I would hope you would agree that should either of these couples actually *have* a child, they'd be accorded the same legal rights. Again, if you want to be sure of that, use the same word.
Your last statement about a lack of "historic cultures with interchangeable heterosexual and homosexual relationships" seems belie the underlying issue: Do you or don't you want the relationships to be interchangeable? The last statement, taken on its own, sounds like you don't, no matter how much you claim that they *will* be, legally.
If you really want to guarantee the same protections (which is what I believe your sincere opinion is), you have to use the same word. Anything else is demeaning, and trouble. And if I were homosexual, I wouldn't trust anything but the same word.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a cat and one of the newer "Discovery" models. I don't have the bearings-sieze problem, I read that the design changed to avoid this problem. Works great, don't know what I'd do without it.
-Zipwow
In the demo, I found myself leaving the base on "Red Alert" so that the minions would be armed, and kill agents on sight. I never quite figured out what the drawback of that would be, surely there is one?
-Zipwow
From what I heard on the Star Trek shows, it always seemed to me that the process was analog, not digital, and not duplicatable.
This gets you around that nasty #5, especially if the only known process of *creating* those analog signals that can be reconstructed involves the destruction of the molecules in the first place. That's what I always inferred from the occasional danger of sending things this way: lose the beam in the middle of transfer, and you've lost the person. Or at least a significant part of them.
Analog makes sense because it carries a near-infinite amount of information, to a point where you can't capture the data by sampling. Also, capture attempts of some aspects may disrupt the other aspects. The reconstruction process may well be different from the data-capture process. The reconstruction process could be yet another field-interaction effect, which doesn't generally serve to record data, for example.
Much of this I've made up as I went along, but I think for an explanation of a fictional device, it works well enough.
-Zipwow
This is an interesting example, because I think in the real navy, there's a straightforward answer: Sometimes your preparation fails.
In the example you gave, there are *two* points of failure. The first is that you can't find the directory you pointed at, and the second is that you can't get a listing of it. Making those things be separate forces you to consider the failure cases.
A large part of what Java is about is failsafe enterprise-level applications. When you write to that level of safety, you need to identify the different causes of issues.
In the same way, your day-sailer on a 12' boat doesn't shout to his crewmate "Prepare to tack!" because there isn't any reason to. If you're sailing an 80' schooner, however, you do shout to your crew of six "prepare to tack!" And then you wait in case someone shouts back, "Port side winch is jammed!".
-Zipwow
The article has a picture of him laughing, but doesn't say whether it was actually taken at the bank? Can anyone confirm?
-Zipwow
Interesting statement. How long do you give the Iraqis and the Afghans, exactly? From what I hear, it isn't exactly safe outside of Khabul just yet.
We're a big country, and it's not like the revolutionaries are going to line up in red jackets. Most of the American weaponry (tanks, helicopters, jets, etc) is completely pointless in a civil uprising.
-Zipwow
"And you know, I very much have the impression that Java is a language of the month."
Which month would that be, exactly? February 1999, perhaps?
Java's clearly a front runner, if not leader, in enterprise server-side applications. Even you admit its influence. Now the question is: why?
First, wrote-once run-anywhere is very, very true in my experience. I'm curious what you're talking about when you say, "many problems have cropped up in this area". I develop in windows and deploy to unix-based (HPUX) servers, and haven't had any issues in three years. The one issue (the only one I've ever seen) was a threading issue caused by a poor decision on my part (busy waiting with no yield call). What gives you the impression that there are issues? When I was doing client-side development, many of the perceived GUI issues were the result of developers making direct calls from java to the operating system. It's obvious when you're doing this, and it should be obvious that it harms portability.
Write-once run-anywhere is important even for server-side development because the criteria for choosing a development platform are different than those for choosing a server platform. In my corporate environment, Windows is the dev platform. I wish it weren't so, but because of other tools for scheduling, email, and application maintenence, it is. That has not been a barrier to our using unix servers, however, and that's a big deal.
You dismiss the idea of server migration, but that too is a big deal. Even if you've decided to go with unix, are you sure you've picked the flavor that is best with you? We've got HP 3000's still where I work, and there are some interoperability tools available for HP-UX that are important to us. Or they were originally. Once we get all the HP3000 code migrated, I'm sure we'd like to ditch the licensing fees and switch to Linux. Is this a problem for the code that I write? Not at all.
I think you need to present some facts to make your case that C-source is as portable as Java. Most of the C developers that I talk to find that idea pretty laughable. If the write-once-run-anywhere problems you alluded to earlier were primarily GUI-related, please give examples of write-once-run-anywhere fully graphical OS-launched C code. I'm pretty sure that's a rhetorical question.
You seem to ask why LISP isn't used for server-side development. I think that answer is partially the syntax, and largely library support. Java's standard libraries are widely regarded as a step above everything else that's available, both for networking and for basic structures (Collections, etc). You can argue that this sort of stuff is available for LISP, but from the comments I read, it isn't as standardized and approachable as the Java APIs.
Java's combination of garbage-collection, solid and complete libraries, portability, and object-oriented features is clearly powerful. It allows people to ignore these issues, and focus on the more difficult (and more important) business-related issues.
You mention that Java applications on your phone are slow. Perhaps.
Would I recommend Java for a commandline-interface application? Absolutely not. Would I develop my company's new accounting application to be distributed to 200 servers worldwide in LISP? Again, I think I'd say absolutely not.
-Zipwow
So you're right. We cheered him when he was attacking the 1980's IBM, which WAS a good thing to do. IBM's business practices and overcontrol were legendary, and harmful.
IBM's practices are much more cooperative, and I have yet to see them doing much major exploitation. In fact, if they beat SCO in court, they'll have done us a favor.
You claim that we shouldn't now demonize Gates for what Microsoft has done, yet you don't explain why. He's a founder, he's still a major decision maker, whatever his title. Microsoft is a harmful monopoly and their technical decisions get in the way of getting things done. Why shouldn't we rail against them and Gates now, just like we did against IBM in the 80's?
All you've pointed out is that our opinions of corporations and individuals change with their behaviors. Isn't that a good thing?
-Zipwow
Van Allen answers his own concern, it seems to me. First he says,
"Casting an eye on the space shuttle's contribution to science, van Allen suggests they have been modest, 'and its contribution to utilitarian applications of space technology has been insignificant.'".
Okay, maybe. But then he says:
[the ISS crew] "have barely enough time to manage the station, never mind conduct any significant research."
So.. it seems that he's saying that it hasn't really been tried, so we shouldn't do it. I'll admit the ISS isn't where we wanted it to be, but I hardly think failure to support it makes the case for scrapping manned spaceflight.
-Zipwow
The point of giving away his money *after* he dies is that he can give more if he grows it while he's alive. Who else would you want managing your charity's money, really?
And if you're going to rant about his extravagant lifestyle in the meantime, you'd better do your research first. He lives in Omaha, NE in a house he bought in the 50's for about 20k. He drives his own car, and mocks corporations that go in for limousines and fancy meeting rooms. He's not a spender.
-Zipwow
I think Mr. Buffett has already made these arrangements.
"His charitable organization, the Buffett Foundation, currently has $25.3 million in assets, and these holdings are expected to swell to $36 billion when Buffett and his wife die and their shares in Berkshire Hathaway go to the Buffett Foundation, which will make it the richest charitable foundation in the world."
A Snopes Article
How, exactly, will you be showing your respect for Mr. Buffett's point of view now?
-Zipwow
Perhaps they'll tell the story from the Romulan point of view. Now, that would be a change.
Holy Cow, that's the best idea I've heard in a long time. Throw in the fact that ToS started a legacy of social commentary, and you could have a hell of a film.
Maybe the Romulans can have a council, a republic of sorts. (I think they already do in some episodes). Then a controversial leader is elected by a narrow margin. Throw in more controversy by the deciding votes being cast in a quadrant overseen by the leader's blood relative.
Then, have the leader coerce the intelligence division of the council into drumming up false evidence against the Federation, showing them to either have or be developing the banned, dangerous, tetrion weaponry. This (if it existed) would be a threat to the entire galaxy, whether used agains the Romulans or not.
Do all this in the first 15 minutes of the film, and pick up when the council uncovers the plot. The rest of the film can be about how the Romulans are committed to a war it no longer believes is justified, and how they deal with that.
I'd watch that, just to see the ending.
-Zipwow
It's interesting to see one sterotype (women objectified by male-oriented games) discuss another (many gamers are male, lonely, and have no interaction with women). I'd hoped to hear some kind of positive comments as well, but I suppose when you're modeling, most people don't have long and involved coversations.
:)
I notice at the article ends with, "Hey, why did she get a plushie?" I would've liked to hear the apparently female author give more discussion about what she personally thought about the situation. Clearly, some games objectify women. The racing game's "booth babes" seem to be a clear example. But what did she think about the woman dressed as the sword-wielding character? Was she affected differently than the horse jockeys that seemed to be nearly up for sale? And did she buy what the Swedish developer was saying about "just dressing up in a skintight outfit for fun"?
And why are all outfits in the future skin-tight anyway?
-Zipwow
"And there are dozens of things to do in game that have nothing to do with building."
Can you elaborate on some of those? I played for about two weeks, but didn't see where it was I should be going other than camp-building and resource-gathering.
I played Tale in the Desert for a good long while, but never managed to get to the fun part.
... some other spinning machines and whatnot, but I never seemed to get to anything that was interesting. Everything I did, while interesting, had been done by every other inhabitant, and what's more, it really had very little to do with me. I could maybe arrange my distaffs in a pattern that nobody else had done, but that was about all I could come up with. And, all I could do was climb that crafting ladder. Why did I *want* bricks? To build a better oven. What do I do with a better oven? Make more bricks. What do I do with more bricks? Build a better (some other thing). It sounds a lot like "kill beast A to get sword B to kill beast B. Rename B to A, repeat" but somehow it was different. Ultimately, killing beasties requires some interaction around swinging the sword, using some kind of blasty magic perhaps, and running away to heal. Making bricks was just running around for materials, then clicking "make bricks".
I made a lot of bricks, picked up a lot of flint, and
I can forgive some of that (a lot of that, actually: I made a smith in UO back in the day), but the day I quit was when I found out that my character-long dream to be an architect and create beautiful buildings was stupid. Could I design elaborate frescoes? Record the history of my group in hieroglyphics? Architect new building designs? Nope. I could plop down a pre-designed, unchangeable "camp" then build it up from there to look like everybody else's first pyramid.
I know there's an "artist" track, but I was rather unimpressed there as well. The most public part of it seemed to be making "sculptures" out of stuff that has no business being sculpted. It reminded me more of an eight-year-old's mural of popsicle sticks and elmer's glue.
I sound bitter because I was disappointed. The pitch I heard was great. "There's no combat... but that doesn't mean there's no conflict!" Maybe the wife would play this one with me. And there were real brand new ideas: Voting in new laws seems interesting, and as far as I could tell it was well implemented. The Pharoh election seemed like it was well done, too, from what I read.
But in the end, what was the fun thing I was supposed to be doing, other than roleplaying an Egyptian slave making bricks?
-Zipwow
If I remember right, they figured out later that it was Sam's own sense of right and wrong that created that requirement. He failed several times and leaped anyway. It was part of the revelation towards the end that cleared that up. Apparently he got more control over it then, although he continued to try to do the right thing.
-Zipwow
I had this wrong for a long time, and I think I can finally articulate the problem.
What I understand to be really happening is that the particles, when subjected to probability situations, always react the same way.
Imagine you've built two identical big mazes, with several decision points along the way. Ignore any idea of an "end", it's not important.
Now, I've got my quantum entagled rat (particle) and you've got yours. We let them both go in our respective mazes, and after a while, look in to see where they are. No matter how far away we are, both our rats will have made the same decisions all along the way, and will be at the same point in the maze. That's spooky.
But it doesn't communicate anything helpful. If I want to tell you to get some milk, we could agree on some part of the maze as being the "get milk" area. The problem is that as soon as I encourage my quantum-entangled rat to go that way (or otherwise interact with it), I've screwed up the quantum entanglement, and our rats don't behave the same way anymore.
Hope this helps,
-Zipwow
wave-tracing's a nice start, but it's still just recorded clips.
I can't find it now, but I've seen at least one gradschool project on generating a new sound from an interaction, based on things like the interacting materials, the speed and location of the impact, etc etc. It was darn cool stuff.
-Zipwow
Keep in mind, this is all just rendering in real-time. If you want the reactions to feel right, you've got to be modeling the physical interactions as well.
Doom and Quake aren't bad, but they still leave a lot to be desired.
And don't get me started on how corny the sounds are...
I think the point of this interface is that the data is more easily interpreted, allowing the human-user to notice patterns that automated scripts would miss. This could be done either in real time, or as a visualization tool for historical files. The latter usage seems like it would be of interest if you're trying to determine the source of a break-in.
For real-time monitoring, your point about mutliple systems is very valid, but what if this approach could be scaled up to allow you to visually inspect the whole system for a number of problems? Perhaps an entire array of cubes, each for a subnet or an individual system, focusing on those that pique your interest.
This idea may be able to mesh with the glanceable objects idea (just the idea, not their chicken egg specifically). If it is informative enough, it could allow you to periodically check some aspects of your whole system for things that you either can't write scripts to do, or don't have time to write scripts for.
-Zipwow
I'm frequently frustrated by stories about "New technology X displayed..." but fail to have a photograph of the thing.
/., at least the posters manage to find a picture.
Thank goodness for
-Zipwow
But which of these other alternatives have a decontamination period in the range of hundreds of thousands of years?
We haven't had a single civilization in history that has gone without warfare or collapse for the amount of time it takes to store this stuff. And I don't believe we can kid ourselves into believing that we can keep it from causing harm for so long.
The scale of nuclear power contamination is so radically different from the others that it doesn't warrant comparison. Should we end our reliance on non-renewables? Absolutely. Is nuclear a way to do it? I say no. I just don't have that much faith in government or business, which are the two entities who will have to deal with it.
-Zipwow
I guess we disagree. I believe that women would find it insulting, demeaning, and discriminatory to be told that they're not entitled to use the word "vote". Giving another word that is "just the same" is akin to saying, "well, if we HAVE to... here's something kinda. Now be quiet?"
-Zipwow
You *must* be misunderstanding? I know you're not telling me you'd be willing to return to white-only drinking fountains.
Segregation, when spoken by the legal system, is the opposite of freedom to assemble. It's specifically prohibiting that ability. And since we're talking about the legal definition, that's what people fear.
How to handle discrimination in private groups is an entirely different question. I don't know hot to say where to stop in: white-only clubs, men-only clubs, gay-only clubs, etc.
I agree that federal action is necessary, for just the reasons that you describe.
I don't think you have to go so far as amending the constitution, so long as you use the word "marriage". A federal law worded something like "The right of marriage shall not be prohibited to any couple regardless of gender. No prohibition may be made with respect to the genders of the participants" seems to be effective enough. I'd support that same wording as a constitutional amendment, though.
Wording it as "gay and lesbian people are allowed 'civil unions' which are not marraiges except that they're exactly the same" seems like shaky stuff.
Again, I'm not going to let you argue (in your last statement) that basically "plenty of other stuff is messed up, so we shouldn't worry about this one".
At this point it sounds like a question of 'settling' for something that is almost right (civil unions) or holding out for the right thing (actual gay marriage). It's somewhat a matter of semantics, but I think it's important not to distinguish. To compare it to women's suffrage, what if women were granted the ability to "select" but not to "vote"?
I'd rather hold out for the real thing, with the real words.
-Zipwow
I'll agree that the former is unfair, and admit some ignorance of the latter. Even so, what does this have to do with anything? I know you better than to think you're arguing that because some other things are unfair (done wrongly), that these things we're talking about don't deserve to be treated fairly.
I'll grant without quoting that some of the reason that 'separate but equal' was overturned in part because it was inequal. It's a big point about "in part", however. Turn that argument around and you'll see what I mean. Would you continue to support segregation if the two sides were actually equal?
(again, good to hear your support of some kind of matrimonial state -- skipping that part)
There is an inherent evil in "separate but equal", in the discrimination that it implies. "You can't join the marriage club, because you're not like us". Except we're going to treat you just like us in *every legal sense*.
If there's nothing different, then why make up a new legal term? If it's exactly the same, why not call it what it is? Marriage is the word, even if that offends the sensibilities of those who would rather there were no gay people.
Did you mean to say "heterosexual marriage" here? I'll read it that way as I respond:
What difference does the ability to produce a child have on anything? If you have a couple who are male and female but "unable to conceive a child without artificial or outside assistance", will you ask them to classify themselves as a "civil union"? I would hope you would agree that should either of these couples actually *have* a child, they'd be accorded the same legal rights. Again, if you want to be sure of that, use the same word.
Your last statement about a lack of "historic cultures with interchangeable heterosexual and homosexual relationships" seems belie the underlying issue: Do you or don't you want the relationships to be interchangeable? The last statement, taken on its own, sounds like you don't, no matter how much you claim that they *will* be, legally.
If you really want to guarantee the same protections (which is what I believe your sincere opinion is), you have to use the same word. Anything else is demeaning, and trouble. And if I were homosexual, I wouldn't trust anything but the same word.
-Zipwow