Why is this devolution? It is simply selection pressure: the higher life forms are pressured into extinction, and the jellyfish and algae go back to evolving: one taxonomy branch is pruned so that another may try. That IS evolution (well, a big hoerkin' chunk of it).
Just to be clear: I was implying that "hiding" meant "avoiding every idiotic marketing drone who thinks a CDROM is a coffee holder...", not "hiding cowardly."
Well, seeing that firefox does a 5... 4... 3... 2.. 1... timeout to install unsigned extensions, perhaps they should crack down a bit more on authenticity, and only provide extensions registered on their site or something similar.
I think this is a FF problem, just like with other SW that gets hacked.
Toru Iwatani (sp?) posed this very same question 20 years ago. In fact, I believe he specifically went on to investigate this, although I don't have a link. He was very interested in the range of emotions possible through computer games.
In the past I thought a 3D virtual suicide simulator would be pretty cool. Perhaps it could even be used in therapy (like fear of heights VR therapy). Could you capture the anxiety up to and including the very end? I got the idea from while rewatching the classic flick "Brainstorm" about 15 years ago, but Macromedia was just getting started and I didn't really have the creativity (or motivation) to pull it together.
I'd like to see a future of gaming where other emotions beyond rage and bloodlust and happy-laughter are explored.
I find it forces me to get organized and cut out all the bullsh*t time, but I am pushing 30.
I now have a tight routine where I leave work @5ish, workout at the gym, drive home, shower, make dinner, do a daily chore (garbage, unload dishwasher, or wash counters), then be on the PC by 8-8:30pm for 3 solid hours of WoW.
Prior to WoW, I'd be putzing around the gym, yapping with people at the stations, putting around the house with the TV on trying to get dinner made, and would take me until 10pm to do that routine. I shaved two hours of wasted time to make room for WoW. Plus I feel like I earned that 3 hours of gametime. This is 3~5 days a week depending on how much work I have.
Although, after 3 months I'm getting a bit bored of WoW. I thought it would be more addictive, but I really don't feel like waiting to raid elites 20 times or more to get epic tier drops, that is boring and hard to arrange for someone that plays ~3 hours at a time. I'm excited about the expansion, but I don't want to unsubscribe and lose my alts...
So anyway, I think it is two parts:
a) time management.
b) being older. i think it may be harder for kids that aren't burnt on 25+ years of grinding in RPGs to spend too much time. See, i have the scars from whomping thousands of monsters in Ultima 3 Exodus for gold... repeat this every 2 years since the early 80's and you can see how i just can't spend my whole life doing the same thing again and again...:)
Re:Telepathic feasibility based on natual selectio
on
Virtual Worlds and ESP
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· Score: 1
Are you suggesting:
a) telepathic ability so pronounced as to provide "unnatural knowledge" may spontaneously appear in a population, and, b) people are distrustful and tend to apply selection pressure by killing people that don't think like themselves?
If so, I think you're trying to bridge the grand canyon with dental floss.
If that's the case, why do we have so many revered geniouses throughout the history of mankind, and zero revered telepaths? I think you're theory is bogus because if it were correct, we would have exterminated ourselves into a beige collective of mindless drones with no original thoughts. Oh, wait...
People with greater than average skill are always derided by the masses.
It is not uncommon for people with psychological disorders to think they are better than everyone around them, or "more aware" of what's truly going on in the world. Especially people that have severe insecurity issues.
About 4 years ago, I went to a local music venue for the weekly talk show hosted by musicians and some pathetic psychic was there claiming "quantum physics proves crystals can heal you". Every other claim she made was punctuated with a bunch of keywords about quantum mechanics (esp. strange action at a distance and observability).
I finally got the mic and asked her opinion of Schrodinger's dissent and if she could respond to one of the founder's main gripes, and she had never even heard of Schrodinger. I asked how she could possibly quote QM every other sentence and never had heard of it's primary founder. She brushed it off with some analogy about knowing how to hit a baseball without understanding all that complicated math.
Don't fall for people who pick a hole in scientific understanding and try to defend pseudoscientific babble while hiding behind things they don't understand.
You are 100% correct. It is absolutely meaningless. But I do it anyway. Why? Boredom? A psychological need to choose sides in a polarized world? The satisfaction in getting to say "BURN!" 50% of the time?...or maybe the fact that all fanboys (and fangirls) realize that such flamewars amount to nothing more than a modern, sapien equivalent of savannah cheetah cubs fighting each other during playtime.:)
think what I'm getting at is that, if you look at IBM's PC division in 1985 versus 1995, things looked a lot better for them in 1985: they had a huge chunk of the PC market
I think we basically agree. Yes, they dominated the x86 market, because they WERE the x86 market, they drove the standards (Ps2 bus anyone?). Gateway, Dell were entering as Wang and Rainbow and Capro and other x86 beige boxes were exiting, so the market fragmented as the home PC boom began.
Now, in 1995 and later, they were still a player, and probably more important in the notebook space than in desktops later on. But they definitely were nowhere near their former glory.
However, if you look at business PCs, and I'm speaking about my company only (90k+ semi co., take a guess which one;-) uses exclusively IBM PCs since ~94, with a 2 year upgrade cycle. IBM dominated the business PC world in the 90's because they had insanely comprehensive service contracts where they basically did all the software and hardware servicing on site, while Dell and Gateway were shipping boxes to CompUSA for mom & pop. I know for a fact that the retail market is 3~4x smaller than the corporate market, so if IBM dominated there, then by association they would dominate the PC market.
Again, I have no solid data, but it is an interesting comparison. I think once it costs less than $10 billion USD to compete in the semiconductor arena, well see some diverse competition. Maybe that will happen when the next emergent technology displaces the behemoth of modern photolithography....
Ah, thanks. "the PC division", that makes more sense now in the gp's context, but the general point raised doesn't make sense due to market entry barriers, but that is discussed thoroughly in other posts.
Are you seriously comparing IBM and Atari? Seriously!?!
IBM is a CENTURY old old, a market cap bigger than Intel -or- GM, still a value giant with massive capital and a solid product base (which to its credit completely shifted its service division to nimbly adapt to 80/90's technology shift), and shows no sign of going away.
...with it's secret laser-based preemptive satellite technology launched on columbia. in fact, they had to blow up the columbia on re-entry to prevent the pilots from discussing what they had put in orbit.
That's a good point. I was just reading the comments on Digg, and with a larger audience comes more idiots. Plus the news isn't entirely "news for nerds". I agree the comments here are generally better, but that's probably due to moderation and clueless audience members (we've all seen blathering idiots moderated to +5 insightful). Does Carmack post to Digg?
I see stories on Digg, Wired, and Drudge hours (sometimes DAYS) before they are on/.
Granted, I can't live without the flamewars and discussions I've come to know and love in this moderated world of slashdot (at least since 1998), but I think the article may have a point...
The data shows a flat line for several hundred years, then a "hocky stick" increase coinciding with our use of fossil fuel, to use the term in TFA.
That is the crux of the issue.
Now I know people who would probably fire back with the cliche "correlation doesn't imply blah blah blah", and then shut their brains off. The cliche is overused, and correlation ABSOLUTELY DOES point fingers at possible sources of the observed trend (that's called the Conclusion of the Results, or rather the interpretation of the experts).
Since NO OTHER MEASUREMENTS trend the same way, the choices are fairly limited as to what could be causing it.
I differ from 99% of the population here: cell phones are shit. More examples of how people will suffer with crappy technology. A cell phone would be 3~5x the cost of my land line. Even with a $15/month pay as you go Cingular phone (which I have), it is 2x the cost and I only get 60 minutes of chat time, assuming the reception works.
So much for the free market offering products their customers want.
Slashdot Mirror
um, because words are important?
and that's coming from a supposed geek.
burn.
Why is this devolution? It is simply selection pressure: the higher life forms are pressured into extinction, and the jellyfish and algae go back to evolving: one taxonomy branch is pruned so that another may try. That IS evolution (well, a big hoerkin' chunk of it).
Just to be clear: I was implying that "hiding" meant "avoiding every idiotic marketing drone who thinks a CDROM is a coffee holder...", not "hiding cowardly."
Serious, my company has literally hundreds of thousands of machines, both Linux and MS.
The sysadmins hide behind a ticket-request system for filing issues.
They dispatch low-paid tech minions to fix issues.
How would I even find a sysadmin to thank them?
I would think anonymity is a virtue in this biz.
or because you're trolling.
Damn, I guess I have to throw back ANOTHER comic-book guy... The sea is full of them today.
Well, seeing that firefox does a 5... 4... 3... 2.. 1... timeout to install unsigned extensions, perhaps they should crack down a bit more on authenticity, and only provide extensions registered on their site or something similar.
I think this is a FF problem, just like with other SW that gets hacked.
Toru Iwatani (sp?) posed this very same question 20 years ago. In fact, I believe he specifically went on to investigate this, although I don't have a link. He was very interested in the range of emotions possible through computer games.
In the past I thought a 3D virtual suicide simulator would be pretty cool. Perhaps it could even be used in therapy (like fear of heights VR therapy). Could you capture the anxiety up to and including the very end? I got the idea from while rewatching the classic flick "Brainstorm" about 15 years ago, but Macromedia was just getting started and I didn't really have the creativity (or motivation) to pull it together.
I'd like to see a future of gaming where other emotions beyond rage and bloodlust and happy-laughter are explored.
Ha ha! Good catch!
That's a pretty big parallel that zoomed right over my head...
I find it forces me to get organized and cut out all the bullsh*t time, but I am pushing 30.
:)
I now have a tight routine where I leave work @5ish, workout at the gym, drive home, shower, make dinner, do a daily chore (garbage, unload dishwasher, or wash counters), then be on the PC by 8-8:30pm for 3 solid hours of WoW.
Prior to WoW, I'd be putzing around the gym, yapping with people at the stations, putting around the house with the TV on trying to get dinner made, and would take me until 10pm to do that routine. I shaved two hours of wasted time to make room for WoW. Plus I feel like I earned that 3 hours of gametime. This is 3~5 days a week depending on how much work I have.
Although, after 3 months I'm getting a bit bored of WoW. I thought it would be more addictive, but I really don't feel like waiting to raid elites 20 times or more to get epic tier drops, that is boring and hard to arrange for someone that plays ~3 hours at a time. I'm excited about the expansion, but I don't want to unsubscribe and lose my alts...
So anyway, I think it is two parts:
a) time management.
b) being older. i think it may be harder for kids that aren't burnt on 25+ years of grinding in RPGs to spend too much time. See, i have the scars from whomping thousands of monsters in Ultima 3 Exodus for gold... repeat this every 2 years since the early 80's and you can see how i just can't spend my whole life doing the same thing again and again...
Are you suggesting:
a) telepathic ability so pronounced as to provide "unnatural knowledge" may spontaneously appear in a population, and,
b) people are distrustful and tend to apply selection pressure by killing people that don't think like themselves?
If so, I think you're trying to bridge the grand canyon with dental floss.
If that's the case, why do we have so many revered geniouses throughout the history of mankind, and zero revered telepaths? I think you're theory is bogus because if it were correct, we would have exterminated ourselves into a beige collective of mindless drones with no original thoughts. Oh, wait...
People with greater than average skill are always derided by the masses.
It is not uncommon for people with psychological disorders to think they are better than everyone around them, or "more aware" of what's truly going on in the world. Especially people that have severe insecurity issues.
Are you for real?
About 4 years ago, I went to a local music venue for the weekly talk show hosted by musicians and some pathetic psychic was there claiming "quantum physics proves crystals can heal you". Every other claim she made was punctuated with a bunch of keywords about quantum mechanics (esp. strange action at a distance and observability).
I finally got the mic and asked her opinion of Schrodinger's dissent and if she could respond to one of the founder's main gripes, and she had never even heard of Schrodinger. I asked how she could possibly quote QM every other sentence and never had heard of it's primary founder. She brushed it off with some analogy about knowing how to hit a baseball without understanding all that complicated math.
Don't fall for people who pick a hole in scientific understanding and try to defend pseudoscientific babble while hiding behind things they don't understand.
You are 100% correct. It is absolutely meaningless. But I do it anyway. Why? Boredom? A psychological need to choose sides in a polarized world? The satisfaction in getting to say "BURN!" 50% of the time? ...or maybe the fact that all fanboys (and fangirls) realize that such flamewars amount to nothing more than a modern, sapien equivalent of savannah cheetah cubs fighting each other during playtime. :)
...us Intel fanboys get to see AMD scrambling to polish a turd, the same way Intel had to with the P4 core for the past 4 years.
AMD CEO to Marketing: "Attention marketing team: Full Steam Ahead with the scrambling and spinning in place!"
I'm going to take a few moments to enjoy AMD's panic. Because: a) its been a long time, and b) it probably won't last long.
think what I'm getting at is that, if you look at IBM's PC division in 1985 versus 1995, things looked a lot better for them in 1985: they had a huge chunk of the PC market
I think we basically agree. Yes, they dominated the x86 market, because they WERE the x86 market, they drove the standards (Ps2 bus anyone?). Gateway, Dell were entering as Wang and Rainbow and Capro and other x86 beige boxes were exiting, so the market fragmented as the home PC boom began.
Now, in 1995 and later, they were still a player, and probably more important in the notebook space than in desktops later on. But they definitely were nowhere near their former glory.
However, if you look at business PCs, and I'm speaking about my company only (90k+ semi co., take a guess which one
Again, I have no solid data, but it is an interesting comparison. I think once it costs less than $10 billion USD to compete in the semiconductor arena, well see some diverse competition. Maybe that will happen when the next emergent technology displaces the behemoth of modern photolithography....
Ah, thanks. "the PC division", that makes more sense now in the gp's context, but the general point raised doesn't make sense due to market entry barriers, but that is discussed thoroughly in other posts.
Apparently my submission was rejected, but AMD cut 1,000 folks too, include GEODE!
2 991
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
Are you seriously comparing IBM and Atari? Seriously!?!
IBM is a CENTURY old old, a market cap bigger than Intel -or- GM, still a value giant with massive capital and a solid product base (which to its credit completely shifted its service division to nimbly adapt to 80/90's technology shift), and shows no sign of going away.
...with it's secret laser-based preemptive satellite technology launched on columbia. in fact, they had to blow up the columbia on re-entry to prevent the pilots from discussing what they had put in orbit.
Jeez, talk about jumping the gun for content... at least wait for the corpse to cool (Like, February).
That's a good point. I was just reading the comments on Digg, and with a larger audience comes more idiots. Plus the news isn't entirely "news for nerds". I agree the comments here are generally better, but that's probably due to moderation and clueless audience members (we've all seen blathering idiots moderated to +5 insightful). Does Carmack post to Digg?
I see stories on Digg, Wired, and Drudge hours (sometimes DAYS) before they are on /.
Granted, I can't live without the flamewars and discussions I've come to know and love in this moderated world of slashdot (at least since 1998), but I think the article may have a point...
Sadly, I don't think four misstatements in four paragraphs is a /. record
Good job proving your point!
The data shows a flat line for several hundred years, then a "hocky stick" increase coinciding with our use of fossil fuel, to use the term in TFA.
That is the crux of the issue.
Now I know people who would probably fire back with the cliche "correlation doesn't imply blah blah blah", and then shut their brains off. The cliche is overused, and correlation ABSOLUTELY DOES point fingers at possible sources of the observed trend (that's called the Conclusion of the Results, or rather the interpretation of the experts).
Since NO OTHER MEASUREMENTS trend the same way, the choices are fairly limited as to what could be causing it.
I want a copper-line phone service, not cell.
I differ from 99% of the population here: cell phones are shit. More examples of how people will suffer with crappy technology. A cell phone would be 3~5x the cost of my land line. Even with a $15/month pay as you go Cingular phone (which I have), it is 2x the cost and I only get 60 minutes of chat time, assuming the reception works.
So much for the free market offering products their customers want.