Just think about it. What if, you were minding your own business, and then suddenly a wave of relatively inexpensive, highly portable VR headsets that covered all the six senses emerged from Dubai. The kids and young adults got hooked in, arabic became the coolest language in town and suddenly you also find out that they are having huge tournaments playing jihad wargames. How would you react?
Granted, parts of the example might be over the top - but it's important to realize how these sudden social, economical and cultural changes are affecting emerging countries. As someone here already mentioned, they've never had the time to gradually adapt like we did (and even then, for us it went pretty fast -- and we still have a lot of ethic/moral concerns yet to be addressed). I can only imagine how it must be to be a parent, watching my kids yearn after something so extremely different and unknown. Seeing them adapting foreign cultural norms (that might totally crash with my own upbringing) and experiencing the feeling of having absolutely no control. Is it really that strange they're going nuts about it?
Interesting idea, but pool guarding systems based only on video is pretty common. Like PoolView, SwimEye, AngelEye among others. It has existed for many years. As a matter of fact, my brother used to code for one of these systems. It's all underwater video monitoring with pattern detection and works fairly well.
The only scenario where I could see this sonar-version would be practical is in Hotel resorts or other closed areas where visiting kids are given this wristband and then left to roam the premises unattended. Going for private households might be the angle required for Kickstarter, but all in all this seems like a product more suited for the business market, IMHO.
I just had to weigh in here, because every time there's a story about iTunes, i read how much people hate it. Even at work, there has been one or two occasions where someone has talked about iTunes and someone else jumps in showing their disgust of the product.
Apparently there is something wrong with me. I've used iTunes since my first iPod in 2004, on PC. Yes, PC. In the early versions there was a bug that instead of ejecting the CD unmounted it. Makes perfect sense on *nix, but doesn't translate that well to Windows. Anyway, I thought it was fine. I still use it, although on a Mac. I regularly buy albums from the iTunes Store and Bandcamp, even though I have Spotify.
I'm happy, but.. I understand that what I'm doing is wasted, hopeless and that I shouldn't. But I need someone to tell me why, in a way that makes me understand. Because very often, when someone lashes out against iTunes, they expect me to have the same foundation of frustration and agony with it. Music is, at least in my life, highly valued and at times considered a fundamental part of staying happy and productive. So I can understand how something like this not working can cause a minor outburst.
It would actually be great to have a bullet list of the major gripes people had with the product, worded in a manner that I could comprehend. Because it seems to me I might be missing out on a lot. Would anyone care to expand my universe?:)
An idiot with a lot of data, that is. I'm not saying sensors can't help us, but for the general public (that is, non-medical cases), I'd expect these to be as useful as the sleep-ware that tells you if you had good sleep last night. Most people, if getting sick or having slept poorly, will know it already. You could use the same argument for heartbeat sensors when exercising - it's cool and all, but for the layman it's pretty pointless.
The danger here of course, if being such an integrated part of everyday life, is that people start trusting the numbers more than common sense. However, as long as you need to actively do something or have something in order for it to work, I would guess it'll most likely just be a fad.
Politics is an will always be an essential part in any organization. This includes your neighbourhood and your own family. You seem to equate "politics" with something evil and unnecessary, but as long as you're dealing with people, making sure people is on the same team, communication is flowing well - and also getting rid of those who make a negative impact is extremely essential.
If you decide you want nothing to do with "politics" (and thus, "people") - then yes, of course, your chance of getting further life is reduced.
I didn't want to be negative, when I saw the news I got super thrilled since WB3 is one of my absolute favorite games. However, I have to say it looked pretty generic, much like your average freemium game on iOS.
Maybe I just got put off by all the cutesiness, I dunno. Am I just being old and bitter?
+1 for trolling. It took me over a minute of serious thinking about what could ever be "racist" about the original before I got the joke. Hats off to you, Sir:)
..since everything seems to be geared towards Thunderbolt 3 these days. Not that I blame anyone for it, but when I originally bought my Mac Pro "trash can", the option of expanding and upgrading using Thunderbolt was one of the very reasons I chose to go for it.
Right now, I have an excellent desktop that's perfect only with the exception of the GPU. If anyone released a certified (i.e. non-hassle) external GPU I'd have no qualms forking out $1000+. However, Thunderbolt 2 (and hence my machine) seems to be an intermediate generation where everything was possible but didn't catch on.
In my country, vaping is regarded as smoking, and is not allowed on planes, trains, buses or inside any other public space. It's still second hand smoke containing nicotine. Isn't it so in the US?
I've never understood why it's so popular to hate it. I've used it since it came to PC, and for the last few years I've had a Mac. I think it works pretty well, does what it should and looks neat. The only issue I've ever had was with the early PC version, where ejecting the CD would actually unmount it, but no biggie (that's what you get porting something from *nix I guess:))
I have all my CDs ripped and in my iTunes music collection and I purchase stuff from the Store. I also have an iPhone with which I sync music, and used an iPod back in the days with the PC version. Again, no issues. YMMV of course, but in all honesty I would believe an application that has lasted so long and with such a large user base will work pretty well for most people.
Unless you want things in a special way of course, in which case many Apple products are guaranteed to annoy you (but you knew that already).
I routinely avoid any products that require a smartphone to operate. Why? Because in practice the longevity of the device depends on the vendors continuously updating the software to support new operating systems - this is especially true for iOS.
In 10 years, you're almost guaranteed there's no way to make it work.
I didn't say this would happen tomorrow. I merely stated that, in order for us evolve further, we will have to do something about it ourselves. And judging by human instinct and competition, we will. Whatever priorities NASA had in the last decades are completely irrelevant to the discussion.
We cannot populate the galaxy...because distance. The nearest star outside of our system is way too far away. We could never reach there. And no, we cannot build a spaceship that can go any appreciable fraction of the speed of light and there is no such thing as wormholes we can travel through.
And what if we can slumber for millions of years, lying deactivated until we reach something of interest? Even if there turns out there is no way to reach places faster than light, if we have the possibility to adapt ourselves accordingly, why wouldn't we? Although instant communication across thousands of lightyears would be nice, it's by no means a requirement for further colonization.
I'm probably going to be lynched by saying this, but in order to fix ourselves and populate the galaxy, we basically have two options:
1. Augment ourselves, using gene technology, computers etc
2. Ditch ourselves and build a totally new, superior species
It's pretty evident that although we have won the top spot here on Earth, we're pretty feeble anywhere else. If we want to expand and spread out across the universe, we need to fix things. Maybe we'll divert into different species designed to live in different environments. Maybe we'll develop a superior brain and switch bodies as needed. Maybe we'll transition into virtual beings. Maybe we'll fuse into a collective mind. Maybe something totally different.
Who knows? One thing is certain, though. If it can be done, someone will do it, and whomever gets it working will probably gain possibilities beyond what we can imagine today, ushering in a new era of colonization and discovery. Personally I see this as natural progession - and it's beautiful!
“When the limits of free speech are trespassed, when it is about criminal expressions, sedition, incitement to carry out criminal offences that threaten people, such content has to be deleted from the net,” said German Justice Minister Heiko Maas.
sedition |sd()n| noun [ mass noun ]: conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.
Now that can be interpreted in many different ways. I would love to know there's an error in the translation somewhere.
Sure, banning incitement to carry out criminal offences is fine. But this "war" against hate speech has a bit of a sour taste to me. What's next, making it illegal to utter anti-democratic opinion? And how would this help anything, really?
Wish I had mod points here. I get really surpised about the arguments regarding "what about single people and where's their compensation"? It's quite simple, getting kids is paramount to keeping the society alive. You don't pay taxes for yourself, you pay taxes to benefit the society around you. It's not about YOU, it's about US (which you are a part of). Our duty in life is to work and pay taxes; this keeps civilization alive. Happy people are more productive, and have a higher chance of making babies, so having a content population is important. Sometimes, doing "the right thing" (i.e. procreating) can be difficult, so it's important with nationwide incentives and subsidies. Making these things up to whomever is a person's employer is unwise, since they don't have the long term perspective needed (they will most likely not reap the benefit of your child's labor, and they have no guarantee you'll work for them for the rest of your life). You also risk increasing social inequality for no good reason, potentially helping to destabilize the society.
Making sure the country is working well should not be the responsibility of a for-profit company; it's the job of the government. Extra perks are nice, but once the "perks" amount to vital necessities like health care, vacation and basic maternity leave it would seem to me like a somewhat unhealthy power balance. Being raised in a social democracy makes me biased I guess, but I can't for the life of me understand why the U.S government isn't more involved in creating laws and making policies to ensure a general minimum of security for its workers? I would really love to hear any proper arguments against it from Real Americans(tm), since what we're fed with over here in Europe is general "US is evil and crazy" news/propaganda, making it difficult to know what's fact about your country and what isn't.
Granted, it's been many years since i was an avid reader of PC Format and the likes, but it seems kind of weird for a computer magazine to write about a car. Is this common these days to have "PC" equal "techie things"?
Articles like these are absolutely worthless. Sure, it's always interesting to see some numbers, but what matters is how it works. Saying the entire phone is bad purely based on its technical specifications says a lot about the reviewer. Quote: "[The Ubuntu phone is]... a phone that is so middle of the road it could be arrested for loitering". Is this journalism?
Can anybody please tell my how such an article is able to reach the Slashdot front page?
If they didn't notify the authorities and got permission before placing cameras in public, that's not just illegal (at least in my country), but also a huge lapse of judgement.
"Students were instructed to take their cameras home and to place them in locations that would provide interesting scenes with bright sunlight". With no warning about adhering to local laws and what is defined as an acceptable location? Somebody should get a fine, but whether the students or the university is to blame is an interesting question.
When I was young and worked as a sailor, we would occasionally dip bread in etanol and feed it to seagulls. Not only were they crazy after it, but they got really drunk and wanted more, more, more. It attracted a large number of birds and they started acting more and more "human", crashing into each other mid-air, fighting, yelling etc. The behavioral pattern was very familiar indeed. There was no doubt they knew the effects of what they ate and that they were craving for it. Although they would come for normal bread as well, the interest was never as high as when we gave them alcohol.
Slashdot Mirror
Just think about it. What if, you were minding your own business, and then suddenly a wave of relatively inexpensive, highly portable VR headsets that covered all the six senses emerged from Dubai. The kids and young adults got hooked in, arabic became the coolest language in town and suddenly you also find out that they are having huge tournaments playing jihad wargames. How would you react?
Granted, parts of the example might be over the top - but it's important to realize how these sudden social, economical and cultural changes are affecting emerging countries. As someone here already mentioned, they've never had the time to gradually adapt like we did (and even then, for us it went pretty fast -- and we still have a lot of ethic/moral concerns yet to be addressed). I can only imagine how it must be to be a parent, watching my kids yearn after something so extremely different and unknown. Seeing them adapting foreign cultural norms (that might totally crash with my own upbringing) and experiencing the feeling of having absolutely no control. Is it really that strange they're going nuts about it?
Interesting idea, but pool guarding systems based only on video is pretty common. Like PoolView, SwimEye, AngelEye among others. It has existed for many years. As a matter of fact, my brother used to code for one of these systems. It's all underwater video monitoring with pattern detection and works fairly well.
The only scenario where I could see this sonar-version would be practical is in Hotel resorts or other closed areas where visiting kids are given this wristband and then left to roam the premises unattended. Going for private households might be the angle required for Kickstarter, but all in all this seems like a product more suited for the business market, IMHO.
I just had to weigh in here, because every time there's a story about iTunes, i read how much people hate it. Even at work, there has been one or two occasions where someone has talked about iTunes and someone else jumps in showing their disgust of the product.
Apparently there is something wrong with me. I've used iTunes since my first iPod in 2004, on PC. Yes, PC. In the early versions there was a bug that instead of ejecting the CD unmounted it. Makes perfect sense on *nix, but doesn't translate that well to Windows. Anyway, I thought it was fine. I still use it, although on a Mac. I regularly buy albums from the iTunes Store and Bandcamp, even though I have Spotify.
I'm happy, but.. I understand that what I'm doing is wasted, hopeless and that I shouldn't. But I need someone to tell me why, in a way that makes me understand. Because very often, when someone lashes out against iTunes, they expect me to have the same foundation of frustration and agony with it. Music is, at least in my life, highly valued and at times considered a fundamental part of staying happy and productive. So I can understand how something like this not working can cause a minor outburst.
It would actually be great to have a bullet list of the major gripes people had with the product, worded in a manner that I could comprehend. Because it seems to me I might be missing out on a lot. Would anyone care to expand my universe? :)
An idiot with a lot of data, that is. I'm not saying sensors can't help us, but for the general public (that is, non-medical cases), I'd expect these to be as useful as the sleep-ware that tells you if you had good sleep last night. Most people, if getting sick or having slept poorly, will know it already. You could use the same argument for heartbeat sensors when exercising - it's cool and all, but for the layman it's pretty pointless.
The danger here of course, if being such an integrated part of everyday life, is that people start trusting the numbers more than common sense. However, as long as you need to actively do something or have something in order for it to work, I would guess it'll most likely just be a fad.
Politics is an will always be an essential part in any organization. This includes your neighbourhood and your own family. You seem to equate "politics" with something evil and unnecessary, but as long as you're dealing with people, making sure people is on the same team, communication is flowing well - and also getting rid of those who make a negative impact is extremely essential.
If you decide you want nothing to do with "politics" (and thus, "people") - then yes, of course, your chance of getting further life is reduced.
I didn't want to be negative, when I saw the news I got super thrilled since WB3 is one of my absolute favorite games. However, I have to say it looked pretty generic, much like your average freemium game on iOS.
Maybe I just got put off by all the cutesiness, I dunno. Am I just being old and bitter?
+1 for trolling. It took me over a minute of serious thinking about what could ever be "racist" about the original before I got the joke. Hats off to you, Sir :)
The day they broke that limit, some cheered. Others looked upon it with dread, knowing the hellspawn that would follow.
..since everything seems to be geared towards Thunderbolt 3 these days. Not that I blame anyone for it, but when I originally bought my Mac Pro "trash can", the option of expanding and upgrading using Thunderbolt was one of the very reasons I chose to go for it.
Right now, I have an excellent desktop that's perfect only with the exception of the GPU. If anyone released a certified (i.e. non-hassle) external GPU I'd have no qualms forking out $1000+. However, Thunderbolt 2 (and hence my machine) seems to be an intermediate generation where everything was possible but didn't catch on.
In my country, vaping is regarded as smoking, and is not allowed on planes, trains, buses or inside any other public space. It's still second hand smoke containing nicotine. Isn't it so in the US?
I've never understood why it's so popular to hate it. I've used it since it came to PC, and for the last few years I've had a Mac. I think it works pretty well, does what it should and looks neat. The only issue I've ever had was with the early PC version, where ejecting the CD would actually unmount it, but no biggie (that's what you get porting something from *nix I guess :))
I have all my CDs ripped and in my iTunes music collection and I purchase stuff from the Store. I also have an iPhone with which I sync music, and used an iPod back in the days with the PC version. Again, no issues. YMMV of course, but in all honesty I would believe an application that has lasted so long and with such a large user base will work pretty well for most people.
Unless you want things in a special way of course, in which case many Apple products are guaranteed to annoy you (but you knew that already).
I routinely avoid any products that require a smartphone to operate. Why? Because in practice the longevity of the device depends on the vendors continuously updating the software to support new operating systems - this is especially true for iOS.
In 10 years, you're almost guaranteed there's no way to make it work.
I didn't say this would happen tomorrow. I merely stated that, in order for us evolve further, we will have to do something about it ourselves. And judging by human instinct and competition, we will. Whatever priorities NASA had in the last decades are completely irrelevant to the discussion.
We cannot populate the galaxy...because distance. The nearest star outside of our system is way too far away. We could never reach there. And no, we cannot build a spaceship that can go any appreciable fraction of the speed of light and there is no such thing as wormholes we can travel through.
And what if we can slumber for millions of years, lying deactivated until we reach something of interest? Even if there turns out there is no way to reach places faster than light, if we have the possibility to adapt ourselves accordingly, why wouldn't we? Although instant communication across thousands of lightyears would be nice, it's by no means a requirement for further colonization.
I'm probably going to be lynched by saying this, but in order to fix ourselves and populate the galaxy, we basically have two options:
It's pretty evident that although we have won the top spot here on Earth, we're pretty feeble anywhere else. If we want to expand and spread out across the universe, we need to fix things. Maybe we'll divert into different species designed to live in different environments. Maybe we'll develop a superior brain and switch bodies as needed. Maybe we'll transition into virtual beings. Maybe we'll fuse into a collective mind. Maybe something totally different.
Who knows? One thing is certain, though. If it can be done, someone will do it, and whomever gets it working will probably gain possibilities beyond what we can imagine today, ushering in a new era of colonization and discovery. Personally I see this as natural progession - and it's beautiful!
From the article:
sedition |sd()n| noun [ mass noun ]: conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.
Now that can be interpreted in many different ways. I would love to know there's an error in the translation somewhere.
Sure, banning incitement to carry out criminal offences is fine. But this "war" against hate speech has a bit of a sour taste to me. What's next, making it illegal to utter anti-democratic opinion? And how would this help anything, really?
https://www.random.org?
I don't know how it's related to this article except the word "entropy", but that was a great read, thanks.
Wish I had mod points here. I get really surpised about the arguments regarding "what about single people and where's their compensation"? It's quite simple, getting kids is paramount to keeping the society alive. You don't pay taxes for yourself, you pay taxes to benefit the society around you. It's not about YOU, it's about US (which you are a part of). Our duty in life is to work and pay taxes; this keeps civilization alive. Happy people are more productive, and have a higher chance of making babies, so having a content population is important. Sometimes, doing "the right thing" (i.e. procreating) can be difficult, so it's important with nationwide incentives and subsidies. Making these things up to whomever is a person's employer is unwise, since they don't have the long term perspective needed (they will most likely not reap the benefit of your child's labor, and they have no guarantee you'll work for them for the rest of your life). You also risk increasing social inequality for no good reason, potentially helping to destabilize the society.
Making sure the country is working well should not be the responsibility of a for-profit company; it's the job of the government. Extra perks are nice, but once the "perks" amount to vital necessities like health care, vacation and basic maternity leave it would seem to me like a somewhat unhealthy power balance. Being raised in a social democracy makes me biased I guess, but I can't for the life of me understand why the U.S government isn't more involved in creating laws and making policies to ensure a general minimum of security for its workers? I would really love to hear any proper arguments against it from Real Americans(tm), since what we're fed with over here in Europe is general "US is evil and crazy" news/propaganda, making it difficult to know what's fact about your country and what isn't.
Granted, it's been many years since i was an avid reader of PC Format and the likes, but it seems kind of weird for a computer magazine to write about a car. Is this common these days to have "PC" equal "techie things"?
I want titties, but these stupid alerts keep popping up
That's fantastic advice if "yourself" is in the top 1% of the most awesome prospects.
It'll work quite fine for everyone looking for a partner within their own league.
Articles like these are absolutely worthless. Sure, it's always interesting to see some numbers, but what matters is how it works. Saying the entire phone is bad purely based on its technical specifications says a lot about the reviewer. Quote: "[The Ubuntu phone is] ... a phone that is so middle of the road it could be arrested for loitering". Is this journalism?
Can anybody please tell my how such an article is able to reach the Slashdot front page?
If they didn't notify the authorities and got permission before placing cameras in public, that's not just illegal (at least in my country), but also a huge lapse of judgement.
"Students were instructed to take their cameras home and to place them in locations that would provide interesting scenes with bright sunlight". With no warning about adhering to local laws and what is defined as an acceptable location? Somebody should get a fine, but whether the students or the university is to blame is an interesting question.
When I was young and worked as a sailor, we would occasionally dip bread in etanol and feed it to seagulls. Not only were they crazy after it, but they got really drunk and wanted more, more, more. It attracted a large number of birds and they started acting more and more "human", crashing into each other mid-air, fighting, yelling etc. The behavioral pattern was very familiar indeed. There was no doubt they knew the effects of what they ate and that they were craving for it. Although they would come for normal bread as well, the interest was never as high as when we gave them alcohol.