...for a poor game. One of my favorite all-time games to play was Combat on the Atari 2600. Even by 2600 standards it had pretty lame graphics, but it was a blast (and a sure way to wear out those awful joysticks!). Why? Because the gameplay was FUN. It had a whole bunch of options (tanks, bouncing bullets, big planes, little planes, etc), you could play over and over and over with few delays, and it was truly competitive -- there was a great mix of luck and skill.
It's like the BASF slogan - Graphics don't make a great game, they make a great game better. How many times have you said, "the graphics were cool but the game was okay" ? If the game is really fun you don't even worry so much about the graphics.
Genetic screening will benefit some people. The idea of shared risk is that no one in the pool of people insured knows who will require medical care and who won't. If you can find ways to screen out the "riskier" portions of the pool, you can make more money.
This is really an extension of current insurance practices. Insurance companies started skimming the healtiest people (young, non-smokers, etc.) off the top by offering them lower rates. Providers like Blue Cross, who insured a heck of a lot of people, got stuck with a higher-risk pool, and so their rates would be higher.
What insurance companies would like to do is to put everyone into a pool of one, i.e., they would have a reliable estimate of how much each individual person is going to cost them. Then they charge a bit more than that, and make money. Have a gene which guarantees a certain disease? We aren't going to have the people with good genes subsidize your care -- you have to pay more because you, as a single individual, are unprofitable otherwise. What would happen in the extreme, of course, is that there would be no shared risk anymore -- everyone would be evaluated on their individual profitability. Eliminate the uncertainty of the future, you eliminate the need to pool yourself with "riskier" people.
Some people would benefit with no insurance. Those who never get sick. The question is, do those that are not likely to get sick have a responsibility to those that won't? If the answer is no, then test away, and let the market decide the fate of those who are known risks. If the answer is yes, then we might have to limit the way people are pooled in health insurance. I suspect that many of the people would answer that question based upon their expectations of getting sick.
Patent #1:
An biologically grown, organic neural-network consisting of Neurons(TM) which interface with each other and external devices, called Sensing Organs(TM-separate patent also applied for), and Muscle Technology(TM -- crosslicensed from the BowFlex Corporation), using Nerves(TM of Maxwell House International) which conduct bi-directional microcurrents in order to receive sensory input, control aforementioned external devices, and conduct higher-level cognitive thinking (due to manufacturing tolerances, cognitive thinking is not guaranteed in all models). It will be called Cerveau.
If anyone is using one of these right now, you owe me big time!
Patent #2:
I also submit a business method which consists of simply licensing the use of the Cerveau to individual users (instead of actually selling it to them), installing a neural packet-sniffer which will allow the licensor to monitor the activity of the Cerveau for any unauthorized Thoughts(TM), and remote disable/deactivate the Cerveau. This will also prevent resale/re-installation of the Cerveau into a new Host, and ensure compliance with all approved thought-patterns.
but that moderate percentage of pro-Linux anti-M$ people just ready to jump on the X-box and hack it _must_ have M$'s attention, at the very least.
You're right. Microsoft is smart enough to know how to court developers -- they will encourage the cottage-industry guys, not stop them. If you hack PSX, you get a cease-and-desist letter. If you want to hack X-Box, here's some free tools! For a few bucks, here's a whole development kit. Philosophical differences aside, you give a toy like X-Box with the tools to do whatever you want with it, and hackers/developers will go wild with it.
Does anyone know whether Lego uses child labor? Or maybe they ruthlessly ran the Bric Blocs people out of business. Who cares? They make cool inexpensive toys and let me do what I want with them. And if it's the same with X-Box, you'll see a lot of people say, "well, they're not all bad"...
And more like SETI@Home -- using the net to do distributed computing, but the article seems to indicate that storage will be distributed as well. And I think that all the computers that are part of the network will be dedicated to this task; you won't be able to hook up your home machine to GriPhyN. If you're going to spread out your storage, you will need to be able to rely on it being there (i.e., Joe Homeuser shut off his PC and now we can't get access to the secrets of the atom),
Merkey said Norman described the fracas as "an apparent miscommunication. Andshe also said 'please don't post those e-mails.' "
This suggests that if "those e-mails" had not been posted, MS would not be backing off. The internet hasn't changed the state of intellectual property (as some might think) where companies are now trying to take away the rights of every independent hacker or developer. They always have. It's just that every piddling lawsuit that large corporations file, every cease-and-desist, every vague threatening letter from their law firms, is now posted far and wide. These things have always been going on, but we never heard about them. Microsoft knows that if every time they threaten anyone, it will be all over the net, they will look even worse than they do now (and maybe they realize more now than before how bad that can be for them).
So keep posting them! If their lawyer tells you not to, it ain't 'cause it's in YOUR best interest.
Think of this - make an entire NFL uniform out of small cells of this stuff, and a little box that transmits a map of the forces experienced by each cell over the surface of the uniform. Then you could superimpose a color-coded force map over the footage of the player wearing the uniform and see the forces experienced in, say, a receiver getting slammed by the safety in a slant over the middle.
Maybe this stuff could be used to improve protection for athletes, automobile drivers, jet-fighter pilots, and that Aussie Crocodile Hunter guy.
...would be Apple. The report doesn't mention how Apple manages not to have to charge $1000 for its OS and can stay afloat (never mind <$1000 for both hardware and software with an iMac). Imagine the ads - showing a Bill Gates lookalike holding up poor slobs with a gun (OK, $1000 or your computer won't work). They would sell about a million iMacs the very day windows did that. Then we'd all be trembling in fear of Steve Jobs - he'd make everyone wear black turtlenecks or something.
Methinks Stan J. Liebowitz has been looking at too many of Ross Perot's pie charts.
What Jon is talking about is the efforts of people to squash technology in order to maintain power. What he doesn't include is that the same people would use the very latest technology without binking an eye if it would help their situation. If they could, the MPAA would use 512-bit encryption on DVDs. That's no Luddite. From the dawn of humanity, people have been using technology to assert power over others. Guess what? The internet has brought in a whole bunch of new technologies in a short time. So we're seeing a frantic rush to embrace some technology, and stop others. Most people will use whatever technology they can to gain/keep power, and try to stop technology that gives power to others. Again, that's not Luddite behavior -- it doesn't stem from a pathological/philosophical problem with technology, it stems from fear and greed. You could possibly paint the slashdot crowd as Luddite if you only read articles about DoubleClick or RealNetworks. That's what Jon is doing. Ho-hum.
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Re:The killer "app" for Mayo-at least for me
on
DivX ;-) Deux Update
·
· Score: 2
That's a DVD-RAM, not DVD-R (they are different check out http://www.mpeglabs.com/dvd/dvdrecord/dvd-r.htm). And while you can do MPEG-2 editing, and even save a MPEG-2 file, actually authoring a DVD is another story (check out https://www.proh.com/order-secure.shtml for some idea of what the drives and authoring software cost). You're right, though, that at this point, it's not such a bad deal, other than DVD-authoring -- MPEG2 is still great for archiving, as long as you have a MPEG2 decoder to output the video to tape/monitor. DVD-RAM disks are kind of expensive, but so were CD-R's.
This is like the cold war - it operates under the principle of mutually assured destruction. It's a bit sad that this is the best outcome under the state of software patents. Everyone sits on their missiles, but no one dares fire them because they are vulnerable to the enemy's missiles.
Well, I would not agree with 100%. That would suggest that everything that happens was predetermined by the initial state. I choose to believe otherwise, or if you prefer, that belief was chosen for me.
I thought of doing the VideoCD thing, but I was looking at investing money for new CD mastering software for making VideoCDs, and a DVD player that supports VideoCD. The downside was that the quality is about the same as VHS or worse (though Super VideoCD is better), so using it to master from was questionable, and the max of 45 min per CD was not ideal. I decided to save the money until better technology is available.
What I would want (and pay good money for) is a DVD player that plays this format using regular CD-R's. Kind of like the MP3 CD players, but for video. Like those little discman-sized DVD players (or the VCD players in Asia). Unfortunately, I can imagine the MPAA, DVD-CCA and who knows who else making a fuss over something like that. A guy can dream, though...
I do amateur video (no, not *THAT* kind) for fun, and I know that low-rent videographers like me have been drooling over the thought of being able to make DVD's. You get durability (right now I use a tape drive for archiving video; with DVD I could master right from my archive format), pure digital format, high quality, and portability (you can play on standard home video equipment). The only problem is the high cost of DVD-R drives, media, and DVD authoring software that puts it out of reach. If you can use a standard CD-R recording a standard ISO disc (no new hardware, software, or media), all you would need is a standalone player.
You are right in part, that in the process of teaching and encouraging, even if done in the most gentle fashion, will remove some courses of thought and action from the realm of possibility. So we always have your Clockwork Orange, no matter how we do it. I would still argue that some Clockwork Oranges (CO for short) are better than others. Maybe what I think is a good CO is only because of the CO that I have experienced. The relativistic point of view is that no CO is better than any other CO. I would disagree with that, and say that we can actually use our faculties to determine the best CO for the situation. Also, while the CO we will obviously influence (or forcing a behavior, as you said, though I think that a good CO does not force it) the outcome, it does not completely determine it. The same CO applied to two very similar situations can have drastically different outcomes.
You misunderstand me. What I mean is that if you allow the freedom to choose to be violent, some will choose that, despite any efforts to encourage them otherwise. Of course, you can always warp people (like Clockwork Orange), but that is the wrong course.
The point is that we must not manipulate people to prevent them from being able to choose, and we must recognize that the end result is that some will choose the very thing that we were trying to avert.
I was not using Lord of the Flies as a document of fact, but more like something that reminds us of certain truths. If you don't think that Lord of the Flies is fundamentally true in it's presentation of the natural disposition of man to be cruel (not the only disposition, but part of it), I can accept your opinion. But if you do agree, then you agree with my point about it as far as I intended to use it.
How can you say children have a free choice when you have raised them in a way that will only allow them to make a certain chioce?
That's the real trick, isn't it? Teaching people to not love violence for it's own sake, but always allowing them the freedom to choose to love it if they wish. Because, the truth about that is, that some will choose to be violent no matter what you do. So the shortcut, the easy way, is to not allow any dissent -- to make it impossible to take the wrong path.
Your comment is well taken. Many would take the notion of raising children "properly" to mean that they don't have the capacity to even think about violence, and that children should be sheltered and coddled so they never are tainted by it. Or so sternly disciplined that they won't do it -- "beat it out of 'em." But even children have it within them to be violent and cruel (Lord of the Flies). But children also can be very kind, generous, and loving. Perhaps parents should spend less time trying to discourage the former and more time encouraging the latter.
If 146 million AIM/ICQ users typed on 146 million Packard Bells for 146 million years, would eventually one of them produce the entire works of Jon Katz?
Why do kids love violent games? That's the real question that people should be asking. I suspect that violent games contribute very little to "making" someone a dangerous person (whatever that means). I would say that the popularity of violent games with kids is something to ponder. Locking up all the "bad" video games is like wearing Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses(TM). The problem hasn't changed. If people want violent games off the market, they should be raising their children in such a way that the kids would *freely choose* not to play them, because the violence would not appeal to them.
But blaming "the world" for corrupting their children is more popular because it lets people cry that they are powerless, and if one is powerless, they are also free from the nasty burden of taking responsibility for the problem and doing something about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a dream where little oddly-blocks are not judged by the color of their surface, but by their ascii character-equivalents.
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I saw an AIBO knock-off for about $45 at Walgreens last night. Has anyone played with one of those?
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...for a poor game. One of my favorite all-time games to play was Combat on the Atari 2600. Even by 2600 standards it had pretty lame graphics, but it was a blast (and a sure way to wear out those awful joysticks!). Why? Because the gameplay was FUN. It had a whole bunch of options (tanks, bouncing bullets, big planes, little planes, etc), you could play over and over and over with few delays, and it was truly competitive -- there was a great mix of luck and skill.
It's like the BASF slogan - Graphics don't make a great game, they make a great game better. How many times have you said, "the graphics were cool but the game was okay" ? If the game is really fun you don't even worry so much about the graphics.
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Genetic screening will benefit some people. The idea of shared risk is that no one in the pool of people insured knows who will require medical care and who won't. If you can find ways to screen out the "riskier" portions of the pool, you can make more money.
This is really an extension of current insurance practices. Insurance companies started skimming the healtiest people (young, non-smokers, etc.) off the top by offering them lower rates. Providers like Blue Cross, who insured a heck of a lot of people, got stuck with a higher-risk pool, and so their rates would be higher.
What insurance companies would like to do is to put everyone into a pool of one, i.e., they would have a reliable estimate of how much each individual person is going to cost them. Then they charge a bit more than that, and make money. Have a gene which guarantees a certain disease? We aren't going to have the people with good genes subsidize your care -- you have to pay more because you, as a single individual, are unprofitable otherwise. What would happen in the extreme, of course, is that there would be no shared risk anymore -- everyone would be evaluated on their individual profitability. Eliminate the uncertainty of the future, you eliminate the need to pool yourself with "riskier" people.
Some people would benefit with no insurance. Those who never get sick. The question is, do those that are not likely to get sick have a responsibility to those that won't? If the answer is no, then test away, and let the market decide the fate of those who are known risks. If the answer is yes, then we might have to limit the way people are pooled in health insurance. I suspect that many of the people would answer that question based upon their expectations of getting sick.
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For the record, I submit:
Patent #1:
An biologically grown, organic neural-network consisting of Neurons(TM) which interface with each other and external devices, called Sensing Organs(TM-separate patent also applied for), and Muscle Technology(TM -- crosslicensed from the BowFlex Corporation), using Nerves(TM of Maxwell House International) which conduct bi-directional microcurrents in order to receive sensory input, control aforementioned external devices, and conduct higher-level cognitive thinking (due to manufacturing tolerances, cognitive thinking is not guaranteed in all models). It will be called Cerveau.
If anyone is using one of these right now, you owe me big time!
Patent #2:
I also submit a business method which consists of simply licensing the use of the Cerveau to individual users (instead of actually selling it to them), installing a neural packet-sniffer which will allow the licensor to monitor the activity of the Cerveau for any unauthorized Thoughts(TM), and remote disable/deactivate the Cerveau. This will also prevent resale/re-installation of the Cerveau into a new Host, and ensure compliance with all approved thought-patterns.
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Available up a couple of levels here on the jpl site.
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Who the HELL have I been paying my 5 cents to?!?!!
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but that moderate percentage of pro-Linux anti-M$ people just ready to jump on the X-box and hack it _must_ have M$'s attention, at the very least.
You're right. Microsoft is smart enough to know how to court developers -- they will encourage the cottage-industry guys, not stop them. If you hack PSX, you get a cease-and-desist letter. If you want to hack X-Box, here's some free tools! For a few bucks, here's a whole development kit. Philosophical differences aside, you give a toy like X-Box with the tools to do whatever you want with it, and hackers/developers will go wild with it.
Does anyone know whether Lego uses child labor? Or maybe they ruthlessly ran the Bric Blocs people out of business. Who cares? They make cool inexpensive toys and let me do what I want with them. And if it's the same with X-Box, you'll see a lot of people say, "well, they're not all bad"...
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I'll have it take my AIBO for a walk...
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And more like SETI@Home -- using the net to do distributed computing, but the article seems to indicate that storage will be distributed as well. And I think that all the computers that are part of the network will be dedicated to this task; you won't be able to hook up your home machine to GriPhyN. If you're going to spread out your storage, you will need to be able to rely on it being there (i.e., Joe Homeuser shut off his PC and now we can't get access to the secrets of the atom),
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Merkey said Norman described the fracas as "an apparent miscommunication. Andshe also said 'please don't post those e-mails.' "
This suggests that if "those e-mails" had not been posted, MS would not be backing off. The internet hasn't changed the state of intellectual property (as some might think) where companies are now trying to take away the rights of every independent hacker or developer. They always have. It's just that every piddling lawsuit that large corporations file, every cease-and-desist, every vague threatening letter from their law firms, is now posted far and wide. These things have always been going on, but we never heard about them. Microsoft knows that if every time they threaten anyone, it will be all over the net, they will look even worse than they do now (and maybe they realize more now than before how bad that can be for them).
So keep posting them! If their lawyer tells you not to, it ain't 'cause it's in YOUR best interest.
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Think of this - make an entire NFL uniform out of small cells of this stuff, and a little box that transmits a map of the forces experienced by each cell over the surface of the uniform. Then you could superimpose a color-coded force map over the footage of the player wearing the uniform and see the forces experienced in, say, a receiver getting slammed by the safety in a slant over the middle.
Maybe this stuff could be used to improve protection for athletes, automobile drivers, jet-fighter pilots, and that Aussie Crocodile Hunter guy.
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I thought the guy from Sealand grabbed it when no one was looking.
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...would be Apple. The report doesn't mention how Apple manages not to have to charge $1000 for its OS and can stay afloat (never mind <$1000 for both hardware and software with an iMac). Imagine the ads - showing a Bill Gates lookalike holding up poor slobs with a gun (OK, $1000 or your computer won't work). They would sell about a million iMacs the very day windows did that. Then we'd all be trembling in fear of Steve Jobs - he'd make everyone wear black turtlenecks or something.
Methinks Stan J. Liebowitz has been looking at too many of Ross Perot's pie charts.
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What Jon is talking about is the efforts of people to squash technology in order to maintain power. What he doesn't include is that the same people would use the very latest technology without binking an eye if it would help their situation. If they could, the MPAA would use 512-bit encryption on DVDs. That's no Luddite. From the dawn of humanity, people have been using technology to assert power over others. Guess what? The internet has brought in a whole bunch of new technologies in a short time. So we're seeing a frantic rush to embrace some technology, and stop others. Most people will use whatever technology they can to gain/keep power, and try to stop technology that gives power to others. Again, that's not Luddite behavior -- it doesn't stem from a pathological/philosophical problem with technology, it stems from fear and greed. You could possibly paint the slashdot crowd as Luddite if you only read articles about DoubleClick or RealNetworks. That's what Jon is doing. Ho-hum.
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That's a DVD-RAM, not DVD-R (they are different check out http://www.mpeglabs.com/dvd/dvdrecord/dvd-r.htm). And while you can do MPEG-2 editing, and even save a MPEG-2 file, actually authoring a DVD is another story (check out https://www.proh.com/order-secure.shtml for some idea of what the drives and authoring software cost). You're right, though, that at this point, it's not such a bad deal, other than DVD-authoring -- MPEG2 is still great for archiving, as long as you have a MPEG2 decoder to output the video to tape/monitor. DVD-RAM disks are kind of expensive, but so were CD-R's.
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This is like the cold war - it operates under the principle of mutually assured destruction. It's a bit sad that this is the best outcome under the state of software patents. Everyone sits on their missiles, but no one dares fire them because they are vulnerable to the enemy's missiles.
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Well, I would not agree with 100%. That would suggest that everything that happens was predetermined by the initial state. I choose to believe otherwise, or if you prefer, that belief was chosen for me.
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I thought of doing the VideoCD thing, but I was looking at investing money for new CD mastering software for making VideoCDs, and a DVD player that supports VideoCD. The downside was that the quality is about the same as VHS or worse (though Super VideoCD is better), so using it to master from was questionable, and the max of 45 min per CD was not ideal. I decided to save the money until better technology is available.
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What I would want (and pay good money for) is a DVD player that plays this format using regular CD-R's. Kind of like the MP3 CD players, but for video. Like those little discman-sized DVD players (or the VCD players in Asia). Unfortunately, I can imagine the MPAA, DVD-CCA and who knows who else making a fuss over something like that. A guy can dream, though...
I do amateur video (no, not *THAT* kind) for fun, and I know that low-rent videographers like me have been drooling over the thought of being able to make DVD's. You get durability (right now I use a tape drive for archiving video; with DVD I could master right from my archive format), pure digital format, high quality, and portability (you can play on standard home video equipment). The only problem is the high cost of DVD-R drives, media, and DVD authoring software that puts it out of reach. If you can use a standard CD-R recording a standard ISO disc (no new hardware, software, or media), all you would need is a standalone player.
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You are right in part, that in the process of teaching and encouraging, even if done in the most gentle fashion, will remove some courses of thought and action from the realm of possibility. So we always have your Clockwork Orange, no matter how we do it. I would still argue that some Clockwork Oranges (CO for short) are better than others. Maybe what I think is a good CO is only because of the CO that I have experienced. The relativistic point of view is that no CO is better than any other CO. I would disagree with that, and say that we can actually use our faculties to determine the best CO for the situation. Also, while the CO we will obviously influence (or forcing a behavior, as you said, though I think that a good CO does not force it) the outcome, it does not completely determine it. The same CO applied to two very similar situations can have drastically different outcomes.
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You misunderstand me. What I mean is that if you allow the freedom to choose to be violent, some will choose that, despite any efforts to encourage them otherwise. Of course, you can always warp people (like Clockwork Orange), but that is the wrong course.
The point is that we must not manipulate people to prevent them from being able to choose, and we must recognize that the end result is that some will choose the very thing that we were trying to avert.
I was not using Lord of the Flies as a document of fact, but more like something that reminds us of certain truths. If you don't think that Lord of the Flies is fundamentally true in it's presentation of the natural disposition of man to be cruel (not the only disposition, but part of it), I can accept your opinion. But if you do agree, then you agree with my point about it as far as I intended to use it.
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How can you say children have a free choice when you have raised them in a way that will only allow them to make a certain chioce?
That's the real trick, isn't it? Teaching people to not love violence for it's own sake, but always allowing them the freedom to choose to love it if they wish. Because, the truth about that is, that some will choose to be violent no matter what you do. So the shortcut, the easy way, is to not allow any dissent -- to make it impossible to take the wrong path.
Your comment is well taken. Many would take the notion of raising children "properly" to mean that they don't have the capacity to even think about violence, and that children should be sheltered and coddled so they never are tainted by it. Or so sternly disciplined that they won't do it -- "beat it out of 'em." But even children have it within them to be violent and cruel (Lord of the Flies). But children also can be very kind, generous, and loving. Perhaps parents should spend less time trying to discourage the former and more time encouraging the latter.
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If 146 million AIM/ICQ users typed on 146 million Packard Bells for 146 million years, would eventually one of them produce the entire works of Jon Katz?
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Why do kids love violent games? That's the real question that people should be asking. I suspect that violent games contribute very little to "making" someone a dangerous person (whatever that means). I would say that the popularity of violent games with kids is something to ponder. Locking up all the "bad" video games is like wearing Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses(TM). The problem hasn't changed. If people want violent games off the market, they should be raising their children in such a way that the kids would *freely choose* not to play them, because the violence would not appeal to them.
But blaming "the world" for corrupting their children is more popular because it lets people cry that they are powerless, and if one is powerless, they are also free from the nasty burden of taking responsibility for the problem and doing something about it.
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