There was a time when the telephone was a thing that fit fairly well into the other ideas which surround a civilized society. That time has longe since passed.
With land line phones let me advance the idea of call waiting.
In a normal civilized society, if I am talking with you (face to face) about something and my good buddy Joe walks up and says he wants to talk to me about something I have one of two choices.
1 - Integrate Joe into the conversaion 2 - Ask Joe to please wait for a moment. Politely finish my conversation with you and then talk to him.
If we had a "face to face" call waiting I would immediately turn from you, ignoring anything you have to say (possibly waiting until you finish you sentence) and talk with Joe. That's rude... but it's also excusable because honestly, we don't have a "face to face" version of call waiting. That means that you're BOTH on the phone and it's not quite and heniously inconsiderate for me to ask you to hold on. I don't know who is calling me and it might be an emergancy.
Cell phones take this a quantum leap further. It is one thing to use a cell phone to make important calls in a timely manner. It is alltogether another to forsake the world around you for the voice on the other end of the phone. Cell phones not only make this possible, but they encourage it. A ringing phone DEMANDS to be answered. The user disengages him or her self, often without explanation or excuse, from the person standing in front of them and then carries on a conversation which makes no sence to those they are actualy with (because 1/2 of a conversation is kind of pointless).
When this happens with your friends it -=may=- be excusable. It shouldn't be, but if you want to treat your friends like a jerk, that's your problem. When it happens with TOTAL STRANGERS it is another thing. Waiters, clerks, these people are doing their jobs and are trying to serve you. If you dismiss them for a disembodied voice you trivilize their job and in many ways themselves as an entity.
So what is there to deal with? Besides distraction, inconsideration (is that a word?), rudeness, and lets not forget the overwhelming urge to slap some of these people.... nothing. Why do you ask?
Not really. The Space Shuttle actualy has a larger cargo capacity than the Apollo units ever got close to.
The Saturn V was designed to do two things. Escape the Earth's gravity well (or at least the great majority of it) and prove to the Soviets that if we could land a man on the moon we could damn sure land a hydrogen bomb on Moscow.
The Shuttle is a little more utilitarian. It is not deisigned to escape as much of the gravity well but rather focuses on providing a method of getting usefull stuff into orbit.
Saturn V might be a usefull way to get stuff very far away from Earth very quickly (a manned Mars mission probably won't use shuttle like craft) but it's not much for cargo capacity. The famous golf clubs had to be specialy designed and smuggled on board.
Where oh where are my mod points when I need them?
Thank you, finaly someone who understand the differnce between what you have the constitutional right to do and what you probably shouldn't do for your own sake.
I've got a first generation portable CD-R player with MP3 playback. That's 10 hours per disk, or roughly 175 3 min songs.
Honestly, that's enough for me. I know they built in MP3 support from the DVD because, honestly, it didn't cost anything to do that. Nonetheless, it's overkill.
Interestingly enough, US Banks have the power to create and destroy money.
The way it works is this. MyBank (insured FDIC) has a certain amount of money on deposit with its local Federal Reserve Bank (NY, Phillie, Whatnot). The Federal Reserve then sets a multiplier, allowing MyBank to loan out Z*Deposit where Z is a number chosen between 1 and however many Cherios Allen Greenspan ate for breakfast this morning.
MyBank then lends you that money. It just up and lends it to you. It didn't have the money to lend, but the Fed said it could so it does.
The key to the entire system is the ASSUMPTION that money is scarce. Or rather, that money has inherent value.
In the case of a MMORPG money is created (typicaly) by killing stuff. This killing of stuff is work, and requires the player (or a cleverly written bot) to spend time persuing this activity.
This time is equivilent to work. As long as people feel that they have to work to get money and that money in turn can be used to get someone else to work for them (or something else) the economy will keep going.
So in essence, as long as the player can not randomly create money (but can work for it), it really is just as valid as any other national currency (except perhaps the old Lira, which was so worthless as to require several million to buy a mellon)
Lets all remember that when the government of South Africa started producing generic AIDS drugs and the pharmasudical companies sued them that public pressure caused those companies to drop the suit.
International law allows for the circumvention of patents in extenuating circumstances... like a public health emergancy. Isn't breast cancer the #1 killer in women of several age groups?
"Fossil Carbon" as its called consists of carbon atoms (bonded who random other stuff) which has been effectively removed from the atomsphere by natural processes. Coal, Oil, Natural Gas: all of these represent large stocks of carbon which no longer form a component of our atmosphere.
Thus, when you burn them, you unlock that carbon from the mineral deposits and release it into the atmosphere. This results in a net gain of carbon in the atmosphere.
Using alcohol based fules the carbon you are releasing is coming from the atmosphere in the first place, not from a mineral source. Assuming a regular harvesting cycle the plants you are growing now are removing CO2 from the atmosphere as you burn off the last crop. Net result is therefore 0 (or close to it).
See, no C02 is removed from the atmosphere by digging a hole in the ground from which to suck oil. That's the key.
Personaly I'm betting on a few aliens with amnesia sitting around watching sitcoms. I imagine they'll let us know when the stars are right and the Earth is in Taurus.
1.) You -=knew=- that the charity was not going to get the commission if you didn't buy it through their site
2.) You, the purchasing party, made that decision on your own. No one made it for you.
3.) All of the money involved was your own, and (again) it was your choice.
With this theftware, the situation is different. EULAs are paper tigers in court and we all know it. Even if they weren't, I'm not entirely sure tha this kind of scheme is legal in the first place, as there appears no way to cancel the contract once the software is uninstalled.
These companies are not putting up the money to buy the CD, they are taking it out of someone elses pockets. By any definition that is theft, particularly if you can demonstrate the irrelevancy of the EULA.
This is true. But the movie reviewers generaly aren't forced to wear someone elses prescription glasses.
The point is that when the music sounds tinny and strained and the mixing sounds generaly poor it changes the feel of the peice.
Consider the soundtrack from Crimson Tide (ideal for this example). Crimson Tide has a thunderous bass line which is a running theme in the soundtrack. Listening to this on a walkman with cheep "came with the damn thing" ear phones is an injustice. You simply can not appreciate the texture of the kettle drums used, the rough sound of the real animal hide drum heads and the subtleties of the choral segments.
Truely great music, especialy music relying on polyphonic textures (which is pretty much the norm now that we've passed the midpoint of the second millenia AD) relies on complexity and depth to produce movement and resolution. Without the ability to hear the subtleties in the music the experiance is lessened.
They might as well call the reviewers and play the music over the phone.
My wedding photos turned out this way. We agreed to pay a premium for the photographers services in exchange for ownership of the negitives and unlimited rights to create prints from those negitives.
She gave us a -=very=- good deal on this all things considered, enough so that we've made sure that all reprints for the first year will go through her nonwithstanding.
That said, one of the main reasons photographers don't like to turn over negitives to the undeserving populace is that many kinds of film are not easily reproduced by Wal-Mart or whathaveyou. So kinds of negitives, called "pro-negitives" or "pro-film" in the photography buisness, produced horrid greenish tinged nastiness when printed on standard commercial grade equipment like the photo processing equipment at your big chain stores.
void Rant (antagonist sudotcsh) { As a White Wolf Storyteller this comment makes me cringe.
What part of mmoRPG do you not get? ROLE PLAYING GAME!!!! (Pardon my shouting). The entire -=point=- of a roll playing game is to step into someone elses identity for a while, to explore that identity and that world and to understand yourself through the actions of the character you play.
In games I run I -=forbid=- my players to refer to their characters by the phrase "my character." Your character has a name, either use that name or the pronoun "I." Similarly, conversation between players -=must=- take place in the campaign world. The characters are typicaly not telepathic and unless they are anything you say to another player had better be in character. (I'm not really that much of a hardass with it, but I push for it)
The point being is that there is -=not=- a difference between the two. What is real? The character in the game does the things the player tells him to do, he reacts the way the player wants him to react, he is therefore an extension of the will of the player. You are stitting there reading this screen, clicking your mouse (or keyboard or touchpad, or whatever) with your hands, with do what you tell them to, react the way you want them to and are also an extension of your will.
I fail to understand how you can subjectively decide that his character is less real than any other interaction you have with human beings. We all play rolls every day. Are you the same person when you're in a conference with your boss as you are with your significant other? Those are different rolls, different personas that you adopt every day. Just because some personas are more detached than others and exist in a virtual world does not make them any less genuine.
For the record... the next time you pick up a phone and order a pizza.... you didn't order a pizza, you held a peice of plastic up to your head and jabbered at it for a while. Another peice of plastic somewhere ordered the pizza which was delivered to your house. }
It seems the gaming value of this would be to substantialy change the way you view 3d environments, particularly first person shooters. The secondary applications of such a system are somewhat more staggering. Robots aside, the key here is to remember that machines do not need to understand distance in the same way humans do. A laser range finder will work just fine for a robot (in most cases) can be picked up for a few hundred dollars at your country club pro shop (how far was that drive?).
Military uses of this technology are the most impressive. Use of two cameras on an unmanned aircraft (providing the bandwidth problem can be solved) could allow a whole new meaning for fly by remote. Similarly, combination of this technology with infrared imaging systems could remove the flatness associated with nightvision equipment, particularly for those where depth is critical (night helocopter missions for example).
Gamers won't see this for a while though, and I think we'll find that head mounted displays will be the weapon of choice for the average FPS gamer. I just don't want a 4x5 display taking up my deskspace... while I play a fair amount of Unreal and Quake III, it's not enough to justify evicting my traditional monitor:-)
This doesn't really apply, but I know a number of studies have been done with horror films. We know that in the case of a movie which is designed to evoke certain primal emotions in homo-sapian-sapian enjoyment is heightened by watching the film in a crowded theater.
Pherimones are probably the explination... but it's an interesting idea.
Re:Just another Typical Dot Bomb?
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eSuds
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· Score: 2
I'm going to chime in and say that a great deal more money will be made by whoever develops a swarm of nanites which I can keep in my laundry hamper to remove dirt, press, starch and (for the wife) perfume the various articals tossed into it.
Now that could be a problem when little Joey starting crawling in the laundry basket.....
First of all it's the Drake equation. Not the Segan one. The equation, for all of you who don't know, goes something like this.
Probability of Intelegent Life Existing In the Galaxy = Rate of Star formation in the Galaxy * Precentage of those Stars which are like ours * Precentage of afformentioned with have planets * Precentage of planets which are like Earth * precentage of afformentioned planets which develop life * precent likelyhood life will evolve intelegence * precent likelyhood intelegent life will care enough to communicate * lifespan of the civilization.
Yea... that's long. But the point of the entire exercise is this. No matter how small you make any of the terms (as long as they aren't zero) the lifespan of the civilization should outstrip them all. Back in the 1960s we weren't so sure about that. Most of us were convinced that WWIII was just around the corner and that lifespan of a civilization which can communication was something like 40 years. Today we're thining more on the order of the lifespan of our star. Maybe longer.
Next point: Why are we intellegent? Some would say that mankind is the "super preditor" a race which has evolved for the purpose of killing things with our mighty brain. But think about it. Seriously, how good is say, steak for you? Not very. Our bodies are not desiged to deal with a carnivores diet. We are supposed to eat mostly berries, fruits, grains, etc and meet only rarely. Why is that? Because that's what our diet was when we had to find our food.
So intelegence does not come from being a super-preditor. It comes from social intereaction and a desire to propigate the species. Any type of creature which operates well in groups is a candiate for intelegence. Dolphins... apes.... wait... I see a patern.
Of course, those groups are territorial and they do tend to kill each other over time. But then, so are we, and so do we.
I don't really have an opinion on this. Is there life out there? Probably. There's a nearly infinite number of stars in the universe, surely somewhere there's someone else looking up at the sky thinking "are we alone?" But other galaxies are VERY far away... and the numbers within our own galaxy don't look so good. Who knows... maybe someday we'll see humanities First Contact..... But I won't hold my breath.
Ok, someone has to play the devil's advocate here so I guess I'll do it.
Who are we to look down on them? Ok, so China is building its economy by dismanteling computer parts in environmentaly hazerdous ways which are seriously messing with their children's health.
How do you think the US became the economic hegemon it was in the 1940s? It wasn't by recycling or giving a rats ass about child wellfare. It was by employing 8 year old imigrant children in factories for 12 hours a day, paying them slaves wages (or something close) and generaly making life hell for a bunch of people.
Of course now we've forgotton all that. Now we've gotten past our past and we want other States to industrialize and become economicly powerfull according to our ideals and environmental standards. The problem is those ideals and standards are a product of our economic superiority.
You can not expect States like China, India, Vietnam, most of South/Central America etc to pull themselves up by their bootstraps without resorting to the same general horrors that we did. I'm not saying its not possible, just that it's unrealistic.
Look at the photographs of the United States from the early 1900s and late 1800s. It wasn't a pretty place to live. We were a horrid nasty vile little cesspool and from that we have created a fairly impressive society.
So China is playing with fire. They will get burned, just like we did. They will kill their children, just like we did. And maybe someday they to can join the ranks of the post-industrial world. Until then we have to let them do what they can. No one told the US that it wasn't ok to commit our attrocities. Why are we any different?
Re:Chess-playing research seems to be a dead end
on
Men vs. Machines
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· Score: 2
I think it would be facinating to see/design a program which is designed to play ranked chess champions.
Give it the name of the player it's about to play. The software connects to a number of databases, finds the matches in some machine readable code (yea... well... we need that part first I guess) and then "studies" them. Use pattern recognition and a neural net to learn how the opponent thinks etc.
I think that would lend more credibility to the argument of computers as valid players as well. Afterall, that way they'd be doing their own research.
Of course, that could be the way it is now and I could be completely clueless.
Most of this comparison in size goes back to economics. For some figures on sugar production and pricing check out this report [PDF format] from the USDA
The United States drinks a lot of soda for two reasons.
1.) Sugar is CHEEP in this hemisphere. Most of the world's sugar is produced in South, Central, and North America. The entire sugar production of the EU, for example, is outstriped by Brazil.
2.) The United States has a HUGE QUANTITY of money. We are the wealthiest nation on earth right now (but the EU will outstrip us soon... and political unity is closer than most people think). We can buy all that Western Hemisphere sugar with our huge cash reserves and save everyone a bundle on shipping.
Soda is fundamentaly cheeper here. Especialy in quantity (remember, when you buy a can of soda most of the cost is going into the Al which makes up the can)... and that matters for resturants which don't have to worry so much about packing materials.
The report mentioned above is dense and slow to load... but interesting nonetheless. I bet a karma whore could get a +5 interesting out of a decent world map of sugar production... I couldn't find one:-)
Since when could we make "perfect" copies of movies from TV broadcast anyhow?
With the exception of pay channels (HBO etc) and pay-per-view the movies available from broadcast and cable are -=not=- perfect copies. They are dumbed down, heavily edited, often redubed, colorized, and otherwise mangled shadows of their former selves.
Who cares if you can make a copy of Gone with the Wind and it's famous line "Frankly my dear I don't give a darn." Darn?!? WTF!!!
Economics is regulated at its core by a thing called opportunity cost. By buying a DVD for $23 I give up say, a Big Mac Meal, three paper back novels, and roughly a day of internet access in cash.
Now then.... I can keep myself entertained a LOT longer with $23 by buying three novels, paying part of my ISP bill, and feeding myself than I can by buying a DVD.
If, however with that same $23 I could buy two and a half DVDs (or say... 3 DVDs for $27) I would be a great deal more interested in buying DVDs. Why? Because I wouldn't be giving up as much to get one. It's not a budget concern. I -=have=- the money to spend on DVDs if I want to... but there are more efficient uses of my money which keep me just as happy.
I for one wouldn't argue right and wrong. This is capitalism man! Want to talk about right and wrong there's a guy in Rome by the name of John Paul who you should meet.
Anyhow. It's like this. Prosecuting 19 year old kids file trading in their college dorm room isn't a great way to make money. It's a great way to get everyone to call you a jerk and never buy your stuff again.
It comes down to this. The people doing most of the file trading are the people they are trying to sell to. If you put these people in jail or sue them to peices they won't buy your product. So that's a bad idea.
What you want to do it find out why they feel the need to break the law. Once you know that you know something key about your target audiance.
I think an execelent point is made. I -=will not=- pay $23 for a DVD. Ever. No way. I'll buy it ten years later if I really have to have it... but never for $23. I don't download movies off of the internet or anything like that (56k is like that:-). If DVDs were 8 bucks a shot though, I'd buy a lot more than 3 of them right now. Overall the movie industry would get more of my money in a given year if that were the case.
That's what it boils down to. The buisness model is changing. More and more people are unwilling to shell out that kind of money for a DVD. There's still a sucker born every minute though.
Slashdot Mirror
What there is to "to deal" with is rudeness.
There was a time when the telephone was a thing that fit fairly well into the other ideas which surround a civilized society. That time has longe since passed.
With land line phones let me advance the idea of call waiting.
In a normal civilized society, if I am talking with you (face to face) about something and my good buddy Joe walks up and says he wants to talk to me about something I have one of two choices.
1 - Integrate Joe into the conversaion
2 - Ask Joe to please wait for a moment. Politely finish my conversation with you and then talk to him.
If we had a "face to face" call waiting I would immediately turn from you, ignoring anything you have to say (possibly waiting until you finish you sentence) and talk with Joe. That's rude... but it's also excusable because honestly, we don't have a "face to face" version of call waiting. That means that you're BOTH on the phone and it's not quite and heniously inconsiderate for me to ask you to hold on. I don't know who is calling me and it might be an emergancy.
Cell phones take this a quantum leap further. It is one thing to use a cell phone to make important calls in a timely manner. It is alltogether another to forsake the world around you for the voice on the other end of the phone. Cell phones not only make this possible, but they encourage it. A ringing phone DEMANDS to be answered. The user disengages him or her self, often without explanation or excuse, from the person standing in front of them and then carries on a conversation which makes no sence to those they are actualy with (because 1/2 of a conversation is kind of pointless).
When this happens with your friends it -=may=- be excusable. It shouldn't be, but if you want to treat your friends like a jerk, that's your problem. When it happens with TOTAL STRANGERS it is another thing. Waiters, clerks, these people are doing their jobs and are trying to serve you. If you dismiss them for a disembodied voice you trivilize their job and in many ways themselves as an entity.
So what is there to deal with? Besides distraction, inconsideration (is that a word?), rudeness, and lets not forget the overwhelming urge to slap some of these people.... nothing. Why do you ask?
Not really. The Space Shuttle actualy has a larger cargo capacity than the Apollo units ever got close to.
The Saturn V was designed to do two things. Escape the Earth's gravity well (or at least the great majority of it) and prove to the Soviets that if we could land a man on the moon we could damn sure land a hydrogen bomb on Moscow.
The Shuttle is a little more utilitarian. It is not deisigned to escape as much of the gravity well but rather focuses on providing a method of getting usefull stuff into orbit.
Saturn V might be a usefull way to get stuff very far away from Earth very quickly (a manned Mars mission probably won't use shuttle like craft) but it's not much for cargo capacity. The famous golf clubs had to be specialy designed and smuggled on board.
Where oh where are my mod points when I need them?
Thank you, finaly someone who understand the differnce between what you have the constitutional right to do and what you probably shouldn't do for your own sake.
But why?
I've got a first generation portable CD-R player with MP3 playback. That's 10 hours per disk, or roughly 175 3 min songs.
Honestly, that's enough for me. I know they built in MP3 support from the DVD because, honestly, it didn't cost anything to do that. Nonetheless, it's overkill.
Interestingly enough, US Banks have the power to create and destroy money.
The way it works is this. MyBank (insured FDIC) has a certain amount of money on deposit with its local Federal Reserve Bank (NY, Phillie, Whatnot). The Federal Reserve then sets a multiplier, allowing MyBank to loan out Z*Deposit where Z is a number chosen between 1 and however many Cherios Allen Greenspan ate for breakfast this morning.
MyBank then lends you that money. It just up and lends it to you. It didn't have the money to lend, but the Fed said it could so it does.
The key to the entire system is the ASSUMPTION that money is scarce. Or rather, that money has inherent value.
In the case of a MMORPG money is created (typicaly) by killing stuff. This killing of stuff is work, and requires the player (or a cleverly written bot) to spend time persuing this activity.
This time is equivilent to work. As long as people feel that they have to work to get money and that money in turn can be used to get someone else to work for them (or something else) the economy will keep going.
So in essence, as long as the player can not randomly create money (but can work for it), it really is just as valid as any other national currency (except perhaps the old Lira, which was so worthless as to require several million to buy a mellon)
Lets all remember that when the government of South Africa started producing generic AIDS drugs and the pharmasudical companies sued them that public pressure caused those companies to drop the suit.
International law allows for the circumvention of patents in extenuating circumstances... like a public health emergancy. Isn't breast cancer the #1 killer in women of several age groups?
It think it goes without saying that Clipy constitutes a weapon of mass destruction.
Unless those votes are in a certain county in Florida.....
Never underestimate the power of a single vote... Andrew Johnson didn't.
I think you rather missed the point.
"Fossil Carbon" as its called consists of carbon atoms (bonded who random other stuff) which has been effectively removed from the atomsphere by natural processes. Coal, Oil, Natural Gas: all of these represent large stocks of carbon which no longer form a component of our atmosphere.
Thus, when you burn them, you unlock that carbon from the mineral deposits and release it into the atmosphere. This results in a net gain of carbon in the atmosphere.
Using alcohol based fules the carbon you are releasing is coming from the atmosphere in the first place, not from a mineral source. Assuming a regular harvesting cycle the plants you are growing now are removing CO2 from the atmosphere as you burn off the last crop. Net result is therefore 0 (or close to it).
See, no C02 is removed from the atmosphere by digging a hole in the ground from which to suck oil. That's the key.
Personaly I'm betting on a few aliens with amnesia sitting around watching sitcoms. I imagine they'll let us know when the stars are right and the Earth is in Taurus.
No... it's not. For a number of reasons.
1.) You -=knew=- that the charity was not going to get the commission if you didn't buy it through their site
2.) You, the purchasing party, made that decision on your own. No one made it for you.
3.) All of the money involved was your own, and (again) it was your choice.
With this theftware, the situation is different. EULAs are paper tigers in court and we all know it. Even if they weren't, I'm not entirely sure tha this kind of scheme is legal in the first place, as there appears no way to cancel the contract once the software is uninstalled.
These companies are not putting up the money to buy the CD, they are taking it out of someone elses pockets. By any definition that is theft, particularly if you can demonstrate the irrelevancy of the EULA.
This is true. But the movie reviewers generaly aren't forced to wear someone elses prescription glasses.
The point is that when the music sounds tinny and strained and the mixing sounds generaly poor it changes the feel of the peice.
Consider the soundtrack from Crimson Tide (ideal for this example). Crimson Tide has a thunderous bass line which is a running theme in the soundtrack. Listening to this on a walkman with cheep "came with the damn thing" ear phones is an injustice. You simply can not appreciate the texture of the kettle drums used, the rough sound of the real animal hide drum heads and the subtleties of the choral segments.
Truely great music, especialy music relying on polyphonic textures (which is pretty much the norm now that we've passed the midpoint of the second millenia AD) relies on complexity and depth to produce movement and resolution. Without the ability to hear the subtleties in the music the experiance is lessened.
They might as well call the reviewers and play the music over the phone.
My wedding photos turned out this way. We agreed to pay a premium for the photographers services in exchange for ownership of the negitives and unlimited rights to create prints from those negitives.
She gave us a -=very=- good deal on this all things considered, enough so that we've made sure that all reprints for the first year will go through her nonwithstanding.
That said, one of the main reasons photographers don't like to turn over negitives to the undeserving populace is that many kinds of film are not easily reproduced by Wal-Mart or whathaveyou. So kinds of negitives, called "pro-negitives" or "pro-film" in the photography buisness, produced horrid greenish tinged nastiness when printed on standard commercial grade equipment like the photo processing equipment at your big chain stores.
void Rant (antagonist sudotcsh)
{
As a White Wolf Storyteller this comment makes me cringe.
What part of mmoRPG do you not get? ROLE PLAYING GAME!!!! (Pardon my shouting). The entire -=point=- of a roll playing game is to step into someone elses identity for a while, to explore that identity and that world and to understand yourself through the actions of the character you play.
In games I run I -=forbid=- my players to refer to their characters by the phrase "my character." Your character has a name, either use that name or the pronoun "I." Similarly, conversation between players -=must=- take place in the campaign world. The characters are typicaly not telepathic and unless they are anything you say to another player had better be in character. (I'm not really that much of a hardass with it, but I push for it)
The point being is that there is -=not=- a difference between the two. What is real? The character in the game does the things the player tells him to do, he reacts the way the player wants him to react, he is therefore an extension of the will of the player. You are stitting there reading this screen, clicking your mouse (or keyboard or touchpad, or whatever) with your hands, with do what you tell them to, react the way you want them to and are also an extension of your will.
I fail to understand how you can subjectively decide that his character is less real than any other interaction you have with human beings. We all play rolls every day. Are you the same person when you're in a conference with your boss as you are with your significant other? Those are different rolls, different personas that you adopt every day. Just because some personas are more detached than others and exist in a virtual world does not make them any less genuine.
For the record... the next time you pick up a phone and order a pizza.... you didn't order a pizza, you held a peice of plastic up to your head and jabbered at it for a while. Another peice of plastic somewhere ordered the pizza which was delivered to your house.
}
It seems the gaming value of this would be to substantialy change the way you view 3d environments, particularly first person shooters. The secondary applications of such a system are somewhat more staggering. Robots aside, the key here is to remember that machines do not need to understand distance in the same way humans do. A laser range finder will work just fine for a robot (in most cases) can be picked up for a few hundred dollars at your country club pro shop (how far was that drive?).
:-)
Military uses of this technology are the most impressive. Use of two cameras on an unmanned aircraft (providing the bandwidth problem can be solved) could allow a whole new meaning for fly by remote. Similarly, combination of this technology with infrared imaging systems could remove the flatness associated with nightvision equipment, particularly for those where depth is critical (night helocopter missions for example).
Gamers won't see this for a while though, and I think we'll find that head mounted displays will be the weapon of choice for the average FPS gamer. I just don't want a 4x5 display taking up my deskspace... while I play a fair amount of Unreal and Quake III, it's not enough to justify evicting my traditional monitor
This doesn't really apply, but I know a number of studies have been done with horror films. We know that in the case of a movie which is designed to evoke certain primal emotions in homo-sapian-sapian enjoyment is heightened by watching the film in a crowded theater.
Pherimones are probably the explination... but it's an interesting idea.
I'm going to chime in and say that a great deal more money will be made by whoever develops a swarm of nanites which I can keep in my laundry hamper to remove dirt, press, starch and (for the wife) perfume the various articals tossed into it.
Now that could be a problem when little Joey starting crawling in the laundry basket.....
First of all it's the Drake equation. Not the Segan one. The equation, for all of you who don't know, goes something like this.
Probability of Intelegent Life Existing In the Galaxy = Rate of Star formation in the Galaxy * Precentage of those Stars which are like ours * Precentage of afformentioned with have planets * Precentage of planets which are like Earth * precentage of afformentioned planets which develop life * precent likelyhood life will evolve intelegence * precent likelyhood intelegent life will care enough to communicate * lifespan of the civilization.
Yea... that's long. But the point of the entire exercise is this. No matter how small you make any of the terms (as long as they aren't zero) the lifespan of the civilization should outstrip them all. Back in the 1960s we weren't so sure about that. Most of us were convinced that WWIII was just around the corner and that lifespan of a civilization which can communication was something like 40 years. Today we're thining more on the order of the lifespan of our star. Maybe longer.
Next point: Why are we intellegent? Some would say that mankind is the "super preditor" a race which has evolved for the purpose of killing things with our mighty brain. But think about it. Seriously, how good is say, steak for you? Not very. Our bodies are not desiged to deal with a carnivores diet. We are supposed to eat mostly berries, fruits, grains, etc and meet only rarely. Why is that? Because that's what our diet was when we had to find our food.
So intelegence does not come from being a super-preditor. It comes from social intereaction and a desire to propigate the species. Any type of creature which operates well in groups is a candiate for intelegence. Dolphins... apes.... wait... I see a patern.
Of course, those groups are territorial and they do tend to kill each other over time. But then, so are we, and so do we.
I don't really have an opinion on this. Is there life out there? Probably. There's a nearly infinite number of stars in the universe, surely somewhere there's someone else looking up at the sky thinking "are we alone?" But other galaxies are VERY far away... and the numbers within our own galaxy don't look so good. Who knows... maybe someday we'll see humanities First Contact..... But I won't hold my breath.
Ok, someone has to play the devil's advocate here so I guess I'll do it.
Who are we to look down on them? Ok, so China is building its economy by dismanteling computer parts in environmentaly hazerdous ways which are seriously messing with their children's health.
How do you think the US became the economic hegemon it was in the 1940s? It wasn't by recycling or giving a rats ass about child wellfare. It was by employing 8 year old imigrant children in factories for 12 hours a day, paying them slaves wages (or something close) and generaly making life hell for a bunch of people.
Of course now we've forgotton all that. Now we've gotten past our past and we want other States to industrialize and become economicly powerfull according to our ideals and environmental standards. The problem is those ideals and standards are a product of our economic superiority.
You can not expect States like China, India, Vietnam, most of South/Central America etc to pull themselves up by their bootstraps without resorting to the same general horrors that we did. I'm not saying its not possible, just that it's unrealistic.
Look at the photographs of the United States from the early 1900s and late 1800s. It wasn't a pretty place to live. We were a horrid nasty vile little cesspool and from that we have created a fairly impressive society.
So China is playing with fire. They will get burned, just like we did. They will kill their children, just like we did. And maybe someday they to can join the ranks of the post-industrial world. Until then we have to let them do what they can. No one told the US that it wasn't ok to commit our attrocities. Why are we any different?
I think it would be facinating to see/design a program which is designed to play ranked chess champions.
Give it the name of the player it's about to play. The software connects to a number of databases, finds the matches in some machine readable code (yea... well... we need that part first I guess) and then "studies" them. Use pattern recognition and a neural net to learn how the opponent thinks etc.
I think that would lend more credibility to the argument of computers as valid players as well. Afterall, that way they'd be doing their own research.
Of course, that could be the way it is now and I could be completely clueless.
Imagine a Beowol^H^H^H^H^H^H.... oh wait... never mind.
Most of this comparison in size goes back to economics. For some figures on sugar production and pricing check out this report [PDF format] from the USDA
:-)
The United States drinks a lot of soda for two reasons.
1.) Sugar is CHEEP in this hemisphere. Most of the world's sugar is produced in South, Central, and North America. The entire sugar production of the EU, for example, is outstriped by Brazil.
2.) The United States has a HUGE QUANTITY of money. We are the wealthiest nation on earth right now (but the EU will outstrip us soon... and political unity is closer than most people think). We can buy all that Western Hemisphere sugar with our huge cash reserves and save everyone a bundle on shipping.
Soda is fundamentaly cheeper here. Especialy in quantity (remember, when you buy a can of soda most of the cost is going into the Al which makes up the can)... and that matters for resturants which don't have to worry so much about packing materials.
The report mentioned above is dense and slow to load... but interesting nonetheless. I bet a karma whore could get a +5 interesting out of a decent world map of sugar production... I couldn't find one
I just want to ask....
Since when could we make "perfect" copies of movies from TV broadcast anyhow?
With the exception of pay channels (HBO etc) and pay-per-view the movies available from broadcast and cable are -=not=- perfect copies. They are dumbed down, heavily edited, often redubed, colorized, and otherwise mangled shadows of their former selves.
Who cares if you can make a copy of Gone with the Wind and it's famous line "Frankly my dear I don't give a darn." Darn?!? WTF!!!
Ok, you need to go back to highschool.
Economics is regulated at its core by a thing called opportunity cost. By buying a DVD for $23 I give up say, a Big Mac Meal, three paper back novels, and roughly a day of internet access in cash.
Now then.... I can keep myself entertained a LOT longer with $23 by buying three novels, paying part of my ISP bill, and feeding myself than I can by buying a DVD.
If, however with that same $23 I could buy two and a half DVDs (or say... 3 DVDs for $27) I would be a great deal more interested in buying DVDs. Why? Because I wouldn't be giving up as much to get one. It's not a budget concern. I -=have=- the money to spend on DVDs if I want to... but there are more efficient uses of my money which keep me just as happy.
I for one wouldn't argue right and wrong. This is capitalism man! Want to talk about right and wrong there's a guy in Rome by the name of John Paul who you should meet.
:-). If DVDs were 8 bucks a shot though, I'd buy a lot more than 3 of them right now. Overall the movie industry would get more of my money in a given year if that were the case.
Anyhow. It's like this. Prosecuting 19 year old kids file trading in their college dorm room isn't a great way to make money. It's a great way to get everyone to call you a jerk and never buy your stuff again.
It comes down to this. The people doing most of the file trading are the people they are trying to sell to. If you put these people in jail or sue them to peices they won't buy your product. So that's a bad idea.
What you want to do it find out why they feel the need to break the law. Once you know that you know something key about your target audiance.
I think an execelent point is made. I -=will not=- pay $23 for a DVD. Ever. No way. I'll buy it ten years later if I really have to have it... but never for $23. I don't download movies off of the internet or anything like that (56k is like that
That's what it boils down to. The buisness model is changing. More and more people are unwilling to shell out that kind of money for a DVD. There's still a sucker born every minute though.