I wasn't completely serious about "stealing" but you see my point- if we aren't actually seeing the ad content that companies pay webmasters to display, at some point they'll find out and try to work around it. The alternative may suck much more than what we have now. People aren't obligated to watch commercials on tv either, but companies will go to great lengths to see that their product gets the "views" it wants. This has included paying shows themselves to shill product. It is starting to really effect content of entertainment that relies upon ad dollars to fund itself. I don't know the solution here, but I do think just opting out (as both you and i obviously have a right to do) isn't going to be a stable situation.
but that's exactly what I'm talking about- if you aren't getting the full "ad view" the advert company wants, then at some point they'll find out and either not pay the website owner anymore, or find some other way to force you to see it. Ad companies aren't going to always be fooled by simple hits.
Capitalism isn't the same as evolutionary biology, and it's one of the biggest fallacies out there to assume that it is. There are much different machanisms at work in either system. Like it or not, thanks to capitalism, virtually every measure of human welfare has increased over the past 300 years.
Maybe you didn't read what I wrote- seeing "capitalism" and "problem" and then seeing red. I'm not saying anything about the virtues of free markets- I'm a great advocate of them. The point is that free market theory has no legitimate way to describe how people ever came to acquire the resources these use to produce things in the first place. Everyone from John Locke to Howard Nesbit have tried to deal with this problem, and none satisfactorily. Most of the ways people acquired reasources were horridly illegitimate, and that has a big effect on the efficient use of resources later on. It has nothing to do with how hard you work- you can't make a tractor with your bare hands. Ultimately resources have to come form somewhere, and for the market to work, they have to be owned. Allow me to play devil's advocate here though with your capitalism = bad equation. Capitalism happens because people want things, and others try to supply them- and everyone tries to find the fastest most efficient way to do so. What you call the threating "bottom line" is really just the sum of people's desires. Frankly, I think the bottom line is a generally good thing. Maybe you don't like what other people desire, but its a little pretentious to blame it all on a system that prizes efficiency instead of the actual demands of people. Money isn't the sole medium of value- money simply represents preferences and estimations of value. It's not quite as menacing when you think about what's really going on.
Believe it or not, we've been here before. I think what's going on now is simply a correlation fo the same problem you'll face when thinking about natural resources and how they got allocated in the first place. This has been a huge debate for some time, but basically it boils down to: no matter how good you are at justifying and heralding capitalism as delivering moral outcomes, its birth was illegitimate. That is- there's no way to justify, under the logic of capitalism, the fact that at some point in history, some person found a natural resource, declared "this is mine," and proceeded, along with his descendants, to profit off of it. The same sort of thing is happening here, only it has to do with intellectual property in many cases- we have all these virtual resources and no clear ownership- so companies are simply grabbing what they can, often paying far undervalue, and fencing it off from all the people tat used to enjoy it collectively.
Yeah- I remember when I was just a little net tyke and I thought everything was free. "Yay!" I thought- "nothing costs anything anymore, no one has to pay for anything!" Then I took economics, and wised up fast. If nothing else bandwidth is very pricey, even at schools. Most kids at college just don't realize this because they get unlimited T1 access. But it ISN'T unlimited and it ISN'T costless- as many schools are discovering. I remember back in the day when I was running a 64kbps 32 user shoutcast server. Even the lazy as fuck student school admins had to stop snorting cheez-whiz to tell me to cut it out...
The only cases in which First Amendment isn't applicable is when it's libel/slander- or any other attempt to defame and damage a person. "Misleading" isn't a crime, and does not change who gets to be called the "press." But there certainly ARE other Constitutional concerns. Namely- state action. The airwaves and radiowaves are given to private companies IN TRUST of the public- they're public property (technically, a public good). Granted, this doesn't apply to cable networks or the internet. But there certainly is a rationale that if companies betray the public trust by which they are granted use fo the airwaves, then the public has a right to take them back. Of course, the only method to do so is the FCC and the legislatures, which of course are pretty much owned by the companies its supposed to be regulating. So maybe that's not really a very plausible rationale... Though losing billions of dollars of airtime might just be punishment enough. These little slips of course, aren't anywhere enough to justify this- though I could tell you horror stories that might..
Philosophy classes are not simply about labels, and while many people do grasp some of the basic questions that philosophy is concerned with, very few know how to pick apart those questions in a rigorous way. You'd be right that "no one needs to be taught philosophy" if not for one simple factor: many logically true things are completely counter-intuitive. They defy common sense hunches, but are nevertheless true. That's why its very important to think things through very carefuly, and develop models and such. That's what real philosophy is all about. And maybe the answers wont even be much different- but at least you can expalin how you got there. I don't think much thought went into the philosophy of the Matrix either- my main problem is that it suffers from the "Superman effect." I.E.- people are said to have certain powers, but they forget to use them at convienient plot moments. Like when superman can run almost as fast as the flash, and can dodge bullets, but is then too slow to dodge having a chunk of concrete tossed at him. Likewise, we SEE that Neo, Geo, and Trinity can all move really really really fast, and even jump long distances. But when they're running from the agents- they move at normal speed. Hello? Add that to the fact that all the kunfu was extremely slow (at least by Jackie Chan standards!) and you got characters with super powers that don't make any sense.
I wouldn't hold much hope out for the X-Men movie either. The comic itself has gone way downhill in the past year or so, both writing wise and art wise. I can't imagine the feature length film, beig advised by the same clowns, could be anything more than WildWildWest shlock for public consumption.
Nonsense- this whole "time" issue is ridiculous- Lucas had more than enough "time" to spend on tons of other promotional projects- and the DVD release need not even be done by Lucas himself, nor need it include tons fo extra media. They're just covering their asses, plain and simple.
Well, has it really BEEN news this year? I mean, online shopping certainly isn't anywhere near its apex, and in fact this is probably a year too early for most online shops- they weren't quite prepared for the kind of rush they were advertising for. And again- it's all being artificially subsidized- so its all about the FUTURE, not about right now. Most of the news programs have been virtualy verbatim reporting on press releases, and most of them have been devoid of any real content.
Re:Is the Metaverse nearing practicality?
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
·
· Score: 2
But the question is still WHY. Why have a 3d representation of a 2d desktop? Why must my friend take the subway over to my house and knock on the door when he can be here instantly with chat/videophone/etc. Why does it have to be connected to a 3d world that only emulates the one we already have? 3d games like quake work because they're based on running around and killing each other- something we can all identify with. But when it comes to communication, we can handle much more abstract, and perhaps much faster and better methods than recreating the look of the "world" around us. It just seems redundant to have me sitting at my computer looking at a monitor display that shows me sitting at my computer looking at an IRC chat. Maybe someday in the future, we'll be able to eliminate the first step- the physical existence, but for now, let's cut out the poorly rendered 3d middleman.
Re:actually it does use the quake (I) engine
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
·
· Score: 2
Even more than that by the end actually- but some of the basic BSP rendering stuff is still the same. Keep in mind that the handful of guys who did it had several years, and it was their day job. And that that engine, though beautiful in its time, is already outdated. And most of the things that made Half-life great wasn't the quake-type engine itself, but rather the animations, linking sound to moving mouths, and the well designed gameplay and content.
Re:Is the Metaverse nearing practicality?
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
·
· Score: 2
I doubt we'll see the Quake3 source for a long time to come. Skins are just maped pictures, models are just exported 3d ap output, as are maps, reptty much. But I should point out that while Quake was a great engine for its time, it's not as well suited to a "Metaverse" concept as some might think. The rendering eninge isn't tweaked for todays hardware, and has some serious limitations on what you can do in the BSP. Not to mention that it was built specifically to be a singleplayer/multiplayer fragfest, and isn't designed or optimized for less violent interaction. We've seen some Quake mods that tried this sort of interaction out.. but you know what? Fragging people with rocket launchers is alot more fun then having big, blocky, and relatively static (only simple animations are possbile) models get in the way of what is essentially an IRC chat. The real question is- why does anyone care about recreating the physical world? In the forseeable future, we'll can never get it quite right (and I'm sure newer commerical engines will always outstrip what anyone can do with Quake), so why try rehashing nature? Why not try to further develop the sorts of abstract communication/interaction models we're already working on, and leave quake to fragfest.
While people are of a lot of different opinions about what RTMark does, thye do at least have a more solid philosphy then you're allowing them. Their point is that people all over the place are trying to inform the public at large about what etoys is doing, and no one cares to listen. They like doing disruptive, mean things, its all part of their whole "using the logic of corporations against corporations" sthitck. Personally, I think it's based on a misguided theory about how public information works ("people are ignorant of right and wrong- they just need to be shown what we think is right, and they'll come around), but they're welcome to have their own opinion. I at least respect that they are a group that's out there trying new things instead of mindlessly marching in the streets, a tactic long past its time. Contrary to public opinion, Seattle accomplished nothing and changed almost no one's minds.
Two points here: one is that didn't I hear something about plasma screens eing on their way for home use? I know they're incredibly flat, and can do HDTV specs easily, but what resolution do they normally function at? The other point: blur is not always a bad thing. A friend of mine saw the Phantom Menace in on film and then on digital projection, and he said that the special effects looked more "fake" on digital, because it was sharp enough to see that they weren't "perfectly" blended into their scenes.
And whos with me that if making the film gets cheaper, ticket prices will simply continue to rise- outpacing even inflation? The way entertainment industry stuff works these days is that the industry sets a standard "price" at the maximum that people will pay for it, then spends all that money on advertising costs. If the cost of production goes down, they don't lower prices- they pour the extra money into more advertising. As I've aruged before, advertising, by its very defintion of spending tons fo economic capital jsut on trying to change people's preferences, is terrible thing for an economy- a ridiculous waste, and a ridiculous distorter of prices.
Also keep inmind that TIME is a complete fluff magazine now- it's essentially like Reader's Digest, except more insiduous. Every three months they have some kooky cover story about Angels. Oh, that's breaking news. And what they did with the recent Columbine article was both journaliztically unethical and downright sickening. I wouldn't trust them to pick Man of Anything, much less of the Century or the Year.
Well, basically, it's all a matter of when. If I started Amazon.com back in 1980 before almost anyone had anything "online" I'd obviously not make a profit. But should investors back me through 2 decades of negative profit, even if I could start paying off in 2002? It's an economic decision, and perhpas their money could have been spent more prouctively somewhere else. So it might be that Amazon is simply being held afloat because investors WANT to hold it afloat, not necessarily for any rational reason, not because its a good bussiness, but because they hope it will be someday. Essentailly, by unwriting their below markt book prices, they are artificially subsidizing a bussiness that could have never survived on its own in a real market. That may be a fair gamble, but keep in mind that the money COULD have gone into other things that might be more productive NOW, and when Amazon's time really did come, they could have invested in it then. What's going on isn't about making wise economic decisions now, it's about trying to second guess the future to make money. Just keep that in mind before anyone starts trumpeting this guy's acheivement. All he's done is coninced investors that he's a good bet- he hasn't proven that he is yet. I could start Videomania.com and sell video games at super reduced prices and be very popular, but that wouldn't make me worth artificaly supporting.
Bravo- though I don't think Allan Greenspan himself is necessarily a big deal, the office that he holds has radically changed economics. Most people don't even realize the power he holds. Great Paul Krugman paraphrased quote: "You want to know a simple formula for what the rate of unemployment will be in the next year? IT will exactly what Allan Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a tiny fraction of the fact that he is not quite God." It's amazing the number of economic debates that are totally clueless on this point. When all the NAFTA discussions were going on, people kept harping on the jobs issue. But their Neo-Keynsian analysis is simply irrelevant in a world in which a cental bank sets interest rates.
Fatbrian, unfortunately, promotes spam. I've gotten advertisment mail from them on addresses that I NEVER use except to reply to user questions,and no one from fatbrain has ever contacted me via those addys. Other people have complained as well. So no one's hands are exactly clean in this mess...
My ferrets bluescreen once and awhile... probably because of low memory warnings.:) Which brings up an interesting point- namely, real pets can be incredible pains in the neck, but you still love them. My ferrets spend every waking hour looking for things to knock over, chew on, sleep in, and most importantly- stealing all my socks and hinding them under my dresser. And I love em for it regardless, though I groan every time they do something stupid (which is constantly). But would consumers put up with such behavior from a purchased robotic pet? And if they wouldn't, what kind of relationship would people have with a robot that never did anything bad or rascally, like a real pet would? Is this a robotic double standard?
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't completely serious about "stealing" but you see my point- if we aren't actually seeing the ad content that companies pay webmasters to display, at some point they'll find out and try to work around it. The alternative may suck much more than what we have now. People aren't obligated to watch commercials on tv either, but companies will go to great lengths to see that their product gets the "views" it wants. This has included paying shows themselves to shill product. It is starting to really effect content of entertainment that relies upon ad dollars to fund itself. I don't know the solution here, but I do think just opting out (as both you and i obviously have a right to do) isn't going to be a stable situation.
but that's exactly what I'm talking about- if you aren't getting the full "ad view" the advert company wants, then at some point they'll find out and either not pay the website owner anymore, or find some other way to force you to see it. Ad companies aren't going to always be fooled by simple hits.
Capitalism isn't the same as evolutionary biology, and it's one of the biggest fallacies out there to assume that it is. There are much different machanisms at work in either system. Like it or not, thanks to capitalism, virtually every measure of human welfare has increased over the past 300 years.
You're thinking of the division of labor. Free trade is the condition under which the division of labor isn't regulated.
Maybe you didn't read what I wrote- seeing "capitalism" and "problem" and then seeing red. I'm not saying anything about the virtues of free markets- I'm a great advocate of them. The point is that free market theory has no legitimate way to describe how people ever came to acquire the resources these use to produce things in the first place. Everyone from John Locke to Howard Nesbit have tried to deal with this problem, and none satisfactorily. Most of the ways people acquired reasources were horridly illegitimate, and that has a big effect on the efficient use of resources later on. It has nothing to do with how hard you work- you can't make a tractor with your bare hands. Ultimately resources have to come form somewhere, and for the market to work, they have to be owned. Allow me to play devil's advocate here though with your capitalism = bad equation. Capitalism happens because people want things, and others try to supply them- and everyone tries to find the fastest most efficient way to do so. What you call the threating "bottom line" is really just the sum of people's desires. Frankly, I think the bottom line is a generally good thing. Maybe you don't like what other people desire, but its a little pretentious to blame it all on a system that prizes efficiency instead of the actual demands of people. Money isn't the sole medium of value- money simply represents preferences and estimations of value. It's not quite as menacing when you think about what's really going on.
Believe it or not, we've been here before. I think what's going on now is simply a correlation fo the same problem you'll face when thinking about natural resources and how they got allocated in the first place. This has been a huge debate for some time, but basically it boils down to: no matter how good you are at justifying and heralding capitalism as delivering moral outcomes, its birth was illegitimate. That is- there's no way to justify, under the logic of capitalism, the fact that at some point in history, some person found a natural resource, declared "this is mine," and proceeded, along with his descendants, to profit off of it. The same sort of thing is happening here, only it has to do with intellectual property in many cases- we have all these virtual resources and no clear ownership- so companies are simply grabbing what they can, often paying far undervalue, and fencing it off from all the people tat used to enjoy it collectively.
Yeah- I remember when I was just a little net tyke and I thought everything was free. "Yay!" I thought- "nothing costs anything anymore, no one has to pay for anything!" Then I took economics, and wised up fast. If nothing else bandwidth is very pricey, even at schools. Most kids at college just don't realize this because they get unlimited T1 access. But it ISN'T unlimited and it ISN'T costless- as many schools are discovering. I remember back in the day when I was running a 64kbps 32 user shoutcast server. Even the lazy as fuck student school admins had to stop snorting cheez-whiz to tell me to cut it out...
lying isn't something you need geek technology to do.
The only cases in which First Amendment isn't applicable is when it's libel/slander- or any other attempt to defame and damage a person. "Misleading" isn't a crime, and does not change who gets to be called the "press." But there certainly ARE other Constitutional concerns. Namely- state action. The airwaves and radiowaves are given to private companies IN TRUST of the public- they're public property (technically, a public good). Granted, this doesn't apply to cable networks or the internet. But there certainly is a rationale that if companies betray the public trust by which they are granted use fo the airwaves, then the public has a right to take them back. Of course, the only method to do so is the FCC and the legislatures, which of course are pretty much owned by the companies its supposed to be regulating. So maybe that's not really a very plausible rationale... Though losing billions of dollars of airtime might just be punishment enough. These little slips of course, aren't anywhere enough to justify this- though I could tell you horror stories that might..
Philosophy classes are not simply about labels, and while many people do grasp some of the basic questions that philosophy is concerned with, very few know how to pick apart those questions in a rigorous way. You'd be right that "no one needs to be taught philosophy" if not for one simple factor: many logically true things are completely counter-intuitive. They defy common sense hunches, but are nevertheless true. That's why its very important to think things through very carefuly, and develop models and such. That's what real philosophy is all about. And maybe the answers wont even be much different- but at least you can expalin how you got there. I don't think much thought went into the philosophy of the Matrix either- my main problem is that it suffers from the "Superman effect." I.E.- people are said to have certain powers, but they forget to use them at convienient plot moments. Like when superman can run almost as fast as the flash, and can dodge bullets, but is then too slow to dodge having a chunk of concrete tossed at him. Likewise, we SEE that Neo, Geo, and Trinity can all move really really really fast, and even jump long distances. But when they're running from the agents- they move at normal speed. Hello? Add that to the fact that all the kunfu was extremely slow (at least by Jackie Chan standards!) and you got characters with super powers that don't make any sense.
I wouldn't hold much hope out for the X-Men movie either. The comic itself has gone way downhill in the past year or so, both writing wise and art wise. I can't imagine the feature length film, beig advised by the same clowns, could be anything more than WildWildWest shlock for public consumption.
Nonsense- this whole "time" issue is ridiculous- Lucas had more than enough "time" to spend on tons of other promotional projects- and the DVD release need not even be done by Lucas himself, nor need it include tons fo extra media. They're just covering their asses, plain and simple.
Well, has it really BEEN news this year? I mean, online shopping certainly isn't anywhere near its apex, and in fact this is probably a year too early for most online shops- they weren't quite prepared for the kind of rush they were advertising for. And again- it's all being artificially subsidized- so its all about the FUTURE, not about right now. Most of the news programs have been virtualy verbatim reporting on press releases, and most of them have been devoid of any real content.
But the question is still WHY. Why have a 3d representation of a 2d desktop? Why must my friend take the subway over to my house and knock on the door when he can be here instantly with chat/videophone/etc. Why does it have to be connected to a 3d world that only emulates the one we already have? 3d games like quake work because they're based on running around and killing each other- something we can all identify with. But when it comes to communication, we can handle much more abstract, and perhaps much faster and better methods than recreating the look of the "world" around us. It just seems redundant to have me sitting at my computer looking at a monitor display that shows me sitting at my computer looking at an IRC chat. Maybe someday in the future, we'll be able to eliminate the first step- the physical existence, but for now, let's cut out the poorly rendered 3d middleman.
Even more than that by the end actually- but some of the basic BSP rendering stuff is still the same. Keep in mind that the handful of guys who did it had several years, and it was their day job. And that that engine, though beautiful in its time, is already outdated. And most of the things that made Half-life great wasn't the quake-type engine itself, but rather the animations, linking sound to moving mouths, and the well designed gameplay and content.
I doubt we'll see the Quake3 source for a long time to come. Skins are just maped pictures, models are just exported 3d ap output, as are maps, reptty much.
But I should point out that while Quake was a great engine for its time, it's not as well suited to a "Metaverse" concept as some might think. The rendering eninge isn't tweaked for todays hardware, and has some serious limitations on what you can do in the BSP. Not to mention that it was built specifically to be a singleplayer/multiplayer fragfest, and isn't designed or optimized for less violent interaction. We've seen some Quake mods that tried this sort of interaction out.. but you know what? Fragging people with rocket launchers is alot more fun then having big, blocky, and relatively static (only simple animations are possbile) models get in the way of what is essentially an IRC chat. The real question is- why does anyone care about recreating the physical world? In the forseeable future, we'll can never get it quite right (and I'm sure newer commerical engines will always outstrip what anyone can do with Quake), so why try rehashing nature? Why not try to further develop the sorts of abstract communication/interaction models we're already working on, and leave quake to fragfest.
While people are of a lot of different opinions about what RTMark does, thye do at least have a more solid philosphy then you're allowing them. Their point is that people all over the place are trying to inform the public at large about what etoys is doing, and no one cares to listen. They like doing disruptive, mean things, its all part of their whole "using the logic of corporations against corporations" sthitck. Personally, I think it's based on a misguided theory about how public information works ("people are ignorant of right and wrong- they just need to be shown what we think is right, and they'll come around), but they're welcome to have their own opinion. I at least respect that they are a group that's out there trying new things instead of mindlessly marching in the streets, a tactic long past its time. Contrary to public opinion, Seattle accomplished nothing and changed almost no one's minds.
Two points here: one is that didn't I hear something about plasma screens eing on their way for home use? I know they're incredibly flat, and can do HDTV specs easily, but what resolution do they normally function at?
The other point: blur is not always a bad thing. A friend of mine saw the Phantom Menace in on film and then on digital projection, and he said that the special effects looked more "fake" on digital, because it was sharp enough to see that they weren't "perfectly" blended into their scenes.
And whos with me that if making the film gets cheaper, ticket prices will simply continue to rise- outpacing even inflation? The way entertainment industry stuff works these days is that the industry sets a standard "price" at the maximum that people will pay for it, then spends all that money on advertising costs. If the cost of production goes down, they don't lower prices- they pour the extra money into more advertising. As I've aruged before, advertising, by its very defintion of spending tons fo economic capital jsut on trying to change people's preferences, is terrible thing for an economy- a ridiculous waste, and a ridiculous distorter of prices.
Also keep inmind that TIME is a complete fluff magazine now- it's essentially like Reader's Digest, except more insiduous. Every three months they have some kooky cover story about Angels. Oh, that's breaking news. And what they did with the recent Columbine article was both journaliztically unethical and downright sickening. I wouldn't trust them to pick Man of Anything, much less of the Century or the Year.
"So what if he's losing money."
Well, basically, it's all a matter of when. If I started Amazon.com back in 1980 before almost anyone had anything "online" I'd obviously not make a profit. But should investors back me through 2 decades of negative profit, even if I could start paying off in 2002? It's an economic decision, and perhpas their money could have been spent more prouctively somewhere else. So it might be that Amazon is simply being held afloat because investors WANT to hold it afloat, not necessarily for any rational reason, not because its a good bussiness, but because they hope it will be someday. Essentailly, by unwriting their below markt book prices, they are artificially subsidizing a bussiness that could have never survived on its own in a real market. That may be a fair gamble, but keep in mind that the money COULD have gone into other things that might be more productive NOW, and when Amazon's time really did come, they could have invested in it then. What's going on isn't about making wise economic decisions now, it's about trying to second guess the future to make money. Just keep that in mind before anyone starts trumpeting this guy's acheivement. All he's done is coninced investors that he's a good bet- he hasn't proven that he is yet. I could start Videomania.com and sell video games at super reduced prices and be very popular, but that wouldn't make me worth artificaly supporting.
Bravo- though I don't think Allan Greenspan himself is necessarily a big deal, the office that he holds has radically changed economics. Most people don't even realize the power he holds. Great Paul Krugman paraphrased quote: "You want to know a simple formula for what the rate of unemployment will be in the next year? IT will exactly what Allan Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a tiny fraction of the fact that he is not quite God."
It's amazing the number of economic debates that are totally clueless on this point. When all the NAFTA discussions were going on, people kept harping on the jobs issue. But their Neo-Keynsian analysis is simply irrelevant in a world in which a cental bank sets interest rates.
Fatbrian, unfortunately, promotes spam. I've gotten advertisment mail from them on addresses that I NEVER use except to reply to user questions,and no one from fatbrain has ever contacted me via those addys. Other people have complained as well. So no one's hands are exactly clean in this mess...
My ferrets bluescreen once and awhile... probably because of low memory warnings. :)
Which brings up an interesting point- namely, real pets can be incredible pains in the neck, but you still love them. My ferrets spend every waking hour looking for things to knock over, chew on, sleep in, and most importantly- stealing all my socks and hinding them under my dresser. And I love em for it regardless, though I groan every time they do something stupid (which is constantly).
But would consumers put up with such behavior from a purchased robotic pet? And if they wouldn't, what kind of relationship would people have with a robot that never did anything bad or rascally, like a real pet would? Is this a robotic double standard?
id is going to be fucking pissed!