nobody's allowed to root for the big guy (who presumably got bigger because of the better products)
Unless they're paying you to do so, why bother? Past superior performance does not indicate present or future performance.
Being the big guy has its own inherent advantages, one of which is leveraging bigness rather than superior products. The little guy has a smaller budget for advertising, so they can use the grassroots support. Also, the little guy can only succeed with a superior product which they've managed to put together without having resources the big guy does. So that is what is being rooted for: better products.
The Fallacy of Other People's Misappropriated Volunteer Efforts comes up on slashdot quite frequently, though predominately concerns itself with open-source software development: There's all sorts of complaining about branching and competitive overlapping software projects when all programmers should be working on project y, where y is the software the whiner (who probably doesn't contribute to anything) would most like to have an improved version of. Programmers aren't a fluid resource that can be thrown at anything for proportional result (remember Mythical Man Month), and a lot of mature software projects are intimidating or unappealling to the unexperienced or differently interested.
Here, there's the misappropriated tech support for the third world:
Most countries need better laws, courts, banks not IT infrastructure.
I would also prefer it if the U.S. had better courts and laws- they're currently better than most countries, but could also stand a lot of improvement. I'm not volunteering as a lobbyist, political activist, or even writing my representatives about those issues. Instead, I do some network administration and general tech support for a couple local non-profits. Are my efforts better spent elsewhere?
The short answer is no:
-I want to build on the knowledge I already have. -I want to feel satisfied at the end of the day for having solved some small network problem, gotten a donated computer up and running, etc. -I want an external and personal source of motivation: other volunteers and employees who immediately appreciate and recognize my efforts (and they couldn't have done it themselves) because it helps them do their job. -I might want to get a paying job doing something similar with the references and skills I've built volunteering.
Large scale societal and infrastructural issues take lots of time, money, and effort beyond the abilities of volunteers to fix alone. It's good to be aware of efforts in those larger-scale issues and support them, but it's easier to get volunteers to do something they already know and want to do. (Contrast with "Hey guys, let's dig a latrine in Cambodia!" recruitment method)
If someone were to go to Senegal or other country with IT work in mind, they may come into intimate contact with the more fundamental problems and shift their efforts accordingly, where as reading a speculative slashdot post about the 'real' problems may put them off from volunteering altogether.
The flying car went the way that civil aviation in general is heading: sued out of existence...
Just imagine millions of car-sized, highly maneueverable, individually piloted, supersonic (perhaps) airborne objects zipping around a densely populated metropolitan area for a minute or two- do any non-lawsuit related complications come to mind?
I'd think the flying car would have to be gradually introduced over the course of centuries until all the infrastructure, systems, and technology could be developed and evolved that could handle it. We've been using roads for millenia: cars aren't that qualitatively different from the horses, buggys, carts, and foot traffic that came before- essentially they are confined to a one-dimensional path with occasional branching. Throwing in full freedom in three dimensions is a pretty big change in terms of the situational awareness required of the pilots and everything they might run into, among other things.
The air traffic control and planes of today are the tentative first steps, but the ubiquitous personal flying car future is probably a long time off.
...the tort system in America is biased towards the right
I think Ralph Nader has written a book about this, the effect is called 'tort deform' (from 'tort reform', get it?). Coffee spillers get disproportionate amount of media-attention, while successful lawsuits where the victims were 'stupid' enough to drink their water or breath their air downstream from a toxic chemical factory are overlooked.
Oh, you said:...the tort system in America is biased towards the right to be stupid
Just like the industrial revolution, modern medicine, and civilization in general is biasing humanity towards the right to be fat, lazy, and to propagate hereditary diseases that would otherwise be fatal. The tendency should be to accomodate the greatest level of 'stupidity' or general unfitness as is affordable. Why? Because stupidity and fitness is subjective, and we can't allow a metric that was appropriate a hundred or ten-thousand years ago to decide what kind of people we want in our population.
I mean, if we could afford to round off all the sharp edges etc., we may be accomodating the survival of more physics geniuses (or some other type of person who may be useful in an enlightened smooth-edged world) that would otherwise scrape themselves to extinction. Yes, people stupid and unfit in every respect will also get a free ride, but a few Einsteins come in the mix.
The decision is then, how should the level of acommodation be decided? By the largest corporations, or popular vote, or the courts? Balance between all involved parties is necessary, I would think.
Doublespeak, also from '1984' - Politically Correct Speech
Pretty OT here, but anyhow:
Why is it when people refer to political correctness these days (with that annoying sense of smug satisfaction derived from being so rebelliously politically incorrect and proclaiming it to the world), they're still thinking of what was politically correct in the early 90's Gingrich era?
A critical element of doublespeak and the rest from 1984 was how a turn of events could completely reverse what could be said and believed- remember the scene where the war-rally occurs just as alliances shifted to make allies enemies and vice versa?
Racism and religious intolerance are still mostly non-PC, but a year ago if you didn't blindly support the government or have a flag sticker* on your bumper you were extremely politically incorrect, given the state of things.
* Those stickers and antenna flags have been there for a long time, and are really starting to look worn. Someone else can point out the irony, but really those flags should disposed of properly and burned like flag care dictates.
> Overpopulation is a scare tactic more appropriate to bad 19th century economics than to clear-thinking 21st century thought.
You could also chalk it up to 19th/20th century racism and class warfare. I think the U.S. briefly had some eugenics laws, where some of the targets in mind were immigrants and/or poor. I read an article the other day ('The Greening of Hate') about how the scare tactic was being revived under the guise of environmentalism...
'clear-thinking 21st century thought' is another item to add to the future-that-hasn't-arrived list, right?
...will arrive when we have the cheap and ubiquitous infrastructure that would allow every usable band of the electromagnetic spectrum (and perhaps some of that of sound) is conveying digital information.
Assuming you can decrypt some fraction of that information (it's targetted at anyone in range), everywhere you go you'd be immersed in spam, running commentary from live on-site bloggers, ads and catalog information for the store you just walked into, car and foot traffic density information, emergency advisories, etc, while simultaneously conventional long distance network traffic is routing through the same network. Every light will have transmission capability, and eventually every visible surface will be able to modulate its reflectivity for same.
Speed doesn't matter that much, the point would be to have as many different available routes available as possible- visible light here, and if weather gets in the way jump transmission over to a weather transparent frequency or go through a land line, or multiplex across all of them.
The technology for transmission and reception just has to get cheap enough so that adding a router and modulation capability into a room light or street lamp is a small percentage of the total cost.
I felt like a "hero" character, running around and offing the various monsters as they fought the troops.
I think the Dynasty Warriors games for PS2 were trying to do something like this, but they don't really pull it off.
This Doom mod is pretty impressive, but:
I didn't like having to start at the very back of the fortress- I wanted to see the first shots of battle but instead I'm running around collecting ammo. Shouldn't there be some health and ammo reserves along the walls?
The waved attack could be extended to add more waves. It seems like the slowdown occurs right when a wave is first started up- so smaller but more numerous waves? Also, the Doom engine could probably be hacked to just randomly not do ai updates for some fraction of the enemy- they'd just charge mindlessly for so many steps and then retarget.
The main doors are open from the very begining. Shouldn't there be a scripted sequence like the wall bombing segment that forces the doors open?
Ladders for the enemy. I'm not sure how this would work if the ai isn't capable of using the ladders the player can. Some old Doom wads had ladders that were just extremely thin stepped stairs and the engine let you run up nearly vertically. They should be scripted so they aren't present initially.
There's a lot of enemy, but they seem to bunch around the openings too much, allowing the player to jump off the walls at the edges and run around the massed hordes.
I would have saved more (and not accidently killed as many) of my allied marines if I could have barged through them to meet the enemy head on, but they get too bunched up. Shooting from the walls doesn't work well because a lot of shots either hit the walls or do that vertical bullet trick and don't hit anything that can actually be seen. So it's back to jump off the walls and flanking the enemy.
Like a couple others said, Serious Sam could probably do this pretty well with some more appropriate monsters and scripting.
Hopefully we'll soon see truly epic battles in FPS trappings in more modern engines, with more complex AI and scripting so that the performance of the soldiers is affected by the actions of the player (morale boosts or whatever), adrenaline rushes where the player hero is briefly able to cut through the enemy hordes like Moses parting the waters and so on.
Although this is a fascinating re-enactment, I'd much rather play with slightly smoother graphics.
Remember Saving Private Ryan from four years ago? A lot of people walked out of that one thinking the landing at Normandy would make a great game. A good number of those people actually followed through, and now we have Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and a lot of other WWII themed games that try to recapture some parts of that movie. Sure WWII games have been around a long time, but Saving Private Ryan was hugely influential, and resparked latent interests.
So you just have to wait a few years for a top quality Helms Deep game (licensed or not), and settle for the amatuer mods until then. I don't remember anything from AoTC that has the kind of psychological impact the D-Day or Helms Deep scenes had, so there's only the officially licensed games to look for there.
Nobody is being too lazy to multiply because there is no reason to multiply.
But for people who are used to working with x by y, instead they have take the square root of the megapixel number for a rough estimate the resolution. The megapixel number is probably good for figuring out how much storage space an uncompressed raw image will take, but only advanced users (probably capable of multiplication) would think about that.
I think the average consumer would want to know up-front how the camera resolution corresponds to their printer or monitor. The different products' advertising would reinforce each other then, and consistency would reduce confusion and increase satisfaction. I should be able to walk into Best Buy and come out with a printer that can print a color 3x5 picture at the same resolution my new camera is capable of, and do so without finding out anything that isn't the first item listed on the packaging. If the megapixel term is here to stay, maybe that means putting that term on the printer or monitor box.
How many times have you read the screen resolution specs of a monitor or something else and multiplied the numbers together? A couple times when you were eight, right? The two smaller numbers, multiplied together, make one huge one! Impressive! Put that on the box and hide any useful information in tiny print behind five levels of links.
Perhaps I'm just ill-informed, and I can take a picture of any resolution as long as the product is less than the advertised megapixels- Here's the 1,500,000x2 panoramic shot from my hiking trip...
I saw Gibson do a reading at the University of Washington about a week ago. The lecture hall was packed- I get the feeling he isn't quite mainstream but having comparative literature courses that feature Neuromancer and occasional media references to the 'inventor of cyberspace' probably help with that.
Gibson mentioned the book started coming together after he was sent by Wired to meet with a lot of music video directors at a festival a few years back- He even fictionalized the Bjork video with the sexy female robots into background material for one of the main characters.
Personally, I thought running through the streets of DC and garrisoning inside the Smithsonian was fun.
It makes perfect sense- the developers can concentrate on duplicate a reality that the players are already familiar with rather than letting them waste time acclimatizing to an entirely novel, foreign, or historicial setting. Known landmarks and cities are going to generate more compelling drama and enthusiasm by ready-made association. Sure lots of people read a lot of fantasy, science fiction, are well traveled, or know history, so those settings are going to generate instant repoire with those people- but it's smaller fraction of potential audience.
And what about the coolness of being the 'bad guy'? Half of this doesn't have to do with being mean, but with style: Dark colors, shiny jackboots, rigid marching and chanting, and angular symbols, aren't inherently evil, but were adopted by (and therefore forever associated with) fascists and others because they so effectively resonate with a lot of people.
Also, the bad guys play to power fantasies more effectively- The bad guy gets to choose when to attack ('pre-emptively' or without any cause at all), can use the most devious methods, can disregard human rights and popular opinion (which are left out of most simulations and games anyhow), and demand total unquestioning submission from their followers (which also simplifies AI). There's more freedom there, which gamers like- but it's a fantasy freedom that generally has negative results when translated to reality- most people are going to end up on the suffering end rather than be dictator.
I guess the problems arise when people are also capable of living out these fantasies vicariously through the actions of their leaders and don't mind their impotent position in the scheme of things: If you believe your government can do no wrong, then screw causality, the government is always carrying out your wishes!
Is it possible that power-fantasy games, if used as an outlet for dealing with political impotence in ordinary life, create a higher tolerance for actual disenfranchisement- or does the disparity between what you would have done and what is decided on-high lower this tolerance?
...it comes down to there not being enough quantums (of time) between now and the end of the universe to check every possible key if every atom can perform on calculation per quantum.
Which theory of the end of the universe is this? There was just a story the other day on some evidence for no end at all- though in that setup most of the universe would eventually so separated from other parts that a possible cosmo-computer would break down.
Usually these kinds of arguements are supposed to show how preposterous it would be to take the opposing viewpoint. But alarms should go off for the SF writer or reader that hears experts construct a fantastical explanation (a computer the size of the universe!) and declare it so ridiculous that it proves their point- there's potential story material to be had if you take the up the idea and logically carry it to even more extreme ends: How would a galaxy-turned-supercomputer look from earth? There's got to be some tradeoff between acquiring so much computing mass in one location that time dilation effects take place (effectively slowing computing speed) and mass being so distributed that the speed of light delays seriously hampers computing speed as well- I'd like to hear or figure out what those limits are.
I think one of the Charles Stross stories mentions the possibility that currently observed astronomical objects (or was it dark matter?) like quasars are actually distant alien supercomputers dumping a _lot_ of waste heat. He didn't mention decryption applications, so there's still room for more stories.
Spell Check: Type in candidate spellings of a word, and assume the spelling with the most search results is the right one: 'amatuer' -> 3.9e6 hits, 'amateur' -> 35e6 hits. Amateur it is. 'modelling' -> 2.6e6 hits, 'modeling' -> 5.7e6 hits. Close call, perhaps both are acceptable?
Ego Boost: Everyone knows about this one: see what comes up under your own name (put it in quotes if necessary)- Hopefully if you run a small website or comment with your real name frequently in a google searchable place that'll come up first. But you'll have to work hard to beat out all those genealogy sites that just list thousands of names, graveyard roll-calls and whatnot. Oh, and there's some court case from five years ago where you're name is featured prominently. My namesake is shared with one of the first shaken babies to die and become a major local (wherever it happened) newstory- not much of a boost after all.
Stalking: I'd imagine this pretty similar to the previous, but with names of other people you know or used to know: your old college sweetheart died in 1892! Wait...
Trademark pre-research You need a product name- something fresh and original, and easily googleable? Start with a few ideas, and use a thesaurus (and don't forget cool foreign language words/roots) to refine the name until google hits are down to a zero. Run words together or otherwise potential customers will end up at sites that just randomly use those words at different points of the text- assume the customer is too dumb or lazy to use quotes. 'NodeZero' is my new badass something-or-other- wait there's 1K hits, how about 'NodeNull'? Only 8 now, that's good, but better yet try 'NodeNothing'- zero results. After the google test see if the.com,.org,or.net site with the same name resolves, just in case.
I think ALL cable systems should be REQUIRED to have a local access channel. It could be a source of revenue for the cable stations, you actually have to buy air time. (Like Wayne's World) - New York and California shouldn't get all the fun. I bet that cooking shows, computer shows, and craft shows would flourish in local markets and help with our cable bills at the same time.
Most of them do. One type is called public access- no ads or commercial programming, and most of the time it's of a generally poor quality (though has anyone seen Jerkbeast in the Seattle area? That was pretty funny the first couple times I saw it).
The other kind is leased access, and it's indistuingishable from QVC and other channels filled with constant paid advertisements. The whole concept of leased access was promoted with a fantasy where local small-time video producers would be able to make shows and have ads just like on the networks, spawning a creative video renaissance etc. similar to what you describe.
...interstellar journey that spans the next 3 books (which degrade in quality in each subsequent book).
It's dirty old sf-writer effect at it's worst:
Female Protagonist: Hey grandpa, you and me and my sister have to repopulate the human race!
(I'm not making this up- I thought only the Old Testament could get away with this stuff)
Does this malady afflict other genres? It's not that I'm completely uncultured, it's just that I tend not to exhaustively read every book good-or-bad by of a given author outside sf.
Although, most of the worst books were co-written with Gentry Lee, perhaps we can blame it on him.
Useful link page from the 'Now with Bill Moyers' site, including interview transcripts, DOJ response, etc. I'm sure a lot of people saw the show Friday and tried to submit it (I did), but didn't bother to read deeper for the encryption stuff (me again) that would make it 'News for Nerds'.
According to the ACCRC, an organization that tries to ship refurbished computers to less advanced countries, it's illegal to for a Cuban citizen to own a computer.
This story is something about the obfuscated code writing contest. I read something about this years ago but I certainly don't recognize the contest purely on its initials, and of course the writeup says very little, all the links are slashdotted, and the initial posts aren't very descriptive.
So the story itself is obfuscated? That would almost be vaguely clever, though I think poorly done is the more likely answer...
Slashdot Mirror
nobody's allowed to root for the big guy (who presumably got bigger because of the better products)
Unless they're paying you to do so, why bother? Past superior performance does not indicate present or future performance.
Being the big guy has its own inherent advantages, one of which is leveraging bigness rather than superior products. The little guy has a smaller budget for advertising, so they can use the grassroots support. Also, the little guy can only succeed with a superior product which they've managed to put together without having resources the big guy does. So that is what is being rooted for: better products.
The Fallacy of Other People's Misappropriated Volunteer Efforts comes up on slashdot quite frequently, though predominately concerns itself with open-source software development: There's all sorts of complaining about branching and competitive overlapping software projects when all programmers should be working on project y, where y is the software the whiner (who probably doesn't contribute to anything) would most like to have an improved version of. Programmers aren't a fluid resource that can be thrown at anything for proportional result (remember Mythical Man Month), and a lot of mature software projects are intimidating or unappealling to the unexperienced or differently interested.
Here, there's the misappropriated tech support for the third world:
Most countries need better laws, courts, banks not IT infrastructure.
I would also prefer it if the U.S. had better courts and laws- they're currently better than most countries, but could also stand a lot of improvement. I'm not volunteering as a lobbyist, political activist, or even writing my representatives about those issues. Instead, I do some network administration and general tech support for a couple local non-profits. Are my efforts better spent elsewhere?
The short answer is no:
-I want to build on the knowledge I already have.
-I want to feel satisfied at the end of the day for having solved some small network problem, gotten a donated computer up and running, etc.
-I want an external and personal source of motivation: other volunteers and employees who immediately appreciate and recognize my efforts (and they couldn't have done it themselves) because it helps them do their job.
-I might want to get a paying job doing something similar with the references and skills I've built volunteering.
Large scale societal and infrastructural issues take lots of time, money, and effort beyond the abilities of volunteers to fix alone. It's good to be aware of efforts in those larger-scale issues and support them, but it's easier to get volunteers to do something they already know and want to do. (Contrast with "Hey guys, let's dig a latrine in Cambodia!" recruitment method)
If someone were to go to Senegal or other country with IT work in mind, they may come into intimate contact with the more fundamental problems and shift their efforts accordingly, where as reading a speculative slashdot post about the 'real' problems may put them off from volunteering altogether.
The flying car went the way that civil aviation in general is heading: sued out of existence...
Just imagine millions of car-sized, highly maneueverable, individually piloted, supersonic (perhaps) airborne objects zipping around a densely populated metropolitan area for a minute or two- do any non-lawsuit related complications come to mind?
I'd think the flying car would have to be gradually introduced over the course of centuries until all the infrastructure, systems, and technology could be developed and evolved that could handle it. We've been using roads for millenia: cars aren't that qualitatively different from the horses, buggys, carts, and foot traffic that came before- essentially they are confined to a one-dimensional path with occasional branching. Throwing in full freedom in three dimensions is a pretty big change in terms of the situational awareness required of the pilots and everything they might run into, among other things.
The air traffic control and planes of today are the tentative first steps, but the ubiquitous personal flying car future is probably a long time off.
...the tort system in America is biased towards the right
...the tort system in America is biased towards the right to be stupid
I think Ralph Nader has written a book about this, the effect is called 'tort deform' (from 'tort reform', get it?). Coffee spillers get disproportionate amount of media-attention, while successful lawsuits where the victims were 'stupid' enough to drink their water or breath their air downstream from a toxic chemical factory are overlooked.
Oh, you said:
Just like the industrial revolution, modern medicine, and civilization in general is biasing humanity towards the right to be fat, lazy, and to propagate hereditary diseases that would otherwise be fatal. The tendency should be to accomodate the greatest level of 'stupidity' or general unfitness as is affordable. Why? Because stupidity and fitness is subjective, and we can't allow a metric that was appropriate a hundred or ten-thousand years ago to decide what kind of people we want in our population.
I mean, if we could afford to round off all the sharp edges etc., we may be accomodating the survival of more physics geniuses (or some other type of person who may be useful in an enlightened smooth-edged world) that would otherwise scrape themselves to extinction. Yes, people stupid and unfit in every respect will also get a free ride, but a few Einsteins come in the mix.
The decision is then, how should the level of acommodation be decided? By the largest corporations, or popular vote, or the courts? Balance between all involved parties is necessary, I would think.
Doublespeak, also from '1984' - Politically Correct Speech
Pretty OT here, but anyhow:
Why is it when people refer to political correctness these days (with that annoying sense of smug satisfaction derived from being so rebelliously politically incorrect and proclaiming it to the world), they're still thinking of what was politically correct in the early 90's Gingrich era?
A critical element of doublespeak and the rest from 1984 was how a turn of events could completely reverse what could be said and believed- remember the scene where the war-rally occurs just as alliances shifted to make allies enemies and vice versa?
Racism and religious intolerance are still mostly non-PC, but a year ago if you didn't blindly support the government or have a flag sticker* on your bumper you were extremely politically incorrect, given the state of things.
* Those stickers and antenna flags have been there for a long time, and are really starting to look worn. Someone else can point out the irony, but really those flags should disposed of properly and burned like flag care dictates.
> Overpopulation is a scare tactic more appropriate to bad 19th century economics than to clear-thinking 21st century thought.
You could also chalk it up to 19th/20th century racism and class warfare. I think the U.S. briefly had some eugenics laws, where some of the targets in mind were immigrants and/or poor. I read an article the other day ('The Greening of Hate') about how the scare tactic was being revived under the guise of environmentalism...
'clear-thinking 21st century thought' is another item to add to the future-that-hasn't-arrived list, right?
>>I know a half dozen folks off the top of my head who'd be happy get a $50k job these days.
>You've fallen into the common belief that money brings happiness.
Right, but what does unemployment bring? Not happiness, and certainly not money.
...will arrive when we have the cheap and ubiquitous infrastructure that would allow every usable band of the electromagnetic spectrum (and perhaps some of that of sound) is conveying digital information.
Assuming you can decrypt some fraction of that information (it's targetted at anyone in range), everywhere you go you'd be immersed in spam, running commentary from live on-site bloggers, ads and catalog information for the store you just walked into, car and foot traffic density information, emergency advisories, etc, while simultaneously conventional long distance network traffic is routing through the same network. Every light will have transmission capability, and eventually every visible surface will be able to modulate its reflectivity for same.
Speed doesn't matter that much, the point would be to have as many different available routes available as possible- visible light here, and if weather gets in the way jump transmission over to a weather transparent frequency or go through a land line, or multiplex across all of them.
The technology for transmission and reception just has to get cheap enough so that adding a router and modulation capability into a room light or street lamp is a small percentage of the total cost.
I think the Dynasty Warriors games for PS2 were trying to do something like this, but they don't really pull it off.
This Doom mod is pretty impressive, but:
I didn't like having to start at the very back of the fortress- I wanted to see the first shots of battle but instead I'm running around collecting ammo. Shouldn't there be some health and ammo reserves along the walls?
The waved attack could be extended to add more waves. It seems like the slowdown occurs right when a wave is first started up- so smaller but more numerous waves? Also, the Doom engine could probably be hacked to just randomly not do ai updates for some fraction of the enemy- they'd just charge mindlessly for so many steps and then retarget.
The main doors are open from the very begining. Shouldn't there be a scripted sequence like the wall bombing segment that forces the doors open?
Ladders for the enemy. I'm not sure how this would work if the ai isn't capable of using the ladders the player can. Some old Doom wads had ladders that were just extremely thin stepped stairs and the engine let you run up nearly vertically. They should be scripted so they aren't present initially.
There's a lot of enemy, but they seem to bunch around the openings too much, allowing the player to jump off the walls at the edges and run around the massed hordes.
I would have saved more (and not accidently killed as many) of my allied marines if I could have barged through them to meet the enemy head on, but they get too bunched up. Shooting from the walls doesn't work well because a lot of shots either hit the walls or do that vertical bullet trick and don't hit anything that can actually be seen. So it's back to jump off the walls and flanking the enemy.
Like a couple others said, Serious Sam could probably do this pretty well with some more appropriate monsters and scripting.
Hopefully we'll soon see truly epic battles in FPS trappings in more modern engines, with more complex AI and scripting so that the performance of the soldiers is affected by the actions of the player (morale boosts or whatever), adrenaline rushes where the player hero is briefly able to cut through the enemy hordes like Moses parting the waters and so on.
Although this is a fascinating re-enactment, I'd much rather play with slightly smoother graphics.
Remember Saving Private Ryan from four years ago? A lot of people walked out of that one thinking the landing at Normandy would make a great game. A good number of those people actually followed through, and now we have Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and a lot of other WWII themed games that try to recapture some parts of that movie. Sure WWII games have been around a long time, but Saving Private Ryan was hugely influential, and resparked latent interests.
So you just have to wait a few years for a top quality Helms Deep game (licensed or not), and settle for the amatuer mods until then. I don't remember anything from AoTC that has the kind of psychological impact the D-Day or Helms Deep scenes had, so there's only the officially licensed games to look for there.
Most people are too lazy to multiply
Nobody is being too lazy to multiply because there is no reason to multiply.
But for people who are used to working with x by y, instead they have take the square root of the megapixel number for a rough estimate the resolution. The megapixel number is probably good for figuring out how much storage space an uncompressed raw image will take, but only advanced users (probably capable of multiplication) would think about that.
I think the average consumer would want to know up-front how the camera resolution corresponds to their printer or monitor. The different products' advertising would reinforce each other then, and consistency would reduce confusion and increase satisfaction. I should be able to walk into Best Buy and come out with a printer that can print a color 3x5 picture at the same resolution my new camera is capable of, and do so without finding out anything that isn't the first item listed on the packaging. If the megapixel term is here to stay, maybe that means putting that term on the printer or monitor box.
How many times have you read the screen resolution specs of a monitor or something else and multiplied the numbers together? A couple times when you were eight, right? The two smaller numbers, multiplied together, make one huge one! Impressive! Put that on the box and hide any useful information in tiny print behind five levels of links.
Perhaps I'm just ill-informed, and I can take a picture of any resolution as long as the product is less than the advertised megapixels- Here's the 1,500,000x2 panoramic shot from my hiking trip...
...at present it would probably be impossible to spread a false "oil shortage" story...
Just like that false "energy shortage" story, right? If only we had the internet of 2003 in 2001...
I saw Gibson do a reading at the University of Washington about a week ago. The lecture hall was packed- I get the feeling he isn't quite mainstream but having comparative literature courses that feature Neuromancer and occasional media references to the 'inventor of cyberspace' probably help with that.
Gibson mentioned the book started coming together after he was sent by Wired to meet with a lot of music video directors at a festival a few years back- He even fictionalized the Bjork video with the sexy female robots into background material for one of the main characters.
Personally, I thought running through the streets of DC and garrisoning inside the Smithsonian was fun.
It makes perfect sense- the developers can concentrate on duplicate a reality that the players are already familiar with rather than letting them waste time acclimatizing to an entirely novel, foreign, or historicial setting. Known landmarks and cities are going to generate more compelling drama and enthusiasm by ready-made association. Sure lots of people read a lot of fantasy, science fiction, are well traveled, or know history, so those settings are going to generate instant repoire with those people- but it's smaller fraction of potential audience.
And what about the coolness of being the 'bad guy'? Half of this doesn't have to do with being mean, but with style: Dark colors, shiny jackboots, rigid marching and chanting, and angular symbols, aren't inherently evil, but were adopted by (and therefore forever associated with) fascists and others because they so effectively resonate with a lot of people.
Also, the bad guys play to power fantasies more effectively- The bad guy gets to choose when to attack ('pre-emptively' or without any cause at all), can use the most devious methods, can disregard human rights and popular opinion (which are left out of most simulations and games anyhow), and demand total unquestioning submission from their followers (which also simplifies AI). There's more freedom there, which gamers like- but it's a fantasy freedom that generally has negative results when translated to reality- most people are going to end up on the suffering end rather than be dictator.
I guess the problems arise when people are also capable of living out these fantasies vicariously through the actions of their leaders and don't mind their impotent position in the scheme of things: If you believe your government can do no wrong, then screw causality, the government is always carrying out your wishes!
Is it possible that power-fantasy games, if used as an outlet for dealing with political impotence in ordinary life, create a higher tolerance for actual disenfranchisement- or does the disparity between what you would have done and what is decided on-high lower this tolerance?
...it comes down to there not being enough quantums (of time) between now and the end of the universe to check every possible key if every atom can perform on calculation per quantum.
Which theory of the end of the universe is this? There was just a story the other day on some evidence for no end at all- though in that setup most of the universe would eventually so separated from other parts that a possible cosmo-computer would break down.
Usually these kinds of arguements are supposed to show how preposterous it would be to take the opposing viewpoint. But alarms should go off for the SF writer or reader that hears experts construct a fantastical explanation (a computer the size of the universe!) and declare it so ridiculous that it proves their point- there's potential story material to be had if you take the up the idea and logically carry it to even more extreme ends: How would a galaxy-turned-supercomputer look from earth? There's got to be some tradeoff between acquiring so much computing mass
in one location that time dilation effects take place (effectively slowing computing speed) and mass being so distributed that the speed of light delays seriously hampers computing speed as well- I'd like to hear or figure out what those limits are.
I think one of the Charles Stross stories mentions the possibility that currently observed astronomical objects (or was it dark matter?) like quasars are actually distant alien supercomputers dumping a _lot_ of waste heat. He didn't mention decryption applications, so there's still room for more stories.
The cause of - and solution to - all our lives existence!
Asteroids are the cause of - and solution to - all our lives existence!
Spell Check:
Type in candidate spellings of a word, and assume the spelling with the most search results is the right one:
'amatuer' -> 3.9e6 hits, 'amateur' -> 35e6 hits. Amateur it is.
'modelling' -> 2.6e6 hits, 'modeling' -> 5.7e6 hits. Close call, perhaps both are acceptable?
Ego Boost:
Everyone knows about this one: see what comes up under your own name (put it in quotes if necessary)- Hopefully if you run a small website or comment with your real name frequently in a google searchable place that'll come up first. But you'll have to work hard to beat out all those genealogy sites that just list thousands of names, graveyard roll-calls and whatnot. Oh, and there's some court case from five years ago where you're name is featured prominently. My namesake is shared with one of the first shaken babies to die and become a major local (wherever it happened) newstory- not much of a boost after all.
Stalking:
I'd imagine this pretty similar to the previous, but with names of other people you know or used to know: your old college sweetheart died in 1892! Wait...
Trademark pre-research .com,.org,or .net site with the same name resolves, just in case.
You need a product name- something fresh and original, and easily googleable? Start with a few ideas, and use a thesaurus (and don't forget cool foreign language words/roots) to refine the name until google hits are down to a zero. Run words together or otherwise potential customers will end up at sites that just randomly use those words at different points of the text- assume the customer is too dumb or lazy to use quotes.
'NodeZero' is my new badass something-or-other- wait there's 1K hits, how about 'NodeNull'? Only 8 now, that's good, but better yet try 'NodeNothing'- zero results.
After the google test see if the
I'm sure there's many more...
I think ALL cable systems should be REQUIRED to have a local access channel. It could be a source of revenue for the cable stations, you actually have to buy air time. (Like Wayne's World) - New York and California shouldn't get all the fun. I bet that cooking shows, computer shows, and craft shows would flourish in local markets and help with our cable bills at the same time.
Most of them do. One type is called public access- no ads or commercial programming, and most of the time it's of a generally poor quality (though has anyone seen Jerkbeast in the Seattle area? That was pretty funny the first couple times I saw it).
The other kind is leased access, and it's indistuingishable from QVC and other channels filled with constant paid advertisements. The whole concept of leased access was promoted with a fantasy where local small-time video producers would be able to make shows and have ads just like on the networks, spawning a creative video renaissance etc. similar to what you describe.
...interstellar journey that spans the next 3 books (which degrade in quality in each subsequent book).
It's dirty old sf-writer effect at it's worst:
Female Protagonist: Hey grandpa, you and me and my sister have to repopulate the human race!
(I'm not making this up- I thought only the Old Testament could get away with this stuff)
Does this malady afflict other genres? It's not that I'm completely uncultured, it's just that I tend not to exhaustively read every book good-or-bad by of a given author outside sf.
Although, most of the worst books were co-written with Gentry Lee, perhaps we can blame it on him.
Useful link page from the 'Now with Bill Moyers' site, including interview transcripts, DOJ response, etc. I'm sure a lot of people saw the show Friday and tried to submit it (I did), but didn't bother to read deeper for the encryption stuff (me again) that would make it 'News for Nerds'.
it's illegal to for a Cuban citizen
-1 grammar? Preview doesn't help if I don't actually reread the message...
Anyone know of any tech jobs in Cuba?
According to the ACCRC, an organization that tries to ship refurbished computers to less advanced countries, it's illegal to for a Cuban citizen to own a computer.
This story is something about the obfuscated code writing contest. I read something about this years ago but I certainly don't recognize the contest purely on its initials, and of course the writeup says very little, all the links are slashdotted, and the initial posts aren't very descriptive.
So the story itself is obfuscated? That would almost be vaguely clever, though I think poorly done is the more likely answer...