Of course I haven't RTFA, but I wonder if the test is measuring what the title of the article says it is measuring. Are the results due to playing the video game, or could they be from the physical exercise involved in DDR (considerable). There is probably room for a number of different control groups. Bad science indeed.
Voluntary physical exertion has already been proven to promote neurogenesis (the creation of new nerve cells in the brain) regardless of the involvement of visual stimulation or problem on the part of a video game. Simply running on a treadmill while staring at a blank wall will produce new neurons, so long as you "want" to do it.
Interestingly enough, forced physical exertion does not promote neurogenesis.
It's very true that athletic peoples' bodies burn more calories, but that does not necessarily correlate to their eating more calories than other people.
Take two people, one who rides a bike two hours a day and one who does not. Two hours on a bike at 15 mph (24.1 kph) burns about 1600 calories. (Don't scoff at this as an implausible amount of exercise, I personally do this.) Your argument would state that the athlete must eat 1600 more calories than the other person. But the non-athlete might eat the same amount of calories as the athlete. They just do not burn it off, resulting in obesity. Why is it that, on average, the people in industrialized countries gain a pound every year starting on their 30th birthday? Because people consume more than they require. Athletes eat the same amount of food as other people, they just burn all of it and simultaneously improve their health. (They tend to eat higher quality food, as well.)
It is also an outrageous fiction that athletes are a bigger drain on the health care system than the obese. "(Athletes) are a bigger drain on the health care system (than the average person) due to sports related injuries." What statistic you used to deduce that fact?!? Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer are the top four killers known to medicine. They are also the four most expensive. Every single one is massively exacerbated by the sedentary lifestyle, coupled with overeating (esp. of the wrong foods) that leads to obesity. These are long term, degenerative diseases which cost more money the longer they go on. Heart disease alone costs the United States over $400 billion dollars a year. High blood pressure? Over $60 billion. (Source: CDC) There is no way that sports medicine costs even 1/10th that figure.
But okay, let's take sports medicine. Obese people put tons of additional pressure on their joints. While there are few detailed analyses of how much obesity contributes to the overall trend, one Canadian study of 17,000 patients found that 9 in 10 who had knee replacements and 7 in 10 who had hip replacements in that country in 2004 were overweight. Sure, an athlete will tear an ACL or require some physical therapy to fix some nagging problem, but it is many orders of magnitude more insignificant than obesity and inactivity in terms of costs and resources.
Slavery is freedom from distraction. A still tongue makes a happy life.
If I lived in that school district and they tried to put one of those Lo-Jack things on my kid, I would wield the ACLU and smite the school district with them while shouting "SMITE" (Bard's Tale fans rejoice!)
Do they have any idea what this sort of douche-baggery would do to someone psychologically? They put electronic tethers on convicts for crying out loud. These are OUR CHILDREN! Maybe there is a reason that children are fleeing our public schools in record numbers... and maybe that reason should be looked for somewhere other than the children!
Powers of Ten is a short film by architect Charles Eames and his wife Ray. It explores the scale of things from the very large scale to the very small, and back again. Quite an fantastic achievement for two people and a few intern/assistants in an era before computerized special effects.
The film is available on DVD.
Charles and Ray Eames were a brilliant husband and wife duo of American designers in the 20th century. They were pioneers in so many different fields that, upon Ray's death in 1988 the entire contents of their architecture and design studio in California was cataloged, crated-up, and sent to the Smithsonian National Museum for permanent safekeeping.
I'll let you check out the wikipedia entry for more info:
Let's say, for argument sake, that someone bought a car and took it apart with the intention of severely modifying it. Cosmetically it might look the same, but maybe they simply wanted that flux capacitor under the hood. What do you think GM, Toyota, Mercedes or any other auto company might do when our intrepid hobbyist brings this car in two months after they bought it complaining that it was "bricked" because the dealership performed some routine maintenance? They'd tell our customer that no, in fact, you purchased a car and not a time machine and that not only is it common knowledge that extreme/permanent modifications void your warranty, it's written in giant block letters on your service contract every time you bring it in for work.
Would such a customer have even the slightest right to complain when, having permanently altered the guts of their car, the big bad General Motors or Honda or whatever company made it told them to hike without batting an eyelash? Of course not. They'd be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
It's time to grow up, people. No one made any of the bricked iPhone owners mod their own phones. To say the risks involved were hidden is absurd. It is in all upper-case bold type at the very top of the service agreement, right in plain view over every single user who updates their firmware: "If you screwed with your phone, it could die if you apply this." Yet all these users clicked CONTINUE. People need to take responsibility for their actions and stop whining.
"Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore's airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, had been gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself. Only the clouds were feathered with chaos - weird columnar structures towering above the Strait of China." -William Gibson
One of the strongest qualities of the original Star Wars universe (Episodes IV-VI) was the dirt around the edges. Spielberg's banged-up, worn out world breathed life into an otherwise unbelivable story. It's pretty obvious that 1st-person shooters are a literal testbed for the neat-and-tidy=fake hypothesis. Virtual worlds would look a heck of a lot better with a little grunge. But what about other dirt; grit in an RPG's algorithmic cogs?
The algorithms that govern character growth and power-potential in an RPG universe could use a little virtual "dirt". These algorithms are very often linear and dull dull dull! There's no real uncertainty in the system--uncertainty that would allow a very low level character to find a disproportionately powerful weapon (for example) very early on in the game. There is also no potential to be a very unlucky player who's character takes a very long time before going anywhere. These are two qualities that make life interesting. The potential for failure lends an exhilarating edge to success while certainty makes success dull.
Game designers are so terrified of alienating players that they design games which no one with an IQ over 90 could possibly lose.
You're talking about fault within the legal system. I was merely talking in terms of logical analysis. (You know, the set of mental tools we use to determine if laws are valid or not... entirely different from the much smaller set of mental tools we use to determine if a law exists or not. Just because it's a law doesn't make it a good law and as citizens, wouldn't you say it's our job to question these things?)
My point was that logically speaking, if you hold all companies to that burden of responsibility, then gun manufacturers could be held responsible for crimes committed through the intentional misuse of their products, automotive manufactueres could be held responsible for crimes commited with the intentional misuse of their products, and so forth. It isn't as though YouTube is intentionally encouraging its users to upload copyrighted material.
At what point are Americans going to become accountable for our own actions again? The reason that websites do not have "common carrier status" is simple: The media corporations saw to it that they weren't given it. They have gigantic lobbies which all but guarantee that any laws passed favor their interests. Since individuals breaking copyright laws aren't a desireable litigious target for the media companies, they saw to it that a law was created that enabled them to sue the fatter juicier targets; the websites over which content is shared. The lobbying and legal muscle of an AOL/Time-Warner is several orders of magnitude more powerful than a company like YouTube.
PS: DON'T USE ALL CAPS. IT'S SHOUTING AND IT'S CONSIDERED RUDE.
I'm, um... not Edison Carter, but what I want to know is... how long until we have Blipverts compressing 30 second commercials into 2 seconds. (and how long after that do people start blowing up?)
YouTube doesn't advocate the use of copyrighted material on its site. Technically, YouTube's responsibility should extend only so far as to warn its users of the consequences of copyright infringement. If the users engage in copyright infringement, shouldn't the users be responsible for their own actions? "But suing individuals is bad for business!" whines the music fatcats... "It makes us look like total greedy jerks." Yeah. It does, doesn't it?
Suing YouTube over the actions of its users is like suing General Motors because someone's idiot teenager hit you with a Hummer. It's not GM's fault that the kid lacked the discipline required to actually use the Hummer with prudence and restraint. It's the kid's. Clearly we can't tell GM that they aren't allowed to make Hummers simply because sometimes idiot kids cause accidents in them.
Once again we see big business terrified by a powerful new infrastructure that threatens its very economic model. These lawsuits aren't about recouping some profits lost when junior uploads the latest Jay-Z music video to YouTube. Heck, music videos are a lost-leader anyway. They give them away for free on three different cable networks here in the US. This is about stifling the competition. The major players in the content industry are terrified that people will turn to each other for content rather than the players themselves. If a musician can get on YouTube and release her own music video, made legitimately with her own money and content, she doesn't need the major music labels. This is about distribution rights. YouTube has positioned itself within a distribution channel which presents itself as a feasible DIY alternative to the old corporate system. The old system is simply trying to sue that new distribution channel out of existence.
When I ride my 17 lb racing bike around town I average 20 mph and get just bout 20 miles per taco... and I looked it up, tacos are a totally renewable energy source!
I am currently attending one of the top Universities in the midwest. (a major research school, 50,000+ students) A few years ago, I would have scoffed at a story like this as being alarmist and overgeneralizing. I can honestly attest to the fact that I know students who abuse drugs, especially Adderall, in order to perform academically. In general, I've mostly seen average students do so to keep up with the really brilliant ones. The competition is so intense that they will do anything to improve their GPA. It's really sad.
C'mon. You and everybody else knew what mfh meant. This isn't English class.
Are classes something we take just to say we passed? Get the grade and forget everything you learned? It is an attitude prevalent in American schools and it is one of the reasons the world is kicking our butts economically speaking. To give one example among countless others, the Indians I have worked with in the United States and for whom English is a second language speak it more fluently than the majority of the Americans I know. (And most of the Americans I know have at least a Bachelors degree.) If your thoughts are inarticulate it follows that the words you use to express them will be as well. If your worlds are inarticulate, it most likely reflects a sloppiness in your thinking.
In this case, you're comparing your Mac (hardware and software) to your Windows XP PC. Uptime depends on much more than just the OS. Bad hardware and drivers will kill the uptime of both OS X and WinXP. Running unpatched WinXP in administrator mode with the firewall turned off will also kill uptime. Sure, there are a lot more crappy PCs out there than crappy Macs (which do exist). But there are plenty of non-crappy PCs with Service Pack 2 that don't freeze or need to be rebooted regularly. I'm surprised yours isn't one of them.
My PC was running Service Pack 2, it did have the firewall turned on, and it was still garbage. This had to do with the rate of memory fragmentation and other factors during the day to day running of the OS. (I tend to be they type of user which has 15+ applications open at any given time. This is not unreasonable to expect of an OS. My Mac manages all the time.) Actually, I could argue that it was Windows inability to properly manage its running assets which was at issue. The same hardware ran BSD and Linux just fine.
IIRC, the ad comparing iLife to Windows' offerings compares the suite to Calculator and Clock, not Windows Media Player and Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. So it is trolling, whether you like it or not.
I'll grant you that, although I would still put it in the category of advertising hyperbole in that they are trying to take it to an extreme to prove a point. (They really should've slammed WMP and all the other garbage that MS bundles though...) In reality Windows Media Player and Windows Picture and Fax Viewer are both singularly and collectively a joke compared to iLife apps.
"Mac" is the brand name of a product line (of computers) made by Apple. Products do not troll. Apple is a company, so if trolling is being done, it is Apple (or more specifically Apple Marketing) that is doing it. Choose your nouns carefully!
Apple's OS X v. Windows XP ads are hardly trolling. It is not trolling when a company compares their product line against their competitor's in a non-subjective way.
When I pull up the terminal window and type 'uptime' my Mac will return a date figure which is in months (and for a while there in years + months!) I have owned a PC running Windows XP and this was never the case. So memory fragmentation and frequency of rebooting are a legitimate comparison between the two platforms.
The iLife suite of applications, like iPhoto, iTunes, iEtc, is far better integrated, reliable and functional than any of the lifestyle applications that Microsoft bundles with Windows. So again, the point that Apple is making is legitimate. Just because you don't like the comparisons being drawn does not make the act of doing so flaming any more than my debate with you is flaming. Too often people call out others for flaming simply based on the fact that they don't like what the other party is saying.
This is not the case with Dvorak. I've been reading him since the late 80s/early 90s. While not being as overtly ridiculous a buffoon as someone like Bill O'Reilly, Dvorak's idea of "fair and balanced" is about as legitimate as that of Fox News. He often chooses which facts to include in a story to give it the slant he wants. He is consitently anti-Apple and makes little attempt to hide the fact. He reminds me of 60-Minutes' Andy Rooney or that idiot on ABC News, John Stossel. (Note: That bit about John Stossel was flaming. The man has the epistemological skills of a turnip and regularly makes an ass of himself on national television.)
The point isn't to hate Dvorak or harbor any emotion toward him whatsoever. The point is that he exists and has the right to voice his opinion, just like when skinheads march or Rupert Murdoch distorts the news. The only way to make people like them go away is to stop listening to them. How many times is a guy like Dvorak going to cry wolf (or inferior product) before people learn to roll their eyes at him? How many people in this country listen to writers like him because they're simply looking for someone they perceive to be in a position of authority (paid writer) to legitimize the things they already want to believe? It is not about facts, truth, or knowledge, it's all about spin.
Comparing 17 year-olds to Hezbollah terrorists is a really bad analogy. No one ever died because a 17 year-old downloaded a movie on BitTorrent. Kids don't walk into movie executives' homes wrapped with high explosive and 10-penny nails demanding "freedom for information or death!"
This sort of really bad hyperbolic logic makes lucid, rational debate almost impossible. (Of course, the MPAA's stance does that as well!)
I love it when pontificators exercise their craft without really having any idea what they're talking about...
If people from the 1920s suddenly landed in the here and now, they'd probably find modern technology a bit weird. Take digital cameras for instance. Nobody would have predicted that most people would now take pictures by holding the camera out in front of them and look at the preview screen to frame a shot.
Actually, upon examining the history of photography, we see that the twin-lens reflex camera was one of the most prominent consumer camera designs throughout the first half of the 20th century.
As the name implies, TLR cameras have two lenses, the objective lens for taking the picture and the viewfinder lens whose image is reflected through 45-degrees upwards and projected on a ground glass focusing screen. Since the image projected on the ground glass is viewable on the top of the camera's box body, these cameras were often held at waist height... (the reason why most of your family's photos from the 50s look like they were taken from a child's height!)
They peaked in the 1950s after the Japanese manufacturers began producing the single lens reflex (SLR) camera. SLRs perform the objective and viewfinder functions through the same lens with the help of a mirror which flips up, producing the characteristic "slap" sound of the SLR.
At any rate, the design of twin lens reflex camera caused people way back in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s to walk around taking pictures in a stiff-armed manner, holding their cameras far away from their faces and peering at a tiny screen. Sound familiar?
The tricorder on Star Trek was a prop. The actors just waved it around and went "wee oooo weee oooo weee oooo..." followed by proclaimations of discovery. "It's life Jim, but not as we know it!"
This is a real, functioning scientific instrument.
Why are they searching for meds there? Why not search the Sahara desert or the moon or the African jungle or something? Why the deep sea reef?
It is most likely that there are other groups studying the life of the Sahara desert and African jungles, however, it is most unlikely that studying biodiversity on the moon will turn up much that is useful. (As far as we know, there is no life there!) More fruitful for the moon would be a search for life at all. Once we find it, then we can study it.
When searching for novel organic compounds scientists will often examine places with high-biodiversity or intense living pressures, like near-surface coral reefs or rainforests. The more ecological niches there are in a locale, the more intense the evolutionary pressure to adapt. When species adapt to these circumstances, they often produce organic chemical compounds which are highly complex and completely unique. Scientists prize these compounds for their ability to perform various funcitons in the human body.
Why deep sea vents and reefs? They are not easy places to live and therefore are likely locations for intense adaptation among resident species.
Lowering the noise-floor is one of my highest priorities for sensors, too. There are ways of doing this other than increasing the resolution. I can't even imagine trying to edit a 50 megapixel camera RAW file... your machine would get sooooo sloooowwwww....
However, low noise and high resolution aren't the only hurdles required for digital to surpass the quality of film. You could have a black and white security camera with ultra-high resolution and very low noise, it wouldn't do you much good. It also calls for a high dynamic range, which film currently has in spades over digital. A logarithmic response curve, like film, would allow digital to finally handle clipping gracefully. And while we're at it why not toss out the single layer bayer mosaic sensor in favor of a layered system like Foveon's?
I can't wait for digital to surpass film. Unfortunately, we have a ways to go.
In terms of high-end photography, there are several requirements which rate MUCH higher than simple FPS:
Input Dynamic Range. This is the range of light values in a scene which the sensor "sees" and is able to record. In order to understand this, think of light at dusk reflecting off wet pavement in the distance. The super bright orange glare hitting your eyes is extremely high intensity light, while the shadowed sides of houses and trees and things are low intensity light. Both of these elements have detail that can be recorded. With a low dynamic range, one or the other can be exposed properly. With a high dynamic range it is possible to capture the detail in very dark shadows and very bright highlights without clipping. (Clipping is truncation to flat black or white pixels with no detail). Chemical film, especially positive film (slide film), has a dynamic range which obliterates the best digital sensors.
Falloff. This is the ability to clip gracefully. When using any type of transducer, whether it's a microphone, a square of film or a digital sensor, there is a response curve which maps values input values (light/sound) into recordable output values. In the age of analog (vacuum tubes, vinyl records and chemical film) the response curves were all based on Calculus. They literally rolled off (logarithmic) at the ends. This meant that as the microphone, vacuum tube or film overloaded, it did so gracefully with a smooth transition to clipping. In the digital world, our chips are "dumb". They can only do algebra, not calculus. Their falloff is linear. 8-bit = 256 values, 16-bit = 65536 values, etc. Anything above or below this is immediately clipped to white or black, on or off. The digital world is flat, if your input source is flat, you sail right off the edge into infinity.
Single Pixel Resolution. 99.99% of digital camera sensors use a single layer of matrixed sensors (Bayer array). These sensors are located in gangs of three, similarly to the pixels on an old CRT television. The problem is that each sensor can only see red, green or blue. There is a lot of jibber-jabber that I could go on with, but essentially, bayer sensors really only see 1/3 of the picture information their lenses dump on them. Chemical film is stacked in layers, thus each pixel location "sees" all three RGB. Currently only the Foveon X3 sensor in Sigma digital cameras is capable resolving all the information in each color channel at each individual pixel location.
Now, even if this new Matrix chip performs at even the sub-par level of today's CCD camera sensors, simply buying a camera with one in it does not by any means guarantee quality photography. Back when the sensor (film!) was interchangable from camera to camera, there was still intense competition between camera and lens manufacturers. This is because the sensor can only "see" the image that the lens and camera body deliver to it. The most important factor is the lens! Imagine rubbing vaseline on your glasses and walking around like that all day. This is life with a cheap camera lens. There's a reason why most professional lenses, without a camera body, cost betweed two and ten times as much as an entire point and shoot camera. If a lens is a valve for light, then a professional lens is like a firehose, a prosumer is like a garden hose, a point and shoot is a drinking straw and a cameraphone is a hypodermic needle.
This is a no-brainer. Of course stimulants reduce our resistance to advertising. If nothing else, they increase the sensation of pleasure and euphoria. This alone will decrease the average person's resistance to advertising messages.
Why do you think that coffee shops are embedded in every Barnes & Noble and Border's book store?
A secondary effect is that stimulants also increase anxiety. Because of the gift giving tradition and material reward systems built into consumer culture, we associate material gain with happiness and pleasure. Therefore, in states of increased anxiety, one of the ways we release this anxiety is to increase our consumption. "Do something nice for yourself. Buy something nice."
This isn't overt mind control. These factors don't affect people 100% of the time. Just like evolution, a 1-3% increase in the statistical average will produce huge aggregate effects over time.
"I don't like big-screen notebooks myself. I worked on a 13 inch display just fine on my desktop back in the day. Even if your laptop is going to be your primary computer, I'd prefer something light and compact even if it was my primary computer, and to just hook that up to a larger external display at home..."
If you are primarily using your laptop for text-related work like programming or writing, then fine, a 17" doesn't make sense. Don't buy one. But just because it isn't the right machine for you doesn't mean Apple shouldn't produce it. Isn't that why Apple produces multiple product lines (pro/consumer) with varying sizes? I don't believe that Apple announced it would stop producing 12" or 15" machines in order to focus on 17" ones.
There is a large market for 17" Apple laptops. I personally know many architects, graphic designers, web designers, and a photographer who all own 17" PowerBooks. I own one, in fact. As an architecture student, I can't imagine having a small screen.
Slashdot Mirror
Voluntary physical exertion has already been proven to promote neurogenesis (the creation of new nerve cells in the brain) regardless of the involvement of visual stimulation or problem on the part of a video game. Simply running on a treadmill while staring at a blank wall will produce new neurons, so long as you "want" to do it.
Interestingly enough, forced physical exertion does not promote neurogenesis.
For more on this good science called neuroplasticity, read the book: Train Your Mind to Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves by Sharon Begley.
It's very true that athletic peoples' bodies burn more calories, but that does not necessarily correlate to their eating more calories than other people.
Take two people, one who rides a bike two hours a day and one who does not. Two hours on a bike at 15 mph (24.1 kph) burns about 1600 calories. (Don't scoff at this as an implausible amount of exercise, I personally do this.) Your argument would state that the athlete must eat 1600 more calories than the other person. But the non-athlete might eat the same amount of calories as the athlete. They just do not burn it off, resulting in obesity. Why is it that, on average, the people in industrialized countries gain a pound every year starting on their 30th birthday? Because people consume more than they require. Athletes eat the same amount of food as other people, they just burn all of it and simultaneously improve their health. (They tend to eat higher quality food, as well.)
It is also an outrageous fiction that athletes are a bigger drain on the health care system than the obese. "(Athletes) are a bigger drain on the health care system (than the average person) due to sports related injuries." What statistic you used to deduce that fact?!? Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer are the top four killers known to medicine. They are also the four most expensive. Every single one is massively exacerbated by the sedentary lifestyle, coupled with overeating (esp. of the wrong foods) that leads to obesity. These are long term, degenerative diseases which cost more money the longer they go on. Heart disease alone costs the United States over $400 billion dollars a year. High blood pressure? Over $60 billion. (Source: CDC) There is no way that sports medicine costs even 1/10th that figure.
But okay, let's take sports medicine. Obese people put tons of additional pressure on their joints. While there are few detailed analyses of how much obesity contributes to the overall trend, one Canadian study of 17,000 patients found that 9 in 10 who had knee replacements and 7 in 10 who had hip replacements in that country in 2004 were overweight. Sure, an athlete will tear an ACL or require some physical therapy to fix some nagging problem, but it is many orders of magnitude more insignificant than obesity and inactivity in terms of costs and resources.
Slavery is freedom from distraction. A still tongue makes a happy life.
If I lived in that school district and they tried to put one of those Lo-Jack things on my kid, I would wield the ACLU and smite the school district with them while shouting "SMITE" (Bard's Tale fans rejoice!)
Do they have any idea what this sort of douche-baggery would do to someone psychologically? They put electronic tethers on convicts for crying out loud. These are OUR CHILDREN! Maybe there is a reason that children are fleeing our public schools in record numbers... and maybe that reason should be looked for somewhere other than the children!
Powers of Ten is a short film by architect Charles Eames and his wife Ray. It explores the scale of things from the very large scale to the very small, and back again. Quite an fantastic achievement for two people and a few intern/assistants in an era before computerized special effects.
The film is available on DVD.
Charles and Ray Eames were a brilliant husband and wife duo of American designers in the 20th century. They were pioneers in so many different fields that, upon Ray's death in 1988 the entire contents of their architecture and design studio in California was cataloged, crated-up, and sent to the Smithsonian National Museum for permanent safekeeping.
I'll let you check out the wikipedia entry for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten
Let's say, for argument sake, that someone bought a car and took it apart with the intention of severely modifying it. Cosmetically it might look the same, but maybe they simply wanted that flux capacitor under the hood. What do you think GM, Toyota, Mercedes or any other auto company might do when our intrepid hobbyist brings this car in two months after they bought it complaining that it was "bricked" because the dealership performed some routine maintenance? They'd tell our customer that no, in fact, you purchased a car and not a time machine and that not only is it common knowledge that extreme/permanent modifications void your warranty, it's written in giant block letters on your service contract every time you bring it in for work.
Would such a customer have even the slightest right to complain when, having permanently altered the guts of their car, the big bad General Motors or Honda or whatever company made it told them to hike without batting an eyelash? Of course not. They'd be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
It's time to grow up, people. No one made any of the bricked iPhone owners mod their own phones. To say the risks involved were hidden is absurd. It is in all upper-case bold type at the very top of the service agreement, right in plain view over every single user who updates their firmware: "If you screwed with your phone, it could die if you apply this." Yet all these users clicked CONTINUE. People need to take responsibility for their actions and stop whining.
Doh! You're totally right. My brainfart. I meant Lucas. Durrr!
"Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore's airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, had been gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself. Only the clouds were feathered with chaos - weird columnar structures towering above the Strait of China." -William Gibson
One of the strongest qualities of the original Star Wars universe (Episodes IV-VI) was the dirt around the edges. Spielberg's banged-up, worn out world breathed life into an otherwise unbelivable story. It's pretty obvious that 1st-person shooters are a literal testbed for the neat-and-tidy=fake hypothesis. Virtual worlds would look a heck of a lot better with a little grunge. But what about other dirt; grit in an RPG's algorithmic cogs?
The algorithms that govern character growth and power-potential in an RPG universe could use a little virtual "dirt". These algorithms are very often linear and dull dull dull! There's no real uncertainty in the system--uncertainty that would allow a very low level character to find a disproportionately powerful weapon (for example) very early on in the game. There is also no potential to be a very unlucky player who's character takes a very long time before going anywhere. These are two qualities that make life interesting. The potential for failure lends an exhilarating edge to success while certainty makes success dull.
Game designers are so terrified of alienating players that they design games which no one with an IQ over 90 could possibly lose.
You're talking about fault within the legal system. I was merely talking in terms of logical analysis. (You know, the set of mental tools we use to determine if laws are valid or not... entirely different from the much smaller set of mental tools we use to determine if a law exists or not. Just because it's a law doesn't make it a good law and as citizens, wouldn't you say it's our job to question these things?)
My point was that logically speaking, if you hold all companies to that burden of responsibility, then gun manufacturers could be held responsible for crimes committed through the intentional misuse of their products, automotive manufactueres could be held responsible for crimes commited with the intentional misuse of their products, and so forth. It isn't as though YouTube is intentionally encouraging its users to upload copyrighted material.
At what point are Americans going to become accountable for our own actions again? The reason that websites do not have "common carrier status" is simple: The media corporations saw to it that they weren't given it. They have gigantic lobbies which all but guarantee that any laws passed favor their interests. Since individuals breaking copyright laws aren't a desireable litigious target for the media companies, they saw to it that a law was created that enabled them to sue the fatter juicier targets; the websites over which content is shared. The lobbying and legal muscle of an AOL/Time-Warner is several orders of magnitude more powerful than a company like YouTube.
PS: DON'T USE ALL CAPS. IT'S SHOUTING AND IT'S CONSIDERED RUDE.
I'm, um... not Edison Carter, but what I want to know is... how long until we have Blipverts compressing 30 second commercials into 2 seconds. (and how long after that do people start blowing up?)
YouTube doesn't advocate the use of copyrighted material on its site. Technically, YouTube's responsibility should extend only so far as to warn its users of the consequences of copyright infringement. If the users engage in copyright infringement, shouldn't the users be responsible for their own actions? "But suing individuals is bad for business!" whines the music fatcats... "It makes us look like total greedy jerks." Yeah. It does, doesn't it?
Suing YouTube over the actions of its users is like suing General Motors because someone's idiot teenager hit you with a Hummer. It's not GM's fault that the kid lacked the discipline required to actually use the Hummer with prudence and restraint. It's the kid's. Clearly we can't tell GM that they aren't allowed to make Hummers simply because sometimes idiot kids cause accidents in them.
Once again we see big business terrified by a powerful new infrastructure that threatens its very economic model. These lawsuits aren't about recouping some profits lost when junior uploads the latest Jay-Z music video to YouTube. Heck, music videos are a lost-leader anyway. They give them away for free on three different cable networks here in the US. This is about stifling the competition. The major players in the content industry are terrified that people will turn to each other for content rather than the players themselves. If a musician can get on YouTube and release her own music video, made legitimately with her own money and content, she doesn't need the major music labels. This is about distribution rights. YouTube has positioned itself within a distribution channel which presents itself as a feasible DIY alternative to the old corporate system. The old system is simply trying to sue that new distribution channel out of existence.
Microsoft Research? I didn't know they had an R&D team... oh wait. You must mean they aquired a new startup, right?
When I ride my 17 lb racing bike around town I average 20 mph and get just bout 20 miles per taco... and I looked it up, tacos are a totally renewable energy source!
I am currently attending one of the top Universities in the midwest. (a major research school, 50,000+ students) A few years ago, I would have scoffed at a story like this as being alarmist and overgeneralizing. I can honestly attest to the fact that I know students who abuse drugs, especially Adderall, in order to perform academically. In general, I've mostly seen average students do so to keep up with the really brilliant ones. The competition is so intense that they will do anything to improve their GPA. It's really sad.
Are classes something we take just to say we passed? Get the grade and forget everything you learned? It is an attitude prevalent in American schools and it is one of the reasons the world is kicking our butts economically speaking. To give one example among countless others, the Indians I have worked with in the United States and for whom English is a second language speak it more fluently than the majority of the Americans I know. (And most of the Americans I know have at least a Bachelors degree.) If your thoughts are inarticulate it follows that the words you use to express them will be as well. If your worlds are inarticulate, it most likely reflects a sloppiness in your thinking.
My PC was running Service Pack 2, it did have the firewall turned on, and it was still garbage. This had to do with the rate of memory fragmentation and other factors during the day to day running of the OS. (I tend to be they type of user which has 15+ applications open at any given time. This is not unreasonable to expect of an OS. My Mac manages all the time.) Actually, I could argue that it was Windows inability to properly manage its running assets which was at issue. The same hardware ran BSD and Linux just fine.
I'll grant you that, although I would still put it in the category of advertising hyperbole in that they are trying to take it to an extreme to prove a point. (They really should've slammed WMP and all the other garbage that MS bundles though...) In reality Windows Media Player and Windows Picture and Fax Viewer are both singularly and collectively a joke compared to iLife apps.
"Mac" is the brand name of a product line (of computers) made by Apple. Products do not troll. Apple is a company, so if trolling is being done, it is Apple (or more specifically Apple Marketing) that is doing it. Choose your nouns carefully!
Apple's OS X v. Windows XP ads are hardly trolling. It is not trolling when a company compares their product line against their competitor's in a non-subjective way.
When I pull up the terminal window and type 'uptime' my Mac will return a date figure which is in months (and for a while there in years + months!) I have owned a PC running Windows XP and this was never the case. So memory fragmentation and frequency of rebooting are a legitimate comparison between the two platforms.
The iLife suite of applications, like iPhoto, iTunes, iEtc, is far better integrated, reliable and functional than any of the lifestyle applications that Microsoft bundles with Windows. So again, the point that Apple is making is legitimate. Just because you don't like the comparisons being drawn does not make the act of doing so flaming any more than my debate with you is flaming. Too often people call out others for flaming simply based on the fact that they don't like what the other party is saying.
This is not the case with Dvorak. I've been reading him since the late 80s/early 90s. While not being as overtly ridiculous a buffoon as someone like Bill O'Reilly, Dvorak's idea of "fair and balanced" is about as legitimate as that of Fox News. He often chooses which facts to include in a story to give it the slant he wants. He is consitently anti-Apple and makes little attempt to hide the fact. He reminds me of 60-Minutes' Andy Rooney or that idiot on ABC News, John Stossel. (Note: That bit about John Stossel was flaming. The man has the epistemological skills of a turnip and regularly makes an ass of himself on national television.)
The point isn't to hate Dvorak or harbor any emotion toward him whatsoever. The point is that he exists and has the right to voice his opinion, just like when skinheads march or Rupert Murdoch distorts the news. The only way to make people like them go away is to stop listening to them. How many times is a guy like Dvorak going to cry wolf (or inferior product) before people learn to roll their eyes at him? How many people in this country listen to writers like him because they're simply looking for someone they perceive to be in a position of authority (paid writer) to legitimize the things they already want to believe? It is not about facts, truth, or knowledge, it's all about spin.
Comparing 17 year-olds to Hezbollah terrorists is a really bad analogy. No one ever died because a 17 year-old downloaded a movie on BitTorrent. Kids don't walk into movie executives' homes wrapped with high explosive and 10-penny nails demanding "freedom for information or death!"
This sort of really bad hyperbolic logic makes lucid, rational debate almost impossible. (Of course, the MPAA's stance does that as well!)
I love it when pontificators exercise their craft without really having any idea what they're talking about...
Actually, upon examining the history of photography, we see that the twin-lens reflex camera was one of the most prominent consumer camera designs throughout the first half of the 20th century.
As the name implies, TLR cameras have two lenses, the objective lens for taking the picture and the viewfinder lens whose image is reflected through 45-degrees upwards and projected on a ground glass focusing screen. Since the image projected on the ground glass is viewable on the top of the camera's box body, these cameras were often held at waist height... (the reason why most of your family's photos from the 50s look like they were taken from a child's height!)
They peaked in the 1950s after the Japanese manufacturers began producing the single lens reflex (SLR) camera. SLRs perform the objective and viewfinder functions through the same lens with the help of a mirror which flips up, producing the characteristic "slap" sound of the SLR.
At any rate, the design of twin lens reflex camera caused people way back in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s to walk around taking pictures in a stiff-armed manner, holding their cameras far away from their faces and peering at a tiny screen. Sound familiar?
Um... no.
The tricorder on Star Trek was a prop. The actors just waved it around and went "wee oooo weee oooo weee oooo..." followed by proclaimations of discovery. "It's life Jim, but not as we know it!"
This is a real, functioning scientific instrument.
It is most likely that there are other groups studying the life of the Sahara desert and African jungles, however, it is most unlikely that studying biodiversity on the moon will turn up much that is useful. (As far as we know, there is no life there!) More fruitful for the moon would be a search for life at all. Once we find it, then we can study it.
When searching for novel organic compounds scientists will often examine places with high-biodiversity or intense living pressures, like near-surface coral reefs or rainforests. The more ecological niches there are in a locale, the more intense the evolutionary pressure to adapt. When species adapt to these circumstances, they often produce organic chemical compounds which are highly complex and completely unique. Scientists prize these compounds for their ability to perform various funcitons in the human body.
Why deep sea vents and reefs? They are not easy places to live and therefore are likely locations for intense adaptation among resident species.
Lowering the noise-floor is one of my highest priorities for sensors, too. There are ways of doing this other than increasing the resolution. I can't even imagine trying to edit a 50 megapixel camera RAW file... your machine would get sooooo sloooowwwww....
However, low noise and high resolution aren't the only hurdles required for digital to surpass the quality of film. You could have a black and white security camera with ultra-high resolution and very low noise, it wouldn't do you much good. It also calls for a high dynamic range, which film currently has in spades over digital. A logarithmic response curve, like film, would allow digital to finally handle clipping gracefully. And while we're at it why not toss out the single layer bayer mosaic sensor in favor of a layered system like Foveon's?
I can't wait for digital to surpass film. Unfortunately, we have a ways to go.Read more, here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186114&cid=153 60697/.
In terms of high-end photography, there are several requirements which rate MUCH higher than simple FPS:
Now, even if this new Matrix chip performs at even the sub-par level of today's CCD camera sensors, simply buying a camera with one in it does not by any means guarantee quality photography. Back when the sensor (film!) was interchangable from camera to camera, there was still intense competition between camera and lens manufacturers. This is because the sensor can only "see" the image that the lens and camera body deliver to it. The most important factor is the lens! Imagine rubbing vaseline on your glasses and walking around like that all day. This is life with a cheap camera lens. There's a reason why most professional lenses, without a camera body, cost betweed two and ten times as much as an entire point and shoot camera. If a lens is a valve for light, then a professional lens is like a firehose, a prosumer is like a garden hose, a point and shoot is a drinking straw and a cameraphone is a hypodermic needle.
--That's my 2(6.022*10^23) cents worth.
This is a no-brainer. Of course stimulants reduce our resistance to advertising. If nothing else, they increase the sensation of pleasure and euphoria. This alone will decrease the average person's resistance to advertising messages.
Why do you think that coffee shops are embedded in every Barnes & Noble and Border's book store?
A secondary effect is that stimulants also increase anxiety. Because of the gift giving tradition and material reward systems built into consumer culture, we associate material gain with happiness and pleasure. Therefore, in states of increased anxiety, one of the ways we release this anxiety is to increase our consumption. "Do something nice for yourself. Buy something nice."
This isn't overt mind control. These factors don't affect people 100% of the time. Just like evolution, a 1-3% increase in the statistical average will produce huge aggregate effects over time.
speaking of trolls...
If you are primarily using your laptop for text-related work like programming or writing, then fine, a 17" doesn't make sense. Don't buy one. But just because it isn't the right machine for you doesn't mean Apple shouldn't produce it. Isn't that why Apple produces multiple product lines (pro/consumer) with varying sizes? I don't believe that Apple announced it would stop producing 12" or 15" machines in order to focus on 17" ones.
There is a large market for 17" Apple laptops. I personally know many architects, graphic designers, web designers, and a photographer who all own 17" PowerBooks. I own one, in fact. As an architecture student, I can't imagine having a small screen.