Looking at the boxoffice results makes as much sense as looking at football scores. It's all about picking a team and rooting for it: economics as a spectator sport.
A few random analogies (heading in different directions) that also come to mind... should a bartender turn off the tap to someone that's drinking themselves to death? Is a busline responsible if they sell a ticket to a runaway? How far should owners of a baseball park go to discourage leaning out from the upper tiers for pop fouls? Where is the line between respectfulness and handing out a Darwin Award?
For a moment, let us set aside legalities, the responsibility for one's own actions, the grief and blame. Someone has died. Surely we can agree that in a civilized society we should step back and reflect on whether there is anything that could be done to prevent it from happening again? This game was a big part of this person's life. It represents an opportunity to have made a difference.
There are two questions that come to mind in these situations: was there any reasonable way of avoiding the distress? did the people running the game profit?
I think the majority here would agree that games don't cause mental instability. They may attract it, but correlation is not causation. However the game encourages players to invest their emotions in the character. Whether it's genetic, memetic, developed or just a moment of weakness, some people react too strongly to that stimulus. Having checks, like a message (that can be disabled) that pops up saying "do you realise you've been playing 4 hours straight?" or a methods of easing the real grief which is felt when a fictional character is killed or crippled are just a nice, civilized things to do.
How is the producer of the game rewarded? If there's a flat rate beyond a certain point, they've got no reward in keeping people glued to the screen beyond sane levels. Flat rates help defuse the conflict between ethics and profits.
(A lot of words, but I speak as someone who lost a best friend to a similar situation years ago when I was the one running the game)
God I hate April 1st.. What is the point of all this nonsense? I guess it could be funny, but after about age 5 it sort of stopped being funny for me.
The point is that in an information-saturated society, you need to sometimes step back and be a little more critical. 4/1 is an arbitrary day set aside to pause and reflect on trust. It celebrates and tests our ability to think critically, just as we use Christmas to reflect on charity or Valentine's Day to celebrate our relationships. I've been burned once or twice by 4/1, but I've emerged from the embarrassment a little wiser each time.
I wonder if there would be any value in a list of people who quickly heard of the new policy and opted out before the deadline? Propose an opt-out policy of questionable legality with a grace period, gather lists of accounts who discovered/heard about it and acted, but then never actually act on the change you proposed.
My read is that it's just the information about the light that's stopping: wave amplitude and frequency. This information is imprinted on a non-moving medium (spin states of the atoms) and then released later when the atoms are excited: a wave released with the same properties of the incoming wave that was absorbed.
I can't see what the technical reason is for saying dramatically that this information is "stored" and not "absorbed" - looks like it's just arguing about the spin [:) ] of the story. I'm not a physics guy either and sometimes I think they try too hard to mystify and dramatize the terminology when it's moved from math to English (especially on "Isn't it a wonderful time to be alive"-NASA press releases).
The problem is that it's hard to confine the supervillians to just the evil lands. By their nature, they constantly scheme to take over the world.
Now if you could convince legions of coders that the coolest game around was to time and again desperately, heroicly save all that is good from the brink of certain destruction each time the exploits of supervillians are set into motion...
Douglas Adams was right
on
Deep Algorithms?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Natural selection is the algorithm that solves all of life's problems:)
s far as we know, once you pass this point there is NO OTHER REPULSIVE FORCE available to keep the collapse in check. The star collapses all the way down to a single mathmatical point.
On the other hand, there are the (relatively) recent measurements of distant galaxies moving faster than expected, suggesting a repulsive force weaker than gravity. If it does exist and is governed by some power law like gravity or electrical forces, then at sufficiently small distances it is stronger than gravity, thus creating an extremely powerful repulsive force.
Perhaps a sufficiently massive black hole would even achieve critical mass and create a really big bang:-)
(I'd use equations and references, but that might give me the illusion of credibility)
First of all, I'd recommend getting away from the idea that one name for one machine. Let aliases become your friend and use hostnames as a directory service:
Under this setup, one node may have the following names: wcam4c12, swebplan8, swebplan9, csys0004, x0209412 (or if it was a person's personal workstation, it might have e0101010 as another alias).
Now, if it moves, gets reassigned, gets a new role, gets supported by a different group, or gets a lease refresh, only one name (and possibly the ip) have to be changed, nothing else in any of the mount tables, lists, documentation. (and if you keep a convention of 8-letter names, you can use any other length of name safely for "fun" aliases)
It may seem like a lot of redundancy to set up, but don't forget: you need all this information anyway and this way you can use it right away in any script or config file without having to do an extra translation from some other id to a node/ip.
Slashdot Mirror
You know you've really become a command-line snob when you catch yourself dismissing a system of descriptive filenames as a "needless GUI"
Kindly old man falls off a bridge, regenerates into a form with straighter hair? ... of course, it all adds up now! :)
Looking at the boxoffice results makes as much sense as looking at football scores. It's all about picking a team and rooting for it: economics as a spectator sport.
(and isn't that a little encouraging?)
It is possible to equate Dunkurk with Yavin or Endor? Yes it is.
I'd equate Dunkirk with Hoth, myself.
The U.S. ambassador to Chile probably words his goverment's stance best:
... compared to US foreign policy, Bill Gates is a relatively benign monopolist?
Not a nut or a bolt will reach Chile.... We will do all in our power to condemn Chileans to utmost poverty
so
b) Americans think they know everything
Not claiming to know everything will never get you a job.
A few random analogies (heading in different directions) that also come to mind ... should a bartender turn off the tap to someone that's drinking themselves to death? Is a busline responsible if they sell a ticket to a runaway? How far should owners of a baseball park go to discourage leaning out from the upper tiers for pop fouls? Where is the line between respectfulness and handing out a Darwin Award?
For a moment, let us set aside legalities, the responsibility for one's own actions, the grief and blame. Someone has died. Surely we can agree that in a civilized society we should step back and reflect on whether there is anything that could be done to prevent it from happening again? This game was a big part of this person's life. It represents an opportunity to have made a difference.
There are two questions that come to mind in these situations: was there any reasonable way of avoiding the distress? did the people running the game profit?
I think the majority here would agree that games don't cause mental instability. They may attract it, but correlation is not causation. However the game encourages players to invest their emotions in the character. Whether it's genetic, memetic, developed or just a moment of weakness, some people react too strongly to that stimulus. Having checks, like a message (that can be disabled) that pops up saying "do you realise you've been playing 4 hours straight?" or a methods of easing the real grief which is felt when a fictional character is killed or crippled are just a nice, civilized things to do.
How is the producer of the game rewarded? If there's a flat rate beyond a certain point, they've got no reward in keeping people glued to the screen beyond sane levels. Flat rates help defuse the conflict between ethics and profits.
(A lot of words, but I speak as someone who lost a best friend to a similar situation years ago when I was the one running the game)
God I hate April 1st.. What is the point of all this nonsense? I guess it could be funny, but after about age 5 it sort of stopped being funny for me.
... a cure for cancer has been found!
The point is that in an information-saturated society, you need to sometimes step back and be a little more critical. 4/1 is an arbitrary day set aside to pause and reflect on trust. It celebrates and tests our ability to think critically, just as we use Christmas to reflect on charity or Valentine's Day to celebrate our relationships. I've been burned once or twice by 4/1, but I've emerged from the embarrassment a little wiser each time.
By the way
I wonder if there would be any value in a list of people who quickly heard of the new policy and opted out before the deadline? Propose an opt-out policy of questionable legality with a grace period, gather lists of accounts who discovered/heard about it and acted, but then never actually act on the change you proposed.
(Occam's razor is for wimps)
My read is that it's just the information about the light that's stopping: wave amplitude and frequency. This information is imprinted on a non-moving medium (spin states of the atoms) and then released later when the atoms are excited: a wave released with the same properties of the incoming wave that was absorbed.
:) ] of the story. I'm not a physics guy either and sometimes I think they try too hard to mystify and dramatize the terminology when it's moved from math to English (especially on "Isn't it a wonderful time to be alive"-NASA press releases).
I can't see what the technical reason is for saying dramatically that this information is "stored" and not "absorbed" - looks like it's just arguing about the spin [
The problem is that it's hard to confine the supervillians to just the evil lands. By their nature, they constantly scheme to take over the world.
...
Now if you could convince legions of coders that the coolest game around was to time and again desperately, heroicly save all that is good from the brink of certain destruction each time the exploits of supervillians are set into motion
Natural selection is the algorithm that solves all of life's problems :)
s far as we know, once you pass this point there is NO OTHER REPULSIVE FORCE available to keep the collapse in check. The star collapses all the way down to a single mathmatical point.
On the other hand, there are the (relatively) recent measurements of distant galaxies moving faster than expected, suggesting a repulsive force weaker than gravity. If it does exist and is governed by some power law like gravity or electrical forces, then at sufficiently small distances it is stronger than gravity, thus creating an extremely powerful repulsive force.
Perhaps a sufficiently massive black hole would even achieve critical mass and create a really big bang :-)
(I'd use equations and references, but that might give me the illusion of credibility)
First of all, I'd recommend getting away from the idea that one name for one machine. Let aliases become your friend and use hostnames as a directory service:
where: w<building><floor><cube/rack id>
who: e<employee number> (workstations only)
what: s<service><project id>
support: c<support group><node id>
when: x<yy><mm><id> (lease expiry info)
Under this setup, one node may have the following names: wcam4c12, swebplan8, swebplan9, csys0004, x0209412 (or if it was a person's personal workstation, it might have e0101010 as another alias).
Now, if it moves, gets reassigned, gets a new role, gets supported by a different group, or gets a lease refresh, only one name (and possibly the ip) have to be changed, nothing else in any of the mount tables, lists, documentation. (and if you keep a convention of 8-letter names, you can use any other length of name safely for "fun" aliases)
It may seem like a lot of redundancy to set up, but don't forget: you need all this information anyway and this way you can use it right away in any script or config file without having to do an extra translation from some other id to a node/ip.
(ah for a network of my own...)