Oh dear. Are you talking about the feeling of "too much excitement to contain"? Watched this digital short (top video, not safe for humorless workplaces) from last night's Saturday Night Live.
That's ironic. When I joined in 1999 Slashdot seemed pretty revolutionary: crowdsourced news, updates several times a day, moderation, metamoderation, exposure to radical ideas like open source software.
I made the same transition from Powerbook to MacBook Pro. I quickly sold the Powerbook so I haven't had the reversion comparison, but I can believe it. I find there's barely enough viewing angle to get both eyes to see the same colors. Trying to show stuff to somebody over my shoulder is a disappointment.
Even worse is the glare-enhancing screens on the new MacBooks. My sister just got one as a new Mac convert and she was stunned at how much more pleasant my old matte screen is.
My supercomputing tasks are computation-limited. Multicores are great because each core shares memory and they save me the overhead of porting my simulations to distributed memory multiprocessor setups. I think a better summary of the study is:
Faster computation doesn't help communication-limited tasks. Faster communication doesn't help computation-limited tasks.
I was a fan of Logitech until I realized that one of their bluetooth mice was the source of many woes on my Powerbook G4. One, it came with crappy drivers that made the machine lock up when it went to sleep while the mouse was on. Two, the bluetooth mouse had movement lag compared to wired mice.
I fixed both those problems by switching to a Kensington bluetooth mouse. I'm not wild about its design (buttons stop short of top end, annoying side-click mouse wheel, battery eject button right where my thumb and pinky grip the sides). But at least it doesn't choke Mac OS X.
To support the grandparent a little, let me say that Flash advertisements suck.
When I'm trying to find the little bit of original writing on a page full of links and diversions, the least helpful thing in the world is to have three blinking, beeping, moving advertisements screaming for my attention. I had to block Flash in my web browsers just to keep my sanity.
I try to whitelist sites with useful Flash like New York Times or YouTube, but that often doesn't work because the Flash host site is different than the core site. Or some sites have both good and bad use of Flash and the good gets blocked with the bad.
So good things can be done with Flash, but the torrent of intrusive uses is going get it classified with spam and telemarketing.
The number of these things I've learned from forums far outweighs the number that I've learned in face-to-face meetings.
For technical information in the same field, yes you'll learn more on the forum than from a group of friends across town. But from the friends you'll learn about a good new restaurant, a festival this weekend, and an obscure board game that you'll love. From a face-to-face meeting with your boss you'll learn about off-the-record information that he wouldn't put in an email but could have a big impact on your career.
I enjoy face-time occasionally, but I'd prefer to spend the majority of my time away from other people and their annoying habits.
I'm very sympathetic to introversion. I need a lot of downtime and alone time. But if I'm alone in my apartment for days on end then I get bored and depressed no matter how much online interaction I have. It shouldn't be very controversial to say that most people would be unhappy and unhealthy if confined to a cubicle and computer screen all the time. Even a strongly introverted human is still very social compared to other species of animals that evolved to be truly solitary.
develop verb
grow or cause to grow more mature, advanced, or elaborate
If they follow the definition, then they are saying that minerals have become more elaborate over time. Whether that is true and whether it is linked to life could be determined from physical evidence. I won't be surprised if it proves true, but I will be surprised if it hasn't been proposed before.
I'm not surprised that hobby clubs are dying. As you say, face-to-face was the best way to acquire knowledge prior to the Internet Age. But now it seems like an extraordinary waste of time - invest three hours with people you barely know to maybe get the same information you can now find with two minutes on Google. If your goal is to learn about and discuss your hobby then the Internet truly blows away the hobby club.
But, as some of us realize, face-to-face meeting is still valuable for other reasons. You're more likely to learn something you didn't know that you wanted to know. You develop relationships that provide support outside of the narrow topic of formal interest. And humans are hyper-social creatures that thrive on the richness of face-to-face interaction.
The desire for face-to-face relationships has already led to the Internet being used as a source to find them: online dating, flash mobs, meetup groups. Maybe, with the Internet becoming more common than the telephone and a greater appreciation for what's lost without face-to-face interaction, there will be a rebirth of hobby clubs organized and supported with the efficiency of the Internet.
In between my twice hourly Twitters, I Twitter "Still breathing" just to let all my friends know I'm okay. If I'm ever silent for twenty minutes I expect them to swarm my apartment and get all the good electronics before my body starts stinking up the place.
I agree that there's a big factor in ratings beyond genre, plot, and actors. Some of the quirky movies they mentioned like Napoleon Dynamite, Life Aquatic, and Lost in Translation have a certain something that makes them good movies (to me) beyond those factors.
Maybe you could link some movies by who mixed the audio or designed the costumes. Maybe you should give more weight to where a director is in their career than to who the director is. Or maybe it's something else that defines the spirit of a movie.
There are probably some customers who are strongly in tune with that factor and other customers who will love a movie with an interesting plot regardless of how crappy the flow and mood is. I reckon that discerning between those customers will help with the Napoleon Dynamite problem. But it would be hard to address it with multidimensional stars if we don't even know what to call it.
I think the big problem with string theory or any other theory of anything is that we don't have enough data about how the universe works. Our experiments only probe a few orders of magnitude in energy, length, and time. These theories try to extrapolate from those familiar conditions out toward extremes and come up against unresolved questions:
How many dimensions are there?
Is space quantized?
Is time quantized?
What happens if we smash particles at higher energies? Are there more particles we don't know about?
It's a noble effort to try to formulate a theory of everything based on what we already know. But the messiness of the endeavour so far makes me think we need more data to narrow the focus and whittle the possible theories down from 10^1000 to 1.
I have learned (from playing several thousand games of Starcraft) that players vary widely in their goal for a game. Some play to win by any means necessary, including hacks. Some play to win within the intended rules. Some play to do something nobody has ever done. Some play to win by every route possible. Some play to have interesting interactions and don't really care whether they win or lose.
My favorite play style is the Mastermind, winning within the rules by manipulating others to work toward my own interests. That requires a lot of observation and psychology. I was often frustrated in my attempts to manipulate other players because I expected them to all play rationally, maximizing their own chance to win. But now I realize that each player has their own goal and by identifying it I can be much more successful in achieving mine.
This also means that more than one player can feel triumphant even if the rules declare a single winner.
Try Rotten Tomatoes. Their system of compiling reviews gives a very good gauge of how good a movie is. Some rules of thumb for the Tomatometer:
Below 60% is not worth seeing
Above 90% is a great movie, and you'll like it even if the plot or previews don't look that great
Between 60% and 90% is in the realm of personal taste. Movies toward the high end you should see if you have at least a lukewarm interest. Movies toward the low end you should avoid unless you already like the plot/director/actors/genre. But you can enjoy anything in this range if you're in the right mood.
I "pirated" World of Goo. I downloaded it when a friend raved over it, tried it for five minutes, thought "Is this it?" and deleted it.
Yeah, and I sneaked into a showing of Quantum of Solace at the movie theater. The opening scene wasn't very impressive so I left. But if I decided to stay I would have bought a ticket afterwards. Really I would!
By the way, did you opt in to the global scoreboard and set a high score during your five minutes?
The submitter is in a mentally precarious state. If he is sincerely this interested in a flood of realtime election coverage, then I pity the state he will be in when the election is over. Maybe we should be advising him on how to break his election news addiction. Or lead him to a safe alternative so he can continue to fixate on something else when it's over.
Or, here are two alternative interpretations of his question: 1) He's a reporter for some news outlet and wants to be the second to break any big story. 2) He's a daytrader in Asia and getting the scoop a few minutes early could be worth a lot of money.
Why so cynical? Slashdot has the best discussion system of any Web forum I know. (Or the worst, except for all the others.)
A troll is someone who makes a statement to draw out responses, not just someone who disagrees with you. A flame is a heated exchange without reason that clogs the discussion with noisy emotion. Slashdot does a good job of keeping both manageable.
The extremists won't convert each other here. But a lot us will shift our views an inch one way or another if persuaded by insight, information, and reason.
We tore this story apart the last time it was posted. We also pointed out that it was misattributed. This is also off topic since today's discussion is on the war; the economy was yesterday. Please stop spreading this manure.
I agree with you that our response to September 11th is more destructive that 9/11 itself. When it happened, I thought that our society was snapped out of petty bickering and would focus on the bigger picture of improving America and our relationships around the world. I am disappointed that instead we acted self-destructively.
I disagree on the war against Bin Laden. If our government and media can be believed on anything, then the Taliban was the ruling power of Afghanistan and was actively supporting attacks on the US. That is justification for war, and our attacks and occupation of Afghanistan were appropriate.
I agree with the sentiment that we would be less of a target if we were a better global citizen. But there will still be crazies and groups focused on the bad things we did in decades past. So some tightening of security and renewed intelligence was called for. I'm just sad to see billions thrown at the appearance of security rather than spending wisely on the most important areas.
On the subject of the current presidential election: imagine that 9/11 didn't happen yet but a similar attack would take place in 2009. Which candidate would you trust to make an appropriate response? From what I see of the candidates, Obama would react with strength but restraint. McCain would react with rage and thunder, maybe lobbing a few nukes around to kill the bad guys.
According to that article, the Bush tax cuts don't expire until 2010. And even then, they apply only to incomes over $200K. Are you sure that Obama would tax you more than McCain? Seriously, I'm trying to understand what's reality and what's FUD.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh dear. Are you talking about the feeling of "too much excitement to contain"? Watched this digital short (top video, not safe for humorless workplaces) from last night's Saturday Night Live.
That's ironic. When I joined in 1999 Slashdot seemed pretty revolutionary: crowdsourced news, updates several times a day, moderation, metamoderation, exposure to radical ideas like open source software.
If Samzenpus runs out of hilarious emails then he can turn to the vast supply of Score:-1 comments to keep this fascinating series going forever.
I made the same transition from Powerbook to MacBook Pro. I quickly sold the Powerbook so I haven't had the reversion comparison, but I can believe it. I find there's barely enough viewing angle to get both eyes to see the same colors. Trying to show stuff to somebody over my shoulder is a disappointment.
Even worse is the glare-enhancing screens on the new MacBooks. My sister just got one as a new Mac convert and she was stunned at how much more pleasant my old matte screen is.
My supercomputing tasks are computation-limited. Multicores are great because each core shares memory and they save me the overhead of porting my simulations to distributed memory multiprocessor setups. I think a better summary of the study is:
Faster computation doesn't help communication-limited tasks. Faster communication doesn't help computation-limited tasks.
I was a fan of Logitech until I realized that one of their bluetooth mice was the source of many woes on my Powerbook G4. One, it came with crappy drivers that made the machine lock up when it went to sleep while the mouse was on. Two, the bluetooth mouse had movement lag compared to wired mice.
I fixed both those problems by switching to a Kensington bluetooth mouse. I'm not wild about its design (buttons stop short of top end, annoying side-click mouse wheel, battery eject button right where my thumb and pinky grip the sides). But at least it doesn't choke Mac OS X.
To support the grandparent a little, let me say that Flash advertisements suck.
When I'm trying to find the little bit of original writing on a page full of links and diversions, the least helpful thing in the world is to have three blinking, beeping, moving advertisements screaming for my attention. I had to block Flash in my web browsers just to keep my sanity.
I try to whitelist sites with useful Flash like New York Times or YouTube, but that often doesn't work because the Flash host site is different than the core site. Or some sites have both good and bad use of Flash and the good gets blocked with the bad.
So good things can be done with Flash, but the torrent of intrusive uses is going get it classified with spam and telemarketing.
For technical information in the same field, yes you'll learn more on the forum than from a group of friends across town. But from the friends you'll learn about a good new restaurant, a festival this weekend, and an obscure board game that you'll love. From a face-to-face meeting with your boss you'll learn about off-the-record information that he wouldn't put in an email but could have a big impact on your career.
I'm very sympathetic to introversion. I need a lot of downtime and alone time. But if I'm alone in my apartment for days on end then I get bored and depressed no matter how much online interaction I have. It shouldn't be very controversial to say that most people would be unhappy and unhealthy if confined to a cubicle and computer screen all the time. Even a strongly introverted human is still very social compared to other species of animals that evolved to be truly solitary.
evolve
verb
develop gradually
develop
verb
grow or cause to grow more mature, advanced, or elaborate
If they follow the definition, then they are saying that minerals have become more elaborate over time. Whether that is true and whether it is linked to life could be determined from physical evidence. I won't be surprised if it proves true, but I will be surprised if it hasn't been proposed before.
I'm not surprised that hobby clubs are dying. As you say, face-to-face was the best way to acquire knowledge prior to the Internet Age. But now it seems like an extraordinary waste of time - invest three hours with people you barely know to maybe get the same information you can now find with two minutes on Google. If your goal is to learn about and discuss your hobby then the Internet truly blows away the hobby club.
But, as some of us realize, face-to-face meeting is still valuable for other reasons. You're more likely to learn something you didn't know that you wanted to know. You develop relationships that provide support outside of the narrow topic of formal interest. And humans are hyper-social creatures that thrive on the richness of face-to-face interaction.
The desire for face-to-face relationships has already led to the Internet being used as a source to find them: online dating, flash mobs, meetup groups. Maybe, with the Internet becoming more common than the telephone and a greater appreciation for what's lost without face-to-face interaction, there will be a rebirth of hobby clubs organized and supported with the efficiency of the Internet.
I plan to integrate my soul into the Cloud before my body ceases.
In between my twice hourly Twitters, I Twitter "Still breathing" just to let all my friends know I'm okay. If I'm ever silent for twenty minutes I expect them to swarm my apartment and get all the good electronics before my body starts stinking up the place.
I agree that there's a big factor in ratings beyond genre, plot, and actors. Some of the quirky movies they mentioned like Napoleon Dynamite, Life Aquatic, and Lost in Translation have a certain something that makes them good movies (to me) beyond those factors.
Maybe you could link some movies by who mixed the audio or designed the costumes. Maybe you should give more weight to where a director is in their career than to who the director is. Or maybe it's something else that defines the spirit of a movie.
There are probably some customers who are strongly in tune with that factor and other customers who will love a movie with an interesting plot regardless of how crappy the flow and mood is. I reckon that discerning between those customers will help with the Napoleon Dynamite problem. But it would be hard to address it with multidimensional stars if we don't even know what to call it.
I think the big problem with string theory or any other theory of anything is that we don't have enough data about how the universe works. Our experiments only probe a few orders of magnitude in energy, length, and time. These theories try to extrapolate from those familiar conditions out toward extremes and come up against unresolved questions:
It's a noble effort to try to formulate a theory of everything based on what we already know. But the messiness of the endeavour so far makes me think we need more data to narrow the focus and whittle the possible theories down from 10^1000 to 1.
I have learned (from playing several thousand games of Starcraft) that players vary widely in their goal for a game. Some play to win by any means necessary, including hacks. Some play to win within the intended rules. Some play to do something nobody has ever done. Some play to win by every route possible. Some play to have interesting interactions and don't really care whether they win or lose.
My favorite play style is the Mastermind, winning within the rules by manipulating others to work toward my own interests. That requires a lot of observation and psychology. I was often frustrated in my attempts to manipulate other players because I expected them to all play rationally, maximizing their own chance to win. But now I realize that each player has their own goal and by identifying it I can be much more successful in achieving mine.
This also means that more than one player can feel triumphant even if the rules declare a single winner.
Try Rotten Tomatoes. Their system of compiling reviews gives a very good gauge of how good a movie is. Some rules of thumb for the Tomatometer:
Yeah, and I sneaked into a showing of Quantum of Solace at the movie theater. The opening scene wasn't very impressive so I left. But if I decided to stay I would have bought a ticket afterwards. Really I would!
By the way, did you opt in to the global scoreboard and set a high score during your five minutes?
Keitai shosetsu
The submitter is in a mentally precarious state. If he is sincerely this interested in a flood of realtime election coverage, then I pity the state he will be in when the election is over. Maybe we should be advising him on how to break his election news addiction. Or lead him to a safe alternative so he can continue to fixate on something else when it's over.
Or, here are two alternative interpretations of his question: 1) He's a reporter for some news outlet and wants to be the second to break any big story. 2) He's a daytrader in Asia and getting the scoop a few minutes early could be worth a lot of money.
Why so cynical? Slashdot has the best discussion system of any Web forum I know. (Or the worst, except for all the others.)
A troll is someone who makes a statement to draw out responses, not just someone who disagrees with you. A flame is a heated exchange without reason that clogs the discussion with noisy emotion. Slashdot does a good job of keeping both manageable.
The extremists won't convert each other here. But a lot us will shift our views an inch one way or another if persuaded by insight, information, and reason.
We tore this story apart the last time it was posted. We also pointed out that it was misattributed. This is also off topic since today's discussion is on the war; the economy was yesterday. Please stop spreading this manure.
I agree with you that our response to September 11th is more destructive that 9/11 itself. When it happened, I thought that our society was snapped out of petty bickering and would focus on the bigger picture of improving America and our relationships around the world. I am disappointed that instead we acted self-destructively.
I disagree on the war against Bin Laden. If our government and media can be believed on anything, then the Taliban was the ruling power of Afghanistan and was actively supporting attacks on the US. That is justification for war, and our attacks and occupation of Afghanistan were appropriate.
I agree with the sentiment that we would be less of a target if we were a better global citizen. But there will still be crazies and groups focused on the bad things we did in decades past. So some tightening of security and renewed intelligence was called for. I'm just sad to see billions thrown at the appearance of security rather than spending wisely on the most important areas.
On the subject of the current presidential election: imagine that 9/11 didn't happen yet but a similar attack would take place in 2009. Which candidate would you trust to make an appropriate response? From what I see of the candidates, Obama would react with strength but restraint. McCain would react with rage and thunder, maybe lobbing a few nukes around to kill the bad guys.
Candidates' tax-cut rhetoric swamps voters
According to that article, the Bush tax cuts don't expire until 2010. And even then, they apply only to incomes over $200K. Are you sure that Obama would tax you more than McCain? Seriously, I'm trying to understand what's reality and what's FUD.
Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?
42% of the budget goes to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, but presumably most of that money came from direct contributions not income tax.
Dividing your tax among the remainder:
Really? Did you use Obama's own calculator?