"I might look at the specs a bit but frankly I couldn't tell you what processor is in the one I currently have."
Oh my god, people like this are on Slashdot?!
Yes there are. We probably outnumber 'people like you'.
99% of the work I do could (and is) done on a 4 year old laptop. I can't remember what CPU is in it (AMD, Intel, TI-99?) and couldn't be bothered to look it up. If I need to know, I'll figure it out then.
When it breaks, I'll do a little research and get a new one, but since my price bracket will likely be sub $1000, I'm much more interested in how much ram is on board, does the chassis run cool, is there a built in webcam for skype calls and is the keyboard sensibly laid out (to name a few). The ergonomics and features of the system are so much more important than the CPU to me, I can't imagine spending more than an hour or so googling to make sure there are no CPU's to avoid.
The graphics workstations we purchase for the artists in the company are another matter, and I could recite the specifications for those to a ridiculous level of detail.
I'm not dissing your whole idea here, but the infrastructure to provide the movies the way you describe IS a distribution channel, and has it's own costs. Costs which are not necessarily cheaper than pressing a bunch of dvd's and sending them out.
The physical media and packaging is not the bulk of what you are paying for.
Having said that, I'm part of the movie making business - I do this for a living. So while I'm with you on the need for better distribution channels, anyone who starts spouting those crap justifications of cost, convenience, blah blah blah as reasons why they download and distribute copies without paying can go to court, in my opinion. (and hell). And yes, bittorrent is distribution.
Your leverage as a consumer is NOT to consume products whose value you feel is not worth the cost. These are movies, not necessities..
Note: not accusing parent poster of this mindset, as he said nothing that would lead me to think he justifies his/her actions this way. Just venting.
Seriously, if you can't see how it might be distracting for the person behind you when you pull out you nice bright shiny phone and start messing with it in a theater, you either lack basic intelligence, or eyes. The other possibility is that you are trolling - if so, grow up a little.
I kind of hope you are trolling, because I keep hoping the human race can't possibly contain members as stupid as you sound right now.
Wait, you walked out on a MOVIE that explored the concept of pre-crime as a moral dilemma 10 minutes into it? I don't get it. Are you only able to watch happy romantic comedies, and early adam sandler movies?
Read some of the comments above, or Peter Watts own blog. The fact is that he was traveling out of Michigan, not into Michigan. Just that simple fact alone is wrong. The press coverage is entirely unreliable.
I agree, I want to see the video. I am a Canadian citizen living in California. To be honest, traveling to and from the United States has become nightmarish. We have enough anecdotal tales from other posters, I won't add mine. But I can certainly sympathize with someone reacting poorly to Customs officials rooting through my trunk while I was forced to remain in the front seat.
The address for sending Freedom of Information requests was posted in a comment above, but I'll post it again.
Paul Colpitts Access to Information and Privacy Coordinator 410 Laurier Avenue West, 11th Floor Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0L8 Telephone: 613-941-7431 Facsimile: 613-957-6408 ATIP-AIPRP@cbsa-asfc.gc.ca
If you are a Canadian citizen, and you want to know, send that in. I've met Peter Watts, he struck me as a very reasonable man. I'd certainly like to know more.
Nah, If you plan on providing criticism on the syntax of pseudo code (which is absurd), I can only reply to the sheer ridiculousness by pointing out how your own code is unsafe.
See, I write a lot of code in languages you probably have a glib and witty remark about, like Lua. In Lua, the command
if (isTrue)
would return true if isTrue was equal to 7, or 0, or 1, or a table, or anything at all other than explicitly false. So all your check does is see if isTrue is defined, not if its value is true. Thats imprecise, and the sort of lazy bullshit programming that causes bugs.
I don't code in pseudo code, so I am not familiar with the language definitions - maybe it works the same way:-).
Amen. Unfortunately there will always be elitist arses who think that just because they know a little bit about some obscure topic, anyone who doesn't is a lazy slacker. I don't have any need for asset tracking of this nature at the moment, but i found the topic interesting, and learned something from the few comments that have appeared so far. The politics and YRO topics bore me to tears. These topics are why I still bother to visit this site.
I send you a text, you respond when you have time. I call you, you have to choose between ignoring me and taking my call. Texting is asynchronous, where a conversation is synchronous. Granted, I can communicate more information in a short amount of time with a phone conversation, but if my issue is non-critical then texting is often more effective.
I am talking about texting from a business prospective here. I often text sales staff on the road, who may well be in a meeting, or contractors on a noisy job site. A director in a meeting with an artist. In all these cases texting not only gets them the information they need without them having o interrupt some other task, it also avoids the need for them to grab a pen or some other device - I just include the information. No lost or misunderstood numbers or names.
Now social texting does confuse me. "OMG! I am at the inaugaration". Why???
Odds are good that whatever she decides, she will end up changing her mind anyway. Virtually no one I went to school with is still doing what they started out in school for. A few are, but the majority spent a few years working (or trying to work) in their chosen fields before finding something that grabbed their 'adult' interest.
Personally I 'wasted' my talent and school years (according to my dad) studying technical theatre. 10 years later I make visual effects software. I use the lessons I learned in school every day, just not the way I expected at the time.
So don't sweat it. She will likely land in the right place for her eventually.
I have a copy of this I picked up about 6 weeks ago at a genre bookstore in Southern California. It is clearly marked as a reviewers copy, and not for sale. I have no idea how it made it onto the shelves for sale.
Fortunately, the person working the desk wasn't really paying attention, and happily sold it to me.
The book even came with a CD containing original chants composed according to the aesthetic and mathematical premises outlines within the novel. A nice touch, and one I am not sure will be present in the final shipping product.
Of course, unless you enjoy gregorian and byzantine chants already, I would skip the CD. (Lovers of ambient music will probably find it interesting as well)
The story is slow to start (not abnormal for a large Stephenson book) and has a few pacing issues. On the whole I found the premise of the monastery a bit contrived, but well constructed. I had less sympathy for the main character than I did for Randy in Cryptonomican, but it's naturally easier for me to connect with a dissatisfied hacker than with an aesthete monk.
If you are a fan of stephenson for the more humerous and modern Snowcrash and Zodiac. This may not be the novel for you. Its a much more serious book, with a deeply philosophical and mathematical bent.
Where Cryptonomican explored mathematics, currency and the defenition of criminal (IMHO), this novel explores seclusion, mathematics and philosphy instead.
Considering how long ago this reviewers copy must have been printed, I am hesitant to talk about pacing problems. I suspect what I have was not a final edit, and much of the story could be improved with intelligent editing.
In short, i enjoyed this book, but i doubt its going to have as broad of an appeal as previous books. I haven't explored the barouque cycle books at all, but I think Anathem might have more in common with them.
Reading this book made me think of Umberto Eco - more cerebral than action, and a bit weak on character development - with lots of clever discussions and wordplay.
Ah. I never said we must settle outside earth NOW. Only that it was a goal which made sense to pursue. I personally doubt we will see a significant human presence outside our own atmosphere for at least 100 years.
Nevertheless, I think as a species it makes a pretty compelling long term goal - the same way I feel having the data for my company backed up and stored offsite is a pretty smart move.
I agree with your first two points, but the purpose of my post was to respond to the "what practical good is exploring mars" tone from the original post, so I focused on practical reasons.
For example, we don't know much about our own oceans and those are far more important to us as a source of food, minerals etc.
[sarcasm]Absolutely. We should immediately stop space research entirely and focus ALL of our efforts on the oceans. I can't believe no one is looking into this subject already.[/sarcasm]
I care if there is water on Mars. With the advent of nuclear and biological weapons, we now have the power to significantly fuck up our living space. Hell - one of these days there will be another asteroid strike.
It would be nice to know if humans can be self sufficient in places other than earth. That won't happen tomorrow, but it won't happen at all if we don't research it.
I don't know if you have looked up lately, but it turns out the universe is an awfully big place. We should probably look around a bit.
I don't know specifically what the wording of the scrabble trademarks are. If they specify square tiles with numeric score values, then I can easily see why the current wordscraper tiles are circles without score values.
I also park illegally on occasion, and sometimes drive a few miles above the speed limit. I have been known file my taxes late, and have stolen music by downloading it. Sometimes I accidentally throw away paper without recycling it.
Scrabulous was a popular, well implemented version of a game I own no less than 4 boards for. i probably have purchased anywhere from 10 -15 boards over the past 20 years.
I enjoyed it, so I played it. Now that wordscraper is available, I will play that.
Those are all illegal, getting caught has penalties, and I know that. I may not agree with the laws, but when I get caught I pay the consequences, without whining or trying to come up with some sort of convoluted justification for my actions.
Not all laws are equal in my books. Murder is not a law I break with the same equanimity as a local parking ordinance.
If you have managed to live your life ethically pure, then I applaud you.
So far, I like it. The custom boards are going to take some getting used to. I am in one game where every tile appears to be a double word score or more, and we are seeing scores of 4000 in some places.
I much prefer the sparse tile versions, where it takes a LOT of planning to get a good score.
Right now, i don't like it as much as scrabble, but I am willing to keep playing until things start to settle.
In my personal opinion, scrabulous was always in clear violation of the law (I am not interested in discussing the ethics of that), and the takedown was inevitable.
If Hasbro had learned from scrabulous instead of acting like spazzes, I would have switched to playing their client.
They needed to release a client equal in speed, slickness and functionality. Then they should have negotiated a wrap up period of several days with the makers of scrabulous, where no new games could be created, but existing games could be wrapped up.
They did neither, and you won't see me switching to play their version as a result.
Slashdot Mirror
"I might look at the specs a bit but frankly I couldn't tell you what processor is in the one I currently have."
Oh my god, people like this are on Slashdot?!
Yes there are. We probably outnumber 'people like you'.
99% of the work I do could (and is) done on a 4 year old laptop. I can't remember what CPU is in it (AMD, Intel, TI-99?) and couldn't be bothered to look it up. If I need to know, I'll figure it out then.
When it breaks, I'll do a little research and get a new one, but since my price bracket will likely be sub $1000, I'm much more interested in how much ram is on board, does the chassis run cool, is there a built in webcam for skype calls and is the keyboard sensibly laid out (to name a few). The ergonomics and features of the system are so much more important than the CPU to me, I can't imagine spending more than an hour or so googling to make sure there are no CPU's to avoid.
The graphics workstations we purchase for the artists in the company are another matter, and I could recite the specifications for those to a ridiculous level of detail.
Doesn't that mean you aren't part of the sample set at all?
I'm not dissing your whole idea here, but the infrastructure to provide the movies the way you describe IS a distribution channel, and has it's own costs. Costs which are not necessarily cheaper than pressing a bunch of dvd's and sending them out.
The physical media and packaging is not the bulk of what you are paying for.
Having said that, I'm part of the movie making business - I do this for a living. So while I'm with you on the need for better distribution channels, anyone who starts spouting those crap justifications of cost, convenience, blah blah blah as reasons why they download and distribute copies without paying can go to court, in my opinion. (and hell). And yes, bittorrent is distribution.
Your leverage as a consumer is NOT to consume products whose value you feel is not worth the cost. These are movies, not necessities..
Note: not accusing parent poster of this mindset, as he said nothing that would lead me to think he justifies his/her actions this way. Just venting.
Oh you are that GUY.
Die.
Seriously, if you can't see how it might be distracting for the person behind you when you pull out you nice bright shiny phone and start messing with it in a theater, you either lack basic intelligence, or eyes. The other possibility is that you are trolling - if so, grow up a little.
I kind of hope you are trolling, because I keep hoping the human race can't possibly contain members as stupid as you sound right now.
Wait, you walked out on a MOVIE that explored the concept of pre-crime as a moral dilemma 10 minutes into it? I don't get it. Are you only able to watch happy romantic comedies, and early adam sandler movies?
Read some of the comments above, or Peter Watts own blog. The fact is that he was traveling out of Michigan, not into Michigan. Just that simple fact alone is wrong. The press coverage is entirely unreliable.
I agree, I want to see the video. I am a Canadian citizen living in California. To be honest, traveling to and from the United States has become nightmarish. We have enough anecdotal tales from other posters, I won't add mine. But I can certainly sympathize with someone reacting poorly to Customs officials rooting through my trunk while I was forced to remain in the front seat.
The address for sending Freedom of Information requests was posted in a comment above, but I'll post it again.
Paul Colpitts
Access to Information and Privacy Coordinator
410 Laurier Avenue West, 11th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0L8
Telephone: 613-941-7431
Facsimile: 613-957-6408
ATIP-AIPRP@cbsa-asfc.gc.ca
If you are a Canadian citizen, and you want to know, send that in. I've met Peter Watts, he struck me as a very reasonable man. I'd certainly like to know more.
Raise your hand if this sounds like something you WANT the department of homeland security to be worrying about.
[crickets]
That's what I thought.
Nah, If you plan on providing criticism on the syntax of pseudo code (which is absurd), I can only reply to the sheer ridiculousness by pointing out how your own code is unsafe.
See, I write a lot of code in languages you probably have a glib and witty remark about, like Lua. In Lua, the command
if (isTrue)
would return true if isTrue was equal to 7, or 0, or 1, or a table, or anything at all other than explicitly false. So all your check does is see if isTrue is defined, not if its value is true. Thats imprecise, and the sort of lazy bullshit programming that causes bugs.
I don't code in pseudo code, so I am not familiar with the language definitions - maybe it works the same way :-).
Not a problem. Crack the DRM in a more reasonable country.
Such a typical programmer/geek response. It's still a problem - you just found a workaround. Doesn't mean it doesn't need to be fixed :-)
Amen. Unfortunately there will always be elitist arses who think that just because they know a little bit about some obscure topic, anyone who doesn't is a lazy slacker. I don't have any need for asset tracking of this nature at the moment, but i found the topic interesting, and learned something from the few comments that have appeared so far. The politics and YRO topics bore me to tears. These topics are why I still bother to visit this site.
You sir, are every IT departments nightmare.
I send you a text, you respond when you have time. I call you, you have to choose between ignoring me and taking my call. Texting is asynchronous, where a conversation is synchronous. Granted, I can communicate more information in a short amount of time with a phone conversation, but if my issue is non-critical then texting is often more effective.
I am talking about texting from a business prospective here. I often text sales staff on the road, who may well be in a meeting, or contractors on a noisy job site. A director in a meeting with an artist. In all these cases texting not only gets them the information they need without them having o interrupt some other task, it also avoids the need for them to grab a pen or some other device - I just include the information. No lost or misunderstood numbers or names.
Now social texting does confuse me. "OMG! I am at the inaugaration". Why???
Odds are good that whatever she decides, she will end up changing her mind anyway. Virtually no one I went to school with is still doing what they started out in school for. A few are, but the majority spent a few years working (or trying to work) in their chosen fields before finding something that grabbed their 'adult' interest.
Personally I 'wasted' my talent and school years (according to my dad) studying technical theatre. 10 years later I make visual effects software. I use the lessons I learned in school every day, just not the way I expected at the time.
So don't sweat it. She will likely land in the right place for her eventually.
In fact, the future arrived yesterday.
Indeed - that's how it looked yesterday. But when I woke up this morning I was disappointed to learn today was still the present.
Ah well. There's always tomorrow!
And he became president. That's a pretty clear success for him. :-)
I have a copy of this I picked up about 6 weeks ago at a genre bookstore in Southern California. It is clearly marked as a reviewers copy, and not for sale. I have no idea how it made it onto the shelves for sale.
Fortunately, the person working the desk wasn't really paying attention, and happily sold it to me.
The book even came with a CD containing original chants composed according to the aesthetic and mathematical premises outlines within the novel. A nice touch, and one I am not sure will be present in the final shipping product.
Of course, unless you enjoy gregorian and byzantine chants already, I would skip the CD. (Lovers of ambient music will probably find it interesting as well)
The story is slow to start (not abnormal for a large Stephenson book) and has a few pacing issues. On the whole I found the premise of the monastery a bit contrived, but well constructed. I had less sympathy for the main character than I did for Randy in Cryptonomican, but it's naturally easier for me to connect with a dissatisfied hacker than with an aesthete monk.
If you are a fan of stephenson for the more humerous and modern Snowcrash and Zodiac. This may not be the novel for you. Its a much more serious book, with a deeply philosophical and mathematical bent.
Where Cryptonomican explored mathematics, currency and the defenition of criminal (IMHO), this novel explores seclusion, mathematics and philosphy instead.
Considering how long ago this reviewers copy must have been printed, I am hesitant to talk about pacing problems. I suspect what I have was not a final edit, and much of the story could be improved with intelligent editing.
In short, i enjoyed this book, but i doubt its going to have as broad of an appeal as previous books. I haven't explored the barouque cycle books at all, but I think Anathem might have more in common with them.
Reading this book made me think of Umberto Eco - more cerebral than action, and a bit weak on character development - with lots of clever discussions and wordplay.
I am allergic to flowers you insensitive clod. :-)
Ah. I never said we must settle outside earth NOW. Only that it was a goal which made sense to pursue. I personally doubt we will see a significant human presence outside our own atmosphere for at least 100 years.
Nevertheless, I think as a species it makes a pretty compelling long term goal - the same way I feel having the data for my company backed up and stored offsite is a pretty smart move.
I agree with your first two points, but the purpose of my post was to respond to the "what practical good is exploring mars" tone from the original post, so I focused on practical reasons.
For example, we don't know much about our own oceans and those are far more important to us as a source of food, minerals etc.
[sarcasm]Absolutely. We should immediately stop space research entirely and focus ALL of our efforts on the oceans. I can't believe no one is looking into this subject already.[/sarcasm]
I care if there is water on Mars. With the advent of nuclear and biological weapons, we now have the power to significantly fuck up our living space. Hell - one of these days there will be another asteroid strike.
It would be nice to know if humans can be self sufficient in places other than earth. That won't happen tomorrow, but it won't happen at all if we don't research it.
I don't know if you have looked up lately, but it turns out the universe is an awfully big place. We should probably look around a bit.
How you read that from what I wrote completely escapes me. I can't respond effectively, because I have no idea what you are talking about.
Where did I restrict the behavior or rights of anyone else by describing my own actions?
Perhaps you should read it again.
I don't know specifically what the wording of the scrabble trademarks are. If they specify square tiles with numeric score values, then I can easily see why the current wordscraper tiles are circles without score values.
Nice. Saves me the effort of doing so. Thanks!
I am kinda looking forward to experimenting with a few layouts of my own as well.
I also park illegally on occasion, and sometimes drive a few miles above the speed limit. I have been known file my taxes late, and have stolen music by downloading it. Sometimes I accidentally throw away paper without recycling it.
Scrabulous was a popular, well implemented version of a game I own no less than 4 boards for. i probably have purchased anywhere from 10 -15 boards over the past 20 years.
I enjoyed it, so I played it. Now that wordscraper is available, I will play that.
Those are all illegal, getting caught has penalties, and I know that. I may not agree with the laws, but when I get caught I pay the consequences, without whining or trying to come up with some sort of convoluted justification for my actions.
Not all laws are equal in my books. Murder is not a law I break with the same equanimity as a local parking ordinance.
If you have managed to live your life ethically pure, then I applaud you.
So far, I like it. The custom boards are going to take some getting used to. I am in one game where every tile appears to be a double word score or more, and we are seeing scores of 4000 in some places.
I much prefer the sparse tile versions, where it takes a LOT of planning to get a good score.
Right now, i don't like it as much as scrabble, but I am willing to keep playing until things start to settle.
In my personal opinion, scrabulous was always in clear violation of the law (I am not interested in discussing the ethics of that), and the takedown was inevitable.
If Hasbro had learned from scrabulous instead of acting like spazzes, I would have switched to playing their client.
They needed to release a client equal in speed, slickness and functionality. Then they should have negotiated a wrap up period of several days with the makers of scrabulous, where no new games could be created, but existing games could be wrapped up.
They did neither, and you won't see me switching to play their version as a result.
In a bizarre twist, the Cowboy Neil jokes are an inversion of the Turing tests. It turns out the self aware slashdot is not sure that WE are sentient.
Throwing nonsense data into the polls helps it decide whether to eventually annihilate us as pests or tolerate us as slightly retarded cousins.