Exactly how much of a child's image would be enough to run afoul of this proposed law? Could you still get in trouble simply by placing a child's head on a South Park-style body hidden behind a digital mosaic? What if you create a child-like composite similar to Betty Crocker from dozens of people at random?
For that matter, does the image even need to involve an actual child at all or even be photo-realistic to get busted under this?
Just wait until some poor anime / hentai fan has their stash of fictitious "child porn" used against them for a lengthy prison term, followed by a life of hell, blacklisted from society for liking scantily-clad drawings of young girls...
Thank god we no longer believe in personal responsibility of the individual anymore! If we don't like something, just make it a felony and it'll magically go away!
Get some backbone already... relationships end badly all the time, regardless of whether or not they're fictitious in nature. If I killed myself every time a relationship resulted in being stabbed in the back by someone I trusted, I'd have at least ten corpses to my name.
And don't give me the sob-story about how this person wasn't "able to make friends in school" or some such non-sense like that. You can't quantify stuff which requires personal effort to make happen.
Was it ethical for this other person to initiate this fake relationship? No. Should they go to prison for it? No. At best, this is a civil issue, not a criminal one. (Well, unless you really stretch the definition of "fraud" into relationships. But be ready for a lashing the next time you have a bad break-up with someone "clingy"...)
Would it really harm anyone if each distribution offered a version of linux for beginning users that installs a single, unanimously agreed upon interface configuration that works the same across the board in all versions? It would certainly make attempts to document linux for first-timers a lot simpler if they actually saw what's in the book on the screen while they learn.
(More advanced users would still be able to obtain their "clean" linux flavor of choice to hack as they see fit...)
If you really want to get technical, only four functions in particular continue to remain in use going all the way back to the earliest of "computers" ever made. These functions are "add", "add", "store" and "move". All other "code" is simply a complex layering of these four basic functions on which all processors are based upon.
I'm surprised just how many people are willing to justify the excessive use of special effects and the campiness of this movie simply because it's "based on a cartoon". The reality is that the movie is not based on a cartoon, but a warped americanized view of an anime series that was introduced to the country long before we were prepared to understand the true complexities of japanese story telling.
This is why we ended up with crap like Robotech instead of the vastly superior Macross. The visuals may have been identical, but with the culture-specific substance stripped out, the end result was little more than a mediocre product that would probably be considered a major insult to the people who actually devoted years of their lives into creating the original.
I feel bad for anyone who ever worked on "Mach Go-Go-Go" having to see what their creation eventually became perverted into.
And don't get me started on Speed Racer: The Next Generation. (Animation Collective simply isn't ready for this type of project, despite their continued success with Kappa Mikey...)
I have to say, despite the fact that I'm now about 3/4th paralyzed throughout my body from a broken neck due to a drunk driver, these self-righteous bitches can stop harassing the video game industry on my behalf. People have been getting drunk long before video games ever existed and will continue to stupidly drive while intoxicated... simply because being intoxicated causes poor judgment in itself. Trying to claim that video games or any other media somehow influences people to drive drunk just for the sake of driving drunk is complete and utter bullshit.
The only reason they're going after the game is because the franchise has a history of controversy tied to it and they want to cash in on this incarnation of Grand Theft Auto before someone else does and desensitizes people to their cause.
This is like asking whether or not Time exists or if we simply created it by comparing one repetitive event to another. So long as a machine can use the concept to make our lives easier, it's origins really don't matter to anyone other than scholars or historians.
Besides, concepts like math and time are driven by human greed more than anything. We always want to know who has more than the next guy as a means of quantifying our own existence.
... is being one of the poor saps who developed it!
Think of how this would be for the guy who developed this game knowing he'd never personally get credit for his work while at the same time being envious of the dead for being stuck with such a god-awful product. Only to then have the project canned, flushing all that time and effort they were forced into putting into a product they probably otherwise despised with a passion, right down the toilet. And for what? To become a 5-second joke blurb on some random website 25+ years later, credited entirely to a fluke incident?
This concept was used in an episode of Sci-Fi channel's original series Eureka, where pieces of chicken grown in this manner (similar to the human pod farm in The Matrix) ended up doing some horribly outlandish thing to the citizens after being eaten. Although the scenario presented would be unlikely to ever actually happen in the manner depicted in the show, it did definitely make you wonder just how "safe" such meats produced in this manner would be for human consumption.
In the meanwhile, this "X-Prize" may end up yielding results far less desirable to PETA than they're thinking. If they think testing cosmetics and drugs on animals seemed cruel, just wait until we start creating half-animal/plant abominations whose entire existence is entirely pain and suffering from the co-mingling of incompatible body configurations until we get things "tuned in" using generation upon generation of eugenic reproduction to get everything right. And even once we do manage one successful sample, we're still going to need to repeat the process several more times over to generate enough breeding stock to ensure that enough genetic diversity exists to prevent entire crops of these meat-bearing vines from becoming susceptible to a single, and possibly deadly, disease.
In the end, this will likely end up bringing all the little Frankensteins out of the shadows long enough to leave pile after pile of maimed corpses from failed test subjects at PETA's doorstep before PETA finally cancels the contest for posterity's sake.
This test may fall slightly short of generating any conclusive results for the situation I'm discussing. For example, did your kids have enough user privileges to actually download/compile, install and configure their own applications and modify the GUI settings to compensate for each application's needs? And if so, did they actually take advantage of this versus using software that was already installed and pre-configured ahead of time?
I'm not doubting your kids' ability to adapt quickly to the new computing environment (in fact, I'd expect any child in this age to have some capability to do so), but there are conditions here that are somewhat atypical. For example, having an tech-savvy adult to fall back on and learn from can directly influence a child's own ability to use an unfamiliar system. (My own father was a programmer and I quickly learned from him to adapt to computers in the early 80s despite being only six years old at the time.)
A true test of this would be to set up a system like this in a setting where there is no tech savvy adult present. Also, set up a Mac and PC of similar capability next to your test configuration. Then, sit back and observe which system(s) the children gravitate towards.
My guess is that the systems running a commercial OS would be more widely used for a number of reasons, ranging from comfort, familiarity and even elements of compatibility with their peers. These are all real-world issues beyond basic capabilities that Linux and other community driven OSes have to be able to compensate for in order to survive within a commercially-dominated war for control of the desktop.
I tried a little test. My kids are not what you'd call computer experts. Just typical kids ages 9 and 16. They use both Mac OS and Windows. I put a Linux Ubuntu system up and made them a logon account. Having never seen Ubuntu before they are able to do all the normal taks they did on the macs. There was not learning curve or comming up to speed. That said, the biggest problem with Linux and other UNIX systems it that you can't run the Adobe or Apple suit of applications. I LIKE Apple's "final Cut Expres" and Aperture and the Adobe creative Suite so I have some Macs at home. Here in the office it si 100% Linux and Solaris. But in terms of ease of use at the desktop level they are all the same.
Those whose orders were accepted will probably receive the configurations they requested complete with retail copies of Mac OS X in the box. But, the various issues currently affecting PsyStar's business and warnings from Apple Legal will probably result in the end user being left to figure out how to get OS X up and running on the system with maybe a sheet of paper explaining whatever process they initially intended to use.
After all, these are simply custom built PCs constructed from parts you can buy anywhere. All PsyStar has to do is provide an assembled system and some evidence that the system is somehow capable of running MacOS X, without having to actually deliver a pre-installed setup ready to run out of the box.
Sure, it'd be a low blow to the customer, but it'd probably be technically enough to keep someone out of prison.
... until the day they start actively punishing the genetically disabled for reproducing either by litigation or making it a criminal act to "knowingly transfer" a poor genetic condition to a child. Now, instead of receiving medical assistance and supplemental income to raise such a child, they could simply sue you for putting unnecessary strain on the taxpayers and wait out the transition from poverty to death to solve the problem at a lower overall cost.
And if you think that could never happen in this country, guess again. We're already headed that direction with proper prescription medications becoming harder to obtain in through the government in favor of generic "equivalents" (and by equivalent, I mean dangerously inferior chemical abominations) of such poor quality that the side effects from using them are almost worse than the effects of not taking the medications at all. It's almost like they've got this planned out specifically so those of us needing these medications will die as soon as possible without it technically being "mass-murder".
In some sense, I happen to agree with this response to the new Apple. Some of their more recent products make little sense when compared to the requests of their consumer base. A prime example of this is the MacBook Air, a light, pretty-looking machine, but priced way too high due to its overall lack of distinguishing features and poor performance compared to a low-end, factory-default MacBook.
That's not to say a product like the MacBook Air doesn't have some kind of market going for it, but there are other markets where its form factor, lack of features and reduced performance would hsve been far better suited. For example, had they instead produced an official Apple-branded Macintosh tablet using the MacBook Air's casing/footprint, combined with only bluetooth and airport for adding devices/networking and then sold the package for a scant $999 per unit, everyone would want one to compliment their home computer. In effect, a PDA done right in a form factor people are already adapted to carrying around but capable of running all their favorite apps away from the keys. That seemingly unused InkWell technology Apple's been touting for years would finally serve a real-world purpose.
But no... Jobs just wanted the "world's thinnest computer" title despite the fact it'll probably only ever end up in the hands of middle/upper class college students with cash to burn on such toys.
I want the Mac Apple refuses to sell me: an upgradeable machine that doesn't have ridiculous components (Xeons, FB-DIMMS) that maybe 0.01% of the userbase actually needs.
Jobs refuses to sell it because he knows people will buy it. He fears this because he is in love with AIO and wants people to buy iMacs even when they aren't a fit for their needs. He also is under the delusion that creating a Mac upgradeable prosumer desktop will somehow "Dell-ize" Apple. The reality, which most Mac users understand, is that what is actually valuable about Macs is not their different-ness, but the fact that they run OS X, which is the best consumer operating system on the market. Mac hardware is not special. It got even less special after 2005. Mac SOFTWARE is what is special.
Anyone want to start a "purchase-by-proxy" service? Simply put, such a service would involve payment up front to temporarily "hire" a third party to make a purchase on your behalf, then turn around and re-ship the unopened box from their location into your state. Yakuza-operated pachinko bars in Japan have been using similar methods for years as a loophole to gambling laws by allowing customers to leave the bar with a particular non-cash prize (such as a stuffed animal) then go to another near-by location owned by the same group to then "sell" the prize in exchange for cash.
Everyone knows it happens, and yet no one interferes.
All of you open source developers hoping for the day that Linux/BSD/etc is taken seriously as a consumer platform (similar to what Windows and the Mac OS have enjoyed for over a decade) need to start banding together now to discuss how to make something as complicated as Linux truly accessible to any user without sacrificing the benefits Linux offers. Until commercial entities like Adobe see that there is a viable audience to market their products to in Linux/BSD/etc, these OSes are going to live out most of their lives as little more than behind-the-scenes grunt-work software or as a niche item on a hobbyist's / enthusiast's computer in some basement.
Somehow, there needs to be some form of interface consistency across the board that is logical, useful and attractive to even the least intelligent of users.
Take the 3D application "Blender" for example. Most of us know that Blender itself is fairly powerful when used correctly by the right person. Yet despite the fact that Blender is both power and free, your typical consumer level user is far more likely to gravitate toward products like Carrara Studio, based almost entirely on it's presentation and interface design. People don't like it when their software intimidates them and they are more than willing to pay good money to avoid it whenever possible.
You also have to consider that time is a major factor as well. While anyone could "learn" to use Blender effectively and efficiently, the time invested in overcoming the learning curve is too much for many of us. If you were to compare Blender's interface directly against Carrara Studio's interface. Most users would again gravitate toward Carrara since they perceive a much lower investment of time involved in trying to "get it". The reality though, is that the core learning curve on either of these apps for most functions is probably identical.
Overall though, it's likely going to be a lot more difficult than it sounds to put a new face on Linux to make it pretty, useful and non-threatening to the average user. Hell, Apple's been trying for nearly 10 years with Mac OS X, and they've only just barely got it right. (Despite the numerous flaws...) It can be done, but it'll take a lot of effort to really pull it off.
Actually, I saw a show on Animal Planet not too long ago that demonstrated this kind of selectivity could be true even with certain breeds of dogs. One example of this they showed was a dog that could find and locate a single specific item out of a selection of around 200 or so objects the dog already recognized and did this repeatedly without once messing up. They then went one step further and introduced an unfamiliar object and instructed the dog to bring an object with a previously unknown object name. The dog then selectively ruled out all the known objects and seemingly linked the unknown elements together as being one in the same, resulting in the dog retrieving the previously unknown item.
They actually have a term for this type of selective behavior already, but I can't quite think of what it was they called it. Needless to say, I think the psychologists are likely more aware of this issue than the article headline suggests.
The psychologists were claiming that if you choose X over Y then you are more likely to choose Z over Y because your *choice* causes bias against Y. (This fits the observed data).
The new suggestion is that if you choose X over Y then you are more likely to choose Z over Y because the choice indicates prior bias against Y. The important part being that this holds even if the bias against Y is so small that it is hard to detect. The only thing required is that there is a fixed "preferred order" of the three.
At least, that's what I understand from the article. Given the field, I also understand that I am most probably wrong:)
Is it just me, or do people here in the states lack spines nowadays? People have been calling each other foul names and playing crude pranks on each other for literally centuries, yet only now it's being considered a "major" problem. Did the entire internet suddenly become populated with emo-kids just waiting to go columbine on the world?
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that cyberbullying causes terrorism. (Which might be true now, only because we're all clinically "depressed" according to the pharmaceutical companies...)
Perhaps if stores stopped selling solid black clothing and cosmetics, perhaps cyberbullying wouldn't be such a concern for these uppity, think-of-the-children bleeding hearts out there.
If this catches on, you might eventually end up ponying up cash on every file that comes in across your WAN connection, including all those lovely invisible 1 by 1 pixel image files used for everything from advertiser user tracking to sloppy page formatting.
During my time in high school in the 90's, I got a phone call on a saturday from our school librarian (recently turned network admin), freaking out after having misplaced her login information for the schools novell setup. She must've been really desperate to be calling me, since she only knew I used the computers on a regular basis at my lunch break.
Luckily for her, I had learned a thing or two about getting around the novell interface to get direct access to the OS itself and managed to walk her through the process of hacking the network enough to modify whatever it was she needed it to do.
Granted, hacking in this case is perhaps a bit liberal, since back then, you could simply interrupt the novell stuff by requesting a task, followed by a CTRL-C combination immediately after, forcing a drop out to an unprotected DOS prompt. (I think later versions eventually managed to trap it, but included an option to manually leave the exploit active for emergencies...)
Don't be friendly with guys you don't at least have some interest in banging! Especially single guys that aren't currently seeing anyone.
Sure, that'll probably ruffle a few feminazi feathers, but get over it. There's no reason a woman should get free reign over actions that would otherwise be treated as sexual harrassment if the roles were reversed. If you want to go around playfully kissing your girlfriends on the cheek for doing something nice, be my guest, but don't for one minute try to suggest you actually believe that action to a guy means the same thing. It's manipulative and dishonest to play the hapless victim whenever a guy gets the "intent" you're feigning with him wrong.
This is exactly why I don't trust women enough to bother dating them... they screw you coming and going... with no actual "screwing" in the process.
....isn't another WWE style robot combat show with little substance beyond being a fancy radio controlled car. Instead, how about bringing us shows with robot competitions where true ingenuity, intelligence and cunning are the major attraction vs a bigger hammer or spike on a wedge.
For example, did anyone ever watch "Robot Rivals" on the DIY channel over the last couple years? Not only did you get robotic competition, you got to watch each team construct a robot specific to each task with a fully stocked supply shelf as well as incorporating a common household item into their design as part of it's overall functions... sort of like the Junkyard Wars series on Discovery Channel. The contestants on each team were even students from competing universities who actually know what the hell they're doing.
If you want autonomy, how about putting a deeper spotlight on DARPA-style challenges? Most of the shows you see on this stuff is far too focused on the results of the challenges, and not nearly enough on the concept, planning and development stages. These challenges probably do far more to advance the field of robotics and artificial intelligence than any box on wheels wielding a sawblade ever will.
Finally, how about getting the viewers more involved with modernized versions of Mind Rover or encouraging more people to pick up a game and simulation tool like Unity, and getting them to develop competative AIs for it?
There's a lot of ways one could go with this, but as long as money/ratings is a primary concern, I'm afraid many of them will go largely unused as far as the general public is concerned.
For the most part, I really don't see ray-tracing adding much to the world of gaming that isn't being handled well enough by current methods. Unless someone was specifically creating games that somehow directly incorporated either the benefits or the added calculations involved with ray-tracing itself, it would only be a costly, and highly inefficient gimmick of an alternative to current techniques.
Sure, ray-tracing has its place in a lot of areas, but real-time gaming would be a terrible misuse of processing horsepower... especially when you could be applying it to other areas of gaming that actually affect gameplay itself. For example, how about more robust AIs for in game elements, or high-end physics processing that can combine things like fabric/hair/ fluid/fire physics processing with the ability to decimate objects completely as vector-calculated chunks based on the surrounding environments, rather than all this predetermined destruction we currently see in games. (Example, a surface could be eroded incrimentally by having a fluid running acrossed it until a hole forms in the shape of the fluid path...)
Ban all religious "teaching" to minors. If they lack the means to make informed decisions in the eyes of law, we shouldn't be perverting a child's ability to identify truth from fallacy by presenting mythology as fact... especially at the earliest points in life where they're still struggling to know the difference between their own parents and family versus completely strangers that simply "look" interesting to them.
Of course, if the religion is that important for "traditional" reasons, parents could actually get off their asses (and their high horses) and present the beliefs of their favorite brand of religion by presenting the mythology in a non-threatening manner... such as a bedtime story. Children can *think* about these things without having it forced down their throats as life-or-death truth.
Did anyone else notice the submitted article on the poll just automatically assumes all P2P activity is "illegal"? Is this merely poor wording/spin doctoring on the part of the submitter, or was the actual poll itself setting up those who participated in it into admitting their P2P activity was all illegal, while completely disregarding those who use P2P for perfectly legal purposes, but simply weren't aware of the wording involved?
Sounds just like the kind of crap one would expect from the **AA slime machine looking to destroy any legitimate technology that threatens their business model instead of simply going after the few individuals they have a civil axe to grind with...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly how much of a child's image would be enough to run afoul of this proposed law? Could you still get in trouble simply by placing a child's head on a South Park-style body hidden behind a digital mosaic? What if you create a child-like composite similar to Betty Crocker from dozens of people at random?
For that matter, does the image even need to involve an actual child at all or even be photo-realistic to get busted under this?
Just wait until some poor anime / hentai fan has their stash of fictitious "child porn" used against them for a lengthy prison term, followed by a life of hell, blacklisted from society for liking scantily-clad drawings of young girls...
Thank god we no longer believe in personal responsibility of the individual anymore! If we don't like something, just make it a felony and it'll magically go away!
Get some backbone already... relationships end badly all the time, regardless of whether or not they're fictitious in nature. If I killed myself every time a relationship resulted in being stabbed in the back by someone I trusted, I'd have at least ten corpses to my name.
And don't give me the sob-story about how this person wasn't "able to make friends in school" or some such non-sense like that. You can't quantify stuff which requires personal effort to make happen.
Was it ethical for this other person to initiate this fake relationship? No. Should they go to prison for it? No. At best, this is a civil issue, not a criminal one. (Well, unless you really stretch the definition of "fraud" into relationships. But be ready for a lashing the next time you have a bad break-up with someone "clingy"...)
Would it really harm anyone if each distribution offered a version of linux for beginning users that installs a single, unanimously agreed upon interface configuration that works the same across the board in all versions? It would certainly make attempts to document linux for first-timers a lot simpler if they actually saw what's in the book on the screen while they learn.
(More advanced users would still be able to obtain their "clean" linux flavor of choice to hack as they see fit...)
Well that was retarded... That was supposed to say "add, subtract, store and move."
If you really want to get technical, only four functions in particular continue to remain in use going all the way back to the earliest of "computers" ever made. These functions are "add", "add", "store" and "move". All other "code" is simply a complex layering of these four basic functions on which all processors are based upon.
I'm surprised just how many people are willing to justify the excessive use of special effects and the campiness of this movie simply because it's "based on a cartoon". The reality is that the movie is not based on a cartoon, but a warped americanized view of an anime series that was introduced to the country long before we were prepared to understand the true complexities of japanese story telling.
This is why we ended up with crap like Robotech instead of the vastly superior Macross. The visuals may have been identical, but with the culture-specific substance stripped out, the end result was little more than a mediocre product that would probably be considered a major insult to the people who actually devoted years of their lives into creating the original.
I feel bad for anyone who ever worked on "Mach Go-Go-Go" having to see what their creation eventually became perverted into.
And don't get me started on Speed Racer: The Next Generation. (Animation Collective simply isn't ready for this type of project, despite their continued success with Kappa Mikey...)
I have to say, despite the fact that I'm now about 3/4th paralyzed throughout my body from a broken neck due to a drunk driver, these self-righteous bitches can stop harassing the video game industry on my behalf. People have been getting drunk long before video games ever existed and will continue to stupidly drive while intoxicated... simply because being intoxicated causes poor judgment in itself. Trying to claim that video games or any other media somehow influences people to drive drunk just for the sake of driving drunk is complete and utter bullshit.
The only reason they're going after the game is because the franchise has a history of controversy tied to it and they want to cash in on this incarnation of Grand Theft Auto before someone else does and desensitizes people to their cause.
This is like asking whether or not Time exists or if we simply created it by comparing one repetitive event to another. So long as a machine can use the concept to make our lives easier, it's origins really don't matter to anyone other than scholars or historians.
Besides, concepts like math and time are driven by human greed more than anything. We always want to know who has more than the next guy as a means of quantifying our own existence.
... is being one of the poor saps who developed it!
Think of how this would be for the guy who developed this game knowing he'd never personally get credit for his work while at the same time being envious of the dead for being stuck with such a god-awful product. Only to then have the project canned, flushing all that time and effort they were forced into putting into a product they probably otherwise despised with a passion, right down the toilet. And for what? To become a 5-second joke blurb on some random website 25+ years later, credited entirely to a fluke incident?
God, now I've gone and depressed myself again...
This concept was used in an episode of Sci-Fi channel's original series Eureka, where pieces of chicken grown in this manner (similar to the human pod farm in The Matrix) ended up doing some horribly outlandish thing to the citizens after being eaten. Although the scenario presented would be unlikely to ever actually happen in the manner depicted in the show, it did definitely make you wonder just how "safe" such meats produced in this manner would be for human consumption.
In the meanwhile, this "X-Prize" may end up yielding results far less desirable to PETA than they're thinking. If they think testing cosmetics and drugs on animals seemed cruel, just wait until we start creating half-animal/plant abominations whose entire existence is entirely pain and suffering from the co-mingling of incompatible body configurations until we get things "tuned in" using generation upon generation of eugenic reproduction to get everything right. And even once we do manage one successful sample, we're still going to need to repeat the process several more times over to generate enough breeding stock to ensure that enough genetic diversity exists to prevent entire crops of these meat-bearing vines from becoming susceptible to a single, and possibly deadly, disease.
In the end, this will likely end up bringing all the little Frankensteins out of the shadows long enough to leave pile after pile of maimed corpses from failed test subjects at PETA's doorstep before PETA finally cancels the contest for posterity's sake.
This test may fall slightly short of generating any conclusive results for the situation I'm discussing. For example, did your kids have enough user privileges to actually download/compile, install and configure their own applications and modify the GUI settings to compensate for each application's needs? And if so, did they actually take advantage of this versus using software that was already installed and pre-configured ahead of time?
I'm not doubting your kids' ability to adapt quickly to the new computing environment (in fact, I'd expect any child in this age to have some capability to do so), but there are conditions here that are somewhat atypical. For example, having an tech-savvy adult to fall back on and learn from can directly influence a child's own ability to use an unfamiliar system. (My own father was a programmer and I quickly learned from him to adapt to computers in the early 80s despite being only six years old at the time.)
A true test of this would be to set up a system like this in a setting where there is no tech savvy adult present. Also, set up a Mac and PC of similar capability next to your test configuration. Then, sit back and observe which system(s) the children gravitate towards.
My guess is that the systems running a commercial OS would be more widely used for a number of reasons, ranging from comfort, familiarity and even elements of compatibility with their peers. These are all real-world issues beyond basic capabilities that Linux and other community driven OSes have to be able to compensate for in order to survive within a commercially-dominated war for control of the desktop.
I tried a little test. My kids are not what you'd call computer experts. Just typical kids ages 9 and 16. They use both Mac OS and Windows. I put a Linux Ubuntu system up and made them a logon account. Having never seen Ubuntu before they are able to do all the normal taks they did on the macs. There was not learning curve or comming up to speed. That said, the biggest problem with Linux and other UNIX systems it that you can't run the Adobe or Apple suit of applications. I LIKE Apple's "final Cut Expres" and Aperture and the Adobe creative Suite so I have some Macs at home. Here in the office it si 100% Linux and Solaris. But in terms of ease of use at the desktop level they are all the same.
Those whose orders were accepted will probably receive the configurations they requested complete with retail copies of Mac OS X in the box. But, the various issues currently affecting PsyStar's business and warnings from Apple Legal will probably result in the end user being left to figure out how to get OS X up and running on the system with maybe a sheet of paper explaining whatever process they initially intended to use.
After all, these are simply custom built PCs constructed from parts you can buy anywhere. All PsyStar has to do is provide an assembled system and some evidence that the system is somehow capable of running MacOS X, without having to actually deliver a pre-installed setup ready to run out of the box.
Sure, it'd be a low blow to the customer, but it'd probably be technically enough to keep someone out of prison.
... until the day they start actively punishing the genetically disabled for reproducing either by litigation or making it a criminal act to "knowingly transfer" a poor genetic condition to a child. Now, instead of receiving medical assistance and supplemental income to raise such a child, they could simply sue you for putting unnecessary strain on the taxpayers and wait out the transition from poverty to death to solve the problem at a lower overall cost.
And if you think that could never happen in this country, guess again. We're already headed that direction with proper prescription medications becoming harder to obtain in through the government in favor of generic "equivalents" (and by equivalent, I mean dangerously inferior chemical abominations) of such poor quality that the side effects from using them are almost worse than the effects of not taking the medications at all. It's almost like they've got this planned out specifically so those of us needing these medications will die as soon as possible without it technically being "mass-murder".
In some sense, I happen to agree with this response to the new Apple. Some of their more recent products make little sense when compared to the requests of their consumer base. A prime example of this is the MacBook Air, a light, pretty-looking machine, but priced way too high due to its overall lack of distinguishing features and poor performance compared to a low-end, factory-default MacBook.
That's not to say a product like the MacBook Air doesn't have some kind of market going for it, but there are other markets where its form factor, lack of features and reduced performance would hsve been far better suited. For example, had they instead produced an official Apple-branded Macintosh tablet using the MacBook Air's casing/footprint, combined with only bluetooth and airport for adding devices/networking and then sold the package for a scant $999 per unit, everyone would want one to compliment their home computer. In effect, a PDA done right in a form factor people are already adapted to carrying around but capable of running all their favorite apps away from the keys. That seemingly unused InkWell technology Apple's been touting for years would finally serve a real-world purpose.
But no... Jobs just wanted the "world's thinnest computer" title despite the fact it'll probably only ever end up in the hands of middle/upper class college students with cash to burn on such toys.
I want the Mac Apple refuses to sell me: an upgradeable machine that doesn't have ridiculous components (Xeons, FB-DIMMS) that maybe 0.01% of the userbase actually needs.
Jobs refuses to sell it because he knows people will buy it. He fears this because he is in love with AIO and wants people to buy iMacs even when they aren't a fit for their needs. He also is under the delusion that creating a Mac upgradeable prosumer desktop will somehow "Dell-ize" Apple. The reality, which most Mac users understand, is that what is actually valuable about Macs is not their different-ness, but the fact that they run OS X, which is the best consumer operating system on the market. Mac hardware is not special. It got even less special after 2005. Mac SOFTWARE is what is special.
Anyone want to start a "purchase-by-proxy" service? Simply put, such a service would involve payment up front to temporarily "hire" a third party to make a purchase on your behalf, then turn around and re-ship the unopened box from their location into your state. Yakuza-operated pachinko bars in Japan have been using similar methods for years as a loophole to gambling laws by allowing customers to leave the bar with a particular non-cash prize (such as a stuffed animal) then go to another near-by location owned by the same group to then "sell" the prize in exchange for cash.
Everyone knows it happens, and yet no one interferes.
All of you open source developers hoping for the day that Linux/BSD/etc is taken seriously as a consumer platform (similar to what Windows and the Mac OS have enjoyed for over a decade) need to start banding together now to discuss how to make something as complicated as Linux truly accessible to any user without sacrificing the benefits Linux offers. Until commercial entities like Adobe see that there is a viable audience to market their products to in Linux/BSD/etc, these OSes are going to live out most of their lives as little more than behind-the-scenes grunt-work software or as a niche item on a hobbyist's / enthusiast's computer in some basement.
Somehow, there needs to be some form of interface consistency across the board that is logical, useful and attractive to even the least intelligent of users.
Take the 3D application "Blender" for example. Most of us know that Blender itself is fairly powerful when used correctly by the right person. Yet despite the fact that Blender is both power and free, your typical consumer level user is far more likely to gravitate toward products like Carrara Studio, based almost entirely on it's presentation and interface design. People don't like it when their software intimidates them and they are more than willing to pay good money to avoid it whenever possible.
You also have to consider that time is a major factor as well. While anyone could "learn" to use Blender effectively and efficiently, the time invested in overcoming the learning curve is too much for many of us. If you were to compare Blender's interface directly against Carrara Studio's interface. Most users would again gravitate toward Carrara since they perceive a much lower investment of time involved in trying to "get it". The reality though, is that the core learning curve on either of these apps for most functions is probably identical.
Overall though, it's likely going to be a lot more difficult than it sounds to put a new face on Linux to make it pretty, useful and non-threatening to the average user. Hell, Apple's been trying for nearly 10 years with Mac OS X, and they've only just barely got it right. (Despite the numerous flaws...) It can be done, but it'll take a lot of effort to really pull it off.
Actually, I saw a show on Animal Planet not too long ago that demonstrated this kind of selectivity could be true even with certain breeds of dogs. One example of this they showed was a dog that could find and locate a single specific item out of a selection of around 200 or so objects the dog already recognized and did this repeatedly without once messing up. They then went one step further and introduced an unfamiliar object and instructed the dog to bring an object with a previously unknown object name. The dog then selectively ruled out all the known objects and seemingly linked the unknown elements together as being one in the same, resulting in the dog retrieving the previously unknown item.
:)
They actually have a term for this type of selective behavior already, but I can't quite think of what it was they called it. Needless to say, I think the psychologists are likely more aware of this issue than the article headline suggests.
The psychologists were claiming that if you choose X over Y then you are more likely to choose Z over Y because your *choice* causes bias against Y. (This fits the observed data).
The new suggestion is that if you choose X over Y then you are more likely to choose Z over Y because the choice indicates prior bias against Y. The important part being that this holds even if the bias against Y is so small that it is hard to detect. The only thing required is that there is a fixed "preferred order" of the three.
At least, that's what I understand from the article. Given the field, I also understand that I am most probably wrong
Is it just me, or do people here in the states lack spines nowadays? People have been calling each other foul names and playing crude pranks on each other for literally centuries, yet only now it's being considered a "major" problem. Did the entire internet suddenly become populated with emo-kids just waiting to go columbine on the world?
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that cyberbullying causes terrorism. (Which might be true now, only because we're all clinically "depressed" according to the pharmaceutical companies...)
Perhaps if stores stopped selling solid black clothing and cosmetics, perhaps cyberbullying wouldn't be such a concern for these uppity, think-of-the-children bleeding hearts out there.
If this catches on, you might eventually end up ponying up cash on every file that comes in across your WAN connection, including all those lovely invisible 1 by 1 pixel image files used for everything from advertiser user tracking to sloppy page formatting.
During my time in high school in the 90's, I got a phone call on a saturday from our school librarian (recently turned network admin), freaking out after having misplaced her login information for the schools novell setup. She must've been really desperate to be calling me, since she only knew I used the computers on a regular basis at my lunch break.
Luckily for her, I had learned a thing or two about getting around the novell interface to get direct access to the OS itself and managed to walk her through the process of hacking the network enough to modify whatever it was she needed it to do.
Granted, hacking in this case is perhaps a bit liberal, since back then, you could simply interrupt the novell stuff by requesting a task, followed by a CTRL-C combination immediately after, forcing a drop out to an unprotected DOS prompt. (I think later versions eventually managed to trap it, but included an option to manually leave the exploit active for emergencies...)
Don't be friendly with guys you don't at least have some interest in banging! Especially single guys that aren't currently seeing anyone.
Sure, that'll probably ruffle a few feminazi feathers, but get over it. There's no reason a woman should get free reign over actions that would otherwise be treated as sexual harrassment if the roles were reversed. If you want to go around playfully kissing your girlfriends on the cheek for doing something nice, be my guest, but don't for one minute try to suggest you actually believe that action to a guy means the same thing. It's manipulative and dishonest to play the hapless victim whenever a guy gets the "intent" you're feigning with him wrong.
This is exactly why I don't trust women enough to bother dating them... they screw you coming and going... with no actual "screwing" in the process.
....isn't another WWE style robot combat show with little substance beyond being a fancy radio controlled car. Instead, how about bringing us shows with robot competitions where true ingenuity, intelligence and cunning are the major attraction vs a bigger hammer or spike on a wedge.
For example, did anyone ever watch "Robot Rivals" on the DIY channel over the last couple years? Not only did you get robotic competition, you got to watch each team construct a robot specific to each task with a fully stocked supply shelf as well as incorporating a common household item into their design as part of it's overall functions... sort of like the Junkyard Wars series on Discovery Channel. The contestants on each team were even students from competing universities who actually know what the hell they're doing.
If you want autonomy, how about putting a deeper spotlight on DARPA-style challenges? Most of the shows you see on this stuff is far too focused on the results of the challenges, and not nearly enough on the concept, planning and development stages. These challenges probably do far more to advance the field of robotics and artificial intelligence than any box on wheels wielding a sawblade ever will.
Finally, how about getting the viewers more involved with modernized versions of Mind Rover or encouraging more people to pick up a game and simulation tool like Unity, and getting them to develop competative AIs for it?
There's a lot of ways one could go with this, but as long as money/ratings is a primary concern, I'm afraid many of them will go largely unused as far as the general public is concerned.
For the most part, I really don't see ray-tracing adding much to the world of gaming that isn't being handled well enough by current methods. Unless someone was specifically creating games that somehow directly incorporated either the benefits or the added calculations involved with ray-tracing itself, it would only be a costly, and highly inefficient gimmick of an alternative to current techniques.
Sure, ray-tracing has its place in a lot of areas, but real-time gaming would be a terrible misuse of processing horsepower... especially when you could be applying it to other areas of gaming that actually affect gameplay itself. For example, how about more robust AIs for in game elements, or high-end physics processing that can combine things like fabric/hair/ fluid/fire physics processing with the ability to decimate objects completely as vector-calculated chunks based on the surrounding environments, rather than all this predetermined destruction we currently see in games. (Example, a surface could be eroded incrimentally by having a fluid running acrossed it until a hole forms in the shape of the fluid path...)
Ban all religious "teaching" to minors. If they lack the means to make informed decisions in the eyes of law, we shouldn't be perverting a child's ability to identify truth from fallacy by presenting mythology as fact... especially at the earliest points in life where they're still struggling to know the difference between their own parents and family versus completely strangers that simply "look" interesting to them.
Of course, if the religion is that important for "traditional" reasons, parents could actually get off their asses (and their high horses) and present the beliefs of their favorite brand of religion by presenting the mythology in a non-threatening manner... such as a bedtime story. Children can *think* about these things without having it forced down their throats as life-or-death truth.
Did anyone else notice the submitted article on the poll just automatically assumes all P2P activity is "illegal"? Is this merely poor wording/spin doctoring on the part of the submitter, or was the actual poll itself setting up those who participated in it into admitting their P2P activity was all illegal, while completely disregarding those who use P2P for perfectly legal purposes, but simply weren't aware of the wording involved?
Sounds just like the kind of crap one would expect from the **AA slime machine looking to destroy any legitimate technology that threatens their business model instead of simply going after the few individuals they have a civil axe to grind with...