I reread that chapter every year, and have for the past three decades. Frodo did not fight in the scouring of the Shire, and none of the actions he took were to save his country for *himself*. As for Saruman and Wormtongue, most hobbits didn't know they existed.
Only the ignorant hobbits like Ted Sandyman take no interest in the outside world, or are suspicious of Gandalf or the Elves. The noble hobbits are without exception interested in the outside world and often have surprising connections to it (Bilbo to the Elves, Dwarves and Gandalf; Merry to Farmer Maggot to Tom Bombadil).
I don't know about mid-range audio, but I think it's generally true in the last 20-25 years there's been a huge growth in the low end of everything. It'd be easy to say it's because everything is made in China, but that's an oversimplification. China is giving our retailers what our retailers think they can sell to us.
It's a complicated story. One thing that strikes me as a middle aged person is how much more *stuff* there is in our lives, and how much of that stuff isn't very well made. Yet cheesy as it is, it is both cheaper *and* better made than the lowest of the low end of 1981. We never see crap like that old stuff, because China can make much better crap for less. And then... there's cars. Even accounting for technology, a cheap crappy car of today is far better built than all but the very best cars of 1981.
So this is my conclusion: There's been a general improvement in quality across the price spectrum, but marketers have figured out that for most purchases the easiest sell is something that is cheap but good enough to be going on with. In response, we have shifted our purchases towards cheaper (but now acceptable) goods and consequently own more stuff, the bulk of which is mediocre. Cars are an exception because breakdowns are a pain in the neck so we actually *do* care about quality. And if we get injured by a design or production flaw, we'll sue.
If that's true, then the conclusion has to be that most people don't care much about audio quality. I think that's true. Most people don't listen to music like they used to. How many people do you know who put on a CD and sit down in a chair to listen to it? People use music as background noise as they go about their tasks, working, jogging, or exercising at the gym.
The cardinal virtues in Lord of the Rings are courage and willingness to sacrifice. The isolationism and disinterest of hobbits in the world at large is not depicted as a virtue, nor is fear and distrust of the elites (the elves and Gandalf) which is characteristic of most hobbits. What makes the laziness, insularity and gluttony of the hobbits acceptable is that they're willing to put them aside; to do without in the service of a greater cause.
If courage and sacrifice are the cardinal virtues, fear and selfishness are the cardinal vices, vices that weaken the hobbits of the Shire until they are prey to Saruman who Tolkien, in a feat of ironic brilliance, depicts as talking like a 20th C politician who plays of the petty weaknesses of his victims. The heroic hobbits, who have learned the lessons of courage and sacrifice, rekindle those virtues in the Shire. Frodo, the greatest of the hobbits, sees Saruman not as an object of fear or hatred, but of pity.
To my mind the signatures of the Tea Party are fear, resentment and anger, not understanding and forbearance. The refrain you hear over and over is "I want my country back." Can you imagine *Frodo* saying such a thing? He feels the loss of what once was keenly, but accepts that he must lose that so others can make a new future.
We have a hole society who thinks that Moderates are week minded. They are not,
True, but nobody listens to them because of their speling impediment.
Anyhow, how many people do you know who would rally to a battle cry, "Y',know, the other side has some valid points."? Well, there's *me* and probably *you*, but I mean *normal* people.
Well, the movies *do* come up with original material... or at least lots of interesting little movies that get reviewed by movie buffs but are not much seen or talked about by us. For us, "movies" equate with "blockbusters" : investment vehicles in which underwriters put 100-200 million dollars for a couple years and hope to break even a couple weeks after the US release, and double their money with the international release.
Is it any wonder creativity, even when present, seems overwhelmed by hype? A blockbuster exists as something to be promoted, not as a work of art to be experienced. It's the sizzle that matters, not the steak. Even when a blockbuster is fairly good, like the recent "Captain America", the things put into it for purely marketing purposes sap it of emotional credibility.
I wish I remember who said it, but somebody once said that in the future, we will only experience varying degrees of slowness. What he meant was that in olden days we could be thrilled at a train that moved us at 50mph -- faster than any horse. But now we can fly at 500 mph, crossing the country in hours instead of days, and all we experience is how *long* the flight takes. As we become accustomed to speed as normal, we can't experience it any longer. [I remember the thrill of using an early ARPANet TIP to log onto a computer across the Atlantic, as if it were in the next room. That's a thrill most of you kids will never experience, like the thrill of an early aviator seeing the land laid out in front of him like a map, an experience we take for granted.]
I think we've reached that point with CGI. It used to be that huge "special effects" amazed us, because in the back of our mind we knew some crazy stuntperson threw himself off a building while wearing a flaming suit. There was a brief period in which CGI upped the ante, but I think we've reached the point where it can't surprise us, when it can only fall short of our expectations. And in the back of our mind, the awareness that this is all digitally manipulated drains the thrill out of it.
But there's always great storytelling to fall back on. A great storyteller can immerse us in a story without props or elaborate effecdts. And there are lots of great story tellers out there who could be had for cheap, in blockbuster terms. Show me a CGI bockbuster that's as scary and thrilling as *Key Largo*, a 1948 film that was probably was shot in three weeks, and edited in about the same. It had a great cast and a terrific screenplay by Richard Brooks and John Huston.
Hollywood is just a marketing phenomenon. It's only a matter of time when amateur story tellers will be able to tell any story Hollywood can, including science fiction and fantasy stories that once would have required huge budgets. And those amateurs won't need Hollywood's distribution clout to get their story out.
So the real question is: how long Hollywood will continue to exist? It continues as long as it can make money, but it's going to have to shift gears to capture the imaginations of audiences jaded by digital effects.
While this is serious science, there's a whiff of mad science about it. If this were my project, I'd dine out at science fiction conventions for the rest of my life on this.
I'd have settled out of court. Really, that's most of what you pay lawyers to do: keep you away from high stakes showdowns in court.
If it were me I'd say, "Mr. Lucas, we can probably win, but there's a small chance that the court will rule the armor isn't a sculpture. That would threaten licensing income streams, which would be huge. So what we should do is sign a licensing agreement that allows him to sell the armor, as long as it's made by him personally using the original mold. That will have just about zero effect on your revenues, but look like a bonanza to this guy. In fact, we'll draft a nice little letter of appreciation he can send out with every piece over your signature. You'll look like a mensch, but what you're really doing is protecting your interests at essentially no cost to yourself."
I've dealt with lawyers in business deals, and that's how they think, at least the good ones. They prefer that future events be governed by minutely specified agreements rather than by winner-take-all courtroom drama. I can only suppose that Lucas himself is a lousy, headstrong client.
I'm not sure how this relates to splitting off Google's other services from search. They'd still be the leader in search even if they were split apart.
Well, I don't think that works, or is particularly necessary.
There really aren't any significant *market* barriers to entry in the areas Google plays in. It's not like you have to agree to go through Google to get customers for your web site, the way music companies have to go through Apple if they want a significant audience in the mobile music market. Nor do you have to target APIs or formats that only Google understands in order to target web users, the way you' have to if you want to complete against MS Office on Windows. Google is a company built on standards and well documented APIs.
To compete with Google in an area like web email or on-line mapping, what you need to do is invest a ton of dough on data infrastructure. The huge, fast, distributed infrastructure makes it easy for Google to bring up new, huge web products. Breaking Google up wouldn't make it any cheaper for a competitor to enter the market. It would make it more costly for Google to enter new markets because its existing resources would be balkanized.
What I've seen is that "most adults" have been indoctrinated with the idea that morals are an outdated tool used by society to control the weak-minded.
I don't think they've been indoctrinated. What you're describing is people rationalizing something that makes them feel bad about themselves. In a way the truth is worse than systemic indoctrination. It's systemic disillusionment.
When you're a kid, they tell you that you are special. Even if nobody can see what makes you special, we're taught to have faith that there is something inside you that is wonderful. Then you become an adult and very quickly it goes from "you are special" to "who the f**k do you think you are?" It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, because so many people are insecure because time is ticking away and their special-ness hasn't manifested itself. People are so desperate to keep up appearances they'll crawl all over other peoples' egos to do it.
Now me, I've been in situations where I've done the right thing even though nobody would know, but that's because I'm so egotistical I *still* think I'm special. I don't have proof of that, nor do I need it. My geek narcissism is sufficient to make me think of myself as wonderful. Now I suppose that by some standards I'm a fool for passing up on opportunities that "everybody" takes, but my way has its compensations. I don't have to worry that other people will find out I'm not as good as they think I am, because I'm too self-centered to care what other people think. But there is one person whose opinion matters a great deal to me. I'd hate to disappoint him, because he's in a position to know if I'm not up to scratch.
On the other hand you don't necessarily need that much construction materials. For example most of the collector structure could be roofed with cheap, lightweight plastic. That's a hell of a lot cheaper than the equivalent area of amorphous silicon solar cells, and it's *financial* efficiency that counts.
Actually, that effect you mention is the mechanism by which they *capture* the solar energy. Of course they don't capture *all* that energy, but that's not the point. The point is the energy you take out as a function of investment and operational costs. The tower component is bound to be pretty expensive, but the system has no moving parts other than the turbines and it can be scaled up by building out over cheap land.
It's the NPV of all the inputs per kw/h that matters, and if the figures come out competitive it doesn't matter if the system is not all that thermodynamically efficient.
Oh, it's more than just a throwback to 1940s movies. *Captain America is a fantasy story*.
*Thor* was science fiction. A lot of people thought the sci-fi doubletalk didn't belong in a movie about Norse Gods, but that made a kind of sense to me. *Thor* is a palace intrigue story about a foreign power meddling in dynastic succession. The title character's journey, while having elements of the fantastic, is intended to be psychologically convincing given the experiences the character has. Thor undergoes an internal transformation. Steven Rogers undergoes an *external* transformation, so psychological realism doesn't come into the story.
Captain America poses he kind of question that belongs squarely in fantasy: what if you took somebody who had inner greatness and made that greatness manifest on the outside? That's way more fantastical -- mythic even -- than anything in *Thor*.
Just because a story doesn't have psychological realism doesn't mean it can't have psychological sophistication. The reason you come away from a story like *Captain America* energized is that you've just seen a kind of mythic story re-enacted in which for once good and evil meet on equal terms, which of course never quite happens in real life. But in fantasy we can give our superman an opponent who is externally the hero's equal or better, so that the hero's victory is a pure vindication of his heroic qualities. In real history or biography particulars matter; the outcome of conflict is never quite the perfect vindication of an *idea* that fantasy can show us.
I'd say it's clear that Rupert Murdoch is not an *average* businessman. He's clearly an *extraordinary* businessman. Some people would say that automatically makes him scum, others that it automatically precludes him from being scum. I think that his special ability and status entails special responsibilities.
We all know that corporations are amoral profit making machines. So it is up to business leaders to carry the standard of human values. That's tough, because business involves complicated compromises between the duty to deliver profit to shareholders and morality. I think you can just about always say of a truly effective business leader that the picture is complicated. Steve Jobs runs his business with a disturbing egotism, but at the same time he gives his designers unprecedented creative opportunities. Sergei Brin may not have created a company that never does evil, but he did create a company which is more ethically nuanced in its approach to issues like privacy or doing business in China than most.
So what can you say for Rupert Murdoch? He's made a ton of money for himself and his shareholders.
I don't consider such a man a business *leader*; I consider him a man who has made himself a cog in the very machine he built. He may be a very component of his company, even a particularly creative one, but he's less than a man because he is nothing without the company.
Because the author is pulling strings behind the scenes, and an accurate depiction of the real world. It doesn't matter whether we're talking *Star Trek* or *Atlas Shrugged*; whatever conditions the author needs to tell the story, he assumes, whether that is the people around the protagonist being a noble band of brothers or a pack of blood-sucking leeches.
Which is not to say literature isn't useful in exploring the real world, you just have to understand its limitations. I've worked with computer simulations of environmental systems, and what layman always thinks is that these models tell you something about the way the real world is. That is seldom the case. Unless you have true values for nearly all the relevant factors as parameters, what a model tells you is something about the way the world *might be*. Literature is like that. An author is all-knowing only within the covers of his book.
Now as to the possibility that AI game designers might outstrip human ones -- I think that is possible, but only within a limited range of possibilities. We've seen this before with computers and people. At one time calculation was seen as a high human intellectual achievement, because it's something we spend a long time learning to do. Now not just arithmetic, but algebra is done by machines better than most humans can do. Likewise chess is a game that, if machines counted, would be dominated by machines with a few freakishly gifted humans. It's only a matter of time before it isn't remarkable for machines to perform better than any human at chess.
AI succeeds by taking some class of tasks out of the realm of AI and putting it in the realm of routine calculation.
So I think there's no doubt that many tasks in game design will be reduced to things that cat can be done by algorithms that were once the realm of AI, because over half a century of experience tells us this happens all the time. But once players adjust to these algorithmically generated designs, what the algorithms won't do is generate anything that feels "fresh" or new. That is because human experience is messy, so it's not possible for something (or say, an intelligent alien) to know what will strike us as intriguing and credible unless it has past data on that.
One of the interesting things that's happened on the psychology end of things is that the question of what is instinctual or "baked in" to humanity is a complex question. We knew that was true, but we didn't know *how* true. For example if you were moving a long a tunnel and came to a steep slope, you'd "instinctively" be be afraid of falling, but in fact experiments show that babies learn this kind of thing. This is the sort of thing that a human designer would know about human reactions, but has to be provided to an algorithm as a parameter. If vertigo were not a factor in past successful games that was adequately modeled in the algorithm, then the algorithm would not recognize it as a factor in the way humans would experience the game.
An AI might be programmed to "know" that when Mayor Quimby on the Simpsons speaks like John Kennedy, it's funny, but when John Kennedy uses that voice to challenge us to go to the moon, it's inspiring. That's because of the vast base of trivia that humans somehow assemble into meaningful experience.
I see non-manned missions as a sensible prerequisite to manned ones. Before Vostok 1 you had Sputnik. There were 20 robotic launches in the Mercury Program before Alan Shepard went up on Mercury-Redstone 3. Before the manned lunar landing we had the Ranger, Surveyer and Lunar Orbiter programs.
Even if you didn't care about the people you send to, say Mars, it would be financially unconscionable to send them there before we'd done some missions that returned Martian samples to earth. I'll give a few reasons here:
* Experience shows that Mars landings are risky. * We have no experience with Mars launches; a few test runs are needed if returning human explorers is important. * Identify targets which can best be studied by humans before sending very expensive missions. * Maintain and advance planetary exploration skills with frequent cheap missions where failure *is* an option. * Reduce cost of manned exploration by developing proven and reliable systems. * Develop a sustainable, successful planetary exploration program before risking everything on a fabulously expensive manned mission with untried technology and uncertain goals.
There are times when you have to be bold, but there are times when being sensible is the bold thing.
So you don't have to have two different app development teams, one for your web projects and one for this project?
Because you want to make use of the javascript libraries you've developed for exactly this kind of app?
Because you have the whole app stack done and tested for web deployment and now you're selling a low end "single user" configuration?
Because you want to use the database platform you're used to and it doesn't happen to be embeddable like SqlLIte? And since you're running the database server anyway a web server's not so big a deail?
I could go on and on. I'm not saying this guy's approach make sense; I'm saying you can't pass judgment on it based on what he's told us.
It almost sounds more like performance art than game development. I mean, the bloody game's motto is "Losing is Fun!", so clearly this guy's agenda is to mess with your habitual, unexamined assumptions, like "losing sucks" or "archers shoot arrows."
Actually, a commentator on the recent Libyan crisis raised what I think is an interesting point about this. He explained that Libya is practically ideal for an unpopular dictator to rule. It has a small population and *huge* resources. The per capita GDP is well above the world average ($16,502 vs. 11,128), but the unemployment rate is 30%.
In other words the income of the country, which largely comes out of the ground, doesn't go to the people's pockets; it underwrites their oppression.
It made me wonder whether it isn't just a matter of high GDP low population. What if it were a matter of per capita accumulated wealth per capita? Then a small group gaining control over a disproportionate share of wealth could tip a democratic country into tyranny.
I installed a ridgeline vent on one of my office over the garage -- totally passive, but highly effective. It wasn't too bad to install either. You just take your circular saw and cut along the roofline on either side of the peak, then nail down the ridge vent over the long crack you've just exposed. You need to put soffit vents in too otherwise the ridge vent won't work, but that's easy. The natural tendency of heated air to rise means you don't need any control systems. So a ridgeline vent is a no-brainer, even if you have a white roof. A roof out to be ventilated, not just for summer cooling but for year round moisture control.
Installing the soffit vents was just a matter of drilling holes with a hole saw bit (like you use for installing locks) and putting plastic inserts in to keep out the birds. This eliminated a mold problem I had in one corner of the house too.
I also installed a thermostatically controlled gable vent fan in the main roof. That's also effective, but obviously takes some energy input. It also runs in the winter during high humidity conditions. That increases heating costs slightly but reduces condensation damage. It's dirt simple to install and not quite as nerve wracking for those who find the idea of cutting holes in their roof daunting. You screw the can-like vent over the inside of the gable vent louver, wire it into your household current, set the operating range on the thermostat/hydrostat (mounted to the fan itself), and enjoy the energy savings. You also need soffit vents, but those are easy.
I already had a white roof, but I estimate the vent saved me a month of air conditioning, and allow me to cool the whole house with a pair of small window units.
Ventilation is an entirely separate issue from roof color. Even if you go with a white roof, it still needs to be ventilated.
Slashdot Mirror
I reread that chapter every year, and have for the past three decades. Frodo did not fight in the scouring of the Shire, and none of the actions he took were to save his country for *himself*. As for Saruman and Wormtongue, most hobbits didn't know they existed.
Only the ignorant hobbits like Ted Sandyman take no interest in the outside world, or are suspicious of Gandalf or the Elves. The noble hobbits are without exception interested in the outside world and often have surprising connections to it (Bilbo to the Elves, Dwarves and Gandalf; Merry to Farmer Maggot to Tom Bombadil).
You obviously missed the point of the book's ending.
I don't know about mid-range audio, but I think it's generally true in the last 20-25 years there's been a huge growth in the low end of everything. It'd be easy to say it's because everything is made in China, but that's an oversimplification. China is giving our retailers what our retailers think they can sell to us.
It's a complicated story. One thing that strikes me as a middle aged person is how much more *stuff* there is in our lives, and how much of that stuff isn't very well made. Yet cheesy as it is, it is both cheaper *and* better made than the lowest of the low end of 1981. We never see crap like that old stuff, because China can make much better crap for less. And then... there's cars. Even accounting for technology, a cheap crappy car of today is far better built than all but the very best cars of 1981.
So this is my conclusion: There's been a general improvement in quality across the price spectrum, but marketers have figured out that for most purchases the easiest sell is something that is cheap but good enough to be going on with. In response, we have shifted our purchases towards cheaper (but now acceptable) goods and consequently own more stuff, the bulk of which is mediocre. Cars are an exception because breakdowns are a pain in the neck so we actually *do* care about quality. And if we get injured by a design or production flaw, we'll sue.
If that's true, then the conclusion has to be that most people don't care much about audio quality. I think that's true. Most people don't listen to music like they used to. How many people do you know who put on a CD and sit down in a chair to listen to it? People use music as background noise as they go about their tasks, working, jogging, or exercising at the gym.
Well, if you're going to labor the point....
The cardinal virtues in Lord of the Rings are courage and willingness to sacrifice. The isolationism and disinterest of hobbits in the world at large is not depicted as a virtue, nor is fear and distrust of the elites (the elves and Gandalf) which is characteristic of most hobbits. What makes the laziness, insularity and gluttony of the hobbits acceptable is that they're willing to put them aside; to do without in the service of a greater cause.
If courage and sacrifice are the cardinal virtues, fear and selfishness are the cardinal vices, vices that weaken the hobbits of the Shire until they are prey to Saruman who Tolkien, in a feat of ironic brilliance, depicts as talking like a 20th C politician who plays of the petty weaknesses of his victims. The heroic hobbits, who have learned the lessons of courage and sacrifice, rekindle those virtues in the Shire. Frodo, the greatest of the hobbits, sees Saruman not as an object of fear or hatred, but of pity.
To my mind the signatures of the Tea Party are fear, resentment and anger, not understanding and forbearance. The refrain you hear over and over is "I want my country back." Can you imagine *Frodo* saying such a thing? He feels the loss of what once was keenly, but accepts that he must lose that so others can make a new future.
We have a hole society who thinks that Moderates are week minded. They are not,
True, but nobody listens to them because of their speling impediment.
Anyhow, how many people do you know who would rally to a battle cry, "Y',know, the other side has some valid points."? Well, there's *me* and probably *you*, but I mean *normal* people.
Well, the movies *do* come up with original material ... or at least lots of interesting little movies that get reviewed by movie buffs but are not much seen or talked about by us. For us, "movies" equate with "blockbusters" : investment vehicles in which underwriters put 100-200 million dollars for a couple years and hope to break even a couple weeks after the US release, and double their money with the international release.
Is it any wonder creativity, even when present, seems overwhelmed by hype? A blockbuster exists as something to be promoted, not as a work of art to be experienced. It's the sizzle that matters, not the steak. Even when a blockbuster is fairly good, like the recent "Captain America", the things put into it for purely marketing purposes sap it of emotional credibility.
I wish I remember who said it, but somebody once said that in the future, we will only experience varying degrees of slowness. What he meant was that in olden days we could be thrilled at a train that moved us at 50mph -- faster than any horse. But now we can fly at 500 mph, crossing the country in hours instead of days, and all we experience is how *long* the flight takes. As we become accustomed to speed as normal, we can't experience it any longer. [I remember the thrill of using an early ARPANet TIP to log onto a computer across the Atlantic, as if it were in the next room. That's a thrill most of you kids will never experience, like the thrill of an early aviator seeing the land laid out in front of him like a map, an experience we take for granted.]
I think we've reached that point with CGI. It used to be that huge "special effects" amazed us, because in the back of our mind we knew some crazy stuntperson threw himself off a building while wearing a flaming suit. There was a brief period in which CGI upped the ante, but I think we've reached the point where it can't surprise us, when it can only fall short of our expectations. And in the back of our mind, the awareness that this is all digitally manipulated drains the thrill out of it.
But there's always great storytelling to fall back on. A great storyteller can immerse us in a story without props or elaborate effecdts. And there are lots of great story tellers out there who could be had for cheap, in blockbuster terms. Show me a CGI bockbuster that's as scary and thrilling as *Key Largo*, a 1948 film that was probably was shot in three weeks, and edited in about the same. It had a great cast and a terrific screenplay by Richard Brooks and John Huston.
Hollywood is just a marketing phenomenon. It's only a matter of time when amateur story tellers will be able to tell any story Hollywood can, including science fiction and fantasy stories that once would have required huge budgets. And those amateurs won't need Hollywood's distribution clout to get their story out.
So the real question is: how long Hollywood will continue to exist? It continues as long as it can make money, but it's going to have to shift gears to capture the imaginations of audiences jaded by digital effects.
It's ALIVE! [insane cackle]
While this is serious science, there's a whiff of mad science about it. If this were my project, I'd dine out at science fiction conventions for the rest of my life on this.
The good news: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.
The bad news for solar energy: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.
The bad news for the US: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.
I'd have settled out of court. Really, that's most of what you pay lawyers to do: keep you away from high stakes showdowns in court.
If it were me I'd say, "Mr. Lucas, we can probably win, but there's a small chance that the court will rule the armor isn't a sculpture. That would threaten licensing income streams, which would be huge. So what we should do is sign a licensing agreement that allows him to sell the armor, as long as it's made by him personally using the original mold. That will have just about zero effect on your revenues, but look like a bonanza to this guy. In fact, we'll draft a nice little letter of appreciation he can send out with every piece over your signature. You'll look like a mensch, but what you're really doing is protecting your interests at essentially no cost to yourself."
I've dealt with lawyers in business deals, and that's how they think, at least the good ones. They prefer that future events be governed by minutely specified agreements rather than by winner-take-all courtroom drama. I can only suppose that Lucas himself is a lousy, headstrong client.
Dash it all! You beat me to it!
There, fixed that for you Col. Pickering.
[Frederick Lowe orchestral music swells]
Professor Higgins (recitativo): by George she's go it!
I'm not sure how this relates to splitting off Google's other services from search. They'd still be the leader in search even if they were split apart.
Well, I don't think that works, or is particularly necessary.
There really aren't any significant *market* barriers to entry in the areas Google plays in. It's not like you have to agree to go through Google to get customers for your web site, the way music companies have to go through Apple if they want a significant audience in the mobile music market. Nor do you have to target APIs or formats that only Google understands in order to target web users, the way you' have to if you want to complete against MS Office on Windows. Google is a company built on standards and well documented APIs.
To compete with Google in an area like web email or on-line mapping, what you need to do is invest a ton of dough on data infrastructure. The huge, fast, distributed infrastructure makes it easy for Google to bring up new, huge web products. Breaking Google up wouldn't make it any cheaper for a competitor to enter the market. It would make it more costly for Google to enter new markets because its existing resources would be balkanized.
What I've seen is that "most adults" have been indoctrinated with the idea that morals are an outdated tool used by society to control the weak-minded.
I don't think they've been indoctrinated. What you're describing is people rationalizing something that makes them feel bad about themselves. In a way the truth is worse than systemic indoctrination. It's systemic disillusionment.
When you're a kid, they tell you that you are special. Even if nobody can see what makes you special, we're taught to have faith that there is something inside you that is wonderful. Then you become an adult and very quickly it goes from "you are special" to "who the f**k do you think you are?" It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, because so many people are insecure because time is ticking away and their special-ness hasn't manifested itself. People are so desperate to keep up appearances they'll crawl all over other peoples' egos to do it.
Now me, I've been in situations where I've done the right thing even though nobody would know, but that's because I'm so egotistical I *still* think I'm special. I don't have proof of that, nor do I need it. My geek narcissism is sufficient to make me think of myself as wonderful. Now I suppose that by some standards I'm a fool for passing up on opportunities that "everybody" takes, but my way has its compensations. I don't have to worry that other people will find out I'm not as good as they think I am, because I'm too self-centered to care what other people think. But there is one person whose opinion matters a great deal to me. I'd hate to disappoint him, because he's in a position to know if I'm not up to scratch.
Of course you know what that means. Based on this one datapoint, family values cause terrorism.
On the other hand you don't necessarily need that much construction materials. For example most of the collector structure could be roofed with cheap, lightweight plastic. That's a hell of a lot cheaper than the equivalent area of amorphous silicon solar cells, and it's *financial* efficiency that counts.
Actually, that effect you mention is the mechanism by which they *capture* the solar energy. Of course they don't capture *all* that energy, but that's not the point. The point is the energy you take out as a function of investment and operational costs. The tower component is bound to be pretty expensive, but the system has no moving parts other than the turbines and it can be scaled up by building out over cheap land.
It's the NPV of all the inputs per kw/h that matters, and if the figures come out competitive it doesn't matter if the system is not all that thermodynamically efficient.
Oh, it's more than just a throwback to 1940s movies. *Captain America is a fantasy story*.
*Thor* was science fiction. A lot of people thought the sci-fi doubletalk didn't belong in a movie about Norse Gods, but that made a kind of sense to me. *Thor* is a palace intrigue story about a foreign power meddling in dynastic succession. The title character's journey, while having elements of the fantastic, is intended to be psychologically convincing given the experiences the character has. Thor undergoes an internal transformation. Steven Rogers undergoes an *external* transformation, so psychological realism doesn't come into the story.
Captain America poses he kind of question that belongs squarely in fantasy: what if you took somebody who had inner greatness and made that greatness manifest on the outside? That's way more fantastical -- mythic even -- than anything in *Thor*.
Just because a story doesn't have psychological realism doesn't mean it can't have psychological sophistication. The reason you come away from a story like *Captain America* energized is that you've just seen a kind of mythic story re-enacted in which for once good and evil meet on equal terms, which of course never quite happens in real life. But in fantasy we can give our superman an opponent who is externally the hero's equal or better, so that the hero's victory is a pure vindication of his heroic qualities. In real history or biography particulars matter; the outcome of conflict is never quite the perfect vindication of an *idea* that fantasy can show us.
I'd say it's clear that Rupert Murdoch is not an *average* businessman. He's clearly an *extraordinary* businessman. Some people would say that automatically makes him scum, others that it automatically precludes him from being scum. I think that his special ability and status entails special responsibilities.
We all know that corporations are amoral profit making machines. So it is up to business leaders to carry the standard of human values. That's tough, because business involves complicated compromises between the duty to deliver profit to shareholders and morality. I think you can just about always say of a truly effective business leader that the picture is complicated. Steve Jobs runs his business with a disturbing egotism, but at the same time he gives his designers unprecedented creative opportunities. Sergei Brin may not have created a company that never does evil, but he did create a company which is more ethically nuanced in its approach to issues like privacy or doing business in China than most.
So what can you say for Rupert Murdoch? He's made a ton of money for himself and his shareholders.
I don't consider such a man a business *leader*; I consider him a man who has made himself a cog in the very machine he built. He may be a very component of his company, even a particularly creative one, but he's less than a man because he is nothing without the company.
Because the author is pulling strings behind the scenes, and an accurate depiction of the real world. It doesn't matter whether we're talking *Star Trek* or *Atlas Shrugged*; whatever conditions the author needs to tell the story, he assumes, whether that is the people around the protagonist being a noble band of brothers or a pack of blood-sucking leeches.
Which is not to say literature isn't useful in exploring the real world, you just have to understand its limitations. I've worked with computer simulations of environmental systems, and what layman always thinks is that these models tell you something about the way the real world is. That is seldom the case. Unless you have true values for nearly all the relevant factors as parameters, what a model tells you is something about the way the world *might be*. Literature is like that. An author is all-knowing only within the covers of his book.
Now as to the possibility that AI game designers might outstrip human ones -- I think that is possible, but only within a limited range of possibilities. We've seen this before with computers and people. At one time calculation was seen as a high human intellectual achievement, because it's something we spend a long time learning to do. Now not just arithmetic, but algebra is done by machines better than most humans can do. Likewise chess is a game that, if machines counted, would be dominated by machines with a few freakishly gifted humans. It's only a matter of time before it isn't remarkable for machines to perform better than any human at chess.
AI succeeds by taking some class of tasks out of the realm of AI and putting it in the realm of routine calculation.
So I think there's no doubt that many tasks in game design will be reduced to things that cat can be done by algorithms that were once the realm of AI, because over half a century of experience tells us this happens all the time. But once players adjust to these algorithmically generated designs, what the algorithms won't do is generate anything that feels "fresh" or new. That is because human experience is messy, so it's not possible for something (or say, an intelligent alien) to know what will strike us as intriguing and credible unless it has past data on that.
One of the interesting things that's happened on the psychology end of things is that the question of what is instinctual or "baked in" to humanity is a complex question. We knew that was true, but we didn't know *how* true. For example if you were moving a long a tunnel and came to a steep slope, you'd "instinctively" be be afraid of falling, but in fact experiments show that babies learn this kind of thing. This is the sort of thing that a human designer would know about human reactions, but has to be provided to an algorithm as a parameter. If vertigo were not a factor in past successful games that was adequately modeled in the algorithm, then the algorithm would not recognize it as a factor in the way humans would experience the game.
An AI might be programmed to "know" that when Mayor Quimby on the Simpsons speaks like John Kennedy, it's funny, but when John Kennedy uses that voice to challenge us to go to the moon, it's inspiring. That's because of the vast base of trivia that humans somehow assemble into meaningful experience.
I see non-manned missions as a sensible prerequisite to manned ones. Before Vostok 1 you had Sputnik. There were 20 robotic launches in the Mercury Program before Alan Shepard went up on Mercury-Redstone 3. Before the manned lunar landing we had the Ranger, Surveyer and Lunar Orbiter programs.
Even if you didn't care about the people you send to, say Mars, it would be financially unconscionable to send them there before we'd done some missions that returned Martian samples to earth. I'll give a few reasons here:
* Experience shows that Mars landings are risky.
* We have no experience with Mars launches; a few test runs are needed if returning human explorers is important.
* Identify targets which can best be studied by humans before sending very expensive missions.
* Maintain and advance planetary exploration skills with frequent cheap missions where failure *is* an option.
* Reduce cost of manned exploration by developing proven and reliable systems.
* Develop a sustainable, successful planetary exploration program before risking everything on a fabulously expensive manned mission with untried technology and uncertain goals.
There are times when you have to be bold, but there are times when being sensible is the bold thing.
So you don't have to have two different app development teams, one for your web projects and one for this project?
Because you want to make use of the javascript libraries you've developed for exactly this kind of app?
Because you have the whole app stack done and tested for web deployment and now you're selling a low end "single user" configuration?
Because you want to use the database platform you're used to and it doesn't happen to be embeddable like SqlLIte? And since you're running the database server anyway a web server's not so big a deail?
I could go on and on. I'm not saying this guy's approach make sense; I'm saying you can't pass judgment on it based on what he's told us.
It almost sounds more like performance art than game development. I mean, the bloody game's motto is "Losing is Fun!", so clearly this guy's agenda is to mess with your habitual, unexamined assumptions, like "losing sucks" or "archers shoot arrows."
Actually, a commentator on the recent Libyan crisis raised what I think is an interesting point about this. He explained that Libya is practically ideal for an unpopular dictator to rule. It has a small population and *huge* resources. The per capita GDP is well above the world average ($16,502 vs. 11,128), but the unemployment rate is 30%.
In other words the income of the country, which largely comes out of the ground, doesn't go to the people's pockets; it underwrites their oppression.
It made me wonder whether it isn't just a matter of high GDP low population. What if it were a matter of per capita accumulated wealth per capita? Then a small group gaining control over a disproportionate share of wealth could tip a democratic country into tyranny.
I installed a ridgeline vent on one of my office over the garage -- totally passive, but highly effective. It wasn't too bad to install either. You just take your circular saw and cut along the roofline on either side of the peak, then nail down the ridge vent over the long crack you've just exposed. You need to put soffit vents in too otherwise the ridge vent won't work, but that's easy. The natural tendency of heated air to rise means you don't need any control systems. So a ridgeline vent is a no-brainer, even if you have a white roof. A roof out to be ventilated, not just for summer cooling but for year round moisture control.
Installing the soffit vents was just a matter of drilling holes with a hole saw bit (like you use for installing locks) and putting plastic inserts in to keep out the birds. This eliminated a mold problem I had in one corner of the house too.
I also installed a thermostatically controlled gable vent fan in the main roof. That's also effective, but obviously takes some energy input. It also runs in the winter during high humidity conditions. That increases heating costs slightly but reduces condensation damage. It's dirt simple to install and not quite as nerve wracking for those who find the idea of cutting holes in their roof daunting. You screw the can-like vent over the inside of the gable vent louver, wire it into your household current, set the operating range on the thermostat/hydrostat (mounted to the fan itself), and enjoy the energy savings. You also need soffit vents, but those are easy.
I already had a white roof, but I estimate the vent saved me a month of air conditioning, and allow me to cool the whole house with a pair of small window units.
Ventilation is an entirely separate issue from roof color. Even if you go with a white roof, it still needs to be ventilated.