I was surprised by this too. We didn't even plan on talking about religion with our son until he was older but at the age of three a cousin talked to him about it. Now at three he had access to lots of information about the world. Most of it just washed past him or he only seem slightly curious about. This notion of 'god' though was something he seemed draw to and wanted to know about. An analog might be vegetables vs candy. To lean on Dennett a bit he really seemed to have a sweet tooth for 'god'. As a result I really think we are hard wired to accept religion. I could have told him that the earth was formed from the body of an icy giant and he would have believed me, eagerly.
Amen brother. All that tax money spent and we don't even have dilithium crystals yet. How are we ever going to achieve warp driver technology without dilithium? Waste of money in my book.
Nodes are visually detected by people. I think bots are just programmed to follow a set of x/y way points and do things along the way. I don't think they are able to look around and understand what they "see". Perhaps if they rely on the cursor changing shape when pointing at a node they could do that but I don't think that's how they currently work.
I agree that truly random wouldn't work. But say you're mining tin/silver in Loch Modan. There are these smallish hills with nodes at well defined locations at the base. But there are a lot of other possible good locations all around the perimeter of these hills that would work. It seems Blizzard would just need to increase the number of possible node locations and randomize that. Say for example, around a particular hill where there is normally one node that pops every 20-30 min, there may be 10-20 other possible good spawn locations for that one node near by. So on average a bot would only get a good result every 150-600 min. This way it would take looong time to bot farm.
There are two other ways to address these issues. 1) Follow the money. I can't believe that people are able to still sell gold. It's a closed system. Blizzard should be able to track each transaction and in game interaction. The just need to buy some gold to find out who is selling, then ban everyone who has bought gold from them in the past. 2) Make the world more organic so bots can't farm. Why does a node of gold always have to appear at the exact same location? This would have the additional benefit of making the world less repetitive and more interesting.
"I wonder what people are going to do if a meteor is going to strike us dead with an 1-year warning period and a scientist presents to the world a method to save our planet." That's a very good question and I suspect that the scientist would wear shoes, knowing that it's an important issue he would not want to distract people from his main point. I really do think that in your hypothetical scenario many people would take the evidence less seriously if presented by someone without shoes. Not you or many of us here but I suspect you also don't tune in to Entertainment Tonight, eager to learn the latest about celerity X, Y or Z.
Sure it looks reasonable to you. You already get it, but I'm sure there were lots of people who didn't hear what he had to say because they were busy wondering why he took off his shoes. I wondered that myself. Did he have shoes when he arrived and decided his feet were too hot? Did he wear the wrong shoes by mistake and they became uncomfortable? What is the thought process behind the decision to remove shoes before going on stage? Is it something he does to deal with stage fright?
"In 2000 years time, would any of the documented evidence be believed? What about in 100 years?"
Yes. Look how many people are willing to believe based on the current set of "evidence". Heck, I'm willing to bet that we still have Scientology in 100 years and that in 2000 the sayings of Cruise the Prophet (blessings be upon his name) will be spread throughout the solar system.
What is really interesting to me is to see what religions do with this device. Think about it. Prayer sometimes brings about this feeling but this machine works every time. If it can be made reliable why does that not make it highly valued by religious communities? Why not combine it with prayer? Who knows, maybe the machine works by literally forcing god to be in the room with you. Would this not just enhance the power of prayer?
Yep. Realized it just after I hit submit. In this case though it still works out because history is long and is sorted in descending order from now into the past. So it's at least grammatically correct. Just doesn't mean what I wanted it to mean.
Thanks for the honest post. I have some honest questions. "...but it is mixed in with much that is clearly symbolic." How is it decided which parts are symbolic and which are not? Is it put to a vote? From my experience taking poetry classes in the past it is clear the some people are better at understanding symbolism than others. Is it possible to get a copy of the bible with the symbolic parts marked somehow (italics perhaps)?
Saying that God is an immortal person with both body and spirit is a very real claim about the state of the universe that is either true or not true. As such it would seem to be squarely in the realm of the "need to know" AND "useful to know" categories. It is a proposition that is, in principle at least, testable. So we should not rely on "personal revelation" for this because evidence of that sort has a long and sorted history of being unreliable at best.
It may well be true that religion helped groups of people survive in the past because it helps form bonds within groups and helps them fend off out-groups. If this is true it is important to acknowledge that this is not only no longer needed but in this nuclear age it is antithetical to its purpose. The types of religion that helped us in the past are hurting us now.
Wow are you ever off base. You're comparing apples to water melons. The big thing you are over looking is the difference between one person carrying out this horible act on their own and a group of people condoning it while the legal system shrugs. The man who kills his wife faces the full weight of the criminal justice system. The family that asks a brother/cousin to kill their daughter who happened to get rapped faces no charges and the brother/cousin a lighter sentence (if any) than the crime warrants.
Someone needs to write an app that would let a user group various free storage locations (google, ms etc) into one mountable drive. Just a thought. If this already exists let me know.
If in-game cash has real world value how should we deal with the PVP situation in some games where someone can kill you and take a percentage of the cash you are holding? Does this become a real world crime? Do we treat a dual differently than a knife in the back gank attack?
I don't think that's quite right. It isn't a matter of knowledge it's a matter of belief. When theists claim to 'know' there is a god they really just mean they believe there is a god and they don't want to question that belief. I know a lot of atheists and none of them claim to know there is no god. Even Dawkins merely says it is very very unlikely. I will be willing to believe in a god if I'm presented with credible evidence. Agnostics that I talk to are often really atheists when pressed about their beliefs but are afraid of the social stigma that comes with the word.
No, you misunderstood. I'm all for replicating trek tech but we need to do it in the right order. Without interstellar space travel everything else is just gadgetry. And as everyone knows, without dilithium crystals it aint gonna happen. Find that first, then work on tricorders, special space fabric, mod boots that look so cool and whatever else you want. I only hold out two exceptions. 1) Holodeck. I would like one of these as soon as possible. 2) Replicator technology. This may in fact be the real key. I know Spock said you can't replicate dilithium in ep#32 but that may have just been a plot line excuse. I bet it can be done.
Sarcasm noted but the article was comparing it to OSX. How do you configure the menu delay at all in OSX? As an aside, you don't really need to go into the registry. There is a pref control for turning it off as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I was surprised by this too. We didn't even plan on talking about religion with our son until he was older but at the age of three a cousin talked to him about it. Now at three he had access to lots of information about the world. Most of it just washed past him or he only seem slightly curious about. This notion of 'god' though was something he seemed draw to and wanted to know about. An analog might be vegetables vs candy. To lean on Dennett a bit he really seemed to have a sweet tooth for 'god'. As a result I really think we are hard wired to accept religion. I could have told him that the earth was formed from the body of an icy giant and he would have believed me, eagerly.
Jesus is in fact (the christian) word for christ and the name of the guy who mows my lawn.
No source, you'll just have to take that on faith.
Oh, galaxy porn. Now that's hot!
"But you've got admit, it's pretty cool how they address you by name throughout this carefully composed, personal email response made Just For You."
Naw, that just means all of that only appies to people named Mark. My p2p traffic gets through just fine.
Amen brother. All that tax money spent and we don't even have dilithium crystals yet. How are we ever going to achieve warp driver technology without dilithium? Waste of money in my book.
Nodes are visually detected by people. I think bots are just programmed to follow a set of x/y way points and do things along the way. I don't think they are able to look around and understand what they "see". Perhaps if they rely on the cursor changing shape when pointing at a node they could do that but I don't think that's how they currently work.
1) But it would be more effective if they also banned the buyers.
I agree that truly random wouldn't work. But say you're mining tin/silver in Loch Modan. There are these smallish hills with nodes at well defined locations at the base. But there are a lot of other possible good locations all around the perimeter of these hills that would work. It seems Blizzard would just need to increase the number of possible node locations and randomize that. Say for example, around a particular hill where there is normally one node that pops every 20-30 min, there may be 10-20 other possible good spawn locations for that one node near by. So on average a bot would only get a good result every 150-600 min. This way it would take looong time to bot farm.
There are two other ways to address these issues.
1) Follow the money. I can't believe that people are able to still sell gold. It's a closed system. Blizzard should be able to track each transaction and in game interaction. The just need to buy some gold to find out who is selling, then ban everyone who has bought gold from them in the past.
2) Make the world more organic so bots can't farm. Why does a node of gold always have to appear at the exact same location? This would have the additional benefit of making the world less repetitive and more interesting.
"I wonder what people are going to do if a meteor is going to strike us dead with an 1-year warning period and a scientist presents to the world a method to save our planet."
That's a very good question and I suspect that the scientist would wear shoes, knowing that it's an important issue he would not want to distract people from his main point. I really do think that in your hypothetical scenario many people would take the evidence less seriously if presented by someone without shoes. Not you or many of us here but I suspect you also don't tune in to Entertainment Tonight, eager to learn the latest about celerity X, Y or Z.
Sure it looks reasonable to you. You already get it, but I'm sure there were lots of people who didn't hear what he had to say because they were busy wondering why he took off his shoes. I wondered that myself. Did he have shoes when he arrived and decided his feet were too hot? Did he wear the wrong shoes by mistake and they became uncomfortable? What is the thought process behind the decision to remove shoes before going on stage? Is it something he does to deal with stage fright?
"In 2000 years time, would any of the documented evidence be believed? What about in 100 years?"
Yes. Look how many people are willing to believe based on the current set of "evidence". Heck, I'm willing to bet that we still have Scientology in 100 years and that in 2000 the sayings of Cruise the Prophet (blessings be upon his name) will be spread throughout the solar system.
What is really interesting to me is to see what religions do with this device. Think about it. Prayer sometimes brings about this feeling but this machine works every time. If it can be made reliable why does that not make it highly valued by religious communities? Why not combine it with prayer? Who knows, maybe the machine works by literally forcing god to be in the room with you. Would this not just enhance the power of prayer?
I'm confused. Are we sure that's funny?
Yep. Realized it just after I hit submit.
In this case though it still works out because history is long and is sorted in descending order from now into the past. So it's at least grammatically correct. Just doesn't mean what I wanted it to mean.
Thanks for the honest post. I have some honest questions.
"...but it is mixed in with much that is clearly symbolic."
How is it decided which parts are symbolic and which are not? Is it put to a vote? From my experience taking poetry classes in the past it is clear the some people are better at understanding symbolism than others. Is it possible to get a copy of the bible with the symbolic parts marked somehow (italics perhaps)?
Saying that God is an immortal person with both body and spirit is a very real claim about the state of the universe that is either true or not true. As such it would seem to be squarely in the realm of the "need to know" AND "useful to know" categories. It is a proposition that is, in principle at least, testable. So we should not rely on "personal revelation" for this because evidence of that sort has a long and sorted history of being unreliable at best.
It may well be true that religion helped groups of people survive in the past because it helps form bonds within groups and helps them fend off out-groups. If this is true it is important to acknowledge that this is not only no longer needed but in this nuclear age it is antithetical to its purpose. The types of religion that helped us in the past are hurting us now.
Wow are you ever off base. You're comparing apples to water melons. The big thing you are over looking is the difference between one person carrying out this horible act on their own and a group of people condoning it while the legal system shrugs. The man who kills his wife faces the full weight of the criminal justice system. The family that asks a brother/cousin to kill their daughter who happened to get rapped faces no charges and the brother/cousin a lighter sentence (if any) than the crime warrants.
m ln orkilling/index.html, 00.htmlt urkey.html?ex=1184040000&en=be57dfd1ac6ad029&ei=50 70
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0214/p07s02-wome.ht
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/18/iraq.ho
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,344374
and also
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/europe/16
Someone needs to write an app that would let a user group various free storage locations (google, ms etc) into one mountable drive. Just a thought. If this already exists let me know.
"There are a number of studies showing that we benefit from higher FPS, up to and over 100 sometimes"
doesn't it also depend on the display though? If my LCD is running at 60 hertz anything over 60fps wont make it past that bottle neck.
If in-game cash has real world value how should we deal with the PVP situation in some games where someone can kill you and take a percentage of the cash you are holding? Does this become a real world crime? Do we treat a dual differently than a knife in the back gank attack?
Wanted to dig you up for the D. A. ref but alas, I have no mod points.
"Does Microsoft give free PR to "security researchers" every time it patches a bug?"
Yes. Yes they do. They are also very proactive in inviting people to hack pre-released code to find security faults early.
Is apple doing this?
I don't think that's quite right. It isn't a matter of knowledge it's a matter of belief. When theists claim to 'know' there is a god they really just mean they believe there is a god and they don't want to question that belief. I know a lot of atheists and none of them claim to know there is no god. Even Dawkins merely says it is very very unlikely. I will be willing to believe in a god if I'm presented with credible evidence.
Agnostics that I talk to are often really atheists when pressed about their beliefs but are afraid of the social stigma that comes with the word.
No, you misunderstood. I'm all for replicating trek tech but we need to do it in the right order. Without interstellar space travel everything else is just gadgetry. And as everyone knows, without dilithium crystals it aint gonna happen. Find that first, then work on tricorders, special space fabric, mod boots that look so cool and whatever else you want.
I only hold out two exceptions.
1) Holodeck. I would like one of these as soon as possible.
2) Replicator technology. This may in fact be the real key. I know Spock said you can't replicate dilithium in ep#32 but that may have just been a plot line excuse. I bet it can be done.
Sarcasm noted but the article was comparing it to OSX.
How do you configure the menu delay at all in OSX?
As an aside, you don't really need to go into the registry. There is a pref control for turning it off as well.