I think part of the problem with storylines has something to do with multiplayer gaming. Back in the day, as you know, before such gaming was big (outside of MUDs, of course), you played a game pretty much alone. The computer acted as the whole world, supporting that world, and you could have a storyline with a decent plot and a reason for being in that world.
Don't get me wrong, I know that multiplayer games can do this as well - but it takes a ton of more effort on the part of the participants in the game - it requires more imagination and such, to keep the game moving toward the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have this imagination or even need to follow a storyline. Some of today's MMORPG games have fantastic imagery and storylines, but when you watch someone who is playing them (I don't personally play any), it all seems like a "free-for-all" with no real cooperation. What little cooperation there is, seems to be amongst members within a gaming "guild" (set up by friends - whether geographically dispersed or not) - but these groups don't seem to cooperate together (I am certain they do, but not to the extent that you see in a real community). This lack of cohesion seems to make the storyline seem secondary.
I suppose this could just be my viewpoint because I am an outsider who doesn't play these type games. Maybe these games are seeming "boring" to a lot of players because they are so "free-for-all" - systems which give a world and objects to manipulate, but it is up to others to decide what the objects of quests (ie, storylines and plots) will be - and most of the time these storylines are so simplistic that they don't draw anyone into the world?
How easy is it for players of a small group to set up a server for the other players to play in that is distinct and separate from the larger world of the MMORPG being played? In other words, can something like a small number of players participate in a small game that is local to them - or must they only participate in the larger RPG?
This is what happens when the motivating factor is to maximize profits.
For publically held companies at least (which I would dare say most information and entertainment publishers are), they aren't just motivated to maximise profits, they are legally FORCED.
In other words, a company (and in some cases, the board of directors, etc) can be held legally liable (I am not sure if it is federal, state, civil or criminal liability - or all of them!) if the company does not make sure to pay due dilligence to "increase shareholder value".
In other words, a company year after year, must do everything legally possible (at least, that is the lip service - some fall into the trap of illegal doings as well - some succeed none-the-wiser - others fail, like Enron) to increase shareholder value. If they fail to do so (they have to be trying - a publically held company can't legally just stop and say "ok, that's enough - from here on out we aren't going to try to profit more than last year, and instead spend what would have been profit on, I dunno, innovation, perhaps..."), they can be held legally liable for not doing so...
It does come down to greed, though, as you and others have noticed. Part of it is greed on the companies part (but this is legally forced) - but part of it is greed on the shareholder's part (which by and large consists of ordinary people - whether as investment groups or individuals) demanding that profits keep rising year after year, and thus these laws to keep companies turning profits are of our own making.
So now, we are simply beginning to reap what we have sown, so to speak...
Real Scooters cost money to run, and are just as expensive to part as cars. Do you want to spend upwards of $400 a month to part your "REAL" scooter?
I was wondering what you meant by the word "part" - I thought maybe you were meaning to "fix" a car, not "park" it. Since you typed it the same way twice, and since the letter "t" is fairly far away from the letter "k" on a QWERTY keyboard, and are still removed from each other on a Dvorak layout (which you might be using/learning) - I had to assume you meant to use the word "part", not "park".
I am not a mind reader, nor will I ever be. In hindsight, with what you say now, speaking of "parking" in the context of expense in a city, then yes, I agree - parking a scooter versus parking a car in the city and all the expenses with that will be expensive.
In my defense, ambiguous spellings aside, I have never held a job in a city where I had to pay for my parking. Even here in Phoenix, unless you get unlucky, most places "validate" your parking stub so you don't have to pay for it. If you do pay for a spot here, it tends to be fairly lower in cost than say, New York, for instance. I can see, though, if you pay day-by-day here, it would definitely get into some real money at the end of a month. Once again, though, every place I have worked here has had free parking...
Where do you live, where are you from, or how old are you?
I am serious here. It is pretty conclusive that our brains are composed of a system of neural nets which learn patterns, and these neural nets likely are connected to one another in such a manner that patterns beget patterns. Jeff Hawkins in his book "On Intelligence" describes his theory of the structure of the cerebral cortex (he doesn't discount the other portions of the brain, but in that work he focuses on the portion that controls high-level thought and reasoning) as being a hierarchical structure, which has built in feedback loops among its own parts, as well as back to the sensory and other parts - that is, we learn a pattern, and during that learning we "play it back" at the same time, so that in the end, that is all we are doing - playing back patterns in similar manner to see if it matches with the pattern we already know.
Imagine you know how to hit a baseball thrown with a regular pitch. A baseball is round, it moves through the air in a certain way - or so you think. Now imagine you are thrown a curve ball or something - a pitch which causes the ball to move differently from the way you learned and know how to hit. You swing, likely just like you learned before, but the pattern doesn't match, and you miss. But seeing the motion of the ball and how the bat missed, sets up new patterns connected to the original that modify the original for the new pattern of "curve ball pitch". If you get thrown enough curve balls, you will likely at some point have a pattern that does connect with the ball, and as you refine it, you now have a pattern subset of the original pitch, overlayed with the original pattern.
Eventually, over a lifetime, the number of patterns you have and how you "play them back" to fit your mind-model of the world to interpret it becomes astounding. It all starts out simply as "flailing" as a baby (try throwing a wad of tissue at a baby to see them react - do it over and over and you will see the pattern matching and buildup occur. Then change what you throw and watch the chaos as the pattern no longer fits, but continue and watch it change to fit, then switch back to the wad of tissue paper - both will continue to work, the overlay and hierarchical linkage is complete), and as time continues, we build up tons of patterns...
I recently experienced a mild form of "synesthesia" (sp?) - where I looked at the color purple and thought "grape flavor" - that is, I could "taste" the "grape soda" flavor. The pattern between the color and the flavor of grape soda was so strong that the sight of one triggered the feeling and flavor of the other. The feeling of "deja vu" is the same thing: patterns and partial patterns play off one another and trigger each (and the feelings associated - other inputs, you see), causing things to "seem similar" (well, in a way they are!). Another similar pattern playback response: smells triggering memories and feelings. Just about everybody has had this experience in one manner or another...
So, your case is interesting in that for most people in the United States (particularly those in the western half of the country) recognize the term "fruit flies" as a noun - a type of insect which has caused massive infestation in fruit growing areas. It was all over the news in the 1980's - at one time it seemed like every broadcast had some kind of reference to fruit flies in it. A lot of genetic engineering advances came from experimentation with fruit flies to try to figure out how to eradicate and/or control them. They caused a lot of damage economically and so they were a "news-worthy" item. For people my age (I am 32), we were innundated as kids with the term "fruit flies" and what they are and what they meant (especially if you lived at the time, as I did then, in California). The pattern was quickly set up, and now these people can't help but think of the term "fruit flies" as a noun.
If you didn't live in the United States at the time, or you are younger than 20-25 years old - this pattern
Consider the fact that you would likely "fuel up" your vehicle with hydrogen only (actually, I wouldn't want it this way, I would rather have it stored in hydrates or some other solid - the only way you can store enough hydrogen for any distance use is to store it as liquid, currently - which is dangerous and expensive, not to mention the fact that hydrogen leaks through, and in some cases makes brittle, just about every material known to man) - you wouldn't store the oxygen in the vehicle (and definitely not at the station or refinery!) as well (talk about an explosive situation!).
Instead, the vehicle would likely "breath" oxygen from the outside air, much in the same way as current engines do (I imagine that a fuel cell could be designed to work with normal atmospheric pressure air as well).
Note that outside air is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen. Thus, you would be drawing in nitrogen as well as the oxygen, and you would "burn" it as regular IC engines currently do. What does that do to your equation?
Unfortunately, my expertise in chemistry ends here, I could not tell you what the balanced equation looks like. But, suffice to say, you will have a certain amount of NOX on one side of the equation (thus, no IC engine that breaths normal "air" can be made that is a truely "clean" or "green" engine because of this fact) - that is where some of the oxygen goes, thus you have less water on the output side...
Instead, you have added a greenhouse gas to the atmosphere...
This game (and the engine behind it) utilizes some really nice DHTML footwork to create something real close to the isometric look and feel of Diablo and similar games.
This one appears to work with all browsers, and even has nice sound effects.
Both of these examples show that you don't necessarily need to have Flash or know Java to create these types of games - it is possible to do them using only browser-based technologies and/or some server side work.
Just to throw in another "buzzword" - AJAX-based gaming!
Do you want to spend upwards of $400 a month to part your "REAL" scooter?
$400? Where is this number coming from? I currently own a paid-for 1994 4-banger Ranger - fuel costs me about $120.00 a month (maybe a little more, but not much) and insurance is $60.00 a month. Maintenance is negligable - consisting mainly of oil changes every 3000 or so miles (every 3 months or so, which I do myself), new tires every couple of years (about $400), new shocks every few years, new brake pads every so often. None of it is near $400.00 a month.
How can a scooter with a much smaller engine and fuel tank cost $400.00 to run? I can't imagine it at all - can you explain your reasoning?
BTW - myself, I would love to have use a scooter or bike to get to work, however living in Phoenix, Arizona and the fact that my workplace hasn't got a shower (and is about 15 miles one way away from my home) kinda rules this out currently...
There have been companies that have created panels and other systems using fresnel lenses and/or mirrors to concentrate more light onto the cells, but your right, the heat buildup limits this. I had a similar idea to yours: mount with thermal epoxy copper or aluminium heatsinks to the back of the cells with tubing or channels, and pipe water or brine through the system to extract the heat (you could add the concentrator system then and it would still work provided your solar cell cooling (solar heating?) system didn't fail). The concentrator portion does work - it is the heat removal system that is the issue...
RFID is still too expensive to be placed within each individual package of Ramen noodles.
Other items I wouldn't be so sure of - anything small that can be easily carried out that has a larger margin is a target for these.
For an example, take Barnes and Noble. They have a theft prevention system (sometimes it is even turned on!) for their books and other items. I think the system uses the standard detection thingie (which the disable by swiping the item over a magnetic thingie), but there are other things...
Something I have found inside books there (they don't actually stick them on) are stickers with a barcode (but not the item's barcode - the barcode is not a real barcode but looks like a "test" code) on one side, and on the other side a spiral antennna (looks like an etched PCB pattern) with a darker "square" chip-like "blob" in the middle to which the "antenna-line" is attached to. This is clearly an RFID tag with a printed (test) UPC barcode.
These RFID stickers are "blown" into random books and other things in the store. They are difficult to find because not every book has them, and not every book of the same book which has one has them. It seems to be a test strategy of some sort, since the number on the UPC is not the number of the ISBN of the book (looks something similar to "6-46464 46464-6")...
I would expect Wally World and others to use this for similar higher margin items like DVDs, CDs, books, games, toys, etc...
My worry isn't so much about the level of the oceans as is the fact that so much freshwater from the arctic ice will be released into the oceans. This will change the salinity of the oceans, and probably effect thermocline layers and the Atlantic thermal current (can't remember what it is called, but it is what keeps Britain from being an ice covered wasteland). We really don't know what the final effect will be because of these changes, but they can't be good. It probably won't be the end of the world, but I could see such changes causing in the short term starvation issues because of the change of growing seasons in certain parts of the world due to weather changes, and length of winter. In the long term (maybe), this would lead to migration of people to warmer areas, and food production would take place in those warmer areas, eventually reaching an equilibrium again. But in the short term, one could likely expect starvation or famine, war and pestilence as people and nations "adjust" to the new situation...
Yesterday's webserver was a P2-300 with probably 256MB of memory and a 40 gig (if you were lucky) hard drive. Actually, there was probably a RAID box in there, but you get what I am saying...
These kinds of boxes are thrown away today, and are still perfectly servable (load up a LAMP system) for home-base web development. They won't pull the power of a new P4 system, and if you want lower power, underclock the sucker. You *will not* tax this box with development only (heck, unless you are running a high-profile website, you could easily put it in service publically if you wanted to and it would be fine).
When you have your development done, then think about a better server. If you can get your stuff working well on a small web server like this is, it will work even better on a real (current) system. Get your development web server for free or nearly free now, spend the real money later.
If you need to make it even lower power, find a P2 based laptop or similar off ebay, pimp it out with a larger hard drive and memory, add a NIC and go (side benefit - "free" UPS if the battery works)...
below the achievable lifespan (with a little clever engineering)
It doesn't require "clever engineering" - just a willingness not to be a money whore.
My 20+ year old TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with floppy drive (from my youth) still works perfectly. Of course, this was built back in the days when you either got a schematic with the product or could order one easily...
I would also note that a solar panel can get physically hot when it has sat in the sun for a while. Some of the larger panels (nothing a normal person would purchase) even include heat sinks for passive cooling (past a certain temperature efficiency of the panel can drop). Think about it - it is a large piece of silicon sitting in the sun for hours, generating electricity. It acts as a piece of the electrical circuit, so it will heat up from this use (much like a battery does), but it heats up much more from the sun. So - be careful handling the panel during and after use - minor skin burns are possible, and can ruin an otherwise fun outting.
This seeming lack of conclusion leaves the book a bit shallow, though one can't truly fault the author for not answering such a difficult question, especially since he backs away from "going there" at several points in the book. The author's refusal to speculate deeply about such matters make it clear why certain examples were "missing" from Part 1.
The reason being, if it truely went in-depth into the philosophical and technical issues behind what I will term "AI Research" (some researchers make distinction between "strong AI" and "weak AI", calling the former "AI" and the latter "connectionistic"/"neural net"/"bottom up" - but really, it all is supposed to lead to the same place, right?), the book would be huge, and for most people, it would be very boring.
I have in my library of materials at home about 20 or so volumes relating to AI research, both in fact and fantasy, and related topics ("Ghost in the Shell" manga sits between "Godel, Esher, and Bach" and Barabasi's "Linked" - for instance). They range from fun and easy to understand, to "OMG - MY BRAIN IS FRIED" complexity (the latter I keep because although I lack the mathematical skills needed to decipher what is being talked about, the challenge to try to understand them still absorbs me at the task). Some are for the layman (still, they contain great information), some are for the programmer (I have one book on creating expert systems using Apple IIe BASIC!!!), and some are for the hard-core research/theoretician. I even have a printed copy of AI4U on my shelf (more on this in a bit).
Despite all of this (and many more works which I am not aware of or have copies of) - man has yet to succeed in coming up with an answer as to how we think. Tantalizing clues have been unearthed, for sure - some of the most recent have built upon the connectionist viewpoint, that our brains are neural-nets, but have a hierarchical structure coupled with feedback loops between sensory inputs and memory, and that what we think of as "thought" is merely pattern playback (interestingly, this is the sort of system which Mentifex's AI4U proposes, but rather than use a connectionist approach, his model uses a more easily built "streaming consciousness" system, similar to a "mercury delay line memory for thoughts" - sure, Mentifex may be an internet kook, but you would be surprised at the similarities behind his self-published work and "more accepted" mainstream AI research).
In the end, none of this has created any AI that we would recognize as thinking and creating as we humans do. I think througout this research, though, is a common thread. I have seen through what I have read commonalities and what appears to be rediscoveries, by different researchers over the course of time, of methods toward true AI. Interestingly, some of these methodologies and ideas get either drowned out or lost in some manner - I have read a couple of books that you would swear would be referenced in later years, for example, by other authors, since the ideas seem so similar or even identical, but the original author/researcher seems completely unknown in the field in later years.
I think this may be part of the problem, the lack of cooperation between "strong AI" proponents and "weak AI" proponents, and those in-between. I think there needs to be cooperation, and I think there needs to be historical continuity in the research, otherwise we will just continue argument and reinvention of the wheel. I think there needs to be more cooperation (which we are seeing, fortunately) between AI researchers and their biological research counterparts. I think that both expert systems and fuzzy logic (ie, multi-valent or vague logic) have roles to play as well with being able to allow a machine to define and reason within our universe.
There is much left to do when it comes to AI. I have only scratched the surface as a dabbling hobbyist in the field. This lack of training and discipline in the field has helped me to see that there is a lot of bickering and in-fighting where th
Why is it that the paying customer is the one getting screwed here?
Who says you are the customer? You?
The fact is, when we pay for "our" movies, we are really paying money to be advertised at in those movies.
You and I are not the customer, we are the product - the advertisers (who get to insert their cars, clothing, burgers, drinks, music, and other assorted detritus throughout the films) are the true customers. I would also wager that policy-makers are also customers, in that the "advertisement" in some movies is a form of propaganda to urge you to "think" in a particular way, one which allows them to push their agendas easier on the population of the world (and how do policy-makers push this agenda? Why, through the corporations they either own or influence, or who have bought into their ideas, who advertise in said movies in return for favors granted by policies - ahem - "laws").
The movie is just the vehicle upon which to deliver this pablum to the masses. It is simply television on a different medium and scale. It is mass insanity - not only is the boot stomping the face, but the owner of that face is paying the stomper to do so and screaming "Give me MORE!!!"
The few times I have played around with Flash under Mozilla, I haven't had too many problems. Basically it was just an untar and then move a class file and a.so over into the plugins directory for the base system (could also go into the user's plugin directory, as well - if only a single user, this is OK, but if you have multiple users on your system, you need to put it in a more common area). Re-launch mozilla, check the about: link - there it is. I would think the same thing would work in Firefox, as well.
I only used Flash, though, for the few times I wanted to view certain flash animations - I quickly got tired of it because it seemed to have a memory leak or something, eventually causing mozilla to slow to a crawl, forcing a restart. However, I think there are extensions that allow you to enable/disable flash under Mozilla/FireFox now, and maybe recent versions have fixed those issues (?)...
Stall in aircraft typically occur (AFAIK) because the rate of air speed around the wing drops, either because the angle of attack is too steep and the engine doesn't have enough power to keep the aircraft moving forward, or the forward speed drops to such a rate that the air speed around the wing drops as a result.
You typically see these conditions only on slower craft (small private aircraft), or on large jet-liners at approach and takeoff. Other craft (like jet fighters and such) typically have more than enough engine power to compensate - some of the craft even use stall to their advantage (and a lot of computer processing) to allow the aircraft to do some amazing maneuvers for evasion. So, really, the concern is on craft where the speed is lower. So I ask:
What ever happenned to the Kline-Fogleman wing design?
For those of you who are unaware, back in the mid-1980's, two gentlemen by the names of Floyd Fogleman and Richard Kline came up with a special wing design, which essentially looked like the profile of a "standard" airfoil, but with a notch on the underside of wing (they also found that the wing worked well flipped upside down!). It utilized drag at low speeds to create extra lift in stall conditions. They received a patent for the design, and tested it on R/C models they designed and flew. They had plans to try a full scale test, but in the meantime they published a book about their design (which they also showed on 60 Minutes as well as in an article in Omni Magazine). The book was entitled "The Ultimate Paper Airplane" (ISBN 0-671-55551-0), and contained details on the airfoil design, why they believed it worked, details on the patent, pictures of their R/C aircraft tests, and - of course - instructions (including various models which could be photocopied from the book) to fold various paper airplanes based on the wing design.
So - what happenned to this design? Where did these guys go off to, and why have we not seen anything more about their airfoil? One thing which may have limited its application was the fact that it did create more drag than a regular wing (fuel consumption?), and it wasn't very good at fast flight speeds. But for lower speed aircraft, this shouldn't have been a problem. If there are any aircraft designers or whatnot out there who know more, please post - I always thought the wing design was interesting, and have always wondered what had happenned...
Today it may be, but what about tommorow? What about a future PDA-like device, about the size of a pad of paper (somewhere between a PDA and a laptop) that is just a screen with a stylus (in a way, similar in size to an old Apple Newton, or a smaller GRID tablet), on which you display the image (perhaps taken with the device itself, or via the outbound camera mounted on your HUD monocle), hand your hero the stylus, and he "signs" it with the stylus (perhaps he has an RFID ring with his public key transmitted and hashed with it or something?), and this overlay "image" is linked to the image you took, and can be composited (or maybe it is auto composited into the digital image directly) - with an e-ink display, it wouldn't be any different from a regular picture - all digital...
Most of the problem boils down to the insanely huge crowd I encountered there. Had it not been for that crowd (which all moved in the direction of the floor arrows, further making navigation in the reverse more difficult), things might have went smoother. Makes me wonder if it would have been better had there not been arrows on the floor and everywhere else? Of course, it might have been difficult then to find your way out, as, like I have noted, the place had maze-like qualities. I don't understand such a system - you don't see any other department store anywhere else doing that, because it only works if you have an up-front plan about everything you are shopping for. If you ad-hoc shop like most people do, it is simply a task in frustration.
Think about it, this is older than the hills. Your "product" could be the absolutely best, most cool, most high-tech-ahead-of-its-time thing, and it could flop because you called it "gurbleflaz".
Give it a hype name, and presto, instant cred.
Yes - the technology behind AJAX has been there for quite a while, in some form or another. But it didn't have a name, something that easily rolls off the tounge and sounds "cool" to the average person (not too mention it also is a name people have heard before as a "good" product - so it hits those feel-good patterns in the brains of many people). AJAX - web technology, patterns hit: clean (the AJAX brand cleanser), good (the AJAX brand cleanser), does the job well.
So - keep this in mind next time you develop a product of any type: give it a good marketable name, something that rolls off the tounge and people can easily remember - then market/advertise it enough - and you will have a winner - even if the actual technology behind it is crap.
Case in point: Ogg Vorbis vs. MP3 - which one is better, which one is worse? Which one rolls off the tounge, and which one is more difficult to pronounce? The choice is clear. Couple that with the obvious fact that MP3 has been out longer and thus has more airplay, so to speak, and the "winner", even though arguably less superior in many ways (quality, size, and "openess" of the player/encoder - ie patents) to the OGG standard - is the one people will remember and use (and this is possibly why other competing standards aren't "winning", either - though a standard that comes out and plays on MP3 - like MP4, or something similar - might edge it out)...
Re:Speaking as a graveyard connoisseur...
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Video Tombstones
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I think you're on to something there. Add a map of the yard with gravesites that could be highlighted to show you where a loved one (or someone you know about - but don't know or remember where they are located), with a "you are here" and a map printout. Also allow for reverse lookups (ie, you know where the tomb is, so you can "click" on the marker and it brings up the information/obituary/etc about them). All of this wouldn't be too hard to do today...
There is no such thing anymore as "plain sight". When it comes to drugs and the way cops act, all bets are off. All a cop needs to search your car is "probable cause":
Scenario 1: You are driving down the highway out in the desert doing the speed limit, but one of your tail lights is busted. You get pulled over by a cop. You are driving an older volvo sedan, you have long hair and a beard, and are wearing a tie-dye t-shirt. You are 40 years old, a successful unix sysadmin, but you don't flaunt shit. The last time you smoked pot was in college, and that was a long time ago and you have better things to do now. The officer gets up to your window, and says "I am stopping you because you have a busted tail light...what is that funny smell?" - BAM! - probable cause right there, whether you have something or not. He is then free to proceed to look all over your vehicle. Hell, your car could be brand new from the factory, and that "funny smell" is simply the new vinyl - but no matter about that...your time is wasted, and if you do have something, you are hosed.
Scenario 2: Same a scenario 1, except this time you have single bud and a pipe in the trunk because you are on your way to having a good time at the lake (or whereever) - you are a normal law-abiding citizen, you don't drive stoned, but you do think that our so-called "War on Drugs" is a crock of shit, no better than Prohibition in the 1920s. But you don't keep the shit out, you have in a bag, inside of a small sealed cannister stuffed in a picnic basket. No where near in "plain sight", and no way to get to it while driving, certainly. Last time you smoked anyway was two weeks ago (you just spent the last two weeks pulling 14 hour days doing a system rebuild or something)...
Cop doesn't pull the "smell somthing funny" trick, but he doesn't like the way you look, you longhair hippy (never mind the fact that you are nowhere old enough to be of that generation), so he asks to search your car. You tell him no, get a warrant. He holds you there, and calls in a K9 unit. The dog sniffs your car, hits on the trunk, and BAM - probable cause. You are HOSED.
Hell, you could even play that last scenario slightly differently - you have just bought the old volvo off an old hippy couple up in Oregon and are driving it back home, not knowing about the busted taillight. You have your hippy look, you get pulled over, you refuse, and the K9 unit is brought in. Unknown to you, buried in the trunk behind a loose flap of carpet is a 30 year old joint from a happy time too long ago to remember - and the drug dog hits on it. BAM - probable cause, you are HOSED!
In none of these situations did the cop really have probable cause due to "plain sight". It really makes me wonder why a drug dog would be brought in at all, there was no real indication other than you looking like a longhair hippy for any such thing to be thought of. In the best case scenario, a lot of your time it wasted, and the cop will probably try to find everything wrong with your car to ticket you on just for fucking with him. The worst case scenario, you go to jail (or maybe a fine, or a couple of days, or something) for something you weren't even aware of, or something you WERE aware of, but in the grand scheme of things really shouldn't have been any different than an old can of beer or a bottle of wine in the trunk...
Why must I look at the big items first, then the small items? Why am I not allowed to look at and buy things in the order I want. I am the customer there, right? What if I pick out an item on the top floor, then see something on the bottom floor that I want to compare it with on the top? What if I find a pillow on the bottom floor and I want to match a couch to the pillow (and not a pillow to the couch - I want to physically see what different pillows look like on a single couch)? Why am I not allowed to do this? Or a lamp on a table, or a doodad on a shelf, etc?
The truth is, the place was a mad-house, probably like your place in Atlanta. Maybe it all settles down after 5 years or so. By then, though, I will have already found (or built) what I wanted elsewhere. The other people in the store seemed "happy", like a "caught in headlights" "happy" - in other words, they were putting on the forced "must look good to the strangers to avoid looking bad" "mask" that so many people "put on" - instead of showing the way they really feel in public.
I have no problem with civility in society - but lying to yourself about issues and faking it just to keep up appearances to others is neurotic at best. Perhaps if more people complained to the store management a better system would result (I made my complaint, still waiting for a response of any kind).
AC, it wasn't so much the crowds that I disliked as the way that the entire store was laid out to make a person only go in one direction. No other store anyplace else that I have ever seen is set up in this manner. Unfortunately, once there is a crowd in place, all going the same direction (why, I don't know - because the arrows say to? Makes you wonder why most people can't drive despite clear road markings, but whatever) - it is difficult to impossible to "go back" to a place where you saw an item you later realize would go perfectly with the item you are currently picking up. The store attacts a lot of visitors, who follow the floor pattern like an ant trail, and later visitors in the crowd are force through the flow. This is not a normal shopping method at all...
As far as "overpriced crap" is concerned - I don't like buying overpriced anything - if I have a choice, I like getting things used or free if I can (some great stuff can be had from rummage sales, thrift stores, dumpsters, and bulk trash pickup piles). Most of the stuff we had before we left were cheap $10.00 or so items (though we did find an abstract picture that we loved for around $80.00) - we wanted to spend more money on the furniture we were thinking about (but never got the chance to see). Finally, some of the stuff at IKEA was "overpriced crap" - I mean, a bundle of sticks for $20.00? WTF?!
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong, I know that multiplayer games can do this as well - but it takes a ton of more effort on the part of the participants in the game - it requires more imagination and such, to keep the game moving toward the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have this imagination or even need to follow a storyline. Some of today's MMORPG games have fantastic imagery and storylines, but when you watch someone who is playing them (I don't personally play any), it all seems like a "free-for-all" with no real cooperation. What little cooperation there is, seems to be amongst members within a gaming "guild" (set up by friends - whether geographically dispersed or not) - but these groups don't seem to cooperate together (I am certain they do, but not to the extent that you see in a real community). This lack of cohesion seems to make the storyline seem secondary.
I suppose this could just be my viewpoint because I am an outsider who doesn't play these type games. Maybe these games are seeming "boring" to a lot of players because they are so "free-for-all" - systems which give a world and objects to manipulate, but it is up to others to decide what the objects of quests (ie, storylines and plots) will be - and most of the time these storylines are so simplistic that they don't draw anyone into the world?
How easy is it for players of a small group to set up a server for the other players to play in that is distinct and separate from the larger world of the MMORPG being played? In other words, can something like a small number of players participate in a small game that is local to them - or must they only participate in the larger RPG?
For publically held companies at least (which I would dare say most information and entertainment publishers are), they aren't just motivated to maximise profits, they are legally FORCED.
In other words, a company (and in some cases, the board of directors, etc) can be held legally liable (I am not sure if it is federal, state, civil or criminal liability - or all of them!) if the company does not make sure to pay due dilligence to "increase shareholder value".
In other words, a company year after year, must do everything legally possible (at least, that is the lip service - some fall into the trap of illegal doings as well - some succeed none-the-wiser - others fail, like Enron) to increase shareholder value. If they fail to do so (they have to be trying - a publically held company can't legally just stop and say "ok, that's enough - from here on out we aren't going to try to profit more than last year, and instead spend what would have been profit on, I dunno, innovation, perhaps..."), they can be held legally liable for not doing so...
It does come down to greed, though, as you and others have noticed. Part of it is greed on the companies part (but this is legally forced) - but part of it is greed on the shareholder's part (which by and large consists of ordinary people - whether as investment groups or individuals) demanding that profits keep rising year after year, and thus these laws to keep companies turning profits are of our own making.
So now, we are simply beginning to reap what we have sown, so to speak...
Real Scooters cost money to run, and are just as expensive to part as cars. Do you want to spend upwards of $400 a month to part your "REAL" scooter?
I was wondering what you meant by the word "part" - I thought maybe you were meaning to "fix" a car, not "park" it. Since you typed it the same way twice, and since the letter "t" is fairly far away from the letter "k" on a QWERTY keyboard, and are still removed from each other on a Dvorak layout (which you might be using/learning) - I had to assume you meant to use the word "part", not "park".
I am not a mind reader, nor will I ever be. In hindsight, with what you say now, speaking of "parking" in the context of expense in a city, then yes, I agree - parking a scooter versus parking a car in the city and all the expenses with that will be expensive.
In my defense, ambiguous spellings aside, I have never held a job in a city where I had to pay for my parking. Even here in Phoenix, unless you get unlucky, most places "validate" your parking stub so you don't have to pay for it. If you do pay for a spot here, it tends to be fairly lower in cost than say, New York, for instance. I can see, though, if you pay day-by-day here, it would definitely get into some real money at the end of a month. Once again, though, every place I have worked here has had free parking...
I am serious here. It is pretty conclusive that our brains are composed of a system of neural nets which learn patterns, and these neural nets likely are connected to one another in such a manner that patterns beget patterns. Jeff Hawkins in his book "On Intelligence" describes his theory of the structure of the cerebral cortex (he doesn't discount the other portions of the brain, but in that work he focuses on the portion that controls high-level thought and reasoning) as being a hierarchical structure, which has built in feedback loops among its own parts, as well as back to the sensory and other parts - that is, we learn a pattern, and during that learning we "play it back" at the same time, so that in the end, that is all we are doing - playing back patterns in similar manner to see if it matches with the pattern we already know.
Imagine you know how to hit a baseball thrown with a regular pitch. A baseball is round, it moves through the air in a certain way - or so you think. Now imagine you are thrown a curve ball or something - a pitch which causes the ball to move differently from the way you learned and know how to hit. You swing, likely just like you learned before, but the pattern doesn't match, and you miss. But seeing the motion of the ball and how the bat missed, sets up new patterns connected to the original that modify the original for the new pattern of "curve ball pitch". If you get thrown enough curve balls, you will likely at some point have a pattern that does connect with the ball, and as you refine it, you now have a pattern subset of the original pitch, overlayed with the original pattern.
Eventually, over a lifetime, the number of patterns you have and how you "play them back" to fit your mind-model of the world to interpret it becomes astounding. It all starts out simply as "flailing" as a baby (try throwing a wad of tissue at a baby to see them react - do it over and over and you will see the pattern matching and buildup occur. Then change what you throw and watch the chaos as the pattern no longer fits, but continue and watch it change to fit, then switch back to the wad of tissue paper - both will continue to work, the overlay and hierarchical linkage is complete), and as time continues, we build up tons of patterns...
I recently experienced a mild form of "synesthesia" (sp?) - where I looked at the color purple and thought "grape flavor" - that is, I could "taste" the "grape soda" flavor. The pattern between the color and the flavor of grape soda was so strong that the sight of one triggered the feeling and flavor of the other. The feeling of "deja vu" is the same thing: patterns and partial patterns play off one another and trigger each (and the feelings associated - other inputs, you see), causing things to "seem similar" (well, in a way they are!). Another similar pattern playback response: smells triggering memories and feelings. Just about everybody has had this experience in one manner or another...
So, your case is interesting in that for most people in the United States (particularly those in the western half of the country) recognize the term "fruit flies" as a noun - a type of insect which has caused massive infestation in fruit growing areas. It was all over the news in the 1980's - at one time it seemed like every broadcast had some kind of reference to fruit flies in it. A lot of genetic engineering advances came from experimentation with fruit flies to try to figure out how to eradicate and/or control them. They caused a lot of damage economically and so they were a "news-worthy" item. For people my age (I am 32), we were innundated as kids with the term "fruit flies" and what they are and what they meant (especially if you lived at the time, as I did then, in California). The pattern was quickly set up, and now these people can't help but think of the term "fruit flies" as a noun.
If you didn't live in the United States at the time, or you are younger than 20-25 years old - this pattern
Instead, the vehicle would likely "breath" oxygen from the outside air, much in the same way as current engines do (I imagine that a fuel cell could be designed to work with normal atmospheric pressure air as well).
Note that outside air is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen. Thus, you would be drawing in nitrogen as well as the oxygen, and you would "burn" it as regular IC engines currently do. What does that do to your equation?
Unfortunately, my expertise in chemistry ends here, I could not tell you what the balanced equation looks like. But, suffice to say, you will have a certain amount of NOX on one side of the equation (thus, no IC engine that breaths normal "air" can be made that is a truely "clean" or "green" engine because of this fact) - that is where some of the oxygen goes, thus you have less water on the output side...
Instead, you have added a greenhouse gas to the atmosphere...
TRIGLAV RPG
This game (and the engine behind it) utilizes some really nice DHTML footwork to create something real close to the isometric look and feel of Diablo and similar games.
Another game I found while looking around:
DHTML Arkanoid
This one appears to work with all browsers, and even has nice sound effects.
Both of these examples show that you don't necessarily need to have Flash or know Java to create these types of games - it is possible to do them using only browser-based technologies and/or some server side work.
Just to throw in another "buzzword" - AJAX-based gaming!
$400? Where is this number coming from? I currently own a paid-for 1994 4-banger Ranger - fuel costs me about $120.00 a month (maybe a little more, but not much) and insurance is $60.00 a month. Maintenance is negligable - consisting mainly of oil changes every 3000 or so miles (every 3 months or so, which I do myself), new tires every couple of years (about $400), new shocks every few years, new brake pads every so often. None of it is near $400.00 a month.
How can a scooter with a much smaller engine and fuel tank cost $400.00 to run? I can't imagine it at all - can you explain your reasoning?
BTW - myself, I would love to have use a scooter or bike to get to work, however living in Phoenix, Arizona and the fact that my workplace hasn't got a shower (and is about 15 miles one way away from my home) kinda rules this out currently...
There have been companies that have created panels and other systems using fresnel lenses and/or mirrors to concentrate more light onto the cells, but your right, the heat buildup limits this. I had a similar idea to yours: mount with thermal epoxy copper or aluminium heatsinks to the back of the cells with tubing or channels, and pipe water or brine through the system to extract the heat (you could add the concentrator system then and it would still work provided your solar cell cooling (solar heating?) system didn't fail). The concentrator portion does work - it is the heat removal system that is the issue...
Other items I wouldn't be so sure of - anything small that can be easily carried out that has a larger margin is a target for these.
For an example, take Barnes and Noble. They have a theft prevention system (sometimes it is even turned on!) for their books and other items. I think the system uses the standard detection thingie (which the disable by swiping the item over a magnetic thingie), but there are other things...
Something I have found inside books there (they don't actually stick them on) are stickers with a barcode (but not the item's barcode - the barcode is not a real barcode but looks like a "test" code) on one side, and on the other side a spiral antennna (looks like an etched PCB pattern) with a darker "square" chip-like "blob" in the middle to which the "antenna-line" is attached to. This is clearly an RFID tag with a printed (test) UPC barcode.
These RFID stickers are "blown" into random books and other things in the store. They are difficult to find because not every book has them, and not every book of the same book which has one has them. It seems to be a test strategy of some sort, since the number on the UPC is not the number of the ISBN of the book (looks something similar to "6-46464 46464-6")...
I would expect Wally World and others to use this for similar higher margin items like DVDs, CDs, books, games, toys, etc...
My worry isn't so much about the level of the oceans as is the fact that so much freshwater from the arctic ice will be released into the oceans. This will change the salinity of the oceans, and probably effect thermocline layers and the Atlantic thermal current (can't remember what it is called, but it is what keeps Britain from being an ice covered wasteland). We really don't know what the final effect will be because of these changes, but they can't be good. It probably won't be the end of the world, but I could see such changes causing in the short term starvation issues because of the change of growing seasons in certain parts of the world due to weather changes, and length of winter. In the long term (maybe), this would lead to migration of people to warmer areas, and food production would take place in those warmer areas, eventually reaching an equilibrium again. But in the short term, one could likely expect starvation or famine, war and pestilence as people and nations "adjust" to the new situation...
Think about it - all the way down to the reports of ecological damage and problems of David Brin's "Earth"...
Yesterday's webserver was a P2-300 with probably 256MB of memory and a 40 gig (if you were lucky) hard drive. Actually, there was probably a RAID box in there, but you get what I am saying...
These kinds of boxes are thrown away today, and are still perfectly servable (load up a LAMP system) for home-base web development. They won't pull the power of a new P4 system, and if you want lower power, underclock the sucker. You *will not* tax this box with development only (heck, unless you are running a high-profile website, you could easily put it in service publically if you wanted to and it would be fine).
When you have your development done, then think about a better server. If you can get your stuff working well on a small web server like this is, it will work even better on a real (current) system. Get your development web server for free or nearly free now, spend the real money later.
If you need to make it even lower power, find a P2 based laptop or similar off ebay, pimp it out with a larger hard drive and memory, add a NIC and go (side benefit - "free" UPS if the battery works)...
It doesn't require "clever engineering" - just a willingness not to be a money whore.
My 20+ year old TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with floppy drive (from my youth) still works perfectly. Of course, this was built back in the days when you either got a schematic with the product or could order one easily...
I would also note that a solar panel can get physically hot when it has sat in the sun for a while. Some of the larger panels (nothing a normal person would purchase) even include heat sinks for passive cooling (past a certain temperature efficiency of the panel can drop). Think about it - it is a large piece of silicon sitting in the sun for hours, generating electricity. It acts as a piece of the electrical circuit, so it will heat up from this use (much like a battery does), but it heats up much more from the sun. So - be careful handling the panel during and after use - minor skin burns are possible, and can ruin an otherwise fun outting.
The reason being, if it truely went in-depth into the philosophical and technical issues behind what I will term "AI Research" (some researchers make distinction between "strong AI" and "weak AI", calling the former "AI" and the latter "connectionistic"/"neural net"/"bottom up" - but really, it all is supposed to lead to the same place, right?), the book would be huge, and for most people, it would be very boring.
I have in my library of materials at home about 20 or so volumes relating to AI research, both in fact and fantasy, and related topics ("Ghost in the Shell" manga sits between "Godel, Esher, and Bach" and Barabasi's "Linked" - for instance). They range from fun and easy to understand, to "OMG - MY BRAIN IS FRIED" complexity (the latter I keep because although I lack the mathematical skills needed to decipher what is being talked about, the challenge to try to understand them still absorbs me at the task). Some are for the layman (still, they contain great information), some are for the programmer (I have one book on creating expert systems using Apple IIe BASIC!!!), and some are for the hard-core research/theoretician. I even have a printed copy of AI4U on my shelf (more on this in a bit).
Despite all of this (and many more works which I am not aware of or have copies of) - man has yet to succeed in coming up with an answer as to how we think. Tantalizing clues have been unearthed, for sure - some of the most recent have built upon the connectionist viewpoint, that our brains are neural-nets, but have a hierarchical structure coupled with feedback loops between sensory inputs and memory, and that what we think of as "thought" is merely pattern playback (interestingly, this is the sort of system which Mentifex's AI4U proposes, but rather than use a connectionist approach, his model uses a more easily built "streaming consciousness" system, similar to a "mercury delay line memory for thoughts" - sure, Mentifex may be an internet kook, but you would be surprised at the similarities behind his self-published work and "more accepted" mainstream AI research).
In the end, none of this has created any AI that we would recognize as thinking and creating as we humans do. I think througout this research, though, is a common thread. I have seen through what I have read commonalities and what appears to be rediscoveries, by different researchers over the course of time, of methods toward true AI. Interestingly, some of these methodologies and ideas get either drowned out or lost in some manner - I have read a couple of books that you would swear would be referenced in later years, for example, by other authors, since the ideas seem so similar or even identical, but the original author/researcher seems completely unknown in the field in later years.
I think this may be part of the problem, the lack of cooperation between "strong AI" proponents and "weak AI" proponents, and those in-between. I think there needs to be cooperation, and I think there needs to be historical continuity in the research, otherwise we will just continue argument and reinvention of the wheel. I think there needs to be more cooperation (which we are seeing, fortunately) between AI researchers and their biological research counterparts. I think that both expert systems and fuzzy logic (ie, multi-valent or vague logic) have roles to play as well with being able to allow a machine to define and reason within our universe.
There is much left to do when it comes to AI. I have only scratched the surface as a dabbling hobbyist in the field. This lack of training and discipline in the field has helped me to see that there is a lot of bickering and in-fighting where th
Who says you are the customer? You?
The fact is, when we pay for "our" movies, we are really paying money to be advertised at in those movies.
You and I are not the customer, we are the product - the advertisers (who get to insert their cars, clothing, burgers, drinks, music, and other assorted detritus throughout the films) are the true customers. I would also wager that policy-makers are also customers, in that the "advertisement" in some movies is a form of propaganda to urge you to "think" in a particular way, one which allows them to push their agendas easier on the population of the world (and how do policy-makers push this agenda? Why, through the corporations they either own or influence, or who have bought into their ideas, who advertise in said movies in return for favors granted by policies - ahem - "laws").
The movie is just the vehicle upon which to deliver this pablum to the masses. It is simply television on a different medium and scale. It is mass insanity - not only is the boot stomping the face, but the owner of that face is paying the stomper to do so and screaming "Give me MORE!!!"
Sad, so depressing and sad...
I only used Flash, though, for the few times I wanted to view certain flash animations - I quickly got tired of it because it seemed to have a memory leak or something, eventually causing mozilla to slow to a crawl, forcing a restart. However, I think there are extensions that allow you to enable/disable flash under Mozilla/FireFox now, and maybe recent versions have fixed those issues (?)...
You typically see these conditions only on slower craft (small private aircraft), or on large jet-liners at approach and takeoff. Other craft (like jet fighters and such) typically have more than enough engine power to compensate - some of the craft even use stall to their advantage (and a lot of computer processing) to allow the aircraft to do some amazing maneuvers for evasion. So, really, the concern is on craft where the speed is lower. So I ask:
What ever happenned to the Kline-Fogleman wing design?
For those of you who are unaware, back in the mid-1980's, two gentlemen by the names of Floyd Fogleman and Richard Kline came up with a special wing design, which essentially looked like the profile of a "standard" airfoil, but with a notch on the underside of wing (they also found that the wing worked well flipped upside down!). It utilized drag at low speeds to create extra lift in stall conditions. They received a patent for the design, and tested it on R/C models they designed and flew. They had plans to try a full scale test, but in the meantime they published a book about their design (which they also showed on 60 Minutes as well as in an article in Omni Magazine). The book was entitled "The Ultimate Paper Airplane" (ISBN 0-671-55551-0), and contained details on the airfoil design, why they believed it worked, details on the patent, pictures of their R/C aircraft tests, and - of course - instructions (including various models which could be photocopied from the book) to fold various paper airplanes based on the wing design.
So - what happenned to this design? Where did these guys go off to, and why have we not seen anything more about their airfoil? One thing which may have limited its application was the fact that it did create more drag than a regular wing (fuel consumption?), and it wasn't very good at fast flight speeds. But for lower speed aircraft, this shouldn't have been a problem. If there are any aircraft designers or whatnot out there who know more, please post - I always thought the wing design was interesting, and have always wondered what had happenned...
Today it may be, but what about tommorow? What about a future PDA-like device, about the size of a pad of paper (somewhere between a PDA and a laptop) that is just a screen with a stylus (in a way, similar in size to an old Apple Newton, or a smaller GRID tablet), on which you display the image (perhaps taken with the device itself, or via the outbound camera mounted on your HUD monocle), hand your hero the stylus, and he "signs" it with the stylus (perhaps he has an RFID ring with his public key transmitted and hashed with it or something?), and this overlay "image" is linked to the image you took, and can be composited (or maybe it is auto composited into the digital image directly) - with an e-ink display, it wouldn't be any different from a regular picture - all digital...
Most of the problem boils down to the insanely huge crowd I encountered there. Had it not been for that crowd (which all moved in the direction of the floor arrows, further making navigation in the reverse more difficult), things might have went smoother. Makes me wonder if it would have been better had there not been arrows on the floor and everywhere else? Of course, it might have been difficult then to find your way out, as, like I have noted, the place had maze-like qualities. I don't understand such a system - you don't see any other department store anywhere else doing that, because it only works if you have an up-front plan about everything you are shopping for. If you ad-hoc shop like most people do, it is simply a task in frustration.
Give it a hype name, and presto, instant cred.
Yes - the technology behind AJAX has been there for quite a while, in some form or another. But it didn't have a name, something that easily rolls off the tounge and sounds "cool" to the average person (not too mention it also is a name people have heard before as a "good" product - so it hits those feel-good patterns in the brains of many people). AJAX - web technology, patterns hit: clean (the AJAX brand cleanser), good (the AJAX brand cleanser), does the job well.
So - keep this in mind next time you develop a product of any type: give it a good marketable name, something that rolls off the tounge and people can easily remember - then market/advertise it enough - and you will have a winner - even if the actual technology behind it is crap.
Case in point: Ogg Vorbis vs. MP3 - which one is better, which one is worse? Which one rolls off the tounge, and which one is more difficult to pronounce? The choice is clear. Couple that with the obvious fact that MP3 has been out longer and thus has more airplay, so to speak, and the "winner", even though arguably less superior in many ways (quality, size, and "openess" of the player/encoder - ie patents) to the OGG standard - is the one people will remember and use (and this is possibly why other competing standards aren't "winning", either - though a standard that comes out and plays on MP3 - like MP4, or something similar - might edge it out)...
I think you're on to something there. Add a map of the yard with gravesites that could be highlighted to show you where a loved one (or someone you know about - but don't know or remember where they are located), with a "you are here" and a map printout. Also allow for reverse lookups (ie, you know where the tomb is, so you can "click" on the marker and it brings up the information/obituary/etc about them). All of this wouldn't be too hard to do today...
Scenario 1: You are driving down the highway out in the desert doing the speed limit, but one of your tail lights is busted. You get pulled over by a cop. You are driving an older volvo sedan, you have long hair and a beard, and are wearing a tie-dye t-shirt. You are 40 years old, a successful unix sysadmin, but you don't flaunt shit. The last time you smoked pot was in college, and that was a long time ago and you have better things to do now. The officer gets up to your window, and says "I am stopping you because you have a busted tail light...what is that funny smell?" - BAM! - probable cause right there, whether you have something or not. He is then free to proceed to look all over your vehicle. Hell, your car could be brand new from the factory, and that "funny smell" is simply the new vinyl - but no matter about that...your time is wasted, and if you do have something, you are hosed.
Scenario 2: Same a scenario 1, except this time you have single bud and a pipe in the trunk because you are on your way to having a good time at the lake (or whereever) - you are a normal law-abiding citizen, you don't drive stoned, but you do think that our so-called "War on Drugs" is a crock of shit, no better than Prohibition in the 1920s. But you don't keep the shit out, you have in a bag, inside of a small sealed cannister stuffed in a picnic basket. No where near in "plain sight", and no way to get to it while driving, certainly. Last time you smoked anyway was two weeks ago (you just spent the last two weeks pulling 14 hour days doing a system rebuild or something)...
Cop doesn't pull the "smell somthing funny" trick, but he doesn't like the way you look, you longhair hippy (never mind the fact that you are nowhere old enough to be of that generation), so he asks to search your car. You tell him no, get a warrant. He holds you there, and calls in a K9 unit. The dog sniffs your car, hits on the trunk, and BAM - probable cause. You are HOSED.
Hell, you could even play that last scenario slightly differently - you have just bought the old volvo off an old hippy couple up in Oregon and are driving it back home, not knowing about the busted taillight. You have your hippy look, you get pulled over, you refuse, and the K9 unit is brought in. Unknown to you, buried in the trunk behind a loose flap of carpet is a 30 year old joint from a happy time too long ago to remember - and the drug dog hits on it. BAM - probable cause, you are HOSED!
In none of these situations did the cop really have probable cause due to "plain sight". It really makes me wonder why a drug dog would be brought in at all, there was no real indication other than you looking like a longhair hippy for any such thing to be thought of. In the best case scenario, a lot of your time it wasted, and the cop will probably try to find everything wrong with your car to ticket you on just for fucking with him. The worst case scenario, you go to jail (or maybe a fine, or a couple of days, or something) for something you weren't even aware of, or something you WERE aware of, but in the grand scheme of things really shouldn't have been any different than an old can of beer or a bottle of wine in the trunk...
The truth is, the place was a mad-house, probably like your place in Atlanta. Maybe it all settles down after 5 years or so. By then, though, I will have already found (or built) what I wanted elsewhere. The other people in the store seemed "happy", like a "caught in headlights" "happy" - in other words, they were putting on the forced "must look good to the strangers to avoid looking bad" "mask" that so many people "put on" - instead of showing the way they really feel in public.
I have no problem with civility in society - but lying to yourself about issues and faking it just to keep up appearances to others is neurotic at best. Perhaps if more people complained to the store management a better system would result (I made my complaint, still waiting for a response of any kind).
As far as "overpriced crap" is concerned - I don't like buying overpriced anything - if I have a choice, I like getting things used or free if I can (some great stuff can be had from rummage sales, thrift stores, dumpsters, and bulk trash pickup piles). Most of the stuff we had before we left were cheap $10.00 or so items (though we did find an abstract picture that we loved for around $80.00) - we wanted to spend more money on the furniture we were thinking about (but never got the chance to see). Finally, some of the stuff at IKEA was "overpriced crap" - I mean, a bundle of sticks for $20.00? WTF?!