When I was a kid I started with Logo. It was pretty good because you got direct visual graphical feedback from your code. Today, I would go with Flash's ActionScript3 for that same reason. You can import graphical resources with a UI and manipulate location, rotation etc., easily with code.
The problem is that people that do not understand these games do not equate sitting in a room alone to socaializing, be it a chat room, an mmo, an online forum, or whatever. Many think face-time is the only way to communicate with others.
I play World of Warcraft, and our guild just had a get-together. It was a raging party with a bonfire and lots of fun and booze. We even have *girls* that play. I assure you these games can be very sociable. They just are not a substitute for real life.
Recurring behaviors are addictions when others can't relate to them.
Talking on the phone is something everyone that is alive today can relate to. It is so engrained into our lives and social consciousness that your Grandmother understands what is happening and considers it being sociable. Seeing a loved one spending time alone in a dark room surfing the Internet is something less friendly to relate to, even though you may be interacting with thousands of people exchanging information in more quality and quantity that is possible in a face-to-face meeting of experts. There is a perception gap.
I do a lot of computer tutoring and I find those that did not grow up with the internet are oft intimidated by it, even many that use and rely on e-mail and websites daily. To them time spent online is exclusionary. It is a kind of sociability that only those savvy enough to use it are included...
Doesn't it sound like the verbage was written by marketing? I don't think it's possible to be addicted to the internet any more than be addicted to a book. You can, however, compulsively read.
I have heard tales of accounts being banned for using game exploits (mind-controlling mobs in UBRS to give a special fire resist buff for use in MC) to me, this seems like it is just a part of the game. How do you determine what is an exploit and what is not, and how do you handle the closing of an account that a player has spent potentially months playing and building?
or
What is your take on Chinese farming? It would appear that a lot of people are making thier livelihood dealing in virtual goods in your worlds. Do you account for such things in your continued development of WoW?
Perhaps this will be what finally makes the general public take notice and demand patent reform. One-click shopping was just an inconvenience for web developers and offended only the well-informed. If they try and mess with the largest developers of neo-hollywood, to mess with the new supply of games to the general public... This could potentially get media attention, and a lot of it.
It's a tricky thing... essentially, if you bill people for things or are an independant contractor (given a 1099 tax form by your employer) then you are a business and can write things off... if you get 1040, well then you can write off bupkis...
the employees get the short end of the stick and the heavy end of the burden. In exchange, businesses get the hassle of filing to the IRS quarterly instead of annually.
I alter photographs for a living and I think I know of what kind of irregularities he's talking about... when pixellated noisy areas in the channels of an a photo get smoothed out by alteration, like with a feathered rubber stamp tool or by scaling and stretching in Photoshop. If this is what the algorithm looks for it will be very effective at finding BAD photo manipulations. Good technique will yield a visual photographic noise that is indestinguishable from the rest of the image, and will probably fool the algorithm. Just add noise to your finished file and export with some wacky compression.
But then again a human eye could always find bad photo manipulaitons if it knows what to look for.
Actually, yes. You can write off all sorts of things as business expenses and never pay any taxes on them. Work in the computer biz? Get a phat box; Company cars; Business lunches; Expense accounts; all tax-free. Get the proper zoning in a live/work loft and write off your rent.
There was a famous case back when westerns were popular of an actress who wrote off her horse as a business expense. She claimed she needed it to practice her lines on. The IRS took her to court and she won the suit. It was indeed legal.
I am about to start an internet business, and without getting into details it will only exist in digital format. There will be no brick and mortar component to the business... so can I just arbitrarilly decide where I want it to exist?
I live in California and am not keen on extra accounting or taxes. The site will be hosted in Canada.
It seems to me that this is a very bad move on the RIAA's part...
Now they have two more enemies that will tell others around them the terrible tale for the rest of thier lives... If my friend got sued I would boycott.
And all the bad PR... The RIAA are middlemen trying to prevent thier obsolescence via lawsuits.
Also I want to know where they got those bogus figures for resitution... I hope the students just decalre bankruptcy and don't pay a cent.
Yes, they are unproductive but e-mails are also a far less effective method of communicating. Don't get me wrong, I love e-mail for what it can do, however e-mails are by nature very ignorable as illustrated in the article.
I have been lately searching for a job... at first online exclusively via sites like monster.com & craigslist.org-- I sent and sent and sent and resumes and letters, only didn't get any replies for months. Eventually I got discouraged and decided to try one of those job fairs, though I thought I was being blown off (thanks, nothing at this time we'll call you if anything...) I got immediate results.
I think I can attribute this to several things inherent with e-mail:
1) Effort Sending out an e-mail can take very little time or commitment, so deleting one follows suit. Spam has trained us well.
2) Quantity Any online correspondence of this nature will attract many more applicants than other methods. While this seems good for employers, it devalues each application further. Not absolutely perfect experience? *delete* This method is unfortunate because often there is a lot more to being able to fit into a working environment than prior history. Sure you know your field, but what good is an employee that's so annoying they can't work in teams with co-workers? That's the sort of thing you can only discern in person.
3) the Human Element When you meet someone face to face there is a lot more sway in the interaction, you give a real physical person more respect and empathy than you do a page of text. Just look at some of the troll posts you are all familiar with for proof of this phenomenon. I highly doubt Anonymous Cowards ever insult or smack people down IRL as I have seen them do on message boards.
4) the Squeaky Wheel When you have the benefits of #3 you have a lot more slack given to you, and it is much easier to retain a presence when you correspond via phone or in person simply because you cannot be ignored until convenient.
By making machines that can kill foreigners more efficiently, we save lives. You say: "the sooner the war ends, the fewer lives will be lost"
If d is total deaths, weapon killing efficiency is K, and t is time;
Kt = d or t = d/K
Given that time = money;
$ = deaths / Killing efficiency
Expect a profit-motivated Bush war to be a long, slow one, with lots of body bags.
Capable of destroying ourselves for awhile now
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
·
· Score: 1
This isn't a new phenomenon. We have been quite capable of mutual assured destruction on a global scale for some time.
The problem is that if you dismiss a field because it has potential to do harm, then you are no longer pushing forward. Almost all important scientific discoveries came with upgrades to our killing potential. I'll bet the guy that invented the wheel used it to squash some neanderthal flat.
But would the world be a better place without semicunductors and jet engines and relativity, and all the other stuff you have to dig through pandora's box to find?
We should keep going. And if we do blow ourselves up like rednecks with dynamite, we at least did it trying to push our horizons...
As for grey goo... can't they make nano-machines that degrade after n generations, or that shatter at some resonant frequency?
There has to be a way to build in an engineered flaw. Let microsoft design the OS or something. Blue screen 'em all.
And as such I need Photoshop, illustrator, QuarkXPress, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver... etc.
They just don't have the compatability on Linux. The closest thing I know of that's gpl is GIMP. It's a start but it's not enough. I would love to switch because the whole concept behind the Open Source movement is something I'd like to support, but I can't. At least not yet.
As for MacOS, some designers swear by it. But I resent that MacOS hides all the nitty-gritty tweaks from the users. Also, macs cost way more for what you get and the systems always seem to become unstable once the next version of MacOS comes out (at least that's how it was back when I owned a 6100). This may have changed with OS X, but the jury is still out. (besides I need a two button mouse,dammitt!)
I need compatibility with any file format a client can give me. And Windows is the way to go for that. I know they are the evil empire, but they give me compatibility with 90% of the software and users out there.
Long story short: I will go where the software developers camp. And right now that's Windows.
I've seen a lot of the DVD's with deleted scenes to understand why scenes were cut. If the pacing of the movie suffers, so does your enjoyment of watching it. Editors cut things out of movies. It's thier job.
I have known enough editors to see that thier job isn't always easy, but a lot of thought and time does go into it. If he took out 40 minutes without hurting the flow, cool. (It's just too bad for Whil that they got his hopes up)
A heated debate about Star Trek... welcome to the heart of nerdville.
I love the show but for the love of god it's just not that important. Besides, no offense to Will, I kinda wanted Wesley to spontaneously combust on several occasions watching the show. I say, "cut away," unless some of the cut scenes contained the affore-mentioned spontaneous combustion.
Media giants cram marketing down our ocular and auditory nerves every
second we're not paying attention.
Big money tells us what to think, who to vote for, and who to kill overseas.
There are way too many people in the United States to be an effective
and progressive democracy. Good luck getting a majority to agree on anything.
Lobbyists run our government, don't fool yourself. And what they lobby
for makes the higher ups richer, usuually at the expense of the lower tiers
and the general public. Examples are the prison guard association (more
drug laws! more prisons! more money!) and the restaraunt association (lower
hospitatlity wages below minimum so that tips compensate! We pay less!).
Ignorance + Technology + Legislature = bad medicine. The RIAA and MPAA
are just symptoms of this.
Too bad I'm not rich enough to own my own senator. I could be the first kid on my block. Won't they be jealous then? </rant>
Slashdot Mirror
...I wonder if they teach evolutionary algorithms?
When I was a kid I started with Logo. It was pretty good because you got direct visual graphical feedback from your code. Today, I would go with Flash's ActionScript3 for that same reason. You can import graphical resources with a UI and manipulate location, rotation etc., easily with code.
Alas, it is proprietary though.
Sadly, the THC oranges are an urban legend:
http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=76;t=000176;p=1
The problem is that people that do not understand these games do not equate sitting in a room alone to socaializing, be it a chat room, an mmo, an online forum, or whatever. Many think face-time is the only way to communicate with others.
I play World of Warcraft, and our guild just had a get-together. It was a raging party with a bonfire and lots of fun and booze. We even have *girls* that play. I assure you these games can be very sociable. They just are not a substitute for real life.
Recurring behaviors are addictions when others can't relate to them.
Talking on the phone is something everyone that is alive today can relate to. It is so engrained into our lives and social consciousness that your Grandmother understands what is happening and considers it being sociable. Seeing a loved one spending time alone in a dark room surfing the Internet is something less friendly to relate to, even though you may be interacting with thousands of people exchanging information in more quality and quantity that is possible in a face-to-face meeting of experts. There is a perception gap.
I do a lot of computer tutoring and I find those that did not grow up with the internet are oft intimidated by it, even many that use and rely on e-mail and websites daily. To them time spent online is exclusionary. It is a kind of sociability that only those savvy enough to use it are included...
Doesn't it sound like the verbage was written by marketing? I don't think it's possible to be addicted to the internet any more than be addicted to a book. You can, however, compulsively read.
I have heard tales of accounts being banned for using game exploits (mind-controlling mobs in UBRS to give a special fire resist buff for use in MC) to me, this seems like it is just a part of the game. How do you determine what is an exploit and what is not, and how do you handle the closing of an account that a player has spent potentially months playing and building?
or
What is your take on Chinese farming? It would appear that a lot of people are making thier livelihood dealing in virtual goods in your worlds. Do you account for such things in your continued development of WoW?
Perhaps this will be what finally makes the general public take notice and demand patent reform. One-click shopping was just an inconvenience for web developers and offended only the well-informed. If they try and mess with the largest developers of neo-hollywood, to mess with the new supply of games to the general public... This could potentially get media attention, and a lot of it.
It's a tricky thing... essentially, if you bill people for things or are an independant contractor (given a 1099 tax form by your employer) then you are a business and can write things off... if you get 1040, well then you can write off bupkis...
the employees get the short end of the stick and the heavy end of the burden. In exchange, businesses get the hassle of filing to the IRS quarterly instead of annually.
I alter photographs for a living and I think I know of what kind of irregularities he's talking about... when pixellated noisy areas in the channels of an a photo get smoothed out by alteration, like with a feathered rubber stamp tool or by scaling and stretching in Photoshop. If this is what the algorithm looks for it will be very effective at finding BAD photo manipulations. Good technique will yield a visual photographic noise that is indestinguishable from the rest of the image, and will probably fool the algorithm. Just add noise to your finished file and export with some wacky compression.
But then again a human eye could always find bad photo manipulaitons if it knows what to look for.
Color me skeptical.
Actually, yes. You can write off all sorts of things as business expenses and never pay any taxes on them. Work in the computer biz? Get a phat box; Company cars; Business lunches; Expense accounts; all tax-free. Get the proper zoning in a live/work loft and write off your rent.
There was a famous case back when westerns were popular of an actress who wrote off her horse as a business expense. She claimed she needed it to practice her lines on. The IRS took her to court and she won the suit. It was indeed legal.
...I mean who the fork do they think they are, anyway?
I'm envisioning a PDA-like device that grabs the info of anyone you touch... With contact you don't actually need the floor tiles, is this correct?
"She gave me an STD, AND a computer virus!"
I am about to start an internet business, and without getting into details it will only exist in digital format. There will be no brick and mortar component to the business... so can I just arbitrarilly decide where I want it to exist?
I live in California and am not keen on extra accounting or taxes. The site will be hosted in Canada.
It seems to me that this is a very bad move on the RIAA's part...
Now they have two more enemies that will tell others around them the terrible tale for the rest of thier lives... If my friend got sued I would boycott.
And all the bad PR... The RIAA are middlemen trying to prevent thier obsolescence via lawsuits.
Also I want to know where they got those bogus figures for resitution... I hope the students just decalre bankruptcy and don't pay a cent.
Yes, they are unproductive but e-mails are also a far less effective method of communicating. Don't get me wrong, I love e-mail for what it can do, however e-mails are by nature very ignorable as illustrated in the article.
I have been lately searching for a job... at first online exclusively via sites like monster.com & craigslist.org-- I sent and sent and sent and resumes and letters, only didn't get any replies for months. Eventually I got discouraged and decided to try one of those job fairs, though I thought I was being blown off (thanks, nothing at this time we'll call you if anything...) I got immediate results.
I think I can attribute this to several things inherent with e-mail:
1) Effort
Sending out an e-mail can take very little time or commitment, so deleting one follows suit. Spam has trained us well.
2) Quantity
Any online correspondence of this nature will attract many more applicants than other methods. While this seems good for employers, it devalues each application further. Not absolutely perfect experience? *delete* This method is unfortunate because often there is a lot more to being able to fit into a working environment than prior history. Sure you know your field, but what good is an employee that's so annoying they can't work in teams with co-workers? That's the sort of thing you can only discern in person.
3) the Human Element
When you meet someone face to face there is a lot more sway in the interaction, you give a real physical person more respect and empathy than you do a page of text. Just look at some of the troll posts you are all familiar with for proof of this phenomenon. I highly doubt Anonymous Cowards ever insult or smack people down IRL as I have seen them do on message boards.
4) the Squeaky Wheel
When you have the benefits of #3 you have a lot more slack given to you, and it is much easier to retain a presence when you correspond via phone or in person simply because you cannot be ignored until convenient.
By making machines that can kill foreigners more efficiently, we save lives. You say: "the sooner the war ends, the fewer lives will be lost"
If d is total deaths, weapon killing efficiency is K, and t is time;
Kt = d or
t = d/K
Given that time = money;
$ = deaths / Killing efficiency
Expect a profit-motivated Bush war to be a long, slow one, with lots of body bags.
The problem is that if you dismiss a field because it has potential to do harm, then you are no longer pushing forward. Almost all important scientific discoveries came with upgrades to our killing potential. I'll bet the guy that invented the wheel used it to squash some neanderthal flat.
But would the world be a better place without semicunductors and jet engines and relativity, and all the other stuff you have to dig through pandora's box to find?
We should keep going. And if we do blow ourselves up like rednecks with dynamite, we at least did it trying to push our horizons...
As for grey goo... can't they make nano-machines that degrade after n generations, or that shatter at some resonant frequency?
There has to be a way to build in an engineered flaw. Let microsoft design the OS or something. Blue screen 'em all.
This isn't a new phenomenon. We have been quite capable of mutual assured destruction on a global scale for some time.
The problem is that if you dismiss a field of
They just don't have the compatability on Linux. The closest thing I know of that's gpl is GIMP. It's a start but it's not enough. I would love to switch because the whole concept behind the Open Source movement is something I'd like to support, but I can't. At least not yet.
As for MacOS, some designers swear by it. But I resent that MacOS hides all the nitty-gritty tweaks from the users. Also, macs cost way more for what you get and the systems always seem to become unstable once the next version of MacOS comes out (at least that's how it was back when I owned a 6100). This may have changed with OS X, but the jury is still out. (besides I need a two button mouse,dammitt!)
I need compatibility with any file format a client can give me. And Windows is the way to go for that. I know they are the evil empire, but they give me compatibility with 90% of the software and users out there.
Long story short: I will go where the software developers camp. And right now that's Windows.
Plus I need my games. =)
to make bad pun about playing with joysticks
While they're at it we should jam those ads before the movie. I hate paying $9 to be visually spammed every chance they get.
It reminds me of this programming class I took as a kid, and all they taught me was how to make turtle lines bounce around the screen.
I've seen a lot of the DVD's with deleted scenes to understand why scenes were cut. If the pacing of the movie suffers, so does your enjoyment of watching it. Editors cut things out of movies. It's thier job.
I have known enough editors to see that thier job isn't always easy, but a lot of thought and time does go into it. If he took out 40 minutes without hurting the flow, cool. (It's just too bad for Whil that they got his hopes up)
A heated debate about Star Trek... welcome to the heart of nerdville.
I love the show but for the love of god it's just not that important. Besides, no offense to Will, I kinda wanted Wesley to spontaneously combust on several occasions watching the show. I say, "cut away," unless some of the cut scenes contained the affore-mentioned spontaneous combustion.
That is all.
The current state of the USA is rather gloomy: