Seymour Papert!! Thank you for bring up his name!! I took a class in LOGO writer when I was a kid, and he happened to live in my area (Deer Isle, Maine) and he came to some of the classes and halped us with projects. Wow, I had totally forgoten about him...
When I first started playing with Red Hat, I was amazed to see that it had and office suite built into it. I didn't have to install anything extra.
An office suite is SUCH a common part of computers. Everyone needs at least a good word proscessor every now and again. If M$ ever got into a position where they really needed to compete with Macs, they could just start making office a standard component of the OS package. In a tight economy like this one, people might start leaning more and more towards cheap PCs in that case. On the one hand, they can get a Mac, pay the price for that, and THEN they have to buy the office software on top of it. Or, they can just get a cheap PC...
I work at a small company, and we have been hit by the falling economy. We have pulled the office back to four days a week, and four days pay. We have also had to start paying half of our own health insurance. I know it's a MOJOR bonus that we didn't pay anything at all, but now we are paying a hefty amount at the same time that we all get our pay cut.
The problem that is arising with management (Management really consists of one person. It's a small office) is that we are supposed to maintain high levels of work, come in on the week-ends, stay late, even though we are only working 4 days a week. We are all feeling taken advantage of, but the job market is so bad, there is not a lot we can do to at this point.
I swear to GOD I had a point when I started writing this post, but I have no idea what it was now. Maybe I just needed to get that off my chest.
I've always believed that games are the next step in what I call "popular, passive entertainment"- started with theater, moved onto books, then eventually film and then television. Each step is built on the technology of the time, and all are story driven.
People are ALWAYS trying change the medium to tell the same story; books become movies, plays become movies, movies - er, become TV shows. But you know what? It's really, really hard to do, and pretty unnecessary sometimes.
Take Half-life. What a crappy, crappy movie that would have made. A nerd in a orange suit running around talking to nerds in lab coats while he blows up aliens. But, the game worked, and I say leave it at that, damnit. Stop trying to cross stories between their mediums. It's not worth the effort to convert, considering how often the conversion sucks.
Speaking of, I can't WAIT to see how terrible the next Harry Potter movie is- The Prisoner of Azkaban is such a complex, long story that pulling it off as a movie is not only going to make for a four hour plus movie, but it's also going to loose the magic that makes the book so great... they really screwed up the last book, if you ask me.
They make tests for nVidia and ATI! Their entire business is based around these two companies (ok, handful of others , too). Of course they worked out some deal with nVidia. I'm sure that nVidia has ways to lean on them so they changed their tune. FutureMark really can't afford to get on the bad side of the card makers, because if they loose the support of nVidia and ATI, what are they going to do?
It's symbiotic realtionships that make the world go round...
Personally, who gives a crap about a benchmark? I'd much rather see stats of how well cards hold up in specific games than in a damn benchmark. On that line of thinking, I'd also rather see nVidia putting time and energry into making games, not benchmarks, run better on their cards.
Tablet PCs seem like a market that's been created just to make money off of the dying PC market.
Steve Jobs said awhile back that we were about to enter a computer "dark age" where there was not a lot of innovation or creativity. I think he's right. There is not a lot new going into computers- just just become more and more beefed up. Really, what differences are there between your current computer and the computer you had three or four years ago? I bet most of the differences are performance based.
My point is, we all have computers, and we all know what they do, and we know what we use them for. That creates a stable market, but not one that grows the way that it has been. Of course computer makers want to make more and more money (I don't know why... who needs more than like, $50,000?) so they created the very stupid tablet PC. Granted, I've never used one, but I really don't see much innovation in the technology as much as the marketing and advertising. "Look!" says HP "This is a laptop with a screen that flips around! uh- you really need this to stay productive!"
Like I said, I've never used one. Hell, I've never even SEEN one, and I go to electronic stores here in New York frequently. They seem like an OK gadget, but I don't think anyone's biting. I'll wait until my Palm Pilot can simply be a remote extension of my desktop computer. And I wont use it for gaming, either.
The thing I enjoy about case modding is that it's not a well-known thing. On the few occasions that I've met someone with a mod, I know I'm dealing with someone a little more serious about their computer than most people, who just use them as mail stations.
I live in New York City, and from time to time I see giant Rockstar logos on sides of buildings and other places. Just the big R.
It seems like they are really tring to get the Rockstar logo on the same level as the McDonalds logo. An interesting way to go- letting people see the logo without the name, and then let them see the name somewhere else.
I could go for a burger right now, followed by a massive killing spree.
How true IS that? I can see how the porn industry maybe pulled it's weight with VHS, but DVD? Comon! That was a logical choice. Even if the porn industry had not picked it up, DVD was giong to take the place of VHS. There was not a lot of reason or competition for it NOT to.
Unless BETAMAX made a comeback, which is always entirely possible.
See, this is a big problem with video games- the term is so broad!! We lump any interactive entertainment that's on a computer into the video game catagory, which I don't normally havea problem with, until you get to this issue. This article is pointing to the minesweepers and solitares of the world, not the Quakes and the Half-Lifes (speaking of upcoming time wasters... drool...)
You would have an easier time convincing me that I'm made out of 100% metal than you would convincing me that EverQuest is on the road to productivity.
Take a step back for a second- Does it really matter if nVidia is cheating on a benchmark? If you think about all the amazing things a card will do for you, we are really only arguing about a few frames a second here, or maybe a slight image quality improvement. It's not like their latest card only gives you 2 FPS and only in grayscale and they say it does 500 other things...
The points between ATI and nVidia really boiled down the arguing between two rack bands at this point. People are going to be loyal to one or the other, but really, is there THAT much of a difference?
The internet is still so young! It's going to be years before we realize the full potential of it. I think that SARS research, SETI and others are just the beginning of a much bigger picture, a picture that's very hard to predict. Who would have thought ten years ago when we talked about the "information superhighway" that we were going to be using the internet to cure diseases with distributed computing?
Information is power- it has been for a long time. The ability to send, receive, and process information instantaneously is really, really incredible. The more people realize this and come up with new, creative ways of using the internet and computers, the better.
Also, you can't beat all the amazing porn out there...
I'm sure this has been addressed here before, but I'm going to get on my soap box for a second.
Why the hell is there NOT a standard for computer education in this country now??? I can see how 10 years ago it would have been hard to predict where technology was going to go, but I think now we can really start teaching kids at least some of the basics as a mandatory public education requirement.
For example, when kids get out of school they should know what a byte is and how it relates to their computer. They should know how RAM is different from a processor or hard drive, and they should at least know basic HTML. And if I had my way, basic troubleshooting skills.
I work as the IT guy in a small design office. I work with people that sit in front of computers all day, yet I'm routinely asked "what is an EXE file", "what is a Megabyte", and "Why wont this 3 GB file go to the printer". These are very basic things in my mind.
There is no denying that computers are here to stay, and a lot of people will have to use them on a daily basis. It should be the responsibility of the government to make sure all these kiddies get some sort of an idea of what they are doing.
I think this question really goes to the heart of medical philosophy- is it a doctor's duty to make you live for as long as possible? Undo God's work?
The world was not designed to be a fair place. Some people get the short end of the stick. It sucks, but that's the way it is. If we start (ok, continue) throwing a wrench in the works and giving everyone an equal chance at life, the universe is going to compensate for that. If everyone lives to be 150, the world does not have enough resources to support everyone, and then there are famines, wars, blah blah blah.
It's sad that some people don't get that fair shot, that they are doomed from the start, but it's not our place to start messing with that.
Re:Improve upon our faults. OCing the Human Brain?
on
The Rights of GM Humans
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
On the outset, it does seem like a really, really cool idea to be able to OC the human brain, but stop and think about the social repercussions. Remember how there were always those guy in high school that did amazingly well in their classes, were stars of the basketball team, and never got a pimple? Remember how much you hated them?
Imagine if their parents were just rich enough to buy that. Instead of nature deciding who's going to be smart, athletic, top of the class (I know environmental factors are just as important, but bare with me) parents just buy the features they want. Think about how you felt towards the kids that were gifted in school. Now thing about know they were made that way, not just lucky.
GM'ed people, while interesting, would have a really, really hard time. Most of us would probably be very bitter towards them and the people that could afford to have GM work done on their children.
As an American (not that I am particularly happy with this country right now), I have always believed that anyone can become president, a CEO, whatever they want. However, I think this is the final divider between the haves and have-nots. OCing the human brain seems harmless, but the social repercussions are endless.
This is changing the subject a little bit- but staying on the topic of non-violent video games; How much of a market is there? I am in the very early stages of creating a video game as part of a class (gotta love liberal arts colleges...) and I keep hoping that we can create something along the lines of the Myst series- interactive, engaging, immersive and fun. But look at the market right now. There is nothing that does not have an emphasis on violence.
Violence, or rather, conflict, is at the nature of a story, whether it's a person versus another person, or a person versus the unknown, there is always a conflict.
Unfortunately, video games are primarily concerned with violent conflict. Although there was an element of it in the Myst games, they did a good job of keeping it minimal. Now we need more games like that exploring conflict in a non-violent way. Maybe adapt some Jane Austin books to games...
Slashdot Mirror
Probably... Stephen King writes a novel about every damn town in Maine.
It is, however, the town that the Mel Gibson movie, Man without a Face was shot in.
Seymour Papert!! Thank you for bring up his name!! I took a class in LOGO writer when I was a kid, and he happened to live in my area (Deer Isle, Maine) and he came to some of the classes and halped us with projects. Wow, I had totally forgoten about him...
I, for one, agree with you.
When I first started playing with Red Hat, I was amazed to see that it had and office suite built into it. I didn't have to install anything extra.
An office suite is SUCH a common part of computers. Everyone needs at least a good word proscessor every now and again. If M$ ever got into a position where they really needed to compete with Macs, they could just start making office a standard component of the OS package. In a tight economy like this one, people might start leaning more and more towards cheap PCs in that case. On the one hand, they can get a Mac, pay the price for that, and THEN they have to buy the office software on top of it. Or, they can just get a cheap PC...
I work at a small company, and we have been hit by the falling economy. We have pulled the office back to four days a week, and four days pay. We have also had to start paying half of our own health insurance. I know it's a MOJOR bonus that we didn't pay anything at all, but now we are paying a hefty amount at the same time that we all get our pay cut.
The problem that is arising with management (Management really consists of one person. It's a small office) is that we are supposed to maintain high levels of work, come in on the week-ends, stay late, even though we are only working 4 days a week. We are all feeling taken advantage of, but the job market is so bad, there is not a lot we can do to at this point.
I swear to GOD I had a point when I started writing this post, but I have no idea what it was now. Maybe I just needed to get that off my chest.
Are you kidding me? With Apple's Fanbase? I can't imagine a Mac-head (or Mac company) switching to a PC because of a piece of software!
I want to see what Quark offers companies like mine that bought Quark 5.0 just a couple of months ago...
I've always believed that games are the next step in what I call "popular, passive entertainment"- started with theater, moved onto books, then eventually film and then television. Each step is built on the technology of the time, and all are story driven.
People are ALWAYS trying change the medium to tell the same story; books become movies, plays become movies, movies - er, become TV shows. But you know what? It's really, really hard to do, and pretty unnecessary sometimes.
Take Half-life. What a crappy, crappy movie that would have made. A nerd in a orange suit running around talking to nerds in lab coats while he blows up aliens. But, the game worked, and I say leave it at that, damnit. Stop trying to cross stories between their mediums. It's not worth the effort to convert, considering how often the conversion sucks.
Speaking of, I can't WAIT to see how terrible the next Harry Potter movie is- The Prisoner of Azkaban is such a complex, long story that pulling it off as a movie is not only going to make for a four hour plus movie, but it's also going to loose the magic that makes the book so great... they really screwed up the last book, if you ask me.
But hey, anything to make a buck, right?
Why does Futuremark exsist? What do they do?
They make tests for nVidia and ATI! Their entire business is based around these two companies (ok, handful of others , too). Of course they worked out some deal with nVidia. I'm sure that nVidia has ways to lean on them so they changed their tune. FutureMark really can't afford to get on the bad side of the card makers, because if they loose the support of nVidia and ATI, what are they going to do?
It's symbiotic realtionships that make the world go round...
Personally, who gives a crap about a benchmark? I'd much rather see stats of how well cards hold up in specific games than in a damn benchmark. On that line of thinking, I'd also rather see nVidia putting time and energry into making games, not benchmarks, run better on their cards.
Someone cretate an application that can do all this, and within 6 weeks it will be the most pirated software on Kazaa.
Well, until Doom 3 comes out, at least.
Tablet PCs seem like a market that's been created just to make money off of the dying PC market.
Steve Jobs said awhile back that we were about to enter a computer "dark age" where there was not a lot of innovation or creativity. I think he's right. There is not a lot new going into computers- just just become more and more beefed up. Really, what differences are there between your current computer and the computer you had three or four years ago? I bet most of the differences are performance based.
My point is, we all have computers, and we all know what they do, and we know what we use them for. That creates a stable market, but not one that grows the way that it has been. Of course computer makers want to make more and more money (I don't know why... who needs more than like, $50,000?) so they created the very stupid tablet PC. Granted, I've never used one, but I really don't see much innovation in the technology as much as the marketing and advertising. "Look!" says HP "This is a laptop with a screen that flips around! uh- you really need this to stay productive!"
Like I said, I've never used one. Hell, I've never even SEEN one, and I go to electronic stores here in New York frequently. They seem like an OK gadget, but I don't think anyone's biting. I'll wait until my Palm Pilot can simply be a remote extension of my desktop computer. And I wont use it for gaming, either.
Sony online's next release: EverSoprano, where you get to swear, shoot guns and get into legal disputes with HBO.
The thing I enjoy about case modding is that it's not a well-known thing. On the few occasions that I've met someone with a mod, I know I'm dealing with someone a little more serious about their computer than most people, who just use them as mail stations.
I live in New York City, and from time to time I see giant Rockstar logos on sides of buildings and other places. Just the big R.
It seems like they are really tring to get the Rockstar logo on the same level as the McDonalds logo. An interesting way to go- letting people see the logo without the name, and then let them see the name somewhere else.
I could go for a burger right now, followed by a massive killing spree.
How true IS that? I can see how the porn industry maybe pulled it's weight with VHS, but DVD? Comon! That was a logical choice. Even if the porn industry had not picked it up, DVD was giong to take the place of VHS. There was not a lot of reason or competition for it NOT to.
Unless BETAMAX made a comeback, which is always entirely possible.
See, this is a big problem with video games- the term is so broad!! We lump any interactive entertainment that's on a computer into the video game catagory, which I don't normally havea problem with, until you get to this issue. This article is pointing to the minesweepers and solitares of the world, not the Quakes and the Half-Lifes (speaking of upcoming time wasters... drool...)
You would have an easier time convincing me that I'm made out of 100% metal than you would convincing me that EverQuest is on the road to productivity.
I thought the same thing. Too bad I blew my mod points already today...
I'd like to point out, for those that didn't notice, the candy that the Oracle gives Neo resembles a red pill.
Take a step back for a second- Does it really matter if nVidia is cheating on a benchmark? If you think about all the amazing things a card will do for you, we are really only arguing about a few frames a second here, or maybe a slight image quality improvement. It's not like their latest card only gives you 2 FPS and only in grayscale and they say it does 500 other things...
The points between ATI and nVidia really boiled down the arguing between two rack bands at this point. People are going to be loyal to one or the other, but really, is there THAT much of a difference?
The internet is still so young! It's going to be years before we realize the full potential of it. I think that SARS research, SETI and others are just the beginning of a much bigger picture, a picture that's very hard to predict. Who would have thought ten years ago when we talked about the "information superhighway" that we were going to be using the internet to cure diseases with distributed computing?
Information is power- it has been for a long time. The ability to send, receive, and process information instantaneously is really, really incredible. The more people realize this and come up with new, creative ways of using the internet and computers, the better.
Also, you can't beat all the amazing porn out there...
I'm sure this has been addressed here before, but I'm going to get on my soap box for a second.
Why the hell is there NOT a standard for computer education in this country now??? I can see how 10 years ago it would have been hard to predict where technology was going to go, but I think now we can really start teaching kids at least some of the basics as a mandatory public education requirement.
For example, when kids get out of school they should know what a byte is and how it relates to their computer. They should know how RAM is different from a processor or hard drive, and they should at least know basic HTML. And if I had my way, basic troubleshooting skills.
I work as the IT guy in a small design office. I work with people that sit in front of computers all day, yet I'm routinely asked "what is an EXE file", "what is a Megabyte", and "Why wont this 3 GB file go to the printer". These are very basic things in my mind.
There is no denying that computers are here to stay, and a lot of people will have to use them on a daily basis. It should be the responsibility of the government to make sure all these kiddies get some sort of an idea of what they are doing.
I think this question really goes to the heart of medical philosophy- is it a doctor's duty to make you live for as long as possible? Undo God's work?
The world was not designed to be a fair place. Some people get the short end of the stick. It sucks, but that's the way it is. If we start (ok, continue) throwing a wrench in the works and giving everyone an equal chance at life, the universe is going to compensate for that. If everyone lives to be 150, the world does not have enough resources to support everyone, and then there are famines, wars, blah blah blah.
It's sad that some people don't get that fair shot, that they are doomed from the start, but it's not our place to start messing with that.
On the outset, it does seem like a really, really cool idea to be able to OC the human brain, but stop and think about the social repercussions. Remember how there were always those guy in high school that did amazingly well in their classes, were stars of the basketball team, and never got a pimple? Remember how much you hated them?
Imagine if their parents were just rich enough to buy that. Instead of nature deciding who's going to be smart, athletic, top of the class (I know environmental factors are just as important, but bare with me) parents just buy the features they want. Think about how you felt towards the kids that were gifted in school. Now thing about know they were made that way, not just lucky.
GM'ed people, while interesting, would have a really, really hard time. Most of us would probably be very bitter towards them and the people that could afford to have GM work done on their children.
As an American (not that I am particularly happy with this country right now), I have always believed that anyone can become president, a CEO, whatever they want. However, I think this is the final divider between the haves and have-nots. OCing the human brain seems harmless, but the social repercussions are endless.
This is changing the subject a little bit- but staying on the topic of non-violent video games; How much of a market is there? I am in the very early stages of creating a video game as part of a class (gotta love liberal arts colleges...) and I keep hoping that we can create something along the lines of the Myst series- interactive, engaging, immersive and fun. But look at the market right now. There is nothing that does not have an emphasis on violence.
Violence, or rather, conflict, is at the nature of a story, whether it's a person versus another person, or a person versus the unknown, there is always a conflict.
Unfortunately, video games are primarily concerned with violent conflict. Although there was an element of it in the Myst games, they did a good job of keeping it minimal. Now we need more games like that exploring conflict in a non-violent way. Maybe adapt some Jane Austin books to games...
From the CNN Article:
"The firm's philosophy is simple. If it looks intelligent and it sounds intelligence, then it must be intelligent."
Did HAL himself, with his basic language skills and poor grammer put this sentance together? Sounds intelligence to me!