I've heard about the scratching problem on X-Box 360s from more places than this article. If a "majority" are okay, it doesn't mean it's not a problem. If any systems are scratching disks then it's a risk. The question is, is it an *acceptable* disk? If just 5% of X-box 360s scratched disks so they became unplayable, then that's bad enough that Microsoft deserves more than just a black eye for it.
I can't help but make a comment on this. I repair machines in a plastics factory, we make parts for dashboards in various vehicles. For us, defective products are measured in PPM (and I'm sure it's the same across the industry). It's short for Parts Per Million.
We have internal PPM - scratched parts, short shots, bad paint, etc., that are caught by the operators and quality inspectors before they leave the building. More importantly is external PPM - defective parts that we didn't catch, that made it out of the building to the customer site and were rejected and sent back. Naturally, this makes our customers angry and costs us a bundle (since we pay for shipping both ways).
Just today I overheard a meeting between a line boss and his operators. He was ranting over how terrible our PPM scores were: Internal - 23,000 External - 151.
Yes, that's 151 bad parts per million that we produced and sent out of our building. That's less than 0.02% defect rate. If our external PPM ever got over 1% for a particular department (1000 parts per million), it would not be surprising to see some operators and quality inspectors fired. In my plants, a 4-digit PPM is a capitol crime.
Now, to hear that there may be 5% of XBox 360's that scratch discs makes me shudder. That's high enough for a full recall of all products while the issue was sorted out.
I'm guessing that you were just making up a figure, but you picked a rather large one.
When kids play with dolls, they skip over the boring stuff!
Um, are you sure you've ever seen a couple of little girls playing with dolls? I have a 9 year old sister, and I'm 23, young enough to vaguely remember that time in my life, but too old to feel into it. When she was about 6, her friend would come over and bring all her dolls on a weekly basis.
I caught snippets of what they were doing... do you think they were doing something grandiose? Like a wedding ceremony? Childbirth? Heck no, they were into changing diapers, talking on little fake plastic phones, washing little plastic dishes in the kitchen set my mom purchased for her. All mundane stuff.
I believe there's a simple reason too. If they pretend a little wedding ceremony between two dolls, what happens when it's over? Children don't understand what really happens on a honeymoon. What about childbirth? How many six year old girls even understand the basic concept beyond a stork delivery? The fact is, acting out a large, exciting event puts a defined end to their playtime. They know once the wedding is over, they have to pick something new and exciting to do, whereas small, simple tasks never really have an end, they are continuously engrossing.
And therein lies the addiction of the Sims. The mundane tasks are never done, you get constant sources of satisfaction and a small (but fake) feeling of accomplishment.
When the bacteria eaten by the mosquitoes begin hurting us, everybody will realize that -after all- they were not just "bad".
Typical biological intervention which reverts against us.
Mosquitoes do not eat bacteria. They are nectar drinkers, with the female ones requiring an additional diet of animal blood.
I'm racking my brain, but I cannot think of a negative reason to remove mosquitoes from cities. Other than reducing spread of West Nile virus and malaria, the only real effect would be a lack of bug bites and a reduced diet for spiders and birds that feed on them.
I have it even worse, I used to work with a guy named David D. Rouse. He initialed "DDR" on all his tools and paperwork. My head gets all fuzzy trying to figure out what he's doing on Slashdot everytime I see the acronym.
I've had emotional responses from games. The ending to Final Fantasy X was definitely one of them. As soon as I finished it I had to go get FFX-2 just to see what happens next.
I've had a moment of triumph once and scared the crap out of my girlfriend (at the time, we're married now). I was having a moment of triumph while playing Dark Age of Camelot. For those who've played it and know what I mean... it was about a month after the New Frontiers expansion when people were still experimenting with taking towers and building up castles and such. I saw a nearby tower burst into flames on my minimap and went running, solo, as a paladin, to try to save the thing. When I got there, the door was at 10%, about to cave in. I quickly rushed in and up to the top, put down a pot of boiling oil and poured it. I killed 7 of the 8 people down there on the first pour, the second finished them off. I was so excited that I jumped up out of my chair and yelled "YES!" at the top of my lungs. A couple more hits and they would've had the tower, it was just perfect timing.
To date, though, there's only one gaming moment that brought a tear to my eye. The very end of the ending FMV for Kingdom Hearts. Kairi is wandering alone through the island where she grew up, and finds a drawing that she and Sora had made as a kid. She makes a little addition, and it's only on the screen for a second, but it just about jerked my heart up into my throat. I don't want to ruin too much, but for RPG fans, I suggest you check it out.
In this case, predicting the future and then altering it by doing something in the present just means you switched to an alternate universe. the other one still exists... and you still clicked the link.. you just don't know about it because in your current universe you didn't click it.
Yes, I think that this really isn't news. I remember hearing over a decade ago about people who would buy a bottle of expensive perfume/cologne, pour half of it into a container at home, fill it back up with water and return it.
I hate having to spend hours a week cleaning people's dying machines of these damned things, they can completely make a system useless in less than a month with some of the less intelligent users out there.
Surely you meant less experienced or less knowledgeable computer users. One of my clients owns a law firm, makes big bucks, and can easily hold his end of a complicated philosophical debate at the dinner table. But, he somehow can't seem to keep spy/ad/malware off his machine. But you assume he is less intelligent than you or I.
I have a similar story. I won't even post it Anonymously, though my move was probably far more stupid.
I had a fantastic full-time job at a computer warehouse. I started as a temp for $8.50, and was hired when I proved to be a very fast learner. In less than a year, I was making $11 an hour. I was dating at the time, and had a great roommate (a high school buddy), so my bills were cut in half. Trust me, $11 an hour was a king's salary as far as I was concerned. I got to know and like everyone I worked with, even the CEO. We were only about 50 people, and I knew them all by name, their spouse, how many kids, etc. We had hotdog and hamburger grill-outs every friday (paid by the company) during the summer, and grinders and/or pizza for every mandatory meeting. Bagels and donuts were always free every day in the break room. This is just the kind of company it was.
Then, I got stupid. I started staying up all nights on Saturday night hanging out with friends, or cramming for finals. Sunday night I would crash so hard that I'd sleep through my alarm clock Monday morning. This happened three times, once I was even two and a half hours late to work. I was confronted and got real defensive. People didn't forget it.
About a month later, profits came crashing down after the boom from all of our customers replacing their computer systems from Y2K. There were three rounds of layoffs to try to keep the company afloat, 5-10 people each time. I was shocked and angered when I was part of the third group.
In retrospect, had I been my boss, I would've made sure that I was in the first group, not the last. I was undependable, a slackoff (making sure to use every sick day available to me each year, even if I had to fake it), and generally not a very hard worker.
In my pigheaded pride, I was determined to find a better, higher-paying job in the same field with my Associate's Degree in hand. This was about the time that everything was starting to be outsourced to India, too. After two months, my savings ran dry, and unemployment checks could barely cover rent. I moved in with a college friend in another city, who said he could get me a job where he worked, programming cash registers. It never happened.
After nine months of unemployment, I had to move back home. My parents wouldn't take me, so I stayed on my grandparents' couch (literally) while I waited for a call from a local factory. I'd been hired, but they didn't have a place for me yet. It took them a month. By then, my unemployment extension had run out. They gave me a second-shift job running a paint line, hanging plastic parts on racks, for $8.00 an hour. I was making more on unemployment.
You know what? After ten months on my ass, I was so grateful for $8.00 an hour I nearly cried. I came really close to giving up my car, or worse, losing my girlfriend (fiance now, we're getting married next month). I worked harder than I thought I could. It took two weeks before I didn't come home in agony with muscles tied in knots. After two months, I took an internal job posting as die setter, then six months later (after fantastic reviews), took a job as preventative maintenance technician. I can't disclose my current wage, but it's definitely much higher than I've ever made before, anywhere.
Am I happy? Definitely. Learning makes me happy, and my company is gladly sending me to college to get my Journeyman's Certificate. Do I enjoy my job? Sometimes. Frankly, I don't think that matters, because every day I come home, to a house with a garage, both of which I own, to a wonderful woman, whom I will marry.
A job is a job is a job. And career is spelled: "W-O-R-K." Don't let your job be everything, but definitely don't neglect it. People don't become CEO's by complaining about their workload, or trying to find loopholes in the company handbook for extra sick days.
I almost did my taxes last year with H&R Block's free online form. It wasn't until the very end, after spending nearly an hour filling out forms, that they revealed that it is only free online filing for Federal taxes. They charge $19.95 (and up, depending on options) for filing state, even through their "free" program.
It really ticked me off, since I remembered filing my taxes for free in 2003 online. I dug around and finally remembered it wasn't through H&R Block, but Intuit. If you make less than a certain amount ($30-35k is the max, can't remember exactly), then you can file both Federal and State online for free. The catch: you'll have to dig forever to find the link to it on Intuit's page, you'll have better luck going straight to this url: http://www.taxfreedom.com.
Keep in mind they haven't updated this page yet for tax year 2004, it probably won't be updated until the end of this month.
You need to read A Signal Shattered by Eric S. Nylund. I don't want to reveal too much, but a major plotline involves making a beowulf cluster of human minds. Very well written too.
He also wrote the first and third of the Halo book series. They are the only ones worth reading imo, because the second book (by William Dietz) is basically a play-by-play of the game. Incredibly boring and repetitive (Master chief fires his gun at the enemy, then fires at another, then fires at another. Then, he reloads, and throws a grenade. etc etc), and you might as well just go play the game.
Anyway, Eric's ideas in A Signal Shattered are fantastic, and he actually realizes that computers aren't going to stay separate from people and combined to number-crunching tasks, but will eventually be integrated with people as an extension of themselves. Really a great read.
For a minute, I pictured the Army's new class of robots being "stress tested" via shotgun fire. I was really wondering if that was such a good idea... I mean, who expects a machine to stand up to a hit from a shotgun?
I know the robots in System Shock 2 certainly didn't last long.
I'd consider 256MB the bare mimumum, MAYBE 192 in an emergency, but X alone uses 59MB.
I have a Compaq LTE Elite 4/75cx (486DX 75Mhz) with 16Mb of RAM, 2Gb hard drive, 10Mbps ethernet, 28.8 kbps modem, and a floppy drive. I run Redhat Linux 7.0 on it.
It took hours to install (like 6-8 hrs), and takes 90+ seconds to start up, but it does run. Also runs Mozilla pretty fast.
Linux is extremely good at using swap space, it doesn't freak out and lock up when memory gets low like Win 9x would do quite often. If you want a quick responding computer, then yes, 256Mb RAM is minimum, but in a pinch, nothing beats the portability of my old-ass laptop.
Oh, and it cost me $40 plus shipping when I bought it earlier this year.
Nobody expects them to delay their release, the question was: "Any chance this bombshell move could force MS/Bungie to push up the release date?"
Knowing that it is available now on the internet, they would be wise to release it sooner to the public in order to turn would-be downloaders into sales. Halo 2 has such a high demand that the hardcore fans will download it if they can get it sooner, and once they have it, why bother paying for it?
However, the percentage of customers who have modded xboxes, a fast connection to download a DVD image in a reasonable amount of time, the means to get it running, and who also won't buy the game when it comes out on shelves (and can stand playing the PAL version with French dialogue) are probably too small to matter to MS/Bungie, and not enough of a threat to their profits.
I'm surprised no one has gone back and remade it, or touched it up.
They have. The folks over at http://sshock2.com keep up to date on all the information. One of the upgrades is an increase in detail to the models of the AI figures. It's called Rebirth. I love it, it really gives an upgrade to the "ghosts" you see in the game who have pointy hands (anyone who's played SS2 knows what I'm talking about).
On the heels of Rebirth came the hi-res texture mod called SHTUP (pronounced shtoop).
There was also an upgrade to the cutscenes in the game, by a group called Wuggles Unlimited, but they seem to have disappeared (lack of hosting).
Look around, there are still fans of SS2 doing work with it!
One night he actually got abducted by aliens! How cool is that?
It gets scarier than that. As anyone who's purchased the guide book knows, any male adult in the Sims 2 who is abducted by aliens will become pregnant (yes, I did say male, apparently the aliens aren't interested in impregnating women). Here's a quote from the Prima Guide:
Alien Abduction
If Sims use the Stargaze interaction with the expensive telescope (Farstar e3 Telescome) at night, there is a chance they'll be abducted by aliens. Abducted sims are returned to the lot three hours later.
If the abductee is a male adult, he always returns from the ordeal impregnated with an alien baby.
Other than the "mother" being male, alien pregnancies are identical to normal ones.
Apparently the alien children inherit none of their father's genetics except for eye color.
My main problem concerning buddy icons and avatars and such is that the selections are simply too limited. I mean, sure, there's a few thousand to pick from, and even categorized, but still finding something that seems to fit me just doesn't happen. I imagine this will be far worse with a 3D avatar based system, since the selection will be much larger, and it just won't be possible for the average person to make their own (like they currently do with animated GIFs and such).
Also, it mentions charging for the service. I personally wouldn't not pay any amount, not even a few pesos a month, for such a service. Instant Messaging is just not something I associate with fees, like web page browsing, or IRC. Besides, if it becomes popular, someone will make a free version of it, or if everyone else thinks it costs too much, it will die a quick death.
It will take some real work to pull this off, but gratz if they do.
Brooks was doing this stuff twenty years ago, and took it about as far as it's going to go.
Yes, how insightful. Everything that could ever be discovered in this particular field has been. It's time to close the books on this forever. Every time I hear this kind of comment, it sets off my "idiot" alarm.
My favorite was from my professor in Applied Electricity. We were in the second week, going over Ohm's Law, I asked how the equations worked when the resistance dropped to zero, like in a superconductor. He said that it was impossible to have no resistance in a wire, "super" conductors cannot exist. (He even used his fingers to make quotation marks in the air when he said "super," because he'd never heard the word before). This was two months ago.
Basically, any time you think that any single topic has been completely explored, and there's nothing left to learn is probably when you're the most wrong. It's the sign of a closed mind, you might as well sell everything, quit your job, and move into a cabin in the mountains, you're definitely not going to contribute any more to society.
Until I see a robot that is entirely indistinguishable from a real insect, there's still more left to explore. In fact, even then, there's more left to do, like miniaturization, self-replication, and so on ad infinitum.
I've actually thought about that a lot. I mean, seriously, if your mind is running in a computer program, then it must have a way to start up or shut down, which means it saves to a file, not running in ram continuously (except maybe MRAM, but it still must be able to "boot" the first time).
Therefore, if you were chatting with a person in a computer and said something that ticked them off and they refused to talk to you anymore, simply shut it down, resore from backup, and restart. Murder? Not really, there's no death. I think it's worse.
And think of the first person who has this procedure done. How many times will his/her processes have to be shut down and restarted, or how many simultaneous instances would be run?
I wholeheartedly agree with you, this should be disallowed, but it's not murder.
But then again, if a human intelligence, even if copied, is to precious for us to research with, then who is to say a created (artificial) intelligence is any less precious.
One or the other is going to happen eventually. We need to be prepared for that day. Much like the first cloned human.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be curious to know if I'm the only person that doesn't have that preference. I've got a browser.sessionhistory.max_entries, but that's it.
That's okay, when I checked mine, it is currently set to -1??!??
No, I think this means that video games = formaldehyde for your brain cells. Keeps it from ever aging.
I've heard about the scratching problem on X-Box 360s from more places than this article. If a "majority" are okay, it doesn't mean it's not a problem. If any systems are scratching disks then it's a risk. The question is, is it an *acceptable* disk? If just 5% of X-box 360s scratched disks so they became unplayable, then that's bad enough that Microsoft deserves more than just a black eye for it.
I can't help but make a comment on this. I repair machines in a plastics factory, we make parts for dashboards in various vehicles. For us, defective products are measured in PPM (and I'm sure it's the same across the industry). It's short for Parts Per Million.
We have internal PPM - scratched parts, short shots, bad paint, etc., that are caught by the operators and quality inspectors before they leave the building. More importantly is external PPM - defective parts that we didn't catch, that made it out of the building to the customer site and were rejected and sent back. Naturally, this makes our customers angry and costs us a bundle (since we pay for shipping both ways).
Just today I overheard a meeting between a line boss and his operators. He was ranting over how terrible our PPM scores were: Internal - 23,000 External - 151.
Yes, that's 151 bad parts per million that we produced and sent out of our building. That's less than 0.02% defect rate. If our external PPM ever got over 1% for a particular department (1000 parts per million), it would not be surprising to see some operators and quality inspectors fired. In my plants, a 4-digit PPM is a capitol crime.
Now, to hear that there may be 5% of XBox 360's that scratch discs makes me shudder. That's high enough for a full recall of all products while the issue was sorted out.
I'm guessing that you were just making up a figure, but you picked a rather large one.
When kids play with dolls, they skip over the boring stuff!
Um, are you sure you've ever seen a couple of little girls playing with dolls? I have a 9 year old sister, and I'm 23, young enough to vaguely remember that time in my life, but too old to feel into it. When she was about 6, her friend would come over and bring all her dolls on a weekly basis.
I caught snippets of what they were doing... do you think they were doing something grandiose? Like a wedding ceremony? Childbirth? Heck no, they were into changing diapers, talking on little fake plastic phones, washing little plastic dishes in the kitchen set my mom purchased for her. All mundane stuff.
I believe there's a simple reason too. If they pretend a little wedding ceremony between two dolls, what happens when it's over? Children don't understand what really happens on a honeymoon. What about childbirth? How many six year old girls even understand the basic concept beyond a stork delivery? The fact is, acting out a large, exciting event puts a defined end to their playtime. They know once the wedding is over, they have to pick something new and exciting to do, whereas small, simple tasks never really have an end, they are continuously engrossing.
And therein lies the addiction of the Sims. The mundane tasks are never done, you get constant sources of satisfaction and a small (but fake) feeling of accomplishment.
When the bacteria eaten by the mosquitoes begin hurting us, everybody will realize that -after all- they were not just "bad".
Typical biological intervention which reverts against us.
Mosquitoes do not eat bacteria. They are nectar drinkers, with the female ones requiring an additional diet of animal blood.
I'm racking my brain, but I cannot think of a negative reason to remove mosquitoes from cities. Other than reducing spread of West Nile virus and malaria, the only real effect would be a lack of bug bites and a reduced diet for spiders and birds that feed on them.
Could be worse, you could live in Mississippi, where they don't teach fractions anymore.
I have it even worse, I used to work with a guy named David D. Rouse. He initialed "DDR" on all his tools and paperwork. My head gets all fuzzy trying to figure out what he's doing on Slashdot everytime I see the acronym.
I've had emotional responses from games. The ending to Final Fantasy X was definitely one of them. As soon as I finished it I had to go get FFX-2 just to see what happens next.
I've had a moment of triumph once and scared the crap out of my girlfriend (at the time, we're married now). I was having a moment of triumph while playing Dark Age of Camelot. For those who've played it and know what I mean... it was about a month after the New Frontiers expansion when people were still experimenting with taking towers and building up castles and such. I saw a nearby tower burst into flames on my minimap and went running, solo, as a paladin, to try to save the thing. When I got there, the door was at 10%, about to cave in. I quickly rushed in and up to the top, put down a pot of boiling oil and poured it. I killed 7 of the 8 people down there on the first pour, the second finished them off. I was so excited that I jumped up out of my chair and yelled "YES!" at the top of my lungs. A couple more hits and they would've had the tower, it was just perfect timing.
To date, though, there's only one gaming moment that brought a tear to my eye. The very end of the ending FMV for Kingdom Hearts. Kairi is wandering alone through the island where she grew up, and finds a drawing that she and Sora had made as a kid. She makes a little addition, and it's only on the screen for a second, but it just about jerked my heart up into my throat. I don't want to ruin too much, but for RPG fans, I suggest you check it out.
Quantum Link was America Online?
Sorry, you got that backwards, America Online was Quantum Link.
Not in the theory of multiple universes..
In this case, predicting the future and then altering it by doing something in the present just means you switched to an alternate universe. the other one still exists... and you still clicked the link.. you just don't know about it because in your current universe you didn't click it.
In other words, go watch Primer.
Yes, I think that this really isn't news. I remember hearing over a decade ago about people who would buy a bottle of expensive perfume/cologne, pour half of it into a container at home, fill it back up with water and return it.
People acted shocked back then, too.
I hate having to spend hours a week cleaning people's dying machines of these damned things, they can completely make a system useless in less than a month with some of the less intelligent users out there.
Surely you meant less experienced or less knowledgeable computer users. One of my clients owns a law firm, makes big bucks, and can easily hold his end of a complicated philosophical debate at the dinner table. But, he somehow can't seem to keep spy/ad/malware off his machine. But you assume he is less intelligent than you or I.
Now that's elitism.
I have a similar story. I won't even post it Anonymously, though my move was probably far more stupid.
I had a fantastic full-time job at a computer warehouse. I started as a temp for $8.50, and was hired when I proved to be a very fast learner. In less than a year, I was making $11 an hour. I was dating at the time, and had a great roommate (a high school buddy), so my bills were cut in half. Trust me, $11 an hour was a king's salary as far as I was concerned. I got to know and like everyone I worked with, even the CEO. We were only about 50 people, and I knew them all by name, their spouse, how many kids, etc. We had hotdog and hamburger grill-outs every friday (paid by the company) during the summer, and grinders and/or pizza for every mandatory meeting. Bagels and donuts were always free every day in the break room. This is just the kind of company it was.
Then, I got stupid. I started staying up all nights on Saturday night hanging out with friends, or cramming for finals. Sunday night I would crash so hard that I'd sleep through my alarm clock Monday morning. This happened three times, once I was even two and a half hours late to work. I was confronted and got real defensive. People didn't forget it.
About a month later, profits came crashing down after the boom from all of our customers replacing their computer systems from Y2K. There were three rounds of layoffs to try to keep the company afloat, 5-10 people each time. I was shocked and angered when I was part of the third group.
In retrospect, had I been my boss, I would've made sure that I was in the first group, not the last. I was undependable, a slackoff (making sure to use every sick day available to me each year, even if I had to fake it), and generally not a very hard worker.
In my pigheaded pride, I was determined to find a better, higher-paying job in the same field with my Associate's Degree in hand. This was about the time that everything was starting to be outsourced to India, too. After two months, my savings ran dry, and unemployment checks could barely cover rent. I moved in with a college friend in another city, who said he could get me a job where he worked, programming cash registers. It never happened.
After nine months of unemployment, I had to move back home. My parents wouldn't take me, so I stayed on my grandparents' couch (literally) while I waited for a call from a local factory. I'd been hired, but they didn't have a place for me yet. It took them a month. By then, my unemployment extension had run out. They gave me a second-shift job running a paint line, hanging plastic parts on racks, for $8.00 an hour. I was making more on unemployment.
You know what? After ten months on my ass, I was so grateful for $8.00 an hour I nearly cried. I came really close to giving up my car, or worse, losing my girlfriend (fiance now, we're getting married next month). I worked harder than I thought I could. It took two weeks before I didn't come home in agony with muscles tied in knots. After two months, I took an internal job posting as die setter, then six months later (after fantastic reviews), took a job as preventative maintenance technician. I can't disclose my current wage, but it's definitely much higher than I've ever made before, anywhere.
Am I happy? Definitely. Learning makes me happy, and my company is gladly sending me to college to get my Journeyman's Certificate. Do I enjoy my job? Sometimes. Frankly, I don't think that matters, because every day I come home, to a house with a garage, both of which I own, to a wonderful woman, whom I will marry.
A job is a job is a job. And career is spelled: "W-O-R-K." Don't let your job be everything, but definitely don't neglect it. People don't become CEO's by complaining about their workload, or trying to find loopholes in the company handbook for extra sick days.
I almost did my taxes last year with H&R Block's free online form. It wasn't until the very end, after spending nearly an hour filling out forms, that they revealed that it is only free online filing for Federal taxes. They charge $19.95 (and up, depending on options) for filing state, even through their "free" program.
It really ticked me off, since I remembered filing my taxes for free in 2003 online. I dug around and finally remembered it wasn't through H&R Block, but Intuit. If you make less than a certain amount ($30-35k is the max, can't remember exactly), then you can file both Federal and State online for free. The catch: you'll have to dig forever to find the link to it on Intuit's page, you'll have better luck going straight to this url: http://www.taxfreedom.com.
Keep in mind they haven't updated this page yet for tax year 2004, it probably won't be updated until the end of this month.
Can we make a beowulf cluster of him?
You need to read A Signal Shattered by Eric S. Nylund. I don't want to reveal too much, but a major plotline involves making a beowulf cluster of human minds. Very well written too.
He also wrote the first and third of the Halo book series. They are the only ones worth reading imo, because the second book (by William Dietz) is basically a play-by-play of the game. Incredibly boring and repetitive (Master chief fires his gun at the enemy, then fires at another, then fires at another. Then, he reloads, and throws a grenade. etc etc), and you might as well just go play the game.
Anyway, Eric's ideas in A Signal Shattered are fantastic, and he actually realizes that computers aren't going to stay separate from people and combined to number-crunching tasks, but will eventually be integrated with people as an extension of themselves. Really a great read.
For a minute, I pictured the Army's new class of robots being "stress tested" via shotgun fire. I was really wondering if that was such a good idea... I mean, who expects a machine to stand up to a hit from a shotgun?
I know the robots in System Shock 2 certainly didn't last long.
I'd consider 256MB the bare mimumum, MAYBE 192 in an emergency, but X alone uses 59MB.
I have a Compaq LTE Elite 4/75cx (486DX 75Mhz) with 16Mb of RAM, 2Gb hard drive, 10Mbps ethernet, 28.8 kbps modem, and a floppy drive. I run Redhat Linux 7.0 on it.
It took hours to install (like 6-8 hrs), and takes 90+ seconds to start up, but it does run. Also runs Mozilla pretty fast.
Linux is extremely good at using swap space, it doesn't freak out and lock up when memory gets low like Win 9x would do quite often. If you want a quick responding computer, then yes, 256Mb RAM is minimum, but in a pinch, nothing beats the portability of my old-ass laptop.
Oh, and it cost me $40 plus shipping when I bought it earlier this year.
Nobody expects them to delay their release, the question was: "Any chance this bombshell move could force MS/Bungie to push up the release date?"
Knowing that it is available now on the internet, they would be wise to release it sooner to the public in order to turn would-be downloaders into sales. Halo 2 has such a high demand that the hardcore fans will download it if they can get it sooner, and once they have it, why bother paying for it?
However, the percentage of customers who have modded xboxes, a fast connection to download a DVD image in a reasonable amount of time, the means to get it running, and who also won't buy the game when it comes out on shelves (and can stand playing the PAL version with French dialogue) are probably too small to matter to MS/Bungie, and not enough of a threat to their profits.
I'm surprised no one has gone back and remade it, or touched it up.
They have. The folks over at http://sshock2.com keep up to date on all the information. One of the upgrades is an increase in detail to the models of the AI figures. It's called Rebirth. I love it, it really gives an upgrade to the "ghosts" you see in the game who have pointy hands (anyone who's played SS2 knows what I'm talking about).
On the heels of Rebirth came the hi-res texture mod called SHTUP (pronounced shtoop).
There was also an upgrade to the cutscenes in the game, by a group called Wuggles Unlimited, but they seem to have disappeared (lack of hosting).
Look around, there are still fans of SS2 doing work with it!
I prefer exuberance. I hear it's quite insubstantial.
One night he actually got abducted by aliens! How cool is that?
It gets scarier than that. As anyone who's purchased the guide book knows, any male adult in the Sims 2 who is abducted by aliens will become pregnant (yes, I did say male, apparently the aliens aren't interested in impregnating women). Here's a quote from the Prima Guide:
Alien Abduction
If Sims use the Stargaze interaction with the expensive telescope (Farstar e3 Telescome) at night, there is a chance they'll be abducted by aliens. Abducted sims are returned to the lot three hours later.
If the abductee is a male adult, he always returns from the ordeal impregnated with an alien baby.
Other than the "mother" being male, alien pregnancies are identical to normal ones.
Apparently the alien children inherit none of their father's genetics except for eye color.
My main problem concerning buddy icons and avatars and such is that the selections are simply too limited. I mean, sure, there's a few thousand to pick from, and even categorized, but still finding something that seems to fit me just doesn't happen. I imagine this will be far worse with a 3D avatar based system, since the selection will be much larger, and it just won't be possible for the average person to make their own (like they currently do with animated GIFs and such).
Also, it mentions charging for the service. I personally wouldn't not pay any amount, not even a few pesos a month, for such a service. Instant Messaging is just not something I associate with fees, like web page browsing, or IRC. Besides, if it becomes popular, someone will make a free version of it, or if everyone else thinks it costs too much, it will die a quick death.
It will take some real work to pull this off, but gratz if they do.
Brooks was doing this stuff twenty years ago, and took it about as far as it's going to go.
Yes, how insightful. Everything that could ever be discovered in this particular field has been. It's time to close the books on this forever. Every time I hear this kind of comment, it sets off my "idiot" alarm.
My favorite was from my professor in Applied Electricity. We were in the second week, going over Ohm's Law, I asked how the equations worked when the resistance dropped to zero, like in a superconductor. He said that it was impossible to have no resistance in a wire, "super" conductors cannot exist. (He even used his fingers to make quotation marks in the air when he said "super," because he'd never heard the word before). This was two months ago.
Basically, any time you think that any single topic has been completely explored, and there's nothing left to learn is probably when you're the most wrong. It's the sign of a closed mind, you might as well sell everything, quit your job, and move into a cabin in the mountains, you're definitely not going to contribute any more to society.
Until I see a robot that is entirely indistinguishable from a real insect, there's still more left to explore. In fact, even then, there's more left to do, like miniaturization, self-replication, and so on ad infinitum.
Also, maybe those numbers are traps to catch people? Surely you need those goods to be sent to an address and someone has to eventually pick it up.
Not if what you're purchasing isn't physical, like the registration to a porn site.
I've actually thought about that a lot. I mean, seriously, if your mind is running in a computer program, then it must have a way to start up or shut down, which means it saves to a file, not running in ram continuously (except maybe MRAM, but it still must be able to "boot" the first time).
Therefore, if you were chatting with a person in a computer and said something that ticked them off and they refused to talk to you anymore, simply shut it down, resore from backup, and restart. Murder? Not really, there's no death. I think it's worse.
And think of the first person who has this procedure done. How many times will his/her processes have to be shut down and restarted, or how many simultaneous instances would be run?
I wholeheartedly agree with you, this should be disallowed, but it's not murder.
But then again, if a human intelligence, even if copied, is to precious for us to research with, then who is to say a created (artificial) intelligence is any less precious.
One or the other is going to happen eventually. We need to be prepared for that day. Much like the first cloned human.