People who's main skill is fund-raising enough money to get elected are even less qualified.
"This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is on my Netflix list, so I haven't watched it yet. But at least the MPAA system is voluntary. A theater can choose to show any unrated film they like, and of course open themselves to complaints from anyone with a holier-than-thou attitude that likes to write letters. The MPAA makes no laws.
And video games already have the equivalent voluntary ratings system in the form of the ESRB. (Which also has it's problems, of which, as a video game maker, I am intimately familiar with.)
But the government should not be in control over what people can and cannot watch, or we might as well tear up the First Amendment right now. It's being mangled enough already.
But his proposal is not like films at all. Films ratings are set by a non-government group called the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
Keep government out of it and let the free market decide what to do.
While this problem only affects some small portion of the people that purchased the 20 or so titles, I think it would be highly educational for Sony if every single one of those discs was turned in for replacement...
Since the members of Second Life already protested about a virtual tax in the past, slapping an extra real-world tax on top of what they are already required to report as income would be sure to cause an uproar.
While the "Linden Dollar" has a market value in the real world, as long as it isn't being bought or sold, just bartered inside the virtual world, there is no sale to be taxed. It's the world "dollar" in "Linden Dollar" that might twist people's attention. If it was "bottlecaps" or "Flanian pobble beads" it's true barter nature might be more obvious.
Don't assume that the people who have the time and wherewithal to burn some rainforest and plant a crop will stop just because bio-fuels go out of fashion and crops grown specifically for them are no longer the most profitable crop.
They will still burn down some rainforest and plant some other crop. It's not the need for a particular crop that drives them to burn rainforest land, its the need for ANY crop that will net them the money to live.
So don't blame bio-fuels for the burning of rainforests. That's going to happen anyway and is its own problem looking for a solution.
I still prefer nuclear for our primary energy source. People tend to dwell on the chance of something negative coming from nuclear power while ignoring the certainty of the harm that comes from most other forms of energy production.
Not that some people aren't willing to make stuff up to taint an energy source that isn't their favorite. You know, like implying that the rainforests are being burned down because of it...
(Actually, the ejection seat trick uses different code. You can't change the seat offset once someone is sitting on it, or at least, someone already sitting on it won't move if you do. Since you want a legitimate driver to be sitting in the driver's seat, that's where you set the offset. To eject someone that doesn't have "the keys", you unsit them and give them a physics push instead.)
When you choose a place to sit down in Second Life, it tries to put your avatar's rear end right there on the surface where you clicked. But since many things you may want to sit on/in require you to be in a particular place (driver's seat, hanging upside-down by your ankles, etc) a script command was added that lets the script pick the spot.
Linden Lab forgot to set a limit on this function. (Read: bug)
But people started getting creative with it. "Sit" on a signpost who's sit offset is 150 meters straight up. The signpost then forces you to stand up. You are now in your private "skybox" and are free to hang upside-down by your ankles in semi-relative privacy.
This unintentional form of teleportation bug is so ingrained in that virtual world now that it can never be fixed. Though Linden Lab did at least cap it to 300 meters, and prevent it from crossing simulator boundaries, which keeps the "bug" flavor to a minimum.
(Of course, there is a better method these days that transcends those limits, using llSetPrimitiveParams and a list of many repeating, distant position commands... Another "keeper" bug?)
"For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking every voting machine with 'red teams' of computer experts and to study the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes."
People that like football are more likely to buy and play football video games....And maybe people that get a kick out of driving fast and dangerous also like to play games that let them do the same thing for fun.
Sheesh. Jumping to conclusions is one thing, but these days jumping to causation is a far more widespread.
You take your chances in everything. In some things, the risk is small, in others the risk is large. In closed systems, like a slot machine or poker game, we know exactly what the odds are. But for life in general, everything is jumbled up and interacting. As you point out. Risk can't be absolute.
But just because the odds can't be known precisely, doesn't mean they can be tested to some extent. The odds of me getting hit by lightning vary greatly by my location, the objects around me, and the current weather. But you can calculate the over-all chance of being hit as 1 in 5000 over the course of your lifetime (however long that may be, another variable) and by knowing under what conditions people have been struck in the past and avoiding those conditions, you know that your chances will be better than average.
There is a theme running through your post highlighted by such phrases as: "uncertainty and ignorance", "absolutely no idea", and "completely unknown to science". (That last one was in regard to prions, the idea of which was first proposed by Tikvah Alper and J.S. Griffith in 1960, so they were known, just not by you.) This suggests your general outlook is that we don't know anything about some things, and therefore should avoid doing those things since the risk is completely unknown.
I'd agree with that. But I'd add that, if someone DOES know something about those things, then they can calculate at least some lower limit of risk, and therefore can do at least something that is within that limit. And in doing that something, they learn more, can predict the risk with greater accuracy, and can do even more with adequate safety. Step after step, increasing our pool of knowledge, making things safer, and getting things done.
The problem comes when the layperson looks in on step 862 of a long chain of testing and learning, without the advantage of all the prior tests and accumulated knowledge on the subject, and sees a much wider expanse of risk than those who know a thing or two about it. That's when the layperson says "that's too dangerous" and the expert says "I know what I'm doing" and the layperson says "that's what they all say, prove it" to which the expert points to the vast store of knowledge that's been built up on the subject over tens or hundreds of years... Which the layperson doesn't (of course) read, and who doesn't (of course) change their mind on the subject.
Instead the layperson forms a petition, lobbies their government, and/or organizes rallies and protests.
This doesn't mean the layperson is an idiot (even if they sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide), as they may be just as much an expert in some other field with just as much accumulated knowledge backing them up. They may even have a few laypersons of their own to deal with.
It just means they've been distracted by the need to be a good person and make the world a better place. It is a noble need, or at least our culture defines it as such. But as distractions go, it can make it very hard to see an issue with perspective and true self-awareness (knowing what YOU don't know).
It's not really a matter of trusting the experts... Just knowing the odds are that they do know what they are doing.
The Cry3Bb1 protein was found in oral gavage studies to have a No Observed Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL) over 3200 mg/kg which exceeds the expected dietary exposure for humans by approximately 58000X. This level exceeded the livestock dietary exposure by 1000X.
Consuming as little as 1.8 litres of water (0.48 gal) in a single sitting may prove fatal for a person adhering to a low-sodium diet, or 3 litres (0.79 gallons) for a person on a normal diet.
Why is Greenpeace going after this damn corn when dihydrogen monoxide is tens of thousands of times more lethal? They really need to get their priorities straight...
Illegal!: The act Illegal: A recording of the act (photograph, video) Illegal?: A recording of a thought about the act (drawing) ILLEGAL?!?: The thought about the act (Thought Police, here we come...)
I've lived in Columbia, MD for the last 35 years - where the power grid IS burried - and can count the total number power outages I've experienced there on my fingers. Not only does the lack of visible wires-in-the-sky nicer on the eyes, but even after the foot or more of rain we've gotten in the past few days... The lights are all still on.
Columbia IS a unique city in that it was designed from the ground up in the early 60's. Planning for burried power and other utilities is much easier in that case than as a retrofit for an existing city.
But personally, I count burried wires among the many perks of living here.
This sort of slacking in education on the part of individual teachers is nothing new, and is not limited to online courses. It's human variation at its finest... Or worst, since when it's a teacher slacking, it hurts all the students under them.
I often tell about an experiment I did in college. I wrote a English Composition 101 paper with some carefully crafted mistakes and submitted it to the four teachers that taught that course. The final grades were: D, C, B, and A. For the same paper.
Of course, there's no real solution for this problem short of continuous monitoring of teacher performance. (If you are in school, fill out those teacher evaluations!)
If I were to pick an online education provider, I would look for one that has a well established evaluation system for it's professors/teachers.
They might end up letting most of 200.0.0.0/7 in, only tarpitting the worst/24s, and teergrubing all 24.0.0.0/8 because so few of their users get anything but spam from rr.com netblocks.
I'm sorry, but Babelfish isn't doing anything for this post. Anyone have a translation? It SOUNDS interesting...:)
"Hey, Mini-Me: You're doing alright... You're a bright kid, you know how to make good decisions, and you can tell right from wrong. Keep it up and use your abilities to take you as far and as high as you can dream of. You can make it. I know."
So I might be lying... It'll do the little tyke good to hear that from greatest authority on his future there is.
...Unless the Octogenarian-Me shows up at that moment and drags me away by the ear to teach ME a thing or two...
I've avoided home audio recording in most of my video projects to date, but I'm now doing a small featurette with voice acting. As the final project will be for airing on the internet under compression, I'm not TOO worried about perfect audio quality. But I'm getting the hums of cheap mikes and unbalanced power connections that are the hallmark of amateur productions.
Ah well, that's what it is, after all.
All my previous work has been music videos with puppets and virtual sets. All amateur, all for fun. Check them out if interested...
Looking forward based on today's cutting-edge research (the sort of news Slashdot often reports), what technology do you find yourself impatient to get your hands on today, or which technologies aren't advancing as fast as you would wish?
I tend to keep a dozen or so previously recorded tapes in my camcorder bag for reference in the field. Having all my previous recordings on-line and in the camera would save me from lugging about all that tape, and make finding a particular clip easier. (Though some sort of searchable index might be a good idea in such a camera.)
It would also make better use of the available storage. I know that when I get close to the end of one tape and begin to record something new, I'm likely to rip open a new tape just in case the remaining space on the current one won't be enough. That space goes unused, wasted.
Along the same lines, there may be one clip on a tape that I do not want to lose, and so I lock the whole tape against re-recording. But I may care nothing about whatever else is on the tape, and would be more than happy to record over it. With a (large) hard drive solution, I could lock just the one clip, and delete/re-use all the remaining space.
Some people have said something along the lines of: "I don't want to have to copy over 25 hours of footage to my computer!" To those people I say, you aren't looking at this right. Don't think of it as an old tape-based camcorder. Think of it as a camcorder merged with a portable firewire drive. When you want to work with the video, you just hook the camera to your computer and edit. You don't HAVE to copy the files over to you desktop (or laptop)... Edit them in situ.
Anyone arguing that tapes are better would probably have been arguing against hard drives to begin with, back in the days of floppy-only storage. Have a 5.25 floppy, on me...
The companies that create the content that would be "aired" with video on demand will resist this model. They make a HUGE amount of money from sales of videotape and DVDs. (Mostly DVDs these days.) They earn far more this way than they would make with their cut of a per-hour or per-program fee.
Yes, this model could be adjusted to LET them make as much or more from this new method of delivery, but it would be such an upset to the established system that the resistance would be paralyzing. (Just think what it would do to companies like Blockbuster and Best Buy.)
There is also the psychological aspect of paying as you watch. It is simple to flop down in front of the tube these days and idly watch what's on, but when you know you'll be charged for it (whether you ENJOY it or not) will make viewers think twice before tuning in. It would cause a drastic reduction in the amount of television watched. This is not a bad thing - to us - but anyone who stands to make money off the viewing public would not want to alienate people from the medium.
Of course, all this is moot if one takes a more rational view. Video On Demand need only take the place (and expand on) the Pay-Per-View system already in place. When mixed with monthly fees for cable channels, it WILL work. It already is.
Perhaps the technology that allows a customer-direct link that Video On Demand requires will allow cable channels to provide regional programming. Just think, CNN-Local... Customized to your zip code.
Slashdot Mirror
People who's main skill is fund-raising enough money to get elected are even less qualified.
"This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is on my Netflix list, so I haven't watched it yet. But at least the MPAA system is voluntary. A theater can choose to show any unrated film they like, and of course open themselves to complaints from anyone with a holier-than-thou attitude that likes to write letters. The MPAA makes no laws.
And video games already have the equivalent voluntary ratings system in the form of the ESRB. (Which also has it's problems, of which, as a video game maker, I am intimately familiar with.)
But the government should not be in control over what people can and cannot watch, or we might as well tear up the First Amendment right now. It's being mangled enough already.
But his proposal is not like films at all. Films ratings are set by a non-government group called the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Keep government out of it and let the free market decide what to do.
While this problem only affects some small portion of the people that purchased the 20 or so titles, I think it would be highly educational for Sony if every single one of those discs was turned in for replacement...
Since the members of Second Life already protested about a virtual tax in the past, slapping an extra real-world tax on top of what they are already required to report as income would be sure to cause an uproar.
While the "Linden Dollar" has a market value in the real world, as long as it isn't being bought or sold, just bartered inside the virtual world, there is no sale to be taxed. It's the world "dollar" in "Linden Dollar" that might twist people's attention. If it was "bottlecaps" or "Flanian pobble beads" it's true barter nature might be more obvious.
Don't assume that the people who have the time and wherewithal to burn some rainforest and plant a crop will stop just because bio-fuels go out of fashion and crops grown specifically for them are no longer the most profitable crop.
They will still burn down some rainforest and plant some other crop. It's not the need for a particular crop that drives them to burn rainforest land, its the need for ANY crop that will net them the money to live.
So don't blame bio-fuels for the burning of rainforests. That's going to happen anyway and is its own problem looking for a solution.
I still prefer nuclear for our primary energy source. People tend to dwell on the chance of something negative coming from nuclear power while ignoring the certainty of the harm that comes from most other forms of energy production.
Not that some people aren't willing to make stuff up to taint an energy source that isn't their favorite. You know, like implying that the rainforests are being burned down because of it...
(Actually, the ejection seat trick uses different code. You can't change the seat offset once someone is sitting on it, or at least, someone already sitting on it won't move if you do. Since you want a legitimate driver to be sitting in the driver's seat, that's where you set the offset. To eject someone that doesn't have "the keys", you unsit them and give them a physics push instead.)
~ Nonsanity ( aka Tiger Crossing in Second Life )
When you choose a place to sit down in Second Life, it tries to put your avatar's rear end right there on the surface where you clicked. But since many things you may want to sit on/in require you to be in a particular place (driver's seat, hanging upside-down by your ankles, etc) a script command was added that lets the script pick the spot.
Linden Lab forgot to set a limit on this function. (Read: bug)
But people started getting creative with it. "Sit" on a signpost who's sit offset is 150 meters straight up. The signpost then forces you to stand up. You are now in your private "skybox" and are free to hang upside-down by your ankles in semi-relative privacy.
This unintentional form of teleportation bug is so ingrained in that virtual world now that it can never be fixed. Though Linden Lab did at least cap it to 300 meters, and prevent it from crossing simulator boundaries, which keeps the "bug" flavor to a minimum.
(Of course, there is a better method these days that transcends those limits, using llSetPrimitiveParams and a list of many repeating, distant position commands... Another "keeper" bug?)
People that like football are more likely to buy and play football video games. ...And maybe people that get a kick out of driving fast and dangerous also like to play games that let them do the same thing for fun.
Sheesh. Jumping to conclusions is one thing, but these days jumping to causation is a far more widespread.
It's all about risk.
You take your chances in everything. In some things, the risk is small, in others the risk is large. In closed systems, like a slot machine or poker game, we know exactly what the odds are. But for life in general, everything is jumbled up and interacting. As you point out. Risk can't be absolute.
But just because the odds can't be known precisely, doesn't mean they can be tested to some extent. The odds of me getting hit by lightning vary greatly by my location, the objects around me, and the current weather. But you can calculate the over-all chance of being hit as 1 in 5000 over the course of your lifetime (however long that may be, another variable) and by knowing under what conditions people have been struck in the past and avoiding those conditions, you know that your chances will be better than average.
There is a theme running through your post highlighted by such phrases as: "uncertainty and ignorance", "absolutely no idea", and "completely unknown to science". (That last one was in regard to prions, the idea of which was first proposed by Tikvah Alper and J.S. Griffith in 1960, so they were known, just not by you.) This suggests your general outlook is that we don't know anything about some things, and therefore should avoid doing those things since the risk is completely unknown.
I'd agree with that. But I'd add that, if someone DOES know something about those things, then they can calculate at least some lower limit of risk, and therefore can do at least something that is within that limit. And in doing that something, they learn more, can predict the risk with greater accuracy, and can do even more with adequate safety. Step after step, increasing our pool of knowledge, making things safer, and getting things done.
The problem comes when the layperson looks in on step 862 of a long chain of testing and learning, without the advantage of all the prior tests and accumulated knowledge on the subject, and sees a much wider expanse of risk than those who know a thing or two about it. That's when the layperson says "that's too dangerous" and the expert says "I know what I'm doing" and the layperson says "that's what they all say, prove it" to which the expert points to the vast store of knowledge that's been built up on the subject over tens or hundreds of years... Which the layperson doesn't (of course) read, and who doesn't (of course) change their mind on the subject.
Instead the layperson forms a petition, lobbies their government, and/or organizes rallies and protests.
This doesn't mean the layperson is an idiot (even if they sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide), as they may be just as much an expert in some other field with just as much accumulated knowledge backing them up. They may even have a few laypersons of their own to deal with.
It just means they've been distracted by the need to be a good person and make the world a better place. It is a noble need, or at least our culture defines it as such. But as distractions go, it can make it very hard to see an issue with perspective and true self-awareness (knowing what YOU don't know).
It's not really a matter of trusting the experts... Just knowing the odds are that they do know what they are doing.
If there's no such thing a Silicon Heaven, then where to all the ToughBooks go?
Illegal!: The act
Illegal: A recording of the act (photograph, video)
Illegal?: A recording of a thought about the act (drawing)
ILLEGAL?!?: The thought about the act (Thought Police, here we come...)
I've lived in Columbia, MD for the last 35 years - where the power grid IS burried - and can count the total number power outages I've experienced there on my fingers. Not only does the lack of visible wires-in-the-sky nicer on the eyes, but even after the foot or more of rain we've gotten in the past few days... The lights are all still on.
Columbia IS a unique city in that it was designed from the ground up in the early 60's. Planning for burried power and other utilities is much easier in that case than as a retrofit for an existing city.
But personally, I count burried wires among the many perks of living here.
And it can't just be me.
So by allowing "them" to you "our" words against us, "they" are basically encouraging us to make it hard to overhear.
This just makes it more difficult to "protect" by us hurting us... When everyone starts being paranoid -- for good reason.
~ Nonsanity
~ Nonsanity
"We've replaced this man's Dream Workshop with a bowl of warm water... Let's see if he notices."
This sort of slacking in education on the part of individual teachers is nothing new, and is not limited to online courses. It's human variation at its finest... Or worst, since when it's a teacher slacking, it hurts all the students under them.
I often tell about an experiment I did in college. I wrote a English Composition 101 paper with some carefully crafted mistakes and submitted it to the four teachers that taught that course. The final grades were: D, C, B, and A. For the same paper.
Of course, there's no real solution for this problem short of continuous monitoring of teacher performance. (If you are in school, fill out those teacher evaluations!)
If I were to pick an online education provider, I would look for one that has a well established evaluation system for it's professors/teachers.
~ Nonsanity
I'm sorry, but Babelfish isn't doing anything for this post. Anyone have a translation? It SOUNDS interesting... :)
~ Nonsanity
So I might be lying... It'll do the little tyke good to hear that from greatest authority on his future there is.
~ Nonsanity
Ah well, that's what it is, after all.
All my previous work has been music videos with puppets and virtual sets. All amateur, all for fun. Check them out if interested...
http://www.fluffandsuch.com/
~ Nonsanity
Nonsanity
I tend to keep a dozen or so previously recorded tapes in my camcorder bag for reference in the field. Having all my previous recordings on-line and in the camera would save me from lugging about all that tape, and make finding a particular clip easier. (Though some sort of searchable index might be a good idea in such a camera.)
It would also make better use of the available storage. I know that when I get close to the end of one tape and begin to record something new, I'm likely to rip open a new tape just in case the remaining space on the current one won't be enough. That space goes unused, wasted.
Along the same lines, there may be one clip on a tape that I do not want to lose, and so I lock the whole tape against re-recording. But I may care nothing about whatever else is on the tape, and would be more than happy to record over it. With a (large) hard drive solution, I could lock just the one clip, and delete/re-use all the remaining space.
Some people have said something along the lines of: "I don't want to have to copy over 25 hours of footage to my computer!" To those people I say, you aren't looking at this right. Don't think of it as an old tape-based camcorder. Think of it as a camcorder merged with a portable firewire drive. When you want to work with the video, you just hook the camera to your computer and edit. You don't HAVE to copy the files over to you desktop (or laptop)... Edit them in situ.
Anyone arguing that tapes are better would probably have been arguing against hard drives to begin with, back in the days of floppy-only storage. Have a 5.25 floppy, on me...
Nonsanity
Yes, this model could be adjusted to LET them make as much or more from this new method of delivery, but it would be such an upset to the established system that the resistance would be paralyzing. (Just think what it would do to companies like Blockbuster and Best Buy.)
There is also the psychological aspect of paying as you watch. It is simple to flop down in front of the tube these days and idly watch what's on, but when you know you'll be charged for it (whether you ENJOY it or not) will make viewers think twice before tuning in. It would cause a drastic reduction in the amount of television watched. This is not a bad thing - to us - but anyone who stands to make money off the viewing public would not want to alienate people from the medium.
Of course, all this is moot if one takes a more rational view. Video On Demand need only take the place (and expand on) the Pay-Per-View system already in place. When mixed with monthly fees for cable channels, it WILL work. It already is.
Perhaps the technology that allows a customer-direct link that Video On Demand requires will allow cable channels to provide regional programming. Just think, CNN-Local... Customized to your zip code.
~ Nonsanity
~ Nonsanity