If you look at the extra content that comes on their DVDs, they talk about how they get their ideas from the public domain.
They spin it so it sounds like they're doing charitable work by take these old stories that are central to our culture and making them *more* accessible.
Of course there's no mention that they're trying to kill the public domain. Besides preventing stories from enering, they hijack the stories they borrow. If I tried to make a movie based on the fairy-tale Beauty and the Beast, then Disney would sue me even though I didn't take anything from their movie. What's more disappointing is most people wouldn't like my moving because they're used to the disney version and since mine is different, it must be all wrong.
In my experience, the community colleges are the worst for catering to the lowest common denominator of students.
Every time I've taken a course at one, the class is divided into two groups of people, those who are there to learn, and those who don't know why they're there. The ones who don't know why they're there don't do any of the assignments and try to learn as little as possible. Invariably, the class is dumbed down to suit them, and the most interesting half the of the material is skipped.
Most people aren't going to download large quantities of mp3's or movies while sitting on a plane. They'll do that before they leave.
The service is intended for websurfing. Think about what percentage of time you spend loading pages vs reading them on your high speed connection. Even with 50 people sharing the connection, only a few will be downloading pages at a time, and the rest will be reading what they've already downloaded.
Among the data found on the 158 drives were 5,000 credit-card numbers
The RIAA/MPAA system recognizes that each digit is a number taken by itself. Since credit cards have 16 digit numbers, 31 numbers/person sounds about right, it's an average of just under 2 cards/person.
How can the human create information without an algorithm?
What you are citing with Godel proves that humans must use algorithms too. It's just that the algorithms are very complex and not understood. The is no reason we can't learn and duplicate the human algorithms, and that's what this contest is all about.
You do a nice job proving that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Step 1:
Make up a set of game boards and have a group of humans each play the game on those boards. Each human will play once on each board. This gives us real human data to compare the software to.
Step 2a:
Let each of the submitted emulators play the game on every one of the boards created in Step 1. We now have a set of results for each human and each emulator on all the game boards
Step 2b:
For every detector that was submitted, give if every set of results. It returns its answer for which it thinks are humans and which are emulators in a very precise way. We now have a matrix of (number of humans + number of emulators) x (number of detectors), where each element is a mathematical answer to 'is this a human player'.
Step 3:
Repeat and take the average score. The Detector that was right the most wins.
Step 4:
The emulator that fooled the most detectors wins. If there's a tie (for either emulators or detectors) in the 95% confidence interval for the model used to compute scores, then the prize is shared among the tied entries
That does seem to be the way things are going, but what's in it for the software and hardware companies? How can they profit by going out of their way to give the customer a broken product?
Maybe selling DRM hardware and software will be the only way the products will be able to access media in the future, and they figure more people care about watching the latest Britney Spears video than about their fair use rights. Unfortunately, that's true, but I think most people who want to watch videos and listen to music on their computers are the ones who do car about fair use. The ones who just want to access the media will use dedicated devices.
This leaves nobody to buy the crippled computer hardware and software, which is as it should be
There is no way they'd be able to pass legislation requiring computers to have DRM. They'd have to prove computers have no other use besides playing media. Not even the RIAA can bribe enough politicians for that.
They're just trying to spin the fact that they can't force that kind of legislation to make it sound like they're being the good guys.
What difference does it make to them if there's that kind of legislation anyway? They're doing everything they can to restrict their CDs to DRM players as it is.
I used to play multiplayer tetris on the LAN at work. There were bonus pieces that let you do good things like eliminate rows from the bottom of the screen or bad things like drop random blocks on someone's screen
It was team based and you generally had to use your good blocks on an ally who's in trouble. We'd play it for hours at a time, and we were enjoying it and socializing, not too numbed to stop. Since we were all in the same room, it was like a LAN party. Occasionally, even the managers would play.
Games like quake3 where all you do is go around shooting things are boring. That's what's mind-numbing and crippling. Tetris makes you concentrate and think.
The best games are the simple ones with high playability, so to answer the question in the summary, there will always be a demand for this.
It sounds like the car is fueled by hydrogen. People won't buy the cars until they can get hydrogen fuel at nearly every corner gas station. Nobody want's to travel a long way to buy gas, or worse, find themselves low on gas 100 miles from the nearest hydrogen station.
The gas stations will not invest in the eqipment to dispense hydrogen until there's a large number of the cars on the road that can use it.
Evolution still exists. There are thousands of new species evolving every years, mostly single-celled organisms, but some larger ones.
The only way of naming every species would be to create a standard naming convention like the IUPAC system for chemicals, but this isn't even close to what the article is about
Re:You can't....
on
Ark Linux
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is true; an easy to use desktop is like a scope with the volts per division and timebase fixed so people don't have to worry about learning what they are.
The funny part is that if you want to make Linux easy to use, creating yet another distribution is not the right way to go. This has been attempted a lot of times, and it usually just makes it harder to do anything except a few basic things the distro creators want you to do
This sort of product should have been on the market a year ago. I'm sure it's just the beginning of a flood from all the major manufacturers, and the price will drop fast.
a) With the company alienating 95% of the market for exactly the reason I said, it is just a matter of time until they go bankrupt. They have a cult following among their users and most people hate them. Smells like Amiga, and it will have the same result. We've even had a discussion here about that.
From TiVo's own website: A TiVo DVR is intended for use only with a paid subscription to the TiVo service. Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected If there's no TiVo company, your TiVo box has as much functionality as a door-stop.
b) The one time up front charge is a bigger rip-off. It's the same price as 2 years of service, and it's glued to your TiVo box. If you want to upgrade, you have to pay again. If your TiVO breaks and you replace it, you have to play again. 2 years is an eternity in the tech industry. This has the same problem that when (not if) TiVo goes bankrupt, it's still a door-stop, but one you paid $250 more for. Why in the world is their a service fee at to use it as a media center? It is supposed to be a piece of hardware, not a service.
c) We were discussing the parent wanting to wait until TiVo comes out with the HP 5000 type features when the HP 5000 does a much better job of it already. You're probably just one of the suckers who bought a TiVo and you hate having it rubbed in your face how stupid you were
d) Oooh, my first freak, and you do such a great job of proving how aptly named it is. I have all the facts because I want a PVR, not a TiVo POS. You're the one who's spewing.
If you build your own, what do you have for a UI. I sit in front of my computer for too many hours a day; I don't want my entertainment center to have a mouse/keyboard driven desktop application as its interface.
I use my old AIW as a PVR, and it's pretty awful for that very reason. The only reason I don't go out and buy a TiVo or ReplayTV is because I want a product, not a service. As soon as a PVR comes out that does everything my VCR does plus the TV-on-Demand type features, I'll be first in line to buy it...even though it will not have any more functionality than the AIW. The UI makes all the difference in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
If you look at the extra content that comes on their DVDs, they talk about how they get their ideas from the public domain.
They spin it so it sounds like they're doing charitable work by take these old stories that are central to our culture and making them *more* accessible.
Of course there's no mention that they're trying to kill the public domain. Besides preventing stories from enering, they hijack the stories they borrow. If I tried to make a movie based on the fairy-tale Beauty and the Beast, then Disney would sue me even though I didn't take anything from their movie. What's more disappointing is most people wouldn't like my moving because they're used to the disney version and since mine is different, it must be all wrong.
Jason ProfQuotes
Tell me again what the U stands for?
Jason
ProfQuotes
In my experience, the community colleges are the worst for catering to the lowest common denominator of students.
Every time I've taken a course at one, the class is divided into two groups of people, those who are there to learn, and those who don't know why they're there. The ones who don't know why they're there don't do any of the assignments and try to learn as little as possible. Invariably, the class is dumbed down to suit them, and the most interesting half the of the material is skipped.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Nerdcore is much stupider. You'd have to be a total ditz to use the word nerdcore.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Eventually someone will take their webserver along on the plane and then posts a Slashdot article about it. What happens when we slashdot an airplane?
Jason
ProfQuotes
10km still belongs to the country that owns the land below it. From an international law standpoint, airspace goes all the way up.
Even if you're on a ship in international waters, you're still bound by the laws of wherever you ship is registered.
You'll also be restricted by the laws of whoever owns the connection you're using.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Most people aren't going to download large quantities of mp3's or movies while sitting on a plane. They'll do that before they leave.
The service is intended for websurfing. Think about what percentage of time you spend loading pages vs reading them on your high speed connection. Even with 50 people sharing the connection, only a few will be downloading pages at a time, and the rest will be reading what they've already downloaded.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Among the data found on the 158 drives were 5,000 credit-card numbers
The RIAA/MPAA system recognizes that each digit is a number taken by itself. Since credit cards have 16 digit numbers, 31 numbers/person sounds about right, it's an average of just under 2 cards/person.
Jason
ProfQuotes
How can the human create information without an algorithm?
What you are citing with Godel proves that humans must use algorithms too. It's just that the algorithms are very complex and not understood. The is no reason we can't learn and duplicate the human algorithms, and that's what this contest is all about.
You do a nice job proving that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Step 1:
Make up a set of game boards and have a group of humans each play the game on those boards. Each human will play once on each board. This gives us real human data to compare the software to.
Step 2a:
Let each of the submitted emulators play the game on every one of the boards created in Step 1. We now have a set of results for each human and each emulator on all the game boards
Step 2b:
For every detector that was submitted, give if every set of results. It returns its answer for which it thinks are humans and which are emulators in a very precise way. We now have a matrix of (number of humans + number of emulators) x (number of detectors), where each element is a mathematical answer to 'is this a human player'.
Step 3:
Repeat and take the average score. The Detector that was right the most wins.
Step 4:
The emulator that fooled the most detectors wins. If there's a tie (for either emulators or detectors) in the 95% confidence interval for the model used to compute scores, then the prize is shared among the tied entries
Jason
ProfQuotes
We're just trying give the humans more time to play tetris
Jason
ProfQuotes
That does seem to be the way things are going, but what's in it for the software and hardware companies? How can they profit by going out of their way to give the customer a broken product?
Maybe selling DRM hardware and software will be the only way the products will be able to access media in the future, and they figure more people care about watching the latest Britney Spears video than about their fair use rights. Unfortunately, that's true, but I think most people who want to watch videos and listen to music on their computers are the ones who do car about fair use. The ones who just want to access the media will use dedicated devices.
This leaves nobody to buy the crippled computer hardware and software, which is as it should be
Jason
ProfQuotes
There is no way they'd be able to pass legislation requiring computers to have DRM. They'd have to prove computers have no other use besides playing media. Not even the RIAA can bribe enough politicians for that.
They're just trying to spin the fact that they can't force that kind of legislation to make it sound like they're being the good guys.
What difference does it make to them if there's that kind of legislation anyway? They're doing everything they can to restrict their CDs to DRM players as it is.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Yep, that's the one. Thanks for the link, I'd forgotten what it was called and haven't seen the game for years.
Jason
I used to play multiplayer tetris on the LAN at work. There were bonus pieces that let you do good things like eliminate rows from the bottom of the screen or bad things like drop random blocks on someone's screen
It was team based and you generally had to use your good blocks on an ally who's in trouble. We'd play it for hours at a time, and we were enjoying it and socializing, not too numbed to stop. Since we were all in the same room, it was like a LAN party. Occasionally, even the managers would play.
Games like quake3 where all you do is go around shooting things are boring. That's what's mind-numbing and crippling. Tetris makes you concentrate and think.
The best games are the simple ones with high playability, so to answer the question in the summary, there will always be a demand for this.
Jason
ProfQuotes
If this comes here, does it mean I'll be getting all that porn spam on my phone? Maybe it would be better to convince them I'm under 18.
Would under 13 make it illegal for them to send any spam?
Jason
ProfQuotes
So that the people running the project can buy the new Hy-Wire car instead?
Jason
ProfQuotes
It sounds like the car is fueled by hydrogen. People won't buy the cars until they can get hydrogen fuel at nearly every corner gas station. Nobody want's to travel a long way to buy gas, or worse, find themselves low on gas 100 miles from the nearest hydrogen station.
The gas stations will not invest in the eqipment to dispense hydrogen until there's a large number of the cars on the road that can use it.
Jason ProfQuotes
Evolution still exists. There are thousands of new species evolving every years, mostly single-celled organisms, but some larger ones.
The only way of naming every species would be to create a standard naming convention like the IUPAC system for chemicals, but this isn't even close to what the article is about
Jason
ProfQuotes
This is true; an easy to use desktop is like a scope with the volts per division and timebase fixed so people don't have to worry about learning what they are.
The funny part is that if you want to make Linux easy to use, creating yet another distribution is not the right way to go. This has been attempted a lot of times, and it usually just makes it harder to do anything except a few basic things the distro creators want you to do
Jason
ProfQuotes
P and L got used up by APL though. This is BCD..Binary Coded Decimal.
Jason
ProfQuotes
This sort of product should have been on the market a year ago. I'm sure it's just the beginning of a flood from all the major manufacturers, and the price will drop fast.
Jason
ProfQuotes
a) With the company alienating 95% of the market for exactly the reason I said, it is just a matter of time until they go bankrupt. They have a cult following among their users and most people hate them. Smells like Amiga, and it will have the same result. We've even had a discussion here about that.
From TiVo's own website:
A TiVo DVR is intended for use only with a paid subscription to the TiVo service. Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected
If there's no TiVo company, your TiVo box has as much functionality as a door-stop.
b) The one time up front charge is a bigger rip-off. It's the same price as 2 years of service, and it's glued to your TiVo box. If you want to upgrade, you have to pay again. If your TiVO breaks and you replace it, you have to play again. 2 years is an eternity in the tech industry.
This has the same problem that when (not if) TiVo goes bankrupt, it's still a door-stop, but one you paid $250 more for. Why in the world is their a service fee at to use it as a media center? It is supposed to be a piece of hardware, not a service.
c) We were discussing the parent wanting to wait until TiVo comes out with the HP 5000 type features when the HP 5000 does a much better job of it already.
You're probably just one of the suckers who bought a TiVo and you hate having it rubbed in your face how stupid you were
d) Oooh, my first freak, and you do such a great job of proving how aptly named it is. I have all the facts because I want a PVR, not a TiVo POS. You're the one who's spewing.
Jason
ProfQuotes
So I'll wait an extra 4 months to get a piece of crap that's totally useless unless the company is there to give it permission to work?
If someone goes with the TiVo option, they're investing in the company; when the company goes bankrupt, their player is useless.
To add insult to injury, you also have to pay a monthly fee to use their product, even just the Media Center option.
Not to mention you're comparing the price of a refubished TiVo to a new HP box
Jason
ProfQuotes
If you build your own, what do you have for a UI. I sit in front of my computer for too many hours a day; I don't want my entertainment center to have a mouse/keyboard driven desktop application as its interface.
I use my old AIW as a PVR, and it's pretty awful for that very reason. The only reason I don't go out and buy a TiVo or ReplayTV is because I want a product, not a service. As soon as a PVR comes out that does everything my VCR does plus the TV-on-Demand type features, I'll be first in line to buy it...even though it will not have any more functionality than the AIW. The UI makes all the difference in the world.
Jason
ProfQuotes