Well, if this strategy weren't the most successful, then the long-term-thinking companies would win out in the end, no? Capitalism won't allow an inefficient system to survive in a competitive marketplace.
In the long term yes, at least in theory (and I'm sure others will point out problems with that theory, as they are ample). In the short term, anything goes, even in the theoretical.
It takes millions of years for evolution to find an "optimal" solution, and even then it isn't necessarily optimal, just "good enough for the environment". And if one species consumes all of the resources due to short term 'thinking' as it were, then another species in the same ecosystem that only consumes in moderation so as to maintain balance will still die.
Right now the environment rewards short-term thinkers. Companies have adapted to it. Long-term thinking requires an (indeterminate) long time to pay off and thus prove itself superior. If the short-term thinking of most companies destroys the economy, then the long-term thinkers may still die, and then who do you say was superior?
It's not like the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith reaches down from the sky and bitch-slaps any organization that performs an economically sub-optimal action. The theory says that in the limit an optimal balance will be reached, but in the meantime (as in what's happening "now" whenver "now" may be) could be wildly stupid and inefficient and still win.
If pedantry was a martial art, you would have just knocked him across the room with a roundhouse kick, punched through his rib cage, torn out his heart, and held it aloft.
The original Team Fortress mod for Quake had maps with this style of play. That might qualify as the first FPS to have this mode. I doubt it's the first game period to do it.
Rather than shooting him in the head, you might try reading his books and understanding his arguments. You don't have to agree with him, but try to broaden your responses beyond "Kill him, the monster! Think of the infants!" Isn't it possible that a random Slahdot poster is perhaps not giving you the full perspective on his views?
Oh, see, you're too late, I already shot him. My irrational "Kill the monster, think of the children!" knee-jerk response was too powerful and immediate to be overcome.
Seriously, I was addressing the argument as given in a flippant manner. I readily accept that the poster misrepresented his views, because no matter what you think, I have zero emotional investment in Singer or his opinions. I don't need to broaden my response, as it was appropriate for the post I replied to, and I'm not going to go read a book on the off chance that post is incorrect before replying.
This is why some OSS vendors like MySQL use two licenses - one OSS, one commercial with support and vendors like RedHat sell free software (because they give paid support).
Huh? I may be mistaken, but I thought the reason MySQL and others use dual licensing is so that a corporate customer can get the non-GPL version, use MySQL in their own product, and redistribute it without being subject to the terms of the GPL -- i.e. they want to make proprietary software. I know that this is the case for QT -- if you want to use their widgets in your proprietary software, then you purchase a license to the non-GPL version. You still get the source in the deal.
If the commercial vendor wants support, they buy a support contract. The copyright license on the code of that software is not relevent to buying support. This is why you can buy a support contract for Red Hat even though it is still almost entirely free software.
One thing about the boobies in Thailand, plastic surgery is incredibly cheap so the boobs tend to be of the California variety, and not the home-grown.
Bah!/me closes the travelocity.com tab opened two posts ago
My favorite -- wish I had a link, but my google-fu is lacking today -- is the woman who sued her employer for making her work with minorities, claiming that her racism was a disability and they were creating a hostile work place for her in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Maybe he only played Wii Boxing. I gotta say that just like the reviews said it has pretty shakey controls. Granted I have played exactly one bout, but it took far less than that for me to get the controls for the other games.
Of course marketing is a huge reason why people think they want the wii, but the fact is that they want the wii remote, whether due to the marketing blitz and hype, belief in a way to get in shape while staying at home and playing games, or because they're gamers who are interested in the possibilities. The part of the Wii that interests all of these people is the controller.
I have to admit, Nintendo's ads make me want to stab their marketeers slightly less. As opposed to implying that their product will make my fucking head explode just by looking at it, they merely imply that it will be a lot of fun. I do think the ad showing a bunch of suits laughing endlessly over the hilarious Mii representation of their high poobah should result in at least one maiming.
What, is it a little controller with 4 or 5 brightly colored buttons, ala Simon or Mastermind? That would suck.
I have trouble imagining it being much more, maybe something as sophisticated as the Donkey Kong Konga bongos with one little drum as the snare and a couple toms little bass drum. I have a hard time believing it would even resemble a drum kit's true diversity at only $80.
Certainly price is important, and anyone who says otherwise (looking at you Sony and fanbois) is insane.
But the Wii is selling much better than the GameCube (about 1/4th of GC lifetime sales already) which was $200, and it's selling to people who wouldn't have considered a game console before regardless of the price. Clearly it's the controller that is making the Wii.
Just without the price, even the controller wouldn't be enough to draw a skeptical non-gamer (or skeptical gamer for that matter).
For some reason this comment reminds me of the hilarious Mr. Show sketch about NASA deciding to blow up the moon, and the controversy that arises when the trained monkey chosen to launch the mission asks "why"?
The Wii has a lot of hype and a lot of potential, but MS is mostly right on with the "We're yet to see a really good game on Wii that really says 'OK that control kicked ass'" quote.
Okay, I have very limited experience with the Wii (no I won't wait at the store before it opens on shipment day in hopes of getting one), only Wii Sports.
But it only took a couple minutes with Wii Tennis, when I noticed that not only could I put english on the ball, but I could control how much english by how hard I twisted, that I said "OK, that control kicked ass".
I can understand Wii sports getting old -- can't see myself playing it for very long -- and maybe there aren't any other games that really have that same impact (from the reviews of Trauma Center and Wario Ware that doesn't seem to be the case, but I don't know). Yet clearly the potential is there and has been exploited by at least one game.
According to him, the baby won't know, so it won't care.
So if I suppose bioethicist Peter Singer would agree that it should be okay for me to kill him from 200 yards with a.50 cal sniper rifle, so long as I give no warning in advance (so he won't know), and I hit him square in the head so it blows his brains out before a single neuron can fire to register the pain or shock (so he won't care).
He might argue that having posed this question to him, he is aware of my intent and does in fact care. So I'll just have to come up with some kind of instant death that he doesn't expect.
I do like the idea because it allows so many creative ways to justify killing to oneself.
Wow, awesome! Now you can just look up "intelligence" and solve the problem that all those psychologists, cognitive scientists, and AI researchers have been struggling with all this time! The fools must not even know about dictionaries.
I do give you props for the zinger, even if the actual observation was banal.
And like SCO, maybe this suit is set to backfire on them?
They tried to get an injunction to stop the contract going through so as to damage their opponent, but they also tried to keep the feds from being able to view their internal documents in the process. Well they didn't get their injunction, and now the feds are going to have access to those documents during discovery. Do these documents contain things they really don't want anyone to know? It's happened before, but are they afraid that even more documented examples of willfull malfeasance be aired in court?
I know, wishful thinking, and it's not like the ones the state went with are any better. But I'm a hopeful guy! The SCO case might even end this decade!
The real question being debated here is not if chimps are humans, but if they are deserving of a given set of rights/protections. It is fine to say that we should respect life forms, but it is a matter of degrees and based upon qualities. If I'm hungry should I be able to kill a human and eat them? What about a chimp? What about a cow? What about a banana? What about yogurt? What quality of these life forms makes them deserving of legal protection from my hunger? What if I need an organ transplant to survive? What animal would not be acceptable to kill to preserve my own life even if it is not threatening me?
Well the question goes so far as to ask if apes should be given full human rights, which I'm saying is ridiculous. There are both those pushing for those full rights, and those using the idea of full huamn rights as a strawman/slippery slope argument to deny them any rights at all.
As far as the question, what I'm saying is that as highly intelligent self-aware species, chimpanzees should not be considered one of those species that we can use and subjugate as we choose (like cows). They should have the right to be left alone and unmolested by humans. And that is the only right they need.
Admitting that other large primates deserve the same rights we give ourselves in the West - the right not to be killed because somebody wants our land, the right not to be locked up in a featureless room and gawped at - is not only not unreasonable, it's part of rising above the aggressive little monkey in our own brains and improving our own chance of long terms survival.
And given that those are the only rights we're talking about, I agree completely. Because those are the only rights primates need to be granted by us. They don't need the right to vote, they don't need to be recognized as "people". They just need to be left the hell alone so they can get on with their primate lives.
The reason why so many people are flipping out over the concept is because they won't draw the line between recognizing that as self-aware beings apes should not be abused for our own purposes, and granting them full human-equivalent status and citizenship and all that other silly nonsense.
I'd suggest whilst the full range of 'human' rights would not fully be apropriate for monkeys, as they cant cope with the responsibilitys or understand them (although arming chimps WOULD be hilarious at a distance) , we can certainly derive a subset of rights they should be able to expect (the right to life, the right not to be tortured, the right for a human advocate to sue on their behalf for loss of rights, etc) based on the facts at hand.
Chimps are chimps. They don't want to be people, they want to be chimps. The only right we need to grant them is the right to be chimps in peace. It has nothing to do with their capability, that's a red herring. They're chimps. Highly intelligent, self-aware, sentient if you ask me (but don't ask me to define it), and also not human. They're chimps. Anthropomorphizing them and asking if they should be considered "people", or comparing them to disabled humans, is to violate their right to be chimps.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's very clear. We shouldn't be performing medical experiments or capturing or hunting chimps or destroying their habitat (more), but that's it. That's all they need. We just need to start respecting the other life forms on this planet, not dressing them up in suits and expecting them to be people. They won't be, don't want to be, and are just fine as they are.
FTFTOS: "Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice."
So it doesn't matter what you're actually using it for, if you go over 5GB you are presumed to have been using it for a disallowed purpose.
It's really simple. They say unlimited, but what they mean is 5GB. 5GB != Unlimited, "purpose" doesn't enter into it.
I fucking hate the way people tolerate this kind of BS. It's blatant false advertising. If they want to cap it at 5GB, that's they're right, but they should not be able to lie and call 5GB "unlimited".
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if this strategy weren't the most successful, then the long-term-thinking companies would win out in the end, no? Capitalism won't allow an inefficient system to survive in a competitive marketplace.
In the long term yes, at least in theory (and I'm sure others will point out problems with that theory, as they are ample). In the short term, anything goes, even in the theoretical.
It takes millions of years for evolution to find an "optimal" solution, and even then it isn't necessarily optimal, just "good enough for the environment". And if one species consumes all of the resources due to short term 'thinking' as it were, then another species in the same ecosystem that only consumes in moderation so as to maintain balance will still die.
Right now the environment rewards short-term thinkers. Companies have adapted to it. Long-term thinking requires an (indeterminate) long time to pay off and thus prove itself superior. If the short-term thinking of most companies destroys the economy, then the long-term thinkers may still die, and then who do you say was superior?
It's not like the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith reaches down from the sky and bitch-slaps any organization that performs an economically sub-optimal action. The theory says that in the limit an optimal balance will be reached, but in the meantime (as in what's happening "now" whenver "now" may be) could be wildly stupid and inefficient and still win.
If pedantry was a martial art, you would have just knocked him across the room with a roundhouse kick, punched through his rib cage, torn out his heart, and held it aloft.
Shang Tsung: Fatality!
The original Team Fortress mod for Quake had maps with this style of play. That might qualify as the first FPS to have this mode. I doubt it's the first game period to do it.
Rather than shooting him in the head, you might try reading his books and understanding his arguments. You don't have to agree with him, but try to broaden your responses beyond "Kill him, the monster! Think of the infants!" Isn't it possible that a random Slahdot poster is perhaps not giving you the full perspective on his views?
Oh, see, you're too late, I already shot him. My irrational "Kill the monster, think of the children!" knee-jerk response was too powerful and immediate to be overcome.
Seriously, I was addressing the argument as given in a flippant manner. I readily accept that the poster misrepresented his views, because no matter what you think, I have zero emotional investment in Singer or his opinions. I don't need to broaden my response, as it was appropriate for the post I replied to, and I'm not going to go read a book on the off chance that post is incorrect before replying.
This is why some OSS vendors like MySQL use two licenses - one OSS, one commercial with support and vendors like RedHat sell free software (because they give paid support).
Huh? I may be mistaken, but I thought the reason MySQL and others use dual licensing is so that a corporate customer can get the non-GPL version, use MySQL in their own product, and redistribute it without being subject to the terms of the GPL -- i.e. they want to make proprietary software. I know that this is the case for QT -- if you want to use their widgets in your proprietary software, then you purchase a license to the non-GPL version. You still get the source in the deal.
If the commercial vendor wants support, they buy a support contract. The copyright license on the code of that software is not relevent to buying support. This is why you can buy a support contract for Red Hat even though it is still almost entirely free software.
One thing about the boobies in Thailand, plastic surgery is incredibly cheap so the boobs tend to be of the California variety, and not the home-grown.
/me closes the travelocity.com tab opened two posts ago
Bah!
My favorite -- wish I had a link, but my google-fu is lacking today -- is the woman who sued her employer for making her work with minorities, claiming that her racism was a disability and they were creating a hostile work place for her in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Wouldn't work for RE4, but the sequal could cast you as a farmer desperate to protect your crop from a horde of undead horrors.
Maybe he only played Wii Boxing. I gotta say that just like the reviews said it has pretty shakey controls. Granted I have played exactly one bout, but it took far less than that for me to get the controls for the other games.
Of course marketing is a huge reason why people think they want the wii, but the fact is that they want the wii remote, whether due to the marketing blitz and hype, belief in a way to get in shape while staying at home and playing games, or because they're gamers who are interested in the possibilities. The part of the Wii that interests all of these people is the controller.
I have to admit, Nintendo's ads make me want to stab their marketeers slightly less. As opposed to implying that their product will make my fucking head explode just by looking at it, they merely imply that it will be a lot of fun. I do think the ad showing a bunch of suits laughing endlessly over the hilarious Mii representation of their high poobah should result in at least one maiming.
What, is it a little controller with 4 or 5 brightly colored buttons, ala Simon or Mastermind? That would suck.
I have trouble imagining it being much more, maybe something as sophisticated as the Donkey Kong Konga bongos with one little drum as the snare and a couple toms little bass drum. I have a hard time believing it would even resemble a drum kit's true diversity at only $80.
Certainly price is important, and anyone who says otherwise (looking at you Sony and fanbois) is insane.
But the Wii is selling much better than the GameCube (about 1/4th of GC lifetime sales already) which was $200, and it's selling to people who wouldn't have considered a game console before regardless of the price. Clearly it's the controller that is making the Wii.
Just without the price, even the controller wouldn't be enough to draw a skeptical non-gamer (or skeptical gamer for that matter).
For some reason this comment reminds me of the hilarious Mr. Show sketch about NASA deciding to blow up the moon, and the controversy that arises when the trained monkey chosen to launch the mission asks "why"?
. individual&videoid=733775770
This is probably a link to it: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids
You're thinking orangutans, not chimpanzees. But I agree completly. Chimps want to be chimps, and orangutans want to costar with Clint Eastwood.
The Wii has a lot of hype and a lot of potential, but MS is mostly right on with the "We're yet to see a really good game on Wii that really says 'OK that control kicked ass'" quote.
Okay, I have very limited experience with the Wii (no I won't wait at the store before it opens on shipment day in hopes of getting one), only Wii Sports.
But it only took a couple minutes with Wii Tennis, when I noticed that not only could I put english on the ball, but I could control how much english by how hard I twisted, that I said "OK, that control kicked ass".
I can understand Wii sports getting old -- can't see myself playing it for very long -- and maybe there aren't any other games that really have that same impact (from the reviews of Trauma Center and Wario Ware that doesn't seem to be the case, but I don't know). Yet clearly the potential is there and has been exploited by at least one game.
Your misinterpretation of the situation suggests that you are, in fact, simply flamebaiting since that level of misdirection can only be deliberate.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity" as the saying goes.
The question is, do you consider deliberate stupidity to be a form of malice?
You could make a case that it is.
According to him, the baby won't know, so it won't care.
.50 cal sniper rifle, so long as I give no warning in advance (so he won't know), and I hit him square in the head so it blows his brains out before a single neuron can fire to register the pain or shock (so he won't care).
So if I suppose bioethicist Peter Singer would agree that it should be okay for me to kill him from 200 yards with a
He might argue that having posed this question to him, he is aware of my intent and does in fact care. So I'll just have to come up with some kind of instant death that he doesn't expect.
I do like the idea because it allows so many creative ways to justify killing to oneself.
I'm going to start calling it "Powerpointless"
Wow, awesome! Now you can just look up "intelligence" and solve the problem that all those psychologists, cognitive scientists, and AI researchers have been struggling with all this time! The fools must not even know about dictionaries.
I do give you props for the zinger, even if the actual observation was banal.
Power point corrupts pointedly?
And like SCO, maybe this suit is set to backfire on them?
They tried to get an injunction to stop the contract going through so as to damage their opponent, but they also tried to keep the feds from being able to view their internal documents in the process. Well they didn't get their injunction, and now the feds are going to have access to those documents during discovery. Do these documents contain things they really don't want anyone to know? It's happened before, but are they afraid that even more documented examples of willfull malfeasance be aired in court?
I know, wishful thinking, and it's not like the ones the state went with are any better. But I'm a hopeful guy! The SCO case might even end this decade!
The real question being debated here is not if chimps are humans, but if they are deserving of a given set of rights/protections. It is fine to say that we should respect life forms, but it is a matter of degrees and based upon qualities. If I'm hungry should I be able to kill a human and eat them? What about a chimp? What about a cow? What about a banana? What about yogurt? What quality of these life forms makes them deserving of legal protection from my hunger? What if I need an organ transplant to survive? What animal would not be acceptable to kill to preserve my own life even if it is not threatening me?
Well the question goes so far as to ask if apes should be given full human rights, which I'm saying is ridiculous. There are both those pushing for those full rights, and those using the idea of full huamn rights as a strawman/slippery slope argument to deny them any rights at all.
As far as the question, what I'm saying is that as highly intelligent self-aware species, chimpanzees should not be considered one of those species that we can use and subjugate as we choose (like cows). They should have the right to be left alone and unmolested by humans. And that is the only right they need.
Admitting that other large primates deserve the same rights we give ourselves in the West - the right not to be killed because somebody wants our land, the right not to be locked up in a featureless room and gawped at - is not only not unreasonable, it's part of rising above the aggressive little monkey in our own brains and improving our own chance of long terms survival.
And given that those are the only rights we're talking about, I agree completely. Because those are the only rights primates need to be granted by us. They don't need the right to vote, they don't need to be recognized as "people". They just need to be left the hell alone so they can get on with their primate lives.
The reason why so many people are flipping out over the concept is because they won't draw the line between recognizing that as self-aware beings apes should not be abused for our own purposes, and granting them full human-equivalent status and citizenship and all that other silly nonsense.
I'd suggest whilst the full range of 'human' rights would not fully be apropriate for monkeys, as they cant cope with the responsibilitys or understand them (although arming chimps WOULD be hilarious at a distance) , we can certainly derive a subset of rights they should be able to expect (the right to life, the right not to be tortured, the right for a human advocate to sue on their behalf for loss of rights, etc) based on the facts at hand.
Chimps are chimps. They don't want to be people, they want to be chimps. The only right we need to grant them is the right to be chimps in peace. It has nothing to do with their capability, that's a red herring. They're chimps. Highly intelligent, self-aware, sentient if you ask me (but don't ask me to define it), and also not human. They're chimps. Anthropomorphizing them and asking if they should be considered "people", or comparing them to disabled humans, is to violate their right to be chimps.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's very clear. We shouldn't be performing medical experiments or capturing or hunting chimps or destroying their habitat (more), but that's it. That's all they need. We just need to start respecting the other life forms on this planet, not dressing them up in suits and expecting them to be people. They won't be, don't want to be, and are just fine as they are.
FTFTOS: "Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice."
So it doesn't matter what you're actually using it for, if you go over 5GB you are presumed to have been using it for a disallowed purpose.
It's really simple. They say unlimited, but what they mean is 5GB. 5GB != Unlimited, "purpose" doesn't enter into it.
I fucking hate the way people tolerate this kind of BS. It's blatant false advertising. If they want to cap it at 5GB, that's they're right, but they should not be able to lie and call 5GB "unlimited".