Going into the article assuming it was about advertising and marketing techniques (from the Slashdot title), my skimming was associated with that. Sorry, I'm still a recent college graduate, and all my old skim-until-you-find-something-interesting techniques still work just fine.
I also have the ability to wake up from a deep sleep and repeat the last 8 words spoken in the lecture.
Thanks for the correction guys (this applies to all the people replying to my post).
To paraphrase Tommy Boy, "I could take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed". I.E. *marketing* does not make quality. I never heard of this Taguchi guy.
To determine what businesses his company wants to be in, Dell looks for large markets where there are inefficiencies or high mark-ups. He looks for standards, because markets don't usually become high-volume until standards exist. Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.
Geometry was the same for the SAME CHARACTER, but when you switch characters (or games), it re-generates the level. There are several locations in the games that are hard-coded, but often how to get to those places are dynamic.
Interesting that they didn't list Castle of the Winds (an old Windows 3.x game by Epic Megagames) as a Rogue spinoff.
Reading the article, as I read about the trap doors, the randomly enchanted/cursed objects, the randomly generated levels/monsters/drops, Castle of the Winds immediately came to mind. I'm frankly extremely puzzled why they didn't list this on the site -- it's not exactly a new game.
Why not just change a few bits in the file after it's downloaded? Use an open-source P2P client and have it modify the file after it's been downloaded. Much like Kazaa lets you change a file's description yet it still associates that file with the other otherwise identical files on the network, change a custom field in the file description which alters the MD5 sum. I'm sure it would be trackable, but if everyone did it for themselves in a non-standard way, the RIAA would have a hard time keeping up with all the methods people make for altering MD5 sums.
Today, the biggest leader in translating Bibles into other languages is the Church of the Latter Day Saints
Because of the large volume of required input language into the system, I don't think that this system will be good for translating Bibles into new languages (think Wycliffe USA).
The advantage of this system, as it would pertain towards helping a particular religious community, is to make it easier to translate the large amount of books on religion into other languages more accurately.
The Czech schoolboys who worked so hard to make a Czech translation of the Harry Potter books would no longer have to wait so long for translations. Rather, the book could be fed through the statistical system and in under a day (minus proofreading) there could be a very nice translation into any mainstream language you wanted.
The advantage here would not be in translating Bibles into new languages, but rather translating massive amounts of books on the subject of Christianity to various languages.
Perhaps this technology would even have a use with Amazon's online digital book project in allowing all of the books on their site to be effeciently translated into other languages and marketed digitally. Interesting concept, to have all of the resources of Amazon.com in digital format for any mainstream language. That could do amazing things for the cross-country circle of ideas and thoughts.
The point that I'm making is not what genre of economic government policy this would be an example of, as much as I'm pointing out that this is the first non-monopoly step that Microsoft has taken because of another competing product since the whole Netscape thing several years ago (Microsoft HAS taken other backward steps in it's march-towards-monopoly, but those have been because of lawsuits, not because of other companies). Also, this is the first OS based step, not just browser based. Netscape didn't change support policies, licensing issues, or anything like that.
In a capitalistic environment, competition is always good for the consumer. I am a consumer, and therefore happy about this.
And since when is competition piracy? Granted some things that Microsoft does may be considered piracy, but I don't see how this relates to the issue at hand. I think you're addressing a topic which I didn't bring up. This is about Linux jumping on the gunwale for several years and finally seeing it start to rock the boat.
The Lindon, Utah-based company sued IBM over alleged misuse of its Linux code and sent letters to 1,500 Linux users warning of potential copyright infringement issues and other legal problems.
With its new contract, Microsoft is effectively promising customers it will insulate them from those kind of messy legal problems.
We all knew that Microsoft considered Linux a threat, but this is the first positive "captilalistic competitiveness" move I've seen on Microsoft's part. It seems that Linux is pushing Microsoft to improve its standards in order to compete more. That's one positive thing through this whole mess, Microsoft is actually forced to compete for our business now.
Capitalism is fine, the problem is when you undercut your own country in favor of other countries. Do you know what a tariff is? It's something used in capitalistic societies to give one party an advantage over another. I.E. tax all incoming tea or whatever so that local-produced tea is comparatively cheaper.
Other countries don't have things like the EPA, they don't have Social Security requirements, they don't have employee tax, they don't have labor unions, they don't have any of these things that drive up the cost of producing in the US.
If you want to keep things in the US, then by all means TAX IMPORTS! We're taxing ourselves, shouldn't we tax others? This is the way to do it, and constitutionally it's one of the few legal taxes (sales/import tax). As of now, we're giving an unfair advantage by imposing domestic tariffs on home-made products.
"For the past year, an intense turf battle between Microsoft and vendors of the upstart Linux has been raging as more corporations and government agencies turn to Linux software to run their desktop and network computer systems to cut costs."
Dictionary.com: ntr.v. upstarted, upstarting, upstarts (p-stärt) To spring or start up suddenly.
The banner-ad on the right side of my screen reading that article was the Oracle/Unbreakable Penguin ad. Granted Linux has been gaining ground quickly as-of-late, but it's not exactly been an upstart.
Isn't the trend towards "flashy products" rather than reliable ones the same reason why current marketing pushes sex rather than product qualities (Pepsi, A&F, etc), movies flaunt big-name actors and actresses, and people won't go see a movie unless it has a high PG-13 or R rating (PG? It's got to be boring). This is the same reason why Legos now has 3-piece dumptrucks and 8-piece Hogwarts castles. Why is this? Dumbed-down education? Why is it that people have just started to gobble up whatever the media tells them rather than understanding what they need for themselves. *sigh* What's society coming to?
About this point (which, in case you were wondering, basically says that you shouldn't expect even the best of machines to be able to make a decent response for anything said to it, but this is something that "even the dullest of men can do"), do the "dullest of men" do this? I find that one of the best things about being human is that we can ask for more information. I don't think that "dull men" can intelligently respond to a discussion about astrophysics, just as I don't think a technogeek like myself can comfortably insert himself into a discussion about non-tech pop culture.:) Don't we all have our areas? Why should we expect a thinking computer to be able to respond to EVERYTHING when even we humans cannot?
Okay. Say I have an ISP that charges me $0.01 cents per month for every e-mail I recieve. Does that mean that I would then be able to sue these unsolicited advertisements? I'm seriously asking here. I'll set up a company and charge myself just for the legal tendencies. I could fund myself from the lawsuits from suing the X-Cam 2 or whatever. (Sorry for posting as A/C, I can't remember my password)
Slashdot Mirror
You mean she's antimatter, and repels the light so that the wavelength shortens?
If a mass was large enough to increase the wavelength of the light bouncing off the sign, wouldn't the light appear infrared?
I can't believe I'm even discussing this, much less at 1:00 AM.
no
I also have the ability to wake up from a deep sleep and repeat the last 8 words spoken in the lecture.
Thanks for the correction guys (this applies to all the people replying to my post).
If you've ever wondered why the quality of Japanese cars is so high, credit Taguchi.
Okay, has anyone heard of a guy named W. Edwards Deming?
To paraphrase Tommy Boy, "I could take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed". I.E. *marketing* does not make quality. I never heard of this Taguchi guy.
To determine what businesses his company wants to be in, Dell looks for large markets where there are inefficiencies or high mark-ups. He looks for standards, because markets don't usually become high-volume until standards exist. Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.
+4 insightful to Dell there.
yuo maen tihs? :)
Geometry was the same for the SAME CHARACTER, but when you switch characters (or games), it re-generates the level. There are several locations in the games that are hard-coded, but often how to get to those places are dynamic.
Reading the article, as I read about the trap doors, the randomly enchanted/cursed objects, the randomly generated levels/monsters/drops, Castle of the Winds immediately came to mind. I'm frankly extremely puzzled why they didn't list this on the site -- it's not exactly a new game.
Why not just change a few bits in the file after it's downloaded? Use an open-source P2P client and have it modify the file after it's been downloaded. Much like Kazaa lets you change a file's description yet it still associates that file with the other otherwise identical files on the network, change a custom field in the file description which alters the MD5 sum. I'm sure it would be trackable, but if everyone did it for themselves in a non-standard way, the RIAA would have a hard time keeping up with all the methods people make for altering MD5 sums.
Because of the large volume of required input language into the system, I don't think that this system will be good for translating Bibles into new languages (think Wycliffe USA).
The advantage of this system, as it would pertain towards helping a particular religious community, is to make it easier to translate the large amount of books on religion into other languages more accurately.
The Czech schoolboys who worked so hard to make a Czech translation of the Harry Potter books would no longer have to wait so long for translations. Rather, the book could be fed through the statistical system and in under a day (minus proofreading) there could be a very nice translation into any mainstream language you wanted.
The advantage here would not be in translating Bibles into new languages, but rather translating massive amounts of books on the subject of Christianity to various languages.
Perhaps this technology would even have a use with Amazon's online digital book project in allowing all of the books on their site to be effeciently translated into other languages and marketed digitally. Interesting concept, to have all of the resources of Amazon.com in digital format for any mainstream language. That could do amazing things for the cross-country circle of ideas and thoughts.
Just my 3.14159 cents...
Respectfully, :)
clint
In a capitalistic environment, competition is always good for the consumer. I am a consumer, and therefore happy about this.
And since when is competition piracy? Granted some things that Microsoft does may be considered piracy, but I don't see how this relates to the issue at hand. I think you're addressing a topic which I didn't bring up. This is about Linux jumping on the gunwale for several years and finally seeing it start to rock the boat.
Respectfully,
Clint
With its new contract, Microsoft is effectively promising customers it will insulate them from those kind of messy legal problems.
We all knew that Microsoft considered Linux a threat, but this is the first positive "captilalistic competitiveness" move I've seen on Microsoft's part. It seems that Linux is pushing Microsoft to improve its standards in order to compete more. That's one positive thing through this whole mess, Microsoft is actually forced to compete for our business now.
--Clint
Capitalism is fine, the problem is when you undercut your own country in favor of other countries. Do you know what a tariff is? It's something used in capitalistic societies to give one party an advantage over another. I.E. tax all incoming tea or whatever so that local-produced tea is comparatively cheaper.
Other countries don't have things like the EPA, they don't have Social Security requirements, they don't have employee tax, they don't have labor unions, they don't have any of these things that drive up the cost of producing in the US.
If you want to keep things in the US, then by all means TAX IMPORTS! We're taxing ourselves, shouldn't we tax others? This is the way to do it, and constitutionally it's one of the few legal taxes (sales/import tax). As of now, we're giving an unfair advantage by imposing domestic tariffs on home-made products.
Respectfully,
Clint Herron
"For the past year, an intense turf battle between Microsoft and vendors of the upstart Linux has been raging as more corporations and government agencies turn to Linux software to run their desktop and network computer systems to cut costs."
Dictionary.com:
ntr.v. upstarted, upstarting, upstarts (p-stärt)
To spring or start up suddenly.
The banner-ad on the right side of my screen reading that article was the Oracle/Unbreakable Penguin ad. Granted Linux has been gaining ground quickly as-of-late, but it's not exactly been an upstart.
Isn't the trend towards "flashy products" rather than reliable ones the same reason why current marketing pushes sex rather than product qualities (Pepsi, A&F, etc), movies flaunt big-name actors and actresses, and people won't go see a movie unless it has a high PG-13 or R rating (PG? It's got to be boring). This is the same reason why Legos now has 3-piece dumptrucks and 8-piece Hogwarts castles. Why is this? Dumbed-down education? Why is it that people have just started to gobble up whatever the media tells them rather than understanding what they need for themselves. *sigh* What's society coming to?
About this point (which, in case you were wondering, basically says that you shouldn't expect even the best of machines to be able to make a decent response for anything said to it, but this is something that "even the dullest of men can do"), do the "dullest of men" do this? I find that one of the best things about being human is that we can ask for more information. I don't think that "dull men" can intelligently respond to a discussion about astrophysics, just as I don't think a technogeek like myself can comfortably insert himself into a discussion about non-tech pop culture. :) Don't we all have our areas? Why should we expect a thinking computer to be able to respond to EVERYTHING when even we humans cannot?
Okay. Say I have an ISP that charges me $0.01 cents per month for every e-mail I recieve. Does that mean that I would then be able to sue these unsolicited advertisements? I'm seriously asking here. I'll set up a company and charge myself just for the legal tendencies. I could fund myself from the lawsuits from suing the X-Cam 2 or whatever. (Sorry for posting as A/C, I can't remember my password)