I think this study proves that being fat isn't just hazardous to yourself. I want a round of bans on public obesity. You shouldn't be allowed to be fat in bars, bowling alleys, or restaurants either. Being fat in public puts everyone at risk. We should start researching the detrimental effects of secondhand obesity. Next time I walk by someone eating junk feed I'm going to lecture him on what he's doing to my health and why he doesn't have the right to put me at risk too.
I was surprised that of the whole list of untimely demises of tech companies, neither 3dfx nor Aureal got mentioned. Both of them really did have some of the best ideas and technology at the time of their departure, but like you said, corporate mis-management did them in.
In the case of 3dfx, they tried to tell gamers what features they should have, instead of implementing the features gamers were demanding (32-bit color among them). They also refused to budge from their insistence on using the Glide API even though it had mostly reached its limits with both OpenGL and Direct3D being obvious improvements.
A3D sound was far and away better than EAX and even now, most of the EAX technology for positional sound is based on A3D. It's astounding that a company had better quality sound technology available 8 years ago, but with Creative Labs cornering the market they have no real incentive to release huge improvements, so it takes a long time for little improvements to trickle through.
The ability to conduct the majority of one's communication using SMS, IM, or site-based messaging services speaks loads about how important that person is to listen to. I strongly prefer less frequent but substantial communcation to constant buzzing/beeping accompanied by endless vapidity.
No, I don't want Windows Media Player for Linux with Microsoft's current disposition. What I would like is for Microsoft to convert their business practices. It can happen, some years ago IBM was practically the same enemy Microsoft is today, but now they're all about open source support.
It would be nice if Microsoft expended fewer resources trying to secure a dominance over Google, Linux, Mozilla, and Sun. The vast amount of money and manpower that Microsoft has could be used to do good things, but they're dead-set on making sure anything they release evades Linux.
It smacks of desperation that Microsoft tries so hard to exclude Linux from any software they release. If they don't loosen up that strangle-hold, their company is going to choke to death.
It's sad that a company with so much money and talent is completely unwilling to adapt to the times. They're clinging to an age of computing that has long since passed. 10 years ago, web tools, platform interoperability and independence, and transparent company operations could have been classified as a trend, but those practices are now solidified.
It would just be nice if Microsoft made even a single genuine move towards cooperation instead of their current modus operandi of "exclusion at all cost".
I wish RMS would spend a lot less time working on grammatical cleverness. It's made worse by his compulsive need to explain his jokes (to let you know just how clever he is) every single time he speaks. Get to the point already!
I thought Flock had a decent idea but as it developed it became less of the things I wanted and more of the things a 12 year kid might want.
For example, at first the idea of giving "Web 2.0" almost seamless integration sounded great. I imagined it similar to how MSN Explorer integrated Hotmail. I got the idea that Flock would do this with things like Wiki, certain popular blog sites, gmail, youtube, etc. with development making the features increasingly generic so more sites get included in the integration.
Instead, they overwrote certain FireFox features that were important to me (For example: keywords), forced me to log in to del.icio.us everytime I opened the browser, but left the actual user experience largely unchanged. Nothing on the web was any easier, different, or more integrated. Their sights were narrowed on Flickr, Photobucket, and blog APIs, but the browser doesn't change the web experience as a whole.
As a result, I was just better off using FireFox. Once FireFox 2 came along, it delivered some of the features Flock had, while Flock got stuck using FireFox 1.5.
I thought the idea was good, the execution was poor.
I think you're the first one to ever accuse me of being pedantic. Common sense tells me that power consumption is not tied to clocks. Neither businesses nor individuals are going to artificially alter the amount of power they consume because they've got another (virtual) hour of daylight.
Why won't there be any ability to gauge for 3 months? Obviously in 3 months there will be a larger sample pool, but that should only narrow the accuracy of the current assessment, I don't think it's going to alter it completely.
Kudos, nice quip. Your personal attack makes your argument much stronger.
I despise DST. It's one of the most asinine concepts someone has ever pitched to me. I can't stand the terminology that surrounds discussions of DST, such as "...we have more daylight...". Scientists have proven to me that the amount of daylight in a given period is not affected by the clocks. Clocks are not time machines, they do not alter the space-time continuum. Clocks measure, they don't change it.
If DST is such a great idea, maybe we should start skipping months instead of hours. When Summer arrives, we'll just call it "Fall" to save on air conditioning costs.
In years of gaming I've never come across a particularly impressive AI. I've found that the computer "cheats" sometimes to seem more advanced (such as in Age of Empires, at higher levels of difficulty, instead of getting smarter, the computer opponent just starts with more resources than you).
In most cases, game AI succeeds solely because it's connected to the game world more than is possible for the player, and it does what computers do best, which is to flawlessly repeat instructions, making it a far superior resource optimizer than a person is.
For example, in some FPS games computer opponents effectively move faster because it knows with pixel precision the clip of every corner of every wall, ledge, and obstacle, so it can turn corners faster than you can. Along the same lines, the computer can make a shot around a corner with 100% accuracy where a player might fail and hit the corner about 10% of the time.
What I find most disappointing is that games never even introduce the lowest level of AI, statistic decision making. For example, in a game like DragonRealms or Morrowind (or any other game in which stealing or crime is possible), guards are 100% reactive. They will never pro-actively go somewhere that crime is statistically likely to happen, they follow a set path until crime is reported, then they react. Even at times where I've seen guards given a pro-active algorithm, it's too predictable, to that point that two people can always coordinate and fool it.
The last thing I want to mention about AI is that I can't stand instantaneous information flow. If you take an action anywhere in a game, the information about your action is available through the entire game world (unless artificially limited). Computer Players don't have to communicate with each other and pass information through normal channels (speech, writing, etc.) like players do. Take Morrowind for example, if you kill someone, everyone in the world knows it. If your reputation goes up or down, people everywhere treat you differently even if, the moment you take the action, you instantly teleport to a location that no one else could possibly have spread the word in, they've already heard about you. It just makes the game seem very mechanical if the game itself doesn't communicate in the same way people do.
For me, the smallest computer is only limited by the size of the keyboard. At a minimum, I need a notebook-sized keyboard, at least until the point computers can take dictation. I even thought notebook keyboards were too small in the past but I was able to adjust, but any smaller and I won't be able to. I've tried to use those thumb-type keyboards and I just can't communicate comfortably with them.
I admit that stinks, but Intel has open sourced most of their drivers (including the i965), which leaves the door open for someone to create decent drivers for it. The i965 might not work but the i950 works flawlessly.
I think they may have perceived their open-sourcing as relinquishing responsibility. Kind of a "Ball is in your court now" gesture. If only things were that simple. Still, I must commend them for providing open source drivers, while ATI and nVidia refuse. Getting a better driver than ATI or nVidia gives you isn't even an option, while it's possible someone could come out with a better driver for the i965 any day now (assuming they haven't already done so).
Why should I have to prove to them that I want better support? They should prove to me that they are providing better support. Until then, I will only purchase Intel video.
The Intel 950 GMA is sweet compared to any of ATI's cards with shoddy support.
Anything made available for human consumption should be equally available for computer consumption. The IP address, location, and method of consumption should be irrelevant. The only thing at issue here should be that her site was made publicly available, and if you make resources publicly available you should fully expect that humans and computers are going to use them.
I think the only fair thing to do is to issue this woman a citation and require technology training classes before she can return to the virtual world. I have no problem with the untrained using our space so long as they don't cause a ruckus. Once the law suits start flying for things they scarcely understand, their presence is not acceptable.
They're not claiming he pirated music AFTER he had the stroke. The fact that he had a stroke and his alleged pirating could be completely unrelated.
I don't believe pirating music should be illegal or a civil offense, but I take the laws as they're given to me, and the disabled are not exempt from them.
I would say we became friends by not talking for long periods of time. Back when we were teenagers, we only talked on Thursday nights. That just meant we looked forward to meeting up instead of it being just another day.
I don't think constant communication fosters strong friendships, because you have little time to reflect on the importance of your relationship with them, and so little changes in a single day that the nature of the relationship becomes shallow and trivial. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Maybe only talking a few dozen times a year is a little too infrequent for most people. But checking in daily or even hourly (with something like Twitter) would seem more like a status report for a job rather than like the roots of a deep and meaningful friendship.
What the hell is with this social networking crap? I haven't even talked to my best friend in 3 days. I've gone months without talking to him, for no particular reason than I just didn't have anything of substance to say. People don't need to be updated on what's going on from a moment to moment basis. If my life was that fucking exciting, Discovery would make a documentary about me.
I think this whole period of the internet will be remembered in a decade as another stupid idea up there with refreshing web page chat room/message boards, web pages embedded with ICQ contact panels and GOTO.com search boxes, and web rings. Useless chaff.
Until now my fears were not confirmed, but this seals the deal.
You goddamn free software commies are destroying our great nation. It starts with using funky, African-named software, trading "music" with Russia, but now you're killing babies and collapsing national security.
Free software also causes global warming. Reliable tests show that FreeBIOS causes far more CO2 emissions than a proprietary BIOS. FreeBIOS also makes your processor run at a cancer-causing frequency.
The battle lines are drawn! This is where Windows users must unite and take back the world from our oppressors! Take your cancer sticks and shove them, because we want clean air!
The submitter has fallen prey to the priority fallacy, the most hypocritical fallacy of them all.
The submitter thinks homelessness is more important than TV upgrades, but he thinks posting to Slashdot is more important than helping the homeless?
He should be working in a soup kitchen 18-19 hours a day, forever. He shouldn't even be wearing clothes, if he spends money on clothes, that's money he didn't spend feeding the homeless. How many homeless people could the $1000 he spent on a computer have fed? I bet he eats luxury food too. If he were really concerned with feeding the poor, he would subsist on a tasteless diet of grain, water, legumes, and a few vegetables.
Ads do not make the internet run. The internet was running just fine before banner ads.
We may not have the same amount of free sites that we do, but quantity is not something the internet is short on. Anyone intelligent enough to have something worthwhile to say would be intelligent enough to find a way to do it without ad revenue.
The signal to noise ration is very low on the internet, thanks largely in part to the number of freely available resources. Every jack-ass with some drivel that popped into his head is free to jabber away until he's blue in the face (Note: I do not exclude myself). It makes finding useful, accurate information a very time consuming process. If people actually had to pay to disseminate information on the internet, people would make sure their message was actually worth communicating.
The ad-model only seems like such a good plan because it's the only one 95% of the internet population is aware of. Love the enemy you know.
Credentials matter because of subjective judgments. Facts can be checked, but every writing has bias, no matter how much effort is made to eliminate that bias. Articles will contain subtle bias in the form of semantic differences.
If I ask two people the best way to get to a grocery store, and one person says "I don't really know my way around but my map says you want to go right on Front Street, left on Broadway..."
The second person says "I go by the store everyday on my way to work. Front Street is usually backed up around 3pm, so you want to go down 5th ave, then left on Broadway..."
It's likely I won't even question the validity of the second person's statement, it's really not a significant enough issue to even think someone would make up the information.
Then it turns out the second person isn't a resident of the city and doesn't work here, he's a tourist and 5th street has been closed for the last 6 months. He just said he was a resident who worked here because he thought his way was better and he wanted me to take his idea seriously, which I may not have done if he had represented himself accurately.
That's an analogous example. There are billions of statements on Wikipedia that may not be significant enough to warrant checking their validity, especially if something sounds "pretty much correct". For example, claiming a programming API is "more robust" than another API (How robust something is can't usually be proven factually so there may not be a citation). If someone with a M.S. in Software Engineering says SVN is "more robust" than CVS, you might accept the statement as truth. Your acceptance might not even be a conscious decision, your mind saw something that sounded perfectly plausible and accepted it. The rot will seep in at those minor points of contention.
I believe IPv6 is still at least 15 - 20 years away. When I first heard about it back in 1999, I went on this panicked frenzy to figure out everything I could about the soon-to-be deployed IPv6. I wanted to make sure my home computers were ready for this major shift, and maybe take advantage of some network performance improvements. That was 8 friggen years ago. I should have put money on the Red Sox winning a world series before I bothered worrying about IPv6.
Slashdot Mirror
Describe to me any poker game in which counting cards could help you. Blackjack? Yes. Poker? No.
I think this study proves that being fat isn't just hazardous to yourself. I want a round of bans on public obesity. You shouldn't be allowed to be fat in bars, bowling alleys, or restaurants either. Being fat in public puts everyone at risk. We should start researching the detrimental effects of secondhand obesity. Next time I walk by someone eating junk feed I'm going to lecture him on what he's doing to my health and why he doesn't have the right to put me at risk too.
I was surprised that of the whole list of untimely demises of tech companies, neither 3dfx nor Aureal got mentioned. Both of them really did have some of the best ideas and technology at the time of their departure, but like you said, corporate mis-management did them in.
In the case of 3dfx, they tried to tell gamers what features they should have, instead of implementing the features gamers were demanding (32-bit color among them). They also refused to budge from their insistence on using the Glide API even though it had mostly reached its limits with both OpenGL and Direct3D being obvious improvements.
A3D sound was far and away better than EAX and even now, most of the EAX technology for positional sound is based on A3D. It's astounding that a company had better quality sound technology available 8 years ago, but with Creative Labs cornering the market they have no real incentive to release huge improvements, so it takes a long time for little improvements to trickle through.
The ability to conduct the majority of one's communication using SMS, IM, or site-based messaging services speaks loads about how important that person is to listen to. I strongly prefer less frequent but substantial communcation to constant buzzing/beeping accompanied by endless vapidity.
I think Amazon's patent only covers users. You have to pay royalties if you only click something once.
No, I don't want Windows Media Player for Linux with Microsoft's current disposition. What I would like is for Microsoft to convert their business practices. It can happen, some years ago IBM was practically the same enemy Microsoft is today, but now they're all about open source support.
It would be nice if Microsoft expended fewer resources trying to secure a dominance over Google, Linux, Mozilla, and Sun. The vast amount of money and manpower that Microsoft has could be used to do good things, but they're dead-set on making sure anything they release evades Linux.
It smacks of desperation that Microsoft tries so hard to exclude Linux from any software they release. If they don't loosen up that strangle-hold, their company is going to choke to death.
It's sad that a company with so much money and talent is completely unwilling to adapt to the times. They're clinging to an age of computing that has long since passed. 10 years ago, web tools, platform interoperability and independence, and transparent company operations could have been classified as a trend, but those practices are now solidified.
It would just be nice if Microsoft made even a single genuine move towards cooperation instead of their current modus operandi of "exclusion at all cost".
- "...think of free speech, not free beer."
- Zero indexing the four freedoms
- GNU is a recursive acronym
- copyleft
I wish RMS would spend a lot less time working on grammatical cleverness. It's made worse by his compulsive need to explain his jokes (to let you know just how clever he is) every single time he speaks. Get to the point already!I thought Flock had a decent idea but as it developed it became less of the things I wanted and more of the things a 12 year kid might want.
For example, at first the idea of giving "Web 2.0" almost seamless integration sounded great. I imagined it similar to how MSN Explorer integrated Hotmail. I got the idea that Flock would do this with things like Wiki, certain popular blog sites, gmail, youtube, etc. with development making the features increasingly generic so more sites get included in the integration.
Instead, they overwrote certain FireFox features that were important to me (For example: keywords), forced me to log in to del.icio.us everytime I opened the browser, but left the actual user experience largely unchanged. Nothing on the web was any easier, different, or more integrated. Their sights were narrowed on Flickr, Photobucket, and blog APIs, but the browser doesn't change the web experience as a whole.
As a result, I was just better off using FireFox. Once FireFox 2 came along, it delivered some of the features Flock had, while Flock got stuck using FireFox 1.5.
I thought the idea was good, the execution was poor.
I think you're the first one to ever accuse me of being pedantic. Common sense tells me that power consumption is not tied to clocks. Neither businesses nor individuals are going to artificially alter the amount of power they consume because they've got another (virtual) hour of daylight.
Why won't there be any ability to gauge for 3 months? Obviously in 3 months there will be a larger sample pool, but that should only narrow the accuracy of the current assessment, I don't think it's going to alter it completely.
Kudos, nice quip. Your personal attack makes your argument much stronger.
I despise DST. It's one of the most asinine concepts someone has ever pitched to me. I can't stand the terminology that surrounds discussions of DST, such as "...we have more daylight...". Scientists have proven to me that the amount of daylight in a given period is not affected by the clocks. Clocks are not time machines, they do not alter the space-time continuum. Clocks measure, they don't change it.
If DST is such a great idea, maybe we should start skipping months instead of hours. When Summer arrives, we'll just call it "Fall" to save on air conditioning costs.
In years of gaming I've never come across a particularly impressive AI. I've found that the computer "cheats" sometimes to seem more advanced (such as in Age of Empires, at higher levels of difficulty, instead of getting smarter, the computer opponent just starts with more resources than you). In most cases, game AI succeeds solely because it's connected to the game world more than is possible for the player, and it does what computers do best, which is to flawlessly repeat instructions, making it a far superior resource optimizer than a person is. For example, in some FPS games computer opponents effectively move faster because it knows with pixel precision the clip of every corner of every wall, ledge, and obstacle, so it can turn corners faster than you can. Along the same lines, the computer can make a shot around a corner with 100% accuracy where a player might fail and hit the corner about 10% of the time. What I find most disappointing is that games never even introduce the lowest level of AI, statistic decision making. For example, in a game like DragonRealms or Morrowind (or any other game in which stealing or crime is possible), guards are 100% reactive. They will never pro-actively go somewhere that crime is statistically likely to happen, they follow a set path until crime is reported, then they react. Even at times where I've seen guards given a pro-active algorithm, it's too predictable, to that point that two people can always coordinate and fool it. The last thing I want to mention about AI is that I can't stand instantaneous information flow. If you take an action anywhere in a game, the information about your action is available through the entire game world (unless artificially limited). Computer Players don't have to communicate with each other and pass information through normal channels (speech, writing, etc.) like players do. Take Morrowind for example, if you kill someone, everyone in the world knows it. If your reputation goes up or down, people everywhere treat you differently even if, the moment you take the action, you instantly teleport to a location that no one else could possibly have spread the word in, they've already heard about you. It just makes the game seem very mechanical if the game itself doesn't communicate in the same way people do.
For me, the smallest computer is only limited by the size of the keyboard. At a minimum, I need a notebook-sized keyboard, at least until the point computers can take dictation. I even thought notebook keyboards were too small in the past but I was able to adjust, but any smaller and I won't be able to. I've tried to use those thumb-type keyboards and I just can't communicate comfortably with them.
I admit that stinks, but Intel has open sourced most of their drivers (including the i965), which leaves the door open for someone to create decent drivers for it. The i965 might not work but the i950 works flawlessly.
I think they may have perceived their open-sourcing as relinquishing responsibility. Kind of a "Ball is in your court now" gesture. If only things were that simple. Still, I must commend them for providing open source drivers, while ATI and nVidia refuse. Getting a better driver than ATI or nVidia gives you isn't even an option, while it's possible someone could come out with a better driver for the i965 any day now (assuming they haven't already done so).
Why should I have to prove to them that I want better support? They should prove to me that they are providing better support. Until then, I will only purchase Intel video.
The Intel 950 GMA is sweet compared to any of ATI's cards with shoddy support.
Anything made available for human consumption should be equally available for computer consumption. The IP address, location, and method of consumption should be irrelevant. The only thing at issue here should be that her site was made publicly available, and if you make resources publicly available you should fully expect that humans and computers are going to use them.
I think the only fair thing to do is to issue this woman a citation and require technology training classes before she can return to the virtual world. I have no problem with the untrained using our space so long as they don't cause a ruckus. Once the law suits start flying for things they scarcely understand, their presence is not acceptable.
They're not claiming he pirated music AFTER he had the stroke. The fact that he had a stroke and his alleged pirating could be completely unrelated.
I don't believe pirating music should be illegal or a civil offense, but I take the laws as they're given to me, and the disabled are not exempt from them.
I would say we became friends by not talking for long periods of time. Back when we were teenagers, we only talked on Thursday nights. That just meant we looked forward to meeting up instead of it being just another day.
I don't think constant communication fosters strong friendships, because you have little time to reflect on the importance of your relationship with them, and so little changes in a single day that the nature of the relationship becomes shallow and trivial. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Maybe only talking a few dozen times a year is a little too infrequent for most people. But checking in daily or even hourly (with something like Twitter) would seem more like a status report for a job rather than like the roots of a deep and meaningful friendship.
What the hell is with this social networking crap? I haven't even talked to my best friend in 3 days. I've gone months without talking to him, for no particular reason than I just didn't have anything of substance to say. People don't need to be updated on what's going on from a moment to moment basis. If my life was that fucking exciting, Discovery would make a documentary about me.
I think this whole period of the internet will be remembered in a decade as another stupid idea up there with refreshing web page chat room/message boards, web pages embedded with ICQ contact panels and GOTO.com search boxes, and web rings. Useless chaff.
Until now my fears were not confirmed, but this seals the deal.
You goddamn free software commies are destroying our great nation. It starts with using funky, African-named software, trading "music" with Russia, but now you're killing babies and collapsing national security.
Free software also causes global warming. Reliable tests show that FreeBIOS causes far more CO2 emissions than a proprietary BIOS. FreeBIOS also makes your processor run at a cancer-causing frequency.
The battle lines are drawn! This is where Windows users must unite and take back the world from our oppressors! Take your cancer sticks and shove them, because we want clean air!
The submitter has fallen prey to the priority fallacy, the most hypocritical fallacy of them all.
The submitter thinks homelessness is more important than TV upgrades, but he thinks posting to Slashdot is more important than helping the homeless?
He should be working in a soup kitchen 18-19 hours a day, forever. He shouldn't even be wearing clothes, if he spends money on clothes, that's money he didn't spend feeding the homeless. How many homeless people could the $1000 he spent on a computer have fed? I bet he eats luxury food too. If he were really concerned with feeding the poor, he would subsist on a tasteless diet of grain, water, legumes, and a few vegetables.
Ads do not make the internet run. The internet was running just fine before banner ads.
We may not have the same amount of free sites that we do, but quantity is not something the internet is short on. Anyone intelligent enough to have something worthwhile to say would be intelligent enough to find a way to do it without ad revenue.
The signal to noise ration is very low on the internet, thanks largely in part to the number of freely available resources. Every jack-ass with some drivel that popped into his head is free to jabber away until he's blue in the face (Note: I do not exclude myself). It makes finding useful, accurate information a very time consuming process. If people actually had to pay to disseminate information on the internet, people would make sure their message was actually worth communicating.
The ad-model only seems like such a good plan because it's the only one 95% of the internet population is aware of. Love the enemy you know.
In Firefox, I've had /. set as my Slashdot keyword for years.
Credentials matter because of subjective judgments. Facts can be checked, but every writing has bias, no matter how much effort is made to eliminate that bias. Articles will contain subtle bias in the form of semantic differences.
If I ask two people the best way to get to a grocery store, and one person says "I don't really know my way around but my map says you want to go right on Front Street, left on Broadway..."
The second person says "I go by the store everyday on my way to work. Front Street is usually backed up around 3pm, so you want to go down 5th ave, then left on Broadway..."
It's likely I won't even question the validity of the second person's statement, it's really not a significant enough issue to even think someone would make up the information.
Then it turns out the second person isn't a resident of the city and doesn't work here, he's a tourist and 5th street has been closed for the last 6 months. He just said he was a resident who worked here because he thought his way was better and he wanted me to take his idea seriously, which I may not have done if he had represented himself accurately.
That's an analogous example. There are billions of statements on Wikipedia that may not be significant enough to warrant checking their validity, especially if something sounds "pretty much correct". For example, claiming a programming API is "more robust" than another API (How robust something is can't usually be proven factually so there may not be a citation). If someone with a M.S. in Software Engineering says SVN is "more robust" than CVS, you might accept the statement as truth. Your acceptance might not even be a conscious decision, your mind saw something that sounded perfectly plausible and accepted it. The rot will seep in at those minor points of contention.
I believe IPv6 is still at least 15 - 20 years away. When I first heard about it back in 1999, I went on this panicked frenzy to figure out everything I could about the soon-to-be deployed IPv6. I wanted to make sure my home computers were ready for this major shift, and maybe take advantage of some network performance improvements. That was 8 friggen years ago. I should have put money on the Red Sox winning a world series before I bothered worrying about IPv6.