All 4 of my computers have AMD cpus, K6-3 450, K6-2 350, Athlon XP 2100+, and Athlon 64 3000+. I bought them because of benchmarks and price comparisons. At the time, the Intel CPUs were just unreasonably more expensive than the AMD ones.
As of now, the Intel CPUs are still much more expensive. I never buy the top-of-the-line processor, I'm usually a couple years behind. Maybe out on the bleeding edge, the price points are closer, but for the value components I buy, AMD processors win almost every time.
There were times I thought brand loyalty was a good thing if for the right reasons. But I've since learned that people hang on to their loyalties longer than necessary. For example given the reason of "reliability", people will hang onto that notion long after a competing brand has a track record of being more reliable. They still buy brand x because it's more reliable, even though that may not have been true for the last 10 years.
Intel's behavior won't affect the market one way or another. As a whole, the market is barreling towards an open source model. If Intel opens up, that's great. If they don't, it won't matter because someone else will enter the market that's willing to do so. The market will follow the demand, with or without Intel.
I saw mentions of Freegeek so I thought I'd mention Freecycle too. If you don't own a Dell computer (or even if you do) you might want to consider it. I've never participated, but my mother is absolutely fanatical about it. She's given and picked up tons of stuff from participants.
When I was younger, I had (misplaced) loyalties to certain brands. Now that I've matured, I realize that AMD, Intel, ATI, NVIDIA, Microsoft... none of them have actually done me any favors. In the past I was loyal to AMD, ATI, and 3DFX - it was like I had some kind of "underdog" complex.
I have come to understand that these companies are the technology equivilant of Nike and Reebok. They want us to be fanatical and pick sides like they're our friends, but they're not friends, they just want cash.
With that in mind, I no longer pick my processors or video cards based on brand loyalty. I study some benchmarks, examine some price comparisons, and go with the winner.
There are other companies, like many GNU/Linux developers, GNU/Linux distributors, and Google, that HAVE done favors for me and that actually warrants loyalty. But for all those companies I'm paying for a product, they've got me only as long as theirs is the best.
I think we could develop a "next generation AI" even without answers to difficult philosophical questions. We have barely scratched the surface of what is theoretically possible given the information we have.
We could probably develop an AI that could hold factually and grammatically correct conversations without needing philosophers. That would be a huge improvement considering the current generation of AI is prone to spout gibberish even given a simple question.
Our current best-of-breed AI cannot discern when context is and is not important. If they are programmed to consider context, each answer strings from the last answer/response set, and non-sequitors confuse it. Conversly, if you ask a bot with no sense of context it has difficulty parsing pronouns.
In a world where they're cloning dinosaurs, I think it's perfectly acceptible for them to also have unrealistic technology. It could probably be assumed that because they have the technology to clone dinosaurs, the rest of their technology is at least a little different than ours.
Feelings of guilt and remorse are consequences. It doesn't matter what the consequences are, because that is being multiplied by 0.
We could assume lost productivity modifies gains: Even if you normally make $100 an hour and it'll take you 5 minutes to snuff them out, you only need your victim to have $10 in their pocket or some jewelry to square it up for a positive CBA.
"There's nothing wrong with abusing the trust to gain something else, if the gain outweights the risk of being caught times the consequences of being caught. Simple cost-benefit analysis."
What you just said was: There's nothing wrong with stealing or killing anyone, if at any point in time it is determined there is no risk of getting caught.
Gains: Penny in their pocket
Risk (0) * Consequences = 0
$0.01 > 0 = Dead prostitute on the side of the highway
And you think there would be nothing wrong with that?
Normal people have the same consistent behavior regardless of what they do. Griefers don't load up a game and switch into sociopath mode. They make the same justifications and rationalizations about everything in life. Just because something isn't important to you doesn't mean it's okay to ruin things for others.
Consider the people who sit in a game and spout racist remarks. It's not "just a game", it's how they really think, the game allows them to reveal their true self. Those are the things they would say in everyday life if they thought they would get away with it.
"If he can keep normal relationships and cares about the well-being of others around him, then he is NOT a sociopath, not matter how many people he pisses off in an online game."
Sociopaths can maintain normal relationships as long as those relationships are perceived as beneficial. One of the biggest problems with identifying sociopathys is that they seem normal. Their lack of genuine emotions make them seem charismatic and confident.
Other posters said it sounds like sociopathic tendencies. It's not a tendency, you are a sociopath.
"It's amazing people still don't understand what a griefer is."
That's practically the definition of a sociopath. A person who does not think or feel the same genuine emotions the rest of society does, but you firmly believe everyone else's brain is wired up the way yours is.
People with normal minds do not play games for the disenjoyment of others, don't understand why someone would want to, and wouldn't enjoy it if we tried. Your thoughts and behavior are equivilant to someone going to medical school so they can cut people with a scalpel. (i.e. Someone who wants to end up with half a dozen bodies hanging in their basement.) You've chosen a course of action for exactly the opposite reason most people do, but you think it's strange the rest of us don't seem to understand or empathize.
Cheaters and (other disreputable sorts) don't cheat to be undetectable. Most of them operate in the same manner as a spammer: they play it by numbers. If they suppose a certain number of people are going to be cheating, they can further suppose even the most astute instructor is going to miss catching some percentage. Even if the cheater gets caught they'll try explain away the incident.
I'd say a fair guess is that at least 10% of all cheaters actually graduate without having to face consequences, and most cheaters are hoping to fall in the margin of those who don't get caught/punished.
I agree. I think Hamsterdance, badger, all your base, etc. Are all a matter of "How funny did you find it?". They obviously weren't meant to be seriously attracting someone to use the site with some kind of purpose. I think the entire list should be redone minus joke (or "one hit wonder") web sites.
I think a list of "worst web sites" should be done using only serious material. If you had a "dumbest quote" contest, you wouldn't include intentional jokes.
I'll concede my definition was narrow, not accounting for games of chance. Although I think my definition would include games of skill.
The second point, winning at D&D for example, is more complicated. It depends entirely on the ruleset you're given. If the ruleset, as defined by the GM, includes win scenarios, then it is possible to win at the game. At the very least everyone is aware that the game has lose scenarios, when your character dies or fails to accomplish a task, there can be significant consequences. As compared to WoW, the consequences for death/failure aren't much more than the consequences of sneezing.
The random number generators for D&D are significantly different than my description of WoW. In tabletop games, random numbers are used to determine an outcome once a course of action is chosen, but the list of possible courses is nearly infinite, making the random number far less significant than the player's decisions. In WoW, the choice of actions is so narrow as to be absurd. Your choice is to attack or not. The emphasis in the game is on the numbers generated, not on the player's choice, to the point that if the player's choice were also generated randomly, it wouldn't significantly alter the outcome.
Chess, Checkers, Magic: The Gathering, Morrowind, Dungeons & Dragons, Tetris, Zelda, Quake... all those are games. World of Warcraft is not a game. WoW might have a lot of members, but that does not make it a game.
A game allows players to make non-trivial choices that affect the outcome (positively or negatively) according to an established ruleset, and make progress towards a win or lose condition.
Every choice in World of Warcraft is trivial and there is no lose condition. All choices lead to a win (which is why all choices are trivial, because no choice affects whether or not you win or lose). Success is a function of time played, the only way to "lose" under the WoW ruleset is to cancel your account.
WoW is a very decent graphical user interface to a series of random number generators. Many people find it interesting to observe how the generators affect the graphics, but that has nothing to do with the application's status as a game.
"vegging away your life" is a behavioral problem not a technological one. Like other posters have suggested, the big motivator behind MythTV, Tivo, and similar DVR solutions is to help you fit TV into your schedule instead of building your schedule around the TV.
The fact that you take such an extreme position against media suggests you've got some unresolved mental issues. Maybe your parents beat you whenever you turned on the TV and the very thought of watching a TV makes you wince in pain. You need to learn about moderation; an important concept for a healthy life.
It is absurd that it takes less time and money to design and build an unmanned vehicle to explore mars, launch the vehicle, and complete the mission, than it does to design and build a rendering engine which passes Acid2 (or is otherwise compliant with HTML 4.01, CSS1/2, and DOM Level 1).
Nevermind CSS3, SVG, or any newer technology, it is shocking that after 9 years of development on the Gecko Engine, it's not even CSS1 compliant. It seems foolish to bother developing subsequent standards until foundational work is complete.
A frontend for an existing browser is only going to be as secure as the host browser, plus any holes the new frontend adds. I think Browzar is a waste of time. It's like pasting aluminum foil to your glass door and trying to claim it now has all the security of a steel door.
"schools need to actually do a proper investigation into what'll actually work best..."
Ah, classic "No True Scotsman Fallacy".
First you're operating under the assumption that they haven't performed a proper investiation.
Second, it wouldn't matter what investigation they did. You want the school to, (ahem), "investigate" until they come up with the answer you've predetermined to be the correct one. It's obvious that you want an answer that doesn't involve Microsoft, therefore any investigation which results in a Microsoft platform being preferred you'll just claim is not a "proper" investigation.
It's entirely reasonable to think that an instutition with political and financial concerns, that are invisible to its attendants, are at play here. You might think their decision is wrong, but how sure are you that the head teacher is even the one pulling the strings? I've seen plenty of situations where the person who appears to be making the decisions is really just doing what their superior has determined they should do. The person who makes decisions is seldom obvious or directly accessible to the underlings.
If anyone is ever rewarded for destroying evidence, witness tampering, etc. It is an open invitation to continue that behavior. Instead of learning not to commit the crime (or even not to get caught) you teach the defendant to cover their tracks more thoroughly.
On the one hand, giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt is great. But if you allow them to stretch that doubt, and even actively widen the margin of doubt, then nothing at all is a crime so long as the defendant has enough time/resources on their side. You end up with arguments which sound like:
"I'm sorry your Honor, there's nothing you can do to prove my client had no reason to incinerate the victim and eject their ashes into space. As it was explained, although my client did have a signed a contract with the victim which clearly stated he was not murdered, my client was then forced to use that contract as kindling to prevent himself from freezing to death in July. My client has a delicate metabolism, 90 degree weather is not enough to sustain my client. Again, it is regretable that all the scientists and the judge who could confirm his condition passed away. No your Honor, that's not a threat. Your predecessors did suffer from a rare form of 'My Body Can't Be Found' syndrome."
"That would end all the ethical issues with raising an animal for food, potential issues from mad cow disease, bird flu and whatever the next media induced panic is."
There is nothing that will ever end media induced panic. The media could make someone with a gallon of valium and heroin in their veins panic.
After reading their responses, even if I'm not completely satisfied with their pitch, I'm willing to consider the possibility that they have a valid product. I'll need to see independent benchmarks.
If there is a network card that's going to improve my gaming experience, even if it costs $280, I'd buy it. Heck, I'd buy anything to improve my gaming experience, but I need solid evidence first.
Slashdot Mirror
All 4 of my computers have AMD cpus, K6-3 450, K6-2 350, Athlon XP 2100+, and Athlon 64 3000+. I bought them because of benchmarks and price comparisons. At the time, the Intel CPUs were just unreasonably more expensive than the AMD ones. As of now, the Intel CPUs are still much more expensive. I never buy the top-of-the-line processor, I'm usually a couple years behind. Maybe out on the bleeding edge, the price points are closer, but for the value components I buy, AMD processors win almost every time. There were times I thought brand loyalty was a good thing if for the right reasons. But I've since learned that people hang on to their loyalties longer than necessary. For example given the reason of "reliability", people will hang onto that notion long after a competing brand has a track record of being more reliable. They still buy brand x because it's more reliable, even though that may not have been true for the last 10 years.
Intel's behavior won't affect the market one way or another. As a whole, the market is barreling towards an open source model. If Intel opens up, that's great. If they don't, it won't matter because someone else will enter the market that's willing to do so. The market will follow the demand, with or without Intel.
I saw mentions of Freegeek so I thought I'd mention Freecycle too. If you don't own a Dell computer (or even if you do) you might want to consider it. I've never participated, but my mother is absolutely fanatical about it. She's given and picked up tons of stuff from participants.
The Freecycle NetworkWhen I was younger, I had (misplaced) loyalties to certain brands. Now that I've matured, I realize that AMD, Intel, ATI, NVIDIA, Microsoft... none of them have actually done me any favors. In the past I was loyal to AMD, ATI, and 3DFX - it was like I had some kind of "underdog" complex. I have come to understand that these companies are the technology equivilant of Nike and Reebok. They want us to be fanatical and pick sides like they're our friends, but they're not friends, they just want cash. With that in mind, I no longer pick my processors or video cards based on brand loyalty. I study some benchmarks, examine some price comparisons, and go with the winner. There are other companies, like many GNU/Linux developers, GNU/Linux distributors, and Google, that HAVE done favors for me and that actually warrants loyalty. But for all those companies I'm paying for a product, they've got me only as long as theirs is the best.
I think we could develop a "next generation AI" even without answers to difficult philosophical questions. We have barely scratched the surface of what is theoretically possible given the information we have.
We could probably develop an AI that could hold factually and grammatically correct conversations without needing philosophers. That would be a huge improvement considering the current generation of AI is prone to spout gibberish even given a simple question.
Our current best-of-breed AI cannot discern when context is and is not important. If they are programmed to consider context, each answer strings from the last answer/response set, and non-sequitors confuse it. Conversly, if you ask a bot with no sense of context it has difficulty parsing pronouns.
Maybe he meant that, but that's not the definition of Science Fiction.
"...a popular genre of fiction in which the narrative world differs from our own present or historical reality in least one significant way."
In a world where they're cloning dinosaurs, I think it's perfectly acceptible for them to also have unrealistic technology. It could probably be assumed that because they have the technology to clone dinosaurs, the rest of their technology is at least a little different than ours.It was supposed to be part of the standard y2k package along with my jetpack, hover car, and virtual reality system.
Feelings of guilt and remorse are consequences. It doesn't matter what the consequences are, because that is being multiplied by 0. We could assume lost productivity modifies gains: Even if you normally make $100 an hour and it'll take you 5 minutes to snuff them out, you only need your victim to have $10 in their pocket or some jewelry to square it up for a positive CBA.
"There's nothing wrong with abusing the trust to gain something else, if the gain outweights the risk of being caught times the consequences of being caught. Simple cost-benefit analysis."
What you just said was: There's nothing wrong with stealing or killing anyone, if at any point in time it is determined there is no risk of getting caught. Gains: Penny in their pocket Risk (0) * Consequences = 0 $0.01 > 0 = Dead prostitute on the side of the highway And you think there would be nothing wrong with that?Normal people have the same consistent behavior regardless of what they do. Griefers don't load up a game and switch into sociopath mode. They make the same justifications and rationalizations about everything in life. Just because something isn't important to you doesn't mean it's okay to ruin things for others.
Consider the people who sit in a game and spout racist remarks. It's not "just a game", it's how they really think, the game allows them to reveal their true self. Those are the things they would say in everyday life if they thought they would get away with it.
"If he can keep normal relationships and cares about the well-being of others around him, then he is NOT a sociopath, not matter how many people he pisses off in an online game."
Sociopaths can maintain normal relationships as long as those relationships are perceived as beneficial. One of the biggest problems with identifying sociopathys is that they seem normal. Their lack of genuine emotions make them seem charismatic and confident.Other posters said it sounds like sociopathic tendencies. It's not a tendency, you are a sociopath.
"It's amazing people still don't understand what a griefer is."
That's practically the definition of a sociopath. A person who does not think or feel the same genuine emotions the rest of society does, but you firmly believe everyone else's brain is wired up the way yours is.
People with normal minds do not play games for the disenjoyment of others, don't understand why someone would want to, and wouldn't enjoy it if we tried. Your thoughts and behavior are equivilant to someone going to medical school so they can cut people with a scalpel. (i.e. Someone who wants to end up with half a dozen bodies hanging in their basement.) You've chosen a course of action for exactly the opposite reason most people do, but you think it's strange the rest of us don't seem to understand or empathize.
Cheaters and (other disreputable sorts) don't cheat to be undetectable. Most of them operate in the same manner as a spammer: they play it by numbers. If they suppose a certain number of people are going to be cheating, they can further suppose even the most astute instructor is going to miss catching some percentage. Even if the cheater gets caught they'll try explain away the incident.
I'd say a fair guess is that at least 10% of all cheaters actually graduate without having to face consequences, and most cheaters are hoping to fall in the margin of those who don't get caught/punished.
I agree. I think Hamsterdance, badger, all your base, etc. Are all a matter of "How funny did you find it?". They obviously weren't meant to be seriously attracting someone to use the site with some kind of purpose. I think the entire list should be redone minus joke (or "one hit wonder") web sites.
I think a list of "worst web sites" should be done using only serious material. If you had a "dumbest quote" contest, you wouldn't include intentional jokes.
If he died shortly after filming, I am absolutely floored by how well they animated his corpse in X3.
I'll concede my definition was narrow, not accounting for games of chance. Although I think my definition would include games of skill.
The second point, winning at D&D for example, is more complicated. It depends entirely on the ruleset you're given. If the ruleset, as defined by the GM, includes win scenarios, then it is possible to win at the game. At the very least everyone is aware that the game has lose scenarios, when your character dies or fails to accomplish a task, there can be significant consequences. As compared to WoW, the consequences for death/failure aren't much more than the consequences of sneezing.
The random number generators for D&D are significantly different than my description of WoW. In tabletop games, random numbers are used to determine an outcome once a course of action is chosen, but the list of possible courses is nearly infinite, making the random number far less significant than the player's decisions. In WoW, the choice of actions is so narrow as to be absurd. Your choice is to attack or not. The emphasis in the game is on the numbers generated, not on the player's choice, to the point that if the player's choice were also generated randomly, it wouldn't significantly alter the outcome.
Chess, Checkers, Magic: The Gathering, Morrowind, Dungeons & Dragons, Tetris, Zelda, Quake... all those are games. World of Warcraft is not a game. WoW might have a lot of members, but that does not make it a game.
A game allows players to make non-trivial choices that affect the outcome (positively or negatively) according to an established ruleset, and make progress towards a win or lose condition.
Every choice in World of Warcraft is trivial and there is no lose condition. All choices lead to a win (which is why all choices are trivial, because no choice affects whether or not you win or lose). Success is a function of time played, the only way to "lose" under the WoW ruleset is to cancel your account.
WoW is a very decent graphical user interface to a series of random number generators. Many people find it interesting to observe how the generators affect the graphics, but that has nothing to do with the application's status as a game.
"vegging away your life" is a behavioral problem not a technological one. Like other posters have suggested, the big motivator behind MythTV, Tivo, and similar DVR solutions is to help you fit TV into your schedule instead of building your schedule around the TV.
The fact that you take such an extreme position against media suggests you've got some unresolved mental issues. Maybe your parents beat you whenever you turned on the TV and the very thought of watching a TV makes you wince in pain. You need to learn about moderation; an important concept for a healthy life.
It is absurd that it takes less time and money to design and build an unmanned vehicle to explore mars, launch the vehicle, and complete the mission, than it does to design and build a rendering engine which passes Acid2 (or is otherwise compliant with HTML 4.01, CSS1/2, and DOM Level 1). Nevermind CSS3, SVG, or any newer technology, it is shocking that after 9 years of development on the Gecko Engine, it's not even CSS1 compliant. It seems foolish to bother developing subsequent standards until foundational work is complete.
A frontend for an existing browser is only going to be as secure as the host browser, plus any holes the new frontend adds. I think Browzar is a waste of time. It's like pasting aluminum foil to your glass door and trying to claim it now has all the security of a steel door.
"schools need to actually do a proper investigation into what'll actually work best..."
Ah, classic "No True Scotsman Fallacy".
First you're operating under the assumption that they haven't performed a proper investiation.
Second, it wouldn't matter what investigation they did. You want the school to, (ahem), "investigate" until they come up with the answer you've predetermined to be the correct one. It's obvious that you want an answer that doesn't involve Microsoft, therefore any investigation which results in a Microsoft platform being preferred you'll just claim is not a "proper" investigation.
It's entirely reasonable to think that an instutition with political and financial concerns, that are invisible to its attendants, are at play here. You might think their decision is wrong, but how sure are you that the head teacher is even the one pulling the strings? I've seen plenty of situations where the person who appears to be making the decisions is really just doing what their superior has determined they should do. The person who makes decisions is seldom obvious or directly accessible to the underlings.
If anyone is ever rewarded for destroying evidence, witness tampering, etc. It is an open invitation to continue that behavior. Instead of learning not to commit the crime (or even not to get caught) you teach the defendant to cover their tracks more thoroughly. On the one hand, giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt is great. But if you allow them to stretch that doubt, and even actively widen the margin of doubt, then nothing at all is a crime so long as the defendant has enough time/resources on their side. You end up with arguments which sound like: "I'm sorry your Honor, there's nothing you can do to prove my client had no reason to incinerate the victim and eject their ashes into space. As it was explained, although my client did have a signed a contract with the victim which clearly stated he was not murdered, my client was then forced to use that contract as kindling to prevent himself from freezing to death in July. My client has a delicate metabolism, 90 degree weather is not enough to sustain my client. Again, it is regretable that all the scientists and the judge who could confirm his condition passed away. No your Honor, that's not a threat. Your predecessors did suffer from a rare form of 'My Body Can't Be Found' syndrome."
"That would end all the ethical issues with raising an animal for food, potential issues from mad cow disease, bird flu and whatever the next media induced panic is." There is nothing that will ever end media induced panic. The media could make someone with a gallon of valium and heroin in their veins panic.
After reading their responses, even if I'm not completely satisfied with their pitch, I'm willing to consider the possibility that they have a valid product. I'll need to see independent benchmarks. If there is a network card that's going to improve my gaming experience, even if it costs $280, I'd buy it. Heck, I'd buy anything to improve my gaming experience, but I need solid evidence first.
I'm absolutely amazed. When you already know the answer and derive keywords from the answer you already know, searching for the solution is trivial!