Just think, its only a 30-generation journey away. Almost seems like nothing doesn't it?
But it'd be just my luck to take off with the wife and kids and get almost out there, you know, 15-18 light years or so... and everything is looking good... when she'd look over at me with *that* look-- you know the one-- the one that says "Honey, we gotta turn around, I think we left the oven on."
My main point is that business is ultimately about the bottom line, the return on the investment. Where women have been "valuable" for business, they have been (reasonably) unhesitatingly employed. My example of electronics assembly and telephone operators was taken from historical record. Both jobs were originally male-oriented jobs. In the case of electronic assembly, women are considered better choices as they tend to have smaller, nimbler fingers and better patience for doing the repetitive assembly work. In the case of telephone operators, male operators often did not perform well in the repetitive environment and resorted to rudeness and other behaviors unflattering to the phone companies.
And my secondary point was if women are so darned good at running companies, why aren't they? And I pointed out that you can't trot out the usual 'the old boys club network' rhetoric on this one since we're talking about companies world-wide, covering different cultures and different eras that go back at least a couple of millenia if not further. For good or for ill, like it or not, "business" has been predominantly a male-oriented affair. However the nature of business is to exploit whatever resources are available to the maximum extent possible to eek out the largest possible return for the business owner(s) and shareholders. Note that I am not saying women are incapable of running a corporation, but only questioning why they do not? If they are "equally capable" (weasel words I know) why aren't they more or less equally represented? Or even just *more* represented than they are without trying to determine the equity factor? Where are the women CEO's ??? Why don't we hear about the "old girl's network" ???
As for myself, I could care less who is the manager or the CEO if they can do a good job and supply me my paycheck. And just for the record, I *do* happen to work for a woman-owned company, not that I see that as any particular mark of distinction. Though apparently enough people do so as to necessitate the use of "woman-" to illustrate the novelty of it.
As the old saying goes, "its not that the Bear dances the waltz, but rather that the bear dances at all".
As far as misogynistic statements go... I can give as good as I get. If you're unsure what I mean, re-read the original referenced article. It was dripping with inherent sexism from the git-go.
You don't go looking for people who hate kittens at your local animal shelter do you?
Actually, that might be an excellent place to look for them. Where else would they get such a wonderful job where they get to execute them? (And who knows what all else while they're waiting?)
Where would you go to find pedophiles? How about schools, churches, sports and community activities (after-school) facilities. An excellent place for a pedophile to blend in and pick his/her victims.
What about a bank robber? Most bank robberies are inside jobs, the result of an employee with access to the money making discreet and inapproriate transactions to embezzle it. But even in the case of the more notorious type-- in the infamous words of Al Capone, when asked why he robbed banks, "Because its where the money is!"
Its not uncommon at all to find people predisposed to certain types of criminal or anti-social behavior "hiding out" in plain view, and well-placed to take advantage of their situations.
#1. How they define 'in who's interest'. The question is whether or not the supposed 'young and brash' males believe the 'deal' to be in their interest.
#2. They are young and do not have the same level of 'life experience' and 'tempered wisdom', regardless of their "testosterone" levels as their older counterparts.
#3. They may be more likely to believe that they can lead their companies to better victories ("deals") than those presented by the "researchers".
#4. It may be that they do not "compute" the "value" of the "deal" in the same manner as the researchers (which seems pretty obvious to me they don't).
#5. Other studies have shown that corporate CEO's tend to be better at 'lying' and often seem to have near-psychopathic personalities. How is this accounted for in the study?
#6. If women are so darned good at running and managing big corporations-- where are they? Money talks-- if that's one of their supposed "strengths", then how come the business world hasn't employed them in that capacity for eons? You can't trot out "the old boy's network" on this one-- we're talking world-wide, different cultures, different eras, and in the one field where nothing much matters except the return on investment. If women are so great, why aren't they *already* out running companies?
#7. Women *do* make good assembly line workers for electronics manufacturers. That is an area where their "innate gifts" have proven to be effective. Also telephone operators. Stuff that's boring and repetitive, they're pretty good at.
My bet is that it will only take a couple of initial DOS attacks before the pirates will strike back with some DOS attacks of their own, and aimed right at the heart of the motion picture industry-- and it won't be pretty. No more online movie tickets-- the sites are blocked. No more movie trailers, the sites are blocked. No more fan forums-- well, you get the picture. Er, or rather, you won't.
Wow, that'd be like old-home week for me! I loved my Altairs:-)
Back them programs were still simple enough and short enough that you could stop it at any time and single step through it, examine the registers, read memory locations, change data in those locations, etc-- all from the front panel and see the results on the LED's. Even the "OS" (as it were) itself. I used to run CP/M on mine, mostly. But there were times I'd kick out the OS and just finger-bone something in from the front panel just for the fun of it. And the OP is right, it really does get you closer to the bone so as to be able to get a good, solid understanding of where the hardware ends and the software begins. And if you start *really* digging into things, you learn about the microcode inside the processor too, and how the microcode instructions become machine code instructions. So you learn about the ALU, the various internal switching busses, the I/O bus (for Intel-style systems and such) and working with memory locations, and "magic" memory locations (memory-mapped I/O), and how stuff gets into and out of the internal registers, and how the overflow and carry bits and so-on are really implemented inside the CPU and how they literally control the flow of "bits" from one spot to another, etc--- all of which is really useful information later when software starts getting layered, and bundled, and managed in different ways. Its easier to understand how to peel back the layers when you've had experience at that level to gain the perspective. I have found that its hard to explain it all to people who have never had to interact with the system at that level.
OMG, letters have post marks and tell what town the sender lives in!
OMG, caller ID gives my phone number to people that I call!
OMG, the Registry of Deeds lists my address and how much I paid for the house!
OMG, the phone book list my name, phone number and address!
We've been dealing with stuff like this for decades, right? I think the danger is more about the contents of your tweets ("I am on vacation") than the metadata ("I live here"). I can probably find your address if I wanted, even without Flickr metadata.
Okay, examining your statements:
Letters DO have postmarks, but they travel WITH the letter and are a little difficult to intercept "in-flight" to examine. Furthermore, the "timeliness" of the postmarks are not so good. By the time you have an opportunity to examine the postmarks, the "window of opportunity" they might reveal is long past.
Your caller ID DOES give out your phone number to people you call, unless of course you're blocking it. But that detail aside, again it is not information that is really all that useful in locating you, except perhaps generally in a large area-- with the exception that it could potentially alert someone who ALREADY knows your various telephone numbers to your location. But in that instance you are already dealing with someone who has extra information to work with.
The Registry of Deeds DOES contain your address, but so does the telephone book, and probably half a dozen other sources. And it does also record the price paid for the house. But neither of these bits of information are particularly useful for determining what goodies you have in your house, or when you'll be home (or not).
The phone book DOES list your name and address. I already covered this above.
However-- for the stuff that DOES matter, and is relevant to the ORIGINAL POST-- many photos taken these days ARE taken with cameras that are GPS-enabled, AND that record the GPS information into the EXIF data region of the image. Thus for SOME photos, it could be possible to absolutely determine where the photograph was taken (within the limits of the GPS device of course), the date and time-of-day, and of course the image may be a picture of your ACTUAL STUFF so that someone could know:
(A) WHATyou have (B) WHERE you have it (C) What TIME and DATE it was THERE
And by including some elementary assumptions about your habits-- which may possibly be revealed in the image or adjoining images-- or else just "reasonable guesses" about people in-general and hoping they apply to you, they could make a prediction as to when you are home and when you are not.
It wouldn't take any great intelligence to do some basic figuring-- particularly if there are additional photos available for comparison. They don't even need to be taken on the same day, in the same location, or show the same stuff-- as long as they relate to YOU, educated guesses can be made ABOUT you from them, based on what they reveal.
They might show you appear to be a typical "family guy" and thus a prediction could be made that you have a mortgage and the usual swath of bills to pay and thus you probably work, and that more likely than not you work during the day.
(Go ahead and tell me that didn't take any great amount of genius, and that someone could have figured that out by simply looking at your house, I'll wait...)
You're absolutely right-- the difference is, with the location information contained in the pictures they can probably do it WITHOUT being in front of your house. And they can probably use the pictures-- yours and other people's-- to determine WHICH houses are worth more scrutiny and effort BEFORE going there in person. And both of these functions SAVE TIME and effort, not to mention REDUCE the chances of GETTING CAUGHT.
Finally, if they pick YOUR pictures and YOUR stuff, YOU'RE the one that's going to be left standing there with nothing but a moronic letter on slashdot.
I think the same can be said for many SIM and/or multi-player games. Especially the ones that give the user a number of variables to manage and control in real time, for real time multi-player games, or else in turns for turn-based games. Even if the variables are "dumbed-down" or distorted, compared to their "real world counterparts", simply going through the exercise of keeping up with multiple things, making executive decisions (right or wrong, make a choice and keep moving), and dealing with the consequences does do a lot to prepare someone for dealing with similar things in real life. I don't believe it auto-magically bestows someone with an MBA, but it does give them an opportunity to face leadership challenges in a controlled and safe manner, and to face many more than they would likely otherwise encounter in their day-to-day "real" lives. Another thing that SIM games do is lets someone experiment with extremes in situations that don't cause actual harm-- except to the SIM's of course, and I think we're safe there until they unionize...
Moreover, I think different types of SIM games are useful for preparing people for different types of real-world situations. While that may seem apparent, I think people often develop "tunnel vision" and only consider the type of game they're currently playing or else have played and may be overlooking lessons that can be learned from other genres. Some SIM games focus on the tactical while others focus more on the long-term strategic. Some emphasize command and leadership "in the heat of the moment" while others emphasize a more wizened approach. Each has its merits and each teaches the players useful lessons that can be applied, at least to some degree, back in their "real lives".
Then there are the various social, interactive, cooperative and/or antagonistic lessons that can be learned from massive-multi-player games. Some games may help players learn how to work cooperatively in a team environment to accomplish a task or a goal. Others may help players develop better socializing skills that can translate to better interpersonal / collegiate relationships in the work environment (how many geeks do we all know who can't even make eye contact in the real world?) And some games may assist a player in honing their diplomatic and negotiating skills.
In the past people used to downplay the possible game versus real-world benefits and synergies that are possible, but I don't know why it should really be all that surprising to anyone really, since the idea of making models, sampling, making measurements, performing statistical analysis, creating simulations-- whether paper or computer-based, have all been classic and time-honored methods of developing an understanding and preparing ourselves to meet some as-of-yet unmet challenge. Going to the moon, for example-- nobody had ever done that before. And yet some method of understanding and preparing the people involved had to be invented and incorporated into the program. And the astronauts and engineers had to do their best to prepare themselves, through practice and simulation, to meet a challenge that nobody on earth had ever faced before them. As the real events played-out, not everything went according to the plans and simulations, but at the very least, they did have *some* practice, and *some* thought previously toward how to best meet their challenges.
There is an old saying that I think applies: "Luck is when opportunity meets preparation."
How better to prepare, if no other method exists, than through simulation and gaming?
So many things work great on the drawing board and just suck in real life-- why? Because the designers don't take into account real-life issues like sensor failure, overlapping sensors, redundancy, multiple measurements, measurements taken with different sensor types, and don't make allowances for real world behavior, like when the tires get stuck in the mud, or the turret gets a rock jammed in it just right, or when a camera is broken-- or even just staring into the sun, and they don't make allowances in their algorithms to check, re-check, check some more, look for errors, errant behavior, "stuck" conditions, etc.
Its easy to chalk something like this up to a "math problem"-- ooops, my bad.
But I'd bet good money that in the final analysis the real answer is sloppy design.
Gee, what an illustrious milestone. A red-letter day for Linux. Woo-hoo... whoop it up boys and girls! A system so desperate for exploits that we'll EMULATE a whole 'nuther system just to get them!
I don't believe that. I think there will be a threshold effect driven by consumer demand. When the price threshold is reached that ordinary consumers will dig into their wallets, I think the pressure will be on solid-state drive makers to get the product out there and at the price the market demands. This is the kind of bogus/fud story that mfgrs float every once in awhile when they're feeling a little inadequate or under-prepared.
I would rather pay for fewer channels with better shit. Seriously cable / fios / satellite tv -- it all sucks. Too many commercials, too many infomercials, too much bullshit content.
TV sucks these days. Movies suck these days. Music sucks these days. Its hard to find any content worth paying attention to, much less buying. The soul is being (or has been) sucked out of everything these days.
Too much lowest-common-denominator bullshit. Fuck it. Why bother?
I'm not sure why you got modded down, you're making a good point.
Another point to consider is context-- the fact that people do different kinds of things online at different times, which may vary from day-to-day, week-to-week, etc. During one time period I may be at work and my browsing / interest behavior revolves around work-related issues. Showing me an ad for a non work-related is not likely to pique my interest during this context. At another time I may be at home with my family doing family-related stuff. My browsing during this period is most likely to be G-rated and related to family entertainment, information, or home-related needs. Occasionally I might look at a "more colorful" site and my browsing is going to be focused in ways that relate to that.
Showing me a porn ad in *ANY* context other than when I'm actually engaged in that type of activity would send me through the roof. I definitely do not want that type of advertisement to pop up during, say, my "family" browsing context, nor my "work" browsing context.
Likewise I'm not an iTunes subscriber, don't buy music online (or offline for that matter, I refuse to support the RIAA mafia) so showing me ads for music downloads and such is completely pointless. Moreover I don't give a rat's ass about most "popular" consumer items and getting in my face about it is guaranteed to get your company on my list of people NOT to buy anything from.
I agree with another previous poster-- if you show me an ad WHEN I am actually interested in buying something that relates to the ad -- BEFORE I buy something related to the ad -- I might consider it. You can determine that context by me SEARCHING for something. If I make a purchase then you should drop that as an ad trigger. Once I make the purchase I'm not likely to be interested in looking at competing products anymore and you'll just piss me off if you do.
And when I am searching-- I want several things-- information, pricing, availability, and shipping cost. Secondarily I want to know store policies on various things including returns, exchanges, gifts, etc. I want GOOD information and in a useful format. I want to be able to start from an overview and drill down to details. I want pictures from lots of angles. I want complete specifications. I want to know if it comes in different colors or sizes and what they are. I want straightforward information I can use to compare products, both within a manufacturer's line and versus competitors *I* choose.
In the online economy your store name / brand / logo / image isn't likely to mean doodly-squat to me. In fact I probably won't even notice the name until I checkout unless I've bought there before and am specifically seeking it out to buy from again. Anybody can hide behind a domain name. There are small operations with outstanding fulfillment and large well-known old-school operations with fulfillment that absolutely sucks. So playing coy and hiding your prices or playing games with product information is just STUPID. Why should I jump through your hoops when there are a thousand other stores just like yours I can visit without the hassle?
Finally, when it comes to targeted ads, generally there is a limited range of products that the marketer has to push. If my interests and activities don't clearly fall within one of those areas, the marketer just "picks something" and throws it at me. There is nothing lamer than showing me your last-ditch pitch when you know I'm not going to be remotely interested in it.
Slashdot Mirror
Google says: "We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust."
So how does Joe User know "Who to trust?" Is Google trustworthy? How would I know? Because they say they're not "evil" ??
Its kind of bullshit advice.
Just think, its only a 30-generation journey away. Almost seems like nothing doesn't it?
But it'd be just my luck to take off with the wife and kids and get almost out there, you know, 15-18 light years or so... and everything is looking good... when she'd look over at me with *that* look-- you know the one-- the one that says "Honey, we gotta turn around, I think we left the oven on."
My main point is that business is ultimately about the bottom line, the return on the investment. Where women have been "valuable" for business, they have been (reasonably) unhesitatingly employed. My example of electronics assembly and telephone operators was taken from historical record. Both jobs were originally male-oriented jobs. In the case of electronic assembly, women are considered better choices as they tend to have smaller, nimbler fingers and better patience for doing the repetitive assembly work. In the case of telephone operators, male operators often did not perform well in the repetitive environment and resorted to rudeness and other behaviors unflattering to the phone companies.
And my secondary point was if women are so darned good at running companies, why aren't they? And I pointed out that you can't trot out the usual 'the old boys club network' rhetoric on this one since we're talking about companies world-wide, covering different cultures and different eras that go back at least a couple of millenia if not further. For good or for ill, like it or not, "business" has been predominantly a male-oriented affair. However the nature of business is to exploit whatever resources are available to the maximum extent possible to eek out the largest possible return for the business owner(s) and shareholders. Note that I am not saying women are incapable of running a corporation, but only questioning why they do not? If they are "equally capable" (weasel words I know) why aren't they more or less equally represented? Or even just *more* represented than they are without trying to determine the equity factor? Where are the women CEO's ??? Why don't we hear about the "old girl's network" ???
As for myself, I could care less who is the manager or the CEO if they can do a good job and supply me my paycheck. And just for the record, I *do* happen to work for a woman-owned company, not that I see that as any particular mark of distinction. Though apparently enough people do so as to necessitate the use of "woman-" to illustrate the novelty of it.
As the old saying goes, "its not that the Bear dances the waltz, but rather that the bear dances at all".
As far as misogynistic statements go... I can give as good as I get. If you're unsure what I mean, re-read the original referenced article. It was dripping with inherent sexism from the git-go.
Does the winning bidder get to turn Daryl into his/her personal boot-licking worm ???
You don't go looking for people who hate kittens at your local animal shelter do you?
Actually, that might be an excellent place to look for them. Where else would they get such a wonderful job where they get to execute them?
(And who knows what all else while they're waiting?)
Where would you go to find pedophiles? How about schools, churches, sports and community activities (after-school) facilities. An excellent
place for a pedophile to blend in and pick his/her victims.
What about a bank robber? Most bank robberies are inside jobs, the result of an employee with access to the money making discreet and inapproriate
transactions to embezzle it. But even in the case of the more notorious type-- in the infamous words of Al Capone, when asked why he robbed banks,
"Because its where the money is!"
Its not uncommon at all to find people predisposed to certain types of criminal or anti-social behavior "hiding out" in plain view, and
well-placed to take advantage of their situations.
I think its all about the underwear.
Women tend to wear silky, smooth underwear, or maybe nylon with some lace.
Whereas men tend to wear itchy, scratchy old boxer shorts or briefs, which would naturally make anybody cranky and hard to get along with.
So its no wonder that the young males were predisposed to making different decisions.
Did any of the researchers factor out the difference in the underwear ???
I think not.
Clearly the research and all of its outcomes is totally biased, and the real answer is 'It depends.'
Why Are So Many Terrorists Engineers?
The answer is pretty simple. Where else are you gonna find 72 virgins???
Some other points to make are:
#1. How they define 'in who's interest'. The question is whether or not the supposed 'young and brash' males believe the 'deal' to be in their interest.
#2. They are young and do not have the same level of 'life experience' and 'tempered wisdom', regardless of their "testosterone" levels as their older counterparts.
#3. They may be more likely to believe that they can lead their companies to better victories ("deals") than those presented by the "researchers".
#4. It may be that they do not "compute" the "value" of the "deal" in the same manner as the researchers (which seems pretty obvious to me they don't).
#5. Other studies have shown that corporate CEO's tend to be better at 'lying' and often seem to have near-psychopathic personalities. How is this accounted for in the study?
#6. If women are so darned good at running and managing big corporations-- where are they? Money talks-- if that's one of their supposed "strengths", then how come the business world hasn't employed them in that capacity for eons? You can't trot out "the old boy's network" on this one-- we're talking world-wide, different cultures, different eras, and in the one field where nothing much matters except the return on investment. If women are so great, why aren't they *already* out running companies?
#7. Women *do* make good assembly line workers for electronics manufacturers. That is an area where their "innate gifts" have proven to be effective. Also telephone operators. Stuff that's boring and repetitive, they're pretty good at.
I'll bet you're a hoot at parties...
My bet is that it will only take a couple of initial DOS attacks before the pirates will strike back with some DOS attacks of their own, and aimed right at the heart of the motion picture industry-- and it won't be pretty. No more online movie tickets-- the sites are blocked. No more movie trailers, the sites are blocked. No more fan forums-- well, you get the picture. Er, or rather, you won't.
Wow, that'd be like old-home week for me! I loved my Altairs :-)
Back them programs were still simple enough and short enough that you could stop it at any time and single step through it, examine the registers, read memory locations, change data in those locations, etc-- all from the front panel and see the results on the LED's. Even the "OS" (as it were) itself. I used to run CP/M on mine, mostly. But there were times I'd kick out the OS and just finger-bone something in from the front panel just for the fun of it. And the OP is right, it really does get you closer to the bone so as to be able to get a good, solid understanding of where the hardware ends and the software begins. And if you start *really* digging into things, you learn about the microcode inside the processor too, and how the microcode instructions become machine code instructions. So you learn about the ALU, the various internal switching busses, the I/O bus (for Intel-style systems and such) and working with memory locations, and "magic" memory locations (memory-mapped I/O), and how stuff gets into and out of the internal registers, and how the overflow and carry bits and so-on are really implemented inside the CPU and how they literally control the flow of "bits" from one spot to another, etc--- all of which is really useful information later when software starts getting layered, and bundled, and managed in different ways. Its easier to understand how to peel back the layers when you've had experience at that level to gain the perspective. I have found that its hard to explain it all to people who have never had to interact with the system at that level.
The parent is misinformed.
Okay, examining your statements:
Letters DO have postmarks, but they travel WITH the letter and are a little difficult to intercept "in-flight" to examine. Furthermore, the "timeliness" of the postmarks are not so good. By the time you have an opportunity to examine the postmarks, the "window of opportunity" they might reveal is long past.
Your caller ID DOES give out your phone number to people you call, unless of course you're blocking it. But that detail aside, again it is not information that is really all that useful in locating you, except perhaps generally in a large area-- with the exception that it could potentially alert someone who ALREADY knows your various telephone numbers to your location. But in that instance you are already dealing with someone who has extra information to work with.
The Registry of Deeds DOES contain your address, but so does the telephone book, and probably half a dozen other sources. And it does also record the price paid for the house. But neither of these bits of information are particularly useful for determining what goodies you have in your house, or when you'll be home (or not).
The phone book DOES list your name and address. I already covered this above.
However-- for the stuff that DOES matter, and is relevant to the ORIGINAL POST-- many photos taken these days ARE taken with cameras that are GPS-enabled, AND that record the GPS information into the EXIF data region of the image. Thus for SOME photos, it could be possible to absolutely determine where the photograph was taken (within the limits of the GPS device of course), the date and time-of-day, and of course the image may be a picture of your ACTUAL STUFF so that someone could know:
(A) WHATyou have
(B) WHERE you have it
(C) What TIME and DATE it was THERE
And by including some elementary assumptions about your habits-- which may possibly be revealed in the image or adjoining images-- or else just "reasonable guesses" about people in-general and hoping they apply to you, they could make a prediction as to when you are home and when you are not.
It wouldn't take any great intelligence to do some basic figuring-- particularly if there are additional photos available for comparison. They don't even need to be taken on the same day, in the same location, or show the same stuff-- as long as they relate to YOU, educated guesses can be made ABOUT you from them, based on what they reveal.
They might show you appear to be a typical "family guy" and thus a prediction could be made that you have a mortgage and the usual swath of bills to pay and thus you probably work, and that more likely than not you work during the day.
(Go ahead and tell me that didn't take any great amount of genius, and that someone could have figured that out by simply looking at your house, I'll wait...)
You're absolutely right-- the difference is, with the location information contained in the pictures they can probably do it WITHOUT being in front of your house. And they can probably use the pictures-- yours and other people's-- to determine WHICH houses are worth more scrutiny and effort BEFORE going there in person. And both of these functions SAVE TIME and effort, not to mention REDUCE the chances of GETTING CAUGHT.
Finally, if they pick YOUR pictures and YOUR stuff, YOU'RE the one that's going to be left standing there with nothing but a moronic letter on slashdot.
I think the same can be said for many SIM and/or multi-player games. Especially the ones that give the user a number of variables to manage and control in real time, for real time multi-player games, or else in turns for turn-based games. Even if the variables are "dumbed-down" or distorted, compared to their "real world counterparts", simply going through the exercise of keeping up with multiple things, making executive decisions (right or wrong, make a choice and keep moving), and dealing with the consequences does do a lot to prepare someone for dealing with similar things in real life. I don't believe it auto-magically bestows someone with an MBA, but it does give them an opportunity to face leadership challenges in a controlled and safe manner, and to face many more than they would likely otherwise encounter in their day-to-day "real" lives. Another thing that SIM games do is lets someone experiment with extremes in situations that don't cause actual harm-- except to the SIM's of course, and I think we're safe there until they unionize...
Moreover, I think different types of SIM games are useful for preparing people for different types of real-world situations. While that may seem apparent, I think people often develop "tunnel vision" and only consider the type of game they're currently playing or else have played and may be overlooking lessons that can be learned from other genres. Some SIM games focus on the tactical while others focus more on the long-term strategic. Some emphasize command and leadership "in the heat of the moment" while others emphasize a more wizened approach. Each has its merits and each teaches the players useful lessons that can be applied, at least to some degree, back in their "real lives".
Then there are the various social, interactive, cooperative and/or antagonistic lessons that can be learned from massive-multi-player games. Some games may help players learn how to work cooperatively in a team environment to accomplish a task or a goal. Others may help players develop better socializing skills that can translate to better interpersonal / collegiate relationships in the work environment (how many geeks do we all know who can't even make eye contact in the real world?) And some games may assist a player in honing their diplomatic and negotiating skills.
In the past people used to downplay the possible game versus real-world benefits and synergies that are possible, but I don't know why it should really be all that surprising to anyone really, since the idea of making models, sampling, making measurements, performing statistical analysis, creating simulations-- whether paper or computer-based, have all been classic and time-honored methods of developing an understanding and preparing ourselves to meet some as-of-yet unmet challenge. Going to the moon, for example-- nobody had ever done that before. And yet some method of understanding and preparing the people involved had to be invented and incorporated into the program. And the astronauts and engineers had to do their best to prepare themselves, through practice and simulation, to meet a challenge that nobody on earth had ever faced before them. As the real events played-out, not everything went according to the plans and simulations, but at the very least, they did have *some* practice, and *some* thought previously toward how to best meet their challenges.
There is an old saying that I think applies: "Luck is when opportunity meets preparation."
How better to prepare, if no other method exists, than through simulation and gaming?
Q: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg ???
A: Everybody knows it was the *ROOSTER* !!! :-)
If it bothers the RIAA... ... then its *fine* with me.
Anything that they're against must be good for everybody else.
What a really good reason NOT to buy an apple-- anything.
I hate people and devices that try to force me to look at ads.
If I wasn't interested in the first place, I'm sure as heck not gonna be interested if you FORCE me to do it.
FUCK APPLE.
Their Antitrust lawsuita aren't like your antitrust lawsuits...
So many things work great on the drawing board and just suck in real life-- why? Because the designers don't take into account real-life issues like sensor failure, overlapping sensors, redundancy, multiple measurements, measurements taken with different sensor types, and don't make allowances for real world behavior, like when the tires get stuck in the mud, or the turret gets a rock jammed in it just right, or when a camera is broken-- or even just staring into the sun, and they don't make allowances in their algorithms to check, re-check, check some more, look for errors, errant behavior, "stuck" conditions, etc.
Its easy to chalk something like this up to a "math problem"-- ooops, my bad.
But I'd bet good money that in the final analysis the real answer is sloppy design.
Gee, what an illustrious milestone. A red-letter day for Linux. Woo-hoo... whoop it up boys and girls! A system so desperate for exploits that we'll EMULATE a whole 'nuther system just to get them!
I don't believe that. I think there will be a threshold effect driven by consumer demand. When the price threshold is reached that ordinary consumers will dig into their wallets, I think the pressure will be on solid-state drive makers to get the product out there and at the price the market demands. This is the kind of bogus/fud story that mfgrs float every once in awhile when they're feeling a little inadequate or under-prepared.
I would rather pay for fewer channels with better shit. Seriously cable / fios / satellite tv -- it all sucks. Too many commercials, too many infomercials, too much bullshit content.
TV sucks these days. Movies suck these days. Music sucks these days. Its hard to find any content worth paying attention to, much less buying. The soul is being (or has been) sucked out of everything these days.
Too much lowest-common-denominator bullshit. Fuck it. Why bother?
(Hint: I don't)
I'm not sure why you got modded down, you're making a good point.
Another point to consider is context-- the fact that people do different kinds of things online at different times, which may vary from day-to-day, week-to-week, etc. During one time period I may be at work and my browsing / interest behavior revolves around work-related issues. Showing me an ad for a non work-related is not likely to pique my interest during this context. At another time I may be at home with my family doing family-related stuff. My browsing during this period is most likely to be G-rated and related to family entertainment, information, or home-related needs. Occasionally I might look at a "more colorful" site and my browsing is going to be focused in ways that relate to that.
Showing me a porn ad in *ANY* context other than when I'm actually engaged in that type of activity would send me through the roof. I definitely do not want that type of advertisement to pop up during, say, my "family" browsing context, nor my "work" browsing context.
Likewise I'm not an iTunes subscriber, don't buy music online (or offline for that matter, I refuse to support the RIAA mafia) so showing me ads for music downloads and such is completely pointless. Moreover I don't give a rat's ass about most "popular" consumer items and getting in my face about it is guaranteed to get your company on my list of people NOT to buy anything from.
I agree with another previous poster-- if you show me an ad WHEN I am actually interested in buying something that relates to the ad -- BEFORE I buy something related to the ad -- I might consider it. You can determine that context by me SEARCHING for something. If I make a purchase then you should drop that as an ad trigger. Once I make the purchase I'm not likely to be interested in looking at competing products anymore and you'll just piss me off if you do.
And when I am searching-- I want several things-- information, pricing, availability, and shipping cost. Secondarily I want to know store policies on various things including returns, exchanges, gifts, etc. I want GOOD information and in a useful format. I want to be able to start from an overview and drill down to details. I want pictures from lots of angles. I want complete specifications. I want to know if it comes in different colors or sizes and what they are. I want straightforward information I can use to compare products, both within a manufacturer's line and versus competitors *I* choose.
In the online economy your store name / brand / logo / image isn't likely to mean doodly-squat to me. In fact I probably won't even notice the name until I checkout unless I've bought there before and am specifically seeking it out to buy from again. Anybody can hide behind a domain name. There are small operations with outstanding fulfillment and large well-known old-school operations with fulfillment that absolutely sucks. So playing coy and hiding your prices or playing games with product information is just STUPID. Why should I jump through your hoops when there are a thousand other stores just like yours I can visit without the hassle?
Finally, when it comes to targeted ads, generally there is a limited range of products that the marketer has to push. If my interests and activities don't clearly fall within one of those areas, the marketer just "picks something" and throws it at me. There is nothing lamer than showing me your last-ditch pitch when you know I'm not going to be remotely interested in it.
By this same logic, every time the RIAA or one of their cronies scans a computer they're committing the same crime.
I wonder if all the bad PR for Alienware this is getting is worth the $150 bucks?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander... right?