The question as framed certainly serves practical purposes. For instance, what are the legal implications of transporter technology? Obviously, Star Trek society has already worked this out, but you assume that at some point someone probably tried to defraud the government by claiming they were a different person because they'd gone through the transporter. "You can't charge me with that crime! I didn't even exist when it was committed!"
That scenario raises lots of conundrums, like how do you define a life? Who gets to claim control of your property after you've gone through? Are your contracts and commitments still binding? The summary mentions anesthetics, but the same questions might apply to an amnesiac. Can you hold a body responsible for actions that body's brain doesn't remember?
"But you die when you transport, man," is a fun debate when you're stoned, but whether or not you care and *why* are the really important bits. Same thing with Beth's dilemma in Rick & Morty. If it's possible to create a truly perfect replica with no interruption in your mental continuity and zero downsides, why do you care if your current body dies? And what happens at a cultural level if we all decide our bodies *are* just interchangeable husks?
I have similar concerns as the OP. I've had days where I've used nothing but my LTE service, including tethering my laptop, and it wasn't terrible. This challenge seems like a good way to confuse the issue, rather than convince people the new standard is unacceptable.
10Mbps might be acceptable for most uses, but all of the bullshit surrounding cellular data is not. A single day won't really reveal the true impact of making LTE the minimum standard.
The mention of RPGs had me thinking Palladium Books (Rifts) or Games Workshop, but they're in Michigan and the UK, respectively. That's probably just a red herring, though.
I think there is (unsurprisingly) a lot of misunderstanding among the CS crowd about what an English major actually studies. I was not one myself (journalism and Russian language double-major), but from what I understood from my English major friends in college, it's not poring over obscure grammar rules for four years. It's actually more of a degree in writing and communications, learning how to structure and present information in essay form. It's also studying the various kinds of writing out there for different purposes - ranging from artistic to practical - and learning about how other writers have communicated in the past (literature) and what can be learned from them and applied to written communications today.
I graduated as a double major: English with a writing concentration, and Philosophy with a religious concentration. I know, the McDonalds track, right?
It's not that hard to understand how someone can look at an MFA student writing poetry for their degree and scoff. However, "English" covers a ridiculously broad spectrum, especially as the definition of a "text" has been broadened to include any context where meaning is being communicated. Ethnographies focus on culture and the spoken and unspoken messages inherent in both our interactions and our environments. The fundamentals of literary criticism can be used to deconstruct and examine everything from works of art to advertising campaigns.
I picked up Philosophy as a second major because I needed a better grounding in where English-as-a-degree is currently grounded. I learned more grammar from my Philosophy classes, because in the upper-level English classes it's just assumed you know how to write. If you don't, how'd you make it that far?
No, an English major is not immediately useful for developing a piece of software, but an English major is useful if you're having a hard time understanding why releasing a decapitated and bloody bikinied torso might offend a significant segment of humanity. Recognizing that connotations are as important as denotations might help bridge certain contentious issues of race and gender that are making more and more frequent headlines. Skill at reading environmental and interpersonal dynamics can lead to subtle changes with dramatic improvements for development teams.
English majors aren't flashy. Chances are slim we'll create for you the next billion-dollar software idea. We're a long-haul sort of investment, which I can understand is distressing for fast-paced companies like Google. We can make what you do and how you do it better, but not always in easily quantifiable ways. Worse, when those ways are quantifiable, they tend to seem blindingly obvious, never mind that you couldn't see the forest for the trees before we came along.
I don't begrudge anyone dissing on English majors. I do it myself because I think it's fun. But I pursued the degree I loved, knowing full well that it wasn't going to earn me six figures anytime soon, or maybe even at all. I'm still happy where I am and with the education I have. Moreover, someone like Bock who dismisses the skills of an English degree gives me a good idea of where their head's at and what's really important to them. Namely, not aligned with what's important to me, so it's not really an opportunity lost.
Installing Firefox is what... 45 seconds? That's £1300 an hour. Now I know how all those commenters make $86,976 a week working from home! They work for Dell!
Perhaps I misread the poster's intent, but I took the conversation as:
"It's not a choice, so pardon the man."
"What if it were a choice? Then the conviction should stand?"
To be convicted of a crime and chemically castrated for being a homosexual is inhumanly wrong. Whether that homosexuality is a choice or not bears absolutely no weight.
Shadow of the Colossus took the prize in the PS2 category. As I recall, SotC was far more successful than Ico, plus SotC gets brought up constantly in any "Games are art" debate. As such, I'm not surprised that Ico may've been bumped.
I'm not sure how a Tony Hawk game made the honorable mention list, but having not played it, I'll reserve judgement.
I find it hilarious how the post about Billy Mitchell being a douche bag prompted dozens of posts about the editing methods of the film, about how one shouldn't judge a person because of those edits, and how the movie is more fiction than reality. Someone posts that Steve Wiebe is a bad father based on the exact same film, and everyone takes it as rote truth. Love it.
You're absolutely right. It's such a shame that no one has yet determined a way to break the locks that bind the iPhone and the iPod Touch to the App Store. You could even say these devices are imprisoned, jailed. If only some intrepid group of hackers could find a way to break these devices out of jail, allowing those that wish it a way to modify their devices or install "unauthorized" applications onto them. If only there were some way to get the word out, and allow those that wish to make use of this mythical hack to find it. Perhaps some day such technology will exist.
But is that going to get us a price drop? When the PS3 first dropped, everyone justified the price of the console because Blu-Ray players were just as expensive, if not more so. Well, I'm seeing hundred dollar Blu-Ray players now, but the PS3 is as expensive as it ever was.
I read "goodluckwiththat" and wished it to the kid honestly. If there's any chance this sets a precedent for what can and can't be done with DRM'ed media, it's worth a shot. Wonder if he'll stick to his guns when they offer him a settlement. Cynicism tells me "No."
Is this UK only? Seems that way from the articles, but the summary doesn't mention anything. If it is, that's good news for them, but kinda useless for the rest of us.
People need to understand a simple concept: if you wouldn't feel comfortable saying something in front of a packed auditorium, you probably shouldn't say it in a public forum online.
Absolutely. If you're comfortable voicing the opinions you put online anywhere else, then you're probably going to be miserable working for a company that refuses to hire you based on those opinions. If you're an asshat who likes to piss people off, then you're not likely to be working for anyone too long, anyway.
I'm not a big fan of the trend towards using online personas against people, but I see it as a reverse filtering effect. "You don't like me. I don't like you. Glad we know this now."
Let them force users to pay for their content. If it kills off the service, then so much the better. Something else will step in to fill the void left behind, and will likely be less dinosaurian about the entire process. Good riddance.
And if it works? Well, I'll accept an "I told you so."
I don't know how much I'll use the service later on, but I've already grabbed the free games.
Incidentally, there's a fourth free game available; Big Kahuna Reef. It's not advertised, as far as I can tell, so I don't know if there might be more hiding in the pages.
An acquisition of the game would explain it. I knew there was an issue with the merger, and that the game might not be released. I never heard that Atari picked it up. Thanks.
I understand that our electoral system is highly slanted towards a two-party system, but no one seems willing to try switching out the two parties we have. We've had beaten into our heads the idea that you have to vote Democrat or Republican or else you might as well not vote. Well, I get the feeling that there are very few people truly pleased with either the Democrats OR the Republicans. Bush's approval numbers may be in the 20s, but Congress is barely above single digits. If everyone who's going to vote Democrat just because they don't want to waste their vote voted Green instead, and every Republican in the same vote switched to Libertarian, I'd imagine you'd see two new parties replace the current failures almost immediately.
Granted, the issue is who should the disenchanted and disenfranchised switch to. You're not going to have all of one side switch to a single third part and all of the other do the same, but isn't the 5% mark the point where the government is legally obligated to give these parties more money and more attention? Can't we at least manage that, if we're so disgusted with our current government?
Nobody's forced to pick either, but you'd think they were. There are plenty of third party candidates, but as long as "third party" = "wasted vote" in the majority of people's minds, nothing with ever change. We keep voting for the lesser of two evils, and every election, both choices get just a bit worse. It's never enough to inspire revolt, but it's been going on so long that government no longer has interest in anything but maintaining power.
Or maybe they haven't yet purchased Rock Band? I've been waiting to purchase RB while I work on getting a 360 and a new TV, etc. With this news, I'm definitely waiting until RB2 comes out. For five bucks I get a whole second game? That's practically free as far as my budget goes. Here's hoping the feature survives to release.
Slashdot Mirror
They make $20,000,000,000 a year BECAUSE they don't self-police.
More importantly, do you care?
The question as framed certainly serves practical purposes. For instance, what are the legal implications of transporter technology? Obviously, Star Trek society has already worked this out, but you assume that at some point someone probably tried to defraud the government by claiming they were a different person because they'd gone through the transporter. "You can't charge me with that crime! I didn't even exist when it was committed!"
That scenario raises lots of conundrums, like how do you define a life? Who gets to claim control of your property after you've gone through? Are your contracts and commitments still binding? The summary mentions anesthetics, but the same questions might apply to an amnesiac. Can you hold a body responsible for actions that body's brain doesn't remember?
"But you die when you transport, man," is a fun debate when you're stoned, but whether or not you care and *why* are the really important bits. Same thing with Beth's dilemma in Rick & Morty. If it's possible to create a truly perfect replica with no interruption in your mental continuity and zero downsides, why do you care if your current body dies? And what happens at a cultural level if we all decide our bodies *are* just interchangeable husks?
I have similar concerns as the OP. I've had days where I've used nothing but my LTE service, including tethering my laptop, and it wasn't terrible. This challenge seems like a good way to confuse the issue, rather than convince people the new standard is unacceptable.
10Mbps might be acceptable for most uses, but all of the bullshit surrounding cellular data is not. A single day won't really reveal the true impact of making LTE the minimum standard.
The mention of RPGs had me thinking Palladium Books (Rifts) or Games Workshop, but they're in Michigan and the UK, respectively. That's probably just a red herring, though.
I think there is (unsurprisingly) a lot of misunderstanding among the CS crowd about what an English major actually studies. I was not one myself (journalism and Russian language double-major), but from what I understood from my English major friends in college, it's not poring over obscure grammar rules for four years. It's actually more of a degree in writing and communications, learning how to structure and present information in essay form. It's also studying the various kinds of writing out there for different purposes - ranging from artistic to practical - and learning about how other writers have communicated in the past (literature) and what can be learned from them and applied to written communications today.
I graduated as a double major: English with a writing concentration, and Philosophy with a religious concentration. I know, the McDonalds track, right?
It's not that hard to understand how someone can look at an MFA student writing poetry for their degree and scoff. However, "English" covers a ridiculously broad spectrum, especially as the definition of a "text" has been broadened to include any context where meaning is being communicated. Ethnographies focus on culture and the spoken and unspoken messages inherent in both our interactions and our environments. The fundamentals of literary criticism can be used to deconstruct and examine everything from works of art to advertising campaigns.
I picked up Philosophy as a second major because I needed a better grounding in where English-as-a-degree is currently grounded. I learned more grammar from my Philosophy classes, because in the upper-level English classes it's just assumed you know how to write. If you don't, how'd you make it that far?
No, an English major is not immediately useful for developing a piece of software, but an English major is useful if you're having a hard time understanding why releasing a decapitated and bloody bikinied torso might offend a significant segment of humanity. Recognizing that connotations are as important as denotations might help bridge certain contentious issues of race and gender that are making more and more frequent headlines. Skill at reading environmental and interpersonal dynamics can lead to subtle changes with dramatic improvements for development teams.
English majors aren't flashy. Chances are slim we'll create for you the next billion-dollar software idea. We're a long-haul sort of investment, which I can understand is distressing for fast-paced companies like Google. We can make what you do and how you do it better, but not always in easily quantifiable ways. Worse, when those ways are quantifiable, they tend to seem blindingly obvious, never mind that you couldn't see the forest for the trees before we came along.
I don't begrudge anyone dissing on English majors. I do it myself because I think it's fun. But I pursued the degree I loved, knowing full well that it wasn't going to earn me six figures anytime soon, or maybe even at all. I'm still happy where I am and with the education I have. Moreover, someone like Bock who dismisses the skills of an English degree gives me a good idea of where their head's at and what's really important to them. Namely, not aligned with what's important to me, so it's not really an opportunity lost.
Installing Firefox is what... 45 seconds? That's £1300 an hour. Now I know how all those commenters make $86,976 a week working from home! They work for Dell!
Perhaps I misread the poster's intent, but I took the conversation as:
"It's not a choice, so pardon the man."
"What if it were a choice? Then the conviction should stand?"
To be convicted of a crime and chemically castrated for being a homosexual is inhumanly wrong. Whether that homosexuality is a choice or not bears absolutely no weight.
As art, I think it would be far more compelling if the hard drive was online and seeding.
Shadow of the Colossus took the prize in the PS2 category. As I recall, SotC was far more successful than Ico, plus SotC gets brought up constantly in any "Games are art" debate. As such, I'm not surprised that Ico may've been bumped.
I'm not sure how a Tony Hawk game made the honorable mention list, but having not played it, I'll reserve judgement.
I find it hilarious how the post about Billy Mitchell being a douche bag prompted dozens of posts about the editing methods of the film, about how one shouldn't judge a person because of those edits, and how the movie is more fiction than reality. Someone posts that Steve Wiebe is a bad father based on the exact same film, and everyone takes it as rote truth. Love it.
You're absolutely right. It's such a shame that no one has yet determined a way to break the locks that bind the iPhone and the iPod Touch to the App Store. You could even say these devices are imprisoned, jailed. If only some intrepid group of hackers could find a way to break these devices out of jail, allowing those that wish it a way to modify their devices or install "unauthorized" applications onto them. If only there were some way to get the word out, and allow those that wish to make use of this mythical hack to find it. Perhaps some day such technology will exist.
Also of note: Cursor*10. Less direct interaction, but more planning ahead.
But is that going to get us a price drop? When the PS3 first dropped, everyone justified the price of the console because Blu-Ray players were just as expensive, if not more so. Well, I'm seeing hundred dollar Blu-Ray players now, but the PS3 is as expensive as it ever was.
I read "goodluckwiththat" and wished it to the kid honestly. If there's any chance this sets a precedent for what can and can't be done with DRM'ed media, it's worth a shot. Wonder if he'll stick to his guns when they offer him a settlement. Cynicism tells me "No."
PvZ was awesome. Loved that game.
Is this UK only? Seems that way from the articles, but the summary doesn't mention anything. If it is, that's good news for them, but kinda useless for the rest of us.
People need to understand a simple concept: if you wouldn't feel comfortable saying something in front of a packed auditorium, you probably shouldn't say it in a public forum online.
Absolutely. If you're comfortable voicing the opinions you put online anywhere else, then you're probably going to be miserable working for a company that refuses to hire you based on those opinions. If you're an asshat who likes to piss people off, then you're not likely to be working for anyone too long, anyway.
I'm not a big fan of the trend towards using online personas against people, but I see it as a reverse filtering effect. "You don't like me. I don't like you. Glad we know this now."
Let them force users to pay for their content. If it kills off the service, then so much the better. Something else will step in to fill the void left behind, and will likely be less dinosaurian about the entire process. Good riddance.
And if it works? Well, I'll accept an "I told you so."
I don't know how much I'll use the service later on, but I've already grabbed the free games. Incidentally, there's a fourth free game available; Big Kahuna Reef. It's not advertised, as far as I can tell, so I don't know if there might be more hiding in the pages.
An acquisition of the game would explain it. I knew there was an issue with the merger, and that the game might not be released. I never heard that Atari picked it up. Thanks.
Did I miss something? Is this a new game, or just the release of the game that was supposed to come out in November?
I understand that our electoral system is highly slanted towards a two-party system, but no one seems willing to try switching out the two parties we have. We've had beaten into our heads the idea that you have to vote Democrat or Republican or else you might as well not vote. Well, I get the feeling that there are very few people truly pleased with either the Democrats OR the Republicans. Bush's approval numbers may be in the 20s, but Congress is barely above single digits. If everyone who's going to vote Democrat just because they don't want to waste their vote voted Green instead, and every Republican in the same vote switched to Libertarian, I'd imagine you'd see two new parties replace the current failures almost immediately. Granted, the issue is who should the disenchanted and disenfranchised switch to. You're not going to have all of one side switch to a single third part and all of the other do the same, but isn't the 5% mark the point where the government is legally obligated to give these parties more money and more attention? Can't we at least manage that, if we're so disgusted with our current government?
Nobody's forced to pick either, but you'd think they were. There are plenty of third party candidates, but as long as "third party" = "wasted vote" in the majority of people's minds, nothing with ever change. We keep voting for the lesser of two evils, and every election, both choices get just a bit worse. It's never enough to inspire revolt, but it's been going on so long that government no longer has interest in anything but maintaining power.
This is also a tad old. Unless Amazon can get me Tiger Woods in the next nine hours, they're going to miss the release date.
Or maybe they haven't yet purchased Rock Band? I've been waiting to purchase RB while I work on getting a 360 and a new TV, etc. With this news, I'm definitely waiting until RB2 comes out. For five bucks I get a whole second game? That's practically free as far as my budget goes. Here's hoping the feature survives to release.