You bring up an interesting if somewhat unrelated question....
Lets say we're in a country with cloning technology available. Is there the possibility of some shady people making clones of themselves and using them as slaves? I mean, hey, they own the cells. Would the clones be treated as children in terms of the law? Thats where I think things will get really interesting.
Because correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the clone start out as a baby and grow up normally? When clones are made they are not at the same physiological age as the original. So I really don't see how in the end cloning is different than having a child with the exception that it is propogating the genes of one individual as opposed to two. Yes, its a bit creepy at first to live around a baby YOU but hey, its an interesting chance to see how you COULD have grown up.....possibly multiple times depending on how many clones you grow. I could even see that becoming a hobby.
Ok, enough for the drunken SLashdot rambling for one night. I'm actually quite amazed at how vaguely coherent my above thoughts were. (P.S. I'd prefer your thoughts on my above scenario to your mod points)
"7. No private profiles. No purpose of a private profile on a social networking site.
I agreed with all of your other points but there is actually a VERY valid reason for private profiles. To explain by example I present the following:
My best friends girlfriend is very beautiful, all around amazing girl that guys go nuts over. Literally. One of our EX-friends from highschool started stalking her and tried to add her as a friend on MySpace. She didn't like the idea of him looking at pics of her or communicating with her so she set her profile to private.
Stalkers are a huge problem on social networking sites. Maybe not for us geeks, but the hot girls who whore up these sites have big stalker problems. So yes, private profiles are crucial. Especially also in this day and age where kids don't want their parents snooping on their pages, but whether that should be allowed or not is a whole different can of worms.
So...now that we know it exists, we'll inevitably try to figure out how to harness it. I mean, its so plentiful right? Any logic-based theories as to what technologies might be developed as a result of this? I'm really curious what scientists will be able to do with this now that they have proof its real. Yes...I'm interested in the studies that will occur and what we'll learn about this, but i'm dying to see what they'll be able to make it DO...this is an entirely new form of matter here!
You joke but when i'm 64 (23 now) I would sure as hell hope that they had games that have more interesting controllers. The wiimote is a step in the right direction, but I want to use my whole body. Or my mind.
And once we get direct mind interfaces, I think thats where a lot of older gamers of todays generation will be at an advantage because mental skill and experience will be a bigger component of how good someone is.
I think of it like Fry on that episode of Futurama schooling everybody at a FPS. I can't wait for my grandkids to bitch and moan that "grandpa's wallhacking again and he's using an aimbot" just because i'll be able to pwn them at CS since I've been playing it longer than they've been alive.
As someone without a wit of background in neuropsych, I was wondering if any of you could explain/debunk my little hypothesis.
That people have a natural bent towards some ability, and if they are lucky enough to discover this talent early on, they can become an expert quickly. Part of this is because once they discover they're good, they keep doing it for fun. I mean, have you ever met an expert in a field who HATED the thing he was an expert at (yes, I realize that is not a real scientific argument). And when you enjoy something you're doing, your brain releases certain chemicals. I wonder if these chemicals might be more effective at building the "skill" part of the brain versus chemicals released when you're doing something you don't enjoy.
So, there, please poke holes in this. If you have thoughts on this I'd rather have your comments than mod points.
It REALLY depends on which burb you're talking about and I wish you would have clarified. There is basically room for one cafe per suburb. If there's another established one there, don't even bother. What usually happens is the people who play there the most are good friends with the people who work there. Then their friends hook them up with free hours. You must be VERY careful in how you handle that. Clamp down too tight and your core customers who spend all their time there with their employee friends will disappear. Let it get too rampant and you won't make money.
Also, consider hiring "volunteers" for some shifts and instead of pay offer them free access to everything. Could save you a bit of cash.
In terms of setup....there was a place in Lake in the Hills near Crystal Lake that had a SWEET setup. Huge couches setup in a configuration to give groups some privacy, inward facing clusters of computers spread throughout the place so friends could gather together, huge screens for console games, etc. Yeah, that place went out of business pretty quick.
The ones that stay open it seems are the ones who minimize the glitz and focus on being clean, having good hardware, friendly employees, and good advertising. And when it comes to advertising the name of the game is LOCAL! Look into coupon programs to give to your loyal customers that gets them a discount or a reward if they bring a friend who buys at least 5 hours of time or something like that. Or gives the first hour of a 3 hour block free. Then print a bunch of these coupons and have the kids distribute them to their friends at school.
Offer tournaments with prizes people actually want, and make sure for the love of god that your place is the type that girls and parents don't mind entering. There should not be a wall of odor when you enter. The goal is to make people hangout there.
"On behalf of AOL, let me clarify... what they meant to say was "there is not a whole lot we could do that wouldn't interfere with the lucrative data-mining business.""
More like what they meant to say was, "there is not a whole lot we can do right now because our lawyers are threatening to castrate us if we say anything else to people who have been affected by this".
They say that its only 1cm bigger than a traditional CD...but couldn't they just trip it down like they do with those CD/business cards and those mini DVDs? I mean yeah, its less space, but its still a HUGE increase.
The one issue of course is whether they read/write like traditional burners, from the inside to the outside. Anybody know whether these do that or not?
Actually I think storage IS still a problem today. Not necessarily the space for storage, but the durability of it.
For example, my main concern with this new storage is that it will hold a ton, but will still only have the couple year shelf-life that DVD-Rs and CD-Rs have.
As storage space increases but shelf-life lags behind, it becomes increasingly riskier to actually use that full amount of space because you're basically putting more of your chickens in one basket.
Does anybody know of any current developments that are working to solve this issue? Is having a home server the best way to reliably store all those old CD-Rs?
Re: the RIAA "silver bullet"....are there any/. lawyers or legal students (no armchair lawyers please) who can weigh in on the effectiveness of it, and any potential limitations it might have due to state laws?
If this really is as big a solution as they are making it sound, then work should be done to ensure that the information gets distributed to the mainstream college students and high school students who are the main people at risk and who are the least prepared for legal problems both in knowledge and in ability to weather the results.
My point was that certain advances likely would not have been made had we not dabbled into the militaristic opportunities it presented...such as getting more "bang" for your buck.
Really? Try thinking about that again the next time you flick on a light switch. Nuclear energy, which has been developed thanks in no small part due to nuclear weaponry. As oil shortages continue and prices go up we will soon find the world becoming more reliant on nuclear energy than ever before.
Shameless plug, but I just wrote an article about a recent HORRIBLE ad for a game design college that has been running in game magazines. You can read my full writeup and see an image of the ad at the following URL:
Honestly, where do they come up with this crap? I work in advertising, and from my perspective I really have to wonder who had the final say over the copy in this...it really is laughable.
At first I thought Backslash was just an attempt by the editors to basically post a dupe officially, quoting some of the +5 comments in order to get more page views per story and thus more money.
However I then read the comments and realized that since the discussion centered around highly rated comments, there was less noise and there seemed to be more interesting side discussions.
However what Slashdot truly needs to implement is a system where the link-only stories on the main page (I forget what they're called) have buttons next to them that lets you expand them to fully viewable blurbs. I should not have to click a story to find out what the hell it is about. My time is precious (as you can tell from all my posts made during the work day) and if I can't tell immediately what a story is about, I won't click it.
I also think all Backslash stories should be relegated to link-only front page placement. Its a rehash, it doesn't warrant the full page real estate that a new story does.
To put it bluntly, I'm glad we are not being forced to make this extra effort. While I give all my moral support to the troops stationed there, because god knows they need it...I do not want to have to play any part in financing this unjust war that has set my country back politically, economically and ethically to a level that will we likely will not recover from in my lifetime.
I'll do what I can to vote Bush out of office, but part of me fears there will be a day when he will just decide not to leave office, and turn the military on those who oppose and then force us to finance him.
You know, countries with dictators don't just HAPPEN, they grow into that.
"I think if I were confronted with that same situation, I'd say, "Excuse me?" I'd then say nothing more, leave the entire order there at the checkout, and leave the store."
But if you did that then there would be VERY little incentive for them to change policy. I mean, you're just one person. However if you made a BIG stink about it, refusing to leave the checkout lane until they explained themselves, and refused to provide that information then you would not only be costing them money (cashiers time spent waiting, managers time spent explaining) but you would also be alerting other customers in the vicinity to the ridiculousness of the situation.
I'd like to add to your post by pointing out how humans are VERY VERY good at pattern recognition. It can be attributed to many things in life...such as our basic concept of time for example. But imagine if our pattern recognition abilities were taken even further. I believe there is a scene near the end of Schizmatrix (awesome book BTW) where there is a genetically modified race of people who have enhanced pattern recognition centers of their brain, and it talks about how it affects them, particularly in enhancing their research abilities.
"I've seen reports that record companies aren't "happy" with the royalties they're getting from iTunes. Could higher-priced, DRM-free releases be part of their solution?"
Are you serious? Those greedy fucks only want MORE MORE MORE. Getting higher prices would make them less mad, but they'd STILL want more.
Re:I read it - sounds interesting - but come on...
on
What Spore May Spawn
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· Score: 1
"No, your planet (or your species, rather) will appear on planets in other players' game instances. Interactions between those players and your species will be local to their game only, and not affect yours. Imagine it this way: instead of Spore shipping with a set of "other" creatures, it will reach out to a central DB and pull back creatures created by other players. Your creature may end up dominating my puny one-legged hoppers, but you'll never know."
And here is the big area where I feel Spore will fall miserably short while shining gloriously in every other area.
When people play games with online components, they want to INTERACT WITH OTHER PLAYERS...particularly their friends. I am EXTREMELY disappointed that there is no method of choosing to only have your planets populated by creatures people on your "friend list" have created. I don't give a crap about creatures random people have made, I want to know if my carnivore has what it takes to wipe out my friends society.
"Of course it was not a good design. If it was, it wouldn't be extinct would it?"
Unfortunately for this lizard the design was great...however the increased wingspan dictated that the larger wing membrane be comprised of a lighter material that also happened to smell like BBQ sauce.
I've often wondered whether humans will evolve to the media's standards of beauty. Maybe its just me being 23, losing hair and feeling old and ugly for the first time, but I SWEAR that people have as a whole gotten more attractive.
Of course there are several huge holes in this theory, such as my impressions being skewed based on LOCAL levels of physical attractiveness (as defined by mass media) and also the fact that there's no way evolution could work that quickly...is there?
Slashdot Mirror
(For the humor-impaired, yes I am aware the real reason they jump is because of the moth larva inside it, click it and learn something.
Lets say we're in a country with cloning technology available. Is there the possibility of some shady people making clones of themselves and using them as slaves? I mean, hey, they own the cells. Would the clones be treated as children in terms of the law? Thats where I think things will get really interesting.
Because correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the clone start out as a baby and grow up normally? When clones are made they are not at the same physiological age as the original. So I really don't see how in the end cloning is different than having a child with the exception that it is propogating the genes of one individual as opposed to two. Yes, its a bit creepy at first to live around a baby YOU but hey, its an interesting chance to see how you COULD have grown up.....possibly multiple times depending on how many clones you grow. I could even see that becoming a hobby.
Ok, enough for the drunken SLashdot rambling for one night. I'm actually quite amazed at how vaguely coherent my above thoughts were. (P.S. I'd prefer your thoughts on my above scenario to your mod points)
I agreed with all of your other points but there is actually a VERY valid reason for private profiles. To explain by example I present the following:
My best friends girlfriend is very beautiful, all around amazing girl that guys go nuts over. Literally. One of our EX-friends from highschool started stalking her and tried to add her as a friend on MySpace. She didn't like the idea of him looking at pics of her or communicating with her so she set her profile to private.
Stalkers are a huge problem on social networking sites. Maybe not for us geeks, but the hot girls who whore up these sites have big stalker problems. So yes, private profiles are crucial. Especially also in this day and age where kids don't want their parents snooping on their pages, but whether that should be allowed or not is a whole different can of worms.
And once we get direct mind interfaces, I think thats where a lot of older gamers of todays generation will be at an advantage because mental skill and experience will be a bigger component of how good someone is.
I think of it like Fry on that episode of Futurama schooling everybody at a FPS. I can't wait for my grandkids to bitch and moan that "grandpa's wallhacking again and he's using an aimbot" just because i'll be able to pwn them at CS since I've been playing it longer than they've been alive.
That people have a natural bent towards some ability, and if they are lucky enough to discover this talent early on, they can become an expert quickly. Part of this is because once they discover they're good, they keep doing it for fun. I mean, have you ever met an expert in a field who HATED the thing he was an expert at (yes, I realize that is not a real scientific argument). And when you enjoy something you're doing, your brain releases certain chemicals. I wonder if these chemicals might be more effective at building the "skill" part of the brain versus chemicals released when you're doing something you don't enjoy.
So, there, please poke holes in this. If you have thoughts on this I'd rather have your comments than mod points.
Also, consider hiring "volunteers" for some shifts and instead of pay offer them free access to everything. Could save you a bit of cash.
In terms of setup....there was a place in Lake in the Hills near Crystal Lake that had a SWEET setup. Huge couches setup in a configuration to give groups some privacy, inward facing clusters of computers spread throughout the place so friends could gather together, huge screens for console games, etc. Yeah, that place went out of business pretty quick.
The ones that stay open it seems are the ones who minimize the glitz and focus on being clean, having good hardware, friendly employees, and good advertising. And when it comes to advertising the name of the game is LOCAL! Look into coupon programs to give to your loyal customers that gets them a discount or a reward if they bring a friend who buys at least 5 hours of time or something like that. Or gives the first hour of a 3 hour block free. Then print a bunch of these coupons and have the kids distribute them to their friends at school.
Offer tournaments with prizes people actually want, and make sure for the love of god that your place is the type that girls and parents don't mind entering. There should not be a wall of odor when you enter. The goal is to make people hangout there.
>
More like what they meant to say was, "there is not a whole lot we can do right now because our lawyers are threatening to castrate us if we say anything else to people who have been affected by this".
The one issue of course is whether they read/write like traditional burners, from the inside to the outside. Anybody know whether these do that or not?
For example, my main concern with this new storage is that it will hold a ton, but will still only have the couple year shelf-life that DVD-Rs and CD-Rs have.
As storage space increases but shelf-life lags behind, it becomes increasingly riskier to actually use that full amount of space because you're basically putting more of your chickens in one basket.
Does anybody know of any current developments that are working to solve this issue? Is having a home server the best way to reliably store all those old CD-Rs?
If this really is as big a solution as they are making it sound, then work should be done to ensure that the information gets distributed to the mainstream college students and high school students who are the main people at risk and who are the least prepared for legal problems both in knowledge and in ability to weather the results.
Really? Try thinking about that again the next time you flick on a light switch. Nuclear energy, which has been developed thanks in no small part due to nuclear weaponry. As oil shortages continue and prices go up we will soon find the world becoming more reliant on nuclear energy than ever before.
Article about bad advertising in gaming mags
Honestly, where do they come up with this crap? I work in advertising, and from my perspective I really have to wonder who had the final say over the copy in this...it really is laughable.
However I then read the comments and realized that since the discussion centered around highly rated comments, there was less noise and there seemed to be more interesting side discussions.
However what Slashdot truly needs to implement is a system where the link-only stories on the main page (I forget what they're called) have buttons next to them that lets you expand them to fully viewable blurbs. I should not have to click a story to find out what the hell it is about. My time is precious (as you can tell from all my posts made during the work day) and if I can't tell immediately what a story is about, I won't click it.
I also think all Backslash stories should be relegated to link-only front page placement. Its a rehash, it doesn't warrant the full page real estate that a new story does.
I'll do what I can to vote Bush out of office, but part of me fears there will be a day when he will just decide not to leave office, and turn the military on those who oppose and then force us to finance him.
You know, countries with dictators don't just HAPPEN, they grow into that.
But if you did that then there would be VERY little incentive for them to change policy. I mean, you're just one person. However if you made a BIG stink about it, refusing to leave the checkout lane until they explained themselves, and refused to provide that information then you would not only be costing them money (cashiers time spent waiting, managers time spent explaining) but you would also be alerting other customers in the vicinity to the ridiculousness of the situation.
Are you serious? Those greedy fucks only want MORE MORE MORE. Getting higher prices would make them less mad, but they'd STILL want more.
And here is the big area where I feel Spore will fall miserably short while shining gloriously in every other area.
When people play games with online components, they want to INTERACT WITH OTHER PLAYERS...particularly their friends. I am EXTREMELY disappointed that there is no method of choosing to only have your planets populated by creatures people on your "friend list" have created. I don't give a crap about creatures random people have made, I want to know if my carnivore has what it takes to wipe out my friends society.
Unfortunately for this lizard the design was great...however the increased wingspan dictated that the larger wing membrane be comprised of a lighter material that also happened to smell like BBQ sauce.
Of course there are several huge holes in this theory, such as my impressions being skewed based on LOCAL levels of physical attractiveness (as defined by mass media) and also the fact that there's no way evolution could work that quickly...is there?