I find those films boring as well (although Casablanca, while far from great, can be likeable in a cheesy way). I'll also note that I hate Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Mann. Of course from this post you have no idea what I do like but it seems that won't stop you from accusing me of being a "philistine" and a fan of Attack of the Clones. Did you ever stop to consider the parent poster might just have idiosyncratic tastes and a grudge against those two particular movies?
for those that like the games, we most certainly would not have computer graphics as much of the pretty graphics you rely on arose out of basic science mathematical research.
... from the 19th century. Seriously, the formulas involved in computer graphics are rather simple compared to what 20th-century pure mathematicians do. Yes, those 19th-century ideas were applied and elaborated by 20th-century computer scientists to produce pretty graphics, but then we aren't talking about "basic science".
Anyway, your general point stands but I just wanted to quibble about your "video games" example.
I would classify current AI as among the level of simple biological intelligence.
I don't know what research labs you've been to but the AIs I've seen can barely locate or tell apart simple objects. They walk slowly and only over even surfaces, they bump into walls and fall down stairs. No, current AIs aren't even on the level of insects for the most part. (That said, it is true that we mostly know what's required to bring them to that level.)
Bah, you seem to think you are revealing a great secret. Hardly anybody has much respect for public elementary/secondary schools. They teach basic literacy and numeracy, and for that reason they are valuable to society, but in general that's about it.
America's is not worse than any other school system I've seen though. And it's silly to call them "indoctrination", since most people's beliefs and attitudes are determined far more by friends and family than schooling.
The US already has the most advanced military and by far the largest military spending. Why is such an increase in military research nececessary at this point in time?
The US military is currently overstreched doing peacekeeping in two medium-sized countries. "Most advanced military" in the world doesn't necessarily cut it when you're up against several opponents at once and when you have more complex objectives than merely destroying your enemies (crushing Saddam's army was trivial, building a democracy is another matter). Moreover, as someone pointed out current military technology is still largely oriented on cold war situations.
You really sound like you have an axe to grind against Microsoft. You do realize that Microsoft consists of hundreds of teams of developers of differing abilities, many of them bought out from smaller companies like yours? There are examples of poor MS software (Windows ME) as well as examples of solid, best-of-breed MS software (Visual C++). It's bizarre to leap from a bug in a file manager dialog to assuming that core memory management code is also bad.
You make me think of Phil Katz, the former boss of the company that made PKZIP. His software was dominant in the DOS days, but he distrusted Windows so much that he refused to port it to Windows 95 when it came out. Like you, he didn't trust Microsoft APIs and wanted to keep full control of what was going on. The result: PKZIP lost the market to WinZip. Don't let your loathing of MS get in the way of good business decisions.
That's way too generous. Approx. 0 IQ is only about 6 standard deviations lower than average intelligence. (See definition of IQ). A more reasonable estimate would be around -50, which would put us at 10 standard deviations.
Your writing/music/video is not your house. You have no fundamental right to prevent someone 6000km away from you from making a copy of a disc to one of his friends, an activity that has no direct bearing on you at all.
Copyright exists only to help the general public by encouraging production of new works. Giving "the right to redistribution" to the artist exclusively is a mere legal convenience. We shouldn't let our ethics be distorted by copyright holders' use of inaccurate terms like "theft" and "piracy".
What you and CmdrTaco are doing is irony, not sarcasm. Merriam-Webster sez (among other meanings which are irrelevant to this case):
irony 2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
sarcasm 2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual
You're not being particularly bitter or caustic, nor ad hominem, so that isn't sarcasm.
Of course I kind of understand that you decided to avoid using the word "irony" because then you would probably have gotten a similar reply from somebody who listened to an Alanis Morissette song and decided that all uses of "irony" are incorrect. But some things really are irony!
You sound very confident in asserting this. Care to elaborate or provide evidence?
This would be caused by the CPU accidentally hitting a HALT instruction, or perhaps some memory handler intentionally halting the CPU when it notices things are out of order? An infinite loop with all interrupts disabled sounds like a plausible scenario as well (and certainly does happen at least in more primitive architectures, but I don't know about modern PC operating systems).
Multiplayer deathmatch isn't very appropriate for GTA: the maps are too large, the weapons are too cheap, the cars are distributed too randomly. It seems to have been added as an afterthought to the early games. I don't think it's much of a loss that they decided not to bother in the 3D GTAs.
One of the best solutions I've seen is to use tier passwords plus a case-dependent "salt". For example your base low-security password could be the string "HB9y1a" (possible to remember when you use it for 10 different things), and then you can append the first two letters of the site you're using. So for slashdot your password would be "HB9y1asl". Of course you don't have to do exactly this; invent your own variant for extra obscurity.
But look at what happens when the state doesn't have overwhelming power. You get a security nightmare like today's Iraq.
The state monopoly on force is the most basic condition of stability and prosperity; it won't do you any good to complain about it. If you don't like the current American government, the best approach is to try to change it using nonviolent means (and luckily, democracies provide an excellent way to do this).
That or, you know, maybe they could just elect someone else come 2008? Perhaps that would be a little easier than a civil war.
Hot tip: in democracies change of government can be effected without revolution. But I guess you're one of those people who thinks that the US is somehow not a democracy, despite the current president being elected by a majority with no evidence of tampering.
I would guess it's only uncomfortable to you because you don't see yourself as a member of the subculture that uses the word "blog". I'll bet you feel the same way about marketing/management speak like "synergy", right?
I used to feel the same way but after starting to read several political blogs I've gotten accustomed to it as a valid word in certain communities. I would still tend not to use it in places like Slashdot, though.
Google News, unlike Google Search, isn't in the business of providing links to all news websites. It's a narrow selection of reputable and content-rich sites. E.g. my blog is not indexed on Google News, but I'm not complaining.
If Google decides that a given source is crappy and offensive to its readers, it's well within its rights to cut it from Google News. If they were censoring it from their search, then I would be raising a ruckus.
Keep in mind that we, the people who see the evil trickery, are a flash in the pan of all the people Microsoft would like to spook people from Linux with fud.
I wouldn't say we're a "flash in the pan". Slashdot readers include 14-year old script kiddies, yes, but also many people like corporate IT managers who make serious purchasing decisions, and consultants who give respected advice. Even if small in terms of percentage, the opinions of Slashdot readers are disproportionately important in the IT world. I think in fact we're the demographic Microsoft would most like to influence.
Those plays happen to be relatively inferior Shakespeare (in my view). Personally I was like you unimpressed with Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet in high school but was blown away when I later encountered Hamlet and King Lear (the most highly praised Shakespeare among scholarly critics). I haven't read/seen Julius Caesar and Much Ado About Nothing but as far as I know the first is a bland historical piece and the latter an early romantic comedy from what I hear, so I can see why you would compare them to soaps. Shakespeare's output was huge and it's not all equal in brillance.
It's still worth giving it another shot, I think. Catch a live play of Hamlet if you can, and try watching Kurosawa's film adaptation of King Lear ("Ran") and see if you can still say that it's on the level of a crappy soap.
An easy trick, I find, for remembering numbers is looking at their properties. E.g. are they prime? Are they squares? Are the digits increasing or decreasing? Are there any repeating digits? Etc. Don't just repeat it over and over in your mind: think about it. The more different ways you think about a number, the likelier it'll be that you remember it.
Of course this isn't nearly as powerful as the methods of these champions, but it's a good trick for those of us who don't have days to practice assocating numbers with biplanes.
Henshall is useful as a reference for people who are already quite literate in Japanese, but I would never recommend it to a beginner. (It certainly wasn't useful for me when I was a beginner.) His verbal mnemonics are not nearly as easy to remember as Heisig's imagery, and learning the convoluted history of characters is, to a beginner, more likely to lead to confusion than easy recall. Henshall and Heisig are quite different kinds of books and I'm not sure why people are always treating them as competitors.
Language is not quite accurate, the vivid imagery is important. Remembering that sentence would be hard but remembering the picture would not be so hard, especially if you are already familiar with the objects visualized. He visualizes a 3-dimensional scene, with the respective actors in various positions, and then recalls it as a unified whole just like you might a bedroom with a desk, bed, dresser etc.
Similar techniques are sometimes used by adult foreign learners to learn Chinese/Japanese characters. It can be easier to remember, say, Darth Vader setting a pack of wild dogs on fire on a pile of flowers in a swamp, than 25 strokes of chicken scribbles. James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji is the most popular (perhaps the only?) book using such a method.
In this context such methods are fairly controversial, since the mnemonics are rather time-consuming to learn and recall is slower than brute force (on the order of 5-10 seconds instead of instantaneous), but it has some quite dedicated followers.
I could not agree more. I really miss the old games (SNES-era) where companies didn't put the majority of their focus on games looking jaw-droppingly realistic, but rather they put their effort into making the game fun.
Bah, honestly though, even in those days most of them did devote most of their time to achieving the prettiest graphics possible given the limitations of their system. This has always been the case.
If you want new SNES-style games, why don't you buy a GBA?
Slashdot Mirror
I find those films boring as well (although Casablanca, while far from great, can be likeable in a cheesy way). I'll also note that I hate Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Mann. Of course from this post you have no idea what I do like but it seems that won't stop you from accusing me of being a "philistine" and a fan of Attack of the Clones. Did you ever stop to consider the parent poster might just have idiosyncratic tastes and a grudge against those two particular movies?
Seriously though, I am impressed at this technology. ; I didn't think it was possible to do surgery precisely enough to connect into the optic nerve.
Anyway, your general point stands but I just wanted to quibble about your "video games" example.
I don't know what research labs you've been to but the AIs I've seen can barely locate or tell apart simple objects. They walk slowly and only over even surfaces, they bump into walls and fall down stairs. No, current AIs aren't even on the level of insects for the most part. (That said, it is true that we mostly know what's required to bring them to that level.)
America's is not worse than any other school system I've seen though. And it's silly to call them "indoctrination", since most people's beliefs and attitudes are determined far more by friends and family than schooling.
The US military is currently overstreched doing peacekeeping in two medium-sized countries. "Most advanced military" in the world doesn't necessarily cut it when you're up against several opponents at once and when you have more complex objectives than merely destroying your enemies (crushing Saddam's army was trivial, building a democracy is another matter). Moreover, as someone pointed out current military technology is still largely oriented on cold war situations.
Er, I can only presume you and the people who modded you up somehow missed the link in his post? That wasn't a sig.
You make me think of Phil Katz, the former boss of the company that made PKZIP. His software was dominant in the DOS days, but he distrusted Windows so much that he refused to port it to Windows 95 when it came out. Like you, he didn't trust Microsoft APIs and wanted to keep full control of what was going on. The result: PKZIP lost the market to WinZip. Don't let your loathing of MS get in the way of good business decisions.
That's way too generous. Approx. 0 IQ is only about 6 standard deviations lower than average intelligence. (See definition of IQ). A more reasonable estimate would be around -50, which would put us at 10 standard deviations.
Copyright exists only to help the general public by encouraging production of new works. Giving "the right to redistribution" to the artist exclusively is a mere legal convenience. We shouldn't let our ethics be distorted by copyright holders' use of inaccurate terms like "theft" and "piracy".
irony 2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
sarcasm 2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual
You're not being particularly bitter or caustic, nor ad hominem, so that isn't sarcasm.
Of course I kind of understand that you decided to avoid using the word "irony" because then you would probably have gotten a similar reply from somebody who listened to an Alanis Morissette song and decided that all uses of "irony" are incorrect. But some things really are irony!
You sound very confident in asserting this. Care to elaborate or provide evidence?
This would be caused by the CPU accidentally hitting a HALT instruction, or perhaps some memory handler intentionally halting the CPU when it notices things are out of order? An infinite loop with all interrupts disabled sounds like a plausible scenario as well (and certainly does happen at least in more primitive architectures, but I don't know about modern PC operating systems).
Multiplayer deathmatch isn't very appropriate for GTA: the maps are too large, the weapons are too cheap, the cars are distributed too randomly. It seems to have been added as an afterthought to the early games. I don't think it's much of a loss that they decided not to bother in the 3D GTAs.
One of the best solutions I've seen is to use tier passwords plus a case-dependent "salt". For example your base low-security password could be the string "HB9y1a" (possible to remember when you use it for 10 different things), and then you can append the first two letters of the site you're using. So for slashdot your password would be "HB9y1asl". Of course you don't have to do exactly this; invent your own variant for extra obscurity.
The state monopoly on force is the most basic condition of stability and prosperity; it won't do you any good to complain about it. If you don't like the current American government, the best approach is to try to change it using nonviolent means (and luckily, democracies provide an excellent way to do this).
Hot tip: in democracies change of government can be effected without revolution. But I guess you're one of those people who thinks that the US is somehow not a democracy, despite the current president being elected by a majority with no evidence of tampering.
I used to feel the same way but after starting to read several political blogs I've gotten accustomed to it as a valid word in certain communities. I would still tend not to use it in places like Slashdot, though.
If Google decides that a given source is crappy and offensive to its readers, it's well within its rights to cut it from Google News. If they were censoring it from their search, then I would be raising a ruckus.
I wouldn't say we're a "flash in the pan". Slashdot readers include 14-year old script kiddies, yes, but also many people like corporate IT managers who make serious purchasing decisions, and consultants who give respected advice. Even if small in terms of percentage, the opinions of Slashdot readers are disproportionately important in the IT world. I think in fact we're the demographic Microsoft would most like to influence.
It's still worth giving it another shot, I think. Catch a live play of Hamlet if you can, and try watching Kurosawa's film adaptation of King Lear ("Ran") and see if you can still say that it's on the level of a crappy soap.
Of course this isn't nearly as powerful as the methods of these champions, but it's a good trick for those of us who don't have days to practice assocating numbers with biplanes.
Henshall is useful as a reference for people who are already quite literate in Japanese, but I would never recommend it to a beginner. (It certainly wasn't useful for me when I was a beginner.) His verbal mnemonics are not nearly as easy to remember as Heisig's imagery, and learning the convoluted history of characters is, to a beginner, more likely to lead to confusion than easy recall. Henshall and Heisig are quite different kinds of books and I'm not sure why people are always treating them as competitors.
Language is not quite accurate, the vivid imagery is important. Remembering that sentence would be hard but remembering the picture would not be so hard, especially if you are already familiar with the objects visualized. He visualizes a 3-dimensional scene, with the respective actors in various positions, and then recalls it as a unified whole just like you might a bedroom with a desk, bed, dresser etc.
In this context such methods are fairly controversial, since the mnemonics are rather time-consuming to learn and recall is slower than brute force (on the order of 5-10 seconds instead of instantaneous), but it has some quite dedicated followers.
Bah, honestly though, even in those days most of them did devote most of their time to achieving the prettiest graphics possible given the limitations of their system. This has always been the case.
If you want new SNES-style games, why don't you buy a GBA?