It's not that simple. If he had only fooled Bredius, I'd see your point, but a lot of others. There was a reason why he had to paint another Vermeer at his trial, to prove that yes, he did it. There were other critics who still refused to believe that they're not Vermeers. Or why they had to study the paint composition at the trial, and not just show them to a couple of critics with nothing to gain from it. Heck, a couple of his paintings were debated if they're forgeries or not until 1977.
It's stuff that you can't easily dismiss as the complicity of one crook to authenticate them as Vermeers. There were people who didn't make a cent out of it, and still thought they're authentic Vermeers and masterpieces.
You may be thinking "but death metal is such a niche, it won't happen." Happened already with other genres. Don't think the music of the '70s, or '50s, or '30s or whatever was actually as monolythic as you'd think. Back in the days of Glenn Miller -- just because that was used by the GGP as an example -- i.e., the 30's, fans of proper jaz as played by the likes of Benny Goodman and Count Basie sneered at the plebs who listened to the manufactured commercial gimmick music of Glenn Miller (or so they saw it), and viceversa. And fans of the newfangled ethnic or hillbilly music sneered at both, and viceversa. And then there were such manufactured superstars (at least in the eyes of those who didn't like them) as Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, and a lot of arguments went back and forth over _that_ topic.
It was rappers vs metalheads all over again.
Only nowadays they all gang up on the newfangled music of kids these days, and form some united front called "the music of the 30's."
So in 2070 you'll probably have grey fans of death metal and rappers turned grey and wizzened Britney Spears fans and grandmas who used to get all wet about the Backstreet Boys, acting like they were brothers in arms all along. And listening to them you'd think it was some uniform "music of the 90's" where everyone listened to all of that indiscriminately. And talking about how not only Meat Hook Sodomy was better than what kids listen to these days, but so were rap masterpieces like "I'm fucking you tonight", and so was anything Britney ever sung, and so on. Even if nowadays you couldn't get a fan of any of those, to have anything good to say about any of the others.
But nostalgia is a funny thing, and the enemy of my enemy...
Probably not verbatim, but rather: by then the kids will be listening to something completely different, to piss off their grandpa who grew up with death metal. And a bunch of people will be feeding pigeons in the park and talking about how this newfangled music kids listen to is complete crap, unlike the good old death metal they used to listen to. And how the latest band those kids listen to, let's call it The Federal Duck, totally doesn't compare to the old masters like Napalm Death, Obituary and Cannibal Corpse. And at that, their lyrics totally can't compare to the depth and profoundity of such masterpieces as Meat Hook Sodomy. And at that, look at the disrespectful clothes they wear these days, unlike the nice shredded jeans and t-shirts with skulls and flayed corpses we used to wear back in the day. Kids these days, eh?
Well, probably not everyone, but you'll probably be able to find one or two guys at the nursing home to reminisce about the proper death metal days in the 90's. If all else fails, try in Sweden:p
And another point, actually. Your example of a better artist of old is... Glenn Miller? The guy whose band was criticized at the time as being too commercial and lacking feeling in its letter-perfect playing? The guy whose music was panned by some critics as being commerial novelty gimmicks instead of real jazz? The guy that even one band said about that he gave America what he thought America wanted? Heck, the guy who only started being a success when the band started being heavily sponsored financially so he got enough exposure?
_That_ is your example of something total unlike nowadays manufactured, commercial gimmick bands? I mean, geesh, that band _was_ the Backstreet Boys of '39-'42, at least if you listened to the old farts panning it at the time.
The fly in the ointment there is that the same kind and style of painting was judged to be teh suck when it was signed Han van Meegren, but praised as a masterpiece when signed Vermeer. You know, they don't make 'em like the old masters any more;) And when revealed as forgeries, well, today again you get snobs and curators going "yeah, well, it couldn't have fooled _me_. I mean, you can see it's teh suck" in interviews.
Let's face it, some of that old stuff only goes so well because of a perverse form of marketing. People are told that Vermeer or <insert 18'th century composer> are the great stuff and stuff that only properly cultivated people can properly appreciate, and you see the Emperor's New Clothes in action.
How many would go for that stuff if they didn't know the piece and you told them it's composed by some intern working for Disney?
And since you mention music from 60 years ago, you don't think those records may be hard to find only because people who grew up with them bought them? Frankly, it seems to me like most people's tastes end up fixed around a certain age. So you get 80 year olds still swearing that Frank Sinatra is the real music, and 60 year olds swearing by disco, and so on. And each generation thinks the music of the next one is crap and only bought by brainwashed idiots.
In fact, even about the Jazz and Swing music of the likes of Glenn Miller -- just since you used that example -- some old fart back then decried it as the mindless crap kids listen to these days.
Here's a funny thought though: the way people have complained about how everything about the next generation is worse for the last, oh, 2000-3000 years straight, if there were any truth to that, by now we've _all_ been listening only to crap, unlike the wholesome and good music that the likes of Socrates listened to.
So here's my prediction: 60 years from now, you'll have old farts reminiscing about how these new bands kids listen to are all mindless crap, unlike the great music of Eminem, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spear and Lady Gaga that they grew up with. Those were the great musicians. Not because any is objectively better, but just because that's the point in time their tastes remained frozen.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of either of those myself, but I also have no need to delude myself that there's something objectively better about the crap _I_ listen to, compared to the crap kids these days listen to.
Well, the savings aren't that huge actually, given that basically you could save the same thing in BLOBs or the new XML types, and really it's the same space on the hard drive regardless of whether it's connected to a database machine or to a NAS. Still, that's not a bad idea on the whole, but it's not one I would give someone before seeing their actual use case or trusting them to know what they're doing. You'd be surprised what can go wrong or inefficient when you have people do random writes in a file over NFS from several cluster members, because at some point someone wanted to also update this or that field in the file.
1. Oracle already has that, under partitioning. If there's a column you can define intervals on, you can have your database partitioned like that. E.g., you can have the database sliced by year, and move the old tablespaces to another HDD.
Probably DB/2 too, though I don't have that much experience with that one.
2. _But_ as Oracle itself points out, if you're doing it because of some delusions of gaining speed, you're doing it wrong. In this case while "90% never read", don't forget that in a well indexed database time will only increase with the logarithm of the number of records. So don't be surprised if dumping 9 million records out of 10 into another partition, will result in much less speed gain than you'd think.
And frankly that's the most common reason I see invoked for partitioning. Someone who has no clue thinks that he'll gain the uber-speed by spliting the data. Some of them even people from the IT department who should know better. Sometimes you can't move them from there no matter what, because the poor dumb beast already promised some PHB that as the great performance optimization and would lose face if he admitted he was wrong.
And especially data which is as in TFA just dead weight and never read, actually has very little impact.
So basically do a proper analysis first.
- are you splitting the data thinking that 1/10 of the data will be 10 times faster to access? Think again.
- are you splitting because of HDD costs? How much data do you have there? I mean, sure, if you're Google or Amazon, it adds up. Otherwise, exactly how much more would the extra complexity cost you? Very few meals are free, and sometimes the extra couple of hundred or even thousands of dollars in just buying fast hard drives can be easily cheaper than the cost of such an overhaul or just the extra admin overhead in the long run.
- do you actually need all that stuff? I don't read that 90% figure in just number of records, but probably most of it is in columns or whole tables which really aren't needed for anything, but are dutifully stored out of some delusion that some day they might be important. Do you actually need all that trivia? Or would you be better off just dropping a few tables instead of partitioning?
E.g. just think about how many details some sites want to know about you just to let you download a patch for a game you've bought. And I don't mean to ship it to you, or check your credit card, but just to register.
Really, there is a difference between data even for mining and pointless trivia. As a trivial example: team's averages for the last season are data that can be used meaningfully, but "which team won the most games (as in, a whole two of them) on a rainy Tuesday night under artifficial lighting" is trivia. The thing is so fine sliced that you're seeing statistical flukes. In the case of those registration sites I mentioned, demographics by age intervals are meaningful data, but by exact birthday is pure pointless trivia. Statistics by region are useful data, but statistics by street name and number are pointless trivia. No, seriously, you won't hit some jackpot that allows you to create a genre specifically for gamers on the even side of the road, nor specifically for people born on a day of the year divsisble by 3.
At any rate, that's what 90% figure is really about. And partitioning won't solve that. Even dividing the database between old records and new records won't change the fact that you still have 90% of any given partition consinsting of trivia nobody really needs.
Or, hey, if you absolutely can't let go of any byte of trivia, how about just moving those tables wholesale on a slower HDD? I mean, they're never read anyway.
Please, don't feel like you have to hold back for the sake of propriety. Tell us all what you *really* think.
That _is_ what I think.
Frankly, after hearing that gang spare no insult in telling me what an abject failure of a person I must be if I play like a "carebear" instead of like them, plus lacking the skill, plus lacking the courage, plus lacking balls, plus obviously self-hating/in-denial/whatever for not playing like them, etc, I don't feel much of a need for propriety in telling them right back what I think of them.
TBH, I'm not convinced that it's a generation thing. Just about every charge against generation Y, I've heard levied against generation X before. We were supposed to be the "me" generation, the self-centered idiots, the louts who grew up with entitlement delusions instead of knowing we must work hard, the ones who don't know how good we have it, the ones who never got taught proper respect, etc. Now essentially I hear that _we_ were the good guys (e.g., here in gaming) while the new generation are the real villains. Bah, humbug. I'll be damned if I let some young whippersnapper steal my spotlight like that. Get off my virtual lawn, damn kids, I still have as much self-centeredness left in me as I did in my teens;)
Now seriously, I've long maintained that, basically, each game gets the gamers it "deserves", or rather those it caters to. As more and more games bend over backwards to cater to assholes, well, they get more assholes.
It was known at least as far back as, oh, I dunno, Phantasy Star Online, that you can make a game where the l33t killer type just can't do much harm and just leaves for greener pastures. The original COH also mostly lost those because there simply was nothing you could do to another player. Even harassment with tells didn't work well (ignore ftw.) Or even sitting in the town square and shouting crap against them or folowing and stealing their kills, well, in a heavily instanced game neither worked too well.
Unfortunately a lot of games basically try to cater to everyone, including the asshole segment, and occasionally disproportionately to the asshole segment. E.g., because it's the loudest group of players and for a while it can seem like everyone wants, in fact even _demands_ unrestricted PvP and disproportionate penalties for the victim. (See STO again: about two dozen Eve rejects could cause the majority of threads, completely out-posting the hundreds of thousands who formed the rest of the community.) E.g., because some developer is himself the kind who doesn't understand why would anyone play for any other reason than proving penis size, and that throwing references to "care bears" and "hello kitty" players makes him sound more properly manly. E.g., because the publisher comes and says "OMG, we need to copy more from WoW/CS/whatever. Like let's start with features X, Y and Z. And in fact let's turn the knobs to 11 on them, so we can brag we're better than WoW/CS/whatever." Sony is probably the lowest hanging fruit there, as it screwed up so often and hard by trying to copy and outdo features it didn't even understand from WoW, that it's not even funny.
And often in the process it ends up catering more to the assholes.
Basically my take is that really nothing happened between generations in the population at large. We still have a bunch of nice kids and a bunch of bad kids, and a lot in between. It's just that more and more games tried to tap into the asshole segment for extra players, and predictably more of the existing assholes became players. Not even all from the newest generation. Some of the most obnoxious players I've met were middle-aged middle-class gentlemen (well, gentlemen when they weren't anonymous online, anyway.)
Never said that the internet actually created assholes. TBH, though, I do think that some games ended up drawing more assholes online by, basically, catering to that segment more.
E.g., back when CS was getting more assholes than all other online games combined, it wasn't even a mystery why. You just needed to ask one of the most obnoxious CS-ers if they want to play a round of UT or Quake 3 instead. You'd promptly get told (or even ranted at) that it's simply no fun if his victims can respawn immediately and get right back in the game. They needed to feel like they inflicted _some_ punishment on someone, even if it's just a minute of not playing, or it wasn't fun for them. The goal wasn't to compete (competing for score works there just as well) or prove they're the best (ditto) or anything else, but really to feel like they prevented someone from playing the game. For the first time in FPS history CS gave them even a small possibility to be (or think they are) annoying to someone, and they flocked to it in droves.
And by now more and more games cater to that segment, and/or can be persuaded to do some changes demanded by that vocal minority. E.g., STO actually went against the protests of each players and implemented a penalty for dying, which was demanded by that Eve rejects minority.
So while I would agree that probably at society scale still the same percentage are assholes as before, I do have the impression that online gaming has attracted a higher percentage than that by now.
Well, not textured FPS, but I seem to remember a couple of non-textured ones before Wolfenstein 3D, so strictly speaking he is right. Of course, they weren't playable either on a LAN or online anyway.
Well, you're right about that, but single player versions don't quite illustrate the rise of the online assholes that I was talking about. Even Doom which came 3 years after Ultima 6, only was realistically playable on a LAN, and even then better not be on the work LAN, the way it broadcast packets. And really, on a LAN the whole thing is a lot less conducive to breeding assholes. What you need, is, well, best illustrated by Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. You can't really skip the middle ingredient. Acting like an antisocial asshole at a LAN party would just get one not invited any more.
(Note however that I would doubt that it just turns a normal people into a fuckwad, like in the comic strip. More likely it's just created a situation where a sociopath can act like his natural self. Sorta like Dave Barry's rule: Someone who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.)
Well, let's not forget that Ultima 6 was launched at a time when gaming was something for nerds, and often idealistic nerds. Even years before that, when we started getting online FPS, it was a world where you were _expected_ to be polite and say "good game", and where it would be a mark of the antisocial asshole to even frag someone who's AFK or chatting. Yeah, you could stop in the middle of a deathmatch and start chatting about your kids' grades (seen that verbatim happen), and it would be frowned upon if someone fragged you.
Then came Counter-Strike and the whole gang of insecure and/or psychopathic kiddies (and men at midlife crisis) who had to prove their penis size at every step, had to blame everything on someone else (getting shot at was only because the other was a cheater, not his staying still in the open, see?), and had to inform you of your sexual orientation and mother's weight and sexual prowess at least once per round. And that's just skimming it.
In the meantime it seems to me like they multiplied like rabbits. Yeah, good luck floating the idea of acting virtuously to someone who thinks he _must_ prove his penis size and that he has balls by ganking some AFK newbie and teabagging the corpse. 'Cause if god forbid he missed that at least one day, people might start questioning if he even has an Y chromosome at all. Actually obeying all 8 virtues? You'd probably need a panel of experts to prove to him first that the penis police won't show up to his door with a rusty hedge scissors, revoke his right to pee standing, and sentence him to wear a dress for the rest of his life.
Honestly, at times it looks like half the gamers nowadays don't even understand that it's even theoretically possible to play a game other than as a bigger asshole than on goatse, or that someone could even theoretically have a reason to play nice that doesn't boil down to being in denial.
Case study: witness the descent of the Eve idiots upon STO at launch, and the thousands of posts boiling down to "if I can't cause a random newbie to lose his ship and all he owns -- or, hey, as a compromise just his weapons, engines and bridge officers -- then the game sucks and it can't possibly be fun for anyone." Not even for said newbie, see. Why all those newbies must shed bitter tears at the utter disappointment of still having a ship by the time they hit level 5. Ganking them is just some selfless act to make the game fun for them, see?;)
So, yeah, good luck with selling the idea of a game which gives bonuses for _not_ being an asshole to _those_.
As someone who took more than a fair share of IQ tests back in the day, I'd say that any test where it's even possible to bring any attitude into it, is a broken test anyway.
A count-the-blocks problem -- useless as it is to predict performance for anything other than counting blocks in isometric 2d -- only gets a number as a result, for example. You get the right number, you pass, you don't, you don't. If it's possible to interpret the picture or the question to truthfully answer any other number, then the test is broken. Ditto for other kinds of IQ questions.
This isn't stuff where you're asked to write an essay, or anything. Answering 14 instead of 15 isn't sassy or attitude, it's just answering wrong. And frankly anyone whose idea of being sassy and witty is answering the wrong number... well, let's just say they're more like quirky in the head than anything else.
I don't think the human body can process enough beer to make that robot appear to morph into a sexually attractive mate.
Well, yes, but they do wonders with injection molding these days so you don't have to (go into an alcoholic coma;)) Have you seen a Real Doll? (Probably not safe for work.) I'm sure they can make the robot fit inside one of those and walk upright with several kilos worth of silicone boobs tacked on the front, and then injection-mold the rest of the doll around it.
Sure, it might lack much facial expressions and such, but then again she probably won't file her nails during the act and ask if you're finished either. So, you gotta take the good with the bad. Plus, we're on Slashdot. Some of us couldn't tell body language if it came and kicked us in the nuts. (Oh yeah, it must mean she likes me;)) So no big loss.
Plus, think positively. You'll probably be able to customize it to your taste, rather than take whatever face or body shape you happen to be compatible with otherwise. (I.e., doesn't charge an arm and a leg;))
Still, I'm not much into beer myself. If they could make one that plays a healer on WoW or COH well, though, now that's gonna be true love;)
Well, I hear they were going to have some lasers, but they're getting sued by Lucas for looking too much like some lightsaber handles he had in mind for a future movie;)
Pretty much my point actually. I'm pretty much disinclined to believe any claim to be a freedom fighter if it involves his own benevolent autocracy (or even oligarchy) at the end, and much less so from someone who is candidly honest up front about being just pissed off that he's not the king collecting taxes off the land. I mean, I appreciate the honesty, but you won't find me with a torch and pitchfork in his mob at the castle gates.
Well, sort of. Actually, not really. Someone who explicitly just wants to replace Sony's walled garden with his own, doesn't exactly strike me as a sort of freedom fighters. In fact the whole situation kinda gives me the mental image of fighting Apple's walled garden by replacing it with Microsoft software.
The fact that the PC hardware itself will be open is effectively just a way to pass that unprofitable part to someone else. PC's commoditization just drove the profit margins of PC vendors into the basement and allowed MS to stick to the part where it can rake in the taxes like a king. In the end it's one reason why MS did better than apple, back in the late 90's and early 2000's.
Activision here wants the same thing. It wants the likes of Dell and HP to do the work of building a cheap PC that's kinda like a console, but not charge royalties for it, so he can get the money instead.
And generally I would question the logic between giving your vote to someone just because they intend to replace another asshole. The history is full of examples where that was a bad idea. I could even Goodwin it by mentioning a certain election in '32 where some people thought they'll show the established parties and coalitions by voting for the new and vocal third party, so to speak. Yeah, that went so well. But otherwise from Lenin to Yuan Shikai to ancient greek tyrants (yeah, most of those used populism to subvert the self-serving oligarchy that passed for ancient greek democracy), we have some millennia of people who offered to save us from they tyranny of someone else by replacing it with their own.
You know, though, it would look awesome as a lightsaber hilt. Beats half of Lucas's designs hands down. Maybe that's why he's ticked off.
I'm thinking I might actually model it as a lightsaber hilt for, say, Fallout 3. It's not often one gets the opportunity to piss off Fallout purists, SW purists and Lucas himself in one fell swoop:p
Aye, I don't think it's even possible to list them all. For most of human history, having an awesomely supernatural weapon was pretty much a requirement to be a hero. If you were just a guy who killed 100 people with a regular sword, you were just some lucky peasant. But have one sword that never misses or looks like a CCFL tube on a hilt, and you're a hero. Have _two_ and you're already in the elite league, next to Arthur and Beowulf;)
Dunno if I'd even give him credit for basically inventing the lightsaber, though. It's been one of those ideas that has floated around for at least one millennium, in one form or another.
E.g., King Arthur's sword Excalibur is said in various legends to be so bright that you can't (or can only with difficulty) look at it, and in at least one it consists or is covered in two jets of bright flame coming from the two chimaera heads on the hilt. It also can slice right through steel.
Other flaming swords or swords made of flame date as far back as Genesis (God placed one at the entrance to Eden after kicking those two buggers out), or one that shines like the sun is supposed to be wielded by Surtr (leader of the Muspelheim fire giants) in the battle of Ragnarok in Norse mythology. In fact Surtr's sword is arguably even more interesting as it isn't described as flaming or made of fire, but as a sword which shines brighter as the sun.
And while not exactly contemporary with the old Norse, there are paintings from _long_ before Lucas which represent Surtr wielding basically a lightsaber. E.g., "The Giant with the Flaming Sword" by John Charles Dollman from 1909.
Or there's the sword Tyrfing, again norse, forged by the dwarves to shine like the sun and cleave through steel or stone like through cloth. (The only catch was that it _had_ to kill someone each time it was drawn, if all else fails, even its wielder.)
And while not necessarily flaming, great heroes carrying awesome swords with supernatural abilities in battle is basically as old as we have a history. The Celts have the likes of Caladbolg which cleaves hills and leaves a rainbow arc when swung (weapon swing arc effects in computer games, anyown?;)), Caesar had the Crocea Mors, etc.
Really, I liked the original trilogy and all, and I'm not trying to minimize Lucas's role on the whole. But crediting lightsabers as his invention, is a bit like crediting Disney with inventing mermaids;)
Markets don't need anything, if you just want them to function at all. After all, the internal market of the USSR also functioned... for loose enough definitions of functioning.
But the free market theory postulates a few more effects of it, though. That's why it's still being argued. Not because it would just continue to work better or worse, but because it's supposed to lead to an optimum point. Which really have only been argued on that ideal model. The whole behaviour of the free market as a perfectly self-correcting mechanism, and which does this or that so well without government intervention, is only argued to any satisfactory degree for that ideal market model and not at all on even the most laissez faire RL model. Much less on one which diverges as massively as what Monsanto wants.
They're not there as just some ideal to strive from, but as the reason why you expect certain results. Why you expect for example an increase in Pareto efficiency or Pareto distribution of wealth isn't just that choice A has some advantage over choice B, but that the buyers know that they're better off with A instead of B, and how much money difference that's worth. Otherwise the optimum point may well never be reached.
The more you deviate from it, the more, well, you may not get the same results. Most of that theory was never proven at all on a case which differs from the ideal at all. E.g., go ahead and try to prove the first welfare theorem _without_ assuming perfectly competitive markets or perfect information and a few more such perfect assumptions. And then try the same for the second theorem, which requires even more such assumptions.
But at any rate, the whole maths and handwaving behind the supposed perfect allocation and self-correction qualities of free markets really _only_ work with those assumptions, and _because_ of those assumptions. Real markets having the same effects is nowhere near proven (and if you believe Stiglitz, you could say it's even disproven.) It's all based on the handwaving that it's still close enough to the ideal to still sorta work that way.
Same as if you calculated that something should come down in X seconds by sliding down a frictionless plane (since you used that as an analogy before), the more that plane differs from frictionless, the more the result will differ. Past a point, that body won't be coming down the slope at all. Past a point you get a result that isn't just a little different, but not the same kind of behaviour at all.
And when you get to the extremes that Monsanto wants, where not just you don't know it all, but basically you know _nothing_ at all about the product you just bought, or at least not know if you got product A or B because they don't want them labeled... well, if you have some market theory which can sort the good from the bad without even knowing which is which, I'm all ears.
At any rate, which to read? Well, you can start with say Milton Friedman. Should be palatable enough to the right wing, right? See if you can spot in how many ways his ideas fundamentally require an ideal free market to produce the results he claims.
I meant actually reading an economics book, rather than the BS talking points from the likes of Cato. But if your gold standard of educating yourself about free market economics is looking it up in the dictionary... well, you just illustrate the problem I'm talking about.
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It's not that simple. If he had only fooled Bredius, I'd see your point, but a lot of others. There was a reason why he had to paint another Vermeer at his trial, to prove that yes, he did it. There were other critics who still refused to believe that they're not Vermeers. Or why they had to study the paint composition at the trial, and not just show them to a couple of critics with nothing to gain from it. Heck, a couple of his paintings were debated if they're forgeries or not until 1977.
It's stuff that you can't easily dismiss as the complicity of one crook to authenticate them as Vermeers. There were people who didn't make a cent out of it, and still thought they're authentic Vermeers and masterpieces.
You may be thinking "but death metal is such a niche, it won't happen." Happened already with other genres. Don't think the music of the '70s, or '50s, or '30s or whatever was actually as monolythic as you'd think. Back in the days of Glenn Miller -- just because that was used by the GGP as an example -- i.e., the 30's, fans of proper jaz as played by the likes of Benny Goodman and Count Basie sneered at the plebs who listened to the manufactured commercial gimmick music of Glenn Miller (or so they saw it), and viceversa. And fans of the newfangled ethnic or hillbilly music sneered at both, and viceversa. And then there were such manufactured superstars (at least in the eyes of those who didn't like them) as Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, and a lot of arguments went back and forth over _that_ topic.
It was rappers vs metalheads all over again.
Only nowadays they all gang up on the newfangled music of kids these days, and form some united front called "the music of the 30's."
So in 2070 you'll probably have grey fans of death metal and rappers turned grey and wizzened Britney Spears fans and grandmas who used to get all wet about the Backstreet Boys, acting like they were brothers in arms all along. And listening to them you'd think it was some uniform "music of the 90's" where everyone listened to all of that indiscriminately. And talking about how not only Meat Hook Sodomy was better than what kids listen to these days, but so were rap masterpieces like "I'm fucking you tonight", and so was anything Britney ever sung, and so on. Even if nowadays you couldn't get a fan of any of those, to have anything good to say about any of the others.
But nostalgia is a funny thing, and the enemy of my enemy...
Probably not verbatim, but rather: by then the kids will be listening to something completely different, to piss off their grandpa who grew up with death metal. And a bunch of people will be feeding pigeons in the park and talking about how this newfangled music kids listen to is complete crap, unlike the good old death metal they used to listen to. And how the latest band those kids listen to, let's call it The Federal Duck, totally doesn't compare to the old masters like Napalm Death, Obituary and Cannibal Corpse. And at that, their lyrics totally can't compare to the depth and profoundity of such masterpieces as Meat Hook Sodomy. And at that, look at the disrespectful clothes they wear these days, unlike the nice shredded jeans and t-shirts with skulls and flayed corpses we used to wear back in the day. Kids these days, eh?
Well, probably not everyone, but you'll probably be able to find one or two guys at the nursing home to reminisce about the proper death metal days in the 90's. If all else fails, try in Sweden :p
And another point, actually. Your example of a better artist of old is... Glenn Miller? The guy whose band was criticized at the time as being too commercial and lacking feeling in its letter-perfect playing? The guy whose music was panned by some critics as being commerial novelty gimmicks instead of real jazz? The guy that even one band said about that he gave America what he thought America wanted? Heck, the guy who only started being a success when the band started being heavily sponsored financially so he got enough exposure?
_That_ is your example of something total unlike nowadays manufactured, commercial gimmick bands? I mean, geesh, that band _was_ the Backstreet Boys of '39-'42, at least if you listened to the old farts panning it at the time.
The fly in the ointment there is that the same kind and style of painting was judged to be teh suck when it was signed Han van Meegren, but praised as a masterpiece when signed Vermeer. You know, they don't make 'em like the old masters any more ;) And when revealed as forgeries, well, today again you get snobs and curators going "yeah, well, it couldn't have fooled _me_. I mean, you can see it's teh suck" in interviews.
Let's face it, some of that old stuff only goes so well because of a perverse form of marketing. People are told that Vermeer or <insert 18'th century composer> are the great stuff and stuff that only properly cultivated people can properly appreciate, and you see the Emperor's New Clothes in action.
How many would go for that stuff if they didn't know the piece and you told them it's composed by some intern working for Disney?
And since you mention music from 60 years ago, you don't think those records may be hard to find only because people who grew up with them bought them? Frankly, it seems to me like most people's tastes end up fixed around a certain age. So you get 80 year olds still swearing that Frank Sinatra is the real music, and 60 year olds swearing by disco, and so on. And each generation thinks the music of the next one is crap and only bought by brainwashed idiots.
In fact, even about the Jazz and Swing music of the likes of Glenn Miller -- just since you used that example -- some old fart back then decried it as the mindless crap kids listen to these days.
Here's a funny thought though: the way people have complained about how everything about the next generation is worse for the last, oh, 2000-3000 years straight, if there were any truth to that, by now we've _all_ been listening only to crap, unlike the wholesome and good music that the likes of Socrates listened to.
So here's my prediction: 60 years from now, you'll have old farts reminiscing about how these new bands kids listen to are all mindless crap, unlike the great music of Eminem, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spear and Lady Gaga that they grew up with. Those were the great musicians. Not because any is objectively better, but just because that's the point in time their tastes remained frozen.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of either of those myself, but I also have no need to delude myself that there's something objectively better about the crap _I_ listen to, compared to the crap kids these days listen to.
Well, the savings aren't that huge actually, given that basically you could save the same thing in BLOBs or the new XML types, and really it's the same space on the hard drive regardless of whether it's connected to a database machine or to a NAS. Still, that's not a bad idea on the whole, but it's not one I would give someone before seeing their actual use case or trusting them to know what they're doing. You'd be surprised what can go wrong or inefficient when you have people do random writes in a file over NFS from several cluster members, because at some point someone wanted to also update this or that field in the file.
1. Oracle already has that, under partitioning. If there's a column you can define intervals on, you can have your database partitioned like that. E.g., you can have the database sliced by year, and move the old tablespaces to another HDD.
Probably DB/2 too, though I don't have that much experience with that one.
2. _But_ as Oracle itself points out, if you're doing it because of some delusions of gaining speed, you're doing it wrong. In this case while "90% never read", don't forget that in a well indexed database time will only increase with the logarithm of the number of records. So don't be surprised if dumping 9 million records out of 10 into another partition, will result in much less speed gain than you'd think.
And frankly that's the most common reason I see invoked for partitioning. Someone who has no clue thinks that he'll gain the uber-speed by spliting the data. Some of them even people from the IT department who should know better. Sometimes you can't move them from there no matter what, because the poor dumb beast already promised some PHB that as the great performance optimization and would lose face if he admitted he was wrong.
And especially data which is as in TFA just dead weight and never read, actually has very little impact.
So basically do a proper analysis first.
- are you splitting the data thinking that 1/10 of the data will be 10 times faster to access? Think again.
- are you splitting because of HDD costs? How much data do you have there? I mean, sure, if you're Google or Amazon, it adds up. Otherwise, exactly how much more would the extra complexity cost you? Very few meals are free, and sometimes the extra couple of hundred or even thousands of dollars in just buying fast hard drives can be easily cheaper than the cost of such an overhaul or just the extra admin overhead in the long run.
- do you actually need all that stuff? I don't read that 90% figure in just number of records, but probably most of it is in columns or whole tables which really aren't needed for anything, but are dutifully stored out of some delusion that some day they might be important. Do you actually need all that trivia? Or would you be better off just dropping a few tables instead of partitioning?
E.g. just think about how many details some sites want to know about you just to let you download a patch for a game you've bought. And I don't mean to ship it to you, or check your credit card, but just to register.
Really, there is a difference between data even for mining and pointless trivia. As a trivial example: team's averages for the last season are data that can be used meaningfully, but "which team won the most games (as in, a whole two of them) on a rainy Tuesday night under artifficial lighting" is trivia. The thing is so fine sliced that you're seeing statistical flukes. In the case of those registration sites I mentioned, demographics by age intervals are meaningful data, but by exact birthday is pure pointless trivia. Statistics by region are useful data, but statistics by street name and number are pointless trivia. No, seriously, you won't hit some jackpot that allows you to create a genre specifically for gamers on the even side of the road, nor specifically for people born on a day of the year divsisble by 3.
At any rate, that's what 90% figure is really about. And partitioning won't solve that. Even dividing the database between old records and new records won't change the fact that you still have 90% of any given partition consinsting of trivia nobody really needs.
Or, hey, if you absolutely can't let go of any byte of trivia, how about just moving those tables wholesale on a slower HDD? I mean, they're never read anyway.
That _is_ what I think.
Frankly, after hearing that gang spare no insult in telling me what an abject failure of a person I must be if I play like a "carebear" instead of like them, plus lacking the skill, plus lacking the courage, plus lacking balls, plus obviously self-hating/in-denial/whatever for not playing like them, etc, I don't feel much of a need for propriety in telling them right back what I think of them.
TBH, I'm not convinced that it's a generation thing. Just about every charge against generation Y, I've heard levied against generation X before. We were supposed to be the "me" generation, the self-centered idiots, the louts who grew up with entitlement delusions instead of knowing we must work hard, the ones who don't know how good we have it, the ones who never got taught proper respect, etc. Now essentially I hear that _we_ were the good guys (e.g., here in gaming) while the new generation are the real villains. Bah, humbug. I'll be damned if I let some young whippersnapper steal my spotlight like that. Get off my virtual lawn, damn kids, I still have as much self-centeredness left in me as I did in my teens ;)
Now seriously, I've long maintained that, basically, each game gets the gamers it "deserves", or rather those it caters to. As more and more games bend over backwards to cater to assholes, well, they get more assholes.
It was known at least as far back as, oh, I dunno, Phantasy Star Online, that you can make a game where the l33t killer type just can't do much harm and just leaves for greener pastures. The original COH also mostly lost those because there simply was nothing you could do to another player. Even harassment with tells didn't work well (ignore ftw.) Or even sitting in the town square and shouting crap against them or folowing and stealing their kills, well, in a heavily instanced game neither worked too well.
Unfortunately a lot of games basically try to cater to everyone, including the asshole segment, and occasionally disproportionately to the asshole segment. E.g., because it's the loudest group of players and for a while it can seem like everyone wants, in fact even _demands_ unrestricted PvP and disproportionate penalties for the victim. (See STO again: about two dozen Eve rejects could cause the majority of threads, completely out-posting the hundreds of thousands who formed the rest of the community.) E.g., because some developer is himself the kind who doesn't understand why would anyone play for any other reason than proving penis size, and that throwing references to "care bears" and "hello kitty" players makes him sound more properly manly. E.g., because the publisher comes and says "OMG, we need to copy more from WoW/CS/whatever. Like let's start with features X, Y and Z. And in fact let's turn the knobs to 11 on them, so we can brag we're better than WoW/CS/whatever." Sony is probably the lowest hanging fruit there, as it screwed up so often and hard by trying to copy and outdo features it didn't even understand from WoW, that it's not even funny.
And often in the process it ends up catering more to the assholes.
Basically my take is that really nothing happened between generations in the population at large. We still have a bunch of nice kids and a bunch of bad kids, and a lot in between. It's just that more and more games tried to tap into the asshole segment for extra players, and predictably more of the existing assholes became players. Not even all from the newest generation. Some of the most obnoxious players I've met were middle-aged middle-class gentlemen (well, gentlemen when they weren't anonymous online, anyway.)
Never said that the internet actually created assholes. TBH, though, I do think that some games ended up drawing more assholes online by, basically, catering to that segment more.
E.g., back when CS was getting more assholes than all other online games combined, it wasn't even a mystery why. You just needed to ask one of the most obnoxious CS-ers if they want to play a round of UT or Quake 3 instead. You'd promptly get told (or even ranted at) that it's simply no fun if his victims can respawn immediately and get right back in the game. They needed to feel like they inflicted _some_ punishment on someone, even if it's just a minute of not playing, or it wasn't fun for them. The goal wasn't to compete (competing for score works there just as well) or prove they're the best (ditto) or anything else, but really to feel like they prevented someone from playing the game. For the first time in FPS history CS gave them even a small possibility to be (or think they are) annoying to someone, and they flocked to it in droves.
And by now more and more games cater to that segment, and/or can be persuaded to do some changes demanded by that vocal minority. E.g., STO actually went against the protests of each players and implemented a penalty for dying, which was demanded by that Eve rejects minority.
So while I would agree that probably at society scale still the same percentage are assholes as before, I do have the impression that online gaming has attracted a higher percentage than that by now.
Well, not textured FPS, but I seem to remember a couple of non-textured ones before Wolfenstein 3D, so strictly speaking he is right. Of course, they weren't playable either on a LAN or online anyway.
Well, you're right about that, but single player versions don't quite illustrate the rise of the online assholes that I was talking about. Even Doom which came 3 years after Ultima 6, only was realistically playable on a LAN, and even then better not be on the work LAN, the way it broadcast packets. And really, on a LAN the whole thing is a lot less conducive to breeding assholes. What you need, is, well, best illustrated by Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. You can't really skip the middle ingredient. Acting like an antisocial asshole at a LAN party would just get one not invited any more.
(Note however that I would doubt that it just turns a normal people into a fuckwad, like in the comic strip. More likely it's just created a situation where a sociopath can act like his natural self. Sorta like Dave Barry's rule: Someone who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.)
Gah, I mean we got FPS years _after_ U6, of course.
Well, let's not forget that Ultima 6 was launched at a time when gaming was something for nerds, and often idealistic nerds. Even years before that, when we started getting online FPS, it was a world where you were _expected_ to be polite and say "good game", and where it would be a mark of the antisocial asshole to even frag someone who's AFK or chatting. Yeah, you could stop in the middle of a deathmatch and start chatting about your kids' grades (seen that verbatim happen), and it would be frowned upon if someone fragged you.
Then came Counter-Strike and the whole gang of insecure and/or psychopathic kiddies (and men at midlife crisis) who had to prove their penis size at every step, had to blame everything on someone else (getting shot at was only because the other was a cheater, not his staying still in the open, see?), and had to inform you of your sexual orientation and mother's weight and sexual prowess at least once per round. And that's just skimming it.
In the meantime it seems to me like they multiplied like rabbits. Yeah, good luck floating the idea of acting virtuously to someone who thinks he _must_ prove his penis size and that he has balls by ganking some AFK newbie and teabagging the corpse. 'Cause if god forbid he missed that at least one day, people might start questioning if he even has an Y chromosome at all. Actually obeying all 8 virtues? You'd probably need a panel of experts to prove to him first that the penis police won't show up to his door with a rusty hedge scissors, revoke his right to pee standing, and sentence him to wear a dress for the rest of his life.
Honestly, at times it looks like half the gamers nowadays don't even understand that it's even theoretically possible to play a game other than as a bigger asshole than on goatse, or that someone could even theoretically have a reason to play nice that doesn't boil down to being in denial.
Case study: witness the descent of the Eve idiots upon STO at launch, and the thousands of posts boiling down to "if I can't cause a random newbie to lose his ship and all he owns -- or, hey, as a compromise just his weapons, engines and bridge officers -- then the game sucks and it can't possibly be fun for anyone." Not even for said newbie, see. Why all those newbies must shed bitter tears at the utter disappointment of still having a ship by the time they hit level 5. Ganking them is just some selfless act to make the game fun for them, see? ;)
So, yeah, good luck with selling the idea of a game which gives bonuses for _not_ being an asshole to _those_.
As someone who took more than a fair share of IQ tests back in the day, I'd say that any test where it's even possible to bring any attitude into it, is a broken test anyway.
A count-the-blocks problem -- useless as it is to predict performance for anything other than counting blocks in isometric 2d -- only gets a number as a result, for example. You get the right number, you pass, you don't, you don't. If it's possible to interpret the picture or the question to truthfully answer any other number, then the test is broken. Ditto for other kinds of IQ questions.
This isn't stuff where you're asked to write an essay, or anything. Answering 14 instead of 15 isn't sassy or attitude, it's just answering wrong. And frankly anyone whose idea of being sassy and witty is answering the wrong number... well, let's just say they're more like quirky in the head than anything else.
Well, yes, but they do wonders with injection molding these days so you don't have to (go into an alcoholic coma;)) Have you seen a Real Doll? (Probably not safe for work.) I'm sure they can make the robot fit inside one of those and walk upright with several kilos worth of silicone boobs tacked on the front, and then injection-mold the rest of the doll around it.
Sure, it might lack much facial expressions and such, but then again she probably won't file her nails during the act and ask if you're finished either. So, you gotta take the good with the bad. Plus, we're on Slashdot. Some of us couldn't tell body language if it came and kicked us in the nuts. (Oh yeah, it must mean she likes me;)) So no big loss.
Plus, think positively. You'll probably be able to customize it to your taste, rather than take whatever face or body shape you happen to be compatible with otherwise. (I.e., doesn't charge an arm and a leg;))
Still, I'm not much into beer myself. If they could make one that plays a healer on WoW or COH well, though, now that's gonna be true love ;)
Well, I hear they were going to have some lasers, but they're getting sued by Lucas for looking too much like some lightsaber handles he had in mind for a future movie ;)
Pretty much my point actually. I'm pretty much disinclined to believe any claim to be a freedom fighter if it involves his own benevolent autocracy (or even oligarchy) at the end, and much less so from someone who is candidly honest up front about being just pissed off that he's not the king collecting taxes off the land. I mean, I appreciate the honesty, but you won't find me with a torch and pitchfork in his mob at the castle gates.
Well, sort of. Actually, not really. Someone who explicitly just wants to replace Sony's walled garden with his own, doesn't exactly strike me as a sort of freedom fighters. In fact the whole situation kinda gives me the mental image of fighting Apple's walled garden by replacing it with Microsoft software.
The fact that the PC hardware itself will be open is effectively just a way to pass that unprofitable part to someone else. PC's commoditization just drove the profit margins of PC vendors into the basement and allowed MS to stick to the part where it can rake in the taxes like a king. In the end it's one reason why MS did better than apple, back in the late 90's and early 2000's.
Activision here wants the same thing. It wants the likes of Dell and HP to do the work of building a cheap PC that's kinda like a console, but not charge royalties for it, so he can get the money instead.
And generally I would question the logic between giving your vote to someone just because they intend to replace another asshole. The history is full of examples where that was a bad idea. I could even Goodwin it by mentioning a certain election in '32 where some people thought they'll show the established parties and coalitions by voting for the new and vocal third party, so to speak. Yeah, that went so well. But otherwise from Lenin to Yuan Shikai to ancient greek tyrants (yeah, most of those used populism to subvert the self-serving oligarchy that passed for ancient greek democracy), we have some millennia of people who offered to save us from they tyranny of someone else by replacing it with their own.
You know, though, it would look awesome as a lightsaber hilt. Beats half of Lucas's designs hands down. Maybe that's why he's ticked off.
I'm thinking I might actually model it as a lightsaber hilt for, say, Fallout 3. It's not often one gets the opportunity to piss off Fallout purists, SW purists and Lucas himself in one fell swoop :p
True enough. It's a different culture than I had in mind, but the point is well taken.
Aye, I don't think it's even possible to list them all. For most of human history, having an awesomely supernatural weapon was pretty much a requirement to be a hero. If you were just a guy who killed 100 people with a regular sword, you were just some lucky peasant. But have one sword that never misses or looks like a CCFL tube on a hilt, and you're a hero. Have _two_ and you're already in the elite league, next to Arthur and Beowulf ;)
Dunno if I'd even give him credit for basically inventing the lightsaber, though. It's been one of those ideas that has floated around for at least one millennium, in one form or another.
E.g., King Arthur's sword Excalibur is said in various legends to be so bright that you can't (or can only with difficulty) look at it, and in at least one it consists or is covered in two jets of bright flame coming from the two chimaera heads on the hilt. It also can slice right through steel.
Other flaming swords or swords made of flame date as far back as Genesis (God placed one at the entrance to Eden after kicking those two buggers out), or one that shines like the sun is supposed to be wielded by Surtr (leader of the Muspelheim fire giants) in the battle of Ragnarok in Norse mythology. In fact Surtr's sword is arguably even more interesting as it isn't described as flaming or made of fire, but as a sword which shines brighter as the sun.
And while not exactly contemporary with the old Norse, there are paintings from _long_ before Lucas which represent Surtr wielding basically a lightsaber. E.g., "The Giant with the Flaming Sword" by John Charles Dollman from 1909.
Or there's the sword Tyrfing, again norse, forged by the dwarves to shine like the sun and cleave through steel or stone like through cloth. (The only catch was that it _had_ to kill someone each time it was drawn, if all else fails, even its wielder.)
And while not necessarily flaming, great heroes carrying awesome swords with supernatural abilities in battle is basically as old as we have a history. The Celts have the likes of Caladbolg which cleaves hills and leaves a rainbow arc when swung (weapon swing arc effects in computer games, anyown?;)), Caesar had the Crocea Mors, etc.
Really, I liked the original trilogy and all, and I'm not trying to minimize Lucas's role on the whole. But crediting lightsabers as his invention, is a bit like crediting Disney with inventing mermaids ;)
Markets don't need anything, if you just want them to function at all. After all, the internal market of the USSR also functioned... for loose enough definitions of functioning.
But the free market theory postulates a few more effects of it, though. That's why it's still being argued. Not because it would just continue to work better or worse, but because it's supposed to lead to an optimum point. Which really have only been argued on that ideal model. The whole behaviour of the free market as a perfectly self-correcting mechanism, and which does this or that so well without government intervention, is only argued to any satisfactory degree for that ideal market model and not at all on even the most laissez faire RL model. Much less on one which diverges as massively as what Monsanto wants.
They're not there as just some ideal to strive from, but as the reason why you expect certain results. Why you expect for example an increase in Pareto efficiency or Pareto distribution of wealth isn't just that choice A has some advantage over choice B, but that the buyers know that they're better off with A instead of B, and how much money difference that's worth. Otherwise the optimum point may well never be reached.
The more you deviate from it, the more, well, you may not get the same results. Most of that theory was never proven at all on a case which differs from the ideal at all. E.g., go ahead and try to prove the first welfare theorem _without_ assuming perfectly competitive markets or perfect information and a few more such perfect assumptions. And then try the same for the second theorem, which requires even more such assumptions.
But at any rate, the whole maths and handwaving behind the supposed perfect allocation and self-correction qualities of free markets really _only_ work with those assumptions, and _because_ of those assumptions. Real markets having the same effects is nowhere near proven (and if you believe Stiglitz, you could say it's even disproven.) It's all based on the handwaving that it's still close enough to the ideal to still sorta work that way.
Same as if you calculated that something should come down in X seconds by sliding down a frictionless plane (since you used that as an analogy before), the more that plane differs from frictionless, the more the result will differ. Past a point, that body won't be coming down the slope at all. Past a point you get a result that isn't just a little different, but not the same kind of behaviour at all.
And when you get to the extremes that Monsanto wants, where not just you don't know it all, but basically you know _nothing_ at all about the product you just bought, or at least not know if you got product A or B because they don't want them labeled... well, if you have some market theory which can sort the good from the bad without even knowing which is which, I'm all ears.
At any rate, which to read? Well, you can start with say Milton Friedman. Should be palatable enough to the right wing, right? See if you can spot in how many ways his ideas fundamentally require an ideal free market to produce the results he claims.
I meant actually reading an economics book, rather than the BS talking points from the likes of Cato. But if your gold standard of educating yourself about free market economics is looking it up in the dictionary... well, you just illustrate the problem I'm talking about.