You can make fake gold at home if you want, but smart cookies know it's fake. Digitally, that's a little harder... Getting around that stuff gets a bit interesting - you need to start looking at security and id keys and assorted madness like that, to verify it's the genuine article - basically the necessary detail of the game skyrockets with the need to implement rules and maintain some semblence of reality. Perhaps instead of gold, the game host creates a virtual mint and creates tagged and signed currency. Punters can't fake that very easily, but then who needs money if everything else can be created for zero cost?
I guess the idea then becomes whoever has the most (non-fakeable) money wins, and money is rewarded for deeds not stuff. Sound familar?
Who knows though, a few years from now when people have got their heads around it, things might open up. We're basically seeing the emergence of digital economies. We've already got several economies operating independantly with closed borders, so it seems to me the logical progression is to open the borders for free trade.
It's kind of trippy in a sitcoms-with-crossover kind of way, but the games are already crossing over into the "real" world so why not with each other? And why not with anything else for that matter? The fact that people are already hacking backdoors and dupes suggests that a demand for more flexibility is there (or maybe it's just opportunity for a quick buck). OTOH, some people like their games and communities just the way they are, so I don't expect changes like this to be universal or to happen anytime soon.
...that the artical makes out like MONEY is somehow real. C'mon people, money hasn't been real since the Gold Stardard was dropped, and depending who you talk to it wasn't real even then. The value of anything is determined by what people agree it is worth - everything: cars, your house, your labour, big businesses, shares, options, and yes, even imaginary gold.
* Neo pays with plastic
<Morpheus> You think that's money you're spending now?
It's ALL virtual. The sooner you realise that the sooner you can stop being a slave to money.
I mean, what do developers for money each day? - Generally, they create code that has no real substance outside the digital realm. Sure it might be useful to some folks, but game items are equally useful to the players using them.
I know little about these games, but it seems to me there's better money in a hack to produce virtual goods outside the context of the game, and bring them in. Eg, produce compatible objects in code, and insert it into the game. Consider it as an Import business. I'll ignore the economic ramifications for now though...
Yeh but how much faster and better would drug develoment be if the research was shared? You can aruge competition makes for a better stimulus, but I believe that competetion AND shared information works best - just look at KDE vs GNOME.
None, as far as I know. In a way, that's kind of the point of free software, and it appears to be Linus approach to the whole issue. Having said that, there may well be indivual developers and companies with secret stashes of IP fodder tucked quietly away.
It would be very cool if MS stomps this company on appeal, and hopefully the whole software patent concept with it. But I don't think they will do that - it's probably worth more to them to lose this battle, and have their own "IP" portfolio's worth validated. If that's the way it goes, look out world because there's gonna be one huge bun fight with every opportunistic company pulling out their dodgy patent claims.
Keep in mind that any rulings on the GPL have potential to affect ANY software licence. The software side of IBM has a huge amount riding on that. Granted, there may be concessions and arguments that suit IBM more than the OSS community, but still, if their case rests on the GPL being valid you can be damn sure they'll defend it to the best of their ability.
Nice try, but don't even think about running 1, 2, 7, or 8 on an address for your business dealing with international clients, or on your mom's PC. Most punters actually *like* HTML mail and pretty inlined graphics, and blocking based on character set is incredibly closed-minded of you.
While it may be your perfect filter system, it's no use for a business or people who deal with non-geek friends.
By "missing link", I guess I'm really referring to the gap between us and lesser primates, rather than the purely evolutionary chain. If it's living rather than fossilised then so much the better.
It's always seemed odd to me that we are "up here" while apes and chimps are "down there" and other mammals kind of dribble down from that. Why nothing in-between? It would be cool if there was some other species that slightly filled that gap bewteen us and the animals.
There are tribes in the Amazon that have been undiscovered until very recently, and there are untold numbers of smaller species that are discovered regularly.
The impressive thing here is that it's a large primate that acts rather unlike other primates. My call is either it's a hoax, or it's that missing link anthropologists have been searching for. If it's the latter, it's a huge discovery.
Ah, so that was Saddam's mistake. He didn't build his arsenal fast enough.
If he did have nuclear weapons, would the US have been so gung-ho, or would there have been much discussion and negotiation, as was the case with Israel/Palestine, and North Korea?
I personally like the idea of individual polling stations printing locally, and folks like Xerox could easily provide production laser printers which can handle the workload. There's also no technical reason that the votes couldn't be printed remotely via ssh tunnel. Output them to something like those super-fast super-reliable DocuPrint lasers.
Making paper copies of things really isn't a big problem.
I feel sorry for my Dad. I was just a nipper, and we used to get those magazines with programmes in them to type in. Poor old Dad would sit there for hours with me reading out each line while I typed them in on the calculator-like keyboard... only to have the RAM pack or Powerlead trash it on the last page. Man those games sucked.
There was one machine code game that rocked though... somthing about flying over a city and bombing it, IIRC. Pretty impressive for it's day.
The dodgy power lead was indeed bad news, but how about the dodgy ram expansion? I remember using either an easer or a matchbox underneath to stop the thing wobbling and crashing the machine.
It might be. I don't know because I haven't tried it yet... But I was thinking that you could pre-load it with a "hi-res" snapshot or a person's/rat's/snail's/whatever's brain. Run the app and there it is - all trained and setup ready to go. No development stimulus required.
The catch being that 1 micron MRI scanning would take far too long and subject the sample to way too much radiation. Maybe not a problem for small samples with large synapses, but not something I'd volunteer for. If my info is outdated and it can be done in a practical manner now, that would be interesting... I wonder what would happen if a recently deceased subject was used? Could it be "reanimated" in software? Probably not, because I suspect it's the living electrical network that we need to copy, and a dead brain doesn't have that electrical activity.
Who cares if you can download pr0n directly to your mind..
Indeed, but you would have to learn how to do that. Providing natural IO (not necessarily biological, just mapped to a speaker and mikes in a way that appears natural to the application) lets the application (person?) work the way it already knows how to. It can learn about ethernet later.:)
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I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you plan to simulate the human brain, make sure you simulate the IO in a manner the simulation can access naturally. Nothing would suck more than being a fully functional simulation trapped in a deaf and dumb computer system.
"I think, therefore I am" doesn't mean much if nobody else knows...
For many applications, I think the holographic stuff is overkill - eg, a keyboard or basic UI. Medical stuff that needs 3D I can understand, but not most consumer stuff. For these apps, would a touchscreen with transparent OLED not be sufficient?
That's like Ferrari selling a cheap-ass subcompact shopping cart. Cute idea for folks who can't get the real deal, but it aint gonna happen. And if it does, don't expect home market pricing - eg, SGI's Intel Workstation affair.
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Those would be the economic ramifications...
You can make fake gold at home if you want, but smart cookies know it's fake. Digitally, that's a little harder... Getting around that stuff gets a bit interesting - you need to start looking at security and id keys and assorted madness like that, to verify it's the genuine article - basically the necessary detail of the game skyrockets with the need to implement rules and maintain some semblence of reality. Perhaps instead of gold, the game host creates a virtual mint and creates tagged and signed currency. Punters can't fake that very easily, but then who needs money if everything else can be created for zero cost?
I guess the idea then becomes whoever has the most (non-fakeable) money wins, and money is rewarded for deeds not stuff. Sound familar?
Yeh, you're probably right.
Who knows though, a few years from now when people have got their heads around it, things might open up. We're basically seeing the emergence of digital economies. We've already got several economies operating independantly with closed borders, so it seems to me the logical progression is to open the borders for free trade.
It's kind of trippy in a sitcoms-with-crossover kind of way, but the games are already crossing over into the "real" world so why not with each other? And why not with anything else for that matter? The fact that people are already hacking backdoors and dupes suggests that a demand for more flexibility is there (or maybe it's just opportunity for a quick buck). OTOH, some people like their games and communities just the way they are, so I don't expect changes like this to be universal or to happen anytime soon.
...that the artical makes out like MONEY is somehow real. C'mon people, money hasn't been real since the Gold Stardard was dropped, and depending who you talk to it wasn't real even then. The value of anything is determined by what people agree it is worth - everything: cars, your house, your labour, big businesses, shares, options, and yes, even imaginary gold.
* Neo pays with plastic
<Morpheus> You think that's money you're spending now?
It's ALL virtual. The sooner you realise that the sooner you can stop being a slave to money.
I mean, what do developers for money each day? - Generally, they create code that has no real substance outside the digital realm. Sure it might be useful to some folks, but game items are equally useful to the players using them.
I know little about these games, but it seems to me there's better money in a hack to produce virtual goods outside the context of the game, and bring them in. Eg, produce compatible objects in code, and insert it into the game. Consider it as an Import business. I'll ignore the economic ramifications for now though...
Yeh but how much faster and better would drug develoment be if the research was shared? You can aruge competition makes for a better stimulus, but I believe that competetion AND shared information works best - just look at KDE vs GNOME.
Sun released Hot Java in 1995, but if their internal R&D docs are up to scratch they might be able to prove prior art.
None, as far as I know. In a way, that's kind of the point of free software, and it appears to be Linus approach to the whole issue. Having said that, there may well be indivual developers and companies with secret stashes of IP fodder tucked quietly away.
It would be very cool if MS stomps this company on appeal, and hopefully the whole software patent concept with it. But I don't think they will do that - it's probably worth more to them to lose this battle, and have their own "IP" portfolio's worth validated. If that's the way it goes, look out world because there's gonna be one huge bun fight with every opportunistic company pulling out their dodgy patent claims.
Keep in mind that any rulings on the GPL have potential to affect ANY software licence. The software side of IBM has a huge amount riding on that. Granted, there may be concessions and arguments that suit IBM more than the OSS community, but still, if their case rests on the GPL being valid you can be damn sure they'll defend it to the best of their ability.
The real question is, how long will it be tolerated by the market and by SEC?. This is bullshit and they should be shutdown for pulling this crap.
Nice try, but don't even think about running 1, 2, 7, or 8 on an address for your business dealing with international clients, or on your mom's PC. Most punters actually *like* HTML mail and pretty inlined graphics, and blocking based on character set is incredibly closed-minded of you.
While it may be your perfect filter system, it's no use for a business or people who deal with non-geek friends.
I think you'll find the violation comes shortly after giving the pendant to your wife...
Fair enough.
By "missing link", I guess I'm really referring to the gap between us and lesser primates, rather than the purely evolutionary chain. If it's living rather than fossilised then so much the better.
It's always seemed odd to me that we are "up here" while apes and chimps are "down there" and other mammals kind of dribble down from that. Why nothing in-between? It would be cool if there was some other species that slightly filled that gap bewteen us and the animals.
There are tribes in the Amazon that have been undiscovered until very recently, and there are untold numbers of smaller species that are discovered regularly.
The impressive thing here is that it's a large primate that acts rather unlike other primates. My call is either it's a hoax, or it's that missing link anthropologists have been searching for. If it's the latter, it's a huge discovery.
Ah, so that was Saddam's mistake. He didn't build his arsenal fast enough.
If he did have nuclear weapons, would the US have been so gung-ho, or would there have been much discussion and negotiation, as was the case with Israel/Palestine, and North Korea?
That's hardly a bonding experience now is it?
I personally like the idea of individual polling stations printing locally, and folks like Xerox could easily provide production laser printers which can handle the workload. There's also no technical reason that the votes couldn't be printed remotely via ssh tunnel. Output them to something like those super-fast super-reliable DocuPrint lasers.
Making paper copies of things really isn't a big problem.
I feel sorry for my Dad. I was just a nipper, and we used to get those magazines with programmes in them to type in. Poor old Dad would sit there for hours with me reading out each line while I typed them in on the calculator-like keyboard... only to have the RAM pack or Powerlead trash it on the last page. Man those games sucked.
There was one machine code game that rocked though... somthing about flying over a city and bombing it, IIRC. Pretty impressive for it's day.
We've sure come a long way since then.
The dodgy power lead was indeed bad news, but how about the dodgy ram expansion? I remember using either an easer or a matchbox underneath to stop the thing wobbling and crashing the machine.
Does Novell have a MacOS-X client?
It might be. I don't know because I haven't tried it yet... But I was thinking that you could pre-load it with a "hi-res" snapshot or a person's/rat's/snail's/whatever's brain. Run the app and there it is - all trained and setup ready to go. No development stimulus required.
The catch being that 1 micron MRI scanning would take far too long and subject the sample to way too much radiation. Maybe not a problem for small samples with large synapses, but not something I'd volunteer for. If my info is outdated and it can be done in a practical manner now, that would be interesting... I wonder what would happen if a recently deceased subject was used? Could it be "reanimated" in software? Probably not, because I suspect it's the living electrical network that we need to copy, and a dead brain doesn't have that electrical activity.
Who cares if you can download pr0n directly to your mind..
Indeed, but you would have to learn how to do that. Providing natural IO (not necessarily biological, just mapped to a speaker and mikes in a way that appears natural to the application) lets the application (person?) work the way it already knows how to. It can learn about ethernet later. :)
Simple facts are usually incorrect assumptions.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you plan to simulate the human brain, make sure you simulate the IO in a manner the simulation can access naturally. Nothing would suck more than being a fully functional simulation trapped in a deaf and dumb computer system.
"I think, therefore I am" doesn't mean much if nobody else knows...
Any other Linux companies are in a similar boat. Companies like SuSE and Mandrake come to mind.
I'm wondering if there's a queue quietly forming...
For many applications, I think the holographic stuff is overkill - eg, a keyboard or basic UI. Medical stuff that needs 3D I can understand, but not most consumer stuff. For these apps, would a touchscreen with transparent OLED not be sufficient?
That's like Ferrari selling a cheap-ass subcompact shopping cart. Cute idea for folks who can't get the real deal, but it aint gonna happen. And if it does, don't expect home market pricing - eg, SGI's Intel Workstation affair.