]] SETI and any program like it are all long shots, and there's no way to prove them wrong, only eventually right...
Wow! You just turned SETI into a religion instead of a science.
Not my intent, and i understand you were just giving me a good-natured ribbing, but when you get down to it these sorts of programs are not exactly falsifiable. At least, I can't think of any sort of fact, event or observation that could be used to demonstrate conclusively that there is no other life in our galaxy (or universe). Until we get a 'yes' the whole thing is just one big 'maybe'. I've never really thought about this before but I wonder how such a theory is justified in the scientific community? Although I suppose technically saying extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists is more of a postulate than an actual theory. And now I've completely overthought this, better quit while I'm ahead.
I would it even call it surprising given the fact that recent numerous discoveries of planets orbiting other stars give more ground to the assumption that life might be common in the Universe. Either it is not or a part of our assumptions must be wrong.
You have certainly waved off a huge amount of information and theory in just two sentences. So you're basically saying that even though we've only searched approximately 0.002%* of the sky for less than a decade and found nothing, this surely disproves the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe? Do we even need to do the math here? SETI and any program like it are all long shots, and there's no way to prove them wrong, only eventually right, unless of course through some cosmic joke there really never was, is, or will be life elsewhere in the galaxy. In order to detect intelligent life via signals from space there needs to be a sufficiently advanced civ that broadcasts into space, the data needs to be strong enough to be detected by us, it needs to get to our planet within the timeframe we're listening, and we need to be paying attention to that area of the sky when this occurs, etc, etc. Life has existed on earth for millions of years, but we've only been "visible" signal-wise in the last century, it's quite possible there's another race out there but they won't even reach advanced electrical communications for another 10, 100, or 1000 years. They might have died off 10,000 years ago and we missed out chance, we can't know. We just have to keep listening and hope like hell we get lucky and hear something, but until then there's just too many variables for one to simply dismiss the case for extraterrestrial life just because we can't hear it.
*regarding the % searched, I'm sure SETI has a number on this somewhere, but it's got to be super small, the sky is, after all, absolutely ginormous.
They get 5 working days to come up with ways to achieve that end result. If any of them come up with the method described in the patent, without having seen the patent's description of the method, the patent is denied on the grounds of obviousness.
The only problem I have with this is that in the case of some (many?) great ideas, the end result itself is the novel concept, and the implementation is not necessarily the hardest part. Take as an example the Flowbee (FYI, it's just more or less a regular electric hair trimmer built into a vacuum hose to collect hair as you cut). The implementation could be done by anyone with a shop vac, a hair trimmer, and some duct tape, but it was rather innovative because up until then no one had made the leap of actually putting such a thing together. It could well be argued that it wasn't obvious to someone skilled in the art (of hair cutting) since barbers have existed for millenia yet up until the flowbee none of them had ever made a trimmer/sucker combo.
I agree however that some bogus patents get through simply because they're patenting something so obvious that people skilled in the art just take it for granted, and such inventions should be blocked and well would be by such a committee as you propose. However such a system would be cumbersome to use effectively given my above example, as well as (1) creating groups to represent every possible catagory of industry to draw upon; (2) paying the salaries for the members since ostensibly they'd be relatively expensive experts in their fields; (3) what counts as close-enough? if the group gets 4 out of 5 claims did they debunk it? 3 out of 5? (4) choosing and implementing a method of screening for group candidates such that you don't get a committee of gibbering morons but on the other end of the spectrum you're also not putting every invention up against a think tank who take it as a challenge to out-invent every application given them.
Back to my original point though: how many times have you seen a product making the inventor rich and you slapped your head and said "duh, why didn't I think of that?" But when you get down to it, although it seemed obvious in hindsight, and might have been a simple solution to come up with, half the work involved for the inventor was actually just noticing there was a niche to fill and proposing a solution in the first place.
A local teen will be charged with 5,934 counts of first-degree homicide for slaying players in Halo2 on Xbox Live.
When asked for comment the local police chief had this to say: "Tonight our information superhighways are safer with this dangerous PKer behind bars. Can you imagine it? Day after day logging on and slaughtering teenagers and socially inept adults in what were clearly premeditated attacks meant to wholly kill with no regard for the consequences. Some of these players were harmlessly out for a drive in their warthogs or ghosts when this psychopath ambushed them with rockets! The humanity! Also he was totally using the superjump cheat."
The laywer of the accused has issued this statement from his client: "A11 u n00bs are teh sux0rz!!1! u r a11 PWNED!"
Oh wait, if you put "e", "i", before it or "computer/Network/Internet" after it - something invented 50+ years ago it is suddenly NEW! Welcome to the new iMillenium!
Hey-hey there buddy, I hold copyright on 'iMillenium' (TM) and I will soon be suing you for a large number of eDollars!
Ever blown up a balloon and released it? Notice how it flew every which way like crazy? Mostly NOT toward Mars?
Dude, I am SO inventing and patenting balloon gyros! Oho, Timmy will bear that smug birthdayboy smirk no longer when all balloons are gyro-guided directly at his face!
I'm sorry, I had something crazy in my ear. Did you just say that Stargate adheres to real science? As in the show about people who travel around the universe (for no discernable reason) through wormholes built by a superpower race of snake symbiotes who enslaved non-earth humans and then populated the galaxy over millions of years and are served and protected by warriors with metal forehead plates and "space spears"?
Well that seems to pass occam's razor just fine.:P
I would have accepted CSI (though glamorized and timeline accelerated), MasterBlasters (though not much actual science shown yet), Myth Busters... Basically any show based in some sort of reality, not one where the main premise is humans using fantabulous mythical technology that they have no greater understanding of than how to dial it like a rotary phone.
Now once upon a time its star, Richard Dean Anderson, was on a little show called McGuyver where his character used actual everyday science to save the day, and usually explained what he was doing the process! Personally that show interested me in science more than most any other I watched while growing up. (Second to Mr. Wizard, of course!)
Thank you! Thank you for outing one of the key underlying causes of this sort of circular logic and the politics that perpetuate it. This is just another symptom of the lack of self-ownership that is forced upon us (taken from us?) by the state. Personally I believe many of our societal problems and litiguous nature trace back directly to the concept of the state as the owner of its citizens. If we are more or less constantly bombarded with the concept that we do not own ourselves and control our personal lives then is it any wonder when blame is misplaced and rarely falls on the actual guilty parties? It's too bad my mod points expired this morning, I was saving them for a post like yours. +1 Insightful for you, sir (or madam).
] ] One must balance the fact that actual innovative devices often generate multiple patents
This is a fact? Funny, I don't think the lightbulb had patents covering "A process for making wire" "A process for creating a vacuum" "A process for creating a bulb of glass" "A process for creating a vacuum in a bulb of glass" "A process for moving electricity through a wire in a vacuum in a bulb of glass"... no, the patent was just on the lightbulb.
While you do make a good point, I think you chose a bad example. The lightbulb patent didn't include all those other things because they were either covered in its claims (as being part of the invention itself) or were products and processes that were already patented. But I'm not going to take you to task for choosing a bad example, as we clearly both know and support the assertion that there are patents that do indeed outline several new inventions to make up one. However you seem to believe that this is A) patently bad (excuse the pun), and B) somehow out of the norm.
Let me first start by explaining that I work for an R&D engineering company - we create and patent new products and processes all the time, that's what we do. And we're not evil about it, we create something new and patent and sell/license it, most of the time in fact the patent is transferred (as per contract) to whatever company hired us to do the work for them. We don't sit on a pile of defensive or software patents (we only patent physical hardware and production methods) and litigate. Secondly, when I say innovative devices often generate multiple patents you seem to think this automatically means we're taking every minute new step and patenting it, that is absurd and difficult to do. However, in the process of creating, say, a nuclear steam generator pressure cleaner (an actual product of ours), our engineers have come up with new and novel hardware for sprayer heads, new materials and designs for high-temp pressure hoses, new mechanical delivery systems, and tons of other interesting devices that are patented and hanging on our wall of patents. Each of these things is in itself a complete and new and useful invention and they can be - and are - used in other devices to enhance or augment that device. In other words, on the way to making our one product we created new, or improved, pieces of hardware that are completely usable outside of the end goal. The new high temp and pressure hoses could be used in other industrial applications and are thus deserving of their own patent.
It has been my experience working here that when a group of engineers sets out to do some larger complex task, often times the steps they take along the way are themselves useful devices. So in order to patent our final product, and still be able to protect the new devices that make it up, we might have 3 'daughter' patents on the new hardware, and another 'parent' patent that references those other ones in it's claims. This is not the same as simply listing X new inventions in claims and trying to jam it all in under one patent. This is in fact discouraged by the patent office for exactly the reasons you give, it obfuscates and complicates the patent. And it's not a bad thing either, if suppose Edison had in fact invented new and novel processes for producing bulbs along the way to making the light bulb, why would he be any less deserving of patents on those inventions simply because they are used by his end product? The long and short of it is that the number of patents one requires to adequately cover a single invention can range from one to many (you don't seriously think there's a single all-encompassing patent for "a device to generate electricity using nuclear fission" or that this would be a good idea, do you?) and how many depends on the invention in question. Some companies do abuse the patent process by patenting every minor item, and mostly this is stupid because alone they are not novel, yet somehow these seem to slip through anyway. But to offhand dismiss anyone of such beh
I don't care if small inventors can no longer afford to apply for a patent---much of the innovation seems to come from megacorps anyway
Part of your post is in fact interesting as modded, but the above snippet I find highly disturbing. You only think that most innovation comes from megacorps because you see them cranking out hundreds of patents per year, or crazy advanced drug patents. But you aren't hearing daily stories about the thousands of basement innovators who apply each year because each one of them is only applying for one or two patents, and taken individually they barely make a blip on the radar, but that makes them no less (potentially) useful or innovative. And besides, the entire point of a democratic republic is to prevent the majority from crushing the rights of any given minority group, I'd like to think we would structure our patent system similarly, although I know this is wishful thinking.
There is a compromise, however, between raising salaries and costs, and protecting the lone patent applicant. It's very simple: have a scaled application cost. And make the appreciation steep, maybe exponential. That way when Joe Inventor wants to patent his duck umbrella it still costs him a reasonable price, the same as now for the sake of argument. But when MegaCorp Inc bursts through the door with MAXINT patent apps for every software process under the sun, the first 2 are regular cost, next two are 150%, two after are %200, then 300%, then 500%, and so on and so forth. Granted, the actual price equation here is tricky but it should be quickly prohibitive. One must balance the fact that actual innovative devices often generate multiple patents, so up to 5 should be relatively low priced, but after that you had better have a business or some VCs behind you to afford the staggering costs of 5+ patents filed in the same year. This would force MegaCorp Inc to seriously rethink how badly they actually need a patent on "clicking twice on the interwebs" and maybe prioritize their portfolio for what is actually essential and what is filler to possibly crush their competition (and true innovation in the process). At the end of a year or two from first filing, the fees would reset for that patenter again.
I also propose adding some kind of patent tax to patents that have been approved but are not being used and have not been open sourced. There should be a window period, to allow someone say to get a company up and running around a patent - let's say 5 years. But after that period if you are not licensing the IP or producing a product then you get the option to put the patent in the public domain or pay a hefty fee. This would prevent the formation of patent-hoarding companies who produce nothing but just use submarine patents to threaten and manipulate companies who are actually producing useful goods or services. Additionally these get-yer-butt-in-gear fees could be fed back into the system to help offset costs.
Of course, along with this there needs to be the usual/. list of patent reforms - no (or at least much more restrictive) software patents, shorter terms for patents to become public domain, especially for drugs, etc etc blah blah blah. I'd also like to see an exponential fee system for resubmitting denied patents. Currently the system allows one to tweak and resubmit over and over again at a minimal cost. Again, care should be taken to assure one can in good faith use the resubmittal process cheaply since a revision or two is often needed. However if MegaCorp is just going to keep tweaking claims until finally it creates a marginal enough loophole for acceptance, it should cost them through the nose after a certain point, 3 maybe? Afterall, if they have patent lawyers helping them craft these things and still can't get it right by then, it's probably not that innovative or original and they're really just fishing at that point.
I do agree with you that the downside of football's agression is (in this context) being somewhat overplayed and ignores the team building, structured environment of the game, not to mention the fact that the players need to learn dozens - if not hundreds at some levels - of different and sometimes complex plays, as well as think on their feet when the play changes. However, I also think you're overestimating just how much "control" is being taught to these kids, especially highschool level football players.
My experience in HS - being a member of the math and college bowl teams, and the band - was on the geek side of things, but I was in no way constantly pummelled by jock bullies - mostly because I avoided them. That said, however, football in our school was very big and every grade had a ton of football players who were more than willing to exhibit their assumed superiority (in all things but grades, stereotypically enough) usually by bullying. Their solution was always first yelling and threats then straight on to attempting to beat the crap out of someone. And usually it was with three or four of their teammates. Nevermind the fact that they were calling you a pussy/pansy/fag etc, it was they who apparently required 2 or more assistants to pummel someone. Hard to see how anyone up against 3 or four of their peers (peers who had been working out all season) wouldn't shy away from such a fight.
To get back on topic from the backstory - what I saw was that these kids were basically in a daily training regime to get bigger, faster, stronger, and able to take a beating like no one else. And they were aware of this and didn't "translate lessons from the field" on teamwork and applying force just where needed to get the job done, hell no! They were 17 yr old boys who found themselves in the position of being physically superior to everyone else and they damn sure wanted you to know it. They had also been trained that hitting harder and being more aggressive on the field won more games. And if anything, the teamwork lessons they took with them were that where one guy might be able to get the job done, a couple worked much better, and to stick up for each other - which was directly applied to fighting single kids in a large group as mentioned above. Plus while there may be boundaries and limits to agression on the field to keep their efforts in line and productive - there aren't quite the same readily enforced ones off the field. No whistle blown by the ref when they get out of line in the school parking lot, and they knew that 3 out of 4 times they weren't gonna get caught for roughing someone up or even just being intimidating for the sake of amusing themselves or their friends.
Now on the other side of the argument people claim that videogames teach and encourage violence, but the majority of the players are not the ones learning the real agression of contact sports, and cases like columbine are the exception rather than the rule (and usually attributable to much more significant causes like abuse or mental instability). If these games were teaching kids to be violent and agressive then why aren't we seeing more of that in schools, and more specifically in direct response to those that physically threaten them, such as football jocks or any other physically imposing group? And the reason is because it's just a game. Deep down the players know that. There's a huge difference between double-tapping A to steal a car or fire a rocket or beat a game NPC, and actually doing such a thing in real life. There's exponentially less sensation and consequences in a pixel game than in real life and people can actually feel that. Don't believe me? Go to a shooting range with some boy scouts and watch how the first-timers react to firing a gun - there is a certain amount of awe and respect there when they realize how extremely different and palpably dangerous a real gun is compared to the picture of a gun they've been manipulating with button presses on their console at home. Same thing with soldiers in the military
Indeed, thanks for posting some others. Honestly I love pretty much every one of his songs, but once I linked 7 I figured I had to stop lest I just relist them all.;)
Also, forgot to mention he's doing one last NY show this weekend. Here's the flyer for it.
Most of the posts I see modded up thus far are people lamenting yet another rap genre coming into being, or complaining about how stupid it is and can't be taken seriously. To those poseters and those who are nodding their heads to them I say go take a listen to MC Frontalot, considered by many (including the/. summary) to be one of the founders of this genre. His stuff is funny, hip, geeky, and tight. You don't even have to like rap (he's more hiphop anyway). His musicality, lyrics, rythms, everything is at a high level.
As to what some of these other artists are putting out I'll have to go take a listen, but Frontalot I think represents some of the best right now and if you're reading/. everyday you owe it to yourself to at least listen to some of his stuff.
A lot of his stuff is free for download, check out the following, I guarantee you'll like it:
Floating Bridge a 90 second song that explains everything you ever wanted to know about bridge engineering, warning: this will get stuck in your head and you will love it
Yellow Lasers An obscure sexual encounter at a Star Wars convention
In the U.S. the court can order you to provide encryption keys and if you do not you will be held in contempt of the court. This usually means the judge puts you in jail until you decide to provide the keys.
Pardon my ignorance on the subject but perhaps someone lawyerish could explain the terms of being held in contempt of court? Is it indefinite, or until that particular case is settled one way or another? From what I have heard about the reporter being jailed for contempt of court for refusing to disclose her source in the Karl Rove CIA case, she can only be held until the grand jury is dissolved. For a more run of the mill (i.e. non-grand jury) criminal case, when could the person be set free? Or if you plead the 5th (in the US that is) can you just be held forever until you divulge the information? I'm assuming there must be something that forces the judge to either convict or release you at some point, otherwise I feel like I would have heard about more cases of people being held indefinitely due to pleading the 5th or being in contempt.
Note: I did read the wiki article on contempt that the parent linked to, but I'm still a bit fuzzy on the limits, if any, of a contempt sentence.
I can understand you're not likeing it when people quit, but best as I can tell threatening them for it is a violation of
the rules, but quiting isn't. Well here's the thing, I consider quitting a form of cheating, because you're essentially giving the other team the
upper hand. Its even conceivable that an odd-numbered party (say 5 players) can artificially inflate some of their
ranks by joinging a 4 on 4 game and then whoever gets put on the opposing team quits, giving their teammates an
advantage. Wash, rinse, repeat. Perhaps not the most likely scenario, but the fact remains, by starting and quitting
you have almost guaranteed that anyone assigned to your team will now go down in rank when they lose. Some
game types are completely unwinable when unbalanced, such as Territories - once you have less people than there
are territories to capture the other team can always hold at least one more than you and have someone left over to
assualt your team.
Also what about when someones net connection goes down? Or thier young child suddenly needs help, or thier
parent intervenes and shuts down thier game? I addressed this in my original post, but I'll add to it here. This
is not like an argument against capital punishment, because I don't care if some innocents are harmed by the process
I use (although they really aren't as I'll get to in a minute*). And I fully acknowledge that sometimes quitting early is unavoidable for many reasons and it happens to me
as well. I would also point out though that I try to be fair by doing the same for quitters from both teams, by telling
people up front so they know, and if someone has a headset and tells the team 'dude I have to go to dinner with the
folks now, sorry' then I obviously make an exception. A lot of the time though what you see is the game starts and
people decide they don't like the map or the gametype and just quit to go find another game as quick as possible,
which is extremely selfish. Also, it has been my experience that there are notably fewer instances of people quitting
early when I tell everyone upfront, seriously. I've had days where 5 games in a row people would quit from one side
or both, but after announcing my policy (and usually others saying that's a good idea and they will do the same)
suddenly no one quits in any game after.
I'll also point out that if you are in a game that's very lopsided then no one gets noticebly better, the poorer player
has no real chance and dies repeatedly with little to no chance learn anything (unless the better player is tutoring
him/her, different story entirely there) and the better player isn't challenged at all. Also true, but not as much
of an issue in larger multiplayer games. Now if you're playing 2 on 2, sure you're screwed. But there's a lot to learn
from being outclassed, even if all you learn is where the good hiding places are, or it makes you really think of how to
deal with that sniper other than just hoping another teammate will take care of him. The other problem with quitting
relates to this point as well - the fact that one is ranked last when quitting, and so the last to quit is the one who is ranked
lowest. So now you have a scenario (4v4) where let's say 1 guy quits, frustrating the other so-so player who quits.
Now it's 2 on 4, the other guy decides he's not gonna tough it out and quits. So now you're last, with basically zero
real chance against 4 other players, but if you quit at that point you're guaranteed to get the worst ranking out of
everyone. Does that seem fair to the player who was going by the book? Not at all. So I'm really not concerned
about the unfairness of my attitude towards quitters when they clearly don't care about their action and how it
affects me in-game.
*Now here's where the system balances things out. Xbox Live - which is responsible for
enforcing the feedback policy - has been doing so quite well for 2 years, you don't hear a lot of complaints on the
web about unfair practices re that. So if
I agree wholeheartedly with all of your comments, I just wanted to point out one slip you made at the end: It's not just about his rights -- it's about protecting the rights of ALL citizens equally, so the gov can't do to him, you, or me, without following the law.
Unfortunately, thanks to things such as the PATRIOT ACT, the government technically is following the law in these cases. The gestapo-like, right-crushing law that should never exist. Sorry to be pedantic, I know what you meant by your sentence, but in these cases mincing words becomes important. I think it may be better put as "It's not just about his rights -- it's about protecting the rights of ALL citizens equally, so the gov can't do [this] to him, you, or me, without [due process and honoring a citizen's constitutionally guaranteed rights].
If they need to fix anything in halo 2, its the wussy quitters...it takes like 5 games to have one full game without cheating or quitting, i swear.
I agree, people who quit during the game have been a much larger headache for me than any griefers or cheaters. A lot of the time it seems to be the poorer players who quit, although it makes little sense to me. Do people not know that they are automatically ranked last when they quit during a game? Do they really think they'll get better by ducking out of games where they are outclassed? Now granted, if you've ever been on the wrong side of a fantastic sinper it can be frustrating, but most of the games I see this happening in are rather evenly matched until that person quits.
And I also understand from time to time shit happens - the dog needs to go out, their parental unit demands it's time for homework/bed (another reason I hate playing before 10pm, gorram kids), bad connection, etc. but that doesn't explain why game after game these days people quit left and right.
I have a headset and I've taken up the habit - usually after losing from quitters a few times - of informing everyone up front that I leave feedback for anyone who quits early as either 'cheating' or 'threats and harrassment' and not just for my team - unbalancing either side is unfair and less fun. Most others seem to agree with me when I say this and it seems to have an actual effect on people quitting that round. Personally I think bungie should add a 'Quit early' option to the feedback to track repeat offenders.
I can totally relate to the problems and frustrations of improper (or in my case, disconnected) grounds in a system causing bad readings and being difficult to debug.
Now what I can't imagine is how many times more difficult that is when true "ground" ends up being over 100 kilometers away!
Oh, they know there's a demand. They want that stuff, but know they must never never never look at it because it is Evil(TM).
And if they can't have it, no one can. Plus, banning it makes it harder for them to get it.
As a complete non-sequitir, does anybody know of a country where the right to free speech actually exists, and the government doesn't tell the citizens what they can and can't choose to view?
Do me a favor, if you ever do find such a place, send me a note and I'll be on the first boat with you.
[rant] I am so sick of prudes in power letting us all know that things that make them feel icky should be illegal. Liberals tend to say to these people 'if you don't like it, change the channel' to which the response is usually something along the lines of 'that doesn't make the issues go away, it's still out there, the sex/hate/violence/lewd/unpopular/misunderstood thing is still there for someone to view and that's no ok with me.' But they never stop to think that the entire reason it's there, publicly available is because some people want it, some people don't have a problem with it. There's not some secret think tank of deviants producing uncomfortable-for-some material just to muck with those conservatives. There is a demand, and hence a supply. What good is freedom of speech, security in one's effects, and freedom of worship if the minute one group decides something is inappropriate, it therefore must truly be, and is only appreciated by some shadowy, poorly defined minority? Who do they think is creating/consuming this stuff? Terrorists? Their own constituents (not the ones they relate or pander to, obviously) must be, otherwise there would be no market and no product. Have we learned nothing from our own history? When are we going to objectively look at the outcomes of any prohibition of 'morally questionable' goods/services and recognize that in just about every instance there were fewer problems before things were regulated than after. (ala War on drugs/poverty/terrorism/alcohol prohibition/etc)
This is not to say that every fiendish desire should be tolerated, things like child abuse, rape, murder, vandalism are unacceptable - but that is because they cause direct harm to others. In today's [American] society there is a stunning lack of personal culpability and self-ownership. And I think these two go hand in hand. If the state says you cannot die when you want, eat what you want, ingest whatever chemical you want, must relinquish any possession to the state (practically on a whim given the recent ruling about imminent domain for commercial interests), then why should anyone feel resonsible for what they do? We are pummelled daily with the notion that our selves are not our own, so if I do not own myself then who is to blame for any of my actions should I stray from the narrowly defined norm of society? If you're not hurting anyone else, not infringing anyone else's rights or property and the only person you are [potentially/possibly] harming through your actions is yourself then it is no one's right to intervene. Unless you do not own yourself, in which case when you hurt yourself, you hurt the state. And that is why the politicians care and legislate that which makes them feel icky, because it must keep the herd in shape for the machine of state to consume at its whim.
I think I got into a bit of a rant, so let me get back on topic. Damn you Hillary Clinton and your sexual-frustration projectionist style of governing. Go read an offensive book by a dead author and try to figure out who to rail against in vain. Maybe then you'll learn that being angered by another's choices or expressions is useless, because in the end it doesn't matter so long as the only harm they do you is that icky feeling that your own conscious produces. Maybe you should legislate your own damn feelings since they seem to cause you so much harm. [/rant]
Can't comment on what you don't know.....
on
The Business of Anime
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I see at least four posts modded up to +4 and +5 right now that say the reason why anime isn't big in america is because of the odd japanese character stereotypes (ala blue hair, teen oversexed girls, way-out plots, etc). And in the next sentence these people also more or less state that they don't like most anime except for the stuff they see on Cartoon network. Can anyone spot the logical fallicy here? If we're admitting that 99% of anime doesn't make it here then how can you say that the reason is it's all too stereotyped - you haven't seen the other 99% to know!
Having watched numerous imports thanks to my college's midnight anime club (tho I'm still a newb by msot of their standards, some of those guys learned to speak japanese from watching so much anime!!) I can say that, yes, a ton of it is full of those stereotypes, but honestly, have you watched american cartoons lately? Fully half of it is spinoffs of PPGs and Pokemon. Look, you have to sort through a bunch of crap to find the gems like GITS, Akira, Evangelion, Lain, etc. but that's true of any genre. You can't just say 'well the 1% to 5% I've seen has all these stereotypes so the rest must too!' Part of the issue is that alot of the hardcore anime american audience do enjoy those types of anime (otaku anyone?), so that's what they tend to demand and therefore is what gets imported. As far as fansubbing goes I think as others have said the problem will mostly go away when the studios just realize that the fansubs exist because of demand - provide that product and the fansubs will go away, or move on to the next thing the audience is demanding.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! You just turned SETI into a religion instead of a science.
Not my intent, and i understand you were just giving me a good-natured ribbing, but when you get down to it these sorts of programs are not exactly falsifiable. At least, I can't think of any sort of fact, event or observation that could be used to demonstrate conclusively that there is no other life in our galaxy (or universe). Until we get a 'yes' the whole thing is just one big 'maybe'. I've never really thought about this before but I wonder how such a theory is justified in the scientific community? Although I suppose technically saying extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists is more of a postulate than an actual theory. And now I've completely overthought this, better quit while I'm ahead.
I believe you misspelled 'Whitecastle'. ;)
You have certainly waved off a huge amount of information and theory in just two sentences. So you're basically saying that even though we've only searched approximately 0.002%* of the sky for less than a decade and found nothing, this surely disproves the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe? Do we even need to do the math here? SETI and any program like it are all long shots, and there's no way to prove them wrong, only eventually right, unless of course through some cosmic joke there really never was, is, or will be life elsewhere in the galaxy. In order to detect intelligent life via signals from space there needs to be a sufficiently advanced civ that broadcasts into space, the data needs to be strong enough to be detected by us, it needs to get to our planet within the timeframe we're listening, and we need to be paying attention to that area of the sky when this occurs, etc, etc. Life has existed on earth for millions of years, but we've only been "visible" signal-wise in the last century, it's quite possible there's another race out there but they won't even reach advanced electrical communications for another 10, 100, or 1000 years. They might have died off 10,000 years ago and we missed out chance, we can't know. We just have to keep listening and hope like hell we get lucky and hear something, but until then there's just too many variables for one to simply dismiss the case for extraterrestrial life just because we can't hear it.
*regarding the % searched, I'm sure SETI has a number on this somewhere, but it's got to be super small, the sky is, after all, absolutely ginormous.
ouch, pun not intended.
You may be on to something there.... ;)
The only problem I have with this is that in the case of some (many?) great ideas, the end result itself is the novel concept, and the implementation is not necessarily the hardest part. Take as an example the Flowbee (FYI, it's just more or less a regular electric hair trimmer built into a vacuum hose to collect hair as you cut). The implementation could be done by anyone with a shop vac, a hair trimmer, and some duct tape, but it was rather innovative because up until then no one had made the leap of actually putting such a thing together. It could well be argued that it wasn't obvious to someone skilled in the art (of hair cutting) since barbers have existed for millenia yet up until the flowbee none of them had ever made a trimmer/sucker combo.
I agree however that some bogus patents get through simply because they're patenting something so obvious that people skilled in the art just take it for granted, and such inventions should be blocked and well would be by such a committee as you propose. However such a system would be cumbersome to use effectively given my above example, as well as (1) creating groups to represent every possible catagory of industry to draw upon; (2) paying the salaries for the members since ostensibly they'd be relatively expensive experts in their fields; (3) what counts as close-enough? if the group gets 4 out of 5 claims did they debunk it? 3 out of 5? (4) choosing and implementing a method of screening for group candidates such that you don't get a committee of gibbering morons but on the other end of the spectrum you're also not putting every invention up against a think tank who take it as a challenge to out-invent every application given them.
Back to my original point though: how many times have you seen a product making the inventor rich and you slapped your head and said "duh, why didn't I think of that?" But when you get down to it, although it seemed obvious in hindsight, and might have been a simple solution to come up with, half the work involved for the inventor was actually just noticing there was a niche to fill and proposing a solution in the first place.
The laywer of the accused has issued this statement from his client: "A11 u n00bs are teh sux0rz!!1! u r a11 PWNED!"
Hey-hey there buddy, I hold copyright on 'iMillenium' (TM) and I will soon be suing you for a large number of eDollars!
Dude, I am SO inventing and patenting balloon gyros! Oho, Timmy will bear that smug birthdayboy smirk no longer when all balloons are gyro-guided directly at his face!
Well that seems to pass occam's razor just fine. :P
I would have accepted CSI (though glamorized and timeline accelerated), MasterBlasters (though not much actual science shown yet), Myth Busters... Basically any show based in some sort of reality, not one where the main premise is humans using fantabulous mythical technology that they have no greater understanding of than how to dial it like a rotary phone.
Now once upon a time its star, Richard Dean Anderson, was on a little show called McGuyver where his character used actual everyday science to save the day, and usually explained what he was doing the process! Personally that show interested me in science more than most any other I watched while growing up. (Second to Mr. Wizard, of course!)
Thank you! Thank you for outing one of the key underlying causes of this sort of circular logic and the politics that perpetuate it. This is just another symptom of the lack of self-ownership that is forced upon us (taken from us?) by the state. Personally I believe many of our societal problems and litiguous nature trace back directly to the concept of the state as the owner of its citizens. If we are more or less constantly bombarded with the concept that we do not own ourselves and control our personal lives then is it any wonder when blame is misplaced and rarely falls on the actual guilty parties? It's too bad my mod points expired this morning, I was saving them for a post like yours. +1 Insightful for you, sir (or madam).
This is a fact? Funny, I don't think the lightbulb had patents covering "A process for making wire" "A process for creating a vacuum" "A process for creating a bulb of glass" "A process for creating a vacuum in a bulb of glass" "A process for moving electricity through a wire in a vacuum in a bulb of glass"... no, the patent was just on the lightbulb.
While you do make a good point, I think you chose a bad example. The lightbulb patent didn't include all those other things because they were either covered in its claims (as being part of the invention itself) or were products and processes that were already patented. But I'm not going to take you to task for choosing a bad example, as we clearly both know and support the assertion that there are patents that do indeed outline several new inventions to make up one. However you seem to believe that this is A) patently bad (excuse the pun), and B) somehow out of the norm.
Let me first start by explaining that I work for an R&D engineering company - we create and patent new products and processes all the time, that's what we do. And we're not evil about it, we create something new and patent and sell/license it, most of the time in fact the patent is transferred (as per contract) to whatever company hired us to do the work for them. We don't sit on a pile of defensive or software patents (we only patent physical hardware and production methods) and litigate. Secondly, when I say innovative devices often generate multiple patents you seem to think this automatically means we're taking every minute new step and patenting it, that is absurd and difficult to do. However, in the process of creating, say, a nuclear steam generator pressure cleaner (an actual product of ours), our engineers have come up with new and novel hardware for sprayer heads, new materials and designs for high-temp pressure hoses, new mechanical delivery systems, and tons of other interesting devices that are patented and hanging on our wall of patents. Each of these things is in itself a complete and new and useful invention and they can be - and are - used in other devices to enhance or augment that device. In other words, on the way to making our one product we created new, or improved, pieces of hardware that are completely usable outside of the end goal. The new high temp and pressure hoses could be used in other industrial applications and are thus deserving of their own patent.
It has been my experience working here that when a group of engineers sets out to do some larger complex task, often times the steps they take along the way are themselves useful devices. So in order to patent our final product, and still be able to protect the new devices that make it up, we might have 3 'daughter' patents on the new hardware, and another 'parent' patent that references those other ones in it's claims. This is not the same as simply listing X new inventions in claims and trying to jam it all in under one patent. This is in fact discouraged by the patent office for exactly the reasons you give, it obfuscates and complicates the patent. And it's not a bad thing either, if suppose Edison had in fact invented new and novel processes for producing bulbs along the way to making the light bulb, why would he be any less deserving of patents on those inventions simply because they are used by his end product? The long and short of it is that the number of patents one requires to adequately cover a single invention can range from one to many (you don't seriously think there's a single all-encompassing patent for "a device to generate electricity using nuclear fission" or that this would be a good idea, do you?) and how many depends on the invention in question. Some companies do abuse the patent process by patenting every minor item, and mostly this is stupid because alone they are not novel, yet somehow these seem to slip through anyway. But to offhand dismiss anyone of such beh
Part of your post is in fact interesting as modded, but the above snippet I find highly disturbing. You only think that most innovation comes from megacorps because you see them cranking out hundreds of patents per year, or crazy advanced drug patents. But you aren't hearing daily stories about the thousands of basement innovators who apply each year because each one of them is only applying for one or two patents, and taken individually they barely make a blip on the radar, but that makes them no less (potentially) useful or innovative. And besides, the entire point of a democratic republic is to prevent the majority from crushing the rights of any given minority group, I'd like to think we would structure our patent system similarly, although I know this is wishful thinking.
There is a compromise, however, between raising salaries and costs, and protecting the lone patent applicant. It's very simple: have a scaled application cost. And make the appreciation steep, maybe exponential. That way when Joe Inventor wants to patent his duck umbrella it still costs him a reasonable price, the same as now for the sake of argument. But when MegaCorp Inc bursts through the door with MAXINT patent apps for every software process under the sun, the first 2 are regular cost, next two are 150%, two after are %200, then 300%, then 500%, and so on and so forth. Granted, the actual price equation here is tricky but it should be quickly prohibitive. One must balance the fact that actual innovative devices often generate multiple patents, so up to 5 should be relatively low priced, but after that you had better have a business or some VCs behind you to afford the staggering costs of 5+ patents filed in the same year. This would force MegaCorp Inc to seriously rethink how badly they actually need a patent on "clicking twice on the interwebs" and maybe prioritize their portfolio for what is actually essential and what is filler to possibly crush their competition (and true innovation in the process). At the end of a year or two from first filing, the fees would reset for that patenter again.
I also propose adding some kind of patent tax to patents that have been approved but are not being used and have not been open sourced. There should be a window period, to allow someone say to get a company up and running around a patent - let's say 5 years. But after that period if you are not licensing the IP or producing a product then you get the option to put the patent in the public domain or pay a hefty fee. This would prevent the formation of patent-hoarding companies who produce nothing but just use submarine patents to threaten and manipulate companies who are actually producing useful goods or services. Additionally these get-yer-butt-in-gear fees could be fed back into the system to help offset costs.
Of course, along with this there needs to be the usual /. list of patent reforms - no (or at least much more restrictive) software patents, shorter terms for patents to become public domain, especially for drugs, etc etc blah blah blah. I'd also like to see an exponential fee system for resubmitting denied patents. Currently the system allows one to tweak and resubmit over and over again at a minimal cost. Again, care should be taken to assure one can in good faith use the resubmittal process cheaply since a revision or two is often needed. However if MegaCorp is just going to keep tweaking claims until finally it creates a marginal enough loophole for acceptance, it should cost them through the nose after a certain point, 3 maybe? Afterall, if they have patent lawyers helping them craft these things and still can't get it right by then, it's probably not that innovative or original and they're really just fishing at that point.
My experience in HS - being a member of the math and college bowl teams, and the band - was on the geek side of things, but I was in no way constantly pummelled by jock bullies - mostly because I avoided them. That said, however, football in our school was very big and every grade had a ton of football players who were more than willing to exhibit their assumed superiority (in all things but grades, stereotypically enough) usually by bullying. Their solution was always first yelling and threats then straight on to attempting to beat the crap out of someone. And usually it was with three or four of their teammates. Nevermind the fact that they were calling you a pussy/pansy/fag etc, it was they who apparently required 2 or more assistants to pummel someone. Hard to see how anyone up against 3 or four of their peers (peers who had been working out all season) wouldn't shy away from such a fight.
To get back on topic from the backstory - what I saw was that these kids were basically in a daily training regime to get bigger, faster, stronger, and able to take a beating like no one else. And they were aware of this and didn't "translate lessons from the field" on teamwork and applying force just where needed to get the job done, hell no! They were 17 yr old boys who found themselves in the position of being physically superior to everyone else and they damn sure wanted you to know it. They had also been trained that hitting harder and being more aggressive on the field won more games. And if anything, the teamwork lessons they took with them were that where one guy might be able to get the job done, a couple worked much better, and to stick up for each other - which was directly applied to fighting single kids in a large group as mentioned above. Plus while there may be boundaries and limits to agression on the field to keep their efforts in line and productive - there aren't quite the same readily enforced ones off the field. No whistle blown by the ref when they get out of line in the school parking lot, and they knew that 3 out of 4 times they weren't gonna get caught for roughing someone up or even just being intimidating for the sake of amusing themselves or their friends.
Now on the other side of the argument people claim that videogames teach and encourage violence, but the majority of the players are not the ones learning the real agression of contact sports, and cases like columbine are the exception rather than the rule (and usually attributable to much more significant causes like abuse or mental instability). If these games were teaching kids to be violent and agressive then why aren't we seeing more of that in schools, and more specifically in direct response to those that physically threaten them, such as football jocks or any other physically imposing group? And the reason is because it's just a game. Deep down the players know that. There's a huge difference between double-tapping A to steal a car or fire a rocket or beat a game NPC, and actually doing such a thing in real life. There's exponentially less sensation and consequences in a pixel game than in real life and people can actually feel that. Don't believe me? Go to a shooting range with some boy scouts and watch how the first-timers react to firing a gun - there is a certain amount of awe and respect there when they realize how extremely different and palpably dangerous a real gun is compared to the picture of a gun they've been manipulating with button presses on their console at home. Same thing with soldiers in the military
Also, forgot to mention he's doing one last NY show this weekend. Here's the flyer for it.
As to what some of these other artists are putting out I'll have to go take a listen, but Frontalot I think represents some of the best right now and if you're reading /. everyday you owe it to yourself to at least listen to some of his stuff.
A lot of his stuff is free for download, check out the following, I guarantee you'll like it:
Floating Bridge a 90 second song that explains everything you ever wanted to know about bridge engineering, warning: this will get stuck in your head and you will love it
Yellow Lasers An obscure sexual encounter at a Star Wars convention
Gonna Be Your Man Frontalot donates his lungs to his biggest fan
Penny Arcade Theme a song for the Penny Arcade crowd
Crime Spree Front is not excatly a criminal mastermind, a tale of his not-so-deadly crimes
Which MC Was That Excellent rundown of improbable internet MCs
Nerdcore Hiphop Title track that named the genre
This is just a small sampling of some of my favorites that I think will definitely hook people.
Pardon my ignorance on the subject but perhaps someone lawyerish could explain the terms of being held in contempt of court? Is it indefinite, or until that particular case is settled one way or another? From what I have heard about the reporter being jailed for contempt of court for refusing to disclose her source in the Karl Rove CIA case, she can only be held until the grand jury is dissolved. For a more run of the mill (i.e. non-grand jury) criminal case, when could the person be set free? Or if you plead the 5th (in the US that is) can you just be held forever until you divulge the information? I'm assuming there must be something that forces the judge to either convict or release you at some point, otherwise I feel like I would have heard about more cases of people being held indefinitely due to pleading the 5th or being in contempt.
Note: I did read the wiki article on contempt that the parent linked to, but I'm still a bit fuzzy on the limits, if any, of a contempt sentence.
Well here's the thing, I consider quitting a form of cheating, because you're essentially giving the other team the upper hand. Its even conceivable that an odd-numbered party (say 5 players) can artificially inflate some of their ranks by joinging a 4 on 4 game and then whoever gets put on the opposing team quits, giving their teammates an advantage. Wash, rinse, repeat. Perhaps not the most likely scenario, but the fact remains, by starting and quitting you have almost guaranteed that anyone assigned to your team will now go down in rank when they lose. Some game types are completely unwinable when unbalanced, such as Territories - once you have less people than there are territories to capture the other team can always hold at least one more than you and have someone left over to assualt your team.
Also what about when someones net connection goes down? Or thier young child suddenly needs help, or thier parent intervenes and shuts down thier game?
I addressed this in my original post, but I'll add to it here. This is not like an argument against capital punishment, because I don't care if some innocents are harmed by the process I use (although they really aren't as I'll get to in a minute*). And I fully acknowledge that sometimes quitting early is unavoidable for many reasons and it happens to me as well. I would also point out though that I try to be fair by doing the same for quitters from both teams, by telling people up front so they know, and if someone has a headset and tells the team 'dude I have to go to dinner with the folks now, sorry' then I obviously make an exception. A lot of the time though what you see is the game starts and people decide they don't like the map or the gametype and just quit to go find another game as quick as possible, which is extremely selfish. Also, it has been my experience that there are notably fewer instances of people quitting early when I tell everyone upfront, seriously. I've had days where 5 games in a row people would quit from one side or both, but after announcing my policy (and usually others saying that's a good idea and they will do the same) suddenly no one quits in any game after.
I'll also point out that if you are in a game that's very lopsided then no one gets noticebly better, the poorer player has no real chance and dies repeatedly with little to no chance learn anything (unless the better player is tutoring him/her, different story entirely there) and the better player isn't challenged at all.
Also true, but not as much of an issue in larger multiplayer games. Now if you're playing 2 on 2, sure you're screwed. But there's a lot to learn from being outclassed, even if all you learn is where the good hiding places are, or it makes you really think of how to deal with that sniper other than just hoping another teammate will take care of him. The other problem with quitting relates to this point as well - the fact that one is ranked last when quitting, and so the last to quit is the one who is ranked lowest. So now you have a scenario (4v4) where let's say 1 guy quits, frustrating the other so-so player who quits. Now it's 2 on 4, the other guy decides he's not gonna tough it out and quits. So now you're last, with basically zero real chance against 4 other players, but if you quit at that point you're guaranteed to get the worst ranking out of everyone. Does that seem fair to the player who was going by the book? Not at all. So I'm really not concerned about the unfairness of my attitude towards quitters when they clearly don't care about their action and how it affects me in-game.
*Now here's where the system balances things out. Xbox Live - which is responsible for enforcing the feedback policy - has been doing so quite well for 2 years, you don't hear a lot of complaints on the web about unfair practices re that. So if
Unfortunately, thanks to things such as the PATRIOT ACT, the government technically is following the law in these cases. The gestapo-like, right-crushing law that should never exist. Sorry to be pedantic, I know what you meant by your sentence, but in these cases mincing words becomes important.
I think it may be better put as "It's not just about his rights -- it's about protecting the rights of ALL citizens equally, so the gov can't do [this] to him, you, or me, without [due process and honoring a citizen's constitutionally guaranteed rights].
I agree, people who quit during the game have been a much larger headache for me than any griefers or cheaters. A lot of the time it seems to be the poorer players who quit, although it makes little sense to me. Do people not know that they are automatically ranked last when they quit during a game? Do they really think they'll get better by ducking out of games where they are outclassed? Now granted, if you've ever been on the wrong side of a fantastic sinper it can be frustrating, but most of the games I see this happening in are rather evenly matched until that person quits.
And I also understand from time to time shit happens - the dog needs to go out, their parental unit demands it's time for homework/bed (another reason I hate playing before 10pm, gorram kids), bad connection, etc. but that doesn't explain why game after game these days people quit left and right.
I have a headset and I've taken up the habit - usually after losing from quitters a few times - of informing everyone up front that I leave feedback for anyone who quits early as either 'cheating' or 'threats and harrassment' and not just for my team - unbalancing either side is unfair and less fun. Most others seem to agree with me when I say this and it seems to have an actual effect on people quitting that round. Personally I think bungie should add a 'Quit early' option to the feedback to track repeat offenders.
Now what I can't imagine is how many times more difficult that is when true "ground" ends up being over 100 kilometers away!
In other news, let me be the first to welcome our space-raditaion-mutated cloned pig embryo overlords.
Which brings me to my next point: in Soviet Russia, CLONED PIGS harvest organs from YOU!
And if they can't have it, no one can. Plus, banning it makes it harder for them to get it.
Excellent points, thanks!
Do me a favor, if you ever do find such a place, send me a note and I'll be on the first boat with you.
[rant] I am so sick of prudes in power letting us all know that things that make them feel icky should be illegal. Liberals tend to say to these people 'if you don't like it, change the channel' to which the response is usually something along the lines of 'that doesn't make the issues go away, it's still out there, the sex/hate/violence/lewd/unpopular/misunderstood thing is still there for someone to view and that's no ok with me.' But they never stop to think that the entire reason it's there, publicly available is because some people want it, some people don't have a problem with it. There's not some secret think tank of deviants producing uncomfortable-for-some material just to muck with those conservatives. There is a demand, and hence a supply. What good is freedom of speech, security in one's effects, and freedom of worship if the minute one group decides something is inappropriate, it therefore must truly be, and is only appreciated by some shadowy, poorly defined minority? Who do they think is creating/consuming this stuff? Terrorists? Their own constituents (not the ones they relate or pander to, obviously) must be, otherwise there would be no market and no product. Have we learned nothing from our own history? When are we going to objectively look at the outcomes of any prohibition of 'morally questionable' goods/services and recognize that in just about every instance there were fewer problems before things were regulated than after. (ala War on drugs/poverty/terrorism/alcohol prohibition/etc)
This is not to say that every fiendish desire should be tolerated, things like child abuse, rape, murder, vandalism are unacceptable - but that is because they cause direct harm to others. In today's [American] society there is a stunning lack of personal culpability and self-ownership. And I think these two go hand in hand. If the state says you cannot die when you want, eat what you want, ingest whatever chemical you want, must relinquish any possession to the state (practically on a whim given the recent ruling about imminent domain for commercial interests), then why should anyone feel resonsible for what they do? We are pummelled daily with the notion that our selves are not our own, so if I do not own myself then who is to blame for any of my actions should I stray from the narrowly defined norm of society? If you're not hurting anyone else, not infringing anyone else's rights or property and the only person you are [potentially/possibly] harming through your actions is yourself then it is no one's right to intervene. Unless you do not own yourself, in which case when you hurt yourself, you hurt the state. And that is why the politicians care and legislate that which makes them feel icky, because it must keep the herd in shape for the machine of state to consume at its whim.
I think I got into a bit of a rant, so let me get back on topic. Damn you Hillary Clinton and your sexual-frustration projectionist style of governing. Go read an offensive book by a dead author and try to figure out who to rail against in vain. Maybe then you'll learn that being angered by another's choices or expressions is useless, because in the end it doesn't matter so long as the only harm they do you is that icky feeling that your own conscious produces. Maybe you should legislate your own damn feelings since they seem to cause you so much harm. [/rant]
Having watched numerous imports thanks to my college's midnight anime club (tho I'm still a newb by msot of their standards, some of those guys learned to speak japanese from watching so much anime!!) I can say that, yes, a ton of it is full of those stereotypes, but honestly, have you watched american cartoons lately? Fully half of it is spinoffs of PPGs and Pokemon. Look, you have to sort through a bunch of crap to find the gems like GITS, Akira, Evangelion, Lain, etc. but that's true of any genre. You can't just say 'well the 1% to 5% I've seen has all these stereotypes so the rest must too!' Part of the issue is that alot of the hardcore anime american audience do enjoy those types of anime (otaku anyone?), so that's what they tend to demand and therefore is what gets imported. As far as fansubbing goes I think as others have said the problem will mostly go away when the studios just realize that the fansubs exist because of demand - provide that product and the fansubs will go away, or move on to the next thing the audience is demanding.