Heck, I play these things BECAUSE I like going to hell and spending some quality time there!:)
In regards to the levels of complexity, I think good games have that extra complexity that allows people to master the game at much more advanced levels than the noobs can. There should be some fun for both casual gamer and for a leet pro. The best illustration of that is Quake Done Quick line of recordings.
But I tend to play turn-based games. I loved classic turn-based games (Civ, UFO and X-Com, and some others), but I am not particularly touched by their modern analogues. I find it strange, but may be they actually are too complex (even though the difference between Civ and Civ3 is quite small). Or may be there are other reasons (psychological? may be I grew out of Civ role-playing?:] ), may be I just don't have the time, but the fact is I prefer quality action/adventure titles. One recent exception was turn-based Silent Storm, another one Worms 3D:] , yet another one was Slay (a classic simplistic hex wargame)... Shit, may be I still like TBS games after all?:)
Sorry, I phrased it badly. If you don't play FPS games because you are honestly no longer interested and want more original and complex games, fine. You are psychologically different then, but I have nothing but respect for that.
You don't understand one thing about FPS games. They are not something that can be improved forever in all respects. This of it as if there is a huge checklist, detailing all features of our reality. And think of FPS games as filling this checklist. Quake: looking up and down - check rooms on top of rooms - check jumping - check
There isn't much really that you can do to improve that. Yes, there was Descent with true lookaround, but after that it's done. Finita. This becomes a standard feature. Rooms on top of rooms. You can't beat Quake here. Well, you can by creating a skyscraper and making every floor playable. There isn't much point in that, but yes, Matrix Online promises just that. After it does it it's over. You can't improve the game here. Now jumping. UT2004 (and other games) has jumping off the walls, somersaults, adrenalin jumps, running jumps, etc. Games also have lying down and crouching. You can't add much more as long as you use a keyboard as controller. Same with everything else. The caveat is that the most impressive and the most desirable things are done first as well as those that are the easiest to do. What is left are things that are hard to do and not as impressive. Just think about it, Doom (or Doom2) already had trees. FarCry has trees too. Doesn't sound like much of a progress, but it still is if you consider the whole path on the way to competely real simulate trees. With Doom it was the first step, but right now we are may be 15-20% done. Same with water. Doom added animated blue floors, Duke 3D added swimmable water. Compared with FarCry that old water looks like carton painted blue. But someone might say that FPS genre is not progressing...
Though not meant as a blast to FPS people, the genre doesn't require huge ammounts of processing power except for the friggin' graphics. This is simply not true. AI is extremely CPU intensive. Good sound would be CPU-intensive if it wasn't offloaded to the sound card. Physics is relatively CPU intensive. And could you please tell, what genre rightly requires more processing power?
I don't even bother with games that are less than about a year old. The market is so ruthless that after that much time, the price is down to $10-$20 and there's a much better chance it will run on my hardware. Pardon my curiousity, but why would a game run worse today on your hardware than it would after a year? Do system requirements drop over time? Do drivers improve SO much in performance? Have you found a way to increase the speed other than to upgrade?
at the end of the day, you'll be running around brown labyrinths shooting demons. I'm sure it will be cool, but it really doesn't interest me. You probably have some psychological problems. What's wrong with running around and shooting demons? I played the original Wolfenstein, but I am still going to buy Painkiller in a few weeks. At this point in time we are still humans and we still enjoy things that remind us of what our ancestors did - running around shooting at stuff. I enjoy innovative games, but at the end of the day nothing beats some good old demon killing mayhem. One of the best games I played this year (besides UT2004, Beyond Good and Evil and FarCry) was CrimsonLand - demon (zombie/spider) killing at its best.:)
I'd say 100-150$ every year is acceptable. I ditched GFTi4200 5 months ago and I run FarCry at 1024x768 just fine on ATi Radeon 9600 Pro (130$ 5 months ago, can buy it today for 100$). And according to tests, it's 50% as capable as the fastest videocard on the market. Yes, I can spend 400$ now, but staying in mid-range gives good quality at relatively low cost.
Let's see boundaries of AI, playability, story, and concept being pushed, rather than just graphics all the time! This is extremely funny. Do you honestly believe that noone is pushing these boundaries? You must be kidding... Get a better video card and try Far Cry again. The AI is very good, much better than that of enemies in Half-Life. Check out UT2004. Compare that with Quake 2 bots (3rd party?). No progress? Check out pretty much any game. They all have stories that are on par with Half-Life and Half-Life was THE GAME 5 years ago. Heck, even a real time stratehy needs to have a story today!:) Playability? This is subjective, but a lot of games today are very playable and replayable. You just need to find what you like.
Come on, it just happens that only the progress in graphics is visible.:) Everything else just sits behind and makes sure that your gaming experience is good. Sound, AI, physics, story, world simulation, everything is improving, but graphics is what you immediately see and notice, that's all.
Good job listing the upgrade points. It's worth noting, however, that the article is actually wrong regarding the obligatory nature of upgrades. Neither Half-Life 2, nor Doom 3 (nor Stalker, FarCry Painkiller or any other game due in 2004) would require DX9 capable videocard.
But in general most upgrades were gradual. CD-Rom drives were an exception, because there is such a huge gap between 1.44 Mb and 600 Mb (though you could play a CD-rip). Soundcards were optional in many games (for a few years PC speaker was supported - Wolf3D, Civ, etc.). VGA cards were optional too. Colour monitors are optional even today (I first saw Doom on a 386 with grayscale monitor). Joysticks were and are still optional.
Here is an example from 1990: Prince of Persia by Brøderbund Minimum CPU Class Required: 8088 / 8086 Video Modes Supported: CGA, EGA, Hercules, MCGA, Tandy / PCjr, VGA Sound Devices Supported: Adlib, PC Speaker, Sound Blaster, Tandy DAC (TL/SL), Tandy / PCjr Input Devices Supported: Joystick (Analog), Keyboard Source: MobyGames
Doesn't look like an obligatory upgrade, does it? You could play it on an XT with a CGA monitor and a beeper using your keyboard, or on a 30MHz 386DX in glorious 256 color VGA, with Adlib (or SB) music and sound effects with an analog gamepad. The same is true with Doom 3.
Why is it so (and will continue to be so)? Simple - it's rather cheap to adapt the game for a 3 year old machine and you can sell more than enough copies to people with such PCs to recoup the costs.
Games made for a 486 will always work for them. I don't understand your point. As for the PCs, these are not gaming machines, get over it. PCs have a quality display included, they include interfaces with peripherals (printers, scanners, cameras and pretty much anything else), they also have hard disks so that you can store stuff and they have lots of other things as well, because PCs are computers, i.e. multipurpose computing devices as opposed to purely gaming machines. I don't use my $1000+ PC for gaming, I use it for computing. That includes gaming and I am happy that I paid that extra 150$ to be able to run FarCry (and HL2/D3/Stalker when they are finally out). Can you control projector lights over Dublin from 3000 km awyy with your PlayStation or XBox? Thought so!
P.S. The article is total crap and the author is full of shit. Even a random post on Slashdot has more value and is more worth commenting on.:)
Oh, more ecofreakage... There are no sea turtles in Dublin. Let's not try stopping every little bit of progress just because we might disturb the turtles. If you have proof that something is causing or will cause significant damage to the environment, all right, voice your concern. But let's not worry too much about imaginary problems.
P.S. I prefer dark sky too, I like my stars, but this project is actually something that more than compensates for temporary light pollution.
Yes, it will be. Of course, the design has to be worked out first, by humans or AI. As for the second part of your post, I disagree.
First of all, people are not optimistic at all - the general public is scared, misinformed and just doesn't care. Two last Future Stidies university Master programs were closed recently in the US due to the lack of interest. Groups opposing cloning, stem cells, genetic engineering, nanotech, just pretty much every advanced technology can gather strong support among general public. Add to that the fact that people in general are incapable of understanding even present science, much less what will be possible in the future. People believe in all sorts of wacky shit instead of believing in Newton Laws and the like. Even scientists are often incapable of looking more than a decade ahead (good ones can, but the majority can't) in their own field, not to mention other fields (even though in the future they might influence their own field).
And still, despite the widespread lack of enthusiasm, we have reasons to expect that Nanotech will, in fact, be the Next Big Thing. The simple fact is that once we have a general purpose programmable nanoassembler the sky is the limit. Pretty much everything becomes possible, including extending your lifetime into billions of years easily. I may be oversimplifying things, but I see only two possible caveats - we may be unable to progress fast enough in development of advanced nanotech (though I don't think this will be the case) or we may kill each other once we get there (I hope not).
Wrong. My ISP is blacklisted by SORBS. I checked their automated service and the reason they are blacklisted is that some messages were sent to spamtrap addresses. How on Earth can the largest ISP in the country avoid that? They are already very proactive in fighting spam, for example, when I send out a legitimate mail message with 100 addresses in Bcc field, they slow down the sending terribly. But how can you prevent all your hundreds of thousands of subscribers from sending mail to spamtrap addresses? Collect all e-mails for approval first? That's just ridiculous. Personally I agree that blacklists have the right to provide the service and others are free to use it, but this is not a solution, this is a missolution gone horribly wrong.
Actually I don't like talks about flat-panel displays either. It seems that no article about advanced technology is complete without either a note on curing cancer or fighting terrorism. I don't like the fact that journalists have to dumb everything down that much... Why not explain the material properties, chemistry, physics, etc. beside new materials, show how they can be used in research to further advance our knowledge? Why everything must be immediately useful in order to be relevant?
Since the potentially available processing power of nanobotes in a certain volume (let's say 1 cubic mm) would be enormous, it would make sense to provide for complex emergent behaviour of all these nanobots under a "centralised" control only when it is necessary. You could have those swarms of little nanites searching for cancer, stray free radicals, etc. swimming through your bloodstream, but capable of combining into a single whole at a moments notice. And in addition to these two extreme modes of operations (all independent or all combined), the whole range of possibilities in between will be open, providing practically unlimited flexibility (limited only by ultimate limits on computational complexity, energy limits, etc.).
Scientists can make all sorts of nifty stuff, but they can't guarantee it will be exciting. Let's look at nuclear power. First, let's realise that a lot of unrealised progress is because of idiots who were so scared as to put an end to all and any controversial research in certain areas (and because of those idiots who started a nuclear weapons race). That's why we don't have Orion spaceship or nuclear engines in cars (even though it might be more feasible than combustion).
Second, we still have nuclear power, and while it is not "too cheap to meter", it is cheap enough to be competitive. France is 70% nuclear and many other countries use nuclear power plants extensively. We also have a promise of thermonuclear power, which will be even better than fission, even though there will still be capital expenditures.
Third, don't be misled by apparent simularity. Nuclear power can't give us anything more substantial than unlimited electric power (in the ideal case). But unlimited electric power is no panacea. In Russia electricity is an order of magnitude cheaper than in the West. In Arab countries gasoline is an order of magnitude cheaper than in the West. How much does that help? Not much really. So even if the nuclear power technology would be developed to perfection, there was simply no reason to rationally expect much to change. It is all different with nanotech. Molecular manufacturing, if developed to a necessary degree, would allow to create (at practically zero cost) practically any material object if we can define its structure, including solar panels and thermonuclear plants. It would allow to fix and change anything in our own bodies and would make ultra powerful computers possible. These things will definitely be possible with advanced nanotech. Now how can anyone argue that their effect on our society will be as small (though that wasn't small at all) as that of nuclear power?
No, it would makes sense to rearrange them in such a way that students know it. Even if they feel attached to a particular PC, not a location, they would have no way to find out about the change, so you would invalidate the experiment.
Stupid. Innovation is plusgood. We need to protect the innovation by preventing you from making something for youself. Remember, the Party will supply you with everything, including sitcoms, pop music and chocolate.
This is no longer outrageous. You can try it too if you have the money. The society no longer thinks this is ridiculous, they think it's alright, because the corporation is doing it (technically MPAA is not a corporation, but you get my point). Want to promote genetic engineering and stem cell therapy - fund some biology lessons. Want to oppose genetic engineering and stem cell therapy - fund some biology lessons. All you need is money. And political power (just in case), which can be bought rather cheaply.
What the USA needs is a bunch of revolutionaries (soon to be branded terrorists), who would compensate their lack of money with personal energy and motivation. Kind of another King. EFF is not adequate to the threat, they are too soft. Someone should start a militant wing of EFF, with bombs, assassinations, self-immolations and stuff. This isn't some radical idea - everyone is doing it (IRA, Al Quaeda, etc.) - a front (party, organisation) for legitimate action and a group of fighters.
Quite often EULAs also add that if any portions of it contradict the law (in your area), then they are void, but the rest of the EULA is not. What this means is that they disclaim responsibility for breaking the law, pretending that it "doesn't matter".
I wonder why people who are keen on arguing don't spend just a few minutes thinking over their arguments. The difference between your chair example and the piracy example is that with chairs the value is the same, no matter what combination you try, but with software (something copyable) there are two good combinations (piracy or buying) and one bad (not using it at all). The number of chairs is limited, so if I do not buy it, generally there will be someone else to sit in them. The number of MS Office copies, on the other hand, is unlimited, so me using or not using it has no effect on others. Thus with immaterial goods it is a good economic strategy to maximise consumption.
In regards to Toyota, you should pay attention to the end of my previous post. As long as someone pays for development it is in our best interest to share the results as widely as possible, but someone needs to pay for it. It would be best for the economy if auto manufacturers could recoup their R&D costs on their first models and then offer these features cheaply, for the cost of manufacturing... Wait, I think this is exactly what they do - something that was a luxurious option in 1990 is included in the cheapest 2004 model by default. As for material composition, if you want pedantry, one can argue that everyone should pay for the cost of human labour, but that would be an oversimplification today. But in any case, one pays only what one is ready to pay, and as long as one is not forcing others to do anything, everything should be ok.
While this seams like a nice idea, It then isn't really a duplication of the orriginal document. Nothing prevents them from making two images (original and restored) available with the ability to switch between them by a single click on them (one line of javascript).
Of course, even if the effect is entirely fictitious, those of us who enjoy Mozart can improve our performance by means of his music and a well placed placebo.:) I am certainly going to try it now.
Since you are majoring in economics, I will keep it brief. The difference between piracy and not piracy is my refusal to transfer money to the developer, so the only difference is who consumes more, total amount of value/consumption/etc. doesn't change. Value is not created by selling software, it is created by using it. So from economy/society point of view it is beneficial if as many people as possible use software (music/films/books), it is irrelevant who keeps the money.
I gave a more detailed explanation (together with 3 mail alternatives and their basic economics analisys) here.
Of course, the statement (like any other rule in economics) is not always true, but in some specific circumstances. First it's worth noting that developers, publishers and BSA-like organisations would be clearly against piracy and it is well explained by the theory of positive net effect. Second, it clearly ignores the fact that at certain levels piracy decreases motivation to create new works and decreases possibilities for new consumption. To solve this we just need to look at marginal effects of both factors - the positive effect of wider consumption and negative effect of lower production. It is intuitively obvious that the effect (positive) of piracy will increase till some point and that would be the optimal point. I believe we still have not reached it, so more piracy is welcome. It is also very clear that those people who are unwilling to pay for the product should be allowed to use it for free. Of course, there are many practical problems with determining who would and who wouldn't pay, but from theoretical standpoint it is quite clear.
a lawful society depends on all laws being enforced I suggest you read up on Dutch and American approaches to enforcing drug-related laws. Zero-tolerance policies appear to work... not.
P.S. Piracy has a net positive effect on economy. It's just that the members of MPAA/RIAA/BSA are large campaign contributors in the US and they force the government to pass draconian laws and force adoption of such laws worldwide.
Aargh! It makes me furious that there is no capital punishment for bullshiting in the media. I would have burned my collection of pirated games only to have these idiots realise that piracy creates value, not destroys it...
To improve the GDP production has to go up. Wanna bet that most gavernment whores don't understand that? It might be all bullshit, but from the countless interviews those idiots give (in different countries, but there are same idiots everywhere) it appears that they honestly believe that piracy has a negative economic effect.
I am glad that at least someone around here understands it and takes the trouble to explain it to others. Unfortunately, AC, your voice is drowned by idiots, who just repeat that "software "piracy" is bad and no matter what excuses peiople come up with".
Come on, is it really that hard to understand that selling software is a zero-sum game - money just changes hands. It's in using software that value is created and it doesn't matter whether the software is pirated.
So there's a lot of testing that google have to do, since they're breaking new ground. I though Google fanboyism was already passe...
Could you tell me, what new ground exactly are they breaking here, besides writing a complex IE-only webmail application in Javascript? That's cool, but not as cool as a 5 kilobytes JS-based chess program or a first person shooter...
1Gb mailboxes - everybody offers huge (or even unlimited - my webmail provider does it now) mailboxes now. Kudos to Google for the idea, but it's not really something very difficult to do. Dynamic folders, filters and searches? Opera M2 was here first. Check out their latest 7.5 beta, it rocks! I have 250Mb of e-mail and it has instant searches and autofill for search terms. "Conversations"? I don't have a GMail account, but is it better than Active contacts and Active threads in Opera?
Not to mention the fact that many other webmail providers already have POP3/IMAP access, forwarding in both direction, encryption, WAP access and what not.
So what is so new about GMail? Except the fact that it's a webmail in javascript...
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, I play these things BECAUSE I like going to hell and spending some quality time there! :)
:] ), may be I just don't have the time, but the fact is I prefer quality action/adventure titles. One recent exception was turn-based Silent Storm, another one Worms 3D :] , yet another one was Slay (a classic simplistic hex wargame)... Shit, may be I still like TBS games after all? :)
In regards to the levels of complexity, I think good games have that extra complexity that allows people to master the game at much more advanced levels than the noobs can. There should be some fun for both casual gamer and for a leet pro. The best illustration of that is Quake Done Quick line of recordings.
But I tend to play turn-based games.
I loved classic turn-based games (Civ, UFO and X-Com, and some others), but I am not particularly touched by their modern analogues. I find it strange, but may be they actually are too complex (even though the difference between Civ and Civ3 is quite small). Or may be there are other reasons (psychological? may be I grew out of Civ role-playing?
Sorry, I phrased it badly. If you don't play FPS games because you are honestly no longer interested and want more original and complex games, fine. You are psychologically different then, but I have nothing but respect for that.
You don't understand one thing about FPS games. They are not something that can be improved forever in all respects. This of it as if there is a huge checklist, detailing all features of our reality. And think of FPS games as filling this checklist.
Quake:
looking up and down - check
rooms on top of rooms - check
jumping - check
There isn't much really that you can do to improve that. Yes, there was Descent with true lookaround, but after that it's done. Finita. This becomes a standard feature. Rooms on top of rooms. You can't beat Quake here. Well, you can by creating a skyscraper and making every floor playable. There isn't much point in that, but yes, Matrix Online promises just that. After it does it it's over. You can't improve the game here. Now jumping. UT2004 (and other games) has jumping off the walls, somersaults, adrenalin jumps, running jumps, etc. Games also have lying down and crouching. You can't add much more as long as you use a keyboard as controller. Same with everything else. The caveat is that the most impressive and the most desirable things are done first as well as those that are the easiest to do. What is left are things that are hard to do and not as impressive. Just think about it, Doom (or Doom2) already had trees. FarCry has trees too. Doesn't sound like much of a progress, but it still is if you consider the whole path on the way to competely real simulate trees. With Doom it was the first step, but right now we are may be 15-20% done. Same with water. Doom added animated blue floors, Duke 3D added swimmable water. Compared with FarCry that old water looks like carton painted blue. But someone might say that FPS genre is not progressing...
Though not meant as a blast to FPS people, the genre doesn't require huge ammounts of processing power except for the friggin' graphics.
This is simply not true. AI is extremely CPU intensive. Good sound would be CPU-intensive if it wasn't offloaded to the sound card. Physics is relatively CPU intensive. And could you please tell, what genre rightly requires more processing power?
I don't even bother with games that are less than about a year old. The market is so ruthless that after that much time, the price is down to $10-$20 and there's a much better chance it will run on my hardware.
:)
Pardon my curiousity, but why would a game run worse today on your hardware than it would after a year? Do system requirements drop over time? Do drivers improve SO much in performance? Have you found a way to increase the speed other than to upgrade?
at the end of the day, you'll be running around brown labyrinths shooting demons. I'm sure it will be cool, but it really doesn't interest me.
You probably have some psychological problems. What's wrong with running around and shooting demons? I played the original Wolfenstein, but I am still going to buy Painkiller in a few weeks. At this point in time we are still humans and we still enjoy things that remind us of what our ancestors did - running around shooting at stuff. I enjoy innovative games, but at the end of the day nothing beats some good old demon killing mayhem. One of the best games I played this year (besides UT2004, Beyond Good and Evil and FarCry) was CrimsonLand - demon (zombie/spider) killing at its best.
I'd say 100-150$ every year is acceptable. I ditched GFTi4200 5 months ago and I run FarCry at 1024x768 just fine on ATi Radeon 9600 Pro (130$ 5 months ago, can buy it today for 100$). And according to tests, it's 50% as capable as the fastest videocard on the market. Yes, I can spend 400$ now, but staying in mid-range gives good quality at relatively low cost.
:) Playability? This is subjective, but a lot of games today are very playable and replayable. You just need to find what you like.
:) Everything else just sits behind and makes sure that your gaming experience is good. Sound, AI, physics, story, world simulation, everything is improving, but graphics is what you immediately see and notice, that's all.
Let's see boundaries of AI, playability, story, and concept being pushed, rather than just graphics all the time!
This is extremely funny. Do you honestly believe that noone is pushing these boundaries? You must be kidding... Get a better video card and try Far Cry again. The AI is very good, much better than that of enemies in Half-Life. Check out UT2004. Compare that with Quake 2 bots (3rd party?). No progress? Check out pretty much any game. They all have stories that are on par with Half-Life and Half-Life was THE GAME 5 years ago. Heck, even a real time stratehy needs to have a story today!
Come on, it just happens that only the progress in graphics is visible.
Good job listing the upgrade points. It's worth noting, however, that the article is actually wrong regarding the obligatory nature of upgrades. Neither Half-Life 2, nor Doom 3 (nor Stalker, FarCry Painkiller or any other game due in 2004) would require DX9 capable videocard.
But in general most upgrades were gradual. CD-Rom drives were an exception, because there is such a huge gap between 1.44 Mb and 600 Mb (though you could play a CD-rip). Soundcards were optional in many games (for a few years PC speaker was supported - Wolf3D, Civ, etc.). VGA cards were optional too. Colour monitors are optional even today (I first saw Doom on a 386 with grayscale monitor). Joysticks were and are still optional.
Here is an example from 1990: Prince of Persia by Brøderbund
Minimum CPU Class Required: 8088 / 8086
Video Modes Supported: CGA, EGA, Hercules, MCGA, Tandy / PCjr, VGA
Sound Devices Supported: Adlib, PC Speaker, Sound Blaster, Tandy DAC (TL/SL), Tandy / PCjr
Input Devices Supported: Joystick (Analog), Keyboard
Source: MobyGames
Doesn't look like an obligatory upgrade, does it? You could play it on an XT with a CGA monitor and a beeper using your keyboard, or on a 30MHz 386DX in glorious 256 color VGA, with Adlib (or SB) music and sound effects with an analog gamepad. The same is true with Doom 3.
Why is it so (and will continue to be so)? Simple - it's rather cheap to adapt the game for a 3 year old machine and you can sell more than enough copies to people with such PCs to recoup the costs.
Games made for a 486 will always work for them. I don't understand your point. As for the PCs, these are not gaming machines, get over it. PCs have a quality display included, they include interfaces with peripherals (printers, scanners, cameras and pretty much anything else), they also have hard disks so that you can store stuff and they have lots of other things as well, because PCs are computers, i.e. multipurpose computing devices as opposed to purely gaming machines. I don't use my $1000+ PC for gaming, I use it for computing. That includes gaming and I am happy that I paid that extra 150$ to be able to run FarCry (and HL2/D3/Stalker when they are finally out). Can you control projector lights over Dublin from 3000 km awyy with your PlayStation or XBox? Thought so!
:)
P.S. The article is total crap and the author is full of shit. Even a random post on Slashdot has more value and is more worth commenting on.
Oh, more ecofreakage... There are no sea turtles in Dublin. Let's not try stopping every little bit of progress just because we might disturb the turtles. If you have proof that something is causing or will cause significant damage to the environment, all right, voice your concern. But let's not worry too much about imaginary problems.
P.S. I prefer dark sky too, I like my stars, but this project is actually something that more than compensates for temporary light pollution.
Yes, it will be. Of course, the design has to be worked out first, by humans or AI. As for the second part of your post, I disagree.
First of all, people are not optimistic at all - the general public is scared, misinformed and just doesn't care. Two last Future Stidies university Master programs were closed recently in the US due to the lack of interest. Groups opposing cloning, stem cells, genetic engineering, nanotech, just pretty much every advanced technology can gather strong support among general public. Add to that the fact that people in general are incapable of understanding even present science, much less what will be possible in the future. People believe in all sorts of wacky shit instead of believing in Newton Laws and the like. Even scientists are often incapable of looking more than a decade ahead (good ones can, but the majority can't) in their own field, not to mention other fields (even though in the future they might influence their own field).
And still, despite the widespread lack of enthusiasm, we have reasons to expect that Nanotech will, in fact, be the Next Big Thing. The simple fact is that once we have a general purpose programmable nanoassembler the sky is the limit. Pretty much everything becomes possible, including extending your lifetime into billions of years easily. I may be oversimplifying things, but I see only two possible caveats - we may be unable to progress fast enough in development of advanced nanotech (though I don't think this will be the case) or we may kill each other once we get there (I hope not).
Wrong. My ISP is blacklisted by SORBS. I checked their automated service and the reason they are blacklisted is that some messages were sent to spamtrap addresses. How on Earth can the largest ISP in the country avoid that? They are already very proactive in fighting spam, for example, when I send out a legitimate mail message with 100 addresses in Bcc field, they slow down the sending terribly. But how can you prevent all your hundreds of thousands of subscribers from sending mail to spamtrap addresses? Collect all e-mails for approval first? That's just ridiculous. Personally I agree that blacklists have the right to provide the service and others are free to use it, but this is not a solution, this is a missolution gone horribly wrong.
Actually I don't like talks about flat-panel displays either. It seems that no article about advanced technology is complete without either a note on curing cancer or fighting terrorism. I don't like the fact that journalists have to dumb everything down that much... Why not explain the material properties, chemistry, physics, etc. beside new materials, show how they can be used in research to further advance our knowledge? Why everything must be immediately useful in order to be relevant?
Since the potentially available processing power of nanobotes in a certain volume (let's say 1 cubic mm) would be enormous, it would make sense to provide for complex emergent behaviour of all these nanobots under a "centralised" control only when it is necessary. You could have those swarms of little nanites searching for cancer, stray free radicals, etc. swimming through your bloodstream, but capable of combining into a single whole at a moments notice. And in addition to these two extreme modes of operations (all independent or all combined), the whole range of possibilities in between will be open, providing practically unlimited flexibility (limited only by ultimate limits on computational complexity, energy limits, etc.).
Just my 0.000000002 cents.
Scientists can make all sorts of nifty stuff, but they can't guarantee it will be exciting. Let's look at nuclear power. First, let's realise that a lot of unrealised progress is because of idiots who were so scared as to put an end to all and any controversial research in certain areas (and because of those idiots who started a nuclear weapons race). That's why we don't have Orion spaceship or nuclear engines in cars (even though it might be more feasible than combustion).
Second, we still have nuclear power, and while it is not "too cheap to meter", it is cheap enough to be competitive. France is 70% nuclear and many other countries use nuclear power plants extensively. We also have a promise of thermonuclear power, which will be even better than fission, even though there will still be capital expenditures.
Third, don't be misled by apparent simularity. Nuclear power can't give us anything more substantial than unlimited electric power (in the ideal case). But unlimited electric power is no panacea. In Russia electricity is an order of magnitude cheaper than in the West. In Arab countries gasoline is an order of magnitude cheaper than in the West. How much does that help? Not much really. So even if the nuclear power technology would be developed to perfection, there was simply no reason to rationally expect much to change. It is all different with nanotech. Molecular manufacturing, if developed to a necessary degree, would allow to create (at practically zero cost) practically any material object if we can define its structure, including solar panels and thermonuclear plants. It would allow to fix and change anything in our own bodies and would make ultra powerful computers possible. These things will definitely be possible with advanced nanotech. Now how can anyone argue that their effect on our society will be as small (though that wasn't small at all) as that of nuclear power?
No, it would makes sense to rearrange them in such a way that students know it. Even if they feel attached to a particular PC, not a location, they would have no way to find out about the change, so you would invalidate the experiment.
Stupid. Innovation is plusgood. We need to protect the innovation by preventing you from making something for youself. Remember, the Party will supply you with everything, including sitcoms, pop music and chocolate.
This is no longer outrageous. You can try it too if you have the money. The society no longer thinks this is ridiculous, they think it's alright, because the corporation is doing it (technically MPAA is not a corporation, but you get my point). Want to promote genetic engineering and stem cell therapy - fund some biology lessons. Want to oppose genetic engineering and stem cell therapy - fund some biology lessons. All you need is money. And political power (just in case), which can be bought rather cheaply.
What the USA needs is a bunch of revolutionaries (soon to be branded terrorists), who would compensate their lack of money with personal energy and motivation. Kind of another King. EFF is not adequate to the threat, they are too soft. Someone should start a militant wing of EFF, with bombs, assassinations, self-immolations and stuff. This isn't some radical idea - everyone is doing it (IRA, Al Quaeda, etc.) - a front (party, organisation) for legitimate action and a group of fighters.
Quite often EULAs also add that if any portions of it contradict the law (in your area), then they are void, but the rest of the EULA is not. What this means is that they disclaim responsibility for breaking the law, pretending that it "doesn't matter".
I wonder why people who are keen on arguing don't spend just a few minutes thinking over their arguments. The difference between your chair example and the piracy example is that with chairs the value is the same, no matter what combination you try, but with software (something copyable) there are two good combinations (piracy or buying) and one bad (not using it at all). The number of chairs is limited, so if I do not buy it, generally there will be someone else to sit in them. The number of MS Office copies, on the other hand, is unlimited, so me using or not using it has no effect on others. Thus with immaterial goods it is a good economic strategy to maximise consumption.
In regards to Toyota, you should pay attention to the end of my previous post. As long as someone pays for development it is in our best interest to share the results as widely as possible, but someone needs to pay for it. It would be best for the economy if auto manufacturers could recoup their R&D costs on their first models and then offer these features cheaply, for the cost of manufacturing... Wait, I think this is exactly what they do - something that was a luxurious option in 1990 is included in the cheapest 2004 model by default. As for material composition, if you want pedantry, one can argue that everyone should pay for the cost of human labour, but that would be an oversimplification today. But in any case, one pays only what one is ready to pay, and as long as one is not forcing others to do anything, everything should be ok.
While this seams like a nice idea, It then isn't really a duplication of the orriginal document.
Nothing prevents them from making two images (original and restored) available with the ability to switch between them by a single click on them (one line of javascript).
Of course, even if the effect is entirely fictitious, those of us who enjoy Mozart can improve our performance by means of his music and a well placed placebo. :) I am certainly going to try it now.
Since you are majoring in economics, I will keep it brief. The difference between piracy and not piracy is my refusal to transfer money to the developer, so the only difference is who consumes more, total amount of value/consumption/etc. doesn't change. Value is not created by selling software, it is created by using it. So from economy/society point of view it is beneficial if as many people as possible use software (music/films/books), it is irrelevant who keeps the money.
I gave a more detailed explanation (together with 3 mail alternatives and their basic economics analisys) here.
Of course, the statement (like any other rule in economics) is not always true, but in some specific circumstances. First it's worth noting that developers, publishers and BSA-like organisations would be clearly against piracy and it is well explained by the theory of positive net effect. Second, it clearly ignores the fact that at certain levels piracy decreases motivation to create new works and decreases possibilities for new consumption. To solve this we just need to look at marginal effects of both factors - the positive effect of wider consumption and negative effect of lower production. It is intuitively obvious that the effect (positive) of piracy will increase till some point and that would be the optimal point. I believe we still have not reached it, so more piracy is welcome. It is also very clear that those people who are unwilling to pay for the product should be allowed to use it for free. Of course, there are many practical problems with determining who would and who wouldn't pay, but from theoretical standpoint it is quite clear.
a lawful society depends on all laws being enforced
I suggest you read up on Dutch and American approaches to enforcing drug-related laws. Zero-tolerance policies appear to work... not.
P.S. Piracy has a net positive effect on economy. It's just that the members of MPAA/RIAA/BSA are large campaign contributors in the US and they force the government to pass draconian laws and force adoption of such laws worldwide.
Aargh! It makes me furious that there is no capital punishment for bullshiting in the media. I would have burned my collection of pirated games only to have these idiots realise that piracy creates value, not destroys it...
To improve the GDP production has to go up.
Wanna bet that most gavernment whores don't understand that? It might be all bullshit, but from the countless interviews those idiots give (in different countries, but there are same idiots everywhere) it appears that they honestly believe that piracy has a negative economic effect.
I am glad that at least someone around here understands it and takes the trouble to explain it to others. Unfortunately, AC, your voice is drowned by idiots, who just repeat that "software "piracy" is bad and no matter what excuses peiople come up with".
Come on, is it really that hard to understand that selling software is a zero-sum game - money just changes hands. It's in using software that value is created and it doesn't matter whether the software is pirated.
So there's a lot of testing that google have to do, since they're breaking new ground.
I though Google fanboyism was already passe...
Could you tell me, what new ground exactly are they breaking here, besides writing a complex IE-only webmail application in Javascript? That's cool, but not as cool as a 5 kilobytes JS-based chess program or a first person shooter...
1Gb mailboxes - everybody offers huge (or even unlimited - my webmail provider does it now) mailboxes now. Kudos to Google for the idea, but it's not really something very difficult to do. Dynamic folders, filters and searches? Opera M2 was here first. Check out their latest 7.5 beta, it rocks! I have 250Mb of e-mail and it has instant searches and autofill for search terms. "Conversations"? I don't have a GMail account, but is it better than Active contacts and Active threads in Opera?
Not to mention the fact that many other webmail providers already have POP3/IMAP access, forwarding in both direction, encryption, WAP access and what not.
So what is so new about GMail? Except the fact that it's a webmail in javascript...