"...as other techniques and all those graphical "shortcuts" that standard 3D cards do are done for a reason - nobody *really* notices or cares so long as the game runs smoothly and there's time enough for AI, pathfinding, physics etc."
This is a flawed argument. If what you say was true then we would still be playing atari-quality games, because, you see, nobody *realy* notices or cares. Games have progressively become better and better looking (with a significant hole at the 2D-3D transition). The reason that we do not have ray-traced games yet but have to make due with low-res polygon stuff is because there is a way to make hardware that accellerates those computations. Everything stems from there. It has been the only feasable bridge between 2D and raytracing and it developed into an industry.
It would be silly to think that people don't care about graphics when there is such a big industry catering to this (and has been doing so for more than a decade). We even managed to reach the uncanny valley! (and this may be one of the big drivers behind the recent movement to older, simpler times when men were real men and games were real games).
Now we're getting to a point that we have such enormous ammounts of computing power sitting there purely to play a game that people start thinking about using it for other purposes. One important development is new rendering techniques. And these people are at it.
We'll have to see if there is a hole big enough to fill the gap before real time ray tracing takes over. It would require some biiiig changes in the industry.
You can't deny that the way we're built is coded in genes.
And besides, if we have neaderthal genes in the junk department then it means we have interbred at some point. And these interbreedings have led to viable, breeding individuals. This then also means that some neanderthal genes must have become expressed simply because not all sapiens genes are dominant.
"Like the homosapiens are more intelligent (by a large margin) and the neanderthals are stronger (by a large margin)."
This doesn't seem to be the case (at least, not by a large margin). There are homo sapiens that are stronger than the average neanderthaler and there is enough evidence to suggest there were neanderthalers smarter than the average homo sapiens. So there realy is a large overlap and it may be due to culture alone, or due to agressiveness or another slight hormonal imbalance that homo sapiens got the upper hand.
From a users perspective it's not so bad realy. Since the carret is usually in the search field and not in the address bar, you basicly exchange the click for activating the address bar for a click on the top result.
Well, the Strisand effect would come into effect when Facebook would look sour about Google+ and showing weakness in its users eyes. That may lead to a mass exodus and THEN you will know the effect is in effect, effectively.
Metal Gear is not evil, it is technology. It has no moral values of it's own. It can be used for killing people (evil) or for sowing pretty flowers and making cupcakes (not evil).
I've got the idea that this is not how they will do it. The police already knows the kind of facts that you name, they've been in that business for decades. I think this one will cross some socially accepted borders, then turn around to piss on them, then run farther away from them.
You can't arrest a person for a crime he didn't do (unless its some horrible crime of terror, i guess). I want to bet you that the next thing these people will need is a change of law to make this possible.
This reminds me of when i was a kid and joked around in department stores by writing little basic programs on ancient 8-bit home computers. Usually the program was along the lines of:
10 PRINT "I RULE! "; 20 GOTO 10
The clerks didn't have a clue on how to break the loop so they had to reboot the thing once they noticed.
Needless to say, i'm still waiting for any service, secret or not, to come take my stuff.
Can you please get your history straight? IBM actually helped the nazis categorize the population. It was the tool that made the holocaust possible. It is silly to think that a company like IBM was not aware of nazi practices. Their buisness was in automating big bureaucracies. Governments are a big chunk of that. The papers were full of what was happening in germany and there was already a stream of jews flighting from there to the US. There is no way IBM didn't know. And you know what? It's still going on. How do you think, for instance, the taliban got their non-russian weapons? It's not from the russians for sure. There are many examples of companies gaining from war and other nasty stuff. And there is nothing holy about IBM.
If people tell each other that they "represent a grey ball" if they take the elevator then the information system is not subliminal in any way. In fact, these bright students are researching the influence of signs like "please take the stairs" on people. It's just that the language of the signs is a bit obfuscated. But i don't think anyone will misunderstand the 'nudge' of a trail of lights pointing you in a certain direction.
Honestly, I think this is just one big excuse to play around with cool stuff. Any of these 'games' could have non-electronic counterparts that would give the same information (and presumably influence the behavior in a similar manner). And there is no mention of the 'play' element. The fact that people will (and of course they will) make a game out of it amongst themselfs. I've seen this happen over different subjects in the past, none of which included technology in any way.
So i think they are needlessly mixing in the notion of technology into what is a social process that will work with or without gadgetry. And despite the article mentioning some discussion about ethics there is no mention of it being a research goal in any way.
I mean, this is nothing new, is it? Sensors prompting you about your posture? Come on. How is this different from any other behavioural feedback system? Games have been doing it for decades. It's your environment giving you extra information about you. In nature it's nothing new, think of the color of wasps and bees. Think of the colors and smells of flowers. Signaling is a basic tool in nature and humans are no exception. The basis for such behavior is not technology. Any informational system will have this kind of influence on humans. And using technology for signaling is nothing new as well.
I don't see anything spectacular here to justify a news article about it. In fact, i'm a bit disappointed by the level at which this research is conducted. There must be better and more interesting uses, by now, for social/informational feedback systems.
"While this is true to be fair the ones doing business with the Nazis were the German branch and from what I understand in Hitler's Germany you did what you were told or enjoy your nice trip to the concentration camp."
Riiight, so you, as leader of the German branch make the mother company cough up milions of dollars worth of equipment to satisfy your german overlord ? I don't think the US branch had anything against making money from the european 'situation'. It was another fat government contract.
"quantum physics is weird, mysterious and counterintuitive... and consciousness is also weird, mysterious and counterintuitive. Therefore the former might explain the latter."
Well, here you go. If i were to find a blue car and a blue fish could i then assume that because both items are blue the car will explain the fish? That is a fallacy right there.
"Of course they can make justifications (i.e. excuses) for it. Every last fascist, authoritarian, power-tripping fevered ego that ever existed has always had one powerful tool: a well-articulated bureaucracy."
Dude, They have a huge social problem with gamers. You can fantasize all you want about tyrants and dictators and whatnot. Matter of fact is that gaming addiction is ruining the society there. The goal is not total control for da evil tyrantz , it's about controlling a nationwide addiction. Now if there was a technology that could give you drugs like heroing in your home at the leasure of a mouse click, don't you think we should somehow regulate this technology? That's exactly how game addiction works. Microachivements triggering pleasure receptors, making you want more. It's a known mechanism in psychology and it's being exploited by almost all subscription-based games. It's the exact same mechanism that makes people sit behind a slots machine for hours on end. Why do you think that casino's are regulated? Exact same reason. People are suckers for this mechanism.
It is a real problem and it is being adressed pretty directly. It's not as if they forbid the internet. They specificly disable people from gaming through the night, which is the actual problem. Normal people don't do this (at least not often enough to see this restriction as a problem) and i bet most non-MMORPG playing citizens will see this as a change for the better.
My understanding is that in a couple of asian countries there are loads of people addicted to online games (very much like a gambling addiction). If a large part of the working population can't perform at work because they have been gaming all night then that society has a huge problem. People can be stupid and seduction from mindless time wastings on the internet is never far away. Someone has to protect these people from themselfs. Imagine everyone could get heroin and cocaine from the supermarket, how do you think our society would look like in a few years? That's why these substances are regulated.
Mind you, the situation there is completely unlike here in the west. People have serious gaming addictions that we haven't seen around here too much. Imagine if 1/3 of all people you know at work would screw up their job because they play games all night? How long do you think such a society could function without breaking?
So some things need to be controlled in a society and it appears gaming can be one of these things. (which is not hard to imagine since there are lots of games based on the same psychological mechanics as gambling games, yes, i'm looking at you, MMORPG!) Games realy can be addicting and unhealthy in certain situations.
So i think you're getting it wrong. It's not about controlling the internets. It's about controlling an addiction problem that is already negatively impacting that society. I think that most people (who are not addicted) in Korea will support the measures and will see it as a rational solution to their growing problem.
Freedom is fun, but if that freedom fscks up other peoples lifes then a limit is reached. I mean, i would't accept it if a large part of my co-workers would be zombified from gaming all night, all the time. Unless i was a game reviewer or something.. But that's besides the point.... Ooh, damn you, game reviewers.
"The human mind is rich, fascinating, and complex enough as it is. There's no need to drag QM into it."
That's a dark age argument. If you don't look you will never find!
Evolution is not restricted to effects similar or bigger than DNA, even if it adapted to by only our DNA. If there is some subatomic effect (discounting electrons) that affects how molecules behave it can be adapted to by DNA. DNA can find solutions to anything in the environment, as long as it has an influence on the organism the DNA makes.
Actually, the specific working should not be restricted to electromagnetic interactions. Anything that can make a difference usually will in some way or another. All effects we know in nature are potentially usable by evolution.
Slashdot Mirror
"...as other techniques and all those graphical "shortcuts" that standard 3D cards do are done for a reason - nobody *really* notices or cares so long as the game runs smoothly and there's time enough for AI, pathfinding, physics etc."
This is a flawed argument.
If what you say was true then we would still be playing atari-quality games, because, you see, nobody *realy* notices or cares.
Games have progressively become better and better looking (with a significant hole at the 2D-3D transition).
The reason that we do not have ray-traced games yet but have to make due with low-res polygon stuff is because there is a way to make hardware that accellerates those computations. Everything stems from there. It has been the only feasable bridge between 2D and raytracing and it developed into an industry.
It would be silly to think that people don't care about graphics when there is such a big industry catering to this (and has been doing so for more than a decade).
We even managed to reach the uncanny valley! (and this may be one of the big drivers behind the recent movement to older, simpler times when men were real men and games were real games).
Now we're getting to a point that we have such enormous ammounts of computing power sitting there purely to play a game that people start thinking about using it for other purposes. One important development is new rendering techniques.
And these people are at it.
We'll have to see if there is a hole big enough to fill the gap before real time ray tracing takes over. It would require some biiiig changes in the industry.
This teaches us more about indoctrination than anything else, i'm afraid.
E=MC^2
The M stands for Mass, not Matter.
Not all Matter has Mass.
So this equation only sometimes applies.
You can't deny that the way we're built is coded in genes.
And besides, if we have neaderthal genes in the junk department then it means we have interbred at some point.
And these interbreedings have led to viable, breeding individuals.
This then also means that some neanderthal genes must have become expressed simply because not all sapiens genes are dominant.
"Like the homosapiens are more intelligent (by a large margin) and the neanderthals are stronger (by a large margin)."
This doesn't seem to be the case (at least, not by a large margin).
There are homo sapiens that are stronger than the average neanderthaler and there is enough evidence to suggest there were neanderthalers smarter than the average homo sapiens.
So there realy is a large overlap and it may be due to culture alone, or due to agressiveness or another slight hormonal imbalance that homo sapiens got the upper hand.
From a users perspective it's not so bad realy.
Since the carret is usually in the search field and not in the address bar, you basicly exchange the click for activating the address bar for a click on the top result.
Well, the Strisand effect would come into effect when Facebook would look sour about Google+ and showing weakness in its users eyes.
That may lead to a mass exodus and THEN you will know the effect is in effect, effectively.
Metal Gear is not evil, it is technology.
It has no moral values of it's own.
It can be used for killing people (evil) or for sowing pretty flowers and making cupcakes (not evil).
"This is the fucking government working to tighten control over the internet."
By breaking into private systems that have little to do with the internet?
Suuure...
Maybe it's time for a tin-foil hat festival?
"That's both hands assholes. Have you noticed that everyone in public life these days is an asshole?"
You sure you've got nothing Freudian going on there?
China, Iran, and the whole bloody criminal community...
"That doesn't make the US an evil regime; it makes the people idiots for electing people willing to get us into sticky situations."
These two things are not nessesarily opposites.
In fact, i've seen hem go hand in hand quite a few times.
I've got the idea that this is not how they will do it.
The police already knows the kind of facts that you name, they've been in that business for decades.
I think this one will cross some socially accepted borders, then turn around to piss on them, then run farther away from them.
You can't arrest a person for a crime he didn't do (unless its some horrible crime of terror, i guess).
I want to bet you that the next thing these people will need is a change of law to make this possible.
This reminds me of when i was a kid and joked around in department stores by writing little basic programs on ancient 8-bit home computers.
Usually the program was along the lines of:
10 PRINT "I RULE! ";
20 GOTO 10
The clerks didn't have a clue on how to break the loop so they had to reboot the thing once they noticed.
Needless to say, i'm still waiting for any service, secret or not, to come take my stuff.
Can you please get your history straight?
IBM actually helped the nazis categorize the population.
It was the tool that made the holocaust possible.
It is silly to think that a company like IBM was not aware of nazi practices.
Their buisness was in automating big bureaucracies.
Governments are a big chunk of that.
The papers were full of what was happening in germany and there was already a stream of jews flighting from there to the US.
There is no way IBM didn't know.
And you know what?
It's still going on.
How do you think, for instance, the taliban got their non-russian weapons?
It's not from the russians for sure.
There are many examples of companies gaining from war and other nasty stuff.
And there is nothing holy about IBM.
If people tell each other that they "represent a grey ball" if they take the elevator then the information system is not subliminal in any way.
In fact, these bright students are researching the influence of signs like "please take the stairs" on people. It's just that the language of the signs is a bit obfuscated.
But i don't think anyone will misunderstand the 'nudge' of a trail of lights pointing you in a certain direction.
Honestly, I think this is just one big excuse to play around with cool stuff.
Any of these 'games' could have non-electronic counterparts that would give the same information (and presumably influence the behavior in a similar manner).
And there is no mention of the 'play' element.
The fact that people will (and of course they will) make a game out of it amongst themselfs.
I've seen this happen over different subjects in the past, none of which included technology in any way.
So i think they are needlessly mixing in the notion of technology into what is a social process that will work with or without gadgetry.
And despite the article mentioning some discussion about ethics there is no mention of it being a research goal in any way.
I mean, this is nothing new, is it?
Sensors prompting you about your posture?
Come on. How is this different from any other behavioural feedback system?
Games have been doing it for decades.
It's your environment giving you extra information about you.
In nature it's nothing new, think of the color of wasps and bees. Think of the colors and smells of flowers.
Signaling is a basic tool in nature and humans are no exception.
The basis for such behavior is not technology.
Any informational system will have this kind of influence on humans.
And using technology for signaling is nothing new as well.
I don't see anything spectacular here to justify a news article about it.
In fact, i'm a bit disappointed by the level at which this research is conducted.
There must be better and more interesting uses, by now, for social/informational feedback systems.
"While this is true to be fair the ones doing business with the Nazis were the German branch and from what I understand in Hitler's Germany you did what you were told or enjoy your nice trip to the concentration camp."
Riiight, so you, as leader of the German branch make the mother company cough up milions of dollars worth of equipment to satisfy your german overlord ?
I don't think the US branch had anything against making money from the european 'situation'.
It was another fat government contract.
They called the police FOR WHAT???
Isn't that a gross abuse of power?
from TFA: "Like I said, it's a big bet for us, and it's a bet that we're certain about."
So, am I the only one who finds this a bit fishy?
"quantum physics is weird, mysterious and counterintuitive... and consciousness is also weird, mysterious and counterintuitive. Therefore the former might explain the latter."
Well, here you go.
If i were to find a blue car and a blue fish could i then assume that because both items are blue the car will explain the fish?
That is a fallacy right there.
"Of course they can make justifications (i.e. excuses) for it. Every last fascist, authoritarian, power-tripping fevered ego that ever existed has always had one powerful tool: a well-articulated bureaucracy."
Dude,
They have a huge social problem with gamers.
You can fantasize all you want about tyrants and dictators and whatnot.
Matter of fact is that gaming addiction is ruining the society there.
The goal is not total control for da evil tyrantz , it's about controlling a nationwide addiction.
Now if there was a technology that could give you drugs like heroing in your home at the leasure of a mouse click, don't you think we should somehow regulate this technology?
That's exactly how game addiction works. Microachivements triggering pleasure receptors, making you want more.
It's a known mechanism in psychology and it's being exploited by almost all subscription-based games.
It's the exact same mechanism that makes people sit behind a slots machine for hours on end.
Why do you think that casino's are regulated? Exact same reason. People are suckers for this mechanism.
It is a real problem and it is being adressed pretty directly.
It's not as if they forbid the internet.
They specificly disable people from gaming through the night, which is the actual problem.
Normal people don't do this (at least not often enough to see this restriction as a problem) and i bet most non-MMORPG playing citizens will see this as a change for the better.
My understanding is that in a couple of asian countries there are loads of people addicted to online games (very much like a gambling addiction). If a large part of the working population can't perform at work because they have been gaming all night then that society has a huge problem.
People can be stupid and seduction from mindless time wastings on the internet is never far away. Someone has to protect these people from themselfs.
Imagine everyone could get heroin and cocaine from the supermarket, how do you think our society would look like in a few years?
That's why these substances are regulated.
Mind you, the situation there is completely unlike here in the west.
People have serious gaming addictions that we haven't seen around here too much.
Imagine if 1/3 of all people you know at work would screw up their job because they play games all night?
How long do you think such a society could function without breaking?
So some things need to be controlled in a society and it appears gaming can be one of these things.
(which is not hard to imagine since there are lots of games based on the same psychological mechanics as gambling games, yes, i'm looking at you, MMORPG!)
Games realy can be addicting and unhealthy in certain situations.
So i think you're getting it wrong.
It's not about controlling the internets.
It's about controlling an addiction problem that is already negatively impacting that society.
I think that most people (who are not addicted) in Korea will support the measures and will see it as a rational solution to their growing problem.
Freedom is fun, but if that freedom fscks up other peoples lifes then a limit is reached. ...
I mean, i would't accept it if a large part of my co-workers would be zombified from gaming all night, all the time.
Unless i was a game reviewer or something..
But that's besides the point.
Ooh, damn you, game reviewers.
"Yes. Everything that isn't directly and solely related to the practical actions necessary for survival is art."
So me pissing on someones head from a bridge must be pure art then?
O.M.G. i'm an artist!
"The human mind is rich, fascinating, and complex enough as it is. There's no need to drag QM into it."
That's a dark age argument.
If you don't look you will never find!
Evolution is not restricted to effects similar or bigger than DNA, even if it adapted to by only our DNA.
If there is some subatomic effect (discounting electrons) that affects how molecules behave it can be adapted to by DNA. DNA can find solutions to anything in the environment, as long as it has an influence on the organism the DNA makes.
Actually, the specific working should not be restricted to electromagnetic interactions.
Anything that can make a difference usually will in some way or another.
All effects we know in nature are potentially usable by evolution.