Even if they do work out all the bugs in the system, it's still only a step toward true VR at best. Without ways to also stimulate all our other senses, this will be more akin to TV than VR.
While there may be completely bogus entries on Wikipedia, for the most part I've found it to be a reasonably accurate source of information on the topics I look up - typically political history. The thing is, you see some complete BS on Wikipedia you are able to fix it in a way you can't with someone's personal website. As a result, over the long term the good information should overcome the bad.
The same process is endemic to the US political process. Assuming Cheney is alive by the end of his time in office (not guaranteed if Bush win's re-election) expect him on Haliburton's board shortly. This is one of the fundamental issues with how we select political leaders. Career politicians with no other experience aren't necessarily a good alternative (Clinton, anyone?) but at least they avoid the conflict of interest between former/future private sector employers and their public service.
If the Brit government is anything like the US government, dealing with open source software may cause a cognitive short-circuit when they try to figure out how to handle bids on something that's essentially free...
I'm not discounting it, I just want some actual numbers. All I ever see is claims that the labels and such are making too much money without any actual numbers. I'd like to know what their profit margins actually are, before I get upset about their cut. I haven't been able to find that information yet, but I'll keep looking when I get around to it.
Excellent post, and good point on the changing industry. I agree with you, I think the RIAA is screwed by the march of technology and sooner or later will have to adapt. In the meantime, I'm not convinced that all the villification of them is accurate so I'm trying to find actual profit and loss statements. That stuff should be public for most of the recording industry since I think they're publicly traded, but I don't know where to look for it yet.
I'm curious, what do you base this claim that fees to production companies are too high? Do you have any idea how profitable they are? I don't have that information off-hand, but think about the investment. A production company requires facilities with a substantial investment in equipment plus a permanent staff that isn't going to come cheap. With their equipment and staff, they provide a valuable service to artists who would otherwise have to self-produce (probably resulting in an inferior product). Then, to top it off, if the production company is on a percentage based contract rather than a flat fee (which I bet isn't the norm, btw) they may well lose money because more musicians fail than succeed.
If your issue is with the labels, again you need to take into account their actual profits as well as the services they provide. Marketing, distribution, etc. don't come cheap, and are essential for the success of the artists. In many cases, they don't result in a hit and the company takes a loss. On others, they make out very well, but is their aggregate profit so out of line? I couldn't find any information on their actual profits, but I suspect they are nowhere near as high as all the "information wants to be free" crowd think.
There's a huge logical fallacy with the idea that groups of people who think the same have any claim to correctness simply because they all agree. If anything, the opposite is true since groups which have common sets of beliefs tend to filter the real world in accordance with those beliefs and that isn't challenged because the group is composed of likeminded individuals. See Janis' "Groupthink" for a very good treatment of this.
It's not just the Patriot Act at work here, or even mainly the Patriot Act. The real issue you're pointing to with regard to access to information is simply the penchant for the current government to classify everything and fight Freedom of Information requests as hard as possible even if the information itself is innocuous. The culture of secrecy is the real issue, not the Patriot Act.
There's a huge difference. If you actually read the Old Testament (more properly known as the Hebrew Bible) you would see that there is no biblical prohibition against killing in general. YHWH routinely instructed the Hebrews to kill other people.
Moralizing about human behavior from a book that doesn't even apply to most people in the first place is rather silly, but if you're going to do it at least get it right. For those who are confused by my comment about the Old Testament not applying, read the New Testament. The foundation of Christianity is a new covenant with "God", which replaces the previous covenant (the Mosaic one, including the Ten Commandments). The prevalence of christians using the Old Testament as justification for their beliefs just demonstrates their ignorance of their own religion and their lack of understanding that under their own doctrine, the Ten Commandments do not apply.
"prepare"? They're not preparing for anything, they're warmonging. That's a case of war creation more than anything else...
Since when did training become warmongering? Since you obviously have some serious misaprehensions about the military, I should point out that "warmongering" is more accurately an activity of civilians rather than the military. Look which parts of our government wanted this current little war we're in...
The military does use simulations to train on. This is just a larger version of command post exercises which have been used to train commanders and staffs for years. At the individual, the Marines were using a Doom mod to train soldiers with years ago.
If you're going to quote the Old Testament, at least be accurate. The Hebrew in Exodus 20:13 is more consistent with "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder." It's just frequently translated as "kill", even though the rest of the Old Testament makes a mockery of that translation.
Bah, it's too early in the morning for me to be interpreting sarcasm, especially since there are plenty of people on this board who would say that without being sarcastic. For that matter, how can I know this guy was sarcastic rather than serious?
Not only that, they're full of shit. Having widespread cases of voting machines not recording the correct vote or even any vote at all, crashing systems, etc. are not examples of user error, they're examples of shitty design.
Re:I'd put more money on the animals...
on
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Actually, it's not a fallacy to the extent you seem to imply. When Lord Acton said "all power corrupts; abosolute power corrupts absolutely" he wasn't just critiquing government. That saying is based on a keen observation of human nature, because most people lack the moral strength to completely resist the corrupting effects of power. Authoritarian states are those which by definition have more concentration of power, and there are no exceptions I am aware of (maybe Singapore?) where corruption is not endemic.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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Huh? The notion of Copyright is not even 300 years old yet. I'm sure Michaelangelo and Da Vinci (among thousands of others) would be surprised to hear that they didn't produce any works of art. If you want to restrict it to written work, we'll bring Euripides into the mix.
Nice to see that some of the mods don't bother reading the linked ads in the original message before downrating posts. My post was A) not off-topic and B) not trolling. Apparently irony is lost at times around here, but I'm not surprised.
To elaborate, there is nothing all that surprising about this for those of us who study politics, since modern politics is really about brand-marketing. Candidates are packaged and presented in ways designed to appeal to us on a gut level rather than with regard to their actual policy positions.
This is magnified by the role of political parties, since a candidates political party is in fact a brand. Over 60% of the electorate still consider themselves members of one of the two major parties. Most party members will vote for candidates of their party, regardless of what that candidate says or does. This holds even though most of those claiming party membership don't even know what the party stands for.
In political campaigns, the cognitive effects of this are readily apparent by listening to how people react to the different candidates. Those with stronger partisan identification will filter the 'news' in such a way that it more neatly fits their biases - ergo 'Coke tastes sweeter'.
No big loss, really. What matters is output, not the spec description. OK, I'll clarify that, what matters to ME is output, not the label. I realize most consumers are too ignorant to realize that the numbers don't tell the story and don't even know where to go to get good analysis of the real differences. That means that it will be really interesting how they choose to market any new architecture, since they can't just go by speed.
Since when is being unscrupulous, immoral/amoral, and conniving "pretty good business decisions"?
Since always? Seriously though, that behavior is exactly why Bill Gates and many other business "leaders" are very successful at what they do. I'm not saying that makes it morally just or otherwise appropriate, but in the world we live in acting immorally can be very good business.
I can't say I'm surprised to hear that Bill Gates wasn't the innovative programmer he's made out to be, but then we already knew that. His strengths have always been elsewhere, mainly in the form of making some pretty good business decisions. Because of that, this Kildall really couldn't have been Bill Gates - he obviously lacks the business sense.
I do find the assertion that it was all a conspiracy with IBM laughable, though. First, why would IBM care? Second, if IBM had a clue about the future value of DOS back then, they would have bought it outright rather than choosing to license it.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if they do work out all the bugs in the system, it's still only a step toward true VR at best. Without ways to also stimulate all our other senses, this will be more akin to TV than VR.
While there may be completely bogus entries on Wikipedia, for the most part I've found it to be a reasonably accurate source of information on the topics I look up - typically political history. The thing is, you see some complete BS on Wikipedia you are able to fix it in a way you can't with someone's personal website. As a result, over the long term the good information should overcome the bad.
The same process is endemic to the US political process. Assuming Cheney is alive by the end of his time in office (not guaranteed if Bush win's re-election) expect him on Haliburton's board shortly. This is one of the fundamental issues with how we select political leaders. Career politicians with no other experience aren't necessarily a good alternative (Clinton, anyone?) but at least they avoid the conflict of interest between former/future private sector employers and their public service.
If the Brit government is anything like the US government, dealing with open source software may cause a cognitive short-circuit when they try to figure out how to handle bids on something that's essentially free...
I'm not discounting it, I just want some actual numbers. All I ever see is claims that the labels and such are making too much money without any actual numbers. I'd like to know what their profit margins actually are, before I get upset about their cut. I haven't been able to find that information yet, but I'll keep looking when I get around to it.
Excellent post, and good point on the changing industry. I agree with you, I think the RIAA is screwed by the march of technology and sooner or later will have to adapt. In the meantime, I'm not convinced that all the villification of them is accurate so I'm trying to find actual profit and loss statements. That stuff should be public for most of the recording industry since I think they're publicly traded, but I don't know where to look for it yet.
I'm curious, what do you base this claim that fees to production companies are too high? Do you have any idea how profitable they are? I don't have that information off-hand, but think about the investment. A production company requires facilities with a substantial investment in equipment plus a permanent staff that isn't going to come cheap. With their equipment and staff, they provide a valuable service to artists who would otherwise have to self-produce (probably resulting in an inferior product). Then, to top it off, if the production company is on a percentage based contract rather than a flat fee (which I bet isn't the norm, btw) they may well lose money because more musicians fail than succeed.
If your issue is with the labels, again you need to take into account their actual profits as well as the services they provide. Marketing, distribution, etc. don't come cheap, and are essential for the success of the artists. In many cases, they don't result in a hit and the company takes a loss. On others, they make out very well, but is their aggregate profit so out of line? I couldn't find any information on their actual profits, but I suspect they are nowhere near as high as all the "information wants to be free" crowd think.
There's a huge logical fallacy with the idea that groups of people who think the same have any claim to correctness simply because they all agree. If anything, the opposite is true since groups which have common sets of beliefs tend to filter the real world in accordance with those beliefs and that isn't challenged because the group is composed of likeminded individuals. See Janis' "Groupthink" for a very good treatment of this.
It's not just the Patriot Act at work here, or even mainly the Patriot Act. The real issue you're pointing to with regard to access to information is simply the penchant for the current government to classify everything and fight Freedom of Information requests as hard as possible even if the information itself is innocuous. The culture of secrecy is the real issue, not the Patriot Act.
There's a huge difference. If you actually read the Old Testament (more properly known as the Hebrew Bible) you would see that there is no biblical prohibition against killing in general. YHWH routinely instructed the Hebrews to kill other people.
Moralizing about human behavior from a book that doesn't even apply to most people in the first place is rather silly, but if you're going to do it at least get it right. For those who are confused by my comment about the Old Testament not applying, read the New Testament. The foundation of Christianity is a new covenant with "God", which replaces the previous covenant (the Mosaic one, including the Ten Commandments). The prevalence of christians using the Old Testament as justification for their beliefs just demonstrates their ignorance of their own religion and their lack of understanding that under their own doctrine, the Ten Commandments do not apply.
"prepare"? They're not preparing for anything, they're warmonging. That's a case of war creation more than anything else...
Since when did training become warmongering? Since you obviously have some serious misaprehensions about the military, I should point out that "warmongering" is more accurately an activity of civilians rather than the military. Look which parts of our government wanted this current little war we're in...
The military does use simulations to train on. This is just a larger version of command post exercises which have been used to train commanders and staffs for years. At the individual, the Marines were using a Doom mod to train soldiers with years ago.
Yah, should be modded "delusional"...
Funny, just reminds me of a networked version of Civilization...
If you're going to quote the Old Testament, at least be accurate. The Hebrew in Exodus 20:13 is more consistent with "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder." It's just frequently translated as "kill", even though the rest of the Old Testament makes a mockery of that translation.
Bah, it's too early in the morning for me to be interpreting sarcasm, especially since there are plenty of people on this board who would say that without being sarcastic. For that matter, how can I know this guy was sarcastic rather than serious?
Not only that, they're full of shit. Having widespread cases of voting machines not recording the correct vote or even any vote at all, crashing systems, etc. are not examples of user error, they're examples of shitty design.
Actually, it's not a fallacy to the extent you seem to imply. When Lord Acton said "all power corrupts; abosolute power corrupts absolutely" he wasn't just critiquing government. That saying is based on a keen observation of human nature, because most people lack the moral strength to completely resist the corrupting effects of power. Authoritarian states are those which by definition have more concentration of power, and there are no exceptions I am aware of (maybe Singapore?) where corruption is not endemic.
Huh? The notion of Copyright is not even 300 years old yet. I'm sure Michaelangelo and Da Vinci (among thousands of others) would be surprised to hear that they didn't produce any works of art. If you want to restrict it to written work, we'll bring Euripides into the mix.
Nice to see that some of the mods don't bother reading the linked ads in the original message before downrating posts. My post was A) not off-topic and B) not trolling. Apparently irony is lost at times around here, but I'm not surprised.
To elaborate, there is nothing all that surprising about this for those of us who study politics, since modern politics is really about brand-marketing. Candidates are packaged and presented in ways designed to appeal to us on a gut level rather than with regard to their actual policy positions.
This is magnified by the role of political parties, since a candidates political party is in fact a brand. Over 60% of the electorate still consider themselves members of one of the two major parties. Most party members will vote for candidates of their party, regardless of what that candidate says or does. This holds even though most of those claiming party membership don't even know what the party stands for.
In political campaigns, the cognitive effects of this are readily apparent by listening to how people react to the different candidates. Those with stronger partisan identification will filter the 'news' in such a way that it more neatly fits their biases - ergo 'Coke tastes sweeter'.
Hmmm, maybe THIS explains why people are still willing to vote for Bush? :)
I'm just visualizing the destruction if you drop one of these suckers and it breaks while spinning at 1 million rpm...
No big loss, really. What matters is output, not the spec description. OK, I'll clarify that, what matters to ME is output, not the label. I realize most consumers are too ignorant to realize that the numbers don't tell the story and don't even know where to go to get good analysis of the real differences. That means that it will be really interesting how they choose to market any new architecture, since they can't just go by speed.
Since when is being unscrupulous, immoral/amoral, and conniving "pretty good business decisions"?
Since always? Seriously though, that behavior is exactly why Bill Gates and many other business "leaders" are very successful at what they do. I'm not saying that makes it morally just or otherwise appropriate, but in the world we live in acting immorally can be very good business.
I can't say I'm surprised to hear that Bill Gates wasn't the innovative programmer he's made out to be, but then we already knew that. His strengths have always been elsewhere, mainly in the form of making some pretty good business decisions. Because of that, this Kildall really couldn't have been Bill Gates - he obviously lacks the business sense.
I do find the assertion that it was all a conspiracy with IBM laughable, though. First, why would IBM care? Second, if IBM had a clue about the future value of DOS back then, they would have bought it outright rather than choosing to license it.