The problem is that focused monitoring tends to expand and quickly consumes resources and/or becomes ineffective. First visitors from which countries get monitored? You say Iranians, what about Saudis? The US has many enemies/potential enemies spread around the world. Terrorist organizations exist obviously in the middle east, but also asia, africa, even south america. Next, out of those countries who do you monitor? Those with visitor visas, student visas, legal immigrants, first generation americans? Do you limit it to just nationalities? What about religions, or political affiliations (ie communists). These questions may seem slippery slope, but if you look historically at the expansion of terrorist laws towards citizens, it isn't that far fetched. Will the suburban 40 year old white mother be monitored any time soon? Probably not, but you don't think they will try to expand monitoring towards organized crime suspects or suspected drug dealers.I think some degree of control is acceptable, the new foreign entry requirements are minimally intrusive. However, when you advocate active monitoring I think it's too intrusive and not effective for the time/cost requirements involved.
In fact, the government does have a legitimate purpose in monitoring, say, Iranian exchange students who are studying nuclear physics. I guess they also have a legitimate purpose monitoring any middle eastern student studying physics, or nuclear engineering, or American born muslim students in chemical engineering, or korean students studying aerospace engineering. Hell terrorists need communications networks, so just throw all the EE and Comp Sci folks in there, and no terrorist organization can get off the ground without money, so add the business students. Of course we still have to keep an eye on the communist students in political science to keep them from creating a communist movement while we are so focused on terrorism. If you're worried about an Iranian student learning how to build a nuclear weapon, there are alot of other ways, and easier, to get the same information. Those courses aren't teaching things that aren't already published. Also, I doubt there is a Nuke 403 course; most college classes are focused on theory. The most difficult part isn't the theory, its the practical engineering and acquisition of materials.
This book sounds horribly like the author is a weenie power-player who only does dungeon-bashes against hopelessly out-powered, out-classed foes with GMs who prefer to please their players with vast hordes of treasure than serious game-play or challanging problems. AKA Munchkins. The biggest problems with Munchkins is that they can ruin a good role playing group by turning everything into a competition. Roleplayers see the game in terms of character development ("the journey is just as important as the destination"); Munchkins see the game as a competition, something you can beat ("ends justify the means"). Roleplayers typically require a higher level of maturity, they aren't playing a game, they are creating/living in a fantasy world.
Re:TV is actually worse than movies...
on
TV Piracy is Next
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· Score: 1
That's clearly untrue as National Geographic, a non-profit, employs hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Other companies that just break even employ countless thousands of people. Also, you ignore the fact that most firms are already profitable before they start outsourcing. National Geographic is functions off of donations and grants. This business model works for them as they do research, teach, etc.; this model wouldn't work for most businesses. Most businesses require investment, investment is driven by returns, which comes in the form of profits or capital growth. Where should the out-of-work software engineers be channelling their energy? Be specific. Many of these people are watching their bank accounts dwindle as they try to put food on the table, so they don't have time to spend going down dead-end roads. Move to India, if you are a good programmer you have an advantage over the local workers based on your native language and ability to communicate with management. Should he go back to school for four years to get a law degree or an MBA? While doing that, should his family live in van in the Walmart parking lot, maybe with the wife turning tricks to pay for food? They're facing the same problems that happened to people in other industries that were outsourced (electronics mfg, auto mfg). Those people had to retrain, had to find alternative jobs to apply their skills, or had to move and follow their job. Don't expect life to just give you a free ride just because you got an IT degree. Just as online distribution of movies and music, and now TV will require companies to find alternative ways to make money, outsourcing IT jobs will require workers to find alternative ways to make money.
I agree with you, you can move to follow the job you want, or accept a job where u are. This isn't too different than the issues people had in previous centuries in the US (and probably other countries). Jobs within the country moved to cheaper areas, or high growth areas were in less populated states. People would complain that they didn't want to move cities because they had roots in their hometown/state for X generations. Its much more acceptable now to change cities or states to accept a job, in the future I would suspect the same would be true of changing countries.
I did the same thing, went to the logitech mx510 from the mx700. I was so used to a lighter mouse that extended gaming use made my wrist feel uncomfortable with the wireless. I also had problems with mouse control, though most of my friends say once you get used to a heavier mouse you'll get better accuracy.
Is it just me, or does $15/month seem WAY out of proportion for something like this?
Why is it whenever somebody discusses an MMO, somebody always has to whine "They cost too much" Professional sports ticket prices are too high, but each time sports comes on the news I don't start ranting "$50 bucks for seats at a 3 hour game, what a rip!" I accept the fact that people are willing to pay that price and I spend my time and money on an entertainment alternative (movies, watching the game in the bar, etc.) $50+$15 is a standard pricing scheme the company chose, deal with it. There is no MMO monopoly, no MMO conspiracy, it's free market economics. There are free client pay for services, pay for client free service, and even everything free MMOs. Yet millions of people are willing to pay for clients and service; people even pay $80 for a client and a free in game cookie. If you are not willing to pay what the companies ask, play an alternative.
Why do most people still use alkaline batteries for their flashlights now, since there are so many better technologies like in computers? Because a flashlight is $20, a laptop is $2000. The scientists creating the machine of death probably had a little extra budget to spend on new power sources.
It's called an analogy. 20 years ago an iPod would be mindblowingly amazing, which is now commonplace, yet we still use the same alkaline batteries in most of our flashlights. So it's possible we get a gravity gun and still have to worry about replacing the duracells in our mag-lites.
Re:Energy Storage...OF THE FUTURE!
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I mean, you've got this freakin' gun that can telekinetically heft and fling oil drums over great distances, but you've still gotta worry about flashlight batteries? Flashback 20 years: You mean you have a walkman that can carry 10,000 songs, has as much file storage as 1000PCs, can sychronize contact information, plays games, has an LCD screen, all in a package the size of a deck of cards, and you still gotta worry about the battery wearing out in 8 hours!
The worst part is spending $50.00 or (iirc) $80.00 for the collectors edition. I just accept this as the price you pay for early adoption. Same as paying $300 for a PS2 to have it the day it came out, when I can get it for half now. Wait a couple months the price will drop, wait a couple years and there will be a free client.
You dont' bring anything away from a forced well rounded highschool education...rogramming and linguistics backgrtound implies that the author went out of his way to learn both, didn't get forced to learn 1 or the other I disagree, when you are in highschool you have not been exposed to most subjects, so how can you make an intelligent decision? English pre-highschool is grammar and vocabulary, math pre-highschool is arithmetic. Both are basically learning toolsets, and not representative of the "interesting" aspects of each subject. An artist might hate arithmetic, so would not choose any math related courses. They in fact might be interested in geometry which is a very different subject, though falls under math. A computer student might hate spelling and sentence structure, but could become interested in writing techniques to improve the quality of their blog. I think there should be more choices in classes, though there should be a degree of "forcing" kids to be exposed and learn new things, so in college, or later in life they can make intelligent decisions on what they choose to pursue.
There are a few problems with specialized teaching. First is funding and fragmentation of the curriculum. Specialized teaching requires more teachers and teachers with unique skill sets, all of which requires money. Then who decides which classes to teach. Is C more important than say Art History? The other problem is there is great value in a well rounded education. Exposure to multiple subjects can lead to new breakthrough ideas, rather than just recycling the old ones. There are articles of people developing more "natural" programming languages. In fact I believe Perl was developed by somebody with a programming and linguistics background. It is possible that learning a foreign language could "spark" new methods of developing programming languages, or new methods of teaching foreign language based on how computer languages are taught.
Well, the reason we're worth 50-60% of where we were 5 years ago is BECAUSE there are people out of work that would be willing to take a deeper cut in pay to be employed Though you probably were not worth what you got 5 years ago due to labor shortage. High pay in the 90's led to everybody getting an IT degree/certification to cash in, which has caused excess labor now. Don't expect things to be as rosy as they were in the boom times, but it should get better than it is now.
The Social Security "trust fund" has been nothing but IOUs for years. Exactly!
What's funny is that $1.5 Trillion of the national debt is owed to Social Security. Social Security is no longer a trust fund, it's being used to pay for existing goverment spending NOW. Basically Social Security has been used as an extra tax on the middle class!
The Everquest 2 website says there are still 17 hours left. Though if I lived in Japan it would be available today, but it won't launch there until later, so I'd have to travel to the US to pick up the game, but then it would no longer be today it would be yesterday. Time travel is so confusing.
Orbits do degrade, especially low earth orbits, just look at Hubble, or ISS, which need reboosts every once in awhile. Low orbit still is subject to significant drag affects of the atmosphere. There is no good definition of where space starts, usually its considered around 100miles, but the atmosphere extends up to 1000 miles into space. So you can have a vehicle designed to achieve the speed of 2 orbits and not have the energy to achieve more.
What about diplomatic power, which is the way things really get done in the modern world, we're certainly not #1 in that category Most diplomacy isn't done with weapons, or a friendly smile, it's done with money. The US has alot of economic leverage. Don't think the US is #1 in the world in diplomacy, look at all the one-sided agreements that are passed in other countries. Recognize US copyrights, US citizens don't need Visas for many countries (though not true the other way around), extradite your cybercriminals, etc. These agreements aren't just with poor nations, they are also with Europe, Australia, etc. I agree, success can be characterized alot of ways. Success means we don't starve, though we die of heart disease because we are so fat. We may work more hours than any other countries, but we can come to our home in our SUV and watch cable on the new 60" plasma TV. Each culture has it's own way of judging success, you really can't say one way is better than another.
From the results of the election and exit polls it seems that voters were more motivated by the candidate's stances on "moral" issues and security, rather than foreign policy and the economy.
There is no "former glory", there is good and bad in history. The US established a republic with democratic values, but also continued promoting slavery, it established a bill of rights for its citizens, but also conquered native americans as part of "manifest destiny." We defended south korea from north korea, helped stop genocide in bosnia, supported afghanistan against the Soviets (and trained and armed those who would eventually attack us with terrorism), supported "friendly" latin american dictators; There's good and bad in the history of the US as there is in every countries' history.
With several highly anticipated MMOs launching this year and next year (WoW, EQ2, Matrix Online), what is your perception of competition in the MMO industry, has it become too crowded? Do you believe new games can be supported by drawing new players into the genre, or will these games pull mostly from the existing player base?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that focused monitoring tends to expand and quickly consumes resources and/or becomes ineffective.
First visitors from which countries get monitored? You say Iranians, what about Saudis? The US has many enemies/potential enemies spread around the world.
Terrorist organizations exist obviously in the middle east, but also asia, africa, even south america.
Next, out of those countries who do you monitor? Those with visitor visas, student visas, legal immigrants, first generation americans?
Do you limit it to just nationalities? What about religions, or political affiliations (ie communists).
These questions may seem slippery slope, but if you look historically at the expansion of terrorist laws towards citizens, it isn't that far fetched. Will the suburban 40 year old white mother be monitored any time soon? Probably not, but you don't think they will try to expand monitoring towards organized crime suspects or suspected drug dealers.I think some degree of control is acceptable, the new foreign entry requirements are minimally intrusive. However, when you advocate active monitoring I think it's too intrusive and not effective for the time/cost requirements involved.
In fact, the government does have a legitimate purpose in monitoring, say, Iranian exchange students who are studying nuclear physics.
I guess they also have a legitimate purpose monitoring any middle eastern student studying physics, or nuclear engineering, or American born muslim students in chemical engineering, or korean students studying aerospace engineering. Hell terrorists need communications networks, so just throw all the EE and Comp Sci folks in there, and no terrorist organization can get off the ground without money, so add the business students. Of course we still have to keep an eye on the communist students in political science to keep them from creating a communist movement while we are so focused on terrorism.
If you're worried about an Iranian student learning how to build a nuclear weapon, there are alot of other ways, and easier, to get the same information. Those courses aren't teaching things that aren't already published. Also, I doubt there is a Nuke 403 course; most college classes are focused on theory. The most difficult part isn't the theory, its the practical engineering and acquisition of materials.
This book sounds horribly like the author is a weenie power-player who only does dungeon-bashes against hopelessly out-powered, out-classed foes with GMs who prefer to please their players with vast hordes of treasure than serious game-play or challanging problems.
AKA Munchkins.
The biggest problems with Munchkins is that they can ruin a good role playing group by turning everything into a competition.
Roleplayers see the game in terms of character development ("the journey is just as important as the destination"); Munchkins see the game as a competition, something you can beat ("ends justify the means"). Roleplayers typically require a higher level of maturity, they aren't playing a game, they are creating/living in a fantasy world.
or is that still to "difficult"
TOO/0 = TO
That's clearly untrue as National Geographic, a non-profit, employs hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Other companies that just break even employ countless thousands of people. Also, you ignore the fact that most firms are already profitable before they start outsourcing.
National Geographic is functions off of donations and grants. This business model works for them as they do research, teach, etc.; this model wouldn't work for most businesses. Most businesses require investment, investment is driven by returns, which comes in the form of profits or capital growth.
Where should the out-of-work software engineers be channelling their energy? Be specific. Many of these people are watching their bank accounts dwindle as they try to put food on the table, so they don't have time to spend going down dead-end roads.
Move to India, if you are a good programmer you have an advantage over the local workers based on your native language and ability to communicate with management.
Should he go back to school for four years to get a law degree or an MBA? While doing that, should his family live in van in the Walmart parking lot, maybe with the wife turning tricks to pay for food?
They're facing the same problems that happened to people in other industries that were outsourced (electronics mfg, auto mfg). Those people had to retrain, had to find alternative jobs to apply their skills, or had to move and follow their job. Don't expect life to just give you a free ride just because you got an IT degree.
Just as online distribution of movies and music, and now TV will require companies to find alternative ways to make money, outsourcing IT jobs will require workers to find alternative ways to make money.
I agree with you, you can move to follow the job you want, or accept a job where u are.
This isn't too different than the issues people had in previous centuries in the US (and probably other countries). Jobs within the country moved to cheaper areas, or high growth areas were in less populated states. People would complain that they didn't want to move cities because they had roots in their hometown/state for X generations.
Its much more acceptable now to change cities or states to accept a job, in the future I would suspect the same would be true of changing countries.
I did the same thing, went to the logitech mx510 from the mx700. I was so used to a lighter mouse that extended gaming use made my wrist feel uncomfortable with the wireless. I also had problems with mouse control, though most of my friends say once you get used to a heavier mouse you'll get better accuracy.
Most self-winding watches I've seen work on that principle. Even the rolex knockoffs I've seen use the moving weight to wind a spring.
Is it just me, or does $15/month seem WAY out of proportion for something like this?
Why is it whenever somebody discusses an MMO, somebody always has to whine "They cost too much"
Professional sports ticket prices are too high, but each time sports comes on the news I don't start ranting "$50 bucks for seats at a 3 hour game, what a rip!" I accept the fact that people are willing to pay that price and I spend my time and money on an entertainment alternative (movies, watching the game in the bar, etc.)
$50+$15 is a standard pricing scheme the company chose, deal with it. There is no MMO monopoly, no MMO conspiracy, it's free market economics. There are free client pay for services, pay for client free service, and even everything free MMOs. Yet millions of people are willing to pay for clients and service; people even pay $80 for a client and a free in game cookie. If you are not willing to pay what the companies ask, play an alternative.
Why do most people still use alkaline batteries for their flashlights now, since there are so many better technologies like in computers? Because a flashlight is $20, a laptop is $2000.
The scientists creating the machine of death probably had a little extra budget to spend on new power sources.
It's called an analogy.
20 years ago an iPod would be mindblowingly amazing, which is now commonplace, yet we still use the same alkaline batteries in most of our flashlights.
So it's possible we get a gravity gun and still have to worry about replacing the duracells in our mag-lites.
I mean, you've got this freakin' gun that can telekinetically heft and fling oil drums over great distances, but you've still gotta worry about flashlight batteries?
Flashback 20 years: You mean you have a walkman that can carry 10,000 songs, has as much file storage as 1000PCs, can sychronize contact information, plays games, has an LCD screen, all in a package the size of a deck of cards, and you still gotta worry about the battery wearing out in 8 hours!
The worst part is spending $50.00 or (iirc) $80.00 for the collectors edition.
I just accept this as the price you pay for early adoption. Same as paying $300 for a PS2 to have it the day it came out, when I can get it for half now.
Wait a couple months the price will drop, wait a couple years and there will be a free client.
You dont' bring anything away from a forced well rounded highschool education...rogramming and linguistics backgrtound implies that the author went out of his way to learn both, didn't get forced to learn 1 or the other
I disagree, when you are in highschool you have not been exposed to most subjects, so how can you make an intelligent decision?
English pre-highschool is grammar and vocabulary, math pre-highschool is arithmetic. Both are basically learning toolsets, and not representative of the "interesting" aspects of each subject.
An artist might hate arithmetic, so would not choose any math related courses. They in fact might be interested in geometry which is a very different subject, though falls under math. A computer student might hate spelling and sentence structure, but could become interested in writing techniques to improve the quality of their blog.
I think there should be more choices in classes, though there should be a degree of "forcing" kids to be exposed and learn new things, so in college, or later in life they can make intelligent decisions on what they choose to pursue.
There are a few problems with specialized teaching. First is funding and fragmentation of the curriculum.
Specialized teaching requires more teachers and teachers with unique skill sets, all of which requires money. Then who decides which classes to teach. Is C more important than say Art History?
The other problem is there is great value in a well rounded education. Exposure to multiple subjects can lead to new breakthrough ideas, rather than just recycling the old ones. There are articles of people developing more "natural" programming languages. In fact I believe Perl was developed by somebody with a programming and linguistics background. It is possible that learning a foreign language could "spark" new methods of developing programming languages, or new methods of teaching foreign language based on how computer languages are taught.
Well, the reason we're worth 50-60% of where we were 5 years ago is BECAUSE there are people out of work that would be willing to take a deeper cut in pay to be employed
Though you probably were not worth what you got 5 years ago due to labor shortage. High pay in the 90's led to everybody getting an IT degree/certification to cash in, which has caused excess labor now. Don't expect things to be as rosy as they were in the boom times, but it should get better than it is now.
The Social Security "trust fund" has been nothing but IOUs for years.
Exactly! What's funny is that $1.5 Trillion of the national debt is owed to Social Security. Social Security is no longer a trust fund, it's being used to pay for existing goverment spending NOW. Basically Social Security has been used as an extra tax on the middle class!
The Everquest 2 website says there are still 17 hours left.
Though if I lived in Japan it would be available today, but it won't launch there until later, so I'd have to travel to the US to pick up the game, but then it would no longer be today it would be yesterday.
Time travel is so confusing.
AMD's mid-30% market share corresponds to their maximum output.
AMD only has 15.8% market share. Still not as high as the 21% peak in 2000.
Orbits do degrade, especially low earth orbits, just look at Hubble, or ISS, which need reboosts every once in awhile.
Low orbit still is subject to significant drag affects of the atmosphere.
There is no good definition of where space starts, usually its considered around 100miles, but the atmosphere extends up to 1000 miles into space. So you can have a vehicle designed to achieve the speed of 2 orbits and not have the energy to achieve more.
What about diplomatic power, which is the way things really get done in the modern world, we're certainly not #1 in that category
Most diplomacy isn't done with weapons, or a friendly smile, it's done with money. The US has alot of economic leverage. Don't think the US is #1 in the world in diplomacy, look at all the one-sided agreements that are passed in other countries. Recognize US copyrights, US citizens don't need Visas for many countries (though not true the other way around), extradite your cybercriminals, etc. These agreements aren't just with poor nations, they are also with Europe, Australia, etc.
I agree, success can be characterized alot of ways. Success means we don't starve, though we die of heart disease because we are so fat. We may work more hours than any other countries, but we can come to our home in our SUV and watch cable on the new 60" plasma TV. Each culture has it's own way of judging success, you really can't say one way is better than another.
From the results of the election and exit polls it seems that voters were more motivated by the candidate's stances on "moral" issues and security, rather than foreign policy and the economy.
There is no "former glory", there is good and bad in history. The US established a republic with democratic values, but also continued promoting slavery, it established a bill of rights for its citizens, but also conquered native americans as part of "manifest destiny." We defended south korea from north korea, helped stop genocide in bosnia, supported afghanistan against the Soviets (and trained and armed those who would eventually attack us with terrorism), supported "friendly" latin american dictators; There's good and bad in the history of the US as there is in every countries' history.
With several highly anticipated MMOs launching this year and next year (WoW, EQ2, Matrix Online), what is your perception of competition in the MMO industry, has it become too crowded? Do you believe new games can be supported by drawing new players into the genre, or will these games pull mostly from the existing player base?
Placebo, eh? Perhaps we could work together and find out the secret of this placebo that's in Tylenol. We'll corner the industry!