i agree. start distributing major open source packages as bittorrents. try tampering with that. and the best part is that exploiting bittorrent will make it even more resilient to attack.
as i see it, rights and freedoms simply set the context for a person to explore nature and themselves.
any AI that was given such rights and did bad things like kill people would be terminated so many times over (Buthlerian Jihad people!)that it would be in their interest learn to conform while developping their own identity to the fullest of their potential. maybe human beings will sober up as well and realize that even tho God told us to be like cancer, destroying our host's body is also our destruction. somethings are better left in symbiosis.
AI can learn from us and we can from AI. it is either that or nothing. because IF we are wrong and deny AI rights and freedoms, its history repeating itself. another sign that we have not grown up at all. but if we deny AI rights, i hope to God that AI never gets the chance to recreate itself using a biological matrix. even worse if it decides to use all the accumulated knowledge of the human genome to design a machine identical to humanity. the case of walking into a brick wall which we continue to deny actually exists.
i would agree with this. but imagine if this we're a malicious kid. or some foreign government.
we've all watched CSI: they always make up theories that explain the evidence. if your prints or DNA show up at a crime scene your are implicated. they will take you in, ask you questions until their are satisfied that you were just passing by earlier and had nothing to do with the crime.
what it seems NASA did is ask the kid what he did, he told them what he did and probably how he did it. they didnt need to locate the problem because they know where it is. they just fix and patch it. and the patching is something they should have done as part of their securing-the-system policy regardless of what this kid did. im sorry but the if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix policy is for poor poor poor as in 3rd world poor IT depts.
but nasa didnt stop there: they had to ensure the system was not contaminated. this is where i can understand all those damages. but honestly: this should again have been part of the normal policy. what really scares me is that just normal maintenance seems to cost so much. this looks like an outrageous fixed cost if you ask me.
ok, while verifying your entire system might not be a foolproof method, it works well enough that you could tell if a system was contaminated or not. unless some other cracker piggy backed on this kids work, and then caused some damages nasa could not directly pin on the kid so they fatten the cost. if they had not reason to believe the system was further compromised why does it still cost so much?
i guess if you are a crime scene and even after your investigation has found the murder weapon and the murderer and you have explained all the relevant details every suspect is a suspect and they should be detained right? when your methodology makes you constantly paranoid of your own systems i think there is a problem here. i dont know how but im sure your paranoia will be your downfall.
say a vulnerability is posted on the web and it happens to affect your systems. how much does it cost you to get your IT department to locate, fix, and patch the problem?
let's further assume that the party that posted the vulnerability is being purposefully uncooperative. but they agreed to get the vulnerability tested independently by a third party who also happens to be uncooperative. how much does it cost your IT department?
i havent got a clue. but 200k seems like a lot. it would seem that keeping a network secure is very expensive business. and i agree that this is true for physical installations, but digital? i mean seriously. unless of course you are over working your staff who also answer all the phones for tech support in-house making it impossible to manage their time or actually do the work they were hired for in the first place. but 200k for a bug? jesus.
i feel really bad for nasa. no matter what system you use there will be bugs and even when that is not the case a system can be badly configured. if each of these issues costs on average 100k (just a guess) to "locate, fix, and patch" can you imagine how much money is going into IT departments right now? or how much money is going into the IT industry? its like paying the plumber 4 times (just a guess) more than his already expensive rates (apparently there is a shortage of plumbers) and honestly believing that this is the way the world should work.
for crying out loud people. what exactly did this kid do? "shutdown -h now"? and it takes 15minutes to boot up? i mean sorry guys, but maybe you should be protecting your system a little better. i always tell myself. if a teenager can pull a prank like this one there are two things you should do. punish the teenager the way we punish any teenager for a prank like this (which they have sort of done). secondly, get some help securing your systems because a foreign nation will not be looking for space to store movies. they will be out there looking to cripple your systems and not necessarily permanently, 30mins could be critical for a crack squad tectical unit and if it is as easy as just shutting down a server......
ps. to be fair, it could be that restarting the system as part of their "locate, fix, and patch" program takes a lot of time (more than 10 minutes?). there again my friends i would suggest a better system to reduce your costs. this has nothing to do with me believing you shouldnt punish this guy. but quit posting damages that could have been avoided if you spent a little more time designing a better system that met your needs. if google can do it i am sure you can too. if it takes so long to restart your system even during normal maintenance then build redudancy for your production environment. if this is really just about your personal inconvience then remember you are a plumber and that crap cloggin the pipe is your job.
they are dead. we all need to move on. what should replace them are what i call the micropress. note this is just an idea, no cost analysis has gone into this, though i think in conjunction with national/government news releases and national lottery-blah-blahs such a booth could end up costing next to nothing.
the idea is that newspapers get printed on demand. and the best part is that users of the micropress can print a selection of articles from internet and old-style print papers.
users would go to their usual corner stores and buy newspaper subscription cards which could either be the size of a credit card or memory sticks (like those used in digital cameras).
these cards store a users publication preferences as well as some form of digital money. the user slots the card into the micropress and either modifies their preferences and pay though the corner store system or just print out their daily paper.
to further subsidize the micropress, a google-style aggregator could also provide recommended articles based on a users selection. so even if a user isnt interested in world issues (which is unlikely) those articles can still be recommended because to some degree they can and do affect local issues as well.
the micropress is really just a glorified web browser that filters out everything else on the internet and only displays news sites and possibly even certain blogs. who determines the news? a consortium made up of both the private and public sector and maybe even sanctioned by the government (hello china).
what do you all think? how many of you actually go out of your way to read a newspaper? and i am not talking about picking one up that is lying around in a coffee shop.
computers are not a nexus of distraction like its made out to be. tv, books, or just about anything that can use your attention is a potential point of distraction. maybe we should all live a simpler life. maybe the amish have it right...
yea, i think not.
as a linguist i can tell you this. a computer can never teach a human being language. not unless such a computer as an exhaustive account of grammar. to produce such a database i guess is on par with mapping out the human genome. it is simply too difficult for a computer to follow the infinite variety of sentential constructions a human speaker can come up with.
that said, i do not entirely disagree with your idea to use computers to help people focus their language skills. i just think it would require too much effort.
computers are not a substitute for good parenting or a good education. they can be used to focus the process of teaching and learning, but in and of themselves make poor developmental tools (and this is just my guess as i am not a child psychologist).
still computers can be a learning experience in and of themselves. a properly designed OS will always lead to greater insight about the inner workings of the so-called digital world. any one that grew up "playing" with a unix or unix-variant can attest to this. and i am pretty sure that if studies were done, it would show that those individuals tend to have a different view of gagdetry at large.
still thoguh, like any good christian will tell you, values start with family and community, then school. obviously this study is not looking at the lack of support these children are getting from their family or community. just think about all those kids that use computers because they have no one else to interact and grow with (possibly because everyone else is busy or distracted).
to recap. using computers to police language is a time-consuming endeavour that might solve a problem that might be easier solved with better parenting and maybe good tv or the age-old standard, a good book. but, have you noticed how many typos there are in books nowadays? yucky if you ask me.
think of it like this. with the option to go dual gfx core you can still continue to upgrade your gfx card as normal.
BUT if you do not want to spend that much dough, you can always buy a cheaper card and stick it in.
UNLESS this Nvidia SLI thing requires you to have two identical cards in which case many gamers will just get budget to mid-range cards and when newer games come out double up on their cards. either way it means you can upgrade for cheaper but at a price ie power consumption.
that was beautiful. did you come up with that on the spot? reminds me of north american aboriginal religious ways and in particular expressions of their cosmology and specifically concerning nature and place and spirit.
Re:Disconnect and motivation
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The Music Man
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pray tell my friend where else you will find american culture? remember to consider accessibility and motivation to seek out other potential sources for american culture. consider as well the portrayal of american culture by americans abroad whether they are individuals or corporations. please, my friend, tell me again where will we find american culture if it is not in american popular media...
another thing to include would be live voice chat. and the ability to issue voice commands to NPC players on the team.
but the biggest key is to have lots of national and international tournaments. in fact the game servers simply schedule the games you are either there or you miss them. you are allowed to miss a certain number of games before you are benched. or something. literally give the players the illusion that they have a real commitment to the game. this goes beyond the usual fair of mmorpgs where the quests will always be there.
give the games good coverage. i mean really follow these computerized sports games the same way regular sports are followed. if you can get a real news crew, create a digital one with all the bells and whistles.
your primary enemy will be the established sports industry getting worried that more and more people are turning to video games and not caring any more for real sports;p
and if you dont believe me, just imagine it for a moment...
if you have ever played any team-based shooters you will know that everyone can be a star. you just have to make the so-called player classes interesting enough. and with the potential to develop your character, fine-tune skills at the expense of others. collect bonuses for team play and solo contributions and you have the basis for mmo sports games.
you dont even have to necessarily fill each position on a team. another aspect of the game would be sharing skills with NPCs. the better your skills the less costly it is for the NPCs to gain skills. we already know how accurate the computer can be. if we define that accuracy in terms of the actual players on the team you get a team that's only as good as you are willing to invest. and of course you can get drafted for teams with really good NPCs.
the whole point of the mmo is interaction. so long as the potential variability on interaction is kept high you can easily have a Sunday Night Football every thursday with the buddies right before heading out to the bar because friday is the beginning of a long weekend:p
i love the idea. a movie created using the game's engine. a few engine tweaks to squeeze out a few more visuals and some work on the facial expressions, and you have a freakin` movie. actually how much is the doom3 license? how much would a good script cost? how much do voice actors cost? how about graphic artists? what's the production cost of say the simpsons? dirty cheap if you ask me. maybe doom3 fans should unite. create some org where they can send donations with the sole purpose of creating said movie. and actually instead of a movie make it a mini-series ala Dune. distribute the movie using bittorrent 2 months after it is released in theatres. the movie could end up being a sort of mod for doom3. but i should stop now.
i completely agree with you. i was using rhythmbox the other day and i noticed something i considered backwards. to go to the next song you ctl+right. in beep media player and winamp clones its as simple as pressing b.
i like gnome's trend towards task specific applications and interfaces. there are a few things i find a little annoying tho, inconsistencies that shouldnt be there to complete the illusion of consistency, i should write them down some day. but what i find even worse are the keyboard mappings in some of these applications. specifically media apps like totem and rhythmbox.
why not have standard buttons for playing, stopping, pausing, ff, rewinding, playlist management? in fact why doesnt gnome set aside special keyboard shortcuts for standard things much in the same way apps can have standard menus or dialogs? this way any media app developed for gnome can be controlled in the same way, and extra options get their own unique shortcuts that the savvy users will have to research on their own.
maybe learning how to program computers should be a part of grade school education.
we are superior because we respond to these kinds of issues a lot faster than MS does. if IE and firefox were two species of squirrel, firefox would be the one to develop the fire spear first and use it to defend itself against evil hax0r monkeys.
no such thing as complex applications without room for errors.
we do not need 2 modes, we just need to remember a few things:
When you talk about a beginner mode i suspect you are talking about a UI where everything is a simple as possible. while this is a good, it does not necessarily mean the UI is easier to use. things expressed in simplest terms oftem means showing all the work. remember high school algebra? show all the work? its great to learn, but sucks ass because sometimes proofs can take a long time to write down.
your so called expert mode is a mode the user should be able to express their needs as precisely as possible. ultimately the only limitation of a precise interface is how you creatively use this interface to accomplish a task. linux cli is a very good example of this. extremely versatile and precise. but there is nothing simple about the cli.
imo, a GUI will only ever be elegant when precision and simplicity are as close together as possible. just for kicks BeOS had this closeness.
the good thing about elegance is that it can be expressed in terms of style. macosx has its own style of elegance but its measureable if we find a way to measure simplicity and precision of interface options/controls. kde has its own, tho many might argue that kde isnt really elegant. kde spends more energy being precise and not necessarily simple. and gnome is oversimple.
Beep Media Player and Rhythmbox are elegant apps from an interface perspective but they both have different styles which i am suggesting can be measured.
that's exactly right. and what it takes to learn a new UI is to map one's own conceptual experiences on to the object that is represented by the UI.
problems arise with the language. the UI is like an agent representing the programmer/mechanic/etc that designed the software or the car. what this means is that the user communicates with this agent, and if both have languages that are too dissimilar you get the same kinds of language problems that you find when you are in a foreign country with alien customs.
while everyone has a different level of conceptual knowledge, UI designers should pay close attention to universal symbols as well as cultural symbols and their effective uses in the media. after all advertisers must do this if they want people to buy a product. a commercial is a form of education. the most successful advertisers are those able to present the symbols in a way that any viewer can relate to the presentation. software UIs should follow this lead.
IMO the reason mozilla and firefox are successful right now is because they have a tendency towards speed, usability and easy of use. they cater towards standards compliance which relieves content developers to work on their content. if everyone in the web browser business did this, we would see an even greater content explosion than we did during the first few years of the web.
MS and IE are trying for this ideal, but they have their propietary needs to take care of. while IE is sorta fast and usable it simply doesnt reach the level of opera or firefox. those browsers are simply too good at what they do. and they usually link to other common services such as google who only cares about providing the best searching experience.
the point i am trying to make is that firefox works at being the best web browser. google works at being the best search engine. google could not exist without a good web platform, but bundle the two together and you have a really good "web experience". two very specialized projects combined in the right way is much better than the alternative which is IE with MSN.
there is still a lot of work to do in respect of creating the ideal web platform for example the integration of messenger and hotmail and outlook. its a really nice combination and simplifies a lot of work for the user. here to, desktop developers can cater to standards for contacts, bookmarks, etc. the idea is to standardize common protocols and file formats. we already have this with the protocols, but we dont have as much of this in terms of file formats. even if there is no standard, the ability to convert one format into another becomes just as important. the projects that specialize in these fields especially if they are open source will be able to combine with services provided by firefox and google, to create an even better "computing experience".
somehow tho, i dont believe any of this will happen. less work is done to get towards this ideal, and more work is done dicking around. honestly how long would it take to achieve this kind of integration, or format conversion or file format standards? the open source movement need only pick the best formats for a particular job and work on those. create converters for other formats but work with just those.
the converters could be part of the desktop environment making them invisible. an important by-product here is that a user could migrate their preferences and settings to any desktop environment and be able to work immediately. no more need for worrying about compatibility issues between apps. a web page in firefox should open the same way in IE. email should open either in evolution or outlook or what ever other alternative exists out there. the main differences are in personalization, and other things such as speed, usability, and ease of use. i mean, it makes more sense to use the fastest tool.
more people will use firefox because of this until IE can move towards this ideal. and from a business point of view, you get to focus on the real money maker and that is content whether in the form of online music, or online movies, or online games, or online books or whatever. i mean do corporations like MS really believe that a standards compliant DRM that was maintained by a neutral third party would not become accepted? when users worry less about the desktop environment and their web platforms, they will only care about their access to their content. somepeople will always be loyal to Apple, others to MS and other still to Linux. in an ideal world, if MS was a content publisher they wouldnt have to worry as much where or how the user is accessing the content, and worry more about making sure that the user has the proper access rights for the content.
there has never been much money in the desktop or the web platform unless you cornered the entire market. the only way to make money in the long term would be to lock the computer, the desktop, and the web. MS doesnt have a lock on the computer, a partial lock on the desktop, and a p
i have to admit, that in posting i was really just dumping an idea. and honestly it makes sense to me to have a test like that. what i realize now though is that the issue needs to be looked into a little bit more and not from a scientific point of view, but a cultural or maybe even from a religious context.
in some cultures animals are equals to humans. in others humans have dominion over all animals. i believe the general consensus is that humans are higher than animals but i personally would suggest a shift where at the very least animals are viewed as active participants in the world.
what you are saying does not show how it is a bad test. in fact it supports the notion that such animals, in fact anything that we commonly call an animal is self-aware and aware of their surroundings. such animals are capable of building complex maps of their worlds and to use such maps to achieve their goals. not only does this show they are self-aware it also shows that they possess more then rudimentary intelligence. understanding how they are capable of all this could lead us to languages that are better designed to help communicate with such animals. just remember that babies respond better to baby-talk than they do regular speech.
the idea of the test is whether we can consciously act against our instincts. when you say, "animals, often endure discomfort and pain in pursuit of other goals", doesn't that sound like animals are able to act against their instincts regardless of the intensity of the stimulus triggering their instinctive reaction or the intensity of the stimulus derived in part from their maps of the world triggering their chosen action? id say it does.
dogs seem to have the prerequisite components for the kind of self-awareness that humans have. whether theirs is as developed might be the difference between human level intelligence and canine.
we also can not discount human emotion and its uses in decision making. at an emotional level, humans and dogs often communicate just fine, where i define fine as a bond, or a relationship almost as strong and as complicated as the friendships people develop with other people. this is not saying that this proves that dogs are people, but that dogs use a similar enough emotional language to humans that meaingful communication at that level is very possible. contrast this with a doll, unless the dolls emotional expressiveness is adaptable to circumstances i wouldnt say that a doll can communicate emotionally with a human being. but a human being can still project such feels on a doll. it is a one-sided relationship (or maybe a more spiritual one). with a dog it is different, because they express right back at you in their own often unique yet canine way. please believe.
there is a test for self-awareness. i saw it in a movie called Dune. the scene with the gomjibar and the pain box. in the movie tho i think the test was used to see if you were human vs animal. apparently animals react to instinct and withdraw. but humans that have the ability to choose hot to respond with any given stimulus can choose to keep their hand in the pain box even while their bodies are signalling a withdrawal.
this isnt a test of one's pain tolerance, simply a test of the human ability to choose how to respond in a given situation. the self-awareness test will likely be a derivation of this test.
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i agree. start distributing major open source packages as bittorrents. try tampering with that. and the best part is that exploiting bittorrent will make it even more resilient to attack.
as i see it, rights and freedoms simply set the context for a person to explore nature and themselves.
any AI that was given such rights and did bad things like kill people would be terminated so many times over (Buthlerian Jihad people!)that it would be in their interest learn to conform while developping their own identity to the fullest of their potential. maybe human beings will sober up as well and realize that even tho God told us to be like cancer, destroying our host's body is also our destruction. somethings are better left in symbiosis.
AI can learn from us and we can from AI. it is either that or nothing. because IF we are wrong and deny AI rights and freedoms, its history repeating itself. another sign that we have not grown up at all.
but if we deny AI rights, i hope to God that AI never gets the chance to recreate itself using a biological matrix. even worse if it decides to use all the accumulated knowledge of the human genome to design a machine identical to humanity. the case of walking into a brick wall which we continue to deny actually exists.
i would agree with this. but imagine if this we're a malicious kid. or some foreign government.
we've all watched CSI: they always make up theories that explain the evidence. if your prints or DNA show up at a crime scene your are implicated. they will take you in, ask you questions until their are satisfied that you were just passing by earlier and had nothing to do with the crime.
what it seems NASA did is ask the kid what he did, he told them what he did and probably how he did it. they didnt need to locate the problem because they know where it is. they just fix and patch it. and the patching is something they should have done as part of their securing-the-system policy regardless of what this kid did. im sorry but the if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix policy is for poor poor poor as in 3rd world poor IT depts.
but nasa didnt stop there: they had to ensure the system was not contaminated. this is where i can understand all those damages. but honestly: this should again have been part of the normal policy. what really scares me is that just normal maintenance seems to cost so much. this looks like an outrageous fixed cost if you ask me.
ok, while verifying your entire system might not be a foolproof method, it works well enough that you could tell if a system was contaminated or not. unless some other cracker piggy backed on this kids work, and then caused some damages nasa could not directly pin on the kid so they fatten the cost. if they had not reason to believe the system was further compromised why does it still cost so much?
i guess if you are a crime scene and even after your investigation has found the murder weapon and the murderer and you have explained all the relevant details every suspect is a suspect and they should be detained right? when your methodology makes you constantly paranoid of your own systems i think there is a problem here. i dont know how but im sure your paranoia will be your downfall.
say a vulnerability is posted on the web and it happens to affect your systems. how much does it cost you to get your IT department to locate, fix, and patch the problem?
let's further assume that the party that posted the vulnerability is being purposefully uncooperative. but they agreed to get the vulnerability tested independently by a third party who also happens to be uncooperative. how much does it cost your IT department?
i havent got a clue. but 200k seems like a lot. it would seem that keeping a network secure is very expensive business. and i agree that this is true for physical installations, but digital? i mean seriously. unless of course you are over working your staff who also answer all the phones for tech support in-house making it impossible to manage their time or actually do the work they were hired for in the first place. but 200k for a bug? jesus.
i feel really bad for nasa. no matter what system you use there will be bugs and even when that is not the case a system can be badly configured. if each of these issues costs on average 100k (just a guess) to "locate, fix, and patch" can you imagine how much money is going into IT departments right now? or how much money is going into the IT industry? its like paying the plumber 4 times (just a guess) more than his already expensive rates (apparently there is a shortage of plumbers) and honestly believing that this is the way the world should work.
for crying out loud people. what exactly did this kid do? "shutdown -h now"? and it takes 15minutes to boot up? i mean sorry guys, but maybe you should be protecting your system a little better. i always tell myself. if a teenager can pull a prank like this one there are two things you should do. punish the teenager the way we punish any teenager for a prank like this (which they have sort of done). secondly, get some help securing your systems because a foreign nation will not be looking for space to store movies. they will be out there looking to cripple your systems and not necessarily permanently, 30mins could be critical for a crack squad tectical unit and if it is as easy as just shutting down a server......
ps. to be fair, it could be that restarting the system as part of their "locate, fix, and patch" program takes a lot of time (more than 10 minutes?). there again my friends i would suggest a better system to reduce your costs. this has nothing to do with me believing you shouldnt punish this guy. but quit posting damages that could have been avoided if you spent a little more time designing a better system that met your needs. if google can do it i am sure you can too.
if it takes so long to restart your system even during normal maintenance then build redudancy for your production environment. if this is really just about your personal inconvience then remember you are a plumber and that crap cloggin the pipe is your job.
they are dead. we all need to move on. what should replace them are what i call the micropress. note this is just an idea, no cost analysis has gone into this, though i think in conjunction with national/government news releases and national lottery-blah-blahs such a booth could end up costing next to nothing.
the idea is that newspapers get printed on demand. and the best part is that users of the micropress can print a selection of articles from internet and old-style print papers.
users would go to their usual corner stores and buy newspaper subscription cards which could either be the size of a credit card or memory sticks (like those used in digital cameras).
these cards store a users publication preferences as well as some form of digital money. the user slots the card into the micropress and either modifies their preferences and pay though the corner store system or just print out their daily paper.
to further subsidize the micropress, a google-style aggregator could also provide recommended articles based on a users selection. so even if a user isnt interested in world issues (which is unlikely) those articles can still be recommended because to some degree they can and do affect local issues as well.
the micropress is really just a glorified web browser that filters out everything else on the internet and only displays news sites and possibly even certain blogs. who determines the news? a consortium made up of both the private and public sector and maybe even sanctioned by the government (hello china).
what do you all think? how many of you actually go out of your way to read a newspaper? and i am not talking about picking one up that is lying around in a coffee shop.
is what cringley had to say. the whole cheap PC china thing should have been the side note.
computers are not a nexus of distraction like its made out to be. tv, books, or just about anything that can use your attention is a potential point of distraction. maybe we should all live a simpler life. maybe the amish have it right... yea, i think not.
as a linguist i can tell you this. a computer can never teach a human being language. not unless such a computer as an exhaustive account of grammar. to produce such a database i guess is on par with mapping out the human genome. it is simply too difficult for a computer to follow the infinite variety of sentential constructions a human speaker can come up with.
that said, i do not entirely disagree with your idea to use computers to help people focus their language skills. i just think it would require too much effort.
computers are not a substitute for good parenting or a good education. they can be used to focus the process of teaching and learning, but in and of themselves make poor developmental tools (and this is just my guess as i am not a child psychologist).
still computers can be a learning experience in and of themselves. a properly designed OS will always lead to greater insight about the inner workings of the so-called digital world. any one that grew up "playing" with a unix or unix-variant can attest to this. and i am pretty sure that if studies were done, it would show that those individuals tend to have a different view of gagdetry at large.
still thoguh, like any good christian will tell you, values start with family and community, then school. obviously this study is not looking at the lack of support these children are getting from their family or community. just think about all those kids that use computers because they have no one else to interact and grow with (possibly because everyone else is busy or distracted).
to recap. using computers to police language is a time-consuming endeavour that might solve a problem that might be easier solved with better parenting and maybe good tv or the age-old standard, a good book. but, have you noticed how many typos there are in books nowadays? yucky if you ask me.
ps. i am an anti-grammar nazi.
Where is the "Use Coral Cache" extension when you need it?
how easy is it to build a station that deep underwater? even if it is assembled on land, but installing it down there....it can't be easy...can it?
think of it like this. with the option to go dual gfx core you can still continue to upgrade your gfx card as normal.
BUT if you do not want to spend that much dough, you can always buy a cheaper card and stick it in.
UNLESS this Nvidia SLI thing requires you to have two identical cards in which case many gamers will just get budget to mid-range cards and when newer games come out double up on their cards. either way it means you can upgrade for cheaper but at a price ie power consumption.
that was beautiful. did you come up with that on the spot? reminds me of north american aboriginal religious ways and in particular expressions of their cosmology and specifically concerning nature and place and spirit.
pray tell my friend where else you will find american culture? remember to consider accessibility and motivation to seek out other potential sources for american culture. consider as well the portrayal of american culture by americans abroad whether they are individuals or corporations. please, my friend, tell me again where will we find american culture if it is not in american popular media...
another thing to include would be live voice chat. and the ability to issue voice commands to NPC players on the team. but the biggest key is to have lots of national and international tournaments. in fact the game servers simply schedule the games you are either there or you miss them. you are allowed to miss a certain number of games before you are benched. or something. literally give the players the illusion that they have a real commitment to the game. this goes beyond the usual fair of mmorpgs where the quests will always be there. give the games good coverage. i mean really follow these computerized sports games the same way regular sports are followed. if you can get a real news crew, create a digital one with all the bells and whistles. your primary enemy will be the established sports industry getting worried that more and more people are turning to video games and not caring any more for real sports ;p
and if you dont believe me, just imagine it for a moment...
if you have ever played any team-based shooters you will know that everyone can be a star. you just have to make the so-called player classes interesting enough. and with the potential to develop your character, fine-tune skills at the expense of others. collect bonuses for team play and solo contributions and you have the basis for mmo sports games.
:p
you dont even have to necessarily fill each position on a team. another aspect of the game would be sharing skills with NPCs. the better your skills the less costly it is for the NPCs to gain skills. we already know how accurate the computer can be. if we define that accuracy in terms of the actual players on the team you get a team that's only as good as you are willing to invest. and of course you can get drafted for teams with really good NPCs.
the whole point of the mmo is interaction. so long as the potential variability on interaction is kept high you can easily have a Sunday Night Football every thursday with the buddies right before heading out to the bar because friday is the beginning of a long weekend
i love the idea. a movie created using the game's engine. a few engine tweaks to squeeze out a few more visuals and some work on the facial expressions, and you have a freakin` movie. actually how much is the doom3 license? how much would a good script cost? how much do voice actors cost? how about graphic artists? what's the production cost of say the simpsons? dirty cheap if you ask me. maybe doom3 fans should unite. create some org where they can send donations with the sole purpose of creating said movie. and actually instead of a movie make it a mini-series ala Dune. distribute the movie using bittorrent 2 months after it is released in theatres. the movie could end up being a sort of mod for doom3. but i should stop now.
thanks for the tip :)
i completely agree with you. i was using rhythmbox the other day and i noticed something i considered backwards. to go to the next song you ctl+right. in beep media player and winamp clones its as simple as pressing b.
i like gnome's trend towards task specific applications and interfaces. there are a few things i find a little annoying tho, inconsistencies that shouldnt be there to complete the illusion of consistency, i should write them down some day. but what i find even worse are the keyboard mappings in some of these applications. specifically media apps like totem and rhythmbox.
why not have standard buttons for playing, stopping, pausing, ff, rewinding, playlist management? in fact why doesnt gnome set aside special keyboard shortcuts for standard things much in the same way apps can have standard menus or dialogs? this way any media app developed for gnome can be controlled in the same way, and extra options get their own unique shortcuts that the savvy users will have to research on their own.
maybe learning how to program computers should be a part of grade school education.
we are superior because we respond to these kinds of issues a lot faster than MS does. if IE and firefox were two species of squirrel, firefox would be the one to develop the fire spear first and use it to defend itself against evil hax0r monkeys.
no such thing as complex applications without room for errors.
we do not need 2 modes, we just need to remember a few things:
When you talk about a beginner mode i suspect you are talking about a UI where everything is a simple as possible. while this is a good, it does not necessarily mean the UI is easier to use. things expressed in simplest terms oftem means showing all the work. remember high school algebra? show all the work? its great to learn, but sucks ass because sometimes proofs can take a long time to write down.
your so called expert mode is a mode the user should be able to express their needs as precisely as possible. ultimately the only limitation of a precise interface is how you creatively use this interface to accomplish a task. linux cli is a very good example of this. extremely versatile and precise. but there is nothing simple about the cli.
imo, a GUI will only ever be elegant when precision and simplicity are as close together as possible. just for kicks BeOS had this closeness.
the good thing about elegance is that it can be expressed in terms of style. macosx has its own style of elegance but its measureable if we find a way to measure simplicity and precision of interface options/controls. kde has its own, tho many might argue that kde isnt really elegant. kde spends more energy being precise and not necessarily simple. and gnome is oversimple.
Beep Media Player and Rhythmbox are elegant apps from an interface perspective but they both have different styles which i am suggesting can be measured.
that's exactly right. and what it takes to learn a new UI is to map one's own conceptual experiences on to the object that is represented by the UI.
problems arise with the language. the UI is like an agent representing the programmer/mechanic/etc that designed the software or the car. what this means is that the user communicates with this agent, and if both have languages that are too dissimilar you get the same kinds of language problems that you find when you are in a foreign country with alien customs.
while everyone has a different level of conceptual knowledge, UI designers should pay close attention to universal symbols as well as cultural symbols and their effective uses in the media. after all advertisers must do this if they want people to buy a product. a commercial is a form of education. the most successful advertisers are those able to present the symbols in a way that any viewer can relate to the presentation. software UIs should follow this lead.
IMO the reason mozilla and firefox are successful right now is because they have a tendency towards speed, usability and easy of use. they cater towards standards compliance which relieves content developers to work on their content. if everyone in the web browser business did this, we would see an even greater content explosion than we did during the first few years of the web.
MS and IE are trying for this ideal, but they have their propietary needs to take care of. while IE is sorta fast and usable it simply doesnt reach the level of opera or firefox. those browsers are simply too good at what they do. and they usually link to other common services such as google who only cares about providing the best searching experience.
the point i am trying to make is that firefox works at being the best web browser. google works at being the best search engine. google could not exist without a good web platform, but bundle the two together and you have a really good "web experience". two very specialized projects combined in the right way is much better than the alternative which is IE with MSN.
there is still a lot of work to do in respect of creating the ideal web platform for example the integration of messenger and hotmail and outlook. its a really nice combination and simplifies a lot of work for the user. here to, desktop developers can cater to standards for contacts, bookmarks, etc. the idea is to standardize common protocols and file formats. we already have this with the protocols, but we dont have as much of this in terms of file formats. even if there is no standard, the ability to convert one format into another becomes just as important. the projects that specialize in these fields especially if they are open source will be able to combine with services provided by firefox and google, to create an even better "computing experience".
somehow tho, i dont believe any of this will happen. less work is done to get towards this ideal, and more work is done dicking around. honestly how long would it take to achieve this kind of integration, or format conversion or file format standards? the open source movement need only pick the best formats for a particular job and work on those. create converters for other formats but work with just those.
the converters could be part of the desktop environment making them invisible. an important by-product here is that a user could migrate their preferences and settings to any desktop environment and be able to work immediately. no more need for worrying about compatibility issues between apps. a web page in firefox should open the same way in IE. email should open either in evolution or outlook or what ever other alternative exists out there. the main differences are in personalization, and other things such as speed, usability, and ease of use. i mean, it makes more sense to use the fastest tool.
more people will use firefox because of this until IE can move towards this ideal. and from a business point of view, you get to focus on the real money maker and that is content whether in the form of online music, or online movies, or online games, or online books or whatever. i mean do corporations like MS really believe that a standards compliant DRM that was maintained by a neutral third party would not become accepted? when users worry less about the desktop environment and their web platforms, they will only care about their access to their content. somepeople will always be loyal to Apple, others to MS and other still to Linux. in an ideal world, if MS was a content publisher they wouldnt have to worry as much where or how the user is accessing the content, and worry more about making sure that the user has the proper access rights for the content.
there has never been much money in the desktop or the web platform unless you cornered the entire market. the only way to make money in the long term would be to lock the computer, the desktop, and the web. MS doesnt have a lock on the computer, a partial lock on the desktop, and a p
in some cultures animals are equals to humans. in others humans have dominion over all animals. i believe the general consensus is that humans are higher than animals but i personally would suggest a shift where at the very least animals are viewed as active participants in the world.
what you are saying does not show how it is a bad test. in fact it supports the notion that such animals, in fact anything that we commonly call an animal is self-aware and aware of their surroundings. such animals are capable of building complex maps of their worlds and to use such maps to achieve their goals. not only does this show they are self-aware it also shows that they possess more then rudimentary intelligence. understanding how they are capable of all this could lead us to languages that are better designed to help communicate with such animals. just remember that babies respond better to baby-talk than they do regular speech. the idea of the test is whether we can consciously act against our instincts. when you say, "animals, often endure discomfort and pain in pursuit of other goals", doesn't that sound like animals are able to act against their instincts regardless of the intensity of the stimulus triggering their instinctive reaction or the intensity of the stimulus derived in part from their maps of the world triggering their chosen action? id say it does. dogs seem to have the prerequisite components for the kind of self-awareness that humans have. whether theirs is as developed might be the difference between human level intelligence and canine. we also can not discount human emotion and its uses in decision making. at an emotional level, humans and dogs often communicate just fine, where i define fine as a bond, or a relationship almost as strong and as complicated as the friendships people develop with other people. this is not saying that this proves that dogs are people, but that dogs use a similar enough emotional language to humans that meaingful communication at that level is very possible. contrast this with a doll, unless the dolls emotional expressiveness is adaptable to circumstances i wouldnt say that a doll can communicate emotionally with a human being. but a human being can still project such feels on a doll. it is a one-sided relationship (or maybe a more spiritual one). with a dog it is different, because they express right back at you in their own often unique yet canine way. please believe.
there is a test for self-awareness. i saw it in a movie called Dune. the scene with the gomjibar and the pain box. in the movie tho i think the test was used to see if you were human vs animal. apparently animals react to instinct and withdraw. but humans that have the ability to choose hot to respond with any given stimulus can choose to keep their hand in the pain box even while their bodies are signalling a withdrawal.
this isnt a test of one's pain tolerance, simply a test of the human ability to choose how to respond in a given situation. the self-awareness test will likely be a derivation of this test.