"These days, if my parents buy a computer from anywhere that isn't a big box store, they expect it to come pre-loaded with software - even though they havn't paid for it. Otherwise, the computer doesn't "work", and they've asked them to fix it. That is the price for their customer loyalty (and money)."
Ironically enough, the oldbies and technically avoidant / illiterate are part of the reason why computers and the market cannot advance too far, the market must cater to the median technical ability, which sadly, isn't that much. Even with new kids, the way average people have to interact with computers is for the most part frustrating. Which it shouldn't be but we're not quite there yet with security, usability, aesthetics, design and speed all in one just yet.
Not only that but IP industry is the horse and buggy industry of the 21st century, why exactly do these people deserve our protection? Should we have protected the horse and buggy industry from going obsolete?
These people cannot stand their industries getting hit because they love the money, no one cried when manual labor was devalued to near nothing, why should we cry for these people? Supply and demand is harsh and that's why it works.
In any other area if we were capable of replicating matter and energy for food so entire industries would collapse over night, they would be seen as horrible people from trying to stop such technology from being used by people.
Why exactly is this any different? Again: Why should we protect the horse and buggy industry, why do they deserve favoritism when so many other people do not get such things? (i.e. everyone who is or has to work for low wages because of supply and demand).
Supply and demand is only obeyed inconsistently by these people, seems rather contradictory to me.
To put it another way, when we detect something we detect a surface partially or wholly, and if it's a surface, it has structure, and if it has structure it is... geometry!
If you feel I am incorrect please point out where I made the error.
"Except the real world is the real world and we usually play games to not be in the real world. Also, not all games are based on repetition."
Note I was talking about interpreting what is actually happening (what we interpret and call repetition) as cycles (i.e. not absolutely repetitive in the absolute sense) but in a general sense, you get up, you got to work, you go to the bathroom, not at the same time every day, etc. Same happens with games, you get an input (something moves/changes) you respond, rinse, wash, repeat.
Input, output is a cycle, and it is repetitive, in goes the input, out goes the behaviour for each frame or serious of frames of time.
"Singleplayer games don't usually have repetition in the MMORPG sense."
You are correct, what I really dislike about MMORPG's is they cannot yet effectively do action RPG's, or combine multiple genre's effectively. Not only that they rely on non-twitch skills, it's going to be horribly repetitive because of the fact that you really aren't doing much beside navigating and clicking menu buttons (it's almost all automated I mean). It's so easy anyone can do it. Hence the $$$, but also the mediocrity.
"As far as WoW goes, the content doesn't suck but going through it multiple times is undoubtedly boring."
Games are based on repetition (that is cycling), almost every action you do in the real world is cyclical (thinking, moving, navigating, etc).
Just think of you day and compare it to the next day, there's good repetition (fighting games, etc) and there's bad repetition. How many of us here watched really good movies more then once? If something is good we will constantly repeat it, like sex, it's all based on the kinds of psychological rewards we get from the activity.
The idea that repetitive "is bad" totally misunderstand what we are really talking about -- cycles, there are good ones, you fill up, then you get bored and move on, and bad ones, they suck and you don't want to do them.
"You have it backwards... and this paragraph ruins your speech. You're like one of the people who tries to come up with a new theory of light particles because it "makes sense" to yourself."
I am a mathematician doing research in the areas of logic and cognitive linguistics thank you very much. I do research and I'm far far ahead of your lower cognitive status. Tell me when you look at a piece of paper with a black square on it, how do you know the distinct square is different from the all white paper? Distinction is the creation of the concept of object, all conceptions are derived from the world of nature's geometry. If you don't believe such you are simply ignorant and quite mad and miseducated. Most importantly I can demonstrate it logically. Come wise one, come to our group... let us see how wise you are.
"The thing is, today we have the knowledge and complexity to fire up kilowatt systems and more - but they're costly running. Certainly there's the extreme hardcore gamers who won't mind running the hottest, most powerhungry quad crossfire system, but they're few and far between."
I think this is a misinformed statement personally, not intentionally as a slant against you but, gamers are one of the few driving the technology in many key area's of research : World simulation, A.I., etc, "Games" are misnomers for the enormous amount of subjects in which "games" (simulations) are advancing our knowledge by leaps and bounds. Not only that many of us contribute our CPU power to mass distributing computing projects (Set@home, folding@home, etc) that help the people who are designing massive parralel internet computing via GPU's and CPU's in it's own right, which is really in it's infancy. I'd love to see shared computing in OS's by default and turned on for things like folding@home, and things we genuinely need like more scientific research, with an "opt out" button, should anyone not want to do so.
Much of the CPU/GPU power in the world goes unused for the electricity they ocnsume. I'd love to see when computers are idle in such a way that they are naturally used to solve problems by default when the computer is idling.
Most people are too stupid or ignorant to figure out how to donate their time or setup internet computing to help speed up research in many areas. I've wondered why microsoft hasn't done this with their screen-savers, with certain organizations like medicine, biology, physics, enregy, etc.
Next, all games are serious hardcore engineering and simulations. I've thought about modelling economic phenomena via sattelite and have it read directly into a 'game', so that we can see it in real time and using susbtitution study the flows of money as fields of energy. So you can actually observe the behaviour of money and slow down the transactions over time, like how you can with an MP3 or wave file with MP3 playing software that allows you to adjust the speed of the song, pause, go back and forth in time.
There is not enough visualization of what is going on IMHO in many areas of research, math is merely a description of geometric and spatial relationships in the real world, anything that has structure of any kind (information, etc) is geometric whether this is realized or not, the fact is most people are not great at symbolic processing, but they are very good at what comes naturally: Vision.
Our computers IMHO are in the dark ages, butttons, widgest, etc... they can't recognize our voices, predict what we will type or say, and most importantly they can't even act as secretaries or organizers of our life...
In short the suck! Computers will one day be able to do teh job of secretaries, and clerks, and wouldn't that be great if programming reached such an amazing level that we could have software agent's do the grunt work for us instead of having to waste time doing all the boring shit because the computer is too stupid?
There is never enough computing power, and people who think so are painfully naive. computing power = more powerful applications = more power to make things easier to use and asbtract away the machine and have hte machine interact in more human and autonomous ways instead of a machine a slave to fixed programming.
Sooner or later we will have programs that program themselves, evolve and adapt themselves, and we will be amazed at the stuff that they can do, this won't happen without the hardware.
"completely new architecture either. Intel representatives disclosed that Nehalem 'shares a significant portion of the P6 gene pool,"
That's like saying equations share a significant portion of numbers gene pool. It's all geometry when you get down to it. I mean really, there are going to be certain circuit geometries that are always good to use and whom you can't totally get away from.
... but make sure you are backwards compatabile with plugins.
Do not use nag screens, they do not work, just update the program behind the scenes, I've done security for users before and it's like the guys who make stuff just don't get how 99% of the people operate -- they won't update their shit, unless it interferes with content they want to browse or use.
The majorit of users cannot be counted on to update their stuff, if you have a nag screen it should be to "turn off auto update", and recommended "only for advanced users", then we can see how many dumb people are out there who turn it off.
The thing I've hated about firefox is that whenever a new version comes out I have to wait for all the plugins to be updated, this is total CRAP. They need to do something about the plugin issue, it's why I held onto old versions of firefox for so long. That and not all plugins play nicely together (which sucks).
"The only way to safeguard privacy in a world where ever more intrusive collection mechanisms, mass storage and automated processing of data is possible is to have a default policy that personal data cannot be held and then work on the exceptions."
It is IMPOSSIBLE to have privacy in a world of high technology, you leave breadcrumbs everywhere, everything you interact with can be recorded, you leave heat signatures in the air or skin cells on surfaces and trash that if someone really wanted they could collect, if they were persistent enough. (i.e. just look at what the the paparazzi will do for money)
They got UAV's now that can fly over your house and see through walls if they really wanted to, they have sattelites that can see into the ground to find hidden hardened installations.
What is one going to do about the sattelites in space or people with camera phones, or webcams, glass cams, the massification of spy equipment, pointed out of their windows or on their persons? I've personally thought myself about wishing I had glasses with hidden camera on them undetectable built into the lenses so people couldn't lie to me, or lie in court if bad shit happened.
You can't even hope to stop them all. David brin, I believe was right on the money: We're going to have to get used to things being public all the time.
"It just seems bizarre to me how many people think it's normal to give out their password to family/friends/partners/whatever. I've never revealed a password to anyone in my life and never will, and my really important ones get changed regularly. Is that really so terribly unusual?"
Yes, most people are ignorant and convenience trumps security.
As expected from an AC.... no it's not women's fault, people totally misinterpreted my post and it got flagged, as usual, if something goes against the mainstream it gets flagged as troll.
"that you are describing is addiction, and buddy, it's nobody's fault but your own."
Bullshit it's no ones fault they are born a man and they socialize for a long time and go months without sex, obviously people here at slashdot have no background in criminology, you see different types of sex crimes for a whole host of different reasons.
"Your assertions boil down to 'it's the fault of the female sex that that woman get raped, because some other woman should've been around for the rapist to fuck instead'."
No they don't, note what I said: Hooker subsidy, or was this totally lost on you? i.e. disabled men and women have a much harder then the average person in maintaining relationships.
"Nobody is responsible for your physical well-being but yourself...."
Bla bla bla bla bla a bunch of western selfish-individualist anti-scientific nonsense, this was the whole point for subsidizing sex industry. Is a kid responsible for being born? or perhaps this (link below) kid should just "be responsible for his growth?", should a kid be responsible for having hormmones and a penis, how about his eyesight and ability to hear, or how about a large portion of his intelligence? Or maybe you should just hold in you shit and piss for the rest of your life? There is so much human being's can not control, and so much they don't know.
"Not only that, how does going from ONE nagging wife to TWO nagging wives make for longevity??"
It's not the nagging, it's the availability and frequency of sex and social support mechanisms knowing more people, being physically intimate with more people = deeper physiological relationships. Whenever I've been in bad relationships I've always been stressed out because of sex, everything else is secondary. To me (and probably a lot of other guys) when you don't get sex it's like your starving and it makes you agitated, depressed, angry, until you get some. It's like going hungry, it really really sucks.
It's also the reason why men commit sexual crimes, in our society men who have social issues and can't get laid very often are prone in their sexual frustration to commit crimes. The truth is, it's not the men's fault either. Its biologically wired into them from birth, it's just as bad as rape IMHO to deny men intimate contact for long periods of time. It's a kind of slow torture and it's cruel to those men and I wish that people would realize that. I would subsidize prostitutes if I could, we'd prevent the problem before they happened. Whether men realize it or not, sex is one of the primary ways of how we feel loved and recharged, and it's not good to go without sex for long periods of time unless your purposely training/trying to master yourself for some reason or your natural physiology doesn't make you feel awful. For most of us, it's torture to go without sex. Like slowly starving to death, and I wish people in the west and especially women realized that and were compassionate to do something about it.
The culture of the west has inherited a lot of strange behaviour and cultural ways of behaviong from are religious ancestors (christnaity, in north america), etc, puritanism. I mean we've seen all this kind of nonsense before in the 1800's where people thought masturbation needed to be "cured" and not that long ago homosexuals as socially degenerate / mentally ill / disturbed.
"Put it this way, if it was a disparate CPU multiprocessor board, and the summary said "Perhaps my p4 will now be useful again", everyone would be laughing."
I'm sure the article was referring to using same generation tech with different GPU's, and the the fact that you could use cards of different speeds/generations was just a spin off, unless there is actually some kind of application where this is useful.
"It's a shame when a studio that is at least trying something different goes under."'
I'd like to deal with this statement, because it implies "If only games were different (i.e. creative), then somehow this implies difference is awesome".
I don't buy a word of it, the problem with hellgate was that it was a diablo rip off in 3D, and a poor one at that. It copied many aspects of diablo but lost the experience of diablo.
The whole point of hellgate was "spiritual diablo clone", it was all over the gaming news when they left, everyone was thinking they were going to make a 3D diablo that was awesome. The fact was the gameplay didn't cross over into 3D. There have been many games that have suffered such fates. Blizzard got it right by NOT following hellgates (full 3D interaction) path and that is why Diablo 3 will most likely sell more and turn out more favorable reviews then hellgate, just because you have the skills to develop a game, does not mean you know how to develop a gaming experience.
There are developers that know how to develop entertaining gaming experience, and their are dev's that just know how to make games without a decent ability to judge whether or not what they are developing is exciting, interesting and entertaining and doesn't suck.
This is a big problem in the industry as far as I'm concerned, there is just too many clueless people (pub's and developers) about how to build entertainment. I think the biggest problem is still the technology. There is so much time and money consuming technical engineering that it overtakes the money and time needed to develop the entertainment aspect. Too much on art and engines, not enough on developing interesting things and connecting them with skill.
Striking a balance is hard, I agree, but that's the business you're really in: Entertainment. Game developers have to be good at knowing entertainment as well as engineering. It's hard, no doubt... and sometimes you just want to keep trying just doing your own thing (which is also valid) but if you want to do your own thing, you got to go back to small time games and understand what aspects of both the art, and the interaction of the objects, makes the game. Some indie game developers know this, they know what is wrong with the industry.
"And there is another issue too: Who is going to write these open source textbooks? "
Very easy, if we take wiki concept and apply it to textbooks every teacher of X subject can contribute, I've thought about making a project website about this very thing and having interested students and professors give the big "fuck you" to people trying to rape kids of money for their education, ideally education should be free, that was the whole concept behind libraries. i.e. publically funded.
We really have gotten away from self-teaching (self-taught), and the net is bringing it back, and thank god! I'm sure many slashdotters already realize: All teachers can do is present us with information and give us feedback, we ultimately teach ourselves, and teachers are more of guide's and then being able to 'make' someone smart who is not interested in learning.
"A dog can change direction. A paramecium (single-celled organism covered in cilia) can change direction. Do dogs and paramecia have Free Will?"
They must have a bit of it, if they can detect their own existence and other existents, i.e. a 'small bit of it'. Or simply a small piece, or low resolution free will.
Think of it this way: Humans are made of tiny cells that conglomerate, but they eventually become conscious, that potential must exist previously, therefore it makes sense to think of consciousness as a gradient.
i.e little bit, then more, then more, etc. My real problem though is with navigation, and being able to detect that you are you (i.e. you are distinct from other things, you see your own reflection and know it is you, even though it is distinct from you in time and place, and not some other entity)
I think the navigation and the mirror experiment (I recognize myself) would be the best example of free will... think of clay zombie, it can interact with things but it cannot recognize itself, and it can only follow a single path at any one time, and the only way it can change path is if something bumps into it.
Define free will and define 'determinism' what and which determinism?
What's the difference between a ball and a human? A human can change it's direction a ball can't, how exactly do humans not have free will here, and most importantly is the concept of "Free will" coherently defined? What is meant by free will, what is meant by "determined"?
If our genetic engineering sciences were advanced enough, we could make fairies and unicorns, would that prove we have fee will? taking a subjective idea and actually making it in reality? i.e. a car didn't exist before we created it, but the stuff the car is made of pre-existing the car, so all aspects of the idea of a car must be derived from pre-existing reality.
I always hate these discussions because no one can really define their terms correctly, anyone want to hae a go at it?
Well something like that, if you made it too thin it would also be ugly, there is some median symmetry, which if you deviate from (too large/too small) you get ugly. There is some statistical ideal each part of the face can have before it deviates too much.
Just like too fat vs too thin (i.e. starving kid in africa vs a fat person).
"Sorry guys, but it's time for you to go back to marketing school. Using brand recognition for a product that does not represent the brand will only devalue the brand."
The problem is not just marketing, it's the desire for constant growth of ones 'customer base' (i.e. advertisers). In a fragmentd market in which your 'customers' (in this case us) needs are radically different. This is where profit gives way to mediocrity, we've seen this before where a site tries to "mainstream itself" to appeal to everyone in the eternal quest for growth, it is my humble opinion that some businesses should simply stick to what the are good at, and if costs keep rising, they have to creatively find ways to cut costs rather then jepordizing losing the business. Or simply just close the business and move on if more profit is what is being sought.
Because when profit gives way to mediocrity the business then ends up pleasing nobody "jack of all trades master of none" effect, because different groups of people and seek different things.
I really hated how he never dealt with the scarcity argument, games are abundant, not scarce, hence according to supply and demand, they shouldn't be able to make money (technically) but they do anyway.
"You lost me there, I'm not sure what you mean. Can you paint an example?"
I mean that knowing what is a genuine mistake from what isn't, is difficult, see my post in relation to the poster that asked about math, see Kjella's post then see my reply.
Knowing who is wrong is not easy, there have been plenty of people who thought someone was mistaken when they were not in many cases in history. There are genuine obvious mistakes but then there are mistakes, that aren't, just that people aren't good enough to realize that they aren't.
There are also many ways of looking at a problem also, there are problems where there isn't really one answer, so a unique solution may look like a 'mistake', when it is really another way of looking at things.
"The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what no body yet has thought about that which everyone sees.... But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1818)
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Max Planck, 1920)"
Slashdot Mirror
"These days, if my parents buy a computer from anywhere that isn't a big box store, they expect it to come pre-loaded with software - even though they havn't paid for it. Otherwise, the computer doesn't "work", and they've asked them to fix it. That is the price for their customer loyalty (and money)."
Ironically enough, the oldbies and technically avoidant / illiterate are part of the reason why computers and the market cannot advance too far, the market must cater to the median technical ability, which sadly, isn't that much. Even with new kids, the way average people have to interact with computers is for the most part frustrating. Which it shouldn't be but we're not quite there yet with security, usability, aesthetics, design and speed all in one just yet.
Not only that but IP industry is the horse and buggy industry of the 21st century, why exactly do these people deserve our protection? Should we have protected the horse and buggy industry from going obsolete?
These people cannot stand their industries getting hit because they love the money, no one cried when manual labor was devalued to near nothing, why should we cry for these people? Supply and demand is harsh and that's why it works.
In any other area if we were capable of replicating matter and energy for food so entire industries would collapse over night, they would be seen as horrible people from trying to stop such technology from being used by people.
Why exactly is this any different? Again: Why should we protect the horse and buggy industry, why do they deserve favoritism when so many other people do not get such things? (i.e. everyone who is or has to work for low wages because of supply and demand).
Supply and demand is only obeyed inconsistently by these people, seems rather contradictory to me.
To put it another way, when we detect something we detect a surface partially or wholly, and if it's a surface, it has structure, and if it has structure it is... geometry!
If you feel I am incorrect please point out where I made the error.
"Except the real world is the real world and we usually play games to not be in the real world. Also, not all games are based on repetition."
Note I was talking about interpreting what is actually happening (what we interpret and call repetition) as cycles (i.e. not absolutely repetitive in the absolute sense) but in a general sense, you get up, you got to work, you go to the bathroom, not at the same time every day, etc. Same happens with games, you get an input (something moves/changes) you respond, rinse, wash, repeat.
Input, output is a cycle, and it is repetitive, in goes the input, out goes the behaviour for each frame or serious of frames of time.
"Singleplayer games don't usually have repetition in the MMORPG sense."
You are correct, what I really dislike about MMORPG's is they cannot yet effectively do action RPG's, or combine multiple genre's effectively. Not only that they rely on non-twitch skills, it's going to be horribly repetitive because of the fact that you really aren't doing much beside navigating and clicking menu buttons (it's almost all automated I mean). It's so easy anyone can do it. Hence the $$$, but also the mediocrity.
"As far as WoW goes, the content doesn't suck but going through it multiple times is undoubtedly boring."
Games are based on repetition (that is cycling), almost every action you do in the real world is cyclical (thinking, moving, navigating, etc).
Just think of you day and compare it to the next day, there's good repetition (fighting games, etc) and there's bad repetition. How many of us here watched really good movies more then once? If something is good we will constantly repeat it, like sex, it's all based on the kinds of psychological rewards we get from the activity.
The idea that repetitive "is bad" totally misunderstand what we are really talking about -- cycles, there are good ones, you fill up, then you get bored and move on, and bad ones, they suck and you don't want to do them.
"I'm not sure what you mean by geometries."
In terms of existent structure, surface, or energy, what isn't geometry? What isn't a shape that has existent structure and can be detected?
If you can't answer that, then you'll know :)
"You have it backwards... and this paragraph ruins your speech. You're like one of the people who tries to come up with a new theory of light particles because it "makes sense" to yourself."
I am a mathematician doing research in the areas of logic and cognitive linguistics thank you very much. I do research and I'm far far ahead of your lower cognitive status. Tell me when you look at a piece of paper with a black square on it, how do you know the distinct square is different from the all white paper? Distinction is the creation of the concept of object, all conceptions are derived from the world of nature's geometry. If you don't believe such you are simply ignorant and quite mad and miseducated. Most importantly I can demonstrate it logically. Come wise one, come to our group... let us see how wise you are.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lawsofform/
"I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."--Socrates
http://www.lawsofform.org/
http://www.boundarymath.org/
"The thing is, today we have the knowledge and complexity to fire up kilowatt systems and more - but they're costly running. Certainly there's the extreme hardcore gamers who won't mind running the hottest, most powerhungry quad crossfire system, but they're few and far between."
I think this is a misinformed statement personally, not intentionally as a slant against you but, gamers are one of the few driving the technology in many key area's of research : World simulation, A.I., etc, "Games" are misnomers for the enormous amount of subjects in which "games" (simulations) are advancing our knowledge by leaps and bounds. Not only that many of us contribute our CPU power to mass distributing computing projects (Set@home, folding@home, etc) that help the people who are designing massive parralel internet computing via GPU's and CPU's in it's own right, which is really in it's infancy. I'd love to see shared computing in OS's by default and turned on for things like folding@home, and things we genuinely need like more scientific research, with an "opt out" button, should anyone not want to do so.
Much of the CPU/GPU power in the world goes unused for the electricity they ocnsume. I'd love to see when computers are idle in such a way that they are naturally used to solve problems by default when the computer is idling.
Most people are too stupid or ignorant to figure out how to donate their time or setup internet computing to help speed up research in many areas. I've wondered why microsoft hasn't done this with their screen-savers, with certain organizations like medicine, biology, physics, enregy, etc.
Next, all games are serious hardcore engineering and simulations. I've thought about modelling economic phenomena via sattelite and have it read directly into a 'game', so that we can see it in real time and using susbtitution study the flows of money as fields of energy. So you can actually observe the behaviour of money and slow down the transactions over time, like how you can with an MP3 or wave file with MP3 playing software that allows you to adjust the speed of the song, pause, go back and forth in time.
There is not enough visualization of what is going on IMHO in many areas of research, math is merely a description of geometric and spatial relationships in the real world, anything that has structure of any kind (information, etc) is geometric whether this is realized or not, the fact is most people are not great at symbolic processing, but they are very good at what comes naturally: Vision.
Our computers IMHO are in the dark ages, butttons, widgest, etc... they can't recognize our voices, predict what we will type or say, and most importantly they can't even act as secretaries or organizers of our life...
In short the suck! Computers will one day be able to do teh job of secretaries, and clerks, and wouldn't that be great if programming reached such an amazing level that we could have software agent's do the grunt work for us instead of having to waste time doing all the boring shit because the computer is too stupid?
There is never enough computing power, and people who think so are painfully naive. computing power = more powerful applications = more power to make things easier to use and asbtract away the machine and have hte machine interact in more human and autonomous ways instead of a machine a slave to fixed programming.
Sooner or later we will have programs that program themselves, evolve and adapt themselves, and we will be amazed at the stuff that they can do, this won't happen without the hardware.
"completely new architecture either. Intel representatives disclosed that Nehalem 'shares a significant portion of the P6 gene pool,"
That's like saying equations share a significant portion of numbers gene pool. It's all geometry when you get down to it. I mean really, there are going to be certain circuit geometries that are always good to use and whom you can't totally get away from.
... but make sure you are backwards compatabile with plugins.
Do not use nag screens, they do not work, just update the program behind the scenes, I've done security for users before and it's like the guys who make stuff just don't get how 99% of the people operate -- they won't update their shit, unless it interferes with content they want to browse or use.
The majorit of users cannot be counted on to update their stuff, if you have a nag screen it should be to "turn off auto update", and recommended "only for advanced users", then we can see how many dumb people are out there who turn it off.
The thing I've hated about firefox is that whenever a new version comes out I have to wait for all the plugins to be updated, this is total CRAP. They need to do something about the plugin issue, it's why I held onto old versions of firefox for so long. That and not all plugins play nicely together (which sucks).
"The only way to safeguard privacy in a world where ever more intrusive collection mechanisms, mass storage and automated processing of data is possible is to have a default policy that personal data cannot be held and then work on the exceptions."
It is IMPOSSIBLE to have privacy in a world of high technology, you leave breadcrumbs everywhere, everything you interact with can be recorded, you leave heat signatures in the air or skin cells on surfaces and trash that if someone really wanted they could collect, if they were persistent enough. (i.e. just look at what the the paparazzi will do for money)
They got UAV's now that can fly over your house and see through walls if they really wanted to, they have sattelites that can see into the ground to find hidden hardened installations.
What is one going to do about the sattelites in space or people with camera phones, or webcams, glass cams, the massification of spy equipment, pointed out of their windows or on their persons? I've personally thought myself about wishing I had glasses with hidden camera on them undetectable built into the lenses so people couldn't lie to me, or lie in court if bad shit happened.
You can't even hope to stop them all. David brin, I believe was right on the money: We're going to have to get used to things being public all the time.
http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html
"Have you heard of toilet training? Might be worth a try ;)"
LOL you know what I meant, sooner or later it's going to drive you crazy. :D
"It just seems bizarre to me how many people think it's normal to give out their password to family/friends/partners/whatever. I've never revealed a password to anyone in my life and never will, and my really important ones get changed regularly. Is that really so terribly unusual?"
Yes, most people are ignorant and convenience trumps security.
As expected from an AC.... no it's not women's fault, people totally misinterpreted my post and it got flagged, as usual, if something goes against the mainstream it gets flagged as troll.
"that you are describing is addiction, and buddy, it's nobody's fault but your own."
Bullshit it's no ones fault they are born a man and they socialize for a long time and go months without sex, obviously people here at slashdot have no background in criminology, you see different types of sex crimes for a whole host of different reasons.
"Your assertions boil down to 'it's the fault of the female sex that that woman get raped, because some other woman should've been around for the rapist to fuck instead'."
No they don't, note what I said: Hooker subsidy, or was this totally lost on you? i.e. disabled men and women have a much harder then the average person in maintaining relationships.
"Nobody is responsible for your physical well-being but yourself...."
Bla bla bla bla bla a bunch of western selfish-individualist anti-scientific nonsense, this was the whole point for subsidizing sex industry. Is a kid responsible for being born? or perhaps this (link below) kid should just "be responsible for his growth?", should a kid be responsible for having hormmones and a penis, how about his eyesight and ability to hear, or how about a large portion of his intelligence? Or maybe you should just hold in you shit and piss for the rest of your life? There is so much human being's can not control, and so much they don't know.
Kid who can't stop growing:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MedicalMysteries/story?id=5466774&page=1
"Not only that, how does going from ONE nagging wife to TWO nagging wives make for longevity??"
It's not the nagging, it's the availability and frequency of sex and social support mechanisms knowing more people, being physically intimate with more people = deeper physiological relationships. Whenever I've been in bad relationships I've always been stressed out because of sex, everything else is secondary. To me (and probably a lot of other guys) when you don't get sex it's like your starving and it makes you agitated, depressed, angry, until you get some. It's like going hungry, it really really sucks.
It's also the reason why men commit sexual crimes, in our society men who have social issues and can't get laid very often are prone in their sexual frustration to commit crimes. The truth is, it's not the men's fault either. Its biologically wired into them from birth, it's just as bad as rape IMHO to deny men intimate contact for long periods of time. It's a kind of slow torture and it's cruel to those men and I wish that people would realize that. I would subsidize prostitutes if I could, we'd prevent the problem before they happened. Whether men realize it or not, sex is one of the primary ways of how we feel loved and recharged, and it's not good to go without sex for long periods of time unless your purposely training/trying to master yourself for some reason or your natural physiology doesn't make you feel awful. For most of us, it's torture to go without sex. Like slowly starving to death, and I wish people in the west and especially women realized that and were compassionate to do something about it.
The culture of the west has inherited a lot of strange behaviour and cultural ways of behaviong from are religious ancestors (christnaity, in north america), etc, puritanism. I mean we've seen all this kind of nonsense before in the 1800's where people thought masturbation needed to be "cured" and not that long ago homosexuals as socially degenerate / mentally ill / disturbed.
"Put it this way, if it was a disparate CPU multiprocessor board, and the summary said "Perhaps my p4 will now be useful again", everyone would be laughing."
I'm sure the article was referring to using same generation tech with different GPU's, and the the fact that you could use cards of different speeds/generations was just a spin off, unless there is actually some kind of application where this is useful.
"It's a shame when a studio that is at least trying something different goes under."'
I'd like to deal with this statement, because it implies "If only games were different (i.e. creative), then somehow this implies difference is awesome".
I don't buy a word of it, the problem with hellgate was that it was a diablo rip off in 3D, and a poor one at that. It copied many aspects of diablo but lost the experience of diablo.
The whole point of hellgate was "spiritual diablo clone", it was all over the gaming news when they left, everyone was thinking they were going to make a 3D diablo that was awesome. The fact was the gameplay didn't cross over into 3D. There have been many games that have suffered such fates. Blizzard got it right by NOT following hellgates (full 3D interaction) path and that is why Diablo 3 will most likely sell more and turn out more favorable reviews then hellgate, just because you have the skills to develop a game, does not mean you know how to develop a gaming experience.
There are developers that know how to develop entertaining gaming experience, and their are dev's that just know how to make games without a decent ability to judge whether or not what they are developing is exciting, interesting and entertaining and doesn't suck.
This is a big problem in the industry as far as I'm concerned, there is just too many clueless people (pub's and developers) about how to build entertainment. I think the biggest problem is still the technology. There is so much time and money consuming technical engineering that it overtakes the money and time needed to develop the entertainment aspect. Too much on art and engines, not enough on developing interesting things and connecting them with skill.
Striking a balance is hard, I agree, but that's the business you're really in: Entertainment. Game developers have to be good at knowing entertainment as well as engineering. It's hard, no doubt... and sometimes you just want to keep trying just doing your own thing (which is also valid) but if you want to do your own thing, you got to go back to small time games and understand what aspects of both the art, and the interaction of the objects, makes the game. Some indie game developers know this, they know what is wrong with the industry.
"And there is another issue too: Who is going to write these open source textbooks? "
Very easy, if we take wiki concept and apply it to textbooks every teacher of X subject can contribute, I've thought about making a project website about this very thing and having interested students and professors give the big "fuck you" to people trying to rape kids of money for their education, ideally education should be free, that was the whole concept behind libraries. i.e. publically funded.
We really have gotten away from self-teaching (self-taught), and the net is bringing it back, and thank god! I'm sure many slashdotters already realize: All teachers can do is present us with information and give us feedback, we ultimately teach ourselves, and teachers are more of guide's and then being able to 'make' someone smart who is not interested in learning.
"A dog can change direction. A paramecium (single-celled organism covered in cilia) can change direction. Do dogs and paramecia have Free Will?"
They must have a bit of it, if they can detect their own existence and other existents, i.e. a 'small bit of it'. Or simply a small piece, or low resolution free will.
Think of it this way: Humans are made of tiny cells that conglomerate, but they eventually become conscious, that potential must exist previously, therefore it makes sense to think of consciousness as a gradient.
i.e little bit, then more, then more, etc. My real problem though is with navigation, and being able to detect that you are you (i.e. you are distinct from other things, you see your own reflection and know it is you, even though it is distinct from you in time and place, and not some other entity)
I think the navigation and the mirror experiment (I recognize myself) would be the best example of free will... think of clay zombie, it can interact with things but it cannot recognize itself, and it can only follow a single path at any one time, and the only way it can change path is if something bumps into it.
Define free will and define 'determinism' what and which determinism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism
What's the difference between a ball and a human? A human can change it's direction a ball can't, how exactly do humans not have free will here, and most importantly is the concept of "Free will" coherently defined? What is meant by free will, what is meant by "determined"?
If our genetic engineering sciences were advanced enough, we could make fairies and unicorns, would that prove we have fee will? taking a subjective idea and actually making it in reality? i.e. a car didn't exist before we created it, but the stuff the car is made of pre-existing the car, so all aspects of the idea of a car must be derived from pre-existing reality.
I always hate these discussions because no one can really define their terms correctly, anyone want to hae a go at it?
Well something like that, if you made it too thin it would also be ugly, there is some median symmetry, which if you deviate from (too large/too small) you get ugly. There is some statistical ideal each part of the face can have before it deviates too much.
Just like too fat vs too thin (i.e. starving kid in africa vs a fat person).
Use mind mapping software... they make professional mind mapping software for businesses.
http://www.thebrain.com/
And it organizes information much better.
"Sorry guys, but it's time for you to go back to marketing school. Using brand recognition for a product that does not represent the brand will only devalue the brand."
The problem is not just marketing, it's the desire for constant growth of ones 'customer base' (i.e. advertisers). In a fragmentd market in which your 'customers' (in this case us) needs are radically different. This is where profit gives way to mediocrity, we've seen this before where a site tries to "mainstream itself" to appeal to everyone in the eternal quest for growth, it is my humble opinion that some businesses should simply stick to what the are good at, and if costs keep rising, they have to creatively find ways to cut costs rather then jepordizing losing the business. Or simply just close the business and move on if more profit is what is being sought.
Because when profit gives way to mediocrity the business then ends up pleasing nobody "jack of all trades master of none" effect, because different groups of people and seek different things.
I really hated how he never dealt with the scarcity argument, games are abundant, not scarce, hence according to supply and demand, they shouldn't be able to make money (technically) but they do anyway.
"You lost me there, I'm not sure what you mean. Can you paint an example?"
I mean that knowing what is a genuine mistake from what isn't, is difficult, see my post in relation to the poster that asked about math, see Kjella's post then see my reply.
Knowing who is wrong is not easy, there have been plenty of people who thought someone was mistaken when they were not in many cases in history. There are genuine obvious mistakes but then there are mistakes, that aren't, just that people aren't good enough to realize that they aren't.
There are also many ways of looking at a problem also, there are problems where there isn't really one answer, so a unique solution may look like a 'mistake', when it is really another way of looking at things.
"The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what no body yet has thought about that which everyone sees. ... But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1818)
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Max Planck, 1920)"