Well, it's a lot better than companies who stand by their mistakes, rather than recanting and apologizing. To me, this is just more proof that Nintendo is sensitive to the perceptions of its customers, whereas many large entities are not. I for one will try to emulate Nintendo.
Well, maybe my spiders should be less hair-trigger, but whatever.
The trouble is not spreading information once it's in digital form and on the internet. We know that's easy. We've known that that's easy for a long time now, so even bothering to point it out shows that you don't know what's going on.
The trouble is that the US government's various agencies are very good at obtaining evidence before it is digitized and made available on the internet. A good example of this would be the large number of video tapes seized after the September 11th, 2001 assault on the Pentagon by, what Pentagon officials claim, was a large commercial passenger jet. There are many such examples, and the proliferation of video cameras with audio recording capability would make it more difficult for government agencies to engage in this type of behavior.
On the other hand, such a proliferation would have an odd effect on US culture. As a comparison, the cold war, the emergence of AIDS (not that it's gone!), and the civil rights movements brought into focus things about individual people that they otherwise could ignore. Each of those affected our culture by forcing people to consider their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in ways they had not before. This consideration was required because of the focus on the effect and meaning of those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Each time, people found themselves drawn towards or repelled from their own humanity and individuality.
If you put cameras on everyone, we will be forced to look at ourselves. It won't just be the faceless government watching us, it will be our friends, our enemies, and thousands of random strangers. Some people will riot in the streets, some will be happier, and some will recede from sight. Some will be angry and call such an intrusion into our lives wrong. Those are the responses every time we have been forced to look at ourselves. Be clear, this will be as straining an event as any we have ever endured. With the focus literally on us, our culture will change in order to survive.
This particular game (or at least the first version of it) gives you a well-defined avatar and personal history of accomplishments, i.e. a personal tech-tree of skills you learn and tasks you accomplish. It also takes quite a long time in real time to accomplish a given task, and certain tasks require specific but hard-to-discover actions to accomplish (like some of the quests, or the marriage ceremony). Thus, players are regularly bent out of shape because of all the hard work they put into getting things accomplished in the game. I'm not at all saying this is a bad thing, just that the design of that particular game engenders a very strong attachment to your character's possibilities in-game.
It's true that you can learn about data structures from Java. The problem is that you can't learn about data structures from Java during your first-ever exposure to the fundamentals of computer programming. You can't grasp the elegance of classes and such when you are just beginning to learn for loops, function calls, the difference between variable passing methods, how to write complicated boolean expressions, and how variable names scope throughout a program. Those fundamentals IMHO need to be learned separately and thoroughly before getting into classes, multiple files for a project, and inheritance. Java makes that 'primer' section of learning fairly tough, and if a professor tries to forge ahead without it, students (like my brother at UTD) will be lost. I would suggest Python as a good language to instruct students in such fundamentals of programming, and Haskell if I could sneak it in.
Now they teach with Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, and C++. I'm not kidding about the Haskell or Lisp, at least at UT Austin. My first cs class, 307, (I skipped the basic C++ "Comp Sci II" class) was in Haskell, and man that was hard. Of course, once I learned Haskell I loved it, and __every other programming language in the world__ became easy once I took a second class in it. Other professors for the 307 class teach using Scheme. Later, I had lots of classes that used C++, one that suggested C++ or Lisp and let me use Haskell (Compilers), and a great class about ACL2 where I learned Lisp from Professor J Moore, an experience I'll never forget. So yeah, they hit us with Haskell (or Scheme) pretty early on, had a large focus on C++, and let the crazy professors teach in Haskell or Lisp if they wanted to.
Some wackos at places like UT Dallas try to teach freshman about Java classes, but they'll learn that's not the right approach.;) Try starting from the basics of programming, THEN move to data structures, not the other way around.
Do you still think that ELECTIONS are the targets? The targets are commercial, not political. Why would anyone that hates the US (or more specific parts of it) enough to kill civilians care about our democratic procedures? Anyone that is angry at the US is angry at groups already in power.
Not only that, but anyone that managed to compromise the system could potentially view the locations of children. This is not something I want any kids I know hooked into.
I guess so. I keep seeing the same 'new ideas' brought up in response, though, which I guess is what ticked me off. The moment Rodney Brooks' work became widely known, I suggested we send a fleet of autonomous robots with cameras to Mars, with a remote-controlled robot left at base to go after anything that looks interesting.
Basically, it would be the same mission as what has now been done, but with a lot more video feed, and maybe a few other basic readings of the terrain. Heck, if they're solar powered, we can keep the buggers running for a long time.
But that was back when I was in high school (eight years ago). Maybe I'm just dissappointed that nobody seems to be using such useful technology already. Perhaps there are issues, but Brooks' early robots were built with off-the-shelf parts. I can't help but wonder why MIT's robot lab hasn't gotten more attention.
... but no one listens. This technology is old, incredibly old in the scheme of computer science and electrical engineering. Rodney Brooks, MIT, Rodney Brooks! Okay, I'm okay. It was on the cover of Popular Science, for crying out loud.
Most games require a balanced and carefully tweaked set of code, artwork, and game rules. This means that only a few pieces of games can ever be open-source. With inovation under the hood invisible to users, and most of the guts of a game needing tweaking for every new level of CPU, it's worth it for a game company to try to outdo its competitors in that one section, too.
I've been saying this for years: we already have robots capable of handling themselves in alien environments. They won't get stuck, because they learn. They won't get their rollers caught, because they walk. Rodney Brooks has been working on them for decades now. The small ones are built with off-the-shelf parts.
We can make a big batch of the cheap self-propelled ones, and then send them plus one or two big control-from-home bots. We let the little guys run around, and then send out the big specimen-gathering ones ourselves if anything looks interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's a lot better than companies who stand by their mistakes, rather than recanting and apologizing. To me, this is just more proof that Nintendo is sensitive to the perceptions of its customers, whereas many large entities are not. I for one will try to emulate Nintendo.
Well, maybe my spiders should be less hair-trigger, but whatever.
The trouble is not spreading information once it's in digital form and on the internet. We know that's easy. We've known that that's easy for a long time now, so even bothering to point it out shows that you don't know what's going on.
The trouble is that the US government's various agencies are very good at obtaining evidence before it is digitized and made available on the internet. A good example of this would be the large number of video tapes seized after the September 11th, 2001 assault on the Pentagon by, what Pentagon officials claim, was a large commercial passenger jet. There are many such examples, and the proliferation of video cameras with audio recording capability would make it more difficult for government agencies to engage in this type of behavior.
On the other hand, such a proliferation would have an odd effect on US culture. As a comparison, the cold war, the emergence of AIDS (not that it's gone!), and the civil rights movements brought into focus things about individual people that they otherwise could ignore. Each of those affected our culture by forcing people to consider their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in ways they had not before. This consideration was required because of the focus on the effect and meaning of those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Each time, people found themselves drawn towards or repelled from their own humanity and individuality.
If you put cameras on everyone, we will be forced to look at ourselves. It won't just be the faceless government watching us, it will be our friends, our enemies, and thousands of random strangers. Some people will riot in the streets, some will be happier, and some will recede from sight. Some will be angry and call such an intrusion into our lives wrong. Those are the responses every time we have been forced to look at ourselves. Be clear, this will be as straining an event as any we have ever endured. With the focus literally on us, our culture will change in order to survive.
This particular game (or at least the first version of it) gives you a well-defined avatar and personal history of accomplishments, i.e. a personal tech-tree of skills you learn and tasks you accomplish. It also takes quite a long time in real time to accomplish a given task, and certain tasks require specific but hard-to-discover actions to accomplish (like some of the quests, or the marriage ceremony). Thus, players are regularly bent out of shape because of all the hard work they put into getting things accomplished in the game. I'm not at all saying this is a bad thing, just that the design of that particular game engenders a very strong attachment to your character's possibilities in-game.
It's true that you can learn about data structures from Java. The problem is that you can't learn about data structures from Java during your first-ever exposure to the fundamentals of computer programming. You can't grasp the elegance of classes and such when you are just beginning to learn for loops, function calls, the difference between variable passing methods, how to write complicated boolean expressions, and how variable names scope throughout a program. Those fundamentals IMHO need to be learned separately and thoroughly before getting into classes, multiple files for a project, and inheritance. Java makes that 'primer' section of learning fairly tough, and if a professor tries to forge ahead without it, students (like my brother at UTD) will be lost. I would suggest Python as a good language to instruct students in such fundamentals of programming, and Haskell if I could sneak it in.
Now they teach with Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, and C++. I'm not kidding about the Haskell or Lisp, at least at UT Austin. My first cs class, 307, (I skipped the basic C++ "Comp Sci II" class) was in Haskell, and man that was hard. Of course, once I learned Haskell I loved it, and __every other programming language in the world__ became easy once I took a second class in it. Other professors for the 307 class teach using Scheme. Later, I had lots of classes that used C++, one that suggested C++ or Lisp and let me use Haskell (Compilers), and a great class about ACL2 where I learned Lisp from Professor J Moore, an experience I'll never forget. So yeah, they hit us with Haskell (or Scheme) pretty early on, had a large focus on C++, and let the crazy professors teach in Haskell or Lisp if they wanted to.
;) Try starting from the basics of programming, THEN move to data structures, not the other way around.
Some wackos at places like UT Dallas try to teach freshman about Java classes, but they'll learn that's not the right approach.
Do you still think that ELECTIONS are the targets? The targets are commercial, not political. Why would anyone that hates the US (or more specific parts of it) enough to kill civilians care about our democratic procedures? Anyone that is angry at the US is angry at groups already in power.
Does this mean you can hack it to record your friends' (or co-workers') fingerprints? Sounds fun and scary.
Not only that, but anyone that managed to compromise the system could potentially view the locations of children. This is not something I want any kids I know hooked into.
I guess so. I keep seeing the same 'new ideas' brought up in response, though, which I guess is what ticked me off. The moment Rodney Brooks' work became widely known, I suggested we send a fleet of autonomous robots with cameras to Mars, with a remote-controlled robot left at base to go after anything that looks interesting.
Basically, it would be the same mission as what has now been done, but with a lot more video feed, and maybe a few other basic readings of the terrain. Heck, if they're solar powered, we can keep the buggers running for a long time.
But that was back when I was in high school (eight years ago). Maybe I'm just dissappointed that nobody seems to be using such useful technology already. Perhaps there are issues, but Brooks' early robots were built with off-the-shelf parts. I can't help but wonder why MIT's robot lab hasn't gotten more attention.
... but no one listens. This technology is old, incredibly old in the scheme of computer science and electrical engineering. Rodney Brooks, MIT, Rodney Brooks! Okay, I'm okay. It was on the cover of Popular Science, for crying out loud.
Most games require a balanced and carefully tweaked set of code, artwork, and game rules. This means that only a few pieces of games can ever be open-source. With inovation under the hood invisible to users, and most of the guts of a game needing tweaking for every new level of CPU, it's worth it for a game company to try to outdo its competitors in that one section, too.
I've been saying this for years: we already have robots capable of handling themselves in alien environments. They won't get stuck, because they learn. They won't get their rollers caught, because they walk. Rodney Brooks has been working on them for decades now. The small ones are built with off-the-shelf parts.
We can make a big batch of the cheap self-propelled ones, and then send them plus one or two big control-from-home bots. We let the little guys run around, and then send out the big specimen-gathering ones ourselves if anything looks interesting.