I'm going to second you on the weight comment. The buttons aren't as accessible as they could be, but the major strain the ds puts on my hands is on my wrists because the damn thing weighs so much. I don't have a psp to compare, but perhaps someone who does could enlighten me, does the psp feel more comfortable? The psp is about 40 grams lighter(about an ounce) and seems to have a better weight distribution, but that doesn't mean it is more comfortable. A lighter DS would be awesome, even if it cost a little more.
So lemme get this straight, if something is marked a troll on slashdot, a site famous for promoting groupthink and modding down everything that doesn't go along with said groupthink(whether it is valid or not), then it is automatically a worthless opinion? Last time I checked, slashdot mods do not speak for me, or the world at large for that matter.
"Demon Haunted World"(well, techincally "Science as a Candle in the Darkness") which I am currently slogging through. He discusses a lot of there same "phenomenon" such as placebos and this, my personal favorite:
IT WAS 37 seconds long and came from outer space. On 15 August 1977 it caused astronomer Jerry Ehman, then of Ohio State University in Columbus, to scrawl "Wow!" on the printout from Big Ear, Ohio State's radio telescope in Delaware. And 28 years later no one knows what created the signal. "I am still waiting for a definitive explanation that makes sense," Ehman says
Actually, earlier than even the "WoW" signal(sometime in the 60s IIRC) a bunch of Soviet scientists convened a conference to discuss how they swore they found intelligent life because they found a long, continuous perfect sine wave somewhere out in space. Turns out it was a quasar, a hithero unkown phenomena, but the Soviets made laughing stocks out of themselves by assuming first it was aliens instead of a more mundane explanation...
Um, well then tell me how I can make my sig less than 120 characters if I make the change. I don't like the term either, but I am just at the limit, and USians is 6 characters, americans is 9. Unfortunately slashdots automarkup forces me to use the whole web address of whitehouse.gov, which really eats into my character count.
The market is good at eventually seeking the best answers, however the market cannot handle very large shocks very quickly(obviously nothing can handle huge shocks perfectly but) the problem is, oil is so ingrained in our current economy it's going to take the market a long while to find adequate substitutes for all its uses without an outside shove. I know that I personally would probably starve to death if tomorrow I woke up and all the oil supplies were cut off. Oil is essential in not only the production of food, but perhaps more importantly, the distrubution of food to everyone who isn't a farmer. While the market should decide the winner(s) of the alternative energy battle, I applaud both government and non-government actions in researching alternative fuels even if they are not cost effective right away.
Well, an experiment is to look at European and Japanese online retailers. Both of those places have nationwide sales taxes(Japans a paltry 5% compared to 16+ in most of Europe) so it HAS to be applied to online sales from major retailers(technically online auctions and fly by night places should have to pay it to IIRC, but good luck getting them to do so). I've lived in the US, Germany, and Japan, and bought off of the respective amazon.whatever in all those places. In Japan and Germany the price listed includes taxes, but you always see how much in taxes you pay when you check out. If those retailers are not increasing in line with US sales, then you can honestly say a lot of it has to do with sales tax, otherwise I would say that it's just more convient for people to buy online.
The question is, are elderly people acutally demanding these products? It's all well and good to invent all sorts of neat gadgets, but if people don't actually want/need the gadgets, what good have you really done? Time will tell whether or not this is a good idea or an expensive series of flops.
The funny thing is people get more worked up about terrorism which kills relatively few people worldwide then they do about barelling down the highway at 100 mph while drunk and not wearing a seatbelt. Last year car accidents killed about 40,000 Americans, about 13 times the number that died on September 11th, but I don't see the government rushing to make cars safer(hell, they are doing the opposite with lax fuel economy standards that don't punish the mammoths that cause a lot of these fatalities)
However, that number is rarely mentioned in the news, but if Zarqawi sneezes the media is all over it. The media has seriously distorted people's sense of reality...
$105 billion is more than the trade deficit between the US and Japan, in other words a VERY significant chunk of change. How much of this damage was "real" as oppossed to existing in name only? How did they manage to calculate such a number, and what is the overall effect on the economy? Who are the real winners and losers in this battle?
Look at some of the ads on that page, I mean there seems to be an ad for "Belgium"(bottom left corner of the page, picture of the Beligian flag). I'm not sure why Belgium really needs to advertise, but I guess those waffles don't sell themselves. I would click on it, but I'm at work and that site doesn't seem to be entirely "work safe"(Japan's sexiest guys and girls?!)
According to the Europeans who came to the island, they were not all that good. From the wikipedia article:
There is a persistent myth that Dodos were eaten as food for the long voyages between the Cape of Good Hope and Asia, but neither historical nor archeological findings corroborate this. Dodos were hardly ever eaten by the Portuguese, who found the birds hard to eat and very messy. Dutch records concur. The Dutch settlers called it the Walgvogel ("disgusting bird") for the unpleasant taste and texture of the meat. No Dodo bones have been found in the old middens of the Dutch fort Frederik Hendrik.
Still, I would like to eat one just to add it to my list of animals whose flesh I have made part of myself. So far I have eaten cow, pig, chicken, duck, deer, reindeer, whale, kangaroo, pigeon, cornish hen, and ostrich. I need to eat more!
Has the world really turned to such devices?
on
How Xbox Happened
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
it seems to me that while usage of such "information devices" has increased significantly over the past few years, they haven't really replaced the PC so much as complimented it. It seems that now the PC is still the hub of our information activities, but when we cannot or do not want to use the pc, we use such information devices. However, it seems we are always either syncing data with the computer or connecting to it. Gates was wrong that they would supplant instead of compliment the PC.
I know it's trendy here to bash windows, but this is FAR from a windows specific problem. Any file system that contains metadata could enable inadvertant disclosure of information, be it windows, mac, linux etc. The solution basically is to ensure that either a)your users are aware of what metadata is and how it works and to make sure that they get rid of any metadata on sensitive documents that they may send out or b) failing that, don't use the metadata.
It may seem like ebay doesn't care, but that could be because policing their network manually would be very expensive, even if they could find cheap enough labor to do it. So the question is, what technologies are out there that could help detect fraud? I imagine if someone could come up with something that would be a great VC opportunity, but obviously it's a very hard problem. You have feedback, but what scammers tend to do is to start new accounts, win a bunch of really small items, get good feedback, then go off on a big scam. Can AI really help solve the problem?
I'm not an MS fanboy(actually I only own a cube and a ds) but it's really hard to tell exactly who is #2 and #3. Sales figures, especially later in the game, are harder to come by, and it does seem like the cube and Xbox finished neck and neck. So honestly you would have to say:
"Nintendo and Microsoft sold about the same number of consoles this generation, which is still a metric buttload less than Sony"
Also I wonder whether or not they actually were able to collect the money yet, or whether somebody pulled a Peter Griffin and bid way over what they could actually pay...
Nothing like drunk generous gamers with cash
Then start your own non-profit search engine company.
Seriously, why do people here think they should be allowed to do anything they want, but others should not be afforded the same liberties? Google is a company made up of people that are exercising their freedom to create a company. You don't like it? Start a competitor that isn't evil. Can't do that? Well then cry me a river about your freedoms, you don't have to use google, and they don't owe you a god damned thing.
Do we need an ethical framework to direct companies to make such algorithms open source?
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I keep on hearing that "open source" is about freedom. Since when is forcing someone to behave in a certain manner considered "freedom"?
Google can do what google wants to do as long as it's within the limits of the law, you don't like it? Start your own damn company that is more ethical.
Yeah, because Wikipedia is very accurate....
Chinese nationalists are really big into pushing ultra-pro China views on Wikipedia, and you take it as the verbatim truth. So yeah, you are a sheep too.
That is actually my point, people who WANT to go to college(like myself) should go to college purely for the learning experience. However, there are a lot of people who feel that they are forced to go to college, who don't want to, who don't really get anything out of the experience. These are the people that shouldn't be going, but of course, they actually support the rest of us(provided they don't get aid, but...)
What I want to do is offer an explanation why this happens. In most cases, the bachelors has nothing to do with the job you turn out to perform. Even in technical fields, you only use a tiny fraction of your college knowledge. So why do they require it?
Fundamental mis-use of statistics really. COORELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION! People see that on average college graduates earn some big amount more in their lifetime than non-college grads. So what do they think? If everyone goes to college, then everyone will make more money!
BZZZZT! Try again! The reason college grads make more money isn't simply the piece of sheep skin. More than likely they are smarter/harder workers, and have a real passion for their work(the later is probably much more important than the former). Therefore they are driven to succeed. Forcing someone who doesn't want to go to college into college does not somehow magically bestow those traits upon them, and costs the individual and society at large a lot of money that could have been invested elsewhere. Furthermore, it might stop them from doing something amazing with their life(such as start their own business etc) instead of sitting in a class where they are bored. I think the "feel gooders" who think that everyone is entitled to a degree so they can feel great about themselves really need to come back to reality. Not everyone needs a college education, not everyone wants one, not having one does not condemn you to failure.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to second you on the weight comment. The buttons aren't as accessible as they could be, but the major strain the ds puts on my hands is on my wrists because the damn thing weighs so much. I don't have a psp to compare, but perhaps someone who does could enlighten me, does the psp feel more comfortable? The psp is about 40 grams lighter(about an ounce) and seems to have a better weight distribution, but that doesn't mean it is more comfortable. A lighter DS would be awesome, even if it cost a little more.
So lemme get this straight, if something is marked a troll on slashdot, a site famous for promoting groupthink and modding down everything that doesn't go along with said groupthink(whether it is valid or not), then it is automatically a worthless opinion? Last time I checked, slashdot mods do not speak for me, or the world at large for that matter.
Most insightful comment about wikipedia EVER!
"Demon Haunted World"(well, techincally "Science as a Candle in the Darkness") which I am currently slogging through. He discusses a lot of there same "phenomenon" such as placebos and this, my personal favorite:
IT WAS 37 seconds long and came from outer space. On 15 August 1977 it caused astronomer Jerry Ehman, then of Ohio State University in Columbus, to scrawl "Wow!" on the printout from Big Ear, Ohio State's radio telescope in Delaware. And 28 years later no one knows what created the signal. "I am still waiting for a definitive explanation that makes sense," Ehman says
Actually, earlier than even the "WoW" signal(sometime in the 60s IIRC) a bunch of Soviet scientists convened a conference to discuss how they swore they found intelligent life because they found a long, continuous perfect sine wave somewhere out in space. Turns out it was a quasar, a hithero unkown phenomena, but the Soviets made laughing stocks out of themselves by assuming first it was aliens instead of a more mundane explanation...
Um, well then tell me how I can make my sig less than 120 characters if I make the change. I don't like the term either, but I am just at the limit, and USians is 6 characters, americans is 9. Unfortunately slashdots automarkup forces me to use the whole web address of whitehouse.gov, which really eats into my character count.
The market is good at eventually seeking the best answers, however the market cannot handle very large shocks very quickly(obviously nothing can handle huge shocks perfectly but) the problem is, oil is so ingrained in our current economy it's going to take the market a long while to find adequate substitutes for all its uses without an outside shove. I know that I personally would probably starve to death if tomorrow I woke up and all the oil supplies were cut off. Oil is essential in not only the production of food, but perhaps more importantly, the distrubution of food to everyone who isn't a farmer. While the market should decide the winner(s) of the alternative energy battle, I applaud both government and non-government actions in researching alternative fuels even if they are not cost effective right away.
Well, an experiment is to look at European and Japanese online retailers. Both of those places have nationwide sales taxes(Japans a paltry 5% compared to 16+ in most of Europe) so it HAS to be applied to online sales from major retailers(technically online auctions and fly by night places should have to pay it to IIRC, but good luck getting them to do so). I've lived in the US, Germany, and Japan, and bought off of the respective amazon.whatever in all those places. In Japan and Germany the price listed includes taxes, but you always see how much in taxes you pay when you check out. If those retailers are not increasing in line with US sales, then you can honestly say a lot of it has to do with sales tax, otherwise I would say that it's just more convient for people to buy online.
The question is, are elderly people acutally demanding these products? It's all well and good to invent all sorts of neat gadgets, but if people don't actually want/need the gadgets, what good have you really done? Time will tell whether or not this is a good idea or an expensive series of flops.
The funny thing is people get more worked up about terrorism which kills relatively few people worldwide then they do about barelling down the highway at 100 mph while drunk and not wearing a seatbelt. Last year car accidents killed about 40,000 Americans, about 13 times the number that died on September 11th, but I don't see the government rushing to make cars safer(hell, they are doing the opposite with lax fuel economy standards that don't punish the mammoths that cause a lot of these fatalities)
However, that number is rarely mentioned in the news, but if Zarqawi sneezes the media is all over it. The media has seriously distorted people's sense of reality...
$105 billion is more than the trade deficit between the US and Japan, in other words a VERY significant chunk of change. How much of this damage was "real" as oppossed to existing in name only? How did they manage to calculate such a number, and what is the overall effect on the economy? Who are the real winners and losers in this battle?
Look at some of the ads on that page, I mean there seems to be an ad for "Belgium"(bottom left corner of the page, picture of the Beligian flag). I'm not sure why Belgium really needs to advertise, but I guess those waffles don't sell themselves. I would click on it, but I'm at work and that site doesn't seem to be entirely "work safe"(Japan's sexiest guys and girls?!)
According to the Europeans who came to the island, they were not all that good. From the wikipedia article:
There is a persistent myth that Dodos were eaten as food for the long voyages between the Cape of Good Hope and Asia, but neither historical nor archeological findings corroborate this. Dodos were hardly ever eaten by the Portuguese, who found the birds hard to eat and very messy. Dutch records concur. The Dutch settlers called it the Walgvogel ("disgusting bird") for the unpleasant taste and texture of the meat. No Dodo bones have been found in the old middens of the Dutch fort Frederik Hendrik.
Still, I would like to eat one just to add it to my list of animals whose flesh I have made part of myself. So far I have eaten cow, pig, chicken, duck, deer, reindeer, whale, kangaroo, pigeon, cornish hen, and ostrich. I need to eat more!
Tetris. Man I love that game!
it seems to me that while usage of such "information devices" has increased significantly over the past few years, they haven't really replaced the PC so much as complimented it. It seems that now the PC is still the hub of our information activities, but when we cannot or do not want to use the pc, we use such information devices. However, it seems we are always either syncing data with the computer or connecting to it. Gates was wrong that they would supplant instead of compliment the PC.
I know it's trendy here to bash windows, but this is FAR from a windows specific problem. Any file system that contains metadata could enable inadvertant disclosure of information, be it windows, mac, linux etc. The solution basically is to ensure that either a)your users are aware of what metadata is and how it works and to make sure that they get rid of any metadata on sensitive documents that they may send out or b) failing that, don't use the metadata.
It may seem like ebay doesn't care, but that could be because policing their network manually would be very expensive, even if they could find cheap enough labor to do it. So the question is, what technologies are out there that could help detect fraud? I imagine if someone could come up with something that would be a great VC opportunity, but obviously it's a very hard problem. You have feedback, but what scammers tend to do is to start new accounts, win a bunch of really small items, get good feedback, then go off on a big scam. Can AI really help solve the problem?
I'm not an MS fanboy(actually I only own a cube and a ds) but it's really hard to tell exactly who is #2 and #3. Sales figures, especially later in the game, are harder to come by, and it does seem like the cube and Xbox finished neck and neck. So honestly you would have to say:
"Nintendo and Microsoft sold about the same number of consoles this generation, which is still a metric buttload less than Sony"
My mistake, thanks!
The post doesn't say what sold for what amount.
Also I wonder whether or not they actually were able to collect the money yet, or whether somebody pulled a Peter Griffin and bid way over what they could actually pay...
Nothing like drunk generous gamers with cash
Then start your own non-profit search engine company.
Seriously, why do people here think they should be allowed to do anything they want, but others should not be afforded the same liberties? Google is a company made up of people that are exercising their freedom to create a company. You don't like it? Start a competitor that isn't evil. Can't do that? Well then cry me a river about your freedoms, you don't have to use google, and they don't owe you a god damned thing.
Do we need an ethical framework to direct companies to make such algorithms open source?
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I keep on hearing that "open source" is about freedom. Since when is forcing someone to behave in a certain manner considered "freedom"?
Google can do what google wants to do as long as it's within the limits of the law, you don't like it? Start your own damn company that is more ethical.
it would tell time in hex :P
Yeah, because Wikipedia is very accurate....
Chinese nationalists are really big into pushing ultra-pro China views on Wikipedia, and you take it as the verbatim truth. So yeah, you are a sheep too.
That is actually my point, people who WANT to go to college(like myself) should go to college purely for the learning experience. However, there are a lot of people who feel that they are forced to go to college, who don't want to, who don't really get anything out of the experience. These are the people that shouldn't be going, but of course, they actually support the rest of us(provided they don't get aid, but...)
What I want to do is offer an explanation why this happens. In most cases, the bachelors has nothing to do with the job you turn out to perform. Even in technical fields, you only use a tiny fraction of your college knowledge. So why do they require it?
Fundamental mis-use of statistics really. COORELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION! People see that on average college graduates earn some big amount more in their lifetime than non-college grads. So what do they think? If everyone goes to college, then everyone will make more money!
BZZZZT! Try again! The reason college grads make more money isn't simply the piece of sheep skin. More than likely they are smarter/harder workers, and have a real passion for their work(the later is probably much more important than the former). Therefore they are driven to succeed. Forcing someone who doesn't want to go to college into college does not somehow magically bestow those traits upon them, and costs the individual and society at large a lot of money that could have been invested elsewhere. Furthermore, it might stop them from doing something amazing with their life(such as start their own business etc) instead of sitting in a class where they are bored. I think the "feel gooders" who think that everyone is entitled to a degree so they can feel great about themselves really need to come back to reality. Not everyone needs a college education, not everyone wants one, not having one does not condemn you to failure.