It's interesting that in early American History secret ballots were viewed as "cowardly".
I know you're working really hard to spout off why anonymity is so important but let's think back to all of the "Great Anonymous Leaders".
Ahhh yes it was Anonymous who wrote "I have a dream..." It was anonymous who signed the declaration of independence. It was anonymous who wrote the constitution.
I don't post anonymously. I usually have my real name in my sig. I take responsibility for what I say. And where I don't put my name in my sig it would take seconds to associate my username with a site that does list my real name.
I'm not saying anonymity is bad. In fact we abandoned the open voting system after it was found to be easily corruptible. But to suggest that less anonymity is inherently a threat to freedom is also equally naive.
So the reason we have SPAM is because stupid people use computers. And stupid people use computers because bill gates made it easy for people to use computers.
If only people who used *NIX CLIs used computers we would still be laughing at those silly machines with the blinky lights that are pretty much useless for anything.
I tend to say the advances in computing over the last couple of decades outstrips the occasional piece of spam in my inbox.
Despite the common misconception on Slashdot. Not every Windows machine is part of a botnet. In fact most Windows machines aren't sending spam. Shocking I know.
Idiots like me use Windows because it's "Better" than the alternatives for purposes we purchased it for.
1) The researches found a result. 2) Proposed a possible mechanism. 3) Stated the mechanism was untested and might just be bullshit they cooked up at the pub.
4) People misreport guess of researchers as "Fact!"... 6) "Shortcoming of science!" (and profit?)
It's sort of like saying that the urban legand "People think we only use 10% of our brain even though research has shown this to be almost certainly false." is a shortcoming of science.
People talk. People like to have "all the answers". The problem is with gossip not science. 'Science' hasn't ruled on the subject yet. The official stance of 'science' is that the mechanism is unknown.
Just as 'science' has only found that mouse mothers subjected to certain conditions can pass along the effects to their children even after the conditions have ceased. The mechanism should be discovered before any other conclusions can be reached. The summary is attempting to assign far more consequence to the study than study can provide. The shortcoming is with vague and speculative reporting not science./rant
DNA is only part of the equation. Put a frog egg in mildly radioactive water and see what happens.
This study essentially just says "The environment of the pregnant mother can have an effect on the offspring." To which I say... "Duh". Push down a 6 pack of budlight every day while preganant and I can disprove mendelson as well. No genetic manipulation!
And exposing a mother to alcohol has effects on the baby as well.
This test is pretty rediculous. Feed a human mother alcohol and the baby can turn out mal-adjusted. Have a human mother smoke a pack of cigarettes every day and the baby might turn out different.
Yes human and mouse mothers, what you're exposed to during preganancy can have an effect on your child outside of genetics.
It should also be noted that darwin proposed "Survival of the Fittest" without any knowledge of genetics. Whether or not changes can occur before or after conception is irrellevant. It's still survival of the fittest. If a finch aquires the ability to eat a nut a day before mating or the day it was conceived is irellevant. The point is you genetically/chemically/spiritually/intellectually transfered an important survival trait to another animal which then out gunned its competition and managed top ass along that same trait genetically/chemically/spiritually/intellectually.
1) If you have ever seen an explosion your BS-o-meter should have alerted you to the fact that some debris would go into a HIGHER orbit... and some would go into a LOWER orbit. Therefore you can have material re-enter the atmosphere AND stay in orbit for thousands of years.
2) It's not the sattelite debris. It's a coincidence and your suspicions aren't confirmed... and they're wrong.
Since when has basic newtonian physics been "alarmist"?
We already have gated communities on the web. They're https sites.
I would say a second secure webspace in which trusted commerce can take place in addition to the existing web wouldn't be a bad thing. I would be willing to completely give up my anonymity when wanting to make a secure transaction. In fact I would be willing to give up my anonymity on the normal internet, but like that I *could* be anonymous if ever needed.
A good specific example of this is Apple's Shake compositor.
For $10,000 you get access to unlimited licenses and the source code. But you're bound by an NDA and contract to not release any code modifications or even publicly state what modifications have been made.
You'll read interviews where a VFX supervisor will say. "We used a proprietary 64bit compositor to do the IMAX work." What they're trying to say is. "We recompiled shake for 64bit but we aren't allowed to name the application due to NDA."
If the OP wants to read what such a contract would look like I would just reference the Shake source code license.
Wouldn't an ultrasonic loud speaker be more effective and less likely to miss?
Or perhaps a pop up scarecrow.
Problem is deer are usually smart enough to figure out what is and is not dangerous. If they get squired a few times they'll just assume they're setting off your sprinkler system. And I've seen deer walk right through sprinklers without a care in the world.
Then again. I've never seen the difference between:
Paintball, Airsoft, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike. All activities are me attempting to hit an oposing player with projectiles to eliminate them from play or gain a point.
I also don't see any difference between Doom and Super Soakers. They're all equally "violent" in my mind. Just because blood comes out when I hit them doesn't make it more violent to me. Now on the other hand a game in which the goal is to mame or inflict 'pain' on an opponent I would view as violent. But those games are very rare and probably not very entertaining. I don't even twitch or cower away at Fallout 3's gore with heads popping off and lots of blood. But I can't stand the idea of someone's fingers getting smashed in a door. One is painful and one is just theatrics.
What's fun is competition and challenge. The study is correct. But I don't think disabling gore makes Half Life 2 less violent. Just less gory. And while some gore is incidental to a game. Some Gore greatly enhances the enjoyment of the game. Usually good gore is comedic gore. Getting blown up in Team Fortress 2 is usually a hillarious experience as you watch your head fly across the map 200 feet in the air. It's gory. It's your own death. And it's really funny.
Monty Python Search for the Holy Grail has some of the most hillarious gore on film. If the knight hadn't bled when his arm was cut off I think it would have been less enjoyable.
And I think dieing horendous hillarious violent ways in portal is one of its most appealing features. Portal is incredibly violent the violence is just mostly directed at you. I also enjoy N+ and find getting hit by a rocket and exploding hillarious and frustrating.
It should be mentioned again "This study is not about VIOLENCE it is about GORE." The title is bad. All they concluded was that in most games gore is not a factor in its enjoyment. Which is kind of "Duh". I find TF2 with confetti even funnier than bloody TF2. But it still means I find stabbing someone in the back thoroughly enjoyable.
If the W3C would get off their lazy asses and offer a universal standard for rich web interaction we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead they flipped off the development community and if you want dynamic interactive interfaces you have to descend into the mediocre hell that is AJAX or easily develop it in Flash.
As sucktastic as flash development is. And it really is sucktastic. Actionscript is a cyst upon the world. Trying to do the same sort of thing through AJAX is incredibly difficult to impossible.
Flash shouldn't be used in situations where it isn't used. It also needs to start adding basic web functionality. For instance if I press "back" it needs to respect that inside the flash app. But this is all W3C's fault, not adobe's. Let's face it Flash is better standardized now than HTML and just about as ubiquitous..
I would want a hinter. But I know in my heart of hearts if there was an unlimited hint button I would just start ramming that sucker like a heroin addicted lab mouse on a drug dispenser toggle.
Don't give the users unlimited hints. But make sure they never get reallllly stuck.
You can deliver what they want and teach them the game however. Make a mode with unlimited hints and no time recharge but call it "Practice Mode" and don't keep track of score. That way everyone who's actually competitive (Which is actually e verybody when you get down to it. Even your mom wants a high score.) will use the mode sparingly.
They could employ the same system that the Xbox employs. Add an IR receiver.
I already have a button which turns off my Xbox 360 in one button press. It's on my Logitch Harmony. When I press "Off" it turns off my hometheater, including my 360.
If they want a quick "OMG boobs!" button then they just need a universal remote. Program it to the XBox's IR "Off" command and bam! Problem solved.
If people start swearing I could just press the "mute" button and it'll mute my receiver.
I guess the EU wants to legislate the ownership or at least education for parents to purchase a Universal Remote. PC games? Add an IR receiver. Again, mute is easy enough in windows. My keyboard has a mute button so there must be a hook. Also minimizing to desktop is a hotkey so that should be pretty easy to setup to an IR command as well.
I recall Microsoft was sued over the "Vista Ready" computers that couldn't run Vista. I'll bet the Windows 7.0 ready computers that come with Vista will have the same problems
Yes I'm sure that two operating systems with the same system requirements, share a driver model and run off of almost the same kernel will have the same compatibility issues as an upgrade from a 5 year older OS based on a different kernel and driver model./sarcasm
If a computer runs Vista what makes you think Windows 7 will suddenly be an insurmountable hurdle?
Those who use Max, Blender, Maya or XSI tend to buy enough RAM to actually run their applications plus excess.
RAM is cheap. I know people who do a lot of fluid sims who have 32GB of RAM on their workstation. I agree you shouldn't be running a MySQL server if you don't need to be. But I suspect that managing services and turning them on and off would have a far greater overhead than just letting them sit in memory and let the OS do its thing: manage and prioritize processor cycles.
It's shocking. It's an ask slashdot that can't be paraphrased into "Dear Slashdot, how do I convince the gullible bone headed administrators at my school to convert to Open Source?"
It doesn't even ask any leading questions like "Since kids are stupid how best should I beat them?"
I think this is the problem with the Ask Slashdot Question.
This is how I read it: "Dear Slashdot. I don't use Word, Excel, Photoshop or any other proprietary software in my day to day work. But on the occasion that I need to crop a photo or graph a single column of data OSS seems to be just as good as the software I never use. How do I switch everyone else out despite their obviously ignorant desire to be held captive by giant evil corporations?"
The answer might be: "Dear Slashdot Questioner. Before you try and pry the closed source software out of your user's hands... perhaps you should remember that you're just an IT help monkey and might not be the best person to evaluate the merits of Open Office Calc vs Excel for the business department. You might not be able to judge the various merits of Photoshop and Gimp in the graphic design department. Or you might be completely clueless as to the relative value of Blender vs 3dsmax and Maya. Please leave tool selection to the various department heads. And we'll leave your decision between a Cisco router and a Netgear router to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Cheaper option is to bribe the pedophile into taking down his blog.
It's interesting that in early American History secret ballots were viewed as "cowardly".
I know you're working really hard to spout off why anonymity is so important but let's think back to all of the "Great Anonymous Leaders".
Ahhh yes it was Anonymous who wrote "I have a dream..."
It was anonymous who signed the declaration of independence.
It was anonymous who wrote the constitution.
I don't post anonymously. I usually have my real name in my sig. I take responsibility for what I say. And where I don't put my name in my sig it would take seconds to associate my username with a site that does list my real name.
I'm not saying anonymity is bad. In fact we abandoned the open voting system after it was found to be easily corruptible. But to suggest that less anonymity is inherently a threat to freedom is also equally naive.
So the reason we have SPAM is because stupid people use computers. And stupid people use computers because bill gates made it easy for people to use computers.
If only people who used *NIX CLIs used computers we would still be laughing at those silly machines with the blinky lights that are pretty much useless for anything.
I tend to say the advances in computing over the last couple of decades outstrips the occasional piece of spam in my inbox.
Define "Bad OS".
For me Windows is a "Good OS".
Despite the common misconception on Slashdot. Not every Windows machine is part of a botnet. In fact most Windows machines aren't sending spam. Shocking I know.
Idiots like me use Windows because it's "Better" than the alternatives for purposes we purchased it for.
How is that a shortcoming of science?
1) The researches found a result.
2) Proposed a possible mechanism.
3) Stated the mechanism was untested and might just be bullshit they cooked up at the pub.
4) People misreport guess of researchers as "Fact!" ...
6) "Shortcoming of science!" (and profit?)
It's sort of like saying that the urban legand "People think we only use 10% of our brain even though research has shown this to be almost certainly false." is a shortcoming of science.
People talk. People like to have "all the answers". The problem is with gossip not science. 'Science' hasn't ruled on the subject yet. The official stance of 'science' is that the mechanism is unknown.
Just as 'science' has only found that mouse mothers subjected to certain conditions can pass along the effects to their children even after the conditions have ceased. The mechanism should be discovered before any other conclusions can be reached. The summary is attempting to assign far more consequence to the study than study can provide. The shortcoming is with vague and speculative reporting not science. /rant
DNA is only part of the equation. Put a frog egg in mildly radioactive water and see what happens.
This study essentially just says "The environment of the pregnant mother can have an effect on the offspring." To which I say ... "Duh". Push down a 6 pack of budlight every day while preganant and I can disprove mendelson as well. No genetic manipulation!
And exposing a mother to alcohol has effects on the baby as well.
This test is pretty rediculous. Feed a human mother alcohol and the baby can turn out mal-adjusted. Have a human mother smoke a pack of cigarettes every day and the baby might turn out different.
Yes human and mouse mothers, what you're exposed to during preganancy can have an effect on your child outside of genetics.
It should also be noted that darwin proposed "Survival of the Fittest" without any knowledge of genetics. Whether or not changes can occur before or after conception is irrellevant. It's still survival of the fittest. If a finch aquires the ability to eat a nut a day before mating or the day it was conceived is irellevant. The point is you genetically/chemically/spiritually/intellectually transfered an important survival trait to another animal which then out gunned its competition and managed top ass along that same trait genetically/chemically/spiritually/intellectually.
Well two things.
1) If you have ever seen an explosion your BS-o-meter should have alerted you to the fact that some debris would go into a HIGHER orbit... and some would go into a LOWER orbit. Therefore you can have material re-enter the atmosphere AND stay in orbit for thousands of years.
2) It's not the sattelite debris. It's a coincidence and your suspicions aren't confirmed... and they're wrong.
Since when has basic newtonian physics been "alarmist"?
That's not entirely true though.
We already have gated communities on the web. They're https sites.
I would say a second secure webspace in which trusted commerce can take place in addition to the existing web wouldn't be a bad thing. I would be willing to completely give up my anonymity when wanting to make a secure transaction. In fact I would be willing to give up my anonymity on the normal internet, but like that I *could* be anonymous if ever needed.
Hybridization seems like the key here.
A good specific example of this is Apple's Shake compositor.
For $10,000 you get access to unlimited licenses and the source code. But you're bound by an NDA and contract to not release any code modifications or even publicly state what modifications have been made.
You'll read interviews where a VFX supervisor will say. "We used a proprietary 64bit compositor to do the IMAX work." What they're trying to say is. "We recompiled shake for 64bit but we aren't allowed to name the application due to NDA."
If the OP wants to read what such a contract would look like I would just reference the Shake source code license.
I think you'll see a huge surge. Everybody wants to be the *first* or *original* 'easy to program, easy to profit' application developer.
If your idea isn't terribly original or difficult to execute you'll be cloned immediately so being first to market is huge.
Wouldn't an ultrasonic loud speaker be more effective and less likely to miss?
Or perhaps a pop up scarecrow.
Problem is deer are usually smart enough to figure out what is and is not dangerous. If they get squired a few times they'll just assume they're setting off your sprinkler system. And I've seen deer walk right through sprinklers without a care in the world.
Then again. I've never seen the difference between:
Paintball, Airsoft, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike. All activities are me attempting to hit an oposing player with projectiles to eliminate them from play or gain a point.
I also don't see any difference between Doom and Super Soakers. They're all equally "violent" in my mind. Just because blood comes out when I hit them doesn't make it more violent to me. Now on the other hand a game in which the goal is to mame or inflict 'pain' on an opponent I would view as violent. But those games are very rare and probably not very entertaining. I don't even twitch or cower away at Fallout 3's gore with heads popping off and lots of blood. But I can't stand the idea of someone's fingers getting smashed in a door. One is painful and one is just theatrics.
What's fun is competition and challenge. The study is correct. But I don't think disabling gore makes Half Life 2 less violent. Just less gory. And while some gore is incidental to a game. Some Gore greatly enhances the enjoyment of the game. Usually good gore is comedic gore. Getting blown up in Team Fortress 2 is usually a hillarious experience as you watch your head fly across the map 200 feet in the air. It's gory. It's your own death. And it's really funny.
Monty Python Search for the Holy Grail has some of the most hillarious gore on film. If the knight hadn't bled when his arm was cut off I think it would have been less enjoyable.
And I think dieing horendous hillarious violent ways in portal is one of its most appealing features. Portal is incredibly violent the violence is just mostly directed at you. I also enjoy N+ and find getting hit by a rocket and exploding hillarious and frustrating.
It should be mentioned again "This study is not about VIOLENCE it is about GORE." The title is bad. All they concluded was that in most games gore is not a factor in its enjoyment. Which is kind of "Duh". I find TF2 with confetti even funnier than bloody TF2. But it still means I find stabbing someone in the back thoroughly enjoyable.
If the W3C would get off their lazy asses and offer a universal standard for rich web interaction we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead they flipped off the development community and if you want dynamic interactive interfaces you have to descend into the mediocre hell that is AJAX or easily develop it in Flash.
As sucktastic as flash development is. And it really is sucktastic. Actionscript is a cyst upon the world. Trying to do the same sort of thing through AJAX is incredibly difficult to impossible.
Flash shouldn't be used in situations where it isn't used. It also needs to start adding basic web functionality. For instance if I press "back" it needs to respect that inside the flash app. But this is all W3C's fault, not adobe's. Let's face it Flash is better standardized now than HTML and just about as ubiquitous..
Agreed.
I would want a hinter. But I know in my heart of hearts if there was an unlimited hint button I would just start ramming that sucker like a heroin addicted lab mouse on a drug dispenser toggle.
Don't give the users unlimited hints. But make sure they never get reallllly stuck.
You can deliver what they want and teach them the game however. Make a mode with unlimited hints and no time recharge but call it "Practice Mode" and don't keep track of score. That way everyone who's actually competitive (Which is actually e verybody when you get down to it. Even your mom wants a high score.) will use the mode sparingly.
They could employ the same system that the Xbox employs. Add an IR receiver.
I already have a button which turns off my Xbox 360 in one button press. It's on my Logitch Harmony. When I press "Off" it turns off my hometheater, including my 360.
If they want a quick "OMG boobs!" button then they just need a universal remote. Program it to the XBox's IR "Off" command and bam! Problem solved.
If people start swearing I could just press the "mute" button and it'll mute my receiver.
I guess the EU wants to legislate the ownership or at least education for parents to purchase a Universal Remote. PC games? Add an IR receiver. Again, mute is easy enough in windows. My keyboard has a mute button so there must be a hook. Also minimizing to desktop is a hotkey so that should be pretty easy to setup to an IR command as well.
I recall Microsoft was sued over the "Vista Ready" computers that couldn't run Vista. I'll bet the Windows 7.0 ready computers that come with Vista will have the same problems
Yes I'm sure that two operating systems with the same system requirements, share a driver model and run off of almost the same kernel will have the same compatibility issues as an upgrade from a 5 year older OS based on a different kernel and driver model. /sarcasm
If a computer runs Vista what makes you think Windows 7 will suddenly be an insurmountable hurdle?
Or you can just buy more RAM.
Those who use Max, Blender, Maya or XSI tend to buy enough RAM to actually run their applications plus excess.
RAM is cheap. I know people who do a lot of fluid sims who have 32GB of RAM on their workstation. I agree you shouldn't be running a MySQL server if you don't need to be. But I suspect that managing services and turning them on and off would have a far greater overhead than just letting them sit in memory and let the OS do its thing: manage and prioritize processor cycles.
"Buy a Ford-- because if you buy a Toyota it will probably explode and kill your children."
There are limits to dishonesty about your competitor's product.
How is it Microsoft's Fault for confusing their customers about a product:
1) They can't buy.
2) They won't ever see.
3) They wouldn't want.
4) Microsoft doesn't want to sell them?
That's like saying the Macbook Nano with the giant touch wheel is confusing Apple customers even though Apple doesn't actually market or sell it.
I found its antipathy for reason and science far more offensive than its bad vfx.
Spock was an offense to reason and logic.
Rationality and Science were just humanity deluding itself and offending the "One True God."
It's shocking. It's an ask slashdot that can't be paraphrased into "Dear Slashdot, how do I convince the gullible bone headed administrators at my school to convert to Open Source?"
It doesn't even ask any leading questions like "Since kids are stupid how best should I beat them?"
That's not true.
Photoshop's interface is universally reviled.
That just goes to show how fierce the hatred for GIMP's interface is.
Even one of the project managers for Photoshop admitted that photoshop's interface sucks.
It's not that we like Photoshop per say. It's that there are no decent alternatives.
Lots of software is starting to require SSE2.
I just had to offload an Athlon XP because new software doesn't support it anymore.
I think this is the problem with the Ask Slashdot Question.
This is how I read it: "Dear Slashdot. I don't use Word, Excel, Photoshop or any other proprietary software in my day to day work. But on the occasion that I need to crop a photo or graph a single column of data OSS seems to be just as good as the software I never use. How do I switch everyone else out despite their obviously ignorant desire to be held captive by giant evil corporations?"
The answer might be: "Dear Slashdot Questioner. Before you try and pry the closed source software out of your user's hands... perhaps you should remember that you're just an IT help monkey and might not be the best person to evaluate the merits of Open Office Calc vs Excel for the business department. You might not be able to judge the various merits of Photoshop and Gimp in the graphic design department. Or you might be completely clueless as to the relative value of Blender vs 3dsmax and Maya. Please leave tool selection to the various department heads. And we'll leave your decision between a Cisco router and a Netgear router to you.
Cordially,
The Educational Faculty.
P.S. We know where you live.
"