I'd like credit for inventing the MMORPG, the ISP, multi-function devices that change their interface based on which function is being used, and YouTube.
When I was 6 years old (well over 30 years ago) I said to a friend, while I was playing Adventure on an Apple ][ with a 120 Baud acoustic modem: "Wouldn't it be cool if other adventurers were in here too, so you could have lots of people who would solve puzzles with you?" I even actually tried to make a BBS door game that would let multiple users do exactly that. I may even have a print-out of that somewhere in my boxes of childhood stuff somewhere.
When I was about 10, and got to see PLATO in action, I said, "Wow, I bet people would pay money to be able to connect to this from home!" I even wrote a letter to the admins of the computer lab at a uni asking them if I could get a PLATO terminal at home if I got enough people to chip in to buy it.
When I was 12 I had a Walkman, an FM radio, and one of those pocket Pac Man games, and I wanted them all to be in the same package so I only had to carry one thing around. My mom said that was dumb because there would be too many buttons, and I said that maybe the thing could "transform" so whatever the one in use at the time was would be the one with the buttons showing. I tried to rig it up by using a chinese puzzle box type design, but lost interest since it would have been REALLY big and REALLY annoying to use.
Back in 1995, while working with a friend to transfer some home movies to VHS, we were talking about how it would be funny to share some of them online - imagine a site where people could put random crap their family filmed on to an archive or even one of those websites, and other people could watch it. Alas, we decided it could never happen due to bandwidth and storage issues.
My point with this is that reasonably bright people come up with ideas for things like this stuff *all* the time - and some of us actually write about it or even try to make a prototype happen - but there's a rather vast difference between coming up with an idea and developing an implementation of it. You want credit for inventing something, actually *invent* it and bring it into the world.
More like spoken like someone who doesn't take their music on the go.
I have an iPod because 99% of the time that I'm listening to music I am not at my computer, and the iPod makes it much easier to navigate my music while I'm on the move than most other music players I've tried.
Things are a bit more complex than you think. I'm a woman who is about to hit 40, and I have a rather different perspective:
I chose not to have kids because I wanted to live for me, not for them. As a result, I have had a pretty good career so far and have financial security and a nice disposable income, though I spend my money mostly on travel rather than on gadgets. Given a choice of companions, I can have:
- A 40-year-old guy who is now at a phase in his life where he's financially secure (as you say), but is also starting to, if not already, falling apart physically, losing his interest in sex while mine's still on the increase, and generally can't be footloose and fancy-free because he's worried about all his stuff. Oh, and who if he is single now is *probably* looking at marrying for kids since he's worried about his "legacy" (or is looking for arm candy, as you say)
OR
- A guy in his mid-to-late 20's who's not making a bundle of money (not that I care), but who's near his peak physically, is going to have a lot fewer obligations tying him down, is likely more looking for a fun time than anything particularly serious, etc. Sure, he is not going to have as much life experience (then again, another 15-20 years of rotting in an office isn't all that enriching), but he'll be a bit more fun for the kinds of things I'm looking for.
Mind you, I'm not saying all men in their 40's fit the first paragraph or those in their 20's fit the second, but I'm willing to be a bit picky, and it's worked out for me so far:D Good luck in your search!
Except that there have been successful hijackings since 9/11. Not of US carriers or with substantial numbers of US passengers, but nonetheless, there have been successful hijackings since 9/11.
Maybe those other people haven't heard about 9/11.
Actually, in the US, passengers will fight back. Israel too, I bet. But there have been successful hijackings since 9/11, so clearly not EVERYONE knows the game has changed.
What if someone were able to invent something that sent a signal turning off the jammer in the car if a call were placed to 911? No, that's not possible - I'm sure this would be implemented in the absolute worst possible way, and that the engineers responsible for designs are far too stupid to think of anything like this! If you get pulled over and need to call your lawyer, turn off the engine - or wait, would the engineers be too stupid to have this thing ever turn off? OH MY GOD WHAT IF I AM JUST WALKING DOWN THE STREET!?!?! I'll never be able to make a call because of all the cars going by! There couldn't possibly be any way to address these issues!!! GOD DAMN BUT MY KNEE KEEPS JERKING!
I think the idea is dumb - there are better ways to stop trivial phone use while driving, and this is an overreaction/attempt at expanding governmental influence. However, I think that this complaint you're bringing up is just stupid; there are ways to deal with the technical issues, so maybe focusing on the real problems with this incredibly dumb plan would be better.
You could get allied nations to commit to a prize pool I suppose? There are funding agreements in place for other things, so this might be something doable.
Any individual or group who has a desire to see a thing developed? Kind of obvious, no?
If a goal is seen as worthy by enough people/groups, they'll be able to raise the money to offer the prize. For example:
Say there is an open source project that I would like to see have certain features that I, personally, am unable to develop. I might offer a bounty for someone who develops that - and I could notify people who may also use this software and who might also want those features developed - and they might contribute to the bounty pool. At some point, the pool would get big enough that someone would want to do the implementation.
If I'm not able to get enough people to fund it to the point where people take it seriously, or if I'm not willing to fund it myself, it probably isn't really worth doing.
For bigger things, I could see the government getting involved. For example, rather than the government funding NASA to build a man-rated system capable of getting to orbit and meeting certain specs (reuse, boosting capability, efficiency, whatever), offer a prize of 1 billion USD as well as contracts for a certain number of flights. This would cost NASA way less than contracting the development, would only cost them if the prize was won, and would spur competitors to get into the field and try to make it happen. The prize-winner would certainly make quite a bit of money from other contracts as well. The runners-up would have taken a risk and lost (or maybe not - I could definitely see some serious innovation coming out of the competition and some new tech that could be marketed).
I frankly don't get why we haven't done this on a governmental level with things like spaceflight, renewable energy sources, etc. It seems to be a no-brainer - the government literally can't lose. The X-Prize demonstrated the feasibility of this on a small scale; ramp it up.
Ah, I see - it wasn't that you're needlessly argumentative, it's that you didn't understand what I wrote. Let me break it down for you:
The people who design the systems that the farmers use would need PhDs or terminal degrees, or at least be comprised of incredibly talented scientists and engineers. Probably the people overseeing the food production operation should have advanced education and training to be able to adapt the system/improve it over time.
I think we're both probably in agreement with this part.
But if we're talking about establishing an actual colony over time, the people who would be tending to the crops could certainly be given sufficient training ahead of time to handle 90% of the work, and could develop the remaining knowledge on the job as they qualify over time for critical tasks. We routinely train people with little more than a high-school education to handle extremely complex systems, and we expect those systems to *work* - I'm looking squarely at the technical ratings in the various armed services.
Note that I am saying that the "farmhands" in this case would be compared to highly trained technical ratings in the military who receive extensive pre-fleet/deployment training and who then enhance their education while performing on the job.
Given the fact that you have high-school dropouts developing extremely complex hydroponic systems that need to maximize growth while minimizing risk of detection growing weed, I'm pretty sure we could find a bunch of people capable of handling the operation & maintenance of hydroponic systems necessary to keep themselves alive.
This statement is not suggesting that we take high-school dropouts who grow weed; it's simply saying that the requisite skills to develop and maintain rather complex systems are not, actually *that* difficult to find. My point was that there are likely more people out there who have the aptitude that, with extensive training, they could handle food production on Mars.
With regards to your comments on physical conditioning and medical history, and your statement that this would be a one-way trip: You can screen out a lot of conditions, yes indeed. But the fact remains that the people going there _will_ die there (one way or another) and that there _will_ need to be the development, relatively early in the colonization effort, of facilities necessary to deal with aging members of the population and emergent health problems that occur. Certainly screening people for various conditions is good, but I think there are exceptions that would and should be made in this case. You cite less than perfect vision as an example - as people get older, their vision tends to deteriorate, so why not be prepared for that? It's pretty much a given that some sort of corrective measures would *have* to be available to the colonists because, well, if they can't see they aren't very likely to survive in that environment very long.
Basically, it seems like you're mingling concepts from short-term peak functioning trips and long-term colonization. For short-term trips to Mars (where people go, plant a flag, and come back) yes, you want people who are in perfect physical condition because they will need to be in perfect physical condition to operate at peak performance throughout the mission. For long-term (as in permanent) trips, it's not reasonable to expect, anticipate, plan for or plan around the idea that the colonists would maintain peak performance and condition indefinitely; you MUST include planning for issues that inevitably come up as human beings get older. Ideally your initial members will be as close to perfect as you can get, but, given that they *will* have to have systems in place for dealing with common problems fairly soon (relatively speaking) I don't think sending people up who have minor, easily treatable conditions is actually a deal killer, and may in fact be quite valuable in the long run as early users of those systems that will need to be in place to handle such t
I had a great time playing Playstation Diablo 1 with an ex, but yeah, Diablo 2 didn't really grab me as a game.
What's odd is that D2 did grab me as a platform for testing out automation concepts and designing very basic expert systems: I wound up learning to write software that could interface with the game, and then make decisions based on game-world information. Ultimately they wound up performing about as well as a "decent" player could. Unfortunately I never developed it to the point where it could explore a level to find an exit or quest locations, so it wound up needing map hacks to work. Still, kind of funny to set up a level 1, go away for a weekend with it running, and come back to see what it had gotten up to.
I really like rhythm games - they can make really repetitive tasks involved in learning physical skills a lot more fun. Recently I've been using Kinect to get more active via dance, tai chi, and yoga, and while I'm probably not actually learning to "dance" or do tai chi, it's a lot more fun with the instant feedback on form and I am getting a LOT more active.
Between my Kinect and now Rock Band 3 with the pro-keys mode (and eventually the real guitar mode) my gaming might actually lead to me learning something applicable outside of gaming, while still being fun as a game.
Easy: You have the game base the quality of the hit off of the physical mechanics of the player's swing.
Swing half-assedly, you might hit, but you'll just have a glancing blow. Swing hard, it'll hurt more if it connects. Swing with precision and power, you hit and it might be a critical on top of it.
Dance Central for Kinect does something like this - it tracks how your body is moving, the timing etc. for each dance move and gives you a score based on how well you perform the move. If you completely screw it up, you "fail" that move. If you have everything in perfect synch and proper timing, you get a "flawless" score. In between failure and flawless and you get some lesser number of points. It's actually quite a good mechanism, at least for me, in improving my technique.
Another game for Kinect - Your Shape - has Tai Chi and Yoga modes that work kind of similarly.
Anyway, tl;dr version of my answer: make the random number generator less prominent, make mechanical correctness of moves done by the player add the variation. The better you get at moving etc., the better you perform in the game.
I never once suggested that we send uneducated "migrant" workers, as you suggest I did - and the fact that you would distill that point down to that indicates only that you aren't interested in having a discussion, just loudly screeching your viewpoint, and deliberately misrepresenting the views of those who might disagree with you so that you can shoot them down.
That's fine if that's your thing, but I'm not interested in fighting. I was hoping to have a discussion and you are clearly not someone worth trying to talk to. A shame, I guess, since we've both obviously got an interest in the topic at hand. Ah, well, there are plenty of other people worth talking to who are capable of having a discussion rather than trying to start a fight - I'll leave you to your thing.
The people who design the systems that the farmers use would need PhDs or terminal degrees, or at least be comprised of incredibly talented scientists and engineers. Probably the people overseeing the food production operation should have advanced education and training to be able to adapt the system/improve it over time. But if we're talking about establishing an actual colony over time, the people who would be tending to the crops could certainly be given sufficient training ahead of time to handle 90% of the work, and could develop the remaining knowledge on the job as they qualify over time for critical tasks. We routinely train people with little more than a high-school education to handle extremely complex systems, and we expect those systems to *work* - I'm looking squarely at the technical ratings in the various armed services. Given the fact that you have high-school dropouts developing extremely complex hydroponic systems that need to maximize growth while minimizing risk of detection growing weed, I'm pretty sure we could find a bunch of people capable of handling the operation & maintenance of hydroponic systems necessary to keep themselves alive.
As to the physical conditioning, you're kidding, right? People undergo rigorous physical training *all* *the* *time* to get them to a physical state that would likely be sufficient for life on Mars. It's called "Marine Corps Boot Camp." I'm pretty sure that even less arduous training routines would be sufficient - though, yes, you'd want to be over, rather than under, prepared. Most human beings who are not well into middle-age or otherwise suffering from a physical disability could likely, if sufficiently motivated, complete the physical portion (and then some) of boot camp.
With regard to the psychological mindset, there exist numerous people who deal with privation on a scale that you and I cannot appreciate (I say this because the both of us have the absolute luxury of being able to spend part of our time arguing about pie-in-the-sky Mars trips on the Internet, and everything we must have in our lives to be able to make this inane discussion possible); there exist some people who *choose* that life by joining a cloister or by otherwise locking themselves away. Heck, I work with someone who spent a few years in Antarctica back before things got quite as, uh, cosmopolitan, as they are now down there, and he insists that had he not been sent back for health reasons (he has MS, and is not capable of walking) he'd be there still. Or, again, many people who are in the military service would have the proper discipline and mindset to be able to handle a colonization effort.
To say that the people who would likely volunteer are mostly just geeks who read too much Heinlein growing up (and, frankly, from some of your objections, specifically the "PhD farmhand" comment, it sounds like you did too) is naive. I don't think there would be millions of people who *could* do it, but I certainly think that there would be millions who would volunteer, and of those millions, I'm absolutely certain that we would have several thousand who would be more than capable of handling it and thriving.
We have pseudo-elections prior to the big elections. They're called primaries, and there is an absurd amount of gaming that goes on with them, plus the fact that the people who can be arsed to vote in them are not a representative sample of the larger population; it leads to strange situations like RON PAUL seeming viable when he was not even close to being so, or opposition members voting in those primaries to try to get the least viable candidate given the nod to make the general election a walk for their team.
As for changing things - I actually think it's easier to get changes to the system in place because you can generate support for systemic changes when people are not afraid that if they fail the outcome will be worse than what it is now. In an election, as it stands, if they push for change and fail they will often wind up putting the person they least want to see in office. But with a non-election push for changes to the underlying system the worst that happens if they fail is... things stay the same as they are now. There is less downside, and thus people are more supportive. Even better, this kind of thing will have more cross-spectrum support than any individual candidate would. Think about it - Green party voters and Libertarian party voters don't agree on policy and platforms very often, but both groups agree that there needs to be a change to the underlying system to give them a voice. While they'd almost never vote for the same candidate, I bet you could drum up support for ballot propositions that would change the way voting is done from every point on the political spectrum.
You are advocating that the electorate change first - I'd love to see it, too, because voter apathy in the US is ridiculous; but that requires too much trust, something we are short of here. I am arguing that it is easier for the underlying system to change because that requires less trust that other people will back your play, and more trust that people who have been without a voice, all across the spectrum, will want one and make an effort to get it.
I do agree that the fact that the US is a 9000 LB behemoth on the world stage and yet we have such a ridiculous approach is annoying. It blows my mind that a nation of 300+ million people and is among one of the most demographically diverse nations on the planet, is somehow "adequately" represented by two not terribly different parties, yet a nation like Finland, which is one of the least diverse populations, has just over 5 million people, and yet has 8 parties in parliament, with an additional 8 outside of it. Hell, they have 2 different communist parties, which is boggling in and of itself, but there you have it.
Yeah, where Ventura won governor and then.... what, exactly? Where is the sustainability? Where is the *party* that he ran with today? Thank you for proving my point exactly: The party Jesse Ventura won with no longer exists, Jesse is no longer the governor, and independent elected governors, representatives and senators are rather thin on the ground in Washington.
I won't say what the "many here" think - they can do a fine job of it for themselves. The problem is what constitutes "water" - and guess what, it's different for many.
For some, "Water" was Bob Barr. For others, "Water" was RON PAUL. For others, it was Ralph Nader. I wonder, if you took the average Bob Barr supporter and asked them if they thought Nader was water or urine, what they would say. Reverse that and ask the Nader voters about Barr.
You're also completely ignoring the concept of games theory. Let's say there are 3 candidates: 1 of them I agree with and want to win, but they are a 3rd party candidate. 1 of them I kind of agree with, so I'd be OK if they won, but not really happy. 1 of them I disagree with vehemently, so I absolutely don't want them to win. Who do I vote for?
Well, if I believe that enough people would break out of the "safe" mold and vote for the 3rd candidate, maybe I could vote for them. But if I believe that the 3rd party candidate does not have a shot of winning despite being the one I would most support, then by splitting the vote I'd wind up with my least favored outcome; I hold my nose and pick the "safe" vote. You keep on ignoring the fact that individual voters are part of the electorate, and in many cases will vote based on what they think other people may do.
In fact, most people who advocate for a third party will explicitly add the caveat to their points to ONLY do this in races where the eventual outcome isn't really in doubt. For example, I live in Chicago. During the Mayoral election, it is a foregone conclusion that the Democrat will win. Therefore, I do not have to worry that my vote will actually have any impact on the outcome of the election, and so I can vote for a candidate I believe in rather than the one I simply think might win and find less objectionable in a close race. But for Senate, given that much of Illinois outside of Chicago is VERY "red" and that race would be very close, I'd be a fool if I voted 3rd party/split vote because it would ONLY result in my least favorite option winning.
You keep on arguing from a completely naive viewpoint that requires people to behave in ways that are unrealistic. Counter my actual arguments rather than say that people are whining - explain to me exactly how my casting my vote for a candidate I *know* cannot win, and thus taking support away from a candidate that *can* win and who is less objectionable than the other candidate that can win is not a smart move. Explain to me how having the worst possible likely outcome (from my perspective) is better for me. In the real world, not some theoretical paradise where EVERYONE decides spontaneously to vote their conscience rather than for the least objectionable reasonable outcome.
While you're at it, explain to me how it's somehow more reasonable or feasible to change the established behavior of the electorate (voting safe rather than taking risks in a very polarized political landscape) than it is to change the way the system is implemented. For bonus points, explain to me how that change would be sustainable without changes to the underlying system, when the homeostasis of our system as it is now is to vote safe.
You seem wedded to this system, I am not sure why - what's so great about our current way of handling elections? Give me some arguments in favor of it.
Can you tell me, in the alternate reality you live in, what kind of system do they use to determine the vote? Because in the reality I'm posting from, voting is a zero-sum game in the US, where whoever gets a plurality of the vote wins - that makes it ridiculously difficult for a 3rd party to emerge because they will almost always simply be splitting the vote of one of the two major parties, ensuring that the opponent furthest from their supporter's political beliefs wins. Also, how does campaign funding and finance work over there? Because over here, major parties get ridiculously huge advantages over minor parties.
The way the entire funding process is handled, the way the two currently dominant parties work to keep each other in existence (as witnessed by the Colorado thing this time around) virtually guarantees that no real serious alternative parties can come into existence; when you have 2 dominant players in the marketplace of ideas, both of whom have coffers that absolutely dwarf any 3rd party player who isn't able to finance their candidates to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars (they'd have to spend in excess of the existing parties simply to get the party and name recognition needed to be effective), it's kind of hard to get your message out, and, more to the point, how many billionaires are there out there who'd be willing to (very likely) throw away a substantial chunk of their fortune on the off chance that they might manage to influence a few elections (though likely not win them)? Meg Whitman and Steve Forbes are two that come to mind, and both of them were horrific candidates who weren't third party anyway. Further, the "winner takes all" nature of the way we count votes ensures that even if a 3rd party does emerge, it will eventually be taken back out of the picture or replace one of the 2 dominant parties - leaving us back with 2 parties.
Then you have the problem with a 3rd party popping up around a single issue like election reform: It *is* an important issue to many people across the political spectrum. It is not, however *the most important* issue to many of those people, especially when we have a down economy and a couple of wars going on overseas. Or anything big happening, which is almost always. When things are good it's hard to convince people that things need to change in order to keep things good. Your facile "if people think it's that important they'll vote for it" ignores these realities completely.
Another problem with creating a 3rd party is: where would it draw from? The Democrats are by and large a center (between left and right) organization that occasionally does manage to lean left. The Republicans are by and large a center-right organization that (often, now, thanks to the Tea "Party" stuff) lean (sometimes much) further right. So, individuals who are not being served are people who are further left than the Dems and then the extreme right. If anything, this election has proven that the GOP is willing to include a fair number of extremists under their tent, and anything more extreme - well, there simply aren't enough to make a difference. So lets focus on a more left leaning party because those are the people not being represented.
Where will they come from? Certainly not from the GOP - Republicans who want a party more to their left will vote Democrat. So the new party people will have to come from the Democrats, which, with our current system means a three way race, with about 50% of the vote going to the Republicans, and the other half being split between two left parties. So, if people really DID vote for their guy, they'd be ensuring that the absolute least favorable choice for them - the Republican - wins.
Looking at things from another perspective - Libertarian vs. Authoritarian rather than right vs. left - this would be the only area I could see it even remotely become possible for a 3rd party to emerge that would take votes away from both the Democrats AND the Republicans, making it so that a vote for a candidate in this theoretical 3rd party
Er, follow-up: I meant to say "political ideologues" not "political conservatives" - I've met PUH-lenty on the left who are similarly willing to disregard hard evidence when it suits them, and was not intending to be partisan.
The "problem" with that is that in some cases, enough people think the race is a foregone conclusion and thus they vote for that 3rd party candidate, winding up with their guy losing.
I'm thinking of Nader voters specifically - I can't believe they'd rather have had Bush win than Gore, you know?
Because of polarization of the electorate, races are getting tighter, and you wind up with groups with a vested interest in disenfranchising people by convincing them to "throw away" their vote on a 3rd party.
I live in Chicago, where the choices are Dem, Dem and Dem, but during this recent election I got scads of mailers suggesting that because one candidate or another was SO FAR AHEAD in the polls, I should vote for a Green candidate or an independent, etc. The groups sending me those turn out to be linked back to... the second place candidate.
We need to reform the way elections are funded and the rules that people running for office need to play by before we can get any real options; alas, we can't get there when the people we do have in office find the idea of real campaign reform anathema.
Here's what I wish would happen: All the third party candidates in a given race, who absolutely know they individually don't have a hope in hell of getting a sufficient percentage of the vote, should work together to form one party solely for the purpose of getting a third party a sufficient chunk of the vote to win "major party" status in their area. They should pick one candidate who runs on the platform of needing more options - because god knows they won't be able to have a coherent platform with many dissenting views, but I think they can ALL agree that we need more options. Maybe their 1 candidate can get a chunk of the vote, maybe not - but something like that is needed to break this cycle.
What sickened me about this election was that, in Colorado, the republican candidate for an office out there was likely going to get less than 10% of the vote, thus turning the republican party into a minor party (meaning it would be on the same level as "Chuck's American Happy Fun-Time Party!") but both Dem and GOP leadership basically got together and said that even if that happened they wouldn't change things to avoid humiliating their republican colleagues. So basically, even if one of those two parties gets completely fucked by their own rules, they'll just ignore the rules to basically keep the status quo. Sickening, and it needs to change.
I've met quite a few - political conservatives who are opposed to scientific findings based on how those findings may interfere with their political aims; environmentalists who flat-out do not understand science and base their beliefs on what "feels" right vs. what has been (as far as we know) empirically proven; anti-intellectuals who profess no particular religious beliefs etc. I've met plenty of atheists who are also anti-science, in that they certainly don't understand the scientific method nor seek to apply it in any way, and attempt to use science in the same way that fundamentalists might try to use the bible to bolster their arguments. Then there are a bunch of "spiritual" people who get into crystals and pyramid power and all kind of pseud-scientific bullshit, and who will militantly oppose scientific findings showing them wrong, to that's also anti-science, and I'd say loony.
Maybe I'm painting with too broad a brush, but that's my take.
Anything's possible - personally, I don't really care since I'm having fun with it, and it isn't like they won't make more/better games as people figure out the device:) They're selling enough (Kinetic addons and games) that I'm reasonably sure of this. Add in the ability for indie devs to make stuff soon and I think it'll have a solid library.
With regard to DC, I didn't find the lack of tactile feedback to be that big a deal - it flashes on the bodypart that is not in the proper spot/beat/synch which has worked for me (went from failing every move to being able to complete them properly about 75% of the time). With my plastic guitars I also get a flash on screen and a sound - it's the same kind of feedback mechanism really, but you're holding something in your hand, vs. just using your body.
I'm with you on the out-of-shape thing: unlike Wii, where you can kind of just twitch to make larger motions, with Kinect you really need to move to make things happen; I played KA and DC last night for about 3 hours and I was having too much fun to realize just how much of a workout that actually was - really sore this morning.
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I'd like credit for inventing the MMORPG, the ISP, multi-function devices that change their interface based on which function is being used, and YouTube.
When I was 6 years old (well over 30 years ago) I said to a friend, while I was playing Adventure on an Apple ][ with a 120 Baud acoustic modem: "Wouldn't it be cool if other adventurers were in here too, so you could have lots of people who would solve puzzles with you?" I even actually tried to make a BBS door game that would let multiple users do exactly that. I may even have a print-out of that somewhere in my boxes of childhood stuff somewhere.
When I was about 10, and got to see PLATO in action, I said, "Wow, I bet people would pay money to be able to connect to this from home!" I even wrote a letter to the admins of the computer lab at a uni asking them if I could get a PLATO terminal at home if I got enough people to chip in to buy it.
When I was 12 I had a Walkman, an FM radio, and one of those pocket Pac Man games, and I wanted them all to be in the same package so I only had to carry one thing around. My mom said that was dumb because there would be too many buttons, and I said that maybe the thing could "transform" so whatever the one in use at the time was would be the one with the buttons showing. I tried to rig it up by using a chinese puzzle box type design, but lost interest since it would have been REALLY big and REALLY annoying to use.
Back in 1995, while working with a friend to transfer some home movies to VHS, we were talking about how it would be funny to share some of them online - imagine a site where people could put random crap their family filmed on to an archive or even one of those websites, and other people could watch it. Alas, we decided it could never happen due to bandwidth and storage issues.
My point with this is that reasonably bright people come up with ideas for things like this stuff *all* the time - and some of us actually write about it or even try to make a prototype happen - but there's a rather vast difference between coming up with an idea and developing an implementation of it. You want credit for inventing something, actually *invent* it and bring it into the world.
More like spoken like someone who doesn't take their music on the go.
I have an iPod because 99% of the time that I'm listening to music I am not at my computer, and the iPod makes it much easier to navigate my music while I'm on the move than most other music players I've tried.
Things are a bit more complex than you think. I'm a woman who is about to hit 40, and I have a rather different perspective:
I chose not to have kids because I wanted to live for me, not for them. As a result, I have had a pretty good career so far and have financial security and a nice disposable income, though I spend my money mostly on travel rather than on gadgets. Given a choice of companions, I can have:
- A 40-year-old guy who is now at a phase in his life where he's financially secure (as you say), but is also starting to, if not already, falling apart physically, losing his interest in sex while mine's still on the increase, and generally can't be footloose and fancy-free because he's worried about all his stuff. Oh, and who if he is single now is *probably* looking at marrying for kids since he's worried about his "legacy" (or is looking for arm candy, as you say)
OR
- A guy in his mid-to-late 20's who's not making a bundle of money (not that I care), but who's near his peak physically, is going to have a lot fewer obligations tying him down, is likely more looking for a fun time than anything particularly serious, etc. Sure, he is not going to have as much life experience (then again, another 15-20 years of rotting in an office isn't all that enriching), but he'll be a bit more fun for the kinds of things I'm looking for.
Mind you, I'm not saying all men in their 40's fit the first paragraph or those in their 20's fit the second, but I'm willing to be a bit picky, and it's worked out for me so far :D Good luck in your search!
What a strange derail!
Except that there have been successful hijackings since 9/11. Not of US carriers or with substantial numbers of US passengers, but nonetheless, there have been successful hijackings since 9/11.
Maybe those other people haven't heard about 9/11.
Actually, in the US, passengers will fight back. Israel too, I bet. But there have been successful hijackings since 9/11, so clearly not EVERYONE knows the game has changed.
What if someone were able to invent something that sent a signal turning off the jammer in the car if a call were placed to 911? No, that's not possible - I'm sure this would be implemented in the absolute worst possible way, and that the engineers responsible for designs are far too stupid to think of anything like this! If you get pulled over and need to call your lawyer, turn off the engine - or wait, would the engineers be too stupid to have this thing ever turn off? OH MY GOD WHAT IF I AM JUST WALKING DOWN THE STREET!?!?! I'll never be able to make a call because of all the cars going by! There couldn't possibly be any way to address these issues!!! GOD DAMN BUT MY KNEE KEEPS JERKING!
I think the idea is dumb - there are better ways to stop trivial phone use while driving, and this is an overreaction/attempt at expanding governmental influence. However, I think that this complaint you're bringing up is just stupid; there are ways to deal with the technical issues, so maybe focusing on the real problems with this incredibly dumb plan would be better.
You could get allied nations to commit to a prize pool I suppose? There are funding agreements in place for other things, so this might be something doable.
Any individual or group who has a desire to see a thing developed? Kind of obvious, no?
If a goal is seen as worthy by enough people/groups, they'll be able to raise the money to offer the prize. For example:
Say there is an open source project that I would like to see have certain features that I, personally, am unable to develop. I might offer a bounty for someone who develops that - and I could notify people who may also use this software and who might also want those features developed - and they might contribute to the bounty pool. At some point, the pool would get big enough that someone would want to do the implementation.
If I'm not able to get enough people to fund it to the point where people take it seriously, or if I'm not willing to fund it myself, it probably isn't really worth doing.
For bigger things, I could see the government getting involved. For example, rather than the government funding NASA to build a man-rated system capable of getting to orbit and meeting certain specs (reuse, boosting capability, efficiency, whatever), offer a prize of 1 billion USD as well as contracts for a certain number of flights. This would cost NASA way less than contracting the development, would only cost them if the prize was won, and would spur competitors to get into the field and try to make it happen. The prize-winner would certainly make quite a bit of money from other contracts as well. The runners-up would have taken a risk and lost (or maybe not - I could definitely see some serious innovation coming out of the competition and some new tech that could be marketed).
I frankly don't get why we haven't done this on a governmental level with things like spaceflight, renewable energy sources, etc. It seems to be a no-brainer - the government literally can't lose. The X-Prize demonstrated the feasibility of this on a small scale; ramp it up.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just learn the material?
I heard it years ago as "I got pregnant because, for my midterm, they said I had to do an essay."
Ah, I see - it wasn't that you're needlessly argumentative, it's that you didn't understand what I wrote. Let me break it down for you:
The people who design the systems that the farmers use would need PhDs or terminal degrees, or at least be comprised of incredibly talented scientists and engineers. Probably the people overseeing the food production operation should have advanced education and training to be able to adapt the system/improve it over time.
I think we're both probably in agreement with this part.
But if we're talking about establishing an actual colony over time, the people who would be tending to the crops could certainly be given sufficient training ahead of time to handle 90% of the work, and could develop the remaining knowledge on the job as they qualify over time for critical tasks. We routinely train people with little more than a high-school education to handle extremely complex systems, and we expect those systems to *work* - I'm looking squarely at the technical ratings in the various armed services.
Note that I am saying that the "farmhands" in this case would be compared to highly trained technical ratings in the military who receive extensive pre-fleet/deployment training and who then enhance their education while performing on the job.
Given the fact that you have high-school dropouts developing extremely complex hydroponic systems that need to maximize growth while minimizing risk of detection growing weed, I'm pretty sure we could find a bunch of people capable of handling the operation & maintenance of hydroponic systems necessary to keep themselves alive.
This statement is not suggesting that we take high-school dropouts who grow weed; it's simply saying that the requisite skills to develop and maintain rather complex systems are not, actually *that* difficult to find. My point was that there are likely more people out there who have the aptitude that, with extensive training, they could handle food production on Mars.
With regards to your comments on physical conditioning and medical history, and your statement that this would be a one-way trip: You can screen out a lot of conditions, yes indeed. But the fact remains that the people going there _will_ die there (one way or another) and that there _will_ need to be the development, relatively early in the colonization effort, of facilities necessary to deal with aging members of the population and emergent health problems that occur. Certainly screening people for various conditions is good, but I think there are exceptions that would and should be made in this case. You cite less than perfect vision as an example - as people get older, their vision tends to deteriorate, so why not be prepared for that? It's pretty much a given that some sort of corrective measures would *have* to be available to the colonists because, well, if they can't see they aren't very likely to survive in that environment very long.
Basically, it seems like you're mingling concepts from short-term peak functioning trips and long-term colonization. For short-term trips to Mars (where people go, plant a flag, and come back) yes, you want people who are in perfect physical condition because they will need to be in perfect physical condition to operate at peak performance throughout the mission. For long-term (as in permanent) trips, it's not reasonable to expect, anticipate, plan for or plan around the idea that the colonists would maintain peak performance and condition indefinitely; you MUST include planning for issues that inevitably come up as human beings get older. Ideally your initial members will be as close to perfect as you can get, but, given that they *will* have to have systems in place for dealing with common problems fairly soon (relatively speaking) I don't think sending people up who have minor, easily treatable conditions is actually a deal killer, and may in fact be quite valuable in the long run as early users of those systems that will need to be in place to handle such t
I had a great time playing Playstation Diablo 1 with an ex, but yeah, Diablo 2 didn't really grab me as a game.
What's odd is that D2 did grab me as a platform for testing out automation concepts and designing very basic expert systems: I wound up learning to write software that could interface with the game, and then make decisions based on game-world information. Ultimately they wound up performing about as well as a "decent" player could. Unfortunately I never developed it to the point where it could explore a level to find an exit or quest locations, so it wound up needing map hacks to work. Still, kind of funny to set up a level 1, go away for a weekend with it running, and come back to see what it had gotten up to.
I really like rhythm games - they can make really repetitive tasks involved in learning physical skills a lot more fun. Recently I've been using Kinect to get more active via dance, tai chi, and yoga, and while I'm probably not actually learning to "dance" or do tai chi, it's a lot more fun with the instant feedback on form and I am getting a LOT more active.
Between my Kinect and now Rock Band 3 with the pro-keys mode (and eventually the real guitar mode) my gaming might actually lead to me learning something applicable outside of gaming, while still being fun as a game.
Easy: You have the game base the quality of the hit off of the physical mechanics of the player's swing.
Swing half-assedly, you might hit, but you'll just have a glancing blow. Swing hard, it'll hurt more if it connects. Swing with precision and power, you hit and it might be a critical on top of it.
Dance Central for Kinect does something like this - it tracks how your body is moving, the timing etc. for each dance move and gives you a score based on how well you perform the move. If you completely screw it up, you "fail" that move. If you have everything in perfect synch and proper timing, you get a "flawless" score. In between failure and flawless and you get some lesser number of points. It's actually quite a good mechanism, at least for me, in improving my technique.
Another game for Kinect - Your Shape - has Tai Chi and Yoga modes that work kind of similarly.
Anyway, tl;dr version of my answer: make the random number generator less prominent, make mechanical correctness of moves done by the player add the variation. The better you get at moving etc., the better you perform in the game.
I never once suggested that we send uneducated "migrant" workers, as you suggest I did - and the fact that you would distill that point down to that indicates only that you aren't interested in having a discussion, just loudly screeching your viewpoint, and deliberately misrepresenting the views of those who might disagree with you so that you can shoot them down.
That's fine if that's your thing, but I'm not interested in fighting. I was hoping to have a discussion and you are clearly not someone worth trying to talk to. A shame, I guess, since we've both obviously got an interest in the topic at hand. Ah, well, there are plenty of other people worth talking to who are capable of having a discussion rather than trying to start a fight - I'll leave you to your thing.
Why would a farmhand need a PhD?
The people who design the systems that the farmers use would need PhDs or terminal degrees, or at least be comprised of incredibly talented scientists and engineers. Probably the people overseeing the food production operation should have advanced education and training to be able to adapt the system/improve it over time. But if we're talking about establishing an actual colony over time, the people who would be tending to the crops could certainly be given sufficient training ahead of time to handle 90% of the work, and could develop the remaining knowledge on the job as they qualify over time for critical tasks. We routinely train people with little more than a high-school education to handle extremely complex systems, and we expect those systems to *work* - I'm looking squarely at the technical ratings in the various armed services. Given the fact that you have high-school dropouts developing extremely complex hydroponic systems that need to maximize growth while minimizing risk of detection growing weed, I'm pretty sure we could find a bunch of people capable of handling the operation & maintenance of hydroponic systems necessary to keep themselves alive.
As to the physical conditioning, you're kidding, right? People undergo rigorous physical training *all* *the* *time* to get them to a physical state that would likely be sufficient for life on Mars. It's called "Marine Corps Boot Camp." I'm pretty sure that even less arduous training routines would be sufficient - though, yes, you'd want to be over, rather than under, prepared. Most human beings who are not well into middle-age or otherwise suffering from a physical disability could likely, if sufficiently motivated, complete the physical portion (and then some) of boot camp.
With regard to the psychological mindset, there exist numerous people who deal with privation on a scale that you and I cannot appreciate (I say this because the both of us have the absolute luxury of being able to spend part of our time arguing about pie-in-the-sky Mars trips on the Internet, and everything we must have in our lives to be able to make this inane discussion possible); there exist some people who *choose* that life by joining a cloister or by otherwise locking themselves away. Heck, I work with someone who spent a few years in Antarctica back before things got quite as, uh, cosmopolitan, as they are now down there, and he insists that had he not been sent back for health reasons (he has MS, and is not capable of walking) he'd be there still. Or, again, many people who are in the military service would have the proper discipline and mindset to be able to handle a colonization effort.
To say that the people who would likely volunteer are mostly just geeks who read too much Heinlein growing up (and, frankly, from some of your objections, specifically the "PhD farmhand" comment, it sounds like you did too) is naive. I don't think there would be millions of people who *could* do it, but I certainly think that there would be millions who would volunteer, and of those millions, I'm absolutely certain that we would have several thousand who would be more than capable of handling it and thriving.
We have pseudo-elections prior to the big elections. They're called primaries, and there is an absurd amount of gaming that goes on with them, plus the fact that the people who can be arsed to vote in them are not a representative sample of the larger population; it leads to strange situations like RON PAUL seeming viable when he was not even close to being so, or opposition members voting in those primaries to try to get the least viable candidate given the nod to make the general election a walk for their team.
As for changing things - I actually think it's easier to get changes to the system in place because you can generate support for systemic changes when people are not afraid that if they fail the outcome will be worse than what it is now. In an election, as it stands, if they push for change and fail they will often wind up putting the person they least want to see in office. But with a non-election push for changes to the underlying system the worst that happens if they fail is... things stay the same as they are now. There is less downside, and thus people are more supportive. Even better, this kind of thing will have more cross-spectrum support than any individual candidate would. Think about it - Green party voters and Libertarian party voters don't agree on policy and platforms very often, but both groups agree that there needs to be a change to the underlying system to give them a voice. While they'd almost never vote for the same candidate, I bet you could drum up support for ballot propositions that would change the way voting is done from every point on the political spectrum.
You are advocating that the electorate change first - I'd love to see it, too, because voter apathy in the US is ridiculous; but that requires too much trust, something we are short of here. I am arguing that it is easier for the underlying system to change because that requires less trust that other people will back your play, and more trust that people who have been without a voice, all across the spectrum, will want one and make an effort to get it.
I do agree that the fact that the US is a 9000 LB behemoth on the world stage and yet we have such a ridiculous approach is annoying. It blows my mind that a nation of 300+ million people and is among one of the most demographically diverse nations on the planet, is somehow "adequately" represented by two not terribly different parties, yet a nation like Finland, which is one of the least diverse populations, has just over 5 million people, and yet has 8 parties in parliament, with an additional 8 outside of it. Hell, they have 2 different communist parties, which is boggling in and of itself, but there you have it.
Yeah, where Ventura won governor and then.... what, exactly? Where is the sustainability? Where is the *party* that he ran with today? Thank you for proving my point exactly: The party Jesse Ventura won with no longer exists, Jesse is no longer the governor, and independent elected governors, representatives and senators are rather thin on the ground in Washington.
I won't say what the "many here" think - they can do a fine job of it for themselves. The problem is what constitutes "water" - and guess what, it's different for many.
For some, "Water" was Bob Barr. For others, "Water" was RON PAUL. For others, it was Ralph Nader. I wonder, if you took the average Bob Barr supporter and asked them if they thought Nader was water or urine, what they would say. Reverse that and ask the Nader voters about Barr.
You're also completely ignoring the concept of games theory. Let's say there are 3 candidates: 1 of them I agree with and want to win, but they are a 3rd party candidate. 1 of them I kind of agree with, so I'd be OK if they won, but not really happy. 1 of them I disagree with vehemently, so I absolutely don't want them to win. Who do I vote for?
Well, if I believe that enough people would break out of the "safe" mold and vote for the 3rd candidate, maybe I could vote for them. But if I believe that the 3rd party candidate does not have a shot of winning despite being the one I would most support, then by splitting the vote I'd wind up with my least favored outcome; I hold my nose and pick the "safe" vote. You keep on ignoring the fact that individual voters are part of the electorate, and in many cases will vote based on what they think other people may do.
In fact, most people who advocate for a third party will explicitly add the caveat to their points to ONLY do this in races where the eventual outcome isn't really in doubt. For example, I live in Chicago. During the Mayoral election, it is a foregone conclusion that the Democrat will win. Therefore, I do not have to worry that my vote will actually have any impact on the outcome of the election, and so I can vote for a candidate I believe in rather than the one I simply think might win and find less objectionable in a close race. But for Senate, given that much of Illinois outside of Chicago is VERY "red" and that race would be very close, I'd be a fool if I voted 3rd party/split vote because it would ONLY result in my least favorite option winning.
You keep on arguing from a completely naive viewpoint that requires people to behave in ways that are unrealistic. Counter my actual arguments rather than say that people are whining - explain to me exactly how my casting my vote for a candidate I *know* cannot win, and thus taking support away from a candidate that *can* win and who is less objectionable than the other candidate that can win is not a smart move. Explain to me how having the worst possible likely outcome (from my perspective) is better for me. In the real world, not some theoretical paradise where EVERYONE decides spontaneously to vote their conscience rather than for the least objectionable reasonable outcome.
While you're at it, explain to me how it's somehow more reasonable or feasible to change the established behavior of the electorate (voting safe rather than taking risks in a very polarized political landscape) than it is to change the way the system is implemented. For bonus points, explain to me how that change would be sustainable without changes to the underlying system, when the homeostasis of our system as it is now is to vote safe.
You seem wedded to this system, I am not sure why - what's so great about our current way of handling elections? Give me some arguments in favor of it.
I would say it's more of a golden age.
I have never seen a more appropriate nickname + thread combination than yours. I am in awe.
Can you tell me, in the alternate reality you live in, what kind of system do they use to determine the vote? Because in the reality I'm posting from, voting is a zero-sum game in the US, where whoever gets a plurality of the vote wins - that makes it ridiculously difficult for a 3rd party to emerge because they will almost always simply be splitting the vote of one of the two major parties, ensuring that the opponent furthest from their supporter's political beliefs wins. Also, how does campaign funding and finance work over there? Because over here, major parties get ridiculously huge advantages over minor parties.
The way the entire funding process is handled, the way the two currently dominant parties work to keep each other in existence (as witnessed by the Colorado thing this time around) virtually guarantees that no real serious alternative parties can come into existence; when you have 2 dominant players in the marketplace of ideas, both of whom have coffers that absolutely dwarf any 3rd party player who isn't able to finance their candidates to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars (they'd have to spend in excess of the existing parties simply to get the party and name recognition needed to be effective), it's kind of hard to get your message out, and, more to the point, how many billionaires are there out there who'd be willing to (very likely) throw away a substantial chunk of their fortune on the off chance that they might manage to influence a few elections (though likely not win them)? Meg Whitman and Steve Forbes are two that come to mind, and both of them were horrific candidates who weren't third party anyway. Further, the "winner takes all" nature of the way we count votes ensures that even if a 3rd party does emerge, it will eventually be taken back out of the picture or replace one of the 2 dominant parties - leaving us back with 2 parties.
Then you have the problem with a 3rd party popping up around a single issue like election reform: It *is* an important issue to many people across the political spectrum. It is not, however *the most important* issue to many of those people, especially when we have a down economy and a couple of wars going on overseas. Or anything big happening, which is almost always. When things are good it's hard to convince people that things need to change in order to keep things good. Your facile "if people think it's that important they'll vote for it" ignores these realities completely.
Another problem with creating a 3rd party is: where would it draw from? The Democrats are by and large a center (between left and right) organization that occasionally does manage to lean left. The Republicans are by and large a center-right organization that (often, now, thanks to the Tea "Party" stuff) lean (sometimes much) further right. So, individuals who are not being served are people who are further left than the Dems and then the extreme right. If anything, this election has proven that the GOP is willing to include a fair number of extremists under their tent, and anything more extreme - well, there simply aren't enough to make a difference. So lets focus on a more left leaning party because those are the people not being represented.
Where will they come from? Certainly not from the GOP - Republicans who want a party more to their left will vote Democrat. So the new party people will have to come from the Democrats, which, with our current system means a three way race, with about 50% of the vote going to the Republicans, and the other half being split between two left parties. So, if people really DID vote for their guy, they'd be ensuring that the absolute least favorable choice for them - the Republican - wins.
Looking at things from another perspective - Libertarian vs. Authoritarian rather than right vs. left - this would be the only area I could see it even remotely become possible for a 3rd party to emerge that would take votes away from both the Democrats AND the Republicans, making it so that a vote for a candidate in this theoretical 3rd party
Er, follow-up: I meant to say "political ideologues" not "political conservatives" - I've met PUH-lenty on the left who are similarly willing to disregard hard evidence when it suits them, and was not intending to be partisan.
The "problem" with that is that in some cases, enough people think the race is a foregone conclusion and thus they vote for that 3rd party candidate, winding up with their guy losing.
I'm thinking of Nader voters specifically - I can't believe they'd rather have had Bush win than Gore, you know?
Because of polarization of the electorate, races are getting tighter, and you wind up with groups with a vested interest in disenfranchising people by convincing them to "throw away" their vote on a 3rd party.
I live in Chicago, where the choices are Dem, Dem and Dem, but during this recent election I got scads of mailers suggesting that because one candidate or another was SO FAR AHEAD in the polls, I should vote for a Green candidate or an independent, etc. The groups sending me those turn out to be linked back to... the second place candidate.
We need to reform the way elections are funded and the rules that people running for office need to play by before we can get any real options; alas, we can't get there when the people we do have in office find the idea of real campaign reform anathema.
Here's what I wish would happen: All the third party candidates in a given race, who absolutely know they individually don't have a hope in hell of getting a sufficient percentage of the vote, should work together to form one party solely for the purpose of getting a third party a sufficient chunk of the vote to win "major party" status in their area. They should pick one candidate who runs on the platform of needing more options - because god knows they won't be able to have a coherent platform with many dissenting views, but I think they can ALL agree that we need more options. Maybe their 1 candidate can get a chunk of the vote, maybe not - but something like that is needed to break this cycle.
What sickened me about this election was that, in Colorado, the republican candidate for an office out there was likely going to get less than 10% of the vote, thus turning the republican party into a minor party (meaning it would be on the same level as "Chuck's American Happy Fun-Time Party!") but both Dem and GOP leadership basically got together and said that even if that happened they wouldn't change things to avoid humiliating their republican colleagues. So basically, even if one of those two parties gets completely fucked by their own rules, they'll just ignore the rules to basically keep the status quo. Sickening, and it needs to change.
I've met quite a few - political conservatives who are opposed to scientific findings based on how those findings may interfere with their political aims; environmentalists who flat-out do not understand science and base their beliefs on what "feels" right vs. what has been (as far as we know) empirically proven; anti-intellectuals who profess no particular religious beliefs etc. I've met plenty of atheists who are also anti-science, in that they certainly don't understand the scientific method nor seek to apply it in any way, and attempt to use science in the same way that fundamentalists might try to use the bible to bolster their arguments. Then there are a bunch of "spiritual" people who get into crystals and pyramid power and all kind of pseud-scientific bullshit, and who will militantly oppose scientific findings showing them wrong, to that's also anti-science, and I'd say loony.
Maybe I'm painting with too broad a brush, but that's my take.
Anything's possible - personally, I don't really care since I'm having fun with it, and it isn't like they won't make more/better games as people figure out the device :) They're selling enough (Kinetic addons and games) that I'm reasonably sure of this. Add in the ability for indie devs to make stuff soon and I think it'll have a solid library.
With regard to DC, I didn't find the lack of tactile feedback to be that big a deal - it flashes on the bodypart that is not in the proper spot/beat/synch which has worked for me (went from failing every move to being able to complete them properly about 75% of the time). With my plastic guitars I also get a flash on screen and a sound - it's the same kind of feedback mechanism really, but you're holding something in your hand, vs. just using your body.
I'm with you on the out-of-shape thing: unlike Wii, where you can kind of just twitch to make larger motions, with Kinect you really need to move to make things happen; I played KA and DC last night for about 3 hours and I was having too much fun to realize just how much of a workout that actually was - really sore this morning.