Thats not entirely true. They are against science that does not promote a given point they are trying to make. If it happens to agree with something they like the sound of, they generally quote findings as if the conclusion was known to them for quite some time.
Actually, this does mean that they're against science. What you're saying is that they're for pseudo-science, which is a combination of a bunch of made-up stuff and selective elimination of inconvenient facts. Just because they call it science doesn't mean we have to dignify it as such.
As to the whole "pollution = teh ghey" thing, are we forgetting ancient cultures (and not so ancient cultures) where it wasn't at all uncommon for people to be what we today would call bisexual? Just because religious extremists can selectively ignore facts doesn't mean that we should.
If we cured aging - as in, we were functionally immortal barring accidents - I suspect that there would be some rather large changes that would shake things up to the point where it would be hard to predict what would happen.
You present one dystopian example (though it's actually even worse now than you think - wealthy people usually give their money to heirs, which yes, technically is redistribution, but I'd still say it's tied up into the hands of one particular family rather than just one particular individual), but there are other possibilities:
What if the prospect of immortality makes people change from their short-term thinking ("Fuck the environment - I'll be dead when things go to hell," and the like) to more self-interest? It's fairly true that people who expect to live long lives tend to prepare more for those spans than people who think they'll die young.
Or what if other technologies advance to the point where we can vastly increase the available resources, both through finding new sources (Space! It's big! It's vast! There's a whole lot of stuff in it!) and through being more efficient in how we use them? With more resources and improved construction techniques combined with truly long life, I'm willing to be the "It would take us centuries to reach even the nearest star," argument would be a lot less of a disincentive to expand humanity's domain. Heck, things we *could* do now, if only the benefits didn't seem to be so far off in the future (read: past our lifetimes) would change a lot of things, but our mayfly mentality gets in the way.
Or what if disconnecting aging and death from humanity, factors that have been deeply coupled with us from the beginning and have shaped so many aspects of our civilizations, causes completely unknown and unknowable effects leading to a future that's vastly different than we imagine?
I suspect that wealth would be one of a great many concepts that would wind up being radically changed during a period of great upheaval while things got sorted out after the advent of immortality, but there's no reason to think the eventual out come would *have* to be a grim one.
Intelligent life *as we know it* would adapt its surroundings to be more hospitable. Actually, this isn't even necessarily true - on our planet, many members of a supposedly intelligent species (us, just in case you were wondering) will actually go to great lengths to change our surroundings to make them *less* hospitable to us but *more* hospitable to other creatures. Further, what does it even mean to make a surrounding be more hospitable to human life? Again, using Earth as an example, certainly cities have allowed us to stack up vast numbers of humans into rather small places, but the jury is still out on whether that's actually good for us. Yes, there are more of us, I suppose, than there could be without such things as cities, but massive populations rapidly using up resources isn't necessarily that great for life. It may be that what's more hospitable to us as a species over the long haul is an environment where we have 1/100th our current number of people or some other configuration. Not that I am some rabid environmentalist, I'm simply saying that there are many differing and seemingly diametrically opposed viewpoints of what constitutes changing our environment to be better for us.
It is absolutely not unreasonable to me to think that there could be intelligent life out there that has evolved in such a way that their external environment is (within certain ranges) almost completely irrelevant - perhaps they live in their minds, or have some other deal going on.
To say that intelligence must change the environment is only true for a very narrow definition of intelligence. If there is one thing about alien intelligence that I can say is almost certainly true, it will be that it is very likely going to be extremely different from us, probably different enough that it would completely change whatever definition we have of "intelligence" and possibly of "life."
Back when I was a hiring manager for a team, I would ask all interviewers to talk about their least favorite tool/language/whatever and why they didn't like it. I'd then ask them to make a case for why it was a good tool despite their dislike of it.
For my highly collaborative team, what I found is that the people who were able to see when/where a tool they personally didn't like would be useful were *much* better candidates than the ones who couldn't see past their own opinions.
Usually - not always, but at least 75% of the time - the people who weren't able to see anything but their own view, were the older geek types. So, I'd recommend asking this kind of question as a test of mental flexibility and a way to ensure that you aren't hiring someone who's become fossilized and set in their ways, and is able to learn new stuff.
First, you don't need to only get books from Amazon - there are many sources for DRM-free books. Second, even if you did get books only from Amazon, stripping them of DRM is trivial.
If you want to factor in things like reselling, then you also need to bring in factors like free digital books. On the 100% legitimate front, there's stuff like Gutenberg and many publishers do offer ebooks for free. Rather less legitimately, digital books are widely available on many torrent sites in vast quantities.
As for "some" inconvenience in reselling books - you're kidding, right? Making auctions, making sure you get paid, dealing with packing, shipping, etc. I suppose, if your time is worth somewhere around minimum wage the amount you'd save by buying used and taking the time to resell them would make sense, but I'm going to guess you don't make minimum wage.
As for the convenience issues you bring up, bringing the Kindle into the bathtub is easy: I put mine inside 2 large ziplocs (with the seals facing opposite each other) and voila, it's completely waterproof unless I were to submerge it and try to force water in. Ditto for the beach, etc. You can make margin notes (not as easily as scribbling on paper, but they are electronic and thus searchable), make bookmarks/dogears, etc. And, of course, being fully digital, the text itself is completely searchable, which is HUGE for anything other than a novel (and could still be good for novels for some people who like to reference things). Beyond that, can you highlight a word in a paper book and instantly get a definition of it? Or how about highlighting a name or place in the book and pull up a wikipedia article on it to get some basic background? Can you carry your entire library with you when you go on a trip?
From what you've mentioned, the only area in which the paper book wins is in how easy it is to make margin notes (assuming you've got a writing implement handy, of course), and everything else seems to be even or vastly in favor of ebooks.
Of course, it all really comes down to individual preference. Some people really REALLY love paper printed books, won't read on anything else, and some people don't need that. But trying to claim that paper printed books are somehow much cheaper/more convenient/more functional using arguments that are easily shown to be false is just silly.
I just had to buy a textbook that cost me $125. This textbook is a paper version, has a really crappy index, will be out-dated in a year or 3, and is pretty heavy. It also costs a fuckton to print, bind and distribute. I have no idea how much the publisher makes on it, but I'm sure it's nowhere near $125, and probably nowhere near even half of that, $62.50.
I would *gladly* pay $125 for the same textbook in digital format, provided that I also got free updates for it electronically for as long as I owned it. It would have a great index (being digital it'd be fully searchable), it would never be out of date, it would weigh nothing. For the publisher, it would cost virtually nothing to distribute and would certainly give them much more profit than a paper version. It wouldn't cut into future sales (individuals don't buy the same textbook twice), and in fact would much more likely lead to *increased* sales, as students would be more likely to keep their textbooks than to try to resell them because unlike current textbooks, these won't be woefully outdated for fields where things move quickly.
The only issue would be the likely rampant piracy, but that would actually be dealt with by universities changing the way they do textbook sales. My first university handled textbook sales by charging a flat book-fee each semester that was the same regardless of what classes you took. Sometimes you'd get screwed ($200 worth of books, but you paid $400) and sometimes you'd make out well ($600 worth of books, paid $400) so it all evens out.
So, for this to work, the first semester students would pay for their reader and then each semester the university could add the book fee to the cost of tuition, students would be able to grab their electronic books, and everyone wins out. The student gets a far superior version of the textbook, the university doesn't have to maintain a huge physical bookstore with all its associated costs, the publishers make much more profit, etc. and so on.
Yes it removes some options from the student (they can't buy used textbooks or whatever), and for some people it may thus become somewhat more expensive, but frankly, if a couple hundred dollars is really going to make or break the bank for someone attending university, they're doing it wrong.
The thing people are seeming to not get - all the people responding to you saying "I make lots of money and I can't justify buying one," basically - is that it's a gadget that, like any other gadget designed to do something, might not be useful to all people.
For example:
If you drive to work every day, the ability to watch videos or surf on the phone is not going to do you much good during that commute. BUT, if you take a train or other mass transit to work/school every day, being able to watch videos or surf becomes hugely useful. The guy driving might be OK having a phone that's just a phone, but the person taking the bus has a different set of circumstances.
Or, another example is the low-income person who wants to be able to have email & web access and a phone, but doesn't want to pay for DSL/Cable/Dial-up at home, doesn't want to own a computer or doesn't want to be tethered to one spot. I know probably 10-15 people who have iPhones (or similarly functional devices) but don't actually own a personal computer, have any kind of net service at home, etc. Heck, for 2 weeks last month I was on a trip visiting a research site where the only reliable net access I had was on my iPhone, and while it certainly wouldn't replace all the things I do with a computer (gaming being key), I could see how it might be sufficient for someone else.
This is not to say that everyone who gets one is actually putting it to good use or that it's going to always be an efficient use of resources, but it is to say that it isn't *always* a conspicuous consumption thing, and that perhaps the people patting themselves on the back for their frugality, tsk-tsking at the "poor" people who're buying these things, and saying they can't understand the appeal might try thinking a bit past their rather narrow viewpoints. It's nice that you guys are making a good living, but it's kind of sad that you seem to be unable to imagine that other people have circumstances different than your own.
In 1, I very quickly went from sheltered vault dweller to wastelands-striding death machine with virtually unlimited resources because the game pretty much piled on resources for you if you were willing to take a little time to search for things. 2 was even "worse" from this standpoint - absurd quantities of guns and ammo were quickly available, and skill-points racked up quickly enough in the relevant skills that the only challenge of the game was figuring out puzzles. They were great games, but they became really easy really quickly.
With FO3, I don't feel like I'm in an abundant land. Oh, I've got *plenty* of guns. But I have to really hoard my ammo and be careful how I use it. In one mission, the desperate feel of the struggle came through incredibly clearly - I was down in a series of tunnels searching for a nest of creatures to put an end to an infestation. My primary weapon - a Chinese Assault Rifle - would make really short work of the critters, but I ran out of ammo early on. My back-up weapon - 10mm sub-machine-gun - was less effective, and used ammo like it was free. As I kept on going down deeper into the tunnels, I had to keep on using less and less effective weapons, finally falling back onto a laser pistol I didn't know how to use very well, and I actually cheered when I found a room that had 20 rounds for my 10mm! By the time I got all the way to the last of the creatures, I was literally beating them to death with a tire-iron since I had *no* ammo for anything left. I'd run in, beat the crap out of one (while it was trying to set me on fire), then run out (usually crippled because it would burn me), drag myself back to a safe-room and sleep to heal, and then go back and fight again.
It *feels* like a struggle. Because I don't have the option of going back to any of 19 different huge caches of ammo and equipment, because I felt like I *HAD* to take these things out ASAP, I really am getting the post-apocalyptic vibe.
You pay $50 because you're getting the game pretty much right when it comes out and you're paying to get it right away. If you waited a bit, you'd only pay $20 for the initial cost once the price for the client software goes down. Since almost all MMOs give you a "free" month when you buy the software, if you're willing to wait you're essentially paying $5 (assuming a $15/month fee) for the installation media and manuals.
It proves nothing. It suggests (based on stereotypical profiles of what "smart" people act like) that they might be bright. In fact, your whole comment can be summed up as playing to stereotypes.
Being book-smart and street-smart and creative-smart and athletic-smart and any-other-smart are not mutually exclusive, despite what television shows and movies might have you believe.
Honestly, I think that the "intelligent = goofy/offbeat" meme came about so that reasonably bright (but by no means genius intellect) people could excuse their abysmal social skills.
Einstein was a total chick magnet. Feynman was an accomplished pick-up artist. Oppenheimer... Well, okay, he was kind of a Gloomy Gus, but dude could be smooth once he got over the whole "I am created death" thing.
What possible difference would bandwidth make? All the heavy lifting is done on the server or the client, with very little (1-5kbps) transfer. An MMO could easily require 10-20x the bandwidth it does now without any new tech - so bandwidth just isn't the issue.
For the most part, I agree with you - circuits or cells, it's just hardware. No reason that consciousness couldn't run on either, AFAIK.
However, the guy you're responding to, I think, was addressing the evolutionary basis for emotion and how a machine designed in a lab has no reason to have the capability of getting angry because it wasn't evolved and was not in a position where anger could serve any useful purpose (in fact, I'd say it might be a good thing to select AGAINST an AI that could feel anger...)
There are lots of messy things that we humans have going on in our brains that are directly related to previous stages in our development where they were important for survival (or, at the least, neutral to it). Why would an AI have those same kinds of things going on in its mind when there's no evolutionary process that would put them in there?
And, for what it's worth, I don't want to see an artificial human-like intelligence. We have billions of human-like intelligences already. Give me something that thinks in ways that are different than a human being and suddenly you'd have something REALLY interesting. I mean, if I want a device to see for me, I want it to see things that I cannot see, just just what I see; same for a device that would think for me - I want it to think of things that I simply cannot think of.
Imagine an AI that computed, say, moral or ethical dilemmas. Or that instead of ripping through dataspaces of "known" vlaues, would somehow be able to catalog spaces of things not known? Or - well, I'm a human, so I can't really say what a non-human intelligence might think of, but I can say that if there was any way I could understand it, I'm pretty sure it'd be fascinating.
And for the record, I never understood why Data would want to be human. It struck me about like a human being wanting to be an insect.
Actually, to respond to your real point - I guess I just feel like the calculations are approximations (albeit incredibly accurate and useful and so on), or attempts to describe the physical world, but not actually descriptions of what the real world is like. From what I gather of Newtonian physics, we know that it doesn't REALLY describe what's happening at every level, it's just a way of calculating the macroscopic behavior of a system. Newton, for example, basically said, "things have mass, can be accelerated, and are affected by gravity, whatever either of those are, and here's how mass and gravity and acceleration seem to make things move" (and yes, I'm simplifying the hell out of it.) He did not talk about what the actual mechanism for things having mass was, or what acceleration was, or what causes/is the basis for gravity.
My comment was primarily about the actual basis for such behaviors (a guess, really, since I am absolutely not up on the details about all this stuff and am entirely a layperson, not a lawyer, etc. and so on) - just a different way of explaining something.
The math describes the behavior but doesn't explain it. The planck stuff (if that's actually the case, but what the hell do I know?) attempts to explain the behavior but doesn't describe it. Two different approaches to the same problem.
The post I was responding to asked why it is or how it is that something can stop moving without experiencing infinite g's. While the calculus might be nice for showing how it mathematically describes the behavior, it doesn't actually address the question of what the basis for the behavior is.
Heh, the Sonys and the Amazons of the world should pay attention:p
Actually, I wouldn't have any problem with the eBook version of a textbook costing exactly the same as the printed one, as long as I got the updates at no extra cost.
As to book fees rather than buying books, a friend of mine went to a really cool liberal arts school where they charged every student a flat book fee each semester of about $300. Some semesters you only got $50 worth of books, some semesters you got $500 worth of books, so it more or less worked out.
That's another variation on the concept of Xeno's Paradox, really (wiki it). In both cases, in order for this to be an actual paradox, time would have to be infinitely smooth, as in not have a minimum possible unit - you can keep on having shorter and shorter amounts of time.
From what I understand, because time and distance seem to be granular (with the minimum units being Planck distance and Planck seconds or something like that), the whole problem gets avoided since EVERYTHING is granular and the deceleration from one moment to the next (even before a full stop) would go in a kind of quantum way - either you're at a speed of 1000 planck distances per planck second, or you're at 999 planck distances per planck second, not 999.99 p/p etc.
It made sense at the time I heard it, but you know, that was undergrad and I was probably really high.
I can answer that... Allowing bots essentially triggers an arms race between the players who bot and those who don't, and that dynamic is not in the spirit that the designers want the game to have.
It wouldn't be a choice, it would become a necessity to bot, because players that didn't bot would have absolutely no way to gather materials in amounts that would allow them to participate in the game's economy. If I choose not to bot, if I try to buy an item I'm forced to bid on it against people who, because they bot, can afford to pay 10x or more for that item.
Further, if I'm "forced" to bot in order to participate in the game's economy, I then won't be experiencing the game world - I'd just be running a script and occasionally checking back to see if anything shiny dropped.
Further, a game population comprised of a significant portion of bots might as well just be a single-player game. Players who enjoy playing with other people will find that the noise generated by the bots makes it difficult to get a group or interact.
Further, the whole tone of the game would change. While botting does exist in WoW, one of the things that I like about it is that usually there is someone behind the keyboard of another character I see, and I can strike up a conversation or otherwise interact with them if there's a need. Bots don't talk - they just roam around an area endlessly, monopolizing the area and annoying people who choose not to bot.
In short, botting is entirely in opposition to the idea of what MMOs are supposed to be about and the negative effects of rampant botting would rapidly lead to a depopulated game world as people decided they weren't willing to keep paying a subscription to play against/with what essentially are NPCs. That's what single-player games are for. If botting were allowed in an MMO, the logical conclusion would be to simply skip the pointless botting and let people click a button to get whatever it was they wanted. Want to be max level? Click here. Want the super-duper-unique item that is better than everything else? Click here.
Mind you, I write this as someone who has written bots for many games - I like the challenge of it, trying to find ways to deal with things that require human judgment, etc. Yet, despite enjoying writing the bots, I really never enjoyed the games that I had successfully automated because anything I would do, I'd wonder why I was bothering with it because my bot could do it for me, and I'd rapidly become bored and stop bothering. The most extreme example of this was when I made a bot for Star Wars: Galaxies that literally could grind out *every* *single* *profession* in the game to "master" level (except for Bounty Hunter because that required some really goofy and overly detailed mission solving that usually would break even when a human was at the keyboard). It became a joke with one of my friends where we'd be out shopping or something and I'd say "Hey, guess what I'm doing now!" "Making armor!"
In games where the world is HIGHLY instanced, such as Diablo II, and where bots never monopolize spawns that other players might want to go after, botting should be entirely allowable. But, I can safely say that the only reason I played Diablo II after I had essentially botted everything one could want from it was because it was free. If battlenet access had cost even a single dollar a month, I would have quit.
Now, there IS one kind of MMO that would allow (actually, require) botting that I would play: Robot Wars! Where the goal isn't to take direct control of your character and do stuff, but instead to write scripts to automate your character to be as efficient as possible. In fact, it would be the opposite of WoW in re: botting, in that you would NOT be allowed *ever* to take direct control of your character. Of course, I imagine the population that would be willing to pay to play this game would be rather small, since people who can do REALLY well at that kind of thing (AI) are probably already doing it as their job.
Totally! I was thinking about bringing up the DRM/resale issue in my post, but it felt off-topic.
What I will say is that I would like it if rather than buying a textbook, I bought a "subscription" that would get me the basic text and updates/edits as they happen to that text. I would cheerfully pay the same amount for a digital book that updated itself with each edition as I would for the paper edition. It'd be win-win for the student and publisher: the student gets to have a reference that continually updates itself (huge in my field, psychology) and the publisher would make *more* profit. After all, they just sell each student 1 edition of a book, and then that book might get resold. Now, though, they still sell the student just 1 edition of the book (the digital updates would really cost nothing) and the book doesn't get resold, and they save a bunch of money on printing costs.
Obviously, the benefit would really only be present for textbooks covering subjects that do change over time. It isn't like a Calc I textbook would have any real reason to change over the years. For those kinds of classes, I *very* much think that open source materials would be far superior. For my stats class we used various resources that were freely available, rather than a textbook. Same for all the other "basic" books. So I think you're very much on the money about how things would have to go.
As for color, probably in any kind of imagery intensive field, sure - color e-ink would be essential. But many for many disciplines that's just not necessary. My main desires would be improved search capabilities (I like using Boolean searches, not just "this word or phrase") and easier margin notes (I'd be very happy to have a stylus - NOT a touch screen - that I could circle some text, scribble a note, and have handwriting recognition translate that note into something I can export to regular text).
I don't disagree that they're pricey, but they're definitely worth it for a certain segment of the population, and not just limited to early adopters. I do a lot of traveling, and when I'm not I have about 3 hours/day of commute time to work via public transit. For me, the huge battery life is incredibly important, as is the ability to bring a LOT of reading material with me in the same small space. I absolutely hate the fact that my laptop won't last throughout an entire flight unless I bring extra batteries with me, and my phone only has enough juice for about 3-4 hours of display use (whether reading or doing other stuff with it) and I *really* don't want to land only to have my phone be out of juice when I need it.
For me, it isn't just reading for pleasure that I use it for. I'm a researcher, and I've got a few hundred journal articles on my Kindle right now (along with the clippings from them I've made and my "margin" notes) and it's just incredibly useful to have. Yes, I can get that same functionality on a computer or phone, but not combined with the nice form-factor and extreme battery life.
This isn't - yet - a mass-market technology. Just like laptops were originally so expensive that it only made sense to some people to buy them, e-readers are still expensive enough that most people couldn't justify the cost. Once they come down in price (and I have absolutely no doubt that in a few years we'll have sub-$100 devices that are at least as capable as the ones we have today) they'll really take off. Right now, though, you clearly aren't their market, but people in my circumstances are, as well as the early adopter types.
One market the manufacturers need to focus on is the textbook market. If I'd had the choice when I first went to university of picking up a $500 widget and getting *searchable* electronic textbooks with days of battery life, I would have done it in a flash, even if I still had to pay roughly the same price for the books themselves. Tha market is huge. I could see a clamshell type of deal with 2 e-ink screens. One for the text, the other side for notes/search results/definitions or whatever kind of reference stuff the student would want to have there. Students already budget for laptops etc, this would just be rolled into the costs and would pretty much just be a marginal increase.
However, the closed formats have got to go! When somebody comes out with an affordable device which will take a wide range of open formats, then there will be one in my hands.
While I don't disagree that it'd be nice to not have to convert files, I haven't had any problems converting stuff for my Kindle... I set up some automation around the MobiPocket software that will batch process LOTS of files to convert them. I downloaded thousands of Gutenberg files and had my computer convert them for me while I slept. Yeah, it's an extra hoop, but it wasn't that big a deal for me at least.
I'm with ya. The *only* thing that I don't like about the Kindle design is that I haven't found a way to reassign the next and previous page buttons. The new Kindle doesn't look good to me. They've made it longer, took away the carrying case to put it in a bag, and it doesn't seem like there are any compelling features.
As for the touch screen on the Sony... Yeah, unless it's multi-touch, not glass, but very resistant to wear and marking, I have absolutely no interest. Moreover, how well would the touch screen work when I have it in a Ziploc baggie so I can safely read it in the tub or at the pool? With buttons on the side I can easily read it while keeping it protected in a water-tight bag. With a touch screen, I don't think that would work.
the only major benefit to the Kindle & Sony Reader are that they use e-ink displays which are viewable under direct sunlight.
And that they don't drain battery life nearly as much as back-lit high-refresh rate screens do. And that they typically are much less likely to cause eyestrain.
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Thats not entirely true. They are against science that does not promote a given point they are trying to make. If it happens to agree with something they like the sound of, they generally quote findings as if the conclusion was known to them for quite some time.
Actually, this does mean that they're against science. What you're saying is that they're for pseudo-science, which is a combination of a bunch of made-up stuff and selective elimination of inconvenient facts. Just because they call it science doesn't mean we have to dignify it as such.
As to the whole "pollution = teh ghey" thing, are we forgetting ancient cultures (and not so ancient cultures) where it wasn't at all uncommon for people to be what we today would call bisexual? Just because religious extremists can selectively ignore facts doesn't mean that we should.
If we cured aging - as in, we were functionally immortal barring accidents - I suspect that there would be some rather large changes that would shake things up to the point where it would be hard to predict what would happen.
You present one dystopian example (though it's actually even worse now than you think - wealthy people usually give their money to heirs, which yes, technically is redistribution, but I'd still say it's tied up into the hands of one particular family rather than just one particular individual), but there are other possibilities:
What if the prospect of immortality makes people change from their short-term thinking ("Fuck the environment - I'll be dead when things go to hell," and the like) to more self-interest? It's fairly true that people who expect to live long lives tend to prepare more for those spans than people who think they'll die young.
Or what if other technologies advance to the point where we can vastly increase the available resources, both through finding new sources (Space! It's big! It's vast! There's a whole lot of stuff in it!) and through being more efficient in how we use them? With more resources and improved construction techniques combined with truly long life, I'm willing to be the "It would take us centuries to reach even the nearest star," argument would be a lot less of a disincentive to expand humanity's domain. Heck, things we *could* do now, if only the benefits didn't seem to be so far off in the future (read: past our lifetimes) would change a lot of things, but our mayfly mentality gets in the way.
Or what if disconnecting aging and death from humanity, factors that have been deeply coupled with us from the beginning and have shaped so many aspects of our civilizations, causes completely unknown and unknowable effects leading to a future that's vastly different than we imagine?
I suspect that wealth would be one of a great many concepts that would wind up being radically changed during a period of great upheaval while things got sorted out after the advent of immortality, but there's no reason to think the eventual out come would *have* to be a grim one.
Let me tweak that a little for you:
Intelligent life *as we know it* would adapt its surroundings to be more hospitable. Actually, this isn't even necessarily true - on our planet, many members of a supposedly intelligent species (us, just in case you were wondering) will actually go to great lengths to change our surroundings to make them *less* hospitable to us but *more* hospitable to other creatures. Further, what does it even mean to make a surrounding be more hospitable to human life? Again, using Earth as an example, certainly cities have allowed us to stack up vast numbers of humans into rather small places, but the jury is still out on whether that's actually good for us. Yes, there are more of us, I suppose, than there could be without such things as cities, but massive populations rapidly using up resources isn't necessarily that great for life. It may be that what's more hospitable to us as a species over the long haul is an environment where we have 1/100th our current number of people or some other configuration. Not that I am some rabid environmentalist, I'm simply saying that there are many differing and seemingly diametrically opposed viewpoints of what constitutes changing our environment to be better for us.
It is absolutely not unreasonable to me to think that there could be intelligent life out there that has evolved in such a way that their external environment is (within certain ranges) almost completely irrelevant - perhaps they live in their minds, or have some other deal going on.
To say that intelligence must change the environment is only true for a very narrow definition of intelligence. If there is one thing about alien intelligence that I can say is almost certainly true, it will be that it is very likely going to be extremely different from us, probably different enough that it would completely change whatever definition we have of "intelligence" and possibly of "life."
Back when I was a hiring manager for a team, I would ask all interviewers to talk about their least favorite tool/language/whatever and why they didn't like it. I'd then ask them to make a case for why it was a good tool despite their dislike of it.
For my highly collaborative team, what I found is that the people who were able to see when/where a tool they personally didn't like would be useful were *much* better candidates than the ones who couldn't see past their own opinions.
Usually - not always, but at least 75% of the time - the people who weren't able to see anything but their own view, were the older geek types. So, I'd recommend asking this kind of question as a test of mental flexibility and a way to ensure that you aren't hiring someone who's become fossilized and set in their ways, and is able to learn new stuff.
No, you aren't locked into anything.
First, you don't need to only get books from Amazon - there are many sources for DRM-free books. Second, even if you did get books only from Amazon, stripping them of DRM is trivial.
If you want to factor in things like reselling, then you also need to bring in factors like free digital books. On the 100% legitimate front, there's stuff like Gutenberg and many publishers do offer ebooks for free. Rather less legitimately, digital books are widely available on many torrent sites in vast quantities.
As for "some" inconvenience in reselling books - you're kidding, right? Making auctions, making sure you get paid, dealing with packing, shipping, etc. I suppose, if your time is worth somewhere around minimum wage the amount you'd save by buying used and taking the time to resell them would make sense, but I'm going to guess you don't make minimum wage.
As for the convenience issues you bring up, bringing the Kindle into the bathtub is easy: I put mine inside 2 large ziplocs (with the seals facing opposite each other) and voila, it's completely waterproof unless I were to submerge it and try to force water in. Ditto for the beach, etc. You can make margin notes (not as easily as scribbling on paper, but they are electronic and thus searchable), make bookmarks/dogears, etc. And, of course, being fully digital, the text itself is completely searchable, which is HUGE for anything other than a novel (and could still be good for novels for some people who like to reference things). Beyond that, can you highlight a word in a paper book and instantly get a definition of it? Or how about highlighting a name or place in the book and pull up a wikipedia article on it to get some basic background? Can you carry your entire library with you when you go on a trip?
From what you've mentioned, the only area in which the paper book wins is in how easy it is to make margin notes (assuming you've got a writing implement handy, of course), and everything else seems to be even or vastly in favor of ebooks.
Of course, it all really comes down to individual preference. Some people really REALLY love paper printed books, won't read on anything else, and some people don't need that. But trying to claim that paper printed books are somehow much cheaper/more convenient/more functional using arguments that are easily shown to be false is just silly.
Here's the thing....
I just had to buy a textbook that cost me $125. This textbook is a paper version, has a really crappy index, will be out-dated in a year or 3, and is pretty heavy. It also costs a fuckton to print, bind and distribute. I have no idea how much the publisher makes on it, but I'm sure it's nowhere near $125, and probably nowhere near even half of that, $62.50.
I would *gladly* pay $125 for the same textbook in digital format, provided that I also got free updates for it electronically for as long as I owned it. It would have a great index (being digital it'd be fully searchable), it would never be out of date, it would weigh nothing. For the publisher, it would cost virtually nothing to distribute and would certainly give them much more profit than a paper version. It wouldn't cut into future sales (individuals don't buy the same textbook twice), and in fact would much more likely lead to *increased* sales, as students would be more likely to keep their textbooks than to try to resell them because unlike current textbooks, these won't be woefully outdated for fields where things move quickly.
The only issue would be the likely rampant piracy, but that would actually be dealt with by universities changing the way they do textbook sales. My first university handled textbook sales by charging a flat book-fee each semester that was the same regardless of what classes you took. Sometimes you'd get screwed ($200 worth of books, but you paid $400) and sometimes you'd make out well ($600 worth of books, paid $400) so it all evens out.
So, for this to work, the first semester students would pay for their reader and then each semester the university could add the book fee to the cost of tuition, students would be able to grab their electronic books, and everyone wins out. The student gets a far superior version of the textbook, the university doesn't have to maintain a huge physical bookstore with all its associated costs, the publishers make much more profit, etc. and so on.
Yes it removes some options from the student (they can't buy used textbooks or whatever), and for some people it may thus become somewhat more expensive, but frankly, if a couple hundred dollars is really going to make or break the bank for someone attending university, they're doing it wrong.
A slight correction:
Three *nearly empty accordion buses* will quickly come, all of them the 29 State, and then you'll die of old age waiting for a 144.
Not that I'm bitter.
Many of them are probably students.
The thing people are seeming to not get - all the people responding to you saying "I make lots of money and I can't justify buying one," basically - is that it's a gadget that, like any other gadget designed to do something, might not be useful to all people.
For example:
If you drive to work every day, the ability to watch videos or surf on the phone is not going to do you much good during that commute. BUT, if you take a train or other mass transit to work/school every day, being able to watch videos or surf becomes hugely useful. The guy driving might be OK having a phone that's just a phone, but the person taking the bus has a different set of circumstances.
Or, another example is the low-income person who wants to be able to have email & web access and a phone, but doesn't want to pay for DSL/Cable/Dial-up at home, doesn't want to own a computer or doesn't want to be tethered to one spot. I know probably 10-15 people who have iPhones (or similarly functional devices) but don't actually own a personal computer, have any kind of net service at home, etc. Heck, for 2 weeks last month I was on a trip visiting a research site where the only reliable net access I had was on my iPhone, and while it certainly wouldn't replace all the things I do with a computer (gaming being key), I could see how it might be sufficient for someone else.
This is not to say that everyone who gets one is actually putting it to good use or that it's going to always be an efficient use of resources, but it is to say that it isn't *always* a conspicuous consumption thing, and that perhaps the people patting themselves on the back for their frugality, tsk-tsking at the "poor" people who're buying these things, and saying they can't understand the appeal might try thinking a bit past their rather narrow viewpoints. It's nice that you guys are making a good living, but it's kind of sad that you seem to be unable to imagine that other people have circumstances different than your own.
But I'm liking FO3 better than 1 or 2.
In 1, I very quickly went from sheltered vault dweller to wastelands-striding death machine with virtually unlimited resources because the game pretty much piled on resources for you if you were willing to take a little time to search for things. 2 was even "worse" from this standpoint - absurd quantities of guns and ammo were quickly available, and skill-points racked up quickly enough in the relevant skills that the only challenge of the game was figuring out puzzles. They were great games, but they became really easy really quickly.
With FO3, I don't feel like I'm in an abundant land. Oh, I've got *plenty* of guns. But I have to really hoard my ammo and be careful how I use it. In one mission, the desperate feel of the struggle came through incredibly clearly - I was down in a series of tunnels searching for a nest of creatures to put an end to an infestation. My primary weapon - a Chinese Assault Rifle - would make really short work of the critters, but I ran out of ammo early on. My back-up weapon - 10mm sub-machine-gun - was less effective, and used ammo like it was free. As I kept on going down deeper into the tunnels, I had to keep on using less and less effective weapons, finally falling back onto a laser pistol I didn't know how to use very well, and I actually cheered when I found a room that had 20 rounds for my 10mm! By the time I got all the way to the last of the creatures, I was literally beating them to death with a tire-iron since I had *no* ammo for anything left. I'd run in, beat the crap out of one (while it was trying to set me on fire), then run out (usually crippled because it would burn me), drag myself back to a safe-room and sleep to heal, and then go back and fight again.
It *feels* like a struggle. Because I don't have the option of going back to any of 19 different huge caches of ammo and equipment, because I felt like I *HAD* to take these things out ASAP, I really am getting the post-apocalyptic vibe.
You pay $50 because you're getting the game pretty much right when it comes out and you're paying to get it right away. If you waited a bit, you'd only pay $20 for the initial cost once the price for the client software goes down. Since almost all MMOs give you a "free" month when you buy the software, if you're willing to wait you're essentially paying $5 (assuming a $15/month fee) for the installation media and manuals.
It proves nothing. It suggests (based on stereotypical profiles of what "smart" people act like) that they might be bright. In fact, your whole comment can be summed up as playing to stereotypes.
Being book-smart and street-smart and creative-smart and athletic-smart and any-other-smart are not mutually exclusive, despite what television shows and movies might have you believe.
Honestly, I think that the "intelligent = goofy/offbeat" meme came about so that reasonably bright (but by no means genius intellect) people could excuse their abysmal social skills.
Einstein was a total chick magnet. Feynman was an accomplished pick-up artist. Oppenheimer... Well, okay, he was kind of a Gloomy Gus, but dude could be smooth once he got over the whole "I am created death" thing.
You think playing games less so that you can have time for watching television is somehow an improvement? Really?
Given that, I'm not terribly surprised that you aren't able to understand why other people might like things that you do not.
What possible difference would bandwidth make? All the heavy lifting is done on the server or the client, with very little (1-5kbps) transfer. An MMO could easily require 10-20x the bandwidth it does now without any new tech - so bandwidth just isn't the issue.
For the most part, I agree with you - circuits or cells, it's just hardware. No reason that consciousness couldn't run on either, AFAIK.
However, the guy you're responding to, I think, was addressing the evolutionary basis for emotion and how a machine designed in a lab has no reason to have the capability of getting angry because it wasn't evolved and was not in a position where anger could serve any useful purpose (in fact, I'd say it might be a good thing to select AGAINST an AI that could feel anger...)
There are lots of messy things that we humans have going on in our brains that are directly related to previous stages in our development where they were important for survival (or, at the least, neutral to it). Why would an AI have those same kinds of things going on in its mind when there's no evolutionary process that would put them in there?
And, for what it's worth, I don't want to see an artificial human-like intelligence. We have billions of human-like intelligences already. Give me something that thinks in ways that are different than a human being and suddenly you'd have something REALLY interesting. I mean, if I want a device to see for me, I want it to see things that I cannot see, just just what I see; same for a device that would think for me - I want it to think of things that I simply cannot think of.
Imagine an AI that computed, say, moral or ethical dilemmas. Or that instead of ripping through dataspaces of "known" vlaues, would somehow be able to catalog spaces of things not known? Or - well, I'm a human, so I can't really say what a non-human intelligence might think of, but I can say that if there was any way I could understand it, I'm pretty sure it'd be fascinating.
And for the record, I never understood why Data would want to be human. It struck me about like a human being wanting to be an insect.
Yeah, but math is, like, hard, and I was high.
Actually, to respond to your real point - I guess I just feel like the calculations are approximations (albeit incredibly accurate and useful and so on), or attempts to describe the physical world, but not actually descriptions of what the real world is like. From what I gather of Newtonian physics, we know that it doesn't REALLY describe what's happening at every level, it's just a way of calculating the macroscopic behavior of a system. Newton, for example, basically said, "things have mass, can be accelerated, and are affected by gravity, whatever either of those are, and here's how mass and gravity and acceleration seem to make things move" (and yes, I'm simplifying the hell out of it.) He did not talk about what the actual mechanism for things having mass was, or what acceleration was, or what causes/is the basis for gravity.
My comment was primarily about the actual basis for such behaviors (a guess, really, since I am absolutely not up on the details about all this stuff and am entirely a layperson, not a lawyer, etc. and so on) - just a different way of explaining something.
The math describes the behavior but doesn't explain it. The planck stuff (if that's actually the case, but what the hell do I know?) attempts to explain the behavior but doesn't describe it. Two different approaches to the same problem.
The post I was responding to asked why it is or how it is that something can stop moving without experiencing infinite g's. While the calculus might be nice for showing how it mathematically describes the behavior, it doesn't actually address the question of what the basis for the behavior is.
Heh, the Sonys and the Amazons of the world should pay attention :p
Actually, I wouldn't have any problem with the eBook version of a textbook costing exactly the same as the printed one, as long as I got the updates at no extra cost.
As to book fees rather than buying books, a friend of mine went to a really cool liberal arts school where they charged every student a flat book fee each semester of about $300. Some semesters you only got $50 worth of books, some semesters you got $500 worth of books, so it more or less worked out.
That's another variation on the concept of Xeno's Paradox, really (wiki it). In both cases, in order for this to be an actual paradox, time would have to be infinitely smooth, as in not have a minimum possible unit - you can keep on having shorter and shorter amounts of time.
From what I understand, because time and distance seem to be granular (with the minimum units being Planck distance and Planck seconds or something like that), the whole problem gets avoided since EVERYTHING is granular and the deceleration from one moment to the next (even before a full stop) would go in a kind of quantum way - either you're at a speed of 1000 planck distances per planck second, or you're at 999 planck distances per planck second, not 999.99 p/p etc.
It made sense at the time I heard it, but you know, that was undergrad and I was probably really high.
I can answer that... Allowing bots essentially triggers an arms race between the players who bot and those who don't, and that dynamic is not in the spirit that the designers want the game to have.
It wouldn't be a choice, it would become a necessity to bot, because players that didn't bot would have absolutely no way to gather materials in amounts that would allow them to participate in the game's economy. If I choose not to bot, if I try to buy an item I'm forced to bid on it against people who, because they bot, can afford to pay 10x or more for that item.
Further, if I'm "forced" to bot in order to participate in the game's economy, I then won't be experiencing the game world - I'd just be running a script and occasionally checking back to see if anything shiny dropped.
Further, a game population comprised of a significant portion of bots might as well just be a single-player game. Players who enjoy playing with other people will find that the noise generated by the bots makes it difficult to get a group or interact.
Further, the whole tone of the game would change. While botting does exist in WoW, one of the things that I like about it is that usually there is someone behind the keyboard of another character I see, and I can strike up a conversation or otherwise interact with them if there's a need. Bots don't talk - they just roam around an area endlessly, monopolizing the area and annoying people who choose not to bot.
In short, botting is entirely in opposition to the idea of what MMOs are supposed to be about and the negative effects of rampant botting would rapidly lead to a depopulated game world as people decided they weren't willing to keep paying a subscription to play against/with what essentially are NPCs. That's what single-player games are for. If botting were allowed in an MMO, the logical conclusion would be to simply skip the pointless botting and let people click a button to get whatever it was they wanted. Want to be max level? Click here. Want the super-duper-unique item that is better than everything else? Click here.
Mind you, I write this as someone who has written bots for many games - I like the challenge of it, trying to find ways to deal with things that require human judgment, etc. Yet, despite enjoying writing the bots, I really never enjoyed the games that I had successfully automated because anything I would do, I'd wonder why I was bothering with it because my bot could do it for me, and I'd rapidly become bored and stop bothering. The most extreme example of this was when I made a bot for Star Wars: Galaxies that literally could grind out *every* *single* *profession* in the game to "master" level (except for Bounty Hunter because that required some really goofy and overly detailed mission solving that usually would break even when a human was at the keyboard). It became a joke with one of my friends where we'd be out shopping or something and I'd say "Hey, guess what I'm doing now!" "Making armor!"
In games where the world is HIGHLY instanced, such as Diablo II, and where bots never monopolize spawns that other players might want to go after, botting should be entirely allowable. But, I can safely say that the only reason I played Diablo II after I had essentially botted everything one could want from it was because it was free. If battlenet access had cost even a single dollar a month, I would have quit.
Now, there IS one kind of MMO that would allow (actually, require) botting that I would play: Robot Wars! Where the goal isn't to take direct control of your character and do stuff, but instead to write scripts to automate your character to be as efficient as possible. In fact, it would be the opposite of WoW in re: botting, in that you would NOT be allowed *ever* to take direct control of your character. Of course, I imagine the population that would be willing to pay to play this game would be rather small, since people who can do REALLY well at that kind of thing (AI) are probably already doing it as their job.
Totally! I was thinking about bringing up the DRM/resale issue in my post, but it felt off-topic.
What I will say is that I would like it if rather than buying a textbook, I bought a "subscription" that would get me the basic text and updates/edits as they happen to that text. I would cheerfully pay the same amount for a digital book that updated itself with each edition as I would for the paper edition. It'd be win-win for the student and publisher: the student gets to have a reference that continually updates itself (huge in my field, psychology) and the publisher would make *more* profit. After all, they just sell each student 1 edition of a book, and then that book might get resold. Now, though, they still sell the student just 1 edition of the book (the digital updates would really cost nothing) and the book doesn't get resold, and they save a bunch of money on printing costs.
Obviously, the benefit would really only be present for textbooks covering subjects that do change over time. It isn't like a Calc I textbook would have any real reason to change over the years. For those kinds of classes, I *very* much think that open source materials would be far superior. For my stats class we used various resources that were freely available, rather than a textbook. Same for all the other "basic" books. So I think you're very much on the money about how things would have to go.
As for color, probably in any kind of imagery intensive field, sure - color e-ink would be essential. But many for many disciplines that's just not necessary. My main desires would be improved search capabilities (I like using Boolean searches, not just "this word or phrase") and easier margin notes (I'd be very happy to have a stylus - NOT a touch screen - that I could circle some text, scribble a note, and have handwriting recognition translate that note into something I can export to regular text).
I don't disagree that they're pricey, but they're definitely worth it for a certain segment of the population, and not just limited to early adopters. I do a lot of traveling, and when I'm not I have about 3 hours/day of commute time to work via public transit. For me, the huge battery life is incredibly important, as is the ability to bring a LOT of reading material with me in the same small space. I absolutely hate the fact that my laptop won't last throughout an entire flight unless I bring extra batteries with me, and my phone only has enough juice for about 3-4 hours of display use (whether reading or doing other stuff with it) and I *really* don't want to land only to have my phone be out of juice when I need it.
For me, it isn't just reading for pleasure that I use it for. I'm a researcher, and I've got a few hundred journal articles on my Kindle right now (along with the clippings from them I've made and my "margin" notes) and it's just incredibly useful to have. Yes, I can get that same functionality on a computer or phone, but not combined with the nice form-factor and extreme battery life.
This isn't - yet - a mass-market technology. Just like laptops were originally so expensive that it only made sense to some people to buy them, e-readers are still expensive enough that most people couldn't justify the cost. Once they come down in price (and I have absolutely no doubt that in a few years we'll have sub-$100 devices that are at least as capable as the ones we have today) they'll really take off. Right now, though, you clearly aren't their market, but people in my circumstances are, as well as the early adopter types.
One market the manufacturers need to focus on is the textbook market. If I'd had the choice when I first went to university of picking up a $500 widget and getting *searchable* electronic textbooks with days of battery life, I would have done it in a flash, even if I still had to pay roughly the same price for the books themselves. Tha market is huge. I could see a clamshell type of deal with 2 e-ink screens. One for the text, the other side for notes/search results/definitions or whatever kind of reference stuff the student would want to have there. Students already budget for laptops etc, this would just be rolled into the costs and would pretty much just be a marginal increase.
However, the closed formats have got to go! When somebody comes out with an affordable device which will take a wide range of open formats, then there will be one in my hands.
While I don't disagree that it'd be nice to not have to convert files, I haven't had any problems converting stuff for my Kindle... I set up some automation around the MobiPocket software that will batch process LOTS of files to convert them. I downloaded thousands of Gutenberg files and had my computer convert them for me while I slept. Yeah, it's an extra hoop, but it wasn't that big a deal for me at least.
I'm with ya. The *only* thing that I don't like about the Kindle design is that I haven't found a way to reassign the next and previous page buttons. The new Kindle doesn't look good to me. They've made it longer, took away the carrying case to put it in a bag, and it doesn't seem like there are any compelling features.
As for the touch screen on the Sony... Yeah, unless it's multi-touch, not glass, but very resistant to wear and marking, I have absolutely no interest. Moreover, how well would the touch screen work when I have it in a Ziploc baggie so I can safely read it in the tub or at the pool? With buttons on the side I can easily read it while keeping it protected in a water-tight bag. With a touch screen, I don't think that would work.
the only major benefit to the Kindle & Sony Reader are that they use e-ink displays which are viewable under direct sunlight.
And that they don't drain battery life nearly as much as back-lit high-refresh rate screens do. And that they typically are much less likely to cause eyestrain.
D'oh!