managing natural disasters, such as floods and landslides
We're talking about India here. That specific part of the satellite's remit will occupy all of it's attention, I'm afraid. They don't seem to get much luck in that area...
In the same way that police regularly assault, kidnap or otherwise harass citizens?
Look, I'm not saying I disagree with you, but you need to refine the ethics of your argument a bit if you want to make a useful point. Unless you were just hoping to bash out something that sounded relevant in order to FP...
I suspect this may come across as slightly trollish, but hear me out:
The principle difference between gaming and TV is interaction - a higher level of engagement or involvement, and thus immersion, that a passive medium like TV can't surpass.
When discussing addiction, I think it's worth noting that - according to the criteria used by most detractors - TV is also addictive. However, it is not considered harmful enough to be of equivalent concern. You're not likely to die from all-night sessions of Battlestar Galactica or whatever.
I think the real issue is about more than just addiction though. I think it's down to the level of passivity or activity required to engage with the medium, and the control over the experience. TV viewing, by its very nature, trains us to passively accept whatever is fed to us. It's in the nature for society to accept and promote whatever maintains the status-quo - a survival trait, if you will - and something which encourages passivity is ultimately a benefit to that. There are also mechanisms for controlling the viewer's experience - you can't choose to change the ending to a film, for example. Gaming, on the other hand, requires engagement, activity, evaluation and decision-making, even in its more basic forms. It also trains people not to let things be, but to strive to overcome obstacles and improve their environment. Whether this encourages socially positive or negative actions depends on the type of game in which the person engages, which in turn is influenced by their social predisposition. It enhances rather than suppresses their psychological traits. There is also less opportunity for control over the medium - the way in which a person experiences the game - and so it could be a threat to social and societal stability.
(I invite you to don your tin-foil hat in response to the above paragraph, but I've tried to avoid making a conspiratorial point.)
It's no surprise that gaming has a highly addictive potential to those who are thus predisposed. The question is; would such an addiction be a problem? Where TV addiction is generally harmless to others, I think games serve to enhance the strengths and weaknesses already imbued in individuals by our society. The root causes of game-influenced behaviour are therefore much more fundamental than the game itself, and blaming games for the actions of individuals who are already thinking far outside the accepted norms of morality is a bit short-sighted.
Yes, but it's good to see that a reasonable and level-headed position is being entertained on Gamespot. If the gaming community as a whole can grow up a little (I know, I know, but bear with me here) and present itself as the reasonable party in this debate, it may do wonders for the credibility of their argument of "it's just another medium; stop scape-goating".
Personally I'm very pleased to see this article published. I think it'll be a moot point in 10 years or so anyway, as more people grow up with roots in gaming culture and a familiarity with the arguments, but the voice of reason can never be heard too often.
Allowing Phorm to do their thing has awful consequences. We're already in the process of having every phone call, text and email logged in a massive "just looking for terrorists, nothing to worry about" database.
Once a private company is able to execute DPI without your explicit consent, purely for profit, what's to stop the government from doing the same "for everyone's protection"? Surely that's a more worthy abuse of your right to privacy...?
Slippery slope? We're about to hit bottom, ladies & gentlemen.
Another advantage is the potential mobility of energy infrastructure that this provides. If production and distribution of electricity no longer need to be physically connected by heavy infrastructure, it becomes much easier to move and distribute the energy to where it's most needed. Mobile power-generation could be operated without constant fuel supply. More significantly, the daily and seasonal fluctuations in energy requirements throughout the world could be mitigated by redirecting collected solar energy to the countries/cities that need it most at the time. Granted it would be an administrative nightmare, but the potential is there...
You're confusing etymology with definition. Anglophobia means "the hatred or fear of English people or culture", and most people take it to mean hatred more than fear since it's a much more useful definition. Bandying around sophistry to pick apart the language of an argument rather than its logic is weak, and never more so than when you're wrong.
As for stating history: what the hell does that have to do with using, as a metaphor, the material fact of the blight's impact on a homogeneous crop? Did you even understand what the discussion was about, or did you just see "potato famine" and go off on a personal rant about historical socio-political oppression?
I think your anglophobic ranting has blinded you to the OP's statement and argument.
One of the major causes of the Potato famine
[emphasis added]
The reliance on a single product - the potato - was unquestionably one of the major factors behind the famine. The fact that this reliance had socio-political factors as its root cause is totally besides the point. The fact is that the poorest people were reliant on the ubiquitous crop as their winter staple, and that ubiquity is what allowed one blight to cause such devastation. As you said yourself, it was all they had.
It's a good analogy, and you've needlessly muddied the waters by misreading and over-extending the OP's point.
Your suggestion that opposing open-source is a necessary step in increasing OS variety is weird and baseless. I'll grant you that completely free trade (as in "without restriction") would facilitate monopoly-practice and in turn engender a monoculture, which is how we found ourself in the current mess.
To suggest open-source development discourages variety though...? Wow. What's your reasoning behind that posit?
NXT was (is) a viable and versatile speaker technology with many of the revolutionary properties ascribed to this one. Not as flexible or cheap, but certainly a significant step up from the paper cones of yore.
Yet, in spite of being a sound technology (sorry), it took years before it finally reached consumer products. Even now the uptake is slow.
The strongest hurdle was poor bass-reproduction, because it didn't have the physical ability to shift sufficient volumes of air - exactly the same issue faced by this new tech - so NXT speaker systems often have to be augmented with sub-woofers - see the Hitachi AX M133 for an example. This doesn't affect the fact that it is ideal for public-address systems, however, since it is a diffuse source rather than a point, and that whole "sweet spot" nonsense becomes a non-issue.
In spite of this, it never made a noticeable entry into the PA market. I can only hope this new technology delivers the cheapness and flexibility promised, and we can finally stop bolting big ugly boxes to the walls in every public space.
Low income. Increases the likelihood of smoking, vinyl flooring, poorly ventilated housing and... oh look, it's right there in the list: "family economic problems".
Hang on... inexpensive and flexible? The possibilities go quite far beyond merely replacing existing hardware functionality, and I don't think people are fully appreciating this.
Durability of touch-surfaces has always been a concern, but if it's so cheap then why not have replacable touch-surface film? Whenever the surface gets a bit scuffed or unresponsive, just replace it yourself - no fuss.
Extending the idea, why not have printed surfaces, with different surfaces for different applications? Just print a new batch of till (cash-teller) overlays whenever the product lineup changes.
I'm sure there are a hundred more innovative ways of using this, of which I could never conceive. If this were just an incremental upgrade to existing touch-hardware, I'd appreciate people's concerns. As it is, the fact that this is supposedly very cheap and flexible means that its most dramatic impact will be in new applications.
Interesting posit. What little I've learned tells me that Chinese has a very simple grammatical structure, which would lend itself well to universal adoption. I assumed that (combined with the population-factor) was why Joss Whedon chose to make it a common tongue in Firefly.
Unfortunately its written system is highly pictorial, and the tonality of the spoken language makes it very demanding to learn if you're not a native. I also find that the lack of grammatical subtlety and the difficulty of using tone to express or lend nuance to the spoken word without being confusing makes it quite a limiting language.
I'm not saying Chinese definitely won't come to dominate at some point, but:
a) if it does, I suspect we will see it undergo some extensive bastardisation to the extent of being barely recognisable in order to overcome the limitations I perceive, and
b) I think it fairly unlikely anyway, given that English has largely come to dominate on a global scale in pretty much every sphere that counts (science, engineering, diplomacy, trade, and the underlying languages of the Interwebs).
I assume we're talking about Mandarin Chinese here by the way (more specifically Beijing Mandarin), since this is the most common and one of the easier-going Chinese dialects, and it's being pushed as the lingua franca (ha) in China and SE Asia in general.
Slashdot Mirror
Adobe's press release here, BBC's article here
We're talking about India here. That specific part of the satellite's remit will occupy all of it's attention, I'm afraid. They don't seem to get much luck in that area...
I doubt even they were unaffected by the Credit Crunch.
In the same way that police regularly assault, kidnap or otherwise harass citizens?
Look, I'm not saying I disagree with you, but you need to refine the ethics of your argument a bit if you want to make a useful point. Unless you were just hoping to bash out something that sounded relevant in order to FP...
This is very confusing. Is he talking about /.?
I suspect this may come across as slightly trollish, but hear me out:
The principle difference between gaming and TV is interaction - a higher level of engagement or involvement, and thus immersion, that a passive medium like TV can't surpass.
When discussing addiction, I think it's worth noting that - according to the criteria used by most detractors - TV is also addictive. However, it is not considered harmful enough to be of equivalent concern. You're not likely to die from all-night sessions of Battlestar Galactica or whatever.
I think the real issue is about more than just addiction though. I think it's down to the level of passivity or activity required to engage with the medium, and the control over the experience.
TV viewing, by its very nature, trains us to passively accept whatever is fed to us. It's in the nature for society to accept and promote whatever maintains the status-quo - a survival trait, if you will - and something which encourages passivity is ultimately a benefit to that. There are also mechanisms for controlling the viewer's experience - you can't choose to change the ending to a film, for example.
Gaming, on the other hand, requires engagement, activity, evaluation and decision-making, even in its more basic forms. It also trains people not to let things be, but to strive to overcome obstacles and improve their environment. Whether this encourages socially positive or negative actions depends on the type of game in which the person engages, which in turn is influenced by their social predisposition. It enhances rather than suppresses their psychological traits. There is also less opportunity for control over the medium - the way in which a person experiences the game - and so it could be a threat to social and societal stability.
(I invite you to don your tin-foil hat in response to the above paragraph, but I've tried to avoid making a conspiratorial point.)
It's no surprise that gaming has a highly addictive potential to those who are thus predisposed. The question is; would such an addiction be a problem? Where TV addiction is generally harmless to others, I think games serve to enhance the strengths and weaknesses already imbued in individuals by our society. The root causes of game-influenced behaviour are therefore much more fundamental than the game itself, and blaming games for the actions of individuals who are already thinking far outside the accepted norms of morality is a bit short-sighted.
Yes, but it's good to see that a reasonable and level-headed position is being entertained on Gamespot. If the gaming community as a whole can grow up a little (I know, I know, but bear with me here) and present itself as the reasonable party in this debate, it may do wonders for the credibility of their argument of "it's just another medium; stop scape-goating".
Personally I'm very pleased to see this article published. I think it'll be a moot point in 10 years or so anyway, as more people grow up with roots in gaming culture and a familiarity with the arguments, but the voice of reason can never be heard too often.
Yeah but, come on... it's voice chat. Of course it'll be dominated by women.
(Kidding!! Sorry honey...)
If my mental arithmetic serves, that would be roughlyyyy... 1.21 Gigawatts!
If you're using SLI, you don't need a microwave. Or central heating.
Allowing Phorm to do their thing has awful consequences. We're already in the process of having every phone call, text and email logged in a massive "just looking for terrorists, nothing to worry about" database.
Once a private company is able to execute DPI without your explicit consent, purely for profit, what's to stop the government from doing the same "for everyone's protection"? Surely that's a more worthy abuse of your right to privacy...?
Slippery slope? We're about to hit bottom, ladies & gentlemen.
Another advantage is the potential mobility of energy infrastructure that this provides. If production and distribution of electricity no longer need to be physically connected by heavy infrastructure, it becomes much easier to move and distribute the energy to where it's most needed. Mobile power-generation could be operated without constant fuel supply. More significantly, the daily and seasonal fluctuations in energy requirements throughout the world could be mitigated by redirecting collected solar energy to the countries/cities that need it most at the time. Granted it would be an administrative nightmare, but the potential is there...
No one can help you. You must face the gazebo alone...
You're confusing etymology with definition. Anglophobia means "the hatred or fear of English people or culture", and most people take it to mean hatred more than fear since it's a much more useful definition. Bandying around sophistry to pick apart the language of an argument rather than its logic is weak, and never more so than when you're wrong.
As for stating history: what the hell does that have to do with using, as a metaphor, the material fact of the blight's impact on a homogeneous crop? Did you even understand what the discussion was about, or did you just see "potato famine" and go off on a personal rant about historical socio-political oppression?
Please, stay on-topic or be quiet.
"turing in his grave"?
Was that deliberate?
Okay, but how would the Sarkozy administration react?
Pedantic? Well okay, but is it too much to ask that they get the President's name right? Sheesh...
I think your anglophobic ranting has blinded you to the OP's statement and argument.
[emphasis added]
The reliance on a single product - the potato - was unquestionably one of the major factors behind the famine. The fact that this reliance had socio-political factors as its root cause is totally besides the point. The fact is that the poorest people were reliant on the ubiquitous crop as their winter staple, and that ubiquity is what allowed one blight to cause such devastation. As you said yourself, it was all they had.
It's a good analogy, and you've needlessly muddied the waters by misreading and over-extending the OP's point.
Your suggestion that opposing open-source is a necessary step in increasing OS variety is weird and baseless. I'll grant you that completely free trade (as in "without restriction") would facilitate monopoly-practice and in turn engender a monoculture, which is how we found ourself in the current mess.
To suggest open-source development discourages variety though...? Wow. What's your reasoning behind that posit?
I agree with you 100%, but still... don't feed the trolls.
Next time: the world's seven wettest oceans!
NXT was (is) a viable and versatile speaker technology with many of the revolutionary properties ascribed to this one. Not as flexible or cheap, but certainly a significant step up from the paper cones of yore.
Yet, in spite of being a sound technology (sorry), it took years before it finally reached consumer products. Even now the uptake is slow.
The strongest hurdle was poor bass-reproduction, because it didn't have the physical ability to shift sufficient volumes of air - exactly the same issue faced by this new tech - so NXT speaker systems often have to be augmented with sub-woofers - see the Hitachi AX M133 for an example. This doesn't affect the fact that it is ideal for public-address systems, however, since it is a diffuse source rather than a point, and that whole "sweet spot" nonsense becomes a non-issue.
In spite of this, it never made a noticeable entry into the PA market. I can only hope this new technology delivers the cheapness and flexibility promised, and we can finally stop bolting big ugly boxes to the walls in every public space.
Grinding, of course, means "reading every day".
Just ask Mister Splashy Pants.
Low income. Increases the likelihood of smoking, vinyl flooring, poorly ventilated housing and... oh look, it's right there in the list: "family economic problems".
Hang on... inexpensive and flexible? The possibilities go quite far beyond merely replacing existing hardware functionality, and I don't think people are fully appreciating this.
Durability of touch-surfaces has always been a concern, but if it's so cheap then why not have replacable touch-surface film? Whenever the surface gets a bit scuffed or unresponsive, just replace it yourself - no fuss.
Extending the idea, why not have printed surfaces, with different surfaces for different applications? Just print a new batch of till (cash-teller) overlays whenever the product lineup changes.
I'm sure there are a hundred more innovative ways of using this, of which I could never conceive. If this were just an incremental upgrade to existing touch-hardware, I'd appreciate people's concerns. As it is, the fact that this is supposedly very cheap and flexible means that its most dramatic impact will be in new applications.
Interesting posit. What little I've learned tells me that Chinese has a very simple grammatical structure, which would lend itself well to universal adoption. I assumed that (combined with the population-factor) was why Joss Whedon chose to make it a common tongue in Firefly.
Unfortunately its written system is highly pictorial, and the tonality of the spoken language makes it very demanding to learn if you're not a native. I also find that the lack of grammatical subtlety and the difficulty of using tone to express or lend nuance to the spoken word without being confusing makes it quite a limiting language.
I'm not saying Chinese definitely won't come to dominate at some point, but:
a) if it does, I suspect we will see it undergo some extensive bastardisation to the extent of being barely recognisable in order to overcome the limitations I perceive, and
b) I think it fairly unlikely anyway, given that English has largely come to dominate on a global scale in pretty much every sphere that counts (science, engineering, diplomacy, trade, and the underlying languages of the Interwebs).
I assume we're talking about Mandarin Chinese here by the way (more specifically Beijing Mandarin), since this is the most common and one of the easier-going Chinese dialects, and it's being pushed as the lingua franca (ha) in China and SE Asia in general.