The fact that molecular biology was around before the term "nanotechnology" was conceived does not disqualify it--it is a perfectly viable method for engineering nm scale materials, and probably the approach that will yield the greatest advances in the near future. To me, the point at which molecular biology becomes nanotechnology is when it is used to engineer novel molecules, as opposed to just shuffling them around from organism to organism or cell to cell.
Re:There needs to be a "Fun" score in every review
on
Black Review
·
· Score: 1
I've now had a chance to play the PS2 demo, and I have to admit that the game loses a great deal of its lustre. This is really a game that relies upon immersion for its appeal, and playing it 4:3 aspect ratio and 480i (perhaps the release version at least offers 480p?), with weaker graphics and sound seriously detracts from the appeal of this title. It's still kinda fun, but it's a pale shadow of the XBox version.
I read the actual text of the statute, and it is pretty well drafted to try to fit within Constitutional requirements. They basical use the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity and work from there.
Except that violence does not fall within the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity. The likelihood that courts would accept a broad additional exception to Constitutional protections regarding freedom of speech and press is essentially zero. Furthermore, the law makes a number of false statemetns:
(2) Even persons who do not commit acts of violence suffer psychological harm from prolonged exposure to violent video games; and
(3) The state has a compelling interest in preventing violent, aggressive, and antisocial behavior, and in preventing psychological or neurological harm to persons who play violent video games.
In fact there is no evidence to support the claim of psychological harm. Even if one accepts the rather poor-quality research that has been conducted on the subject, the strongest claim that can be made is that games increase aggression. Aggression is not in itself criminal, and certainly does not constitute psychological harm. Moreover, violent crime has decreased since games have become more violent and realistic, and has done so in the very demographic that plays those games.
Re:No Wonder The 360 Is Selling So Poorly
on
Black Review
·
· Score: 1
Uh, the main reason the XBox is selling "poorly" is that it is still difficult to find one to buy except in an expensive bundle with a bunch of crap that you don't want. I've been on a waiting list for a non-bundle 360 since last summer, and I just got it last week. Of course, it has the usual launch issues--a handful of mostly mediocre, overpriced titles. But the same was true for the Playstation I & 2 and the first XBox.
Re:There needs to be a "Fun" score in every review
on
Black Review
·
· Score: 1
I have to disagree with this review as well as the other reviews on gaming sites. This game is fun. Period.
I agree with you. I've seen a number of dumb reviews of this nature, and might well have passed this one up. Fortunately, I had a chance to play the demo, and I ran right out and bought it. This game is definitely a blast to play, as long as you don't confuse it with some kind of military simulation. It is more like a playable action movie, with about the same level of plausibility--think "Dynasty Warriors" with guns. And for a game of this type, there is a surprising amount of freedom of movement and opportunities for player choice. I've enjoyed playing some levels over just to see how well I can do (and what else I can find to destroy).
The graphics on the XBox are truly beautiful, particularly running at 480p widescreen. If somebody had told me that it was running on an XBox 360, I'd probably have believed them. The Dolby 5.1 sound effects are amazingly effective.
The reviewer says he sold his XBox to buy an XBox 360--how foolish is that? I just bought a 360 and I'm happy to have it, but if I had to sell my XBox to afford it, I'd wait. The XBox 360 has just a handful of games, only a couple of which appeal to me, and is unable to play many of the best XBox One titles. Not to mention that publishers seem to be under the delusion that XBox 360 graphics are so great that they can get away with charging $60 a title (I'll be buying all of my XBox 360 titles used until pricing sanity prevails). In fact, so far, the best games on the XBox 360 are on XBox Live Arcade.
This is just another example of a legislator pandering to an electorate that he imagines to be too stupid to understand that such a law, even if it were somehow to be passed, would immediately be invalidated by the courts.
To have even a prayer of getting the courts to accept such a drastic restriction of the constitutional rights of adults, it would be necessary to prove that such games pose some grave threat. This would be pretty difficult, considering that as violent video games have gotten more popular and realistic, the incidence of real-world violence has steadily DECREASED--particularly among young males, who are the demographic that most plays such games.
Just for future reference... "slippery slope" is not a valid argument. In fact, it is the name of a logical fallacy. When someone says "new legislation such and such could lead us down a very slippery slope", that's when you can stop listening because they have decisively abandoned logic.
Your statement is logically equivalent to the assertion that "slippery slopes" do not exist--i.e. there are no circumstances such that change in one direction is much easier than the other. Considering that there are many physical circumstances in which such is the case--including a literal slippery slope, as well as innumerable examples of thermodynamically irreversible reactions in chemistry and physics, this is a fairly remarkable assertion. What empirical evidence can you provide to support the radical claim that this cannot occur in legal or social contexts?
Plus, if there's anything to be learned from the whole OS/2 experience it's that perfect emulation of your rival's platform brings no market advantage.
In this case, the goal would be not to gain a market advantage, but to neutralize a disadvantage. The market advantage is that many people prefer the Mac interface to Windows. The market disadvantage is that some people who would prefer to be using a Macintosh are forced to use Windows because critical applications are available only for the Windows OS.
the only thing that's important is if you live long enough to have kids at all. If you die at age 7 you won't matter much to evolution.
About as much as if you live to age 97 but don't get around to having kids.
On the other hand, if EVERYONE lives to be exactly 40, the "survival of the fittest" part of evolution stops working and as I said, we revert to the natural selection aspect where your genetics influence your partner's selection of you as a mate.
You might want to actually read a book on evolution. It sounds like you think that evolution is different from natural selection. "Survival of the fittest" is a gross oversimplification--the expression is not used much anymore by scientists because it tends to lead to that kind of misunderstanding.
As far as evolution is concerned, it doesn't really matter how long you live--all that matters is how good a job you do of propagating your genes. Certainly living long enough to have children is part of that, but so is your fertility, your child care, your contribution to the reproductive success of other members of your immediate family, and many other factors.
I don't mean to be a flamebaiter, but the people having lots of babies are not the "intelligent" people. Normally, people from "less intelligent" families, who are more intelligent than their peers, are seen to be "breaking the cycle". They seem to go on to have many less children than their less intelligent brethren. I'm just saying what I think appears to be the case here; I don't have any hard data to back it up.
This may well have always been true, and our current level of intelligence may well represent a steady-state balance between the survival advantages of high intelligence and the tendency of intelligent people to get distracted into activities that compete with the evolutionarily important business of passing on their genes.
However, it is highly likely that high intelligence is multifactorial--not a single "magic" gene, but a propitious combination of genes that may not individually be uncommon. If this is the case, then the below-average reproduction of the most intelligent individuals to reproduce will not necessarily have that huge an effect, because even though "average" intelligence individuals may be less likely to produce highly intelligent children, there are a lot more of them, and brilliant children of average intelligence parents will continue to arise just by the luck of the draw.
That's just one example. While I believe that some pursue subjects because they excel at them and struggle with others - there's other reasons. For starters, one may receive an A in history and a C in math, not because they are deficient in math, but because it doesn't interest them as much as history.
Of course, some people are more interested in some subjects than others. And interest itself may well be influenced by genetic factors. Many people become fascinated by subjects such as science and math at a very early age, while their peers and even siblings do not, suggesting an inherent bias.
It would be nice if interest and aptitude always went together. But I've seen too many students with a passionate desire for a career in medicine or science, working themselves to the bone just to pull C's, to regard
Of course, we are talking about statistical biases, not absolutes, and there will always be exceptions. I know people in the sciences who were so interested in the subject that they persevered even though they struggled through their technical courses only by dint of superhuman effort--and some of them have had reasonably successful careers. But overall, somebody who is equally interested in two subjects will be more likely to pursue the one that comes easily than the one that is a struggle. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."
I don't think we need the original paper, I learned this in high school biology. Evolution never stops, there is no perfectly evolved thing
However, evolution doesn't really seek perfection--it is prone to find a local optimum, where any deviation from the mean reduces fitness, and get "stuck" there. So instead of a continuous climb, most species could be sitting at the summits of local fitness peaks, changing only in response to changes in the environment (or, in the modern world, relocation to a different environment) such as new diseases, new foods, changes in climate, etc.
The problem evolution is having now is that in order for the primary mechanism of evolution to "work", a significant portion of the members of a population have to die. (not survive long enough to reproduce)
So you are asserting that if everybody lived to exactly the same age, we would all have the same number of children?
No, it can only be selected if there is genetic differentiation in it. So if susceptibility levels to the "full world" meme vary for different alleles of the same gene, the less susceptible versions will be selected for. But if that genetic variation doesn't exist, it can't be selected for.
Actually, even if there was no genetic variation in susceptibility to the "full world" meme, there is almost certainly genetic variation in the ability to control one's own sexual behavior. So if there is no variation in susceptibility to the meme, then the meme would have a side effect of selecting for people who are highly sexually active (and poor at remembering to use contraception) despite their own best intentions.
This part, in particular, made me laugh. Basically, you're saying people pursue the liberal arts, not because:gasp: it's a pirsuit which interests them, but because they lack the mental faculties to become engineers?
Are the two explanations mutually exclusive? Let's say that you are equally interested in engineering and, say, history, but you consistently get A's in history and C's in math. Which field do you think that you are more likely to pursue?
Quite possible. Considering that brains are sort of our specialty as a species, we tend to think that smart is good. But as far as natural selection is concerned, we may just need to be smart enough. It could be that excessively intelligent people are more likely to get distracted into activities that compete with their real business (evolutionarily speaking) of spreading their genes as widely as possible.
Apple is going to aim for the high end, high margin end of the accessories market, just as they have with everything else they sell. There will be plenty of room for 3rd party manufacturers of bargain-priced accessories, as well as premium-priced accessories targeted toward "niche" markets that are too small for Apple to bother with.
As I said... fucking Apple zealots. You do understand what the TPM does, don't you? A CPU, even one whose design is opaque, doesn't even compare since it is not designed to allow software to hide information from the owner of the machine. The TPM in the new Apple Macintosh is there *specifically* to ensure that you, the person who paid for the hardware, is not the person in control of the machine. It is never out of the control of Apple... a preinstalled rootkit and electronic dog-collar for those stupid enough to pay for their own shackles. As I said, it's an expensive X-Box.
You have still failed to identify anything that Apple's TPM actually prevents you from doing with the computer, other than examining its contents--which you can't do with any of the chips on the motherboard.
So, using Linux on the machine will suddenly give you access to the contents of the TPM, will it? Answer: No... zealot... it won't. The Intel Macs are little better than fancy X-Boxes.
Even more shockingly, much of the electronics, including the cpu itself, are packaged in sealed chips where it is impossible for the owner to see how the individual transistors and traces are laid out.
. So if Apple were to do a PVR, it is following a predictable pattern. Release it in small manageable bites and work out the kinks.
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually comes up with a PVR capable Mac, but recording video over the air or from cable is never likely to be a huge money maker for Apple (just look at how TiVo is doing). For the same reason that Apple has held off on a radio tuner for the iPod, I don't expect to see a TV tuner right away. It makes considerably more sense for Apple to pursue an iTunes like model, bypassing existing video distribution systems entirely. What I find notable about the MacMini is that it looks like it might be capable of HD video output. Will Apple begin offering shows in HD resolution through iTMS to supplement the currently available shows in iPod resolution?
So what, specifically, does this DRM hardware prohibit you from doing with the machine? People have already begin running other operating systems on Intel Macs So if you want the machine to be "totally under your control," all you need to do is dump the Apple software and install your own.
His biggest objections seems to be that the Mac Mini is not a PVR. Of course, if it had included everything necessary for a PVR--ATSC HD tuner, analog tuner, cable card capacity, huge hard drive--it would have been considerably more expensive, and analysts would be criticizing Apple for releasing an $1000 computer to duplicate the functionality of a device that your cable company will rent you for $10/month.
In other words, it's designed with the intention to dazzle the casual observer long enough to run their credit card through the register, not to faithfully reproduce music.
Yes, Apple shouldn't have tried to make it look like a high-end stereo system--they should have designed it to look like a boom box.
Few remotes are very well designed. The two best I've seen are the TiVo remote and a remote for an older device called VideoGuide that added TiVo-like capabilities to VCRs. Of course, making a simple remote for a simple device like an iPod is not exactly a huge challenge. I'll be interested to see what Apple comes up for a remote when and if they finally release a true media center PC.
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It is not nanotechnology unless you are manipulating individual atoms or molecules. They are not doing this. QED, it is not nanotechnology.
They are manufacturing synthetic peptides. Peptides are molecules. QED.
The fact that molecular biology was around before the term "nanotechnology" was conceived does not disqualify it--it is a perfectly viable method for engineering nm scale materials, and probably the approach that will yield the greatest advances in the near future. To me, the point at which molecular biology becomes nanotechnology is when it is used to engineer novel molecules, as opposed to just shuffling them around from organism to organism or cell to cell.
I've now had a chance to play the PS2 demo, and I have to admit that the game loses a great deal of its lustre. This is really a game that relies upon immersion for its appeal, and playing it 4:3 aspect ratio and 480i (perhaps the release version at least offers 480p?), with weaker graphics and sound seriously detracts from the appeal of this title. It's still kinda fun, but it's a pale shadow of the XBox version.
I read the actual text of the statute, and it is pretty well drafted to try to fit within Constitutional requirements. They basical use the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity and work from there.
Except that violence does not fall within the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity. The likelihood that courts would accept a broad additional exception to Constitutional protections regarding freedom of speech and press is essentially zero. Furthermore, the law makes a number of false statemetns:
(2) Even persons who do not commit acts of violence suffer psychological harm
from prolonged exposure to violent video games; and
(3) The state has a compelling interest in preventing violent, aggressive, and
antisocial behavior, and in preventing psychological or neurological harm to persons who
play violent video games.
In fact there is no evidence to support the claim of psychological harm. Even if one accepts the rather poor-quality research that has been conducted on the subject, the strongest claim that can be made is that games increase aggression. Aggression is not in itself criminal, and certainly does not constitute psychological harm. Moreover, violent crime has decreased since games have become more violent and realistic, and has done so in the very demographic that plays those games.
Uh, the main reason the XBox is selling "poorly" is that it is still difficult to find one to buy except in an expensive bundle with a bunch of crap that you don't want. I've been on a waiting list for a non-bundle 360 since last summer, and I just got it last week. Of course, it has the usual launch issues--a handful of mostly mediocre, overpriced titles. But the same was true for the Playstation I & 2 and the first XBox.
I have to disagree with this review as well as the other reviews on gaming sites. This game is fun. Period.
I agree with you. I've seen a number of dumb reviews of this nature, and might well have passed this one up. Fortunately, I had a chance to play the demo, and I ran right out and bought it. This game is definitely a blast to play, as long as you don't confuse it with some kind of military simulation. It is more like a playable action movie, with about the same level of plausibility--think "Dynasty Warriors" with guns. And for a game of this type, there is a surprising amount of freedom of movement and opportunities for player choice. I've enjoyed playing some levels over just to see how well I can do (and what else I can find to destroy).
The graphics on the XBox are truly beautiful, particularly running at 480p widescreen. If somebody had told me that it was running on an XBox 360, I'd probably have believed them. The Dolby 5.1 sound effects are amazingly effective.
The reviewer says he sold his XBox to buy an XBox 360--how foolish is that? I just bought a 360 and I'm happy to have it, but if I had to sell my XBox to afford it, I'd wait. The XBox 360 has just a handful of games, only a couple of which appeal to me, and is unable to play many of the best XBox One titles. Not to mention that publishers seem to be under the delusion that XBox 360 graphics are so great that they can get away with charging $60 a title (I'll be buying all of my XBox 360 titles used until pricing sanity prevails). In fact, so far, the best games on the XBox 360 are on XBox Live Arcade.
This is just another example of a legislator pandering to an electorate that he imagines to be too stupid to understand that such a law, even if it were somehow to be passed, would immediately be invalidated by the courts.
To have even a prayer of getting the courts to accept such a drastic restriction of the constitutional rights of adults, it would be necessary to prove that such games pose some grave threat. This would be pretty difficult, considering that as violent video games have gotten more popular and realistic, the incidence of real-world violence has steadily DECREASED--particularly among young males, who are the demographic that most plays such games.
Just for future reference... "slippery slope" is not a valid argument. In fact, it is the name of a logical fallacy. When someone says "new legislation such and such could lead us down a very slippery slope", that's when you can stop listening because they have decisively abandoned logic.
Your statement is logically equivalent to the assertion that "slippery slopes" do not exist--i.e. there are no circumstances such that change in one direction is much easier than the other. Considering that there are many physical circumstances in which such is the case--including a literal slippery slope, as well as innumerable examples of thermodynamically irreversible reactions in chemistry and physics, this is a fairly remarkable assertion. What empirical evidence can you provide to support the radical claim that this cannot occur in legal or social contexts?
Plus, if there's anything to be learned from the whole OS/2 experience it's that perfect emulation of your rival's platform brings no market advantage.
In this case, the goal would be not to gain a market advantage, but to neutralize a disadvantage. The market advantage is that many people prefer the Mac interface to Windows. The market disadvantage is that some people who would prefer to be using a Macintosh are forced to use Windows because critical applications are available only for the Windows OS.
the only thing that's important is if you live long enough to have kids at all. If you die at age 7 you won't matter much to evolution.
About as much as if you live to age 97 but don't get around to having kids.
On the other hand, if EVERYONE lives to be exactly 40, the "survival of the fittest" part of evolution stops working and as I said, we revert to the natural selection aspect where your genetics influence your partner's selection of you as a mate.
You might want to actually read a book on evolution. It sounds like you think that evolution is different from natural selection. "Survival of the fittest" is a gross oversimplification--the expression is not used much anymore by scientists because it tends to lead to that kind of misunderstanding.
As far as evolution is concerned, it doesn't really matter how long you live--all that matters is how good a job you do of propagating your genes. Certainly living long enough to have children is part of that, but so is your fertility, your child care, your contribution to the reproductive success of other members of your immediate family, and many other factors.
I don't mean to be a flamebaiter, but the people having lots of babies are not the "intelligent" people. Normally, people from "less intelligent" families, who are more intelligent than their peers, are seen to be "breaking the cycle". They seem to go on to have many less children than their less intelligent brethren. I'm just saying what I think appears to be the case here; I don't have any hard data to back it up.
This may well have always been true, and our current level of intelligence may well represent a steady-state balance between the survival advantages of high intelligence and the tendency of intelligent people to get distracted into activities that compete with the evolutionarily important business of passing on their genes.
However, it is highly likely that high intelligence is multifactorial--not a single "magic" gene, but a propitious combination of genes that may not individually be uncommon. If this is the case, then the below-average reproduction of the most intelligent individuals to reproduce will not necessarily have that huge an effect, because even though "average" intelligence individuals may be less likely to produce highly intelligent children, there are a lot more of them, and brilliant children of average intelligence parents will continue to arise just by the luck of the draw.
That's just one example. While I believe that some pursue subjects because they excel at them and struggle with others - there's other reasons. For starters, one may receive an A in history and a C in math, not because they are deficient in math, but because it doesn't interest them as much as history.
Of course, some people are more interested in some subjects than others. And interest itself may well be influenced by genetic factors. Many people become fascinated by subjects such as science and math at a very early age, while their peers and even siblings do not, suggesting an inherent bias.
It would be nice if interest and aptitude always went together. But I've seen too many students with a passionate desire for a career in medicine or science, working themselves to the bone just to pull C's, to regard
Of course, we are talking about statistical biases, not absolutes, and there will always be exceptions. I know people in the sciences who were so interested in the subject that they persevered even though they struggled through their technical courses only by dint of superhuman effort--and some of them have had reasonably successful careers. But overall, somebody who is equally interested in two subjects will be more likely to pursue the one that comes easily than the one that is a struggle. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."
I don't think we need the original paper, I learned this in high school biology. Evolution never stops, there is no perfectly evolved thing
However, evolution doesn't really seek perfection--it is prone to find a local optimum, where any deviation from the mean reduces fitness, and get "stuck" there. So instead of a continuous climb, most species could be sitting at the summits of local fitness peaks, changing only in response to changes in the environment (or, in the modern world, relocation to a different environment) such as new diseases, new foods, changes in climate, etc.
The problem evolution is having now is that in order for the primary mechanism of evolution to "work", a significant portion of the members of a population have to die. (not survive long enough to reproduce)
So you are asserting that if everybody lived to exactly the same age, we would all have the same number of children?
No, it can only be selected if there is genetic differentiation in it. So if susceptibility levels to the "full world" meme vary for different alleles of the same gene, the less susceptible versions will be selected for. But if that genetic variation doesn't exist, it can't be selected for.
Actually, even if there was no genetic variation in susceptibility to the "full world" meme, there is almost certainly genetic variation in the ability to control one's own sexual behavior. So if there is no variation in susceptibility to the meme, then the meme would have a side effect of selecting for people who are highly sexually active (and poor at remembering to use contraception) despite their own best intentions.
This part, in particular, made me laugh. Basically, you're saying people pursue the liberal arts, not because :gasp: it's a pirsuit which interests them, but because they lack the mental faculties to become engineers?
Are the two explanations mutually exclusive? Let's say that you are equally interested in engineering and, say, history, but you consistently get A's in history and C's in math. Which field do you think that you are more likely to pursue?
Is there some inherent cap on human intelligence?
Quite possible. Considering that brains are sort of our specialty as a species, we tend to think that smart is good. But as far as natural selection is concerned, we may just need to be smart enough. It could be that excessively intelligent people are more likely to get distracted into activities that compete with their real business (evolutionarily speaking) of spreading their genes as widely as possible.
Apple is going to aim for the high end, high margin end of the accessories market, just as they have with everything else they sell. There will be plenty of room for 3rd party manufacturers of bargain-priced accessories, as well as premium-priced accessories targeted toward "niche" markets that are too small for Apple to bother with.
As I said... fucking Apple zealots. You do understand what the TPM does, don't you? A CPU, even one whose design is opaque, doesn't even compare since it is not designed to allow software to hide information from the owner of the machine. The TPM in the new Apple Macintosh is there *specifically* to ensure that you, the person who paid for the hardware, is not the person in control of the machine. It is never out of the control of Apple... a preinstalled rootkit and electronic dog-collar for those stupid enough to pay for their own shackles. As I said, it's an expensive X-Box.
You have still failed to identify anything that Apple's TPM actually prevents you from doing with the computer, other than examining its contents--which you can't do with any of the chips on the motherboard.
So, using Linux on the machine will suddenly give you access to the contents of the TPM, will it? Answer: No... zealot... it won't. The Intel Macs are little better than fancy X-Boxes.
Even more shockingly, much of the electronics, including the cpu itself, are packaged in sealed chips where it is impossible for the owner to see how the individual transistors and traces are laid out.
. So if Apple were to do a PVR, it is following a predictable pattern. Release it in small manageable bites and work out the kinks.
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually comes up with a PVR capable Mac, but recording video over the air or from cable is never likely to be a huge money maker for Apple (just look at how TiVo is doing). For the same reason that Apple has held off on a radio tuner for the iPod, I don't expect to see a TV tuner right away. It makes considerably more sense for Apple to pursue an iTunes like model, bypassing existing video distribution systems entirely. What I find notable about the MacMini is that it looks like it might be capable of HD video output. Will Apple begin offering shows in HD resolution through iTMS to supplement the currently available shows in iPod resolution?
So what, specifically, does this DRM hardware prohibit you from doing with the machine? People have already begin running other operating systems on Intel Macs So if you want the machine to be "totally under your control," all you need to do is dump the Apple software and install your own.
His biggest objections seems to be that the Mac Mini is not a PVR. Of course, if it had included everything necessary for a PVR--ATSC HD tuner, analog tuner, cable card capacity, huge hard drive--it would have been considerably more expensive, and analysts would be criticizing Apple for releasing an $1000 computer to duplicate the functionality of a device that your cable company will rent you for $10/month.
In other words, it's designed with the intention to dazzle the casual observer long enough to run their credit card through the register, not to faithfully reproduce music.
Yes, Apple shouldn't have tried to make it look like a high-end stereo system--they should have designed it to look like a boom box.
Oh wait--they did.
Few remotes are very well designed. The two best I've seen are the TiVo remote and a remote for an older device called VideoGuide that added TiVo-like capabilities to VCRs. Of course, making a simple remote for a simple device like an iPod is not exactly a huge challenge. I'll be interested to see what Apple comes up for a remote when and if they finally release a true media center PC.