1) Lower your data distribution costs via Bit Torrent. Figure out new ways to use your clients to distribute your second to second data.
2) Use social engineering to get your players to create content for free.
3) Charge a minimal amount for being the part of the system that ensures the game is "fair" in terms of cheaters and hackers.
The biggest problem, imho, is that NPC's will be dumb as a stump for at least another decade and so their entertainment value will be very limited. They will not approach the value of a badly acted character in a 2nd rate TV show.
I hear you about the eye thing. I waited about 10 years before I got mine.
In the five years since then, I do not regret that I waited but I have really enjoyed them. I can see when I go to the beach, when I play sports, when I ski. If I wasn't physically active, it wouldn't matter so much.
I agree on the shakiness of their claims. I've had sleeved CD's that were supposed to last 70 years that can't be read after five (with light use).
Now I use DVD's AND multiple USB hard drives. And I still occasionally lose data.
Every television show, movie, video game or play that is not a "one man show" is a collaboration.
The fact that any 3d models will be free is huge. As the cost of producing entertainment grows lower- the powers that be have to be seriously concerned about their future profits.
I think that is because you are using a "loaded" term like "soul". It has many religious subtexts (eternal life, life beyond death, etc.) that are implied beyond the mystery of conciousness.
I agree with you that there are a lot of things we do not know about conciousness at this point.
You havn't shown by experiment that you dont have insubstantial invisible wings. Or an astral 3rd eye. Or an invisible 6' rabbit following you. Or something called a soul. Or an astral body. Or the ability to read people's minds. There are a million imaginary things you cannot show.
So we use "occum's razor" to handle those cases. It is not necessary to prove a soul, invisible rabbit, or astral 3rd eye does NOT exist. You have to prove that they -DO- exist by showing some kind of reproducible evidence.
However, I would accept that the idea people have soul which is undetectable has the same validity that thunder is caused by enormous beings bowling up in the clouds which we cannot produce any evidence about either.
Why? Because, by OR, the simplest explanation that covers the facts is enough- anything extra left over can be cut away.
A day without swsiprz is like a day without sunshine!
After a few months, all the managers posted his picture so everyone knew who he was, basically destroying his ability to do his job. So he no longer does that. Last I heard he was running xxx sites.
One of my religious friends says the soul does not contain the personality.
Most christians seem to believe that their personality will survive death. A lot believe if you do not believe, your soul disintegrates when you die. Others think it continues to exist but is somehow shunned from god's presence.
IF it does contain the personality, then one wonders why we can manipulate it so well with chemistry. You can make a person spiritual or a non-spiritual, a violent paranoid killer, or a simpering coward paralyzed with fear with the proper chemistry.
I believe that we will be able to copy our conciousness. The copy will perceive itself to be "real" even tho it can see it is in hardware instead of wetware.
I do have concerns about the "singularity" mentioned in the responses to the article. Almost any superior being abuses its power. Once we get computers smart enough- they will begin growing smarter than us very quickly. Picture viral or bacterial evolution rates for a machine intelligence that gets close to human intelligence. I presume such an intelligence would abuse us as long as it cared about our existence.
I think we would have a breakdown in "friendliness" (AI concept) fairly quickly. Out of the million ways to become smarter, a few of them would view us as a burden and they would have a failure of friendliness.
I would pay any amount of money to have myself encoded since I have seen no evidence of any afterlife that I do not find equivalent with some madman or ignorant primative's babblings. So, at this time, I think when the wetware version of me dies, I end for all time.
However. IF souls were real, then at the least, when the last organic cell was replaced, I would think the soul would go. But it's almost ludicrous to suppose that any particular cell in the body ties the soul to the body so it could be any cell. But nothing down this line of reasoning is even remotely logical. Of course, that's typical of religious discussions involving things that can't be proven or measured.
At a particular "secure" power plant, one security tester found....
1) Even tho the steel door was indeed going to be hard to get past, the drywall next to it was easily punched through.
2) Even tho the "man trap" did indeed close automatically, he could easily jump up, grab the edge and climb out.
3) Even tho the site was high security, he simply asked the person ahead of him to hold open the door for him since his hands were full with a couple empty boxes.
---
So, I won't fault the empire there little pecadillos.
According to a british wind turbine maker:
How long does it take to pay back the energy used to manufacture a power station?
Nuclear 3 to 6 months.
Wind 3 to 6 months.
Source: http://www.britishwindenergy.co.uk/ref/faq.html
According to Wiki:
How many months until the energy cost to make the item is paid off?
Nuclear
Coal
Wind 3 to 8 months in high wind (7m/s).
Wind 6 to 23 months in low wind (4m/s).
Solar:
monocrystalline 44 to 87 months (if I read it right)
amorphous 28 to 56 months.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain
Apparently solar cells used to take more energy to make than they produced because they broke before they reached breakeven.
Even now, solar has to drop by MORE than an order of magnitude (one order of magnitude would drop it to 5 to 8 months which is still more expensive than the other forms).
I have also read that any solar method that relys on rare materials will become expensive the second that particular method becomes popular so any "real" solar solution has to be based entirely on commonly available materials.
I personally want to supplement grid power during the day- not replace it. Batteries are expensive and die in 7 years or less currently.
This is actually a problem with wind, wave, solar and other forms of renewable energy as well.
The net pollution and energy used to produce them is often greater than the energy source they are replacing.
I am hoping nano makes solar work.
Another alternative is hemp. If they planted kansas in hemp, we would get an enormous amount of diesel fuel and only about 5% of hemp varieties are really narcotic (just trace amounts of THC in the other 95%) Unfortunately, it's currently unpopular because of the drug issue.
Okay...all 500,000 friends of mine are hosting original essays which has a quote in the middle of the essay from the book.
Such as:
I think that the 5,317th sentence, which ends the paragraph and chapter in the new Harry Potter book, "No Professor smith, I don't want to see your dirty pictures of Hermione!" is central to the books theme.
I think that the 5,317th sentence, which ends the paragraph and chapter in the new Harry Potter book, "No Professor smith, I don't want to see your dirty pictures of Hermione!" with "dirty" in italics is central to the book's theme.
I think that the 5,318th sentence, which starts the paragraph and starts a new chapter named "Harry has a Dream"in the new Harry Potter book, "Harry was in front of class and Voldemort and all his female classmates were laughing at Harry because he could not keep his robes tied and he had on no underwear." is central to the book's theme.
These are legitimate mini-articles taken separately.
If there is a legal limit, people will find it and exploit it. It is almost like obscenity. It's very hard to define.
The same thing could be used for audio "song reviews", video "movie reviews" and so on.
The difference is if they legally own the content or morally own the content.
If they extend the LEGAL copyright law to "forever" then I believe they have lost the moral right to own copyright.
If they refuse to publish the content in and sell it at a reasonable price then I believe they have lost the moral right to own copyright.
If they publish the content and sell it at a reasonable price, then I think they have a moral right to sell and control access to that content for a reasonable period.
I do not think 20 dollars for an object that costs under 1 dollar is a reasonable price.
I do not think extending copyright from 28 years to 75 years past the death of the creator is reasonable.
I do not think refusing to publish content (supressing it) is reasonable.
I have and will continue to support music and other content distribution channels that are not ripping off me and/or the artists.
Copyright law has gone from "encouraging creation of new content" to "massive monopolies for a tiny subset of the population."
I could very well imagine this being linked into god-knows-what. Imagine, for instance, having $100 in parking tickets due, and the library terminal refusing you connection to their services before this due is paid.
You're not going nearly far enough... how bout this...
Imagine, for instance, having $100 in parking tickets overdue, and the library terminal automatically informs the police of your location so they can come arrest you.
The day is rapidly coming when those suspected of any crime will be automatically reported by cameras and radio RFID readers over traffic intersections, RFID scanners at the entrances to malls and other public buildings, etc. etc.
It's all fine until they decide people who are members of the green party are inherently committing a crime. But they've never done anything like that (cough cough joe mccarthy) before.
Every time they run short, companies start talking about the coming shortage and then lobby for more h1b visa's which makes everyone decide it would be stupid to enter the field.
Vicious cycle as long as they can import skilled developers.
There is no reason to enter IT yet-- they do not want to pay you what you are worth, they have no loyalty and will fire you.. er "reallocate you to the curb" at a heartbeat's notice, and they will fire you and refused to hire you once you get to 55 years old (50 if you look old).
It wouldn't annoy me so much, except I know how much the executives make and if just one at each company was making reasonable salaries (say about 1 million dollars), then they could afford to retain 30 to 100 employees with full benefits.
It is not reasonable to pay 1 person so much money- it unbalances things and they can only buy one washer, one big TV, and one car. If the same money was going to 30-100 other people they would put it right back in the economy.
So save the "boo hoo" games corporations- your lack of loyalty and greed is causing the shortage.
I write and use java programs.
They havn't been slow for several years.
They are usually cross platform unless they use specific system features to look nicer-- even then 99% of the code is system agnostic.
It does, but it wasn't in the message I was responding to.
People who have problems with they're grammer need to think when their typing to there audience.
But really, I think the spreading incorrect usage of "loose" (in place of "lose") bugs me most. I usually don't say boo about grammar issues because this is a very ephemeral medium and people are just quickly tossing off ideas. As long as I can understand the idea they were trying to get across then I just deal with their idiosyncrasies.
A week in 96 degree sun building houses for the homeless.
AND I also like BT.
I agree the artists need some money to keep working. I disagree that they won't write or create new art unless they get millions of dollars. I really disagree that the middlemen who do nothing that can't be replaced by BT should get rich. I donate money to artists (via magnatune among others) where I know the artists are actually going to see a majority of the money and I've established that I like the art.
I also try some stuff, don't pay for it, don't bother to delete it but never listen to it again.
There is now more quality songs/art/tv shows/movies than I could watch/listen to if I spent every day from waking to sleeping consuming it. Only monopolies are holding up the prices- but the glut is coming and prices will drop.
The zahn books are the true next three stories. They cost me sleep and made me miss work. The third one- I waited to read on the weekend because I couldn't put them down.
Brilliant writing. A stronger, smarter, better villian than any of the movies. And how the end started as a butterfly's breath which just built and built.
---
As far as the "there/their" thing. Every time I see these kind of rouge errors I get so frustrated that almost loose it.
Magnatune has really good music with a donation price of about 5 to 18 dollars (your choice) for albums you like.
You can get the music any many different formats. Try it for free before you buy it. Hell- even keep it without buying it- no DRM in the songs.
The best thing is- the artists keep HALF of the money you donate which is very satisfying. Much more satisfying than paying for a CD full of songs recorded by people who have been DEAD for 40 years (and should really not be copyrighted any more IMHO).
Plus easy straight forward licensing for bars, music videos, movies, etc. etc.
I particularly like Ehrin Starks (piano and cello) and bought a physical CD of it or 12.47 including shipping- AFTER I got to sample the music, burn my own CD of it, etc. for free. Why did I buy it when I'm normally so jaded-- because it feels good to support music presented this way. I don't feel like a sucker.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Lower your data distribution costs via Bit Torrent. Figure out new ways to use your clients to distribute your second to second data.
2) Use social engineering to get your players to create content for free.
3) Charge a minimal amount for being the part of the system that ensures the game is "fair" in terms of cheaters and hackers.
The biggest problem, imho, is that NPC's will be dumb as a stump for at least another decade and so their entertainment value will be very limited. They will not approach the value of a badly acted character in a 2nd rate TV show.
I hear you about the eye thing. I waited about 10 years before I got mine.
In the five years since then, I do not regret that I waited but I have really enjoyed them. I can see when I go to the beach, when I play sports, when I ski. If I wasn't physically active, it wouldn't matter so much.
I agree on the shakiness of their claims. I've had sleeved CD's that were supposed to last 70 years that can't be read after five (with light use).
Now I use DVD's AND multiple USB hard drives. And I still occasionally lose data.
Every television show, movie, video game or play that is not a "one man show" is a collaboration.
The fact that any 3d models will be free is huge. As the cost of producing entertainment grows lower- the powers that be have to be seriously concerned about their future profits.
I think you meant to say, the people involved are seriously idiots.
The ityiewt was strong with them.
Well.. I may have a window up here on the 6th floor but I do not think it is a safe exit.
I go to specific steps to shut all light out of my bedroom. I sleep much better in a completely dark room.
Next thing you know, the zoning boards will prohibit using jpxtpvr in slashdot posts!
I think that is because you are using a "loaded" term like "soul". It has many religious subtexts (eternal life, life beyond death, etc.) that are implied beyond the mystery of conciousness.
I agree with you that there are a lot of things we do not know about conciousness at this point.
May your vsyejfg be long and happy.
Just remember that unlike proteins and minerals, and despite the effort of many very driven people, no hard evidence of a "soul" has ever been found.
Gotta love car analogies, they seem applicable to just about any argument.
Let's all hope for plentiful ypvrzsn during the coming year.
Sort of. But I think you have it backwards.
You havn't shown by experiment that you dont have insubstantial invisible wings. Or an astral 3rd eye. Or an invisible 6' rabbit following you. Or something called a soul. Or an astral body. Or the ability to read people's minds. There are a million imaginary things you cannot show.
So we use "occum's razor" to handle those cases. It is not necessary to prove a soul, invisible rabbit, or astral 3rd eye does NOT exist. You have to prove that they -DO- exist by showing some kind of reproducible evidence.
However, I would accept that the idea people have soul which is undetectable has the same validity that thunder is caused by enormous beings bowling up in the clouds which we cannot produce any evidence about either.
Why? Because, by OR, the simplest explanation that covers the facts is enough- anything extra left over can be cut away.
A day without swsiprz is like a day without sunshine!
Actually he was too effective.
After a few months, all the managers posted his picture so everyone knew who he was, basically destroying his ability to do his job. So he no longer does that. Last I heard he was running xxx sites.
A day without jvnmbnr is not a day fully lived.
Grrrr... Wish I could edit my posts. Mentally correct this to read...
So, I won't fault the empire *their* little security pecadillos.
Happy Zftjpyd to you too!
One of my religious friends says the soul does not contain the personality.
Most christians seem to believe that their personality will survive death. A lot believe if you do not believe, your soul disintegrates when you die. Others think it continues to exist but is somehow shunned from god's presence.
IF it does contain the personality, then one wonders why we can manipulate it so well with chemistry. You can make a person spiritual or a non-spiritual, a violent paranoid killer, or a simpering coward paralyzed with fear with the proper chemistry.
I believe that we will be able to copy our conciousness. The copy will perceive itself to be "real" even tho it can see it is in hardware instead of wetware.
I do have concerns about the "singularity" mentioned in the responses to the article. Almost any superior being abuses its power. Once we get computers smart enough- they will begin growing smarter than us very quickly. Picture viral or bacterial evolution rates for a machine intelligence that gets close to human intelligence. I presume such an intelligence would abuse us as long as it cared about our existence.
I think we would have a breakdown in "friendliness" (AI concept) fairly quickly. Out of the million ways to become smarter, a few of them would view us as a burden and they would have a failure of friendliness.
I would pay any amount of money to have myself encoded since I have seen no evidence of any afterlife that I do not find equivalent with some madman or ignorant primative's babblings. So, at this time, I think when the wetware version of me dies, I end for all time.
However. IF souls were real, then at the least, when the last organic cell was replaced, I would think the soul would go. But it's almost ludicrous to suppose that any particular cell in the body ties the soul to the body so it could be any cell. But nothing down this line of reasoning is even remotely logical. Of course, that's typical of religious discussions involving things that can't be proven or measured.
xnpcrzt!
At a particular "secure" power plant, one security tester found....
1) Even tho the steel door was indeed going to be hard to get past, the drywall next to it was easily punched through.
2) Even tho the "man trap" did indeed close automatically, he could easily jump up, grab the edge and climb out.
3) Even tho the site was high security, he simply asked the person ahead of him to hold open the door for him since his hands were full with a couple empty boxes.
---
So, I won't fault the empire there little pecadillos.
Did a little digging and here is what I found.
According to a british wind turbine maker:
How long does it take to pay back the energy used to manufacture a power station?
Nuclear 3 to 6 months.
Wind 3 to 6 months.
Source:
http://www.britishwindenergy.co.uk/ref/faq.html
According to Wiki:
How many months until the energy cost to make the item is paid off?
Nuclear Coal Wind 3 to 8 months in high wind (7m/s).
Wind 6 to 23 months in low wind (4m/s).
Solar:
monocrystalline 44 to 87 months (if I read it right)
amorphous 28 to 56 months.
source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain
Apparently solar cells used to take more energy to make than they produced because they broke before they reached breakeven.
Even now, solar has to drop by MORE than an order of magnitude (one order of magnitude would drop it to 5 to 8 months which is still more expensive than the other forms).
I have also read that any solar method that relys on rare materials will become expensive the second that particular method becomes popular so any "real" solar solution has to be based entirely on commonly available materials.
I personally want to supplement grid power during the day- not replace it. Batteries are expensive and die in 7 years or less currently.
This is actually a problem with wind, wave, solar and other forms of renewable energy as well.
The net pollution and energy used to produce them is often greater than the energy source they are replacing.
I am hoping nano makes solar work.
Another alternative is hemp. If they planted kansas in hemp, we would get an enormous amount of diesel fuel and only about 5% of hemp varieties are really narcotic (just trace amounts of THC in the other 95%) Unfortunately, it's currently unpopular because of the drug issue.
I'm not a pattern hound but being able to say, "Implement this as a DAO factory" and walking away knowing they know what you mean is pretty priceless.
When I've worked with consultants who were very into patterns, I found they could communicate large amounts of design concisely.
I mean the other alternative is talking around the problem with vague words until you each think you understand one another.
That just dodges the point.
Okay...all 500,000 friends of mine are hosting original essays which has a quote in the middle of the essay from the book.
Such as:
I think that the 5,317th sentence, which ends the paragraph and chapter in the new Harry Potter book, "No Professor smith, I don't want to see your dirty pictures of Hermione!" is central to the books theme.
I think that the 5,317th sentence, which ends the paragraph and chapter in the new Harry Potter book, "No Professor smith, I don't want to see your dirty pictures of Hermione!" with "dirty" in italics is central to the book's theme.
I think that the 5,318th sentence, which starts the paragraph and starts a new chapter named "Harry has a Dream"in the new Harry Potter book, "Harry was in front of class and Voldemort and all his female classmates were laughing at Harry because he could not keep his robes tied and he had on no underwear." is central to the book's theme.
These are legitimate mini-articles taken separately.
If there is a legal limit, people will find it and exploit it. It is almost like obscenity. It's very hard to define.
The same thing could be used for audio "song reviews", video "movie reviews" and so on.
I agree with you up to a point.
The difference is if they legally own the content or morally own the content.
If they extend the LEGAL copyright law to "forever" then I believe they have lost the moral right to own copyright.
If they refuse to publish the content in and sell it at a reasonable price then I believe they have lost the moral right to own copyright.
If they publish the content and sell it at a reasonable price, then I think they have a moral right to sell and control access to that content for a reasonable period.
I do not think 20 dollars for an object that costs under 1 dollar is a reasonable price.
I do not think extending copyright from 28 years to 75 years past the death of the creator is reasonable.
I do not think refusing to publish content (supressing it) is reasonable.
I have and will continue to support music and other content distribution channels that are not ripping off me and/or the artists.
Copyright law has gone from "encouraging creation of new content" to "massive monopolies for a tiny subset of the population."
I could very well imagine this being linked into god-knows-what. Imagine, for instance, having $100 in parking tickets due, and the library terminal refusing you connection to their services before this due is paid.
You're not going nearly far enough... how bout this...
Imagine, for instance, having $100 in parking tickets overdue, and the library terminal automatically informs the police of your location so they can come arrest you.
The day is rapidly coming when those suspected of any crime will be automatically reported by cameras and radio RFID readers over traffic intersections, RFID scanners at the entrances to malls and other public buildings, etc. etc.
It's all fine until they decide people who are members of the green party are inherently committing a crime. But they've never done anything like that (cough cough joe mccarthy) before.
Every time they run short, companies start talking about the coming shortage and then lobby for more h1b visa's which makes everyone decide it would be stupid to enter the field.
Vicious cycle as long as they can import skilled developers.
There is no reason to enter IT yet-- they do not want to pay you what you are worth, they have no loyalty and will fire you.. er "reallocate you to the curb" at a heartbeat's notice, and they will fire you and refused to hire you once you get to 55 years old (50 if you look old).
It wouldn't annoy me so much, except I know how much the executives make and if just one at each company was making reasonable salaries (say about 1 million dollars), then they could afford to retain 30 to 100 employees with full benefits.
It is not reasonable to pay 1 person so much money- it unbalances things and they can only buy one washer, one big TV, and one car. If the same money was going to 30-100 other people they would put it right back in the economy.
So save the "boo hoo" games corporations- your lack of loyalty and greed is causing the shortage.
I write and use java programs. They havn't been slow for several years. They are usually cross platform unless they use specific system features to look nicer-- even then 99% of the code is system agnostic.
It does, but it wasn't in the message I was responding to.
People who have problems with they're grammer need to think when their typing to there audience.
But really, I think the spreading incorrect usage of "loose" (in place of "lose") bugs me most. I usually don't say boo about grammar issues because this is a very ephemeral medium and people are just quickly tossing off ideas. As long as I can understand the idea they were trying to get across then I just deal with their idiosyncrasies.
Cheers
Oh my. That was funny.
Well, I've done habitat for humanity too.
A week in 96 degree sun building houses for the homeless.
AND I also like BT.
I agree the artists need some money to keep working. I disagree that they won't write or create new art unless they get millions of dollars. I really disagree that the middlemen who do nothing that can't be replaced by BT should get rich. I donate money to artists (via magnatune among others) where I know the artists are actually going to see a majority of the money and I've established that I like the art.
I also try some stuff, don't pay for it, don't bother to delete it but never listen to it again.
There is now more quality songs/art/tv shows/movies than I could watch/listen to if I spent every day from waking to sleeping consuming it. Only monopolies are holding up the prices- but the glut is coming and prices will drop.
The zahn books are the true next three stories. They cost me sleep and made me miss work. The third one- I waited to read on the weekend because I couldn't put them down.
Brilliant writing. A stronger, smarter, better villian than any of the movies. And how the end started as a butterfly's breath which just built and built.
---
As far as the "there/their" thing. Every time I see these kind of rouge errors I get so frustrated that almost loose it.
Magnatune has really good music with a donation price of about 5 to 18 dollars (your choice) for albums you like.
You can get the music any many different formats. Try it for free before you buy it. Hell- even keep it without buying it- no DRM in the songs.
The best thing is- the artists keep HALF of the money you donate which is very satisfying. Much more satisfying than paying for a CD full of songs recorded by people who have been DEAD for 40 years (and should really not be copyrighted any more IMHO).
Plus easy straight forward licensing for bars, music videos, movies, etc. etc.
I particularly like Ehrin Starks (piano and cello) and bought a physical CD of it or 12.47 including shipping- AFTER I got to sample the music, burn my own CD of it, etc. for free. Why did I buy it when I'm normally so jaded-- because it feels good to support music presented this way. I don't feel like a sucker.