This mod looks promising- thanks for the tip! It's not a full StarCraft game, but it's a good start.
Confusing Interest with Talent?
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
While I daydream about Mathematics and various areas of science all of the time, jotting down thoughts and looking up information on subjects I think about throughout the day... As you yourself admit, you spend a lot of your time looking up math/science subjects, solving problems, and thinking about them. Now, suppose your friend did the same. Do you think he would be stuggling with Science concepts? Now, suppose that your friend thinks about Music all of the time, jotting down songs and listening to how music around him works. Is his success in music because he has more talent than you, or because he thinks about Music while you think about math? If you thought about music as much as you think about mathematics, don't you think that you would be better at music?
I don't mean to completely destroy your point- some people do have more natural talent than others. Like you, I am good with math but not music. My brother is the opposite- he has musical talent but math and science have no interest for him. The reason that I am better at math than music, though, is because math was more interesting to me, and because it was more interesting, I did more with it, as I did more with it, I got better, and as I got better I became more interested. I do think that I had some small amount of mathematical talent to start with that got me interested in the first place- but without training, it wouldn't matter.
If you think about it, Slashdot isn't all that much different from Myspace. Instead of a bunch of poorly written sites by attention whores trying to get people to look at them, you have a bunch of comments by karma whores trying to get people to mod them up. With Myspace you are trying to get people interested in your life so you feel special. On Slashdot, we assume everyone else is posting from his parent's basement too, so we try to get people interested in our ideas instead.
Summarizing with a catchy rhyme: Slashdot makes you think, MySpace makes you blink.
I can think of many popular games in the past that could be re-released with improved graphics and sell well- especially if they were sold as inexpensive expansions. Take CounterStrike: Source, for instance. Same game, improved graphics. What I would love to see is StarCraft 3D- They could use the WarCraft III engine and sell it as an expansion to WarCraft III.
Plenty of kids will get picked on because of things beyond their control- speech impediments, accents, deformities, family members, poverty, shortness, new kid in school, etc. Conformity is often impossible for these kids. It's ignorant of you to imply that kids getting picked on bring it on themselves because they don't 'fit in'.
I'm not saying that I had these problems, or that I couldn't have fit in if I wanted to- I'm sure I could have. That was not a priority for me then, though, and I don't see why it should have been.
I was smart enough then to know when I was being 'socially different', and you are correct that you can do well academically without ridicule (in most schools). I'm just saying that if you let "being normal" keep you from playing Magic, joining the chess club, setting the curve, or wearing you favorite pair of shorts, then you're letting the bullies win.
I'm not saying you should be an attention whore, though- If you're doing weird stuff just to stand out you look like an idiot. Goths and emos invite critism.
You're right! People at my school made fun of me for using correct english, scoring high on tests, and reading books during class! I'll bet that if I got C's, used more slang, and watched football instead of reading books, I would have been ignored!
Sure, I could have conformed to the groupthink, but then I would have been a loser like the rest of them. Most of the idiots who made fun of me are probably working at Taco Bell now (If they are employed at all). I, meanwhile, never think back and go "oh, if I only was more normal in school, I'd be better off now".
You are allowed to make copies of music you own for the purposing of listening to them, that's an important part of fair use. The record companies would rather that you weren't aware of any fair use provisions, but if you own a CD you have the right to copy the data on it into any other format and listen to it. What's illegal is taking the CD, making copies of it, and giving (or selling) those copies to other people.
Why do I get the feeling that this is about as insightful as the slashback comments get? I'm glad someone told me that I can hide/backs by clicking the "sections" button and changing preferences there.
Yes, I know this post is a bit trollish, but I'm going for "Funny"... that, or +5 Troll. That would be cool.
The bridge in Hungaria should be named:
-The Chuck Norris Bridge
-The Steven Colbert Bridge
-Geza Hofi's Bridge (an actual Hungarian)
-King Steve's Kickass Bridge
-The Bridge of Death
-CmdrTaco's Bridge
Of course drugs would not be legal to children under a certain age- just like cigarettes and alcohol now. There's too much potential for abuse otherwise. I personally support the legalization of marijuana but not any of the 'harder' drugs- things like meth will destroy a person.
"The success of Flash in the next 10 years rides largely on whether leading-edge customers like YouTube will design their Web sites with Flash." Obviously Flash needs customers in order to be successful, what makes the article worth reading is Lynch disscussing his strategy for keeping Flash successful. Lynch says he wants Flash to work well with other systems like AJAX as a means of keep Flash relevant and useful. Apparently this is something that Google Finance already does, and Macromedia is encouraging similar things rather than being scared of competition.
Having 'mini-patents' that only last a short period of time- say, 3 years- would be neat. In fact, all software patents and 'business method' patents should have this shorter limitation. 3 years is enough time for people to make a profit off software (if it isn't, they will probably never make a profit off it) and having limited protection might help companies feel safer about investing in new technology. Plus, it means that stupid stuff like this would only be an issue for 3 years, instead of 20 (and if Moore's Law holds, who knows what computers will be like in 20 years?)
Free internet is a draw for most people. Of course, once they get hooked on it they will want to upgrade to a service that is actually fast and usable...
Though it may not be clear enough from the earlier posts, the Indians that the testing is done on are often underinformed and have no coverage in case the drug testing goes badly (Though the Indian government is trying to pass laws to fix this). Thus, we have a case where the drug companies are exploiting people for our gain- and even though he isn't harming them himself, he is still supportive of a system in which others are exploted for his benefit. You don't have to dirty your own hands to be evil- you just have to knowingly support a dirty system.
Okay... so basically they are adding sugar and salt to make their food tastier. And they are using science to do this! Wow. Those evil, evil people. You know, I should sue my mom- she adds corn syrup and salt to her food too!
Seriously, people should take responsibility for their own actions instead of trying to blame other people. In this drug case, the drug company should take responsibility and help these people out. These people were trying to help them test their products, and the drug company should try to help them in turn- especially if some of the allegations in the article are true.
In the 'cheeseburger' case, however, the people who are responsible are the people who ate the food. If they don't have enough self-control to resist McDonald's food, how could you expect them to resist Twinkies? Or their mother's tasty cake? Or the chocolate bars in the grocery store? Why don't they sue everyone who makes food that has sugar, salt, or MSG?
I think this is a very poor example of the laws that you are worried about. The cheesburger bill mentioned in your article is designed so obese people can't sue McDonalds (and other fast-food industries) for making them fat. I hope that most people on/. realize that obese people are usually fat because they lack self-control, and that these people are well aware that fast food is not the healthiest of choices, nor was it advertised as such. While I have some sympathy with obese people, I don't blame McDonald's, Hostess Twinkies, or Mom's Apple pies for making them fat.
It's a lot cheaper to test drugs on poor Indians than to test them on Americans- all the more so because the Indians have a much harder time suing for negligence.
Indeed. Because I work at a small company we can't avoid certain proprietary solutions- we don't have the manpower to create all the software we need, and our field is specialized enough that there are rarely open source solutions for a lot of our projects. Of course, that also means there are rarely proprietary solutions too, and then we get to make our own software, sometimes from scratch. Oh, and I imagine most professionals on/. are above the $20/hour range- that was a hypothetical example, showing that even cheap programmers can be expensive if they spend a lot of time making a project work correctly.
My boss at work is a big fan of Linux and other open-source applications. However, we still use plenty of Microsoft and other proprietary products- because often there is either
A. No open source solution
B. The closed source solution works enough better to justify the cost.
Obviously open source software is cheaper and easier to modify than closed-source software. However, time is money- even halfway decent programmers make $20 an hour, so a week spent trying to get something to work properly (either through reading manual pages or actually adding features to the program) is $800 of cost to the company. If we could buy that same software with all the features we need for $300, then we are saving ourselves $500. On the other hand, if we could get it working in a day of work, that would only cost us ~$80, and the open source solution would save us $220. How close the software is to what we need makes a big difference.
Eventually there might be good open source solutions for everything- but until then it only makes sense for companies to use proprietary software some of the time.
It's not a "Black list". It is merely that any site meeting certain, very broad definitions would not be viewable from public libraries/schools if this bill passes. The article was merely pointing out how broad the wording of the bill was, and how it could potentially force libraries to block sites that we consider 'harmless', like Amazon and Slashdot.
Now that Gates is leaving, will we be replacing the classic "We are Microsoft, you will be assimilated" logo for Microsoft stories? Would we have a Borg Ballmer? A Chair-Throwing Ballmer? Just a M$ in large font?
"We noted significant differences in the amount of violence among video game genres. All of the video games played in the action (n=22), adventure (n=3), fighting (n=2), shooting (n=1), strategy (n=1), and simulation (n=1) genres contained violence, while only 2 of 12 sports games (17%) included violence not associated with normal play in a sports game."
As we all know, violence and sports go hand in hand. And yet these researchers are saying that playing virtual hockey is less violent than virtual pac-man? It always bugged me that people are worried that video games might make their child violent, but don't worry about football making their children violent. How many convicted felons have played for the NFL? How often is some current NFL player being charged with assault or rape? Seems to happen every week. And, somehow, these guys are seen as heroes by most of America, while 'gamers' are seen as unstable and violent.
Slashdot Mirror
This mod looks promising- thanks for the tip! It's not a full StarCraft game, but it's a good start.
While I daydream about Mathematics and various areas of science all of the time, jotting down thoughts and looking up information on subjects I think about throughout the day...
As you yourself admit, you spend a lot of your time looking up math/science subjects, solving problems, and thinking about them. Now, suppose your friend did the same. Do you think he would be stuggling with Science concepts? Now, suppose that your friend thinks about Music all of the time, jotting down songs and listening to how music around him works. Is his success in music because he has more talent than you, or because he thinks about Music while you think about math? If you thought about music as much as you think about mathematics, don't you think that you would be better at music?
I don't mean to completely destroy your point- some people do have more natural talent than others. Like you, I am good with math but not music. My brother is the opposite- he has musical talent but math and science have no interest for him. The reason that I am better at math than music, though, is because math was more interesting to me, and because it was more interesting, I did more with it, as I did more with it, I got better, and as I got better I became more interested. I do think that I had some small amount of mathematical talent to start with that got me interested in the first place- but without training, it wouldn't matter.
If you think about it, Slashdot isn't all that much different from Myspace. Instead of a bunch of poorly written sites by attention whores trying to get people to look at them, you have a bunch of comments by karma whores trying to get people to mod them up. With Myspace you are trying to get people interested in your life so you feel special. On Slashdot, we assume everyone else is posting from his parent's basement too, so we try to get people interested in our ideas instead.
Summarizing with a catchy rhyme: Slashdot makes you think, MySpace makes you blink.
I can think of many popular games in the past that could be re-released with improved graphics and sell well- especially if they were sold as inexpensive expansions. Take CounterStrike: Source, for instance. Same game, improved graphics. What I would love to see is StarCraft 3D- They could use the WarCraft III engine and sell it as an expansion to WarCraft III.
Plenty of kids will get picked on because of things beyond their control- speech impediments, accents, deformities, family members, poverty, shortness, new kid in school, etc. Conformity is often impossible for these kids. It's ignorant of you to imply that kids getting picked on bring it on themselves because they don't 'fit in'.
I'm not saying that I had these problems, or that I couldn't have fit in if I wanted to- I'm sure I could have. That was not a priority for me then, though, and I don't see why it should have been.
I was smart enough then to know when I was being 'socially different', and you are correct that you can do well academically without ridicule (in most schools). I'm just saying that if you let "being normal" keep you from playing Magic, joining the chess club, setting the curve, or wearing you favorite pair of shorts, then you're letting the bullies win.
I'm not saying you should be an attention whore, though- If you're doing weird stuff just to stand out you look like an idiot. Goths and emos invite critism.
You're right! People at my school made fun of me for using correct english, scoring high on tests, and reading books during class! I'll bet that if I got C's, used more slang, and watched football instead of reading books, I would have been ignored!
Sure, I could have conformed to the groupthink, but then I would have been a loser like the rest of them. Most of the idiots who made fun of me are probably working at Taco Bell now (If they are employed at all). I, meanwhile, never think back and go "oh, if I only was more normal in school, I'd be better off now".
You are allowed to make copies of music you own for the purposing of listening to them, that's an important part of fair use. The record companies would rather that you weren't aware of any fair use provisions, but if you own a CD you have the right to copy the data on it into any other format and listen to it. What's illegal is taking the CD, making copies of it, and giving (or selling) those copies to other people.
Why do I get the feeling that this is about as insightful as the slashback comments get? I'm glad someone told me that I can hide /backs by clicking the "sections" button and changing preferences there.
Yes, I know this post is a bit trollish, but I'm going for "Funny"... that, or +5 Troll. That would be cool.
I know, I know, it's Hungary, not Hungaria.
The bridge in Hungaria should be named:
-The Chuck Norris Bridge
-The Steven Colbert Bridge
-Geza Hofi's Bridge (an actual Hungarian)
-King Steve's Kickass Bridge
-The Bridge of Death
-CmdrTaco's Bridge
Of course drugs would not be legal to children under a certain age- just like cigarettes and alcohol now. There's too much potential for abuse otherwise. I personally support the legalization of marijuana but not any of the 'harder' drugs- things like meth will destroy a person.
"The success of Flash in the next 10 years rides largely on whether leading-edge customers like YouTube will design their Web sites with Flash."
Obviously Flash needs customers in order to be successful, what makes the article worth reading is Lynch disscussing his strategy for keeping Flash successful. Lynch says he wants Flash to work well with other systems like AJAX as a means of keep Flash relevant and useful. Apparently this is something that Google Finance already does, and Macromedia is encouraging similar things rather than being scared of competition.
Having 'mini-patents' that only last a short period of time- say, 3 years- would be neat. In fact, all software patents and 'business method' patents should have this shorter limitation. 3 years is enough time for people to make a profit off software (if it isn't, they will probably never make a profit off it) and having limited protection might help companies feel safer about investing in new technology. Plus, it means that stupid stuff like this would only be an issue for 3 years, instead of 20 (and if Moore's Law holds, who knows what computers will be like in 20 years?)
Free internet is a draw for most people. Of course, once they get hooked on it they will want to upgrade to a service that is actually fast and usable...
Though it may not be clear enough from the earlier posts, the Indians that the testing is done on are often underinformed and have no coverage in case the drug testing goes badly (Though the Indian government is trying to pass laws to fix this). Thus, we have a case where the drug companies are exploiting people for our gain- and even though he isn't harming them himself, he is still supportive of a system in which others are exploted for his benefit. You don't have to dirty your own hands to be evil- you just have to knowingly support a dirty system.
Okay... so basically they are adding sugar and salt to make their food tastier. And they are using science to do this! Wow. Those evil, evil people. You know, I should sue my mom- she adds corn syrup and salt to her food too!
Seriously, people should take responsibility for their own actions instead of trying to blame other people. In this drug case, the drug company should take responsibility and help these people out. These people were trying to help them test their products, and the drug company should try to help them in turn- especially if some of the allegations in the article are true.
In the 'cheeseburger' case, however, the people who are responsible are the people who ate the food. If they don't have enough self-control to resist McDonald's food, how could you expect them to resist Twinkies? Or their mother's tasty cake? Or the chocolate bars in the grocery store? Why don't they sue everyone who makes food that has sugar, salt, or MSG?
You're evil, but at least you're honest about it. I can respect that.
I think this is a very poor example of the laws that you are worried about. The cheesburger bill mentioned in your article is designed so obese people can't sue McDonalds (and other fast-food industries) for making them fat. I hope that most people on /. realize that obese people are usually fat because they lack self-control, and that these people are well aware that fast food is not the healthiest of choices, nor was it advertised as such. While I have some sympathy with obese people, I don't blame McDonald's, Hostess Twinkies, or Mom's Apple pies for making them fat.
It's a lot cheaper to test drugs on poor Indians than to test them on Americans- all the more so because the Indians have a much harder time suing for negligence.
Indeed. Because I work at a small company we can't avoid certain proprietary solutions- we don't have the manpower to create all the software we need, and our field is specialized enough that there are rarely open source solutions for a lot of our projects. Of course, that also means there are rarely proprietary solutions too, and then we get to make our own software, sometimes from scratch. Oh, and I imagine most professionals on /. are above the $20/hour range- that was a hypothetical example, showing that even cheap programmers can be expensive if they spend a lot of time making a project work correctly.
My boss at work is a big fan of Linux and other open-source applications. However, we still use plenty of Microsoft and other proprietary products- because often there is either
A. No open source solution
B. The closed source solution works enough better to justify the cost.
Obviously open source software is cheaper and easier to modify than closed-source software. However, time is money- even halfway decent programmers make $20 an hour, so a week spent trying to get something to work properly (either through reading manual pages or actually adding features to the program) is $800 of cost to the company. If we could buy that same software with all the features we need for $300, then we are saving ourselves $500.
On the other hand, if we could get it working in a day of work, that would only cost us ~$80, and the open source solution would save us $220. How close the software is to what we need makes a big difference. Eventually there might be good open source solutions for everything- but until then it only makes sense for companies to use proprietary software some of the time.
It's not a "Black list". It is merely that any site meeting certain, very broad definitions would not be viewable from public libraries/schools if this bill passes. The article was merely pointing out how broad the wording of the bill was, and how it could potentially force libraries to block sites that we consider 'harmless', like Amazon and Slashdot.
Now that Gates is leaving, will we be replacing the classic "We are Microsoft, you will be assimilated" logo for Microsoft stories? Would we have a Borg Ballmer? A Chair-Throwing Ballmer? Just a M$ in large font?
"We noted significant differences in the amount of violence among video game genres. All of the video games played in the action (n=22), adventure (n=3), fighting (n=2), shooting (n=1), strategy (n=1), and simulation (n=1) genres contained violence, while only 2 of 12 sports games (17%) included violence not associated with normal play in a sports game."
As we all know, violence and sports go hand in hand. And yet these researchers are saying that playing virtual hockey is less violent than virtual pac-man? It always bugged me that people are worried that video games might make their child violent, but don't worry about football making their children violent. How many convicted felons have played for the NFL? How often is some current NFL player being charged with assault or rape? Seems to happen every week. And, somehow, these guys are seen as heroes by most of America, while 'gamers' are seen as unstable and violent.