Do you frequently brush up on physics or cosmology or some scientific field to keep your forward looking ideas sharp and in-line with current academic trends or do you simply rely on your imagination? Any academic journals you subscribe to looking for something to stimulate you into envisioning a future with an interesting twist? Is this common in the writing community or do I have the wrong image in my head?
I've heard that to be a good writer you need to read and write several hours daily. On average how many hours do you spend reading each day? Writing? Do you have an average word count you aim to produce for each day?
So the Chesapeake's dying from overfishing and your answer is to move on up to Delaware Bay. Hope your grandchildren appreciate the fine work you're doing for the planet.
Do you know what catch and release is? Those sharks and toadfish I'm landing with a rod and reel on Delaware Bay sure the hell aren't ending up on my plate. We might take a striper or two and maybe use some spots for bunkfish (bait) but it's nothing compared to what a commercial boat is doing. Doesn't even register! I don't think I've ever even landed a croaker that was big enough to keep!
When I charter a boat for a day at $500 (plus tip) and a fisherman takes me out instead of trying to commercially fish, it ends up being good for the bay. Thanks for accusing me of destroying our resources though, I'll add that to the list of why I don't talk to people about possible conservation strategies right next to being called a tree hugging hippie when I mention it at work.
Next time you're on the bay walk up to any boat captain and ask him/her about overfishing on the bay. HINT: It's not the five guys who are up there one weekend a year to enjoy the sun and land a few fish. In fact, they will probably tell you that a steady stream of that kind of tourism will allow those fisherman income so they stop overfishing to pay for their boats and fuel!
I've been crabbing in the Chesapeake and New Jersey for the past ~5 years once or twice a year using both pots and hand lines and haven't noticed any steady size increase to match the increase in carbon emissions. Not a lot of variance anyway when I hear the "daily biggest crab" winners at the outfit we go through (7.5" to 8.5"). You would think we would start hearing about 9" or 10" crabs if their size is increasing with carbon emissions. Anecdotal, I know but what I've seen first hand doesn't really line up with this.
Also, I tried to track down the original article from the Post and it didn't sound like it lined up with this article:
Under conditions with lower levels of carbon, two mud crabs polished off 20 oysters in six hours. But in the aquariums with higher levels of carbon, the mud crabs seemed confused.
They went over to the oysters, but they didn’t eat as many — sometimes fewer than half of what other crabs ate under normal conditions. Dodd scratched his head. “Acidification may be confusing the crab,” he said. The situation, he concluded, “is more complicated than you’d be led to believe.”
Ries said crabs might be getting loopy from all that carbon in their systems, depriving them of oxygen and putting them in a fog.
They're right about the Chesapeake being in trouble though... a growing "dead zone" coupled with overfishing. Man, in the past six years fishing trips on that body of water have gotten very sorry. We're now going up to Delaware Bay... it's a shame, I've donated to Save the Chesapeake but people around here are stubbornly against the EPA or any government regulation. There goes those natural resources I guess.
And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
If you'd gone on for a PhD, you'd know how absurd that sounds. Dissertation research damn well is a job, probably tougher than any job you've ever had. And I've had plenty of work experience in what people smugly and stupidly call the "real world" (hint: any world where people live and work is just as real as any other) as a basis for comparison.
So you start out how absurd it is for me to say that academia is a lot of work but it's not a job. Then you go on to lecture me about how much more difficult working on a doctoral thesis is compared to just a regular old job. And how different the two things are. Then you assume that I'm going to give you a lecture about the "real world" which I neither did nor have any intention of doing.
From what I have experienced, a doctoral thesis is a highly neurotic and unpredictable world with no guarantees. Infighting and contacts often trump a true meritocracy more so than they would in a normal job. The payout is confusing and pretty much a gamble with much of it being that you contributed to your field. A job, on the other hand centers on providing measured amounts of goods and services for a guaranteed paycheck. It is stable, it is steady, it often comes without fame or press releases.
All I said was that the two are not the same thing and I love having a job. Why are people replying to me like I scoff at these "lazy doctoral thesis" researchers? I do not recall doing any such thing, in fact I had at one time aspired to be one!
I did not attack you or your choices, I did not "smugly and stupidly" say that doctoral thesis folks do not know what the "real world" is -- please stop projecting that onto me. Why are there multiple posts telling me I'm wrong when I clearly stated that "a doctoral thesis is a lot of work?!"
The two things have entirely different means and entirely different goals with entirely different lifespans.
So I guess you don't see the value of art in society?
That is a bizarre conclusion and I apologize if you derived that from my post.
I think we are enriched by writing, painting, drawing, sculpting, performance, and the endless ocean that is music. I think a world where we just worry about being "productive and tangible" is a sad grey world.
We are enriched -- I would argue that we're more enriched when we take those things up as a hobby. I will also argue that "being the best lute player in Cornwall" doesn't mean anything when YouTube allows one of the other six billion people to reach everyone on Earth. This is a good thing because it disperses all of the great things we're talking about but it also sets the bar mighty high. Worrying about being "productive and tangible" is not a sad grey world, it's a realistic world! And nowhere did I imply that we should "just" worry about that stuff, I merely questioned what the ratio of employment is. Right now there are too many people gunning for the job of tenured post doctoral thesis literature professor -- as evidenced by her post. There are a limited number of those!
I say this as a developer: a healthy society supports the arts.
As a developer, I'm able to actually earn enough money that I have disposable income to support the arts. Had I pursued my career as a bass player, I might be writing a column right now about how Flea and Paul McCartney are ruining my profession and keep me out of a job. Conversely I'm more than gainfully employed and extremely thankful for that fact!
The ratio of artists to patrons of the arts is important. If one side of the equation grows too large you have problems. We're discussing that inequality here, not talking about exterminating one or the other. The column in this article is indicative of too many people entirely basing their income models off of being artists. In such a crowded market with technology that allows me to select whichever artist I choose, this is not smart!
Well before all the Starbucks barrista jokes and RTFM on life comments, I figured I'd kick in some thoughts.
After four years of trying, I’ve finally gotten it through my thick head that I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you.
I got my masters between 2005-2007. Before that I had done two internships (while getting my undergrad) and then worked a year without school. When I went back to school my employer completely paid for my masters of science in computer science and, actually, I worked forty hours a week the whole time I was going to school full time. Doctorates are a completely different animal. I wanted to do one and yet the two professors who were interested in me said I would have to quit working my job. No deal, I've been working at least a 20 hour a week job since I was 13 and I think I would go insane now if I didn't have a full time job. And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
A lot of these complaints in this article (though well written and entertaining surprise surprise) are indicative of anyone who takes a career in an entertainment world to the final resting place. What? You think the second trombonist for the Milwaukee Symphony is a bad trombone player? And when he travels to Kansas for an audition and is rejected because some insider got the lead, he's not upset that he's structured his whole life around trombone playing? No, he just picked an entertainment profession which means Pareto Law would be the best possible outcome and you're likely going to be a starving artist. There's just not enough revenue to spread around and when there is it is highly concentrated to a few individuals.
This is why STEM is pressed so hard and fascist leadership in China actually dictates how many STEM graduates their universities will pump out. I don't want that here in the states, what I want is realistic expectations set and delivered to prospective students about what employment rates look like and where the payout in the endgame lies. Don't confuse me some sort of dream crusher rubbing one out to telling people that their passion is a sideshow in the game of life but rather just a realist with production of goods and services in mind.
This story actually sounds positive compared to my friends who got lit undergrad degrees and then went out into the world to use them. My close friend from high school first got a job proof reading SEC filings that had already gone public. He would proof them all night long and then they would go out as updates -- that nobody would ever read. Then after feeling like he was doing nothing, he started delivering pizzas and did that for six years before he finally landed a great job. What job would that be? Well, he works as one of the state's tax collectors who calls people up. He's a genuinely nice guy and has a very friendly voice and talks about tax solutions to people who owe the state money. And he never took a math or accounting course and he does very little writing in his job. That is the reality of a lit degree.
From the sound of this author's research, she could probably get into natural language parsing fairly easily... she understands orders of logic so may be able to learn some of the more friendly computer languages.
Reading, writing, making music, painting, playing games are all things that I super love to do. But they're just a side thing to something else that I'm good at that is much more productive and tangible to society.
He then likened people who worry about intermittent internet connectivity being an issue as the same as someone not buying a vacuum cleaner because the electricity sometimes goes out.
So if we were to fulfill that analogy you would have to expect there are vacuum cleaners that already exist that run without electricity -- as almost all the games I own run without an internet connection. Now, a new vacuum cleaner comes out but it is required to always be plugged into the wall and it will only work if it is connected to a service that costs me a monthly payment. Correct, I would not buy this "new" vacuum cleaner as I have tons of old vacuums that somehow manage to get the job done without the need of electricity.
Unsurprisingly I have purchased none of these always-on for the sake of DRM games.
You're introducing a feature that none of your customers want -- a feature that complicates a product and causes them inconvenience for unclear benefits to you. A feature that introduces a new dependency and more moving parts to run the game. And how are you surprised, exactly, that there are many people upset about this?
In all seriousness, I wonder if their games library will be available for generic Android devices. When it comes down to it, the games library will make or break this thing. I don't play enough to justify buying one, but I'm definitely rooting for them from the sidelines.
As of 7:59 p.m. PT, there are already 104 published games on OUYA (all still free to try), like Final Fantasy III and some new surprises we think you’ll love: Beast Boxing Turbo, Stalagflight, Knightmare Tower, and even one called Save the Puppies. There are already a few entertainment apps, too. You can watch the TV shows and movies you already own with XBMC and Flixster, or watch games streamed through TwitchTV.
Man, I remember doing so much crap on my Dreamcast -- years after it failed. I hope this console is like a Dreamcast with the original intent of being open to homebrew and messing around!
I'm still waiting for my ouya to ship and I was a kickstarter backer. Apprently they missed the DELIVERY estimate of march 28. They also only shipped about 250 units to hand picked high profile people for review while everyone else gets the shaft. They've had my money for a long time now, other people have ouya, where's mine?
You... should probably just stop using Kickstarter. If you get upset when people miss deadlines, if you get upset when a fledgling company tries to build press, if you are not interested purely in helping something that otherwise wouldn't happen happen then do not use Kickstarter. Do yourself and the people trying to use Kickstarter and Kickstarter a favor and stop using it!
They have horrible communication and leave everyone in the dark unless they donate thousands of dollars. We started their company and they can't even email us back when we send an inquiry as to what is going on with our units. Horrible company. Horrible PR.
They're a small company, you want them to spend money on a call center or the device?
Horrible console because it REQUIRES a credit card to use.
just bad. very disapointed. It'll be an emulator box for me, that's about it.
So it's "just bad" and you're very disappointed despite never having used one or held one in your hands? They tried something bold and they succeeded. You should be happy about that. You don't understand what Kickstarter is and I hope this experience teaches you a valuable lesson -- stay off Kickstarter, it's not a goddamn store.
We recently talked about the 'Ouya' console — a conceptual Android-based gaming device that's had a massively successful Kickstarter campaign. While most people are excited about such a non-traditional console, editorials at 1Up and Eurogamer have expressed some more realistic skepticism about the claims being made and the company's ability to meet those claims.
Sooooooo... when do we own up to spreading FUD about this Kickstarter campaign? I mean, look at some of the highest rated comments.
Well, I'm glad I got on board. Also glad I got in on the RFduino early on! I'll let you know how it handles when I get my hands on it;)
Problem is, you'll need to get money into your account somehow. To do so will take a wire transfer that the IRS will be notified about. Going the other direction would also take a wire transfer, that the IRS will be notified about.
Your "non-story" assertion is a bit short sighted from what I know... if you divert all your income to Ireland or the Netherlands you can get it there nearly tax free. What you perceive as a hard time getting your money to the states is trivial if you find someone who will accept those accounts as collateral for you to borrow against. Oftentimes, the rate of the loan is lower than what you would lose getting hit with capital gains taxes in the US. On top of that, you can put that money in Ireland into a highly rated international fund to cut that loan rate down. Just because you had enough money, you get to skirt tax law enacted by our democratically elected politicians. Congratulations, you're a dick and I'm sure you can blame the socialists and "the system" for forcing you to do this and I'm sure you'll ask me if I donate extra money when I'm doing my taxes -- I don't. But I sure the hell don't tell my employer that I actually have accounts in Grand Cayman and they'll be moving 75% of my paycheck there for me and I'll take 25% of it here so I get a huge rebate for living below the poverty line while building bigger assets in the Caribbean.
These offshore accounts? This is just one piece of a very large puzzle... I can't wait for the bean counters to poor over all this data and find some of the other pieces. Either give me and every other equal citizen the same rights to avoid taxes or shut this crap down.
The files contain information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries.
Look — we’re moving into the opening years of an economic revolution. The floods of Big Data pouring from the Internet and related technologies are washing away the foundational reasons for the existence of several of our most critical – and comforting – societal structures, potentially changing forever the very notion of what a company is, what a job is, what a brand is, what an educational degree means, and how we’ll work and govern and care for ourselves while attempting to live long and prosper. Almost every part of our existence is being restructured, and quickly, by the stunning power of nearly infinite information.
Don't you see? It's not tax evasion or unfair taxation, it's just the magical power of the internet. Stop asking questions and demanding an equal opportunity to skirt income laws! It's "Big Data" that's changing things rapidly and excitingly. Stop fighting the Economic Revolution!
Also Dwolla was down for two days but appears to be back up as they appeared to have worked a deal with CloudFlare. Mt. Gox uses Prolexic so this shouldn't affect them, right? Right? Accessing the database of Instawallet sounds like a total fail though.
A scary reminder of how insecure ALL money is in the computer age...
Really? My Celtic ring money is still fully intact around my wrist and still worth the silver it's made out of. All currencies have their ups and downs. Some benefits are double edged swords (just ask Renminbi traders). Nice editorial though -- the services surrounding BitCoin are clearly infantile and only now are getting DDOS protection.
My credit union offers two factor authentication. Could a Bitcoin exchange do the same? You bet. But they haven't. The fact is that it's easier to find legit and robust exchanges and institutions in USD than BitCoin.
You're not reading the whole transcript, are you? Let me pick out more excerpts for you:
Laura: And in fact, that’s what’s happening with Chris Crawford’s patent. Intellectual Ventures sold it to another company, a company called Oasis Research, in June of 2010. Less than a month later, Oasis Research used the patent to sue 16 different tech companies. Companies like Rackspace, Go Daddy, and AT&T. Companies that do cloud storage.
Okay so there's IV's link to Oasis Research (another you questioned earlier in these comments) and let's read a little further, shall we?
Alex: The first owner is clear, it’s Chris Crawford, who was granted the patent in 1998. And then, it’s clear that a company named Intellectual Ventures Computing Platforce Assets, LLC. — no one could actually tell us what a “platforce” is — bought the patent in July of 2010. But in between those two dates, there are two other owners. A company called Kwon Holdings and another one named Enhanced Software, LLC. And what was odd, Kwon Holdings, Enhanced Software and Intellectual Ventures all have the same address.
Okay more shell companies and let's read a little further still:
Alex: So can you point me to a patent that you acquired that was languishing but then got licensed to somebody and built in a way that I could see? Detkin: I can tell you that it’s happened, but unfortunately the deal is confidential. There are two deals that were done. One was with a toy company. The other was,
I can’t remember the technology of the other one but they came to us and they said we’re interested in this particular patent. We’d like to take it out into the
world. Will you give us a license? And we did. And they put it out there. It was out there for last Christmas. I actually don’t know how it’s done. I would be
curious to find out myself. But I agree, that’s an anomaly. I see where you’re going with your question and I don’t mean to fight you on it. The fact is the bulk
of our patents, the bulk of our revenue is from people using inventions they were using it before we bought it and they were using it after we bought it, but we
provided an efficient way for them to get access to those invention rights. Alex: The way I hear what you’re saying, the way I translate it in my head, is they
were using it before without paying a license and nobody was bothering them. And now they are paying a license to you. Why is that a better situation?
Detkin: Well, because we want to incentivize the guy who invented it.
And that's where their investigation ends. Which is why I think their Chris Crawford example is bogus. Because all it did was lead to shell companies who were pursuing litigation and IV was an "interested party" on the docket. But yeah, tell who ever is paying you to come on Slashdot and defend these guys that it's not going to work.
First, titles are not patent claims.
I don't think that was ever said on that episode and, if you pay attention, they're just highlighting that five thousand people were trying to patent a particularly thing that was very similar in achieving the same overall goal. And they were right and the reason they did that was to show the listener that it's impossible for the small time inventor to read over these things and stay up to date on inventions -- take what you want from that, you obviously took it to the level of someone who's just skimming this looking for out of context errors. Congratulations!
In fact, most of that This American Life episode was pretty poor, research-wise.
"Most of it"?! You didn't even listen to it, it's an hour long and you cite one out of context sentence! How can you possibly say that, they actually went to Marshall, Texas, they actually did legwork, they actually tried to ask questions and they got
... to processing massive antennae data sets to detect asteroids that may be on a collision path with earth.
Engineer: Sir, sir, sir! Our HPC has detected an asteroid of catastrophic proportions hurtling directly toward Earth with a 99.993% chance of a direct center of mass strike! CEO: Excellent, did you prevent it from phoning home to their main servers with this information? Engineer: Yes sir! Just as you instructed, the world awaits you to heroically deliver this vital information of a massive threat that is currently a needle in the a haystack... CEO: Good work, now go out front and remove the sign under our logo that says "Do No Evil." Engineer: Um, sir? Time is of the essence... CEO: I SAID DO IT! Then get me a big chair and a cat -- preferably black and lethargic. Then get me every world leader on a video conference. *evil laugh* Would you like your Christmas bonus in Renminbi or Euro? Engineer: This is... this is madness! CEO: Hmmm, you know what, you're right. It'd be stupid to do that without first buying up bunkers and portable generators... I have an inkling they're going to become a hot commodity...
Did the recent switch this month to a first-to-file country affect you negatively? Positively? What sort of impact do you foresee that having on your business model? Was it right to move that way?
"This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" And Joe Chernesky referred them to Chris Crawford as an example of where Intellectual Ventures had helped an inventor license his/her patents to customers. Since the Chris Crawford lead largely turned up to be bogus, could you refer us to a few small time inventors that Intellectual Ventures has helped license their patents to licensees without having to get into extensive litigation?
One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?
Many readers of Slashdot (myself included) feel that the patent system is broken. I haven't heard any criticisms from you or Intellectual Ventures so I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about the patent system. Is it fundamentally broken? Only a little broken? Working flawlessly and exactly as it was intended to work?
Okay, frankly, I don't see the "Go-Green" aspect of this. Maybe I'm missing something here -- was that joke to make it sound eco friendly but actually reflecting the color of money? I'm lost as to how this would be environmentally friendly as opposed to your current situation unless that extra money is going to subsidize your enterprise using renewable energy or something...
One, it's a great idea and even if you don't move forward with this plan I think it's important to give the employee kudos for suggesting something new. If everyone came up with a half crazy/half ingenious idea you'd be able to try out a lot of innovative stuff. That said, I think there's some underlying costs you should evaluate up front: there needs to be an administrator for the Bitcoin mining software, (I assume you know this but) your electrical bill should rise up a bit to reflect the increased power draw when your cluster is crunching numbers and there needs to be a way to record any incidences where you think the BTC software ran into the day or inhibited a normal work related job on the server. That shouldn't be a deal breaker, just have a system in place to assess those monetary incursions on your business. It may also require you to do some interesting tax claims as you might "earn" so many bitcoins that your accounting department has to start including it on an asset sheet so that the books stay legal. I'm not an expert in this.
Is it viable? Would we generate enough revenue to cover our electrical costs even with CPUs running at 100% utilization all evening?
Probably? The real problem is the volatility of BTC on trades and, if you become a major reserve of BTC, you would likely have difficulties realizing your USD valuations of BTC in one swift action. One day it could make sense and the next day it could be a bust all based on whether MtGox was hacked or some major holder cashed out. How exactly did you plan on evaluating these holdings?
Personally, I wouldn't do this. I'd take a more entrepreneurial approach and attempt to lease CPU time to new customers. I know this practice has grown less profitable as people have been better equipped to set up their own clusters but what you might do is look into software that rents out your cluster by the hour and then seek out customers. As far as I know you can only expect a couple cents an hour per core on something like that but it slowly adds up. Plus, it's a little more legit and on the level.
Another idea is to lease this downtime as CPU usage to a local university or high school or something and, whether they use it or not, you might be able to write off some of that donated time and save a little money on taxes or at least build good will.
As a follow-up question and one that came up after the initial proposal, this entire idea has us wondering why the botnet/malware guys aren't doing this already? It would seem like a trivial task to take a botnet of hijacked PCs and have them do BC mining instead of spreading more malware and generate real revenue for the owner's of the botnets wouldn't it?
I'm not an expert in this but I'm pretty sure the answer is simple: when a botnet is up, it takes commands instead of issuing information back to the command and control. The idea behind a botnet is more frequently to control millions of random desktops from one central point. If botnets phone home with a new wallet or information, you run the risk of being traced more easily, being detected more easily and also DDOSing yourself if your botnet gets out of hand. That's my suspicion anyway. I'm sure some do do this, they probably just can't get very large.
Odd, it seems someone should notify John Legere that he's dishing up some new fangled bullshit instead of the old fangled bullshit we all know and hate. He also said, "This is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard in my entire life. Do you have any idea how much you're paying?" But apparently that was only about his competitor's pricing models...
"if you want to talk about restricting and banning things, look at the actual tools that he actually used to succeed in carrying out this horrible crime."
Ah yes, you don't like your inanimate object blamed, so you want to push the blame off on some other inanimate object.
How about we just blame the person?
Wrong. It's about banning speech. If you could show me that the game disc it was printed on had cadmium on it and that it flaked off and was dangerous to human health, I would advocate banning that particular game disc. If you can prove an inanimate object is the reason people are dying, I'll go along with your ideas on restricting it. What I will not agree to is banning books, movies, music, software or anything that represents an "idea" just because you're afraid of those ideas. If I buy a game and download it online, there is no inanimate object. It's information.
Yeah if all game discs could explode and send a piece of metal or lead into someone's chest, I would be interested in heavily restricting the sale of it. Your apples to oranges comparison of "inanimate objects" could also apply to nuclear weapons, C4, ricin, etc. Have fun living in that society! Comparing guns to information just shows that people don't understand the first amendment's importance as being a civil right and are all for only the second amendment that was written when guns were muskets. You can have all the muskets you want at the level of technology that was present when the second amendment came into effect.
The New York Daily News' Mike Lupica reported last week that investigators of the Newtown case found a huge spreadsheet in the Lanza home where 20-year old Adam Lanza had methodically charted hundreds of past gun massacres, including the number of people killed and the make and model of weapons used.
Okay, so far none of this has anything to do with video games -- does it? Anyone with their mind set and with extreme determination to accomplish the goal would do the above. Hell, this sounds more like the fantasy football people at my office than the gamers.
A Connecticut policeman told Lupica 'it sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research'
So we should ban doctoral theses? We should halt all research? Yeah, if someone is incredibly determined to do something, they're going to make a science out of it and conduct super extensive research. This is true of anything from baseball card collecting to weightlifting to money management to drug dealing. Name a thing. Anything. Now imagine what someone would do if they took it to an extreme level. Yeah, that's what's going on here.
'[Mass killers such as Lanza] don't believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer'.
You lost me. This is absolute bullshit. Statements that have more to do with a single person's determination suddenly linked to video games in what should be viewed as illogical stupidity. Oddly this statement can work for anything, weightlifters view their personal records and recorded journals as score sheets. Baseball card collectors view their completed sets and insert sets as score sheets. Farmers that are trying to get the most out of their fields look at their yields like score sheets. I mean, what about sports where you have actual score sheets and stats? Why are we not saying this was the work of an NFL running back or a second degree Taekwondo black-belt?
He did outside research to carry out an incredibly difficult task? Sounds more like your average software documentation than your average video gamer -- time to protect people from research and documentation.
Christ if you want to talk about restricting and banning things, look at the actual tools that he actually used to succeed in carrying out this horrible crime. Where is the logic that violent video games were instrumental in this horrible attack? Where is the link between his research and video games? Because it's a score sheet? Ridiculous!
Slashdot Mirror
Do you frequently brush up on physics or cosmology or some scientific field to keep your forward looking ideas sharp and in-line with current academic trends or do you simply rely on your imagination? Any academic journals you subscribe to looking for something to stimulate you into envisioning a future with an interesting twist? Is this common in the writing community or do I have the wrong image in my head?
As the emergence of more Philip K. Dick movies (and remakes) indicate, there's a lot of great sleeper sci-fi out there.
Who's your favorite writer that no one else seems to be enjoying?
I've heard that to be a good writer you need to read and write several hours daily. On average how many hours do you spend reading each day? Writing? Do you have an average word count you aim to produce for each day?
So the Chesapeake's dying from overfishing and your answer is to move on up to Delaware Bay. Hope your grandchildren appreciate the fine work you're doing for the planet.
Do you know what catch and release is? Those sharks and toadfish I'm landing with a rod and reel on Delaware Bay sure the hell aren't ending up on my plate. We might take a striper or two and maybe use some spots for bunkfish (bait) but it's nothing compared to what a commercial boat is doing. Doesn't even register! I don't think I've ever even landed a croaker that was big enough to keep!
When I charter a boat for a day at $500 (plus tip) and a fisherman takes me out instead of trying to commercially fish, it ends up being good for the bay. Thanks for accusing me of destroying our resources though, I'll add that to the list of why I don't talk to people about possible conservation strategies right next to being called a tree hugging hippie when I mention it at work.
Next time you're on the bay walk up to any boat captain and ask him/her about overfishing on the bay. HINT: It's not the five guys who are up there one weekend a year to enjoy the sun and land a few fish. In fact, they will probably tell you that a steady stream of that kind of tourism will allow those fisherman income so they stop overfishing to pay for their boats and fuel!
Also, I tried to track down the original article from the Post and it didn't sound like it lined up with this article:
Under conditions with lower levels of carbon, two mud crabs polished off 20 oysters in six hours. But in the aquariums with higher levels of carbon, the mud crabs seemed confused.
They went over to the oysters, but they didn’t eat as many — sometimes fewer than half of what other crabs ate under normal conditions. Dodd scratched his head. “Acidification may be confusing the crab,” he said. The situation, he concluded, “is more complicated than you’d be led to believe.”
Ries said crabs might be getting loopy from all that carbon in their systems, depriving them of oxygen and putting them in a fog.
They're right about the Chesapeake being in trouble though ... a growing "dead zone" coupled with overfishing. Man, in the past six years fishing trips on that body of water have gotten very sorry. We're now going up to Delaware Bay ... it's a shame, I've donated to Save the Chesapeake but people around here are stubbornly against the EPA or any government regulation. There goes those natural resources I guess.
And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
If you'd gone on for a PhD, you'd know how absurd that sounds. Dissertation research damn well is a job, probably tougher than any job you've ever had. And I've had plenty of work experience in what people smugly and stupidly call the "real world" (hint: any world where people live and work is just as real as any other) as a basis for comparison.
So you start out how absurd it is for me to say that academia is a lot of work but it's not a job. Then you go on to lecture me about how much more difficult working on a doctoral thesis is compared to just a regular old job. And how different the two things are. Then you assume that I'm going to give you a lecture about the "real world" which I neither did nor have any intention of doing.
From what I have experienced, a doctoral thesis is a highly neurotic and unpredictable world with no guarantees. Infighting and contacts often trump a true meritocracy more so than they would in a normal job. The payout is confusing and pretty much a gamble with much of it being that you contributed to your field. A job, on the other hand centers on providing measured amounts of goods and services for a guaranteed paycheck. It is stable, it is steady, it often comes without fame or press releases.
All I said was that the two are not the same thing and I love having a job. Why are people replying to me like I scoff at these "lazy doctoral thesis" researchers? I do not recall doing any such thing, in fact I had at one time aspired to be one!
I did not attack you or your choices, I did not "smugly and stupidly" say that doctoral thesis folks do not know what the "real world" is -- please stop projecting that onto me. Why are there multiple posts telling me I'm wrong when I clearly stated that "a doctoral thesis is a lot of work?!"
The two things have entirely different means and entirely different goals with entirely different lifespans.
So I guess you don't see the value of art in society?
That is a bizarre conclusion and I apologize if you derived that from my post.
I think we are enriched by writing, painting, drawing, sculpting, performance, and the endless ocean that is music. I think a world where we just worry about being "productive and tangible" is a sad grey world.
We are enriched -- I would argue that we're more enriched when we take those things up as a hobby. I will also argue that "being the best lute player in Cornwall" doesn't mean anything when YouTube allows one of the other six billion people to reach everyone on Earth. This is a good thing because it disperses all of the great things we're talking about but it also sets the bar mighty high. Worrying about being "productive and tangible" is not a sad grey world, it's a realistic world! And nowhere did I imply that we should "just" worry about that stuff, I merely questioned what the ratio of employment is. Right now there are too many people gunning for the job of tenured post doctoral thesis literature professor -- as evidenced by her post. There are a limited number of those!
I say this as a developer: a healthy society supports the arts.
As a developer, I'm able to actually earn enough money that I have disposable income to support the arts. Had I pursued my career as a bass player, I might be writing a column right now about how Flea and Paul McCartney are ruining my profession and keep me out of a job. Conversely I'm more than gainfully employed and extremely thankful for that fact!
The ratio of artists to patrons of the arts is important. If one side of the equation grows too large you have problems. We're discussing that inequality here, not talking about exterminating one or the other. The column in this article is indicative of too many people entirely basing their income models off of being artists. In such a crowded market with technology that allows me to select whichever artist I choose, this is not smart!
After four years of trying, I’ve finally gotten it through my thick head that I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you.
I got my masters between 2005-2007. Before that I had done two internships (while getting my undergrad) and then worked a year without school. When I went back to school my employer completely paid for my masters of science in computer science and, actually, I worked forty hours a week the whole time I was going to school full time. Doctorates are a completely different animal. I wanted to do one and yet the two professors who were interested in me said I would have to quit working my job. No deal, I've been working at least a 20 hour a week job since I was 13 and I think I would go insane now if I didn't have a full time job. And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
... she understands orders of logic so may be able to learn some of the more friendly computer languages.
A lot of these complaints in this article (though well written and entertaining surprise surprise) are indicative of anyone who takes a career in an entertainment world to the final resting place. What? You think the second trombonist for the Milwaukee Symphony is a bad trombone player? And when he travels to Kansas for an audition and is rejected because some insider got the lead, he's not upset that he's structured his whole life around trombone playing? No, he just picked an entertainment profession which means Pareto Law would be the best possible outcome and you're likely going to be a starving artist. There's just not enough revenue to spread around and when there is it is highly concentrated to a few individuals.
This is why STEM is pressed so hard and fascist leadership in China actually dictates how many STEM graduates their universities will pump out. I don't want that here in the states, what I want is realistic expectations set and delivered to prospective students about what employment rates look like and where the payout in the endgame lies. Don't confuse me some sort of dream crusher rubbing one out to telling people that their passion is a sideshow in the game of life but rather just a realist with production of goods and services in mind.
This story actually sounds positive compared to my friends who got lit undergrad degrees and then went out into the world to use them. My close friend from high school first got a job proof reading SEC filings that had already gone public. He would proof them all night long and then they would go out as updates -- that nobody would ever read. Then after feeling like he was doing nothing, he started delivering pizzas and did that for six years before he finally landed a great job. What job would that be? Well, he works as one of the state's tax collectors who calls people up. He's a genuinely nice guy and has a very friendly voice and talks about tax solutions to people who owe the state money. And he never took a math or accounting course and he does very little writing in his job. That is the reality of a lit degree.
From the sound of this author's research, she could probably get into natural language parsing fairly easily
Reading, writing, making music, painting, playing games are all things that I super love to do. But they're just a side thing to something else that I'm good at that is much more productive and tangible to society.
He then likened people who worry about intermittent internet connectivity being an issue as the same as someone not buying a vacuum cleaner because the electricity sometimes goes out.
So if we were to fulfill that analogy you would have to expect there are vacuum cleaners that already exist that run without electricity -- as almost all the games I own run without an internet connection. Now, a new vacuum cleaner comes out but it is required to always be plugged into the wall and it will only work if it is connected to a service that costs me a monthly payment. Correct, I would not buy this "new" vacuum cleaner as I have tons of old vacuums that somehow manage to get the job done without the need of electricity.
Unsurprisingly I have purchased none of these always-on for the sake of DRM games.
You're introducing a feature that none of your customers want -- a feature that complicates a product and causes them inconvenience for unclear benefits to you. A feature that introduces a new dependency and more moving parts to run the game. And how are you surprised, exactly, that there are many people upset about this?
In all seriousness, I wonder if their games library will be available for generic Android devices. When it comes down to it, the games library will make or break this thing. I don't play enough to justify buying one, but I'm definitely rooting for them from the sidelines.
Well, this exists and according to this kickstarter post:
As of 7:59 p.m. PT, there are already 104 published games on OUYA (all still free to try), like Final Fantasy III and some new surprises we think you’ll love: Beast Boxing Turbo, Stalagflight, Knightmare Tower, and even one called Save the Puppies. There are already a few entertainment apps, too. You can watch the TV shows and movies you already own with XBMC and Flixster, or watch games streamed through TwitchTV.
Man, I remember doing so much crap on my Dreamcast -- years after it failed. I hope this console is like a Dreamcast with the original intent of being open to homebrew and messing around!
I'm still waiting for my ouya to ship and I was a kickstarter backer. Apprently they missed the DELIVERY estimate of march 28. They also only shipped about 250 units to hand picked high profile people for review while everyone else gets the shaft. They've had my money for a long time now, other people have ouya, where's mine?
You ... should probably just stop using Kickstarter. If you get upset when people miss deadlines, if you get upset when a fledgling company tries to build press, if you are not interested purely in helping something that otherwise wouldn't happen happen then do not use Kickstarter. Do yourself and the people trying to use Kickstarter and Kickstarter a favor and stop using it!
They have horrible communication and leave everyone in the dark unless they donate thousands of dollars. We started their company and they can't even email us back when we send an inquiry as to what is going on with our units. Horrible company. Horrible PR.
They're a small company, you want them to spend money on a call center or the device?
Horrible console because it REQUIRES a credit card to use.
That's not quite true, it sounds like it requires a credit card to download video games ...
just bad. very disapointed. It'll be an emulator box for me, that's about it.
So it's "just bad" and you're very disappointed despite never having used one or held one in your hands? They tried something bold and they succeeded. You should be happy about that. You don't understand what Kickstarter is and I hope this experience teaches you a valuable lesson -- stay off Kickstarter, it's not a goddamn store.
We recently talked about the 'Ouya' console — a conceptual Android-based gaming device that's had a massively successful Kickstarter campaign. While most people are excited about such a non-traditional console, editorials at 1Up and Eurogamer have expressed some more realistic skepticism about the claims being made and the company's ability to meet those claims.
Sooooooo ... when do we own up to spreading FUD about this Kickstarter campaign? I mean, look at some of the highest rated comments.
;)
Well, I'm glad I got on board. Also glad I got in on the RFduino early on! I'll let you know how it handles when I get my hands on it
Problem is, you'll need to get money into your account somehow. To do so will take a wire transfer that the IRS will be notified about. Going the other direction would also take a wire transfer, that the IRS will be notified about.
Your "non-story" assertion is a bit short sighted from what I know ... if you divert all your income to Ireland or the Netherlands you can get it there nearly tax free. What you perceive as a hard time getting your money to the states is trivial if you find someone who will accept those accounts as collateral for you to borrow against. Oftentimes, the rate of the loan is lower than what you would lose getting hit with capital gains taxes in the US. On top of that, you can put that money in Ireland into a highly rated international fund to cut that loan rate down. Just because you had enough money, you get to skirt tax law enacted by our democratically elected politicians. Congratulations, you're a dick and I'm sure you can blame the socialists and "the system" for forcing you to do this and I'm sure you'll ask me if I donate extra money when I'm doing my taxes -- I don't. But I sure the hell don't tell my employer that I actually have accounts in Grand Cayman and they'll be moving 75% of my paycheck there for me and I'll take 25% of it here so I get a huge rebate for living below the poverty line while building bigger assets in the Caribbean.
... I can't wait for the bean counters to poor over all this data and find some of the other pieces. Either give me and every other equal citizen the same rights to avoid taxes or shut this crap down.
These offshore accounts? This is just one piece of a very large puzzle
The files contain information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries.
Oh, no no no, tax evasion for the ultra rich that can play international games isn't the reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. No! From Forbes' response to the viral video "Wealth Inequality in America" they say:
Look — we’re moving into the opening years of an economic revolution. The floods of Big Data pouring from the Internet and related technologies are washing away the foundational reasons for the existence of several of our most critical – and comforting – societal structures, potentially changing forever the very notion of what a company is, what a job is, what a brand is, what an educational degree means, and how we’ll work and govern and care for ourselves while attempting to live long and prosper. Almost every part of our existence is being restructured, and quickly, by the stunning power of nearly infinite information.
Don't you see? It's not tax evasion or unfair taxation, it's just the magical power of the internet. Stop asking questions and demanding an equal opportunity to skirt income laws! It's "Big Data" that's changing things rapidly and excitingly. Stop fighting the Economic Revolution!
What an absolute crock of shit.
A scary reminder of how insecure ALL money is in the computer age...
Really? My Celtic ring money is still fully intact around my wrist and still worth the silver it's made out of. All currencies have their ups and downs. Some benefits are double edged swords (just ask Renminbi traders). Nice editorial though -- the services surrounding BitCoin are clearly infantile and only now are getting DDOS protection.
My credit union offers two factor authentication. Could a Bitcoin exchange do the same? You bet. But they haven't. The fact is that it's easier to find legit and robust exchanges and institutions in USD than BitCoin.
Laura: And in fact, that’s what’s happening with Chris Crawford’s patent. Intellectual Ventures sold it to another company, a company called Oasis Research, in June of 2010. Less than a month later, Oasis Research used the patent to sue 16 different tech companies. Companies like Rackspace, Go Daddy, and AT&T. Companies that do cloud storage.
Okay so there's IV's link to Oasis Research (another you questioned earlier in these comments) and let's read a little further, shall we?
Alex: The first owner is clear, it’s Chris Crawford, who was granted the patent in 1998. And then, it’s clear that a company named Intellectual Ventures Computing Platforce Assets, LLC. — no one could actually tell us what a “platforce” is — bought the patent in July of 2010. But in between those two dates, there are two other owners. A company called Kwon Holdings and another one named Enhanced Software, LLC. And what was odd, Kwon Holdings, Enhanced Software and Intellectual Ventures all have the same address.
Okay more shell companies and let's read a little further still:
Alex: So can you point me to a patent that you acquired that was languishing but then got licensed to somebody and built in a way that I could see? Detkin: I can tell you that it’s happened, but unfortunately the deal is confidential. There are two deals that were done. One was with a toy company. The other was, I can’t remember the technology of the other one but they came to us and they said we’re interested in this particular patent. We’d like to take it out into the world. Will you give us a license? And we did. And they put it out there. It was out there for last Christmas. I actually don’t know how it’s done. I would be curious to find out myself. But I agree, that’s an anomaly. I see where you’re going with your question and I don’t mean to fight you on it. The fact is the bulk of our patents, the bulk of our revenue is from people using inventions they were using it before we bought it and they were using it after we bought it, but we provided an efficient way for them to get access to those invention rights. Alex: The way I hear what you’re saying, the way I translate it in my head, is they were using it before without paying a license and nobody was bothering them. And now they are paying a license to you. Why is that a better situation? Detkin: Well, because we want to incentivize the guy who invented it.
And that's where their investigation ends. Which is why I think their Chris Crawford example is bogus. Because all it did was lead to shell companies who were pursuing litigation and IV was an "interested party" on the docket. But yeah, tell who ever is paying you to come on Slashdot and defend these guys that it's not going to work.
First, titles are not patent claims.
I don't think that was ever said on that episode and, if you pay attention, they're just highlighting that five thousand people were trying to patent a particularly thing that was very similar in achieving the same overall goal. And they were right and the reason they did that was to show the listener that it's impossible for the small time inventor to read over these things and stay up to date on inventions -- take what you want from that, you obviously took it to the level of someone who's just skimming this looking for out of context errors. Congratulations!
In fact, most of that This American Life episode was pretty poor, research-wise.
"Most of it"?! You didn't even listen to it, it's an hour long and you cite one out of context sentence! How can you possibly say that, they actually went to Marshall, Texas, they actually did legwork, they actually tried to ask questions and they got
Engineer: Sir, sir, sir! Our HPC has detected an asteroid of catastrophic proportions hurtling directly toward Earth with a 99.993% chance of a direct center of mass strike! ... ... ... this is madness! ... I have an inkling they're going to become a hot commodity ...
CEO: Excellent, did you prevent it from phoning home to their main servers with this information?
Engineer: Yes sir! Just as you instructed, the world awaits you to heroically deliver this vital information of a massive threat that is currently a needle in the a haystack
CEO: Good work, now go out front and remove the sign under our logo that says "Do No Evil."
Engineer: Um, sir? Time is of the essence
CEO: I SAID DO IT! Then get me a big chair and a cat -- preferably black and lethargic. Then get me every world leader on a video conference. *evil laugh* Would you like your Christmas bonus in Renminbi or Euro?
Engineer: This is
CEO: Hmmm, you know what, you're right. It'd be stupid to do that without first buying up bunkers and portable generators
Did the recent switch this month to a first-to-file country affect you negatively? Positively? What sort of impact do you foresee that having on your business model? Was it right to move that way?
"This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" And Joe Chernesky referred them to Chris Crawford as an example of where Intellectual Ventures had helped an inventor license his/her patents to customers. Since the Chris Crawford lead largely turned up to be bogus, could you refer us to a few small time inventors that Intellectual Ventures has helped license their patents to licensees without having to get into extensive litigation?
One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?
Many readers of Slashdot (myself included) feel that the patent system is broken. I haven't heard any criticisms from you or Intellectual Ventures so I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about the patent system. Is it fundamentally broken? Only a little broken? Working flawlessly and exactly as it was intended to work?
One, it's a great idea and even if you don't move forward with this plan I think it's important to give the employee kudos for suggesting something new. If everyone came up with a half crazy/half ingenious idea you'd be able to try out a lot of innovative stuff. That said, I think there's some underlying costs you should evaluate up front: there needs to be an administrator for the Bitcoin mining software, (I assume you know this but) your electrical bill should rise up a bit to reflect the increased power draw when your cluster is crunching numbers and there needs to be a way to record any incidences where you think the BTC software ran into the day or inhibited a normal work related job on the server. That shouldn't be a deal breaker, just have a system in place to assess those monetary incursions on your business. It may also require you to do some interesting tax claims as you might "earn" so many bitcoins that your accounting department has to start including it on an asset sheet so that the books stay legal. I'm not an expert in this.
Something that is important is that the sooner you get this up and running, the better. Read up on the distribution of bitcoins to understand what I mean.
Is it viable? Would we generate enough revenue to cover our electrical costs even with CPUs running at 100% utilization all evening?
Probably? The real problem is the volatility of BTC on trades and, if you become a major reserve of BTC, you would likely have difficulties realizing your USD valuations of BTC in one swift action. One day it could make sense and the next day it could be a bust all based on whether MtGox was hacked or some major holder cashed out. How exactly did you plan on evaluating these holdings?
Personally, I wouldn't do this. I'd take a more entrepreneurial approach and attempt to lease CPU time to new customers. I know this practice has grown less profitable as people have been better equipped to set up their own clusters but what you might do is look into software that rents out your cluster by the hour and then seek out customers. As far as I know you can only expect a couple cents an hour per core on something like that but it slowly adds up. Plus, it's a little more legit and on the level.
Another idea is to lease this downtime as CPU usage to a local university or high school or something and, whether they use it or not, you might be able to write off some of that donated time and save a little money on taxes or at least build good will.
As a follow-up question and one that came up after the initial proposal, this entire idea has us wondering why the botnet/malware guys aren't doing this already? It would seem like a trivial task to take a botnet of hijacked PCs and have them do BC mining instead of spreading more malware and generate real revenue for the owner's of the botnets wouldn't it?
I'm not an expert in this but I'm pretty sure the answer is simple: when a botnet is up, it takes commands instead of issuing information back to the command and control. The idea behind a botnet is more frequently to control millions of random desktops from one central point. If botnets phone home with a new wallet or information, you run the risk of being traced more easily, being detected more easily and also DDOSing yourself if your botnet gets out of hand. That's my suspicion anyway. I'm sure some do do this, they probably just can't get very large.
Odd, it seems someone should notify John Legere that he's dishing up some new fangled bullshit instead of the old fangled bullshit we all know and hate. He also said, "This is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard in my entire life. Do you have any idea how much you're paying?" But apparently that was only about his competitor's pricing models ...
"if you want to talk about restricting and banning things, look at the actual tools that he actually used to succeed in carrying out this horrible crime."
Ah yes, you don't like your inanimate object blamed, so you want to push the blame off on some other inanimate object.
How about we just blame the person?
Wrong. It's about banning speech. If you could show me that the game disc it was printed on had cadmium on it and that it flaked off and was dangerous to human health, I would advocate banning that particular game disc. If you can prove an inanimate object is the reason people are dying, I'll go along with your ideas on restricting it. What I will not agree to is banning books, movies, music, software or anything that represents an "idea" just because you're afraid of those ideas. If I buy a game and download it online, there is no inanimate object. It's information.
Yeah if all game discs could explode and send a piece of metal or lead into someone's chest, I would be interested in heavily restricting the sale of it. Your apples to oranges comparison of "inanimate objects" could also apply to nuclear weapons, C4, ricin, etc. Have fun living in that society! Comparing guns to information just shows that people don't understand the first amendment's importance as being a civil right and are all for only the second amendment that was written when guns were muskets. You can have all the muskets you want at the level of technology that was present when the second amendment came into effect.
The New York Daily News' Mike Lupica reported last week that investigators of the Newtown case found a huge spreadsheet in the Lanza home where 20-year old Adam Lanza had methodically charted hundreds of past gun massacres, including the number of people killed and the make and model of weapons used.
Okay, so far none of this has anything to do with video games -- does it? Anyone with their mind set and with extreme determination to accomplish the goal would do the above. Hell, this sounds more like the fantasy football people at my office than the gamers.
A Connecticut policeman told Lupica 'it sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research'
So we should ban doctoral theses? We should halt all research? Yeah, if someone is incredibly determined to do something, they're going to make a science out of it and conduct super extensive research. This is true of anything from baseball card collecting to weightlifting to money management to drug dealing. Name a thing. Anything. Now imagine what someone would do if they took it to an extreme level. Yeah, that's what's going on here.
'[Mass killers such as Lanza] don't believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer'.
You lost me. This is absolute bullshit. Statements that have more to do with a single person's determination suddenly linked to video games in what should be viewed as illogical stupidity. Oddly this statement can work for anything, weightlifters view their personal records and recorded journals as score sheets. Baseball card collectors view their completed sets and insert sets as score sheets. Farmers that are trying to get the most out of their fields look at their yields like score sheets. I mean, what about sports where you have actual score sheets and stats? Why are we not saying this was the work of an NFL running back or a second degree Taekwondo black-belt?
He did outside research to carry out an incredibly difficult task? Sounds more like your average software documentation than your average video gamer -- time to protect people from research and documentation.
Christ if you want to talk about restricting and banning things, look at the actual tools that he actually used to succeed in carrying out this horrible crime. Where is the logic that violent video games were instrumental in this horrible attack? Where is the link between his research and video games? Because it's a score sheet? Ridiculous!