Or, because I don't know how to tell if someone is here legally or not.
I have a neighbor who is hispanic. His kids speak english, but some of the adults at the house often converse in Spanish. (Note: This is a similar pattern for ANY immigrant family.) I of wonder whether he is here legally.
On the other hand, he takes better care of his house than I do, has always been friendly. I don't talk to him much, but that's more my own fault than his. I can't exactly go over and say, "Hey, did you happen to come here illegally? What about the people you hired to help you make your awesome front yard?" without being a complete dick. Heck, if someone were to ask ME a question like that, I'd be sorely tempted to suggest things they could go do to themselves.
The only time I could find out something like that would be if I'd hired someone to do work for me, and asked them for proof of citizenship (or proof that their employees are citizens). I'm not even sure how much of THAT sort of question is allowed -- it certainly seems like it could be discrimination if I didn't ask ALL of the potential people I might hire.
A sibling poster (Alzheimers?) mentioned Penny Arcade, which is big enough to be picky about advertisers. I concur, and I guess I might call them my portal to gaming news (besides here, of course). They filter out the crap, and I hear about things like this from them first, usually. It helps that the two principles, Gabe and Tycho, have very different tastes in games, but both recognize quality vs crap.
He doesn't review many games, but dear god when he does, it is brutally honest. He's also quite funny, even if not exactly worksafe. He exposes the weaknesses of things like HL2 which we put up with, and so forth. It's very refreshing. I wish I had about 10 times as many reviews from him, even about games I don't care about. I'd watch a Yahtze review of Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
"Lastly, let's talk about Portal. If you're a regular viewer, you'll recognize how INSANE these words sound coming out of my mouth, but I can't think of any criticism for it.... This is the most fun you'll have with your PC until they invent a force-feedback codpiece."
I am extremely grateful for the negative reviews of things. There will always be people that like it just fine, and then there are those (like Mr. Cranky) that can find even more todislike than I can. They will tell you the things that irked them, that made them regret it, etc -- and that helps me avoid bad experiences.
If all I had were positive reviews, it'd be hard to narrow down the field of potential restaurants (especially in an area I am visiting), or games. If all I heard were negative reviews, I'd still buy things, but either expect them to suck (and then be pleasantly surprised), or just determined to experience them for What They Were.
At the same time, I'm grateful for dissenting views, even if positive. For example, I've been interested in Assassin's Creed for a while. (In case any readers aren't video gamers, it's a "sandbox" style game for the Xbox360 which has you tooling around in Crusades-era holy lands.) Many reviewers said it was very pretty, but that some things got repetetive (and didn't really like the combat system). I was worried that I might not like it, until I read Penny Arcade's "trust us, it does actually rock" post.
I appreciated Gabe's argument that reviewers don't play games the same way many of us do, and that the review process is poorly suited for sandbox games. Reviewers play with a deadline, whereas in a sandbox game the point is to take your time, explore, and find cool stuff. Perhaps even replay to do things differently. Gabe saying this, and his subsequent "real world" review (along with Tycho's explanation of the combat system), convinced me that I will probably greatly enjoy the game. (Assuming I manage to buy an XBox360 and the game. D'oh.)
I find it interesting that you use the term "diabolical". What makes the behavior of this wasp more diabolical than would a human slaughtering a cow to eat?
We kill the cow before eating it, and thus it feels no pain while we eat. Wasp larvae eat the roach while it is alive. (Do we even know if insects can feel pain when being eaten from the inside out? Do they have nerves inside for sensing that? I pity the researchers tasked with finding that out.)
A more apropos analogy would be the practice of eating the brains of extremely intoxicated monkeys whilethey are still alive. Creepy stuff.
Perspective: Most people, when looking at those historical events (McCarthyism, etc) tend to recognize that it's a bad thing. When it's THEIR turn, however, people either don't realize what's happening until later, or don't want to bother making a fuss on constitutional principles if it will make them late for work (or if they feel it might endanger them to do so).
calling the RIAA a coward for not suing Harvard is like calling me a coward because I won't pick a fight with Bas Ruten.
I think that's a flawed analogy. A more fitting analogy might be to compare the RIAA to a bully in high school, picking on anyone younger than them who wasn't on a sports team. It's specifically picking the targets that yield the highest probability of reward, with the little to no risk.
Someone who shows up to a fistfight with a shotgun is likely to be chided for cowardice. The disadvantaged side will be tempted to think "cowardice", whereas the person who comes excessively armed, or chooses only ripe targets, will see it more as operational prudence.
[My lawyer] offered to settle with me for my hoped-for amount out of his pocket provided I release him to sue the other attorney (he was going to make way more money that way, he was that confident). I was ok with that, so that's how it went down.
There needs to be just a modular computer appliance for the other 99.999% of the population, the potential customer gets a checklist of normal apps with descriptions, "surf the web" chat with friends" "watch movies" play games", a "what would you like to do?" thing, that gets checked off and only that is what the appliance "does" with big fat buttons that work with one mash and that's it, even directly on the keyboard or better yet just a blank machine with plug in applications as hardware modules.
The OLPC's interface is very sparse, and seems to cover almost exactly the design philosophy you want (with, admittedly, much more collaboration options than you probably thought of). I see it as a pretty radical departure in terms of UI from most current machines, and considered it intriguing. Basically, you can run multiple things, but there's only ever ONE thing maximized at a time. This mirrors how many non-geeks use their computers (perhaps related to the small default screen size of older monitors;)).
If I weren't on a budget, I'd have donated one.:( I hope that in a couple years, when my kid's old enough, they'll still be around.
Moreover, having to hit Start several times (EA logo, game logo, NFS:Underground "safety" video, title sequence...) before I get to the menu of the game I'm already annoyed to be playing gets old VERY fast. (Please, no cracks about NFS:Underground;)) This same thing happens on PC and console games.
I rather like it on PC games when I can skip the title sequence and just get to a menu. Blizzard does this right. Once I've seen the Starcraft cinematic, never again (unless I want to). (Valve seems to do it right too, at least with the older versions of CS and HL I have.) In contrast, starting up SFC3 involves skipping a couple things. Anything from Ubisoft, or EA, or sponsored by NVidia (or ATI, I presume), is going to have another 3 seconds of unskippable crap.
Never mind that some only skip if you press Escape, yet exit the game if you hit Escape at the menu. It's not aggravating to have to restart the game a SECOND time because I hit it 5x insteadof 4... (Fallout2...).
I sound bitter. Sorry. This is something that's annoyed me for some time. I really don't care who the publisher is (I can see it on the box), and if anything this behavior sours my opinion of the publisher -- because they have explicitly marred my gaming experience every time I've loaded their games. I don't mind seeing all that crap the first time, but for goodness sake let me have an option to turn the crap off./rant off. Sorry guys. (-: Anywho, things like this are why I enjoy older games, or games from publishers like Introversion, Blizzard, and Valve.
It would be especially interesting (and not exactly surprising) if someone were to create a portal-map-generating-tool, thereby enabling a much larger set of possible maps.... many of which might not suck.:)
I'm not sure why you'd put a tinyurl on a web page, where you could just embed the URL in a link using href, like this (oh, the temptation to link to goatse was great, but I resisted).
Why? Laziness on the part of the writer, I believe.
While often the ability to give a descriptive link to something is nice, the advent of forum software (or e-mail or IM) which automatically hyperlink any text that looks like a URL means that it is often easier to just type out http://www.example.org/foo/bar.html . Pasting it in is easier for the writer, and also allows the reader to SEE what the link is before highlighting it. The hierarchical nature of URLs enables savvy users to already have some idea what they are getting ("Hmm, that URL has 'goatse' in it... Danger, Will Robinson!") without having to move their mouse. URLs also survives being printed better.
Hyperlinks are an awesome tool, and of course nothing stops someone making a deceptive link (which has one anchor and descriptive text which lists a different URL), but... in general it's still very easy to just type out a URL.
So -- that brings us to TinyURLs, and clones thereof. It's good for use on the mobile phone (though I don't know why I'd want to use the web from mine;)), or in IM, or generally anything where you need to remember something.
As for a single point of failure... I don't see what's stopping any of us from making our own TinyURL-like-services -- so, you could link to http://www.myblog.org/link/1066 instead of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings;) (though to be fair, Wikipedia's URLs are already often memorable and easy to type... (-:
... and have for several years. I use IM as a way to send a quick, non-urgent question to someone, rather than call them on the phone -- it allows them to answer at their leisure (like E-mail), but allows a "disposable" conversation to pick up steam, without having 15 messages cluttering my inbox which I then need to destroy. It also allows ME to ask a question which I Don't expect an immediate answer to, and then get back to working -- or possibly hold multiple IM conversations with different coworkers if necessary. Multitasking over IM seems much easier than on email or phones.
Don't get me wrong -- when something gets complicated, the phone gets picked up, as talking is much easier than typing. (I do dislike that the phone is not logged, whereas my IM and E-mail are all automatically keeping logs of everything I send/receive... oh well.) I also use e-mail, if the person is out of the office, or if the communication seems to have more "importance" than what IM would have -- so that there's a more permanent record. (Technically, my Trillian logs are just as permanent, but... it just doesn't seem the same.)
When I worked at the university, all of us IMed each other, as our coworkers were in different rooms, sometimes down the hall.
Mr. Gibson's dark future is a human failure and not a 'techno-biological' failure. The future's darkness comes from a tyrannical plutocracy which misuses the technology, which could have just as easily been used to save mankind.
However, I think it's telling that we tend to take it for granted that such a human failure is very likely. I mean, we've been politically scheming, warring, backstabbing, cheating, and generally being selfish all throughout the history of humanity. The very fact that people like Jesus (assuming he existed), the Dalai Lama, and war veterans are so revered is (I believe) directly related to the rarity of unselfishness in the general public.
The growth of Corporations as legal entities seems unchecked. I expect this plutarchy will continue, not due to technology, but (as you said) due to misuse of POWER (not just technology). The cyberpunk view of the future is not due solely to technology, but to a belief that we humans will misuse it given the chance. (Heck, look at what we have people doing with surveillance technology now.)
So, then a more appropriate thing would be something like,
"Wo creas as lnog sa u cna raed it?" vs hu kars so lng as u cn reed it?
Interesting. The former is made of typos I might make (and have, though not at once;)), the latter is spelled phonetically. Strangely (or not?), I have a really hard time reading phonetical renditions of words, as compared to typos.
As for the ethics involved: anyone who gives you a contract like that to sign has made their lack of morals completely clear. You owe them no consideration in return whatsoever. Indeed, if you used them to pay your rent while secretly working out your brilliant idea at home, they'd have only gotten what they deserve.
"Ethical" behavior which one only applies when the other party "deserves" it is not ethical behavior. The only way to maintain the moral high ground is to continue to act in an ethical manner, EVEN IF the opposition does not.
- If you lie to someone because they lied to you, you are still a liar. - If you break/ignore a contract/promise you've agreed to, because you feel the others are undeserving of respect, you've still reneged on a contract/promise and are thus in the same boat of weasels.
Of course, if you hold them to the letter of the agreement, or ensure that they agree to one more beneficial to you, that is not the same thing at all. (-: Still, my main point was that you shouldn't jump into the gutter just because your enemy did too.
Well obviously they are a major threat, but [fundamentalist christians] haven't been throwing airliners into major structures lately.
Instead, - Some have started/supported military action with a foreign country which was unconnected with said attacks, and was not an immediate threat - Some have put bombs at abortion clinics: i.e., tried to kill people to prevent them from having an abortion. (I think most of us agree that someone willing to kill another to get people to conform to their beliefs about what is "moral" is most certainly a religious extremist.)
Which bothers you more? - 2,974 people were killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. - 3858 US soldiers are confirmed dead by the DoD due to operations in Afghanistan/Iraq - Roughly 17 times more people get killed by drunk drivers than by terrorists in the US.
If we were concerned about TRUE security and public safety, wouldn't we be far more interested in preventing the deaths due to non-ideological causes (drunk driving, other car accidents), rather than waging war in other nations?
[an implanted microchip capable of] creating a seamless interface between the user and the information resources (in-time collection data and archival databases). In essence, the chip relays the processed information from the IIC to the user. Second, the chip creates a computer-generated mental visualization based upon the user's request. The visualization encompasses the individual and allows the user to place himself into the selected battlespace.
What I find funny is, this sounds like the report's equivalent of "a miracle happens here". I would love if such capability existed (think of the RSI-avoidance!:)), but I think we'd hear about it if it had been invented.
. They share the (apparently far too common) viewpoint that if they can find a legal loophole to get what they want, it's pretty much compulsory that they exploit it.
To be fair, I imagine that they are legally reponsible to their shareholders to do that, much as corporations are effectively sociopathic due to the drive to create profit.
I agree that it's Bad Form to leverage copyright as they are, but at the same time... don't many copyright provisions state that you have to aggressively pursue infringement, or risk losing your copyright? Otherwise, next time they sue a real infringer, they risk his defense being, "well, you didn't care when X did it, so why do you care now that I did?".
The globalization of copyright is a scary thought, though. It's a sticky wicket no matter how you look at it.
Liberals rarely recognize or appreciate the role of the 2nd ammendment in protecting the rest of the document and are always too eager to re-interpret it and shut it down. In doing so they lose all credibility when they scream about the 1st, 4th, or any other....
Just because someone has been wrong in the past, does not affect the truth or validity of their current statements or arguments. It is foolish (though common human behavior) to discredit someone due to past untruthfulness, but it falls into the trap illustrated by Aesop's fable of the boy who cried wolf.
Someone may be a hypocrite, but that doesn't make them wrong when they're talking about abuse of the constitution. Look at the claim at face value, not at whether the claim was made by a "lefty" or "liberal screecher", and judge the claim on its own merits, not on the merits of the claimant.
Good point. I admit that I *loved* Eternal Darkness (and am on my second playthrough). The control scheme seemed strange and simplistic, but at the same time... once you mastered it, you could really dish out some whupass. (-: I think I shall be more forgiving of Too Human's control quirks, and trust that it will be Better Than I Feared.
I'm curious about the loot system. Will this lead to grinding in areas until I get the one random Shoulders of Awesomesauce, which everyone on the internet knows are better than the Spaulders of L33tness (OK, I don't believe that;))? On one hand, I dislike that I may feel "forced" to replay the same crap until I get better drops... but it's not like I don't enjoy that some of the time in WoW, either. Going back to older content and demolishing it DOES have an element of fun, as long as it's optional.
I'm most intrigued that this may reduce the perceived "necessity" to find a walkthrough and play by that. So many games (Tron 2, Deus Ex, etc etc) have little experience or powerup bonuses hidden across the levels. While it's fun to find them, it always seems like if I don't go for them, my character will be insufficiently prepared for the challenges to come. On some Deus Ex levels, if I didn't play the "clear everything out and explore every nook, and read the walkthrough to make sure I pick the dialog options that don't screw me" game, there was a substantial difference in the amount of skill points (or whatever the resources were) and nanites available. At least when it's random, the answer sounds like it will be, "Play more, and you'll get better. Go have fun, be a badass."
I realize that this "necessity" of getting a walkthrough is self-imposed. It even feels like cheating, sometimes. But, the difference between using one and not often seems very dramatic, especially when there's no "going back" to explore later (whether it's exploring zones, respeccing, or trying different gear out).
Signed might not mean "signed by the phone vendor", but just "signed by the developer with a chain of trust so we know you're not some hacker in Elbonia". The latter is still secure, if you can trust the chain. Well, more of, if it's NOT secure, you know who to point the finger at.
I think one problem is that many of us, no matter how knowledgeable we are in our subject, are not necessarily skilled at writing and editing prose documents. If a professional technical editor were to donate time to edit some of the major articles, I imagine the quality would be improved.
A side issue you touch on is the "non-encyclopedia" type things. I would expect that it should be fairly straightforward to write the how-to at wikihow.com (or some similar site), and link to it from the Wikipedia article. I know that when I look up some obscure language or algorithm, it's nice to be able to find a link to a beginning-level text. In a related direction, it'd be nice if for certain categories (Lisp, rocket science, molecular biology, the history of wales), links were provided to well-recognized textbooks on the subject.
For example, the MIT press Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is reknowned as a rich resource for those wanting to learn (whether about Lisp or about programming), the Gigamonkey's book Practical Common Lisp is considered a great starter text for Common Lisp, and Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography is so well regarded as to be referred to as "The Book" (or "The UFO Book") in the crypto community. I'm very happy to see that books like this are often mentioned in the Wikipedia articles.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, because I don't know how to tell if someone is here legally or not.
I have a neighbor who is hispanic. His kids speak english, but some of the adults at the house often converse in Spanish. (Note: This is a similar pattern for ANY immigrant family.) I of wonder whether he is here legally.
On the other hand, he takes better care of his house than I do, has always been friendly. I don't talk to him much, but that's more my own fault than his. I can't exactly go over and say, "Hey, did you happen to come here illegally? What about the people you hired to help you make your awesome front yard?" without being a complete dick. Heck, if someone were to ask ME a question like that, I'd be sorely tempted to suggest things they could go do to themselves.
The only time I could find out something like that would be if I'd hired someone to do work for me, and asked them for proof of citizenship (or proof that their employees are citizens). I'm not even sure how much of THAT sort of question is allowed -- it certainly seems like it could be discrimination if I didn't ask ALL of the potential people I might hire.
A sibling poster (Alzheimers?) mentioned Penny Arcade, which is big enough to be picky about advertisers. I concur, and I guess I might call them my portal to gaming news (besides here, of course). They filter out the crap, and I hear about things like this from them first, usually. It helps that the two principles, Gabe and Tycho, have very different tastes in games, but both recognize quality vs crap.
I'll also mention Yahtze's "Zero Punctuation":
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/
He doesn't review many games, but dear god when he does, it is brutally honest. He's also quite funny, even if not exactly worksafe. He exposes the weaknesses of things like HL2 which we put up with, and so forth. It's very refreshing. I wish I had about 10 times as many reviews from him, even about games I don't care about. I'd watch a Yahtze review of Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
For example:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2541-Zero-Punctuation-The-Orange-Box
"Lastly, let's talk about Portal. If you're a regular viewer, you'll recognize how INSANE these words sound coming out of my mouth, but I can't think of any criticism for it.... This is the most fun you'll have with your PC until they invent a force-feedback codpiece."
(-:
I am extremely grateful for the negative reviews of things. There will always be people that like it just fine, and then there are those (like Mr. Cranky) that can find even more todislike than I can. They will tell you the things that irked them, that made them regret it, etc -- and that helps me avoid bad experiences.
If all I had were positive reviews, it'd be hard to narrow down the field of potential restaurants (especially in an area I am visiting), or games. If all I heard were negative reviews, I'd still buy things, but either expect them to suck (and then be pleasantly surprised), or just determined to experience them for What They Were.
At the same time, I'm grateful for dissenting views, even if positive. For example, I've been interested in Assassin's Creed for a while. (In case any readers aren't video gamers, it's a "sandbox" style game for the Xbox360 which has you tooling around in Crusades-era holy lands.) Many reviewers said it was very pretty, but that some things got repetetive (and didn't really like the combat system). I was worried that I might not like it, until I read Penny Arcade's "trust us, it does actually rock" post.
I appreciated Gabe's argument that reviewers don't play games the same way many of us do, and that the review process is poorly suited for sandbox games. Reviewers play with a deadline, whereas in a sandbox game the point is to take your time, explore, and find cool stuff. Perhaps even replay to do things differently. Gabe saying this, and his subsequent "real world" review (along with Tycho's explanation of the combat system), convinced me that I will probably greatly enjoy the game. (Assuming I manage to buy an XBox360 and the game. D'oh.)
I suspect it's either Clippy or a "searching ..." magnifying-glass-in-a-circle ... ;)
Perspective: Most people, when looking at those historical events (McCarthyism, etc) tend to recognize that it's a bad thing. When it's THEIR turn, however, people either don't realize what's happening until later, or don't want to bother making a fuss on constitutional principles if it will make them late for work (or if they feel it might endanger them to do so).
I think that's a flawed analogy. A more fitting analogy might be to compare the RIAA to a bully in high school, picking on anyone younger than them who wasn't on a sports team. It's specifically picking the targets that yield the highest probability of reward, with the little to no risk.
Someone who shows up to a fistfight with a shotgun is likely to be chided for cowardice. The disadvantaged side will be tempted to think "cowardice", whereas the person who comes excessively armed, or chooses only ripe targets, will see it more as operational prudence.
So
http://laptop.org/laptop/interface/index.shtml
The OLPC's interface is very sparse, and seems to cover almost exactly the design philosophy you want (with, admittedly, much more collaboration options than you probably thought of). I see it as a pretty radical departure in terms of UI from most current machines, and considered it intriguing. Basically, you can run multiple things, but there's only ever ONE thing maximized at a time. This mirrors how many non-geeks use their computers (perhaps related to the small default screen size of older monitors
If I weren't on a budget, I'd have donated one.
Moreover, having to hit Start several times (EA logo, game logo, NFS:Underground "safety" video, title sequence ...) before I get to the menu of the game I'm already annoyed to be playing gets old VERY fast. (Please, no cracks about NFS:Underground;)) This same thing happens on PC and console games.
/rant off. Sorry guys. (-: Anywho, things like this are why I enjoy older games, or games from publishers like Introversion, Blizzard, and Valve.
I rather like it on PC games when I can skip the title sequence and just get to a menu. Blizzard does this right. Once I've seen the Starcraft cinematic, never again (unless I want to). (Valve seems to do it right too, at least with the older versions of CS and HL I have.) In contrast, starting up SFC3 involves skipping a couple things. Anything from Ubisoft, or EA, or sponsored by NVidia (or ATI, I presume), is going to have another 3 seconds of unskippable crap.
Never mind that some only skip if you press Escape, yet exit the game if you hit Escape at the menu. It's not aggravating to have to restart the game a SECOND time because I hit it 5x insteadof 4... (Fallout2...).
I sound bitter. Sorry. This is something that's annoyed me for some time. I really don't care who the publisher is (I can see it on the box), and if anything this behavior sours my opinion of the publisher -- because they have explicitly marred my gaming experience every time I've loaded their games. I don't mind seeing all that crap the first time, but for goodness sake let me have an option to turn the crap off.
It would be especially interesting (and not exactly surprising) if someone were to create a portal-map-generating-tool, thereby enabling a much larger set of possible maps .... many of which might not suck. :)
Why? Laziness on the part of the writer, I believe.
While often the ability to give a descriptive link to something is nice, the advent of forum software (or e-mail or IM) which automatically hyperlink any text that looks like a URL means that it is often easier to just type out http://www.example.org/foo/bar.html . Pasting it in is easier for the writer, and also allows the reader to SEE what the link is before highlighting it. The hierarchical nature of URLs enables savvy users to already have some idea what they are getting ("Hmm, that URL has 'goatse' in it
Hyperlinks are an awesome tool, and of course nothing stops someone making a deceptive link (which has one anchor and descriptive text which lists a different URL), but
So -- that brings us to TinyURLs, and clones thereof. It's good for use on the mobile phone (though I don't know why I'd want to use the web from mine
As for a single point of failure
... and have for several years. I use IM as a way to send a quick, non-urgent question to someone, rather than call them on the phone -- it allows them to answer at their leisure (like E-mail), but allows a "disposable" conversation to pick up steam, without having 15 messages cluttering my inbox which I then need to destroy. It also allows ME to ask a question which I Don't expect an immediate answer to, and then get back to working -- or possibly hold multiple IM conversations with different coworkers if necessary. Multitasking over IM seems much easier than on email or phones.
... it just doesn't seem the same.)
Don't get me wrong -- when something gets complicated, the phone gets picked up, as talking is much easier than typing. (I do dislike that the phone is not logged, whereas my IM and E-mail are all automatically keeping logs of everything I send/receive... oh well.) I also use e-mail, if the person is out of the office, or if the communication seems to have more "importance" than what IM would have -- so that there's a more permanent record. (Technically, my Trillian logs are just as permanent, but
When I worked at the university, all of us IMed each other, as our coworkers were in different rooms, sometimes down the hall.
http://www.recoveredenergy.com/d_plasma.html
:)
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_gasification
Figured I'd save others the Googling.
However, I think it's telling that we tend to take it for granted that such a human failure is very likely. I mean, we've been politically scheming, warring, backstabbing, cheating, and generally being selfish all throughout the history of humanity. The very fact that people like Jesus (assuming he existed), the Dalai Lama, and war veterans are so revered is (I believe) directly related to the rarity of unselfishness in the general public.
The growth of Corporations as legal entities seems unchecked. I expect this plutarchy will continue, not due to technology, but (as you said) due to misuse of POWER (not just technology). The cyberpunk view of the future is not due solely to technology, but to a belief that we humans will misuse it given the chance. (Heck, look at what we have people doing with surveillance technology now.)
So, then a more appropriate thing would be something like,
;)), the latter is spelled phonetically. Strangely (or not?), I have a really hard time reading phonetical renditions of words, as compared to typos.
"Wo creas as lnog sa u cna raed it?"
vs
hu kars so lng as u cn reed it?
Interesting. The former is made of typos I might make (and have, though not at once
"Ethical" behavior which one only applies when the other party "deserves" it is not ethical behavior. The only way to maintain the moral high ground is to continue to act in an ethical manner, EVEN IF the opposition does not.
- If you lie to someone because they lied to you, you are still a liar.
- If you break/ignore a contract/promise you've agreed to, because you feel the others are undeserving of respect, you've still reneged on a contract/promise and are thus in the same boat of weasels.
Of course, if you hold them to the letter of the agreement, or ensure that they agree to one more beneficial to you, that is not the same thing at all. (-: Still, my main point was that you shouldn't jump into the gutter just because your enemy did too.
Instead,
- Some have started/supported military action with a foreign country which was unconnected with said attacks, and was not an immediate threat
- Some have put bombs at abortion clinics: i.e., tried to kill people to prevent them from having an abortion. (I think most of us agree that someone willing to kill another to get people to conform to their beliefs about what is "moral" is most certainly a religious extremist.)
Which bothers you more?
- 2,974 people were killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001.
- 3858 US soldiers are confirmed dead by the DoD due to operations in Afghanistan/Iraq
- Roughly 17 times more people get killed by drunk drivers than by terrorists in the US.
If we were concerned about TRUE security and public safety, wouldn't we be far more interested in preventing the deaths due to non-ideological causes (drunk driving, other car accidents), rather than waging war in other nations?
What I find funny is, this sounds like the report's equivalent of "a miracle happens here". I would love if such capability existed (think of the RSI-avoidance!
Still, once such technology exists
I agree that it's Bad Form to leverage copyright as they are, but at the same time
The globalization of copyright is a scary thought, though. It's a sticky wicket no matter how you look at it.
Just because someone has been wrong in the past, does not affect the truth or validity of their current statements or arguments. It is foolish (though common human behavior) to discredit someone due to past untruthfulness, but it falls into the trap illustrated by Aesop's fable of the boy who cried wolf.
Someone may be a hypocrite, but that doesn't make them wrong when they're talking about abuse of the constitution. Look at the claim at face value, not at whether the claim was made by a "lefty" or "liberal screecher", and judge the claim on its own merits, not on the merits of the claimant.
I think it's not just the brains at the start of the process, but those all along.
Good point. I admit that I *loved* Eternal Darkness (and am on my second playthrough). The control scheme seemed strange and simplistic, but at the same time ... once you mastered it, you could really dish out some whupass. (-: I think I shall be more forgiving of Too Human's control quirks, and trust that it will be Better Than I Feared.
;))? On one hand, I dislike that I may feel "forced" to replay the same crap until I get better drops ... but it's not like I don't enjoy that some of the time in WoW, either. Going back to older content and demolishing it DOES have an element of fun, as long as it's optional.
I'm curious about the loot system. Will this lead to grinding in areas until I get the one random Shoulders of Awesomesauce, which everyone on the internet knows are better than the Spaulders of L33tness (OK, I don't believe that
I'm most intrigued that this may reduce the perceived "necessity" to find a walkthrough and play by that. So many games (Tron 2, Deus Ex, etc etc) have little experience or powerup bonuses hidden across the levels. While it's fun to find them, it always seems like if I don't go for them, my character will be insufficiently prepared for the challenges to come. On some Deus Ex levels, if I didn't play the "clear everything out and explore every nook, and read the walkthrough to make sure I pick the dialog options that don't screw me" game, there was a substantial difference in the amount of skill points (or whatever the resources were) and nanites available. At least when it's random, the answer sounds like it will be, "Play more, and you'll get better. Go have fun, be a badass."
I realize that this "necessity" of getting a walkthrough is self-imposed. It even feels like cheating, sometimes. But, the difference between using one and not often seems very dramatic, especially when there's no "going back" to explore later (whether it's exploring zones, respeccing, or trying different gear out).
Signed might not mean "signed by the phone vendor", but just "signed by the developer with a chain of trust so we know you're not some hacker in Elbonia". The latter is still secure, if you can trust the chain. Well, more of, if it's NOT secure, you know who to point the finger at.
I think one problem is that many of us, no matter how knowledgeable we are in our subject, are not necessarily skilled at writing and editing prose documents. If a professional technical editor were to donate time to edit some of the major articles, I imagine the quality would be improved.
A side issue you touch on is the "non-encyclopedia" type things. I would expect that it should be fairly straightforward to write the how-to at wikihow.com (or some similar site), and link to it from the Wikipedia article. I know that when I look up some obscure language or algorithm, it's nice to be able to find a link to a beginning-level text. In a related direction, it'd be nice if for certain categories (Lisp, rocket science, molecular biology, the history of wales), links were provided to well-recognized textbooks on the subject.
For example, the MIT press Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is reknowned as a rich resource for those wanting to learn (whether about Lisp or about programming), the Gigamonkey's book Practical Common Lisp is considered a great starter text for Common Lisp, and Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography is so well regarded as to be referred to as "The Book" (or "The UFO Book") in the crypto community. I'm very happy to see that books like this are often mentioned in the Wikipedia articles.