Australia has a huge history of labour unions, and they've traditionally been quite powerful, including links to the strongest political party in the nation (the opposing party to them is actually a coalition of two parties which had to band together to compete federally and in almost all states). It's due to them that the working conditions in Australia have historically been pretty good. These days the unions are no longer as strong, but they still certainly have a place.
Actually the magnetic north pole is in Antarctica, so if the maps were drawn with the north pole at the top (as you'd expect), it's Australia who's on the top of the world and it's all your silly Northern Hemisphere continents which would be dropping off the globe.
That's a fair point, but I wasn't suggesting that it should be banned. I just had a mental flash of a game like that being sold through mainstream channels and being commonly accepted...
Well, fortunately, I think we're a fair way off that yet.
What about when the player can choose whether or not to be highly violent? For example, a Star Wars game where you can go to the Light or Dark side, and could have a pivotal moment involving "helplessness of the victim". The game does not encourage the player to be excessively violent, but gives them the option to be.
Yep, and that could spell serious trouble for everyone enjoying the unlimited usage in the US. I know that in Australia the ISPs saw it coming, so limited the amount of data transferred per month (typically to less than 20GB). You may yet be facing those kinds of restrictions yourselves.
Uh, perhaps you should have checked this particular article before you copy and pasted this rant - the only place he links his blog is his name-link; the others are legit publications. I'd have said that linking to blogs are just about exactly what name-links are for.
OK, regardless of whether or not this is a good idea, maybe someone should let this guy know what the bill is about.
"Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not,"
Maybe he was trying to outlaw violence in movies and got his media mixed up?
Extremely interesting, and it looks like the team who developed it are legit, but I don't suppose you know if they've had their research published, do you? Would feel more secure in getting excited about it if it has gone through a thorough peer review.
Yes, it's more of an invention rather than a scientific breakthrough, but if the project leader is a physicist I'm guessing they had to make some sort of scientific achievement to achieve results like these.
It's going to be fascinating watching what happens over the next few decades, and how the governments and people of the world end up dealing with it. It could go all sorts of ways.
I'm sorry, but this is completely wrong. A positron and an electron both have spin + or - 1/2, the difference is in their charge. You can't 'spin it too far' - that doesn't even make sense on a quantum-physical level, unless there have been amazing leaps that I somehow missed in recent years.
Or put another way, if you manage to 'learn' something from Civ 1-4 or Railroad Tycoon then your education must have truly sucked.
The idea is that these games are being used with kids who are still undergoing their education. I know that when I was 7 or 8 and playing the original Civilization, I was definitely hearing for the first time about the ancient 'Wonders' of the world.
I think it's safe to say that if we created a 10-foot version of these they'd naturally go after politicians as the closest analogy to cockroaches at this scale. Unfortunately, this wouldn't deal with Bush, since they need a brain to work on.
What happened to the day when it was more important to be right and honest than to sell tons of books/magazines/newspapers?
That day was over as soon as it cost more to fact-check a book than the projected profit. Or, more cynically, perhaps when it was calculated that the expected loss from erroneous facts was less than the cost of fact-checking. Either way, publishers are not a public service; they are a for-profit business, and typically not a particularly high-margin business. What would you prefer: A percentage of books with incorrect facts, or no books at all because the industry isn't profitable?
Me, I'm just looking forward to the e-book days when publishing will cost next to zilch, and it's easy to post and check reviews - user-moderating systems are handy things.
Yeah, the administration clearly aren't nazis! So what are all these leftists complaining about? Sure, they're curtailing freedom, spying on nationals, and invading other countries, but they don't salute the swastika, so they're obviously not bad guys.
When it comes to valuable databases and such, it's best to keep them on a remote-access-only server, and only allow the data to be accessed in controlled ways. Then, typically, it's trivial to disable mass-export for everyone except those who might need it (usually just sysadmins). While, technically, this doesn't stop someone from going through by hand and recording everything, this does make it much more time-consuming and more obvious in logs.
"OK, we need to find a way to make more money - the Blizzard guy who lives across the road has five yachts, and I'm still paying off my third."
"Well, they've got a highly popular Massively Multiplayer, which brings in a lot of cash because of their subscription model."
"Massively Multiplayer, eh? When is ours coming out?"
"Uh, we won't have one for another nine months."
"Nine months! They could have a dozen by then! We need one of these 'subscription models' as soon as possible. What do we have?"
"Just some highly anticipated single-player games in the next couple of months."
"Highly anticipated, huh? Maybe...highly anticipated enough to be willing to pay a subscription model for no good reason?"
"Uh...I wouldn't know, boss. No-one has ever been that evil."
"Yes, yes, I know. I'm a genius. Make it happen."
Ah, I think you've made a slight mistake here. When the grandparent post referred to "very complicated molecules", I'm fairly sure that (s)he was talking about the set of occasionally rather complex molecules which are necessary for life as we know it.
Yeah, the great thing about that little prediction was that this story was published in 2000.
Anyway, here's something a little more recent, even though it's not a scientific paper. Unfortunately, it seems that recent tests indicate that this concept will probably not solve any problems.
Ah ha, I knew the black hat meant something - hackers are witches! Obviously the problem was that they didn't protect their data from being read in hex-idecimal.
...So long as the malware doesn't affect the sales. And it won't affect the sales unless there's a better looking competitor, either because Microsoft aren't patching quickly enough or the quality of the competitors (read: Linux distributions, in general) improve in the eyes of the public to the point where they can compete. Microsoft hasn't needed to worry about the second much since the last time it was competing with other mainstream (such as the Apple OSes, early in the game), but the first has always remained important in the long term. If the OS became so full of vulnerabilities that it was unstable to run, then people would start turning to other OSes and then the share price would take a serious nose-dive. So long as they remain relatively on top of it, and appear (mostly) reliable, short-term problems won't affect their sales, and therefore their share price.
The problem with this idea is that it will cause people to be much more cautious in their investing, and therefore only invest in companies that have proven to be reliable - big companies. While big companies aren't immune from losses, no-one will be willing to invest in start-ups or innovative small companies since they are so unpredictable.
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Australia has a huge history of labour unions, and they've traditionally been quite powerful, including links to the strongest political party in the nation (the opposing party to them is actually a coalition of two parties which had to band together to compete federally and in almost all states). It's due to them that the working conditions in Australia have historically been pretty good. These days the unions are no longer as strong, but they still certainly have a place.
Actually the magnetic north pole is in Antarctica, so if the maps were drawn with the north pole at the top (as you'd expect), it's Australia who's on the top of the world and it's all your silly Northern Hemisphere continents which would be dropping off the globe.
Eh, was basically what I was trying to get at - My version was closer to reality than its parent, and yours was closer again.
That's a fair point, but I wasn't suggesting that it should be banned. I just had a mental flash of a game like that being sold through mainstream channels and being commonly accepted...
Well, fortunately, I think we're a fair way off that yet.
Guns? OK! Using guns? NO!
Which is actually pretty reasonable. It's just that "Simulation of using guns? NO!", which is what's being proposed, is rather silly.
The day that the main character in a video game commits rape is the day that things have officially gone way, way too far.
What about when the player can choose whether or not to be highly violent? For example, a Star Wars game where you can go to the Light or Dark side, and could have a pivotal moment involving "helplessness of the victim". The game does not encourage the player to be excessively violent, but gives them the option to be.
Yep, and that could spell serious trouble for everyone enjoying the unlimited usage in the US. I know that in Australia the ISPs saw it coming, so limited the amount of data transferred per month (typically to less than 20GB). You may yet be facing those kinds of restrictions yourselves.
Uh, perhaps you should have checked this particular article before you copy and pasted this rant - the only place he links his blog is his name-link; the others are legit publications. I'd have said that linking to blogs are just about exactly what name-links are for.
"Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not,"
Maybe he was trying to outlaw violence in movies and got his media mixed up?
Yes, it's more of an invention rather than a scientific breakthrough, but if the project leader is a physicist I'm guessing they had to make some sort of scientific achievement to achieve results like these.
It's going to be fascinating watching what happens over the next few decades, and how the governments and people of the world end up dealing with it. It could go all sorts of ways.
I'm sorry, but this is completely wrong. A positron and an electron both have spin + or - 1/2, the difference is in their charge. You can't 'spin it too far' - that doesn't even make sense on a quantum-physical level, unless there have been amazing leaps that I somehow missed in recent years.
The idea is that these games are being used with kids who are still undergoing their education. I know that when I was 7 or 8 and playing the original Civilization, I was definitely hearing for the first time about the ancient 'Wonders' of the world.
Considering they're required by law to maximise their profits, no crap. They can't choose ethics over profits.
I think it's safe to say that if we created a 10-foot version of these they'd naturally go after politicians as the closest analogy to cockroaches at this scale. Unfortunately, this wouldn't deal with Bush, since they need a brain to work on.
That day was over as soon as it cost more to fact-check a book than the projected profit. Or, more cynically, perhaps when it was calculated that the expected loss from erroneous facts was less than the cost of fact-checking. Either way, publishers are not a public service; they are a for-profit business, and typically not a particularly high-margin business. What would you prefer: A percentage of books with incorrect facts, or no books at all because the industry isn't profitable?
Me, I'm just looking forward to the e-book days when publishing will cost next to zilch, and it's easy to post and check reviews - user-moderating systems are handy things.
Yeah, the administration clearly aren't nazis! So what are all these leftists complaining about? Sure, they're curtailing freedom, spying on nationals, and invading other countries, but they don't salute the swastika, so they're obviously not bad guys.
When it comes to valuable databases and such, it's best to keep them on a remote-access-only server, and only allow the data to be accessed in controlled ways. Then, typically, it's trivial to disable mass-export for everyone except those who might need it (usually just sysadmins). While, technically, this doesn't stop someone from going through by hand and recording everything, this does make it much more time-consuming and more obvious in logs.
"OK, we need to find a way to make more money - the Blizzard guy who lives across the road has five yachts, and I'm still paying off my third."
"Well, they've got a highly popular Massively Multiplayer, which brings in a lot of cash because of their subscription model."
"Massively Multiplayer, eh? When is ours coming out?"
"Uh, we won't have one for another nine months."
"Nine months! They could have a dozen by then! We need one of these 'subscription models' as soon as possible. What do we have?"
"Just some highly anticipated single-player games in the next couple of months."
"Highly anticipated, huh? Maybe...highly anticipated enough to be willing to pay a subscription model for no good reason?"
"Uh...I wouldn't know, boss. No-one has ever been that evil."
"Yes, yes, I know. I'm a genius. Make it happen."
Ah, I think you've made a slight mistake here. When the grandparent post referred to "very complicated molecules", I'm fairly sure that (s)he was talking about the set of occasionally rather complex molecules which are necessary for life as we know it.
Anyway, here's something a little more recent, even though it's not a scientific paper. Unfortunately, it seems that recent tests indicate that this concept will probably not solve any problems.
Ah ha, I knew the black hat meant something - hackers are witches! Obviously the problem was that they didn't protect their data from being read in hex-idecimal.
...So long as the malware doesn't affect the sales. And it won't affect the sales unless there's a better looking competitor, either because Microsoft aren't patching quickly enough or the quality of the competitors (read: Linux distributions, in general) improve in the eyes of the public to the point where they can compete. Microsoft hasn't needed to worry about the second much since the last time it was competing with other mainstream (such as the Apple OSes, early in the game), but the first has always remained important in the long term. If the OS became so full of vulnerabilities that it was unstable to run, then people would start turning to other OSes and then the share price would take a serious nose-dive. So long as they remain relatively on top of it, and appear (mostly) reliable, short-term problems won't affect their sales, and therefore their share price.
The problem with this idea is that it will cause people to be much more cautious in their investing, and therefore only invest in companies that have proven to be reliable - big companies. While big companies aren't immune from losses, no-one will be willing to invest in start-ups or innovative small companies since they are so unpredictable.