Despite a few areas of marginal success, there are still fundamental structural difficulties in Britannica as a project, that its founder (Colin "Jimbo" Macfarquhar) has yet to address.
Now, don't get me wrong, Britannica is acceptable for satisfying incidental questions, perhaps a good tool for satisfying children's curiousity, but I wouldn't rely on it as a serious reference tool.
Some say they prefer the tactile sensation of a book over our more traditional, electronic forms of learning. But I don't think Britannica can rely on such an obvious gimmick for too long.
It's clear to anyone who thinks seriously about this issue that an encyclopedia which doesn't allow immediate revision of errors by anyone who finds them will never have the credibility of a wiki.
Britannica's slow production schedule and restriction of edits to a tiny, select group of so-called 'experts' will always plague it with difficulties. I, for one, will have nothing to do with it, and hope they abandon this foolhardy experiment before people begin to hastily grant them an ounce of credibility.
PS - I tried to give Brian Chase the nickname "Herostratus" in wikipedia, but they corrected it in under five seconds. The great anarcho-democratic encyclopedia is dead.
"On another note the guy has an interestingly hungarian sounding name."
This is the last sentence from the comment. I'm sorry, but I cannot take anything in that comment seriously. On another note, I preferred the string of puns in the comments above.
Anyone else think this is similar to the visibility gadgetry in some FPSs, like the camera darts in Splinter Cell?
It'd be interesting to see grenade cameras exactly like these in FPSs, hopefully we'll get that soon. Then we can test out all the mad sp10itz so the government doesn't have to.:)
I'd vouch for the tactical usefulness short range visibility tech, but IRL I'd probably just run in to clear a room of terrorists, accidentally cycle to my cam-nade, bean a terrorist in the head with one, then die by a headshot while circle-strafing him and waiting for my damn handgun to autoload.
Also, any chance we can combine this invention with this one? It's just not the future until little copter cameras are buzzing around like mosquitos all over the place.
The Focus of Technology Moves To People With Web 2.0. One of the lessons the software industry relearns every generation is that it's always a people problem. It's not that people are the actual problem of course. It's when software developers naively use technology to try to solve our problems instead of addressing the underlying issues that people are actually facing. Then the wrong things inevitably happen...
Or does someone have a link that's translated from PR bullshit to English?
Good thing we stopped relying on unnatural ideals of beauty in other media long ago, like film and magazines. Video games have had a few decades, when will they f-in' catch up?
Seriously, I'm tired of video games treated as some sort of special exception we hold to a higher standard. Articles like this simply revel in the dismissive stereotype that the industry is dominated by undersexed males... which it clearly is... er, but... my point is that other industries that are not so dominated also prop up these abusive cultural ideas of beauty. If our idealistic attitudes about beauty are actually so corrosive, why are we getting singled out again?
Some of your corrections I agree with; while I feel others undermine the scope of the new markets that emerged based on these games. Almost every one of these games' success could not be anticipated in terms of the existing market. That was my main point: feeding the existing market what it seems to want is a recipe for disaster in content creation. It's a mistake people make in film, music, television... but video games serve the point just as well.
The most illustrative example is probably Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo was novel not because it was a racing game, but because of it's meticulous emphasis on real cars and physics. It may not have been a ludicrous and unheard of idea, but it was a novel enough departure from the existing market that the idea was repeatedly passed on by game producers until Yamauchi built up enough credibility in the company that he couldn't be refused. The producers represented the "target market" philosophy, and Yamauchi represented designing something interesting for the sake of itself, to follow his inspiration. Yamauchi was right, the producers were wrong.
Now, I'll concede that completely disregarding what games work and which don't is a bad idea. If no one wants another tennis game, then don't make another tennis game without bringing something new to the table. But if you're checking your inspiration at the door because you don't have 100% surety that a market will support your product, you should stop trying to create things, and just go be an actuary.
Yeah, it might be fair to focus on target market when designing a purely functional product, but when designing a piece of entertainment, the factors you must weigh are completely different.
The success of a piece of entertainment often has a great deal to do with how novel it is, not how faithful it is to past forms. We like art that's refreshing. You can't get stimulation by repeating the same process over and over again.
For example: Super Mario Brothers Pac Man The Sims Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Tetris Doom Civilization Myst Gran Turismo
Many of these games had no prior target market to rely upon, because they were fairly novel, at least for their chosen medium.
Throughout history, we championed the content creator. Only a tiny fraction of the population could write or understood math or science. Only a tiny fraction could dedicate themselves to the arts.
Most individuals' time was consumed by being agrarian generalists: they owned a farm, and they were constantly occupied by all the repairs and maintenance of their property. It wasn't a job, it was a way of life. But now, more and more, our economy makes us all incredible specialists. We're confined not only to a literal cubicle, but to a cubicle of tasks, often only seeing one tiny part of our contribution to social welfare. But as a result, we end up with leisure time. (Cf. Judge Skelly Wright's opinion in Javins v. First National Realty Corporation). While those reading/. while at work might quibble, the fact is that we all now have meaningful leisure time in some sense, we're not dedicated 100% to our livelihood.
In addition, current technology is allowing us to collaborate and share information as a global community like it never has before.
What does all this mean? For one, it means that techies can have bands, and even get national coverage, without giving up their day jobs. In fact, if MySpace is any evidence, anyone can have a band... and a lot of us already do. Also, given that 80,000 blogs are created each day (though 40,000 are probably also abandoned each day), huge throngs of people have something to say and are able to say it to huge, unrelated throngs of people.
The singularity is similar to the way other areas of economics have evolved. It used to be that 90% of the population made 100% of the food, and now only 10% of the population provides 100% of the food. It's the opposite for art and science (naturally, as we're freed from producing necessities, we can devote more time to producing luxuries, improving general quality of life, and solving more complex problems). Traditionally, 1% of the population made all the cultural content. The singularity? Soon, 99% of the population will be making 100% of the content.
For the first time in history, we are the captains not only of our personal destiny, but of our cultural destiny. However, as cultural creativity becomes so democratized, our contribution will become less and less controlling. Like Warhol said, it's not that we're all going to be famous, it's that we each only get 15 minutes.
THE DOWNSIDE OF A CULTURE OF CREATIVES, AND A SILVER LINING FOR SEARCH
A professor once said to me, "No one cares how much you know anymore, that's why we have the Internet. The important thing is creating new ideas." The formidible aspect of the new society of cultural creatives is that soon, no one will really need you to create ideas anymore either. Your drop in the cultural bucket is less and less meaningful every day. Content is easier and easier to make and share, and everyone wants to play, so as a corrolary, it will become harder and harder to find compensation as a cultural creative.
So what's the new valuable thing, in this storm of data/content? Maybe not making worthwhile contributions to the arts, science, knowledge, (which is important, but self sustaining). However, finding the worthwhile signal amidst all cultural noise is becoming more and more valuable. Someone needs to be a sieve for all the content being thrown around right now. Technologies of search and sort are the ways to do it. Google is not prospering because it learned something about advertising. Google is prospering because it precociously encapsulates the spirit of the dawning age, while most of us are still trying to figure out just what the hell I'm talking about.
On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages, when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost*. One article raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of pricegouging, which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.
So where's the congratulatory hype?
Here's some, though we're probably not seeing a huge amount of post-release PR because they can't meet extra demand such PR would generate anyway. And they probably gave their PR department a holiday after all their pre-release work.
Or maybe they fired them after all their ads got banned from TV.
Where are our promo boxes?
The other comments have covered this pretty well. Really, if M$ sent a big heavy box in the mail to the editors of/., would any of them actually risk opening it?
Personally, I wouldn't have been in Boulder in the first place.
A counterfactual is a special type of conditional that asserts something counter to the facts (a hypothetical to anyone outside of contemporary analytic philosophy). They typically cause no end of confusion due to their natural ambiguities.
The poster's counterfactual is ambiguous, in much the same way that allows both of the following statements to be coherently, simultaneously true: 1) If Caesar had invaded Iraq, he would use the Atomic Bomb. 2) If Caesar had invaded Iraq, he would use catapults.
Either of your interpretations is fair, on the face of the language. However, drawing an inference that the submitter was trying to say, "I endorse crime," seems somewhat less than charitable.
Slashdot Mirror
"Nixie" is just a genericized trademark.
[N]ame brand word association is one of the more subtle threats to this nation's free trade. It gives the larger, well-known companies an unfair advantage. I'm doing my part to keep the playing field level by weaning people off referring to generic products with brand names.
And yes, even though all the manufacturers are out of business, the principle here is still really important.
Despite a few areas of marginal success, there are still fundamental structural difficulties in Britannica as a project, that its founder (Colin "Jimbo" Macfarquhar) has yet to address.
Now, don't get me wrong, Britannica is acceptable for satisfying incidental questions, perhaps a good tool for satisfying children's curiousity, but I wouldn't rely on it as a serious reference tool.
Some say they prefer the tactile sensation of a book over our more traditional, electronic forms of learning. But I don't think Britannica can rely on such an obvious gimmick for too long.
It's clear to anyone who thinks seriously about this issue that an encyclopedia which doesn't allow immediate revision of errors by anyone who finds them will never have the credibility of a wiki.
Britannica's slow production schedule and restriction of edits to a tiny, select group of so-called 'experts' will always plague it with difficulties. I, for one, will have nothing to do with it, and hope they abandon this foolhardy experiment before people begin to hastily grant them an ounce of credibility.
Not only was that "me too" post not trolling, it was, in fact, the only appropriate reply.
Bravo!
Maybe they meant something else.
...my mind is a swirling miasma of scintillating thoughts and turgid ideas.
I thought this was a slam on the 360's reduced hard drive space.
Could we maybe not reuse acronyms?
Yeah, and Herostratus was also an Ephesian. Not all analogies are perfect.
I like how they talk wistfully about that great, stomach churning invention from 2005: "In Vitro Meat."
Ah, yeah, remember In Vitro Meat?
No? Neither did I.
It's because that article was published the same day (Dec. 11th, 2005).
I'm not sure a contemporaneous story could have "helped make 2005 what it was," at best it could be "helping to make 2005 what it is."
IV Meat is still worth a read though, it's a cyberpunk fantasy come true.
In Vitro Meat (free BugMeNot required).
Wait, so Chase killed JFK?
PS - I tried to give Brian Chase the nickname "Herostratus" in wikipedia, but they corrected it in under five seconds. The great anarcho-democratic encyclopedia is dead.
They have Splinter Cell on the consoles now? Didn't realize it, don't own any.
"On another note the guy has an interestingly hungarian sounding name."
This is the last sentence from the comment. I'm sorry, but I cannot take anything in that comment seriously. On another note, I preferred the string of puns in the comments above.
Anyone else think this is similar to the visibility gadgetry in some FPSs, like the camera darts in Splinter Cell?
:)
It'd be interesting to see grenade cameras exactly like these in FPSs, hopefully we'll get that soon. Then we can test out all the mad sp10itz so the government doesn't have to.
I'd vouch for the tactical usefulness short range visibility tech, but IRL I'd probably just run in to clear a room of terrorists, accidentally cycle to my cam-nade, bean a terrorist in the head with one, then die by a headshot while circle-strafing him and waiting for my damn handgun to autoload.
Also, any chance we can combine this invention with this one? It's just not the future until little copter cameras are buzzing around like mosquitos all over the place.
The Focus of Technology Moves To People With Web 2.0. One of the lessons the software industry relearns every generation is that it's always a people problem. It's not that people are the actual problem of course. It's when software developers naively use technology to try to solve our problems instead of addressing the underlying issues that people are actually facing. Then the wrong things inevitably happen...
Or does someone have a link that's translated from PR bullshit to English?
Good thing we stopped relying on unnatural ideals of beauty in other media long ago, like film and magazines. Video games have had a few decades, when will they f-in' catch up?
Seriously, I'm tired of video games treated as some sort of special exception we hold to a higher standard. Articles like this simply revel in the dismissive stereotype that the industry is dominated by undersexed males... which it clearly is... er, but... my point is that other industries that are not so dominated also prop up these abusive cultural ideas of beauty. If our idealistic attitudes about beauty are actually so corrosive, why are we getting singled out again?
Oh yeah, America hates gamers.
Good response.
Some of your corrections I agree with; while I feel others undermine the scope of the new markets that emerged based on these games. Almost every one of these games' success could not be anticipated in terms of the existing market. That was my main point: feeding the existing market what it seems to want is a recipe for disaster in content creation. It's a mistake people make in film, music, television... but video games serve the point just as well.
The most illustrative example is probably Gran Turismo.
Gran Turismo was novel not because it was a racing game, but because of it's meticulous emphasis on real cars and physics. It may not have been a ludicrous and unheard of idea, but it was a novel enough departure from the existing market that the idea was repeatedly passed on by game producers until Yamauchi built up enough credibility in the company that he couldn't be refused. The producers represented the "target market" philosophy, and Yamauchi represented designing something interesting for the sake of itself, to follow his inspiration. Yamauchi was right, the producers were wrong.
Now, I'll concede that completely disregarding what games work and which don't is a bad idea. If no one wants another tennis game, then don't make another tennis game without bringing something new to the table. But if you're checking your inspiration at the door because you don't have 100% surety that a market will support your product, you should stop trying to create things, and just go be an actuary.
I can finally buy that Xenu Space Plane I've had my eye on.
Yeah, it might be fair to focus on target market when designing a purely functional product, but when designing a piece of entertainment, the factors you must weigh are completely different.
The success of a piece of entertainment often has a great deal to do with how novel it is, not how faithful it is to past forms. We like art that's refreshing. You can't get stimulation by repeating the same process over and over again.
For example:
Super Mario Brothers
Pac Man
The Sims
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Tetris
Doom
Civilization
Myst
Gran Turismo
Many of these games had no prior target market to rely upon, because they were fairly novel, at least for their chosen medium.
I like how the article makes a point of distinguishing between well-reviewed games that make money and well-reviewed games that lose money.
It's pretty comprehensive. Because as we all know, no game ever gets anything less than a 7/10 from critics.
Except for Daikatana.
It'd be so easy:
Input starting location.
Input destination.
Step 1: Buy a car.
Freaking Space Elevators!!!
THE SINGULARITY
/. while at work might quibble, the fact is that we all now have meaningful leisure time in some sense, we're not dedicated 100% to our livelihood.
Throughout history, we championed the content creator. Only a tiny fraction of the population could write or understood math or science. Only a tiny fraction could dedicate themselves to the arts.
Most individuals' time was consumed by being agrarian generalists: they owned a farm, and they were constantly occupied by all the repairs and maintenance of their property. It wasn't a job, it was a way of life. But now, more and more, our economy makes us all incredible specialists. We're confined not only to a literal cubicle, but to a cubicle of tasks, often only seeing one tiny part of our contribution to social welfare. But as a result, we end up with leisure time. (Cf. Judge Skelly Wright's opinion in Javins v. First National Realty Corporation). While those reading
In addition, current technology is allowing us to collaborate and share information as a global community like it never has before.
What does all this mean? For one, it means that techies can have bands, and even get national coverage, without giving up their day jobs. In fact, if MySpace is any evidence, anyone can have a band... and a lot of us already do. Also, given that 80,000 blogs are created each day (though 40,000 are probably also abandoned each day), huge throngs of people have something to say and are able to say it to huge, unrelated throngs of people.
The singularity is similar to the way other areas of economics have evolved. It used to be that 90% of the population made 100% of the food, and now only 10% of the population provides 100% of the food. It's the opposite for art and science (naturally, as we're freed from producing necessities, we can devote more time to producing luxuries, improving general quality of life, and solving more complex problems). Traditionally, 1% of the population made all the cultural content. The singularity? Soon, 99% of the population will be making 100% of the content.
For the first time in history, we are the captains not only of our personal destiny, but of our cultural destiny. However, as cultural creativity becomes so democratized, our contribution will become less and less controlling. Like Warhol said, it's not that we're all going to be famous, it's that we each only get 15 minutes.
THE DOWNSIDE OF A CULTURE OF CREATIVES, AND A SILVER LINING FOR SEARCH
A professor once said to me, "No one cares how much you know anymore, that's why we have the Internet. The important thing is creating new ideas." The formidible aspect of the new society of cultural creatives is that soon, no one will really need you to create ideas anymore either. Your drop in the cultural bucket is less and less meaningful every day. Content is easier and easier to make and share, and everyone wants to play, so as a corrolary, it will become harder and harder to find compensation as a cultural creative.
So what's the new valuable thing, in this storm of data/content? Maybe not making worthwhile contributions to the arts, science, knowledge, (which is important, but self sustaining). However, finding the worthwhile signal amidst all cultural noise is becoming more and more valuable. Someone needs to be a sieve for all the content being thrown around right now. Technologies of search and sort are the ways to do it. Google is not prospering because it learned something about advertising. Google is prospering because it precociously encapsulates the spirit of the dawning age, while most of us are still trying to figure out just what the hell I'm talking about.
So where's the XBox 360?
/., would any of them actually risk opening it?
On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages, when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost*. One article raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of price gouging, which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.
So where's the congratulatory hype?
Here's some, though we're probably not seeing a huge amount of post-release PR because they can't meet extra demand such PR would generate anyway. And they probably gave their PR department a holiday after all their pre-release work.
Or maybe they fired them after all their ads got banned from TV.
Where are our promo boxes?
The other comments have covered this pretty well. Really, if M$ sent a big heavy box in the mail to the editors of
Or maybe yours just got smashed uh... "in the mail."
*Another estimate of XBox cost/unit, from BusinessWeek.
**I don't actually think M$ planned to sell direct on Ebay to capitalize on created shortages, but it's still an interesting idea.
...we've found something IQ tests actually correlate with.
All this time we've just been testing for a gene and we didn't know it, go figure.
Usually I'd check wikipedia... but eh, they're silent on it.
Personally, I wouldn't have been in Boulder in the first place.
A counterfactual is a special type of conditional that asserts something counter to the facts (a hypothetical to anyone outside of contemporary analytic philosophy). They typically cause no end of confusion due to their natural ambiguities.
For more on these logical puzzles, I recommend W.V.O. Quine and David Lewis.
The poster's counterfactual is ambiguous, in much the same way that allows both of the following statements to be coherently, simultaneously true:
1) If Caesar had invaded Iraq, he would use the Atomic Bomb.
2) If Caesar had invaded Iraq, he would use catapults.
Either of your interpretations is fair, on the face of the language. However, drawing an inference that the submitter was trying to say, "I endorse crime," seems somewhat less than charitable.