The sting felt by those responsible is approval ratings going downwards throughout both of your terms.
I'm all for easing the soldiers' lives; that is, the ones lucky enough to survive. When you're in the trench [not speaking from experience], you know that you have to do what you're ordered to, no matter how much it stings. You most likely didn't end up there by choice.
[long pause]
Dammit. I'm angry now. Please don't read the next paragraph. Bush should be charged with high treason for attacking American ideals and values (balance of power between the three, increased surveillance; you can probably add more). He should be charged with violating the constitution. He should be charged with reckless endangerment (of the lives of soldiers). He should be charged with human rights violations for allowing waterboarding to take place, and not giving people a fair trial. He should be charged with violating the Geneva convention regarding the handling of war prisoners.
[continue reading from here]
Bush, not the soldiers, should feel the sting of war.
If you've watched Fahrenheit 911, you may remember the scene where Moore walks around in DC asking politicians whether they want to send their sons and daughters off to die^W^H fight in Iraq.
That, to me, captured the problem: the worst happening to those in power, when they misuse it, is that they lose it. That is, the very worst position they can be put in is the one everybody is in all the time.
Untrue! It is possible to cryptographically lock media to your identity.
Citation needed. Exactly what is the protocol? You send them your public key, they send you an mp3 encrypted with it?
(Whereby your identity is represented by a public/private key pair.) By loading your key to your different devices (something that can be done transparently if there is a standard), you can remove the media barriers while still throwing up barriers against illicit sharing.
Why don't I give my key to my six billion closest friends?
Why don't I just simulate the computation done by the devices on my general-purpose computer, extract the resulting drm-free audio/video stream and dump it to disk?
So in general allowing lighted working conditions during your work day.
It's bright outside when you sit inside with the flourescent lights and the computer screens, and it's dark outside when you want to play soccer with your kids [don't have any]. That's really well thought out;)
For legal purposes, I think online games should be defined as a foreign nation. No actual property or currency crosses the border into your real country of residence, since it all exists in game
True, but the virtual property is still possessed in The Netherlands, in the sense that the item (user:pass) required to control use of the virtual property resides in the victim boy's head in The Netherlands. In the same sense, you possess your car through the proxy that is your car keys.
Lawyers are used to dealing with indirect forms of possession. I remember reading an interesting wikipedia article about it, but I can't seem to find it now.
I don't think there's a need to turn online worlds into foreign nations. But one has to be careful about which laws to transplant onto them. Forbidding killing other characters--would that also make it illegal to depict murder in movies? Would it make Wile E. Coyote's cartoon acts of attempted animal cruelty illegal? For the more gruesome, see Happy Tree Friends.
I think a good first approximation for judging when to apply laws to what happens in virtual worlds is to look at the real world effects. The kid was violently forced to give up real-world possesion (of a virtual object).
If someone ganks me over and over and over, and doesn't target anyone else, that would probably annoy me to no end. Maybe, depending on the facts of the case, that should be treated as harassment [I'm being annoyed in the real world for the sole purpose of annoying me]. That's a big Maybe, though, and people should be a bit thick-skinned.
But if someone hides in the bushes near the main road and succeeds their pick pockets roll against me, I'm not being deprived of real-world possession: my power to control use of my virtual gold pieces only go as far as the rules of the game say it goes.
So, extending laws into virtual worlds: no. But the virtual worlds are a part of the real world. In some cases it would make sense to apply real-world laws to something that in part takes place in a virtual world. Be wary of techno-illiterate judges, though.
Whereas in my world of free speech, everyone deserves air time for their beliefs and if they can't express them clearly or if they make no sense, then its their loss.
I'm all for Michael Behe being allowed to speak his mind. On his blogspot account, or his own webhost, or on the sidewalks. Being allowed to express your views isn't the same as being allowed to express your views _everywhere_. I'm free to talk about my backgammon strategies, but I'm not free to do it in the chess club.
Behe's views are not scientific*. They do not belong in any scientific discussion. No scientific institution should be compelled to let him speak at or in the name of that institution (be it a journal, a university or whatever else you can come up with).
*if you think Behe's views are scientific, please explain to me one of his theoretical models, what predictions can be made from this theory, and what evidence will show that prediction to be false.
Generating questions is not itself a sign of a bad study.
Generating questions about the study is (often) a bad thing; it means the article is unclear or lacks information.
Generating questions about reality is (often) a good thing; it means there's more science to be done because there's rich system of causality and "moving parts" beneath the surface. IOW, there is a "there" there.
[and if I had actually read more than the summary, I might have chimed in with my opinion on whether it is indeed a bad study].
I would have guessed it to be all the Whitespace in the C and assembly. That's a language that can really brainfuck you. A real gem, a perl I tell you;)
[commercial] programmers are insulated from the users and have got used to the annoyances and so can't be bothered to fix them.
The solution is for the organization to eat its own dog food, give _everybody_ submit-access to the bug tracker for _everything_, and teach people to use it aggressively. Tell them that nothing is too much to ask for, but the answer may be no:)
No matter what kind of software you write [almost], you can use it for something in your organization. Music player? Encourage the IT/dev people to listen to music using it. Image (photo) editor? Use it for the images of well-clad smiling people on the company web page. Blogging software? Have people hand in their weekly reports to the manager in form of a blog post. Be just a tiny bit creative.
Anything that speeds up voting encourages greater participation.
How long does it take the average voter to cast his or her vote, in your guesstimate? How long has it taken you? From my vague memory, it takes me transportation [2 x 2km by bike] plus five to ten minutes. If you mean to talk about tallying speeds, you're saying that some people go "I could vote, but because I'm going to have the result in $n days instead of... still getting the result in $n days, I'm not going to".
I don't know much about voter registration in the US [in Denmark, you get a card mailed to you that you hand in at the voting hall in exchange for an empty ballot], but I suspect that this is the real culprit. I remember John Taylor Gatto (.com) say in one of his talks that he sent some of his students (\in K-12) out on the streets handing out voter registration forms. People came running and screaming for them.
I think the danish system works very well. Voter turnout is still too low in my opinion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout says it's 87%), but at least the bar is fairly low; if people abstain due to apathy or a busy schedule, that's not really something you can fix by forcing them to turn up [and cast a blank vote].
But I agree with your view; actually, an overarching one: making voting easier makes more people do it.
If the internet had existed in the time of the founding fathers, I feel sure they would have used it to give the people greater oversight of the legislative process.
s/legislative process/all of government/. All power must be kept in check.
Nope mind control was a protoss ability in the expansion.
You're talking past me. Yes, mind control is a Protoss ability, I know that. What I'm saying is that it _should_ be a zerg ability, because the zergs already do mind control: the overmind controls the cerebrates who control the overlords who control the underlings by injecting radioactive overlord midichlorian DNA. It only makes sense that overlords can inject their DNA into non-zerg brains and reprogram them (because as we all know, brain cells, not sperm cells, are among the fastest splitting*). How's _that_ for a plausible mechanism?;)
Similarly, Prodigal Sorceror _is_ blue, but _should_ be red, since direct damage is red's game.
I'm just sick of the entitlement mentality that is wedded to a near Stockholm Syndrome among a lot of younger people.
The distribution cost has been cut down by a huge amount since this whole internets thing came about. I would love to see some way of funding musicians (which I think is needed to get music of a high enough quality to satisfy peoples' needs) that would allow us all to share the music freely and would allocate the funding to those who turn in into the greatest societal benefit.
Once a good enough piece of music is out there, people are willing to donate their own electricity and bandwidth to give it to other people. The "only" thing left is getting the first copy out there.
If, say, we're taxed more and the National Arts Council allocates funding*, we as a public, having already purchased the music, would be entitled to it. We could still make the right of public performance exclusive to the creator [tangent: but copy-bands is also a good thing... maybe a short, say one year, exclusivity period is the right deal].
* I hear that's where some of the money going into Elephants Dream and the other fruity blender projects came from (where $nation = Netherlands). And I don't think this'll work well on a large scale, being essentially a plan economy.
Most people think computers are incapable of being incorrect.
I strongly disagree, and I'll explain why.
Microsoft is trying hard to change that, but they are getting less effective.
Heh:) A large portion of people remember the days of windows 95 and apps crashing all over the place, and the infamous blue screen of death. Even in XP you run into the neat dialog box "[App crashed! Send us your private information yes-no?]".
If the computer is wrong, it must have been something that the user did incorrect.
True some of the time. If the user can connect in their mind something they did with an undesired outcome, the outcome will act as a punishment [don't you love B.F. Skinner?] and they will learn to not do those things. Your example is probably a good one.
If they can't identify their own action as causally related to the undesired outcome (the poorly coded application segfaults during a full moon when precisely three files are opened at the same time), they won't learn what not to do.
If they can't causally link their own behavior with bad outcomes, they don't have any way of blaming themselves: in their mind they didn't do anything wrong.
When they can causally link their action to the computer's response, they might say "fool myself once, I can't fool me again". Or they might blame the computer for "deciding" to do the undesired thing, asking "why can't the computer just work / drop all spam / remove the virus part from the screensaver part / connect to the wifi access point inside the faraday cage? It can't be that hard!".
So in general, there's no default target of the blame. It's influenced by whether the user has a sense of control and their model of how computers work, specifically what kind and amount of freedom and agency the attribute to it.
That being said, I think most people are too trusting of what the computer says to them when they perceive the computer to work correctly (the phrase "lp0: on fire" springs to mind). So if the voting machine says "Your vote for Jefferson has been counted", most people would trust that if there are no dialog boxes saying "FAIL!" with lots of red pixels in them.
There's one major difference this analysis doesn't cover. If you're patient, you can get a dell for up to 40% off, and although it's not quite as drastic with Lenovo, the same is true. This macbook will ALWAYS be expensive.
And the article agrees:
A. It's completely true that you can buy some amazingly well-equipped Windows notebooks for much, much less than the cheapest MacBook.
Well there you go. If you stick to hardware, like the article says it does, macbooks cost more for less.
A funny thing I noted: the article shows pictures of all computers. It shows the back side of the PCs' screens [monochromatic or gradient surfaces with a logo], while showing the front of the macs with splashly wallpapers and apps and happy faces. I'm sure that was completely coincidental and wasn't due to any bias.
By the author's count, there's parity is six categories, macbook advantage in thirteen and dell advantage in nine. The dell costs $819; the macbook costs $1299, which is 160% percent of the dell. Note that 9 * 1.6 is 14.27, so why doesn't the macbook lead more? Okay, that's a stupid way of counting. Let's look at some meat.
Parity? Counting "?" vs. anything as a tie, the all the PCs beat all the macs. That's parity, apparently.
the MacBooks are the only ones with optical in and out, or at least the only ones that tout it. [Advantage: macbooks]
Genuine, but it may not be worth the 60% markup to you.
Webcam: They all have one. I'm going to avoid comparing resolution and give them all PARITY
Why avoid the resolution comparison? That's like saying they all have a CPU, so they're at parity there. Smells funny.
Keyboard and Touchpad: [macs have innovative touchpads, they have advantage]
Any of them have trackpoints? Those are infinitely better than touchpads; sometimes I don't even notice I haven't plugged in my trackball because using the trackpoint felt so natural. Can any of the touchpads be turned off? I'm not saying the macs don't have a better [and maybe even use-worthy] touchpad, but again... is a slightly better touchpad worth $480?
Fingerprint Scanner: The Dell and Sony have one. ADVANTAGE: DELL AND SONY
Bleh. Does anyone really care?
Bundled Media Software -- Bundled Productivity Software
The macs win on iLife and Easy Media Creator, Dell wins on MS works. I'm not sure what iLife and EMC do, but unless you have high-end or specialized needs, free software can do everything you need. Didn't he also say stick to hardware?
The MacBook is.95 thick; the Lenovo is 1.1 at its thickest point; the Dell is 1.51 at its thickest; the Sony is 1.33 thick at its thickest. The white MacBook is 1.08. ADVANTAGE: MACBOOK
Why is everybody crazy with thickness? Either it's in your backpack or it's on a table somewhere. Unless you have an overfull backpack, why do you care? Is.5" worth $480? (okay, so the mac leads by four, not one, so I should ask whether.5" is worth $120)
Environmental Impact
And that's the final proof: macs are for lefty green vegetarian pacifist free-love hippies who felt personally attacked by South Park 10.02 - Smug Alert!;)
My conclusion: if you think the extra $480 for a nicer-looking and thinner machine, a nicer touchpad, and a wrappable power cord is worth it, go for it. I'd rather buy a fairly decent machine that does well what matters, and spend the saved money on, say, a wii. Or an assload of games. Or tuition fees if you happen to live in a country where the state doesn't pay _you_ to get an education.
Or a movie theater can be tricked by having people exit with already-used tickets, and bring other friends in using them.
Could you elaborate on how that works? I think the movie theaters you talk about don't work like those I think of. Here's my typical use case:
(1) Buy ticket. On the ticket, there's the name of the movie, date and time of when it's shown, and a seat address. There's also a removable part with some of the same information. (2) Go up to man between me and screen; he removes the removable part and lets me pass. (3) watch movie. (4) throw out ticket and leave.
What's your attack on that system? Is your system different? How so?
Some interesting attacks I can cook up: go see the earliest movie. Stay inside the guarded area and watch all other movies shown that day for no additional cost. A reasonably simple fix is to have someone check that the area is all emptied between the movies; a counter-fix is hiding in the toilet. Counter-counter-fixes include giving keys to the toilet to the guards, and posting guards outside each hall instead of one in front of all the halls. A problem with emptying the area is also that the movies aren't shown at overlapping intervals.
The real answer is that this is not really an issue: most people value their time enough that the time spent between movies is not worth it; sure, you can bring a good book, but still... also, viewing movies for one day straight is going to do something funny to your head you may not want, and you may not like all the movies shown that day. The money spent on guards is going to ramp up much faster than the money not earned from cheaters.
Another attack is people fabricating false tickets on their own. The fix is to put a cryptographic signature (or a keyed hash) of the information on the ticket on the stub removed by the guard [in barcode or pixel-matrix form], and give the guard a scanner that verifies the signature. Counter-fixes are harder; you have to steal the private key or tamper with the verification tool. Again, this is probably a non-issue since the time spent on learning how to make counterfeit tickets probably exceeds what most people want.
Although, if the technology is cheap enough, you might do away with the guard if you have a system similar to the subways that lets one person pass through on scanning a valid ticket. This could potentially save money.
Sometimes, but I don't think that it's about some smart-person-persecution system. The big problem is that, if somebody points out a security hole, it must be fixed. Even if the hole has been noticed before but was ignored because the odds of exploitation are so remote as to negate the sense in repairing it, once it's been reported it must be addressed
That depends entirely on whom the security hole has been reported to; if you only report it to a few people, and only to those able to fix it, they might look kindly on it [like when I did that with my university's/etc/passwd]. I think the increased awareness is one of the arguments in the full disclosure versus limited disclosure debate [I won't advocate one position over another in that debate, and you can find all the arguments for both sides on your own time].
Consoles are fine for shoot them ups - platformers, FPS and the like
Playing FPSes on Consoles? Let's look at the pros and cons:
Cons:
Except for the wiimote, you don't have a usable way to controlling looking and turning that's more fine-grained than on-off. So you'll either have players missing all the time, or having the game make targets much easier to hit which diminishes the effect of player skill and sense of accomplishment
Few buttons; you'll have a really hard time giving the player random-access to the weapons.
Players don't typically carry their TV around, so to shoot your friends you'll have to use split screen, meaning that all information is public, which feels lame and gives each player a lot less screen real estate. Forget about playing with more than two players. You can play over the network, but then you're not all in the same room.
Limited communication facilities (oh yeah, I want to use an on-screen keyboard to chat...), except if you go and invest in a headset; how commonly is this supported?
Pros:
Those true of all console games
Did I miss any? I'm not saying that FPSing on consoles can only be bad, just that there are limitations you have to take into consideration. One path is focusing on delivering a great story that involves you shooting the bad guys. But then, I hear there's this call of halo thing the kids are going crazy over these days (git offa mar lorn). How _do_ the console FPSes stack up versus PC games? Is my picture of console FPSing accurate?
some formulas aren't "tired" and can be done again and again with a few changes between iterations. The GTA and Civilization games come to mind.
Some additions to that list:
The Zelda series [I've played OoT a little some years ago, and completed TP, now and in april/may]. I don't know the franchise that well, but I hear most of the time you know you're going to be riding around in Hyrule solving puzzles in dungeons to collect items that'll help you save the princess from Ganondorf's clutches. Tried and true; my knowledge of what was going to happen based on OoT didn't do a damn thing to detract from the value of TP, it was great fun.
The Guitar Hero series. It's still the same idea: hit the colorful gems with the correct timing. What changes is the details of the gem placement and the background music. [again, confession/background: I've played like three tracks of GH2 and a handful or two of GH: Aerosmith; I own GH3, have gold-starred the setlist on easy and most bonus tracks, gold-starred tier 1-7 plus dover on medium with one third of the bonus tracks, 5* half of hard, 3* all except Reign in Blood and One, 3+* tier 1-6 on expert; IOW, I'm short of completing it by the other 90%]. Based on my experience with the earlier titles, GH3 is exactly what was expected, and still damn fun.
Starcraft seems to be a good example, too: most people want SC2 to be something pretty much like SC1 with better graphics and a few changes for flavor and balance (I, for one, welcome our mind-controlling overlords; Mind Control definitely has a zergish flavor).
Giving money to puzzle solvers has happened before. See for instance The Eternity Puzzle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle).
It'd be great if the product's home page said something about the rules of game, because then we could geek out and try to solve it programatically (if possible). It says "Puzzle" on the tin, but is it like playing Zelda or is it like the push-the-ice-blocks-around puzzle in Snowpeak Ruins from Zelda [roughly comparable to a small instance of Sokoban]?
Also, interesting, if this _is_ easy to solve programatically, we'd all be playing a big instance of something like the centipede game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_game).
Slashdot Mirror
I cannot condone taking the sting out of war
The sting felt by those responsible is approval ratings going downwards throughout both of your terms.
I'm all for easing the soldiers' lives; that is, the ones lucky enough to survive. When you're in the trench [not speaking from experience], you know that you have to do what you're ordered to, no matter how much it stings. You most likely didn't end up there by choice.
[long pause]
Dammit. I'm angry now. Please don't read the next paragraph. Bush should be charged with high treason for attacking American ideals and values (balance of power between the three, increased surveillance; you can probably add more). He should be charged with violating the constitution. He should be charged with reckless endangerment (of the lives of soldiers). He should be charged with human rights violations for allowing waterboarding to take place, and not giving people a fair trial. He should be charged with violating the Geneva convention regarding the handling of war prisoners.
[continue reading from here]
Bush, not the soldiers, should feel the sting of war.
If you've watched Fahrenheit 911, you may remember the scene where Moore walks around in DC asking politicians whether they want to send their sons and daughters off to die^W^H fight in Iraq.
That, to me, captured the problem: the worst happening to those in power, when they misuse it, is that they lose it. That is, the very worst position they can be put in is the one everybody is in all the time.
Note that even in that era, the leader would have the best armor, the best weapons, and be surrounded by a unit of his most elite troops.
Not only that, they didn't have shit all over 'em.
Untrue! It is possible to cryptographically lock media to your identity.
Citation needed. Exactly what is the protocol? You send them your public key, they send you an mp3 encrypted with it?
(Whereby your identity is represented by a public/private key pair.) By loading your key to your different devices (something that can be done transparently if there is a standard), you can remove the media barriers while still throwing up barriers against illicit sharing.
Why don't I give my key to my six billion closest friends?
Why don't I just simulate the computation done by the devices on my general-purpose computer, extract the resulting drm-free audio/video stream and dump it to disk?
So in general allowing lighted working conditions during your work day.
It's bright outside when you sit inside with the flourescent lights and the computer screens, and it's dark outside when you want to play soccer with your kids [don't have any]. That's really well thought out ;)
For legal purposes, I think online games should be defined as a foreign nation. No actual property or currency crosses the border into your real country of residence, since it all exists in game
True, but the virtual property is still possessed in The Netherlands, in the sense that the item (user:pass) required to control use of the virtual property resides in the victim boy's head in The Netherlands. In the same sense, you possess your car through the proxy that is your car keys.
Lawyers are used to dealing with indirect forms of possession. I remember reading an interesting wikipedia article about it, but I can't seem to find it now.
I don't think there's a need to turn online worlds into foreign nations. But one has to be careful about which laws to transplant onto them. Forbidding killing other characters--would that also make it illegal to depict murder in movies? Would it make Wile E. Coyote's cartoon acts of attempted animal cruelty illegal? For the more gruesome, see Happy Tree Friends.
I think a good first approximation for judging when to apply laws to what happens in virtual worlds is to look at the real world effects. The kid was violently forced to give up real-world possesion (of a virtual object).
If someone ganks me over and over and over, and doesn't target anyone else, that would probably annoy me to no end. Maybe, depending on the facts of the case, that should be treated as harassment [I'm being annoyed in the real world for the sole purpose of annoying me]. That's a big Maybe, though, and people should be a bit thick-skinned.
But if someone hides in the bushes near the main road and succeeds their pick pockets roll against me, I'm not being deprived of real-world possession: my power to control use of my virtual gold pieces only go as far as the rules of the game say it goes.
So, extending laws into virtual worlds: no. But the virtual worlds are a part of the real world. In some cases it would make sense to apply real-world laws to something that in part takes place in a virtual world. Be wary of techno-illiterate judges, though.
-- Jonas K
Whereas in my world of free speech, everyone deserves air time for their beliefs and if they can't express them clearly or if they make no sense, then its their loss.
I'm all for Michael Behe being allowed to speak his mind. On his blogspot account, or his own webhost, or on the sidewalks. Being allowed to express your views isn't the same as being allowed to express your views _everywhere_. I'm free to talk about my backgammon strategies, but I'm not free to do it in the chess club.
Behe's views are not scientific*. They do not belong in any scientific discussion. No scientific institution should be compelled to let him speak at or in the name of that institution (be it a journal, a university or whatever else you can come up with).
*if you think Behe's views are scientific, please explain to me one of his theoretical models, what predictions can be made from this theory, and what evidence will show that prediction to be false.
-- Jonas K
This creates more questions (bad study)
Generating questions is not itself a sign of a bad study.
Generating questions about the study is (often) a bad thing; it means the article is unclear or lacks information.
Generating questions about reality is (often) a good thing; it means there's more science to be done because there's rich system of causality and "moving parts" beneath the surface. IOW, there is a "there" there.
[and if I had actually read more than the summary, I might have chimed in with my opinion on whether it is indeed a bad study].
-- Jonas K
More like in 0 ;)
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1006155&cid=25490929 is above your post, but posted during the same minute according to slashclock.
I would have guessed it to be all the Whitespace in the C and assembly. That's a language that can really brainfuck you. A real gem, a perl I tell you ;)
[commercial] programmers are insulated from the users and have got used to the annoyances and so can't be bothered to fix them.
The solution is for the organization to eat its own dog food, give _everybody_ submit-access to the bug tracker for _everything_, and teach people to use it aggressively. Tell them that nothing is too much to ask for, but the answer may be no :)
No matter what kind of software you write [almost], you can use it for something in your organization. Music player? Encourage the IT/dev people to listen to music using it. Image (photo) editor? Use it for the images of well-clad smiling people on the company web page. Blogging software? Have people hand in their weekly reports to the manager in form of a blog post. Be just a tiny bit creative.
Ideally, code size should be asymptotic to an optimal size.
For Linux, that's O(n) thanks to device drivers. That is, until we make the vendors supply them.
As you approach the limit, the amount of special-case logic and hardcoding approaches zero, and the amount of data-driven logic approaches 100%
Code is data. Look into lisp some day :)
Anything that speeds up voting encourages greater participation.
How long does it take the average voter to cast his or her vote, in your guesstimate? How long has it taken you? From my vague memory, it takes me transportation [2 x 2km by bike] plus five to ten minutes. If you mean to talk about tallying speeds, you're saying that some people go "I could vote, but because I'm going to have the result in $n days instead of... still getting the result in $n days, I'm not going to".
I don't know much about voter registration in the US [in Denmark, you get a card mailed to you that you hand in at the voting hall in exchange for an empty ballot], but I suspect that this is the real culprit. I remember John Taylor Gatto (.com) say in one of his talks that he sent some of his students (\in K-12) out on the streets handing out voter registration forms. People came running and screaming for them.
I think the danish system works very well. Voter turnout is still too low in my opinion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout says it's 87%), but at least the bar is fairly low; if people abstain due to apathy or a busy schedule, that's not really something you can fix by forcing them to turn up [and cast a blank vote].
But I agree with your view; actually, an overarching one: making voting easier makes more people do it.
If the internet had existed in the time of the founding fathers, I feel sure they would have used it to give the people greater oversight of the legislative process.
s/legislative process/all of government/. All power must be kept in check.
Mind Control definitely has a zergish flavor
Nope mind control was a protoss ability in the expansion.
You're talking past me. Yes, mind control is a Protoss ability, I know that. What I'm saying is that it _should_ be a zerg ability, because the zergs already do mind control: the overmind controls the cerebrates who control the overlords who control the underlings by injecting radioactive overlord midichlorian DNA. It only makes sense that overlords can inject their DNA into non-zerg brains and reprogram them (because as we all know, brain cells, not sperm cells, are among the fastest splitting*). How's _that_ for a plausible mechanism? ;)
Similarly, Prodigal Sorceror _is_ blue, but _should_ be red, since direct damage is red's game.
http://xkcd.com/378/
I'm just sick of the entitlement mentality that is wedded to a near Stockholm Syndrome among a lot of younger people.
The distribution cost has been cut down by a huge amount since this whole internets thing came about. I would love to see some way of funding musicians (which I think is needed to get music of a high enough quality to satisfy peoples' needs) that would allow us all to share the music freely and would allocate the funding to those who turn in into the greatest societal benefit.
Once a good enough piece of music is out there, people are willing to donate their own electricity and bandwidth to give it to other people. The "only" thing left is getting the first copy out there.
If, say, we're taxed more and the National Arts Council allocates funding*, we as a public, having already purchased the music, would be entitled to it. We could still make the right of public performance exclusive to the creator [tangent: but copy-bands is also a good thing... maybe a short, say one year, exclusivity period is the right deal].
* I hear that's where some of the money going into Elephants Dream and the other fruity blender projects came from (where $nation = Netherlands). And I don't think this'll work well on a large scale, being essentially a plan economy.
I haven't come up with a good model yet, but at least there's a politician in my parliament who thinks a bit like I do (danish article: http://www.computerworld.dk/art/42432?cid=4&q=forretningsmodel+ophavsret&sm=search&a=cid&i=4&o=2&pos=3).
but they only know what any junior level sysadmin would know.
I believe the technical term is "PFY".
Which makes sense if you think those in power mainly are interested in creating artifical scarcity to maintain control.
Who's in power again? Is it the parliament or the MAFIAA? And does it matter?
But as the animals look from Napoleon to Pilkington, from man to pig and from pig back to man, they find that they are unable to tell the difference.
Most people think computers are incapable of being incorrect.
I strongly disagree, and I'll explain why.
Microsoft is trying hard to change that, but they are getting less effective.
Heh :) A large portion of people remember the days of windows 95 and apps crashing all over the place, and the infamous blue screen of death. Even in XP you run into the neat dialog box "[App crashed! Send us your private information yes-no?]".
If the computer is wrong, it must have been something that the user did incorrect.
True some of the time. If the user can connect in their mind something they did with an undesired outcome, the outcome will act as a punishment [don't you love B.F. Skinner?] and they will learn to not do those things. Your example is probably a good one.
If they can't identify their own action as causally related to the undesired outcome (the poorly coded application segfaults during a full moon when precisely three files are opened at the same time), they won't learn what not to do.
If they can't causally link their own behavior with bad outcomes, they don't have any way of blaming themselves: in their mind they didn't do anything wrong.
When they can causally link their action to the computer's response, they might say "fool myself once, I can't fool me again". Or they might blame the computer for "deciding" to do the undesired thing, asking "why can't the computer just work / drop all spam / remove the virus part from the screensaver part / connect to the wifi access point inside the faraday cage? It can't be that hard!".
So in general, there's no default target of the blame. It's influenced by whether the user has a sense of control and their model of how computers work, specifically what kind and amount of freedom and agency the attribute to it.
That being said, I think most people are too trusting of what the computer says to them when they perceive the computer to work correctly (the phrase "lp0: on fire" springs to mind). So if the voting machine says "Your vote for Jefferson has been counted", most people would trust that if there are no dialog boxes saying "FAIL!" with lots of red pixels in them.
Microsoft says it has achieved similar results with shipping containers (despite Google's patent)
Hate microsoft. Hate patents. Head asplode.
It's going to be interesting to see what the comments are on this bit... :)
There's one major difference this analysis doesn't cover. If you're patient, you can get a dell for up to 40% off, and although it's not quite as drastic with Lenovo, the same is true. This macbook will ALWAYS be expensive.
And the article agrees:
A. It's completely true that you can buy some amazingly well-equipped Windows notebooks for much, much less than the cheapest MacBook.
Well there you go. If you stick to hardware, like the article says it does, macbooks cost more for less.
A funny thing I noted: the article shows pictures of all computers. It shows the back side of the PCs' screens [monochromatic or gradient surfaces with a logo], while showing the front of the macs with splashly wallpapers and apps and happy faces. I'm sure that was completely coincidental and wasn't due to any bias.
By the author's count, there's parity is six categories, macbook advantage in thirteen and dell advantage in nine. The dell costs $819; the macbook costs $1299, which is 160% percent of the dell. Note that 9 * 1.6 is 14.27, so why doesn't the macbook lead more? Okay, that's a stupid way of counting. Let's look at some meat.
MacBook: 45 watt-hour, 5 hours
Dell: 56 watt-hour, ? hours.
Lenovo: ? watt-hour, 5.5 hours
Sony: ? watt-hour, 6 hours
MacBook white: 55 watt-hour, 4.5 hours
Verdict: parity
Parity? Counting "?" vs. anything as a tie, the all the PCs beat all the macs. That's parity, apparently.
the MacBooks are the only ones with optical in and out, or at least the only ones that tout it. [Advantage: macbooks]
Genuine, but it may not be worth the 60% markup to you.
Webcam: They all have one. I'm going to avoid comparing resolution and give them all PARITY
Why avoid the resolution comparison? That's like saying they all have a CPU, so they're at parity there. Smells funny.
Keyboard and Touchpad: [macs have innovative touchpads, they have advantage]
Any of them have trackpoints? Those are infinitely better than touchpads; sometimes I don't even notice I haven't plugged in my trackball because using the trackpoint felt so natural. Can any of the touchpads be turned off? I'm not saying the macs don't have a better [and maybe even use-worthy] touchpad, but again... is a slightly better touchpad worth $480?
Fingerprint Scanner: The Dell and Sony have one. ADVANTAGE: DELL AND SONY
Bleh. Does anyone really care?
Bundled Media Software -- Bundled Productivity Software
The macs win on iLife and Easy Media Creator, Dell wins on MS works. I'm not sure what iLife and EMC do, but unless you have high-end or specialized needs, free software can do everything you need. Didn't he also say stick to hardware?
The MacBook is .95 thick; the Lenovo is 1.1 at its thickest point; the Dell is 1.51 at its thickest; the Sony is 1.33 thick at its thickest. The white MacBook is 1.08. ADVANTAGE: MACBOOK
Why is everybody crazy with thickness? Either it's in your backpack or it's on a table somewhere. Unless you have an overfull backpack, why do you care? Is .5" worth $480? (okay, so the mac leads by four, not one, so I should ask whether .5" is worth $120)
Environmental Impact
And that's the final proof: macs are for lefty green vegetarian pacifist free-love hippies who felt personally attacked by South Park 10.02 - Smug Alert! ;)
My conclusion: if you think the extra $480 for a nicer-looking and thinner machine, a nicer touchpad, and a wrappable power cord is worth it, go for it. I'd rather buy a fairly decent machine that does well what matters, and spend the saved money on, say, a wii. Or an assload of games. Or tuition fees if you happen to live in a country where the state doesn't pay _you_ to get an education.
Or a movie theater can be tricked by having people exit with already-used tickets, and bring other friends in using them.
Could you elaborate on how that works? I think the movie theaters you talk about don't work like those I think of. Here's my typical use case:
(1) Buy ticket. On the ticket, there's the name of the movie, date and time of when it's shown, and a seat address. There's also a removable part with some of the same information. (2) Go up to man between me and screen; he removes the removable part and lets me pass. (3) watch movie. (4) throw out ticket and leave.
What's your attack on that system? Is your system different? How so?
Some interesting attacks I can cook up: go see the earliest movie. Stay inside the guarded area and watch all other movies shown that day for no additional cost. A reasonably simple fix is to have someone check that the area is all emptied between the movies; a counter-fix is hiding in the toilet. Counter-counter-fixes include giving keys to the toilet to the guards, and posting guards outside each hall instead of one in front of all the halls. A problem with emptying the area is also that the movies aren't shown at overlapping intervals.
The real answer is that this is not really an issue: most people value their time enough that the time spent between movies is not worth it; sure, you can bring a good book, but still... also, viewing movies for one day straight is going to do something funny to your head you may not want, and you may not like all the movies shown that day. The money spent on guards is going to ramp up much faster than the money not earned from cheaters.
Another attack is people fabricating false tickets on their own. The fix is to put a cryptographic signature (or a keyed hash) of the information on the ticket on the stub removed by the guard [in barcode or pixel-matrix form], and give the guard a scanner that verifies the signature. Counter-fixes are harder; you have to steal the private key or tamper with the verification tool. Again, this is probably a non-issue since the time spent on learning how to make counterfeit tickets probably exceeds what most people want.
Although, if the technology is cheap enough, you might do away with the guard if you have a system similar to the subways that lets one person pass through on scanning a valid ticket. This could potentially save money.
Sometimes, but I don't think that it's about some smart-person-persecution system. The big problem is that, if somebody points out a security hole, it must be fixed. Even if the hole has been noticed before but was ignored because the odds of exploitation are so remote as to negate the sense in repairing it, once it's been reported it must be addressed
That depends entirely on whom the security hole has been reported to; if you only report it to a few people, and only to those able to fix it, they might look kindly on it [like when I did that with my university's /etc/passwd]. I think the increased awareness is one of the arguments in the full disclosure versus limited disclosure debate [I won't advocate one position over another in that debate, and you can find all the arguments for both sides on your own time].
Consoles are fine for shoot them ups - platformers, FPS and the like
Playing FPSes on Consoles? Let's look at the pros and cons:
Cons:
Pros:
Did I miss any? I'm not saying that FPSing on consoles can only be bad, just that there are limitations you have to take into consideration. One path is focusing on delivering a great story that involves you shooting the bad guys. But then, I hear there's this call of halo thing the kids are going crazy over these days (git offa mar lorn). How _do_ the console FPSes stack up versus PC games? Is my picture of console FPSing accurate?
some formulas aren't "tired" and can be done again and again with a few changes between iterations. The GTA and Civilization games come to mind.
Some additions to that list:
The Zelda series [I've played OoT a little some years ago, and completed TP, now and in april/may]. I don't know the franchise that well, but I hear most of the time you know you're going to be riding around in Hyrule solving puzzles in dungeons to collect items that'll help you save the princess from Ganondorf's clutches. Tried and true; my knowledge of what was going to happen based on OoT didn't do a damn thing to detract from the value of TP, it was great fun.
The Guitar Hero series. It's still the same idea: hit the colorful gems with the correct timing. What changes is the details of the gem placement and the background music. [again, confession/background: I've played like three tracks of GH2 and a handful or two of GH: Aerosmith; I own GH3, have gold-starred the setlist on easy and most bonus tracks, gold-starred tier 1-7 plus dover on medium with one third of the bonus tracks, 5* half of hard, 3* all except Reign in Blood and One, 3+* tier 1-6 on expert; IOW, I'm short of completing it by the other 90%]. Based on my experience with the earlier titles, GH3 is exactly what was expected, and still damn fun.
Starcraft seems to be a good example, too: most people want SC2 to be something pretty much like SC1 with better graphics and a few changes for flavor and balance (I, for one, welcome our mind-controlling overlords; Mind Control definitely has a zergish flavor).
Giving money to puzzle solvers has happened before. See for instance The Eternity Puzzle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle).
It'd be great if the product's home page said something about the rules of game, because then we could geek out and try to solve it programatically (if possible). It says "Puzzle" on the tin, but is it like playing Zelda or is it like the push-the-ice-blocks-around puzzle in Snowpeak Ruins from Zelda [roughly comparable to a small instance of Sokoban]?
Also, interesting, if this _is_ easy to solve programatically, we'd all be playing a big instance of something like the centipede game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_game).